Natalie Angier In The NY Times: Curriculum Designed To Unite Art And Science.

Full post here.

Ah, we’re so close…

Angier quotes David Sloan Wilson:

“If you do statistics in the context of something you’re interested in and are good at, then it becomes an incremental as opposed to a saltational jump,”

You see that the mechanics are not so hard after all, and once you understand why you’re doing the statistics in the first place, it ends up being simple nuts and bolts stuff, nothing more.”

Not a bad argument…if the imagination is piqued and the interest is there, perhaps a platform for other areas of study, especially the sciences, can be more easily developed. 

Perhaps (though isn’t this always the way?) there has been cultural erosion enough to make science a misunderstood field among the public.  If this is true, then clearly English departments busy with continental philosophy, cultural relativism, the denial of meaning etc have helped make this state of affairs possible…

So how do you unite the arts and sciences?

To illustrate how the New Humanities approach to scholarship might work, Dr. Heywood cited her own recent investigations into the complex symbolism of the wolf, a topic inspired by a pet of hers that was seven-eighths wolf.

Dear Lord.  Apparently in a way that doesn’t do justice to either one.  After all, the arts require entering into the creative imagination and genius of great artists like Shakespeare, Milton, and Melville.   Science is different.

“Dr. Wilson is determined to avoid romanticizing science or presenting it as the ultimate arbiter of meaning, as other would-be integrationists and ardent Darwinists have done.”

Good luck with that, Dr. Wilson…though some political and social good may come out of your work… 

Some good scientists and writers of science who are much better than this Angier’s loyalty to more political and social concerns: Nigel Calder, Carl Zimmer, George Smoot, Richard Feynman…

See Also: The moral thinking both Angier and Sloan Wilson neglect in The Economist On Moral Thinking:  David Sloan Wilson’s Research and Natalie Angier In The NY Times: In Most Species, Faithfulness Is A Fantasy

More On Jim Webb For Vice-President

-His Senate page here.

-Wikipedia page here.

Brief summary-Navy man, served in Vietnam, went to Georgetown Law School, wrote books and novels mostly about war, served in the Reagan administration as Secretary Of The Navy (as a Republican), continued to document war as a filmmaker and writer, ran as a Democrat and barely beat George Allen (of macaca fame) on an anti-Bush and anti-Iraq invasion platform.

His voting record and some speeches here.

Arguments against:  He was not a fan of women in combat nor the equality movements behind them (see Women Can’t Fight) and spoke out more than once about it.  He’s pro-gun, and strong on anti-illegal immigration.  He’s a bit of a maverick (temper) and too far outside the mainstream left. 

Arguments for:  He’s moderate and outside the mainstream left and can help win the moderate Democrats who might go Republican otherwise.  He’s a decorated war veteran (one of the main themes of his life) and can give Obama a lot of what he needs in a running mate. 

More about the democratic backlash here at Outside the Beltway.

See Also: Webb wrote a book about the Scots-Irish.  Some other famous wartime Scots-Irish include: Andrew Jackson, U.S. Grant, George S. Patton and…John McCain! 

Addition:  Ross Douthat has plenty more here.

**Looks like Webb is not really that interested.

Freeman Dyson On The Question Of Global Warming

Full essay here.

Say what you want about people insisting we go green:  They’re watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside), they’re busy constructing the new secular religion…they’re do-gooders more interested in being right then in thinking the ideas through…

…but how can you distinguish the science and doubt from all the ideology and certainty?

Freeman Dyson in his review of two books in the NY Times Sunday (covering the politics, science and economics of GW), would seem to wonder at the same questions, and stresses:

“The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism”

Which doesn’t help public discussion of the science nor protect reasonable skepticism…

…of course there is much truth there as well.  In Dyson’s work and in the data that leads some to say global warming is happening.

See Also:  From The Literary Review–An Appeal To Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, The National Geographic-Marching To The Eco-Drumbeat,

Al Gore: Confusing Science With Politics Since 2006!

 

Stanley Fish In The NY Times: More Colorado Follies

Full post here.

“The University of Colorado is considering a $9 million program to bring high-profile conservatives to teach on the left-leaning Boulder campus.”

Bad idea says Fish. Put scholarship and learning above any political considerations.

He also distinguishes between conservative thought and conservative aesthetics:

A course in conservative thought might run from:

“…Plato and Aristotle and hitting the highlights including Hooker, Hobbes, Adam Smith, Burke, Schmitt, Wyndham Lewis, Oakeshott, Strauss, Kirk, Bork…”

and conservative aesthetics:

“…Plato and Aristotle [sic} including Dante, Puttenham, Swift, Pope, Bergson, Matthew Arnold, Irving Babbitt, Eliot, Pound and Allan Bloom…”

So would liberal aesthetics include the Romantics, Santayana, modern lyrical poetry etc…? What about Nietzsche?

Certainly Plato isn’t merely conservative?

by carpe icthus

Tornadoes! Some Links

With so many deadly tornadoes in the news lately, I thought I’d post a few links:

-Here’s a link to the How Stuff Works tornado page.

-The Tornado Project Online. (Affiliated with How Stuff Works, lots of top-ten lists etc…)

-How to make a tornado box for a science fair.

-Is it a vortex of rising, warm and moist air or cool air dropping downward?   Good models here.  A horizontal column of rotating air that gets lifted with the rising air in the formation of a storm?

