welcome to the cultural revolution (aka what the FUCK is wrong with the florida legislature?)

(xpost)

exactly!

re the scenario that i described above: american law school is ALL ABOUT the socratic method -- that is, the professor challenging the students' pre-conceptions wr2 questions. it is part of the whole PROGRAM, and NOT targeted at "silencing" the right. and if these clowns felt so "persecuted" by a law school professor, how the HELL were they going to hold up under questions from a JUDGE, or in a deposition?!?

(though i should add that i'm not exactly enthused about the socratic method. not b/c it "silences" students through brutalist questioning -- but more so b/c i think that it's a largely pedagogically useless exercise in "hide the ball." which, of course, has a power dynamic all of its own -- but said power dynamic is NOT per se about "silencing the right.")

“I expect to be out there on my own pretty far,” he said. “I don’t expect to be part of a team.”

I'm amused!

This weird dynamic crops up all the time in grading related disputes- a huffy student who doesn't like their grade will say "it's just your OPINION that my paper is poorly written" with this look of triumph in their eye, as if they've somehow turned their shit into gold. So now instructors are much more prone to give out grading rubrics with a checklist of qualities and quantifiable, errors-per-page = grade B etc. tables of correlation (smoke and mirrors, as the decision about how to apply such rubrics still rests upon the instructor's judgement). As long as grades are given, there is a power dynamic in place, and people are going to grade grub and nurse grudges. Transpose this same dynamic onto class discussion and you've got a recipe for a disastrous series of frivolous lawsuits from inarticulate crybabies with an axe to grind who couldn't convince the teacher or their classmates but who can shrilly yelp about the injustice of it all to a lawyer who's only too happy to oblige. That's what our underfunded schools need- hefty settlement fees passed out by rightwing, fellow traveler judges. Hallelujah!

If the democrats can find their fucking balls, the 2006 elections will be interesting. Its almost fun watching the republicans blow their tops when they dont get what they want, despite controlling all levers of government.

Jesus Christ, have these wankers stepped into a classroom? Admittedly, I'm not very fond of educational systems in general, but bloody...

Are you kidding? They have all sorts of shit to say about it. Don't get them started, they never fucking shut up. What they say has nothing to do with "science" as it's generally been practiced for the past many hundred years, but that doesn't bother them at all.

This bill won't pass, not in Florida after the Schiavo debacle. That wound is going to be fresh for a while. If it's going to pass, it'll be in Alabama or someplace. But most likely it won't pass anywhere, because when push comes to shove, the Chamber of Commerce concern about college grads not being able to spell "cat" or add 1+1 will continue to trump the roll-back-the-Renaissance brigade, if only because the Chamber has more money. The sad thing is that the bill doesn't have to pass in order to embolden self-identified "conservatives" into challenging every bad grade they get from any professor who doesn't seem sufficiently party-lined. One more pain in the ass for university profs to worry about, and one more reason for those of us who aren't university profs to be glad we're not.

My personal experience with this whole issue came from my high school history teacher, who was a self-identified Reagan Republican and was hands down the best teacher I ever had. He made me understand history in ways that nobody before or since ever managed. Sometimes after class, my liberal friends and I would hang around and argue contemporary issues with him, which he was more than happy to do. I feel sorry for people who think they can only learn from people who think the same way they do.

and though upthread i took a swipe at the federalist society, one of my best friends in law school was the president of my school's fed. society chapter. he is also one of the most brilliant and decent people i've been fortunate to know ... even though his politics suck :-)

My anthro professor said a couple weeks ago that he teaches evolution as the discipline of anthropology views it, with the evidence it considers valid. He doesn't care what kids believe, their responsibility when taking his classes is to know what anthropology says about evolution, and if they object to it, they shouldn't take anthropology classes. You can't argue with that unless you're a loony...too bad you can't say "this is how the discipline of literary criticism views X." Baaaah.

