In Which I Try To School Dr. Skeptic

Dr. Michael Shermer has done some great work in the realm of debunking nonsensical claims about paranormal activity, and describing the difference between science and pseudo-science. His books Why People Believe Weird Things and Borderlands are fundamental reading if you want to understand the difference between science and belief. Unfortunately, he seems to not be as skeptical as he should be about what he reads in the New York Times. Here's an example of what I mean in a long Twitter monologue regarding this NYT article:

Twitter Message by @michaelshermer w/ replies by @Cujo359, June 12, 2013

Go to the byline link to see the entire conversation.

We all have our blind spots, but the points I make seem so obvious that I can hardly believe I have to make them. I guess it's true - you should never meet your heroes, even online.

Claims made on the basis of secret information are usually classified as claims of special knowledge, and are dismissed as nonsense. When Madam Cleo claims she can talk to the dead, reasonable people recognize this as absurd. When the government does it, though, claiming they have "intelligence" that proves their point but they can't tell us what it is, generally sensible people lap this up as their god's truth. I don't get that, but maybe that's because spending a couple of decades in the defense industry gives you a jaded perspective.

Afterword: Here are the links embedded in those Twitter messages:

• N.S.A. Chief Says Phone Logs Halted Terror Threats (Dr. Shermer's link)
• Public Documents Contradict Claim Email Spying Foiled Terror Plot (my first link re: Mike Rogers)
• Stuxnet virus strengthened Iranian nuclear programme: Report (my second link re: Stuxnet)

UPDATE: Added that bit of exposition about special knowledge and Madam Cleo.

UPDATE 2: This is precious. Not completely related to this particular subject, but it does challenge people's credulity when it comes to their trust in certain parts of our government. Click. Read. Enjoy.

Just What Should We Expect?

Caption: The IRS building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. What evil are they up to now? Image credit: U.S. Treasury/Wikimedia

It's a day of the week ending in 'y', so it should be no surprise that someone thinks the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is up to no good:

Let’s be very clear: because the Internal Revenue Service holds so much private data, and because it can make people’s lives absolutely miserable, it is of paramount importance in our political system that it both is, and is perceived as, an apolitical entity. If it discriminated against tea party groups that attempted to register as 501(c)4 social welfare organizations, then that’s a grave offense, and it needs to be investigated thoroughly and dealt with severely.

The IRS was wrong to target the tea party. They should’ve gone after all 501(c)4s

Face it, anyone who has ever had to fill out a tax form, and perhaps gotten advice from the IRS that it is in no way to be held responsible for, is going to want to give the IRS the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, that's not a valid reason for assuming it's wrong.

Most of the folks I've seen criticizing this on Twitter, at least, haven't bothered to find out what is actually the norm here. To tell you the truth, I haven't either, but the difference between me and them is this:

I don't assume I know what's going on.

Let's try a thought experiment - suppose you have what you think is a winning strategy for picking lottery numbers, yet you don't ever win the lottery. Is the lottery commission conspiring against you? Of course not. The reality is that the numbers are chosen at random, so even if you understand how those numbers were chosen, the small sample size of winning numbers just about guarantees that you aren't going to win any particular lottery. Any honest mathematician would tell you that.

What we expect isn't necessarily the truth, even when we use logic and reason to arrive at that expectation. In order to understand what you should be expecting, you have to understand what's normal, and how the system works, and what's possible. How the system works in this case is that the IRS is expected to investigate claims for non-profit applications. If, as is the case with the Tea Party, there's a lot of money behind that applicant, then there's probably more reason to investigate.

But what's the norm? How often does the IRS investigate such claims? In a set of Twitter messages today, CNBC's John Harwood explained the IRS's position:

Twitter message(s) from @JohnJHarwood

I've combined the content of several messages into one screenshot graphic. As you can see, to some extent the IRS went beyond what it's expected to do, but there were a great many other organizations investigated for similar reasons.

Expecting the IRS to investigate all of these organizations, as Ezra Klein did in the article I quoted in that first block quote, may be somewhere between difficult and impossible. The IRS, too, will feel the sequestration crunch. Do we really expect them to investigate all organizations, whether they are known to have ties to big money or questionable people or organizations? My guess, and once again it's only a guess, is that we can't really. The number and type of such organizations is bound to increase, given that there is little legal framework for them at the moment. Plus, as we've seen recently, enforcing regulations and the law on those with power and money isn't a big government priority right now.

I can't say whether this is the norm or not at this point, but any serious investigation of this claimed discrimination needs to include a discussion of that point that involves actual evidence. That may take a while, which is probably beyond the attention span of the American public. Meanwhile, though, I'd say if there was any political organization in this country better able to take care of itself, it's probably one of the two major political parties. I suspect they'll soldier on somehow.

Meanwhile, what we should learn from all of this is to ask those basic questions with any story, both of ourselves and the press. What is normal? What is possible? How is the system supposed to work? Ask those questions, and at least you'll have some credible notion what the problem is.

Selective Attention To Data

Caption: Richard Dawkins during a reading from his latest book, The Greatest Show On Earth at the University of Washington, October 8, 2009. I don't remember it, but he must have mentioned flying horses, since it's now widely known that he's obsessed with people who believe in them.

Image credit: Cujo359

As it did last year, Al Jazeera managed to bring some of Dan Hind's foolishness to my attention by publishing it. From the title alone, I figured this would be nonsense, with the promise of equating all sorts of things that not only aren't the same, but aren't even close. You know, like people who rail against bigots are bigots themselves, that sort of thing. Sure enough, he starts by getting it wrong regarding Richard Dawkins:

Richard Dawkins is having a busy time of it. Last weekend, he tweeted: "Mehdi Hasan admits to believing Muhamed flew to heaven on a winged horse. And New Statesman sees fit to print him as a serious journalist." His many supporters saw this latest contribution as part of his brave campaign against irrational beliefs. The devout were infuriated, which, I suspect, only encourages him.

Varieties of Unreason

[unless otherwise noted, all links and italics are from original articles. See the attribution links to validate, since I transcribed them by hand.]

