The Jolly Bloger

Dear Ted Haggard,

2009-01-30T11:12:00.000-08:00

Fuck you.

Hold on. Allow me to back up just a bit.

Ted, you have spent your life building and maintaining boxes. All kinds of boxes, but particularly in regards to sexuality. You have a "Normal" box, and a "Faggot" box. You have built a career putting people into these boxes. If someone didn't quite fit neatly into one box or the other, you'd cram and shove them in.

Then, you'd nail the boxes shut and lock them up with chains. If anyone ever tried to pry open their box just a little bit you would shame them, taunt them, and threaten them with all kinds of horrible things. When everyone was packed uncomfortably in your boxes, you were happy to kick the "Faggot" box into a lake of fire - quite literally in your mind. You did all this in the name of Jesus, and the name of love.

All the while, you were living a secret, double life. You were paying a man to bring you drugs and have sex with you. The next day, you'd return to your boxes. You would have been perfectly content to continue the double life forever wouldn't you? But the man you paid for sex didn't let that happen - he exposed you. I bet you were mad at first, but it wasn't long before you told the world how liberating it was to have all your secrets out in the open. Lucky you.

Now, Ted, you've been on Oprah, and you told her you don't think that you fit nicely into one of your own boxes. You have a complicated sexuality that can't be defined simply.

Well guess what Ted: Everyone has a complicated sexuality that can't be defined simply. No one fits nicely into one of your boxes. All of this time you've been ruining lives by forcing simple definitions on complicated people, in the name of loving them, and all it took to change your mind was having your lies exposed, your hypocrisy made public, and your reputation and fortune threatened.

So fuck you, Ted. Fuck you with a white-hot metal rod. Fuck you so hard you beg for the lake of fire.

Sincerely,

The Jolly Bloger

Them Sneaky Catholics

2008-12-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

I'm watching the Richard Dawkins interview with George Coyne right now*. 'Father' Coyne comes across, as many Catholics do, as quite sophisticated and scientific in his treatment of evolution. There's a particularly pernicious kind of dishonesty there though - it's often seen in supposedly liberal Catholics who purport to be rational and scientific.

The argument goes like this:

Certainly evolution by natural selection is the best scientific explanation available for the origin of all the various forms of life on earth, I wouldn't dispute that. What I take issue with is the scientist's presumption that there is nothing more to humanity than chemical reactions. Simply look at the glorious works of art, music, and emotion, blah blah blah, there must be something more. That is all I am proposing, and if you allow, I prefer to call that something 'God'.

Sometimes the full thing is articulated in so many words, and sometimes the latter part of the argument is simply implied, but that's the long and short of it.

There are some subtle but venomous logical fallacies in that. I think the major one is the straw man - assuming that science puts a period after the word 'evolution', in ink, then closes the book. No biologist has ever said that evolution as we currently understand it is absolutely the last word, and we are not accepting any new ideas. They leave it at the first bit: that evolution is the best explanation we have right now. If anyone has any new ideas, we'd love to hear them. Bring us your evidence.

Then there's the argument from ignorance. They say "well I can't see how evolution explains the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so I believe there must be a greater explanation." Really, that's not so terrible. We all do this every day, none of us is perfectly philosophically scientific about everything, we'd never get anything done if we were. The problem arises when you try to use this argument to convince others, even when someone is offering a perfectly good explanation for exactly how evolution explains art, or whatever.

There's also an equivocation problem, when they say "all I mean by 'God' is the mystery in nature" then turn around and talk about a virgin birth, a ressurection, and mass produced, bite-sized wafers of man-god-flesh. I don't want to get into all that right now.

In the end, this kind of argument boils down to the God of the Gaps. It's not sophisticated, and most certainly not scientific. It is an outright rejection of Occam's Razor and the null hypothesis, the foundational principles of science. There is never an alternative theory presented, it is merely stating "I don't accept this is all there is (which no one ever said), so I'm going to go ahead and believe whatever I want anyways, with no rational basis for doing so."

This type of argument is perhaps more dangerous than that of creationists and Intelligent Design proponents, because it appeals to the fence sitters. It is likely to attract people with enough sanity to see the Ben Steins and Ken Hams are lunatics, but not enough intellectual sophistication (or courage) to carry their reason to its natural conclusion - that we must accept the simplest explanation that accounts for all the observable evidence, and, for now, leave the rest with an open-ended question mark until we figure that out too.

*I paused it during part 1 to write this, so forgive me if Dawkins addresses all of these arguments later in the interview!

EDIT:

Ugh. Ok, I've watched more of the interview now. Turns out Coyne wasn't really making the argument I thought he was at the beginning (although all of the above still applies!). His view on evolution, as far as that goes, appears to be absolutely correct. At the end, when Dawkins backs him into a bit of a corner, he admits that his belief in God is fundamentally irrational. He uses the word superfluous, that is to say, not necessary to explain anything we can observe. Well again, this is an outright rejection of Occam's Razor. It's also a bit of a conversation stopper, because if you are having a rational debate based on logical arguments, and one person's position comes down to "this has nothing to do with logic or rationality" then there's nowhere to go.

