Vox Popoli

The OC revives the Rebel Moon experiment:

Ergo, if you’d like to participate in this little experiment (and you’re willing to spend 4 bucks* to get a new copy of REBEL MOON) we’d appreciate it if you’d place your order on Saturday, July 28, 2007, preferably between the hours of midnight and noon U.S. Central time.

You want ’em signed? I can sign ’em. You want ’em personalized? You got that, too. As I said at the start: if anyone has any suggestions for making this offer more appealing, I am listening.

If you’re willing to dedicate $4 to science and the Amazon shareholders, do give it a whirl tomorrow.

Dr. PZ Myers can’t quite bring himself to embrace the claim:

I’m an atheist who thinks IQ tests are over-rated and over-interpreted, and here’s a Danish study that claims that atheists have IQs that average 5.8 points higher than theists’.

I expect that he is correct, actually given the obvious caveat of atheist self-identification. Atheists are a tiny fraction of the population, and the sort of individuals who were classified as atheists were almost surely High Church atheists who have enough of a predilection for abstract thought to identify themselves on the basis of their belief in the non-existence of God.

It’s interesting to note that atheism is such a destructive philosophy that these more intelligent, very law-abiding people are also less healthy, have fewer children, less satisfying sex, more divorces, are more likely to commit suicide, more likely to be depressed or addicted and live shorter lives.

Of course, 5.8 points is pretty close to the IQ difference between men and women:

A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests.

I find it interesting that so many atheists – including female atheists – spend so much time running around declaring that they are smarter than those stupid theists. But the male ones have got nearly as much scientific reason to declare that they are smarter than those stupid women, and even more to declare that they are smarter than those stupid blacks.

And yet they don’t. I wonder why?

Okay, so perhaps I’m not quite as done as I’d thought. I was in London and spotted Michel Onfray’s book, In Defence of Atheism. I’d considered addressing it in TIA, but at the time, the Italian version was the only one available that I could read and I didn’t think I had the time nor was it worth the energy of the translation.

After reading it, though, it absolutely demands a chapter. In the classic Continental style, Onfray rushes in and proudly declares atheists to be guilty of practically everything that Dawkins and company attempt to duck, dance around and othewise sweep under the carpet. It’s very French: “hatred of women is like a variation on the theme of hatred of intelligence”. And only an anti-semitic French communist who admires Foucault could manage to argue that Jews are anti-intelligence AND anti-science.

Atheists look stupid enough when they try to argue Christians are intrinsicly anti-science, asserting that Jews are too requires the myopic combination of ignorance and arrogance that only a French philosopher with a PhD can hope to manage.

American atheists will find Onfray to be tremendously embarrassing and even alarming, as he shrieks in defense of unabashed hedonism and attacks “christian atheists” (those who think that traditional Christian morals such as charity and honesty are moral imperatives) in almost exactly the same way that Sam Harris attacks religious moderates. Like Hitchens, he’s very worked up about circumcision, literally 2.5 percent of the book is dedicated to decrying what he believes to be the negative impact of circumcision on sexual pleasure.

He’s even more overblown than Harris, claiming that the list of atheists murdered by the Christian churches is “endless” in concluding a section on Spinoza, who was persecuted, although not murdered, by Jews. Better yet, he does so after DENYING that Spinoza was an atheist.

It’s impressive, in much the same way that watching cars pile up one after another on an icy highway is impressive.

Fat people aren’t jolly, they’re contagious:

If your friends and family get fat, chances are you will too, researchers report in a startling new study that suggests obesity is “socially contagious” and can spread easily from person to person. The large, federally funded study found that to be true even if your loved ones lived far away. Social ties seemed to play a surprisingly strong role, even more than genes are known to do.

“We were stunned to find that friends who are hundreds of miles away have just as much impact on a person’s weight status as friends who are right next door,” said co-author James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego.

The study found a person’s chances of becoming obese went up 57 percent if a friend did, 40 percent if a sibling did and 37 percent if a spouse did. In the closest friendships, the risk almost tripled.

Clearly the only reasonable answer is to ban fat people from all public places. If the dangers of secondhand smoke justifies kicking all the smokers outside, can we really afford to let virulent fatties from spreading their contagion to the general populace?

Temperatures have risen 9/10ths of one percent in Las Vegas since the 1960s! However, they have fallen 1.8 percent since the 1940s, 2.7 percent at their nadir.

Always check the numbers….

I haven’t finished the ultimate Harry Potter novel yet, so I can’t write a full review. However, I’m not sure I will manage to slog my way through it, as thus far, it’s even worse than the previous book in the series, which hitherto marked the low point. Sure, it the trek through Mordor got a bit tedious, but here, even the action is a yawn. Point-yell-miss… point-yell-stun! Red shirt dies, oh the horror!

Harry is becoming more and more like Rand’al Thor of the execrable Wheel of Time series; apparently fantasy authors believe that constantly agonizing over every sliver suffered by an individual dedicated to the cause is the height of character development. Rowlings’s plotting is even less competent than usual and if the Death Eaters weren’t the unmitigated bastard, occultic love children of the National Socialists and Chang Hsien-chung, I’d be rooting for Lord Voldemort.

