If you do not distinguish between those with religious faith who are tolerant of other ideologies and the religious bigots, you too are a bigot.
Freedom of religion that does not permit freedom from religion is a hoax.
Recent decades have seen radical transformations of the media, and many people tend to see those changes as entirely driven by technology. But legal and political decisions have remained central in determining what kind of media develop. In 1987, the FCC discarded the fairness doctrine, and it no longer uses its authority to promote public-affairs programming. The abandonment of the fairness doctrine also released the broadcast media from requirements for balance and opened the way to the targeting of ideological audiences. In a sense, these developments represent a return to the partisan journalism of 19th-century America. Partisanship was muted in the media through the mid-20th century; now it is far more open, sharp, and often belligerent.[I will come back to that Tech Review piece later this week from a different angle]
"....The main idea is that there are some cultures in which women feel they can’t leave the house without makeup and some in which women feel they can’t leave the house without veils– and that this similarity is significant....."
"Political scholars have long recognized that information
and
communication technologies have fundamentally altered how candidates run campaigns--websites, online fundraising, and email communication have become integral to political campaigns. Often, however, these new technologies are viewed as a supplemental communication tool for conducting "politics as usual"— presumed to change the style of political campaigns, but not the basic structure of political interaction. Prof. Hillygus argues that new technologies have changed not only how candidates communicate with voters, it has also
changed the substance of that communication. "
I think I am going to knock off work early today and go over there to catch her talk ...just to see if she really has a halo.
But others say Mr. Wolfowitz repeated the mistakes he had made at the Pentagon: adopting a single-minded position on certain matters, refusing to entertain alternative views, marginalizing dissenters.
“Wolfowitz unsettled people from the outset,” said Manish Bapna, executive director of the Bank Information Center, an independent watchdog group. “His style was seen as an ad hoc subjective approach to punishing enemies and rewarding friends.”
His time at the Pentagon was characterized by infighting, especially with the Central Intelligence Agency, which he thought underestimated Iraq as a threat to the United States. He clashed with Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, and others who warned — correctly, it turned out — that the United States would need more forces in Iraq. His vision of democracy in the Arab world also ran aground in Baghdad.You may think I am mistaken here: aren't the stubborn shows of fidelity such as retaining Rumsfeld far past his usefulness at least a sign of closeness or faithfulness that real friends should enjoy? But I maintain that friends don't let friends govern drunkenly: these "friends" could not criticize effectively or listen to each other if the messages were not positive. They are stuck with each other more than they are friends.
| Baucus | MT |
| Bayh | IN |
| Bingaman | NM |
| Carper | DE |
| Casey | PA |
| Conrad | ND |
| Dorgan | ND |
| Landrieu | LA |
| Levin | MI |
| Lincoln | AR |
| McCaskill | MO |
| Nelson | FL |
| Nelson | NE |
| Pryor | AR |
| Reed | RI |
| Rockefeller | WV |
| Salazar | CO |
| Tester | MT |
| Webb | VA |
But the argument also exposes tensions within the Republicans “big tent,” as could be seen Thursday night when the party’s 10 candidates for president were asked during their first debate whether they believed in evolution. Three — Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas; and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado — indicated they did not.
Yet it is that very embrace of intelligent design — not to mention creationism, which takes a literal view of the Bible’s Book of Genesis — that has led conservative opponents to speak out for fear their ideology will be branded as out of touch and anti-science.OK, Cohen calls them "thinkers". At this point I expected to stumble upon their reinvention of social Darwinism. But they just can't call it that because even they seem to recall that particular category of misapplied an misunderstood Darwinism was thoroughly discredited early in the 20th century.Some of these thinkers have gone one step further, arguing that Darwin’s scientific theories about the evolution of species can be applied to today’s patterns of human behavior, and that natural selection can provide support for many bedrock conservative ideas, like traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances.
The reference to stem cells suggests just how wide the split is. “The current debate is not primarily about religious fundamentalism,” Mr. West, the author of “Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest” (2006), said at Thursday’s conference. “Nor is it simply an irrelevant rehashing of certain esoteric points of biology and philosophy. Darwinian reductionism has become culturally pervasive and inextricably intertwined with contemporary conflicts over traditional morality, personal responsibility, sex and family, and bioethics.”No wonder the non-fundie conservatives want a little daylight between themselves and the believers. It will be interesting to watch and see if that separation widens into a gulf. But conservatives have political articles of faith even if they aren't burdened with religious mythology. That is why many of them will never get more out of the science of evolution than a sprayed on sheen of intellectual respectability and a new word to use for their usual agenda. At the AEI conference where Mr. West spoke for old time religion as the true biology, Larry Arnhart said in effect "no its not a bad word, we can use it like its a good word:
The technocrats, he charged, wanted to grab control from “ordinary citizens and their elected representatives” so that they alone could make decisions over “controversial issues such as sex education, partial-birth abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and global warming.”
“I do indeed believe conservatives need Charles Darwin,” said Larry Arnhart, a professor of political science at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, who has spearheaded the cause. “The intellectual vitality of conservatism in the 21st century will depend on the success of conservatives in appealing to advances in the biology of human nature as confirming conservative thought.”But the unfortunate Mr Arnhart should actually learn the subject before he writes books in which evolution is a sloppy metaphor and a pliable label.
Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard and Carson Holloway in his 2006 book, “The Right Darwin? Evolution, Religion and the Future of Democracy,” for example, have written that jumping from evolutionary science to moral conclusions and policy proposals is absurd.The big conclusion was that conservatives of all stripes need to engage on the topic and that sounds like the smartest thing any of them said. They are badly stuck and talking among themselves might help. As it stands, their pronouncements of moral depravity lurking in Darwinism only hurt them. It may be "only a theory" But Perhaps Arnhart will drift over to the liberal camp when he notices what he has been saying:...
Mr. Arnhart said that having been so badly burned by social Darwinism, many conservatives today did not want “to get involved in these moral and political debates, and I think that’s evasive.”
While Darwinism does not resolve specific policy debates, Mr. Arnhart said in an interview on Thursday, it can provide overarching guidelines. Policies that are in tune with human nature, for example, like a male military or traditional social and sex roles, he said, are more likely to succeed. He added that “moral sympathy for the suffering of fellow human beings” allows for aid to the poor, weak and ill.
sourcesmiles of polluted waterway industrial point sources 927 municipal point sources 3608 combined sewer overflow 152 nonirrigated crop production 14851 irrigated crop production 9280 feedlots 17241 urban runoff 2683 surface mining 522 petroleum activities 5953 septic tanks 104 channelization 313 flow regulation/modification 0 removal of riparian vegetation 11879 streambank modification 0 natural 12598 source unknown 8865
...she admits her shock that women were torturers. Her essay drips with essentialist tendencies, yet I think many would nod their heads in agreement thinking that "women are better than this, women would change the ethos in the military."
"Why is there an anti-cellulite cream but not an anti beer-belly cream"You will notice them standing up for themselves when you go to read what PMS really stands for. That made me feel more at home since a lot of my reading lately has been at Pandagon and Feministe.
And this is what I get for protecting them.