Obama Lights Up: Ruminations from a Fellow Addict

Will the stunning revelations never cease? When pressed during an interview with Tom Brokaw, Barack Obama waffled a bit before admitting that he hasn't been entirely successful in kicking his nicotine addiction. He still lights up from time to time, but he's promised that he won't do it in the White House.

During his interview with NBC News' Tom Brokaw over the weekend, President-elect Barack Obama acknowledged that he has had some trouble kicking his smoking habit but promised that the White House would remain a smoke-free zone.

"There are times where I've fallen off the wagon," Mr. Obama said when asked if he had stopped smoking...

— Source

Let's get the obvious out of the way. Smoking is bad. Kids, don't try this at home. Everybody tells you this stuff, so why should I repeat it? In most ways, this item is a non-story. The last eight years of radical misgovernment have left many aspects of our nation's well-being in smoking ruins. A smoking Executive? If he can pull America out of its historical nosedive and make repairs to our economy, infrastructure, international relations and commitment to education, I don't care if Obama likes to pound nails up his nose while singing the theme song from Bonanza at 3:00 in the morning in drag. Really, really bad drag. Get over yourselves, snap snap.

So while I'll readily admit that a smoking president might not be the greatest thing in the world, it's far from the worst. I say this as a smoker myself, and one who, like Obama, has made repeated and unsuccessful attempts to kick the habit. In light of that, my first bit of advice to the President-Elect, were he listening, would be to stay away from Chantix. It did weird things to me when I tried it, and I got my hands on a prescription the week after it went on the market. Chantix impaired my memory and caused me to have multiple episodes of sleep paralysis that left me an utter wreck after about two months on the stuff. We can't risk having that in a president. All things considered, he's better off sneaking out to the Rose Garden for the occasional smokebreak... and so are we if he stays away from varenicline.

So, even though I am painfully aware of how addictive cigarettes are and have a pretty thorough understanding of how and why they're so bad for you, I'm going to play the optimist here and speak about the upside of this nasty habit. Yes, there is one and no, it's not worth the health consequences and no, this isn't an endorsement of inhaling particulate matter. Still, the guy already smokes. Let's think about the lung being half-full for a moment.

In one way, I've benefited from being a smoker. Because we smokers are banned from indulging our habit indoors in the workplace (and rightfully so), we have to step away from whatever else we're doing every so often in order to pump a little sweet, sweet nicocrackatein into our bodies in order to be able to maintain our concentration and evenness of mood. It's boring to do that by ourselves, so smokers naturally form little cliques that take breaks together. From experience, I can say that these little sessions have allowed me the opportunity to learn about all sorts of things — useful things — from other smoking colleagues. This is as true now that I am studying biology as it was when I was a headhunter. It's hard to get time from people to simply learn from them what they know; everyone's days are pretty full. Those smokebreaks make it happen. I've learned about everything from inside information regarding the executive teams at high-tech startups to the problems with designing primers for insect mitochondrial genes from fellow junkies.

Might Obama reap the same sort of benefit from amongst the negative consequences of his unhealthful indulgence? He might. You know, he might not be the only world leader, or staffer employed by a world leader, who smokes. He might not be alone out there on the White House steps puffing away in the dead of winter. Who knows what breakthroughs might come when he's joined out there by some government official from another country? What inside knowledge might he gain from sharing a few tar-tawnied moments with a staffer traveling with the Prime Minister of Brunei? Scorn if you must, but these smoke session are intimate in a way that the inside of an office or conference room can never hope to be. You're removed from that environment. You're outside. Maybe you're cold and feeling a little alienated. It's natural that such a situation breeds candor amongst those involved. Obama's health might suffer just a little, but we as a nation might just come out ahead because of it.

I have another common trait I share with Obama, or at least I like to think so. Both he and I are highly educated and possessed of a level of intelligence markedly higher than the outgoing president. The latter is, in and of itself, not saying very much, I know. Still, from my own experience I can state that my own awareness of both the costs of smoking and my inability (so far) to quit is a rather humbling thing. It reminds me of my own frailties and it probably does the same for Obama. Such weaknesses are intrinsically humiliating things to anyone with even a modicum of self-awareness, and Obama's waffling in the interview likely demonstrates that he has experienced a similar awareness and its consequent humbling effect. I've long maintained that anyone narcissistic enough to think they ought to be president probably shouldn't be elected, so it's a hopeful sign that Obama gets this periodic thump upside his head with the two-by-four of an unresolved character flaw. He's aware that he's not perfect, that he can do wrong by himself. He's not likely to wave that silly banner of divine right and council like some Chief Executives we know. I'm aware that plenty of people will disagree with this notion that I prefer my humans both flawed and aware of their flaws. Lots of folks think that a president should be a spiritual leader of some sort, a shining paragon of white knight rectitude. Me, I like to see that the guy knows there are some chinks in the armor. It's hard to be humble when one thinks of themselves as perfected. Besides, as embarrassing a habit as smoking is, is it really any more humiliating than


I think not.

Now, look, the fact that Obama is going to sneak off for a cigarette when the pressure is on every so often is not something to be celebrated. Still, presidents have done a lot worse in recent memory. I'll take smoke-n-choke over shock-n-awe any day of the week.

So, Mr. President-Elect, smoke 'em if you got 'em until you don't need to get 'em anymore. From one smokin' schmuck to another, you have my sympathy on this. It must hurt to have the press and the naysayers jabbing their fingers into this bullet wound in your self-image. I'm sure Michelle gives you as much grief over the habit as LL gives me; I also can't smoke in my home or in my office and I'm quite acquainted with the winter winds of New England as one result. Still, maybe you can leverage this for our benefit somehow. Whatever it takes. If I'm ever in DC and see you out having a dose of the bad stuff, I'd love to come and join in your act of enlightened self-destruction. I've got a few thoughts on research funding, and so do you. We can talk about it while we die just a little.

See? Smokers' optimism.

Sphere: Related Content

Godless Sign Found in Washington: True-Believers Say Dumb Things in the Meantime

The sign placed by the Freedom from Religion Foundation in the state capitol building in Olympia, Washington and then stolen — possibly at the behest of notable falafel enthusiast Bill "Would You Look at the Size of That Head" O'Reilly — has been returned. It was dropped off at Seattle radio station KMPS by an unidentified man, received by receptionist Rose Gumpe and passed to DJ Ichabod Caine. It's now being used as promotional material by the radio station for Caine. KOMO-TV news in Seattle has the story:

According to local police in Washington:

State Patrol Sgt. Ted DeHart said the billboard was still on display Thursday evening when the Capitol rotunda building was shut down.

He said there would be no way someone not authorized to be inside could get in the building after it's closed at 6 p.m...

— Source

So it looks very much like an inside job, as it were.

It's worth noting that KMPS is a country music station, speaking perhaps to a conservative demographic in terms of its listeners (and recent guests on Caine's show have included Dinesh D'Souza). Caine had been discussing the sign on his show since it went up, although he denies any responsibility in terms of its theft. It may explain, at least, why the sign was dropped off at the station.

Personally, I think this event is yet another example of the "religion does not make people moral" principle. The situation is that religious groups were allowed to place displays on government property, and as both Governor Chris Gregoire and Attorney General Rob McKenna explain in a bipartisan joint statement,

The U.S. Supreme Court has been consistent and clear that, under the Constitution's First Amendment, once government admits one religious display or viewpoint onto public property, it may not discriminate against the content of other displays, including the viewpoints of nonbelievers.

That someone, or even some group of people, found the sign objectionable is not the point. The FFRF had the right to place their sign in the Capitol because other groups were allowed to advertise religion-related messages. There is nothing special about it being a couple of weeks before a holiday held in particular esteem by one such group; the same rights and responsibilities still apply, and unauthorized removal of the sign constitutes theft as it would during any other time of the year. A crime was committed, and the motivation for that crime being religious or political makes no difference at all. It is exactly the same crime that would have been committed if someone who agreed with the FFRF had swiped a baby Jesus mannequin from a creche.

Caine, for his part, misses a subtle but important point in the interview recorded above. He states that the sign is "negative speech." He's right in that, of course. The sign is making a manifestly negative statement about religion, as it was intended to do. However, any religious display, and in fact nearly every religion, makes an intrinsically negative statement about all other religions (or the absence thereof). Each maintains that it is the correct one and that others are, therefore, incorrect. The Christian religion teaches that belief in the divine nature of Jesus is necessary to gain a reward in the afterlife and "blessings" in this life, and that there is no other way. That's an essentially negative statement about any religion that doesn't include this belief and the accompanying obeisances. Islam says the same thing about the status of Mohamed as a prophet. In fact, both Christianity and Islam were formulated precisely as negative statements against what was perceived at the time as corruption within the existent religions from which they stemmed (Christianity regarding Judaism, Islam regarding both Judaism and Christianity). This isn't even touching on polytheistic religions. To say, then, that beliefs are to be inherently respected or should go unchallenged by negative statements about them runs precisely counter to why those beliefs were formulated into codified religions in the first place. A Christmas display, a menorah... it doesn't matter. None of them make only a positive statement of belief, they also make a negative statement about other beliefs. If they didn't, they would be meaningless. The FFRF's sign was more explicit in it's statement of non-belief, and that non-belief was about the very supernaturalism upon which religions are based. One God is, after all, just one more than none.

