Perceivence

Last night I read two notes on Facebook, posted comments on them both, and went to sleep. One of them was prompted by a priest that the author respected saying that the Catholic Church is the one true church and that other churches and religions are cult. It was generally about the arrogance of Christians claiming that they have the way to God to the exclusion of every other or most others. I wasn't up for debating the merits of the case that he outlined, so I just zeroed in on a statement he made about the truth:

( Read more... )

I was so critical of my contributions that I kinda dreaded reading the responses. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, no one has said anything along the lines of the withering criticisms I've had for my writing. The first person responded saying that my comment was well said (I suppose it was, but I still don't think the first part was true) and the second person hasn't responded to my comment on his note as yet.

Many times, I think I'm too harsh on myself.

Kendall El 04 de agosto a las 19:06 · Comentar · Me gusta
Liverpool accept Alonso bid

Kamal El 04 de agosto a las 19:28 · Eliminar
"Liverpool ACCEPTS Alonso bid"

In this context, Liverpool is either a plain singular noun (the Liverpool Football Club) or a collective noun(the Liverpool football team). I think the first is more likely; in that case, the verb is obviously in the singular. If it is, indeed, the second case, then the noun should take a singular verb since we're dealing with a collective noun whose individual members are inconsequential to the meaning of the sentence.

I'm sure they taught you all this in Prep School. Don't let the silly British media and the ape-ish West Indian, Australian, New Zealandic, South African and Irish media ruin your grammatical sense. For once the Americans and the Canadians (perhaps by virtue of some Canadian ape-ishness) have it right.

</vicarious rant>

So the government† has finally taken the initiative and included the draft new constitution in copies of each of the three weekly papers printed on Friday, 31 July 2009. That's just in time for Emancipation Day (175 years, yay!), but a full two months after the 28 May 2009 date on the cover of the constitution bill. The 48-page newspaper pull-out also includes a four and a half page article titled A brief summary of the main proposals in the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Constitution 2009 by Parnel R. Campbell, QC, Resource Person of the Constitution Drafting Panel, Chairman of the Constitutional Review Steering Committee (CRSC) (2007-2009), and Chairman of the Constitutional Review Commission (CSC) (2003-2006). The document says that it's "A discussion paper presented to a Consultation hosted by the Windward Islands Farmers' Association (WINFA) on Wednesday 8th July 2009". That was just over 3 weeks ago.

So they're late, but better late than never, right?

Mr Campbell's article is especially useful and I expect that much of the commentary in the immediate future will focus on the things the article says, the things it doesn't say, and the man who wrote the article. I have nothing to say about the man and I sincerely wish that people participating in these discussions would try really hard to not spoil their points and arguments with personal attacks. I have some things to say about the document, though. I encourage everyone to read Mr Campbell's article. I'll try to get an electronic copy of it and make it available as soon as I can.

On a whole, I thought the article was great. It does an effective job of pointing out most of the major changes to the constitution, and it even includes some reasons for some of these changes. It talks about quite a few things (one can suppose this is because the constitution changes quite a few things) but, naturally, spends more time on some things than others (probably because some things are more contentious and important than others). Four major changes occupy more space than all the others: the change of our head of state from the hereditary British monarch to an indigenous President; the change in the electoral and parliamentary system from a strictly first-past-the-post system to a mixed first-past-the-post and proportional representation system; the reductions in the powers of the Prime Minister; and the increases in the powers of the Leader of the Opposition (who the new constitution would renamed the Minority Leader). In talking about these major things Mr Campbell draws on personal experience, talks a bit of history, and makes comparisons with other Commonwealth countries.

The article isn't without its flaws, though. Foremost of these are the things the article notably does not talk about. It does not mention the proposed changes in the amendment process. That is, it does not mention the reduction in the minimum period between the reading of the constitution bills from 90 days to 60 days, and the reduction of the majority required in the referendum from two-thirds to three-fifths. The article also doesn't say that the change of our highest court of appeal from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to the Caribbean Court of Justice would not require another referendum. As a summary, one can't expect the article to include everything, but I really don't think that the changes in the amendment process are insignificant omissions.

Still, as I said, it's well worth the read. It's certainly the best composed, most informative and best argued piece on the constitution that I've seen so far. So if you haven't read it yet, go pick up a newspaper, pull out the pull-out, turn to page 43, read the article that begins there, and let us know what you think.

