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From Christie Blatchford's We're so polite that we can't see a danger hiding in plain sight:
Even Mr. Shaikh, whose actions I consider principled and courageous despite the fact that he was a paid RCMP agent (he earned $300,000 for his undercover work) and who I hesitate to praise only because I suspect it will hurt his reputation, considers himself first a Muslim. He may be as integrated a Muslim-Canadian as there is, and has always been an active participant in secular Canadian life (less so now than when he was a wild young man), he is a good and proud Canadian, yet he answers first to faith.
As if wasn't enough to divide ourselves by race and by ethnic background, we're now being encouraged, by the press, to divide ourselves by religion too. At least, that's what I take the term "Muslim-Canadian" to indicate.
By parity of argument, then, we must also have Catholic-Canadians, Jewish-Canadians, Baha'i-Canadians, etc. Or, more accurately, Irish-Catholic-Canadians, Italian-Catholic-Canadians, and the like.
I'm an Agnostic-Canadian myself, some days even tending toward Atheist-Canadian.
I used to be a Yogi-Canadian, but that was back when I was following an East-Indian-West-American guru, who ironically believed in uniting East and West—albeit on the basis of a wholly fraudulent spirituality—rather than splitting them farther apart. And if you don't think New Age spirituality is a distinct culture just as surely as Islam is, you've simply never been to southern California.
P.S. I'd Like to Buy the World a Coke.
From Myron Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass:
Rights belong to individuals rather than to groups. But within our revolutionized culture is an antidemocratic strain that ignores the individual. So found a thoughtful undergraduate who, with misgivings, wrote a memo to her fellow members of the University of Pennsylvania's "diversity education" planning committee affirming "my deep regard for the individual and my desire to protect the freedoms of all members of society." Back came her memo from a politically correct university administrator, with this phrase circled and the word individual underlined. Said the administrator: "This is a 'RED FLAG' phrase today, which is considered by many to be RACIST. Arguments that champion the individual over the group ultimately privilege the 'individuals' belonging to the largest or dominant group"....
"What is excellence?" Jesse Choper, dean of the Berkeley law school, asks rhetorically. "There is no litmus paper test for it. Excellence is often like beauty, in the mind of the beholder." And, like so many arguments put forth by the new culture, once any value becomes entirely subjective, its definition becomes merely a matter of power politics. One professor, a proponent of preferential treatment for minority college students, takes Dean Choper's thought to its extreme conclusion: "[W]hen you see the word 'qualifications' used," he asserts, "remember that this is the new code word for whites."
This is what the next two years of my life look like, in order of priority:
Finish book on hair-ism, multiculturalism, affirmative action and immigration, which will probably get me charged with a "hate crime" or two ... dozen, since we really aren't allowed to laugh here anymore. (At least the goat-fuckers' complaint against Maclean's was dismissed by the CHRC, though)
Assorted periodic webmastering and computer programming duties
Practice guitar
Get out to play at open stages (which I did yesterday for only the third time in the past nine months—I simply haven't had the time to have a social life over the winter, being up to my neck in research and writing), drink beer
Start/Finish book on the paleolithic origins of religion (100+ books still to read for research)
Record CD of original music
Get back into meditating again, 'cause I could really use the relaxation
Get decent on electric guitar and bass
Nowhere in there have I set aside any time to debunk the half-wit bumblings of the B-grade members of the integral community. There are a number of very good reasons for that:
The average debunking piece takes me eight hours to write
In wasting half a waking day writing such an essay, I invariably don't learn anything new for myself, instead just rehashing stuff I already knew. Even the least productive day spent reading is more benefit to me than that
Like Ken Wilber, the B-grade half-wits are incompetent and/or intellectually dishonest fools, who have never had a correct, original idea in their lives, and are Too Fucking Stupid to realize that
Like Wilber, they can create ignorance faster than I or anyone else can debunk it; a problem which will never end
Unlike kw's fraudulent work, no one will ever care about their half-baked ideas. They write and write and write in the hope of saying something valuable and making notable contributions to integral/paranormal thought, even when they inherently lack the brains and the minimal self-honesty necessary to ever realize that goal
For at least two or three years now, there has been enough information available online, for free, that anyone with half a goddamned brain could see that Wilber is a fraud, and that Dean Radin and his ilk are just about as bad. Anyone who can't see that by now deserves to suffer at the hands of his own brutal ignorance. Put another way: Please do take enough rope to hang yourselves, and don't feel obliged to regard that as just a metaphor
I am not going to waste even one more hour of my life on deluded integral-ite pretenders who will not listen to reason and who absurdly imagine that they're even capable of doing anything that will ever matter in the world, when they can't even represent basic facts accurately or do minimally competent research. (That is basically the same set of reasons, by the way, why David Bohm never responded to Ken Wilber's mangling of his Nobel Prize-caliber ideas.) Every moment I spend debunking pointless, B-grade integral rubbish like that takes my time away from doing work that does actually matter. Or even just from spending a night out at a pub, getting drunk. From the latter, I might at least get an idea for a song. From the incompetent, reality-disconnected integral-ites of the world, by contrast, I don't get even that much. Ever.
