Morford is guilty here of a sin that might be called metaphoricalism--assuming that because he himself often speaks metaphorically, people who insist on literalism must be fools, ignorami, and/or members of a tiny lunatic fringe.

Yes, of course the ability to interpret metaphor is an important characteristic of the intelligent, educated mind. But most of the time, most people mean exactly what they say, and it's a grave mistake to assume otherwise. He really goes off the rails when he insists that mythology must be interpreted in metaphorical terms. There is no reason to believe--no evidence whatsoever--that the people who originally told the stories of Eve, Paris, or the risen Christ thought they were speaking anything other than literal truth; nor were the monsters lurking in the darkness beyond the campfire anything other than our ancestors' attempts to rationalize (not symbolize) the nasty, brutish, and short nature of life throughout most of human history. A metaphorical interpretation of these myths is more reasonable than a literal one, to be sure. It is also, historically and to a large degree in the modern age, a distinctly minority view.

Your terrifying lack of imagination

(Also: âZ"Science is just mysticism disguised as mathematics," says the guy on the internet.)

Kind of lost in the shuffle over the health care ruling (my opinion, FWIW, is that it's a lousy law, but clearly the best we're going to get in the current political climate, so all in all I'm glad it was upheld; perhaps in another couple of decades, we'll be ready to try again) is this piece of news about another Supreme Court ruling: the court voted 6-3 to strike down the Stolen Valor Act.

I admit to mixed feelings about this. It was clearly the right decision -- any law that limits free speech is prima facie a bad law, and the government's argument that it only restricts "false statements (that) have no value and hence no 1st Amendment protection," to quote the LA Times story, is chilling. We cannot outlaw people telling lies. OTOH, there are a hell of a lot of people using lies about their claimed service for personal advantage (up to and including a certain former President) and this is not only disgusting, it's often outright fraud. The SVA was an exceedingly blunt instrument for a problem that called for a scalpel. I guess the solution I'd like to see is the use of existing criminal fraud statutes for cases where it could be shown that the liar is not just telling stories to impress his buddies at the bar, but actually deriving financial or other measurable gain. Oh yeah, also court-martial for deserters (preceded, where necessary, by other measures such as, oh, say, impeachment, for those whose position places them beyond the usual corrective measures.)

I blame Hollywood, really. At this point they've probably given out more Medals of Honor than have actually been awarded in the entire history of the US military. Lesser decorations have been relegated, in this mindset, to something you get just for showing up. It's not just lazy storytelling; it has a real effect on real people who earn real medals. And no, I'm not saying this should be illegal either, but it should certainly be mocked at every opportunity.

More proof, as if any were needed, that modern conservatism is completely insane.

At this point in the conversation, we're usually treated to a chorus of, "Hey, liberals say crazy things too!" And the answer to that is ... well, yeah, kind of. Which is to say, there are plenty of left-wing lunatics out there, and many of them put their lunacy on display at every opportunity.

The difference is that these left-wing lunatics do not have anywhere near the power or prominence of their right-wing counterparts. They're not hosting nationally syndicated talk shows. They're not parlaying famous last names into political careers. And they are sure as hell not running the Democratic Party, as the right-wing lunatics are clearly running the GOP.

Here's the thing, conservatives. We marginalize and trivialize our extremists. Maybe we shouldn't do that; sometimes the extremists have legitimate grievances. But it's better than what you do with yours. You celebrate and lionize them. It's not just Reagan; it's Limbaugh and Coulter and Savage and Hannity -- and yes, Boehner and Cantor and McConnell, and the current version of Romney (which may of course change next week, or an hour from now, but for now ...) We keep our lunatics locked up. You put yours in charge of the asylum.

So here's my challenge. If you are tired of liberals making hay of every crazy thing some conservative pundit or politician says, do something about it. Point and laugh at your own side's lunatics, as we do. Make us believe that common ground is possible, that you have the same ends for the country that we do even if we disagree about the means. Put your racists and fascists in the same room where we keep our communists and anarchists, and keep them decently out of public view.

Or if you're not willing to do this, understand that we have no choice but to consider you just as bad as the worst of your number, and act accordingly.

Note to copywriters working for the DoD, or trying to appeal to a military audience: "soldier," "sailor," and "airman" are not proper nouns. "Marine" is a proper noun, because it happens to be part of the name of the service, United States Marine Corps. (Or, for that matter, the Royal Marine Corps on which the US version was modeled.) This does not mean that Marines are any more special or heroic or elite than members of the other services. (Marines, of course, will disagree, but that's part of their shtick. The rest of us just smile and nod.) It's an accident of language, no more.

Also not proper nouns: "military" and "veteran." Capitalizing any of these words, when they do not appear at the beginning of a sentence, does not emphasize how Special and Heroic and Elite our Brave Fighting Men And Women are for Making Sacrifices to Defend Our Freedom. It just makes you look illiterate. Now, you may not particularly care about literacy -- you're in the advertising business, after all -- but by God and the Constitution, I fought specially and heroically and elitely to defend your right to speak freely, not to sound like a moron doing so!

