Scientific Truth

I’ve been thinking for the last few hours about the rejection by some fundamentalist evangelicals of evolution in favor of creationism, and the outrage over evolution being taught in schools. My thoughts are this: if you do not wish to believe in evolution that is fine.

But to not believe in evolution, and to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old is to completely ignore the scientific method responsible for the development of the technologies we have come to depend on and take for granted in our life. The same investigation of observe reality that led to the conclusion that the earth is billions of years old and we evolved from lesser organisms also led to the cars we drive and the computer I’m typing on.

So when I find websites like creationism.org (no link) which are dedicated to pfomoting anti-science viewpoints by using science and technology, you can image that I find this extremely hypocritcal. I wonder how the disconnect is remedied by those who use science debunk it.

The Hypocrite Homophobe Train Arrives in Washington State

Whenever a closeted public figure who supports an anti-gay agenda is outed in a gay sex scandal, an angel gets his wings.

Psychologists have long demonstrated that high levels of homophobia are commonly correlated with same-sex attraction among men.

How many more Larry Craigs and Richard Curtises will we need to have before people see the truth about homophobia in America?

Bush Complains About Congress

President Bush today said the current Congress had, “the worst record in 20 years.”

“Congress is not getting it’s work done,” Bush said, flanked by members of the Republican House leadership. “The House of Representatives has wasted valuable time on a constant stream of investigations, and the Senate has wasted valuable time on an endless series of failed votes to pull our troops out of Iraq.”

I agree. They have been unable to pass any of the important legislation facing our country: their bill to fund stem-cell legislation failed. Their bill to set a timetable for ending the worst foreign policy disaster in our nation’s history, the Iraq War failed. They have been unable to pass bills which extend leave time for the troops fighting this war, increasing numbers of which are returning with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. They have failed to increase health-care coverage for poor children. They have failed to pass any substantial immigration reform.

Their most recent major piece of legislation, the Dream Act, was a tremendous disapointment to me. The Dream Act would have given immigrants who have lived in this country since they were under 16 and received a college diploma or served in the military an opportunity to become citizens. The bill failed under the fear that our future doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and soldiers would have funny sounding last names.

Of course, these failure are not what President Bush and the Congressional Republicans were refering to. They are the ones who caused the above failures, either through vetoes, or by refusing to allow the legislation to even reach the floor for a vote. As the Democrats only have a razor thin majority in the Senate (51-49, 50-51 if you look at Joe Lieberman’s voting record on these issues and count Dick Cheney), they are unable to pass any legislation without some Republican support.

No, President Bush was upset over something else. He’s upset because he’s worried that as support for the Iraq War continues to decrease that he is being forced to reach compromises with the Democrats in order to continue to fund it. After spending 6 years with a rubber-stamp Congress and completely ignoring the Democrats, he is having a difficult time learning to work with the opposition party.

I plan to take high doses of Valium until January 20, 2009. Here’s a website that counts down the minutes remaining.

P.S. I am aware that given the volume of our readership, some of the readers, statistically speaking, must continue to support the President. I was very much appreciate if you would leave a comment about why you support him so that I feel less bad about our nation’s leadership (seriously, it might help me sleep better at night).

The McClurkin Scandal: Why Barack Obama Just Lost My Vote

I’ve been on the fence these last few months between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Obama has the most articulate stance on faith in politics I’ve ever heard. Hillary Clinton is a seasoned policy wonk with a clear vision for America.

Now, I think I just fell firmly into Hillary’s camp by default. Why? Because of Barack Obama’s involvement with “ex-gay” activist Donnie McClurkin. Previously, I thought that Obama’s campaign had hired McClurkin because of an oversight, but now I learn that Obama actually gave McClurkin a podium from which to slam gays and lesbians.

I can’t support any candidate who gives those attitudes a podium.

As if Women in Technology Didn’t Have it Tough Enough

The industry I work in is notoriously difficult for women. In my two years working in social media, I’ve been overlooked, belittled and even sexually harassed by prominent people in my own field simply because I’m young and female. Worse has happened to my female friends in the industry.

Now, a site called Dig a Silicon Valley Girl (no link! you’ll have to read the article on Mashable to find it) allows people to rank and categorize women in Silicon Valley as either “bimbos” or “geeks” and rank us on how hot we are.

I’m ABSOLUTELY FUCKING FED UP with how women are treated in the technology world and in the world in general. As those who know me will attest, I’m pretty difficult to offend. What offends me deeply is seeing women I respect being treated like brainless pieces of meat because they’re female and have chosen to work in the tech industry.

Three Reasons I Like Snitter Better than Twitterific

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Twitter, it’s a neat little service that allows you to write 140 character “micro-blog” posts and share them with your friends. There are a lot of simple desktop clients popping up to allow people to “tweet” and review their friends “tweets” from the desktop. The most popular of these services at present is Twitterific.

