Archives 2012

Animus

This morning, I got email from Robert Broadus at Protect Marriage Maryland, an organization formed to oppose gay marriage in Maryland (and also the repeal of DADT, DOMA, and generally stand in the way of social progress), about the Maryland bill to legalize gay marriage (which recently passed both houses, but hasn’t been signed by the governor yet):

It is important to understand that re-defining marriage is not about “equality,” “civil rights,” or even the word, “marriage,” as homosexuals in Maryland already have domestic partnership benefits, and have intentionally rejected civil unions at every opportunity.  Instead, re-defining marriage represents the hope of “acceptance” for their godless lifestyles, imposed on the rest of society via the government and the force of law.

(emphasis added)

Could Broadus make it any more plain that he’s a bigot, and that that’s his main reason for opposing marriage rights for gays? (And, not incidentally, that he thinks this approach is a good way to raise money for his cause.)

One reason why this matters is that animus played an important part in the Proposition 8 trial: basically, the Supreme Court decided that you can’t just pass laws against people because you don’t like them; that legislation has to provide an actual benefit or solve a real problem.

Indeed, in the Prop 8 ruling, judge Walker wrote:

In the absence of a rational basis, what remains of proponents’ case is an inference, amply supported by evidence in the record, that Proposition 8 was premised on the belief that same-sex couples simply are not as good as opposite-sex couples.FF 78-80. Whether that belief is based on moral disapproval of homosexuality, animus towards gays and lesbians or simply a belief that a relationship between a man and a woman is inherently better than a relationship between two men or two women, this belief is not a proper basis on which to legislate.

Proponents’ purported rationales are nothing more than post-hoc justifications. […] What is left is evidence that Proposition 8 enacts a moral view that there is something “wrong” with same-sex couples.

Yes, I realize that Maryland is not California. But to the extent that they’re similar, if there’s an anti-gay-marriage referendum in Maryland, and it passes, and it gets challenged in court, then Broadus is laying the foundation for an animus charge.

I would have thought he’d be more subtle about it, though.

Shit My Bible Says: Deuteronomy 22

From Deuteronomy 22:

5 A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.

I guess this means God hates Martin Lawrence for the Big Momma films… okay, bad example. But apparently God also hates Eddie Izzard and Tim Curry. To say nothing of every woman who ever wore pants or borrowed her boyfriend’s shirt.

And speaking of clothes:

11 Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.

(Leviticus 19:19 is actually broader, and forbids all mixed-fabric clothing (I’m looking at you, cotton-polyester wearers!):

19 “‘Keep my decrees.
“‘Do not mate different kinds of animals.
“‘Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed.
“‘Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

)

And near the end, we find:

28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[c] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

Yeah, you read that right: the Bible says a woman has to marry her rapist.

Anyway, the reason for bringing up these examples, particularly the one about mixed-fabric clothing, is partly to point out just how detailed the Bible gets at times (if you’re a glutton for punishment, you can read God’s instructions to his interior decorator, aka Exodus 26).

And also to point out a contrast: when he was putting together his books of law, God allegedly found time to talk about agriculture and clothing; these things were worthy of his attention, and not something he could trust mere humans to work out for themselves. But he couldn’t be bothered to mention, even once, that owning people is bad; that raping children is bad; that genocide is bad (but why would he, when he commits and orders it so often?), that democracy is better than monarchy, and so on, and so forth.

I’m pretty sure that if I were composing a list of the Top 613 Most Important Things People Should and Shouldn’t Do, I’m pretty sure I’d include those in there. But that’s just me. I know it sounds hubristic to say my morality is better than God’s, but what other conclusion can I draw?

(Updated, Feb. 23, 10:32: typos. Thanks, alert reader!)

A Positive Review

I know this is bad form, but I really like this review of something I wrote:

If it is a Poe, it is a pretty clever one: goes suspiciously overboard only 3-4 times

I might need to add “goes suspiciously overboard only 3-4 times” to my bio.

Cranston Votes Not to Appeal Ruling

Everybody and their assorted siblings are reporting that the Cranston, RI School Committee voted not to appeal the court decision that ruled a prayer mural unconstitutional.

Hemant links to the Cranston Patch’s liveblogging of the meeting. Best quote:

7:28 p.m.: City’s lawyer, Joesph Cavanaugh Jr., gives a history of the banner, and said there were two legal tests that the judge could have based his review on. Cranston argued it was historic display, but the judge viewed it through the lens that the mural is a prayer, mainly because of the presence of the term “school prayer.”

