Slurmy Spoo

While at Loblaw's ...

2007-04-16T15:33:00.000-04:00

Davenport Gaffe

2007-04-14T00:21:00.000-04:00

I went to the Town Hall meeting to hear what people on campus were saying about the UWO Gazette "teach her a lesson" rape joke controversy. There was lots of talk about disgust, outrage, accountability, some very moving stories, and even a couple of sweeping generalisations about men which I tried not to take personally.

I'm really glad I stayed for the whole thing because right at the end Davenport gets up to speak and, at about the 30 second mark, expressed his sincere concern for "the weaker members of society." If I had been drinking milk, it would've sprayed out of my nose at that moment. I started laughing to myself, and as Davenport paused awkwardly (realising what he'd just said, I'm sure) you could hear a few quiet "how can he say that?" and "what did he just say?" comments before a bunch of people started booing him. He then tried to recover with "uh, or rather, vulnerable?" before finally settling on something more long-winded and politically correct, which I forget now. Did I mention A-channel was there to get all this on tape? LOL.

Potted Plants ♥ Tenure

2007-03-09T22:30:00.000-05:00

This Freakonomics blog post reminds me of a conversation I had with someone last week. Here's Stephen Levitt, a guy with tenure, ranting on the subject:

The idea that tenure protects scholars who are doing politically unpopular work strikes me as ludicrous.
[...]
The best case scenario would be if all schools could coordinate on dumping tenure simultaneously. [...] Absent all schools moving together to get rid of tenure, what if one school chose to unilaterally revoke tenure. It seems to me that it might work out just fine for that school. It would have to pay the faculty a little extra to stay in a department without an insurance policy in the form of tenure. Importantly, though, the value of tenure is inversely related to how good you are. If you are way over the bar, you face almost no risk if tenure is abolished. So the really good people would require very small salary increases to compensate for no tenure

BTW in 2004 he gave a TED talk (22min) that's pretty interesting, and funny in a way.

Wikipedia & 72 Virgins

2007-01-30T15:10:00.000-05:00

Found this NYT story, Courts Turn to Wikipedia, on hardocp.com:

More than 100 judicial rulings have relied on Wikipedia, beginning in 2004, including 13 from circuit courts of appeal, one step below the Supreme Court. (The Supreme Court thus far has never cited Wikipedia.)

Of Steve Martin's 72 virgins these are my favourite:

Virgin No. 8: Can we cuddle first?

Virgin No. 17: “Do it”? Meaning what?

Virgin No. 18: I’m saving myself for Jesus. (now THAT would be funny!)

Virgin No. 29: Well, I’m a virgin, but my hand isn’t.

Virgin No. 35: By the way, here in Heaven “virgin” has a slightly different meaning. It means “chatty.”

Virgin No. 45: When you’re done, you should really check out how cool this ceiling is.

Virgin No. 70: My name is Mother Teresa.

Animals in the Womb

2007-01-23T17:14:00.000-05:00

Much cuter than I would have imagined. See the article for a few more.

(6 months out of 24)

(12 months out of 24)

Hyperinflation

2007-01-23T11:02:00.000-05:00

The Wikipedia article has lots of amazing examples:

Inflation 1923-24: A German woman feeding a stove with currency notes, which burn longer than the amount of firewood they can buy.

The Lesser of Two [Catholic] Evils

2007-01-23T10:07:00.000-05:00

According to CNN:

LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Britain's leading cardinal said on Tuesday the Catholic church may be forced to close down its adoption agencies if the government insists they consider placing children with gay couples.

I doubt that any number of studies showing that gay parents don't make kids gay would convince these people that it's better for the kids than foster homes. I guess their good intentions count for something, but this is backwards and paranoid.

[Cardinal Douchebag] said it would be "an unnecessary tragedy if legislation forced the closure of these adoption services."

Is he referring to papal legislation? Ah, then I couldn't agree more.

Explanatory Power of Belief

2007-01-21T11:45:00.000-05:00

Came across a neat paper called "Explanations Versus Applications: The Explanatory Power of Valuable Beliefs" while reorganising my hard drive.

Method
Eighty interested Harvard undergraduates received a questionnaire informing them that this study was investigating people’s religious beliefs. Those in the applications condition were then asked to list either 3 or 10 observations that God can explain, whereas those in the explanations condition were asked to list either 3 or 10 observations that can explain God’s behavior.

When finished, participants answered four questions about their religious beliefs:
‘‘What is the general importance of God in your life?’’
‘‘How important is God to you on a daily basis?’’
‘‘How confident are you that God exists?’’ and
‘‘To what extent do you feel you have a personal relationship with God?’’

One result of their study is described in the graph below. Basically, by reflecting on why you hold a particular belief, you undermine your own perceived value of that belief. They note that people who were asked to list 10 explanations for God could usually only think of 4-5 items and this actually reinforced their belief slightly.

Finally, this research suggests that the ultimately valuable belief (a) explains everything and (b) is explained by nothing. Few beliefs can manage this feat, but those associated with science and religion are the most common contenders. We think it is no accident that Western theology has historically depicted God as the ‘‘unmoved First Mover.’’ Both science and religion seek primary causes that can explain higher-level observations, albeit through different methods. It is of little surprise, given our findings, that believers in science and believers in religion so often come into direct conflict. What these experiments suggest is that at least some of this conflict can be attributed to the psychological mechanisms that create valuable beliefs. What these valuable beliefs share, our research suggests, is not simply their perceived truth, but their power as explanations.

The Penis is Evil

2007-01-17T17:49:00.000-05:00

From the sci-fi 'classic' Zardos:

Zardoz: The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the gun shoots death, and purifies the earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth... and kill!

Yes, that's Sean Connery, and he wears it for the whole movie.

In 2004 the magazine Total Film described Connery's costume (consisting of a ponytail wig, leather knee boots, and a loincloth which bears a strong resemblance to a giant orange nappy or diaper) as the number 1 "dumbest decision in movie history".

My Preciousssss...

2007-01-02T23:26:00.000-05:00

Shermer @ TED2006

2007-01-01T20:46:00.000-05:00

If you've got 17 minutes to kill, check out this talk by Michael Shermer about both pseudo-scientific beliefs and our powers of observation. The bits on religious and alien sightings was good:

Religious iconography, discovered by a Tennessee baker in 1996. He charged $5 a head to come and see the Nun Bun, until he got a cease-and-desist order from Mother Theresa's lawyer.

The Virgin Mary in Clearwater, Florida. We actually went to see this one. A lot of the faithful had come to be there, in wheelchairs and crutches and so on. We went down to investigate. All these candles, so many thousands of candles people had lit in tribute to this. So we walked around to the backside and turns out that, anywhere there was a sprinkler head and a palm tree, you get a Virgin Mary. Here's a Virgin Mary on the backside (which they started to wipe off).

The details of the "Quadro2000 Dowser Rod" are also hilarious. But the most interesting segment was where he challenges your powers of observation (I was way off on my count with the basketballs, and the Stairway to Heaven bit is hilarious).

Minsky on Sci-Fi

2007-01-01T12:56:00.000-05:00

Marvin Minsky in the latest Discover:

[Science fiction] is about the only thing I read. General fiction is pretty much about the ways that people get into problems and screw their lives up. Science fiction is about everything else.

I think he's underestimating just how much fun it is to read about people screwing their lives up, though.

P.S. Happy New Year!!

Stats Attack 4 (Books edition)

2006-12-29T03:23:00.000-05:00

I found some interesting statistics on books in the U.S.:

81% of the population feels they have a book inside them. (lol)
80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
42% of college graduates never read another book.
$1.7 billion is spent annually on textbooks. (for comparison: $78 billion is spent on alcohol, $37 billion on cigarettes and $6 billion on pet food.)

The Practical Value of Human Life

2006-12-29T02:41:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading a great little book that I got for Christmas called Innumeracy. It's not a new book (1989) but it's full of scenarios and games where our intuitions often mislead us, and especially the innumerate. Some of the examples I've heard of before, but most were eye opening or at least fun to figure out for yourself before continuing to read; for all I know, this could be the book that popularised some of the puzzles I recognised.

Someday I'll go back and pull out some of the more entertaining examples but right now I keep thinking about the way the book ended, since it touches on something that troubles most of us from time to time, but we all come to terms with it for practical reasons (like wanting to have a life -- nothing wrong with that, right? right?):

[An example of the economic value of human life:] when the recent decisions by a number of states to raise the speed limit on certain highways to 65 m.p.h. and not to impose stiffer penalties on drunk driving were challenged by safety groups, they were defended with the patently false assertion that there would be no increase in accident rates, instead of a frank acknowledgment of economic and political factors witch outweighed the likely extra deaths. Dozens of other incidents, many involving the environment and toxic wastes (money vs. lives), could be cited.

They make a mockery of the usual sentiments about the pricelessness of every human life. Human lives are priceless in many ways, but in order to reach reasonable compromises, we must, in effect, place a finite economic value on them. Too often when we do this, however, we make a lot of pious noises to mask just how low that value really is. I'd prefer less false iuety and a considerably higher economic value placed on human lives. Ideally, this value should be infinite, but when it can't be, let's hold the saccharine sentiments. If we're not keenly aware of the choices we're making, we're not likely to work for better ones.

