Morality and logic

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7288/full/464490a.html

Worthwhile, interesting article that gives another confirmation (at least to me) of the importance one should assign to the power of persuasion.

"Emotions such as empathy and disgust might be at the root of morality, but psychologists should also study the roles of deliberation and debate in how our opinions shift over time."

WaMu

Sen. Tom Coburn was in action again today along with Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and, frankly, they make a pretty good tag team. Senate hearing into the collapse of Washington Mutual, the largest bank failure in US history (at least according to the 'crawl' across the bottom of the C-SPAN screen), starring WaMu auditors and presidents and CEOs.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/04/13/HP/R/31770/Senate+Hearing+on+2008+Collapse+of+Washington+Mutual+Bank.aspx

One gets the impression that Coburn, Levin, and Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-DE) have uncovered quite a bit of unflattering information during their investigations of WaMu high officials. Despite some initial, modest bravado, the WaMu brass looked extremely uncomfortable in the face of increasingly pointed questioning. Sen. Coburn laid a none-to-subtle reminder on WaMu's former President and CEO, Mr. Kerry Killinger, that a good lawyer never asks a question he doesn't already know the answer to.

You are left modestly satisfied by this round of appetizers. Seems obvious that the main course will be Goldman Sachs with a side of Lehman Brothers.

SIDESHOW: Reports that our own Mitch McConnell was in NYC last week hustling campaign contributions on Wall Street in exchange for promises of obstructionism to any financial reform legislative action comes as... no surprise.

Palin and Bachmann

The two female superstars of the far-right are now a tag team in that cage match we call "life". This first story, from WaPo, gives you the basic details:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/07/AR2010040702599.html

Then, this version from the more uninhibited Politico positively gushes.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35506.html

People thought and still think I'm nuts to offer this... but I won't rule out the possibility of a Palin-Bachmann in 2012 presidential ticket fueled by the tea party contingent. My dark fantasies also can embrace a Ron Paul-Rand Paul ticket as well. Pawlenty, Huckabee, Jindal... all those guys are just posers; wannabe crazies with no true cred or intensity. Palin and Bachmann are The Real Deal.

Sen Coburn

http://www.capitolnewsconnection.org/node/14443

A nice change of pace news item that encourages me quite a bit. Senator (Dr) Tom Coburn (R-OK) has not been one of my favorite people... far from it. But, his comments made during Obama's Health Care Summit caused a sudden respect for a guy from the far-right who's willing to actually talk solutions rather than partisan politics.

The cited article above offers more proof that, just maybe, Coburn is a breakthrough kind of Republican willing to seriously talk about the issues. Difference of opinion and perspective is a very healthy component in a viable democracy, a desirable objective.

The submerging of Republican agenda engineered by Bush/Cheney/Rove beneath the waves of partisan dogmatism and now carried to newer heights with Steele/McConnell/Boehner is not sustainable... at least in my opinion. Dr Coburn's comments hint of better things to come.

UPDATE: 4/8/10
Jeff Sharlet, the Author of The Brethren and whose opinion I respect, has declared the response to Coburn's remark typical of the hopeful, wishful thinking coming out of liberals when a conservative essentially throws out a bone. Jeff's precise term is "goes all gooey" and, I guess, that's where I went.

According to Sharlet, "Coburn was for a long time a man of honest and candid craziness. He breaks with the GOP quite a bit. He's basically a biblical libertarian."

Make me believe

IF the Republican Party would like me to believe they are really concerned about this country and good, ethical governance... would you kindly explain to Senator John Ensign that he must resign immediately? Innocent until proven guilty is one thing, but Ensign doesn't deny a thing.

Complexity

Although I haven't finished dismantling/disrespecting the media just yet, I have found myself sidetracked by the thoughts prompted by a recent article. The following excerpt is from a blog by Clay Shirky: (complete entry here)

In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter looked at several societies that gradually arrived at a level of remarkable sophistication then suddenly collapsed: the Romans, the Lowlands Maya, the inhabitants of Chaco canyon. Every one of those groups had rich traditions, complex social structures, advanced technology, but despite their sophistication, they collapsed, impoverishing and scattering their citizens and leaving little but future archeological sites as evidence of previous greatness. Tainter asked himself whether there was some explanation common to these sudden dissolutions.

