Category: Uncategorized

The allegations of abuse of a girl is no excuse for kidnapping hundreds of children and breaking up their families:

The leader of the Yearning For Zion Ranch says he doesn’t understand how the government could sweep in and seize all their children based on an unproven allegation.

“This whole situation is abusive and out of hand,” said Merril Jessop, a presiding elder in the FLDS Church. “The nearest thing I have ever seen comparable to this, even on the TV shows, is Nazi Germany.”

“The only thing we ask of the governor and citizens of Texas,” Jessop said, “is to give every man, woman and child due process and an attorney before they destroy their lives.”

As usual, good intentions pave the road to Hell. The irony is that those who are supportive the government seizing these children on the basis of allegations of a sexually abused fifteen-year old are often the same people who argue a fifteen-year old girl is mature enough to have sex and get an abortion without parental consent. Now, I’m not a big fan of the Mormon religion or its variants myself. But that doesn’t mean that it is right to look the other way as these Americans’ unalienable and Constitutional rights are trampled and their children are forcibly kidnapped by government agents!

About the only positive thing you can say about it is that unlike Waco, the government forces didn’t kill them all. This is not America, this is the decaying corpse of what was once America. How long will it be before the first child is seized based on evidence of abuse that consists of ownership of a book that advocates the “hitting” a misbehaving child?

Here is Charles Krauthammer’s Holocaust Declaration referred to in today’s column:

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran.

This should be followed with a simple explanation: “As a beacon of tolerance and as leader of the free world, the United States will not permit a second Holocaust to be perpetrated upon the Jewish people.”

This policy — the Holocaust Declaration — would establish a firm benchmark that would outlive this administration. Every future president — and every serious presidential candidate — would have to publicly state whether or not he supports the Holocaust Declaration.

In other words, Krauthammer wants to establish the United States as the Praetorian Guard for the Jewish people, risking its national interest in order to pretend that it is a beacon of tolerance. As I noted in today’s column, this is a complete non-starter for a variety of reasons… chief among them the fact that Israel is not, as Krauthammer describes it, an “allied democracy”. It is not an ally at all. The idea that the USA has “no more pressing cause” than defending Israel has far more to do with Krauthammer’s loyalties than it does with anything even remotely resembling reality.

You can seldom reach more perfect heights of nonsense than when atheists attempt to cite historical justification for their paranoid projections about the Christian thirst for atheist blood. Since it’s hard to say whether they’re weaker on logic or history, combining the two makes for the ultimate entertainment. From ExecutedToday, courtesy of the Carnival of the Godless:

1689: Kazimierz Lyszczynski, the first Polish atheist

On this date in 1689, in a Warsaw marketplace, Kazimierz Lyszczynski had his tongue torn out, his head struck off and his body burned to ashes which were shot from a cannon — all for scratching a few words with the whiff of atheism.

Consider a few facts:

1. Poland is generally considered to have converted to Christianity in 966.
2. The first “atheist” was executed only 723 years later.
3. Kazimierz Lyszczynski vehemently denied being an atheist and there is no evidence that he actually was one.
4. Pope Innocent XI condemned the affair.

Naturally, this sad incident is cited as some sort of example of the dire danger which theists pose atheists should a new Dark Ages of religious oppression ever arise. Never mind that the Lyszczynski execution took place 689 years after the Dark Ages are considered to have ended, if they had ever existed at all. Which, according to the historical consensus of the last 70 years, they didn’t.

Mr Kohnstamm, whose book is titled Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?, said yesterday that he had worked on more than a dozen books for Lonely Planet, including its titles on Brazil, Colombia, the Caribbean, Venezuela, Chile and South America.

In one case, he said he had not even visited the country he wrote about.

“They didn’t pay me enough to go Colombia,” he said.

“I wrote the book in San Francisco. I got the information from a chick I was dating – an intern in the Colombian Consulate.

This doesn’t surprise me at all. Most readers would be shocked at how little editing takes place in the publishing world. Based on my experience with one of the largest fiction publishing houses, I can say that while they’ll spend eighteen months making a decision about publishing a book proposal for which they approached YOU in the first place, once you turn in the first and final draft, they’ll let one underpaid editor fresh out of college spend a week or two going over the manuscript. If you’re lucky, a second one might line-edit it and correct your punctuation errors.

If you don’t believe me, just consider the size of the first Harry Potter book compared to the last one. Do you really think it got any editing? Does it read like it was edited?

There is no way a travel book gets fact-checked. It would cost too much. I’ve lived in Europe for a decade and I don’t think I’ve looked at a travel book since the first year we were here and we visited Florence and Verona. Unless you like reading them for the fiction, they serve little point now that you can look up hotels on the Internet.

Scott Hatfield asks about my interest in EXPELLED beyond the subject matter:

I’m pretty sure you are interested in the question of who is lying and who is telling the truth. Perhaps you, Vox, would care to address the question of why those interviewed are correct/incorrect in claiming that the filmmakers misrepresented their intent?

