SIDESHOW:
Froomkin: "Historically speaking, White House criticism of the media has often been unseemly and defensive, with the president's ire generally provoked by journalists who excel at their work -- by asking cheeky questions, exposing important things that the president would prefer be kept secret, holding the powerful accountable and playing host to a vibrant and informed exchange of a wide range of political opinions. But in this case, the critique is something else entirely. The litmus test is that the Obama White House is not upset at news gatherers for doing their job. What Obama and his aides are correctly pointing out is that the people working at Fox News are doing another job altogether."
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Weekly Review
Twin car bomb attacks just outside the Green Zone in
Baghdad destroyed three government buildings, killed 155
people, and injured 520. The attack was the country's
worst since 2007 and killed an unspecified number of
children at the Justice Ministry day-care center. "There
were children killed in the swings," said a rescuer,
"others who died right where they sat on the see-saws."
More violence is expected as elections near; three
beheaded bodies were found in the province of
Babel. Fourteen Americans were killed in two helicopter
crashes in Afghanistan, and the Department of Defense
announced that 72 members of the U.S. military had
recently died while serving in Operation Enduring Freedom
in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan,
the Philippines, the Seychelles, the Sudan, Tajikistan,
Turkey, and Yemen, as well as at Guantanamo Bay. The
United States was planning a fact-finding mission to
Burma, and North Korean diplomats attended nuclear talks
in New York City. Democratic senators believed that a
health-care bill with some sort of public option would
soon pass in Congress. "Blue Dogs bark," explained a
disappointed Senator John McCain, "but never bite." The
Secret Service asked for a budget increase to handle the
death threats against President Obama. A Minnesota man
pleaded guilty to driving a La-Z-Boy while intoxicated,
and Bernard Kerik was in jail for violating his bail. An
apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared on a football-sized
rock in California, and the face of Christ was found in
the wood paneling of the men's room of an Ikea in
Glasgow. Jews fought with Muslims at the Temple Mount, and
Lebanon announced it had bested Israel's record by
creating a two-ton plate of hummus.
In Kyrgyzstan, where the full cabinet resigned after
President Kurmanbek Bakiyev took steps to consolidate his
power, an ice-skating bear mauled a circus director to
death. A mob in the Indian state of Jharkhand beat five
Muslim widows and forced them to eat excrement for their
witchcraft, and scientists said that a large meteorite
crater in Latvia was likely created by people with
shovels. It was revealed that a British investigation into
sex trafficking that lasted six months and involved every
police force in the country failed to find anyone who had
forced anybody into prostitution. Britain replaced its Law
Lords with a new Supreme Court whose justices wear no
wigs, and Morrissey collapsed onstage in Swindon. A man
was set on fire at a pub in Leeds and severely burned; he
had been all in cottonballs, dressed as a sheep. Sweden's
Lutheran church decided to consecrate gay
marriages. Nigeria was cracking down on its online
scammers, and Easter Islanders voted to limit the number
of visiting tourists. Soupy Sales died. Hundreds of
bishops called for Catholic leaders in Africa to step down
for corruption. Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana was named
to head the Vatican's justice and peace office, leading to
speculation that he could become the first black pope, and
after 25 years away from Uganda, Charles Wesley Mumbere, a
nursing assistant in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, returned
home and ascended the throne as omusinga, or cultural
leader, of the Rwenzururu Kingdom, to lead the Bakongo and
Bamba peoples of the Mountains of the Moon. Scientists
found that death may make the pygmies short.
