I read the Krugman piece last Sunday & the Sokal parody when it came out a few years ago. Krugman is simply an ass; regardless of his professional qualifications as an economist his NYT column has descended into partisan hackery. If you want to know what's happening with the economy you should definitely not read it.
The Sokal piece was interesting because it illustrates one of the great divides in the Left, that is, the divide between the Modernists (Sokal) and the Post-Modernists (his parody's target audience). The Right is winning public policy battles now because they understand the weaknesses and contradictions on the left. The Left is losing these battles because they don't understand the Right at all. Instead they keep attacking the caricatures of the right they've constructed.
Sorry for the rambling post but I'm more-or-less testing my new laptop with this response (1GHz P3! Wifi! 768MB of memory! Gentoo Linux! Non-pink screen!)

Mitch - thanks for the kind words!

And it is ludicrous to believe that simply because someone is a Republican and/or a conservative, and perhaps embraces free markets, lower taxation, small government and property rights - that they then have no clue of how to handle proper scientific method.

Also most insulting to assume that a person's religiousity excludes them from being a member of the scientific realm. Some of the top scientists in history were not secularists. (Which I personally believe is essentially another religion in itself, albeit one that does not accept the notion of God.)

P.S. Thanks for getting the comments fixed! I wondered what I was doing wrong early this a.m....

Back to the topic under discussion. I used to work with an optics/physics PhD (I'll leave out his name). He was THE go-to guy for adaptive optics in the western hemisphere. He worked for the government doing star wars stuff & then switched to working for astrophysics research institutions. He knew light the way Mitch knows 80's heavy metal bands :). He was also a church-going fundamentalist Christian who told me the proudest moment of his career was using our telescope to read the first chapter of Genesis illuminated with the light from a distant star.
He left the physics world a few years ago to pursue a doctorate in Russian Literature (And no, he wasn't Russian).
It would be fun to introduce him to Krugman some day.

It's not only the scientific community that bashes the religious. Here in MN, the "fine arts" community assumes that if one is interested in classical realism, one must be some kind of a religious fanatic.

I don't see the connection, either, but the names have been called.

I think that the left hates and fears anything that smacks of tradition, because traditions reveal truths, and truth is the last thing the left can afford to have floating around out there...

Well I suppose if you want to avoid going straight to the source and rely on commentary once removed, Mitch, this would be a perfectly valid screed. Aptly titled as well, since James Miller is, in fact, making it up. Krugman says no such thing. Why not address what he actually says? Because it's easier (and more fun!) to pick apart what someone else says, who also apparently didn't actually read the piece. Or at a minimum, read it through some personal filter that added ideas that weren't there in the first place.

See a scientist's view of what Krugman says here: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/in_which_i_commit_liberal_heresy_in_the_last_two_paragraphs/

There is an anti-science contingent to the new conservative movement. There's also an anti-science contingent in the progressive movement (the post-modernists, primarily entrenched in social science and liberal arts in academia). The problem is, the conservatives are calling the policy shots now, so don't be terribly surprised if many scientists are highly critical of the Republican party.

Terry -- this just goes to show that there are good scientists who are religious. It isn't necessarily incompatable. There are certain beliefs, if taken seriously, are incompatable with scientific thought, but in an of itself there does not have to be a conflict. The conflict arises when your faith asserts things that clearly cannot be true, yet you demand to have the rest of the world conform to it. That is completely incompatable with scientific inquiry.

MLP -- All traditions do not reveal truths. The left is not somehow "anti-truth". Blindly upholding tradition for the sake of tradition is, frankly, idiotic. What exactly does your smear have to do with the subject at hand again?

"Well I suppose if you want to avoid going straight to the source and rely on commentary once removed, Mitch, this would be a perfectly valid screed."

It's valid in any case, since I was referring to Sheila O'Malley's exercise in parody and the inside joke of that parody being publishable; we were beaten to the punch.

I didn't go "straight to" Krugman because it wasn't entirely my point.

"Aptly titled as well, since James Miller is, in fact, making it up. Krugman says no such thing. Why not address what he actually says? Because it's easier (and more fun!) to pick apart what someone else says, who also apparently didn't actually read the piece. Or at a minimum, read it through some personal filter that added ideas that weren't there in the first place."

Very possibly.

"See a scientist's view of what Krugman says here: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/in_which_i_commit_liberal_heresy_in_the_last_two_paragraphs/"

I'll give it a shot.

"There is an anti-science contingent to the new conservative movement. There's also an anti-science contingent in the progressive movement (the post-modernists, primarily entrenched in social science and liberal arts in academia). The problem is, the conservatives are calling the policy shots now,"

In some quarters, they are. In many others - academia, the bureaucracy, social "sciences" - anti-scientific liberals have relinquished not a jot of control."

"so don't be terribly surprised if many scientists are highly critical of the Republican party."

I won't, but then I suspect a fair chunk of the criticism will be less scientific than ideological, then as now.

"MLP -- All traditions do not reveal truths."

I suspect that was not her point.

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