David Brooks in today’s NYT:

…Obama has won roughly 70 percent of the most-educated counties in the primary states. Clinton has won 90 percent of the least-educated counties.

There’s something rather disturbing about that. I wonder how Hillary feels about the fact she’s very popular amongst the uneducated?

Two stories that remind me of why I value the First Amendment:

Russia is persecuting minority religions in order to preserve the dominance of the Orthodox Church.

And in the States, a atheist soldier is suing the army because of threats made to him.

- “In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.”

- “Another sergeant allegedly told Specialist Hall that as an atheist, he was not entitled to religious freedom because he had no religion.”

“You know, some people counted me out and said to drop out,” said a glowing Hillary at her Philadelphia victory party, with Bill and Chelsea by her side. “Well, the American people don’t quit. And they deserve a president who doesn’t quit, either.” (NYT)

It’s an interesting argument. “My opponent may be ahead on votes and delegates and he’s going to cross the finish line before me, but because I’ll be close behind I deserve to win.”

I came across this little fellow a couple of evenings ago when we were taking Maia for a walk. He was just behind the house, sunning himself on the riverbank. He didn’t seem to be bothered by my presence at all. He was so well camouflaged that when I looked back after taking my eyes off him for a moment I thought he’d slid off.

One of the standard arguments of anti-evolutionists is that evolution is very unlikely because most mutations are harmful.

In fact, it seems that most mutations are neutral, with only a few being either harmful or beneficial depending on the environment that the organism finds itself in. Various projects are deliberately inducing mutations in, for example, food crops and decorative plants in order to bring about beneficial changes. If the anti-evolutionists were correct these projects would simply fail.

Further than this, scientists have messed with the control mechanisms that tell genes when to turn on and off. Every gene in your body contains the genes for insulin, for making toenails, and for creating brain cells, yet fortunately most of those genes are turned off in most cells most of the time. A complex regulation system tells genes that it’s time to get to work. Messing with that system would seem to be a recipe for catastrophe, and yet it’s not.

When the regulatory mechanisms in E.coli were randomly rewired, 95% percent or the organisms did just fine, and some even benefited.

Mutations can be beneficial. Evolution happens.

Anti-evolutionists (mainly conservative Christians) will pay no attention, of course. As I wrote yesterday, we tend to ignore or dismiss evidence that contradicts our beliefs.

I’m fascinated with memory, and how it works. This interest is practical rather than theoretical. I find that an understanding of memory is important because 1) I’ve often been a student (I’ve spent 10 years of my life in college and university and plan for another three or four more years of study) and had to memorize information, and 2) because we all depend on memory in our day to day lives, for everything we do, although I’m particularly interested in how our memories can give different people conflicting accounts of the same incident.

There are a couple of recent articles in the Times that deal with memory:

Idea Lab - Memory explains some of the limitations of memory, including erroneous eyewitness testimony and vulnerability to being misled by “spin.” Understanding the limitations of memory is important so that we don’t place too much faith in it. Every time, for example, that we retrieve a long term memory we risk adding to or altering it. It’s possible for us (or others) to change our memory of events such that we believe the new version. “Could there possibly have been two people in the car? Did one of them maybe have a beard?” Leading questions make us vulnerable to changing our memories.

In Divided They Fall, Nick Kristof discusses research showing how existing opinions lead to bias in how we perceive and remember events. He also goes into how this leads to polarization — we seek validation for our existing beliefs and opinions and ignore or dismiss contrary evidence. This has led to conservative and liberals in the US living in separate “meme-pools” in which they pay attention only to people with like views. (Actually, liberals are a bit better than conservatives at paying attention to contrary views).

Kristof’s column is based on Farhad Manjoo’s new book, “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.” I plan to get a copy.

I don’t know who the pastor being interviewed is, but he runs rings around the Fox News reporter, who does a great job of showing how “impartial” that channel is. We need more people like this pastor, who can articulately and passionately promote justice.

Selene, Japan’s lunar spacecraft, has been putting together an incredibly detailed map of the moon that includes mineral identifications. That’s all cool, but the sheer Japaneseness of the map below delights me. It’s the moon as Hiroshige would have printed it had he been into astronomy.

If you click on the image you can see a larger (250KB) version that covers the whole of the earthward hemisphere.

