…and this is a 
I'd better not say what I've named my plush octopus, then
Category: Religion
Posted on: November 26, 2007 2:34 PM, by PZ Myers
Yet another example of religious insanity:
A British primary school teacher has been arrested in Sudan, accused of insulting Islam's Prophet by letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Mohammed, her school said on Monday.
Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons, aged 54 from Liverpool, told Reuters they feared for her safety after receiving reports that young men had already started gathering outside the Khartoum police station where she was being held.
I don't know why they're blaming the teacher. Clearly, all of those 7-year-olds need to be hauled out of their homes and stoned to death.
Comments
Jesus Christ!
Posted by: Coturnix | November 26, 2007 2:40 PM
And I'll bet that quite a few of those young men are named "Mohammed". Obviously, the police should haul them all in and throw them into the impound locker with the teddy bear.
Posted by: Ktesibios | November 26, 2007 2:46 PM
Isn't Mohammed an extremely common given name among Muslims? Is everyone named Mohammed an insult to the prophet? I guess everone named Mohammed needs to be killed, eh?
Posted by: Lord Runolfr | November 26, 2007 2:46 PM
Isn't Mohammed a common name in Arabic/Moslem circles? IIRC, the leader of the 9/11 murders was an Egyptian named Mohammed Atta or some such.
Sounds like the boys down in Sudan just want to stone a Xian teacher for old times sake. Must not be much else happening there
FWIW, the Sudan is one of the few theocracies left in the world. They could be blazing a trail for the USA, if the theocrats have their way.
Posted by: raven | November 26, 2007 2:47 PM
This is no fair representation of the Islamic world. The vast majority of Muslims are tolerant and open-minded individuals, and are just as appalled by this incident as you and me.
So the "Voices of Reason" keep saying. They conveniently ignore the evidence which indicates that "the vast majority of Muslims" are utterly warped and deranged by their religion.
Posted by: Jamie | November 26, 2007 2:53 PM
OK, at the risk of being a smartalec, I thought religion itself was insanity. Apparently I haven't been paying close enough attention to NPR (Non-believer's Press Releases)....or, at the very least, I believe I haven't.
Still, it seems that 'insane insanity' doesn't appear to be too helpful a reduction. Can I then puckishly conclude that religion itself is not insanity, or is that religion is just a subset of insanity in general? I just want to know what kind of crazy I am.
Oh, wait. I'm a theist blogging on Pharyngula. That kind of crazy.
Posted by: Scott Hatfield, On Medication | November 26, 2007 3:03 PM
Jehovah, Jehovah, Jehovah.
*ducks*
Posted by: stogoe | November 26, 2007 3:05 PM
Religion is a subset of irrationality, a concept that strive to limit in our day to day lives.
Posted by: Lycosid | November 26, 2007 3:09 PM
"My plush octopus?" As in, you have only one? This has been a severe day of disillusionment. :(
WRT Scott's comment:
The supernatural claims of religion (the factors, in other words, that distinguish a "religion" from, depending on the religion in question, a "philosophy," a "political movement," a "community service organization," or a "street gang") satisfy the technical definition of "delusion" (or would if the definition weren't arbitrarily written to exclude it) but I would contend that it is in many cases is properly classified as a similar phenomenon to "hallucinations in the sane." This is not one of them.
I wish I could say I was surprised. Any word on whether the British government is going to be able to get her out of there?
Posted by: Azkyroth | November 26, 2007 3:12 PM
Anyone who believes something without evidence is crazy. Are moderate Christians just as crazy as Islamic fundamentalists? Well that's a good question, and I can't say I know the answer. What I do know, however, is that Islamic fundamentalists are much more stubborn, and infinitely more dangerous.
Posted by: Jamie | November 26, 2007 3:16 PM
That makes me feel a little awkward about having named my plush piggy Lying Pedophile Mo' Hamhead.
Posted by: Greg Peterson | November 26, 2007 3:19 PM
I read this story earlier today and just felt sick. Particularly when I got to the part about men gathering outside the police station. So can anyone tell me... where do I apply to leave the human race? I refuse to be a part of any species which contain members so vile, so repulsive. Gah! I feel dirty.
Hmm, If I sew on a few more arms...
