Everyone knows that the United States was first settled in 1620.  Everyone is wrong.

We celebrate a wildly distorted history of Thanksgiving year after year.  On Thanksgiving, we solemnly give thanks that we have enough food to allow our families to overeat.  For the sake of holiday decorum, we avoid the thought that we could actually be doing something to help millions of people starving to death elsewhere in the world.  We could splurge a bit less on the big holiday meal, for instance, then send life-saving donations to relief agency to save some real lives.  But that would be such a downer on the holiday.  Instead, let’s spend time with those people we love and think happy thoughts about Thanksgiving.

After all, we celebrate holidays to be happy, to bond family and friends.  And it is a good thing to keep in touch with family and friends. To keep the room happy, though, we need to focus mostly on happy things and to avoid thinking about facts, memories or courses of conduct that might interfere with that happiness.  Other than watching our favorite football team lose the big game, what could possibly interfere with the flow of happiness on Thanksgiving?  Here’s one thing: the truth about Thanksgiving.

With Thanksgiving approaching, I decided that it would be good medicine to re-read the chapter on Thanksgiving in James Loewen’s iconoclastic classic, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (1995). It was well worth the effort.

The first “settlers,” of course, were the indigenous Americans, “Indians,” who settled the North American continent at least 9000 years ago, perhaps much longer.  To suggest that anyone other than Native Americans first “settled” this land is a silly proposition with racist overtones.

Setting aside the fact that Native Americans were here first, we shouldn’t forget that African slaves still preceded the Pilgrims by almost 100 years.  Those first African slaves arrived in present day United States as part of the San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay  area of present-day South Carolina, founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón  in 1526. As indicated in the above Wikipedia article, the ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony to seek refuge among local Native Americans, where they remained.

And that’s just the earliest pre-Pilgrim settlers.  As Loewen points out, “in 1565 the Spanish massacred the French Protestants who had settled briefly at St. Augustine Florida and establish their own fort there.”  And don’t forget those other early settlers who came here seeking religious liberty: “these were Spanish Jews, who settled in New Mexico in the late 1500s.”  Loewen also points out that much of the American Southwest “has been Spanish longer than it has been ‘American.’”  For this reason, Loewen suggests that American history books should begin with stories from the West Coast.  But there’s more: the Dutch were living in what is now Albany by 1614.  Further, British settlers established a permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

Most of us were taught otherwise, of course.  We learned that in 1620 the Pilgrims landed near Plymouth Harbor and that they were aided by friendly Indians who gave them provisions, leading up to the first Thanksgiving, which the Pilgrims celebrated with their new Indian friends.

I don’t know how those Pilgrims put up with those stinky Indians.  Oh, wait!  Loewen describes that it was the other way around:

Residents of northern Europe and England rarely bathed, believing it unhealthy, and rarely removed all of their clothing at one time, believing it immodest.  The Pilgrims smelled bad to the Indians.  Squanto tried, without success, to teach them to bathe.”

We talk about the Black death and the bubonic plague as being incomparable tragedies.  (more…)

According to this site maintained by Dr. Martin Seligman, you can “develop insights into yourself and the world around you through these scientifically tested questionnaires, surveys, and scales.”

I took a few of these tests (some only a few minutes) and might have learned a thing or two.  

The site has almost 400,000 registered users around the world.  Use of the website is free–all you need to do is fill out a quick registration.

Andrew Sullivan declares here that whenever a Pope delares that “even closeted, chaste gay men cannot be priests,” he makes himself a legitimate target for the types of jokes recently aired on Italian television and radio.

MSNBC reports that Americans would be required to sign up for the military draft after turning 18 under a bill that will be introduced by Charles Rangel, a Democrat, the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.  Rangel states that bringing back the draft is a way to deter politicians from launching wars:

“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” Rangel said.

Rangel, a veteran of the Korean War who has unsuccessfully sponsored legislation on conscription in the past, said he will propose a measure early next year. While he said he is serious about the proposal, there is little evident support among lawmakers for it.

The military drafted conscripts during the Civil War, both world wars and between 1948 and 1973.

In an article entitled, “Think Tank Will Promote Thinking,” the Washington Post informed its readers about the new wing of the Center for Inquiry:

The goals of the new group are to establish relationships with sympathetic legislators, provide experts to give testimony before Congress, speak publicly on issues when they are in the news, and submit friend-of-the-court briefs in Supreme Court cases involving science and religion.

The mission purpose is further set forth at the Center for Inquiry site: 

If the naturalistic outlook is to supplant the ancient mythological narratives of the past, it needs a new institution devoted to its articulation and dramatization to the public. The Center for Inquiry is that institution.