Hind continually cherry-picks information throughout this column. This is the first instance, and if one were to check the second link in that quote above, which is also the second link in the article, one would find that Hind is, so to speak, talking out his butt:

Yesterday, on Twitter, I wrote of the British journalist Mehdi Hasan’s belief that the Prophet Muhamed flew to Heaven on a winged horse. It is a belief at least as silly as [Arthur Conan] Doyle’s belief in fairies, and it merits the same “It’s a rum do comment on the paradox that Mehdi Hasan is simultaneously a very good journalist and political editor, who writes penetrating and sensible articles on current affairs and world politics. That such an effective critical intellect should simultaneously be capable of believing in winged horses seemed to me to merit some sort of wry comment, comment of the “It’s a rum do” variety: isn’t it odd, what a paradox, like Conan Doyle or Dowding and the fairies.

Away With The Fairies

[link added for the benefit of those who aren't British]

As Dawkins mentions in that essay, it's hard to express yourself in 140 characters so that everyone will understand, particularly if you're in a hurry. He'd written as much in later Twitter message on the subject, evidence that Hind also apparently chose to ignore.

Sadly, it gets worse. After giving that subject the once-over, Hind moves on to another subject he clearly didn't want to look at very much:

Let us turn now to another story, which might, at first glance, seem unconnected. In January 2010, Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff published "Growth in a Time of Debt". The paper seemed to show that countries with debt in excess of 90 percent of GDP grew far more slowly than those with lower debt burdens. Though they immediately faced criticism from other economists, politicians around the world seized on their findings to justify cuts in public spending. For example, a month after Rogoff and Reinhart announced their findings, George Osborne, the British Chancellor, told an audience that "the latest research suggests that once debt reaches more than about 90 percent of GDP, the risks of a large negative impact on long-term growth become highly significant".

...

So things stood until a graduate student, Thomas Herndon, went through Rogoff and Reinhart's figures and found that there were some worrying gaps.

Varieties of Unreason

Once again, we have an extremely selective view of events posing as a history. Here's what economics Professor Paul Krugman wrote on the subject in a recent New York Times column:

Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna on “expansionary austerity” and Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff on the dangerous debt “threshold” at 90 percent of G.D.P. — faced withering criticism [(PDF)] almost as soon as they came out.

And the studies did not hold up under scrutiny. By late 2010, the International Monetary Fund had reworked Alesina-Ardagna with better data and reversed their findings, while many economists raised fundamental questions about Reinhart-Rogoff long before we knew about the famous Excel error. Meanwhile, real-world events — stagnation in Ireland, the original poster child for austerity, falling interest rates in the United States, which was supposed to be facing an imminent fiscal crisis — quickly made nonsense of austerian predictions.

The 1 Percent’s Solution

Caption: The infamous Excel spreadsheet that was the basis for the Reinhart-Rogoff paper. Turns out, if you ignore the right data, and completely forget ideas about cause and effect, the paper made sense.

Image credit: Mike Konczal

One of the reasons that it's taken this long to discover the "Excel error" Krugman mentions, and the paper Hind refers to as the start of criticism of Reinhart-Rogoff (R&R), is that R&R initially refused to publish their data. This is the opposite of good science, and they were roundly criticized for that, too. Nevertheless, as Krugman mentions, there was plenty of criticism of the paper at the time, which should have left anyone who is even mildly intellectually honest with the notion that there were serious doubts among economists at the time. It should not have been the basis for any policy, based on the criticisms leveled on it at the time. This didn't stop politicians and pundits from quoting the paper, though, for reasons economist Dean Baker correctly diagnosed:

The discrediting of the R&R paper raises important questions for economic policy. This work was central to the argument against measures designed to boost the economy. Now that it has been discredited, one of the major intellectual pillars of the drive for austerity has been removed. In principle this should lead to a rethinking of economic policy.

Unfortunately that does not seem likely to be an outcome. The policy of austerity has produced winners and losers, and the winners seem to have considerably more power. The high unemployment and weak labor markets of the last five years leaves workers with little bargaining power.

Crashing the 90 Percent Club: The Importance of the Reinhart-Rogoff Error

Yet Hind pretends otherwise, as did many politicians and pundits at the time. A paper with dubious conclusions based on unpublished data isn't the basis of a serious intellectual discussion of economics, much less national economic policy. The politicians and pundits took it as a matter of faith, because they wanted to believe it, just as the reporter Dawkins referred to wanted to believe in a flying horse.

Which makes Hind's conclusion all the more ridiculous:

When properly accredited experts say things that the powerful want to hear, their word becomes a kind of gospel. It is immune to serious challenge unless it is shown to be grossly inept. Even when it is debunked, the people who own and run the world carry on doing what they want, confident that another plausible-sounding justification will surface soon. Meanwhile, the self-declared champions of reason and truth are too busy worrying about flying horses to notice.

Varieties of Unreason

Whether R&R's results were due merely to incompetence, or to deliberate fraud, their "accreditation" had more to do with accepting orthodoxy, no matter how absurd, and less to do with what Hind refers to as people obsessing about flying horses. The people who debunked R&R were people who compared that paper's dubious conclusions with reality, and found it wanting. The people "worrying about flying horses" are the ones who noticed this, not someone who doesn't think it's right (or in this case, helpful) to question certain things. R&R's effect on public policy has a lot more to do with self-serving attention to facts than it does with science.

And selective attention to facts is exactly what Hind is guilty of. To label Dawkins, a scientist with a long and distinguished career, as a "professional atheist" as Hind does in his article, who only pays attention to stories about flying horses and the like, is absurd to a degree even Glenn Beck might have trouble matching.

Dan Hind is the reigning answer to the question "How much of a moron can you be and still be published at Al Jazeera?" As bad as this and that previous article have been, I hope no one unseats him.

Today's Pop Quiz

Robert Reich wrote this today as his opening remarks about President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense, or more accurately, the reaction of the neo-conservative Republicans to that nomination:

If the neocons in the GOP who brought us the Iraqi war and conjured up “weapons of mass destruction” to justify it are against Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary, Hagel gets bonus points in my book.

The Neocons vs. Chuck Hagel

What logical fallacy is Prof. Reich committing here?

Winter Solstice:2012

Caption: The Mayan pyramid of Chichen Itza. The Maya stopped maintaining this at least five hundred years ago, yet it stubbornly refuses to stop existing.

