30 Apr 2009, 11:24 PM
To force myself to draw (and post) more often, I’ve decided to try posting sketches every Thursday. And what a day on which to begin! Orac reminds us that today, 30 April, is Führertodestag, the 64th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s suicide!
*spucken*
More Hitler and other stuff below the fold.
29 Apr 2009, 12:56 AM
The New York Times published a puzzling op-ed yesterday: In Praise of Folly, by religious affairs correspondent John Berwick. The piece is an attempt to preemptively defuse any unfortunate statements Pope Benedict XVI might make in his upcoming tour of the Middle East by putting a positive spin on some of his controversies to date. The spin, however, just leaves me feeling a little queasy.
Berwick refers to four specific “bloopers” made by this pope that have caused an uproar: a speech associating Islam with violence, the repeal of excommunication for Holocaust-denying bishops, the suggestion (made en route to Brazil) that pro-choice legislators be excommunicated, and his recent assertion that condoms are actually exacerbating the AIDS epidemic. “Bloopers,” seriously? I’m sorry, but dripping ketchup on your papal regalia, mistakenly addressing a bishop by the wrong name, stumbling as you climb out of the popemobile: these are the sorts of things I would consider bloopers. Using your position as leader and figurehead of a major world religion to make an apparent endorsement of those who dismiss as myth one of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century is, at best, a faux pas.
Going beyond downplaying these statements as mere whoopsies, Berwick argues that the net result of such inflammatory statements has been a net positive. Pope B-16′s offending of Muslims, for instance, ultimately resulted in the formation an unprecedented Catholic-Muslim interfaith forum. I’ll grant you, that’s pretty impressive. And all it took in the interim was huge Islamic outcry, the razing of some Catholic churches, and a nun murdered in retaliation! Berwick’s right, who needs all that “prudent diplomacy” after all?
Furthermore, are we to believe B-16 has been playing reverse psychology in all these instances, just to get people talking? To what extent should we credit the Pope with the benefits of the backlash against him? Maybe this Independence Day I’ll raise a standard in honour of King George III, true author of the US Constitution!
But most of all, I’m troubled by the inclusion of Benedict’s statements regarding AIDS and condoms. Berwick mentions it only once; he doesn’t bother to rationalize that one away, nor do I think he’d be able to if he tried. Berwick insinuates in his editorial that the pope’s critics are no more than “arbiters of political correctness.” But Benedict’s statements about condoms were not politically incorrect, they were factually incorrect. They were a blatant, deliberate falsehood that threaten to undermine humanitarian and medical efforts. That Berwick would have us turn our heads from that so the pope can save face is deplorable.
26 Apr 2009, 6:17 PM
John Kricfalusi, best known as the creator of “Ren & Stimpy,” posted to his blog last month a collection of excerpts from a comic book from 1948, about a couple of guys who volunteer to publicise a new private hospital but wind up causing the doctors even more grief in the process. (You can read the whole comic here.) John K posted it to show off Milt Gross’ artwork, but one panel in particular stood out to me for a different reason:
This was what measles meant to me when I was growing up: it was a fictional disease, a gag, the sort of thing you only ever saw on TV or in books. No one ever got measles in real life; at least, no one I knew. I guess that makes me incredibly fortunate; in Milt’s day, a dumptruck full of children with measles probably wasn’t too much more out of the ordinary than any other dumptruck full of children.
But thanks to antivaccinationists, this specter of the past may be a vision of the future. That’s no laughing matter. As Phil Plait noted today, children are dying of vaccine-preventable illnesses. Vaccine denialists, in their misguided quest to associate vaccines with health risks such as autism (a thoroughly debunked hypothesis), are doing real damage to humanity.
And the antivaxxers are apparently okay with that. In an interview with Larry King on 4 April, antivax celebrity duo Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey had this to say:
KING: Isn’t the problem here, Jenny, that people sometimes listen with one ear are going to panic. And not vaccine at all?
MCCARTHY: Probably. But guess what? It’s not my fault. The reason why they’re not vaccinating is because the vaccines are not safe. Make a better product and then parents will vaccinate.
CARREY: We’re not the problem. The problem is the problem.
(For more on that interview, see Science-Based Medicine)
Jen, Jim, here’s the thing. You think you smell smoke. You think you see flames. So you’re raising the alarm, because even if people panic and get injured in the stampede for the exits, it’s better than letting the building burn down around them, right? But you’re wrong about the danger. There is no fire. We’ve tried to explain this to you, but you refuse to listen to reason. And we’re trying to calm the crowd, but it’s hard when you keep inciting them to panic.
You think you’re in the right, but you’re emphatically not. The problem you’re warning about doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, you’re shouting “fire!” in a crowded theatre, and people–real people–are getting hurt. That is your fault. You are the problem.