Vaccine Against A Hoax

I recently discovered that one can get vaccinated against a hoax.

Too bad that one cannot get vaccinated against stupidity.

It is amusing, isn't it?

Religious Liberty and Equality in the US

File this under "Be careful what you ask for, because you might just get it."

With people fighting to get the so-called "religious liberty" and the ability to discriminate by using their religious freedom as an excuse, along comes the Satanic Church that will demand their equal rights and freedom. Let's just see to what extent those who fought for religious liberty are willing to tolerate another religious wanting the same thing that they have.

In my book, these religious liberty is simply a smoke screen used as an excuse to exercise their bigotry, homophobia, and intolerance. After all, there are many other activity that are contrary to their religious beliefs that they tolerate. Anyone checking if those straight, heterosexual couple getting married have already had pre-marital sex with one another? Last time I checked, Christianity prohibits such a thing, yet no one seemed to have a problem baking a cake for those weddings.

Zz.

Donald Trump Undermines Marriage

OK, so we all know that Donald Trump can't keep getting married to just one woman. But it is highly amusing that he is also helping to destroy other marriages.

A new study is reporting that there is an increase in couples splitting up due to their disagreement over Donald Trump's policies and presidency.

The survey included 1,000 participants nationwide, and what it found isn't particularly shocking to those of us who had political squabbles with relatives over the holiday season. According to the results, 22 percent of Americans know a couple whose relationship has been negatively affected by Trump's election, while 24 percent of Americans who are in a relationship or married report that since Trump was elected president, "they and their partner have disagreed or argued about politics more than ever."

Whether intentional or not, the FACT of the matter here is that Trump presidency is causing the nation to disintegrate and fracture.

It is funny that many people make claims that gay marriages "undermine" traditional marriages, without offering any shred of evidence to back such claims. Yet, here we have clear evidence that Donald Trump is undermining and even destroying marriages.

Where are those proctecting-the-sanctity-of-marriages folks now?

Zz.

Travel Ban Would Not Have Stopped Previous Attacks

The claim by the Trump administration that the travel ban from these countries would make the US safer and would have prevented previous attacks is quite hollow. The Washington Post has an article that basically said that the current policy would not have stopped those attacks, because the attackers were either US citizens, permanent residents, or were not from one of those banned countries.

This is a table that summarizes the attacks by so-called Islamic extremists since 2001.

“The ban is less about national security and more about advancing a worldview based on religious and racial exclusion,” J.M. Berger, a fellow with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at The Hague and co-author of “ISIS: The State of Terror,” wrote in an email Sunday. “It’s not likely to make us safer, and it is far more likely to help our real enemies, ISIS and al-Qaeda. We don’t do ourselves any favors when we make their talking points into reality.”

So instead of making us safer, it has made us even more vulnerable.

Zz.

Happy Birthday, Fred Korematsu

Today, January 30, 2017, Google Doodle celebrates the birthday of activist Fred Korematsu, who fought the US government way back in 1942 on the internment of Japanese US citizens during World War II.

Korematsu refused to comply with the order and fled from his home in San Leandro, California to Oakland. Korematsu was soon captured and convicted, but he appealed the decision. Although the Supreme Court ruled against him 6-3, the decision was overturned in 1983.

In the original Supreme Court ruling, dissenting Justice Robert Jackson said that the only crime Korematsu committed was “being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born and where all his life he has lived.” Justice Frank Murphy called the executive order “legalization of racism.”

“It is the case of convicting a citizen as a punishment for not submitting to imprisonment in a concentration camp, based on his ancestry, and solely because of his ancestry, without evidence or inquiry concerning his loyalty and good disposition towards the United States,” they wrote. “If this be a correct statement of the facts disclosed by this record, and facts of which we take judicial notice, I need hardly labor the conclusion that Constitutional rights have been violated.”

And now, more than 70 years later, history is almost repeating itself, where whole groups of people are being persecuted not because they did anything wrong, but because they are assumed to already be guilty just simply for who they are.

Zz.

Fake News, Faith, And Reason

Whoa! An essay that conveys what I've been thinking of lately!

A dozen or so years ago, I was working on a profile of Zig Ziglar, the famous motivational speaker who died in 2012, and I went to hear him speak at his church in a suburb of Dallas. His topic, as a lay lecturer in adult Sunday school, was the threat of cults, and he began by mocking the creation myth of Scientology — the whole baroque science-fiction epic starting 4 quadrillion years ago and proceeding through the Galactic Overlord, the frozen thetans and the nuclear holocaust on a planet called Teegeeack.

“Now, I ask you,” he said, wrapping up his recitation, “how could any of this fool an intelligent, thinking man or woman who has read the first four chapters of Genesis?”

