The timing of the new Ken Burns documentary is no mistake. If you are watching the harrowing two-part series, and I hope you are, I think that you will find that "The Dust Bowl" is not merely a look at the past, but also a lesson about the present and the future. The many voices in the documentary often remind the viewer that the dust bowl was an ecological disaster that was man made, and that it did not take humans very long to accomplish it.
Many people find it hard to believe that human activity could have such large and long-lasting consequences. But it took us less than a hundred years to make a mess of the Great Plains, and all we had to do was to get rid of the buffalo grass that was protecting the soil. We've been working at pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere world-wide for hundreds of years now, and I think that it's time we begin to know our own strength.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Magic powers
Does the Republican reaction to Nate Silver's polling success remind anyone else of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Several inconvenient truths
There are two kinds of polls. The first kind is designed to find out, as nearly as the sampling methodology can, what public opinion is. The second kind is designed, consciously or unconsciously, to buttress certain people's fantasy land.
This is true, as we know, not only of polls, but of science and other sources of information. We know that people, some more than others, are prone to want their information to confirm what they want to believe.
People who could not bring themselves to believe that a black man with a name like Barack Hussein Obama could really have come to be President of the United States constructed their birther fantasies.
People who found that the theory of evolution conflicted with their deeply held beliefs built edifices of pseudoscience.
People who didn't want to believe that the activities of mankind have heated up the atmosphere found ways to discredit climate scientists instead of trying to prove them wrong.
People who thought that mainstream scholarship had a liberal slant wrote Conservapedia, claiming to correct the slant, but actually creating more fantasy for themselves and others like them.
People who found it inconvenient to love their neighbor in the way that Jesus taught started the Conservative Bible Project, again in the name of correcting a liberal slant, but without any particular evidence of liberal meddling. Their own meddling actually served only to dismantle the very foundation of Christianity.
And in the weeks before yesterday's presidential election, people who could not stand the idea of four more years with Barack Hussein Obama began to claim that the polls claiming that he would win had actually been falsified and given a liberal bias.
The truth is, of course, that the poll with the best scientific methodology is the most useful. You can make predictions from an honest poll, and, lo, the predictions will come true. Poll methodology influenced by wishful thinking may succeed in making the faithful happy in the short term, but when the election comes, the believers will just end up all the more disappointed that the results were exactly as predicted by the poll designed by people who just wanted to know what would happen.
This is true, as we know, not only of polls, but of science and other sources of information. We know that people, some more than others, are prone to want their information to confirm what they want to believe.
People who could not bring themselves to believe that a black man with a name like Barack Hussein Obama could really have come to be President of the United States constructed their birther fantasies.
People who found that the theory of evolution conflicted with their deeply held beliefs built edifices of pseudoscience.
People who didn't want to believe that the activities of mankind have heated up the atmosphere found ways to discredit climate scientists instead of trying to prove them wrong.
People who thought that mainstream scholarship had a liberal slant wrote Conservapedia, claiming to correct the slant, but actually creating more fantasy for themselves and others like them.
People who found it inconvenient to love their neighbor in the way that Jesus taught started the Conservative Bible Project, again in the name of correcting a liberal slant, but without any particular evidence of liberal meddling. Their own meddling actually served only to dismantle the very foundation of Christianity.
And in the weeks before yesterday's presidential election, people who could not stand the idea of four more years with Barack Hussein Obama began to claim that the polls claiming that he would win had actually been falsified and given a liberal bias.
The truth is, of course, that the poll with the best scientific methodology is the most useful. You can make predictions from an honest poll, and, lo, the predictions will come true. Poll methodology influenced by wishful thinking may succeed in making the faithful happy in the short term, but when the election comes, the believers will just end up all the more disappointed that the results were exactly as predicted by the poll designed by people who just wanted to know what would happen.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Dare I hope?
There are signs that people are actually catching on to Mitt Romney's practice of constant lying, and that they're actually indignant about it.
Romney seems to be betting that, if he takes enough different positions on the same issue, people will respond to the position they like by voting for him. But perhaps, perhaps, lies do actually catch up with you if you tell enough of them over a long enough period of time.
Romney seems to be betting that, if he takes enough different positions on the same issue, people will respond to the position they like by voting for him. But perhaps, perhaps, lies do actually catch up with you if you tell enough of them over a long enough period of time.
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