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By Erich Vieth on November 16th, 2009

Chris Mooney: New Atheists’ attack on religion is counter-productive

Chris Mooney is the author of The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum). He is also an atheist who, for years, has engaged with believers on the validity of religious claims. He strongly believes that those who respect the scientific method should question religious claims.

In this interview with D.J. Grothe at Point of Inquiry, however, Mooney takes on the New Atheists (starting here at about the 10:30 minute mark). Instead of attacking religions, Mooney advocates that we should promote scientific literacy. Yes, we should refute the baseless claims of fundamentalists, but it is equally critical to “mobilize the religious moderates,” and not alienate them by attacking all religions.

Mooney argues that the New Atheists have painted with much too broad a brush, and that they have used an aggressive tone that achieves “nothing at all.” He points to P.Z. Myers as being one of the most prominent culprits.

Featured • Religion • Science
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By Erich Vieth on November 16th, 2009

String around the Earth: excellent math question

Have you ever considered snugly wrapping a string around the entire Earth? If you did that, and then you added merely one additional meter of string (which would then raise the string uniformly off the surface of the Earth), how much higher off the ground would that new string be (the original long string, plus one additional meter)? Here’s a simple statement of the problem, allegedly first used by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Here the math. Wonderful problem and surprising solution.

Featured • Statistics
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Buffett’s bet on peak oil
By Brynn Jacobs on November 15th, 2009

Buffett’s bet on peak oil

Warren Buffett is lauded as one of the greatest investors of all time, if not the greatest. He’s the second-richest person in the world, and known as the “Oracle of Omaha” for his seemingly prescient investments. For example, in the wake of the collapse of Bear Stearns and during the height of the market panic that followed it, Buffett stepped in and negotiated a deal with Goldman Sachs. He acquired $5 billion worth of preferred shares, which would pay him a 10% dividend, as well as warrants with the rights to sell those shares at any time within 5 years from the time of the transaction. As of September this year, those warrants were “in the money” to the tune of $3.1 billion, and that doesn’t include the $500 million in premium payments that Goldman pays every year. Those lucrative terms (punitive for Goldman Sachs) left others wondering why the Treasury Department could only negotiate a 5% dividend, but that only added to the mystique and legend of Warren Buffett. At the time, Buffett was quoted as saying “If I didn’t think the government was going to act, I would not be doing anything this week,” referring to the massive bailout bill which was indeed enacted by the government.

It’s deals like that that enable one to become one of the richest people in the world. But it’s also that background that has some on Wall Street scratching their heads at the news that he was purchasing Burlington Northern railroad. The Wall Street Journal discussed how the acquisition seemingly broke two of Buffett’s cardinal rules on investments: 1) buy undervalued stocks or companies, for obvious reasons and 2) don’t split your own stocks, as it dilutes the equity of the existing shareholders. Bloomberg quoted a hedge fund principal as saying, “It could be five years before the logic of [Buffett's purchase of] Burlington Northern becomes clear.” Even Buffett admits that the purchase was “not cheap” and that it represents an “all-in wager”on the future of the American economy. And there can be no doubt that it is a significant investment– he’s liquidating other rail investments totaling $691.3 million while the Burlington Northern purchase will cost some $26 billion– an increase in his railroad holdings of some 3,600%. And this bears repeating, he’s splitting stock to get it done. This is the first time ever that Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett’s investment company) has split shares. He’s so reluctant to split shares, the class A shares regularly trade over $100,000 per share, an unheard-of valuation.

Current Events • Economy • Energy • Featured
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Hungry Ghosts
By Lisa Rokusek on November 14th, 2009

Hungry Ghosts

I recently came out of an emotional bad spell - emerging from it felt a lot like hitting the surface after you’ve been underwater just a little too long. This spell of anxiety/fear/depression/whatever it was taught me more than usual because it happened smack dab after I had a really awesome year business wise. I was on a high. Things were so good I had to go buy a suit so I could go to Las Vegas and get an award for being so awesome. That is important to note not because getting an award is important (but it is kind of cool, right?) but because of what happened after the award.

Intellectually I knew that all the activity I had in the funnel would end, and I’d be back in building mode. I knew it and even tried to prepare myself for the letdown. My business is cyclical - I know that. And I like building mode. Building mode is how one gets to closing mode. I just had a run of especially good fortune and my building mode was a distant memory, which I knew was not such a great thing for me. In the midst of my crazy happy frenetic good luck mode, I tried to prepare for what would come after the constant activity of balancing all the stuff in the hopper died down. I know how I can be - I get squirrley sometimes, so I tried to prepare.