I think the more obvious example of such practical constraints is in medical systems (public or private) -- the cost vs. lives trade-offs in medicine are clear and will never go away.

Anyway, not that this is a new question, but, if someone makes a conscious decision in favour of personal freedom but that may lead to deaths (allowing everyone to drive, for example, when it's inherently more dangerous than public transit), then at what point are they 'morally' responsible for that decision? Meh, I guess it doesn't matter. Just seems arbitrary though, and so the whole idea that God knows the thresholds sounds silly and/or unfair. "A life is a life." Hmm, okay.

Stats Attack 3

2006-12-29T02:32:00.000-05:00

Time again for some statistics, otherwise known as "damn lies." Here are some miscellaneous stats from numeric life:

27% of people include pets in their wills.
The average American has 9.8 passwords/PINs to remember.
In passwords, the number 1 appears twice as often as any other number.
53% of Hip-Hop fans admit to committing a crime, compared with 18% of fans of musicals.
According to the Wold Wildlife Fund, if everyone lived like an American (or a Canadian) we would need 5 Earths to support us.
8% of the U.S. working population commutes more than 1 hour (one way) to go to work.
Each additional inch in a person's height correlates with a 2% increase in average salary.
Women with science doctorates are 2 times as likely as men to never have married or to be divorced.
In the U.S. from 1997--2001, national wage gains captured by the richest 1% was far more than the entire bottom 50% combined.

Children/education:

Learning from a teacher of opposite gender correlates with lower average grades.
997 hours/year = the average time a U.S. child spends in class.
1,023 hours/year = the average time a U.S. child spends watching TV.
30% of U.S. students don't graduate from high school. (!?? my dad says this is also true in Ontario!)
40% of U.S. college freshmen need remedial classes because they are unprepared.
70% of public high school students admit to serious test cheating.
60% of public high school students admit to plagiarizing at least one essay.
At 32 graduate business schools in the U.S. and Canada, 56% of business students were willing to own up to cheating.

Beliefs:

20% of Americans believe that the living can communicate with the dead.
46% of women surveyed believed that "the souls of the dead protect the living as spirit guides," compared with 27% of men.
According to Bible, God killed 2,038,334+ people, compared to Satan's 10.
42% of adult Americans were not "absolutely certain" about the existence of God, up from 34% three years ago.

Health/body image:

The average American woman weighs 163 lbs (74 kg).
56% of women and 43% of men are dissatisfied with their appearance.
More than 290,000 women in the US had breast implants in 2005, up 37% from 2000.
Breast implants correlate with a 73% higher rate of suicide.
Teens who use media with high sexual content are more than 2 times as likely to have sex by the time they are 16 years old. (causation could be the other way around though, I think!)
77% of women surveyed would prefer a new plasma TV to a diamond solitaire necklace.
86% of women would prefer a new digital video camera to a pair of designer shoes.

The placebo effect is physical, not just psychological. In a recent study:

By telling Parkinson's patients that they were receiving medicine (a placebo), the problematic neurons quieted down by 40%.
Morphine is up to 50% more effective when patients know it's coming.

Parasites

2006-12-21T13:48:00.000-05:00

Videos corresponding to some parasite entries on The Loom that I liked from the last year. Amazing. Aren't we lucky that humans don't have to worry about parasites that are [quite] this terrifying?

You are Spooginated

2006-12-20T21:13:00.000-05:00

Children are so innocent. As seen on The Daily Show:
I can just imagine the marketing people cracking up when they saw the final ad.

BLF

2006-12-08T19:53:00.000-05:00

No, BLF doesn't stand for Best Label Friend, it stands for Barbie Liberation Front. A great example of culture jamming, in 1989 they swapped the voice hardware of retail Teen Talk Barbie dolls ("Math is hard!" "I love shopping!" "Lets plan our dream wedding" and "Will we ever have enough clothes?") with the voice hardware of Talking Duke G.I. Joe ("Eat lead, Cobra!" and "Vengeance is mine!").

The Science of Jelloopdeloops

2006-12-08T19:12:00.000-05:00

Funny that the Discovery Channel would choose to separate its gifts for boys and girls. From the link:

Here's the first five gifts for the boys:
Discovery Whodunit? Forensics Lab
Discovery Fingerprint Lab
Discovery Speed Detector
Radio Control Equalizer Stunt Car
Discovery Remote Control Chromashift Roboreptile

Very sciency. Now for the girls:
Discovery Ultimate Pottery Wheel
Discovery Knit Kit
Discovery Deluxe Nail Salon
It's My Life Scrapbook Kit
Discovery Friendship Bracelets
Discovery Jelloopdeloops Jewelry Kit (just what the fuck is a "Jelloopdeloop"? Somehow I don't think Marie Curie played with Jelloopdeloops)
Klutz Â® Paper Fashions Kit
It's All About Me Quiz Book (yes, one can never be too vacuous)

Well, event though it's weird for Discovery to separate its gifts in the first place, what the guy forgot to mention was that their web site sorts each category by best sellers first. So, really it's the parents that are responsible for "Discovery Deluxe Nail Salon" being a best seller <shudder>.

Update: Oh man, check out these science toys for girls. I especially like the Spa Science Kit: "Kids blend natural and organic materials to make an oatmeal mask, rose bath balm, and aromatherapy oils. A great way to cultivate a girl's interest in science." (wtf!?)

Well, no one can prove him wrong

2006-11-18T15:19:00.000-05:00

Listen to Pat Robertson's deep answer a viewer's question:Oooh Pat Robertson, such a wuvvable wittow man. Who's a cwazy evangewicow pshychopaf? You are! Yes you are! Come'ere, <tickles Pat on the stomach> koochee woochee woo!

Ready? One... Two... Th--

2006-11-18T01:23:00.000-05:00

Always wondered how you could make a difference in the world? To promote world peace? At long last, the answer: www.globalorgasm.org !! (the music is charming).

WHERE?
Everywhere in the world, but especially in countries with weapons of mass destruction.
WHEN?
Solstice Day - Friday December 22nd, at the time of your choosing, in the place of your choosing and with as much privacy as your choose
WHY?
To effect positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy, a Synchronized Global Orgasm

Be sure to read the part under "The Science." LOL.

1.0 Laptop / Child

2006-11-16T18:50:00.000-05:00

The One Laptop Per Child project has built the first few prototypes of their final model. You can see pictures of the OLPC team playing with their creation at the OLPC Wiki. I envy these guys: they're working on an idea that's poised to change the world. At first I thought they got rid of the hand crank that their original design had (still visible in their gallery) but it turns out they just moved it to the AC adapter, which makes sense. No power outlet needed => awesome. Check out the hardware specs page... the processor uses 1 watt and system load is 3 watts with a capacity of 7 hours.

"I didn't do it"

2006-11-11T20:13:00.000-05:00

C++0x

2006-11-09T02:38:00.000-05:00

C++0x, the next C++ language standard, is coming...
Oh man, I can't wait to be able to write C++ code like this!

   template<class T> using Vec = vector<T,My_alloc<T>>;
   Vec<double> v = { 2.3, 1.2, 6.7, 4.5  };
   sort(v);
   for(auto p = v.begin(); p!=v.end(); ++p)
       cout << *p << endl;

I especially like the new concepts language feature and how it's better than restricting through inheritance (Java and C# generics). I could never believe anyone would make a language where basic types (int, double) were treated fundamentally differently from classes (everything derived from Object? Pfft). Too bad we'll have to wait three years before the standards are accepted.

Look at all the good stuff potentially coming to C++ in the official C++0x wish list.

On Beauty

2006-10-24T21:35:00.000-04:00

Such a great time-lapse video: before/makeup/photoshop/after (be sure to watch the high-res version)I think every 13-year-old should see material like this in their classroom. Of course, when I feel like being shallow, I binge by trash-talking about the "ugly" contestants on Canada's Next Top Model (I will marry you, Number Six) and even The Bachelor (yes, I admit, I've watched two episodes this season). When not watching TV I don't seem to have such a critical eye though, not sure why TV does that to people.

There's another video on that site (campaignforrealbeauty.ca) that shows interviews with teenage girls and their mothers, talking about beauty and pressure. One girl made a comment that stuck in my head:

The first time I ever heard I was ugly, at school, was in grade 3 or 4. It was like, the first time anyone told me that, so, I didn't know what to feel; then I just felt it all the time.

I wonder if everyone reflects on this and we just don't talk about it with each other, or whether they just interviewed some very self-aware girls.

For more before/after Photoshop fun, see Glenn Feron's Art of Retouching site (temporarily under construction at the time of this post).

Update: What a coincidence, I just noticed these stats on Numeric Life:

56% of women and 43% of men are dissatisfied with their physical appearance.
[...]
More than 290,000 women in the US had breast implants in 2005, up 37% from 2000.

So I guess men are almost as neurotic on average about their appearance as women are.

U.S. Debt Trivia

2006-10-15T22:49:00.000-04:00

Having some fun perusing Wikipedia's page on U.S. public debt.

