tales of an ordinary girl

Entertainment
Afternoon Inquisition 3.2.09
Do you believe Michael Vick should be allowed to play in the NFL again? Do you believe that a double standard for athletes and celebrity entertainers exists? Does thata double standard apply more to football players?

Government
How Texas Helps Its Teens Get Pregnant
Wiley and Wilson used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the sex education curricula from 96% of Texas’s school districts. They then analyzed the curricula to reach the startling conclusion that an overwhelming majority of Texas schools are utterly failing to teach comprehensive sex education to their students and are instead substituting irrelevant, false or misleading information in place of medically accurate sex education. Or, put bluntly and without political correctness: All but a tiny minority (3.6%) of Texas schools are helping their teens get pregnant either by lying to them about sex or by teaching them irresponsible, proved-to-fail sexual practices.

What makes this news especially difficult to swallow is that “An August 2004 Scripps Howard Texas Poll found that 90 percent of Texans support ‘teaching students with age-appropriate, medically accurate sex education that includes information on abstinence, birth control, and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases’”(.pdf p.3). Thus, the Texas schools are going against the wishes of the vast majority of Texans in providing kids with irrelevant, false or misleading information on sex.

International
Chechnya leader tells why 'loose' women deserved to die
Some in Russia say Kadyrov's attempt to create an Islamic society violates the Russian constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women and separation of church and state. But the Kremlin backs him, seeing him as the key to keeping the separatists in check.

Few dare to challenge Kadyrov's rule in this southern Russian region of more than a million people, which is emerging from the devastation of two wars in the past 15 years. The fighting between Islamic separatists and Russian troops, compounded by atrocities on both sides, claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Kadyrov describes women as the property of their husbands and says their main role is to bear children. He encourages men to take more than one wife, even though polygamy is illegal in Russia. Women and girls must wear headscarves in all schools, universities and government offices.

Nonbelieving Literati
NL: The Welsh Girl
Freedom to be without "shackles of nationalism" - the familiar fetters of cynefin. Perhaps Kris Kristofferson was right: "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose". At least, perhaps freedom's another word for being unfettered - even to a place you love.

Patriotism, love of country, is a thorny issue for all three characters, even Esther. Yes, she lives in her homeland, but she feels its colonial status and yearns for escape - to America with Karsten, she dreams at one point; to England with a soldier; maybe even just away, anywhere with the young Welshman who wanted to marry her but for whom she had no affection until after he left... And yet she knows she won't go elsewhere, that the cynefin passed through her mother will bind her to the farm. And she wants that as much as she doesn't - she's always wondering why she has no heritage, no birthright, and the farm her father hates while he serves it - "isn't this my birthright, she wants to cry out", and she hopes the child the English soldier left inside her will be a daughter. Karsten is accused of being loyal to "landscape, at least", but his escape from the POW camp is motivated much less by patriotism, something he barely comprehends, in fact, than by a desire just to be alone for a change, and to erase the stain on his honor (a stain that, as Esther sees, can be erased though her honor is gone for ever). Several times in the book Esther ponders the meaning of patriotism, once when Karsten asks why she doesn't turn him in, why she betrays her country.

Nonbelieving Literati: The Welsh Girl - Peter Ho Davies
But when she goes off with Colin she finds the experience much different than she was hoping for. It starts out alright riding away quickly through the night, walking in the pool, drained and closed for winter, but then rapes her and she's left confused, in shock. She's not even sure it's really rape. It was brief, she escaped, and she's alive to sort through what's happened.

This green and pleasant land
Identity does appear to be the key. Human nature being what it is, we like to congregate in insular groups; no doubt a survival trait inherited from our distant anthropoid ancestors. Outsiders are expressly excluded from the group, thus protecting the group members from potentially harmful pathogens and possibly dangerous individuals. Even today this tendency is clearly visible in our culture. As you might expect, I’m keen to point to the exclusiveness of certain religions in relation to this idea, but patriotism is a perfect example of how readily people will align themselves with a group or faction almost arbitrarily. The stance of this group becomes their own personal stance, psychologically strengthening their position.

Religion
Guest Post by William Lobdell: "Without a Doubt"
I have a different theory. I think there are so many closet doubters because people sense there’s no God who personally intervenes in their lives. But they can’t take the final step toward deism, agnosticism or atheism because the religious ties that bind us are thick. I know. I was a closet atheist for four years.

A Look at Liberal Christianity
I agree with the author that the Bible is fallible and open to interpretation. I also agree with him that the Bible simply “gives us a historical understanding of how men and women have understood God and salvation.” If one accepts those things, then how does one determine whether those understandings are right, meaningful, misguided, dangerous or evil? How can the author support claims that his interpretation of the Bible is the right one, but another interpretation, i.e., a misogynist one (which he rejects), is wrong? The reality is this: when one seeks to determine which biblical interpretations trump the others, one inevitably turns to sources other than the Bible. That being the case, why not simply dispense with the Bible completely, or at least relegate it to a much lower level of authority?

Science
Is Science Communication Doomed?
First, have women evolved to enjoy shopping? This may be a question that none of you ever considered, because you’re smarter than that, but nonetheless it is a question that appealed greatly to one particular group of people: namely, the Manchester Arndale Shopping Centre. Certain corporations have learned that an easy way to get your name in the news is to pay a scientist of relatively low integrity to crunch some numbers, fudge some facts, and publicize some stupid bullshit made-up “research” that somehow benefits the client. It’s advertising, but with a sciencey glow.

It’s advertology.

There's more than one main character in the book, despite the title, but I want to concentrate on Esther, the female lead in the book. I like how the author uses her story to explore female sexuality in the middle 20th century.

At first she's caught up in the fairy tale. She dreams of a new life away from the Welsh countryside. She wants to see the world and put her English education to good use, but she feels bound to her father and their farm. She feels little attraction to the local boys because they have no drive to leave, no ambition. But she finds the attention of an English soldier tantalizing, a way to get out, I think, more than anything. And after a couple of weeks she begins dreaming of her escape.

She wonders what it is Colin wants to tell her so much. For a second she lets herself dream ... of a ring, of him on bended knee, asking her to marry him, carrying her off to his home in the East End, to wait for him there in the bosom of his family ... his sister who'll be her best friend ... his mother who'll be like a mother to her ... waiting for the end of the war as if for some decent period of courtship.

But when she goes off with Colin she finds the experience much different than she was hoping for. It starts out alright riding away quickly through the night, walking in the pool, drained and closed for winter, but then rapes her and she's left confused, in shock. She's not even sure it's really rape. It was brief, she escaped, and she's alive to sort through what's happened.

Rape, as she understands it, is a particular form of murder, when a man kills a woman. It's connected to sex, but the main thing is the murder. No one - in the films she's seen, the books she's read, the whispered stories at school - no one survives rape. She is still unclear if the sex is so violent that it just kills you on the spot, or if the man has to actually strangle you or shoot your or stab you afterwards, and she had thought in the midst of Colin's roughness, the blunt, searing pressure of him between her legs, that she was bout to find out. But then he had left her, and she felt such relief. She had survived, clambered out of the pool as if from a grave. And this is how she knows she hasn't been raped. The idea of being forced doesn't enter into it - hadn't she gone willingly enough? Besides, what was it to be forced to do something she didn't want to do? She'd been forced all her life by one circumstance or another - by poverty, her mother's death, by the needs of the flock. Being forced to do things is such a part of her daily life, and as for this, she'd at least wanted some part of it - the kissing, her hand in his. If she's been raped, she thinks, then she wanted it more than most things in her life, although that isn't saying much. [...]

If she had to call it anything, she thinks now, groping for the word, she'd call it a misunderstanding. He meant one thing, she meant another.

But she isn't in the movies and all she can hope for is that the worst is over.

