Vox Popoli

Noezoom manages to miss the point:

If you are aware of how little actual editing and fact-checking newspaper editors do… then this should shake the faith of all of those who believe so firmly in the religion of science.

newspaper editors do not have the authority to pass law in the religion of science (unless you’re defining the faithful as only those who casually follow scientific endeavors through common media outlets).

if anything, corrections and retractions should affirm faith in science because it shows that the self-correcting mechanisms are working.

No, but editors of scientific journals do and the New York Times stated that “journal editors are like newspaper editors” in that they simply don’t do any independent investigation of the submitted studies any more than a newspaper editor will go and interview the subjects of a submitted story.

The corrections and retractions don’t show that the self-correcting mechanisms are working, indeed, they show that the errors and falsehoods are so rampant and obvious that those outside the system are noticing them and calling attention to them. This is like arguing that the pedophile priest scandal should affirm faith in the Catholic Church. Retractions after getting publicly busted by outsiders is hardly a “self-correcting mechanism”.

By this strange definition, the justice system is a self-correcting mechanism for criminals. Where, exactly, does the “self” enter into the picture?

A high school teacher in Belleville, Ill., was arrested and charged with breaking the neck of a 17-year-old student and then leaving her to die in some woods, according to police. Investigators said Samson Shelton, 26, who is a teacher at Columbia High School, tried to strangle Ashley Reeves and then left her to die.

Shelton was with St. Clair County detectives when they found Reeves in a park in Belleville. She survived in the woods for 30 hours before she was found…. Police said the Shelton and Reeves apparently had a relationship, Local 6 News reported.

Those public schools just keep looking better and better, don’t they…. Sure, there might be a few bad apples at on the staff there, but I’ll bet the facilities are first rate!

From FASCISTI by Giordano Bruno Guerri

Secondo Emilio Gentile, il maggiore storico italiano del tema, al cui lavoro questo capitolo deve molto, “il xx secolo puo esser definito l’epoca della sacralizzazione della politica” e il facismo fu il primo esperimento di “istituzionalizzazione di una nuova religione laica” dai tempi della rivoluzione francese. Il culto che il regime dedico a se stesso dunque non fu soltanto un fenomeno di propaganda, di buona o mala fede da parte di organizzatori e organizzati:

Il problema e piu serio e anche piu drammatico. I riti e le feste di massa volevano educare per convertire, investendo i valori fondamentali e i fini ultimi dell’esistenza. La funzione della liturgia di massa andava oltre l’aspetto ludico o demagogico, e pure era presente: mirava a conquistare e plasmare la coscienza morale, la mentalita, i costumi della gente, e persino i suoi piu intimi sentimenti sulla vita e sulla morte. Nella socializzazione di una religione politica capace di cambiare il carattere degli italiani, trasformandoli in una comunita di credenti nel culto del littorio, i fascisti vedevano la principale condizione per gettare le fondamenta di uno Stato destinato a durare nel tempo e a lasciare nei secoli l’impronta di una nuova civilta.

Gli stessi fenomeni si verificarono nella rivoluzione sovietica e nel movimento nazista. Ma anche tutte le elite politiche ed economiche democratiche del mondo occidentale ebbero, nel primo dopoguerra, il problema del consenso: “La nuova epoca, quella di un capitalismo organizzato, in forte crescita e tendente a un consumo di massa, richiedeva un governo fondato sul consenso generale. (V. De Grazia). I regimi totalitari perseguirono quel consenso sopratutto attraverso un culto religioso dell'”idea”, mentre le democrazie cercarono maggiormente di soddisfare le esigenze materiali del popolo.

It is amazing to see the difference between the original sources and histories of those who actually experienced historical fascism and the revisionist summaries of the American academics who wished to use it as a means of whitewashing socialism. The falsehood of the specious claims that Fascism was embraced by the Catholic church, or even a synthesis of socialism and Catholicism, or that National Socialism was a Christian phenomenon is belied by the European historians, who are not exactly right-wing Protestants.

I’ll translate this later, but the essential point Guerri is making here is that all three of the twentieth-century totalitarianisms were manufactured religious cults with the State and People substituted for God. They were attempts to replace Christianity with a political religion, and the astute reader will perceive the ominous significance underlying the Lizard Queen’s “politics of meaning”, which, like its intellectual predecessors, specifically decries the democratic focus on satisfying the material needs of the populace.

From the New York Times:

Virtually every major scientific and medical journal has been humbled recently by publishing findings that are later discredited. The flurry of episodes has led many people to ask why authors, editors and independent expert reviewers all failed to detect the problems before publication….