Posted by: Ted D | November 26, 2007 3:20 PM
Anyone who believes something without evidence is crazy. No, you're thinking of "stupid." The insanity part comes wen you try to build on that foundation...oh and torture and kill people who don't agree with you -- and that's religion.
Posted by: AlanWCan | November 26, 2007 3:31 PM
Kids got to take that doll home. It's possible that some of them even slept with Mohammed.
How many millions will the Brits have to give Sudan to get that woman out of jail?
Fanaticism pays.
Posted by: CalGeorge | November 26, 2007 3:36 PM
Boy, JeGodvAllah's got a thin skin. Perhaps He/She/It would feel a little more self-confident and a little less self-conscious if He/She/It stopped using so many aliases and prophets and started speaking for Him-/Her-/Itself.
My psychiatrist's been coaching me for years to just come out and say what I mean. Couldn't hurt for the Big Guy to join some sort of therapy group and learn how to communicate.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 26, 2007 3:38 PM
but... but... teddy bears are great, surely? they wouldn't, for example, stone people to death? they're the very model of morality.
Posted by: alex | November 26, 2007 3:41 PM
God, would you ever shut up about religion and creationism. You're the worst creationist of the lot, your attack on James Watson recently put you firmly in the leftist race-creationist camp.
http://www.slate.com/id/2178122/entry/2178123/
Posted by: andromeda | November 26, 2007 3:41 PM
Clearly the teacher is not the only one to blame in this. Twenty of those sinful little seven-year-olds voted to name the bear Mohammad. Even worse, the remaining 3 seven-year-olds were defiant enough to vote *against* Mohammad. I'll bet some of them even compounded their crime by being female. Fatwas all around!
I'm trying to joke, but the sad part is, it makes just as much sense to punish the children as the teacher. As several posters were quick to point out, the name Mohammad has a history of being used for non-prophets. I could try and analyze the psychology of this latest outcropping of insanity - mass hysteria, presumably - but why bother? The point is, this is not justice, and this is sure as hell not sane behavior.
Religion and perspective - ne'er the twain shall meet.
Posted by: Master Mahan | November 26, 2007 3:47 PM
"God, would you ever shut up about religion and creationism."
God has actually been curiously silent on the subject.
Posted by: Rey Fox | November 26, 2007 3:49 PM
Polpo Allah Luciana?
Posted by: noncarborundum | November 26, 2007 3:50 PM
D'uh, typing is fun.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 26, 2007 3:52 PM
They conveniently ignore the evidence which indicates that "the vast majority of believers" are utterly warped and deranged by their religion.
Fixed that for ya Jaime.
Posted by: Sarcastro | November 26, 2007 3:57 PM
An 'expert' on IQ said on BBC radio 4 recently that the average IQ of people in that region is about 85. If he's correct, that might help explain their behaviour.
Posted by: Richard Harris | November 26, 2007 3:58 PM
Maybe the teacher was teaching the kids about that new theory that's sweeping the scientific world; whatchamacallit.. Indignant Design theory
Posted by: Lee Graham | November 26, 2007 4:02 PM
Oh, and on a related note, it turns out that the Saudi rape victim the courts decided to give more lashes was having an affair, so I guess that's all right then.
And as for you, I'm rather tired of explaining the wealth of flaws, distortions, and outright lies in The Bell Curve. You'll notice the study Saletan sites is - drum roll please - based off The Bell Curve.
I do have to applaud the way Saletan tries to label anyone who disagrees with this bullcrap a creationist, though - apparently with a straight face. Clearly believing Adam hung out with plant-munching velocoraptors is the same as pointing out basic statistical flaws in The Bell Curve. In this spirit, I'd like to suggest Saletan - and yourself, of course, dear poster - are Honesty Child Molesters.
Posted by: Master Mahan | November 26, 2007 4:14 PM
Fixed that for ya Jaime.
No, I meant what I said. The vast majority of Muslims are utterly warped and deranged by their religion. Muslims. Most Christians I know are relatively harmless. Most Muslims, on the other hand, as a mild example, believe that apostasy should be punishable by death. All the statistics indicate this.
