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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

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Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

How stupid are these people?

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

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You are here: Home / “Who is the worst science writer?” “Gregg Easterbrook” “Who is second?” “Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second.”*

“Who is the worst science writer?” “Gregg Easterbrook” “Who is second?” “Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second.”*

by Tom Levenson|  October 22, 20116:36 pm| 96 Comments

This post is in: General Stupidity, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To

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[Fair warning:  this post is merely the scratching of a pet peeve.  No grand significance here.  You have been warned.]

I don’t know why, but I still, more or less as a reflex, skim Gregg Easterbrook’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback column over at ESPN.  (No linky, ’cause I’m kind — but it’s easy enough to find if you are so moved.) 

That Tuesday habit is one I really should break, not least because even a quick scan robs me of five minutes I’ll never get back.

But the real reason to give the column a miss is because it is depressingly often larded with nuggets like this:

A Cosmic Thought: Last week researchers announced they had found, in a South African cave, evidence of painting 100,000 years ago. The previous oldest evidence of painting was from 60,000 years in the past; the famous Lascaux cave paintings in France were made about 17,000 years ago. The latest find, in South Africa, shows both that our ancestors were experimenting with iron oxides to make permanent paint 50 millennia in the past: all that time ago, they painted inside caves, seeming to hope their work would last long enough to be seen by distant descendants.

Each time telescopes improve, the universe is revealed to be larger, older and grander. Each time anthropology makes an advance, the human experiment is shown to be older and more complex than thought. Who can say where the cosmic enterprise may be headed?

A bit of backstory.  Easterbrook has been around a long time, promoting a technological optimist’s view of a lot of problems facing us.  He’s been a climate change scoffer — Naomi Oreskes, (whom I interviewed this week — podcast available here) called him out for deeply misleading writing on global warming as far back as 1992, when he put professional denialist Fred Singer’s words in the mouth of the enormously distinguished climate researcher Roger Revelle — all in an attempt to paint Al Gore as a (not yet fat) environmental extremist.  (See p. 194 of her excellent book, Merchants of Doubt.)

Easterbrook is also one who pulls cards from the bottom of the deck when it comes to science and religion.  One tactic he’s used fairly often  is to chip away at the authority of science as a measure of the material world by stray snarking at all that science doesn’t know.  Things like dark matter (who knew!) and dark energy — what? 95.3 % of the mass-energy density of the universe is made of stuff we can’t see? — all add up (for Easterbrook) into a sly case that maybe scientists don’t know as much as they think they do…which leaves room for more supernatural speculation.

That’s the old God of the gaps argument in defense of faith.  It’s a semi-regular source of fun in my science writing class to bring in a scientist to talk to our graduate students about what it’s like to be on the other side of the notebook — and in such sessions we’ve regularly found Easterbrook’s classic bad faith advance of this tired old trope in this Wired feature  serving as a “don’t-do-this” example.

And here it is again, more subtly framed than usual.  I got nothing against Easterbrook’s noting that there are ongoing discoveries in paleo-anthropology, though I have a bit of a problem with his fatuous statement that these ancestral paint works, amazing as they are, reveal any desire of early homo sapiens to communicate with us.  The past is a foreign country, Gregg.  They do things differently there.

But anachronism is a venial sin.  More serious is Easterbrook’s cleverly un-ostentatious transition to the power of telescopes to reveal cosmic riches. It’s a subtle move, but the effect is to link human aspiration with some kind of cosmic teleology, a goal to which we and the universe aspire.



He’s still retailing gaps and God:  look, Easterbrook says, every time we chip away at our ignorance, we find more wonders.  All that we don’t know is evidence of … he doesn’t quite say. But the implication is clear:  it’s an enterprise, it’s cosmic, and it’s heading somewhere.

As a matter of fact, he’s wrong.  The history of astronomy since Copernicus is one that continuously deflates the idea of human centrality in the universe (which is what makes his anthropology-cosmology faux transition so egregious).  The suggestion of a goal, especially one in which (by juxtaposition) human ingenuity is implicated, gives the game away.  And most of all that phrase, “the human experiment,” is a tell.  If we are the objects of experiment, who is the experimenter?

And that’s what makes Easterbrook’s the worst kind of science writing in my book:  the goal of this writing is not to illuminate, but to emphasize false mysteries, to conflate hugely disparate ideas and discoveries, all to advance an argument that theologians themselves have long disparaged.

