Here’s today’s headline from MSNBC today:

U.S.-Iran tensions could trigger accidental war

Here’s what is going on, according to this article: 

Citing Iranian involvement with Iraqi militias and Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, the Bush administration has shifted to offense in its confrontation with Iran — building up the U.S. military in the Persian Gulf and promising more aggressive moves against Iranian operatives in Iraq and Lebanon.

The behind-the-scenes struggle between the two nations could explode into open warfare over a single misstep, analysts and U.S. military officials warn.

If a war broke out with Iran, that war would be the least accidental thing that has ever happened.  A plan to attack Iran has been in place for many months, as reported at least two years ago.

My question tonight is why this headline characterizes any war that might result as “accidental.”  We’re only an flimsy excuse away from bombs dropping, just in time so Bush can start thinking about cleaning out his things, retiring back to his ranch as the fake cowboy he is, and leaving this country and the middle-east in a much bigger mess than it already is.

This Comic strip often takes a pointed view of popular perceptions.

For example, today’s Cow and Boy strip:

This seems all too familiar. One side framing an issue for debate, and the other sidestepping the frame because it doesn’t fit their world-view. We see a lot of this out in the blogosphere, and in the media, and in the schools, and so on.

Here’s a compelling article by Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon.  Kahneman is famous for identifying numerous human heuristics and biases in the lab. He received a Nobel prize in economics based on his decades of inspiring work. Renshon is a Harvard doctoral student.

In this article, the authors note that many built-in human heuristics and biases lead our leaders to choose war over peace. Our leaders are “predisposed to believe their hawkish advisors more than the doves.”

Here’s a sample:

People are prone to exaggerating their strengths: About 80 percent of us believe that our driving skills are better than average. In situations of potential conflict, the same optimistic bias makes politicians and generals receptive to advisors who offer highly favorable estimates of the outcomes of war. Such a predisposition, often shared by leaders on both sides of a conflict, is likely to produce a disaster. And this is not an isolated example.

In fact, when we constructed a list of the biases uncovered in 40 years of psychological research, we were startled by what we found: All the biases in our list favor hawks. These psychological impulses—only a few of which we discuss here—incline national leaders to exaggerate the evil intentions of adversaries, to misjudge how adversaries perceive them, to be overly sanguine when hostilities start, and overly reluctant to make necessary concessions in negotiations. In short, these biases have the effect of making wars more likely to begin and more difficult to end.

The excessive optimism of humans is yet another potential pitfall for leaders:

Psychological research has shown that a large majority of people believe themselves to be smarter, more attractive, and more talented than average, and they commonly overestimate their future success. People are also prone to an “illusion of control”: They consistently exaggerate the amount of control they have over outcomes that are important to them—even when the outcomes are in fact random or determined by other forces. It is not difficult to see that this error may have led American policymakers astray as they laid the groundwork for the ongoing war in Iraq.

Once we’ve begun a losing cause, our biases keep us from evaluating losing situations accurately.  The authors frame this problem as the deep-seated human aversion to cutting losses.  This is akin to the sunk cost phenomenon we’ve previously discussed in the context of Iraq. 

If you’ve been following this blog for the past few weeks, you know that I attended the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis Tennessee (Jan 12-14).  The conference, sponsored by Free Press, drew more than 3,500 participants.

Free Press offered a reduced admission fee to those who agreed to blog the conference.  I took them up on that offer and ended up posting repeatedly from (and about) the conference.  For anyone who would like to know about cutting edge issues in media reform, I did my best to report them. 

Now that my flurry of media reform posts is slowing, I decided to place the links to those posts in one spot—here—for anyone wanting to vicariously attend the conference: 

Nation Conference for Media Reform - Opening Shots

Dennis Kucinich on A) Media Reform and B) How Bush is Scaring the Republicans

Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control Media - Day 2 of the National Conference for Media Reform

Nation Conference for Media Reform - Plenary Speech by Bill Moyers

How to save the Internet: net neutrality (equal access)

National Conference for Media Reform - The Press at War and the War on the Press

Children and media policy

Media Reform Speech by FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein

Emerging research issues in media

Ed Markey: A good friend for each of us who believes in a vigorous First Amendment

Assembling democracy

Bloggers: Welcome to the downside of journalism!

Journalism quotes

Reporting on Iraq - from afar

Bill Moyers: “Big Media is Ravenous. It Never Gets Enough. Always Wants More. And it Will Stop at Nothing to Get It.”

Meet the exhibitors at the National Conference for Media Reform

Why we won’t solve any other major problem confronting the U.S. without media reform.

What is the future of newspapers?

Patriotism and asking good hard questions 

Today’s biggest story: Somebody won the Powerball jackpot! 

Here’s a long and thoughtful article by Gary Kamiya on Salon, titled “The Readers Strike Back.” The article is as long as it is thoughtful.

