Who else hates the Transportation Security Administration?

You can’t imagine how much I detest TSA. OK, maybe you can; I think my contempt is widely shared. It’s the arbitrary rules, the immediate awkward responses to last week’s threat, the implicit understanding that the overbearing security theater is going to continue forever without end, with ever-escalating nonsense, and the fact that you do not dare voice that outrage to the TSA, or they can and will make your travel unpleasant or even impossible. They are anti-free speech and anti-reason.

You know one little thing that just annoys the heck out of me? When I travel abroad, other countries don’t make me take my shoes off to go through security. Are they seriously at greater risk than we are? Or is this just random rules-tossing that we are obligated to suffer through?

One guy who has been fighting back is the security expert, Bruce Schneier. Right now, this week, he’s in a debate on The Economist with Kip Hawley, former head of the TSA, defending the claim that “changes to airport security since 9/11 have done more harm than good“. Schneier is cleaning Hawley’s clock. It’s one of the more entertaining and informative online debates that I’ve ever read.

Of course, it really helps that Hawley’s opening statement is this exercise in absurdity:

More than 6 billion consecutive safe arrivals of airline passengers since the 9/11 attacks mean that whatever the annoying and seemingly obtuse airport-security measures may have been, they have been ultimately successful.

You have got to be kidding me. Seriously? That’s your opening salvo? You know, I’ve got this lucky coin in my pocket that scares away tigers. Here’s the proof: I haven’t been eaten by tigers yet.

Schneier, on the other hand, punches hard. I like that in a guy.

Kip Hawley doesn’t argue with the specifics of my criticisms, but instead provides anecdotes and asks us to trust that airport security—and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in particular—knows what it’s doing.

He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to trust that there’s a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic lightsaber that’s really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).

If you’d like to learn more about Schneier, here’s an entertaining account of how he taught a journalist to circumvent airport security. There’s one thing you need to know: TSA is a collection of ineffectual buffoons who are keeping themselves lucratively employed by inventing ever more elaborate, clownish schemes that don’t touch the real security issues.

1.5 million children stolen

If you kidnap one child, there’s an APB and a massive police response and if you’re caught, you’ll be spending a good long while in jail. If you kidnap a million children over decades, you’re a source of morality and goodness. So think big!


Just needs a clerical collar…

In some cases, mothers in Australia were drugged and forced to sign papers relinquishing custody. In others, women were told their children had died. Single mothers also did not have access to the financial support given to widows or abandoned wives, and many were told by doctors, nurses, and social workers that they were unfit to raise a child. Siewert says, “We heard practices that were either illegal or unethical and downright cruel.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me to hear the same thing happened elsewhere,” continues Siewert, “…the U.K., the U.S., Canada and Ireland. So you could, I think, expect that those countries also had these sorts of practices.”

I suspect you can guess who’s behind such contemptible acts: it’s the Catholic Church, of course, arbiter of morality, who have long held that a woman has no autonomy at all and must be supported by a good strong manly man…so single mothers are obviously unfit to care for a child.

Ironically, Bill Donohue has issued a press release whining about how the Reason Rally singled out Catholicism for venom (it didn’t). He takes vindication in our contempt for his religion.

Catholics take note: The fact that the atheists always attack us more than any other religious group is a backhanded compliment. They know who the real enemy of hate is, and who they must defeat. They don’t have a prayer.

Sorry, Bill. The record is clear. Your church is not an enemy of hate at all; it’s a sinkhole of depravity and oppression. The church is attacked because it’s a monstrous institution. And if it is attacked more than other religions, it’s only because it commits more crimes than others.

Perhaps they should also remove the word “education”

Because someone doesn’t understand the word. The New York City Department of Education wants to ban the use of certain words on standardized tests — because they might make students feel uncomfortable or unpleasant. Jebus. If an educator isn’t making a student uncomfortable, isn’t pushing his or her students to be stressed by new concepts and difficult processes, they aren’t doing their job.

