A few toons

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Fall of Foolish Faith

Here's a nice read from Victor Stenger, recently published in the Huffington Post.  Nice, that is, if you share my antipathy towards religion.  If you consider yourself religious, you should read this anyway.  You don't want to be close-minded, do you?

The Fall of Foolish Faith

by Victor Stenger, Physicist, PhD, bestselling author

snip

In America today, petro-dollars fuel a giant Christian propaganda machine that works to undermine the efforts of scientists to find solutions to the problems that face us with overpopulation, pollution, and climate change. They use techniques that were pioneered 30 years ago by the tobacco industry to suppress the evidence that smoking causes cancer and heart disease. And these techniques exploit the antiscience that is inherent in religious belief.

A new technique that in recent years has been added to the arsenal of global warming denialism is to frame climate change as a theological issue. Global warming deniers say that God would never allow life on Earth to be destroyed. After all, he gave humans dominion over the planet. Besides, the world is coming to an end soon anyway, so it doesn't matter.

Republican politicians are in the forefront of the battle over climate change. John Shimkus, Republican of Illinois, has said that climate change is a myth because God told Noah he would never again destroy Earth by flood. All the current Republican presidential candidates have either always said climate change was a hoax or have backed off previous statements in which they agreed that warming is taking place.

snip

We can only solve the problems brought about by the misuse of science by adhering to the scientific method, and by more rational behavior on the part of scientists, politicians, corporations, and citizens in all walks of life. Religion, as it is currently practiced with its continued focus on closed thinking and ancient mythology, is not doing anything to support the goal of a better, safer world. In fact, religion actively and vigorously opposes that goal.

Religion has destroyed our trust by its repeated failure. Using the empirical method, science has eliminated smallpox, flown men to the moon, and discovered DNA. If science didn't work, we wouldn't do it. Relying on faith, religion has brought us inquisitions, holy wars, and intolerance. Religion doesn't work, but we still do it.

Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings.

Science is not going to change its commitment to the truth. And religion is not going to change its commitment to nonsense. And that is why I call upon scientists and all thinking people to focus their attention on reducing the influence of religion in the world, with the goal of the eventual fall of foolish faith. The future depends on it.


Original.


Visit Victor Stenger's blog by going here.

Yeah, try that

Something good I can say about Santorum is that at least he's willing to acknowledge that the economy is improving.  The other clowns in the race have to lie their asses off to try and convince Republicans that everything is going to hell.  Sigh.  Republicans WILL believe just about any old shit out there, as long as it doesn't come from a Democrat, of course.

Greece in trouble

Greece in trouble?  An understatement.  I hadn't found anyone to put what was going on in Greece in stark relief until I read this column by Nicholas Kristof.    

Greece should be a precautionary tale that austerity in the face of recession is NOT a good idea.  We hear this message a lot from "the left", but telling that to a conservative - American or European - seems like talking to a brick wall.   Still, I wonder, I'll bet you that SOMEBODY is getting rich over the situation in Greece.  I wonder if that is true, and who it would be?   Someone like Mitt Romney, probably.

In Athens, Austerity's Ugliness

by Nicholas Kristof

Europe declared war on Keynes, and Keynes is winning.

In the United States, Republicans lambaste President Obama’s stimulus package as a failure and insist on bone-crunching budget-cutting. If you want to know how well that works, come visit Europe — especially Greece.

Yes, Greece needed a wake-up whack and economic reform, but Republican-style austerity knocked the patient unconscious. Contrast the still-shrinking economies of Europe with the stirrings of recovery in the United States, and you feel lucky to be an American and a beneficiary of President Obama’s stimulus.

It’s stunning here in Athens to see many traffic lights not working, to see beggars pawing through garbage for food, to see blackened ruins of shops burned in rioting. I was even greeted by a homeless man who spoke impeccable British-accented English.

That man, Michael A. Kambouroglou, 35, claims that he studied English literature at Cambridge University and worked for years in the tourism industry, most recently at a five-star hotel. He told me that he had enjoyed a good life, visiting the United States and traveling around the world, until the day nearly a year ago when the collapsing economy caught up with him, and he was laid off.

“To be honest, I never thought it could come to me,” he recalled. “It happened in a flash.” Kambouroglou says he goes out every morning, knocking on doors and looking for work, but in this economy it seems hopeless. The overall unemployment rate here is 21 percent — 48 percent among young people — and the European Union forecasts that the Greek economy (and all of the euro zone) will shrink further this year.