Well, yes, precisely. Scientology is incompatible with Christianity, or Judaism or Islam; you cannot by any stretch of reason believe in both. What went without saying, to Ziglar and to his audience that morning, was the logical superiority of a six-day Creation and a talking snake, and by extension the flood and the ark, the litany of biblical miracles and the Resurrection.

But from an agnostic standpoint, there’s no inherent reason to believe one account over the other. They are stories written in books that function as their own authority. People believe in the Bible as a matter of faith, because they accept its message of redemption, not because of empirical evidence or the inherent plausibility of the individual stories within it. This has been true as far back as Augustine, who held that faith and reason go together, but faith leads the way: “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” Or, in the more pungent formulation of Mark Twain, faith consists of “believing what you know ain’t so.”

Does that remind you of something transpiring in American society at this moment? Many Americans subscribe to conspiracy theories as preposterous as anything L. Ron Hubbard could have dreamt up, and — because they relate to current events and real living people — far more dangerous. Just in the past few days, a man shot up a Washington pizzeria, acting under the delusion that it was the headquarters of a child-sex ring involving Hillary Clinton, and a woman who believed that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a government hoax was arrested for making threats against the parents of a child who died there.

 Conspiracy theories exist across the political spectrum, but some of the most influential purveyors populate the far right, including the radio commentator Alex Jones, who has claimed that not just Sandy Hook but also the 9/11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing were “false flag” operations staged by the federal government as pretexts to expand its tyranny. And Jones has had as a guest on his show Donald Trump, whose campaign abandoned even the pretense of grounding statements in empirical fact. The unemployment rate was whatever he said it was — “probably 28, 29, as high as 35” — and Barack Obama was born in Africa right up until the moment it became expedient to say something else. 

Many of these absurd beliefs originate in “fake news,” clickbait posts whose authors may not even care if they are believed, as long as there are enough suckers out there to click on them. This has led to calls by media figures and other interested parties, Hillary Clinton among them, for a crackdown on the way social media sites abet the spread of nonsense. But the bigger question is, how could someone possibly believe that one of the most visible and recognizable figures in the world, surrounded at all times by aides and security, was sneaking into the basement of a pizza parlor to have sex with children? Who are those people?

By a wide margin, Trump was supported by (white) evangelical Christian voters. And in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of the few areas where he did well was the Orthodox and Hasidic enclave of Borough Park. Obviously, people supported Trump for all sorts of reasons, including some grounded in religious conviction, such as opposition to abortion, but also some that had nothing to do with faith. And, of course, many religious people voted the other way. But, to state the obvious, a precondition for believing, along with Jones, that Hillary Clinton is a literal demon from hell is a belief that demons and hell exist in the first place. It is much easier to ignore evidence about global warming if you believe, with Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., that Earth’s climate is controlled directly by God. More generally, is there something in the mindset of a religious believer — someone who accepts the reality of an unseen deity, based on ancient accounts of events with no parallel in everyday experience — that encourages the acceptance of unprovable claims in the realms of politics or science?

It’s not an easy question. Christians put Scripture in a separate epistemological category: It is the word of God, not subject to the same empirical testing as a weather forecast or an unemployment report. Some highly trained minds — Isaac Newton, for one, and Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian — have managed to maintain a strong Biblical faith while also rigorously pursuing objective truths about the natural world, but most of us don’t have the philosophical chops to pull it off. Conservative churches offer their believers certainty rather than ambiguity, and they attract congregants who are comfortable obeying, and exercising, authority.

 Brain-imaging studies show that doubt requires more mental effort than belief. Credulousness is the default setting for most people, most of the time. That is as true of crystal-gazing New Agers passing along posts about a conspiracy by Monsanto to control the world through genetically modified corn as it is of Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, an elder of the Erath County Cowboy Church, who passed along an unfounded rumor that Clinton had been endorsed by the Communist Party. Miller, who is reported to be under consideration for nomination as secretary of agriculture, told reporters he doesn’t care whether it’s true or not. 

So someone like Miller is essentially treating political discourse as a matter of faith. If your goal is to be saved, you don’t go around looking for logical holes in the Gospels; you leave that to the atheists. If your goal is to elect Republicans, you pass along anything that puts your opponent in a bad light and leave the fact-checking to the mainstream media.

But is that any way to run a country? Maybe it’s a time to reawaken our capacity for doubt, now when misinformation is more readily available and arguably more dangerous than ever before in history. Faith has a place in the lives of many people. But, per Augustine, it can no more stand alone than pure reason; a Christian must call on both to be strong in the world. That’s still good advice.

The problem also comes in when people can't tell the difference between speculative, unverified babble versus something with actual physical evidence. Talking heads on TV tend to ramble on and on about something, and often make guesses and speculation of a piece of news. But listeners often confuse or mistook them as being part of the news.