What words, you might ask, are they sheltering impressionable youth from?

Abuse (physical, sexual, emotional, or psychological)
Alcohol (beer and liquor), tobacco, or drugs
Birthday celebrations (and birthdays)
Bodily functions
Cancer (and other diseases)
Catastrophes/disasters (tsunamis and hurricanes)
Celebrities
Children dealing with serious issues
Cigarettes (and other smoking paraphernalia)
Computers in the home (acceptable in a school or library setting)
Crime
Death and disease
Divorce
Evolution
Expensive gifts, vacations, and prizes
Gambling involving money
Halloween
Homelessness
Homes with swimming pools
Hunting
Junk food
In-depth discussions of sports that require prior knowledge
Loss of employment
Nuclear weapons
Occult topics (i.e. fortune-telling)
Parapsychology
Politics
Pornography
Poverty
Rap Music
Religion
Religious holidays and festivals (including but not limited to Christmas, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan)
Rock-and-Roll music
Running away
Sex
Slavery
Terrorism
Television and video games (excessive use)
Traumatic material (including material that may be particularly upsetting such as animal shelters)
Vermin (rats and roaches)
Violence
War and bloodshed
Weapons (guns, knives, etc.)
Witchcraft, sorcery, etc.

If you really want to make high schoolers uncomfortable, how about “algebra” and “molecules” and…and…homework?

Removing any mention of the word “evolution” from the curriculum rather effectively decapitates the teaching of biology; “celebrities”, not so much, but it’s bizarre that they put that word on a par with “slavery”. How do they talk about American history without mentioning slavery?

JohntheOther is even worse than I thought

That weirdo, JohntheOther, has been busy making more of his boring talking head videos lately — I haven’t watched them, even the one addressed to me, because I just find them so godawful tedious — but apparently they’re nothing but strings of notpologies, in which he apologizes for getting the details wrong and calling Rebecca Watson a sociopath, but he still thinks Rebecca Watson is a sociopath. Then I learned on Manboobz that JohntheOther was notorious for another video he made. This one is riveting.

JohntheOther, the guy who flew into righteous indignation because Watson pretended to send her assistant on a scavenger hunt, who wondered what happens when “when people lack an ethical compass”, who put up a false front of pious concern for the atheist community and its dysfunctional sociopathy, is the same JohntheOther who declared that he would never help a rape victim. He would just walk on by.

Trigger warning: he describes in detail a time when he was in his 20s and he interrupted a rape and beat up the attacker thoroughly. Good for him, although he seems mostly upset that the victim didn’t want to be touched by him afterwards and was afraid, and that he was at risk of being accused of being the rapist (he wasn’t accused), and that he’d never do that again and would let the rape proceed if he were in that situation again.

What’s also weird is that he describes a park that was notorious for its danger to women, and that he witnessed a rape in progress, yet he’s still fixated on this notion that women falsely accuse men of rape.

Hear that, feminists? John Hembling wouldn’t lift a finger to help a rape victim anymore, and it’s all your fault. Because you’re all sociopaths.

Jack Chick & climate change

I mentioned Jack Chick in that last article, so I actually looked in on his site. He’s got a new tract! It’s on Global Warming! He doesn’t believe in it. Why? Because it snows sometime, and climate scientists include women and they all believe in pagan gods. Really! Would I lie to you?

You don’t have to worry about climate change, because Jesus is going to set you on fire and slaughter you with plagues. So there’s no problem.

How…reassuring.

Foolish Fulwiler fantasizes

Jennifer Fulwiler is a treasure. She’s a former atheist who doesn’t have a clue about atheism, a naive Catholic convert, and someone who pities us atheists because “we’re trapped in a prison of reason“. She never makes sense, so she never disappoints.

And now she’s done it again. Fulwiler is babbling about the Global Atheist Conference. She’s not making sense again.

She lists a number of ‘first impressions’.

Hemant Mehta ought to worry. She likes him a lot, and is mystified that he’s not going to be at the GAC.

