Danish Mohammed cartoons reprinted in France and Norway--and Lebanon

The Danish cartoons of Mohammed have been reprinted in both Norway and France (and may be seen at the link at left). These cartoons have led to hostages being taken, death threats against the cartoonists, and the withdrawal of ambassadors to Denmark by Libya and Saudi Arabia. The reprinting has led to further Muslim outrage, apologies from the publishers, and some firings. Norway has given a state apology and made noises about restricting freedom of speech regarding anti-religious statements. France and Denmark have refused to make state apologies and have defended freedom of speech. The EU and UN have come out against freedom of speech, which are good reasons to oppose UN control of the Internet.

By the way, here are some other cartoons about Mohammed and Islam (thanks to Einzige for the reference).

UPDATE: A magazine in Lebanon, Shihan, has reprinted the cartoons, and in an article with the subheading "World's Muslims, be logical," Jihad Momani (a pseudonym?) asks, “Which one do you think damages Islam more? These cartoons or the scene of a suicide bomber who blows himself up outside a wedding ceremony in Amman, or the kidnappers that slaughters their victims before the cameras?” (Hat tip: Catallarchy, which I inexplicably failed to credit for their posting which first led me to this subject.)

Financial freedom

My parents loaned me a set of 13 CDs by a Christian financial counselor named Dave Ramsey, which I listened to in my car over the last several weeks. The CDs are audio recordings of Ramsey's course of lectures that he calls "Financial Peace University."

I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised--there were occasional references to God and Bible verses, but they were relatively few and tended to be ones that gave sensible advice. It was only the last CD, on charitable giving, which emphasized tithing to a church over other forms of charitable giving, that I found more objectionable than sound. (There were also two bonus CDs, one with samples from Ramsey's radio show, in which I agreed with virtually all of the advice he gave to listeners, and another giving his personal testimony and a "come to Jesus" call that I gave up listening to after about the first 15 minutes.)

The first 12 CDs I give pretty high marks to. Each CD covered a single topic:
1. "Super Savers": how to save money, build an emergency fund, the value of cash purchases.
2. "Cash Flow Planning": how to budget.
3. "Relating With Money": how to communicate about money in a relationship and with your children.
4. "Buying Only Big, Big Bargains": how to find good deals and negotiate on price.
5. "Dumping Debt Part 1": facts about credit cards and how to get out of debt.
6. "Dumping Debt Part 2": more on that subject.
7. "Understanding Investments": some basic information about stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.
8. "Understanding Insurance": some basic information about insurance offerings and which ones are a ripoff.
9. "Retirement & College Planning": 401Ks, Roth 401Ks, IRAs, SEPs, Coverdell ESAs, etc.
10. "Buyer Beware": understanding some marketing and sales tactics and how to avoid being pressured by them.
11. "Real Estate & Mortgages": some basics about buying and selling a home, types of mortgages (apparently recorded before the recent popularity of some more creative mortgages), and refinancing.
12. "Careers & Extra Jobs": how to find a job you love, when it makes sense to seek extra income to get out of a problem.
13. "Collection Practices & Credit Bureaus": some basics on collections, how to clean up your credit report, how to get out of bad debt messes when you can't afford to pay all your bills.

Some of the basic messages of Ramsey's plan are to start by building an emergency savings of $1,000, cut up all your credit cards and budget every dollar of income, get all non-mortgage debt paid off, build up savings of 3-6 months of expenses, and start investing 15% of annual gross income in mutual funds (maximizing tax-preferred options). He's very anti-credit card and anti-debt. I agree with the latter (except for a mortgage); the former I don't personally agree with for myself, but I think it's good advice for anyone who doesn't have the discipline to be a credit card "freeloader" (pay off all credit card balances monthly).

He also advises never buying a house with anything but a 15-year fixed rate mortgage, and never with a monthly payment greater than 25% of your monthly take-home pay, never spending more than 20% of your annual income on cars (and always paying cash, never going into debt--and that means buying used).

The average household has about $10,000 in credit card debt, lots of people have been buying their homes with interest-only adjustable rate mortgages where they can barely afford the interest-only payments (or even just the negative amortization option), and many people have been pulling equity out of their homes to pay for consumer goods, and buying homes with interest-only adjustable rate mortgages (some with negative amortization options), and these people are heading for disaster. Ramsey's advice is pretty sound.