Kamiay brings out the many ways in which unedited, immediate and intense reader feedback (especially at newspapers & e-zines) affects writers and their craft.  Here’s the before and after snapshot: 

[T]he newly vocal masses contain not only thoughtful and respectful readers but also large numbers of fools, knaves, blowhards and nuts. Moreover — and this is a crucial point — the percentage of letter writers who are fools, knaves, blowhards and nuts has exponentially increased. In the old stamped-letter days, the difficulty of writing in weeded out more of these types; letters tended to be somewhat more thoughtful, and letter writers usually adhered to certain conventions of etiquette and decorum governing communications between reader and writer. Not forelock-tugging subservience to their betters, but simple courtesy. There was a tacit acknowledgment of the implicit contract between writer and reader, one characterized by at least a modicum of idealization and respect on both sides. I don’t want to exaggerate this — certainly there were plenty of ad hominem and intemperate letters back then. But having edited several magazines in the print-only era, I can say that there were far, far fewer. Perhaps the unseen presence of an editor, the slightly formal nature of writing a “letter to the editor,” led readers to be on their better behavior.

Now, in the glorious days of “disintermediation,” when writing a letter or posting a blog is as easy as banging away on a keyboard for a few seconds and clicking “Send,” that contract has been trashed. Formality? The context of online communication is more like being in your car in a traffic jam than sitting across a table from someone and having a talk — and it’s easy to flip somebody off through a rolled-up window. As a result, the kind of people who are prone to flipping others off, braying obscenities and ranting pointlessly are disproportionately represented in online letters sections and reader blogs.

The article makes the point that the “worst online abuse is directed at writers who make themselves vulnerable by revealing intimate things about their lives.”  Kamiya quotes Salon writer Laura Miller: “If you write something revealing, people mob up and become predatory.”  This tendency toward abuse illustrates that online writing is (like so many other important things) subject to the ”the tragedy of the commons.”  

The benefits of all of the writer feedback are many, but these benefits need to be weighed against the greatest danger: creative paralysis experienced by the writers.   

Here’s some compelling viewing, compliments of Pharyngula. 

It’s John Kasich of FOX interviewing Brian Flemming, producer of the video “The God Who Wasn’t There“).  Kasich is so upset, you’d think he really believes in hell.  Flemming has heard it all before, obviously.  Loved his line: “I think that Atheists can play basketball too.”).

To sum up Kasich: Atheists are bad bad bad bad bad bad bad people.  No matter how they live their lives. 

Makes you wonder why they don’t light candles and burn incense on the TV set at FOX. 

I don’t have any friends like this.   I don’t think I do . . .

Here’s a short video that takes you deep into a fundie lecture hall to be taught by the likes of Ken Ham.  I learned of this video by visiting a well-written science blog, Pharyngula (written by biology professor Paul Z. Myers).

Watching the video is startling, disturbing and depressing.  The young children are being taught to mindlessly repeat the world according to Ken Ham in order to please their teachers and parents.  In this video, you can hear the kids parrotting Ham’s claim that dinosaurs and people lived at the same time, a few thousand years ago, because the Bible says so.  No need to raise any serious questions or to consider whether the evidence backs up these claims.  Just repeat after Ham.  What Ham and these children are attacking, of course, is not evolution, even though they are calling it evolution.

As I watched, I kept thinking of all of those hungry young minds that are only a couple good questions away from seeing that Ken Ham is a fool.  Or is he evil?  What is the right term for a man who propogates his self-delusionals in order to bask in the adoration of the children he helps to keep ignorant?

Really, those youngsters are only a couple of good questions away from becoming seekers of knowledge, if only their parents could have the courage to let them explore new ideas with the same vigor with which they repeat their fear-induced oxymorons.  If only those parents had enough faith in their own children to give their children access to both sides of the story and then step back to let their children make their own choices . . .

But no.  As it often is these days, this video shows that fear and ignorance win the day.

I’ll end with a quote:

…if I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

[Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir]

I’ve recently been digging into the family of blogs that goes under the umbrella name: scienceblogs.com.  Here’s the general mission:

Our mission is to build a community of like-minded individuals who are passionate about science and its place in our culture, and give them a place to meet.

The Science Blogs are a tremendous resource, consisting 57 dedicated scientists and science writers reaching out to accomplish the above mission.  Look down the left column here for the bloggers.  Recently, I have spent time on these science blogs:

Discovering Biology in a Digital World, is authored by a woman who describes herself as follows:

I am a microbiologist and molecular biologist turned tenured biotech faculty turned bioinformatics scientist turned entrepeneur. My passion is developing instructional materials for 21st century biology

She presents some cleanly-written articles on topics the deserve cleanly written articles, like “How do you Sequence a genome,”  What is a gene?  and “Make your own stem cells.”

