Calling All Literalists

Religion seems to be on the minds of some of our politicians, and for once it’s something other than dog-whistling for easy conservative votes.

Last week Coalition leader-in-waiting Joe Hockey made a speech to the Sydney Institute about the evils of religious ‘literalism’, and this week senator Nick Xenophon called Scientology a ‘criminal organisation’ that should have its tax-exempt status revoked. (I agree, but why stop at Scientology?)

I’d like to think it’s because the increasingly vocal atheist community is getting noticed as a potential vote-winner … but sadly, ‘tis not the case.

Hockey has no time for atheists, despite taking the same line as Dawkins on fundamentalists. The interesting thing though, is that he has no time for theists either.

Hockey wants to promote a kind of touchy-feely deism, where scriptures can be accepted or ignored as you like and God doesn’t intervene in the world in any meaningful fashion.

Sounds a lot like atheism doesn’t it?

It strikes me that that’s what moderates like Hockey effectively are. They just choose to eschew the label.

Why? Maybe it’s the desire to distance themselves from the Dawkinses and Hitchenses of the movement. Or maybe it’s the inexplicable desire to continue considering the bible a source of meaning and purpose.

Either way, I’d like to see more moderates calling out the literalists in their midst. But I can understand why many don’t.

After all, to remove the literalists from Christianity is to remove the movement’s core support base.

Without those who consider God an extant interventionist force, and the political and financial clout they bring with them, Christianity would be just another school of philosophy.

And not a particularly interesting one.

Hey Hey Let’s Not Overreact

I wasn’t going to weigh into this debate, but here goes.

Let’s get one thing very clear: a white person putting on make-up and pretending to be a black person is not inherently offensive.

This may seem obvious, but I have a feeling that this ridiculous Jackson Jive skit is going to cause some to disagree with that.

Let’s take a recent example: a few weeks ago the US series Mad Men had one of their white characters perform a minstrel show to an amused garden party.

Far from being offended, The New York Times (that bastion of liberal politics) hailed it as one of the best episodes of the series. So what’s the difference?

Simple. The Mad Men episode was relevant, poignant, funny and meant something.

The Jackson Jive skit? It wasn’t funny and it meant nothing.

It may have been a sad indictment on the state of Australian television but it said nothing about racism in Australia. If you want to find evidence of that just google “stolen generations” or “Cronulla riots”.

The point is that any reference to old American blackface shows in the Jackson Jive skit is a projection on the part of Americans. The performers weren’t aware of it.

Should they have been aware of it? Maybe. But maybe they’re just not as steeped in American culture as some of their detractors. That’s hardly a crime.

The people who should have known better were the producers of the show.

What the hell were they thinking getting Harry Connick Jr, not just an American but a white southern gentleman, to judge this thing? Did it not occur to them that he might be offended?

What next? Getting Cat Stevens to judge a pork-pie-eating contest?

No wonder it went viral. US cultural sensitivity around this stuff is running hot right now. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

What I’m worried about is this falling over into knee-jerk censorship, whereby any white actor in black make-up is automatically deemed censurable.

That would be a bad reaction.

Worse, it would mean we were giving trash like Hey Hey it’s Saturday an influence that it just doesn’t deserve.

Why is Socialized Health Care Evil?

The health care debate in the US seems to be never-ending.

On one side we have Republicans loudly remonstrating against the evils of socialized medicine (US spelling deliberate), even though that's not what's being proposed. And on the other side we have the Democrats struggling just to articulate just what it is they're proposing.

While everyone seems to agree that the system is broken, no-one can agree on how to fix it.

The model proposed by Obama, which includes a “public option” of government-run health care to compete with the private insurance companies, seems sensible, so what is the Republicans' problem with it?

According to conservative journalist and Republican poster-boy Matthew Continetti it's because the public option is a slippery slope to socialized health care. This statement (made on last week's Real Time with Bill Maher) was left unquestioned, as if it's perfectly obvious that 'socialized health care' is a Bad Thing.

My question for US Republicans is this: why is this so? Apart from Cold War-derived cultural distaste for the word “socialized”, what's your justification for this view?

In the US you already have so many socialized institutions: defence force, police force … even your beloved fire-fighters.

These services are socialized because the benefits they provide are a group insurance against future events. It's not practical to price these services on an individual basis. No individual can assign a meaningful probability to whether, or to what extent, they will need to call on these services.

Education is also largely socialized because, like these other services, the advantage is not just realised by those who directly utilise it. Everyone benefits from an educated populace, just as everyone benefits from a defended country and safe streets.

