Paul Ryan's recent string of whoppers was brazen enough (by contemporary standards) to set off the punditocracy, including War Room host Jennifer Granholm's op-ed on how Lying might be the new normal. Seizing on Neil Newhouse's recent ... admission ... that the Romney campaign is "not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers," Granholm trotted out James Kouzes and Barry Posner's Leadership Challenge, which includes the importance of honesty. But the Leadership Challenge's response to the question, When faced with the dilemma of telling your boss the truth or what he or she wants to hear, what do you do? is that yes, that is a very good question. The same goes with an electorate that wants to be lied to.

After the fabricated tales of Iraqi nuclear weapons, after the swift boat campaign, after Obama's team made the umpteenth use of the longstanding CIA-New York Times pipeline, are we surprised?

The truth is more horrible: we don't want the truth. We want our lies, because our lies do not undermine the little worlds we create for ourselves. As James Bennett observes, the ad containing Ryan's lie is running because it is effective. We vote for people who lie to us. We've been doing that for years. And so we elect the officials we deserve.

How many people even read a party platform? The Republican Party's 62-page document in eight parts addresses issues from the ideological bias "deeply entrenched within the current university system" to the threat posed by non-compulsory non-treaty resolutions of the UN.

Of course, the Democratic Platform will probably be a similarly stuffed goose, and RNC Chair Reince Priebus told one of those inadvertent truths when he said that GOP platform 'not the platform of Mitt Romney'. Of course, it is Romney who is running, not the platform committee, which suggests that a platform committee is really a cage to keep hyperactive activists out of real trouble.

Pseudoscience was a creation of the Renaissance: the founders of what we now call "science" also dabbled in alchemy, astrology, numeralogy, and other enthusiasms. Some (like Newton) were serious, others (like Kepler) knew that they were scamming, but it was a genuine grass-roots movement, not (originally) intended to deceive. Which brings us to ... economics.

A jaundiced look at the laureates of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel during the 1980s and 1990s, for all that mathematical modeling of whatever they were modeling, raises the awkward issue of physics envy. But, asked the Lakatos Seminar of Milton Friedman, is it science?

Even worse, a former director of of the London School of Economics asks if it is even technology: he reports that Europe's financial officials find all those models (which won all those Nobel prizes) are not particularly helpful. Well, maybe not if you want rebuild Europe's economy. But if you want to influence policy to benefit your friends, the smoke and mirrors, especially with a few Nobel prizes as props, can be very useful. Of course, as the latter op-ed observes, real sciences are not immune; indeed, if there is a truly real science, it is epidemiology, and the Tobacco Institute and its ilk corrupted not a few epidemiologists.

One basic rule is that a real expert has to be able to explain without appeals to authority. The moment an expert says, "as an expert," hold onto your wallet.

Pseudoscience was a creation of the Renaissance: the founders of what we now call "science" also dabbled in alchemy, astrology, numeralogy, and other enthusiasms. Some (like Newton) were serious, others (like Kepler) knew that they were scamming, but it was a genuine grass-roots movement, not (originally) intended to deceive. Which brings us to ... economics.

A jaundiced look at the laureates of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel during the 1980s and 1990s, for all that mathematical modeling of whatever they were modeling, raises the awkward issue of physics envy. But, asked the Lakatos Seminar of Milton Friedman, is it science?

Even worse, a former director of of the London School of Economics asks if it is even technology: he reports that Europe's financial officials find all those models (which won all those Nobel prizes) are not particularly helpful. Well, maybe not if you want rebuild Europe's economy. But if you want to influence policy to benefit your friends, the smoke and mirrors, especially with a few Nobel prizes as props, can be very useful. Of course, as the latter op-ed observes, real sciences are not immune; indeed, if there is a truly real science, it is epidemiology, and the Tobacco Institute and its ilk corrupted not a few epidemiologists.

One basic rule is that a real expert has to be able to explain without appeals to authority. The moment an expert says, "as an expert," hold onto your wallet.

Many people say that they don't vote because of the lousy choices they have, as if those lousy choices were dictated by Mars. But those lousy choices were made in the primaries. Turnout in the primaries is so low that each voter has far greater impact; but most eligible voters can't be bothered. The St. Petersburg Times reported the results for Florida primaries this summer: about a fifth of the eligible voters showed up at the polls, in only nine of the 158 legislative races did at least 10 % of the voters cast a ballot, and about a quarter of the races had no opposition.

