One of the features of the endless stream of articles about the nonexistent DDT ban is the way they all cite each other instead of cracking open a textbook or checking with an actual scientist. I call this the disinformation cycle. As far as I can tell, it is nearly 100% efficient and there is little danger of actual facts about the world contaminating the pure flow of disinformation.
The appropriateness of the icons for each step in the cycle is what makes this "bloggy goodness".
You da man, Tim.
D
It is always fascinating that the so-called "skeptics" are totally unskeptical of anything that supports their point of view, no matter how outrageous or how unreliable the source.
Yeah, those trusty scientists. They would never be biased. Or maybe us Red State yokels really are just a bunch of ignorant bastards. I also like how we were once from Blue States, but somehow the media changed the color of the politcal landscape. Wouldn't want the democrats to be associated with the color red, now, would we?
Of course, one could produce an almost exact duplicate of this diagram for anti-GM or anti-free trade propaganda.
You'd just need to substitute The Daily Show, Commonground.com etc at the appropriate points.
This isn't a defence of the right-wing abuse of science and facts, it's an appeal for some equal-time buttkicking for our own left-wing idiots.
Ben, I would have hoped you could find a better source than a liar like David Horowitz. His study doesn't tell you anything about the party affiliation of malariologists or climate scientists since they were not included. And even if you think that the scientists are biased, you should still find out what they have to say and not rely on PR firms for your facts about the world.
Tim, that piece you link to is supposed to discredit Horowitz? Come on, that was pretty weak. I'm a PhD student at the UW, and I see the bias in the faculty up close and personal. They are decent people and I like them very well, but they are very one sided politically.
Yes Ben, because you're "fair and balanced."
Whoops, I didn't see that Isserman responded below Horowitz's letter. But then, you didn't link to Horowitz's own response to Isserman. Why is it you take Isserman's word and not Horowitz's?
Chad, I try to be. I admit it is difficult.
Ben,
"Yeah, those trusty scientists. They would never be biased. Or maybe us Red State yokels really are just a bunch of ignorant bastards."
The article you link is nothing more than a survey of opinions and values among academics. What exactly does it have to do with the thoroughness and factual accuracy of statements made by conservative think-tanks about climate science? Bias is not difference of opinion Ben--it's a systematic mishandling of factual data.
If college campuses are overwhelmingly liberal it may be because of liberal bias in academia.
Or... it may be because the better educated people are in the sciences the less compelling conservative views are.
Nothing in Horowitz' screed or your comments discriminates between these two possibilities. Conservative think-tanks aren't considered to be sources of disinformation because they have conservative opinions—they are because it's because they consistently defend easily demonstrable falsehoods that even a minimal attempt at scholarship would have corrected. Like for instance,
1) CFC's do not deplete ozone because they're heavier than air from Steven Milloy of Junk Science and Fox News.
2) There's no physical basis for temperature from Ross McKitrick of the Frazer Institute, the Marshall Institute, and Tech Central Station.
3) Climate models predict only 1/3 of observed 20th century temperature rise yet again from Milloy and Fox News (the facts can be found in countless places. here and here for instance).
4) Creationism is science from Tech Central Station and (ironically) climate scientist Roy Spencer.
5) Abortion causes breast cancer again from Milloy.
6) Yet second hand smoke doesn't again from Milloy (let's not forget that Milloy, who in addition to being Fox News' only regular science commentator, the founder of Junk Science, and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, got his start in the 90's with as a lobbyist for Philip Morris).
And. Oh well. I could continue this list ad-infinitum, but it's far too late as it is. As for conservatives being "a bunch of ignorant bastards", I for one wouldn't make a sweeping statement like that. But on the other hand, it seems to me that if conservatives consistently make basic factual errors like these—errors that even a high school science student wouldn't make, then carefully avoiding the word "ignorant" is treading dangerously close to being "politically correct". After all, is certainly isn't liberals who are advocating creationism.
If you wish to make your point, you need to demonstrate that conservative think-tanks and their supporters are handling their data and evidence better than their enemies--i.e. that liberal think-tanks make errors like those in the above list far more often than conservative ones. You haven't done this.
All the best.
It's ironic that David Horowitz would be cited here as an authority on liberal "bias". Few other commentators in recent history have more biased and histrionic than he has on various controversial topics. Some of his more ridiculous claims such as the potboiler that Hillary Clinton helped free two Black Panthers accused of torture and murder have even ended up on urban legend web sites. Though Horowitz' name isn't mentioned in the linked article (from one of the best urban legend web sites on the internet), he was one of the biggest purveyor of this myth when it came out and has even been cited as a "source" by other Right-Wing commentators in regards to it.
ben, you would make your case, like, more better if you linked to a study that looked at the attitudes of scientists in the hard sciences. And not using Horowitz to make a point. That's like me tossing you a softball by linking to an authoritative paper about redneck bias by, say, Noam Chomsky.
And I got my grad from the UW, and I really didn't care about the political bent of my profs, because they imparted an excellent education to their students.
Really. Their purported political bias didn't affect the quality of my education.
But maybe over on your side of the campus that's an issue for docs, if'n you want funding by conservatives only. Clean money and all that. Do conservatives give money for education to someone other than their own?
HTH,
D
"and I see the bias in the faculty up close and personal. They are decent people and I like them very well, but they are very one sided politically."
Yes, it's been established for quite a while that more education is correlated with liberal politics and recently with skepticism towards the utterances of Bushies and their ilk. How that has come to be "bias" is a mystery, as much as the probable reluctance of educated middle class Arabs to accept the messages of the Talibans and bin Ladens of their culture would be comparable bias.
"It's ironic that David Horowitz would be cited here as an authority on liberal "bias"."
Of course, Horowitz's conversion from young flaming liberal has been cited as proof of the superiority of the conservative philosophy, whereas I just see it as a nitwit with poor reasoning skills operating on bias being able to be switched to another bias without much trouble. See also the Lyndon Larouche/Lyn Marcus case.
"Do conservatives give money for education to someone other than their own? "
Drop on over to the business school part of campus, you'll find conservative professors aplenty.
(You know, there was a day when the concept of universities giving doctorates in business would have made a scholar weep, laugh, or both).
There's a difference between conservatives and "conservative think tanks." I don't know much about the latter, but from the bad work they've done in the past...
Anyhoo, the liberal bias of my professors hasn't affected my education at all either, since I'm in engineering, which isn't very political. Sort of. But then some of my education is clearly affected by the liberal bias of academia as a whole. Worthless classes such as "Engineering and Society" with obvious liberal bents that we are forced to take part in. Blech, I still have a foul taste in my mouth from that one. Not to mention all the liberal nitwit stuff on campus that I see, especially women's studies (the way it is taught, the subject material, not the topic in general) and other subjects in the social sciences.
I don't even remember what the heck we were discussing anyway. Oh yeah, bias. Well, there are politically conservative scientists out there, who are not part of the nitwit cycle in the picture above. That's all.
I guess I'm just a little chaffed by the liberalness of campus. I've seen more than one conservative display torn down or heckled by liberals, but never once the other way around. Why is that?
