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Weiye Loh

Censoring Sex Education - 3 views

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1002815/1/.html International guidelines on sex education reignite debate By Ong Dailin, TODAY | Posted: 04 September 2009 071...

Sex Education

started by Weiye Loh on 04 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
kenneth yang

CYBER TROOPERS MAKE ARREST FOR SEXUAL SOLICITATION OF A MINOR - 8 views

BALTIMORE, Aug. 12 -- The Maryland State Police issued the following news release: A man who had been making online plans to allegedly have sex with someone he thought was a 13-year old girl, had h...

started by kenneth yang on 18 Aug 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

POrn is Good! - 20 views

"Also, I do not believe that people are born knowing how to engage in sexual activity. " From a Socratic perspective, knowledge is inherent in us. You just need to ask the right question at the ri...

pornography

started by Chen Guo Lim on 01 Sep 09 4 follow-ups, last by Weiye Loh on 03 Sep 09
Weiye Loh

Online "Toon porn" - 20 views

I must correct that never in my arguments did I mentioned that the interpreter is the problem. I was merely answering YZ's question if cartoon characters can be deemed as representative of human be...

online cartoon anime pornography ethics

started by Ang Yao Zong on 01 Sep 09 5 follow-ups, last by Weiye Loh on 02 Sep 09
Weiye Loh

Management of gays revisited, part 1 « Yawning Bread on Wordpress - 0 views

yawningbread.wordpress.com/...ement-of-gays-revisited-part-1

Law Sexuality

shared by Weiye Loh on 23 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Michael Hor noted that despite the vocal attempts to demonise gay people and paint homosexual orientation as injurious (including by some members of the ruling party) the government did not subscribe to such reasoning. Yet the government chose to keep the law.
  • The “key speech arguing for the retention of 377A” that Hor refers to was that made by Thio. Hor then goes on to discover that the government’s decision was bi-layered. The surface justification, going by the prime minister’s words, was that it would be symbolic — a “signpost of heterosexual orthodoxy”. Hor next asks what the motivation might be for wanting such a symbol. He examines the possibility that it could be to steer people towards heterosexual orientation, yet the government itself, from its own words, does not believe so.
  • As was well-known, the anti-gay movement was religiously inspired. The government however was neither dictated nor swayed by them, Hor said. In fact, the government “roundly rejected” the movement’s essential beliefs. Still, it appears that the government did not want to annoy them any further by leaving them empty-handed. That motivation alone made the government decide to retain 377A.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • But, Hor points out, Page 340: to give legislative effect to a norm which stems almost exclusively from Christian or Muslim beliefs does appear to be a curiously misguided decision. Take the example of the prohibition against eating pork — certainly a tenet of Islam and Judaism. No one would even suggest that we enact a law banning the consumption of pork in Singapore, even for Muslims, no matter how strongly these two religious communities feel about it.
  • With reference to the constitutional guarantee of equality before the law, Hor explains that this provision requires that, Page 340: law must not be “arbitrary”; there must be a “rational nexus” or “reasonable classification” between what the law targets and the purpose for which it is laid down.
  • Laws must be tested for “fit” and “weight”, he said. With respect to the former, the question is whether the classification of the target persons affected by the law fits the intended purpose of the law. As for “weight”, the question is whether whatever the problem the law purports to deal with is real and serious enough to justify the intervention of criminal sanction. Or is it mostly capricious?
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 23 Sep 10
       
      The weight of the law has to do with the probability that Foucault mentioned. 
  • decision to retain 377A is gravely problematic on both fronts. It does not fit very well at all. . . . If, as we have seen, the legislature was acting in some manner on the antipathy of certain segments of society towards homosexual activity, then the non-inclusion of women in 377A is a very huge omission indeed — more than half our population and presumably half of all homosexual activity.  It would be akin to subjecting half all our cars to a certain speed limit rule based on the colour of the car.
  • The element of “weight” is no less shaky. Can the sole purpose of accommodation of sectarian sensibilities ever be weighty enough to justify the criminalization of private sexual conduct between consenting adults? If the answer is “yes”, then it is hard to imagine for what earthly purpose the equal protection clause was written into the Constitution for. It is not the case that the Legislature has made a judgment that 377A activity is sufficiently harmful to society to attract criminal sanctions. . . the speech of PM Lee shows a clear belief that it is not so harmful — but 377A was to remain for, apparently, the sole purpose of appeasing those who disapprove.
  • It is not difficult to see that if the desire to accommodate a disapproving segment of society is reason enough, that would result in the evisceration of equal protection. . . Equal protection is about protection against prejudice, and if the government does not buy into the substantive arguments (of those who disapprove) for criminalization, then those putative reasons become, as far as the government is concerned, prejudice.
  • Weiye Loh on 23 Sep 10
     
