How Technology Threatens Liberalism and Conservatism

Interesting post up last week at Postmodern Conservative. The question is the whole Google Buzz debacle and what that says about future politics. I think it undeniable that the line between public and private has at best blurred and at worst outright become effaced due to technology. It’s not just “auto-discovery and [...]

Vaccine Doctor Dismissal

The doctor who perpetrated fraud regarding a vaccine link with Autism will finally be banned from medicine. Yes it’s not done yet, but it looks like it’ll happen soon. It’s hard to underestimate the damage to children this guy has done. Not to mention the irrational panic he’s caused in parents. [...]

Chemistry Set Generation

I, like many, was enraged by this ridiculous story about a school that evacuated due to a “bomb threat”. The threat? An 11 year old with a science project in a Gatorade bottle – a motion detector. All this reminds me of the good old days of the chemistry set generation. [...]

Should Downs Syndrome Be Cured?

The New York Times has up an editorial, “Should Downs Syndrome be cured?” Of course. This idea that debilitating problems in babies should be left because others have it is ridiculous. Guess what, if you spend your childhood battling cancer it’ll change your personality as well.
I think a lot of [...]

Polling Beliefs and Action

Interesting post up by Megan McArdle on polls on global warming. As many have noted this week there was a 14 point drop in the number of people accepting global warming. While some of that might be explainable by persuasion by warming skeptics, I think McArdle is correct that something else is [...]

Creationism as a GOP Litmus Test?

There’s some interesting discussion about whether Creationism has become a kind of litmus test for GOP candidates. Razib, writing over at Secular Right, notes
[I]t looks like 3 of the front-runners for the G.O.P. nomination are rather frank Creationists (Palin, Huckabee and Pawlenty). I’m skeptical about any of these as likely candidates (i.e., if [...]

Lengthen the School Year and Sleep In

Interesting post up at New Majority. The first is this:
heed the scientific research about teenagers’ sleep patterns and reverse the crazy trend towards an earlier and earlier start of the school day. The adolescent brain is not operating at 7:20 am, much less at the 6 am wakeup call for 7:20 arrival. It’s [...]

Missing Dads and Bad Behavior: Environment or Genes?

An other fascinating post from Razib. This one on the question about whether bad behavior from homes without dads is primarily due to environment (as both liberals and conservatives tend to suggest) or genes. I’d never have even thought to raise the question. It’s quite fascinating even though it doesn’t fully resolve [...]

Living in Sin Belt

One of my favorite blogs is Gene Expression. Even in these days where I’ve been too busy to read blogs regularly I still manage to check out Razib’s. Today he had an interesting post on nuclear families. I hope he won’t mind if I quote his graphs. They are quite interesting.
The [...]

Orson Scott Card’s Foretelling of Blogs in the 80’s

OK, first read this xkcd comic:

Drugs and Libertarianism

I’m no Libertarian. (I’m for small but vigorously enforced regulations and don’t entirely buy the “there are no positive rights” argument) That said I’ve long thought the Libertarian argument against the drug war was compelling. Even conservative thinkers like William F. Buckley were convinced. Megan McArdle has up an interesting post [...]

Anti-Science in the Left

I’ve been a big critic of some of the ridiculous anti-science stuff that folks on the right have done. Especially some of the actions by the Bush administration (which sometimes have been egregiously politically opportunistic and other times outright anti-science). However now that Democrats are in power we’re getting that side’s anti-science. [...]

Posner on the Conservative Movement

Posner has a great post on the conservative movement:
“My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings.”

Utah Republicans Becoming Liberal

Slate has up an interesting article on how “the most Republican state in the nation is drifting to the left.” I think this misleading for two reasons. For one it makes the classic error of assuming there is only one political axis. Huntsman, for instance, is very much in the libertarian wing [...]

Pirated Books

The problem of scholarly books being scanned and posted online. I confess I’ve downloaded a few of these – but only ones out of print. (HT: Brooks Blog) That said the scholarly book industry is about the only industry worse than the recording industry. Authors get basically nothing. And most [...]

keep looking »

Quote of the Moment

Search

Try Amano Chocolate
First American Gold Medal Winner
at the
London Academy of Chocolate

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Archives

Blogroll

Admin

Unique Visitors