A few days ago, a reader sent me a link to this Channel Four report. It’s a five minute video, so here it is:
There are some scary quotes in there, but the stats are worse. From their own survey, 80% of 50 Muslim, Jewish and ‘accelerated Christian education’ schools taught Creationism as fact and ignore evolution. Of those, five were state-funded schools. That’s 74% of 19 Jewish schools, 100% of 21 Evangelical schools and 50% of 10 Islamic schools. None of these schools is breaking a law*, although of course Paul Kelley would have been had he been reckless enough to educate in a secular way. The law, as has been mentioned, is an ass.
Personally, I think the best argument for teaching evolution in schools is that it’s the only way I know that you can make biology into a passably interesting subject. I for one always found it crushingly dull — because it was mostly a list of information presented in a “here’s what happens; don’t ask why, just learn it” kind of a way. Throw in evolution and you can explain why these things happen. You can talk about DNA and all the weird ways genes try to get copied. You can tie biology in to all kinds of other subjects much more effectively. I’m sure you can teach vast tracts of biology without mentioning genes or evolution, but I defy you to make it interesting.
That aside, the best reason I know of not to teach Creationism is simply that it’s patently false. Of course, Creationists won’t accept that, so a better argument is that there is no evidence to support it (because it’s so false). The only argument in favour is the whole stupid “parents’ rights” thing. And I do accept that parents have a right to educate their children in whatever way they want — but I think they should be made to look up the word “educate” before they start paying someone to preach at them, because filling impressionable young minds with damaging lies to promote an ideology is nothing more or less than exploitation — and it’s not even for personal gain: we’re talking about exploitation for the sake of an abstract concept. And I think it’s utterly abhorrent that the government would fund this.
I blame the parents for this. They should be outraged if their kids are being taught such bullshit, and they should get something done. The government are also in the wrong, of course, but you can hardly expect the government to act if the people don’t care. (You know, because the government only ever does what the people want.) People listen to parents. God knows why.
I’m not against the ides of schools being different and parents having choice. I’m not against the idea that some of those differences might be based on a religion — a school aimed at Muslims that makes sure the textbooks don’t have illustrations in articles about Mohammed, or a school aimed at Jews that only serves kosher food, that’s fine. And hopefully the genuine followers of those religions would be able to get places in those schools, because since all schools would be required to teach the same curriculum non-religious parents presumably would just pick the nearest school, or the one the kid’s friends were going to. The moment you let them teach different things then the idea of “choice” becomes an illusion: when you’re presented with one good school and one bad school, you don’t have a choice. Everyone with a brain will try to get into the good school and then you’re back to pot luck (or selection, if it’s a faith school). It’s just the same as the ridiculous claim made by the Department of Health the other day, that “operation success rates help patients choose treatment”. Their theory is that by publishing statistics on survival rates at different hospitals, they give patients a choice. No, you don’t. You just make life difficult for everyone, and worry people who can’t get into the best one. The stats should be public, certainly, but not for that reason. I think that all schools and hospitals should be good enough that you don’t care which one you use, and I think that if they’re not then you should fix it rather than shifting the onus onto patients and parents to find an acceptable one.
More to the point, if it’s legal to teach Creationism, that must mean there is no requirement for schools to teach facts that are true.
The other day I made fun of John McCain for referring to Czechoslovakia, a country which hasn’t existed for 15 years. After that, I read a comments thread with similar accusations about Barack Obama, and I thought “I should check these out — I’d hate to be mocking one candidate while the other does worse things”. I like to think of myself as an equal opportunities sarky bastard. (In that spirit, allow me to roundly mock commenter Reid for saying “Hussein will not be elected President” and leaving it at that, as if the very fact that Obama’s middle name is Saddam Hussein’s last name makes any difference to anything at all.)
They didn’t seem to think the Czechoslovakia thing was important, and you can make a good case for that, but their reasons are ridiculous:
“This is basic elementary school geography. I don’t care what excuses you make for them. It also illustrates their level of awareness of the world.”
Can you draw an accurate map of Africa?
How about if I draw the lines, can you put in the names?
Nobody can do that. How is that even remotely like not knowing what countries are called while discussing their politics?
