Category: General Discussion
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Silverstein: How the “Serial Abrogators of ‘Human Dignity’” Can “Keep Their Wealthy American Friends”
I just received my July issue of Harper’s Magazine, complete with an article about lobbying and public relations in Washington. Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall, but it’s too good for me not to share some highlights. It seems to me that this article screams for a legislative intervention and for an ethical rule…
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Can Advertising Kill?
The courts, prodded on by libertarians, civil libertarians, and corporate-funded think tanks, have afforded more and more protection for “commercial speech,” expression in the business interest of the speaker. Commercial speech has a lower level of protection than religious and political expression, but still, in order for the government to regulate it, it has to…
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Harper’s Magazine on Washington Lobbying
Watch your newsstand for the July issue of Harper’s Magazine. Today’s Wall Street Journal reports today that Harper’s Ken Silverstein has written an article describing his experience posing as a businessman with interests in improving the image of Turkmenistan. He approaches lobbying firms, and hints that he represents a front company that can direct oil…
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Left wing woo from HuffPo
The last day or so of posts on HuffPo is a perfect example of why I’ll never take that site seriously, and why in the end, lefties are just as susceptible to anti-science nonsense as the right. We start with Donna Karen promoting her new health-care initiative, the Well-Being Forum with much credit to hucksters…
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Blogging for Sex Education
Renegade Evolution encourages us to spend some time today blogging for sex education (she has a great feminist blog by the way). I thought to further this aim I’d talk about this recent Nation article about the scam that is the abstinence education industry. Basically, it’s just pork for the already-wealthy right-wing friends of the…
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The Penitent Paris
As Paris Hilton gets ready for her short stay in jail, she increasingly is photographed carrying Jesus books. And today, she appears on my favorite blog wearing a “Faith” hoodie, and carrying Count Your Blessings, Spiritual Warrior, and some others. Her behavior recalls Machiavelli’s advice: …a prince ought to take care that he never lets…
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One month of denialism
We’ve been on for one month now. It was a pretty good start. We got about 110k pageviews, about 54k visitors, 100 entries and 1050 comments on those entries. We’ve gone through what makes a denialist argument, what makes a crank, 3 major categories of denialists (there are many more) and almost a whole deck…
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Some More Thoughts on Gonzalez and Academic Freedom
Some followup from the earlier post: If Gonzalez thinks ID is science, and not religion, he may have an even harder time arguing that there is discrimination here. Professors, rightly so, have freedom of religion and can believe whatever they want in their personal lives. However, if he thinks ID is science, I don’t think…
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The Limits of Academic Freedom
First, a disclaimer: I don’t know much of anything about this controversy surrounding Guillermo Gonzalez, but I do know a fair amount about academic freedom. I wrote an article several years ago on legal protection for professors’ speech. Legally, professors have the same rights as ordinary public employees, and so only a small spectrum of…
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I was right!
People with good reasoning skills don’t fall for stupid things like spun arguments and advertising. I always suspected that if we taught a basic reasoning class in public schools in which kids were taught about logic and critical thinking it might lead to a decrease in the efficacy of advertisement. Reasoning abilities are influenced by…