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This English study of people with Asperger’s syndrome practically describes Sam Harris’s Reason Project:

The suggestion is that people with Asperger’s syndrome do have difficulties with theory of mind: unlike those of us with neurotypical brains, they lack the ability to jump straight to the right decision, almost as a matter of instinct. What they seem to do instead is to work out other people’s beliefs and intentions by means of logical reasoning. As Professor Frith told me, this could easily explain some of the social awkwardness of people with Asperger’s.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with either logic or people with Asperger’s syndrome. But this study does help explain the exasperating inability of atheists, particularly militant atheists such as the New Atheists, to understand the beliefs and intentions of the neurotypical religious majority of the people on the planet.

The fact that a scientific non-entity such as Harris would think to publicly question the ability of a scientist, whose scientific credentials are impeccable, to direct the National Institutes of Health on the sole basis of his unexceptional religious beliefs suggests the real possibility of a link between his atheism and a material brain handicap. Ironically, the theory of atheism as the manifestation of a physical phenomenon fits very well with Harris’s own neuroscientific perspective.

It also helps explain the observable gap between the average atheist’s reliance on logic and his ability to make competent use of it.

A few American Israelis appear to have gone off the deep end ever since Obama chose Cairo over Tel Aviv:

The Pope and the cardinals of the Vatican help organize tours of Auschwitz for Hezbollah members to teach them how to wipe out Jews, according to a booklet being distributed to Israel Defense Forces soldiers. Officials encouraging the booklet’s distribution include senior officers, such as Lt. Col. Tamir Shalom, the commander of the Nahshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade.

I realize there is a German Pope these days, but I find it highly unlikely that he, and the College of Cardinals based in Rome, occupy themselves with providing guided tours to Lebanese terrorists in Poland. As Justin Raimondo wryly notes: “The irony that one of Israel’s most ardent defenders is now using arguments based on theories of genetic superiority may be lost on that country’s knee-jerk defenders at this point….”

It seems to have escaped the attention of nearly everyone, Christian, Jew, and atheist alike, that an America that is not a White European Christian nation is not an America that will lift a finger in order to preserve the only Jewish state. I tend to doubt those Muslim Somalis in Minnesota lose much sleep over the prospective fate of Israel.

The Israelis have the same right to exist and defend themselves that any other nation does. Their right of conquest is no less legitimate than that of dozens of other nations. But I fail to see how actively attempting to create more enemies than they already have, or fostering even greater reliance on the USA, serves any rational Israeli interest.

In which I address the recent matter of Adam Roberts’s criticism of the recently published Hugo Award shortlist.

Are you smarter than a Nobel-prize winning economist?

There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don’t know when or whether you’ll need care — but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor’s office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.

This tells you right away that health care can’t be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can’t just trust insurance companies either — they’re not in business for their health, or yours….

The second thing about health care is that it’s complicated, and you can’t rely on experience or comparison shopping. (”I hear they’ve got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary’s!”) That’s why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners.

So, here’s the challenge for the economically literate readers here. Can you spot the flaws in Paul Krugman’s assertion that health care is a special case not subject to the basic laws of economics?

I found this chapter to be interesting, because it managed to be extremely informative without ever quite pulling a coherent case together. In certain places, it’s more than a little apparent that Liberal Fascism is a debut and I thought that this chapter was one of them. But the value of the historical material serves to redeem the structural flaws. On a tangential note, one of my great-uncles, an accomplished artist, was a devoted Dewey enthusiast. While I quite liked him, even as a child I could never quite lose the impression that there was something rather ominous about the philosophy.

Next week’s reading is Chapter Seven, “Liberal Racism: The Eugenic Ghost in the Fascist Machine”. The quiz for it will be posted on Saturday, August 1st.

Sunny Lucas died on Tuesday, July 21st. The void she leaves behind in the electronic firmament will be much regretted by canine-lovers around the world. Our condolences to Rachel and the rest of the Lucas family.

Only two weeks ago, I estimated that bank failures calculated as a percentage of total deposits would be more than twice that of 1931. My estimate of 0.77 percent was actually a slight exaggeration of that which would be a straightforward doubling of the January-June total, since it included bank failures 46 through 52 that were actually reported on July 2nd. Therefore, from a strict calender perspective, they should not have been included in the failures of the first six months.

My reasons for stretching the period for two days to include those additional seven banks were twofold. First, the FDIC always reports bank failures at the end of the day on Friday, so it’s probable that most of those seven banks actually filed their paperwork prior to the end of June. Second, because the pace of the failures appears to be increasing, leaving them out would have led to an estimate that was likely to be too low.

This was almost certainly the right decision because with one Bank Failure Friday still left in July, one bank has failed for each of the twelve days since the column was published on July 13th. These 64 failed banks held deposits sufficient to bring the running total to $34.9 billion for the year; when multiplied by 12/7, this indicates a 2009 deposit failure rate of 0.79 percent. Furthermore, the shaky state of the $7.6 billion Corus Bank and the $14 billion Guaranty Financial Group strongly suggests that failed deposits will exceed one percent of the $7.6 trillion in total bank deposits by the end of the year. This would be more than THREE times the percentage of failed deposits in 1931.

I have to admit, I always find it to be a little ominous when my alarmingly bearish observations turn out to be too optimistic.

It would appear that the Darwinist habit of attempting to shift the discourse by attacking their critics in lieu of defending their beliefs is not a new one:

Christian theologians, almost without exception, likewise accepted the fact that the earth is a sphere. The only two Christian writers known to have advocated a flat earth were a 4th-century heretic, Lactantius, and an obscure 6th-century Egyptian Monk, Cosmas Indicopleustes. Later, these two obscure and uninfluential writers were used as the prime evidence to prove that the flat-earth view was accepted by the Church as a whole—or at least by large parts of it.

While I was aware that the Catholic Church had never declared any doctrine of a flat earth, I wasn’t aware that the Darwinists had dug so deeply into the obscure and the heretical in order to provide a basis for their misleading accusation of a dogmatic Christian belief in a flat earth. Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes – this is the first I’ve ever heard of either man – weren’t exactly Tertullian and Origen, much less Augustine and Aquinas. Also, if anyone is in possession of any information that contradicts the information at the link, I’d quite like to see it.

Because as it stands, this tends to call the intellectual honesty of the nineteenth century champions of Darwinism into question in addition to further demonstrating the historical unreliability of the secularist camp.

David Brooks wonders why he calls himself a Republican:

It made me wonder, are they really my guys? Do I have guys anymore?

Certainly in childhood I felt a strong affinity for the Democrats. Everybody I knew was one. The Democrats were obviously forces for justice and morality. Then sometime in adulthood I did come to naturally assume that the Republicans were the vehicles for the things I thought were best.

But you never know the workings of your own mind until you get an unexpected cold blast from somewhere deep inside. The thought that I’m part of the G.O.P.’s fan base sent such a blast, though it’s complicated.

Needless to say, he is very far from the only Republican to wonder why David Brooks calls himself a Republican. There’s certainly very little that’s “republican” about his ideology as evinced in his columns. And Gail? They really don’t….