How About Those Gasoline Prices - Part 2

Early Saturday morning I had a dream. In that dream, I went out of my house one day and noticed something that completely astounded me. If I recall correctly, in the dream I was walking with my wife up the road to nearby Woodbury Plaza, and in the distance I saw the price sign on display at the BP gasoline station. What caught my attention was the price that was advertised for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline. It read $1.75 per gallon.

In the dream, I turned to my wife and asked her, "What the hell happened to cause the price of gasoline to go down so much? I don't understand how this is possible!"

That's about all I remember from the dream.

Anyway, this past July 11, I got an e-mail from my congressional representative Steve Israel with the catchy title "Dropping Gasoline Prices in Two Weeks or Less." In his e-mail, Representative Israel announces:

Reducing gas prices in two weeks? It’s entirely possible. And no, it doesn’t depend on a massive production increase from Saudi Arabia, or even additional drilling—which wouldn’t give us a price reduction for five to ten years.

All we need to do is draw down a limited portion of the oil in our country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), and prices will drop dramatically. Most importantly, the effect will be immediate- unlike drilling on the continental shelf or in Alaska, which will take nearly a decade to have a significant impact.

The SPR currently holds over 700 million barrels of oil- it’s highest capacity in history! Why are we hording such a massive reserve of oil when gas prices continue to rise at an intolerable rate? According to the Department of Energy, oil from SPR deployment would enter the market in less than 2 weeks. Why wait 10 years when we can have results now?

While I appreciate Representative Israel's concern about the price of gasoline, the fact is, since he sent out the above-cited e-mail, we have had results without tapping the SPR. I don't recall the exact peak price in my neighborhood, but I believe it was over $4.30 per gallon for regular unleaded. After hitting a record of $147 per barrel, the price of a barrel of oil has since declined to about $111. Slowly but surely, the price at the pump has been declining, dipping below $4.00 per gallon. The BP gas station that featured in my dream lowered its price for regular unleaded to $3.92 per gallon today. The prices in Western Suffolk are lower by about a nickel. Last night, on the way home from a friend's house in Deer Park, I filled up my tank with gas costing $3.86 a gallon.

So, why is the price of gasoline going down? While I am sure there are a lot of different explanations and theories, one factor that has to be contributing to the decline is the fact that Americans are driving less. According to an August 13, 2008 news release from the Department of Transportation:

Americans drove 4.7 percent less, or 12.2 billion miles fewer, in June 2008 than June 2007. The decline is most evident in rural travel, which has fallen by 4 percent – compared to the 1.2 percent decline in urban miles traveled – since the trend began last November.

The full report can be read here. So far, the number of miles driven for each of the first six months of this year shows a decline from the same month in 2007. It breaks down as follows:

January -1.6%
February -0.5%
March -4.3%
April -1.6%
May -3.9%
June -4.7%

One of the things this demonstrates is that prices are outside of the ability of our elected officials to control. I don't know how much Representative Israel expected the price of oil to drop by tapping the SPR, but the market price's downward trend surely renders his proposal unnecessary. And it also begs the question, how do our elected officials "know" what the price of gasoline should be? Should we slowly deplete the SPR to maintain a price of $2.00 per gallon? And if so, how are they going to encourage motor vehicle owners to reduce their driving and use alternative modes of transportation?

While I don't have any hard statistics, I have seen anecdotal evidence that more people are riding their bicycles, as I have been doing, when carrying out local errands. Even in my own neighborhood, I notice more people with Shoprite or CVS plastic bags hanging from their handle bars (to which I wince a bit, as I wear a knapsack on my back, which is much safer), and I see some Long Island Rail Road commuters making use of the bicycle lockers at the Hicksville Station. Unfortunately, I can't make use of a bicycle locker, because I have to pick my children up from day camp, and starting next month, from school.

The big question, make that two big questions, is, how low will gasoline prices fall and for how long? I think I can be pretty confident that we won't see the price I saw in my aforementioned dream. One downside of declining fuel prices is that if they get low enough, fuel conservation efforts will slacken and the demand for gasoline will increase, thereby setting the stage for the price to go up again.

Now, I make no claim to any special oracular powers when it comes to the price of gasoline. I couldn't tell you what the price of a barrel of Brent Light Sweet Crude will cost a month from now. I do expect that the price of gasoline will stop falling at some point and that it will resume its upward march and set a new record, whereupon it will decline somewhat, before rising again. From what I have read, it seems inevitable that we will eventually reach a point where production will not be able to keep pace with demand, unless we can find a significant alternative fuel sources that will steer us away from our dependence on petroleum. But that is a topic for another post.

In the meantime, I still plan to continue doing what I have been doing, using my bicycle or walking for local errands, and planning my driving routes to minimize fuel consumption.

Feelin' That Christian Love!

Last night, while surfing the Internet, I came across a Youtube segment from the short-lived Richard Pryor Show from the mid-1970's that I had dimly remembered from my childhood. From there, I clicked on another Richard Pryor video from the show wherein Richard makes a startling discovery about ancient Egypt.

After watching the segment, I read some of the comments that previous viewers posted in response to the video. One commenter, going by the name of nukecat (profile in the link), wrote "sorry to spoil all of your fun, but jews arent black and they are gods choosen (sic) people, not blacks."

I felt the need to spoil his fun, and informed him that "The Jews are not God's "chosen people" and the god of the Bible does not exist." To be honest, it was intended as a drive-by comment, and I wasn't looking to get into a debate.

Then, when I checked my e-mails a short while ago, I found that I got not one, but two responses from nukecat.

In a message received at 10:30 P.M. last night, nukecat responded with these insightful words:

sorry to say that your (sic) wrong
you dont know what the fuck your (sic) talking about

Apparently, that was not enough for him, because I received the next message from him at 10:42 P.M., in which he charitably informed me:

i hope you burn in hell asshole
its sad..you look intelligent ...but looks are deceiving
what miserable life you must lead without god

It never ceases to amuse me how some people assume that being an atheist means living a miserable life. To be honest, I am astonished at times about how good my life has turned out. It seems to me that if anyone has a miserable life, it must be nukecat. He doesn't bother to offer any factual information as to why he is right and I am wrong, and instead resorts to vulgarities and wishing me eternal suffering. If my life is miserable, then what does that make his?

The Lure of the Flesh

Today, I was reading this post by Vjack at Atheist Revolution about a bunch of Christian busybodies staking out an adult store in Indiana, taking pictures of the establishment's customers and writing down their license plate numbers. It wouldn't surprise me if these busybodies, like Bubba Flavel in Porky's 2, are merely using their outrage to mask their own fascination with "indecency".

Blacksun wrote in the comments section of the post about "a drive-thru cappuccino shop in rural Washington state staffed by bikini-wearing baristas that was closed down. They claimed that the scantily clad women essentially amounted to an "adult business." Of course, since SO many children are driving around to cappuccino shops, they MUST be protected."

I did some searching on Google and while I did not come across the CNN article Blacksun mentioned, this article likely deals with the same establishment. From my brief research on this, it would seem that bikini barista shops are becoming a growing trend in the American Northwest.

Now personally, I don't find anything wrong with drive through coffee shops being staffed by bikini clad ladies, as long as they are at least 18 years of age and their participation is voluntary, that is that refusing to wear a bikini should not be grounds for dismissal. The way I see it, if the coffee at such an establishment is not very good, I doubt male customers are going to keep going back again and again to such places just to catch a glimpse of cleavage. I personally wouldn't go out of my way to be served at a coffee house staffed by buxom bikini clad baristas, but if it was close to where I live or work and I liked the coffee, I would consider the attraction to be an added benefit to patronizing a place I would likely frequent anyway.

From a feminist perspective, there are probably two ways of looking at this. On the one hand, some feminists would argue that using attractive, scantily clad women to sell a product is demeaning to women, while another valid feminist perspective would be that if a woman wants to flaunt her sexuality and feels empowered by it, then it should be her choice to do so. Some people will be swayed to patronize a coffee shop because it has hot bikini babes serving "a cup of Joe," while others will go to another coffee shop because the baristas are not wearing bikinis.