Kinda depends on which week you left elementary school.
What? For the record, Obama studied law at Harvard, and McCain was 5th from bottom of his class of almost 900.
I’ll tell you, as a truck driver, the average person person can tell you the name of the next town.
One of my favorite stories–I was lost, trying to find a consignee–instructions from the dispatcher were bad, nothing matched up with the map. Called the consignee and talked to several people who, given the intersection of major (for the area) highways where I was sitting could not tell me how to get from where I was to where they were.
I finally found the place by circling town (it was just a little bitty place) in decreasing-radius circles until I spotted a likely candidate in the dark.
I have literally no idea why this story is here. Possibly it’s a failed attempt to reference the Kentucky thing (see below) but probably he started thinking about something else and just kept typing.
The Czech Republic is very important to lots of people, and given that they ought to quit changing names every few years. They have been through, what, four since I left grammar school? Larry Sheldon | 07.18.08 - 2:03 am | #
The Czech Republic has been the Czech Republic since its inception in 1993, and while the full name of Czechoslovakia changed many times before then, “Czechoslovakia” was never wrong for long, assuming that Sheldon left grammar school some time after 1918. They stopped being Czechoslovakia when the country broke in two — what the hell where they supposed to do? Both be Czechoslovakia?
Still, here goes nothing, a full round-up of all the gaffes they accused Obama of making, and a few other things they said about him. Are they worse than McCain’s total ignorance of how to work a computer? Are they worse than his apparent failure to read and understand the Constitution? Let’s have a look.
Fifty Seven States
One of their favourite Obama ‘gaffes’ is his supposed assertion that there are 57 states. The first problem I have with this is that it clearly demonstrates Republicans can’t count, because what Obama actually said was this:
I’ve now been to 57 states, [with] one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to, even though I really wanted to go, but my staff would not justify it.
That makes sixty states, you feeble-minded buffoons. Of course, that would make it harder to draw absurd parallels with the 57 member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, except that it wouldn’t because there are only 57 states in that if you exclude the three ‘observer’ states. (I wonder if it’s ever the same people who promoted the Jeremiah Wright clips who think Obama is a Muslim.)
I’ve now been to fifty… seven states? I think one left to go. One left to go. Alaska and Hawaii I was not allowed to go to…
Pretty clearly, Obama said “fifty” instead of “forty”, because he was thinking about the number of states that there are. That’s the kind of mistake people make all the time. And afterwards he acknowledged his error, rather than repeating it as McCain did with Czechoslovakia.
No dice on the 57 states thing, I’m afraid. I’m not a hypocrite yet. I just missed a clip of a mildly amusing error.
Which States Border Illinois
Again, Obama’s knowledge of US geography is called into question. One (presumably conservative) ‘news’ website reports this as “Media Snoozes While Obama’s ‘Altered States’ Gaffes Continue”. If this is as serious an error as they’re implying then the media is clearly complicit in some kind of propaganda campaign. We can’t have a President who doesn’t know the local geography of the state that elected him to the Senate, can we? So what’s the deal?
Well, Obama said this:
Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known [in Kentucky], coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.
And the not-so investigative journalists at News Busters cleverly dug out their atlas and noticed that Kentucky shares a border with Illinois. Therefore, they conclude, Illinois is zero miles from Kentucky and Obama is a fool. We need a map.
(All maps taken from Wikipedia)
Note that I had to Google search to find this — Sheldon simply assumed that we all knew about this.
They’re right, too. Illinois is closer to Kentucky than Arkansas, which by what is clearly a really significant amount. Here, for those interested, is the same map with the population densities shown. (By which I mean I looked at the population maps on Wikipedia and pasted them on top of the state map, ignoring the projection differences as hard as I could. I made this in a couple of minutes in Paint.NET, so it’s not very good.)
You can clearly see that the entire population of Illinois lives almost as far from Kentucky as they possibly can. In fact, probably further from Kentucky’s borders than the population of Arkansas live. That’s not really fair, though, as the population of Kentucky are over to the west of the state, away from Arkansas, so the population centre of Illinois is still nearer to that of Kentucky than that of Arkansas is, but I think this shows that simply going by closest borders isn’t a good plan.
