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Fundamentalist-based Republicanism

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Douglas Roberts-2

Re: Fundamentalist-based Republicanism

I third the motion.

Monday, Tuesday evening this week, either place. I prefer the beer at 2nd Street, and the food at Cowgirl, so no matter which.

--Doug

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:38 AM, Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Nov 3, 2008, at 11:30 AM, Steve Smith wrote:

<snip>

Agreed. Let's have a beer!

- Steve

Actually, I'd like to get back to that. We used to have a Friam beer now and again, what's a good time for folks? Cowgirl? Second Street?

-- Owen

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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Kari Sentz

Re: Fundamentalist-based Republicanism

In reply to this post by Steve Smith

I have written the principal of LAHS to verify this. She has sent me an
initial response that she was contacting the Department chairs for further
information. (Not to doubt you Doug...I wrote her immediately after our
first exchange.) In addition, I have spoken to a number of LAHS parents
and community members who were appalled at the thought of excluding
evolution in course curriculum.

Evolution plays an important part in the science at LANL...at least in its
computational, biological, and medical research. This should be reflected
in the education of the community's children. (Not to say one way or the
other that it is.)

The changing demographic in Los Alamos county will hopefully be evidenced
tomorrow.

I'll let you know what I find out.
Kari

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> Douglas Roberts wrote:
> <blockquote
> cite="mid:[hidden email]"
> type="cite">Clarification (I just asked my wife for details):  the
> (verbal) directive to not teach evolution in  Los Alamos High School
> science classes was issued three years ago.  Some of the teachers
> chose
> to circumvent this directive by teaching from the historical
> perspective of Darwin's life. 
> 
> </blockquote>
> 
> I can report on contrasting (but similar) situation where a friend was
> teaching Laser Science and Holography in a High School in Missouri a
> couple of years ago.  It might not surprise us that in Missouri, a
> teacher would be told not to teach Evolution.  This friend was not
> told
> not to teach evolution (it wasn't in his curricula anyway), but after
> many months of intriguing young minds with the wonders of science and
> technology, he managed to make some statement (I can't remember the
> particulars) that tied lots of what he'd said to them to the dirtiest
> of words - Evolution.   After the reactions of most of
> his
> promising young science students made him aware that he'd stepped in
> something messy, he went to the principal to ask what the school policy
> was (assuming the worst).   The principal simply said "You are
> on your
> own".  The implied message was that the school would not interfere if
> he wanted to (needed to) go into such things, but that neither would
> they defend him against irate parents (and students) either. 
>   
> Being an easy-going but determined sort, he continued (carefully) with
> his class to engage them in all things scientific that he could and
> when he stumbled into the no-man's land of dogma, he let them blow off
> their dogmatic steam against Evolution and whatnot.  I suspect
> he made some very serious headway into changing "hearts and minds" in
> that little Missouri town, simply by showing them how interesting
> Science could be but not needing to confront their dogma directly.  I
> can just see him listening to them spout dogma back at him with a
> twinkle in his eye and then go back to whatever clever science
> experiment he was into, knowing they had to hear the inanity of their
> own line, without him saying a word against it. 
> 
> Los Alamos is a different story.   My daughters both went
> through the
> LA school systems and I found the DARE (Drugs Are Really Expensive)
> program started when my oldest was in 6th grade every bit as offensive
> as banning Evolution from Science.   My very strong-willed
> daughter
> came home one day chanting "I will think for myself, I WILL think for
> myself, I will THINK for myself... "  and told me all about the DARE
> program that one of LA's finest had come to tell them about.  She was
> really excited.  They were all being offered a chance to "think for
> themselves!" with a vengeance, what could be better?  They were going
> to have a club whose motto was "I think for myself!".   There
> was even
> a subtext that part of thinking for themselves was reporting to the
> club-meister ( a police officer ) anyone they knew of using illegal
> drugs.   
> 
> I have my own reasons (beyond security clearances, etc) for rejecting
> the pop-drug-culture, but this was patently offensive and
> wrong.   The
> schools (and police) were one step away from creating something like
> the "Brown Shirts" of Nazi Germany.   Fortunately, I was able to
> laugh
> it off and steer my 12 year old back onto her old track of *thinking
> for herself* and once she realized they were pandering to that part of
> her ego and in fact were asking her to do anything but *think for
> herself*, she was free of their mesmerization.  Unfortunately at
> least
> half of her peer group ate it up like Doug's proverbial dog-vomit and
> proudly.   I don't know what their parents told them... but I
> suspect
> they either didn't want to "rock the boat" or they actually thought
> teaching children to "think for themselves" amounted to teaching them
> how to recite that line while goose-stepping through the halls in
> cadence.   Sad for such an educated and presumably enlightened
> community.  With that backdrop, it is only a small step (in my mind)
> to
> the same administration and teachers going along with "no Evolution
> teaching". 
> 
> I am as surprised as most of you that there was not an uprising over
> the "banning of Evolution" (even) at LAHS.  I can see why Doug might
> have developed an acute sense of (what do we call paranoia when it is
> well founded?). Do we have others with children or teachers in the LAHS
> system here to report?   I would expect at the very least, for
> the
> thespians to write a scathing satire about this and perform it every
> semester.  Doug?  Maybe you can get this started? 
> 
> I am not a big fan of public school systems in general, but like
> Democracy, find them a lesser of evils, and the LA schools systems
> having the blessing of a good budget and some very motivated and
> capable teachers.  I'm even a lesser fan of elite (often religious)
> private schools either BTW, and home-schooling as it is often done
> today (usually for elitist and/or religious reasons) sucks even
> more! 
> I just can't be pleased, can I?  There is very little that my
> daughters
> learned in school that I didn't have the opportunity (as with the DARE
> program) to provide some perspective.  Had they been raised in a time
> of "non-Evolution" we would have had long, often hilarious talks about
> it, I am sure.  As we did around the DARE program and any number of
> other popular educational pecadillos. 
> 
> - Steve 
> </body>
> </html>
>
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Phil Henshaw-2

