If you find this image snazzy, be aware that you can wear it upon yourself by simply purchasing it from my crappy Cafepress store!  (There are higher quality versions at my store, as well.)  But moving on!

As we all know, combining the set of all “oxy” with all “morons” will give you “creation scientist”, which is so illogical a term that merely typing the word into Deep Blue will cause it to explode in frustration and subsequently play chess like a four year-old.  (Incidentally, this is how the great chess grandmaster finally  managed to beat the computer.)

Venn diagrams and other visualizations are so helpful in making logical relationships clear.  They are also a handy tool for mocking creationists.  (Perhaps my most famous comic mocking creationists is this well-worn diagram that insults creationists and republicans alike.)

Of course, the diagram is not perfect.  In reality, the set of all “morons” is arguably equivalent to the set of all “creation scientists”, if only because I would personally be reluctant to call someone a moron should they realize that evolution is true in a religious atmosphere that all too often encourages such stupidity.  I have also left off the set “clean”, which intersects with “oxy” to produce the subset “crappy daytime infomercials” and with the set “morons” to produce the subset “creation scientists who just bathed”.

Conquering the world is a difficult task, but it is a worthwhile goal for any aspiring evil genius. Now what is the most important part of conquering the world? Is it having really cool, high-ranking henchmen with weird physical deformities and absurd methods of attack involving thrown items of clothing? No. Is it devising elaborate, Rube Goldberg-type methods of killing potential heroes? No. The most important thing to have before setting out to conquer the world is lots and lots of underlings. You’ll need people to build your rockets, to transport your rockets, to clean your rockets, and to spell out the word “rocket” on the side of the rocket and maybe put some cool flame decals on it so everyone will know what it is. But where do you find these underlings? How does one come across people so eager and willing to aid in the destruction of their very own planet? Well, it isn’t easy to find them, but it can be done.

First of all, you have the find the most gullible people in the world. This can be done in a variety of ways. Start conversations on various topics, like the following:

*The moon landing was a hoax.

*Evolution is a lie.

*Homeopathy totally cures cancer.

If you find anyone agreeing with you, this person is surely a gullible buffoon. Capture him in your net and take him to your secret headquarters. He may be suspicious at first, but you can put his mind at ease by throwing out phrases like “I am only kidnapping you to cure you of the quantum energy chi trapped in your DNA that can only be released through holistic, traditional chinese medicinal practices involving watered down trace elements,” “I am removing you from society because it’s all a conspiracy theory to cover up huge governmental black flag operations that everyone is in on except you,” or “Darwin said evolution was a lie on his deathbed, so I’m taking you to the great church of Jesus to build a rocket that will disprove evolution with Biblical science.”

Now normally you’d think you can stop here, but that is not the case. Some of these people will still not be stupid enough.  You have to put them into an environment that rewards stupid behavior and winnows out those showing signs of intelligence. Call it survival of the idiots.  Put the gullible candidates into a giant maze, and place a big hunk of cheese at the end of the maze. Inside the big hunk of cheese, place a giant, crazed robot with guns for arms that wields a chainsaw. Any candidates who reach the end of the maze should be eaten by the crazed robot for being too intelligent. Those still stuck in the maze, endlessly pushing against the doors that say “pull” in search of the exit are your new minions.

Don’t stop here. Though there are a lot of stupid people in the world, there are likely not enough for a good-sized army of minions. You need to breed them with each other. Then breed their children with each other, keeping the relationships incestuous as this will only encourage the proliferation of stupidity through the gene pool. After a few sexy generations of this, you’re ready to take over the world.  (Also, invent a cure for old age and death, so that you can live long enough to see this.)

Now, to build rockets, like any good evil genius!  Give your minions simple instructions using single-syllable words and easy to understand verbs like “go,” “do,” and “be”. Have them build, label, apply sweet flame decals to, and transport rockets. Shoot said rockets at various countries in demand of large sums of money. Show them images of your hordes of minions, using photoshop to edit out their glazed over stares and the pools of drool and saliva at their feet. The good thing about this is that as long as you are not a communist and encourage capitalism, western governments will work with you.  It also helps to have large resources of oil.

Congratulations! Now you can meet George Bush. But do not try to usurp George Bush’s army. He leads a whole country full of half-stupid creationist woo conspiracy theorist minions. You’re better off going up against France or Sweden.

Damn, who knew one of Obama’s speeches could make such a great song?!

Sure, it lacks any real substance or anything, but damn if it isn’t catchy.  If they put this up during the Super Bowl, Obama would instantly have about five billion votes, I think.  (Of course, at four minutes long, only Bill Gates could afford it.)  Hopefully he can pull it out against Hillary, and even more importantly, against the Republican candidate during the presidential election.