Showing some skin to sell more coffee is one thing, but it is quite another thing when the product being sold could be dangerous to your health. The photo at the top of this post is a picture of a Taiwanese betel nut girl, one of thousands who sell betel nuts from glass encased booths on roadsides throughout Taiwan.

The chewing of betel nuts is common in southern and south east Asia, particularly in India and Taiwan. I first heard of it last year when I was reading a tourist guide book about Taiwan, as I was (and still am) interested in visiting there in the near future. According to the tour guide, "Taiwan now has one of the highest rates of mouth and throat cancer in Asia, a statistic most doctors link with chewing the nut."

From this article from the Taipei Times:

"Before, we only knew that chewing betel nuts could lead to oral cancer and other oral-related diseases," Ko said, "but now we have found that it can also harm other parts of the body."

Ko said that betel nuts have been identified by academics and researchers as a first-class cancer-causing substance. Even though betel-nut chewers spit out the juice, some of it is swallowed and goes into the bloodstream. Arecoline, an ingredient in the betel nut, becomes the residue that stays in the organs.

Alas, efforts to reduce the chewing of betel nuts is running into an obstacle, as this Bloomberg article notes:

The Taiwan government's plan to curb cancer faces tough opposition: about 60,000 women who sit in roadside glass booths, often wearing little more than a bikini, selling the island's oldest legal drug.

The so-called betel-nut beauties, who are unique to Taiwan, peddle the island's second-largest crop to 17.5 percent of the adult male population, according to government estimates.

I believe that in this particular case, there is a legitimate argument in favor of curbing the sale of betel nuts as a public health issue, including discouraging its sale by scantily clad ladies. A product that is a known carcinogen should not be glamorized.

Below is a brief video from Youtube about Betel Nut girls.

The Modesty Guard

While Israelis and their Arab Muslim neighbors do not particularly like each other, it seems as if some ultra-Orthodox Jews have taken inspiration from the Sharia police in Muslim countries and have started their own "Modesty Guard" to harass Jewish women who are deemed not sufficiently modest. Read about it and watch the video here on Haaretz.

The Goldilocks Zone

Panorama of Martian landscape around the Phoenix Mars Lander

In the comments thread of this post on Vjack's Atheist Revolution site, a Christian commenter going by the name of Thomas wrote:

Now on a different note, this always amazed me. Science tells us that if the earth was a small amount space closer to the sun, our atmosphere would disintegrate and we would burn up. If the earth were a small amount of space farther from the sun, we would all freeze and die. What keeps us the EXACT distance from the sun so that life will continue on our planet? Is it something we as humans can take credit for?

I replied to Thomas that he was spouting the "Goldilocks Zone" argument, which is another way of saying that our Earth is "fine tuned" for life. After all, is it just a coincidence that our planet is in just the right spot for life? Of course, that assumes that we are at the "EXACT distance."

Yesterday, NASA announced that "[l]aboratory tests aboard NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander have identified water in a soil sample. The lander's robotic arm delivered the sample Wednesday to an instrument that identifies vapors produced by the heating of samples." There is now considerable evidence that there were once "vast lakes, flowing rivers and deltas on early Mars, all of which were potential habitats for microbes."

From the mission objective for the Phoenix Mars Lander:

"Recent discoveries have shown that life can exist in the most extreme conditions. Indeed, it is possible that bacterial spores can lie dormant in bitterly cold, dry, and airless conditions for millions of years and become activated once conditions become favorable. Such dormant microbial colonies may exist in the Martian arctic, where due to the periodic wobbling of the planet, liquid water may exist for brief periods about every 100,000 years making the soil environment habitable.

Phoenix will assess the habitability of the Martian northern environment by using sophisticated chemical experiments to assess the soil's composition of life-giving elements such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and hydrogen. Identified by chemical analysis, Phoenix will also look at reduction-oxidation (redox) molecular pairs that may determine whether the potential chemical energy of the soil can sustain life, as well as other soil properties critical to determine habitability such as pH and saltiness."

So, Thomas is wrong. If the Earth was a small amount of space farther from the sun, we would not necessarily all freeze and die. If Mars had periods where parts of its surface were covered with liquid water, then our Earth could have been 100 million miles from the sun instead of 93 million miles, and our planet should still have been warm enough to possess liquid water. Then again, even at its current distance from the sun, there are some scientists who theorize that some 700 million years ago, our Earth was entirely encased in ice. This theory has been dubbed "Snowball Earth." As this article shows, while there is counter-evidence that the entire planet was not covered in ice, even critics of the "Snowball Earth" theory acknowledge that the Earth during the time period in question experienced more glaciation than at any other time in the planet's existence.

Of course, under such conditions, the human race would probably freeze to death. But life itself need not. There are organisms that seem to thrive in environments and temperatures hostile to human life. We call these organisms, appropriately enough, extremophiles. As Doctor Penelope Boston writes in the article I just linked to, "On Earth, we have environments ranging from the superheated waters of submarine volcanic vents to the ultra-dry bitter cold of the Antarctic Dry Valleys. We find organisms living in caves dripping with sulfuric acid and others thriving in intensely alkaline solutions. We find creatures happily existing in saturated salt solutions, enduring megadoses of ionizing radiation, or deriving their food and energy sources from unpromising inorganic materials like manganese, iron, and sulfur compounds."

Will we find evidence that such organisms currently or once did exist on Mars? Who knows? NASA reports that it is extending the mission of the Mars Phoenix Lander to September 30, 2008. In the weeks after that date, the data collected from the probe will continue to be analyzed. I, for one, eagerly await what new discoveries await us.

Maybe Jack and the Beanstalk Was Real

Feed me, Seymour!

This year, my wife planted some sunflower plants in front of our living room window. She said she gave them some vitamins, which must account for their tremendous size. The tallest one of them all, which stands directly behind my children in this photo, must be at least twelve feet in height, and it hasn't even bloomed yet!

But sadly, I am not even close to the world's record for the tallest sunflower. I did some checking on the Internet, and apparently some guy in the Netherlands got one to grow to over 25 feet! Then again, we'll see how much more this one has yet to grow.

The Natural Conclusion of Atheism?

"What's the most you ever lost in a coin toss?"

I have not seen the movie No Country For Old Men yet, but I have watched a few scenes of it on Youtube, as well as reading some review and opinions on the film on various web sites.

One discussion in particular caught my attention, the topic being whether Anton Chigurh, the cold-blooded killer portrayed in the film by Javier Bardem, was an atheist. The discussion was raised by an e-mailer who opines that No Country For Old Men is:

"a modern classic, a deep meditation on the natural conclusion of atheism (the recklessly craven positioning of self for purposes of survival) and the believers who dare to exist for causes outside of self, an endeavor that "No Country" makes clear is noble indeed but corrosive to the soul."

As an atheist myself, I don't see it that way at all. While Anton Chigurh may be an atheist (apparently the novel by Cormac McCarthy on which the movie is based implies that he is), he definitely strikes me as being a sociopath. He feels absolutely no connection to his fellow human beings, going so far as to turn a gas station owner's clumsy attempts at making small talk with him into a potentially life and death situation.

Rather than being a "natural conclusion of atheism," Anton Chigurh is at best a possible outcome of atheism, and one that will be only chosen by a small few who reject the idea of civilization itself. And what do I consider civilization to be? The excerpts below from this post probably express it better than I ever could:

"Civilization is not a lifestyle, it is a way of thinking about our relationship to other people. In a civilized society, you act as though other people are as real as you are - that is, you assume that they feel pain like you do, and you endeavor to do unto others as you would have done to you. In a civilized society you believe that others have rights, just as you believe you do, and you attempt to extend them as justly and fairly as possible.

Civilization has existed in all of human history at one point or another - and if it has a definition, if you can sort out the societies that thought public beheadings were civilized from the ones that didn’t - it comes down to the notion that we have responsibilities towards other people, and th[at] other people have rights and responsibilities towards us."

Attack of the Holy Water Spritzer

Sadly, my Mom has taken a turn for the worse lately, after having been active and independent for the last few months. She is suffering from anxiety and depression and has been abusing her supply of anti-anxiety and sleeping pills.