Re: Fundamentalist-based Republicanism

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Marcus,
Your example of our weird faith people have in "trickle down" economics
points to a specific instance of magical thinking, in the usual form, that
we think our stereotypes have causal value in physical systems of the world.
The data reads to me as that globally increasing investment generally had
the claimed effect, prior to 1970, and then largely stopped. That somewhat
coincides with the rise in fanatical belief in the principle just when it no
longer worked.

The effect of believing your stereotypes means that changing the world is
simply a matter of convincing others to have the other stereotypes... I
think that's what I observe in most politics and why I'm nearly as
disappointed in the level of insight into our problems by the republicans as
by the democrats. They ALL have crazy fictions about how to change the
complex systems of our world, that independently develop organization and
behavior of their own almost no one happens to watch. We just give label
with the latest news story stereotype and that settles it!

I dont think education seems to fix that disease in the situation where
everyone apparently has it.

Phil Henshaw

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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Parks, Raymond

Re: Fundamentalist-based Republicanism

In reply to this post by Douglas Roberts-2

Douglas Roberts wrote:
> .... I suppose that when the RWRDDA movement (Right Wing Religious
> Dumbing Down of America) movement becomes sufficiently intolerable to
> more of our scientific community, additional folks will begin to speak
> out on the subject. Perhaps if we get a Creationist Vice President
> the process will accelerate!
>
Might I suggest a viewing of the movie "Idiocracy"? I agree with
that movie that the dumbing down is not from a particular party but from
corporate interests, primarily corporate media.

I listened briefly to a segment of Hannity's radio show devoted to
Democrat callers and his screeners had no problem finding people equally
as dumb and inflammatory as al-Jazeera found at the Palin rally. Both
sides pander to the lowest common denominator.

--
Ray Parks [hidden email]
Consilient Heuristician Voice:505-844-4024
ATA Department Mobile:505-238-9359
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Owen Densmore

Re: Fundamentalist-based Republicanism

Administrator

Radio OpenSource, http://www.radioopensource.org/ .. is a good
collection of interviews. A recent one was:
http://www.radioopensource.org/campaign-08-how-was-it-for-you-jim-fishkin/
.. in which Jim Fishkin remarks that typical political discussions/
sound bites have the information content of a fortune cookie!

He also has an interesting approach that can cure some of the
problems: "deliberative democracy".

-- Owen

On Nov 4, 2008, at 11:55 AM, Parks, Raymond wrote:

> Douglas Roberts wrote:
>> .... I suppose that when the RWRDDA movement (Right Wing Religious
>> Dumbing Down of America) movement becomes sufficiently intolerable to
>> more of our scientific community, additional folks will begin to
>> speak
>> out on the subject. Perhaps if we get a Creationist Vice President
>> the process will accelerate!
>>
> Might I suggest a viewing of the movie "Idiocracy"? I agree with
> that movie that the dumbing down is not from a particular party but
> from
> corporate interests, primarily corporate media.
>
> I listened briefly to a segment of Hannity's radio show devoted to
> Democrat callers and his screeners had no problem finding people
> equally
> as dumb and inflammatory as al-Jazeera found at the Palin rally. Both
> sides pander to the lowest common denominator.
>
> --
> Ray Parks [hidden email]
> Consilient Heuristician Voice:505-844-4024
> ATA Department Mobile:505-238-9359
> http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641
> http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org