Focus on the Family: Pray for rain on Obama

The lunatics at Focus on the Family want people to pray for rain on Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. This is absurd on multiple levels--not only does nothing fail like prayer, but how on earth do they consider this to be a remotely ethical or rational thing to do?

Why not just pray that Obama doesn't get elected? Or follow the pattern with Supreme Court justices, and pray for death?

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

UPDATE (August 12, 2008): Focus on the Family has pulled the video from their site, claiming that it was all just a joke, as the Rocky Mountain News reports:

Focus on the Family Action pulled a video from its Web site today that asked people to pray for "rain of biblical proportions" during Barack Obama's Aug. 28 appearance at Invesco Field at Mile High to accept the Democratic nomination for president.

Stuart Shepard, director of digital media at Focus Action, the political arm of Focus on the Family, said the video he wrote and starred in was meant to be "mildly humorous."

But complaints from about a dozen Focus members convinced the organization to pull the video, said Tom Minnery, Focus Action vice president of public policy.

"If people took it seriously, we regret it," Minnery said Monday.

UPDATE (August 27, 2008): There was flooding at the Democratic National Convention--but it was flooding of the Fox skybox at the Pepsi Center when a sprinkler system went off for about five minutes, dumping 50 to 100 gallons of water per minute.

UPDATE (August 30, 2008): Obama's speech went off without a hitch, but it looks like Hurricane Gustav may cause a suspension of the Republican National Convention.

Is religion a response to disease?

Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill of the University of New Mexico have published a report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in which they hypothesize that patterns of behavior that promote exclusivity act as a response to disease transmission, including both religion and language. They looked at the average number of religions per country and how disease-ridden each country is, and found a positive correlation between number of parasitic diseases and number of religions. The number of religions per country studied ranged from 3 to 643, with an average of 31; the number of parasitic diseases ranged from 178 to 248, with an average of 200. They also found that people in countries with more religions and diseases were less mobile--they moved shorter differences--than countries with fewer religions and diseases.

Does this mean that religion is a response to disease, prompting people to keep to themselves and be less mobile, or does it mean that religion acts similarly to disease (prompting people to behave in that same way)?

(Via The Economist, August 2, 2008, p. 83.)

Nigerian university cults

There's an interesting article in the August 2, 2008 issue of The Economist about "Cults of violence" in Nigeria. Campus "cults" have arisen in Nigeria's university system that are something along the lines of a cross between a fraternity and a criminal gang. These "cults" have killed 115 students and teachers between 1993 and 2003, according to the Exam Ethics Project. The first such group, the Pyrates Confraternity, was founded by Wole Soyinka, a Nobel prizewinner in literature, in 1952 at the University of Ibadan. Subsequent groups had names like the Black Axe, the Vikings Confraternity, and the Klansmen Konfraternity. Members of these groups were originally elite students who have moved on to positions of authority in Nigeria. The groups charge membership fees, but members typically make the money back by performing actions for the group, such as acting on behalf of politicians connected to the group. Such actions of late have included harassment, violence, and murder. Rivers State University banned "cultism" in 2004, but since the groups are provided with cash and weapons by politicians, the ban has had little effect.

UPDATE (December 2, 2021): This article in The Record (November 24, 2021) is of relevance: Olatunji Olaigbe, "How the pandemic pulled Nigerian university students into cybercrime."

Bad coroner to be stopped from performing Mississippi autopsies

Mississippi coroner Steven Hayne, whose incompetent and dishonest work has been exposed in numerous articles by Radley Balko at The Agitator, will be cut off from future work--but only after he completes a backlog of 400-500 autopsies in the next 90 days. That's more than double the number of annual autopsies per year per coroner according to the National Association of Medical Examiners, and he's typically done 1,500 per year. The NAME says a coroner shouldn't do more than 250 a year, and will not certify any coroner who does over 350 a year.

Balko points out how inept and dishonest Mississippi's government and newspapers have been in dealing with Hayne.

Mississippi is not a state I ever want to visit, let alone live in.

UPDATE (September 7, 2008): Radley Balko has tracked down a file of complaints about Hayne going back to the early nineties which shows, among other things, that the government in Mississippi was well aware of what Hayne was doing, and used him because he gave them the results they wanted.