Posted by: Jamie | November 26, 2007 4:14 PM
Well Bah Humbug, I am serious when I say all who go about with Religious Fundimentalism upon their lips should be boiled in their own pudding and have a stake of the Olive Branch shoved through their hearts. I am sick and tired of hearing about the &^%&^$%#@^*&)&(&* Nutcase Muslims, when will they be forced to come out of the stone age and read their own Book of the Prophet, if that is what they want, the Stone Age, then I say let's bomb them back into it. All Muslims, thank GOD, are not Insane. Now that being said I believe that all Religion has ever done for the world is create lunacy and extremism. Mankind is not smart enough apparently to live it's existence without a crutch.
Posted by: Barry | November 26, 2007 4:28 PM
The Christians believe that too, and it says as much in their book. We just have a society of laws that forces them to behave. As soon as that isn't there, they're at least as gleeful about killing heretics as the Muslims are.
Posted by: Dustin | November 26, 2007 4:36 PM
Theory = 'races seperated by over 40,000 years of evolutionary history and facing wildly divergent selection pressures magically evolved identical IQ levels'. That is creationism at its worst, and it's what Myers believes.
Posted by: andromeda | November 26, 2007 4:44 PM
The Xian bible says that
1. Disobedient children should be stoned to death at the city gates (Deuteronomy).
2. Witches should be put to death.
Neither happens very often these days. There are civil laws that keep them from murdering their kids or alleged witches. In a theocracy, both might be more common.
Posted by: raven | November 26, 2007 4:46 PM
Why aren't the Christians rounding up all the latinos named Jesus? Religious fundamentalism is fun!
Posted by: zer0 | November 26, 2007 4:48 PM
A teddy bear? Oh my aching stigmata! Will the wonders of stupidity never cease?
On the other hand...
Well, yes, but... but no. It's critical to understand the subtle nuances of arbitrary religious symbolic boundaries. It's not okay to name a perfectly innocent child's cuddly toy after the prophet, but it's perfectly okay to name a mewling, drooling, pooping
tabula rasabundle ofsinjoy after the prophet.I suppose I'll be stoned to death for naming my piccolo "Allah Breve".
Posted by: Kseniya | November 26, 2007 4:51 PM
And what races would those be?
Posted by: tim gueguen | November 26, 2007 4:51 PM
My question was of course in response to the last post by this "andromeda" person.
Posted by: tim gueguen | November 26, 2007 4:53 PM
"Seperated[sic] by over 40,000 years"? I've always wondered where that idea came from. Were humans distributed along racial clines all enforcing anti-miscegenation laws or something?
How about "humans have been interbreeding and interacting liberally for tens of thousands of years and in the absence of some kind of (magical) genetic isolation mechanism we'd expect similar capabilities distributed throughout"?
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 26, 2007 4:53 PM
Posted by: SEF | November 26, 2007 5:02 PM
WEll, I think I've seen enough fruit this evening to make a fruitcake.
Posted by: guthrie | November 26, 2007 5:04 PM
The millions Britain pays to get her out should be spent on sending a rapid reaction force there to slaughter these stupid bastards at the same time, and make the Sudan a protectorate again. Or dig a Vulcan bomber out of a museum somewhere and use it to rain twenty thousand pounds of teddy bears down on the place. Take your pick.
It's a trumped up charge against an innocent woman; proof that even those who go to a place solely to do good cannot escape the wrath of the Islamist Fuckhead Society. (As if the beheading of left-wing aid workers in Iraq wasn't proof enough.)
If I were an imam, I'd have put out a fatwa on these bloody idiots already. Or on the teddy bear.
Posted by: Justin Moretti | November 26, 2007 5:05 PM
"Clearly, all of those 7-year-olds need to be hauled out of their homes and stoned to death."
Don't give the "gathering young men" ideas. Perhaps they won't think of that themselves.
Posted by: Piotr Gasiorowski | November 26, 2007 5:10 PM
'races seperated by over 40,000 years of evolutionary history and facing wildly divergent selection pressures magically evolved identical IQ levels'
And precisely the same magical number of fingers and toes!
Posted by: CJO | November 26, 2007 5:11 PM
Or what about the idea that our linguistic and cognitive abilities evolved prior to the divergences that account for the superficial differences between races? How about that intelligence (being coded for at a large number of loci) could be under stabilising selective pressures, and thus would remain roughly consistent under a thousand generations.
I mean, we've all got the same number of legs, arms, fingers and toes, and that didn't happen by magic. The evolution of the human brain from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees (~5-7 MYA) to tool using (~2.5 MYA) took 4.5 to 2.5 million years. How fucking fast do you think brains evolve, anyway?