She has seen a few of his mates in the street, sappers she recognizes from the pub, and felt their eyes, heavy, on her. He's talked, she's sure, but she's less certain what he might have said. Not the truth, she thinks. Something more colorful, boastful. And if he's told his friends, she wonders how long before someone in the village hears something. It's this she fears more than anything, dimly sensing that what he did to her can't in the end be rape if no one else knows. She suspects that what kills the poor girls raped in films and books, finally, is shame. All those hands over moths, all those horrified looks. But the sappers will leave soon - today, tonight. Everything will be in the past then, able to be forgotten, provided no one else knows.

She's able to relax once the soldiers leave, although she still feels afraid. It's not the act of rape itself that haunts her, but her dreams leaving with Colin. And the final realization of that comes when she finds out she's pregnant.

And then too, finally, she feels as if she might really have been raped. All this time, thinking she's escaped Colin, thinking she's escaped with her life. yet she'd been right to start with, when the word had sprung to her mind as he'd pressed her against the mildewed tiles of the pool. He had wounded her, she thinks, and not a small wound, the drops of blood in her drawers, but something deeper and stranger. What a wound it is that stops your bleeding. And in her heart there's a morbid fear that what he's given her is a lingering death, nine months long, that she won't survive childbirth, that she'll die and he'll have raped her after all.

And so she finds herself pregnant, alone, loathing the man who did it to her. She's been terrified the small town will find out her secret and now there's no way to hide it. Instead of being the victim, she's become the accused. She has no recourse but to accept the shame.

We haven't come much further from those days.

The next book we'll read in the Nonbelieving Literati is Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.

Astronomy
Unusual Light Pillars Over Latvia



In the Shadow of Saturn



Largest Moon of 2009 Over the Alps



Economy
U.S. mortgage meltdown linked to 2005 bankruptcy law
Before Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, households could erase their unsecured debts by filing for Chapter 7 liquidation. That freed up income that distressed homeowners could use to make mortgage payments.

The new law, however, forced better-off households seeking bankruptcy protection to file under Chapter 13. That chapter requires homeowners to continue paying their unsecured lenders.

In other words, say the Fed researchers, cash-strapped homeowners who might have saved their homes by filing Chapter 7 are now much more likely to face foreclosure.

Games
Dawn of War II beta coming January 21
The release date for Dawn of War II, the sequel to the excellent Warhammer-themed RTS developed by Relic, is slowly approaching, with the game expected to hit store shelves in late February. Relic has announced that excited players will soon have a chance to test-drive the game prior to the release with the official beta.

A new year brings with it more bad video game legislation
Meanwhile, over in New York, Wright's bill seems to be banking on the concept that video games that contain profanity or racism can adversely affect youngsters. The goal of the law is to, "[prohibit] the sale to minors of certain rated video games containing a rating that reflects content of various degrees of profanity, racist stereotypes or derogatory language, and/or actions toward a specific group of persons."

Government
Atheism and the Pledge
Saying “under Allah” would seem to imply that a certain view of God, the Muslim one, was more right, and that all others were less right. This American Christians could never tolerate. And so on and so forth. Once you start thinking in collectivist terms, there’s no end to the petty exclusion games you can play. That’s why it’s better not to have a pledge at all.

The words “under God” also have a history to them. They were added during the McCarthy era in part to indicate that atheists are not true Americans. What’s humdrum compulsory unity to everyone else is actually your declaration that I, Jason Kuznicki, am not a proper citizen. That’s what you’re really saying, every time you take the Pledge.

International
Afghan Girls, Scarred by Acid, Defy Terror, Embracing School
“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”

In the five years since the Mirwais School for Girls was built here by the Japanese government, it appears to have set off something of a social revolution. Even as the Taliban tighten their noose around Kandahar, the girls flock to the school each morning. Many of them walk more than two miles from their mud-brick houses up in the hills.

Nonbelieving Literati
Lying
Is justice a lie? Are we lying to ourselves when we think that there exists a true notion of justice? Mercy, charity, morality -- are these lies? If so, then they are lies which make all our lives better and happier and more worthwhile, and my commitment to the truth must be hampered by my love and respect for such notions. But perhaps they are not lies. Perhaps we can say that morality and charity and justice exist because we believe in them. They are ideas, and ideas exist only in the human mind as a matter of course.

Of Myths and Mailmen
Reading The Postman gave me a new appreciation for the potential benefits of myths. Given my history with religious mythologies, I’ve been very suspicious of myths since my enlightenment and have been leery of considering the possibility that humanist myths may serve useful purposes. My shifting thoughts about this issue are nascent and require much more development, but I think I’m ready to start thinking about the matter now.

NL: The Postman
Still, the ideas that Brin is exploring are still valid. The short-term predictions didn't come true and the militias aren't quite the force they used to be pre-Waco, but the ambiance of this shattered world is authentic. Feudal serfdom, male dominance, warring bandit chiefs - all the enemies of Civilization - they could certainly emerge. (Once, decades ago, I read a post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, which one I can't recall, that had a line in it I'll paraphrase: When survival came to sharing, the British queued up - and survived.) So the question Brin is asking here is: What is it in America that supports Civilization, and what fights it - and how can we best harness the former to defeat the latter?

The Post-apocalyptic-man
Given that all it would take to trigger an (entirely non-biblical) Armageddon is one fundaloony with their finger on a big red button (and the “Palin 2012” stickers, whilst ironic, are also pretty scary), it might behove us to give some thought to the possibility of post-holocaust survival. Step up, David Brin’s The Postman, which places its hero in the middle of an apocalyptic America where technology is all but dead and the population have been reduced to medieval squalor. What useful lessons can we glean from Gordon’s experience in this blasted landscape?

Philosophy
On the Morality of: Patriotism
The existence of countries aids moral progress in another way: it makes it possible to advance one step at a time. At this point in human history, if we were to try to unite the human race under one banner, the sure result would be either crippling stagnation or brutal autocracy. No other kind of government would be able to accommodate (or, in the case of autocracy, to trample over) the impossibly broad and complex range of desires and concerns among different groups of people. Having separate countries allows some issues to be tabled so that we can focus on the rest. (For an example of what happens when you try to take everyone's wants into account at once, consider the United Nations, which is well-intentioned but mired in diplomatic gridlock on virtually every issue of importance.) As well, it limits the power of despots and demagogues, however successful they may be at home, by creating boundaries beyond which they hold no sway.

Born of Amalek
I understand a siege upon their old enemy. We killed them often to preserve our place in this land. But I am wise enough to know–since this time they even kill our animals–that this is no war for land or resource. They kill from hate. They break every potshard, shaped with the loving hands of mothers and wives and inscribed with the thoughtful knife of the archivist. A swift motion breaks each pot, and the memories are gone. Our mark upon this land will be severed forever.

Religion
The Insecurity of Religious Faith
One would think that if their particular Faith was supportable by commonsense evidence, they would not need daily or weekly meetings to reinforce that Faith. They wouldn’t need a pastor, minister or priest, nor a religious hierarchy setting up rules and commandments designed to keep them in line. The existence of their god(s), and the Faith they placed in them, would be obvious. If their god(s) existed, there would be hard evidence of that fact. They wouldn’t need to be herded as if flocks of sheep, to use a Christian metaphor. Certainly, I have no need to attend weekly meetings of the Sun church to maintain my belief that it will rise tomorrow. The evidence all around me is there for the picking.

Science
Chemical replicators
Now you might be saying, "But these are designed enzymes, created by a couple of intelligent scientists!" Not quite. They started with a very rough sequence, one that inefficiently catalyzed an A + B → E sort of reaction, but that not only worked slowly, but also produced faulty products that eventually killed the reaction after a few cycles. Then they tweaked it to form a minus-strand enzyme, and then they subjected both the plus and minus strand forms to — natural selection! They made copies with mutagenic PCR (so they had a range of random variants), ran it through several cycles of in vitro selection for more efficient forms, and ended up with two RNA enzymes that were good at building copies of each other.

I enjoyed the ideas and the story in this book, but the characters drove me nuts. It's not really the writing that I have a problem with so much, but the notion that people can be characterized as "good" and "evil".

