Mayim Bialik: Snap Out Of It!

This week we’re telling YOU to snap out of it, Mayim Bialik!  When you played Blossom, we watched your young career, well, blossom.  And then you warmed your way back into our hearts as Amy Farrah Fowler, kindling your odd relationship with Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory.  And when you did we in the rational and skeptical community lauded you as an ideal role model for young girls everywhere, for unlike most actresses, you are a degreed neuroscientist, and your Ph.D. hangs proudly on your wall at home.  But then you had to go and ruin the ride.  You publicly stated that you don’t vaccinate your kids – something no responsible parent would do, much less a responsible scientist.  You belong to this creepy thing called the Holistic Mom’s Network, as if any person who belongs to an organization with the name “holistic” in the title doesn't instantly lose her scientific membership card.  Having a science-promoting actress is one thing, but when that science turns out to be pseudoscience, you end up being a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Or rather, a true sheep, as only a mindless sheep could be herded into crackpot thinking in this way.  You are a sheep in wolf’s clothing, in sheep’s clothing.  And that, by the way, is a holistic metaphor!

Yes, we once were pleased that someone with a Ph.D. in science would turn to acting instead of breaking new ground in the laboratory.  But now we know the truth of why you came back to the studios.  No, it wasn't for the money.  It was because you can’t hack it as a true scientist with all your woo-woo thinking!  You can’t be a real scientist, and so you pretend to be one on TV instead!  You are not the idealized role model for young girls we thought you were.  You are instead the poster-child for, “Don’t let this happen to you!”  You studied neuroscience, but weren't able to figure out your own neurons!  In a world where skeptics and freethinkers are stocked full of lonely males hoping for more women to embrace science and reason, you were their greatest light of hope, and are now their darkest shadow of letdown.  At least you are an ideal role model in one sense:  You are a shining example that achieving a Ph.D. is no guarantee against being flat-out wrong.

But it’s not too late, Mayim.  You don’t have to wait for one of your precious children to die of whooping cough in order to come to your senses.  You can take heed from the many women who once belonged to the Holistic Mom’s Network, and left after they became sick of seeing their children get sick.  You can then very publicly tell the HMN to go take a long walk off a short cliff, vaccinate your precious children, and take a stand for real science.  And when you do, I’ll convert to Judaism and FedEx you my ring and marriage proposal.

So, Miss Amy Farrah Fowler, we at the Sacred Cow Wursthaus take great pride in grasping the polka-dotted back-strap of your Victoria’s Secret brassiere, yanking it back and letting it fly to give YOU a well-earned snap between your scapulae!  Mayim Bialik, SNAP OUT OF IT!

Neil Says: Read The Bible! But Which One?

A recent blog post noted how, back in 2011, Neil DeGrasse Tyson participated in Reddit's 'Ask Me Anything' series of public Q & A.  When asked which books should be read by every intelligent person on the planet, Neil suggested eight books.  The first book he listed was, interestingly, the Bible.

I'll list the other seven books Neil recommended in a little bit. But first, I wanted to spend some time on this blog post helping people out with his first suggestion. I wholeheartedly agree with it, of course. I became an atheist largely by learning what the Bible really says, and so I enthusiastically recommend everyone read it - especially Christians. (The polls tell us that only about 20% of Christians have ever read the Bible all the way through at least once, which explains a lot about why they are so clueless.) But there are some pitfalls to reading the Bible which the layperson might get tripped up by.  Certain versions of the Bible are incomprehensible. Others are so watered down that they don't constitute scripture at all. And the different kinds of versions out there are a veritable alphabet soup of confusing titles.  There's the King James Version (KJV), the Revised Standard Version (RSV), The Living Bible (TLB), the New American Bible (NAB), the New International Version (NIV), the American Standard Bible (ASB), the Good News Bible (GNB), Today's English Version (TEV), and the New American Standard Bible (NASB), among many others. Which, if any, truly constitute a "good" bible over a not-so-good one?

