Smoking Ban

So, it seems Wisconsin now has a new smoking ban, effective this past Monday, the day past independence day. No longer will people be able to light their own miniature firework in commemoration of American freedom in a bar, restaurant, or hotel. Could this be that this violates the very spirit of freedom which America stands for? Are we becoming the nanny state that McCarthyists feared?

I've brought my non-nicotine-addicted brain cells to bear on this issue, and I'm forced to conclude that the answer is clearly no. We, the People, have not lost the right to smoke. We can still buy, sell, and use tobacco products. We can smoke at home. We can smoke outdoors. We can smoke in designated locations.

What we have lost the right to do is blow smoke in other people's faces in public locations, and bravo to that. After all, if one chooses to inhale smoke into one's lungs, that's one thing. Making other people inhale your smoke afterward is quite another. And although the data on second hand smoke isn't statistically significant, it's still damned annoying. The right to swing one's fists ends with someone else's nose. The right to inhale smoke ends with forcing someone else to breathe it.

Ah, but according to the Journal-Sentinel, many are protesting the smoking ban because it removes the ambiance of certain establishments. One band is quoted as saying that there's just something to the smoky atmosphere of a live gig in a bar. It's part of the mystique of being a rocker.

I say, that's what fog machines are for.

The owner of Landmark Lanes claims that the lack of smoky atmosphere will rob him not only of ambiance, but of customers, and that it will cost him his business.

I say, he'll recoup his losses by not having to clean off the nicotine stains from the brightwork.

Actually, Landmark will begin putting out tables and chairs for those who wish to smoke outside on the sidewalk. This should prove interesting, since that's the central avenue for the biggest annoyance on Milwaukee's East Side. No, not cigarette smoke -- hobos. They're thick along Farwell, and they'll target everyone who's smoking outside. Not just outside Landmark, but all the bars and taverns which now must have smoking outdoors on the sidewalks where the bums regularly patrol.

This could get interesting!

Either the hobos will finally get cleaned off the streets as thousands of pissed off smokers force Milwaukee police to finally do something about them, or thousands of smokers will finally quit.

Yeah, fat chance on either of those.

What makes this interesting for me, as a non-smoker, is that this happened so soon after an increase in cigarette taxes which was supposed to pay for so many things in the State budget. Either this hasn't generated the revenues expected, or the State Legislature expects to raise taxes some other way. Or both. Get ready for it. We'll face another huge budget shortfall, and since it's always easier to raise a limited tax than it is to cut an entrenched entitlement, something else will get taxed. And (speaking of taking away American freedoms after the 4th of July) it won't be legalized marijuana, unfortunately for us all.

Yet those who say their freedom is being violated by this ban will continue to whine, completely ignoring the fact that our more important freedoms are being raped by government far more regularly. I've said it before, and it bears repeating, that nicotine really does nothing for you, except get you addicted. It has no redeeming value. It doesn't ease nausea. It doesn't help the symptoms of glaucoma. It doesn't even get you high. So why bother defending it? Why not campaign for that which should be legal anyway instead of fighting over a reasonable limitation of something already legal?

Nah, that would make too much sense!

So, let freedom ring, all you nicotine addicts! You may smoke all you want -- at home.

Eric

Grand Canyon - A Different View?

My, how hard creationists work to make sure that visitors to the Grand Canyon believe that Noah's flood could have done it. In a book written by Steven Austin (not the "Stone Cold" WWE wrestler) titled "Grand Canyon: A Different View," the idea is profferred that a massive flood event could have both laid down the sediments and then rapidly carved them afterwards due to a damming event. In short, it took a lot of water over a little time, as opposed to a little water over a lot of time.

Now, I've known for some time about the holes in this idea. Desert footprints in the Coconino sandstones, for example. Or travertine deposits in the Tapeats sandstone from an extinct and buried riverbed which had been carving its own canyon prior to being buried by new sediments from an advancing sea. But I've just come back from a fantastic road trip with my dad, and it seems that the holes in the creationist idea are even more gaping than I'd originally thought.

