Derek Markham @ Treehugger.com highlights the latest dubious project from extremist elements in the fossil fuel industry:

You’re either with us or against us, according to the Western Energy Alliance’s social media campaign.

The Western Energy Alliance (a misnomer, as the only energy industries it lobbies for are oil and natural gas) would like us to believe that the future of energy is black and white, and that either you side with all of those pesky activists and environmentalists who want us to go back to the dark ages by giving up all fossil fuels and depriving everyone of health and happiness, or you side with the oil and gas companies and want the evil guv’ment to lift all of the profit-robbing regulations from the industry.

“Eliminate fossil fuels! We hear it all the time. Sounds easy, right? Then pledge to live fossil fuel free for a week and see what it’s really like.”

The group just launched a ridiculous social media campaign, called the Fossil Fuel Free Challenge, in which it gives participants two choices, both of which are disingenuous and short-sighted, and then backs up both choices with hyperbole and dishonest characterizations.

“Fossil fuels permeate our lives. Our campaign provides us the opportunity to show those who oppose responsible oil and natural gas development that they would be poorer, sicker, less educated, colder in winter, and hotter in summer while generally leading a dull and deprived life. But for anyone who thinks life is better without fossil fuels, then we challenge you to go one week without them.” – Tim Wigley, president of Western Energy Alliance

The cited website is simple-minded and irresponsible.  It fails to properly characterize the situation in which pollution has become a serious problem, fossil fuels contribute to global warming, and we have more problems with the oceans becoming the sink for used plastics.

But let’s deconstruct the website.  If you agree with the WEA’s position, then they say,

Yeah, fossil fuels make modern life possible! They allow us to be healthier and lead more productive lives.

This is a bit of weasel wording.  It is, in fact, true that the energy provided by fossil fuels has greatly improved life – but notice how my wording differs from their wording.  By separating energy from the source – fossil fuels – we differentiate the requirement (energy – although, yes, this can be ameliorated through conservation) from the optional part – fossil fuels.  With this clarification we can then easily understand that it’s energy, currently provided by fossil fuels, which provides the good times – not fossil fuels in and of themselves.

Naturally, the pollution emitted while processing and burning fossil fuels is not mentioned on the website.  This is a failure of responsibility.

And if you choose to take their challenge, they happily point out how fossil fuels pervade our lives:

For five days don’t use any product made from, delivered using or operating on oil, natural gas or their associated products. That means staying clear of anything that uses gasoline, oil or natural gas. Even electricity, plastics, rubber and synthetic fibers are to be avoided.

Which is irrelevant – because the technologies which will permit fossil free living fall into the categories of not invented yet, not fully developed, or not fully distributed.

They are engaged in advocacy for their position, and I have no doubt they’d plead this to be their right.  Here’s the problem: the processes and results of their work poisons the environment and the citizenry, and yet they make no mention of it.  It would be perfectly fine to continue this work while stating that they fully support / invest in the development of replacement technologies, because it’s obvious that we are not yet ready to fully transition from fossil fuels to alternative technologies.  It’s even fine to have a long term plan to continue production, albeit in reduced form, because some usages will no doubt be impossible to replace (but never bet against an engineer).

Instead, they are attacking the alternatives.  It may be speculative, but (and note how this echoes the very first point in this post) I think they have permitted their pursuit of money to divert themselves from the pursuit of prosperity.  Think about it: Possession of money is just the ability to buy things.  Prosperity is the entire package: enough money, good health, healthy environment, happy neighbors, good standing in the community, all those things which comprise a good life.  The employees & owners of WEA, in essence, are driving away from themselves many of the elements of a good life through this advertising campaign.

And that’s a sad statement on corporate morality.¹

¹I speculate that Behavioral Economics might play into that mindset, better known as “I have a hammer, and thus everything is a nail.”

Along with the Australian turn of the worm came news of the political environment of their Liberal Party, which is more conservative than liberal.  From news.com.au comes this:

The so-called base of the party despises the man from Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Their hostility will bar them from giving him a smooth entry to the Prime Minister’s office.

The term “the base” is not accurate. In no way are its members the foundation of the party.

It’s simply a name for the ultra conservative minority, a few shards of reactionary thought urged on by right wing Liberal Party agitators in the media.

But they know how to hate and will not want to give up their sense of entitlement to dictate to other Liberals which they believe they gained when Mr Abbott rolled Mr Turnbull in 2009.

It’s rather dismayingly familiar, isn’t it?  The conservatives engaging in denial of science, as evidenced in this reproduced blog entry of the new PM of Australia, courtesy The Sydney Morning Herald:

Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is “crap” and you don’t need to do anything about it. Any policy that is announced will simply be a con, an environmental figleaf to cover a determination to do nothing. After all, as Nick Minchin observed, in his view the majority of the Party Room do not believe in human caused global warming at all. I disagree with that assessment, but many people in the community will be excused for thinking the leadership ballot proved him right.

Conservatives set great store by the past, by definition.  After all, the actions of the past have carried them (& us) to our current positions, and if those positions are prominent and prosperous, then might it seem logical to consider those actions, and by extension the principles precipitating those actions, to be of a positive and salubrious nature.

If I may be excused, it even crosses my mind that the slave-owners of the American South will fit this pattern.

The difficulty with this general position (I do not confine myself to the slave-owners, nor even equate them to conservatives, if only to stem an immediate outcry of abuse), however, has to do with the quality of principles.  Quite often principles are considered immune to the vagaries of chronological change; that is, principles take on an eternal glow of effusive rightness.  Academics, professional and amateur (I should place myself in the latter class, I’m sure), congregate around the principles, engaging not only in praise, but in explanation, although often the explanations are ill-placed, assume constant contexts, and are often more of the quality of rationalization, which, although not fundamentally of an egregious nature, will in most specific instances indeed turn out that way.

Let’s apply these observations.  Conservatives believe their articulated principles have brought us to current prosperity; all well & good.  They believe them eternally correct.  Now the mud begins to surge up the ankles and into the boots, because our context constantly changes.  A “principle”, which I shall place in those quotes to indicate this dubious quality, may be finely applicable in one context, while completely improper in another.  Let’s take an example:  Libertarians, especially those new to the club, often rage against regulations in the areas of pollution, environment, zoning, and several other categories.  Why?  Because they can go back in history and point at some specific example and cry, “See?  There was no need for regulations then; and now we’re so much better off, so why should we promulgate this regulation now?”  (This is often followed by prolonged, learned, and – occasionally, not always – incoherent discussions to support their point.)

But they fail to qualify and compare the relevant contexts.  A century, two centuries ago, populations were far smaller, so that even if a large percentage of the population engages in some activity causing, say, pollution, nature can simply absorb the pollution with little impact.  Compare to today’s 8 billion people (or, more precisely, the local population density in the specific scenario), and nature may now be ill-prepared for the onslaught.  And then, given the increase in energy availability, general scientific knowledge, etc, and now our ability to generate pollution is greatly increased; the toxic materials we now generate have a potency much greater, in many cases, than any seen before.  Simply consider the by-blow of a nuclear power plant.

But – like most folk, and I do not wish to suggest any condemnation – these conservatives wish to live their lives by principles, preferably those transmitted to them by their forefathers.  They see them as good, and as eternal.  An attack on a principle is, in essence, an attack not only on themselves (for by adhering to a set of principles, they become part of their person), but on their heritage and ancestors.  By suggesting impropriety on the part of their ancestors, they are told that their entire bloodline is soiled, while they still feel they are adhering to good & right principles – often of a divine nature, which simply works as gravel in the gears of reason.

Thus, the conservatives deeply married to their principles will cry out their rage, their way of life is imperiled by the wastrel liberals.  They are deadly serious about this, just as much as their opponents value their own principles.  These principles are currently assuming the mobility of a mountain: it only moves at the beckoning of God.  Thus we see outré conclusions which the good extremist conservative is forced to attain, given the narrow corridors his principles have forced him to traverse: monstrous conspiracies by scientists, scientists whose entire goal is to study reality; assertions of various scandals where the worst that a reasonable person might think is that an unfortunate error has occurred; etc.

And, just to complicate the situation, certain instigators take to the media to increase their rage even more. These instigators are not liberals, but fellow conservatives, or at least carpetbaggers set to enrich themselves on the oil slick of anger of the conservatives.  The resulting cacophany serves to obscure the discussion, to hobble truth, and to slow necessary adjustments to human society.

The role of the Internet needs little explanation.  However, by contrast, this does throw some light on an old-fashioned, denigrated, and almost forgotten role from the pre-Internet days: that of the gatekeeper.  In the days when self-publishing was a difficult, though not impossible, proposition, the gatekeeper was that person who had the power to choose who could be published by the large industrial concerns in all of the traditional media areas: TV, radio, and print.  For those who failed the sometimes arbitrary, self-interested tests ordained by those gatekeepers, the gatekeepers were of dubious societal worth; but, in hindsight, it’s becoming clear that they also served to filter extreme views from widespread distribution.  Today, when the gatekeepers are now consigned to Pandora’s Box, we now see the spectacle of Rush and his ilk, a sad case indeed.

