The more things change...

Checking the headlines real quick....

• Imus is back on the air.
• Larry Craig still isn't gay, despite 5 guys going on record as saying they had sex w/ him.
• Bush & Cheney Inc. lied about Iran's nukes.

In other words, nothing at all has changed. We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

Ah, a bit of brain floss....

A perfect antidote to the previous pious ramblings.

Hmmm....the timing was fortuitous. Almost miraculous. Obviously, a magic sky-daddy intended me to find that article at exactly the time I did.

More Unhinged Ramblings

I sincerely hope Time got things wrong in this article on Papa Ratzi's latest encyclical. Because they make him sound like a senile, doddering, deluded fool.

First, of course, he has to attack the wraith of Marxism, much as a GOP campaigner invoking the specter of Hillary, or an 80's evangelist raving about secular humanists. But the real problem you see, is materialism itself. The idea that by focusing on this world, we're providing "false hope of life without suffering":

"We can try to limit suffering, to fight against it, but we cannot eliminate it," Benedict writes. "It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater." In other words, the fall of Communism again proves that human salvation lies in the Gospel alone.

A great deal of ink has been spilled about what an intellectual Ratzinger is, about the quality of his thinking. If this is an example of it, the Church is in serious trouble.

First of all, I don't know of any serious thinker who maintains we can completely eliminate suffering, unhappiness, whatever. A straw man is one of the cheapest rhetorical tricks in the book, but I guess all's fair when the Church is involved. Secondly, isn't the alleviation of suffering held up as a goal by the Church? The problem, apparently, isn't that materialists try to alleviate suffering, it's that they point out ways of doing it (better food production, medicines, education, for a few) that don't involve blind obedience to magic sky-fairies.

Benedict argues that Marx was flawed, above all, because he misunderstood the human condition. "He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil.

Hm, he's got a point. If people are free, they might do things they shouldn't. That's what "freedom" means. That's why we've seen so many instances in history that when the Church had most of the political power, evil was eliminated, crime was unknown, and no one ever suffered.

He really seems annoyed that people have free will. I'm just saying.

It has become apparent since his election in April 2005 that this Pope, whether or not one agrees with him, stands out for his intellectual honesty and linguistic clarity.

If this is an example of either.... Well, maybe by comparison with his predecessors.

In this latest document, he uses Marxism — though no longer a clear and present danger to Catholic faith — as a warning against the rampant growth of reason, science and freedom without a commensurate growth of faith and morals.

Unfortunately, it's his unspoken, unexplored, and pernicious assumption that faith and morals are near-synonyms that is the root of the problem.

"The ambiguity of progress becomes evident. Without doubt, it offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil — possibilities that formerly did not exist," Benedict writes. "We have all witnessed the way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world."

In this much, at least, he seems to be in contact with reality. Unfortunately, he goes off the rails soon enough, and refers us back to tribal sky-gods and self-contradictory texts of dubious authorship as ultimate authorities. Bleh.

However, you have to love the patented Time non-conclusory conclusion:

Benedict's message of old-fashioned faith in the modern world is itself a call to revolution — or counter-revolution. Only time will tell how many respond to the call.

Translation: Maybe it's something. Or maybe its opposite. Or maybe it's nothing at all. We don't know.

Pretty hard to argue with logic like that.

But Logic is Hard!

I expect PZ will have something to say about this. (I hope he does, actually; he usually gets to the core of an issue very well.)

Consider the limitations of science...

All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

. . .

Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.

You see where this is going, don't you? OH NOES! SCIENCE HAS LIMITS! There are some things we don't know! What's more, some of the questions are so hard, we're not even sure what the right questions are. Therefore, the entire edifice must be a pack of lies.

But wait, it gets better. The anthropic principle gets snuck back in here...