Really, taken in context, Obama’s statement was about politics. I don’t know much about state-level politics, beyond the fact that everyone in Texas is insane and Louisiana is apparently doomed, and California is governed by a robot from the future, but I was able, thanks again to Wikipedia, to find out what larger ‘regions’ the states are usually divided into (Guess how long this map took me):
So is seems likely to me that Arkansas is probably much closer, politically, to Kentucky than Illinois is. Of course, Obama’s statement is still mildly silly — you obviously shouldn’t refer to distances between states when your state is zero miles away — but I can’t bring myself to consider this a “gaffe”. And nor, apparently, can anyone else much, because the media didn’t bother reporting it. “Snoozed”, if you won’t.
I’m still not a hypocrite. I am, however, heartened that the US media would ignore inconsequential things instead of sensationalising them (you know, this one time).
Obama is a Marxist
This is something a couple of Republicans have said, and I can’t even be bothered deconstructing it. Learning Marxism for the sake of a blogpost would be going far above and beyond and I’m not doing it. The actual odds that this is anything other than another Republican who can’t tell Marxism from Liberalism from Communism from Socialism are so vanishingly small that the possibility isn’t worth considering.
Hell, one commenter said McCain was a Marxist, although he called himself “a “bleedingheart” libertarian”, which is like calling yourself a tree-hugging capitalist.
Obama can’t tell ’surrender’ from ‘re-deployment’
This accusation doesn’t make any sense without context and no context was given. I genuinely don’t know what point is being made here. I had a look on Google and that didn’t seem to help. I presume it’s a reference to Iraq, and I know Obama wants to slowly take troops out of there, and I think he’d send a few more to Afghanistan, which I think would be called “re-deployment”. I imagine the commenter here decided that that constitutes “surrender” and phrased his accusation in a way designed to make himself look as foolish as possible: you can’t conflate two concepts then accuse people of not being able to distinguish them. It’s so absurd as to be almost brilliant.
Yeah, that was pretty dumb. I’ll give you that one. And even though it was the same Larry Sheldon who said it as said all that other rubbish, I’ll even refrain from cancelling it out against his nonsense. In fairness, Obama did say it only once rather than repeatedly, and the significance of the attack on Pearl Harbor was the timing and lack of warning rather than the actual weapons used, but still, Obama messed up pretty good there.
On the other hand, this was an isolated incident, whereas what I did was to combine three McCain issues — his age, his repeated references to countries that don’t exist and his inability to work a computer — and wrap them up into one coherent package of 1992-ness. This is just pointing and laughing at a mistake. I think I’m okay with myself here.
Obama Went To Harvard
Yes. Yes, he did. Isn’t that good?
Lastly, I feel for the sake of completeness, I should lay out what I consider the better case for Saying “Czechoslovakia” Doesn’t Matter, since I defended Obama just now and if I’m being fair I should do it properly. First of all, he could be discussing the Czech Republic and Slovakia. If this is the case he should say “the former Czechoslovakia” as we do with Yugoslavia, but that’s still just a speech thing rather than a shocking ignorance thing. Secondly, he may just be in the habit of saying “Czechoslovakia” — that happens — but if that was true I’d expect him to reliably pronounce it correctly. To be honest, though, I don’t think any of that case matters, because it only dents one of the three things I flagged up as indicators that McCain may be living in 1992. In context, I think it looks pretty bad for him, and even if it doesn’t matter, he and his staff should be able to spot things that make him look dumb and change them. The fact that they can’t or don’t is at least as worrying as the mistake itself.
Obviously I don’t think that an election should be decided or fought on a Who Said The Dumbest Thing competition. But if this is the best collection of “gaffes” they have then I’m happy to keep poking fun at McCain, safe in the knowledge that I’m not indulging in too much selective reporting.