The Times did not remark on the (longstanding) fecklessness of Florida's Democratic Party - in a number of races for competitive districts, there were no Democratic candidates - but they did quote pundits and politicians blaming redistricting, lobbyists, campaign contributions, space aliens, anything except the voters who couldn't be bothered despite several races in which the victory margin was in the double digits. A reminder: in a democracy like America, we get the government we deserve.

Wernher von Braun (L) led the engineers that built the rocket that took Neil Armstrong (R) to the Moon; images from NASA.

And we set off to the Moon because we got a kick in the pants. The Soviet Union didn't get a head start; after WW2, they didn't rest on their laurels like we did. That is how they got into space, and got a man into space, first.

Sergei Korolev (L) led the engineers that built the rocket that took Yury Gagarin (R) into space; images from NASA and ROSCOSMOS.

Neil Armstrong has just died, and his era seems almost like another, more heroic, age...

The American Society of Civil Engineers, which has been nagging us about the deterioration of America's roads, dams, bridges, etc., has decided to hand out grades to Florida cities, and Tampa got a C. We got a D- for failure to maintain or replace schools, a D for storm drains that don't drain, a rather generous C- for our transit system, and so on. Of course, we all know the reason for all this: low taxes and low impact fees means that there is no money for maintenance and repair. Meanwhile, our infrastructure may be in for another test, with guests coming and Isaac thinking about dropping in.

Tampa Bay is that little hook halfway down the western Florida coast.

Two years ago, a "Shadow Scholar" wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education that he had written perhaps five thousand papers for undergraduate and graduate students. Using the pen name Ed Dante, he wrote that I've written toward a master's degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, ... international diplomacy, ... hospitality, business administration, ... accounting, ... history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports, ... management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. ... All for someone else. The Chronicle's article (for subscribers) is posted on-line. (See a response posted at Inside Higher Ed.) A few people hoped that it was just a hoax, especially considering his description of companies with rooms full of writers churning out term papers. Well, he just came out of the closet...

The Chronicle interviewed him again, and he has written a book. He blamed society more than, say, the professors; the institutions are more to blame, but he said that he could not propose anything that institutions might do differently. "I think everyone is a co-conspirator." For a variety of reasons, students prized grades more than education, but he never came out and said anything like ... that's how we raise kids these days, by stressing grades and standardized exams and the punitive side of education.

We pointy-headed university faculty are like everyone else. We listen to golden rock, comb our hair over our bald spots, and worry about our cholesterol. The difference for university faculty is that this time of year, we are ruefully reminded of the ultimate reality inshrined in those lines from Crock, as he and his sidekick watched the next cohort arrive.

Crock: They get younger every year.

Poulet: No sir. We're getting older.

Each year, like good old Poulet, Beloit College issues its annual Mindset List telling us young-at-heart faculty that incoming freshmen are only eighteen years old, which means that that they were born in 1994, which means that faculty ...

• ... should keep their eyes open for Justin Bieber or Dakota Fanning at freshman orientation.
• Freshmen have always lived in cyberspace, addicted to a new generation of "electronic narcotics."
• The Biblical sources of terms such as "Forbidden Fruit," "The writing on the wall," "Good Samaritan," and "The Promised Land" are unknown to most of them.
• Michael Jackson’s family, not the Kennedys, constitutes "American Royalty."
• If they miss The Daily Show, they can always get their news on YouTube.

Today, the Tampa Tribune ran four opinion pieces by local Pillars of the Community on what the Republican National Convention means for Tampa. Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corporation CEO Rick Homans said that it was Time for Tampa to show our stuff on a world stage, Tampa Bay & co. CEO Kelly Miller writes that We're out to make a lasting impression, Tampa Bay Partnership CEO Stuart Rogel wrote about Showcasing Tampa, up close and personal, and Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce CEO Bob Rohrlack claims that Tampa relishes businesses, both large and small -- all claimed that the investment in our tax dollars was worth it. Oh yes, sounding very much like Mary Poppins at Uncle Albert's, on page 2 of the Views section, American Meteorological Society president-elect Marshall Shepherd observes that the Tampa Bay metropolitan area is especially vulnerable to sea level changes and warns on Tampa Bay area and climate change: Better pay attention -- but most delegates probably would rather not.

Speaking of lovable Uncle Albert, on August 26, the day before the Convention -- and the day before classes start at the University of South Florida -- Ron Paul's fans will be holding a rally for him at the USF Sundome, the basketball stadium on east campus, where a lot of people park. Paul was the favorite of Republican students, and as David Horsey observed, Paul was almost unique in that his supporters actually liked him. For details, see the Sundome page on the event -- and don't forget that Elton John is coming on September 14.