My brother Bobby and I resolved to bring her to a hospital with a detox facility and Nassau County Medical Center told my brother over the phone that they had beds available.

When my brother and I were standing outside of her apartment at the senior facility where she lives, one of her neighbors came outside and was walking to her car nearby. She told us she wanted to "bless" my Mom before she left for the hospital.

I had encountered this neighbor before at my father's funeral a couple of years ago. She is loud, short, talkative and very religious Greek Orthodox woman in her Eighties. At one point when I was standing near my dad's casket, she came up to me and kept telling me to "trust in the lord." As much as I wanted to chew her out, I knew she meant well, so I kept my annoyance and my status as an atheist to myself.

But when my Mom came outside to get in the car, the Greek Orthodox woman approached her, telling my Mom that she was going to bless her. And with that, the lady whipped out a pink colored water spritzer and started spritzing what was presumably "holy water" on my mom's chest while doing the sign of the cross. She then called Bobby and I over to "bless" us as well. Bobby obliged her, but I walked away shaking my head and laughing. "How absurd!" I thought. She called to me again, but Bobby told her, "Tommy's an atheist. He doesn't want to get blessed" or something like that. The lady ended up giving my mom the water spritzer and telling how when she was in the hospital, she "blessed" the doctor, the nurses and all the other hospital staff that were involved in whatever procedure she had done there.

With that, we all got in my car and drove off to the hospital.

So, just how effective was Greek Orthodox lady's holy water?

Well, after filling out the forms, meeting with the triage nurse, and then some other hospital employee, all of which took some two hours or more of our time, we were called for a third time for what we assumed was the last meeting before Mom was assigned to her bed. Instead, the man who called us informed us that the last available bed was taken a short while earlier. He explained to us that because the hospital was a public hospital, they had to assign the beds on a first-come first-serve basis.

In other words, the whole affair was an absolute waste of time. So now we have to wait and see if one of our other options, a private facility, will have a bed available for her on Monday morning.

Way to go Greek Orthodox holy water!

The Muslim Woman Denied French Citizenship - Encore

Last week I, among others in the blogosphere, commented on the case of Faiza Mabchour, a Moroccan immigrant whose application for French citizenship was denied because her "radical" practice of Islam was deemed to be incompatible with French values. Part of that radical practice of Islam was her wearing of a niqab, which is similar to a burqa, except that the niqab has an opening so that the wearer's eyes can be seen.

The New York Times has an article (registration required) that follows up with the Moroccan woman, only in this article she is called Faiza Silmi. The article quotes Fadela Amara, the French minister for urban affairs and herself a practicing Muslim of Algerian descent referring to the niqab as "not a religious insignia but the insignia of a totalitarian political project that promotes inequality between the sexes and is totally lacking in democracy."

As for Faiza herself, she claims that she abandoned the traditional Moroccan djelaba for the niqab because the djelaba "was not modest enough."

“I don’t like to draw men’s looks,” [Faiza] said. “I want to belong to my husband and my husband only.”

Pardon my language, but I call bullshit on this. If a woman insists on wearing a niqab in a country where hardly any woman wears one, then she is guaranteeing that not only men, but just about everyone else, will look at her. This is not about dressing modestly. It is about making a public spectacle of oneself. "Oooh! Look at me! I'm so pious!" Dressing modestly means dressing in a way so as not to attract too much attention to oneself. Maybe Faiza Salmi should ditch the niqab and walk around wearing sweatshirts, baggy pants and drab colored head scarf.

Oh, any by the way, if these two pictures below are any indication, then djelabas totally rock!

Signs of a Thaw Between Israel and Syria

To anyone following the news in the Middle East, it is no secret that Turkey has been acting as a mediator in peace talks between Israel and Syria.

While the big sticking point of course is the status of the Golan Heights, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 War, there are small steps that both sides can take to inch their way towards formal peace.

In my job as a trademark paralegal, I often correspond on behalf of our clients with intellectual property firms around the world. One irritant that firms who wish to file their trademarks in the Middle East is the Israel Boycott Declaration. I have not personally encountered this problem in my nearly eleven years in the field, though I have also not represented clients seeking to register their trademarks in Syria and Iraq, two Middle East countries that persisted in requiring applicants to submit an Israel Boycott Declaration.

An example of the information requested in a Declaration for trademark applicants in Syria asks such questions as: "Do you or any of your subsidiaries now or ever had a branch of main company factory or assembly plant in Israel? .... do you have or any of your subsidiaries now or ever had general agencies or offices in Israel for your middle eastern or international operations? .... what companies are you shareholders in their capital? State the name of each company and the percentage of share to their total capital---and the nationality of each one?"

It is illegal for United States companies to comply with Israel Boycott requests, and the U.S. Department of Commerce has a bureau "charged with administering and enforcing the Antiboycott Laws under the Export Administration Act. Those laws discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from furthering or supporting the boycott of Israel sponsored by the Arab League, and certain Moslem countries, including complying with certain requests for information designed to verify compliance with the boycott. Compliance with such requests may be prohibited by the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and may be reportable to the Bureau."

But in a recent move, "Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Naji al-Otari approved on June 4, 2008 to exempt all new trademark, patent, industrial drawing and design applications from submitting the Israel Boycott Declaration requirement." The article does note though that "the effective date of the boycott declaration waiver was not decided by the Property Protection Department."

While a development like this is hardly the sort of thing to make the nightly news, in light of the backdoor peace negotiations between Israel and Syria, this does seem to signal a possible step forward by the Syrian government. I will keep an eye on this and see if a date is announced for when the boycott declaration waiver will take effect.

You Know You're Going to Have a Crappy Day

when the shuttle bus you board in the Broadway Mall parking lot to bring you to the train station starts to move before you have seated yourself, causing you to lose your balance as you are trying to sit down and get stabbed in the ass by the seat belt blade!

Yes, that is precisely what happened to me this morning as I endeavored to catch the 8:41 train out of Hicksville. As I reached down to check the seat of my pants while the bus was making its way to the station, I could feel the rip in my pants and my exposed underwear. When the bus got to the train station and all of the other passengers filed out, I moved up to the front seat and asked the driver, "Can you bring me back to my car please?"

He asked me if I forgot something, and I told him what had happened to me. Five minutes or so later, the bus driver had brought me back to the spot near where I had parked.

As I was stepping out of the bus, he asked me, "Do you want me to wait for you?"

I felt like saying to him, "Oh yeah, like I just happen to have an extra pair of pants in my car just in case of situations like this." But instead, I just told him that I had to go home and change.

France Denies Muslim Woman's Citizenship Application

From the United Arab Emirates English language daily The National, comes this article about how a "deeply religious Moroccan woman has been denied citizenship because her radical practice of Islam has been judged by the highest court in the land to be incompatible with French values."

"The 32-year-old mother-of-three, identified in news reports as Faiza Mabchour, is the first person to be refused the right to become French on the grounds of cultural behaviour."

My first reaction to this is to shout "Way to go, France!" If an immigrant's religious beliefs put him or her firmly at odds with the values of the country to which he or she seeks to become a citizen of, it seems to be a matter of commonsense to deny the application.

My feelings about this are reinforced when compared to the way Belgium handles Malika El Aroud, an internet jihadist whom I blogged about here. As some of my readers may recall, "Malika El Aroud is allowed to advocate jihad against non-Muslims, including presumably the people of Belgium, while being subsidized by the Belgian taxpayers in her nefarious activities, all the while her identity in public being kept anonymous."

Again, my inclination is to support the decision of the French government with regard to Faiza Mabchour, though I think I need to give it further consideration. I would be interested to hear what you all think about this.

Religious Displays in the Public Workplace

Vjack at Atheist Revolution has a post here about atheism and religion in the workplace, and how the religious attitudes of one's co-workers or supervisors "who wear, display, or push their religious beliefs in the workplace can be a problem. "Hostile workplace" generally refers to a form of sexual harassment, but many atheist workers experience another sort of hostile workplace. Express their feelings about religion, refuse to participate in prayer meetings, or turn down enough church invitations, and they can be ostracized, harassed, or even fired."