Meanwhile, one of the most colorful political conversation I've had in ages was at an Xmas party this year. An neighbor of mine was going to town about Georgia's recent shenanigans in the evolution arena, and I got an earful about the accuracy of the Bible. Something along the lines of, "If it's in the Bible, God said it. And if God said it, it's the Truth." Thank god he doesn't live next door.

kicker is, many people, not just conservative assholes agree somewhat with this. of course, the majority of the louder types that claim this as proof their moral authority/rightousness only feel the need to quote certain bits.

which translation is revered by american xtian fundamentalists, and yet it was commissioned by a homosexual english monarch (a point that i NEVER tire of pointing out).

the thing is, there is a difference between classic 'young-earth' creationism and the new-school 'Intelligent Design' folks. Both are despicable, but the 'intelligent design' people dress their tired arguments up in more sophisticated trappings (i.e. they don't deny that the earth is billions of years old and they dont deny the existence of natural selection, though they weaken its power to just being something that eliminates unfit phenotypes). This allows them to be reach more educated people (yet who are not familiar with the literature on evolution).

the 'Intelligent Design' movement gained momentum in the 90's with the book Darwin on Trial, by Philip Johnson (a lawyer!), and Darwin's Black Box, by Michael Behe, a molecular biologist who claimed that the biology of cells is TOO COMPLEX OMGWTFLOL to be created step-by-step by natural selection (an old, old argument that has been refuted many times). Of course neither of them really suggest a viable alternative except for "Intelligent Design", which of course is not an workable explanation for anything.

yeah, this shit is tiring.

no shit!

There are plenty of examples of intellectuals who cling to pseudo-science or other forms of dogma. We just don't tend to lump the "intelligent design" phoneys in the same group as the doom-and-gloom crowd who've predicted another Ice Age, the end of the oil supply, or a 36,000 NYSE.

again, their system of values, their morality, is completely dependent on having the moral authority, of them being unquestionably right. things must be literal, that there must be an Absolute Standard(one that's unarguable) since any interpretation of it seen as questioning it, which is seen as an attack on its legitimacy. every single word of the Bible has to be literally true, for how else can they claim their moral authority on it. This is the true Literal Word of God, they say, and we're merely following what God said. Anyone who questions this must be against us, which is therefore against God, which is therefore Evil and must be never be tolerated ever and stamped out whever it could possibly rear its ugly head.

Also, a central value is continually supporting and propagating their view of morality. this is part of while they're better at organizing that most progressives tend to be. despite which subgenre of conservativism you subscribe to, you know that a main part of it(as well as a main part of any other flavor of conservatism) is reaffirming and propagating conservativism.

the Narcissism of Small Differences hasn't seemed to play as much as a role in conservative organinizing efforts in the last 30+ years as it has say, in the many strands of progressive movements.

(xpost)

wtf? you think oil is never gonna run out? or are you referring to people making specific predictions...?

The whole new ice age thing is a fairly localised effect of global warming. Melting of the greenland icecap floods the north atlantic with cold water stopping the north atlantic sink which drives the gulf stream. Without the gulf stream, the temperature in europe drops giving a little ice age. This has happened before in the 16th an 17th centuries.

This is a competing adjunct to the general global warming story.

They may have underestimated supply, but no one was really factoring the big increase in demand that china's boom has caused.

Here's a very interesting article about the movement for a post-autistic economics.
http://www.adbusters.org/metas/eco/truecosteconomics/post-autistic.html

Unfortunately, like most progressive movements this one has a terrible name. While the right wing crusades under banners like "educational freedom" or "student rights" the left comes up with the predictably cumbersome "post-autistic economics."

(i) i don't like the idea of left-wing (or moderate, or any label) "cultural revolutionists" running amok in the university.

(ii) what do you consider to be "dangerous hogwash" running amok in economics? milton friedman is NOT the only economist, you know (nor is he necessarily always wrong).

Besides, global cooling is a measurable reality. Dust particles in the atmosphere have been keeping a lid on global warming for many years. In the 70s global cooling could have been an easy conclusion to make, with the greenhouse effect and greenhouse gas emissions not being fully understood.

Lakoff writes about how Grover Nordquist holds a weekly meeting with like six dozen leaders of different conservative factions. they meet, argue, debate, air grievances, figure out what each other is doing and how to organize this to best effect. they compromise with each other, which is easy, since each guy knows that if his stuff ain't at the forefront this week, it could be at the agreed-upon forefront next week, and they all know that each other wants effectively the same thing and sing the same tune, they only sing it in different keys.

it helps that conservative types tend to have a personality very much oriented towards a top-down, authoritarian. everything else is in service to reaffirming authority.

of course, as others and Lakoff have pointed out, the progressive side has does science on their side, which can be used to disprove the other side(handy for convincing other progressive-leaning folks of how the other side is wrong) as well as tools of analysis to figure out exactly what the other side has done to get where it is, and ways to go about using similar methods to further progressive causes.

heh. how does that line go? "They have the guns / but we have the music..."

