Why Dont You Blog?

Well, it’s good news, in one sense. “Saudi king pardons rape victim” according to the BBC.

You read that correctly. The headline did indeed say victim, not perpetrator.

The Saudi king has pardoned a female rape victim sentenced to jail and 200 lashes for being alone with a man raped in the same attack, reports say.

This man and woman were in a car when they were abducted and raped by seven men.

The “Qatif girl” case caused an international outcry with widespread criticism of the Saudi justice system

The words “laughably named” could fit snugly in that sentence between Saudi and justice.

The less “good news” aspects of this story are that the halfway-sane outcome is only the result of pressure from the west and that the pardon does not imply that there was any error on the court’s decision. There is no reason to assume that such sentences won’t be passed in the future.

The custodial sentence plus 200 lashes was imposed after the woman, who has not been named, appealed against an earlier sentence of 90 lashes.

She dared to appeal. Her sentence was more than doubled. The man - who you will note was also raped - was also sentenced to 90 lashes. The BBC doesn’t know if he was “pardoned” too and I wouldn’t hold out much hope on this showing.

The pardon was said not to imply any criticism of the sentence. It was just supposed to be the King expressing some seasonal goodwill for Eid al-Adha. Well done, your highness. According to the BBC, he’s been criticised on some conservative websites for the pardon, which is seen as kowtowing to the west. Words fail.

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Someone had to do it, it might as well be me..

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I was going to avoid the topic of how recent research identified hardly any one knew the biblical stories any more. Heather has covered it, as has Psycho Atheist. Both of these posts pretty much hammer every point I could think of making on this. Until today, that is.

Today, as I was driving around the freezing, wet, countryside, I was listening to BBC Local Radio. There was some weird discussion (I missed the start of it, so was a bit lost), but it basically boiled down to some lunatics ranting (and I mean they sounded like froth was coming out of their mouths they were so angry) about what a disgrace it was. The general consensus was that this loss of nativity teaching was leading to a complete breakdown of our society.

This did get me thinking a bit. I like history, and historical stories, as much (if not more) than the next person (unless that person is Alun) so I think it is a shame people do not know historical details. That said, there is a much larger gap in the knowledge than this tiny Christian questionnaire shows. To remind you, the questions asked were:

1. According to the Christian Bible story where was Jesus born?
2. Who told Mary she would give birth to a son?
3. Who was Jesus’ cousin?
4. Where did Joseph, Mary and Jesus go to escape King Herod?

Ok, I have to admit, I had to double check who Jeebus’ cousin was. Shame on me. However, in my defence, this is not a history of my culture. In the modern ages we place a lot of emphasis on people tracing their roots and learning their own cultural history, so as far as I am concerned this is as alien to me as if the questionnaire was about the Jade Emperor. Despite the nonsense I heard on the radio, one caller actually said “like it or not, we are a Christian nation and our children should learn the facts about Christianity” (I suspect he is unaware of the term “ironic”), I live in a Northern European with a celtic-slavic population. With that in mind, I wonder how many people know the proper history about their own culture. If I did a survey of people in the street with the following questions, how many would answer ANY correctly?

1. What tribe was Beowulf from?
2. Where did the Scot tribe come from?
3. Who was Fenrir’s Father?
4. Where does Heimdal stand guard?

I suspect there will be less than 1 in 3 of the population who can get those correct (at least without resorting to Wiki / Google searches).

If we want to teach our children myths, teach them ones which are interesting a relevant to their culture. If we want them to learn “real” history, then teach them the real history not the biblical variant.

Popularity: 12% [?]

In a spirit of mid-winter-solstice charity, I decided to take seriously the claim on
worldnet daily that there is an amazing pill that can unblock your arteries. It must be an advert, although you’d have to be a really regular devotee of the site to detect that from the index page. The relevant page is labelled “Breaking Health News“on the homepage so I’m treating it as an item of news.

(It’s not as if anyone would ever dream of accusing the likes of worldnet daily advertisers of preying on the fears of the gullible and sick to make a quick buck.)

The 23-Cent LIFE-SAVER Heart Surgeons NEVER TELL YOU ABOUT!
The astonishing health miracle 1.5 million grateful patients swear by…
So safe, it’s FDA-APPROVED for use in baby food: Proven THREE TIMES SAFER than aspirin—used worldwide for 56 years without any significant side-effects ever reported!
So effective, you can actually SEE it working: medical studies prove it works and U.S. doctors prescribe it every day!
So cheap, it’s JUST PENNIES A DAY: Just 23 cents per capsule—one-tenth the cost of a gallon of gas!

