22

It's my birthday!

I was feeling nostalgic for the Netherlands, so I made a little landscape with clouds, acrylic and enamel again. I think it's Delft, but you can pick your own city if you like.

Productive

Crunching away on the thesis, filling my walls with the artistic thoughtbunnies of an increasingly scrambled mind.

Penny

Untitled (suggestions?)

The Boy in sunglasses

Hertzsprung-Russell

Flux/Peak

Boobquake!

In a follow-up to last week's post on sluts and earthquakes, today is Boobquake: a day for women around the world to show off their cleavage in an attempt to debunk a fundamentalist Iranian cleric who blames natural seismic events on women dressing immodestly.

The Bad Astronomer has more:

"...last week an Islamic cleric in Iran said that all the earthquakes occurring in that country are caused by women dressing "immodestly". Yes, this same screwed-up thinking that brought us the Taliban and the idea that burning, throwing acid upon, and beheading women is all their own fault for being, y’know, women, gives us this:

"Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes… What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?" Sedighi [the cleric] asked during a prayer sermon Friday. "There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam’s moral codes."

I got news for you, Sedighi: if I were God, I’d be throwing more earthquakes your way for the way you treat women. In fact, I’d send a few thousand mini ones that open the Earth and just swallow up the twinkie clerics who say such profoundly horrid things.

Serious note: I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: not all cultures are created equal. Any culture that sweepingly and maniacally oppresses half their population is what I would call evil. Moral relativism be damned: that kind of crap is wrong, plain and simple.

So I stand with my XX-oriented friends against the neolithic thinking of gender-oppressing religions. As Ben Franklin would say were he here today:


We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang lifted and separated.

Now go out and flash your favorite intolerant bastard! I leave you with my favorite relevant lj icon.

The Beeb does whales

Two articles in the BBC this week:

• How to rescue a stranded whale (with video)

Each year anywhere between five and 50 whales, dolphins and porpoises are washed up on Britain's beaches. British Divers Marine Life Rescue, a volunteer charity, was set up in 1998 to rescue them.

To find out how it's done Nick Higham, and volunteers including a chef, a plumber, a man who runs boat trips and a woman who works in IT, encountered a two-tonne inflatable whale for a training course on a Kent beach.

• Whaling plan draws anger 

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has published draft proposals for regulating whaling for the next decade.

Japan's Antarctic whale hunt would fall in stages to less than a quarter of its current size. But hunting would continue on the endangered fin whale.


Key countries, including the US and Japan, have limited comments to saying they will consider the draft proposal carefully.


But some conservation and animal welfare groups have already indicated opposition.


"The fact that this proposal is even being discussed shows just how far out of touch the IWC is with modern values," said Claire Bass, manager of the Marine Mammal Programme at the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA).


"It is entirely missing the point that blasting conscious animals with exploding harpoons is grossly inhumane."


However, others argue that the aim of completely banning whaling is unrealistic, and that a major down-scaling, combined with bringing it under international oversight, is a worthwhile compromise.


But the inclusion of fin whales and the continuation of hunting in the Southern Ocean - which has been declared a whale sanctuary - are points of concern.

With regards to "completely banning whaling is unrealistic, and ... a major down-scaling...is a worthwhile compromise", I am reminded of this article from the Onion:

VATICAN CITY—Calling the behavior shameful, sinful, and much more frequent than the Vatican was comfortable with, Pope Benedict XVI vowed this week to bring the widespread pedophilia within the Roman Catholic Church down to a more manageable level.


Addressing thousands gathered at St. Peter's Square on Easter Sunday, the pontiff offered his "most humble apologies" to abuse victims, and pledged to reduce the total number of molestations by 60 percent over the next five years.


"This is absolutely unacceptable," Pope Benedict said. "It seems a weakening of faith in God has prevented our priests from exercising moderation when sexually abusing helpless minors."


"And let me remind our clergy of the holy vows they all took when they entered the priesthood," he continued. "They should know that they're only allowed one small child every other month."

Library thoughts

It's mindblowing how much you have to read just to avoid writing something barfingly stupid.