I have a problem with absolute good and evil or good and evil personified. In fiction I'm more lax in my judgments, but I think that Trent could have made a better point if he wouldn't have made his characters so one-sided.

Issues rarely have only two sides. They're too complex to be divided into right and wrong, good and evil. Yes, I can sometimes say with absolute certainty that something that is being done in the world is wrong. But that doesn't make the people behind it evil.

The mob may perform horrific acts when goaded by dishonorable words and actions, but they are in the end still people. They're the people like the ones I interact with everyday. They're people just like me.

Cyril and Peter were like Gargamel and Azrael - cartoon characters, except without the comedy. They had their own dreadful inflictions, but nothing they did was ever remotely portrayed as human.

I realize it's a tried and true tactic to make a person into something alien or hateful in order to dehumanize him or her. When we go to war it's considered patriotic demonize the other side. But rational, intelligent people should be able to look past the devil horns.

Even so, every group to some extent, personifies the people who are outside the group as different whether they're not as smart, not as moral, not as trustworthy, not as charitable, or in some other way not as virtuous or not as good. It's an instinctive urge we all feel.

To give over to that urge is the real tragedy. In the end it's really ideas that are the true enemy.

Halfway through the first chapter I wondered why I had never heard of this book before. By the second chapter I was liking it so much that I wondered why I had never read it before. But once the heavy theological arguments had been established, I realized that I didn't love everything about this book. Still, it was enjoyable. I identified very strongly with Peter's deconversion experience, even if mine took a much less cerebral path.

In a surprising bit of coincidence James Randi spoke at Dragon Con about Martin Gardner and his religious beliefs. I had no idea it was the same Martin Gardner until after I was halfway into the book and also editing part of the recordings I had from the convention.

I'm of two minds about Gardner's final evolution of belief. In one sense his belief in some kind of unknowable god is inoffensive. His beliefs don't negatively influence his ethics - in my thinking anyway - and they're as close to PZ's desire for a knitting club as you can get. There are plenty of things that I believe in that I probably only believe because they make me feel good. People enjoy reading my blog. One day I'm going to retire in relative comfort. My cat actually cares that I'm around. But none of those beliefs actually impact anyone else.

My own fundamentalist beliefs took a brief turn to deism, as a formless, unknowing, unidentified something-out-there, but it was too nebulous to be important to me. It didn't give me any more comfort than nothing. So I eventually dropped the idea of a nebulous something.

I see an unknowable god as completely meaningless. I won't deny that it's possible that there's something out there that can't be understood and had something to do with us being here, but if it's so far beyond me that I can't comprehend whatever it is, what does it matter in my day-to-day life? Why would it even care that I gave it a moment's thought? I don't find myself obsessing over whether or not the microbes my body give me any thought.

Thus, believing in something that I will never interact with became meaningless in itself and quickly dissolved into more of a "what does it matter?" philosophy and eventually into an "I want to see the proof" skeptical outlook that I have today. (Mostly after hearing the nebulous god or goalpost-moving god arguments so many times that I was motivated to find arguments against both.)

But again, personal beliefs in a god or great spirit or supreme being don't bother me any more than the belief that the Democratic Congress is going to grow a spine one day or that the Chiefs will win the Super Bowl again. (Well, statistically one or the other will happen one day, right?.. yeah, right.)

And for some reason throughout the book I kept envisioning Homer, the ever persuasive guide, as The Exterminator. I don't think Ex would have been half as patient though. I could just hear him going off f’Chrissake at some point during the Barthian analysis. Despite that, the image held. Sorry, Ex. Maybe you were only acting as my sub-conscious owl in there.

I've never received so many comments on a book before. When I read I tend to take the book I'm reading with me everywhere - to work, to lunch, I keep it on my desk at home, in my car while I can't possibly read it, to the store, and to friend's houses. Rarely do I get to read it in those places, but it's with me if I find some time.

I kept hearing the same comment from strangers.

"What book is that?"

I'd show it to them and tell them the title.

"Oh, it's about comics."

Well, no. Really it's about the formation of the universe, evolution, beginnings, conflict, love.

The truth is, I never really knew how to explain it. I never felt like I got a good grasp of it. Was I missing something or looking to hard for something that wasn't there? The love stories mostly irritated me, but then occasionally there would be a paragraph or a phrase that would grab me. For example, in Without Colors:

Trees of smoke-colored lava stretched out twisted branches from which hung thin leaves of slate. Butterflies of ash flying over clay meadows hovered above opaque crystal daisies. Ayl might be the colorless shadow swinging from a branch of colorless forest or bending to pick gray mushrooms under gray clumps of bushes. A hundred times I thought I glimpsed her and a hundred times I thought I lost her again. From the wastelands I moved to the inhabited localities. At that time, sensing the changes that would take place, obscure builders were shaping premature images of a remote, possible future. I crossed a piled-up metropolis of stones; I went through a mountain pierced with passageways like an anchorites' retreat; I entered a garden where, from the sandy beds, tall menhirs rose into the sky.

How could you not love the poetry of his phrases? But the subject... I never felt like that character knew love, though he thought he did. He knew yearning and desire perhaps. He wanted to possess the object of his desire. But the object wasn't human. It was just an object, for all it had a feminine form.

Then there was what I will refer to as the Larry David story. As I read The Light-Years I felt like I was in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. I like the show, but it always makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Yeah, silly, but I cringe when he does the obviously stupid things he can't keep himself from doing. I don't want him to fall into the pit he's staring at with open eyes, but I also want to laugh at his absurd situations. The Light-Years, though it was amusing, didn't make me laugh. It made me want to slip in a DVD and watch Larry David. It's embarrassing to admit, but in this one instance I preferred the television to a book.

But the best stories, I thought, were Games Without End, How Much Shall We Bet?, and The Dinosaurs, two without any sign of a love interest and one with a minimal interaction.

The Dinosaurs was full of isolation and thought. Yes, it was the thoughts of the dinosaur that I found most interesting. As he puzzles through the society that surrounds him, defines himself and redefines himself, I found something. And when he went on his way, I felt like cheering. Fuck the mammals. I want to be a dinosaur.

International
A Free Speech Outrage
This affair is, however, an excellent illustration of the chilling danger posed by laws which seek to ban "hate speech". Even if passed with the best intentions in the world, they are swiftly made use of by tyrants and theocrats who recognize quite well that any means of persuading the state to censor ideas can easily be used against their critics. Make no mistake - if Wilders was extradited and imprisoned, he would not be the last. Swiftly on the heels of that demand would come the next one, and the next, each one arrogantly presuming the right to punish anyone anywhere who says anything uncomplimentary about Islam. The OIC, in fact, referred to the "thin line" separating freedom of speech from what they want to be illegal. In other words, they're saying it's very easy to cross the line between what they view as permissible and impermissible criticism, which means the zone of permissible criticism must be a very small one indeed.

Nonbelieving Literati
He really should have had a blog
I laugh, almost, at the way that nothing that happens is Zadig's fault. It seems disingenuous to me, almost tongue-in-cheek. "Oh please, good sirs, I acted with the purest of intentions!" I can't shake off the feeling that Voltaire is sitting inside the page laughing at us, protesting his own innocence when he knows his own tongue was downright wicked at times! It's conceit, I tell you, pure careless conceit, and I don't think Voltaire cares who knows it. There is a liberation in it, a sort of permission to love yourself with wry honesty and accept that, deep down, you're rather partial to yourself. Now, aren't you? Admit it.

Photography
Night Shinings



Religion
One Way in which We Should Know Ourselves
I have for some time suspected we humans are born with a whole mess of innate drives, instincts, or predispositions that can skew our approach to the world when we are so unaware of them we cannot compensate for them. It even seems to me that much of what we call “wisdom” is a matter of compensating for the distortions to our reason, emotions, and values caused by those innate predispositions.

