Stay with it, PZ

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Michael

I had the fun of seeing a talk by PZ a few towns over back in 2009. I noticed two things right away. First, the beard really is quite respectable. Second, the guy has quite a few extra pounds. I found this a bit dismaying. He was someone I admired (and simply enjoy now), so it was disappointing to see that he had what was likely a strong moral failing. No, no, I don’t mean being fat. That has nothing to do with morality. I mean not trying to be healthy. For all I know he was on a diet at the time, but even so, no one can doubt that he has spent long periods of time not caring much about his body. I see that as an issue of morality, and I have written about it here. Fortunately, PZ looks to be turning things around:

I don’t make them. But I will lose more weight this year. Out of fear.

I was just at the grocery store, standing in the check-out line, which has become a gauntlet of terror. It’s the magazines.

Today, it was Paula Deen, round-cheeked and grinning, teeth bleached white, eyes like cold blue LEDs, photoshopped into perfectly plasticky plump grandmotherliness — a grandma with the complexion of an irradiated sixteen year old, glowing and sparkling — and she was holding a bowl of livid yellow macaroni and cheese that was bigger than her head. And I said to myself, this is the new face of death. And I said to myself, this is the American face of death, the death of viscid excess, the death that ends not in bones, but a quivering mass of adipocere. And I said to myself, don’t piss yourself, Myers, but that’s goddamn terrifying.

And I thought about buying that magazine and pasting that freakishly leering face on my refrigerator, but decided that placing a potent ward in my kitchen that would cause me to starve to death instead probably wasn’t a good idea.

Good. I hope he stays with it. Losing weight and/or being fit isn’t always easy. I devote a significant amount of my time to picking shit up and putting it back down again. I do enjoy it, but I would lying if I said it was easier than turning on Netflix.

I doubt PZ will read any of this, but if he does I hope he remembers: the keys to fitness are consistency and will. I realize it sounds like some hippie bullshit, but it’s true. A person who exercises irregularly will see minimal benefits, presuming he doesn’t just give up first. It takes a concerted effort – and the payoff for that is always great.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Catholics, adoption, intolerance, and non-acceptance

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Michael

A friend recently made a post on Facebook where I felt she did not distinguish between intolerance and non-acceptance. I’ve written about the issue before, so I naturally responded. I think it’s more than a mere semantics issue: If we conflate intolerance with non-acceptance, we bring everything into a false equivalence, often causing us to overlook actual issues of intolerance. Let’s take the issue of Catholic adoption agencies in Illinois:

Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money.

This is blatant intolerance. Rather than continue placing orphaned children into loving homes, these Catholics are actively seeking to impede the rights of others by way of shutting everything down. If they weren’t legally bound, there is no doubt they simply wouldn’t allow gay adoptions at all – ya know, since that’s the sort of intolerance they had been practicing for decades.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, look at the gall of these people:

“In the name of tolerance, we’re not being tolerated,” said Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield, Ill., a civil and canon lawyer who helped drive the church’s losing battle to retain its state contracts for foster care and adoption services.

I suppose the Bishop is technically right. No one is willing to tolerate his bigotry, so that is itself a form of intolerance. Of course, this is nothing more than a caveat: Intolerance is unacceptable except where it has a compelling reason. I think that much is implied, assumed, and understood. The Bishop is trying to exploit an unspoken yet implicit issue in order to gain pity for discriminating Catholics. It’s pathetic.

It should be obvious to any thinking person that this really isn’t a matter of mere semantics. If we’re going to allow people to run around, without challenge, claiming they are facing intolerance, as if connotations and implied meaning have no place in language, then real issues of intolerance – such as gays not being allowed to adopt – will have far less impact in the public mind when they are identified and pointed out: the dilution of language is always the dilution of meaning.

via Friendly Atheist.

Filed under: Politics and Social, Religions | Tagged: , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Anti-evolution legislation in New Hampshire

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Michael

New Hampshire has been disappointing as of late. Here and there I’ve been hearing rumblings of Republicans gearing up to destroy the lives of Granite State gays. Then they put money in the pockets of naturopaths at the expense of the health of their citizens. And now a number of schmucks are getting ready to put forth some anti-science bills:

House Bill 1148, introduced by Jerry Bergevin (R-District 17), would charge the state board of education to “[r]equire evolution to be taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists’ political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.” House Bill 1457, introduced by Gary Hopper (R-District 7) and John Burt (R-District 7), would charge the state board of education to “[r]equire science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established, and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories or modes.”