You see, the Grand Canyon is only part of the story. The layers which comprise the Grand Canyon are part of the overall Colorado Plateau, and these layers correlate to each other, making any creationist attempt to explain the Grand Canyon being carved by a breached dam from a now-extinct lake being left over from Noah's deluge a half-assed attempt, at best. It's like blaming one kid for all the graffiti in Chicago -- it's just too simple an explanation to be true.

Here's what I saw on my trip: The uppermost layers of the Grand Canyon, the Kaibab limestone, make up the lowermost layers of Zion National Park in Utah, whose towering canyon peaks are a sight to behold! Furthermore, the uppermost sandstone layers of Zion national park's mountain-peaks comprise the lowermost layers of Bryce Canyon National Park, also in Utah. These three make up what's known as the Grand Staircase (even though an area in the center of these three has been recently dubbed Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument). That means that any "breached dam" creationists propose has to not only carve out the Grand Canyon, but also carve out Zion canyon, and somehow erode Bryce Canyon in a way which leaves hundreds and hundreds of hudoos (a hudoo being a towering chimney composed of eroding sedimentary layers, with larger tops than bottoms). Any rushing water would topple any column structures of Bryce Canyon, even if it were part of the creationists' bogus breached dam area, which it isn't, and even if Zion canyon weren't too far to the West to get carved out by said dam, which it is.

And there's more. Precambrian schist which is contemporaneous with the Vishnu shist at the bottom of Grand Canyon can be seen in Durango, Colorado, located on the Durango-Silverton rail line. Clearly visible from the tourist train is the layers of shist, and a v-shaped area where a river once carved out a channel before the whole area became embedded with sediment once again. Now, this layer would long predate any flooding event proposed by a Noachian hypothesis, so it again makes for a proper headache for biblical literalists. And these layers are also contemporaneous with the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, whose half-mile high cliff walls are composed entirely of pre-Cambrian schists. There's simply no way this ultra-hard canyon rock could have been laid down by Noah's flood, just as it is equally impossible that such ultra-hard rock could have eroded such a massive canyon in less than 6,000 years.

So the next time some creationist tries to spin-doctor Grand Canyon, ask him, what about Zion? What about Bryce Canyon? And what about the Black Canyon of the Gunnison? How do those fit Noah's flood?

Chances are, he'll not know. Not only because he hasn't confronted the question before, but because these geologic features don't fit his absurd world-view at all.

Eric.

Mount Rushmore

So, I’ve finally visited Mount Rushmore. I’ve heard quite a bit about it, and I must say that I’ve always found it a bit overreaching. I mean, anyone who needs to go that far to show how patriotic one ought to be is taking things way over the top. But I’ve largely been in agreement with the point that Penn and Teller made on their Showtime program, ‘Bullshit,’ which is basically that these four heads, carved in the middle of sacred Indian lands, is tantamount to a great big “fuck you” to the native American tribes, and a pat on the back to white supremacists everywhere.

You see, the original plan for the black hills was to carve the faces of Lewis, Clarke, and Chief Red Cloud. But the sculptor they found to do the work, a guy named Gutzon Borglum, was a bit of a racist shit. This member of the KKK was fresh off the project known as Stone Mountain, commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1919, which featured a gigantic frieze of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis, carved into a mountainside near Atlanta, GA. (You can still find this sculpture today. This bastard had some nerve doing a giant sculpture of Lincoln after that stunt!) Borglum chose Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Rosevelt largely on the principle that these four helped best to forge America and “win the west.” In other words, conquer the Indians. Talk about an insult to history!

Well, maybe so, but that’s at least not the official story proffered behind Mount Rushmore today.

Today, the officials in charge of the Mount Rushmore monument go out of their way to extend good relations to the Indian tribes of the Black Hills. They tirelessly work to extend the hand of friendship to local tribes, and the “lighting ceremony” done each night, is often officiated by a park ranger who is also a native American. These days, the official rationale behind the faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt are these: that Washington represents the founding of our nation, Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, helped write the Constitution, and doubled the nation’s size with the Louisiana purchase, represents the building of our nation, Lincoln represents the preservation of our national unity, and Roosevelt represents the preservation of our nation for tomorrow – particularly with founding our National Parks.

