Month: May 2012

Julian Sanchez recently suggested that "invoking God doesn’t actually get you very far in ethics." Ross counters:

Virtue is not something that’s commanded by God, the way a magistrate (or a whimsical alien overlord) might issue a legal code, but something that’s inherent to the Christian conception of the divine nature. God does not establish morality; he embodies it. He does not set standards; he is the standard. And even when he issues principles or precepts through revelation (as in the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount) he isn’t legislating in the style of Hammurabi or Solon. Instead, he’s revealing something about his own nature and inviting us to conform ourselves to the standards that it sets.

Sanchez fires back: 

Ross evidently thinks this counts as some sort of explanation of how there might be moral truths. I think it is a classic virtus dormativa—a series of grammatically well-formed strings masquerading as propositions. It’s not much of an explanation to say Zeus causes thunderstorms unless you have an account of how Zeus does it …

If God is the standard, why ought we accept the standard to emulate it? How could a natural fact about God—even if you call it a “supernatural” fact, whatever that distinction amounts to—constitute a reason? If the fact that some action will cause suffering isn’t adequate motivation to avoid it without something further, why is the fact that the divine nature abhors suffering (or sin, or whatever we think) supposed to do any better? Why do we imagine someone could (rationally?) greet the first fact with a shrug, but not the second?

Millman sides with Sanchez:

If you already think that Christianity “makes sense” – that is to say, is persuasive on its own terms – then you don’t need to have a conversation about whether believing in it is pragmatically necessary for society; you already believe it. If you don’t already think Christianity makes sense, then why is it pragmatically necessary to believe in Christianity in order to believe in human rights and human dignity? Why can’t you just believe in those things directly? That’s Sanchez’s question, and Douthat’s answer – that humanists don’t have strong reasons for their beliefs – is a non-sequitur. If there are no good humanistic reasons for believing in human rights, then there are no good humanistic reasons for believing in Christianity in order to believe in human rights either. And therefore there are no good humanistic reasons for believing in Christianity. In which case Sanchez is right.

Luke Epplin wants to see SNL get over its "preferred target" – television. He points out that "of the 152 live sketches aired this season, a whopping 58 percent (88 sketches) were television parodies of some sort": 

For all the talk-show parodies aired on SNL this season, none matched the caustic wit of Zach Galifianakis's Between Two Ferns, a chat fest that ridicules both the lo-fi production values of many web series and the empty questions often lobbed at celebrities in televised interviews.

The aggressively amateur, self-aware vibe of Between Two Ferns feels more in-step with today's wired, do-it-yourself culture than the polished, mechanized nature of SNL sketches. After all, despite the playfulness of "Bein' Quirky With Zooey Deschanel," the host remains trapped within the decidedly unquirky and restricted confines of daytime television, all but guaranteeing that recurring episodes of the show will deliver more of the same. It would make more sense for a pixie like Deschanel, who values handmade crafts and vintage artifacts, to pop up in a homespun, free-form web series broadcast from strange locations—say, a tree house or an igloo. 

See that sorta funny skit here. Little surprise that the most hilarious things to come out of SNL over the past several years are the viral Digital Shorts by Andy Samberg and the rest of the Lonely Island crew, who got their start online.

Why it might work:

Ask a straight man, "How do you like your women?" and it’s unlikely he’ll answer, "Dumb and sleepy." But according to new findings, these characteristics—and any other traits suggesting that the lady isn’t particularly alert—are precisely what the human male has evolved to look for in a one-night-stand.

In an article soon to be published in Evolution and Human Behavior, University of Texas–Austin graduate student Cari Goetz and her colleagues explored what they called the sexual exploitability hypothesis. … Goetz and her team began with the assumption that—because our brains evolved long before prophylactics entered the picture—female cognition is still sensitive to the pregnancy-related consequences of uncommitted sex and women remain more reluctant than men to engage in it. They set out to test the idea that any indication that a woman’s guard is lowered—that she’s "sexually exploitable"—is a turn-on for your average man.

Erin Gloria Ryan is miffed the study doesn't address why women might want to engage in one-night stands.

A look at the science of the spasms that strike as you doze off, known as hypnic jerks:

As sleep paralysis sets in remaining daytime energy kindles and bursts out in seemingly random movements. In other words, hypnic jerks are the last gasps of normal daytime motor control. … So there is a pleasing symmetry between the two kinds of movements we make when asleep. Rapid eye movements are the traces of dreams that can be seen in the waking world. Hypnic jerks seem to be the traces of waking life that intrude on the dream world.

The Brooklyn Brewery fears so:

The brewmeister of Brooklyn Brewery says toxic fracking chemicals like methanol, benzene, and ethylene glycol (found in anti-freeze) could contaminate his beer by leaking into New York's water supply. Unlike neighboring Pennsylvania, New York state has promised to ban high-volume fracking from the city's watershed. But environmentalists say the draft fracking regulations are weak and leave the largest unfiltered water supply in the United States—not to mention the beer that is made from it—vulnerable.

Meanwhile, Walter Russell Mead digests a new study that found gas production, often via fracking, has actually reduced carbon emissions by 450 million tons over the past five years:

While greens have spent years chasing a global green unicorn, America has been moving towards reducing its carbon footprint on its own, and fracking has been the centerpiece of this change. In fact, America’s drop in carbon emissions is greater than that of any other country in the survey.

Greens have often praised Europe and Australia for their foresight in adopting forward-thinking carbon-trading schemes, while chastising America for its reluctance to do the same. Yet the numbers are out, and America has actually performed better than its carbon-trading peers. From an empirical standpoint, fracking has a much better track record at reducing emissions than the current green dream.

More Dish on the pros and cons of fracking here, here, here and here.

Raleigh, North Carolina, 2.15 pm

"There are two kinds of fighting—narcissistic fighting and Oedipal fighting. Oedipal fighting is father and son rolling up their sleeves and duking it out. Narcissistic fighting is putting yourself above the opponent by putting him down. I think Obama does both. He knows how to be a narcissistic fighter and an Oedipal fighter. He knows how to argue about policy and argue with people. Be he also has this other part of him—and I don’t know where it comes from—that’s like this pocket of nastiness," – Justin A. Frank, author of "Obama On The Couch."

I worry that the president risks losing some of his favorability and likability with the sneering. He has the better arguments. He should simply make them.

Mike Ervin, aka Smart Ass Cripple, weighs the pros and cons:

When you think about it, hospital beds can be excellent kink vehicles. They contort into all kinds of positions. Some have trapezes. And some hospital beds even give vibrating massages. But a hospital bed is designed to look like a deathbed. You can’t have a swinging bachelor pad with a hospital bed. You’re not supposed to do anything in a hospital bed except sleep, eat, shit in a bedpan, peruse Reader’s Digest and/or die.