The ‘decent interval’ is over!

Whenever someone dies, there is something called a ‘decent interval’ where it is considered in extremely poor taste to disparage the deceased. It’s perfectly reasonable – even the worst of people have families who are mourning the loss, and it does no good to rub salt in their fresh wounds. The length of that decent interval is very much an ambiguous question. There is no rule as to when it’s done, but it’s usually proportional to the amount of good (or evil) the person did in hir life. I myself was appalled when the vultures began circling almost immediately after Christopher Hitchens died.

Andrew Breitbart died last week. When it happened, I stated it as a fact and left it alone because, despite the revulsion I felt toward him, it wasn’t right to begin crowing victory at the death of an enemy. Mobutu & Gen. Ze’evi have apparently kicked the fucking door off the ‘decent interval’, and thank fuck for that:

Provocateur, website founder and collector of America’s largest wads of spittle Andrew Breitbart died last Thursday morning, when some sentient shred of his cardiac organ kamikazed out of an exhausted sense of justice.

The invertebrate response from journalists was exactly to be expected. Breitbart said, like, bad stuff in his lifetime, but he also married someone and fathered people; once he even objected to anti-gay GOP rhetoric. A malicious career and two milquetoast mitigating facts: It all balanced out, really, at least for the purposes of forced, quailing objectivity. To borrow a grossanalogylustilyemployed on Breitbart’s own websites, if today’s mainstream media was penning obits on May 1, 1945, they would have summed up with, “Despite initiating the Second World War, the German leader was fond of public architecture and is survived by his beloved dachshunds.”

But nothing so generic could be the money quote of this squeamish grudging esteem-a-thon. For that, we have to go to Slate‘s Dave Weigel, who quoted Breitbart thus: “‘Feeding the media is like training a dog,’ he wrote. ‘You can’t throw an entire steak at a dog to train it to sit. You have to give it little bits of steak over and over again until it learns.'” This is just the carrot part of the metaphor. Nobody mentioned the stick.

The piece is long, but holy fuck is it amazing. I love good polemic, and this is great polemic. You’ll notice that the focus is (rightly) placed on Mr. Breitbart’s actions and behaviour, and is a criticism of things he actually did. This isn’t crowing over someone’s death – this is an unapologetic statement that the man who people are tiptoeing around revealed himself to be an awful person deserving of an honest and thorough verbal keel-hauling, which this piece gives him in spades.

Go read it right now. Some choice nuggets below the fold.

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Kiva Project Update: Our third loan

Hey Cromrades,

I didn’t hear much from you with regard to our Kiva project, so I donated all the money to Invisible Children.

Joking.

But I didn’t have time to go through the Kiva.org website and really closely scrutinize the projects, so I just picked a couple at semi-random. This is why I need y’all to help me out here – to make sure our money goes to the best source.

At any rate, here’s where it went this month:

Unyenyekevu Group – DR Congo

Kavira is an entrepreneur and head of the Unyenyekevu business group. She is 55 years old, married and the mother of 10 children, who are all in school. Her husband is a mechanic.  Kavira sells second hand handbags. She has been involved in small-scale business of this type for four years. This is her 11th loan from Hekima, and will enable her to buy one sack of bags, among other things.

Kavira would like to see her children grow up in comfort, expand her business and buy another plot of land to leave to her children. She would like to thank Hekima for its work helping poor women who are excluded from traditional banking.

Ayen Thon – South Sudan

Ayen lives in Bor. She sells charcoal and has been in business for three years. She is 30 years old, married, and has no children. Ayen heard about BRAC South Sudan from a credit officer and this is her third loan from BRAC.

She has requested a loan of 1,500 SDG in order to purchase charcoal. She will use her extra income from this loan to build a house in future.

$25 has gone to each of these projects. I picked them because a) African, b) women, c) business. My selection criteria, I’m afraid, are not much fancier than that.

Because of the tendency for these loans to get funded fairly quickly, I’d suggest that if you’re interested in providing input into these loans, wait until I announce the next round (i.e., in a month’s time). I do hope you will chime in with where these funds are going, because I am bound to overlook something, and I consider this our money – at least until we have enough to spend on something I really want then I’m leaving you suckers in the dust from my G4.

For the month of October (the first month this site went live), we made $46.38, and loaned $50.
For the month of November, we made $65.81, and loaned $50.
For the month of December, we made $44.76, and loaned $50

Total amount loaned so far: $150
Total loan funds repaid: $2.50
Fund balance: $5.57

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I quit

For as long as I can remember, I have been deeply fascinated by science. One of my earliest memories involves a cross-country trip (nothing can prepare you for how immense Canada is – you have to drive across it) with a big stack of science books – of course the highlight of the whole trip was the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology  in Drumheller, Alberta. As a matter of fact, the second-most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make was in high school, when I had to choose whether to pursue a career in science or music. The most difficult, incidentally, was deciding whether my best friend would live or die*.

