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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Cory Booker: The Pathology of False Equivalence





Et Tu, Cory Booker? The Pathology of False Equivalence


Newark Mayor Cory Booker. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes)

There is a disease spreading across our political punditry, and the beloved mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, seems to have contracted it. On Sunday’s Meet The Press, Booker disavowed the new ad campaign attacking Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, and in doing so, compared the Obama team’s decision to air the ads to the right-wing invocation of Reverend Wright to take down the president. Booker released a retraction video hours later, but the incident indicates just how advanced the sickness of false equivalence is in our national dialogue. The plague has now infected a normally sharp public official unlikely to confuse a thinly veiled racist play against the first African-American president with an examination of the economic track record of his challenger.

I’m as much a Cory Booker fan as the next populist progressive. I’ve watched with bemusement as his social media presence has made him a superhero, able to plow driveways in biblical snow storms and tweeting as he goes door to door during hurricanes to protect his constituents. His larger-than-life persona went stratospheric last month when he rushed into a burning building to save a woman trapped by the flames. But Cory, while you had me at your first hashtag, you lost me yesterday when you uttered these words:
“This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides,” [Booker] said on Meet the Press. “It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop.”
In an effort to appear objective in a political climate anything but, talking heads now feel the need to utter a Democratic offense in the same breath as a Republican offense. But I’ve got news for them: when the offenses don’t line up—as they often don’t these days—these folks don’t sound objective, they sound like lunatics.

Mitt Romney is running as CEO-in-chief of a country starved for jobs. His economic record is central to his candidacy by his own design. The ads in question feature workers from factories destroyed by Bain Capital challenging Romney’s model for job creation. In an election where the economy and jobs lead voters’ concerns by double digits, a candidate’s history as an industrial titan is not only germane but crucial to decision-making. Obama’s team are hardly the first people to think so; Winning Our Future, the Sheldon Adelson–backed Super PAC, launched the mini-documentary King of Bain, widely credited with helping win the South Carolina primary for Gingrich.

This line of inquisition simply does not equate to using a preacher’s old inflammatory statements as an attack on the president’s patriotism. Even the previous Republican challenger understood the immorality of stoking racism as a path to the Oval Office.

But unchallenged false equivalence in our media and from our politicians is at epidemic proportions. A few cases in point:
    In March, after the release of Game Change—the movie depicting the train wreck that Sarah Palin made of the McCain campaign in 2008—McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt defended himself on Morning Joe by claiming that both parties choose unqualified candidates for vice president. He compared John Kerry’s choice of John Edwards as vice president in 2004 to McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin, saying both were ill-suited to run the country. Schmidt is a Republican operative with self-interest in playing down the Palin decision, so we might forgive him the transgression. But NBC Chief Correspondent Andrea Mitchell—guest on the same show and the epitome of establishment media—was quick to affirm Schmidt’s assessments of the two candidates. Not a single guest made the obvious point that Edwards was a respected senator with thoroughly vetted policy positions whose character flaws would not be revealed until years later. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, was virtually unknown and her lack of knowledge on even basic policy issues would have become clear in the most basic interview of a rigorous vetting process.

    Earlier this month, one of Politico’s premiere political reporters, Manu Raju, stated in an article about Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s frustration over gridlock in the Senate that the filibuster is a tool that has been employed with growing frequency by both parties over the years. Raju’s history book seems to begin in 2009 when the threat of filibusters by the Republicans shot up to more than double that of their Democratic counterparts in previous years.

    More insidious is the February column by Washington Post analyst Ezra Klein that claimed that “politically motivated” shifts on issues by both parties undercut any ideological meaning of “left” and “right.” By making this sweeping conclusion, Klein ignores the body of evidence that shows distinctly different motivations for the examples he uses. Democrats have consistently shifted position in an effort to compromise with Republicans—being lambasted by their base for doing so—and move legislation forward. Republicans have shifted position to stake out increasingly extreme positions that will drive government out of business. In conflating the two, Klein misinforms readers about the nature of the political dysfunction in our country and makes it that much harder to fix it.
The problem of false equivalence is so rife in our country that the president dedicated a chunk of his speech at the Associated Press luncheon in April to the issue. While it doesn’t rank explicitly on the list of voter concerns, this habit contributes to the high rates of American distrust in the news media. The American people are smart enough to know when a commentator or anchor holds an opinion and forgiving when this is made apparent. Attempts to cover up personal bias with false equivalence does not make one objective, but it does make one complicit in obscuring the dynamics of that lead to political gridlock and an unresponsive democracy. I’d expect Cory Booker, who’s built his entire political career on being responsive, to be immune to such an affliction.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Facebook Said to Put Off IPO Until 2012 to Buy Time for Growth?

Bloomberg




Facebook Said to Put Off IPO Until 2012 to Buy Time for Growth


Facebook Inc. will probably put off its initial public offering until 2012, giving Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg more time to gain users and boost sales, three people familiar with the matter said.

Facebook would benefit from another year of growth absent the added scrutiny that comes with a public listing, instead of holding an IPO in 2011 as investors speculated, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Facebook doesn’t discuss share-sale plans. Still, Zuckerberg, who holds board control, could push for a stock sale at any time, they said.

