Catholic hospitals favor death

A pregnant woman in a Phoenix hospital was in a dire state: she was suffering from severe pulmonary hypertension, a condition made much worse by the pregnancy, and was at risk of heart failure. The hospital did what had to be done, with the approval of the family: the 11-week-old fetus was aborted, and the life of the mother saved. This was routine, and I think there was no moral ambiguity at all in this situation: either the mother’s life was saved and the fetus was destroyed, or both mother and fetus would die.

Except that this was in a Catholic hospital. One of the people on the ethics committee that reviewed the case before the abortion was a nun, who agreed that this was the right thing to do. Predictably, Thomas Olmsted, bishop, has deplored the procedure and declared that the nun is automatically excommunicated.

“I am gravely concerned by the fact that an abortion was performed several months ago in a Catholic hospital in this diocese,” Olmsted said in a statement sent to The Arizona Republic. “I am further concerned by the hospital’s statement that the termination of a human life was necessary to treat the mother’s underlying medical condition.

“An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother’s life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means.”

So, inhuman monster and non-doctor Olmsted thinks they should have just stood by and watched the woman go into cardiac arrest and die? This is insane and unethical.

If this is to be standard operating procedure for Catholic hospitals, I think it’s time for the government to step in and remove doctrinaire Catholics from all roles in hospital administration — they are an ongoing danger to the health of innocent patients. Do not go to Catholic hospitals: you never know when the local witch doctor will pop up by your bedside, go “ooga booga” (in Latin, of course!), and tell you that your treatment makes god angry so the staff has decided to let you suffer and die. It’ll be good for you…in imaginary Heaven.

Oh, but let the nun who realized that reality has priority over dogma stay on the job.

Clarity

A very nice statement by Dawkins: the virtue of the New Atheist is clarity, not shrillness, not certainty, not militancy, and the problem is our opponents all have to be obscurantists to make excuses for folly.

Aww, who needs those pesky principles of justice anyway?

Have you heard about the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act?

Meanwhile, the bill recently introduced by Joe Lieberman and John McCain — the so-called “Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act” — now has 9 co-sponsors, including the newly elected Scott Brown.  It’s probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act.  It literally empowers the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by simply decreeing them a Terrorist suspect — including American citizens arrested on U.S. soil.  The bill requires that all such individuals be placed in military custody, and explicitly says that they “may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,” which everyone expects to last decades, at least.  It’s basically a bill designed to formally authorize what the Bush administration did to American citizen Jose Padilla — arrest him on U.S. soil and imprison him for years in military custody with no charges. 

If this bill passes, may I suggest that, since it does undermine the rule of law and does great damage to the republic, that the first persons charged under its provisions be the despicable McCain and Lieberman? Won’t they be surprised!

Of course, since we do respect the rule of law, I suggest that everyone write to their congresspeople and tell them that you oppose this bill. Save McCain and Lieberman from the fate of Danton and Robespierre!

We have another college grad in the family

It was commencement day here at UMM, and it was a special one for us because Child #3 is now officially Bachelor of Arts #3. Here she tolerates her father and mother for a few more moments before she abandons us forevermore.

i-d972e6b885210617d7f2dbd101de4de8-skatje_grad.jpeg

And there she is in the midst of all the faculty and 2010 graduates of the computer science discipline at UMM.

i-254de281f8d5d61922bf765fed211d63-skatje_dis.jpeg

Yay, we’re all done! Kids gone, all off on their own trajectories into the future!

Lars Vilks attacked again

Like last time, I expect this news will set off another fusillade of dissenting opinions, but too bad. Extremists have vandalized Lars Vilks home, trying to set it on fire (original article in Swedish here).

i-2a3638440e52793fb97ed4e968df186b-dog_mohammed.jpeg

In an undoubtably futile attempt to forestall what I expect will be common objections to this story here, I know that there are political ramifications to the cartoons of Mohammed. I know that many of them were motivated by racism and xenophobia. In this instance, though, I don’t care. Vilks drew a sketch. His enemies set his house on fire.

I would encourage Muslims to respond in kind, with their own cartoons lampooning Vilks (it shouldn’t be hard; the article about the arson has a picture of Vilks that looks rather deranged already). But when you respond to an insult to your beliefs with violence and destruction, you have moved beyond the boundaries of civilization, straight into barbarism, and you will get no sympathy from me.

Bat sex is not protected by academic freedom

Whoa, dudes. Did you hear about the bats who have oral sex?