UPDATE (January 23, 2007): The Simple Dollar has a good summary of Dave Ramsey's program.

Western Union discontinues telegrams

After 145 years in the business, Western Union discontinued sending telegrams on January 27.

The story behind the Wedge Strategy becoming public

The Seattle Weekly has published a story on the Discovery Institute, including original scans of the "Wedge Strategy" and the story of how it was leaked to the Internet by Matt Duss and Tim Rhodes. More at Pharyngula, including the Wedge in PDF.

I found this paragraph interesting, considering how much the Discovery Institute spends on PR:

Seattle Weekly began making inquiries for this story in mid-2005, but neither Chapman nor any Discovery Institute fellow has been willing to be interviewed. A last attempt to elicit comment, e-mailed to spokesperson Rob Crowther on Jan. 4, elicited the following: "With the start of the new year all of the Fellows and staff are quite busy and their schedules are completely full. I think you'll find more than enough information on our website that you are welcome to quote from. If you want to submit questions in writing, I'd be happy to pass those along and see if anyone has time to respond, but I can't make any guarantees." A number of questions were submitted; none was answered.

Phoenix housing inventories for sale continue to climb

To continue from just before where we left off last time... there were 10,748 homes for sale on July 20, 2005, and it had increased by 79% to 19,254 by October 2. Yesterday, it was up a further 69% to 32,512--a 202% increase over the July 20 number. I've seen estimates that about a third are being sold by "investors."

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Arizona porn spamming proxy abusers busted

The Federal Trade Commission today unsealed and announced its action in the U.S. District Court in Arizona against William Dugger (a/k/a Billy Johnson, d/b/a Net Everyone) of Hawaii (with a business address in Phoenix), Angelina Johnson (d/b/a Net Everyone) of Hawaii and/or Phoenix, and John Vitale (d/b/a Net Everyone) of Phoenix for sending CAN-SPAM-violating porn spam using compromised systems of uninvolved third parties. The Temporary Restraining Order announced today freezes their assets and requires their ISPs to disconnect all of their equipment from the Internet and deny them any access to it.

Congress banned from Wikipedia for abuses

Wikipedia has banned the IP blocks of U.S. Congress from the ability to make changes, due to repeated abuses by Congressional staffers who

repeatedly engage in revert wars, blank content, engage in libelous behavior or violate WP:NPOV, WP:CIV [Wikipedia's standards for neutral point of view and civility]. The editors from these IP ranges are rude and abrasive, immature, and show no understanding of Wikipedia policy. The editors also frequently try to whitewash the actions of certain politicians. They treat Wikipedia articles about politicians as though they own the articles, replacing community articles with their own sanctioned biographies and engaging in revert wars when other users dispute this sudden change. They also violate Wikipedia:Verifiability, by deleting verified reports, while adding flattering things about members of Congress that are unverified.

A newspaper article has been written on this subject in the Lowell Sun by Evan Lehmann.

A list of further details is in the Wikipedia entry on Congressional Staffer Edits.

Kudos to Wikipedia for treating Congress the way it deserves to be treated.

Apparently Sam Coppersmith has never heard of Kelo v. New London Development Corp.

Sam Coppersmith complains that legislators seeking restrictions on eminent domain abuse are wasting their time (and apparently that they are trying to create a diversion from other more important issues). Sure, Arizona has better protections in place than most states (as demonstrated by the decisions in Bailey v. Myers (link is a PDF) and City of Tempe v. Valentine) , but why is it any surprise that there is extensive support for expanding such protections in the aftermath of the Kelo decision? The failure of his column to even mention that decision strikes me as disingenuous.

The Castle Coalition and the Institute for Justice have very strong grassroots support on this issue, and it's not a partisan issue.

Discovery Institute and the status of Intelligent Design as science

The Discovery Institute has lately taken the position (argued by law student Michael Francisco) that Judge Jones was wrong to even consider ruling on the question of whether Intelligent Design is science. This position has been refuted in detail by Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, by John Pieret at Thoughts in a Haystack, and by Mike Dunford at The Questionable Authority.