That true-believers realize all of this at some level is exemplified by another sign put up in the State Capitol by Ken Hutcherson, former NFL player and Tim LaHaye/Rush Limbaugh disciple and present senior pastor at the Antioch Bible Church:

The controversy over the anti-religion sign prompted Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of the Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, to post a pro-religion sign about 15 feet from where the athiest sign was located.

It reads: "There is one God. There is one Devil. There are angels, a heaven and hell. There is more than our natural world. Atheism is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."

— Source

To make such a statement, Hutcherson first has to know in some way what the basis of the FFRF's sign was and how it ties into the state-sponsored religious debate that has been opened up in the capitol building. Of course, stating that a non-belief can be superstition or myth — both of which categories are entirely based on positive beliefs — is stupidity, duplicity, or both. If Hutcherson himself weren't part of the effort of one religion to make negative statements about others, moreover, his church would not have the following as elements of their doctrinal statement:

We believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the verbally inspired Word of God, the final authority for faith and life, inerrant in the original writings, infallible and God-breathed..

In other words, all beliefs other than ours are wrong. This is "negative speech.

We believe that man was created in the image of likeness of God, but that through Adam's sin the race fell, inherited a sinful nature, and became alienated from God; and that man is totally depraved, and of himself utterably unable to remedy his lost condition (Genesis 1:26,27; Romans 3:22,23, 5:12; Ephesians 2:1-3, 12).

We believe that salvation is the gift of God brought to man by grace and received by personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ...

This, of course, means that anyone who doesn't hold these beliefs is "fallen" and not "redeemed." It's a negative statement couched in a positive assertion

The sign may be back, but the episode points out that there is a growing connection between the right to free expression and the holding of a particular set of beliefs in a worryingly substantial portion of the American populace. In Washington, this connection found expression in the theft of the sign by an as-yet-unidentified (and likely to remain unidentified, unless he seeks publicity) culprit with very specific motives. In California, it was a local official who brought pressure to bear for the removal of a statement of non-belief after calls from a few religious residents. Statements that challenge religion are seen as things to be excepted from free speech.

When and if that happens, the true-believers can fight it out amongst themselves whose statements of belief are allowable and whose aren't. After all, ask a religious Jew what he/she thinks about the divinity of Jesus and he's going to make a negative statement in all likelihood. If statements about the non-existence of God aren't protected, then why should we expect that statements about the non-divinity or non-existence of Jesus would be? And after they get that hashed out, maybe they can have a boxing match to decide whether the denial of papal infallibility and the central importance of the Vatican by Protestants should be protected or not.

Given the time, I'm sure that believers like Hutcherson can ultimately figure out exactly which speech and which religions are guaranteed freedom... and which aren't.

Oddly, enough, the FFRF sign never mentions any such things and no atheists I know of have suggested that the negative statements about reason and logic made by the religious should be considered blasphemous and so not protected speech. You can't have blasphemy without the belief to blaspheme in the first place. Without the superstition, there can be no violation... which would throw a bit of a kink into Hutcherson's very silly sign if he only hadn't gotten a few concussions back when he played football.

Sphere: Related Content

Onward Christian Shoppers: Ironic? No.

I was half asleep after the long drive home from Pennsylvania and fully asleep by 7:00 PM. Because of that, I woke up at 2:00 this morning and wound up watching CNN. As I watched the Prime News program anchored by Mike Galanos, I saw the following segment. The pay-off quote here comes at about the 1:35 mark:

Guest and forensic psychologist talks about how the trampling death of Jdimytai Damour at a Valley Stream, NY Wal-Mart on Black Friday was a typical case of herd mentality resulting from the loss of personal responsibility and the anonymity of a crowd situation, but then he notes at 1:38 that there is an "inescapable irony" that the tramplers were Christians. The psychic dissonance at work here was enough to stop me dead in my tracks. How can this event be both typical and ironic? Russell seems to be making the case that we should expect some special behavior from those who consider themselves (and are considered by others) to be members of a particular religion, as if a religious belief would immunize someone against typical human psychology.

I have my doubts about Russell's contention that the crowd that killed Damour, injured his co-workers, and couldn't be bothered to let the police try to rescue the hapless temporary worker, let alone stop their shopping frenzy long enough to lend their own aid, were typical. I'm not a psychologist nor even a particularly observant student of human behavior. He may or may not be correct in making that assertion. I can state from personal experience that I have been in a violent crowd situation, saw someone get knocked down and stopped to help that person get back on their feet and avoid injury. If that isn't typical behavior, in a crowd or otherwise, it's a sad statement about human nature. I didn't stop and think about doing it; I just did it because that's my own instinct. I'd hope that someone else would do the same for me if I needed it. I may not be typical, though. That small gesture might represent abnormal behavior. Perhaps there's something wrong with me.

The notion that one would expect Christians to behave differently, though, that a consciously-adopted belief should alter social behavior, is ludicrous. I don't find anything particularly ironic in Christians trampling someone, at least no more so than I'd find it ironic that Jews, Hindus or atheists would trample someone. Brian Russell seems to want it both ways; what's typical for everyone else is somehow atypical for Christians. Is there some evidence that he, as a psychologist, can present to back up this statement? He doesn't mention any in his discussion with Mike Galanos, and so the statement comes across as rather glib to my ears.

It hasn't been my experience with those who subscribe to the Christian belief set that they act much differently from anyone else. They may ascribe different motivations to their behavior and they may see a different significance to events than others, but aside from some very superficial and intentional things, I've never noticed much of a difference.

One thing that Russell says which I do find myself in agreement with is that the Black Friday homicide of Damour says something about our culture which is profoundly disturbing. That is, according to Russell, it demonstrates a fundamental devaluation of the well-being of others and a synchronous elevation of self-gratification as the highest good. Russell notes several other recent events that he connects with the Wal-Mart trampling, such as the recent online suicide of a Florida teenager during which nobody intervened and the hit-and-run victimization of an elderly man in Connecticut which saw the injured left lying in the street without anyone helping him. One could compile a huge list of such inhumanities, of course. It's easy to do in a country in which a large fraction of the populace can't afford health care.

We live all too much of our lives in customized bubbles now, I think. We have so much technology connecting us in superficial ways that we're losing our ability to connect in unmediated ways. We're suffering not from a lack of religion but from a lack of the real basis of morality. We're losing our empathy, our ability to understand without cogitation that others feel what we feel, are hurt by what hurts us, and have the same needs that we do. That the trampling took place at a Wal-mart is not insignificant; Wal-mart is perhaps the cheapest outlet in America for the purchase of the very devices that mediate our experience of the world, so the death of a human being in the clamor for inexpensive access to mediating, customizable, sensually titillating gadgets is precisely the message that we need to take away from this. These push-button self-gratifications have taken on a life of their own for much of our population, not in the way that another human being might be loved but in the way that our own hand, our own eyes, our own bodies have meaning to us. As we become more fused to the toys and technology that we place between ourselves and the fleshy, carbon-based world in which we should be living, we retreat further into this silicon cocoon. Empathy is abstracted, sympathy is viewed as some sort of deficiency, and "self-reliance" becomes a shorthand for "I'm getting what's mine, screw the rest of you."

Far from being resistant to this mindset, religious belief may make it easier. It allows the use of "God's will" to explain away the unthinkable, but more to the point it is a handy way of dividing people. It's one of the fissures among many that allow one group of people to see some other as less valuable, less good, less acceptable. Witness this statement by the very recently deceased George Docherty, the man largely responsible for cramming the "under God" bit into the US Pledge of Allegiance:

An atheistic American is a contradiction in terms," he said in his sermon. If you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.

— source

Given the willingness that exists amongst the religious to denigrate others in this manner, why on earth should we expect, as Brian Russell seems to do, that they wouldn't be prone to the kind of behavior that occurred at Wal-mart and claimed one life? I am seizing on Christians here because that is the religion mentioned in the segment from CNN linked above, but I don't consider them a special case in this regard. I certainly heard the same sort of talk from Jews when I was growing up in a Conservative to Orthodox Jewish family, for instance. I was once informed by a Hindu priest that I couldn't be allowed to enter a temple at certain times because I was a mleccha, a term which I later learned translates roughly into English as a "barbarian" as well as a class label considered to be even more untouchable than the classic Untouchables. Need the caste system even be brought up in this context?

