Following up on our earlier conversation, Sean at CosmicVariance has a great essay on how a presidential candidate’s belief in evolution or creationism is very relevant to their performance in a democratic political system… “It Does Matter What People Think About How the World Works”.

Check out this series of powerful pictures of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, 1989. The passionate joy and democratic spirit of the protestors in the earlier pictures is in stark contrast with the regimented cruelty of the soldiers and the mechanized terror of the tanks in the event’s denouement. Yes, the picture of Tank Man is there, and it is still a moving picture. However, I am most affected now by the pictures that show the protestors together, collectively prefiguring a democratic form of political life that is alternative to the party control that still stifles the civil and political liberties of the Chinese peoples, only now in a capitalist form more acceptable to the West.