Resurrection

I stopped blogging a long time back on this site. A main reason I did so is my desire to move into full-time employment and not offend any potential employers or customers/clients. Another reason I did so is that my views when I started writing here have softened over the years. I have been using Twitter for a few years now, and since I'm back in grad school I've decided to temporarily exhume the corpse of this blog in order to access its contents and merge in my Twitter feed with it.

Update 8/24/19:

My Twitter: @sdanielm
I now (occasionally) write at this site: non serviam ergo fiat lux
my personal web space: Steven Daniel Morgan

New public blogsite

*UPDATE* I'm going to have to leave the new site private for a few weeks as I go through and ensure that I didn't miss anything in making it anonymous. I expect to do little to no posting in the interim. You can bookmark the new page though for the future and subscribe to its RSS feed.

Theists and IQ

I've made it clear before that I don't think atheists are simply smarter than theists, or that theism is indicative of a low IQ.

I was joking around last week with the head football coach at my school (one of the two people at my school I've dialogued with on atheism) when I said, "I wouldn't mind if my wife left me for Tim Tebow," and he replied, "But then your kid would be raised a theist!" Completely unfazed, I replied, "Oh no, because my son would still have my genes and therefore a very high IQ and thus would never buy into that nonsense." I said it as a joke, but I know some people would take it seriously, although I know he didn't.

When some people ask me if I could ever believe in God again, I try to use Santa as an analogy. Not that I'm saying that I think god-belief is comparable to Santa-belief, but rather that when we learn about Santa's nonexistence through our own experience (seeing mom and dad buying toys or putting them together on Christmas morning) we are so completely deconverted from the belief that we would have to see comparable positive evidence to outweigh the negative evidence we've witnessed. In other words, I might believe in Santa again if he lands on my roof with his magic reindeer and flies off into the night in front of me. Ditto with God.

My experiences with witnessing human suffering are on the scale that I just simply cannot believe in any sort of powerful benevolent Being. If the problem of evil has some satisfactory solution (I don't think it does) then perhaps I could reconsider it, but I think all that would do is clear the logical obstacle that I think exists to prevent god-belief. In order to actually give me a reason to believe (rather than the capacity to do so) I think would actually require a burning bush or something just as dramatic in my own life.

Don't hold your breath waiting...God's propensity for all that miraculous stuff just so happened to go out of style around the time that technology started developing to record it.

It's great to be a Florida Gator

Two years ago and one day I last said this: It's great to be a Florida Gator!!!

Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators!

Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators!

Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators! Go Gators!

"...it's great...to be...a Flor-ida Ga-tor...yes it's great...to be...a Flor-ida Ga-tor...yes it's great..."

Just in case you're abysmally ignorant, the Gators (we) just won the national championship against the Sooners in an awesome fight.

On the BCS

The Hokies victory yesterday meant both of my teams may win their BCS bowls. Also, a note of analysis from the game showed me just how important defense is up against a good passing offense. Basically after losing Murray I think OU has a weake run option left, despite contrary assertions. After watching Cin give up 4 interceptions, I really think the Gators' D will win the game because Bradford hasn't been passing against such speedy defenders. The caveat is of course that Bradford's accuracy is much higher than Pike's and his wide outs are probably a lot better too. I also think that the OU defense won't contain our offense, and so we may have a pretty high score.

My prediction: Gators 45 - 27

The Place of Science in Federal Government

I am subscribed to Seed Magazine, and I read the interview with Bush's point man on science, National Science Advisor John Marburger, the other day with little surprise as he tried to boast of his president's accomplishments:

Seed: What do you regard as your greatest accomplishment?

JM: In a job like this, the most important accomplishment is to make sure that this vast machinery of science continues to move forward and produce the kind of results that have made America strong and great and an exciting place to be a scientist. And I believe that history will show that under this administration, science and technology have thrived as well as they could, given the constraints that we work under. Those constraints are very great. Not least of which is having a very unpopular president, very difficult foreign policy, wars, and unpopular policies of various kinds. Those notwithstanding, I'm satisfied that I've done everything that I could to make science work for the nation. I think that future presidents will find it difficult to compile a record as long as this one. In retrospect, it will be seen that this was a tough act to follow.