In nine days, the Biggest Show Tampa Ever Hosted opens, and as Creative Loafing puts it, One might compare the convention preparation to old-school senior prom night. Much like the city’s pre-RNC expenditures, prom money is spent on dresses that will never be worn again. Resources that might otherwise be used to fix the car or pay for a college class are spent on coiffing, extravagant meals and limousines.... Creative Loafing posted several examples of preparations, in particular the new palms planted along Bayshore Boulevard, one of the major Tampa scenes:

Perhaps the greatest discovery of the Nineteenth Century was that the Earth was vastly older than anyone (except various Hindu mystics) had imagined. And thanks to Louis Agassiz -- the last serious creationist -- we know that we live in an unusually placid moment. We are nearly three million years into the Pleistocene, the Age of Bizarre Weather, complete with Mr. Agassiz's ice ages. Climatologists are still working on the Pleistocene's pathologies, but considering the havoc even minor meteorological tantrums have wreaked on human civilizations -- like the Little Ice Age -- and considering concerns that another full-scale ice age may be imminent, perhaps our instinct for self-preservation might induce us to start managing the weather rather than let "natural processes" drive us back into the caves, or worse.

Global warming (or, to be more precise, ocean warming) may push us into it. While it all started with Joseph Fourier (almost immediately after the death of the phlogiston theory and the development of the modern theory of combustion), Global Warming as a phenomenon and a problem to be solved only emerged into public debate recently. Considering that the Pleistocene played a major part in human evolution for nearly three million years, and played a major part in the emergence and extinction of many hominid species, if we cannot handle a minor glitch like Global Warming then the Pleistocene may well do to us what it did to our cousin hominids.

Saints are admired at a great distance, but they can be hard to live with. The United States discovered this when Cardinal Mindszenty took refuge in the US embassy in Budapest -- for fifteen years. Four decades after Mindszenty's release, Her Majesty's government may wind up playing Hungary's old role (like Hungary, at the behest of a patron). Julian Assange, who resembles Mindszenty in inflexibility (among other things), has taken refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London.

Her Majesty's government seems determined to retain the Blair-era moniker "America's lapdog", and is even insinuating that the British government might not honor the embassy's immunities, although Mr. Hague's assurance that there was "no threat" of storming the embassy must have been greeted with mixed feelings by nostalgic Hungarians. Meanwhile, the Guardian has provided Graham Greene fans with live coverage -- Julian Assange granted asylum by Ecuador. And Ecuador is beginning to wonder what embassy life might be like with Assange underfoot for the next fifteen years...

Despite retired NYPD officer and John Jay College Police Science Professor Eugene O'Donnell's advice to "Make arrests early to nip things in the bud," Tampa Police told the Tampa Tribune that during the Republican National Convention, they intend to avoid the sort of antics that have gotten the NYPD in the news lately: Police to use patience first with RNC protesters. Meanwhile, both major metropolitan dailies have sites dedicated to the coming convention: the Tampa Bay Times has a page devoted to the Republican National Convention while the Tampa Tribune has a page devoted to RNC 2012 Tampa and another to a Visitors' Guide

Just as pundits are agog over Mitch Romney selecting Paul Ryan as his running mate in the upcoming election for leader of the central third of a continental mass on a small planet orbiting a yellow dwarf (yes, our Sun is a mere yellow dwarf), we are reminded that there's a whole universe out there. Our old acquaintances, the Perseids, wowed everyone who could tear themselves from the TV and the internet and look outside...

Meanwhile, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III has just released the biggest three-dimensional map of the universe ever created (see the video). And 4.5 million people watched Curiosity land on Mars - and another 3.5 million watched the landing on the Internet. Curiosity has a quarter million Facebooks likes and nearly a million twitter followers, and crowds at Times Square erupted into cheers of "NASA, NASA, NASA" and "USA, USA, USA" while watching the landing.

Said Robert Burns to a louse, O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us / To see oursels as ithers see us! But if we did this, what would happen to politics? After all, one side has a monopoly on virtue and truth, while the other is full of villainy and lies. And lest we blame the pundits for this, take a look in the mirror.

Harvard success-ologist Heide Halverson, writing about a new book by psychologist Timothy Wilson, says that how we see ourselves is only weakly correlated with how others see us. Allying herself with Burns, she says that this is counterproductive, for only by an objective look at ourselves can we improve.

