Is Being A Conservative A Mental Defect?

As half of the United States continues to support the Republicans despite example after example of failed policies I am left to wonder - Why?

Well, I've read about various studies from the past few years where new neuroscience tools are being used to watch people's brains as they make decisions. What these studies show is that people who self-identify as being conservative are not very good at dealing with new information.

See:

What Makes People Vote Republican?

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany's best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Democrats and Republicans Both Adept at Ignoring Facts, Study Finds

The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.

Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain

...scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

Why we vote the way we do

For both the 2000 and 2004 elections, the analysis showed that negative perceptions of Democratic candidates Al Gore and John Kerry were more pivotal in putting a Republican in the White House than were positive perceptions of George Bush.

Update 9/19/2008 - more stories about the Conservatives' mental defect:
Left, Right; Obama, McCain: It may not be what you think

Conservatives Scare More Easily Than Liberals, Say Scientists

Update 9/26/2008
What's the difference between a liberal and conservative?

Political conservatives operate out of a fear of chaos and absence of order while political liberals operate out of a fear of emptiness, a new Northwestern University study soon to be published in the Journal of Research in Personality finds

Update 9/30/2008
Two Genes Predict Voter Turnout

In this article, we hypothesize that people with more transcriptionally efficient alleles of the MAOA and 5HTT genes are more likely to vote. An association between a gene and political behavior may also be moderated by environmental factors. This phenomenon is known as a gene-environment (GxE) interaction (Shanahan and Hofer 2005). We therefore also hypothesize that an association between each of these genes and voting may be moderated by social activity. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we conduct gene and gene-environment association tests on the relationship between turnout and MAOA and 5HTT. The results show that both genes are significantly associated with the decision to vote. Moreover, the association between 5HTT and turnout is moderated by exposure to religious social activity. These findings have important implications for how we both model and measure political interactions.

My Best Friend Is A Sled Dog

New research explains the super-athleticism of sled dogs

New research suggests the canines are superior to most other mammals, including humans, in at least three key areas: They are unusually adept at adapting to exercise, they have superior aerobic capacity and are unusually efficient in using food as fuel.

Bike To Work Pants

What a great idea! Business on the outside, reflective on the inside.

Cordarounds Bike-to-Work pants with reflective Teflon cuff

This Sounds Familiar

From February, 2000:

McCain Backs Out of Debate In California

With new polls showing his campaign dead in the water among California Republicans, Arizona Sen. John McCain has pulled out of a long-scheduled debate with Texas Gov. George Bush, set for Thursday in Los Angeles.

McCain SMASH!

Will Ford Be In Time?

Ford to bring six fuel-efficient European models stateside

A 40+ mpg diesel C-Max would be a great thing.

Game Over Man...

If this "methane leak" is confirmed and expands then the current crisis will seem quaint.

See: The methane time bomb

The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

I Eat That Much Every Day

PhysOrg: Dark chocolate: Half a bar per week to keep at bay the risk of heart attack

The Least Effective Presidents

It seems to me that the two self-described evangelicals have been the two least effective presidents. Yet there is a group of voters who want more evangelicals in office. A search for this topic turned up this story at NPR: The 'Religionization' Of The Oval Office

A Few Bad Days For McCain

9/17/2008
McCain Leaves GM Plant To Chants Of Obama 08'


9/22/2008
The Humane Society makes its first-ever presidential endorsement.

While we've endorsed hundreds of congressional candidates for election, both Democrats and Republicans, we've never before endorsed a presidential candidate. We have members on the left, in the center, and on the right, and we knew it could be controversial to choose either party's candidate for the top office in the nation. But in an era of sweeping presidential power, we must weigh in on this most important political race in the country. Standing on the sidelines is no longer an option for us.

I'm proud to announce today that the HSLF board of directors -- which is comprised of both Democrats and Republicans -- has voted unanimously to endorse Barack Obama for President.

9/23/2008
George Will backhandedly endorses Obama with Is McCain Fit for the Presidency?

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

9/24/2008 AM
Economic Fears Give Obama Clear Lead Over McCain in Poll

9/24/2008 PM
McCain concedes? Or just quits for the time being? Stunt Man

9/24/2008 Late Night
John McCain outright lies to David Letterman, and Letterman turns on him.
Sizzle! David Letterman Skewers McCain Over Cancellation (with video)

It Is Okay When We Do It

DHS Report Says Leave Laptops At Home

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security appears to be of two minds about the security of information on portable devices.

On the one hand, it defends border searches of laptops as necessary to limit the movements of terrorists, to deter child pornography, and to enforce U.S. laws.

"One of our most important enforcement tools in this regard is our ability to search information contained in electronic devices, including laptops and other digital devices, for violations of U.S. law, including potential threats," said Jayson Ahern, deputy commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in an online post in June.

On the other hand, it has warned business and government travelers not to carry laptops or other electronic devices when traveling abroad, as a way to prevent "unauthorized access and theft of data by criminal and foreign government elements."

