Month: September 2006

The Horrors of Men with New Testaments

Like most student newspapers, the one at the university where I’m pursuing my Master’s degree in is pretty lousy, but this editorial to kick off the start of the semester was a new low in pathetic quotient.

Ever since I can remember (at least back to the mid-1980s), several times a year a number of gentlemen show up on campus and station themselves at heavily trafficked points on campus. They then hand out a small New Testament. Typically as you approach them, they’ll try to hand you the book.

A bit annoying, especially if you’re walking across campus and you get propositioned repeatedly, but the sort of thing that’s fairly common on a college campus (along with people handing out flyers for their bands, etc.)

If you believe the student newspaper, however, these men handing out half a Bible were disrupting the entire campus,

Many students encountered problems this week when non-students were handing out bibles or other literature in an aggressive manner. These people might in fact belong to an RSO, but their motives do not seem to be in the best interest of the student body.

When I walked into the student center and man offered me a New Testament, that was nowhere near aggressive. Everywhere I walked on campus, the Bible people were very polite and as unobtrusive as one can be when attempting to hand out unsolicited materials.

And the Western Herald putting itself in the position of judging which RSOs have the proper motives is downright absurd — I don’t remember anyone electing that rag as the diviner of proper motivation for student groups (if I missed it and someone did do so, perhaps the newspaper could publish a list of all of the student groups with a 1 to 5 ranking on the purity of each group’s

Some people hand out flyers without approval, such as the solicitors for credit cards and fast food chains. Of course, they are not adhering to the guidelines set forth by the SALP and the university, but those who do have approval from the university should be held to stricter guidelines.

God forbid any spontaneous acts of speech ever occur on campus.

And then the Western Herald goes from stupidity straight into insanity (emphasis added),

Freedom of speech is important, and should not be hindered, but freedoms should be restricted when they interfere with the rights of others. These solicitors are blurring the lines of free speech and posing potential harm to students.

Students walking from class to class often have very little time to spare. The last thing on their minds should be politics, religious beliefs, or whatever else these groups are trying to sell. In some cases, these people have been so aggressive that they have put bibles in people’s hands without permission, or even put them into backpacks.

Let the Christians hand out the New Testament on street corners and outside building entrances, and the next thing you know they’ll be doing drivebys and beating down students for their iPods.

Come on. The big question is how the moron who wrote the two paragraphs above was ever accepted into a university. Someone fell asleep when handling that application.

In January 2005, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation released a survey on the First Amendment views of more than 100,000 high school students, nearly 8,000 teachers and more than 500 administrators. Disturbingly, more than 1/3rd of the students thought that the First Amendment goes too far in protecting free speech.

Apparently such attitudes become hardened and are carried with students to college, where even college newspapers tell the First Amendment to go to hell.

Source:

Editorial: On Campus Solicitors. Western Herald, September 7, 2006.

New Technique Reveals Far More Ocean-Based Bacteria Than Previously Believed

Using a technique that examines short bits of DNA, researchers examined water taken from the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean and discovered thousands of previously unknown species of bacteria.

The survey was part of the Census of Marine Life, a decade-long effort to map all marine life. Researchers found an astonishing amount of bacteria in the deep ocean samples — over 20,000 different species in just one liter of water.

In a press release announcing the publication of the results of the survey in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, leader author Mitchell L. Sogin said,

Microbiologists have formally described 5,000 microbial ‘species’. This
study shows we have barely scratched the surface. Over the last 10 to 20 years, molecular studies have shown there to be more than 500,000 kinds of micro organisms. In our new study, we discovered more than 20,000 in a single liter (about one quart) of seawater, having expected just 1,000 to 3,000. The number of different kinds of bacteria in the oceans could eclipse five to 10 million

Sources:

Ocean Microbe Census Discovers Diverse World of Rare Bacteria. Press Release, Census of Marine Life, July 31, 2006.

Thousands of bacterial species discovered in oceans. CBC News, July 31, 2006.

A Young Mind Is A Terrible Thing to Waste . . . Memorizing the Koran

The New York Times published one of the strangest religion-related stories when reporter Michael Luo wrote about schools in the United States where students aged 7 to 14 spend 8 hour days memorizing the Koran.

And that’s pretty much all they do, according to the New York Times. Luo writes (emphasis added),

Because the task is so difficult, most of the children at the Muslim center study only the Koran while they are enrolled in the class. Some parents try to tutor their children in other subjects on the side. But for the most part, it is after the children finish that they work to catch up in other subjects in preparation for going back to regular school.

As Luo notes, this is likely a violation of New York state law which requires private schools to offer instruction that is “substantially equivalent” to that received in public schools. And they do this for two years or longer.

The real kicker, though, that makes this story even more bizarre is that the children are learning to memorize the Koran so that they can recite it in Arabic. But most of the students at the American memorization schools don’t read or speak Arabic, so they are memorizing it phonetically. As Luo puts it, “Students know how to pronounce the words but mostly do not know what they mean.”

The children are essentially human tape recorders, regurgitating sounds in a language they don’t understand. Unbelievable.

In exchange for this sort of waste, the children are told they will receive a get-into-heaven-free card. Luo writes,

A hafiz [person who has memorized the Koran] plays an important role during Ramadan, when the entire Koran must be recited over 30 days to mosque members. But becoming a hafiz is also believed to bring rewards in the hereafter, guaranteeing the person entrance to heaven, along with 10 other people of his choosing, provided he does not forget the verses and continues to practice Islam.

”It’s almost like a bank account for the afterlife,” said Zawar Ahmed, 11, who recently became a hafiz through the Muslim Center and brought in sweets for his classmates to celebrate.

Source:

Memorizing the Way to Heaven, Verse by Verse. Michael Luo, The new York Times, August 16, 2006.