I suppose, amongst those we read and mock as needed, he’s hardly the worst.  But he gets my goat, so there.

*referencing this, for those among us with little interest in holes in the water into which you throw money.

Images: Francisco de Goya, The Inquisition Tribunal, between 1812 and 1819

Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Creation of the Sun and the Moon,  (Sistine Chapel ceiling) 1512.

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96Comments

  1. 1.

    Bruuuuce

    October 22, 2011 at 6:44 pm

    maybe scientists don’t know as much as they think they do

    What rot! The whole point of science is that we don’t know everything, and sometimes we find that what we thought we know is not merely inaccurate, but wrong. We then reload, reset our understanding to fit the new data, and keep looking for confirmation or disproof.

    Anyone who thinks they know everything, or even the majority of what there is to know, doesn’t understand science at all.

  2. 2.

    Yutsano

    October 22, 2011 at 6:45 pm

    Goya sure did love his goofy hats.

    He’s still retailing gaps and God

    Nature abhors a vacuum, the human brain even more so. What we cannot explain we don’t accept as lacking explanation, so we fill that hole ourselves with God/Allah/whathaveyou, and call it a day. Easterbrook is just flexing a normal human condition, flawed as that is.

  3. 3.

    FMguru

    October 22, 2011 at 6:47 pm

    Easterbrook also loves to play the false equivalence game. He’s literally argued “Why are physicists so willing to believe the universe is an overlapping field of vibrating 11-dimensional strings that can never be detected, but they can’t admit that maybe we were created by a loving God whose work can be seen in every beautiful sunrise and child’s smile?” which betrays a total incomprehension about what science is and does.

    He also hates Jews almost as much as Andrew Sullivan hates black people.

  4. 4.

    Delia

    October 22, 2011 at 6:52 pm

    FWIW:

    “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
    ― Isaac Newton

  5. 5.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 22, 2011 at 7:00 pm

    I couldn’t get past this:

    The latest find, in South Africa, shows both that our ancestors were experimenting with iron oxides to make permanent paint 50 millennia in the past: all that time ago, they painted inside caves, seeming to hope their work would last long enough to be seen by distant descendants.

    Both . . . and? Both . . . and what? What am I missing here?

  6. 6.

    joel hanes, sp4

    October 22, 2011 at 7:01 pm

    Thanks for this.

    Easterbrook’s well-written but ultimately empty and Wrong writings on science topics were one of the things that motivated me, some time ago, to allow my Atlantic subscription to lapse after 25 years of continuous readership.

    We should compile a list of those who have cast doubt on AGW so that we’ll know who to burn in effigy when the crops fail.

  7. 7.

    chrome agnomen

    October 22, 2011 at 7:02 pm

    orionid meteor shower tonight.

  8. 8.

    BGinCHI

    October 22, 2011 at 7:06 pm

    Come on, Tom. Aren’t you forgetting?

    Don’t know much about history
    Don’t know much biology
    Don’t know much about a science book
    Don’t know much about the French I took
    But I do know that I love you
    And I know that if you love me too
    What a wonderful world this would be….

    Now, I don’t claim to be an A student, but I think if you gave Gregg a big hug this could all work out.

    Plus, just think, maybe you’ll be at the top of a flight of stairs. These kinds of accidents happen all the time.

  9. 9.

    Bago

    October 22, 2011 at 7:07 pm

    For the title I would have gone with “I wanna be sedated”. Of course that would have dovetailed nicely if this post were completed on Thursday. Alas, time marches on.

  10. 10.

    Ty Lookwell

    October 22, 2011 at 7:09 pm

    I’ve always been impressed by his prescient 1980 piece for the Washington Monthly, Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty.

  11. 11.

    MeDrewNotYou

    October 22, 2011 at 7:11 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: That’s not the only problem. Notice that the discovery is that 100kya humans were painting while two sentences later he calls it “50 millennia past.” Can’t they afford an editor? Not even a once-over?

  12. 12.

    Jeff Fecke

    October 22, 2011 at 7:14 pm

    Scientists may tend toward atheism, but even P.Z. Myers will tell you that scientists will accept evidence of God if any exists. Saying “Hey, I don’t get that — must be God!” is not evidence. And I say this as someone who is spiritual, if not religious.

  13. 13.

    Bartleby

    October 22, 2011 at 7:17 pm

    FMguru, do you have some links or references for Easterbrook’s antisemitism? It’s not that I doubt it (I wouldn’t put anything past him), just would like to see for myself.