Blogging
AP Goes After Bloggers For Posting Article Headlines And Snippets
And, now, it's expanding its target list. Rather than just going after the big aggregators (surprisingly, Google settled), it appears that the Associated Press is going after bloggers for merely posting a linked headline and a tiny snippet of text from the article. In this case, Rogers Cadenhead informs us that the AP sent 7 DMCA takedown notices last week to his site, the Drudge Retort (a site that mocks the Drudge Report). In six cases, a blog post on the site quoted just a small snippet of text from an AP article (between 33 and 79 words -- nowhere near the full length of the article). In every case, they also contained links back to the original AP article. Five of the six used a different headline than the original AP article. The other complaint was about a comment to a blog post, which also included a very short snippet and a link.

Civil Rights
Destroying Marriages to “Protect” Marriage
I was married in California and lived part of my married life there, so I feel somewhat invested in this. First and foremost, the idea that marriage in general needs to be “protected” by denying it to same-sex couples is ridiculous, just as it was when people believed that marriage needed to be “protected” by denying it to interracial couples. Second and more specifically, the idea that my marriage needs to be protected by a bunch of hyperventilating ninnies in the midst of a queer panic makes me want to retch. Please do keep your clammy, quivering, homophobic fingers off my state of matrimony, if you please. My marriage has not once been threatened by same-sex marriage; heck, I’ve been to Massachusetts at least four times since same-sex marriage was made legal in that commonwealth. Roving bands of same-sex married couples did not trample my marriage rights while I was there.

I Do -- And Why
Look at the patchwork of laws around this country regarding same-sex marriage. Look at the states that have banned it, and the ones that have gone so far as to ban the recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states. Look at the fact that if my partner and I travel to Alabama or Michigan, Alaska or Pennsylvania, or any of over two dozen other states, our marriage will be seen as not having existed at all. Null. Void. Look at the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress and signed by President William Jefferson Clinton in 1996, stating that the Federal government will not recognize same-sex marriages, even if they're completely legal in the state where they were performed.

What does that tell you about how those states, and the country as a whole, sees us?

Second place award That's the weird paradox of the California ruling. It's thrilling. It's unbelievably great news. It's a huge historical step. But at the same time, it throws the true meaning of this legal patchwork into sharp focus. It makes it that much clearer that queers in this country are, in a very literal sense, second-class citizens. We pay taxes, we serve on juries, we have to obey the same laws that everyone else does... but in a very practical, codified- into- law sense, we just don't count for as much.

Comics
Waking the Feminist inside the Fangirl
Women don’t just like a story because it is about women. We like stories that are well-written and well-developed, just like anyone else. There’s no need for Lifetime comics. As comic story lines become more grounded in the real world, the fact that often their female characters are mere sketches becomes more apparent. That is not to say that there aren’t more developed depictions of women in super hero comics. One example is the push to make Ms. Marvel a major player in the Marvel U, a heroine with some authority. I appreciate moves like that. However, it’s a small step and since the marketing is not there how are girls and women to know that there might be a story they'd enjoy coming from the Big 2?

Government
Authorization or Declaration?
Because they gave him discretion, the likes of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton were able to question how the President conducted this war, and say, “I would’ve never done it that way.”

To all the “patriots” out there that “support the troops,” this was the dumbest thing you could’ve done. You gave the President’s opponents an out. Congress basically voted to say, “We’re not responsible,” and then proceeded to act that way.

Every member of Congress, in an hour where young lives are going to be committed and some will surely die, must be on record, for or against. They must take responsibility for the decision they have made. They should not be able to hand it off.

Government “Strike Teams” Invade Homes, Harass Flood Victims
No warrant, no knock home invasions are being carried out on the flimsy pretext of "checking for structural damage" as cops harass and threaten with arrest people who refuse to have their homes ransacked by thugs in uniforms.

Cedar Rapids police chief Greg Graham promised residents over the weekend that "Law enforcement officers are not entering homes," and that firefighters would only enter homes through unlocked doors and windows yet the video clearly shows locked houses being broken in to.

Nonbelieving Literati
Humanist blogging à la Voltaire!
Printed books are a form of one-way communication -- like television -- from knowledge producers to knowledge consumers. There's one big difference, however: less is more. The less your infotainment consumes of your brain's attention, the more your brain has to work on its own in response. Caleb Crain argues this in The Twilight of Reading: "It makes you smarter because it leaves more of your brain alone." Darnton's research illustrates this in his chapter analyzing police records of (spying on) nightly conversations taking place in taverns around town. Unlike television today which can consume all of your brain's leisure time without your brain ever having the strain of producing a single thought of its own, in those days you could only read books for so long, and then the next natural step is to go down to the pub and discuss them.

Pardon My French, Voltaire
Anyway, the whole book has a spontaneously knocked-off quality, as if it were made up by someone who had never actually told a coherent story before. I can imagine Voltaire, sitting down at his desk, setting his pocket watch (watch de poche) for an hour (soixante minutes), and saying to himself: “Today, I’m going to write exactly 1,000 words.” (Aujourd'hui, je vais écrire exactement 1.000 mots, give au take dix mots.) And that’s apparently what he did. Some of those words were shaped into blasphemous or satiric sentences, which no doubt made him chuckle. Me, too, in a bland sort of way. An example of his irreligious wit: Is there anything more worthy of respect than an abuse dating from ancient times? Cute. I won’t cite any more here, because I’m going to leave the best quotes for the other Nonbelieving Literati to steal; there aren’t really enough to go around. Still, I do identify with someone using that kind of automatic-writing authorship style, and can easily picture Voltaire slapping himself in the knee: “I think this stuff is very funny.” (Je pense que cette substance est très drôle. Ouch. Mon knee.)

Thoughts on Zadig
Zadig has the answer:

Reason is of more antient Date than the Custom you plead for.

Interesting thought, isn’t it? We atheists confront this sentiment routinely in debates with theists. How often do we have to refute a book written anywhere between 2000 and 4000 years ago, depending on the appropriate chapter? This is “antient’ wisdom we’re talking about here, set down, if not by god, at least by god’s scriveners. Well, now I’ve got the perfect rejoinder.

Nonbelieving Literati: Zadig - Voltaire
This passage as after Zadig convinced his master, Sétoc, that he was wrong to worship the elements in the representation of the sun and the moon after Zadig made a great show of bowing down to a lantern. But instead of picking up on the idea of worshipping nothing he instead worshipped Zadig's god. Not so wise there, in my opinion. Would it not have been better for Sétoc to then show Zadig that he was just as ridiculous? But then the entire point of the story would have been thrown off its rails (much to the better, I think).

"It would have been a great pity if he had been hanged."
That's one of the funniest sentences I found in Zadig, this "sardonic* comedy" about a man named Zadig, written by the French Enlightenment figure Voltaire. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but rather silly in its understatement, especially if you imagine it being said by very rich people in an off-hand way, and if you know that the reason he was almost hanged was because of half a poem. But of course it was all solved in the end - with an assist from a parrot - because Zadig was a nearly perfect, charming, intelligent, reasonable, handsome, and modest character. It could be argued that the theme of the book is how tragic it is that he lives in a world of less perfect, less intelligent, absurd people, like the woman who begged to be beaten after she asked for help not to be beaten by her lover, which sort of brings to mind the cycle of violence, except that it was over-the-top.

NL: Zadig
But there is a difference between Zadig and Candide more profound than the degree of the heroes' trials. Candide eventually comes to understand that Dr Pangloss's outlook is absurd and useless; he settles instead on "we must tend our garden". Zadig, on the other hand, musters nothing more than a feeble and - crucially - unanswered "But..." in response to the angel.

Photography
Solstice Moonrise, Cape Sounion



Tech
Men Write Code from Mars, Women Write More Helpful Code from Venus
Emma McGrattan, the senior vice-president of engineering for computer-database company Ingres–and one of Silicon Valley’s highest-ranking female programmers–insists that men and women write code differently. Women are more touchy-feely and considerate of those who will use the code later, she says. They’ll intersperse their code–those strings of instructions that result in nifty applications and programs–with helpful comments and directions, explaining why they wrote the lines the way they did and exactly how they did it.

The code becomes a type of “roadmap” for others who might want to alter it or add to it later, says McGrattan, a native of Ireland who has been with Ingres since 1992.