The metre is rubbish. Two words are at the start of the phrase, and one is at the end. It doesn’t scan at all, because…
Hat is a noun. The other words are verbs, and…
‘Splat’ is the wrong verb. Still, at least ’splat’ rhymes. After all…
‘Wrap’ doesn’t rhyme with ’splat’ or ‘hat’. Essentially, the connection between these words is that they all have an ‘a’ in them. If it was “wrap, slap, cap”, that would rhyme and include a verb that more accurately portrays the application of suncream. But it isn’t. And even then…
‘Wrap’ shouldn’t be in there at all. I don’t know who came up with this campaign, but I must assume it was someone who has never seen someone put on a t-shirt. You don’t wrap them. You can, if they’re massive t-shirts, but you won’t end up through any of the right holes. I’m not really sure what could be done about this, because “cover, smother, beaver” isn’t catchy or clear. Of course, they could always abandon the whole idea of using three similar-sounding words and do something that works.
There shouldn’t be five errors in what is essentially a three word campaign.
The big question about John McCain is: is he too old and out of touch to be President?
Well, he can’t use the Internet.
And he still thinks Czechoslovakia is a country.
(Nice analogy, by the way. Not in the least patronising.)
And that it’s pronounced “Czechlosovakia”.
So yes, he is. Czechoslovakia broke up on the first day of 1993, when McCain was 56 and therefore had no excuse for not being able to learn new things. The Internet was just getting widespread around the same time. Clearly, whatever year it is inside John McCain’s head, it’s no later than 1992.
Only the GOP, a political party so insane that GOP stands for “Grand Old Party”, could possibly think this idiot could make a passable world leader.
A while ago, Scottish authorities decided to do something about their drinking problem. Er, Scotland’s drinking problem that is, not the authorities’.
The main points in summary. Ministers want to increase the offsales age from 18 to 21, to set a minimum price for drink based on alcohol content, to end discount offers, to introduce alcohol-only checkouts at big shops, to levy a social responsibility fee on some retailers and to boost spending to address alcohol problems.
Now, ending discount offers I think might help. When you’re selling soft drinks with vodka in them cheaper than regular soft drinks, three bottles at a time, you’re basically selling drunkenness, not refreshment. That’s targeted at the problem. That’s a sensible policy. A minimum price per unit of alcohol sounds not unreasonable too — it’s a small change from the existing alcohol duty.
We propose that a fee should be applied to some alcohol retailers to help offset the costs of dealing with the adverse consequences of alcohol and invite views on our proposals. We do not intend that this would apply to small businesses where the sale of alcohol is incidental to the main purpose of the business and the amount of alcohol sold may be small.
The aim being that “the costs associated with the wider impacts of a commercial activity should be borne by those who benefit from it”. Well, okay, but we already have alcohol duty — if you want to tax people based on how much alcohol they sell, raise the duty on it. That won’t work and this won’t either. If the cost is high enough to affect business then the drunken vandals will just go elsewhere, maybe to a small business where the sale of alcohol is incidental to the main purpose of the business and the amount of alcohol sold may be small. Or to a pub, which isn’t covered by the proposals.
But mostly, I think it’s insane to try raising the age from 18 to 21. The minimum ages for various activities in this country are messed up enough already without moving them any further apart. So their theory is that you can have sex with your girlfriend at 16, marry her at 18, but you can’t have a glass of wine with her in front of the TV until you’re 21? That is fucking mental, and that’s before you start considering the civil liberties implications of banning about 200,000 people from off-licenses just because you can’t control vandalism. I find it impossible to believe that even 5% of those people are problematic, which would leave 190,000 people, all old enough to vote, essentially being discriminated against by the government, based on their age. Really, who thought that would be smart? Certainly none of these people did.
They tried these ideas in one town, and they say it’s helped, reducing various measures of crime by around half. But they’ve tested a whole raft of ideas all at once as a package, for a short time. We’ve no idea if it would work in other places, for longer times or which of the ideas helped. And it doesn’t address the civil liberties issues.
Here’s a few quick things too big for Google Reader; too small for their own blog posts. (Not really sure why they’re too small; I’ve done two-line posts before now, but it’s my blog and I’ll do what I like.)
Fist, this fantastically silly story from the Telegraph:
Kristie Meyer has cited the religious beliefs of her former husband, Jamie, as the main reason why an Indiana judge should restrict his visitation rights. … However, legal experts have warned that the American Constitution prevents judges from showing a religious preference. …Mr Meyer may now be asked to prove that Satanism, which he says is about celebrating man’s desires rather than worshipping the devil, is a real faith.