Consider visiting Retrospectacle, whose quest is to ponder “how science intersects with politics, culture, policy, money, medicine, and religion in an attempt to be more than just a niche scientist sitting in the oh-so-lovely ivory tower.”  In this link, she ponders the science of being rich.

Did you ever wonder why we curse?  Page 3.14  explores that issue here.  Or try out this demonstration to see how well you could create a carbon-neutral future if your were “King for a Day.”

For a bounty of thoughtful posts, visit Mike the Mad Biologist who, according to the blog, rants about “politics, evolution and microbiology.”  A good example of the high quality writing is “Chickens and Group Selection.”  You’ll also get a good dose of religion and politics from Mike.

Actually, you’ll get a good dose of politics stirred in with science at many of these sites, including Corpus Callosum and the Scientific Activist (including this post about yet another unqualified Bush Appointee at NASA). All of this “political science” is necessary, of course, because modern politics so often can’t bear to follow the lead of good science to follow the evidence where it leads.  Yet another engaging site along these lines is Dispatches from the Culture Wars, a site written by Ed Brayton.

Though not part of the Science-blog family, here’s yet another good science-education site I recently discovered.  Would you like to see some really impressive collection of science-related images and video, combined with crisp writing?  If so, check out Neurophilosophy.    Here is how the author describes his interests:

I write about most aspects of neuroscience, from the molecular to the cognitive. I am particularly interested in neuroethology, cognitive evolution, philosophy of mind and the application of nanotechnology to the biomedical sciences. I occasionally throw in a bit of astronomy/ cosmology, and anything else I find interesting.

I could imagine spending weeks reading the posts at these quality sites.   If only I had weeks . . .

Since the Korean War (officially called a “police action”), America has been famous for losing wars.  It drew a stalemate in Korean — a conflict that has still not officially ended.  It lost in Cuba, in the Bay of Pigs.  It lost in Viet Nam, after losing 50,000 lives, billions of dollars and nearly a decade of national attention.  It lost in Somalia, where its bodies of its dead troops were dragged through the streets.  It has lost repeatedly in the Levant, supporting Israelis whose brutal methods bear striking similarities to those of the Palestinians (for a recent example, see here).  It is even on the verge of losing in both Afganistan and Iraq — in Afganistan, the Taliban is apparently organizing for an attack this spring, while attacks by insurgents in Iraq continue unabated.

Likewise, on the domestic front, America is losing the war on poverty, a goal since FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s of protecting America’s poor from illness, homelessness, starvation, etc.  America is losing the war on drugs:  crystal meth is the latest front line of this battle and America’s only solution appears to be the ineffective strategy of sending drug addicts to jail:  America imprisons more of its population than any other nation on earth, mostly on drug charges.  And America will lose the war on terror.

Why?  Several reasons come to mind.  First and foremost:  because “terrorism” is not an enemy; terrorism is merely a tactic that is used by an enemy.  It is a political weapon, not a military one, used by enemies who know they could never defeat America militarily.  That is why a military response to terrorism will always fail:  because terrorists are not military threats.  Until Americans recognize this difference, they will continue to be fat, juicy targets for terrorists.

Second, not only is terrorism merely a tactic, but it works:  Americans are relatively easily to scare.  We’ve seen remarkable examples of this during the past five years, as Americans have given up their most valuable, centuries-old freedoms to bald-faced liars (neo-con Republicans) whose only talent appears to be fear-mongering (it clearly isn’t crisis management).

Third, because Americans build lots of fat, juicy targets for terrorists to destroy.  Obsessed with conspicuous consumption, Americans just can’t resist spending their money on flamboyant tangible assets instead of on less conspicuous, intangible assets that might do much more to reduce their terrorism risk…things such as becoming a better global partner.

So, get ready for another defeat, America.  George Bush might be correct when he says that Iraq is “the front line in the war on terror.”  Unfortunately, he’s losing it, despite his simple-minded lies to the contrary.  Or, actually, because of them.

Back in September, 2006, I bemoaned the lack of a real plan by any Democratic leaders regarding Iraq.  Things have not changed since September.  It has not been easy to find any leader stepping up with anything other than a symbolic plan or a wish.  That is the context of Feingold’s recent post at Huffpo: 

For the first time in the four-plus years since Congress authorized the Iraq war, Congress is having a serious debate about how we can fix the President’s failed Iraq policy. Unfortunately, while there have been plenty of members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, voicing opposition to the President’s plans for escalation, most of the plans being pushed will do nothing to end the catastrophe in Iraq.

Fuss Feingold claims that he is about to present a real plan that will:

not cut funding for the troops. Our troops will continue to receive the salaries, equipment, training and protection they need. What I am proposing is ending funds for the continued deployment of U.S. forces in Iraq six months after the enactment of the bill. This will require the President to safely redeploy troops from Iraq by that date.

