Feeding The Fish

I’m a fan of Damian Thompson’s counterknowledge concept (’misinformation packaged to look like fact’) and it’s blog- I’m less of a fan of his Holy Smoke blog, if only because it’s a tad depressing to watch him skim over abuses of facts by Catholics that he’d tear apart as counterknowledge if anyone else had made them.

Case in point: He had a post the other day on the unjust ‘heckling’ of Catholic Bishop Patrick O’Donoghue (who I mentioned last week) in a select committee. Now I have no idea if it was an unjustly harsh grilling, but personally I think that someone who can say that teaching safe sex is part of a “deluded theory that the condom can provide adequate protection against Aids” and writes policy for sex education in schools probably should be questioned harshly. Now, I’m not really expecting high-ranking church officials to come out against their insane approach to sex education; I do ask that they don’t lie about the facts. Telling people condoms are wrong is one thing, telling them that condoms don’t work or, this can’t be brought up enough, are actually infected with HIV is another thing altogether. Its counterknowledge, pure and simple, being used to scare people who don’t know better by people who have no excuse not to know better.

In the article he also venerates Tory MP Douglas Carswell for saying that the bishop had a harsh reception:

Mr Carswell told this week’s Catholic Herald: “I think the bishop was slightly taken aback, and I felt slightly embarrassed. I give people a hard time, but only if they are on the public payroll, a recipient of public money, in the civil service or quangos – they’re fair game. But otherwise, if they’re members of civic society, they’re kind of guests. He wouldn’t have got that sort of treatment if he were an imam.”

Now, I think all people are entitled to a basic amount of respect, but Mr Carswell misses the basic point here: We’re talking about Catholic tax-payer funded schools; he IS a recipient of public money! Why wasn’t Mr Carswell giving him a hard time? Why, because he happens to be a bishop, should he not get held to account?

People who deal in counterknowledge like the ineffectiveness of condoms in preventing STDs should be chased out of anything relating to education policy, and if it were anyone other than a Catholic bishop who’s using counterknowledge to advance a moral view that Thompson happens to agree with, I’m sure he’d be leading the charge.

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And so I can get all my Catholic Church related anger out in one post (and I blame rhetorically speaking for bringing this to my attention), here’s what Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s response was to the idea of meeting with scientists so they explain their work with hybrid embryos:

” have been approached by MPs and asked by others in the media to consider meeting with leading scientists who are currently involved in this area. I would be only too happy to agree to such a meeting and I am sure other Church representatives and leaders of other faiths would also agree…….In agreeing to such a meeting my only condition would be that the scientists were also willing to accept instruction from our Churches and peoples of faith on basic morality, on what human life really is, on the purpose of our life on earth”

These scientists want to come and meet with the church leaders in the perhaps naive hope that they’re simply ill-informed rather than actively shit-stirring, and their response? Ok, sure, I’d do that; I’m a reasonable man after all! My only condition, and it’s not really a biggie, is that they acknowledge that we’re really the most moralist people EVER and defer to us in all moral judgements from now on. Note the way it’s phrased, it’s these scientists who are willing to come and explain themselves rather than the cardinal, who’s been viciously lying about what their work involves, who lack basic morality!

And to round off with some Daily Mail moralising:

The orchestrated attacks on the Roman Catholic church by ministers, scientists and medical charities have done nothing to advance the debate over the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

In sneering language, they have portrayed the Church as rooted in the Dark Ages - wilfully blocking research which could help millions who suffer from such dreadful ailments as Alzheimer’s, muscular dystrophy and Parkinson’s. Bishops and cardinals have been accused by fertility expert Lord Winston of lying to the public, by health minister Ben Bradshaw of being intemperate, emotive and plain wrong, and by other Labour MPs of “scaremongering”.

