Firefox Tab Purge #4

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve published anything here, owing in part to a hard drive failure, but mainly due to matters I’d like to write about by way of something more in-depth than summary.

It’s finally time for another  Firefox Tab Purge; a blog race against memory leakage (thanks Adobe for your rubbish Flash plugin). Time avert disaster by documenting and closing some tabs before it’s too late and I lose the lot as my computer grinds to a standstill!

This is the stuff I read. The science and satire are down the bottom if you want to skip past the acrimonious, grown-up material.

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Politics

Ever wondered if Tea Party libertarians were so libertarian they’d let firefighters watch a house burn down? Well Glenn Beck and Co. think it’s just fine. And in an apparently re-titled article in Rolling Stone (it used to have Tea and Crackers in the title), Matt Taibbi explores the motivations behind the Tea Party movement and why many of them seem to rail against their own interests.

It seems we may be talking about class again, if John Birmingham is any indication (thanks Jason, et al.). Birmingham raises the old issue of what to do with the disenfranchised working class, specifically how to get them talking with the middle class and how this involves politics not skirting around the issue. Personally, speaking as lumpenprole, I find it effective in forcing discussion of points of contention with the middle class, to place the bottom rung between chair legs across someone’s throat. You’re probably better off listening to Birmingham.

What else can be said for it – Bill Maher nails whiney rich people. I don’t usually link to HuffPo (being a home for anti-vax and affiliated dangerous woo), but I’ll make an exception in this case.

The gossip about Rob Oakeshott being a sleeper for the ALP is doing the rounds, but Claire Harvey seems to have stumbled upon a more parsimonious history, explaining his past defection and leading up to his recent support for an ALP government.

I’m not sure whether to put this under politics or religion – the two merge somewhat when discussing the monarchy/theocracy (there’s this for one). I’ll go with politics. I used to argue that the current Queen was alright, and that it was her character that held up the impression that the monarchy isn’t all that bad (imagine by contrast, Prince Charles as King – yuck). Well apparently Her Majesty has been trying to apply for special income support for heating the palace – from funding that would normally go towards families in need. Not impressed.

All it took was one article, just one, for me to be schooled in such a way that made it click – I’d thought Australia was a nominal secular democracy, but in reality we’re a soft theocracy. Max Wallace points to a much untalked about history of S.116 in the High Court in ‘The whale in the bay of Australian Politics‘ (thanks Chrys). The state of play is worse than I’d imagined. A more ambiguous S.116, explicitly stating its intentions, would seem to be needed.

 

Religion

In ‘On Facebook, young Muslims turn away from Islam‘, it’s claimed that ‘…the trend seems to be telling of pressures that the image of militant Islam has had on them.’ Yet none of the quotes in the article actually bear this out – they’ve all given reasons other than said ‘pressures’. Is the article trying to paint atheism as a fad, or exaggerate the successes of anti-Islamic campaigning? I think I sense someone grinding an axe. (Thanks Rod).

Apparently a US Federal Judge has asked the Vatican to serve papers to the Pope in relation to the alleged cover up of the sexual abuse allegedly dished out by ex-Wisconsin priest, Father Murphy. Expectations are, given the jurisdiction and past conduct, that the papers won’t be served. Whatever this is, it doesn’t look like cooperation!

Scott Bronstein of CNN writes about a deaf Victim of the ex-Wisconsin priest, Father Murphy, tracing the background of the infamous case in some detail. Hard reading.

Anglican throws Catholics under the bus to get at New Atheists: Scott Stephens online “Religion and Ethics” editor at the ABC, attempts to pass off this silliness as a defence of Pope Benedict XVI. Personally, I think Stephens, rather than calling Hitchens ham-fisted etc., needs to actually show why Hitchen’s et al. are wrong – address their criticisms, not so much their prose. Moreover, there is a far, far more grotesque insult in this piece than that explicitly directed at atheists, implicitly directed at Catholics (not to mention that implicitly directed at the victims!); the argument that no-one in the Catholic Church has done as much to address the phenomena of clerical child abuse as Pope Benedict XVI (who in addition to all the rest people are complaining about, has blamed the phenomena on secularism and homosexuals).

I think Stephens needs to break out his Decretum Gratiani and remind himself just how unflinching Catholics can and have been about clerical child abuse in the past (and on the related matter, clerics being able to marry); the Catholic Church can do better than Benedict XVI. I nominate Gratian as just one example.