First, if all you want is the general gist of it, any one of the above might suffice. But most people want the authoritative version. After all, we're talking about what some people consider to be the Word of God, here! It might help to get it absolutely right. Paraphrasing might make something more comprehensible, even accessible, but it also might alter the meaning to such an extent that you aren't really reading what the original author intended to convey. On the other hand, if you read a version which is not paraphrased at all, but written in a style which is too closely matched to a language other than English, or worse, written in a version of English which is too old to be understandable, then most of what you read will be missed. To make matters worse, some Bibles use source texts which are outdated.  The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, while the New Testament was originally written in ancient Greek. Older, more reliable manuscripts of the earliest versions of the Bible have been unearthed by archaeologists in recent years, such as the Nag Hammadi library, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. But many Bibles do not incorporate these manuscripts into their translations and in so doing leave out the best possible source material. What criteria should be used when selecting a Bible?

Let's establish some basics. The ideal Bible:
1.) Should be written in a clear, comprehensible, modern version of the English language.
2.) Should utilize the oldest and most reliable Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic source texts.
3.) Should be a literal word-for-word translation of these original texts as closely as possible, something scholars refer to as "formal equivalence."

Most Bibles meet the first criteria. In fact, making the Bible more understandable has been something of a crusade for many scholars, as they want as many people as possible to understand what it says. We find far fewer candidates which meet the other two criteria, but there are some good ones. Let me evaluate several popular versions of the Bible using the above three criteria.

The King James Version. No version of the Bible carries as much weight with certain Christians as the King James, or KJV. In certain circles, anyone who quotes the Bible using anything other than the King James is not truly quoting the Bible at all. But how does it truly measure up?
1.) Clear and understandable English? Not even close! Most of the King James is written in a classic Elizabethan style of English which is not used anymore, and so the reader is often left baffled. Here's a great example: A classmate of mine was once reading, along with the rest of us in the class, a passage from John 19:24, "They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots."
The student then raised his hand and said, "Lots of what?"
A few of us giggled at the question, but I helped him out. "Lots as in lotteries," I told him. Then he understood. The Roman soldiers were essentially rolling dice to see who would get Jesus' clothing after he'd been crucified. But this poor student had no idea at first what the text was talking about. And that's just one of thousands of such misunderstandings which can occur when a modern speaker of English tries to make sense of the Elizabethan. Unless someone happens to be well schooled in Shakespeare, the King James is somewhat baffling. And yet there is something to be said for the old-style language. It carries with it a certain beauty and poetic style which modern English does not. Perhaps therein lies some of the appeal.
How about 2.) oldest and most reliable manuscripts? Again, not even close. The source text used for the King James is the Textus Receptus (Latin for 'received text'). Back in the 1500's, this was the best Hebrew and Greek text available, but it was far from perfect, especially for the book of Revelation. Segments of the book of Revelation had rotted away from the only extant Greek text, and so had to be replaced by taking the Latin Vulgate translation and translating it back into Greek. Thus, there are segments of Revelation which were translated from Greek, to Latin, back to Greek again, and then finally translated into English! But the older texts which archaeologists have found since do not factor in at all.
Finally, we evaluate 3.) to see if it has a clear, word-for-word translation from the original manuscripts. Here, finally, we have a winner. The King James does translate literally, perhaps better than any other English version. That, and it's pretty language style, are its primary saving graces.
Final Grade: 1/3; D+