Or maybe they DON'T want to, or don't care, if it is valid or not, as the article suggests. If this is true, then it is pretty sad. The Spaghetti Monster truly lives!

Zz.

US Congress Is Full Of Stupid People!

... and you, the voters, are directly responsible for putting them there!

In this latest instant, the US Congress overrode the President's veto on being able to sue Saudi Arabia for the 9/11 tragedy. This issue isn't about that, but rather, at how the members of the Congress DECIDED on what to vote on! It seems that many of them (i) didn't read what they were passing and (ii) didn't think BEYOND that at the possible consequences of their actions.

This news report describes what has just happened.

The White House had long raised concerns about the law, warning that it could have a chilling effect on Saudi Arabia's cooperation with the U.S. in fighting terrorism. Senior national security officials also argued that it could trigger lawsuits from people in other countries seeking redress for injuries or deaths caused by military actions in which the U.S. may have had a role.

But top lawmakers said the White House didn't press those warnings until it was too late and the popular bill was already barreling its way through Congress. Other lawmakers acknowledged that they didn't pay much attention to the bill.

That earned McConnell and others a scathing response from the White House, which said lawmakers didn't know what they were voting for.

"What's true in elementary school is true in the United States Congress: Ignorance is not an excuse," said spokesman Josh Earnest.

Now, people, let's think about this just a bit. You are voting on something. Isn't it YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to figure out what it says and what it will do? It is NOT the responsibility of someone else to tell you all these things! And what is scarier is that you guys are voting for something that you didn't "pay much attention" to! Holy cow! How many times has this happen and how many legislation have you guys voted in which you cast your vote in ignorance of what it will do? No wonder we have so many stupid laws!

We elect you guys to do just TWO things: enact sensible legislation, and come up with a yearly budget. You already screwed up the latter many, MANY times, and often come up with a budget LATE (try doing that in an ordinary job). And now, you guys have shown that you don't even pay attention to what you vote on.

How are you able to claim your income for failing to do what you've been paid to do?

PATHETIC!

Zz.

Who Are The Innovators In The US?

This is a rather interesting study that I haven't seen before. It surveys people who are considered to be innovators and the US to see who they really are and what their backgrounds area.

This study surveys people who are responsible for some of the most important innovations in America. These include people who have won national awards for their inventions, people who have filed for international, triadic patents for their innovative ideas in three technology areas (information technology, life sciences, and materials sciences), and innovators who have filed triadic patents for large advanced-technology companies. In total, 6,418 innovators were contacted for this report, and 923 provided viable responses. This diverse, yet focused sampling approach enables a broad, yet nuanced examination of individuals driving innovation in the United States.

I wish the sampling is larger, but it is what it is. What they found is quite fascinating, especially when framed with the current US political climate on immigration:

• More than one-third (35.5 percent) of U.S. innovators were born outside the United States, even though this population makes up just 13.5 percent of all U.S. residents.

• Another 10 percent of innovators were born in the United States but have at least one parent born abroad.

• More than 17 percent of innovators are not U.S. citizens, yet they are making invaluable contributions to U.S. innovation.

• Immigrants born in Europe or Asia are more than five times as likely as the average native-born U.S. citizen to have created an innovation in America.

• Immigrant innovators also are better educated on average than native-born innovators, with over two-thirds holding doctorates in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)

I think there's plenty of evidence to show that the US has, throughout its history, depends on immigration of some of the brightest and most innovative individuals around. The question is how to encourage that without abusing the system and replacing US workers, the way the H1-B visa has been abused. That visa program was supposed to bring in high-skilled workers into areas in which there is a shortage of US workers. Unfortunately, that has been used by many companies for what it was prohibited from doing, i.e. replacing US workers with foreign workers that have regular skills not in short supply.

At the same time, we also must keep in mind that dumping the baby out with the bath water isn't the solution either. This survey clearly shows that when it is done right, it has significant benefits to the US economy, even if one take a very conservative approach to the result of the survey. We need a smart, thoughtful, and rational approach to this. Do you think your politicians have such skills to make that type of a decision?

Zz.

Presidential Election Comic Relief

It seems that for the past few US presidential election, the Republican party has not failed to provide ample comic relief to the election/campaign process. 2 elections ago, we had Sarah Palin. Then we had Michele Bachmann in the last election. This election, we have Donald Trump.

There appears to be an endless supply of clowns running for president in the Republican party.

Zz.

Businesses Being Allowed To Discriminate Against GLBT

I don't know if everyone who is a proponent of this simply drawing a blind eye, or if the rest of the population is not seeing this.

As more and more states in the US and in various parts of the world start to accept and legalize gay marriages, there are now laws in other parts trying to allow various private organizations and businesses to refuse serving people or activities that these entities think are "contrary to their beliefs". Of course, they word it that way so that it doesn't sound as if they are targeting gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender community. But they are.