Feingold has my attention.  I’ll be watching for the details of his plan.

Isn’t it striking how many highly intelligent freethinkers are ineffective speakers and writers? 

Not all of them, mind you.  Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are notable exceptions in my mind. They both get right to the point using ordinary words.  They both look at their audience while speaking. Harris is one of the more affable speakers out there, while Dawkins excels at communicating with an earnest intensity.  Their approaches to delivering their ideas explain their popularity.  They stand out from the crowd with their ability to convey their ideas.  Many other freethinkers (all of them intelligent, sincere and committed to following evidence where it leads) could greatly improve on the way they deliver their ideas.  By failing to work on their delivery, they are losing opportunities to communicate their valuable ideas.

I base this conclusion on my viewing of the presentations at the La Jolla conference, “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival.”  You can watch videos of the sessions here. I briefly discussed the conference here.

While watching some of the presenters, however, I imagined being a fundamentalist; In short, I imagined feeling threatened by the ideas of the La Jolla freethinkers.  If I were a fundmentalist, I might think I disagreed with the ideas of the scientists and philosophers while I was actually much more repulsed by the manner in which those ideas were presented.

For instance, some of the freethinking scientists and philosophers appear arrogant.  They might not actually be arrogant, though they appeared arrogant.  For instance, many of them speak with a know-it-all tone of voice (I won’t name names–just take a look at some of the video presentations).  

Tone of voice is not the only way to look arrogant, though.  Many freethinkers just can’t help throwing around dozens of “isms.”  Still others are name-droppers, constantly dropping names of books and authors. Dropping names makes one look like one is showing off how much he or she knows rather than sincerely attempting to connect with the audience.  Here’s another form of arrogance: hogging the floor and failing to get to the point.  If it can be communicated succinctly, it should be.  Anything else looks arrogant in that it tells the audience that the speaker’s time is more valuable than that of the audience. 

Maybe arrogance (or what appears to be arrogance) is a cost to pay for being a professor at a university (I should note that there are many exceptions to this observation).  The development of mannerisms that look like arrogance might be the gradual and unintentional result of talking to captive audiences of inferiors (students who are not as knowledable and who are dependent upon you for grades). 

For many Believers, the words “scientists” and “arrogant” are redundant terms.  Getting this idea off the table (the idea that freethinkers are arrogant) should thus be a high priority.

But arrogance is only part of the problem.  (more…)

If you couldn’t make it to Washington, DC, many local communities sponsored their own anti-war protests today.   The one I attended was sponsored by the St. Louis Instead of War Coalition.   The sponsors assembled the several hundred participants into groups to be photographed, those photos to be delivered to new Missouri Claire McCaskill.

The man (below), referring to his sign, stated: “This is what it’s all about, right?”

The woman on the left (below) proudly told me that she created her sign before the Iraq war even began.

The crowd included veterans of earlier wars, including this WWII veteran sitting on my right (that’s my daughter Charlotte on my lap)

The sponsors selected the following quote for its invitation to the rally: 

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Because I’ve taken the time to read my local newspaper today, I am well-informed.  I now know that everybody at the South St. Louis County Dierberg’s grocery store is excited that the winning Powerball ticket was sold right there.

But that’s not all.

Under “Top News,” I can read that the St. Louis Cardinals probably will not be signing a pitcher who was with them last year.

But there’s more: From a local trial, we now know how a St. Louis area man allegedly broke his girlfriend’s neck.  And there’s even more news: The colorful banner at the top of the front page reminds me to get ready for this week’s Auto Show at the downtown convention center.  Don’t forget the teaser at the bottom right: Buy Sunday’s paper and you can read an article about beer and the Bible. 

All of this important information on a single front page!  Can you believe that they make their reporters spend years at journalism schools in order to write things like this? 

If I were a journalist who worked for this newspaper, this front page would embarrass me.   I would keep it a secret that I worked for this paper.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch is not a locally-owned newspaper. It is owned by Lee Enterprises.  If you visit the website homepage of Lee Enterprises, you will see lots of web headlines about growing the revenue, increasing the circulation and controlling the costs.  You will not see the word “journalism.”  You will not see anything about the need to hire the best reporters available. Nor, at the Lee site, will you see anything about the need for investigative reporting. 

There isn’t any serious investigate reporting anymore. Not at most newspapers. Cutting investigative journalism saves papers lots of money and spares some of the paper’s advertisers considerable embarrassment.  It’s a win-win for the paper’s owners and advertisers.  The readers?  The community? If they don’t like it, let them go start their own newspapers, right?  That a newspaper contains no investigative journalism, though, makes it appear that there is nothing important going on in the community, even though, in truth, local newspapers no longer try to cover political and corporate malfeasance or misfeasance.  “Nothing to worry about in this city . . . Now just run along and buy something you see in one of our fancy ads.”