There is a saying: “Trying lets us fail with honor.” I failed. I’m not sure I had any honor, either.

“I woke up one morning and I was scared. Not just a little scared, either. I was in full-on panic mode. I remember thinking, “Dammit, Lisa, this is exactly what you worked to prevent.” Yep it sure was. In my defense, I had a crazy end of September/October. We had family in from out of town (stressful), my Mom had spine surgery (surprisingly stressful), the foster greyhound we rescued need to be carried up and down our stairs in order to go outside (it takes both of us - constantly coordinating schedules is stressful), I bought a car (consumerism is, for me, fraught with drama, tension and guilt - stressful, but I sure like the car) and Ginger decided to feng shui our bedroom. Not only was I going through something hard, I had to do it with our bed facing a new and opposite wall. Things like that do bad things to me. I spent an entire sleepless night focused on whether the bed facing the other direction was symbolic of me never closing another deal. During that mental wrestling match I started doubting my employ-ability (I only have one suit!!) and by morning I had tearfully decided my only option was to make this thing work or I’d end up living in a paper box. I went to bed scared, I woke up panicked and I think Ginger wanted to throttle me (I wanted to throttle me).

[more . . . ]

American Culture • Meaning of Life • Neuroscience • Psychology Cognition • Quality of Life • Science
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By Mike Pulcinella on November 14th, 2009

An atheist’s response to a religious greeting

I have an acquaintance at the gym, let’s call him “Greg”. I like Greg. Whenever I ask him how he’s feeling Greg answers, “I am blessed!”

If I see him when I’m on my way out and I say, “See ya later Greg!’, he always says something like, “God bless!” or “God willing!”

Greg is obviously a devout man. He hurt his wrist in a bad fall recently and told me how God was looking out for him because it could have been much worse. I nodded silently. Greg doesn’t know I am a doubter and I would never bring it up in the gym.

The strange thing is that lately I have found myself returning his greeting in kind. The other day Greg saw me before I saw him and he greeted me first.

“How’s it going today Mike?”

“I am blessed!”, I found myself saying (much to my surprise) and I meant it!

“You know it!”, he said with a knowing smile, and walked on.

It’s true! I do feel “blessed”, whatever that means. I’m very grateful for the things, the people, my health and the opportunities that I have in my life. I think about it every day. I often say that I feel like I live in a constant state of thankfulness. If that isn’t blessed I don’t know what is!

So now whenever I see Greg I greet him in a way that I’m sure leads him to think that I am a believer like him. My beliefs haven’t changed, I’m still an atheist, but it makes me feel good to say it and hear him say it back.

Is that wrong??

Featured • Meaning of Life • Religion
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Welcome to our store! . . . sort of . . .
By Erich Vieth on November 14th, 2009

Welcome to our store! . . . sort of . . .

Customers of this Dollar Tree store in St. Louis are greeted with the following signs located on the main entry door:

img_0210

Here’s how I interpret the above: Welcome, honored guests, but it you rip us off, we’ll throw your ass in the slammer before you can even utter “Merry Christmas.”

American Culture • Media • Science • law and order
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Mississippi
By Erich Vieth on November 14th, 2009

Mississippi

One of the readers of this blog, Jim Shank, has offered me the right to publish some of his photos. This is one of his photos, a morning scene of the Mississippi River, about ten miles north of St. Louis, which is also a few miles south of the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi.

chain-of-rocks-jim-shank

This shot was taken from the “Chain of Rocks Bridge,” which has been reconfigured to be only for pedestrians and bicycles–no motor vehicles. This is also a spot where, in January and February, you can spot American Bald eagles.

Speaking of St. Louis, Jim also captured this reflection of the Arch, taken from a nearby collection of rehabbed warehouses (now serving as offices and retail) known as Laclede’s Landing.

lacledes_landing_jim-shanks

Thanks, Jim.

Saint Louis • photography
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By Hank on November 13th, 2009

In Which I Render God Speechless

Robots. Whilst not yet able to disguise themselves as innocent-looking assault vehicles which drive themselves, make ghastly jokes and lay waste to entire cities & provide fodder for truly reprehensible motion pictures, robots will one day be our oppressors. To attempt in some small way to understand our eventual machine overlords (and perhaps locate a weakness that can be exploited) before the inevitable enslavement of humanity, I recently went to this website: http://www.titane.ca/concordia/dfar251/igod/main.html and had a chat with a rudimentary AI which has been named God. I decided to treat it as the all-knowing all-seeing creator of the universe, whom you may have encountered as a central character in a series of very popular books.

[more . . .]