A second reason that the laws of physics have now been brought within the scope of scientific inquiry is the realization that what we long regarded as absolute and universal laws might not be truly fundamental at all, but more like local bylaws. They could vary from place to place on a mega-cosmic scale. A God’s-eye view might reveal a vast patchwork quilt of universes, each with its own distinctive set of bylaws. In this “multiverse,” life will arise only in those patches with bio-friendly bylaws, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe — one that is just right for life. We have selected it by our very existence.

That's right... The entire universe was made just for us. And science says it may even be possible! If we push and twist and distort it enough.

And having made the setup, we conclude with the *koff* inevitable:

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

That's right. Them pointy-headed scientists is working just as much on faith as the rest of us. Pass the Leviticus.

But wait, there's more!

This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

That's right. In even trying to look for physical law, the scientists were going on faith the whole time. They're religious, they just don't know it! Or won't admit it because they hate baby Jesus!

But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

Translation: I can think up a hypothetical at the cutting edge that you don't have a soundbite answer for. Therefore God.

But what alternative are you offering?

God.

I see. Then how did the universe come to be?

God.

How can we understand its workings?

God.

What evidence do you have for this position?

God.

What reasons do you have for this position?

God.

What testable hypothesis does this lead to?

None. God doesn't need it and can't be
proven anyway. Therefore God.

Well, thanks for clearing that up.

I find myself actually quoting celebrity loon Scott Adams, who (back when his books were worth reading) had a list called You Are Wrong Because:, listing various logical errors. I believe this one would be "Incompleteness as Proof of Defect." Sample case: Your theory of gravity doesn't explain why there are no unicorns, therefore it must be wrong.

Science can't answer the question I pulled out of my butt, therefore it's obviously bogus.

Feh. And this is what passes for reasoning in some quarters? And religionists wonder why fewer and fewer people take them seriously?

Obviously a between-semester activity

So looking back over the number of posts per week, starting with late August and moving forward to the present:
16, 14, 6, 4, 9, 3, 7, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2.

And the only reason there's 2 posts this week (counting this one) is that with the Thanksgiving break, I've had time to clear some backlog.

Clearly a trend. At least this semester, as real life has intruded, blogging has dropped off. No surprise, really. It's been a busy semester. Accreditation site visit, dealing with the aftermath thereof (no matter how well things go, there's always aftermath), organizing for the programming competition we're hosting next semester, working on a conference presentation and a journal paper... Not to mention various family crises, out-of-the-blue calls from exes, and various other things to fill up my copious free time.

On the bright side, I'm certainly not bored.

Linguistic Hazard

In Croatian, as in other languages, changing a single consonant can completely change the meaning of a word.

Thus, one should be careful when singing in Croatian if one does not actually speak Croatian.

In this case, a line from the Croatian national anthem turned into a brag about one's anatomy.

And so it goes.

I don't get it.

Or rather, get it too well.

The AP reported this morning that Musharraf said he'd step down from the Army this month. The BBC doesn't have anything up about it, though they have other stories on Pakistan. The NYTimes has their interview with him, in which he didn't give a date, but no reference to any statement he was stepping down from the Army, not even to cast doubt on it. From CNN... [sigh] all the latest on OJ, which is of course the most important thing that's happening in the world.

Various updates

Took the team to the regional programming contest this past weekend, did fairly well... Useful learning for the programming contest we're hosting in April (that I somehow got put in charge of).

Meanwhile, got Eclipse installed and running on my office machine for Java and C++, and located a decent downloadable C++ reference we can install on the contest machines.

Now we just need to work out the details, such as where we're going to put the contestants...

The Democrats Cave, Again

And once again the Democrats give the Decider what he wants, because otherwise he'll say mean things about them...

Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Mukasey's nomination to be President George W. Bush's next U.S. attorney general is headed toward Senate confirmation after two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced they would support him.

Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, who recommended that Bush nominate Mukasey, and Dianne Feinstein of California said they will vote for the 66-year-old retired federal judge when the panel considers the nomination on Nov. 6.

