American public turning against science?

An Op-Ed in the Boston Globe by Ken Miller expresses that concern:

AMERICAN science is in trouble, and if you wonder why, just go to the movies. Popular culture is gradually turning against science, and Ben Stein’s new movie, “Expelled,” is helping to push it along.

I believe that American culture has a deep vein of anti-intellectualism, and the current anti-science movement has roots that go back at least to the “Reagan revolution”. It’s a multi-pronged attack – there’s astroturfing by big business (acid rain, smoking, climate change), there was the “property rights vs. science” battle that was lost in the West in the 1990s, and there’s the battle against the creationists. Sadly they have fed one upon the other – big business showed that scientific opinion is for sale (and if some scientists are for sale, then maybe all are, right?) The property rights issue managed to cast science as just another interest group. The creationists built on both of these ideas – they bought their own scientists, cast real science as just another ideologically-driven lobby, and then asked for “fairness” and “equal time”. Expelled is, of course, part of the next step – demonise science and scientists.

Expelled is a slick propaganda piece, full of outright lies. Miller continues

Why is all this nonsense a threat to science? The reason is Stein’s libelous conclusion that science is simply evil…Stein is doing nothing less than helping turn a generation of American youth away from science. If we actually come to believe that science leads to murder, then we deserve to lose world leadership in science. In that sense, the word “expelled” may have a different and more tragic connotation for our country than Stein intended.

My hope is that Stein has overplayed his hand when he said that science leads to murder. But most of the people he may have reached with the movie will never any of Stein’s more outrageous nonsense.

Farewell speech?

Hillary Clinton’s victory speech in Indiana sounds more like a farewell speech.  While she affirms that she is going on to West Virginia and Kentucky (two states she’ll win easily), this feels different from her other speeches.  Actually I like this Hillary a lot better than the one I’ve heard recently.

This isn’t a concession speech, but there’s finally an awareness of the reality of the situation.  Nice speech.

Must read: Josh Rosenau on Ben Stein

Last night on Countdown I was pleased to see Ben Stein come in second in Worst Person in the World.  (First place would have been better, but no one has a chance when Coultergeist is in the running…she made Rush Limbaugh look sane.)  What earned Stein the nomination was a comment  he made in a TBN interview

[T]he last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you. …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

In response to this comment by Stein, Josh Rosenau has an excellent post: “Holocaust Remembrance Day”.  I always wonder to what extent creationists are aware that the lies they are telling are lies.  Apparently in Stein’s case, he is well aware.

in 2006, he wrote a column discussion Hadamar, a Nazi facility at the center of Expelled. “Nazis,” the Ben Stein of 2006 explained, “believed thoroughly in a vicious corruption of Malthusian economics.” Not only is he right that Malthus is a better historical precedent, but he’s right to call what the Nazis did “a vicious corruption.”

More on gas prices

Given the concerns about rising gas prices, Hillary Clinton chose to jump on board with John McCain’s proposal to waive the Federal gas tax over the summer.  As I mentioned previously, there’s no reason to assume that oil companies will pass these savings along to consumers, especially if, as Clinton proposes, the shortfall in revenue be made up through higher taxes on the oil companies.

Over at TalkingPointsMemo, David Kurtz discusses the issue.  In response to his post, one of his readers comments on the inelasticity of the supply of oil.  In a “normal” market, driven by supply and demand, competition tends to push prices down.  The lower your prices, the more you can sell.  The thing that sets the floor on your prices is your cost of production.  As you lower your prices, you increase sales because (a) people buy from you instead of your competitors (who are charging higher prices) and (b) people buy more of the product because it’s cheaper.  (Of course reality is far more complex than this.)

In some cases, demand is inelastic.  Lowering the price of toilet paper a couple cents is unlikely to make people consume more of it.  Raising the price doesn’t make people use a lot less.  Competition is likely to keep prices low.

In other cases, supply is inelastic.  And that’s the case with oil.  Right now, oil companies can sell all the gas they can produce.  Lowering the price of gas isn’t going to change the amount of oil they sell – it’s only going to reduce their profit margin.  There’s an upper limit that the market will bear, of course – the higher the price, the more people will switch to more fuel efficient vehicles, the more people will walk or take the bus, and the more people will skip non-essential travel.  Gas prices always spike in the summer because Americans travel more.  Higher oil prices are likely to cut back on travel and make people vacation closer to home.  Thus, higher prices are likely to damn demand, which is likely to reduce price spikes.

I’m just guessing here, but I suspect that cutting the gas tax will probably make people less likely to cut back on their summer plans.  And, of course, once they have taken the trip, they still need to get back.  So cutting the gas tax might actually increase prices.

The only real solution is to cut demand.  If demand falls, not only are we likely to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that we are pumping into the atmosphere, it’s also the one thing that can actually push real prices down.  What’s interesting to think is that if the price of gas is determined by what the market will bear, then not only is reducing the gas tax likely to have no effect on the prices consumers pay for gas, increasing the gas tax should also have little effect.  Increase the gas tax and put the money into public transport and fast commuter trains.  Cut demand for real.  And then maybe gas prices would actually decline… (Yeah, I know, it’s not going to happen.)

