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Building bridges to a non-church … ?

Posted in Gay rights, History, News, Religion on October 19, 2010| 4 Comments »

religion
re-li-gion [riˈlijən]
noun: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods

From a Roman Catholic priest dripping water on my tiny brow as an infant, to the forced placing of tabs of LDS on my pre-teen tongue, to Jehova’s Witnesses disturbing afternoon delight sessions and beyond, attempts to shove religion down my throat have come often in my life. Thanks to a rather thick skin, an agile mind and a father who found it all more than a bit ridiculous, I managed to get by without swallowing the Kool-Aid, no matter what the flavor.

I don’t simply consider myself non-religious, but anti, and as any student of just about any bit of history can account, there’s good reason to take aim at the faithful when accepting blame for horrors is the target. (Check out the data here for a look at the part religion had played in genocides in just the last 60 years.)

Yesterday’s post addressed issues of religion-inspired hatred and its present-day deadly impact on people who happen to love folks with similar equipment and provided some insights from really smart guy Frans de Waal that, alongside discussions happening in my world these days, have me thinking about what might be the reverse of “religion”.

Of course, the religious would suggest words like ‘evil’, or ‘infidel’, or ‘unsaved’, or ‘headed for hell on a rail’, or simply ‘damned’, while others might put forth ‘atheist’ or ‘secularist’ to fill in the posed blank.

Dr. de Waal proposes that the possibility of a blank at all is not likely:

Any framework we develop to advocate a certain moral outlook is bound to produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion.

As often happens when I’m seeking info, it presents, as it does today in this article in the Huff Post that echos the good doctor’s thoughts without meaning to.

The author, Chris Stedman is a self-proclaimed “atheist promoting religious tolerance and interfaith work” … a designation I find confusing.

His take seems to be that atheists are somehow bound to spend time and energy trying to talk people down from their religious … what? … perch? … pedestal? … pulpit? … whatever … and convert them to atheism.

Sure, there is Richard Dawkins, vociferous and strident and poster child for what Stedman … and others … refer to as “Evangelical Atheism”, but compare the number of Dawkins in the world with the legions of bishops, elders, imams, priests, missionaries and others proselytizing the length and breadth of Planet Earth and you can’t help but come back with the idea that touting un-touting is a rather lonely endeavor.

Stedman says otherwise, but without attribution, so I’m not sure where this comes from:

When a large and vocal number of atheists say that their number one goal is convincing people to abandon their faith, it comes as no surprise that our community is construed as extreme and aggressive.

Personally, I’m a big fan of going toe-to-toe with those carrying the cross of luring people to accept Jesus Christ as their personal trainer … or whatever … as both the arrogance and the dangers involved in doing that just piss me off. This has much to do with recent events that have me drawing a line in the sand and trying on the idea of fighting intolerance with intolerance, being a bit frustrated with all the other cheek turning us non-believers are famous for. Being “construed as extreme and aggressive” actually sounds okay to me. After all, if you wanna end war and stuff, ya gotta sing loud.

Which brings me back to the Stedman piece:

“I may lose all of my credibility for saying this,” I said with a chuckle, “but I have zero interest in talking people out of their religious beliefs. The only religious beliefs I take issue with are ones that infringe on individual freedoms — for example, when someone’s religious belief informs their conviction that I, as a queer person, should not be free to marry whoever I choose. But their belief in God, when it does not contribute to actions that inhibit my liberty, is of no concern to me.”

EXACTLY.

Who gives a flying fuck what someone else holds dear as a belief? I couldn’t care less if folks think dancing naked around a pile of mangos will assure them of fruit in the afterlife … if wishing upon a star will grow them wings … if imagining a bit of stale bread to be some dead guy’s skin … go for it! Think of something wacky and live your life according to your wackiness. Just don’t screw around with anyone else’s whack unless you’re invited … and it’s a party … and your own doesn’t depend on getting theirs to match yours. Oh … and you’re not making a few bucks out of the deal.

Where Stedman loses me, however, is where he approaches that line Dr. de Waal so aptly defined … where what results comes out looking “like any old religion” … in other words, here:

It’s just a hypothesis, but I wonder if fewer nonreligious people would actively try to dismantle religious communities if we had a more coherent community of our own. Perhaps if we spend less energy negatively “evangelizing,” we’ll find ourselves well positioned to reach out in ways that build bridges instead of tearing them down.

He suggests reaching out to religious liberals and moderates in efforts to work together, an idea that feels like missing the point.

For starters, where’s the common ground between people who believe that the world began 6,000 years ago in the Garden of Eden and those who know that’s just stupid? Okay … maybe those people aren’t religious liberals. Maybe moderates understand the science behind geology and astronomy and evolution and have somehow modified their take on just how literally the bible should be interpreted, and if that’s the case, what is there to talk about?

