How I Deal With Phone Spam

How I deal with Phone Spam. Give the phone to one of my kids and let them have an interesting conversation. I used to also answer polls by giving ridiculous answers as a kind of civil disobedience. I kind of think polls are pretty damaging to society since they lead to superficial views of problems [...]

Conservatism and the Academy (Again)

Larval Subjects has up a response to yesterday’s post on conservatism and the academy. I think he makes some good points, but I think the ultimate problem is that unless we can quantify the problem (i.e. bad scholarship by conservatives vs. liberals) we really can’t say anything. This sort of analysis is precisely the sort [...]

Conservatism, Marxism, and the Academy

I’ve honestly been avoiding the culture wars within the university the past few years because (1) I think there’s tons of overwrought hyperbole on both sides and (2) most of us are only in college for a few years and then spend the rest of our lives being grateful we don’t have to take finals [...]

Bloggingheads on Republicans

Good Bloggingheads TV on whether liberals and conservatives read outside of their political peers. Lots of stuff of late on whether a major portion of conservativism has become an echo chamber. While I confess I’ve really become concerned with the “low brow” populism of the conservative movement of late I’m skeptical of the echo chamber [...]

Polls Show Americans are Stupid

I want to make a larger philosophical point on all this. But Graham Harman noted a poll showing a surprising number of Republicans believing silly things like Obama is a Muslim or non-American. I think the original poll is at The Daily Beast. Now one has to be somewhat careful with these things. It’s easy [...]

The Health Care Finale

Even though I disagree with him politically, I always appreciate Russell Fox’s comments on matters. Here’s his thoughts on the health care passage. (I should note that Russell is a fellow Mormon and its interesting to see how our religion plays out differently in our political views) My own view is that both sides have [...]

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 revealing” of private [...]

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. Those parents who aren’t [...]

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. Back when I was [...]

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 this sort of discussion [...]

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 going on. She [...]

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 you [...]

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 not [...]

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 the issue. (There [...]

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 first is the [...]

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