Facebook Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Facebook Inc., could push for a stock sale at any time. Photographer: Antoine Antoniol/Bloomberg 

July 30 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Douglas MacMillan talks about the likelihood Facebook Inc. will put of its initial public offering until 2012 and the business strategy of the owner of the world's largest social network. MacMillan speaks with Deidre Bolton on Bloomberg Television's "InsideTrack." (Source: Bloomberg) 

The Facebook homepage
The Facebook homepage. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg 

Waiting lets Zuckerberg, 26, hone the skills needed to steer a company that issues quarterly results while facing criticism on such matters as user privacy. Facebook, valued at $24.9 billion, would use the time to propel its user base beyond the 500 million mark reached this month and add to sales that two of the people said may double to at least $1.4 billion in 2010 from $700 million to $800 million last year.

“The burden of being public has never been greater,” said Kevin Landis, who manages about $260 million at Firsthand Funds in San Jose, California, and has invested in the technology industry for 16 years. “Zuckerberg doesn’t have to put his name at the bottom of four 10-Q statements every year and attest that everything in there is true or else he’s responsible. The minute it’s public, he does.” Landis doesn’t have direct knowledge of Facebook’s IPO plans.
Jonathan Thaw, a spokesman for Facebook, owner of the world’s largest social network, declined to comment. Zuckerberg, in a television interview this month, said Facebook will go public “when it makes sense,” without elaborating.

Pressure Allayed 

Some investors had speculated a share sale might happen in 2011 after venture capitalist Jim Breyer, a member of Facebook’s board, said in January that the Palo Alto, California-based company isn’t focused on a 2010 sale. Instead, Facebook’s management is trying to woo more users and developers, Breyer said at the time.

Startups are often urged to sell shares by employees and investors eager for a return on their equity. In Facebook’s case, some of that pressure has been allayed by private sales, often facilitated by such exchanges as SecondMarket Inc. and SharesPost Inc., which help find buyers for startup shares.
SharesPost values Facebook at $24.9 billion, more than double its value in March.

Zuckerberg’s Challenges

Zuckerberg faces a range of challenges, including management of a rapidly growing workforce and rising competition from companies including Twitter Inc., the blogging service that has amassed more than 190 million monthly visitors.

Facebook is also contending with heightened regulatory scrutiny over how it handles users’ personal data. And it’s up against a lawsuit that contests company ownership. A New York man, Paul Ceglia, claimed in state court in June that he owns an 84 percent stake, based on an April 2003 contract. Facebook has said the lawsuit is “frivolous, if not outright fraudulent.”

“If they have other sources of capital, the company would probably be better off deferring an IPO until Zuckerberg had more experience under his belt,” said Ray Valdes, a San Jose, California-based analyst at Gartner Inc.

Facebook’s timetable may disappoint technology investors who speculated an IPO would encourage other startups to wade into the public markets. Venture-backed IPOs dwindled in the past 2 1/2 years as the financial crisis wiped out investment banks such as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. and forced many hedge funds to close.

IPO Dearth

This year, 40 companies put off or have withdrawn IPOs in the U.S., according to Bloomberg data.

“The companies that went public in the second quarter had to have readjusted price expectations on average,” said Hans Swildens, founder of Industry Ventures LLC, a San Francisco-based investing firm that owns a Facebook stake. “The capital markets are swinging week by week. It’s a very hard time.”

Facebook, founded in 2004, now has about 1,400 employees. Investors include Accel Partners, Microsoft Corp. and Elevation Partners LP, the private-equity firm among whose founders are Bono and Roger McNamee. Besides Zuckerberg and Breyer, board members are Internet entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, money manager Peter Thiel of Founders Fund and Donald Graham, CEO of The Washington Post Co.

Zuckerberg holds board control, according to “The Facebook Effect,” a chronicle of the social network’s origins by David Kirkpatrick.

Silicon Valley ‘Watershed’

Elevation Partners has bought Facebook shares in private transactions that total $210 million, a person familiar with the matter said in June. Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investor, has accumulated a stake of almost 10 percent, people familiar with the matter said in May.

Mutual fund managers and individual investors want their own chance to invest in Facebook’s growth, said Ted Hollifield, a partner at law firm Dorsey & Whitney LLP in Palo Alto.

“There’s definitely the market demand and appetite for a very successful IPO,” said Hollifield, who works with venture capital firms and startups. “Facebook’s IPO is going to be a huge watershed for the whole Valley.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Brian Womack in San Francisco at bwomack1@bloomberg.net; Ari Levy in San Francisco at alevy3@bloomberg.net; Douglas MacMillan in New York at dmacmillan3@bloomberg.net.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Leonard Peltier and the Oglala Commemoration of June 26

Welcome to the official site of the OGLALA COMMEMORATION







The American Indian Movement (AIM) was called upon  a generation ago by the Oglala traditionalists on the reservation to protect the People.  These individuals – men, women, and children – were  routinely terrorized.  Acts of violence and retaliation were played out throughout the community.  No one was immune from the cruelty and pervasive violence that gripped the innocent of Pine Ridge.  In struggling to maintain traditional values, AIM was sought out to provide assistance and protection from a flawed tribal administration that failed to support its people.  The activists sought only to align themselves in solidarity with the People against the forces which sought to undermine the tribal sovereignty of the Oglala Nation.  These threats existed not only on Pine Ridge, but in countless other Nations throughout Indian Country as well.  After decades of neglect, exploitation, and marginalization, opportunities arose that allowed the Oglala to rise above their historical circumstances and multigenerational trauma to empower themselves to bring about change through a return to traditional values. 

