OK, here’s the situation. An English woman and her two teenage daughters visit New York on holiday. The woman is taken ill. What happens next? Full marks if you guessed that the girls were taken to an orphanage, separated, strip searched, given a medical examination, told that they couldn’t visit their mother in hospital, and locked up for the next 30 hours! (The Beeb has the story here, while the Guardian has more details.)
One more famous victory in the American war on tourists…
Pre-rational filtering and foundational beliefs
Via Greta Christina, here’s a nice piece by the Chaplain entitled: What’s So Bad About Religion?. Here’s the central idea:
Even though the vast majority of believers apply rational thought processes in most areas of their lives, there is a corner of their minds, especially for religious conservatives, in which they refuse to shine the light of reason. Every scrap of information they process is run through religious filters. If it does not threaten to undermine the religious scaffold around which they’ve built their lives, then normal reasoning processes can be applied safely. If a bit of information contradicts the scaffold, then it must be rejected. Religious liberals, on the other hand, frequently bend the scaffold so that it will accommodate new information. Whatever process one applies, the fact remains that there are points at which reason and religion conflict. How one handles those conflicts determines the extent to which religious belief is harmful.
The Chaplain cites the case of a (presumed) schizophrenic who wound up killing his daughter; his fellow believers thoughts the voices and delusions that afflicted him were of divine origin, rather than the the result of deranged brain chemistry. But this kind of poisonous thinking is not restricted to small, inbred groups, as Johann Hari shows in his devastating piece on contemporary exorcism.
One blog that I read religiously(!) is Father Jake Stops The World. Today he had an interesting piece about a meeting with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church:
Bp. Katharine reminded us that there are two stories of creation in Genesis. One begins with the creative act of God, after which we are told that God looked upon creation and declared that “It is very good.” The other creation account focuses on the fall in the garden.
The divisions among Christians today can be seen to be loosely along the lines of which of these stories we choose to emphasize. Do we begin with recognizing that we were created “very good,” that the intention was always for us to be “God’s beloved,” or do we begin with the story of the fall, beginning our relationship with God with the idea “I am a miserable sinner.” Where we begin influences the nature of our conversations, not only among other Christians, but with the world, and with God.
Another way to sum up these differences among Christians today would be to suggest that there are those focused on “the depravity of man” and those who choose to focus on “the glory of God.”
Now obviously I don’t believe that either story is true. Nevertheless I think that any wise person – and certainly anyone who has had children! – will recognize the distinction between, and the consequences of, these two broad types of beliefs; between “I am loved” and “I am evil”. On the one hand, we have self-confidence and optimism; on the other, fear and self-doubt. It’s the fear that causes people to erect what the Chaplain calls “the scaffold”. ((Although to English ears, “scaffolding” would sound less… terminal!)) Fear of the world, fear based on their indoctrinated sense of weakness and worthlessness, and above all fear of being excluded.
All of this will be familiar territory to regular readers of this blog. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the idea that (dis)belief in God might be less significant than (dis)belief in eternal punishment. Almost four years ago I wondered.…
why do Christians not cut out all of that blatantly un-Christian stuff from the Bible? Cue Thomas Jefferson…
And I guess I find it unfortunate that a kind, compassionate, thoughtful person like Jake still has to sign on to the Death Cult bits of Christianity. Fear and guilt make a lousy basis for a worldview.
Bush as horse-thief
Or perhaps bandit. It’s all in his favourite painting. As Paul Simon put it so succinctly, “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
The inherent contradiction in Libertarian thinking
Larry nails big-Ell Libertarians:
Libertarians tend to be upper-middle-class professionals. What these Libertard upper-middle-class professionals fail to realize is that their status and wealth is protected by un-Libertarian law and custom (i.e. requiring law degrees and bar examinations; why not let the market decide who should be a lawyer?)
The truly wealthy realize they don’t need a political philosophy to protect their wealth. Indeed, the very wealthy usually realize their wealth — just like the wealth of most of the middle-class — derives precisely from the non-Libertarian structure of society. Henry Ford couldn’t have become rich unless his workers were paid sufficiently above cost to afford to buy his automobiles.
The thing which I find infuriating about Libertarians is that they treat their damned philosophy as some kind of Revealed Truth, just like religious fundies. Things like property rights and markets are human inventions: fairly recent ones, and (if history is any guide) quite likely to be modified or replaced over the next few thousand years.
Secular Philosophy
Welcome to Secular Philosophy, a site dedicated to the exchange of ideas and debate relating to all things secular with an emphasis on philosophy. Here you will find exclusive films, books and blogs by Daniel Dennett, Colin McGinn and Massimo Pigliucci, as well as the Center for Inquiry’s Point of Inquiry podcast every Friday evening.
[Via the Leiter Reports.]