My adoption agency sent a link the other day to this huge photoset of images of Ethiopian children, adoption agency staff, and adoptive families.

My wife and I needed a birthday card (it’s Barb’s 50th tomorrow) and we decided to use one we’d bought in Ethiopia. We checked out the web address on the back of the card and found that it was made by an excellent program that gives employment to young women in the southern town of Jimma. They’re nice cards. Why not buy some and help some Ethiopians to support themselves?

Yesterday and today I meditated with a friend who lives a couple of thousand miles away in Spokane, Washington. We both used our computers to log on to Skype, a free service that allows you to talk with other people (and even see them). My computer was set up on a coffee table, with the built-in webcam pointing at the area where I meditate. Priyamitra was likewise sitting in front of his computer. I could see him in full-screen, and he could see me the same way.

We did a little chanting together, and then I rang a bell and we meditated for 40 minutes.

I find it to be very supportive when I sit with other people. My sits are calmer, my mind is more settled, I’m less inclined to restlessness, and the time goes by faster.

I’m very appreciative that I can do this! Just a few years ago the idea of having a full-screen image of a friend meditating 2,000 miles away would have seemed like science fiction.

I’ve been looking into the possibility of having group videoconferencing that would allow a few of us to meet and discuss our practice or to study together, but so far that’s still in the Sci-Fi realms, unless you’re prepared to spend a lot of money. At the moment Skype only enables you to videoconference with one other person, but hopefully they’ll add that facility soon.

There’s a powerful editorial in the NYT today condemning John C. Yoo’s appalling contortions of the law in order to justify the torture and abuse of detainees — There Were Orders to Follow - New York Times — a document the NYT describes as

“Eighty-one spine-crawling pages in a memo that might have been unearthed from the dusty archives of some authoritarian regime and has no place in the annals of the United States.”

Even the US Constitution, and specifically the 4th Amendment, doesn’t limit the government’s actions in Yoo’s opinion.

All of this happened under the reign of the man who promised to bring decency to the Whitehouse.

While apologizing to someone this morning for having inadvertently but carelessly said something that wasn’t true, I caught myself about to use the word “misspoke” and then thought — Hang on, what does that word actually mean?

I realized that the word had come to mind because of Hillary Clinton’s having said that she “misspoke” when she claimed that she’d had to run across a tarmac airfield in order to avoid sniper fire after landing in Bosnia as first lady in 1996.

I then realized instantly that “misspoke” is a weasel word. Weasel words are derived from the weasel’s habit of sucking the contents out of an egg without destroying its shell, and are

deliberately misleading or ambiguous language used to avoid making a straightforward statement while giving the appearance that such has been made. Weasel words are used to deceive, distract, or manipulate an audience. (Wikipedia)

It’s a perfectly valid word in some contexts, of course. We all misspeak from time to time, by which I mean that we mean to say one thing but actually say another. In talking about something that happened last decade I say that it happened in the 1980’s, forgetting that we’re now in the 2000’s. Or I say “increase” when I clearly meant to say “decrease” or “Germany” when I meant to say France. Misspeakings are generally easy to catch, and usually another participant in a conversation can step in and correct the misstatement — because it’s obvious what was intended.

But what does it mean when someone claims to have “misspoken” in saying that she had to run across the tarmac in order to dodge sniper fire, when in fact she walked calmly across the tarmac months into a ceasefire and participated in a ceremony that included a young child? This is no slip of the tongue. To be generous it’s a gross exaggeration (the unlikely possibility of sniper fire did actually exist) and at worst it’s an outright lie intended to convince her audience that she has been tested under fire (literally) and that she has experience that she in fact lacks.

And as for the supposed retraction, in which she confessed only to having “misspoken” — that seems like the perfect example of a weasel word, intended to convey that her gross exaggeration (or lie) was merely a slip of the tongue, embarrassing, perhaps — like calling your wife by the name of an ex-girlfriend — but at heart innocently done.

The word “misspoke” has now in fact become the standard weasel word for politicians wishing to confess their sins while making it appear that they haven’t really done anything wrong.

Rudy Giuliani “misspoke” when he said he was at Ground Zero “as often, if not more than the workers” and “I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to.” (He wasn’t).

John McCain “misspoke” when he declared that his ability to walk freely in the marketplace was a sign of a significant improvement in security in Iraq — not mentioning the heavy security that surrounded him.