Last Thursday, ABC premiered the first episode of a quirky, moralising legal drama that is arguably the bastard child of Ally Mcbeal, Boston Legal, and a bunch of new age hippies.  Such a deformed monstrosity of a show could only be the mutated amalgam of three parents, eschewing the normal process of sexual intercourse to create new life by simply chopping off the worst aspects of each (not that new age hippies have any good aspects, mind) and haphazardly throwing these chunks together in a semi-coherent form.

I don’t hate the show just because I abhor the show’s blatant moralising in favor of idiotic new age bunk and “alternative” medicine, though.  No, even in spite of these faults, the show is just plain bad, even absent these affronts to my sensibilities.  The dialogue tries entirely too hard to be snappy and witty, coming across like that ass at your job who is always trying to make jokes and usually failing.  And its quirks are hardly endearing or entertaining.  Weird, unnecessary musical moments pop up for no apparent reason, often featuring washed-up, homosexual pop stars from the ’80s.  It’s like Ally Mcbeal’s infamous dancing baby, except somehow more irrelevant and hardly as memorable.  And don’t even get me started on the plot; it’s formulaic, predictable, and incredibly cheesy.  If the first episode is a sign of things to come, then viewers have good reason to tune out, and I suspect the large majority of viewers, like me, were only the residuals of Lost’s season priemer, which Eli Stone had the luck of following.  I’m saddened that I did not immediately change the channel.

Naturally, the show’s transparent new-age agenda is the one thing that really stirred up my gastric juices.  I can pardon a bad show, but I cannot and will not forgive a bad show that pushes insane bullshit as somehow factual.  Indeed, the first episode did not merely make one or two awkward endorsements of pseudoscience; instead the whole show is founded upon pseudoscience.  The premise of the show, for instance, revolves around the main character’s attempts to change the world as a “prophet” of God.  Apparently, having visions of George Michael makes one a prophet, now.  There is even a character on the show whose sole purpose is to dispense worthless new-age platitudes.  And, get this, the character is a practitioner of “alternative” chinese medicine.  That’s right, the show features the unholy trinity of woo: faith, antivaccination nonsense, and alternative medicine.  (I can already sense Orac’s head exploding in rage.)  The first episode appeals endlessly to the power of faith with the help of George Michael singing the song of the same name, foolishly advertises the long falsified claims of hysterical mothers that ingredients found in vaccines cause autism, and features the quack alternative medicine practitioner dispensing sage spiritual advice while poking him endlessly with needles.  Although, if I had to choose between being stabbed with needles and watching this tripe, I’d go with the needles, hands down.

The first episode is saturated with nonsense like this.  Ultimately, it relies less on substance and more on appeals to emotion (and blatant lies) to get its point across.  How can anyone root against Eli Stone when he helps the mother of an autistic boy to prevail against a towering legal firm and monolithic vaccine maker?  It doesn’t matter that Eli suffers from delusional hallucinations; that the mother doesn’t understand causality, medicine, or science; or that the cause they’ve decided to champion is ridiculous and unsupported by any evidence.  What matters is that the little guy won.  The delusional, idiotic, little guy.

At heart, the show is simply trying to convey that faith can prevail over science and “facts”, and so can alternative medicine.  Of course, no facts of any sort support the claims of alternative medicine practitioners or new-age gurus.  Alternative medicinal practices are just a method for impatient pseudo-doctors to pretend to be practicing medicine without the effort or accountability, and new age spirituality just takes all the worst reasoning of established religions and removes it from ritual.  Of course, Eli Stone ultimately fails to show that faith can transcend science.  By siding with the antivaccination crowd, the show has opened itself up for criticism based on the implications of this unthinking support, and Eli Stone unwittingly refutes its new-age, feel-good ideology by advocating such nonsense.  Authoritative and legitimate medical institutions like the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention universally recognize that vaccines are safe and effective.  What we find in Eli Stone is that faith does not trump reason.  Instead, faith leads to horrible injustices and the endorsement of idiotic, unproven claims that ultimately cause more harm than good.  Now we must fear for the mothers or potential mothers who watch this show and try to prevent their children from being vaccinated.  We must fear for those who will refuse modern medical treatment in favor of worthless and futile reliance on alternative medicine, medicine that doesn’t have to live up to reasonable safety standards, whose efficacy is unsupported by evidence, and whose side effects can be dangerous and deadly, particularly in relation to other drugs or overuse.  Eli Stone means well, but its faith causes more harm than good.  To paraphrase Steven Weinberg, Eli Stone proves once and for all that though good people do good things and bad people do evil things, it takes faith for good people to do evil things.

During all this political nonsense regarding the presidential primaries, an interesting concept has been floating through the blogosphere:  a science debate for the presidential candidates.

Of course, the idea doesn’t seem to have much mainstream support, and it is doubtful we’ll ever see our presidential hopefuls discussing legitimate scientific concerns within the next decade.  A good chunk of the Republican candidates, for instance, do not believe in evolution.  Even old internet money-bags himself, Ron Paul, has admitted that he doesn’t believe in evolution (as if his insane libertarianism wasn’t enough to disqualify him).  Of course, Paul is one of those “intelligent” idiots who deny evolution, and he played it off by remarking that it wasn’t relevant to his campaign for president.

