Shock as British government says something sensible

Feòrag writes:

The British government has issued the promised guidelines for teaching creationism in school, and they make it perfectly clear that the only place it has is in the science curriculum is to explain why it’s not science.

One of the advantages of being a cynic is you can be pleasantly surprised when the powers that be get something right.

Lesbian sex on TV

BBC4 are putting out an adaptation of the novel Fanny Hill:

Fanny Hill, one of the most notorious novels of all time, which was banned in the UK in 1749 and in the USA in 1821 has been adapted for a new two part TV adaptation on BBC4 by Andrew Davies, the BAFTA award winning dramatist of Bleak House and Pride and Prejudice.

The Daily Telegraph describe what sounds like a very “interesting” program:

Within the opening 10 minutes, the 15-year-old Fanny, played by the 22-year-old unknown Rebecca Night, is being seduced by a woman in a brothel.

In other scenes Fanny is shown naked, losing her virginity and fighting off a rapist. Fanny and several of the other female characters appear topless during the drama and scenes of orgies that follow.

But not everyone’s impressed:

However, John Beyer, the director of Mediawatch-UK, the viewers’ watchdog, last night accused the BBC of investing in sleaze so it could raise the profile of BBC4, the digital channel on which the programme will be screened.

And what’s wrong with sleaze on TV, if that’s what people want to watch? BBC stands for British Broadcasting Corporation, and if a particular program gets high ratings, it’s because that’s what British people like to watch. If Beyer doesn’t approve of the tastes of British people, he’s welcome to fuck off out of our country. Personally I think it’s absolutely disgusting the amount of filth, depravity and lesbian sex on TV; there’s nowhere near enough.

MediaWatch-UK — motto “Spoiling everyone’s fun since 1965″ — can’t be found at http://www.mediawatch.org.uk/

Religion and academia

From David Bernstein:

Outrageous, If True: According to the Columbia Spectator, Barnard religion professor Alan Segal was asked by the university to provide a list of archeology experts to comment on the controversial tenure case of Nadia Abu El-Haj’s tenure–archeologists who “preferably” were not Jewish. Segal quite properly refused, noting that religion “has nothing to do with what you say as a professional.”

El-Haj’s “scholarly” work is premised on the idea that Jewish Israeli archeologists invented evidence of ancient Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel to justify Zionist claims to the land. Besides the issue of discrimination, which would be unthinkable in any other context related to any other group, the request to Segal seems like an implicit endorsement of her thesis, that Jewish archeologists cannot be trusted to be objective in their work related to Israel (which makes one wonder why the university would trust El-Haj, of Palestinian Arab origin, to be objective).

James Miller replies thus:

If I were Nadia Abu El-Haj I would prefer, all else being equal, that Jewish people not be among those evaluating my scholarship for tenure. So as not to be accused of anti-Semitism let me say that my mother and wife (although not my father or myself) are Jewish. But based on my experience, Jewish people on average have a far more positive view towards Israel than non-Jewish people do. El-Haj’s scholarship directly attacks Israel and so on average I would suspect that her scholarship would get a more favorable review from non-Jewish than Jewish archeologists.

In a world without bias the religion of El-Haj’s reviewers wouldn’t matter. But we don’t live in such a world. Given that this bias exists, it is rational to try to minimize the harm it might cause El-Haj.

Imagine that El-Haj’s research consisted of archeological evidence that she tried to use to disprove the historical accuracy of parts of the Koran. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to try to avoid Islamic reviewers for her tenure case?

Religious beliefs often cause people to be bias towards those who attack such beliefs. To deny this, or to assume that college professors are too professional to allow such bias to influence them, is silly.

Religious people are often biased towards their religion — almost always so. Academic scholarship, such as archeology, is (or should be) about analysing and collating facts about something and then dispassionately drawing conclusions from these facts.

Religion doesn’t work like that: people have religious beliefs either because they were brought up with them, or they converted to a religion. The first reason is an absurd reason to believe anything; if someone said that they believed that the number of prime numbers was finite, and they believed it because their father and his forefathers had believed that, we’d laugh at them. And the second reason is little better: to believe in something because you want it to be true, i.e. because it gives you some emotional satisfaction, is ludicrous; if an archeologist said they believed they’d found the tomb of King Arthur, on the grounds that they have an emotional attachment to Arthurian legend, people would be incredulous.

So religion can best be thought of as a form of diseased thinking, and religious ways of thinking are thus at odds with what academic ways of thinking ought to be. It may be that a religious person is capable of thinking rationally on subjects outside their religion, but on subjects close to their religion, they probably won’t be.

As well as religious bias, someone might have nationalistic bias towards their country. (Nationalistic bias is similar to religious bias, but differs in one respect: countries exist, and God does not. Religious people are in the business of building intellectual superstructures around an entity that doesn’t exist.)

There are many parts of the world where history is a matter of current political controversy — Israel is one of those places — and as James Miller says it’s silly to expect people with religious or nationalist sentiments to be unbiased when evaluating data relating to such history.

Why network neutrality is necessary

It’s been argued that network neutrality is necessary to prevent ISPs from abusing theri power, particularly if they are the only ISP servicing a particular area. AT&T illustrates why network neutrality is important, in their terms of service, which mandate that they can cut off a user’s account should the user criticise them:

AT&T’s new Terms of Service give AT&T the right to suspend your account and all service “for conduct that AT&T believes”…”(c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.”