The Center is also interested in providing rational ethical alternatives to the reigning paranormal and religious systems of belief

The Center is a group of prominent scientists and advocates of strict church-state separation promoting “rationalism” as the basis of public policy.  The Center for Inquiry-Transnational, founded by Paul Kurtz, will lobby and litigate on behalf of science-based decision making and against religion in government affairs.
 
The Center bemoans the growing lack of understanding of the nature of scientific inquiry and the value of a rational approach to life.

This disdain for science is aggravated by the excessive influence of religious doctrine on our public policies,” the declaration says. “We cannot hope to convince those in other countries of the dangers of religious fundamentalism when religious fundamentalists influence our policies at home.

Mickey Knox sums up his opinion of LA: “How in hell can one live in a city where having a car is as important as having a place to live in.”

I might rephrase this as “who would design a city in where having a car is as important as having a place to live in”. The core of my current home of St. Louis was built before car ownership was common, but our city fathers seem to specialize in making the city pedestrian and bicycle unfriendly: interstates carving up neighborhoods, no sidewalks, no enforcement of traffic laws. And a ridiculously inadequate public transportation system. I’m afraid many American cities have gone the same way: outside New York, and a few other cities, car ownership is an expectation. The financial and health costs to the owners, and the environmental costs from the pollution, don’t seem to enter into anyone’s calculations.

Knox was an interesting character, by the way: a Brooklyn-born actor who appeared in a number of gangster films (he was the drive in White Heat, for instance) until he was blacklisted. He went to Europe where he worked as a dialogue coach and dialogue director: he taught Anna Magnani her lines for The Rose Tattoo and dubbed The Good, the Bad and the Ugly into English. I recommend his autobiography, The good, the bad and the dolce vita (Nation Books, 2004).

Full disclosure here: I lived happily car-free in New York City, Jersey City, Boston, Chicago and Amherst, and bought my first car when I moved to St. Louis County to accept a job. I have a feeling if other Americans had the experience of living in cities where cars were not necessary, they would demand cities built for people, not automobiles.

Michael Moore recently published this pledge in the Los Angeles Times.  I applaud each of these twelve points:

1) We will always respect you. We will never, ever, call you “unpatriotic” simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2) We will let you marry whomever you want (even though some among us consider your Republican behavior to be “different” or “immoral”). Who you marry is none of our business. Love, and be in love — it’s a wonderful gift.

3) We will not spend your grandchildren’s money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It’s your checkbook too, and we will balance it for you.

4) When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home too. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on some amateur Power Point presentation cooked up by men who have never been to war.

5) When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you too will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that afflict you and your loved ones, we’ll make sure those advances are available to you and your family too.

6) When we clean up our air and water, you too will be able to breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water. When we put an end to global warming, you will no longer have to think about buying oceanfront property in Yuma.

7) Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9) We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren’t much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, take up another sport. In the meantime, we will arm the deer to make it a fairer fight.

10) When we raise the minimum wage, we will raise it for your employees too. They will use that money to buy more things, which means you will get the money back! And when women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage too.

11) We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don’t practice those beliefs. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs (”Blessed are the peacemakers,” “Love your enemies,” “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” and “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me”). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn’t just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism — starting here at home.

12) We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and break the law. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side first. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I know, a catchy title.  A little unfair maybe, since there’s nothing particularly titillating in what follows.  Or maybe there is, depending on what–what’s the saying?–”pumps yer nads!”   But in view of Erich’s post about our newly appointed head of Family Planning, I thought this might be the time to indulge more than a little in a topic rather close to my heart (depending on where one locates said metaphorical organ).

Did you know that the last week of October is national Protection From Pornography Week?  Yes, indeed, signed into law by our illustrious president, Mr. Bush back in 2003.  I for one had no idea I needed to be protected from it.  How reassuring to know that we are being defended from dangers both real and imagined by the ever watchful gaze of our very own homegrown clerics.

We’ve spent tax dollars on this.  Here is the link to the official White House proclamation.

Seems innocuous enough, even homey.  All that stuff about the destructive effects of porn on children, who can argue?

Has it occurred to anyone throughout the last two decades (beginning, in my opinion, with Ed Meese–anyone remember him?) of the war on pornography that–like alcohol and tobacco–pornography is simply not for children?  It seems a ludicrously simple idea to me–it was never intended for them.  We manage to have reasonable laws about things not intended for children.  We don’t let them drive cars (except at amusement parks, in specially constructed rides), we don’t let them drink booze, we don’t allow the sale of tobacco to minors.  They can’t vote, either, because we presume to decide on their level of intelligence and ability to make political statements.  That one may be arguable, but…    

We don’t allow children to sign contracts.  We don’t let them in to see “R” rated movies without a parent or guardian.  Technically, children aren’t allowed to have credit cards, but sometimes that one slips through the cracks.