Sounds to me like an eminently sensible faith, compared at least to Christianity.
Meanwhile, legal observers say his former wife may have to show that Satanism - which is recognised as a religion by the US Internal Revenue Service - is harmful to their daughters’ upbringing. Mrs Meyer has argued that her ex-husband’s public expression of satanic beliefs has embarrassed their children.
Can you really legislate on the basis that parents mustn’t embarrass their children?
Pat Roberts, her lawyer, has asked the judge to order Mr Meyer to drop off the children at his ex-wife’s church so they can attend with her during his visitation time. “Frankly, (it) can be emotionally damaging or confusing to children when they’re faced with these two different forms of worship,” Mr Roberts told the Chicago Tribune.
Yes, if you go around exposing children to alternative viewpoints, the indoctrination might not work. Honestly, I can’t see any other way of reading this.
… “Allowing them to go to church for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning is… not unreasonable.”
I think it is, but probably for a different reason. I hope that reason prevails in this case, and honestly I think it will.
Name something you associate with the Trojans. Go on. Word association: what’s the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word “Trojan”? I’m guessing you said “horse”.
The classic Trojan Horse maneuver is as follows: a large, woody object believed to be safe is allowed to penetrate, but then it bursts open and lots of smaller entities come out and cause havoc. Agreed?
This is the same thing as I did for the Telegraph, but for the Daily Mail. This one was harder because their search function is bad and their website unreliable. Also the dross between the formula stories was more depressing. But then, it did turn up the brilliant formula for the perfect horror film, so that’s something…
The Perfect Day: O + NS + Cpm/T +He, except when it’s [W+(D-d)]xTQ MxNA
As in the Telegraph, this was repeated year on year on year on year.
The Perfect Christmas: PX = (8F * 4P +£23 * 8F + 3G + 2W + 2W:3C + 5T:1NR / 3D) / 3D As covered previously. Presumably even following this formula Christmas is still worse than June 20th.
The Perfect Bacon Butty: N = C + (fb (cm) . fb (tc)) + fb (Ts) + fc . ta
Apparently, “the experts at Leeds University tried 700 variations on the traditional bacon butty.” I did my undergraduate degree at Leeds and I can vouch that this is true, although I had no idea it was research. Dr Graham Clayton is to blame for this.
Out of interest, N = force in Newtons required to break the cooked bacon. C = Newtons required to break uncooked bacon, fb = function of the bacon type, cm = cooking method, tc = cooking time, Ts = serving temperature, fc = function of the condiment/filling effect and ta = time or duration of application of condiment/filling.
The Perfect Present Wrap: {(d+2h+w)2 2(w+h)2 — whatever that means
Thanks to Dr Sara Santos at the University of Manchester, “we now know why we put everything in boxes”.
Staying Awake At Work: CDA + CT + KF TMT
Bear in mind that KF stands for “knacker factors”, so this is Maths. This comes from “experts at fatigue management consultancy Awake”.
The Perfect Cheese Sandwich: W = (1 + bd/6.5 - s + (m-2c)/2 + (v+p)/7t) * (100+l)/100
“Geoff Nute and his team” of “sensory analysts at Bristol University” produced this equation, which says that without a tangy sauce, you need infinite cheese. This was in the optimistically named “science and tech” section.
The Perfect Penalty: (((X + Y + S) / 2) x ((T + I + 2B) / 4)) + (V/2) -1
As in the Telegraph.
The Perfect Breasts: the nipple should be 45% of the way down. Apparently.
“Patrick Mallucci spent many hours poring over photos of topless models in lads magazines and tabloid newspapers to formulate his theory.” Enough said.
The Perfect Teeth: no formula
This isn’t strictly a formula. It’s really a set of rules about what makes a nice smile, of use to cosmetic dentists. I’ve seen at least one of them discussed in the British Dental Journal, but that was to debunk it. Hard to say what the truth is. Better at least than “the perfect cheese sandwich”, but still…
How To Beat The Post-Holiday Blues: ((j+c) x (r+t) - (h+o))/b
Professor David Holmes of Manchester Metropolitan University “carried out the research on behalf of Churchill Travel Insurance”, who will presumably use it as a basis for premiums on Post-Holiday Blues Insurance. As ever, all the variables are listed on wholly arbitrary 1-5 kind of scales. According to the Mail, b represents “whether gaps between holidays too long”. Yeah. Gaps too long. Also, verbs for losers.
