Will Wiedner Go To Prison For Praying?

Just a short post to keep this in my sights for when I need a good laugh at a stupid berk.

The Oregonian reports that the state of Oregon has done away with exemptions for families who have caused harm and death to children by relying on faith-healing alone, without medical intervention. I find this to be a good thing.

The funny that I want to keep in mind, though, is the complete and utter ignorance and obvious fear-mongering put forth by Oregon's representative Jim Wiedner, of Yamhill, who asked, "am I going to go to prison because I took the time to pray with my child [prior to my wife's taking him to the pediatrician for his tonsillitis]?"

Jim, you stupid git. While I generally discourage my children from calling people names and I try to avoid doing so myself, this is such an egregiously blatant ploy to strike fear into the godly sheeple that "Mabel! The damned gubmint is gonna make it illegal for us to pray for little Bubba when he's sick! Get the guns and we'll let gawd sort 'em out!", that I just can't resist the impulse.

No, Jim, you won't go to prison for praying with your son about his tonsillitis before he goes to the doctor for, hopefully, tests and perhaps an appropriate antibiotic. You should go to prison for pandering, though.

Measles in New Mexico!

This past Sunday, I read here that a case of measles has been diagnosed right here in New Mexico. Apparently, an unvaccinated woman flew here from Europe, passing through a couple of US airports and ended up in the hospital in Santa Fe.

First, the comedy. In reading some of the comments (I only read a couple of pages and there were several hundred pages when I looked), I notice that several commenters seem unaware that New Mexico is, in fact, one of the 50 states of the United States of America. A couple of them were angry that some dirty illegal Mexican immigrant is responsible for bringing the measles into the US. Good grief! This brings to mind the story my FIL tells of traveling from Albuquerque to visit family in Wisconsin. He was driving his personal vehicle with New Mexico plates and was stopped by the Wisconsin Highway Patrol for some infraction. The officer accused him of having a forged driver's license and insisted on seeing his passport and visa until he finally believed my FIL that he really, truly is American after speaking to someone else at his base. I won't even get into the bigotry of the "dirty illegal Mexican immigrant" issue right now.

Second, I was surprised to see how many commenters on the two pages I read were horrified that anyone in the US was unvaccinated. Where have those people been hiding? I'm looking at that like it's a good thing, though, since if they are horrified about not being vaccinated, they obviously haven't been influenced by the anti-vaccination movement. I haven't returned to the article or its comments since Monday, but I'm hoping that the anti-vax misinformation mongers haven't derailed the comments into a dangerous pit of lies. I'm not going to return to the article or its comments, because I suspect that it probably has.

Third, the reason this unvaccinated woman is a danger to everyone is that many misinformed people here in the US have chosen not to vaccinate their children. These children are in danger of blindness, sterility, or even death, if they contract measles. In addition, some children and adults cannot be vaccinated due to various health issues, such as immune system disorders. Plus, since vaccinations are not effective 100% of the time, some individuals who are vaccinated still do not have full immunity. These individuals are in danger as well, and they depend on the rest of us to be vaccinated in order to avoid life-threatening diseases such as measles.

Since vaccination numbers among children especially are not as high as they should be, mostly due to misinformation and outright lies from the anti-vax movement, this single traveler could have infected dozens of individuals prior to being diagnosed. Those dozens can be infecting further dozens right now. Let's hope not.

Bottom line: Vaccinate your children and yourself! That is all.

Stouffer's Thinks You're Stupid!

Well, I can't find a video of the recent Stouffer's Lasagna ad, in which a family which has made changes in its lifestyle is forced to have Stouffer's frozen lasagna for supper instead of eating out all the time (apparently). In this ad, the voice-over claims with great enthusiasm that Stouffer's Lasagna is made of, get this, "REAL INGREDIENTS!"

Is this their selling point? Wait, what? My kids made a mud-pie recently, and it, too, was made of REAL INGREDIENTS! Did that make it edible? I think not. I cooked up a copper sulfate crystal in my high school chemistry class many years ago and it was also made of REAL INGREDIENTS! I still didn't eat it, and would not recommend that anyone do so.*

Can someone at Stouffer's please define UNREAL ingredients for me? I really would like to know what that means. My mind conjures up visions of me trying to serve up to my family the tea and crumpets The Princess served at her most recent tea party. These treats actually were made of unreal ingredients and because of that, they DIDN'T ACTUALLY EXIST, except in our imaginations. Surely Stouffer's is not insinuating that parents are serving imaginary foods to their families? Or maybe they just think we're stupid.

Perhaps some ad exec working for Stouffer's is a closet solipsist - unless the ingredients are right there in front of him or her, they don't exist! But that won't work, either, since the ad exec cannot possibly be present each time a parent serves Stouffer's frozen lasagna, so all lasagnas, excluding the one on the exec's plate, would be made of UNREAL INGREDIENTS, and would not exist.