Except possibly to say this: if you are admittedly and happily irrational in even one aspect of your belief system**, then why would you choose to restrain yourself to science and reason in all others? I suppose the answer is "that's something else I'm irrational about" and again, it takes you nowhere. Seems to me that a small willing rejection of reason is no different from an abject total rejection of reason.

** Only in regards to facts! In cases of emotion or aesthetics, I think irrationality is perfectly acceptable for reasons I may or may not explain some day.

"...Then they came for my spoon, and no one was left to speak up."

2008-07-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

Ack! My go-to reducto ad absurdum has prophetically come to pass.

Anyone caught carrying a knife without a good excuse should expect to go to prison, Tory leader David Cameron says.

A gun ban, I think, is wrong. But I can understand the logic. A gun is in class by itself. It is very dangerous, allows attacks from a distance, and its very difficult to improvise a gun.

A knife, on the other hand, is just a sharp thing. You cannot ban any and all sharp things, its ridiculous, look at airport security. They get so caught up in where to draw the line that they don't allow fingernail clippers. There's no solid line that separates knives from ordinary objects, so a ban is a slippery slope all the way down. A dull rock can inflict as much damage as a knife can, and ironically, long fingernails are more dangerous than fingernail clippers!

The scariest part, to me, is this:

"So we're proposing that anyone convicted of knife crime should expect to go to jail. I don't believe the government's presumption to prosecute is enough. It doesn't send a strong enough signal. We need a presumption to prison."

He urged police to exercise "common sense" by not prosecuting people carrying penknives for angling, or for bringing home kitchen or garden equipment from the shops.

"This is about kitchen knives stuffed down the front of tracksuits," he told The Sun.

When you give police the authority to arrest essentially anyone (because everyone at all times is carrying something as potentially dangerous as a knife) and only ask them to exercise it at their discretion, you have created a police state. The police have absolute power. There's a passive threat hanging over everybody's head: you don't HAVE to commit a crime to be hauled off, all you have to do is get on a cop's bad side.

So if a little old lady is coming home from the shop with a kitchen knife, she will not be arrested. Why not? Only because she is a little old lady.

In England, you are now presumed guilty until proven innocent, and it is only through the benevolence of the police that you remain on the streets. This is the concept of original sin, backed up with the threat of government.

Psychics: What's the Harm?

2008-06-30T11:49:00.000-07:00

There is a girl named Victoria who lives in Barrie, Ontario. Victoria has a severe form of autism, and is nonverbal. It can be extremely difficult to raise an autistic child, even at the best of times. I work with autistic people, I know this. Their brains work in a very different way, making meaningful communication next to impossible, even for verbal people. Victoria lives in a completely alien world.

One day Victoria's mother got a phone call from the school. She went for a meeting, where she was told that they had reason to believe Victoria was being sexually abused.

"That's when I got sick to my stomach," [Victoria's mother] said. "I was shocked the whole meeting."

That's one of the most devastating things a parent can hear, particularly a parent of such a vulnerable child. Even if completely untrue, such a claim can have a terrible emotional effect on the whole family. So you'd think the school would be a little bit cautious about tossing around such dire allegations.

Yeah, you'd think.

Turns out the suspicion of abuse was raised by Victoria's educational assistant - you know, the person in charge of protecting and watching over her when her parents cannot - who had visited a psychic who told her that a child with a 'V' name was being abused.

That's it, that's the evidence of abuse the school went on when they called the Children's Aid Society, which is obligated to investigate any possible abuse case, although mercifully they acknowledged that the whole psychic thing is completely ludicrous.

Even though the claims are absolutely baseless, and Victoria was certainly not abused, this kind of thing causes harm. The emotional stress on the family, the level of trust in the educational aids and the school, the waste of resources spent investigating, and the lingering suspicion that the community will have for years to come are all very real harmful side effects.

The next time someone asks "what's the harm" of going to a psychic, tell them about Victoria.

Astrology: Worse than Bullshit

2008-05-28T11:06:00.000-07:00

Astrology is wrong. Ok, that needs no qualification at all. Any number of sources can handily debunk the theory itself. But it's not just wrong. I'm making the point that astrology is, essentially, racism.

From the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Astrology Defense Kit:

6. Shouldn't we condemn astrology as a form of bigotry?

In a civilized society we deplore all systems that judge individuals by sex, skin color, religion, national origin, or other accidents of birth. Yet astrologers boast that they can evaluate people based on another accident of birth - the positions of celestial objects. Isn't refusing to date a Leo or hire a Virgo as bad as refusing to date a Catholic or hire a black person?

There was a birthday today at my office. Cake, flowers, singing - a joyous occasion to be sure. The boss - the frigging top brass - brought up the fact that it is May, and therefore the birthday celebratee is, whatever, a Gemini or something, thus she has this and that quality and is good at X and bad at Y. My eyes had glazed over red at this point and there was too much steam coming out of my ears to pick up any specifics.

We've played this game before: let's imagine that, instead of finding out her birthday, the boss had just learned that this employee was born to Jewish parents and reacted thusly.

