Enduring damage

The Bush administration will leave us with another legacy: unqualified Republican ideologues receiving appointments in various institutions, including scientific organizations, as their ship of state sinks. The rats are scuttling overboard, and are being rewarded with captaincies on any available vessel. An article in the Washington post discusses the trend. I thought these were striking examples.

In one recent example, Todd Harding — a 30-year-old political appointee at the Energy Department — applied for and won a post this month at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There, he told colleagues in a Nov. 12 e-mail, he will work on “space-based science using satellites for geostationary and meteorological data.” Harding earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Kentucky’s Centre College, where he also chaired the Kentucky Federation of College Republicans.

And in mid-July, Jeffrey T. Salmon, who has a doctorate in world politics and was a speechwriter for Vice President Cheney when he served as defense secretary, had been selected as deputy director for resource management in the Energy Department’s Office of Science. In that position, he oversees decisions on its grants and budget.

One of the best changes Obama could make in our government is to inspire a culture of competence. It looks like his ability to do that has just gotten much harder.

Casey Luskin writes a revealing letter

A while back, two ladies visited the Discovery Institute, and wrote about their experiences afterwards. They admittedly did so under false pretenses, acting as if they were fellow travelers in creationism, but they did get interesting and amusing responses from the inhabitants.

They tried to do it again. They wrote a letter and were entirely upfront about their motives this time, and asked to have a real conversation about Intelligent Design creationism.

Casey Luskin wrote back. It would have been entirely understandable if he’d simply turned them down, but no … instead, he writes a long letter in which he stirs himself to defend the DI in a rambling reply that offers fascinating insight into how these people see themselves. Number one: they are civil. That seems to be all that matters. Never mind that they are calling almost every biologist in the world corrupt and deceitful; ignore the fact that they are a propaganda organization trying to poison the educational system of our country; it is entirely irrelevant that they are ignorant of biology yet want to dictate how all of science should be taught; they think they are being very, very nice. And Casey Luskin, of course, has been nothing but sweetness and generosity, a poor soul who has been rebuffed by the “Darwinist community”, and who gets called mean names.

Then he makes demands. He’s willing to meet and talk if:

  1. The ladies apologize for their previous attitudes towards the DI.

  2. They edit all of their past posts about their visit to the DI to add a disclaimer, saying that they were sorry, that they were naughty, and urging everyone else to be nice to the DI.

  3. They make a new series of blog posts that call all those other “Darwinist” blogs on the carpet.

  4. They cease saying mean things about all creationists henceforth.

Awww, doesn’t that sound exactly like someone who wants to kiss and make up? Although I’m actually thinking the whole thing makes him sound like a whiny, pretentious pipsqueak.

Ooops, there I go again. I just violated the “culture of civility” in which Casey takes such peculiarly unself-aware pride. I am chastened, and need to revise my approach, I think. I therefore offer to get together and discuss reconciliation with the creationists if:

  1. Casey Luskin immediately apologizes for the Institute’s meddling in school boards around the country.

  2. They edit all of their PR pieces at Evolution News & Views to include a disclaimer, saying that they were sorry, they really don’t know what they’re talking about, and they ought not to be peddling such nonsense.

  3. They make a new series of blog posts at EN&V that tell all the ID blogs that they shouldn’t be pushing propaganda anymore, and that their ought to be some actual science done for ID before they make further demands to change the culture to suit their ideology.

  4. They cease saying stupid things about biology henceforth.

I think that’s fair.

He’ll probably turn me down. That’s OK. The poor guy has just added to his own mythos with an obliviously pathetic email that adds pitiful whiner to his accomplishments as a credentialist toady and scientific ignoramus; maybe he’ll learn his lesson, and realize that sometimes he needs to shut up, crawl into a corner, and lick his wounds.

(By the way, the two ladies will be on the Skepticality podcast in a week or two. I’ll have to catch that one for sure.)

Come on down

I’ll be spending my day at this symposium, “Understanding evolution: the legacy of Darwin”, most of today. It’s about to start, so I’m not going to say much before I focus on the lectures, but it is open to the public, so if you’re in the Penn neighborhood, come on down to Claudia Cohen hall, room G17 (which we have since learned is the famous old surgical demonstration auditorium), and listen in. I’ll report later on the contents of the talks.