Worthless classes such as "Engineering and Society" with obvious liberal bents that we are forced to take part in
Yeah, poor thing. You're oppressed. You should have a self-esteem class too to help you overcome the oppression you feel. And you're scared, too, and heaven forfend you actually have to consider the users or the context in which you're building that bridge. Those users are scary and they're out to take away white male priveleges if you find out what they need.
I've seen more than one conservative display torn down or heckled by liberals, but never once the other way around. Why is that?
You mean you've seen behaviors by kids on campus? Wow.
Maybe you should go to one of them fine southern campuses so you can see the other way around. But anyway, if you want local examples, just go back to the last election and look in the P-I (or the KingCo Journal if'n you want a conservative paper) for examples of Dem lawn signs torn down.
Best,
D
z, like Ben, I am a PhD student in the sciences. Astronomy, in particular. One wouldn't think that a discussion about the evils of the Iraq war would have anything to do with stars and galaxies, but there are professors in my department who routinely inject such politics into the undergraduate lectures. This is wrong. As wrong as it would be for a Christian professor to lecture about scripture in science class. But while the university tolerates inappropriate anti-Bush rhetoric, it rarely stands for any other kind of proselytizing. That's where the ``bias'' comes from.
It's problematic when 70-90% of the faculty and the administration are demonstrably leaning in one political direction. (What happened to diversity?) What concerns me is the lack of any checks and balances inherent in the system to act as brakes on the tendency for the majority to quash opposing views. Though I am right-of-center politically, I would be apprehensive about a faculty that had this proportion in favor of right-leaning politics. There is an implicit assumption from both sides that they are on the side of righteousness, but until human knowledge has reached perfection and we can confidently rule out the right or left as wrong, a balance is needed.
Dano, it's amazing that pre-political correctness Western Civilization somehow managed to construct wonderfully functional structures without having to be lectured on their context. No doubt these ``Engineering and Society'' classes were borne of the masses crying out for bridges that were more sensitive to their points of view. Before I converted to astronomy, I started off in engineering and was forced to sit through one of these classes. They are nothing short of leftist-thought indoctrination with a micro-veneer of objectivity, i.e. bridge-user context, whatever that really means.
With respect to antisocial antics on campus, I attend the largest university in the south, and I'm not sure what you're talking about with southern campuses doing things the other way around. I've seen nothing of the kind. Can you cite examples of what you mean? And since when do reprehensible acts from one side excuse those of the other? But, anyway, I think the point is that while we already know that the political right consists of war-mongerers and other violent troglodytes, it's only natural to ask how it can be that the political left -- as a guiding light of peace, decency, and tolerance -- breeds violent and intolerant behavior on campuses?
Sarah,
I suspected that when I wrote the initial reply to ben above that I'd seen his website somewhere.
Now that you've given me the linky, I see that I've remembered correctly.
Thanks.
But wrt your
and the implications, of course two wrongs don't make no right. And I'm thinking historically for examples. And human behavior is the same regardless of American political identification or binary rhetoric; adherence to a party ideology doesn't negate bad or good behaviors.
But I envy your degree. I'm an amateur astronomer stuck in Seattle area, and my scope gathers dust save for a few weekends in summer and the rare occasion I can go over to the east side. CA was way better for seeing, and I used to live in a town with a dark sky law - great. It's certainly a good time to go into astrophysics.
Best,
D
Dano,
[H]uman behavior is the same regardless of American political identification or binary rhetoric; adherence to a party ideology doesn't negate bad or good behaviors.
Well, that's just the point. Political correctness is supposed to negate bad behavior. Furthermore, any group, but especially the left, as representatives of correct-thinking and good behavior, should be actively weeding out people who behave badly in its name. But it tolerates this behavior and breeds more. You are correct that there are individuals on both sides who just want to behave badly; but, if the left is genuinely about peace and tolerance, in the mean we should be seeing fewer incidents of violence and intolerance from the left than from the right. This is not the case on campuses, and for some reason this doesn't seem to inspire any soul-searching on the part of the peace-lovers.
WRT astronomy, yes, you are in the wrong place for that. Texas has conducive weather, and some of the most fantastic dark-sky regions in the country. If you lived in a region with dark-sky laws, I'm guessing you were near Lick or Palomar.
This is not the case on campuses, and for some reason this doesn't seem to inspire any soul-searching on the part of the peace-lovers.
That's the problem with kids these days: they're so childish.
But I could say something about soul-searching wrt the lack of military recruitment in certain socioeconomic groups, but it would make me look silly, as I'm sure there are plenty of folk that are. Let's not broad brush everyone based on a sample.
BTW, If I could get my gravatar to work, it's a B/W M33.
Best,
D
Ahhh, political correctness. What it was originally suppose to do was help stop negative and harmful stigmatisation of minorities etc through the use of deleterious words. It has mutated since then into a favourite activity of know nothing bureaucracts, a few crazed lefties, and a nice rhetorical point, something along the lines of "say, my people impale people on stakes, but at least we arent politically correct!"
One of these days I'll work out how to get quotes on here, but anyway:
"Furthermore, any group, but especially the left, as representatives of correct-thinking and good behavior, should be actively weeding out people who behave badly in its name."
Sure, just as soon as we can agree on correct thinking, and (I apologise for making this hideously dichotomous) you on the right reign in your own people behaving badly.
"Western Civilization somehow managed to construct wonderfully functional structures without having to be lectured on their context."
Well, as far as I am aware, most of them lived in their context, and therefore didnt need lectured. Furthermore, people were thinking about and carefully designing school buildings, taking into account the rate of fresh air, amount of light, room neeeded for children to run around in, etc etc, but they probably didnt get lectured on it because they would learn it outside university or college.
I do though agree that politics has nothing to do with astronomy, and indeed, should not be permitted in class. I wouldnt mind talking to such a person about why they feel the need to add it in.
The last I was aware, various hypothese about the liberal predomination on campus include the idea that conservative minded folk go away and get jobs in business, and arent interested in the life of a campus researcher/ lecturer, partly because it pays less.
ben,
The most important part of this discussion would be how scientific facts are manipulated for policy. In this regard, there are no number of instances, most likely irrelevant regarding various hurt feelings and possibly less than apporpriate behavior on campus, that could equal the misrepresentation and disingenuous use and abuse of science by the current right wing administration of the US and their hangers-on. This is simply a fact. I do not wish to hear about Lysenkoism or other such historical situation that is irrelevant to the point Tim is making. Two wrongs never make a right, and thus we are left to contemplate the relative magnitude of the wrongs. It is quite simple.
Having been on both sides of the conservative/liberal divide, I would have to agree with Ben. Campuses are liberal.
My contention is, so what? What do liberals on campus really control, once you get five feet outside the campus perimeter.
What does have enormous control are the large corporate funded "think tank" lobby groups and conservative politicians who make the law. They run the country. Left-wing professors are running seminars.
OK. I would kick out Bush and most of congress (and the supreme court) if I could. It's too bad we don't have the capacity to produce an honest and virtuous government, free from the influence of those who would corrupt the law for their own purposes.
But then, has anyone ever?
My contention is, so what? What do liberals on campus really control, once you get five feet outside the campus perimeter.