Oh, you're a Jew? That's weird, you aren't particularly funny. You must be great with numbers though, huh? Everyone keep a hand on your wallets! Hahaha, just kidding. Seriously though, have you had a nose job? I can hardly tell you're Jewish!

Everyone present would be absolutely agape at that kind of bigoted inappropriateness. Yet when it's in regards to the birthday rather than sex, race, or religion, a good laugh is shared by all.

The Audacity of Pope

2008-04-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

So the Pope has come to America for a visit. One of his goals is to "heal sex abuse wounds" of the countless victims of priest rape. The audacity of this man astonishes me. No matter how good his intentions are, he has no right to get further involved in these cases. The catholic church has lost the right to be a source of comfort to the people it has abused.

Think about it, this is an organization that commits a crime, denies the crime, covers it up, protects the criminals, blames the victims, and THEN has the balls to try to "help" the victims sometimes up to forty years later. He probably expects praise for it too. To me, that's basically the same idea as a doctor going around with a tyre iron smashing people's kneecaps, then tenderly putting them in a cast and giving them a bill.

Pope supporters will surely be crowing about all the wonderful things the catholic church has done to heal abuse wounds after this. Sorry, it doesn't count when you apologize for damage that you have caused.

Oh, but it's going to be alright from now on right? Because the Pope "vowed to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood". Sorta like the vow of celibacy the pedophile priests took eh? I call bullshit.

Fuck the popo.

P.S.
More blatant hypopecrisy (via RD)
and Hitchens weighs in.

The needs of the many outweigh the rights of the individual

2008-02-25T14:36:00.000-08:00

I just read an article in my local paper, the Vancouver Sun, that has got to be one of the most unsettling things I've read in weeks. A group of doctors - international but led by a Canadian named Dr. Edward Mills - think that "rich Western countries, including Canada, are demolishing African medical systems and destroying African lives by continuing to lure away their health care workers" and that "the problem is so bad future active recruitment should be considered a crime in international law".

Put simply, these doctors feel that if medical recruiters from Canada or America go to Africa and simply inform doctors there of the opportunities and wages available in the west, without lying or in any way misleading them, then those recruiters are committing a crime.

The rationale is that Africa needs doctors more than we do. On the face of it, that seems to make sense. How dare we take doctors away from those who truly need them. However, the unstated subtext is alarming. There is a blatant disregard and disrespect for the autonomy of the African doctors. The implication is that they should not be allowed to leave their own countries in pursuit of their own prosperity. What about personal choice? Are these doctors damned to remain unwillingly in a poor country simply because they were born there? Does this group of doctors not believe the African doctors have free will, or the mental ability to make difficult choices? That they are helpless at the hands of American recruiters? Would they consider it a crime for a North American born doctor to live and work in the United States or Canada making $200,000 a year rather than toil in poverty to help those most in need?

I wonder if this is just short sighted compassion or, dare I suggest, a sign of latent racism? Perhaps I'm reading a bit much into it, but read these lines from the article and tell me they don't give you a sour taste:

The active poaching of African doctors has caused the ratio of physicians to patients in the area to plummet in recent years, Mills said.
And as more doctors leave, the conditions for those that remain deteriorate, making it more likely they'll take the bait offered by recruiters from wealthy nations.

Does it really help to use such condescending language when talking about Africans? We're poaching and baiting them, like animals? Fuck off. Since when does a legitimate job offer to a qualified professional with no misrepresentation constitute malicious "baiting"?

The article goes on to say that "the authors distinguish between accepting foreign medical staff who seek out opportunities in other countries - which they say is legitimate - and actively recruiting them with advertisements, job fairs and lucrative sign-up packages, which they call a 'violation of the human rights of the people of Africa.'"

Is this not the same as saying "well if they find out about the opportunities on their own we can't stop them, but for god's sake don't tell them!" Also, the general population of any country emphatically does not have the right to be treated by a doctor against that doctor's will. These people have overcome some pretty major boundaries, worked their asses off, gone through medical school, and now they have the skills to help others and become a success, and then some group of high and mighty doctors says those skills do not, in fact, belong to the person who earned them, they belong to the government. And the government will punish whoever dares to direct those skills away from the greater good.

The idea that people have some absolute and enforceable (force is the key) duty to only exert their efforts to the benefit of others, regardless of personal choice, is distinctly un-American and also un-Canadian. Not only that, its logically incoherent. This afternoon I plan to go skiing. It will cost me about $50. That's $50 that could have gone to AIDS research. Am I committing a crime? If I donated that $50 to education in Africa, but not to AIDS research in Africa, am I committing a crime?

The very reason America is able to pay doctors so much, the very reason they don't have terrible public health crises of their own, the very reason we have the ability in North America to waste our money on frivolous things like plastic surgery and ski passes is the inaliable right of the people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - our right to work for anyone willing to hire us, for as much money as we can weasel into our contracts. Fuck communism, fuck the greater good, fuck enforced poverty and enforced charity, and fuck anti-African racism masquerading as so much hippie feel-goodery.

p.s. After reading over this post, I realized I might have come across as somehow insensitive to the myriad hardships facing millions of African people every day. I am not. I sincerely applaud anyone willing to sacrifice potential wealth and devote their time to solving some of the most difficult problems the world has. However, I have enough respect for Africans as human beings to acknowledge their complete ability to make that decision for themselves, and their right to be as wonderfully greedy and selfish as they wanna be, should they so choose.