The New International Version. This version of the Bible has won the popularity contest among most Christians. Outside of the King James, it is the most often-quoted text among evangelicals. How does it do? Well, in some ways, its an improvement, and in other ways, an abject failure.  Let's go through the criteria.
1.) Clear and modern English? You bet! The New International Version is among the most understandable Bibles to be found. But this is both a blessing as well as a curse.  We'll see why shortly.
2.) Oldest and most reliable manuscripts used? Again, yes! The New International Version does, in fact incorporate translations from the oldest manuscripts to be found.  This is quite forward-thinking, and is one of this version's strongest points. But alas, it almost doesn't matter, because:
3.) This version does not give a literal, word-for-word translation. Not even close! Ostensibly, the translation technique uses something called "dynamic equivalence," which means a sense-by-sense translation instead of a word-for-word translation. But the method used when determining how the English text was to be phrased was to assemble a committee, comprised of scholars from all leading Christian denominations, and then take a vote as to the best way in which to phrase certain passages! This makes the NIV the proverbial camel-as-racehorse more so than any other version of the Bible, and thus erases any of the benefits involved with using the oldest, most reliable source texts.  What good does the correct source text make if the paraphrasing thwarts this advantage anyway? On the other hand, if what you want is a Bible to quote errors and contradictions with, you would do well to use the NIV, because the phrasing committee has already done its level best to erase as many contradictions and errors as they could find! If the contradictions are still there in the NIV (and they are!) then they're genuine! As such, this is always the version I use when "Bible battling."
Final Grade: 2/3; C+

The New American Bible. This is the official version of the Bible used by Catholics. As such, it has a very scholarly approach, and is not bad as far as content is concerned. Perhaps this is because in Catholic doctrine, it is the Pope which is infallible, rather than scripture, thus leaving scholars more free to revise what needed revising while staying true to the original source texts. Let's evaluate this one:
1.) Clear and modern English? For the most part, yes. The text tries to retain some of the flavor of the original manuscripts while being careful to use modern terminology. For example, Jesus always heals the "mute" rather than the "dumb."
2.) Oldest and most reliable manuscripts? Not entirely. It utilizes the Textus Receptus, but also incorporates some things from the Septuagint (an older Greek text) as well as the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is somewhat better than the King James, but not by much.
3.) Literal word-for-word translation? Yes. For the most part, the NAB utilizes formal equivalence. Only occasionally does it depart from this in certain passages which are uncomfortable to Catholic doctrine.
On the whole, this isn't a bad version to use, especially if you will be discussing the Bible with family members who were also raised Catholic. This version also has some interesting books in the Old Testament which are not included in the Protestant Bible, such as the books of Judith and Tobit. On the other hand, it is not a popular version among Protestants, and lacks acceptance by certain evangelicals who are suspicious of the Pope and Catholicism. As such, I find it to be of use only in certain situations.
Final Grade: 2/3;  B-

The Good News Bible and The Living Bible. These are two different versions, but I conflate them here because they are functionally very similar.  The Good News Bible was originally known as Today's English Version, but was changed to The Good News Bible in the mid 1970's.  Sometimes it was published as a paperback book titled simply as, "The Way." This title still occasionally turns up in used book stores and rummage sales. The intention of this text was to simplify the New Testament in such a way as to make it easier for missionaries to translate it into exotic foreign languages. But the paraphrasing of the text had an unintended consequence: it made it highly accessible for children to read. As such, the Good News Bible has been popular in religious grade schools and Sunday schools. A similar story lies behind The Living Bible. A paraphrase of the American Standard Version, it proved a quite handy Bible for children. However, it was not a translation, and did not pretend itself to be. Because both GNB and TLB are paraphrase versions, the results in their evaluations are identical.  Here they are:
1.) Clear and understandable English? Certainly! In fact, this is their one, redeeming quality. In the GNB, there are even cute little stick-figure drawings which illustrate the stories for the benefit of the youngest readers. But this is also its biggest drawback.
2.) Oldest and most reliable manuscripts? Not even close. Both versions are quite blunt in their use of paraphrasing, and the original versions are all but abandoned in the quest for understandability.
3.) Literal word-for-word translation? Obviously not.
Final Grade: 1/3;  F

