Apparently they do. Did you know that it isn’t only religious zealots who live in a chronic state of twisted panties? Even some atheists have hair-trigger offense mechanisms that one would normally associate with Fox news people. It is a mental state in which some ignorant bastard’s offhand comments will cause the hearer to spew bile like a Westboro Baptist Church member at a soldier’s funeral.

During a recent Super Soul Sunday interview with The Great and Mighty O, Diana Nyad’s self-professed atheism was dismissed and now atheists are pissed.

Atheist activist: What the fuck?! What do you mean, “I don’t see you as an atheist”?! Did Diana suddenly turn invisible? Was Oprah in effect telling this brave woman that she is willfully ignoring her very existence? “La la la I’m not listening!” Do you think that we will go away if you ignore us? We’re here, and and God isn’t so deal with it lady! “Ooh, ooh, I’m Oprah, I know all there is to know about spirituality and God and what God means to everybody.” Blah blah blah! Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a non-religion affiliated corporation-produced holiday card? Didn’t think so. I’m Oprah, I have my own cards printed and in them I’m God.

Apathetic Atheist: Jesus Christ. Calm the fuck down. I’m pretty sure Oprah wasn’t brushing aside Diana’s atheism as if it couldn’t possibly warrant the same respect as a legitimate belief. She probably thought she was doing Diana a solid by putting a spiritual spin on her atheism so people wouldn’t hate her more than they already do for being gay. Oprah knows how the game is played, “Act spiritual and then do whatever you want. It’s what I do and I’m Oprah“.

CNN’s Faces of Faith really helped clear up some of the misconceptions about atheists by talking to faitheist Chris Stedman:

Super Soul Sunday? Faitheist? Spare me.

On this day in 1772, the great poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born. Before getting to his work, I’d just like to say that I’ve always been disappointed with his politics. Like most of those early Romantic poets (with notable exceptions), he was conservative. In a sense you can’t blame them. They were men and women of their time. And they were all pretty well set—at least middle class. But then again, F. Scott Fitzgerald was in the same situation and he had no problem seeing the reality of the world that he lived on the edge of. But I feel sorry for the guy. He was sickly his whole life. He was also addicted to opium most of his life. Even more important, he really was an exceptional poet. In the past, I’ve written about Kubla Khan, an amazing if incomplete work. But The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is his most important work. Although not associated with his opium use as was Kubla Khan, it absolutely reeks of it. But I think that Coleridge worked the poem, unlike Kubla Khan that was simply a core dump. Anyway, it teaches an important lesson: don’t shoot birds that lead you to safety. And it has this great bit:

The great Dizzy Gillespie was born in 1917. In addition to his enormous output of great music—including all kinds of collaborations—Gillespie was a mentor to many of the periods greatest talents, most notably Charlie Parker. Here he is with his quintet doing “Tin Tin Deo”:

The great fantasy writer Ursula Le Guin is 84 today. I’m not a big fan, but I want to put in a plug for one of her science fiction books, The Lathe of Heaven. It tells the story (as I recall; it’s been about 30 years) of a guy whose dreams change reality. His psychologist starts manipulating him into creating the perfect world. It is quite good, or at least I thought so at 16. It was also made into a movie for PBS. As I recall, it was pretty good. And more recently there was another TV version starring James Caan. I can’t speak to that one. But the concept itself is very cool, so it would be hard to screw up.

Other birthdays: Italian Baroque painter Domenichino (1581); dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel (1833); bluesman Elvin Bishop (71); author Carrie Fisher (57); and Jim Moriarty in Sherlock, Andrew Scott (37).

The day, however, belongs to the great math and science writer Martin Gardner who was born on this day in 1914. He wrote the kind of books that nerds like me just love. A good example is, My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles. But you can pick up just about any of his books and they are great fun. He said of himself, “I just play all the time and am fortunate enough to get paid for it.” I’m with him; if I go on vacation (What a thought!) I’m much more likely to take one of his books than a novel. What can I say? It is who I am. Gardner also wrote a lot about pseudoscience, which is equally fun. He published over 100 books during his career.