Black Sun over at Black Sun Journal tackles the subject of religious propaganda being posted on public property in violation of the law, "especially when those messages are anonymous–where the perpetrator cannot be traced or held accountable. It’s clear that this kind of message is not even an advertisement for a particular church. Instead, the signs are an attempt to generically proselytize and induce guilt in members of other faiths or those, like myself, with no faith at all." Read Black Sun's post to see how he personally dealt with the situation.

As for myself, I faced a situation this past Friday that was sort of an amalgamation of the two. Though it was my day off from work, I went to the Nassau County Clerk's Office in Mineola to get a notary signature authenticated for a document that was needed for a trademark opposition in Bolivia.

At the Notary Public section in the County Clerk's Office, there were two women behind the counter. The one to the left was available, and called me forward. I handed her my paperwork and she left to go to the back of the office to look in a file cabinet for the information on the notary public to authenticate the signature.

While I was standing there waiting, my eyes drifted towards the other women behind the desk. She had finished helping the person she was dealing with while I was waiting to be called and was now alone at her workstation. She appeared to be an Indian woman in her late twenties or early thirties with a pretty face. But what ended up catching my attention was her work area itself. Perpendicular to the counter was a pillar that formed a wall in front of which sat her desk. On this pillar were displayed rather prominently a cross, a Christian calendar, and some other Christian materials, along with a small picture of an Indian man who presumably was her husband. I was a bit surprised to see such items displayed so conspicuously in a county office, particularly for an employee who conducted her work face to face with the public from her desk.

I continued to stand there waiting, because the employee helping me was having trouble finding the notary public's information in the county records. While standing there, I noticed the Christian Indian woman staring at the t-shirt I was wearing.

"What does that say?" she asked me smiling, her voice friendly. I turned to face her and let my arms hang to the side so that she could more easily read my shirt, which looked like this. She chuckled briefly and I explained to her that I got it in Florida after taking off from work to finish a scuba diving class. And with that, our interaction ended. The other woman returned to the counter and explained to me that even though the notary's stamp indicated she was qualified in Nassau County, New York State's records indicated that she was in fact qualified in Queens County, which made my trip there a waste of time. Well, it wasn't a total waste, because I also went to the Social Security office in Mineola to submit an application to replace my lost Social Security card. And my experience at the County Clerk's Office provided me with inspiration for this post!

But back to the main thrust of this post. Some atheists in my position might have taken offense at the County employee having Christian paraphernalia so prominently displayed at her workstation, particularly since her workstation was behind a counter where she interacts with the public. On further reflection though, I was not bothered by it. None of the items were of a proselytory nature. Rather, they seemed geared towards providing her with a measure of personal inspiration, and I personally do not see the need to begrudge her that.

Others might retort that if an atheist in her workstation had atheist materials prominently displayed, that it would result in a torrent of complaints and the atheist employee would be forced to take them down. Probably true. But I think there is a difference between having religious items on display that are of a personally inspirational nature in contrast with items that take a negative position against the beliefs of others. If the woman's work station displayed signs along the lines of "Get Right With Jesus or Get Left in Hell," there definitely would be a valid cause for complaint, and I am sure that she would be forced to remove them (unless maybe it was a county clerk's office somewhere in the Bible Belt). An atheist equivalent to this woman's work station at the Nassau County Clerk's Office would be a work station that contained inspirational quotes and materials of a secular humanist nature that made no disparaging references to religious belief.

I don't know if anyone, whether atheist or a follower of another religion, has or will complain about this particular lady's display of Christian paraphernalia at her workstation. Personally, I don't have a problem with it. Given the nature of her duties, I fail to see how her religious beliefs would put her in a position to discriminate against the general public. Rather than have a knee-jerk objection to the display of any religious belief in such a forum, I think it would behoove atheists and worshippers of other faiths to draw a distinction between literature and materials that are merely inspirational to the employee who displays them, and paraphernalia that is proselytory or condemnatory in nature.

UPDATED: Scratch (Maybe) This Country Off My Travel List

One of my favorite English language publications in my International Media list in my sidebar is the United Arab Emirates daily The National.

The United Arab Emirates is the financial hub of the Persian Gulf region and has a large expatriate population. As noted by Expat Focus, "[t]he United Arab Emirates are generally recognised as the most cosmopolitan and "Westernised" of the Middle East countries and the expat population is growing rapidly. In fact, less than 50% of the population of the UAE are Arabs."

On the other hand, however, "95% of the population are Muslims and Islam is the official religion." Thus, while "alcohol is available to non-Muslims (with the exception of the Emirate of Sharjah where it is forbidden for all) it must never be consumed on the streets or offered to local citizens."

It is probably inevitable then that some tensions would arise between Western expatriates and tourists in the Emirates and the mores and customs of the local population.

One apparent problem is a growing number of complaints about topless women at UAE beaches. From the article in The National:

Public beaches in Dubai will soon have large signs warning women against topless bathing and indecent exposure contrary to the cultural values of the UAE.

Dubai Municipality said yesterday the decision followed repeated complaints from residents about nudity, mostly among tourists. Residents had complained that a growing number of women were sunbathing and swimming topless, municipality officials said.

An extreme example of this disregard for local mores is reported in this article, wherein:

A British sales manager caught having intercourse with a man on a public beach faces a jail term of up to six years.

Michelle Palmer, who is in her 30s, and the British tourist face charges of public indecency after a police officer who had previously warned the pair about their behaviour found them having intercourse on Jumeirah beach.

While a jail term of up to six years is unduly harsh for fucking on the beach, it is perfectly reasonable for the UAE to enforce standards of decency on their public beaches. After all, we don't permit such things on our beaches here in the United States.

But because we are talking about an Islamic country here, you know they can't help themselves from taking their prohibitions to the level of absurdity. To repeat, no one can fault the UAE for cracking down on indecent exposure on their public beaches, particularly those where children are present. But it is quite another thing to make it a crime for even married couples to kiss and hug in public. Again, from The National:

Couples arrested for kissing in public, a crime punishable by deportation, cannot plead ignorance of the law, a senior Dubai judge has warned.

Earlier this year, an expatriate couple arrested for kissing in a parked car narrowly avoided being deported after being found not guilty of a scandalous public act.

A passer-by noticed the couple, photographed them in the act and then reported them to the police.

“The man was planning to take his wife out to dinner for her birthday after a heated argument and he was apologising to her and kissed her. A man who happened to be walking by saw them and took their picture,” said their lawyer, Nabih Bader. The couple escaped with a stern warning from a judge.

As the excerpt from the article above shows, such a law is practically an invitation for busy bodies armed with cell phone cameras to go around snooping on couples and reporting them to the police. It is petty and vindictive.

It is not clear to me from the article how far the law in the UAE goes. I have e-mailed the author of the article and asked if it applies to circumstances such as if I were to greet my wife in a public place and give her a quick embrace and a kiss on the lips for at most a second or two. I also asked the author if it applies to married couples who hold hands together while walking on the beach. If that is indeed the case, then I definitely have no desire to visit the United Arab Emirates with my family as long as such a law is on the books and enforced. Hopefully the writer of the article will provide me with a reply, and if so, I will update this post with his or her response.

UPDATE: The writer of the article on public kissing being a crime in the UAE, Hani Bathish, was kind enough to favor me with a reply to me e-mail. Hani wrote:

"Well Tom, of-course there is considerable leeway afforded, especially to foreign nationals, I doubt anyone would raise a fuss over a couple holding hands in public, or even a peck on the cheek. The UAE, however, is still a deeply conservative culture so it always helps to keep that in mind when you are here.

Thanks for reading The National and taking the trouble to write, we greatly value any and all feedback from our readers on our stories."

Okay, so maybe I might be willing to visit the United Arab Emirates, though to be honest, I am not much of a desert person. I am not keen on visiting Las Vegas either. In conclusion, Western tourists and expatriates in the UAE should not act like obnoxious assholes, and the UAE should maybe lighten up a little on mild displays of public affection.

