Look at it as another reason to encourage embryonic stem cell research

I suppose this is a kind of threat—an archaic and quaint threat, but I’m sure some people take it seriously—but the Catholic church has made a strong statement against embryonic stem cell research.

The Vatican stepped up its fight against embryonic stem cell research on Wednesday, saying that scientists involved in such work would be excommunicated.

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican department dealing with family affairs, said in a magazine interview that “destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion… it’s the same thing”.

“Excommunication applies to all women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos,” the cardinal told Catholic publication Famiglia Cristiana.

To which I can only weakly reply, “no, no, don’t drive scientists away from your religion, Catholics!” Bwahahahaha!

Anyway, do read the article. I thought that, while short, it was very informative about the political debate on stem cells in Italy, and actually summarized the situation fairly accurately and pithily.

Embryonic stem-cell research techniques involve destroying human embryos to extract their stem cells. Stem cells are ‘blank’ cells which have the ability to grow into any tissue of the body. Scientists think they could eventually be used to treat a host of ailments including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and diabetes.

The stem cells of very early embryos are preferred because they can become any kind of cell whereas adult stem cells are less flexible. Despite popular support, embryonic stem cell research is opposed by pro-life groups and many conservative lawmakers because the human embryo must be destroyed before its stem cells can be removed.

I’ve gotten so used to the way American journalists so readily fall for the false claim of the anti-choicers that adult stem cells are better than embryonic stem cells in all ways that I was surprised to see that more accurate short description in there.

Humans are very strange animals

I mentioned that cringe-inducing hemipenectomy that some spiders do…well, Stan Schwarz had to one-up me and sent a link to an image of an example of full genital splitting (if you click that link, you’re probably safe; it’s a very tiny thumbnail image. Click on that, though, and all bets are off). I have no idea why any human being would want to do that—it looks like a very creepy meat butterfly in the guy’s crotch. If that description alone grosses you out, you definitely don’t want to click on that link. Move along, move along.

The burden of bearing a massive penis

i-ccbc028bf567ec6e49f3b515a2c4c149-old_pharyngula.gif

Maybe half of my audience here will be familiar with this problem. You’re a man, and you’re hauling this massive, ummm, package around in your pants everywhere you go. Other men fear you, while the women worship you…yet at the same time, your e-mail is stuffed to bursting with strange people making friendly offers to help you make it even bigger. It’s a dilemma; you think you would be even more godlike if only it were larger, but could there possibly be any downside to it? (There is a bit of folk wisdom that inflating it drains all the blood from the brain, but this is clearly false. Men who are stupid when erect are also just as stupid when limp.)

A couple of recent studies in fish and spiders have shown that penis size is a matter of competing tradeoffs, and that these compromises have evolutionary consequences. Guys, trash that e-mail for penis enlargement services—they can make you less nimble in pursuit of the ladies, or worse, can get you killed.

[Read more…]

Ho-hum. Getting flooded again.

This is becoming a regular occurrence: someone is trying to bomb my email address again, with 5-10,000 junk emails pouring in each hour. Look, fool, this is a waste of effort: the effect is that the activity monitor on my sidebar shows a lot of red and green bars, and my email software gets really sluggish as it sucks up all the garbage and automatically throws it away. If you’re trying to inconvenience me, this is a rather silly, pointless way of doing it.

If you’re trying to get through to me by email, the one real problem this causes is that I’m not going to be checking it for a while, until the dumb twit with the automatic mailer gets tired of it. If you need to tell me something, the contact information up there has some suggestions.

Look! It’s raining stupid people this morning!

What else can I think, when reading Echidne of the Snakes, I run across this astonishing gem of self-loathing femininity.

If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt and politics, what would you do? Hoo-boy, this is where I get in trouble, and that starts with “T” and that rhymes with “P” and that stands for “pool.” I’d like to jump in a pool right now. Some may tell me to jump in a river for this one: I would remove women’s suffrage, and I might even consider making voting rights tied to property ownership.

Well, actually, she doesn’t get in trouble: read the comments and everyone is quite supportive, and think that disenfranchising the majority of Americans is simply a wonderful idea. It would clear the roles of all those worthless welfare queens who always vote for Democrats, dontcha know. Women aren’t supposed to vote or run for office or do anything other than serve their families.

And they’re very, very happy about it all.

As you might guess, when you’ve got a popular idea this stupid, that makes people content to lobotomize themselves and throw away the basic privileges of a democratic society, there’s one thing behind it all: religion. The site cites the The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy, a lovely short document that will fit in well in the Republic of Gilead. And of course, coupled with this, we find as usual crazy ideas about the history of the world.

You know, this kind of thing just reinforces my belief that religion is a deep-seated evil in the world. And before all you moderate, liberal sensible Christians start yelling at me for tarring you with a broad brush, tell me: how many of you criticize the insane wings of your belief systems? Have you gotten off your butts to police this broad institution you call sacred, that you believe has a holy duty?

Every time they’re mentioned, an editor at Time sheds a tear

Time’s former “Blog of the Year,” the execrable PowerLine blog with which I share a state, has done it again: said something so stupid and so palpably false that I’m feeling a bit embarrassed about ragging on Oklahoma in my previous post—I should feel ashamed by association at being a Minnesotan. Check out Deltoid: down is up in the world of the Hindrocket.

It’s a Bible Belt story, but don’t worry—it has a happy ending

Oh, geez, Oklahoma.

There was a weird court case there recently. Well, maybe not so weird, unfortunately—I could see it happening here. To make it short, an atheist girl in high school was kicked off a sports team because she wouldn’t join in team prayers; abuse ensued; school officials lied; the principal assaulted the father; police and principal perjured themselves to press charges against him; threats were made to try and drive the family out of the state. It’s actually a little bit hard to believe such stuff could go on in 21st century America, but it went to trial, and this next little anecdote alone is enough to convince me that the Smalkowski family was discriminated against for their lack of faith.

Edwin introduced himself to the jury as National Legal Director for American Atheists and asked the prospective jury in the Oklahoma panhandle if they could accept the testimony of an Atheist over that of a professed Christian. When the jury looked at him blankly, the judge asked the prospects if they understood the question. One woman spoke for many in the group by asking “What is an Atheist?” Edwin explained that an Atheist was a person who did not believe in a god or gods or in a supernatural world, and that the defendant and his entire family were such persons. Many of the prospects said they could not believe such a person over a Christian and were struck for cause. To their credit, many members of the jury panel, including two ministers’ wives, told the judge they could not be fair to an Atheist in such a situation and were excused.

Don’t worry, foreigners who read this, in the United States we ship all of our really stupid people to Oklahoma, so this story isn’t at all representative of what you’d discover in Iowa or Alabama or Pennsylvania.

Nah, I lied. Oklahoma is a perfectly normal state, and even in Minnesota we’d probably have to struggle to scrape up 12 people who both knew what an atheist was, and didn’t think they strangle kittens for fun. Sigh.

Anyway, the good news is that they did manage to find 12 intelligent people, and got a fast and unanimous verdict of not guilty. Yay, Oklahoma!

One cute postscript:

The night of the verdict, tornados of unusual violence descended on the panhandle of Oklahoma. The home of the Principal who had brought the false charges against Chuck Smalkowski was severely damaged.

This fact has no relationship whatsoever to the verdict.

Man, you mess with the religious and all you have to face are imaginary, invisible, insubstantial ghosts; screw with the godless and you have to deal with the immense power of the real physical universe. (To be fair, though, you still have to deal with the same forces even if you don’t screw with us.)