He went on in this vein, talking about how much of US GDP Bush invested and how that would be a "tough act to follow." The problem is this little thing called fact. From the NRC report in 2007*, quote, "In 2001 (the most recent year for which data are available), U.S. industry spent more on tort litigation than on research and development. Federal funding of research in the physical sciences, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, was 45 percent less in FY 2004 than in FY 1976." Tough act to follow?

In part because of Republicans' views on trade and laissez-faire capitalism, science jobs and technology jobs are being exported like never before. From the same report, "The United States is today a net importer of high-technology products. Its trade balance in high-technology manufactured goods shifted from plus $54 billion in 1990 to negative $50 billion in 2001."

Also, the tendency for US students to go into science and technology fields is getting worse and worse, "In South Korea, 38 percent of all undergraduates receive their degrees in natural science or engineering. In France, the figure is 47 percent, in China, 50 percent, and in Singapore, 67 percent. In the United States, the corresponding figure is 15 percent."

I think that the Obama administration faces budget challenges (Bush squandered a surplus and left Obama a $1 TRILLION deficit his first year), but sees things exactly the way the NAS report does:

"Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position. For the first time in generations, the nation’s children could face poorer prospects than their parents and grandparents did. We owe our current prosperity, security, and good health to the investments of past generations, and we are obliged to renew those commitments in education, research, and innovation policies to ensure that the American people continue to benefit from the remarkable opportunities provided by the rapid development of the global economy and its not inconsiderable underpinning in science and technology."

We'll wait and see. In the meanwhile, picking Holdren to replace Marburger was a very, very good decision.

One of the tough decisions that our president will have to make is shifting the billions and billions of dollars spent on weapons-technology programs and weapons R&D to creating jobs dealing with improving green technology and combatting climate change. People will say he's "soft" until they realize that our greatest threat is not China challenging us on a battlefield but the gaping hole in our economy that has partly resulted from our energy and technology policies, as well as fair versus free trade agreements.

* National Research Council, 2007, Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.

Suffering and the Bible

Since I've had a little more free time this past two weeks, I've pondered a little on old philosophical problems and thus have felt the old familiar urge for an atheist apologetic post. I just got through reading a thought I've had before, but put well into words: that the Cinderella-esque nature of the Christian narrative makes the problem of evil even more difficult for the Christian than for the Muslim or Jew. I also saw Bart Ehrman's lecture (video) on suffering via DC. He also mentions Elie Wiesel and his God on Trial that you can watch on YouTube. He lists the following as the attempts in the Bible to explain or understand suffering in the world: as punishment for (or as a natural consequence of) sin, evil forces in the world (Satan) who are allowed to punish people, as a test of one's faith (Job), a "mystery" that even to ask "Why?" is a blasphemy, that sometimes chaos happens and we "get in the way".

Ross Douthat writes:

Any such revolution would affect atheism as well as belief. Consider, for instance, the way in which the dominance of the Christian story has actually sharpened one of the best arrows in the anti-theist's quiver. In Western society, especially, the oft-heard claim that the world is too cruel a place for a good omnipotence to have created derives a great deal of its power, whether implicitly or explicitly, from the person of Christ himself. The God of the New Testament seems more immediate, more personal, and more invested in his creation than He had heretofore revealed Himself to be. But this arguably makes Him seem more culpable for the world's suffering as well. Paradoxically, the God who addresses Job out of the whirlwind is far less vulnerable to complaints about the world's injustice than the God who suffers on the Cross - or the human God who cries in the manger. For many Christians, Christ's suffering provides a partial answer to the problem of theodicy. But for many atheists and agnostics, it only sharpens the question: How can a God who loves mankind enough to die for us allow us to suffer as much as we do?

Take that question away, and all the arguments that spin away from it disappear as well. Which is just one small reason why a world in which nobody had any reason any longer to believe that God had been born in human flesh to a poor Jewish woman in Bethlehem, or died a miserable death on a Roman cross, would be a world in which atheists as well as believers found themselves arguing about life, the universe and everything in very different ways than they do now.

This is true. For people like presuppositionalists, they prefer to use the whirlwind-style God along with their Calvinism and Rom 9 to say, "Who are you to question God's way of running the world?" To them, you either have no logical basis to even argue that God isn't good (a difficult argument for them to maintain) or you have no ability to cross over to disprove their beliefs because of your flawed fundamental premises. They are a small minority of Christians for good reason. For most Christians, they want to believe that the world as you see it is not the world that God wants it to be, but that He allows it to remain this way because of one thing or another (attempting to draw a distinction between what God permissively and what God perfectly wills has always been absurd to me). Free will is the typical theodicy.