U.S. public debt on 30 December 2005 was $8,170 billion (or $8.1 trillion), which is nearly six times the amount of United States currency in circulation (M1 Money Supply), estimated to be $1,372 billion.
The debt equates to $28,412 per head of the U.S. population, or $58,390 per head of the U.S. working population.
Total U.S. household debt, including mortgage and consumer debt, was $11,400 billion in 2005.

So the U.S. government owes nearly as much as all individual U.S. citizens combined. Hmm.

Apparently there was recently a Canadian political party called the Canadian Clean Start Party, and their stated goal was to reset all outstanding public debt by simply defaulting on it. Responsibility is for losers. Hey it worked for Argentina right?

More Photos of the Day

2006-10-15T22:37:00.000-04:00

I like these portraits, also from lense culture.

Made in China

2006-10-15T21:09:00.000-04:00

Since the world relies heavily on China to manufacture goods, I thought this series of photos from lense culture was interesting. It's by a Canadian photographer who, over the course of three years, collected images of the civil/industrial/urban landscapes that have developed in modern (pseudo-mega-capitalist) China. Don't stop until you at least come to the giant pile of rotary telephone dials.
P.S. I'm glad I don't work in a factory.

Men Have Pee-Pees, Women Have Boo-bies

2006-10-14T17:49:00.000-04:00

Very informative movie from break.com: a Saudi television show uses a Tablet PC to illustrate the main difference between men and women, and it might not be what you think.

Smoking Area

2006-10-10T01:35:00.000-04:00

I thought this was pretty clever (sent by my Dad).

Best Political Ads Evar

2006-10-09T23:46:00.000-04:00

For those who haven't seen the classic Daisy Girl ad, check out LBJ's campaign spots from the 1964 presidential election race (Quicktime).
I absolutely love the catch phrase "or we must die." The way the narrator delivers her lines in the "Ice Cream" spot is surreal too:

Children should have lots of Vitamin A and Calcium, but they shouldn't have any Strontium 90 or Caesium 137. These things come from atomic bombs, and they're radioactive. They can make you die.

Old Dawkins Article

2006-10-09T22:46:00.000-04:00

Back when I found this post-9/11 commentary by Richard Dawkins I had a bunch of stuff to say about it (blah blah religion blah blah), but now I don't have the typing stamina to really comment, so for fun I'll just quote a few bits that use particularly damning language:

(quoting Douglas Adams)
Now, the invention of the scientific method is, I'm sure we'll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn't withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn't seem to work like that.
[...]
If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday,' you say, "I respect that."

And Dawkins mostly nails it on the subject of religion as a label:

It is not an exaggeration to say that religion is the most inflammatory enemy-labeling device in history. Who killed your father? Not the individuals you are about to kill in 'revenge.' The culprits themselves have vanished over the border. The people who stole your great grandfather's land have died of old age. You aim your vendetta at those who belong to the same religion as the original perpetrators. It wasn't Seamus who killed your brother, but it was Catholics, so Seamus deserves to die "in return." Next, it was Protestants who killed Seamus so let's go out and kill some Protestants "in revenge." It was Muslims who destroyed the World Trade Center so let's set upon the turbaned driver of a London taxi and leave him paralyzed from the neck down.

One thing that's funny (i.e. not funny) about the religion-as-a-label rant is that after the Soviet revolution the atheists also labeled themselves as "us" and all religions as "them" and proceeded to imprison or murder religious people outright. Labels seem to be the problem in a much more general sense, just moreso those that tend to be passed down the generations (*cough* religion *cough*). To me there's a qualitative difference between saying "I'm Christian" and "I'm guided by Christian values" ... it's sortof like the difference between "I'm Canadian" and "I grew up in Canada."

(quoting Rev. Billy Graham, concerning 9/11 attacks)
I have been asked hundreds of times in my life why God allows tragedy and suffering. I have to confess that I really do not know the answer totally, even to my own satisfaction. I have to accept, by faith, that God is sovereign, and He is a God of love and mercy and compassion in the midst of suffering. The Bible says God is not the author of evil. It speaks of evil as a "mystery."

Hey, sounds lame, but at least he knows what he doesn't know.

Explicit Enough?

2006-10-09T22:16:00.000-04:00

You have a dirty, dirty mind. Shame on you.

The Slimming Effect

2006-09-24T03:10:00.000-04:00

HP has introduced a new feature into its line of digital cameras: the Slimming effect. It looks for human figures and squashes the image to make you look thinner with the press of a button. I know our society is obsessed with women being scrawny, which sucks for a lot of people; I feel like this represents some kind of 'new low' for some reason. Here's a screenshot from the ad.

I Crush Your Head!

2006-09-12T15:18:00.000-04:00

This made me crack up completely. Who knew Saddam was a fan. Flickr has some good head-crushing examples.

Jesus Camp

2006-09-07T20:23:00.000-04:00

Watch the trailer. No comment.

aolstalker.com

2006-08-16T11:07:00.000-04:00

Now that AOL has released the private search data of thousands of users, anyone can browse the search queries of user #XXXXXX over at aolstalker.com. Here's a sample of a popular one, user #672368. Absolutely fascinating:

2006-03-05: curb morning sickness
2006-03-09: get fit while pregnant
2006-03-11: he doesn't want the baby
2006-03-11: uou're pregnant he doesn't want the baby
2006-03-11: you're pregnant he doesn't want the baby
2006-03-11: online degrees theology schools
2006-03-11: online christian colleges
2006-03-11: online bachelor degree theology
2006-03-12: foods to eat when pregnant
2006-03-14: baby names and meanings
2006-03-28: maternity clothes
2006-03-29: pregnancy workout videos
2006-03-29: buns of steel video
2006-03-29: is yoga alligned with christianity
2006-04-17: abortion clinics charlotte nc
2006-04-17: greater carolinas womens center
2006-04-17: can christians be forgiven for abortion
2006-04-17: roe vs. wade
2006-04-18: abortion clinic charlotte
2006-04-18: symptoms of miscarriage
2006-04-18: abortion clinic charlotte nc
2006-04-20: engagement rings
2006-04-20: high risk abortions
2006-04-26: wedding gown styles
2006-05-14: www.substanceabusepreventionservices.org
2006-05-26: demetrios bridesmaid dresses
2006-05-27: marry your live-in
2006-05-31: family specialist
2006-05-31: family specialist hospital

Reality-Based Community

2006-07-23T16:32:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia's article on the term reality-based community has an interesting nugget. The term was originally used by people inside the Bush administration to refer to people who advocate decisions based on analysis of evidence. Obviously this is in contrast to a faith-based community. Here's an interesting encounter that a reporter had with a Bush aide in 2004:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

"Discernible reality"?!

Mencken Quote

2006-07-23T16:21:00.000-04:00

Maybe I shouldn't be quoting a racist, but I thought this was a funny way of putting the current state of affairs in America:

"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
-- H.L. Mencken, 1920

I also thought this was a funny quote from the same guy, and it applies whether you're religious or not:

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

Don't Hassle the Hoff

2006-07-20T11:47:00.000-04:00

I feel like making a quick tribute to Hasselhoff today. BTW I'm not gay. No, really, I'm not.

Harper to the Rescue

2006-07-19T13:48:00.001-04:00

The CBC is reporting that Stephen Harper is going to take a detour on his way home from the G8 meeting and personally rescue a few Canadians stranded amongst the current violence in Lebanon. Before leaving for Cyprus, he's going to leave non-critical staff behind to make room for as many civilians as possible on the trip home to Canada.

When I first read that, I immediately thought "Ugh! He's just trying to look like a hero. It's 100% photo-op" but then I told myself not to be so cynical. After all, he is helping people by doing this, so why question his intentions?

Officials said only Harper's wife, Laureen, and a couple of his communications staff and his official photographer, will fly to Cyprus with him.

Right. Critical staff. Like his god damned official photographer. Bleh, oh well, I'm sure Paul Martin would've done the same.

Pregnancy 'Resource' Centres

2006-07-19T11:28:00.000-04:00

Some U.S. congressman organised a test to see whether "crisis pregnancy centres" were giving accurate information to pregnant teens who called them up. These crisis centres are mostly run by religious groups, which is fine, except...

20 of the 23 centers reached by the investigators (87%) provided false or misleading information about the health effects of abortion.

The misleading or dishonest information was broken down into three categories: abortions cause breast cancer, abortions cause fertility problems, and abortions are more traumatic than giving birth. From this article:

Eight centers told the caller that having an abortion would in fact increase her risk. One center said that "all abortion causes an increased risk of breast cancer in later years," while another told the caller that an abortion would "affect the milk developing in her breasts" and that the risk of breast cancer increased by as much as 80% following an abortion.
[...]
Seven centers told the caller that having an abortion could hurt her chances of having children in the future. One center said that damage from abortion could lead to "many miscarriages" or to "permanent damage" so "you wouldn't be able to carry," telling the caller that this is "common" and happens "a lot."
[...]
However, thirteen centers told the caller that the psychological effects of abortion are severe, long-lasting, and common. One center said that the suicide rate in the year after an abortion "goes up by seven times." Another center said that post-abortion stress suffered by women having abortions is "much like" that seen in soldiers returning from Vietnam and "is something that anyone who's had an abortion is sure to suffer from."

