tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post114678476963035665..comments2024-03-28T03:19:40.014-04:00Comments on The Y Files: Todd Gitlin on the self-immolation of the academic leftCathy Younghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09688616617444359647noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-27676099259080329502013-11-28T14:03:09.069-05:002013-11-28T14:03:09.069-05:00All my former college mates and friends at the uni...All my former college mates and friends at the university are fond of the best writing service that focuses on finding <a href="http://allfreepapers.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow">some example dissertation papers School-based Clinics</a> suggested by educators worldwide. Studying knowledgeable facts as much as keeping in mind gained experience may require mental health and long lasting efforts of both the undergraduates and postgraduates. It comes as a rule that useful information is worthy looking for it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-19059825447317333642011-05-17T22:41:22.081-04:002011-05-17T22:41:22.081-04:00nice share thanks a lot :)
download free pc gam...nice share thanks a lot :) <br /><br /><a href="http://www.ourpcgame.net" rel="nofollow"> download free pc games </a><br /><a href="http://www.affiliatesrating.com" rel="nofollow"> affiliate review</a>Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16217946196345356227noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1149024742881125492006-05-30T17:32:00.000-04:002006-05-30T17:32:00.000-04:00I would argue that the Academic Left does have rea...I would argue that the Academic Left does have real-world influence, much of it harmful:<BR/><BR/>"The U.S. government desperately needs Arabic-speaking military officers, intelligence analysts and diplomats. Yet many of this country´s best universities are working hard to make sure it doesn´t get them.<BR/><BR/>In fact, there is a de facto boycott of language program funding on many of the country´s most prestigious campuses. On April 27, the Middle East Studies Association — America´s canonical Middle Eastern academic society — passed a resolution calling on the nation´s institutions of higher learning to "not seek or accept" such financial help. "We deplore the channeling of funds for education through defense or intelligence agencies," said the association. <BR/><BR/>The professors pointed out that "[the National Security Education Program] was instituted specifically to address the personnel needs of federal agencies responsible for national security. Students accepting [its] fellowships have a national security obligation." The professors do not approve of this. As one told me, "We are not in the business of training spies."<BR/><BR/>http://www.unitedjerusalem.org/index2.asp?id=106874Jeff with one 'f'https://www.blogger.com/profile/05744612696537883583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1148705491802023832006-05-27T00:51:00.000-04:002006-05-27T00:51:00.000-04:00This is so true: "Left-wing intellectuals began to...<I>This is so true: "Left-wing intellectuals began to assail reason as a white male bourgeois prejudice long before the current wave of conservative attacks on the legacy of the Enlightenment." How can liberal intellectuals defend in one breath the scientific method in the context of the battle over the theory of evolution, and then, in the next breath, argue that science and reason are merely ploys for white male dominance?</I> <BR/><BR/>What "liberal", as opposed to "radical", has said this? Words do have meanings you know and liberal is not a synonym for all things left of center.<BR/><BR/><I>How many times have we heard that applying science to racially or gender-sensitive questions is bigotry incarnate?</I><BR/><BR/>Personally, I've never heard anyone express this view. I don't doubt that someone may have but unless you can supply a citation I remain a sceptic.W.B. Reeveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11501942097348818813noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1148588765961489542006-05-25T16:26:00.000-04:002006-05-25T16:26:00.000-04:00This is so true: "Left-wing intellectuals began t...This is so true: "Left-wing intellectuals began to assail reason as a white male bourgeois prejudice long before the current wave of conservative attacks on the legacy of the Enlightenment." How can liberal intellectuals defend in one breath the scientific method in the context of the battle over the theory of evolution, and then, in the next breath, argue that science and reason are merely ploys for white male dominance? How many times have we heard that applying science to racially or gender-sensitive questions is bigotry incarnate?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147682448473209622006-05-15T04:40:00.000-04:002006-05-15T04:40:00.000-04:00Classical mechanics isn't fundamentally wrongHm, I...<I>Classical mechanics isn't fundamentally wrong</I><BR/><BR/>Hm, I think we're just using the term differently, then. Classical mechanics is useful for describing everyday mechanics because, while inaccurate, its inaccuracy doesn't matter much at human scales. But there is no scale at which classical mechanics is actually correct, and it becomes more radically incorrect at extremes of velocity and mass. That, to me, merits the term "fundamentally wrong" -- it turned out that there was a different theory that was far more accurate.