Image credit: Daniel Schwen/Wikimedia

Once again, it's the Winter Solstice, or, as folks with a more worldly view might refer to it:

The December solstice occurs when the sun reaches its most southerly declination of -23.5 degrees. In other words, it is when the North Pole is tilted 23.5 degrees away from the sun. Depending on the Gregorian calendar, the December solstice occurs annually on a day between December 20 and December 23. On this date, all places above a latitude of 66.5 degrees north (Arctic Polar Circle) are now in darkness, while locations below a latitude of 66.5 degrees south (Antarctic Polar Circle) receive 24 hours of daylight.

December solstice 2012: 21 Dec 11:12 (UTC)

Which is really early in the morning on the West Coast. Of course, as most of you undoubtedly know, this is another day when the world was supposed to end:

A new Reuters survey found that one in 10 people believe the end of the world will occur in 2012, and one in seven believe the world will end in their lifetimes.

"Perhaps it is because of the media attention coming from one interpretation of the Mayan prophecy that states the world ‘ends’ in our calendar year 2012,” Keren Gottfried, research manager at Ipsos Global Public Affairs, told Reuters.

End Of The World 2012: Mayan Calendar Doomsday Prediction Held By 1 In 10

Maybe if you're reading this by now, that one person in ten will have figured out that when a civilization that basically ended five centuries ago didn't bother to update its calendar, that this doesn't mean the world will end.

Fat chance, right?

Anyway, for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere and yet aren't butt stupid, this day is a day of renewal. The days will start to get longer soon, and we can start thinking about springtime. Just about all the major religions have holidays this time of year, and that's why.

Over at Space.com, Joe Rao explains why the ancients were so interested in the winter solstice:

The ancient skywatchers had no understanding of the sun's migration; they thought this celestial machinery might break down someday, and the sun would continue southward, never to return. As such, the lowering of the sun was cause for fear and wonder.

...

When the ancients saw the sun stop and slowly climb to a higher midday location, people rejoiced; here was a promise that spring would return. Most cultures had winter solstice celebrations and some adapted it to other events. In Persia, the solstice marked the birthday of Mithra, the Sun King.

Dec. 21: The Winter Solstice Explained

Yep, Sun sticks around - good. Sun goes away - bad. Pretty smart, those ancients. Wish they could have made their calendars last longer, though. They would at least have spared us one more end of the world scenario.

So, assuming we survived the apocalypse, Happy Solstice!

Afterword: This article was written on Dec. 17. If the world ends before it appears at 4:00 AM PST (12:00 GMT), boy, will I feel silly.

UPDATE: Be sure to check out today's APOD. It's another photo of that Mayan pyramid, and it's gorgeous.

The Crap It Comes From Both Sides Now

Caption: The first printing press of the Tombstone Epitaph, Tombstone, Arizona.

Image credit: Cujo359

Another in a long line of examples of why our press can't do a good job of reporting on the things it should be reporting on comes from Politico:

On Wednesday [Politico reporter Ben] White tweeted to his 8,500 followers, “Yesterday the right screamed at me. Today it’s the left. Must be doing it right.”

‘Vapidity’: Guardian‘s Greenwald Sics Rabid Followers on Politico‘s White

Of course, the latin-speaking philosophers among us will recognize this as a sort of perverse, double-edge argumentum ad populum. After all, if these folks don't like you, you must have something going for you, right? Why don't people who are confronted with such a phenomenon ever think that there might be another explanation that's, shall we say, less flattering? From that same article, they quote press critic and SnS blogrollee Glenn Greenwald:

Many people would read White’s message and carry on. Not the Guardian‘s perpetually self-serious Glenn Greenwald. “Here’s the motto for journalistic vapidity,” he wrote, linking to White’s tweet for his near 100K followers to have a look at.

...

In a sassy email, Greenwald told FBDC we didn’t understand the point he was trying to make. “There is nothing wrong with criticizing both left and right. I do that all the time.” He continued, “The problem is journalists who believe that receiving criticisms from both sides is proof that they are doing something right- as though centrism is the inherently superior position. It isn’t. Sometimes one is criticized by both sides because the centrist view is wrong, or becaude [sic] both sides recognize your error.”

‘Vapidity’: Guardian‘s Greenwald Sics Rabid Followers on Politico‘s White

For that matter, why don't they wonder if maybe they've just screwed up differently on different days?

Just thinking out loud here, but maybe it's time that some folks stopped considering the character of people who are criticizing them, and more time checking whether the criticism is right or not.

Newt Gingrich And The Fallacy Of Inversion

Caption: No, the word "if" is not misspelled. Click on the image credit link and then hover your mouse cursor over the cartoon to see the clever hidden message.


Image credit: xkcd

It's not every day that a prominent American politician gives us an unambiguous example of logical fallacy. No, that's actually not true. It's a rare day when an American politician doesn't provide an example. What's unusual is that xkcd provides a good illustration on the same day.

Yesterday, President Obama had this to say about the tragic death of Trayvon Martin, a young African American who was killed by an armed "neighborhood watch" participant in Florida:

"When I think about this boy, I think about my own kids," Obama said in the Rose Garden. "I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this. And that everybody pull together."
...
"My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said. "All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves."

Obama: 'If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon'

Which was to say that he saw a resemblance to his own children, and so the thought of the young man being killed for no good reason hit him especially hard. I'll simplify this thought to an easily parsed sentence for reasons that will become clear a bit later:

This boy resembles my own children, so I feel sympathy for him and his family.

This seems to have offended Newt Gingrich. He had this to say, according to Politico:

“It’s not a question of who that young man looked like. Any young American of any ethnic background should be safe, period. We should all be horrified no matter what the ethnic background," Gingrich said. "Is the President suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot that would be ok because it didn’t look like him?"

Newt calls Obama's Trayvon Martin comments 'disgraceful'

Anyone who hadn't slept through his introductory philosophy course would have been able to answer Gingrich with something like this:

No, that's the fallacy of inversion.

The logical inverse of my characterization of the President's statement is this:

If someone doesn't look like me or my kids, then I won't feel sympathy for him or his family.

This is an elementary fallacy of logic, as this website explains:

The fallacy of the inverse states that if a first even[t] implies a second event, then the opposite of the first even[t] occurring will cause the opposite of the second even[t] occurring. You must be careful of this flawed thinking and actively train your mind to oppose it.

Ultimately, the fallacy of the inverse is our minds confusing the notion of cause and effect.

