Do you remember how people insisted that the gays were trying to ruin marriage? Well, they succeeded in Texas. When the people of Texas passed a 2005 constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage, those clever, clever gays somehow forced them to word it poorly enough that it might prohibit ALL marriage in the state, same-sex or otherwise:
The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that “marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.” But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:
“This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”
Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. But Radnofsky, who was a member of the powerhouse Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston for 27 years until retiring in 2006, says the wording of Subsection B effectively “eliminates marriage in Texas,” including common-law marriages.
Why, yes, I do believe that legal recognition of marriage is a legal status “identical or similar to marriage.” By definition.
How in the world did that slip by people? It’s a pretty big deal. They might need a new constitutional amendment to fix the problem.
It’s absolutely legal to stop recognizing civil marriages. The people (through the governmental processes) can decide what relationships to grant special recognition and benefits. They decided to stop granting benefits to any relationships. Kudos for leveling the playing field for all sexual orientations, Texas!
I’m guessing it’s not what the people of Texas thought they were agreeing to. Their best options are an activist judge and revising their governing document. Which idea do you think offends Texans more?
I spent the last week filling in for Daniel Florien at UnreasonableFaith. Writing just three posts a day gave me an appreciation for how much time Hemant and Dan put into their blogs, especially given that they have full-time (and then some) jobs. A round of applause is due.
If you don’t read UnreasonableFaith, you should go check it out. I had a few posts I particularly enjoyed writing, including one looking at vigilante justice in our cultural stories (Boondock Saints or Sinners) and one on the similarities between reported alien encounters and demon encounters (Aliens vs Demons).
I was hoping to pick up here at FriendlyAtheist where I left off at UnreasonableFaith: inviting everyone to add me as a friend on facebook and follow me on my nascent twitter account. I’ve been looking to get more involved in the nontheistic community – both online and in person (or IRL as young folks say.)
In that last post I also put up a picture of myself that I’ve been thinking about long time and finally got around to doing:
Jesse Galef reading The Portable Atheist while breakdancing
I figured The Portable Atheist is a fairly recognizable cover. Contrary to what some on facebook are insisting, the starbursts are just my reflective Newbalance logos. It is not God.
For those of you who don’t believe me, feel free to send money and I’ll send you more information – including pictures – of my hol(e)y shoes for you to worship.
Sorry for the lack of posting; I’ve been guest-blogging for Daniel Florien at UnreasonableFaith.com. Stop by and say hello!
I had a thought I wanted to share. In an earlier post here on FriendlyAtheist, I said that we’re not fighting against religious people, we’re fighting against the harmful memes that are infecting our society. Following the metaphor, critical thinking skills of various kinds build up a strong immune system against these mind viruses.
I started musing further in a post on UnreasonableFaith. Perhaps we can push the metaphor further: is satire a vaccine against mind viruses? Satire introduces a mostly harmless variation of craziness such that we can recognize the similarities in other forms of idiocy and resist them.
The satire has to be close enough to the real argument to be recognizable, obviously. Jon Stewart’s recent parody of Glenn Beck is a prefect example. The impersonation was definitely recognizable and Stewart exposed the faulty logical leaps and techniques that Beck is known to employ.
Some mind viruses are difficult to vaccinate against – we have trouble finding satire that doesn’t trigger the harmful effects in some people. For example, it can be too difficult to tell the difference between a satirist and a fundamentalist believer (see Poe’s Law).
Four weeks ago I let you know that I had been laid off from the Secular Coalition for America when they ‘restructured’. At Richard’s suggestion, I keep intending to put up a personal post discussing my job search. It’s more difficult than I expected. I love talking about ideas and issues but I’m more uncomfortable talking about myself. You would be amazed at how many times I’ve started to type something only to delete it 10 seconds later. Striking a balance between optimistic and bitter has been tough, both in my thoughts and in my many attempts to write.
Being unemployed has been… interesting. I spent the first evening getting drunk with my ex-coworkers and the second day hungover. Since then, my time has been spent looking for jobs, investigating political theory PhD programs, relaxing, and meeting new people in the DC atheist scene. I desperately needed a break, but it would be dishonest to say that I’m glad to no longer be working for the Secular Coalition. As upset as I am, I still support their mission and wish the organization success. Sometimes I have trouble reconciling those two emotions. I wonder if/how cognitive dissonance will set in…
In my understanding, happy and successful people rarely set out on a particular path and stayed on it their whole lives. We all get knocked off course and we are forced us to rethink our next step. A big part of success is dealing with that uncertainty and those unexpected events well.
