Ada Lovelace Has A Day

I just discovered that there is a day for this brilliant woman. Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord Byron, a scholar, and wrote what is arguably the very first computer program in an essay about Charles Babbage. Of course, since she was a woman at a time when women were considered not to have either brains or rights, she would have been seen as an anomaly at best, a monster at worst. Since she had some position, however, she has not been forgotten or dismissed. Warning: personal opinion follows. Women who denigrate the idea of Feminism and fail to understand how tenuous their position is vis-a-vis history cause me heartburn. If they think about it at all, they seem to believe Woman As Property happens in the Third World and nothing like that can happen here (wherever the particular Here happens to be). But then you run into something like this. One paragraph from this report says it all: Females do not have voting privileges, but are generally allowed to speak at meetings, according to Klaetsch. Sunday’s meeting was the first time in recent history that St. John’s Council President Don Finseth exercised his authority to prevent females from speaking, church members say. This is in Wisconsin. Recently. I grant you, this is not a state practice, but in these times when so many people seem to feel that religion trumps civic law, it’s a disturbing thing to behold. The question in my mind is, why don’t all the women there pick up their marbles and leave? Because they either buy into the second class status accorded them or they like something about the condition they inhabit. Western women have it easy in such matters—no one will stone them if they get a little uppity. For them, this is a “lifestyle” choice, at least functionally. In parts of the Middle East and Africa it’s life or death. Back when I was in high school, in the supposedly enlightened United States of America, in 1971, I took an architectural drawing class. The room was filled with boys. All boys. One girl was taking the class. Where was she? The teacher put her in a separate room, the supply room at the back, with her own drafting table and tools. Why? Because the morons inhabiting the rest of the class wouldn’t leave her alone, wouldn’t let her do her work, teased her, ridiculed her, abused her, told her she was weird, unnatural, a lesbian, that she wanted to be a man, that all she needed was a good screwing and she’d get this crazy notion of being an architect right out her system. I heard this, witnessed some of it. It made me profoundly uncomfortable at the time, but I didn’t understand it other than as the same run-of-the-mill bullying that I myself had been subjected to all through grade school. But it went beyond that, I now see, because what she did ran counter to some idea of what the relative roles of men and women are “supposed” to be. Did the boys indulging the abuse understand that? No, of course not. They were parroting what they’d grown up seeing at home and elsewhere, with no more reflection or self-awareness than the hardwired belief that Real Americans all love baseball that Communism was automatically evil and John Wayne was just shy of the second coming. Analysis would be the natural enemy to a traditional view that maintained an absurd status quo and should therefore be resisted, hence anyone among their peers that preferred reading to sports was also an enemy. So celebrate Ada Lovelace Day. No one, male or female, should accept restrictions imposed by cant and tradition and national dogma. But until it is entirely recognized that we are all of us People first, male and female next, and that equal rights accrue to people, not types, none of us are safe in our predilections and ambitions.

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Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles

What guiding principles would you select if you wanted to establish a highly cooperative new society? In order to avoid re-creating the deep-seated cultural strife that is ripping us apart, you might be tempted to brush aside all current conflicting systems of religious-based morality and start fresh, striving to come up with a system to which most non-believers and many believers could assent. At center, it would be an evidence-based system. That's what Paul Kurtz has done with his newly released Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values. It's not for everyone, but its list of principles and values will resonate with many people. Here are the basic principles:

Neo-Humanists:

  1. aspire to be more inclusive by appealing to both non-religious and religious humanists and to religious believers who share common goals;
  2. are critical of traditional theism;
  3. are best defined by what they are for, not what they are against;
  4. wish to use critical thinking, evidence, and reason to evaluate claims to knowledge;
  5. apply similar considerations to ethics and values;
  6. are committed to a key set of values: happiness, creative actualization, reason in harmony with emotion, quality, and excellence;
  7. emphasize moral growth (particularly for children), empathy, and responsibility;
  8. advocate the right to privacy;
  9. support the democratic way of life, tolerance, and fairness;
  10. recognize the importance of personal morality, good will, and a positive attitude toward life;
  11. accept responsibility for the well-being of society, guaranteeing various rights, including those of women, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities; and supporting education, health care, gainful employment, and other social benefits;
  12. support a green economy;
  13. advocate population restraint, environmental protection, and the protection of other species;
  14. recognize the need for Neo-Humanists to engage actively in politics;
  15. take progressive positions on the economy; and
  16. hold that humanity needs to move beyond ego-centric individualism and chauvinistic nationalism to develop transnational planetary institutions to cope with global problems—such efforts include a strengthened World Court, an eventual World Parliament, and a Planetary Environmental Monitoring Agency that would set standards for controlling global warming and ecology.
Paul Kurtz has issued an invitation for others who accept its main principles and values to sign on in support, even if they do not agree with all of its provisions. I have signed up. The values listed in this document are my values. It is so rare that I find a collection of principles to which I would so readily aspire. These principles should not surprise anyone familiar with the work of Paul Kurtz. This Neo-Humanist statement is both a set of positive principles and a push-back against radical atheism:

