She can't swing more to the left. Not that she can't go further left, but it wouldn't be a good strategy. People already see her as something of a political weathervane, and she'd have to swing back for the general, alienating the people she'd swung to the left for.

It all started back in 1968, when growing anxiety over the war in Vietnam, internal tensions of the civil rights movement, and the Assassination of Bobby Kennedy, then the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, led to riots at the party's national convention in Chicago. The Democrats lost that election to…

Likewise.

I haven't, but I wasn't discounting the existence of the scale. I have heard him say that he would sooner believe that he was hallucinating than that he discovered evidence supporting the existence of a god, which doesn't exactly sound like a 6 to me, unless the scale is logarithmic.

Mainly the first one, although it's more of a clarification. Generally, it is considered good science to consider alternative hypotheses, even if there isn't evidence "for them," so long as there is not already support against them. You don't assume the truthfulness of these alternative hypotheses, but you also…

That isn't really what he said. He said that you don't need to consider a hypothesis unless there is evidence for it. I said you cannot entirely discount a hypothesis until there is evidence against it.

It's pretty tough to believe that a 6 on that scale would write a book called The God Delusion.

That's not really how hypothesis testing works. Even if there is not explicit support for something that could plausibly be true, you can't really discount it until you have evidence that it is not true.

Ecology Masters student here, having read through this conversation, I'd just like to point out that although evolution (particularly natural selection) conflicts with literal interpretations of many religious books, most denominations of the the major religious traditions don't claim to take those books literally,…

Most won't even openly say they support creationism any more, because it's become such a loaded term. Usually it is either intelligent design or "creation science" (which, as far as I can tell, isn't substantively different from creationism) that they claim to support.

Well, in the case of Dawkins, he is too confident that a god does not exist. "God exists" is not a testable hypothesis, especially considering there are so many different views about what a god actually is. He effectively approaches the existence of a god unscientifically but claims support for his belief from…

red

*bradley proceeds to douse hot dog in soy sauce and mint jelly.

I reserve the proper pronunciation for the New England variety.

WILSOOOON!

Spoken like someone who prefers Manhattan clam "chowder."

I mean about what the hell was happening. I generally liked the Kubrick-iness of it, but there were so many things that happened that he didn't even attempt to explain. It was very frustrating.

My Dad and his sister have totally different accents even though they were raised in the same town. How accents work is some weird shit.

I saw The Shining for the first time, since it's on Netflix now, and I have so many questions.

I, too, am suspicious. But hey, it works for beer, might as well try it. It's more the planning 6 weeks ahead of time for four cocktails that I don't get.