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POPSWhy I am an atheist - Dave H There is nothing that religion can accomplish that cannot be accomplished without it. But there is much religion causes that we can do without.
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POPSAtmospheric Scientist's thoughts on CO2
Examiner: Stephen Schneider recently co-authored a paper published in PNAS exploring the level of expertise found in scientists who support the consensus position on climate change compared to those who do not agree with the consensus. What is your reaction to this paper? J.C. I was one of only three scientists who made both the "good guy" and the "bad guy" lists. Quite an honor I suppose. However, I think the study was pathetic. It basically says, "Those of us who agree with each other like to cite the work of our friends and not the other guys." Duh. (One of my fellow scientists calls this "tribalism" - an appropriately primitive description.) I think the more sinister motive was evident in that the paper chided the media, such at the SF Chronicle, to stop investigative-reporting and just "trust us" (the guys on the "good guys" list) when it comes to climate change. It really was an attempt to make a blacklist. In that sense, I guess I ended up being gray...
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POPSMust Read: Scathing Critique on Obama's Incompetence 
..... Iran sees how North Korea toys with Obama and continues its programs to develop nuclear weapons and missiles; Cuba spurns America's offers of a greater opening; and the Palestinians and Israelis find that it is U.S. policy positions that defer serious negotiations, the direct opposite of what the Obama administration hoped for. The reviews of Obama's performance have been disappointing. He has seemed uncomfortable in the role of leading other nations, and often seems to suggest there is nothing special about America's role in the world. The global community was puzzled over the pictures of Obama bowing to some of the world's leaders and surprised by his gratuitous criticisms of and apologies for America's foreign policy under the previous administration of George W. Bush. One Middle East authority, Fouad Ajami, pointed out that Obama seems unaware that it is bad form and even a great moral lapse to speak ill of one's own tribe while in the lands of others.
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POPS Welcome to Mr. Obama's Fascist America Mr. Obama is fracturing America. He is calling on the primacy of race and gender in order to perpetuate his national socialist revolution. He is championing a revanchist tribalism - the politics of grievance and racial victimology that undermines our common national identity. Just like his old pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Mr. Obama is an anti-American, virulent race-baiter. Modern liberal identity politics is rooted in fascist doctrine. The most influential philosopher of the 20th century was Martin Heidegger. His 1927 classic work, "Being and Time," is widely acknowledged as profoundly influencing Western thought - especially the academic left and its embrace of postmodernism. It's the very culture from which Mr. Obama - by his own admission - comes. The German thinker developed the theory of the primacy of race, blood and group identity in a secular, relativistic world. Heidegger rejected eternal Judeo-Christian principles of moral absolutes. http://bit.ly/c4orbX
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POPSA Mighty Pale NewsPaper lol, how funny is it when the 'token' black dude at this rag tries to denigrate a fellow black dude for being in the minority at a tea party? Freakin hilarious I'd say!
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POPS Castles Built on Sand chip away at the fortress walls of secrecy about temperature data, Terence Corcoran (http://bit.ly/7wwlwo) refers to the second leg of the IPCC thesis - that is after the physical science was supposedly settled. This focused on social and economic solutions to the supposed global warming problem, and required wider scientific expertise to formulate and validate models whose complexities and unknowns rivalled those of trying to predict the weather decades hence. Only four scenarios were developed, called A1, B1, A2, and B2. In the 1998 draft, the A1 scenario is called the Golden Economic Age. It describes a period of “rapid and successful economic development,” brought on by the economic structures that have been successful in the past: free markets, global free trade, innovation. “Free trade enables each region to access knowledge, technology, and capital to best deploy its respective comparative economic and human advantages.”
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POPS"The Big Cutoff:" Another Climate Email Exposed Andy: Copenhagen prostitutes? Climate prostitutes? Shame on you for this gutter reportage. This is the second time this week I have written you thereon, the first about giving space in your blog to the Pielkes. The vibe that I am getting from here, there and everywhere is that your reportage is very worrisome to most climate scientists. Of course, your blog is your blog. But, I sense that you are about to experience the 'Big Cutoff' from those of us who believe we can no longer trust you, me included. Copenhagen prostitutes? Unbelievable and unacceptable. What are you doing and why? Michael What is he doing? He's reporting facts. Professor Schlesinger ought to give it a try and see if it suits him.