Hitting Kids Does Not Work

My guess is most parents hit their kids out of frustration and lack of patience. Corporal punishment has an immediate effect but science shows that over the long term striking your child has negative consequences.

See: Spare the Rod: Why you shouldn't hit your kids

How are parents like half the voters?

Part of the problem is that most of us pay, at best, selective attention to science—and scientists, for their part, have not done a good job of publicizing what they know about corporal punishment. Studies of parents have demonstrated that if they are predisposed not to see a problem in the way they rear their children, then they tend to dismiss any scientific finding suggesting that this presumed nonproblem is, in fact, a problem. In other words, if parents believe that hitting is an effective way to control children's behavior, and especially if that conviction is backed up by a strong moral, religious, or other cultural rationale for corporal punishment, they will confidently throw out any scientific findings that don't comport with their sense of their own experience.

And what does the United States have in common with Somalia? These are the only countries to not sign the U.N.'s Convention on the Rights of Children.

Electricity Into Thrust?

Is it possible to turn electricity into microwaves into thrust? This wired.com article indicates the Chinese have worked with an inventor to do just that. See: Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive

Tea > Water

Recently heard that this story was replayed for some reason. Via the BBC - Tea 'healthier' drink than water

Links To Other Stories Getting Overlooked

MSNBC - In hard times, tent cities rise across the country

MoJo - Meet the Religious Right Duo Behind "Obama Waffles"

AP - John McCain either doesn't want to meet Spain's prime minister any time soon or isn't quite sure who he is

Those Anti-Obama Ads From Vets For Freedom Are Wrong

Background from NPR on the ads: Vets For Freedom Keeps After Obama -- But It's Not Political

The facts:

UCLA study of satellite imagery casts doubt on surge's success in Baghdad

By tracking the amount of light emitted by Baghdad neighborhoods at night, a team of UCLA geographers has uncovered fresh evidence that last year's U.S. troop surge in Iraq may not have been as effective at improving security as some U.S. officials have maintained.

Avoiding the V Word: As he prepares to depart Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus cautions against premature declarations of victory.

Petraeus is careful not to credit all the progress to the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. The sea change came last year from a series of movements now known as the Awakening, when Sunnis, organizing around traditional tribal leaders, decided to turn on Al Qaeda as "an organization that embraces an extremist ideology, employs indiscriminate violence, and practices oppressive social customs," in the general's words. One of those customs was a ban on smoking. "That was the turning point when they cut the fingers off the first person who was smoking," he jokes. "Can you imagine an Anbar sheik being told he can't smoke?" So would the Sunni Awakening have succeeded without the surge? Possibly, he concedes, but the surge came at that time and helped empower Sunni leaders, paying their fighters and backing them up on the streets. This is where Seneca the Younger comes in: "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

Peak Oil Graphs

Links to SeekingAlpha: Peak Oil - Are We There Yet?

The Candidates' Technology And Media Policies

Basically Obama sees the Internet as infrastructure, McCain would see it as a product.

See Slate: Obama vs. McCain on media policy 2008

Being pro-net neutrality means that Obama and his advisers believe basic anti-discrimination rules (a modern version of the "common carriage" rules that make phone companies and innkeepers serve all comers) will preserve the open nature of the Internet—and keep it safe for unapproved speech and surprising innovations like Wikipedia and YouTube.

Camp McCain starts from a different ideological place: one that takes the Internet as, essentially, a very cool "product." As a product, the Net is less a public resource, and more something provided by the private sector in whatever form it considers best. In this sense, Camp McCain sees the Internet as more like cable television on steroids than some imaginary commons of the ether. What channels should be on cable is mostly a question for Time-Warner and Comcast—so why shouldn't Internet providers make the same kinds of decisions?

That's the view McCain pushed in 2005, when he co-sponsored a bill that allowed Internet blocking "on notice." If McCain's bill had become law, a cable or phone company could in theory block, say, the video site Hulu.com by providing notice in the "service plan." Interestingly, in that bill at least, McCain put himself at odds with more moderate Republicans, like Kevin Martin, present chairman of the FCC, who recently punished Comcast for just such consumer blocking. McCain (though he wavers in interviews) has put himself firmly in the anti-net-neutrality camp. According to his Web site, McCain might forbid some blocking, but in general, "John McCain does not believe in prescriptive regulation like 'net-neutrality.' "

Another Myth Is Busted

PhysOrg reports that sites that were originally referred to as "Forts" by William Henry Harrison were actually water works designed to cope with post-glacial climate change.

See: Revising and re-sizing history: New work shows Ohio site to be an ancient water works, not a fort

The site known as Miami Fort is no fort at all, and it is also much larger than previously believed – so large, in fact, that its berms stretch to almost six kilometers in length, making it twice as large as any other Native American earthworks in Ohio, and one of the largest in the nation.

Old Growth News

Via Treehugger - Old-Growth Forests in New York State Protected Under New Legislation

Via Discover - Want to Capture Carbon? Protect Old Trees

The new study suggests that protecting old growth forests may be just as important as planting new trees in efforts to reduce carbon dioxide levels and fight global warming.

