Links - 30th May 2009

"One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways." - Bertrand Russell

Ed: Keywords - beyond that, prevent him, him employed, matters of opinion, coercion, out of jail, in matters of public opinion, employment, voluntary subjugation, nothing more

More keywords: coerced by society, endanger employment, bernard shaw, job

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Why the 2012 cult is a silly scam. - "It's a harmonic convergence all right, a harmonic convergence of ignorance and superstition—a tsunami of stupidity—worthy of the millennial cults of the 19th century most enjoyably anatomized in Leon Festinger's famous study, When Prophecy Fails, a look at the way end-of-the-world cults grow even stronger after their prophet's end-of-the-world date flies by and the world confoundingly continues to exist... The best cultural explanation I found for this flowering of idiocy said that New Age fads like the Hopi prophecy and 2012 are a kind of cultural colonialism in which white people endow the minorities they have wiped out or repressed with mystical powers made more mysterious by their virtual vanishing... New Age stupidity isn't always harmless, that it can be a cruel hoax playing a con game with people's hopes and fears. I'll never forgive the sketchy con man who stole that poor woman's money and illusions."

Being Transgender is Not a Mental Disorder - "Now, 36 years later, transgender activists are calling on the APA to drop from the DSM its designation of “gender identity disorder,” (GID) which shrinks use to label and stigmatize a person who is unhappy with his or her biological sex. The so-called disorder is listed in the DSM as a “sexual dysfunction” along with pedophilia... “In a perfect world,” Allison said, “psychiatrists would treat patients with gender variance, but not for gender variance.”"
If it's not a disorder, then presumably they don't need "treatment" and shouldn't have access to sex change surgery. And if patients with gender variance are not being treated for gender variance, maybe it's just therapy after the depredations of a "trans-phobic" society.

Calling wife ugly may become offence in Malaysia - "One of the clauses proposed to be amended in the Domestic Violence Act 1994 pertains to emotional violence against women who are currently only protected against physical abuse... Women's Development Department director-general Noorul Ainur Mohd Nur said emotional violence was a form of abuse that scars women deeply and lowers their self-esteem, dignity and self-confidence. "It could be a case when a husband tells his wife she is ugly or humiliates her until she feels emotionally pressured," she told media at the end of a seminar on how to curb violence against women."
The madness of feminism rears its ugly head once again. Of course, telling your husband he is lazy is not 'emotional violence', because men are evil.

Britons see French as sexier, but less witty: poll - "British expatriates living in France find French people sexier and better dressed -- particularly French women -- but not as witty or good company... Britons who have settled in France say they are happier and healthier, seeing French people as having stronger family values, less crime and less stress"

Christian Group to Produce “Clean” Pornography - "The group, recently incorporated as the Southern Coalition for Progressive and Pure Change (an obscure sub-branch of the International Congress of Church and Ministries), will pay for the production of 5 films which they say will act as a “stepping stone away from iniquity” as viewers use the films as an intermediate step as they “switch paths from the sexually impure world of the devil to the white shining path of the Lord.”... Dr. Lovett was willing to give a general description of the the first film, however. According to Lovett, Jodie and the Great Black Whale will feature an 18 year old missionary in Jamaica who is swayed by native temptors into working as an exotic dancer. Dancing under the stage name “Divinoria,” she cavorts with the pagan locals until, during a scene in which her Aunt uses a bible to talk her off the stage pole, she once again finds inspiration as a Christian. At the end of the film, Divinoria burns down the strip club with a large flaming bush and leads the recently converted locals in raising a new church."

Pope attacks blurring of gender - "Speaking on Monday, Pope Benedict XVI warned that gender theory blurred the distinction between male and female and thus could lead to the "self-destruction" of the human race... It is not "out-of-date metaphysics" to "speak of human nature as 'man' or woman'", he told scores of prelates gathered in the Vatican's sumptuous Clementine Hall. "We need something like human ecology, meant in the right way.""

Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal - "Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission. Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives. The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses... when people saw tight television shots of blowhards with whom they disagreed, they felt that the other side was even less legitimate than before. The larger point is that liberals and conservatives often form judgments through flash intuitions that aren’t a result of a deliberative process... So how do we discipline our brains to be more open-minded, more honest, more empirical? A start is to reach out to moderates on the other side — ideally eating meals with them... persuasion may be most effective when built on human interactions. Gay rights were probably advanced largely by the public’s growing awareness of friends and family members who were gay. A corollary is that the most potent way to win over opponents is to accept that they have legitimate concerns, for that triggers an instinct to reciprocate."
Alternatively, you can just label each other bigoted or immoral and just shout at each other.