If one side of the table sees homosexuality as evil incarnate and the other side is gay, where’s the starting point for discussion? If the religious group has no problem with what and who the gay group does in the privacy of their own pants, what’s the issue?

Religious liberals and moderates who keep their thoughts to themselves, support the rights of others, care for their kids and don’t kick the dog are pretty much like the average, everyday secularist, so the only reason I can see for trying to get some sort of coalition going might be called politics. I’m okay with that, but it also misses the point.

“Active dismantling” is appropriate when the fact is that religious fuckwads go out of their way to ram their warped agenda down and around the necks of any- and everyone. Their methods range from the devious — It’s our duty to save you from damnation — to the militant — God hates fags! — and pervasive. They’re also panicked by the idea that people may begin thinking for themselves, so bloody aggressive in their manipulation of hearts and minds.

Here’s a disgusting example of that manipulation … a video sent by a church to junior high kids to get them to save the souls of their classmates:

Shocked? Revolted? Horrified by the minds that would put that together for CHILDREN? Deeply concerned about the kids who had that dumped upon them? I certainly hope so …

When was the last time you had a secular humanist or atheist even so much as knock on your door to tell you you’re doomed, doomed, I say! (Or even: You’re an idiot.) … please read this pamphlet? That happens like almost never … and when it does, it’s only to make a point … like the guys in this video.

There’s also the issue of smarts. Anyone who actually believes the bullshit fed to them by any religion insisting that they own the rights to all right, that every other idea that can occur to anyone is not only wrong, but inherently evil, has to be either dumb as a shovel or capable of a disconnect to rival Sybil and therefore not a good candidate for any position that could make any difference to anyone under any circumstance.

Building bridges can be a nobel undertaking, but not always possible. When the divide is so wide the other side can’t even be imagined, much less seen, it’s often better to mind the gap. Of course, if the other side starts lobbing grenades, throw ’em back!

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The world is round and Eden is an island in Seychelles

Posted in Gay rights, History, Nature, News, Religion, science, tagged , , , on October 18, 2010| 5 Comments »

Frans de Waal / Wiki images

Yeah, yeah … it’s bad form to discuss politics and religion in polite company. Shoot me now, but I’ve never been able to take either of those issues off the table no matter how well behaved fellow talkers may be, even though I’m well aware of how pointless debate on the topics always is.

Up until recently, my world has been mainly peopled by those whose biggest religious difference amounted to disagreements over how god-like they were … or weren’t, that being closer to my view. Lately, though, the potential scope of the divide created a rift valley that makes the one in Africa seem no bigger than the gap between my two front teeth … a cute little trademark (I’ve been told) that only becomes inconvenient when I bite into hot pizza.

Of course the debate rages and rears its ugly head one hell of a lot lately. Much of the blame for the spate of suicides amongst gay teens lately can be laid directly at the genuflected knees of the christian self-rightous, and the Tea Party race to pull the US back to 19th century thinking divides the country in ways that are hard to follow, much less absorb.

No idea why it’s taking three paragraphs to get to the point of this post, but this article from the NY Times is what I’m all about.

Written by one of my personal heroes, Dr. Frans de Waal, and titled “Morals Without God?”, it says it all brilliantly, making and substantiating points I consider unassailable on evolution and altruism, on religion and logical reasons for, and on atheism in its various manifestations.

Take for example Dr. de Waal’s observations on the deeper meanings of “inequity aversion” in chimps … a process whereby chimpanzees don’t like it one bit when things aren’t fair:

According to most philosophers, we reason ourselves towards a moral position. Even if we do not invoke God, it is still a top-down process of us formulating the principles and then imposing those on human conduct. But would it be realistic to ask people to be considerate of others if we had not already a natural inclination to be so? Would it make sense to appeal to fairness and justice in the absence of powerful reactions to their absence? Imagine the cognitive burden if every decision we took needed to be vetted against handed-down principles. Instead, I am a firm believer in the Humean position that reason is the slave of the passions. We started out with moral sentiments and intuitions, which is also where we find the greatest continuity with other primates. Rather than having developed morality from scratch, we received a huge helping hand from our background as social animals.

I find it interesting that hardcore atheist Richard Dawkins shares at least part of the view held by christians that postulates humans are born flawed, although his idea of gaining redemption has more to do with socialization than baptism and salvation.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

Frans de Waal disagrees and gives evolutionary biological arguments in favor of our species having more good going for us that we realize.