And now I see a report of the same problem in Australia.  Is this the future of the democracies?  To be plagued by extreme views endorsed by citizens who do not have the time to become educated in the myriad issues facing the nation?  We all face this problem.  Personally, on some issues I’m simply neutral; on those susceptible to scientific analysis, I defer to genuine analysis, while paying attention to sources devoted to vetting and evaluating same (see Skeptical Inquirer); and some I am forced to use “common sense”, a rather dubious appendage, I’m sure, of which I try to maintain a proper skepticism.

And yet, I do not think that only democracies are doomed to bear these people.  Consider the plight of Iran, discussed here at an earlier date, where the hardliners of the conservative party threaten those attempting to move the party forward, and accuse them of apostasy in the context of the Islamic Revolution.  Just as the Internet permits the incursion of liberal views, it also permits the circulation of extremist views – and lends itself to organization.

Things have no moral quality in and of themselves (see here and here), but they can enable moral acts, i.e., acts with a moral dimension (are there any without?).  Including, apparently, the Internet.

I’ve been resisting this post for months. I fear I’m exhausted and my inner snark has come through.

I can’t imagine taking a degree in the study of adjectives, but I’m sure they’re very nice people.

This essay is part of the Pillar series.  Please follow the link in the menu to discover the nature of this series.

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To the reader who might wish to assert the United States of America is a Judeo-Christian nation, or some similar sentiment, I must admit to a reaction of a nature similar only in that it is nearly fundamental to my temperament, and automatic in its reaction; otherwise, it is in complete variance to the reader’s thought, or rather, feeling.  My immediate reaction is: the United States is secular.  But such must yield to more considered reflection, which, when indulged upon, yields a conclusion stronger yet: the United States MUST, for her survival, her honor, her very nature, be secular.

The news sphere crackles with incidents of relevance, such as the Idaho legislators who refused to attend a legislature’s invocation involving a Hindu prayer, or the massacre of minority or disfavored populations in Iraq by ISIS forces (here and here).  How do these disparate events link to the question at hand?  Read on, dear reader …

Definitions

We might begin by asking, what does it mean to say we, the United States, are secular?  Or, alternatively, to be of any religious nature, as a Mormon might dispute the Baptist’s assertion to a traditional Christian nature, or a Presbyterian’s view might differ from a Catholic’s concept.  The most useful conception may be to suggest that, while we may acknowledge and respect the First Amendment, it is well known that we are founded on a Christian view of the world, and that, really, all positions of importance are reserved for Christians, and where the government law and the Bible clash, well, we all know the Bible should be paramount.

Such a view prevails through a noticeable fraction of the populace, and suffices to our purposes.  It is to this view I find myself opposed.

The First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …

It is best to begin with the weakest part of my argument, and from there build to the crescendo, so the beginning will be the basic law.  I say weakest, for it is settled law, but without, at this juncture, basic justification.  There is nothing new to the interested reader; I reiterate this basic part of our governmental structure, not only to fulfill the rote requirements of discussing an Amendment, but to point out that this part of our governmental structure, and in fact our culture, is beyond the reach of majority whim.  We are a Constitutional Republic, which means we recognize that sometimes majority opinion will be wrong, that it can be variable, that it can blow about like a leaf on the wind.  This amendment reminds us that the coercive power of the State should never be utilized with respect to this most variable of subjects, for reasons yet to be explored.  The Amendment is our bulwark against the waywardness of the day, as first one sect and then another gains power in the focus of the Nation.

But why concern ourselves with such matters?  Surely, the opposed reader might murmur in all sincerity, we’re all Christians here!  At this juncture, it might be best to ask those whose concerns on these matters have shaped our Law, as they gave it deep thought, given the examples that befell their ancestors.

The Founders

It all begins with the Founding Fathers, of course.  They penned the weighty documents shaping our lives; they gave long and deep thought and debate to every line of our Constitution.  Why did they make the decisions we deal with in our lives?

We might learnedly argue over the intentions of the Founders – putative statements vs. implied intentions, close textual analyses, even documents of dubious character imputed to those who would, in all reality, find the content of said documents repulsive: such is the emotional turmoil our Founders can roil in the breasts of both their contemporaries and the political warriors of today.

But let us take a different tack.  The approach mentioned in the previous paragraph exists oddly without context, as if those who fought both physically and intellectually for the soul of the nation were mere heads floating in nutrient broth; so let’s build a reasonable context and then ask how the Founders would react to it.

Society

What is the purpose of society?  To glorify God?   Kill the enemy?  Restore some former glory?  Each of these positions may have its advocates, but I believe they are vain, shallow, and unworthy of the serious searcher.

I propose it’s self-perpetuation; without that, nothing else matters.  As a whole, societies exist today to exist tomorrow.  This implies member replacement and expansion, commonly (but not always) achieved through reproduction; given an already adequate supply of folks, a relatively low average rate is necessary assuming an otherwise conducive context.  Raising one’s offspring while ducking, say, a spray of mustard gas from the murderous tribe next door is not congruent with any unrisible definition of ‘conductive context’.

So let’s examine “conducive context”, not from our modern viewpoint where we can relax amongst our cornucopia of plenty and raise our individual blood pressures arguing over political and epistemological fantasies, whilst peeling grapes or removing buns from our Quarter Pounders, but from the viewpoint of Colonial America, circa 18th century.  The Founders, faced with very real conundrums as the Country advanced beyond the victory over the English Monarchy, had diverse religious roots, but what was their knowledge and experiential base?  What informed their decisions, beyond the requirement of a conducive context?
English History

The European settlers of the area which later became the initial thirteen states making up the new country of The United States of America were, by and large, English expatriates, or their descendants, men & women whose experience with English events was, at its most distant, third hand; more often, it was second hand or even personally witnessed.  It is entirely reasonable to suppose this culture, this history, informed the choices of the Founding Fathers who helped form the legal, formal frameworks on which the United States rests.  A brief history of the relevant times, visceral as it will be, will serve to inform the skeptical reader of the knowledge, formal and informal, acquired through schooling and popular play (such as that of Wm. Shakespeare) available to those who sought to create a new country.

Henry VIII (reigned 1509 – 1547)
A period of civil unrest began with Henry the VIII’s famous break with Roman Catholicism and his founding of the Anglican Church; concomitant with this act was the attachment of England to the Anglican Church.  One of the primary immediate results was the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries Act of 1536 (the remainder were dissolved in 1542), a law which stirred up resentment in northern England.  20,000 to 40,000 rebels rose up against the law, but were dispersed when

“Henry VIII promised the rebels he would pardon them and thanked them for raising the issues [certain acts Henry had passed] to his attention. [Robert] Aske told the rebels they had been successful and they could disperse and go home.”

Alas, the promise was merely convenient; when more violence occurred, the leaders and 200 of the followers were rounded up and executed.

Noteworthy in 1540 was the death by burning of three men accused of religious heresy, in that they preached Lutheranism, these being Robert Barnes, William Jerome and Thomas Garret.

Scotland was invaded, with hopes of imposing Anglicanism on the then-Catholic Scots; it ceased with the death of the Scottish King but then resumed, with the destruction of Edinburgh, when the Scots reneged on the treaty that had been imposed upon them.

Henry felt he ruled purely by the Grace of God, and the kingdom was often near bankruptcy, at war, and suffering from civil strife.

Edward VI (1547 – 1553)

The son of Henry VIII, adherent to the new Church of England, became King at age nine and never held true power; this was held by the Privy Council.  In his short reign religious difficulties continued.  The war on Catholic Scotland was uninterrupted, and the Scots’ alliance with Catholic France made the fighting bitter; witness the utter destruction of Edinburgh and a network of English garrisons, although the dream of uniting England with Scotland was not achieved.

The Prayer Book Rebellion broke out in 1549 in Devon and Cornwall, when religious services were ordered to be performed in English.  Catholic sympathizers were executed, prisoners had their throats slit, and the usual battlefield atrocities were committed.  5500 died amidst the chaos.

Church properties continued to be converted to Royal and private purposes, embittering Catholic priests and laity alike.

Queen Jane (9 days in 1553), Queen Mary (1553 – 1558)

Jane, Protestant cousin of Edward, was Queen for several days before the Privy Council discovered its 3000 man army faced a 20,000 man army supporting the Catholic Mary, daughter to Henry. Some supported Mary for religious reasons, others because of their detestation of the Privy Council, and so Jane was deprived of the throne, and later her life, due to her religion.

Queen Mary, Catholic ruler of Anglican England, aka Bloody Mary, proclaimed that no one would be imprisoned or executed because of their religious inclinations, yet did exactly that; reversed most of the policies enacted by her father and brother; and burned at the stake more than 280 Protestants during her tenure, using the newly passed Heresy Acts.  The executions were considered cruel even by her own, yet Mary persevered; thus the chalice of Catholicism in England came to be poisoned.

Like her father, she felt she ruled by the Grace of God.

Elizabeth I (1533 – 1603)

Elizabeth I, Protestant, and last of the Tudors, succeeded Mary upon her death, and England once again became Anglican as she (under the guidance of counselors) introduced the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, which dismantled “Popery”. Known as “Good Queen Bess,” her long reign was relatively quiet for our purposes, once the official religious designation of England had been switched; this was pursued for both personal (she was raised Protestant, unlike her sister) and practical reasons (being illegitimate in Catholic eyes made being Queen impossible).  Still, the Rising in the North, a Catholic attempt to install Mary, Queen of Scots, on the English throne, did result in the executions of 750 of the imprisoned Catholics, plus the general disorder of a revolt.