Where’s Hemant Mehta? He must have been busy that weekend. The blogger/author is a major up-and-coming voice in the modern atheist movement. Given the perspective he’s gained from the discussion on his blog, I would think that he would add a lot of value to a conference like this.

Yes, I agree. But you know, there are a lot atheists out there, and we can’t all go to every conference. It’s just weird to pick out one random atheist among many and wonder why they aren’t at one particular conference among many. So? Would you like me to list a few dozen other prominent atheist speakers who weren’t invited or couldn’t make it?

Just look at these headshots! With that number of speakers you’d expect at least a couple unflattering, obviously-take-with-an-iPhone shots, but they’re all gorgeous. Lookin’ good, atheists.

That’s just weird. It’s like she’s baffled that we look human.

Since I’m sure he doesn’t want to say it himself, I’ll say it for him: PZ Myers should have gotten top billing in the ads, and it’s crazy that he wasn’t mentioned at all in the audio spots. When he saw that, he had to be all like, “Do millions of blog pageviews per month count for nothing?!”

Not for nothing, but why would anyone in their right mind think that’s the most important characteristic to promote? The audience either reads my blog and knows who I am and don’t need to advertise me, or they don’t read it and I’m effectively a nobody to them. I have a realistic perspective here; my number one job is as a teacher at UMM, and that’s generally not a huge selling point, sad to say. And Dawkins/Dennett/Harris are a much bigger draw, and to an Australian audience, the local atheist celebrities are going to be much more interesting.

And then Fulwiler gets “clever”, I think…at least clever for someone gullible enough to fall for Catholic bullshit, which isn’t very. Look at this clumsy setup:

I like the part about basing laws on rational thought and evidence. It echoes a sentiment that is a driving force in the atheist community right now, namely the idea that society must develop a set of moral values that is not rooted in any kind of supernatural belief system. I think it could end up being a really good thing that the leaders of modern atheism are coming together to discuss this, because this is an idea that needs a lot more exploration.

She doesn’t believe a word of this. I think it’s quite right that not only do we need to develop a fully secular morality, but that it’s the only kind of morality there is, because her supernatural tyrant doesn’t exist. Catholic morality is not built on the supernatural, but on lies and fear, tools of priests for all time, and a secular morality is built on truth, as near as we can get to it.

How do I know Fulwiler doesn’t believe this? Because she next brings out a great big strawman on strings and dances it around on the stage of the convention.

I imagine that one day someone will get on the stage at one of these conferences, and propose a new moral code in which the the strong exterminate the weak and take all their possessions for themselves, thus ushering in a glorious age where only the most superior genes remain in the gene pool. Everyone in the crowd will gasp and fidget uncomfortably…and then realize that they cannot argue against it without stepping outside of their own atheist-materialist worldview. They’ll find themselves tempted to appeal to the transcendent to make their case, wanting to have blind faith in the fact that love should be prized above all else, believing that self-sacrifice is always better than selfishness, regardless of what the latest scientific studies say.

Riiiight. You all know what would happen if a speaker started promoting a totalitarian tyranny and demanding that we start persecuting the “weak” — they would be ripped apart rhetorically. These are the kinds of arguments that are advanced for a theocratic monarchy, you know, and we’re entirely familiar with them. At the GAC, Sam Harris would rise up and argue for an egalitarian morality without bringing in anything transcendent. Richard Dawkins would dismantle that ridiculous argument for social Darwinism with ease, and it wouldn’t be by claiming that self-sacrifice always trumps altruism.

Morality is an attribute that is only relevant in interactions between individuals. A group of interacting individuals is a community. Morality is defined within that community; the desires of a hypothetical invisible entity have no relevance to the rules that regulate that community…except when parasitic individuals use the carrot and stick of supernatural rewards and punishments to mislead the members of that group.

Fulwiler has written a bizarre fantasy that is exceeded in crudity by Chick tracts like Big Daddy. Sure, imagine some absurd caricature of an atheist getting trounced by some clever religious person — but it simply doesn’t have any relationship to reality.

