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.

Unsubscribe Me

… from the “War on Terror”.

(via Crooked Timber and The Virtual Stoa)

Emigration not necessarily bad

Chris Dillow says emigration is not necessarily bad for the development of poor countries, citing a study of Cape verde:

One of the apparently strongest arguments against immigration is wrong, according to this new paper.
The argument is that migration depresses the economic prospects of poor countries, as their brightest people leave.
But this isn’t true. The authors studied the determinants of education in Cape Verde, a country notable for having a large proportion of its natives living overseas – and, not uncoincidentally, a better economic performance than most African countries.
They found that emigration increased the human capital, and hence aggregate economic prospects, of the remaining population.
This is simply because youngsters get educated in the hope of emigrating.

Furthermore, these emigrants send home large amounts of money in remittances. The total amount sent in remittances worldwide in 2006 was $250 billion; for many countries this is larger than the amount of foreign aid and foreign direct investment they receive annually.

Three hundred and two (302)

That’s the number of blogs currently covering the story that Alisher Usmanov censored Craig Murray’s articles about him, which suggested that he isn’t a very nice person. (On the contrary, Mr Usmanov is in fact a very nice person, despite the fact that he is close to the brutal Uzbek dictator Islom Karimov).

The list is available over at Chicken Yoghurt …