Men, on the other hand, have no such pretenses. Often, “they try to show how clever they are by writing very cryptic code,” she tells the Business Technology Blog. “They try to obfuscate things in the code,” and don’t leave clear directions for people using it later. McGrattan boasts that 70% to 80% of the time, she can look at a chunk of computer code and tell if it was written by a man or a woman.

Woo
CityNews Exclusive: The Mother, The Child, The School Board And The Psychic
The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard - the principal, vice-principal and her daughter's teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they'd received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse - and that the CAS had been notified.

How did they come by such startling knowledge? Leduc was incredulous as they poured out their story.

"The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

I complained to one of my co-workers that I just didn't get Zadig, even though I understood the premise. I didn't understand what was different or revolutionary about the writing. He pointed out that the story was written for a different audience at a different time.

Zadig is about finding happiness by accepting fate - fate that is divinely controlled by the gods. To me it's a tired theme I heard growing up again and again. We are only vessels for God to shape as he wishes. God works in mysterious ways, etc, etc.

But instead of going over ground I've covered here on my blog many times, I instead want to talk about a few specific passages that struck me while I was reading.

Opposite Zadig's house lived Arimaze, a person whose mean soul was depicted on his coarse face. He was corroded with gall and swollen with conceit, and to cap these qualities he had a tedious wit.

This passage refers to the belief that evil reveals itself on the outward appearance of a person. And that good people are pleasant to look upon. Even today, particularly in the fantasy genre, characters that are evil are portrayed as deformed or go through a transformation that deforms them (for example, Star Wars) and why the traditional image of a witch is portrayed as a hag - green skinned and hideous, with warts thrown in.

We think of it as a ridiculous belief now, of course, but it was accepted by the Greeks, the Romans, and even Christians until relatively recently.

Sétoc grasped the profound meaning of this apologue. His slave's wisdom entered his soul. He no longer burned his incense in honor of things, but worshipped the Eternal Being who had created them.

This passage as after Zadig convinced his master, Sétoc, that he was wrong to worship the elements in the representation of the sun and the moon after Zadig made a great show of bowing down to a lantern. But instead of picking up on the idea of worshipping nothing he instead worshipped Zadig's god. Not so wise there, in my opinion. Would it not have been better for Sétoc to then show Zadig that he was just as ridiculous? But then the entire point of the story would have been thrown off its rails (much to the better, I think).

"I am not fond of the supernatural," said Zadig. "Claimants to magical powers, whether they be men or books, have always displeased me. If Your Majesty will permit me to make the test I propose, you will be quite convinced that my secret is the simplest and easiest thing in the world."

But while the point of the book is divine guidance, it still makes use of reason, which I very much enjoyed. In this part of the story Zadig finds an honest treasurer by having the applicants pass through a room with treasures before being ushered into the king's presence, where they would be required to dance. All but one of the men danced with "heads bowed" and "backs bent" as they tried to hold on to the treasures they had stolen, but one man danced with grace.

But even with Zadig's ability to reason he still falls for the most outrageous claims.

They spoke of pleasure, and the hermit proved it to him to be a gift of the gods, "for," said he, "man can give himself neither ideas nor sensations; he receives everything: pleasure and pain come to him as does his being."

Zadig marveled how a man who had done such mad things could reason so well.

I can accept that we are influenced by ideas and actions outside of our own minds, but that we cannot any ideas or sensations that are our own? That's garbage.

And here's the part of the story that I was waiting for, but hoping wouldn't turn in this direction. The part where all of Zadig's troubles are explained. After the wise hermit drowns the son of a widow who had put them up, Zadig flies into a rage only to be greeted by the hermit transformed into an angel. When he asks why the angel why bad things happen to good people and why evil had to exist at all, the angel responds:

"In that case," replied Jesrad, "this earth would be another earth, the concatenation of events would belong to another order of wisdom; and that order, which would be perfect, can exist only in the eternal abode of the supreme Being, whom evil cannot approach. He has created millions of worlds, no one of which can resemble another. This vast variety is a symbol of the vastness of his power. On the earth there are no two leaves of a tree like to each other, and in the limitless plains of the heavens no two orbs. All you see on the little atom where you have been born had to be, in its appointed place and time, in accordance with the immutable laws of him who embodies everything. Men think that the child who has just perished fell into the water by chance, that by the same chance this house was burned: but there is no such thing as chance; everything is test, or punishment, or reward, or prevision. Remember the fisherman who thought himself the most unfortunate of men. Ormuzd sent you to change his destiny. Frail mortal! cease contending with that which is to be worshipped."

And there Zadig shows that he is simply worshipping the elements in another form.

Cats


Black cats unlucky at shelters
A 2002 study in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science that examined adoption rates over nine months in a California pound found that black cats were about half as likely to be adopted as tabby cats and two-thirds less likely than white cats. But for cats in general, the odds are not good: of the approximately 3,000 cats of all colors offered for adoption during that time, only around 600, or 20 percent, found homes. Those remaining were euthanized.

Games
Activision/Blizzard leaves, still hopes to profit from ESA
Activision has been feeling the weight of its upcoming merger with Vivendi, not only by dropping out of the ESA, but also firing shots at its largest competitor, EA. Despite the company's power, however, there are certain things it can't do on its own, and leaving the ESA seems almost selfish. Activision Blizzard won't take part in E3, but it will take advantage of the show's existence. It will no longer be a part of the ESA, but it will benefit from the ESA's lobbying efforts. In some ways the plus-sized company is asking for a free ride, and other smaller publishers may be watching to see if Activision Blizzard can get away with it.

Blizzard attempt to kill WoW bot bad news for copyright law
Public Knowledge doesn't seem to want to side with either party in these suits. "This is a case pitting distasteful gaming behavior against an unsavory over-assertion of copyrights," Sherwin Siy, Public Knowledge staff attorney stated. Blizzard is trying to stop a company from profiting from cheaters, but in doing so it may alter EULAs and TOS agreements, to the detriment of users.

"Under Blizzard's theory, a copyright owner could not only contractually impose the most onerous restrictions on its customers—restrictions that undermine rights guaranteed by copyright and First Amendment law—but could also enforce those conditions with the threat of copyright law's high statutory damages," argues Public Knowledge in its brief. "Blizzard's attempt to use contract to alter and displace those aspects of copyright law it does not like, while using copyright penalties to construe and enforce the terms of that alteration, is untenable, and the Court should not endorse it."

History
In Love With the History Our Teachers Never Told Us
He added: “In our version of America, we don’t go back nearly far enough. It’s the winners who make history, and that’s why we start with the Pilgrims: with the Anglo-American and New England version of the story. Culturally, we need to expand the story to include the Spanish in particular, but also the French and the Portuguese. Not only are we not an Anglo nation now, but we never really were. Early America, if you think about it, was a lot like America today — very diverse — and even the parts of the story we think we know, we don’t know at all.”

International
Suspended lashing for Iranian feminist
ran has handed a feminist a suspended sentence of 10 lashes and six months in prison, the Kargozaran newspaper reported yesterday, in the fourth such punishment for a women's rights activist in Iran within weeks.

The sentence for Rezvan Moghadam imposed by Tehran's revolutionary tribunal is suspended for three years, meaning it will be implemented if she repeats the stated offence within that time.

Law
Maryland Court Rejects Muslim Divorce
Maryland's highest court has rejected a talaq divorce performed by a Muslim man in order to prevent his wife from getting anything in their divorce under state law (see full ruling here). Under Islamic law, a man can divorce his wife merely by saying "I divorce you" three times. In this case, the man, Irfan Aleem, a World Bank economist, went to the Pakistani embassy and signed a piece of paper saying that so they would immediately grant him an official divorce and he would not have to split up his $2 million estate with his wife. The Maryland court said no, they will not recognize that divorce and he still has to go through the laws of the state in order to get one, saying, "the enforceability of a foreign talaq divorce provision, such as that presented here, in the courts of Maryland, where only the male, i.e., husband, has an independent right to utilize talaq and the wife may utilize it only with the husband's permission, is contrary to Maryland's constitutional provisions."

