Category Archives: politics

The Church of Climate Change? (2)

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

Via the New York Times come these comments from a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia (the hacked documents came from the UEA’s Climatic Research Unit). They are particularly interesting for what he has to say about the … Continue reading →

Posted in politics, science, Science & Faith | Tagged | 3 Comments

The Church of Climate Change?

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

Heather, in the course of your (fine) post on Syncopation and Thanksgiving, you reject the notion “that global warming theory represents some atavistic religious impulse.” In one sense, of course, you are quite right to do so. The idea that we … Continue reading →

Posted in politics, science, Science & Faith | Tagged , | 10 Comments

Syncopation and Thanksgiving

Posted on November 26, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

The New England colonists balanced Thanksgiving feasts with petitionary fasting, known as days of “public humiliation and prayer:” Pleas for rain during spells of drought were the most common reason for fasting. But Puritans also fasted whenever a comet, an … Continue reading →

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Politics and Science

Posted on November 26, 2009 by Bradlaugh

Barely was the ink dry (pixels glowing, whatever) on  my having posted this to National Review Online: Politics … corrupts the human sciences, suppressing research in areas where it’s feared results will crash up against what Bill Buckley called “the prevailing structure of … Continue reading →

Posted in politics, science | 6 Comments

Roissy No Alpha

Posted on November 24, 2009 by Bradlaugh

I’m a big fan of Roissy in DC — who isn’t? — but someone should tell him that he’s got the alpha-beta stuff all wrong. In hierarchical primate societies, the alpha males are the ones with power. They have legions of … Continue reading →

Posted in politics, science | 21 Comments

Mammograms v. buying a loaf of bread

Posted on November 20, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

The furor over the recent mammogram recommendation illustrates how distorted our assumptions about health care and health insurance have become, distortions which the Senate and House bills only exacerbate. In a saner world, where medical consumers paid for routine services, … Continue reading →

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The Feds Feed the Children

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

The Agriculture Secretary was promoting his department’s new hunger (or, in contemporary parlance: “food insecurity”) survey on CSPAN this morning, and promising to expand the federal government’s role in feeding children.  We do a good job with school lunches and … Continue reading →

Posted in politics | Tagged | 24 Comments

Church & State

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

  England has a state church (a fact that–quite reasonably–gives that church, the Church of England, some privileges), but only the one. Now it seems luckless Brits are going to have to put up with this:  John Denham, the communities secretary, said … Continue reading →

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A counterweight to pessimism?

Posted on November 17, 2009 by Heather Mac Donald

I of course hearken to my esteemed SR colleague’s bracing call to gloom.  But how could one not feel just a little bit joyful at yet another sign of the grass-roots knowledge explosion that the internet has fostered?  an army … Continue reading →

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More from the Religious Left

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Andrew Stuttaford

In a piece of utterly unremarkable news, the Archbishop of Canterbury argues here for more taxes, attacks “fantasies of unlimited growth”, calls for “sustainability” (defined, presumably, by him and those like him) and once again raises suspicions that he’s just another cleric who can’t … Continue reading →

Posted in politics | Tagged | 9 Comments