Thank You, and Have A Nice Day.

A perpetual problem with scientific software is that much of it starts out as one-time scripts written to analyze a specific piece of data, and then it gets released into the wild as The Way To Analyze This Type Of Data. A closely related problem, which affects repositories of scientific software, is that a kind of informal API develops among the developers and users (who are initially the same people) of packages within the repository, without ever being really documented in a way that makes sense to people who have not been involved in the development. What documentation there is tends be rather ... self-referential, shall we say, and assume a whole lot of background knowledge about how the software works which new users will, in almost all cases, not have.

Not to break my arm patting myself on the back, but I have to say that my years of industry experience in writing end-user applications, and managing a development team made up of people who had all joined the team at different times and had to understand what was going on, taught me a lot about how to write good documentation. Industry programmers could learn a lot from academia about how to make software run better, because scientific users have to squeeze every possible bit of performance out of every processor cycle. Academic programmers could learn a lot from industry about how to write documentation that allows people to use that performance without wanting to tear their hair out.

... I have to admire the Republicans for their ability to stick to their predefined narrative, even when it's the exact opposite of reality. The purpose of CISPA is "creating this monster here in Washington to control what we would see and not see on the Internet." Obama's veto threat is aimed at preventing the creation of such a monster. But that doesn't fit with Boehner's definition of The Way Things Are, so ...

Boehner rebukes W. H. on CISPA veto threat

... because you know, James Lovelock. And somebody lost his temper in an e-mail once. And haha, Al Gore is fat.

Antarctic ice melting from below, reveals satellite

This has garnered lots of comments along the lines of "Great, now schoolkids in TN can give answers based on Islam / Buddhism / Hinduism / FSMism and get full credit and there's nothing they can do about it! Be careful what you ask for, fundies! Hah hah hah!"

It does not work that way. Here's how it will work. Religious answers which will be acceptable, and more generally, religious challenges to school authority which will be acceptable, will be those based in Christianity, specifically fundamentalist Protestantism. And students who profess other beliefs will be even more ostracized than they already are. This is what the sponsors of the bill wish to achieve, and if the bill becomes law and survives the inevitable court challenges, it is what they will achieve. To think anything else is naivete of the highest and most dangerous order

You have to read carefully to understand what's really being debated here. Short version: in 2008, Louisiana passed a law which more or less mandated the teaching of creationism, Luddism, and denialism, and now they're trying to repeal it. I don't know enough about the current state of LA politics to know if the repeal effort has a prayer (hah!) of succeeding, but I wish the best of luck to Sen. Peterson, Mr. Kopplin, and their supporters.

What makes this particularly irritating is that the language of the 2008 law is designed to make it hard to challenge; its supporters can ask with wide-eyed innocence, "Who could POSSIBLY object to 'critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion'?"

The answer, of course, is "nobody but a bunch of creationists, which is why we want to repeal the law." But the wording is an ugly trick, on par with the title of the USA-PATRIOT Act. See also, "But Hussein is his middle name! Why do you have a problem with his name?" and other acts of right-wing disingenuousness.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the "if we teach Biblical creationism then we have to teach all the other religions' creation myths too" argument is a bad one to use against these loons. They're not interested in "religious freedom" or "equal time" or anything else of the sort; what they want is a Christian (specifically fundamentalist evangelical Protestant) theocracy, and no one should have any illusions about their goals. If they get their way, we will have to teach (their version of) Biblical creationism, and we will not have to, or even be allowed to, teach anything else.

The same goes for the closely related "if we have Christian prayers in schools, then we also have to have Jewish / Muslim / Buddhist / Hindu / Wiccan / Satanist / etc. prayers too" idea. This is an appealing argument to tolerant, open-minded liberals, but it is a dangerous misunderstanding of the thinking of the religious Right.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/12/missouri-republicans-introduce-bill-that-forces-educators-to-teach-creationism-in-schools-and-universities/

If the DNC did this, then every Democratic candidate for office, from Obama down to the guy running for county dogcatcher, would be peppered with endless questions about it at every press conference, and would have to issue a statement either endorsing or repudiating the Committee's stance. It would be the greatest campaign issue for the Republicans in recent history, and they wouldn't let it slip by them. It would, more or less, be equivalent to the entire Democratic ticket saying, "You know what, we don't really care about 2012, you guys can have it."

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/11/402358/republican-national-committee-files-brief-seeking-to-allow-corporate-funding-of-campaigns/

I will now eagerly await the actions of the Democratic attack machine on this story in 3, 2, 1, ... still counting ..., 0, -1, -2, ... um, guys?

We have already seen that "piracy" (in the IP sense, not in the original meaning of the word) is one of four root passwords to the Constitution. The others are "drugs," "child porn," and "terrorism." It's time to fight fire with fire.