(xpost)

note that their side REQUIRES culture war. (how do you say that in German, anyway? "kulturkampf?") they HAVE to have animosity, alienation, yelling & shouting on news shows instead of slightly quieter debate, demonification of the Other(just because they're the Other), a Manichean US/THEM viewpoint.

They NEED to feel themselves as put-upon, as the victims, of an immoral and vicious Culture(be it education, social, pop, or political), to feel righteous and that their efforts are Just & Good. Doesn't matter that they actually control the politics, or the media groups that put out the cultures, etc.

dammit, i really need to start that Lakoff thread when I get home. I have too much to type out in the limited breaks i get at the new job here.

That's why I said that hindsight is 20/20. And that's what the intelligent design crowd will tell you about intelligent design--that their theories will be borne out with time i.e. as this design is more fully understood. 40 years from now, it's almost certain that our understanding of intelligent design (and shit, I really hate even typing that phrase) will be much better, as will global warming.

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2005/03/the_scandal_of_.html

...For Scalia, as an originalist, the Constitution means what it says and it says what it means. That's a phrase borrowed from evangelical preachers, of course, who say the same thing about their reading of the "plain text" of the Bible.

Mark Noll describes this evangelical approach as "naive Baconianism." Here's Noll in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (the one book you should read if you want to understand American evangelical Christians):

Evangelicals make much of their ability to read the Bible in a "simple," "literal" or "natural" fashion -- that is, in a Baconian way. In actual fact, evangelical hermeneutics, as illustrated in creationism, is dictated by very specific assumptions that dominated Western intellectual life from roughly 1650 to 1850 (and in North America for a few decades more). Before and after that time, many Christians and other thinkers have recognized that no observations are "simple" and no texts yield to uncritically "literal" readings. ...

When evangelicals rely on a naive Baconianism, they align themselves with the worst features of the naive positivism that lingers among some of those who worship at the shrine of modern science. Thus, under the illusion of fostering a Baconian approach to Scripture, creationists seek to convince their audience that they are merely contemplating simple conclusions from the Bible, when they are really contemplating conclusions from the Bible shaped by their preunderstandings of how the Bible should be read.

There are, in other words, two problems with evangelicals' alleged "simple," "common-sense" approach to the text. First, such an approach doesn't work. Second, this isn't really what they're doing anyway. The supposedly literal approach begins with certain presuppositions (cultural, personal, psychological, economic) and then finds these very same presuppositions as obvious and self-evident in the plain meaning of the text. Thus the sacred word becomes a mirror and our exegesis begins to resemble Stuart Smalley's daily affirmations....

which actualy agrees with much of what Lakoff has written before.

this Christian doesn't, at least.

that's part of the kicker, too. it can be very difficult to talk about one's personal beliefs, thanks to the fact those most vocal about their beliefs(esp. in the last 30+ years) have mostly been total fucking assholes(having prosetlyzation as a central tenet of their beliefs hasn't helped).

so anybody talking about what they believe tend to get viewed with suspicion and outright scorn(hell, just check what happens on this board).

(xpost)

I think they're amused and appalled by what we've done with everything after the first 5 books.

Lewis Black talks about this, about how conservatives get the Old Testament wrong becuase "...it's not your Book. Your Book is the other one."

Weirdness...I looked it up and all the sites in James' defence are Christian websites.

in my experience as a Jew, I'd say Judaism on the whole places much more weight on human agency than Christians do, as far as how they relate to texts. Judaism posits the Torah as being directly handed to the Jews by God - but only because of their "covenant" with God, as established by three patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Insofar as the Torah contains commandments, Judaism views these as being directly communicated by God through his "chosen people" here on earth (the three patriarchs, various prophets, Moses "the lawgiver", etc.). But the Torah also functions as a history of the Jewish people, and in that respect its treated like a family document handed down from one generation to the next - ie, this is what your folks were doing in the desert all these years - and as such it is implied that a "literal" reading is appropriate.

