This American Life was great this weekend — if you missed
it, the audio for the show “A Little Bit of Knowledge” is posted on the website now.
In addition to a great piece by Dan Savage on his 6-yr old son and his Catholic mother arguing about whether he
and his partner should get married (guess which one is in favor? really makes you think about how much
gender roles are ingrained at an early age), there’s a good segment on physics crackpots.
In particular, the story interviews a guy named Bob who fervently believes that Einstein misunderstood the relation between Energy and Time.
Bob compained: “There is a climate within the physics community that anyone who comes into the zone and hasn’t gone through the same steps that they have is regarded with distain.” Perhaps. But apparently his theory contained the “kind of mistakes a freshman sociology student would make in a first year physics class”, according to the physicist he managed to convice to look at it. I think every professional physicist must get a few emails of this sort
every week. I’ve noticed that these emails always contain a lot of italics and bold and ALL CAPS. I got one this week, which contained
sentences like these “When the electron rotates around its own diameter, its speed is more than the rectilinear motion of a quantum of light.” It also pointed to a lovely website which seemed to claim that quantum mechanics proved the existance of God. Or something like that, it wasn’t really in complete sentences.
The segment also mentioned John Baez’s famous Crackpot Index, in case
there are any aspiring crackpots out there who want to assess themselves. Anyways, I’m not sure why physics seems to attract such a high number of people who
think that they have finally figured it all out, if only those dastardly and convention-bound physicists would listen, but the Bob in this story is not that unusual.
My favorite justification that he came up with for why theory must be right and Einstein wrong was this:
“E=mc^2 doesn’t make sense because it’s difficult to understand.”
Speaking of gay marriage and crackpots, and things that are difficults to understand, that’s a bit like how I feel about Rick Santorum, who I just managed to catch on the day after re-run of the Daily Show. I heart Jon Stewart, but this was severely disappointing. Transcript here, video here. At least he realized it was bad — here’s what he said today: “A real controversy over the relative suckiness of that interview. Some people thinking it sucked, whereas other people thiking it suuuuuucked.”
I’d vote for suuuucked. This guy is not just obsessed with man on dog sex, and is not just your run of the mill homophope. This is a guy who thinks that church pedophilia was caused not by pedophiles, but by the “sick culture” created by liberal academics in Cambridge, and who thinks not allowing public prayer in schools is
oppressing the Christians. But, at least we learned that he’s opposed to segregation!
But luckily, in a rare switch, CNN picked up the slack from Stewart on the very same night, and Aaron Brown asked Santorum whether he believed
there was a right to privacy inherent in the constitution. No, he does not. Specifically, he was asked about the Griswold vs. Connecticut decision, which
upheld the right to birth control for married couples, and he said he thought this case was wrongly decided. Aaron Brown: “Why would a conservative
argue that government should interfere with that most personal decision?” Video at
Crooks and Liars. If you agree with Rick that the government should limit your access to legal contraception, by all means, join Jesus General’s campaign.
July 27th, 2005 at 3:17 am
Let me begin by saying that Mr Santorum does not seem to be particularly bright.
Having made that understatement, I am nevertheless struck by the liberal response to what he had to say. Man-on-dog sex! EEEWWWW!! That’s disgusting and hilarious! But I’m shocked, yes, truly shocked, that you would even want to *talk* about that!
Thing is, though, that most people would react to a gay porn movie the same way. Why is being disgusted acceptable as a critique of man-on-dog sex but not of gay sex?
Again, everyone is amused by Santorum’s weird efforts to exculpate the catholic priests who were caught with their pants down. Most people were nauseated by the images that story summons up. But liberals are not allowed to confess that they were nauseated by what the priests actually did — they have to pretend that their disgust is actuated purely by abuse of power or something. Nor are they, any more than Catholic apologists, allowed to suggest that the real reason for this problem is that the priesthood is a natural place for gays to be.
In short, there seems to be quite enough hypocrisy attached to this subject to go around: left and right can at last join hands on the one subject that compels both of them to make statements that make them look like fools or liars or both……
July 27th, 2005 at 5:21 am
But apparently his theory contained the “kind of mistakes a freshman sociology student would make in a first year physics class”
One of these days I should make a list of the kind of mistakes freshman physics students make in my first year sociology class.
July 27th, 2005 at 5:29 am
I also watched the interview and it really did suuuuuck. At least Stewart stood up and admitted it.