Answering the call for help, many traveled  great distances to lend support and protection.  One such individual was Leonard Peltier. As with many, it was Leonard's desire to defend and protect traditional people's right to exist and thrive that brought him to Oglala.  The events of June 26th are forever emblazoned in the consciousness of all Oglalas; it is this date that has forever changed and affected not just Leonard's life, but the life of all Indigenous Peoples struggling for the right of self-determination and sovereignty. 


To this day, Leonard sits in a prison which confines him  physically, yet fails to confine his spirit that transcends the brick and mortar cell to which he is subject.  It is this sprit of hope that Leonard believes will heal Native Nations and unite them in the the protection and preservation of sacred ceremony, culture, language, and the responsible stewardship of the land and its resources for the generations yet to come.

The Oglala Commemoration Committee's goal is to honor Leonard's wishes and to actively work  to promote these beliefs and values.   


The Committee, through is efforts, continues to pay respect to those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of Indigenous Rights. 

Join us every June 26, in Oglala, South Dakota as "Honor our Warriors" This is a free event and open to the public. A day of remembrance, honoring , memorials , food and music.

Afghanistan, like Vietnam, except nobody gives a shit





Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox

Saturday, May 12, 2012

Afghanistan, like Vietnam, except nobody gives a shit

Dear Friend,

This weekend as we celebrate mothers, it's important to remember that there are mothers all over the world who are in pain because of war and economic oppression. It's also important to remember that Julia Ward suggested this holiday way back in 1870 for peace through her Mother's Day Proclamation. 

For me, it's distressing that "liberals" are gleeful over the fact that the president is personally in favor of same-sex marriage (although it doesn't actually change a thing, except he received one million campaign dollars within an hour) while not protesting either in word or deed Obama's drone program and war in Afghanistan.



I am hoping that the NATO protests (remember NATO is just an euphemism for US Imperialism) in Democrat Rahm Emanuels' Chicago next week (I will be there) are large and non-partisan; but, in fact, the largest coalition to protest at the DNC has changed its name so as not to appear its protesting the Democrats so as not to offend anybody.

I have been blessed with three wonderful surviving children and now four grandbabies and I can be secure that even though a drone overhead may be spying on me, it isn't equipped with hellfire missiles. It's safe to say that every mother in the U.S. will be safe from having their home raided at night by the U.S. military and having their children slaughtered while they sleep.

I don't know what to do anymore. Why aren't we out in the streets in droves protesting the Drone Bomber and his wars? Why do we worship his words and not protest his deeds? Where are the large war protests during the Vietnam or even Bush eras? Even though Mother's Day is not a happy day for me, I try to put myself in the sandals of a woman in Afghanistan, Gaza, Paksitan, or some other hot zone--and when I look across the miles at the U.S., I wonder why no one cares about me and my family.


This weekend, Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox has no new show, but I suggest you listen to the show with Rachel Corrie's mother, Cindy (or any other show in the archives)

CLICK HERE FOR SHOW WITH CINDY CORRIE

I really hope that every Mother has a peaceful day filled with love and the best present for me (and the world) would be that our brothers and sisters put aside partisan political hackery and devote themselves to peace and justice not found in either half of the War Party.

Cindy Sheehan 

Friday, May 11, 2012

Some Pilots Refuse to Fly as Stealth Jet’s Oxygen Problems Worsen

WIRED

Danger Room 

What's Next in National Security


Some Pilots Refuse to Fly as Stealth Jet’s Oxygen Problems Worsen

An F-22 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida in 2010. Photo: Air Force
An F-22 at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida in 2010. Photo: Air Force

The Air Force’s F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and their faulty oxygen systems are choking their pilots. One attempt at a quick fix only made the problem worse. Despite this the Air Force, ordered its roughly 200 Raptor pilots to keep flying. Now Maj. Jeremy Gordon and Capt. Josh Wilson, both experienced Raptor fliers with the Virginia Air National Guard’s 192nd Fighter Wing, have refused to fly an airplane that they claim is fatally flawed.

In an interview with 60 Minutes on Sunday, Gordon and Wilson say they aren’t alone. A “vast, silent majority” of Raptor fliers fears for their lives as their high- and fast-flying jets cause them to black out or become confused in mid-air. Some pilots have taken out extra life-insurance policies. And Air Force doctors “absolutely” have said no one should fly the $400-million-a-copy F-22 until the jet’s oxygen woes are resolved, Gordon and Wilson claim.

But Gordon and Wilson say the Air Force has threatened to fire any F-22 pilot who refuses to fly for safety reasons. The Virginia Guardsmen appealed to Rep. Adam Kinzinger, himself an Air Force pilot, for protection under the federal whistleblower law. The Air Force, perhaps fearing a wider mutiny, has launched a charm offensive aimed at reassuring skeptical aviators and the public.