There are literally millions of erroneous views and thousands of noxious doctrines, and to invest the time and effort to speak out in an informed, knowledgeable way on any one issue necessarily requires neglecting—"being silent" or "ignoring" all or almost all of the others. Hence the judgement to speak on one issue means that you think that it is the most pressing of all possible issues—and the best possible use of your time.... Ignoring bad ideas happens naturally because the researchers that do happen to encounter them know not to waste others' time by passing them along, leading to a slow but natural death of 99.9% of bad ideas. Attention needs to go to the many bad ideas that are widely accepted and deeply entrenched in the minds of scholars: the fringe at the center is the real problem. —John Tooby
—John Tooby
In the spiritual world, the "fringe at the center" is Ken Wilber and his Integral Institute, not the extraneous B-grade fools (Salmon, Maslow, etc.) drawn to that cesspool or to closely related ones, who will never have enough of an audience for their own ideas for any debunker to bother with wasting time on, given all the other work that needs to be done, even in fields that have nothing to do with any spiritual practice.
P.S. The Diversity Recession, or How Affirmative Action Helped Cause the Housing Crisis.
More than a negligible amount of the blame for the mortgage meltdown can be traced back to multiculturalism: government-mandated affirmative-action lending, demographic change, illegal immigration, and the mind-numbing effects of political correctness.
And you had thought it was all because the borrowers weren't "second-tier" enough, eh?
I was out of beer on this first day of summer (!), so I walked down to the liquor store and adjacent supermarket this afternoon.
There was the sound of drumbeats in the air, and as I turned the corner, it became obvious why: There's an official, real-live pow-wow going on in the park on the corner.
I worked at a fishing lodge for a decade, with an Indian reservation nearby, so First Nations culture is no big, liberal thrill for me: Quite frankly, I've seen enough of it to have no use for it at all. But it did put me in mind of a block of prose which I've been trying to find a place for in the as-yet-offline writing I've been doing over the past month and a half:
We're "a nation of immigrants"? So is every other country in the world, with the exception of that stretch of savannah somewhere in eastern Africa where our species first came down from the trees. The idea that being the first group of human beings to reach a piece of land gives you some special claim on it is so ... well, species-ist. Because you know who was here, in North America, before the Indians? The woolly mammoths, horses, and camels (yes, camels!), that's who. And you know what happened to them? In brief, the early Native Americans slaughtered them. All of them. And it's not as though they were using/eating every part of the animals, either. On the contrary, "Clovis mammoth kills prove to have been only partly butchered, suggesting very wasteful and selective utilization of meat by people living amidst an abundance of game. Some hunting probably wasn't for meat at all but for ivory, hides, or just machismo." The advantage of having exterminated every member of a species or race, of course, is that there are no descendents left to point out how you shouldn't have done that. So, a tip of the hat to those thorough, homo-aboriginal hunters: even the later white settlers with rifles didn't manage to completely kill off the buffalo, though it certainly wasn't for lack of trying. Still, should we ever manage to clone any of those lost animals, and if they could talk, it would be interesting to see what sort of apologies they might demand for being on the receiving end of the reckless extermination—almost a genocide, really—wrought by Homo Aboriginalis. woolly mammoths, horses, and camels. Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), p. 339: "When Indian hunters arrived, they found the Americas teeming with big mammals that are now extinct: elephantlike mammoths and mastodonts [sic], ground sloths weighing up to three tons, armadillolike glyptodonts weighing up to one ton, bear-sized beavers, and sabertooth cats, plus American lions, cheetahs, camels, horses, and many others." or just machismo. Ibid., p. 340, 347: "According to the interpretation that seems most plausible to me, the outcome was a [hunting] "blitzkrieg" in which the beasts were quickly exterminated—possibly within a mere ten years at any given site.... Clovis mammoth kills prove to have been only partly butchered, suggesting very wasteful and selective utilization of meat by people living amidst an abundance of game. Some hunting probably wasn't for meat at all but for ivory, hides, or just machismo.... We are all too familiar with the blitzkriegs by which modern European hunters nearly exterminated bison, whales, seals, and many other large animals. Recent archaeological discoveries on many oceanic islands have shown that such blitzkriegs were an outcome whenever hunters reached a land with animals naïve to humans."
We're "a nation of immigrants"? So is every other country in the world, with the exception of that stretch of savannah somewhere in eastern Africa where our species first came down from the trees. The idea that being the first group of human beings to reach a piece of land gives you some special claim on it is so ... well, species-ist.
Because you know who was here, in North America, before the Indians? The woolly mammoths, horses, and camels (yes, camels!), that's who. And you know what happened to them? In brief, the early Native Americans slaughtered them. All of them. And it's not as though they were using/eating every part of the animals, either. On the contrary, "Clovis mammoth kills prove to have been only partly butchered, suggesting very wasteful and selective utilization of meat by people living amidst an abundance of game. Some hunting probably wasn't for meat at all but for ivory, hides, or just machismo."
The advantage of having exterminated every member of a species or race, of course, is that there are no descendents left to point out how you shouldn't have done that. So, a tip of the hat to those thorough, homo-aboriginal hunters: even the later white settlers with rifles didn't manage to completely kill off the buffalo, though it certainly wasn't for lack of trying.
Still, should we ever manage to clone any of those lost animals, and if they could talk, it would be interesting to see what sort of apologies they might demand for being on the receiving end of the reckless extermination—almost a genocide, really—wrought by Homo Aboriginalis.
woolly mammoths, horses, and camels. Jared Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), p. 339: "When Indian hunters arrived, they found the Americas teeming with big mammals that are now extinct: elephantlike mammoths and mastodonts [sic], ground sloths weighing up to three tons, armadillolike glyptodonts weighing up to one ton, bear-sized beavers, and sabertooth cats, plus American lions, cheetahs, camels, horses, and many others."
or just machismo. Ibid., p. 340, 347: "According to the interpretation that seems most plausible to me, the outcome was a [hunting] "blitzkrieg" in which the beasts were quickly exterminated—possibly within a mere ten years at any given site.... Clovis mammoth kills prove to have been only partly butchered, suggesting very wasteful and selective utilization of meat by people living amidst an abundance of game. Some hunting probably wasn't for meat at all but for ivory, hides, or just machismo.... We are all too familiar with the blitzkriegs by which modern European hunters nearly exterminated bison, whales, seals, and many other large animals. Recent archaeological discoveries on many oceanic islands have shown that such blitzkriegs were an outcome whenever hunters reached a land with animals naïve to humans."