Will You Get Seasonal Affective Disorder?: X a x ((24-b) x (c+d+e) + f x (g+h+i))
Here, we learn why you should always use the multiplication sign instead of the lower case ‘x’. Also why you should remember to include the equals sign. This was devised by “consultant psychiatrist Dr David Wheatley” and “commissioned by Kira St John’s Wort, makers of a herbal “happiness” supplement, as part of a study on depression”. It has to be said, the list of instructions is sufficiently varied and complex to give the whole thing an air of credibility. But still…
How Beer Goggles Work: no formula supplied
“Bausch & Lomb PureVision, one of the world’s biggest eyecare firms” got “Professor Nathan Efron, Professor of Clinical Optometry at the University of Manchester” to do this. I don’t know why it’s so often universities I’m at where this stuff happens; before I started at Leeds, Dr Clarke, who took our electronics lectures, was asked by some supermarket or other to work out an equation for how to flip a pancake, and I guess they were expecting him to wander off and make something up, but no, he built a huge red trebuchet-looking thing to flip a strange cardboard pancake. I was there for four years, and some of my friends worked on this for a brief period. Partway through my course he retired, an act which made him much easier to locate — his workload went from insane to average. To my knowledge, the only thing this project has ever achieved is to break countless platinum-iridium tips for the tunnelling microscope. I suppose that means that they at least have more credibility than the “oh, it’ll be b times a plus 4d over qpr” crowd, but still…
When Heyfever Is Worst: 6.02pm on May 29; no formula supplied
Stay indoors at that time, is my advice. “Dr Adrian Morris, allergy specialist for Boots Health Club, … created the hayfever formula”.
The Perfect Horror Film: (es+u+cs+t)² +s+ (tl+f)/2 + (a+dr+fs)/n + sin x - 1
Who says modern films are too formulaic? This is science! Look! It has a fucking sine function in it:
The experts have taken blood and guts (Sin x) and subtracted it by the stereotypes (1), to make Sin x - 1, saying Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining turned into the total opposite of a protective father figure.
See? That’s Science! Don’t say it isn’t! “Mathematician Anna Sigler, … a former graduate from King’s College, London” did this research. A former graduate, no less. Presumably her degree was revoked when they saw what she was doing with it. The Shining won, by the way. “The research was carried out for Sky Movies, which will be showing The Shining and other scary movies this weekend.” Coincidence.
How To Wash Your Hair: formula not stated
“Kerys Mullen, technical manager at Dove, said: “A lot of people ask us about the best way to wash their hair so we decided to work out the ideal formula.”"
The Perfect Boiled Egg: formula not stated
How to boil an egg, by several chefs. At the bottom, input from “Dr Charles Williams A physicist from Exeter University [sic]“, who “has worked out a formula for the perfect boiled egg based on the ‘heat-diffusion equation for spherical objects’”. Fair enough, but I for one will trust the chefs on that one.
The Perfect Day To Change Your Life: M x O + Bh (H+R) x S; max. May 18
This is the handiwork of Cliff Arnall, the same Cardiff University muppet responsible for the best/worst day formula the Mail and the Telegraph obligingly publish twice every year. If anything this is worse than that one: “Under the formula M stands for motivation and O for opportunity while Bh is bank holiday proximity. The H in the second half equals increasing hours of daylight, while R equals reflection time and S, simply success.” Yes. And..? Surely the aim is to maximise S? In which case, shouldn’t it be on the other side of the equals?
The Secret of True Happiness, no less: P + (5xE) + (3xH)
Thomson travel got “psychologist” Carol Rothwell and “sports scientist and ‘life coach’” Pete Cohen to “insist their equation is a useful guide to our levels of satisfaction with life”. Because just asking “are you happy” doesn’t work. Not enough maths, see.