I have one critique of Dunford's argument--I believe he is conflating two positions in order to create a contradiction on the part of the Discovery Institute when he points out that they argued that he should rule on the constitutionality of Intelligent Design, but should not have ruled on whether Intelligent Design is science. These are distinguishable issues and one could hold both simultaneously without contradiction (though not necessarily without error). Where the Discovery Institute contradicted the recent argument from Michael Francisco is that its expert witnesses and its amicus brief did argue for the scientific status of ID, as Brayton and Pieret point out.

Wanchick's moral argument

Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick have begun a debate over at the Internet Infidels site. Wanchick gives six arguments for Christian theism, one of which is the following "moral argument":

But what makes us obliged not to mistreat humans? After all, if naturalism is true, "a human being is a biological animal,"[16] as naturalist Julian Baggini admits. But unless humans have unique moral worth not had by beasts, it seems objective moral truth wouldn't exist. It wouldn't, for instance, be immoral to rape or kill, for animals do so to each other regularly with no moral significance.[17]

When somebody says "it seems," that may be an indication that there isn't a solid argument. Here, for instance, Wanchick says that unless humans have unique moral worth distinct from all animals, there is no objective moral truth. The conclusion clearly doesn't follow without additional premises. The more obvious conclusion from the premise that humans are not the unique holders of moral worth is that animals also have moral worth, that mistreating and abusing them is wrong, and perhaps that it is immoral to kill animals for food--this is the conclusion drawn by many vegetarians and vegans. Moral worth is a distinct concept from moral responsibility, so the fact that animals don't respect each others' moral worth doesn't make them morally blameworthy. One can have moral worth and rights that deserve to be respected without having the capacity for moral reasoning or responsibility.

Paul Draper pinpoints the problem such properties would cause for naturalism: "every human being has a special sort of inherent value that no animal has, and every human has an equal amount of this value. Such equality is possible despite the great differences among humans, because the value in question does not supervene on any natural properties. It is a nonnatural property that all (and only) humans possess."[18] The great naturalist philosopher J.L. Mackie, and myriad others, agree.

Mackie's "queerness" argument certainly does carry some weight as an argument against the objectivity of moral properties. This argument about equality, however, I find less convincing. I would argue that the inherent value that is "equal" is that we recognize a set of individual rights for those who meet certain minimal criteria of personhood (or sentience, consciousness, capacity for pain, or whatever are the minimal features which give rise to such rights), and it is those rights which are equal, and are so for social and economic reasons. In fact, the actual value any one person has (for themselves and others) does vary from person to person based on natural properties.

Unfortunately, to defend naturalism, Draper and Mackie (like Carrier) have to absurdly deny that humans have such unique inherent worth.[19] Carrier even says some animals are more morally valuable than certain humans in virtue of their superior intellect, rationality, etc.[20] But such positions are obviously false. Humans have moral worth not found in animals, regardless of their comparative capabilities, and the failure to recognize this is simply a lack of moral insight.

There is no argument here except bare assertion: "such positions are obviously false." Those who advocate animal rights would question Wanchick's capacity for moral insight, and since Wanchick supplies no evidence or reasons to support his position on this issue, there is no reason to prefer his position to theirs.

But since these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren't natural, they must have a supernatural source. And since moral properties exist only in persons, the source of moral properties must be a supernatural person.

Again, Wanchick has proceeded by bare assertion--"these moral properties obviously do exist in human beings and aren't natural"--that's two assertions, neither of which he has offered any support for. He then asserts that "moral properties exist only in persons," again without argument. I have some ideas about how such an argument could be constructed, though most of them involve non-objective meta-ethics, which would not support Wanchick's view. I don't think that Wanchick actually believes that "moral properties exist only in persons"--surely he would agree that there are particular actions that are objectively wrong, such as an axe murder. But an axe murder is not within a person, it is an action in the natural world, and for it to be objectively wrong is for that action to have moral properties. If Wanchick agrees with this, it undermines this entire argument. If he disagrees with it, then he owes an explanation for how his view is not a form of subjectivism.

The moral order, then, is evidence of a supernatural person who grounds moral truth. Additionally, at least some moral truths are necessary, and thus their foundation must be a necessary being grounding moral facts in all possible worlds.[21]

Wanchick finishes up with more bare assertion, throwing in his "additionally" remarks without any justification or argument.

I'm not sure if this is the worst of Wanchick's six arguments, but it's quite feeble.