  14. 14.

    Bartleby

    October 22, 2011 at 7:18 pm

    Never mind, Google took me right to it. What a maroon.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 22, 2011 at 7:21 pm

    @MeDrewNotYou:

    Wow, I completely missed that! Maybe he thinks a millennium is 2000 years, just as a ton is 2000 pounds. Maybe he thinks a millennium is “number of years since Jesus.”

    Or maybe he’s just careless and lazy and needs an editor.

  16. 16.

    RossInDetroit

    October 22, 2011 at 7:22 pm

    Gotta admit the dark matter/energy thing is a bit annoying. I read all of the popular material on the subject as it comes out and I’m more puzzled all the time.
    But just because something’s unknown doesn’t mean Science has Failed and can be replaced by arbitrary opinion, Gregg.

  17. 17.

    opal

    October 22, 2011 at 7:25 pm

    The firebagger responsible for the phrase “pretentious art douche” hasn’t been seen recently.

    This is how science works.

  18. 18.

    eemom

    October 22, 2011 at 7:26 pm

    a trivial matter: there is also an Easterbrook who is a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, who is a sort of second in command to the infamous Judge Posner and equally a disciple of the Chicago School of Economics dogma that has dictated that court’s jurisprudence for decades.

    So every time I see a post about this other Easterbrook dude I think of him.

  19. 19.

    Capri

    October 22, 2011 at 7:36 pm

    @Bartleby:
    He was fired from his ESPN gig for a while because of his “Jewish problem.” When was he quietly hired back?

  20. 20.

    freelancer (iPhone)

    October 22, 2011 at 7:38 pm

    No room for David Brooks on this list? I know Bobo is a columnist, and as big of a political hack establishmentarian water carrier as anyone out there, but his books are “ostensibly” about science, even if they are riddled with his misreadings on the subject.

  21. 21.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 22, 2011 at 7:42 pm

    @freelancer (iPhone):

    Is it just a coincidence that the anagram of “bobo” is “boob”? (And I mean that in the non-breastian way.)

  22. 22.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    October 22, 2011 at 7:42 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: how was lunch?

  23. 23.

    jcgrim

    October 22, 2011 at 7:43 pm

    ‘Merchants of Doubt’ by Oreskes and Conway is one of the most significant books of this century. The authors researched in depth the deception perpetrated on the citizenry by the tobacco and coal/oil industries. The book catalogs in depth the growth of corporate funded think-tanks that employed scientists to cast doubt on scientific evidence about the health effects of tobacco and dangers of global warming. Selling doubt was their product.

    Their methods are a template for today’s corporate think tanks that mix factual truth, opinion, cloaked as science to influence public opinion and shape public policies. it is nearly impossible today for the citizenry to know the distinctions between facts and marketing, peer reviewed evidence and public relations white papers.

    I sent Tom’s interview with Oreskes to my cousin who works for Lisa Jackson at the EPA and to several other friends. Thanks so much for doing this wonderful and important interview.

  24. 24.

    JCT

    October 22, 2011 at 7:48 pm

    @RossInDetroit:

    But just because something’s unknown doesn’t mean Science has Failed and can be replaced by arbitrary opinion, Gregg.

    Ah yes, the wingnut “approach” to science.

    As an clinician-scientist, this pervasive anti-intellectual view regarding the scientific method just fills me with despair. I have lost hope in even trying to describe how science is really “done” to non-scientists. In the past I just assumed that I wasn’t doing a good job explaining, but now, I think it is willful ignorance and these idiots have no idea how this will accelerate our race to the bottom over time.

    Way back when, when I was preparing for my Med School interviews I was told to aim the explanation of my undergraduate research to an “opthamologist’s” level (hmmm, Rand Paul?). These days it is probably a 2nd grader.

    I had an interesting experience when participating in a voir dire once. The attorney asked me if, as a scientist, I could appreciate the concept of reasonable doubt. I had a hard time not laughing out loud…

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 22, 2011 at 7:50 pm

    @chrome agnomen:

    What time, roughly?

    Or never mind, I forgot I have google :-)

  26. 26.

    MeDrewNotYou

    October 22, 2011 at 7:51 pm

    @eemom: I’m doing research on Easterbrook’s “Jewish problem,” and happened to see that Wikipedia says the two are brothers*. Feel free to draw your own conclusions about the asshole gene.