Most newspapers are not locally owned, not even the big newspapers in most big cities.  In Fighting for Air (2007), Eric Klinenberg writes that the lack of locally-owned papers and the increase in newspaper market share owned by a small number of large corporations correlates with the decay in quality journalism.  From 1990 to 2003, newspaper employment has dropped from 455,000 to 381,000.  “By 2000 only about 2% of cities had more than one paper and roughly 80% of all dailies were owned by chains.”  There are fewer stories, fewer local stories, fewer reporters, less access to local sources for local news… you end up with front-page stories that somebody (hang on to your horses!) won the Powerball drawing.   (more…)

At his recent State of the Union address, President Bush pointed out a modern American hero: 

After her daughter was born, Julie Aigner-Clark searched for ways to share her love of music and art with her child. So she borrowed some equipment, and began filming children’s videos in her basement. The Baby Einstein Company was born — and in just five years her business grew to more than $20 million in sales. In November 2001, Julie sold Baby Einstein to the Walt Disney Company, and with her help Baby Einstein has grown into a $200 million business. Julie represents the great enterprising spirit of America.

What does Baby Einstein sell?  An “entire line of playful and interactive DVDs, videos, books, music CDs, and toys.”  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that products this good will turn millions of babies into . . . well, pooping drooling little Einsteins.  Once we harness all of the nation’s cognito-baby-power, solving of the Grand Unification Theory can’t possibly be far behind, I tell you!  In fact, whenever a few of those Baby Einstein babies are together in a playpen, you’d better not stray too far away, for those moments when they collaborate and start chanting solutions to Fermat’s Theorums.

It was good to see President Bush getting solidly behind a serious educational initiative like Baby Einstein. 

Or has Bush shot crookedly again?  It turns out that Baby Einstein excels at convincing you to entrust your baby to the boob tube.  Check out some of the popular Baby Einstein product lines here for newborns and here for ages 6 months and up.  Twelve-packs of DVDs to give your baby that invaluable experience that he or she needs in order to develop into a fully-functioning TV-gawking adult. 

“But what’s the harm?” you might ask. The following statement was issued by Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood in response to President Bush using his State of the Union address:

During his speech, the President lauded Baby Einstein’s founder, Julie Aigner-Clark, as an example of the “the heroic kindness, courage and self-sacrifice of the American people,” and described the success of Baby Einstein in detail.  In 2006, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint against Baby Einstein for false and deceptive marketing; that complaint is pending.

It is extremely disappointing that the President used his State of the Union address to provide a free infomercial for a company built on false and deceptive marketing.  Despite its claims, there is no evidence that watching Baby Einstein videos is educational for babies and toddlers…

We don’t believe that preying on parents’ concerns about their children’s well-being; deceiving customers about a product’s benefits; or exploiting our youngest and most vulnerable children should have any role in the American marketplace. 

Research suggests that — for babies — TV viewing may be harmful.  It’s been found to interfere with cognitive development, language development and regular sleep patterns. The more time babies spend in front of TV, the less time they spend engaging in two activities that really do facilitate learning: interacting with parents away from screens, and spending time in creative play. 

TV viewing can also be habituating.  For older children, hours of television watched are linked to bullying, poor school performance and childhood obesity.

Despite these concerns, more babies are spending more time in front of televisions than ever.  They do so, in part, because well-financed sophisticated marketing campaigns insure that we’ve all heard of Baby Einstein. 

What is the essense of the Complaint that Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has filed against Baby Einstein at the FTC? 

The complaint charges that these companies are violating Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act by marketing their videos as educational for babies.  (more…)

Author Susan Jacoby has proposed the following as a “little campaign speech” she’d like to hear from candidates running for President.  In proposing this speech, she notes that she is taking it for granted that “the 2008 Democratic nominee will be a believer in God and a member of some church.” It wasn’t always this way.  As she also notes, Abraham Lincoln refused to join any church –he didn’t believe that his personal faith had anything to do with any church hierarchy.

Without further ado:

“My fellow Americans, I stand before you as a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and I believe that it is my duty to share my views on the proper relationship between religion and government. For eight years, the president and his aides have tried to write their particular religious views into law and have suggested that anyone who disagrees with them is lacking in values and morality. This suggestion is an affront both to God and to a free people, and I will never insult your intelligence or your faith by claiming that I, or my government, speak for the Almighty.

“I believe in God, and I believe just as deeply in the separation of church and state that was America’s founding gift, not only to its own citizens but to the world. I will never suggest that my policies are the right ones for our country because my God says so. I will never allow one form of religion to exercise a veto power over any policies that I believe to be in the best interest of all Americans.

