Science Proves Conservatives are Chicken

Fascinating piece in the NY Times:

…the roots of political judgments may lie partly in fundamental personality types and even in the hard-wiring of our brains.

Researchers have found, for example, that some humans are particularly alert to threats, particularly primed to feel vulnerable and perceive danger. Those people are more likely to be conservatives.

One experiment used electrodes to measure the startle blink reflex, the way we flinch and blink when startled by a possible danger. A flash of noise was unexpectedly broadcast into the research subjects’ earphones, and the response was measured.

The researchers, led by Kevin B. Smith of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, found that those who had a stronger blink reflex at the noise were more likely to take such conservative positions as favoring gun rights, supporting warrantless searches, and opposing foreign aid.

That makes intuitive sense: If you are more acutely sensitive to risks and more fearful of attack, you also may be more aggressive in arming yourself and more wary of foreigners.

Scholars also measured changes in the electrical conductance of research subjects’ skin, after they were shown images meant to trigger disgust — like a person eating a mouthful of worms. Our bodies have evolved so that when we’re upset, glands secrete moisture to cool us down, and that increases conductance.

Liberals released only slightly more moisture in reaction to disgusting images than to photos of fruit. But conservatives’ glands went into overdrive.

Of course, since this is science proving something, the right-wingers among us will claim it’s not real, something from the liberal media and will ramble off some Bible verse that has nothing to do with anything.

What Happens in Conservative Bastions?

The Denver Post has a very interesting piece on Colorado Springs, a so-called “Conservative Bastion“. It’s a lengthy read, but very interesting. For example:

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

The article goes on to make the point that many folks, not just in Colorado’s second-largest city, are flat exhausted with what appears to be severe ineptitude and idiocy on the part of government officials. They’re not necessarily wrong. In Justin’s fantasy land, the Mayor would have all his department heads say precisely how much they need to do their job with an emphasis on looking ahead. I imagine the conversation going something like this:

Mayor: “Ok, what do we need to get done?”
Public Works: “It costs us $X per street light per day, so, for 365 days we need $Y.”
Police Chief: “It costs $X per cop per day, so I need $Y to cover us for the year. And, we have 10 old cars on their last few miles, so we should replace those 10 this year. We can do 5 more next year.”
Fire Chief: “It costs us $X per fireman per day, so I need $Y to cover us for the year.”

This is not that hard. At the end of the day, you add up your total and figure out your tax rates to meet that demand.

What people want at the local level is really, really straightforward. Plow the streets, fix the holes, plug the leaks and protect the people. And only hire just enough people to get the jobs done. So, you don’t get to hire an executive assistant to the assistant deputy mayor. And, while we’re at it, you don’t get to spend $800 per chair for meeting rooms and you don’t get to spend money on things no one really uses – especially when they’re better alternatives nearby. For example, someone in the comments says:

These cuts are not major quality of life issues. For example, they are talking about closing an indoor wave pool. I have been at it twice now, where my 2 kids and I were the only people enjoying it. Four lifeguards were watching us and the city was wasting a lot of energy running it. We prefer the YMCA pools — they are cheaper and nicer.

City government has no business running these kinds of things – not when you’re scaling back on police and firemen when you may really need them to have adequate coverage.

It’s hard to say what’s really happening in Colorado Springs. I think you can get away with turning off every other streetlight and closing a few water parks and not watering the grass (seriously – they live near a desert, why are they watering grass?). The citizens may have very good reason to doubt their government’s ability to spend money wisely. Until we start seeing our Mayors at rummage sales and flea markets, that opinion likely won’t change much.

Why Republicans Win

I was driving home today from running a few errands and I was thinking about Air America Radio.

When I first started working for the Court, I came across Air America and found it to be a pretty good way of passing the day. Music stations get cumbersome to me and since I was only an intern, I didn’t spend much time configuring iTunes with a bunch of podcasts (there weren’t that many then, anyway).

I generally liked Air America. Surprisingly, I enjoyed Jerry Springer’s talk show. It wasn’t like his TV show and he was rather thoughtful to his callers and offered good, centrist, opinions. Mind you, most others on the radio like Rachel Maddow and Randi Rhodes were far, far left of center.

This week, Air America died. It declared bankruptcy after years of financial trouble. The folks at FOX no doubt had a heyday with the news.

As I was driving, I realized why Air America failed – their audience is way too progressive to be listening to a radio. I only listened because it was the only thing available. Once I started working full-time and had more and more tech-related podcasts, I dropped listening to Air America. Plus, Jerry Springer had moved on and Rachel Maddow got her show on MSNBC.

It occurs to me why Republican-radio is so popular. The people that would actually listen to Republican-radio are old enough to actually own radios in places other than their cars. All the same reason why Republicans have such epic failures each year figuring out this new-fangled Internet. So, Republicans like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly will claim they destroyed Air America when really it was just bad distribution. Air America never put up full-length podcasts and only had an Internet stream that was shoddy and poor like every other radio stream online.

I’ll keep this in mind when I run for Congress.

Purdue Isn’t Very Gay

Purdue University has a professor in some hot, gay water:

A Purdue University professor has landed in hot water with students protesting his personal blog — a conservative Web page on which he posted an “economic case against homosexuality.”

Some have called for Bert Chapman to resign or be fired for his Oct. 27 posting, which laid out an argument that the cost for AIDS research and treatment should factor into the national debate over the acceptance of gays and lesbians.

My favorite part of this story is on page two:

In a phone interview Wednesday, Chapman said he was surprised at the backlash his blog had caused in the pages of the daily campus newspaper, which has run several letters calling for his job.

Hearing rumors of a student protest, he said he wished the matter would simply go away.”It is sad we live in a time when truly free and open debate on controversial issues is characterized by such virulence,” Chapman said. “As a country, we are in serious trouble if we reach a point when only one side on a public policy issue is allowed to be discussed.”

You know, there’s a difference between free speech and plain stupidity. It’s the reason why you can’t make death threats to people, the reason why you can’t scream “FIRE” in a crowded room and the reason why you can’t berate people publicly with slander and libel. You know why? Because it’s wrong, unsafe and harmful.

And if anyone can make an economic case against anything, it’s me. So, here goes:

The Economic Case Against Conservative Christians
By Justin Harter

Conservative Christians cost America billions of dollars in lost economic development every year because they take up people’s time with useless non-issues.

Also, the amount of hot air required to keep Pat Robertson’s head afloat is negatively impacting the nation’s ailing hot air balloon industry by draining supply.