It appears Stouffer's thinks we're stupid.

I seem to be writing lots of posts about crap I see in ads lately. Sorry. Apparently my sensitivity level to ridiculous and stupid garbage is set pretty low right now.

* - in that same chemistry class, we followed a set of directions for an experiment that led to delicious, delicious peanut brittle (such and such grams of sucrose, such and such grams of "protein pellets", such and such level of heat for such and such amount of time, etc.), which we DID eat, and were graded on its consistency and flavor. Also, summer school for chemistry, until the board of directors put the kibosh on it, included an experiment that led to BEER (yes, it was a LONG time ago). Cooking IS chemistry! And everything is made of REAL INGREDIENTS!

Domino's Thinks You're Stupid

Domino's Pizza's latest commercial shows us just how stupid advertising grunts think we all are.

Puffery, the spokesactorpizzaman says, is exaggeration of opinion, not fact. Papa John's claim of pizza flavor superiority, he says, is just puffery. Domino's pizza flavor superiority, on the other hand, he says, is based on FACT.

His data for this FACT? A graph showing the results of a taste test showing that people prefer Domino's Pizza, overwhelmingly, he says, over Papa John's and Pizza Hut's!

What is the best cheese? Cheddar? Provolone? A nice ripe Brie? You say Cheddar is the best cheese? Okay, what data did you use to determine that? What? It's your OPINION? What? Your sister thinks Brie is best? Your dad likes a stinky Camembert? So, then, what's the best cheese? Come on! Come on! Just the facts, ma'am!

No puffery over at Domino's, though! Really? Since when is taste-testing anything other than recording the OPINIONS of various individuals in a group of individuals who tried the product?

In regard to the test: Restaurant News reports that an independent company tested Domino's new recipe pizza with 1800 people in 8 nationwide markets. The numbers do show that at least 58% and as much as 67.5% of people asked said that they preferred Domino's pizza over Papa John's or Pizza Hut's in each case.* Pretty good, but hardly overwhelming. Variation among restaurants could raise those numbers through the roof or drop them to zero from one day to the next. Nonetheless, all of these pretty numbers are still based on OPINION, not fact. A bit of puffery on Domino's part, perhaps?

A very unscientific taste test reports that the overall opinion (and it's still just an opinion, people, not a FACT) of tasters was, "Meh, cheap pizza is cheap pizza."

Domino's thinks you're too stupid to see through their puffery.



*58% of those asked said they preferred Domino's sausage pizza over Pizza Hut's. Domino's pepperoni took the highest prize, with 67.5% of tasters preferring it to Pizza Hut's. For other numbers, see the article.

Tea-baggers, Galts, and Other Pachyderms

Worthy of mention, from Daylight Atheism:

[NOM Board Member, Orson Scott] Card isn't the most prominent member of the religious right to call for armed rebellion because the government won't cater to his wishes. He's not even the first. (Rick Perry may have that honor, along with a substantial portion of the Texas Republican Party.) But it is frightening that, as society moves away from accepting their views, these calls for revolution become more and more common among them.

What this shows, I think, is that the religious right is unwilling to participate in the social contract: the understanding that we all have a voice in directing the course of the state, but the price of that freedom is not always having one's own way. The religious right has no interest in that bargain. If they don't get to win, they don't want to participate. And as soon as events are not going their way, they immediately begin calling for armed revolt and insurrection, determined to achieve their goals by violence if they can't achieve them by democracy. The most insane aspect of this is that no one is taking away any of their rights - their clamoring for rebellion is purely because they can no longer control the lives of others.

This is what is silly, but frightening, about the extremely vocal right-wing Republican fringe. If you won't let them win, they'll take their ball and go home, just like kindergartners. Or maybe they won't invite you to their birthday party. But when they take their ball and go home, they would love it if they could cause everyone who wouldn't let them win to disintegrate in a painful way into dust and blow away. Or the people who aren't invited to their birthday party should die, disappear, and never be uncooperative with the toddler's desires ever again! It's toddler behavior, but these are supposed to be grown-ups. A toddler wishes another person dead or vanished because toddlers haven't developed a moral sense or empathy or a sense of responsibility. Toddlers are interested in doing what THEY want, when THEY want, and others must participate, assist, agree, or DIE. That's why we don't allow toddlers, for the most part, to choose how they will live their lives, much less allowing them to decide for others. They require supervision and education into how to hold up their ends of the social contract.

These latter day (there ya' go, a reference for you, Orson Scott Card, whose Ender novels have given me much now-tarnished-and-slightly-nauseous delight! Darn you, man! Grow UP!) revolutionaries seem to have been poorly supervised and educated. If these grown ups can't tell everyone how to live, they threaten to destroy society as we know it. What they would put in its place, in light of their vicious playground justice mentality, is not anything I like to contemplate.

