Illegal Truths

I'd planned on not posting anything else today, but then this was flagged on LGM, and I concluded it could not pass without comment.  Various panjandrums in North Carolina are hoping to pass a bill that outlaws various statistical methods for the prediction of sea-level change.

OK, "outlaws" is a bit strong.  Scientists can still use the methods, they just can't use them in anything the state will actually officially look at.  And what are these deeply questionable, pseudo-sorcerous approaches that must be refuted as the bunkum they are?

Well, let me ask you a question: what comes next in the following sequence:

1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, ...

Last Night Something Pretty Bad Happened...

We lost a dog.

Sometimes cancer is a horrible malingering presence, slicing off the pieces of a loved one until there's nothing left but a shivering nub, alive in spite of itself.  Other times, it rips through someone so quickly that you still haven't processed its arrival by the time it's already gone, having torn out something irreplaceable along the way.

So it was with Storm, who went from dozing contently in shafts of sunlight to passing away on the operating table in less than a fortnight.  She could have kept fighting, sitting immobile for months on end as the vets fought to save the front half of her body, but we decided she deserved better than that.  A dog who uses her front paws to signal her love and need to be loved should not have to learn to live without them, especially since the exchange of limbs for a few more months of life was a gamble no sensible haunter of Vegas casinos would have taken.

What does one say about The First Dog?  Some experiences cannot be repeated, not really.  We like to pretend they can - that's why we have alcohol - but twelve and a half years after she first bounded into our lives, all nervous barks and melodramatic sighs, there is now just Storm, and every other dog.

Some people thought Storm an unintelligent dog.  To be sure, she frequently gave that impression.  Once upon a time she would stare in incomprehension as her adopted brother Josh (another Old English Sheepdog, who preceded her in crossing over to the Land of Infinite Milkbones) would show her how to open doors.  She never did work it out.  Just recently she adopted the habit of deliberately trapping her head behind my father's chair, forcing him to move it so she could pass, despite quicker and father-free alternative routes available.

I never thought she was stupid, though.  She was just exceptionally good at tactical thinking.  Why walk quietly into the front room when you could force others to move aside, demonstrating your superiority?  It takes a supremely superior canine mind to develop a bark that clearly expresses "I don't want this toast unless you put some scrambled egg on it, humans."  Put simply, Storm was as smart as she needed to be to have everyone else do things for her.  Like Paris Hilton only, you know, of some worth.

We gave Storm, I hope, a very happy decade and a quarter.  In return, she gave us what a dog gives.  If you've experienced it, no description is necessary.  If you haven't, no description will suffice.

Sleep well, Storm.  We loved you a great deal.

Storm "Stormy Dog" Crossman 1999 -2012

The Equaliser

As you get weaker, it will get harder.

War, eh?  That's a big old sausage-fest, am I right?  And with the whole length of Game of Thrones' second season been in large part the ramp-up to what looks to be a truly apocalyptic battle, there might not be a great deal for the women to do come Episode 9.

In the interests of balance, then, "The Prince of Winterfell" is (almost) all about Eve.

A Brief Comment...

On Jim Parson's decision to come out.  I got into a conversation about celebrities choosing to reveal their sexualities when Zachary Quinto made this choice at the end of last year.  There can be a temptation to respond to this news with a shrug of the shoulders and a comment along the lines of "So, who cares?" 

I'd suggest this isn't actually a good response.  If I can be permitted to speculate for a moment, I think a lot of people react this way because they're not a fan of the kind of micro-study of celebrities every act, finding (as I do) the obsession with such gossip a distraction at best, and unhealthy at worst.  There's also the fact that suggesting learning of Parson's sexual orientation makes any difference to you could be interpreted by others as homophobic.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with thinking Parson's announcement makes no real difference to you.  But let's not forget the people for who it might make a difference to: young gay people for whom the normalisation of homosexuality is a pressing concern, and for whom - particularly in America - the knowledge that respected, high-profile people can discuss their sexuality without their world collapsing around them.  We've come a long way from the 80s, when I grew up, in which the choice of role-models for young gay men wasn't too wide, or as impressive as it is now (I'm ashamed to admit that this was pointed out to me by a gay acquaintance of mine; I was far too busy staring at Pamle Anderson et al to notice), but there's still plenty of work to be done.

Quinto himself said he'd chosen to come out because he'd felt he'd done as much as he could to advance the cause of gay rights without pinning his own colours to the mast.  Whilst knowing the actor who plays Sheldon is gay will be a supreme irrelevance the next time I watch Big Bang Theory, I congratulate Parsons on his decision, and hope that it will make the lives of those suffering from unreasoning bigotry that little bit easier.

Update: I think I should have been clearer, actually.  I'm trying to say that public stating this news isn't worthy of consideration is a bad idea.

For God's Sake

Seems there's some debates goin' on over this series of tubes regarding the debt modern liberalism owes to Christianity.  This is worth getting into more detail over (though no promises; The Other Half and I have friends to visit and cider to consume this weekend), but for the moment I just want to consider this comment from Ross Douthat, which Larison has highlighted.