*****

† I should say that I don't know that the government did this; I think it did, but I don't know. The pull-out is included in all three papers and there's a bit on page 43 about the constitution being published under the auspices of the Clerk of the House of Assembly, but I don't think these things confirm that it's the government that did this, and I haven't heard or seen anything else anywhere to confirm or deny it.

Here's a list of things about HIV/AIDS that intrigued or surprised me when I first learned of them. I have to admit: in more than one case I refused to believe the claim until I had what I thought was enough evidence to persuade me to believe it. (One generally shouldn't believe a counter-intuitive claim because a good friend of yours said she read it somewhere on the Internet.) So when writing this, I did my best to support each of the nine points with (what I hope is) sufficient reasoning.

I'm sure that when many people see some of these things they'll ask why on earth I chose to put this list together. Wouldn't people be better off not knowing some of these things? Don't some of my statements trivialise the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of people infected with HIV across the region? Don't they undermine the efforts of our public-health sectors and non-governmental organisations? Isn't this just foolish?

Maybe. I sincerely hope not and I honestly don't think so, but maybe.

The thing is, though, none of this is conspiratorial. This isn't anything like evidence that HIV was brewed in a lab. This is stuff from free, public UN, WHO and governmental reports. This is Wikipedia and news stuff. This is Google stuff. This is stuff that's out there in plain sight for anyone who really bothers to look.

1. The risk of transmission of HIV/AIDS is much smaller than you probably think.

What do you think is ( the intriguing things! )

And does this mean that if our prevalence rate were only 0.4% it would be incorrect to say that there's an HIV epidemic in the general population of St Vincent and the Grenadines?

*****

1. I'm referring to the WHO's consideration of a flu pandemic purely in terms of how widespread the disease is without regard for its deadliness. This BBC News article hints to that and also talks about concern for the panic that declaring a flu pandemic might have caused. Check also the WHO's own pandemic scale, which says nothing about deadliness, and talk of devising a flu pandemic severity index in the US.
2. Green, MS et al. When is an Epidemic an Epidemic? Israel Medical Association Journal 2002; 4: 3 - 6. http://www.ima.org.il/imaj/ar02jan-1.pdf. This is a short, easy read on the different ways different people use the word 'epidemic' and the impacts those differences may have.
3. Page 24. The sentence, "By 2002, only 36% of low- and middle-income countries had a fully implemented surveillance system; however, 58% of countries with a generalized epidemic (where HIV prevalence is above 1%) had such a system."

**************

Some UNAIDS publications

AIDS epidemic update report archive
2001 AIDS epidemic update
2002 Report on the global AIDS epidemic
2003 AIDS epidemic update
2004 Report on the global AIDS epidemic
2005 AIDS epidemic update
2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic
2007 AIDS epidemic update
2008 Report on the global AIDS epidemic</p>

This is a follow-up to my previous entry Catholicism and Carnival. The responses [on Facebook] went a good distance towards helping me answer my questions. I started typing my thoughts on those responses with the intention of posting them as comments to that [Facebook] post, but I think they're long enough to deserve a blog entry of their own.

The main question was why does the Catholic Church not oppose carnival? My objective here isn't to criticise Catholicism, though I do realise that because of my position and the way I phrase my questions it may come across as though I'm doing that. What I want to do is figure out how the Catholic non-opposition and support for Carnival are justified within a Catholic framework. I'm basically wondering why the rationale for the evangelical condemnations of Carnival does not result in a similar Catholic condemnation of the the festivities. I realise that the Catholic church isn't the only one with such a stance, but I've chosen it for a variety of reasons, among which are that I know more about Catholicism than, say, Anglicanism, and because I think Catholicism typifies some of the other, older, established Christian denominations in this regard.

So to the follow up. People said lots of stuff in their comments. I'm using this note to address the points that were made in direct response to my questions. I commented on the other contributions in the comments section of the last note.

The reasons given for the Catholic church's non-opposition/support were:

• It's our culture; it's part of our identity. [Shanique]
• It's tradition. The church has not opposed (or has supported) carnival for years. [Kevon?, Kevyn, Anya]
• It brings in money. Carnival is profitable so it would be difficult for the church to oppose it. [Kevon, Anya]
• You can participate in Carnival without sinning. It isn't necessarily about excess. [Shaun, J'elle, Jomokie]
• We're small, so it isn't something that would've attracted the attention of the Vatican. [Shaun]

I hope I didn't miss or conflate any.