The Fallacy Of The Inverse

Which is something politicians get away with doing pretty often. Wikipedia describes the fallacy this way:

Denying the antecedent, sometimes also called inverse error, is a formal fallacy, committed by reasoning in the form:

If P, then Q.
Not P.
Therefore, not Q.

Arguments of this form are invalid. Informally, this means that arguments of this form do not give good reason to establish their conclusions, even if their premises are true.

Wikipedia: Denying The Antecedent

Both articles provide good examples of why this is true. I think to really understand why Gingrich is wrong, though, all you have to do is be a human being. People who resemble people we love will tend to evoke more compassion in us than those who don't. Most of us understand that, when it's not convenient for us not to, at least.

The case of Trayvon Martin's death has been another one of those events that spawn far too much of what I call Molestus hoc, ergo propter hoc reasoning, meaning "this annoys me, therefore it's the cause". Whether it's racism, or kids wearing those hoodies, everyone seems to have an opinion about this. Newt Gingrich sees persecuted white people. What I see is another person who should not have had access to a firearm in that circumstance foolishly causing the death of an innocent person. The difference between me and these other people is that I know it's possible that I'm wrong, despite the reasonable-sounding nature of my hypothesis.

I'm not going to rush to judgment on this matter, as I think no one should. We all have our opinions, and just because something looks like something we're familiar with doesn't mean that it's caused by the same thing. Nor should we, as Newt Gingrich has done, forget the basic rules of logic we should all have learned in high school.

Understanding Physics Is A Conservative Bias

It's astounding what you can learn on the Internet. Take this story, for example:

Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced Wednesday that they have been able to confirm a new high-efficiency solar cell design that utilizes nearly the entire solar spectrum.

Translation: They figured out a way to make solar panels generate electricity in the dark.

Scientists Develop Affordable Solar Panels That Work In The Dark

Now, I would think that anyone who stayed awake through his high school physics would know that there is something lost in that translation, but let me elaborate:

No, it doesn't mean that there are solar panels that work in the dark.

During the day, tremendous amounts of solar energy hit the surface of the Earth. It's something like a kilowatt (1000 watts) per square meter. If you're not used to the metric system, think of it as being the same as a square yard, because for the purposes of this discussion, it's close enough.

At night, however, almost no light energy hits the surface, even when there's a full moon and an aurora borealis (or an aurora australis). It's hard to turn solar energy into electricity when there's no solar energy. This, one would think, is rather obvious when one thinks about it.

Image credit: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

Of course, reading the Lawrence Berkeley Lab press release on the subject confirms that they are, indeed, merely talking about how it makes use of different kinds of semiconductors to collect light energy at several different wavelengths. So, yes, this is just about being better at converting solar energy during the day. Even the caption for this picture mentions that it converts sunlight, not moonbeams.

Yet, both this article and the one it was quoting got that wrong somehow. How they got all that wrong, I don't know, but scientific literacy being what it is these days, I'm not too terribly surprised.

Curious to see whether anyone else caught onto this, I read the comments. Someone did, indeed, catch the problem:

I don't see how using the full solar spectrum translates into generating electricity in the dark. To me, it only means getting more energy when the sun is shining. They do that by using all of the sunlight. Conventional solar cells can convert only a limited range of frequencies, and the rest of the sunlight is wasted--either reflected or absorbed or transmitted without converting it to electricity. They might use only the red light and ignore the rest. Or only infrared and not visible or ultraviolet light.

Scientists Develop Affordable Solar Panels That Work In The Dark: Comment by Cliff Lewis

Someone was paying attention in his physics class, apparently. Someone else commented that he agreed, so there are at least a few of us still out there.

Then I read this comment:

Well if this kind of story sets off your BS detector then maybe your BS detector needs to be re-calibrated.

The naysayers, that at the slightest provocation, jump to squash enthusiasm for development of alternative energies of all kinds are quite transparent. You are conservatives, or "independents" who want things to be just like they always were. OIL is king. Period. Even if it drives us into the dark ages. No other source can exist unless it's also enviro-adverse. Like Coal. Or Gas. It just kills you to think they we might actually pull off this "Energy out of thin air" pipe dream.

Sorry buddy. We're forging ahead and it's going to happen.

Scientists Develop Affordable Solar Panels That Work In The Dark: Comment by Ron Brunton

Not only am I a racist, because I think Barack Obama's doing a lousy job as President, but I am apparently a conservative, because I understand physics.

I learned that today, and I was reminded that not all stupid people are conservatives.

UPDATE (Mar. 15): Earlier today, someone from the LBL domain visited this article. So far, no correction that I've noticed either in comments or via e-mail. If someone familiar with the technology does have a correction I'm glad to hear about it, even if I end up looking stupid, too.

Actually, I'm told I'm rather good at that.

What Geology Can Teach Us, Part 2

There are quite a few things that these two formations have in common:

Image credit: All images by Cujo359

Both of them are roughly circular craters more than a kilometer in diameter. Both are in the western United States. They are relatively near in age, only a few tens of thousands of years old. Each appears to have been cut through a relatively hard layer of rock near the surface, with some weaker rock underneath (note the undercutting visible on the far side of both craters). Yet this is where the similarities end.

The first picture is of Meteor Crater, which I wrote about a few months ago. It was formed by this:

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that's what's left of what formed it, a 150 foot wide piece of iron ore that struck Earth 20,000 to 50,000 years ago.

The second photo is of a crater called Hole In The Ground, which is in eastern Oregon. It was formed between 13,500 and 18,000 years ago. Just looking at its similarity to Meteor Crater, you might suspect that it too, was formed by a big rock hitting the Earth. You'd be wrong, though. It was formed by something like this:

That sign shows how Mt. Mazama was turned into what became Crater Lake, but it's the same idea. Big, giant, kabloowie, forming a crater.

In fact, the first geologists to encounter Meteor Crater thought that it, too, was a volcano. It wasn't until they explored under it that they realized this wasn't the case. At the time I was visiting it, I was wondering how anyone could think this hadn't been done by a meteor, because it looked so much like a huge bomb crater.

Then someone showed me Hole In The Ground.

What can geology teach us here? It teaches us that things that look the same aren't necessarily the same. Even when you think about it really hard, you can still be wrong. It's only through forming a hypothesis, and then testing it against what that hypothesis means that you can figure out if you're right or not.