So tell me please, all you US Republicans … why is health care any different?

Coming Soon: Agora

This should spark some interesting debates when it’s released later this year.

Depending on who you ask, the story of Hypatia (here played by the lovely Rachel Weisz) and the destruction of the ancient library in Alexandria in the 4th century AD is either one of the most egregious examples of how religious hegemony can wreak destruction on civilisation, or … no. That’s about it.

Any other views are more or less apologetics for Christianity and the vague hand-waving that goes along with proclamations that they’re not really that bad anymore.

I’d take that view slightly more seriously if we hadn’t seen Dubya’s Christian troops stand passively by while the National Library in Baghdad was destroyed in 2003.

It’ll be interesting to see how the movies portray Cyril (a.k.a Saint Cyril of Alexandria) given he’ll undoubtedly be the villain of the piece. After all, he’s still considered one of the Fathers of the Catholic Church.

With a bit of luck we’ll get a Papal condemnation and picketing from idiots who haven’t bothered to see the film, but are blindly following the edicts from the pulpit. No great stretch that, of course.

Let the games begin.

Mathematical Proof of Republican Ignorance

This time they’ve gone too far.

On Thursday, 10 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against an official (but non-binding) resolution declaring today, March 14, 2009 (3/14/09) as Pi day.

You can read the whole sad story here.

Screwing up the world economy is one thing, but really. This is just a travesty.

It’s nothing more than a Luddite knee-capping of a noble attempt to bring an awareness of Math to the Masses.

What do we expect though, from the crowd that gave us eight years of anti-science medievalism and Sarah Palin?

Never mind. It’ll always be Pi day in our hearts.

Heatwave II: The Reckoning

One might be forgiven for thinking that our state government is an incompetent pack of whinging little girls.

Apparently three days in a row of temperatures over 43° constitutes a “natural disaster”.

Sorry Mr. Batchelor, but no. It doesn’t.

This kind of thing should be expected and our infrastructure should be able to cope with it.

If a few hot days is all it takes to completely trash our public transport and power delivery systems, then that’s a serious indictment of our government’s dire track record in public maintenance.

News flash for those “in charge”:

This is not the first time this has happened. And it won’t be the last.

In fact, where the hell do you people get off being surprised by this?

The climate is changing. You might have read about it. It’s been in a couple of papers.

All utilities planning should be allowing for this sort of thing to happen every two or three years. Because a decade or two down the track, it will be.

We’re well past the time we can sit on our hands and start thinking it’s all going to get back to normal soon.

So Mr. Batchelor, Ms. Kosky and Mr. Brumby: get it the hell together.

Inauguration

Dubya is already a fading memory, although the fallout from his disastrous reign will hang over the world like a toxic cloud for years to come.

In just over four hours Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the USA.

The moment has been anticipated for so long (remember the bumper stickers?), it’s hard to believe it’s almost here.

Everyone’s talking about the crowds (record-breaking), the speech (historic) and Michelle Obama’s wardrobe.

But beyond the streamers and frocks and statistics, over and above the simple change of government, this event represents a genuine change of mood.

The sense of optimism may turn out to be brief, but right now it’s no less real for that.

The task of rebuilding America’s reputation, which has been almost destroyed over the last eight years, is a huge one.

We genuinely hope he’s up to it.

Freeview. Ho Hum.

The final move to digital television in Australia is still a long way off, with latest estimates putting it sometime in 2013.

It’s taking so long because getting the Australian government to organise something like this is like getting an Amish family to produce a video podcast about World of Warcraft.

They’re making feints in the direction of activity though, with the 2009 launch of something called “Freeview”.

The big claim on the official site is that there will be fifteen new free-to-air channels starting up sometime in 2009, ten standard and five in HD.

<sarcasm> Well, that should get the punters ditching their rabbit ears and flocking to Harvey Norman for a set-top box. </sarcasm>

The thing is, those of us with set-top boxes already know that those fifteen channels are already there, but the only ones being used for new content are ABC2, SBS News and Ten HD. Channels 7 and 9 are just showing their basic broadcast across all three of their stations.

So here’s my question: what’s going to happen in 2009 to encourage the networks to put different content on each one?

On the official government website it announces a big-arse industry conference in March to “discuss the future of Digital TV in Australia”.

All the interested parties will be there, so presumably that’s where all the bribery, blackmail and back-scratching will happen. And we definitely won’t be freeviewing anything until all that’s done.

It’ll be a nauseating exercise in faux-concern and ham-fisted negotiation, as the government tries to save face on its bungled implementation and the networks try to get away with doing as little as possible.