And maybe it's just me, but I've always felt that Judaism by and large placed a much higher premium on debate/interpretation/scholarship than any kind of fundie christianity. The importance of literacy, of "arguing" with God, of engaging with the text was always front and center in my religious education.

http://www.rsnt.org/assets/arch_of_titus_depicting_roman_exile_of_jews.jpg

real awesome:

http://fusionanomaly.net/devomongoloid7inchfront.jpg

http://us.ent4.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/dreamworks_skg/gladiator/joaquin_phoenix/gladiator2.jpg

"just a bit of fun. let's all be cool."

60,000+ Hispanic Christians to “Rock” at LA Coliseum

Three days of inspirational music and messages

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) February 19, 2005 -- ActionHouse presents Festival Bajo el Sol, three days of inspirational music and messages at the Los Angeles Coliseum for the Hispanic Christian community with performances from the best Christian entertainers and speakers.

Who: Internationally renowned Speaker Luis Palau. Performances by Marcos Witt, El Trio De Hoy, Annette Moreno, Joshua Chavez and many more!

When: Concert July 16th 5:00 – 9:30 pm. followed by Youth After Party On the Infield till 12:00 am - Carnival July 15 – 17, 2005

Where: Los Angeles Coliseum - 3939 S Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90037

Tickets: $19.00 General Admission, $35.00 Infield (ages 2 and under enter free!) tickets will be available thru Ticketmaster, Christian bookstores and at the Coliseum box office. Discounted Group tickets available 1-800-872-7002

Located in the heart of the city and the Hispanic community, Festival Bajo el Sol is expected to draw between 60,000 – 80,000 people with carnival rides, booth merchants and family festivities.

"Last year's event at the LA Sports Arena was so successful," states producer, Benny Colon of ActionHouse, "that we were asked to do it again!"

ActionHouse is located at the Los Angeles Dream Center in the heart of Los Angeles, California. Mentoring the youth and inspiring artists of all nationalities, ActionHouse is helping to develop the next generation of inspired artists, actors, and producers. Their facility includes dance studios, private editing suites, student lounge, and a computer lab with state-of-the-art workstations for video editing and production. Through internships and mentoring programs, ActionHouse is making a way for the next generation. www.actionhouse.net

More information on Festival Bajo el Sol, performing talent, or merchant and sponsorship opportunities visit www.festivalbajoelsol.com

Tickets: $19.00 General Admission, $35.00 Infidel

BAHAHAHAHA yay bullshit strawman conservative talking point!

prof #1: "Goddammit, Kingfish, you will BELIEVE that carbon nanotubes are the way of the future, and have a Young's modulus such to make a space elevator VIABLE!"

kingfish: "YOU'LL NEVER FORCE ME TO TAKE PART IN YOUR DOGMA!"

prof #2: "You will SWEAR on the name of all that you believe is holy in your so-called 'Christendom' that correctly-sized NMOS transistors can properly bias the input stage of a monolithic-amplifier circuit requiring FAR less surface area than if you were to use actual resistors OR YOU WILL NOT PASS THIS CLASS and you will be BANNED from my classroom!"

kingfish: "NEVER!"

Conceptual Metaphors, Progressive Values, and Reframing in America: the Work of George Lakoff

What place does belief have in an intellectually rigorous education, or discipline? None whatsoever, either back yourself up with evidence and a rigorous argument, or shut up. This doesn't meant that there has to be agreement on what is true or even agreement on what constitutes valid evidence, but something as insubstantial as belief has no place at all in a rigorous education.

i don't consider "relativism" a problem: wrestling fact from the power politics of life is as hard now as it wz yesterday, 100 years ago, or a thousand years ago)

After seeing The Life Of Galileo recently, I did think that at least now that this pope is dying, scientists aren't terrified about the sucession. I know, for Pope read US President + Congress + Senate + Supreme Court in three years time, but that's progress of a sort.

Materialism, Empiralism, Darwinism, or whatever are all beliefs that currently have a large place in education. These are not treated as insubstantial.

or the ones who think that the Sermon on the Mount/"feed the hungry"/"heal the sick"-thing might be onto something?