Similarly, further down:

9:11 p.m.: […] Father Andrew George asks why the judge viewed the mural as a prayer and not an historic document. Cavanaugh said is because it has the word “school prayer” in it and has “petition words’ and states “amen.”

Shit My Bible Says: Lilies of the Field

It’s easy to dismiss the previous two episodes in this series as “Oh, but that’s the Old Testament!” So let’s pick on the New Testament for a change:

Matthew 6:25-34:

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?

28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

And also Luke 12:22-31:

22 Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. 24 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! 25 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life[a]? 26 Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

27 “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! 29 And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. 30 For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

(emphasis added)

Here we have Jesus saying not to worry about what’ll happen tomorrow. Don’t worry about where your next meal is coming from or whether you can get clothes. And he’s not saying “make sure you’ve made adequate preparation for your future, but don’t give yourself an ulcer.” He’s saying not to worry about the future, because it’ll all work out somehow.

Now, if you have (or want) health insurance, or a retirement plan, or a college fund, or if the way you vote is influenced by what kind of world you want to leave your grandchildren, then you can recognize that the above is bullshit. You are worrying about the future instead of letting it work itself out on its own.

See, that’s the funny thing: the only people who can say “See? It all worked out after all” are the ones who weren’t killed by “it”.

Not worrying about retirement makes sense if you don’t think you’ll live long enough to retire: if you have a terminal disease that’ll kill you in six months, then yeah, you might as well cash out your IRA and enjoy trip to Tahiti before you die.

This is of a piece with some of Jesus’ other pronouncements, like Luke 6:29: “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them.” If the world is about to be destroyed, then yeah, this makes sense because you have better things to do than sue the guy who stole your coat. But as a long-term strategy, it’s an invitation to get beaten and robbed.

Shit My Bible Says: Numbers 15:32-36

Numbers 15:32-36:

32 While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34 and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.

I’ll let apologetics site CARM explain this one:

Gathering sticks in itself is not wrong. It could be for the purpose of providing a fire for warmth of cooking. The problem is that a man was deliberately and flagrantly gathering sticks in the open on the Sabbath day when God had commanded that no work be done on the Sabbath. This was a direct challenge to God’s authority.

Okay, so a guy was gathering wood instead of telling God how wonderful he is, as God had commanded, and for that he had to be executed. Not fined, not spanked, not ordered to perform community service, but killed. By having rocks thrown at him.

And this isn’t something Moses or one of his flunkies thought would be a good idea. God himself commands it. The same God who is, people tell me, the source of all morality.

Go out on the Sabbath some time (whether you think that’s Saturday or Sunday) and count the people doing work. Aside from firefighters, emergency room staff, police officers, and the like, who are doing truly important work that won’t wait until Monday, you’ll also doubtless find gas station attendants, store employees at the mall, football players, tech support line operators, IT guys doing maintenance on the weekend, ans so on and so forth. All of these people deserve to die violently, according to the word of the unchanging God.

If this doesn’t outrage you, what the hell’s wrong with you? And if you are outraged, doesn’t that mean your morals are better than God’s?

Shit My Bible Says: Numbers 5:11-28

Back in January, the Pennsylvania House passed a resolution naming 2012 “The Year of the Bible”:

WHEREAS, a bunch of pious bullshit, and

WHEREAS, a pile of revisonist history, and

WHEREAS, puppies are cute and stuff, therefore let it be

RESOLVED, something or other blah blah blah this is an easy vote-winner and I can get out of here in time for happy hour, right?

(paraphrased)

So, yeah. Year of the Bible. Huh. Presumably that means that the good people of Pennsylvania ought to read the Bible to find out what it says, that our country and values are based on. Or, if it’s anything like Black History Month, sit through a bunch of PSAs and maybe, if you’re still in school, go on a field trip to the local museum.

