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.

Pullman on free speech

The wonderful Phillip Pullman, confronted with an insufferably English question about the title of his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, fires off a pithy, powerful defense of free speech.



Phillip Pullman wrote the books that got me through middle school in one piece. His Dark Materials forms part of my personal scripture, along with Hitchhiker's Guide and a few other formative books and movies. I wanted to be Lyra and then, even more, I wanted to be Will. Maybe after reading them I am, a little bit. They're that good.

In addition to writing fiction, Pullman is one of those rare public intellectuals who actually has something useful to say. He has strong convictions about free speech, civil liberties, and religion, and isn't afraid to speak his mind. A final Pullman quote, from an article he wrote for Banned Books Week:

My basic objection to religion is not that it isn't true; I like plenty of things that aren't true. It's that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

Om lingalinga

This week's dispatch from the Department of Woo is old news, but just as funny as it was two years ago. Sanal Edamaruku, president of Rationalist International, challenges a guru who claims to be able to kill people with his mind magic to kill him on live TV.  The guru begins mumbling and gesticulating. Several hours later, Edamaruku still very much alive and laughing, the show goes to news.

Edamaruku speaks truth to hooey:

It was in March 2008. The tantra master and I were studio guests on a popular TV show to debate on the subject of "Tantric power vs science". He boasted that he was able to kill anyone by mantra and tantra within three minutes. I grabbed my chance to put him in check and offered myself for a test. Caught on air, he couldn't escape without losing face – and his high-profile clientele. So our unprecedented experiment began. The master started chanting his trade mark "killer" mantra that has become quite a hit on the internet since: "Om lingalingalingalinga, kilikilikili…"

After several rounds of chanting failed to knock me out, he tried the whole arsenal of his tantric gimmickry on me, obviously without any result either. I was just laughing. In his embarrassment, he proposed I was protected by a supreme god whom I served – never mind that I am an atheist! Finally, he resorted to foul play, pressing his thumbs against my temples, hard enough to kill me the conventional way, but was cautioned by the umpiring anchor. With no way to escape, he upped the stakes and agreed to perform the "ultimate destruction ceremony" that would kill me dead sure. With ratings soaring, the programme overran, rolling on and on in "breaking news" mode. The channel announced another round of our epic battle for the night show.

Same game, this time in proper style: open night sky, the auspicious hour before midnight, me sitting on the tantric altar, blazing flames, white smoke, voodoo doll, peacock feather, mustard seed and all that. The master, besmirched with ashes from the cemetery ground and after the prescribed ritual consumption of sex, meat and alcohol at his tantric best, was assisted by a chorus of vigorous mantra chanters: "Om lingalingalingalinga, kilikilikili…"


Well, the pig still didn't fly.

Sanity - 1
Magic - 0

That's how it's done. That's how you fight the forces of backwardness and the charlatans who prey on the gullible. Let them embarrass themselves in public by telling the world what they really think. You barely need to ridicule them - this guy did a beautiful job of ruining himself.

If only the Teabaggers were so easy. Luckily, though, they're getting more absurd by the day. It shouldn't be too long before more people are laughing at them. The name is perfect enough: now all they need is uniforms and a secret handshake. 

The moral: just keep on laughing. Even if it doesn't help, it might keep you from crying.

The Pope forgives

The Onion, America's Finest News Source, reports on some recent news out of the Vatican: the Pope has graciously absolved thousands of priest-molested children of their sins.

"Though grave and terrible sins have been committed, our Lord teaches us to turn the other cheek and forgive those who sin against us," said the pope, reading a prepared statement from a balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square. "That is why, despite the terrible wrongs they have committed, the church must move on and forgive these children for their misdeeds."

"As Jesus said, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,'" the pope continued. "We must send a clear message to these hundreds—perhaps thousands—of children whose sinful ways have tempted so many of the church's servants into lustful violation of their holy vows of celibacy. The church forgives them for their transgressions and looks upon them not with intolerance, but compassion."

Google vs. China

Google just cold turkey stopped censoring in China. Who knows what happens next. I'm behind Google all the way, but sooner or later they're going to get kicked out. If the Party really decides to get its crackdown on, massive government cyberattacks are going to be the least of their problems.


From Wiki:

The apparatus of the PRC's Internet repression is considered more extensive and more advanced than in any other country in the world. The regime not only blocks website content but also monitors the internet access of individuals. Amnesty International notes that China “has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world.” The offences of which they are accused include communicating with groups abroad, opposing the persecution of the Falun Gong, signing online petitions, and calling for reform and an end to corruption.^[4]

Some pretty egregious offenses there. It certainly would be unacceptable to have anyone suggesting reform, pointing out corruption, communicating with "groups" (what groups?) abroad, or opposing persecution. That would be shameful. Or something.

I'm just waiting for the international fiasco when a Google employee gets thrown in jail on some similarly ridiculous charge.

From the article:

Thousands of police officers are employed to monitor web activity and many automated systems watch blogs, chat rooms and other sites to ensure that banned subjects, such as Tiananmen Square, are not discussed.

What must it be like to work as a censor? To possess illicit knowledge when your job is to obliterate it? Are there really thousands of people across China who know what their country's been up to and choose to smother the horror stories anyway? That's real patriotism. Or true denial.

Maybe they told them it was all a pack of Western lies, evidence be damned. Maybe it's a cultural thing and I'm being insensitive. Then again, maybe the toxic waste in the air and water has affected their heads.

China scares me on several levels. Intensely corrupt, wildly irresponsible, and childishly vindictive, it looms like an enormous dumptruck on the horizon. They'll be more powerful than the States one day. We're far from perfect, but at the very least, we've got a mostly democratic government and a fetishistic attachment to free speech. What does China have?

Self-portrait

Does what it says on the tin. It's not the greatest likeness, and I'm not even sure it's finished, but it captures something.

Back to it

I'm back from spring break, sunburned, certified for scuba adventures and thoroughly satisfied. I slept for about two days after I stumbled off the bus, and now I think I'm ready for the next few weeks. And it is only weeks now. One week until grad school apps are due, a few more weeks until the thesis (currently in embryonic form) is due, and only a few weeks after that until graduation.

My semester thus far has been an easy ride: work hard all day, then home for painting and beer all night. The next while is going to involve a lot less painting and a lot more typing. Thinking, even. And probably less beer. Alas.

On the bright side, it is currently 60 degrees and sunny out.

Spring break

A week's hiatus begins tomorrow! Down to Florida for sweet beach time and finally getting my scuba certification. Sixteen hours there - five people in a little sedan - then several days of sunny 75 degree weather, laying in the sun with frosty beverages, diving, and bumming around with good people. I have been looking forward to this for a long time.

Oh so sweet

Sweet vindication:

• The Cove won Best Documentary at the Oscars!
• Homophobic state senator comes out as gay, surprising only the very naive. 
  
  
  

  Last year, Mr Ashburn opposed a bill to establish a day of recognition to honour murdered gay rights activist Harvey Milk. He has also voted in the statehouse against efforts to expand anti-discrimination laws and recognise out-of-state gay marriages. Mr Ashburn, who represents California's 18th district, said he does not plan to run for any public office after his term ends later this year.

  No, I don't imagine he does. See also:

  
  
  
  • Ted Haggard 
  • This wonderful study from 1996 in Journal of Abnormal Psychology:

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?

By Adams, Henry E.; Wright, Lester W.; Lohr, Bethany A.

Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Vol 105(3), Aug 1996, 440-445.