"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked."

In this case, the incompetent who are supposedly protecting us from the wicked.

Guffaw-worthy quote of the day

For some reason, I have never felt it incumbent to tell anyone what their view of existence should be.

--Andrew Sullivan

Still not that simple...

Mike Rogers on Hardball keeps up the "Larry Craig is lying or in denial" meme....

But it's not that simple...

Andrew Sullivan discusses the Larry Craig case, showing his usual combination of incisive insight and stunning obtuseness.

At this point in their lives, to allow the possibility that Craig is indeed homosexual, that he has sustained, lived, internalized a fundamental lie for his entire life, and involved his wife and children in that lie, would be to destroy themselves. I am not going to exonerate the man from hypocrisy because it is impossible. But I do think his problem is far deeper.

Perhaps. Such a case could be made. But Sullivan hasn't made it.

He grew up in a different time, and a different place, where even the possibility of being gay was inconceivable.

Agreed.

I don't think he even thinks of himself as gay, or has any idea what being gay might actually mean.

He's getting onto thin ice here. Agreed, Craig probably doesn't think of himself as gay. But what does Sullivan mean by "being gay"? As an identity? As an essentialist reduction, something you either are or aren't, and if you have sex with men then you are? Apparently...

I think he thinks of his sexual orientation as a "lifestyle" (to use that hideous term Lauer kept referring to) that can be overcome the way one overcomes smoking or poor eating or sexual compulsion. And he constructed an identity in opposition to this "lifestyle" early, out of pain and defensiveness and terrible fear.

Sullivan is assuming an awful lot here. Specifically, that Craig is gay as Sullivan understands the term; that Craig is misinformed at best, deluded at worst, if he doesn't see himself that way; and that his denials are a defense against the intolerable fact of being a gay man.

Craig was seeking in that toilet stall a connection, a shard of intimacy, that the world would not give him, or that he could not give himself.

Or maybe he just wanted a blow job.

No one should have to live without that intimacy and dignity - no one. Living a life like that - a deeply lonely, compromised, painful interior existence - is a very sophisticated form of hell. No human can keep it up for ever. No human should have to keep it up for ever.

He is a hypocrite; and he made his choices. I am not going to dispute that. His voting record helped sustain the misery for others that he lived with himself. He is for ever responsible for that.

But he is also a victim. And to see such a victim's pain exposed brutally in a public restroom pains me. He needs help. So do millions of others.

Yes, agreed. The closet is nasty and toxic. BUT.

After seeing the SNL "Oh Really?" video and the claymation "I am not gay" vid (to the tune of YMCA, and it's scrolled off whatever blog I found it on, can't find the link, my bad), I'm just noticing a rampant assumption that I'm not sure is valid.

As Sullivan correctly notes, Craig grew up in a different time and place. And yes, it may be just as Sullivan describes it. But is that the only possibility?

There's a general assumption that Craig is gay, and is simply lying or in denial about it. That either you are gay or you're not, and that if you were seeking sex with men then you are and that's that.

It's not that simple, though. The current definition of gay as an identity, with a social role attached to it (some behaviors prescribed, others prohibited), as an exclusive orientation, is a 20th-century phenomenon. (Actually, late-19th century England and Germany, or so my friend Harry who's studied this much more thoroughly than I have, says.)

But it's not the only possibility.

It's not the understanding the Greeks had, for instance. They had fairly elaborate rules about who could do what with whom, based on social class, rank, and a few other things. Feudal Japan had a different set of rules. South Asia today has a different set. I came across an online collection of photos of young Taliban in Afghanistan that are just now making their way out of the country. Many of them are vaguely homoerotic, the men are clearly expressing affection for each other, yet I'm willing to wager that few if any of them define themselves as 'gay' in the Western sense. Even though they're having at least a little sex from time to time.