When Kambouroglou’s savings ran out, he moved under a bridge in Athens. The suffering is widespread. Some 250,000 Greeks now receive free meals from churches or shelters, according to the Greek Orthodox Church.

There’s no doubt that Greece had been living recklessly and needed structural reforms. While much of Europe was fundamentally healthy until the crisis hit — the caricature Americans hold of a socialist Europe in decline is a vast exaggeration — Greece truly was a mess. For example, if you’re a business owner, taxation often works like this: Instead of paying a tax bill of, say, $100,000, you pay $40,000 to the state, hand a $20,000 bribe to the tax collector, and keep $40,000.

Republicans are right to see in Greece some perils of an overgenerous government: The state sector was bloated, early retirements and pensions were sometimes absurd, and rigid labor markets undermined Greece’s competitiveness. But the problem was not a welfare state — Greece has much less of a safety net than northern Europe. Rather, it was corruption, inefficiency and a system in which laws are optional.

I drove around Greece and found driving here easy because traffic rules don’t seem to matter. If you’re blocked by a one-way street, you barrel through in the wrong direction. Stop signs are merely suggestive. No-passing markers before blind turns mean: pass anyway, and pray. When an entire economy operates without rules, it has a problem.

Yet instead of structural reforms or improved tax collection, what has changed in Greece, so far, has mostly been slashed budgets. And, as in the rest of Europe, austerity in the middle of recession has made matters worse — just as John Maynard Keynes predicted.

Granted, there are no easy solutions for Greece, but this path doesn’t seem to be working. “It might end up as a social revolution,” Kambouroglou said grimly. That’s too pessimistic, but my hunch is that the latest rescue package will fail (except that it will buy time, perhaps its purpose) and that Greece eventually may leave the euro zone. In any case, the rescue packages seem more about saving French and German banks than saving Greece.

Countless Greeks are giving up on their homeland and emigrating to northern Europe or Australia. Gloom is as thick as a morning fog on the Peloponnesus.

“The state has ceased functioning,” editorialized an Athens newspaper, The Kathimerini.

That’s an exaggeration, but schools, hospitals and social services are devastated. Staff at some halfway houses for the mentally ill haven’t been paid for six months, and electricity has been cut off. “And it’ll get worse,” predicted Dr. Cristos Panettas, the chief psychiatrist of the Psychiatric Hospital of Attica.

One of the earliest recorded economic crises in the Western world came in Athens in the 5th century B.C. Fortunately, Athens was then led by the great Pericles, an early Keynesian who did not respond by slashing budgets.

Instead, he ordered a public works initiative and built the Parthenon. I dropped by the Parthenon the other day, seeking inspiration, and a guide, Miranda-Maria Skiniti, was incisive about the lessons: “We need Pericles today.”

There’s ageless wisdom there for Greeks, Europeans — and Americans.

Original.

Assorted chuckles

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Blame Obama

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Bagby going green!

They have finally begun reconstruction of Bagby Street here in Houston, which runs about 1.5 blocks from our house.  The end-result is going to be very nice, AND it will be the FIRST official "Green" road in the state of Texas!

from the Midtown Rocks blog...

I’ll bet you didn’t think a street reconstruction project could go ‘green,’ did you? The design concept for the Bagby Reconstruction was greatly influenced by the national Greenroads™ Program and is conceived to incorporate sustainable practices. Such as, you ask? The Bagby and Pierce Street Reconstruction Project will feature numerous rain gardens, which aids in the decontamination of water before it’s released into Buffalo Bayou. Get a sneak peek of what the street will look like upon completion by clicking on  Bagby_Reconstruction

And what exactly is a Green road?  

What is Greenroads?

Greenroads is a sustainability rating system for roadway design and construction. It is applicable to all roadway projects including new, reconstruction and rehabilitation (even overlays), bridges, you name it. If it is a project where a road is involved, you can use it.

Greenroads is a collection of sustainability best practices, called "credits," that relate to roadway design and construction. Achieving these credits can earn points toward a total score for the project, and in general, this Greenroads™ score can be used as an indicator of sustainability for the roadway. Four different certification levels (rating) are available depending upon total score on a voluntary basis.

Go here for more info.