Link-dump in progess! Here are a bunch of things I’ve seen posted around the web over the last week or so that don’t really tie together in any particular way but are too worthwhile to miss. Take notes, you will be quizzed on this material later.
1. Former Dateline reporter John Hockenberry has left NBC and joined the MIT Media Lab as a professor. He has written this article for MIT’s Technology Review about his disillusionment with the content biases in the major news operations. Every place I’ve seen it linked, it has been described as “scathing”, but it also needs to be described as “disheartening” and, sadly, as “unsurprising”.
2. Science fiction writer and all-around genius guy Bruce Sterling gave his annual “State Of The World” Q&A on the community site “The Well” this week. Just the introductory post by forum moderator Jon Lebkowsky would be worth reading on its own for its summation of the “state of the world”, but Sterling has a lot to say about terrorism, the collapse of nation-states, the impending ecological holocaust, and a couple of other interesting tangents. The dialogue is not over — people are still posting questions and he is still responding — but what’s been posted already is excellent reading.
3. This just about made me blow a gasket yesterday: a judge in New Jersey has ordered an atheist couple to relinquish custody of their adopted daughter because they do not believe in God. His reasoning is that they are depriving the baby from “…the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience.” The couple and the ACLU have appealed the decision to the New Jersey Supreme Court. Very honestly, I am chilled to the bone by the title of the article — “Can Atheists Be Parents?” — let alone the actual court ruling. Has the Christian Right’s goal of turning this country into a theocratic authoritarian state succeeded to the extent that I need to fear that my child might be taken from me by an overzealous judge because my personal beliefs do not match someone’s prescribed belief in God?
4. Shamed by the news reports of the video of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, the Pakistan government has backed off their earlier story about the cause of her death, but now there is the report that Bhutto had an appointment later that same day with Senator Patrick Leahy and Congressman Patrick Kennedy where she planned to deliver to them a copy of a report showing that the Musharraf government has been funneling American aid intended for “fighting terrorism” into efforts to rig the now-postponed January 8 election. In other words, she may have been about to give the American politicians the very smoking gun that killed her.
5. I think we’ve pretty clearly established the degree to which TSA airport security measures are nothing more than “security theater”, but just in case you still had any doubts, they should be wiped away once and for all by this blog post by Patrick Smith in last week’s NYT “Jetlagged”. Smith is a former airline pilot who also writes the “Ask The Pilot” column at Salon, and has plenty of first-hand experience with the “follies” of airport security.
It seems to me that the only job an atheist shouldn’t be qualified to hold is that of clergy. This judge is totally off base and we need to all be worried about such a precedent…not only for atheists, but anybody not Christian rightest.
I so want to print that Jetlagged article and hand it out at the airport.
AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!
Turns out that the Time article I was so incensed about is from 1970!! It’s been all over the web, but people are just noticing that the story is from the archives…you have to look pretty closely to see the dateline.
I guess I can put my pitchfork away for the moment. I’ll be more careful checking the dates on news links from now on.