National News
They got horse racing in Heaven
Me? I'm truly baffled. Not by Eight Belles' injury and death. By the notion that God has a stable of race horses. (Yes, I expect it's a figure of speech, but listen to a lot of people talk and Heaven will be just like Earth.) Are there races there? Parimutuel betting? Who'd run against God's horse? Does he have favorites? Do they all win - is it heaven if they lose? Or do they just stand around all day - that wouldn't be heaven for the horses...

I don't mean to make fun, but... doesn't it sound like a bad movie? It's just ... baffling.

Nonbelieving Literati
Something or other
But not long after the third part (or, excuse me, chapter) I had to put in a bookmark and set the story down. My thoughts were flying left and right as I examined the injustices of sexism now - especially in media advertising, which has always been a sore spot. Who do you expect to see in a laundry detergent commercial? Who knows that Jif is the superior peanut butter brand? Where are the fathers like mine that grumble over a dirty house and always having to wash the dishes and enjoy, more often than not, to cook and go grocery shopping? For the injustices of sexism one way also mark poorly the other: if a woman's place is in the kitchen, then that is not the man's place. And this hardly allows people to grow to be whomever they can.

Photography
An Antarctic Total Solar Eclipse



The Gegenschein Over Chile



Politics
Wright v. Robertson



Religion
The Christ-Centered Marriage
The thing is, Jesus never actually participated in our marriage. Oh, sure, we prayed before making major decisions and we prayed for fellow believers who were experiencing difficult circumstances; we prayed before meals and in church; but we certainly didn’t pray before doing the routine things that married couples do every day: buying groceries, getting the car fixed, making love...

Sermonette #5: Breaking Out is Hard to Do
Accordingly, transitions in thought and lifestyle are neither smooth nor easy. Even when one has rejected the teachings of one’s parents and friends with regard to religion, sometimes one is still torn between what we want and believe versus what we have been taught is “right.” The baggage we have inherited from parents, friends and our worship communities has shaped our values. The baggage can still be upon our shoulders months or even years after rejecting the fundamental assumptions upon which the baggage is based. Even when one has critically dissected the issues and intellectually rejected the doctrines, we can still live, out of sheer habit, in accordance with what was rejected, and thereby create a discrepancy between what we hold in theory as true and what we live in practice.

X-mercy Story - Melody's story Part 1.
When I got to Mercy Ministries I had the Resident's Handbook thrust into my hands. I remember reading it and wondering why they were suddenly taking away any independence and self management I had. It is true that I went into the program seeking treatment for my illness, which I was coping with- but at the same time I knew it was holding me back. I had been responsible for seeking support from professionals in the past, I was studying at University, and yet it seemed like Mercy Ministries were trying to revert me into being totally dependent, totally controlled, and a child who was not trusted to make her own responsible decisions.

X-Mercy Melody's Story part 2
Two staff members, one of them being my Mercy Ministries counsellor had me in a room with them. They shut the door and pulled the curtains so that nobody could see in, then had me stand in the middle of the room while they laid hands on me, and cast the demons out of me one by one, calling them by name. They spoke loudly, then quietly, then loudly again, alternating between speaking in tongues and speaking in English. I wanted to cry. I didn't understand why they were yelling. I was so frightened. At one point, one of the staff members tried to reassure me "Don't worry," she said. "I am angry at Satan, not at you."

After the exorcism, I was told that I shouldn't have any more symptoms because the demons that were causing them had been cast out. Although I am embarrassed to admit it, I held on to what they had said. I wanted to believe them. That I had been healed, that I wouldn't have any more symptoms, that they had "fixed" me. And I was okay, for about two days.

When the next panic attack hit, being unable to manage it the way I had been taught by my doctors, I went to staff to ask for help. I was having a lot of problems with my breathing. They took me to their office, closed the door, and proceeded to tell me about how disappointed they are in me. I was told that they had already cast the demons out of me, therefore if I was having any symptoms now, it was for one of two reasons. 1) I was acting for attention, or 2) I had knowingly and willingly invited the demons back into me.

I was devastated. I couldn't work out what I had done wrong. Maybe I wasn't a good enough Christian? Maybe God didn't want to heal me? Maybe I really did have demons inside of me???

Sociology
Is Religious Faith Irrational?
And none of these beliefs make us fundamentally irrational people. It is entirely possible to have certain irrational beliefs -- even significant beliefs, even stubbornly held ones -- and still be a basically rational person in most other areas of our lives. It's not just possible. It's universal. We all do it. In fact, hanging on to mistaken ideas once we've committed to them seems to be a basic part of how our minds work. And despite that, we're still generally rational people, able to process information and analyze it effectively and make appropriate decisions about how to act on it... most of the time.

An Atheist Goes to a Wedding
So here’s what the preliminaries of the wedding made me think of. In all the crazy motion of life, a wedding is an attempt to fix a certain moment in time: If only for a few minutes, let us stop moving; give us a break. We humans, for whatever evolutionary reason, require our ritual occasions to put us back in touch with the rest of our species, both living and dead. Some of us may even choose to reflect for a short time, to revel briefly in our commonality. Let differences be forgotten for this instant; give our reciprocated animosities a break.

Atheism
Going to Church
For many years, I've had a certain creeping envy of people who belonged to religious groups. The whole idea of having a place to go once a week to seek ecstasy and transcendence and meaning and share it with others, as a link in a chain going back hundreds or even thousands of years... it was something I felt a curious longing for. During my woo years, I even sought out, in a half-assed way, a religious group that I might be able to join up with. It was kind of like that Onion article: Black Gospel Choir Makes Man Wish He Believed In All That God Bullshit. (Especially the line where the pastor says, "Perhaps our abiding faith in Jesus and love for our fellow man will, at the very least, inspire him to quit living in his head all the time.")

But at no point during this church service did I think, "This is something I would like to have, and don't."

Faith Walk: Saving lives is better than saying prayers
For the last two years I’ve participated in the National Gift of Life Day (see www.centerforatheism.org), which is an organized effort to get atheists, agnostics and nonbelievers to donate blood. A single donation of whole blood is one of the most effective proven ways to save lives. It’s also a demonstration of selfless sacrifice and altruistic caring about the rest of humanity.

Entertainment
Miley Cyrus and America’s Love Affair with Sexual Nonsense
I now ask that we turn to the third and last Very Serious Moral Issue™. I personally consider this to be the big one. It seems to me this incident, and so many incidents before it, indicate that many of us are given to sexual hysteria. “Sexual hysteria” might be a strong term, but what else can it be called when a mildly suggestive photo of a 15 year old seemingly causes millions of people to panic that an entire generation of youth will become “a nation of whores”? So, the last Very Serious Moral Issue™ here is this: Is it moral to respond to the mildly suggestive photo of a 15 year old celebrity by harshly and abusively condemning her, her family, her photographer, and the people who published the photo? Is that moral?

The Good News
A video excerpt from House, the television series.

Games
EA Reveals Online RTS/TCG BattleForge
Publisher Electronic Arts today announced BattleForge, an online PC real-time strategy game that has players assembling their forces through virtual trading cards.

Developed by SpellForce and Siedler creator EA Phemonic, the fantasy-based game is slated to arrive this fall. As with other online trading card titles, players will be able to win and trade cards, as well as buy new cards through micro-transactions.

Government
Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo by Murat Kurnaz
The bandages wrapped around Abdul's stumps were never changed. When he took them off himself, they were full of blood and pus. He showed the bandage to the guards and pointed to his open wounds. The guards ignored him. Later I saw how he tried to wash the bandages in his bucket of drinking water. But he could hardly move his hands, so he wasn't able to. And even if he had, where would he have hung them up to dry? He wasn't allowed to touch the fence. He wrapped his stumps back up in the dirty bandages.