Even though altruistic behavior evolved for the advantages it confers, this does not make it selfishly motivated. Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals. For example, animals engage in sex without knowing its reproductive consequences, and even humans had to develop the morning-after pill. This is because sexual motivation is unconcerned with the reason why sex exists. The same is true for the altruistic impulse, which is unconcerned with evolutionary consequences. It is this disconnect between evolution and motivation that befuddled the Veneer Theorists, and made them reduce everything to selfishness. The most quoted line of their bleak literature says it all: “Scratch an ‘altruist,’ and watch a ‘hypocrite’ bleed.”

Then later in the article:

Mammals may derive pleasure from helping others in the same way that humans feel good doing good. Nature often equips life’s essentials — sex, eating, nursing — with built-in gratification. One study found that pleasure centers in the human brain light up when we give to charity. This is of course no reason to call such behavior “selfish” as it would make the word totally meaningless. A selfish individual has no trouble walking away from another in need. Someone is drowning: let him drown. Someone cries: let her cry. These are truly selfish reactions, which are quite different from empathic ones. Yes, we experience a “warm glow,” and perhaps some other animals do as well, but since this glow reaches us via the other, and only via the other, the helping is genuinely other-oriented.

The idea that god separates us from the animals and makes humanity human, meaning that without a god people would revert to savagery … or never would have left it … is addressed very well, right after this quote from Al Sharpton that echos a wide belief in religious circles: “If there is no order to the universe, and therefore some being, some force that ordered it, then who determines what is right or wrong? There is nothing immoral if there’s nothing in charge.”

Similarly, I have heard people echo Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, exclaiming that “If there is no God, I am free to rape my neighbor!”

Perhaps it is just me, but I am wary of anyone whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. Why not assume that our humanity, including the self-control needed for livable societies, is built into us? Does anyone truly believe that our ancestors lacked social norms before they had religion? Did they never assist others in need, or complain about an unfair deal? Humans must have worried about the functioning of their communities well before the current religions arose, which is only a few thousand years ago. Not that religion is irrelevant — I will get to this — but it is an add-on rather than the wellspring of morality.

Nope … it’s not just you Doc!

Even Martin Luther King Jr. … a man of the cloth and professionally religious … appeared to understand that we’re equipped the at least some of the right stuff when he said, “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness,” although he may well have gone on to insist that can only be done under certain well-dictated formulas.

I get it that ignoring the science is a huge part of the system that keeps the faithful from questioning, as Dr. de Waal puts it: Deep down, creationists realize they will never win factual arguments with science. This is why they have construed their own science-like universe, known as Intelligent Design, and eagerly jump on every tidbit of information that seems to go their way.

What I don’t get is how that continues to happen in a modern world with high literacy rates. Sure, we once filled in the gaps of our knowledge with fantastical fairy tales … that was a function of language … but eventually learned that the world is round, that thunder isn’t anyone yelling at us, that smoking really isn’t good for a body and where babies come from.

We’re nowhere near the end of our learning, but it is interesting how some choose to cherry-pick what science they buy and what gets rejected out-of-hand. Our brains are bigger than those of other primates, (but don’t have any extra parts, so it’s plain enough our relation), yet they seem to have a better handle on what it takes to form and maintain cohesive societies with no need of some dude sitting in judgement to keep them from annihilating each other and the world around them. We started at the same place, so where did we screw it up?

It’s a human thing, as Dr. de Waal points out: Humans are so sensitive to public opinion that we only need to see a picture of two eyes glued to the wall to respond with good behavior, which explains the image in some religions of an all-seeing eye to symbolize an omniscient God.

We strive for a logically coherent system, and have debates about how the death penalty fits arguments for the sanctity of life, or whether an unchosen sexual orientation can be wrong. These debates are uniquely human. We have no evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not affect themselves. The great pioneer of morality research, the Finn Edward Westermarck, explained what makes the moral emotions special: “Moral emotions are disconnected from one’s immediate situation: they deal with good and bad at a more abstract, disinterested level.” This is what sets human morality apart: a move towards universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring and punishment.

So, that’s what it’s all about: justification, monitoring and punishment. That says a mouthful, don’t it? It takes a human to us/them, and doesn’t that just work out so well. Not. Why anyone would choose to deny common roots with non-human primates is as puzzling to me as why some insist that homosexuality is a choice without wondering why anyone would jump into that very difficult life. Apparently humans on the whole need to relinquish person responsibility, need to judge and be judged and base actions on results.

I leave the summation to Dr. de Waal:

I take these hints of community concern as yet another sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we do not need God to explain how we got where we are today. On the other hand, what would happen if we were able to excise religion from society? I doubt that science and the naturalistic worldview could fill the void and become an inspiration for the good. Any framework we develop to advocate a certain moral outlook is bound to produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion.

I can just hope we eventually evolve to be a bit smarter ….