It’s a pretty explanation, and one which resonates much better than that of Borglum. So I must say, I’ve softened my position on Mount Rushmore just a bit. After all, which is a greater insult to the native lands? Four heads in a mountainside, or a coast-to-coast infestation of Shopkos, Home Depots and Wal-Marts? Certainly the golden arches are a greater insult to the Indians than Mount Rushmore ever was! Native tribes who express their angst at these sculptures in the Black Hills are directing their time and energy at the wrong thing.

I guess by that standard, Mount Rushmore is okay. Not great, just okay. But I must also remember, even as I inform all of you, that nationalism is the evil cancer at the heart of nearly all wars – second only to religion in terms of causation of human violence. And Mount Rushmore is, if nothing else, nationalist. For that reason alone, I must still frown upon this icon of the American West. It remains, not an emblem of America’s greatness, but a tribute to our tendency to steamroll over nature and put up a parking lot.

And I look forward to the completion of the Chief Crazyhorse Monument, located just a few miles south of those four big heads.

Eric

Bush Was Really THAT Stupid? Yes! Us too!

The following article appeared in the online version of Free Inquiry magazine recently, although it does not appear in the April/May or June/July editions. It's eye-opening, however! It's sobering to think that not only was former President Bush was really as stupid as this article highlights, but that we, the American people, elected this moron TWICE! And now that we have the most educated president since Woodrow Wilson, and the highest I.Q.'ed president since Dwight Eisenhower, it boggles the mind that anyone would want to return to the "glory days" of idiot leaders, and supplant Obama for bumpkin-babe Sarah Palin. Remember, this isn't an indictment of Bush's stupidity. It's an indictment of our own stupidity for electing and re-electing him. The American voter is generally more stupid than what you're about to read below.

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A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

JAMES A. HAUGHT

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.
Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.

The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”
Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”

It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) and a Free Inquiry senior editor.

Mojave Cross Stolen!

So, it seems that someone, and we don't know who just yet, has stolen the cross in the Mojave desert's war memorial. Because it was on government land, it was (and despite its absence, still is) the center of a huge court battle over whether its presence violates the separation between church and state.

Now, before I go any further, I simply must say that I sincerely hope the idiots who stole this cross did so because they were stealing it for scrap metal, or conducting a fraternity prank, or some other benign reason. Because if this cross was stolen by a group of atheists who wanted to take matters into their own hands, then they've made things so much worse. Our acceptance is obvious to those who know that religious freedom comes directly from being able to tell religion "no, thanks," but such people are still too rare a commodity -- unfortunately for us all. So any deliberate theft of a cross by atheists would only confirm every wrong stereotype we've gown bored with: lack of morality, self-centered, out to destroy religion, blah, blah, blah.

On the other hand, if this cross was stolen by a group of religious fools who wanted to keep the cross from being whisked away by liberal judges, then they're the bigger fools. The supreme court already ruled 5-4 against taking the cross down, even though they included a technicality which they sent back to lower courts for review.

That having been said, it's time for somebody to point out that 5 to 4 rulings, in any context, much less the highest court in the land, should not fucking govern anybody! Just recently a 5 to 4 ruling guaranteed that corporations get to voice opinions during elections as though they were citizens. That's unbelievably insane! Not that rulings higher than this are much better. The famous Dredd Scott decision, which ruled African Americans were not citizens, was not a 5 to 4 vote, was it?

It gives one pause, now that we're apparently getting a new supreme court justice in the form of Elen Kagen.

In order for there to be true freedom, we need justices who will not show favoritism to one sect over another. Future scholars may look upon this supreme court decision in the Mojave desert and liken it to a form of the Dredd Scott case, but unfortunately, we have to live in the here and now. Not the future.

Here's where conservatives say something I like. They say that justices should interpret the law as it reads in the constitution, and not try to legislate from the bench. That's a good value! I like that value. But let's face it: the threat of judicial activism is coming from the RIGHT, not the left! They want to overturn Roe v. Wade, not by actually changing the law, but by putting activist right-wing justices onto the supreme court.

So once again, we see that "liberalism" is nothing more than conservative values taken to their logical conclusion.

Let's hope that a new monument goes up on the Veterans' Memorial in the Mojave desert. One which honors all the faiths which gave their blood for this nation, not the least of which are the non-Christian, Native-American "code talkers," whose use of their aboriginal language clearly won the war on both fronts. We owe our very American lives and freedoms to these non-Christians!

