Sunday, August 26th, 2012
TIMOTHY EGAN, - The New York Times
Stephan: This is willful ignorance, this is what we are faced with in the government's leadership, and the potential effect it may have on your life can hardly be overstated.
The tutorial in 8th grade biology that Republicans got after one of their members of Congress went public with something from the wackosphere was instructive, and not just because it offered female anatomy lessons to those who get their science from the Bible.
Take a look around key committees of the House and you’ll find a governing body stocked with crackpots whose views on major issues are as removed from reality as Missouri’s Representative Todd Akin’s take on the sperm-killing powers of a woman who’s been raped.
On matters of basic science and peer-reviewed knowledge, from evolution to climate change to elementary fiscal math, many Republicans in power cling to a level of ignorance that would get their ears boxed even in a medieval classroom. Congress incubates and insulates these knuckle-draggers.
Let’s take a quick tour of the crazies in the House. Their war on critical thinking explains a lot about why the United States is laughed at on the global stage, and why no real solutions to our problems emerge from that broken legislative body.
We’re currently experiencing the worst drought in 60 years, a siege of wildfires, and the hottest temperatures since records were kept. But to Republicans in Congress, it’s […]
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Saturday, August 25th, 2012
Stephan: This is not a new story, but I am publishing it because I got two emails from readers asking about this topic. Religion and spirituality are not one and the same. Indeed, they often have little or nothing to do with one another. The failure to make this distinction is the source of endless difficulties.
More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea — one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery — for ‘spiritual atheist’ scientists.
The research will be published in the June issue of Sociology of Religion.
Through in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at elite universities, the Rice researchers found that 72 of the scientists said they have a spirituality that is consistent with science, although they are not formally religious.
‘Our results show that scientists hold religion and spirituality as being qualitatively different kinds of constructs,’ said Elaine Howard Ecklund, assistant professor of sociology at Rice and lead author of the study. ‘These spiritual atheist scientists are seeking a core sense of truth through spirituality — one that is generated by and consistent with the work they do as scientists.’
For example, these scientists see both science and spirituality as ‘meaning-making without faith’ and as an individual quest for meaning that can never be final. According to the research, they find spirituality congruent with science and separate from religion, because of that quest; where spirituality is […]
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Saturday, August 25th, 2012
Jeanne Lenzer JEANNE LENZER, - Slate
Stephan: I wouldn't quit taking my meds, but I would take this in to my physician and have a conversation.
A new study is turning decades of medical dogma on its head. A panel of independent experts reports this week that drugs used to treat mild cases of high blood pressure have not been shown to reduce heart attacks, strokes, or overall deaths.
Most of the 68 million patients in the United States with high blood pressure have mild, or Stage 1, hypertension, defined as a systolic (top number) value of 140-159 or a diastolic (bottom number) value of 90-99. The new review suggests that many patients with hypertension are overtreated-they are subjected to the possible harms of drug treatment without any benefit.
The study was conducted by the widely respected Cochrane Collaboration, which provides independent analyses of medical data. The ‘independent
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Saturday, August 25th, 2012
PAUL KRUGMAN, Nobel Laureate and Op-ed Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: I read both of Ayn Rand's major books - Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead -- when I was 19 and thought, at the time, that she must be a psychotic with major control and power issues. It astonished me that so many people actually took her seriously. Years later I became very good friends with Nathaniel Branden her onetime lover and for many years, before his own disillusionment, her leading spokesperson. I asked Nathaniel, whom I both liked and respected, what he had found so beguiling. I confess after his explanation it still didn't make any sense to me. Objectivism is such obvious nonsense. I place it as the antipode to Marx's Das Kapital. Both of them theoretical works written by people who hadn't a clue what real life was about -- and who were utter hypocrites to boot. It tells me more about Paul Ryan than I want to know that he remains enthrall to Rand, and the idea that a Vice President of the United States would be influenced by her I find quite scary.
So far, most of the discussion of Paul Ryan, the presumptive Republican nominee for vice president, has focused on his budget proposals. But Mr. Ryan is a man of many ideas, which would ordinarily be a good thing.
In his case, however, most of those ideas appear to come from works of fiction, specifically Ayn Rand’s novel ‘Atlas Shrugged.
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Saturday, August 25th, 2012
PATRICIA DONOVAN, - Guttmacher Institute
Stephan:
Recent studies indicate that at least half of all babies born to minor women are fathered by adult men.1 In addition, there is a widespread perception that these young mothers account for the large increase in welfare caseloads over the last 25 years. As a result, a growing number of policymakers are embracing the notion that adolescent pregnancy rates can be lowered and welfare costs reduced if states more rigorously enforce statutory rape laws prohibiting sex ual intercourse between adults and minors.
In the last year, several states have taken steps to punish men who violate these laws. Meanwhile, the new federal welfare law urges that ‘states and local jurisdictions…aggressively enforce statutory rape laws’ and requires state welfare plans to outline an education and training program for law enforcement officials, counselors and educators that focuses on ‘the problem of statutory rape.’ It also directs the attorney general to implement a program to study the connection between statutory rape and adolescent pregnancy, with particular attention to ‘predatory older men.’2
Concerns about statutory rape are particularly acute in regard to the youngest adolescents. Although relatively small proportions of 13-14-year-olds have had intercourse,* those who become sexually active at an early age are especially likely […]
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