    Easterbrook has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Colorado College and a master’s in journalism from Northwestern University. He is married and has three children, two sons, born in 1989 and 1995, and a daughter born in 1990. He is the brother of Judge Frank H. Easterbrook and Neil Easterbrook, English professor at Texas Christian University.

    *-I skimmed the article on the judge and mentions his work with Posner. I assume he’s the same guy you’re talking about.

  27. 27.

    MosesZD

    October 22, 2011 at 7:52 pm

    He’s also bad at football. His cliché’s are often derived from his inability to understand football and/or statistics.

    I gave up on him years and years ago when I figurd out his lame-game.

  28. 28.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 22, 2011 at 7:54 pm

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred):

    JPL and I decided that we have to get an Atlanta gang together (the two of us plus SIA and A Mom Anon) and make a pilgrimage to Athens to visit you.

    It was really nice to get to meet her. Amazingly, we spent comparatively little time talking about Balloon Juicers. And she fed me a very nice quiche and fresh berries. AND the car servicing cost me a lot less than I had anticipated. All in all, a good day!

  29. 29.

    Roger Moore

    October 22, 2011 at 7:58 pm

    @Jeff Fecke:

    Saying “Hey, I don’t get that—must be God!” is not evidence.

    Yeah, but that’s the best the theists have. For all that God is supposed to be active in the world, clear cut miracles are mighty thin on the ground.

  30. 30.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 22, 2011 at 7:59 pm

    @MeDrewNotYou:

    Easterbrook has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Colorado College

    This is wrong of me, but I laugh every time I see the name of that institution because of a car window decal I glimpsed many years ago:

    COLLORADO COLEGE

  31. 31.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 8:05 pm

    OT but Cain is speaking at Faith and Freedom right now in Iowa

    “Stupid people are running America!”

    liberals have us in a chokehold, blah, blah

  32. 32.

    Morzer

    October 22, 2011 at 8:08 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    He probably meant “that both our ancestors”. Some people still like stories about snakes, apples and adult activities in daddy’s garden.

  33. 33.

    freelancer (iPhone)

    October 22, 2011 at 8:10 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Considering the fact that we here in the blogosphere coined that nick for him based on the title of one of his books, I think one of the reasons the name has stuck is it’s Verisimilitude to the word boob. How’ve you been? How’s everyone else this fine Saturday?

    Tom’s point about the aim of science and it’s progression away from a suggestion of an intended goal or aspiration was also addressed by Carl Sagan in his later work Pale Blue Dot, esp in the chapters The Great Demotions and A Universe Not Made for Us, seen here:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-6wXZXOUV8

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8P1Y1a7-L4

    If any person “gets” science, it’s Sagan. (No offense, Tom. I really enjoy your work here too!)

  34. 34.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 8:11 pm

    he’s gonna kick the EPA’s ass

    oh, and Planned Parenthood, too

  35. 35.

    Maude

    October 22, 2011 at 8:12 pm

    OT but they should have left the Sistine Chapel Ceiling the way it was. It was lovely when it was faded.
    That pictures of the sun and moon looks like something at an amusement park.

  36. 36.

    piratedan

    October 22, 2011 at 8:13 pm

    and naturally, he has a forum on one of the highest trafficked websites known to man. Just another example of how the Peter Principal is still in effect in our daily lives.

  37. 37.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    October 22, 2011 at 8:14 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Good deal! it’s dead as a doornail over here for some reason. There is a big half-marathon in the morning so maybe everyone is laying low for that.

  38. 38.

    WereBear (itouch)

    October 22, 2011 at 8:15 pm

    It’s not uncommon, the either/or, binary mind; except a real science writer should not have one.

    It’s easy to have both science and a sense of wonder. One does not cancel the other.

  39. 39.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    October 22, 2011 at 8:16 pm

    Here’s some great BBC techonoly humor.

  40. 40.

    Felonious Wench

    October 22, 2011 at 8:18 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    Yeah, but that’s the best the theists have.

    Not all. For me, all of the discoveries and concepts scientists and researchers make about anything in the universe, from the smallest subatomic particle to the string theory, are fodder for my concept of God. Science is God for me, what science teaches me illuminates God. I do not see them as mutually exclusive in any way, and I do not think of the unknown as “oh, that’s God.” I just think it’s something we haven’t been able to discover yet.

    The more we find, the more we have yet to learn. It’s infinite, the discoveries we can make through science. That’s the miracle to me.

  41. 41.