The Chiristian uses a system of inquiry when they ask the Holy Spirit to guide them.

That sounds like a belief to me.

these terms are meaningless. Define them.

"The Chiristian uses a system of inquiry when they ask the Holy Spirit to guide them"

what if the Holy Spirit is guiding you by presenting indisputable physical evidence, from which you must draw your own conclusions?

"The view that experience, especially of the senses, is the only source of knowledge.
That sounds like a belief to me. "

The totality of human experience is filtered through the senses. If you believe otherwise, please explain.

yes, but what does this tend to mean in practices? also, does holitically involve something akin to, say, contextual analysis? analysis that might neat little bits of info about how the Decalogue share many structural similarities to Hittite laws that were going around at the time.

in other words, please clarify.

(xpost)

catagorically - Looking at single verses only; neglecting to consider the whole bible as God-breathed.

"What if the Holy Spirit is guiding you by presenting indisputable physical evidence, from which you must draw your own conclusions?"

This may be one way, but not the only possible way. It could guide the spirit of a human.

"The totality of human experience is filtered through the senses. If you believe otherwise, please explain."

This is a good question. The Holy Spirit can work on the spirit of a human which is something deeper then senses.

Which gets to another point that mark touched on aptly -- evolution isn't a *theory* -- it's a process that is a central object of *investigation* in the disciplinary domain of biology. To do biology, one must first accept that the object of one's investigation exists. So to the extent that this issue isn't "headed off at the pass" I think it's because we're teaching *what science is* wrong, with a crude sort of empiricism that Zizek manages to dodge quite well. (point of information -- as I understand it the "concrete universal" is actually from Laclau and Zizek picked up on it early in his career only to generally throw it by the wayside or at least scare-quote it in his more recent work. along those lines, Zizek's ontology has always had an objective reality, just as his epistimology has always had an irreconcilable rupture with that reality -- tho a *relative* one rather than absolute).

I never understood the scientific method until I started reading philosophy of science, because the way that it was taught in school was mystical-religious junk! Hypotheses just appear in thin air, and experiments just verify or disprove them. Science is just a huge collection of generally verified atomized facts. ("The world is all that is the case." full stop) This is what I think mark is growling about and against, and rightfully so. If instead of saying we're teaching our kids the TRUTH we said "we're teaching our kids productive methods for generating applicable knowledge of the world" we'd be in much better shape.

But I think mark is also prettifying Nairn's arguments. If the wager of science is on a verifiable reality, then the wager of Narin's version of religion is that verification is *never enough*. Everything is encapsulated in the exchange:

You don't draw a conclusion and then find evidence to support it, you look at the evidence and then draw a conclusion."

where are you getting this process from? What if you were to already know the conclusion as told by GOD?

Both sides are obv. wrong. If you know the conclusion you don't bother with evidence. But if you don't have prior sets of conclusions (not to mention historically developed instruments and technique and method), then you don't know what evidence you feel like gathering, or can gather. And similarly if you don't have tentative conclusions, or at least conclusions as to what possible conclusions one might expect, or etc.

Nairn's position is clearly not "once we discover everything that's true, the sum total of this knowledge will turn out to be the true xtianity." Rather, it is that the only *way* to discover truth is through true xtianity -- which, whether Nairn is consistent in drawing implications or not (he's not), means that the mertonian norms of science are destroyed!

(Sorry, you probably know that, it just drives me nuts. Little copyeditor rage there.)

This is so completely...what's the word...OTMFM. Teaching people how to think rather than what to think -- how to approach the world critically, how to recognize received wisdom and subject it to the same scrutiny as brand-new information, how to deal with "information" period, in all its forms.

For what it's worth, my mom's a middle-school science teacher at a small, mostly progressive private school, and she has one creationist student in her class this year. After some tactful discussions with the parents, sympathizing with their right to believe whatever they want, she told them their daughter was just going to have to deal with discussion of evolution because that was a core part of the subject matter. Mom even kind of pushed it with a multiple choice test in which students had to select the right definition of "evolution." The girl circled the right answer, and then wrote next to it in big letters, "STUPID!" But at least she got it right.

http://www.badmovies.org/movies/plannine/plannine7.jpg

"Y'see?! Y'see?! STUPID!"