Maybe we're all conspiracy theorists

Here's an interesting post by Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist (which, unfortunately, I haven't read).

He seems like a rational guy, but he's also a conservative writing for The Wall Street Journal (a newspaper which has become even loonier since being purchased by Roger Ailes' News Corp., the parent company of Fox "News"). So see if you can spot where his bias creeps in.

(And yes, I'm biased, too. We all are. But if you think I'm wrong about this, tell me why.)

Michael Shermer, the founder and editor of Skeptic magazine, has never received so many angry letters as when he wrote a column for Scientific American debunking 9/11 conspiracy theories. Mr. Shermer found himself vilified, often in CAPITAL LETTERS, as a patsy of the sinister Zionist cabal that deliberately destroyed the twin towers and blew a hole in the Pentagon while secretly killing off the passengers of the flights that disappeared, just to make the thing look more plausible.

He tells this story in his fascinating new book, "The Believing Brain." In Mr. Shermer's view, the brain is a belief engine, predisposed to see patterns where none exist and to attribute them to knowing agents rather than to chance—the better to make sense of the world. Then, having formed a belief, each of us tends to seek out evidence that confirms it, thus reinforcing the belief.

This is why, on the foundation of some tiny flaw in the evidence—the supposed lack of roof holes to admit poison-gas cans in one of the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers for Holocaust deniers, the expectant faces on the grassy knoll for JFK plotters, the melting point of steel for 9/11 truthers—we go on to build a great edifice of mistaken conviction.

I say "we" because, after reading Mr. Shermer's book and others like it, my uneasy conclusion is that we all do this, even when we think we do not. It's not a peculiarity of the uneducated or the fanatical. We do it in our political allegiances, in our religious faith, even in our championing of scientific theories. And if we all do it, then how do we know that our own rational rejections of conspiracy theories are not themselves infected with beliefs so strong that they are, in effect, conspiracy theories, too?

So far, so good, right? Michael Shermer is a brilliant man. I might also recommend How We Know What Isn't So (1991) by Thomas Gilovich. It's not just superbly entertaining, it will really make you think.

Gilovich talks about "cognitive illusions," which we're all prone to. Just as optical illusions aren't evidence that our eyesight is poor, so are cognitive illusions not evidence that we're stupid. In both cases, they're just the result of our biological structure, the means by which we apprehend the world. We're easily fooled by certain things.

All of us develop a worldview by which we try to make sense of our environment. After that, we find it very easy to believe things which fit that established worldview, and we find ways to ignore or dismiss things that don't. This is a natural tendency of all of us.

Yes, me, too. I try to recognize it and to compensate for it, but it's not that easy. It's just very, very easy to believe what we want to believe.

Science, too, tries to compensate for this natural tendency - a lot more successfully than most individuals. That's a huge part of what the scientific method is all about. And although scientists themselves are only  human, the scientific method is easily the best way we've ever discovered of separating what's true from what feels good. Nothing else even comes close.

The result is that, when it comes to a scientific matter, the consensus of scientists who specialize in that particular field is far and away more likely to be correct than not. And if it is wrong in some respect, the scientific community itself will be the first to recognize that, and the consensus will change.

Note that what any individual scientist thinks isn't important. If you choose a particular scientist to believe, especially when his is a minority opinion, you're just choosing what you want to believe. Likewise, a scientist outside his field of expertise is really no better than a layman.

Anyway, Ridley eventually gets to this point:

But those are the easy cases. What about the harder ones?

Take climate change. Here is Mr. Shermer's final diagnostic of a wrong conspiracy theory: "The conspiracy theorist defends the conspiracy theory tenaciously to the point of refusing to consider alternative explanations for the events in question, rejecting all disconfirming evidence for his theory and blatantly seeking only confirmatory evidence to support what he has already determined to be the truth."

This describes many of those who strive to blame most climate change on man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Of course, they reply that it also describes those who strive to blame most climate change on the sun.

That's how belief systems work: On both sides, there is huge belief, buttressed by confirmation bias, and equally huge belief that the belief and the conspiracy are all on the other side. Rick Perry, Al Gore—each thinks the other is a mad conspiracy theorist who will not let the facts get in the way of prejudices. Maybe both are right.

See the problem? See his bias kicking in? (Or maybe it's just the bias of The Wall Street Journal, since this was written for that publication.)

Ridley presents Rick Perry and Al Gore as just two sides to the same coin. Both have their belief systems, and both are biased. Both are presented as a possible example of a "mad conspiracy theorist who will not let the facts get in the way of prejudices."

But think about that. Al Gore accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Pretty much 100% of climatologists agree that global warming is occurring, and around 98% think that it's mostly caused by human activity.

A very few climate scientists disagree and think that human activity isn't the main cause. I might argue that they're regularly shown to be wrong, but maybe that's just my bias. It really doesn't matter anyway, because I don't need to do that. The only rational move here is to accept the scientific consensus. That's Al Gore's position.

Rick Perry, on the other hand, rejects global warming entirely. He claims that it's just a massive, worldwide fraud perpetrated by dishonest scientists greedy for research dollars. Apparently, oil, coal, and gas companies, flush with cash, who've been paying their executives multimillion dollar bonuses, can't outbid the munificent salaries which universities lavish on their science professors. Odd, isn't it?

And, of course, none of them would refuse to be bribed. I mean, of course you'd take money to betray everyone and everything you believe in. That's just self-evident, right? (You know, I think Rick Perry has just given us a glimpse into his own ethical system, and it's not pretty at all.)

Ridley is an "economic conservative," and he presents these two sides as equivalent. Al Gore, with his acceptance of the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists, is equivalent to Rick Perry, with his rejection of the consensus and his belief in a worldwide conspiracy of evil scientists. (Keep in mind that even the few climatologists who disagree with the consensus generally don't see a conspiracy. They just interpret things differently than the majority.)

Do you think those two stances are equivalent? Really? Do you think that both sides show evidence of a "mad conspiracy theorist who will not let the facts get in the way of prejudices"? Or do you think that Ridley, as a conservative, just couldn't bring himself to criticize Rick Perry while praising Al Gore?

I know what I think, but maybe I'm just biased. :)

PS. Thanks again to Jim Harris for the link.

Bush's failed hunt for bin Laden

That's pretty clear, isn't it? But here's Bush patting himself on the back for his contribution to finally killing Osama bin Laden:

President Bush sat down with USA Today to discuss the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and his role in shaping U.S. policy in their aftermath. During the interview, Bush thought he’d take the opportunity to pat himself on the back for Osama bin Laden’s death:

Bush said the events that led to the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May began during his administration.

