iPandora

Elena Kagan in concert with the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists fudges the facts regarding partial birth abortion to support her employer, then President Clinton.

Climatologists fear those with differing viewpoints so much they nudge numbers and massage facts, not substantially, but just enough, and very carefully control who gets access to their data.

A study finds children raised by adults living in homosexual relationships turn out OK, and then it turns out the study was run by a militant lesbian and contained unrepresentative samples that could not be construed in any way to represent a reasonable portrait of the general population.

I think it’s about time we set the 19th century idea of scientific infallibility to rest. It’s been dead a long time and the corpse is starting to stink.

Fourteen years ago, to protect President Clinton’s position on partial-birth abortions, Elena Kagan doctored a statement by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Conservatives think this should disqualify her from the Supreme Court. They understate the scandal. It isn’t Kagan we should worry about. It’s the whole judiciary.Kagan, who was then an associate White House counsel, was doing her job: advancing the president’s interests. The real culprit was ACOG, which adopted Kagan’s spin without acknowledgment. But the larger problem is the credence subsequently given to ACOG’s statement by courts, including the Supreme Court. Judges have put too much faith in statements from scientific organizations. This credulity must stop.

The problem with science is the problem with religion is the problem with corporations is the problem with the poor: we’re all merely human. We’re incapable of unbiased action or thought, no matter how carefully we try.

As conservative talk show host Michael Medved says, he admits he’s biased and is up front about it. No one can talk with him and not be aware of where he is coming from. And it is precisely this honesty, this up-frontness about his perspective that means you can learn the truth from him. It’s not that conservatives always tell the truth and liberals always don’t, it’s that when you know someone’s perspective and know they are not trying to obfuscate, you can see how their story fits into the bigger picture of Truth.

Compare the unabashedly conservative hosts on the Fox News channel. No one expects them not to be conservative (and even the liberals there trumpet the fact) and therefore, because there is no guise of infallibility or ruse of absolute even-handedness, they are the most watched news network, and the fastest growing too.

CNN pretends to be totally unbiased, and thus tip their hand. MSNBC proves everything.

I don’t care where you come from nearly as much as I care that you’re up front about it.

Being up front about your opinion shows that you respect others to be capable of informed decisions, and it shows you’re not so conceitedly ignorant you’ve convinced yourself you’re the only one right.

Science is made of human observation.The existence of biases in each and every human being means all observations and perceptions are biased as well. To deny the bias it to enhance the bias and the resulting skew in all your resulting data. You may be able to claim the scale cannot lie but you’re still going to interpret the data the way you want.

Science is not the holy pursuit of the epitome of truth, it is the headlong search for rationalization, for proving we’re not wrong.

The sooner we accept that science is just another human endeavor and therefore subject to all the faults and failures and stunning triumphs of all other human endeavors, the sooner we can get on with this crazy little thing called life.

What is truth?

Perusing Hulu this morning I saw a National Geographic series “Mysteries of the Bible“.� Considering the source is National Geographic I didn’t have much hope for the accuracy of the show but I started watching the first available episode anyway.

Episode 2 purports to investigate the historicity of the nativity narrative.

With an authoritative voice, the narrator begins a list of “fact” after “fact” intended to disprove the majority of the story of the birth of Christ.

Using phrases like “most historians” and an awful lot of “but’s”, the show, in the first 5 minutes, proceeded to claim that because only two gospels mention the nativity narrative and those two mention different aspect of the narrative, they must be disagreeing.

Just a thought experiment here: If my wife and I were to describe a trip we took together and I mentioned how beautiful the scenery was on the drive and she mentioned how pleasant it was at the lake we visited as our destination, would our two stories, through their difference, contradict each others?

I thought not.

Apparently, because one the the gospels only mentions the shepherds and another gospel mentions the wise men, and only one of the gospels mentions that there was a census that prompted Mary and Joseph’s trek to Bethlehem, those stories must be figments of the minds of the individual writers.