Point being, we manage these other prohibitions quite handily.  Occasionally something goes wrong, but we have a system for dealing with it that doesn’t require a national week signed into effect by the president.  I mean, we don’t have a National Protection From Contracts Week detailing how contracts have debilitating effects on families and children (especially children, oh, those poor innocents who cannot defend themselves from the deprivations of over-zealous loan officers and contract litigators!).

The other side of this is, however, perhaps a little more contentious.  We don’t allow children to participate in all this stuff, but we make an assumption that adults may, can, and that there is, for the most part, nothing wrong with it! 

So why do we need this Protection From Porn Week? 

Well, it’s not aimed at children.  With all that child sexual exploitation is an evil thing and no sensible adult would allow that it’s not, the target here is not to protect children.  It’s not even to protect.  The target is Sex.

Since the Sixties there has been a war going on in this country about the public function of Sex in our society.  I won’t here detail that war–we sell products with it, but we can’t actually sell the thing itself (except in certain places under strict licensing etc.); we all like to be sexy, even when we don’t admit it, but we don’t necessarily want to follow through on the implications, i.e. have sex commensurate with the degree of sexiness we like to pretend to; sex is one of the most wanted things we have, yet there is a perverse urge to deny it to others when we deem it inappropriate (or even when it is appropriate, just public).  The war has taken on all the canny subterfuge and annoying intangibility of the worst aspects of the Cold War, which I think is an ironic if apt comparison.  After all, the Cold War was as much about ideas as about actions.

Attorney General John Ashcroft spent $80,000 on a curtain to hide the tits of Justice so television viewers wouldn’t be offended.

Who really was?  We’ve been looking at public nudity like that for two centuries.  Except for a few extreme crackpots, I don’t know of anyone who ever seriously complained–because we have all made the distinction between nudity and sexuality in these instances.  I mean, no one seriously gets turned on by the nakedness of Justice.  Do they? (more…)

Spamalot is all the rage these days, but perhaps you’d rather just go do a silly walk.   Or perhaps you’d rather just go invent your own silly walk in the privacy of your own home, using this Silly Walks Generator.

You didn’t think it could get any loonier at the White House, did you?  According to this article by the Washington Post, Bush’s new appointee in charge of family planning is opposed to all effective forms of family planning:

The Bush administration has appointed a new chief of family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services who worked at a Christian pregnancy-counseling organization that regards the distribution of contraceptives as “demeaning to women.”

Eric Keroack, medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a nonprofit group based in Dorchester, Mass., will become deputy assistant secretary for population affairs in the next two weeks, department spokeswoman Christina Pearson said yesterday.

Keroack, an obstetrician-gynecologist, will advise Secretary Mike Leavitt on matters such as reproductive health and adolescent pregnancy. He will oversee $283 million in annual family-planning grants that, according to HHS, are “designed to provide access to contraceptive supplies and information to all who want and need them with priority given to low-income persons.”

AWC (full name “A Woman’s Concern - Pregnancy Health Services”) is a pregnancy counseling service that forbids employees from referring patients to birth control providers.  Here’s their brochure.  Here’s a quote from the AWC brochure:  “AWC staff and volunteers will not distribute brochures, books or other materials that advocate and promote the use of contraception.”  Check out the website of AWC. As you can see, they refuse to even acknowledge the existence of birth control. The reason they don’t mention birth control is because they’re totally against it. 

If organizatins like this had their way, new laws would be passed prohibiting the sale of the pill, condoms, the diaphragm and every other effective means women have to control pregnancy.  Some conservatives out there are really advocating for these horribly intrusive and counter-productive laws.  To make things even worse, these fake clinics are getting lots of government money through the mechanism of tax credits.

I’ve previously investigated some of these so-called “pregnancy crises centers” or “pregnancy resource centers.”  They should all be shut down for the fraud they perpetrate on their unsuspecting customers and for their terrible medical advice that has the effect creating lots of repeat customers (lots of future unwanted pregnancies). See here and here. 

In Slate.com, William Saletan writes that the Democrats should blast the Republicans for the irresponsible policies they push in the area of family planning. 

The solution is simple: Democrats are for reducing abortion without banning it. The most effective way, short of abstinence, is through birth control. Birth control isn’t about doing what feels good. It’s about taking responsibility.

This is no gimmick. It’s a model for a new, more responsible definition of responsibility. Conservatives have often joked, astutely, that for many liberals, social irresponsibility is a euphemism for personal irresponsibility. But the reverse is also true: For many conservatives, personal responsibility is a euphemism for social irresponsibility. The solution is to require responsibility on all sides. Birth control is a perfect example. Its effectiveness depends on technology, access, and use. Better technology is industry’s responsibility. Better access is society’s responsibility. Better use is the individual’s responsibility. If everybody does his or her job, the abortion rate goes down. Way down.

