Who’s the bigger liar, Michael J. Fox or James Talent?

Everyone who doesn’t have their head buried in the sand is probably aware of Rush Limbaugh’s recent criticism of a political ad by Michael J. Fox in which he accused incumbent Senator James Talent of Missouri of attempting to criminalize stem cell research. Initially Limbaugh’s accusations were towards Fox for not taking his Parkinson’s medication, which he blamed for the erratic movements Fox made during the ad:

“[Michael J. Fox was] is exaggerating the effects of this disease. He was moving all around and shaking [...] and it’s purely an act. This is the only time I have ever seen Michael J. Fox portray any of the symptoms of the disease he has [...] this is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting, one of the two.”

When it was later revealed that the erratic movements were side effects of the dopamine antagonists which Fox took in order to control his Parkinson’s, effects which occur due to malfunctions in his basal ganglia which are incredibly hard to fake through “acting”, Rush recanted. Both of his hypotheses were proven wrong, so much like the Bush Administration when they were caught with their pants down after their WMD hypothesis was empirically proven wrong, he pursued a different course of attack. Okay, his medication made him move like that, not the lack thereof, and it wasn’t acting, so what could be said?

Rush decided to save face by focusing on the specifics of Fox’s wording. Fox claimed that Senator Talent had tried to criminalize stem cell research. That’s a lie! Senator Talent, although an adamant pro-lifer who opposed stem cell research, had never attempted to criminalize it, but merely withhold taxpayer funding. Michael J. Fox overembellished a political statement. That was how Rush chose to save face when he came out and attacked a victim of a degenerative nerve disease for showing symptoms.

While it is true that James Talent has never actively attempted to criminalize stem cell research, that hasn’t stopped him from blatantly lying to prevent the passage of amendments designed to protect it. He had this to say about Missouri’s Amendment 2, which would provide protections for stem cell research in the Missouri state constitution:

“I personally cannot support the initiative because I’ve always been opposed to human cloning and this measure would make cloning human life at the earliest stage a constitutional right. I would encourage every Missourian to study the initiative carefully and make up their own minds on this very difficult moral issue.”

Here, Talent makes the issue out to be human cloning, not stem cell research. This would perhaps be a valid criticism, except the amendment also explicitly bans human cloning!

Have a look at an excerpt of the text of Missouri’s Amendment 2:

To ensure that Missouri patients have access to stem cell therapies and cures, that Missouri researchers can conduct stem cell research in the state, and that all such research is conducted safely and ethically, any stem cell research permitted under federal law may be conducted in Missouri, and any stem cell therapies and cures permitted under federal law may be provided to patients in Missouri, subject to the requirements of federal law and only the following additional limitations and requirements:

(1) No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being.

James Talent has asked his constituency to oppose this amendment to guarantee a basic set of rights for stem cell researchers on the basis that it would allow human cloning, when this is the very first provision outlined in the proposed amendment. The interpretation he gave to the voters of his state directly contradicts the text of the bill. It is both a strawman and red herring: he has informed the voters of Missouri that the bill would constitutionally guarantee the right to human cloning when it does precisely the opposite, and furthermore introduced the irrelevant detail of human cloning to a bill which is explicitly about guaranteeing rights to stem cell researchers.

If Rush Limbaugh’s real problem is with Michael J. Fox misrepresenting the position of his political opponent, then certainly he would be critical of James Talent of lying about an amendment in order to prevent its passage. But that’s not what Rush Limbaugh was doing at all, it was all a vain attempt to save face after criticizing a victim of one of the worst afflictions known to mankind of displaying his symptoms. Fox’s statements are not too far off from Talent’s actual position, while Talent’s statements are the diametrical opposite of the bill he decided to criticize. James Talent may not explicitly work towards criminalizing stem cell research, but he’s certainly willing to lie to ensure it doesn’t receive legal protections.

I think the real issue here is that the Rush Limbaughs and James Talents of this country are feeling guilty because the ad actually shows the suffering they are allowing to continue by trying to push their religious morals onto the rest of the population. Victims of Parkinson’s, spinal injuries, and a host of other debilitating afflictions need those stem cells more than week old embryos do.