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, thanks for the URLs. I think I've read everything Feynman ever wrote that was accessable to pre-graduate-level physics enthusiasts. Realclimate.org wasn't in my bookmarks, but I added it.Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147626807133816532006-05-14T13:13:00.000-04:002006-05-14T13:13:00.000-04:00There's no reason to believe that Sadr was motivat...<I>There's no reason to believe that Sadr was motivated by religious feelings rather than by the usual desire to be a local strongman.</I><BR/><BR/>Pure speculation on your part and not very well based at that, since Sadr is a Cleric and couches all of his appeals in religious terms. Irrelevant in any case since it is the motivations of his followers that are at issue. A leader may be completely cynical about manipulating the religious feeling of his followers but this is only possible if his followers actually possess such feelings. You appear to be moving the goal posts.<BR/><BR/><I>The Saudi royal family claims allegiance to Wahabbism for political reasons; for most of their history it helped control the population. The Japanese Shogunate used a special form of Buddhism for a similar reason, once upon a time. Religiously, however, the Saudi royal family is about as Wahabbist as Woody Allen is.</I><BR/><BR/>Again, not particularly relevant to the argument. Have the Wahabbists disowned the House of Saud? Outside the Islamist fringe the answer is no. Wahabbism remains a pillar of Saudi rule and the major figures of Wahabbism continue to collaborate with the ruling family.<BR/><BR/><I>What you're forgetting to take into consideration is that the Saudis didn't know, when they started pushing Wahabbism as a means of controlling the masses back after they took over the country, that in 1990 they'd need the help of a bunch of infidels to keep Saddam Hussein's greasy mits off their oil. When push came to shove, surprise surprise, the Saudis decided they'd rather keep being filthy-rich despots than actually stick to their alleged religion. Equally unsurprising is that many of the non-rich non-despots who really HAD bought into their religious bullshit didn't feel nearly so happy about it. The Saudis are hardly the first despots to stir up populist hatreds as a means of maintaining control and then get bitten by that hatred themselves.</I><BR/><BR/>Actually I haven't forgotten any of this. What's puzzling is why you think this is relevant to your defense of Wolfowitz's nonsense. The Wahabbist masses didn't rise up in rebellion at the presence of US Troops and the House of Saud wasn't overthrown. Business continues as usual in Riyadh, making hash of the idea that Iraq was somehow a safer bet than Saudi Arabia for US intervention.<BR/><BR/><I>That is quite incorrect. The belief that no infidels can be allowed to reside within the Ummah (the Islamic world) is one held my only a small fraction of Muslims, such as Wahabbis. The more widespread, though not necessarily majority, belief is that Muslim lands must not be *ruled* by non-Muslims -- not a problem in Iraq, which we neither pretend nor intend to rule, and whose new democratic government has ample Muslim representation.</I><BR/><BR/>It would have been incorrect if what I said had any relation to the strawman you raise. Of course it does not. We were not discussing residence in Islamic societies but military invasion and occupation. Believers in Islam are required as a religious duty to defend all members of the community of faith (Umma) from attacks by non-believers. Good luck trying to convince the Islamic community that Iraq doesn't qualify as such an attack.<BR/><BR/><I>This is why, despite most Iraqis being devout Muslims, attacks against US troops have been limited and are currently significantly outnumbered by attacks against other Muslims. Iraqis want the US to leave -- some sooner, some later -- but few want us out for religious reasons. They want us out because, well, it's their country, and who wants foreign troops patrolling their streets?</I><BR/><BR/>Well at least you grasp that they do not want us there. However, unless you have something beyond speculation, wishful thinking and faulty readings of Islamic teaching to support your analysis, I will have to take it with a large grain of salt.<BR/><BR/><I>I'd love to see the warped chain of logic that leads you from "the war in Afghanistan wasn't caused by holy sites" to "holy sites aren't a problem".</I><BR/><BR/>I'd like to see the "warped chain of logic" that leads you to make such an absurd statement. For someone who expresses such dainty sensitivity to others misrepresenting your own statements you seem to have no qualms, ethical or moral, about indulging in the same tactic yourself. To refresh your memory, you said:<BR/><BR/><I>Wolfowitz's point was that Iraq didn't pose the same "infidels in the land of the Holy Cities" problem that Saudi Arabia did, where US troops were concerned. Najaf is indeed a holy city to Shiites Muslims, but it is not even vaguely as revered by Islam as a whole as Mecca is -- and, even more importantly, Shiites don't get up in arms about Americans being in the same country as Najaf the way that Wahabbi Muslims did about Americans being in the same country as Mecca.