But is that true?  Is Paul unaware that, of all scientific theories, the theory of evolution is one of the most politically charged, constantly coming up in school boards and likely headed for yet another court case in a number of places, most likely Florida?  Of course, with Paul’s hands-off style of government, and desire to dismantle beauracracies like the department of education, he presumably won’t have to worry about it.  That way, the federal courts can’t keep creationism out of schools, and the red states can teach creationism through state votes while the blue states can shake their heads and laugh at the declining scientific literacy of the red states, I guess.

Not only that, but belief in the theory of evolution is a good indicator of one’s scientific literacy.  Anyone who doubts the theory of evolution is unlikely to know the difference between a hypothesis, a theory, and an asshole.  They are less likely to take the advice of science advisors, or even appoint science advisors who are credible.  How are they going to deal with issues like stem-cells, global warming, and who knows what else without even the slightest hint of scientific understanding?

Paul and the evolution-deniers like him (here’s looking at you, Huckabee) can ramble all they want about the irrelevancy of scientific knowledge in politics, but they’re dead wrong.  Scientific issues are cropping up all the time, as I’ve shown with my examples above, and not only that, but basic scientific thinking should be a requirement of any rational person.  Science doesn’t just tell us about gravity and stars and whether balls will roll down an inclined plane.  Science is a method for arriving at knowledge.  Anyone who can’t come to a solid scientific conclusion thus has to have all of his beliefs called into credibility, because they may rest upon a faltering epistemic foundation, or warrantless assumptions.  If they can’t reason scientifically, there’s a good chance they don’t reason at all, or worse, they reason like a rationalist with his head in the clouds, capable of justifying any stance he wants so long as he assumes certain axioms…and no need to check any of that against reality as it is.  That would be too “scientific” and thus “irrelevant.”  This is why you don’t need legitimate evidence to start wars in Iraq.  Just get Colin Powell to talk about trucks driving around for an hour, appeal to everyone’s confirmation bias, and you’re set!

Indeed, how anyone can characterize a scientific debate as irrelevant is beyond me…especially when it is a known fact that candidates waste plenty of time spewing pointless platitutdes in talks and discussions devoted solely to faith.  Where Hillary Clinton can remark that she sometimes asks God to help her lose weight (try asking a treadmill) and John Edwards can try to mumble as quietly as possible how he doesn’t support gay marriages “personally” and Barack Obama can drone on and on and on about how we are a nation of believers and he is a believer and did he mention he’s a frickin’ believer?  As much as I like Obama, when you get him in front of a religious audience to speak about a religious topic his speeches are about as empty and void of reason as George Bush’s brain.

So they can’t talk about science because it’s “irrelevant,” but they can talk about faith for hours on end.  And not because it’s relevant, but because it’ll get you votes.  Which, I suppose, is totally “relevant” from their perspective, where the object is not to have the best policies you can manage, but to convince the average Joe Schmo to vote for you.

Searle’s “Chinese room” argument aside, most people intuitively deny that robots or computers could ever be capable of thought.  I believe that this comes from a flawed intuition that humans are somehow special, that mind-stuff is somehow more than neurons firing in our brain.  We can blame Descartes for this.  Mind-body dualism is perhaps the biggest obstacle that must be overcome before one can readily accept that thinking machines are indeed a possibility.

Perhaps the best way to overturn mind-body dualism is to simply look to empirical reality.  Is the mind really different from the brain?  You wouldn’t think so, judging from all sorts of observational evidence.  Cognition can instantly vanish, personalities can change, and any semblance of consciousness goes away should one’s brain be damaged in particular ways.  Indeed, neuroscientists have been able to induce emotions in people or prohibit certain cognitive functions just by stimulating areas of their brains.  To think that there is something extra there is unreasonable, when all the evidence shows us that we need not even posit anything else.

Then, of course, there’s all that evidence from biology.  The theory of evolution shows that we ultimately evolved from simpler, even mindless, organisms.  We can also see a progression of varying degrees of consciousness and thought, and varying sizes and complexities of brains.  To think that robots can’t think because they don’t have immaterial “soul-stuff” would be to deny that we evolved at all.  Otherwise, where did our soul-stuff come from?  Certainly not from the creatures we evolved from!  And yet, the evidence shows that we DID evolve from them.

Even more compelling is the evidence from robotics.  SHRDLU is a good example of an early experiment in AI.  The robot lived in a “block world” and could sense and manipulate a variety of blocks of different sizes, shapes, and colors.  You could, for instance, tell the robot to pick up a blue pyramid and put it on top of a green cube.  It also had memory and other skills mimicing primitive “thought”.  Certainly, SHRDLU’s intelligence is at least on par with digger wasps who “think” according to a strict plan.  If any step of the plan is somehow interefered with, the wasp will restart, over and over, even though it has already completed these tasks earlier.

