Lee's Blog

My mother’s mother died in 1981. When my sister and I were cleaning out her home, I found a sign in the attic which read, “Our home is not for sale. We welcome our new neighbors.”

This was a very puzzling sign. It certainly would make sense to put up a sign that offered the house for sale, but why would you put up a sign that denied the house was for sale? And what did the new neighbors have to do with it?

Further, the sign was obviously professionally made. This wasn’t something that she’d put together with stencil and spray paint. So what was it for?

As my mother and her mother had both passed on, and my father’s sister was helping us clean out the house, I took it to her and asked what it was. She thought about it for a while, and concluded that it was a response to blockbusting.

Blockbusting was a practice of real estate vultures. If a black family moved into a white neighborhood, the real estate vultures would go around to the white neighbors and encourage them to sell out quick before the real estate prices plummeted. And, of course, the real estate prices did plummet as the neighbors rushed to dump their houses and flee.

But obviously my grandmother refused to have anything to do with this, and didn’t want the real estate vultures even coming around, so she put out this sign. What’s more, a lot of other people must have felt the same way, since some company had produced and sold the signs.

It had never occurred to me, growing up, that there was anything at all unusual about the fact that my grandmother lived in an integrated neighborhood. And yet I am rather older than the average American.

Then too, my father’s parents lived in an integrated neighborhood. They had lived there since the 1930s. I’ll bet it wasn’t integrated in the 1930s, which means they too had stayed put while the neighborhood was integrated.

The first house I owned was built in the 1940s, and the original deed featured a racial covenant which provided that the property must never be sold to a person not of European descent. I bought it when the people who had owned it since 1948 died. The racial covenant was, of course, declared unenforceable long before I bought it, and the neighborhood was integrated. Which means that the prior owners had stayed put while the neighborhood was integrated.

This is, obviously, a rather small sampling, but it certainly suggests that flight wasn’t a uniform response of whites to blacks moving into the neighborhood, even in (I guess) the 1950s and 1960s. I don’t personally know of any case of whites fleeing from blacks moving into the neighborhood.

The point being — I’m rather older than the average American. In fact, I’m about the same age as the Obamas. And yet, every neighborhood I can remember living in, or remember my grandparents or any other relative living in, was integrated. America has changed, and it is hateful and divisive to pretend that it has not.

There’s a common creationist trope that I’ve seen which goes like this: someone has discovered absolutely irrefutable evidence of the existence of God (a recent one was a mineral that was somehow completely inexplicable except as a special creation of God) and the evil scientists, especially biologists but also geologists and mineralogists, refuse to even look at it because (implied but usually not expressed) to acknowledge its existence would force them to give up their faith in the Church of Darwin.

This is such an awesomely stupid trope that I can’t believe people can say it with a straight face.

What does science (aka the Church of Darwin) tell us about the soul? It tells us that there is no evidence for the existence of a soul, that no one has ever managed to devise a test for the existence of a soul, and that, given that we are apes, and mammals, and vertebrates, etc., it’s hard to see how we could have souls (whatever they are) while other apes, mammals, and vertebrates don’t.

What does science (aka the Church of Darwin) tell us about the afterlife? It tells us that there is no evidence for the existence of an afterlife, and that no one has ever managed to devise a test for the existence of an afterlife. Oh, sure, there are accounts of what people experienced while their brains were shutting down in the dying process, which was however interrupted so that they are still alive to give their accounts. But the evidence is that their accounts are corrupted by expectations and leading questioning (human memory is famously fallible), and much of what they describe seems attributable to the effects of the dying process on the workings of the brain, particularly the visual system.

Now, what does Christianity tell us about the soul? You have one. What does Christianity tell us about the afterlife? You will have one. Furthermore, if you don’t believe in the loving Christian God, the loving Christian God will subject you to unspeakable, unthinkable, unimaginable agony, horror, and degradation for all of eternity. But if you do believe, you will receive eternal bliss.

