from THE VAGARIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by Daniel Gilbert

Our tendency to underestimate the power of random processes to create order leads us to seek explanations where none are needed. Our tendency to be satisfied by well-formed utterances that are devoid of content compels us to accept explanations when none are provided.

Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for former Secretary of State Colin Powell:

“You begin to speculate, you begin to wonder — Was this intelligence spun? Was it politicized? Was it cherry-picked? Did in fact the American people get fooled? I’m beginning to have my concerns…”

Let me help: yes, yes, yes, and yes. What are you, retarded?

I think of it not so much a failure of intelligence, but a success of stupidity.

Salon’s Andrew O’Heir recently wrote than “when the long lens of history finally focuses on McGovern’s contentious era, he’ll appear in the main text, named as a prophet, while Nixon will be a twisted king consigned to the footnotes.”

But when asked last Saturday evening what he thinks about the present White House occupant, McGovern said he’d rather have Nixon there.

Nixon, he pointed out, was fairly practical and forward-thinking on domestic issues and the economy. He created the Environmental Protection Agency, advocated gun control, imposed wage and price controls, etc. And he wasn’t indebted to the neocons and their absolutist agendas.

A very important point made by Jerry Adler in an unusually fair newsweek article:

In part, the fascination with the man is being driven by his enemies, who say they’re fighting “Darwinism,” rather than evolution or natural selection. “It’s a rhetorical device to make evolution seem like a kind of faith, like ‘Maoism’,” says Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson … “Scientists,” Wilson adds, “don’t call it ‘Darwinism’.”

Calling natural selection “Darwinism” is like calling psychology “Freudism.” Though Darwin’s own insights stand up much better than Freud’s.

A slashdot article pointed me to this interesting site/blog: Right to Create.