Month: January 2010

Cape Times and Argus – holocaust denialists?

Taryn Hodgson – who you’ve read about previously, when she impersonated the typical student by a) writing a letter to the UCT student newspaper, and b) making little sense, is at it again. This time she focuses on (b) exclusively, and swaps her fake student hat out for the one worn in her capacity as the international co-ordinator of the Christian Action Network (CAN). Her current concern relates to the evil tolerated by the South African press:

In what appears to be a case of censorship by the press, The Cape Times and Argus have again refused to place an obituary notice (for aborted babies),” said Christian Action Network (CAN) international co-ordinator Taryn Hodgson in a statement.

The newspapers had refused to publish the advertisement in their classified “Deaths” and “Personal” sections, Hodgson said.

“Freedom of speech seems to be undermined when newspaper editors censor obituary notices and refuse to give appropriate media coverage to the hidden holocaust of 900 000 South African babies killed by abortion,” she said.

Without wanting to get into anything pesky like “science” – which would involve Taryn accommodating irritating details like EEG’s only showing brain activity around 30 weeks, therefore making the claim that “babies” are being killed rather unsustainable – Taryn’s arguments are again rather peculiar. The quite reasonable explanation provided by Independent Newspapers editor-in-chief Chris Whitfield (who said that it would be “inappropriate to publish the anti-abortion obituary in the “Deaths” section”, as “such advertisements would violate the ‘sensibilities for people who use the columns to commemorate loved ones'”) was dismissed as “hypocritical” by Taryn on the grounds that the newspapers’ classified sections “often contain legitimately offensive material such as strip joint advertisements”.

So, as our arbiter of what is “legitimately” offensive, Taryn wants us to believe that a) it’s morally incontrovertible that strip joints are offensive, and that b) it’s perfectly acceptable for my obituary for a dead mother, brother, wife, etc., who I didn’t want to die, and who I probably miss, should appear alongside an obituary (or obituaries) for 900 000 zygotes, blastocysts and foetuses, who may at some point have developed into babies that the parents presumably did not want to live? That seems rather offensive to me – or at least it would if my spouse’s obituary were published on the same day. And the lack of sensitivity displayed by CAN is amplified by the fact that their freedom to have their viewpoint heard is undeniable: they were welcome to publish their ode to lost (and fictional) souls in other sections of the newspaper, and they live in a country where their mystic mumbo-jumbo is fully tolerated, and even encouraged by our political leaders.

And even on her own standards, there’s a final peculiarity: Taryn will be leading a march to Parliament on February 1 in protest against the “thousands of babies, killed by abortion, who have never had a funeral”. Is she not aware that there are plenty of other babies (real and fake) killed by TB and AIDS (etc.) who die without funerals? Can we take her seriously until she insists on publishing obituaries for them, too – or are they less important for the purposes of this tasteless PR stunt in the service of Jesus?

Help is at hand

Yes, life is sometimes somewhat perplexing. Who to trust, what to read, and “what the hell did she mean by that?”. And that’s just to mention a few of the problems humans have had to face ever since we figured out how to communicate. But now, the stakes are higher, what with Google making us stupid (or, stupid making us Google), and the information overload generally taxing our attention-deficit disorders.

We’ve all received those emails where it’s not quite clear whether the sender is joking, or perhaps laying on some not-so-obvious sarcasm. One of the things readers have to do in these instances is some interpretive work, where you try to balance what you know about the person, and your history of correspondence with them, in order to determine the implicit meaning of a sentence or letter. This activity is most likely beneficial to us in some respects, as we practice our interpretive skills, and perhaps learn a little about psychology along the way.

And viewed from the perspective of the sender, conveying subtleties in the absence of face-to-face communication is also sometimes a challenging task – and one that we become better at through exercising the skills in question. For some, though, both the reading and the writing tasks described above are simply too much effort. Would it not be just great if you can dispense with the whole bother of trying to craft a sentence, and provide the reader with some completely unambiguous clue as to how to interpret your utterance?

SarcMarkYes it would, say Sarcasm, Inc. – the inventors of the SarcMark – who also tell us that the this symbol (denoting sarcasm) “makes punctuation cool again”, and also claim that by using the new SarcMark, “you’ll never be misunderstood again”. How cool is that? As pointed out by The Guardian:

The real breakthrough of Sarcasm, Inc is the realisation that, despite having used sarcasm and irony in the written word for hundreds of years, humans are simply too stupid to consistently recognise when someone has said the opposite of what they mean. The SarcMark solves that problem … Our prayers are answered.

This must surely be the dawning of a new and exciting era in communication. With the SarcMark as precedent, we will no doubt discover all sorts of ways in which we could be more efficient at communication. If you’re angry, or sad, or disappointed, you’ll be able to say exactly that with some clever punctuation mark – perhaps in increasing size depending on the depth of your feelings.

Gizmodo really said it all with the title of their article responding to this innovation:

SarcMark: For when you’re not smart enough to express sarcasm online.

Killing gays may not be helpful

As reported in a previous post, Uganda is currently considering a bill that would impose the death penalty or life sentences on homosexuals. Furthermore, the proposed bill criminalises those who do not report a suspected gay person within 24 hours, and will most likely also have the effect of dissuading health care professionals in Uganda from assisting anyone who is gay – as well as dissuading gay people from seeking treatment, seeing as outing yourself as gay could land you in jail.  It’s worth reading this story on NPR to see the extent to which American Evangelical Christians are prepared to foment hatred and prejudice in order to buttress their support bases in the 3rd World – after all, surely all those folk in Africa will one day be able to afford to buy their sermons on DVD?

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Skeptical of the skeptics

Groucho Marx (borrowing from Freud, as Woody Allen reminded us in Annie Hall) famously said “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member” – and while the point of the joke is most likely self-deprecation, it also reminds us that we sometimes need to be skeptical about the clubs we join – and the clubs we form.

Last night, Skeptics in the Pub (Cape Town) had their second meeting. I missed the first one while traveling, so was keen to meet up with the group and see what I’d missed out on in December. It turned out to be an interesting evening, although perhaps not for reasons any of the other attendees would appreciate hearing about, and made me wonder more than once whether it was the sort of gathering you could (perhaps should) go to once in your life, but never again – because each iteration of these gatherings feels just like the previous one. Every so often, a person, or a person and a few friends, decide that they should form some society or other, recruit people to their cause, and go out and change the world (or manageable little bits of it, at least).

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