It's more important to mobilize the troops by telling them they're oppressed, Paul, then to get the details right that you present. Liberals are the oppressor, see, and white males are always oppressed by someone or something.
Best,
D
"Liberals are the oppressor, see, and white males are always oppressed by someone or something. "
We narrowly escaped the War on Christmas!
When did engineering professors get "liberal"? In my day, before they invented rocks, the engineering professors not only wanted to hold classes during the Vietnam moratoriums and such, but would gleefully describe in class their desires to go knock some of them demonstrators' heads in. Of course, five or ten years later they were all smoking weed and tying their hair in ponytails. That's conservatism for you, don't jump on a new idea until it's been tested and proved.
"if the left is genuinely about peace and tolerance, in the mean we should be seeing fewer incidents of violence and intolerance from the left than from the right."
The other week in the NYTimes it was revealed that the guy who had been inciting a probicycle demonstration, of all things, in NY to get violent and attack the police lines was in fact a police agent. Ah, takes me back to the Nixon days. You can't make this stuff up.
Let me ask you something, Dano. Would you feel the same way if all universities employed 70-90% right-wing faculty? What if they were all like Bob Jones University? Would you be as blase about it then?
There are countless examples of political correctness run amok on campuses. Universities used to be regarded as bastions of free thought and free expression, but they're the furthest thing from it, because they are governed by leftist orthodoxy.
What do liberals on campus really control, once you get five feet outside the campus perimeter.
Universities are supposed to be readying the next generation of leaders in society -- teachers, social workers, doctors, therapists, lawyers, businessmen, scientists -- they train the elite. But are they training free-thinkers or are they churning out ranks of indoctrinated people?
If nowhere else, campuses should be the one place in society where the free exchange of ideas reigns. But get up in any class and try to argue for capitalism or against feminism. Try to argue that anti-discrimination laws are bad or that welfare is bad. For one thing, you'll be shouted down; then you'll be marked down. Everyone knows what's going on on campuses. Universities are becoming left-wing seminaries, producing people with a missionary zeal, where you come to be trained in the catechism of equality and tolerance and multiculturalism and feminism. Those who dare to disagree are denounced as heretics. (Look at the hysterical reaction to Larry Summers at Harvard University when he had the audacity to speak against the feminist orthodoxy.)
Anyone who doesn't recognize that political correctness has overtaken campuses with far-reaching effect is being dishonest or hasn't been on a campus in the last 40 years.
Well, would the conservative small-government few-regulatory-bodies free-market solution be to institute quotas for conservatives on campus? To provide public funds for chairs of conservative philosophy? Outlaw liberal professors?
Conservatives run into the same problem whenever a market free of government regulation operates in a fashion where they don't like the results, whether it's academia, the media, Hollywood; they whine and pout and rage and stamp their feet about how somehow the liberals have managed to control something, because they can't think of a suitable conservative remedy to what the invisible hand of the market has decided.
Seriously, (I don't mean to point this at you personally, BTW, I'm thinking of Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly and Limbaugh and all those whiners) what would you do to remedy what you see as a problem, if anything? A liberal has a readymade answer: get the government to mandate a fix for the inequity. Conservatives don't have that option. As noted, there are conservative philosophied schools, they more or less suck, but anyone who really thinks liberals control the campuses and its a problem can take their business there.
re: #9
2) There's no physical basis for temperature from Ross McKitrick of the Frazer Institute, the Marshall Institute, and Tech Central Station.
Oh? How convenient that link doesn't work -- no physical basis for temperature,eh? It that a quote, a paraphrase, or a fabrication? Please cite where Dr McKitrick has made such a claim.
I fixed the link for you John. HTH.
JohnMcCall,
"Oh? How convenient that link doesn't work — no physical basis for temperature,eh? It that a quote, a paraphrase, or a fabrication? Please cite where Dr McKitrick has made such a claim."
The link is to a May 21, 2004 post by Tim at this site titled Corrections to the McKitrick (2002) Global Average Temperature Series. It works just fine. McKitrick's remarks, which Tim addresses at length, are from a Feb. 27, 2003 briefing given by he and Christopher Essex on their book Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy, and Politics Of Global Warming sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition--an industry funded think tank of exactly the sort this post is about.
McKitrick's remarks are on page 8, paragraph 6, where he says,
The briefing link also works.
If you think any of this is a "fabrication" you're more than welcome to download the briefing and read it for yourself. And this time, try to be more careful, especially if you're planning on making accusations. And if you want to know what's wrong with McKitrick's remarks, try reading Tim's critique at the perfectly good link that's now been given to you twice, and any standard undergraduate thermodynamics text.
I see now where Tim said he fixed the link. If it was broken in the original post, my apologies. It worked fine when I tested it in the preview. In any event, it works now, and with the other link in the last post, demonstrates the point about McKitrick.
Sarah (re # 30): you said
But steps are being taken to rectify the situation. The Medium Lobster discusses it here.
John
This problem was originally created by government. Most, or at least many, of these schools are public institutions, which means that the government (the people) are footing the bill for their liberal nonsense. I wonder how many times tax money has gone to support a production of the vagina monologues? Good grief.
Anyway, you are right, the conservative solution would turn to the free market, and yank the funding for this baloney. That way we can get back to the separation of dogma and state.
Sarah wrote, Universities are supposed to be readying the next generation of leaders in society — teachers, social workers, doctors, therapists, lawyers, businessmen, scientists — they train the elite. But are they training free-thinkers or are they churning out ranks of indoctrinated people?
Silly. Take biologists. It's probably true that their political opinions are to the left of the average citizen, for whatever mechanism makes natural scientists tend to be liberal. But the claim that that's because hiring and tenure decisions in biology departments are partly based on the candidates political ideology is nutty.
I was on a mathematics faculty for awhile, and certainly politics never came up in these decisions.
The only "politics" I've seen in departments of science or mathematics were of the "I want to hire a guy in my sub-sub-sub-field, not yours, but I won't come out and say it directly so I'll make up some kind of rationale for it" variety. Certainly I was aware that people in my department had varying views on politics; but neither their teaching nor their research reputations had anything to do with that.
But get up in any class and try to argue for capitalism or against feminism. Try to argue that anti-discrimination laws are bad or that welfare is bad. For one thing, you'll be shouted down; then you'll be marked down. Everyone knows what's going on on campuses.
Clearly you haven't been informed that universities have things called "economics departments" and "business schools." Which, I might add, have far more real-world power than departments harboring left-wing post-modernist nutjobs.
Would you feel the same way if all universities employed 70-90% right-wing faculty? What if they were all like Bob Jones University? Would you be as blase about it then?
Whut z and lib'rull done said.
Poor Sarah. You're so oppressed, you think that everyone's out to get you. Awwwwwww. Poor thing.
Whatever.
You might want to think about folk self-sorting [OK, Tiebout sorting if we have to stick to your narrow frames so you can unnerstan'] according to, say, self- and other-regarding tendencies.
Or, you can think about what kind of folk choose their ideologies. Does that choice have any parameters that are similar to career choice? Do folk sort according to their choices?