A couple of nights ago Robert Scoble tweeted that he’s using a new Twitter desktop client: Snitter, so I checked it out.

I instantly liked it better than Twitterific. Here’s why:

1. It allows you to make a small URL from within the interface rather than making you go to your browser to go to sites like TinyURL, URLTea or SnipURL.
2. You can send direct messages to people and see your direct messages within the client, rather than going to the browser.
3. You can look at a feed of all tweets by your followers, again without going to your browser, even if you don’t typically follow them.

Ann Coulter Out to Dinner with a Bunch of Gay Guys in West Hollywood!

I knew she was big fat hypocrite.

I can’t help but wonder if our favorite gay-hater is actually a closeted lesbian herself…

Right to Personal Truth Trumps Political Correctness, but Not on the Campaign Trail

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Deborah Douglas weighed in on the uproar in the gay community over the Obama campaign’s hiring of Donnie McClurkin — a self identified ex-gay gospel singer — to entertain fundraiser guests.

She argues that McClurkin, “doesn’t have to stay gay if he doesn’t want to.” She goes on to describe how McClurkin’s childhood of sexual abuse led him to be, “confused about the role of sex and sexual identity.”

I agree with Douglas that if McClurkin wants to be ex-gay, that’s his right. He can live his life, explain his choices and develop his personal truth about God, sex and the world any way he wants. But his choices do have political ramifications when he makes those choices public. The ex-gay movement might work for McClurkin — I’ll believe it if he’s not caught having sex in an Iowa men’s room any time in the next 20 years — but it doesn’t work for a lot of people.

In fact, it more than doesn’t work. It leads a lot of gays and lesbians who would otherwise be openly living their lives and accepting themselves into lives of self-hating misery.

When a presidential campaign hires a vocal advocate for such a movement for his campaign, he gives a tacit endorsement of that advocate’s position. As nuanced and relatively tolerant as that position may be in this case — McClurkin doesn’t condemn gays quite as vehemently as some — it is still an endorsement of a position that causes many people immeasurable pain.

The gay community was quite reasonable to sit up and howl at Obama’s association with McClurkin.

Why Everyone In Boston Should Love Me (And Everyone Else Should Hate Me)

In 2004, I was on vacation with Teresa during the ALCS Championship series. We watched the very end of Game 3, and as a diehard anti-Yankees fan, the crushing 19-8 blowout made her very sad. The next day she said she absolutely did not want to watch Game 4, because she did not want to see the Yankees sweep out the Red Sox and win yet another World Series.

So I PROMISED her that if we watched Game 4, the Red Sox would not only win that game, but come back and win the entire series. And I don’t just go around promising things either; I only promise things I KNOW I can deliver. This was a big promise too; not only would this have been the first time in Major League Baseball that a team came back from being down 3-0, but the Red Sox also were sort of “cursed”, and hadn’t won the World Series in 86 years. But, as fate would have it, the Red Sox came back and won the ALCS Championship in what will most likely be remembered as the greatest comeback in the entire history of sports.

So, now, 3 years later, Boston Fans, you owe me. The “curse of the bambino” has been lifted, and I was probably the only person in the world who truly believed that the Red Sox would win that series (including the players). And for those who aren’t that big sports fans, this is Boston’s YEAR. They just might sweep the three major sports (baseball, football, and basketball). The Red Sox are currently up 3-0 in the World Series, the Patriots are 7-0 and have won every game by at least 14 points, and the Celtics aquired Ray Allen and former MVP Kevin Garnett this off-season, making them a heavy favorite to win the NBA’s Eastern Conference this year. Looks like its a good time to be living in Boston right now.

Highlights From The Republican Debate

I watched last weeks Republican debate, and found the only intelligent response from the entire night. Ron Paul’s response on the Iraq War. Enjoy.

Bashings on the Rise: Let’s Show Support for Seattle’s Gay Community

A recent wave of anti-gay behavior on Capitol Hill has the local community really worried. Broadway used to be a neighborhood where LBGT people could be themselves without fear of persecution, but that’s changed in the past few weeks.

I was out at a gay club with friends last Saturday night and saw signs up in all the restrooms warning people to watch their drinks, as toxic substances were being slipped into drinks at Capitol Hill bars.

The whole thing is really scary and disgusting and it’s important that the greater Seattle population stands up for our gay and lesbian friends.

I’d like to organize a counter-bashing. That is, let’s get a crowd of people up to Capitol Hill a week from tomorrow night with signs. We’ll stand on streetcorners, express support for the gay community and tell bashers to leave our friends alone!

Leave me a comment if you’re interested in attending and spread the word on your blogs. I’ve also created a Facebook event here, so feel free to join!

