Unicon, Work, Elections and Racial and Religious Madness, Banned Rats!

[tcpip]

Spent the weekend at Unicon with dukeofmelbourne and caseopaya. Not a bad event, first gaming con I've been too in several years. Played "Parallel Flight" (Fireborn, not so good), Restoration (Urban Arcana, very good), Get Who (based on Get Smart, death coincidental, fun but severly limited for characters other than agents 99 and 86), Schools Out (Mutants and Masterminds, a d20 superhero game; OK, but combat orientated) and at the top of my enjoyment list "Four Fists of Righteous Fury" (where we had narrative and character development, deadly seriousness and comic relief!). Surprised to see that there were no D&D sessions. Sessions were far too short. Will give a full write-up on experiences on aus_gamers in the near future. Afterwards went to Mind Games to spend money ;-)

I have been working. Borderlands has shifted offices and their network and all it's wiring needs to be reassembled. This week I start training Prosper Australia on marketing and getting media coverage. I've also picked up a translation job for a set of health clinics in Northern Ireland who apparently need documentation ... in Tetum. Strange but true. CCNA Semester 2 starts on Tuesday. Feeling confident about it.

Schroeder grasps defeat from the jaws of victory and is about to destroy the SPD in the process. Meanwhile, in New Zealand Helen Clark's victory seems assured following the counting of special votes. I will be living in New Zealand by the end of 2006, I swear.

More bombings in Bali. Further evidence to recent suggestions that too much religion is bad for your society. From religious to racial fundamentalism; former US Secretary of Education thinks the way to solve crime is to abort "blacks".

I've banned my rats from the desk drawer and the office. Two keyboard cables and three speakers is too much. They're coping ;-)

Comments

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

First, I see you have fallen victim to the Leftist meme du jour. Bennett, though by no means a reasonable man, in this particular case was quoted out of context and was ridiculing the idea that a link between abortion and crime statistics was worth considering with his comments. So the comment that he made that people consider appalling was in fact a hypothetical example of something he considered a bad idea. Not to say I like Bennett, but dragging him over the coals for this one is the sort of idiot political discourse that is precisely the problem with US politics.

Actually, a lot of the prediction before the whole Germany horse trading began was that Merkel would be the one that gets screwed by the coalition. The SPD gets a few years where someone else gets to make some unpleasant reform decisions and they can sabotage her leadership enough it will be very difficult for her to increase her parties role.

Of course, its not really religion that is bad for you society, if it comes with pluralism and tolerance. There is an argument that with sufficient pluralism and tolerence, you are unlikely to have too much religion, of course.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

1. Bennet's comments ("But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down...That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down") is clearly built on the assumption that there is a racial type ("black") which has a genetic propensity to commit more crime. I really don't see anything other way to intrepret his comments.


2. The sensible thing for the SPD to do would be to form a coalition government with the Greens and rely on the Left Party for support. Of course, this would require them to admit that the reason they've done so poorly (and the Left has done comparatively well) is that their "reforms" are unpopular. Seeming that Merkel is offering more of the same, but harsher, the SPD is engaging in a slow suicide. Those who support the reforms will go the way the Christian Democrats, those who oppose it will go the way of the Left Party. So why would anyone want to vote SPD?


3. Of course. The difficulty that all religions face is that making absolute metaphysical claims means that pluralism by definition is negated.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

1. Actually, I'd say its quite conceivably based on a realistic hypthesis that black people probably commit more crime than the average, due to generally being of a lower socio-economic group and living in areas with poorer social services. Bennett may be a creep, but you don't have to assume he is both a creep and an idiot. And by doing so, you contribute to the sort of political discourse which has largely lead to the prevalence of creeps like Bennett.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I certainly didn't read Bennet's comments that way. He is making a gentotype definition, not a socio-economic one. If he meant abort children of the poor because they commit more crimes he would have said so; however, he is a race theorist. In his world "race" is a definite subspecies of human which has a correlation to socially constructed activities (e.g., criminal).

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

You can read that into one word? I think you are hearing what you want to hear. In the context of US politics, where socio-economic status IS strongly statistically correllated to race, and thus statistically correlated to socially constructed activities like crime, his comments (ie that he was acknowledging the statistical correlation BUT rejecting the reasoning that leads from a naive interpretation of that) make sense. Again, he is a creep but not an idiot. While on this argument, you are siding with those who are idiots. I'd prefer to be neither, thanks.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I make no suggestion that he is an idiot. As I mentioned in the original post, he is a race theorist.

Have a look at a more full transcript;

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006

and follows;

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509300008

This is clearly race orientated. Bennett is claiming that blacks are the cause of crime.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

He says nothing that is not consistent with believing that race and crime are statistically correlated, without implying a necessary causal role. Given that he is rejecting the idea as unsound, you are second guessing which of several grounds for unsoundness he could be using as a basis for rejection, and assuming he chose the one that deserves the most criticism. Which is an unreasonable assumption.

He is certainly being evasive about just who introduced race into the debate, sure. But frankly, you are drawing a long bow, when there are plenty of better things to harrass Bennett over.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

He is a creep, because the first thing that sprang (is that a word?) to mind when asked about abortion and crime statistics, was a fairly unhelpful and disgusting theory.

He is an idiot because he actually spoke his mind on the subject.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

2. That option, however, is not actually open to them, as the Greens and the SPD do not together form a majority, and the Left will not go into formal coalition, as I understand it. And you, of all people, should know that politics is not simplistic enough that people automatically divide along the lines of support of a single broad policy direction.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The Left made it clear that they would not form a coalition, but they would still support the SPD-Green coalition if it wanted government. Support for this proposal was strong among some SPD representatives from what I have read.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I would have taken it.
But you could see how there would be a difficult political environment to be working in -- the SPD would be relying on the Left for government, but fundamentally relying on the CDU to get reforms that the Left dislike through.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

3. No more than any other school of thought, such as atheism, that makes absolute metaphysical claims. The issue is how much religion claims it should be able to enforce its wishes on society (in particular the modern state), which is a different issue. Buddhism, for example, doesn't actually claim to make absolute metaphysical claims in some variants (it claims its teachings are testable hypotheses that each believer should test for themselves) but it can still be problematic.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Re 3). Oh, I agree. I find that fundamentalist atheism is as abhorrent as any other form of religious fundamentalism. And fundamentalist Buddhism is just weird as well as dangerous.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

Fundamentalists of any stripe are scary in some sense. But fundamentalist atheists are mostly just annoying, because mostly they don't believe their beliefs should be enforced by the state.

Its the relationship between church and state that is the worry, not the metaphysics. Islam used to be tolerant in the middle ages, because they believed in a (somewhat) pluralist state (at least by the standards of the time), now the Islamist concept of the relationship between church and state is all screwed up.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

But fundamentalist atheists are mostly just annoying, because mostly they don't believe their beliefs should be enforced by the state.

Except for the ones in the former Soviet Union, contemporary China and sometimes France. ;-)

because they believed in a (somewhat) pluralist state (at least by the standards of the time)

Well, it was more of a case that their religion was more pluralist. Even the most radical secular rationalists, the Mutazilite, still completely tied Church and State together.