UPDATE (September 10, 2008): Balko has an update to his September 7 post that corrects a statement about Dr. Emily Ward, Mississippi's last official state medical examiner.

Lying NYPD cops

Via The Agitator, here's video from a Critical Mass event in New York City which compares what actually happened on the scene from multiple angles to what police officers wrote in their reports. I have no sympathy for people who violate traffic laws like running red lights (which happens near the beginning of the video) or behaving like five-year-olds (which happens near the end), but this video also shows people who are supposed to be public servants violating people's rights and lying to make arrests on false pretenses. Officers like Sgt. Timothy Horohoe need to be not just fired, but criminally prosecuted.

The video asserts that Joyce Lin (the aforementioned person acting like a five-year-old) was within her rights to not produce identification and walk away, but this may not be true depending on New York law. Nevada has a law that requires suspects to identify themselves in certain conditions, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada (542 U.S. 177, 2004). If New York has a similar law, Lin was required to identify herself.

UPDATE (December 17, 2008): A Critical Mass bicyclist knocked from his bike by an NYPD cop in a similar incident in July, caught on video and viewed over 1.8 million times on YouTube has been cleared, and the cop indicted, stripped of his badge and gun, and assigned to desk duty. The NYPD officer in that case was Patrick Pogan. Sometimes flagrant police abuses do get punished, but it's a pity they often have to be caught on video and seen widely for that to happen.

A deceptive mortgage refinance offer

I received a letter in the mail from Chase Bank offering me a fee waiver on a mortgage refinance to "lower [my] monthly payments," "to save interest," and to "Save up to $1,000 in waived fees."

The letter gives me two options for "a fixed-rate first mortgage tailored to fit [my] needs - and with a new low rate." Option one is a 20-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6.13% (6.26% APR) with a payment of principal and interest that is described as giving me "monthly payment savings" of $178 and "total annual savings" of $2,132. Option two is a 10-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.63% (5.80% APR) that is described as giving me "total interest savings" of $12,817.

There's just one problem with this. My current mortgage is a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 5.25%. I currently make extra principal payments every month so I am paying more than what my new monthly payment would be for option two of their refinance offer, the 10-year fixed-rate mortgage.

This means that both option one and option two are losers--neither will save me a cent. If I keep doing what I'm doing now, I'll have my mortgage paid off in nine years, paying less in interest and in total than in either option one or option two. By choosing option one I could choose to pay less per month without being penalized (except due to the higher interest rate), but I'd pay significantly more over the term of the loan--more than $50,000 more. By choosing option two, the "total interest savings" would only occur by comparison to my current loan if I were not making extra principal payments. But compared to what I'm actually doing, it again would cost a bit more (by a few thousand dollars), and I wouldn't have the flexibility of paying less in a given month if necessary that I have now with my current loan.

In short, Chase Bank has knowingly sent me an offer with two options that will cost me more money than my current loan, given how I am currently paying it off (and have been for as long as I've had the loan). But they've tried to describe them to me as though they will save me money, when they won't.

Don't accept one of these offers unless you either need to (e.g., it will give you lower monthly payments and you're struggling to make your current payments) or it will genuinely save you money in the long term (e.g., it has a lower interest rate that saves you more than any fees that may be rolled into the new loan).

CMI/AiG lawsuit update

Answers in Genesis (AiG) sent out a new letter to supporters dated July 23, 2008, and is distributing copies of court filings in the United States regarding their attempt to force Creation Ministries International (CMI) into arbitration and override the lawsuit CMI filed in Australia. An AiG supporter contacted me in email and sent me one of those documents, a motion that AiG filed in U.S. court arguing for arbitration (PDF). (Is there any significance to the fact that it is dated April 1, 2008?) He didn't sent me the other documents, which include CMI's reply to AiG's motion, AiG's response to CMI's reply, and CMI's argument filed with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office to oppose AiG's attempt to register "Answers in Genesis" as a trademark there. These documents are hosted at http://66.42.196.216:50050/arbitration.htm and each PDF has the password "john17"; my copy of the AiG motion PDF, linked above, has no password.