Fyodor, I don’t know what kind of liberals you’ve spoken to or heard about, but your characterization of liberals’ typical reactions to these things is way off the mark.
Every liberal I know – and I mean every one – thought the man-on-dog sex comment was just silly and irrelevant. Being disgusted by the thought of two people (or animals) having sex, whoever they are, is not in any way a reasonable critique of the issues here, and no liberal I know thinks it is. Indeed, there are plenty of heterosexuals who I absolutely do not want to see having sex. This is precisely the reason I’ve removed the mirrors and cameras from my bedroom.
All liberals I know are nauseated by the thought of men molesting children, and are happy to say so. They are also disgusted by the abuse of power, but that isn’t instead of being nauseated by what went on. It is true that, as liberals, we are often prepared to openly discuss the nuances of a given situation and that, given the diversity of the groups making up the left, there are frequently differences of opinion on some topics. However, surprisingly enough, liberals have spontaneously and efficiently coalesced around the idea that adults violating children is disgusting, wrong and to be stopped.
Perhaps one can point to a counterexample, but it wouldn’t make them representative.
July 27th, 2005 at 5:46 am
All liberals I know are nauseated by the thought of men molesting children
It’s pretty much an indictment of political chatter in America these days that one even has to write this sentence; or even respond in the first place to rubbish about liberals not being nauseated by child abuse.
July 27th, 2005 at 6:42 am
Mark, I think that you are missing the point…or maybe you haven’t run into the kind of political correctness that I have. The man-on-dog stuff *is* relevant precisely because everyone has the same reaction: somebody like that must be sick. Which is precisely the reaction most people had to homosexuality in the pre-PC era. We don’t feel much compulsion to analyse our feelings about bestiality: it’s obviously an indication of mental disturbance. If you had kids I dare conjecture that you might be a tad perturbed to learn that your child’s teacher had a loving, consensual relationship with a goat. But it is strictly verboten to draw the obvious conclusion.
Of course I know that liberals are just as nauseated by paedophilia as anyone else. But they have a lot of trouble being honest about the reasons for their disgust. Surely you have noticed that, when discussing the case of the priests, liberals have to dance around a bit to avoid giving the impression that they think that homosexuality might be relevant here. I have even heard somebody [on the left] say that there was no evidence that homosexuality was particularly common among priests! The point being that it is highly un-PC to suggest that homosexuals, being disturbed, might in some cases be inclined towards other kinds of sick behaviour: so liberals have to take that into account. Thus we have the bizarre spectacle of some liberals agreeing with the bishops that homosexuality has nothing to do with this problem!
In short: we aren’t allowed to say, “Goddamn sickos!” any more, because some of the people who are supposed to come under our protection might well be described in that way. That leads to some pretty weird conclusions.
July 27th, 2005 at 7:43 am
If you agree with Rick that the government should limit your access to legal contraception,
I am no fan of Rick, but this is not what he said in the interview. He does not think that the government should limit your access to legal contraception. He thinks that the federal constitution does not prevent states from limiting access to contraception.
The same sort of contortion is often used against liberals. If we argue that women should be able to have an abortion conservatives say that we think women should decide to have abortions.
If you just want to feel chummy with your liberal friends, then you can make up ridiculous positions and pretend that they are what the GOP stands for. But if you want to make progress it would be better to address the positions that people actually stand on.
The position taken by Rick is scary. He, and many in the GOP, think that the federal government shouldn’t be protecting individuals from intrusive state governments. (It appears that the federal government should instead be protecting gun manufactures.) I think many conservatives might become alarmed if they realized that much of the GOP’s talk about fighting “judicial activism” and “big government” is really about shifting power to state legislatures, not to individuals. But maybe that is wishful thinking.
Gavin
July 27th, 2005 at 7:49 am
Fyodor – where to begin. Now I see that we completely disagree. The idea the homosexuality has something to do with paedophelia is plain wrong, not just because it makes very little sense, but also because it is unsupported by data. It’s a little like saying that rapes are mostly committed by men with a particularly strong sex drive – it’s not about that!
I take issue in the strongest terms with your characterizations of gays as sickos or as mentally disturbed and I find your comparisons here with bestiality incredibly simplistic and off base. I find most liberals clear, honest and unconflicted about theses issues and am surprised that you do not, although my suspicion is that you are misinterpreting their statements because of your own extreme views on this.