Very Bad and Insensitive of me, no? And then there's this, also looking for a home:
In a similar vein, one might think that "crying wolf" at the slightest hint of unfairness would make it more difficult for outside observers to take real inequities seriously, and might even trivialize the ordeals of others who have suffered real discrimination. Such a view, however, embodies an insensitive stereotyping of the lupine community—a "lupineophobia," wherein wolves are singled out as allegedly being a group of violent, bloodthirsty predators. Yet, if we were to put ourselves in their shoes ... or their paws ... surely we can see that all they really want is to be understood and accepted for the distinct contribution which they make to the ecological mosaic—a tiling in which wolves and their sharp, pointy canine teeth should no more be feared, on a per capita basis, than are rabbits, say, or budgies. Or Muslims. Or, if it turns out that there is a statistical, per-capita difference ... well, you can't make a woolly cultural mosaic or a national quilt without disemboweling a few sheep.
In a similar vein, one might think that "crying wolf" at the slightest hint of unfairness would make it more difficult for outside observers to take real inequities seriously, and might even trivialize the ordeals of others who have suffered real discrimination.
Such a view, however, embodies an insensitive stereotyping of the lupine community—a "lupineophobia," wherein wolves are singled out as allegedly being a group of violent, bloodthirsty predators. Yet, if we were to put ourselves in their shoes ... or their paws ... surely we can see that all they really want is to be understood and accepted for the distinct contribution which they make to the ecological mosaic—a tiling in which wolves and their sharp, pointy canine teeth should no more be feared, on a per capita basis, than are rabbits, say, or budgies. Or Muslims.
Or, if it turns out that there is a statistical, per-capita difference ... well, you can't make a woolly cultural mosaic or a national quilt without disemboweling a few sheep.
You can sort of see what kind of trouble I'm looking to get myself into there, eh? Rest assured, though, I take no prisoners from any race, ethnic group, or culture: They're all gonna hate me by the time I'm finished with this.
So at some point we'll see whether you're still allowed to laugh in Canada, or whether that's been outlawed as well.
"Nobody puts Geoffrey in a corner."
It's "too ambiguous" to call Scientology a cu*t:
There's been another development in what's becoming a long-running dispute between anti-Scientology protesters and British police, as a 57-year-old man was charged with breach of the peace for displaying a sign that read "Stupid Cu*t" and "Greedy Cu*t" during a protest in Edinburgh at the weekend.
This follows a series of incidents where protesters in UK cities have been warned by police that branding Scientology a "dangerous cult" during demonstrations could be viewed as inciting religious hatred.
Arrested? He's gotten himself h'arrested? "What a silly bunt."
Oh, wait—that's been censored too....
Can you still say "punt"? You know, like "punting on the Thames"? Or is that, also, now too "fucking close to water" to be allowed?
How about "tips"? "Regina"? "Bovary"?
Or is c*ckney rhyming slang completely out?
Homosexuality in males may be caused in part by genes that can increase fertility in females, according to a new study.
The findings may help solve the puzzle of why, if homosexuality is hereditary, it hasn't already disappeared from the gene pool, since gay people are less likely to reproduce than heterosexuals....
Camperio-Ciani and his team hypothesize that the genes they modeled may cause people of both sexes to be extremely attracted to men, which would lead men with the genes to pursue relationships with other men, while causing women with the genes to have more sexual partners, and become pregnant slightly more often than an average woman....
"I think this is an example where the results of scientific research can have important social implications," Camperio-Ciani said. "You have all this antagonism against homosexuality because they say it's against nature because it doesn't lead to reproduction. We found out this is not true because homosexuality is just one of the consequences of strategies for making females more fecund." (more)
And, since you can't talk about sodomy without mentioning Mohammed and his cultish, dimwit followers—
From Shariah in Minnesota? Radical Muslim activists go fishing in troubled waters:
Troubling incidents began several years ago, when taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport—about three-quarters of whom are Muslim—started refusing to transport passengers carrying alcohol. One woman, returning from France with wine, was turned away by five cabs in succession. Refusals of service now number about 100 a month, and heated altercations have erupted.
In September 2006, the Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) proposed a two color top-light pilot project to indicate which drivers would accept passengers with alcohol. The proposal, later dropped, would apparently have marked the first time that a government agency in the U.S. officially recognized Shariah law, and distinguished individuals who follow it from those who don't.
In November 2006, the six "flying imams" bumped the taxi drivers from the headlines. In Minneapolis for a conference, the imams were detained after engaging in what an airport police report called "suspicious" activity. Some prayed loudly in the gate area, spoke angrily about the U.S. and Saddam, switched seats and unnecessarily requested seat belt extenders with heavy buckles that could be used as weapons, according to witnesses. They were questioned and released later that day. The imams denounced the incident as racial and religious profiling. "If up to now, [Americans] don't know about prayers, this is a real problem," said Omar Shahin, one of the detained men and head of the North American Imams Federation. Twin Cities imams demanded a separate Muslim prayer room at the airport.