Bergevin pulls out what has got to be the most basic creationist canard by implying that a theory is somehow not scientifically sound or established. He’s wrong. See Theory of Gravity for further reference. But as if blatant ignorance wasn’t enough, he then goes and commits a logical fallacy by demanding, in poorly veiled code, that teachers make ad hominem attacks on scientists. It would be risible if it wasn’t so pitiable and contemptible and insensible all at the same time.

Hopper and Burt don’t fair much better. They use the broad concept that accepted science changes with the evidence, but they do so in an obviously sneaky, if superficially acceptable, way. Fortunately they slipped up and showed their hand early:

Although HB 1457 as drafted is silent about “intelligent design,” Hopper’s initial request was to have a bill drafted that would require “instruction in intelligent design in the public schools.”

Surprise, surprise. I guess they must have read Kitzmiller v. Dover after their first draft.

I remember Maine had a very brief flair up a few years ago when some administrator out in East Bumfuck made similar suggestions concerning the teaching of evolution. He quickly learned the value of shutting up in the face of overwhelming evidence he just didn’t understand, but it was still disappointing that the moment wasn’t captured more fruitfully by journalists; no one in the media took the time to pen a short article on why evolution is true and why the administrator was wrong. It wouldn’t have needed to be some in-depth piece, but just something that explained some of the basics (starting with what a theory is since that was at the heart of the issue here). Hell, I’m sure any paper could have gotten an actual biologist to write something for them in under an hour.

I just hope New Hampshire does at least a little bit better than Maine did.

Filed under: Evolution, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Why the philosophically incoherent should never speak of marriage

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Michael

Really, they shouldn’t speak of anything, but this post happens to specifically be about marriage. So let’s get to it. Keith Ablow, an alleged psychiatrist and certain member of FOX Noise, has recently said some horrifically incoherent things about the government, marriage, and liberty:

Among those aged 18 to 29, only 20 percent are now married, compared to 59 percent in 1960. Just 51 percent of all those over the age of 18 are now married, compared with 72 percent in 1960.

The trend away from marriage is now accelerating, rather than slowing down, and I believe that by 2020, marriage will be a road taken by a minority of adults.

I believe the reasons for marriage falling out of favor with Americans are many, including my own clinical observations that the vast majority of married people consider their unions a source of pain, not pleasure, and that too few of them are equipped with the psychological and behavioral tools to achieve true intimacy or maintain real passion. When the architecture of a relationship is airless and seemingly without exit (without bankrupting your family by hiring lawyers and having your kids pack overnight bags every week), people will eventually learn to steer clear of it.

When I started reading this article I didn’t think about the gender of the author. I didn’t happen to glance at his name, nor was it particularly a concern of mine. However, once I got to the given reasons for why marriage is on the decline, I just knew it was a man. A woman would be far less likely to neglect to mention the difference in women’s lives between 1960 and 2011. First, 50 years ago the income gap was much more than it is today. It was virtually unsustainable for a woman to live well on her own then, through no fault of her own. It only made sense to attach one’s self to a man in order to do well. Men would do the same thing if roles were reversed. Second, it was less socially acceptable to be a single woman too far into one’s 20’s than it is today. That’s a strong motivating force to tie the knot. Moreover, if a woman was single and had a child, that was another good reason for getting hitched in the 60’s. That isn’t the case today. Third, religion has historically been a strong force in marriage. With fewer and fewer people claiming a religion today, that force is dissipating.

Perhaps no factor, however, is more responsible for the decline of marriage in America than government participation in it. The fact is that getting a marriage license means, essentially, signing a Draconian contract with the state to manage the division of your estate in the event of a divorce, without ever having read that contract.

Oh, I wasn’t aware there was no government participation in marriage in 1960.

The contract, if it included all the relevant laws pertaining to divorce, child custody, spousal support and other relevant matters, would probably run hundreds of pages. And what’s more, the contract, once signed, may be changed by the state legislature at any time, leaving the parties to it with no recourse.

Weird. I thought that democracy was a type of recourse. I must be mistaken.

This all means that getting married in America is—in the current scheme—an act of self-abandonment which subjugates one to government in a more infantilizing fashion than nearly any other voluntary action you could take.

This is plain wrong. If people didn’t want government involvement in their marriages, they simply would not get married in the eyes of their state. They would just go to their church or mosque or hippie in the woods. The fact that they aren’t tells me that even if they don’t like everything the government does in regards to marriage, they like enough of what it does. It sounds to me like a choice made freely by consenting, mature adults.