Beer in Baghdad

From The Independent,

Alcohol is openly for sale once more in Baghdad. All over the Iraqi capital, drink stores, which closed their doors in early 2006 when sectarian strife was raging, have slowly begun to reopen. Two years ago, al-Qa'ida militants were burning down liquor stores and shooting their owners. Now around Saadoun Street, in the centre of the city, at least 50 stores are advertising that they have alcohol for sale.

I have to admit I was at best guardedly optimistic about "the Surge". But this is just the latest indicator that things are beginning to improve in Iraq. Once Iraq's women are safe to walk the streets in shorts and low cut tops, Iraq will be ready to rejoin the ranks of the civilized nations of the world!

Kelantan State in Malaysia Sucks Again

In a previous post in my Malaysia Sucks* series, I referred to an article from the BBC about the state of Kelantan in Malaysia, where the ruling Islamist party is requiring the segregation of the sexes at supermarket checkout counters.

Now, from the Associated Press, via The Jakarta Post, the Kelantan state government "plans to compel Muslim government workers to pray five times a day as required by their religion, an official said Tuesday."

The article quotes "Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat, the chief minister of northeastern Kelantan state, [who] said Muslims who shirk their prayer obligations "'are not fearful of Allah and are susceptible to committing bribery and other sins.'"

But hold on there Tommy, how do you know Nik Nak isn't right? Maybe forcing Kelantan's civil servants to pray five times a day will make them more honest and efficient!

Okay, fine, let us examine the evidence then. Here is a link to Transparency International's annual Corruption Perception Index for 2007. From its web site, "Transparency International (TI) seeks to provide reliable quantitative diagnostic tools regarding levels of transparency and corruption, both at global and local levels." According to TI, "[t]he CPI ranks more than 150 countries in terms of perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys."

Now, assuming that TI's methodologies are accurate, we should expect that the least corrupt countries in its ranking system will be deeply conservative Muslim countries. However, when you click on the link above to the CPI for 2007, the ten least corrupt countries in the Index are: Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Iceland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, and Norway. Not a single Muslim country appears in the top ten list. Heck, even the United States only ranks number 20. The best ranked Muslim country is Qatar, which comes in at number 32. As for Malaysia, its ranking is 43.

Interesting then that the top ten countries in terms of honesty and transparency are secular countries that are not Muslim majority. So, Nik Nak, maybe instead of forcing your civil servants to pray five times a day, maybe you need to look into more meaningful ideas for reform, like perhaps better salaries and education requirements? Maybe even send a fact finding team to Denmark, that country you hate because of those stupid cartoons, to find out how they manage to have an honest civil service without bowing to Mecca five times a day.

* To my Malaysian readers who might have stumbled upon this blog by googling "Malaysia Sucks", please note that I am not saying Malaysia sucks in its entirety. I have no doubt that Malaysia is a beautiful country filled with wonderful people. My criticism of Malaysia in these posts is limited to a narrow focus on issues of religious pluralism and womens' rights. As a Muslim majority country with a not insubstantial minority of Chinese and Indian non-Muslims, Malaysia serves as an important barometer for how well a Muslim majority country can protect and promote democracy and pluralism. I want Malaysia to be a successful country, and my barbs are aimed at those persons and forces in the country that seek to turn it away from the path of a tolerant and prosperous nation.

Interesting Article of the Day

From the Kuwait Times, did you know that the United States exports bull semen to Iran?

US exports to Iran - including brassieres, bull semen, cosmetics and possibly even weapons - grew more than tenfold during US President George W Bush's years in office even as he accused Iran of nuclear ambitions and helping terrorists. America sent more cigarettes to Iran, at least $158 million worth under Bush, than any other products.

Well, personally, I wouldn't feel too troubled if some of those crazy religious fundies get lung cancer from smoking our cigarettes. I just hope they don't figure out a way to use that bull semen against us!

On Atheism and Stalinism

Ivan the Terrible: Pious Christian and Murderous Tyrant

One of the frequent counter-arguments employed by Christians against atheists who refer to the body counts racked up during the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and the Medieval pogroms against the Jews, to name a few examples, is to point out the millions of people who were killed by atheistic regimes such as Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's Peoples' Republic of China.

To be fair, they do have a valid point. There are far greater forces for destruction in the world than religion, and the Soviet Union under Stalin is a perfect, if tragic, illustration of this fact. The truth is that it is not so much religion that is the problem as it is a matter of a totalitarian ideology that brooks no opposition or dissent, married to an overwhelming monopoly on force to carry out that ideology. That ideology can have either a religious or a secular basis.

But if one wants to hold up Stalin as a poster boy for the atrocities of atheism, one must also consider whether the blame should truly fall on atheism itself, or if instead if Stalin's atrocities were facilitated by a Russian culture that had historically been conditioned to obedience to absolutist dictators. In the case of Joseph Stalin, it is well known that the former seminarian was a great admirer of one of history's most notorious tyrants, Tsar Ivan the Fourth, better known as Ivan the Terrible.

One of my favorite books in my collection of books on history is Fearful Majesty: The Life and Reign of Ivan the Terrible by Benson Bobrick. It is a well written work and I recommend it for anyone interested in Russian history. The book also is the source of the information about Ivan the Terrible below.

In response to domestic opposition to his policies in the 1560's, Ivan created his own personal force known as the Oprichnina. Bobrick writes that "The Oprichnina became a state-within-a-state. It was an instrument of Ivan's will which paralleled the traditional bureaucracy...with its own ministries, treasury, council and so forth - but which actually existed to implement (not check, balance or modify by legalities or counsel) Ivan's desires."

Here is how the Oprichniki are described on page 198 of the hardcover edition of the book:

To staff his new court and administration and (as was soon apparent) to enforce the expropriation of land, Ivan assembled a sort of Praetorian Guard. Weirdly foreshadowing Hitler's SS, these Oprichniki, as they were called, donned black uniforms, displayed enigmatic or morbid insignia, and regarded themselves as a new form of religious sect with their own rites and customs. Whereas the SS sported a death's-head badge and a runic double-S flash, the Oprichniki rode on black horses and carried at their saddlebow a dog's head and broom as symbols of their determination to guard, day and night, the safety of their master and to sweep away all his enemies. No social contacts between them and the rest of the population were tolerated. Anyone could enlist...so long as he was willing to pledge himself to complete obedience to the tsar, and to faithfully execute all his orders. Their oath was almost a transcription of Matthew 10:37: "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

This force would be unleashed on Ivan's enemies, real and imagined. Bobrick quotes one eyewitness, who recalls that:

"It was a pitiful and sorrowful spectacle of slaughter and killings. Every day, ten, twenty or more Oprichniki concealing large axes under their cloaks, rode about the streets and alleys. Each detachment had its own list of boyars, dyaki, princes and leading merchants. No one knew what his own guilt or alleged wrongdoing was supposed to be. No one knew the hour of his own death or even the fact that he had been condemned. Everybody went about their affairs as if nothing was the matter. Suddenly a band of killers would descend."

To make matters worse, the courts were prohibited from "convicting Oprichniki of any crime!" As a consequence of this policy, criminal bands would go on rampages garbed as Oprichniki, taking advantage of the fact that no one could "distinguish between bandits and the tsar's own men."

And what was Tsar Ivan doing while all of this was going on? From page 224:

In a profane parody of monastic life, he assumed the role of abbot over a community of Oprichniki brethren...The brethren went about in dark cassock habits and cowls of rough black serge, and divided their time between exhausting church services and atrocities.

The monastic "rule" was strict. Everyone was awakened at three in the morning for matins, which lasted until dawn. During the service, Ivan sang, read, or prayed - sometimes with such fervor that he bruised his brow from beating it on the ground. Occasionally he would confer with his advisers and "often the bloodiest orders were dictated at matin-song or during Mass," which followed at eight. At ten the brethren gathered for their first repast of the day. During the meal, Ivan stood and read occasionally from the lives of the saints or some other edifying work. Leftovers were distributed in the marketplace to the poor. The remainder of the afternoon Ivan spent on affairs of state, or in the company of a favorite, or in hunting forays in the woods. Not infrequently, however (and he was "was never so happy as then in countenance and speech"), he would descend into the dungeons to observe acts of torture. "Blood often splashes his face," goes one eyewitness account, "but he does not mind; indeed he is delighted, and to indicate his joy he shouts 'Hoyda, Hoyda!' - a Turkish word resembling "giddyup" or "let's go," used by Tatar horsemen to urge on their steeds.