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POPSThe Dead Elephant in the Afghanistan Room What prevents women from being safe, asserting human rights in Afghanistan? It's the really obvious dead elephant in the room that everyone is trying to pretend does not smell up the whole place - it is the US and NATO war against who/what? Tribalism, war lords, terrorists, Taliban?
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POPSThe power structure of Bronze Age societies was based on social networks I actually find this demonstration highly important and pertinent to our modern day situation on the web. It appears that evolution of civilization favors a society organized around the tribal concept (our modern day equivalent being the loosely knitted, groups or indeed tribes on the social networks). It seems that the future heralds a return to tribalism on a global scale via the web.
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POPSAnother View Earlier I clipped the TED video about this movement. Here's another take on this issue. I'm on the fence somewhat with this. On one hand, finding a way to reach fundamentalists and attempt to weaken their message seems like a good idea even if it doesn't address the problems with religion as a whole. Then we have Myer's take on this here which is much more antagonistic. Which will have more of an impact? I honestly don't know.
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POPSWhy Your Boss Is White, Middle-class And A Show-off A very nice study! Pointing just to the point of how things have not changed since men appeared. The more we will not attend to it, individually and otherwise, the more the gaps in relation to the advancement in technology and philosophy... will widen.
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POPSThe Illusion That Is Barack Obama For all his Camelot-like rhetoric, Obama is a product, in significant measure, of the political culture that Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass described as "The Chicago Way" At no point did Obama, the would-be saviour of US politics, challenge this corruption, except for face-saving gestures as a legislator. Emil Jones, the machine-made president of the Senate, allowed him to sponsor a minor ethics bill. In return, Obama made sure to send plenty of pork to Jones's district. When asked about pork-barrel spending, Jones famously replied: "Some call it pork; I call it steak." Obama repaid the generosity. When he had a chance to back clean Democratic candidates for president of the Cook County board of supervisors and Illinois governor, he stayed with the allies of the Outfit. In the Illinois Senate, he made a specialty of voting present. Obama is such a down-the-line partisan that, in the past two years he has voted with the Democrats more often than did the party's majority lea
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POPSRace and politics Portside columnist Richard Cohen was first to raise the issue of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack's spiritual mentor, whose magazine last year declared that Louis Farrakhan "epitomized greatness." Minister Farrakhan, Cohen reminded his readers, "has reviled Jews in a manner that brings Hitler to mind." This was the old one-two to the midsection. Publicizing the Wright-Farrakhan ties alarmed Jewish voters backing Barack, while African-Americans, many of whom admire Farrakhan as a defiant black man, saw Barack as dissing a brother on the orders of the white liberal establishment. Last weekend, The New York Times gave page-one coverage to the Farrakhan-Wright matter and Jewish concerns about Obama's ties to Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, said the Times helpfully, is "loathed by many Jews. The liberals are playing the race card on each other, and showing real proficiency.
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POPSTribalism, Violence and Poverty The suggestion is that people being ruthlessly exploited by an appeal to their traditional loyalties will, in times of confusion and suffering, shelter first in their family, then in their 'tribe'.
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POPSDefining Bigotry I grew up in the South but thankfully, because of my immigrant parents, was spared the narrow mindedness of my neighbors. Falwells's death is newsworthy because he was able to fashion a coalition of ethnocentric, homophobic, misogynistic like minded bigots. I shed no tears for him on his death. There are legions waiting to take his place. My optimism gives me hope that his death signals the passing of an era marked by suspicion, fear, and tribalism. But I'm not holding my breath.
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POPSMother's day 2007 It's time for a world shift in thinking. Mothers are half of the equation of grief that comes to families stricken with the absurdity of wars. We need to put aside our tribalism and pride. We need to adopt a culture of empathy and social responsibility. We must cast off narrow views of sectarianism. A life lost is a tragedy. War is a lack of imagination.
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POPSAre we born to be racist? Computer modelling shows that being groupist is the best strategy. I wrote this post after reading a fascinating, thought-provoking New Scientist article about the implications of this for racism, which I think merits discussion. If we're inclined to be groupist, I propose that "looks like me" is the obvious grouping method and as skin colour is the most obvious feature - that's why we may be genetically predisposed to be racist.
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