– If the Bible is so full of divine knowledge, provided by an omnipotent God who knew many things of which his desert nomad scribes couldn’t possibly have been aware, why doesn’t it contain any superior medical advice?

– I agree with just about everything in this Cracked article on interpersonal conflict, except the presumption that such problems are insuperable. If we learn more about ourselves, we can beat all of this.

– “We cannot excuse this as a cultural tradition.” Hillary Clinton talking sense on female genital mutilation. Nice to see that particular excuse being prominently dismissed so unambiguously. Would be nicer still if male circumcision / genital mutilation were included also.

The latest post in one explanatory series focuses on “body ownership”, and while I’m still not finding the approach of this particular series entirely satisfactory, it’s inspired what might be an interesting thought experiment.

Let’s assume that you’re like the majority of people I interact with online: not an anti-natalist, but in favour of a woman’s rights to choose what to do with her own body as far as reproductive health goes. If she wants to terminate a pregnancy in the early stages of development, she should be allowed to do so safely and legally. If she wants to have the baby, it will be legally her child, assuming she doesn’t display a serious dereliction of parental duties. While carrying an infant to term, there should be some legal restrictions on the activities she’s allowed to engage in, such as using drugs, for the sake of the baby’s welfare.

Most of the controversy in all this tends to surround the abortion side of things. On the other hand, a woman wanting to become a mother is usually seen as positively admirable.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical woman called Linda. She’s healthy and financially comfortable, and she and her husband want to have a child together. Millions of children are born in the US every year; however you might feel about the suitability of some of these parents to the task of raising a new child, Linda and her husband are as uncomplicated and controversy-free as possible. They’re in an excellent position to be great parents.

But Linda’s hypothetical world is a slightly different world than ours. In Linda’s world, scientists have learned something about fetal development in the womb (which doesn’t apply in our world). From the stage when Linda’s baby starts developing a brain and central nervous system, and for the rest of the pregnancy, it will be in extreme pain. As its consciousness starts to appear, the first sensations it experiences will be of constant anguish and torment, which will continue unabated for several months.

This happens to all babies. Pregnancy is an agonising experience, until the point of birth, and this can only be prevented by terminating the pregnancy before the fetus reaches that stage of development. There are no long-term effects from this pain, no trauma that causes any suffering later in life. But every unborn child will begin existence by experiencing several months of torture.

Is it morally acceptable for Linda to deliberately try to become pregnant, and purposefully put an infant through this pain?

In fact, let’s say it’s even worse. Let’s say that Linda’s baby will be in the same unceasing pain for the entire first year of its life, as well. It won’t be able to express its suffering usefully; it’ll just cry and flail a lot, like most babies do, and regularly wear itself out and fall asleep. Again, the pain stops after about a year, and there’s never any trauma or suffering later in life associated with these experiences in infancy. But we know that this is what unavoidably happens to every child that’s born.

Here’s my point: In Linda’s world, taking the same attitude to motherhood that we do in our world would be actively immoral.

To create new consciousnesses as cavalierly as we do here, knowing what will happen to them, is morally unconscionable in Linda’s world.

To have the option of artificially preventing fertilisation, or terminating the embryo’s chance of developing into a conscious being that will experience months and months of excruciating pain, but to refuse to do so, is something for which you’d need a seriously convincing justification.

Perhaps it’d be part of some regulated scheme to keep the human species alive while doing everything we can to minimise this pain. There’s perhaps an interesting set of questions to explore there too, which I’m not going to get into too deeply right now. But I think it’s clear that “I just really want a baby, I think it’d bring me and my partner closer together, plus they’re so cute, and anyway we got drunk and couldn’t find the condoms” isn’t going to cut it any more.

In that world, there’d be a seriously strong case that pregnancies should not generally be permitted to reach such a stage of development.

Sexual and reproductive health there would probably go in a very different direction than it has here. But it’s conceivable that it would reach a point where enforcing mandatory abortions, in the cases of a high proportion of pregnancies, becomes the least evil option.

Are you still with me?

If you think I’ve already parted ways with reasonable ethics, common sense, or basic decency, I’d love to hear what mistakes you think I’ve made in the comments below. I think that, in this imaginary scenario, the conclusions I’ve drawn are tragic, but valid.

And if you agree, then you’re at least playing in the anti-natalists’ ball-park. You might not be on the same side, but you’ve stipulated to one of their primary ideas: that the potential future suffering of a conscious being may morally necessitate us to terminate its existence, for the sake of its own well-being, before it has a chance to experience said suffering.

In Linda’s world, this moral obligation seems unavoidable. What about ours?

– We know he was good at maths, cryptography, and being hounded to suicide for his sexuality, but Alan Turing also knew a thing or two about tigers.

– Amidst all this fuss about the hugely unpopular NHS reforms being pushed through by the Tories, it’s worth taking a moment to remember some of the other things David Cameron is wrong about.

– Some drivers say that this sign is “too complicated”.

The internet’s already kicked up a very effective fuss over this while I’ve still been gathering links and trying to put together some thoughts.

So.

First of all, read this by sturdyAlex, because it’s completely brilliant.

Then follow the Boycott Workfare blog, and read posts like this one and this one.

The Guardian has been reporting on how unfair this scheme is, and also how it affects disabled people.

The New Journalist looks at a speech in which Iain Duncan Smith totally abandoned any remaining vestiges of credibility he might have been able to lay claim to.

The Third Estate looks at the context in which workfare exists: minimum wage, benefits, prison work, apprenticeships, and so on.

