I ran across this interesting post recently on Deltoid concerning a list of (supposedly) 650 "scientists" who deny Global Warming is real (or at least, that it's our fault in any way). Inhofe, of course, is Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, champion of one of the brightest red states in…
Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks the following question:
What if your attitudes toward time could explain why you are chronically late, why you’re likely to fight for rainforest preservation, or why you might be predisposed to addictions?
Zimbardo has written a new book explaining the psychology of time. In his opinion, the secret power of time is not about “clock time,” but rather about subjective time. His analysis has numerous real-world consequences. For instance, he takes on many addiction recovery programs such as D.A.R.E., accusing them of “useless propaganda. The problem is that these programs “only work for future-oriented people,” whereas addicts are “present-oriented.” addiction prevention programs all too often fail to recognize that the audience is not helped by lectures about future consequences. The real problem is that societal forces trap and tempt these present-oriented people, and they need lots of role-playing to deal with the problem at a point where it matters.
If Zimbardo’s name sounds familiar, it might be because of the famous Stanford Prison Experiment he conducted in 1971.
People divide the flow of human experience in various ways, and it affects the way they live their lives. For instance, time-orientation affects our decisions to give in to temptation or to delay gratification. Many people live in the present, and they focus on the here and now. Alternatively, other people are oriented to the past, and they bring the past to their present, in both helpful and unhelpful ways. Future-oriented people constantly weigh the costs versus benefits–in …
No one else here has yet mentioned this foo-fah-rah that emerged in the Washington state capitol in Olympia, and is spreading to others. Several governors have allowed Nativity scenes to be erected in their Capitol rotundas. In Washington state, the regional atheists got permission to put up an adjacent sign…
Here's Andrew Sullivan discussing alleged religious leader Rick Warren's strange position regarding George W. Bush's policy regarding Torture. To Sullivan's comment I say "Amen."
Gods with anuses? This post concerns some of the elaborate ways humans seem to compensate for their anxiety about death. A 2008 Harris poll shows that 61% of Americans believe that Jesus was born to a woman who was a virgin. Thus, by a landslide margin, Americans believe that a woman named Mary got pregnant without any of that icky sperm/penis/vagina stuff (whether a human ovum was involved is keeping theologians busy ). To keep the Savior pure and holy, I can only assume that Jesus emerged into the world through some sort of Divine Cesarean rather than out of the vagina, but the Bible is not clear on the actual method of delivery. Ever since the alleged birth of Jesus, Mary (who was “without sin”) has been referred to as “Virgin Mary,” despite her long marriage to Joseph, suggesting that she kept Joseph sexually frustrated for the rest of his life. All of this uneasiness our animal nature is typical of many religions. In order to keep people focused on the other-world, religions work hard to convince people that human animal existence is vulgar and vile. According to many religions, our earliest “ancestors” were taught that human bodies were shameful even as they were being unceremoniously booted out of the Garden of Eden. Rather than considering our bodies to be exquisite machines that constitute and sustain us, many religions portray human bodies as ungainly, oozing, disgust-inducing earth-bound vessels from which we will eventually escape, thanks be to God! We are to God as slugs are to us. Rather than embracing the marvelous functioning of human bodies, many religions disparage them though, paradoxically, they attribute the “design” of our sordid bodies solely to God, not to natural selection. Thus, there is one notable exception to the general rule: only when Believers are trying to fight off Darwin do they consciously strive to appreciate the exquisite function of human bodies. Oh, such a tangled web religions weave . . .