“The work that was done by intelligence communities during my presidency was part of putting together the puzzle that enabled us to see the full picture of how bin Laden was communicating and eventually where he was hiding,” he said. “It began the day after 9/11.”

The reality, of course, is that Bush’s attempts to capture or kill bin Laden were huge failures. While it’s been well documented that the Bush administration missed an opportunity to get bin Laden in Tora Bora in 2001, Bush himself subsequently stated publicly that he wasn’t spending much time thinking about getting him. “I truly am not that concerned about him. I am deeply concerned about Iraq,” Bush said in 2002, “I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.” Bush told reporters in 2006 that hunting the al Qaeda leader was “not a top priority use of American resources.”

And in 2005, Bush shut down the CIA’s unit dedicated to finding bin Laden in order to shift resources to Iraq. “The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants,” the New York Times reported in 2006, adding that resources “had been redirected from the hunt for Mr. bin Laden to the search for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed last month in Iraq.” When the right wing rushed to give Bush credit after bin Laden’s death in May, ThinkProgress produced this short video highlighting Bush’s failures...

Soon after he took office, President Obama steered the U.S. on a course to end the war in Iraq and put resources back into finding bin Laden. “Shortly after I got into office,” Obama said in an interview after bin Laden’s death, “I brought [then-CIA director] Leon Panetta privately into the Oval Office and I said to him, ‘We need to redouble our efforts in hunting bin Laden down. And I want us to start putting more resources, more focus, and more urgency into that mission.’”

Obviously, most politicians try to claim credit for everything. That's not too surprising. But the right-wing seems to have a particular obsession with re-writing history.

Well, maybe that's similar to their dislike of science. Just as reality has a well-known liberal bias, so too does history. And when all of your policies have proven to be complete and utter failures, I suppose you have to try to claim credit for other people's successes.

After all, what else do you have? And when you're faith-based, you simply can't - or, at least, won't - change your mind.

Worrying about the wrong thing

Here's another column by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, this one on our "fatal distraction":

Friday [a week ago, now] brought two numbers that should have everyone in Washington saying, “My God, what have we done?”

One of these numbers was zero — the number of jobs created in August. The other was two — the interest rate on 10-year U.S. bonds, almost as low as this rate has ever gone. Taken together, these numbers almost scream that the inside-the-Beltway crowd has been worrying about the wrong things, and inflicting grievous harm as a result.

Ever since the acute phase of the financial crisis ended, policy discussion in Washington has been dominated not by unemployment, but by the alleged dangers posed by budget deficits. Pundits and media organizations insisted that the biggest risk facing America was the threat that investors would pull the plug on U.S. debt. For example, in May 2009 The Wall Street Journal declared that the “bond vigilantes” were “returning with a vengeance,” telling readers that the Obama administration’s “epic spending spree” would send interest rates soaring.

The interest rate when that editorial was published was 3.7 percent. As of Friday, as I’ve already mentioned, it was only 2 percent.

For the past two and a half years - ever since a Democrat took over the presidency, since Republicans certainly weren't worried about this when they were in charge - the right-wing has made a concerted effort to scare Americans about the federal deficit. (Yeah, forget Dick Cheney's observation that "Reagan proved deficits don't matter.")

Well, I wasn't too happy with the borrow-and-spend policies of the Bush administration, and I've actually been worrying about the deficit for years. But the depths of the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression is not the place to be obsessing about government debt.

In fact, the best thing we could do for the deficit is to put people back to work. Instead, governments are slashing their workforces, and otherwise cutting spending, which is just making the whole situation worse.

At the federal level, I'm convinced that Republicans are pushing this for exactly that purpose. They don't want our economic situation to get better, because that would help President Obama's re-election chances. And Democrats, as usual, are too craven and too feckless to fight them, certainly not effectively.

Barack Obama has tended to adopt Republican rhetoric. I don't know if he's just that conservative, or if he thinks it might appease them, but he's wrong either way. The federal deficit is a long-term problem, but not what we should be focusing on today.

Although you’d never know it listening to the ranters, the past year has actually been a pretty good test of the theory that slashing government spending actually creates jobs. The deficit obsession has blocked a much-needed second round of federal stimulus, and with stimulus spending, such as it was, fading out, we’re experiencing de facto fiscal austerity. State and local governments, in particular, faced with the loss of federal aid, have been sharply cutting many programs and have been laying off a lot of workers, mostly schoolteachers.

And somehow the private sector hasn’t responded to these layoffs by rejoicing at the sight of a shrinking government and embarking on a hiring spree.

O.K., I know what the usual suspects will say — namely, that fears of regulation and higher taxes are holding businesses back. But this is just a right-wing fantasy. Multiple surveys have shown that lack of demand — a lack that is being exacerbated by government cutbacks — is the overwhelming problem businesses face, with regulation and taxes barely even in the picture.

For example, when McClatchy Newspapers recently canvassed a random selection of small-business owners to find out what was hurting them, not a single one complained about regulation of his or her industry, and few complained much about taxes. And did I mention that profits after taxes, as a share of national income, are at record levels?

When it comes to policy proposals, Krugman pointed out (this was before Barack Obama's job speech yesterday) that Republicans would oppose anything Obama proposed. Nothing he proposed would make it through the House, anyway - literally, nothing.

So, since it wasn't going to pass Congress anyway, Obama needed to make it "big and bold." Well, was it? I really can't tell, myself. I don't have the background to be able to judge that. (My college minor in economics - decades ago - just doesn't cut it.)

But Krugman seems to have been impressed:

First things first: I was favorably surprised by the new Obama jobs plan, which is significantly bolder and better than I expected. It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world. But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment.

Of course, it isn’t likely to become law, thanks to G.O.P. opposition. Nor is anything else likely to happen that will do much to help the 14 million Americans out of work. And that is both a tragedy and an outrage. ...

It calls for about $200 billion in new spending — much of it on things we need in any case, like school repair, transportation networks, and avoiding teacher layoffs — and $240 billion in tax cuts. That may sound like a lot, but it actually isn’t. The lingering effects of the housing bust and the overhang of household debt from the bubble years are creating a roughly $1 trillion per year hole in the U.S. economy, and this plan — which wouldn’t deliver all its benefits in the first year — would fill only part of that hole. And it’s unclear, in particular, how effective the tax cuts would be at boosting spending.

Still, the plan would be a lot better than nothing, and some of its measures, which are specifically aimed at providing incentives for hiring, might produce relatively a large employment bang for the buck. As I said, it’s much bolder and better than I expected. President Obama’s hair may not be on fire, but it’s definitely smoking; clearly and gratifyingly, he does grasp how desperate the jobs situation is.