Is this what Craig's getting at with his denials? Doubtful. Just as I doubt Ahmedinejad was showing his familiarity with queer theory when he maintained that there are no gays in Iran.

But it's not just a simple "you either are or you aren't, and you are, so admit it and get out of the closet, queen." And Sullivan, of all people, should know better. It's also possible Craig looks at gay culture--metrosexual, style obsessed, politically liberal--and doesn't see himself in any of it. That when he says "I'm not gay" he's simply saying "I'm not part of that culture." And gay culture is very upper-middle-class, very white, very urban. (There are reasons for that, but this post is long enough already.) He sees gay culture and not only doesn't see himself in it, he doesn't see anything he'd want in it, so of course he rejects it. And because he's been hiding from it, his view of gay culture is probably biased--centered around the highly-visible extreme minority. (Senator, for whatever it's worth, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence don't speak for me, either.)

Identity is extremely complex. We know this. Why are we so obsessed with putting people into labeled pigeonholes?

I'm not about to go off onto queer theory--and don't get me started with what all is wrong with Foucault--but this is ridiculous.

I think we survived

Our accreditation site visit wrapped up yesterday. Because of the rules about the confidentiality of the process, I can't say much more than that, other than woohoo! glad it's over...

Oh, and also, I have not been asked to clean out my office. I choose to take that as a good sign as well.

Blog whoring

Check out my comment over here... Just because. Science fiction and porn... two of my favorite subjects.

Hell of a job you're doing, Bushie.

What a legacy.

Wish I'd Said That

Or at least, Wish I'd Found That Quote....

Some optimists say that in Army Gen. David Petraeus, Bush has finally found his Gen. Grant. That may or may not be true, but it is beside the point. The problem is that Petraeus has not yet found his President Lincoln.

But, alas, Mark Kleiman beat me to it.

It just never stops...

I've been offline a few days dealing with personal stuff...and what do I find when I get back? Priests trying to seduce young men... An accidental death during autoerotic play... What IS it with closeted clergy, anyway?

Never mind. I know. It's about the self-loathing and shame of the closet, and the institutional hypocrisy that pretends everyone in the hierarchy is 100% straight, or simply asexual. Other expressions of sexuality simply do. not. exist.

And while we're worried about this, the killing in Burma continues.

Update: The priest in question now says he was only pretending to be gay, in order to flush out other homosexuals within the church. The desperation continues as he searches frantically for someone to throw under the bus, before he himself gets thrown.

More Liars For Jesus

They have them in Europe, too... A bunch of Dutch creationists are importing BBC nature documentaries and translating the voice-overs into Dutch. So far, so good.

However, they're also doing a few selective edits:

"Instead of saying "70 million years ago, something happens," they say "a very long time ago something happens". They also omit paragraphs such as: "This is inherited from my warm-blooded ancestors,"

And certain episodes and topics simply don't exist:

In particular, she singled out the EO DVD "Het Leven van Zoogdieren" - The Life of Mammals. The series is presented as written and "presented by David Attenborough. Yet it is censored and Episode 10, about apes and humans, is absent. In short, he said, it appears "in a mutilated form, cutting or rephrasing all passages relevant to evolution."

The problem, as the Telegraph article points out, is that it's still being presented as a BBC documentary, not an edited or adapted version.

This is within BBC rules, apparently, as the edits total less than 5 minutes per hour. But "legal" and "right" aren't the same thing. Or so a carpenter from Galilee is alleged to have said.

[hat tip: PZ]

It's hitting the rotary air-circulating device

Our accreditation visit is in about two weeks... Postings may be even more sporadic than usual.

You have been warned.

I'm not dead yet...

Had some time to blog last Friday, but blogger wasn't feeling well & wouldn't respond. Busy all weekend, and the articles I'd bookmarked last week to comment on all seem a bit...well... stale. Like week-old news. And some articles are worth commenting on even well after the fact. These aren't.

So no comment, except to say that there's no comment.