That's how science works. It's why we know that these similar-looking things actually have very different stories.

A recent stupid conversation with someone at another blog brought this example to mind again, so I figured it was time to put this up here. The nature of the argument isn't important - in fact, I'm willing to bet that the individual I was having it with will never figure this out. Still, it's one of those lessons that everyone should try to remember when they're telling me what a naive or stupid person I am for not believing what they've concluded because what they've seen is sorta, kinda like something else they sorta, kinda know about.

UPDATE/Afterword (Mar. 19, 2013): For anyone interested in visiting Hole In The Ground, Lockwood Dewitt provides a reference:

The reason I chose this photo as an introduction to Hole-in-the-Ground can be seen above that little tree past and to the left of the central playa, on the opposite wall. The offset in that layer of basalt marks a fault which bisects this crater, and it's thought that this was the weak feature that allowed the basaltic magma to migrate upwards at this spot. More detailed information on HIG can be found in USGS Circular 838, at mile 25.1 in this road log.

Geo 365: March 19, Day 78: Hole-In-The-Ground

I reckon that Lockwood will be writing more about this crater in the days ahead.

It's a bit out of the way, to say the least, but at least it's not a tourist trap.

UPDATE 2 (Mar. 19, 2013): At the previous link, Lockwood Dewitt provides this correction:

The mode of formation is different from Crater Lake- that is a collapse feature, a caldera, while this is an explosive feature, a true crater. (Though looking at the cross-section in that road log, it definitely looks like subsidence was involved.)

Geo 365: March 19, Day 78: Hole-In-The-Ground: Comment by Lockwood

I've corrected that part of the narrative about Hole In The Ground's formation to no longer say " followed by a collapse".

The Boy Who Cried Reductio Ad Hitlerium

Image credit: Arrr!.

Much has been made already of Leon Wieseltier's ridiculous implication in this month's The New Republic that one-time TNR editor and now Atlantic writer Andrew Sullivan is anti-semitic. If you want to spend an hour or so reading a thorough refutation of this, go to Glenn Greenwald's article on the subject, and then follow the links. There's really not much to add to all that, other than to point out the obvious.

Of course, pointing out the obvious is what I do. Greenwald brushes up against it here:

What's most striking about this attack is how inconsequential it is. It was once the case, not all that long ago, that an accusation of "anti-semitism" was the nuclear weapon of political debates, rendering most politicians and pundits (especially non-Jewish ones) petrified of being so accused. A 4,300-word prosecution brief published by The New Republic, accusing a major political writer of being a Jew-hater, would have been taken quite seriously, generated all sorts of drama, introspection and debate, and seriously tarnished the reputation of the accused.

No longer. Neoconservatives have so abused and cynically exploited the "anti-semitism" charge for rank political gain -- to bully those who would dare criticize Israeli actions or question U.S. policy towards Israel -- that it has lost its impact.

TNR's ugly and reckless anti-semitism games

There are several purposes to labeling someone's position, as Wieseltier has done to Sullivan's. One is, as Greenwald observes, intimidating people into not touching a subject. That is definitely a feature of this particular debate. It has long been a feature of debates about our policy toward Israel, the Palestine, and the Middle East in general. Most any hint of criticism for Israel's behavior is routinely met with such charges, as is almost any suggestion that a more balanced policy would be preferable. Glenn has covered this well, as have others.

Another purpose is, depending on the circumstance, to either label a person's idea with some undesirable trait or with an undesirable person or movement. The latter is often referred to humorously as reductio ad hitlerium, roughly translated as "reducing to Hitler". It gets that name due to the fact that one of the classic examples of this strategy is to associate an idea with something that Hitler did or supported. The fact is, of course, that Hitler did and said many things, some of which are done and said by most societies. He had an industrial policy, for instance. That doesn't automatically make having an industrial policy a bad thing for a government to do. The real strategy here is to change the subject from the merits of the idea being discussed, to either the motivations of the person or persons whose idea it is, or to instill unreasoning apprehension about the idea. It's a cheap point, and lots of people try to make it.

Perhaps the most infamous example of this sort of "reasoning", of late, was Fox News personality Glenn Beck's tirade in which he announced that he had decided that President Obama and the Democrats were not socialists after all, as he and many other conservative pundits have charged, but fascists. Who honestly thinks that these two concepts of a society are so similar that it takes months of observation to tell whether someone advocates one, the other, or neither?

This is why I resist such labeling. Accusing someone of being a racist, a sexist, a socialist, a fascist, or an anti-semite is a cheap and dishonest way to win an argument. If done successfully, it neatly obviates the need for the person making the charge to justify his own ideas.

There is also another danger, which the Greenwald quote illustrates. Continually making specious allegations of anti-semitism, racism, or what have you inevitably cheapens the impact of the label. The boy who cried wolf is a story that everyone should keep in mind. Certainly, anyone with any sense will no longer believe Leon Wieseltier the next time he cries "anti-semite". There really are anti-semites, racists, and sexists out there, and recklessly labeling anyone and everyone with such terms will inevitably make us less inclined to pay attention the next time someone does it.

Afterword: I'll also note, in passing, that Wieseltier's first bit of "evidence" that Sullivan is an anti-semitic:

“Trying to explain the doctrine of the Trinity to readers of The New Republic is not easy.” On June 2, 1944, W.H. Auden penned that sentence in a letter to Ursula Niebuhr. On January 26, 2010, Andrew Sullivan posted it as the “quote for the day” on his blog. Displaced and unglossed quotations are always in some way mordant, and bristle smugly with implications. Let us see what this one implies.

Something Much Darker

is nothing of the sort. As Sullivan observed, Auden's quote was a lament that many of TNR's readers at the time were people whose outlook is more secular than religious. This, I suspect, is probably still true. Though I'm an atheist, I agree with Auden. None other than well known secularist Richard Dawkins explained why in his book The God Delusion:

Rivers of Medieval ink, not to mention blood, have been squandered over the 'mystery' of the Trinity, and in suppressing such heresies as the Arian heresy. Arius of Alexandria, in the fourth century AD, denied that Jesus was consubstantial (i.e., of the same substance or essence) of God. What on Earth could that possibly mean, you are probably asking? Substance? What 'substance'? What exactly do you mean by 'essence'? 'Very little' seems the only reasonable reply. Yet the controversy split Christendom down the middle for more than a century, Emperor Constantine order that all copies of Arius' book should be burned. Splitting Christendom by splitting hairs, such has been the way of theology.

