MORE CRYSTAL BALL GAZING

I predicted that Santorum would gain traction, suggesting that evangelicals such as Gary Bauer and James Dobson would pick the Pennsylvania hard-core pro-lifer as the non-Mormon conservative to rally around. Well, Santorum actually hasn't gained that much traction, stalling a bit in New Hampshire after some testy Q-and-A's with college-age crowds.

Nevertheless, he has been anointed. Santorum actually would be in worse shape, if it wasn't for the strength of his opposition. Perry and Huntsman are both non-factors that may be outdrawn by the Stephen Colbert Political Stunt Machine, and while Gingrich has hurt Romney with his questions about Bain, he has also bled some support in the backlash, wherein GOP faithful fall for the false equation: "Gingrich questions Bain Capital business practices = Gingrich places capitalism on trial."

Which reminds me of something, visible after the ad.....

SIGNS OF THE AFLOCKALYPSE

As I often say to my students when breaking down some counter-intuitive but astounding fact about the natural world, "I can't make this stuff up." Dawkins is on to something here: there really is something seemingly magical about reality, in that it often defeats our expectations, which are so grounded in our day-to-day experience. When we encounter phenomena at scale different from ours, they really do seem to violate our sense of what the rules are. This is part of the appeal of magic, in that sleight-of-hand tricks and optical illusions are used to elicit a sense of "rule violation". We are amazed and intrigued, and we wonder "how do they do that?"

This is a healthy sense of "magic", the sense in which apparent rule violation elicits wonder and inspires the thoughtful to attempt to figure out the secrets behind Nature's tricks. In science, we proceed most fruitfully when we assume that there is, in fact, a natural explanation for natural phenomena and develop proposals ("the hypothesis") to explain the phenomena. What makes the hypothesis scientific, by the way, is whether or not it can be tested via experiment.

Of course, there is another meaning to the word "magical". That is when a person assumes that the phenomena in question can not be explained naturally, and requires that the trick not be explained in terms of Nature's rules, but in terms of those rules being violated. Otherwise intelligent and educated people do this all the time when they encounter phenomena or other ideas that run counter to their day-to-day experience, and often feel that they are exercising "common sense" when they embrace a supernatural cause. "Embrace" is the right word, because once you are emotionally invested in the supernatural claim, it becomes difficult to look at the evidence dispassionately. I claim that once a person is so invested, they have adopted an unhealthy sort of "magical thinking", which places them on a collision course with reality and makes them more willing to affirm things that are ludicrous on their face.

Here's an amazing example of this. There is a recent phenomenon (mostly in the Midwestern United States) of flocks of birds falling dead, out of the sky, by the hundreds in some cases:



Well, this is obviously a natural phenomena that seems to violate our expectations, and it certainly cries out for explanation. Scientists are conditioned by their disciplines to seek natural explanations for natural phenomena, and it is a truism that such an approach is the only one that proves rewarding in scientific terms. So, naturally, scientists have proposed different ideas to explain the phenomena of birds falling dead out of the sky. They will gain support to the degree that they can be tested. That's the scientific response to anything that looks like magic: assume a natural cause, come up with creative ideas that can be tested, and see how the ideas perform.

Or, you can do the unscientific version, and assume that anything that looks like magic really is magic, the act of a supernatural being. So if birds drop dead....it must be God killing them. Why would God do that? Well....check out this video and get the skinny from Cindy Jacobs, a Weatherford, Texas woman who helps lead a ministry called Generals International, and who is actually regarded as a "prophet" by the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders. Members of this group (whose political influence is growing) believe that they are engaging in spiritual warfare, and that natural disasters are signs of God's judgement, so they are preconditioned in a sense to regard the following idea as plausible: according to Jacobs, flocks of birds falling dead out of the sky is caused by a change in government policy regarding gays in the military. That's right, God kills birds because we no longer expect service people to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

This is an example of the sort of "magical" thinking that science can't do anything with, because it's something we can conceive---but can't test.

It's conceivable that a supernatural being could've killed birdies because our government has dropped a policy that requires gay service people to keep their orientation under their hat, because, don'tcha know, the supernatural being hates teh gay. It's also conceivable that a supernatural being loves gays and hates gay-baiting ninnies, and so the supernatural being killed the birdies because our government doesn't do enough to promote teh gay.

Both of these ideas are conceivable, but neither are testable in a scientific sense. Both are pretty ridiculous. Why would God kill thousands of blackbirds in Arkansas to protest gayness? I mean, if a thousand pink cockatiels fell out of the sky over Castro Street, it might seem a little more on-point...but from a scientific perspective, all such explanations are still equally untestable, and worthy of scorn.