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Chilean miners and that thing about holes …

Posted in Men, News, Sex, tagged , on October 15, 2010| 13 Comments »

Sigh …

I have been trying so hard to veer away from writing on the propensity for philandering in males … really, I have … but the topic keeps popping up, as such things do. The sneaky buggers happen across my path even when I’m busy looking at another angle of a story, so, being mine and all, my fingers head for the keyboard and the sighs happen in black and white.

While the world has been enthralled with the plight and eventual rescue of those 33 Chilean miners, I followed the story along with everyone else. Horrified by the idea of being trapped beneath tons and tons of Planet Earth for weeks and weeks and weeks, who didn’t imagine the terror? And when they began emerging from that living grave, who didn’t at least mentally applaud the efforts of the rescuers and the fortitude of those who’d lived those weeks?

Well … turns out there may have been quite a few who’d have voted to bloody well leave them down there.

From The Telegraph, this headline, “Mistresses and wives clash over trapped Chilean miners” could lead one to believe some of those guys might be needing another bolt hole, and needing it soon.

At least five wives have been forced to come face to face with mistresses whose existence was kept from them by their husbands, who have been trapped more than 2,300ft below since a cave in on August 5.

One miner has four women fighting over him in an effort to claim compensation offered to the families of those facing between three to four months underground until a rescue shaft can reach them.

FFS!

One miner, who has not been named, has a first wife he never divorced, his live-in partner, a mother of a child he had several years ago, and a woman who claims to be his current girlfriend all visiting the camp.

Seems it’s the case that the only time wives may have been sure their husbands weren’t dipping their wick in another woman’s well was between the 5th of August and yesterday. (Not going in any direction toward what may have been going on between consenting guys down there in the darkness …)

I do get that Latino men have that macho thing going that needs some putting around to prove manliness or attractiveness or dickness or whatever and that dudes who make a living digging around in the bowels of the earth may not be too picky about dropping into any old hole, but five out of thirty-three THAT WE KNOW ABOUT ALREADY?

Come to think about it, given the results of the informal poll I conducted a while back, that number seems impossibly low, and most likely is:

“Some of the men have children from numerous women and all of them have arrived here to stake their claim. I’ve met five families in this situation but I’m sure there are more.

… “Those that truly love their men have slipped away quietly not wanting to cause any more pain to the families but others are putting up a fight.”

The hilarious aspect of the story … to me … is the way the concern over the stability of the trapped miners has played out.

The team of psychologists charged with ensuring the mental welfare of the men below ground are attempting keep such developments from the miners.

“We read all the letters before they are sent down to make sure the miners do not experience any extra anxiety,” said Alberto Iturra, head of the psychological team.

You think these guys are so stupid that they didn’t have a clue that up top their wives were meeting their girlfriends and a whole lotta talkin’ was goin’ on? I’m guessing, probably. Surprise, surprise, boys … your cover, like your dick, has been blown! “Extra anxiety” … ya think? Let’s just call it … hm … what? … consequence? Paybacks be a mo fo? You might as well leave your balls in the hole, Dudes, cuz they’re toast now?

Of course, there will be open arms waiting since forgiveness is a virtue and these guys have suffered, although not for their sins.

One of the trapped miners, Yonni Barrios Rojas, who is using his first aid training to treat medical problems underground is among those who faces difficult questions when he finally makes it the surface.

His wife, Marta Salinas, 56, discovered he had a mistress when she came across another woman holding a vigil for him. The other woman, Susana Valenzuela, said they met on a training course five years ago and he was planning to leave his wife for her.

“He is my husband. He loves me and I am his devoted wife,” insisted Mrs Salinas. “This other woman has no legitimacy.”

I’m hoping Señora Salinas takes her compensation check and spends it on a holiday with a 28-year-old toy boy who will make her feel ways … and things … she hasn’t felt in many years and that Susana wins the prize that is Yonni for the month it takes for the next popped tart to show up.

Are there lessons to be learned from this? Sure. Will anyone learn them? Nah. Will women who have no other option welcome their man home, cook him up a big pot of caldillo de congrio,tuck him into bed and join him gratefully. You bet.

Sigh …

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Line in the sand …

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Friends, Gay rights, News, Religion, Sex, Smarten up on October 10, 2010| 6 Comments »

Tolerance. I’m all for it, or was. Embracing diversity, respecting the views and beliefs of others, giving plenty of room for different strokes, live-and-let-live and all that hooey.

Yep. No expectation that folks should think like I do just because I’m right, now is there?

I’ve managed a lot of years on this attitude, but I’m just about done with it and feeling a need to start drawing lines in the sand; un-crossable, non-neogtialble lines dividing me from them.

