By Patrick Appel
From an article by Randy Kennedy:
“It seems to me to be obvious that everything we value in Christmas — giving gifts, celebrating the holiday with our families, enjoying all of the kitsch that comes along with it — all of that has been entirely appropriated by the secular world,” [Sam Harris] said, “in the same way that Thanksgiving and Halloween have been.”
Razib adds his two cents.
By Patrick Appel
Ezra responds to Noah:
Whenever I read posts like Pollack’s, I’m reminded of something David Frum wrote in his book Comeback. "Who agreed that conservatives should defend the dysfunctional American health care system from all criticism?" He asked. "Who volunteered to take the bullet for every crummy HMO and overpriced surgeon in the country? Who decided that it was okay with us for tens of millions of Americans to lack health care coverage?"
The healthcare system needs reform. There is no denying that.
Heather Mac Donald is offended by Novak equating religion and morality:
I’m puzzled as to why Mr. Novak and other Catholic thinkers believe that reason can discover something as abstruse and remote as God but not a workable set of ethical principles, but I will leave that quibble aside for now. His predictions of secular moral paralysis strike me as rather overblown. Does any parent ask himself whether he must allow his nine-year-old son to run over his four-year-old sister with his bike because “God is really dead” or because philosophers disagree on whether morality is consequentialist or deontological? He does not, because the value of his children is self-evident, as is the necessity of inculcating in them common decency, if only for the sake of a sane household. And his children will learn that common decency through repetition and by gradually understanding that others have the same capacity for pain and sorrow that they do. To be sure, some households remain dysfunctional, but their problems almost invariably stem from the parents’ incapacity, not from the failure to invoke God as a reason to not kick your mother when she asks you to pick up your clothes.
By Patrick Appel
Keith Ward thinks through big questions about science and religion:
History suggests…that there are facts that are not publicly accessible or verifiable, measurable or testable, or susceptible to universal agreement. The evidence for such facts is often objectively less than certain, but it is often reasonable to believe more strongly than the available evidence strictly allows, if there is a great amount at stake, if we genuinely believe that the facts are as we judge them to be, and if there is no way of avoiding the issue.
These are the factors William James mentions in his famous essay, “The Will to Believe,” first published 1896 (see Burkhardt, Bowers, and Skrupskelis 1978). If a belief is forced (you cannot avoid it), vital (of great practical import), and living (a realistic and plausible option), then, James suggests, it is rational to commit yourself to it even with less than overwhelming evidence. That seems to me to do no more than reflect the practice of good scientists when they believe that “there is no event without a cause,” “there are universal laws of nature,” or “the universe is comprehensible and mathematically intelligible.” We admire the tenacity of Einstein who refused to give up belief in determinism in the face of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. We may even admire Daniel Dennett’s determination to avoid dualism at all costs or Richard Dawkins’ refusal to read books of theology because he already knows they are rubbish. Much will depend upon our own perspective. What is certain is that there are few people who can live in the real world refraining from believing anything unless they have theoretically sufficient evidence for it. Human life is too short for that.
Two children are pictured on December 5, 2008 at an internally displaced people (IDP) camp near Kibati in Nord-Kivu. The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and a rebel movement are to meet on December 8, in Kenya to formalise a ceasefire, Kinshasa’s foreign minister said Friday, raising hopes of an end to months of fighting in the east of the country. At the same time Congolese and Rwandan armed forces are to launch operations against Rwandan Hutu rebels operating in the same region following two days of talks, a statement said. The UN refugee agency said Friday that more than 90,000 people were missing in the conflict-hit eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after three makeshift camps in rebel-held areas were found emptied. Photo by Pascal Guyot/Getty.
By Patrick Appel
According to a new study, more intelligent men also have better sperm. A quote from Dr Allan Pacey, an expert in fertility at the University of Sheffield:
The fact that it’s possible to detect a statistical relationship between intelligence and semen quality in adult men probably says more about the co-development of brain and testicles when the man was in his mother’s womb, and therefore how well they both function in adult life, rather than suggesting that playing Sudoku can somehow stimulate more sperm to be produced.
I love this comment by Brit:
"Intelligent men have better sperm" insists a team of single, broke, male academics from the Institute of Psychiatry.
By Patrick Appel
The unemployment rate hit 6.7 percent yesterday and the underemployment rate hit 12.5 percent. What does it mean?:
It’s yet another sign that this recession is a much bigger deal than the last two, in 2001 and 1990-91. But in percentage terms (it was a 0.39% drop) there were bigger one month falls in employment in 1980 and, repeatedly, in 1974 and 1975. There were also sharper drops in almost every year of the 1950s, but those were mostly the result of temporary layoffs that were reversed a few months later…It means a lot of people are losing their jobs. Beyond that, it’s going to be hard to say what the significance is until we know what the next six months or so look like. If there are only a couple more months this bad, then it’s a manageable if painful downturn. If the declines keep growing and growing, then it’s something else entirely.
By Patrick Appel
Patrick Ruffini says conservatives shouldn’t dismiss Obama’s fundraising advantage:
The real shift we should be thinking about is not the shift from large to small donors. It is the shift from direct mail to the Internet. Republicans have always had a small donor base (in contrast to the pre-McCain-Feingold Democrats). It is called direct mail, and it’s why the RNC always outraises the DNC no matter what (even in 2008). But the problem is that 1) it doesn’t scale, and 2) the transaction costs are very high — usually around 30-40% for mailing a housefile and 100% to prospect for new donors.
To put this in direct mail-ese, the Obama campaign raised $500 million online after sending one billion "pieces" of e-mail. To raise half a billion, Obama spent no more than $25 million on all Internet efforts combined (I have to review the final numbers, but I think this is right), a 20x ROI. Sending a similar volume of snail mail would have eaten up the vast majority of the $750 million Obama raised overall.
By Patrick Appel
Hilzoy wants Ayers to go away:
Ayers may think that there’s still a debate about the Weather Underground’s effectiveness. And he might also think that he "acted appropriately in the context of those times." To me, though, he’s just a shallow rich kid who took himself and his revolutionary rhetoric much too seriously, helped inspire people to do things that got them killed, and helped to discredit the anti-war movement and the left as a whole.
The Dish 