While it is clear that Ivan the Terrible considered himself to be a pious Russian Orthodox Christian (indeed, he even fancied himself a theologian and sometimes engaged in debates with Catholic and Protestant representatives), it would be wrong to blame Christianity for his excesses. However, as Ivan was definitely not an atheist, I submit his reign as evidence that it is not atheism that leads to tyranny. In Ivan the Terrible's case, as it was with Joseph Stalin, tyranny and terror was the natural outcome when a ruthless ruler has at his disposal the apparatus of the state and few, if any, checks or balances on his use of power. Sadly, for Russia, this seems to have been a frequent recurrence throughout its history. Peter the Great, though he did not come anywhere near Ivan's savagery, was also able to bend the apparatus of the Russian state to ruthlessly carry out his personal agenda.

Thus, if one wants to argue that atheism is at fault for the atrocities of Stalin's dictatorship, I would argue that one must ponder whether Stalin's murderous regime would have been possible if Russia had not first produced a tsar like Ivan the Terrible.

Long Time No Post

Wow, it's been almost a week since my last post. I just haven't been able to get around to it, though I have been mulling some topics. I have not been completely idle in the atheist blogosphere though, as I have been participating vigorously in a back and forth with a couple of Christian commenters in the comments thread at this post on Vjack's Atheist Revolution site. I encourage you all to join in.

I do have a post in the works that I hope to put up soon inspired by my remarks there, particularly expanding on my point that the vast universe we live in makes the god of the Bible improbable.

I'm too tired to put it together tonight though, as I am still fatigued from last night's outing with my wife. Empire Kayaks in Island Park hosted a kayak trip to see the fireworks display at Point Lookout. I took some pictures, but unfortunately none of them came out well enough to make it worth putting them up here. The trip was decent and something different from the ordinary. My left arm is really sore though and in need of occasional applications of Ben Gay® ointment from all that paddling.

Hooray! We Finally Got Our Stimulus Check!

It finally arrived in the mail today. My wife was starting to doubt that we would ever receive it. The reason it took so long is that we filed our income taxes by paper a few days before the April 15 deadline. I filed by paper because we owed money to both the Feds and New York State, so I wasn't going to pay the fee for filing electronically through TurboTax.

As happy as I am to have received it, to be honest, it's just going to go into our savings account to replenish what I took out of it to pay off a credit card bill. I try to maintain at least a $5,000 balance in the savings account linked to the checking account as an emergency fund. So yeah, our stimulus check is serving a useful purpose, even if it is not what President Bush had in mind.

The Lost Tribe That Wasn't

From The Guardian Online:

They are the amazing pictures that were beamed around the globe: a handful of warriors from an 'undiscovered tribe' in the rainforest on the Brazilian-Peruvian border brandishing bows and arrows at the aircraft that photographed them.

Or so the story was told and sold. But it has now emerged that, far from being unknown, the tribe's existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that 'uncontacted' tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.

While I didn't write about it when this story first surfaced, I did have some doubts about it. They were spawned by the now famous picture with the red painted warriors firing their bows and arrows up at the plane. It didn't strike me as authentic.

As for whether or not there are still "uncontacted" tribes in the Amazon, I guess it is possible there are isolated pockets of them here and there who have never met outsiders before, but they surely know that they are not alone. I am sure some of them have spoken with people in other tribes and found out about visitors to the forest and this can't have been the first time they ever saw an airplane.

Another thought I had was "Oh shit, now some Christian missionaries are going to try to find them so that they can 'save' them."

Jeebus Folk At My Door

It's Saturday morning and barely a half hour ago I was laying in bed with my beautiful wife cuddling and talking, when the door bell rings.

"Oh shit!" I grumbled as I got up and made my way to the front door. I peeped through the door and saw two ladies and knew immediately what I was in for.

I opened the door, and on my stoop was an Indian looking woman and a couple of steps down stood a black woman leaning on the hand rail.

"I hope you are having a good morning" the Indian woman greeted me. By her accent, I surmised she might be Guyanese, as most of these Jehovah Witness types who haunt my neighborhood tend to be of Caribbean origin.

"Well, I was," I replied.

The Indian lady started to go into her spiel. She reached into her shoulder bag to pull out a pamphlet and says something along the lines of, "A lot of people are full of despair with the way things are going in the world these days and they are afraid for the future."

"Well, I'm actually quite optimistic about the future," I interjected. She started to say something, but I didn't pay much attention and continued, "Because I am an atheist."

If memory serves, she started to say something about, "Well, the Bible says there is hope..."

I shot back, "Listen lady, the Bible talks about the destruction of the world. That doesn't sound too optimistic to me."

"Well, the Bible says there will be some survivors," she replied somewhat meekly. I got a chuckle out of that. Some survivors?

I decided to wrap things up with the we're gonna have to agree to disagree spiel. I was satisfied with the kick in the ass I had just given to her telling her that her religious belief requires war and destruction. But as she and her companion were turning away and heading down my walkway to the sidewalk, I fired off one last parting shot: "It's all a bunch of mythology and nonsense!"

And then it was back to the bed to tell my wife what had just happened.

Those Darn Morals!

I meant to do this post earlier, but it got sidelined by other things.

A couple of weeks ago I stepped out of the office for a few minutes to make a Starbucks® run. The girl behind the counter took my order and a few minutes later I had my iced mocha in hand. And no one had rung me up! Usually, the person who takes the order rings it up and another barista prepares it. But this time, no one had bothered asking me to pay.

I stood there for a few seconds pondering what I should do. I was a little ticked that they were out of soy milk and had to make my iced mocha with skim milk instead. Not to mention that Starbucks is a very profitable company, and they wouldn't notice the missing four dollars and change.

"Screw em!" I thought and walked out the door into the Rockefeller Concourse. I had gotten away with it! There was no one to stop me.

And then I stopped.

"I can't do this," I said to myself. "This is stealing and I am not a thief."

I turned around, walked back into the Starbucks, and walked up to the person manning the register to pay for my iced mocha.

I am writing about this little incident, because it serves as a rebuke to all those theists who claim that atheists have no morals. I wanted to walk away without paying. I did walk away without paying. But in the end I went back and did pay. Not because I feared what some sky daddy would think of me. I went back and paid for my drink because I recognized the value of not stealing. If everyone did what I did, then it would have a negative impact. A civilization worthy of the name cannot survive in the absence of trust and honor.

And now I anticipate comments from everyone telling me what an idiot I am for going back and paying for my drink!

Gay Marriage Is Destroying America

Seriously, I wonder how long it will take before some Bible belt pastor blames this on this.

The Red Cross Needs Your Help

The Red Cross has issued an appeal for donations to help it provide necessary services to our fellow Americans who have lost so much from the devastating floods that have hit the Midwest. See this article from CNN to get a sense of how serious this situation is.

Because of a shortfall in donations, the Red Cross is in the unenviable position right now of having to borrow funds in order to meet the needs of so many. The online donation page is here. I urge you all to give what you can and give America a demonstration of the generosity of the atheist and humanist community!

My New Letter to the Afghan Embassy re: Pervez Kambaksh

Mr. Said T. Jawad
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Afghanistan
Embassy of Afghanistan
2341 Wyoming Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20008

Dear Ambassador Jawad,

I am writing to convey my dismay and disappointment that the charges against Mr. Pervez Kambaksh for the supposed crime of blasphemy have not been dropped and that he still faces the possibility of the death penalty.

From what I have read, Mr. Kambaksh was originally convicted in a "trial" that lasted for only a few minutes where he was denied the right to counsel to challenge the charges brought against him. He also apparently is still unable to find legal counsel because fundamentalist thugs have threatened to kill anyone who takes his case.