-The Red Cross Tornado Preparedness Page.

-You’ve got to check out Tornadovideos.net.

A swedish guy has a small tornado drop down in front of his car (1:15 or so, cool video)A dust-devil here.  If you have time and are a real weather geek, the formation of a supercell here.

See Also: The Greensburg Tornado on Doppler Radar

by Extreme WX Photographer

Sunday Poem-W.B. Yeats: When You Are Old

When You Are Old

When you are old and gray and full of sleep, 
And nodding by the fire, take down this book, 
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look 
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 
And loved your beauty with love false or true, 
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, 
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, 
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled 
And paced upon the mountains overhead 
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

-WIlliam Butler Yeats

Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain

Only On the Left In This Photo

Full post here.

Dalrymple (pseudonym of an English doctor) is concerned about massive immigration to London, but even more about the British response. He goes so far as to compare Britain unfavorably with France.

Britain:

“…is not an ideological state; it has no foundation myths that are easy to identify with…”

Remember the French Revolution? According to Dalrymple, the French ideological rigidity that came of it may be more useful for handling the ideological rigidity of many millions of Muslims on the outsides of Paris:

“Multiculturalism, that is, is not compatible with the founding Enlightenment mythology of France; assimilation, not integration, is the goal “

France can enforce assimilation through its laws…Britain can’t, apparently, and this puts it in a bind.  Its culture may disappear in these waves of immigration and it may not be able to stop it. 

————————————————-

I’m not convinced, but I do think Dalrymple is onto something:

If liberalism (both British and American) continues to ignore much of its own legacy, its own intellectual and cultural traditions as well as its own history (as it follows the inexorable logic of multiculturalism, valuing all cultures and peoples) it will continue to be a liberalism that is unmoored and unrealistic..

Here in the U.S., I think this excess leads us to an angrier and more bitter ideological response from the right. The ensuing fight eats up political capital and common social ground. We divide. As a result, we can’t solve our problems with the same sensibility and reasonableness. Think border fence with Mexico.

See Also: Theodore Dalrymple In The City Journal: Atheism’s Problems which has an interesting critique of atheism as well.

Photo by: Jaap Stronks 

Even David Patterson Doubting Hillary Tactics

From Drudge. Full post here.

“New York Gov. David Paterson, a superdelegate who supports Hillary Rodham Clinton, said she’s showing “a little desperation” and should give up her effort to count votes from renegade primaries in Michigan and Florida.”

Clearly Hillary will do what’s best for the party.

Didn’t The New Yorker cover this after the North Carolina/Indiana caucauses?

See Also: CNN has the delegate count here.

 by Angela Radulescu  Still Going!

A Brief Discussion Of Andrew Sullivan and “The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How To Get It Back”

      

Andrew Sullivan argues rather persuasively in The Conservative Soul:  How We Lost It, How We Get It Back that U.S. conservativism is under threat from those who want to put God into our politics.  The religious right (and those that pander to the religious right for political gain) are undermining what has made America so great and free in the first place:  the balance of powers that prevents no one person nor ideology from being in a position to enforce their wills and idealism upon the rest of us. 

For Sullivan, one of the great counter-intuitive insights of our founding fathers (carried on in conservative thinkers like Oakeshott) is to not base our founding principles in virtue. 

Instead, the job of the laws, lawmakers, and law enforcers is simply to keep other people from interfering with our own rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  This is quite a lucky and amazing development.   Blessedly, there’s no insistence that any of us obey the will of God in our politics, nor that any of us are particularly noble, courageous, nor virtuous apart from the minimal interference of the state to protect us from those who would interefere with our lives, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…

I don’t have a quarrel with these ideas so much as…

———————————————————-

I have a quarrel with these ideas…

1.  Sullivan roots his thinking in the doubt of religious faith.  He is a practicing Catholic who promotes a broad interpretation of Catholic doctrine that highlights a humble, ever-doubtful and tolerant pursuit of truth and free thinking.    

Why this doubt must occur within Catholic doctrine and Christian teaching is not at all clear to me.  For religious believers there is the matter of submitting the will in faith to God…and also to the authority and hierarchy of the church.  This is non-negotiable.

2.  As someone who supports gay marriage, Sullivan has another problem.  The right of gays to marry is also supported by the gay rights movement and almost by entirely by liberals.  The gay rights movement is perhaps not even organized enough to demonstrate the many illiberal tendencies of other, more established gender and racial movements on the left.  Black nationalism, gender feminism, latino nationalism etc….can pose just as serious of a threat to our liberal institutions and freedoms as the religious right. I submit that gays aren’t even there yet…and the liberals who support gay rights aren’t about to invest energy into the conservative soul…

Another Take On J.S. Mill From “Liberal England”

Full post here. 

Why have so many people promoting gender and racial equality been allowed to pass as mainstream liberals…and not have to answer for the inherent threat their ideas can pose to our liberal democracy and the institutions that support it?

It’s a good question.  

Key quote:

“More recently Richard Rorty made an attractive attempt to reconcile the most avant-garde postmodern theory with a defence of the institutions of the Western liberal democracies, but the Mill of On Liberty still reigns supreme.”

See Also: What Can Liberalism Be? Much More Than It Is Now.