What about a non-scientific perspective? Well, all of us have them. We also have a tendency to mix all of our non-scientific perspectives together. We jumble together our personal interests, our cultural concerns, our ethnographic history....and our personal beliefs about the supernatural. We invest in them, and to the extent that we are unable to think objectively about them, we become capable of not just believing things which can't be tested, but acting as if others should kow-tow to things that, while not actually demonstrated, seem unquestionably true to ourselves.

Me, I believe His Eye is on the Sparrow, but I don't go around expecting other Christians to believe that Yahweh would capriciously punish our country by making birds drop dead---and, by extension, I am reluctant to regard gay people as my natural enemies. It's not a plague, nor is it something that most people who identify as "gay" would choose, given that people like Cindy Jacobs treat them as lepers.

CRYSTAL BALL SEASON

Well, I'm back with another set of comments on politics. This is what happens when a fella like me has too much time on his hands due to convalescence, I'm afraid. Just to be clear, I'm feeling better, but when I'm really better, probably won't have time to blog. It's kind of like the guy who said he was "calling in well", and that you would know he was sick because he'd be back in the office, nursing what made him unwell in the first place.

In an earlier post, I had made a couple of predictions about the ever-entertaining GOP primary season under way....

1) A new pro-Santorum super PAC begins media buys highly critical of Romney in South Carolina.

I'm looking pretty good here. The Senator's main source of funding prior to last month was his own "leadership PAC", called America's Foundation. As of June, they had spent slightly more than half a million on Santorum's campaign, but during the buildup to the caucus Santorum's, um, sympathizers have quietly moved the major donors to a new super PAC called Red White and Blue Fund, which has ponied up for ads in South Carolina, while at the same time using an increasingly-popular accounting trick to delay revealing their donors list.

2) The conservative elites will go back to attempting to ignore Congressman Paul, because he doesn't need their money and isn't going anywhere.

This is very interesting, because all the candidates but Romney have suggested that Paul and his supporters need to be treated with respect. But the fallout from increased media scrutiny over Paul's fringe-feeding newsletters seems to have deprived him of his hoped-for bubble:


The blue bubble is Gov. Perry, who was undone by gaffes in public appearance that reflect a lack of preparation. The red bubble is the meteor named Herman Cain, who simply wasn't prepared to handle media scrutiny of his personal life. The green bubble is the reinvention of Newt Gingrich, who for nearly a month portrayed himself as a happy warrior and changed man, and the likely nominee. Super PAC money, mostly from Mitt Romney's, um, sympathizers, must have missed the memo, crushing Gingrich with a slew of negative (and to some degree misleading) ads.

Paul, with a solid Iowa operation, did go up a tad, but he never peaked the way the previous three "ABM's" launched, plateauing before the caucus, which allowed Sen. Santorum a means to seize what was essentially the best part of a three-way tie. There is no yellow bubble, and there's not going to be one. From this moment on, the story is going to be of three lines moving roughly in parallel: Romney, Santorum and Gingrich.

Interestingly enough, the independent or moderate-minded Republican who might've been intrigued by Paul seems to be shifting their attention to Huntsman, who has a make-or-break, all-or-nothing strategy in the Granite State. Whether it is the lack of coverage by conservative media, an endorsement by the Boston Globe, or just a juvenile episode is hard to say, but at this critical juncture the Paul and Huntsman campaigns have turned a lot of their attention towards sniping at one another, rather than attempting to make inroads against the front-runner (Gov. Romney).

3) All the major media will do their "Who is Rick Santorum, really?" story and for the most part, he will gain traction because he has a pitch that distinguishes himself from the rest of the GOP field, one that resonates with blue-collar voters without the populist rhetoric that alienates establishment Republicans.

The first half of that "prediction" is comically easy to demonstrate, I won't bore you with it. The second part is up in the air: so far Santorum hasn't gotten more press (mostly bad) for combative exchanges with college-age voters, most of whom are in school or who don't seem to be blue-collar in orientation. As with everything else in the next 48 hours, debate heroics (or the lack thereof) will probably determine who gets traction, and who fades.

As for my big prediction, that evangelicals are looking for a conservative they can back against Romney, at least one of the heavy hitters I alluded to earlier (Gary Bauer), just came out with an endorsement of Santorum, less than 24 hours after being quoted as being opposed to any conclave to diss Romney. If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck.....