Such divisiveness is an inherent part of all religions, and the division always implies the lesser value of some human lives as compared to others if it doesn't state it explicitly. That value is assigned largely on the basis of belief. By adopting Christianity, the belief goes, one is forgiven at the outset and can obtain an unlimited number of future dispensations. Christians don't believe this is true of non-Christians, of course, and an atheist... well, an atheist can't even be an American.

It is ironic, though, that a forensic psychologist, who is at least nominally a scientist, should make the kind of statement that Brian Russell made about Christians without the least bit of empirical evidence to back it up. Christians are plenty violent, plenty callous, and just as much afflicted by the empathically deadening effects of consumer culture as anyone else. It was, after all, a Christian contingent that brought us the so-called Culture War in this country. If Christians are capable of declaring war against non-Christians, why should it seem ironic that some of them are capable of killing someone, too? Don't wars usually involve that sort of thing?

Jdimytai Damour was just collateral damage, an inanimate object in the minds of those who killed him and injured those who tried to save his life. This isn't about Christian or non-Christian, believer or non-believer. This isn't about Valley Stream, New York and it isn't about Wal-mart. This is all about America. This is what we're becoming.

Shock and awe hasn't even gotten off the ground yet. Watch out for we Americans; we're capable of anything, and we don't even understand why.

Sphere: Related Content

Non-Belief in America: A Rising Tide of Reason?

I find a recent story in The Wall Street Journal encouraging (hyphal tip to Greater Worcester Humanists for the lead). It talks about the growth and emergence of the secular movement in the USA and the rather humorous, panicky attempts by religious extremists to push back against it.

Atheists Reach Out -- Just Don't Call It Proselytizing

Nonbelievers Think the Time Is Right to Better Organize Their Nonreligion and Swell the Membership; 'Reason's Greetings'

...During the past three years, membership has grown in local and national associations of nonbelievers. Books attacking faith as a delusion shot up best-seller lists. For the first time, the faithless even raised enough funds to hire a congressional lobbyist.

Building on that momentum, nonbelievers have begun a very public campaign to win broad acceptance. On billboards and bus ads, radio commercials and the Internet, atheists are coming forward to declare, quite simply: We're here. And we're just like you...

Not so fast, religious leaders respond. They point out that the vast majority of Americans believe in God. A poll by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life earlier this year found 71% of American adults are absolutely certain God -- or some sort of universal spirit -- exists, and a further 17% said they were fairly certain. Only 5% said flatly that they don't believe.

Atheists "are talking to a very small slice of the population," said Mathew Staver, a leading Christian conservative and law-school dean. "In some ways, they're really just talking to themselves..."

Of course Staver would say that. Staver says a lot of things that don't make much sense. As far as his being a "law-school dean," that's technically true... if you consider Liberty University a school instead of a religious indoctrination center. That's a hard case to make in light of their doctrinal statement and the statement of belief that all faculty there is required to sign, though.

In this case, Staver is twisting facts to suit his argument when he says "only" 5%. Even if that figure were true, 5% is not an insubstantial number of people. To put it in context, the Pew Forum's most recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey shows that only 1.7% of the population follows Judaism and 1.7% is Mormon. Unless Staver wishes to argue that Jews and Mormons have no impact on the rest of America, that they are "really just talking to themselves," then the same can't be said about nonbelievers. I wonder how these other groups feel about Staver suggesting that they should be ignored?

Secularist groups say their membership began to surge in 2005, when Congress sought to prevent Terri Schiavo's husband from removing her feeding tube. Many new members said they hoped nonbelievers could serve as a counterweight to religious influence in political affairs...

Bingo. As is noted later in this article, the rational community is by no means homogeneous and, by its very nature, is not particularly prone to organizational efforts for that reason. Still, the increasing stranglehold of those who believe that their religion should serve as the blueprint for law over political discourse in this country has served as a goad for nonbelievers to put aside differences and come together to push back against the American shariah movement. We can have rational arguments about those areas of disagreement later; they're just not as important in light of a much greater challenge. To do otherwise is tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Rather than renew old battles, such as the symbolic fight to remove "In God We Trust" from currency, members are mobilizing to repair what they view as breaches of the wall between church and state -- such as federal funding for faith-based charities and teaching of intelligent design in science class. They believe many others sympathize with their views -- but are too timid to commit.

I have to admit that as much as I usually dislike having "In God We Trust" on currency, there's a certain irony to the slogan that I can enjoy during the current economic meltdown.

The new ad campaigns and other public-relations efforts are designed to raise comfort levels about atheism by making the point that nonbelievers are "just as ethical and moral as anyone else," said Lori Lipman Brown, who lobbies Congress on behalf of the Secular Coalition for America.

As Doug Krueger, a philosophy professor in northwest Arkansas, put it: "Step one is for people to know we're not crazy, we're just regular people [who have] perfectly satisfactory lives without believing in God."

There's an irony, too, in the necessity for people who don't believe in an invisible, omnipotent being and its winged, praise-singing minions to demonstrate that they aren't crazy while belief in divine intervention and incorporeal evil spirits is the norm. Sarah Palin can talk about an immaterial divine hand "opening doors" for her to "plow through" and much of America nods its head in agreement that such things happen, but if we contend that no bearded man from a parallel dimension provides opportunities, that we humans are responsible for the state of our own and one another's lives, we're a bunch of misfits!

So the American Humanist Association is spending $42,000 to plaster buses in Washington, D.C., with ads asking: "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake." FreeThoughtAction and its local affiliates have put up billboards all over the country asking: "Don't believe in God? You are not alone." Eight billboards are going up this month in Denver...

Organizers of such efforts generally say they aren't trying to evangelize. Instead, they say their goal is to make the public more comfortable with the concept of atheism and give fellow nonbelievers a sense of community.

In seeking the spotlight, the movement risks a backlash. Some Christians find the billboards deeply offensive, especially at this time of year. In recent weeks, press releases from the religious right have accused atheists of "mocking" and "insulting" Christmas. In rural Chambersburg, Pa., one Christian group responded to an "Imagine No Religion" billboard with a giant sign of their own, asking: "Why Do Atheists Hate America?"

Ah, there's the humorous part. It hearkens back to the days of 2003, when 83% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq and those of us who thought it a bad idea were confronted with that stupid question, "Why do you hate America?" If any empty-headed question is symbolic of blind faith, of going along with the crowd simply because it's the majority, that's the one. And just as we in that 17% minority spoke our minds then not because we hated America but because we hoped to steer it away from a direction we thought bad for it, those of us in the 5% that Staver insists is talking to itself are trying to change the course of America toward one that leads to greater reason, to policy based on empirical reality rather than wishful thinking, and to a better future in general. It has nothing to do with hating anything, whether it's a religion or a country, and everything to do with simply being rational. If we have to organize to do that, if we have to reach out to others who have no connection to other nonbelievers in their own localities, so be it.

Still, leading activists say nonbelievers tend to be just as wary of organized atheism as they are of organized religion -- making it tough to pull together a cohesive movement.

"A pastor can say to his flock, 'All rise,' and everyone rises. But try that in an atheist meeting," said Marvin Straus, co-founder of an atheist group in Boulder, Colo. "A third of the people will rise. A third will tell you to go to hell. And a third will start arguing....That's why it's hard to say where we're going as a movement."

No kidding! Independent thought doesn't necessarily lead to agreement; it often results in the opposite. Aside from the core idea behind secular thought — that theology shouldn't be the basis for policies that affect the lives of all Americans — there's plenty of disagreement and debate about the particulars and priorities beyond. That very debate, though, is what reason should encourage. It's how a society learns, changes and progresses. If you find ten nonbelievers in a room agreeing with one another about some aspect of social policy, you can bet that they've been in that room for at least a couple of hours and half of them will probably have exhausted their voices. The very fact that we can change our minds is a strength.

If the theocratically-inclined find this offensive, if they believe that their religions are under attack because we put up a billboard expressing dissent against it and offering some other way of thinking, too bad. It's going to keep happening and all indicators point to it becoming more widespread, not less. That's America for you, and that very freedom is one of the reasons that I, and other secularists, believe it's worth inciting the outrage of those who would take it away. It's a risk we're willing to take on behalf of our country.

Sphere: Related Content

NOVA: "The Bible's Buried Secrets" Airs Tonight

Don't forget, tonight's episode of NOVA is the long-anticipated "The Bible's Buried Secrets":

In this landmark two-hour special, NOVA takes viewers on a fascinating scientific journey that began 3,000 years ago and continues today. The film presents the latest archeological scholarship from the Holy Land to explore the beginnings of modern religion and the origins of the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament.

This archeological detective story tackles some of the biggest questions in biblical studies: Where did the ancient Israelites come from? Who wrote the Bible, when, and why? How did the worship of one God—the foundation of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—emerge?

