Obama odds and ends

Obama's inauguration speech was censored in China. They didn't like these two sentences:

"Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions." The words "and communism" were removed from the Chinese translation by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history." That whole sentence was removed from the Chinese translation.

Rick Warren's invocation speech was the low point in the career of a U.S. Army officer who gave in to pressure to conform when his commanding officer expected everyone to applaud, saying "God Bless him for having the courage to pray for all of the lost souls in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ!"

On Obama's first day in office, he issued executive orders to suspend military commissions for 120 days, close Guantanamo Bay in the next year, require all government agency interrogations to comply with the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation, freeze salaries for the 100 top executive branch officials, reverse George W. Bush's executive order allowing former presidents and their relatives to keep presidential materials out of the National Archives beyond the 12-year statutory limit, close all CIA secret prisons, and call for a review of all U.S. government detention procedures.

The Obameter is tracking Obama's campaign promises. So far he's kept five, compromised on one, stalled on one, taken no action on 488, and broken none. He will need to delay, if not break, some of his spending promises...

UPDATE (February 17, 2009): So far, it appears that Obama has no intention of keeping his promise to post all bills to the web for five days of public comment prior to signing them. He's broken that promise repeatedly already.

Petwalk donations plea!

This Sunday, January 25th is the first annual Petwalk. Fred and I are participating and need your help in the form of a donation. Sure the economy looks bad right now, but if you can spare just $5 for a great cause, I'd really appreciate it. To learn more, please visit my donation page.

NY conference on the religious-secular divide

A conference on "The Religious-Secular Divide: The U.S. Case" will be held on March 5-6, 2009 at The New School in New York City. The conference will:

explore the tension between religion and secularity in the United States, which is long-standing, widespread, and increasingly intense. This is evident in contemporary debates over such issues as evolution and intelligent design, the importance of religion in political decision-making, and in spiritual or faith-based philanthropy. These issues will be addressed from the perspectives of religious studies, legal studies, political science, sociology, and philosophy. Charles Taylor will deliver the keynote address on March 5th at 6:00pm.

The conference website may be found here. The current speaker list is:

Richard J. Bernstein
Jose Casanova
David L. Chappell
William E. Connolly
James Davison Hunter
Daniel Dennett
Noah Feldman
Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad
Susan F. Harding
George Kateb
Mark Lilla
David Martin
Michael W. McConnell
James A. Morone
John T. Noonan, Jr.
Ann Pellegrini
Winnifred Sullivan
Charles Taylor
Peter van der Veer

Big Brother, meet Little Sis

The Sunlight Foundation, promoting transparency in government, has issued an invitation to check out the beta of Little Sis, a wiki described as "an involuntary Facebook of powerful Americans," created by the Public Accountability Initiative.

You can sign up for an account to edit the wiki at http://www.littlesis.org/join, or just check out the site at http://www.littlesis.org.

What Does It Take for a Police Officer to Get Fired?

Radley Balko, guest-blogging at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, describes three police officers, asking whether each has engaged in egregious enough conduct to be fired:

One,

Shoving a 71-year-old Walmart greeter to the ground and, when another customer came to assist, shoving that customer through a glass door?

Two,

How about three DWI incidents within a one-year span, including one in which the officer ran a roadblock, then had to be tasered, pepper-sprayed, and wrestled to the ground; another in which he hit another car, then left the scene of the accident; and another in which he fell asleep in his cruiser in front of a school, while in drive, with his foot resting on the brake?

Three,

How about an officer with an otherwise stellar record, who has a reputation in the department for honesty, but who became an outspoken critic of the war on drugs, and on one occasion declined to arrest a man after finding a single marijuana plant growing outside the man's home?

Can you guess which of these officers lost their jobs for the described conduct? Read Balko's post to find out.

ApostAZ podcast #12

The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available:

Episode 012 Atheism and Nonsense-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! Solstice Party Wrap Up, January Events, UK Atheist Bus, Papua New Guinea Witch Burning... In This Century! Yeah! Jeremy's Funeral Proselytization, REBT: Unconditional Other Acceptance.

Comments:

The "penis panics" (also known as "koro" or "genital retraction syndrome") are typically in Nigeria, Ghana, and Benin, but have also appeared in parts of Asia such as China and Singapore.

Jeremy's funeral proselytization story is unfortunate. I've attended a few too many funeral services of late (six so far this century), of which four have been religious and two have been completely secular. All of the religious ones had a tone to them that occasionally seemed to assume that everyone present was Christian, but none had a hellfire component or a call to Jesus that I remember--they were focused on remembering the person who was gone and addressing the loss of the people present. I have heard of churches that emphasize the hellfire component, and in 2003 a priest at the funeral service of Ben Martinez in Chama, NM, said that the deceased was a lukewarm Catholic who now burns in hell. The family filed a lawsuit over it.

Shannon and Noel, congratulations on your engagement!

Re: Jeremy's godfather story--you should say sure, you'll be happy to tell the kid all about their faith, thinking to yourself, "including that most of what you believe is not true."

Job creation by president

The creation of jobs in the economy is neither the president's responsibility nor within his power to do anything other than influence through policy, but it's still interesting to look at the record of job creation under the last eleven presidents (Truman to Bush Jr.), as presented at Barry Ritholtz's blog (from the Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics):

Welcome, Pharyngulites!

The photo P.Z. linked here with was taken in Phoenix, Arizona in February 1999, near the intersection of 19th Ave. and Campbell. The post at this blog which links to it is this one.

While you're here, here's an index of some of my better posts.

Utah Sen. Chris Buttars' Mormon Gulag

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out an account of a 15-year-old kidnapped from his grandmother's house at the request of his parents, and taken to the Utah Boys Ranch, then run by Utah Senator Chris Buttars. Apparently the mind-control treatment didn't take, and he started the Utah Boys Ranch Network to expose the abuse.

CC-licensed NIN album is Amazon's #1 MP3 seller for 2008

The record labels and the RIAA have insisted that peer-to-peer filesharing is cannibalizing the music industry and that aggressive lawsuits and copy protection are necessary to protect the industry. But Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I-IV under a Creative Commons license which allowed free redistribution from its initial release, while also selling it in MP3 format from its website and via Amazon.com, with no copy protection. The result--it's the #1 selling MP3 album on Amazon.com for 2008 and generated $1.6 million in revenue for the band in its first week, with no cut to a record label.

Looks like record labels are now superfluous for established artists, who no longer need to see their revenue cannibalized by middlemen.