At any rate, there is no reasonable need to rehash this argument. And since there is no valid scientific reason to abandon the hypothesis that there is no significant difference in intelligence among 'races', your comparison of a person who does not to a creationist is frankly wrong.
How is it that the people who argue the hardest for intelligence differences between the 'races' seem the stupidest, anyway?
Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 26, 2007 5:17 PM
ow about "humans have been interbreeding and interacting liberally for tens of thousands of years and in the absence of some kind of (magical) genetic isolation mechanism we'd expect similar capabilities distributed throughout"? mostly seperate. most british people today are descended form the origninal inhabitants. any interactions that occur are at the extreme periphery.
Posted by: andromeda | November 26, 2007 5:18 PM
If adults in authority can get away with equating a teddy bear with the thoroughly dead prophet, then I'm with George Carlin: religion is mental illness.
Posted by: Watt de Fawke | November 26, 2007 5:26 PM
Like the Gauls, who inhabited a large swath of western Europe and were the progenitors of the "original" Celts? And don't even get me started on those Normans and Saxons. All dirtying up them pure Anglos.
No, no interbreeding there at all.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 26, 2007 5:33 PM
I better not say what I call my piggybank!
Posted by: Ross Nixon | November 26, 2007 5:35 PM
Mr Shrek is British, Geordie to be precise, and my in-laws are the most in-bred lot I've ever met.
Posted by: Bride of Shrek | November 26, 2007 5:40 PM
It's England, not Australia. People have bloody well swum the channel, and it was narrower in the not so distant past. Armadas have invaded England, raped, conquered and settled the 'English' for two thousand years. It is one of the worst examples of a genetically isolated population outside of the Mediterranean area.
Posted by: Kerlyssa | November 26, 2007 5:41 PM
You know, considering that scientific racism fits PZ's description of creationism, as analogous to a football team that's lost every game but still demands it be given a place at the superbowl and cries foul when it isn't, at least as well as most creationists do, that comparison is exactly 180 degrees wrong and 100% ironic.
Posted by: Azkyroth | November 26, 2007 5:43 PM
What is the "leftist race-creationist camp"?
A group of liberals who creates races?
I like this one today, too:
(11-26) 12:00 PST SAN JOSE - A South Bay psychic and fortune teller known as "Miss Donna" has been charged with bilking $445,000 from a woman by telling her she was cursed and needed to pay up so she would be cleansed of evil, prosecutors said today.
Posted by: MikeM | November 26, 2007 5:55 PM
Eric Turkheimer on Cato Unbound says that the research program that races differ in genes for IQ is wrong because it reinforces negative stereotypes about an historically disadvantaged population. I think that he is right.
http://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/11/21/eric-turkheimer/race-and-iq/
Turkheimer, incidentally, conducted important research on the relationship between socioeconomic status and heritability of IQ.
Posted by: Colugo | November 26, 2007 5:59 PM
Posted by: SEF | November 26, 2007 6:02 PM
I hate to feed the troll but andomeda has come up with an ingenious way to excuse his obviously meager IQ. Blame it on his race, whatever that may be.
The British are pretty mixed due to sequential invasions by the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Norman French, and the current influx of Asians and Blacks. The preRoman population, celts, are themselves relatively recent immigrants from the continent. The language, English, is itself a recent derivative of Old German.
So what is wrong with being ethnically mixed? Many or most Americans are so wildly mixed that it has long since ceased to be either interesting or important. FWIW, geneticists identify mixing of various populations with a phenomena called hybrid vigor. This is why, for instance, most corn is double hybrid and why mutt dogs are considered the most intelligent. Hmmmm, maybe andromeda's problem isn't an inferior racial (best guess, Trollish) background. Maybe he is just too inbred.
Posted by: raven | November 26, 2007 6:03 PM
Like, wow. That is one of the more spectacular self-immolations I've witnessed here.
Posted by: PZ Myers | November 26, 2007 6:07 PM
Add in Christianity and Judaism and pretty much every other religion and you'd be completely right. They're frequently a bunch of nutters and more than willing to kill for what they believe in.
Look at the history of most any Mennonite family and find out how many were killed for their beliefs. Quite a few in mine. Even here in America where that stuff isn't supposed to happen. Which is why huge swaths of Mennonites left the United States for Canada and up-state New York, where they were safer from religious extremists in the more populous parts of the colonies.