She also faced the vexing problem of the Catholic Irish:

Crown forces pursued scorched-earth tactics, burning the land and slaughtering man, woman and child.

Then came the 9 Years War, an Irish revolt.  Even for Good Queen Bess, generally thought to have believed faith was personal, religious cruelty was not entirely absent.  Still, one must observe the general positive view of her reign and the correlation with religious tolerance.

James I (1603-1625)

James I, of the House of Stuart, King of Scotland, and son of Mary, Queen of Scots, succeeded Elizabeth after charming her into naming him successor, despite her execution of his mother.  He was the eponymous sponsor of the King James Version of the Bible, adherent to the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), and, later, the Church of England, and the author of two books on the theological basis of kingship.  During his reign The Gunpowder Plot occurred, the attempt of a Catholic group to destroy the King and Government of England; a possible motivation was the failure of James to relax prohibitions on English Catholics.  Unfortunately, greater misfortunes were then visited on the Catholics, including an Oath of Allegiance, which could be demanded of any Catholic and included denial of the Pope’s authority over the King: a distressing requirement.  The Puritans, founded during Elizabeth’s reign, registered objections to various religious practices; James initially required conformity from them, but later softened his stance somewhat.  His reign was, perhaps, relatively quiet.

Charles I (1625 – 1649)

The Meaning of Faith

Wherein we elaborate upon the basis of the certainty of the member of the sect, and how it should impact the honest thinker.

*     *     *

This word, faith, we use to indicate our belief in something without proof– this is definitional, incontestable. If there was final, legitimate (or objective) proof that some divinity existed, even were it beyond our comprehension, then the only debate would be between those who accept the proof, and those very few to whom admission of that reality was repugnant. Faith would not play into the matter; of sects, there might only be one, or perhaps a very few. Instead, the least bit of attention will yield recognition of a thousand sects or more, each finding some facet, large or small, to differentiate themselves from the next, from the most xenophobic to the most inclusive.  All are included within perhaps a dozen distinct religions, almost all vying with each other; within each, sect confronting cult confronting orthodoxy confronting heterodoxy– a history of disagreement leading to confrontation, sometimes terminating in horrific consequences. Witness any number of notorious battles in Western Europe alone: murders, massacres, and instances of mayhem, all associated with religious differences. The rare religion really practicing tolerance often finds itself persecuted. Such a sect is the Bah’ai, one of whom I knew for a short while many years ago. Yet, this is not to accuse religion of being the source of strife; to my mind, it is merely a lens that focuses a fundamental facet of mankind into something yet larger, crueler, meaner: that combative nature necessitated by the bloody claw of Nature.  But to return to the point at hand, we use faith, or lack thereof, to justify our own belief in the degree of truthfulness of a particular religious system.

A key implication must then come to the fore – if there is no proof, then there can be no objective certainty, only subjective certainty.  If this is so, then the serious inquirer must ask: how can I be so certain I am right, when the wellspring of certainty consists of dogmatic training, intuition, long traditions, and the bonds of my many friends?  To be sure, a forcefully held opinion can be quite daunting, reinforced by the lungs and black looks of the holder; yet, without objective facts – and those have not been found by searchers with the best of intentions – they remain only opinions, dependent on nothing more than intuition.

Beware the approbation of the crowd: the opinions of the many, be they honestly and forcefully held even by friends, still remain arbitrary opinions in the absence of objective facts.  They have not found the font of truth, but only (but not merely) the comfort of supporting opinions, of belonging, and sharing an important tie.

Perhaps the adherents of these various religions have found success in the course of their lives, however success may be defined. But to use that as a logical justification for the truthfulness of their religious claims – and, worse, the fallaciousness of their theological rivals’ claims – is a logical error called post hoc ergo propter hoc, or “after this, therefore because of this.” But in the absence of objective fact, drawing a conclusion concerning the nature of divinity, even that it exists, is a fool’s errand.

It is not inappropriate to wonder about those folks for whom the truthfulness of a religious system is less than primal; often, those whose exposure has been to a single such system from which they have benefited fail to question the truthfulness of the system; or their circumstances do not permit such investigations; or their temperament is such that it is more important to belong than it is to pursue the truth.  For those students of science, their existence is unsurprising, for survival is an important facet of existence, and while knowing the deep truth about any number of things is not instrumental to survival, membership in a group may greatly enhance survival potential.  Particularly for homogenuous groups, such an attitude is understandable.  Again, though, this would be to mistake adherence for proof, for objective truth.  They adhere, but for reasons peculiar to circumstance, have no particular insight into the final reality.

Before the summation regarding Faith, it is necessary to ask: what if we continue, regardless of the intellectual barriers heretofore erected, to be rock-solid in our certainty and to apply it in our government – to proclaim a theocracy as advocated by a few?  I refer you to the English History, or at least its summary: the observation that confidence in one’s knowledge of the Divinity leads, tragically, to the disregard of those of one’s fellows who fail to adhere to one’s precisely formulated views: deprivation of equality, of property, of decision, and of life; the creation of chaos, of a society inhospitable to all but those most orthodox in today’s orthodoxy, and those few doomed when tomorrow’s orthodoxy differs from today’s.  Does the reader doubt this?  These very scenarios play out to this very day; attestations appear on the television news with appalling regularity.  A retreat to the refuge of ‘Christianity’ merely begs the definition of Christianity, along with a murmur of ‘good luck’; a claim to modernity results in references to the barbaric actions of the various sects of Islam, the various sects of the Jews, and, at the very least, the words of the sects of the Christians, murmured, perhaps, into their beards. And forget not the fanatical acts of Warren Jeffs‘ group of Mormons, the Jim Jones cult, and even the activities of certain Amish groups!  All done in the name of some solitary divinity; all done in the pursuit of temporal power.

So, to our summary: “Faith” is a dangerous word.  It rationalizes any action, any assertion, because it is not subject to any restraint; the daring may use it to achieve their darkest desire, and very dark that may be.

And yet: Faith is also a path to a possibly better future.  Faith comes in many forms, as mundane as faith that our fiat money will continue to be accepted within our nation, to faith that our neighbors will continue to do what is right, to the wondrous, everyday fact of altruism, that mysterious habit of the good to hold out a hand to someone who needs help, regardless of their nationality, their color, their station, their cleanliness, their location.  To Americans at their best, show them someone in true need, assaulted by random Nature, and the American will stick out a mitt, haul the unfortunate to their feet, and help them get started; all with the Faith that this is the right thing to do, that some day that altruism will somehow be repaid to them.  For those of us who think they are realists – and I often include myself in that number – there is a great blind spot that goes with that philosophy, and it is this: no, that cannot be done.  It is not realistic.  We cannot split our camp into two, the tigers will eat us.  Can’t be done.

Sometimes those with Faith get eaten.  And sometimes those with Faith are the leaders to the next great step on our journey.  Here I use the word faith loosely, as simply attempting some great feat without any assurance of achieving same, of risking all, and achieving all, on scant anything but that it will turn out.  Realists hardly do that.

And, finally, in all true Faith there must lurk a tiger of its own: Doubt.  The sincere, clear-eyed believer, to achieve such a description, must forever be aware that Faith means belief without proof, and honesty then must beget doubt.  The doubt need not be crippling, but must be honestly acknowledged and given its due; the believers’ behavior should be moderated toward those not entirely consonant in their belief systems. For the important point of doubt is this: perhaps your potential opponent is Right, and you are Wrong.  Or you are both Wrong.

Or maybe the Atheist is right.

Obligations on Sects

Given the political position and intellectual attributes ascribed to many deities, it is important to understand the obligations inherent upon a sect contemplating existing within a governmental system intent on blindness toward the claims made by the sect.  In the United States, a sect may operate freely unless it abridges any secular law imposed by the State; as the State is prohibited from making laws with respect to religion, the sect may consider all laws to be secular and must be in compliance with all.  To take an extreme example, if a sect (perhaps of Mayan derivation, as an example) believes that blood sacrifice of the sect’s enemies on its altars is a divine requirement, then they should be aware of the State’s prohibitions on homicide, and either modify their deity’s requirements, or choose not to reside in the United States.

Since violent conflict is generally prohibited by modern societies, a wise sect will draw an important lesson: mutual respect.  Respect burnishes reputations; spite, distaste, and hatred tarnishes it.

Immigration

It is perhaps not as well acknowledged as it should be, but the heart-blood of the United States has always been its immigrants.  They are often brave, for they have left their homes, even if forced; they are intelligent, for they learn ways alien to them and become comfortable in our land, as do their children; and they are innovative, because the mental walls we construct for ourselves do not apply to them, and so they may view a problem in a very different way.  Doctors, scientists, engineers, artists: they have brought their genius, their energy, their all, and have made the United State prosper.  Their names are Legion, and need not be repeated here.  All have come and flourished in this land of the free.