"'The Bible's Buried Secrets' is both a scientific detective story and dramatic adventure that digs deeply into the Bible and the history of the ancient Israelites through the archeological artifacts they left behind," said Paula S. Apsell, NOVA Senior Executive Producer...

— Source

Readers may recall that this program has the American Family Association foaming at the mouth. In July, Don Wildmon declared jihad against PBS over it, urging his clusterflock to contact their congressional representation in protest and use this particular program as an example of why PBS should no longer receive public funding. The fundienutters are upset, you see, that the program uses scientific methods and reasoning in making the outrageous claims (if you're a fundamentalist religious true-believer with your head lodged firmly up your Dark Ages) that the Bible was written by numerous authors, that the stories are the continuations of pre-existing myths, that monotheism didn't spring into existence at the beginning of time, etc.

All of which is very good reason to watch the show and send a contribution to PBS in support of an effort to investigate reality instead of simply furthering superstition.

Sphere: Related Content

Ralph Nader Reveals His Racism Yet Again

During the course of the contest for the presidency now ended, I was pleasantly surprised to note the absence of Ann Coulter from the airwaves. Coulter's slide into obscurity since the publication of her paranoid and bizarre screed, Godless, is one of the things that have given me some hope that America may be returning to reason and repudiating the visceral hatred of the radical right.

Leave it to Ralph Nader to remind us, in Coulter's absence, that old-fashioned racism and bigotry is still very much alive and isn't the exclusive domain of wingnutters. In a quote from Nader discussed in an election night interview on Fox News, Nader accused Barack Obama of being an "Uncle Tom" in his relationship to corporate interests.

Whether or not one agrees with the assertion that Obama is too accommodating to big business, clearly the assertion itself could be expressed without one of the most incendiary references to his race possible. In fact, the unapologetic Nader has gone out of his way to include the slur in his statement. What does it mean, after all, to ask whether Obama would be an "Uncle Sam" in the first place? Nader could simply have said that Obama was misrepresenting himself; there was no reason to do this.

Still, Nader has a long history now of making racist statements. Some prior instances of this have been collected here, including such gems as:

There's only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He's half African-American," Nader said. "Whether that will make any difference, I don't know. I haven't heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What's keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white?

The assertion that Obama's ethnicity should make him predisposed to speaking a certain way and cause him to focus on a particular set of issues or to hold to some specific set of priorities is, without question, utterly racist. Obama, just like any other person in this country, is free to think about things in whatever way he wishes, to speak however he thinks best, and to prioritize things in whatever way he desires. The whole point of equality is that everyone enjoys the same freedoms and the rest of us get to agree or disagree without consideration of the coincidence of skin color. Clearly, Nader disagrees with Martin Luther King's contention that we should judge people based on the content of their character, not on the color of their skin.

I've previously made note of Nader's racist tendencies. This latest fuselade is in itself no longer surprising, just revolting. That it took an interviewer on Fox News, of all places, to call Nader out on his garbage should be an embarrassment to anyone who has ever put stock in the man enough to have even considered voting for him. At this point, Nader is no longer due any respect whatsoever from anyone at all. He should be cast onto the rubbish heap of history, right next to Ann Coulter.

Sphere: Related Content

What Spore Teaches Us About Intelligent Design: The Four Lessons of Casey Luskin

I'm proud to note that I've added numerous points to my geek cred scale recently by purchasing a copy of EA/Maxis' computer game, Spore. I haven't had much time to play it, but I have managed to take a species of mine all the way to the galactic phase. My little critters, the Shub, are gleefully jetting about the galaxy, although their home world, Mloukhiye, is currently under attack. You can see a Shub there on the right. Cute, no?

I like Spore. It's a fun little game, and that's all it is. I wouldn't dream of using it as a tool with which to instruct students about evolutionary biology for a very simple reason; it's nothing like evolutionary biology. It lacks most of the mechanisms that we see driving evolution in the real world. There's no random mutation in Spore, for instance. Nor is there sexual selection, genetic drift or gene flow. In fact, Spore is essentially The Sims with characters that aren't necessarily human or even human-like. In the real world, species don't jump from being cells to having legs because they eat enough bits of nutrient floating in liquid medium. They don't grow bigger brains because they sing duets with other organisms. The real world simply doesn't work like Spore. In other words, Spore isn't evidence for or against any empirical principle. It is, after all, just a fun little game.

That, of course, isn't going to stop the ID Creationism contingent from advancing the notion that this bit of electronic fluff from Electronic Arts somehow supports their notion of how the diversity of life arose on the planet. They are not, after all, under the constraint of testing hypotheses, nor even of rudimentary common sense, because the vacuous nonsense they assert as a theory (proving that they're not even under the constraint of English usage) is just that — vacuous. They could as easily maintain that the existence of pie is evidence that prayer has the power to turn the head purple. We are thus treated to platters of blather such as an article in The Christian Post in which Casey Luskin, better known to sentient beings everywhere as Captain Clownie, yammers on about how a computer game is evidence of, and teaches users about, his favorite content-free fairy tale:

'Spore' Game Helps Players Understand Intelligent Design
Fans of a video game about evolution include young Christian teenagers and intelligent design proponents

By Katherine T. Phan
Christian Post Reporter

While the latest video-game craze, "Spore," touts the theory of evolution, taking gamers from a single-celled organism to complex civilizations, some say it also promotes God and intelligent design...

Players start the game with the task of feeding a single-cellular amoeba that eventually lays an egg after it has consumed enough blob-like nutrients in its 2-D world. The egg allows gamers to edit their simple organism into a more complex creature - with seven legs, one eye and purple skin if they so desired.

At each egg stage, players can further "evolve" their creatures to have different body structures, physical capabilities and even bigger brains – all of which affect the creatures' abilities and personalities in the game...

Let's pause right here for a moment. In Spore, players do not "evolve" their creatures, they edit their creatures. There's a big difference here. See, you have to click this little button and a new window opens. The player then spends a few "DNA points" to buy arms and legs and eyes which they choose from a menu on the left side of the screen. That isn't evolution by any definition, of course. Is it intelligent design? Sure, assuming that the player isn't a member of the Discovery Institute, barring appropriate use of the word "intelligent" in this context. However, is it evidence for what Luskin and his Creationist clown car assert? Is this how the designer designs? Is he constrained by a budget of DNA points amassed by creatures eating blobs of algae? Well, the truth is... I don't know. Since one of the assertions these numbskulls make is that we can't know anything about their designer (whom, for the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to as Bob the Builder henceforth), he could be clicking away at a menu on some celestial computer somewhere and we could all be nothing more than critters in a pangalactic Sporepedia. However, I am unaware of the proponents of ID ever having advanced this notion beforehand... which, for their purposes, is just fine, since their vacuity isn't constrained by the requirement of predictiveness, anyhow. Unlike real scientists, IDolators are free to make it up as they go along. Everything they do is ad hoc.

And here we have the first thing that Spore really does teach players about Intelligent Design; one can say nearly anything (real biology is barred from discussion, of course), and ID pseudotheory can find a way to accommodate it. Chalk one up for Captain Clownie. We've all learned a valuable lesson. To continue with the article, then:

"Anyone can see that Spore is not really about evolution by the Darwinian mechanism; it's about evolution by intelligent design," Casey Luskin with Discovery Institute, a leading intelligent design think tank, wrote on the group's affiliated blog Evolution News & View...

Well-played, Captain! I agree entirely; anyone who knows anything about evolutionary biology can see that Spore is not about evolution by Darwinian mechanisms, nor by any other mechanisms seen in the real world. The thing is, so what? Computer games routinely violate the laws of physics; one might just as well state that Super Mario Brothers isn't about quantum mechanics. See, entertainment devices don't always seek to replicate the real world and Spore is not a teaching tool. It isn't science. It's a computer game from which precisely zero lessons about the universe in which we (by which I do not mean to necessarily include Captain Clownie and the Funtime Gang over at the DI) actually exist. In truth, Spore is about neither evolutionary biology nor about religiously-derived "alternative theories." It's about having a bit of fun.

But here we have our second lesson about Intelligent Design inadvertently brought to the fore by Spore: ID advocates can't tell the difference between a fantasy role-playing game and reality. Note that this is a notoriously poor sort of mindset from which to begin the genesis of anything useful to science. But they do go on:

The game even refutes many Darwinist objections to I.D., argued Luskin, including one objection that says detecting design requires knowledge about the designer.

"Browsing on YouTube I can find hundreds if not thousands of Spore creatures that were designed by people whose real names, parents' names, and tribes of origin I know nothing about. We don't have to know who the designer is, or who spawned the designer, to be able to detect design," wrote Luskin...