I have no idea what a pregnant teen goes through, but having an impartial person to talk to would obviously help. I mean, maybe some freaked-out boyfriend or parent is pushing for an abortion or whatever. So why do these places have to screw it up with cherry-picked info and outright lies?

I thought this was interesting, from Wikipedia:

Pro-choice advocates have accused crisis pregnancy centers of deliberately misinforming women on abortion and birth control. On March 30, 2006, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) introduced a bill called the "Stop Deceptive Advertising for Women's Services Act", which aims to hold crisis pregnancy centers up to truth in advertising standards.

I think it's hilarious that laws even have to be passed for stuff like that. Just like advertising firms, some religious groups have priorities they put above the teen's own interests, so similar laws have to be put in place to protect teens from disinformation. Some of these places are run by a group now called Care Net, originally the Christian Action Council. This article quotes a spokeswoman from Care Net saying that the breast cancer, fertility and trauma stats are accurate despite scientific consensus saying otherwise. At least they believe what they're telling teens then... I guess.

I googled "pregnancy in London, ON" and exactly two locations showed up within the city limits. Both of them are pro-life groups. The London Crisis Pregnancy Center on Piccadilly St has some insane statistics on post abortion stress; stuff like "65% consider suicide" and "100% feel regret." The other one is Birthright International that has a place on Richmond St. I can't tell from their web site whether they're honest or not:

BIRTHRIGHT DOES NOT
...use "scare tactics" or pressure.
...show abortion slides or pictures.
...picket or harass abortion clinics.
...evangelize.
...lobby for legislative changes or engage in the public debate on abortion.

Cutest. Thing. Evar.

2006-07-15T17:58:00.000-04:00

From Cute Overload:

The Wal-Mart Effect

2006-07-13T16:22:00.000-04:00

Numeric life sums up a study on Wal-Mart from Discover magazine:

A group of Penn State agricultural economists find in (US) counties with new Wal-Mart stores, the usage of food-stamps is 100% higher. They blame Wal-Mart causing the collapse of mom-and-pop local business networks and low wages.

Maaaybe Wal-Mart simply builds new stores in counties that already use lots of food stamps, but I doubt it. Once you're an employee of Wal-Mart, you can only afford to shop at Wal-Mart. And get your insurance through Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart becomes a form of company store for some people. I highly recommend the documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price for anyone interested in such stuff.

Zombie Game

2006-07-13T12:15:00.000-04:00

This is the most insane experiment ever. Derren Brown hypnotises this dude with a video game, kidnaps him, and wakes him up in a real-life version. The guy freaks out. If it's not a hoax then it's a huge gamble legally (or maybe not in the UK?). The video is 10 minutes.

Harper's Plan 5uX0rZ

2006-07-05T16:31:00.000-04:00

I didn't read the corresponding study yet but I like some of the "well duh" headlines in the CBC article, such as:

   Problems will continue under Tory plan: study, and

   Poor areas will be hurt most, analyst warns, and

   Working parents not well-served.

God damned $1200 rebate.

When Condoms Cost $1000

2006-07-05T15:19:00.000-04:00

I try to avoid televised sports so, instead of watching the World Cup match between France and that other country (Poland? Paraguay? Meh, something like that), I'm browsing the operations research category in Wikipedia.

Here's a gem: the safe sex makespan problem.

The safe sex makespan problem is used in operations research as an example that the cheapest capital cost often leads to dramatic increase in operational time, but that the shortest operational time need not be given by the most expensive capital cost.

M men are each to have safe sex with N women using condoms. Each condom can be used any number of times, but the same side of one condom cannot be exposed to more than one person. Condoms can be re-used any number of times, and more than one can be used simultaneously.

Given M men and N women, the minimum number of condoms C(M,N) required for all the men to have safe sex with all the women is given by:
C(M,N) = M + N - 2 if both M,N >= 2
C(M,1) = M
C(1,N) = N
C(1,1) = 1

Those dirty OR people and their hot safe-sex orgies. At least I'll never have to worry about this particular problem.

Open Access Publishing

2006-07-04T23:39:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia has an article on Open access (OA), an alternative to the pay-for-subscription publishing model.

Tell Me About It

2006-07-04T10:43:00.000-04:00

Animal Algorithms

2006-06-30T21:24:00.000-04:00

Awesome experiment reported at nationalgeographic.com:

How do ants return home in a straight line, even after improvising random, twisty routes to find food? To find out, scientists attached tiny stilts to some insects and half-amputated others.

Yep, a lucky few got stilts glued their 'feet' while the less fortunate ants got all of their legs amputated and were forced to walk home on their bleeding exoskeletal stumps.

For the ants on stilts, each step now covered more distance than they were used to. They overshot the nest, running an average of more than 50 percent farther than they should have. Those with shortened legs undershot by nearly as much.

The result that totally blew my mind was this:

Interestingly, the ants quickly adjusted to their new leg lengths. After the initial experiment, the ants were promptly returned to their nest. The next day the modified ants were allowed to engage in normal foraging, and they returned to the nest as well as the "normal" ants.

So ants are basically integrating their current distance from the nest as they explore, tracking their orientation and counting on their internal pedometers. Amazing stuff.

That tiny bundle of neurons inside the head of each ant can totally beat anything we can do with computers, so it's cool to see what kind of 'algorithms' have evolved in animal brains. Reminds me of a talk I saw about this paper where they studied how praying mantises judge the distance to their prey. A mantis will bob its head left and right in order to gauge the exact distance to leap forward at the target (based on the degree of the target's lateral movement in their field of vision). According to the authors, pigeons actually bob their heads forward and back for the same reason. Neato!

Negative Results

2006-06-23T13:53:00.000-04:00

A friend and I were just talking in the lab about the fact that negative don't get published. I've already been bitten by this a couple of times, and I'm also guilty of it a couple of times. He mentioned the science commons projects underway which will maybe have an effect, someday. Then I came across this CBC column that mentions a Journal of Negative Results for both Biomedicine and Ecology/Biology. The article goes on to suggest that Canada actively push for publication of negative results, since no one else seems interested:

[W]hat would be a better specialization niche for a place where the expression of national self-definition is as "cautious as a Canadian", than for us to become the world's centre of null hypothesis journals. It would be relatively cheap to do and think how natural and proud it would feel telling your children and your grandchildren: Because of Canada, this is what humanity now knows doesn't work.

I Crush Your Head!!

2006-06-21T11:47:00.000-04:00

"I crush your head. I crush your head. You're a flathead!"
I miss Kids in the Hall.

Alternate caption: "Well, uuh yuhsee now, it gets about this size."

Pixels I Like

2006-06-17T23:45:00.000-04:00

Stats Attack 2

2006-06-16T00:42:00.000-04:00

Stuff I liked from numeric life recently:

Women's brains respond 20% faster to erotic images than to other images.
Women buy 68% of all books. Wow, girl power.
70% of the time, women correctly predict whether a man likes children just by looking at his face.
59% of brides-to-be expect to have sex on their wedding night; 28% plan to just sleep; 16% plan to get pregnant.
Romantic love lasts an average of 12-18 months.
48% of an individual's propensity to become self-employed is genetic.
In 2005, credit card companies spent $6 billion on advertising. The average American receives 6 unsolicited credit card offers per month.
9.3% of Americans have diabetes which makes them 42% more likely to have diabetes than Canadians.
56% of women would rather be thinner than smarter.
3 is the optimal group size for problem-solving.
Kids in the U.S. spend 2 hours per day watching TV.
80% of women report foot pain, and 74% of those women wear high heals.
The average conversation contains 0.3 inaccurate statements per minute. Men fib to make themselves look better, women fib to make others feel better.
Since September 2005 the U.S. national debt has increased an average of $2.44 billion per day.

Eyeball + Scalpel = Cure for Whatever

2006-06-14T10:40:00.000-04:00

Found interesting photographs of a guy who went to see John of God, the Brazilian faith healer with magical powers. The particular `surgery' that this guy underwent (before, during and after) was the eyeball-scraping one, although John of God has developed lots of other sensible procedures like shoving forceps up your nose and psychic surgery. I don't know what this guy was trying to get cured of, but from his comments it looks like Eczema.

Every Sickness

2006-06-14T03:09:00.000-04:00

Saw this place across the street and had to take a snapshot. Click to see the rest of this divine storefront of the Holy Spirit. This kind of garbage is when it stops being fun and games. If they were just healing stuff like minor arthritis and depression then, hey, as long as they don't charge money, chalk it up to placebo and no harm done. But cancer and diabetes are dangerous things to pretend to heal. There should be some kind of law forcing places like this to make sure their `healees' have gone to see a real doctor as well.

Hmm, I never thought of this before, but do insecure boys/men pray to God for a bigger ... doodle? AAAHahaha, I just googled "penis enlargement prayer" and came up with this site by a self-described penis enlargement expert:

Making a Spiritual Connection to your Penis Enlargement.

This is another area of growth that I find very important. After having the best exercise routine I can possibly have I thank GOD. GOD is my higher power, use your own. Thanking a power greater than yourself will keep you humble and thankful for all you are gaining. It is very easy for a man to become egotistical and un-humble, but putting your trust and appreciation in a higher power really helps to keep me humble. I never pray for gains, I only thank God for the gains I get.