Livejournal feed

For readers of Amused Cynicism who use Livejournal, may I point out that this blog has a livejournal feed: cabalamat2.

The UK Dependence Party?

Richard North thinks Britain should buy into US military satellites:

It was just over two years ago that we pick up a report on how president Bush had issued a decree changing US national disclosure policy, upgrading Australia to the highest rank of intelligence partner that the US has in the world.

This unprecedented move brought Australia’s status into line with Britain, hitherto the only other country to have such a privileged relationship with the US, and vastly expanded the quantity and quality of US intelligence Australian agencies received.

Now, there is a indication of how that relationship is maturing and developing with an announcement recorded by Reuters (via Defence Talk) that Australia is considering whether to join the advanced US military WGS communications satellite network.

The news came originally from an executive of Boeing Co., who said that the Australian government was prepared to foot part of the bill for expanding the system of five satellites. The constellation is due to be fully operational by 2012 and, w With Australia helping to fund a sixth satellite in the system, it would get full access to the whole of the network, enhancing two-way wartime communications with the United States and increasing the system’s coverage and capacity world-wide.his makes an interesting contrast to Britain, which has gone it alone with the development of its Skynet 5 network of three satellites, a PFI deal fronted by Paradigm, a subsidiary of European aerospace company, EADS Astrium.

And, while the that deal was originally slated at £2.5 billion – with the contract running to 2018 – it has now increased to £3.6 billion after the MoD was “ripped off” to the tune of £822 million by Paradigm. The Australians, on the other hand, are looking only to a share of the less than £1 billion ($1.8 billion) cost of a sixth satellite.

Much has been made of the weakening of the special relationship on this blog and the (partial) realignment of British defence policy with Europe, and the fact that Britain went it alone, but with a European commercial partner, on the Skynet project cannot be construed as strengthening it.

However, such independence – as opposed to Blair’s “poodle” stance with president Bush – is often seen as a sign of strength. One does wonder though. We end up with a less capable system, costing more and running into obsolescence earlier, and lose the advantages of a closer partnership with the greatest military power on earth.

The problem with this, of course, is that Britain would, for the lifetime of the satellite, be dependent on the the goodwill of the USA, who could at any time cut our connection to it if we dared to have any foreign policies that the USA didn’t like. Given that the whole point of national defence is to ensure Britain’s independence — i.e. to ensure that foreigners can’t push us around — this would not be a good use of money.

But Richard North wants foreigners to be able to push us around — provided those foreigners are the US government. He’d be happy for Gordon Brown (and his successors) to grovel before George Bush (and his successors). Perhaps North should start his own political party, pushing for this policy — he could call it the United Kingdom Dependence Party.

(For those who don’t get the joke, Richard North is a former member of UKIP who writes a blog called “EU Referendum” which is virulently opposed to the EU, regarding it as an intrusion on Britain’s independence.)

Religion as child abuse

From New Humanist:

Richard Dawkins’ description of religion as child abuse riled a lot of people, but it’d be hard to view dressing children in this delightful range of clothing as anything else.

Sold on Amazon, the T-shirts carry the slogan “If you miss the Rapture, where in Hell will you go?”. They’re available in both adult and children’s sizes, and there’s even a baby grow version for parents who want to indoctrinate tots with the fear of God from the moment they enter the world.

On heroes in education

Alex Taborrok on heroes in education:

You know the plot. Young, idealistic teacher goes to inner-city high school. Said idealistic teacher is shocked by students who don’t know the basics and who are too preoccupied with the burdens of violence, poverty and indifference to want to learn. But the hero perseveres and at great personal sacrifice wins over the students using innovative teaching methods and heart. The kids go on to win the state spelling/chess/mathematics championship. c.f. Stand and Deliver, Freedom Writers, Dangerous Minds etc.

We are supposed to be uplifted by these stories but they depress me. If it takes a hero to save an inner city school then there is no hope. Heroes are not replicable.

What we need to save inner-city schools, and poor schools everywhere, is a method that works when the teachers aren’t heroes. Even better if the method works when teachers are ordinary people, poorly paid and ill-motivated – i.e. the system we have today.

I agree. The system needs to be set up so that it works, and that it has internal self-righting mechanisms when things go wrong. Then, no need to heroes or super-human efforts.

Could the Iraq War have been avoided?

Juan Cole points to an alledged transcript of a conversation between George Bush and then Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, which suggests that Saddam Hussein would have accepted exile if he got $1 billion and guarantees of safety, but Bush wasn’t prepared to accept those terms.

The Iraq War is beyond parody

From Blood and Treasure:

US soldiers are luring Iraqis to their deaths by scattering military equipment on the ground as “bait”, and then shooting those who pick them up, it has been alleged at a court martial.

… Capt Didier, of the 1st Battalion 501st Infantry Regiment, said members of the US military’s Asymmetric Warfare Group visited his unit in January and later supplied ammunition boxes filled with “drop items” to be used ” to disrupt the AIF [Anti-Iraq Forces] attempts at harming coalition forces and give us the upper hand in a fight.”

and:

A unit of Polish snipers seconded to first Fallujah had permission to shoot any adult male carrying a cellphone after 8pm on the basis that mobile phones are used as IED triggers.

Apparently the Poles claimed a hit rate of 80%, which may be down to the fact that someone ambling down the street chatting on a mobile is an easier target than most that snipers encounter.