I agree with one of the first things Ehrman says about suffering with respect to Americans: it is very, very difficult to relate to most Americans the scope and nature of suffering that occurs in the world on a daily (minute-by-minute) basis. The inability of Americans to grasp at such suffering, I am convinced, is at least in part the reason for the outlier nature of America in being a very religious country which is also very rich. As I said in a recent post,

The idea that God is listening to your requests and will fix that prostate, or give you that new job, or raise, or protect you from danger, is hilarious. While you're sitting there asking that, mothers are raising their dead children to the sky, after pleading with God to spare them. People are physically rotting from leprosy and mentally rotting from Alzheimer's. To think that God is letting all the billions of people on earth suffer and plead with no reprieve, but that he cares what job you have or mate you pick, is the height of hubris. The problem of evil has destroyed the faith of giants like Charles Templeton and unknowns like me.

When Bart Ehrman talks about free will theodicies, he labels them the "robot answer" defense of suffering in the world: humans are given the ability to obey or disobey and this leads to suffering in the world. He points out that this may help explain some suffering but not natural disasters. He doesn't take it to the next level and include animal suffering, accidents and the distinctions I've drawn before -- the question of why one person's (evil) will supersedes the others involved (including God's and the victims of the suffering), the question of why the physical contingencies allow for one person's (evil) will to actually physically occur rather than be a wish...[I won't rehash all that again, but it is essential to read that post as I feel I've dealt with nearly every single point that theists raise to the argument from evil against God's existence.]

Ehrman goes on to bring up the classic 3-point argument from evil:

1. God is all-powerful
2. God is all-loving
3. There is suffering

He establishes the common theodicies:

1. Deny one of the three premises (deny 1, deny 2, deny 3)
   
2. Bring in an "extenuating circumstance" to explain how the three premises are not logically imcompatible: as punishment for (or as a natural consequence of) sin, evil forces in the world (Satan) who are allowed to punish people, as a test of one's faith (Job), a "mystery", that even to ask "Why?" is a blasphemy, that sometimes chaos happens and we "get in the way" (think spiritual warfare here).

He then goes on to look at the two major overarching themes on suffering in the Bible -- one from the OT and one from the NT:

1. OT (the "Prophetic response") -- the Prophets nearly all had the same view on suffering, and it only concerned Israel, that suffering was punishment for sin. This is exemplified in the story of the Exodus and the obligation that Israel had towards God for saving them from Egypt. If Israel was God's "Chosen People" then all its suffering (war, drought, pestilence, famine) must be explained as some sort of breach of contract, and of course it must be man's (not God's) fault for this contract being breached (cf. Amos 3:2). The reason this is a supposed "solution" to the problem of evil is that the punishment is made with repentance in mind; if the people turn around from their "sin" then the suffering will have served a "greater good" of saving their souls. This is consistent with Adam & Eve's explusion from the Garden of Eden, with the Noachian Flood, with Sodom & Gomorrah, &c. The question of why people are supposed to believe that this sort of God is worth serving is left for the thinker...
   
2. NT (the "apocalyptic response") -- found in the latest book of the OT (Daniel) and dominated the NT: suffering was not coming as a punishment from God, but from "other sources" in the world. Enemies of God (cosmic forces in the world) cause our suffering (the devil and his demons). The devil was not found in the Prophets. Sin is not a specific wrong that you've done, but a sort of cosmic force in the world ("the flesh") and this is what leads to suffering. Eventually, God will remove these evil forces from the world and restore perfection to the world.
3. The Ecclesiastical Response -- "all is vanity" [vanity = Hebrew hevel: transcience, impermanence]. There is no justice in the world, therefore the idea that suffering is a just punishment for sin is false. Also, there will not be justice in the next world, which takes away the empty hope of Apocalypticists. Therefore, live life fully in the present. There is therefore no "answer" to suffering except to try to live and enjoy life. Paul's thoughts as he pondered this possibility? Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die! This third response is somewhat like that of atheism.
   