Speaking of fantasy, here’s how she imagines an atheist convention ending…with all the atheists flocking to the church afterwards.

I hope that these events really will provide a forum for questioning assumptions and asking tough questions as much as they claim they will. Because when they do, the nearby churches will be flooded with post-convention crowds.

I don’t think so. Dream on, deluded lady.

Oh, if you all want a real treat, read the comments on that article. I think Fulwiler might just be the intellectual among the Catholic community that reads her drivel.

Whoa! Catholic women are much prettier than atheist women. I feel bad for all the atheist men. =(

I feel unclean now.

Manology 101

There I was, minding my own business, when out of the blue some random guy going by the name “principles101” tweets at me…

@pzmyers time for some real biology lessons: goo.gl/obiC

Oh hellz yeah, I think, I love me some biology lessons. So I follow the link, and it’s a free textbook, it says. Only it’s at some site called Manhood Academy, with cheesy clashy glarey page design, and … you can guess where this is going. Sure, it’s a free “book” that you can download, but there isn’t a speck of biology in it. It cockily calls itself “The Principles of Social Competence“, but it isn’t even that — it’s a ridiculous fantasy novel, 292 pages long, in which the authors stroke themselves by inventing elaborate dialogs and scenarios in which the manly men they are instructing all emerge victorious, with gorgeous cowed women clinging tremblingly to their burly powerful arms.

Mostly this is accomplished by pretending that women are like puppy dogs, and it is the man’s job to train her. For instance, if you encounter a girl who doesn’t know how to take a compliment, there’s a little script for what you should say:

“No that’s the wrong answer. You don’t just say, ‘Hah, right.’ That’s a total turn off. You need to learn how to show some appreciation. When I tell you that I like the way you smile, that it turns me on, you should say, ‘Oh my god! That’s soooooo sweet of you!!!! Thank you!!!!.’ See, just like that. That’s the right way to do it.”

You know, if I tried that on a real woman, rather than the Barbie doll the author is posing in his mind, she would either be rightfully creeped out and run away, or she’d focus her withering scorn on my assumption that her purpose in life is to “turn me on”.

Apparently, though, I just have to be persistent.

By consistently punishing a woman’s dysfunctional behavior, she will eventually submit to your will. This means she now fears your authority and values your expectations.

Once a woman submits to your authority, you need to reward her with your praise and affection to maintain her submission.

Give her a biscuit, too, and if she forgets her training, slap her on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.

There’s the usual caricature of feminism — “At its heart, feminism represents women’s desire to control men” — lots of long-winded pop pseudopsychology, all larded up with so much random clip art that it will make your eyes ache. Oh, and please do read the section beginning at page 238: “How to handle bitch behavior”. Apparently, the best way to handle a woman is to just call her a “bitch” over and over again until she cries and succumbs to your irresistible manhood. Then you can call her a “cunt” to make her beg for your lovin’.

It’s an eye-opener. There are actually men in existence who are that stupid that they believe that BS. Look and laugh: if you’ve ever been curious about what exactly is so unbelievably inane about MRAs and PUAs, it’s a useful example.

Kirk Cameron is an idiot about so many things

Kirk Cameron recently casually and confidently said this about homosexuality:

I think that it’s unnatural. I think that it’s detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.

He never said why he knew this, or how the behavior of people in the privacy of their bedrooms undermines the whole of civilization, but I assume it was simply because he’s been brainwashed by that old book written by patriarchal crankypants, the Bible. He now confirms my assumption.

I was surprised, frankly, that people were surprised by the things that I’ve said," he explained. "I have been consistent for 15 years as a Christian. I’m a Bible-believing Christian. What I would have thought was more newsworthy is if I had said something that contradicted the word of God, if I had contradicted my faith.