At the same time, the flying branch is expanding F-22 operations with new, ultra-realistic training exercises and a high-profile deployment to an airbase near Iran. The Raptor’s tendency to suffocate its pilot threatens to sideline the jet at a defining moment in its front-line service.

In 2010 Capt. Jeffrey Haney died when his F-22 crashed in Alaska. Despite evidence that Haney had blacked out just prior to hitting the ground, the Air Force officially blamed the incident on pilot error.

But other Raptor pilots reported signs of oxygen deprivation. In February last year Wilson was at the controls of his F-22 on a training flight when he began feeling disoriented. “I had to really concentrate, immense concentration on just doin’ simple, simple tasks,” he tells 60 Minutes. “And our training tells you if you suspect something’s probably goin’ on, go ahead and pull your emergency oxygen and come back home. When I did make that decision to pull the emergency oxygen ring, I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t remember, you know, what part of the aircraft it was in.”

Three months later, the Air Force temporarily grounded all of its Raptors so it could study the problem.


But that five-month stand-down, and a more limited grounding in October, did not result in any major changes to the F-22′s on-board oxygen-generating system. “We didn’t find a definitive cause for the incidents,” Lt. Col. Tadd Sholtis, an Air Force spokesman, told Danger Room. As a stopgap the flying branch equipped every Raptor pilot with a heartbeat monitor and installed an extra charcoal filter in the oxygen generator.

The charcoal filters were faulty and shed residue into the jets’ oxygen systems. The Air Force removed them last week after pilots began coughing up what 60 Minutes describes as “black sputum.”

The blackouts continued. In October Gordon and his wingman both reported oxygen shortages. In all, Raptor pilots suffered 11 black-outs or near-blackouts between October and May, 60 Minutes reports.

But the Air Force kept the F-22s in the air. “We live in a community where risk is part of our lives,” Gen. Mike Hostage, the Air Force’s top fighter commander, said at an April ceremony in Virginia celebrating the F-22. “Right now, we believe that risk — although it’s not as low as we would like it — is low enough to safely operate the airplane at the current tempo.”

Hostage said he would qualify in the F-22 and fly it regularly until the oxygen problem is resolved. “I’m asking these guys to assume some risk that’s over and above what everybody else is assuming, and I don’t feel like it’s right that I ask them to do it and then I’m not willing to do it myself,” he said.

Meanwhile, the cumulative effects of oxygen deprivation are apparent among Raptor fliers, Gordon says. “In a room full of F-22 pilots, the vast majority will be coughing a lot of the times. Other things — laying down for bed at night after flying and getting just the spinning room feeling, dizziness, tumbling, vertigo kind of stuff.”

The whistleblowers anticipate more deaths as the Air Force pushes its Raptor crews to continue flying despite overwhelming evidence of the jet’s faultiness. “We are waiting for somethin’ to happen,” Wilson says. “And if it happens, nobody’s going to be surprised. I think it’s a matter of time.”

Poisoned Fighter Pilot Faces New Nightmare: Air Force Bureaucracy


WIRED

Danger Room 

What's Next in National Security

Poisoned Fighter Pilot Faces New Nightmare: Air Force Bureaucracy

An F-22 Raptor. Photo: USAF

The Air Force is continuing disciplinary action against one of the Air Force pilots who refused to fly the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter because the pricey jet’s faulty oxygen system was steadily poisoning him. Capt. Josh Wilson, from the Virginia Air National Guard, has been granted whistleblower protection under federal law — a status the Air Force has publicly acknowledged. But that hasn’t stopped the flying branch from beginning a process that may very well threaten to end the pilot’s career.

Wilson and Maj. Jeremy Gordon, also a Raptor pilot with the Virginia Guard, stopped flying the $400-million-per-copy F-22 after they and dozens of other pilots reported in-flight symptoms consistent with oxygen deprivation, including confusion and blackouts. The Air Force temporarily grounded some or all of its roughly 180 Lockheed Martin-made Raptors twice last year so it could study the jet’s onboard oxygen generator.

When the flying branch failed to pinpoint the problem, as a stopgap measure it installed an extra carbon filter in the F-22′s oxygen system then ordered the pilots back in the air for an intensifying program of training exercises and deployments. But the carbon filter was faulty, too, and shed black dust into the pilots’ masks. F-22 fliers began coughing up black phlegm. Ground crews who spent time in the Raptor’s cockpit also reported symptoms. Air Force doctors advised the aviators to stand down.

Wilson and Gordon were the only pilots who refused to get back into the cockpit — that we know of. But in an interview broadcast Sunday the pilots told 60 Minutes that a “vast, silent majority” of the Air Force’s 200 or so Raptor fliers feared for their health or their lives. Gordon’s flight qualification soon expired. Wilson, the younger and less experienced of the two, faced a harsher punishment. The Air Force sent him a letter of reprimand that Frederick Morgan, the two pilots’ Ohio-based lawyer, says is just the first step in a potentially career-ending disciplinary process.


In addition to seeking legal counsel, Wilson and Gordon appealed to Rep. Adam Kinzinger, himself an Air Force pilot, for protection under the federal whistleblower law. Kinzinger and Sen. Mark Warner issued a letter Thursday urging the military not to mess with these pilots — or any others that bring up problems with the Raptor.

