tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post9211866442804354658..comments2023-12-21T06:35:36.624-05:00Comments on Recursivity: You are Not Allowed to Laugh at the Lies and Idiocies of the Right!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-65355860640302450082016-06-03T04:29:44.330-04:002016-06-03T04:29:44.330-04:00Sounds like most of these examples are just from m...Sounds like most of these examples are just from mainstream sources and scientists, not "liberals" per se.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-25942554771293372452016-06-02T23:29:47.418-04:002016-06-02T23:29:47.418-04:00Concerning dissection:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schoo...Concerning dissection:<br /><br />http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/shp/middleages/medievalcivilisationrev3.shtml<br /><br /><br />Regarding Copernican dethroning, here are some examples given by Danielson in another version of that article:<br /><br /><br />In 1973, in one of a series of public lectures marking the 500th anniversary of Copernicus’s birth, Theodosius Dobzhansky declared that, with Copernicus, the earth was "dethroned from its presumed centrality and preeminence." Perhaps most famously of all, Carl Sagan described Copernicanism as the first in a series of "Great Demotions ... delivered to human pride." And the same general claim continues to be repeated year by year, whether in popular accounts or in the writings of the most learned scientists, as for example in the pronouncement of Britain’s Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees: "It is over 400 years since Copernicus dethroned the Earth from the privileged position that Ptolemy’s cosmology accorded it." Late in 1999, amid the pseudo-millennial exuberance that engulfed the closing days of that year, the then-Chair of the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society was asked to nominate a ‘‘Top Ten’’ list of Astronomical Triumphs of the Millennium—and placed at #3 spot the following:<br /><br />We are not the center of the<br />SOLAR SYSTEM (Copernicus, 1500)<br />UNIVERSE (Digges, [1576])<br /><br />To complete this miscellaneous sampling, I share an instance that caused me particular dismay. In October of 2000, Sky & Telescope published a review of my own anthology, The Book of the Cosmos. The review was illustrated with the famous heliocentric diagram from Copernicus’s De revolutionibus orbium caelestium, accompanied by a caption provided by the magazine’s editors. Copernicus, the caption stated in part echoing Sagan, "was the first to push humankind off its pedestal of being the center of the universe. Such a celestial demotion did not go over well in religious circles."<br />---https://www.blogger.com/profile/11350250527250228626noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-91467656519837197792016-06-02T11:15:46.441-04:002016-06-02T11:15:46.441-04:00Maybe you can cite some examples of the first two....Maybe you can cite some examples of the first two. I never ever heard anybody say them, not liberals, not conservatives.<br /><br />As for the second one, there were indeed a few early Christians who believed in a flat earth, such as Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes. But you're right, it was never a mainstream belief. But I've heard the myth repeated by both liberals and conservatives, Christians and non-Christians.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-45347315790074646372016-06-02T08:35:28.667-04:002016-06-02T08:35:28.667-04:00Jeff, just to push back against your statements ab...Jeff, just to push back against your statements about conservative "facts", here are some of the "facts" that I regularly hear liberals repeat:<br /><br />"Everybody knows that Copernican heliocentrism dethroned the earth from its <br />exalted position" <br /><br />http://campus.udayton.edu/~physics/rjb/OldClasses/ASI%20347%20Physics%20and%20Literature/Danielson%20-%20The%20great%20Copernican%20cliche.pdf<br /><br />"Everybody knows that those evil Christians banned dissection out of superstition" <br /><br />http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/04/debunking-a-myth/<br /><br />"Everybody knows that those dumb Christians believed in a flat earth"<br /><br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth <br /><br />---https://www.blogger.com/profile/11350250527250228626noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-80529233621021220622016-05-12T17:53:55.136-04:002016-05-12T17:53:55.136-04:00Ginger - actually, the biggest problem with the &q...<br />Ginger - actually, the biggest problem with the "danger of guns in the home" argument from the left is that they treat that danger as uniform across the population, when it is anything but. Gun violence is heavily skewed towards the young, suicidal and male. If you are none of those things, the argument falls very flat.ScienceAvengerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00855046387193200080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-58027589978611773032016-04-28T14:23:40.333-04:002016-04-28T14:23:40.333-04:00Re Gingerbaker