It’s time that politicians were challenged on the use of this particular weasel word.

Nick Kristof writes in the Times:

A Congressional study by the Joint Economic Committee found that the sums spent on the Iraq war each day could enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start or give Pell Grants to 153,000 students to attend college. Or if we’re sure we want to invest in security, then a day’s Iraq spending would finance another 11,000 border patrol agents or 9,000 police officers.

Imagine the possibilities. We could hire more police and border patrol agents, expand Head Start and rehabilitate America’s image in the world by underwriting a global drive to slash maternal mortality, eradicate malaria and deworm every child in Africa.

All that would consume less than one month’s spending on the Iraq war.

At the risk of seeming to be obsessed with Obama, while looking for transcripts online I came across one where he mentioned that his given name, Barack, means “blessing” in Arabic.

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to notice this, but that’s my daughter’s name as well. Maia’s birth name is “Bereket,” which also means “blessing” (in Amharic) as well as “abundance” or “gift.”

Michelle Malkin, the neoconservative blogger, and Maureen Dowd, the New York Times’ desperately cynical (and rather liberal) op-ed columnist have something in common today: both pass on misleading statements about Barack Obama’s use of the phrase “God Bless America.”

Malkin has a piece entitled “Newsflash: Obama says “God bless America,” in which she uncritically passes on a comment by the Baltimore Sun: “At a rally shortly before his press conference today, Obama uncharacteristically ended his remarks with the phrase ‘God bless America.’ ”

Dowd says “Newly alert to the perils of not seeming patriotic enough, he ended a speech in Pennsylvania the other morning with “God bless America!’ ”

These people have researchers. They have access to Lexis-Nexus and all those tools that allow you to examine everything that’s been said by anyone of note. So they must be right? Obama doesn’t end speeches by requesting God to bless the United States?

A couple of minutes on Google shows that they are inaccurate (or to put it another way, lazy and incompetent):

July 27, 2004: “Thank you, and God bless America.” (This was Obama’s keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention!)

Feb 25, 2005: May God Bless you, and may God Bless these United States of America.

January 20, 2008: May God bless the memory of the great pastor of this church, and may God bless the United States of America.

Texas, March 5, 2008: “Thank you, San Antonio. God bless you. God bless America.”

Many of the transcripts available online are, moreover, the text of the prepared speech rather than what was actually said. It seems that Obama often invokes blessings spontaneously at the end of his talks, most often ending with “God Bless You.” This means that he may well have used that blessing more often than the available transcripts allow.

I rather like Obama’s unpremeditated approach; it suggests that his closing words are heart-felt rather than prepared and rote. I wish that for every time George Bush had mentioned God he had seriously reflected on what the New Testament actually teaches.

I often have critical words to say about Christians who practice hate or who distort the truth, but I’ll say now that I admire Obama’s Christianity, which strikes me as being compassionate and wise, and embodying the best of Christ’s teachings.

Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 - New York Times.

I wrote to a new friend in Sri Lanka just a couple of weeks ago, and expressed the surprise I experienced every time I read something about Arthur C. Clarke: “My god,” I would think. “Is he still alive?” Well, sadly, he is not.

When I was in my teens I became hooked on science fiction. The first I remember reading was Isaac Asimov, but i quickly took to Arthur C. Clarke’s writings. Rendezvous With Rama sticks with me as one of the most impressive accounts of an encounter with an alien craft imaginable. His Childhood’s End is another engrossing account of our species encountering an alien — and superior — civilization. I read and enjoyed many others, however, including more short stories than I can recall.

It strikes me that those two books, plus 2001: A Space Odyssey — based of course on his short story, The Sentinel — concerned imagined encounters with superior races. There was a sense of humility there: a sense of the unlikelihood that we are really that advanced a species, given the size and age of our universe. And there was also a sense of wonder: what would we learn about ourselves, how would we change, upon meeting another intelligent (more intelligent!) species?

Arthur C. Clarke was a staple of my juvenile reading, although I’m not sure whether I’d still enjoy his writing were I to return to it now with my undoubtedly more refined eye. But his work struck me at the time of reading as being a head above most of the other science fiction writing that I encountered. And he enlarged my world, and expanded my sense of what was possible. And he communicated a love of science. And I am grateful to him, and sad to hear that he has passed on at last.