Certainly, there is plenty of reason to think robots are in principle capable of thought.  Given enough time, computers will certainly be thinking just like we do, although probably in wildly different ways.  One way to accomplish this is to utilize the process of evolution.  If scientists are incapable of programming a certain action pre-planned, natural selection can possibly lead to the generation of thoughts.  Perhaps the most immediate objection is that “computers can only do what they are programmed to do,” but that’s not necessarily true.  In fact, it’s not true at all.  Pretty recently researchers have managed to evolve robots that communicate, despite not being programmed to communicate.

The story of these robots is very interesting.  They were originally programmed to perform random actions when sensing light, suching as lighting up or moving.  Then they were put into an evironment with selection pressures.  There were spots that charged batteries and spots that drained their batteries.  Those that “survived” best had their programs reinstalled with slight mutations, mimicing evolution.  And after only 50 generations, they had evolved a rudimentary system of communication, lighting up in a certain way to indicate a power source, and another way to indicate a power-draining source.  Interestingly, a wide variety of different sorts evolved.  In one of the communities, the robots evolved cheating, and they’d “lie” to the others by using the power signal over a power-draining area, and then hog the power areas for themselves!  Not only that, but altruistic robots also evolved, who were willing to have their power drained themselves to protect others.  And none of these robots were programmed to do so!

Like it or not, we will one day have thinking robots.  And, like it or not, these robots may even be liars and cheaters should they reach these cognitive levels.

Possummomma informs us of a rather hard to believe science fair project she came across.  The purpose of the kid’s project was to demonstrate whether Christians were more moral than nonchristians by asking them questions that define “morality” strictly in terms of fundamentalist Christianity.  For his next project, I guess he’ll do a project about whether Christians are idiots or not by defining idiocy in terms of belief in God.

Of course, the kid made his morality far too narrow-minded, as it turned out even the Christians didn’t live up to his morality standards!  So his conclusion is that EVERYONE needs to go to church more and read the Bible.  This made me wonder, of course, how the epitome of Christianity would perform on this morality test.  Let’s see Jesus’s responses!

Questions I will ask. There are 20 points available.
1. Have you ever spoke the name of our Lord in vain?  Well, that one time I was dying on the cross I kinda increduously cried out to God, asking him why he had forsaken me.  But I was on a fucking cross, man!  Can this be only a half point off?  Oh, and another time I did say, “Me damn it,” but I had just stubbed my toe.
2. Have you ever killed another human being? Unfortunately, because me and God are the same person, I sadly have to take credit for all those nasty murders, of which the worst is probably drowning the world, and a close second is probably killing off Job’s family just to settle a bet.
3. Have you every lied?  I did say I’d be back with Judgment day in the lifetimes of those who knew me, so I guess I might have fibbed there.
4. Have you ever had relations before marriage?  God damn it!  This trinity doctrine is killing me.  As Jesus, yeah, I never had any relations aside from getting off on my foot fetish by washing the feet of hookers and tax-men, but as God I may have fucked a virgin or two in the ear to produce the birth of the messiah, even in spite of the fact that the virgin was married to another dude.  Yeah, sorry about that, bro.  Of course, the really weird thing about that is that I’m my own dad.  Weird.
5. Do you go to church every Sunday or once a week?  Shit, you got me again.  The only time I go to the temple is to overturn the money lenders and the pigeon-sellers, even in spite of the fact that they were an essential part of worship at the time.
6. Do you wish you had more stuff? NO!  Hooray!  I can finally answer a question with a moral response!  In fact, I don’t think ANYONE should have ANY stuff, and if you DO have any stuff, you’re going to HELL forever!  Damn, it feels good to be moral!  Oh, wait…I guess I DO ask for tithes, even from ridiculously poor people, and I have demanded animal sacrifices in the past.  Does that count?  I mean, I’m God, I could use the money and the scorched lamb flesh.  In heaven it’s all clouds and rice cakes, for crying out loud.
7. Do you gossip?  No, not…oh, wait, I guess I did gossip about Judas a lot, and how he would betray me.  And I did talk a lot of shit about Peter denying me.
8. Do you give to charity?  No.  I don’t think anyone should have any possessions at all.  Poor people don’t need charity.  They need to stay poor, for they are blessed that way.
9. Do you listen to rap or heavy metal music?  Of course.  I am everywhere.  I hear everything.
10. Have you ever had an abortion or been pro-choice?  Technically I’ve never had an abortion, being male, but I have advocated dashing the heads of infants against rocks.  But that’s not abortion, that’s just good, old fashioned murder.  So I guess I’m good on this question!  Damn, but I guess I have been pro-choice.  After all, that whole “free will” thing is all about that.  Crap.
11. Have you ever read Harry Potter or Spiderwick Chronicles or the Golden Compass?  I see everything, and know everything, so of course I have!
12. Do you see movies with unwholesome content?  See above.
13. Do you pray every day?  No, I don’t have time.  I’m too busy answering all these inane prayers for new bikes and new cars from rich suburban kids, and too busy ignoring prayers for food and shelter from starving children in developing nations.
14. Do you believe that God is the creator of heaven and earth?  Of course, although I’m a bit confused about the order of the creation, depending upon which creation story in Genesis you read.
15. Are you overweight because you eat too much?  I am God, I weigh infinity.  But my height is also infinity.  I believe that puts me into a reasonable BMI.
16. Do you take pride in accomplishments other than service to God?  Of course.  Sometimes I take pride in my gambling skills.  I always win my bets with Satan, usually at someone else’s expsense.
17. Do you put God and Jesus first?  No, I don’t.  This is obvious because I myself am God, and yet I advocate turning the other cheek and otherwise putting your own interests last.  And if my own interests are God’s…well, you see where I’m going with this.
18. Do you view pornography?  Not only do I view pornography (I see everything, kid), but I also created it!  I was the very first voyeur, in fact.
19. Do you practice temperance in every thing you do?  No, sometimes I’m admittedly extreme in my treatment of others.  I mean, I’ll punish finite sins with infinite punishments, kill babies and encourage that whole cities be ravished just because they don’t worship me, and so on.  But I do love you.
20. Are you quick to anger?  I am a God of wrath, and I come not to bring peace but a sword.  Does that answer your question?

