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Lilley and Levant on freedom of speech, hate-crimes and Toronto’s Madrassah
May 18, 2012 — xanthippa
While I do agree with their major points – freedom of speech, even ‘hate speech’ – just not on taxpayer’s dime, I do disagree with them when it comes to actions which abrogate the religious freedoms of children: just as no parent has the right to sexually abuse their child, no parent has the right to curb their child’s freedom of religion through childhood religious indoctrination.
TorrentFreak: BitTorrent Piracy Boosts Music Sales, Study Finds
May 17, 2012 — xanthippaWhat sets this academic study apart from the rest?
Larger sample size and more accurate data.
The music industry claims that albums which are leaked prior to their release cause them the greatest financial loss: this study demonstrates that this is simply not true:
‘However, according to the research, sales may actually be hurt by going after these [file sharing] sites. Hammond’s findings suggest that piracy itself acts as a form of advertising similar to radio play and media campaigns, where more downloads result in a moderate increase in sales.’
Let’s not hold our breath hoping for the recording industry will admit its error…
CanGames 2012
May 17, 2012 — xanthippaIf you happen to be in Canada’s capital region this coming Victoria-day weekend, and you enjoy games of strategy and wit, check out CanGames.
Friendly mahem since 1977!
Egyptian Philosopher Murad Wahba: Muslim Brotherhood Ideologically Required to Start Wars
May 16, 2012 — xanthippaIt is difficult for us to see what is happening inside Egypt, which is why it is good to listen to the Egyptian thinkers themselves:
Modern Day Christian Witch Hunts
May 14, 2012 — xanthippaLike many of the people in the modern anti-religion (anti-ALL-religions), I have, on occasion, been accused by modern-day Christians of unfairly lumping their religion in with all the other unreasonable dogmas which are so destructive to society, yet whose malignancy is tolerated under the guise of ‘religion’.
Sure, they agree, Islam is guilty of persecuting, jailing and executing people on the vacuous charge of ‘witchcraft’. That is obviously wrong and evil and ignorant. (Or, so the narrative goes…) Christianity is better than other religions because we have shed the shackles of ignorance and, for centuries, indulge in these sort of unenlightened practices and have not for centuries…
Show me – they dare – an inquisitor or a witch hunter today!
Well, OK – let’s do that!
Christians today – and not just in developing countries, but in the UK and the US – are active in hunting down and torture-killing witches. The new twist to the narrative is that these modern-day ‘witches’ are children.
Yes, children!!!
Here is a bit about a 15-year-old boy who was murdered (and his younger siblings tortured) by relatives in the UK because they suspected the children of witchcraft. The trial of the family members has concluded with a guilty verdict earlier this year – that is 2012!!!
And, the US is not immune…
Recent surveys show that some 20+% of the adults in the USA believe in ‘witches’ – of the malignant, fairy-tale type, not of the neo-Pagan religious practitioners type…
So much for Christianity having come out of the dark ages!!!
Here are some supporting links:
Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries
Interview: Witches, Mermaids and Exorcisms With Pastor Godwin Umotong On SaharaTV
NY Times: On a Visit to the U.S., a Nigerian Witch-Hunter Explains Herself
Facebook: Stand Against Helen Ukpabio
The short of it is: unreasonable belief leads to unreasonable actions. Adults must be free to do stupid things, but children must be protected from their parents’ religious beliefs.
We accept that a parent, while responsible for a child, does not have the freedom to abuse them sexually. It is high time we extended this protection of children to include protection from religious abuse, because it is no less destructive than sexual abuse!
And while I am at it…
Most of us consider Judaism to be another one of the ‘civilized’ religions – one which has produced some of the most enlightened minds in the field of science and which is not ‘oppressive’ on its practitioners the way some other religions are…
Yet, there is Judaism and there is Judaism…
Many Jews are well integrated into their host societies and for them, being ‘Jewish’ is more of a national identity than it is a religious faith. Many do practice some of the customs which identify them as ‘Jews’ as a form of private observance and, as long as they do not impose it on their children before they are old enough to give informed consent (and, yes, I am referring specifically to the intolerable practice of arbitrary amputation of part of a penis in infants, which ought to be illegal), I have no argument with it.