Defending Islam

2008-02-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

On Saturday I attended a lecture at the University of British Columbia titled "Islamic Law, Women, and the Headlines: A Commentary" by Professor Asifa Quraishi from the University of Wisconsin.

It was a really interesting talk, and I did end up learning quite a bit. However, not surprisingly, I disagree with a lot of what she said.

The general theme of her talk was to explain the "classical" history of Islam, which basically means she can cherry-pick any "facts" she likes, because historical records are hugely variable
and inherently untrustworthy. Of course, according to Dr. Quraishi, classical Islam is very compassionate, tolerant, and respectful (even to women).

Unfortunately, she never got around to talking about contemporary Islamic law. She would basically assert that "hundreds of years ago women were treated perfectly equally, but your news media don't report that do they!" There's a lot of subterfuge in that strategy though. I got the impression that her entire case (and likely her entire career) is based on a misunderstanding of terms. When she talks about Islamic law, she means ancient Islamic law. But when people listen to her, they are thinking about current Islamic law, so the impression you take away if you aren't careful is "Gee, I guess Muslim countries aren't that bad after all." This is basically equivalent to addressing the problems of modern democracy by talking about the ideals of ancient Athens.

There was a great question asked at the end of the lecture that highlighted this. A man asked if she could name a single Islamic country where her kind of equality and compassion is practiced and if not, why not? She stumbled through an awkward non-answer for about 3 minutes and moved on to another question.

There was a particularly scary point she made about international human rights pressure from western, secular nations. She brought up an example where a woman was on trial in Nigeria for some ridiculous offense (I wish I could remember the details, I'm kicking myself for not recording it), and human rights organizations applied pressure to the government to suspend her sentence and punishment. The government, in response to this, actually moved her trial up to punish her sooner. Dr. Quraishi said that even though they had good intentions, it was the human rights organizations' fault that this woman ended up being punished. There was a question about the more recent case in Saudi Arabia where a woman was abducted, raped, and then arrested because of it and international pressure was successful in reducing her sentence. Dr. Quraishi said that was because the international pressure came from Muslims, so the government was willing to listen. She made it quite clear that if you are not a Muslim, then you have no right to express a critical opinion of Islamic nations practicing whatever law their version of the Koran tells them. Bullshit.

She also emphasized the great lengths to which the Koran is interpreted and discussed before it becomes law. The point being to convince us that Islamic law is somehow democratic and dynamic even though at the root it is still based on an ancient and supposedly infallible text.

And of course there was plenty of the obligatory "but you must respect it" garbage. At one point she actually said "sorry to the atheists in the audience" because we can't tell people that stoning homosexuals to death is wrong if they believe God told them to do it. Gimme a fucking break.

If I attend any similar lecture in the future, I'll be sure to record it so I can post the mp3 along with my commentary. I should also plug the Vancouver Institute which sponsors a great series of free public lectures each year at UBC.

Canadian Jailbait: All Talk, No Action

2008-01-23T12:25:00.000-08:00

A big study of Canadian teens' sexuality has revealed that they are severely uninteresting. The actual rate of teen sexuality across the board - both genders and all age groups - is significantly less than the estimates of parents and of teens themselves (see the link for the actual numbers). This is extremely disappointing people! Sex is very good, and what better time to do it than in high school? God knows teenagers don't have anything else going for them, they're the least interesting group of people on the planet. The least they can do is live up to their own expectations vis. bumping uglies.

In all seriousness, there are a couple of truly disturbing things in the article:

The other piece of good news is that almost three-quarters of teen girls and 61 per cent of boys consider abstinence to be an option -- although, again, it doesn't mean that they will actually choose that option, said Dr. Frappier. "A lot have said that they have considered abstinence. It doesn't mean that they are abstinent. "

Good news? Shut the fuck up, Joanne Laucius of The Ottawa Citizen and lead researcher Dr. Jean-Yves Frappier, head of adolescent medicine at Montreal's Sainte-Justine University Health Centre. Are we really as backwater as all that? How much do you want to bet that Joanne Laucius and Jean-Yves Frappier are far from abstinent themselves? Abstinence (usually equivalent to ignorance) is not a desirable state for teenagers, nor is it safe. What you want is for kids to be informed and responsible, which brings me to the other scary part.

The bad news is that almost all the teens failed when it came to their understanding of sexually transmitted diseases -- out of 32 marked questions about STDs, the average score was four. This is especially worrisome because the incidence of sexually transmitted infections among teens has been on the rise for about seven years, said Dr. Frappier.

Assuming the test itself was decent (a big assumption... judging from the first quote, the test might have just been teen fear-mongering), that's pretty awful. I'd way rather hear that teenagers are having all kinds of dirty, kinky, raunchy, confident, empowering, safe, sexy sex than a little bit of awkward, uninformed, embarrassed, dangerous, boring sex.