Well damn, it looks like Jesus failed the test.  If more than five questions are answered in the “immoral” way, you’re a damned, dirty sinner.  And Jesus only answered two out of the twenty correctly. He isn’t overweight, and he believes he created the universe! (Ironically, the kid weights the murder question the same as the “believes God created the universe” question…so feasibly if I believe all that other shit but have MURDERED someone I’m a pretty upstanding citizen.)

At any rate, this proves my scientific theory that Jesus was a douchebag.  This is a vindication for SCIENCE, once again proving that religion is bullshit!

Earlier in the week, I made the mistake of entering a debate with someone about the nature of racial slurs and other offensive words.  My argument was primarily linguistic.  I tried to argue that not everyone who uses a word like “nigger” is necessarily using it in a malicious manner.  The responses were predictably irate and unthinking.  I was told repeatedly that the word’s meaning is inherently offensive, and it could never be used in a non-malicious manner.

This struck me as odd.  Meaning is hardly static, and in fact the interpretation of words and phrases is notoriously fluid and far from absolute.  Take, for instance, the phrase “Would you mind shutting the window?”

Now, if someone wanted to argue that this phrase had an absolute meaning, they would probably settle for its normal usage in normal contexts.  It would be equivalent to a polite command or request for someone to close a window.  However, consider the following scenarios:

1.)  The phrase is uttered by someone in a windowless room while pointing at a door.  Obviously, in this case we wouldn’t interpret it in the “normal” sense and search fruitlessly for a window to close.  We would judge from his probably intentions and other context cues that he most likely wants the door closed, not the window.  Notice how intentions can inform and even override the normal social contexts of words.  (Indeed, considering people’s intentions is part of the social contexts of words, and claiming a word has absolute meaning despite intentions is to actually ignore a major social context of language interpretation.)

2.)  The phrase is uttered by someone as you are opening a window on a computer.  In this case, it is clear that the word “window” though spelled the same as that in the original phrase, is actually a completely different word, and refers to a program open on a computer screen, and shutting it means closing it or minimizing it.

3.)  The phrase is uttered by someone who wants your opinion on the opening and closing of windows.  Here, the person isn’t trying to make a demand or a request, but wants information about your state of mind.  He is seeking a “yes” or “no” answer as to whether you would mind, and doesn’t necessarily want you to close the window.

4.)  After laboriously opening a difficult window and you go over and then shut it, the phrase is uttered in a sort of snarky tone of voice.  Obviously, the sarcasm is meant to imply that they are requesting that you do NOT close the window, as they just exerted a lot of effort in opening it.

Now, why is it that such subtle uses of language, context, and intention can never be considered for offensive words?  Why would any other word, and even a whole sentence as indicated above, be subject to so many circumstances that can alter its meaning in a variety of ways, and yet a word like “nigger” or “fag” is absolutely set in stone and always offensive?

Perhaps the strangest argument, though, is what I call the “group-inclusive use” argument, wherein one can only use a racial slur if they are a member of that particular race.  Of course, there are all sorts of technical problems with this argument.  Half of my family is mexican, and half is german.  Does this mean I can only use half of a racial slur for mexicans?  Can I say “wet” or “back” but not “wetback”?  It’s the sorites dilemma for race relations!  If the theory of evolution predicts we all originated from a common ancestor who lived in Africa, aren’t we all African Americans?  At what point am I not?  What if, like a transgendered male, I’m a young white man who nevertheless identifies himself as an ethnic minority, despite my outward appearance?  Is it okay in that scenario?  The list goes on and on.