</I><BR/><BR/>Except, of course, there was no Wahhabist insurection in Saudi Arabia, while the insurgency in Iraq shows no sign of abatement. You are the one who was arguing the pertinence of "holy sites" to violent Islamic reaction. I pointed out that the absence of such didn't retard the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Evidently, you don't feel competent to address this point, so you invented one that you found less challenging.<BR/><BR/><I>I'm also amused by your use of the term "pan-Islamic" to describe a resistance that was almost entirely composed of Afghanis -- many of them not particularly driven by religious motivations -- and members of a few fundemantalist Sunni sects.</I><BR/><BR/>Whereas I'm amused by your transparent word games. "Almost entirely" is simply an admission that the armed resistance was not entirely made up of Afghanis. <BR/><BR/>This is another example of your patented tactic of attempting to change the terms of debate without admitting to doing so. The pan-Islamic character of the Afghani war of resistance is not dependent on the ethnicity of the individual combatants, though you are forced to admit foreign fighters did play a role. More significant are the sources of support for that resistance. <BR/><BR/>Will you now claim that the resistance did not receive support from around the Islamic world, notably from the House of Saud? Will you deny that the resistance was logistically dependent on bases in neighboring Islamic states?<BR/><BR/>Or will you continue with your standard operating procedure of inventing false arguments that no one but yourself has entertained?W.B. Reeveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11501942097348818813noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147484723734369822006-05-12T21:45:00.000-04:002006-05-12T21:45:00.000-04:00I'm afraid I don't see how you're reconciling "the...I'm afraid I don't see how you're reconciling "there's stuff QM should be able to account for and can't" with "there's no chance QM might be fundamentally wrong". Classical mechanics was in much the same position for a long time, and for all its predictive power it did ultimately turn out to be fundamentally wrong. I'm curious how the idea that a unifying theory based on different assumptions than both QM and relativity was ruled out as a possibility. Could you point me to a good book on the subject?<BR/><BR/><I>My take is that the environmental sciences are just giving us their observations, and saying that we are in deep shit. Why are these scientists wrong?</I><BR/><BR/>We are not currently in deep shit. As a species and as individuals we're thriving. What we're being told is that current signs indicate that we WILL be in deep shit in the future.<BR/><BR/>Well, that's an interesting prediction. But science has thus far provided accurate long-term climatological and ecological predictions for a grand total of zero planets, and I'm certainly not going to assume that they'll get it right the first time out of the gate. Few theories do, particularly when large numbers of variables are involved.<BR/><BR/><I>Are they lying to us?</I><BR/><BR/>The ones who say science has demonstrated that global warming is a threat to humanity certainly are. That global warming threatens humanity is an untested hypothesis.Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147478636397311002006-05-12T20:03:00.000-04:002006-05-12T20:03:00.000-04:00Revenant, saying that there is a (i.e. one) well-f...<I>Revenant, saying that there is a (i.e. one) well-funded "apocalyptic" movement is saying a hell of a lot. It strongly implies some sort of concerted effort (one might say "conspiracy")</I><BR/><BR/>I neither said nor implied it, so I won't be held responsible for you thinking I meant it. The word "movement" is regularly used in the singular to refer to non-conspiratorial groups of people with a common purpose but no common leadership -- e.g. "the victim's rights movement". The term "well-funded" refers to the fact that billions of dollars a year are given, by individuals, organizations, and governments, to promote the movement's ideas.<BR/><BR/><I>This certainly does move the goalposts far from a dispassionate discussion.</I><BR/><BR/>You keep using that term. I do not think it <A HREF="http://www.skepticwiki.org/wiki/index.php/Moving_the_Goalposts" REL="nofollow">means</A> what you think it means. :)<BR/><BR/><I>What sources convince you that they are not acting in good faith? Certainly, ExxonMobil and other corporations fund media outlets that downplay global warming. Do you trust them?</I><BR/><BR/>All of them have the same motivation for being untruthful: money. Saying "using gasoline hurts the environment" would cost Exxon money, and I wouldn't expect them to say it. But saying "global warming isn't a threat" would cost environmental groups money, too, because people who aren't scared about the fate of their environment don't give money to environmental groups. The oil industry has no motivation for saying "oil is bad" and the environmental movement has no motivation for saying "the environment is fine".<BR/><BR/><I>There is very little we are not certain about, regarding the principles of QM.