From the above, I'd first strike out the money one. It may be a pragmatic concern for some Catholics and maybe even some leaders in the Caribbean's Catholic Church, but I don't think it's an ideological one. I don't think it addresses how Carnival fits into the Catholic worldview or ethic. If anything, I think that such a reason would be outrightly and soundly rejected on ideological Catholic grounds.

On the matter of culture/identity, the only way I could see a Catholic cogently arguing from that angle is if s/he says it's part of his/her Catholic culture and identity. I say this because I don't see how any Christian could seriously argue that something tolerated, accepted or promoted just because it is part of a society's culture or identity. The "It's our culture!" cry simply doesn't interact with the kind of universal, objective moral arguments that Christians usually make. One can imagine or read about a hundred and one cultural practices (honour killings, female circumcision...) that would not hold up to a second's scrutiny in any discussion set in a Christian moral framework. Perhaps one could argue something like:

1. Since something is cultural and
2. Given another reason
3. We should do Ex or we shouldn't do Zed

But I don't see how one could just say "It's our culture!" alone and expect that to stand.

Now if someone argues that it's part of his/her Catholic culture and identity (and it seems that a case can be made there given Carnival's origin as a pre-Lenten festival), that quite naturally raises the question of why. Why is it part of Catholic culture? Why has it become a Catholic tradition? If we phrase the question in terms similar to the ones I initially asked we'd see that we're back to the start. Saying it's part of our Catholic culture and identity doesn't answer the question.

From there we could go nicely into the "It's tradition" reason, but I'll put that off for a bit because I think there's really something there. So before I get to that, I want to talk about the last reason that I find insubstantial. That reason runs something like "we're too small for the Vatican to pronounce on it". That sounds reasonable. But not everything is left up to the Pope or the Vatican to decide, right? Surely if there's an issue in a region then the priests, bishops and cardinal(s) of that region can come together and decide something, can they not? Plus, I gather that Brazil's carnival is rather like ours in the respects that I've outlined. I think Brazil has the world's largest Catholic population, so it is anything but insignificant.

So now to the "It's tradition!" reason. I can see how that would be compelling to Catholics. Whereas Protestants champion (or claim to champion) sola scriptura, Catholics are unapologetic about the role that 'Holy Tradition' plays in their faith. As most Catholics should know, though, in Catholicism there's a difference between common-t 'tradition' and capital-t "Holy Tradition". Whereas one is considered fallible and not truly an indispensable part of the Catholic faith, Catholics consider the other as authoritative as Protestants take the Bible. Granted that Holy Tradition is usually used to mean the teachings and practices handed down from the Apostles, the early Christian community and prominent later Christians, I don't think that any Catholic would seriously argue that the Caribbean carnivals are part of Holy Tradition.

So if it's a tradition it's definitely a common-t tradition. We're familiar with the history of Carnival, so we have an idea as to why that tradition has developed. It seems that good question can be raised as to why it was allowed to develop in the first place (see Jo-Ann's comment in the last note), but let's leave that aside for now and ask another question: why has it persisted after its initial development when, by almost everyone's assessment, the Caribbean's Carnivals have changed?

I think the Catholic answer to that question might be in the final reason: that Carnival isn't necessarily about excess and sin. A person can participate in and enjoy Carnival without sinning, without participating in its excesses, and without condoning the wrongdoing by his/her mere participation.

This seems like a very slim line to use as a route of escape, especially given the strict and largely consistent Catholic sexual and larger moral ethic. So far I don't think it works, but, as I said, the responses have moved me some way along understanding the Catholic position here, so I guess I'll work with this new-found understanding for now.

I don't get the (official?) Catholic non-opposition and outright support for Carnival. I really don't. Does anyone know a sound rationale for it? How can a church with such a strong and apparently consistent sexual ethic not condemn the hypersexualised carnivals of the Caribbean? Perhaps it will help if I sketch the evangelical opposition to the practice. Maybe someone can identify where a Catholic worldview would identify a failure in our reasoning and show me why it differs on this. But before I do that, I'll try to outline my understanding of the supporters' position. (Maybe someone can also point out where I'm wrong in this.)