So, as a public service, allow me to present what I’d like to call Shit My Bible Says. For this first episode, let’s take a look at Number 5:11-28 (skip forward for the tl;dr version):

11 Then the LORD said to Moses, 12 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘If a man’s wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him 13 so that another man has sexual relations with her, and this is hidden from her husband and her impurity is undetected (since there is no witness against her and she has not been caught in the act), 14 and if feelings of jealousy come over her husband and he suspects his wife and she is impure—or if he is jealous and suspects her even though she is not impure— 15 then he is to take his wife to the priest. He must also take an offering of a tenth of an ephah[a] of barley flour on her behalf. He must not pour olive oil on it or put incense on it, because it is a grain offering for jealousy, a reminder-offering to draw attention to wrongdoing.

16 “‘The priest shall bring her and have her stand before the LORD. 17 Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water. 18 After the priest has had the woman stand before the LORD, he shall loosen her hair and place in her hands the reminder-offering, the grain offering for jealousy, while he himself holds the bitter water that brings a curse. 19 Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, “If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. 20 But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband”— 21 here the priest is to put the woman under this curse—“may the LORD cause you to become a curse[b] among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. 22 May this water that brings a curse enter your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries.”

“‘Then the woman is to say, “Amen. So be it.”

23 “‘The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. 24 He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse, and this water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering will enter her. 25 The priest is to take from her hands the grain offering for jealousy, wave it before the LORD and bring it to the altar. 26 The priest is then to take a handful of the grain offering as a memorial[c] offering and burn it on the altar; after that, he is to have the woman drink the water. 27 If she has made herself impure and been unfaithful to her husband, this will be the result: When she is made to drink the water that brings a curse and causes bitter suffering, it will enter her, her abdomen will swell and her womb will miscarry, and she will become a curse. 28 If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children.

(emphasis added, quite emphatically)

To recap: if a man thinks his wife has been cheating on him, the local priest should give her a magic potion that will induce an abortion if she was unfaithful.

Read that again: causing a miscarriage — or, as the pro-life crowd likes to call it, murdering a baby — is considered an acceptable side effect of finding out whether your wife’s been getting some action on the side.

I was going to say that this shows that the God of the Bible doesn’t consider fetuses to be human, but then I realized that he’s quite fond of killing, and ordering the killing of, people who are unambiguously human.

At any rate, I don’t see why the religious right are up in arms about abortifacients, to say nothing of contraceptives. It seems obvious that according to the Bible, killing fetuses is no big deal.

(HT Larry O’Heam, aka Almighty God.)

Floristgate: How Petty Can You Get?

Cranston High School prayer mural
Quick recap for those who don’t visit the atheosphere much, or who have been living under a rock: Cranston High School West in Cranston, Rhode Island used to have a mural with a “School Prayer”. Jessica Ahlquist, a student at the school, tried to have it removed on the grounds of it being blatantly unconstitutional, and eventually had to sue. And she won.

Naturally, the good Christians of Rhode Island realized that religion is a private matter that shouldn’t be pushed in public schools, and accepted the ruling graciously. Ha ha! Just kidding! Actually, they inundated her with insults and threats of bodily violence.

To date, I’ve only seen two responses from Christians condemning their coreligionists’ behavior:


(Sorry, the Washington Post’s comment system doesn’t allow linking to individual comments.)

If there are more, I’d like to hear about them. But so far, the moderate Christian community is endorsing these bullies by its silence.


And then it gets pettier: Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation wanted to send Ahlquist a dozen roses to thank her for her courage. She with her local florist, who then forwarded the order to a local florist in Rhode Island. Three florists in Cranston, RI, turned the order down. One included a
note saying “I will not deliver to this person”. (They eventually got a shop from Putnam, CT, to deliver the flowers from out of state.)

At first glance, this looks like plain old bigotry, no different from hanging a sign in a store window saying “whites only”. But NBC 10 in Providence reports

Raymond Santilli of Flowers by Santilli in Cranston said someone from the foundation told him the delivery person might need police protection and show identification to gain access to the home.

“We refused the order because we really don’t want to cross lines,” he said.

Santilli said he had personal feelings about the issue and because it’s his shop, he can choose to deliver or not to deliver flowers to whomever he wants.

“If I send flowers there, somebody may get upset with us and retaliate against us,” he said.

(emphasis added.)

So either this florist is a bigot or a liar, which doesn’t speak well him and, to the extent that he represents the people of Rhode Island, doesn’t speak well for Rhode Islanders in general; or else he has justified concerns for his safety if he is seen to do business with (hushed tones) atheists, which doesn’t speak well for Rhode Islanders either.