In the meantime, the new head advisor of the $238,000,000 budget to provide for family planning grants believes that effective family planning is immoral and demeaning.  Maybe we can’t yet reverse this appointment.  But let’s at least we should be honest about what is going on.  Let’s start calling Keroack’s organization the U.S. Department of Accidental Pregnancies.

In this interview, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) claims that global warming is not caused by humans. He argues that liberals “want us to believe the science is settled and it’s not.” Why is is the atmosphere getting warmer? Inhofe: “God is still up there and we still have natural changes [in the atmosphere]“

All of this brought to you by FOX, consistent with other junk science brought to you by FOX.

According to this article, the USDA has revised its terminology to eliminate the word ”hunger” from its annual report, replacing it with the unfamiliar phrase ”low food security.”   In doing so, was the Bush Administration (which has a long history of manipulating scientific terminology to suit its political agenda) merely playing politics again, or was it trying to be more scientifically accurate?  You be the judge.

Some of us have been going beyond simply avoiding the frenzied mobs at the mall the day after Thanksgiving, for a number of years. We intentionally avoid any purchase on that day. This “Black Friday” full of obligatory consumption, angry parking, elbows, whining kids and glazed countenances is not one of the better parts of the American Experience. Although the stampedes and mini-riots over the latest plastic “hot item” make for amusing news.

Join us for the peaceful, easy feeling of Buy Nothing Day.

This Thanksgiving weekend, take the day you get off, off. Don’t join and exacerbate the mob. If you must buy those just-the-thing-I-need-how-nice items, do it another day. Listen to Tom Lehrer’s Christmas Carol as an antidote for all the inescapable seasonal music. Rent some classic videos on Wednesday, and watch them with the family on Friday. Play football in the yard or chess by the fire. Write holiday greetings to old friends. Bake from scratch! Make memories, not debts.
This is not a specific plea for easing up on consumption, but rather about breaking with the media-inspired feeding frenzy as a holiday kick-off.
^{This post inspired by Erich’s recent posts about Commercialism and Consumerism .}

See them floundering after their cherished possessions, like fish flopping in a river starved of water. 

Sutta Nipata 777 (From What Would Buddha Do? (1999)).

A friend of mine recently returned from an extended trip to Egypt.  He found it striking that the 18 million residents of Cairo lived in tightly packed conditions and that they owned so very few possessions.  Based on his own observations, the average resident of Cairo owned about 10% of the property owned by the average American family.  My friend’s estimate was about on the mark.  Most Americans would certainly describe most residents of Cairo to be “poor.” 

Amidst this material “poverty,” though, my friend noticed numerous signs of family togetherness and harmony that he doesn’t often see in the U.S.  Parents and children were spending time with each other, smiling at each other, playing together and apparently enjoying each others’ company.  How could this be, that people appeared to be so happy when they owned so little?  As my friend described what he saw, I couldn’t imagine Americans getting along that well if someone took away 90% of our possessions.  In fact, we’d become embittered and we’d be at each other’s throats.

My friend’s comments caused me to think of the enormous amount of material possessions that Americans have and crave.  We have shameful amounts of material possessions.  We have many times more stuff than we need.  Yet we work very hard to have ever more.

We are afflicted with the all-consuming epidemic “affluenza,” according to authors of the 2002 book of that title.  What is affluenza? “A painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” The authors quote T.S. Eliot: “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men.” 

Here’s an excerpt from a review of Affluenza from Amazon.com:

Americans each spend more than $21,000 per year on consumer goods, our average rate of saving has fallen from about 10 percent of our income in 1980 to zero in 2000, our credit card indebtedness tripled in the 1990s, more people are filing for bankruptcy each year than graduate from college, and we spend more for trash bags than 90 of the world’s 210 countries spend for everything. “To live, we buy,” explain the authors–everything from food and good sex to religion and recreation–all the while squelching our intrinsic curiosity, self-motivation, and creativity.

Do our leaders warn us of our materialistic excesses?  They used to.  Consider Jimmy Carter’s televised “Crisis of Confidence” Speech delivered on July 15, 1979.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

We don’t hear speeches like that anymore.  Not from politicians or even from most religious leaders.  Most politicians and preachers who might dare to suggest that Americans were shallow-minded materialists would get the boot. 

In fact, everything was so amazingly peachy within a couple months after 9/11, that George W. Bush commended us for our shopping:

In the face of this great tragedy, Americans are refusing to give terrorists the power. Our people have responded with courage and compassion, calm and reason, resolve and fierce determination. We have refused to live in a state of panic or a state of denial. There is a difference between being alert and being intimidated, and this great nation will never be intimidated. People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing . . .

That’s how bad it’s gotten.  (more…)

In Missouri, Republican legislators charged with getting to the bottom of a problem, have produced a fine example of spurious causal linkage that ought to go down in history with the assertion made by certain agents of the pope to Michelangelo that, since one of his marbles had taken seven years to complete, the new one for which he had requisitioned four helpers, would therefore take 28 years to complete–four times seven, you see, equals twenty-eight. It never occurred to them to divide, only multiply.

Which seems to be a problem Republicans have with regards to certain problems.

Their conclusion in this instance is that the rise in illegal immigration over that last three decades can be attributed to abortion. Specifically, because some forty-five million abortions have been performed since Roe v. Wade, those millions of potential Americans represent the short-fall in our labor pool which illegal immigrants are filling.

I haven’t laughed so painfully in a long time. Not over this sort of absurdity.

The Democrats on the same committee have refused to sign off on the report, but the report is now public, and all the Republicans signed it, hence alleviating any doubt (had there ever been any) where they stand on the issue of illegal immigration. Obviously, we should go on an accelerated program of creating a second baby boom to stem the tide of all those undocumented workers stealing American jobs. It will, of course, take about 18 years for the program to produce any tangible results–unless, of course, the Republicans intend sponsoring legislation to overturn child labor laws.

Anything to strike a blow at a woman’s right to choose.

Now, lest we not be clear about where I come down on this issue–both issues–let me state a couple of things up front.

I am a man. I therefore do not believe I have a “natural” right to say anything at all about what a woman does concerning reproduction. I have some contempt for males who bleat about their rights being trampled by abortion (after all, it’s MY fetus, too, she used MY sperm). In specific instances where a couple planned in advance to make a baby and the woman backed out after pregnancy occurred, I have a modicum of sympathy–broken promises are hard to take–but I don’t see any way short of legal instrument (a contract between them, notarized, etc) of ever proving the case. (more…)

According to this recent news item on MSNBC, Emily Gillette, 27, filed the complaint with the Vermont Human Rights Commission late last week against Delta Air Lines, for kicking her off of a flight between Burlington and New York City.

Gillette said she was breast-feeding her 22-month-old daughter as their flight prepared to leave Burlington International Airport. She said a flight attendant handed her a blanket and told her to “cover up.”

The airline is defending itself by claiming that Gilette wasn’t being sufficiently “discreet.”

A breast-feeding mother is perfectly acceptable on an aircraft, providing she is feeding the child in a discreet way,” that doesn’t bother others, said Paul Skellon, spokesman for [the airline]. “She was asked to use a blanket just to provide a little more discretion, she was given a blanket, and she refused to use it, and that’s all I know.

Huh?  Let’s see . . . I’m looking at my calendar . . . it is the year 2007 A.D.  

I’m not going to waste any time wondering whether Ms. Gillette was “discreet.”  Immoralist that I am, I don’t see any reason why any woman should have to be discreet while nursing her baby.  There’s no more reason for this than for requiring a woman to throw a towel over her own head while she herself eats a pretzel.  Or requiring a man to be discreet when he blows his nose.

I’m wondering why an airline would have a policy that requires a nursing mother to be “discreet.”  What part of nursing needs to be discreet?  The part about nourishing milk being made available to the baby?  The part about the baby drinking the milk?  The part about the baby not going hungry?  None of these is the true fear, because no one would have any problem with a woman conspicuously feeding breast milk (which she previously pumped from her breast) out of a bottle.  Nor is the worry that some portions of breasts are offensive.  Women expose large swaths of tops of their breasts through their conscioius choice of clothing. To combat this “top of breast” onslaught, airlines would need to invoke strict dress codes.  I haven’t heard any outcry for such airline dress codes.

This inane airline policy is really about protecting “us” from nipples.

Gee . . . I wonder what social segment is pressuring airlines (and everyone else) to protect us from nipples?  Let’s have an unscientific survey.  Let’s put 500 religious fundamentalists over here on my right.  Now, by a show of hands, which of you fundamentalists think that the nipple of a nursing mother should not be visible in a public place?  I see about . . . oh . . . 462 hands.   Now, let’s put 500 secular humanists over here on my left. Please raise your hands if the airlines should protect us from seeing nipples.  Two hands?  Wait!  One of you is clentching a Bible!  Get over in the other group where you belong! Only one hand now?  No wonder they call us God-cursed immoralists!

So . . . the people trying to “protect” us from nipples are the same people who strive to “protect our marriages” from gay people. It’s the same people who try so hard to foist that sex obsessed book on the rest of us.  You know, the Bible.