Science has always been a huge part of my life, which is why I am devastated to say that I am going to have to quit:

In a recent experiment, Paul Vasey of Canada’s University of Lethbridge and Barnaby Dixson of New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington found that while beards may be stylish, and are probably a mark of alpha males, they aren’t necessarily a key tool for attracting the ladies. “Women … do not rate bearded faces as more attractive than clean-shaven faces,” the researchers wrote in the journal Behavioral Ecology.

(snip)

Both men and women said that with beards, the men looked older and more aggressive than they did with their beards shaved. The viewers also ascribed higher social status to the men when they were bearded than when they were baby-faced. Women said that the clean-shaven faces were more attractive than the whiskery ones.

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they are forced to choose between their deeply-held personal beliefs, and the scientific consensus. Many people find it difficult to accept scientific evidence for the age of the earth. Others find the vastness of the cosmos too daunting and shut out the evidence for the Big Bang. Still others cannot bring themselves to accept the fact that all life is descended from a common ancestor, in defiance of the Genesis account. It seems that I am forced to make the same decision.

Look at this face: [Read more…]

Movie Friday: Limbaugh on Kony

So this clip popped up a few weeks ago, and I had no idea it was going to become so topical, but that just goes to show you what I know.

One of the things that has still not filtered into the discussion about who Joseph Kony is and what he represents is the extent to which his religious beliefs fuel his actions. Joseph Kony, to all appearances, is not a person who is casual about his religion. He does not appear to have anything like the model of belief that the anti-Gnu faitheists wish to portray modern ‘sensible’ religion as – self-effacing and private, with ritual and symbolism for community purposes. No, Mr. Kony is sincere in his mindless zeal, and truly believes that he is on a holy mission from Yahweh to liberate Uganda from the clutches of Satan or whatever his deal is. [Read more…]

Show her the money!

Happy International Women’s Day!

In every field, at every level of education, men earn more than women. That’s the grim takeaway of this new report [PDF] from the U.S. Census Bureau, which assesses the value of a higher education in the United States—and illustrates the persistent pay gap between male and female employees who hold comparable degrees. In short, education is valuable, but it’s most lucrative if you’re male.

I have more patience than some others when it comes to stupid attitudes about sexism and feminism. Part of that is simple privilege: I can afford to not take those kinds of attitudes personally; however, some of  my zen is honestly come by. I’ve always called myself a feminist, but my understanding of that term didn’t really mature until I became involved in organized skepticism. I then came to understand feminism as a branch of skepticism – learning to unpack and, in a way, debunk claims about gender roles, sex characteristics, history, and a whole host of others. In fact, the level of overlap between feminism and anti-racism has helped enhance my understanding of both topics.

I can kind of understand the problem though, and it relates directly to that overlap. I care deeply about anti-racism for, at least in part, fundamentally selfish reasons. While I must always start this statement with the huge caveat that I have managed to escape the worst aspects of racism in my own life, racism still very much affects my day-to-day life. I have, therefore, a vested interest in seeing the world pay more critical attention to race and race issues. Because of this selfish motive, it is easy for me to empathize with women and recognize the multitude of similarities in the problems we face. However, it took me several years to come to this conclusion. [Read more…]

A few words about “Kony 2012”

I have some small experience with skepticism on the internet and in social media. It’s usually a pretty hard slog, because people don’t like being corrected, especially when they’re passionate about something. So you’ll see people posting stuff that you find on Snopes, and you have to painstakingly explain to your friends and more gullible family members that it’s generally not a good idea to forward along things that are unsourced, particularly when they don’t pass the skeptical ‘sniff test’. And then someone gets into a fight over it, and it’s 2 or 3 days before it stops spreading like wildfire.

Yesterday, a friend sent me a link to a video called “Kony 2012” with the question “thoughts?” Now, as hipster as this makes me sound, I’ve actually known who and what Joseph Kony was for a few years now. I’ve even talked about him (obliquely) on this blog before. There is no question in my mind that Joseph Kony represents everything that is evil about humanity. I try to avoid describing people as ‘good’ or ‘evil’, in an attempt to recognize that the environment is a much better predictor of behaviour than anything that exists within us organically. Even still, the methods and actions of Mr. Kony are so beyond comprehension and empathy that I struggle to even see him as a human being. His only saving grace, politically speaking, is that he’s been allowed to commit his atrocities in a place where the rich and powerful nations have more or less ignored him.