Sluts and earthquakes

Hojjat ol-eslam Kazem Sediqi, the acting Friday prayer leader in Tehran, delivered a televised sermon at the Tehran University campus mosque last week. Given the wretched den of sin and iniquity in which he was speaking (all institutions of higher learning are like this), it is perhaps unsurprising that he chose to sermonize on the "prevalence of degeneracy" in modern society. Every generation of hypocrites laments the lapsed morals of the generation following theirs, nothing new there. When the degenerate youth asks why they need to behave exactly as their parents claimed they did, the elder generation rarely has anything convincing to say. But last Friday Sediqi put his finger on the real reason that strict Islamic morality is necessary, at least for women:

"Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes," he explained.

Tens of thousands of people have died in Iran earthquakes in the last decade.

More than 25,000 people died when a powerful earthquake hit the ancient city of Bam in 2003.

You heard it here first: 25,000 people died because some hussy pushed her veil an inch back to feel the sun on her forehead.

This is hilarious, but the "Unveiled women cause adultery" argument makes me crazy.  Male arguments for the necessity of the veil always puzzle me, because they are an admission of profound moral weakness. The veil is actually an insult to men: the statement it makes is that men are so very fallible that the very hint of a strand of hair will inevitably drive them into a lustful frenzy, after which point they cannot be held responsible for their own actions. It ascribes less agency to members of the male sex than most people ascribe to small children. For one of the most patriarchal religions in the universe, that's just... weird.

Artistic procrastination

Same story as last week. Thesis moving slowly, overwhelmed by a continuous flow of paint.

Amber

Bonsai

Self portrait as Che Guevara

New Jersey

for Pickle

The end is nigh

I'm counting hours until the end of undergraduate classes forever and ever and ever. This is beyond strange. It hasn't been four years. They're lying to me. My cap and gown are stashed away in my sock drawer, still in their plastic because I'm scared to open them up. I walk in a month and two days.

Locked myself in and stayed up for a few days this week staring at this screen and contemplating my thesis with a growing sense of existential horror. Sort of like this, but silently and in a library. I am cautiously optimistic, however. If I keep going long enough, it is statistically probable that I will produce a work of profound insight and great intellectual beauty:

Meat

Meat from Japan's "scientific research" whaling program is turning up in US and Korean stores. The Beeb reports:

Scientists say they have found clear proof that meat from whales captured under Japan's whaling programme is being sold in US and Korean eateries.


The researchers say they used genetic fingerprinting to identify meat taken from a Los Angeles restaurant as coming from a sei whale sold in Japan.


They say the discovery proves that an illegal trade in protected species still exists.


Whale meat was also allegedly found at an unnamed Seoul sushi restaurant.


Commercial whaling has been frozen by an international moratorium since 1986.


But a controversial exemption allows Japan to kill several hundred whales each year for what is termed scientific research.


The meat from these whales is then sold to the public in shops and restaurants in that country.

From the article, it seems the meat was advertised straight up as whale meat. While it boggles the mind that eateries selling endangered species escaped notice for so long, I suppose it's better than the alternative: dolphin and whale meat with toxic levels of mercury deliberately mislabeled and sold to unwitting customers as more expensive stuff.

Wonder how toxic this stuff was?

Arrest the Pope

Richard Dawkins wants to arrest the Pope:

RICHARD DAWKINS, the atheist campaigner, is planning a legal ambush to have the Pope arrested during his state visit to Britain “for crimes against humanity”.


Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the atheist author, have asked human rights lawyers to produce a case for charging Pope Benedict XVI over his alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic church.


The pair believe they can exploit the same legal principle used to arrest Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, when he visited Britain in 1998.


The Pope was embroiled in new controversy this weekend over a letter he signed arguing that the “good of the universal church” should be considered against the defrocking of an American priest who committed sex offences against two boys. It was dated 1985, when he was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases.


Benedict will be in Britain between September 16 and 19, visiting London, Glasgow and Coventry, where he will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th-century theologian.


Dawkins and Hitchens believe the Pope would be unable to claim diplomatic immunity from arrest because, although his tour is categorised as a state visit, he is not the head of a state recognised by the United Nations.

That last part (emphasis mine) is interesting.