The AiG filing argues that CMI is the organization that has behaved unreasonably, that CMI has rebuffed attempts at reconciliation, and that Carl Wieland is the one who was trying to take over AiG internationally, not Ken Ham. It argues that the arbitration clauses in the agreement that CMI has issues with--the one signed in October 2005 by the Australian organization's directors who subsequently resigned en masse--are the key applicable clauses. They may have a good legal case, but their overall story seems to me to be at odds with a number of the facts set forth in CMI's detailed chronology of events (PDF). In that chronology, it was CMI that first attempted to argue for arbitration, while AiG ignored their attempts. CMI rejected the specific form and location of arbitration suggested by AiG, as that proposal required keeping the October 2005 agreement in place, when the content and manner in which that agreement was put into place is at the center of the dispute, and required that the arbitration occur in the U.S.

Perhaps most significantly, AiG reneged on the verbal agreement that was reached in Hawaii, saying in writing that it is "off the table." Instead, AiG says the parties agreed to return to Hawaii for another session if no written agreement was reached in a certain period of time--while ignoring the fact that it has made no attempt to reach such written agreement, suggesting that its verbal commitment was not genuine.

CMI has put up a new version of its web page of links to relevant documents, which includes the AiG July 23 letter from Don Landis and their response to it. Their main points of response to the Landis letter are to criticize it for omitting the following:

• AiG’s rejecting or ignoring every one of the straightforward models of Christian arbitration proposed
• That their wanting to have the organisation of their choice arbitrate was only after we had made it plain that if there were no settlement discussions, or Christian arbitration, we had no choice but to launch legal action due to our lawful (hence biblical, cf Romans 13) duties as directors (to have the legal snare their lawyers’ actions had placed around our ministry’s neck removed).
• That our early settlement proposals involved being ready to walk away, with them being allowed to keep the overwhelming bulk of what they had seized. We did not at that stage even request that they do the right thing as far as the magazine subscribers that were deceived in the US were concerned, we just assumed that in due course their consciences would make that happen — it has not happened.
• That by AiG-US seeking to force Christian arbitration to happen in the USA, rather than the countries we offered in the course of the matter (Australia, NZ, Hong Kong, Singapore) it is to their great legal and commercial advantage; including forcing us to spend a great deal more money, despite being the smaller ministry that has suffered the losses in all of this.
• That the jurisdiction their infamous entrapment documents mentions is the courts of Australia, yet they sought to block accountability in those courts and Australian Christian arbitration.
• That the alleged ‘agreement to arbitrate’ they rely upon has nothing to do with their unlawful actions in relation to the magazine.
• Even more importantly, that a settlement agreement was reached at a formal settlement meeting in August 2007, in Hawaii, between all the parties. Though Ken Ham did not appear, although we were told he would, the verbal agreement was reached with formal representatives of both organisations, was sealed with a handshake and a gentleman’s agreement to get it all down on paper urgently and end the matter — but AiG sought to subsequently shift the goalposts and in essence reneged on their commitment. And have since officially stated in writing that the Hawaii agreement is ‘off the table’.
• That they used false pretences to cause our trademark to lapse in Canada, so that theirs could get off the ground, allowing them to immediately use AiG-Canada — see next bullet point about the deceptive confusion this would cause.
• That at the Hawaii meeting, there was general understanding of the reason why the AiG trademark (we have owned that trademark in Australia all along) was important to our safety, which is why they agreed in Hawaii to not use it for several years here and in Canada, for instance. It is not because of wanting to stifle ministry, it is because they had already tried to demand that we hand it over, and had started a widely publicised attempt to get Australian supporters to enlist with them instead. We have NO problem with fair competition, but the law is there to protect against deceptive use of a mark. Our documentation shows how we were forced by AiG to change our name, and if they had then come into Australia or Canada under the old name, people would have been misled into thinking that this was us. I.e. this ministry spent many years building up a reputation under the name AiG. We have said all along that once sufficient time passes, it makes perfect sense to hand over the name rights to AiG, once people realize that these are two different organisations. The same is true for Canada — if we did not act to protect the organisation that used to be called AiG there, their frequently demonstrated desire to destroy that fledgling ministry would have meant that they could do it great harm.
• A major point is that they freely agreed in Hawaii to these temporary restraints on their use of the trademark in those countries.

There was supposed to be a court hearing in Australia yesterday, August 8--I haven't heard whether that occurred and, if it did, what happened, but I will report here when I do.