A couple weeks ago, I received email from employees at Americans United for Separation of Church and State saying that they had an opening for a new Web Developer. They remembered liking me when I applied for a job in 2008 and thought they would pass the news along in case I was 1) interested 2) looking for work in the area and 3) had a computers background. Man, I sure must be luckyhave skills that contribute to fortuitous encounters. Not only am I looking for work and love Americans United, but I have a CS background and spent the last year in jobs heavy on web responsibilities.
I have a job interview with them later today (actually, I should be IN the interview by the time this post goes up). I think I have a strong resume and interview well, but at a certain point it’s out of my hands. Here’s hoping!
I’ll be going straight from the interview to New York, hoping to catch my sister’s talk at NerdNight NYC. There will be speed-dating with fellow nerds at 7PM for those interested, or you can just show up at 9PM for the NerdNight talks. If you’re in the city, you should come! You know this sounds interesting:
*Presentation #3 Aliens, Psychics and Ghosts, Oh My! Or, How Our Brains Fool Us Into Believing Strange Things
by Julia Galef
Description: Do you believe in ghosts? What about demons, witches, ESP, astrology, telekinesis, dowsing rods, homeopathy, alien abductions, or spirit planes? If you said ‘none of the above,’ you’re in the minority. Journalist Julia Galef draws upon probability theory, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience to explain why so many people believe in superstitions and the supernatural. She admits that this talk may involve a teensy-weensy bit of math, but hastens to add that there will also be demonic sex, and possibly an impression of a crazed pigeon.
Bio: A writer and editor with a degree in statistics from Columbia, Julia Galef is frequently consumed with a messianic urge to explain to people why their beliefs are irrational. To keep from annoying everyone, she usually just stuffs another cookie in her mouth. In 10 years she will either be the fearless leader of a rationality cult, or obese.
Yes, I love my family. Hope to see some of you there!
On style, Randi’s delivery is excellent – from his comedic timing to his facial expressions. On content, he provides a wonderful explanation for why we cannot empirically prove a negative – no amount of evidence and inductive reasoning will be enough to counter the infinite range of possible conditions and scenarios. Those claiming to be psychic can always claim that their psychic powers do not work when being tested by a skeptic – and we cannot prove otherwise!
You can’t just rest on your imagined laurels because I am unable to disprove the existence of a particular supernatural influence. Show me the evidence for your claim! Show me an amputee who regrows a limb, an individual who repeatedly knows the 10-digit numbers written in my desk, or a single reindeer who can fly.
If you ever wanted a find situation desperately in need of more skepticism (and who hasn’t?), look no further: The Iraqi army is spending $16,500 to $60,000 per dowsing rod and trying to use them to detect explosives. This foolishness is not only a vast waste of money for what is essentially a wobbly stick of metal, but it puts people’s lives in danger. Um… Iraq, you know the whole “security” thing? You’re doing it wrong. The rods are normally being used in place of physical inspections of vehicles and show no signs of working: (via PZ Myers)
The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of theMinistry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives.
Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”
The Justice Department has warned against buying a variety of products that claim to detect explosives at a distance with a portable device. Normal remote explosives detection machinery, often employed in airports, weighs tons and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. The ADE 651’s clients are mostly in developing countries; no major country’s military or police force is a customer, according to the manufacturer.
Whew, General Jabiri just cares about whether the wands work! I’m sure that as soon as things are explained, he’ll see the light of reason, righ–
“I don’t care about Sandia or the Department of Justice or any of them,” General Jabiri said. “I know more about this issue than the Americans do. In fact, I know more about bombs than anyone in the world.”
He attributed the decrease in bombings in Baghdad since 2007 to the use of the wands at checkpoints. American military officials credit the surge in American forces, as well as the Awakening movement, in which Iraqi insurgents turned against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, for the decrease.