But do we want to know? Business psychologist Dan Ariely warns us of what he might say. We lie. We cheat. We bend the rules. We break the rules. ... [b]ut, remarkably, this doesn’t stop us from thinking we’re wonderful, honest people. We’ve become very good at justifying our dishonest behaviors so that, at the end of the day, we feel good about who we are. As if we are sleepwalking (and Wilson would suggest that, in a sense, we are), we take little steps down that primrose path - and there are no signs saying, Hell, 25 miles. Writing about one traveler, Ariely writes: He started off small, as people tend to do, and never considered that he might get caught. As time went by, it got easier and easier for him to cheat the system free of guilt. But then he got caught, and now it’s too late to correct his mistakes.

Of course, this the result of a deliberate policy. The conservative theologian C. S. Lewis got hold of a speech composed by the Demon Screwtape, in which that awesome shade supported the Devil's new policy of pursuing people like ... the grubby little nonentity who had drifted into corruption, only just realizing that he was corrupt, and chiefly because everyone else did it ...

But as Dale Carnegie observed, people need to feel good about themselves. Al Capone was just a businessman and Napoleon whined, Whose blood have a shed? We don't want to know how others see us. We don't want to know how the man in the mirror sees us. We don't believe in Screwtape. And our motto for politics is: I'm perfect, but you are a mess.

A research team has found that as the Ozone Hole expands, Ultraviolet B hitting the ocean increases, damaging coral reefs and other ocean creatures. Team leader Moira Llabres was most interested in the effects of UVB on ocean critters, but she reminded us of "the evidence that high levels of UV continue affecting human health, such as skin cancer and ocular damage."

Under the heading of "stereotypes confirmed" comes a recent survey described in Inside Higher Ed: 37 % of the social psychologists surveyed said that in deciding between two equally qualified applicants to hire as new faculty, one conservative and one liberal, they would choose the liberal. A few even said that a "conservative perspective" would negatively impact their decision on whether to recommend publishing a paper or recommend funding a grant (both academic journal publication and grant awards depend heavily on recommendations by anonymous reviewers - volunteers recruited by journal editors and grant agency directors).

Inside Higher Ed tilts toward the humanities and social sciences, so of course the stereotype they address is that of entrenched liberals discriminating against conservatives. This stereotype has suffered from several recent studies suggesting that aspiring academics self-select for their fields: liberals go into the liberal arts and conservatives go into business. The stereotype off of Inside Higher Ed's radar would be a common reaction of natural science and engineering types: this is the sort of behavior one would expect of social scientists (and business, too, for that matter). I do not know of any evidence that natural science and engineering faculty are more objective and disinterested than those of other fields, but the presumption is a common one.

Meanwhile, the business psychologists have been conducting studies suggesting that homogeneous groups tend to be happier (and possibly more self-satisfied) than heterogeneous groups, but that the heterogeneous groups are more productive.

The next Congressional deadline for dealing with the budget is January 1; if Congress does not act by then, certain machinery will starting "fixing" things automatically, with potentially dire results (although pundits agree that no fix at all would be even more dire). But it's election year, and Fearing an Impasse in Congress, Industry Cuts Spending, raising the prospect of another economic dip. Considering that these industrialists are the ones filling the political atmosphere with vast amounts of money - and therefore arguably enabling the current Congress - it's surprising that they can't get better service.

There is no evidence of extraterrestrial life at present - which may not mean much, considering that as of two decades ago, there was no evidence of extra-solar planets - but the problem of finding it is a very good problem for developing biology, planetology, and space exploration.

NASA has landed a roving robot called Curiosity on Mars, and it will be spending hopefully two years browsing the terrain, ostensibly looking for "life" (whatever that is), but more precisely investigating the chemistry and geology of our most beguiling neighbor. We do not know what we will find - we never do, in pure science - but if we weren't driven to explore, we would still be living in caves.

With only three weeks to go, the Tampa Bay Times included a special section whose feature article profiles one of the architects of the Republican choice of Tampa: RNC 2012 might be Al Austin's biggest Tampa project yet. Austin is one of the many Florida businessmen whose business (he's a developer) depends on "growth", and like many Florida businessmen, he has sought growth for Florida by pursuing showy prestige projects. But as far as Tampa's substance goes, I should mention that the University of South Florida (where I profess mathematics) was just listed in the Washington Post's College, Inc. column as one of Five universities that really are up-and-comers - a considerable accomplishment considering the nonfeasant if not hostile treatment of Florida universities by a state government that is entirely in the hands of the political party Austin supports and whose national convention is now visiting us.

