Politics
evolvingthoughts | July 11, 2008
When does a person's religious beliefs constrain someone who is not religious? What sorts of redress can a religious person expect in a secular society?
These questions arise from the recent to-do about PZ Myers defense of the stealing of a communion wafer from a Catholic church. As a result, he got death threats, attempts to have him fired from his university position, and general abuse while the correspondents were simultaneously affirming the niceness of Catholics [see here, here and here for example]. Meanwhile, the Catholic Cardinal of Sydney, George Pell, appears not to have learned…
clock | July 11, 2008I guess it is unlikely you have not already heard about the big brouhaha that erupted when Bill Donohue targeted PZ Myers for showing disrespect towards a belief that made some religious nuts go crazy and violent against a child (yes, Eucharist is just a cracker, sorry, but that is just a factual statement about the world). If not, the entire story, and it is still evolving, can be found on PZ's blog so check out the numerous comments here, here,
here, here, here, here and here.
Also see what Greg Laden and Tristero say. [Update: see also John Wilkins and Mike Dunford for some good clear…
pharyngula | July 11, 2008The Catholic League has issued another press release. In addition to disparaging the theory of evolution as the "King Kong Theory of Creation" (which is a bit peculiar, since Catholicism does not take a stand against evolution), he accuses me and my ilk (that's you, fair readers) of hysteria while making this hysterical declaration:
As a result of the hysteria that Myers' ilk have promoted, at least one public official is taking it seriously. Thomas E. Foley is chairman of Virginia's First Congressional District Republican Committee, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and one of…
pharyngula | July 11, 2008While everyone here is distracted by the debate over whether a cracker is tasteless bread dough or a sacred slice of man/god meat, the right-wing source of outrage du jour is a widely published photograph of an Iranian missile test in which one of the missiles was clearly photoshopped into the picture. Gary Farber cuts through the crap and points out that yes, government propaganda agencies will lie to you. So?
If the right wing wants to fuel more hysteria to incite war with Iran, though, it seems like a mistake on their part to emphasize that one quarter of their weaponry are digital…
drorzel | July 11, 2008Tobias Buckell brought the whole sordid racist rejection letter episode to my attention a couple of days ago. This has apparently decided to become the "Violet Blue" episode for this week, and today, Toby dredges through the sewers of the Asimov's forums to find a few real gems of sexist and racist filth. I hadn't previously been aware that Asimov's hosted forums, and I can't say that this has inspired me to sign up.
Toby does make one important comment, though:
I know this stuff feels tiring, but there are a lot of cool people out there in the blogosphere who are just as annoyed by this.…
pharyngula | July 10, 2008This is horrible news. Some faction of the religious right has called for a boycott of McDonald's fast-food — because they were a sponsor of the 2007 San Francisco gay pride parade. They claim it's not about hiring homosexuals, or allowing homosexuals to eat at McDonald's, or about how homosexual employees are treated, but is instead:
It is about McDonald's, as a corporation, refusing to remain neutral in the culture wars. McDonald's has chosen not to remain neutral but to give the full weight of their corporation to promoting the homosexual agenda, including homosexual marriage.
Oh. They…
drorzel | July 10, 2008Via Matt Yglesias, the following pair of pictures purports to show that "an equal number of people can fit into a vastly smaller space if they're riding a bus than if they're in single passenger cars." See if you can spot the problem:
Answer below the fold:
The bus picture is on a vastly different scale than the car picture, greatly exaggerating the size of the effect.
I'm not denying the effect, mind-- just lamenting the deceptive photo editing used to make it look larger than it is. And the hell of it is, it's pointless stupid photo editing. The same point would be made by properly cropped…
razib | July 9, 2008I don't post much about "politics in the news" because I almost never (OK, never) have anything value-added to say. That being said, I do want add something to the Jesse Jackson comment about wanting to cut off Barack Obama's testicles. Many people are framing this at Jackson's irritation at Obama talking down to black people and putting a specific focus on their social pathologies as opposed to broader societal dynamics. I think it is important to remember that Jesse Jackson isn't an exemplar of bourgeois probity himself (unlike Obama, at least what we know of him). He had an…
razib | July 9, 2008Most Americans are not aware that Herbert Hoover's Vice President, Charles Curtis, was 3/8 Native American and spent time on the Kaw reservation as a youth. He was also a Kansan. NPR has a piece up which looks back at this historical footnote.
pharyngula | July 9, 2008Here's a much more serious issue than a goddamned cracker: it's the steady accumulation of military power in religious hands. It's not overt policy, but we should be worried that there is an increasing association between religiosity and military service — an association between credulity and obscene amounts of physical power. Jeremy Hall is discovering this first-hand.
Hall grew up reading the Bible every night and saying grace at dinner. Then, after his first tour of duty, he met some friends who were atheist and decided to read the Bible again. He read the whole Bible, and had so many…
clock | July 9, 2008There is a new (temporary) blog on scienceblogs.com - Next Generation Energy:
For the next three months, Seed editors and a hand-picked team of guest bloggers will delve into energy policies of all kinds--from carbon capture to windmills.
Every Wednesday, we'll post a new topic or question about alternative energy on the blog. In the days following, our expert guess bloggers will post their answers to the question, and respond to questions and comments from readers.
So without further ado, here's our first week's question:
Our oil supplies are down. And with rising concerns of global food…
clock | July 9, 2008You can watch John Edwards give a keynote address about "The Challenge of Reducing Poverty" at the 2008 Campus Progress National Conference in Washington, DC. on C-Span3 and hear him talk about campaign and about poverty on NPR's Talk of the Nation.
laelaps | July 9, 2008
A Wolf's Guenon (Cercopithecus wolfi). Photographed at the Bronx zoo on July 5th, 2008.
gregladen | July 8, 2008Ed Brayton (Dispatches form the Culture Wars) has this post with a video you should watch.
I have two reactions to this. First, it is absolutely fascinating to contemplate the change (assuming this guy, in the video, is accurate) in attitude i Britain, and the post-game analysis ... the extension of the "Irish Problem" by a decade and a half or more. The statement thatPhillippe Sands is making is truly astounding from the historical perspective for anyone who remembers the IRA and Britain in the 1970s and early 80s.
The second point he makes is to not call the current conflict a "war on…
terrasig | July 7, 2008Well, I didn't exactly plan to break my silence with a non-science post but a couple of you asked if I had any comments on the passing of Senator Helms. Frankly, I was already going into the US Independence Day weekend with a bit of melancholia, feeling very much like the Philadelphia Inquirer's Chris Satullo in his not-so-glorious-Fourth essay.
Then Jesse Helms died on the 4th and I had to hear about "the passing of a great patriot," and any number of hypocritical invocations of God ("America has lost a great friend, but Heaven has gained another of the great cloud of witnesses. We stand on…
clock | July 7, 2008My friend, neighbor and uber-blogger Pam Spaulding, has an article about her in today's New & Observer. Very nice! Good read. And also, Happy Birthday, Pam - what a great present you got from the corporate media today ;-)