Ehrman points out four tenets of this apocalyptic response:
1) dualism [Manichaeism]: which groups everyone into either God's camp or the devil's, and also gives this world (the one of suffering) to the devil but the future world (the one of perfection) to God, is also intended to explain "why the wicked prosper but the righteous suffer", in the sense that the present age will "pass away";
2) pessimism: we can't really improve the present age, and even if we do, it won't matter in the cosmic sense, the present age is under the control of evil forces, and things will get worse and worse;
3) vindication: God will set things right, especially by judgment, and restore its own sovereignty, those in one camp will be rewarded and those in the other will be punished, this is why the suffering that occurred in this world is really inconsequential, this was the beginning of philosophical defenses within Judaism/Christianity of the afterlife;
4) imminence: the timing for all this is soon, the coming of the Lord is at hand, things were just about as bad as they could get/were going to be, Mark 9:1, the imminence seems necessary as it helps to make God less bad for letting all this suffering occur -- if God can stand this much suffering for much longer, it seems that God is less good;

Ehrman looks at the Apocalypticists as a contrast to the Prophets and points out the logical inconsistencies that any believer has to deal with. Moral complacency is a real issue for the former: why worry about evil if things will get better only in the next world? Along this same line, the belief that the end is coming soon is something that gives believers hope but also alarm and fear. Therefore, along with moral complacency, believers along the Apocalyptic response have a certain scary worldview that doesn't enrich their lives or the lives of those around. The conflict between the two major responses is obvious: either this world is rotten and you don't get what you deserve here because God doesn't fundamentally dole out punishment until a later judgment, or, people do get what they deserve in this life. Either you reap what you sow here in this world or you don't and you get it in the world to come.

One of the questions he was given at 48:00 or so in to the video was, "How do you know that suffering is bad if there is no God?" He dealt with it pretty simply: the traditional utilitarian view -- whatever brings about good (in the sense of health, wealth, happiness and pleasure) for the majority of people, acknowledging and using our human sense of empathy in avoiding suffering for ourselves and others as being foundational to this moral view. He also hinted at seeing the problem of Divine Command Theory in his transition from to becoming an agnostic from Christian.

I also liked a guy at the end (55:00 or so) who pointed out that the idea that "the poor you shall have with you always," and the general moral complacency brought about by the Apocalyptical view is harmful and wrong. We have the resources in the world, if they were redistributed and focused, to end the sort of starvation and ridiculous death rates from things like lack of drinking water and mosquito nets. And this guy's point was that a religious view keeps us from realizing that we could alleviate much suffering on earth, and thus in turn reduce the burden on a theist to explain/justify it with a theodicy.

Some of Ehrman's statistics (21:55):

• Every 5 seconds, a child starves to death
• Every minute, 25 people die from drinking unclean drinking water
• Every hour, 700 people die from malaria
  

Instamapper with G1

Did I mention I love this phone? Oh yeah. Although some of the features of instamapper may be Orwellian or have such consequences, for now, it's just cool:

GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com




See more on this feature here.

The anthropic principle revisited

This month's issue of Seed alerted me to something that I have mentioned before and think may just destroy the factual basis of the fine-tuning argument for a God's existence. Imagine that instead of arguing that the physical constants are fine-tuned so that they cannot be independently varied, we actually did a mathematical analysis of them to see how the ratios of the constants could be changed but still produce life. In a peer-reviewed article entitled, "Limitations of anthropic predictions for the cosmological constant Λ: cosmic heat death of anthropic observers", Fred C. Adams at Michigan looked at the relationships of gravity and the nuclear forces as fundamental physical constants and found that so long as these are varied together, they produce a number of star-sustaining, and therefore life-sustaining, physical universes.

In this latter case, the bounds on a Λ [the cosmological constant] can be millions of times larger than previous estimates—and the observed value. We thus conclude that anthropic reasoning has limited predictive power.

Theists often use the anthropic principle to argue in favor of an intelligent designer of the universe. Given that the idea of the argument precludes the designer being a part of the universe, this is all but arguing for the existence of God, not just some alien somewhere. The argument usually goes, "If you changed the force of gravity by even one-quadrillionth of a N, then life couldn't exist..."