As any apologist who enjoys Carnival will tell you, Carnival is about culture and fun. It's about cultural expression that fuses the region's Christian and European traditions with its African and tribal traditions. It's about creativity. It's about having a good time. It's about social commentary -- airing the societies' problems in songs about poverty, gender inequalities, abuses and politics in creative ways. It's about showcasing women's beauty, talent and (lack of) knowledge.

But it's also a festival of and to the flesh. In the 'original' form that we still see in Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica, it's about a farewell to the flesh before the 40-day Lenten period. It's the time you free up and forget your inhibitions. It's the time we bend the rules of fidelity and make exceptions to our codes of integrity and decency.

And we can go further. As the Christian and other prudential opponents to Carnival say, it's also about excess. It's about sex, sex and more sex -- sex with (barely any) clothes on, protected sex, unprotected sex, sex between people who don't know each other, sex between unmarried people, and sex between a married woman and a man she isn't married to (yuh woman butting me!). It's about alcohol (the only thing better than rum is more rum!). And it's not about alcohol in moderation. It's about getting so drunk that you're brave enough to wind on that woman or sleep with that man. It's about those nights you hope you'll never remember with the friends you may very well forget.

With all this in mind, it's hard for me to imagine a coherent Catholic (or Anglican or Methodist or any other orthodoxish Christian) apology for Carnival. So, what's the reason? What're the arguments? What's excuse? Does anyone know?

And oh, I'm talking about the official (or semi-official or de-facto official) reasoned and/or revealed position of the church or the majority of its clergy here. We all know that in every denomination of Christianity the practice of the laity (and even the clergy) can differ widely from the church's official doctrine or accepted norm. This isn't about the hypocrisy of the young evangelical pastors who preach about abstinence and preach against carnival and end up drunk and wasted J'Ouvert morning. (Yes, that's a major issue, but it isn't the issue I want to deal with here.) This is about the pastors and priests and deacons and churches that don't see anything intrinsically or otherwise wrong with Carnival.

⁶"With what shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
⁷Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
⁸He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
~ Micah 6: 6 - 8 (ESV)

I told a good Internet friend of mine the other day that I hate moralising. I had just reasoned, fairly cogently, I think, in defence of the people who did not condemn outright the murder of one of three or so prominent American abortion doctors. And I hated it. I hated that I could come up with that reason; I hated that I could see a light under which I found that reasoning compelling. I hated my empathy. I hated, I think, reason itself. But I couldn't find a good reason to justify my hatred.

And that wasn't the first time I hated reason. I generally love reasoning and thinking about all sorts of things largely because the rudimentaries come easy to me and I think I am fairly good at it. In my teens I relished the chance to go online, read things, and spar with others. Back then, my biggest concern was thinking through my beliefs, trying to find ways to defend them, and trying to make corrections where needed. I'd pretend that human justifications are stricly rational, even if some of the premisses are hidden or something. I'd argue strongly for objectivity and absolutism, and against subjectivity and relativism. I'd think that finding a single, apparently irrefutable argument against a system should've been enough for someone to drop that system right there.

It's very different today. I still generally believe in objective truth and that the subjectivity is in experience, but I've been almost compelled to focus, it feels, more on the subjectivity of experience than the objectivity of the truth. I still enjoy reasoning to conclusions from premisses and discovering wonderful new things I didn't know. And I still learn sobering things that contradict what I believe and force me to change. But right now, I'm really, really preoccupied with some frustrating things about reason.

I sometimes hate the finality of reason. I hate how unavoidable some conclusions are because of certain premisses. At the same time, I hate the uncertainty of the finality of reason. There's always this thought near the back of my head that I could just be missing that piece of information or two that would drastically change the picture. Just because I've been checking and rechecking my working several times a month for the last seven years doesn't mean that I'm right. Maybe I'm forgetting something. Maybe I never knew it.

And perhaps most of all, I really hate what these things mean for my personal morality. When I was younger, I understood and accepted many of the moral teachings of my faith. But it was a sort of distant understanding. These things are plain, I thought. I get them and they're easy. I know people are different -- different people are tempted in different ways; but why do people still repeatedly do such wrong things when the moral imperative against them is so obvious and undeniable?

Well, today, I don't think I understand those things much less than I did then, but there are new pieces of things to consider. Hahaha. I now know firsthand why people do wrong things even when all their powers of reason tell them they're wrong. And it's exceedingly frustrating how good I've become at making excuses and crafting explanations. Although I find the existence of an objective ethic compelling, I find it hard to condemn people for almost anything. It's as though I think people's weakness is excuse enough to not demand good of them.