There’s no reason for Christians to be upset about Harry Potter. There’s no more magic in the “magic” than there is a literal god in the deus ex machina. I finally had to put the book down in disgust when Hermione wracked her brain to think of what spell could possible free a woman from her chains, then pointed her wand and shouted “release”. I mean, given that schooling in magic is the background for the book series, it’s remarkable that the magic system is so utterly retarded.

Perhaps it gets better in the second half. I’m not sure I will last it out long enough to find out. It’s a very bad sign for a book when you find yourself unconsciously picking up a formulaic libro giallo in preference to finishing what you’ve started. Needless to say, I’m not feeling terribly inclined to revisit my prediction that it will not be long before Harry Potter will no longer be regarded in the same league as Narnia, The Dark is Rising, A Wrinkle in Time and Watership Down, assuming that it is now.

The AKP wins despite the West’s warnings:

Three months ago, up to a million protesters poured onto the streets of the Turkish capital, Ankara, shouting that the secular system was in danger. They claimed the ruling AK Party (AKP) had a hidden Islamist agenda. Turkey’s powerful military warned it would intervene to protect the republic, if required.

This Sunday, 46.4% of the electorate cast their votes for the AKP across the country, proving they did not believe in any such danger.

I suggest it proved that they prefer the Islamic party to the secular system. The founding fathers thought democracy was a terrible idea, so much so that they made sure most people couldn’t vote. I have no doubt that Turkey will sooner or later demonstrate why “victory” in Iraq was always impossible.

I’m not sure that’s the wisest word for Newt Gingrich to use about other men given his own rotundness and short stature. And he’s no Degaulle. But I think he is correct about the current GOP crop being no-hopers, except for Ron Paul, whose iconoclastic positions give him a chance against Hillary:

“If, in mid-October, it’s quite clear that one or more of the current candidates is strong enough to be a serious alternative to a Clinton-Obama ticket, you don’t need me to run,” the former House Speaker said at a breakfast sponsored by the American Spectator. “If it becomes patently obvious, as the morning paper points out, that the Democrats have raised a hundred million more than the Republicans, and at some point people decide we are going to get Hillary unless there’s a radical change, then there’s space for a candidate,” he added. “So you’ll know by mid-October one of those two futures is real.”

A fellow fantasy writer – one of the Dragonlance successors – shares his two cents:

I just read your article and wanted to drop you a line. You’re probably right about Potter. I’ve heard from my kids that it’s not as hip as it used to be to like Harry Potter. Add to that the fact that the books have become more mature as they went on, ostensibly to keep up with their aging audience. That means they’re not pulling younger readers into the series like they were in the beginning.

But as a fellow author, I must ask, is it really a bad thing that people won’t be reading Harry Potter books in ten years? Do books have to be momentous just because they’re popular?

I’ve got to admit, it’s a pet peeve of mine that some people demand that popular things also be deep and meaningful. This group can’t stand it when something that is pure entertainment value becomes popular. They see it as a waste of time and somehow beneath the decency of man.

I’ve never understood it.

Sure, anyone who’s read any of my books will know I like popcorn entertainment, but what’s wrong with that? Sometimes people just want to be entertained without having to wade through the cumbersome vehicle of the author’s position piece. If you want to give the world your opinion, they say, write an op-ed for the paper?

I would argue that Harry Potter will dwindle anyway, just like Narnia, and Lord of the Rings have. Sure, there still popular, but nowhere near what they were. You can still be well read in the genre without having read them.

I largely agree, except for the idea that Narnia and Lord of the Rings have faded, and that one can be well-read in the fantasy genre without having read them. What’s unusual about both Narnia and LOTR is that they are still being read and widely imitated decades after their authors died. What I’m primarily objecting to is the idea that the Harry Potter books are a classic that will last forty or fifty years the way the Lewis and Tolkein books have. Considering that Potter is a fantasy spin on the Tom Brown books and was somewhat anticipated by the Diane Duane Wizard series, it’s hard to say what a Harry Potter imitation would even be, let alone imagine whole new series of them being produced thirty years from now.

Peter King can’t understand how anyone could possibly do what most of mankind has done throughout history:

It sounds very much like Smith empathizes with Vick’s plight and doesn’t find it very objectionable that Vick might have put a few bucks down on dogfights. Is he serious? Is there anything justifiable about Vick going to a single dogfight, or gambling a dime on a dogfight? Should the feds, once they had evidence from four corroborating witnesses that placed Vick in the middle of one dogfight after another, have ignored the evidence and not gone after him?

I have no problem whatsoever with people betting on dogfights, cockfights or EUR/USD exchange rate. And yes, going to dogfights is perfectly justifiable, as is gambling a dime or more on it. Don’t give me that “it’s the law” nonsense either, if Vick was being indicted for breaking federal marijuana laws, King would be equally outraged, but at the feds for pursuing such a petty law.

Dogs die. Fighting them and gambling is low class entertainment, but most of the world is lower class, by definition. Considering that Peter King makes a living writing about men bashing their bodies into each other and permanently damaging themselves, his pretense that dogfighting is somehow beyond the pale isn’t just silly, it’s hypocritical.

And I’m told people have been known to wager on the NFL too.