Revised Standard Version. The RSV has been popular in Protestant denominations, primarily for glossing over certain uncomfortable Old Testament passages which don't fit in with certain dogmas, but which does so in such a subtle way that none but the most ardent of Biblical scholars usually notice. It has been considered to be denominationally liberal. Here's how this one measures up:
1.) Clear and understandable English: Yes, for the most part. The RSV was first made a little after the beginning of the 20th century, and so sounds only slightly dated, but still has modern enough English to be comprehensible.
2.) Oldest and most reliable manuscripts: No. It primarily relies upon the Textus Receptus, Septuagint, and limited use of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
3.) Literal word-for-word translation: Almost, but not quite. It does take some liberties with paraphrasing, but only situationally.
Final Grade: 2.5/3;  C+

New American Standard Bible. I saved the best for last. This one is a little off the beaten path, but is quite popular among professional Biblical scholars, primarily for the reasons I'm about to list here. The American Standard Bible was not especially well done, but revisions to it in recent years have updated its status, and its standing, making it one of the better Bibles to be had, especially if you are of the type to insist on getting the straight dope. I personally find this version to be most popular in Episcopal churches. Here's how it meets the criteria:
1.) Clear and understandable modern English: Bingo! The NASB has always aimed at being both clear in its language usage while also being grammatically correct.
2.) Oldest and most reliable manuscripts: Again, yes! After 1995, the NASB was revised to incorporate the oldest and most reliable manuscripts available.
3.) Literal word-for-word translation: Absolutely! This has been a standard goal for the American Standard Bible (first published in 1901), and has been maintained with the New American Standard Bible. Students of both Greek and Hebrew will find it easy to compare with the English text on a word-for-word basis, making it an ideal study aide for those who pursue Biblical languages.
Final Grade: 3/3  A+

So there you have it! My preference is for the NASB, and whenever I'm studying the Bible on my own, that is the version I most turn to. On the other hand, when I'm debating with Christians and quoting scripture at them, I most often use the NIV, both because it's more popular with the masses, and because any errors I find in there are doubly legit. But I'll admit, I do love reading the KJV on occasion as well. There's just something about that old style of Shakespearean English which is beautiful to me.

One thing further: Beware of "Study Bibles!" The "Defender's Study Bible" is a good example. Basically, a Study Bible is one which is riddled with commentary below each and every Bible passage, and usually that commentary is aimed at twisting the scriptures towards right-wing politics. If you happen to find such a Bible, ignore the commentary! You want to determine what the Bible says for yourself. You don't need someone else's spin-doctoring getting in the way.

Oh, yes! Neil's other book recommendations! Here they are:
2.) The System of the World, by Isaac Newton.
3.) On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin.
4.) Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift.
5.) The Age of Reason, by Thomas Paine.
6.) The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith.
7.) The Art of War, by Sun Tzu.
8.) The Prince, by Machiavelli.


Eric

*

Snap Out Of It, Jordan Klepper!

Snap Out Of It is a segment on the Sacred Cow Wursthaus podcast where I tell people who should be on the freethinking side, but somehow aren't, to snap out of it and get their act together.

Some background info:  Jordan Klepper did a skit three weeks ago on the Daily Show in which he chided Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation for scolding a restaurant called Mary's Gourmet Diner.  Mary's, it turns out, had previously been offering a 15% discount for publicly praying before eating the meal, and FFRF quite rightly cried foul over it, sending them a threatening letter.  It seems the restaurant might not have been quite so discriminatory, as the discount also was offered for other things.  Still, Mary's quickly capitulated, and FFRF recommended that all its members patronize Mary's Diner afterwards.  Still, the story went viral.  Jordan Klepper took this and, after a two-hour interview in which he ground Dan Barker down, edited out all but the silliest bits from the interview and made Dan Barker look incredibly foolish.  He strongly felt that sending a harsh letter to a small diner threatening suit over atheists' "civil rights" was an egregious overreach.  Well, that's fine, but Jordan was in a glass house throwing stones.