My biggest problem with Obama is that we haven't been hearing any political leadership on our side. We haven't been hearing anyone - our president, ideally - argue that we shouldn't be worrying about the deficit right now, not until we get the economy moving again. So basically, without anyone on the other side, the Republicans have been winning by default.

Economically, I think that's been disastrous. And politically, I think it's been disastrous, too. Now, maybe Obama is starting to understand that, I don't know. He did address a bit of that yesterday (the full text of his speech is here):

I agree that we can't afford wasteful spending, and I will continue to work with Congress to get rid of it. And I agree that there are some rules and regulations that put an unnecessary burden on businesses at a time when they can least afford it. That's why I ordered a review of all government regulations. So far, we've identified over 500 reforms, which will save billions of dollars over the next few years. We should have no more regulation than the health, safety, and security of the American people require. Every rule should meet that common sense test.

But what we can't do - what I won't do - is let this economic crisis be used as an excuse to wipe out the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades. I reject the idea that we need to ask people to choose between their jobs and their safety. I reject the argument that says for the economy to grow, we have to roll back protections that ban hidden fees by credit card companies, or rules that keep our kids from being exposed to mercury, or laws that prevent the health insurance industry from shortchanging patients. I reject the idea that we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to compete in a global economy. We shouldn't be in a race to the bottom, where we try to offer the cheapest labor and the worst pollution standards. America should be in a race to the top. And I believe that's a race we can win.

That's a nice start, it really is. But we need a lot more of it. And,... there's still a lot of tax cutting in this proposal - as usual. Admittedly, it includes tax cuts aimed at the average working person, not the wealthy. But note that cutting payroll taxes takes money out of Social Security and Medicare. Is that really what we want to do when Republicans are already claiming that we can't afford our social safety nets?

Obama also said that "everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything." Well, if there are off-setting cuts, that's hardly going to make this much of a stimulus, is it? (And yes, I suppose that it wasn't announced as a "stimulus," because that certainly wouldn't fly. But that's still what we need.) If it's paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy, that's different (because that doesn't have a very big impact on our economy).

But, of course, that won't fly, either. Well, nothing is likely to get past the Republicans in Congress anyway, so maybe that doesn't matter. This is mostly a political document. Republicans won't do anything to help improve our economy, not as long as Barack Obama is president, unless they absolutely have to. So politics is the only tool Obama has.

So far, he's been horribly inept at wielding that tool. Let's hope that's finally starting to change. And let's hope that it's not already too late - for him and for us.

--

Incidentally, that "hair on fire" comment in Krugman's column referred back to an earlier part of it:

Before I get to the Obama plan, let me talk about the other important economic speech of the week, which was given by Charles Evans, the president of the Federal Reserve of Chicago. Mr. Evans said, forthrightly, what some of us have been hoping to hear from Fed officials for years now.

As Mr. Evans pointed out, the Fed, both as a matter of law and as a matter of social responsibility, should try to keep both inflation and unemployment low — and while inflation seems likely to stay near or below the Fed’s target of around 2 percent, unemployment remains extremely high.

So how should the Fed be reacting? Mr. Evans: “Imagine that inflation was running at 5 percent against our inflation objective of 2 percent. Is there a doubt that any central banker worth their salt would be reacting strongly to fight this high inflation rate? No, there isn’t any doubt. They would be acting as if their hair was on fire. We should be similarly energized about improving conditions in the labor market.”

But the Fed’s hair is manifestly not on fire, nor do most politicians seem to see any urgency about the situation. These days, the best — or at any rate the alleged wise men and women who are supposed to be looking after the nation’s welfare — lack all conviction, while the worst, as represented by much of the G.O.P., are filled with a passionate intensity. So the unemployed are being abandoned.

But we are starting to hear - finally - the right stuff coming from the Federal Reserve, don't you think? Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a speech yesterday, too, and this is part of what he had to say:

While the weakness of the housing sector and continued financial volatility are two key reasons for the frustratingly slow pace of the recovery, other factors also may restrain growth in coming quarters. For example, state and local governments continue to tighten their belts by cutting spending and reducing payrolls in the face of ongoing budgetary pressures, and federal fiscal stimulus is being withdrawn. There is ample room for debate about the appropriate size and role for the government in the longer term, but--in the absence of adequate demand from the private sector--a substantial fiscal consolidation in the shorter term could add to the headwinds facing economic growth and hiring. [my emphasis]

The prospect of an increasing fiscal drag on the economy in the face of an already sluggish recovery highlights one of the many difficult tradeoffs currently faced by fiscal policymakers. As I have emphasized on previous occasions, without significant policy changes to address the increasing fiscal burdens that will be associated with the aging of the population and the ongoing rise in health-care costs, the finances of the federal government will spiral out of control in coming decades, risking severe economic and financial damage. But, while prompt and decisive action to put the federal government's finances on a sustainable trajectory is urgently needed, fiscal policymakers should not, as a consequence, disregard the fragility of the economic recovery. Fortunately, the two goals--achieving fiscal sustainability, which is the result of responsible policies set in place for the longer term, and avoiding creation of fiscal headwinds for the recovery--are not incompatible. Acting now to put in place a credible plan for reducing future deficits over the long term, while being attentive to the implications of fiscal choices for the recovery in the near term, can help serve both objectives.

I suppose these statements will just increase the attacks on the Federal Reserve, huh? After all, it's only been around since 1913, and I'm sure conservatives want to take us back much further than that (centuries further, if often seems). And unfortunately, there are some loons on the left, too, who'd help them do it, at least when it comes to the Fed.

At any rate, we're starting to hear the right things - or at least some of them - from the White House and the Federal Reserve. Whether it's too little too late, well, I guess we'll just have to see.

Evidence-based thinking

Many of my Christian friends agree with me, more or less, when it comes to politics. But while they may appreciate my political posts, I'm pretty sure they don't care much for those about religion. And let's face it, I post a lot about religion.

I do that because it's important to me. But it's not just because that's who I am. Indeed, I never used to advertise my atheism, not because I feared any repercussions (as some atheists rightly fear), but simply because I didn't think it was anyone else's business - just as their religious beliefs were none of my business.

I've already explained how that changed, how I came to realize I had to stand up and be recognized as an atheist. But I've done that, right? I've made it pretty clear, I think. And your own religious beliefs are still none of my business. You have the right to believe whatever you wish, and that's a right I'll continue to defend.

So I feel I need to explain to my Christian friends (I know very few people of any other religion, and none very well) exactly why I keep blogging so much about religion - against religion, to be precise. If your belief is really none of my business, why do I keep hammering away at this subject?