Entertainment • Featured • Humor • Internet • computers
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By Erich Vieth on November 12th, 2009

New realistic war video game

Two new videos from Onion Network News:


Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

And now a video about Ford’s new concept car:


Ford Unveils New Car For Cash-Strapped Buyers: The 1993 Taurus

Humor • War
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By Erich Vieth on November 12th, 2009

Ashleigh Banfield’s story of wartime censorship

Ashleigh Banfield has finally gotten hired back to work at a major network, after losing her job at MSNBC in 2003 for speaking out against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Here’s what she had to say back in 2003, which caused her to lose her job. She is speaking of what you are not shown by the news media when the nation is at war:

What didn’t you see? You didn’t see where those bullets landed. You didn’t see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism or was this coverage-? There is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not mean you’re getting the story, it just means you’re getting one more arm or leg of the story. And that’s what we got, and it was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn’t journalism, because I’m not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful terrific endeavor, and we got rid oaf horrible leader: We got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn’t see what it took to do that.

Banfield also has some critically important things to say about the “Fox News effect” (the patriotizing and glorification of war).

Reading this Huffpo post about Banfield reminds me of this post featuring similar comments by Amy Goodman. It also reminds me how Phil Donahue also lost his job at MSNBC for being critical of the Iraq invasion (more about Donahue’s views here). These sorts of firings are actually predictable. The documentary “War Made Easy” reminds us that hawks close ranks around Presidents who start wars and they also put tremendous pressure on networks to do the same. Banfield’s story reminds us that we need to strive to keep dissenting voices prominent during times of war because something about war makes us insanely fearful and even less able to reason than in times of peace. It is during times of war that we become collectively willing to let ourselves run amok wrapped in the flag.

Featured • Media • War
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By Erich Vieth on November 12th, 2009

What does this say about the government we support in Iraq?

Yes, Blackwater paid a million bucks to bribe Iraqi officials to placate those officials and thus allow Blackwater to continue garnering a huge paycheck in Iraq. Lots of people are rightfully pissed at Blackwater. But what does this say about the Iraqi government that more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers died to establish?

Imagine this in 2003: Dick Cheney tells the public that we’re going to spend one trillion dollars and allow 3,000 U.S. soldiers to die in order to establish a corrupt Iraqi government when we don’t actually know whether Iraq has any plans to attack the United States. How much support would there have been for that kind of needless military adventure?

Corruption • Iraq • Politics • Psychology Cognition
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“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”
By Brynn Jacobs on November 11th, 2009

“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”

The shootings at Fort Hood last week have provoked a media feeding frenzy. Questions abound, and there is no dearth of speculation as to the shooter’s motives. Most articles I have seen waste no time pointing out that the shooter was a Muslim, that he exclaimed “Allahu akbar” before shooting, and that he is linked with radical imams and possibly Al Qaeda. That’s from the ostensibly “impartial” media, but there are also a few extremely distasteful editorial perspectives that are unfortunately quite mainstream that I wanted to comment on today. I’m afraid my ability to edit sarcasm out of my posts declines in direct proportion to the insanity and hypocrisy with which I’m confronted, so bear with me.

First, Forbes featured an article by Tunku Varadarajan entitled “Going Muslim“, a play on the old phrase “going postal”. He describes it thusly:

As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub–disconcertingly–”Going Muslim.” This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American–a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood–discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.

Bigotry • Current Events • Featured • Military • Religion
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By Erich Vieth on November 11th, 2009

Tear up the health care bill and start over.

I wrote a comment on this same issue last night, but I wanted to make it into a post as well, given the importance.

Marcia Angel, M.D., former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, is highly critical of the proposed “health care reform.” Although she admits that it accomplishes a few things, it is worse than doing nothing.

It throws more money into a dysfunctional and unsustainable system, with only a few improvements at the edges, and it augments the central role of the investor-owned insurance industry. The danger is that as costs continue to rise and coverage becomes less comprehensive, people will conclude that we’ve tried health reform and it didn’t work. But the real problem will be that we didn’t really try it.

Read the full post at Huffpo for Angel’s clear and understandable ideas for meaningful (and not corrupt) health care reform. I agree with Angel that the current bill is an industry-coddling joke and that it is worse than doing nothing, for the reasons she offers. The House bill has a few pieces of low hanging fruit (e.g., portability), but at great unnecessary expense and waste. We need to tear up this celebrated new bill (celebrated by the Democrats, anyway) and start over. For more on Angell’s ideas for reform, also see her recent appearance on Bill Moyer’s show.

Health • Health Care Reform • Politics
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