Ryan Somma on Lisa Nowak
It was comforting to know that someone like Lisa Nowak, who represents the best of the best of the best, can be driven to dramatic, irrational acts for love.
Memes in the Watson category “/law, govt and politics/politics”
121–140 of 151
The Argonauts
You are part of a scientifc techno-progressive movement that seeks to solve transhumanity’s injustices and inequalities with technology. You support universal access to technology and healthcare, open source models of production, morphological freedom, and democratization. You try to avoid factionalism and divisive…
Malthus > Darwin > Marx
In 1800 Thomas Malthus, later professor of political economics of the East India Company College, was the first human in history to receive a comprehensively complete inventory of the world's vital and economic statistics. The accuracy of the pre-Trafalgar 1800 inventory was verified by a similar world inventory taken…
America is Naturally Anti-Science
In the end, politics is about story. Robert McKee, Hollywood's master of storytelling, views the world from the top of America's other great cultural export—its movies. "1 think that the American ethos is not science-friendly and never has been," he says. "The American model is Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Guys who…
Post Modernism Leads to Totalitarianism
There is objective truth to be learned by observation, and the knowledge gained gives power that other "ways of knowing" have not. But the more dangerous problem with postmodernist thinking is its a priori nature. Not truth, but a political goal has to be served—in this particular case the goal of openness, or…
Kuhn's Explanation of Scientific Revolutions as Post-Modernism
The politics the book ascribed to science resonated closely with prevailing attitudes. Scientists ("the Man") resist new (baby boomer) ideas, clinging to old (Western white male), outdated theories even as the evidence they are being willfully blind to accumulates (discrimination) like energy in an electron until it…
The Anti-Relativity Movement
America's embrace of Einstein stood in stark contrast to the treatment he was getting at home. Right-wing relativity deniers, like modern American climate science deniers, mounted ad hominem attacks against Einstein and his theory, which they loudly branded a "hoax." They were led by an engineer named Paul Weyland…
Science is Libertarian
In the wake of the Bush presidency, the already-clear rift between the two dominant perspectives on the right—the small-government libertarians/anarchists and the theocratic fundamentalists—began to grow even wider. Far more than the conservative or liberal philosophy, it is who wins the argument between…
The Purpose of Sleeping
If sleeping and dreaming do not perform vital biological functions, then they must represent nature's most stupid blunder and most colossal waste of time.
Inquiry Must be Free
There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. ... Our political life is also predicated on openness. We know that the only way to avoid error…
How Science Really Works
It is often held that scientific hypotheses are constructed, and are to be constructed, only after a detailed weighing of all possible evidence bearing on the matter, and that then and only then may one consider, and still only tentatively, any hypotheses. This traditional view however, is largely incorrect, for not…
The Second Law of Thermodynamics
There is only one law of Nature—the second law of thermodynamics—which recognises a distinction between past and future more profound than the difference of plus and minus. It stands aloof from all the rest. ... It opens up a new province of knowledge, namely, the study of organisation; and it is in connection with…
It is Wrong to Compare Man's Pettiness to the Majesty of the Universe
It has become a cheap intellectual pastime to contrast the infinitesimal pettiness of man with the vastnesses of the stellar universes. Yet all such comparisons are illicit. We cannot compare existence and meaning; they are disparate. The characteristic life of a man is itself the meaning of vast stretches of…
Political Arguments Cannot be Religious
Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I…
The Need to Get Off Foreign Oil
New technologies are advancing to the marketplace. but consumers can be wary of change. If they unequivocally demand alternatives to gasoline, for example, the marketplace will be activated, but ±ere is plenty of resistance to overcome. Recently, the president of Shell Oil, John Hoffmeister, expressed his views on…
The Political Environmental Conundrum
Action regarding the environment requires objectivity, precision, accuracy, validity, replication, constructive criticism, and consensus. Scientists, engineers, and economists have to stay focused on putting accurate data into the hands of decision makers, while they explain their findings to the public, which, in the…
Sciences are Monuments Devoted to the Public Good
Moreover, the sciences are monuments devoted to the public good; each citizen owes to them a tribute proportional to his talents. While the great men, carried to the summit of the edifice, draw and put up the higher floors, the ordinary artists scattered in the lower floors, or hidden in the obscurity of the…
The One Piece of Dogmatism Allowed the Scientist
It is the business of science to offer rational explanations for all the events in the real world, and any scientist who calls on God to explain something is falling down on his job. This applies as much to the start of the expansion as to any other event. If the explanation is not forthcoming at once, the scientist…
Clarification of the Term "Vestigial"
Opponents of evolution always raise the same argument when vestigial traits are cited as evidence for evolution. “The features are not useless,” they say. “They are either useful for something, or we haven’t yet discovered what they’re for.” They claim, in other words, that a trait can’t be vestigial if it still has a…
The Monarchy Paradox
There is something exceedingly ridiculous in the composition of monarchy; it first excludes a man from the means of information, yet empowers him to act in cases where the highest judgment is required. The state of a king shuts him from the world, yet the business of a king requires him to know it thoroughly…