Comment Elsewhere: Academic Psychology an oxymoron?

In a discussion of one of the least impressive bits of well-publicized psychology "research" I've seen in years, I avered:

Cherry picking and confirmation bias! Without them, psychology would hardly exist as an academic discipline. I understand the inclination to give these people databases and statistics packages as a corrective, but you have to fix the, if you'll pardon the reference, underlying psychology first.

Comment Elsewhere: Google Creep

In a discussion of the failure of Buzz, I remarked

Frankly, the more services Google tries to bundle, the less I like them. Maybe it's just because I appear on the internet in both pseudonymous and epynomous forms, but the ability to keep political, family, shopping and professional issues separate is actually quite important to me. There have been about a half dozen cases in the last few years where online service mergers made my online life more difficult, not more convenient.

Comment Elsewhere: Bad Genetics Counseling

In response to a great but difficult question on genetic testing, I wrote:

It's very important to get good information on genetics -- I'm not saying you're not, because you clearly know how to read scientific material critically, but my blind spouse talked to a "genetics counselor" before we were married who literally didn't know the difference between recessive and dominant traits, and freaked us out (until I could get over to the medical library and do some research, this being pre-WWW).

Pop Quiz: Politics or Theology? Wait, there's a difference?

Trinitarian debate or Republican mythology?

He's nothing like the father! He doesn't share the epistemology of the father. He doesn't have the nature of his father, the knowledge -- he has nothing in common with the father.

This actually comes from a discussion of Pres. Ronald Reagan and what, in theory, he would think of Sarah Palin. [via] It's a member of the current conservative commentariat telling Ronald Reagan JR. that she has a better grasp on his father's political judgement than he does. At one point she seems to conflate Reagan with the Founding Fathers, and concludes by saying that Ron Reagan, JR. must never have really met his father. Politically speaking, presumably.

The metaphysical discussion of political legacy aside, what actually struck me about this exchange is that Ron Reagan, JR. seems to have a higher (and better supported by recent evidence) opinion of his father's abilities and judgement than the so-called conservative he's arguing with, who seems to have absorbed the common liberal opinion about Pres. Reagan's essentially emotional/anti-intellectual approach to governance.

Update: to make things more interesting, Michael Reagan is getting into the act, raising the possibility that the Reagan legacy could split into opposing camps....

Comment Elsewhere: The Evil of the Clone Wars

Towards the end of a discussion of character and continuity in the Star Wars universe I commented:

Am I the only one who thinks that the animated Clone War series is a cruel trick on children, who will think of Anakin as a mildly annoying but basically heroic figure, only to discover that he’s really a mind-shatteringly evil person outside of that very limited storyline? Also, all the characters they are getting attached to get wiped out in a vast slaughter, except for the ones who eventually get killed one by one....

I really don't understand what they're thinking: they're creating a generation of children who will view their movies as a vicious betrayal. With luck, I suppose, the franchise will wither and die as a result. One can only hope.

Quotation: Mark Twain's "The War Prayer"

I got the Babylon 5 series over the holidays, all five seasons plus Crusade and some movies. Yeah, I'm a geek. Anyway, we were watching the episode The War Prayer and noted, after it was over, that the War Prayer itself was never directly invoked in the show. It's there by implication, but not more. In the course of the discussion, I realized that my spouse, who's usually much better read than I, especially on anti-war stuff, didn't know the source of the reference, Mark Twain's very short story "The War Prayer." It's worth noting that the link to the story, the first link in the google search, is to a B5 fan site. I found it, and read it aloud, which was surprisingly hard.

It seems appropriate, in these days of struggle, passion, and overweening faith, to quote the core of it, the usually unspoken prayer behind a prayer for God's aid in victory:

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

Read the whole thing. Even having read it before, even knowing this core bit, the whole thing has a great power. We must be careful when we pray.

Picture: Radiator Web

Picture: Improvised Bathroom Latch

Picture: Mantis

Comment Elsewhere: The Smoking Gun as a Stake Through the Heart

In a rare emergence at Peevish, we got into a discussion of Bush administration criminality and Republican obstructionism, and I said:

We need the smoking gun. We need proof that Bush and Cheney and Libby and Rove and Kagan (and Kagan, and Kagan, etc.) and Kristol and Rumsfield actively conspired to put partisan success over national welfare, put ideological barriers in the way of reality, put profit ahead of people. I can see the bullet holes, you can see them too, but until we can put that gun in their hand and their prints on the trigger and the bullets, people will consider the Republicans to be just another political party, rather than a treasonous criminal conspiracy. If we can do that, we can make the Republican party as dead as the Whigs and the Know-nothings, and we can get on with our lives. There will still be a conservative movement, a business party (a big chunk of the Democratic party qualifies!) an anti-liberal movement. But they will have to abjure the Republican legacy to remain legitimate.

All I want for Christmas is a smoking gun email....