My reason is that faith-based thinking seems to be destroying our country - and much of the rest of the world, too. I'm always happy to have believers as political allies, but there's a reason why religion is so closely associated with loony right-wing Republican politics. The fact is, faith is the wrong way to make decisions, even when you get the right answer!

I know that you, too, wonder how the right-wing can believe such crazy stuff, and the answer is that they have faith. Even those few who aren't fervently religious are still faith-based, not evidence-based, thinkers. When you accept faith as a reasonable way to believe, then there's no way to ever tell when you're wrong. (Do I really need to point out that the 9/11 attackers were men of great faith?) No matter what, if you have faith, you'll believe it.

Evidence-based thinkers can be wrong, too, of course. But there's a corrective mechanism built into that. Show us enough evidence and we'll change our mind. OK, it's not that simple, true. But science is basically evidence-based thinking, with careful procedures worked out to separate the truth from wishful thinking, and it actually works!

Because it's based on evidence, science comes to a consensus worldwide. Science is basically the same in Saudi Arabia and in India, in Sweden and in Thailand, in Russia and in America. And when new evidence indicates that scientists have been wrong, the scientific consensus changes. Religion has nothing like that. There's no self-correcting mechanism to faith-based thinking.

And so we get Republican presidential candidates, vying for the faith-based voters in their party, who are blatantly anti-science. Here, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman comments about the anti-intellectualism of the political right:

Mr. Perry, the governor of Texas, recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as “just a theory,” one that has “got some gaps in it” — an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists. But what really got people's attention was what he said about climate change: “I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.”

That’s a remarkable statement — or maybe the right adjective is “vile.”

The second part of Mr. Perry’s statement is, as it happens, just false: the scientific consensus about man-made global warming — which includes 97 percent to 98 percent of researchers in the field, according to the National Academy of Sciences — is getting stronger, not weaker, as the evidence for climate change just keeps mounting.

In fact, if you follow climate science at all you know that the main development over the past few years has been growing concern that projections of future climate are underestimating the likely amount of warming. Warnings that we may face civilization-threatening temperature change by the end of the century, once considered outlandish, are now coming out of mainstream research groups.

But never mind that, Mr. Perry suggests; those scientists are just in it for the money, “manipulating data” to create a fake threat. In his book “Fed Up,” he dismissed climate science as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart.”

I could point out that Mr. Perry is buying into a truly crazy conspiracy theory, which asserts that thousands of scientists all around the world are on the take, with not one willing to break the code of silence. I could also point out that multiple investigations into charges of intellectual malpractice on the part of climate scientists have ended up exonerating the accused researchers of all accusations. But never mind: Mr. Perry and those who think like him know what they want to believe [my emphasis], and their response to anyone who contradicts them is to start a witch hunt. ...

According to Public Policy Polling, only 21 percent of Republican voters in Iowa believe in global warming (and only 35 percent believe in evolution). Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates...

Frankly, it's even crazier to dismiss the scientific consensus on evolution than on global warming. Evolution has been mainstream biology for more than a hundred years, with the evidence just getting stronger and stronger the whole time.

But in both cases, scientists who specialize in those fields are nearly unanimous in their agreement on the basics. If you dismiss the science, what are you going to believe, your gut?

Apparently, yes, that's exactly the case. Here's Krugman again (in a different column):

A number of people have pointed me to this remarkable editorial by Stephen Moore in the WSJ. What’s remarkable isn’t the views; it’s the all-out embrace of anti-intellectualism. It actually denounces “fancy theories” and rejects them because they “defy common sense”.

Gosh, if that’s the way the right is going, the next thing you know they’ll reject the theory of evolution. Oh, wait.

Common sense is great. But it doesn't replace knowledge. It doesn't negate the need for evidence. If the evidence indicates otherwise, then your "common sense" is simply wrong.

Now, economics isn't science, but there's still evidence behind those "fancy theories." If you're going to believe your gut instead, that's faith-based thinking. You're just believing what you want to believe. And again, you've got no self-correcting mechanism. When you don't rely on evidence, there's no way anyone can convince you that you're wrong.

I know what you're going to say. "But I accept the scientific consensus on evolution and global warming. I'm with Krugman on economic issues. I'm on your side. What does this have to do with religion?"

Well, as I said, I'm glad to have religious believers as political allies. But as I see it, this is purely accidental. You got the right answer - this time - and I appreciate that. But what about next time? If you stick to faith-based, rather than evidence-based, thinking, what will you decide to believe next time?

Faith-based thinking is always wrong, even when your answer is right. Remember back in school, when your math teacher made you show your work? That was because you might have been able to guess the right answer, but that wouldn't help you one bit on the next question. So you had to show you understood the process.

This is the same way. Until we all learn to use evidence-based thinking, we'll be prone to believing whatever we want to believe. Sometimes, for some people, it will be true, but all too often, as we're seeing now, it may be batshit crazy. Fundamentally, faith-based thinking is simply the wrong way to believe. The results may or may not be wrong, but in any case, the method is wrong.

Yes, true, some scientists are religious believers - far fewer than among the general population, but some. In general, they use evidence-based thinking in their scientific specialty, but stick with faith-based thinking when it comes to religion. But what happens when their religion conflicts with science? All too often, they simply believe what they want to believe.

And if you recognize the value of evidence-based thinking, why would you want to use faith-based thinking for anything? Well, let's face it. It's because you want to believe what you want to believe. And you don't want to give up your faith, that comforting belief you've been taught since infancy.

I suppose it takes courage to accept evidence-based thinking. I wouldn't know. Seriously, I can't give myself any credit for it, since that's just the way I've always been. Even as a child, as far as I can remember, I wanted evidence. I wasn't particularly good at distinguishing good evidence from bad, but I wanted some evidence for what I was being urged to believe.

Anyway, this is the connection I see between politics and religion. This is why I keep posting about religion. This is why I feel that, although your religious beliefs are your own business, I need to keep expressing my own views.

This is important!  Faith-based thinking is disastrous here in the 21st Century. Your own faith may be perfectly benign, but you give cover to the craziest people in the world who also believe what they believe because they have faith. And their beliefs aren't always so benign.

Here's what happens with "balanced" journalism

Here is a rather shocking post by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. I don't normally do this, but I'm going to post the whole thing. Well, it's short and it's really quite important.

Brad Plumer points us to a new survey from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, and the news is grim. As usual, plenty of people don't believe in global warming, and tea partiers really, really don't believe in global warming. But in a way, that's not the most appalling result of the survey. This is:

(click to embiggen)

Holy cow. This is a straightforward factual question, and the correct answer is something in the neighborhood of 98%.¹ But even among Democrats, only 42% think that most climate scientists believe global warming is happening. [Hmm,... that's not precisely true, according to the figures, but close enough.]  It's even worse among the other groups.