That is: maybe similar characteristics are shared by folk who are interested in the hard sciences, and the same may be true for places like biness school or economics depts.
Nah. On second thought: don't think about it.
Go on feeling oppressed. You'll be more useful that way to political campaigns.
Best,
D
John Cross:
Good linky sir.
Best,
D
liberal, kindly go back and re-read my comments, because you are responding to things I never said. What concerns me is not necessarily whether Prof Jones is a Democrat, but whether he is preaching his politics to a captive audience of undergraduate science students -- or if students feel compelled to agree with Jones' views in order to maintain good standing in class. It happens far too often, and it's indefensible.
Clearly you haven't been informed that universities have things called "economics departments" and "business schools."
So, what about humanities, social science, and education students? If any of them want to defend traditional values and religion and capitalism, just tell them take their views to the business school?
Which, I might add, have far more real-world power than departments harboring left-wing post-modernist nutjobs.
This is an incredibly narrow-minded statement. Not all the power and influence in the world has to do with business and money. You are selling short many other professions that make a great deal of difference in society.
Oddly enough, I'd have to agree with the general sentiment of Sarah's post -- that a science professor shouldn't use the classroom as a pulpit to espouse his political beliefs...a politics professor on the other hand. Nevertheless Sarah, you're argument would be better received if you didn't frame it as an example of the persecution-of-the-right since it implies whinyness (i.e. the political orientation of the professor is irrelevant).
You'd probably also do well to admit that there is at least a possibility that there is as much if not more bias in the mainstream media in favour of conservative ideology, and that this bias is far more important...
If any of them want to defend traditional values and religion and capitalism, just tell them take their views to the business school?
'Traditional values' is a political frame.
"Defending" capitalism or religion isn't the purpose of education, and I'd refer you to the linky John included above to put the proper context on your wishy-wish.
I don't know what kind of education you wish for, Sarah, but adulthood will probably show you the value of a well-rounded one, as well as impart wisdom to your choices.
Best,
D
You have got to be joking.
...you're argument would be better received if you didn't frame it as an example of the persecution-of-the-right since it implies whinyness (i.e. the political orientation of the professor is irrelevant).
I agree that nominally it's irrelevant; however, with 70-90% of faculty subscribing to left-of-center political views, it makes sense to frame it thus. When the situation reverses, you can count on me to frame it as an example of persecution-of-the-left.
You'd probably also do well to admit that there is at least a possibility that there is as much if not more bias in the mainstream media in favour of conservative ideology, and that this bias is far more important
As Ben said, you must be joking. The vast majority (approx. 90%) of mainstream media journalists in the United States self-identify as left-of-center. (And, please, for God's sake, spare me Chomsky's argument for corporate news bias.)
Dano,
Traditional values' is a political frame.
"Defending" capitalism or religion isn't the purpose of education, and I'd refer you to the linky John included above to put the proper context on your wishy-wish.
This is such a bizarre claim, I don't even know where to begin. Have you even attended university? What exactly do you think a university education consists of?
Unless you attend Harvey Mudd or something, all undergraduates are required to take several humanities and social science courses, whose themes all center on culture, i.e. politics and religion. (Amusingly, a class I took on popular media included an entire chapter devoted to proving that capitalism sucks because the female characters in Ayn Rand's novels like rough sex).
I don't know what kind of education you wish for, Sarah, but adulthood will probably show you the value of a well-rounded one, as well as impart wisdom to your choices.
How "well-rounded" an education can one have when one is predominantly exposed to only certain viewpoints?
The kind of education I wish for students to have provides approximately equal exposure from opposing viewpoints. (As seen in the last two elections, the United States is roughly equally split between red and blue states. Why is this not reflected in universities?) I wish for a return to emphasis on critical thinking skills, as opposed to emphasis on absorbing and regurgitating politically correct platitudes. I wish for an environment in which students feel free to discuss and defend any viewpoint they wish without fear of reprisal.
And, please, don't patronize me with lectures about adulthood. I'm 34.
This is such a bizarre claim, I don't even know where to begin. Have you even attended university? What exactly do you think a university education consists of?
My highest degree attained is grad (westerly on campus from your dear bro, undergrad at an excellent Land Grant Uni.).
Anyway, it's only bizarre if you believe a proper education's purpose is to defend capitalism. That's what the order and choice of your words, placed into a sentence construct, said. Really. Your sentence construct:
is soooo postmodern. On my side of the campus, when we said something this bad, we'd preface it by saying "not that I want to sound postmodernist or anything, but...". I don't know what the arrow space injuneers say [I only saw the structural folk, and rarely].
Actually, I take that back. It's not postmodern.
It's unaware. Unaware that an education challenges assumptions and such, and your How "well-rounded" an education can one have when one is predominantly exposed to only certain viewpoints? tells me either you are afraid to challenge the professor or aren't in an environment where you can do so.
As I don't share your gender, there may be issues here I'm not aware of.
But I challenged my professors all the time, and went out for drinks afterward to continue the discussion, because I know how to conduct myself.
HTH,
D
P.S., The kind of education I wish for students to have provides approximately equal exposure from opposing viewpoints.
I want equality where I walk all the time too. I live on planet earth. I can't have it, but I can strive for it.
Ideals are like stars. We never reach them but, like the mariners on the sea, we chart our course by them. - Carl Schurz
I never said that a proper education is to defend capitalism or religion, etc. The purpose of proper education is to promote the free exchange of ideas. If a university environment is such that students do not feel free to put forth and defend particular viewpoints (e.g. that capitalism is good) without being shouted down by classmates or the professor, or having a grade adversely affected, then it is not education, but indoctrination. If students are rarely confronted with differing viewpoints, then it is indoctrination.
...tells me either you are afraid to challenge the professor or aren't in an environment where you can do so.
Actually, I was quite fearless and was very much a thorn in the side of my liberal professors (though I have to give credit to them for being professional about it). The reactions from my fellow students, however, ranged from pathetic to vile. My real concern is for the many other students who are either not as fearless as I was (where's that wonderful inclusiveness and tolerance of the left when you really need it?) or who have been made to suffer a poor grade just for holding a particular view. When I was at UC-San Diego, my roommate's boyfriend was a sociology grad, who delighted in telling me how he flunked his students for wrong-thinking. He claimed that while one particular paper was well-constructed, the ideas were so "wrong" that he wished he could give the student a grade of Z instead of what he did give him, which was an F.
I am also concerned about another kind of torment, from which my religious students suffer. We have a large proportion of Mexican students on this campus, most of whom are devoutly Catholic. I have been asked in private by fearful students if it is still OK for them to believe in God despite what they have learned from some of their professors. It sickens me that these students are made to suffer this way for their beliefs.
There are many more documented examples of this sort of thing. Shapiro's Brainwashed is a good place to start. Just because you, personally, have not been subject to these sorts of things does not mean they aren't happening. Like I said before, if anyone isn't aware of what's happening on campuses today, they're either being dishonest or haven't been near a campus in decades.
Sarah, so the problem wasn't liberal professors, but liberal students? What do you think should be done about them?