Land of the free, repeat it softly, and let that famous phrase circulate in your head for a moment.  We have seen the morbid result of the explicit control of government by those of a religious bent, by well-meaning men & women convinced of the favor of their divinity, at the application of laws written by a subjective mind but proclaimed to be of a divine nature – but subject to no confirmation, and, even worse, no debate, with results scarce needing repeating: repression, offense, hatred, loathing, murder, extinction.

Empathize with our worthy immigrants- possessors of energy, talent, and motivation:  they see one country, full of welcome, of guarantee of a lack of religious strife; they see another country, where sect rages against sect, where bodies appear in the morning to the grief of their loved ones, and a sad whirlwind of vengeance sets in.  Which country should they pick to ensure the safety of their children?  Should my valued reader, possibly an urger of divine control of the United States, still select that which would bring chaos to the United States, and divert the resourceful immigrant from this soil?

Conclusion

In review and summary …

The founding of the United States of America marks the coming together of a unique assemblage who decided they needed to live together in peace in order to survive a hostile world.  Instructed in the ways of man by the history of their former home country, and thus realizing the necessity of surviving disagreements between citizens who are members of various sects, none of which could proclaim with certainty their grasp of any truth, they deliberately ejected religion from a central position within government structures in order to minimize the disorder a resolutely religious party might bring, and to enshrine that decision in the Bill of Rights.  For those who doubt the wisdom of such a result, one might only consult the recent history of such countries as Saudi Arabia and other theocracies, or for that matter aspiring organizations such as ISIS, and the conditions, repressions, and, in extremis, horrors visited upon those religious minorities out of favor with a theocratic ruler.

This removal of religion from the source of worldly power permitted those of a religious bent to return their attention to the central focus natural to their vocation: the spiritual development of their fellows.  By the same token, however, it becomes necessary that some slight subjection of the sect to the State becomes necessary; restrictions on activities are rare, but in the face of compelling State interest, required.

Thus, one of the most religious countries of the Western World is, in fact, secular: the governing laws are indifferent to the sects citizens might have chosen, and that indifference should remind those adherents that Faith implicitly teaches Doubt: we cannot know, but only hope, and through that lack of objective knowledge, we know that others may be more right than ourselves.  Given that great mystery, we should not live in suspicion, hatred, loathing, or any other such adjective belonging to a dread realm, but rather in respect, trust, and a shared faith that, by having freedom of (or from) religion, by being secular, we are the stronger for it.  To be anything else is to risk being torn asunder by our divisions, to fall from the high path into the fire, to fail the school of history as well as the heart-stopping lessons of today.

In the Founders time, a few dozen sects fled to the New World for a new home.  Today we are home to hundreds, with relationships so diverse as to span the entire spectrum, from close alliance, to anger and hatred, and even murder.  If the government of the United States were to descend into some divine alliance, then it’s power would be used to assert the dominance of the sect, much to the discouragement of all those other sects.

And this is why our demanding thesis, that the United States has been, is, and must remain secular, is true. The alternative is neither glorious nor honorable. It is only chaos.

E Pluribus Unum.  There is no other answer.

(Completed with the help of Arts Editor Deb White and Wikipedia.)

Too delicious.  From Keith Pickering @ The Daily Kos:

Ben Carson couldn’t find the evidence for human-caused climate change, so Jerry Brown sent it to him

The State of Minnesota is trying to discover what happened to some of the original furniture that was designed for the state Capitol.  If you have ornate benches, rolltop desks, etc, perhaps they’ll buy them back from you.  From MPR:

When architect Cass Gilbert drew up his plans for the state Capitol, he also designed much of the furniture he wanted inside it, including ornate benches, desks, tables and light fixtures.

But that was more than 100 years ago, and things tend to get misplaced.

Now, as the $309 million restoration of the building moves toward a scheduled 2017 completion, state officials are trying to round up some of the missing items or find companies that can recreate them. Gilbert designed many of the nearly 1,600 original pieces. The fate of about half of the original furniture remains a mystery.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia is no longer PM, as he’s ousted by former communications minister Malcolm Turnbull.  While CNN reports this is primarily about leadership style and economics, this will also have an impact on Australia’s climate change policy.  He did not agree with Mr. Abbott’s policies, as enunciated in a blog post, reproduced by The Sydney Morning Herald (the original is no longer available, although Turnbull’s blog remains here), subtly entitled, “Abbott’s climate change policy is bullshit“:

… as we are being blunt, the fact is that Tony and the people who put him in his job do not want to do anything about climate change. They do not believe in human caused global warming. As Tony observed on one occasion “climate change is crap” or if you consider his mentor, Senator Minchin, the world is not warming, its cooling and the climate change issue is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to deindustrialise the world.  Now politics is about conviction and a commitment to carry out those convictions. The Liberal Party is currently led by people whose conviction on climate change is that it is “crap” and you don’t need to do anything about it.

The Guardian reports,

He has spoken out in defence of climate scientists, whose work has been derided by many of his colleagues and even by Maurice Newman, the chairman of Abbott’s business advisory council, who believes the world may have entered a cooling phase.

“It is undoubtedly correct that there has been a very effective campaign against the science of climate change by those opposed to taking action to cut emissions, many because it does not suit their own financial interests, and this has played into the carbon tax debate,” Turnbull said in a speech in 2011.

“Normally, in our consideration of scientific issues, we rely on expert advice [and] agencies like CSIRO or the Australian Academy of Science, are listened to with respect. Yet on this issue there appears to be a licence to reject our best scientists both here and abroad and rely instead on much less reliable views.”

So this sounds like a leader with some respect for the science of climate change.  But what sort of guy is Mr. Turnbull?  The Guardian also covers this question:

A few weeks after Brendan Nelson beat him for the dog-days job of leading a demoralised Liberal Party after its 2007 election loss, Malcolm Turnbull called Nelson’s new chief of staff Peter Hendy.

“Turnbull told me that my job was to get Brendan to resign in the next few weeks because Brendan was hopeless and he would damage the Liberal brand so much that by the time he, Turnbull, took over, the next election would no longer be winnable,” Hendy told me in 2009. “He called Nelson personally with the same message.”

Turnbull was in such a tearing hurry to fulfill his unshakeable belief that he should lead the Liberals, and the nation, that first term opposition did not daunt him, nor party room defeat, nor the normal parameters of self awareness.

He’s been leader of the Liberal Party before, so he has some experience in that department.  Now to see how Australia’s energy and climate change policies change.

Miranda Blue @ Right Wing Watch reports that the situation has become rather more intense:

The Oath Keepers, the anti-government “Patriot” group that mounted an armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management at the Bundy Ranch, stationed armed guards outside of military recruitment centers after the Chattanooga shooting, and unsettled Ferguson protestors when they showed up carrying assault weapons, is now offering anti-gay Kentucky clerk Kim Davis a “security detail” to protect her from further arrest if she continues to defy the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling. …

[Oath Keepers founder Stewart]Rhodes said that the Rowan County sheriff should have blocked U.S. Marshals from detaining Davis, but since neither the sheriff nor the state’s governor will do their “job” and “intercede” on behalf of Davis, the Oath Keepers will have to do it instead. “As far as we’re concerned, this is not over,” he said, “and this judge needs to be put on notice that his behavior is not going to be accepted and we’ll be there to stop it and intercede ourselves if we have to. If the sheriff, who should be interceding, is not going to do his job and the governor is not going to do the governor’s job of interceding, then we’ll do it.”

In an update she notes:

Rhodes reports that Davis, through her Liberty Counsel attorneys, has declined Oath Keepers’ offer and he has ordered members of his group to “stand down.”

Davis’ action should be a relief – to the right wing extremists.  After all, for years they’ve complained about the illegal actions of that fiendish elected official, Barack Obama.  Such accusations may be found here and here and, well, just point your finger anywhere on the Internet and you’ll find one outraged citizen full of, uh, outrageous claims.  But if they’re going to relieve Mz. Davis of the responsibility of actually fulfilling her electoral responsibilities, how can they, in good conscience, hold President Obama to his?

(h/t Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog)

Arliss Bunny @ The Daily Kos presents the story of the Federal Reserve during the crisis of 9/11.  It’s fascinating, and I had not really considered that event to be an attack on the US financial system before; I can’t help but wonder if the Great Recession was a fallout of that attack.

The letters column of American Archaeology (fall 2015, not (yet) online) includes a mention of a bone fragment on which is a depiction of a mammoth.  This picture is from NPR:

ScienceDirect published the abstract of the study of this bone fragment back in 2011:

Rare earth element analysis was consistent with the fossil bone being ancient and originating at or near the Old Vero site (8-IR-9). Forensic analysis suggests the markings on the bone are not recent. Optical microscopy results show no discontinuity in coloration between the carved grooves and the surrounding material indicating that both surfaces aged simultaneously. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed that the edges of the inscription are worn and show no signs of being incised recently or that the grooves were made with metal tools. In addition, the backscattered SEM images suggest there is no discontinuity in the distribution of light and heavy elements between the scribed region and the surrounding bone indicating that both surfaces aged in the same environment.

To which I can only say, a pity the Crayon coloring didn’t survive those 13,000 years.

NewScientist (29 August 2015, paywall) presents a short interview with Simon Colton of Falmouth University concerning his programs that discover things:

Can computers make breakthroughs?

