Critical Brain Candy

Here’s an article trying to look at the bad effects of the separation of church and state.

The Dark Side of Secularism

Personally I think the seperation is a good thing. I think it’s a prerequisite for the advancement of our civilization. Every religion breeds fundamentalism, or extremism, and as we’ve seen over the past thousands of years can be extremely violent. I don’t think I need to go into more details there. Having these same entities running the governments is too risky, given the power they would then wield.

I’m obviously not saying all religions are violent all the time, but considering this has been happening on a regular basis throughout history I think it’s a big risk. All it takes is one person at the right time – a charismatic leader using religion as a rallying cry, especially in response to some traumatic event, is a recipe for disaster. Religion is such an easy and useful tool for people like that to use, because even if most people don’t agree with the action being advocated, the fact that it’s “in the name of their religion” brings many more people on board than it would otherwise.

However, that doesn’t mean that religious values can’t be used an input to, or the foundation of, the values of a society that end up being encoded as laws. But the seperation needs to take place once the law has been written and agreed upon by society. An example of where this goes wrong was when Bush proposed the “faith-based initiatives.” This immediately implied that secular charities would get less money and were less trusted by the government.

This is a great “open letter” from Lloyd Axworthy (former Canadian Foreign Minister, current president of the University of Winnipeg) to Condi Rice. It’s a little “scathing” for my tastes, but hits on all the major topics.

Even hits on one of my favourites – that one of the major failings of the US political system is that the Administrative branch does not ever really have to “talk to” the other branches. I really like that in British-style systems any minister can question the Prime Minister. In the US no one ever gets to have an open debate with the President. The closest would be (and the intention was) that the media was supposed to fill this. But these days since they can (and do) selectively pick who they let in, it kind of negates that. Basically the President never gets questioned directly, in the real sense of questioning.

Missile Counter-Attack

Wow. I’m suprised he finally admitted it. This is too savouringly hypocritical to be true. In a speech Friday Bush said these exact words, on the topic of Lebanon and Syria:

“The world is beginning to speak with one voice. We want that democracy in Lebanon to succeed, and we know it cannot succeed so long as she is occupied by a foreign power.”

I’m torn. Is this a slip by his speech writers or the perfect example of the goggles he wears wherein everything he does is so great, as if told to do so by his god?

The article the quote came from is here

So, why is it that in the US if a more “liberal” politician suggests not going to war they are flagged as un-American and unpatriotic and it’s all over the news. Yet we hear nothing of a Republican congressman suggesting that they nuke Syria?

Looks like Microsoft is winning in their (important) case to overturn a patent infringement ruling. The patent claims the invention of technology to “call programs to stream content over the internet.” This is complete abuse of the patent system. There is no “invention” here. I can write a program to do this in a million different ways. They patented an idea, which is not what patents are supposed to be for.

An article on the subject is here.

I’m mad. It’s the kind of anger mixed with futility and depression. It’s caused by this article about how T-Mobile sales are increasing after the Paris Hilton phone hacking incident.

Why are these people SO STUPID???? Let’s look at their thought process here:

1. I see a news report that Paris Hiltons cell phone was hacked and all her friends phone numbers are posted on the Internet.
2. I decide this is a great idea, either because:
a) I would love to also have my cell phone hacked
b) I want to be like Paris Hilton
c) I hope I can have my phone hacked in a way similar to Paris Hilton in some strange form of worship and emulation. I feel like it brings me closer to her.

There are (at least) two extremely sad statements about our society here. The first is that people worship Paris Hilton. I can’t understand this. She brings absolutely nothing to society except that she acts like an idiot on TV. I guess this has more to do with society’s larger obsession with “reality TV” although I don’t know how some ditzy rich girl’s experience of flashing a farmer is reality.

Secondly it’s our societys idolization of people on TV. I find it so sad when I’ve had to watch something like the morning “Today Show” where they pan the camera across all the people outside holding up signs and hoping for their one second of TV time. Maybe this brings some kind of validation to their otherwise boring life that they “mean something” because an image of them showed up on a box in some persons living room.

All I know is that when I (eventually) have kids it scares the crap out of me how hard it will be to have them not turn out to be TV and Celebrity worshipping zombies.