We Are Not Parts

I’ll admit up front that I’m shooting from the hip here. There are many aspects to what is happening in Wisconsin right now with parallels to several past instances in the country in the fight over workers’ rights, unions, and moneyed interests, but I frankly don’t have the time to research them all right now and get something up before it all comes to a head. Isn’t it interesting, though, that we are collectively cheering what is happening in the Middle East right now and something similar is happening right here and people don’t seem to be paying attention to what’s at stake? I grant you, it’s a stretch. But on principles, not so much. We’re talking about who has the right to speak to power and over what. The protesters in Madison aren’t having their internet access and phone service pulled and it’s doubtful the military will be called in, but on the other hand the Wisconsin state police are being asked to go get the now-labeled Wisconsin 14 and bring them back to the state capitol to vote on something that is clearly a stripping of the right of petition and assembly. So this can become very quickly a constitutional issue and that’s scary, because right now the Supreme Court has been decidedly against workers’ rights. Governor Scott is at least being clear. I’ll give him credit, he’s not ducking questions about what he’s trying to do. Wisconsin, like many states, has a budget crisis. He’s already gotten concessions from the unions, a lot of money. The unions have not balked at doing their civic duty in terms of agreeing to pay cuts, freezes on raises, and some concessions on benefits to help the state meet its budgetary responsibilities. But he’s going further and asking that all these unions be stripped of their collective bargaining abilities in order to make sure they never again demand something from the state that the legislature or the governor believes they don’t deserve. In other words, Governor Scott doesn’t ever want to have to sit down and ask them for concessions ever again—he wants to be able to just take what he wants. [More . . . ]

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The sordid details of the NBC and Comcast merger

Here's how it happened. If you read the entire account by Peter White, you'll be dismayed, though not surprised:

Comcast met behind closed doors with the FCC to map out the future of broadband service and video streaming over the Internet. Anyone who wonders how federal banking regulators got captured by the financial industry, or how lawmakers got neutered by the insurance companies on the health care bill, or how big money is going to buy the next presidential election, should study the Comcast merger. It is a cautionary tale of things gone awry in Washington, where corporate speech is heard and heeded and the voices of actual citizens are ignored.

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Turning toward science?

According to this article by M. Mitchell Waldrop, the Templeton Foundation (endowment of $2B) seems to be making an adjustment away from religion and toward traditional science:

Towards the end of Templeton's life, says Marsh, he became increasingly concerned that this reaction was getting in the way of the foundation's mission: that the word 'religion' was alienating too many good scientists. This prompted a rethink of the foundation's research programme — a change most clearly seen in the organization's new website, launched last June. Gone were old programme names such as 'science and religion' — or almost any mention of religion at all (See 'Templeton priorities: then and now'). Instead, the foundation has embraced the theme of 'science and the big questions' — an open-ended list that includes topics such as 'Does the Universe have a purpose?'

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Openness correlates to moral relativism

Yale professor Joshua Knobe has gathered various findings suggesting that the personality trait of openness correlates with moral relativism. These findings suggest "we can start out with facts about people’s usual ways of thinking or talking and use these facts to get some insight into questions about the true nature of morality."

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Conservatives working hard to increase the number of abortions

Congressional conservatives are working hard to strip all federal funding from Planned Parenthood. What will be the effect? USA Today reports on a study by the well-respected Guttmacher Institute:

Publicly funded family planning prevents nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 800,000 abortions in the United States each year, saving billions of dollars, according to new research intended to counter conservative objections to expanding the program. The data are in a report being released Tuesday by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health think tank whose research is generally respected even by experts and activists who don't share its advocacy of abortion rights.
Some have characterized this as but one item on an ongoing Republican war on women. I see it as a war on almost everything but warmongering. For instance, the House just voted to de-fund the IPCC, a celebrated international Nobel Prize winning scientific organization providing definitive information about the state of the climate. The $13 million/year federal dollars that supported this organization is the equivalent of the money we waste every hour in Afghanistan.

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