I think we will only see computers making true discoveries when software can program itself. The latest version of HR [a program to discover things] is specifically designed to write its own code. But it’s a challenge; it turns out that writing software is one of the most difficult things that people do. And, ultimately, there are mathematical concepts that you can’t turn into code, especially ones dealing with infinity.

I’ve mentioned Noson S. Yanofsky and his book THE OUTER LIMITS OF REASON: WHAT SCIENCE, MATHEMATICS, AND LOGIC CANNOT TELL US in prior posts (here and here), and one of his subjects was the problem of paradoxical statements, which he attributed to languages capable of self-reference.  The above section of the interview strikes me as related: a program which can write itself is, in a sense, self-referential because it has to understand, in some sense, that it exists (which is a strange thought in itself for what is basically an arrangement of bits in a computer, and becomes even stranger as one goes deeper into operating system implementations and realizes that this arrangement of bits can be partitioned and moved around as the operating system pages programs in and out … but I digress), and that it can modify itself in order to achieve its goals.  I wonder if the program can formulate paradoxical statements and goals, and if this would eventually constitute a certain amount of consciousness / intelligence?  (Is intelligence the ability to express & comprehend a paradox?)

Also of interest is the problem of representing certain mathematical concepts, such as infinity, which suggests, once again, a limitation of artificial intelligence capabilities (at least, based on current computing architectures) which may render them forever unable to match us in certain competitions … or may suggest a problem with our mathematical assumptions.

And goals!

How do you make software discover things?

You give it data that you want to find something out about, but rather than looking for known unknowns – as with machine learning, where you know what you’re looking for but not what it looks like – it tries to find unknown unknowns.

We want software to surprise us, to do things we don’t expect. So we teach it how to do general things rather than specifics. That contradicts most of what we do in computer science, which is to make sure software does exactly what you want. It takes a lot of effort for people to get their heads round it.

I’ll just say it’d be fascinating to see more on this subject.  It also reminds me of the story of a friend of mine from, oh, thirty years ago, who claimed he’d put together a symbolic logic program and gave it some facts and told it to start deductions.  Occasionally it’d ask him a question.  Once it asked him if the famous little jerk in Mercury’s orbit had actually been observed.  And once it asked him if a platypus as mammal or bird.

I’ve never been sure if he was pulling my leg or not.

Finally, something in what I use for a brain keeps pinging me with “DNA” in connection with this entire post.  Can it be said that DNA is self-referential in some meaningful sense, since it … sort of … creates itself, including the self-creation aspect?  I can’t quite make myself believe it, but the pattern match is occurring and demanding to be revealed.

Egypt is taking baby steps towards removing the dread influence of religion from government, AL Monitor‘s Rami Galal reports:

Continuing its efforts to separate church and state, Egypt has banned its imams from preaching in mosques while running for political office, a move that is stirring controversy among officials, legal experts and, of course, imams.

The Egyptian Ministry of Awqaf (Endowments) issued a statement Aug. 24 that read: “In order to prevent mosques from being used as political platforms, the ministry shall ban all preachers running for parliamentary elections from delivering sermons or religious lectures in mosques starting the first day they announce their nomination until the completion of the election process, so as to prevent them from promoting themselves or others through the use of religion for electoral interests.”

The ministry went further, deciding to “irrevocably strip its leaders who decide to run for elections of their leadership position and privileges within the ministry.”

It appears imams are employed by the Ministry.  The Ministry justifies the decision using reasoning reminiscent of that used for the creation of the United States’ First Amendment:

Abdel-Latif added, “The nomination of an imam or a preacher would place the ministry in a very critical situation, in light of its efforts to separate religion from politics and to prevent Salafists and other religious parties from using the mosques as political outlets for their campaigns.”

He pointed out, “Had the ministry allowed its imams to run for parliamentary elections, the political Islamic movement would have accused it of using double standards. The mere appearance of a candidate on the political arena, especially if associated with the Ministry or Al-Azhar, would be regarded as a call to support him in the elections, even if he has not particularly called upon people to vote for him. This is especially true since people in Egypt place clerics on a pedestal, even if they lack political savvy.”

Some of the officials and imams are unhappy, but given the religious fury experienced by England as various sects took control of the monarchy from Henry VIII onwards, the realization that a religious figure capable of exciting the emotions of the mob acting in this capacity is quite important, and putting a muzzle on it makes complete sense – from the point of the officials responsible for public peace.  To the religious figure, on the other hand, the muzzle is uncomfortable and unflattering, as it seems to label them as, somehow, unclean – despite their close association with God.  Thus the Alliance Defending Freedom organization in the United States, as reported by CNN‘s Dan Merica in 2012:

“In light of what I have presented,” Johnson says he will say, “How can you go into that election booth and vote for Barack Obama as president of the United States?”

What Johnson plans to do is in violation of the IRS’ so-called Johnson Amendment, a 1954 law that has made it illegal for churches that receive tax exempt status from the federal government to intervene in “any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

Why is Johnson so brazenly violating that law this Sunday? Strength in numbers: He will be joined by at least 1,400 others pastors across the United States.

Johnson’s sermon is part of a wider effort by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal organization that since 2008 has organized Pulpit Freedom Sunday, when they encourage and pledge to help pastors who willfully violate the Johnson Amendment by endorsing from the pulpit.

Religious reasoning feels quite right to them, as they take their guidance from religious tomes – without ever realizing that exciting the religious loathing of other groups who disagree on some obscure – to me! – point leads to a more fragmented and ineffective civil discourse.  In the end, history teaches us the more religion-blind the government and the citizenry become, the more peaceful society becomes.  This does not mean agnostic or atheist, but having the sensibility that religion has a limited sphere in which to operate, and once it moves beyond the sphere, no matter how well-meaning, one may experience disaster.  This may tie in with the thoughts expressed in this post, which I daydream about expanding on some day.

Venerable National Geographic has passed control of its media assets  (magazine, cable channels, etc) to a group controlled by Fox, run by James Murdoch, youngest son of Rupert Murdoch of News Corp.  From the National Geographic press release:

The National Geographic Society and 21st Century Fox announced on Wednesday that they are expanding their partnership in a venture that will include National Geographic’s cable channels, its 127-year-old magazine, digital and social platforms, maps, travel, and other media.

Under the $725-million deal, Fox, which currently holds a majority stake in National Geographic’s cable channels, will own 73 percent of the new media company, called National Geographic Partners. The National Geographic Society will own 27 percent.

Officials at National Geographic and Fox said the deal will bring greater financial stability to the Society’s media products and its scientific research arm, which have operated as a non-profit since National Geographic’s founding in 1888.

While the magazine is the iconic face of the Society, especially for us old timers who remember the stacks and stacks of yellow mags, I suspect NG’s real worth lies in the research arm; the magazine existed as an important funding tool, both directly and indirectly.  However, as The Washington Post notes (and in a very interesting way),

The agreement provides a financial lifeline not just for the much-honored magazine, but also for the National Geographic Society itself, the organization’s chief executive acknowledged Wednesday. Like many print publications, National Geographic has been hurt by the onset of the digital era, which has put it on a slow trajectory toward extinction.

The magazine’s domestic circulation peaked at about 12 million copies in the late 1980s; today, the publication reaches about 3.5 million subscribers in the United States and an additional 3 million subscribers abroad through non-English-language editions. Advertising has been in steady decline.

“It has become apparent that ensuring the future of the society would require something bold,” the society’s chief executive, Gary Knell, said at an all-staff meeting Wednesday. Continuing as a media organization and potentially absorbing future losses, he said, “presented enormous and real existential risks. We . . . truly believe the path we’ve chosen presents the greatest potential upside.”

It’s interesting that one print publication would be predicting the demise of another.  Can we be so sure of the loss of a magazine of such unique interest and quality?

In any case, I wish the partnership well.  National Geographic magazine was certainly one of my motivators in where my life has led, motivating that sense of wonder and interest in various fields of science, especially the bizarre ways of life led by others – and how ours must look to them.

Senor Unoball @ The Daily Kos coughs up a hairball on the news.

Katherine Martinko likes them:

Here is a good reason to plan a vacation in the near future – it will make you healthier and happier. Far too many people fail to fit vacations into their lives, and yet taking time away from work to recharge, whether it’s on an exotic trip or a relaxing ‘staycation’ at home, has wide-ranging benefits. Studies have shown that vacations are crucial for human wellbeing for many different reasons.

I just liked the post!

Following in Kim Davis’ footsteps is someone who should know better, according to Josie Duffy @ The Daily Kos:

Gay marriage has been legal in Oregon since May 2014, but [Judge Vance] Day told his staff to tell same-sex couples to find another judge.

Judging from the story, my earlier remarks apply to this clown as well.  Religious convictions do not apply when doing a government job.  If your limited intellect can’t handle the idea of a civil marriage vs a religious marriage, it’s time to settle into retirement and muttering into your beard.

The GOP leadership has not yet chosen to lead on the Iran deal, but instead begin digging into odder options.  First up, Steve Benen reports on one approach:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a struggling presidential candidate, has a very different approach in mind: the Republican senator wants to “strip the IAEA, a United Nations agency, of the U.S. portion of its funding.”

Steve references Politico‘s report:

The 2016 long-shot Republican presidential candidate warned Secretary of State John Kerry this week that unless the White House allows lawmakers to review the agreements forged between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran, he will work to strip the IAEA of U.S. funding.

