Events

Via Sullivan, a suggestion from Dan McAdams about the difficulties some people have accepting natural selection theory: A story is a narrative account of a motivated character who acts to achieve certain goals or ends over time. Every great story you can think of—from Homer’s Iliad to your favorite television show—involves characters who pursue goals over time, characters who want something and set out to achieve it. In this sense, the classic biblical creation stories are very good stories. You have a...

Or, as Krugman puts it, Eurodämmerung: Some of us have been talking it over, and here’s what we think the end game looks like: 1. Greek euro exit, very possibly next month. ... 4b. End of the euro. And we’re talking about months, not years, for this to play out. Good thing I only have about €15 in cash. Though I do have some escudos and pesetas somewhere...

It looks like we're not hearing the truth about anthropogenic climate change. Who's keeping the lid on the data? Climate scientists: Climate scientists have been consistently downplaying and underestimating the risks for three main reasons. First, their models tended to ignore the myriad amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks that we now know are kicking in (such as the defrosting tundra). Second, they never imagined that the nations of the world would completely ignored their warnings, that we would...

Leave it to a British newspaper to create such a clear diagram of states' policies: On the same subject, Illinois Governor Pat Quinn today promised to pass a gay-marriage law...someday: Supporters of the gay marriage bill pending in the Illinois House aren't likely to call it for a vote before lawmakers are scheduled to go home May 31. "I think we have a few other things on our plate, like pensions, health care, Medicaid, public safety, education, the state budget, and I think that's going to take all...

And the office dog is doing what he does best:

The President's announcement yesterday and a new ad this morning make it clear the election 179 days from now is about the future vs. the past: Sullivan comments: One small note. Above, Romney says that we should not discard 3,000 years of history of one-man-one-woman marriage. Ahem. His own family were ardent polygamists only a century ago - and went to Mexican colonies to escape US federal oppression of their version of marriage (which also goes back a long, long way and still exists across the...

The President's stance has evolved: video platform video management video solutions video player Question: when will Romney say something?

I'm not the only one who sees Richard Lugar's defeat last night as more evidence the Republican party, long unmoored from reality, has drifted to the edge of the flat world they inhabit. It turns out, Lugar sees the same thing: [Republican U.S. Senate nominee Richard Mourdock] and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate. In effect, what he has promised...

Today the right wing won two battles in their long, slow, rear-guard war against the 21st century. In North Carolina, voters chose by a 60-40 margin to add an anti-marriage amendment to the state constitution, continuing the tradition of tolerance and modernity established by enlightened statesmen such as Jesse Helms and William Blount: North Carolina has become the 31st state to add an amendment on marriage to its constitution, with voters banning same-sex marriage and barring legal recognition of...

A mailing list I participate in has attracted a troll, which is a person who, deliberately or not, annoys everyone around him with ill-tempered, rude, and stupid questions. Our list's troll has managed to get himself suspended from Wikipedia about 10 times (he's still suspended), mostly for "incivil tone" and for missing the purpose of Wikipedia. This kind of user has haunted every online community since The WELL and CompuServe—yea, even unto the days of the of dial-up BBS. This guy is simply the first...