Oh dear. Why bother with a sensible, naturalistic explanation when we can use unsubstantiated supernatural mumbo-jumbo? Oh, that’s right: because there are people counting on these devices to keep explosives off the street. I suppose bombings would go down if people believed the wands to work… but I wouldn’t want to pin my hopes on only having gullible enemies.
How can he possibly defend the use of unscientific nonsense?
Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.
Then the operator must walk in place a few moments to “charge” the device, since it has no battery or other power source, and walk with the wand at right angles to the body. If there are explosives or drugs to the operator’s left, the wand is supposed to swivel to the operator’s left and point at them.
If, as often happens, no explosives or weapons are found, the police may blame a false positive on other things found in the car, like perfume, air fresheners or gold fillings in the driver’s teeth.
The James Randi Educational Foundation gets a shoutout, which is nice to see because I first learned about the phenomenon by watching James Randi videos. The rods work by the Ideomotor Effect:
Enjoy the video and either laugh or cry, whatever helps you get by.
I just started my day with a dose of outrage. The notion of hell exists in many religions and denominations. If a person believed it to be torture and that his friends or family members would suffer eternally unless they converted, it makes sense for them to evangelize.
What a powerfully successful meme. What a sick, twisted, and fucked up belief system.
I almost blew a blood vessel watching the following bullshit. It’s a hypothetical letter from hell written by a teenager to his Christian friend describing the terrible agony and asking why he didn’t evangelize.
I refuse to watch it again to type up a transcript of any kind.
I used to think that John Stuart Mill was right that when ideas were freely exchanged the marketplace of ideas would eventually expose the truth and that people would come to know it for the truth. But then I started learning more about the flaws and weaknesses in human reasoning and perception. We’re extremely vulnerable to this kind of emotional manipulation, and it threatens to overwhelm our rational faculties. Being true is different from being convincing. I no longer trust that the truth will win out.
Talk about intellectual cowardice. This entire argument is a blatant appeal to emotion which should be dispelled by stopping to think for 10 seconds. But when you’re irrationally terrified, it’s hard to form rational thoughts. Too often, religion uses bad logical arguments slipped in the ‘emotional’ side door to our beliefs.
These are the memes we are up against. People believe it because they themselves have been affected by the meme. I give them credit for genuinely believing in the horror of hell and for – understandably – wanting their friends and family to avoid it.
We are not up against the people who believe; we are up against the memes that have infected society and are spreading irrational fear. It’ll be a tough struggle – we can’t overcome the inherent flaws in our evolved brains. But I for one think it’s a struggle worth having.
Even for those who don’t believe in luck, we know that some people feel luckier than others. Some people stumble across good jobs, good dates, and good opportunities for no discernible reason. What can you do to become luckier? According to this 2003 article I just came across, you listen to Richard Wiseman (who, by the way, has a great blog).
I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.
Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people’s ability to notice the unexpected.
…
My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
My one comment (besides, “isn’t that so interesting?”) would be that he didn’t mention the necessity of preparation. I imagine that if you prepare for a variety of circumstances, you’ll be able to get the best outcomes and seem lucky. Bad events won’t seem as unlucky and you’ll be ready to take full advantage of the good events.
Wiseman was even able to train people to become (feel) luckier!
I asked a group of lucky and unlucky volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck.
One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier. While lucky people became luckier, the unlucky had become lucky.
I’m reminded of a quote attributed to Niels Bohr. His friend noticed a horseshoe hanging above Bohr’s door and asked why he put it up, given that he didn’t believe in luck. Bohr replied, “I don’t believe in luck, but I hear it works even if you don’t believe.”
Having a “lucky” talisman can give people confidence – and thus lead to better results. It becomes a self-reinforcing and helpful belief. I might hesitate before bursting that bubble by arguing with them that luck doesn’t exist. But if “luck” is just a combination of learnable skills, we would be empowering people, not breaking a spell by alerting people to the fact.
I found this article fascinating. Of course, I always love it when we come up with rational reasons for things that we previously considered out of our control, but it’s particularly relevant to me right now. I’m in the process of looking for a new job (update on that soon) and trying to have a “resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good”.
Isn’t it “lucky” that I found this article when I did?
