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How cats defy gravity and get tasty milk noms!
Still the case for those who are not Male Prostitutes
It looks like 21 century ideas might begin to have the slightest bit of intellectual purchase with god’s go to guy here on earth. The pope, in his new book, has a section on condoms and reproductive health that suggests that condom use in certain situations could be considered acceptable. His popitude says:
“In a book to be released on Tuesday, the pope said that it was acceptable for male prostitutes seeking to prevent the spread of HIV to use condoms.”
Male prostitutes? That is it? No other case comes close enough to Papal reality to justify the use of condoms? Amazing progress consider this is the same individual as of 2009 that said this:
“The pope drew unprecedented criticism from European governments, international organisations and scientists in March 2009 when he told reporters while flying to Africa that condoms would not resolve the Aids problem there but, on the contrary, increase it.”
So, this is progress(?). During the inquisition it would be akin to a holy edict stating that the maximum weight used during strappado torture has just been lowered down to 5o pounds from 55 pounds. Woo ya!
Woo! Thankgoodness for papal mercy!
Well, I guess the phrase, “Our troops will be out of Afghanistan by 2011” has more connotations than the ones most people would be aware of. Apparently it means this:
“Instead, the Harper government now wants to extend Canada’s military presence by another three years to 2014, maintaining a force of up to 1,000 soldiers and support personnel in “non-combat training roles.”
It is nice to see that our autocratic PM is being all that he can be. Furthermore, Harper is not putting this extension up for debate in the House of Commons.
“Harper and Cannon have both said a vote on the extension is not needed. Cannon pointed out Monday that a parliamentary vote was not taken when Canadian troops were sent to Haiti after the devastating earthquake in January.
Speaking on CBC’s Power & Politics with Evan Solomon, Cannon said there was “no precedent” for a parliamentary vote on the extension of the mission in Afghanistan.
“This is really a function of mission creep,” NDP MP Jack Harris said after the announcement. “We started in 2002 and we’ve been there nine years now. Last Saturday was the ninth anniversary of the fall of the Taliban.”
Canada has wilted under the pressure of NATO and the US, to keep a military presence in Afghanistan despite promises to get our troops out of the country.
Find your woo! (click on image to embiggen) H/T:Crispian Jago’s blog
See also his Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense!
Approaching contentious topics in conversation is always a touchy proposition considering my stance on most issues. The War in Afghanistan, Prison Policy, Educational Policy and Patriarchy are all minefields that are necessarily carefully navigated through as disagreeing too much with the dominant point of view only leads to consternation and frustration on both sides of the conversation.
Sadly, we end up talking about ‘other’ topics and any sort of give or take is eliminated because of the calcified nature of conservatism in Alberta. Take for instance the Oilsands, a blight in Northern Alberta that is poisoning the environment and the people who live near them. The counter argument, jobs and the economy of course. We are making money and that takes precedence over all. Once the Athabasca river is thoroughly contaminated and the people living near it have moved away or died, things will be fine I imagine.
Similarly in Afghanistan, I’m sure once we kill enough of the Taliban peace and prosperity will firmly take hold and we can make a gracious exit and commend ourselves on a job well done. The alternate picture, perpetual war against a embittered, radicalized population does not to have much traction, although it is a narrative much closer to the reality of the situation in Afghanistan at present. I imagine though that we’ll eventually end up blaming the Afghan people for being too backward, too corrupt and too sectarian for our benevolent efforts (bombing the crap out of everything) and disengage while calling it mendaciously, a victory for our side. Consider the magic woven in Vietnam where America came out of the war eventually demanding reparations from the Vietnamese for their actions… Imperial hubris is wonderful.
Hubris aside, the mentality of some conservatives can be somewhat trying, especially with regards to crime and prisons. The verdict is in, and the evidence points to one clear concept. Punishing people does not ‘fix’ them. More punishment is not the solution. Here is where I get accused of being “soft” on crime. Quite bluntly, dealing with the precursors to crime and criminality – poverty, discrimination, and inequality- is a much more efficient and effective way to deal with crime in a society. I assert with certainty we will still need prisons because necessarily, there exists in any population a percentage of people who simply do not fit in and need to be segregated from the general population. The focus though needs to be on the precursors and getting people the skills they need to become a member of society that does not need to commit crime.
