I've decided this blog will also be a collection of fun facts I learn from teh intarwebs and NPR. For example:
-Giorgio Carbone of Seborga, Italy convinced the inhabitants of his town that the town was an independent principality. They elected him as prince, and he was addressed colloquially as "His Tremendousness".
-The floor collapsed under a Weight Watchers meeting. I'm sure it must have been mortifying for them, but it's also really really funny.
-"Truck Nutz", metal testicles to hang from your pickup truck or other sufficiently manly vehicle in case isn't already compensation enough, are now illegal in Florida. The fact that they actually make a product like this is amusing enough, but even better is the fact that they spent time debating this in the Florida senate. One of the senators admitted to owning a pair and said that it is, and I quote, "an expression of truckliness." Wow.
-I just found my new favourite phrase in Italian: "Ho una fame da lupo", which means, roughly translated, "hungry like the wolf". (And I really, really tempted to link that to this video.) Or maybe it's "succhiacazzi" (cocksucker). Grazie, professore!
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Osama Bin Laden obsessed with Whitney Houston!
According to this article, Osama Bin Laden is completely obsessed with Whitney Houston. He wants to have her husband killed and take her as a wife. I can just imaging him wandering around going "IIIIIIIII will always love yooouuuuuu!"
Sunday, February 14, 2010
You CAN be good without god...who knew?
This article from Science Daily explains an interesting new theory about why religion and morality are linked. See, there had previously been two main theories about the origin of religion:
1) Religion evolved as a way to solve the problem of cooperation among unrelated individuals.
2) Religion evolved as a by-product of pre-existing cognitive capacities. For example, it is much better for the survival of young if they have a tendency to believe what the elders tell them about what is edible/dangerous etc.
This article talks about two psychologists who found (citing many studies in moral philosophy) that people show no difference in moral judgements for unfamiliar dilemmas, despite differences in, or even lack of, religion. This suggests that intuitive judgements of right and wrong are independent of specific religious obligations.
"This supports the theory that religion did not originally emerge as a biological adaptation for cooperation, but evolved as a separate by-product of pre-existing cognitive functions that evolved from non-religious functions," says Dr. Pyysiainen (one of the authors of the article). "However, although it appears as if cooperation is made possible by mental mechanisms that are not specific to religion, religion can play a role in facilitating and stabilizing cooperation between groups."
This is interesting because of some of the common views on the connection between religion and morality. Some people view morality as impossible without religion, others see religion as a way of expressing moral intuitions, some see religion as something that impedes moral progress, and still others think religion and morality are in no way linked. But it still remains that in most cultures (including this one), religious beliefs and concepts have become the standard way of articulating moral ideas. Since the language of morality and the language of religion are so intertwined, an attack (perceived or real) on religion is seen as an attack on morality.
I think this is where the trouble comes in for people like my mom. She's believed all her life that religion is good, moral, and right. Therefore, people without religion are bad, immoral, and wrong. Then I come out to her as an atheist, and suddenly she has to reconcile her preconceived notions of what an atheist is with her knowledge of who I am. I'm just glad that my mother chose to go with her knowledge of me as a good, moral person instead of forcing me into the role of evil immoral atheist.
1) Religion evolved as a way to solve the problem of cooperation among unrelated individuals.
2) Religion evolved as a by-product of pre-existing cognitive capacities. For example, it is much better for the survival of young if they have a tendency to believe what the elders tell them about what is edible/dangerous etc.
This article talks about two psychologists who found (citing many studies in moral philosophy) that people show no difference in moral judgements for unfamiliar dilemmas, despite differences in, or even lack of, religion. This suggests that intuitive judgements of right and wrong are independent of specific religious obligations.
"This supports the theory that religion did not originally emerge as a biological adaptation for cooperation, but evolved as a separate by-product of pre-existing cognitive functions that evolved from non-religious functions," says Dr. Pyysiainen (one of the authors of the article). "However, although it appears as if cooperation is made possible by mental mechanisms that are not specific to religion, religion can play a role in facilitating and stabilizing cooperation between groups."
This is interesting because of some of the common views on the connection between religion and morality. Some people view morality as impossible without religion, others see religion as a way of expressing moral intuitions, some see religion as something that impedes moral progress, and still others think religion and morality are in no way linked. But it still remains that in most cultures (including this one), religious beliefs and concepts have become the standard way of articulating moral ideas. Since the language of morality and the language of religion are so intertwined, an attack (perceived or real) on religion is seen as an attack on morality.
I think this is where the trouble comes in for people like my mom. She's believed all her life that religion is good, moral, and right. Therefore, people without religion are bad, immoral, and wrong. Then I come out to her as an atheist, and suddenly she has to reconcile her preconceived notions of what an atheist is with her knowledge of who I am. I'm just glad that my mother chose to go with her knowledge of me as a good, moral person instead of forcing me into the role of evil immoral atheist.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Haiti Charges Americans with Child Abduction
A group of ten American Baptist missionaries tried to take 33 Haitian children out of Haiti without government consent. They were trying to take them by bus to the Dominican Republic where they were in the process of creating a Christian orphanage. These children were going to be eligible for adoption in the U.S. The problem (other than the whole "without government consent" thing) is that some of these kids still have a living parent. Some of these parents claimed that the missionaries promised simply to educate the children in the Dominican Republic and allow them home to visit. Also, the missionaries had been warned by child protection officials, human rights experts and Dominican authorities in Haiti that they could be charged with trafficking if she tried to take the children out of the country without proper documentation. Read the full article here.
The lawyer for the group says that 9 of the 10 are "completely innocent", and that only the leader of the group should be held accountable. I don't know how much the others knew about what was going on, so I can't really say anything about them. However, I think that there's no excuse for Ms. Silsby, the leader. She said that she and the group had gone to Haiti to rescue children left orphaned by the earthquake, and that "our hearts were in the right place." I believe that for the other nine people (if it's true that they really were in the dark about the status of the children and all of the legal stuff) but not for Ms. Silsby, for the simple fact that she knew exactly what she was doing, and how wrong and illegal it was. She lied the the parents about putting their children up for adoption! There is absolutely no way to say that she's just trying to help the children.
The group is charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy, and could face a potentially extended legal proceeding in Haiti and, if convicted, face prison terms of up to 15 years. I think she should be convicted. She was attempting to do something that would rip families apart, and she was doing it on purpose. She should not be able to hide behind her faith or the church. She should not be allowed to use that as an excuse. She was doing something illegal and harmful. She should pay the consequences.
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