Jesus made him do it

It wasn’t that long ago that we got to hear lots of wailing about how secular/liberal values led to the Virginia Tech massacre (although, to be fair, most of the wailing was of the “god works in mysterious ways” sort). We had Chuck Norris blaming the “secular progressive agenda”.

Though one can point to Cho’s own psychotic behavior and our graphic slasher media as potential contributors to his deplorable murder spree, we must also hesitate to consider how we as a society are possibly contributing to the growth of these academic killing fields. I believe those who wield the baton of the secular progressive agenda bear significant responsibility for the escalation of school shootings. Even conservatives who refuse to speak when evil flourishes must acknowledge some culpability.

We had church groups claiming that restoring prayer to the schools would fix everything.

American Family Radio has raised a similar battle cry, claiming in a video that events leading to recent years’ school shootings in places like Jonesboro, Ark., Springfield, Ore., Littleton Colo., and Blacksburg, Va., “started when Madalyn Murray O’Hair complained she didn’t want any prayer in our schools, and we said ‘O.K.'” That is an apparent reference to Supreme Court decisions that have outlawed government-sanctioned prayer and devotional Bible reading in public schools.

Now we have a federal agency releasing a profile of the killer.

Cho, 23, of Centreville, whose family was religious and had sought help for him from a Woodbridge church, repeatedly made religious references. He said that he had been “crucified” and that, as with Jesus, his actions would set people free. He called himself a “martyr” who would “sacrifice” his life. He wrote that he would go down in history as the “Jesus Christ of the Weak and Defenseless.” He thought his actions would inspire others to fight back and get even.

Ooops. I predict that, just like Tim McVeigh is conveniently forgotten when it’s time to characterize terrorists as brown and muslim, Cho will be forgotten when it’s expedient to pretend Christianity is a religion of peace and love.

An almost biblical curse

There are a couple of small towns on the border between Utah and Arizona that are basically feudal theocracies, ruled by a particularly nasty splinter sect of polygamist Mormons. It’s got some truly ugly social consequences — daughters are prizes given away to church leaders, while sons are competitors who are driven away — but now it turns out that there also some biological consequences. The community is deeply inbred, and their prize is the possession of the highest rate of fumarase deficiency in the world, with at least 20 afflicted children in the last 15 years. Fumarase is an enzyme in the Krebs cycle; deleterious mutations in these genes cause a metabolic disorder called fumarase deficiency.

It’s not a nice innocuous disease. It’s variable in its severity, but bad cases lead to debilitating mental retardation, frequent seizures, characteristic appearance (a large head, coarse features), and death. With care, affected individuals can live for many years, but they’ll never be self-sufficient and they do require near-constant attention.

And because it is widespread in a small isolated community, that for various reasons (including religion) is neither a desirable destination for new residents nor will its population try to integrate with the outside world, it’s going to get worse. Half the children born to a pair of carriers will be carriers of the disease themselves, and those nice big Mormon families produce lots of children. Not only are the young girls in this community forced to marry and start spawning baby after baby, but compound the horror with the idea that some will be having children who will need to have their diapers changed for 20 years…

But Isabella is such a lovely name!

Apparently, you shouldn’t name your daughter “Barbie” unless you want her to grow up to be an airhead. A study, reported in the Guardian, claims that names have a powerful influence on social expectations — they report a significant effect in lowering exam scores based on whether the student’s name is classifiable as coming from a distinct ethnic/socioeconomic class, and further claim that the femininity of a name has a negative correlation with performance in math and science.

It’s somewhat odd. For one thing, they calculated a femininity score for various names based on letter and sound combinations—”Isabella” is the most feminine name, while “Abigail” comes out near the bottom. I don’t know any male Abigails, and Grace and Ashley, two other names in the list with low femininity scores, don’t sound particularly macho to me.

On the whole, people judged to have more traditional names such as Rachel and Robert did extremely well. More alternative names scored badly. Breeze, for example, was given 16 out of 100, while Christopher received full marks. ‘A name is part of an impression package,’ said Mehrabian. ‘Parents who make up bizarre names for their children are ignorant, arrogant or just foolish.’

Eh. It sounds like traditional conservative bigotry to me. If it holds up, though, it’s an interesting example of the way cultural biases can affect performance on supposedly bias-free examinations. I wouldn’t be too surprised if it’s valid, though: I know that when I grade exams and papers, I consciously avoid looking at the name on the exam until it’s time to record the scores in the gradebook, and I often grade from back to front to make that easier to do. That’s not to avoid bias from the femininity of the names, though, but because I know the students and want to avoid preconceptions.

I do have to note, though, that a) we named our daughter Skatje, and b) the author of the report is named “Anushka” (which sounds nice to me), and one of the teachers interviewed is named “Edyta” (an unfamiliar name, and now I suppose I’m going to imagine every Edyta I meet is a schoolteacher. Or not.)

(via Unhindered by talent)

Saint, monster…they’re the same thing

A name I’d like to see banished to oblivion is that of Paul Hill, the religious fanatic and murderer who gunned down Dr John Britton and James Barrett at an abortion clinic. I don’t care whether you are pro-choice or anti-woman, only the most wretched, insane god-walloper can possibly approve of assassinating health-care providers to protect fetuses. And there can’t be that many of them, can there? And they are going to face universal public censure, right? Cruelly, archy tells me otherwise.

Behold, Paul Hill Days.

A couple of deranged Christian organizations are planning to send their members to Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the end of July to thump about like a gang of gumbies, bellowing about what a good man Paul Hill was. God’s man. A hero. A martyr.

And to crown this exercise in lunacy and poor taste, they’re planning a reenactment of the murders.

I guess the Rev. Phelps and his merry band of haters aren’t quite as uniquely bizarre as I’d thought.

Ick — now the Rev. Donald Spitz has sent McKay a letter, blaming him and people like us for AIDS, rape, murder and robbery, and all kinds of such nastiness, because we don’t believe in Jeeezus. These people are crazy evil; I’m beginning to get a sinister vibe from just the title “Reverend” anymore.

Council of Europe’s anti-creationism recommendation

The Council of Europe has put up a wonderful motion for a recommendation. Can anyone imagine this being discussed in the American senate or house of representatives? The Republicans would howl in fury against it, and the Democrats would rush to bury it, lest they offend the Republicans and annoy the ignorant members of their electorate. (The Council of Europe, by the way, is not the same thing as the Council of the European Union or the European Parliament, so it’s not really comparable to our congress. Europe says some very sensible things, but Europe is also very confusing.)

[Read more…]

Idiots with too much money

I don’t normally mind people their hobbies and obsessions, even when I don’t share any interest in their object of desire at all, but I did feel some intense schadenfreude at this story about people smashing their over-priced, over-powered sports cars. There is just something excessive about spending $1.5 million on a car. The other troubling part of the article, though, is the mention that more and more people are buying these extravagant luxuries — the number has tripled since 2003 — which is why we’re seeing more of them involved in accidents. It’s another example of how the rich-poor divide is widening in this country. So, yeah, rich pampered scumbags, wreck those cars.

And then you read stories like this one: expensive sports car goes out of control at a charity event, bodies are flying through the air, and 6 spectators end up dead and a score are in the hospital. The driver, of course, is mostly uninjured.

(via Hillary Rettig)