Social Commentary

Polywhatever

Glenn thinks that a lot of the current concern about polygamy is an offshoot of the gay marriage debate. I think that’s right, but we need to clarify terms here:

There’s a pretty good argument that polygamy is usually bad for the societies it appears in, producing a large surplus of sullen, unmarriageable young men.

Polygamy per se (a marriage of more than two individuals) doesn’t result in frustrated young men–that would be polygyny (the specific case in which it is one man married to multiple women). It could be balanced out with polyandry (in which one woman has several husbands). Judging by the fact that males are…ummmmm…orgasm challenged relative to healthy females, and the prevalence of porn fantasies (and perhaps real incidents, though I have no personal experience) about one woman satisfying a number of men, and all enjoying it, at least at the time, could in fact be popular if it weren’t for that pesky male imperative to know whether or not your kids are really yours.

But I’m not aware of many societies that have general polygamy–it seems to be one or the other, with polygyny dominating for fairly obvious evolutionary-psychological reasons.

Space

Is Science Politicized?

Of course it is. And, as Ron Bailey points out, there’s never been a time when it wasn’t, for all the reasons he describes and more, and the Dems are just as (if not more) guilty of this than the Bush administration (contra Chris Mooney’s ideologically blinkered thesis).

The same applies to space “science” (though in fact much of NASA spending has very little to do with science, despite the popular myth). And in light of how something as supposedly objective as “science” can get politicized, it’s foolish to think that major government-funded engineering projects (like the president’s Vision for Space Exploration) aren’t, or that the politics don’t drive the architecture decisions much more strongly than economics or the loftier goal of building a space-faring civilization.

It may indeed be the case that the “stick” and a Shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicle are necessary to maintain (at least in the short term) Congressional support for the overall program (though that’s not at all clear to me), but we shouldn’t fool ourselves that this will result in significant progress in our space capabilities, particularly relative to more flexible, versatile, diverse and ultimately lower-cost means of achieving the desired goals.

Political Commentary

K Street a Bargain

In today’s New York Times, the article “Go Ahead, Try to Stop K Street,” an argument is quoted from Newt Gingrich that you have to shrink government to curb lobbyists. “There is $2.6 trillion spent in Washington, with the authority to regulate everything in your life,” he said. “Guess what? People will spend unheard-of amounts of money to influence that. The underlying problems are big government and big money.”

Curbing the budget will only reduce the acceleration of lobbying, not reduce lobbying. It is a bargain. The Indian tribes are just smart to get in on it (if not in their choice of representation). In my joint paper with Livingston and Jurist, we say the following:

National lobbying of Congress and the President in 2004 totaled $1 billion. That may seem like a lot, but it is a pittance compared to the $2.3 trillion in Federal outlays. Congress and the President also pass laws and make executive orders that implicitly subsidize through loan guarantees, forbid activities altogether, impose work and investment rules that implicitly tax certain activities, and establish through the courts and federal agencies how property rights are defined. Thus, it is possible that Congress and the President influence perhaps twice as much of the economy as the Federal Government spends. Given that, $1 billion to buy influence on Capitol Hill is surely a bargain. With 589 bills passing both houses of Congress (enrolled) in the 108th Congress, that works out to about $3.3 million of lobbying per enrolled bill. Adding in campaign contributions per enrolled bill (about $400 million per session for the President

Weird

Maybe He Can Tell Us About Warp Drives

I’ve always thought that Ted Kennedy lived in an alternate universe, but now he admits it:

Briefly, Kennedy rewrote the outcome of the 1964 election. “This nominee was influenced by the Goldwater presidency,” he said. “The Goldwater battles of those times were the battles against the civil rights laws.” Only then did Kennedy acknowledge that “Judge Alito at that time was 14 years old.”

Harry Turtledove ought to hire him for some new story ideas.