A Clothing Company That Makes My Heart Flutter

Empire Canvas Works - I'll be ordering myself a vest soon!

We're Empire Canvas Works, and we're not here to replicate the technology-laden garb you see on retail shelves. Our task is to harness the steady function of natural fibers, and blend it with a few modern traits that ensure comfort and durability. We believe that your garments, handwear, and footwear should work the same way, every day, despite age, wear, and exposure to the elements. Our goal is to sell you a great product- once. Your task is to wear your mitten palms smooth on the Hickory of an axe, collect generations of puppy hair on your vest, and listen as the tight fibers of your anorak sing quietly against the brush for miles on end.

A Profile Of Ben Franklin - The First American

Benjamin Franklin: City Slicker

Franklin also exhibited psychological skills far beyond any mere country bumpkin’s. Seeking a second term as clerk, for instance, he was opposed by a rich and talented new assembly member who proposed a different candidate for the post. Franklin won the job, but he didn’t like the threat that the member would pose to his pocketbook in the future. Rather than gaining the man’s favor by paying servile respect, however, Franklin wrote a note asking to borrow “a certain very scarce and curious book” that he knew the rich man owned. The man sent the book immediately. Franklin read it and returned it a week later with another note, this one “expressing strongly” his “sense of the favor.” The assemblyman “ever afterwards manifested a readiness” to serve Franklin and remained a lifelong friend. It was another instance, Franklin believed, of the truth that “he that hath once done you a Kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.” Now that’s city slick.

A Source For Finding The Best Products

Goodguide

GoodGuide™ provides the world's largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and companies. GoodGuide's mission is to help you find safe, healthy, and green products that are better for you and the planet. From our origins as a UC Berkeley research project, GoodGuide has developed into a totally independent "For-Benefit" company. We are committed to providing the information you need to make better decisions, and to ultimately shifting the balance of information and power in the marketplace.

Is It Any Wonder Michigan Is Having Problems?

The state-level politicians do not appear to get "it".

See:
Nestlé gets OK to bottle more water

The approval was given after the Department of Environmental Quality determined the company's new well near Evart, and a pipeline to be built beneath wetlands in Osceola County, will not harm streams or wetlands.

Nestlé already draws water from four existing wells near its Stanwood bottling plant in west central Michigan at an average rate of 218 gallons per minute. The new well will be able to pump at 150 gallons per minute.

What my congressman does (and does not) know about energy

I confess that my expectations about energy literacy among most people are quite low. And, I wouldn't expect most members of Congress to understand energy very well either unless they serve on committees that deal with energy issues. But my congressman, Fred Upton of Michigan, is the ranking Republican member on the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality. So, I expected that he would have a pretty good handle on basic information about energy, at least in the United States.

With pen and yellow pad in hand I clicked on the interview ready to take a few notes. On the first pass I thought perhaps Upton had just misspoken on some points. But as I listened again, I realized that he was confidently spouting obviously erroneous information. Here is a man who is central to energy policy in the United States speaking glibly on a broad range of energy issues who in at least two instances got important basic facts wrong and in other cases was either misinformed or misleading. If his understanding of energy issues is a proxy for those in Congress who are well-informed on energy issues, then it's no wonder federal energy policy is in the state it's in.

Maybe Some Kids Are Simply Picky?

The NY Times has another article about children's eating habits and it quickly became one of the most E-mail articles. See: 6 Food Mistakes Parents Make

Here are the mistakes according to the article:

1. Sending children out of the kitchen
2. Pressuring them to take a bite
3. Keeping ‘good stuff’ out of reach
4. Dieting in front of your children
5. Serving boring vegetables
6. Giving up too soon

Hops

American farmers are seeing more success with hops with production growing in New York and Michigan.

See:
NYT - Think the 1800s, Then Pour Yourself a Cold One

MyNorth - On Tap Tonight! Old Mission Hops Flavor New Right Brain Ale

...the newly formed Old Mission Hops Exchange planted the first crop of hops in Northern Michigan in at least 75 years.

How Delaware Got An Offshore Wind Farm

See NYT Mag: Wind-Power Politics

Science Mini-links

Swedish researchers confirm Siberian seabead methane leak

Strongest Storms Grow Stronger Yet, Study Says

Obama Answers Science Questions
"This is the first time we know of that a candidate for president has laid out his science policy before the election at this level of detail"

British Bashing

There was a meme recently of all the problems with the brits. For examples see:

Childhood’s End: Britain, land of bleak houses and low expectations

Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report.

Some Britons too unruly for resorts in Europe

'The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British'

It's easy to forget (particularly in California) that the British mind-set, "low expectations, a sense of making do, a sense of enduring rather than enjoying," is still the norm in places like New England. I recently spent a few days in a small community in Maine where self-deprecation, shabbiness and eccentricity were all alive and well.
Boasting, self-conscious cleanliness (in dress or person) and obvious vanities are still considered sure signs of lesser birth.