However, what upsets me most about this particular argument is that it espouses just the sort of racism it is meant to criticize.  For instance, when asked why white people cannot ever use a word like “nigger” in a positive context, the responder says that this is because throughout history white people have used the word offensively.

Think about that argument.  It is essentially an inductive argument, and can be laid bare like so:

1.  All white people who use the word “nigger” are using the word offensively because white people in the past have used the word offensively.

Now let’s take a look at an average inbred yokel’s racist justification for labelling all blacks as criminals,  “All black people are drug dealers!  Just the other day I saw the cops arresting a black person selling drugs!”  This can be rephrased:

2.  All black people are drug dealers because in the past black people have been drug dealers.

Notice that both arguments are essentially of the same logical form.  All x’s are y’s because some x’s have been y’s.  Now, it is clear that the argument is obviously not deductively valid.  It is also clear that both arguments are racial generalizations, because they try to apply a principle to all members of a racial group based upon the actions of a subset of that group.  All white people must be using a word offensively because a subset of white people in the past used the word offensively.

The interesting thing is that when I point out this blatant racist generalization, and show the people making this argument the implicit racism, it tends to make them really, really mad.  And really, that’s part of the point.  I do not truly think their argument really indicates they are racist, I am only applying their own absolutist condemnation to their own statements.  As I’ve noted above, I think a person’s intentions count for a lot, and it is clear that the people who use this argument have the best intentions and for some reason or other think they are fighting racism in making such an argument.  With that said, though, it is clear that they may harbor racist motivations of their own without even knowing it, even when they do not consider themselves racist.  It proves my point that we shouldn’t assume that offensive words are absolutes, as no part of language is absolute, because in doing so we may end up characterizing well-meaning people as racists.  I’m a strong people in putting people before words.  If there’s a possibility, given the context clues, that you aren’t trying to be offensive, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.  If you’re waving a confederate flag and shouting obscenities, on the other hand…

Of course, one way to avoid the criticism I’ve raised is to simply argue that ALL uses of the word “nigger” are offensive, regardless of the speaker’s skin color.  In that case, one would not be attributing meaning to a person based solely upon their ethnicity, and would avoid the criticism of generalizing based upon race–although they are still generalizing, I might add, because their linguistic absolutism seems to imply that because people in the past have used a word in an offensive manner, it must remain offensive for all.  So much for the subtlety and constant flux of language!

Still, though, people seem to think it is impossible to use a word like “nigger” in a manner that is not offensive.  Indeed, it is ironic that in the debate several of the people were asking me, “When is it EVER possible to use the word ‘nigger’ in a way that isn’t offensive?”  My immediate response is to say, “Why, in the way you just used it.  Referring to it as a word is obviously not the same as hurling the word at a person of color with a shout, fists clenched, and burning cross in the background.”  What amazed me is that, instead of conceding my point, she apologized and said that she was indeed a racist.  For referring to it as a word!

I think that sort of mindset is rather absurd.  Several of the commenters in the discussion who vehemently disagreed with me nevertheless pointed out that they’ve seen situations in which mixed-race peer groups have used the word “nigga” as a sign of friendship.  What is funny about this is not that no one in the peer group was offended, but that the white woman overhearing it was.  Indeed, I can think of countless situations where it wouldn’t be immediately evident that a person using the word is trying to be malicious.  If one is reading it from a book, or singing along to a rap song, for instance.  If someone doesn’t know the meaning of the word and is simply repeating it.  If someone is trying to use the word poetically or metaphorically in an artistic work about racism.  If someone is just trying to convey brotherhood or friendship…to say that all of these people in all of these situations are thereby racist is rather absurd.  The best bet in these situations is to think, “If I can replace the offensive word with a non-offensive synonym (like ‘friend’), then perhaps that is actually what he means by this word?”  You don’t have to be able to read minds, just contexts.

In fact, it’s not just absurd.  It trivializes the very notion of racism.  Imagine a white man who donats money to civil rights organizations, votes for politicians based upon their civil rights records, campaigns against racial hate crimes, and yet occasionally says the word “nigger” (but intends it to mean “friend”).  Now, it is obvious we would not consider this person racist if we removed that last attribute.  But if that single attribute, the fact that he uses a certain word, can render a person we’d normally consider abundantly non-racist a bigot, then aren’t we guilty of trivializing his racism?  When I think of racism, I think of those trying to deny rights to others, who see others as inferior, who see others as evil or bad…not simply as people who use certain sorts of language.  To equate the “racist” man I outlined above with a member of the KKK is like deciding to define “murder” as the swatting of flies, and then reviling a swatter of flies as equal in shame to Jeffrey Dahmer.

