Earlier today, The Range noted that I'll be moderating a panel of political writers—Rick Perlstein, Chris Mooney and Tom Zoellner—on Saturday at the Tucson Festival of Books. (You can get details here, but it's from 2:30 to 3:30 in Gallagher Theater and will be carried live on C-SPAN's Book TV.)

Mooney, the author of The Republican War on Science and the forthcoming The Republican Brain, writes about the intersection of politics and science—and how many scientific policy decisions are decided on the basis of politics and not science.

The Republican Brain explores how the way our minds work have a lot to do with how we approach politics. An excerpt from a recent Salon article that Mooney wrote about the book:

The idealistic, liberal, Enlightenment notion that knowledge will save us, or unite us, was even put to a scientific test last year—and it failed badly.

Yale researcher Dan Kahan and his colleagues set out to study the relationship between political views, scientific knowledge or reasoning abilities, and opinions on contested scientific issues like global warming. In their study, more than 1,500 randomly selected Americans were asked about their political worldviews and their opinions about how dangerous global warming and nuclear power are. But that’s not all: They were also asked standard questions to determine their degree of scientific literacy (e.g, “Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria—true or false?”) as well as their numeracy or capacity for mathematical reasoning (e.g., “If Person A’s chance of getting a disease is 1 in 100 in 10 years, and person B’s risk is double that of A, what is B’s risk?”).

The result was stunning and alarming. The standard view that knowing more science, or being better at mathematical reasoning, ought to make you more accepting of mainstream climate science simply crashed and burned.

Instead, here was the result. If you were already part of a cultural group predisposed to distrust climate science—e.g., a political conservative or “hierarchical-individualist”—then more science knowledge and more skill in mathematical reasoning tended to make you even more dismissive. Precisely the opposite happened with the other group—“egalitarian-communitarians” or liberals—who tended to worry more as they knew more science and math. The result was that, overall, more scientific literacy and mathematical ability led to greater political polarization over climate change—which, of course, is precisely what we see in the polls.

So much for education serving as an antidote to politically biased reasoning.

What accounts for the “smart idiot” effect?

Don't worry, they've worked out their issues, according to Shandling's Twitter feed today. Thank goodness. I'd hate to think the creator of the Larry Sanders Show and a plush university mascot have unresolved conflict.

[The Classical]

As we mention in this week's print edition, I'll be moderating a panel of political writers—Rick Perlstein, Chris Mooney and Tom Zoellner—on Saturday at the Tucson Festival of Books. (You can get details here, but it's from 2:30 to 3:30 in Gallagher Theater and will be carried live on C-SPAN's Book TV.)

Perlstein is the author of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America and Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus. My friend Rodd McLeod, a Democratic strategist who often appears on the Political Roundtable with me on Fridays, says the two books serve as a history of the conservative movement in America and reveal how the current GOP political playbook was written.

Perlstein is also a columnist at Rolling Stone, where he recently penned a fascinating column about how conservative politics works these days. An excerpt:

This pattern is widely misunderstood by analysts. Republicans striking conservative positions are interpreted as "pleasing the base." But this isn't the main thing they're trying to do. Much more so, such moves are aimed at shifting the way even those who don't pay attention to politics — actually, especially those who don't pay attention to politics: "independents," "swing voters," etc. — understand the world. William Rusher, the National Review publisher and conservative movement activist who died last year, once said that the greatest power in politics is "the power to define reality." Obama never attempts that. Instead, he ratifies his opponent's reality, by folding it into his original negotiating position. And since the opponent's preferred position is always further out than his own, even a "successful" compromise ends up with the reality looking more like the one the Republicans prefer. A compromise serves to legitimize.

The recent contraception fight is a perfect example. The Obama administration announces that religious employers can't claim exemption from paying for their female employees' contraception. Catholic bishops go berserk: it's a violation, they say, of their church's "religious liberty." Two weeks later, Obama offers his compromise: these employees will still get their contraception, only now insurance companies would pay for it, which they would be glad to do, because contraception (as opposed to childbirth) saves them money.

Many progressives counted the outcome as a victory — and, by the logic Andrew Sullivan proposes, it was precisely that. Obama had "punked" the GOP on contraception, delivered a “knockout punch,” according to the outstanding and tough-minded feminist commentator Amanda Marcotte: "[Obama] drew this out for two weeks," she wrote, "letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concern but without actually reducing women's access to contraception .... With the fig leaf of religious liberty removed, Republicans are in a bad situation. They can either drop this and slink away, knowing they've been punked, or they can double down. But in order to do so, they'll have to be more blatantly anti-contraception, a politically toxic move in a country where [according to this study] 99% of women have used contraception."

But that's not what's happening. Instead, given an inch, conservatives are taking a mile.

A local mountain bike group is offering $1k grants to people in the community who have a project to improve cycling in Southern Arizona. See all the details.

Bike Fest, the series of events celebrating bicycles in Tucson, starts a week from today. Check out all the events including Cyclovia details.

Utility work creates road hazard for cyclists on popular route. Check out where and what the city plans to do about it.

One of the city's longest running bicycle races wrapped up Sunday. Check out the results and photos from the event.