Writing in the December 2009/January 2010 issue of Free Inquiry, the magazine he founded, Kurtz declared "militant atheism is often truncated and narrow-minded...it is not concerned with the humanist values that ought to accompany the rejection of theism. The New Atheists, in my view, have made an important contribution to the contemporary cultural scene because they have opened religious claims to public examination...What I object to are the militant atheists who are narrow-minded about religious persons and will have nothing to do with agnostics, skeptics, or those who are indifferent to religion, dismissing them as cowardly."

In his interview at Huffpo, Kurtz reminds us that only 2 to 3 percent of Americans self-identify as "atheists," whereas 16 percent of Americans (50 million people) do not affiliate with any religious organization. The Statement ends with this invitation:

We submit that the world needs to engage in continuing constructive dialogue emphasizing our common values. We invite other men and women representing different points of view to join with us in bringing about a better world in the new planetary civilization that is now emerging.

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More on the complexity of happiness: New TED lecture by Daniel Kahneman

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel laureate who has spent his long life making dozens of startling discoveries regarding judgment and decision-making. More recently, he has done considerable work in hedonic psychology. He recently appeared at TED to discuss the "The riddle of experience vs. memory." [caption id="attachment_11875" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image by Nruboc at Dreamstime.com (with permission)"]Image by Nruboc at Dreamstime.com (with permission)[/caption] There is no person better qualified than Kahneman to describe how the human psyche is rife with "cognitive traps." In this TED talk Kahneman explains that these traps "make it difficult to think about happiness." One foundational problem is that humans tend to resist admitting complexity; happiness is a monolithic term for most of us. Kahneman states, however, that "happiness is no longer a useful word, in that it applies to many things. We need to completely give up the simple word "happiness" in order to effectively communicate. One of the biggest problems is that there is a huge confusion between experience and memory when it comes to determining happiness. The distinction is with A) happiness IN your life versus B) happiness ABOUT your life (or WITH your life). The problem with trying to determine one's own happiness is exacerbated by the "focusing illusion." The effect of this illusion is that "we can't think about any circumstance that affects well-being without distorting its importance." Kahneman gave an example of a friend who claimed that a scratching sound at the very end of a music recording ruins the entire experience. This is utter nonsense, since the scratching sound occurred only at the end of the recording. It didn't ruin the entire experience. Rather, it ruined "the memory of the experience." Human beings consist of two selves: the experiencing self (who lives in the moment) and the remembering self (who keeps score and maintains the story of our lives, selecting and maintaining our memories. For the remembering self, a critical part of any story is how it ends. If it ends badly, the memory of the entire experience is contaminated (In this video, Kahneman describes earlier studies regarding colonoscopies which dramatically illustrated this point). Time is a funny thing for human beings. For our experiencing self, a two-week vacation is twice as good as a one-week vacation. For the remembering self, a two-week vacation might not be any better than a one-week vacation--"time has very little impact on the story" for the remembering self. [More . . . ]