But, as you can imagine, I don't really think that.

And I feel as though this entry was crap.

The Pope said quite a lot of things when he went to Cameroon, but the mainstream media have been hung up on a few words. As the BBC put it in this article:

HIV/Aids was, he argued, "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".

Since then, there have been a conspicuously timed UNAIDS press release and outright condemnations from all sorts of random people, including editors, bloggers, world leaders and governments. Most of these have, I think, been predicated on a misunderstanding of what the Pope said. They've been running around as though the Pope made a scientific statement. I think it's rather clear that he neither made a scientific statement nor intended to make one. Furthermore, he wasn't talking about just the AIDS pandemic; he was talking about all the bad things it causes and all the bad things that cause it. He was talking primarily about the human condition and how it contributes to the AIDS pandemic, and secondarily about the particularly African condition that exacerbates the problem. He was talking about the people of Africa -- like the people of the Americas, the people of Europe, the people of Asia and the people of Australasia -- needing salvation.

But could he have made a scientific statement to that effect?

Maybe. In a recent article, the Irish Times quotes Dr. Edward Green, the director of Harvard's HIV Prevention Research Project, as saying that "there is not a single country in Africa where HIV prevalence has come down primarily because of condoms". He claims that many of the reductions in African HIV/AIDS rates are because of reductions in the number of sexual partners that Africans have. The Catholic News Agency quotes him more extensively and even has him saying -- in some appropriately fancy scientific language, of course -- the same thing that some regular people argue: that condom use may increase risky behaviour.

And he isn't the only one. In 2003, Norman Hearst, a Professor at the University of California, San Francisco published a UNAIDS-supported study on the effect of condom promotion on AIDS prevention in the developing world. The study's summarised results:

Condoms are about 90% effective for preventing HIV transmission, and condom use has grown rapidly in many countries. Condoms have produced substantial benefit in countries like Thailand, where both transmission and condom promotion are concentrated in commercial sex, but the public health benefit of condom promotion in settings with widespread heterosexual transmission remains unclear. In countries like Uganda that have curbed generalized epidemics, reducing numbers of partners appears to have been more important than condoms. Other countries continue with high HIV transmission despite high condom use. Impact of condoms may be limited by inconsistent use, which provides little protection, low use among those at highest risk, and negative interactions with other strategies, such as partner reduction.

There are, of course, more than two people in the epidemiological community. In the CNA article Dr Green plainly says that his views aren't popular. But that, of itself, doesn't render them without merit.

So could the Pope have made the kind of scientific statement that some think he did? It seems so.

I usually half-joke that it's best to transit Grantley Adams International Airport when an international flight has just landed. Those're the only times I've found more than a couple immigration officers on duty and the "NOTHING TO DECLARE" part of the customs area unblocked.

So when I came off LIAT's last flight from St Vincent tonight( The rest of the story )

And with that he dismissed me with a point to the ITEMS TO DECLARE branch and a look at the next person behind me. He didn't ask me anything else. He didn't glance at my passport. He didn't look at my customs form. But I'm certain he saw my skin colour, and he must've recognised my accent -- what it wasn't, I'm sure, if not what it was -- and that was enough for him.

And being a submissive black West Indian, I wordlessly did as he directed.

We're finally in Cork!

( Our journey to Cork )

So that's my rather boring chronicle of our trip so far.

This semester is shaping up marvellously.

I'm enjoying all my courses. I love the maths courses for their rigour, their abstractions, and the way that they stretch my thinking. I love Discrete Maths, a Computer Science course, for its layers of depth (despite my teacher's insistence on doing only what is required). I love Information Structures for its concepts and the way it's developing my programming skills, although I think there are clear ways in which the course can be improved. I love the foundation course I'm doing -- Law, Governance, Economy and Society in the Caribbean -- because of how different it is from the maths and computer science courses, because of its breadth, and because of the intrinsic value of much of the things it deals with.