Sarah,
Let me see if I get this straight - you consider a book by an idealogue like Ben Shapiro to be evidence?!? Well, some of the problems with the book can be seen here: http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?ID=28928
"Most, or at least many, of these schools are public institutions, which means that the government (the people) are footing the bill for their liberal nonsense. I wonder how many times tax money has gone to support a production of the vagina monologues? Good grief"
The government is preferentially funding liberal professors? The Bush administration too?
"The reactions from my fellow students, however, ranged from pathetic to vile."
I thought the problem was liberal profs not allowing the students to speak their true minds. Or did they get brainwashed before this point? And how is it you managed to avoid the indocrination, when the others are so vulnerable?
Sarah,
Apologies, I hope you'll forgive me, because when you say just above:
I never said that a proper education is to defend capitalism or religion, etc.
I thought that when you said:
If any [students] want to defend traditional values and religion and capitalism, just tell them take their views to the business school?
that meant students want an environment where it's OK to have their ideology validated. And then all my yadayada.
Now, I'm not speaking for John Cross, but I presume he took your comments to mean the same thing due to the linky he provided.
And seeing all the confusion from other commenters on this thread, I'm compelled to ask if they give docs English classes down there?
Oh, and PoliSci classes too, after I read this:
Not all the power and influence in the world has to do with business and money. You are selling short many other professions that make a great deal of difference in society.
Hoo-boy. I'm sure Cheney's Energy Commission buddies...er...stakeholders...spanned a wide range of folk in the education, service, and non-profit sectors. Suuuuure. 34, huh?
Best,
D
preferential nothing. The money goes to the school on account of that's what we do. Where it goes is up to the school. I for one am planning on taking this course as soon as possible: Discourse and Sex/uality or maybe Women, Words, Music, and Change where I can study Comparative analysis of use of myths, tales, music, and other forms of expressive culture to account for, reinforce, and change women's status and roles. Now there's a good use of taxpayer money.
Sarah wrote, liberal, kindly go back and re-read my comments, because you are responding to things I never said. What concerns me is not necessarily whether Prof Jones is a Democrat...
Nonsense. You wrote, above, It's problematic when 70-90% of the faculty and the administration are demonstrably leaning in one political direction. (What happened to diversity?)
If any of them want to defend traditional values and religion and capitalism, just tell them take their views to the business school?
One thing you ain't---consistent, given that you also wrote What concerns me is ... whether he is preaching his politics to a captive audience of undergraduate science students... Of course, I guess "defending" "traditional" values, religion, and capitalism isn't "preaching," whereas attacking an illegal invasion based on a faked casus belli is.
Not that I agree with your premise---I took humanities courses, and I don't recall anyone attacking anything you list.
This is an incredibly narrow-minded statement. Not all the power and influence in the world has to do with business and money. You are selling short many other professions that make a great deal of difference in society.
Huh? Read what I wrote: "Which, I might add, have far more real-world power than departments harboring left-wing post-modernist nutjobs." I stand by this claim.
"2) There's no physical basis for temperature from Ross McKitrick of the Frazer Institute, the Marshall Institute, and Tech Central Station.
Oh? How convenient that link doesn't work — no physical basis for temperature,eh? It that a quote, a paraphrase, or a fabrication? Please cite where Dr McKitrick has made such a claim."
I guess you're relatively new here. Wait until you find out that pesticide resistance is not inherited.
You can learn a lot listening to the righties.
Mr. Church-
You are in error and/or you are being (uncharacteristically) imprecise. I repeat, "no physical basis for temperature" is not a claim or implication of Dr. McKitrick. I have/had already read the McKitrick3 thread and the TBS briefing. I've also read Taken By Storm where much of the disputed points are not even in print, that is points disputed by Dr. Lambert and Mr. Rabett (in his blog). At your request (post 34), I reread the thread and briefing -- no where in those 2 link results (thread and TBS briefing), and the book itself for that matter, is that claim expressed or implied.
Are you being deliberately inaccurate with intention to deceive and inflame? I shutter to think that your physics and thermodynamics are so weak as to not know the difference between your inflammatory claim in point 2, and Dr. McKitrick's (and Dr. Essex') precisely stated point questioning the physical meaning of average-, global-, and particularly global-average-temperature.
Now my request; please edit/retract your point 2 of post 9. Or, cite/quote from your references, specific statements expressed or implied, that Dr. McKitrick claims there is "no physical basis for temperature!"
"The vast majority (approx. 90%) of mainstream media journalists in the United States self-identify as left-of-center. (And, please, for God's sake, spare me Chomsky's argument for corporate news bias.) "
Would that be similar to the argument that auto manufacturers are pro-corporate, despite the obvious fact that 90% of their employees are staunch union members, so they in fact have a distinct socialist slant?
I'm trying to decide whether the rightwingers' bugaboo the New York Times' liberal bias is best exemplified by their uncritical parroting of Ahmed Chalabi's WMD-armed Saddam paranoid fantasies, their sitting for a full year on the trivial news that the administration has been secretly wiretapping US citizens without court oversight, or Paul Krugman's once strident now wistful calls for fiscal responsibility and a federal budget within even distant shouting distance of balance.
correction 58 - shudder
An example of disputed point, in the TBS briefing but not in Taken By Storm: the Cup of Coffee ... Glass of Ice Water graph.
Please feel free to contact Dr. McKitrick directly -- he has been quite forthcoming on requests for information, even freely giving Dr. Lambert mean vs RMS spreadsheet information in the interest of maintaining dialogue and constructive critique (data later used by Dr. Lambert in McKitrick3). And we all know Dr. Lambert is not prone to validating any of the M&M (McI & McK) nor M&M (McK & Mic) documented results. Contrast that willingness to exchange information, with the let's say the "climate professionals" at RealClimate.
Re: 59
Like the thermodynamically naked-emperor author of post 53, you're likely in over your head. Stick to media comment and politics, and stay clear of actual physics, thermodynamics, and statistics. Political discussion/speculation/prejudice toward me is misplaced.
However, if you really want to have a studied statistical discussion on leading media bias, let's start with this: http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664
John McCall, I have a convenient McKitrick category. Perhaps you could look at the posts there. See if you spot where I checked McKitrick and Michael's work. And are you are seriously defending Essex and McKitrick? Have you ever studied any physics at all?
JohnMcCall,
"You are in error and/or you are being (uncharacteristically) imprecise. I repeat, "no physical basis for temperature" is not a claim or implication of Dr. McKitrick."
"Now my request; please edit/retract your point 2 of post 9. Or, cite/quote from your references, specific statements expressed or implied, that Dr. McKitrick claims there is "no physical basis for temperature!"
I could have worded myself better here. What I meant to say was that he maintains that there is no physical basis for average temperature--that any definition of regional or global average temperature is as good as any other. But beyond clarifying that point, I retract nothing.
On page 8, paragraph 6 of his briefing on Taken By Storm McKitrick says,
He then elaborates on the point at length on pages 6 through 9 and in Figure 1 shows us a comparison of a cup of coffee and a cup of ice water and tries to prove that they can be averaged any way we want--an example that has no analog in global climate because the two cups are separate systems. Tim dealt with this fallacy very well in his post on it.