The God Delusion - pg. 33

[This is my transcription of the page. It can't be cut and pasted electronically.]

As this hilarious Mr. Deity episode demonstrates, it's a concept that makes no sense to anyone who is trained to think logically.

Clearly, positing anti-semitism is no more necessary to explain Sullivan's sense of the irony of this quote than belief in Catholicism is necessary to explain mine. Both Catholics and secularists can find humor in it, though doubtless for different reasons. Sullivan's response to that particular point was that he was poking fun at the unusually large number of Jews on the TNR staff, of course. That just further supports the idea that there are many possible reasons for finding such a quote humorous, and anti-semitism isn't necessary to explain most of them.

Molestus Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

Updated Nov. 8

Every once in a while, I see someone use what I refer to as the molestus hoc, ergo propter hoc logical fallacy. A play on the phrase post hoc, ergo propter hoc (more or less literally "it follows, therefore it is caused by"), this variation uses the verb molestus, which means "annoy", or "anger". This version of the post hoc fallacy is a common one these days - people assume that events are caused by whatever it is that annoys, angers, or frightens them, whether there's actually any reason to or not.

Yesterdays shooting at Ft. Hood has yielded a treasure trove of such speculation. Blue Texan described some of it this morning at FireDogLake:

The Anchor Baby [Michelle Malkin]:

Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror.

Atlas Juggs [Atlas Shrugs]:

They knew this guy was a jihadi. They knew. But they sacrificed American lives at the alter [sic] political correctness.

Jihad Watch:

Yet there was, and what’s more, Major Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness and the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States have been working for years to obscure.

The Corner:

This is not the first time American soldiers have been victims of politically correct policies.

It takes a particularly demented type of crazy to blame the US military for a tragedy like this. Because that’s exactly what they’re doing here.

Right-Wingers: “Political Correctness” to Blame for Ft. Hood Shootings

I don't know what's more offensive, the notion that the Army would deliberately allow this sort of thing out of a spirit of political correctness, the idea that tolerance is killing people at a faster rate than intolerance, or the pathetic conceit that these assclowns are the only ones "courageous" enough to point this out. Whatever it is, they're wrong. The guy who did this, who is probably the only one who actually knows why he did it at this point, hasn't been talking publicly. And while these people are at turns deceitful, stupid, and feckless, they are not courageous.

They're frightened of a religion that's different from their own. Since it frightens them, to them it's obviously responsible for anything done by any Muslim, or anyone who is influenced in some way by Islam, or who advocates tolerance of it. They're ignorant cowards. Unfortunately, they have a lot of company.

Less pernicious, but equally misguided, is the attempt to explain this incident as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There has been a notable increase in the incidence of PSTD in the last few years, and a rise in both violence and suicide among service members. That is a problem, and it needs to be addressed. At the moment, though, there is no direct evidence that Maj. Hasan suffered from PTSD. He may have had some psychiatric problem, and he may not.

For the record, combat isn't the only way to contract a case of PTSD. Insisting that Hasan couldn't have it because he wasn't in combat is wrong. Many forms of stress can cause it, as Medicinet notes:

Virtually any trauma, defined as an event that is life-threatening or that severely compromises the emotional well-being of an individual or causes intense fear, may cause PTSD. Such events often include either experiencing or witnessing a severe accident or physical injury, receiving a life-threatening medical diagnosis, being the victim of kidnapping or torture, exposure to war combat or to a natural disaster, exposure to other disaster (for example, plane crash) or terrorist attack, being the victim of rape, mugging, robbery, or assault, enduring physical, sexual, emotional, or other forms of abuse, as well as involvement in civil conflict. Although the diagnosis of PTSD currently requires that the sufferer has a history of experiencing a traumatic event as defined here, people may develop PTSD in reaction to events that may not qualify as traumatic but can be devastating life events like divorce or unemployment.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: What Causes PTSD?

Here's a story of someone who contracted PTSD doing mortuary work for the Army. It can happen, even to people who only experience the pain of war through others.

People saddened by the stress our soldiers are experiencing in Iraq and Afghanistan might see this as another example, but as yet there isn't proof.

My own conclusion about what's happened is that it is apparently the work of a single individual. Given that, its origins probably lie in the mind of that individual. Certainly, whatever the motivations are will be something we'll have to learn through interviews by law enforcement and mental health professionals. Until such interviews are done, speculating about what caused this is both pointless and potentially dangerous.

Hasan was wounded four times during his rampage. He is most likely not yet in a condition to give a coherent account of his reasons for doing this. I feel safe in asserting that no one has yet determined why this event occurred, beyond the obvious fact that Hasan felt the need to shoot people. I could come up with alternative explanations to PTSD or Muslim rage that fit the facts, but that doesn't mean it would be any closer to the truth. Speculation isn't fact.

I’d like for some serious investigation into Maj. Hasan’s state of mind to have taken place before I decide who, or what, is to blame. By the time that happens, of course, some white woman will have gone missing, or some big explosion will have happened somewhere other than Iraq or Afghanistan, and the TV news will have forgotten all about this. That's sad, because there may be important lessons we can draw from this.

It's just clear that as of yet, we don't know what those are.

UPDATE: Over at Political Animal, Steve Benen adds a postscript:

A tragic part of American life is that, from time to time, we learn of horrific shootings like the one at Fort Hood yesterday. There was, apparently, another shooting this morning, this time in Orlando, in which one was killed and seven were critically wounded. The gunman wasn't a Muslim.

Likewise, last year, 32 people were shot down in Virginia Tech. In March, 10 were killed in a shooting rampage in Alabama. In April, 13 were killed in upstate New York. In each instance, the gunmen weren't Muslim.

Bringing Out The Worst In Small, Sad Minds

The fact that some of these people were Christians, and may have said something like "God help me", or whatever, won't be taken by the Islamophobes as proof that Christians are a source of danger.

UPDATE 2 (Nov. 8): I didn't see this until today, but Greg Marx at the Columbia Journalism Review seems to have been thinking along the same lines I am:

It’s been just over twenty-four hours since Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire on his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood—more than enough time, clearly, for our pundits to begin opining on what it all means. And though those interpretations are varied, there is one headline that could apply to nearly all of them: Tragic Massacre Vindicates My Pre-existing Political Convictions.