We need to make sure there is a culture in which others feel safe coming forward,” Warner wrote.

The Air Force acknowledges the protected status. “Air Force leadership has made clear that the we are treating the pilots as whistleblowers,” service spokesman John Dorrian tells Danger Room.

But Wilson’s disciplinary action continues all the same, Morgan tells Danger Room. “They didn’t rescind the letter.” Fearing for his career, Wilson has offered to resume flying. “He’s eager not to be disciplined,” Morgan says.

Regarding the letter of reprimand, Dorrian says he cannot comment on private personnel matters. He refers Danger Room to the Air National Guard, but warns that the Guard, too, probably will not comment on any pilot’s individual case.

The Air Force did remove the carbon filters that Morgan says only “made the problem worse.” That was some comfort to Wilson and Gordon, according to Morgan. Now Gordon says he’ll get back in the cockpit, too — but only to help the Air Force work on fixing the oxygen problem. “All these guys want is for the airplane to work,” Morgan says.

This battle is far from over. While the Air Force mulls over Wilson’s and Gordon’s offers, the pilots along with their lawyer are meeting with Air Force doctors and Sen. Mark Warner, a new ally alongside Rep. Kinzinger. Maybe Warner can get the Air Force to explain how whistleblower protection should not stop Wilson’s ongoing disciplinary action.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Civil unions and straight marriage

Out of the
CROOKED TIMBER
of humanity, no straight thing was made

Civil unions and straight marriage

by Henry on January 24, 2010

Arthur Goldhammer’s excellent blog on French politics and society points to this article on the French pact civil de solidarité – a kind of civil union introduced in 1999/2000, largely as an alternative to gay marriage. But the pacs has had very interesting consequences for straight couples (95% of couples with pacs are straight), as this chart shows.



The growth of the pacs’ popularity over its first decade is striking. There are now two pacs for every three marriages. Interestingly, this is because of both a significant decline in marriage, and a significant increase in the overall number of people willing to engage in some kind of state-sanctioned relationship. While you would obviously need more finely grained data to establish this properly, the obviously intuitive interpretation of this (at least to me) is that the pacs have grown both by providing an option for people who would probably not have gotten married in the first place, and attracted a number of people who otherwise would have gotten married, but who prefer the pacs’ lower level of formality (it is much easier to cancel a pacs relationship than to get divorced).

Perhaps this provides grist for the mills of social conservatives (who could claim, stretching the data a bit, that gay-appeasing civil unions are undermining the sacred institution of marriage) – but it would oblige them to face up to the question of whether they should prefer gay marriage to potentially corrosive civil unions that straight couples can take advantage of too. Liberals and leftwingers don’t face nearly the same dilemma, since they can reasonably assume that those who choose civil unions over marriage have good reason for doing so (and perhaps will get married later if they want to; obviously, you can’t tell from data like this how many partners in pacs decide to get married later on).

What We’ve Gained—and What We’ve Lost


Center For Inquiry - On Campus

ADVOCATUS DIABOLI

What We’ve Gained—and What We’ve Lost

May 10, 2012

If anyone didn't already know that the legalization of same-sex marriage is inevitable, President Obama's dramatic announcement that he supports it should settle the matter. That makes this a good time to appreciate what those of us who favor the expansion of rights as a general principle have gained -- and what we've lost.

There was something tragicomic about Obama's May 9 announcement, coming as it did as a reactive response to Vice President Biden's impulsive endorsement of same-sex marriage on a Sunday morning talk show. The White House spent two days waffling before Obama finally went on TV. His views had "evolved" into favoring same-sex marriage some months back, the official story goes; he'd been planning to disclose that sometime before the Democratic Convention, but hadn't yet chosen a date. "I've been meaning to mention this," the subtext seems to run, "and now that Veep's shot his mouth off I suppose I might as well do it today." Whatever else one might say about this, it falls short of the image of proactive leadership most Obama supporters might have preferred.

What else might one say about Obama's statement? From a secular humanist standpoint, it's surely welcome. As several pundits have noted, no expansion of rights championed by a sitting president has ever failed to become the law of the land. Still, as LGBT-rights activists -- and other supporters of expanding individual rights -- celebrate, we shouldn't lose sight of what has been lost. (What follows draws from my August/September 2009 FI op-ed "Two Cheers for Same-Sex Marriage.")

Fifteen years ago, before the idea that same-sex marriage might be attainable re-directed LGBT activism, the target toward which most LGBT activists strove was civil unions. Civil unions had a lot to recommend them. In time, they would probably confer most or all of the same rights granted by traditional matrimony in such areas as parental rights, sickroom visitation, healthcare decision-making, community property, the right to inherit, and so on. What secular humanists especially liked about civil unions was that they would be a wholly new instiution, conceived entirely within the domain of secular law. They'd be free of matrimony's tangled roots as both a legal and a religious construct, and they'd be free of matrimony's historical baggage as an institution for transferring what amounted to ownership of the bride from her father to her husband. In twenty or twenty-five years, the thinking went, a robust form of civil union would be legal for same-sex couples across the land.