The trouble with Pascal’s Wager is that there is no basis on which you can determine which God to place your bets on. Pascal assumed the choice was between the loving Christian God who will torture you for all eternity if you guess wrong, or no God at all. But it might be just as well be between Mithras and no God at all. Or Allah and no God at all. Or, for that matter, between Zeus and all the Olympians, and no gods at all.

But what if you had irrefutable evidence that the loving Christian God actually exists? Why would you possibly fail to take Pascal’s Wager? Why would you cling to science and therefore ensure that you are tortured for all eternity by the loving Christian God? You would have to be, literally, insane. This isn’t like refusing to admit that your theory of supernova formation doesn’t match the evidence, and Joe’s does, because that would mean that Joe gets the promotion and acclamations and you don’t. This is like refusing to admit that the lump that showed up on the x-ray really is cancer because that would mean you’d have to have surgery even though all evidence is that you will make a full recovery and have a long and comfortable life.

Only it is infinitely bigger than that, because in this example you would have to suffer the agony of cancer surgery and everything that goes with it, and the reward is a long and comfortable life, whereas in the example of irrefutable evidence of the loving Christian God, you would suffer only the embarrassment of admitting to your error, and the derision of your fellow scientists (until you showed them the evidence), but the reward would be avoidance of eternal agony.

The reason scientists don’t immediately drop everything and adopt a belief in the loving Christian God, and go out and proselytize all their friends to do the same, is that the irrefutable evidence does not exist. This should be evident to anyone who thinks about it for thirty seconds.

It’s been very entertaining to read the flap about Professor PZ Myer’s being expelled from the movie Expelled, here, here, and here, and many, many other places on other blogs.

The one thing that bugs me about all the commentary is the assumption that there was an “enemies list”, and that Dr. Myers was on it because he was from Minnesota, and Dr. Dawkins was not because he would not be expected to be found in Minnesota. I don’t think that’s how this happened at all.

I think the way this happened is that Dr. Myers is a college professor in Minnesota and many people who were in line or were working in the theater were college-age Minnesotans, and the sequence of events was something like this:

Someone looks around and says to the next person, “Hey look, isn’t that Dr. Myers in line?” Since he is well known to be contemptuous (to say the least) of creationism, the fact that he is in line is an interesting topic of conversation. Someone mentions to the producer that Dr. Myers is there, figuring perhaps that this will be a nice little bit of publicity.

But it backfires; the producer (who apparently has a personal dislike for Dr. Myers) calls over the Rent-a-Cop and orders him to throw Dr. Myers out because he isn’t invited and isn’t welcome. The Rent-a-Cop, having no interest in the whole affair except to do his job and get paid, and not wanting to get in a hassle with a paying customer, says, “But doesn’t he have a ticket?” The producer shoots back, “No, he doesn’t have a ticket!”

So the Rent-a-Cop, having verified that Dr. Myers doesn’t have a ticket, isn’t invited, and doesn’t appear to belong to any protected minority group that it might be illegal to discriminate against, goes and orders him not to enter the screening room, because the owner, or in this case the renter, of the property has the right to kick anyone out that he wishes. Dr. Myers says, “Fine, I won’t go in.” But he stays to talk to his family and guest in line. The Rent-a-Cop goes back to the producer and reports the situation.

The producer (who has not looked at the line or the “guest” list and so hasn’t seen who else might be with Dr. Myers), is furious that Dr. Myers is still in the theater, and orders him thrown out. The Rent-a-Cop, who probably doesn’t know exactly what authority the producer has, thinks maybe he does have authority over the whole theater, and maybe he does have the right to treat Dr. Myers as a trespasser. So the Rent-a-Cop orders him out of the theater.

Dr. Myers goes, but waits outside for someone to come out so they can arrange for a meeting place. The Rent-a-Cop reports this to the producer, who gets into paranoid mode (what’s he doing? why is he hanging around? does he have some nefarious plot to sabotage my screening and kidnap my worshippers?) and orders the Rent-a-Cop to throw him out of the mall. The Rent-a-Cop is starting to wonder about how much authority the producer really has, but is quite sure that he hasn’t rented the whole mall for this screening, so he objects to the order. While they are arguing, Dr. Myers arranges a meeting place and leaves.