Politico also reports the US provides around $88 million.  I can’t help but wonder if some other nation would step in to cover the funding if Graham were to succeed with his threat.

Meanwhile, the House GOP caucus has displayed a symptom of what happens when an overly rigid structure comes apart – the destruction is bewildering and unpredictable.  Matt Fuller @ RollCall reports on the House GOP strategy:

House Freedom Caucus members are poised to demand Wednesday that Republican leaders delay a vote on an Iran disapproval resolution until the White House has revealed all “side deals” with Iran.

And if GOP leaders don’t delay the Iran disapproval resolution, HFC members are discussing voting down the rule for the resolution on Wednesday.

Which I take to mean, breaking with the leadership.  Matt further notes,

But the larger issue for members with the Friday vote seems to be the report of “side deals” between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., offered a privileged motion Tuesday for a vote on a resolution that states the House should not act on the Iran nuclear legislation until it receives all “side deals.”

Under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, the president is obligated to send Congress “all related materials and annexes,” and until the president does that, the 60-day clock for a vote on Iran does not start.

So if the GOP House believes materials have been withheld, then the clock hasn’t started.  I suppose this has the potential to end up in court.  Matt finishes with a curious omission:

Delaying a vote now could simply subject Democrats to a prolonged campaign later to change their position on the Iran deal, or perhaps worse, a long-term GOP campaign that the deal should be nullified. If House Republican leaders want to move forward with a vote on the disapproval resolution, Democratic leaders may be inclined to let them.

A delay could also subject GOP legislators to pressure; or to restate it, present an opportunity to lead, rather than follow the rest of the sheep over the cliff.

Steve Benen also has some commentary here.

The Supreme Leader of Iran isn’t making it easy for the GOP to return to the right side of the tracks, as he once again declares for the death of Israel, as reported by many news outlets.  The Times of Israel:

Israel will not survive the next 25 years, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday, making a series of threatening remarks published online.

In a quote posted to Twitter by Khamenei’s official account, Khamenei addresses Israel, saying, “You will not see next 25 years,” and adds that the Jewish state will be hounded until it is destroyed.

The quote comes against a backdrop of a photograph apparently showing the Iranian leader walking on an Israeli flag painted on a sidewalk.

“After negotiations, in Zionist regime they said they had no more concern about Iran for next 25 years; I’d say: Firstly, you will not see next 25 years; God willing, there will be nothing as Zionist regime by next 25 years. Secondly, until then, struggling, heroic and jihadi morale will leave no moment of serenity for Zionists,” the quote from Iran’s top leader reads in broken English.

The quote was apparently taken from a speech given earlier in the day.

I think there’s a couple of interesting facets here.

First, this is a domestic speech, given to a domestic audience which is expecting a bit of red meat.  Khamenei, as noted in this Foreign Affairs article, has been around time and his views of the USA are quite hostile, so an anti-West speech, which includes Israel, is no surprise.

Second, while he is the Supreme Leader, he is supervised by the Council of Experts, who can remove him for cause, so he must keep them happy.

Third, he is a bright guy.  He has to know that inserting a comment about the death of Israel into the world community at this point will stir the GOP up; so the question becomes, why?  What does the leader of Iran see as a gain from a stirred up GOP, United States, and Israel?

The latest in planetary number calculations from NewScientist‘s Jacob Aron (29 August 2015, paywall):

[Peter] Behroozi [of the Space Telescope Science Institute] and his colleague Molly Peeples have combined the latest exoplanet statistics with our understanding of how galaxies form stars. The result is a formula that tracks the growth in the number of planets in the universe over time (arxiv.org/abs/1508.01202).

It suggests there are currently 10²⁰, or 100 billion billion, Earth-like planets in the universe, with an equivalent number of gas giants. “Earth-like” doesn’t mean an exact replica of our planet, but rather a rocky world that, if blanketed by a suitable atmosphere, would hold liquid water on its surface. Applied to the solar system, this definition would include Mars and Venus but not Mercury or the moon.

And that’s just the start. Only a fraction of the gas within all the galaxies in the cosmos has cooled enough to start collapsing, so stars and planets will continue forming for billions of years. That means 92 per cent of the universe’s Earth-like planets won’t exist until long after the sun has died and taken the Earth with it.

“Philosophically, if you want to know our place in the universe as a whole, then you also need to include what will happen in the future,” says Behroozi. “I didn’t expect to find the Earth had formed so early.”

And other civilizations?

Figuring out where we fit in the grand cosmic timeline also gives us an idea of how many other civilisations might be out there. Suppose intelligent life is so rare that Earth is the first planet in the universe to evolve a civilisation – an almost ludicrously conservative assumption. Then the sheer number of future Earth-like planets means that the likelihood of us being the only civilisation the universe will ever have is at most 8 per cent.

If we find just one other inhabited planet in the Milky Way, the number of other such worlds rockets up. Such a discovery, together with the unlikeliness of our galaxy being the only one to host life, would make Earth at least the 10 billionth civilisation in the universe at present.

Enough to make me blink.

Here’s the situation: the Democrats are, including the right wing of the party and those under pressure from a public unversed in foreign relations, rallying behind the Iran deal – only two Democratic Senators have registered opposition to the deal, both heavily involved with Israel.  The current GOP leadership, on the other hand, is united in opposition to the deal, the GOP presidential contenders competing to make outrageous comments in order to catch the attention and votes of the GOP base.  Alone amongst the allies of the USA, Israel stands against the deal.  While some of the Mid East allies are grumpy, even Saudi Arabia has signed on.

But now, as Steve Benen @ Maddowblog notes, the old GOP leadership is showing up for perhaps its last stand – against those who supplanted it.

Because, whether the right likes it or not, the GOP’s elder statesmen keep announcing their support for the diplomatic solution.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell expressed support for the nuclear agreement with Iran, calling the various planks Iranian leaders accepted “remarkable” and dismissing critics’ concerns over its implementation.

“It’s a pretty good deal,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Powell, a veteran of the Bush/Cheney administration and the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, described the provisions of the Iran deal as “remarkable” and praised the “very vigorous verification regime [that] has been put into place.”

PoliticusUSA notes:

“They had stockpiled something in the neighborhood of 12,000 kilograms of uranium. This deal will bring it down to 300 kilograms,” Powell said. “It’s a remarkable reduction. I’m amazed that they would do this this but they have done it.”Putting a finely honed knife to the back of Republican fearmongering about the Iran deal, Powell said, “These are remarkable changes. We have stopped this highway race that they were going down and I think this is very, very important.”

For the finishing blow, Powell took out the Republican argument that we just gave them everything and got nothing, “Will they comply with it? Well, they get nothing until they comply and that’s the important part of the arrangement.”

He joins Brent Snowcroft, and former Senators Richard Lugar and John Warner in supporting the deal – senior members of the GOP who have been shoved aside by the current leadership.  Of course, not all the GOP retirees are in the same boat.  From another Benen article:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to speak today at a D.C. think tank, delivering remarks intended to condemn the international nuclear agreement with Iran. If an ignominious exchange over the weekend was evidence of his expertise, however, Cheney might want to reschedule, brush up on the details, and rethink his approach.

The underlying challenge for the failed former V.P. is the degree to which his own Iran policy failed spectacularly. Iran didn’t have a meaningful nuclear weapons program until Tehran developed one – during the Bush/Cheney administration. At the time, in response to Iran’s nuclear program, the Bush/Cheney administration did nothing – except, of course, strengthen Iran’s regional power by invading Iraq.

Here’s the thing: this is not so much a debate any longer as a display of leadership.  Leadership quite often means grabbing the tether of a bucking horse and leading it where it should go, not where it wants to go.  In this case, the current GOP leadership and the GOP base have convinced themselves that the deal is horrid – while the Democrats do not agree, and the rest of the world, having examined the deal, and in important cases actually signed on, watches in a sort of quiet horror at the antics of the GOP.

Lugar, Snowcroft, Warner, and now Powell are showing how to be a mature political party by setting aside partisan politics at the national border and evaluating events in a proper way – that is, by putting the interests of the nation above party.  By putting honesty above party.  By not being swayed by the cries of the uninformed base, of the commercially motivated pundits with no skin in the game, of the political amateurs currently occupying national seats who fail to realize that “boots on the ground” and other such marketing phrases really mean People Will Die.

Let their be no mistake: the degree to which the GOP Members of Congress choose to support the Iran deal will be a measure of the maturity of the GOP Party.¹

¹And how long after these courageous members of Congress stand up and declare their allegiance is to their country, first, and Party, second, will the wild cries of “RINO” ring out, and soon their skins will hang from the walls of the Party faithful, who will then resume their slack-jawed, drooling wandering through the hallways of Futile Purity?

The Corpse Came C.O.D. was recorded by the Tivo in the last few days, and we watched it.  It’s an uncomfortable melding of a murder mystery and a comedy.  Such things can be done, of course, but this one does not do it well.  It is notable for the many cameos by gossip columnists, if you’re into such things.

Tangential to this thread, Steve Benen discusses the accomplishments of the Obama Administration since the last election cycle:

Indeed, as we talked about a couple of months ago, it’s worth looking back at the political climate in November 2014 – just 10 months ago – in the wake of a very successful election cycle for Republicans.

