Month: April 2005

Three Cheers for Secular Hedonism

On the passing of the Pope, National Review’s John Derbyshire laments the general decline of the Catholic church and of Christianity in general in the Western world. Derbyshire blames it all on secular hedonism,

Both [conservative and liberal critics of the RCC] surely nkow in their hearts that the real culprit is the irresistible appeal of secular hedonism to healthy, busy, well-education populations. We live, as never before in human history, in a garden of deilghts, with something new to distract us and delight us every day. None of that is enough to turn the heads of those who are truly, constitutionally devout; but not many human beings are, nor ever have been, that committed to their faith. And so the flock wanders away to the rides, the prize booths, and the freak shows.

Derbyshire is trapped because on the one hand, he believes that “conservatives . . . are supposed to be the people who celebrate humanity in all its knotty and unpredictable variety, and in the power of the individual human will to transform the world.” On the other hand, what well-educated, rich (by historical standards) individuals in the West choose to do in increasingly large numbers is embrace what Derbyshire calls secular hedonism. He seems to concede that religion for most people is something they turn to due to external forces, and once those external conditions are no longer there, only the “constitutionally devout” remain.

To Derbyshire this leads inevitably to a Brave New World where individuals choose to dehumanize themselves in order never to feel bad. I think, however, that human society will manage to cope in a post-religious age (if that ever truly arrives) without descending into that. Everyone (even us atheists), after all, struggles with how to find meaning. And while religion has certainly taken a bit hit over the last century, so has secularism. The mass murdering atheists of the 20th century certainly made that point.

I suspect that some new religious movement or other that more directly speaks to and addresses the sort of phenomenal cultural changes that have occurred in the last two thousand years will ultimately build upon and largely replace the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Source:

The Rearguard Pope. John Debyshire, National Review, April 7, 2005.

Gambian Journalist Murdered in Apparent Hit

Gambian journalist Deyda Hydara was murdered in December 2004 in what Reporters Without Borders claimed was a well-organized operation that bears a resemblance to the murders of other journalists in that country.

Hydara, who edited Gambia’s Point newspaper and worked for Agence-France Presse and with Reporters Without Borders, was an outspoken opponent of new laws designed to curtail freedom of expression in Gambia. The laws allow journalists to be jailed for up to six months for writing ‘libelous’ articles. In order to publish in Gambia at all, newspapers have to prove to the satisfaction of the government that they have the finances to pay new fines the government has also instituted for ‘libelous’ articles.

Leonard Vincent, who heads up Reporters Without Borders’ African unit, told The BBC, that witnesses to Hydara’s killing were afraid to talk to police and that an independent commission was needed to look into his murder.

In addition, according to the African Independent newspaper, both the business offices and homes of prominent newspaper editor and journalists have been the targets of a series of arsons over the past few years. So far, no one has been arrested in connection with any of the arsons.

It is, of course, difficult for countries to overcome poverty and corruption when government’s and their allies can slap odious restrictions on newspapers and kill reporters with impunity.

Source:

‘Hitmen killed Gambia journalist’. The BBC, January 6, 2005.

AFP and Reporters Without Borders correspondent gunned down in Banjul. Press Release, Reporters Without Borders, December 17, 2004.

Veteraln Jouranlist Shot Dead in The Gambia. African Independent, December 17, 2004.

Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda Trade Bloc Accord Goes Into Effect

A treaty between East African nations Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda went into effect in January creating a trade bloc that over the next few years will create a free trade zone.

A similar East African free-trade zone was set up in 1967, but collapsed in 1977 as wars devastated the region.

Under the terms of the agreement creating the East Africa Community Customs Union, Kenya, which has a more industrialized economy than Tanzania and Uganda, will pay duties on goods it exports to the other two until 2010, when such duties will disappear.

The three countries will also set identical tariffs for imports from outside the three countries.

Source:

East Africa trade accord launched. The BBC, January 1, 2005.

Wikipedia Far More Accurate than Instapundit/Dinocrat (And That’s Not Saying Much)

For some reason, Instapundit is linking to someone who is flat out falsely charging the New York Times with plagarism. According to blogger Dinocrat (Jack Risko),

The New York Times copied an erroneous Wikipedia entry into its news pages today. From the NYT’s article on the Marburg Haemorragic Fever outbreak in Angola:

There is no cure or vaccine for the highly contagious virus. Victims suffer a high fever, diarrhea, vomiting and severe bleeding from bodily orifices and usually die within a week.

The Wikipedia entry on the virus:

There is no cure or vaccine for the highly contagious virus. Victims suffer a high fever, diarrhea, vomiting and severe bleeding from bodily orifices and usually die within a week.