I therefore propose that We the People, in order to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish these Talking Points:

(1) Lamar Smith gets campaign contributions from drug dealers!

(2) PIPA stands for "Porn Infant Porn for All!" You know it's really bad 'cause it's got "porn" in it twice.

(3) If SOPA passes, the terrorists have won.

None of this actually makes sense, of course, but if we repeat it loudly enough and often enough, it should work.

This is a nice, compact debunking of the "B-b-but in the 1970's all the scientists were predicting global COOLING!" meme that the denialists seem unable to resist. It won't help with the hardcore denialists, of course -- "You can't reason someone out something he didn't reason himself into" -- but it's worth keeping around to show those who might be on the fence. Be sure to follow the links; there's some good stuff there.

Derailing for Dummies

I'm not going to say I agree completely with all the arguments herein, but it nonetheless ought to be required reading for anyone (and particularly, yes, for white men) who is considering jumping into discussions about race, sex, religion, and other Sensitive Subjects. It strikes me as being akin to lists of common logical fallacies -- not at all (a large number of Slashdotters to the contrary) the be-all and end-all of understanding how to have a good debate, but an incredibly useful tool for understanding the basics of how not to make yourself look like a fool.

The reactions to Christopher Hitchens' death have reminded me that I am, even among my fellow nonbelievers, a stranger in a strange land.

My personal "I had no need for that hypothesis" brand of atheism, or agnosticism, or whatever, is important to me to exactly the same degree it was important to Pierre Laplace -- that is, not at all, unless someone with the power to order my head chopped off makes an issue of it. (To be fair to Napoleon, he did nothing of the sort. Modern bloody-minded political leaders could take a lesson from this.) I spend as little time as possible pondering (and pontificating on!) the nonexistence of God, or the Gods, or the Universal Spritual Force Which Holds Everything Together But Which I Don't Want To Call God Because That's Too Conventional, because it does not matter to me. I have science to do.

But then, I was raised by two atheists, an ex-Catholic and an ex-Jew, and they didn't get that luxury. Neither, I strongly suspect, did Hitchens, or any of the other more vocal "New Atheist" leaders -- and neither did the vast majority of the nonbelievers I know. Almost everyone I have ever known, in my entire life, was raised with some sort of religious belief. Most of them retained that belief, or switched over to a closely related one. Some broke away from it, and the use here of the verb "to break" is appropriate. It is a breaking, and like all such violent events, it leaves scars. The ex-believers almost universally have in their minds something very much like the titanium rod I have in my leg; it provides some support against the stresses and strains of the world, but one is always aware that it is there, and sometimes it rubs against other, organic structures in uncomfortable ways.

My father is an immigrant, and although he's lived here for what is now by far the greater portion of his life, he's still sometimes taken aback by some cultural reference which was common to the childhoods of his native-born contemporaries. In a culture which is shaped as deeply by religion, specifically Christianity, as is ours, I sometimes feel like a long-term immigrant too. I may look and talk and for the most part think like the people around me, but there's that common cultural reference point, that history of belief if not the belief itself, that I don't have.

"You don't know what it was like, man! You weren't there!" Indeed. And I don't regret this, because I've seen the scars the breaking leaves. But I do regret that there really is no other way to understand what it feels like, without having to go through the associated pain.

Hitchens was an abrasive, egotistical loudmouth, and the things he was loud about tended to be opionions with which many of my family and friends passionately agreed. For what it's worth, I agreed too, for the most part, but without the passion. Because I just don't have the background -- the Passion of the Atheist, if you will -- to feel it. I have no need for that passion.

This leaves me free to look at the man and his life with the immigrant's eye. If the immigrant's lack of a common cultural reference point comes with a price, it confers advantages as well. My father often makes astute observations about American culture which no native-born citizen, not even one as culturally introspective as I am, could quite come up with. Objectivity helps. And the objective truth is that while Hitchens was right about many small things, he was wrong, badly wrong, about One Big Thing.

Hitchens saw 9/11 as the result not merely of Islamic extremism, but of religion in general -- in which he was right -- and conceived of America's subsequent kill-em-all reaction, specifically the Iraq portion, as a war against religious extremism -- in which he was wrong. Deeply, tragically, bloodily wrong. And he compounded the wrongness by turning his considerable eloquence and wit to propagandizing for the war, often turning against his fellow leftists in the process, growing ever louder as the corpses piled higher.

One Big Thing. And I understand that to my fellow nonbelievers, more specifically to the ex-believers in whose land I-the-immigrant live, the small things were not small. Hitchens wrote for decades against Yahweh, after all, and for only a few years in the service of Mars. But for myself, while I have no need of the Yahweh hypothesis, I know Mars quite well. Bright-speared Mars, and Odin who stirs up wars among men, and Morrigan who sends her ravens to feed on the dead -- these Gods I know; and Hitchens preached their gospel. To others, this may well be a minor heresy. So be it. It is a sin I find myself unwilling to forgive.