This video, created by an advocacy and humanitarian aid group called Invisible Children, is designed to strip away the anonymity that allows Joseph Kony to engage in his grisly campaign. Their reasoning is that if people are paying attention, there will be sufficient political pressure to “do something” (which, in the case of Invisible Children, means hunting him down and either arresting him or killing him). The powerful imagery of the video, coupled with the shocking reality of the situation, immediately provoked huge reactions from people who had no idea that any of this had been going on. [Read more…]

‘Couv team ASSEMBLE!

Tonight, we are once again assembling at the Billy Bishop for some skeptical imbibing and conversation. I somehow managed to miss last month’s meetup, but I am absolutely not going to miss this one. Plus I am meeting up with Natalie beforehand for some delicious Vera’s burgers. If you can’t make it tonight, make sure to check out the other events hosted by Vancouver Skeptics in the Pub – one downtown Vancouver and another in Richmond. Check out the schedule for more info, and if you can make it to Kitilsano tonight, come by and say hi!

If drinking isn’t your game, there are a lot of other fun skepty activities happening in the city, many of which are available on the Vancouver Skeptics page. Vancouver has a very active skeptical community, including associations with the UBC and SFU skeptic/atheist groups, and a number of other affiliated groups like CFI Vancouver. If you live in the Vancouver area and want to know what your fellow freethinkers are up to, check out the page!

See you tonight! Burgersburgersburgersburgers.

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Yesterday, tomorrow, today

The central thesis of my series on black history this year was focussed on the importance of understanding the whole truth of our history as a nation. This is not only relevant to Canada, mind you – it is universally true that understanding where we came from tells us how we got where we are. Furthermore, it gives us an indication of how we can move into the future intelligently, avoiding the same pitfalls that had waylaid us before. The reason why I thought black history was particularly useful for this task is that a) it has not been well-explored and is not well-understood, and b) it is a particularly egregiously bad slice of our history that we must learn to confront honestly if we are to glean anything from it.

That being said, Canada’s abysmal treatment of black people is far from the worst story we have to tell. For that, we have to turn to First Nations Canadians. The original settlers and inhabitants of the land were repeatedly exploited and conned into agreements that worked to their continual disadvantage. It is only recently that we have been willing to confront our national shame in anything other than an entirely token way, and many (myself included) would argue that we are still not doing enough to not simply make up for historical injustices, but to understand how we non-Aboriginal Canadians fit into their historical narrative.

Just as in the case of black history, learning the history of the Nation of Canada and the First Nations of Canada teaches us about ourselves, in ways that we may find uncomfortable but which are critical to moving forward: [Read more…]

TUPAK LIVES!

Boy do I wish I was talking about this guy:

No, in fact I am talking about this guy:

As you can see, I’m not an ordinary person. Ever since I realized I have the power to predict the future, I knew that anything was possible for me, and I wasn’t wrong. I can predict things that are about to happen, and I can feel the vibrations of winning numbers in games like roulette or the lottery.

The blood of my Cheyenne ancestors runs through my veins. It has enabled me to predict my own future, and the future of the people around me. As a respected Shaman, I also have the power to transform woes into happiness, problems into solutions, and mysteries into revelations.

I found an ad for this “psychic medium” (a.k.a., scam artist) in the back-channel app that we use to tabulate site stats here at FTB. It was the name that grabbed me initially, but then I saw this:

I’m so confident of the value of what I “see” in your future, and of the advice I can give you, that I’m ready to offer you an initial “Visionary Contact Session” completely free of charge. Use it to take stock of your personal life. You’ll find it a surprisingly accurate study of your personality, of the main character traits that shape your Destiny, and increase the likelihood of experiencing certain problems. And there’s a big surprise in store for you, but I won’t say any more now. I’ll let you think about it. Just don’t think too long…

Now it goes from sad to hilarious. This guy is claiming that he will be able to see into my future, based on little more than astrology (and of course, me telling him what the biggest problem in my life is right now). Here’s the thing: as of yesterday I have a really clear picture of what the next few months/years hold for me. Unless Mr. Tupak is a blog reader (or he Googles me, which would be cheating), there’s very little chance of his prediction being anywhere near accurate. Oh sure, he might get vague things like “you are considering returning to school”, which is a common occurrence for people my age. He might even get “a career change is on the horizon” (which isn’t strictly true, but he could claim it amounts to the same thing), but again that’s entirely common for people in their 20s.

Anyone feel like submitting themselves to Mr. Tupak’s expert wisdom? I’ll bite the bullet and give him my real info, but anyone worth their salt can find out most of my pertinent details inside of 15 minutes. I’d be interested to see what happens if someone whose entire life isn’t on a website makes a request. I’ll let you know what info I get back.

Warning: Tupak is not good with refunds

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