What’s brought on this uncharacteristic lean toward leaning away? Short answer: I’m reacting to reactionaries. I’ve had it with different strokes reining down on heads, arms, legs, and those who limit “let live” to only their own ilk.

A far too steady diet of news stories like this has strained all limits of forbearance.

The attackers forced the man to strip to his underwear and tied him to a chair, the police said. One of the teenage victims was still there, and the “Goonies” ordered him to attack the man. The teenager hit him in the face and burned him with a cigarette on his nipple and penis as the others jeered and shouted gay slurs, the police said. Then the attackers whipped the man with a chain and sodomized him with a small baseball bat.

This, of course, following right on the heels of the deaths of Alec Henrison and Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase, Billy Lucas … and on and on.

I’m done being shocked and sad. I’m through cutting slack to those who are just too invested in whatever-it-is-stupid-agenda that makes it okay to label gay people as “less than” or “abominations”, to carry signs insisting that “god hates fags” or to judge in any way something that has NOTHING to do with them.

Although I will continue to be amused by kind-hearted and humorous get-backs like this video posted on facebook … ‘like’ them here … and I’ll wear purple on the 20th in support of efforts to raise awareness, I will no longer sit back and listen to anyone wax on about being entitled to harbor even the hint of condemnation for a segment of the population that has been segmented off because of who they choose to love.

Nope.

People like the moronic Andrew Shirvell get nothing by my wrath and “anti-gay activists” are deemed evil incarnate, especially those who who use their stance to hide behind their preference for behinds.

I won’t limit myself to simply encouraging people to support organizations like The Trevor Project, but now take to vilifying any and all who don’t.

My tolerance is gone, and I don’t give a flying fuck if someone thinks it’s within their rights to disagree over the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality … it’s NOT. Don’t like the idea of gay? No one cares. Keep it to yourself, or, better yet, get a grip, stop spending time conjuring mental images of acts that are none of your damned business and get it through your head that gay people are not only as good as you are, they are very often a whole lot better in all the ways that count on the goodness scale.

Here are some truths that might help with that:

1) Homosexuality is NOT a choice. Some people are blond, some people are Black, some people are gay. (Some are blond AND black AND gay … not always a good look, but nobody’s place to judge.) And who the fuck would choose to be gay in this world? Anyone worried that they might make that “choice” may just want to take another gander at their motivation for condemnation.

2) Gay people could give a shit whether or not you approve. What is important is whether or not you deny rights, and if you do, you’re an asshole.

3) For those who fall back on religion as an excuse to cast aspersions, keep in mind that the story goes that Jesus had two dads, and he turned out okay, and any belief that any god should care what people do with their god-given bits shortchanges that god by reducing him to pin-headed moron status.

Feel free to add to this list …

Yes … I’m pissed off today, even more than I was yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. I’m afraid for so many I love so much, terrified someone will hurt them because of who and how they love. I’m crushed with the thought that fear is growing around them, turning them into hermits when they should be flying free and joyfully. I’m furious that some are forced into hiding themselves behind a mask of heterosexuality, denying their true and lovely natures and their loves.

I’ve tried it other ways, but it’s not worked out so well, and now I’m fighting intolerance with intolerance. So, to anyone who disagrees with me … fuck you. Sandra hates self-righteous homophobes.

Line drawn. Cross over to the good side or stay well away.

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Celebrate the life of John Lennon

Posted in History, Loss, Music I like, News, tagged on October 9, 2010| 4 Comments »

Today I celebrate the life of John Lennon who would be 70 years old had he not been murdered almost 30 years ago. His life and his music changed the world, and his death marked the end of an era of hope and the beginning of the ’80s … a decade of shallow greed and small-mindedness that metastasized throughout our culture and manifests today in polarizing self-righteousness.

How much different our world might be if a poor excuse for a human had not gunned down John Lennon on the 8 December 1980 we cannot know, but that sick and simple act most certainly robbed us all of the wisdom of a great mind, the direction of a generous spirit, the sagacity of a benevolent participant in life’s parade, the perspective of a compassionate genius and a whole lot of music.

We are left with what he had time to give. I share some here today …

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. ”

“If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.”

“God is a concept by which we measure our pain.”

“The more I see the less I know for sure.”

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.

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What a tool …

Posted in Gay rights, News, Sex, Smarten up, tagged , , on October 8, 2010| 4 Comments »

Although a useful tool, a vital instrument of communication, a bridge between people and cultures, a marketing dream, an unparalleled method of widely dispersing information, and on and on and on with the positive applications that come with, the Internet is also a toy. In the hands of those of limited scope … usually sporting their own personal joy stick … what can be found within the confines of their screen is reduced to a video game.