Based on admittedly incomplete evidence, I believe that Dawkins and PZ Myers are entirely correct in saying that the producers of EXPELLED misrepresented their intent to them. While this is a completely acceptable method of modern documentary-making, as evidenced by the award-winning documentaries of Michael Moore, I find it somewhat objectionable. However, since both Dawkins and Myers are too short-sighted and insecure about their beliefs to engage in open discourse with the majority of those who don’t agree with them – they’ve both publicly attempted to justify their refusals to engage with the opposition in the past – this sort of misrepresentation was almost inevitable for any critic attempting to get a straightforward answer out of them on the subject. In any event, whether you think this Moorean misrepresentation was justified or not, it doesn’t inherently invalidate anything about the film.

On the other hand, it’s clear that Dawkins is lying about various aspects of his contacts with the documentary’s producers. Dawkins is known to have lied before in similar circumstances, so this is not the first time that he has attempted to put a retroactive spin on his previous remarks and actions. He’s not just a known liar, but an admitted one now, as indicated by both his attempt to claim that the false details were minor as well as his subsequent apology. But then, Dawkins’s lying doesn’t inherently validate anything about the film either.

I haven’t read much about PZ’s part in this little slap-fight, so I don’t have an opinion there. But aside from his wildly inaccurate statements about me, which I tend to regard as personal opinion rather than serious statements of fact, I can’t recall any signs that PZ is prone to the sort of habitual dishonesty that Dawkins exhibits in certain situations. I’m not sure that PZ always realizes when he’s said something remarkably stupid, but it seems to me that when he does notice, he’s much more prone to stubbornly defend his words than to deny he said them or retroactively claim an implausible interpretation for them.

Simon Barnes searches in vain for a moral standard by which he can condemn Max Mosley:

The allegations that he took part in a sado-masochistic orgy with five prostitutes, and the further allegations – which Mosley has denied – that the performance involved dressing up as Nazis and Jewish prisoners are not without their horrifying element. All the same, it is hard to put your finger on what Mosley has done wrong.

This is a perfect example of the moral warrant issue which so trips up the New Atheists, especially Christopher Hitchens. To Barnes’s credit, he recognizes that it’s not hard to find a moral offense in a married man cavorting with multiple prostitutes from a religious perspective; I confess to being a bit mystified where the violation of feminist morality might have been.

I should be interested if any of the non-believers here perceive any moral offense in the Mosley situation, and if so, just what it might be.

I was aghast to hear my four year old daughter playing with her dolls the other day. The dolls are not the problem; the story line was. Tuning in and out while she nattered on, I suddenly realized the dialogue went something like this:

First Princess: “Oh no! The evil witch is coming. We need Prince Sean!” (Sean is the boy she’s all but stalking at preschool).

Second Princess: “Oh! She’ll cut our guts out. Where are the boys? We need boys.”

FP: “Girls aren’t strongly brave. We shall die! Who will save us? Oh! It’s the prince. He’ll save us.”

All in a high-pitched and annoying ditzy soprano. It got so much worse than this, I had to sit her down for a chat. Where on earth was she getting this stuff?

I pummel her and her 7-year-old brother with feminist analysis of every medium they encounter, from billboards to story books to cereal boxes. I’m a single mom with a freelance career; they watch me struggle and kick ass everyday, all without help from a ‘prince.’ Yet, my daughter argues furiously with me that only boys are strong and brave and tough. She was actually offended when I called her a tough cookie after she’d done something cool. “I’m not tough, Mom! I’m a girl.”

It’s stupid to fight Mother Nature. You can do it for a while, but she’ll always wear you out in the end. It’s also hilarious to hear these strong, independent women trying to talk male. Ladies, you simply cannot struggle and kick ass at the same time. And by the way, what sort of feminist allows her daughter to play with dolls in the first place?

The Eligible Bachelor Paradox explained:

You can think of this traditional concept of the search for marriage partners as a kind of an auction. In this auction, some women will be more confident of their prospects, others less so. In game-theory terms, you would call the first group “strong bidders” and the second “weak bidders.” Your first thought might be that the “strong bidders”—women who (whether because of looks, social ability, or any other reason) are conventionally deemed more of a catch—would consistently win this kind of auction.

But this is not true. In fact, game theory predicts, and empirical studies of auctions bear out, that auctions will often be won by “weak” bidders, who know that they can be outbid and so bid more aggressively, while the “strong” bidders will hold out for a really great deal. You can find a technical discussion of this here…. This is how you come to the Eligible-Bachelor Paradox, which is no longer so paradoxical. The pool of appealing men shrinks as many are married off and taken out of the game, leaving a disproportionate number of men who are notably imperfect (perhaps they are short, socially awkward, underemployed). And at the same time, you get a pool of women weighted toward the attractive, desirable “strong bidders.”

Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.

This is quite useful and I wish I’d taken the time to apply the game theory for myself since it describes precisely what I’ve observed and been commenting upon for a few years now. Some women of my acquaintance that were extraordinarily strong bidders in their middle twenties later ended up marrying men who simply weren’t the caliber of the men who were competing for their attention a decade prior, while those who still haven’t married are now contemplating choices between various men, none of whom would have gotten a second look from them 15 years ago.