    Triassic Sands

    October 22, 2011 at 8:21 pm

    “Who is the worst science writer?” “Gregg Easterbrook.” “Who is second?” “Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second.”*

    While not strictly a “science writer,” Michael Crichton, were he not hanging out in Heaven with the Baby J, might be worthy of consideration.

    Perhaps someday researchers will find wholly natural explanations for life and the cosmos. For the moment, though, discoveries about these two subjects are inspiring awe and wonder, and many scientists are reaching out to spiritual thinkers to help them comprehend what they’re learning.

    G. Easterbrook. Wired

    Nonsense. Spiritual thinkers have no evidence for anything, so the only “help” they can offer scientists trying to understand their own discoveries is unverifiable speculation. How that furthers understanding escapes me.

  42. 42.

    Baud

    October 22, 2011 at 8:21 pm

    “Why are physicists so willing to believe the universe is an overlapping field of vibrating 11-dimensional strings that can never be detected, but they can’t admit that maybe we were created by a loving God whose work can be seen in every beautiful sunrise and child’s smile?”

    Answer: Overlapping fields of vibrating 11-dimensional strings can be evaluated mathematically. Loving gods, not so much.

  43. 43.

    Redshift

    October 22, 2011 at 8:28 pm

    @JCT:

    Ah yes, the wingnut “approach” to science.

    I summarize it as “there are only two possible answers, so any weakness in the evidence for your side proves I’m right!”

  44. 44.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 8:45 pm

    you guys are talking about faith, you should be watching this Faith and Freedom thang on CSPAN, if you really wanna see the crazy

    i hope Colbert or Stewart is paying attention

  45. 45.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 22, 2011 at 8:46 pm

    @freelancer (iPhone):

    Yeah, I was pretty sure I wasn’t the first to notice that. I just, for some reason, felt like saying boob. “Bobo is a boob!” There’s something quite satisfying, in a third-grade way, of saying “Bobo is a boob!”

  46. 46.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 8:49 pm

    The Right to Life Showdown in Iowa

    I think Bachmann wins. She wants a constitutional amendment to define when life begins.

  47. 47.

    S. cerevisiae

    October 22, 2011 at 8:51 pm

    @harlana: How do you keep from throwing your remote through the TV? I will wait for the snarky review.

  48. 48.

    freelancer (iPhone)

    October 22, 2011 at 8:52 pm

    @harlana:

    Lol, I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d like my blood pressure to remain within the already above normal, but not quite dangerous parameters that it currently inhabits. So football is the menu for the evening, since my Huskers already won, it’s all good.

  49. 49.

    srv

    October 22, 2011 at 8:55 pm

    It’s a good thing we didn’t waste all that money on the superconducting super-collider – dumb Euros flushed all those billions to find some boson and nothing to show for it.

    And why do we need new telescopes if all this dark matter and energy can’t be seen? Going on 60 years of “we don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s there!”

    And it’s after 1999 and no flying cars no gravity waves.

  50. 50.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 8:59 pm

    Gingrich says we left Iraq in defeat, we lost the “third Iraq war” and strengthened Iran

  51. 51.

    Lee Hartmann

    October 22, 2011 at 9:01 pm

    The Editors beat you to this long ago:

    http://thepoorman.net/2008/06/18/gregg-easterbrook-is-wait-for-it-an-idiot/

  52. 52.

    JGabriel

    October 22, 2011 at 9:02 pm

    Gregg Easterbrook (via Tom Levenson @ Top):

    A Cosmic Thought …

    You know, Gregg Easterbrook’s Cosmic Thoughts certainly sounds like it should be a tag.

    .

  53. 53.

    Baud

    October 22, 2011 at 9:02 pm

    @harlana:

    “third Iraq war”

    Which one am I missing?

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 22, 2011 at 9:02 pm

    @Maude:

    And Bluebeard!

  55. 55.

    freelancer (iPhone)

    October 22, 2011 at 9:02 pm

    @JGabriel:

    Seconded.

  56. 56.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 9:03 pm

    @freelancer (iPhone): i have historically low blood pressure but i still can’t believe i’m watching it. as expected, they are saying some really outrageous shit, Newt is OUT THERE. Bachmann is the Rabid Fetus Avenger. Cain is just an angry old man. Ron Paul not up yet. Newt is still vomiting all over the stage.