Now, I subsequently called this a "wake up call" on the Sacred Cow Wursthaus podcast, mostly because the Daily Show is hardly Fox news!  And it's true that we as atheists need to change our tactics and abandon the bullheaded Madalyn Murray O'Hare approach to litigation.  Still, if FFRF overreached, Jordan Klepper did so even worse, both with Dan Barker and especially so on the skit he did the following week.  Hence the tirade below, which I will be reading live on the podcast today.  Here you go:

"This week I'm telling YOU to snap out of it, Jordan Klepper!  Yes, I somewhat took your side on last week’s podcast when I called your fake news segment about Mary’s Gourmet Diner a wake-up call, but your subsequent installments on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have convinced me that you are not the moralist you make yourself out to be.  Like the skit you did the following week where you defended the civil rights of people dressed up as Santa Claus to get drunk and party during Santa Con in New York.  Yes, we get it: In the wake of so many news stories featuring cops killing blacks and not getting indicted, lesser civil rights struggles seem funny by comparison, and you’re cashing in on that.  But how can you call Dan Barker, a man who makes Fred Rodgers look mean by comparison, a “dick,” and a “petty asshole,” and then in your next segment, act like a drunken Santa Claus who stumbles into a daycare center and starts cursing and swearing at a bunch of kids!?  Jordan, you may insult a man whose organization overreached “petty,” but saying “Fuck you!” repeatedly to a room full of little kids is a new definition of low.  Even if it was done off-camera (which I very much doubt), it made you look a thousand times worse than Saddam Hussein, much less Dan Barker – a man who, by the way, is defending YOUR rights as an admitted fellow atheist, and to whom you owe a great deal of respect, even if his organization does overreach on occasion, which it does only rarely!  

"So, Mr. Fake News, we at the Sacred Cow Wursthaus take great pride in twisting up our locker-room towels and giving YOU a well-earned crack across your hyper-sensitive ass!  Jordan Klepper, SNAP OUT OF IT!"

Eric

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No Santa Claus

Here's a re-post of a previous poem which I wrote, based off of the original C.C. Moore classic.  Although I originally wrote it to chide parents for lying to their kids about Santa, I have since softened my stance somewhat.  After all, kids need to know their parents aren't infallible.  It's a normal part of growing up. The Sacred Cow Wursthaus podcast will have a reading of this set to music, so don't forget to listen in. Enjoy!

An Account of No Visit by St. Nicholas
A poem by Eric Hildeman
(Borrowed from the work of Clement Clark Moore)

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
But that was to change before the night ended,
For none was asleep, every eyelid distended;
Our stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas might just soon be there;
But we three kids weren't quite so nestled in our beds,
For visions of espionage danced in our heads;
Tonight we would learn, for once and for all,
Whether Santa was real, or if there was none at all;
And see for ourselves if reindeer could fly,
In defiance of gravity across the night sky.
Brother and sister in their sleepers, and I in my cap,
Had convinced mom and pop we were taking our nap;
When out in the den there arose such a clatter,
We sprang up from our beds to see what was the matter.
Away to the stairwell we flew in a flash,
Sliding down the floorboards, and avoiding a crash.
Peering over the railing at the lit tree aglow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to the objects below;
And what to our wondering sight should appear,
But a very distinct absence of eight tiny reindeer.
Our parents were wrapping presents so lively and quick,
That we knew in a moment there was no St. Nick.
More rapid than bullets the revelations they came:
All costumes and lies, and a legendary name.
And if all these lessons had come now to naught,
What other things were false that we'd been taught?
Those things which we'd thought so sure and so brazen,
Could they be lies too? Could God? Could Satan?
We spoke not a word, but stared straight at this work,
When mom and pop suddenly turned ‘round with a jerk;
My baby little sister, that jolly little elf,
Had laughed when she saw this, in spite of herself.
The glint in pop’s eye and the tilt of his head,
Soon let us kids know we had plenty to dread!
Pop clenched up his fist out in front of his nose,
And giving a nod, to the stairwell he rose.
He sprang up the stairs, to my team I gave a whistle,
And away we all flew like the down of a thistle.
Back down the hallway the courses we flew,
At our heels, the bogus St. Nicholas, too.
More rapid than eagles his courses they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called us by name;
"You doggone kids! You'd just better run!
You've spoiled our secret! You've ruined our fun!”
And hearing these words while running down the hall,
We dashed away, dashed away, dashed away all!
When back in the bedroom I spun back around,
Bro' and Sis' landed back into bed with a bound.
Our pursuer had stopped, leaving us dumbfounded,
’Till we all slowly realized we were certainly grounded.
Though no permanent scars did we receive that Christmas night,
We emerged more confused about what was wrong and what was right.
In the years that followed, in teenage vice,
We listened more to peers than to parents' advice.
And one more lesson that night we were taught:
It’s all right to lie, if you just don't get caught;
Or if certain situations will justify,
The certain variety or use of the lie.
'Tis a difficult problem, and a peculiar plight,