Iran Is The New Iraq

The debate these days has moved away from Iraq. Who wants to talk about that anyway? It’s like debating whether or not to take a patient off like support.

No, the debate now is whether or not to run Iran through the same Chemotherapy we tried on Iraq. Except for with fewer resources, no available troops, and no remaining credibility.

The Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which passed 76-22 gives President Bush more political capital for an invasion of Iran. An invasion which would require either an immediate pullout from Iraq, or a draft. And a significant raise in taxes or cut in domestic spending.

Presidential candidates are weighing the merits of pushing sanctions on Iran. On the one hand, putting pressure on Iran is the right thing to do. On the other, no one trusts President Bush anymore.

I know that Iran with WMD’s is a dangerous thought. But we’ve already had an opportunity to disarm one potentially unstable middle eastern country, and we blew that. We no longer have the ability to effective disarm Iran. We gave that up when we botched Iraq.

The War for Reality: Christian Nationalism, Abstinence Education and the “Culture War”

In the rational world, there is public truth and personal truth. Personal truth can be derived by following the strict teachings of a religion, or it can be found through a lifetime of introspection and moral inquiry. Everyone has a personal truth that works for that individual and that individual alone. Respect for other people’s personal truth is one of the most important things we can achieve as human beings. Public truth — the realm of facts, statistics, science, empiricism and research — ensures that we all have space to develop our personal truths.

That’s why when someone’s personal truth begins to codify itself and overrun public truth, we have a problem.

My good friend Mark recently sent me a New York Times op-ed piece by Amanda Robb that references all the research that shows that abstinence-only education actually causes more teenage pregnancy, more unprotected sex and more sexually transmitted diseases. The problem with citing this research is that it doesn’t really matter to the Christian nationalists that support publicly funded abstinence education.

Why? Because they don’t care about facts — the very mainstay of public truth. Instead, they conflate public truth with personal truth. A very illustrative example of this is laid out in Michelle Goldberg’s chilling investigative report about the rise of Christian nationalism in America, Kingdom Coming.

On pages 135-136, she cites a 2003 speech by abstinence “educator” Pam Stenzel at the Reclaiming America for Christ conference. Here is the sub-chapter about Stenzel in its entirety:

At Reclaiming America for Christ, Stenzel told her audience about a conversation she’d had with a skeptical businessman on an airplane. The man had asked about abstinence education’s success rate — a question she regarded as risible.

“What he’s asking,” she said, “is does it work. You know what? Doesn’t matter. Cause guess what. My job is not to keep teenagers from having sex. The public schools’ job is not to keep teens from having sex!”

Then her voice rose and turned angry as she shouted, “Our job should be to tell kids the truth!”

People of God,” she cried, “can I beg you to commit yourself to truth, not what works! To truth! I don’t care if it works, because at the end of the day, I’m not answering to you, I’m answering to God!”

Later on in the same talk, she explained further why what “works” isn’t what’s important — and gave some insight into what she means by “truth.”

“Let me tell you something, people of God, that is radical, and I can only say it here,” she said. “AIDS is not the enemy. HPV and a hysterectomy at twenty is not the enemy. An unplanned pregnancy is not the enemy. My child believing that they can shake their fist in the face of a holy God and sin without consequence, and my child spending eternity separated from God, is the enemy. I will not teach my child that they can sin safely.”

The crowd applauded.

Of course, Stenzel isn’t just teaching her child.

Stenzel’s is the most arrogant, small-minded definition of truth. It takes personal truth and projects it onto the whole of civilization. In this speech, Pat Stenzel is quite literally saying, “it doesn’t matter what anyone else believes. It doesn’t matter what science says. It doesn’t matter that children will suffer as a direct result of the education we give them. All that matters is what we elect — we few who know the special truth — believe. We have no evidence to back up our claims about human sexual mores. All we have is personal truth, and our personal truth is more important than public truth, or anyone else’s personal truth.”

I support Pam Stenzel’s right to her personal truth. The Constitution protects it, because personal truth is a fundamental component of the pursuit of happiness. I would die to protect Pam Stenzel’s right to her personal truth.

But Pam Stenzel and her ilk are doing more than trying to legislate morality with abstinence education. They are trying to change the very definition of truth. They are telling America that facts don’t matter — that public truth, science, research and empiricism are irrelevant in the face of the special and unverifiable tenets of their brand of Christianity.

This isn’t a culture war, it’s a war for the very nature of reality.

Guiliani - “I Am Superman”

Rudy Guiliani made the claim today that he will to end illegal immigration within three years of his Presidency, by increasing the number of border guards from 12,000 to 18,000 and building a fence with technological monitoring.

“If you do this for two or three years, you’ll change behavior,” Giuliani said. “If people come to the border and figure they can’t get in, they’ll stop.”

