Month: November 2009

Good God. Why not synagogues? Or did a neighboring country try that already? It's hard to think of a gesture more useless with respect to a real problem – integration of Muslim immigrants – or clumsier as a way to provoke religious hostility and intolerance and thereby further radicalize Swiss Muslims. But it is a useful reminder that religious liberty and toleration have roots that are not so deep in Europe.

Here's an interesting and intellectually honest book review from a Sarah Palin fan, writing in the theocon journal. First Things:

The book is not intellectually roguish, but intellectually rougish. It covers up something with the appearance of health, but we are left to wonder what is being covered up.

Indeed we are. But this is a more salient question for Adam Bellow at Harper Collins, the person who allegedly edited this book:

Her publisher did not fact check this book well (if at all). She was badly served by her publisher and editor. People who criticize me for nit-picking her use of quotations miss the point. I am a fan . . .  though now a weary one . . . and I found the errors. The publisher had to know that her critics would check every fact.

How can I in a single day with no help find error after error when I am no writer, no editor (as this blog post indicates), and no

specialist?

I've emailed Bellow asking him about the fact-checking process for "Going Rogue." Getting an on-the-record confirmation that, for example, Harper Collins reviewed the medical records proving Palin's multiple medical stories (including corrected hospital records by her own account) would be a useful piece of information. Since it appears that the McCain campaign knew nothing of these rumors, and indeed, by some accounts, nothing even of Bristol's pregnancy, it would be reassuring to know that someone somewhere has actually sought proof of some of Palin's wildest embellishments or total fantasies.

A responsible editor would do due diligence and check them out, right? I'll let you know Bellow's response to the fact-checking question when I get it.

Hmmm:

(Hat tip: Paul Kedrosky)

"The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do—it is contributing to ending the recession. In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent," – Mark Zandi, economics adviser to the McCain campaign. More on Zandi here.

Appleyard lectures PZ Myers and his ilk:

Treating science as an ideology, an occasion for polemic and abuse, and anathematising those who dissent is profoundly unscientific. It is an attitude that will, in the end, damage not just science itself but science as a public institution. Science is, as Thomas Nagel put it, a 'view from nowhere', it is a method, not a posture towards the world.

It assumes – and, indeed, attains – the possibility of a superhuman perspective. As such, it is a profoundly admirable and magnificent achievement of the human intellect. But it is only one such achievement. When science aspires to be anything else – ideology, for example – it is prone to delusion, fantasy and intolerance.

That is where we now are, a dangerous place where people set up web sites that abandon mere explanation and promote science as an ideology, as, in effect, an opinion held with such ferocity that all dissent must be crushed. This phase, I hope, will pass. But I am beginning to have my doubts.
 

Jonah Lehrer has some fascinating thoughts on how they are related after reading an article by Tom Stafford on confabulation.

Timelapse movie: The Alps — part I from Michael Rissi on Vimeo.

A new series of timelapse movies which I recorded this summer and autumn in the Swiss Alps. Most locations are only reachable on foot, some need alpine hikes of 3-5 hours. I spent several weekends in cottages of the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC), where I shot these clips. The music is from Beethoven's great 7th Symphony, 2nd movement.

Don Draper's many words of wisdom.

Carlene Bauer tells her story:

There was always a tiny voice inside me saying “That can’t be right” whenever I heard something that seemed to contradict who I understood God and Jesus to be from reading the Bible—all-loving, all-forgiving. For example: it had been made clear to me that Catholics were lesser, wrongheaded Christians because they worshipped Mary and the Pope and thought works would save their souls. The disparagement made it seem that unless Catholics recognised that they needed to accept Jesus as their saviour (for the evangelicals you had to get down on your knees and make the overture in full awareness of your decision), they were going to hell. Now, my father, my grandmother and uncle were Catholic. My best friend at the time was Catholic. It didn’t seem right that God was looking down on them with arms crossed, shaking his head when they seemed sincere in their belief. Why would God allow there to be so many wrongheaded Christians?

An epic smackdown:

And no need to bother with an art competition.