Because it was at this point that much of the political world simply assumed that the Obama presidency was effectively over. Sure, he’d still be in office, and maybe he’d make a decision or two, but the president’s ability to advance his agenda and rack up major accomplishments had passed. Obama was irrelevant, the argument went. Republicans were ascendant and it was time to start thinking about the 2016 race.Indeed, many expected this precisely because the script for “lame duck” presidents is so familiar, especially following a stinging electoral rebuke.

And yet, here we are. The 2014 midterms are a distant memory; Republicans lack direction and leadership; and the Obama administration has spent the year scoring one victory after another.

Remember, the parties had two very different explanations for what transpired in the last election cycle. For Republicans, GOP candidates won because Americans rejected progressivism. For the White House, voters were irritated with a Beltway that accomplishes nothing. Voters weren’t rejecting liberalism so much as they were expressing contempt for political paralysis.

The president saw no reason to temper his ambitions because as far as Obama’s concerned, he’s delivering on what people want: progress and constructive, effective policymaking.

The mystifying unknown of dark matter, used to explain the movement of faraway galaxies, has begun to annoy some physicists.  NewScientist (22 August 2015, paywall) publishes an article by Sabine Hossenfelder and Naomi Lubick on the matter:

But quarks are quirky. They never float around freely thanks to a peculiar property of the strong nuclear force that binds them. When the distance between quarks is small, the force is weak. But as that distance increases, it gets stronger and the quarks are pulled back together. Another strange quality of the strong force is that it is weaker at high energies, such as those produced in collisions at the LHC. Physicists can calculate how quarks interact at these energies but not at lower ones, where the force keeping quarks together strengthens. As a result, physicists still struggle to explain how quarks form mesons and baryons, a process which occurs at lower energies.

This uncertainty has led to proposals that other forms of matter might exist. As early as the 1980s, Edward Witten, a mathematical physicist at Princeton University, suggested that light quarks could combine with their heavier cousins, such as strange quarks, in unusual ways.

Unlike in ordinary matter, these combinations of quarks would not form atomic nuclei. Instead they would develop into large amorphous blobs, gathering ever more particles in a small space. Witten called them “quark nuggets”. Bryan Lynn, a theoretical physicist at University College London, and others later expanded this to more examples such as “strange baryon matter” and “chiral liquid drops”.

Such exotic clumps of familiar elementary particles would not contain the enormous spaces between atomic nuclei that we see in normal matter. This would make them as dense as neutron stars, a teaspoon of which weighs as much as a mountain. So even though they might be extremely heavy, they could also be tiny. Some researchers have dubbed them “macros” – a reference to the need to measure their masses in kilograms and tonnes rather than the vanishingly small units usually employed for particles.

And because macros are entirely made up of nuclear matter, without any circulating electrons or empty spaces, they would not be capable of sustaining fusion and therefore could not shine. The high density of the clumps would also make them less likely to interact with incoming light. In short, macros would be diminutive, massive and extremely hard to spot, if not entirely invisible.

While it’s not unheard of to theorize about some particle and have it discovered years later, such as the neutrino, dark matter has been somewhat unsatisfying without any signal beyond gravity to show for it, so this alternative has a certain attraction to it – just quarks in some new configurations.  No sign these actually exist, yet, but new tests are being devised and they have not yet been ruled out.

The paradigm of a low-fat, high carb diet is becoming quite wobbly.  Last June, Katherine Martinko @ Treehugger.com reviewed Nina Teicholz’s new book, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet:

Over the ten years she spent researching her book, Teicholz interviewed top nutrition experts in the country, as well as many of the scientists who conducted the studies that remain the cornerstone of mainstream nutritional advice in the United States. She spent years reading the studies in their entirety, not just the abstracts. This effort paid off; she came across many inconsistencies, questionable methods, skewed data, and misleading conclusions. She interviewed people in the nutrition field who have been shunned for not “toeing the official line,” for daring to question whether minimizing saturated fat intake is really the best thing for human bodies.

The Big Fat Surprise reveals a world that is fraught with poor science, loads of industry money, political clout, and bloated egos pushing for specific results that always feature the demonization of fat, particularly saturated. It makes you realize quickly that the food pyramid, as we know it, has very little to do with what’s actually optimal for human health and far more to do with politics.

Now NewScientist (22 August 2015, paywall) carries an opinion piece to much the same effect, if somewhat more moderate.  It’s by Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy, Tufts University, and David Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center:

… by 2000, growing research showed benefits from healthy fats, and harms in low-fat diets high in processed carbohydrates. So in 2005, US guidelines raised the upper fat limit to 35 per cent and, for the first time, set a lower limit of 20 per cent. Few people noticed, and the low-fat craze continued.

Through continued advances in nutrition science, it is now clear that an emphasis on reducing total fat is not only unhelpful, but can be harmful. Whether for weight loss or preventing long-term weight gain, diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer, evidence shows that it brings no clear health gain.

In contrast, meaningful health benefits are documented with high plant fat, Mediterranean-style diets supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts, in which total fat intake makes up more than 40 per cent of calories.

Based on these findings, the US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee omitted a total fat limit in recommendations, ahead of final benchmarks this year.

The US, UK and others should take note. Existing advice is driving consumers and industry towards low-fat products high in refined carbs, sugars and salt; and away from healthy higher-fat foods such as nuts, vegetable oils and whole-fat dairy products.

Note the divergence – Teicholz recommends animal fats, while Mozaffarian and Ludwig still recommend plant-derived fats.  Martinko, the reviewer of Teicholz’s book, notes that

She [Teicholz] goes on to say that, if we returned to eating tallow and lard once again, it could free up much of the agricultural land currently dedicated to growing soybean, rapeseed, cottonseed, safflower, and corn oils.

Which sounds good at first.  I do not know the current fate of tallow and lard – is it treated as waste, or used in another form?  If the former, then maybe some agricultural land could be retired or repurposed; if it’s used in other applications, then I fear that more cattle would need to be raised for slaughter, which would utilize at least the repurposed land, and probably more.

Historically, concerns about saturated fat started with Dr. Ancel Keys, a Mayo and University of Minnesota researcher.  From Wikipedia:

His interest in diet and cardio-vascular disease (CVD) was prompted, in part, by seemingly counter-intuitive data: American business executives, presumably among the best-fed persons, had high rates of heart disease, while in post-war Europe CVD rates had decreased sharply in the wake of reduced food supplies. Keys postulated a correlation between cholesterol levels and CVD and initiated a study of Minnesota businessmen (the first prospective study of CVD).^[25] At a 1955 expert meeting at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Keys presented his diet-lipid-heart disease hypothesis with “his usual confidence and bluntness”.^[26][27]

After observing in southern Italy the highest concentration of centenarians in the world, Keys hypothesized that a Mediterranean-style diet low in animal fat protected against heart disease and that a diet high in animal fats led to heart disease. The results of what later became known as the Seven Countries Study appeared to show that serum cholesterol was strongly related to coronary heart disease mortality both at the population and at the individual level.^[28][29] As a result, in 1956 representatives of the American Heart Association appeared on television to inform people that a diet which included large amounts of butter, lard, eggs, and beef would lead to coronary heart disease. This resulted in the American government recommending that people adopt a low-fat diet in order to prevent heart disease.

I know that recently he was accused of cherry-picking his data.  Dr. McDougall of the newsletter It’s The Food provides a defense of Keys here.

Interestingly enough, Keys was known for following his own advice (or, to reuse a more memorable phrase, eating his own dog food) and made it to the age of 100; his wife to the age of 97.

So, in our minimal discussion (here and here) of the categorization of human (or, at least, American) society, we mentioned and gave a slight definiton of the Educational Sector.  This then lets us read this bit from University of Wisconsin–Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank (from Minnesota Magazine) with perhaps a trifle more clarity:

The top of my list of challenges is trying to figure out how to create financial stability for an institution where our long-term model has included substantial subsidies from the state, and that model is being eroded year after year. The state at the same time wants to continue to demand that we provide the same subsidy to our students, even though they aren’t providing it to us. They want the same low tuition rates for the citizens of the state because that’s good politics and good for the state. Trying to figure out how you make an institution work in the midst of those financial challenges when state dollars have fallen rapidly for the last 15 to 20 years is, to me, the biggest challenge of the big publics. If we could solve that, everything else is pretty minor in comparison.

The unfortunate requirement that education function in the language of the private sector tends to deform its mission, making it more subject to the whims of both the private and public sectors.  This brings up the notion of command and support sectors, where the public and private sectors may be in the former category, while the education and health sectors would reside in the latter.  The basis of compartmentalization would be the degree to which other sectors influence and deform the operationality of the sectors.

