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Legislating science

Sunday, January 15, 2012

 Many years ago I read a book about some aspect of science, in which the author recounted a story about a mathematician who was trying to prove a certain mathematical proposition. The mathematician had a friend who was a state legislator, and the legislator, whether at the instance of the mathematician I cannot recall, introduced a bill to make the mathematical proposition true, at least in that particular state. As it turns out, the proposition was not true, and the bill was not passed, though the two facts have nothing to do with one another.

As has been so often said, the more things change, the more they stay the same, except, in our benighted times, they seem to get worse. My recollection is that the legislator in the anecdote above was pretty much alone in his desire to legislate science, but that is no longer the case.

The legislature in the state of Missouri is considering a statute that would legislatively declare “intelligent design” good science, despite the fact that it is not, in fact, good science. 

PZ  Myers flags this legislation under consideration in the Missouri House.  It seems HB1227 would not only redefine “intelligent design creationism” as actual science, it would then require that textbooks and classes in Missouri schools be forced to teach it as acceptable science along with “scientific theory” evolution.

Now, in the case of the long dead legislator with the mathematical friend, he at least had the defense of believing that the proposition in question was true. The legislators of Missouri have no such defense. And lest you think that they intend to foist this garbage off only on the defenseless young, who might at least be disabused of these strange notions once they reach college age, think again:

And before you say “Well that’s going to make it hard to get into college when you graduate with a background in basic science that has built-in air quotes”, the law applies to universities and colleges in Missouri too, defined as “any introductory science course taught at any public institution of higher education in this state” having to meet criteria like this:

“If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a course of study, biological evolution and biological intelligent design shall be taught. Other scientific theory or theories of origin may be taught. If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth’s biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation and teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course.”

This, by the way, is Missouri, a border state which, by contrast with, say, Alabama, we might have grounds to believe is not completely stuck in a Southern Baptist-ized version of the Middle Ages. 

 

I’m not sure the Missouri constitution gives the legislature the explicit power to legislate science, but who knows, maybe it’s among the implied powers these cretins usually profess to loathe. But if they do have such powers, the possibilities are limitless. I would suggest, as a start, that the legislature declare that a perpetual motion machine is possible. I’ve always wanted one, and all I’d have to do to get one is move to Missouri.

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God works in mysterious ways

Sunday, January 15, 2012

 I’m not much of a football fan, but I gather that yesterday’s game proved that there is either no god, or that there is a god and he thinks the Bronco’s quarterback is an ostentatious prick.

Filed in American Life, Religion | | Comments (0)

A few photos

Saturday, January 14, 2012

We went to Boston today, and I took the opportunity to fool around with a lens I got for Christmas. It’s a fisheye type lens, taking in 180 degrees. Sort of a gimmick, but fun. This first picture is a refelection on the John Hancock building.

This one is inside the Boston Public Library. The best of the bunch, I think.

 This one is taken from the steps of the library. 

 

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Friday Night Music

Friday, January 13, 2012

Someone I know sent me this link, and I thought the video and the music was great. Get the full story here. Dave Brubeck in Russia, joined by a Russian violinist.

Things like this make you think that things would be so much better in the world if the politicians, the bankers and the priests would just get out of the way.

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Intellectual Honesty at the Cato Institute

Thursday, January 12, 2012

My wife just sent me a link to this article by a troglodyte named Daniel J. Mitchell, of the Cato Institute. Frankly, I’m not sure why she sent it. She’s in bed at the moment, so I’ll find out tomorrow. I found it interesting in that it illuminates the right wing mind, especially its propensity for playing the media victim card, despite the fact that they, you know, own the media  In the article, Mitchell pre-emptively defends Mitt Romney from attacks, that Mitchell admits have not yet taken place, regarding Romney’s use of legal tax shelters that the 1% use to avoid paying the already slim percentage of their incomes they would otherwise pay in taxes. He concludes as follows:

Last but not least, here’s a prediction. I think it’s just a matter of time until Romney gets attacked for utilizing tax havens, though the press may wait until after he gets the GOP nomination.

But when those attacks occur, I’m extremely confident that the stories will fail to mention that prominent Democrats routinely utilize tax havens for business and investment purposes, including such figures as Bill Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Robert Rubin, Peter Orszag, and Richard Blumenthal.

It’s almost enough to make you think this cartoon is correct and that the establishment press is biased.

Neat trick. He proves press bias by predicting the press will do something it has not done. Personally, I think the press should have at Romney on the subject. but unlike Mitchell I’m pretty sure that if they do they will mention that Democrats do it, if in fact they do, and maybe even if they don’t, because they have been well whipped by people like Mitchell.

But here’s another neat trick. See those links in the quote? Makes you think that at the very least he has a source that proves that Bill Clinton, for one, uses tax shelters, and that other prominent Democrats, whether those he names or others, routinely utilize tax havens. And maybe they do, but the links don’t prove it. Even at this humble blog I make a point of linking to reasonably reliable sources if I make a factual assertion. 

If you click on the “Bill Clinton” link you go to a Forbes profile page which informs you that Clinton is the 50th most influential person on earth. I could find no mention  of tax shelters. The link is basically useful if you’ve been living under a rock for the past 25 years and you never heard of Bill Clinton. The “prominent Democrats…” link? That brings you to a blog post in which the listed individuals (Clinton, Kerry, et. al. ) are alleged to utilize tax havens, but the allegation is unsourced in that blog post. The author of that blog post? A guy named- – – – wait for it- – – – Daniel J. Mitchell. That’s right, a guy who pats himself on the back for his intellectual honesty (read the full article, he does indeed) links to his own unsourced article to prove his facts.