Happy birthday Martin Gardner!

The video below discusses new research that shows that girls don’t develop much empathy until the age of 13. It is worse for boys who don’t start developing it until they are 15. In fact, most boys see a dip in empathy between the ages of 13 and 16. This isn’t shocking news. To begin with, this is about the age that children begin to be able to understand hypotheticals, and the essence of empathy is, “What if I were him?” Nor is it surprising that as boys have their bodies flooded with testosterone, they would get even worse on the empathy scale. Doubtless the male brain is turning onto empathy just like the female brain, but the hormone effect is swamping the cognitive effect.

Bottom line: men are pigs. I don’t care how old men are, in my experience they are lacking in empathy. And I think it has a big effect on our politics. Men are far more conservative than women. If only women voted, we would have a far more liberal society. There seem to be two different ways of looking at social ills. It’s like in the Old Testament: wrath or mercy.

The conservative perspective is that generally bad things happen to bad people. It isn’t a surprise that the Christian conservatives are so focused on the Old Testament. It is all about judging people: the good are rewarded and the bad are punished. So without knowing anything about a hungry baby, the conservative attitude is that its parents must have done something wrong.

This kind of thinking leads to some behavior that always shocks me. When conservatives do find out about some injustice, they are often more outraged than liberals. Most conservatives I know are appalled by the greed of the rich. But their operational assumption is always to avoid identifying with others and understanding what they go through. It isn’t that they can’t manage empathy, but it seems more difficult for them and so they don’t use it much.

There is another aspect to this. Conservatives also seem very prone to abstract empathy. This is seen most clearly in the abortion debate. The anti-choice people do show empathy. But it is abstract. They focus on the fetus, even before it has a brain. They ignore the actual living, breathing, thinking host mother. In this way, the empathy they show is not real. Mostly, they’ve been taught that God hates abortion and so they go through the process of this abstract empathy—”If the fetus had a brain and could feel pain, I’ll bet it would be terrible!” But it is little more than an intellectual fantasy to displace any actually feelings of empathy.

None of this should be taken to suggest that no conservatives have empathy and all liberals do. But statistically speaking, conservatives have less empathy and they use it less. And this is largely the outcome of the fact that men don’t have as much empathy as women.

See Also: The Rich Lack Empathy.

Dean Baker made some interesting comments at his blog yesterday, Post Granny Bashers Are Whining for JP Morgan. In it, he discusses how the Washington Post has defended JP Morgan against a civil suit the Justice Department was pursuing against the company for mortgage backed securities that they knew were bad. The Post argued that the government were just a bunch of meanies because 70% of those securities were actually sold by two companies that JP Morgan had acquired (Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual). This argument makes no sense on at least two levels. First, when one company acquires another, it also acquires its liabilities, including its legal liabilities. But even apart from this, that still means that 30% of the bad securities were sold by JP Morgan itself. Baker notes, “This means that it could have been involved in misrepresenting tens of billions of dollars in mortgage backed securities sold to investors.”

What’s most annoying about the whole thing is how the Post (along with pretty much everyone else in the mainstream press) thinks that the law ought to be different for people with money. Dean Baker sums this up perfectly:

That’s always the way. It reminds me of the whole Rick Santelli rant that led to the formation of the Tea Party movement.[1] The TARP program that gave $700 billion to banks might have caused some grumbling, but it was no big deal. But $75 billion for homeowners? That was an outrage! Didn’t the government know that its only proper role was to help the super rich? Helping homeowners was just a bridge too far.