What was wrong with that vision? Today, many activists view civil unions as insufficient, a second-class "gay ghetto" institution that still separates same-sex couples from more favored opposite-sex couples. But don't judge so quickly. Let's jump back to fifteen years ago, and consider what many civil-union supporters (myself included) expected to happen next. Once robust civil unions were the law of the land for same-sex couples, this thinking went, the next step would be legal activism by opposite-sex couples seeking a way to give their unions the protection of law without having to resort to traditional matrimony with all its negatives. Once that was achieved, civil union would no longer be a gay-ghetto phenomenon. Most importantly, the centuries-long monopoly held by traditional matrimony as the only way to legally authenticate a couple's commitment would have been broken. At long last there would be a new, wholly secular, historically unencumbered way for any couple, gay or straight, to seal their shared commitment.

That's what we've lost.

As I see things, there are two ways to view the now (almost certainly) inevitable triumph of same-sex marriage. One: It's a welcome expansion of human rights, following in the footsteps of woman suffrage, the legalization of interracial marriage, and the civil rights movement. And it is, in spades. But here comes Two: It's a regrettable triumph for traditional matrimony, whose oppressive monopoly stands unscathed. Ironically, cultural conservatives should probably applaud same-sex marriage. The LGBT movement was the only social reform movement powerful enough to have shattered matrimony's monopoly, and its abrupt shift from seeking civil unions to seeking same-sex marriage turned LGBT activists from matrimony's most threatening enemies into its newest supporters.

What really happened over the last decade and a half? We've moved to the threshold of legal same-sex marriage across the country, another triumph for rights-seeking activism. But traditional matrimony, that hoary old church-entwined man-buys-woman institution, has ducked a bullet. And those of us, gay and straight, who wanted most of all to undermine matrimony's monopoly have been left behind. That's what we've gained, and what we've lost.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Are We Born to Be Religious?

Science News




 
Cover Image: May 2012 Scientific American Magazine 
See Inside

Are We Born to Be Religious?

Genes and personality influence our attitudes toward religion

 
Image: Bara K. Kristinsdottir/Aurora Photos

In Brief

  1. Many people change their religious affiliation during the course of a lifetime. Overall attitudes toward belief, however, are generally stable in adulthood.
  2. Specific clusters of personality traits correlate highly with particular kinds of religious belief.
  3. Although environmental influences play a large role in determining a person’s religious beliefs during adolescence, genetic factors emerge as more important in adulthood.
A deep question pervades the debates surrounding religion—whether God exists, sure, but that one is mighty difficult to answer. Instead we can ask a related, more approachable query: Why does God exist for some of us but not for others? Theologians and ministers preach that faith is preeminently a matter of personal choice. Is it, really?

Not everyone is a believer, of course, nor do we all maintain allegiance to a single belief system throughout the course of our life. Almost half of American adults, for example, have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lifetime, and most do so before age 24, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Although religious affiliation may be fluid, once people enter adulthood they tend to stick with one category, retaining either faith in God or the absence thereof.

For the most part, people are either religious or atheists because they were raised that way. Parents, classmates and other trusted figures impress their views on children and introduce them to a set of rituals and practices. Later in life those influences hold less power. Several forces can diminish a person’s religiosity—frequently cited reasons include the absence of social pressures to be religious or a desire to distance oneself from one’s family. Personal crises can also spur a change, prompting some people to convert and others to abandon religion.

Recent research suggests, however, that this is not the whole story. By studying the correlations among thousands of individuals’ religious beliefs and measures of their thoughts and behaviors, scientists have discovered that certain personality types are predisposed to land on different spots of the religiosity spectrum. Genetic factors account for more than half of the variability among people on the core dimensions of their character, which implies that a person’s feelings regarding religion also contain a genetic component. By analyzing twins, some of whom share the same DNA, psychologists have begun to collect evidence for the genetic roots of religiosity. These studies are starting to explain what makes some of us believers, whereas others end up rejecting supernatural notions.

Bringing Up Believers

The search for a biological basis for religion has gained wide appeal as the tools to probe our internal makeup have improved. Numerous brain-scanning experiments have sought to pinpoint one or another brain region as being important to the religious experience, prompting occasional claims that humans are equipped with a “God module,” a part of the brain that causes us to have religious beliefs. In 2004 a much hyped book called The God Gene proposed that a particular gene, VMAT2, was linked with religiosity. The data supporting that claim, however, were never published in a peer-reviewed journal, and other scientists never replicated the purported results.

Discerning how genes lead to behavior is one of biology’s toughest tasks. Genes make proteins, and figuring out how those proteins give rise to behaviors, let alone beliefs, pushes at the edges of our scientific knowledge. What is clear is that genes are not a blueprint; instead they interact with environmental influences in many complex ways, twisting fate at every turn. One way to examine the question is to look at personality characteristics: genes predispose a person to particular traits, which can manifest as certain behaviors.

The study of personality began almost a century ago, when pioneering psychologists working in the 1920s and 1930s became inspired by biology’s orderly classification systems and set out to codify personality. They started by scanning the dictionary for all the terms that captured some aspect of a person’s character, producing a list several thousand items long. Factions of psychologists debated over which descriptors, and how many of them, were needed to capture the essential dimensions of personality.
More recently, psychologists have rallied around “the big five,” as psychologist Lewis Goldberg of the University of Oregon called them in 1981. These five traits—extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness—have been shown to be independent of one another and to remain stable throughout most of life. In work published in 1987 Robert R. McCrae and Paul T. Costa of the National Institutes of Health verified the five factors by administering questionnaires and collecting self-reports and peer ratings from thousands of people. Subsequent surveys in many languages and countries have contributed to the dominance of the five-factor model in personality psychology today.