The right wing mind is a beautiful thing. As I understand it these “fellows” at the Cato Institute are paid to think. If that’s the case Mitchell is living proof that the free market he worships doesn’t work, since I’m fairly sure there are a lot of folks out there who could think twice as good for half the salary. Where is the law of supply and demand when you need it?

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Warren raises far more money than Brown

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

 Yesterday I read in the Globe that Scott brown had a great fundraising quarter. 

Today, we hear that Elizabeth Warren almost doubled his total. I’ll say it again, at a certain point you reach a point of diminishing return. Ten million dollars in negative ads are not twice as effective as five million dollars worth of ads. They’re going to try to slime her, but she’ll have enough to respond, thanks to thousands of small contibutions. Wouldn’t it be nice if other Democrats took note.

At the rate she’s raising money she’ll have plenty left for her presidential campaign in 2016. 

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Woody Guthrie was right-the fountain pens strike again

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

One of the great mysteries of American politics, at least to me, is why the typical American small businessman is a Republican. For reasons that are unfathomable, they appear to believe that their interests are aligned with the corporations that own the Republican party, despite massive evidence that they are perceived by those corporations and by the Republican party as just another set of people to be sucked dry and left for dead. It is a tribute to the power of propaganda that these folks, who should be more perceptive than the mass of folks who don’t have the time, education or information to see through the scam, are in fact no better than the millions in seeing where their interests lie.

 

What brings this to mind? 

Via Matt Taibbi’s blog on Rolling Stone I was directed to this article in Bloomberg’s, which describes one method employed by banks to steal from the merchants who accept their credit cards. If this type of activity is widespread, and you just know it is, the scale of the theft probably makes the mortgage fraud scam small potatoes:

 Stephen and Cissy McComb say they managed their Italian eatery in Park City, Utah, for more than two decades without running afoul of security rules of Visa Inc. (V) and MasterCard Inc. (MA) — until they were accused of mishandling data and opening the door to $1.26 million in fraud.

The McCombs, who opened Cisero’s in 1985, are now in a legal fight with the bank that processed their credit charges and, indirectly, with what they say are card networks that change rules without notice, impose unfair one-sided contracts and allow the taking of money from merchants’ accounts with no proof of fault.

The couple sued, saying they didn’t break MasterCard and Visa rules, that there was no security lapse and that no acts of fraud were specifically claimed. The fraud was conjured from unexplained and unsupported data, they said in court papers filed in state court in Park City. Their suit may be the first court challenge to penalties under the card networks’ security procedures, said one of their lawyers, W. Stephen Cannon.

The card issuer and banks, acting through subsidiaries, impose fines on merchants for failing to adhere to rules purportedly designed to prevent fraud. Naturally, the merchants are not permitted to know the actual rules, nor are they allowed to contest the fines:

When the restaurant and US Bancorp entered their first contract, “arcane operating rules — over 1,000 pages in length — were not publicly available to merchants and did not contain provisions on data security,” the McCombs said in their complaint.

The fines are initially assessed against US Bancorp by Visa. US Bancorp simply passes them on to the merchant, never bothering to determine whether there is any factual or legal basis for them. 

 

Merchants already pay exorbitant fees to the banks for the privilege of enabling the banks to make even more exorbitant profits off of the customers of those merchants. The card issuers are in a position, and make no mistake, it might as well be a monopoly position, to impose an exorbitant sales tax on almost every transaction that takes place in this almost cashless society. But what fun is making obscene profits if you can’t add that little frisson that comes with a bit of mega thievery.

This story should lead to a massive government investigation, because only the government is in a position to determine the scale of this particular criminal enterprise.

Don’t hold your breath.

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Buchanan exits, stage right

Monday, January 9, 2012

John Aravosis at Americablog notes that Pat Buchanan appears to have been (silently) dropped by MSNBC. All to the good. Aravosis gives this example of Buchanan’s only slightly coded racism. 
 

For what is a nation?

Is it not a people of a common ancestry, culture, and language who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, share the same music, poetry, art, literature, held together, in Lincoln’s words, by “bonds of affection. . . . mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-?eld, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone”?

If that is what a nation is, can we truly say America is still a nation? The European and Christian core of our country is shrinking. The birth rate of our native born has been below replacement level for decades. By 2020, deaths among white Americans will exceed births, while mass immigration is altering forever the face of America.

You have to wonder if it ever occurs to Pat that stuff like that, with the words slightly changed, was what the European Christians who ran this country were once saying about the Irish Catholics that were altering the face of America forever.  
While I am personally against the death penalty, I might reconsider if they imposed it on any racist that uses quotes from Lincoln to make his case. Almost as bad as Ron Paul trying to claim Martin Luther King as a personal hero. 

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Krugman has it wrong this time

Monday, January 9, 2012

He asks what Romney has ever done, or proposed to do, to create the level playing field he advocates in his speeches. No need to do anything, this blissful state of affairs already exists, for Romney would surely agree with Anatole France that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread”. How much more level a field could you want?

On the other hand, though it is true that the rich are not allowed under the bridges, unlike the poor, they are allowed to rob banks.

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New App

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Ever since I got my iPad I have been on a quest to get a satisfactory RSS reader app. I have abouty six of them, all with their strengths and weaknesses. Lately I’ve been using Flipboard, which has a great interface, but is not terribly efficient. I subscribe to lots of feeds, and I like to scan them quickly, something that’s not really that easy on Flipboard. 
Should there be anyone else out there who still reads blogs in lieu of tweets, I highly recommend my latest find, an app called Mr. Reader. I realize it’s a silly name, but it’s really quite a good app, which, among other things, plays well with Terminology, another app that I just downloaded, as well as Instapaper, Read it Later, Evernote, Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other internet services. 

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