Andrew Sullivan uses a Barack Obama's interview on the meaning of religion as a launching point for a recent post. Here are Obama's words: "I think this is the historical moment we're in — we have come to define religion in absolutist, fundamentalist terms. So to be a believer is to be…
Go ask one of those opponents of stem cell research why it’s OK to donate a kidney. They’ll look at you like you’re nuts. They’ll tell there’s a person who’s about to die and another person with an extra kidney, and it’s all that simple.
In 2006 you won’t hear any protest that kidney donation is something Frankenstein would do. Stem cell research opponents won’t assert that the extra kidney constitutes a “human life” even though it is alive and human. They won’t tell you that kidney transplants are morally wrong. They won’t claim that a kidney has an invisible soul.
Instead, they will reassure you that a spare kidney is not a unique human being. They will tell you that kidney cells are only “potential” human beings (reproductive cloning, illegal in most countries, could accomplish this). As icing on the cake, they will assert that kidneys don’t feel any pain.
At that point you’ll need to jump in. For starters, you might remind the stem cell research opponents that blastocysts (from which stem cells are harvested) are clumps of about 150 cells small enough to fit inside Roosevelt’s eye on a U.S. dime.
You might then add that blastocysts are only five days old when the stem cells are harvested. At this point in time, the stem cells are pluripotent: they can develop into all the different cell types in the body (except the placenta), but they have not yet developed into any specialized type of cell. …
These (among numerous other quotes) are from a site called “My Favorite Quotes.” Beware, neocons: These quotes might cause you to doubt that the United States was founded as a “Christian” nation! Here are some of my favorites:
President Bush has often used the term Islamic Fascists. Here is a short and though-provoking video that challenges Americans to examine its own national character according to a 14-point fascism analysis (based on the writings of Lawrence Britt). The video was create two years ago, as America entered Bush's second term.
I am only through the first chapter of A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives (2006). Nonetheless, this is a delightful and insightful work by experimental psychologist Cordelia Fine. So much so that the first chapter of the book, “The Vain Brain,” is well worth the price of the entire book.
Fine is a witty yet precise digester of cognition research. The main point of “The Vain Brain” is that we work exceedingly hard to interpret reality in a way that is kind and gentle to our egos. We do this constantly, often to an extent that is often comedic.
In one experiment, subjects were arbitrarily told that they did well on a test. They were happy to take credit for their “success.” Those who were told they did badly tended to blame their “poor performance” on conditions other than their abilities. Whenever we fail, we dig hard to find lots of “reasons” other than blaming the person we so often see in the mirror. Researchers have dubbed this strategy “retroactive pessimism.” According to Fine, it “makes your failures easier to digest.”
We have two big allies to help us in our “retroactive pessimism”: manipulative memory and manipulative of reasoning. Who is doing the manipulating? We do it.
With regard to memory, we are terrifically talented at forgetting evidence that embarrasses us. “It seems that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for negative feedback to …