Oral sex is widely used in human foreplay, but rarely documented in other animals. Fellatio has been recorded in bonobos Pan paniscus, but even then functions largely as play behaviour among juvenile males. The short-nosed fruit bat Cynopterus sphinx exhibits resource defence polygyny and one sexually active male often roosts with groups of females in tents made from leaves. Female bats often lick their mate’s penis during dorsoventral copulation. The female lowers her head to lick the shaft or the base of the male’s penis but does not lick the glans penis which has already penetrated the vagina. Males never withdrew their penis when it was licked by the mating partner. A positive relationship exists between the length of time that the female licked the male’s penis during copulation and the duration of copulation. Furthermore, mating pairs spent significantly more time in copulation if the female licked her mate’s penis than if fellatio was absent. Males also show postcopulatory genital grooming after intromission. At present, we do not know why genital licking occurs, and we present four non-mutually exclusive hypotheses that may explain the function of fellatio in C. sphinx.

Read that carefully. If it’s a bit difficult to imagine, here’s a video:

Not only do female bats give male bats oral sex, but they do it while they’re having intercourse. The male enters the female from the rear, and the female bends over to lick the shaft of the penis while he’s thrusting in and out. I have never seen that in a porn film. Maybe there is such a thing out there — I can’t claim much knowledge of porn — but this means that animals not only carry out sexually activities condemned by the religious as unnatural, but they do it better than we do.

I have just done something very wicked. I have compared human sexual behavior with that of another animal, describing work published in a serious scientific journal. I could get fired for that! If you were to show this story to co-workers and discuss the implications, you also could get condemned and sanctioned. We’re in trouble now!

You may find that hard to believe, but it’s true in at least one case: Dylan Evans, at University College Cork, in an argument about the uniqueness of human behavior, brought this article up, and his opponent shut him down by crying harassment, triggering an investigation. He was exonerated, but the university president has decided he needs to be sanctioned anyway.

Here’s the story straight from the target.

Dear Colleagues,

The President of University College Cork, Professor Michael Murphy, has imposed harsh sanctions on me for doing nothing more than showing an article from a peer-reviewed scientific article to a colleague.

The article was about fellatio in fruit bats. You can read it online at http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0007595

It was covered extensively in the media, including the Guardian – see http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/10/oral-sex-bats-improbable-research

The colleague to whom I showed the article complained to HR that the article was upsetting. I had been engaged in an ongoing debate with the colleague in question about the relevance of evolutionary biology to human behaviour, and in particular about the dubiousness of many claims for human uniqueness. I showed it the colleague in the context of this discussion, and in the presence of a third person. I also showed the article to over a dozen other colleagues on the same day, none of whom objected.

HR launched a formal investigation. Despite the fact that external investigators concluded that I was not guilty of harassment, Professor Murphy has imposed a two-year period of intensive monitoring and counselling on me, and as a result my application for tenure is likely to be denied.

I am now campaigning to have the sanctions lifted. I would be grateful for your support on this matter. I have created an online petition at:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/freedebate/

I’d be grateful if you sign the petition and ask your colleagues to do so. If you also felt like writing directly to the President of UCC, his address is:

Professor Michael Murphy
The President’s Office
University College Cork
Cork
Republic of Ireland.

Your support would be greatly appreciated.

Dylan Evans

Oh, well, the article was upsetting. Can’t have that; science articles are supposed to be affirming and soothing, I guess.

If you find the president’s actions unwarranted and ridiculous, sign the petition and write to him. And please, do feel free to discuss bat porn all you want.

Several of the documents in case are now available online.

Congress is a dysfunctional mess

Once upon a time, there was a bill moving through congress that was a good bill. It increased funding for research, and for science and math education. It had bipartisan support and was sailing through.

There is a villain to this story, though. Some congresscreatures — Republicans, led by a fool from Texas — didn’t like the good little bill. It’s not clear why. Maybe because it was going to cost some money. Maybe just because they don’t like that science and education stuff.

So they hatched a plan, taking advantage of a little rule. They made a motion to recommit, stopping the bill in its tracks by adding a new addition that would require the whole thing to go back to committee. Congress could vote to kill the addition, which would let the bill proceed, or they could vote to for the recommit, throwing the good little bill back.

Now here’s the cunning part: the addition was a completely irrelevant demand, a new requirement that federal employees caught watching porn would not get paid. Congress could vote for better science and education funding and allow porn watching, or they could vote against science and education and against porn. Sneaky. Devious. Evil. Jebus, but I’ve come to despise Republicans.

So what happened? 121 Democrats promptly abandoned the bill and voted against it. Because they’re cowards without a single bone of principle in their flabby, craven bodies. They didn’t want to be seen voting for porn, so they let the Rethuglican ringmaster crack his whip and herd them right where he wanted them to go.

I think I despise them all.