Hell, if it were really true that 60% of climate scientists believed in global warming and 40% didn't, I probably wouldn't believe in it either. But nationally, that's what a large majority of Americans think. They think that within the scientific community, there's roughly an even split among believers and deniers.

If this were limited to the far right, we could blame it on Fox and Drudge and Limbaugh and all the other usual suspects who peddle climate absurdities just because they conveniently buttress their worldview. Chris Mooney describes here how this kind of "motivated reasoning" helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal.

But it's not just a phenomenon of the right. It's a phenomenon of everybody, including those who get their news from the mainstream media. It's what happens when reporters insist that every story about climate change has to include a quote from at least one or two skeptics to "balance out" the other scientists. [my emphasis]  Is it any wonder that the public is so wildly misinformed?

¹I wasn't going to bother with this, but a reader emails to point out that, actually, 100% of climate scientists believe global warming is happening. Something like 98% of them believe that it's mostly caused by humans. But I'm giving our survey respondents a break, since I suspect most people automatically think "human-caused global warming" whenever they hear "global warming."

Incredible, isn't it? How could the American people be this ill-informed? As Drum points out, the original post focused on the Tea Party:

Self-identified Tea Party types make up just 12 percent of the country, but they tend to be the fiercest global-warming deniers: “Majorities of Democrats (78%), Independents (71%) and Republicans (53%) believe that global warming is happening. By contrast, only 34 percent of Tea Party members believe global warming is happening, while 53 percent say it is not happening.”

Even though their views are at odds with the vast majority of climate scientists, Tea Partiers are also by far the most confident in their beliefs — more likely to say they are “very well informed” and that they “do not need any more information about global warming.” Note that this dovetails with earlier research finding that when you give those dismissive of global warming more information, it only serves to harden their doubts.

But none of that really surprises me,* since I already knew that Tea Party types were completely off their rocker. (I do think it's funny that they claim to be "very well informed" on the subject.) No, I'm most astonished by the poll results from everyone else, how ignorant we are about the scientific consensus.

If you don't "believe" in the scientific consensus, that's one thing (which shows a faith-based, rather than an evidence-based, mindset - or just a real eagerness to believe what you want to believe, regardless of the facts). But to not come even close to understanding how widespread that consensus is, with even Democrats being so far off the mark, that's just incredible!

And it's very much an indictment of American journalism these days. No one should be this poorly informed on such an important issue. As I say, I'm just astonished by these poll results. How about you?

* Note that one thing which does surprise me about the original post is that even Tea Party types support some environmental politics. But as the column states:

Highly popular even among Tea Party types: research and subsidies for renewable sources [of energy]. Of course, this support could prove floppy once tested. Tea Partiers, for one, seem prone to getting whipped into outrage over seemingly uncontroversial green policies — note that “Tea Party members are more than twice as likely than any other group to say they don’t want to change the light bulbs in their house to energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights.”

Speechgate

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Another manufactured controversy! You know, there's a real connection here with yesterday's post. Talk about undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government! If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd start wondering if all of the news media weren't part and parcel of that disgraceful Republican strategy (not just Fox, I mean).

But no, I don't think it's deliberate. I just think it's just a combination of journalistic incompetence, combined with the mindless search for a mass audience, television's "lowest common denominator." But it does our country no good at all.

Inequality the real cause of our terrible economy

Here's a post by Robert Reich, formerly Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, on "Why Inequality is the Real Cause of Our Ongoing Terrible Economy."

An excerpt:

The 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. ...

Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats.

During periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion — as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day — growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered giant downturns. It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 — the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.

We've been on the wrong path - the wrong economic path, at least - in this country for decades. And as that path has been increasingly disastrous for us, a large part of our population has become even more fanatic about sticking to it - indeed, even stepping on the accelerator.

Well, these people are faith-based. They don't change their minds based on the evidence. Instead, when things begin to go badly, they stick to their beliefs even more firmly, convinced that the problem has been not the wrong direction, but a lack of faith in that wrong direction. The worse things get, the more scared they get and the more fiercely they cling to their existing beliefs.

Right-wing economic beliefs have been dominant in America since Reagan. Even the Democrats, never ones to stand up against something popular, have moved to the right. But it's the Republicans who've really taken it to extremes. Heck, Ronald Reagan would be kicked out of the GOP these days for being too liberal.

It would be one thing if these policies had been a success, but that's hardly the case. Why are people so angry these days if they like the way things have been going? The only people who really like it are the extremely wealthy, and even they won't be better off for long.

As Reich points out, there's a clear alternative:

Some say we couldn’t have reversed the consequences of globalization and technological change. Yet the experiences of other nations, like Germany, suggest otherwise. Germany has grown faster than the United States for the last 15 years, and the gains have been more widely spread. While Americans’ average hourly pay has risen only 6 percent since 1985, adjusted for inflation, German workers’ pay has risen almost 30 percent. At the same time, the top 1 percent of German households now take home about 11 percent of all income — about the same as in 1970. And although in the last months Germany has been hit by the debt crisis of its neighbors, its unemployment is still below where it was when the financial crisis started in 2007.

How has Germany done it? Mainly by focusing like a laser on education (German math scores continue to extend their lead over American), and by maintaining strong labor unions.

But we don't want to take any lessons from Europe, do we? No, we're "exceptional" (which apparently means that we refuse to learn from anyone else). We won't look at Finland for ideas on how to improve our schools, and we won't look at Germany - or any other country - for ideas on how to do well economically in the 21st Century.

Yeah, we'd rather discover our mistakes after we make them, apparently. We don't want to look at the mistakes - and the successes - of other countries, so we might be able to skip all that. Well, since we refuse to admit our mistakes anyway, I suppose that's moot.

We really need to become evidence-based, so that we can actually learn from our mistakes. And we need to be humble enough to admit that we might still be able to learn from someone else. This isn't a matter of pride in country. You can be proud of America while still recognizing that we're not perfect.

We've been on the wrong path in America for thirty years. When will we finally recognize that? And when will we decide to do something about it?

PS. I must again thank Jim Harris for the link.

How fragile democracy really is

This is just a quick followup to yesterday's post, "Reflections of a GOP operative." A column in The Atlantic quotes another retired Congressional staffer:

I don't think people realize how fragile democracy really is. The 2012 campaign is currently looking to be the final nail in the coffin unless people start to understand what is going on.

One thing that especially resonated with me about Mike's piece is the importance of "low information" voters. The mainstream media absolutely fails to understand how little attention average Americans really pay to what goes on in all forms of government. During our 2008 race, our pollster taught me (hard to believe it took me 24 years to learn this) that the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress. All the millions of dollars of TV ads, all the thousands of robo-calls and door-knocks, and it all comes down to having a message that will stick in the voters' minds during the 5 minutes before they walk into the voting booth.