Best Headline Today (OLPC are douchebags)

2008-01-04T13:07:00.000-08:00

From CNet news (the 'C' is for Cynical):

OLPC fires back at Intel, children learn nothing

Nothing warms the soul more than watching two organizations try to simultaneously claim the moral high ground while belittling the goals and methods of their rival, all in the name of the children.

I've been wanting to talk about OLPC for quite some time, but they cause me grief. If you don't know about the project, its a non-profit venture with the goal of creating, producing, and supplying a very cheap ($100) laptop to children in developing countries. A wonderful goal! I'm behind it 100%, I have been known to call it the greatest project I have ever heard of.

However.

Their politics are a little strange to me, to say the least. They refuse to operate like a business, so they won't sell the laptops privately. I would really like one, so this is frustrating. They did do a thing a little while ago where you pay double the price and get one laptop and a tax receipt for another one... I didn't get one because I disagree with their other practices as well.

They also refuse to let a private group handle the distribution to children, or to do the distribution themselves. They will only provide laptops where the government of that country agrees to buy and distribute the machines. This is totally backwards. When you're dealing with, say, Nigeria, the last thing you want is to go through the government. You want private donors to fund you, and private volunteer groups to distribute. Developing nations are famous for corrupt governments that don't care about their citizens interests.

Now comes more bad news. See the article linked above. OLPC is fucking with Intel, trying to get them to work exclusively on their project instead of potential competitors. Good for Intel for telling them to screw off.

I can understand greedy capitalism. If you're in it for the money, great. Make a great product, market the hell out of it, and sell it for a huge profit. I can also understand charity. If your goal is to get computers in the hands of poor children to help them learn and develop, then you toil in obscurity to achieve that end any way you can - including supporting your competitors if their goal is the same. OLPC is doing neither of these things. They hamstring their own project by refusing to make money, and then they try to stop their competitors from achieving the social goal they pretend to want so badly. Seems to me they only care about the accolades and awards. As long as they get a Nobel Peace Prize out of it, then fuck the children, right?

I'm still following this, because I want so badly to support the project. Hopefully they can turn it around somehow, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Homegrown "discrimination"

2007-12-21T00:46:00.000-08:00

This one's from Vancouver, (adjacent to) where I live!

A 21-year-old Metis woman who converted to Islam has filed a human rights complaint against her former employer alleging she was fired because she refused to shake hands with male coworkers.

The problems started on Hamel's first day at the call centre, she told The Vancouver Sun in an interview. When she was introduced to her male coworkers, she put her hand to her chest, as she always does with men outside her family, and said, "My name is Chantal. I'm sorry I can't shake your hand because of my religion."

After that, she said, the mood towards her soured in the office.

Holy Hopping Muhammad, how many times can I say that this is not religious discrimination! Her ex-manager goes on to say that she was fired for poor performance, but for the sake of argument let's assume he's covering his ass and she was in fact fired for not shaking hands.

Us theoretical types like gedankenexperiments, or thought experiments, so let's try one here. Let's imagine a religion where it is mandatory for men to spit on women when they meet. We'll call it Expectorism. Is it so far fetched? Of course not. So an expectorist man is hired to work at a company, and the first day on the job, the boss takes him around to meet his coworkers. He spits on every woman he meets. Can anyone in their right mind honestly argue that he should keep his job because spitting is part of his religion? If so, I'd like to buy you a drink and probe your mind.

You might be saying "perhaps he would be fired, and fairly so, but that is still religious discrimination." Not so...

Fuck. Never mind. Now I'm depressed. You are currently witnessing a horrific form of live blogging. I was all fired up and ready to go on about how religious discrimination only applies to beliefs, not behaviours, and that anyone can be fired for doing something wrong independent of their beliefs, but not for merely holding the beliefs themselves. I thought I would grab a link to the actual law for credibility. What I found was this - case law from BC where the government sided with the plaintiff in every cited case. A financial aid worker refused to grant medical coverage for abortion, a store clerk refused to help decorate for Christmas, a union member refused to pay union dues. All were reprimanded, all sued, and all fucking won. I give up. Post over. The hippies win. Canada blows.

Oh, I was also going to comment a bit on the woman's quote at the end of the article:

Although following her religious restrictions is sometimes a challenge - like avoiding contact with men in a crowded SkyTrain - she said since donning her hijab she has gained a lot of self-respect and deflected unwanted attention.
"Before I converted, having my hair loose, guys would honk at me," she said. "It's mainly all about respect, that's why women wear the hijab."

Sweetheart, respect ain't got nothing to do with it. What you've gained is a delusion. Men do not respect you more for wearing a hijab. Granted, they're jerks to honk at you in the first place, but putting a bag on your head does not confer an ounce of respectability. Construction workers who would otherwise be cat-calling are now thinking one of two things: that you're too uptight to bother with, or you have a shit-crazy father who will kill them if they whistle. You also need to open your fucking eyes and take a look at the world. Women don't choose to cover their faces for respect; they don't choose to cover them at all (those who do are morons). It's about oppression, submission, control, and male weakness. Basically, hijab = rape, and you have sanctioned your own sexual violation.