(Pope Pius V in my opinion, went a little too far; in his Horrendum arguing that laity and clergy alike after committing such crimes, should lose all benefits of membership, all church protection and be handed over to secular authorities – nice so far – to be executed as per the standard punishment. The theological endorsement for a supposedly secular execution, for one, as a theological pre-condition makes said execution non-secular – church state separation precludes the state acting as a church proxy – and this is before even beginning to discuss the dubious merits of bumping off pedophiles).

Incidentally, you can read some of Hitchens articles on the matter here and here.

Of course, it’s not the “New Atheists” that are the real victims, and it’s not the average, every day Catholic that’s the real victim either – the victims in this scenario, in case people were forgetting, are the people who were abused as kids. Apparently National Times writer* (I can’t bring myself to call him a journalist) Brendan O’Neill, in forgetting who’s doing the suffering, manages to define acts like forced oral sex as not being rape. At least Brendan O’Neill has the relative luxury of consent when he includes auto-fellatio in his mental gymnastics routine.

Recently Universal Society of Hinduism President, Rajan Zed, arguing that the religious had their freedoms, and were afforded respect for their beliefs, condemned the Pope for not being more inclusive after the Pope compared atheists to Nazis at the beginning of his UK visit. I appreciate the sentiment of equality, but I don’t have a right to not be offended, and I don’t want to live in a world where people aren’t free to disrespect my beliefs (or lack thereof); just as I don’t and won’t respect the Pope’s silly beliefs about condoms, gays, women, atheists, recreational sex, Jews, Muslims, The Pill, more recreational sex, The Universe etc.

I’m not a fan of Paul Kurtz. While I readily will cede that he has done much good for critical thinking, and humanism, I will also readily point out that he’s not the only person who’s done good work, nor is every godless individual (such as myself) actually in his dept. I will also point out that whenever he spout’s his take-the-highroad-you-atheists, he’s implying that atheists take the low-road, which is most often not the case. Sure, he may look good and noble saying it, but it’s spreading a stereotype, which isn’t good and noble, and what’s more, when this stereotype lands on the doorstep of someone who is in no debt to Kurtz you have a scenario where it’s entirely reasonable for someone not to hold him in particularly high regard.

Well, this posturing of Kurtz’s has now reached megalomaniacal proportions – he’s now comparing himself to Jesus and Galileo. Seriously. You can read two particularly good takes on the interview, one by Russell Blackford here, and another by Ophelia Benson here.

I may not like Kurtz, but I sincerely hope he finds a suitably healthy palliative to sooth his obviously inflamed ego in the last years of his life. Aside from the targets of his vain opprobrium, he’s clearly hurting himself as well.

Russell Blackford and Ophelia Benson have been writing a lot of late that I’ve really enjoyed reading, particularly on that silly (groan) “New Atheist” bogeyman meme that the “New Inquisition”** keeps peddling.  You can read the goodness here, here, here, here, here and here. Quite a lot to summarise really, but all worth reading.

 

Media

Just about everyone else on Facebook has plugged it, so I’ll plug it. It’s a comment by Possum Comitatus on the recent outing of blogger Grog’s Gamut, taking place over at Margaret Simons’ The Content Makers. Succinct, I think. Apparently though, newspapers are the voice of the people, so that makes it okay (thanks for the belly laughs Scott).

 

Science

It often irritates me when mangrove dwelling gastropods and the bioclastic sediment they contribute to (ie. shell grit, calcium carbonate rich sands etc.) are overlooked as carbon sinks in discussions of climate change and environmental policy. Now there’s a possible new contender for the role of annoyingly overlooked oceanic carbon sink – aerobic anoxygenic photoheterotrophic bacteria. (Thanks Jason). The difference in scale we are potentially talking about, is of course huge – making my beloved mangroves look a bit small.

Toni O’Loughlin of The Guardian reports on the discovery of an impact on Jupiter discovered by amateur Australian astronomer, Anthony Wesley. Nice work Anthony.

 

Satire

Ben Pobjie gives seemingly much-needed advice for footballers, in ‘How Not To Rape People: A Handy Guide For Modern Men And Footballers‘.

And finally, Anson Cameron exposes a double standard when it comes to blasphemy in ‘Book burning shelved, it’s time to commit atheists to the flames‘.

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And that’s that; tabs closed. Hopefully Firefox will let me watch some YouTube videos now.

~ Bruce

 

* Sincerest apologies to my fellow writers.

** Turnabout is fair play – deprived of their thumbscrews by a secular world, the “New Inquisitors” have descended to the literary equivalent of the misnamed Chinese water torture. Drip. Drip. Drip.