In Lighter News

Penny Arcade has been a bit hit-and-miss for a while now, but their latest comic is true genius.

All I can think of when seeing that is whether Yahweh is going to hand Moses a Horadric Cube. All together now: "Guhreeeeetings!"

Quote Of The Day (Before Yesterday)

From the always readable Mahablog:

Arsonists set fire to some equipment at the construction site of a mosque in Murfreesboro , Tennessee. I guess it was too close to Ground Zero.

This latest incident, following hot on the heels of a Puerto Rican man being verbally assaulted by a crowd of protesters whilst on his way to work, is another reminder of why Goldberg's arguments are so ludicrous. Again, I'll have more on this soon (I've ended up having to split my original column into two; there was simply too much bile for a single sitting), but what Goldberg is missing - or pretending to miss - is that the concern here is not over the number of reported hate crimes between 9/11 and now, it's in the volatility of the situation as a whole. I could just of easily shortened him last time round to "People raising safety concerns about these giant mounds of gunpowder underneath each major city are idiots, because there haven't been all that many fires lately."

It should be clear to anyone with cognitive faculties that the issue of minority groups' vulnerability is not simply a factor of how much they are currently under attack (or, as Goldberg would have it, how much the FBI has decided they are reporting being attacked); it's the ease with which that degree of hostility can change. Surely, the rapidly increasing reports of abuse and arson (mixed in with the occasional alleged stabbing) demonstrates just how precarious a position Muslim Americans are finding themselves in.

The other crucial concept that Goldberg breezes past concerns a minority's capacity to (through legal means, of course) defend themselves when these kinds of hate-waves take place. His comparison between ill will towards Jews and Muslims fails on both the above counts. Anti-Semitism clearly hasn't gone away, and obviously it would be a great day for the world if it ever did. If we compare not hate crime statistics, however, but rather the proportions of politicians, celebrities, and highly regarded media personalities in the US who are of Jewish heritage compared to Muslim, then Goldberg's argument falls apart. Why aren't people concerned (or as concerned) about a Jewish backlash? Because the Jewish population in America has far more of a voice amongst the country as a whole to fight back against the hate-peddlers (the degree of sympathy that exists in America for Israel and the still-raw wound of the Holocaust also makes it harder for such poison to spread).

I'm not saying the Jewish population should be any happier about the amount of hate-crimes they have to endure than their Muslims cousins. I'm also not saying anti-Semitism could never again become a dominant and/or publicly acceptable viewpoint within the States or its allies (it was only last year that an armed Holocaust-denier burst into the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. and murdered a security guard). I'm saying that Goldberg himself, along with Charles Krauthammer, Senator Joe Lieberman, Jon Stewart, etc. etc. are ideally placed to fight such a hideous possibility tooth and nail.

Muslims, so far as I can tell, are entirely reliant on Christian and Jewish commentators to take their side, something which to put it mildly is not happening nearly enough right now.

That's why we're concerned.

Our Newest Adoring Fan

I don't have anything to report yet today, but I would be remiss in my duties were I not to announce some happy news: regular commentator (and damn good friend) lyndagb gave birth to a healthy baby girl last night. Given the exceptional intelligence of her mother (and father), I have no doubt that baby Thea will be using her tiny fingers to offer fierce internet rebuttals within, ooh, the next six months or so.

It's Getting Increasingly Hard To Paraphrase This Stuff

I'll almost certainly be a longer, more detailed dissection on the matter over at GeekPlanet next week, but I don't want you guys to feel like I don't call anymore, so submitted for your approval: a brief taster.

Shorter Jonah Goldberg: Muslims are the most loved people in America, so long as you ignore anything so complicated as percentages, and since Muslims doing better than Jews but not as well as Christians, it's only common sense that churches and synagogues should be built near to Ground Zero, but not mosques.

Failures

Apologies, folks. I had intended to write one of my "Five things I learned in..." posts regarding my weekend trip to Sheffield. In the event, though, the only thing I discovered is that a combination of five lagers, one JD and coke, and two ridiculously heavy plates of Chinese food renders a space-borne cephalopod entirely insensible. D'oh!

Well, I guess that's not entirely true. I also learned my friends are sneaky and evil.

So... there's that.

Also; Nemmie? Any idea whose socks those are? Or do I not want to know?

Is Alive!

Busy in Sheffield this weekend, so have yourself a picture of unrestrained awesomeness sent to me by Mad Richard last week.

Clearly his modelling skills far outweigh my own. I am deeply jealous both of his latest acquisition itself, and the way he has managed to construct it without bending, breaking or swallowing any of the pieces (although there's still time for him to screw up the laser, I suppose). Mad Richard also tells me "The best bit is that there's a sensor so that he knows his exact weight (down to 0.1 of a gram), so if you try and remove a piece he shouts "No disassemble, no disassemble!" and goes berserk!"

Now that, my friends, is craftsmanship.

Usain Bolt Twists The Space-Time Continuum

My delightful A-level tutee phoned this morning in a (mainly fake) thundering rage, because he's done so well this morning that he can't skip out of his first university choice and go to his second, which has with hindsight become his favourite.

Well, caveat emptor, I say (and I know he's delighted with his results, if not their side-effects); I at least can view this with unvarnished pride, having gotten him up two grades in reasonably short order. I am thus dreading taking a look at the papers today, since I have no doubt I will learn that either a) he only did so well because the exams have gotten so easy, or b) he only did so well because his teacher was failing him and I was there to pick up the pieces. These, of course, are the only two possible stories to be told when there is a variation in the pass rate from the year before, which is to say every single year.

I prefer it when it's a), to be honest. It always bugged me that my younger brother got much better sprinting times than I did when we were at school. It comes as a great relief to learn that that's only because metres had gotten shorter.