The end of Life on Mars
They finally broadcast the last episode of Life on Mars here in the USA. I thought that the writers handled it well, within the time constraints of a single one-hour episode. ((Shorter in the UK – BBCAmerica has tons of ads.)) They managed to sustain just the right level of uncertainty throughout: as the account in Wikipedia put it, “Ultimately the viewer is left with ambiguity as to which to emotionally accept as real: Sam’s life in the present day or his life in 1973.” Most viewers will lean one way, of course; I think I may try watching it again while gently nudging myself towards the alternative interpretation.
The only real weakness [MILD SPOILER ALERT] is that when Sam and Morgan were in the cemetery, Sam didn’t raise the obvious objection about his knowledge of events between 1973 and 2006. But that’s a nit.
Bottom line: this was one of the most interesting and well-produced television drama projects of recent years. I understand that work is proceeding on a US version; while most such transfers are doomed to failure, I hope this works. But will the US producers have the courage to present 1972 as it really was, warts and all?
Institutional stupidity of the highest order
The Federal Aviation Administration is set to fire an employee who was training to become an air traffic controller at Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center. His crime? He obeyed military orders to extend his duty in the California National Guard, which made him unable to obey Federal Aviation Administration orders to return to Oakland Center due to what the FAA manager at the facility wrote was “facility staffing requirements.â€
In other words, “we’re understaffed at Oakland Center, so if you don’t disobey your C.O., we’ll fire you.” If the FAA was a private employer, this would obviously be illegal. But when two bureaucratic governmental behemoths confront each other, who knows what the outcome will be? Particularly when one of the bureaucracies – the FAA – is widely regarded as the most bumbling, pig-headed and incompetent organization in the entire U.S. government. (And there’s stiff competition for that title, I can assure you.)
OLPC: Give one, lose one?
Back on December 3, I placed a “Give One, Get One” order with OLPC. I knew that demand had been high, so I checked in at laptopgiving.org occasionally to see how things were going. Each time I’d enter my email address and confirmation number, and get a message about “sometime in January”. No problem.
Today the message had changed: “Most laptops to US based donors have already shipped.” Puzzled, I tried again — but this time I entered only my confirmation number, with no email address. This took me to a page with a FedEx tracking number; one more click, and I saw that a package with that number had been delivered on December 28 to a residential address in St. Paul, MN.
Needless to say, I do not live in St. Paul, MN.
Sigh…..
UPDATE, Jan.21, 7am EDT: I just received an email from OLPC saying that my “donation was in the queue”, and that I should expect to receive a further email on Wednesday with shipping details.
UPDATE, Jan.24, 6am EDT: From the “further email”:
We are awaiting the arrival of new inventory so that we may ship your laptop to you. We will send you another update in the next few days when we have specific shipping information.
Heading east, with a suitcase full of cables
On Saturday morning I’m flying off to Boston. Normally I’d be on a red-eye, but when I booked this back in November(!) the cheapest deal was a daytime non-stop on Alaska. I’m going to be there for four weeks, dividing my time between working remotely and helping Kate and Mark with the children ((Hmm, that sounds odd, but nicely so! Thomas and Tori: “the children”.)).
One frustration is that ZipCar and FlexCar haven’t finished merging their businesses. I’m a FlexCar member in Seattle, while ZipCar operates in Boston and Brookline. They announced that they were merging late last year. I had hoped that even if their systems weren’t fully combined, it would at least be possible for me to get a temporary ZipCar membership, so that I wouldn’t have to shell out for a month-long rental. ((Remember that most US credit card companies only cover the CDW for domestic rentals up to 15 days; at $12+ a day, those charges can really mount up.)) But no. It seems that they’re converting their systems city by city, and Seattle isn’t due to be “done” for a few months. Shucks.
As is usual these days, “packing” means throwing a few clothes into a case, and then assembling all of the cables, docking cradles, and power adapters for the electronics. Camera, iPhone, Kindle, MacBook. My PSP… no, I’ll go without it. ((Can I really do without “World Snooker Challenge 2005”? Tough call.)) A full-size USB headset (for Skype). A spare hard disk in a USB enclosure (which means another cable and adapter). I keep resolving to buy only gadgets that can recharge through USB, but I’m not there yet.
No paper books, though. 🙂
And I mustn’t forget my hat, and perhaps some gloves. [/me hunts around for a pair] Hell, maybe even boots. By the time I touch down at Logan, it’ll be about 20°F…
Emergency supplies
I just received (from Amazon, naturally) a fresh shipment of what every self-respecting expat Brit needs in his kitchen cupboard. Yes, that is a small container of Patum Peperium at the front.
The QFC that I patronise, up on Capitol Hill, carries a couple of really nice sharp Cheddars, slightly crumbly, that go beautifully with Branston Pickle or Marmite. And then of course there’s Beecher’s Handmade Cheese down at Pike Place Market….