And, of course, the harassment of the Mormons, including the lynching of their founder, across the United States into the wilderness of Utah. And then, it's not like the Mormons have clean hands with their "Mountain Meadows" scandal. They're well known to have brutally butchered 120 men, women and children on the way to California.
And, of course, abortion provider killings. Bombing of doctor's offices. The demands for "biblical" law.
Posted by: Moses | November 26, 2007 6:07 PM
Perhaps by 'original inhabitants' Andromeda really means 'kinds'.
That would make the truthfullness of the claim on par with the rest of the creationists' bullshit. At least we now know why Andromeda's so pissed off at PZ for being anti-religion and anti-creationist.
What Andy really means to say is, "I know you are but what am I?"
Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 26, 2007 6:08 PM
Yes, but they never cease. Humans fuck, almost like bonobos. Which is why all human variance is clinal.
The only reproductively isolated group of humans ever were the inhabitants of Easter Island for about 400 years. It would make a lot more sense to divide humanity into two races, Native Easter Islander and Everyone Else, than any other scheme that has ever been advanced (and dozens, if not hundreds, of contradictory schemes have been proposed, and often religiously believed in).
Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | November 26, 2007 6:10 PM
The 'offending' school has now been closed until January. Sharia barbarism 2, rationality and education, 0.
Posted by: Peter McGrath | November 26, 2007 6:13 PM
...young men had already started gathering outside the Khartoum police station...
Now, before you criticise these young men, remember that they are motivated by faith, just like scientists! Right?
Posted by: windy | November 26, 2007 6:13 PM
andromeda,
care to elaborate?
Although DNA research as shown that, in the areas where used, that local inhabitants lines can be traced back to prehistoric there is also a large amount of new blood coming in (well apart from in Norfolk where rumour has it a descendant of the beaker tribes is looked at funny) eg, well the amesbury archer (to save you the effort a skeleton found at stonehenge dating back to 3200 bc who lived in the alps as a child.
Posted by: kevinj | November 26, 2007 6:14 PM
Disturbing number of people reaching for fantasy ordinance.
Posted by: Don | November 26, 2007 6:21 PM
You're presenting England as isolated? Really? They've been invaded and colonized by pretty much the entirety of Europe. Ever notice how similar German is to English? That's because the Anglo-Saxons were originally made up of by invading Germanic tribes, and they only came after the Romans, who weren't the original inhabitants either. Not that it was one tribe, either - that apostrophe is there for a reason. The Angles and the Saxons were separate tribes.
Then of course you have your various Danes, your Franks, your Norse, and your Normans - who owed their origins to both France and Scandinavia.
I look forward to seeing what you come with next. There's nothing quite like misinformation tetherball.
Posted by: Master Mahan | November 26, 2007 6:22 PM
I bought that book. Everyone was a-twitter about it and I wanted to see it for myself.
I've also bought books by Robert Bork, Al Franken, Burdick & Lederer (The Ugly American), Michael Moore, Dinesh D'Souza and a bunch more. I find them interesting and like to delve into the footnotes, the arguments, the logic, etc.
Some have been good books (Franken's), or entertaining (Moore) and some have been bat-shit crazy (Bork). Even when I don't agree with the entire premise of an author's position, I can sometimes see some validities in claims against the "opposition," even if they're massively over-stated.
Unfortuantly, The Bell Curve was probably the hardest to see the BS in. Mostly because it was deliberately obfiscated/wanked in so many areas that I didn't know where to start shoveling the shit.
But I did like the way they sold thier "blacks are inferior" argument. Not by attacking blacks at first, but by attacking poor whites. I thought it was a clever way to pull the wool over the eyes of others.
Posted by: Moses | November 26, 2007 6:22 PM
When is Coathangrrrr going to come in and scold us for ridiculing Muslims?
Posted by: Stevie_C | November 26, 2007 6:28 PM
By the way, if anyone wants to read a good treatment of English history, I recommend Warren Ellis' Crecy. It's an enjoyable read, told from the perspective of an English longbowman and filled with details such as how the longbowmen dipped their arrows in the latrine for a bit of biological warfare. It also has swearing.