According to this model, the ways in which individuals’ personalities differ from one another can be organized along five main dimensions. People differ in extroversion: extroverts are dynamic, gregarious and socially warm, whereas introverts are timid and reserved. Neuroticism refers to a person’s tendency to be anxious, depressed and generally emotionally vulnerable, as opposed to emotionally stable and positive. A third facet is agreeableness, which captures whether a person is empathetic, helpful and trusting of others, as opposed to mean, individualistic and arrogant. Conscientious individuals are methodical, self-controlled, and willing to establish goals and work toward achieving them, whereas those low in conscientiousness tend to be impulsive and disorganized. Finally, we can differ in openness: whether we like novel, challenging and complex ideas, experiences and feelings. Less open individuals prefer to stay within their comfort zone.

Linking Personality and Religion

To find links between a person’s religious beliefs and any other facet of life, scientists must sift through enormous quantities of data. In 2010 I published an in-depth analysis of 70 previous studies seeking to link religion and personality with a total of more than 21,000 participants. These papers covered several decades, ages and religions, although Christianity was most heavily represented. Several of these reports corroborated self-assessments, with ratings provided by family members, friends and colleagues.

What those studies revealed is that religious people consistently differ from low-religious or non­religious individuals on two personality dimensions: agreeableness and conscientiousness. The effects were modest in size: 60 percent of religious versus 40 percent of nonreligious people are agreeable or conscientious. Yet this correlation showed up in study after study. It was present in both men and women, from teenagers to adulthood, and among several cohorts ranging from the 1970s to the present, as well as in a study from the 1940s. We saw this trend in people of all major religions, not only in Protestant and Catholic  but also in Jewish and Muslim faiths. Several behavioral experiments bolster the idea that religious individuals tend to display agreeable and conscientious behaviors. For example, religious people are inclined to show cooperation in laboratory experiments and to volunteer in real life. They also endorse healthy lifestyles that reflect self-control such as low alcohol, drug and tobacco use. Again, these effects are modest, but the fact that they are pretty consistent across studies makes them notable.

One could argue that rather than certain types of people being more likely to become religious, religion might instead instill agreeableness and conscientiousness in believers. To answer this question, researchers examined data from the Terman Longitudinal Study, a project that followed people with high IQs throughout their life. In the early 1920s, when these participants were between the ages of 12 and 18, their parents and teachers evaluated various aspects of their personalities. In 2003 Michael McCullough of the University of Miami and his collaborators found that of the 492 subjects they analyzed, the children and adolescents rated as more agreeable and conscientious turned out to be more religious 19 years later than the individuals who were rated lower on these measures as children. Another analysis published two years later examined changes in religiosity of Terman study participants over the course of 50 years. The people who were high in agreeableness in their early adulthood were more likely to remain believers or even to become more religious later than those who were less agreeable as young adults.
These results are in line with personality theory. Personality traits are already present in early childhood. Later in life they heavily shape social attitudes, values and identities. It thus becomes clear that rather than religion making people agreeable and conscientious, it is personality that determines religiousness.

If further research, especially in Eastern cultures and religions, confirms this pattern, we may have psychological evidence in favor of some of the universal functions of religion. Scholars have long suggested that because religion fosters social cohesion, it may have played an important evolutionary role by enabling larger groups of people to band together. These findings on personality traits support that idea. Agreeableness and conscientiousness together denote a preference for social harmony and personal order—in other words, stability.

A Profile of Belief

We can add even more nuance to our personality profiles of believers. In my 2010 meta-analysis I also reviewed studies that had focused on either spirituality, which encompasses more modern forms of faith not necessarily connected to religious institutions, or fundamentalist types of religion. About 62 percent of those who are high in openness to experience—and are agreeable and conscientious—are interested in and involved with spirituality. About the same percentage of people who are agreeable and conscientious but low on openness tend to become involved with fundamentalist religious groups.
Openness appears to tune believers to the kind of faith they end up holding.
An important question is how these clustered traits might relate to choices in real life or at least to real life as it is modeled in the lab. In a study I conducted in 2005 at the Université Catholique of Louvain in Belgium with Isabelle Pichon, we asked Belgian participants how they would react in several situations in which they could choose to either offer help or not. Here is one scenario: you are trying to catch a train when you see a person whose suitcase flies open and from which the contents scatter. Do you stop to help? We assigned our subjects randomly to one of two conditions. In one, the person needing help was a friend, family member or colleague. In the other, the person requiring assistance was unknown. Our findings were intriguing: the more religious the participants, the more they expressed willingness to help the familiar individual but not the stranger. Spiritual subjects, however, did not distinguish between known and unknown people. They were equally willing to help in both cases.