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Welcome to Prom Night

Constance McMillen wanted to go to her high school prom. Like most students in the United States, she doubtless saw the event as the capstone of four years of effort, a gala event for students that represents a reward for getting to the end of their senior year and, presumably, graduating not only from high school but into adulthood. One night of glamor and revelry, dressed at a level of style and affluence many might never indulge again, to celebrate the matriculation into the next level of independence. A party where students can show themselves—to their peers and to themselves—as adults. It has become something more, probably, than it was ever intended to be. Patterned after high society “debuts” at which young ladies of good breeding (and potential wealth) are introduced to Society (with a capital “S”) in a manner that, when stripped of its finery and fashionable gloss, is really a very expensive dating service, with the idea of creating future matches between “suitable” couples, the high school prom is a showcase, a public demonstration of, presumably, the virtues of a graduating class. Over the last few decades, even the less well-off schools strive to shine in what a prom achieves. Instead of a local band in the high school gym, with bunting and streamers and colored lights to “hide” the fact that normally gym class and basketball are performed in this room, the prom has become elevated to a decent hotel with a ball room, a better-priced band (or a DJ), and all the attributes of a night on the town in Hollywood. Tuxedos and gowns are de rigueur and students’ families spare no expense to deck their children out in clothes they really often can’t afford. Limousines transport the budding fashionistas and their knights errant to the evening’s festivities and you know this cost a fortune. Students may be forgiven for believing that it’s for them. In its crudest terms, the prom is for the community, a self-congratulatory demonstration of how well the community believes it has done by its youth. It is a statement about what that community would like to see itself as.

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Talking about God is no longer religious

In the case of Newdow v. Rio Linda, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that talking about "God" is not religious talk. The case was brought on behalf of an atheist public school student who was required to recite the current version of the Pledge of Allegiance, which includes the phrase "under God." The Majority Opinion holds that the phrase “under God” in the current version of the Pledge of Allegiance is not a personal affirmation of the speaker’s belief in God. Further, the Majority plays a shell game, pretending that is is required to analyze the entire Pledge (which it finds to be primarily patriotic) rather than having the courage to look at the offending phrase "under God," which was added by Congress in 1954, during America's McCarthyite period. Here's the Majority's shell game in action (from p. 3877):

We hold that the Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the Establishment Clause because Congress’ ostensible and predominant purpose was to inspire patriotism and that the context of the Pledge—its wording as a whole, the preamble to the statute, and this nation’s history—demonstrate that it is a predominantly patriotic exercise. For these reasons, the phrase “one Nation under God” does not turn this patriotic exercise into a religious activity.
I will emphasize points raised by the Dissent because the Dissent is coherent and honest, in contrast with the disingenuous Majority opinion. The Dissent begins at page 3930 with an elaborate table of contents. Don't trust me on any of these points: read the opinion for yourself and you'll see that I'm not exaggerating in the least. What are the facts of the case? I’ll refer to the case description given by Judge Reinhardt’s Dissent (from page 3976):

When the five-year-old Roe child arrived for her first day of kindergarten, her teacher, a state employee, asked the young students to stand, to place their hands on their hearts, and to pledge their allegiance to “one nation, under God.” Neither young Roe nor her mother, however, believe in God. Thus, having already learned that she should not tell a lie, young Roe simply stood silently, as her classmates recited in unison the version of the Pledge that requires its proponents to express their belief in God. Everyday thereafter, the children filed into school, and each morning they recited an oath of allegiance to “one nation, under God” — an oath that undeniably “requires affirmation of a belief and an attitude of mind” to which young Roe does not subscribe: a belief that God exists and is watching over our nation. Cf. W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 633 (1943). For eight months, the five-year-old Roe faced, every morning, the daily “dilemma of participating” in the amended Pledge, with all that implies about her religious beliefs, or of being cast as a protester for her silent refusal. Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577, 593 (1992). On some days she quietly endured the gaze of her teacher and her classmates as she refused to say the Pledge, standing in silence as the classroom’s lone dissenter; on others she walked out of the room and stood in the hallway by herself, physically removed from the religious “adherents” — the “favored members of the [classroom] community,” Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 310 (2000), who were able to swear their fealty to the United States without simultaneously espousing a state-sponsored belief in God that was antithetical to their personal religious views. In April, 2005, Jan Roe filed this lawsuit on behalf of herself and her child. Her claim is straightforward: The Constitution of the United States, a nation founded by exiles who crossed an ocean in search of freedom from state-imposed religious beliefs, prohibits the purposefully designed, teacherled, state-sponsored daily indoctrination of her child with a religious belief that both she and her daughter reject.

The Majority Opinion also blunders by incorrectly stating that “under God” is not a religious phrase because it was not allegedly not inserted in the Pledge for religious reasons. The Majority Opinion makes the laughable claim that the phrase “under God” is simply “a reference to the historical and political underpinnings of our nation,” and that its purpose is to remind us that our government is a “limited government.” The Dissent responded to this point at page 3931:

Were this a case to be decided on the basis of the law or the Constitution, the outcome would be clear. Under no sound legal analysis adhering to binding Supreme Court precedent could this court uphold state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance by children in public schools. It is not the recitation of the Pledge as it long endured that is at issue here, but its recitation with the congressionally added two words, “under God” — words added in 1954 for the specific religious purpose, among others, of indoctrinating public schoolchildren with a religious belief. The recitations of the amended version as conducted by the Rio Linda Union and other school districts fail all three of the Court’s Establishment Clause tests.