“If you elect me, I pledge to you not miracles but a total commitment of my heart and mind to the hard work that lies before us all. Join with me as Americans–whether you are religious believers or religious skeptics–in this great enterprise. Forty-five years ago, President John Kennedy spoke of peace as ‘the necessary rational end of rational men.’ Today I stand before you and speak of peace, social justice, and human rights–at home and around the world–as the necessary rational ends of rational men and women.”

Jacoby’s speech was in response to an question posed by the Washington Post:

As the presidential campaign begins to take shape, do you think it is appropriate and or important for the candidates to express their personal religious views and to use religious rhetoric? Why?

The answers of other respondents (all of the others were affiliated with religious organizations) can be found here. 

How often have you heard this phrase: “powerful members of Congress.”  It gets under my skin.  It sometimes makes me seethe. I saw it on the front page of yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch dealing with the President’s State of the Union address:

The prospects: Democrats in Congress have proposed raising the requirement to 60 billion gallons of 2030.  Some experts say big reductions in gas usage won’t happen unless Bush orders much higher fuel economy standards, which powerful members of Congress would resist.

[By the way, I'm not trying to single out the Post-Dispatch. This is just an illustrtion.  Almost every media publisher across America also uses this phrase] 

So there it is.  Some members of Congress are more “powerful” than others.  What does that mean?  Does it mean that they go to the gym more often so that they have big muscles?  Or does it mean something more sinister?  And if it’s a sinister thing, why is it so nonchalantly placed on the front page of the newspaper as though it’s not a scandalous thing?

There’s nothing in the Constitution that would give any clue to the mania of “powerful member of Congress.” To the extent that belonging to a particular political party makes one “powerful,” the Constitution is totally silent about political parties.  The “power” of Congress should not be determined by reference to who belongs to what club.  When it comes down to voting on issues, each member of Congress has the same number of votes as every other member of Congress.  And it can’t really be party politics to which the Post-Dispatch is referring in this case, because the allegedly “powerful members of Congress” who would “resist” meaningful energy policy changes are Republicans, who have recently been voted into the minority status.

Here’s why use of this term by journalists makes me angry: “Powerful members of Congress” are the recipients of lots of corporate money.  Huge corporations have locked onto the reality that certain members of Congress, more than others, respond favorably and predictably to the receipt of money.  If you pay them, they will be your puppets.  And see here. If you pay them a lot of money, they will throw around some of that money so that some of their peers will also become your puppets.

I don’t remember learning about “powerful members of Congress” in my grade school or high school civics classes.  I do remember lessons where we recited the Pledge of Allegiance and we became teary-eyed when we spoke about a Constitution that none of us really understood much.  But we did learn this much: our country is supposed to be about fairness.  We would have been surprised to learn, even as grade schoolers, that some people are more equal than others. 

Whenever a corporate media outlet nonchalantly refers to “powerful member of Congress” an important story is being buried, a story that is usually much bigger than the thing ostensibly being discussed. (more…)

Sometimes I have only questions, and few answers.  I feel that way about Iraq.   I have not heard any really good proposals for what to do now in Iraq.  Maybe it is because I start with the belief that we caused this problem by our war-mongering.  I find it hard to think it is responsible or sufficient to walk away and leave this mess we created behind us.  I would appreciate some thoughtful ideas, based on the following premises (they may not be your premises, humour me and help me think of solutions based on mine):

1. We started this war and we were wrong to do so.

2.  Life for Iraqis is worse than it was before we started, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, and the infra structure is in shambles.

3.  We don’t want more American soldiers to die.

Based on those propositions, what is a responsible solution here?  Can we just walk away and leave the mess behind?  Do we throw a lot of money at them to fix the problem themselves?  Does that appease our conscience?  Do we help them partition into three separate countries: one for Kurds, one for Sunis, one for Shiites?  What if we try a ‘political solution’ but we can’t get Syria, etc., to take this problem off our hands?

What can we do now that Humpty Dumpty has fallen? 

Did you see Virginia Sen. Jim Webb’s response to the President’s State of the Union address last night?  Here’s the text.

The President took us into this war recklessly. He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War, the chief of staff of the army, two former commanding generals of the Central Command. . .and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs. We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable - and predicted - disarray that has followed.

And what about the recent remarks of Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska?

“There is no strategy,” he said of the Bush administration’s war management. “This is a pingpong game with American lives. These young men and women that we put in Anbar province, in Iraq, in Baghdad are not beans; they’re real lives. And we better be damn sure we know what we’re doing, all of us, before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder.”

A Vietnam veteran, he fairly lectured fellow senators not to duck a painful debate about a war that has grown increasingly unpopular as it has gone on. “No president of the United States can sustain a foreign policy or a war policy without the sustained support of the American people,” Hagel said.