That’s the thing about free-to-air television. There’s no advantage to any of the networks in increasing the number of channels they transmit.

In the long term it might make them a viable competitor to Pay TV, but with streaming media just around the corner even that’s looking shaky.

In the short term, and this is where their focus tends to lie, all it does is increase expenses while spreading the fixed revenue base more thinly. No-one wins.

Except maybe the viewers, but no-one cares about them.

It’s Not Mystifying

John Clarke QC has wrapped up his investigation into the Mohamed Haneef affair, in which an innocent man was accused of being a terrorist.

Amongst all the damning evidence of Federal police incompetence and political interference, the most interesting thing was Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews’ decision to cancel Dr Haneef’s visa.

That was described as “mystifying”.

Of course it’s not mystifying at all.

Andrews was a populist little toady pandering to a government led by a racist and autocratic leader who knew that fear is a much better way to control the public than compassion.

And it was in the lead-up to an election, when then previous election had been won on the back of appearing to take a hard-line on issues exactly like this.

So where’s the mystery?

Humanism in schools. Hooray.

The Humanist Society of Victoria has developed a curriculum for primary school students based on humanist ethics.

Their focus is the wonderful idea that ethics can be derived without reference to any religion; that you don’t need to defer to some magical God or ancient book or (more often) the authority of the clergy to know what’s right.

This is a really important idea, and absolutely the sort of thing we should be instilling in our children.

But of course that’s not the way it’s being reported.

Instead, we get headlines like this:

Religion in schools to go God-free

Students to be taught there's no God

This angle completely misses the point. But that’s to be expected in a culture with such an entrenched religious tradition.

And the predictable backlash from religious, particularly Christian, vested interests has begun.

This is my favourite quote, from fundamentalist godbot Jenny Stoker of Christian lobby group Salt Shakers:

"If you go there, where do you stop? What about witchcraft or Satanism? If you accredit humanism, then those things would have an equal claim to be taught in schools."

Wrong, Jenny. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

If you teach Christianity in schools then all those things have an equal claim. They’ve all got precisely as much evidence as each other to support them.

Our government should never promote any one religion over another, and certainly not in our government schools.

So, Jenny, unless equal time is given to all religions (and that includes Wicca and Satanism and Scientology and The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster) then no time should be given to any of them.

That's It Then

In a final termination of the vestiges of the Howard years, the question about Don Bradman has been removed from Australia's citizenship test.

Well, huzzah for that.

After years of being embarrassed by our government, this is I think the final nail in that particular coffin.

Now a year into the reign of K-Rudd, it's back to the normal pre-Howard days where our government is just a source of low-level disappointment and bemusement.

The Matt is Back

When I say working, I obviously mean that in a very loose and intermittent sense.

We seem to have tracked down the source of the frequent and annoying brown-outs in our wireless, and it is . . .

My wife's iBook! Yes, for some reason the router we have cacks itself whenever there's a Mac in range.

Anyone have any ideas why this might be? I thought I'd throw it out there before going to talk to my ISP who, as has been previously shown, don't like Macs either.

It could be something to do with the landline we're running through which is experiencing problems of its own. In fact, the reason I'm up this early on a Saturday is to welcome the Telstra man, who it's confidently claimed will be arriving between 8 and 12. We'll see.

I fully intend to make up for the dreadful lack of posts here, as soon as something interesting happens.

It might be a while. I get the feeling that the US election (being as it was The Single Biggest Event of the Decade^TM) may have drained the world of the energy required to generate interesting content. Entropy, don't you know.

Having said that, I'm not at all sorry I missed out on being one of the myriad bloggers breathlessly covering every tiny movement.

That must have been exhausting.

Michael Atkinson is Pure Evil

The Rudd Government is apparently gunning to out-conservative the conservatives, with a proposed mandatory internet filter that will

(a) significantly slow internet speeds,

(b) put Australian censorship in the same category as that enjoyed by China and Iran, and

(c) fail to stop one single person from downloading illegal content if they want to.

There's naturally been a major industry backlash, so here's hoping the whole ridiculous idea gets shelved.

Then, straight into this maelstrom of Luddite lunacy comes the announcement that Michael Atkinson (remember him?) is no longer satisfied just passively resisting the introduction of an R18+ rating for video games, but is now actively scuttling any chance of advancing the issue by blocking debate.

Back in March it was announced that there would be public consultation on the issue, which has apparently now been completed. It obviously had the results I predicted it would, because Atkinson has rejected its publication.

Just who the hell does this guy think he is?