The Pathetic Fallacy

2007-12-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

(circuitous hat tip to Slant Six Creative via Seth Godin)

Below is an excerpt from the second part of a three-part essay I am reading by Errol Morris. In it, he examines two wartime photographs taken from the same spot on the same day, and asks in which order were they taken. It's really long, but I think worth it. He goes into some history, namely the Crimean war, but most interesting to me is the discussion of certainty. How we know what we know, and why we think we know it. It's a great example of evidence-based reasoning and I admire his skeptical treatment of assumptions. The below passage jumped out at me; I like the combination of literary admiration, scientific caution, and psychological explanation of the pathetic fallacy. We must be careful in science not to confuse our poetic exaltations of nature with our clinical models of its mechanisms, and also (vis. the last paragraph, on photographs) not to confound the models themselves with the mechanisms they are meant to describe.

There is an extraordinary passage in A.W. Kinglake who wrote an eight-volume history of the Crimean War, “The Invasion of the Crimea: Its Origins and an Account of its Progress down to the Death of Lord Raglan.” The passage concerns the April 1855 bombardment and makes liberal use of what is known as the pathetic fallacy. The term, coined by John Ruskin in 1856, refers to our propensity to endow inanimate nature with human-like characteristics. Ruskin disapproved — he called it a fallacy, didn’t he? But to navigate in the world – to read the world, so to speak – we need to see the world as having some sort of purpose, some sort of motivation. (It is too frightening otherwise.) Hence, we see intentionality everywhere. The hurricane wants to thwart our plans; the earthquake intends to teach us a lesson.

Here is the passage from Kinglake in its entirety. It is possibly the masterpiece of the pathetic fallacy.

THE WAYS OF A CANNONBALL WHEN OBSTRUCTED WITHOUT BEING STOPPED.

Whether taking its flight through the air, or encountering more solid obstacles; a round-shot of course must be always obeying strict, natural laws, and must work out the intricate reckoning enjoined by conflict of power with absolute, servile exactness; but between the ‘composition’ of ‘forces’ maintained in our physical world and the fixed resolve of a mind made up under warring motives there is always analogy, with even sometimes strange resemblance; and to untutored hearers a formula set down in algebra would convey less idea of the path of a hindered, though not vanquished cannonball than would the simple speech of a savage who, after tracing its course (as only savages can), has called it a demon let loose. For not only does it seem to be armed with a mighty will, but somehow to govern its action with ever-ready intelligence, and even to have a ‘policy.’ The demon is cruel and firm; not blindly, not stupidly obstinate. He is not a straightforward enemy. Against things that are hard and directly confronting him he indeed frankly tries his strength, and does his utmost to shatter them, and send them in splinters and fragments to widen the havoc he brings; but with obstacles that are smooth and face him obliquely he always compounds, being ready on even slight challenge to come, as men say, to ‘fair terms’ by varying his line of advance, and even if need be, resorting to crooked, to sinuous paths. By dint of simple friction with metal, with earth, with even the soft, yielding air, he adds varied rotatory movements to those fell skill as he goes; he acquires a strange nimbleness, can do more than simply strike, can wrench, can lift, can toss, can almost grasp; can gather from each conquered hindrance a new and baneful power; can be rushing for instance straight on in a horizontal direction, and then – because of some contact – spring up all at once like a tiger intent on the throat of a camel.

Wow.

“The demon is cruel and firm,” “he acquires a strange nimbleness…a new and baneful power,” “a tiger intent on the throat of a camel.” The soulless, inanimate world of the iron cannonball comes alive. Literally with a vengeance. Not only does the cannonball have intent – it plans, it connives… it is hopelessly devious, maybe even deviant.

Photographs are no different. We look at them. They are nothing more than silver halide crystals arranged on paper or with digital photography, nothing more than a concatenation of 1’s and 0’s resident on a hard-drive. Yet we believe they have captured something of our essence – something of the stuff that is in our heads.

Sudan charges UK teacher with insulting Islam

2007-11-28T11:45:00.000-08:00

This story is so sick... I don't know what to say about it, I'm truly speechless. I've seen it referenced all over the place, so you may have read about it already. A British teacher in Sudan named the classroom teddy bear Mohammad, and was arrested for blasphemy. She now faces possible jail time, fines, or corporal punishment.

It gets worse though, the quotes from Sudanese Muslims are even sicker:

"Any one can make a mistake and Muslims are forgivers. She will be forgiven and God will be the judge."

"She is a teacher and should be teaching her pupils to be respectful and have morals but instead she is doing the opposite," said Mohamed Toum, a law student.

A mistake? That implies that deliberately naming a fucking teddy bear after the god damn prophet is indeed a punishable crime, but she didn't MEAN to. Fuck that, that is not an acceptable way to view the world. And then he says she should be teaching respect and morality? What the FUCK people?!? Is it respectful to whip a kind woman who wanted to teach kids how to read because of what she named a FUCKING TOY? Is it moral to react this way? Pull your worthless fucking heads out of your collective asses, Muslim world.