Actions have consequences. So it is no surprise that volunteering to be lorded over by the state would result in feelings of confinement while married.

Yes, because that’s why married couples feel confined. “Damn it, Mary, I need my space! Let’s get away from these damn tax returns!” And, again, maybe it’s just that I’m an ig’nint youngin’, but I could have sworn the government “lorded” over marriages in 1960.

Nor is it any surprise that signing over one’s rights to self-determination to the state…

Apparently Ablow defines “self-determination” in terms of things he thinks people should do. Someone who freely signs a contract is obviously a right-less slave.

And it is also predictable that people would eventually find this distasteful, because human beings instinctively love liberty, especially in matters as personal as love and the raising of families.

He’s hinting at something…what could it be…

The solution is obvious: Get the state entirely out of the marriage business. No more marriage licenses. No more special treatment of married couples by the IRS or any other facet of government. No state ever had a legitimate claim to issue marriage licenses, to begin with, since marriage is a spiritual commitment and quite often, a religious one. And it is, fundamentally, an intensely personal one based in autonomy—until city hall gets involved and messes everything up.

Oh, I get it now. “Self-determination”, “liberty”, “autonomy”. I remember when I first read an introductory philosophy of ethics book, too. Cute.

So where to start on this one. First, married couples act as distinct entities from individuals, ergo, their treatment is inherently “special”. And it should be. Second, no state has a legitimate claim to issue marriage licenses? Really? Which constitution prohibits that? Which populace passed a law saying as much? Last time I checked, so long as what it does not violate a given constitution or human rights, a state can have whatever law it pleases so long as that law is passed democratically. Third, so what if marriage has historically been “spiritual” or religious? I care about the fact that it does not violate human rights and has been approved democratically. Besides, does Ablow approve of government-endorsed marriage for atheists and agnostics? I’m neither spiritual nor religious, so it must be okay for me to get a marriage license from the government. Furthermore, if he wants to appeal to the historical roots of marriage, why stop at religion? Go back far enough and it will be common to find contracts entered into which were governed by various laws, whether highly organized or simply tribal.

In the new paradigm I suggest, every couple wishing to get married would state that intention to their house of worship or their community of family and friends.

This isn’t new. In fact, just about everyone does this. Then they also get married in the state’s eyes.

They would take meaningful vows in front of gatherings of loved ones. Then they would—like knowledgeable and competent adults, rather than state-dependent, incompetent children—sign financial documents they generate together (while represented by attorneys or knowledgably waiving that right) which would govern how their assets should be pooled during the term of the contract and how they should be divided in the event they decide to end the contract.

If there’s anything I want to do as competent and independent adult, it’s enter into lengthy legal contracts of dubious quality, which cost me a lot of money, and which are my only choice. Thank goodness Keith Ablow is here to take away my options. Christ. Maybe for his next article he will read past chapter one in his ethics textbook.

The state’s interest would be limited to enforcing laws about fair amounts of child support and fair visitation rights which must be included in such documents when children are born.

So the government can be involved in dictating what is fair child support and visitation rights, but not marriage contracts. Interesting. Apparently Ablow approves of the government being involved in something which necessarily must happen – reproduction – but when it comes to something voluntary – entering into a marriage – it needs to butt out.

That’s it. The state would protect kids financially and emotionally from parents who fail to protect them. Otherwise, they would have no business getting involved in people’s marriages at all. They never had any business getting involved in them, to begin with.

I think, Ablow never had any business, writing an article which addresses philosophical, and now apparently grammatical, issues, which he never understood in the first place. Random comma.

Filed under: Philosophy, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Ohio abortion bill on hold

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Michael

Anti-abortion advocates have caused the “heartbeat” bill in Ohio to be put on hold:

Fear of expensive legal battles over the law may have prompted a wave of amendments by Senate backers to the bill. But the wording of the bill has split anti-abortion backers.

“Supporters of the bill delivered more than 20 amendments on Wednesday, asking us to make changes after months of deliberation in both the House and Senate,” Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus, a Republican, said in a statement.

“These eleventh hour revisions only serve to create more uncertainty about a very contentious issue. We’ve now heard hours of testimony that indicate a sharp disagreement within the pro-life community over the direction of this bill, and I believe our members need additional time to weigh the arguments. Therefore, I have asked the committee chairman to suspend hearings on the bill,” Niehaus said.