Men always understand that desirable women have options. Women seem to have a harder time understanding that desirable men do too. Note that decisiveness here does not apply to one’s character, merely the strength of one’s bid. If one woman has 30 points of attraction and is competing with a woman with 50 such points, she will nevertheless have the competitive advantage when she goes all in if her rival only puts in a mathematically half-hearted effort.

The economic key to successfully finding and marrying a mate you find desirable, then, is to go all in once you have found an individual that meets your criteria rather than obsessively comparing various satisfactory options in hopes of determining the ideal one. And it should be noted that by “going all in” I do not mean “acting like a stalker”.

You know, there just might be a book in this sort of thing….

I previously asserted that Richard Dawkins couldn’t last 5 minutes in a debate of The God Delusion with me. After reading this account of his encounter with Mark Mathis, the producer of the movie EXPELLED, I think I may have been a bit too generous. Dawkins is the proverbial example of a man who is intellectually crippled by his short-sighted refusal to listen to substantive criticism:

Dawkins: Why were you dishonest about the film you were going to make?! We were lead to believe that you were going to present a fair account of evolution.

[Richard Dawkins is now bouncing up like a man on a string to launch his charges. He then fades into his seat when a proper, logical explanation is given.]

Mathis: Mr. Dawkins, that’s precisely what we have done. We’ve presented a fair account of the academic persecution that goes on across America and indeed the world when a scientist dares to disagree with the Darwinian view.
Dawkins: You were not forthcoming with me that you were making a film that involved people who claim they have been persecuted!

Mathis: Professor Dawkins, I contacted you by e-mail prior to our interview. You quizzed me on all of the questions in your backyard for a half hour before we sat down with the cameras. After the interview you signed our release and accepted a generous payment for your time (Laughter). I think we were very fair with you.

Mathis: By the way Mr. Dawkins, I want to tell you that what you said on Atheist Radio not long ago was completely untrue. You tried to take credit for setting up our second interview location at the British Museum of Natural History. I set up that location and it involved a tremendous amount of time and effort and a very large check. You also claimed on Atheist radio that you expected me to be doing the interview and not Mr. Stein, that you were duped again. I have a long e-mail record of my communication with you, explaining that following the success of The God Delusion Mr. Stein wanted to interview you himself. I sent you a list of Mr. Stein’s broad range of accomplishments. I can accept this situation as perhaps a lapse of memory, but what you said was not true.

Dawkins: Those are minor points.
Mathis: Not to me. You called me a liar on the radio (Laughter).

Dawkins: If that is the case then I offer you an apology.
Mathis: I accept.

(Brushing away a tear) It’s deeply touching, isn’t it? Now, I haven’t seen the movie, so I have no idea whether it makes a conclusive case against the scientific community or if it is the dishonest schlockfest that PZ Myers claims it to be. Since neither evolutionary biology nor professional squabbles over tenure in academia are of much interest to me, I don’t particularly care one way or the other; I am skeptical of the medium as a vehicle for anything but propaganda and emotional manipulation anyhow. Still, as a writer engaged in the religion/atheism debate, I find it completely unsurprising that atheism’s current champion should prove to be so incapable of defending himself against an attack, even in his area of nominal expertise. How could he, when he manifestly prefers wallowing in mindless adulation to studying his opponents and engaging them with an eye towards honing his arguments. Information about the enemy should always be treasured and studied in detail, not ignored. One would do very well to learn from his negative example.

And speaking of those who have no clue that just maybe the rest of the world doesn’t think precisely the way they do, John Scalzi’s attempt to explain to one disgruntled Whatever reader that she is not, in fact, the epicenter of humanity, is both funny and informative:

“Every time I’ve read the comments at your site, the people there come across as intelligent, open-minded, educated people. I find it hard to believe that there are actually that many who agree with Vox.”

Now, discovering who reads Whatever is an imperfect science — I’ve not taken a poll. But what I *do* have are piles and piles of stats, which tell me on a very granular level how many people visit, (relevant to this discussion) where they’re coming from when they visit, and who links to the site. These tell me that lots of folks come in from sites whose politics, social views, and general lifestyle preferences differ from mine, sometime dramatically. Are these majority? By no means — but, as an example, even before this week, about as many people came to visit my site from Vox Day’s blog as comment frequently on the site. If they chose to comment on the site on a daily basis, the tenor of the comment threads would be different. Over the last 30 days, the top five referring sites are Neil Gaiman’s, PZ Myers’, Glenn Reynolds’, Vox Day’s and the Nielsen Hayden’s. It’s an eclectic mix, to be sure, and all of those referrers are in the thousands of clicks, aggregate (and in the case of VD, was so before this week, too).

I had no idea Mr. Scalzi was so popular in these parts. No wonder his books sell so well, if his work harbors broad spectrum appeal to the Ilk, the Pharyngulans and the cult of the Tor Witch.

“You’ve got to put the video game away once in a while.”
– Barack Obama

You know, I might have been willing to overlook the socialist economics, the third-world affinities, the black supremacist ties, the foreign policy blather, the annoying wife, the mystic logic and the weird messiah complex. But now, Mr. Magic Negro, now you’ve simply gone too far! That’s just crazy talk!