Monday, January 17, 2005

David Von Drehle of the Washington Post hits the road to find Red State America

The Red State- Blue State divide is a terrible generalization that the Mainstream Media can't escape. Right and Left coasters appear to have contempt for the majority of voters who pulled the lever for Bush. Conservative voters don't seem to have a better handle on what the "elitists" really believe. Dare I borrow from Kerry and ask for a little nuance in our self-critical analysis of the Great Divide?

David Von Drehle, the intrepid Washington Post writer, opens up the Red Sea for all of us to view.

This piece is must reading!

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

The Massachusetts exodus! Of course it has nothing to do with taxes!

The Boston Business Journal online says that the Massachusetts exodus is very real judging by a new report out today:


United Van Lines said its annual analysis of movement within the United States shows that 55.5 percent of all moves involved someone leaving the Bay State. That puts the Commonwealth in the "high outbound" category, which is dominated by other Northern states, including New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana

This is so serious that the Globe's Joan Vennochi asks: "
What's the matter with Massachusetts? "

Thursday, January 06, 2005

First Antony Flew now other skeptics; scientists taking leaps of faith

The New York Times has a very fascinating question of several prominent scientists recently. The newspaper asked the following question: "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" Naturally the responses gravitated around the question of religious faith and the existence of God. Most of the answers were insigthful revealing a diversity of opinion among the men and women of the test tube. The neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University and author of "A Primate's Memoir" gives a tough but reasonable answer that in my mind agitates the existential angst of human life

Mine would be a fairly simple, straightforward case of an unjustifiable belief, namely that there is no god(s) or such a thing as a soul (whatever the religiously inclined of the right persuasion mean by that word). ...I'm taken with religious folks who argue that you not only can, but should believe without requiring proof. Mine is to not believe without requiring proof. Mind you, it would be perfectly fine with me if there were a proof that there is no god. Some might view this as a potential public health problem, given the number of people who would then run damagingly amok. But it's obvious that there's no shortage of folks running amok thanks to their belief. So that wouldn't be a problem and, all things considered, such a proof would be a relief - many physicists, especially astrophysicists, seem weirdly willing to go on about their communing with god about the Big Bang, but in my world of biologists, the god concept gets mighty infuriating when you spend your time thinking about, say, untreatably aggressive childhood leukemia.


Liberty Corner has additional comments on the "Limits of Science."