Day: September 26, 2000

Does Violence Against Men Count? (Part II)

Tuesday, September 26, 2000

After I pointed out what I think is feminist hypocrisy over the Nike ads, there was some discussion on the site along the lines of, “get real, you don’t think violence is a real problem for men, do you?” Actually, yes.

Men are the overwhelming victims of violent crime in every society of which I am aware (if somebody knows of a society in which women are more likely to be victims of violent crime, please let me know so I can make a correction). Many radical feminists seem to think that this is besides the point because most of the violence against men is committed by other men — conflating the perpetrator and victim in a classic blame the victim argument.

In fact violent acts, regardless of whether they are perpetrated by men or women, are usually committed by a small minority of individuals who have a history of prior criminal offenses and little regard for their fellow human beings. The person who commits violent acts out of the blue certainly exist, but is definitely in the minority.

The problem I and other critics of contemporary feminism have is that some feminists only object to violence against women and not men. Cathy Young beautifully illustrated this in a recent column, Anti-male bias infects too many campuses, in which she described the bizarre aftermath of a murder/suicide at the University of Michigan,

A more recent incident at U[University of]-M[ichigan] suggests that the university deserves its place on the top 10 anti-male colleges list. Last year, a female student fatally stabbed her boyfriend (who had never been accused of violence and had been trying to break up with her) and then shot herself. The Women’s Studies Department held a memorial service — for the killer.

Is that what feminists fought for so hard for so long? To memorialize and honor murderers, provided they are women? In fact I suspect that almost all people, male or female, find the actions of Michigan’s Women’s Studies Department to be revolting, which only illustrates just how far radical/academic feminism has strayed from the admirable goal of sexual equality.

It Takes an Incompetent Government to Flood India

India has had a number of famines that were caused by its government, and now its citizens can thank the government for a disastrous flood so far has killed 400, left 200 more people missing, and left more than 15 million people homeless.

West Bengal, where the worst of the flooding occurred, was hit by heavy rains, but government officials compounded the problem because of a lack of coordination between officials who were responsible for monitoring water levels and those responsible for managing dams in West Bengal. As a result, the dam operators thought water levels were far lower than they were and released way too much water, resulting in the worst floods in the area in 30 years.

To add insult to injury, according to opposition parties the government is also bungling relief and rescue efforts. There have been riots in relief camps as people are waiting several days for food, water and shelter. Opposition parties claim the West Bengal government mismanaged funds. For example, one of the delays was caused by the fact that the government never used funds it was allocated to buy a sufficient number of speedboats for transportation during flooding which is common in the area.

Source:

Authorities helped cause India floods. The BBC, September 25, 2000.

MS Wins — Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case; Sends Antitrust Appeal to Lower Court

The Supreme Court today decided not to hear the Microsoft case immediately, but rather sent the case to an appeals court to wind its normal way through the judicial system. Bottom line: buy Microsoft ASAP as the stock is going to soar over the next few weeks.

Microsoft is downplaying the impact of the decision, but in reality it’s an enormous victory for the company. The appeals court is very likely to overturn part or even all of the excessive penalty against Microsoft, and whatever the final outcome of the case is it will take years to decide at which point the whole case will be even more irrelevant than it already is today.

(On the other hand, I think MS is going end up committing suicide with their .NET plans so don’t hold on to that stock too long. Disclaimer: if you’re seriously thinking of buying stock based on what I say, you need your head examined. Don’t blame me if .NET succeeds and you’re out a lot of money. Don’t blame me when pigs start flying either.)

The Jesus Seminar’s Latest Publicity Stunt

On my bookshelf I’ve got several different versions of the Bible along with quite a few volumes Christian apologetics as well as atheistic criticism of the Bible, not to mention just straight ahead historical looks at Christianity. It’s a topic I used to be strongly interested in, but don’t really get into very much today.

Anyway, as an atheist I’ve often talked with very intelligent Christians who agree with me on at least one thing: that the issue of whether or not God exists is a serious one worthy of study rather than reflexive rush to judgments on either side. Which is why the Jesus Seminar’s regular publicity stunts are so annoying.

According to a story in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, at its next meeting the Jesus Seminar is going to vote up or down on the following statement: “Jesus of Nazareth is a manifestation of God.”

Robert Funk, the scholar who originally organized the Jesus Seminar, actually tells the Star-Telegram that, “We are opening up a new phase of the seminar. We are discussing the future of God, so to speak.”

Only an academic would possess the incredible level of hubris necessary to take it upon himself to discuss “the future of God” in this fashion, especially given that a question such as whether or not Jesus was a manifestation of God is really not one that can be answered through historical or scientific means. Leave it to a bunch of historians to think they can actually vote, after they decide about Jesus, whether or not “God is.” Just forget the thousands of years of philosophical debate on this issue, and let the Jesus Seminar folks take a vote!

Supporters of the Jesus Seminar claim their controversial pronouncements stir interest in Biblical scholarship. I think this is a bit like saying that Jerry Springer’s show encourages research into conflict management. More likely, the Jesus Seminar’s publicity stunts probably convince a lot of people that secular Biblical historians are a bunch of morons.

This reminds me of the campus atheist group at the university I work at — I went to a couple of meetings only to find them quite a bit more obnoxious than any of the Christian groups on campus. I happened to walk by a display table they set up in the student union the other day, and prominently displayed on a presentation board was a bumper sticker that said “Evolutionists do it with increasing complexity.” Along with strongly implying that religious belief and evolution are incompatible, the whole effect to me was to completely demean and trivialize the important insights of Darwin, much as the Jesus Seminar trivializes the insight and importance of the near universal belief in some sort of deity by asserting that the matter can be decided by democratic vote.

Folding@Home

The SETI@Home project always seemed a bit foolish to me since it was questionable whether or not the project aimed at solving a real problem (i.e. if there is no alien civilization within very narrow parameters near us, the project is a waste of time). On the other hand, Folding@Home seems right up my alley.

Like SETI@Home, Folding@Home is an attempt to use distributed computing to solve a big problem. Unlike SETI@Home, however, the Folding folks are pretty sure there’s a solution to what they’re studying, it just requires incredible computing power to get at. The problem being: how do proteins self-assemble. On the one hand this is one of the most basic and essential phenomenon that is necessary for life, and on the other hand it’s kind of amazing that not only is nobody sure exactly how it happens, but that a process that happens probably millions of times every day with ease requires the sort of computing power that is difficult to assemble even today.

Just like SETI@Home, to participate you download a screen-saver type utility that runs parts of the calculations when you’re not using your computer. Your system then passes back its part of the solution as do other machines and then everything gets assembled into meaningful results back to the folks at Stanford.

I’m probably going to download this and install it just out of self-interest. As I mentioned the other day, I’d prefer not to die and solving the protein folding problem would almost certainly lead to a great deal of new knowledge about various human diseases. Sure contacting ET would be cool, but better understanding what goes wrong in Alzheimer patients (where proteins in the brain start doing very bizarre things) would be even better.