Earlier this month, the six imams filed suit in U.S. district court in Minneapolis against US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission, claiming discrimination and defamation. Now some Muslim cashiers at Twin Cities Target stores have begun refusing to scan pork products, like bacon and pepperoni pizza, and insisting that other cashiers or the customers themselves do it.
Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else.
Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: "Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security"....
Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children's classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it"....
[Danzig] said that even people who are relatively well off and successful can feel like failures and become alienated from their societies. He said one terrorist told him: "We have been raised on a theory of superheroes. We all want to be like Luke Skywalker.
"When we're doing mundane things, we lose track of our ambition but when someone comes along, like Asahara, the head of the cult, and presents himself as a messiah and gives us a picture of progress that is ordained by heaven and that we are carrying out a saintly mission on earth that is for us extraordinarily evocative."
Mr Danzig added: "The parallels with al Qaeda are obvious." (more)
Yes, aren't they? (Woooo.....)
Well, after eight years of "Curious George Goes to Washington" (a.k.a. "The President with the Yellow Hat"), having Barack the Pooh in the White Black House might be a step up.
("White House" is a racist term, right?)
I'm just a little black raincloud Hovering over the ... USA
I voted for Marvin K. Mooney, myself....
P.S. If I lived in London, I can tell you where I'd be getting my hair cut, exclusively: Wedge.
You realize that these whining idiot Muslims are offended by Piglet too:
Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean," even an anthropomorphized cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet....
And where's the harm in that? As Pastor Niemöller said, first they came for Piglet and I did not speak out because I was not a Disney character and, if I was, I'm more of an Eeyore....
[S]mall acts of cultural vandalism corrode the fabric of freedom all but unseen....
If Islam cannot "co-exist" even with Pooh or the abstract swirl on a Burger King ice-cream, how likely is it that it can co-exist with the more basic principles of a pluralist society?
[A]t some point Britons have to ask themselves—while they're still permitted to discuss the question more or less freely—how much of their country they're willing to lose.
It gets worse:
In northern Nigeria, some areas have instituted the extreme Islamist Sharia law. Sharia is not supposed to affect Christians, but there have been deadly skirmishes over beer: Muslims have burned down liquor stores, while beer drinkers have stoutly defended for their right to live as infidels. (more)
If you're not willing to literally fight for your beer, you don't deserve to live in any free and civilized (i.e., "Western") part of the world. As the Founding Father and brewer Sam Adams said:
If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom—go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!
Hmm, Barack Obama's half brother, Abongo.
And South Africa's president, Mbeki.
Put 'em together, and what do you have? "Mbongo"!
Ayaan Hirsi Ali thinks that a far more controversial cartoon animation [than Fitna] is in the making in the Netherlands. The apostate and former member of the Social Democratic party Ehsan Jami is preparing an animation about the violent and oppressive character of the prophet Muhammed. According to reports from the Netherlands the movie will depict Muhammed with an erection in the company of a six year old girl. (more)
Woo-hoo! That oughta be a "riot," as they say. I don't normally watch cartoon porn (and not just because I've only got a dial-up connection), but in this case, I'll be sorely tempted to make an exception!
Thought Reform 101: The Orwellian implications of today's college orientation.
Stuff White People Like.
Smart Fraction Theory II: Why Asians Lag.
I just saw this comment (#60) on PZ Myers' blog:
Yes, IQ is known to be dependent on (early) childhood nutrition (NB the research will be long pre-internet). The brain is regarded by the body as a second-class organ - one to be disfavoured when resources are scarce. This applies during both development [hence the importance of good nutrition in childhood, and the correlation of that with higher IQs] and later activity (eg eating takes significant supply away from the brain while the gut does the more important digestion thing).
If the goal of Eros was to express Intelligence in the Kosmos, why would It Wilber-esquely design the human body to disadvantage the brain (for life) in favor of building the body, in circumstances where that choice has to be made? Hmm?
The answer, of course, is that not only has the human body (and immune system, etc.) not been Intelligently Designed by Spirit, it hasn't even been tweaked by Eros to slightly tilt or bias its evolution. It couldn't have turned out to neglect the brain in favor of the body if there was a Goal of expressing Intelligence behind it all. On the contrary, if you were designing a vehicle to express intelligence, you would have to favor the welfare of the brain over that of the rest of the body, particularly in circumstances where the consequences might affect the organism for the rest of its life.
And then there's the sea squirt:
The larval stage ends when the [sea squirt] finds a suitable rock to affix to and cements itself in place. The larval form is not capable of feeding, and is only a dispersal mechanism. Many physical changes occur to the tunicate's body, one of the most interesting being the digestion of the cerebral ganglion previously used to control movement. From this comes the common saying that the sea squirt "eats its own brain."
Essentially the same thing happens, of course, when otherwise-thinking persons searching for spiritual meaning in their lives find Wilber's Integral Institute, and affix themselves firmly to it.
Eros in action....
P.S. Offended Muslim Syndrome, a.k.a. the "Ham Steak of Hate."
I mentioned a little while ago that I agree with both Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, in their view that religion is a form of child abuse (i.e., when children are raised to believe in a particular religion, under threat of damnation). And it's been bugging me that (i) I was just doing that from memory, and (ii) I didn't give any easy-to-click-on links for that. So here they are for Hitchens (Chapter 16, esp. regarding circumcision and scriptural injunctions against masturbation) and Dawkins.