McCain, Clinton, Obama and the gas tax

John McCain proposed a temporary repeal of the 18 cent per gallon federal gas tax over the summer, when gasoline demand peaks.  The idea is that it would give consumers some relief from high gas prices at a time when prices tend to peak.  Hillary Clinton jumped on board, but realising that taxes on gasoline are used to build and repair roads and bridges, proposed that the revenue shortfall be made up through taxes on windfall profits by the oil companies.  Apart from making only a trivial difference to most consumers as envisioned, ($3.60 if you buy 20 gallons of gas), Saurabh explains why consumers are unlikely to see the full 18 cent reduction in prices.

Only Barack Obama has said something sensible on this issue – that these are short-term measures that do more harm than good (road construction, for example, generates a lot of jobs).  But none of them seem to have mentioned one key point – higher prices are good, because they reduce demand.  The higher prices of the “summer driving season” are due to the fact that people do a lot of driving in the summer.  The increase in consumption also increases greenhouse gas production.  Higher prices reduce demand, which, in turn, should moderate the spike in gas prices.  Higher prices also push consumers towards smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles.

It makes me wonder whether anyone has tried to determine what effect a repeal of the gas tax is likely to have on gas prices.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it resulted in higher gas prices.  It definitely will have a bad effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

Boren endorses Obama

I missed this, but apparently University of Oklahoma President David Boren has endorsed Barack Obama and agreed to serve on his national security team. Sam Nunn, another conservative Democrat, has agreed to do the same thing.

DocHoc discusses the implications of this at Blue Oklahoma.

Thought police in Arizona?

Dissent is one of the cornerstones of democracy. But in the view of some Arizona Republicans, the idea of democracy must be protected at all costs from the reality of democracy.

From The Arizona Republic

Arizona public schools would be barred from any teachings considered counter to democracy or Western civilization under a proposal endorsed Wednesday by a legislative panel.

Democracy is a living institution.  It’s an attack on democracy to forbid dissent.  The opportunity for dissent is an important element of western civilisation.  It’s the mark of a sad, frightened mind that is willing to destroy what it claims to defend because it is afraid of change and modernity.

Additionally, the measure would prohibit students of the state’s universities and community colleges from forming groups based in whole or part on the race of their members, such as the Black Business Students Association at Arizona State University or Native Americans United at Northern Arizona University. Those groups would be forbidden from operating on campus.

So not only do they fear dissent and modernity, they also appear to be afraid of people who don’t look like them.

“This bill basically says, ‘You’re here. Adopt American values,’ ” said Kavanagh, a Fountain Hills Republican. “If you want a different culture, then fine, go back to that culture.”

It’s amazing how tone-deaf these people can be.  Go back to what culture?  Have you forgotten that you’re squatting in their land?  You want to forbid groups like “Native Americans United” and say “go back to that culture”?  Forgotten who’s really the guest in who’s house?

H/T Denise at NewPages Blog

Chris Matthews

Mark Leibovich hits the nail on the head

Matthews’s bombast is radically at odds with the wry, antipolitical style fashioned by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert or the cutting and finely tuned cynicism of Matthews’s MSNBC co-worker Keith Olbermann. These hosts betray none of the reverence for politics or the rituals of Washington that Matthews does. On the contrary, they appeal to the eye-rolling tendencies of a cooler, highly educated urban cohort of the electorate that mostly dismisses an exuberant political animal like Matthews as annoyingly antiquated, like the ranting uncle at the Thanksgiving table whom the kids have learned to tune out.

That probably does a pretty good job of characterising my reaction to Chris Matthews.  And yet…

A number of people I spoke with at NBC said that Russert can be disdainful of Matthews, whose act he often sees as clownish. They also told me that Russert believes Matthews is something of a loose cannon who brings him undue headaches in his capacity as NBC’s Washington bureau chief.

While I take issue with Matthews, he beats Russert any day of the week in my book.  Matthews is odd, and a bit too much the product of his upbringing and generation.  Russert, on the other hand, just comes across as a bad journalist.

War crimes?

I have followed the issue of the John Yoo torture memos with a certain amount of horror, but without really probing the implications. So this came as something of a shock

That is, it doesn’t concern Yoo’s ideas about the laws or communication of same; it concerns credible allegations that Yoo acted directly and deliberately, in his capacity as an employee of the US government to facilitate war crimes.

(Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber)

I have called things war crimes from time to time. I have enjoyed reading reports of war crimes indictments laid against various of the neocons in European courts. But on a certain level I saw it as hyperbole – it may be true, but on some level I didn’t really feel that people like Rumsfeld set out to commit war crimes. Yoo’s writings are different. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t instruct people to commit war crimes. But unlike some of the others, it seems pretty clear that he did his best to allow them to happen.

Oklahoma politics

“As a general rule, we do not have to listen to them”

- Rep. Guy Liebmann, R-Oklahoma City, in response to an attempt by Chad Smith, Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, to speak at a State House committee meeting on a bill to declare English the official language of the State of Oklahoma.

See Official English legislation passes House committee following tense hearing

Update: Just to clarify, what really struck me about this quote was the idea that a politician would say that about the people.  Imagine another situation in which an employee said that of their employer.