Science and the scientific approach works well for many purposes, including possibly its ability to convince others.
When we make decisions based on any kind of “true faith” approach, (more…)
This idea came up while Chet and I were discussing politician’s answers to questions, which seem often to have nothing to do with the original question.
Q: Senator, what is your position on launching a pre-emptive attack against Georgia?
A: The protection of this great nation is my highest priority.
Q: Yes, but what about an attack on Georgia?
A: My opponent’s views on the economy are retrograde and misinformed.
Whenever we’re just going along and suddenly we see a duck, it is mandatory to say “Oh, look, a duck!”. This is well-known. Even though it derails the conversation, we just have to do it.
So if we were to carry a throw-down duck, when the going got tough, we could throw down our duck and say “Oh, look, a duck!”
I hope this idea is useful to you and I look forward to seeing a lot of ducks at the next conference.
Don’t these people have anything useful to do? Even if Obama had been referring to Palin as a pig, which he clearly wasn’t, if you’re grown up enough to run for VP you’re grown up enough to wave off a stupid insult.
I’ve seen third-graders run better elections than this.
I suppose politics has always been disgusting. We just didn’t have 24/7 media coverage back in the days of Washington and Adams.
The thing that bothers me most, though, is that if you sow hatred, distrust, and fear, you’ll get hatred, distrust, and fear.
We are better than this. How can we make these people work together to make the world, and our lives, better?
It seems that whenever a politician modifies his or her position on something, they are accused of “flip-flopping”.
Maybe I’m unique in this, but I would like my leaders to be continually evaluating the situation, taking in new information, observing results, and changing their views and their actions.
Seems to me that “Stay the course” is a bad strategy in most every endeavor. I’m more into steering.
There are a lot of people who become outraged when someone says what many people are, or should be, thinking.
A recent case is a comment by one of McCain’s people that a terrorist attack would be good for McCain. Now we are supposed to be all outraged that anyone would say that. But answer this multiple choice question:
If there were to be a terrorist attack between now and the election, would the effect be to:
Some might think “I don’t know, could go either way.” Personally, I think it would improve McCain’s chances, because it would increase people’s anger and willingness to take warlike action, and McCain is at least somewhat perceived as The Warrior. I don’t want that outcome, and I certainly don’t want to be attacked. But if it happened, what would happen next?
I don’t think we advance ourselves by pretending that some thoughts are unthinkable. Thinking about what might happen is how we avoid falling into the pit.
It’s going to be a long time between now and November …