Not-So-Invisible Hands

In a move that has stunned journalists who know nothing about basic economics, house prices have jumped in the wake of the Government's increase to the first home-owner's grant.

What's really funny is that this was precisely the Government's intention in the first place. They want house prices to go up. That's what K-Rudd means when he talks about "growth in the housing sector".

At least I'm pretty sure that's what he means. It certainly doesn't mean building more houses.

We're coming off the end of one of the longest housing booms in history, and people are conditioned to see the value of their house as a measure of economic health.

What they don't seem to realise is that the economy's temperature is being taken rectally, and the thermometer is being artificially heated by a systemic colonic imbalance in supply and demand.

Prices are high because there just aren't enough houses.

A nice fibrous diet of more houses in the system would clean things out, but it would also end up very messy. K-Rudd knows this. So for the moment, he's decided it's better to stoke the fires.

Obama/Biden/McCain/Palin = ?

There's a sensational new meme over at Fark, in which people can elegantly express, in simple visual terms, their thoughts on the US presidential and vice-presidential candidates.

This one's my favourite:


But of course I've also gone ahead and made my own:

Bias? What Bias?

Two headlines in today's papers, both reporting exactly the same story:

In The Age:

Rudd flags rescue plan for economy

and in the Murdoch papers:

Cash thrown at economic woes.

Sigh. I thought this sort of shit went out with Howard. Apparently not.

Still, please note the number of left-leaning readers not lining up to blast Murdoch employees with accusations of nefarious and politically-motivated bias.

Closing Hospitals in the Name of God

In a staggeringly arrogant move, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart has threatened to close Catholic-run hospitals if proposed changes to abortion laws in Victoria are passed.

His position is that Catholic employees would be required to perform abortions and they couldn't possibly do that in good conscience and maintain their religious freedom and blah blah blah.

Please.

I'll leave aside the rightness-or-otherwise of the proposed changes, and I won't dwell on the fact that not all employees of Catholic hospitals are necessarily Catholic, and just say that this beautifully illustrates the danger of allowing essential services to be hijacked by religious interests.

Churches have long made a habit of attaching themselves to charitable enterprises. This is partly out of a genuine desire to do good works, and partly out of a genuine desire to promote their brand . . . much like a Hollywood celebrity being photographed holding a starving African child.

But like the child being unceremoniously dropped when the next $20m pay packet comes up, the charity will always come second to maintaining the Church's perceived moral authority.

So good works are done and people are helped. It's all well and good until they start believing their own publicity.

Case in point: Mr. Hart seems to think that if he makes good on his threat, medical services will suffer because surely nobody other than Catholics would have the social conscience needed to run a hospital.

Doesn't he realise there'll be a huge line of providers ready and willing to immediately step into the breach? There's lots of money in medicine.

But of course he knows that.

After all, that's the other reason the Church got into it in the first place.

Michael Palin for President

Well, I'm convinced.

An Innocent Russia Writhed

St. Paul's Cathedral. Flinders Street.

One of the final events of this year's Melbourne Writer's Festival was a reading this afternoon of works by Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.

Akhmatova lived through some of the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century: the Russian revolution, two world wars, the rise of the communist state and the awful tyranny that accompanied it. These were the times that unalterably shaped the political landscape of Europe and the world.

Her poems were banned for many years by the Central Committee, and hearing their passion and power it's not surprising. They capture the feeling experienced by a people trapped by their history, and a people powerless to fight the forces arrayed against them.

But while her words reflect the despair for what has been lost, they also shine with the hope for what may be retrieved.

It's a celebration of the human spirit, best summed up in this beautiful piece read by Helen Garner.

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
Death's great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?

By day, from the surrounding woods,
cherries blow summer into town;
at night the deep transparent skies
glitter with new galaxies.

And the miraculous comes so close
to the ruined, dirty houses --
something not known to anyone at all,
but wild in our breast for centuries.

Anna Akhmatova, 1921

She said she'd never forget him . . .

Sue Jones-Davies, the actress who played Judith Iscariot in Monthy Python's 1979 classic The Life of Brian has been elected Mayor of the Welsh town of Aberystwyth.

One of her first acts as Mayor will be overturn the town's almost-30-year ban on, you guessed it, The Life of Brian.

I love this story, but there are two things about it that amaze me.

First, that there's somewhere in the Western world that still has a ban on this great movie, when all but the most one-eyed of religious leaders have conceded that it's not actually blasphemous, and

Second, that the citizens of this place, clearly a conservative backwater, have happily elected a woman as Mayor who's done a full-frontal nude scene.

But then again, maybe it's just because they haven't seen the movie.