Basically, they’re afraid the Supreme Court will rule against them. It’s funny because the whole strategy of the anti-abortionists for the past 10-15 years has been to push the boundary of Roe v Wade, even flagrantly ignoring it, in order to force a SC showdown.

At any rate, I’m glad to see this has been set aside from now. The entire premise was just silly. A heartbeat does not somehow convey special importance onto a fetus. In fact, it is a whole confluence of factors which contribute to what we define as being important in humans. It cannot possibly be clear when it is that enough of those factors have come together in order for us to draw a line; the best we can do is seek a reasonable point during pregnancy (a point which we laden with necessary exceptions). I think Roe v Wade actually found that point.

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Cell phone driving bans

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Michael

The NTSB has recommended a ban on all things to do with cell phone use, including hands-free devices, except in emergency situations:

The recommendation suggests going far beyond the current restrictions on texting and talking on the phone while driving to include outlawing the use of hands-free devices.

The five-member board of the NTSB made their decision after a 19-year-old driving his pickup truck near Gray Summit, MO, crashed into a school bus, which in turn ran over a smaller vehicle and crashed into another bus. The pickup driver and a 15-year-old aboard one of the buses were killed in the accident. Records show that the pickup driver had sent or received 11 text messages in the 11 minutes preceding the crash.

“Driving was not his only priority,” said NTSB chairman Deborah Hershman. “No call, no text, no update is worth a human life.”

This is a stupid basis for a recommendation. It’s an anecdote that can be equally countered with any other anecdote: I used to text and drive when I had a phone more convivial to single-hand use. I never once had an accident, nor did I ever come close to hitting anyone or anything. Bam, texting for all! Or not.

Moreover, this shitty anecdote only addresses texting. That involves looking away from the road frequently and/or for relatively extended periods of time. That is not what happened during a phone call.

I think if the interest here is safety, it can be generally achieved without inconveniencing too many people. Let’s outlaw the people who have the hardest time dealing with technology and driving. First, that means young people. While I know a lot of people will get behind this because they’re simply jealous of youth, the actual rational basis is that young people have limited driving experience. Ban those under 20. Second, anyone over 65 needs to have the phone taken out of their hands. Of course, not a lot of old people text, especially while driving, but plenty of them talk on the phone. Ever seen an old person try to deal with technology? It isn’t pretty. They have to focus more than people who have grown up in this modern age. They aren’t functioning at a fast pace. They can’t handle it. Factor in driving and it gets uglier. Ban ’em, I say.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , | 12 Comments »

I hope he holds his ground

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Michael

The President has threatened a veto if Republicans unnecessarily attach a decision on an oil pipeline to a bill concerning a payroll tax. Of course, the Republican controlled house said ‘fuck it’ and just went ahead and did what it wanted anyway. It probably won’t get to the President because it will die in the Senate, but I hope he holds his ground if it does find its way to his desk. It isn’t that I don’t think the pipeline should be put in place – it should – I just don’t think it should be attached to a tax bill. Moreover, this is a great opportunity to show that the Republicans don’t give two-shits about tax cuts. They merely care about tax cuts for their donors ‘job creators’. (Where are all those jobs, by the way? In fact, where have they ever been? Bueller? Bueller?) Since this tax cut is for the middle class, and because it will spur at the very least some activity since 70% of the economy is driven by the consumer (gasp! alert the papers! we must let the Republicans have this information for the first time in their lives!) and this puts more money in the hands of the consumer, the Republicans aren’t interested.

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Why we need objective redistricting laws

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Michael

Every time a state legislative body finds itself redrawing districts, there is danger afoot. If the body is controlled heavily by one party or another, and if the governorship is held by a member of the same favored party, it is likely the districts will be redrawn to favor those in control. Prime examples include Massachusetts and Texas, the latter likely being the biggest redistricting problem in the nation. Republicans have ironclad control over the state despite the fact that whites are actually a minority and – let’s not be subtle or coy – blacks, Hispanics, and other national minorities tend to vote for Democrats.

As old people and those knowledgeable about history may remember/know, due to Texas’ past of horrific racism, it is one of a number of southern states that must seek federal approval before implementing changes to maps and voting practices. (See 1965 Voting Rights Act.) This makes sense. After all, sure, we can chalk some ultimately racist redistricting up to a simple desire to maintain power rather than racism, but let’s not be stupid. Southern states, including and perhaps especially Texas, have a high number of racist individuals. If left to their own devices, they absolutely would not be nearly as fair in the way they treat voters.