What, an attack on the Church? Totally unprovoked I might add? And crude as well, pointing out the other side is lying (even if they are) is just unsporting!

mysociety need your help. Their amazing TheyWorkForYou site parses the official website, strips out all the awkward formatting and hard to search layout and reorganises it so it can be easily accessible. Now, given as they’re a small, ill-funded charity (go on, help them out!) they’d like it if Parliament took a little bit of work off their hands by instead of publishing in an obscure and hard to parse way to instead release its information in a nice, easy XML format (which is essentially pure content, no presentation) so use of it by them and by anyone else would be far more straightforward. Kudos to David Cameron for being quick off the mark in giving his support (can we buy him a tripod while we’re at it?)

So in the unlikely event this is the only blog you’ve read that’s brought up the subject (the mysociety guys tend to be treated as heroes by political bloggers and we’ll report if they sneeze), go sign up to their campaign now!

Brown caved on a free vote, which raises the question: are there many matters Parliament discusses that aren’t moral or ethical issues?

Given a sudden bout of laziness, I won’t paraphrase and try and it write off as my own thoughts but will instead just copy outright from this Polly Toynbee article.

What is a moral issue in politics? Recent House of Commons practice has freed MPs to follow their consciences on questions of pressing moral profundity such as hunting with hounds, Lords reform and fluoridation of the water supply. How do parties decide what belongs in some unique realm of “morality”? Perhaps by the volume of green-ink emails from obsessives that follows any mention of such matters, among them abortion and embryology.

Now look at what political parties have decreed not to be matters to trouble MPs’ consciences: going to war in Iraq is a prime case. That may be small potatoes compared with climate change, where MPs have nodded through a puny record of action, as if the survival of their grandchildren ranked morally below fluoridation of teeth. Replacing Trident while pretending to work for non-proliferation and world peace might strike many as a matter of conscience, but apparently not. Coming soon will be the vote on detaining suspects without charge for 42 days, which won’t be moral enough for a free vote either.

Some would put ID cards into this “moral” category deserving a free vote too, though (here come the emails) I tend put that on the green-ink side of the equation. But I would put the duty of the wealthy to pay fair inheritance tax into the moral basket, alongside the bully power of City money to ensure that the little people pay proportionately more in tax than the rich. I think it a moral matter when the Commons votes through a minimum wage below the inflation rate, further impoverishing the already underpaid.

If I were an MP, I might demand a conscience vote on these. I would certainly see no reason why the religious conscience is treated as more precious than other MPs’ moral views. On the great questions of war, climate and social justice, the cardinals and bishops never muster their heaviest artillery. They keep their powder dry for their own bizarre morality, focused as ever on sex and fertility - but why should those issues be sacrosanct for MPs’ free votes?

Blogging etiquette requires I have a line of text underneath a large quote.

Maybe all this talk of the actual science of what the Bill entails has distracted me from the issue at hand: Should MPs have a free vote or not?

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of Roman Catholics in England and Wales, became the most senior church figure to call on Mr Brown to sanction a free “conscience” vote of MPs on the Bill.

“Certainly, there are some aspects of this Bill on which I believe there ought to be a free vote, because Catholics and others will want to vote according to their conscience. I don’t think it should be subject to the party whip.”

That seems reasonable. After all, punishing MPs for voting with their conscience would be unreasonable, right Cardinals? Wait, what’s that internet? We have a quote from an article last year where the church suggested rather heavily that they might deny communion to any Catholic MPs who stepped away from the party church line?

In his sermon the Cardinal, Scotland’s most senior Catholic, said politicians who support abortion should be aware of the “barrier such co-operation creates to receiving Holy Communion” but after the Mass he would not say whether he meant that Catholic politicians who back abortion should be cast out from the Church. “I’m not going to say whether or not those who are involved in any way in helping or aiding abortion can approach the altar to receive Holy Communion. It’s not up to me to judge them, I’ll leave that to God to judge them.”

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, added his support to Cardinal O’Brien, urging all Catholics “especially those who hold positions of public responsibility” to educate themselves about the Church’s prohibition on abortion so that they could make decisions “with consistency and integrity”.

