Debate in PA: Jumble of a Rumble

A sad affair last night. Clinton and Obama peppered with Republican talking points. No actual content for the first hour.

These things are being talked about. They aren't important, but they're being talked about. So that justifies ABC talking about them? Reverend Wright, lapel pins, electability of your opponent. Who said what when and why? And who is madder/sorrier/unhappier?

The problem with these issues quote-unquote is that asking the question is doing Republican dirty work. There is no answer for these questions. They are all gotcha-style questions. Candidates look bad. Anybody going to ask John McCain the Republican equivalent of these questions? Probably not.

This time, the blogosphere is up in arms about the idiocy of the emcees, George Stephanopolis and Charlie Gibson. Maybe the next debate will be better, but only if the next news organization listens to the commentaries.

Picture presidential debates 20 years from now:

Isn't Paris Hilton still great?
Why should the United States Government pay for Britney Spears' mental health care?
Shouldn't you be kicked off the island?
Senator, why do you hate America?
Governor, why is your state so small?
Mrs. Vice President: Why does your cookie recipe make such bad tasting cookies?
Senator, why do you refuse to visit flag factories?

It can still get worse from here.

October Surprise:Iran

Someone important thinks that we're in for a Fall, possibly October surprise. Pat Buchanan thinks we're likely to start bombing Iran.

Another possible October surprise: From the LA Times: Finding Bin Laden.

The Bush administration may go for a twofer. Both will substantially help McCain over the Democratic nominee.

Darwin Fish are Not Demonstrating Identity

Jonah Goldberg (linked in the title, registration required) in the Los Angeles Times today April 1, 2008 says

As Christopher Caldwell once observed in the Weekly Standard, Darwin fish flout the agreed-on etiquette of identity politics. "Namely: It's acceptable to assert identity and abhorrent to attack it.

Goldberg is quoting Caldwell, but presumably is supporting the statement. There is a lot here to rebut and discuss. First, in two-way communication through symbols and symbology: the person displaying the symbol gets to decide what the displayer means by the symbol. And there is the reverse: the viewer gets to decide what the viewer thinks of the symbol.

Now, asking someone what their symbol means does not necessarily get you what they really mean. We've all heard "its just a joke" and "my comments were taken out of context" ad nauseam as excuses for stupid and offense comments, from politicians and from our neighbor's children, not necessarily respectively.

People who display the Christian fish symbol as a statement about their religion, separately from their belief about biology I would not mind if I knew that to be the case. But to me (how about to you?) the Christian fish symbol is used to indicate a disbelief in science and specifically biology. This takes the fish statement away from the realm of religion and into the realm of science.

To scientists - religious or not - and to scientifically literate people of any stripe, denying evolution is a bit like denying that you have freckles or a cleft chin. Evolution is a statement of fact, not of belief. Evolution can be checked. It is not up to you to believe it or not believe it. Scientists 'believe' evolution because it describes the world that we see around us. If evolution and the various detailed descriptions of our world did not describe the world, if evolution did not make predictions which are shown to be true, then scientists wouldn't 'believe' in evolution.

Believe is the wrong word, but I'm having trouble thinking of a better word. Other possibilities: 'Follow', or 'act as if it is true', or 'act as if it is true until something better comes along' are competitors. Definitely the word believe for the religious person and for the scientist are not the same activities.

Consider two parallel hypothetical experiments. Suppose that all knowledge about evolution and biology were wiped away. Would humans reinvent the concept of evolution? The answer is almost certainly yes. Now consider a second hypothetical experiment. Suppose that all knowledge of Christianity were wiped away. Would humans reinvent it? The answer is almost certainly no. We haven't tried the first experiment, but science does attempt to operate that way: there are a lot of brownie points in science for someone who can disprove a widely held belief and replace it with a new set of facts. We have essentially done the second experiment. Christianity spreads by people having babies and by teaching others about it. It doesn't get reinvented from scratch. Humans have invented lots of other sorts of religions when given the chance, but not Christianity.

In science there is no controversy about whether evolution is true or not. Evolution happens. There are a lot of details to evolution: evolution isn't a simple little mathematical result like e equals m times c-squared. These details need to be worked out, and we do not know all the details. There is a lot going on, and scientists are very busy working out details and elaborating how evolution works. There is much work to be done in elucidating how much evolution goes on, how evolution proceeds, whether there is a better word to describe what we observe in nature, can we use evolution to our own ends to make better drugs or chemicals or products, who should get credit for what discoveries, and so on, the business of science is quite extensive.

Displaying the Darwin fish symbol may indeed be a statement about me, but for Darwin fish displayers, the Darwin fish is more importantly a statement about the world. And it is a checkable statement.

October Surprise:Iran

An October surprise from the White House to help John McCain get elected.
My prediction: Bombing Iran. Or other short term incursion.

Crook to Prosecutor: The 2009 White House Changeover

Supposing a democrat wins the election, are we all certain that Bush and Cheney are going to go gently into that dark night?

The next president, if democrat, will be picking up the pieces of the last 8 years of policies that he or she strongly disagrees with. At least some of those policies are going to appear to be covering criminal activity: those billions of dollars going in airplanes to Iraq, nobid contracts to Halliburton, signing statements, torture, Cheney's secret energy negotiations, vice presidential visitor logs, paying reporters to report biased news, leaking CIA agent's identities, lost emails, cronyism. The list will be long.

Cheney and Bush and advisers might well be worried about criminal prosecutions. From the Cheney-Bush perspective, the cats will now be in charge of the hen house.
While deleting lots of emails is one way to interfere with prosecution, and taking massive quantities of documents with them is another, there is still likely to be plenty of evidence lying around. Its hard to commit crime on this massive of a scale without leaving some evidence lying around.

I recall a statement in the news from someone at the Pentagon during the night that Nixon resigned. The statement was to the effect that the Pentagon was making certain that all troop movements were authorized and previously scheduled, and that no extra commands that skipped the normal chain of command.
Presumably we will have the same situation in 2009.

Unpreventable Medical Mistakes

I'm looking at a flyer for a seminar titled "Medical Errors in Hospitals: Cause and Prevention". A quote (hopefully not out of context) from the description/abstract: "Medical errors in hospitals are the eighth leading cause of death in the United States - killing approximately 100,000 people per year. Two thirds of these deaths could be prevented."

Well gee. If one third of these deaths could not be prevented, what was the medical error? The patient would have died anyway. If someone is dying, and nothing you as a physician do matters, why is it a medical error? If an error occurred, then maybe you mistakenly caused additional pain, or omitted appropriate palliative care?

Errors that kill someone, who otherwise would have left the hospital is as major an error as it gets. If there is a death, but it isn't preventable, any error in care is of lesser impact. Errors that don't kill someone are of lesser stature, though potentially pretty egregious still...

I would say that the abstract should state that 67,000 preventable deaths occurred. The un-preventable deaths should be omitted.

Is Hillary McCain or John Clinton a Muslim?

Is it time to ask Obama whether he thinks Clinton or McCain is a Muslim? Should Clinton tell the interviewer that it is a stupid, inappropriate question? Both on its face, and indirectly, through the implications, it's not an appropriate question.

And no, the title isn't a misprint. Might not be right, but it wasn't unintentional.