KLEM FM

When you believe in things that you don't understand, 

then you suffer, 

Superstition ain't the way 

link

Full lyrics after the jump.

Our Superstitious President, Victor Hanson

The essay is a good and interesting read and recommended. But what can Hanson possibly cite to support a claim of Obama being superstitious? My idea of superstition is all the little things one does and thinks throughout the day that clutter one's doing and thinking.

Hanson strikes some excellent professorial blows of the sort that can be adopted for disruption by going through examples of Obama putting ideology ahead of available facts. Hanson baits us with superstition then supplies examples of Obama ignoring statistics in favor of progressive policy. Rather quickly the charges against Obama shift from superstitious in the title, to unscientific in the next few paragraphs, to ignores available data thereafter.

Obama's idea of science is reductionists, it relies on consensus of professors, not a particularly courageous bunch, and if their agreement advances progressive agenda then it becomes fact. And from this view of how Obama embraces science we can imagine that Newton, Galileo and Darwin as exemplars of groupthink having worked through consensus with support of status-quo institutions and universities advancing majority-held theories.

Brilliant. That takes two paragraphs, and I think that might be the best bit.

Hanson uses stem cell research for example. This is a particular point of nettlesome annoyance because there is nothing at all scientific in this stance. I've heard more people chime in on this vociferously without knowing what they are talking about save for what they drew from Moveon.org so they all say the same thing about Republicans being unscientific when it is actually they, and now the president is crowing about victory on this matter from the same place of pure ideologic ignorance. Straight up.

This is where Hanson uses "anti-science" and "anti-factual" in place of superstition.

Obama warns about backlash against Muslims following Islamic terror attacks while statistic show clearly and repeatedly and variously that Jews need protection. Hanson fleshes out his description of this with examples through three paragraphs.

Obama associates San Bernardino with no fly list either ignoring or conflating the terror watch list while no connection between these things is shown to exist.

Obama rejects Keystone pipeline on ideologic grounds ignoring all arguments contrary.

Hanson devotes a devastating paragraph to changing NASA's foremost mission to outreach to Muslim groups to make them feel better about their contribution to science, math and engineering. Hanson asks readers to imagine a future Republican president converting federal department to outreach to Christian populations to make them feel better about their contributions to science, math and engineering.

Obama blithely connects California drought to climate change, flies out there to do it,  while ignoring all other factors. Three long paragraphs discussing the fish, progressive policy, El Nino, and actual science indicating that extra coolness is chief among the problem and not extra heat, that is, El Nino not as strong as usual among many other factors.

Hanson now describes Obama's approach to the natural world as "privileging ideology over facts." This is the description he settles with. Superstitious, to unscientific, to unreceptive to available data , to privileging ideology over facts.

Is that so bad?  Privileging ideology over facts.

Hanson discusses Benghazi killings without lingering, moving directly to Michael Brown's death in Ferguson in the same paragraph finishing with flawed 1 in 5 females raped on campus studies debunked by facts and still "resurrected for its electoral utility."

Hanson concludes Obama does not believe in science because science is blind. Our age requires social justice be affected by any means necessary even when that means denying scientific method and facts themselves.

Nice. I was really hoping this article would be about bizarre rituals and possibly goats, and chickens, and candles. The superstition part is not developed. I was hoping for more. Hanson switches superstition for ideology without exploring the magical thinking. There is a lot of potential for discussing how superstition pervades the ideology but Hanson does not do that. Hanson shows that Obama accepts different facts. Say, for Keystone, Obama is looking past fossil fuels, it's a thing with him and with them, dirty fuel, they hate that. We can sympathize with that. Obama cannot have a pipeline mar the map of his administration. That would be Obama advancing something that Obama and many others want desperately to move away from. They're fine with all the anti-science, anti-logic, anti-economics, anti-energy self sufficiency of the present. None of that matters. The truth of the future they envision is not powered by coal and oil. So whatever it takes to get there. Obama's superstition, his secular-religion that is irrational and unscientific, can be described sympathetically.