Science And Society

They Still Don’t Get It

Derb explains science to his fellow conservatives Tom Bethell and Peter Robinson (and no doubt many more, such as Hugh Hewitt):

Evolution is not the end term of a syllogism: it is an explanation for the observed variety of living species–an extremely successful and fruitful explanation. For 100 years and more, every new fact brought to light has conformed to the theory; none have contradicted it. Nor is any alternative theory in play. Nobody is doing science — tackling problems, uncovering new facts, generating testable hypotheses, making predictions — on the basis of any other theory. Nobody, nowhere…

…yes, material causes only are admitted in science, because science is the attempt to find material explanations for observed phenomena. Likewise, only hollow balls 2.5 inches in diameter are allowed in tennis, because tennis is a contest played with 2.5 inch diameter hollow balls. Whether other kinds of balls exist is a matter of opinion among tennis players and fans, I suppose; though if a player were to come on court and attempt to serve a basketball across the net, the rest of us would walk away in disgust.

Just so.

Science And Society

They Still Don’t Get It

Derb explains science to his fellow conservatives Tom Bethell and Peter Robinson (and no doubt many more, such as Hugh Hewitt):

Evolution is not the end term of a syllogism: it is an explanation for the observed variety of living species–an extremely successful and fruitful explanation. For 100 years and more, every new fact brought to light has conformed to the theory; none have contradicted it. Nor is any alternative theory in play. Nobody is doing science — tackling problems, uncovering new facts, generating testable hypotheses, making predictions — on the basis of any other theory. Nobody, nowhere…

…yes, material causes only are admitted in science, because science is the attempt to find material explanations for observed phenomena. Likewise, only hollow balls 2.5 inches in diameter are allowed in tennis, because tennis is a contest played with 2.5 inch diameter hollow balls. Whether other kinds of balls exist is a matter of opinion among tennis players and fans, I suppose; though if a player were to come on court and attempt to serve a basketball across the net, the rest of us would walk away in disgust.

Just so.

Science And Society

They Still Don’t Get It

Derb explains science to his fellow conservatives Tom Bethell and Peter Robinson (and no doubt many more, such as Hugh Hewitt):

Evolution is not the end term of a syllogism: it is an explanation for the observed variety of living species–an extremely successful and fruitful explanation. For 100 years and more, every new fact brought to light has conformed to the theory; none have contradicted it. Nor is any alternative theory in play. Nobody is doing science — tackling problems, uncovering new facts, generating testable hypotheses, making predictions — on the basis of any other theory. Nobody, nowhere…

…yes, material causes only are admitted in science, because science is the attempt to find material explanations for observed phenomena. Likewise, only hollow balls 2.5 inches in diameter are allowed in tennis, because tennis is a contest played with 2.5 inch diameter hollow balls. Whether other kinds of balls exist is a matter of opinion among tennis players and fans, I suppose; though if a player were to come on court and attempt to serve a basketball across the net, the rest of us would walk away in disgust.

Just so.

Administrative

More On Blogspot Spam

I’ve had to ban blogspot from comments and pings, because I was starting to get a lot of spam with that in the URL. Apparently I wasn’t alone.

About 39,000 fake blogs have been created on the web in the past two weeks, according to an analysis by Technorati, or about 4.6 percent of the 805,000 new weblogs created in that period. FightSplog, which has been monitoring new blogs at Blogspot, recently documented 2,763 porn splogs created by a single “splogger.” Blogspot-based spam blogs recently began featuring names of prominent bloggers in posts, boosting the splogs’ visibility in searches at web-based RSS aggregators like Feedster, PubSub and Bloglines.

It would be nice if Google would share the wealth a little:

But Google itself seems to have closed that hole, according to Jeff Jarvis, who noted that searches on Google are free from the splog listings found in identical searches on PubSub and IceRocket, among others. “Google needs to both fix Blogspot and share its secrets for ignoring blogspam,” Jarvis writes.

Here’s one possible solution, to at least keep it down to a dull roar by no longer allowing automated blog setups:

Suggestion, Google? As bold as this might sound, you should institute an authentication system – a captcha of sorts – for every single post that gets sent through your Blogger service. This means that there’s no more easy rides for the idiots out there who are killing your baby and the blogosphere. The user logs in, enters their post, then has to jump through a captcha hoop – much like commenters have to do on Blogger.com these days. It’s a simple suggestion, and one that you really, really, really, REALLY oughta consider. You were willing to go the ref=”nofollow” route, why stop there?

That was a couple months ago, but I’ve still seen a lot of this crap when I open up the filters.

Anyway, until they wise up, friends don’t let friends blog on Blogspot. Get a real domain, folks.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, here’s the story at Wikipedia, with some more links.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!