I am persuaded that the phrase "child abuse" is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven mortal sins in an eternal hell. (Dawkins, p. 358)
Jill Mytton herself had been brought up to be terrified of hell, had escaped from Christianity as an adult, and now counsels and helps others similarly traumatized in childhood: "If I think back to my childhood, it's one dominated by fear. And it was the fear of disapproval while in the present, but also of eternal damnation. And for a child, images of hell-fire and gnashing of teeth are actually very real. They are not metaphorical at all." I then asked her to spell out what she had actually been told about hell, as a child, and her eventual reply was as moving as her expressive face during the long hesitation before she answered: "It's strange, isn't it? After all this time it still has the power to ... affect me ... when you ... when you ask me that question. Hell is a fearful place. It's complete rejection by God. It's complete judgment, there is real fire, there is real torment, real torture, and it goes on for ever so there is no respite from it."
She went on to tell me of the support group she runs for escapees from a childhood similar to her own, and she dwelt on how difficult it is for many of them to leave: "The process of leaving is extraordinarily difficult. Ah, you are leaving behind a whole social network, a whole system that you've practically been brought up in, you are leaving behind a belief-system that you have held for years. Very often you leave families and friends ... You don't really exist any more for them." (Dawkins, p. 361-2)
Earlier in our televised conversion, Jill had described this kind of religious upbringing as a form of mental abuse, and I returned to the point, as follows: "You use the words religious abuse. If you were to compare the abuse of bringing up a child really to believe in hell ... how do you think that would compare in trauma terms with sexual abuse?" She replied: "That's a very difficult question ... I think there are a lot of similarities actually, because it is about abuse of trust; it is about denying the child the right to feel free and open and able to relate to the world in the normal way ... it's a form of denigration; it's a form of denial of the true self in both cases." (Dawkins, p. 365-6)
Dawkins considers the labels "Muslim child" or a "Catholic child" equally misapplied as the descriptions "Marxist child" or a "Tory child," as he wonders how a young child can be considered developed enough to have such independent views on the cosmos and humanity's place within it. (Wikipedia)
And if you haven't checked out the Five Feet of Fury blog yet, please do so. It's a real must-read for freedom-of-speech-related issues. (When even the Catholics and the Intelligent Designers understand the importance of free speech far better than our liberals do, we are living in an odd world indeed.)
I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind. —Prime Minister Rt. Hon. John Diefenbaker, July 1, 1960, House of Commons
And, from Mark Steyn's Please send more complaints:
Most of us have a vague understanding that Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag in February 1933 as a pretext to "seize" dictatorial powers. But, in fact, he didn't "seize" anything because he didn't need to. He merely invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Republic's constitution, allowing the state, in the interests of the greater good, to set—what's the phrase?—"reasonable limits" on freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom from unlawful search and seizure and surveillance of postal and electronic communications. The Nazis didn't invent a dictatorship out of whole cloth. They merely took advantage of the illiberal provisions of a supposedly liberal constitution.
Oh, and by the way, almost all those powers the Nazis "seized" the morning after the Reichstag fire, the "human rights" commissions already have. In the name of cracking down on "hate," Canada's "human rights" apparatchiks can enter your premises without a warrant and remove any relevant "document or thing" (as the relevant Ontario legislation puts it) for as long as they want it. And without anybody burning the House of Commons or even the Senate.
As we all know, Allah promised his terrorist-warriors seventy-two virgins in Paradise. But you probably didn't know this—from Robert Spencer's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (p. 103-4):
But Paradise would not be a bore for Muslims with different proclivities. Allah also promised his blessed that in Paradise, "round about them will serve, devoted to them, young male servants handsome as pearls well-guarded" (Qur'an 52:24), "youths of perpetual freshness" (Qur'an 56:17): "if thou seest them, thou wouldst think them scattered pearls" (Qur'an 76:19)....
But surely the Qur'an isn't condoning homosexuality, is it? After all, it depicts Lot telling the people of Sodom: "For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds" (7:81) and "of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, and leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing all limits!" (26:165). A hadith commands that "if a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death." Another hadith has Muhammad saying: "Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him." These strictures have worked their way into Islamic legal codes, such that two Saudis were so anxious to avoid a flogging or prison term that they murdered a Pakistani who witnessed their "shameful acts" by running over him with a car, smashing his head in with a rock, and setting him on fire.
But the pearl-like youths of Paradise have given rise to a strange double-mindedness about homosexuality in Islam. The great poet Abu Nuwas openly glorified homosexuality in his notorious poem the Perfumed Garden: O the joy of sodomy! So now be sodomites, you Arabs. Turn not away from it—therein is wondrous pleasure. Take some coy lad with kiss-curls twisting on his temples and ride him as he stands like some gazelle standing to her mate—A lad whom all can see girt with sword and belt not like your whore who has to go veiled. Make for smooth-faced boys and do your very best to mount them, for women are the mounts of the devils!
O the joy of sodomy! So now be sodomites, you Arabs. Turn not away from it—therein is wondrous pleasure. Take some coy lad with kiss-curls twisting on his temples and ride him as he stands like some gazelle standing to her mate—A lad whom all can see girt with sword and belt not like your whore who has to go veiled. Make for smooth-faced boys and do your very best to mount them, for women are the mounts of the devils!
This paradoxical attitude toward homosexuality runs through Islamic history.
Oh, and this:
In 2004, a fourteen-year-old would-be Palestinian suicide bomber told the Israeli troops who disarmed him: "Blowing myself up is the only chance I've got to have sex with seventy-two virgins in the Garden of Eden."
Yeah, no shit. A chance like that doesn't come around every day....
The "Garden of Eden" is a cheap hotel outside Mecca, right?
P.S. And, I just discovered the PoemHunter website. Ah, "The Joy of Poetry"....