You are correct to point out that I should have been clearer about average temperature vs. temperature. But beyond that it makes little difference. Ultimately, McKitrick is attempting to show that there's no meaningful way to measure global temperature change (and ultimately thermal energy content of the atmosphere), either warming or cooling, making global warming an imaginary math trick. This argument is almost as ignorant as the one I inadvertently implied. And for someone who's being paid to publish on a subject this important, it's also negligent.
ben opines:
I for one am planning on taking this course as soon as possible...[blablabla]. Now there's a good use of taxpayer money.
Now lil' ben's feeling oppressed because he's given a choice to not attend classes he doesn't like.
I feel your pain, ben. I really do. Poor lad! Let me give you a big hug next time I'm in town.
Empathy for others aside, what other bases for oppression can your irrational fear identify, ben?
That some folks might have interests other than your narrow conceptual framework - a framework that apparently devalues anything outside of that narrow frame? Verrry oppressing, surely.
You're oppressed by all the multicultural food smells when you walk up The Ave?
You're oppressed by the little freshman girlies' navel piercings during summer viewing season? The boys' flip-flops in November oppresses you because they might get sick and your tuition money goes toward their health care?
Poor thing. How do you make it through the day?
Best,
D
Oppressed? Hardly. However, the sheer waste of the nonsense I linked to boggles the mind. And it's paid for with taxpayer money. I have no problems with somebody studying those important issues on their own, but to include them as a major course of study at a univeristy is a joke.
I may as well make up a course on "Music, Poem and Dance as Insight into Ballistic Jello." Yeah, that would benefit society. Or how about "The Scrotum Dialogs: Wrinkled and Smooth as Context for Cultural Revolution."
Who said anything about oppression? You did, Dano, nobody else. That is a poor defense, or offense, or whatever it is.
Sarah, so the problem wasn't liberal professors, but liberal students? What do you think should be done about them?
Well, they should have been disciplined by the professors. I wasn't clear about this before -- much of this vile behavior from liberal students took place in the classroom. Being told by other students to "shut up" or being called names in class should not be tolerated, but it was. My professors' passiveness about abusive behavior in their classrooms was tacit approval and an indirect form of harrassment.
Now, the implicit assumption in most of the responses here seems to be that just because I have not personally been directly victimized by liberal professors, I have no reason to be concerned. For one thing, I was older and more experienced than most students when I started university in earnest, and chose my humanities and social sciences courses very carefully. I knew how to avoid professors who were notoriously intolerant or nutty, like the women's studies professor who harangued male students in her class, because she thought the phallic shape of rockets was a clear attempt by engineers to subjugate women (take that, ben!). Actually, now that I remember, I was "victimized" -- once. I printed a joke in the physics department newsletter poking fun at political correctness, and set off a firestorm of indignation. As a result I was asked to face a panel to be lectured on the necessity for political correctness in society. Can't have anyone defying the orthodoxy now, can we? Other things were more subtle, like wasting my time with a Chomsky video about media bias in a course on short-story creative writing. (I defy anyone to explain how media coverage of the Nicaraguan election has anything to do with short-story composition.)
My concern is primarily driven by two experiences. 1) Though my professors never attacked me, personally, they were often passive with respect to students who were abusive, and tolerated behavior that should have resulted in disciplinary action. 2) There was no diversity of thought in certain departments. The sociology, anthropology, women's studies, and history departments at my alma mater were staffed exclusively by leftist professors. Where is the balance? Human affairs cannot possibly be one-sided, so why are students only exposed to one viewpoint? That should be a concern to anyone who believes that the function of universities is to produce free-thinkers, not drones. In the natural sciences, ideas are scrutinized mercilessly before they are accepted as fact. But this rarely occurs in the humanities and social sciences. Any ideology that is confident in itself would allow different ideas to compete openly and see which one wins. That this doesn't occur is my main concern, and it tells me that universities are not interested in promoting free thought, but in indoctrination.
To whomever asked how I managed to avoid the indocrination, I did so largely because I was raised by parents who, as reformed socialists, inoculated me against this kind of indoctrination. Also, unlike most students, I started university much later, at 27. Nothing takes the shine off liberal idealism like experience.
The government is preferentially funding liberal professors? The Bush administration too?
The NEA and the teachers unions are the 800-lb gorilla of the Democratic Party. It doesn't matter who is in the White House.
Of course, I guess "defending" "traditional" values, religion, and capitalism isn't "preaching," whereas attacking an illegal invasion based on a faked casus belli is.
Not this again. Do you people ever get tired of harping on the same tired old myths over and over? Not wishing to instigate a digression and waste Tim's bandwidth, but the illegality of the invasion has been thoroughly debunked. Get. Over. It. (If you really wanna argue about this, you can email me or comment on my blog.)
With respect to the rest of the comment, it's only preaching when ideas aren't scrutinized and only one side of the argument is presented. If a right-wing professor argues for capitalism and discourages students from voicing other viewpoints, that is preaching. If a liberal professor argues for a welfare state and encourages students to argue against it, then that is not preaching. Is that all clear now? Now, as to whether the latter really happens with any frequency, I encourage any of you to sit in on a social sciences course discussing current affairs and make a sincere argument in favor of American foreign policy. See what happens.
WRT temperature and McKitrick and Essex. They made a rather elementary mistake which invalidates their entire argument. See http://rabett.blogspot.com/2005/11/temperature-rex-bites-essex-and.html
Basically you can't use Celcius for any average except arithmetic and certainly not if you are averaging emissivity. Ignorant is a kind word for what they did.
"Well, they should have been disciplined by the professors. I wasn't clear about this before — much of this vile behavior from liberal students took place in the classroom. Being told by other students to "shut up" or being called names in class should not be tolerated, but it was. My professors' passiveness about abusive behavior in their classrooms was tacit approval and an indirect form of harrassment. "
I still maintain that there's a hellofa difference between aggressive liberal profs indocrinating their views into the blank minds of the undergrads, and passive profs who let the aggressively liberal undergrads force their views upon the class.
"Temperature is a continuous field, not a scalar, and there is no physics to guide reducing this field to a scalar, by averaging or any other method."
Is McKitrick, or his backers, aware that temperature at equilibrium he observes is in fact an average of the temperature of the molecules in the substance being measured, which are distributed on a Gaussian? Otherwise, a glass of water would evaporate all at once, wouldn't it? And the temperature of each molecule fluctuates all over the place enormously rapidly as it collides with hotter and colder molecules? In fact, the only temperature we measure/observe is an average temperature, the average of an enormous number of molecules over an enormous number of fluctuations; the actual physical "temperature" is too granular in time and space to be observed, it's the average which we see as "equilibrium". Plain old mean average, no geometric average, thank you; do the math and see. The molecules involved do not know whether they are all in the same body of fluid or not, so the same average holds for that cup of hot coffee plus a cup of ice water. Remember Maxwell's Demon? The one who would sit in a cup of tepid water and separate it into a cup of hot water and a cup of ice water? It wasn't energy balance that prevented that, it was entropy.