I hope Google doesn't use my "penis enlargement prayer" search for evil.

My Money's on the Grey Goo

2006-06-01T20:32:00.000-04:00

Most probable doomsday scenario is either grey goo or green goo. I love Wikipedia. Remember, the singularity is near. It's not nearly as romantic an armageddon as what fundamentalist Christians have in mind.

PS: Gattaca is one of my most favourite movies ever.

The Art of Retouching

2006-06-01T18:16:00.000-04:00

In the lab today I ended up showing a couple more people Glenn Feron's web site (subtitled the art of retouching). I wish I could post my favourite before/after images here but I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate that. Check out the Serena Williams one (and corresponding cover for Black Men magazine).

I think the material on that site would be excellent, just excellent, for a high school class about the media and how it can affect self image; I remember a lot more about my grade 10 class on subliminal messages than my class on Animal Farm. I wish high school taught us how to have more media savvy.

We're Made Out of Meat

2006-05-31T18:28:00.000-04:00

Slate has an article on growing meat in labs that talks about humans' bizarre ability to empathise with animals some times and slaughter them for meat other times, almost arbitrarily. I think about that a lot since in my head I still can't rationalise it, at least not completely ... so, I don't bother trying too hard. Steaks are tasty.

My daughter has been demanding meat ever since she tasted it in baby food. I've seen vegetarian friends lust at the thought of a burger. We're carnivores. We evolved that way. [...] Maybe what we're asking for, what God is giving us, is the wisdom to see that we can't change our craving for meat, but we can change the way we satisfy it.

How? By growing meat in labs, the way we grow tissue from stem cells. That's the great thing about cells: They're programmed to multiply. You just have to figure out what chemical and structural environment they need to do their thing. Researchers in Holland and the United States are working on the problem. They've grown and sautéed fish that smelled like dinner, though FDA rules didn't allow them to taste it. Now they're working on pork. The short-term goal is sausage, ground beef, and chicken nuggets. Steaks will be more difficult.

Update: If you're into information, check out Wikipedia's in-vitro meat article. If you're into opinions, check out Slashdot's artificial meat post.

Say What You Feel

2006-05-30T13:15:00.000-04:00

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
-- Dr. Seuss

Fred Rogers, 1969

2006-05-28T15:47:00.000-04:00

If you watched Mister Rogers' Neighbourhood as a kid then you might appreciate what he says in this 7 minute speech about childrens' programming.
I thought what he said last was really moving:

Mr. Rogers: Could I tell you the words of one of the songs
which, I feel, is very important?

Senator: Yes.

Mr. Rogers: This has to do with that good feeling of control,
which I feel that... that children need to know is there,
and it starts out:

What do you do with the mad that you feel?

and that first line came straight from a child.
I work with children, doing puppets, in very personal
communication with small groups.

What do you do with the mad that you feel?
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh so wrong
And nothing you do seems right

What do you do?
Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you can go?

It's great to be able to stop
When you've planned the thing that's wrong
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song

I can STOP when I want to
STOP when I wish
Can STOP, STOP, STOP anytime
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine

Know that there's something, deep inside
That helps us become what we can
For a girl can be someday a lady
And a boy can be someday a man

Randi in Australia, 1980

2006-05-26T20:50:00.000-04:00

On Google Video there's a clip of James Randi and Dick Smith performing their famous scientific experiment on dowsing.

I remember learning about this result a long long time ago so it was really cool to see the corresponding 'movie' of who was involved. The dowsers were all so confident that they were “tuning in” to some kind of “rays” being emitted from all objects. What was cool is that not only did they show that dowsing is no better than chance but they also showed that, when the dowsers knew where the water/metal/whatever was ahead of time, then their dowsing rods went off with 100% accuracy—it's all subconscious. Click here for the 45 minute video.

Something else I found interesting was that when the dowsers were asked why they're so sure that dowsing works they said things like “after so many years of success, it's more than coincidence” and then proceeded to use their imagination to explain what must really be going on (the “rays” being emitted). Kind of like when people say stuff along the lines of “a hurricane hit New Orleans, but I know what's really going on: God is punishing them for <insert sin here>.” It's funny how people use coincidences as an opportunity to make up bizarro explanations. Nothing is a coincidence... uh, right, whatever.

Happy Towel Day

2006-05-25T23:07:00.000-04:00

I almost forgot it was Towel Day! Always know where your towel is.

Modesty isn't their Forté

2006-05-22T15:49:00.000-04:00

Click here to watch a some discussion on FOX and CNN about Canada; it features Ann Coulter and even Carolyn Parrish sparring with Tucker "The Dick" Carlson.

They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent

For some people, nationalistic fervor seems to get their pride and their arrogance caught in some kind of permanent feedback loop.

Righteous Merchandise

2006-05-21T12:54:00.000-04:00

To follow up on the Westboro Baptist post, here's another pic that I found sitting on my hard drive (don't ask why I collect this stuff). It's God Hates Fags, for kids!Saddest picture on my blog so far.

Persuasive?

2006-05-21T12:07:00.000-04:00

Found these sitting on my hard drive. I ran across them sometime last year at a site promoting abstinence (which I have nothing against). Um, "telling dad" should be the least of your concerns -- unless he's into honour killings. Not that the dirty-slut shamety-shame strategy isn't effective on stupid people, but ... come on.

If the teen scratches off FALSE to the "I intend to wait until I'm married" question, they are faced with a skull and crossbones which signifies that they'll probably die from AIDS. I don't get why marriage itself has anything to do with it; they should just come out and say "nobody should have more than one sexual partner in their entire life." I guess nobody expects to get divorced anyway, so "wait until marriage" sort of implies one partner.

I wonder how many people bother getting tested for STIs these days. Besides the pregnancy issue, I guess condoms are a compromise so that people don't have to ask their new partner "have you been tested for sexual diseases" since that's non-sexy-talk. I have to admit, the "even with proper condom use, HIV has a 15% chance of transmitting" statistic seems surprising (they didn't teach that number in my sex ed class).

Update: Mike pointed out that the statistic is really "condoms only reduce risk of transmission by 85%" which means that there's still 15% of the original risk which in general is not 100% to begin with but more like 0.1% according to Wikipedia's HIV article. This seems shockingly low considering there are parts of the world where 15-50% of adults are infected with HIV.

They're Made Out of Meat

2006-05-20T11:57:00.000-04:00

Good sci-fi has a way of putting everything into perspective, even when it's short and/or silly. Here's an excerpt from the short story They're Made Out of Meat:

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

Righteous Judgements

2006-05-06T00:10:00.000-04:00

Hannity and Colmes actually interviewed a member of Westboro Baptist Church. You've probably seen this tiny group of crazies on TV before, but usually they stick to harassing homosexuals. If you've never heard of this Christian Cult then I think reading about their leader, Fred Phelps, would be entertaining.
You can watch the 5 minute interview here:

Woo-woo lady: There are no innocent people. Thank God for 9/11. Thank God for dead soldiers. Thank God for IEDs. There are no innocent people.
[...]
I thank God for every single one of his richeous judgements that he executes upon a rebellious nation and on people who will not obey.

Colmes: What's the matter with you?

Woo-woo lady: What's the matter with YOU? Why won't you just obey? The scripture says that if you will obey the Lord, your God, bless you. If you do not obey the commandments of the Lord, your God, curse you. We're talking now about the curses of God.

The reason I posted this is because, even though this is a tiny cult and their statements don't represent anyone who matters, I think their views on suffering and innocence are, in a general sense, entirely consistent with huge swaths of Christianity. Somebody set me straight if I'm wrong there, but that's the impression I get.

Believers are right in saying that, if the old-school God exists (now with bonus wrath inside!) then saying “I don't like God” is not a sensible reason to reject Him. Even if you believe in God's wrath, our history is filled with evidence that we can spare ourselves unnecessary suffering if we actively try to defend ourselves using our brains and hands instead of praying, for example. I guess you can try to do both, but evidence for the former is rock-solid while evidence for the latter is pretty fishy.

If you're strictly worried about adhering to God's will, then of course you can just shrug your shoulders at worldly suffering. After all, “there are no innocent people.” It's obvious why humanists find this attitude frustrating. It's as if religious fundamentalists think we're God's little Sea-Monkeys. It all comes down to this: do you care about suffering in this life, or the next? Moderate people find a way to care about both and I think that's great.

Of course, nothing guarantees that an atheist cares about suffering in this world, either. After all you don't see me running off to the parts of Africa where people really need help—I sit around making software. Making myself upset has been a hobby.

Oh Father, Pretty Please?

2006-05-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

The Colbert Report recently highlighted the folks in Washington D.C. who are rallying for people across the country to pray for lower gas prices:

FOX News Anchor: Can the power of prayer ward off the pain at the pump? Clergy members and other demonstrators believe it's worth a shot. They gathered yesterday joining other groups across the country calling on a higher power to step in.

Colbert: Pray for lower gas prices. Remember folks, God hears all prayers, but sometimes his answer is “let market forces handle it.”