Using interviews with only a couple “experts” looking and sounding so very authoritative with their reasonable words, the show uses shoddy historical research. Actually I take that back, the show doesn’t even bother checking the historical proofs. The only document they use to support the nativity narrative is the Bible, which they’re trying mightily to disprove. If they can taint the Bible, they’ll have won the argument without a fight.

The problem is that there are a plethora of authoritative sources besides the Bible which can corroborate the historicity of not just the bare fact of Jesus’ birth, but the additional and critical details as well.

National Geographic knows the average viewer will not notice the lack of factual analysis. They know the average viewer tunes into the TV and turns off their mind, accepting anything and everything reported as fact, as fact. There is no critical thinking, no analysis.

This is a cherry picking attempt to discredit the Bible and one of the core narratives it contains. And it may end of shaking the faith of some credulous souls.

For my part I could only stomach 10 minutes of the show, and the logical fallacies, the complete and utter lack of historical data presented, the lack of alternate opinions presented all pointed to this being a hack job so overwhelmingly I couldn’t push myself to watch the rest.

This polar bear doesn't give a hoot about Al Gore

Gary Sutton, writing on Forbes.com, reminds us it wasn’t too long ago the official government position on the environment was that we were in the beginnings of the next great ice age.

More than the reminder of the untrustworthy nature of such pronouncements and official positions is the why behind such windy terrors. For the government it is control of the populace through fear.

It’s the job of elected officials to whip up panic. They then get re-elected. Their supporters fall in line.

Al Gore thought he might ride his global warming crusade back toward the White House. If you saw his movie, which opened showing cattle on his farm, you start to understand how shallow this is. The United Nations says that cattle, farting and belching methane, create more global warming than all the SUVs in the world. Even more laughably, Al and his camera crew flew first class for that film, consuming 50% more jet fuel per seat-mile than coach fliers, while his Tennessee mansion sucks as much carbon as 20 average homes.

For the researchers, scientists, and academics going along, it is money, support for their own strains of research.

You can’t blame these scientists for sucking up to the fed’s mantra du jour. Scientists live off grants. Remember how Galileo recanted his preaching about the earth revolving around the sun? He, of course, was about to be barbecued by his leaders. Today’s scientists merely lose their cash flow. Threats work.

Gary wraps up his arguments with a reminder that the climate is not the only weapon of FUD employed by those seeking power and control:

I can ask “outrageous” questions like that because I’m not dependent upon government money for my livelihood. From the witch doctors of old to the elected officials today, scaring the bejesus out of the populace maintains their status.

Sadly, the public just learned that our scientific community hid data and censored critics. Maybe the feds should drop this crusade and focus on our health care crisis. They should, of course, ignore the life insurance statistics that show every class of American and both genders are living longer than ever. That’s another inconvenient fact.

Read The Fiction Of Climate Science.

So, the swine flu is going to kill you, right?

Let me put this into perspective. Right now there are about 160 reported deaths from the swine flu world wide. This is not the number infected, but the number killed. But what does this number really mean.

First, compare this 160 deaths world wide to the 36,000 people who die each year in the U.S. to the common flu. In other words we are more worried about a disease that is at least 225 time less likely to kill us then the common flu.

So how has this flu affected the world population of over 6 billion people? Well, run the math and you realize that only .000002% of the world population has died from this disease, as opposed to the .01% of the world population that has been killed by genocide in Sudan since 2003 (675,000).

So why is there the worry? By last numbers there is between 2600 and 2700 reported cases of this flu for which there is supposedly no natural immunity. The fear is that a single sneeze could effect hundreds of people which could lead to a pandemic.

It is time for brief lesson on disease. Most  diseases inhabit our body for at least a day before they exhibit symptoms. This is because the symptoms are usually the result of the disease attacking our body and our body using its resources to attack the disease. In fact, for many cases of the common cold, by the time you exhibit symptoms, the cold is already destroyed in your body and your body is just tired from the fight.

So, I get the swine flu and a day later I exhibit symptoms and am quarantined, etc. How many people did I interact with the day before? How many hands did I shake? How many times did I lick my finger and rub it against something?