Here’s a little self-help therapy for those of you who just can’t get over the fear and shame of nipples.  Go into your bathroom and lock the door.  Stand in front of a mirror and take off your shirt.  Now, carefully take a look at your nipples.  There . . . that’s what nipples look like.  Ask yourself whether your head exploded.  Probably not.  Did a demon emerge from the floor and stab you with a pitchfork?  Probably not.

I’m also going to suggest some reading for you fundamentalists.   There are articles that discuss nipples and areolas. I know reading these article is going to be difficult, because what really bothers you guys is that you don’t want to be reminded that you are animals.  Yes, humans are animals.  We are cousins with the other animals (and plants).  We poop.   We breathe, we sleep, we cough, we have emotions, we eat, we guard territories.  Just like other animals.

Yes, and we lactate.  Take a deep breath and listen up: seeing a nipple won’t make you turn to stone.  If you get sexually bothered seeing a woman’s nipple, it’s YOUR problem, not hers.  Really, you need to get over it.

This is more about history of science than about modern answers. Some of the latest methods for calculating how old the Earth is are succinctly summarized here at www.talkorigins.org.

One of the more readable of the many innumerate and unscientific rebuttals to a few of the dating methods can be found at http://www.allaboutcreation.org.

In brief, before the 18th century scholars generally accepted that the Earth was created shortly before man began keeping records. But then came “the Enlightenment”, and systematic record keepers began turning up (correlating) all sorts of things that could only make sense if the world were older than previously assumed.

For example, fossils were already a problem for a Young Earth outlook in the 1700’s. Given the predictably small percentage of any animal population that gets caught in the conditions that allow fossilization (one big flood lasting for weeks won’t result in fossilization), and the number of different fossil species found, there isn’t room on the planet for them all to have had living populations in the same few thousand years! Fortunately, different fossils are found in specific layers, the same layer for a given fossil type anywhere on the planet, allowing them to be spread out over a few hundred different epochs. Of course, this stretches the world time into at least millions of years.

Another example: (more…)

If the American Congress has no interest in investigating the Bush administration’s abuses of power, we can always rely on the Germans to lend a hand. As reported on NPR this morning, and also in Time and elsewhere on the internet, Germany’s chief prosecutor is seeking a criminal investigation and prosecution of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and  others for their role in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Janis Karpinski, former Brigadier General who was once commander of US military prisons in Iraq, issued a statement in support of the filing. Here’s the link to the Time story.

Maybe Tenet can wear his Presidential Medal of Freedom to the trial.

In a post entitled “A Seriously Warped Moral Compass,” Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism relates a discussion he had with an evangelical fellow.  The topic?  Hosea, chapter 13, a Bible passage in which God promises that for the crime of disbelief, the city of Samaria’s “infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.”  This is one of those many Bible passages that the anti-abortion demonstrators refuse to display on their signs as they march in front of clinics.

I’ve often been in discussions similar to the one described by Ebonmuse. Such discussions are highly predictable, actually.  They all lead to the same conclusion.  The fundamentalists all end up insisting that whatever God does, He is still “good” or “just.” 

Here’s how the encounter of Ebonmuse with his fundamentalist acquaintance:

“You’ve said that it’s perfectly okay for God to command genocide. You’ve said it’s okay for him to condemn people to be tortured for all eternity because they had some sincere doubts about his existence. And now you’re saying it’s perfectly okay for him to order the slaughter of pregnant women and their unborn children! So what would you consider immoral? Is there anything you think he can’t do and still be good? Is there any act - anything at all - that a good god would never command?”

For the first time, a shadow of disgust passed across John’s face. “Yes. A good God would never say that it’s okay for people to be gay. Homosexuality is disgusting and unnatural and God would never permit it.”

Here’s how I see it.  Either God is not “good” or one can still be good even though one slaughters babies.  Now, maybe those babies (some of them being unborn babies) were morally deficient and “had it coming,” but I doubt it. 

In my heathen view, babies are not capable of doing anything capable of earning the death penalty.  In the meantime, we’ve got a language problem.  If fundamentalists keep insisting that God is good when He kills babies, we’ll just have to advise all of the dictionary makers that there is a new definition of “good.”  We’ll call it “good #2” (or something like that) and it will mean something like this:  evil, depraved, morally obtuse and dangerous.   Once this new definition of good (#2) is commonly accepted, we can start using it commonly.  For instance, if someone sticks a gun in your face to rob you, you can say, “Hey!  You’re good #2!”

Here is how Ebonmuse ends his post:

People such as this have a seriously warped moral compass. They have their priorities precisely backwards, they are obsessed with precisely the wrong things. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg once said: “Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

As long as fundamentalists can’t shake off the effects of the LSD they apparently take, they rest of us will just have to understand that they give God a free pass, morally speaking. He gets all the credit but none of the blame.  Although He’s sometimes good, he’s often good #2.  He’s always “just.”  He is incapable of doing evil even when he’s busy slaughtering innocent babies. And perhaps it is because God is so good (#2) that the fundamentalists are “inspired” to be good (#3), namely, they (sometimes) refrain from killing and stealing because they’re afraid that God might be good (#2) to them too.

