Obama’s appeal; Science, and Cruelty

I have Yahoo News set to send me e-mail updates of Barack Obama news.

I found the following article to be interesting:

CLINTON: The New York senator draws support from women, blacks and voters without a college degree. She has neutralized what was expected to be a major liability — her vote in favor of the Iraq war. She no longer is heckled on the campaign trail for that vote and has managed to persuade many anti-war Democrats that she would move quickly to end the conflict as president.

Clinton has worked hard to convince voters that she is not the brittle, calculating figure she long has been portrayed. While she does not have the intuitive campaign skills of her husband, voters say she has impressed them with her warmth, ready smile and willingness to spend hours taking questions, chatting and shaking hands. A bona fide celebrity, Clinton never tires of posing for cell-phone photos with starry-eyed fans.

She still has obstacles to surmount before winning her party’s nomination. She must convince skeptical Democrats eager to reclaim the White House that she can win a general election. She must walk a fine line between embracing her husband’s legacy and projecting independence and an ability to bring change to Washington. [...]

OBAMA: Despite his charisma, crowd appeal and early opposition to the Iraq war, the Illinois senator’s support has remained essentially flat for months and has begun to drop in some key areas.

He is popular among upscale, educated voters, but the poll indicates Clinton still holds a 12-point lead in that group. While he hopes to be the first black president, and his strategy relies in part on blacks coming out for him, his support among black voters has dropped by 5 percentage points since the last survey.

Obama still has strengths to draw on as the race enters its final stretch. He has significant financial resources to invest heavily in the early states. His message of hope and change resonates among voters eager to move on from the hyper-partisan Bush and Clinton years. His strong field operation in Iowa makes him highly competitive there.

But the freshman senator has liabilities, especially the lingering concern among many voters that he lacks the experience necessary to govern in a dangerous world. He can be somewhat remote and chilly as a campaigner, making an intellectual connection with voters rather than an emotional one. He has been known to cut off voters when their questions go on too long and can appear weary of the endless glad-handing and other rituals of retail politics. [...]

Emphasis mine. That about sums it up as to why candidates that appeal to me seldom appeal to the public at large. I like the intellectual connection. But when someone tries to make an emotional connection, alarm bells go off in me; something inside me screams “beware of the con-job”. The article continues:

EDWARDS: While his national numbers show him badly trailing Clinton and Obama, Edwards remains strong in Iowa and is counting on a good showing there to fuel momentum in other states.

The multimillionaire lawyer has adopted a tough, populist tone, pledging to fight poverty and challenging members of Congress to refuse health insurance until they pass a law to bring coverage to everyone. He has railed against lobbyists and other Beltway power brokers, and has gone further than other candidates in depicting Clinton as a charter member of the Washington establishment.

Edwards has deployed his popular wife, Elizabeth, to take on Clinton more directly than he can. Among other things, Elizabeth Edwards has said Clinton is too polarizing to be elected and would not be a strong champion for women in the White House.

But Edwards faces formidable challenges. He has had to compete with Obama to position himself as the strongest “anti-Clinton” candidate in the field; that is a difficult task given Obama’s celebrity and record fundraising success [...]

Science and Religion: Science Avenger has some nice recent articles. Among these:

Answering a frequent creationist argument:

Luskin writes:

”Duplicating Genes Doesn’t Increase Biological Information in Any Important Sense. I now have 2 questions to ask of Darwinists who claim that the mechanism of gene duplication explains how Darwinian evolutionary processes can increase the information content in the genome:

(1) Does gene duplication increase the information content?
(2) Does gene duplication increase the information content?

Asking the question twice obviously does not double the meaningful information conveyed by the question. [...]

The obvious flaw in this analogy is the implicit assumption that any duplication of any words must produce new meaning (analogous to function). That is not what evolutionary theory says. It only says that SOME duplications can result in new functions. To illustrate this point, imagine a series of genes that spell out the word “cot”. This word has meaning, function, if you will. Now imagine the middle “gene” duplicates, and we get “coot”, also a word with meaning, and one that differs considerably with its ancestor. Now imagine one pointmutation, yielding “colt”. Again, a new word with meaning, and all resulting from a duplication and a subsequent point mutation. This is the more apt analogy to evolution. It is a testament to the myopia of evolution deniers that they can’t seem to think of these two steps simultaneously. [...]

In another article, S. A. points out that there is some hope for our future:

Apparently skepticism, and a generally negative perception of Christianity, are at all time highs:

“Among young non-Christians, nine out of the top 12 perceptions were negative. Common negative perceptions include that present-day Christianity is judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%), and too involved in politics (75%) – representing large proportions of young outsiders who attach these negative labels to Christians. The most common favorable perceptions were that Christianity teaches the same basic ideas as other religions (82%), has good values and principles (76%), is friendly (71%), and is a faith they respect (55%).”

OK, so that’s the non-Christians, of course their attitudes are negative, right? But what about the Christians themselves? No good news for the pious there either:

“Even among young Christians, many of the negative images generated significant traction. Half of young churchgoers said they perceive Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical, and too political. One-third said it was old-fashioned and out of touch with reality. “

In other words, they see it for what it is, and more clearly than any generation before them. The key issue that does it for them? Homosexuality:

“Today, the most common perception is that present-day Christianity is “anti-homosexual.” Overall, 91% of young non-Christians and 80% of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity.

In yet another article, S. A. points out just how intellectually dead the creationism/ID movement is. Science is ever growing, ever expanding. But hey, if a mediocre scientists wants to make a name, well, what a better way than to enter a realm where the standards are easy to meet? Hmmm….maybe there is hope that I can become famous?