UPDATE (August 10, 2008): There are now 25 documents on the Answers in Genesis site, and passwords are no longer required for most documents. I've only begun reviewing the documents beyond the first five.

1. Court Order of August 8 (Granting AiG's petition to compel arbitration)


2. AiG’s memo in support of compelling arbitration
3. CMI’s response to AiG’s Motion
4. AiG’s reply to CMI’s response


5. CMI’s Australian lawsuit against AiG and Ken Ham
6. CMI’s Canadian legal opposition against AiG
   


7. Affidavit of John Thallon Thallon presents a case that Wieland wanted "democratic reform" that would give him more control of the overall organization and that the U.S. group was having issues with complaints from him, Gary Bates, and Jonathan Sarfati. This affidavit strikes me as an honest declaration of Thallon's perceptions of the controversy (though possibly with some self-deception) and is probably a good indication of how AiG-US sees its position. It doesn't comment on issues such as AiG-US's reneging on the verbal agreement in Hawaii, the specific terms of the October 2005 agreement, or the way in which AiG-US was deceptive about the continuing availability of the Australian group's publications to U.S. subscribers. There's a funny account of how Wieland became upset by AiG-US making changes to an Australian-authored article, changing the correctly spelled "toe the line" to the incorrect "tow the line." Thallon describes Wieland's reaction as unreasonable, but I'm sympathetic--it's very annoying when an editor introduces an error into an article, without checking with the author. Thallon claims in this affidavit that he was not pressured into signing the October 2005 agreement, but this is not consistent with the Briese report, which says that (a) "In the presence and hearing of the other Board directors and Paul Salmon, Thallon told Wieland the Board had no choice in the matter. If they didn't sign, he said, they faced a 'hostile separation' from AiG-USA. (The Board was firmly against a separation of the ministries.)" and (b) "Subsequently, Dr John Hartnett, an associate professor and volunteer speaker for CMI, telephoned Thallon to get answers for what had happened. Thallon said words to the following effect: 'We had no choice. If we didn't sign, Ken Ham would not have bought the next issue of the magazine.' (There were approximately 35,000 US subscribers to the magazine and the journal.)" (Thanks to Kevin Henke for identifying this contradiction.)
   
8. Affidavit of John E. Pence This affidavit, like the Thallon one, argues that Wieland was unhappy with Ham's leadership of AiG-US and was asking for changes in the organizational structure that the U.S. group did not want to make. I think this declaration makes a strong case that the U.S. and Australian groups needed to go their separate ways. I like the claim that Creation magazine was seen as becoming "too technical" for U.S. readers. Pence argues that the magazine distribution issue was caused by Wieland refusing to provide proofs until after the U.S. group purchased the next issue, and they refused to do so for fear that there was something in the magazine designed to "harvest" information from U.S. subscribers, which there was--but why would it be unreasonable for them to point U.S. readers to their new website if they wanted to renew subscriptions, since they rightly suspected the U.S. group was going to cut off distribution? In Wieland's response, he points out that he had relented and agreed to provide the proofs before payment was made. This declaration, unlike Looy's (below), enumerates specific statements by CMI that the author considers to be false and defamatory, such as that "AiG forced CMI to sign the MOA and DOCL, and that through such documents AiG took valuable property from CMI and attempted to take control over CMI" and that "AiG discontinued purchasing and distributing Creation magazine in bad faith and for purposes of harming CMI."
   
9. Exhibits 1-8
10. Exhibits 9-11
11. Exhibits 12-15
12. Exhibits 16-18 These exhibits include the report from the mediator in Hawaii, and letters from AiG and CMI's attorneys about the settlement and arbitration process. The impression I get is that CMI, more than AiG, was an obstacle to the settlement.
13. Exhibits 19-23 There are further documents here from AiG's U.S. attorney and from CMI's Australian attorney to AiG's Australian firm--again, these make CMI look like the bigger obstacle to settlement.
14. Affidavit of Mark Looy
    Looy accuses CMI of false and defamatory statements, but fails to identify even one such statement.
15. Affidavit of Walter Donald Landis Landis, chairman of the board of directors of AiG-US and lead pastor of Community Bible Church in Jackson, WY, speaks in generalities about the AiG/CMI disagreement, and makes accusations of falsehoods and defamation with little in the way of particulars to substantiate them. He says he wants to participate in any lawsuit, but due to health considerations (he had a heart bypass and prostate cancer, and has "severe anxiety concerning flying"), he can't travel to Australia. Landis' affidavit gives me the impression that he's a major ass.
    