I'm also enjoying the co-curricular groups I'm in. The Debating Society is beginning to take on the form that we'd like it to, and it's great being a part of that transformation. I'm still getting into UWI STAT, but I like the idea of it (although, there again, there are clear ways to improve implementation). Campus Crusade for Christ is fruitful and supportive, and VINSA is Vincentian. I really need to get more into UNA-UWI, though. :P

A lot of us are in shock right now. NBC -- the holders of the exclusive 'rights' for the covering of the 2008 Beijing Olympics on TV and online in the USA -- did not show the 100 metre final live. They did not show Usain Bolt smash the world record (again). Apparently, they're going to show about 10 hours after the event during 'prime time' -- after everyone has heard the results. More than that, they did not hype this event, at all. This is THE signature event of the Olympics and they didn't so much as advertise it as one of the major things they'd be covering during prime time tonight. (They mentioned swimming, of course, as well as beach volleyball and women's tennis, iirc.)

Understandably, even Americans are annoyed. But really, since residents of St Vincent and the Grenadines are not in the US (we can't even access the online coverage), why on earth is this our problem? How could Karib Cable let this happen? I understand that CMC has the broadcasting rights and a coverage package for the region and then redistributes it to local companies. Why does our coverage consist entirely of this rubbish Ameri-centric NBC coverage? Where is our CMC coverage?

Did people anywhere else in the Caribbean NOT have the opportunity to watch this thing live on tv?

So the Olympics began on Friday with much praise from those who saw the ceremony, and annoyance from those -- like me -- who couldn't see it live. I'm still not sure which company holds the 'rights' to broadcast the game in my country, but we had to do with the NBC coverage 12 hours after the event. And when that came on I was somewhere where I couldn't see the NBC coverage, so. :(

While it was showing live, however, I figured I should be able to find a stream online. I couldn't find a good stream from my usual sources, but while searching I found out that, apparently, there's International Olympic Committee (IOC)-approved access to online coverage for the Olympics in every country in the world! (Not all of it is live, though.) Apparently, the IOC struck a deal to have highlights on Youtube for all the countries that didn't secure exclusive web deals. From an IOC press release:

IOC Director of Television and Marketing Services, Timo Lumme said: “The IOC’s priority is to ensure that as many people as possible get to experience the magic of the Olympic Games and the inspirational sporting achievements of the Olympic athletes. For the first time in Olympic history we will have complete global online coverage, and the IOC will have its own broadcast Channel and content production facilities. The IOC’s Channel will make fantastic Olympic footage available where young generations of sports fans are already going for online entertainment, and will complement the footage offered in these territories by our broadcast partners across all media platforms.”

Except that that part about having "complete global online coverage" is apparently false. I can't get on to the Youtube channel and none of the other options I've tried worked. Apparently, if that experience and this list of the Internet 'rights' holders are anything to go by, Grenada is the only English-speaking Caribbean country with IOC-approved online access to Olympic footage. Netizens of Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago have no such access options. The same seems to be true for the Caribbean British overseas territories of Anguilla, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, although the British Virgin islands and some non-Caribbean British overseas territories (like the Falkland Islands) are apparently better off.

So what's going on here? Is the IOC lying? If it isn't, who is (or are?) our Internet 'rights' holder(s) for the games? And will this situation be fixed before the games are over?

And what was the cause of this? Is it that the IOC believes it can afford to not have such coverage for these few (hundred?) thousand Caribbean Internet users? (Though I wonder if they realise this affects wealthy tourists from nice, big, powerful countries and the compatriots of the world-class sprinters Usain Bolt and Aafa Powell as well as residents from these other countries they may not care about.) Or is it an honest oversight by the IOC?

The 79-year-old geneticist said he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.". He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true".

He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because "there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don't promote them when they haven't succeeded at the lower level". He writes that "there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so".

That's from this Times report. These aren't his first ever remarks of this kind. As the same report says on the following page:

( Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns )

Thoughts? Comments?

So, having not checked getreligion.org in a while, I decided to drop by to see if there was anything interesting to read there. After some browsing, I bumped into this blog entry. Its first quotation ran:

Women are just as likely to get an abortion in countries where it is outlawed as they are in countries where it is legal, according to research published Friday.

( Read more... )

I've been noticing recently that reporters are generally as terrible at reporting the findings of scientific studies as they are at reporting the nuances of religious stories (which is what that site is really devoted to pointing out). But this story was terrible, simply terrible.

All propositions are eternal!!

I just sent this (place another piece) as an email to some of my friends. 
 
( The email )

PS: Is Joseph his first name? Is that a Car...Garifuna/Callinago name?