Jumping To Confusion

He then goes on to detail how confused the initial reporting of this event has been, as well as how many folks were willing to jump to the conclusion that this has something to do with islamofascism or PTSD. Worth a read, I think.

Attendance And The Google

Did you mean John McCain vote attendance

Image credit: screenshot by Cujo359.

Over the last few months, one of the most visited articles at this blog has been On Attendance. This article is about the attendance records of the various Senators who were running for President at the time. It concluded that Clinton's attendance was very good by the prevailing standards, and Obama's better than average.

People usually happen by that article because they're doing a web search for Barack Obama's attendance record. Now, there are lots of possible reasons, but I keep wondering why none are looking for John McCain's attendance record, which is bad by any standard. While I've seen a few hits for Hillary Clinton's attendance record, I've seen none for McCain. Why is that?

It turns out that you needn't posit political bias to explain this fact. Simply doing a Google search of John McCain vote attendance, my article comes up on the tenth page. That means that people have to scroll past ninety or so other articles to get to mine. Some of those articles are by nationally known publishers. Some, like this provocative one, would be at least as interesting as mine. On the other hand, that article is the number one article for Barack Obama vote attendance. Only the gods of internet search know why such a difference exists.

For those who might have alighted here first, here are the totals as of today:

Senators With Lowest Vote Attendance - 110th Congress

Name	State	Missed (%)	Comment
John McCain	R-AZ	63.8%	Rep. Pres. candidate (as far as we know, he didn’t have a brain haemorrhage)
Tim Johnson	D-SD	48.7%	had a brain haemorrhage
Barack Obama	D-IL	45.5%	Dem. Pres. candidate
Hillary Clinton	D-NY	32.3%	Dem. Pres. candidate
Joseph Biden	D-DE	30.3%	Dem. Pres. candidate thru Jan. 3, now V.P. candidate
Christopher Dodd	D-CT	26.8%	Dem. Pres. candidate thru Jan. 3
Sam Brownback	R-KS	26.8%	Rep. Pres. candidate thru Oct. 19
Edward Kennedy	D-MA	17.2%	Diagnosed with brain cancer
Daniel Inouye	D-HI	10.5%	wife died in March, 2007 after long illness

(As of today, August 29, 2008) Source: Senate Members Who Missed Votes

McCain's, Clinton's, and Obama's records have all gotten worse, though Clinton still enjoys a comfortable lead. Johnson's has gotten much better, thanks to the fact that he is now physically able to attend votes. The rest have stayed roughly the same or improved somewhat.

I suppose there are three lessons you can draw from this little exercise. First, everything that happens is not due to a right wing conspiracy or bias. Sometimes, things just go a lot differently when you change the question a little. Second, somthing that's true seven months ago may not be as true today. Third, when someone says "I wonder how Candidate A does at vote attendance?" and concludes that this is or is not good, the next logical question is "What about Candidate B?"

UPDATE (Aug. 30): I'm still waiting for my first hit from someone looking to see how many votes McCain has missed. This article is number three or four in that search.

UPDATE 2: The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is one of the lobbying groups that rate legislators on their voting records in light of whatever the group is interested in. Here's what they had to say about John McCain's record last year:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) scored 0 percent in 2007 (24 percent lifetime) due to missing all 15 votes scored, including the key vote on repealing tax giveaways to big oil – a measure that failed by only one vote.

LCV Releases 2007 National Environmental Scorecard

In the related field of alternative energy, McCain's record is equally unimpressive:

Voteskipper McCain shirked votes supporting renewable tax credits four times this session, letting them be filibustered every time. Twice the bill was blocked by a single vote. In the past month alone, he missed every single energy vote brought to the floor. Sen. McCain stayed on the campaign trail while his conservative allies filibustered each proposal — on energy speculation, low-income heating bills, and renewable energy and energy efficiency incentives — and he drilled for cash from the oil industry.

McCain Says He’d End His Vacation From Congress To ‘Drill Here, Drill Now’

Here's what John McCain had to say about that record, according to Think Progress:

McCAIN: I have a long record of that support of alternate energy. … I’ve always been for all of those and I have not missed any crucial vote. But my citizens in Arizona know that when I’m running for the President of the United States I have to be out campaigning.

McCain: ‘I Have Not Missed Any Crucial Vote’ On Energy Legislation

[emphasis from original]

Sometimes the wisest course is to do nothing. I don't think that wisdom applies here, though.

Broncos Play Before 75,000 Fans, Just Like Hitler!

Image credit: Denver QB from AP photo. Composited by Cujo359

[Adolph Hitler and a Denver Broncos quarterback - according to the fractured logic of Ben Stein, they're just the same. See NOTE]

Over the last week I've written a few articles critical of the silliness of Barack Obama's campaign for President. So, you might wonder, how are the Other Guys doing? Sadly, they've been doing even worse. I say "sadly" simply because it shouldn't be possible, not because I favor Republicans returning to power any time soon.

Let's start with the comedy stylings of Ben Stein. Stein, whose most recent work was as narrator for the terminally stupid Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, said this in an interview this week on Glenn Beck's bark show:

On the July 23 edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, guest Ben Stein, while discussing Sen. Barack Obama's plan to deliver his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination at Denver's Invesco Field, stated that he did not "like the idea of Senator Obama giving his acceptance speech in front of 75,000 wildly cheering people" because "[t]hat is not the way we do things in political parties in the United States of America." Stein continued: "Seventy-five-thousand people at an outdoor sports palace, well, that's something the Fuehrer would have done. And I think whoever is advising Senator Obama to do this is bringing up all kinds of very unfortunate images from the past."

Stein on Obama's convention speech

Anyone who didn't sleep through elementary philosophy will recognize this as guilt by association. Ironically, people sometimes jokingly call this rhetorical fallacy Reductio Ad Hitlerium, as in "He <fill in the blank here>, just like Hitler!" It could fairly be pointed out, I think, that since this is the home stadium of the Denver Broncos, they must be just like Hitler, too.