Posted by: Master Mahan | November 26, 2007 6:33 PM
I suspect as soon as he/she/it is done hashing out the ethics of removing lint from one's navel elsewhere on the intertubes.
Posted by: Dustin | November 26, 2007 6:33 PM
:LOL: That was frackin' funny. England had one of the most diverse ethnic backgrounds. Starting with Celts, Britons and Picts, who inter-bred like crazy, the population was further diversified with the Romans.
Following the collapse of Roman rule, England was invaded by the Anglos, the Saxons, the Jutes, and the Frisians who conquered and divided much of England amongst them. This remained, pretty much, status quo until about 800AD when the Vikings invaded and colonized much of England, especially in Northumbria and spread their genes far and wide.
By the 10th Century or so, much of England was under the control of the Danes. The Normans got into the picture in the 12th Century.
The point being that England is a hodge-podge of Northern European ethnic origins. Hardly some "pure bred" race.
Posted by: Moses | November 26, 2007 6:39 PM
I understand completely. I study the various species of wingnuts because it's a great way to train one of God greatest gifts (sic), critical thinking. They're like logic problems written by the severely disturbed.
Posted by: Master Mahan | November 26, 2007 6:52 PM
Wow. see what you miss when you go away for a few hours?
First off: Sudan is not alone in being a theocracy.
See Also: Iran. Saudi Arabia is not far behind as the royal family can't ignore the clerics without setting up a religious revolution. The United States is still quite a ways from a theocracy, so long as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights stand. Get rid of either of those documents and it'll be game over before you can blink.
Posted by: DLC | November 26, 2007 7:05 PM
I know that I am stating the obvious here but andromeda is one of the most ignorant trolls to show up here. Betty is more intelligent. (While being more deluded.) Making an argument about the British Isles while knowing nothing about the history of the British Isles. Truly staggering.
If one is going to try to make the racist argument about the Anglo-Saxons, at least know the history. Thought one would be hopeful that such historical knowledge would knock the racist leanings from you.
Posted by: Janine | November 26, 2007 7:14 PM
Andromeda may have misunderstood some reports saying the historical migrations had less impact than believed.
"In The Tribes of Britain, archaeologist David Miles says around 80 percent of the genetic characteristics of most white Britons have been passed down from a few thousand Ice Age hunters."
Needless to say this is not the last word on British genetics, some studies have found a huge Saxon impact (and if you think "around 80% of most" counts as purebred, I have some puppies to sell you...)
Posted by: windy | November 26, 2007 7:14 PM
I've noticed a common them here among scientific racists, creationists, and climate change denialists.
As a general rule, they tend to glom on to the ideas of the lone or few who dissent from the general scientific consensus and insist that the rarity of said dissenters and the paucity of their refereed scholarship is due to The Great Censorship Conspiracy of Academia. Secondly, they respond to any criticism of such dissenters with some vague ad hominem attack accusing the critic of an inability to think outside the PC/liberal/leftist box (because, um, it takes a really novel, free-thinking mind to suggest that people of a different ethnicity or race might be somehow sub-par).
Unfortunately, in nearly every case I've seen here, the general level of knowledge demonstrated by the 'free-thinkers' outside of what they've read in The Bell Curve or on Climate Audit is nearly nil.
For people who like to accuse others of dogmatism, they give every indication of being dilletantes who happened to stumble upon a book or resource that validates their racism, creationism, or climate change denialism.
Haven't these people ever heard of getting a second opinion?
Posted by: Brownian, OM | November 26, 2007 7:16 PM
The only reproductively isolated group of humans ever were the inhabitants of Easter Island for about 400 years.
A bit OT, but Tasmanians were possibly isolated for thousands of years.
Posted by: windy | November 26, 2007 7:19 PM
For some off-topic comic relief, Tyler DiPietro has a nice rendition of "Shorter Bill Dembski":
Read the original at your own risk, and be alert for Teh Burning Stupid.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | November 26, 2007 7:20 PM
I don't think Muslims are any more deranged by their faith than any other large religious subset of the total human population of this planet. What you do have are cultures in certain states which are more prone to extremism and violence. The fact that some claim to be carrying out violent and oppressive acts in the name of Islam does not mean that adoption the faith automatically turns all its followers violent.
As for andromeda's comment about British descent, speaking as a Brit, my first response is that I'm happy to acknowledge we're a bastard 'race'.