Was the phrase "under God" added to the Pledge in 1954 for religious reasons? There is no doubt about this. The idea to insert “under God” began in the pews of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church—The Dissent provides loads of citations and details (see, for example, p. 3944). How did the phrase “under God” get into the Pledge? Congress inserted it in 1954. On page 3957 of the opinion, the Dissent presents the all-telling details. The Dissent explains starting at page 4008:

Not only was the message underlying the new Pledge clear — “true” Americans believe in God and non-believers are decisively un-American — but so too was its intended audience: America’s schoolchildren.

The legislators who set out to insert the words “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance were fully aware that in 1954 the original Pledge was a commonplace scholastic ritual. Indeed, a primary rationale for inserting the explicitly religious language into the Pledge of Allegiance, as opposed to into some other national symbol or verse, was that the Pledge was an ideal vehicle for the indoctrination of the country’s youth. The amendment’s chief proponents in Congress were not at all bashful about their intentions. Speaking from the well of the Senate, Senator Wiley endorsed the bill by saying, “What better training for our youngsters could there be than to have them, each time they pledge allegiance to Old Glory, reassert their belief, like that of their fathers and their fathers before them, in the all-present, all-knowing, all-seeing, allpowerful Creator.” Id. at 5915 (emphases added). Senator Ferguson, who authored the Senate bill, agreed that “we should remind the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and the other young people of America, who take [the] pledge of allegiance to the flag more often than do adults, that it is not only a pledge of words but also of belief.” Id. at 6348 (emphasis added). In the House, Congressman Rabaut, the original author of the first bill to amend the Pledge, declared that “from their earliest childhood our children must know the real meaning of America,” a country whose “way of life . . . sees man as a sentient being created by God and seeking to know His will.” Id. at 1700 (emphases added). His colleague, Congressman Angell, argued that “the schoolchildren of America” should understand that the Pledge of Allegiance “pledge[s] our allegiance and faith in the Almighty God.”

In conclusion:

An examination of that text and the plain meaning of its words clearly reveals the explicitly religious purpose motivating the amendment to the Pledge. The words “under God” are undeniably religious, and the addition to the Pledge of Allegiance of words with so plain a religious meaning cannot be said, simply because it might assist the majority in obtaining its objective, to be for a purpose that is predominantly secular. The words certainly were not inserted for the purpose of “reinforc[ing] the idea that our nation is founded upon the concept of a limited government.” As I have stated earlier in this dissent and as I reiterate here, the suggestion by the majority that the purpose of inserting the phrase “under God” into the Pledge was to remind us that we have a “limited government” finds no support in the record and is wholly without merit.

And why is it that the Majority Opinion is pretending that this case is about the effect of the entire Pledge rather than the two-word phrase that is clearly at issue? To avoid the obvious. Here's what would have followed from honest and competent jurisprudence (again, this is from the Dissent):

[The earlier U.S. Supreme Court case of Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1984)] explicitly requires us to compare the original statute to the amended form and to examine what the amendment has added. Where the addition is religious, the addition must be invalidated. Here, Wallace unquestionably requires us to strike down as unconstitutional the state-directed, teacher-led daily recitation of the “under God” language in the Pledge of Allegiance in the public schools. Omitting the two words added by the 1954 amendment and returning to the recitation of the secular version of the Pledge that was used in public schools for decades prior to the adoption of the amendment would cure the violation of the Establishment Clause at issue here.

Newdow v. Rio Linda would seem to suggest two things to those who take the logic of the Majority Opinion seriously. First of all, stare decisis is the sacred foundation of our entire legal system--except when it is not (for instance, when the Newdow Court intentionally skates around the Wallace decision), and that the principle of stare decisis can be cavalierly switched on and off by an appellate judge. Second, it’s time to revoke the tax-exempt status of all churches that talk about “God” because such talk is no longer religious. The bottom line, though, is that Newdow is simply the latest in a long line of dishonest Pledge of Allegiance decisions. For example, see this earlier post on the federal district court case of Freedom from Religion Foundation v. The Hanover School District, where the Court claimed that making the children recite the Pledge each day is for the purpose of "teaching them history."

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