How many people did those 2700 confirmed cases interact with before (and even after) the disease surfaced? I would estimate about 54,000 people (20 interactions per person). So why aren’t there 54,000 people infected. Why aren’t we all wiped out as our body has “no natural defenses”?

The reason is because this is a created or imagined disease. It is sort of like the monster you feared when you were younger because you believed he was in your closet. There was some minimal evidence of a monster (boards creaking, darkness), but the reality was that your mind created the monster and cause you to be afraid of him.

So we have this monster before us. There is some evidence before us as we look at the deaths and infections, but the reality is that we have allowed ourselves to be scared into a fear. The media has become our brain as they show pictures of people wiping the legs of a school desk (honestly, who will be licking the legs of a school desk?) and have traveled to Mexico to show the place this all started and have told us that buildings have been shut down for this virus.

This is the monster that we have allowed our brain to create a monster for us where, in reality, there is nothing (or almost nothing). Sure, we should be concerned about this, but worried? No way.

In fact, what this really reminds me of is the movie “Wag the Dog”. Anyone seen it? The premise is that a “war” is made up by the political administration so that people will be distracted from the real issues surrounding the administration. Our media, finding nothing to report on the administration (since the administration is doing nothing good, but the media can’t report that) needed something else to scare us with. Something to distract us from the real news. Their answer . . . Thank God for Swine Flu!

The reality is that AIDS and HIV continue to kill millions, genocide continues to be acceptable in Africa, abortions of black babies continues to exceed the number of live births of black babies, and we recently rewarded large companies dieing in a capitalist society by changing the rules for them. But no, the real news that we should all “obviously” be worried about is that a disease that pales in comparison to any other disaster we have been facing for years may be sitting at our door ready to pounce on us when we are not looking.

It’s all across the newswires:

The Great Messiah Steps Into Our Small, Mostly Vicarious, Lives And Allows Federal Funding Of Stem Cell Research!

Well, tie me to a pole until the Jackanapes come home and lick my toes until I die imagining Caravaggio! I’d've never thought such a thing could occur.

At least the ABC story got things half right when they filed this story under Health AND Politics.

Two bits and then my opinion:

1. The local Fox affiliate this morning noted that opponents to stem cell research are opposed on moral grounds. No word yet on if the reporter bothered researching any further than the local abortion mill’s press release.
2. There are actually 2 primary classifications of stem cells: embryonic and adult. The embryonic stem cells cause tumors and uncontrollable growths and the adult stem cells actually cure people.

My opinion is an old article I wrote as far back as November of 2007:

• Adult stem cells suffer no chance of rejection from their host. Adult stem cells are collected from the person they will be used on, meaning the organs grown from them carry the exact biological and genetic “fingerprint” of the rest of the body, there is zero chance of rejection of these treatments.
• Adult stem cells are given voluntarily as part of treatment. There is no moral or ethical morass involved in the collection of the these cells.
• Adult stem cells can differentiate under controlled conditions. Unlike embryonic stem cells, which differentiate wildly and which we are currently unable to control, adult stem cells pluripotency can be controlled in application with greater reliability.

So we have an issue where the successful treatment and therefore all the private money has gone in one direction, but a few stubborn souls insist on using disinformation and outright lies to promote a morally reprehensible treatment system which would have been likely looked upon with distaste by most of the Nazi death doctors in hopes of getting us to pay for a treatment process with no current success and little promise.

“If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough.” ~James A. Thomson

Read all about it…

It’s an issue of science as much as morals. If you will ignore the morals, you cannot, at least, ignore the science.

If you must ignore both, your life is far smaller for it.

By the way, what business is it of the government to pay yours and my money for this? Don’t we already do that supporting the massively bloated health care industry?

Once again it is proven there are very few things in which we humans, as independent moral agents, do not have a choice.

It was not good to criticize an obese person because they may have been a carrier of the ‘obese gene’ and therefore had no choice whether they were chunky not trim, but studies out recently point to the fact that exercise counteracts the effects of that gene.