Until recently, the Administration and it’s many supporters (where did most of them go) slammed people who raised the above sorts of concerns as traitorous and unpatriotic. Why?  Because Bush’s (former) supporters said so. Lazy and seeking imminent satisfaction, like toddlers, they didn’t want to do the intellectual ground work.  Their reach was, indeed, greater than their grasp.

Have we learned anything about the importance of vigorously questioning our leaders?  I think that many of us have.  Many of us have learned that huddling together like timid sheep is danagerous and stupid. Many have learned that we are stonger when we treat the voices of sincere criticism with respect.  After all, if those critics are wrong, we should be able to explain why without venom; once we do this, they’ll join us.  If those critics are correct, though, we need to publicly acknowledge those criticisms and change our ways. For our own good.

Perhaps it’s because the lessons we’ve learned about communicating are so patently obvious that the President is bypassing communication alltogether in his secret dealings with Iran. 

What concerns me about Iran is that (I fear) decisions are being made without any meaningful public discussion.  Unlike Iraq, where the Administration duped America, we are edging toward disaster with Iran in silence, repeatedly provoking Iran to make the first move. The American public is not being asked what they think about going to war with Iran. 

So here’s the biggest lesson our President learned from Iraq:  When no one knows what you’re up to, there’s no critics to paint as unpatriotic.  Problem solved.

Never try to do such a foolish thing.  It could never work.  It just makes things worse.  War is a chainsaw.  Reconstituting social structures is akin to brain surgery.

So here’s a question: In what major city were the following photos taken? (These photos were sent to me by an American friend who once lived in this city).

Snowscape of the mystery city.

Major ski resort ten minutes from the mystery city.

Vali Asr Blvd.

A worker on Election Day.

Casting votes on Election Day.

Here’s some more photos of this city–Tehran.  You see, it’s not all sand and desert. 

I’m sure that many people will be surprised at how beautiful Tehran is. After all, these photos don’t show bombs going off or general chaos (which the Western media tends to depict about the Middle East).  When is the last time the Western corporate media talked up the beauty of the Middle East, where it wasn’t in an exotic travel section?  When was the last time you read that most people in Iran are not actively trying to “destroy America”?

Why would we spend so much energy trying to convince ourselves that “they” are different than us?  Is it, perhaps, that we are repulsed at destroying people en masse when they are too much like us? 

Do they have major problems in Iran?  Absolutely.   Do they have dangerous sword-rattling political leaders?  Absolutely.  Does America have those too?  It’s becoming clearer every day. 

Are there millions of peace-loving residents in Iran?  According to my friend, Absolutely.  What they want are very much the same sorts of things we want.  The existence of millions of freedom-seeking people in Iran was common knowledge prior to 9/11.  Contrary to popular hysterical belief in America, 9/11 did not change everything.

It’s time for President Bush to take many deep breaths, admit that he’s over his head and to start listening to evidence-based people at the State Department (if any of them remain).  It’s time to can the flaming rhetoric (leaders of both countries need to stop this) and it’s time for Mr. Bush to quit trying to provoke a war with Iran. 

Given the vast overlap of human needs and hopes among the citizens (if not the leaders) of Iran and the U.S., the failure to thoroughly explore cooperative co-existence demonstrates the abject lack of moral imagination. 

Well . . . I had heard about having other people’s servers get overwhelmed by Digg.com, but it hadn’t before happened to us.  Until today.

Last night, I had put up a post about a psychology site that let’s you “average” faces, resulting in incredible attractive (mathematically generated) faces of men or women.  Really fascinating (and fun).  I naively titled the post:  “I created a woman so beautiful she made me melt.”  Which was true, as you’ll (someday) be able to see . . .

I sent the post to Reddit.com and digg.com.   We received higher than average traffice all day (many more than 12,000 unique visitors today so far), but then our site froze up.  It’s hard to tell at this point, but it appears that the Digg folks came over in unbelievable numbers–so overwhelming that this site was brought almost to a standstill.   I was eventually able to get back in and convert the post to an (unviewable) “draft,” where I’ll keep it until things calm down. 

To avoid this problem in the future, Nick Smith, our designer (nicksmithdesign.com) advises that I will need to incur serious monthly charges for the next higher level of hosting.  Hmmm.

If you can get through to read this, that’s what’s been going on today.  If you visited us today, but couldn’t navigate the site briskly, please give us a few hours.  We hope to be back to normal.   Interesting stuff, the Internet. 

Are people concerned about global warming now?  Yes, indeed.  Even crowds of people in traditionally conservative Idaho. 

Check out this piece by Melinda Henneberger on Huffpo.

I was going to meet a friend for coffee yesterday. But when I called him, he said that he couldn’t because he was subpoenaed by the FBI to give a deposition in the Devlin case.