With all due respect Mister Ambassador, blasphemy laws are an anachronism and have no place in a civilized society. The case of Mister Kambaksh demonstrates that such laws can be used to persecute innocent people and suppress the free exchange of ideas. I submit that blasphemy laws have the effect of retarding the growth and development of society when certain topics are considered off limits from discussing even as a hypothetical situation. It creates a repressive climate where one group with access to or influence over the levers of power can use such laws to limit criticism or target its political and intellectual opponents.

I call on the courts and elected government of the people of Afghanistan to abolish the death penalty for blasphemy and free Pervez Kambaksh. You know it is the right thing to do. Your President, the Honorable Hamid Karzai, knows it is the right thing to do. Find some technicality, some loophole, anything that will work, and let Pervez Kambaksh go free and be kept safe from narrow minded fanatics and bigots who would seek to do him harm.

I thank you for your consideration and look forward to hearing from you.

Respectfully yours,

Save Pervez Kambaksh

One of the things I have noticed about the blogosphere, as well as the media in general, is the outrage du jour. We read about something or see something on the television that outrages us at that particular moment, and then after the brief passage of time, it gets forgotten, to be replaced by a new outrage du jour.

One case that received a lot of attention in the atheist blogosphere at the beginning of the year was Pervez Kambaksh, a journalism student in Afghanistan who was charged with the crime of blasphemy for disseminating articles that were deemed insulting to Islam. (As an aside, I think I insult Islam just by waking up and getting out of bed every morning!)

I did a couple of posts about Pervez Kambaksh (by the way, his name has different spellings, but I will stick with the one I have been using) here and here. Since then, his name seems to have faded from the public consciousness. Wondering what had happened to him, I did some searching on Google.

From a May 18, 2008 article from the UK publication The Independent Online:

Pervez Kambaksh, the Afghan student sentenced to death after being accused of downloading internet reports on women's rights, yesterday pleaded innocent to charges of blasphemy. He told an appeal court in Kabul that he had been tortured into confessing.

Mr Kambaksh, 24, vehemently denied that he had been responsible for producing anti-Islamic literature. He insisted the prosecution had been motivated by personal malice of two members of staff and their student supporters at the university in Balkh, where he was studying journalism.

The head of the panel of three judges at Kabul, Abdul Salaam Qazizada, adjourned the trial until next Sunday to allow Mr Kambaksh further attempts to find a lawyer. As of last night they had not succeeded. The original trial took place in January. Mr Kambaksh's appeal was moved to Kabul at his own request, amid fears for his safety in Mazar after international outrage at the sentence. A petition by The Independent to secure justice for him has attracted more than 100,000 signatures.

In an open letter to Afghan President Hamid Karzai dated June 11, 2008 by the organization Reporters Without Borders, the case of Pervez Kambaksh was raised:

"You must of course be aware, Mr. President, of the case of the young journalist Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, which has shocked the entire world. The death sentence passed on him by a court in Mazar-i-Sharif triggered a wave of legitimate outrage. More than a million people have already signed a petition launched by the British newspaper The Independent calling for his release. The recent revelation that he was tortured by members of the security services casts doubt on your government’s ability to respect the relevant international standards.

How, Mr. President, can you ask for greater support from western countries when, at the same time, judges, prosecutors, political leaders and some clerics are targeting Afghan journalists with such virulence in your country?

Kambakhsh’s release and the quashing of his death sentence would be a positive signal in an otherwise sombre panorama."

I urge everyone who reads this post to contact the Embassy of Afghanistan in their respective countries and demand that the charges against Pervez Kambaksh be dropped and his life spared. Of course, be forceful but also respectful. The idea here is to persuade, not to condemn.

The website for the Embassy of Afghanistan in the United States is here. A man's life hangs in the balance here, and if the Afghan government catches enough heat from this, they might find some face saving way of letting Pervez Kambaksh go free.

Atheist 13 Meme and My 400th Post!

Michael Dorian of the New York City Atheists blog has tagged me with this meme, which, as the title above indicates, also happens to be my 400th post. Though I still haven't achieved the level of readership I had hoped for, Exercise in Futility has managed to stand the test of time, and I believe the best is yet to come.

Anyway, here it goes!

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?

I would define it simply as the absence of belief in a god. Personally, I cannot rule out 100% that there is no higher power that created our universe. But if there is such a being, I don't see how anyone can claim to know what it wants or indeed that it wants or needs anything from us puny humans.

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

I was raised Roman Catholic. For the most part, I hated it. I had to go through catechism and attend mass every Sunday. But around New Years of 1984, when I was in the middle of 9th grade, I was inspired by the priest's sermon to take my religion seriously. I read the Bible from start to finish three times in a row, I went to mass voluntarily, pestered my friends about the need to believe, and even slept with a Bible in my bed!

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?

I can't. So I will just go ahead and say what I want to say about it. The ID movement is an attempt by some in the belief community to have a "scientific" hook on which to hang their religious faith.

Q4. What scientific endeavour really excites you?

Space exploration. One of the things that turned me away from Christianity was the realization of how small we are in this vast universe. For me, the god of the Bible is the god of a very small universe where humans are the reason for the universe having been created. Back then, people didn't know that ours was one of a number of planets orbiting the sun in our solar system, and that our sun was one of millions which were orbited by planets of their own in the Milky Way, which itself was one of millions of galaxies each filled with millions of their own suns with their own planets orbiting them. When you look at it that way, it is hard to believe that our actions here on this planet have any cosmic significance.

But to get back to the main point of the question, I am intrigued about the possibility of finding life, even at the microbial level, on another planet or body in the solar system. We would realize that we are indeed not alone in the universe, and that if we can find microbial life in a place like Jupiter's moon Europa, to take one possible candidate, then there is a greater possibility that intelligent life may exist somewhere as well.

Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why?

Well, the "atheist community" is not a monolith, so I don't know what I would change about it. One thing I would argue is that what we should strive for is not an atheist world, but to promote pluralism and tolerance, even for religious people. When you have a country where one group tries to impose its dogma on everyone else, it requires an apparatus to enforce it, which results in a totalitarian society, whether it be Stalin's USSR or Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response?

I would ask him/her what the motivation was. Ultimately, I would have to respect my son or daughter's position if there was no changing his or her mind.

Q7. What’s your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?

It amuses me when they ask me "Well, then how did the universe get here?" My response to that is, "Even if the universe was designed by someone, it doesn't mean it was your god."

Q8. What’s your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?

I don't know. I am pretty moderate as far as atheists go. From the perspective of other atheists, I guess maybe my advocacy for the rights of religious minorities to be free of persecution. The reason why it matters to me is that if persecution of a minority is tolerated, then you are contributing to a climate that makes it okay to persecute you.

Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?

Oh, I don't know. Each of them has something positive to offer.

Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?

That's easy, my wife! She is a lapsed Catholic, but does not seem to have it in her to embrace atheism.

Now name three other atheist blogs that you’d like to see take up the Atheist Thirteen gauntlet:

Okay, I choose Stardust, the Jolly Nihilist, and Tina.

The Pledge Project - My Video

I am pleased with the feedback I have received so far about my idea for modelling the Blasphemy Challenge by having those of us who support removing "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance post videos of ourselves reciting the Pledge without those two words.

I think that having videos of atheist Americans pledging allegiance to their country, besides generating interest and support for the project, helps to put a human face on the issue. When you actually hear people reciting the Pledge the way it was before Congress changed it in the 1950's, it doesn't sound so alien. And as I remarked at the end of my video below, I think the Pledge flows a lot more smoothly without "under God" in it.

I had originally shot a longer video with an intro that was about one and a half minutes, but I did not like the way it turned out and decided to go with the shorter video above.

What Would He Know About the Authenticity of Marriage?

In his column for The Long Island Catholic, Bishop William Murphy condemns New York Governor David Paterson's recent order that state agencies recognize same-sex marriages performed outside of New York State. The governor's order came in the wake of the decision legalizing gay marriage (at least for now) in the state of California.

And what are the bishop's reasons for opposing gay marriage?