The testimonials suggest we are the presence of a miracle cure. Arteries cleared. Heart surgery avoided. Blood pressure normalised. Breathing problems sorted out. Ankles unswollen. Eyesight improved. Liver spots disappeared. Paralysis cured, even.

Naturally, I think ‘As they said on the Simpsons, “Where can we get these placebos?”‘

There is a substance that safely unblocks arteries and it’s been known for 56 years? Why is there still any arterial disease then?

Because heart surgeons won’t tell you about it? Those skeptical science-y types spoil everything… Surely that’s not because it doesn’t work? That would be unthinkable. I mean it’s advertised on a site as reputable as worldnet daily. (Snurk)

Or, is worldnet daily suggesting that surgeons’ greed is stopping patients from getting a safe and cheap treatment? Blimey, they’ll be arguing for socialised medicine next! But “doctors prescribe it every day.” (That must be regular doctors, not those greedy heart surgeons, then.)

It is a chemical called EDTA. Wikipedia puts a mild dampener on the enthusiasm. Among many other uses, it’s an industrial solvent, a water softener and a fertiliser. It’s used to clean bottles and it’s put in soft drinks to mitigate the formation of benzene. (Argh, benzene in soft drinks?) European and US rivers are awash with it apparently. It appears to be not exactly 100% safe either.

There’s even an odd, if intriguing, celeb scandal connection mentioned in the Wiki page:

EDTA played a role in the O.J. Simpson trial when one of the blood samples collected from Simpson’s estate was found to contain traces of the compound. This was used by the defense to indicate that the sample had been planted from one of the vials collected during the investigation. Prosecution claimed EDTA might have appeared in the sample as a result of eating McDonald’s foods ….

Wikipedia describes the uses proposed by the wingnut site advert as “theoretical.” A Cochrane Collection review of the studies, as reported in Medscape, found no evidence of any effects in all but one study of it. The other one (involving 10 people) was stopped when the results showed an effect. (Uh? Don’t ask me. I just blog this stuff.)

At present, there is insufficient evidence to decide on the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of chelation therapy in improving clinical outcomes of people with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.

Compared to swallowing whole the whole worldnet daily message, swallowing mostly harmless pills is pretty small beer. Not to mention swallowing the line that you can get a load of free gifts to keep even if you send the stuff back as not working.

So, how much do they charge for this widely available industrial solvent? (Which seems to be so freely used that it’s a wonder there’s anyone left with plaque in their arteries)

BEST VALUE: A full year of Enhanced Oral Chelation™™ for just $239.40. I SAVE $120.00 and get all 7 FREE gifts:
4 FREE bottles of Mineral Power!™ (a $79.80 value)
NO MORE SNEAK ATTACKS! (a $19.95 value)
DE-GUNK YOUR ARTERIES FOR LIFE! (a $19.95 value)
FREE SHIPPING AND HANDLING
$246.65 worth of discounts and FREE gifts in all!

Bloody hell! It costs $246.65 for 4 bottles of a mineral supplement, a couple of leaflets and some money-off coupons!

And what happened to the “$126.65 value, FREE!” they were shouting about earlier in the page? Were the leaflets affected by the rise in oil prices in the time between writing the page and setting up an order form? The numbers are so specific, they couldn’t have just pulled them out of the air could they?

*************
Pointless aside: Doesn’t chelation mean turning something into a turtle? Or a shell?

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Governments are supposed to have advisors and advisory committees for a reason. Otherwise, it’s like buying a satnav for your car but just driving in the opposite direction to the one it suggests.

The trouble is that governments haven’t had their thinking formed by a close reading of the “Emperor’s new clothes” story. They need to be surrounded by people who tell them their new suit is sumptuously sheer. Any courtier who dares to say, however diplomatically, “My liege, that whole subtle tailoring thing isn’t quite borne out by the evidence of the senses” becomes an ex-courtier pretty quickly.

The Home Affairs Committee of the House of Commons is not remotely impressed by the need for 42 days’ detention for terror suspects. The BBC reported that the committee “saw no evidence that there was a case for extending the pre-charge detention beyond 28 days.”