The producer figures the enemy is gone, all is well, and (still without having checked out the line or the “guest” list) goes on with the screening. When the lights come up, he discovers to his horror that Dr. Dawkins was in the audience.

I think this explanation covers every aspect of the case, and it doesn’t require the assumption of an enemies list circulated to the Rent-a-Cops at every screening. I realize the general assumption is that everyone involved in Expelled is both stupid and paranoid, but I don’t think they’re stupid enough to think that they can circulate an enemies list among hired muscle in city after city, and not have word get back to the press one way or another.

Being in New York, I heard about the baby abandoned in a cab. Now it seems that she wasn’t abandoned in the cab at all; the cabdriver just agreed to help her family give her up in a, shall we say, unorthodox manner. The police are not happy about this:

Sailema [the cabdriver] was charged with filing a false report. Both he and Siavichay [his girlfriend] were charged with endangering the welfare of a child. Police said her roommate, Marcelo Vinansaca, 24, of the Bronx, was also charged with obstructing the investigation by giving false information to detectives.

I can certainly see why he was charged with filing a false report, but why “endangering the welfare of a child”? She was never in any danger. If she had really been abandoned in the cab, the cabdriver might have failed to notice her for a while, might have parked the cab and gone off for dinner while she froze in there, something like that, but she hadn’t really been abandoned. She was entrusted to an adult by other adults; he was at pains to keep her safe; he took her to other trustworthy adults (at the fire station); they turned her over to other trustworthy adults (hospital personnel), who turned her over to the authorities. At no point was she in any danger, and the cabdriver knew that at no point would she be in any danger.

I do not understand this charge at all.

Also, I do not understand the restriction on the “no-fault” child drop-off law. It is legal to leave a child at a hospital or similar location where it is safe, where it will be accepted and put up for adoption, no questions asked, provided the child is less than five days old. But why less than five days old? There has to be some limit — you don’t want someone dropping off a five-year-old — but a child that is too young to have formed an attachment to any adult will not suffer trauma by being abandoned in a safe place, and it certainly seems to me that, in this case, both children — the six-month old and the fourteen-year-old victim of statutory rape — would be better off if the younger child were handed over exactly as she was.

The reason no-fault drop-off laws are necessary is because adoption laws are so onerous as to make it impossible for the mother to walk away — she must give all sorts of information and make her situation horribly public. In many cases, as in this one, her parents may reasonably want to shield her from public revelation.

It’s a case of the best (laws that protect the rights of adopted children to discover their genetic background, and the rights of sperm-providers to discover the fruits of their wild oats) driving out the good (laws that enable young girls or even older women who made a mistake to avoid suffering for it for the rest of their lives, while simultaneously giving the resulting babies an opportunity at a better life).

If there are objections to no-fault dropping off of an older child — this one’s age, for instance — they would be based on the fact that adults (such as the father) have formed attachments to the child of which they should not be deprived. But to be honest, I feel that a father who has more than a physical connection to the child ought to be able to notice that the child is missing and go looking for it. Apparently there is a six-month period before the child is put up for adoption, which ought to be reasonably adequate for a father to notice it is missing, check on abandoned children, and find it.

It’s true, it’s true, that you can come up with instances where this is not the case (he’s serving overseas, for instance), but no law is perfect (and the same would apply if the child were abandoned at four days old instead of four months old). You can come up with special exceptions in such cases. I do think that five days is too short a cut-off, and this unfortunate situation might have been avoided if the cut-off were somewhat longer.

Charles Krauthammer said, “ To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.“

By his definition, then, I must be a conservative. I don’t think people who disagree with me are evil. I don’t think Christians are, by and large, evil or crazy. I don’t think creationists are, by and large, evil or crazy. I think they’re both wrong, and I think creationist arguments are very weird and sometimes crazy (in the vernacular sense of “too weird to even wrap my head around” as opposed to “suggesting the speaker should be committed”).