For those in the mainstream press, it is clear that the nation is divided into two groups. There are the right kind of people who must always be helped and can never be allowed to fail. And they should never be criminally prosecuted because that would just be wrong. After all, these aren’t criminals. Just look at their nice suits and dashing haircuts! Then there are the wrong kind of people: the poor and middle classes. It isn’t that the Rick Santellis of the world are actively against them. They just think they aren’t deserving of any help ever. So it’s a perverse kind of communism in America: the rich receive regardless of their needs and the poor give regardless of their ability.

And the la-hand of the Freeeeee!
And the hoooome, of thhhhhe, braaaave!

[1] I think it is probably wrong to say that the rant started the Tea Party movement. Certainly it was a galvanizing event. But if it hadn’t been for Fox News pushing it, there never would have been a movement.

I found this excerpt of a Mental Floss interview with Bill Watterson.

Check out Mr Watterson’s college-era work.

On this day in the distant past, two great painters were born. The Dutch Golden Age painter Aelbert Cuyp was born in 1620. Mostly, he was a landscape painter. He does amazing things with skies: light, not the way it is, but the way it ought to be. The French portrait painter Nicolas de Largilliere was born in 1656. I don’t think that he is as good, but his work is still amazing.

The great composer Charles Ives was born in 1874. Here is Central Park in the Dark, which is one of the most important classical works of the 20th century. He wrote it in 1906, but it wasn’t performed for another four decades. And that is probably for the best. Today it sounds fine: dissonant, but fine. In fact, it reminds me of the Howard Shore’s title music for the film Existenz. But it likely would have caused riots in 1906. It is hauntingly beautiful.

Two great actors were born on this day in 1882. First there is Bela Lugosi. I’ll be honest, although I really enjoy him in Dracula and White Zombie, I much prefer Boris Karloff. The second actor is the wonderful Margaret Dumont, Groucho’s foil in many Marx Brothers’ films. She was perfect as the representative of the establishment that the brothers rebelled against. Without her, Groucho especially wouldn’t be as much fun.

Other birthdays: pianist Jelly Roll Morton (1885); discoverer of the neutron James Chadwick (1891); film director Jean-Pierre Melville (1917); baseball player Mickey Mantle (1931); actor William Christopher (81); musician Tom Petty (63); film director Danny Boyle (57); actor Viggo Mortensen (55); and musician Snoop Dogg (42).

The day, however, belongs to the great philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey who was born in 1859. Below is a nice, brief, discussion of his influence by A.G. Rud. I like that he mentions that Dewey would be skeptical of our modern focus on testing standards. What real educational reformer is not? Our modern treatment of students as though they are widgets on an assembly line really bugs me. It reminds me of a very Soviet approach to education. The approach is all about turning children into adults who will be useful to the business community. It should be about maturing children into good citizens in all the glorious diversity that the word ought to suggest.

Happy birthday John Dewey!

On this day in 1862, the elder of the Lumiere brothers, Auguste was born. His younger brother Louis was born on 5 October 1864. They were moving picture pioneers. They invented, for example, the perforation on the sides of film that allow it to be perfectly fed through cameras and projectors. But they are most known for their films. Together, they made almost 200 films. Admittedly, most of them were like Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, which is 48 seconds long and simply shows a train arriving at the station. But they did arguably make the first comedy, The Sprinkler Sprinkled. I find this period fascinating because you get to see how a gimmick very quickly leads to the production of art. It is only 20 years from these earliest films to The Birth of a Nation, which pretty much has all of the modern film syntax. Another interesting thing about the Lumiere brothers (mostly Louis, I think), is that they had a great eye for photography. The shots are always well framed. This isn’t a surprise, given how much work they did with still photography. But most films at that time were not as well made.

The great professional wrestler Tor Johnson was born in 1903. He is best known for a still popular Halloween mask and, of course, his star role in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space. Here he is, and yes, he was a sex machine:

The great musician Peter Tosh was born in 1944. I didn’t realize that he was murdered during a home invasion—just a couple of years after I got into his music. Here he is doing “Legalize It”:

Two conservative assholes are 57 today. The first is also an idiot, Steve Doocy. The second is just evil, Grover Norquist.