Reminds me of prosperity theology which teaches the faithful that, among other things, if they pray hard—and pray right—God will deposite money into their bank accounts. For real. From Wikipedia's article on Peter Popoff:

God will make “divine transfers” into a viewer's “divine account.” His infomercial states that “A divine transfer is supernatural. This is not money you're going to make from your job. ... God is going to supernaturally put money into your account.”

Subluxation

2006-04-27T19:42:00.000-04:00

Not sure what to think about this 1994 study on the philosophy of Canadian chiropractors. A few stats:

68% agree that “most diseases are caused by spinal malalignment”
74% disagree that “controlled clinical trials are the best way to validate chiropractic methods”
75% disagree that “the scope of chiropractic practice should be limited to musculoskeletal conditions”
94% see themselves as an integral part of the health care system

I've never been to a chiropractor so I don't know what the heck I'm talking about. But I'll talk anyway. My blog — Mine!

I'd heard before that chiropractic had mystical origins (all diseases exist because spinal cord problems interfere with some mind/body spirit entity, or something like that). None of that history necessarily has any bearing on the merits of what modern chiropractors do but, from the study, about half of modern chiropractics lean towards the beliefs of D.D. Palmer, the spooky founder of chiropractic methods. From the Wikipedia article on him:

DD Palmer's effort to find a single cause for all disease led him to say:
A subluxated vertebra ... is the cause of 95 percent of all diseases ... The other five percent is caused by displaced joints other than those of the vertebral column.
He said he "received chiropractic from the other world" during a séance, from a deceased physician named Dr. Jim Atkinson.

Even though chiropractic treatment on non-spine related conditions has received mixed reviews in scientific studies, until now I've always assumed that modern chiropractic thought had more in common with physiotherapy than with bloodletting. Now I'm going to be a little irritated when I see many hundreds of dollars in chiropractic treatments being subsidised by a benefits plan! My hats off to those chiropractors that keep-it-real and don't try to cure brain tumours (or even asthma) with their training.

Update: Coincidentally, I just encountered this post at the JREF Archives that contains a statement by the Society of Homeopaths defending their practice:

It has been established beyond doubt and accepted by many researchers, that the placebo-controlled randomized controlled trial is not a fitting research tool with which to test homeopathy.

How dense do you have to be to make a statement like that? I guess 74% of chiropractors (in 1994) would agree.

Meadow Muffin!

2006-04-26T01:28:00.000-04:00

The episode list for season 4 of Bullshit! just came out:

"The Boy Scouts" (against their discrimination of gays and atheists)
"Prostitution" (pro-legalization)
"The Death Penalty" (against)
"Cryptozoology"
"Ground Zero" and what has come from it. (Penn called it a debacle)
"Pet Love" (concerns people spoiling pets with diamond dog collars, expensive food, et cetera)
"Reparations" (against)
"Manners"
"Numbers"
"Astrology"
"Abstinence-only Sex Education" (against)

Purity Balls

2006-04-24T23:17:00.000-04:00

Focus on the Family is promoting a pretty interesting phenomenon called a Purity Ball, where fathers take their young daughters to a dance and then recite The Pledge: a commitment by the father to be manly and to guard his daughter's chastity.

“We want to help them enter marriage as pure, whole persons,” she said. “But it’s not just physical. It’s moral and emotional purity.”

So that means I'm not pure (I'll buy that), but I'm not a whole person either? I guess they're right w.r.t. the Bible. I think abstinence is a choice that deserves a lot of respect. I don't think I can ever understand what the idea of “physical and moral purity” truly means to the faithful though—I feel left out!

Googling Purity Ball returned this really great post on the subject, and I totally agree with this guy that the best way to protect kids is to inform them instead of instilling some abstract sense of guilt and dirtiness. I like his point on pre-marital sex, too, assuming it doesn't cause you to go to hell:

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, I think not having pre-marital sex is pretty idiotic. This is a separate issue from promiscuity -- I'm not a big fan of totally indiscriminate appendage insertion or acceptance -- but if you're serious enough about someone that you're contemplating marriage, you damn well better know what your own sexual playing field is, and you damn well better know if you're sexually compatible with your presumed marital partner.

I wouldn't call it 'idiotic' though.

Hmm, Toothpick or Electrical Cables

2006-04-23T21:57:00.000-04:00

Nothin' says lovin' like a “light” beating. Just don't leave a mark, since then other people might see it. There's something surreal about seeing this kind of dark-ages debate happening in modern TV studios. Is it okay to think that Mohammed's relationship advice might be a little quaint?
No? Too soon? Click an image to watch the full video.

Him: Light beatings are not excessive. They don't leave a mark, don't break bones, and don't cause bleeding. These are light beatings. With some women - nothing helps except beatings. Her: And with some men - nothing helps except beatings. Him: With some women - nothing helps except beatings! Her: And with some men - nothing helps except beatings!
God is aware of men's needs. He knows that a man may have just come home, and maybe he desires something or maybe he saw something. He knows what this need is, and this why he ordered the wife to consent to her husband.

If you thought these videos were interesting, check out this and this.

This last interview with a convicted Egyptian rapist is really bizarre. The whole thing seems manipulated to teach the “sluts deserve to be raped” mentality but with a weird God twist.

Her: How old are you, Ayman?
Him: 26 years old.
Her: What were you sentenced for?
Him: Kidnapping and rape.
Her: What was she wearing?
Him: She wore a short dress, which didn't have enough material for a sleeve.

Cowboy Leg Beautiful Pole

2006-04-23T14:03:00.000-04:00

This menu is the most awesomest Engrish I've seen in ages. The guy who bought and scanned the menu posts his own reaction to each menu item; here's my favourite:

Do I order this or agree with it?

How to Save an Atheist

2006-04-22T14:02:00.000-04:00

Hilariously simple minded. Flawed analogies. Classic misrepresentation of evolution. They're right about atheists having to be technically agnostic, but that misses the point entirely. I absolutely love the bananas-were-designed-for-people argument.

Someone must've explained to them the flaws in their arguments by now, but I bet they keep using them anyway because they're effective at stumping someone on the street who's not ready for it. I'm a bit disappointed that the presumably "average" atheists they interview aren't better at trouncing all over these bogus arguments. Likewise I'm sure it makes a lot of religious people wince when they hear some yokel defending their faith with particularly lame arguments.

I guess the point of what Ray Comfort is doing is to convert (er, save) people, not to have a real debate—hence the bait and hook analogy that he himself uses to describe what he does. In that respect he kind of reminds me of Ken Ham.

You can read more about this group, The Way of the Master, at Wikipedia; don't forget to check out the Criticism section.

Happiness

2006-04-01T20:03:00.000-05:00

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about."
-- Albert Einstein

I've never heard truer words. Thanks for the quote, Dan.

The Power[lessness] of Prayer

2006-03-31T19:20:00.000-05:00

Mike the Mad Biologist just posted about a study that searches for any tangible (read: real) effects of prayer:

Praying for other people to recover from an illness is ineffective, according to the largest, best-designed study to try to examine the power of prayer to heal strangers at a distance.

The study of more than 1,800 heart bypass surgery patients found that those who had other people praying for them had as many complications as those who did not. In fact, one group of patients who knew they were the subject of prayers fared worse.

Update: The results of this study on the effects of “retroactive prayer” (since God is independent of space and time!) are absolutely hilarious and what makes it fun instead of scary is that its author, Leonard Leibovici, designed the study to show how statistics can be used to reach ridiculous conclusions. I don't know if the study was really conducted properly or not, but Wikipedia's article on prayer cites it without criticism. Nice.

Photoshop Challenge

2006-03-30T21:25:00.000-05:00

It's a dream of mine to Photoshop an image that's good enough to get on TV in Rick Mercer's Photoshop Challenge. It's all about the idea—the clever ideas always win out over the fancy editing. Here are my top two favourites so far:

Original

Photoshop

I knew it, I just knew it!

All the guy did was add Olivier Chow into the background.
This one was entitled "A Difference of Opinion" ... lol

More at Rick's blog.

Lasers == Cool

2006-03-29T18:21:00.000-05:00

Putting advanced technology to good use, via National Geographic (link):

An entry in a German science-photo competition, this image shows a fly sporting a set of "designer" lenses crafted and set in place with a cutting-edge laser technique. The glasses fit snuggly on the fly's 0.08-inch-wide (2-millimeter-wide) head.

You Damned Dirty Atheists!

2006-03-23T12:57:00.000-05:00

According to this University of Minnesota study most Americans rank atheists as the least-trustworthy minority (via Majikthise). From the article:

“Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong. Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”

Maybe the problem is that, in highly religious communities, many people of faith don't get a chance to personally interact with atheists. If you label someone an ‘atheist’ and leave it at that, then you can hardly blame a naïve person for equating this to “no morals whatsoever.” Many agnostics and atheists are also humanists; I think it's difficult to interpret the ethical principles behind humanism as promoting self-interest and untrustworthiness, and therefore much harder to pigeonhole a self-described humanist as ‘immoral’ than a self-described atheist.