Recently federal judges in San Antonio redrew district maps for Texas. They had ruled that the GOP-drawn maps did not reflect ‘minority’ (i.e., not white) population growth in the state. A halt has been placed on that redrawing because there are issues which need to be reviewed, but there is a good chance the Republican-favoring maps will need to be fixed. This, I think, demonstrates the fundamental problem with arbitrary redistricting rules. This is a state issue, but there is also too much subjectivity present in the federal process.

What the U.S. needs in order to fix this gerrymandering is an objective set of rules. They may need to be complicated since populations do not spread evenly across a region, plus most states are not fit into any given geometric shape. However, this is the only reasonable way to ensure that one of two parties does not become too powerful in a single state or region (provided that that power is unrepresentative of population dynamics). After all, ever wonder why the U.S. is so absolutely polarized? There are probably a number of factors at play, but the biggest one is almost certainly the concentration of power had via redistricting. Barney Frank isn’t representative of a huge number of people, but his current district makes it seem as though he is. (And in 2012, reality will be more well represented, hence why he won’t run again.) Michele Bachmann is a crazy idiot who is only in power because the odd shape of her district. If all this strangeness and subjectivity were removed, the result would be far more moderate politicians; no one would need to appeal to the craziest of the crazy in order to get votes since the crazies wouldn’t appear to be the majority.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , | 8 Comments »

Governor Sam Brownback sucks

Posted on November 27, 2011 by Michael

Emma Sullivan was on a terrible school field trip to the state capitol building in Kansas when she tweeted this:

Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot

So what did Governor Sam Brownback’s people do? They tattled, of course:

Emma Sullivan, 18, was hauled into her principal’s office and ordered to write letters of apology after one of Governor Sam Brownback’s office contacted the tour organizer to complain about the offending note on the social networking site Twitter.

I believe my letter of apology would have consisted of “And you can go fuck yourself too.”

I’m at a loss about which part of this is worse, the fact that some prick in Brownback’s office told on a high school kid or the fact that Sullivan’s school made her apologize. Maybe this quote can clear things up:

“In general,” spokeswoman Leigh Anne Neal said in an e-mail “students on school-sponsored field trips, in which they are representing the school, would be expected to conduct themselves in accordance with school district policies, including use of electronic devices.

“Students may express their personal beliefs, views, and opinions, as long as they do so appropriately and in accordance with school policies.“

What a load. In other words, feel free to express yourselves, kids, but only if what you’re saying is stamped and approved. Yeah, Brownback’s people are morons, but the school has handled this like, well, the average high school that is unconcerned with educating children well.

I realize free speech and other basic human rights get ignored in schools because, well, what are kids going to do, amirite, ‘adults’? But regardless, the girl spoke her mind to a public official in person and then Tweeted about it. Good. That’s exactly the sort of thing she ought to be doing. If anything, the school should hold her up as a positive example for the rest of the student body. Of course, if that didn’t happen immediately, it isn’t going to happen now – high school administrators don’t tend to be open to looking like the idiots they usually are. Thank goodness for the Streisand Effect, though:

Governor Sam Brownback sucks.

Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Nudity versus sex

Posted on November 19, 2011 by Michael

Aliaa Magda Elmahdy is a student in Egypt who has started a campaign to challenge silly Muslim attitudes towards nudity, and in fact, towards women in general. Her strategy? Posing nude on her blog:

The 20-year-old wrote on her blog that the photos, which show her naked apart from stockings, are her “screams against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy”. Her blog has received 1.5 million hits since her photos were posted earlier this week.

From this we’ve learned two things and reinforced a third: We’ve learned that some people do have guts, we’ve learned that novel nudity has a strong appeal, and it has been reinforced that people like naked women.

And yes, yes, here is the link to her blog.

The article, apparently being written by a lazy journalist, goes to Twitter feeds for quotes on the issue. There was one I especially liked:

Another supporter commented: “We need to learn how to separate between nudity and sex.”

Whether in the Islamic, Christian, Jewish, or other religious world, there is a difficulty people have in distinguishing between these two things. There really isn’t a good reason for it; I think, like with the unprincipled opposition to legalized prostitution, this all comes down to an irrational “ewwy!” feeling. Sex is something which has been beaten down, portrayed as a negative thing which comes with nothing but bad consequences (unless done within the confines of marriage, of course). I think that’s a view we could do away with for the better.

via PZ.

Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

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