</I><BR/><BR/>Well, given your background you pretty definitely know a lot more about QM than I do, but isn't it still the case that the theory can't be reconciled with the also-well-established theory of relativity? <BR/><BR/>QM has (as you know) enormously accurate predictive value -- much more so, at this point, than any theory of planetary climate. Yet physics is still willing to seriously entertain the possibility that QM might be fundamentally wrong, and require replacement with some new theory that more accurately explains physical phenomena. The environmental sciences are, it seems to me, much more hostile to attempts to find other explanations for global warming and/or explanations for why it might be neutral, or even good, for humanity.Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147467988984164832006-05-12T17:06:00.000-04:002006-05-12T17:06:00.000-04:00Revenant, 5 minutes Googling yields; 108 species s...<I>Revenant, 5 minutes Googling yields; 108 species since 1973</I><BR/><BR/>I actually have that same link bookmarked already. But (a) 3.3/year is three or four orders of magnitude below the extinction rates I typically hear cited, (b) half of the species on the list are from Guam or Hawaii, and (c) NONE of the species listed went extinct in the last decade. This leads me to suspect the list is incomplete. If only 51 species have gone extinct in the last third of a century outside of Guam and Hawaii, some of those turned out to not really be extinct after all, many were near-extinct when first discovered, and none at all were wiped out in the last decade, then it is hard to credit the idea that extinction is a pressing concern, at least outside of the Pacific Islands.<BR/><BR/><I>What well-funded... etc? This sounds awfully close to tinfoil hat territory, or moving the goalposts to another planet</I><BR/><BR/>Um, what's the previous claim of mine that you're saying my above remarks move the goalposts from?<BR/><BR/><I>Sources?</I><BR/><BR/>Well, Greenpeace and the Sierra club spend around a quarter of a billion dollars a year between them, for starters.Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147377020756259212006-05-11T15:50:00.000-04:002006-05-11T15:50:00.000-04:00The planet will survive regardless, but with rapid...<I>The planet will survive regardless, but with rapid climate changes in the past, lots of species have died off. We are starting to see that now, and can directly tie it to climate change. </I><BR/><BR/>On a side note, something I've always wanted but have never been able to find is a list of species which are believed to have gone extinct in the past century or so. I keep hearing that species are going extinct at record rates, but nobody ever names names.<BR/><BR/>I think it is fair to say that climate change will be very bad for some species (and, of course, good for others), but there's no reason to believe that it will be bad for humanity. We can exist happily across a huge temperature range -- and that range improves with technology.Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147371310059925492006-05-11T14:15:00.000-04:002006-05-11T14:15:00.000-04:00The honest answer is almost always "it's complicat...The honest answer is almost always "it's complicated." <BR/><BR/>The most fascinating thing I've heard about lately (Discovery channel show?) was that, in a geological time frame, the poles of the Earth are going to flip over any second now. Part of that process is that the magnetic field that protects the Earth from harmful radiation is going to disappear for two or three centuries before it resumes. (IIRC, the actual reversal of the poles is instant.)<BR/><BR/>Since this was a Discovery Channel show it was all presented as dramatically and ominously as possible and then at the end they said that in the end there will probably be an increase in cancers or other radiation related things but life will survive just fine and for those centuries there will be constant aurora in the night skies from the poles to the equator.<BR/><BR/>They think they see it starting but that we'll certainly be long gone. Still, maybe our great-grandchildren will be alive to see it.<BR/><BR/>What I'd like to know is if any climate scientists are considering what this will do to climate?Synovahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01311191981918160095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147369319403138162006-05-11T13:41:00.000-04:002006-05-11T13:41:00.000-04:00I should have said, 'We are starting to see that n...I should have said, 'We are starting to see that now, and can directly tie some of it to climate change.'<BR/><BR/>ZAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147364569664850862006-05-11T12:22:00.000-04:002006-05-11T12:22:00.000-04:00I was just curious. It seems to me that the hones...I was just curious. <BR/><BR/>It seems to me that the honest answer is a little more complicated than simply "we don't know". The honest answer is: The earth is warming. Human activity is certainly contributing, but we can't quantify how much. While the mechanisms by which greenhouse gases retain heat in the atmosphere are well known, and have been for decades, many but not all planetary mechanisms for sinking and releasing heat and carbon are not. We don't know if stopping the human activity will stop the warming at this point. On a geologic time scale, this kind of thing isn't that unusual, but on a human historical time scale, it certainly seems to be. The planet will survive regardless, but with rapid climate changes in the past, lots of species have died off. We are starting to see that now, and can directly tie it to climate change. We are not sure how much that will impact human beings.