You can view this sort of argument here and here by Collins. A substantive reply to Collins' argument follows:

Collins is more persuasive, although certainly not original, when trotting out the Anthropic Principle, the argument that the universe is uniquely pre-tuned to bring about life in general and human life in particular. There are a number of physical constants and laws such that if any had been even slightly different, life might well have been impossible. For example, for roughly every billion quarks and antiquarks, there is an excess of one quark – otherwise, no matter. If the rate of expansion immediately after the Big Bang had been a teeny tiny fraction smaller than it was, the universe would have recollapsed long ago. If the strong nuclear forces holding atomic nuclei together had been just a smidgeon weaker, then only hydrogen would exist; if a hair stronger, all hydrogen would promptly have become helium, and the solar furnaces inside stars –which we can thank for the heavier elements – would never have existed.

Both Dawkins and Sagan also examine this argument, which Dawkins caricatures as "god-as-dial-twiddler." It is oddly tautological, in that if the universe were not as it is, we indeed would not be here to wonder about it. In Fred Hoyle's science fiction novel, The Black Cloud, it is explained that the probability of a golf ball landing on any particular spot is exceedingly low – and yet, it has to land somewhere! The Anthropic Principle can also be "solved" by multiple universes, of which ours could simply be the one in which we exist; this might apply not only to horizontally existing multi-verses, but to the same one occurring differently in time if there have been (and will be) unending expansions and contractions. Moreover, it isn't at all clear that the various physical dials are independent, or that the physical constants in the universe could be any different, given the nature of matter and energy.

This is a typical response to the theistic position --

1) pointing out that improbable events happen all the time without being of divine origin: each seven-card hand dealt in stud poker has a probability of (1/52*1/51*1/50*1/49*1/48*1/47*1/46) = 1 in 674,274,182,400. But does that make it a miracle?
2) questioning whether the constants can be changed at all, or if they are primally fixed by the nature of the universe
3) invoking the multiverse to reduce the significance of any one universe's "uniqueness" in a statistical sense (also see here)

But from a scientist's standpoint, it's much more interesting to wonder what ratios and relationships amongst the physical constants would still produce life if they were varied interdependently. And that's the question that has been answered by Fred Adams. There are many configurations of the constants that, when varied together, still produce life-friendly, or "Goldilocks"-zone universes. This makes the anthropic principle much less interesting. Yet another reason to give up on the idea of a God.

On contraception and religious right troglodytes

Sometimes I think it's easier just to look forward and try to put behind us the regressive and ridiculous policies of the past decade, and especially social conservatism spearheaded by religious right troglodytes. However, we have to raise awareness of the real harm done by programs run by people like this. For example, in many nations, people are so poor they scavenge garbage dumps but are not given access to birth control (and are threatened with excommunication) because of the shameful and absurd Catholic Church. In Africa, millions are dying from AIDS and hunger but Bush's programs (for all the legacy spin) cause more death because they place all emphasis on "abstinence" and do not provide the sort of comprehensive sex ed and contraception options that are effective.

Bush appointed a birth control opponent to head the agency in charge of family planning: the Dept. of Health and Human Services. The religious right doesn't just want to prevent abortion. They want to control your reproductive rights. Specifically, they want to end all forms of birth control and there's a clear (although perhaps subconscious) reason why: religion is hereditary. The one surefire way to increase the number of parishioners in the church is to breed them. The church could care the less what quality life your children have -- that's between you and Jesus -- but they want to make sure you have children who are in the pews.

If the religious right was actually interested in human welfare, they'd support comprehensive sex ed and realize that countries with no reproductive rights are those with the highest rates of abortion. But they don't live in the reality-based community.

*UPDATE: Add another study to document the failure of "abstinence pledges" to do anything but increase STDs and teen pregnancies*

Xmas gifts for the crazy Christian you love

Ship of Fools presents great gifts for the religious nutcase in your life this holiday season. My favorite is their favorite (#1):

My parents would so put this in their yard.

Early xmas

My beautiful wonderful wife got me the G1 phone with Google's open source Android platform. I love it. I've never had a "smart"phone before and so that alone is great, but adding on the awesomeness of Android is even better. I won't review anything, since you can find hundreds of those in seconds, but I'll just say that the phone is great and the software is sublime, which is the major reason for buying the G1.