And, from PZ Myers' Random Acts of Evolution:
Perhaps an important lesson from the differences is that efforts to use quantitative measures of complexity to justify a ladder of life, with some species held as "more evolved" than others, are an exercise in futility. Bony fish like fugu and land-dwelling tetrapods like humans diverged over 450 million years ago, and what we've both been doing is busily accumulating differences, not superiority in one lineage or another.
You see? There is no "ladder to the Infinite." Never has been.
Oh, and this very prescient Sam Francis piece from 2004—Al…Obama? Is There Really A Difference?:
Already people at the convention were blabbering about "Hillary and Obama in 2008".... But I would also venture the guess that when you rip Mr. Obama's thin mask away, what you'll see is a face that strongly resembles the Rev. Al [Sharpton]'s.
If you don't get why that would be highly insightful (i.e., if you still buy into Obama's media image), you really need to check out some of these articles, esp. the ones by Steve Sailer. Doesn't mean McCain is any better, or that Hillary would have been a better choice either; it's just good to be informed.
And, peace be upon Allah, could it really be that reality doesn't exist until we observe it, i.e., that the wacky, Copenhagen interpretation of the indeterministic formulation of quantum mechanics was right all along? The Reality Tests:
The only assumption Leggett made was that a natural form of realism hold true; photons should have measurable polarizations that exist before they are measured. With this he laboriously derived a new set of hidden variables theorems and inequalities as Bell once had. But whereas Bell's work could not distinguish between realism and locality, Leggett's did. The two could be tested....
The experiment wouldn't be too difficult, but understanding it would. It took them months to reach their tentative conclusion: If quantum mechanics described the data, then the lights' polarizations didn't exist before being measured. Realism in quantum mechanics would be untenable....
With eerie precision, the results of Gröblacher's weekend experiments had followed the curve predicted by quantum mechanics. The data defied the predictions of Leggett's model by three orders of magnitude. Though they could never observe it, the polarizations truly did not exist before being measured....
Most physicists believe that quantum effects get washed out when there are a large number of particles around. The particles are in constant interaction and their environment serves to "decohere" the quantum world—eliminate superpositions—to create the classical one we observe. Quantum mechanics has within it its own demise, and the process is too rapid to ever see. Zeilinger's group, which has tested decoherence, does not believe there is a fundamental limit on the size of an object to observe superposition. Superpositions should exist even for objects we see, similar to the infamous example of Schrödinger's cat....
Late last year Brukner and Kofler showed that it does not matter how many particles are around, or how large an object is, quantum mechanics always holds true. The reason we see our world as we do is because of what we use to observe it. The human body is a just barely adequate measuring device. Quantum mechanics does not always wash itself out, but to observe its effects for larger and larger objects we would need more and more accurate measurement devices. We just do not have the sensitivity to observe the quantum effects around us. In essence we do create the classical world we perceive, and as Brukner said, "There could be other classical worlds completely different from ours."
The Blasphemy Collection.
Perfect reading for a Sunday afternoon. Along with some Caddyshack....
And this is gonna make Ram Dass happy: Indian business school names Hindu monkey god as its chairman.
"Monkey business," eh?
Hmm, well this is interesting. So is this. And this. And this. And this (PDF) piece of raging black anti-Semitism. And this.
You had no idea Malcolm X was such a lunatic, did you? Or that the Nation of Islam was such a cult, with a worldview worthy of Scientology.
Me neither.
P.S. Action figures of Albert Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci!
From Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom's Why Truth Matters (p. 168, 171):
In 1992, when the English department (not, mark, the Philosophy department) of Cambridge University nominated Jacques Derrida for an honorary degree, philosophers including W.V.O. Quine wrote a letter of protest. M. Derrida describes himself as a philosopher, and his writings do indeed bear some marks of writings in that discipline. Their influence, however, had been to a striking degree almost entirely outside philosophy ... In the eyes of philosophers, and certainly those working in leading departments of philosophy throughout the world, M. Derrida's work does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigor. [P]ostmodernist epistemic relativism ... is thought to be, and often touted as, emancipatory. It is supposed to set us all free: free from all those coercive repressive restrictive hegemonic totalizing old ideas. From white male Western reason and science, from the requirement to heed the boundary between science and pseudoscience, from the need to offer genuine evidence for our versions of history, from scholars who point out that we have our facts wrong. In Foucault's account, Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it includes regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its "general politics" of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true ... But the idea that this is emancipatory is a delusion.
M. Derrida describes himself as a philosopher, and his writings do indeed bear some marks of writings in that discipline. Their influence, however, had been to a striking degree almost entirely outside philosophy ... In the eyes of philosophers, and certainly those working in leading departments of philosophy throughout the world, M. Derrida's work does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigor.
Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it includes regular effects of power. Each society has its regime of truth, its "general politics" of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true ...
Well, that sort of cushions the blow about me being "far from the brillance [sic] of a Derrida or Foucault," doesn't it?
P.S. Farewell Free Speech: The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal says so long to freedom of speech.
From Ken Wilber's A Brief History of Everything (p. 189):
Take, for example, the work of Howard Gardner on multiple intelligences—the idea that development involves not one capacity but many relatively independent capacities (from musical to artistic to mathematical to athletic, and so on), which I think is quite right. We can plot the depth of those developmental capacities as well. They will fall within the same basic levels of consciousness development, but they are nonetheless relatively separate talents that unfold with their own logics, as it were. None of that is denied; in fact, I very much support those approaches. In my view, there are numerous different developmental lines or streams (e.g., cognitive, moral, aesthetic, interpersonal, needs, etc.) that move relatively independently through the basic levels or waves (body to mind to soul to spirit), giving us a very rich, multidimensional tapestry of waves and streams of consciousness unfolding.