WebMD: Exercise Can Overcome Obesity Gene

The study showed, as past research has, that people with certain variations of the FTO gene were more likely to be overweight. However, the researchers found that being genetically predisposed to obesity “had no effect on those with above average physical activity scores.”

LATimes Blog: Lessons From The Amish: We’re Not Doomed To Obesity

OK, folks, it’s time for another round of Health Lessons We Can Learn From the Amish. Four years ago we discovered that the Amish maintained super-low obesity levels despite eating a diet high in fat, calories and refined sugar. They key was their level of physical activity — men averaged 18,000 steps a day, women 14,000. That’s monumental compared to the paltry couple of thousand or so most of us eke out in a day.

A recent study revealed even more about the Old Order Amish: They maintain low obesity levels despite having a gene variation that makes them susceptible to obesity. The secret here? You guessed it — lots of physical activity.

The important thing to remember is that we have choices, and our response to those choices affect out lives. If we are slothful and do not maintain our bodies by diet and exercise, we have none but ourselves and the choices we are responsible for to blame for the fat adorning us.

Neil gets around. A lot.

There have been at least two cases this week where I’ve found some new blog or something outside my regular reading and there in the comments was Neil, arguing with lucidity and alacrity for truth in whichever topic was being discussed.

Truly an amazing man… being from the greatest state in America has it’s benefits.

But one comment in particular stood out to me this week, or today.

On the Forbes.com blog Digital Rules, Rich Karlgaard wrote regarding freedom of thought in academia and science, specifically in context of the issue of Evolution and alternative theories and the newly released documentary/movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

To be a skeptic of Darwinism today is indeed costly. You will be publicly ridiculed. You will be called stupid, ignorant, bigoted, irrational and unenlightened. You will be compared with Neanderthals and flat-earthers. You could easily limit your career if you work in academia or science.

He ended his post with a query:

What do you think? Do advocates of intelligent design have a case? Is Darwinism flawed and are its proponents trying to silence the debate?

Neil concluded his reasoned response:

We have lots of evidence for the existence of God – cosmological (“first cause”), teleological (design), morality, logic, the physical resurrection of Jesus, etc. If atheists don’t find that compelling, then so be it. I’m on the Great Commission, not the paid commission. But to insist that we have no evidence is uncharitable in the extreme and makes reasoned dialogue impossible.

Thanks to Stefan at Sound Politics:

Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.

PBS: The Mystery Of Global Warming’s Missing Heat

In a previous article, Priorities Of Preservation, I discussed the importance Christianity puts on the entirety of an person: body, mind, and spirit.

While the world, in a misguided and myopic view constrained by sin, only really cares for the preservation of the body. And through ignorance, loses the whole person.

In a report released last week which most have already heard of or commented on, it was noted that 1/4 of the US Teenage Female population is infected with one of several Sexually Transmitted Diseases.

The immediate cry was that Abstinence Education must be completely abandoned and further explanation of the ins and outs of safe sex be taught to every child.

I find those making that argument to be their own worst enemies, and I am determined to sit and watch them tear themselves apart trying to make sense of what they’ve said.

Better have a good belt to hold these sides in. The problem is, this is no laughing matter: peoples lives are at stake.
At the blog dbTechno (“Providing Science And Technology News Since 1996″) under the headline “Teens Having Sex, Getting STD’s Due To Lack Of Knowledge” (strongly caution) there is a small picture of three bikini-clad young women shaking their derrières before the camera. This was the picture Google had selected on it’s news aggregator to highlight the several articles on this topic this morning.

In our sexified culture it is considered “emancipated” for a woman to be so “comfortable” with her sexuality that she feels willing to flaunt her body either scantily clothed or free of clothes before the whole world.

I don’t think that it is a sign of a healthy self-image that women are willing and even choose to clothe themselves that way.

I am not for arbitrary requirements in clothing, but it is saddening that, younger and younger, we are compelling out daughters and sisters to choose between frumpy and scandalous.