Nah. I wouldn’t be able to show my face at the mathematics meetings; I’d rather remain an anonymous mediocrity rather than an object of deserved ridicule.

Here is an excellent piece of evidence supporting the hypothesis that ID is a science stopper. If it is such a landmark scientific finding, it would be relevant in research and would be cited by those researchers when they publish their findings. However, as David Lampe, Associate Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at the Duquesne University shows, compared to first-rate scientists, Behe’s contributions and influence are paltry at best.

This is one of the tell-tale signs of a pseudoscience: stagnation. Whether it is astrology, chiropractic, or intelligent design, the one thing starkly different from mainstream science is a complete lack of change. One can check a decades-old article from any of those topics and it reads like it was written yesterday. Contrast that to a book on a hard science like astronomy, which is out of date practically the moment it leaves the printers.

Animals, Culture and Cruelty
My dad served two tours in Vietnam, both at Tan-San-Nhut Air Force Base near Saigon (now Ho Chi Mien City). One tour lasted a year; the other was temporary duty for one month.

His year long tour came just after the Tet offensive of 1968; Silver Star recipient Sgt Alonzo J. Coggins has chronicled this offensive (Battle for Saigon) here.

Of course, my Dad talked about some of the horrors of war; he spoke of the bodies being stacked up “”like chord wood”, prisoners being made to squat outside under the scorching sun, the survivors of a B-52 bombing attack stumbling in with their ears bleeding from the concussion of the bomb misses, etc. I saw photos of napalm attacks and the like.

War is horrible; it completely sucks.

But I’ll tell you what I still remember. He talked about the Vietnamese eating frog legs (ok, so far). But he told me that the Vietnamese would skin the frogs while they were still alive. That thought haunts me even today; I admit that my first thoughts weren’t all that complementary toward people who think that is ok.

(yes, other cultures have done horrible things to animals; example: the French used to burn cats alive because they enjoyed listening to the noises that the cats made while they burned to death, but that was a long, long time ago).

I wondered about this and last night, I looked it up.

Oh boy; evidently this happens not just in Vietnam, but in many places in Asia.

Japan:

But for the next course, the chef comes out with a live frog. A live. frog.. It’s alive… still blinking… And we are not talking about the tiny little frogs around here either, it looked the size of a small cat. The chef proceeds to skin the frog alive (alive) and then the camera cuts to what looks like a 2 joints of finger being held by a pair of chopsticks. Its not still mind you, it is moving… not moving… moving… not moving… I then think, is it beating???? argghhhh… It can’t be! He continues to explain that this is the heart of the frog, still beating mind you… To my utter horror, he puts the still moving (and beating heart) into his mouth and chews away… Again ARGHHHHHHHHHHH…. So I’m there squirming in reflex, backing in terror away from the tv, holding onto my chest and I may have blacked out for a minute… but definitely re-swallow my previous normal non reptilian, non moving, non frog heart dinner.

I look back and the next thing I see is the host being given his frog sashimi (raw frog meat), presented on a bed of THE FROG’S OWN SKIN!!! with accompanying head… arranged rather nicely, Martha Stewart would even have festively approved. MMMMM Yummy…. (bleah…)

Korea:

Interviewer: In the United States we can watch films depicting animal cruelty and tell ourselves “it’s only a movie” because of established laws and regulations. If I dog is kicked out a window in a mainstream comedy like There’s Something about Mary, we know it’s not real. But in The Isle the audience is actually watching a real frog get skinned, real fish get mutilated, and so on. It’s very disturbing and seems to place an obstacle to the films reception, or maybe I should say distribution, to other countries. Thoughts?
KK: Yes, I did worry about that fact. But the way I see it, the food that we eat today is no different. In America you eat beef, pork, and kill all these animals. And the people who eat these animals are not concerned with their slaughter. Animals are part of this cycle of consumption. It looks more cruel onscreen, but I don’t see the difference. And yes, there’s a cultural difference, and maybe Americans will have a problem with it – but if they can just be more sensitive to what is acceptable in different countries I’d hope they wouldn’t have too many issues with what’s shown on -screen.

Going away from frogs, consider what happens to snakes in Java:

At a slaughterhouse, deep in the Javanese jungle, blood-stained hands untie a wriggling sack and pull out a ten-foot long python.

The snake is stunned with a blow to the head from the back of a machete and a hose pipe expertly forced between its jaws. Next, the water is turned on and the reptile fills up — swelling like a balloon.

It will be left like that for ten minutes or so, a leather cord tied around its neck to prevent the liquid escaping.

Then its head is impaled on a meat hook, a couple of quick incisions follow, and the now-loosened skin peeled off with a series of brutal tugs – much like a rubber glove from a hand.

From there the skin will be sent to a tannery before being turned into luxury shoes or handbags. Finally, they will be snapped up by an army of pampered Western fashionistas desperate for the latest look and happy to pay thousands of pounds to get it. [...]

Meanwhile, back in Indonesia, the python’s peeled body is simply tossed on a pile of similarly stripped snakes. After a day or two of unimaginable agony it will die from the effects of shock or dehydration.

Barbaric, cruel, stomach turning – those are just a few of the words used by those who have witnessed snakes being skinned alive.

Now don’t get me wrong. I know that we eat animals. I know that we’ve found cures for horrible diseases by doing experiments on animals. But there is really no excuse to kill them in ways that cause such agony. Humaneness has to be part of the equation.

And before you bring up Michael Vick and dogs, remember that he went to jail for doing such things.

So anyone who says that somehow, we are inferior to the Eastern cultures when it comes to moral or so called “spiritual” issues, I say BULL**IT.