Über die Freiheit / de libertate

Why do children’s pyjamas need to be flame resistant?

Re: “Beliefs basis for Nichols’ appeal” (Leader-Post, June 19.)I can sympathize with marriage commissioner Orville Nichols in his appeal against the decision of the Human Rights Commission. Imagine having to ask two men, or two women, to promise to “Love, honour, and cherish” one another. Those are such sinful acts!

E. J. Adams
Regina [Leader-Post]

“I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing,” said the Rev. John Hagee, John McCain’s ex-BFF, when asked about Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans just before a “massive homosexual rally,” aka an annual street party called “Southern Decadence,” was supposed to take place in the French Quarter. “I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”

And God got his way: By drowning little old ladies in attics in the Ninth Ward, God prevented that massive gay rally—for one year.

So how does a douchebag like Hagee explain away the tragedy in Iowa last week? A tornado struck a Boy Scout camp, killing four and injuring scores more, and the Scouts are famously antigay and antiatheist. Well, we need only to consult the same interview with Rev. Hagee to learn the answer: While all natural phenomena represent God’s “permissible will,” says Hagee, “it is wrong to say that every natural disaster is the result of sin… No man on Earth knows the mind of God.”

See how that works? Not every natural disaster is the result of sin, you see, because sometimes natural disasters happen to us, not just to them, and when they happen to us, well, the Lord sure moves in mysterious ways, and no man on Earth knows the mind of God. But let a natural disaster strike San Francisco this week, next week, or ever again, and Rev. Hagee will be able to read the mind of God like it was a large-print edition of Highlights for Children. [Savage Love]

Religions are false. Religious morality is thus based in falsehood, insofar as they are distinctively religious. I don’t know why I should take people who are wrong more seriously than people who are right. Also, I think it’s more respectful to be frank about what I think and treat religious people like adults, responsible for what they believe, than it is to allow religious people a special zone of personal irrationality, not to be mentioned in a bad light, lest they become insulted. [The Fly Bottle]

Milton Friedman was an economist. That might drive some people to hate economists. They are misguided, he has one redeeming quality: he his currently rotting in hell with many a powerful scumbag he served so well in his lifetime. [Freakonomics]

See here.

How did you feel when you heard that Buckley died this year? I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred. [NY Times]

Yes.

I just recently learned that  I might be able to get Romainian citizenship. All I have to do is become fluent in Romanian and learn the history and culture and prove my grandmother was Romanian. Globalization is awesome.

Radley Balko’s new post is brilliant: First, They Came for Michael Medved. And I Didn’t Speak Up, Because Michael Medved Is an Enormous Douche.

Commenter Christ in AL wins for best comment: “All I can say is, that memorial is hardly ‘fabulous’.”

A random Google search led to this four-year-old gem:

Mel Gibson has come under fire for being hard on Jews in his film “The Passion of the Christ” — but apparently, he feels that Protestants are also doomed to damnation. In fact, it looks like Gibson, a conservative Catholic, believes that his Episcopalian wife could be going to hell.

Gibson was interviewed by the Herald Sun in Australia, and the reporter asked the star if Protestants are denied eternal salvation. “There is no salvation for those outside the Church,” Gibson replied. “I believe it.”

He elaborated: “Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She’s a much better person than I am. Honestly. She’s, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it’s just not fair if she doesn’t make it, she’s better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it.” [MSNBC]

Who wouldn’t want to marry this man.

From the list of favorite quotes by economist Thomas Sowell:

…you can never be happy and dress yourself solely in the glass of other men’s approval. 

This quote is attributed to “Nicholas Flood Davis, The Irishman in Canada, p. vii.” This is in error. He means Nicholas Flood Davin, founder of Regina’s Leader-Post.

I recently had the the honor of having my passport photos taken. Following Europe’s lead you are now reminded that you must not smile in passport photos. What on earth is the reason for this? Does a curvatuer of the lips make it impossible to identify someone? The argument seems to be that a neutral expression is necessary for such purposes. What a load of bullshit. That said, I wouldn’t have smiled anyway.

A draft law in Liaoning province makes it an obligation for adult children to contact or visit their parents regularly. [China Daily, via Marginal Revolution]

I’ve always been under the impression that, as an American citizen who has never resided in the United States, I was ineligable to vote in American elections. I seem to have been mistaken. I’m going to have to look into this.

Data are available for every Florida precinct on vote totals for each candidate, the number of non-voted ballots, and on voters’ race and party affiliation. At first glance, the numbers seem to confirm the disturbing claim that African American had higher rates of non-counted ballots than other groups. But critics are wrong in charging that this aberration cost Gore the election, for the group most “victimized” by non-voted ballots, in fact, was African American Republicans.African American Republicans who voted in Florida were an incredible fifty-four to sixty-six times more likely than the average African American to have had a ballot declared invalid. Another way of phrasing this is that for every two additional African American Republicans in the average precinct, there was one additional ballot that did not register a vote for president.

In 2000, there were 22,270 registered African American Republicans voters in Florida-or about one for every twenty registered African American Democrats. In a state where the 2000 presidential race was decided by fewer than 1,000 votes, this is no trivial number. Since we can assume that these voters, as Republicans, would vote mostly for the Republican candidate, the overall numbers show that George W. Bush was hurt more by the loss of African American votes than Al Gore.

These results are indeed disturbing. They indicate that, if there was a conspiracy to disenfranchise some group of Florida voters, that effort was directed at Republicans, not at African Americans as a race. This conclusion confirms with another fact that the data reveal: among white voters, Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to cast non-voted ballots. Additionally, I found that the overall rate of non-voted ballots was 14 percent higher when the county election supervisor was a Democrat, and 31 percent higher when the supervisor was an African American Democrat.

So where does all this leave us? It’s hard to believe that there was some nefarious plot to disenfranchise Republicans overall or African American Republicans in particular. More likely, a significant proportion of these Republicans, particular those living in heavily Democratic areas, simply did not like the choices for president and therefore declined to vote for that race. Although tampering cannot definitely be ruled out, we can dismiss claims that the poor and African Americans overall were disenfranchised, since figures show that income and race were only one-third as important in explaining spoiled ballots as were the methods and machines used in voting.

[John R. Lott, Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t (Washington: Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2007), 178-179.]

I’m not a chess geek - I prefer games where people laugh. [Bryan Caplan]

Some person puts up a post defending Sweden, gets slapped down. Brilliant.

If the government could provide me with an endless supply of hot chicks, I might actually become a pinko. [John C. Randolph at Reason]

MTV Networks Europe has been fined a total of £255,000 ($484,500) by U.K. media regulator Ofcom for “widespread and persistent” breaches of its broadcasting code by four of its channels.

The Viacom-owned operator will have to pay the following penalties: TMF £80,000 ($152,000), MTV France £35,000 ($66,500), MTV UK £80,000 ($152,000) and MTV Hits £60,000 ($114,000).

The “highly offensive language and material” was broadcast before the 9pm family-viewing watershed. [Variety]

Whenever such a case happens in the United States there is a chorus of complaints and mockery from the “enlightened” Europe. I guess it was all smoke and mirrors.

Like a bear robbed of her cubs,
       I will attack them and rip them open.
       Like a lion I will devour them;
       a wild animal will tear them apart.

Hosea 13:8

It’s very unpleasant to be an irreligious kid in a religious family. Every week - if not more often - you have to remain silent in the presence of dogmatic nonsense. You can’t even get things off your chest during the Q&A session - most religions don’t have them, and most religious people don’t appreciate them. If you challenge your family members, your chances of getting a straight answer - or even a civil one - are pretty low. [EconLog]