I'm unfamiliar with the argument that Luskin says we "Darwinists" bring up in regard to IDiocy. I am, however, familiar with two arguments that he may have crammed together here. The first is that if design is present, it should be detectable and the second is that if there is a designer present the designer should also be detectable and because that designer can be observed, even indirectly, it absolutely follows that we could say something about the nature of that designer based upon how Bob the Builder designs. We could infer, for instance, what kind of design regime it follows, what sorts of tools Bob uses, etc., all of which perforce tell us something about this veiled designer.

Captain Clownie, of course, puts his foot right in it when he says that he can't tell anything about the people who designed the Spore creatures he's found on YouTube. This may be indicative of the extent of Luskin's brain damage, since anyone lacking his degree of cognitive impairment can say any number of things about the designers of Spore creatures without even looking at the creatures themselves. For example, it's a sure bet that every single person who has designed a Spore creature has used the Spore creature creator to do so, and we can thus infer that such individuals also have access to at least one computer and furthermore know how to use it, could we not? We can make some educated guesses about what colors these designers favor, particular if we can find several of their creations and note what they have in common in this regard. More importantly, we can test our hypotheses about these junior Bobs by sending them an email and asking a few questions. Some might choose not to respond, but at least a few of them would and we could expand from our initial hypothesis to build a profile of one or more designers, look for commonalities between them and ultimately come up with some idea of what unites the kind of people who make creatures for Spore. In fact, you can bet your bottom dollar that there are people working at EA who do just this kind of thing for a living. In case Captain Clownie missed it, then, here's a clue; this discipline is called marketing. Even if Luskin didn't investigate the creators of those Spore critters on YouTube, other people make a living doing precisely that. In fact, they did so before anyone ever bought the game, and the information they uncovered was used to make predictions about who would buy Spore and how many buyers there would be long before the game itself ever hit the shelves. If they were correct, they might get a nice bonus. If they were wrong, they might get fired. This works just like science; what's known prior to an experiment (in this case, the launch of a product) is used to create a hypothesis which is then tested, evidence for and against the hypothesis is gathered, and the hypothesis is either conditionally accepted or rejected.

Here, we learn our third lesson about ID Creationism — it doesn't lend itself to inquiry. As soon as a bit of useful agitprop is formulated, inquiry ceases. Luskin didn't find anything about to say about the Spore creators because he didn't even trying once he could make some statement in support of an a priori conclusion. We have learned that Intelligent Design is, in fact, exactly the opposite of the search for the truth about the world in which we live — a most valuable lesson, indeed.

Benjamin Cormack, writing on the gaming Website GotGame.com suggested Spore may even help players understand, in a small way, the heart of God.

"As you guide and care for your creations, you may actually develop an almost parental sense of pride in watching them grow, kind of like children or sea monkeys," he wrote...

Well, that's a very long way from Captain Clownie's assertion that it isn't necessary to infer anything about Bob the Builder, isn't it? Cormack is certainly saying something about God (and, after all, that's precisely who Bob the Builder really is!) Of course, it's also a tremendous leap of logic and certainly a category error. It's based on a major statement about the nature of the designer — this designer has human emotions and, not only that, applies them in an entirely human way. Bob the Builder forms attachments to the things it creates.

We get yet another lesson about Intelligent Design, then. It has no problem with contradicting itself in order to accommodate any opinion about anything at all, so long as that opinion is one in contradiction of sound science and reason. This is, of course, a major advantage of being vacuous.

It turns out, then, that Captain Clownie is absolutely correct in his assertion, shared with numerous other IDolators, that Spore teaches players about Intelligent Design. He's just wrong about what lessons those players can learn. What Spore has done is simply to bring the termites out of Bob the Builder's woodpile to make the usual round of silly statements that those of us who still have a few working brain cells firing away can then dissect using that most incisive of scalpels, reason. In summation, we who are still in possession of this valuable faculty and who hold it in esteem learn the most valuable lesson of all about Intelligent Design from the reaction of one of its leading advocates to Spore. That is, they aren't very good tool-users. They tend to apply a cudgel when what's called for a nice, sharp blade.

The ability to use tools is a major part of what makes us humans. To be a bad tool user is, in a sense, to be an inferior human being. I would submit, then, that the ultimate lesson one can take away from all of this is about Casey Luskin himself and, based upon their assent to Captain Clownie's arguments, about the leadership and members of the Discovery Institute. They don't know how to use the one tool that makes all other possible — reason. They're not so much a think tank as they are a holding pen for the chronically deficient who have benefited from the relaxed requirements of fitness that good tool-users have engendered. Natural selection having failed to remove them from the ideological gene pool so far, we shall have to wait for the effects of some other factor to lead in the end to their inevitable extinction. Surely the very fact that this rubber-nosed know-nothing can assert that one can learn about the real world by playing a video game should be enough to demonstrate how jejune is the black hole of intellect termed "intelligent design" for all of humanity. At least, I would like to think it that obviously stupid.

I also suspect, sadly, that someone will come along to dash my hopes any minute now.

Sphere: Related Content

Mushroom Season Makes the News

The proliferation of fungal fruiting bodies in Massachusetts this summer is making the news here. While that in itself is a good thing, the press always has to come up with an interesting angle that makes a story one of human interest. In the case of mushrooms, that usually winds up as warnings about mushroom poisonings. In fact, it's often about children being poisoned, even when it hasn't actually happened.

Still, I'm glad when my favorite kingdom gets some press, and in this case that press includes a television interview by WBZ with my PhD advisor:


The story is a bit alarmist, of course, because that makes it interesting to people who normally don't care about mushrooms. The "won't somebody think of the children!" angle always sells. What the story also doesn't mention is that even most poisonous mushrooms aren't lethal mushrooms. They'll make you sick, but you won't die — although you might feel like you're going to. Of all the mushroom species found in North America, only a small fraction ever prove lethal, although I can certainly understand why the parent of some kid who eats a bit of an unidentified mushroom would be concerned. A good rule of thumb for reducing the risk if you happen to be a Massachusetts parent worried about your kid eating something nasty in your garden is to keep an eye out for any mushroom that has what looks like warts on its cap, a ring on its stem and a cup or collar at the base. Those are likely to be members of genus Amanita, and thus the most likely to be lethally poisonous. Go through the yard and remove them. They're generally among the more conspicuous fungi you'll see. You can remove every mushroom you see, but you're likely to spend a lot of time at it. Of course, you can also just keep a close watch on the kids, but it only takes a second of one's back being turned for a toddler to pop a bad fungus into his or her mouth. If you would like to see some of the various forms that Amanita can take, click here. Judging from what I've seen around town, the most common species right now is Amanita brunnescens, which has a cap colored various shades of brown and white to very light brown warts. It can get quite large and, while toxic, probably isn't going to cause death.

The Boston Globe is also running a story today on the prolific mushroom fruitings being seen in the area. It talks a bit more about amateur mycologists and not quite so much about the poisonings that haven't happened:

Everything's coming up mushrooms
Summer of rain has silver lining - a rare bonanza of fungi
By Tom Haines

No one loves the rewards of a rainy summer quite like a mycologist does.

"It's just, I'm telling you, cloud nine," said Elinoar Shavit of Concord.

Even on short walks, Shavit has easily spotted Boletus edulis (porcini), Craterellus fallax (black trumpet), Laetiporus sulphureus (chicken mushroom), and "chanterelles galore!"

After July brought twice the average rainfall to the region, prompting mycelium to fruit in abundance, mushroom maniacs - whether serious scientists or curious cooks - are reveling in a bounty seldom seen...

There are thousands of species of mushrooms that burst forth when conditions are right with bulbs and caps in craggy shelves and huddled clusters, and more. The mushrooms survive for a few hours or weeks, depending on species; some prefer spring, others summer or fall...

Shapes, colors, and composition also fascinate scientists and others who want to know exactly how things work. Experimenters of another sort favor certain mushrooms, which grow in New England only very occasionally but can cause hallucinations.

This year, though, even the usually disinterested among us are captivated by more kinds of mushrooms, in larger quantity - whether clumps of black trumpets or giant puffballs - popping up in the yard more or less overnight...

Local hospitals have seen a spike in calls, mostly from parents of toddlers who had popped mushrooms in their mouths. Most tastings have turned out to be harmless, and there have been no fatalities this year, according to Alfred Aleguas, clinical manager with the Regional Center for Poison Control and Prevention Serving Massachusetts and Rhode Island...

One close call came before a neighbor contacted Shavit, a contributing editor to Fungi magazine known for her ability to identify different species. The neighbor told Shavit she had picked 30 pounds of chanterelles, an elegant, edible specimen that is tasty when sauteed in oil with shallots and salt. On closer inspection, Shavit determined the suspected chanterelles were Omphalotus illudens, or Jack O' Lantern mushrooms, known to spur vomiting and diarrhea.

Norman "Dugie" Russell, who helps Children's Hospital Boston and Beverly Hospital with emergency mushroom identifications, warns casual pickers to study guidebooks and seek expert advice...