So, if you assert there is no such thing as an average temperature measurement, then in fact there really is no such thing as temperature for anything larger than a single molecule for any longer than the infinitesimal fraction of a second between molecular collisions, and even if you protest that you didn't say that explicitly, it's nevertheless an unavoidable result of what you did say explicitly.
ben, lots of crap is paid for by taxpayer money- there are billions of dollars of other things besides the vagina monlogues to contend with. I suggest you diversify your ideas about presumed cost of things beyond just what you pay in taxes. Consider the cost of environmental catastrophe. The cost of having millions/billions of dollars just vanish in Iraq. Corporate tax fraud. Government bailout of large companies. Ridiculous economic giveaways to oil comapnies. These are lots of things that your money is going towards, if you truly were worried about where your money was spent, you'd be worried about those things. Your arguments are disingenuous.
And Sarah, it would be impossible for campuses to be 80% conservative. The American conservative movement has thrown its lot in with anti-intellectuals, fraudsters and hacks. The academic world is much better off with the occasional flippant remark about George Bush or Iraq out of a Bio professors mouth than with faith- or corporate based science/history/anything.
Michael Bérubé has a post, "Indoctrinate U.," that shows how ludicrous Horowitz's claims are.
Here's an example of how pathetic the right-wingers are:
You see, absence of evidence is evidence.
Sarah said,
(1) IIRC that often-repeated claim is based on a single questionaire of dubious quality. I challenge you to provide a proper citation, so the quality of this claim can be debated.
(2) Suppose the claim were true.
(a) Many journalists are working stiffs with no opportunity to bias coverage of important news stories with potential political impact. E.g., the local reporter on a crime beat.
(b) The ultimate editorial control of a journalistic organization lies with publishers (producers, in the case of broadcast) and top editors. Their ideological orientation is likely not the same as workaday journalists. IIRC in almost all presidential elections in the US in recent decades, a majority (or perhaps plurality) of the daily papers in the US have endorsed the Republican candidate.
Finally, Chomsky's point about media and corporations---or, more generally, the media and the economically powerful---makes a lot of sense. How do the media support themselves? Advertizing.
FWIW, as a callow youth yrs. truly studied English literature under a founder of the Conservative (very) party in New York. It was a not so subtle attempt at indoctrination into both religion and politics. There was much less of this overt silliness in my other classes, some of which were taught by folk on the right (and left), but I remember the one example more clearly than all the others.
The best course made it clear what were the facts and what were the interpretations. The really good ones showed how different structural frameworks could be used to interpret the facts to bring out different things.
As to your fellow students, they are 18 year olds. What did you expect?
I still maintain that there's a hellofa difference between aggressive liberal profs indocrinating their views into the blank minds of the undergrads, and passive profs who let the aggressively liberal undergrads force their views upon the class.
No, there isn't a huge difference, but that's irrelevant. The point is that both of these things happen, and the former more frequently.
And Sarah, it would be impossible for campuses to be 80% conservative. The American conservative movement has thrown its lot in with anti-intellectuals, fraudsters and hacks. The academic world is much better off with the occasional flippant remark about George Bush or Iraq out of a Bio professors mouth than with faith- or corporate based science/history/anything.
In other words, your bias is better than my bias. With no uncertainty whatsoever, you can say that your point of view is correct and mine is wrong, ipso facto students ought to be deprived the choice. That kind of self-assuredness sends chills down my spine. Even still, it's a phony self-assuredness, because anyone who is truly confident in his convictions believes they can stand up to the light of scrutiny. You obviously don't.
liberal, all you need to do is look at all the trouble the NY Times is having lately. But I exaggerated the number -- apparently it's around 60-80%. Go ahead and refute it -- it's always easier to write something off as "flawed" than to deal with the meaning of the results. And if you don't believe that a person who presents an account of some occurrence or issue to the general public, who picks and chooses what issues the public reads about/watches (after all, he doesn't have unlimited resourches), isn't influenced by his own biases, you are detached from reality. I don't even completely trust supposed right-wing news sources -- I read everything.
As to your fellow students, they are 18 year olds. What did you expect?
I don't expect a whole lot from 18 year-olds, but I do expect professors to uphold standards of decent behavior in their classrooms. (How many times do I have to repeat this?)
Actually, I take that back, Eli. I do expect more from 18 year-olds. I learned in kindergarten that it wasn't OK to tell people to shut up and call names.
Well, it seems that Pinko Punko and liberal beat me to the points I was going to make, but those who are claiming a liberal bias in universities should answer this: Why should there be more conservatives in university, considering the nature of the anti-intellectualism inherent in many conservative beliefs? Some of their beliefs even show an outright hostility to science and critical thinking that those who hold these views with a death grip may find having their views (and consequently themselves, as many take these things personally) being strongly challenged to be vicious attacks on them, thereby causing them to find the environment hostile and as a consequence ending their studies or finding a place they can attend where their views aren't challenged (and there are such places). When you see the up-is-down logic of Ms. Neal's quote shown in #69 (the Berube piece nails it), it's impossible not to think that this is another (in a long, sad line) of those ginned-up non-issues that are brought up with hysteria by the more radical of the right-wing solely to intimidate people and institutions which don't toe their line.
Sarah,
When you say the purpose of universities is to "promote the free exchange of ideas", I take it that one could substitute the word "respectful" for "free". On this point I couldn't agree more. Presumably, one would also be in favour of this type of exchange in other forums as well; this blog for example.
I find it somewhat ironic then, that in pleading for the respectful exchange of ideas, you nevertheless resort to the same sort of behaviour that you are busy condemning "(And, please, for God's sake, spare me Chomsky's argument for corporate news bias.)". Spare you the argument? Well for YOUR sake :)--I won't. The basic argument as already alluded to runs like this:
This is only one example of the systemic bias that exists which favours one idealogy (right-wing) over another. And as others have suggested, I would submit that this bias alone dwarfs any potential bias on university campuses (having gone through nine years of university at 3 different schools studying physics and economics I can't say I've seen much of the antics you describe, but maybe that's the difference bewteen the U.S. and the rest of the western world...)
Ok that's my attempt at "a free exchange of ideas". Your turn.
Q: What's worse than a pathetic whiner?
Perhaps David Horowitz can help answer the question:
A: A dishonest pathetic whiner!
Folks, this is like freebasing irony.
Sarah, I kinna suspect you had a fairly large mote in your own eye there.
Why should there be more conservatives in university, considering the nature of the anti-intellectualism inherent in many conservative beliefs?
This is very convenient. Leftists have a very nifty way of defining their point by using a lofty word like "intellectual," and then by definition everyone else is the opposite.
It's not that the right is anti-intellectual, it's that the right has a problem with the pretense of the exercise of the intellect that masquerades as true use of the intellect. The fact is that the people on the left who control universities are scared to death of certain ideas. They refuse to listen. Look at the absolute hysteria that ensued when the president of Harvard University dared to challenge feminist ideas. University leftists are absolutely determined to stifle certain ideas. Look at what happened with the Pennsylvania school board "intelligent design" controversy. The school board was told that ID has no place in science class, and should be taught in philosophy class. So in California, a high school tried to do just that -- teach ID in a philosophy class -- and now it's being sued by same group that challenged the Pennsylvania school board. They absolutely lied about their intention, which is to completely stifle a certain idea. Rather than take something head-on because of confidence in their beliefs, rather than let supposedly backwards right-wing ideas stand beside those of the superior left and let the chips fall where they may, the left stifles.