The media likes to call this group "independents," which implies that they think so long and deeply about issues that they refuse to be constrained by the philosophy of either party. There may be a couple of people out there who fit that definition, but those are not the persuadable voters campaigns are trying to capture. Every campaign is trying to develop its candidate into an easy-to-remember slogan that makes him or her more appealing than the other guy. Actually, because negative campaigning is so effective, they are more often trying to portray the opponent as more objectionable ("I guess I'll vote for the crook because at least he won't slash my Medicare").

I'm writing because now that I have been out of the Beltway Bubble, I have gained a little more perspective on how real people see the work of Washington, and I am scared that they are close to revolt. The debt ceiling debate in particular had me screaming at the TV on more than one occasion because both sides botched it so badly. I would like to hope that news outlets like yours could play a positive role in helping to educate people. But I'm feeling pretty pessimistic at the moment.

Yes, I'm feeling pretty pessimistic myself. But if we give up, we're guaranteed the worst outcome. If we give up, what kind of people are we? There is no giving up. If we lose, we lose. And we keep on fighting, because no loss is final unless you quit trying.

There is no alternative. We don't quit. We can't quit. I'd rather be optimistic right now, but that's just too bad. Pessimism isn't enough to stop me from trying.

The good book

(Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Reflections of a GOP operative

Here's an interesting article in Truthout by a former Republican staff member in Congress. I'll pick out some of the juicy bits, but the whole thing is well worth your time.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy. ...

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant. ...

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

A deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"

Remember, this is a Republican saying this (admittedly, not until he retired). This is a bit like my previous post about Chuck Hagel. But far too few Republicans are saying these things, and none seem to have the courage to do so when they have anything left to lose. "Profiles in Courage" this ain't.

Still, it needs to be said, over and over again. If this were my political party, I'd be standing up and making my objections known. It is my country, and so I'm still trying to do that. But it has less impact from the outside.

The column continues:

This constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The United States has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. There were only 44 million Republican voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the political results of the election of President Obama by 69 million voters.

Note that there are 312 million American citizens, more than three-quarters of whom are of voting age. The fact that only 44 million Republican fanatics could decide the fate of our government last November is absolutely disgraceful.

Undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing Karl Rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer's New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

And yeah, I just blogged about that, too (here). And who are "those people"? Well, you know exactly who they are:

As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black. Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear. ...

Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class - without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.

What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites

While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.

How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? - can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?

You know that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democrats refer to them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune.

That's what's so infuriating about the Democrats. Yes, they completely ceded the field. They can't turn a phrase if their life depended on it. They can't describe Democratic values and Democratic policies clearly, plainly, and - especially - boldly. They're way too timid, apparently so worried about angering somebody that they anger everybody. Heck, they even adopt Republican talking points! Honestly, I have to wonder how Democrats ever get elected.

Of course, since they haven't fought back hard enough against what the Republicans have been doing to our country, they're faced with the need to raise huge sums of money for re-election. And that tends to put them competing with Republicans for the favor of corporations and the wealthy, which means that they simply can't afford to be too different from their rivals.

Still, don't get me wrong. Democrats may be infuriating, but they're not actually evil and they're not actually insane. That means they look pretty darn good these days!

After a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors' looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "Washington spending" - which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

Thus far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation.

Yeah, good stuff, isn't it? And this is from someone who was on their side. Well, I don't want to post too much of this commentary. (I really do encourage you to read the whole thing.) So I'll end with this final excerpt, which describes why he retired:

I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. And, in truth, I left as an act of rational self-interest. Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder value," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.

If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be "forced" to make "hard choices" - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.

Note how Republicans often claim that they won't make changes which will affect people 55 and older. For one thing, of course, that's a complete lie. If it doesn't affect those people now, it certainly will ten or twenty or thirty years down the road, when that crop of seniors gets small enough that the political implications don't scare them off. See how your special treatment holds up then!

But also, they blithely assume that none of us cares about anyone else. Yeah, if it doesn't harm me personally, you can do anything you like. After all, why should I care? Is that how people think? Is that how our seniors think? Are the Republicans right about this?

Because the only reason they're promising to exempt the elderly is because they're scared to do otherwise. Those people vote!  True, they tend to vote Republican, because they're easy to scare - or to distract with "culture war" issues - but Republicans are still cautious enough around active voters to watch their step. If only young people would recognize that! And learn from it.

PS. My thanks to Jim Harris for the tip. And yeah, for all of them. He's sent me some great links!

Chuck Hagel shows his mettle - again

I miss Chuck Hagel. When he was our senator, I disagreed with him about most things, and I never voted for him, but I respected him. Do you know how rare that is here in Nebraska?

Here he is again, showing why. Hagel is a conservative and a Republican. We really do disagree at a fundamental level. But I was never ashamed that he was our senator.

Of course, his courage at speaking up about these things made him really hated in this state - in his own party. So he didn't run for re-election in 2008. Unlike most senators, who think they've been appointed for life, he moved on. But I do miss him. (His replacement, Sen. Mike Johanns, has been a complete embarrassment.)

I got this video from Washington Monthly, thanks to a tip from my commenter here (note that I'm always grateful for such things). But let me quote from that article:

Thomas Friedman noted several weeks ago that “sane Republicans” need to do more to stand up to the “Hezbollah faction in their midst.” But have you noticed how infrequently this actually happens? Even during the debt-ceiling debate, arguably the most dangerous scheme launched by a major American political party since the Civil War, no elected GOP officials — literally, not one — ever stood up during this process to say, “Wait, this is wrong. We shouldn’t do this.” They all just went along. The party’s presidential field cheered them on. High-profile retired Republicans and the GOP’s elder statesmen sat on their hands. Even Hagel, who deserves credit for speaking up now, is about six weeks too late.

I’m reminded of this item from Robert Prather, published in July on the center-right Outside the Beltway blog, about his sense of what’s become of the GOP.

I’ve been moving to the left for a few years now, but these idiots are radicalizing me. I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life (full disclosure: I didn’t vote the last two elections due to moving), but I doubt I’ll ever vote for a Republican again. They’re either stupid or evil, but either way they’re dangerous and bad for the country.

Shouldn’t there be a legion of Republicans — former office holders, party loyalists, life-long members, all of the above — who are sympathetic to this perspective? Even if they’re not willing to go as far as Prather, aren’t there any GOP officials left who heard Hagel’s concerns and found them compelling?

Isn’t it about time more of them said so?

Amen.