<BR/><BR/>ZAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147303561651173092006-05-10T19:26:00.000-04:002006-05-10T19:26:00.000-04:00Are you familiar with the Paleocene-Eocene thermal...<I>Are you familiar with the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum?</I><BR/><BR/>Well I couldn't write a dissertation on it, no, but I've read about it. What about it?Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147295003514735042006-05-10T17:03:00.000-04:002006-05-10T17:03:00.000-04:00Rev,Are you familiar with the Paleocene-Eocene the...Rev,<BR/><BR/>Are you familiar with the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum?<BR/><BR/>ZAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147235325645451472006-05-10T00:28:00.000-04:002006-05-10T00:28:00.000-04:00Tell it to Muqtir al Sadr. His boys don't seem to ...<I>Tell it to Muqtir al Sadr. His boys don't seem to have gotten the memo about Shias being down with the US military's handling of Najaf.</I><BR/><BR/>There's no reason to believe that Sadr was motivated by religious feelings rather than by the usual desire to be a local strongman.<BR/><BR/><I>As far as the Wahabbi's attitudes are concerned, need I point out that the entire Saudi Royal Family claim alliegence to Wahabbism and are its greatest sponsors?</I><BR/><BR/>The Saudi royal family claims allegiance to Wahabbism for political reasons; for most of their history it helped control the population. The Japanese Shogunate used a special form of Buddhism for a similar reason, once upon a time. Religiously, however, the Saudi royal family is about as Wahabbist as Woody Allen is. <BR/><BR/><I>The same Saudi Royal family that invited the US military into Saudi Arabia in the first place.</I><BR/><BR/>What you're forgetting to take into consideration is that the Saudis didn't know, when they started pushing Wahabbism as a means of controlling the masses back after they took over the country, that in 1990 they'd need the help of a bunch of infidels to keep Saddam Hussein's greasy mits off their oil. When push came to shove, surprise surprise, the Saudis decided they'd rather keep being filthy-rich despots than actually stick to their alleged religion. Equally unsurprising is that many of the non-rich non-despots who really HAD bought into their religious bullshit didn't feel nearly so happy about it. The Saudis are hardly the first despots to stir up populist hatreds as a means of maintaining control and then get bitten by that hatred themselves.<BR/><BR/><I>Anyone with a grasp of the status of the "Umma" within Islam</I><BR/><BR/>...a group which does not count you among its members...<BR/><BR/><I>would understand that the fact of non-Islamic intervention itself is sufficient to call any believer to arms, regardless of their sectarian affiliation.</I><BR/><BR/>That is quite incorrect. The belief that no infidels can be allowed to reside within the Ummah (the Islamic world) is one held my only a small fraction of Muslims, such as Wahabbis. The more widespread, though not necessarily majority, belief is that Muslim lands must not be *ruled* by non-Muslims -- not a problem in Iraq, which we neither pretend nor intend to rule, and whose new democratic government has ample Muslim representation.<BR/><BR/>This is why, despite most Iraqis being devout Muslims, attacks against US troops have been limited and are currently significantly outnumbered by attacks against other Muslims. Iraqis want the US to leave -- some sooner, some later -- but few want us out for religious reasons. They want us out because, well, it's their country, and who wants foreign troops patrolling their streets?<BR/><BR/><I>What holy sites did Afghanistan possess to inspire a decade long pan-Islamic war of resistance to the Soviet occupation?</I><BR/><BR/>I'd love to see the warped chain of logic that leads you from "the war in Afghanistan wasn't caused by holy sites" to "holy sites aren't a problem".<BR/><BR/>I'm also amused by your use of the term "pan-Islamic" to describe a resistance that was almost entirely composed of Afghanis -- many of them not particularly driven by religious motivations -- and members of a few fundemantalist Sunni sects.Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147232883676196192006-05-09T23:48:00.000-04:002006-05-09T23:48:00.000-04:00it HAS been the general scientific consensus for m...<I>it HAS been the general scientific consensus for many years now that climate change is real, you have had plenty of folks poo-pooing it as more nonsense from the looney academics. As time has gone on, the evidence is only gotten stronger, and some of those people are finally getting a clue. </I><BR/><BR/>I still say that that is a disingenuous description of the argument. You make it sound like the whole debate is just a question of "is the Earth getting warmer or not?". If that was the whole question, few people would care. The real meat of the argument has always been over the big three questions I mentioned -- is it our fault, is it unusual, and should we care. The honest scientific answer to all three questions is "we don't know yet".