Two completely different climate change articles. Or are they?
There is still a fairly large contingent of people who honestly believe that while there seems to be global climate change occurring, there is no proof that it is human induced and, further, that it is beyond our control. This is despite the bulk of scientific evidence running contrary to such a viewpoint. And, even if you accept the position, would it not be better for us on a number of levels to curtail the waste products we dump in our air and oceans? What’s the downside of taking the warnings seriously?

Healthcare
Heart Pump Creates Life-Death Ethical Dilemmas
"Once a patient leaves the hospital, the LVAD ceases to be a medical treatment and becomes effectively part of the patient himself, much like a transplanted organ or even a native one," Simon wrote in the January-February issue of the Hastings Center Report, which is published by the Hastings Center, a bioethics think tank. "We would not remove a patient's biological heart, transplanted or native, simply because the patient was suffering greatly from heart failure and did not want to go on; nor should we disable his LVAD."

History
'Human Smoke' by Nicholson Baker
Anti-Semitism was rife among the Allies. Of Franklin Roosevelt, Baker notes that in 1922, when he was a New York attorney, he "noticed that Jews made up one-third of the freshman class at Harvard" and used his influence to establish a Jewish quota there. For years he obstructed help for European Jewry, and as late as 1939 he discouraged passage of the Wagner-Rogers bill, an attempt by Congress to save Jewish children. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said in 1939 of German treatment of Jews that "no doubt Jews aren't a lovable people. I don't care about them myself." Once the war began, Winston Churchill wanted to imprison German Jewish refugees because they were Germans. What a comfort such leadership must have been to the Nazis, who, according to the New York Times of Dec. 3, 1931, were trying to figure out a way to rid Germany of Jews without "arousing foreign opinion."

Founding Creeds: An Interview with Jonathan Row
The most important component of the American Founding, in my opinion, was Enlightenment. Enlightenment defines as human progress through the untrammeled use of man’s reason. They believed man’s reason was so keen that it could look to all sources and pick out what was rational or useful and discard what was irrational or superstitious. Enlightenment was what made the synthesis possible. And man’s reason was the ultimate lens through which all sources were to be viewed. Noah Webster, when defending the US Constitution in 1787, citing mainly pagan sources, stated that they consulted the wisdom of all ages and in the Constitution contained an “empire of reason.” A better statement of Enlightenment could not be found.

International
Will we ever get used to seeing flesh?
Many (including women) feel that this sort of behavior by rowdies is “natural” as the girls are “asking for it.” I am sure their solution to keep the men in check is to cover up the girls and tone down their moves, completely glossing over the fact that on Indian streets girls wearing “modest” clothes and walking demurely are routinely teased and molested. Why can’t our politicians and our police understand that there needs to be a zero tolerance policy towards eve-teasing as that’s the only way people will learn how to behave? But we are a long way from that. Forcing the cheer girls to hide their bodies simply reinforces the belief amongst the public that it’s the girls who are at fault.

Almost, but not quite, right about gay marriage
Maybe the government finds it unpalatable to be the one that makes marriage available to gays and lesbians. In that case, I have already proposed what I think is a good solution: make "marriage" something that governments have no part in, and replace it with a civil union contract. Governments have no place in making people behave according to any moral code; in a democracy it should follow rather than lead the community, since the democratic source of legitimacy is the community, not the government. As marriage is seen as a moral issue, get right out of it and let the community do its thing. The religious can restrict it (in their churches) to hetero couples. Muslims can insist that Muslims only marry Muslims, etc. And gay and lesbian organisations can marry who they like.

Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier
"Not much can be done when we have an honour killing case," said Sergeant Ali Jabbar of Basra police. "You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws. The father has very good contacts inside the Basra government and it wasn't hard for him to be released and what he did to be forgotten."

Nonbelieving Literati
Virginia and me
As I was reading along, I kept hoping the author would explain her position and present her arguments. Instead I found page after page of rambling and irrelevant poetic descriptive passages. I know her fans are probably saying "The poetry isn't irrelevant -- it's an essay about being a writer!" Right, but I was hoping that she'd show her mastery of the writer's craft by demonstrating that she knows how and when to make a point clearly and concisely.

Nonbelieving Literati: A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
I think humans have come a long way in being tolerant, but I think we will continue to struggle with bias. It's innate in us and not easily resolved. And I know this because no matter how I struggle with it I still find that I am in ways sexist (against men), racist, and biased against transgenders - those being my three examples in any case, but it should apply to anyone different than me. It's about understanding and I don't always understand.

A Blog of One's Own
Many of us in the Atheosphere — myself included — if we’re honest with ourselves, admit that we feel superior, at least intellectually, to theists. Even writing that sentence, I can’t keep myself from chuckling over how ironic it is that I seem to be critical of that feeling. Because aren’t we, in fact, superior? Or am I just being sarcastic?

The crux of Woolf’s paragraph, of course, is that every individual and every group likes to think that he or she or it is better than others. We atheists, for all our own feelings of superiority, encounter the tremendous “superiority” of religionists every single day. We’re outnumbered and, usually, outmaneuvered. They’re going to heaven; we’re not. They’ve got god on their side; we don’t. They control the political dialogue in this country; we can’t get a word in edgewise. The only thing we can do, as Woolf points out, is to bolster up our own self-confidence, to refuse to accept being treated by the vast quasi-theocratic establishment as if we’re godless babes in the spiritual cradle

'Oxbridge'
Yet when I see the shallow layers worn away on the steps, worn down by the shoes of students -- those shoes are mine. Though they were all men, or most of them, their shoes are mine and my feet step in their footprints and they belong to me and I to them. Once this place was barred to us but we have found our way inside and the men who once lived here belong to us now, too. Their legacy is ours.

Chloe Liked Olivia
According to Woolf, not only were women proscribed from writing throughout much of human history - the literary roles they were alloted (by male authors) were rigidly constrained. Off the top of my head, I can think of two current fiction series that feature groups of women or female buddies: Lisa Scottoline highlights a female law firm in several books and James Patterson has a series that features a Women’s Murder Club. If you’re familiar with other female buddy fiction series (and you probably are), mention them in the comments.

A Doghouse Of One’s Own
Why do I have to live on the end of this tether? I can’t go anywhere, I have to stay here in the yard, and sleep under the porch when it rains. He gets to sit up there in the room, and all he does is read and write, all day long. Or he leaves me here with his sister while he does whatever he does down at that theater. He spends no time with me. Does he let me off this rope and take me to the park, throw a stick or a ball so I can chase it and get some exercise? No. I need my exercise. My muscles are beginning to atrophy, and all I can do to keep some semblance of health is to walk in a circle around this firkin’ tree. I wish Will would build me a doghouse.

A man and his room
Thus, this book is a terrific reminder of how difficult life is for any group that has faced discrimination, even a number of generations later. Woolf is brilliant in showing us why this is a truism and does so without whining. She simply sets up the facts and makes analogies and she is spot on with every one of them.

a room of one's own (how to be chinese for a day)
Walking through Flushing that day totally smacked me in the face. Just being there, surrounded by folks who looked nothing like me, speaking a language I could not understand, made me overwhelmingly conscious of how different I was from everybody else. I felt as though I was walking through a foreign land, without any of the comforts or emotional anchors I’ve grown to rely on to maintain a feeling of safety and competence in my environment. And that night, as I went to bed, I thought about high school and how it must have felt for a small number of kids with skin much darker than mine to walk down a hallway surrounded by privileged white kids.

NL: A Room of One's Own
I find myself wondering why Woolf - who certainly controls her language - is using the conditional here - "she would come if we worked", not "she will come if we work". Does she mean to say that we will not work? Or does she mean that we will not "have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own" or "the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think"?

Politics
A holiday from gas prices?
James Hamilton, professor of Economics at the University of California-San Diego, said that most of the benefits from a temporary tax moratorium would likely go to producers rather than consumers. He said that states that suspend gas taxes are able to respond to rising demand more efficiently than the country as a whole, because gasoline supplies can be easily moved from one state to another.