The Wall Street Journal editorial pages are a very silly place

The United States has some serious problems: an ugly war, a shaky economy, a bad government (on the way out, at last). It’s been a rough eight years. So of course it must be someone’s fault, and Daniel Henninger has a simple explanation: blame the atheists. Especially blame the atheist’s successful war on Christmas. He says, “A nation whose people can’t say ‘Merry Christmas’ is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.” You see, we’ve all lost the important values of “responsibility, restraint, and remorse” that Christianity inculcates.

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines.

Feel free: Banish Merry Christmas. Get ready for Mad Max.

Wait, what? The country has been run for the last eight years by a gang of amoral atheists? Bankers are atheists? All those people who borrowed money unwisely are atheists? Christians don’t default on loans, don’t exploit lax banking rules, don’t start wars, don’t torture?

I would like to visit Mr Henninger’s alternate dimension.

Here on my planet, of course, this country has been run by the evangelical wing of the Republican party, the vast majority of the population are Christians, it’s almost impossible to get elected to positions of any power without being a professing theist, and the religious right has been deeply tangled in political decisions, while atheists do little more than write books. Nobody has banned “Merry Christmas” — militant atheists like Dawkins (and Myers) happily put up Christmas trees every December, although of course we do regard it as an entirely secular holiday.

I’m not at all concerned about people who say “Merry Christmas”, and don’t really think whether you say the magic mantra or not has much of an effect on the economy. I’m much more worried that the editorial staff at the Wall Street Journal, who all seem to be delusional loons, might be influencing the management of our economy.

Maybe Mr Henninger needs to read Kathleen Parker, who at least has noticed that the Republican party has become the god-walloping know-nothing party, and that maybe that has something to do with the state of the nation.

Turnabout

The Mormons have this arrogant practice of posthumous baptism — one of the motivations for their huge genealogical libraries is to help them go through the old records, find the names of dead people, and ‘convert’ them to Mormonism. It’s silly and pointless, but it can also be insensitive and offensive, such as when they start baptizing Jews killed in the Holocaust.

So here’s brilliant reversal: convert dead Mormons to…homosexuality. I love the idea. It really doesn’t matter what their sexual orientation in life was, it doesn’t even matter if they were raging homophobes…death changes a lot of things, so let’s simply declare them to have found joy in same sex relationships in the afterlife.

I hope there is an official roster being maintained somewhere. I’m pretending that Brigham Young is a squealing poofter right now, having a wild party with Joseph Smith, dressed in a dusting of sequins and nothing else. That’s an image the elders of LDS need to keep in mind when they’re playing their sanctimonious games with the memory of other people’s revered dead.

Liveblogging Janet Browne

I’m attending a lecture by Janet Browne at the University of Pennsylvania, and the organizers asked me if I’d be willing to do something a little bit unusual — if I’d be willing to blog the talk. Obliging as always, I said yes, so here I am in the front row with a borrowed laptop typing away.

I’m practicing my art in public…should I ask for an honorarium? Tips from the crowd afterwards? At least I expect to be so boring that I won’t detract from the Janet Browne show.

The introductions are going on. As many of you know, Dr Browne is a distinguished historian of biology who wrote what is probably the best biography of Darwin ever. Tonight, she’s talking about “The Many Lives of Charles Darwin”.

[Read more…]

Foraging in Philly

I’ve got a rather laid-back schedule here in Philadelphia, and I took advantage of it this morning — I took a little walkabout around the neighborhood. Unless you’re from Los Angeles, cities are great places for walking, and it was very pleasant to idle along.

Then, of course, I was required to get lunch at a truck. And, of course, I had a cheesesteak. Wow. They only make these greasy confections right in this particular city, I’ve found: onions and peppers and chopped beef all fried together and slathered onto a slightly chewy roll, with a little cheez-whiz and ketchup (not mustard, Sidaway — you’ll catch me putting mustard on a cheesesteak on the day you put ambergris on your spotted dick). It is to die for, and you can’t have too many or you will die.

The rest of my afternoon is going to be spent tweaking my talk, then off to have tea with graduate students and Janet Browne — you are allowed to be jealous — then to Browne’s talk and Drinking Skeptically. It’s going to get a bit busier the rest of the day.