Removing their modesty with bits of lycra and spandex.

Revealing their bodies for the eyes of all the world.

And then we worry that too many of them are having sex.

I think a healthy self image will result in true self-worth, where the woman will not feel compelled to dress “sexy” to get the approval and acceptance of others.

When a woman is dressing revealingly they are revealing their insecurity, not their assuredness.

The Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board this morning published an article titled “Abstinence-Only Education Needs To Go” (no scandalous images here) in which they completely demolish their own claims, twice.

First, early in the article they lay claim to the moral high ground:

From here, it would be easy to play the blame game. But that would be unproductive. It doesn’t matter if you’re the pro-sex education or abstinence-only type, the statistics speak for themselves, and what matters most is that something be done to make our children more sexually responsible and safe.

And then, in the very next paragraph:

Let’s start with re-tooling the failed abstinence-only approach backed by the Bush administration. Let’s teach teenagers about contraceptives and other precautions that could help protect them if they are sexually active.

Yes, lets avoid the blame game, and lets look at the facts. The Bush Administration has indeed backed and supported an abstinence-only education approach, because no one who practices abstinence contracts an STD, no one. It make sense to back a winner. But how many education programs has the Bush Administrations policy actually affected? Good question.

I would be willing to bet that with state policy, and NEA policy, and DoE policy, there is precious little abstinence-only education going on in the public schools of America.

The article then goes on to make an astounding statement. I very nearly cheered, at work, when I read this:

Abstinence teaching has its merits. It not only promotes a sure-proof defense against STDs and unwanted pregnancies, but also the idea that sexual activity requires a high level of maturity and understanding. An adolescent who engages in “protected” sex prematurely may not run the risk of physical infections, but could be exposed to long-term emotional and psychological damage.

And then gets to the…

BOTTOM LINE: Place more emphasis on contraceptives and STDs in sex-education classes.

And they reached that how?

With this simple caveat they have attempted to justify their entire tortured argument, and by extension, rationalize their continued support for the torture of young minds and bodies with illness both physical and psychological:

Like it or not, half of the teenage girls in this country are already sexually active, according to the study. Something has to be done to make them wiser in their choices, or we soon could have an even bigger public health crisis on our hands.

Do they not see the cruel irony?

Because we’re a bunch hapless, helpless dolts who’ve bought the lie that children are capable of making their own informed decisions regarding sex and mature relationships.

Because we’re a bunch of laissez-faire non-present parental units who feel no particular responsibility to counter the culture’s claims that boys are animals and girls are meat.

Because we’re a bunch of lazy do-gooders who value intentions over actions and outcomes and are willing to allow our children to do whatever they please so long as it makes them feel good.

We will complete ignore what we already know to be true: that premature involvement in adult relationships, emotional and physical, will not only harm the body but will also damage the mind.

So long as we tell enough of them to use condoms, we are perfectly willing to let them hop into bed with any yahoo or floozy who comes along.

Yea, that’s advanced society and parental love for you.

See also:

The Condom Conspiracy: Sex, Lies, STIs and Teenage Girls – the evangelical outpost

While we have Planned Parenthood and sex educators claiming that condoms can “offer effective protection against most serious sexually transmitted infections” the report finds there’s no scientific basis for that claim.

STD Data Comes As No Surprise, Area Teenagers Say – Laura Sessions Stepp and Katherine Shaver in the Washington Post

The Marrow girls offered several reasons why teenagers have sex.

“It’s to fit in, peer pressure,” Christine said, noting that virgins are often mocked. Also, “sex sells on TV.”

Khadijah chimed in that some young girls found their inspiration in the popular R&B singer Rihanna, whose latest album is titled “Good Girl Gone Bad.”

But Christina suggested something closer to home. “Write this down,” she said. “Bad parenting.”

In the race for the Republican nomination, there’s something for everyone.

There’s a liberal who’s principled and experienced but still liberal.

There’s a populist who tickles ears and yet is Christian, courageous, and popular.