Wiki tells me that the Vatican is "a recognised national territory under international law, but it is the Holy See that conducts diplomatic relations on its behalf, in addition to the Holy See's own diplomacy, entering into international agreements in its regard." The Vatican itself is not recognized by the UN.  It is the Holy See (the ancient episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome) that wears the pants in terms of foreign relations.

Wiki:

In addition to the member states [of the United Nations], there is currently one non-member permanent observer state: the Holy See (which holds sovereignty over the state of Vatican City and maintains diplomatic relations with other states). It has been an observer state since 6 April 1964,^[37] and gained all the rights of full membership except voting on 1 July 2004.^[38] 

Wiki again:

The Holy See has been recognized, both in state practice and in the writing of modern legal scholars, as a subject of public international law, with rights and duties analogous to those of States. Although the Holy See, as distinct from the Vatican City State, does not fulfil the long-established criteria in international law of statehood; having a permanent population, a defined territory, a stable government and the capacity to enter into relations with other states,^[4] its possession of full legal personality in international law is proved by the fact that it maintains diplomatic relations with 177 states, that it is a member-state in various intergovernmental international organizations, and that it is: "respected by the international community of sovereign States and treated as a subject of international law having the capacity to engage in diplomatic relations and to enter into binding agreements with one, several, or many states under international law that are largely geared to establish and preserving peace in the world."^[5]

In that light, calling the Pope's trip to England a "state visit" sounds a bit pretentious (if not out of character). The Pope is a "head of state", but as far as I can tell he's not actually the head of any full-fledged state. Vatican City is a toy country, and the Holy See is "analogous" to a State. I don't know that either of those grant him diplomatic immunity.

Of course, he has immunity of a different kind. He's the kindly daddy (from Latin: papa; from Greek: πάππας (pappas), an affectionate word for father) of the  most self-consciously grandiose institution on the planet. He's the shining, beatific face of the patriarchy. He's the ultimate earthly arbiter of right and wrong.

You can't just clap him in irons for systematically sheltering and relocating the holy men who raped the children entrusted to their care.

Can you?

Mammals in the House

Congress has scheduled a hearing on marine mammal captivity, the Orlando Sentinel reports. The House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife will meet on April 27th to hear testimony. Animal welfare advocates hope the meeting will lead to tighter regulations on the industry, which has had some of its not-so-shiny areas brought to light by the recent death of a SeaWorld trainer by a killer whale in Orlando and the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove," about dolphin captures in Japan.

From the article:

The Sun Sentinel explored the world behind marine parks in a 2004 investigative series. It found that over the previous three decades, about 1,500 sea lions, seals, dolphins and whales in marine parks had died at a young age, some from human hazards such as capture shock and ingestion of coins and foreign objects.

The industry took root in Florida when the first marine park, Marineland of Florida, opened in 1938, and fostered an international trade with killer whales now worth up to $5 million each.

Until the 1980s, many of the marine stars came from the wild, with Florida waters supplying bottlenose dolphins that ended up at parks in Europe, Israel and Canada. U.S. attractions stopped capturing marine mammals more than 15 years ago and now rely on breeding.

Today, of the 1,243 marine mammals in the nation's parks, zoos and aquariums, only 15 percent were caught in the wild, a Sun Sentinel analysis of federal data shows. Another 14 percent were found stranded on beaches, and the rest were born in captivity.

Sarah over at WaterNotes, a conservation blog, has some further thoughts on the hearing:

This is a huge development for many reasons and – I feel – a golden opportunity for zoos and aquariums to give a voice to their husbandry practices, reveal their missions, and inform the public about the size and scale of their education and conservation programs.  It’s a chance to separate the institutions who get it right (and most likely carry AZA credentials) and those that have a long way to go.  It is also a chance to discuss what the role of zoos and aquariums can be and what more they can do, towards fulfilling the obligations of the MMPA [Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, info here and here] to use contact with and observation of marine mammals to inspire our next generation of ocean advocates and stewards.

Enamel

I've been playing around with enamel recently. It's great: mix it with water and it makes the most beautiful swirly patterns as it diffuses. It comes out shiny and textured, and stains your hands forever. No amount of turpentine will get it all off - you just have to wait a week or so for the skin to slough off. Artistic stigmata. It's well worth it. 