Again, the moral of the story here is pretty simple, aside from the fact that we mycologists and enthusiasts are having a wonderful year. If you don't know the difference between an Omphalotus and a Cantharellus on site, don't eat any mushrooms without having them identified by someone who has a grasp of diversity, because, frankly, it's very easy to tell those two genera apart. Omphalotus always grows on wood and has blade-like gills; Cantharellus grows on the ground and has vein-like "gills." If you think you've found some chanterelles (Cantharellus) and want to know for certain, please let me know. I'll be happy to take a look and tell you whether you've got the right mushrooms... for a small cut of your find, of course, if they do turn out to be chanterelles. I love the things. In fact, LL and I had some Craterellus cornucopioides for dinner just last night. They're my favorite.

It truly is an amazing year for mushrooms, whether they're edible or just beautiful. If you live in New England and have been curious to learn about fungi, this is the time to do it. Contact your local mycological society and get out on a few forays. A better year for sheer numbers and diversity is unlikely to come your way for another decade or two. You can find contact information for amateur mycological societies throughout the United States courtesy of the North American Mycological Association. Here are the ones in New England:

• Connecticut:
  Berkshire Mycological Society
  c/o Jim Berlstein
  PO Box 247
  Norfolk, CT 06058-0247
  web: www.bms.iwarp.com
  email: berkshiremycology [at] lycos.com
  
  Connecticut Valley Mycological Society
  129 Stockburger Rd
  Moodus, CT 06469-1042
  email: janblanchard [at] comcast.net
  
  
• Maine:
  Maine Mycological Society
  216 Huff's Mill Rd.
  Bowdoin, ME 04287-7138
  web: www.mushroomthejournal.com/mma/index.html
  email: mjpmm955i [at] gwi.net
  
  
• Massachusetts:
  Boston Mycological Club
  20 Shirley St
  Ayer, MA 01432-1208
  web: www.bostonmycologicalclub.org
  email: georgeriner [at] mycogeo.com
  
  
• New Hampshire:
  Monadnock Mushroomers Unlimited
  PO Box 1796
  Keene, NH 03431-1796
  email: beewing [at] cheshire.net
  
  
• Northeastern US:
  Northeast Mycological Federation
  web: www.nemf.org
  email: ursula.hoffmann [at] lehman.cuny.edu

Sphere: Related Content

The Memetics of Evil: Liberal Hunting License

It's my blog and I'll obsess if I want to.

The murder of two people by Jim Adkisson at a liberal church has had me thinking a great deal about why things like this happen. I have noticed that the right-wing's explanation for Adkisson's actions is predominately that he was a mental case. It's hard to disagree with that. In my estimation, and I would like to believe that of the majority of American human beings of all political persuasions, anyone who attempts to address their grievances with a shotgun blast is disordered.

Still, there are plenty of deranged individuals walking around unrestrained these days. Some of them are even prone to violence, and the target of their rage has some explanation. Violent people rarely choose a random target; they usually (perhaps always) pick a mark that has some significance to them. That usually means someone who is visibly different in some way. Various psychopaths have targeted those of other ethnicities, or women, or the elderly. They choose their targets based on a distinction, and that distinction has a meaning to them. The significance doesn't arise in a vacuum, either. There may be some personal trauma involved or they may be acting on messages they believe that they're receiving.

It's valid to ask, certainly, why Jim D. Adkisson decided that his hatred would be focused on liberals. Liberals don't look different and, by and large, don't act differently than non-liberals. You can't pick the liberal from the crowd based on their pigmentation or mannerisms. A liberal in a suit looks exactly like a conservative in a suit or a Communist in a suit, for that matter.

Adkisson was almost certainly acting on messages from the media. Somebody told him, in his interpretation, that killing people with a particular social and political philosophy was the right thing to do in order to solve not only his own problems but those of others like him. He even wore a sort of a uniform when carrying out his imagined mission.

A brief dig around the internet this morning yielded such a message with very little effort. It looks like this:

You can buy these from a website calling itself The Patriot Shop for $1.50 each. According to the website:

All sales proceeds at PatriotShop.US support our Mission of Service to America's Armed Services, and help ensure that The Patriot Post is distributed to hundreds of thousands of military personnel and students without a fee...

So, a bunch of people who have fantasies about shooting liberals and sell a product that endorses that fantasy call themselves "patriots" and seeks to influence the military (people with guns). The message here is that it is not only acceptable to shoot liberals, it's patriotic. It's what people who love their country enough to defend it ought to be doing. Anyone who sees humor in this sort of thing is already well on their way down the twisting path of psychopathy. The thought of killing another human being is only funny to those lacking any sense of empathy, the very basis of morality. This isn't patriotism, it's pathology.

This is precisely the kind of message that people like Jim Adkisson are prone to picking up. I have no reason to believe that he ever saw this particular example, of course. The point is that this type of message has been rather prevalent in the media over the past few years. If it weren't, there'd be no market for "liberal hunting licenses."

People who are attracted to this sort of meme aren't patriots, they're problems. They're very big problems waiting to happen. Violent imaginings always precede violent acts, and the people who accept messages embodied in things like the above "hunting license" have already thought about doing things like what Jim Adkisson did to the Tennessee Valley UU Church. If there were such a thing as liberal hunting licenses, they would be lining up to buy them. If they believed that they could get away without penalty for killing those with whom they disagree, you can rest assured that they'd be doing it.

While watching CNN last night, I heard a psychologist (I forget his name) describe Adkisson as a coward because he was hoping that the police would kill him rather than killing himself. I don't see the basis for that statement. Adkisson may well have seen himself as a martyr for the cause, and being gunned down by the police would have helped to establish that aura in his own mind. In his own mind, Adkisson almost certainly making a stand for what he believed in. In his world of violent fantasies, he was a heroic patriot who was answering a call. The enemy had been identified; someone had to do something about it.

If only he could have purchased a hunting license.

If you have a moment, why not contact the management of The Patriot Shop and let them know what you think of their liberal hunting license... and their continuing to sell it in light of events in Knoxville.

Sphere: Related Content

Ben Stein's Corollary to Godwin's Law: Hitler is Everywhere

I'm not sure whether Ben Stein is mentally deranged, has had some kind of stroke, or has just come to the decision that the "anything I don't like is Hitler" gambit used in Expelled should be spread about as much as possible, but there's something very wrong with him. Whatever the reason, he seems to have come up with something that I think should be named Ben Stein's Corollary to Godwin's Law, or Stein's Corollary for short. That is, anything that Hitler did, no matter how much it may have been done by other people, can be used in an attempt to silence any possibility intelligible discourse.

Stein recently employed this corollary while appearing on CNN's Glenn Beck Show in reference to the plans underway for Barack Obama's acceptance of the Democratic nomination at an outdoor arena apart from the main convention in order to accommodate the large number of people who want to attend the event:

...that is not the way we do things in political parties in the United States of America... Seventy-five-thousand people at an outdoor sports palace, well, that's something the Fuehrer would have done. And I think whoever is advising Senator Obama to do this is bringing up all kinds of very unfortunate images from the past.

Seriously, what neurological circuit has shorted in Stein's brain to make this kind of analogy and expect it to sound even remotely reasonable? He seems to be seeing the zombie Hitler everywhere.

Even if no other American politician had ever given a speech at an arena before, so what? Does the mere fact that both Obama and Hitler have appeared in an outdoor arena mean that there is some meaningful similarity between the two?

Hitler wore shoes. I wear shoes. Therefore, I want to exterminate Jews, gypsies and homosexuals. It makes every bit as much sense. But wait... I've never seen Ben Stein barefoot! He could be a Nazi.

But wait again... Barry Goldwater held a rally at Colt .45 Stadium in Houston in 1964!

Besides baseball, we also played for a Barry Goldwater rally in the stadium just before the 1964 presidential election. That may not have been the last event at Colt Stadium, but we were there.

— Source

Barry Golwater held a rally at a sports stadium, and Hitler held rallies at stadiums... so Barry Goldwater was like Hitler. So much for Stein's "we don't do things like that in America" delusion.

That a politician speaking at a large sporting venue automatically conjures up images of brown shirts in Stein's mind tells us nothing about the speaker and everything about the ongoing degeneration of Stein's relationship with reality. What's next... Obama wears shoes and Hitler wore shoes (anyone ever seen a photo of Hitler's bare feet)? They both prefer to breathe the same mixture of gases when appearing in public? Hitler is everywhere! Head for the hills!

Sphere: Related Content

Cell Phone Cancer Woo Spread by Irresponsible Newspapers

After living in Worcester for a year, I’ve already learned an important lesson about the local media. That is, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette is generally an unreliable piece of crap. Nonetheless, it has excelled in plumbing the depths of irresponsible and inaccurate reporting with today’s headline story which amounts to fanning the flames of woo-inspired public panic regarding cell phones, electromagnetic fields and cancer.

Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, issued an internal memo warning staff about dangers from cell phone use that have never been borne out by any reputable peer-reviewed study. This internal memo has apparently been leaked to the press and the Worcester Terrible & God-awful decided to run the story as front page news.

WARNING: Limit cell phone use or risk cancer
By Jennifer C. Yates and Seth Borenstein THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to his faculty and staff yesterday: Limit cell phone use because of the possible risk of cancer...

Herberman is basing his alarm on early unpublished data. He says it takes too long to get answers from science and he believes people should take action now — especially when it comes to children...

No other major academic cancer research institutions have sounded such an alarm about cell phone use. But Herberman's advice is sure to raise concern among many cell phone users and especially parents...

The largest published study, which appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 2006, tracked 420,000 Danish cell phone users, including thousands who had used the phones for more than 10 years. It found no increased risk of cancer among those using cell phones...

A little basic physics and organic chemistry here. In order for any form of radiation to cause cancer, the electromagnetic waves must possess enough energy to disrupt the bonds in DNA molecules. When this occurs on a large enough scale, a mechanism is triggered called the “SOS response.” Essentially, enzymes kick in that quickly repair the damage without proofreading the DNA. This can result in any number of errors (point substitutions, inversions, etc.), or somatic cell mutations, which lead to cancer. None of this can happen, however, until the damage is done in the first place.

There are several ways to express the amount of energy represented by an electromagnetic wave. For the sake of convenience, I’ll just use frequency here. The greater the frequency the more energetic the EM wave. Simple stuff.

The EM waves generated by cell phones have frequencies that are in the neighborhood of 900 megahertz, that is to say 9×10⁸ Hz. For comparison, television signals are broadcast on frequencies of between 30 and 3000 megahertz. Thus, the radiation given off by a cell phone is well within the energetic limits of the frequencies, and so energy levels, of EM waves to which we are exposed constantly every single day and have been since before the moment of conception. There is nothing magical about the radiation given off by a cell phone; if it were dangerous we would expect to see harm being caused by other waves with similar frequencies. Radio and television broadcasts would be causing cancer to millions and millions of people the world over. We would expect to see tremendously increased rates of children being born with genetic mutations. Moreover, someone would have discovered a link between these broadcasts and increased cancer rates. That hasn’t happened, nor is anyone demonstrated a link between cell phone use and brain cancer in a study that has adequately controlled for confounding factors. In fact, study after study has shown no link as is mentioned briefly in the article. Not only has no link been demonstrated but nobody can explain what the underlying mechanism would be that would result in cell phones causing cancer, but radio and television that doing so.

Ionizing radiation – the kind that really can cause cancer – has much higher frequency and so much higher energy. Xrays, for example, have frequencies of between 10¹⁷ and 10²⁰ Hz. That’s many, many orders of magnitude different. In practical terms, it’s the difference between it being 1° and 1,000,000,000° outside. We all know what to do when the temperature gets down to 1°; what would we do if the weather report called for a high of 1,000,000,000°? Maybe panic a little? That’s the difference we’re talking about here.

It’s bad enough that an award-winning scientist such as Dr. Herberman could be taken in by electromagnetism woo, but for the press to start spreading his phobia around is ten times worse and for a newspaper to run a story based upon his poorly-evidenced memo is ten times more irresponsible still. Clearly, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette is in dire need of a science editor. That they would choose to run this piece with a title beginning with the word “warning” should immediately strip away any remaining shred of respect that one might have for this fishwrap of a paper. I realize that the market niche opened up when the Weekly World News went under, but if the T&G aims to fill that gap then it should have the decency to let its readers know that intention.

It is unfortunate that overwrought headlines sell newspapers, and even more unfortunate that readers will see the title “Dr.” before a name and immediately buy into what the person bearing the title says. Basic science education of even moderate quality should be enough to counteract the sort of thing, but much of the public lacks the basic knowledge to critically evaluate a story such as this precisely because science education isn’t a major priority. We thus get sentiments like this one arising out of ignorance:

It's like smoking, you have been notified of a potential danger and possible result, it's up to each person to do what they want with the information. I for one don't see how holding a cellphone to your temple for extended periods of time or wearing a bluetooth device all day long can be anything but BAD for you. Heavy users like heavy smokers will never agree with it, can't even think of it, but the dangers are there with everything man has created.

— Source

Shame on the T&G for exploiting ignorance to sell papers and for helping to spread unfounded fears. A good newspaper should be a source of reliable information. What shall we call the T&G for being the diametric opposite?

Sphere: Related Content

The AFA Wants to Bury "The Bible's Buried Secrets"

The American Family Association’s Don Wildmon is once again up in arms about reality’s failure to confirm the literal truth of his Biblical beliefs. The PBS program Nova is producing an episode entitled “The Bible’s Buried Secrets.” While there’s no link yet on Nova’s web page for information about the episode, some of the archaeologists involved with it have commented and it sounds like this will be standard fare for the long-running documentary series.

The paucity of specific information about the show hasn’t stopped ol’ Don from bursting a blood vessel or two about the reporting of many of the contradictions known to exist between Biblical stories and the archaeological record. He was kind enough to share his concerns with me in his most recent “Dear Manmeat” e-mail:

Dear Manmeat,

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS), probably the most liberal network in America, will present a program this fall that says the Old Testament is a bunch of made-up stories that never happened. "The Bible's Buried Secrets" says the Bible is not true. It is scheduled to air on November 18.

Producer Paula Apsell said: "...It's (The Bible's Buried Secrets) designed for intelligent people who are willing to change their mind. …it will give intelligent people who want to read the Bible in a modern way a chance. If we insist on reading the Bible literally, in 25 years, nobody will read it any longer."

Among highlights of "The Bible's Buried Secrets":

• The Old Testament was written in the sixth century BC and hundreds of authors contributed.
  
• Abraham, Sarah and their offspring didn't exist.
  
• There is no archaeological evidence of the Exodus.
  
• Monotheism was a process that took hundreds of years.
  
• The Israelites were actually Canaanites.
  
• The Israelites believed that God had a wife.

I have often said that PBS should not receive tax dollars. "The Bible's Buried Secrets" is simply one more reason Congress should stop supporting PBS with our tax dollars. Congress gives PBS hundreds of millions of tax dollars to help support the network.

I find Wildmon’s use of the word “liberal” rather revealing in this context. There is nothing particularly liberal about reporting the facts uncovered by investigation and scientific research. The points that Wildmon brings up are no more biased toward some political philosophy than would be a statement that the earth revolves around the sun. The fact is, we have no evidence that Abraham was a real person nor have there been archaeological finds indicating that ancient Israelis ever inhabited Egypt, built anything there, and fled the place to spend 40 years wandering the Sinai. We do know that monotheism was not the primitive condition of religion; there is no doubt whatsoever that early beliefs were polytheistic. One can easily point to any number of early religions including those of the Near East, and the struggle of early monotheistic religions against the prevailing polytheism is well documented not only in the archaeological record (c.f. Akhenaten) but in the bible itself (c.f. the Golden Calf episode in Exodus itself). Monotheism clearly took centuries, if not millennia, to emerge. The Israelites did believe that Jehovah had a bride, or at least the feminine component. Her name is Shekinah and she is referred to in Jewish texts such as the Talmud wherein she is said to grant the power of prophecy. The mystical, kabalistic work Zohar, a work of particular importance to modern day Hasidic Jewish sects, also makes reference to Shekinah.

Wildmon’s apoplexy over a program of the nature of “The Bible’s Buried Secrets” exemplifies the very problem with Fundamentalism and its insistence on literal reading of Biblical mythology. Empirical observation simply does not support the historical accuracy of stories such as that of Abraham or Moses. When confronted by this, fundamentalists twist the presence of archaeological evidence that contradicts the tales upon which they found their belief as a conspiracy concocted to overthrow their religion. Since the stories must literally be true in order for their faith to be justified, anything from the outside world that fails to support those stories must be something manufactured by the forces of darkness. These days, the forces of darkness are personified by a vague application of the term “liberal.” Taken to its extreme, this profoundly twisted and emotionally immature refusal to face the facts is turned into a delusion of persecution. Archaeologists aren’t simply reporting what they have found but attacking the adherents of fundamentalist Christianity. Such flawed reasoning is applied to every aspect of the real world which exists beyond that covers of any particular religious text; it exists as much in fundamentalist Islam, Hinduism or Animism as it does in the literalist form of Christianity. It is equally wrong, equally immature, and frankly equally stupid no matter which religious context one chooses.