The late senator Kennedy used to be quite good on separation of church and state issues, but he had a weakness for helping Christian Science. Call me cynical if you like, but it might have to do with the fact that the Church of Christ, Scientist is based in Boston and has political clout. Now that John Kerry is the senior senator in Massachusetts, he’s taking over where Kennedy left off. The LATimes reports:
Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.
The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, home to the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments — which substitute for or supplement medical treatments — on the same footing as clinical medicine. While not mentioning the church by name, it would prohibit discrimination against “religious and spiritual healthcare.”
Yes, this is obviously nonsense. While I expected this of Hatch, Kerry typically gets it right. But don’t be disheartened! When I worked for the Secular Coalition, we were lobbying on this issue - as it turns out, there was some positive news on the House side last week:
The Secular Coalition for America is thrilled that the House of Representatives has decided to remove language found in all three draft bills that would require private and public plans to cover the spiritual care of individuals with religious objections to medical care.
Today the House released their version of the health care reform bill that did not include language requiring private and public health plans to cover spiritual care for any person. This “spiritual care” includes reimbursements for payments that Christian Scientists make to members of the Church who pray for them when they are ill.
So! Here’s where we stand: the offending provision will probably be in the final Senate bill – it has the cover of being a bipartisan effort and that chamber is less favorable to our issues. But it isn’t in the House versions. Before a full vote, it will be up to the party leadership to reconcile the versions – that’s where the real decision will be made.
There’s hope yet, although it would be nice if we didn’t have to keep fighting for minor victories in what is already supposed to be a secular government.
We humans are so intent on finding meaning in things that we have a tendency to find it even where none was intended. It’s what we call a false positive and it happens all the time. We often hear about people seeing the Jesus or the virgin Mary in a particular piece of toast, water stain, or IKEA bathroom woodwork. But we usually associate it with images, not words, making this story about Governor Schwarzenegger particularly valuable.
It turns out that Schwarzenegger sent a veto letter to the state legislature. This is nothing out of the ordinary and wouldn’t be worth my mentioning, so you must know that there’s more of the story to come. No, it’s the “secret message” that got attention – see if you can find it (image from the San Francisco Bay Guardian):
But wait — there’s a real message, an actual missive from the Gov to Tom, embedded in this text. And it’s not hard to find — in fact, it’s hard to believe it could have been a coincidence.
Read down the letters on the left side of the message
If you read along the left-most column and take the first letter of each line, you get “I fuck you”. This was seen as a dastardly and immature prank. But I’m betting that the odds of a ‘coincidence’ like this are higher than intuition suggests.
To be honest, I’m not particularly interested in whether of not the message was intended, but the story does raise an interesting question: how likely are we to find a “hidden message” where none was intended?
It’s absolutely possible that the message was deliberate – I certainly used to do that sort of thing in my English papers (I hated the classes and needed some creative way to keep the projects interesting). There are also other important factors – there was a feud between the governor and the politician in question, the wording is stilted, etc. But as it stands, I’m not willing to rule out the null hypothesis (a hilarious coincidence) quite yet.
It looks like Brad Johnson at the Wonk Room tried the kind of analysis I was envisioning. He says the odds of that particular phrase are about 1 in a trillion, taking into account the likelihood of different letters being the start of each word.
Now, the likelihood that some phrase would be spelled out? Ignoring letter distribution, there’s about a 0.3% chance any four letter string is a common English word, and a 3% chance any three letter string is a common English word. The specific likelihood of the words “soap” and “poet” appearing, for example, given the Schwarzenegger speeches, is one in 100,000 — much greater than the one in 10 million shot of “fuck” appearing.
As letter distribution would make the appearance of common words more likely (e.g. “teas”), the probability of some two-word combination appearing is on the order of two percent. The likelihood of it making any sense, of course, is smaller. A more accurate estimation is left to the reader.
Good to see there are fellow nerds in the world interested in spending time on the question! But what’s missing from Brad’s analysis is the possibility of messages hidden other ways – we would be similarly remarking had the message been at the end of each line instead of the beginning. Or had the message been in the first letter of consecutive words. Or the last letter of consecutive words. Or in another language. Or backwards. This would surely increase the potential for “hidden” messages dramatically.
I should see how often “hidden messages” appear in the Bible.
This is a job for Python! Quick – to the bat-computer lab!
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I had a thought I wanted to share. In an 
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