<BR/><BR/>But in much the same way that the term "UFO" has, in the public arena, come to mean "alien spaceship", the term "global warming" has, in the public arena, come to mean "unusual human-caused global warming which is damaging our environment". So just as people who say "UFOs don't exist" aren't necessarily claiming "there's are no flying objects we are unable to identify", people who say "global warming is a myth" aren't necessarily denying that the Earth has heated up in the last century. They're usually just denying the whole widely-preached by scientifically-unverified idea that human activity is destroying the planet.<BR/><BR/>It is also worth noting that it is hardly fair too blame people for failing to trust climate scientists when the same people saying "it is an observed fact that the Earth has warmed over the last century" (which is true) are so frequently the same people saying "there is no doubt that global warming is due to human activity" (which is a lie). Climate scientists are guilty of being the boys who cried wolf.<BR/><BR/><I>Which is why, rather than pounding on ALL intellectuals, it is important to differentiate between the philosphy/ideology pushers, and people who are producing something that can be verified.</I><BR/><BR/>The problem is that academia doesn't make that differentiation. Colleges don't teach that physics is real and developmental psychology is subjective bullshit. Most people's college experience consists of a major in some sort of pointless wanking like Business or Psychology or Communications that teaches them little they end up using in real life. Maybe they take a few entry-level hard-science classes, but by and large college is about regurgitating professors' subjective opinions, learning a few interesting trivia facts, and trying to have a good time before starting on forty years of working. Small wonder that people have contempt for academics when even those of us who attended college didn't really meet all that many professors who seemed worthy of respect for their intellectual prowess.<BR/><BR/><I>Historians are working from a record that can be verified. Models in economics can be tested with real world data and so on.</I><BR/><BR/>In theory, sure, but in practice that doesn't happen nearly as much as it ought to. You can still find the economic equivalents of phlogiston theory being taught at major universities, and history is so hyperspecialized that primary sources frequently go unchecked. Witness the "Arming America" scandal, for example -- Michael Bellesiles was able to completely fabricate mounds of data in support of a fairly shocking new theory, and it was several years (and several major awards from historical organizations) later before historians really bothered to check his data. One has to wonder if they'd have bothered checking at all if the subject hadn't been controversial and his opponents so vehement in wanting to prove him wrong. A guy could probably go his whole career making up shit about farming habits in 14th-century Uzbekistan and nobody would ever give a rat's ass enough to find him out.Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147193304508104332006-05-09T12:48:00.000-04:002006-05-09T12:48:00.000-04:00Rev,Try to focus your argument on what I said. Th...Rev,<BR/><BR/>Try to focus your argument on what I said. There IS sound verifiable information available on shifts in the climate. Not only have we verified that average temps have increased, there are measurable shifts in ocean currents, bird immigration patterns, dates when plants sprout, dates when insects emerge, changes in the size of glaciers, and on and on. I did not speculate on what might be causing that. I did not speculate on whether or not this would be bad. I did not speculate on whether or not this was unusual. <BR/><BR/>Even though, due to a convergence of evidence from multiple disciplines (climate science, ocean science, animal science, plant science, etc), it HAS been the general scientific consensus for many years now that climate change is real, you have had plenty of folks poo-pooing it as more nonsense from the looney academics. As time has gone on, the evidence is only gotten stronger, and some of those people are finally getting a clue. <BR/><BR/>Granted, I will give you the media coverage of this has been pretty sad. Media coverage of science is usually pretty bad. But it isn't as if we don't live in a wired world and we can't get access to scientific reports on this. It is one thing to dispute the influence of greenhouse gases and the future results of climate change. It is a whole other thing to reject out of hand all that data because you don't like and don't trust intellectuals.<BR/><BR/><I>If the subject of your "research" is "themes of oppression in Iranian literature", your theories and conclusions need not have any basis in reality whatsoever. The "regulatory mechanism" for most liberal arts and social sciences consists of nothing more than a gigantic academic circle-jerk, with Ph.Ds producing articles of interest only to each other, if that, and of little or no use to anyone in the real world at all.