Indeed, it’s completely obvious that absent the Christian faith, there would be no liberalism at all. No ideal of universal human rights without Jesus’ radical upending of social hierarchies (including his death alongside common criminals on the cross). No separation of church and state without the gospels’ “render unto Caesar” and St. Augustine’s two cities. No liberal confidence about the march of historical progress without the Judeo-Christian interpretation of history as an unfolding story rather than an endlessly repeating wheel.

Larison notes that the progress of liberalism has indeed gone hand in hand with the development of our civilisation, which until recently has been explicitly Christian.  It would be pretty hard, I think, to argue liberalism in the exact form we currently recognise it (to the extent that such nebulous concepts can be described as "exactly" anything) would have evolved without Christian influence.

It's much harder, to put it mildly, to believe that absent Christianity, liberalism in some form wouldn't exist.  Indeed, Douthat's argument isn't "completely obvious", it's somewhere between a completely unproveable counter-factual and an assertion which is absurd on its face. 

Whenever an atheist argues that without Christianity there'd have been no Crusades, no Inquisition, and no Nazi Party, it pisses me off.  The human desire for power, wealth, and the subjugation and hence neutralisation of the "other" is sufficiently ingrained in our lizard brains for it to be easily arguable that Christianity has provided an excuse for atrocity, not been the cause.  At least some of the Crusades were undertaken for no better reason than the Holy Church wanted more power, and whilst the glib (and common) response to that is to point out that, yes, the church is explicity Christian, the concentration of so much power in the hands of so few on the grounds that God wants it that way is just further evidence that religion can be applied as a tool by some very, very bad people.

Douthat's claim seems to be the mirror image of that approach.  Those who forged the philosophy of liberalism did so through reference to the Bible, therefore the Bible deserves the credit.

Consider what would have happened were Christianity removed from world history.  Would the West be atheist from coast to coast?  This seems vanishingly unlikely, given the way religions spread.  I'd assume we'd be Muslims, or possibly Hindu.  Does Douthat really want to argue that universal human rights aren't something any other religion could conceive of?  Does he really want to tell the descendents of Gandhi that he owes his view of the universal dignity of man to the religion of his colonial oppressors?  Really?  Even the famously peaceful Gandhi would have wanted to tell him to fuck off for that one, I'd have thought.  Ditto the tens of thousands of human rights activists in jail across the world right now, an awful lot of them who aren't Christian, and would be fairly outraged to learn they owe their deep convictions to Jesus.

I realise that Douthat is making these comments in the middle of a conversation about the American approach to liberalism, but that's precisely why his sweeping generalisations are so problematic; he's writing off the entirety of non-Western culture as being philosophically incapable of even conceiving of human rights or the separation of church and state.  It's that latter point, by the way, that confirms he's insisting these ideas are generated by Christianity specifically, and not religion in general, since without religion of any kind there indeed wouldn't be a concept of separation of church and state, for the same reason there'd be no concept of anti-aircraft guns without anyone ever having built a flying machine.

I'd actually really like to see a consideration of how a society without any kind of religion could generate what for shorthand I'll call humanist principles.  That isn't what Douthat is doing, though.  He's claiming Western civilisation has a copyright on a decidedly global concern, and in the process arguing that those who for so long were oppressed by Christians could only conceive of their right to be free because of the religion their oppressors brought with them.  Nice.

Friday Talisman: My Eyes, My Eyes

This week on Friday Talisman: the conjurer!

I have to say, I really don't like this model.  No amount of pockets or cute bunnies can distract from the fact that this woman looks like an Uruk-Hai in a wig.  Unless she can disappear her own fucking face, I don't see much of a career for her in showbiz, or anywhere else where people can be generally be assumed to have the gift of sight.

Really not convinced about the colour scheme, either.  Admittedly, I have to take the rap for sticking so closely to the picture on her card.  I've actually toned it down a little, would you believe?

Elsewhere on the paint table, my Dark Angels reinforcements continue to gradually build:

And the Heldenhammer finally gets its mechanical prow done up all purdy:

A Suggestion

It has come to my attention that the Sun is giving away teeny tiny Star Wars Lego toys today and Sunday.  They're gorgeous: I love 'em.

Unfortunately, of course, the Sun is evil, a villainous attempt to simulate the inner workings of the mind of a horny twelve-year old sociopath, who also likes football.

So, if you couldn't resist the temptation of the galaxy's tiniest Star Destroyers, might I suggest you donate at least the cost of the disgraceful rag you've purchased to charity.  Preferably a charity than stands in proud opposition to the schoolyard cruelty of Rupert Murdoch's stupidest vassal.

Like this one, for example.

Also, fun fact: this dinky Lego Star Destroyer is about 32 000 times shorter than the "real thing"; in order to fill an actual Star Destroyer with these toys, the Sun would have to give one away with every issue for the next thirty five thousand years.