Educational policy dovetails into the discussion of the justice system as it has been noted that in punishment heavy modes of operation, educational policy can act as a feeder system for the criminal justice system. Again, the idea that we can punish (people) children into becoming what we want is deleteriously wrong notion that needs to be dispelled from the schools. The fear of punishment works for many, but not all children. For those who do not have the skills to behave correctly punishing them more only pushes them further away from our goal of nurturing and educating people to become contributing members of our society.
Like the unreality of the punishment point of view the view that Feminism is over and women have achieved equality in our society is a persistent meme that needs to be corrected. The Patriarchy is not dead, our culture is a rape culture and women are still second class citizens at their very best. Is the work of eradicating the massive inequality built into our culture even close to being done, heck no. Not acknowledging that the work needs to be done retards progress significantly, as again, the case must be made, defended and writ large so the proper context can be established and the idea that feminism is not “over” can be vanquished (again).
The theme of this post has been pretty much “waaaa! it sucks having to constatantly contradict the dominant cultural and historical narrative, look how much work it is!!!!”. I realize that, but I write to educate those who wonder why when they talk about certain topics with their progressive friends they all of a sudden get that tired 1000 kilometer stare.
I am going to use the discussion points found on RichardDawkins.net as the basis of this feature.
Calilasseia is the author of the post and deserves many rich accolades for assembling so much useful information in one spot. This constitutes an open thread of sorts, please leave your opinions and observations in the comment section.
Enjoy!
[24] Inheritance basics (and the canards destroyed thereby).
Getting back on topic with respect to evolution, there is a basic concept that needs to be deal with here, and which at a stroke deals with several creationist canards, such as the farcical “I’ve never seen a cat give birth to a dog” nonsense, which, if it ever happened without laboratory intervention involving IVF and implantation, would constitute a refutation of evolutionary theory.
That concept is, quite simply, inheritance. Inheritance is a process, that even the mythology creationists claim to adhere to, accepts as valid. Though given the hard evidence from approximately four thousand years of agriculture prior to said mythology being written, not to mention the evidence of inheritance in humans that must have been visible even to pre-scientific man, said mythology would look even more ridiculous if it tried to deny the validity of inheritance. Well, guess what? Here’s the simple point that every creationist fails to understand, and which lies at the root of many of the canards they give credence to, and to reinforce this point, I’ll make it stand out:
Evolution is based upon inheritance.
That’s right. Now this is so simple a notion, that many of the people writing about evolution have failed to reinforce this achingly simple fact, presumably on the basis that they assume that their readers understand this. The problem is, of course, that creationists manifestly don’t understand this. If they did, they wouldn’t erect some of the half-baked nonsense that they do. Where evolutionary theory differs from other ideas about the biosphere, is that it postulates that inheritance unifies the biosphere. Evolutionary theory postulates that ultimately, we and all the other living organisms on the planet are linked by inheritance. Which, as a corollary, leads to numerous testable ideas, ideas that have been tested, and which, as a result of passing those tests, have in turn given rise to a whole new scientific discipline called molecular phylogeny. This isn’t magic, because inheritance isn’t magic. Inheritance is a process that is so simple, it was amenable to systematic analysis by a monk. Which once again, demonstrates the utility value of paying attention to reality, and learning from empirical test, as Mendel did.
Now, since evolutionary theory postulates that inheritance is a key process in the development of the biosphere, this should deal at a stroke with the fatuous “I’ve never seen a cat give birth to a dog” drivel that creationists erect, because there is no way that a cat could pass on an entire, complete set of genes from an entirely different lineage to its offspring. An organism can only pass on whatever genes it dispenses in its gametes, and most of those it will have obtained from its parents, the odd mutation here or there contributing a small additional amount of variation. However, thanks to meiosis, which I briefly mentioned in [14] above, offspring are not exact copies of their parents (which would be hard to achieve anyway with a 50/50 split of genes inherited from each). Meiosis involves some interesting gene shuffling, so that different gametes contains different mixtures of the parental genetic material (for which, again, that nice Mendel fellow provided evidence in those pea plant crossing experiments). As a result, variation will be disseminated across generations. It is this variation that evolution works with. To reinforce this point, inheritance is a dynamic process across generations, and it is the outcome of that dynamic process that provides the raw material for evolutionary mechanisms to work upon.
Oh, and a video bonus!
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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