The extent of deformation is probably inversely correlated with the efficiency of the sector in accomplishing its purpose.  An example might be the educational system in North Carolina, where, under the banner,

“We’re capitalists, and we have to look at what the demand is, and we have to respond to the demand.”

the higher educational system is suffering major cuts.  While cutting funding is a traumatic event for most concerned, the real problem is that the cuts are under the guidance of representatives of the private and public sectors, not the educational sector.  Their motivations are very different from those of the educational sector, and the chance of a disaster occurring must certainly rise as those motivations are permitted to run rampant in a sector whose goals are not identical to their own; that is, the educational sector is educating the next generation, not attempting to profit from their operations.  Moving such a purpose into the private sector has not been promising, and while we may point at private colleges and universities, these subsist more on alumnae donations, foundations, endowments, as much or more as they do on tuition from students.  These sources are peculiar to the educational sector as they do not fit into the modes of any other sector, with some crossover to the (undefined) health sector.

(I also have to shake my head at the thought that demand is important; this is the thought process of a private sector CEO, not an educator who is thinking of the future of the students, who, for the most part, are young and inexperienced, even if the law now sees them as ‘adults’ – if adults without drinking privileges.  They may demand basket-weaving; they should take classes in foreign languages.  Who should win this discussion?  Strawman, you say?  How about classes in Business vs classes in Ethics?)

So what?  Well, how should education be funded?  Perhaps the private colleges and universities are doing OK, but the public schools are under a lot of stress.  The University of Wisconsin is not alone; from the same article, University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler states,

The clear cause is disinvestment in the University of Minnesota by the state. Our state appropriation was cut dramatically and those dollars were replaced with increased tuition dollars. At the same time, the institution became increasingly efficient. To illustrate, look back 10 years or so and do the following exercise: add together the state appropriation per student and the tuition paid by the student to get a total that is a very rough measure of what it costs to educate a student. That total is 11 percent lower today after accounting for inflation, showing a pretty remarkable improvement in efficiency. But the total state appropriation per student is lower today than it was at the beginning of the century. So what has changed dramatically is who pays the cost. It used to be mostly the state, and now it’s predominantly the student and her family.

It is not unreasonable to suggest that a well-educated citizenry is an asset to the State, to the public sector.  Using that reasonable statement, it’s not difficult to argue that the public sector should fund the educational sector, at least in those institutions we call public universities, as a way of paying for the service of providing a well-educated citizenry.

It would be very good to find a dedicated source.  The gas tax is often guaranteed to be used for upkeep of the road system; something similar, beyond political gimickry, should be developed for the Educational sector.  This would permit the support status of education, which makes it a victim, to be isolated from the undue influence of the private and public sectors.  However, the exact source seems to be beyond me.

Science is a perfect ideal surrounded by imperfect servants, by whom I mean the scientists: poor sensory organs, poor tools, and the occasional dishonest creature makes up the corp.  The results are studies with results defying known science, anomalous results, and the occasional out and out fraud.  These problems are not particularly easy to manage, due to various factors, which I take to include both poor logistical tools as well as egotism and narcissism, and, in the commercial realm, a desire for corporate secrecy.

The advent of computers and then the Internet, however, present an opportunity to emplace procedures ameliorating the imperfections of the servants of science.  But first, an example of the problem, courtesy an anonymous psychologist and The Atlantic:

In the last few years, psychologists have become increasingly aware of, and unsettled by, these problems. Some have created an informal movement to draw attention to the “reproducibility crisis” that threatens the credibility of their field. Others have argued that no such crisis exists, and accused critics of being second-stringers and bullies, and of favoring joyless grousing over important science. In the midst of this often acrimonious debate, [Brian] Nosek has always been a level-headed figure, who gained the respect of both sides. As such, the results of the Reproducibility Project, published today in Science, have been hotly anticipated.

They make for grim reading. Although 97 percent of the 100 studies originally reported statistically significant results, just 36 percent of the replications did.

The original publication in Science is here.  Lisa Feldman Barrett, in the New York Times, disagrees with the perception that there may be a crisis occurring:

But the failure to replicate is not a cause for alarm; in fact, it is a normal part of how science works.

Suppose you have two well-designed, carefully run studies, A and B, that investigate the same phenomenon. They perform what appear to be identical experiments, and yet they reach opposite conclusions. Study A produces the predicted phenomenon, whereas Study B does not. We have a failure to replicate.

Does this mean that the phenomenon in question is necessarily illusory? Absolutely not. If the studies were well designed and executed, it is more likely that the phenomenon from Study A is true only under certain conditions. The scientist’s job now is to figure out what those conditions are, in order to form new and better hypotheses to test. …

Psychologists are usually well attuned to the importance of context. In our experiments, we take great pains to avoid any irregularities or distractions that might affect the results. But when it comes to replication, psychologists and their critics often seem to forget the powerful and subtle effects of context. They ask simply, “Did the experiment work or not?” rather than considering a failure to replicate as a valuable scientific clue.

(h/t Richard Soulen)  And, of course, this can be absolutely true for some fields, and false in others.  However, the point is to detect those studies with flaws in design and execution, and to detect them early.  To this goal, Dr. Nosek is now running the Reproducibility Project.  From the Atlantic article:

… would be the first big systematic attempt to answer questions that have been vexing psychologists for years, if not decades. What proportion of results in their field are reliable?

As Professor Barrett points out, this could be an opportunity to discover new information and follow leads to new discoveries.  But replication of results remains an important facet of science, so this project is important in its own right, not only for psychology, but science in general.  And replication can be used as a criticism, as in this article from NewScientist (22 August 2015, paywall), “Suicidal behaviour predicted by blood test showing gene changes,” which claims tentative evidence that suicide can be predicted from a blood test.  Here’s the criticism:

While mortality linked to physiological conditions like cardiac disease has fallen, suicide rates are at an all-time high across all age groups in the US. In the UK, rates have been rising steadily since 2007, and similar trends are seen in other countries. The desire to have psychiatry benefit from biological advances in the same way as the rest of medicine is why the NIMH has changed its approach. But the shift towards detecting biomarkers by neuroimaging or monitoring gene expression has drawn criticism.

“The NIMH is funding biomarker porn,” says James Coyne of University Medical Center in Groningen, the Netherlands. “It’s airbrushed, heavily edited, and you can’t replicate it at home.”

Coyne’s view is shaped by the small sample sizes used in early mental health biomarker research – something that can be problematic for rare conditions.

An allied problem is publication bias, wherein journals preferentially publish papers which fail to falsify their hypothesis, which means we lose access to knowledge about falsified hypotheses.  This has particularly been a problem in the area of drug development, wherein we have not kept good track of what drugs are not applicable to what conditions – arguably more sheer data than what drug does have an effect on what condition.  Towards resolving this is ClinicalTrials.gov, which enables the registration of studies as well as their results.

Then we can talk about fraud.  Scientific American has a review of a book, On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science (Princeton University Press, 2010), by David Goodstein, containing this fascinating observation:

Knowing that scientists are highly motivated by status and rewards, that they are no more objective than professionals in other fields, that they can dogmatically defend an idea no less vehemently than ideologues and that they can fall sway to the pull of authority allows us to understand that, in Goodstein’s assessment, “injecting falsehoods into the body of science is rarely, if ever, the purpose of those who perpetrate fraud. They almost always believe that they are injecting a truth into the scientific record.” Goodstein should know because his job as the vice provost of Caltech was to investigate allegations of scientific misconduct. From his investigations Goodstein found three risk factors present in nearly all cases of scientific fraud. The perpetrators, he writes, “1. Were under career pressure; 2. Knew, or thought they knew, what the answer to the problem they were considering would turn out to be if they went to all the trouble of doing the work properly; and 3. Were working in a field where individual experiments are not expected to be precisely reproducible.”

And while scientific fraud is a serious matter, I must cite one that makes me laugh, the Columbia University ‘Miracle’ Study of 2004.  From, appropriately enough, Skeptical Inquirer:

On October 2, 2001, the New York Times reported that researchers at prestigious Columbia University Medical Center in New York had discovered something quite extraordinary (1). Using virtually foolproof scientific methods the researchers had demonstrated that infertile women who were prayed for by Christian prayer groups became pregnant twice as often as those who did not have people praying for them. The study was published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine (2). Even the researchers were shocked. The study’s results could only be described as miraculous. This was welcome and wonderful news for a shaken nation.

The upshot?  Bad procedures.  Two authors who backed away and refused to answer questions.  A third who ended up in jail.  Again.

So what?  Don’t we already have “peer-reviewed” journals?  Certainly, but they can only do so much.  From Charles Seife at the L. A. Times:

[Science Magazine] Editor in Chief Marcia McNutt said the magazine was essentially helpless against the depredations of a clever hoaxer: “No peer review process is perfect, and in fact it is very difficult for peer reviewers to detect artful fraud.”

This is, unfortunately, accurate. In a scientific collaboration, a smart grad student can pull the wool over his advisor’s eyes — or vice versa. And if close collaborators aren’t going to catch the problem, it’s no surprise that outside reviewers dragooned into critiquing the research for a journal won’t catch it either. A modern science article rests on a foundation of trust.

So some scientists have feet of clay.  Projects such as the Replication Project function as a way to splash more light onto studies, and whether it’s disinterested scientists performing their duties, or scientists with vendettas, when the subject is out in the light for viewing, it’s just like the encryption community – everything improves.  Using technology to gather up studies in all their details, from data to collection methods to analysis methods to results will certainly help to improve the quality of the studies, IF other scientists are willing to take that information seriously and use it for their own replication attempts.

After all, scientists don’t reinvent the wheel; they stand on the shoulders of those who already did.