Researchers find their political views awesome, study shows.

According to studies cited in this New Scientist article "political positions are substantially determined by biology and can be stubbornly resistant to reason". The over-simplification of political views into "red" and "blue" as well as the idea that others who hold differing ideas are really some sort of "others" in the biological sense and immune to reasoning really irks me. I wrote this letter in response:

The studies cited in Jim Giles' article entitled "Born that way" (p. 29, 2 February 2008) perpetuate the false dichotomy that the spectrum of political thought lies on one axis, running from left to right, with liberals on one end and conservatives on the other. In this formulation, the liberals tend to exhibit the personality trait of "openness", described as being "open to new experiences, focusing on change as an opportunity rather than a problem, and thinking about the world as it might be." One wonders what sort of questions were asked to ascertain the prevalence of this trait. Consider opposition on the left to the dynamic change wrought by free trade and globalisation and to scientific advances such as genetically-modified crops. I doubt many on the left would regard these sort of changes as opportunities rather than problems.

Menino madness

Catching up on posts...

Boston Mayor Tom Menino's thinking is sometimes as muddled as his speech. After reading about his views regarding in-store medical clinics in this Boston Globe article I wrote this letter:

Mayor Menino, opposed to retailers opening medical clinics in their stores, states that "Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong." Clearly there are more pressing problems for the Mayor to tackle. From my time in Boston I remember, much to my horror, that there were retailers who had the gall to make money off of hungry people. I suggest that the Mayor oppose this proliferation of these so-called "grocery stores" in the city limits of Boston as his first priority.