What does the bible tell us?

Mark Zepezauer: Why the Right Hates America

Mark Zepezauer: Why the Right Hates America

Friends on the right, you wound us. If we didn't love America, why would we spend so much time and energy on bake sales and discussion groups and lecture series and petition drives and demonstrations to make it a better place? I mean, there may be some parts of Dallas we're not too keen on, and personally, you couldn't pay me enough to live in Phoenix, but on the whole, sure, love that America. Friendly people, nice beaches, great forests, er, what's left of them.

After all, who was it that said that the 9/11 attacks allowed, quote, "the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve"? It wasn't any leftist, that's for sure. It was that jolly old moral majoritarian, the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

600th study released showing huge wealth disparity | The Smirking Chimp

600th study released showing huge wealth disparity

I posted a question on Twitter: “How many studies need to come out showing the huge wealth disparity before the government acts to fix it?” and got the usual snarky, flippant response I’ve grown to expect and love from readers. The standard response goes like this: the government knows it’s a problem, but the rich, connected people are the ones in power, they benefit from this feudal system, and so they vote to preserve it.

Yet, our wealthy overlords seem incapable of reversing their myopic governance. They demonize the poor and unemployed, and dangle benefits before their noses before ultimately yanking them away. They propose severe austerity measures in the midst of an economic recession, and casually discuss privatizing Social Security – one of the last meaningful government programs. And they can generally get away with abusing the underclass because the corporate state – assisted by both political parties – toppled the sole tool of the solidarity labor movement, the union.

t r u t h o u t | The Lonely, Dangerous Fight Against Christian Supremacists Inside the Armed Forces

t r u t h o u t | The Lonely, Dangerous Fight Against Christian Supremacists Inside the Armed Forces

In his fight against British imperialism, Mahatma Gandhi described the life cycle of successful civil disobedience: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Mikey Weinstein, the 55-year-old founder of the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), likes to quote it, knowing full well he's crossed the line into a bloody-knuckle brawl. Over the past year, Weinstein and his organization have recorded a tremendous string of victories in the fight against Christian supremacists inside the armed forces.

The United States military cannot favor one religious sect over another, staying true to the Constitution's establishment clause that service members pledge to defend. More pragmatically, the military cannot favor one religious sect over another because it's destructive of good order and discipline, creating divisions between service members when they must rely on the guy next to them to survive in a firefight. Yet inside the U.S. military a small, determined, and fanatical clique wants to abuse its power and prosetlyze to service members below them in the chain of command. Through this captive market, they can inject their peculiar ideology into the most powerful institution on earth.

How facts backfire - The Boston Globe

How facts backfire - The Boston Globe

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

“Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be,” read a recent Onion headline. Like the best satire, this nasty little gem elicits a laugh, which is then promptly muffled by the queasy feeling of recognition. The last five decades of political science have definitively established that most modern-day Americans lack even a basic understanding of how their country works. In 1996, Princeton University’s Larry M. Bartels argued, “the political ignorance of the American voter is one of the best documented data in political science."

But researchers are working on it. One avenue may involve self-esteem. Nyhan worked on one study in which he showed that people who were given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information than people who had not. In other words, if you feel good about yourself, you’ll listen — and if you feel insecure or threatened, you won’t. This would also explain why demagogues benefit from keeping people agitated. The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are.

Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully: in Ten Minutes - Great Writing Creative Writing Community

Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully: in Ten Minutes - Great Writing Creative Writing Community

I am going to tell you these things again because often people will only listen - really listen - to someone who makes a lot of money doing the thing he's talking about. This is sad but true. And I told you the story above not to make myself sound like a character out of a Horatio Alger novel but to make a point: I saw, I listened, and I learned. Until that day in John Gould's little office, I had been writing first drafts of stories which might run 2,500 words. The second drafts were apt to run 3,300 words. Following that day, my 2,500-word first drafts became 2,200-word second drafts. And two years after that, I sold the first one.

You want to write a story? Fine. Put away your dictionary, your encyclopedias, your World Almanac, and your thesaurus. Better yet, throw your thesaurus into the wastebasket. The only things creepier than a thesaurus are those little paperbacks college students too lazy to read the assigned novels buy around exam time. Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. You think you might have misspelled a word? O.K., so here is your choice: either look it up in the dictionary, thereby making sure you have it right - and breaking your train of thought and the writer's trance in the bargain - or just spell it phonetically and correct it later. Why not? Did you think it was going to go somewhere? And if you need to know the largest city in Brazil and you find you don't have it in your head, why not write in Miami, or Cleveland? You can check it ... but later. When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.

Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition

Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition

Our findings highlight the importance of situations and historical factors that can produce political shifts by affecting psychological needs pertaining to uncertainty and threat. The need to achieve closure and to resolve ambiguity, for example, are heightened under conditions of destabilizing uncertainty (for example, with the outbreak of terrorism, economic turmoil or political instability). Thus our research is best understood as addressing the cognitive and motivational bases of conservatism (and liberalism) rather than the personalities of conservatives (and liberals).


We readily acknowledge that identifying the motivational underpinnings of a belief system does not constitute a valid argument in a political debate any more than it does in scientific debates. What counts is the cogency of the political arguments and the degree to which they fit with independently verifiable facts and reasonable assumptions. When the dust settles on the current debate, we hope that these important messages will be seen as the real focus of our research.

Something in the Water - Food - The Atlantic

Something in the Water - Food - The Atlantic

The nitrogen in chemical fertilizer does two things incredibly well. It supercharges crop growth, and it produces nitrates, chemicals that are ultra-soluble in water and easily pass through soil to accumulate in groundwater. Once there, nitrates can persist for decades and increase in concentration as more fertilizer is added.

Ingestion of nitrates by infants has been shown to lower levels of oxygen in the blood, leading to the potentially fatal blue-baby syndrome. And several studies have shown that consumption of nitrate-contaminated water can cause cancers in animals.

What plant genes tell us about crop domestication | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis

What plant genes tell us about crop domestication | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis

Anyone who has seen teosinte, the wild grass from which maize (corn) evolved, might be forgiven for assuming many genetic changes underlie the transformation of one plant to the other.

Plant domestication can be thought of as a two-step process. In the first step, plants acquire traits in what is called the “domestication syndrome” that make the plant worth the labor of cultivation. These include traits that allow a crop to be reliably sown, cultivated and harvested, such as uniform seed germination and fruit ripening.

In the second step, the now domesticated plant is selected for improved qualities. It is in this stage, for example, that farmers might breed many different varieties of a crop that differ in grain taste, fruit color or fruit shape.

Why More Equality? | The Equality Trust

Why More Equality?

Why More Equality?
Our thirty years research shows that:

1) In rich countries, a smaller gap between rich and poor means a happier, healthier, and more successful population. Just look at the US, the UK, Portugal, and New Zealand in the top right of this graph, doing much worse than Japan, Sweden or Norway in the bottom left. Inequality vs health and social well-being

2) Meanwhile, more economic growth will NOT lead to a happier, healthier, or more successful population. In fact, there is no relation between income per head and social well-being in rich countries.

3) If the UK were more equal, we'd be better off as a population. For example, the evidence suggests that if we halved inequality here:

- Murder rates would halve
- Mental illness would reduce by two thirds
- Obesity would halve
- Imprisonment would reduce by 80%
- Teen births would reduce by 80%
- Levels of trust would increase by 85%

4) It's not just poor people who do better. The evidence suggests people all the way up would benefit, although it's true that the poorest would gain the most.

5) These findings hold true, whether you look across developed nations, or across the 50 states of the USA.