And the talk of “privilege” is what really gets me.  Now, I realize that privilege is a very real phenomenon.  A poor, black, disabled woman will almost always have less opportunity than a rich, able-bodied, white man.  The problem is that people use appeals to “privilege” as blankets for errors in reasoning.  If, for instance, I cannot accept the argument that only black people can use the word “nigger” because white people have used it as a slur in the past, it isn’t because I find the foundation of the argument racist in itself and logically invalid.  No, it’s because I come from a position of privilege and am incapable of understanding things from another perspective.  Now, this is really a very poor excuse for bad reasoning.  To think one must be a member of a particular group to fully understand that group is nonsensical.  Privilege isn’t just some sort of reified pedastal that applies uniformly to one class of a binary opposition, but is instead a product of a whole web of interrelated characteristics.  In general, a black person has less privilege than a white person, a poor person less than a rich person, but what about a rich black person compard with a poor white person?  I’m willing to bet thousands of dollars that a rich black man like Colin Powell has a hell of a lot more privilege than this straight, poor, half-mexican, atheist male.  Does that mean Colin Powell cannot possibly understand privilege?  Of course not.  He’s a black man.  I’m sure he’s been in situations where he’s been in a position of powerlessness.  To say he cannot understand straight, poor, half-mexican, atheist males like myself simply because he is not a poor, straight, half-mexican atheist dude is just a convenient way for me to avoid criticism from him.  It is a lot like the move theists make with atheists who are critiquing God’s existence when they claim that God is ineffable and unknowable and wholly removed from anything we could even attempt to address or understand.  It’s just an easy way to avoid criticism or a discussion.  In fact, it’s a form of privilege in itself.  Can’t they understand their position of privilege in these debates, that they have it so easy because they can just appeal mindlessly to this term instead of trying to put forth a reasonable argument?  Me, I have to scratch and work and think, but as soon as someone says “privilege” it’s over!

I understand that I am likely to take a lot of flak for this, because it seems the great majority of people conveniently become linguistic absolutists when it comes to offensive words, even in spite of the fact that they have been documented to change meaning.  Is there a cultural context where the phrase, “I’m going to kill you!” means you should fear for your life?  Of course.  But there is also a cultural context where you’d be foolish to fear for your life upon hearing the same phrase–if, for instance, I say it while laughing and smiling because you played a practical joke on me.  Why should we ignore these contexts, and subtleties like people’s actual intentions in using certain language, in favor of a bull-headed absolutism that ignores the people behind those words in a rather misguided attempt to villify them or portray them as insensitive bigots?

Am I a linguistic nihilist?  No.  I am not arguing that words mean whatever, whenever, with no rhyme or reason.  If I’m in a room without windows and ask if you’d mind shutting the window while pointing to an open door, you can infer from context clues that I want the door closed.  This does not mean that you can reasonably infer from context cues that what I really mean is “Grab me a bucket and feed me my own feces” when I ask you to close the window.  I’m not trying to appeal to some unknowable, Wittgensteinian private language, folks.  But neither am I a linguistic absolutist.  Words don’t mean one thing and one thing only, independent of other influences.  I fall somewhere in the middle, in the real world.  The world where “window” can conceivably mean “door” in the right contexts, but not necessarily “Feed me feces.”

Feel free to discuss in the comments, but please refrain from name-calling and rudeness.  I know from first-hand experience that those who campaign the loudest against using offensive language are the quickest to use it themselves!  (You can, of course, call me a piece of shit douchebag if your intentions are not malicious, naturally!  Sort of like the big-brotherish, arm around the shoulder, “How the fuck ya doin, fuckface?” thing you’re likely to get from your friends who are still in college.)

So, tell me how the fuck YOU doin’, fuckfaces.  Feel free to voice your disagreement.  I won’t bite.

Someone posted a horrifying video of a man dying from a heart attack on live TV in a livejournal community.  This is not news in itself, but some of the comments are absolutely insane.  Some of the people find the death somehow funny.  Even worse, some people think the death proves the existence of hell and souls.

Here’s the worst of the worst, though:

first thing i think is he’s headed to hell..i dunno, faces dont contort like that unless somethin serious bad is goin down.

[Source]

That’s right.  Anyone who so much as grimaces during a heart attack is clearly on his way to hell.  Someone should shoot this girl in the gut and find out if she smiles through it.  However, this does explain why Jesus was so happy and joyous and pretty much getting jiggy with it when he was being crucified.  Obviously, he wasn’t going to hell.

 This one is pretty lame, too:

Thats amazing. It looks as though his soul is actually just floating up and out of his body. He’s so lifelike one second then the next he’s dead. A great reminder that the body is just a container for the soul.

[Source]

This is evidence for the soul, apparently, because materialists predict that people who die should look lifelike one second and then continue looking lifelike even after they die, and well after they have rotted away, too.  And I don’t know about you, but I didn’t see anything floating out of anything.  It looked more like the guy’s heart stopped beating, which stopped blood flow to his body, which in turn caused various bodily functions to turn off…but hell, obviously this kind of thinking is wrong and the real explanation is that his soul is floating to hell.