As for the Chomsky argument, the bottom line is that the advertisers won't do anything to alienate their customers. Ultimately the consumer determines what makes it to the news.
Take made-for-TV movies. A very large number of these movies are about long-suffering and abused housewives. The reason for this is because the people whom advertisers are most trying to reach are women. It is a well-established fact that women control about 85% of the spending in a household. But women are much more inclined toward left-leaning ideas and issues than men. Like in Canada right now, 42% of men will vote for the Conservative Party in the next election, and 29% for the Liberals. For women, it's turned around. So everyone knows that women, as a group, support the left more than the right -- and they control 85% of spending. Now, advertisers, when it comes down to a choice between promoting certain views or making a buck, they're going to make a buck. They aren't going to alienate their target. Chomsky is trying to have it both ways by saying that greedy capitalist corporations would do anything for a profit, but then they would sacrifice their profit to promote their views.
Another example is what happened with the whole Rosa Parks thing and the transit boycott in Birmingham, Alabama. Blacks were able to hurt downtown businesses by boycotting the bus system, and in the end, it was the white business-owners who went to the city government and petitioned to stop the transit segregationist crap -- because their businesses were being hurt. Now what most people don't know is that the transit system used to be private from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and when the government passed a law regulating the interaction of blacks and whites on the system, the private transit company refused to enforce it because they didn't want to alienate their black customers. This whole problem didn't occur until the government started to run the transit system. The point is, business wants to make a profit. Period. It will not risk alienating its clientele.
The trend in the media that is truly disturbing is that people are carving out market share by telling other people what they want to hear. CNN caters to the left, and Fox to the right. They're pretending to give information, but what they're really doing is just massaging everyone's prejudices and assumptions. It's dangerous. You get someone like Michael Moore who is making huge profits by telling the left exactly what it wants to hear, and that's because there's a huge market for it. Half of America is dying to hear how bad the right is, and someone's cashing in.
And at this point the discussion has reached the limit of its usefulness for me, so that's all I've got to say. Have fun. :-)
Funny I thought it was those left-leaning reporters who determined what makes it to the news.
Chomsky is trying to have it both ways by saying that greedy capitalist corporations would do anything for a profit, but then they would sacrifice their profit to promote their views.
Riiight - because corporations have a vested interest in preventing movies-of-the-week about abused wives. Explain to me how this applies to news reporting about corporate issues that might lead consumers to know stuff that could hurt a company's profits. (And then you turn around and tell us CNN is left-wing - CNN has endorsed the nationalisation of key indutries when, exactly? Oh, wait, you probably meant 'liberal' - which means CNN is as pro "free" market as FoxNews. Some diversity of views you've got there.)
The function of the attack on the supposed bias of universities is to wrest credibility from publicly funded, tenured (and therefore independent) academics and transfer it to privately funded thinktanks whose "fellows" know their salaries are dependent on their corporate benefactors liking what they hear. The real danger the right perceives in universities is the fact that the thinkers there aren't sufficiently owned.
Sarah Writes:
"Look at what happened with the Pennsylvania school board "intelligent design" controversy. The school board was told that ID has no place in science class, and should be taught in philosophy class. So in California, a high school tried to do just that — teach ID in a philosophy class — and now it's being sued by same group that challenged the Pennsylvania school board. They absolutely lied about their intention, which is to completely stifle a certain idea"
In the Dover Pennsylvania case members of the board of education tried to introduce ID as science. It was shown in the trial that some of the board members wanted to replace the fact of evolution with creationism. The judge noted that some of board members had lied to the court about their religious motivations.
The California case the class is called philosophy but is not. It is teaching ID (creationism) as fact. It is a thinly veiled attempt to get around the prohibition of the government promoting a religion.
There is NO intelligent design controversy. Evolution is fact ID is creationism with hand waving.
Tim wrote, "there is little danger of actual facts about the world contaminating the pure flow of disinformation."
I've been de facto banned from Tim Blair's site for pointing out that they should put their money where their mouths are and place bets over global warming. They actively shield themselves from actual facts.
'Bye, Sarah.
I presume you are the same Sarah who thought citing the Oregon petition<.phpa> was a telling argument against global warming.
For what it's worth, I can see no evidence that The Left has suppressed your views, or has needed to. To the extent that you have chosen to embrace voodoo climatology and faith-based biology (see above), any injury to your credibility is a self-inflicted wound.
...David Horowitz, the conservative activist who has led the push for the hearings in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, admitted that he had no evidence to back up two of the stories he has told multiple times to back up his charges that political bias is rampant in higher education.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/01/11/retract
Good catch, jre.
Same silly Sarah, same lack of discernment<.phpa>, same quitting pattern.
And note bro ben is tag-teaming there too.
Best,
D
re: 57,70 ...
"Proper citation" about majority of journalists are liberal -- don't care.
"Proper citation" that the media is liberal (already posted in this thread in #59), http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=6664
Still no takers?
Or at least it's measurable for the "major media" of the study.
Mr Church-
Re: 61
Your small, but important correction to #2 post 9, is of course appropriate.
However, your subsequent conclusion that "Ultimately, McKitrick is attempting to show that there's no meaningful way to measure global temperature change (and ultimately thermal energy content of the atmosphere), either warming or cooling, making global warming an imaginary math trick." is worth arguing.
Please read TBS itself (and not just the briefing), and judge their point that reducing a complex chaotic global system (with turbulence < weather < climate) to a single intensive scalar, a global-temperature (or "T-Rex" as they call it) is physically absurd. Principal arguments include measure methods, AND also that the averaging statistic has no physical meaning for the intensive variable T and for non-equilibrium reasons.* That may not stop people from using it as an indicator; but from a physics-thermodynamics stand point, that doesn't make it an indicator with an accepted physical-thermodynamic meaning. And using therm-lightweights like Dr Lambert to render authoritative opinions on the validity of the global-T climate indicator doesn't help your case - he's deferring to Mr Rabett, who has his own troubles in the field.
*In a briefing-only critique (to date), Mr Rabett is fond of hyping this distinction as "obscure" on his blog, not recognizing or ignoring that this discussion refers to the earth's atmosphere, in fact a non-equilibrium system -- an error not atypical some of his thermodynamically flawed generalizations.
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Re: 60
Dr Lambert-
Just because Mr Church made an obvious mistake in characterizing Dr McKitrick's (and Essex) position in post 9 #2 (corrected in 61), does not mean that my degree and post-graduate work in physics has magically sunk below your weak expertise (as demonstrated on this blog). But questioning me to the minimal level of the thermodynamically-naked emperor Dano (re: "studied any physics at all?), seems to be an uncharacteristically wild swing from you?
You're a deservedly recognized talent in an extended (post-publishing) review process; but at this time, your thermodynamics background clearly isn't up to the standard you've demonstrated elsewhere - Dr Thermos wins this game.
Let me get this straight. You claim to have a done post-graduate work in physics and can't see anything wrong with the physics in TBS? Oh dear.