Heaving Dead Cats » politics

Tell Your Representative to Stand Up For Fact-Based Education

Neece — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 01:47:04 +0000

What a concept. Fact-based education. Why are we fighting for this in the 21st century? I have no idea, but the fact is, it’s a big issue here in the United States. I don’t often meddle in political issues unless there’s a positive action you can take. The Secular Coalition for America makes it easy to contact your state representatives on certain important issues.

Here’s a 4:36 minute video and information you need. Then just go HERE to send letters to your state reps through the Secular Coalition For America. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Texas State Board of Education’s moves to impose educational standards into its textbooks intended to indoctrinate Texas public school students with a telling of U.S. history that is based in extremist religious ideology.

You’ve probably also heard about some of the more jaw-dropping proposed changes to the curriculum, such as booting Thomas Jefferson off of a list of influential thinkers in place of explicitly religious figures, and the totally fabricated assertion that our system of government is based specifically on the laws of Moses. This comes from the same group of theocrats who famously fought to undermine evolution in science classes and delete from science textbooks the scientific consensus on the age of the universe because they conflict with the Bible.

As terrible as this religious imposition is for Texas students, all Americans have reason to fear. Due to the size of the Texas textbook market (and because other highly populated states do not use statewide textbook contracts in the say way), the backward dictates of its theocratic school board effect textbooks used by public school students all across the country.

Someone in Congress is finally standing up to this abuse of power and unconstitutional overreach by the religious extremists on the Texas State Board of Education. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (T-DX) recently introduced a resolution (H. Res. 1593) that supports fact-based curricula in public schools without meddling by those with an avowed religious agenda. Students in Texas and all across America need to know that Congress wants them to have an education based on facts and science, not myth and religious bias.

TAKE ACTION NOW: Watch the video message above from Secular Coalition for America Executive Director Sean Faircloth supporting Rep. Johnson’s resolution, and then tell your member of Congress to become a co-sponsor.

Unexpected Friendship With A Palin Lover

Neece — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:04:49 +0000

Sometimes you can learn something when you least expect it.

My sister-in-law (we’ll call her Martha) has been dating this guy who we’ll call Steve. I met him the night that she and Steve were reacquainted at the high school reunion last year. It was one of those big affairs where 10 years of classes were invited. Anyway she and Steve have basically been dating ever since. She hasn’t had the best luck with guys in the past but she’s head over heels in love with him and is very happy, which is good.

The night I met Steve, I mentioned to him that I was reading a great book called Microcosm: E. Coli and the New Science of Life. It’s a fantastic book that I highly recommend. Butch was there and chimed in that it’s all about evolution, which it is, in a very cool, observable way. Steve rolled his eyes and scoffed. Scoffed! I didn’t want to get into it since we were heading home but I immediately found myself feeling cold toward him.

So, when Martha brought Steve to a family BBQ the next day I was polite but really didn’t have anything to say to him. He seemed nice enough though.

Time went on and I learned from him that he likes Sarah Palin. He thinks she’s got some good ideas. (I think I just threw up a little in my mouth there) Martha told me he’s a full on conservative republican but that they don’t talk about politics. As I do with most people, I was also refraining from political – or religious – talk with him as well.

To this day we’ve stayed clear of those two topics. But we’ve gone out to dinner quite a few times, hung out at family gatherings, and he even invited us over to watch some MMA on a channel we don’t get next month (Woot!) He’s a genuinely nice guy. He’s not stupid by any means, can hold a conversation, has a good sense of humor, and seems to be making Martha extremely happy.

Why am I talking about this? Well, to me, Sarah Palin is a stupid, vapid pentecostal nutcase with only enough brain cells to rub together to help her wink and flap her mouth when someone pulls her puppet strings. The fact that people give her 2 seconds of their time, combined with her views on Armageddon and the end times, makes her extremely dangerous. Usually when confronted with someone who likes Palin, I run the other way.

But this time, because I wanted Martha to be happy, I got to know Steve and found that I genuinely like him. I don’t want to talk about politics or religion with him, but I like the guy.

It leads me to wonder, are the vast majority of republicans and christians more like Steve? Are they relatively nice people who are not stupid, or even smart? Good, honest people who are just misguided in politics because of how they were raised or values they got from church?

Have the vocal minority that I see on tv or the interwebs overshadowed the quiet majority that encompasses Steve? Do the vocal minority give people like him a bad name? Or is that bad reputation well earned even for Steve?

And does it matter? I mean, if people like Steve would happily vote for Palin because of her “good ideas and folksy charm” doesn’t that make him a serious part of the problem, even if he’s a relatively nice guy?

Here’s another question. Are Steve and I going about this the right way? By eschewing political and religious debates and arguments, are we missing an opportunity? I don’t think so.

Sometimes the best way is to lead by example. We each know where the other is coming from, and he’s shown me that there are nice republican christians out there, something I wasn’t too sure of before. Maybe he has learned that atheists aren’t so bad by hanging out with Butch and I. Maybe that’s better than a bunch of heated arguments pitting reason against dogma, or republican conservatism against whatever the hell I am. Those arguments would never change the other’s mind, but would certainly strain or break the friendship we’ve developed.