We can make further distinctions among types of religiosity. In collaboration with my graduate student Joanna Blogowska, we replicated the suitcase scenario with Polish participants in a study published in 2011. We added a second study, in which we examined the willingness to help either a student in need or a feminist student in the same situation. It turned out that participants who were high on religious fundamentalism were not very willing to help unknown people or a feminist, an individual whom they perceived as threatening to their values. They did, however, frequently offer to help either a close acquaintance or a student in need. The participants who were high in fundamentalism assisted individuals in those latter two categories 66 percent of the time versus exactly half of the time for feminists and strangers. In other words, those viewed as outsiders were least likely to receive a helping hand from more conservative believers.

Genes and Environment

These clustered personality traits—and their corresponding behavior—suggest an underlying genetic component. To investigate this idea, researchers have contacted hundreds of pairs of twins to assess their religious beliefs at different points in time. These twin studies aimed to identify how each of the following variables helped to determine religiosity—the unique experiences of each twin, the shared environmental factors of family and environment, and finally, heritability.
What these studies conclude is that shared environment—namely a family’s approach to religion—plays a great role, especially during childhood and adolescence. After that, the picture shifts, the early environment becomes less potent, and a genetic influence emerges between the ages of 18 and 25 years.

Let us look a little more deeply at one of these twin surveys. In a 2005 study by Laura Koenig, then at the University of Minnesota, and her colleagues, for example, the researchers analyzed reports on the religiosity of twins in adolescence compared with adulthood. The intent was to calculate the relative importance of genetic factors versus environmental influence at those two stages of life. The scientists used a statistical model to determine which factor is most important in adolescence versus adulthood. For adolescents, they learned that genetics—in other words, dispositions for certain personality traits—accounted for only 12 percent of their religious identity, and a shared upbringing contributed 56 percent to the outcome. (If you include a third category, which captures all the unique events that shape a twin’s life, these three numbers add up to 100.) Conversely, 44 percent of adults’ religiosity could be attributed to genetics, and 18 percent had to do with their environment.

All these data suggest that genetic influences help to explain why adults sometimes stray from the beliefs of their childhood. The more distance they get from the influences of their early years, the more idiosyncratic factors can hold sway over a person’s attitudes. In a way, we are born to be inclined toward religion or atheism. Does God call us? For some of us, the answer is yes: through our genes, parents, acquaintances and life events.

This is article was published in print as "Are We Born to Be Religious?"

Sunday, May 6, 2012

Cinco de Mayo - the Basics


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Cinco de Mayo - the Basics
The Flag of the United States of Mexico

Basic Guide to Cinco de Mayo:

Cinco de Mayo is probably the holiday most often celebrated that no one understands. What’s it all about? How is it celebrated? What does it mean to Mexicans? Here are the answers in a handy guide.

What is Cinco de Mayo?:

Literally "the Fifth of May," Cinco de Mayo is a Mexican Holiday celebrating the Battle of Puebla, which took place on May 5, 1862. In 1861, France sent a massive army to invade Mexico, as they wanted to collect on some war debts. The French army was much larger, better trained and equipped than the Mexicans struggling to defend the road to Mexico City. It rolled through Mexico until it reached Puebla, where the Mexicans made a valiant stand, and, against all logic, won a huge victory. It was short-lived, as the French army regrouped and continued; eventually taking Mexico City, but the euphoria of an unlikely victory against overwhelming odds is remembered every May fifth.

Isn’t it Mexico’s Independence Day?:

That's a common misconception. Mexico celebrates its independence on September 16, because it was on that day in 1810 that Father Miguel Hidalgo took to his pulpit in the village church of the town of Dolores and invited his flock to take up arms and join him in overthrowing Spanish tyranny. Independence Day is a very important holiday in Mexico and not to be confused with Cinco de Mayo.

How Big a Deal is Cinco de Mayo?:

Cinco de Mayo is a big deal in Puebla, where the famous battle took place but it really isn't as important as most people think. September 16, Independence Day, is a much more important holiday in Mexico. For some reason, Cinco de Mayo is celebrated more in the United States of America, by Mexicans and Americans alike, than it is in Mexico. One theory for why it is more popular in the USA is that at one time, it was celebrated in all of Mexico and by Mexicans living in former Mexican territories such as Texas and California. It was ignored in Mexico after a while but still celebrated north of the border, which never got out of the habit of remembering the famous battle.

How is Cinco de Mayo Celebrated?:

In Puebla and in many USA cities with large Mexican populations, there are parades, dancing and festivals. Traditional Mexican food is often served or sold. Mariachi bands fill town squares, and a lot of Dos Equis and Corona beers are served. It’s a fun holiday, really more about celebrating the Mexican way of life than about remembering a battle which happened 150 years ago. It is sometimes referred to as a “Mexican St. Patrick’s Day.” In the USA, schoolchildren do units on the holiday, decorate their classrooms and try their hand at cooking some basic Mexican foods. All over the world, Mexican restaurants bring in Mariachi bands and offer specials for what’s almost certain to be a packed house.

How Can I Host a Cinco de Mayo Party?:

It’s easy to host a Cinco de Mayo party! Making basic Mexican food like salsa and burritos is not too complicated, add some decorations and mix some Margaritas and you’re good to go. Look at the links listed below for recipes, decorations and more valuable Cinco de Mayo information from About.com’s team of writers!