• Photo Ryn Gargulinski
• Phoebe the random barker

My dog Phoebe was not nearly in the incessant barking category, but she did have a flair for belting out a series of random barks at random moments, usually serene random moments during which a loud bark would make your head explode. In addition to shattering your skull, her random bark-fests have resulted in dropped dishes, ruined phone calls and nearly gave one of my friends a heart attack as a raucous ruff pierced through the cool morning air.

Using a bark correction collar had always been in the back of my mind, yet it stayed in the back. It’s not like neighbors were complaining or calling the police. Nor did Phoebe have a high-pitched, yippy bark that always sounds like a Yorkie being skinned. I just didn’t really have the $100 to shell out for the dinky electronic contraption that typically comes in the most hideous colors.

My guy agreed to pay half. I no longer had an excuse. We ambled on over to Pet Smart.

Our choices were not that vast, especially since the store associate pointed out the citronella spray collar was one big joke. That left us with the shock collar. But just don’t call it a shock collar. This PC climate demands we refer to the battery-operated correction device stimulus collar or, better yet, a gentle electronic modification unit. One of the descriptions even went out of its way to tsk-tsk the folks who still call it a shock collar:

The training collar that stops annoying, excessive barking the humane way (often incorrectly referred to as a shock collar), this collar uses safe but effective static correction.

Hey, what happened to the “gentle” as part of the description?

The Tucson Weekly confirmed this morning that State Rep. Daniel Patterson's attorney, Joe St. Louis, claimed legislative immunity yesterday to prevent his client from facing domestic-violence charges until the end of the current legislative season.

According to Tucson City Prosecutor Baird Greene, who confirmed that Patterson was in Tucson City Court yesterday to face four misdemeanor counts involving domestic violence, another hearing has been set next week for St. Louis' legislative immunity argument. However, Greene was not able to confirm the next hearing date.

Patterson pleaded not guilty to charges of domestic-violence assault, domestic-violence disorderly conduct, domestic-violence imprisonment and domestic-violence harassment. The charges stem from a Tucson Police Department investigation on an incident that took place Friday, Feb. 24 at Patterson's home near Santa Rita Park, as well as from additional incidents that took place going into early March.

On Wednesday, March 7, the Tucson Weekly confirmed that Georgette Escobar, Patterson's ex-girlfriend and former campaign manager who accused Patterson of domestic violence on Feb. 24, was arrested on drug charges. She currently waits for arraignment in the La Paz County Jail. La Paz County officials recently confirmed that Escobar faces two felony drug counts, one involving possession of a dangerous drug, and the other possession of drug paraphernalia.

Over the past two weeks, Patterson and St. Louis have attempted to discredit Escobar through the release of tweets and an investigation on Escobar's previous criminal charges. The investigation commissioned by St. Louis included the release of Escobar's real name, which she told the Tucson Weekly was legally changed in order to protect her identity from an estranged husband who she claims brutally abused her.

Greene said he couldn't comment on Escobar's current charges, but he said she still has rights to be protected by the system, and that the charges brought up against Patterson and the TPD investigation is an attempt to honor her rights.

Regarding legislative immunity, Greene said his office is prepared to argue against that based on how it is defined in the state Constitution: "Members of the legislature shall be privileged from arrest in all cases except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, and they shall not be subject to any civil process during the session of the legislature, nor for fifteen days next before the commencement of each session. (Article IV, part 2, section 6.)."

Domestic violence could fall under the "breach of peace" category. Greene said that during the hearing St. Louis never explained why domestic violence is an exception.

This week on Arizona Illustrated's Political Roundtable: Pima County Republican Party Chairwoman Carolyn Cox and Pima County Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Rogers join Arizona Public Media's Christopher Conover and Political Roundtable moderator Jim Nintzel for a discussion of the race to finish Gabrielle Giffords' congressional term, a battle over development near university-area neighborhood and the latest at the Arizona Legislature. Watch it tonight at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 6.

Collecting Cabbage Patch Kids (even if you have spent ONE MILLION DOLLARS on the venture, as TLC mentions) seems like the best sort of weird hobby, since it's an entirely harmless venture, but this video is still a little disconcerting. Not as disturbing as an episode of Hoarders, but still, when the guy is talking as Kevin, the Cabbage Patch Kid? I actually shuddered.

[The Hairpin]

• NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

If you think it's been windy in these parts in recent days: The UA's HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured this shot of a half-mile-tall dust devil skirting across the surface of the Red Planet.

HiRISE's Paul Geissler tells us:

A towering dust devil casts a serpentine shadow over the Martian surface in this stunning, late springtime image of Amazonis Planitia.

The length of the shadow indicates that the dust plume reaches more than 800 meters, or half a mile, in height. The tail of the plume does not trace the path of the dust devil, which had been following a steady course towards the southeast and left a bright track behind it.

It's only seven minutes long and there are pictures of cats included. I don't know what's going on over there at PBS, but if they could produce more mini-documentaries about the nerdy stuff I'm into and fewer three hour specials about doo wop, that would really help me out.

[HT: The Awl]