Committee chairman Keith Vaz said the committee recognised there was a “real and acute” threat from terrorism but said there was a danger Muslims could come to view detention as a form of internment…

Not just Muslims. It is clearly a form of internment, if you accept that “internment” is a euphemism for “locking up people without evidence, so as make martyrs of them and to turn people who culturally identify with them into enemies of the state.”

Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith was “unequivocal” in opposing the 42 day limit, when  interviewed in the Guardian on 6 December. He said “I thought it was wrong. I thought it was unnecessary and I believe these things are very important.”

Generally, the whole of informed opinion is pretty well clear on the issue. So, whose advice do you think the government will follow?

Or what about Bush? Fingar’s report, published last week, reached the conclusion that there was no evidence that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. How much ice does a professional intelligence report cut in terms of stopping the development of T.W.A.T. beta 3.1? Probably little enough, unfortunately. The very word “intelligence” probably sends a shudder down the spines of Bush and his associates.

Obviously, the whole point of being an Emperor is that you don’t need to listen to your stronger-willed and more honest advisers. You can just carry on with whatever nude modelling career your stylists suggest. It’s not as if your subjects have votes or anything…

Popularity: 9% [?]

Mort-ified* to hear that Terry Pratchett has the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease.

Some parts of his Discworld series are so funny that you can’t read them on public transport for fear of cackling uncontrollably and getting taken for a crazy person. (Maybe that’s just me.)

He is taking the Alzheimer’s news with the wise and witty touch you’d expect from him.

“I know it’s a very human thing to say ‘is there anything I can do’, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.”

He’s sold over 55 million books according to the BBC. That’s amazing. There was a Guardian interview with him once in which he complained mildly about librarians who told him that they were so pleased that so many teenagers liked his books, because they often sparked an interest in reading “real” books.

Books don’t get much “realler” than Pratchett’s best works.

Personally, I found his straight sci-fi dull, his kids’ books a bit twee, the spin-off books really irritating and the many Discworld fan-products just money-grubbing. (The Science of Discworld annoyed me no end - pop science around a discworld story that you couldn’t even follow because of having to pick it out from the gee-whizzy science stuck in by his collaborators.) I even find the cover illustrations crap, although as soon as I see one it sets off a Pavlovian dog response in me: “Must have that book. NOW.”

The books in the Discworld series can be sublime. The Discworld is like our world but in HDR. The characters are amazing. I have to stop there because I will end up sounding (even more) like the pseud’s guide to English Literature 101

The man is a genius. I hope some seriously high-end experts in brain chemistry get to work on him fast.

* Lame Pratchett pun. Sorry.

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I was trying to ignore this - partly because every post here seems to be turning out to be a crap version of some other atheist’s blog post and I never find out until I’ve posted. But, hoping that the Daily Mail Online is too distasteful for the more faint-hearted in the atheosphere, I’ll present this story.
The Daily Mail headline says:

Wife ‘cured’ by prayer can’t get benefits stopped because government computer doesn’t recognise miracles

….With the Government pledging to crack down on “sicknote Britain”, it seems remarkable the 56-year-old received more than £3,500 she did not even want.

(Stop sniggering at the back!!! Of course, she had to withdraw it………)

What? The government has a sceptical computer? And it’s forcing public money on Christians against their will?

The “story”: A woman got disability payments for 6 years after she had to stop working because of the damage to her “hip, pelvis and spine” (Maybe I’m being too pedantic, but aren’t these all more or less the same place?) She got better but didn’t tell the Social Security (/Department of Work and Pensions or whatever it’s called now.) Then she did. They said she needed confirmation from a doctor before they could stop her claim being processed. But now they have stopped it and she has to pay a few months’ money back.

Simple story. Twisted by the Daily Mail and the people involved into a piece of journalistic excrement that manages to claim evidence of a religious miracle, at the same time as insulting the government.

It’s a little out of character for the Daily Mail - the fearless scourge of the dole-scrounging workshy - to be putting a case that it’s somehow the fault of the government that someone claimed disability allowance when they weren’t disabled.

Was it the spirit of Christmas that prompted this surprising change of heart toward benefits claimants? No, it’s the spirit of Christianity or, at least, of one of its odder forms.

Her husband Stuart, 58, a pastor at Hooe Baptist Church, said that he prayed every day after the accident that God would “bring my wife back”.
The prayer seemed to be answered when his wife attended a Christian conference in January last year.
Within hours, Mrs Clarke was able to fold away her wheelchair and stop taking painkillers. When she realised she was permanently cured four months later, she contacted the Government’s Industrial Injury Department to put a stop to her benefits.
… But the department continued to give her £600 a month - and she ended up being paid £3,600 in incapacity benefits for a period when she was in perfect health.