Meanwhile, the Tampa Tribune reports that Officials say TIA is ready for convention-week rush, and for entertainment, that RNC protesters push causes from jobs to wars; anticipated participants include CODEPINK, Coptic Christians Against Persecution, Doctors for America, Fight Back Florida, Florida Consumer Action Network, Food Not Bombs, March on the RNC, Morning in America, Planned Parenthood, Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, Pray Tampa Bay, ResistRNC (Occupy the RNC), Service Employees International Union, West Central Florida Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO), and several other groups lacking websites (!).

Chick fil-A CEO Dan Cathy's recent statements to Baptist Press News on being closed on Sundays, on not divorcing, on philanthropy, and of course, on gay marriage (see if you can locate the nudge, nudge, wink, wink in the story) has generated much media coverage. It has also generated lots of college student interest. So, um, what does the Bible say about gay marriage?

This is tricky, since people are prone to project their own fantasies into the Bible, e.g., whether Genesis 19 is about inhospitality, homosexual rape, or what. The only unequivocal statements about homosexuality that I know of in the Old Testament are Leviticus 18:22 ("Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination") and Leviticus 20:13. Levitican references are problematic because Leviticus is full of abominations, most of which wound up in the dustbin thanks to Peter and Paul (see, e.g., Acts 10).

Turning to the New Testament, the whole issue is the sort of business that would win one of Jesus Christ's snippy remarks (beginning with "O, hypocrites ..."). Unlike divorce, which won the unequivocal That shalt not dump thy first frump in order to acquire a trophy wife (or words to that effect in Mark 10:9), Jesus does not say anything definite about homosexuality (yes, eunuchs came up, but eunuchs are not homosexuals). That leaves Paul's rants, who raised the issue in Romans 1:26 (scholars agree that homosexuality is one of the things he's ranting about), 1 Corinthians 6:26 (the guess is that the Greek word arsenokoites, translated into "effeminate" by King James' committee, means "homosexual"), and 1 Timothy 1:9 (there's arsenokoites again). A jaundiced retort would be that the "disobedient" are also on Paul's list of people destined for Hell, and considering Paul's position on slavery...

And nothing at all about gay marriage, with marriage itself a troublesome subject. The purpose of marriage, according to the Old Testament, is to be fruitful and multiply. No, according to the Romans, it was the cement holding society together. And Paul was a good Roman, for in 1 Corinthians 7, he starts by observing that of course sex is dirty (he doesn't quite put it that way) but then, he says, if the couple can't control themselves, they should at least get married so that they wouldn't be living in sin.

Following that logic...

Elaine Scarry reviews a book by Steve Pinker, and proposes that Poetry [and Novels] Changed the World. Although his name does not appear in this piece, it all starts with Johannes Gutenberg, whose (probable) invention of lead typecasting started the great decline in the price of books. As prices fell, the number of different titles increased (from 500 per decade at 1600 to 7,000 per decade at 1800), the number of books printed increased, and literacy rates rose until by the end of the Nineteenth century, the majority of Danes, Englishmen, Finns, Frenchmen, Germans, Icelander, Scots, Swedes, and Swiss were literate.

Pinker suggests that the novel was particularly important. In an era with very poor communication or transport, where most people lived and died within a few miles of their birthplace, books revealed that there were other, very different people who still had thoughts and dreams of their own. Scarry proposes that literacy helped impart a kind of empathy, a greater ability to place onesself in someone else's shoes. Moving on, Scarry observes that this diversity of opinion shows up in "disputation poetry" (debates between violets and roses, between age and youth, etc.), and suggests that poetry may have also played a role in changing the world's mindset. And this being an essay by a professor of English in a literary magazine, Scarry suggests that beauty itself helped tame the beast.

Another possibility arises from two famous observations. Arthur Schopenhauer said that protesting released pressure like a steam safety valve (hence people were "letting off steam"). Meanwhile, Sigmund Freud once said that civilization began when someone responded to an injury with a curse. Mass literature provides a remarkably rewarding forum for letting off steam with volleys of curses. This is a very unesthetic observation, but while we may complain about toxic election campaigns, it is certainly an improvement over the traditional method of raising armies and warring over the capitol. Perhaps political yapping saved the world ...

The Tampa Tribune reports that Most downtown Tampa businesses will be open for business during the RNC (okay, that isn't quite what the headline said). The City of Tampa is maintaining a website on City Services during the 2012 RNC. Come and spend money!

Back ...

• Backwards in time to July 2012.
• Back to the Ticker Archives.
• Back to the Liberal Moonbat Home.