The Origin of Humor

There’s all sorts of mysteries about consciousness.  One of these is the origin of humor. It’s often touted as one of the many things that a materialist theory of consciousness, that our minds are just an emergent effect of our brains, will always struggle to explain.

I think I get it.

Think of your cerebral cortex as a big pyramidal hierarchy.   At the base of the hierarchy are your senses and motor systems.  At the top is the brain structure which encodes long term memories, the seahorse-shaped hippocampus.  The whole pyramid is built out of structures called neocortical columns, that sit around analyzing patterns, classifying them, and feeding the information up the hierarchy, up toward the hippocampus.  The higher you go, the more abstract the information the neocortical columns are dealing with.  Information also flows down the hierarchy, so patterns discovered in one part of the system can be relayed to others.  The only information that gets to the top of the hierarchy are things that weren’t caught at any other level.  They are stored there, then programmed into all levels of your brain, so the system can know what it doesn’t know and use that to aid future pattern detection activities.

The important part in humor, at least the kind of humor that makes a bizarre association that you find amusing, is that downwards propigation from the higher association centers to the lower, more sensory and motor-related parts of the brain.  I believe humor arises from a pattern the higher level association centers can recognize, but one which when propogating down the hierarchy raises a “What the hell?” from the lower level parts of the cortex.

My take is that the lower  parts found patterns they thought they could recognize and passed their conclusions upward to the association centers.  And the association centers balked: “Haha, you thought you could recognize the pattern, but you didn’t!  Here’s the actual pattern”

A pattern which the lower level parts get incredibly confused about.

I think the simultaneous sense of understanding and confusion, happening in different parts of the brain, and the cross-chatter between them is what gives rise to humor.

Just a speculation.

When Jon Stewart and Michael Savage agree

I noticed something that completely amazed me the other day on the Daily Show, when Jon Stewart was interviewing former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. Jon expressed a sentiment I had heard from someone before. That someone was Michael Savage.

Michael Savage is quite the interesting person. I say this being an extreme, almost Chomskyesque liberal. I’m not sure exactly what his deal is… it almost seems like he was an intellectual who grew frustrated with intellectual elitism and decided to pursue a path entirely the opposite. He holds two masters degrees and a PhD, but after years of frolicing with the visionary beat poet Alan Ginsburg (and allegedly initiating a fair bit of homosexual innuendo with him) Michael Weiner (pronounced “whiner”) changed his name to Michael Savage and became the most prominent voice criticizing George Bush for not being conservative enough.

Throughout everything I’ve heard him say though, one thing struck a chord and resonated with me. That was Savage’s ultimatum to George Bush: “If we’re there, let’s win, or let’s get the hell out of there.” This, unlike anything else I’d ever heard him say, made sense in what he would consider to be my mentally diseased brain. It was a simple point really: the status quo sucks. Something must be done. “The decider,” George W. Bush, has been stuck in a state of perpetual indecision. “Stay the course” is really more like sit on the fence. We maintain troops at levels we believe necessary to keep the country from plunging into civil war, but every day the threat grows worse.

On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart made the same point to Trent Lott. “Don’t you ever want to say to the President… if we’re in for the fight for our way of life… why not send either more people, or get the people out? Doesn’t it seem like he’s saying ‘We’re fighting for our way of life everybody, but… don’t worry about it, I’ve got it covered’”

Evidently, Michael Savage struck a chord with Jon Stewart too (or at least, I can only assume that with his finger on the pulse of political punditry Stewart has seen Savage expressing similar sentiments). And while I expect that this is one of the conservatively acceptable ideas Stewart puts forth primarily to placate his guest’s “interesting” political viewpoints, it’s one he saw enough value in to bring to the attention of the former Senate Majority Leader.

The question is when will Bush stop sitting on the fence. The status quo sucks. Letting Iraq slip into gradual civil war isn’t staying the course. It’s sitting on the fence. It’s ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.

We need to do something. Either get the job done, or bring our troops home.