Absolutely. Increasing the currently ineffective border control by 50% will totally stop the 2 million people a year already risking their lives to seeking a better one.

Guiliani also claimed today that he would “colonize the moon, lower taxes, increase spending, balance the budget, win the war in Iraq, and kill Osama Bin Laden with my bare hands” all in his first term.

Are Cell Phone Numbers Really the Ultimate Identifier?

My friend and colleague Jason Preston often says that cell phone numbers will be the universal, unique identifier of the future. There are a lot of cool upsides to this idea. Imagine walking by a cute girl at the supermarket, only to have your cell phone notify you that you have three mutual friends on Facebook. It’s the perfect excuse to chat with someone you would otherwise have no reason to talk to.

But what if your cell phone number belonged to someone else before it belonged to you? It happens more than you’d think, and it’s creating trouble for consumers and companies alike.

It’s also plaguing me at the moment, because my home phone number used to belong to two different women, each with credit problems.

Given these problems, I don’t think we can replace our social security numbers and drivers’ licenses with a seven-digit number just yet. No matter how cool the possibilities.

Ron Paul Is Whacky

Whacky - “abberant, abnormal, singular, strange, uncommon, unconventional, unusual.”

In my recent post, I said that Ron Paul is “whacky.” Several people commented in support of Ron Paul, saying that he is not whacky. He certainly fits the definition posted above. He is neither common, conventional, usual, ordinary, nor dull. He is an aberration because he is an anti-war conservative in a pack of hawkish neo-conservatives.

As a liberal, I would really prefer to have someone more to the left than Ron Paul on social issues. However, I must say that I love seeing him try to put the “conservative” back in the Republican party. And since he has more available spending money for his campaign than front-runners Mitt Romney and John McCain, and has stood out in the debates, it is safe to say we will be hearing more from him.

Given the state of things for the past 7 years in Washington, it is refreshing to see someone who is willing to say something true and be booed. I watched Ron Paul in the debates the other nights, and he made several true statements he knew would be very unpopular. He was cheered loudly and booed loudly. He was the only candidate who elicited any kind of emotion response from the crowd without using the words “9-11″ or “terrorist.”

While I still feel that Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and Richardson would be strongly preferrable to any Republican candidate, I must say that Ron Paul frightens me significantly less than fearmongers Guiliani, Romney, McCain, Huckabee, and Thompson, and I hope he continues to press the front-runners on the Iraq War and the National Debt.

Fiscal Conservative For A Day

“My fellow Americans, I’m afraid that I cannot sign SCHIP into law today. I know providing giving health care for poor kids by taxing cigarettes seems like a good idea, but I am not a tax-and-spend liberal.”

I believed Mr. Bush might actually have realized that a 9 trillion dollar debt was a bit of problem, and so he was turning over a new leaf by vetoing any bills with unnecessary government spending. It turns out he just likes tobacco lobbyists more than poor, sick kids. That would, at least, appear to be the only possible explanation for his veto, given what President Bush did today.

Today, President Bush signed the 286 billion dollar transportation bill. It was not only way over budget, but jam packed full of pork-barrel spending. How much you say? Here’s a good point of reference: President Ronald Reagan once vetoed a tranportation bill because “I haven’t seen this much lard since I handed out blue ribbons at the Iowa State Fair.” That bill had 121 earmarks (otherwise know as pork-spending). The bill that President Bush signed in today had . . . 6,371 earmarks. That’s roughly 60 per Senator. Here is a list of some of the more ridiculous earmarks:

6 million for graffiti clean up in New York City.
$4 million for the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio, and the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
$2.3 million for beautification of the Ronald Reagan Freeway.
$2.4 million for the Red River National Wildlife Visitor Center in Louisiana.
$1.2 million to light the steps and some equipment at the Blue Ridge Music Center in Virginia.
$13.5 million to the International Fund for Ireland to help fund the World Toilet Summit.
$1.3 million for Alaskan berry research.
$500,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum in Sparta North Carolina.
$86 million dollars total since 1985 for “wood utilization research”.
$65.7 million on shrimp aquaculture since 1985.

I would also like to point out that this is not the only bill with earmarks. In 2005-2006, Congress passed 23,960 earmarks, not one of which was vetoed by President Bush. The Agricultural Bill included almost half a million dollars for “asparagus technology and production” in the state of Washington. The Defense Bill included 2.5$ for the Northwest Manufacturing initiative, which has nothing to do with defense and is able job creation.

Some municipalities have even gone to point where they are hiring lobbyists with local taxpayer money in order to try to convince Congressmen to give them federal money through earmarks. We have a 9 trillion dollar debt. Whoever we elect in 2008 needs to get that and put an end to this unethical and wasteful practice.

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