However, there are other forms of Judaism alive and well in our society – ones which I consider much less benign.
When a group of people refuses to integrate and takes great pains to segregate itself from the society in which they live, bad things happen.
Always.
When religion is the ‘carrot and the whip’ to enforce such a segregation, we ought not tolerate this: it is one thing for adults to exercise their freedom of religion, it is quite another one for them to strip it away from their children.
Because we have learned that over and over and over again , and as one of my role-models, Asma Jahangir, has taught us – when a religious minority demands special rights, they will always use these ‘rights’ to oppress minorities within themselves, most commonly children and women.
As is the case in this story of a self-segregated Orthodox Jewish community, their ‘internal courts’ and child abuse…
Aside: when we fought – and succeeded – against the opening of Sharia courts in Ontario, we also fought against separate ‘Jewish tribunals’ – in effect, the Jewish versions of Sharia courts. I am pleased to say that, unlike in the linked article, Ontario is free of this malignancy: a society cannot exist unless there is one set of laws for everyone, equally applied to everyone by both the police and the courts!!!
To sum up: one law – and one and equal law enforcement – for all members of society is necessary in order to maintain society. Children have innate rights which even their parents must not be permitted to violate – and permitting parents to violate their children’s right to religious freedom (through childhood indoctrination) is deeply connected to and, in reality, little different from permitting parents to commit or facilitate child sexual abuse. It is about time we started treating the two crimes alike!
Exploring some Internet Explorer stories
May 11, 2012 — xanthippaIf you are on the interwebitubes – and, reading a blog, I presume you are – you are likely already aware that Microsoft is taking some serious steps to prevent browsers other than Internet Explorer from their Windows 8 devices running on the ARM platform.
Do we really want to re-visit the browser wars of the 1990’s?
‘”They’re trying to make a new version of their operating system which denies their users choice, competition, and innovation,” said Harvey Anderson, Mozilla’s general counsel. “Making IE the only browser on that platform is a complete return to the digital dark ages when there was only one browser on the Windows platform.” ‘
(Check out the article: it explains the issues well – plus it has graphs!)
So, what does it look like when a whole society is locked in to using Internet Explorer (IE)?
Look no further than South Korea: there, through a well-meaning but misguided legislation (!!!) in the 1990’s, all e-commerce was effectively locked into using IE. Even though the legal situation has been remedied, the lock it had created in practice seems unbreakable.
Results?
No consumer choice and business stagnation…
Apocalypse has been cancelled
May 11, 2012 — xanthippaI am, of course, speaking of the dreaded 21st of December, 2012, when the world is going to end because the wise old Mayans chose to end their calendar on that day.
This is a sad day for all us fans of conspiracy theories….
‘The Maya recorded time in a series of cycles, including 400-year chunks called baktuns. It’s these baktuns that have led to rumors of an end-of-the-world catastrophe on Dec. 21, 2012 — on that date, a cycle of 13 baktuns will be complete. But the idea that this means the end of the world is a misconception, Stuart said. In fact, Maya experts have known for a long time that the calendar doesn’t end after the 13th baktun. It simply begins a new cycle. And the calendar encompasses much larger units than the baktun.’
…
‘In one column, the ancient scribe even worked out a cycle of time recording 17 baktuns, the researchers found. In another spot, someone etched a “ring number” into the wall. These notations were used to record time in a previous cycle, thousands of years into the past. The calendar also appears to note the cycles of Mars and Venus, the researchers said. Symbols of gods head the top of each lunar cycle, suggesting that each cycle had its own patron deity.’
I am not certain from reading the article that my understanding of the length of the newly found calendar is correct, but it seems to imply that it goes on for at least 1,600 more years than the ‘apocalypse in 2012’ one.
The article itself states that
“The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future,” said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. “Numbers we can’t even wrap our heads around.”
But, I think they are discussing the system itself, not the particular notation they found, which, I think, they say encompasses 17 cycles of 400 years, continuing well past 2012.
Here is a link to neat photos of the discovery.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 