BTW, I’d highly recommend that you check out Ebonmuse’s site.  Lots of thoughtful analysis and good clear writing.

He comes at the topic of religion from many angles, always with new fruitful observations. Here’s how he describes himself:

Part-time computer hacker, part-time freethought activist; optimist and skeptic rolled into one; a poet at heart but a scientist at mind; a thorough-going atheist who admires religious music and architecture. I contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman put it. And anyone who suggests that I’m only an atheist because of a dysfunctional family or a bad experience with church gets fifty lashes with a wet noodle blessed by the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[Note:  This is not the original version of this post.  While I was correcting a typo, the original post got “eaten” by an airport Internet connection].

Bill Moyers wrote that “it has been said that the mark of a truly educated person is to be deeply moved by statistics.” To the extent that this is true, go hither and understand the world through the statistics presented by “Worldometers.”  Lots of thought-provoking statistics kept up to the second (through extrapolation). 

I see that 28,125 people have died of hunger so far today.  Enough people to fill a big stadium, many of them children, dying of something entirely preventable . . .

Very much worth a visit, if you are capable of being “deeply moved by statistics.”

Okay, so we all would like to save the planet, save the environment, and save a buck on heating and cooling.
The price of heating gas is rising. So, how can I decide whether electric heaters are more cost effective than the gas furnace? How do I compare gas company therms to electric company kilowatt-hours?

Easy! One therm is 29.3 kilowatt-hours. But, how much heat is that? Well, a kilowatt-hour gives you 3,413 btu’s. It doesn’t matter if you use these kwh’s in a space heater, a TV, a lamp, a fridge, or a ceiling fan. All the kwh’s you use in the house become heat in your home. Every one! Nearly perfect efficiency.

How do you convert therms to btu’s? A therm of gas is defined as 100,000 btu’s, but it is actually a bit trickier to figure in practice. If the gas burns with complete efficiency, and all the heat is kept in the house (as in a gas oven or ventless fireplace log), this definition useful.

But in gas central heating, about 20% of the heat goes straight up the flue! Then you also have to figure in the kilowatts you use to blow the air around. Those contribute some heat, but add to the actual cost of heating.

From my last utility bills:

• Gas: $1.65/therm / .80 (80% efficient furnace) gives me $2.00/100,000 btu’s
• Electric:$0.06/kwH x 29.3 (kwh/therm) gives me $1.75/100,000 btu’s

So, although a $1.65 therm is cheaper than 29.3 khw at $1.76, keeping the overall house cooler and using space heaters where needed will probably save me some money this winter.

Even if I had 94% efficient gas furnace (they make those for a few thousand dollars), gas would barely break even with electric only until the gas prices go up. They will. Electrically, I live over a big coal bed and only 100 miles from a working nuclear power plant, so I expect those rates to stay pretty stable.

Maybe I missed something in the post-election flurry, but in the wake of the recent Democratic victories, why did Nancy Pelosi take such pains to assure everyone that “impeachment is not on the table”? Is she already looking to run for president in 2008 and doesn’t want to offend people?

Personally I’d love to see an impeachment. Not so much for the possibility of seeing Bush removed from office (although I wouldn’t mind that at all) but in order to have a real investigation into the lies, deceptions and abuses of power by the Bush administration during the last six years. And I want that information presented in the mass media, so that people who get their news from the television news will hear about what the readers of Paul Krugman and Frank Rich already know. And I want the other people involved to be so exposed and discredited that they can never work in government again.

This article in Slate.com was helpful to me.  Here’s an excerpt:

Modern evangelicalism emerged from an early-20th-century conflict between Protestant liberals and fundamentalists. The fundamentalists felt that the liberals had strayed too far from the teachings of the Bible and urged a return to the most orthodox teachings. The evangelicals staked out a middle ground—more conservative than the liberals but not quite as old-fashioned as the fundamentalists. The evangelicals and fundamentalists remain two distinct groups, though they share a belief in the importance of a personal relationship with God and the Bible. In general, the fundamentalists tend to be stricter and more isolated from mainstream culture. An evangelical parent might encourage his kids to listen to Christian rock, for example, while a fundamentalist parent would object to all music of that kind.

I think so.  The rampant commercialization of the U.S. becomes powerfully evident whenever I return from an extended trip to a country where people don’t wallow in materialism (on this exact point, see this post by Mindy Carney).  Americans are professional buyers and horders of things they don’t need.  I believe that the trojan horse of ubiquitious advertising is largely to blame.  Before I go further, here are a couple of quotes to ponder.