But still....

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!


Eric

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Charlie Sykes Misses The Mark

Two weeks ago, SWiFT, the Southeast Wisconsin Freethinkers, of whom I am a member, worked in collaboration with American Atheists to put up a provocative billboard for the holidays.  For those who missed it, here's what the billboard looked like:

Charlie Sykes, the premier talking head on the 3-time Marconi Award winning local radio station WTMJ, which monopolizes all sporting events, as well as news, traffic and snow-closings, had this to say about the billboard after he ranked it #3 on his weekly "Deep Tunnel" awards:

"Hey, we get that atheists don't believe in God and don't celebrate Christmas, but you know, Christians don't put up billboards mocking their darkened, soulless beliefs.  So my advice to atheists is..." [And here he plays his sound clip of a man screaming, 'Shut up! Shut up! Shut! Up!'  Followed by the sound of a toilet flushing.]

Well, in the words of an old commercial for Starkist Tuna, "Sorry, Charlie!"  First off, atheists DO celebrate Christmas.  Only a small percentage of us choose not to, and they are usually chided by their fellow unbelievers for being sticks-in-the-mud.  But more importantly, it is simply, empirically FALSE that Christians don't put up billboards mocking atheists "beliefs." (He meant so say, 'lack of beliefs,' I'm sure.) So, to help set Charlie straight, here is just a small sample of the many anti-atheist billboards out there, not including the ones currently visible from I-894 and I-94 in Waukesha:

There was one more which I mentioned on the Sacred Cow Wursthaus podcast, which featured Jeffrey Dahmer, but that billboard illegally used the copyrighted trademarks of the American Humanist Association and Planned Parenthood, and so the image has been removed from the Internet.

So to you, Charlie, I give my own award: The Whoopie-Cushion Award!

"Bplbplbplbplbpltttt!!!"


Eric

*

Ferguson, Misery. Er, Missouri.

I'm shocked at the civil unrest which has broken out in Ferguson, Missouri. That is, I'm shocked that other people are shocked. After everything which has happened leading up to this tragic event, people actually have the nerve to look surprised! Honestly, what did you all expect?

You suburban comfort-dwellers, with your insured vehicles and your cable television, are partly to blame. You first created those slums when you fled to the suburbs when blacks dared to move into your neighborhoods, telling them with actions rather than words that you assumed they would make bad neighbors. Since then, you have been perfectly content to scold those who live in slums and are unable to get out, to chide those in the inner city for daring to ask for enough government aid to just barely have a shot at getting a better life, maybe, someday, and then to assume ghetto blacks are automatically thieves. You have prevented them from getting contraceptive care, then in the same breath accused them of being "welfare moms." You have denied them education and then called them stupid. You have smoked their weed, and then let them be thrown in jail for selling it to you. You have consistently voted for legislators who were committed to corporate welfare rather than real welfare on the misguided notion that socialism for big business was better than just plain socialism. You have pissed on them, your fellow Americans, and then held your nose at their odor. How dare you act surprised when the caged animal finally bites the hand that feeds it mere scraps! Wake up!