The answer he arrived at was that they hadn’t collapsed despite their cultural sophistication, they’d collapsed because of it. Subject to violent compression, Tainter’s story goes like this: a group of people, through a combination of social organization and environmental luck, finds itself with a surplus of resources. Managing this surplus makes society more complex—agriculture rewards mathematical skill, granaries require new forms of construction, and so on.

If you want to perform a "root cause analysis", to discover what the root of any problem might be; you follow (or try to) all the breadcrumb trails back to their source(s). Perhaps the ills of media arise from a cause beyond their ability to address.

Here's a practical experiment. Take a nice clean piece of paper, 8 x 10, a standard straight ruler, and a freshly-sharpened No. 2 pencil and place them all on an appropriate writing surface. Draw a single dot on the paper. Draw a second dot and connect both dots with a single line. Draw a third dot and lines connecting it to the first two dots.

Very quickly (as you get to dots 7, 8, or 9), you're presented with a complex mass of dots and lines with the very real possibility some needed lines between dots will be overlooked.

Substitute "people" for "dots"... or ideas... or opinions. Substitute "consensus" for lines. You understand. Tainter's thesis begins to make some sense, gains a little traction in the mind.

We have created the most complex society in history, not only in this country but throughout the entire world. This sudden, electronic globalization we're experiencing, even as I write this, has spattered the landscape with so many new 'dots' and 'lines' attended by so many disconnections isn't adding to the complexity... it is compounding the complexity.

To escape Tainter's 'Curse', we'd better come to grips with the complexity. Discovering those critical 'inflection points' from which to form action plans and strategies requires factual information of high quality. We are not getting high quality information anymore.

Perhaps it IS too much to ask for media outlet altruism in providing precisely the unbiased, boring reportage when so much more money can be made simply playing to and validating the audience's existing preconceptions. Perhaps the lure of celebrity trumps the notion of humble scribe or valiant crusader. Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations.

Knowledge is Power. The lack of knowledge is... well, uncomfortable at the moment.

Objectivity in the press, who cares?

Here's the scoop. Those of us living outside the Beltway don't have access to unvarnished goings-on of the movers and shakers. C-SPAN offers a little hope, but precious little, as they simply run cameras and capture engineered public pronouncements. Make no mistake, this is a still a good thing, but only up to a certain point.

Without primary, direct access to the newsmakers; WE, the unwashed of Middle America, have to rely upon folks who are making money to -report- the news as a profession. The profession unfortunately these days seems to be casting neutral reporting under the wheels as it's not entertaining enough to hold viewers, readers. So what we end up with is a melange of facts and personal observations from someone who's main concern is whether their hair looks good and the Chyron has their name spelled right. I won't condemn the -entire- profession, just major and increasing portions of it. Communications majors have displaced other, perhaps more appropriate, majors... like history or political science.

Here's the rub. While it's a game or a 'job' to you guys, I'm out here trying to determine which facts in the 'news' I can use to build an accurate worldview. I would like my arguments to bear the force of truth and fact behind them. What I get from the news operations, however, are sophisticated puzzles that have to been de-spun and politically-neutralized... and frankly, I have trouble doing that well. Most people don't even attempt the distillation and swallow down the raw reportage uncomplaining. That's not good. They parrot the product of clever wordsmithing and try to pass it off as erudition.

Finally: What if the "news" is not only spun, but bubbles up from the fevered mind of a self-described "Rodeo Clown" who loves the ratings, but won't be taking any responsibility for the consequences of that content. This is not careless or naive at work here, this is premeditated deception. Free Speech is a great thing and says he can do it, and there appears to be no conscience or corporate media ethics to restrain him.

I do worry about the sudden uptick in militia activity and I do worry about the increasing threat of violence... IF I'm de-spinning all the incoming information correctly. In the back of mind, however, is this agitated little voice wondering whether the threat is smaller... or larger than what's being reported. From where I sit, in Middle America, I don't know and am having trouble finding out.

No, no. -Less- objectivity is better.

A belated, yet interesting, rebuke to my last posting here.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/35257_Page2.html

In essence: CNN has lost 40% of it's audience because it is too centrist, too fact-oriented, too boring. Fox and MSNBC are the models to be emulated. Audiences want "edgy". Read the article for yourself and see what you think.

More bread, more circuses.