Don’t tell my mother I work in an advertising agency - she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.  ~Jacques Seguela

He who buys what he does not need steals from himself.  ~Author Unknown

Many people would argue that we can freely ignore advertisements. Therefore, it’s OK to make the all-American deal: allow as many ads as necessary to pay for news and entertainment. 

I disagree. Yes, we can ignore particular commercials or even dozens of commercials.  But the average person is exposed to two million television commercials by age 65.  In The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (2005), Barry Schwartz writes that “The average American sees three thousands ads a day.”  As advertising professor James Twitchell puts it, “Ads are what we know about the world around us.”  Just listen to Americans!  They have become the commercials they have been exposed to.   They just can’t stop craving the things they see advertised.  They recite skits they hear on commercials just like people often used to sing the melodies they heard on cigarette commercials from the 1960’s.  It is naive to assume that we can subject ourselves to this onslaught without ill effect.

Is this massive exposure to commercials harmful to us?  I believe so.  In my opinion, we shouldn’t assume that the ubiquitous commercialization of our world is harmless.  In light of accumulating evidence, it would be more prudent to assume that rampant commercialization causes widespread societal dysfunction.  Television is not just the programs.  Rather, television promotes a lifestyle, largely through its commercials and through the programs that those sponsors choose to promote. I’m not limiting my criticism of advertising to television advertising.  All forms of advertising lead us to ignore things that we claim to be important to us and to reallocate our energy and money toward things that we all admit are not important.

Consider, also, the narcotic effect of TV, which is mostly related to the way in which the content is presented, not the content itself.

As reported by American Dream, 79% of Americans think there should be more limits on advertising directed at children.  92% of people believe that TV commercials make children too materialistic. A super-majority of Americans (87%) think that our current consumer culture makes it harder to instill positive values in our children.

What is the cumulative effect of our constant exposure to images of happy people buying things they don’t need, images strongly suggesting that we must do likewise? I believe that we are seeing the result—massive societal Attention Deficit Disorder and the wasting of minds.  Minds that turn passive and all consumptive, caused by the extinguishing of their sense of curiosity.  We are too distracted to take the time to think critically.  We try to fill our resulting intellectual emptiness by buying things we don’t need.  It’s a perverse form of sublimation akin to eating too much because we fail to sleep enough.

Although television is a huge source of this advertising in the U.S., it is not the only source.  Advertising also permeates our minds through print ads (newspapers, magazines, flyers, posters), public displays (billboards, bus stops, train stations, signs of all sizes and colors), movie theater ads (pre-movie commercials and product placements), vending machine facades, radio commercials, ads burned onto our clothing (t-shirts, shoes, hats), displays pasted on prominent buildings and sports arenas, and even an occasional blimp. Don’t forget all those banners and pop-ups marching across your computer screen, many of them blinking and singing.

No one is safe from a constant barrage of ads.  Corporations are persistent predators at our schools. See The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education and ASU’s Commercialism in Education Research Unit.

Even the “good” news is not all that good: children saw fewer paid television ads in 2004 — 17,506, or a 12.5 percent drop from 1977 when they saw 20,000.   Doing the math, this still amounts to about 50 paid television ads per day.  

To quantify one example, take billboards (please, take them). As reported by Freepress.net:  500,000 billboards “decorate” U.S. federal highways.  That total is increasing by thousands each year.  It is getting to be an unusual pleasure to drive down a highway where billboards have been outlawed, where you can actually appreciate trees and sunsets.

Much of what passes as “information” is actually graffiti, corporate graffiti created and maintained on behalf of the economic elites.  If this sounds harsh, just look for it the next time you drive down through any city. (more…)

In the Bible, Genesis chapters 7-10 describe a great flood that destroyed all human life on earth, except for Noah and his family.  Bible scholars claim this event occurred about 4500 years ago.  This raises two questions I have been unable to answer:

1)  If all human life on earth descended in the past 4500 years from one family, then why are there so many different types of humans on our planet; e.g., Caucasians (with many variations), Africans (with many variations), Asians (with many variations), Pacific Aboriginees (with many variations), Native Americans (with many variations), etc.?

2)  If all human life on earth descended in the past 4500 years from one God-fearing family, then why are there so many different ancient religions on our planet that are not based on the god of the Old Testament, including many that are polytheistic?

I’m just curious how a continent of Asians with straight black hair, a continent of Africans with tightly curled black hair, a continent of Europeans with blond hair, two continents of Native Americans, and a wide range of Pacific island tribes with semi-curly black hair, all could have descended in 4500 years — from one Middle-Eastern family living near Mount Ararat, especially if evolution is “just a theory,” and especially given that each group has its own indigenous religion(s).