  57. 57.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    October 22, 2011 at 9:05 pm

    @harlana: ““We won the first Iraq war in 1991 and very effectively, in four days driving them out of Kuwait. We won the second Iraq War in 2003 in defeating Sadam in 22 days,” he continued. “And then for reasons I don’t understand we tried to occupy and try to change Iraq and that eight-year campaign is now ending in failure. The fact is the Iranians are now stronger in Iraq than we are.”

  58. 58.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 9:06 pm

    @Baud: according to Newt, we won Desert Storm and then Iraqi Freedom and then . . . that’s about as far as I got in trying to make sense of it

    it’s really quite a spectacle

  59. 59.

    Baud

    October 22, 2011 at 9:06 pm

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred): Thanks for the clarification.

  60. 60.

    RSA

    October 22, 2011 at 9:07 pm

    Easterbrook’s writing is pretty confusing. He writes,

    The latest find, in South Africa, shows both that our ancestors were experimenting with iron oxides to make permanent paint 50 millennia in the past: all that time ago, they painted inside caves, seeming to hope their work would last long enough to be seen by distant descendants.

    Now, he could be confusing 100,000 years with 50 millennia. But neither is really a good estimate for the earliest known cave paintings, which are from about 30,000 to 35,000 years ago.

    The main problem is that he’s suggesting that the recent find was of cave paintings, pushing back the earliest known dates. That’s wrong. Here’s a link to the actual Science article, though it’s only open to subscribers. The bulk of the article is about what was found (a sort of workshop for creating paints) and how it could be properly dated. At the end of the article, the authors write,

    The application or use of the compound is not self-evident. No resins or wax were detected that might indicate it was an adhesive for hafting. Possible uses could include painting a surface in order to decorate or protect it, or to create a design.

    Easterbrook seems not to have read the primary source, which I’d have thought would be a no-no for a science writer. He seems to have taken a finding of painting materials in caves as being actual paintings in caves, whereas the archaeologists are much more careful about their claims. Those claims are interesting in themselves–evidence of early knowledge of chemistry, of planning abilities, even possibly the use of symbolic representations (though this last seems a bit weak to me) [Edit: It seems to have been other scientists who added the interpretation of symbolic reasoning, not the original discoverers]. All in all, though, pretty cool!

    (I’m not so much interested in Easterbrook as in the evolution of cognition, which is why I tracked down the original article.)

  61. 61.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    October 22, 2011 at 9:08 pm

    @Baud: The google is your friend!

  62. 62.

    Baud

    October 22, 2011 at 9:10 pm

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred): You kids and your fancy computer machines…

    @harlana: You make me almost want to watch.

  63. 63.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 9:10 pm

    Newt wants 7 3-hour, Lincoln Douglas style debates with Obama, no moderator! oh dear me. that would be unfortunate. frankly, frankly

    Bachmann keeps changing her look.

    Paul is up next.

    I know. You’re welcome. ;p

  64. 64.

    freelancer (iPhone)

    October 22, 2011 at 9:11 pm

    @harlana:

    I saw the Avengers trailer. I love Joss Whedon, but I think I’d look forward more to a Rabid Fetus Avengers film.

    Question: if I’m bit by a Rabid Fetus, do I get the modern medical treatment? Or am I stuck with the old school, 21 shots to the stomach traditional rabies treatment?

  65. 65.

    Raven (formerly stuckinred)

    October 22, 2011 at 9:14 pm

    @harlana: Yea and then they can go one-on-one and Barak can post his fat ass and give him another face job.

  66. 66.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 9:18 pm

    Newt is still vomiting the stage and then Rick’s just gonna Santorum the place.

  67. 67.

    Bob Westal

    October 22, 2011 at 9:19 pm

    Re: Easterbrook’s infamous Quentin Tarantino diatribe that led to the charges of antisemitism. I think it’s been forever scrubbed off the web but, at the time, I remember being much more offended as a cinephile than I was as a Jew. In other words, he’s always an idiotic film critic.

  68. 68.

    harlana

    October 22, 2011 at 9:21 pm

    i had to suffer through this asshole in the 90’s and he just won‘t fucking go away

  69. 69.

    RossInDetroit

    October 22, 2011 at 9:21 pm

    @JCT:

    I have lost hope in even trying to describe how science is really “done” to non-scientists.

    My brother’s a scientist (Materials) and he used to try on his blog. Now it’s mostly weird cocktail recipes.