From The General Intelligence Factor (Scientific American):
Several decades of factor-analytic research on mental tests have confirmed a hierarchical model of mental abilities. The evidence ... puts g at the apex in this model, with more specific aptitudes arrayed at successively lower levels: the so-called group factors, such as verbal ability, mathematical reasoning, spatial visualization and memory, are just below g, and below these are skills that are more dependent on knowledge or experience, such as the principles and practices of a particular job or profession.
Some researchers use the term "multiple intelligences" to label these sets of narrow capabilities and achievements. Psychologist Howard Gardner of Harvard University, for example, has postulated that eight relatively autonomous "intelligences" are exhibited in different domains of achievement. He does not dispute the existence of g but treats it as a specific factor relevant chiefly to academic achievement and to situations that resemble those of school. Gardner does not believe that tests can fruitfully measure his proposed intelligences; without tests, no one can at present determine whether the intelligences are indeed independent of g (or each other). Furthermore, it is not clear to what extent Gardner's intelligences tap personality traits or motor skills rather than mental aptitudes.
Other forms of intelligence have been proposed; among them, emotional intelligence and practical intelligence are perhaps the best known. They are probably amalgams either of intellect and personality or of intellect and informal experience in specific job or life settings, respectively. Practical intelligence like "street smarts," for example, seems to consist of the localized knowledge and know-how developed with untutored experience in particular everyday settings and activities—the so-called school of hard knocks. In contrast, general intelligence is not a form of achievement, whether local or renowned. Instead the g factor regulates the rate of learning: it greatly affects the rate of return in knowledge to instruction and experience but cannot substitute for either.
And from Steven Pinker:
I'm sympathetic to modular theories of the generic human mind like Howard Gardner's, but they have nothing to do with individual differences in intelligence. For one thing, the inclusion of "musical" and "bodily and kinesthetic" intelligence is mainly a tactic to morally elevate those traits by rebranding them as forms of "intelligence." But a great athlete or drummer is not necessarily "intelligent" in the sense that people ordinarily mean by the term.
And then there's this integral routine:
Ken: This would deserve the term that's too widely tossed around, which is "conscious business." Otto: What's that called? Ken: Conscious business. Everybody is using that phrase these days. Otto: So what's that? Ken: Conscious business?
Ken: This would deserve the term that's too widely tossed around, which is "conscious business."
Otto: What's that called?
Ken: Conscious business. Everybody is using that phrase these days.
Otto: So what's that?
Ken: Conscious business?
Yeah, "Say goodnight, Gracie...."
"Multiple intelligences"? Hell, Wilber can't even manage one.
[Bryan] Adams stresses "Summer of '69" has "nothing to do with the year 1969," as Adams was only nine years old at the time. He has implied it is a reference to the sex position: "...[A] double entendre, it's about sex, much like [one of Adams' professed favorite songs] Bob Seger's 'Night Moves,'" which follows a similar theme of nostalgia and summer love.
Co-writer Jim Vallance strongly disagrees, confirming the conventional interpretation. He notes Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty" as his own influence, recalling Adams cited the film Summer of '42 as his. He has added, "...Bryan Adams is a great writer, a great singer, and a great friend. He's entitled to his recollections as to what inspired the song "Summer of '69." My recollections just happen to be different than his." (Wikipedia)
Admit it: You'll sleep better tonight knowing that.
[Shania] Twain practices Sant Mat, which calls for daily meditation and vegetarianism. (Wikipedia)
Ach, you'd think she'd have learned from what that path did to Syd Barrett....
I've known for some time now that Canada is way over-touchy about political correctness and the like, but it surprised me to find out just how over-the-edge this "diverse, multicultural" country already is.
First, from First They Came For... Canadian "Hate Speech" Totalitarianism Is Not New:
"Yes, in Canada you may not speak the truth about free speech to its official enemies. In Canada, the reason why we must defend even the most vile speech and writing becomes clear: because suppression of it eventually leads to the inability to criticize government."
"You know you've lost your freedom when you cannot call a censor a censor"....
"The court is insisting that Canadians' speech not only follows the government-approved ideology on the topic of race, ethnicity, and religion (an ideology that I agree with, but that I don't think should be legally coerced). It is also insisting that Canadians' speech follows the government-approved ideology and terminology on the topic of free speech itself."
"According to [the CHRC], the statement 'I don't care if it's a religious thing or not, if you don't want to follow our rules, even if it is taking off your scarf thing for one lousy picture, then stay out of my effing country!' may be legally suppressed, on the grounds that it's 'likely to expose persons to hatred or contempt on the basis of religion.'"
And from Free Speech vs. Muslim Sensibilities:
Ezra Levant didn't know it, but when the conservative Canadian activist and lawyer published the now-notorious "Muhammad cartoons" in his magazine, the Western Standard, in 2006, he launched a cultural counterinsurgency against political correctness and the creeping advance of Islamism in the Great White North....
Most Canadians don't realize that these Commissions and tribunals aren't "real" courts. They operate outside the criminal justice system in an Orwellian world of their own. To the CHRCs, traditional rules of evidence don't apply. Truth is no defense. Commissioners can confiscate a defendant's computer without a warrant. Defendants can be forced to apologize to their accusers, even though the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that even convicted murderers cannot be obliged to apologize to their victim's family; that, the Court ruled, would be, "cruel and unusual punishment."
Incredibly, the CHRCs boast a Stalinist 100 percent conviction rate: no one has ever been found "not guilty"....