July 27th, 2005 at 8:00 am
In the CNN clip with Aaron Brown, what he was saying is that it is not for the courts to turn back stupid laws passed by the legislature; it is for the legislature to go back and fix them in the next session. Courts, as I understand Santorum to be saying, should be ruling only on the constitutionality of laws based on a very narrow reading of the constitution.
I, in general, disagree with that – the Constitution has to be treated as a living document, or else we have to do what Thomas Jefferson once suggested and have an American Revolution every generation. The one little sympathy I have with that point of view is that we, the voters, can also amend the state constitutions; we, the voters, should be more involved with politics, and we will do so only if such involvement has real practical consequences; and finally, we should have 50 laboratories of democracy, not just one. States can develop competitive advantages by the quality of their state constitutions.
July 27th, 2005 at 8:48 am
This issue about sex is consent. Can a child consent to molestation? Can a dog consent to beastiality? Can a man or woman consent to rape? Can two adults consent to intercourse? It is all about consent. If both parties consent to the act, then it is nobody elses business what happens. Can consent be legislated? No, but non-consent can be. No sex without consent is and always has been the law. All else is the business of the consenting adults.
July 27th, 2005 at 8:54 am
Well put DouglasG
July 27th, 2005 at 9:51 am
DouglasG has nailed it on the subject of sexual practices.
On the subject of crackpots, are there really a lot of physics crackpots, or are there only a few physics crackpots, who happen to be extremely prolific in their communications? My experience with comments on blogs would seem to suggest the latter. It’s the same few people over and over again.
July 27th, 2005 at 10:03 am
Yes, DouglasG nailed it. I think that ties in with that Fyodor et al confuses disgust.
I think it is perfectly all right to be disgusted by violence play (S/M), power play or role play connected to sex if you don’t understand the connection – I don’t. But it is consensual and doesn’t harm bystanders, so it is nothing I can or should oppose.
The added and different disgust that I feel towards the nonconsensual acts Douglas describes is not only all right to act upon since someone is harmed, but one should.
July 27th, 2005 at 10:20 am
Levi, crackpots are probably severely disturbed in areas of communication, in addition to other difficulties.
Real hardcore does not understand the world in general or argumentation against their pet ideas, I think – they have illusions of grandeur since this enables them to assume without difficulty that they are correct.
Those who use the web may have less trouble but they are probably lonesome – who understands them? So they might use the web a lot to get some social interaction and the satisfaction to think someone is interested in their ideas.
But it is hard to understand their motivations so I am probably wrong.
July 27th, 2005 at 10:31 am
Surely you have noticed that, when discussing the case of the priests, liberals have to dance around a bit to avoid giving the impression that they think that homosexuality might be relevant here.
I’ve noticed that liberals have had to dance around to avoid giving the impression of being anti-Catholic or anti-religion when criticizing the priests, and the Catholic Church’s handling of the abuse cases. That, much more than the homosexuality issue, has hampered the ability of liberals to strongly criticize the abuse cases.
Likewise, there has not been nearly enough criticism of Santorum for blaming the liberals in Boston for the abuse cases.
July 27th, 2005 at 4:59 pm
Since Risa has linked to This American Life…one of the best hours of it I have ever heard is “Godless America” of 6/03/05 (it’s in the archives of the site).
July 27th, 2005 at 7:49 pm
Well, Douglas, I agree with all that about consent. But if you look at my original statement, you will see that I predicted that you would say precisely this:
“But liberals are not allowed to confess that they were nauseated by what the priests actually did — they have to pretend that their disgust is actuated purely by abuse of power or something.”
Of course everyone is upset about the priests’ abuse of power. But please don’t tell me that that was your gut reaction. Your gut reaction was revulsion at some creepy pervert interfering with a small boy. The point I was making is that liberals really *want* to react in this way, because they [quite rightly] detest everything that the priesthood stands for….but they can’t, because it is unPC to talk about “creepy perverts”. And you know why.
Becky:
“I’ve noticed that liberals have had to dance around to avoid giving the impression of being anti-Catholic or anti-religion when criticizing the priests, and the Catholic Church’s handling of the abuse cases.”
Very true. The Catholics have, with surprising success, propagated this wacky notion that being anti-Catholic is in some way equivalent to being racist or to some other form of intolerance. The Muslims are even better at this game. I wonder who taught them this trick — that all criticism of any group can be construed as the moral equivalent of racism? Who will be the next to claim victimhood? Scientologists? Gays? Oops!