So, instead of working on my thesis this week, I made a tree and... something else! The pictures are crap because of the shininess, apologies.

I'm not a great fan of Impressionism - it's very pleasant and serene, and it just doesn't capture me - but I love Van Gogh. I'd like to think that the second one is in the spirit of what he would have made had he been able to see the Earth from space. 

Easter

As Zombie Awareness Week draws to a close, we celebrate the miraculous restoration of the three-day old corpse of an ancient Palestinian cult leader, moldering in the desert heat, to glorious, malodorous life. To commemorate this holy occasion, we eat candy in the shapes of pagan symbols of fertility and lust: eggs, chicks, and bunnies (as in, to fuck like ____ ).

It took me a long time to realize that this fluffiest of holidays – we got to eat Peeps and stay home from school – was actually about sex and death and zombies. We hide the truth under cloying pastel colors and magical anthropomorphic bunnies, but the story of Jesus rising from the grave and then marrying his own still-virginal mother is actually interesting. And morbid and horrifying and awesome.

Eminent internet scholars have written on the zombie Jesus hypothesis, and most agree that it is likely that he did once walk the Earth. Indeed, he may be lurching around still. Uncyclopedia records a fragment of the Apocrypha dealing with this version of the Resurrection:

It was as the subtle, burning glances of His onlooking Roman captors, the remorsefully sullen followers became more stricken with terror, fright, and penance that Zombie Jesus returned to this world, forcing his broken, tired limbs, blood-stained from the mortal wounds he had suffered, to pull his undead carcass from the rough hewn Cross so that he might seek the most appropriate Earthly sustenance deserved of the sacrificed son of God: a crimson river of Flesh and Brains to satiate his heavenly hunger.

I leave you with an earworm, composed on the fly by friend and praetorian guard Nate. It goes to the tune of “I Saw Three Ships”, and should be sung with enthusiasm in public places, preferably in two or three-part harmony.

The Virgin Mary and Zombie Christ

On Easter Day, on Easter Day

The Virgin Mary and Zombie Christ

On Easter Day in the morning!

Simon Singh vindicated

Science writer Simon Singh wrote an article two years ago in which he called out chiropractors on their fantastical claims and dangerous practices. Soon afterward, the British Chiropractic Association, in a fit of idiocy, brought a libel suit against him. Singh has lost two years of his career to the suit, but yesterday he won.

[EDIT: Oops, my bad. He won his appeal to classify his comments as "free comment" instead of statements of truth, which makes this easier, but he's not in the clear yet. There are still many legal hurdles he has to clear before this business is over.]

Writing that this coalition of quacks "happily promotes bogus treatments" (in one of Singh's books) to describe a "treatment" that has proven both ineffective and potentially lethal strikes me as perfectly reasonable. The BCA thought it was criminal. As soon as the internet heard about the suit, it exploded with indignation and scorn. From Wiki:

"A "furious backlash"^[2] to the ongoing lawsuit has resulted in the filing of formal complaints of false advertising against more than 500 individual chiropractors within one 24 hour period, one national chiropractic organization ordering its members to take down their websites,^[3] and Nature Medicine noting that the case has gathered wide support for Singh, as well as prompting calls for the reform of English libel laws.^[4]"

Sometimes, if you ignore 4chan, the internet gives me hope for humanity. 

The bullshit of chiropractors runs deep. From Singh's original article:

"This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let’s be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body."

It's not just that it's wacky. People have died.

"...manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

[Some reports here.]

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

Happily, the Court of Appeal ruled in Singh's favor, trashing the BCA's suit in scathing terms. From yesterday's ruling :

"The opinion may be mistaken, but to allow the party which has been denounced on the basis of it to compel its author to prove in court what he has asserted by way of argument is to invite the court to become an Orwellian ministry of truth. Milton, recalling in the Areopagitica his visit to Italy in 1638-9, wrote:

"I have sat among their learned men, for that honour I had, and been counted happy to be born in such a place of philosophic freedom, as they supposed England was, while themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning among them was brought; …. that nothing had been there written now these many years but flattery and fustian. There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old a prisoner of the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought."

That is a pass to which we ought not to come again."

Love the Milton. Love that we're winning again.