On second thought, you'd think it would be difficult to interpret the Bible's teachings as promoting selfishness, but many Christians manage to do so. According to this study from 2000, a majority of American church leaders (!) believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” I mean, what would Jesus think about trickle-down economics?! Anyway, moving on:

Many of the study’s respondents associated atheism with an array of moral indiscretions ranging from criminal behaviour to rampant materialism and cultural elitism.

If religiosity has, in the modern world, been shown to have no correlation with human well-being, then how on earth can people come to the conclusion that lack of religion is the cause of social ills? In fact the correlation is the opposite: for a while now international studies have shown that nations with the fewest social ills and highest levels of well-being also tend to be the most secular. See this study (PDF) for a comparison of “belief in God" versus social ills among developed countries, and then check out the rankings of those same countries on the United Nations Human Development Index.

Can we then claim that religion hampers human well-being? Mmmmm...No. The U.S.S.R. was as secular as you can get. I think people on both sides suffer from distorted perceptions of how much impact religiosity has on the success of society. Studies also show that religious people are happier, so it depends on your definition of well-being I suppose. I do however think it's fair to say that, from a humanist point of view, religion hampers the process of finding rational ways to promote well-being if you use the United Nations' definition of well-being and definition of standard-of-living.

Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Aargh! Nooo!

The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one’s exposure to diversity, education and political orientation—with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts.

No surprise there. After all, according to Pat Robertson the atheist elite has infiltrated America's school system in a fiendish power grab! These atheist radicals pose a sinister threat:

... you don't want your child to be brainwashed by these radicals, you just don't want it to happen. Not only brainwashed but beat up, they beat these people up, cower them into submission!

watch video via Crooks and Liars
LOL Pat Robertson <sigh>. Seriously though, I think the observation of higher tolerance among the East/West Coast and college educated is predicted by the idea that people of faith who actually interact with atheists are more likely to distinguish between abandoning faith and abandoning ethics.

Methinks it's Subliminal

2006-03-12T23:25:00.000-05:00

A giant billboard down the street from my house:The snake seems overly ... erect.
The only thing I remember from grade 10 English was the class where our teacher showed us actual examples of subliminal messages in magazine ads. His examples included a woman drinking from a glass that had a reflection of a penis airbrushed into it and various ads for booze/cigarettes that had words like death, alone, sex, f*ck and c*nt embedded in them if you knew where to look. The art of persuasion indeed.

6.5e+9 and Growing

2006-02-25T20:10:00.000-05:00

The earth hit 6.5 billion humans today. I'd like to personally welcome the approximately 375,000 people that were born today, and I suggest that as soon as they reach surfing age they head on over to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. Thanks Numeric Life.

Stewart on Deficits

2006-02-24T17:45:00.000-05:00

Funniest Daily Show segment I've seen in a long time, via Crooks and Liars (WMV and QT).

But sleep tight America! The government isn't taking money from your pocket—it's deficit spending. It means the United States is actually taking out long term loans from banks and foreign governments. So, don't think of it like $2,000 that you don't have. Think of it as $200,000 your grandchildren don't have. And, seriously, f**k them; they think you smell like ass.

He totally hits the nail on the head there. See my Feynman on Deficits post for more cynical fun.

My Friend, Oscar

2006-02-22T11:54:00.000-05:00

   I didn't win it,

      but I got to hold it.

         I'm a total nobody,

            but I still got to hold it :~)

Anyway, I might actually bother watching the Oscars this year considering the host.

Qigong 101

2006-02-22T00:46:00.000-05:00

To look back on the centuries that people have relied on faith healing is a bitter-sweet reminder of how gullible we're all capable of being under the wrong circumstances, and I do mean all of us. I've got a post on faith healing in the works (Miracle Spring Water ring a bell?). Anyway, Mad Mike over at Majikthise has received word that a close relative of faith healing, therapeutic Qigong, has been taught to children as though it were science in some schools (although presumably very few). A concerned parent writes:

One of my daughter's classmates fell unconscious while she was performing these exercises. Then the Qigong instructor ran to the victim and began moving his hands over her body, telling the students that he was healing her by moving his hands over her which was manipulating body energy or "Chi."

What's most frustrating about these practices to me isn't just the obvious stuff (dangerous to delay real treatment, blah blah blah) but that the practitioners somehow fail to see the value in forming a proper (falsifiable) hypothesis and testing it. You know, double blind tests and all that good stuff that we've developed so as not to make fools of ourselves time and time again. How, in this day and age, can people grow up in such a way that they fail to see value in the scientific approach?

The Power of Balance is based in Toronto, and here's what they claim:

With speialized [sic] training, [Qigong] can be used to heal others, somewhat like an energetic, no-needle form of acupuncture.

Yep, that sure sounds a lot like what the Qigong instructor at that elementary school was trying to do earlier, although I don't think it makes sense to apply acupuncture to a child that just fainted, even avec-needle acupuncture. If that was my kid I'd completely spaz. You can see Mike's post right here which includes a petition to keep Qigong out of schools (sortof like ID).

Update: This entry at the JREF Archives mentions a 2005 Journal of the American Medical Association study that suggests that acupuncture might be just placebo. Their summary:

New German research on the use of acupuncture for headache patients concluded that the placement of the needles on the body was of no importance whatsoever. One Klaus Linde at the University of Technology in Munich conducted the experiment. The old Chinese notion of "meridians" and energy-lines and spots in the body, are again falsified by medical experiment.

Sounds to me like bunk on par with reflexology and all the other pseudosciences.

Pop Quiz, America

2006-02-20T11:22:00.000-05:00

A random sampling of Americans was recently asked to name prominant figures on the world stage. Here are the percentages of Americans who got each question correct:

Leader of Cuba 70%
U.S. secretary of state 56%
Prime minister of Great Britain 54%
President of Russia 37%
President of Mexico 29%
Chancellor of Germany 4%

I even got the Angela Merkel one right, although that might be because her party has the word Christian right in its name (which still totally blows my mind).

You might be thinking "with all the media focus on American foreign policy and the Iraq war, shouldn't Americans know who these public figures are by now??" Well that's the best part: wait for it... these results actually are an improvement:

Knowledge of world leaders in 2000 was lower compared with 2003 and this year. At that time, just 2% knew Jean Chretien was prime minister of Canada, only 33% could name Madeleine Albright as secretary of state, and only about one in five knew of Putin and Blair at that point in their tenures.

The Gallup Poll has the detailed survey results that summarise previous years as well.

John Kricfalusi's Blog

2006-02-20T10:51:00.000-05:00

John Kricfalusi has a blog! Absolutely amazing stuff.
Happy Happy Joy Joy!

Answers in Genesis

2006-02-19T16:43:00.000-05:00

Evangelist Ken Ham has devoted himself to debunking evolution in the minds of American children with the usual "does your grandpa look like a monkey?" type stuff. Ham's ministry is called Answers in Genesis and they specialise in making sure that children doubt evolution's merits (there's also a No Answers in Genesis group, ha-HAAH!).

Really though, I can't see anything wrong with Ham's approach in principle—we shouldn't expect the next generation to take our scientists' findings entirely on faith, after all. If our schools are teaching the history of evolution in a dogmatic fashion then, well, that seems wrong; evolution is a fact but, after all, our evolutionary history is just a theory. The problem with Ham's approach is that he doesn't apply the same principles of skepticism to his own claims:

Ham encourages people to further their research with the dozens of books and DVDs sold by his ministry. They give answers to every question a critic might ask: How did Noah fit dinosaurs on the ark? He took babies. Why didn't a tyrannosaur eat Eve? All creatures were vegetarians until Adam's sin brought death into the world. How can we have modern breeds of dog like the poodle if God finished his work 6,000 years ago? He created a dog "kind"—a master blueprint—and let evolution take over from there.

Remember that these are Ham's answers, and are only guesses based on the Bible. I never understood how a T-Rex could eat vegetables with those teeth, but whatever. I can't tell if he himself really believes these childish answers or if they're designed to appease the imagination of his young audience. A further sampling:

"Who's the only one who's always been there?" Ham asked.
"God!" the boys and girls shouted.
"Who's the only one who knows everything?"
"God!"
"So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"
The children answered with a thundering: "God!"

[...] He shows his audiences a graphic that places the theory of evolution at the root of all social ills: abortion, divorce, racism, gay marriage, store clerks who say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

Gay marriage a social ill? Evolution responsible for racism? RAAARRGGHHHH!! And I really don't think God cares if a store clerk says Happy Holidays—relax. You can read more about Ken Ham's adventures in this Wikipedia article and this L.A. Times article (found the link via this post by iocaste at Majikthise).

Feynman on Deficits

2006-02-19T00:07:00.000-05:00

In 2005 Maclean's magazine published an article entitled Is America Going Broke? which (not surprisingly) presents a bleak outlook on America's ability to ever ever ever (...ever) pull itself out of debt:

[David] Walker's department projects that, under the current tax rates, interest costs on the skyrocketing national debt would be about half of all government tax revenues by 2031. Ten years later, the cost of servicing the debt will exceed all government revenues.
[...]
"The U.S. government is effectively bankrupt," [Kotlikoff] wrote. The available options to close the fiscal gap? Hike income taxes by 78 per cent; slash Social Security and Medicare benefits by more than half; or eliminate all other discretionary spending.
"That," he concludes, "is America's menu of pain."