Like the logical extension of Pong, moving from a virtual Atari ball to dot-munching smileys to aim-shoot-drive-take-over-the-world gee-those-guys-look-realer and realer, the step to webcam ease-of-play can feel a natural progression in the gaming world.

It’s not. It’s different, and it’s time peeps got with the programming.

This Slate Mag article illustrates only too well the potential outcome of aiming a cam with the intent to damage.

Tyler Clementi wanted privacy. Like countless college freshmen before him, he needed a place to make out, but he had a roommate. So he asked his roommate to clear out of their Rutgers dorm room for a couple of hours.

The roommate, Dharun Ravi, obliged him. But Ravi left something behind: his computer. It had a webcam and an Internet connection. That’s how Ravi got back into the room, according to police. He never touched the door or window. He just tapped into the webcam from a friend’s computer down the hall. Through it, he saw Clementi making out with a man. Ravi tweeted his discovery, inviting 148 of his closest friends to access the webcam. A day later, Clementi jumped off the George Washington Bridge and died.

The idea that images that show up on a screen are somehow less than human is prevalent in today’s world. Virtual vultures clog Skype, MSN, Yahoo, Google and iChat with artificial wooing on a point system whose payoff is a peak at privates … SCORE! then move along to score again. “It means nothing. It’s just virtual,” is a common refrain when the practice is called into question and consequences … well … what consequences? After all, these people aren’t real. It’s a game.

Fact is, however, it is a real person on the other end of the connection, a person who may have other ideas and not be scoring according to the same card. A positive response to “Will you respect me in the morning?” is an easier lie when it’s a simple matter of defriending or blocking, and what’s the worry when the sense is that there’s nothing more to that than to choosing Bugs over Daffy? After all, does Minnie mind if folks decide to spend time with Daisy? Of course not. She has no mind to mind with.

Don’t get me wrong … if gamers choose this version of PokeHeMan, share the rules and are over the age of consent, who cares? Mutual agreement on the unhuman nature of the other players can establish an avatar-to-avatar relationship with no holds barred and no potential outcome but outscoring. That seems to me a waste of life moments, but they’re not mine so it’s not in my realm to give a shit.

Unfortunately, it’s more often that dehumaning happens without someone realizing they’ve become a cartoon character.

Of course, voluntary relinquishing of privacy is something completely different than turning on a webcam surreptitiously. That is truly malicious, yet in the case of Tyler Clementi the on-screen-so-not-real aspect seems to fit.

No doubt, Ravi is a nasty prick, but also most likely a spoiled brat raised on video games that encouraged the disconnect it would take to invade another person’s personal life, then broadcast the invasion as widely as possible.

Ravi was watching him from a computer down the hall. You’d think a guy peeping at his roommate through a webcam would understand how public the Internet can be. But Ravi, too, was blind. “Roommate asked for the room till midnight,” he typed. “I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.” Then Ravi hit a button, posting the message to Twitter.

Then, later:

Ravi’s exact tweet was: “Anyone with iChat, I dare you to video chat me between the hours of 9:30 and 12. Yes it’s happening again.”

The technology is new-ish, and perhaps hearts and minds will eventually catch up, incorporate the projected person with the human in the cam’s eye. We can hope. That can’t happen too soon, as it’s already too late for some …whether it be some pitiful chick thinking she’s found love only to learn she means nothing because she “means nothing, is just virtual” or a Tyler Clementi

It turned out that he wasn’t a username, an avatar, or some random two-dimensional dude making out with another dude on a video feed. He was flesh and blood. His body hit the water. He died.

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Letter to an athletic supporter …

Posted in Celebrities, Celebs, Elections USA, News, Writing for fun, tagged on September 28, 2010| 10 Comments »

Dear Mr. Elmer,

Although you might consider this a bit disorthodox, I really, really, really appreciate you votin’ for me back when I was, ya know, gettin’ ready to run this great country (okay, almost run it unless the old guy kicked) so I could stop popping over the border into Canada with my family for health care. Please, please, please know that I don’t misunderestimate how much that meant to me, ya know, and that’s why I’m now personally thanking all my supporters, especially the athletic ones like you. I can’t refudiate the fact that having a wimp for a hubby did perspire me to go online and personally get naked for all the guys who slid one in the ballot box on my behind … oops, lol … behalf, but, ya know, I think I’ll really, really especially like you, so please add me to your skype, facebook and Bebo friend lists and fire up the webcam.

When I win the next erection, my promise is to redo a room in the White House just for chats with all you wonderful Americans who pushed and pushed and pushed really, really hard to get me through to the big finish. I think it’s important to keep my finger on the pulsings of all you voting guys, and since Todd will be busy with his new job as Secretary of the Interior Decorating, he won’t be able to do much, but he will probably watch since he’s right behind me in every move I make. My goal is to make history so good that I’ll get a monument like Washington’s, but rounder and maybe in pink.

