"good framing" - PZ Meyers, on the following

Mike the Mad Biologist : Another Fight About Framing and Evolution: Can I Play?:

The other thing we evolutionary biologists don't do enough of, and this stems from the previous point, is make an emotional and moral case for the study of evolution. Last night, I concluded my talk with a quote from Dover, PA creationist school board member William Buckingham, who declared, "Two thousand years ago someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?"

My response was, "In the last two minutes, someone died from a bacterial infection. We take a stand for him."

there are times...

I want to take a picture of a school board just after they passed some anti-science legislation and LOL-caption it

"Loving God and Loving Your Neighbor: You're doing it wrong."

two from Ed

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Anti-ACLU Quote of the Week:

This was so perfect that I had to edit my speech for Wednesday night to include it. From anti-gay whacko James Hartline and quoted, naturally, in the Worldnutdaily:

"The American Civil Liberties Union has done everything possible to destroy Christianity in the American culture and government. From tearing down crosses on public property to removing crosses and the Ten Commandments from governmental buildings, there has been no greater hate machine against our constitutional right to free religious expression in America than the ACLU!" Hartline said.

Notice how he shifts ground, using examples of government religious expression and then claiming that the ACLU is out to destroy individual religious expression? That's standard operating procedure for the ACLU haters.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Balko is right:

He says it's time to stop paying the White House press secretary:

Yet we pay this person well into six figures of taxpayer money . . . for what, exactly? This person is supposed to be the liaison between the White House and the press. And we're now to the point where stonewalling, obfuscating, spinning, parsing, and generally preventing the flow of truthful information are accepted and acknowledged parts of the job description (standard disclaimer about these things also being endemic to politics itself notwithstanding).

Why are we paying someone to mislead us, stonewall us, and flack for the president-someone who basically runs an overglorified White House PR shop? Any time there's any sort of controversy at all, you can bet the WHPS will be doing everything he/she can to make sure we know as little as possible. So why should we pay for that? It's pretty insulting, really.

Couldn't agree more. The White House press secretary is paid to lie to us. We all know it.

you'd think by the 1990s, feminists authors would have learned from their early mistakes...

On a paper about whether or not computer science really is a science, by Frances Grundy [a Fellow at Keele University, UK] I wrote in a comment:

I can't say too much for the Grundy articles so far. It seems "framing" (in the poor sense) is all to obviously noted when reading it. There are factual, historical claims that are well written and supported just fine.

Then there's crap like this: "As [programming techniques and languages] developed in sophistication men wanted to make sure that this newly emerging field was a male one."

It was unsupported (and unsupportable) blanket statements like that which gave feminism and feminist writing a VERY poor reputation throughout the '60s and '70s. One would think by the late 1990s such poor writing would have stopped.

In fact, the whole point of her exercise in the label identification of computing ("science", "engineering", whatever) is all really more focused on the perennial question: why are there so many more men than women in computing?.

But rather than address that question directly, since not being a sociologist it is out of her scope, she hits it indirectly by attacking labels. The label discussion is fine, a valid one. The sociological implications she throws in there are vapid and unsupported.

on government micro-management

Robert Fripp's Diary for Wednesday, 12th March 2008:

The increasing governmental micro-management of macro-social (economic & political) processes, whether an outcome of increasing control by a centralised & unelected bureaucracy in Brussels and/or a development of Mr. Blair’s decade in power and/or Mr. Brown’s Presbyterian instincts, leads to much the same: an inability for undertakings to develop organically & proceed creatively. In the UK, two macro-concerns currently being debated & subject to micro-management & Initiativitis are Education & Health. Our Landlord, Butcher Fry, is the subject of regular inspections directed towards controlling his business as Village Store & Post Office, to such an extent that it prejudices his operation. Tesco have sufficient economies of scale to deal with government’s interest; Broad Chalke Village Store does not.

David & Robert wonder whether the BRICs (the rapid-growth countries Brazil, Russia, India & China) suffer the same degree of operating-control on exceptionally small matters. Actually, we don’t wonder at all: if enterprises in those 4 economies were subject to micro-management, the economies would not be rapidly growing.

Actually, I think China is an exception there. I see their economy rapidly growing because they have the resources (in cheap personnel) to have multitudes of companies all attempting to do the same thing and don't mind the failures when they happen (a lesson learned from our golden ages of start-ups), OR they have one government bureaucrat in place in the various firms to monitor and regulate all the companies continually rather than have them try business as usual until the great inspection.  In both cases, cheap educated labor seems to work in their advantage.  But that's just my suspicion; I haven't read up on their situation nearly enough.

I also think there's a sense of conditioning to subsume to the bureaucracy that's been a part of their economic culture for millenia.  Their leaders and dynasties may have changed continually, but their bureaucracy has remained intact.  Only the bodies that fill it have changed.

closing the books on the record industry? never...

Robert Fripp's Diary for Friday, 14th March 2008:

An innocent visitor to this Diary might exclaim: But EMI & BMG are household names! Surely they would provide prompt & accurate accounting? The answer is simple: not to me. I lack the egotism to assume I have been singled out for this exceptionally dud treatment. I note again:

1. it is rare that inaccurate & late accounting favours the artist;
2. this fact is known to those providing the inaccurate & late accounting.

The Enlightenment

Why did we bother?

No, really, why did we bother?

No, I'm serious.  Why did we bother?

Can anybody tell me why we bothered?

I really want to know...