But there is a side effect to this and everyone seems to have missed! Let's look at the case of this baker in Ireland who refused to make a silly cake:

"We just didn't want to be forced to use our creative skills to help endorse and promote a campaign message that went against our sincerely held religious beliefs," he said.

"We are just trying to be faithful to the Bible. We think it is wrong to use the law to force anyone to say something that they oppose, and we hope the court will take the same view."

OK, let's run with that, shall we? What if a Muslim person walks into this bakery, and requested a cake for "Happy Eid Fitr"? Will he also refuse to do such a cake? After all, it is "promoting" a festival of another religion, and what is more offensive to his Christian belief than the promotion of another religion that clearly claims that his belief is false?

The same can be applied to all those laws in the books in various states in the US. Are people of various religions can now refuse to serve those of the opposite religion? Keep in mind that the most serious attack on one religion is another religion, considering that each considers the others to be false! So who should you be most offended with, a GLBT person, or someone who practices another religion?

Yet, if this baker or if the laws were to say that we can refuse to serve someone just because of his or her beliefs, everyone will be up in arms and shouting religious discrimination! But that is what such beliefs and such laws allow! So why aren't people seeing and addressing that?

Zz.

Conservatives May Not Be Happier Than Liberals

First of all, these types of "survey" should be taken with a grain of salt. There is a lot of ambiguity here because it requires an interpretation of a survey result, which by itself (as shown in this report), can be "inflated".

So my intent here is to report and highlight this article is that you can't really use ANY of it to make any kind of strong statement one way or the other. If you do, then you are using very, VERY feeble data and analysis to support your argument one way or the other. Whether you are a conservative or a liberal, you can't neither use this, nor any of the previous survey, to claim that you are "happier" than the other. Nope, there are no solid, clear data and analysis to support your claim. You may THINK you're happier, but you have zero scientific evidence to back up your claim.

Zz.

When you defend Phil Robertson, this is what you are defending

This is a pretty accurate article that blows away the smoke and the distractions.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/defend-phil-robertson-heres-youre-001248300.html

Somehow, the Ted Cruz's and the Sarah Palins seem to have glossed over the other stupid remarks that he made.

Zz.

Dear North Korea

Dear North Korea, You are nothing more than a petulant child seeking attention. You also have a serious paranoia. No one wants to invade you. In fact, we don't care for you that much, so you can keep whatever you have. Please continue to torture your own people and deny them their basic dignity, and leave the rest of us alone. Sincerely, ZapperZ

Clinton Becomes Bush's Hand Wipe

OK, this is too hysterical to pass up, so you can look for yourself in case you missed it.



I'm not a big fan of G.W. Bush, but he has provided some of the most hilarious acts of any politicians since Dan Quayle!

Zz.

British Govt. Apologizes To Alan Turing

This isn't part of life's amusing event since it is rather tragic.

After the tremendous call due to an online petition, the British government today finally and formally apologizes posthumously to Alan Turing for his inhumane treatment. This despite his significant contribution not only to the computing knowledge and mathematics, but in his war effort to decipher the German's secret code during WWII.

In a statement on the British Government Web site, Prime Minister Gordon Brown acknowledged Turing's "outstanding" contribution during World War II.

"He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war," he wrote, adding, "The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely."

Turing is considered one of Britain's greatest mathematicians, a genius who is credited with inventing the Bombe, a code-breaking machine that deciphered messages encoded by German Enigma machines during World War II.

He went on to develop the Turing machine, a theory that automatic computation cannot solve all mathematical problems, which is considered the basis of modern computing.

One would hope that in this day and age, such treatment would no longer occur. But the human being capacity for stupidity, and for cruelty, has never ceased to amaze me.

Zz.

US Endorses UN Gay Rights Text

Some time, you read something that is full of hypocrisy, it makes your blood boil.

The US, the so-called champion of "human rights", finally endorses the UN declaration on gay rights after the Bush administration made the US the only western country not to sign it.

But what made my blood boil was this part:

Some Islamic countries said at the time that protecting sexual orientation could lead to "the social normalization and possibly the legalization of deplorable acts" such as pedophilia and incest. The declaration was also opposed by the Vatican.

The Vatican and the Catholic Church, of course, are experts in pedophilia and how to hide it. But how the "islamic countries" could actually be so uppity about such act while keeping a straight face is beyond me. Let's not forget that taking prepubescent child bride is alive and well in Saudi Arabia, the bedrock of Islamic religion where millions of muslims go for their pilgrimage. If this is not pedophilia, then what is it?

So maybe they just don't want protection for gays and lesbians (I'd like them to pull out statistics on how many lesbians have assaulted underaged girls) simply because they don't want competition for their pedophiles!

Zz.