Oh, so she has to pay back benefits to which she wasn’t entitled, then? (I assume her husband is working, unless it’s a voluntary pastor thing. So she probably wouldn’t have got social security benefit at all - which is a lot less than £600 a month if she wasn’t a permanent invalid. But I digress.)

Ignore the legal aspects or even the sequence of events that must have led to this story.

(Picture an embarrassed civil servant - who is trying to get out of a conversation with a woman who says “I’ve now been healed by a miracle” - saying “Oh good. I just need to see some confirmation from a doctor before I stop the computer payments.” Woman phones Daily Mail in horror.)

What about the confused and confusing theology here? The injury apparently had nothing to with god, (unless the deity wanted this couple to get some invalidity cheques and decided to injure her. Mysterious ways, etc…) But the healing itself came directly from their deity. Well, OK, not actually directly, as such. I mean, it took 6 bloody years to work. The pastor can’t be very good at it, can he? Or god just didn’t care.

She was healed after attending a service? Well, a matter of “hours” after attending a service. Granted there is no time too large to be considered a matter of hours, but I’ll take it this as meaning “a day or so.” He’s a pastor and this is the only service she’s attended in 6 and a half years? Seems unlikely. In fact, it seems unlikely that there are any times in their lives that aren’t a matter of hours removed from attendance at a service.

So, where is the miracle even supposed to be here? God had been too busy fixing the results of World’s Strongest Man competitions and Hollywood awards, that he forgot to take all his calls. But one day, he suddenly switched on his prayer-answerphone, heard the 6 year-old message and decided to do what this one pastor asked. (The selfish bugger could have prayed for world peace or dying babies or at least healing a few amputees, if it was going to work.)

A cynic might see it as the miracle of the new anti-Invalidity Benefit moves by the government - very much spurred by the Daily Mail and its ilk - which involve following fake physically disabled people and photographing them walking to the pub or even (in one recent case) running marathons. This sort of activity can cause great stress to mentally and physically ill people but that cuts no ice with the Daily Mail or its middle-England readers.

Miraculous healings seems to soften their hard taxpayers’ hearts indeed. Soften their heads too, it appears.

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Wow, yet another ursine soft toy with political implications, though this time it’s a teddy making a gentle point about how society has been changed by anti-immigration hysteria. Paddington, the star of the long-popular children’s book series gets hassled over his immigration status in the latest book by Michael Bond.

Michael Bond, the 81-year-old writer who created Britain’s favourite asylum seeker back in 1958, returns with his first novel-length collection of Paddington stories for 30 years, and the bear in the duffel coat is confronted with what his creator calls a “very different world”. (from the report in the Guardian)

The story is that the Peruvian-originating Paddington reports a loss to the police and gets into some trouble over his immigration status instead. All works out well in the end, of course. (Don’t have nightmares.)

Nice one, Michael Bond, for the gentle jab in the fake-furry underbelly of our paranoid society.

I will forbear (argh) from mentioning that the London Underground Railway Society is about to seize Michael Bond for the name he gave his creature. But be warned” Militant trainspotters can get really obsessed……

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Sponsored link (Well, I can dream……):
Gift for your Christian friends
Hold your own communion services at home and find it easier to suspend disbelief than if you’ve been handed a stale wafer and told it’s Jesus’ body.
Get the exact same amount of spiritual benefit that you’d get if you bought a Mary-faced pancake on e-bay, but you can get it fresh every day.

This is the best among the array of kitsch Christmas gifts on ship of fools, a self-mocking Christian website. It’s a a toast stamper for turning regular unholy toast into toast with Jesus’s image burned into it.

(I think this counts as both fair comment and free advertising, so bleh to any holy copyright lawyers.)

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Child “witches” are being beaten, tortured and abandoned in the Niger Delta, after the local evangelical pastor has pronounced them to be possessed, according to a story by Tracy McVeigh in the Guardian Unlimited.

This possession by a witch can be miraculously removed by the simple payment of money to the pastor. Is this making you puke yet? Just wait till you find out some of the details.

There is a video on the Guardian website. If you find the video too harrowing, there is a gallery of images with some explanations, although that’s not easy viewing either.

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