Reminds me of an old Richard Feynman quote from way back when deficits were first becoming "astronomical":

There are 10¹¹ stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.

Given the Reagonomics policy that deficits-are-A-okay and can always be reversed once the economy is sufficiently st-st-stimulated (tee hee), I wonder if these same attitudes can be successfully applied to our personal finances. Wait a minute, now I remember: Americans are applying these same principles to personal finance, with $7,200 in average household credit card debt (see Stats Attack 1).

Social vs. Sexual Selection

2006-02-18T19:16:00.000-05:00

Coturnix of Science and Politics is currently a guest contributer at Majikthise, and he's added a really interesting post that summarises and reviews Joan Roughgarden's book Evolution's Rainbow and her new article entitled Reproductive Social Behavior: Cooperative Games to Replace Sexual Selection (abstract). He includes a number of excerpts from her writing, and adds his own rather well-founded opinion:

I do not agree that sexual selection is not confirmed. Even the first arguments, those of Darwin in Descent of Man are pretty strong [...]

A few years ago I did an almost exactly same experiment in two very different species: the Japanese quail and the crayfish. The results from the crayfish experiment were consistent with sexual selection and not with social selection theory. The data from quail were not consistent with sexual selection but were nicely explained by Roughgarden's social selection theory.

So, do not dismiss sexual selection yet, but don't dismiss Joan Roughgarden's ideas, either.

Update: A study on the influence of social selection just came out. Click here.

Warped Morality

2006-02-18T00:36:00.000-05:00

Couple of stories of note (via Feministe):

A) A young woman in Iran was recently sentenced to death by hanging for defending herself and her 16 year old niece from would-be rapists:

As the girls tried to escape, the men once again attacked them, and at this point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the men in the chest. The teenage girl, however, broke down in tears in court as she explained that she had no intention of killing the man but was merely defending herself and her younger niece from rape, the report said.

B) Pakistani cleric Mohammed Yousaf Qureshi has offered a $1,000,000 bounty for the killing of cartoonists responsible for the Mohammed cartoons (see earlier post):

This is a unanimous decision by all imams of Islam that whoever insults the prophets deserves to be killed and whoever will take this insulting man to his end, will get this prize.

Firstly, I seriously doubt that this was really “a unanimous decision by all imams of Islam.” Secondly, I wonder what would happen if Sean Hannity offered a $1,000,000 prize for the killing of Ted Rall on the basis that he insulted Generalissimo El Busho. Qureshi should be jailed. Instead of “deserves to be killed” I think the strongest consequence they should be able to demand is “deserves to be excommunicated” considering the nature of the offense.

Stats Attack 1

2006-02-16T11:15:00.000-05:00

A few select stats from the wonderful Numeric Life:

431:1 is the average CEO/worker salary ratio in the U.S.
31% of American teens believe they'll become famous someday.
12.3 years is now the average age when American girls hit puberty.
Girls are outperforming boys at school, university, and at launching businesses.
The average American household has 12-13 credit cards and $7,200 in debt on those cards (!!!).
Scientists and engineers (5% of U.S. population) generate 50% of GDP.
TV in the bedroom correlates with half as much sex for couples.
29% of us think about a former love at least once a week (how about at least once a day!).
A 2005 article in Nature says that humans are 98.77% chimp
Superbowl XL ads cost an average of $83,333 per second.

British Soldiers Beating Video

2006-02-14T23:48:00.000-05:00

The only place I could find the raw video was break.com.
Watch the video (WMV), and listen to the commentary by the corporal who's filming the incident (yes, yesss, yyesssss ... dieeee), now that's hate.

Update: On a related note, TalkLeft has posted some of the new Abu Ghraib photos. They're arguably worse than the ones most of us have seen so far. If you've had enough already then don't bother with these though.

Multi-User Touch Interface

2006-02-14T14:09:00.000-05:00

Over at Vic Divecha's Tech Blog there's a post mentioning that Apple has patented some multi-user interface technology developed at NYU:

For a video of the technology being demoed check out the homepage for the project (QT) or an alternate link here (Flash 8).

These Are My Moms

2006-02-13T23:53:00.000-05:00

I noticed an October 2005 update (PDF) of the National Lesbian Family Study (NLFS) that follows the progress of children being raised by gay parents (N=74). The results for these kids show that, at 10 years of age, they've turned out completely normal so far:

In social and psychological development, the NLFS children were comparable to children raised in heterosexual families. The NLFS girls demonstrated fewer behavioral problems than age-matched peers. These findings are consistent with other studies demonstrating a high degree of emotional well-being in children of lesbian families (Anderssen et al., 2002; Bliss & Harris, 1999; Golombok et al., 2003).

One notable difference is that half of these children have experienced homophobia from their peers. One child writes:

last year a girl told me my moms were going to hell.

Something that caught my attention was their citation of a previous result that describes the children's character. To me these characteristics seem consistent with a child who is (a) teased by homophobes and (b) has attentive and caring parents:

Teachers in a New Mexico survey (Bliss & Harris, 1999) described children raised by lesbian and gay parents as having more problematic social interactions yet more self-confidence, maturity, and tolerance than their peers.

What everyone's dying to hear is more evidence relevant to nature versus nurture when it comes to homosexuality. Naturally I have my own assumptions on this, but unfortunately we'll have to wait another 7 years before this particular study gets a follow-up <sigh>. We're all curious I suppose but, really, “can parents turn kids gay?” and “can people choose to be straight?” should be completely irrelevant questions—unless you start from the premise that homosexuality is somehow bad.

Grrrr religion.

Atheism == Ø?

2006-02-12T15:59:00.000-05:00

Found an excellent comment at the JREF Archives. An anonymous submitter writes:

I saw a quote I like, to rebuke the assertion that atheism is just another religion:"Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby"

It reminds me of something a friend said to me recently: [approx]

Religions are like a set of beliefs, so atheism is just an empty set, but it's still a belief system so it's fundamentally no better.

I guess I can see why atheism seems hypocritical from that point of view, but it seems like an excuse to be dismissive rather than a genuine observation. Consider an analogous [hypothetical] argument:

Faith-healing and medical science are both ways to heal people, so neither approach to healing is fundamentally better.

My point is that if two ideas are related then, well, they're related, and reducing things to the point where they have something in common is not a meaningful observation.

Deep down I'm sure Christians don't equate their religion with Scientology on any meaningful level—they probably view Scientology as a fraud, like most people do; well, atheists tend to look at all religion in a similar light, so who's being hypocritical?

Update: Turns out Majikthise has a related post.

I want to storm your love palace...

2006-02-12T07:48:00.000-05:00

Jill at Feministe had a great thread a while back called Worst Pick-Up Line Ever. It's a gold mine I tellsya!

Guy: You girls smell really clean!
Girl: What kind of a line is that?
Guy: An honest line, man! You girls smell like you take a lot of baths.

And my personal favourite:

You must be a grain of sand between 62.5 and 125 μm because, according to the Wentworth scale of sediment size, you are fine

Is it conceivable for a grown man...

2006-02-12T06:10:00.000-05:00

A brave woman, via MEMRI-TV...

Let me tell you what "pleasure from sexual contact with her thighs" means...

Ghada Jamshir
Women's Rights Activist

Click here to watch her interview.

Don't Worry, They Divorced

2006-02-12T04:26:00.000-05:00

MEMRI-TV has an interview with a daughter of Anwar Sadat who was forced to marry when she was 12 years old and was subsequently beaten and impregnated.

My childhood was completely ruined, because they began to treat me as a woman.

Camelia Sadat

Click here to watch the interview, or go to the favourites section of MEMRI-TV for other interesting videos from the Middle East.

Free as in Speech

2006-02-12T00:43:00.000-05:00

A brief survey of recent MEMRI-TV clips has turned up a nice collection of, how-you-say, presumptuous fundamentalist hatemongers. It turns out that the Mohammed cartoons were a Zionist plot all along. Very related to the last quote in my previous Dawkins post.

Pick your poison...

"It is the responsibility of the heads of state in the World Muslim Congress to demand legislation, that will be binding on the press and the media in the West, that will prevent the humiliation of our Prophet" Hassan Nasrallah Hizbullah Secretary-General
"This is a Crusader Zionist campaign, which is led by the extremist pro-Zionist right, headed by George Bush in America" Ali Muhi Al-Din Al-Qardaghi Statistician (not!)
"That's what this is about. This is the handiwork of the Zionists" Ali Khamenei Leader of Iran Coming soon: Nukes!

I think Ali Khamenei may have had the Faurisson affair in mind when he implied that "the West" is hypocritical when it comes to free speech.

Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who for some reason decided to publish the cartoons in the first place, is facing numerous threats on his life. When asked whether he now regrets the decision, he responded:

That is a hypothetical question. I would say that I do not regret having commissioned those cartoons and I think asking me that question is like asking a rape victim if she regrets wearing a short skirt Friday night at the discotheque.

I see what he's trying to say, but it's a bit repulsive to compare his situation to that of a rape victim.

Leader of Cuba	70%
U.S. secretary of state	56%
Prime minister of Great Britain	54%
President of Russia	37%
President of Mexico	29%
Chancellor of Germany	4%