Schism on "-isms"

There's been a modern divergence in thinking on how to treat various addictions to substances. The old 28-day treatment and AA ever-after absolute abstinence plan is completely without individuality or spectrum thinking. I was reading a piece in the NYT by an alcoholic on the holidays and how he avoids parties so as to avoid drinking, and saw his two references to the modern skeptics of AA/absolutism: Drink/Link and Moderation Management. Although it may be possible that some people's brains are too tuned to alcohol to enjoy it moderately (which he self-identifies with), it has to be true that there is a spectrum to the "disease" of alcoholism just as with any other. Those on the "less sick" side of it can almost certainly receive a different treatment method.

From my own background and the people I've known who have been on other substances than alcohol or pot, there is probably a very different truth about addiction to opioids and such. I would apply zero tolerance there, in fact, as these drugs don't have the same pharmacology and cannot be "enjoyed moderately" as pot and alcohol might.

(BTW: Jim Atkinson wrote two other interesting pieces on drinking here and here)

On a slightly tangential note (but still drug-related), last night Amber and I watched an interesting program called "Marijuana Nation" on NGC and I was fascinated and educated. It went through a number of issues on medical marijuana, the federal vs. state legal clashes, the way growers use state parks and trash natural resources, and inside a professional growing operation that has to be one of the most scientifically-advanced in the country. It almost makes one want to have another dance with Mary Jane, and if not with her, then an interesting evening with a toadstool.

Seth doesn't sleep much

My cute little guy doesn't like to sleep very much.

At the risk of sounding like a zillion other parents who think their child is gifted or special in some way, I have done my homework on this one. My kid sleeps less than 10 hours a day, sometimes 8. The average newborn should sleep about 16 hours a day, but Seth probably never slept more than 12.

In looking at him, I noticed how alert he was early on, and so did the nurses and doctors, who all commented on how much he watched his surroundings and how little he slept. As time has gone on, he learned early to hold his head up all the time on his own and interacts with toys and his play station. I am happy to see him developing so fast (Amber wants him to stay a baby as long as possible: something about that maternal instinct of needing to be needed), but the sleep thing has become more of an issue lately.

I was reading about how sleep is seen as the enemy by CEOs and defense contractors for the military but people forget just why we need sleep. It may be that gifted people sleep less than others; that's been proposed before:


Also:

Hyperactive is a word often used to describe gifted children as well as children with ADHD. As with attention span, children with ADHD have a high activity level, but this activity level is often found across situations (Barkley, 1990). A large proportion of gifted children are highly active too. As many as one-fourth may require less sleep; however, their activity is generally focused and directed (Clark, 1992; Webb, Meckstroth, & Tolan, 1982), in contrast to the behavior of children with ADHD. The intensity of gifted children's concentration often permits them to spend long periods of time and much energy focusing on whatever truly interests them. Their specific interests may not coincide, however, with the desires and expectations of teachers or parents.

I'm not sure if Seth is gifted or not, but I'm hopeful that's what it is from the evidence I've seen. Now I know you're a genius if you're reading my blog, and I know that I'm a little fixated on the idea of giftedness generally and especially studying the lives of the highly gifted. Thus this may be me fixating on something that doesn't exist, but that I hope does. Otherwise, he may be autistic or something...but I'm not too worried about it, since he makes eye contact, smiles, coos and goos, &c.

Haggard floats back up

It's like a train wreck: you can't look away.

Since the guy fell from grace and his church took a huge hit, he just hasn't gone under; people with megalomania rarely do.

Update: Dixie County Lawsuit media coverage

A few months ago I mentioned that I was going to contact some people with the ACLU and the local Dixie County papers to try to get an update on the status of the case.  I didn't hear anything back, and now I found out from Prof. Friedman's excellent blog that proponents of church-state separation have won a primary challenge:  we have legal standing to sue.  The ACLU found a non-resident of the county who was nonetheless given legal standing because of the nature of this anonymous person's business with the county in buying land there.  Here is the LexisNexis link to ACLU of Florida Inc. v. Dixie County Florida, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61177 (ND FL, Aug. 8, 2008)

I have updated the list of media related to the whole Dixie County debacle as it has unfolded.