"Sexual relationships are essentially private matters until they are made public by public action. Then they have to be scrutinized to see if they correspond to what is good and right and true for the common good of society. In all these levels, sexual intimacy between persons of the same sex does not pass muster. They do not serve the common good. They cannot do so because they contradict biological teleology and the natural law."

Like so many other gay marriage opponents, Bishop Murphy assumes that same-gender relations are all about sex. What does he think, same gender couples spend all of their free time giving each other reach arounds? Has it ever occurred to the good bishop that a same gender couple can have a mutually fulfilling relationship in the same way that those of us who are in heterosexual marriages experience?

Bishop Murphy continues, "I fail to understand how this can be called marriage, no matter how many people want to call it that. No matter how much some may wish to apply the term “marriage,” it does not fit because it fails the test of truth and authenticity."

The test of truth and authenticity? What the fuck are you talking about, Bishop Murphy? This is an example of the biased mindset inherent in the anti-gay marriage crowd, the assumption that a marriage between a man and a woman is considered automatically to be "authentic". I would be interested to know how many of the marriages that Bishop Murphy presided over ended up in divorce. How many of them were marriages of convenience? How many of them are now stale, loveless marriages where the couples stay together merely for the sake of the children or because a divorce is simply too much of a bother? Is a marriage between an older rich man and his young trophy wife really authentic? Does it really serve a societal good?

How about a marriage between a man and a woman where there is no intention of producing children from the union? My uncle, who lost his first wife to cancer eight years ago, is getting married to the woman with whom he has been in a relationship with for the last seven years. They are both in their mid-sixties, and clearly they do not plan to have children. I am happy for the both of them and look forward to attending their wedding this fall. But let's be honest, there is no societal benefit to their marriage. Why then should it be legal for them to get married but two people of the same gender in a monogamous relationship for the same amount of time or longer does not meet the bishop's "test of truth and authenticity"? And what would a celibate old man know what an authentic marriage feels like anyway?

Unrest in Indonesia

For those who have been following this story in the news in Indonesia:

"On June 9, 2008, Religious Affairs Minister Maftuh Basyuni, Home Minister Mardiyanto, and Attorney General Hendarman Supanji signed a decree ordering the Ahmadiyah community to “stop spreading interpretations and activities which deviate from the principal teachings of Islam,” including “the spreading of the belief that there is another prophet with his own teachings after Prophet Mohammed.” Violations of the decree are subject to up to five years of imprisonment."

From the same press release from Human Rights Watch:

"The Ahmadiyah faith was founded in what is now Pakistan in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. The Ahmadiyah community is banned in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and has come under attack in Bangladesh. There are approximately 200,000 Ahmadis in Indonesia."

The Ahmadiyah community also has its own web site here. In a press release issued by the sect, they lament that, "[t]his decree belligerently violates the human rights of every Ahmadi Muslim in Indonesia and ignores the principles of religious freedom enshrined in the country’s Constitution."

To their credit, not all Muslims in Indonesia support the decree. From Al Jazeera English, "[a]n Indonesian Muslim group is planning to file a lawsuit against the government saying it is undermining religious freedoms by deciding to impose special curbs on a minority religious sect condemned as "deviant" by some protesters."

Sadly though, "a demonstration in support of religious freedom was attacked by supporters of the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) wielding bamboo sticks – injuring a dozen people."

From the aforementioned Human Rights Watch press release:

“The Indonesian government needs to show it takes attacks on religious minorities seriously by prosecuting those responsible,” said Adams. “If Munarman remains at large it will fuel suspicion of support in some government quarters for his aims. The government has a duty to protect Ahmadis and other religious minorities – that’s a bedrock principle of modern Indonesia.”

"Indonesia ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in February 2006. In doing so, it agreed to comply with all the provisions of that treaty, including that, “No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice” (Article 18(2)), and “persons belonging to ... minorities shall not be denied the right, in community with the other members of their group, to enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion” (Article 27)."

According to the web site for the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia to the United States:

"Six world religions are formally recognized in Indonesia: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Confucianism, Hinduism and Buddhism. Nevertheless, other faiths can be found, especially in isolated societies. These religions, called traditional faiths, are also accepted. According to recent counts, approximately 85 percent of the population is Muslim, 11 percent is Christian (Protestants and Catholics), and 4 percent is Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian, or traditional."

The official philosophical foundation for the Indonesian state is Pancasila, which translates into "Five Principles". The first principle of Pancasila, much to the chagrin of those of us who are atheists, stresses belief in a one and only supreme God. However, when you look at the six formally recognized religions listed above, you might notice that one very well known religion is missing. If you haven't figured it out yet, I will give you a hint: it starts with the letter "J"!

The second principle is much more admirable, proclaiming a just and civilized humanity, while the fifth principle calls for social justice for all of Indonesia's people. Surely, the treatment of the Ahmadiyah sect by the government and by the extremist radicals who commit violence against them goes against the second and fifth principles of Pancasila.

Now why is an atheist like me blogging about the persecution of a marginal Muslim sect in Indonesia? Well, I for one believe that pluralism and tolerance is something worth defending, even if it means standing up for the right of followers of a religious minority to practice their faith free from persecution in a country on the other side of the world. Extremists are bullies who must be fought and defeated wherever they raise their head, because if they are allowed to win, it strikes another blow to the principle of secular government. While those of us who are atheists probably wish all religious people would become atheists too, just as Christians and Muslims wish all people would follow their creeds, it's just not going to happen. Therefore, the best society one can reasonably expect to have is one like we have here in the United States where all can exercise freedom of religion or freedom of no religion. It might not be perfect, but it sure as hell beats the alternative.

If you are all not tired of my advocacy and activism yet, I plan to post a letter I will be sending to the Indonesian Embassy regarding the Ahmadiyah sect. I also sent an e-mail to the address provided on the Ahmadiyah web site offering my support. I am interested to see if they reply, especially since I mentioned in my e-mail that I am an atheist.

The Pledge of Allegiance Project

Since May 15, Alonzo Fyfe has been posting exclusively about the Pledge of Allegiance and the need to remove the words "under God" from it. He calls it The Pledge Project.

In his opening salvo, titled "The Pledge Project: Acting Against Anti-Atheist Bigotry", Alonzo declares:

I consider 'under God' in the pledge, and the national motto of "In God We Trust" to be the most significant cause of the deteriorating political situation that atheists in specific and secularists in general are facing in the United States, and I want to see these practices ended.

He goes on to write:

Let's be honest – these policies were adopted, and they continue to be enthusiastically supported – because they serve as a way of keeping political power out of the hands of any person who will not pledge allegiance to 'one nation under God'. They are loved (by those who love them the most) because they endorse a religious barrier to public office that only allows those who are willing to express a belief in God can pass through.

I won't reproduce any more of it here. Some of you may have already read it, and for those of you have not, you can just click on the link above.

To be honest, fighting to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance was never something that resonated with me. While I agree in principle that the Pledge should be restored to what it was before those two words were added in the mid-Fifties, I always felt that it would amount to expending a lot of time and effort on something of symbolic value when there were more substantive issues that demanded attention. My thoughts on the issue are pretty much summed up in one of my first posts on this blog, "One Nation Under Zeus".

Still, reading one of Alonzo's posts recently got me to thinking about the Blasphemy Challenge that drew a lot of interest last year. As you may recall, the Blasphemy Challenge involved people filming short videos of themselves "denying" the Holy Spirit and posting them on Youtube. Well, I figured, why not adopt the same idea for The Pledge Project? How about we make videos of ourselves and others saying the Pledge of Allegiance sans the words "under God"?

I left my suggestion in the comments section of one of Alonzo's posts, but thus far he has not responded.

Well, at any rate, I have decided to take the first step, and have filmed my two children saying the Pledge of Allegiance without the words "under God." It seemed appropriate, because they have to say the Pledge every day in school, whereas most of us grownups are rarely ever in situations where we are required to recite it.

Here is the video for your viewing enjoyment:



I expect to add my own recital of the Pledge too either today or later this week. I don't know if this will catch on with the rest of the atheist blogosphere (at least for those of us here in the United States), but let's see what happens!

Why Lose Trillions, When We Can Lose...Billions?

Read all about it, as the BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions.