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Comments by emmet


51. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171579 by emmet on April 28, 2008 at 3:27 pm

And I replied that you misread my comment. I did not edit the post.


Liar.

52. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171577 by emmet on April 28, 2008 at 3:26 pm

FWIW, post #23 was edited to change "they" into "men like this" since I last read it.

53. Girl, 17, killed in Iraq for loving a British soldier

Comment #171543 by emmet on April 28, 2008 at 2:47 pm

For FSM's sake, people, get a grip! It's horrifying and disgusting and the perpetrators deserve to be punished, but turn that fucking country into a sea of glass? sub humans? human filth?

I understand the anger and frustration, but this not the language of rational moral people! I'm less disturbed by the fact that people can murder one of their family and get away with it than by members of the reality-based community calling for genocide in response.

54. Religion a figment of human imagination

Comment #171513 by emmet on April 28, 2008 at 2:29 pm

I think there's evidence that orcas have imagination. See this YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxDZW4k8tCY

In the clip, orcas collaborate (three swimming together) in order to swim under an ice floe, creating a wave to upset the floe and knock a seal off. This requires some or all of having the idea, planning, communication, an expectation of what will happen, some kind of "model". I fail to see how this could be done without something that could reasonably be termed imagination.

55. Investigating Atheism

Comment #167555 by emmet on April 24, 2008 at 6:57 am

"Investigating" atheism on the other hand seems to be suggesting that atheism is a criminal case that needs to be solved.

Their definition of atheism as "denial of the existence of God" is equally telling. "Denial" carries a negative connotation of contrarily rejecting something true (as in "holocaust denial") or belligerently withholding something which is due (as in "denial of a right"). It subtly suggests both that God definitely exists and that atheists are doing something bad in not accepting this as true.

56. Investigating Atheism

Comment #167508 by emmet on April 24, 2008 at 5:39 am

How extraordinarily badly written!

Since the publication of Sam Harris' The End of Faith in 2005, the English speaking world has seen a spate of books on atheism, [...]. The publication of [...] Sam Harris' The End of Faith (2005) [... has] added and expanded the debate.


Huh? SH's TEoF not only started it, but added the debate, how interesting. How do you "add a debate" anyway? "Added to the debate" is surely what is intended.

If the second reference to SH was to "Letters to a Christian Nation", and they added a "to" it would be OK, but in the first two sentences from Cambridge?

I wrote better than that when I was 12.

57. Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capital

Comment #167491 by emmet on April 24, 2008 at 5:23 am

I don't see how people, who have no education to speak of, believing in penis-snatching witches is more deserving of laughter and derision than people with a college education believing they're personal friends with a magic iron-age Levantine zombie.

Since we have no reason to believe that their ignorance is wilful (unlike Western flat-earthers, geocentrists and creationists), I think they are more deserving of pity than disdain.

58. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #167355 by emmet on April 23, 2008 at 11:47 pm

David Robertson et al point to him and say, 'See! Scientists do believe in god!

I wouldn't count him, or any other clinician, as a scientist. Remember that the threshold for publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal is "Patient X had Y, we did Z, he didn't die" and statistically insignificant results are regularly published and then make their way into the public domain where they cause panic. There's plenty of woo in the medical profession too: doesn't the UK's NHS have homeopathic units?

59. Evolution: 24 myths and misconceptions

Comment #163524 by emmet on April 18, 2008 at 1:06 pm

I did not get anything like an answer to my question, so I will ask it again.
I suggest purchasing a fully working keyboard. Yours appears to be faulty. In particular, the "h" and "e" keys don't appear to respond after the "t" key has been pressed.

After that, maybe you could rewrite your question in English and people could read it without feeling like they've had a fork stuck in their eye every other word.

60. Religious education as a part of literary culture

Comment #160870 by emmet on April 14, 2008 at 1:54 pm

Robotaholic, spoken like a true engineer.

Oi! Spinoza! *blows whistle* Yellow card!

:o)

We'll have less of your stereotyping engineers, thanks. Someone says they don't like a particular kind of art and that makes them an engineer? I'm an engineer who's spent more than his fair share of time in art galleries and I resent the insinuation that my profession makes me some kind of cultural Philistine.

I'm not a culture vulture, I admit, but someone saying they don't like a particular kind of art doesn't allow one to infer their profession. If someone says "Unmade Bed" is execrable (and Tracy Emin generally), what does that make him? A diesel fitter, perhaps? What if cubism doesn't blow his skirt up? Maybe a lawyer? If I think that every painter who ever held a brush did an "Ecce Homo" and most of them are pretty unremarkable, does that make me an accountant?

All of the above to be read in Michael Palin's "Parrot Sketch" accent.

61. Lungless frog discovered in Borneo

Comment #158835 by emmet on April 11, 2008 at 5:16 am

It's on YouTube: All Things Dull and Ugly

Seems it's Python: I'm amazed I never heard it before!

fretmeister, MrPickwick: I know a chemist who was called to the bar at 68. Why not the other way around?

62. Commentary: Democrats finally getting religion on religion

Comment #158462 by emmet on April 10, 2008 at 2:51 pm

Since the triumph (and tragedy) of Laika I`ve been a romantic about space but the practical in me says that only a tiny minority have got any benefit from anything higher than 36000km.

Well, if you think modern technology and computers are a benefit, then I have to disagree. The moon-shot really jump-started modern technology, particularly in electronics and computing and, for a while, made science and technology sexy.

I read a similar argument the other day against the LHC, I just hope that poster remembers his objection to fundamental research in physics when he needs a PET or MRI scan.

The benefits aren't always immediately apparent, but they're there.

63. German Church admits aiding Nazis

Comment #158441 by emmet on April 10, 2008 at 2:12 pm

But this sounds like the same argument that occurred when people found out that Pope Benedict XVI was a Hitler Youth. It's impossible to know exactly how anyone would act in that situation. I would probably have a hard time giving up my life for a cause that had no chance.


This much is certain: by his own admission, Ratzinger was conscripted into the Hitler Youth and, later, the Wehrmacht as an AA gunner. When he was sent to active service, in the final throes of the regime, he had no stomach for it, deserted and fled home. We can say with certainty that he hadn't the courage either to fight against Nazism or fight for his country, whatever he believed.

Like you, I don't know how I would react under those circumstances, being pretty spineless, I'd probably have done the same as he did, but then I don't claim to have been chosen by God to be the moral leader of a billion people, nor do I ever claim to be infallible (even when I'm sitting in my magic chair). One would have thought that the Holy Spirit would have chosen someone with a little more moral backbone when he entered the College of Cardinals.

64. The simple falsehood at the heart of Expelled

Comment #158432 by emmet on April 10, 2008 at 1:57 pm

It would be an extremely interesting experiment to slightly change those extracts from Mein Kampf so that they appear to denigrate atheism, post them to a blog/website, and see how long it would take to accumulate a following of Fundies.

65. Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Comment #158365 by emmet on April 10, 2008 at 11:53 am

Pao Chang@158193,

Mr.(prof.? doctor?lol) Hitchens

Yeah, actually I wondered about that. AFAICT, Hitchens does not have a doctorate, nor even a master's. He was/is a visiting professor at the New School in New York, which perhaps caused the confusion, but he has himself said things that muddy the waters.

66. Hitchens vs. Hitchens

Comment #158044 by emmet on April 10, 2008 at 2:53 am

To a large degree, I think that Christoper Hitchens and many others put the cart before the horse when they argue for atheism. It seems to me that the positive argument should be for empirical evidence, science, and critical reasoning with atheism as a necessary but not sufficient condition. Merely being an atheist does not make one a member of the reality-based community and does not make one ethical or moral. Nobody can argue that Stalin or Mao were burdened by an excess of secular moral philosophy and critical thinking. That they happen to have been atheists is a side-show, but we fall into the trap of having to justify these monsters when we argue purely for atheism on its own outside the context of the evidence-based rationality and secular moral philosophy that seem, to us, to go so naturally alongside atheism that we sometimes forget they're not part of it.

We err if we make a claim positively as a consequence of atheism alone. Religions, on the other hand, claim to provide complete moral frameworks (at least) and sometimes complete frameworks of knowledge and for government. The difference between the Crusades and the Inquisition, on the one hand, and the atrocities of Stalin and Mao, on the other, is that the former were justified in terms of the complete moral frameworks provided by Christianity whilst the latter cannot have been justified in terms of atheism, because atheism does not, and should not claim, to provide any moral framework at all.

What this means is that the tired old question "If you are an atheist, where do you get your morality from?" is actually a perfectly legitimate and reasonable question. To say, "I don't believe in leprechauns and that provides me with a complete morality" is clearly ridiculous. If I am honest, I must admit that I don't know what the foundation of my own morality is: evolution, culture, tradition, and reasoning all in some measure. All I can say with certainty is that it is not helped by accepting as absolute the teachings of bronze-age zealots who didn't know either. I believe that atheism intensifies my committment to certain moral principles, like not harming or killing others, but I don't think it can originate those principles. As Hitchens points out very well, religion doesn't either: the age of our species means that basic moral principles predate Abrahamic religion at least.

That said, I think Christopher Hitchens is very weak on the whole "Stalin and Mao" thing. His stock "turning it around and making it into religion" answer is not at all persuasive or compelling; on the contrary, its slippery and dishonest casuistry is transparent. His followup "show me the country who abandoned theocracy in favour of the teachings of Spinoza, Paine [...] and went awry" is far stronger, but he doesn't articulate it particularly well because it appears evasive to answer a question with a question and smuggle in Jefferson. It would be much better, in my view, to simply say: "I don't claim that atheism provides a complete basis for running a country or anything else (religions like Islam are not so modest). I am arguing for secular reason and critical thinking, for which atheism is merely a sine qua non. I don't have to answer for Stalin because neither of us believe in God any more than you have to answer for Hitler because neither of you believe in Santa Claus" --- the whole "Stalin and Mao" question is based on an entirely false implicit premise that atheism makes claims which it does not, and is batted out of the park easily. I don't understand why Chrisopher Hitchens makes such a dog's dinner out of it with unecessary sophistry.

If you're arguing positively for science and reason, as Richard does, with atheism merely as part of it, the answer to "Stalin was an atheist!" is "So what? Your point?".

67. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #157065 by emmet on April 8, 2008 at 2:24 pm

Someone remind me again what century we're living in please!!!!

Well, we are living in the 21st century.

They have chosen to live bodily in the 21st century and intellectually somewhere between the bronze age and the mediæval period.

68. Pastor attacks scientist's talk

Comment #154776 by emmet on April 3, 2008 at 5:37 pm

Can't "we" (the reality-based community) stop tacitly acknowledging that "Darwinism" and "Evolutionism" are scientific terms? These terms are used solely in a theological context and, this being the case, actually have no place in a discussion about science.

Next time someone says "Darwinism" or "Evolutionist", I'd love to see the scientist on the other side say "Excuse me?" or "Sorry, I don't know what you mean". It's long past time that we stopped engaging with them on their turf and, instead, insist that they use the terminology of science when (pretending that they are) discussing science: "Oh, do you mean natural selection?"

I'm not a biologist, but isn't it the case that we can assert that "evolution" is NOT a theory, just an empirically observed phenomenon like "gravity"? I know that, technically, the phenomenon is "massive bodies are attracted to each other" and that "gravity" is a label given to a kind of meta-abstraction on the way to an explanatory theory, but isn't the same also true of evolution: that it's more a label for the phenomenon than it is a part of the explanation? In this sense, evolution exists beyond any doubt and variation subject to natural selection is the explanation. Wouldn't it be more difficult for these nutjobs to deny natural selection as the explanation for the observed phenomenon of evolution, which seems quite intuitively obvious and easily explained, rather than continue to allow them to redefine and obfuscate terminology in an ad-hoc manner with woolly, ill-defined, and loaded terms like "evolutionism" and "Darwinism" unknown to the bona-fide scientific lexicon?

69. Thy will be done

Comment #154283 by emmet on April 3, 2008 at 4:02 am

I propose a reasonable compromise: say the prayer, then the councillors who assent to the prayer may say "Amen!" at the end, and the councillors who dissent may say "Bollocks!"

More seriously, a one-minute plea from the chairman asking the councillors to remember the purpose of their meeting and try, at all times, to deal with each other constructively and in the best interests of their constituents would be of far greater value than a formulaic recitation of "The Lord's Prayer".

70. CEAI Action Alert for Science Teachers

Comment #154280 by emmet on April 3, 2008 at 3:35 am

Would that be belly button lint or clothes dryer lint? I feel we maybe on our way to a major schism.

No need for a schism: good cdesign proponentsists will teach the controversy.

71. 'We Make Our Own Heaven'

Comment #152778 by emmet on March 31, 2008 at 2:32 pm

Atheism by itself has no stuff.

Yep, true, and I don't understand all the negativity surrounding the idea of having some kind of "community" of like-minded (i.e. atheist/agnostic) people, like if you're not some kind of smelly antisocial troglodyte, you're not a real atheist.

I don't have any kids, but if I had, I think it'd be nice to have a group of the ungodly to cooperate on certain things. For example, I'd like to have access to a reasonably good microscope and telescope, both of which are pretty expensive items for one person/family, but easily affordable for a dozen, or two-dozen, like-minded persons/families. I can think of worse things to do on a Sunday than bring the kids down to some kind of "Community Centre" to look at snot or toenail clippings under a microscope.

72. Iowa county board gives initial OK for ghost hunters to investigate asylum

Comment #152767 by emmet on March 31, 2008 at 1:52 pm

I check out the local pub if I want to see spirits. After a while I might even see God. LOL

Lay off the mescal and switch to regular tequila.

73. Saudi Arabia Leader Calls for Interfaith Dialogue

Comment #150265 by emmet on March 26, 2008 at 4:18 pm

Now, I realise that in saying this I might get flamed mercilessly, but everyone appears to be assuming the worst. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps King Abdullah has a progressive agenda, but the realpolitik dictates that he take things one step at a time: he can persuade the Grand Mufti to go along with extending some tolerance of monotheisms now; maybe in ten years, he'll be able to abolish the religious police; in twenty years, he'll be able to extend the established tolerance of other religions to polytheism; in thirty, perhaps even atheism might be accepted.

Insofar as we care at all, I'm sure we'd all like to see Saudi change, but it's not going to happen overnight unless there's a revolution. If there was to be a gradual transition, the first step would be something very much like this.

74. Expelled Overview

Comment #149962 by emmet on March 26, 2008 at 11:12 am

REGARDING the Computer Animation:

This was discussed over at Pharyngula at some length. It is now certain, based on published stills, that the animation in Expelled! is not the Harvard animation: it is very similar (almost shot-for-shot in places), but was independently produced. DI speakers had previously used the Harvard animation, and when something strikingly similar appeared in Expelled!, some people assumed the creotards had ripped it off again.

Of course, we should ram home the message that it wasn't the creotards who made either the discoveries that informed the animation or the original version of it. If molecular biologists had been satisfied with "goddunnit" as an answer, we wouldn't know that motor proteins even existed.

75. Sue Blackmore debates Alister McGrath

Comment #149010 by emmet on March 24, 2008 at 11:38 pm

I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!



Sorry, couldn't resist the reference.

76. No Admission for Evolutionary Biologist at Creationist Film

Comment #148957 by emmet on March 24, 2008 at 6:50 pm

I'm just glad it will be ignored mainly here in Ireland and I presume the rest of Europe too (hopefully).

Undoubtedly. I'll be hat-eatingly surprised if it ever makes it to Filmstaden in "downtown Uppsala". I'll probably end up watching a low-quality rip off somebody's laptop... like Richard.

77. The Secular Conscience

Comment #147307 by emmet on March 20, 2008 at 6:14 am

Judge theology it by its fruits: three thousand of years of Judaeo-Christian theology has yielded nothing; a lot of rubbish about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or bogus calculations of the age of the earth, but not a single useful artifact. Not a steam engine, a lightbulb, or a medicine. In one tenth of that time, rational enquiry and science have given us everything in the modern world from NSAIDs to MRI to sat-nav.

Theology is bunk. A theologian deserves no more respect than an astrologer.

78. In Britain, creationist theory is evolving

Comment #145662 by emmet on March 18, 2008 at 12:09 am

I'm calling Poe's Law on Pathfinder. Has to be a parody/troll yanking the collective RDDN chain.

79. The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing

Comment #144550 by emmet on March 16, 2008 at 10:25 am

The typesetter needs to be taken outside and shot at dawn.

I'm not in favour of waiting that long.

The enabling power of word-processors has, unfortunately, been the death of typography. I've seen many books that were obviously excreted with Microsoft Word.

80. In Britain, creationist theory is evolving

Comment #144535 by emmet on March 16, 2008 at 10:07 am

Mercifully, European countries have national curricula revised periodically by expert panels, not local school boards populated by non-experts. The only chance of a cab-driver having the slightest influence on the national science curriculum in Britain is if Richard takes up a new career behind the wheel after he retires from Oxford.

81. Ban anti-Catholic books in schools, says bishop

Comment #144239 by emmet on March 15, 2008 at 12:55 pm

But they don't need American women when they have Ann Widdecombe

The best-looking recruit they've had in years ;o)

82. Selling science to the masses

Comment #144232 by emmet on March 15, 2008 at 12:40 pm

A huge number of people get their information predominantly from television. One thing that I have noticed is that the information content of television documentaries has declined considerably. Most of the documentaries that I see on Discovery Channel (or whatever) contain vast amounts of padding and repetition --- the first few minutes after the ad break is a "synopsis" of the bit before the ad break, but the bits between ad breaks are so short that it amounts to repetition. They are much inferior to the information-rich Horizon, Panorama, and Living Planet documentaries I watched on the Beeb as a kid. I'd even go so far as to suggest that the low signal-to-noise ratio of documentaries, which we might otherwise think of as promoting science, actually contribute to the perception of science as dull and boring.

I don't think the answer is "framing", although I do think that certain issues could be promoted better by the scientific community and we could probably learn a thing or two about marketing and grabbing attention, but science documentaries that are less soporific than the current crop wouldn't do any harm.

83. Bishop accuses gays of 'conspiracy' against the Catholic Church

Comment #143075 by emmet on March 13, 2008 at 12:17 pm

Well I say let's hear more stuff like this - it makes the Catholic church look ridiculous.

I take issue with the omission of "even more" between "look" and "ridiculous".

84. Ban anti-Catholic books in schools, says bishop

Comment #143067 by emmet on March 13, 2008 at 12:05 pm

Yes, we should all take our lessons in sexual morality from a septuagenarian male virgin representing an institution that facilitated rape of children.

85. A natural phenomenon

Comment #137470 by emmet on March 3, 2008 at 12:42 am

David Attenborough had the best job in the world. Now that the position is vacant, I want it!

FYI, "Sir Attenborough" is ambiguous (at least in the UK and Ireland): his older brother, the actor Sir Richard Attenborough, was also knighted, albeit with not quite so many honours, and is well-known.

86. Darwin's dangerous idea

Comment #137466 by emmet on March 3, 2008 at 12:29 am

I wonder what will happen to this statistic when my generation gets out of school? (I'm 14)

Well, when you're currently dead last, the only way is up, right?

Unless, of course, the margin of ignorance between the US and Bulgaria and Slovenia widens, which isn't impossible: in 1993, the Iron Curtain had recently fallen and both were former Communist countries. Now, both are members of the EU and (in all likelihood) benefiting from EU structural and cohesion funds, which could plausibly lead to better education in these countries. I don't see much that encourages me to believe that education might have improved in the US since 1993.

87. Darwin's dangerous idea

Comment #137283 by emmet on March 2, 2008 at 3:44 pm

Here's hoping natural selection prunes out the really stupid ideas...

That'd be a triumph of hope over experience: it hasn't done a very good job pruning out the really stupid people!

88. Sea reptile is biggest on record

Comment #135470 by emmet on February 29, 2008 at 2:28 am

Photo of me on Svalbard

Me on Svalbard with the mountains in the background. The first thing that you recognise in Longyearbyen, looking out across the fjord, is the glaciers that are always at the beginning of any documentary on polar bears. I felt like David Attenborough :o)

It doesn't cost much to get there, only a few hundred Euro from Oslo or Tromsö. Well worth it.

And, yes, the whole archipelago was once called Spitzbergen and the (big Western) island that is now just called Spitzbergen was called "West Spitzbergen". I'm not sure when the renaming happened, though.

89. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #135023 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 1:05 pm

The discourse in Sweden is much like the way Sam Harris wants it to be in the US: if someone even mentions a god in a live debate or in a written article then they immediately pay a price, a high price, in lost credibility. So nothing of that sort is ever mentioned.

Even in Ireland, which is sometimes somewhat unfairly perceived as being some kind of Catholic quasi-theocracy (half-true 30 years ago), public piety is regarded as very odd and suspicious. If the leader of a political party started wittering on about "Our Lord and Saviour Jeebus" or somesuch, they'd be viewed as a nut and would lose credibility as a politician. It's so unthinkable that I can't even begin to imagine the political price that would be paid.

90. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #135001 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 12:34 pm

I have been described as: ...

Me too, with the possible exception of "crass" (I don't remember ever being called that), but then I can add "touchy", "pedantic", "argumentative", "patronising" and quite a few colloquialisms for genitalia (of both genders).

Probably all true too at different times.

91. Sea reptile is biggest on record

Comment #134973 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 12:20 pm

Svalbard is an utterly amazing place. I went there in the summer of 2005 with no particular interest in geology and came back with a couple of geology books and an armful of assorted leaf fossils picked up from the terminal moraine of Longyearbyen glacier. Highly recommended if you ever get a chance to go there.

92. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134965 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 12:10 pm

I am all for getting your shit together and moving on.

But I also understand that after a great deal of abuse that is difficult.

Agreed on both counts: I never intended to suggest otherwise.

Turns out you're not a bastard after all ;o)

And, btw, the thing about the Irish being short- or ill-tempered is a myth: we're actually an extraordinarily friendly and peaceful lot.

93. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134953 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 11:37 am

al-rawandi,

Irish temper? Yup, guilty as charged :o)

The point I was trying to make is that no formerly-occupied people is going to make lives better for themselves by bitching about the colonists and the past as a substitute for planning for the future.

For the record, I don't think that former colonial powers have done nearly enough; in most cases, they haven't even acknowledged that what was done in the past was wrong and apologised with so much as a shred of sincerity. I regularly meet English people who are actually proud of the "Empire", which I find quite shocking: I don't think it's a cause for anything but shame.

But, waiting around for a former colonial power to do a damn thing is foolish: it's like a robbery victim waiting for the robber to come back, give them back their wallet, and apologise. It's just never going to happen.

And I don't know whether Germany should compensate the children of Holocaust survivors. I don't have a dog in that fight. I've never even heard of it before, so I'd be loathe to jump to any conclusion.

94. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134933 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 10:57 am

al-rawandi,

You presumptuous condescending bastard.

Just thought I'd get that out of the way first.

Ireland never occupied anyone. We were oppressed, persecuted, enslaved, and starved to varying degrees for 750 years. Our population was halved from 8 million to 4 in a generation, due to famine, while the colonial occupiers allowed overseas aid to rot in warehouses and continued to extract food produce, rents, and taxes. Resentment of that colonial history is deeply ingrained in our culture.

But, what changed Ireland's fortunes was not resentment about the colonial occupation, but stable government, a couple of serendipitously favourable economic policies and successfully attracting foreign direct investment.

So, yeah, I consider myself European. Insofar as we have a common core culture that can be called European, I think it's pretty damn good.

Does that make me an apologist for colonialism? No! And I don't have to forgive anyone for the crimes of the past, least of all myself.

95. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134894 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 9:46 am

to the short sighted people who write as if europe is some kind of well-heeled, diplomatic confederation: try foisting your argument on someone who has been at the receiving end of british, german, belgian, dutch, french, etc. colonialism. i don't think that person will see european 'civilization' in quite the same elevated manner.

Ireland was occupied by the English from 1172 until 1916 (give or take a few years). I see European civilization in a pretty elevated manner. What civilization do you suggest as a better alternative? European colonial powers did a lot of very nasty things all over the world, but there isn't a damn thing we can do about it now to change the past. How long has to pass before one starts improving the here-and-now and looking to the future, or do we piss and whine about Pharoah and the bloody Egyptian imperialists forever?

96. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134712 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 6:07 am

Clodhopper: funniest thing I've read in a while :o)

But if accessibility of booze is the only problem you can find with a country I would say it doesn't have any problems worth mentioning.

I agree, but it can be a bit of a pain, particularly if there's a holiday on Monday or Tuesday, then Systembolaget can be closed for a few days (closes early on Saturday, closed on Sunday). After running out of white wine and vodka a couple of times, I learned that if you're having a few people over, you really have to lay in a huge stockpile of wine/beer/spirits just in case everyone wants to drink the same thing, then you end up with a load of alcohol that you wouldn't otherwise have bothered with, and end up drinking much more than you might otherwise: the total opposite of what's intended by having a state alcohol monopoly.

97. Are they running for President or Pastor-in-Chief?

Comment #134601 by emmet on February 28, 2008 at 3:18 am

If you are a republican or libertarian stay waaaay clear of Scandinavia

Judging by your name, you're Swedish, but I don't see why one would want to avoid Scandinavia, really. I'd consider myself a republican (in the representative democracy, one-person-one-vote, all persons equal, no monarchy sense) and a libertarian (in the do what you like as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else sense), and while I found ID cards and all the odd little rules in Sweden somewhat bizarre at first, it all seems to work pretty well. Systembolaget, I could really do without, but I only think you'd want to avoid Sweden if you were pathologically paranoid and believed that the government was out to get you (in the tinfoil hats and black helicopters sense).

98. Pakistan blocks YouTube over blasphemous video

Comment #133584 by emmet on February 26, 2008 at 11:51 am

... the Irish Republic...

Was declared in 1919 and abolished by the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. The official name of the country (in English) is "Ireland" (Bunreacht na hÉireann, Art.4), and the official description is "The Republic of Ireland". Technically speaking, there is no entity called "the Irish Republic".

Pedantic much? me?

:o)

99. Add another flea to the list...

Comment #133360 by emmet on February 26, 2008 at 6:04 am

Epinephrine,

Thanks. I was pretty annoyed when I wrote that, and I know that China doesn't really hold the pink-slip on the US national debt, but one myth deserves another :o)

100. Add another flea to the list...

Comment #133240 by emmet on February 26, 2008 at 12:54 am

Not so fast. Sweden is in a demographic death spiral, like most modern welfarist states where the citizens think it's the government's job to wipe their khyber for them. Malmo will be majority muslim soon. And if Sweden were to become a US state, it would be poorer than Alabama.


Take a look at some actual statistics compiled by the UN, OECD, or WHO for Sweden, then compare them with the US: Sweden has the lowest infant/child mortality in the world, one of the best education systems in the world and free at every level, excellent universal healthcare, long life-expectancy, and a narrow poverty gap. Then take a look at how the US compares: the highest infant/child mortality of any developed nation, rampant child poverty, laughable education except for the best universities, first on healthcare spending but 27th on health outcomes, a yawning poverty gap, and a staggering national debt with China holding the deeds, high levels of violent crime including regular high-school shootings, and a government that executes and tortures people.

No Swede expects the government to "wipe their khyber" for them, you patronising asshole: the Swedes have a strong work ethic, expect what they pay for in taxes, and get it for the most part. What do your taxes pay for?

Go and learn something about the US in an international context before you go pissing on somebody else's country. Your attitude feeds the international cliché of the US as a violent sweatshop populated by fat ignorant gun-toting rednecks who only ever think of money.

And, no, I'm not Swedish.

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