A widespread belief among nonscientists is that journal editors and their reviewers check authors’ research firsthand and even repeat the research. In fact, journal editors do not routinely examine authors’ scientific notebooks. Instead, they rely on peer reviewers’ criticisms, which are based on the information submitted by the authors.

While editors and reviewers may ask authors for more information, journals and their invited experts examine raw data only under the most unusual circumstances.

In that respect, journal editors are like newspaper editors, who check the content of reporters’ copy for facts and internal inconsistencies but generally not their notes. Still, journal editors have refused to call peer review what many others say it is — a form of vetting or technical editing.

If you are aware of how little actual editing and fact-checking newspaper editors do – I caught three errors in my own column yesterday that the editor missed and asked him to correct them – then this should shake the faith of all of those who believe so firmly in the religion of science. And that slap at “widespread belief among nonscientists” must have stung those who consider themselves to be scientists-by-proxy based on their distaste for religion.

Now, science is a very useful tool. One would have to be a fool to deny it. But like logic, it has two-edges and it is possible to misapply it, to hide untruth behind it and to take its conclusions too far. Those who hate and fear religion often talk of science as if it is practiced by holy secular saints, when the reality is that there is more fraud and blatant money grubbing among scientists than there is on the part of televangelists.

What is the difference between an Oral Roberts who says that God will “take him home” if he doesn’t receive an amount of money and a scientist who applies for a government grant for a study based on falsified data? They’re both lying con men as far as we can tell, but at least those who give to Mr. Roberts have a choice, nothing is being forcibly taken from them backed by the threat of government force.

Critics of religion like to point to its evils and ignore its proven benefits. (In fact, they usually have manufacture the evils and try to blame religion for things which it bears no responsibility, like war.) But to be intellectually honest, one cannot consider the many good things which have come from science, (medicine, longer lifespans, safe childbirths, computer games), without also noting its obvious evils, (more and more efficient ways to kill more people).

The Bible has repeatedly proven to be more reliable than modern archeology, sociology and psychology. One can even make a case that it anticipated some aspects of modern physics, although that’s debatable. Some atheists wonder how an intelligent, educated person can believe in the Bible. I, on the other hand, constantly wonder how any intelligent, educated person can look at the massive fraud and many contradictions that permeate modern science and place their unquestioning faith in that.

RB wields the red pen:

As a former high school Industrial Education teacher who tried to make a difference, I fully agree with your sentence above from your WND column! I once had the audacity to flunk the star quarterback who only strutted around in the class like a peacock, and incurred the wrath of the administration. The superintendent, principal, coach and the counselor descended on me after I turned in my grade and declared that the school would lose its chance at the State championship if the guy did not play that coming Friday. They asked me to change his grade, which I refused to do because that would be unfair to the other students who diligently worked to earn a grade. Then asked what he had to do to get a good grade, they declared he would not be able to do all that when I showed him the list of assignments he failed to complete.

Having come out of the machining and manufacturing industry to get my degree and teach, teaching the concepts of industry as a prevocational exploration and preparation program and knowing that the future would be computer-operated machine tools called CNC, I dispesnsed with the “busywork” shop concept to placate the malconents and dummies in a high school daycare setting. I requested equipment to update the facilities, but was turned down due to $900 being too expensive. But a week later, I read in the local paper that the schoolboard had approved spending $2,500 for new football uniforms to keep their reputation as the best dressed team in the league.

Well, we can’t have the boys go out there not looking pretty, can we? And it costs a lot of money to redo all those uniforms with new, sufficiently bland, PC nicknames and regalia.

Of mice, men and things that begin with the letter P:

A renowned U.S. scientist who has documented fertility and sex changes — including decreasing penis size — due to environmental contamination says he wouldn’t apply pesticides on his own lawn.

Personally, I suspect a vast right-wing conspiracy between the fertilizer manufacturers, the spammers and the enlargement industry.

This happened to catch my eye whilst I was reading a “biographical companion” to the works of a certain mystery novelist of some repute:

“Girls, you must remember, are far more ready to be raped than they used to be. Their mothers insist, very often, that they should call it rape.”
– Agatha Christie, Nemesis

From the Corriere’s Italian Life:

a study by Procter & Gamble has revealed that American women devote just four hours a week to household chores while Italians spend twenty-one on housework.

And yet some of them try to make their husbands feel guilty about not doing their four hours worth? Shoot, it takes at least an hour just to mow the lawn, and that Playstation isn’t going to play itself either, now, is it?

The FBI secretly sought information last year on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks and credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court’s approval, the Justice Department said Friday.

It was the first time the Bush administration has publicly disclosed how often it uses the administrative subpoena known as a national security letter, which allows the executive branch of government to obtain records about people in terrorism and espionage investigations without court approval.

Personally, I think the Bush administration should have hired Arnold as their new press secretary.