It seems to me that instead of being a triumph of the will of democracy over party politics, a free vote seems to mean that the party whips step back so the church whips can step forward. Or is that too cynical?

And in related news: James Graham draws my attention to an article by the good cardinal telling atheists they’re heartless meanies who are incapable of love, which is incidentally why our soulless secular solutions haven’t found the solution to the HIV problem in Africa: They need more love! I know, I know, I would have thought a constructive role for the church might be more telling people that using condoms doesn’t damn them for eternity or, at the very least, to stop telling people that condoms are deliberately infected with it, but I think we’ll have to defer to his wisdom on this one.

Tina Fay is an award winning American writer and comedian who was head writer at SNL before going on to write, star in, and produce 30 Rock, a show about the behind the scenes of a sketch comedy show. (For UK readers, apparently it’s like Studio 60, but with the show-within-a-show actually being funny. Also: not cancelled). The point I’m trying to make here is this really is quite a talented and funny lady.

In a Reader’s Digest article she let slip some comments that some found objectionable. Now, I LOVE the Daily Show, but I think her point that some jokes get laughs because people approve of them being made rather them than actually being funny is true. I don’t think there’s wrong with that, if the Daily Show didn’t ration out the funny the internet would be full of nothing other than re-postings of Daily Show sketches and we’d never get anything done. I do object to her view of male comedy:

RD: What’s the difference between male and female comics?
Fey: Every comic way of writing is unique, but I think male comedy is more boisterous. Usually it involves robots and sharks and bears. Female comedy is more likely to be about the minutiae of human behavior and relationships.

Because I don’t think that’s true in the slightest, for one thing it ignores the complex minutiae of behaviour you can get through various combinations of robots, sharks and bears. The proper response to this from a male comic should be “F*** you and the robot bear you rode in on!” - instead because the woman in question happens to be a bit of a cutie, we’re informed that Tina Fay’s existence is no longer able to be validated by Daniel O’Brien’s penis (I’m sure she’s weeping). I do appreciate the irony that when male writers are accused of frat boy humour, O’Brien hits back with a hard-hitting piece about how he would no longer sleep with her. I don’t think that was intentional either, I think it was genuinely the funniest thing he thought was possible to say about an attractive woman. This, friend, is why she writes for SNL and you write for Cracked.

Another choice quote:

I’d reference some hilarious female comedian to disprove your point right now, but I can’t fucking think of any.

Hahaha, comedy is a profession that women find hard to break into? Oooh, You crack me up!

In interests of passing on the hat-tip, I got this story through The Largest Minority who also added this comment regarding Fay’s fuckability in relation to her support for Hillary Clinton:

Here’s a tip ladies (that’s not what I meant), if you ever want to get a guy interested, please refrain from mentioning Hillary Clinton… ever. For guys, talking about Hillary with a woman we fancy is like sitting next to grandma at the strip club. Her name is an anti-Viagra neutron bomb destroying the appeal of everything within a hundred block radius.

Remember folks: There is no sexism directed towards the Hillary Campaign or its supporters whatsoever.

There’s news going round that the Government might seriously be looking at changing the electoral system to some version of the Alternative Vote.

I’m a bit torn on this, on one hand I’m glad the problem is being thought about; on the other hand I think AV is a bad solution to the problem. I’m disappointed that there are only currently plans for one additional preference, this gives us the same dynamic we have for Mayoral elections, where you vote your conscience with your first vote, and then cast your ‘real’ vote for one of the main parties. This gives the illusion of greater choice and legitimacy; whilst in the end very little has changed. The system needs at least three votes to avoid the problem, as this allows the possibility for votes to condense around a common third party candidate before one of the main parties. This will do nothing to increase representation of parties already under-represented at Parliament and in fact the system can produce more un-proportional outcomes than under FPTP. This is a system that seems to fix the problem by giving MPs greater legitimacy without actually changing very much. Of course, the appearance of progress without actually having to sacrifice anything is doubtless too tempting a prospect to resist.