Your thoughts?

Australia’s New Prime Minister is Not Religious!

Neece — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:33:12 +0000

My friend Kevin lives in Australia and sent me a message this morning about their new prime minister Down Under. Julia Gillard is the first female prime minister of Australia, AND this is what she says about her personal life:

Gillard has never married or had children. Her partner since 2006, Tim Mathieson, is a hairdresser. Gillard said through a spokeswoman that she was a “non-practising Baptist” and “not religious”. She is tolerant of public interest in her personal life, stating that “People want to know who you are, the shape of your life. That is legitimate.”

Very interesting! Australia has voted in a woman who is Not Religious! How did that happen? That’s wonderful! She is the first person in high politics I’ve ever heard of who has said that.

Let’s hope she does a great job and that other “non-religious” politicians follow suit and run for high offices and succeed. I wonder if we could ever get that far here in America? Wow, I’m really reaching for the stars now!

Good luck, Julia. I hope you do great things in your run as prime minister.

Logical Fallacies in Advertising

Neece — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:29:18 +0000

Awhile ago I wrote about Advertisements and Logical Fallacies. It was basically just an overview, but this time I thought I’d list some of the actual fallacies in advertising. No matter where we go, we’re bombarded with advertising and marketing. While companies have to follow the letter of the law and be “truthful” there are loopholes and ways to avoid following the spirit of the law.

This is part of a series on Logical Fallacies.

People are highly suggestible. That’s just the way it is. I’m a skeptic and I still fall prey to suggestibility. Usually I catch myself and then put on my critical thinking cap, but it happens to the best of us. The fact that companies (anyone using a marketing campaign, including governments) go out of their way to trick us into buying their stuff, meaning that more than ever we have to be critical thinkers in our everyday lives.

Ad Hominem: often used in political campaigns where some character flaw is brought up. If it doesn’t have anything to do with their ability to do their job, it’s irrelevant, and therefore a logical fallacy.

Appeal to Emotion: any emotion can be exploited. If they manipulate your feelings of sympathy, sexuality, anger, fear, love, pity, pride, flattery, wishful thinking, ignorance, etc., the company then snags you. You make a decision based on that feeling. No logic or real benefit is addressed. This is a type of Red Herring.

The Bandwagon: everyone else is doing it or buying it so you should too. But that is irrelevant. Even if 99 people in 100 buy X toothpaste, it doesn’t mean X toothpaste is a good product. It just means the company is good at marketing. Do your research!

False Dilemma: The either-or fallacy: Only two options are given when in fact others are there but not mentioned. This is black and white thinking. A company makes it sound like you have to choose between one of two extremes, and their product or service is the only choice you could make because the other is awful. In fact usually there is a range of choices or a continuum of how the situation works, not just the two extremes. And they may not even be mutually exclusive as shown.

Appeal to Fear: An appeal to emotion, this is common in politics and marketing. Deception and propaganda are used in an attempt to increase your fear and prejudice toward the competitor. The False Dilemma is implied, because if A is scary then B is offered as your only alternative.

Hasty Generalization: Making a decision based on insufficient evidence. Often there is a broad conclusion using statistics of a small group even thought it fails to represent the whole population.

Red Herring: A diversionary tactic. Bringing an argument up in response to another argument which does not address the real issue. Usually there is an appeal to emotion in there as well. There are many kinds of red herring arguments. Some used in advertising would be Appeal to Tradition, Style over Substance, Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy, Appeal to Authority, and many more.

Appeal to Tradition: An idea is deemed correct based on the correlation with some past or present tradition. Basically, this is right because it’s always been done this way. Two assumptions are made: the old way of thinking was proven correct when it was introduced (when in fact this may be false), and the past justifications for the tradition are still valid at present (but the circumstances may have changed).

Appeal to Authority: Saying something is true because a perceived authority figure says it’s true. This is the opposite of the ad hominem argument because the arguer is appealing to positive characteristics of the person to support their argument. A classic example is a person in a lab coat. The person is probably an actor, but they appear to be a scientist so whatever they say must be true. Another example is a business suit. If someone has a nice suit on, it doesn’t mean they are experts at anything.

Information IS Beautiful!

Neece — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:26:42 +0000

Stumbling around the interwebs, I found a site that I think you might love. It’s called Information is Beautiful. David McCandless takes all kinds of data and ideas and visualizes it in appealing ways.

The one I found that I thought was amazing was Snake Oil?: Scientific evidence for popular health supplements. (That link takes you to the interactive version. See the static version here.) On the side is a show me button that flies out a list of uses and types of supplements. Choose what you’re interested in to filter the results. The bigger the bubble, the more popular the supplement is. The higher on the chart, the more evidence there is that it works. Notice how many bubbles are below the Worth It line. Remember, the supplements are only good for the conditions listed inside the bubble, which you can see by hovering over it.