Signed,
Your gal pal in the GOP,
Sarah Palin

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The best-paid schemes of mice and men

Posted in Children, Health, News, The United Nations on September 20, 2010| 2 Comments »

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an ‘men
Gang aft agley,
An’lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

~ Robbie Burns

(If Burns was writing this morning, he might also substitute paid for laid … although I’m sure well-laid fits in this rant, too …)

I’m choosing to start the week off with a bit of Scottish verse, then quickly moving along to giving the United Nations a big hand … upside the head, and a foot up the ass to see if that does anything to knock the organization out of its PR-spinning, wonky orbit.

I will say one good thing about the Untied Nations … they are good at graphs, as proved by a report in today’s news.

This one, for example:

There are loads of similar graphs, all indicating … well, gee … that the UN’s “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)” adopted 10 years ago were a waste of time and a ton of money.

So, just guess what the plan is now.

They’re going to meet up in Manhattan next week to “redouble efforts to meet them by 2015”.

“The path that will be set at the summit will determine the direction and results, success or failure, of the entire MDG venture,” says Olav Kjorven, a senior official in the UN’s main development agency, the UNDP.

Yeah … pull the other one.

The truth is that poverty has fallen, but progress has been uneven, and most of the goals are off-target to meet the deadline.

One of them – halving world poverty – is likely to be met, largely because of robust economic growth in China and India.

But less has been achieved on others, such as decreasing hunger, improving access to health and education, and helping mothers and children.

According to their own figures, not only have rates of infant mortality, availability of clean drinking water and reduction of early deaths from nasties like AIDS and malaria not improved since these masses of the well-dressed, well-fed and well paid sat over champers and sturgeon roe a decade ago and dusted crumbs from each others’ lovely lapels, in many cases it has gone worse.

World hunger is on the rise since the adoption of the UN goals, with nearly a billion people suffering.

And the number of women who die in childbirth every year is still in the hundreds of thousands, falling far short of the UN goal to cut maternal deaths by three quarters.

Since the UN can hardly take credit for jumps in the econ strength of China, India and former Soviet countries, it seems more than a tad disingenuous to claim MDGs made much difference, and blaming donor nations’ shortfalls does little to alleviate the notion that these very expensive summits are any more than chichi circle jerks.

This one hasn’t even started, yet already the Kool-Aid is being passed around to the international media:

The summit is expected to declare that achieving the Millennium Development Goals is do-able by 2015, with the right combination of money, policies and, above all, political will.

Drink up, me hearties, yo ho! (Yesterday was Internatonal Talk Like a Pirate Day, sponsored by an organization that probably accomplishes more in one year than the UN does in a decade to improve the lives of a few sad gits, so I’ll give them a plug.)

Want to see some flash PR work? Check out the MDG website and catch a clue as to where some of the money and effort goes. To see where it doesn’t, just look at the world.

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Harvest and Harangue … yes, this is cheating …

Posted in History, News, Peeps, Religion, tagged , , , , on September 17, 2010| 6 Comments »

Since I’ve been busy lately … mucho work and some pleasant and interesting communication … I’m opting for a familiar blogging out I call “Harvest and Harangue”, meaning I go through the day’s news and bitch about the stuff that pisses me off.

I’ll start with murder, since that’s always such a popular topic, and with one I recall so well.

December 8, 1980 … Mark Chapman shot John Lennon. All these years later, the genius that was John is still dead and the fuckwad who killed him has had another parole hearing.

“I felt that by killing John Lennon I would become somebody and instead of that I became a murderer and murderers are not somebodies,” he said.

In a closing statement, Chapman said his life had changed because of Jesus.

“I know him, he is with me, he is with me now, he is helping me speak to you now. Without him I am nothing, I would have been an even bigger nobody.”

With some modicum of sense, the parole board turned him down again, but the fact that he gets to do this every couple of years … trot out his somebodyness and get his ugly mug in the international press annoys the shit out of me. As for his Jesusness … well, Jim Jones had that happening, too, if I recall and look at the holy shit he created.

Moving right along, but sticking with murder … if you’ll excuse the expression in this case … this story is one you can sink your teeth into.

A Broadmoor patient who confessed to killing two women in East Sussex in 1998 and eating flesh from one of them has been jailed for at least 21 years.

He also admitted trying to murder and rape a Czech student on a train and raping a London woman in her home.

Excuse me … but TWENTY-ONE years? WTF are these people thinking? Lock up and throw away the key, peeps, because the world don’t need this person.

The judge said that it had been “to his credit” that he decided while he was at Broadmoor “to get these terrible crimes off his chest, because he was concerned that he was too dangerous at that stage to be transferred from Broadmoor to a less secure hospital but also because he wanted to remain at Broadmoor”.

