Democrats may lose in the next election

The Republicans have a secret weapon, one that is going to be unstoppable, and probably means they are going to dominate both houses of Congress. Phil has discovered (via Randi, who also has another useful item) the most potent electoral tool in the Republican arsenal—better than fear and hate, even more powerful than Diebold—I’m telling you, this thing exceeds the awe-inspiring awesome awesomeness of magnetic “support the troops” ribbons for your car. It’s the Presidential Prayer Team. Sign up, and you will get specific instructions on exactly what to tell God. After all, if we can get a million Americans to tell Him that He needs to protect the sacred institution of marriage from the NJ Supreme Court, He’ll know to ignore the uncoordinated pleas for mercy from those backward primitives in Darfur (where, obviously, God has been doing a bang-up job.)

The Presidential Prayer Team harnesses the power of the Internet and popularity of e-mail to communicate with our members. You will receive up-to-the-minute prayer requests and information. PPT is widely recognized as one of the most innovative and effective users of electronic communication in Christian ministry today. The prayers of PPT members have had an untold impact on America for good and for God.

Oh, yes…untold impact. I quite agree with that. I’m also impressed that sending email to Christians is considered innovative and effective—do keep it up, keep those prayer wheels turning. This is a great way to actually accomplish something.

I have to confess, though, that as an atheist I didn’t really understand why this service was necessary. Don’t Christians pray all the time? Well, was I ever surprised to learn this:

Many have wanted to pray for our President and our country, but haven’t known how to pray or what to pray. The Presidential Prayer Team provides you the most accurate and up-to-date information so that you can pray with intelligence, conviction and power.

Oh. So this web page is for the many millions of Christians who know that they are devout and religious, but don’t know how or what to pray for—they are harnessing the power of the imbeciles of America.

Now I’m really afraid.

Utter nonsense

What the hell? How can the BBC News publish this tripe?

But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.

Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.

Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.

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DeLong explains Easterbrook

How can Gregg Easterbrook be publishing a science column in Slate? Brad DeLong explains it all.

The fact that Easterbook’s writing is “lively” and “provocative” and that he is a member of the appropriate social networks is sufficient reason to publish him as a “science writer.”

I can see where “lively” and “provocative” are necessary pre-conditions for getting a column in a popular magazine, but are they sufficient? No. Would they hire someone for a gossip column who had never heard of Scarlet Johansson or Brad Pitt? There is this phenomenon called “expertise” that ought to be part of the equation.

That being in the right clique is part of the prerequisite is unfortunate, but is a common part of human reality. The interesting thing, though, is that picking Easterbrook tells us something about the social circles in which Slate management seems to circulate—and that is that they are disjunct from the social circles that include competent scientists and science writers.

The fact that this has an effect not just on how good their operations are at delivering accurate information but also on how the scientifically-literate regard their operations as a whole–I don’t think that’s something that enters Weisberg’s (or Foer’s) mind at all.

Exactly. Although it could be that that’s a smart (in a short-sighted, counter-intuitive way) decision: the scientifically literate are clearly a minority in this country, so maybe one way to market ‘science’ to that profitable majority of boobs is to hire a boob to write it. That is, if you think your job is not to tell people what they ought to know, but rather to repeat to them what they think they already know.

Inverting the blogosphere into a kind of anti-beauty contest gives me hope

How about them boobies? I was traveling yesterday, and missed most of the astonishing uproar over being photographed while bearing breasts—so I won’t add much to the thrashing except to point out the bright side.

You see, the real resentment is over the fact that Jessica happens to be young and attractive, a couple of fortuitous and irrelevant features that don’t matter to the assessment of her writing. There are a lot of people like that in the blogosphere, like Amanda and Lindsay, and it’s not just the ladies—look at Ezra and Chris. They’re the competition. If we old and homely people can take them out by impeaching them on the basis of their looks and simultaneously elevating our raddled, decrepit appearance into a sign of gravitas and wisdom, we win! We need to constantly reinforce that pleasing “he/she-sure-didn’t-get-there-on-looks-and-sunny-disposition” source of false credibility, and divide the world into crotchety sourpusses you must obey and young kids with taut connective tissue you can ignore.

I suspect Ann Althouse must be cleverly thinking the very same thing.