What David says about the evidence:

We only considered large, human, randomized placebo-controlled trials in our data scrape – wherever possible. No animal trials. No cell studies. Many of the health claims made by the $23 billion supplements industry are based on non-human trials. We wanted to cut through that.

This piece was doggedly researched by myself, and researchers Pearl Doughty-White and Alexia Wdowski. We looked at the abstracts of over 1500 studies on PubMed (run by US National Library Of Medicine) and Cochrane.org (which hosts meta-studies of scientific research). It took us several months to seek out the evidence – or lack of.

The information is generated from a Google Doc, so when new research comes out it can be easily updated. Very cool indeed. The data has web addresses to the source of the research so you can see it for yourself. It’s not just anecdotal evidence.

David also has a chart on caffeine and calories. He even shows how much exercise it will take to work off that large iced mocha you had for breakfast.

He does two interesting charts about politics. The Left vs the Right. A world version and an American version. These are chock full of information.

His 2012 chart is also great. The left describes the believers, the right describes the skeptics, with information refuting what the believers say. Sources are listed at the bottom, and are available in a Google Doc.

His climate change chart shows global warming deniers vs the scientific consensus.

He has many more on his site as well. That’s just a few of my favorites.

Your Two Cents About the Faith Based Initiative Program

Neece — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:20:46 +0000

The Secular Coalition of America sent me a request a few minutes ago, asking me to write a letter to Obama about the Faith Based Initiative Program. I pretty much keep my nose out of politics, but I thought I’d pass this along because I firmly believe in the Separation of Church and State as my God Given Right!

Seriously, this country was founded on the incredibly important idea of religion and politics being separate. If you want to see a country where there is no separation, just go to Iran. I’m pretty sure they are a theocracy. Don’t hold me to that, though. My world politics skills have never been very sharp.

Anyway, I think letter writing campaigns work best when the people or organization targeted gets absolutely inundated from all over the place with the same request. Here is what the Secular Coalition for America says:

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama promised to abide by “a few basic principles” that would protect the constitutional separation of church and state in his plan for an expanded faith based initiative program. He was specific: “First, if you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them – or against the people you hire – on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs.”

On February 5, 2009 President Obama issued his Executive Order establishing his Faith Based Intiative program. Twelve months later at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama claimed that his administration had “turned the faith-based initiative around” from its misuse during the Bush administration. But it appears the only thing President Obama has changed about how millions of federal dollars are spent is that the office guiding the direct funding of houses of worship is now called the “White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships” rather than the “Office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives.” Twelve months, Two words. That’s not a turn around, it’s a re-branding.

Go Here to Send a Letter to Obama through the Secular Coalition of America. Hey, maybe if enough of us say something it might just make a difference.The Secular Coalition for America has called for reform and oversight of the Office and the agencies that it oversees for years. Government reports and hearings have documented the constitutional problems and gross abuses rampant in this program, but a year later all Americans continue to have their federal dollars used for government-condoned religious discrimination, while reforms to prohibit proselytizing in these purportedly secular social service programs have still not been enacted.

No law is required to fix this – simply the stroke of a Presidential pen.

America’s Founding Fathers strongly believed in a clear separation between church and state. They gave us a Constitution that forbids government to support or oppose any religion, leaving Americans free to follow their own consciences when it comes to matters of faith. In the words of the First Amendment, government shall make “no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”

Churches and other houses of worship are free to spread their beliefs. But they are expected to raise their own funds through the voluntary contributions of the faithful. Taxation to support religion and religious endeavors was forbidden under the Founders’ constitutional framework. No American should be compelled through taxation to subsidize any religion. Twelve months, Two words.

I will resist the urge to climb up on my tallest soapbox and rail against the machine and leave you with another lolcat lolbear.

JFK Had the Right Idea

Johnny — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:19:31 +0000

I stumbled upon a transcript on the National Public Radio site awhile-back. It was a speech made by John F. Kennedy in 1960, given to a group of Protestant ministers a few months before the election. JFK was a devout Catholic, but he was also had a solid understanding of the separation of church and state; this speech has some excellent excerpts that exemplify this. JFK was the first Catholic elected president, and during the elections other religious groups (primarily the Protestant group) were concerned about rumors that he would send an ambassador to the Vatican and be taking direction from the Pope. As it turned-out, it was Reagan who established the first ambassador to the Vatican in 1984.

So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again not what kind of church I believe in — for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

If only politicians today would take this view, instead of attacking that wall of separation.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

Truly he was a politician who understood the founding of our county; for although beliefs of our founding fathers may have varied, they knew that the success of the nation depended upon religious freedom, and to have religious freedom you must have separation of church and state.

You can find the full speech transcript on NPR’s site.

Heaving Dead Cats » politics

Tell Your Representative to Stand Up For Fact-Based Education

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Unexpected Friendship With A Palin Lover

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Australia’s New Prime Minister is Not Religious!

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Logical Fallacies in Advertising

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Your Two Cents About the Faith Based Initiative Program

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JFK Had the Right Idea

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