  70. 70.

    freelancer (iPhone)

    October 22, 2011 at 9:22 pm

    I gave in and switched up. It’s like Wingnut Bingo. Activist Judges! Abortion on Demand. The Secretary of Energy hatez hims some Energy and Berkley! (Nevermind the Nobel Prize) The Interior hates manufacturing internally! Prayer in schoolz! I like ethanol cuz I’m in Des Moines! fuck the poor moochers and lazy niggers on welfare. States’ rights!

    This is all in the last 10 minutes.

  71. 71.

    Mark S.

    October 22, 2011 at 9:23 pm

    @harlana:

    Newt wants 7 3-hour, Lincoln Douglas style debates with Obama

    That’s great, Newt. Someone might care if there was any possibility of you winning the nomination. Until then, this is the closest you’ll get to debating Obama.

  72. 72.

    RossInDetroit

    October 22, 2011 at 9:26 pm

    Mark the calendar. The TV is turned on. But we’re going to watch a DVD. No GOP for us. I’ll read the body count in the Times tomorrow.

  73. 73.

    Mark S.

    October 22, 2011 at 9:27 pm

    Movies. Science. Sports. Is there any subject Easterbrook doesn’t have an inch-deep understanding of?

    I don’t think I’ve ever read the guy in my life, even when I used to read a lot of sportswriters. I’ve learned enough reading other people bitch about him.

  74. 74.

    SiubhanDuinne

    October 22, 2011 at 9:29 pm

    @harlana:

    Every time Newt says “frankly” (which he does about once every three sentences), that’s when I know for sure that he’s lying.

    That, and when his lips move.

  75. 75.

    freelancer (iPhone)

    October 22, 2011 at 9:33 pm

    @Mark S.:

    That’s a parallel experience to the way I became acquainted with Bobo.

    Ron Paul is pounding the Government is Bad button very HARD. He’s simultaneously punching the culture war straw man with equal force. It’s an incoherent game of Whackamole.

    Gubmint exists only to prevent abortions, restrict divorce, and to get people to walk away from paper money, I guess.

  76. 76.

    JGabriel

    October 22, 2011 at 9:38 pm

    harlana:

    Newt wants 7 3-hour, Lincoln Douglas style debates with Obama

    They just can’t get away from wanting to relive the Confederacy. Astounding.

    .

  77. 77.

    JGabriel

    October 22, 2011 at 9:40 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Every time Newt says “frankly” (which he does about once every three sentences), that’s when I know for sure that he’s lying.

    I’ve found an even more surefire way to tell if Newt is lying: his lips move. It’s a dead giveaway, I swear.

    This technique works for pretty much all of the GOP, actually.

    .

  78. 78.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    October 22, 2011 at 9:51 pm

    Even as arrogant we were arguing that physicists were yesterday, scientists are still far more humble than the type of people you see on TV claiming to be religious. (Notice, I’m only talking about those who run around claiming to be super religious.)

  79. 79.

    mclaren

    October 22, 2011 at 9:51 pm

    …That’s what makes Easterbrook’s the worst kind of science writing in my book: the goal of this writing is not to illuminate, but to emphasize false mysteries, to conflate hugely disparate ideas and discoveries, all to advance an argument that theologians themselves have long disparaged.

    That’s not even science writing. It’s the deliberate misuse and abuse of science in the service of mindless superstition and just-so stories about invisible sky fairies.

  80. 80.

    JCT

    October 22, 2011 at 9:53 pm

    @RossInDetroit: Materials science is good stuff (I’m married to a physical chemist). There is a real loss of respect among the low info types for science. Pathetic.

    The cocktails actually make a lot of sense –a number of my colleagues are both good cooks and ardent mixologists. Sort of goes along with lab research in a way.

    I indulged in both tonight, a new martini recipe and a wicked scampi / pasta dish. Always amusing when my teenager scolds me for playing my music too loud while cooking. Dead giveaway that the cocktails were strong.

    @Belafon (formerly anonevent): Sure, that’s because every day we are reminded that we don’t understand something but if we keep at it, we will. Humbling and exciting! Knowing everything is boring, unless you’re a wingnut.

  81. 81.

    freelancer (iPhone)

    October 22, 2011 at 9:57 pm

    The emcee for this abortion of a political event in the heart of wingnut Iowa, well, English is his second language, and that’s being more than generous. What is it about the Right’s base that rewards insufficiency in the name of promoting token diversity? Yeah, our women and/ our minorities are even bigger boobs than we are, but now you can’t say we’re racist, sexist, or bigoted! So there!