Lovely Quotes From Men Series Opener

Simon Jones is a git.

Dude doesn't want to get married. Dude claims Frances railroaded him into marriage. Dude doesn't want children. Dude claims Frances railroaded him into fatherhood. Dude's true feelings about women in general come out:

And it’s not only Frances who’s become a boring frump — it’s depressingly common to see clever, attractive women become parenting bores. You can spot them at parties, in baggy clothes and making no effort to be interesting to men. Surely the ultimate mummy could still be a sex cat, if no longer a sex kitten?

Never forget, fellow women, that you are required by the patriarchy to continually be interesting to men at all times and in all places. Whether that interests you or not. Twisty has it right(though the subject of the linked post is much more disgusting than Simon's sad saga):

The sex class is responsible for maintaining its perpetual availability for the use of males.

She points out that women who do not feel obligated to conform to the requirements of patriarchical femininity will be punished. By being castigated and maligned by some git in the Times Online, for example.

Simon, however, for all of his whine-worthy suffering, did not learn from his experience with boring, frumpy Frances. He soon left Frances for Maria and repeated the whole ridiculous performance again. Git. I'm going to mail him a box of tissues.

College Student's Suicide Blamed on Dawkins

A young college student has committed suicide. His father blames Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion for causing the young man to lose faith in God and in a fit of hopelessness, kill himself.

Keith Kilgore told WND he feels, by allowing his son to move into the atmosphere of a secular school, like "I put a toddler in the front of my car."

Exactly so. By teaching his child that there is nothing but but hopelessness and nihilism without a god, and that intelligent design is a viable alternative to the theory of evolution and then sending him out into the real world, to a real college, with a real biology class, he DID put his child in the front of a car. I have found nothing in The God Delusion that says life is meaningless and hopeless without a god; on the contrary, Dawkins is consistent in that he loves to write about how fascinating and beautiful life in the real world is and he encourages readers to seek that fascination in their own lives.

Any good biology class will challenge fundamentalist beliefs. This poor young man was taught from childhood all the terrible arguments anti-science religious people parrot long after they have been refuted. It would have been difficult for any child growing up knowing only the " then why are there still monkeys" and "where are the transitional forms" types of argument to stay faithful in the face of actual scientific knowledge that would contradict what he has been taught all his life. How difficult and depressing it must have been for this obviously intelligent young man to finally understand that his family and friends and community had been lying to him his entire life.

"I'm all for academic freedom," Keith Kilgore said. "What I do have a problem with is if there's going to be academic freedom, there has to be academic balance. They were undermining every moral and spiritual value for my [son]," he said. "They ought to be held accountable."

Because, obviously, and as many others have written, colleges and universities should be teaching future MD's how to balance the four humours through bleeding and purging in addition to actual science-based medicine, such as germ theory. And astronomy students should be learning astrology and geocentrism as well. And chemists should learn alchemy. And geologists should learn flat-earth theory. For academic BALANCE, you know.

Damn those scientists and their big brains! Don't they know it is their job to make sure their students' moral and spiritual needs are being met in their classrooms? If I choose to raise my child to believe things that directly contradict reality, and to take pride in his ability to debate his false beliefs against the blasphemers using stale and long-discredited arguments, they should respect that and cater to his ignorance by teaching the falsehoods WITH the reality! That's what I'm paying them for! They ought to be held accountable!!!

IMO, Mr. Kilgore, his family, his church, and his community should be held accountable for lying to this young man and encouraging his false beliefs and hopes, directly resulting in his loss of faith and suicide. Apparently and very sadly, based on the young Kilgore's lack of communication with his father and other family members in regard to his loss of faith, the poor young man felt unable to even discuss his despair with his family, and instead, only communicated his feelings to a few friends who apparently didn't feel it would be appropriate to inform anyone who might be able to help him. While that is not quite as morally reprehensible as watching a young man commit suicide on the internet and doing nothing other than express shock or laugh and encourage him to do it, I still have to wonder how these "friends" will handle the guilt of knowing how depressed and hopeless Kilgore felt while doing nothing to help.

I say that it was this young man's parents, his friends, and his church that betrayed his trust and set him up for this tragedy. Dawkins's books are chock full of hope. Religion is chock full of false hope.

When Patriarchy Makes the Rules I - UPDATE

Pakistani police have disinterred two bodies of murdered women, whose plight is detailed here.

The two murdered women are:
Izzat Khatoon and Mai Siyani.

Four men have been arrested, two of whom pointed police to the shallow graves.