Regarding LTE (letters to the editor) "con" means the person writing is againstthe 10C monument & "pro" means they approve of it:

1. Gainesville Sun -- 11/28/06
2. Dixie County Advocate -- 11/30/06
3. Alligator -- 11/30/06
4. Alligator -- 12/1/06 (editorial)
5. FFRF Press Release -- 12/1/06
6. Gainesville Sun -- 12/02/06
7. 3 Letters to the Editor at the Sun -- pro, pro, con (12/2/06)
8. Dixie County Advocate -- 12/7/06
9. 2 More Letters to the Editor at the Sun -- pro (12/12/06), con (12/17/06)
10. St. Petersburg Times -- 1/3/07
11. St. Petersburg Times (LTE) -- con, 1/13/07 (4th letter down; response to 1/3/07 article)
12. Gainesville Sun -- 2/7/07
13. ACLU News Release -- 2/7/07
    
14. Reuters (Miami) -- 2/7/07
15. Gainesville Sun -- 2/8/07
16. St. Petersburg Times -- 2/8/07
17. Alligator (LTE): -- con, 2/9/07, (see text here)
18. Dixie County Advocate -- 2/15/07
19. Orlando Sentinel -- 2/17/07
20. Gainesville Sun (LTE) -- pro, 2/17/07
21. Dixie County Advocate (LTE) -- con, 2/24/07
22. Liberty Counsel -- 3/8/07
23. CNS News -- 3/12/07
24. Florida Humanists Association -- 4/9/07, (also here and here)
25. atheism.about.com -- 4/27/07, Austin Cline
26. Dixie County Advocate -- 9/27/07, Issue 40, Page 18
27. Dixie County Advocate blog -- 6/11/08, linked to my YouTube video

other media (blogs):

1. KipEsquire -- 11/28/06
2. Florida Progressive Coalition -- 4/4/07
3. John Pieret -- 4/15/07
4. Prof. Friedman -- 8/14/08

rev 11/22/08

I'm on a roll

I don't know if I'm just taking good luck with me everywhere I go or what...

1) Obama gets elected.
2) The Gators have a real shot at the BCS National Championship.
3) The Hammond Skyhawks won their third state football championship in a row (SCISA AAA). The State has video and an article. This is after RHS won in 2006.

Conservatism at any cost

Shortly after the economy's tailspin began, I wrote two items on the misplacing of blame on the poor and/or Democrats and/or Fannie & Freddie for the credit crisis. One of the things I addressed in the last item I wrote was the market share of subprime lending was 84% privately-held. Today, Krugman links to an article with a neat graph showing the market share of mortgages through 2003, and the NYT published a great article on Phil Gramm, whose actions seriously undermined regulation of the financial markets and helped precipitate this crisis. Excerpts below the fold:

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Gramm became the most effective proponent of deregulation in a generation, by dint of his expertise (a Ph.D in economics), free-market ideology, perch on the Senate banking committee and force of personality (a writer in Texas once called him “a snapping turtle”). And in one remarkable stretch from 1999 to 2001, he pushed laws and promoted policies that he says unshackled businesses from needless restraints but his critics charge significantly contributed to the financial crisis that has rattled the nation.

He led the effort to block measures curtailing deceptive or predatory lending, which was just beginning to result in a jump in home foreclosures that would undermine the financial markets. He advanced legislation that fractured oversight of Wall Street while knocking down Depression-era barriers that restricted the rise and reach of financial conglomerates.

And he pushed through a provision that ensured virtually no regulation of the complex financial instruments known as derivatives, including credit swaps, contracts that would encourage risky investment practices at Wall Street’s most venerable institutions and spread the risks, like a virus, around the world.
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“Phil Gramm was the great spokesman and leader of the view that market forces should drive the economy without regulation,” said James D. Cox, a corporate law scholar at Duke University. “The movement he helped to lead contributed mightily to our problems.”

In two recent interviews, Mr. Gramm described the current turmoil as “an incredible trauma,” but said he was proud of his record.

He blamed others for the crisis: Democrats who dropped barriers to borrowing in order to promote homeownership; what he once termed “predatory borrowers” who took out mortgages they could not afford; banks that took on too much risk; and large financial institutions that did not set aside enough capital to cover their bad bets.

But looser regulation played virtually no role, he argued, saying that is simply an emerging myth.

“There is this idea afloat that if you had more regulation you would have fewer mistakes,” he said. “I don’t see any evidence in our history or anybody else’s to substantiate it.” He added, “The markets have worked better than you might have thought.”
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From 1999 to 2001, Congress first considered steps to curb predatory loans — those that typically had high fees, significant prepayment penalties and ballooning monthly payments and were often issued to low-income borrowers. Foreclosures on such loans were on the rise, setting off a wave of personal bankruptcies.