“Devlin case?” I asked innocently. You see, I stopped watching TV (as discussed here), I don’t subscribe to the paper, and I don’t work in an office where I’d hear gossip or listen to drive-time news.

My friend proceeded to ask me if I’d heard that they’d landed a man on the moon, and other similar ludicrous media comparisons.

_{(I had a meeting later that day with a man who doesn’t believe in the moon landing, but that’s beside the point.)}

As near as I can tell from my subsequent reading, this is a case about a couple of kidnappings over the years that police have recently and accidentally solved. Good human interest stuff, but is this really big news? Does following this case in local, national, or even international news somehow help protect our freedoms, or even our standard of living? The total number of people directly involved by Devlin over the years is significantly less than the weekly body count in Iraq, and that’s the official, died-in-the-field American service-persons count. I’m obviously not counting the subsequent dog pile of media and lawyers in the Devlin case.

I can see why the mainstream news is all over this case. It has much human drama: A monster, a survivor, crying families, a nominal hero, and many lawyers. But must I really be made to feel as though I am illiterate because I was unaware of this family drama?

Really, I did.  You, too, can create a surreally attractive male or female by using the Face Laboratory run by two experimental psychologists working at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

Your hyper-attractive face will actually be made by a computer. You’ll help by choosing the “ingredients” (a few or many faces), and the program averages them into a final product.  This averaging process downplays imperfections and results in exquisite symmetry.  

What’s amazing to me is that strikingly attractive averaged faces result even when (maybe especially when) you choose some of the faces that might initially appear relatively unattractive. 

As explained in the site’s FAQ’s:

Symmetry is one aspect of faces that has been extensively studied by many researchers in relation to attractiveness. The most common method used to investigate the effect symmetry has on the attractiveness of faces involves manipulating the symmetry of face images using sophisticated computer graphic methods and assessing the effect that this manipulation has on perceptions of the attractiveness of the faces.

But why should we be attracted to symmetry.  Evolutionary psychologists suggest an answer:  symmetry is a token for health, and therefore fitness to reproduce:

But why would cognitive averaging have evolved? Evolutionary biology holds that in any given population, extreme characteristics tend to fall away in favor of average ones. Birds with unusually long or short wings die more often in storms. Human babies who are born larger or smaller than average are less likely to survive. The ability to form an average-mate template would have conveyed a singular survival advantage.

Inclination toward the average is called koinophilia, from the Greek words koinos, meaning “usual,” and philos, meaning “love.” To Langlois, humans are clearly koinophiles. The remaining question is whether our good-mate template is acquired or innate. To help solve the mystery, Langlois’s doctoral student Lisa Kalakanis has presented babies who are just 15 minutes old with paired images of attractive and homely faces. “We’re just starting to evaluate that data,” says Langlois.

But koinophilia isn’t the only-or even supreme-criterion for beauty that evolution has promoted, other scientists argue. An innate yearning for symmetry is a major boon, contend biologists Anders Moller and Randy Thornhill, as asymmetry can signal malnutrition, disease, or bad genes. The two have found that asymmetrical animals, ranging from barn swallows to lions, have fewer offspring and shorter lives.

So get going, now!  Go create somebody.

No!  Wait!  First, a thought.  Is it possible that one’s life would look more attractive if a bunch of our lives were averaged together?  Any one person’s life is often disjointed, with moments of stumbling, error and bad judgment (that is certainly and often the story of my life).  But what if we could somehow average together a particular life with the lives of 20 other people picked at random, then run some sort of “averaged” video of the result?   Would there result be graceful, confident, sublime?  Or would we miss the edges and the pimples?

And what if the whole world were full of people that looked like the super-averaged computer results from this site, but then along came some regular people with their lack of perfect symmetry?  Would they be seen as ugly or as distinctively attractive?  Who would that society choose to be its models and movie stars, the non-symmetrical or the symmetrical?

According to Rolling Stone (January 25, 2007), TXU, an electric power company based in Dallas has recently announced plans to build 11 new coal plants in Texas over the next four years.  These additional coal plants would put more pollution into the air each year than 11 million SUVs. These will be the “old technology” types of coal plants, rather than the “newer and cleaner method known as coal gasification.”

Texas Governor Rick Perry announced fast-tracking permits for these new coal-fired plants two weeks after the recent election.  Rolling Stone also reports that TXU had pre-rewarded Perry’s reelection campaign with more than $130,000.

TXU is reportedly undeterred by the protests of 30 Texas cities and towns represented 7 million people. 

They are already talking about expanding beyond Texas with another fleet of new coal plants in other states.  By pushing ahead so heedlessly, they are essentially betting the company on the belief that most Texans-and most Americans-would prefer to risk epic storms, droughts, crop failures and polluted air rather than to save the planet.