In my opinion AV is only appropriate when there can only be one of a position, like a Mayor, President or other singular executive position. MPs’ aren’t like that and there’s no need for only one MP to represent an area, in fact the people are better represented and Parliament will be more proportional if an area is represented by multiple MPs. For a legislative body we really should be looking at multi-member proportional systems like the Single Transferable Vote or (my pet project) the Delegated Vote instead of systems that just solidify existing control.

I see two possible ways this could affect future reform:

1. AV will bring in a slightly more proportional chamber (by no means a certainty), so that a transition to a more proportional chamber will be less of a shock on the main parties and a more proportional system like STV or DV could transition with less opposition than from our current state.
2. AV removes the most potent weapons in our electoral reform arsenal (the absurd number of MPs without majorities) and superficially addresses the concerns in our current voting system and pushes all call for reform far into the future.

I hope for the former, but find the latter far more likely. It depends if we want the strongest possible electoral reform argument, or the possibility of a Parliament that might be slightly more friendly to it. Alternatively, we could end up with a Parliament that’s not much different to what we have now, but believes it’s fixed the problem.

Theo Hobson’s annoying me; I’ve quoted him before and doubtless will again because he’s a useful source as a secularist Christian, but today I made the mistake of reading him whilst wearing my atheist hat, not my secularist one. In his Easter piece explaining the story of his faith and I was less than impressed.

An intense bout of undergraduate angst sent me to the father of “existentialist” theology: Kierkegaard. I accepted his idea that despair is the normal modern condition, from which only faith can rescue us.

Ah, so that’s why Christianity is attractive! Life is endless toil and despair, and only God can save you! I was hoping that the message of the article would be that after this self-admitted bout of undergraduate angst, he discovered a deeper reason to believe but sadly not:

So my attraction to Christianity is two-fold. It comes from the sense that without faith there is despair, that the highest form of psychology is faith-based. And it is rooted in the quasi-socialist ideal of the Kingdom of God. Christianity is the true idiom of social hope - and also of psychological realism.

You know, I don’t feel much like despairing - Life seems pretty good most of the time in my godless universe. Maybe I’m just deluding myself here and I only think I’m happy during those times I manage to get through a whole week without crying myself to sleep because of the cruel reality of a life without God. I don’t doubt that his faith genuinely makes him happier and I wish him well with that, but the idea that faith is required for anything other than despair to be possible is patently untrue. You have to suspect some of his bile towards atheists in his other pieces is influenced by this, don’t they know they’re supposed to be miserable?

At the end of the piece he suggests that I should be surprised by his version of Christianity as opposed to what I may learn from Dawkins, whilst I don’t doubt there are plenty of religious folk out there who have other reasons to believe, the idea of religion being something people turned to feel better about life rather than something that has any evidence is true sounds an awful lot like something Dawkins might say. I followed his links to articles where he discussed atheism in more depth and got fairly pissed off; far from being the reasonable Christian alternative to the atheist caricature of a person of faith, Hobson comes over as a bile-filled hypocrite. If we start off with this article:

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This GOVERMENT WANTS TO CREATE MONSTERS AND POSSIBLY EAT YOUR CHILDREN Bill really is causing a ruckus isn’t it? As usual, the church hasn’t bothered to check the facts (or is better advantaged by actively misleading people), the constant use of dishonest and emotive language is sadly predicable. Calling the procedure ‘monstrous’, comparing it to creating Frankenstein’s monster and claiming that if this bill passes “extension of abortion laws, legalised raiding of a dead person’s tissue, legalised creation of babies whose sole purpose is to provide spare parts” will shortly follow should be called mindless fear-mongering. The fact for some reason the opinions of people who use texts written by people who thought the sun orbited the earth and then apply them to the cutting edge of modern medicine are given free access to the press and, bizarrely, some say over public matters should be something we’re more concerned with than these experiments.