But Mr. Gramm did everything he could to block the measures. In 2000, he refused to have his banking committee consider the proposals, an intervention hailed by the National Association of Mortgage Brokers as a “huge, huge step for us.”
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In late 1999, Mr. Gramm played a central role in what would be the most significant financial services legislation since the Depression. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, as the measure was called, removed barriers between commercial and investment banks that had been instituted to reduce the risk of economic catastrophes. Long sought by the industry, the law would let commercial banks, securities firms and insurers become financial supermarkets offering an array of services.
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In November 1999, senior Clinton administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, joined by the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, and Arthur Levitt Jr., the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, issued a report that instead recommended legislation exempting many kinds of derivatives from federal oversight.

Mr. Gramm helped lead the charge in Congress. Demanding even more freedom from regulators than the financial industry had sought, he persuaded colleagues and negotiated with senior administration officials, pushing so hard that he nearly scuttled the deal. “When I get in the red zone, I like to score,” Mr. Gramm told reporters at the time.

Finally, he had extracted enough. In December 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act was passed as part of a larger bill by unanimous consent after Mr. Gramm dominated the Senate debate.

“This legislation is important to every American investor,” he said at the time. “It will keep our markets modern, efficient and innovative, and it guarantees that the United States will maintain its global dominance of financial markets.”

But some critics worried that the lack of oversight would allow abuses that could threaten the economy.
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“He was the architect, advocate and the most knowledgeable person in Congress on these topics,” Mr. Donovan said. “To me, Phil Gramm is the single most important reason for the current financial crisis.”

Mr. Gramm, ever the economics professor, disputes his critics’ analysis of the causes of the upheaval. He asserts that swaps, by enabling companies to insure themselves against defaults, have diminished, not increased, the effects of the declining housing markets.

“This is part of this myth of deregulation,” he said in the interview. “By and large, credit-default swaps have distributed the risks. They didn’t create it. The only reason people have focused on them is that some politicians don’t know a credit-default swap from a turnip.”

But many experts disagree, including some of Mr. Gramm’s former allies in Congress. They say the lack of oversight left the system vulnerable.

“The virtually unregulated over-the-counter market in credit-default swaps has played a significant role in the credit crisis, including the now $167 billion taxpayer rescue of A.I.G.,” Christopher Cox, the chairman of the S.E.C. and a former congressman, said Friday.

Mr. Gramm says that, given what has happened, there are modest regulatory changes he would favor, including requiring issuers of credit-default swaps to demonstrate that they have enough capital to back up their pledges. But his belief that government should intervene only minimally in markets is unshaken.

“They are saying there was 15 years of massive deregulation and that’s what caused the problem,” Mr. Gramm said of his critics. “I just don’t see any evidence of it.”

So far as I am able to tell, Gramm was not joking in any of his quotations.

An end to this occupation after a war of choice

Assuming the new agreement passes the Iraqi parliament, the war in Iraq now has a definite end in sight:

The draft approved Sunday requires coalition forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities and towns by the summer of 2009 and from the country by the end of 2011. An earlier version had language giving some flexibility to that deadline, with both sides discussing timetables and timelines for withdrawal, but the Iraqis managed to have the deadline set in stone, a significant negotiating victory. The United States has around 150,000 troops in Iraq.

It's still hard to believe how duped we were by the lies told by Bushco. And it's also hard to believe that so many still don't realize it.

The waning Southern strategy

The NYT had a great front-page item today following up on what I wrote a few days ago about the (sad) role of Applachia in the election.

Along the Atlantic Coast, parts of the “suburban South,” notably Virginia and North Carolina, made history last week in breaking from their Confederate past and supporting Mr. Obama. Those states have experienced an influx of better educated and more prosperous voters in recent years, pointing them in a different political direction than states farther west, like Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, and Appalachian sections of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

They accompanied the analysis with a great graphic too:

Basically I would just say that I hope the party continues its slide into irrelevance and ignorance. Let the GOP be the party of the uneducated religious zealot, the bigoted redneck and the gun-crazed nutjob. According to Beliefnet, 52% of the anti-intellectual elements of the party (namely Evangelicals) apparently believed that Obama was a Muslim. Yet they still believe the media is ridiculously liberal, despite the media's inability to inform them of the basic fact of the President-elect's religion. Sad.