But the people who comment at Pharyngula are liberals. While I am on the same side as they are with regard to science and creationism, and really most things, I am really disconcerted by the venom which they spew on the concept of Christianity. Of course, being good liberals, they almost never spew this venom on any other religion — I’ve never seen any of them even suggest that it is a bad thing for Saudi “police” to burn girls alive, but oh, it’s a terrible thing for the President to publicly admit to being a believer, for that proves that the Dominionists are going to take over and stone homosexuals, and re-enact slavery, and make women unpeople, and … and … well, basically to enact the sorts of laws here that are perfectly acceptable and that only a bigot to object to in Saudi Arabia.

They also use a lot of disgusting language, none of which I will repeat, to describe Christians. It is one thing to poke fun at people who try to argue about science when they really don’t know anything about it, or to mock arguments that are really stupid. I enjoy that too. But simply spewing hatred and posting the result — that’s not amusing, and not argument. Making up stories about what people you don’t even know intend in their hearts of hearts, or taking the behavior of small groups of wackos as being representative of the secret intentions of a hundred million or more people — that’s not amusing, and not argument. It’s paranoia, and I find it very disturbing to read.

Of course, it’s PZ’s site and his call as to whether he allows or encourages that sort of thing, and I’m not about to comment about it on the site (people who comment on that issue are dismissively called “concern trolls”). And it’s not just him, of course.

Allowing and encouraging this sort of behavior certainly seems to me to contribute to the coarsening of culture and the venomous divisiveness, that has made politics in the US so troubling.

I got an Amazon Kindle as a late Christmas present, and in reading about eBooks available for it, I came across a reference to Project Gutenberg. I’d actually known about that before, but had forgotten.

I downloaded a txt file, ran it through Mobipocket Creator, and read it on my Kindle. It was fun, but I was pained by typos in the text. So I began to wonder how it was that they had gotten the text into txt format in the first place. This led me to Distributed Proofreading.

I immediately signed up as a distributed proofreader, and have (as of this morning) proofread 315 pages, including part of Omphalos! The very book of which I’d heard so much!

Other books I worked on include Rural Rides, the diary of a social reformer in early 19th Century England. This confirms what I’d read in other places, that early 19th Century England was a horrible place. The United States is frequently vilified as a capitalist country just like early 19th Century England, but it isn’t, as this book quite incidentally shows.

Some interesting pages that I worked on for Rural Rides included a discussion of the “tommy system”, whereby the factory owner also owns a store and pays the employees in kind instead of in money. Thus, he can buy in bulk and more efficiently, and he gets the profit that would otherwise go to a shopkeeper, while the employees, at least theoretically, still get the same goods. The author makes a rather sanguine assumption about the factory owner:

The only question is in this case of the manufacturing tommy work, whether the master charges a higher price than the shop-keepers would charge; and, while I have not heard that the masters do this, I think it improbable that they should.

(Oh really? “Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go; I owe my soul to the company store.”) But putting that aside, he goes on to make some computations that I found intriguing:

Even in the well-cultivated and thickly-settled parts of the United States of America, it is the general custom, and a very good custom it is, to pay the wages of labour partly in money and partly in kind; and this practice is extended to carpenters, brick-layers, and other workmen about buildings, and even to tailors, shoemakers, and weavers, who go (a most excellent custom) to farm-houses to work. The bargain is, so much money and found; that is to say, found in food and drink, and sometimes in lodging. The money then used to be, for a common labourer, in Long Island, at common work (not haying or harvesting), three York shillings a day, and found; that is to say, three times seven-pence halfpenny of our money; and three times seven-pence halfpenny a day, which is eleven shillings and three-pence a week, and found. This was the wages of the commonest labourer at the commonest work. And the wages of a good labourer now, in Worcestershire, is eight shillings a week, and not found. Accordingly, they are miserably poor and degraded.

He’s focusing on the “found”, but note that the “commonest” laborer on Long Island in New York is paid almost half again as much in cash as the “good” laborer in Worcestershire! Wages have always been higher in America than elsewhere, a point that people really should contemplate in thinking what changes are needed in our society. That’s not to say that changes are not needed in some areas, but one should try to retain or even recover those features which caused the wages of commonest laborer on Long Island to be half again those of a good laborer in Worcestershire.