</I><BR/><BR/>Exactly. That crap should be taken with a large dose of salt. Which is why, rather than pounding on ALL intellectuals, it is important to differentiate between the philosphy/ideology pushers, and people who are producing something that can be verified. By the way, that isn't just limited to the physical sciences. Historians are working from a record that can be verified. Models in economics can be tested with real world data and so on. I refuse to defend sociology, though, ... you know how I feel about the soft sciences. :)<BR/><BR/>WB Reeves did a fine job of addressing the Wolfowitz issue.<BR/><BR/>ZAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147161065668036182006-05-09T03:51:00.000-04:002006-05-09T03:51:00.000-04:00Wolfowitz's point was that Iraq didn't pose the sa...<I>Wolfowitz's point was that Iraq didn't pose the same "infidels in the land of the Holy Cities" problem that Saudi Arabia did, where US troops were concerned. Najaf is indeed a holy city to Shiites Muslims, but it is not even vaguely as revered by Islam as a whole as Mecca is -- and, even more importantly, Shiites don't get up in arms about Americans being in the same country as Najaf the way that Wahabbi Muslims did about Americans being in the same country as Mecca.</I><BR/><BR/>Tell it to Muqtir al Sadr. His boys don't seem to have gotten the memo about Shias being down with the US military's handling of Najaf. <BR/><BR/>As far as the Wahabbi's attitudes are concerned, need I point out that the entire Saudi Royal Family claim alliegence to Wahabbism and are its greatest sponsors? The same Saudi Royal family that invited the US military into Saudi Arabia in the first place.<BR/><BR/>In any case the whole fixation on "holy sites" is wrong headed to begin with. Anyone with a grasp of the status of the "Umma" within Islam would understand that the fact of non-Islamic intervention itself is sufficient to call any believer to arms, regardless of their sectarian affiliation. The proximity of "holy sites" is an agravating but secondary factor. <BR/><BR/>What holy sites did Afghanistan possess to inspire a decade long pan-Islamic war of resistance to the Soviet occupation? A resistance which proved a breeding ground for the Jihadist terrorists of today. <BR/><BR/>Wolfowitz's, comment was both ignorant and foolish.W.B. Reeveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11501942097348818813noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147132987858359832006-05-08T20:03:00.000-04:002006-05-08T20:03:00.000-04:00rejecting sound, verifiable science regarding meas...<I>rejecting sound, verifiable science regarding measurable shifts in climate.</I><BR/><BR/>That's moving the goalposts a bit, don't you think? While there are certainly some people who dispute that the Earth has warmed over the past century -- and, indeed, such warming has been verified -- most people generally dispute (a) that humans caused this, (b) that it's bad, or (c) that the current warming trend is unusual. None of those three things has been verified. It is a continual source of bemusement to me that a science theory which is still in its infancy has, thanks to the prior existance of a well-funded apocalyptic environmentalist movement, been awarded a status of near-unquestionable certitude that the theory of evolution took ten times as long and orders of magnitude more data to achieve, and which things such as quantum mechanics and general relativity STILL haven't achieved. We're still not sure about QM, but BY GOD we're postitive about global warming theory, even though it's never made an accurate or useful prediction about anything.<BR/><BR/><I>I recall Wolfowitz saying that Iraq had a secular culture that was "overwhelmingly Shia, which is different from the Wahhabis of the peninsula, and they don't bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory." Any academic familiar with the region would have pointed out Najaf.</I><BR/><BR/>Which is exactly the sort of meaningless nitpicking that consumes so much of academia outside of the physical sciences. Wolfowitz's point was that Iraq didn't pose the same "infidels in the land of the Holy Cities" problem that Saudi Arabia did, where US troops were concerned. Najaf is indeed a holy city to Shiites Muslims, but it is not even vaguely as revered by Islam as a whole as Mecca is -- and, even more importantly, Shiites don't get up in arms about Americans being in the same country as Najaf the way that Wahabbi Muslims did about Americans being in the same country as Mecca. <BR/><BR/><I>What we can do is educate ourselves enough to tell the difference between what is logical and reasonably verifiable and things that smell more like a philosophy or ideology. We can also be informed about what regulatory mechanisms are in place to root out dishonesty and fraud.