Which, sort of, brings us to our next bit of Republican rhetorical excess. After all, if you're going to hire a big stadium so your politician can speak there, you're presuming that he'll be able to fill that thing with his fans. Little wonder, then, that presumptuous is the latest buzzword out of the Republican noise machine. Bob Cesca writes:

And today, the word of the day in the corporate press is... "presumptuous." Used in a sentence: Senator Obama is being presumptuous during his trip -- acting all presidential and dignified. How dare he be presidential while running for, you know, president. Presumptuous. During the live CNN web feed of the Berlin address, an anchor used it to describe the event. Joe Klein used it in a blog post today. Of course Joe attributed it to racist voters rather than very serious reporters -- racist because it's presumably a synonym for 'uppity' and we can't accuse the press of such awfulness. And Candy Crowley used it in her post-address analysis on CNN. That's a lot of coincidences. "Presumptuous" must really be a popular word. Odd that it's being used so often by people who want Senator Obama to win.

The Barbeque Media Wants Senator Obama To Win? That's Rich

[links from original]

Of course, Klein and Crowley can always be counted on to echo Republican talking points - it's the only reason such incompetents can stay in the news business.

Of course, all you need to do is Google for the phrase "Karl Rove Obama presumptuous" to figure out why the Republicans think this will play so well. That faux Presidential seal that the Obama campaign has chosen as a logo brought out lots of comments about how presumptuous it was. The Republican strategists, and their proxies in the press, caught onto that quickly enough.

Let's not forget, either, as Cesca points out, that one synonym for "presumptuous" is "uppity", as in uppity black guy. Or "elitist" black guy.

A thinking person might ask himself at this point, what's the big deal? Anyone who runs for President is going to have a large ego. Presumption, and even a little arrogance, are going to be part of the package. Do the people who repeat this meme think for one second that John McCain isn't just as arrogant or presumptuous? If not, they're damn fools. Of course, as I've observed before, that's an adjective that can be applied to much of the voting public these days.

Which brings us to our next example of Republican rhetoricians gone wild:

This is pretty extraordinary. A candidate for the American Presidency is using flyers printed in German to turn people out for his campaign rally in Berlin on Thursday. This flyer can be found on a bilingual page on BarackObama.com advertising the event:



The German flyers bear Obama's campaign logo and say "Paid for by Obama for America."

I'm surprised at this lapse in judgment in an otherwise well-oiled and professional Obama campaign. The last time they printed up campaign paraphenalia in a foreign language, it didn't work out so hot for them.

Obama Campaign Prints German-language Flyers for Berlin Rally

[links from original]

That link, of course, leads to the aforementioned article on the Obama campaign's new logo. It contains two words in Latin, which as you might recall is one less Latin word than appears on American money. [As an aside, I'll point out to Patrick Ruffini that the first image that came to my mind when I saw that poster was "Jesse Owens".] Matt Yglesias observes:

Apparently it's now unpatriotic to so much as concede that they speak foreign languages in foreign countries. Or maybe American politicians should only be allowed to speak in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the UK.

Meanwhile, I understand that as a campaign tactic, contemporary conservatism's reliance on the national security issue and contemporary conservatism's embrace of xenophobia and insularity go together like a horse and carriage.

We Speak American Here

Ya think? I'd have to think that if a German politician spoke in America, he'd probably use English in his advertising, don't you?

What should we make of this? I think I'll take a cue from the average American voter and let someone else do my thinking for me. In this case, it's Digby:

Keep in mijnd that the GOP does not do this stuff for a knock out. They operate on the death of a thousand cuts. Little criticisms, relentlessly played, dribbled out over time designed to create a running theme. This one is obvious: elitist, aloof, and --- presumptuous. That last carries quite an amazing amount of freight --- presumptuous, uppity, doesn't know his place. It applies neatly to any Democrat who deigns to lead Broderville but the historical, subliminal American memory that attaches to such a word when the person in question is black is particularly powerful. (I smell the mark of Rove on that --- he's really good at stuff like this.)

Pressing The Press

OK, I can't help it - I can't stop thinking completely. I don't have a view of what the Republican playbook really is. I think that Digby's hypothesis is supported by the facts, though, which are that in the past it's never been one thing that's killed Democratic Presidential hopes. Whether it's Clinton, Gore, or Kerry, the Republicans have used many different memes, like "flip flopper", "no values", etc., to slowly erode the public's image of the candidate. Not all of the memes work, but when the press is willing to go along, as they inevitably are these days, it's a lot easier than it should be. They'll keep trying out memes until they find some that work, and then repeat them relentlessly. To know that, all you need to do is look at how they've worked in the past.

It's also safe to predict that in "presumptuous" and "elitist", they've found buzzwords that will work on a portion of the voting public. They'll paint Obama as the big-headed uppity negro who talks to foreigners and uses foreign words, and it will play to a particularly thoughtless portion of the population. Whether they're enough to tip the balance will remain to be seen, but as H.L. Mencken once observed, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. Last time I checked, Republicans weren't going broke in excessive numbers.

(h/t Articles by Dana Hunter and PZ Myers led me to some of these articles.)


NOTE: I make this point with some trepidation. Inevitably, someone will be offended by this composite, even though its point is clearly satirical. I intend no offense to the Denver Broncos or their fans by this. In fact, I'm not even trying to insult Hitler. One would think the point is obvious, but we'll see how long it takes before the first complaint that I'm comparing a deliberately unidentified Denver QB with Hitler appears.

UPDATE: Over at Carpetbagger Report, Steve Benen writes:

Years ago, I was having a conversation with a jazz pianist who told me, “When I hit a wrong note, I keep hitting it — so the audience will think it’s intentional.” To move away from the wrong note would be a subtle admission of a mistake.

John McCain seems to apply the same standard to himself.

McCain can’t stop hitting the wrong note

He goes on to show that McCain has changed his position on what the Surge was four times in the course of a week. Actually, I think the idea of the wrong note anecdote is that your supposed to hit the same wrong note, not different ones. It appears the Republicans don't even need to get that right.

UPDATE 2 (Jul. 27): When I said that McCain was bound to be presumptuous, too, I didn't expect that guess to be so immediately and spectacularly confirmed. David Neiwert explains:

In his new ad touting his health-care plan, John McCain dubs himself "President McCain" at the ad's outset. In big block letters.

McCain's Already Crowned Himself President

Seems Mr. Straight Talk might have been a little too straight here. By the way, going by the subtitles, that's not much of a health care plan. It's more of a take care of the health care providers and insurance companies plan from the look of it.