You law-enforcement officers, who bravely put on the uniform to protect your citizens, are also partly to blame. You all began as young idealists committed to ending crime and cleaning up the streets, perhaps even to potentially take a bullet to protect the innocent. You were committed to serve and protect. But then you saw the reality of the situation. You saw that the only two ways for young inner city black kids to escape poverty involved either a basketball career or dealing drugs, and that meant that you, the police officer, became the primary thing standing between them and a better life. You were their biggest enemy, and their number one oppressor. You resented that. You wanted to change things so that you were seen as the hero, not the enemy. But eventually, you were worn down, convinced by your captains and your elder officers that there was no real solution, and gave up. You decided at some point to side with the fatalism which has infected every urban police force in this country. And in so doing, you saw a certain wisdom in doing everything you could just to get home safely to your family after every shift. And so, instead of putting your life on the line when it came time to do what was right, you often chose to shoot first instead. You saw the greater good as protecting your fellow officers instead of protecting the people on your patrol - people who, deep down inside, you came to secretly regard as a lost cause. No, people don't understand how you put your lives on the line every day, hoping against hope that somehow, someway, things will get better without you. They never will. But that's no excuse to have allowed the mean streets to have made you jaded, and cause even the least racist among you to be racist in deed if not in word or thought. When your primary mission was to make yourselves be the friends and guardians of the inner city, you instead made it an ancillary concern - secondary or even tertiary to the higher priority of simply arresting and incarcerating those who broke the law because they were too poor to do anything else. "Let the jails fix them," you thought, as if simply shutting them away was somehow a solution. Yes, perhaps Officer Darren Wilson really did have no choice when he opened fire. And no, Michael Brown does not make the ideal martyr. But he was the victim who just happened to be the last straw in a very large bale of hay which finally broke the camel's back. How dare you foster the hatred among those you say you protect, and then try to justify shooting a kid who attacks you with the very hatred you instilled within him? If you can't give a day in court, at least give an apology! Wake up!

And finally, to my inner-city fellow humans, by brother Americans, the ones who are the same race as me but who just happen to have darker skin due to a difference in ancestry, you also are partly to blame. You have internalized the negative racist stereotypes with which you have been wrongly stained, and worn them like a macabre badge of honor. You have built statues to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., named streets after him, lionized him as a hero, and then proceeded to do the exact opposite of everything he stood for. You have shunned education when he would have embraced it. You have abandoned your self-worth when he would have told you to champion it. You have resorted to violence when he told you flat-out to turn the other cheek as Jesus and Gandhi recommended. When racists refused to see you as individuals, saying that you were all the same, you gladly accommodated them by being identity-less, acquiring new names the way some people acquire new shoes. After being wrongly being called stupid for so long, many of you decried education as a "white thing," and dropped out of high school. You have then pretended it was your cultural heritage to speak and write improperly. You have embraced being called criminals by acting and dressing like organized gang members, as if this would somehow make you appear more lawful to the cops you hate, and would rather avoid. You have even stood in solidarity with convicts by pulling down your pants below your hips - just as prison inmates do when their sodomy is spoken for - as a way of saying "I'm a jailbird, too!" You have become your own self-fulfilling prophecy. It's as if, after being pelted with pig-shit for years and years, you have collectively decided to wear your pig-shit coat as the latest fashion trend. But you're not fooling anybody but yourselves. You cannot beat poverty by wallowing in it, nor can you rise above by clipping your own wings. No, you cannot change your skin color, but you can control how you dress, how you talk, and how you live. How dare you complain about racism when you have colluded so well with your racist oppressors by confirming everything negative they've assumed about you! Wake up!

So now that I've called out the errant behaviors, what can we do about the present situation? It's a complex problem with a whole matrix of causes, and it will require a multi-layered solution with at least as many facets. But there is at least one thing we can do which will have an immediate impact: More black cops! Right now, the main problem of the inner city is a lack of good paying jobs for young people who desperately need them, and the main problem of the police force is the perception that they are racist oppressors who are not representative of the people they allegedly serve. We can solve two problems at once by putting young black men (and women) on the fast track to getting trained as police officers and patrolling their own neighborhoods. Oh, yes, these cops will be called Oreos, Uncle Toms, and sell-outs, but the one thing they won't be called is racists. That element will be cut out of the equation. For good.