"Prices would certainly rise to the market-clearing level," said Hamilton. "I would expect the price [of gas] to go back to very close to where it was before [the tax cut], in which case consumers would not see any benefit."

Laura Bush, docile doormat
I was equal parts appalled and amused. And not only because my brash, blunt friend and Heinz obviously had far more in common, personality- and attitude- wise, than she cared to acknowledge. No, I was stunned because my friend far preferred, as the perfect counter to Heinz, as a role model and a woman and the ideal presidential wife, one tepid, timid, thoroughly useless Laura Bush.

Wait, what? You mean docile, prudish, former librarian Laura Bush, she of the nonexistent inspiration and dull-as-dishwater personality? Yes indeed, that Laura Bush. Here was my friend, brash and funny and who spoke her mind without the slightest reservation, and who could drink and think and opine with the strongest of men, and yet she admired this ... limp wallflower? I didn't get it. I still don't completely get it, to this very day.

Religion
The Great Leveller
The history of Christianity is a history of complete and utter failure. Hundreds of Mega-churches, thousands of missionaries, millions of dollars and billions of Sunday services have achieved absolutely nothing. It is all a delusion; a pretence; a sham which could not convince one man in a million that are capable of rational thought.

Should we embrace moderate Christianity?
Sam Harris and many others often claim that moderate religious groups give cover to fundamentalists by honoring the holy books that they use to build their walls of doctrine. I used to agree, but now I’m not so sure that’s true. No, we shouldn’t have to respect beliefs that are based on a foundation of straw, but we can respect people who share many of the same goals that we do, even if we do not share the same beliefs regarding religion. Just because I think all religion is a waste of time, doesn’t mean I have to think that all believers should be shunned or ridiculed.

Skepticism
Huffington Post is a denialist website
This is an example of something we here at denialism blog have been talking about lately. Liberalism is no protection from anti-scientific thinking. In fact, if there is a unifying theme of denialism, it is that any extreme of ideological thinking leads to the necessary denial of fact. When one considers the causes of denialist worldviews, one sees again and again some form of fundamentalist belief. Fundamentalist religion leads to the rejection of evolution. Free-market fundamentalists are the leading source of anti-global warming denialism. On the liberal side, a mixture of technophobia and neo-luddism leads to paranoid suspicions about everything from GM crops causing non-existent illnesses to fear of harmless radio technology such as wifi to the fear of vaccines and medicine innovations exemplified by the HuffPo cranks and the evidence-based medicine/HIV/AIDS denialists like Mike Adams and Gary Null.

The F word, Racism, and Skepticism
This schism is occurring because a group of people can’t change the way they think about the world. One factor is more important than any other. They also have trouble admitting when they are wrong.

As a white broad, I try. Hard. But I still screw up.
I’m a product of my culture, which is racist, and homophobic, and xenophobic. And when I’m wrong, I admit it, and learn from it, and CHANGE. I don’t accuse everyone else of being wrong and out to get me, I acknowledge the fault in myself.

I've Converted To EVERY Religion (Just In Case)



Sociology
What elevators can teach us about superstition
“In the old system—board elevator, press button—you have an illusion of control; elevator manufacturers have sought to trick the passengers into thinking they’re driving the conveyance. In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.) Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer. Elevator design is rooted in deception—to disguise not only the bare fact of the box hanging by ropes but also the tethering of tenants to a system over which they have no command.”

My reading this month has gone slowly. I haven't read anything in the last couple of weeks. I've been tired and busy and I haven't picked up a book. I blame the Forgiven book. It's hefty and a bit dry.

Read in April
I Was Wrong - Jim Bakker
A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf (Nonbelieving Literati)

Currently Reading
A History of the End of the World - Jonathan Kirsch
Forgiven: The Rise and Fall of Jim Bakker and the Ptl Ministry - Charles E Shepard

Coming Up Next
Spirit Gate - Kate Elliott
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea - Carl Zimmer
Dark Tower - Stephen King
The Lucifer Effect - Philip Zimbardo
The Android's Dream - John Scalzi
The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science - Natalie Angier

While reading A Room of One's Own a few paragraphs caught my attention and I couldn't really focus on anything else for the rest of the book.

If only Mrs. Seton and her mother and her mother before that had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex, we might have dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine; we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions. We might have been exploring or writing; mooning about the venerable places of the earth; sitting contemplative on the steps of the Parthenon, or going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half-past four to write a little poetry. Only, if Mrs. Seton and her like had gone into business at the age of fifteen, there would have been -- that was the snag in the argument -- no Mary.

And that point, I think, lays very neatly at the center of what Virginia Woolf argues about why women in her day did not write very much fiction.

Woolf goes on to explain why it was impossible for women to raise money to support the writing of a book. Women spent more time producing and raising children. Women were not allowed to own property or money until a short time before she made her observation. Women were generally discouraged from such pursuits because it was "unwomanly".

Today most of those reasons no longer apply, except for producing and raising children, and that is much more a product of a "traditional" family. I think most men support having women in the workforce and having wives and daughters that aspire to a career.

In a "traditional" family, as I think of it anyway, a man and a woman get married, have children, and the wife stays at home taking care of the children while the man provides for the family financially. And I think that's wonderful as long as both of the spouses want it to be so and both jobs are considered real work.

What struck me, and probably several of you, as so jarring is that men need women to have children just as much as women need men. Without women men would not have sons to raise or leave an inheritance to. Daughters are just as much genetically part of both parents as a son. So why should sons see all of the benefit of an inheritance?

And that's precisely what's changed over the years as humans have evolved socially into more of an equal footing. And it can apply not just to sex, but race, ethnic group, sexual orientation... really any difference we share as humans. Some are still struggling to be seen as equal and others have pretty much made it.

I realize that I don't know what it's like to be a black man, or an Asian woman, or a transgender. I don't know what type of daily life anyone outside of me lives. I can't even extrapolate how women, in general feel. I can only speak for myself.

But even in my day-to-day life I still find shades that daughters are unequal to sons, that women should feel guilty about having a career and children, or that affirmative action has given an unfair advantage to women.

I've considered staying at home if my husband and I ever have children. But I don't think I would be able to do it. Even if we financially decided it was feasible, I don't know if I could give up the security of having my own job. I'm independent minded and I can't conceive of asking someone for money. Having my own income is part of what makes me confident, independent, and free. I could possibly some day redefine myself as those things without my own income, but I can't imagine it at this time, no matter how much I love and trust my husband.

Affirmative Action is a sticky issue for me. I believe that all aspects of a job should be based on merit. But I know in reality that other factors often weigh in. Affirmative Action was created to ensure that companies that refused to put aside bias would be penalized. In actuality it's difficult to enforce and at times it works to the detriment of people that are not a minority.

I would prefer to be judged on merit. But it's difficult to know whether women or blacks or the transgender or even men are judged completely on merit or on other traits that are not essential to the job. In the Aetheosphere I read about female scientists who complain about a gender bias in the research sciences or in educational institutions. I'm sure there are many, many other examples of bias against some group. I don't know if there is a solution that won't tread on someone's rights. Like most of life there is no perfect answer.

But I do believe (and I say believe because I don't know enough to say know, so I'm working on something akin to faith than knowledge) that Affirmative Action has led to more equality even as it has contributed to injustice. Does the good outweigh the bad? I don't know if I can say that looking at individuals because if we're trying to measure equality here those that have been disenfranchised are just as equal as those who have benefited; however, if we look at the good of the whole in numbers, something I don't necessarily like to consider, then probably so.

I think humans have come a long way in being tolerant, but I think we will continue to struggle with bias. It's innate in us and not easily resolved. And I know this because no matter how I struggle with it I still find that I am in ways sexist (against men), racist, and biased against transgenders - those being my three examples in any case, but it should apply to anyone different than me. It's about understanding and I don't always understand.

The important thing is to acknowledge that I don't understand and that I am very likely wrong in my characterizations of people that aren't like me. If I dismiss their complaints out-of-hand then I am promoting a culture of bias, the same sort of bias that I believe is wrong when directed towards me.