Microsoft released Windows 7, and Sun Microsystems said it
would lay off 3,000 people; economists said that the
U.S. economic recovery will not bring back lost
jobs. China was accused of cyberspying on American
businesses and announced that its GDP had grown at a rate
of nearly 9 percent in the third quarter. About 100,000
Italian women signed a petition of protest after Silvio
Berlusconi made fun of a homely lady, and Texas
researchers found that estrogen regulates fat-cell growth
and keeps womens' bellies from growing as fat as mens', at
least pre-menopause. "Nobody ever does female rodent
research," said one scientist, explaining why such basic
findings were so long in coming. "Male researchers hate
working with female rats." Chicago rats fed a diet of
sausage, pound cake, bacon, cheesecake, and Ho Hos began
to behave like rats addicted to heroin, consuming
increasing amounts of food to feel satisfied and
continuing to eat even when to do so meant that electric
shocks were delivered to their tiny paws. When switched to
healthful food ("the salad option") the rats, which had
become obese, their brains numbed by junk, simply refused
to eat. A man in Iowa punched another man, who was
ordering Mexican food, for being a zombie. Researchers
from Oregon determined that ancient beavers did not eat
trees, and a firm in New Jersey was distributing vaginal
mints.
-- Paul Ford
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To the Editor:
Nicholas Wade chides Richard Dawkins in his review of “The Greatest Show on Earth” (Oct. 11) for getting “his knickers in a twist” over contemporary creationism, a worldwide campaign of disinformation on which millions of dollars are being spent annually. What would it take to get Nicholas Wade’s knickers in a twist? The claim that condoms don’t prevent the spread of HIV? Or does religious faith excuse any evil deed? If geologists had to confront a similar propaganda campaign against plate tectonics, they would get a little testy too, I imagine, and physicists might grow impatient if they had to devote half their professional time and energy to fending off claims that quantum mechanics is the work of the devil.
What is going on at The New York Times? Why is it so bizarrely respectful of those who doubt evolution? In recent years The Times has published three preposterous Op-Ed articles by evolution-doubters (Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Michael J. Behe and Senator Sam Brownback). These no more deserved space in The Times than the opinions of flat-earthers or trance-channelers. In the wake of Judge John E. Jones III’s decision in the Dover, Pa., case that intelligent design is a religious viewpoint that may not be taught in public schools, one would think The Times would finally recognize that the intelligent design campaign is a hoax and dishonest to the core, and stop giving it respectability in its pages.
DANIEL DENNETT
North Andover, Mass.
The writer is the author of “Breaking the Spell” and “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.”•
To the Editor:
In his review of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” Nicholas Wade charges that Richard Dawkins is guilty of a philosophical error. According to Wade, philosophers of science divide scientific propositions into three types — facts, laws and theories — and, contrary to Dawkins’s assertions, evolution, which is plainly a systematic theory, cannot count as a fact. However, contemporary philosophy of science offers a vastly more intricate vocabulary for thinking about the sciences than that presupposed in Wade’s oversimplified taxonomy and in his confused remarks about “absolute truth.” Although philosophers may quarrel with aspects of Dawkins’s arguments on a range of issues, he has a far firmer and more subtle understanding of the philosophical issues than that manifested in Wade’s review.
The crucial point is that, as Dawkins appreciates, the distinction between theory and fact, in philosophical discussions as in everyday speech, can be drawn in two quite distinct ways. On the one hand, theories are conceived as general systems for explanation and prediction, while facts are specific reports about local events and processes. On the other hand, “theory” is used to suggest that there is room for reasonable doubt, whereas “fact” suggests something so amply confirmed by the evidence that it may be accepted without debate.
Opponents of evolution slide from supposing that evolution is a theory, in the first sense, to concluding that it is (only) a theory, in the second. Any such inference is fallacious, in that many systematic approaches to domains of natural phenomena — like the understanding of chemical reactions in terms of atoms and molecules, and the study of heredity in terms of nucleic acids — are so well supported that they count as facts (in the second sense). Many scientists and philosophers who have written about evolution have pointed out that the contemporary theory that descends from Darwin has the same status — it, too, should count as a “fact.” Dawkins is entirely justified in following them.
PHILIP KITCHER
New York
The writer is the John Dewey professor of philosophy at Columbia University and a former editor in chief of Philosophy of Science, the journal of the Philosophy of Science Association.