Besides being unimaginative, the connotations of monsters and immoral Mad Science™ inherent in bringing up Frankenstein are clear. Archbishop Cramner lightly questions the Cardinal for using language like ‘Monstrous’, he then goes on a diatribe about the evils of creating chimera-like monsters, mixes of humans and animals. If Cramner had read the BBC article, let alone done some more in-depth research, he’d know that chimeras are not a possibility here. Essentially all these scientists are doing is taking an animal egg, scooping out the genetic material, sticking some human DNA and letting it grow a little, then stopping that and harvesting the cells it’s produced to research fixes for serious conditions. We are talking about small balls of cells that lack neurones, lack alone anything resembling a brain. There’s no chimera here, even if it were to develop it’s not going to come out with paws or a trunk, there is no non-human DNA present (ignoring the fact that most human DNA is animal DNA anyway). In fact there is no evidence these embryos are even capable of developing (which is one reason why implantation is forbidden). But those facts are inconvenient, these are immoral and monstrous scientists and politicians who have turned away from God and abusing the power they stole from him to create a mockery of life. Science Is Bad.

Something Cramner said caught my eye:

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Mark Halperin at TIME has come up with 10 reasons why Clinton should quit. Whilst I personally think that she’s dead at this point, this list contains some pretty poor items.

1. She can’t win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats.

Look, she’s losing by enough that it’s serious, but let’s not forget the reason the super-delegates are involved at all is because she has almost half the party with her. At this point either candidate winning will alienate a lot of Democrats. As for overturning the will of the elected delegates, the only point this matters is if she’s won the popular vote, and given the bizarrely uneven way the popular vote turns into delegate counts, I think the popular vote is the the better metric. I don’t think it’s likely she’ll win the popular vote at this point,but if it does there’s a serious argument to be made for gong with it over delegates. If we look at it the other way round, I don’t think the line ‘Obama overturns popular vote to gain nomination’ goes down that well either.

7. The Rev. Wright story notwithstanding, the media still wants Obama to be the nominee — and that has an impact every day.

OK, so all that stuff I was saying about the delegates and the popular vote? Forget it, what really matters is who the media want! Think quickly: Is bowing out because the media like the other guy better a good or a bad reason?

When Obama wins the nomination, what on earth makes people think the media will stay with him? There’s some wonderfully naive Obama supporters who come out with stuff like “Yeah, except McCain isn’t as sleazy as the Clintons, and WOULDN’T dredge up such slime” seemingly without irony, there are people out there who really think that Hillary Clinton has been far meaner to Obama than McCain and the right-wing establishment is going to be! They really think that after weeks spent on a remark from Obama’s former pastor who he had previously disowned and zero time spent on McCain welcoming Falwell and Robinson back into the fold that the media will stand by Obama. It boggles belief.

Clinton is beating McCain in polls after months (heck years) of abuse from the press, Obama is beating him after an amazingly friendly press run. The press not liking someone is not an argument. If Obama is the right candidate, he’s the right candidate, what the media think should be of no-consequence. If people start picking candidates based on who the media prefer then that’s a fashion show, not a democracy.

10. She can’t publicly say more than 2% of all the things she would like to say about race, electability, beating McCain and experience.

Subtext: Hillary is a filthy racist who just pretends not to be to get elected.

12. This is a change election, and Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton can never truly be change.

It can be if the voters decide that’s the kind of change they want, Clinton’s healthcare plan would bring more change to more people than Obama’s. Clinton is a natural establishment candidate but let’s not pretend that she anything like Bush or that she’s running for Bill’s third term. Things have changed.

Barring some unlikely huge win in the future or reruns in Florida and Michigan, I don’t see Clinton winning. But for the moment Obama hasn’t won a majority of his party yet, and these are lousy reasons to stop.

ABC News: Hillary Was in White House on ‘Stained Blue Dress’ Day

No, this isn’t The Onion, this is a real news organization trying to pass this off as a real story. What’s worse is it’s immediately qualified after the title that she only ‘may’ have been in the White House that day, but ‘Hillary may have been in White House on ‘Stained Blue Dress’ Day’? That’s a stupid story, who would run that?