The British government aren't any better. They're asking people not to get worked up over this, they're sure it will be resolved in good time, heaven forbid we strain relations with these monsters, or appear (gasp) Islamophobic. Fucking right I'm Islamophobic, I'm scared shitless of these sick motherfuckers.

I'm going to go throw up now.

--EDIT--

Holy hell, sorry I hate to return to this, but about ten minutes after I hit publish on this post I saw another article with more ridiculous quotes and I had to reopen this and update.

A Sudanese pupil of a British woman arrested on blasphemy allegations has said it was his idea to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

So now they've fucked up these kids for life. The poor little boy feels personally responsible for the imprisonment and possible beating of his teacher. That's the kind of life long guilt that can turn a healthy kid into a suicide bomber. And what do you think are the chances he'll be able to get decent therapy in Sudan?

The Sudanese Embassy in London said the situation was a "storm in a teacup".
It has indicated that she could be released soon, as the incident was based on a cultural misunderstanding.

More religious apologists in England. It's not a misunderstanding, it's a bastardization of human decency and morality in the name of dangerous religion and unwarranted 'tolerance' run amok. It is not a virtue to tolerate intolerance.

"What is happening now is standard procedure because one of the parents has complained and the police is bound to investigate just as is the case in any country in which there is rule of law."

AAAHHH! RULE OF LAW?!?!?! FUCK ME!! Remember, this is from the Sudanese embassy in London. This is not a man on the street interview in downtown Khartoum. As if I have to say it, the rule of law most certainly does NOT necessitate the arrest of anyone who offends (gasp) the fucked up religious sensibilities of another. In fact, Muslim countries are by definition devoid of the rule of law because the core of their beliefs is that religion is above the law.

"Ms Gibbons has been suspended from her teaching post, and the school has closed until January."

The children get no education now. Well done Sudan, surely you are a paragon of civility and modernity.

Ok, back to throwing up.

More Lama Bullshit

2007-11-20T14:50:00.000-08:00

This is just ridiculous. A touch of context, if I may:

Buddhists believe in reincarnation. They claim to believe that when you die, your soul, your essence, the ghost in your brain, floats out of your body and into the baby of some animal species that represents your actions in your previous life. They believe that when the Dalai Lama dies, his spirit goes into a baby boy in Tibet, who is then found by other Lamas (priests) and named the new Dalai Lama. Buddhists really believe this.

Ok. Now the current Dalai Lama is worried that when he dies, China will appoint a new Dalai Lama who is sympathetic to China. A valid concern, because they probably would do that. But here is his solution. He wants to pick the next Dalai Lama himself. Yeah, that's right, he wants to completely toss out the reincarnation thing and just pick some kid.

So this means either the Dalai Lama doesn't actually believe what he claims to believe (in which case he's insulting the intelligence of his followers every time he professes it), or he's saying it really doesn't matter that much anyways. Fine with me.

What an embarrassing time to be a Buddhist, that's like if the Pope admitted that the earth is actually billions of years old, evolution does exist, and the biblical story of creation is just a metaphor. What? He did? Oh, ok.

Cognitive Dissonance

2007-10-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

Back to the Dalai Lama. He's in Canada now, meeting with our Prime Minister Stephen Harper. I already discussed my political differences with Mr. Lama, now I'd like to talk about his supporters in the west. Specifically from this article.

Asked about Canada's role in Afghanistan, the Dalai Lama said he believes "non-violence is the best way [to] solve problems."

"Using violence, counter-violence, sometimes it creates more [complications], he said.

Is it just me, or does that sound like something a six year old would say? First of all, non-violence isn't a thing. If he had said non-violent diplomacy is the best way to solve problems, at least that would make sense, but you can't 'do' anything by non-violence alone. It is defined by non-action. Second, that kind of over simplified wishful thinking is usually the realm of kindergarten students and Miss America contestants. The Dalai Lama doesn't know what he's talking about, and he has no solution to offer anyone. He says himself that he's "no expert on diplomatic formalities." So why is he so damn popular?

I figure either people just like hearing simple bite-sized unrealistic niceties that you would tell a toddler, or they genuinely support his claim to Tibet. If it's the former, well, those people are idiots. There isn't much I can say about that. If it's the latter, then it's a little more interesting. Why would anyone support his political claim to Tibet? It is a theocratic monarchy based on reincarnation. To genuinely support the Dalai Lama politically, you must not only accept that he is actually the reincarnation of the last Lama, but also that this is an appropriate way to choose a leader. If these western supporters were challenged on the point, I bet they would say they are in favour of democracy in their own country. So where does that leave you? Isn't there an implicit assumption there that Tibetans are somehow less capable or less intelligent than North Americans? Of course, WE should vote for our leaders, but THEY must have a priest as dictator.

Perhaps they are just taking cultural relativism to an extreme. I don't understand that either, saying that the Dalai Lama should rule Tibet because that's just the way they've always done it. If you go that far with relativism, how can you have any opinion at all? It's a complete resignation of morality - you're saying that anything anyone does is ok with you because... who are you to disagree?