I endorse the sentiments contained in the articles linked to above. If you’ve read through it all and got as angry as I have, you might want to sign this petition.

– Recession for the majority, boom time for those at the top.

– An open letter to Channel 4 about its Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, from someone who ought to know.

– Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the tabloids…

Anyway, this is a brief post about the “slippery slope” argument as applied to gay marriage.

Martin Robbins is getting frustrated at the persistence with which many campaigners are seeking to Keep Marriage Heteronormative. He dismantles the various anti-equality arguments well enough, but that shouldn’t really even be a challenge for any thinking person these days.

Still, however many times all this needs to be repeated, there’s no forcing anybody to accept it, and there might be no escape from the futile waste of time that seems to present itself as the only solution: Wait until the generation of people who come stubbornly pre-opposed to the idea die off, and society is primarily comprised of those who’ve grown up amid this conversation and who can easily tell which, generally speaking, is the side that makes sense.

There’s just one thing that comes up in Martin’s piece which I want to comment on. One question being asked by the Coalition for Marriage is:

If marriage is redefined once, what is to stop it being redefined to allow polygamy?

The same answer can be given here as with any question that takes this form.

The thing that will stop us from redefining marriage to allow polygamy, if anything, is simply this: a good reason why we shouldn’t redefine marriage to allow polygamy. Are there any of those? Well, maybe. Martin suggests not, and I’m inclined to agree, but that’s for a discussion about polygamy to decide. Right now we’re talking about gay marriage. So, are there any good reasons why we shouldn’t redefine marriage to allow same-sex partnerships? We’re still waiting.

If we do terrible thing A, what’s to prevent us from doing terrible thing B later?

Rational arguments against terrible thing B that simply don’t apply in the case of terrible thing A. That’s what.

And now it’s kinda no longer topical, and I’m not really inclined to pull together a post on it myself, and I don’t think I have all that much interesting to say. So I’m delegating my views to some people who’ve already talked about this at quite ample length.

Here are some sensible people, in no particular order, who have written worthwhile things about Baroness Warsi in the past week or so:

The British Humanist Association
Nelson Jones
The New Journalist
Mark Steel
Crispian Jago
Newsthump
Crispian Jago again

I encourage you to read them in full, and I generally endorse the sentiments contained therein.

There. Done. It’s a piece of piss, this blogging lark.

– I see rich people… They don’t know they’re rich. John Scalzi on characteristically fine form.

– Nick Cohen’s worth reading on militant secularists.

– Many attitudes to disabled and poor people are shocking, and being exacerbated by a lot of media coverage and government policies.

Were you cheering for Big Brother’s totalitarian regime of constant surveillance the whole time?

No? You mean you read it as some kind of satirical warning of the dangers of allowing the government too much power to monitor its citizens’ private affairs?

Better stay out of Canada then, you paedo.

Yes, that’s seriously how Canada’s Minister of Public Safety seems to think. There’s a new law being proposed, which seems likely to go ahead. What would this law do?

Internet service providers and cellphone companies must hand over basic subscriber information of customers to law enforcement agencies.

…

In addition to a name, address, phone number and email address, companies would also be required to hand over the Internet protocol address and a series of device identification numbers, allowing police to build a detailed profile on a person using their digital footprint and to facilitate the tracking of a person’s movement through the location of their cellphone.

The police won’t have to get a warrant to find out all this stuff. They won’t need to even suspect you of anything, or provide reasonable grounds for suspicion at any later point, or let you know they’re demanding this information about you.

They just want to change the default state, to one in which they get to snoop through the stuff you assume is private, because they’re called the government.

And if you’re not okay with it, well, you’re on the same side as child pornographers.

If the people running the country really can’t think of any reason why someone might be opposed to giving the government even more power over its people, other than the desire to stand shoulder to shoulder with those dealing in child porn, then Canada’s in real trouble.

As an argument, it’s up there with “You know who else liked breathing oxygen? HITLER.”

(h/t BoingBoing)

They were arrested, not charged with a crime, and allegedly physically injured by the officers making the arrest.

Then this conversation was caught on tape:

“Well, you’re going to jail for robbery that’s all,” the officer said.

“For robbery?” Franklin asked.

“Yeah, I’m gonna make stuff up,” the officer responded.

So, that really doesn’t look great.

Still, in the rare cases of a bad apple like this abusing their power, there’s a system of checks and balances in place to make sure they don’t get away with it, and that this kind of authority is only handed out to those who’ll use it wisely and compassionately, right?

Seattle Police Sergeant Sean Whitcomb told KOMO 4 News that the comment was inappropriate, but that the department’s [sic] had investigated the complaint and exonerated the officer.

(h/t Ed Brayton)

Wow.

I’m going to quote myself from a post last year, on the subject of the police.

First:

There are numerous law enforcement officials who do an almost superhuman job on a day-to-day basis, tolerating obnoxious and/or intoxicated troublemakers with saintly patience, and risking serious harm in trying to stop violent and dangerous people from making the world a worse place. I could not do the thankless work that they do, and I hugely admire the level-headed and responsible reactions that so many of them regularly exhibit, when faced with so much vitriol and disrespect. They all deserve to be respected, because every other human deserves to be respected. I fully support police officers being remunerated handsomely, in return for having to put up with a certain amount of bullshit, such as the constant “fuck the police” attitude that some people maintain.

Secondly:

FUCK THE POLICE.

Human beings always deserve civility and respect as a first resort, a priori. Authority does not. Extending it the same courtesy is dangerous, and this story is a perfect example as to why.