Wikipedia mischaracterizes how contagious Marburg is, and the NYT copies the mistake. Consulting more authoritative sources would have avoided the problem. From the CDC:

This is a lie. Dinocrat apparently doesn’t have the first clue about using Wikipedia, and Glenn Reynolds is content just to take his word for it. The reality is that Wikipedia plagiarized from the New York Times story, not the other way around.

This is trivial to demonstrate. Here is the Wikipedia page on Marburg on April 8, 2005. It doesn’t include the two-sentences that Dinocrat claims the NYT copied from Wikipedia. Those two sentences were added later on April 9, after the New York Times story was published. Here is the page where the edit is made, listed at 15:28 (I have no idea what time zone Wikipedia is using).

The history page for the Marburg virus entry at Wikipedia also confirms that Wikipedia copied from NYT. There’s a notation made later in the day (after Dinocrat had made his post) at 23:31,

nyt link – phrase was copied from there, sorry for wrong summary

So the same text appeared at both Wikipedia and the New York Times. Rather than check the history at Wikipedia — where, after all, articles are being constantly updated and edited — Dinocrat chose to simply assume the NYT was copying from Wikipedia and then Glenn Reynolds ran with that ball, spreading the meme among those who read his popular blog.

Sometimes its not just the MSM who come off as rank amateurs who are more interested in playing “gotcha” than taking the time to get their facts straight. If you’re going to write stuff like . . .

We knew there was a problem with the NYT story right away, and it took only a few clicks to determine that the lazy use of Wikipedia was the source.

. . . you better make sure you’re not a lazy-ass yourself.

Reynolds isn’t much better. He warns that,

IT’S USUALLY A MISTAKE to copy things from Wikipedia without looking further into the subject.

So, its a mistake to take Wikipedia at face value, but any old blogger who makes a very serious charge with basically no evidence as to who was plagiarizing from who apparently can be trusted “without looking further into the subject.” Bah, nobody apparently gives a damn anymore. If it slams James Watt, Bill Moyers has no problem repeating a bogus quote from an online source without investigating further. If it slams the NYT, Reynolds has no problem spreading false accusations of plagiarism around the Internet (and I thought Glenn was supposed to be the voice of reason about accusations of plagiarism.

Oh, and one other point. Dinocrat is full of crap on the claim that Marburg is not highly contagious simply because it “require[s] direct contact with the bodily fluids or excreta of an infected person, so they are pretty easy to avoid.” First, since the virus can live on surfaces of objects for several days, according to the CDC, it might not be so easy to avoid contact with infected fluids. Second, just because you can, in theory, easily avoid exposure to an infectious agent doesn’t mean that it isn’t highly contagious.

Hepatitis A, for example, is also considered highly contagious, and it is usually contracted by consuming the fecal matter of someone who is already infected (it can also be contracted through sexual activity and IV drug use). I suspect most people would agree that this is something that should be, in theory, pretty easy to avoid. Like Marburg, however, Hepatitis A is generally considered highly contagious because of the very high risk of contracting the disease once a person comes into contact with the infectious agent. Contagion is not just the odds of being exposed to an infectious agent, but also about how likely that infectious agent is likely to cause the disease once exposure does occur.

Marburg and its deadlier cousin Ebola are considered highly contagious because exposure to the infectious agent is believed to produce a very high risk of infection. The only certain way to prevent the disease from spreading is isolating patients and having those who come into contact with patients, such as health care workers, use preventative measures such as face shields, etc., to prevent have any contact with the bodily fluids of those afflicted.

Risko should probably revise his title to say something like, “Note to Rest of the World: Don’t Use This Blog As An Authoritative Source.”

More Lies From Powerline on Schiavo

As I noted a couple weeks ago, Powerline helped spread the nonsensical claim that Terri Schiavo had never been given the sort of tests that people would normally be given to determine if they were in a persistent vegetative state. Now, Powerline’s John Hinderaker is simply lying about what his blog said about the controversial Terri Schiavo memo.

This was a memo that the Washington Post obtained that were talking points put out by the Republican leadership about the Schiavo case. Among other things, the memo said that being out front and center on the Schiaveo issue would have political benefits.

After the Post story appeared, Powerline questioned the memo’s authenticity. In fact they said it was a fake. Hinderaker wants to deny that now. He says here (emphasis added),

We were “wrong” in the sense that we laid out the evidence and said that based on the available evidence, we thought that the memo was a fake. We did not report as a fact that the memo was a fake, and we did not purport to have any information that was not publicly available.

That’s a lie. Powerline’s Scott Johnson made a post that can be read here about a Washington Times story that was titled, “Was the Schiavo memo a fake?” The title of the Powerline post was clearly a response to that question and reads:

ANSWER: YES

I guess if you just ignore the post where they came out and said the memo was a fake, then maybe they didn’t really say the memo as a fake. Maybe it depends on the definition of “answer”. . .

At this point I actually have more trust in Daily Kos than I do in the folks at Powerline (i.e., next to nothing)