  82. 82.

    MikeJ

    October 22, 2011 at 10:15 pm

    @Baud:

    (3rd iraq war) Which one am I missing?

    People in the gulf refer to the IRan/Riaq war as the first Iraq war, then Bush the smarter, then Bush the dumber.

  83. 83.

    different-church-lady

    October 23, 2011 at 12:57 am

    I’m sensing a Balloon-Juice theme here: bullshitters really get under the skin of ‘juicers and their commenters.

    Easterbrook? A bullshitter. Brooks? A bullshitter. McArdle? A really bad bullshitter.

  84. 84.

    SRW1

    October 23, 2011 at 5:12 am

    “… maybe scientists don’t know as much as they think they do…”

    Dear Gregg, is that as opposed to some of the believers I occasionally see on TV while flipping channels? The people who can tell me the smell of farts vented on the occasion of some biblical event that alledgedly took place during the bronce age?

  85. 85.

    JMG

    October 23, 2011 at 7:03 am

    It should be noted that Easterbrook knows absolutely nothing about pro football and proves it on a weekly basis, so we sports fans know better than to even look at the headline of an Easterbrook piece on anything else, let alone cosmology.

  86. 86.

    Michael James

    October 23, 2011 at 8:37 am

    I’ve never heard of this guy before, so I typed his name into Google, and almost immediately, one of the first autocomplete suggestions to come up was “… is an idiot”.

  87. 87.

    Ken

    October 23, 2011 at 8:40 am

    @RSA: Did they consider the use of the pigments for cosmetics, body-painting, etc.?

  88. 88.

    Steve

    October 23, 2011 at 9:47 am

    I guess you could conclude that our ancestors deliberately tried to create cave paintings to communicate with us thousands of years hence, just like all those prehistoric insects deliberately froze themselves in amber to help us study them.

  89. 89.

    Judas Escargot

    October 23, 2011 at 10:33 am

    @Raven (formerly stuckinred):

    And then for reasons I don’t understand we tried to occupy and try to change Iraq and that eight-year campaign is now ending in failure.

    Um… we, Mr G.?

    I’ve been trying to recall who was President and which party had most of the power when “we” decided to try and turn Iraq into yet another Chicago-school economic paradise… but memory fails me.

    Someone help me out here.

  90. 90.

    BC

    October 23, 2011 at 10:34 am

    they painted inside caves, seeming to hope their work would last long enough to be seen by distant descendants.

    Like the gang bangers of our day, they probably painted everywhere, but the paintings inside caves are the only ones to withstand the climate. Take the consequence that painting inside a cave means that the painting isn’t exposed to the elements and draw the conclusion that the artists of the time were overly concerned that people in the 21st century would see them. There is a logical fallacy that describes this, but I don’t know what it’s called.

  91. 91.

    RSA

    October 23, 2011 at 12:07 pm

    @Ken:

    Did they consider the use of the pigments for cosmetics, body-painting, etc.?

    Not that I can find, but other scientists were consulted for the newspaper articles about the Science article, and they make the same suggestion that you do. It’s funny that we now think of cosmetics as being frivolous, but they’re helping us figure out the timing of some of the landmarks in human evolution.

  92. 92.

    r€nato

    October 23, 2011 at 1:11 pm

    @jcgrim: Art Pope, the lesser-known bird-of-a-feather of the brothers Koch, is spending lots of money to make North Carolina into a right-wing libertarian-ish paradise.

    One of his initiatives is to defund the NC universities, replacing their publicly-funded departments in whichever discipline with privately-funded institutes.

    Imagine a world where the tobacco and oil/coal lobbies don’t just fund think-tanks that pump out pseudoacademic propaganda… but they also control which ‘facts’ are taught in our institutions of higher education.

  93. 93.

    r€nato

    October 23, 2011 at 1:12 pm

    @BC:

    chronocentrism?

  94. 94.

    cokane

    October 23, 2011 at 1:50 pm

    Well none of this is as dumb as his previous, constantly repeated assertion that the particle accelerators were going to create a black hole on earth.

  95. 95.

    Davide Castelvecchi

    October 24, 2011 at 8:59 am

    Strangely few people seem to have picked up on Easterbrook’s recent butchering of cosmology and physics:

    http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/degrees-of-freedom/2011/10/16/on-the-physics-nobels-the-atlantic-gets-dark-energy-all-wrong/

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