My garden woes

By this time of year, I'm normally just swamped with fruit. I'll have given fruit to my friends, relatives, pretty much all of my neighbors, and even people just passing by. I'll have my freezer stocked with fruit for the winter, and I'll have eaten so much fruit myself that I'm actually rather tired of it.

But not this year. For a variety of reasons - some of my own making - this summer has been a complete disaster. All my work, day after day, has been pretty much for nothing. And the main reason for that has been the squirrels. I just haven't been able to keep them out of my fruit this year.

I've tried all sorts of things. Finally, this past week, I took my electric fence charger in to be tested. Apparently, it wasn't working right (still shocking, apparently, but not all the time), so I bought a new one. This one was far more expensive than the first and much more powerful. This one is for cattle, not pets, and I was strongly urged not to touch it myself.

Note that it has a very high voltage - thousands of volts, I think - but very low current. So it will sting, it will probably hurt like hell, but it's not dangerous. It won't actually cause any damage. But when I first plugged it in, I quickly discovered a problem with my setup. I could hear this loud cracking sound from underground, where I've got an insulated wire going under the gate on my chainlink fence.

Let me tell you, that was a scary sound! After hearing that, I really don't want to touch the electric fence wire! Every second, when that charger would pulse, I'd hear it. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!  I don't know if that would intimidate the squirrels, but it certainly intimidated me!

I dug up the underground cable (it's an insulated wire specially-designed for this purpose, because ordinary electric cable isn't insulated for such high voltages) and discovered a spot where the insulation was damaged. It wasn't scraped off completely, but it was thin enough that a high-voltage spark could jump to ground.

So I got that fixed - although I still hear cracking occasionally, where the electricity has found another place on my fence, due to water or dirt, to jump to ground - and I turned it on. The result? Pretty well... nothing. The squirrels are still eating my fruit. In fact, that squirrel eating the last of my fall peaches and fall apples crawls through those electric wires without seeming to notice anything at all!

Yeah, apparently squirrel fur is really good insulation. After making this change, now I'm terrified to go into my own backyard, or at least to go anywhere near those electric wires, but the squirrels don't notice it at all. Heh, heh. (Seriously, I think the squirrels will still get zapped occasionally, and will eventually learn to avoid the wires. Whether that will keep them out of my fruit or not is another question.)

It's not just the squirrels causing me problems, though. Squirrels don't normally eat my grapes, but the birds sure do, so I go to a great deal of work putting up bird netting. (Note that the wasps and bees really attack my grapes, too, and the netting doesn't do anything to help with that. I don't like to spray them, because I don't want to kill bees, but you can't believe the numbers I get here - or the damage they do. I don't know what commercial growers do.)

Anyway, I really worked to get the nets up and to make sure there weren't any holes anywhere. The result? The other day, I had four robins inside the netting! One of them was dead when I found him - tangled up in the netting, hanging upside down. Yeah, I hate when that happens! (There are ways to minimize that, but not to avoid it entirely.)

The other three were very much alive, and I was able to get two of them out of there. Well, I got one out, and the other seems to have found a way out on his own. At least, I don't see him in the grapes anywhere. But the last robin - a young one - was really a pain!

I could catch him through the netting, but never near an opening (and I didn't want to cut a hole in my net). I've got chickenwire along the ground (that's actually to keep the birds from getting tangled up in netting bunched along the ground), so I propped that up to let  him out. But when I got close, he wouldn't fly down, where he could get out, but always up into the netting, instead.

And when I left him alone, he didn't want to get out. What, and leave all those lovely grapes? I left him alone for two days, with the fence still propped up, and I could see him resting on the ground right beside that opening,... but he was just as happy as could be staying inside, eating all the grapes he could stuff down his throat.

Finally, this morning, I went out and got him out of the net. It was a struggle, but I finally accomplished that. Of course, by tomorrow, they'll be back in there again, I suppose. Or some other birds will be. I don't know how they get inside, but they do.

Of course, they really, really work at it. They can see those grapes inside, and they really do work to get at them.

Sometimes, I'll see birds just beating themselves against the netting. I don't know if they've become furious at seeing those grapes just out of reach, if they're trying to beat their way through the netting, or if they're merely trying to push the net closer to a bunch of grapes (any bunch close to the net is quickly stripped of grapes). But they really do work at it.

And they're very good at finding even the smallest opening to squeeze through. They're not very good at all at finding their way out again. But maybe they just don't have the same incentive then.

Speaking of which, I did have a squirrel inside my bird netting the other day. I don't know why. (I hope he wasn't discovering a taste for grapes.) When I walked outside, he tried to scamper off, but couldn't get out of the netting. Man, he was absolutely furious! Heh, heh. It was pretty funny.

I thought at one point that he might get tangled up in the netting, which wouldn't be funny at all (because I'd have to try to cut him out of it - without getting bit). But I deliberately scared him, so he might think twice before coming back. I even smacked him - lightly - with a stick.

Well, when a squirrel panics, all they can think about is running away. And when they're surrounded by nylon netting, that doesn't work too well. Heh, heh. Well, after a few minutes, I left him alone, and he had no trouble finding a way out then. He probably just got out through one of the seams. It's not that hard for a squirrel. (Before I got my electric fence set up, they'd slip in and out of the bird netting covering my strawberries with no problem at all.)

All this would be pretty funny if I weren't working my butt off for nothing! Luckily, this is just a hobby for me. But I sympathize with farmers and others who grow food for a living. It can't be easy. We do need to share our planet with wildlife, but I understand that it's not always easy.

Registering the poor to vote is un-American

I'm not kidding. That's the exact title of this post by right-wing columnist Matthew Vadum, "Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American."

Here's an excerpt:

Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?

Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.

Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals.  It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country...

You see, poor people tend to vote in their own best interests (not often enough, I'd say - but let's leave that for another time), kind of like how wealthy people vote for politicians who promise to cut their taxes. So maybe Vadun thinks that we shouldn't let the wealthy vote, either?

Yeah, letting the wealthy vote Republican is "like handing out burglary tools to criminals," huh?

Honestly, how far back do these right-wing loons want to take our country? Is there any progress we've made in the past few centuries that these fanatics don't want to eliminate? OK, sure, get rid of Social Security and Medicare. End all government regulation - environmental, health, financial. Break down that wall of separation of church and state. Bring back religious wars.

And now, get rid of that whole democracy thing. How crazy that we should let ordinary people govern themselves! It's only the upper classes who are fit for such things, right?

What's next, slavery? Burning witches at the stake? The divine right of kings?

More on the Christian national registry of atheists

I posted about this yesterday, but it seems to be getting a lot of my fellow atheists worked up. Good!