In fact, the reaction by Wildmon to a program that neither he nor anyone else outside of those directly involved with it has seen, is a slightly more sophisticated form of the toddler’s argument from “la la la, I’m not listening.” Wildmon knows that his followers weren’t likely to watch anything broadcast on PBS to begin with, but that’s not enough. Wildmon wants to shut down the very possibility that anyone could be influenced by a review of real evidence. He doesn’t even find it necessary to provide a link to any sources that his readers could check and potentially make up their own minds because that in itself would be contrary to fundamentalist thought. Instead, Wildmon is confident that he can simply make assertions and rouse his faithful to action and have them clap their hands not only over their own ears, but over yours, mine and everyone else’s. It’s not enough for a fundamentalist to choose for him or herself not to consider an argument; the fundamentalist feels compelled to prevent anyone else from doing so.

It should be apparent not only from the ridiculous mental deficiency spewed into American culture by Wildmon, but from the history of other cultures that have become dominated by fundamentalist religious thought, that there is no difference between fundamentalism and totalitarianism. The basis for the will to power over the mind of every individual in the fundamentalism-plagued society may be different, but the totalitarian heart of theocracy differs from that of fascism only by its initial motivation and not at all in the ends it seeks. It doesn’t take much bending to twist a cross into a swastika. The first force applied in doing so is the attempt to decide to what information the people will have access.

There is no evidence to support, and much to contradict, the assertions of fundamentalist religion. This is not the fault of some conspiracy but the reflection of reality. The mythology of fundamentalist Christianity is no different than the mythology of Hellenism.

Having said all this, perhaps the next thing the reader might wish to do is to actually look at what the people involved in making “The Bible’s Buried Secrets” have to say about their program.

…Biblical archaeologists William Dever and Carol Meyers talked about the special and addressed the fact that many people will have problems with a film that claims to challenge viewers "to think about the Bible in an entirely new way," according to "NOVA" senior executive producer Paula Aspell. She said the show will examines the message and the meaning of the Bible as it looks for a historical core. "What emerges is provocative new evidence surrounding the origins of monotheism and the ethical code that accompanies it, ideas that change the world and resonate for us today as it did then."

Biblical archaeologist William Dever said the film is controversial, "but it ends on a positive note. It should bring to laypeople a new appreciation of the literature and the history of the Bible. And I think even professional biblical scholars might learn something from it…”

— Source

Sphere: Related Content

Hate from the Heartland: Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart

What do you do if you're a county commissioner in Oklahoma up for re-election and facing criminal charges of felonious misuse of campaign funds? If you're Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart, you commission the creation of a 16-page comic book that looks like it was drawn by a sixth-grader, fill it with bigotry and allegations that your opponents are "pedifiles" working for Satan, set yourself up as a messianic figure at the center of a battle between angels and devils, and do everything you can to rally your local fundamentalists. You pretend that anyone who stands in your way is in favor of allowing gay men to rape Boy Scouts.

In short, you do as much to play upon hate, fear and ignorance as you can, all the while exhibiting your own embrace of the basest traits that humanity has to offer alongside your own illiteracy. Then you wrap it all up with a neat little ribbon and launch it toward the doorsteps of your jurisdiction.

Mud-Slinging Comic Book Stirs Up Scandal
Oklahoma County Official Creates Comic Featuring Gays in Togas, Satan

By MARCUS BARAM, ABC News

Political candidates looking for an edge have employed all types of cutthroat tactics to sully their opponents, from TV ads depicting nuclear war and paroled murderer-rapists to flyers alleging interracial relationships and criminal fraud.

And then there was the 16-page homophobic comic book featuring Satan, angels, toga-wearing gay people and crude depictions of public officials discussing "anal sodomy" and "Pedifiles."

Brent Rinehart, an Oklahoma County Commissioner locked in a tough reelection race, spent two months creating the comic book and is preparing to send it out to registered Republicans in his district...

The book also attacks Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, who filed felony campaign finance charges against Rinehart last year related to his 2004 campaign for county commissioner. Rinehart's trial is set to begin in September.

Edmondson is depicted holding a sign that says "Gay rights now!" while Rinehart's figure blasts the attorney general for his decision to "force the Boy Scouts to accept homosexuals as scout leaders, a pedifile's [sic] dream come true."

Though the book's content has stirred up scandal and been widely condemned by politicians in Oklahoma, Rinehart is unrepentant, misspellings aside.

"I'm proud of it," he tells ABCNews.com. "It's a novel way to tell a story about the last three and a half years. It's informative, entertaining and a good read..."

ABC News was kind enough to archive a copy of Rinehart's "comic book" at the link above. I used that copy to produce my own copy of the noxious campaign comic book, which I've annotated with a few comments but otherwise left in all its pristine, hateful, narcissistic glory.

If you thought that Oklahoma legislator Sally Kern was a vile and hateful malignancy infesting America's heartland, you're just going to love the hell out of self-appointed fundamentalist messiah and all-around example of what's wrong with American politics Brent Rinehart.

Sphere: Related Content

Transcript of Pope Benedict's Homily at World Youth Day

The following transcript of Pope Benedict XVI's homily at World Youth Day was produced by turning on the television (coverage provided by EWTN), then my laptop's speech recognition software, and then walking out of the room. The raw transcript was saved as a Microsoft Word document. I then ran Word's spelling and grammar checker and accepted whatever changes it suggested. When there was more than one correction suggested, I always chose the first one. This, then, is what the computer heard Pope Benedict say. It starts off a little clumsy, but it makes as much sense as anything I've ever heard uttered by a clergyman by the end.

A U.S. ally in the eighth of the season lasts only in this kind. Get known to have it. On a study was the Holy Father you long for as the event is the value of a man. To be on third is the challenge, not as hard as it is easy. Some thanks to our house is the kind of a show of hands as the author has a son who is of the view that he is fine and does as pretty a Eucharist as this.

All are being with the rays of the only holy thing that that is: the one of the united tens of only a light. On one of these signs, by the way, you of the U.S. lose. You’re of the view that I have the main thing. Now he’s had a lot of that all. Use a kiss and take much as follows this.

The only other thing in the year by Jose shows off a thing. I think his time in his house or many of you author the views of the eighth OP has the ad half, as high as I know. That if the ideas of the U.S. now has gotten, how does that which has offices of the infamous as long as an eighth? The real law via acts as a semblance of that’s OK. You’re only as long as they have in the ninth of this thing. As long as they are mad at us as a pizza, it’s as thick and anonymous as this. As they are false, then rather than thanks I am a thank you. Out of UFS he and his giving thing from the SISSY stand as theater at these cars. Spans of the path use a five to its hands of the eight then I’ll think as a studio takes months. SS heads of state have the highest sounds of this.

This is nice. Now he’s SS Grand Am.

As it is a sound in a phone, that is as safe a path at $10.00 as anything. My SIN got a lot of guys’ things that I’m using. The humanism is in all other Islamic eyes of the south. As a USS is a man, so long as that’s as easy as a month’s 69.

Does a man you think is something is saying that they follow a path as a thing? You’ll then say of his case that they have anything as often as a fax. It is the main thing to go as long as an SI is the fan. He has been a few having AIDS. This thing will be the key thing. To communicate his test, call this as the house. His hands as a youth a day late, as they say, then a youth is a thing they use for a fifth as that has some of the period.

From a phase of his death and taxes and fees of the same as the date and time, this season is a long haul. It says of his cause that you visit to get a visa. A thin line of a designed investigative thing is the same as a long time, is the same hands. Unknowns visit our home as a different thing than home videos that are as many as in a net view that it ends. We’ll pay his use of the state’s main and say that he’s committed a sin. Is humanism from the thick end as I’ve seen a thing orbiting the U.S.?

Is it some of his main business days? Are these safe to sign? The thing is that a DOSS is the CIA’s thirds of saying it’s easy, I think as thickly as follows. As well as a sense of him, now have many of these days in a row. You say you view thoughts as exciting if that’s lost. The fed has a name as guy. Is the stance an eighth Baghdad? As bad as the south face of a handful of zones and the status of thickness, then their house owned safety and five of a thing happen as you stop. Of all the things that they had to say, there are thumbs as long as his. You have to thumb your head at FA’s eyes.

Is there a long thing with thin thighs that got this thing? As soon as they have a thing as long as his evidence, a thick film is as safe as real law. A thinning interview that is only his own are they. A seventh anthem is a man. Spam called and came off his thing and has become an eighth day. As thick as the phone is a headphone, but only think entirely to be as thin as the data. As of yet the thumbs they expect are these. You’ll fall as I have. Is a thing they know that I am a file? Stop and fashion the Z and the author of the events was that guy. That is all my AA captain wants. Atheist, the following is the eighth man of the inning as a result. Was CS safe as a youth? Think of that.

As the Visio ZION these days, I think it’s, yeah, I think that’s anything. Saying all that they have is the days. Home has views. The path of the house is a nine now and at the van they are both a visa and a mountain goat.

I think we can all take away a few lessons from that.

Sphere: Related Content