This doesn’t happen much on non-biological issues, but I think I can say, without reservation, that I agree entirely and wholeheartedly with PZ Myers’ take on the events that inspired my post “Community”.
Category: Follies of the Human Condition
Community
I regularly have a problem when trying to fix problems with physical objects that do mechanically things[1]. In attempting to solve the problem, I learn that the problem I thought was the problem is not the problem and discover what the actual the problem is. Not that I then necessarily have any idea how to solve the new the problem, but at least I know what the problem is now.
Its like an episode of House, without the erroneous suggestion that it might be lupus[2].
Or, maybe its like Atheism[3].
One of Atheism’s major problems is that not enough girls are showing up to their parties. Recently, there was a great deal of attention focused on the issue of sexism in Atheism after a dust-up erupted around the reporting of events during a predominantly male “women in atheism” panel. Briefly, a female audience member took vocal issue with some of the panel’s statements and left in some distress feeling that the panel’s responses to her concerns were condescending and mocking.
I’m not sure there is much to learn from this event. There is a lot to learn from the response.
Nonexistent due process on the internets
From Ars Technica: A Silicon Valley Democrat Representative looking for GOP help:
At 9:30pm PST on February 11, US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seized the domain mooo.com. They ordered the domain name’s registrar to redirect all traffic headed for mooo.com to a government IP address, one which displayed a single stark warning that the domain name had been seized for involvement with child pornography.
But the mooo.com domain name was shared between 84,000 sites; every one suddenly displayed the child pornography warning. The mistake was soon corrected, but the free domain name provider running mooo.com warned users that removal of the banner from their sites might “take as long as 3 days.”…
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who holds a law degree, is furious about the mistake. At a recent Congressional hearing, Lofgren grilled IP Czar Victoria Espinel about the incident and stood up for the 84,000 affected sites. “If I were them, I’d sue the department,” she thundered.
The article goes on to indicate that Rep. Lofgren is looking for GOP support to block a disappointing Democratic leadership-endorsed bill that would run roughshod over due process when it comes to internet seizures. If the GOP actually cared about due process for people without deep corporate pockets, Rep. Lofgren might have a chance. Her best hope is that the GOP blocks this simply because they hate Dems.
More importantly, this is just yet one more reminder that, as a society, we haven’t yet figured out how previously cherished ideals of due process, free speech, privacy, etc. apply to the rapidly evolving technological thicket of the internet.
Export regulations for my Dell monitor
Apparently, it is illegal to sell my Dell monitor to, say, a relative or friend who works for Lat Alamos, Oak Ridge, or similar facility. From the product information guide:
Export Regulations… In addition, the Products may not be sold, leased, or otherwise transferred to, or utilized by an end-user engaged in activities related to weapons of mass destruction, including without limitation, activities related to the design, develpment, productions, or use of nuclear weapons, materials, or facilities…
Education makes you dumber…
At least in this case:
From “Education, politics and opinions about climate change evidence for interaction effects” (PDF):
Abstract U.S. public opinion regarding climate change has become increasingly polarized in recent years, as partisan think tanks and others worked to recast an originally scientific topic into a political wedge issue. Nominally “scientific” arguments against taking anthropogenic climate change seriously have been publicized to reach informed but ideologically receptive audiences. Reflecting the success of such arguments, polls have noted that concern about climate change increased with edu- cation among Democrats, but decreased with education among Republicans. These observations lead to the hypothesis that there exist interaction (non-additive) effects between education or knowledge and political orientation, net of other background factors, in predicting public concern about climate change. Two regional telephone surveys, conducted in New Hampshire (n=541) and Michigan (n=1,008) in 2008, included identical climate-change questions that provide opportunities to test this hypothesis. Multivariate analysis of both surveys finds significant interactions. These empirical results fit with theoretical interpretations and several other recent studies. They suggest that the classically identified social bases of concern about the environment in general, and climate in particular, have shifted in recent years. Narrowcast media, including the many Web sites devoted to discrediting climate- change concerns, provide ideal conduits for channeling contrarian arguments to an audience predisposed to believe and electronically spread them further. Active- response Web sites by climate scientists could prove critical to counterbalancing contrarian arguments.
There seems to be something here that explains a lot about beliefs other than climate change: evolution and political subjects like health care and economic policy – pretty much any subject where an intellectually indefensible position is in fact defended by ideologically-driven snake oil outfits whose product is scientific-sounding doubt of some mainstream scientific consensus. See “The Merchants of Doubt”.
UPDATE: Here is some follow-up material on this issue, some of which shows that on the subject of evolution, there is still an enormous conservative/ liberal split (with reality favoring the liberals again), but education doesn’t make you dumber.
The Finch and Pea 