Investigators have conflicting reports in regard to the number of women killed. The Asian Human Rights Commission originally stated that five women were killed, but it is now suspected that either the two whose bodies have been found were the only victims, or that one more woman was murdered, or that the two were murdered while a third escaped.

Investigations confirm that the women were kidnapped using a government vehicle, which adds to the suspicion that Pakistani People's Party Minister Sadiq Umrani's brother, Abdul Sattar Umrani was involved. Abdul Sattar Umrani is suspected by some to have been involved in another murder in January, 2006, under similar circumstances in that the three murdered were a couple on their way to be married in civil court and their taxi-driver.

I can only say that at least this is being investigated, though I have little faith that justice will prevail. I am also disgusted as usual, but never surprised that things of this nature are not followed in the international, and especially the US, press. I would love to be proven wrong.

When Patriarchy Makes the Rules I

This appeal from the Asian Human Rights Commission describes a recent atrocity in Pakistan. In the province of Balochistan, five women were buried alive, allegedly by a relative of a provincial minister who is a prominent leader of the ruling Pakistan People's Party and his accomplices.

The five women are:
Fatima, 45
Jannat Bibi, 38
Fauzia, 18
A young woman between 16 and 18
Another young woman between 16 and 18.
I will provide names as they become available.

When the possibility of a probe was broached in Pakistan's parliament

Senator Israrulla Zehri told a fellow Senator, Bibi Yasmin Shah, to keep quiet when she took up the issue. “This is part of our Baloch traditions. We will not let anyone interfere with this,” said Zehri on the floor of the house.

Another Senator, Jamal Khan Leghari, protested, saying

I am also a Baloch but would not link the Baloch traditions to such kind of act against humanity. No Baloch can dare to even think of taking such action."

(source for both quotes above)

Abdul Sattar Umrani is a brother of Minister Sadiq Umrani is the alleged murderer, along with six or more unknown accomplices, and apparently used a Balochistan government vehicle to transport the victims to a remote area, where they first shot the three teens and began to bury them, wounded but alive. When the other two women, one an aunt of one victim and the other the mother of another, protested, they, too, were thrown into the pit and buried alive.

The supposed reason for Abdul Sattar Umrani to have abducted and murdered these women is that the three teens had expressed a desire to marry men they had chosen rather than be married to men of their fathers' choosing, as required by Baloch tribal tradition.

These types of barbaric tragedies must be stopped! This is patriarchy in its ugliest and most abominable form! When women can't or won't be controlled by men, kill them. Unacceptable in any society! Unworthy of any tradition!

The site linked above, belonging to the Asian Human Rights Commission, has a button for sending an appeal letter to President Musharraf, Prime Minister Gillani, and others. Please go there and use it!

UPDATE: HERE

New Title For Bringing Barbaric Asshattery to Public Attention: When Patriarchy Makes the Rules

First of all, I am changing the name of When Religion Makes the Rules to the above name. This will be a series of blog posts regarding various incidences of asshattery, barbarism, or other disgusting behaviors perpetrated on individuals anywhere in the world by other individuals who use various patriarchal "traditions" as excuses for such behavior.

The first of such blog posts was this one written in regard to Rand Abdel-Qader's murder.

The second addressed the murder by god-mandated neglect of Madeline Neumann.

The third was a follow-up to the Rand Abdel-Qader tragedy in which I wrote about the murder of Rand's mother, Leila Hussein, who had been in hiding since Rand's murder.

My next post will be the FIRST of the series, though these previous posts are obvious precursors.

McCain: Thanks For The Support

Here's a snip from an interview by Wolf Blitzer of Senator John McCain, our Republican Presidential candidate and former P.O.W., who prides himself on his knowledge, understanding, and die-hard support of and for our troops:

BLITZER: Let's talk a little bit about some national security issues. You're president of the United States, you've vowed that you will capture Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.

Now we know that President Bush since 9/11 has been doing the best he can. What would you do differently?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I'm not going to telegraph a lot of the things that I'm going to do because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But, look, I know the area, I have been there, I know wars, I know how to win wars, and I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden -- or put it this way, bring him to justice.

BLITZER: All right. If you capture...

MCCAIN: We will do it, I know how to do it.

WTF? Wouldn't it make sense that, if he is so very confident that he knows how to capture/bring to justice Osama bin Laden, and if he is so very supportive of our troops in Afghanistan and cares that they spend as little time as necessary in harm's way and come home alive, he might want to share this unassailable knowledge with our military commanders? Instead, he seems to be using the (debatable) fact that he has this knowledge as a campaign prop. Either he's lying or he doesn't really want to help our troops to come home alive. Yet. Until he's elected and sworn in. Until a minimum of 6 more months has passed with our troops in Afghanistan, currently numbering approximately 34,000, but projected to be increased to at least 40,000 by 2009, fighting and dying. What an asshat.