There’s a fiscal conservative with serious experience and a very public track-record who wore a dress (once, on camera), supports homosexual marriage, and is not in favor of criminalizing mothers who have abortions (a slight but significant difference from actually being pro-choice).

There’s some dude with two first names and some good ideas, but with serious inconsistency, and serious stupidity concerning international affairs and national security harking back to pre-WWII Republican isolationism.

There’s a conservative business leader and governor with a funny first name and movie-star looks who’s been consistent, if not amazing.

And there’s a movie star without the looks who’s been amazing, if not consistent. If only he acted like he wanted to win.

There are others, but they are also-ran’s or sometimer’s and not worth consideration at this stage in the game.

I don’t much care for the liberal, the populist, the fiscal, or Mr. Two Names. Though I could stomach the fiscal, were he to, by some stretch of imagination, win the nomination. The others I abhor for various reasons.

The liberal is neither a man of honor nor a man of principle. He has convenient and far-sighted-sounding reasons for his liberal attachments and accomplishments, but his willingness to sell the farm, ideologically speaking, is not the measure of a man. Personally, I admire and honor his courage in his past. But I fear to many years within the beltway, and those who have spent those years with him not recommending him in the droves we’d expect, are very indicative of a lack of character and ability.

The populist is just that. He uses his sincere (and I do not doubt, genuine) Christianity to excuse and/or support and champion decidedly non-Christian policies. God did not institute a welfare state (for individuals or corporations) in Theocratic Israel. Instead He instituted laws and policies which protected individuals from each other’s harm and sin. Claiming that “green” science is correct in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary does not lead me to believe he is either “wise as a serpent” or “harmless as a dove”. In fact, I would submit the populist is the inverse: He is wise as a dove and harmless as a serpent (taken ironically, of course).

Mr. Two Name needs no rebuttal as he is his own best revealing mirror. Dismissed out of hand is the best response to the majority of his supporters.

I’d like the movie star to catch a fire, but his lack of consistency heretofore is troubling, and I believe, more accurately indicative of who he’d be in office that what he’d be if he did catch a fire.

The man I voted for in my last election (for some time at least) in California is the leader. A realization I came to after considering what he does when there’s not supposed to be a camera around.

Here are a few articles from across the web which seem to me to be particularly salient and and appropriate to the candidates in this race.

•  The Trouble With McCain
  Jay Cost, Wall Street Journal

  Thirty-four Republicans have endorsed Mr. Romney, while just 24 have endorsed Mr. McCain. Furthermore, Mr. Romney’s supporters are more in line with conservative opinion. Their average 2006 ACU rating was 84.1, and 26 of them come from states Bush won in 2004. Meanwhile, the average 2006 ACU rating for Mr. McCain’s supporters is 70.7, and just 12 of them come from Bush states. In light of Mr. McCain’s résumé, this is consequential. He should have locked up most members of the Republican caucus, but he has not.

• Hillary And MLK
  John McWhorter, Wall Street Journal

  …[T]here she was on “Meet the Press” Sunday, having to defend herself for simply saying that while King laid the groundwork (which she acknowledged), another part of the civil rights revolution was Lyndon B. Johnson’s masterful stewardship of the relevant legislation through Congress. She was arguing that she is more experienced in getting laws passed in Washington than is Barack Obama — which is true.

• Barak Obama And Israel
  Ed Lasky, American Thinker

  One seemingly consistent them running throughout Barack Obama’s career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are anti-Israel advocates. This ease around Israel animus has taken various forms. As Obama has continued his political ascent, he has moved up the prestige scale in terms of his associates. Early on in his career he chose a church headed by a former Black Muslim who is a harsh anti-Israel advocate and who may be seen as tinged with anti-Semitism.

• Where They Stand
  Pete Du Pont, Wall Street Journal

  …[T]he political ups and downs of the candidates and the electricity of the campaign–”I am promising change!”–matter much less than the substantive policies the next president would implement regarding the five most important challenges facing our country.