I hope the V.F.W. in California remembers that.

Eric

Letter to Sheboygan Mayor

Well, on the National Day of Prayer, the Mayor of Sheboygan presided over a prayer event, and said that the Freedom From Religion Foundation should "stick their fingers in their ears," or something to that effect. So, the following letter has been sent, handwritten (as one should always do with public officials) to hopefully set him straight. The final line of the letter echos my last blog entry, but some things just bear repeating.



Dear Mr. Mayor,
I understand you recently presided over a National Day of Prayer event, and instructed members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation to stop up their ears during the proceeding on the principle of majority rules. While I admire your passion, when it comes to “majority rules,” I'm afraid you have been badly misinformed.
You see, where Men have the right to live free, a majority of whites cannot enslave a minority of blacks. Where there is freedom of speech, a majority of fuddy-duddies cannot tell a minority of comedians what they cannot insult. In like manner, where people have freedom of religion, a majority of Protestants cannot tell a minority of Catholics what to believe, nor vice-versa. Nor may a Christian majority tell a Muslim minority what to believe. And, by the same token, a majority of believers cannot tell a minority of unbelievers to pray.
I'm certain that you are a good man and a good mayor, and that you wouldn't have made this gaff unless some staff member or advisor hadn't badly misinformed you. But America is about freedom, and “majority rules,” as you well know, only applies during elections, or if an individual's activity or creed does tangible harm to someone. It really goes without saying that one cannot have religious freedom unless one has the freedom to opt out. That makes the rights of the atheist part of – indeed the most important part of – religious freedom, and those who opt out of all are merely the freest of free Americans. Perhaps you do not like atheists for personal reasons, but we are the canaries in the coal-mine. Our right not to pray protects your right to freely do so according to the creed of your choice.
And call me crazy for saying so, but I really think that America is best defined by free citizens refusing to get down on their knees.

Eric J. Hildeman
Founder of Freethinkers of University Wisconsin Milwaukee.

Times Square Bomb vs. Old Myth

Well, we have our Times Square bomb plot suspect. His name is Faisal Shahzad, and what a shock, his motives were inspired by religious extremism.

Once again, we see that the cable news media outlets refuse to talk about anything else, unless perhaps it's a quick look at our ruined gulf coast brought about by the biggest oil spill since the Exxon Valdez. But as I'm watching this news story develop, I can't help but marvel at the stubbornness of religion.

Repeatedly, Islam embarrasses itself by trying to bomb people into respecting it. That is, when it's not threatening to behead women who name teddy bears after the Prophet Muhammed. The so-called religion of peace is proving itself to be the biggest threat to world peace ever known. And yet, I repeatedly hear the claim made, again and again, that God is required for moral behavior.

Seriously?

I mean, how many times do we have to get bombed by the most fervent of believers before we realize that maybe, just maybe, religiocity is a problem, not a solution? How many times must children be sexually abused by priests or have knuckles slapped by nun's rulers before people excercise some common sense and LEAVE?

I can understand not leaving the faith in a nation like Pakistan, where apostates are killed for sport. But what excuse to Catholics have here in the supposed Land of the Free and Home of the Brave? More like land of the self-enslaved and home of the spineless.

I'm not suggesting that religion is always hurtful. But it's surely as hell-on-earth not always helpful! And it is not required for moral behavior. Put another way, when has an atheist ever bombed a building in a public square?

Rep. Pete Hoekstra was quoted recently as saying, "Being lucky can't be our national security strategy." I agree. Surely some of our national defense must therefore go into fighting the religiocity which continues to bomb us. Eliminating the National Day of Prayer is a good first start.

Here's my dream: To see the day when there are scantily clad women advertising sun-tan lotion on Al-Jazeera, and when television shows similar to South Park garner ire from religious leaders for insulting Mohammed -- not in New York, but in Riyadh, or Tehran. And to see freedom so fully expressed that America is finally the coast-to-coast Amsterdam it was meant to be. That world is achievable. But it starts with recognizing religious fervor as our enemy.

Call me crazy, but I really think that the spirit of America is defined by its citizens NOT getting down on their knees!

Eric