Codeword alert! Be wary of that phrase, “Bible-believing”. It doesn’t mean what you think it does. “Bible-believing” is actually a very narrow, very specific phrase used by modern evangelicals that means they fervently accept a remarkably literalist, radically right-wing, extremely judgmental and vicious version of Christianity. It means he really believes he has been privileged with the words of his god, and is justified in every hateful claim he makes.

He goes on to say that he hates no one, but he earnestly believes that almost everyone is going to hell, that we atheists are very much included in the ranks of the damned, and that he’s going to be chortling over our eternal torments someday, while he’s lolling about in heaven. So sure, he doesn’t hate you: he just coldly takes joy in his certainty that you will suffer for eternity, and that you deserve it.

He doesn’t hate, sure. He’s just creepily nasty.

So that’s the tax on stupid

I was just tuning in to watch The Walking Dead … gotta see the zombies … and they keep annoying me with these commercials peddling “gold” coins: a $50 value, yours for only $9.95, and they are genuine 24K gold (plated), containing a whole 14 milligrams of gold. I checked gold prices, did a quick estimation, and figured out nearly instantly that that amounts to … about 75 cents worth.

Wow. That’s quite a racket. Shouldn’t there be something illegal about taking advantage of stupid people that excessively?

“Living chromosomes function just like solitonic/holographic computers using the endogenous DNA laser radiation.”

I think that’s my new favorite pseudo-scientific phrase. It’s part of a whole mind-numbing compendium of utter nonsense and woo — it claims that junk DNA plays a role in data storage and communication, that it contains “basic rules of grammar”, and that it responds to your words.

This means that they managed for example to modulate certain frequency patterns onto a laser ray and with it influenced the DNA frequency and thus the genetic information itself. Since the basic structure of DNA-alkaline pairs and of language (as explained earlier) are of the same structure, no DNA decoding is necessary.

One can simply use words and sentences of the human language! This, too, was experimentally proven! Living DNA substance (in living tissue, not in vitro) will always react to language-modulated laser rays and even to radio waves, if the proper frequencies are being used.

This finally and scientifically explains why affirmations, autogenous training, hypnosis and the like can have such strong effects on humans and their bodies. It is entirely normal and natural for our DNA to react to language.

Just think of all the mutant babies spawned by listening to Rush Limbaugh. But be prepared: we might be sucking in alien propaganda.

But the higher developed an individual’s consciousness is, the less need is there for any type of device! One can achieve these results by oneself, and science will finally stop to laugh at such ideas and will confirm and explain the results. And it doesn’t end there.?The Russian scientists also found out that our DNA can cause disturbing patterns in the vacuum, thus producing magnetized wormholes! Wormholes are the microscopic equivalents of the so-called Einstein-Rosen bridges in the vicinity of black holes (left by burned-out stars).? These are tunnel connections between entirely different areas in the universe through which information can be transmitted outside of space and time. The DNA attracts these bits of information and passes them on to our consciousness.

Stop to laugh, everyone! It’s expected!

Now here comes the “science”:

In nature, hyper communication has been successfully applied for millions of years. The organized flow of life in insect states proves this dramatically. Modern man knows it only on a much more subtle level as “intuition.” But we, too, can regain full use of it. An example from Nature: When a queen ant is spatially separated from her colony, building still continues fervently and according to plan. If the queen is killed, however, all work in the colony stops. No ant knows what to do. Apparently the queen sends the “building plans” also from far away via the group consciousness of her subjects. She can be as far away as she wants, as long as she is alive. In man hyper communication is most often encountered when one suddenly gains access to information that is outside one’s knowledge base. Such hyper communication is then experienced as inspiration or intuition. The Italian composer Giuseppe Tartini for instance dreamt one night that a devil sat at his bedside playing the violin. The next morning Tartini was able to note down the piece exactly from memory, he called it the Devil’s Trill Sonata.

I’m going to stop there. The rest is Indigo Children, collective consciousness, UFOs, anti-gravity, and how DNA is superconducting and transforms gravity into electricity. There’s only so much I can take.