Politics vs. Science

Nope. Not what you think. In fact, in order to remove current political “science” from consideration this time, I’ll simply ask:

Tomato: fruit or vegetable?

True fruits are developed from the ovary at the base of the plant’s flower and contain the seeds of the plant. Botanically a tomato is a fruit.

However, in 1893, in what I view as a purely political decision contrary to fact, simply decreed the tomato to be a vegetable in order to satisfy the bureaucrappic “needs” (read that as “desires”) of tariff collectors, since fruits were exempt from a tariff on imported foods and vegetables were not.

Now, can anyone else name anything in current events that might fall into this unscientific denial of reality that is being pushed as public policy? Hmmm?


Note: I originally, and very uncreatively, typo-ed “1983” for the date of 1893 above. You would have thought I’d at least make some sort of interesting mistake, eh?Oh, well. 🙂

Putting My Eyes (and Head) Where My Mouth Is

*heh* (A follow on to About That “Literacy” Thing)


A brief discussion on Son&Heir’s naming of his new birds led me back to re-reading Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (Yeh, I’m reading it online even though I have a copy within reach of my right hand, even as I type. ;-)) I’m not really reading it in order–just skipping and cherry-picking for now out of some of my fav passages. Here’s one, from the chapter, “OF DARKNESS FROM VAIN PHILOSOPHY AND FABULOUS TRADITIONS” that makes me think of much “thought” from the Mass MEdia Podpeople Hivemind, our wonderful *gag-spew* “political elite” and others who frame much of public discourse, from that on Anthropogenic Climate Panic to “racism”:

Nor are we therefore to give that name [philosophy–in general, reasoning to obtain knowledge of the physical world] to any false conclusions; for he that reasoneth aright in words he understandeth can never conclude an error:

Nor to that which any man knows by supernatural revelation; because it is not acquired by reasoning:

Nor that which is gotten by reasoning from the authority of books; because it is not by reasoning from the cause to the effect, nor from the effect to the cause; and is not knowledge, but faith.

Thomas Hobbes, where are you when we need you?