Other birthdays: essayist James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784); painter Theodoros Vryzakis (1814); painter Umberto Boccioni (1882); oceanographer Walter Munk (96); writer John le Carre (82); actor Michael Gambon (73); actor Divine (1945); actor John Lithgow (68); and the really bad film director Jon Favreau (47).

The day, however, belongs to Vinicius de Moraes who was born on this day in 1913. He is certainly one of the greatest Brazilian songwriters of the 20th century. And he’s probably the best lyricist. He wrote the lyrics to “Garota de Ipanema,” which is better known as “The Girl from Ipanema.” He was also a great performer. Here he is with a very young Toquinho:

Happy birthday Vinicius de Moraes!

There have been a lot of articles written in the last two days talking about the battle raging inside the Republican Party. Yesterday, for example, Bloomberg published, Republican Civil War Erupts: Business Groups v. Tea Party. But I don’t buy it. If there is a war going on in the GOP, it is only between those who want to immediately eliminate all aid to the poor and those who want to do it incrementally over the next decade: Paul Broun versus Paul Ryan.

I think Josh Barro is beginning to see the light. In the middle of the crisis, he wrote, “The most dangerous group in Congress is moderate Republicans, many from the northeast, who could reopen the government and break extremists’ grip on their caucus’ agenda, but choose not to.” Implicit in that statement, however, is the fact that the supposed moderates are choosing not to do anything for their own personal reasons. And I know from other things that Barro has said and written that he largely thinks it is cowardice.

This is the conventional wisdom in Washington. Most of the Republicans are not so very extreme, they are just worried about challenges from the right. But what really appears to be happening is that these supposed moderates believe exactly the same things that the extremists do. They are just trying to thread a needle. If there were no bad political consequences, they would be voting extremist, not moderate. There are a couple of reasons I think this. First, most right wing challenges fail. Look at how Orrin Hatch turned even further to the right because of a primary challenge. And what finally happened? Hatch won his primary by over 30 percentage points. So the fear may be real, but it isn’t all that valid.

Add to this the fact the Republicans especially overestimate how conservative the people they represent are. What this means is that these supposed moderates are eager to join the extremists. They have fear of the right and the left (actually the center). But when there is pressure from the two sides, they always move to the right. Mike Coffman, for example, won re-election by less than 7,000 votes. In his district, Obama beat Romney by 5 percentage points last year. Coffman, in other words, is extremely vulnerable in 2014. And in the end, he voted to reopen the government. But where had he been? In the nice warm waters of GOP extremism because that’s who he is.

The same thing goes for business interests who are now supposedly upset that their Republican lapdogs are doing things that make them a tad uncomfortable. There is no rift here. The only difference between Ted Cruz and Sheldon Adelson is that Adelson wants policy results. And really, who cares if the Republicans weaken the economy, as long as they also push policies that continue giving more and more to the rich? I’ll admit, the business community might like to soften the edges of the GOP. But that’s just as true with gay rights as it is with government shutdown and Debt Ceiling crises. What the business community (as represented by the nation Chamber of Commerce) wants is exactly what the House extremists want. It’s just that the business community would rather finesse the argument. “Let the poor die!” just isn’t good marketing. But it is a shared policy goal.

Update (19 October 2013 4:26 pm)

Dave Weigel says more or less the same thing, Tea-ism: Why Big Business Won’t Abandon the Tea Party. But as usual for him, he accepts the Tea Party rhetoric at face value. The reason they are unruly is simply because they have actually drunk the tea. The business community knows that Obamacare will not bring about a socialist hellscape. That’s just rhetoric that they generate to get the base’s attention. It just doesn’t work as well to say, “This is the kind of program that might lead to slightly less freedom for the very rich over the coming decades.” Again: the end goal is the same. The only thing that the two “sides” disagree about is urgency.