July 27th, 2005 at 8:03 pm
The reason we get lots of physics crackpots is that physics is a high-status profession. You don’t get a lot of knitting crackpots because there is no glory in it. But there is a lot of glory and admiration in being the next Einstein.
You can even see a hierarchy of crackpots. There are very few condensed matter crackpots, but many GR and string theory crackpots. There was one condensed matter crackpot at Chicago who believed in a magic length scale for colloids, but if you have ever seen the slush pile in the GR room at Chicago, you’ll see there are a TON of GR crackpots who claim Einstein was wrong.
July 27th, 2005 at 9:13 pm
Salon.com has a whole thread of readers weighing in on the Jon Stewart Santorum interview.
July 28th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
Now that I have helped Sean to better understand his place on the political spectrum (your very welcome, buddy — you can buy me a beer the next time I give a talk at CFCP), I would like to try to understand the philosophy of these bloggers a little bit better. To that end, I have some questions for Risa, or whoever else might wish to answer:
Is it possible for someone to be against gay marriage, without that person meeting your definition of “homophobic”?
Is it possible for someone to be against legalized abortion, without that person meeting your definition of “sexist”?
Is it possible for someone to be against affirmative action, without that person meeting your definition of “racist/sexist”?
Zero
July 28th, 2005 at 2:34 pm
I’ll give my answers. I would think that, in an abstract sense, they are yes, yes and yes. However, the point is that even if someone is against all these things, and is not a homophobe, a sexist or a racist, I most likely would still disagree with them. I don’t see any defensible arguments aganst gay marriage, for example.
There is a more practical point here. Take gay marriage. I think if you took out all the homophobes, this matter wouldn’t be controversial in any significant way.
July 28th, 2005 at 2:57 pm
Zero, I really don’t think I need your help to figure out where I stand on the political spectrum. Since more than 90% of Americans believe in God and 70% believe in Hell, while most or all of the authors of this site are athiests, I think it’s already clear we’re not typical, nor did we ever claim to be. That said, more than 50% of Americans currently believe that gays should have the rights to either marriage or civil unions with the same rights as marriage, and 65% of Americans think that Roe v Wade should be upheld.
While it’s perhaps possible, I’m not sure I have ever seen an honest example, at least of the first two. I have never heard an argument against gay marriage that has not been homophobic and/or sexist. Personally, I think government should get out of the marriage business altogether, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.
I think it’s very possible for someone to be against abortion as a concept without being sexist. And it’s certainly possible to make a non-sexist argument for doing everything possible to reduce the incidence of abortions. But I think it is impossible for women to have equal opportunity in a society in which they cannot control their own reproductive systems. So, yes, I think that anything that seeks to take this control away from women themselves is inherently sexist.
With regard to affirmative action, I think it’s possible to be against this without being racist or sexist. Affirmative action is not some unmittigated good, I just think it happens to be, in many cases, the best solution to a difficult, but real and important problem.
July 28th, 2005 at 6:50 pm
Risa’s answer to this is both clear and wonderful. It is a better exposition of my own feelings on the matter than what I wrote myself. It should answer completely the question raised.
July 28th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
Thank you for your well-reasoned responses to my inquiries. It is nice to know that, in your eyes, “conservative” does not AUTOMATICALLY equate with “racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe”. That is a good starting point for dialogue.
By the way, I tend to agree with Risa that government should probably remove itself from the marriage business. I caused quite an uproar at a certain department’s lunch outing by suggesting this a few years back.
Zero
July 29th, 2005 at 9:23 am
The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles has (or had; I visited in 2002) an exhibit of crackpot letters sent to the Mount Wilson observatory, mostly in the 1920s and 1930s. A few samples are here:
http://www.mjt.org/exhibits/letters/letters.html
It’s a wonderful example of how crackpottery was alive and well back when it was all communicated with pen (or typewriter) and paper. Einstein was already a favorite target.
August 1st, 2005 at 1:12 am
[...] A commenter the other day objected to my characterization of Pennsylvannia Senator Rick Santorum’s position on birth control. Luckily for us, the good Sentator clarified his position last Thursday: I vote and have supported birth control because it is not the taking of a human life. But I’m not a believer doesn’t Again, I think it goes down the line of being able to do whatever you want to do without having the responsibility that comes with that… [...]