Eventually even some left-leaning groups and individuals expressed their concerns about the CHRC's power to censor. They ranged from PEN Canada to, of all people, Noam Chomsky.
Incidentally, according to Canada's Criminal Code:
[A] hate crime is committed to intimidate, harm or terrify not only a person, but an entire group of people to which the victim belongs. The victims are targeted for who they are, not because of anything they have done.
Hate crimes involve intimidation, harassment, physical force or threat of physical force against a person, a family or a property.
Most of the harassment I've experienced (only a small amount of which I've blogged about) over the past decade falls directly under that umbrella. Or at least it would, if an "identifiable group" weren't defined as "any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation."
Nothing in there about hair length, you see. Ergo, hippies aren't an "identifiable group."
P.S. I saw this report on the Danish embassy in Islamabad getting bombed. Take note of the Barbara Plett mentioned as a BBC reporter in the article. She and I went to high school and acted in the annual drama together (Kozlenko's Jacob Comes Home; she was Magda). She was one grade below me, and was always, for anyone who cared to see, an extremely smart cookie. (Would it surprise you to learn that she used to "nearly die laughing" at some of the early, political-satire articles I wrote for our school newspaper?)
She actually once interviewed me for the local paper, the Carillon News, when she was taking a year after high school to save money for university (working as a waitress at the Chicken Chef restaurant in Steinbach), and I was in the middle of my NSERC award.
Barb used to report from Cairo; I had no idea she was now in Islamabad. She's the only "famous person" to ever come out of Landmark, Manitoba ... so far.
And as far as her crying at the sight of the terminally ill Yasser Arafat being airlifted: To take that as an indication of a "pro-Palestinian bias" on her part is just plain stupid. She cried because she's a (very) good and decent human being, not for any "journalistic bias." And she would, indeed, surely have done the same for Ariel Sharon, under comparable circumstances.
One of the highlights of my late farmer-grandfather's (on my dad's side) life was his retirement-age trip to the Holy Land; and Barb's father was a pastor himself in Landmark. She's a "good Christian girl," who's looking more like her mother with each passing year. If anything, with her Mennonite background she would have a pro-Israel bias to keep in check.
(There were plenty of "end of the world," apocalyptic hopes/fears among the older generation where I grew up during the Cold War, taking the establishment of Israel as a fulfilling of biblical prophecy about the Second Coming, etc. Also, plenty of a "traditional duties of the husband and wife" emphasis, including at the 1989 wedding of one of my former classmates, where his pastor-father forcefully reminded the new bride [with chapter-and-verse biblical citations] to not stray too far from the kitchen, etc.)
Not to mention that any reasonably equitable reporting of Arabs vs. Jews is likely to be seen by both sides as being "biased," just as surely as a fair reporting of paranormal claims will be dismissed as "liberal media" bias by one-sided, agenda-driven idiots like Ken Wilber.
But of course that's all lost on our world's vultures and whining Jews (and Gentiles), who can't look past their own political goals to see another human being, in either the death of their mortal enemy or in a reporter being touched by that.
Barb's also not a "British journalist": What would a Brit be doing in Carleton University two decades ago? They have journalism schools in the U.K., don't they? And where do you think she lost her "accent"? (She used to show up on CBC Radio, in the early '90s; I immediately recognized her voice.) She's Canadian, dammit! and last I checked, we're no longer a British colony.
Just from knowing Barb, I'd bet dollars to donuts that the biggest problem with "fairness" in her handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that the BBC had someone reporting all that who told too much of the truth for her own good.
And you know where that will get you....
You may remember the big brouhaha that caused Larry Summers to resign from the presidency of Harvard a couple of years ago.
It's always nice to find out what really went on:
The Education of Larry Summers
We're Different. Get Over It
Why (Some) Men Don't Support Summers
From the article in the April issue of GQ, on James Brown:
Mr. Brown needed new teeth. Getting implants screwed into the jaw is a brutal procedure, and Mr. Brown didn't think he could stand the pain. He wanted to be put under.
Dental implants are painful? Not exactly. In fact, not at all.
After many (teenage, esp.) years of dental neglect, for the past half-decade I've had two titanium-screw dental implants, in teeth #15 and #24. Cost me $3K each, back in the day when I could briefly afford that sort of thing.
(In dental [FDI] numbering, the mouth is divided into four quadrants—don't even get me started—like in high-school Cartesian geometry. As seen from the patient's viewpoint, the first quadrant is in the upper-left quarter of the mouth, the second is in the upper-right, the third is in the lower-right, etc. That quadrant gives you the first digit in the numbering. The second digit is gotten just by counting back from the front of the mouth—so, the two top front teeth are #11 and #21, the bottom rear molars farthest back are #38 and #48, etc. For knowing things like this, I once got told by a dentist that I had a "high dental IQ.")
The oral surgeon who put the titanium anchors in explained very clearly to me before the local-anesthetic surgery that if I felt any pain at all, it meant that something had gone very wrong (and that, in that case, there would probably be scar tissue forming around the screw in the bone, so the screw wouldn't sit tight, and they'd have to redo the whole procedure). True to his word, I didn't feel a (painful) thing, either when the holes were drilled into the bone to receive the anchoring screws, or when the screws were slowly tightened into the holes in the same session.
So if the ex-Godfather of Soul was worried about that procedure being painful, he shouldn't have been.
And for god's sake, floss.
Anyway, from now on I'm going to stick to a magazine where I can trust the articles to contain reliable information on implants:
Playboy.
"I feel good!!"