It takes a fundamentalist to ruin a medical breakthrough.  Take, for instance, the recently developed HPV vaccine called Gardasil.  The vaccine protects against the most dangerous forms of HPV (the virus that causes genital warts).  It effectively nullifies the majority of strains that are likely to create cancer in women, and this is a good thing considering that statistics show that virtually 3 out of every 4 women will get HPV at some point in their lives.

But fundamentalists object to the vaccine for one very ridiculous reason:  They think that it encourages sexual promiscuity.  I guess, according to their reasoning, God put HPV on the Earth as a deterrent for people to be sluts, just as he put HIV on the Earth as a deterrent to be homosexual (nevermind that worldwide those at the greatest risk for infection are heterosexual females, and those with the least risk are lesbians).

I cannot comprehend such reasoning.  In essence, these people think the prevalence of cancer-causing viruses is good simply because it prevents people from having sex.  In their hierarchy of moral taxonomy, then, it would appear that having sex is a greater moral problem than, oh I don’t know, dying from fucking cancer.  It takes a truly depraved mind to worry more that females might be out having sex than worrying that they might contract a cancer-causing virus, even within the confines of a wholesome, Christian marriage.  Indeed, these same people who wield their Biblically justified screeds against natural sexual impulses would at the same time ignore the fact that Jesus himself spent much of his time healing the sick, curing lepers, and raising the dead.  This is a man who protected a whore from being stoned to death in the very book they consider holy.  And yet, still, helping to stop the spread of a cancer-causing virus is apparently not Biblical enough for these crazy fundamentalists, who seem to derive all of their morality from Old Testament injunctions against such heinous acts as having sex with members of the same sex, menstruating, wearing clothing composed of more than one material, and eating at Red Lobster.  One almost suspects them to start campaigning for prohibitions of dancing and hanging accused witches, their morality is so primitively puritan.

Having said that, I was awed last night by the genius of the marketing behind the Gardasil vaccine upon seeing a commercial for the drug.  Like any advertisement for a pharmaceutical product, it featured young, healthy-looking people running through fields and holding hands and shit, but what really struck me is that they did not market it as a vaccine against HPV.  Genital warts and the virus itself were not mentioned at all, in fact.  They touted the drug as a cancer preventative.  This is framing at its best, because, really, that’s exactly what the vaccine does!  It’s a lot more difficult for fundamentalists to object on puritanical grounds to a drug that prevents cancer than it is to object to a drug that is supposed to prevent a sexually transmitted disease and thus encourages harlots to enjoy perfectly natural functions outside the confines of a restrictive institution originally developed to treat women like a man’s personal property.

I can only wonder how the fundamentalists will react when the scientists finally cure AIDS.  “But think of all the homosexuals and subsaharan heathen women who will live as a result!” they’ll cry.  But there’s a perfectly natural solution.  The fundamentlists can simply refuse the cure for themselves whenever they get AIDS, because, after all, it must be God’s will.  And according to Michael Behe, God intelligently designed all those irreducibly complex viruses as part of his perfect, awe-inspiring plan to be a vindictive, assholish fascist.

In my recent spat of political posts lately, I was asked why I did not support Hillary Clinton.  I admit that I’ve been very critical of her, but I suppose I can admit she isn’t all that bad.  Still, I don’t like her for one very simple reason:  I don’t trust her not to start another war.

Now, the first indication that we shouldn’t trust her on such matters is the fact that she voted for the Iraq war.  She still has yet to repent for doing that.  Think about the justification that started the war.  It was built up on baseless charges that Iraq was trying to build up a nuclear program, and then bolstered by false claims that they harbored terrorists.

Hillary Clinton, though she claims to support peace, has raised several red flags concerning anticipatory war with Iran.  She recently voted to label Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, for one.  She has also said that it is absolutely unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and there has been a growing fervor about their nuclear capacities (which are really pretty much nil–but so were Iraq’s).  What we see is two of the huge reasons for Hillary to go to war with Iran.  These two issues–terrorism and nuclear weapons–predisposed her to vote for the war in Iraq.  It would seem, then, that she would only continue our wars in the region, even though she claims she will end the Iraq war.  I think this is a huge reason not to vote for her.

I’m also not a fan of her support of the “three strikes” rules for crime.  This is the sort of legislation that makes it possible for a man stealing a hundred dollars worth of DVDs to spend twenty years in prison because it happens to be his third crime.

In the end, I can begrudgingly agree with her on most issues, even if she would not go nearly far enough with them (as in her focus on rehabilitation for nonviolent drug users–but why not just end the pointless drug laws once and for all, instead?).  But the Iran issue really bothers me.  I also have my doubts that she can balance the budget.  Perhaps if they have another Republican congress to curtail her spending she can pull it off.  And if they have enough excess money in the Social Security fund.  But they’ll all be pleasantly surprised when the baby boomer contributions start to peter out.

Hillary is certainly an improvement over Mccain, Romney, or (shudders) Huckabee, but I’d still rather see Edwards or Obama beat her out.  Even better, I’d like to see Kucinich or Gravel, but we all know that’s not going to happen.