That’s an upside to global warming I hadn’t considered before

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Republicans are capable of thinking long term—really long term. After a recent hearing, Rep. Don Young (Reprehensible, Alaska) enlightened us with a Deep Thought:

Before he left the hearing, Young, noting the presence of network TV crews, took a moment to reflect on his thoughts regarding climate change, citing the benefit of global warming — not caused by man — in another eon to an area that today is frozen much of the year. “We’re dealing with the most northern part of the United States of America, and a most hostile climate, and we’re pumping oil, and I’d just like to remind them if they’re asked where did the oil come from, and I would say this to Al Gore specifically: This was a jungle at one time, this was a forest at one time, this was a fern-laden area with mammoths at one time, and that’s really why we’re pumping oil,” he said.

Oh, yeah! Global warming will foster the luxuriant bogs and swamps of a new, more tropical Alaska, laying down the deep beds of carbon that will fuel the SUVs of tomorrow’s America! Carbon dioxide…it’s for our future! (“Tomorrow” is defined as “100 million years from now”, and “America” refers to the evolved, sentient descendants of whatever species makes it that long and is resident on the tectonic plate corresponding to the current state of Alaska. No promises to current voters are intended or implied.)

A Minnesotan mentioned another little problem with Young’s peculiarly hopeful idea.

Next to speak was the committee’s ranking Democrat, James Oberstar of Minnesota, who reminded Young that while global warming might have been good for fern jungles, human civilization is another story.
“That happened years ago,” Oberstar said. “The place was uninhabited by humans at that time.”

Pssht. Nattering nabob of negativism.

I think it’s very ambitious. I’d always thought the Republicans would love to roll back history to the Middle Ages, but who’d have thought they’d set their sights on returning to the Carboniferous?

House jumps the shark

True confession: I try to watch the medical drama House when I can. It’s lead character is an acerbic and brilliant atheist M.D. (played by Hugh Laurie, a comedic actor—which was a smart casting decision), and the humor is snarky and dark. That’s just the kind of thing I enjoy. It’s been going downhill, I think, because the episodes have gotten far too predictable—there’s always a weird illness which is handled via increasingly wild semi-random diagnoses that always, and I definitely mean always, ends with the complete cure of the patient. The infallibility is wearing a little thin.

Last season’s finale almost made me give up. They turned the gross-out factor up to 11 (exploding testicles and eyeballs popping out), and resolved everything with the lamest, laziest television cliche: it was just a dream. I hoped it was just an aberration.

Last night’s episode, though, blew it. I have lost faith in House. <spoilers below>

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Cool! A new argument for dualism!

At least, that is, it’s new to me. Austin Cline summarizes a report in The Philosophers’ Magazine by Michael La Bossier:

[R]ecent studies of cloned animals reveal that current cloning techniques produce animals that are as distinct in their personalities as animals produced by “natural” means of reproduction. Texas A&M, which has been on the forefront of animal cloning, has found that cloned pigs differ from each other in, among other things, their food preferences and degree of friendliness towards human beings.…

Given that the clones are genetically the same and are typically raised in similar environments, it seems reasonable to consider the possibility of a non-physical factor that causes the difference in personality. After all, once the physical factors are accounted for, what would seem to remain would be e non-physical. In light of the history of philosophy, the most plausible candidate would be the mind.

Ooh! Ooh! I have to test this!

I have in my hand two identical dice. I throw them at the same time, to the same place, with the same amount of force…whoa. A 5 and a 2. How can that be?

I have two quarters. They are the same, right down to the year. I flip them both and…two heads. That’s a relief. I flip them again, and get a head and a tail.

This is amazing! I have just proven that dice and coins have minds! Is there some kind of big rich philosophical prize I can win for this accomplishment? Would the Templeton Foundation hand out a million bucks for proving that there are immaterial spirits haunting objects in the world?

Please—no one mention the concept of chance until I’ve got the money. And especially don’t mention that complex dynamic systems, such as, say, cloned pigs, are highly sensitive to variations in initial conditions, and offer many opportunities for accumulation of subtle, random changes, such as occur during development.

I recommend this as an entrance exam for the priesthood

Maybe it would have been more sensible to start with the water-and-wine trick, and later work up to the walking-on-water finale.

A priest has died after trying to demonstrate how Jesus walked on water. Evangelist preacher Franck Kabele, 35, told his congregation he could repeat the biblical miracle. But he drowned after walking out to sea from a beach in the capital Libreville in Gabon, west Africa. One eyewitness said: “He told churchgoers he’d had a revelation that if he had enough faith, he could walk on water like Jesus. “He took his congregation to the beach saying he would walk across the Komo estuary, which takes 20 minutes by boat. “He walked into the water, which soon passed over his head and he never came back.”