My second response is, bollocks!
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | November 26, 2007 7:23 PM
DLC, Saudi Arabia is 'not far behind'. Saudi Arabia is a theocracy. Those clerics have free ride over the population. And look at the fruits. Most of the September 11 terrorists were Saudi. Most of the leaders of Al Quada are Saudi. Most of the terrorist entering Iraq in the wake of the American invasion are Saudi.
I am not even touching on the treatment of women. Just keep in mind US military women are not allowed to drive there. (But the Southern Baptists must be jealous.)
This one of the great allies of the US.
Posted by: Janine | November 26, 2007 7:23 PM
The only reproductively isolated group of humans ever were the inhabitants of Easter Island for about 400 years.
What about Tasmania? IIRC it was home to the longest-isolated group of people known.
Posted by: Abbie | November 26, 2007 7:31 PM
It would be nice if there were an edit feature. I had the wrong name; it is Brenda, not Betty.
Posted by: Janine | November 26, 2007 7:38 PM
But the Juto-Frisians had really poor press agents - there's a lesson there...
Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | November 26, 2007 7:48 PM
Perhaps the teacher is in trouble because she was teaching the kids how to vote - a dangerous idea!
Posted by: Coturnix | November 26, 2007 8:29 PM
There is a wonderful book, Before the Dawn (2003) by Nicolas Wade which describes many aspects of human evolution from the emergence of Homo sap. in eastern Africa to the beginnings of recorded history. In a broad sweep, Neanderthals were replaced by behaviorally modern humans in Europe, perhaps as late as 15,000 ybp in the Iberian peninsula. Agriculture spread from the Fertile Crescent rapidly across Europe at the end of the Younger Dryas, but, the techniques spread, the genes of the early practitioners by and large, did not. There is a remarkable degree of 'regionality' of certain genetic markers-- see the afore mentioned reference for greater detail. I will try to pick up this thread tomorrow, but, flittering off to write lectures for an 8:30 A.M. class.
Posted by: mothra | November 26, 2007 8:37 PM
Unfortunately, the operative word is was. The last pure-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine died over a century ago, thanks to colonists from Ye Olde Genetically Isolated England, and any remaining descendants are part British as well.
Of better or for worse, the handful of 'uncontacted peoples' are pretty much the only remaining places you can find any vague degree of genetic isolation, and they're not very practical for testing. Sentinelese tend to be a bit too hostile to take an IQ test.
Posted by: Master Mahan | November 26, 2007 8:49 PM
It's not just the dogma that makes people nuts. You have to wonder what sort of lives these people are living where they have nothing better to do than go down to the local precinct and threaten someone who's already locked up.
Posted by: Molly, NYC | November 26, 2007 10:10 PM
That sounds interesting, but what exactly is the relevance? Is it just an interesting sidenote, or is this intended to bolster the arguments of fork-tongued fuckwits like andromeda who argue that a person's skin color is a predictor of their IQ and various other traits, and accuse people who deny their very specific claims about what "race" comprises and implies of believing that heredity does not exist?
Posted by: Azkyroth | November 26, 2007 10:58 PM
Make that "..and various other traits, and pretend that people who dispute their very specific claims about what "race" comprises and implies are actually arguing that heredity does not exist at all?" I second the wishful thinking about an edit button, but it'd probably cause more problems than it solves, especially if comments are reviewed...
Posted by: Azkyroth | November 26, 2007 11:02 PM
re. #s 56 (David Marjanovic)
#72 and #76 were correct, #81 brings in a red herring. David did write 'only...ever', so Tassie must have slipped his mind.Given the small size of the effective population before contact (and consequent low genetic variability, it can be inferred), the absence of extant 'pure-blooded' (sic) Tasmanians probably doesn't mean much additional genetic diversity has been lost there... except for Tasmanian Y chromosomes, which are probably completely extinct.
Isolation occurred at some unknown time after the end-Pleistocene sea-level rise, either when Bass Strait became unnavigable in bark canoes or when the Tasmanian population lost that technology - unless occasional mainlanders got blown south from time to time, which I concede is not totally unlikely over such a long timescale.
Posted by: John Scanlon, FCD | November 26, 2007 11:44 PM
And won't YOU feel bad when they actually do it.
Posted by: Stoic | November 27, 2007 12:44 AM