16. Declaration of Kenneth Duncan MacDonald This declaration is from an Australian attorney who has served on multiple corporate boards as to the legitimacy of the October 2005 documents, the MOA and DOCL. He argues that, given the information he has and a few assumptions he enumerates, that these are validly executed documents.
    
17. Declaration of Simon Fisher Another Australian attorney and law professor, this one hired by CMI. He enumerates deficiencies in the MOA and DOCL, and argues that they result in making several provisions of the MOA unenforceable, and putting the status of the MOA as a whole in doubt. He argues that there were transfers from CMI to AiG in the agreement without remuneration and that the board did not appear to consider "the interests of its members as a whole when entering into the MOA and DOCL." He also responds to specific arguments of MacDonald.
    
18. Declaration of Carl Wieland This document contains point-by-point responses to the declarations of Thallon, Pence, Looy, and Landis. There's an error in paragraph 154 where it says "Don Landis Ham"--I believe it means Landis, not Ham.
    
19. Exhibit 1
20. Exhibit 2
21. Exhibit 3
22. Exhibit 4
23. Exhibit 5
24. Exhibit 6
25. Exhibit 7


26. CMI AiG dispute historical docs This document is a PDF of a PowerPoint presentation that has been given by AiG about the dispute, with a lot of emphasis on Carl Wieland's statements about and impressions of Ken Ham. The presentation seems to have the underlying assumption that Wieland's impressions of Ham couldn't possibly be accurate. It also has a slide that indicates that AiG-US was focused on biblical doctrine while the Australian group was focused on science (p. 32, compare to p. 30). An email shows Wieland chiding Ham for endorsing a book that makes arguments that was on their list of arguments that the groups recommended not be used (p. 36). This confirms my original impression of the schism that it partly involved this issue.
    

Members of Christian biker gang arrested on suspicion of attempted murder

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Long controversial for its aggressive evangelism aimed at those with a troubled past -- ex-convicts and drug addicts among them -- the Anaheim-based Christian motorcycle gang known as the Set Free Soldiers found itself in deeper trouble Wednesday when its leader and half a dozen members were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

The arrests, which followed a double stabbing in a brawl with the Hells Angels at a Newport Beach bar July 27, was the latest brush with the law for the group of black-leather-clad bikers, which has straddled the line between Christian outreach group and outlaw motorcycle gang.

I'll add this one to my response to Beliefnet commenter Houghton, who seem to think that we should be more concerned about P.Z. Myers-inspired atheist violence.

De-fact-o

A new peer-produced skeptical website, De-fact-o, has popped up to provide skeptical, fact-based evaluation of claims of history, politics, science, health, environment, religion, pop culture, conspiracy theories, questionable quotes, fake photos, and more. There's a page per claim, and the claim is rated true, false, mostly false, probably false, or unknown. The site is reminiscent of (and not yet as comprehensive as) Snopes.com, but I hope to see it grow substantially with member-produced content.

The articles I've checked out appear to be well-done. Those who register on the site can comment on articles, vote on their accuracy, and write new ones, but unlike Wikipedia, approval from the site owners is required before new articles get posted. All articles on the site are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). I would have preferred a Creative Commons license, myself, due to some oddities of the GFDL (see the Wikipedia article on the GFDL, which is where the term is linked to from this paragraph).

FFRF billboard update

The FFRF billboards are going to start earlier than planned, and unfortunately the first one will be up on August 18, when I'll be in Maryland.

Here's the new schedule:

Billboard #2501 Start Date: August 18 -- 19th Ave. and Fillmore
Billboard #2005 Start Date: August 25 -- Jefferson and 13th St.
Billboard #2911 Start Date: August 25 -- McDowell and 14th St.
Billboard #1103 Start Date: September 1 -- 3rd Ave. and Van Buren
Billboard #1245 Start Date: September 8 -- 7th St. and Coolidge

Each billboard will be up for one month, so the billboards will be up from August 18 to October 8 instead of from September 1-October 1.

(Previously.)