As I said yesterday, Pastor Stahl is a nobody, but he might be doing some good if he gets us atheists standing up to be heard. We've seen the success that gays have had in coming out of the closet, and we should emulate that.

Of course, that's easy for me to say. I have nothing to lose. It's not so easy for many atheists.

Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar

(image from Moby Games)

If you've got the hankering to try a really old game (from 1985), I thought I'd point out that GOG.com has Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar available for free.

OK, yeah, it's been freeware for awhile now, but GOG.com has their games set up to play on modern computers. They make it so easy - and their games are so cheap - that I often buy a game from them even when I already own it.

Ultima IV is widely considered to be one of the best games of all-time. Of course, it's very old. And although it was incredible when it first came out, its flaws are far more evident these days. The CRPG Addict did a playthrough of Ultima IV last year. You might want to check that out. (Note that the posts are shown in reverse order there.)

I meant to do a Great Games post about this game (I'm not getting too far with those, am I?), but I couldn't remember if I played Ultima IV or Ultima V. Whichever it was, it was one of the first computer games I ever played and the game which really got me hooked on RPGs.

Ultima V is an even better game, I think, though it's not yet available on GOG.com (soon, I expect). If you're curious, The CRPG Addict is doing a playthrough of that game right now. (Again, the posts are shown in reverse order.)

But note that these old games aren't usually easy to play these days. It's not just the difficulty of getting them to run on modern computers, but the fact that game interfaces have improved so much over the years. And, let's face it, we've become accustomed to far better graphics and audio.

The gameplay is still great. Indeed, in many ways we've gone downhill when it comes to gameplay. But you still have to be pretty dedicated - or maybe just curious - to play a lot of these old games. And for many of us, nostalgia is also a huge factor. Maybe that wouldn't be the case for you.

Still, when Ultima IV is free, what can you lose? And really, almost all of the old games at GOG.com are so cheap you'd get your money's worth even if you only played an hour or two. And I can pretty well guarantee you'll do far more than that. (I've been having a great time lately with Fallout - still meaning to write a Great Games post on that one.)

A national registry for atheists

From Dispatches from the Culture Wars:

Pastor Mike Stahl of the Living Water internet church thinks atheists should be registered.

Brothers and Sisters, I have been seriously considering forming a (Christian) grassroots type of organization to be named “The Christian National Registry of Atheists” or something similar. I mean, think about it. There are already National Registrys for convicted sex offenders, ex-convicts, terrorist cells, hate groups like the KKK, skinheads, radical Islamists, etc..

This type of “National Registry” would merely be for information purposes. To inform the public of KNOWN (i.e., self-admitted) atheists. For example, let’s say you live in Colorado Springs, Colorado, you could simply scroll down (from the I-Net site/Blog) I would have, to the State of Colorado, and then when you see “Colorado Springs”, you will see the names of all the self-admitted atheist(s) who live there...

Now, many (especially the atheists) , may ask “Why do this, what’s the purpose?” Duhhh, Mr. Atheist, for the same purpose many States put the names and photos of convicted sex offenders and other ex-felons on the I-Net – to INFORM the public! I mean, in the City of Miramar, Florida, where I live, the population is approx. 109,000. My family and I would sure like to know how many of those 109,000 are ADMITTED atheists! Perhaps we may actually know some. In which case we could begin to witness to them and warn them of the dangers of atheism. Or perhaps they are radical atheists, whose hearts are as hard as Pharaoh’s, in that case, if they are business owners, we would encourage all our Christian friends, as well as the various churches and their congregations NOT to patronize them as we would only be “feeding” Satan.

Frankly, I don’t see why anyone would oppose this idea – including the atheists themselves (unless of course, they’re actually ashamed of their atheist religion, and would prefer to stay in the ‘closet.’).

[Note that I cleaned up the punctuation a little bit to make that comment easier to read. Since Stahl has now hidden his blog, I can't access the original, and I suspect that the weird punctuation might be an artifact of the copying process.]

Tracie at The Atheist Experience thinks this would be a great idea and sent Pastor Stahl an email saying so:

Will there be an annual yearbook published? Like a directory? I'm an "out" atheist, and don't want to miss out. Is there a fee to be included? Thanks for your efforts! I've been trying to get a comprehensive list of atheists in the global community for years now, and have been doing it the hard way apparently--collecting them slowly over years on social networks. But if you're willing to do the leg work, that would be awesome. You rock, Pastor Mike! Please make the list publicly available, we get a lot of letters from atheists asking where they can meet other atheists in their area. A listing like you suggest would be a big help!

Heh, heh. Of course, she's being sarcastic, but really, finding other atheists in your community can be a problem. I mean, it's not as though we congregate in churches on Sundays. We don't go door to door trying to convert people, and most of us don't even have horns on our foreheads. So how do you tell?

Maybe we need some kind of recognition sign.

But a national registry - particularly one operated by Christian loons like this - probably wouldn't be to our benefit. (Heh, heh. Ya' think?) Atheists would be even more cautious about coming out of the closet than they are already.

And for good reason! Note Stahl's threat: "if they are business owners, we would encourage all our Christian friends, as well as the various churches and their congregations NOT to patronize them as we would only be “feeding” Satan."

Just imagine if he'd said that about Jews, or even Muslims. Just imagine that someone had said that about Christians, someone in China, perhaps. Can you imagine the uproar then? But somehow, that kind of bigotry is par for the course when it comes to atheists. Funny, huh?

Ah, well, this pastor is a pathetic nobody. He's good for a laugh, but nothing more. We atheists certainly can't be intimidated that easily.

Sad little racists

"It's really, really dumb."  No kidding!

Cristina Rad gets pretty worked up here, doesn't she? But she's right to feel that way. It's the 21st Century, yet we still have these pathetic little racists?

As a white man, I hear this stuff sometimes, from people who don't know me and assume that I'll agree with such idiocy. Mostly - not always - it's from people much older than me, people who grew up in another time and still haven't learned any better.

Of course, I don't want to give the impression that things aren't better than they used to be. We have indeed progressed - progressed a lot - in America. (In fact, I heard more blatant racism in Europe, when I traveled there years ago, than I ever did here. That surprised me.)

Most racists in America will indignantly deny being racist, and then, in the next breath, say something incredibly racist. Well, they tend not to be very smart.

They also find it very easy to believe the worst about blacks, Hispanics, immigrants - anyone different. That's why so many people believe the most idiotic things about Barack Obama. They wouldn't be quite that stupid if Obama were white.

Oh, and I like Cristina's t-shirt: "We Are All Africans." It's true, too. Everyone in this country is an African American, in the sense that our ancestors came from Africa.

Tough guys

(Savage Chickens)