OT: New Brain Study

lol...thats a good try....

Any "study" usually has the exact results that the people that did the study intended. Amazingly, people of limited scope get on that train. And then there's statistics...again, aimed at the people that will buy that tripe. So, what ststistics will you offer?

I think that it was a joke post...

Most likely, Hawke is usually rational. As you can tell, I have a sore spot about "Studies" and statistics.

(67% of all statistics are made-up on the spot)

No, it is a real study that does show significant differences between the way Republicans and Democrats process statements about candidates and policies.. Been all over the news lately but not quite as drastic a difference as Hawke proposes. Dems do put more mental activity into the logic part of their brains but in the end the emotional area resolves any conflicts in both Republican and Democrat brains.

From one standpoint, this is not surprising. For the most part, Republicans have things to believe in and the faith to do it. Democrats haven't had much for years. Especially their leaders. Thanks for pointing this out, Hawke. Respectfully, Ron Moore

FISH ON!!!

LOL, 67% of your last three posts could have an inference drawn from them! :-)

According to Hawke :

Congratulations on continuing to use the "OT: " format, which has been demonstrated to be automatically removed by anyone doing a followup from Outlook Express (and probably Outlook, as well).

Already, all branches of the thread which are currently visible from my news server, have lost the "OT: " marking.

The problem is that OE makes the assumption that *all* combinations of two letters followed by a colon ':' *must* be some version of "Re: " in some language or other, so it strips it off, and replaces it with a fresh "Re: ".

Thus -- for those filtering on "OT", the filters will not mark the articles as already read.

I would suggest something like "[OT]" instead. One extra character, but at least it won't be discarded by Microsoft's "Uncle Bill Knows Best" approach to everything. :-)

Thank you, DoN.

Yup. That's what the neocons use instead of brains: belief and faith.

That's what the study says, apparently.

-- Ed Huntress

I find it difficult to believe that neocon ideologues actually believe what they are saying. It would be hard to fathom.

I don't find it hard to believe they believe it. It has a long history, with the ideas themselves predating the actual neo-conservative ideology by many years. If you trace the ideas behind American Exceptionalism and follow some of the branches of Historicism (if you read Fukuyama's article, that's where his discussion of "Marxist" versus "Leninist" comes from. In the academic sense, as he says, neocons are Marxists -- historicists -- while realists are "Leninists." And "realist" is not a complimentary term in that sense. )

They're self-assured, egotistical historicists. The dumber ones just believe in American Exceptionalism because they haven't traveled enough, or paid enough attention when they were in school. Or they find it convenient to their own self-esteem to believe it.

The really smart ones (and they are many) are political theorists who tend to admire Machiavelli. Theory at that level is an arcane, labyrinthine business. It's not something that makes much sense to the rest of us.

All in all, it belongs in history's dustbin. It may wind up there soon. The reality behind it is starting to become clear to many people. I've despised the whole idea for a couple of decades. It looks to me like a good way for a powerful country to self-destruct.

-- Ed Huntress

For those who think I just made this up as a joke let me assure you that this is indeed true. It was on CNN yesterday. It was not a study or survey done by anyone with an agenda. It was a scientific study done by medical researchers that were doing basic research on brain function. They used advanced brain scanning equipment and MRIs to scan the brains of subjects to see what areas of the brain were affected when exposed to politically related information. So, this is not a joke and the results the scientists got showed that the brains of republicans showed more activity in areas of the brain related to emotion than Democrats when subjected to the same political stimuli.

Hawke

Hawke

I can assure you this was no joke. I have met Dr. Westen who conducted the study. He is a tetchy type professor at Emory who wouldn't know a joke if it hit him in the face. My daughter took Psyc 111 from him last year and says he has NO sense of humor. He is extremely well respected in the brain research field and as far as I can see is as apolitical as it gets. He would be just as interested in the difference in how machinists and farmers think as Republicans and Democrats.

They actually believe what they are saying will get them re-elected ;)

Looks fine on my end.

BTW, I'm running OE

According to Dave Lyon :

That's because I went back to the original message, and *I'm* not running OE, so my newsreader properly put a "Re: " in front of the "OT: ". And your reply only gobbled the "Re: " at the front, so the "OT: " was protected.

Look at the other replies in this thread.

Try a reply to the original, and then look at your reply. You'll then see what I mean. The "OT: " will be replaced by "Re: " in your reply.

Or -- to make it a bit easier, I'll add another "OT: " to the front of the "Subject: " header, and when you reply to that, you will see the change.

(Actually -- I'm interested in seeing whether OE somehow manages to get it right with both two copies of "OT: " separated by a single copy of "Re: ". :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

And have an error of +/- 3% when talking about a population size of 1 billion, using a sample consisting of 3 people, and 1 dog.

jk