I say let's give it a try: Let's ignore petty crimes in past behaviors when screening applicants. Let's even ignore jail time for non-violent offenses. If young black men are going to carry a gun in the inner city anyway (and they likely will), then let's do all we can to give them a badge to go along with that gun. After all, a white hillbilly cop patrolling a black inner city neighborhood makes about as much sense as a male gynecologist or a skinny sumo wrestler. And if we want people to feel that cops are connected to their neighborhood, let's recruit cops who are from that neighborhood. Certainly that makes more sense than some ridiculous rule requiring police officers to take up residency inside the borders of a city so ridiculously border-jumbled as Milwaukee. (Or Ferguson.)

Let's Axel Foley the police force! And then see what some suburban-level incomes can do to quell civil unrest!


Eric

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Let's Forgive Matt Taylor.

Have you heard the amazing news lately? The ESA, Europe's answer to NASA, has just landed a robotic probe on a comet! It's a first in history, a first in science, and should be at least as big a news story as the first Viking landing on Mars.

Into the scene stepped Dr. Matt Taylor, the project scientist for the Rosetta mission, who talked to us about the huge impact this amazing feat will have about our understanding of comets and their role in the history of the universe. He wanted us to understand the amazing story about how the Rosetta satellite took ten long years to reach this comet before deploying the Philae lander. It was the culmination of decades of hard work, and was to be Dr. Taylor's crowning achievement.

And all anybody wants to talk about is his damned shirt.

Okay, I'll grant you that the shirt was in poor taste. It was covered with artwork of scantily clad women in sultry poses which ranked one tick short of soft-core pornography. During the interview, the point he was trying to make with his odd shirt became clear, as he framed the scientific achievement as a sexy one, calling comet 67P, "sexy, but not easy." Eccentric? Yes, but still a fair point. It really WAS a sexy scientific achievement!

And all anybody wants to talk about is that damned shirt!

Dr. Taylor later gave a tearful apology. More to the point, he had just been asked a question by a reporter regarding the mission itself, asking him to please detail the scientific potential to the project. Instead, he apologized for his offensive wardrobe, and could barely continue afterward.

He's broken. After nearly two decades of work so intellectually difficult that most engineers can't even relate, the defining pinnacle which was to mark his career has now been marred forever. I don't blame him for breaking down. Meanwhile, some outstanding science is being done... and all anybody wants to talk about is that goddamned shirt!

Okay, look, I'm not insensitive to why the shirt was so offensive. I understand why it was in poor taste. Women have this strange obsession with telling us men that they don't want women objectified while at the same time wanting to be objectified themselves - meaning that what a woman really wants is herself objectified and not some idealized bikini model (which is a subject for another blog post, but I digress). But let's face it, if Matt Taylor is like most scientists, he's the socially off-center type who grew up being awkward around people and bears little sense or common sense when it comes to things like fashion. He probably doesn't have a single conservative thing in his wardrobe. Scientists are supposed to be slightly off, that's why they're so brilliant.

Can't we give the guy a break, already?

When he apologized, he was wearing a dark zip-up hoodie, probably meant to hide whatever least-loud-colored thing he had available, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if that hoodie had been borrowed from a colleague. For the rest of this man's life, he will be living in missed-opportunity hell, marred as "that guy who blew it." I think that amounts to feminists having gotten their revenge upon him, and piling on and on on top of that! It's so completely over. This poor man's already paid more than his due, and will go on paying forever.

Why is it that one male scientist wearing one risque shirt during one media event the thing that gets the most outrage? Why is it that Kim Kardashian and Miley Cyrus are hypocritically spared this kind of vitriol?

And if feminists really wanted to criticize, they should probably have blamed, not Matt, but his wife, Luanne, who somehow managed to let her husband walk out the door dressed like that!

Enough already. I say it's time to forgive him.

Now let's get back to the sexy science part!


Eric

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