It seems to me that any way you cut it, supporting the Dalai Lama requires some major self-deception and doublethink. I think it would just be too exhausting to hold two contradictory truths at the same time. I don't think I could do it.

"It's not your fault you're fat" says British nanny-state out of protruding, distended anus-mouth

2007-10-17T13:38:00.001-07:00

Or rather, "obesogenic".

The British government, which has been spiraling ever closer to outright 1984 style communism recently, has officially decided to bin the notion of personal responsibility, and a hefty chunk of freedom along with it.

"Obesity, the authors concluded, was an inevitable consequence of a society in which energy-dense and cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work were rife.
Dr Susan Jebb of the Medical Research Council said that in this environment, it was surprising that anyone was able to remain thin, and so the notion of obesity simply being a product of personal over-indulgence had to be abandoned for good.
"The stress has been on the individual choosing a healthier lifestyle, but that simply isn't enough," she said."

Ooh, that last line gives me shivers. Ominous isn't it? Read that again: letting individuals make their own choices about what to put in their bodies and how to spend their spare time simply isn't enough. Subtext: the government must intervene and force people to behave a certain way, no matter what they'd rather do.

Now realistically, I agree with most of the above quote. It is hard to be healthy today, and it is a wonder anyone manages to stay thin, and it does go a little beyond personal choice because an unhealthy lifestyle is the default. However, the study is not passively relating this information to the public. It recommends that government step in and take control.

There is a small offhand remark about getting the public's consent to limit their freedom, but this is always a ridiculous sentiment. If the public wanted to eat healthier, wouldn't they choose to on their own? That's called the free market. They want us to think that every citizen will agree equally with letting the government control what they eat. That's called sanction of the victim. What they really mean by public consent is getting the consent of the majority to control the minority of fat people who choose to eat cheeseburgers. That's called oppression.

Acupuncture Placebo Effect

2007-09-25T10:29:00.000-07:00

The BBC has reported on a German study with some interesting findings.

More than 1,100 patients took part in the study. They were given either conventional therapy, acupuncture or a sham version.
Although needles were used in the sham therapy, they were not inserted as deeply as in standard acupuncture. Neither were they inserted at points thought key to producing a therapeutic effect, or manipulated and rotated once in position.
After six months 47% of patients in the acupuncture group reported a significant improvement in pain symptoms, compared to 44% in the sham group, and just 27% in the group who received conventional therapy.

They go on to pay lip service to Ancient Wisdom and point out that "Acupuncture is based on the ancient Chinese theory that needles can be used to release the body's vital energy, or qi." Of course there's no mention of the fact that there is no such thing as vital energy in any form, qi or otherwise, or that the ancient Chinese "theories" have exactly as much support as medieval belief in humors and bloodletting.

The role of the placebo effect in this study is interesting, and I would love to see it investigated further. In particular, do you get the same 44-47% success rate with needles when the test group believes in acupuncture? How about when they're skeptics? I would imagine that for those who do not accept the whole qi nonsense, the positive effect will shrink dramatically.

This of course raises some ethical concerns for medical professionals. If the placebo effect does in fact help people, but only when they're deluded, then what right do we have to shatter their delusion? Well, the placebo effect can only work some of the time. If your back pain is stress related or in any way psychosomatic, then plain suggestibility might 'cure' you. However, if there's really something physically wrong, then the placebo effect isn't going to help. It's not fair to waste time giving genuinely sick people false treatment just to keep the illusion alive for the hypochondriacs, and further, even when it does help it is dishonest. I may be alone here, but I don't think that giving somebody temporary comfort justifies lying to them for any reason.

Big Trouble in Regular China

2007-09-07T13:24:00.000-07:00

So I just saw this on the BBC (damn!) and it made me sick.

Doctors in China have discovered 26 sewing needles embedded in the body of a 31-year-old woman.
They think they were inserted into Luo Cuifen's body when she was a baby by grandparents upset she was not a boy.

I'm sick of China.

I'm sick of people fawning over Chinese culture. So much new-age bullshit comes from ancient Chinese "medicine" and even intelligent people think there's some value to a medical treatment simply because it was invented a thousand years ago. I'm sick of going into a drug store and finding Chinese herbal treatments on the medicine shelves, I'm sick of hearing about what a wonder drug green tea is, I'm sick of hearing about accupuncture, I'm sick of ancient Chinese 'wisdom'. I'm sick of recalls on shoddy products made by unscrupulous businessmen; from tainted dog food to lead toys. I'm sick of communist oppression and governments obsessed with keeping information from their citizens. I'm sick of the Zodiac sign required by Blogger. Come on, it's Google for god's sake! I'm sick of a culture that values rote memorization and subservience in the education system over deep understanding and critical thinking. I'm sick of not just discrimination, but unthinkably cruel widespread abuse perpetrated by GRANDPARENTS on the basis of gender.

Dear China,

Shape the hell up if you ever want to be taken seriously as a world power. Right now you're a joke.

Sincerely,
The Jolly Bloger