Yes, torture works for obtaining f...Re Gingerbaker<br /><br />Yes, torture works for obtaining false confessions. For accurate intelligence, not so much.colnago80https://www.blogger.com/profile/02640567775340860582noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-30988449179237158592016-04-25T17:49:04.583-04:002016-04-25T17:49:04.583-04:00Yes, there are so many things wrong with that essa...Yes, there are so many things wrong with that essay that I couldn't list them all. I might take another crack at it later.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-13421993167875807922016-04-25T16:20:58.098-04:002016-04-25T16:20:58.098-04:00I wouldn't trust Emmett Rensin to argue in goo...I wouldn't trust Emmett Rensin to argue in good faith.<br /><br />Yes, it is a virtue to not be smug and dismissive of people, no matter who they are or what they believe. But it does not follow that white workers left the Democratic Party in the 60's and 70's because of the smug self-satisfaction of liberal elites. They likely left because of Vietnam, the Civil Rights Act, the Drug War, Islamic terrorism, the Cold War, Stagflation, or a whole other host of issues. As evidence of liberal smugness, Gawker and the Daily Show are cited. Yet Emmett does not even bother trying to tie liberal smugness to electoral success or failure, in any election year. Emmett is conflating Democratic Political Comedy in the 21st century to all Democratic Party outreach of the latter half of the 20th century.<br /><br />Redefining words such as "smug" into new, personally crafted meanings is a cute way to score cheap rhetorical points, as well as too-smart-by-half way to "prove" people didn't fully read your essay. But Emmett apparently knew he had to stack the deck in his favor when subsequently defending his premise.<br /><br />When reading the essay, I wondered if I would ever get to meet the liberal in Mr. Rensin's imagination, the one that smirks at poor white people constantly and dismisses their votes and agendas, who lives on both coasts simultaneously in two different ivory towers and probably chuggs lattes white smoking thin black cigarettes, and would gleefully trade every white working class vote in America for one more sick burn at their expense, and thinks that liberal smugness is a winning electoral strategy. But the more simpler explanation is that again, Mr. Rensin has spent too much time in his media bubble and has confused mass media stereotypes with electoral reality. I encourage him to actively participate in an election instead of taking potshots from the sidelines.<br /><br />The premise would make a good political science graduate thesis, although it would be hard to tease apart the media perceptions versus actual voter exit polls. But Mr. Rensin isn't interested in letting facts or history clutter up a good political stereotype.Lit3Bolthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10407681812425172672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-87507691632855487632016-04-24T10:05:43.026-04:002016-04-24T10:05:43.026-04:00I agree fully with "We liberals have a lot of...I agree fully with "We liberals have a lot of deliberately-sustained misconceptions and distinctions distilled down to absurdities as well", even if I might disagree with some of your examples. But I don't think liberals have a monopoly on smugness, as that essay implied.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-89632397649737618972016-04-24T09:55:19.373-04:002016-04-24T09:55:19.373-04:00We liberals have a lot of deliberately-sustained m...We liberals have a lot of deliberately-sustained misconceptions and distinctions distilled down to absurdities as well.<br /><br /> Guns in the home are dangerous - who knew? Next up - studies demonstrating the same thing can be applied to knives, razor blades, swimming pools, staircases, and icicles. One of my favorite liberal blogs keeps making posts which assert that "guns make you stupid". (It is his one madness.) I must have defective guns in my home - I can still tie my shoes. <br /><br />Torture is another subject ripe for oversimplification. It is now gospel for many liberals that torture never works and is always immoral despite all circumstances. This despite the testimony of agencies that have successfully (as far as getting verified info) used torture for most of a century. Or the pretty obvious ethics of using torture in ticking bomb situations.<br /><br />Don't even get me started on the astoundingly misinformed position of many on the left with regard to Palestinian issues which often leap like Nureyev into anti-Zionism and outright antisemitism.<br /><br />Many on the Left also have some very odd notions about what constitutes "Islamophobia" to the point where logic has degraded to defense of the wacky notion that "belief does not affect behavior". Unlike the right who seem to happily goosestep in tight formation, we on the Left eat our own young. Just look at the constant distortion of the positions of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins for Exhibit A and B.<br /><br />About all I can say in our defense is that when we fuck up at least we do it out of the goodness of our hearts. Because we still have them.Gingerbakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14211637630936981883noreply@blogger.com