Planting by the moon

The Old World Kitchen, Elisabeth Luard 1987

There are plenty of crops you can't plant when the moon is waning. The May moon is bad, for example; if you plant beans then, they make a mass of stalks and no fruit. You have to plant seedbeds of onions, lettuce, melon and pumpkins with the waning moon as you do vetch and alfalfa. If the later is planted at any other time, the livestock swell up and die when they eat it. That's the truth. I don't know why it is, but everyone here knows it. [The Pueblo, Ronald Fraser, 1973]

Why?

The simplest most intuitive explanations includes the word "tides." The moon's affect on large bodies of water you see for yourself. The moon's gravity tugs at the bodies of water covering the earth. There is no dispute about that. Ideas about planting by the moon consider the moon tugging at all bodies of water, tugging the water table underneath the soil, tugging the water moisture within the soil. Seeds planted at the time of high tides have more water available to them in the soil. So plant during periods of waxing moon.

Waxing / waning moon also affects weather by affecting moisture in the atmosphere as well.

Conversely, plowing the ground is easier when there is less water in the soil. So plow during periods of waning moon. (This contradicts what my farmer friend just told me, his field was easier to plow under and deeper because it had more water in it. Incidentally, his fields are like powder, soft fragrant powder)

The effect of the phases of the moon on seed germination and growth was first studied by L. Kolisko in 1930. Using wheat, Kolisko found that seeds germinated faster and more prolifically when sown at the full moon. The new moon gave him the most unsuccessful results. Later experiments on cress confirmed Kolisko's findings. Recent studies at Northwestern University, conducted by Professor F. Brown, have shown that, even under equal temperatures, seedlings absorb more water at the full moon than at the new moon. The findings lend credibility to adages that recommend harvesting at full moon. It seems plants have less water content at the new moon phase. Professor Brown went so far as to test plants in a darkened laboratory where they would have no direct access to effects of sun or moon. The plants still responded to the moon phases.

The light reflected by the moon also affects plants.

The lunar month is divided into two basic moon activities: waxing and waning. The beginning of each process is designated by the new and full moon. A full moon occurs when the moon is 180 degrees opposite the sun, in position to receive sunlight over the maximum volume of its surface. A new moon occurs when the sun and moon are so closely aligned that it is impossible for the moon to give off any reflected sunlight. Waxing occurs in the period between the new and the full moon. Waning describes lunar activity between the full and the new moon. When the moon is waxing, it is said to be in its first and second quarters. The waning of the moon brings the phases through the third and fourth quarters of the cycle.

The waxing moon phase is a good time to encourage plant growth and proliferation. The waning moon phase is a useful time to control plant growth and keep down garden pests....

We have already seen evidence asserting growth and liquid absorption peaks at the full moon, and drastically declines during the new moon....

We know from fluctuations in the electrical field of plants, made visible through Kirlian photography, as well as through experience, that plants grow and absorb water at an irregular rate. Rapid growth rate is often followed by a period of rest. Fruit bearing is followed by a period of dormancy. Although we do not know the full effects of the waxing and waning moon on plant growth, we do know that synchronizing phases of plant growth with the phases of the moon produces healthier plants and more abundant yield.

Lunar winds on Earth surface. 

What?

Lunar winds on the earth's surface, moving at l/20 of a mile per hour, are too minute to be felt on the human skin, but they come, as do tides, twice daily. In the morning they flow east, in the evening to the west, influencing the growth of plants as surely as sunshine and rainfall.

KayKeys.net   
http://kaykeys.net/spirit/earthspirituality/moon/moonseed.html

Most other explanations are less useful than this. They rely on ancient knowledge acquired by observations of accumulated result and  passing down the connections they made between moon and the moon passing through Zodiac star constellations, and and planets and all that involving superstition and a good deal of anthropomorphizing plants. Differing methods were developed over time, Synodic, Sidereal and Biodynamic cycles.

the Gardeners Calendar.co.uk  
http://www.the-gardeners-calendar.co.uk/moon_planting.asp

Almanac. com
http://www.almanac.com/content/planting-moons-phase-gardening-calendar

WLEM AM

Where Woody Hayes would feel at home. 

The spread favors Denver over Seattle by 2.5, but keep in mind that three out of the four times the Broncos lost the Super Bowl, they were in orange jerseys, as they will be today.