</I><BR/><BR/>There are systems in place for checking data and theory in the physical sciences, sure, although historically those have tended to break down somewhat catastrophically when dealing with politically sensitive issues. But the physical sciences also have the advantage of being about reality -- if you lie and say "if you do X to Y, Z happens" and nobody can reproduce your result, what are you going to do? Much of the rest of academia has no such reality check. If the subject of your "research" is "themes of oppression in Iranian literature", your theories and conclusions need not have any basis in reality whatsoever. The "regulatory mechanism" for most liberal arts and social sciences consists of nothing more than a gigantic academic circle-jerk, with Ph.Ds producing articles of interest only to each other, if that, and of little or no use to anyone in the real world at all.Revenanthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11374515200055384226noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147108564998974842006-05-08T13:16:00.000-04:002006-05-08T13:16:00.000-04:00Synova,The whole-scale rejection of intellectuals ...Synova,<BR/><BR/>The whole-scale rejection of intellectuals throws out the baby with the bath water, and that is a problem. There is a big difference between rejecting the idea that one doesn't have a sophistocated palette if you can't taste the 'currant notes' in a glass of wine and rejecting sound, verifiable science regarding measurable shifts in climate. The ideas and biases of some intellectuals are silly, but some really do know what they are talking about. A lot more could have gone right in Iraq, for example, if the war planners had bothered to listen experts on culture and customs in the region. I recall Wolfowitz saying that Iraq had a secular culture that was "overwhelmingly Shia, which is different from the Wahhabis of the peninsula, and they don't bring the sensitivity of having the holy cities of Islam being on their territory." Any academic familiar with the region would have pointed out Najaf.<BR/><BR/>Sure, there have been abuses in the sciences and academia. There have been abuses in EVERY field, from politics to business to science to education. We can't counter that by becoming experts in everything. What we can do is educate ourselves enough to tell the difference between what is logical and reasonably verifiable and things that smell more like a philosophy or ideology. We can also be informed about what regulatory mechanisms are in place to root out dishonesty and fraud. All of these things take some effort, though. I guess the lazy man's approach is to just throw up your hands and say, 'Because some intellectuals are snooty lunatics, all of them suck and have nothing of value to say!'<BR/><BR/>ZAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147019888063932382006-05-07T12:38:00.000-04:002006-05-07T12:38:00.000-04:00A couple of observations.I find the whole business...A couple of observations.<BR/><BR/>I find the whole business about the academic "left" a wee bit overblown. To begin with, their influence, such as it is, is almost entirely limited to the hothouse of the Academy and, as others have noted, it is largely anti-political in the sense that that they present no practical program for action in the larger society. When was the last time any campaign or policy was promoted on the turgid obscurantism of Po-Mo theory?<BR/><BR/>As for the idea that the "linkage" between the fevered talking shops of certain humanities departments and political Liberalism is the work of the "Academic Left" or the "Left" in general, I have to laugh. <BR/><BR/>It wasn't the Left, academic or otherwise, that turned this putative linkage into a cottage publishing industry with books such as "Tenured Radicals", et al. The Right saw political advantage in promoting this spurious connection and set to it with a will. The Academic Left, obsessed with theoretical navel gazing and posturing, had neither the interest nor the juice to accomplish such a linkage in the public mind. Not to mention that these inheritors of some of the worst aspects of sixties radicalism are, for the most part, hostile to Liberalism on principle.<BR/><BR/>The role of the so-called "Academic Left" in higher education is a serious topic worthy of serious scrutiny and debate. Such debate is ill served by demagogic attempts to engraft it onto larger political disputes where it has no demonstrable impact.W.B. Reeveshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11501942097348818813noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1147012210469515702006-05-07T10:30:00.000-04:002006-05-07T10:30:00.000-04:00http://wizbangblog.com/2006/05/07/the-arrogance-of...http://wizbangblog.com/2006/05/07/the-arrogance-of-the-intellectuals.php<BR/><BR/>Related post and comments on Wizbang.<BR/><BR/>We refuse to listen to our betters because our betters have nothing relevant to say.Synovahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01311191981918160095noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11306845.post-1146882733141441372006-05-05T22:32:00.000-04:002006-05-05T22:32:00.000-04:00revenant,"The identification of "liberalism" with ...revenant,<BR/>"The identification of "liberalism" with the Left allows the Left to pull a bait-and-switch. It lures people in by talking about "liberal" ideas like helping the underprivledged -- conveniently ignoring the fact that virtually everybody thinks that's a good idea and differ only in how to best offer such help -- then ties them to distinctly illiberal, left-wing ideas like massive wealth redistribution programs."<BR/><BR/>I'll give you that one.ada47https://www.blogger.com/profile/07518135598811100411noreply@blogger.com