To his credit? Sorry, Judge, but this guy gets NO credit, not even if he finds Jesus. I’d say he’s a shark, but that would be an insult to sharks.

And speaking of sharks … sorry, can’t resist an easy segue … they kill, too, but it’s not called murder, it’s called lunch, as the tiger in this story would be happy to tell you if he could just get the bits out of his teeth long enough to spit out a sentence.

The 3.6-metre (12ft) tiger shark was caught on 4 September by a local investment banker who was deep-sea fishing.

Whilst reeling it in, he said he saw a leg poking out of the shark’s mouth.

After cutting the creature open, defence force officers found a torso, two severed arms, and a right leg.

Amazingly, the dude’s fingerprints were readable, but his claims of being a strong swimmer and therefore beyond the dangers of the sea, apparently, didn’t float.

Deadly sea creatures running on instinct and hunger have nothing over some humans when it comes to horror as this story proves … and probably have a more highly developed sense of humor to boot.

A US artist whose satirical cartoon inspired an internet campaign inviting people to draw images of the Prophet Muhammad has disappeared into hiding, her newspaper has said.

Molly Norris, who disavowed the movement that provoked outrage in the Islamic world, has moved and changed her name, the Seattle Weekly said.

She fled after FBI agents warned she was in danger …

FFS, Peeps … get over it! The world has moved beyond stone tablets, even photography was invented a couple of years ago, and if Mo was around today you can bet he’d be paying big bucks to his PR firm to get his mug on the cover of every mag around. After all, that’s de rigueur in the religious leaders game.

Just check out the popester’s spin machine in high gear as they try to clean up the shit he’s smearing around Britain.

The pope urged the UK to guard against “aggressive forms of secularism”.

A speech in which the Pope appeared to associate atheism with the Nazis has prompted criticism from humanist organisations.

However, the Catholic Church has moved to play down the controversy, saying the Pope knew “rather well what the Nazi ideology is about”.

Humanists have said the comments were a “terrible libel” against non-believers.

No shit.

Unfortunately for the spinnsters, he just keeps putting his foot in it …

He said: “Even in our own lifetimes we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

“As we reflect on the sobering lessons of atheist extremism of the 20th century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus a reductive vision of a person and his destiny.”

Yep … even in his own lifetime … and, yes, people DO remember … and the catholic church do NOT come out clean.

The Pope’s reaction to the Holocaust was complex and inconsistent. At times, he tried to help the Jews and was successful. But these successes only highlight the amount of influence he might have had, if he not chosen to remain silent on so many other occasions. No one knows for sure the motives behind Pius XII’s actions, or lack thereof, since the Vatican archives have only been fully opened to select researchers. Historians offer many reasons why Pope Pius XII was not a stronger public advocate for the Jews: A fear of Nazi reprisals, a feeling that public speech would have no effect and might harm the Jews, the idea that private intervention could accomplish more, the anxiety that acting against the German government could provoke a schism among German Catholics, the church’s traditional role of being politically neutral and the fear of the growth of communism were the Nazis to be defeated.) Whatever his motivation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Pope, like so many others in positions of power and influence, could have done more to save the Jews.

So shut the fuck up, Ben, pull on the big man panties, confess … get it off your chest like the dude who ate women … and thank the Brits for coughing up £12 mil for your holiday.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch …

Movies get news, too … ours being the “live life to the fullest a screen can hold” society … and stories about celebs are oh-so-vital to maintaining the illusion that life is worth living.

Just how worthy should be questioned more often, but this venture up the celebrity ass really should serve to aim a Klieg where the sun don’t shine.

Actor Casey Affleck has admitted the documentary film he made about Joaquin Phoenix quitting Hollywood to become a rap star was staged.

Affleck told the New York Times that Phoenix gave a “terrific” performance”.

Over the last two years, the actor has behaved strangely in public, leading fans and critics to wonder whether he was documenting a breakdown on film.

Ah … duh … since there was a camera following him everywhere. Ya think? Not clever. Not tricky. Just WAY up your own asses, Casey and Joaquin. Andy Kaufman did the same thing years ago … only it was with Carson, not Letterman … and, forgive my smugness, but I called this way back when. (I still expect Andy to show up admitting that his death was part of the act.)

But I’ll end up with a bit of movie news that makes total sense to me. Sacha Baron Cohen is going to play Freddie Mercury in a movie Brian May and Roger Taylor are working on.

“We have Sacha Baron Cohen, which will probably be a shock to a lot of people, but he’s been talking with us for a long time,” May told the HARDtalk show.

Good choice guys.

And that’s the way it was … 17 September 2010 …

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