And then there’s the Facebook page I Stand With The Cranston Florists (which I thought was publicly-visible this morning, but now appears to have reverted to the default Facebook visibility setting of “fuck you if you’re not in the Collective”), which appears to be the work of radio personality John DePetro, who has, from what I’ve seen, consistently taken the anti-constitution side of the argument.

But the thing is, this sort of thing isn’t rare. I wish I had a genuine moment of “Whoa! What the hell just happened?” surprise at the Christian reaction. But I didn’t. The most surprising thing here is that this happened in Rhode Island rather than a Bible belt state like Alabama. I wish I could believe the usual excuses that “these are just a few bad apples” or “they’re not True Scotsmen Christians™“. But we’ve seen this happen all too often whenever the majority is reminded that they’ve overstepped their bounds.

Update, Jan. 24: The Rhode Island Council of Churches has announced a press conference to call for tolerance and civility, to support Ahlquist’s right to challenge the banner, and condemn the insults and bullying aimed her way (via Hemant Mehta).

“Motion Capture” for Text-to-Speech?

I had a random thought over the weekend, and while I suspect it’s not original, I couldn’t find anyone working on it.

One big reason why text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis sucks so badly is that the result sounds flat. Yes, the synthesizer can try to infer cadence and tone from things like commas, paragraph breaks, exclamation points, and question marks, but the result still falls far short of what a human reader sounds like. In the end, the problem seems to be Turing-hard, since you need to understand the meaning of a piece of text in order to read it properly.

So would it be possible to record a human reading a piece of text, and extract just the intonation, cadence, and pacing of the text? Hollywood already uses motion capture, in which cameras record the movements of a human being, and makes a CGI creature move the same way (e.g., Gollum in The Lord of the Rings or Shrek). In fact, you can combine multiple people’s movements into one synthesized creature, say by using one person’s stride, another’s hand movements, and a third person’s facial expressions.

So why not apply the same principle to synthesized speech? For instance, you could have someone read a paragraph of text. We already have voice-recognition software, so it should be possible to analyze that recording and match it to individual words and phonemes in the text. That gives you timing, for things like the length of a comma or reading speed. The recording can then be analyzed for things like whether a given word was spoken more loudly, or at a higher pitch, than other surrounding words, and by how much. This can be converted to speech markup.

This means that you could synthesize Stephen Fry reading a book in Patrick Stewart’s voice.

Perhaps more to the point, if you poke around Project Gutenberg, you’ll see that there are two types of audio books: ones generated via TTS, and ones read by people. The recordings of humans are, of course, better, but they require that an actual person sit down and read the whole book from start to finish, which is time-consuming.

If it were possible to apply a human’s reading style to the synthesis of a known piece of text, then it would be possible for multiple people to share the job of recording an audio book. Allow volunteers to read one or two pages at a time, and synthesize a recording of those pages using the volunteer’s intonation and cadence, but using a standard voice.

I imagine that there would still be lots of problems with this — for instance, it might feel somewhat jarring when the book switches from one person’s reading style to another’s — but it should still be an improvement over what we have now. And there are probably lots of other problems that I can’t imagine.

But hey, it would still be an improvements. Is anyone out there working on this?

Stop the Press! I Want to Get Off

The New York Times asks, in all sincerity, whether it should be doing fact-checking.

As an Op-Ed columnist, Mr. Krugman clearly has the freedom to call out what he thinks is a lie. My question for readers is: should news reporters do the same?

If so, then perhaps the next time Mr. Romney says the president has a habit of apologizing for his country, the reporter should insert a paragraph saying, more or less:

“The president has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on a misleading interpretation of the president’s words.”

Is this really what it’s come to? That one of the oldest, most respected newspapers in the country has to ask itself whether it should be calling bullshit when a politician says something that isn’t true.

I thought the job of newspapers was not just to report what’s going on, but also put it in some sort of context so that it makes sense (within the limits of the format, of course). And part of that is mentioning when a source is wrong. Especially when that source pants-on-fire wrong.

But apparently people at the Old Gray Lady think that “he said, she said” is the same thing as balance and objectivity. It’s not enough to know what a person said; we should also know whether the statement is true or not. Or at least whether it’s credible or not.

To quote one of the comments, “the opinions of cranks and shills disagree with those of experts, and should be portrayed that way.”

It’s sad that the Times even feels the need to ask this question.