    In Chapter 19 of a new book Management of Success, Singapore revisited, National University of Singapore law professor Michael Hor makes a strong argument that Section 377A of the Penal Code is unconstitutional. This is the law that makes it an offence for men to have sexual relations with each other, effectively criminalising male homosexuality.
Inosha Wickrama

ethical porn? - 50 views

I've seen that video recently. Anyway, some points i need to make. 1. different countries have different ages of consent. Does that mean children mature faster in some countries and not in other...

pornography

started by lee weiting on 30 Aug 09 9 follow-ups, last by Inosha Wickrama on 04 Sep 09
Weiye Loh

The School Issue - Junior High - Coming Out in Middle School - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...27out-t.html

Identity sexuality fluidity

shared by Weiye Loh on 07 Oct 09 - Cached
  • All of this fluidity, confusion and experimentation can be understandably disorienting for parents and educators. Is an eighth grader who says he’s gay just experimenting? Could he change his mind in a week, as 13-year-olds routinely do with other identities — skater, prep, goth, jock — they try on for a while and then shed for another? And if sexuality is so fluid, should he really box himself in with a gay identity? Many parents told me they especially struggled with that last question.
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 07 Oct 09
       
      Could this fluidity be a methodology for survival? A play of signs and seduction? In what way could it be informed by the new media? I am reminded of Peter Steiner's dog-on-internet comic.
  • A year earlier they asked Austin if he was gay after they discovered his call to a gay chat line. He promised them that he was straight, and he promised himself that he would cover his tracks better. It’s not uncommon for gay youth to have their same-sex attraction discovered thanks to a rogue number on a phone bill or, more often these days, a poorly concealed Internet search history. “We see a lot of kids get outed by porn on the computer,” Tim Gillean told me in Tulsa. “I knew one kid who told his mom: ‘I don’t know how that got there. Maybe it was dad!’ ”
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 07 Oct 09
       
      Issue of privacy and surveillance made possible by technology.
Weiye Loh

Titans of science: David Attenborough meets Richard Dawkins | Science | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...d-attenborough-richard-dawkins

Science

shared by Weiye Loh on 11 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • What is the one bit of science from your field that you think everyone should know?David Attenborough: The unity of life.Richard Dawkins: The unity of life that comes about through evolution, since we're all descended from a single common ancestor. It's almost too good to be true, that on one planet this extraordinary complexity of life should have come about by what is pretty much an intelligible process. And we're the only species capable of understanding it.
  • RD: I know you're working on a programme about Cambrian and pre-Cambrian fossils, David. A lot of people might think, "These are very old animals, at the beginning of evolution; they weren't very good at what they did." I suspect that isn't the case?DA: They were just as good, but as generalists, most were ousted from the competition.RD: So it probably is true there's a progressive element to evolution in the short term but not in the long term – that when a lineage branches out, it gets better for about five million years but not 500 million years. You wouldn't see progressive improvement over that kind of time scale.DA: No, things get more and more specialised. Not necessarily better.RD: The "camera" eyes of any modern animal would be better than what had come before.DA: Certainly... but they don't elaborate beyond function. When I listen to a soprano sing a Handel aria with an astonishing coloratura from that particular larynx, I say to myself, there has to be a biological reason that was useful at some stage. The larynx of a human being did not evolve without having some function. And the only function I can see is sexual attraction.RD: Sexual selection is important and probably underrated.DA: What I like to think is that if I think the male bird of paradise is beautiful, my appreciation of it is precisely the same as a female bird of paradise.
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 11 Sep 10
       
      Is survivability really all about sex and reproduction of future generation? 
  • People say Richard Feynman had one of these extraordinary minds that could grapple with ideas of which I have no concept. And you hear all the ancillary bits – like he was a good bongo player – that make him human. So I admire this man who could not only deal with string theory but also play the bongos. But he is beyond me. I have no idea what he was talking of.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • RD: There does seem to be a sense in which physics has gone beyond what human intuition can understand. We shouldn't be too surprised about that because we're evolved to understand things that move at a medium pace at a medium scale. We can't cope with the very tiny scale of quantum physics or the very large scale of relativity.
  • DA: A physicist will tell me that this armchair is made of vibrations and that it's not really here at all. But when Samuel Johnson was asked to prove the material existence of reality, he just went up to a big stone and kicked it. I'm with him.
  • RD: It's intriguing that the chair is mostly empty space and the thing that stops you going through it is vibrations or energy fields. But it's also fascinating that, because we're animals that evolved to survive, what solidity is to most of us is something you can't walk through.
  • the science of the future may be vastly different from the science of today, and you have to have the humility to admit when you don't know. But instead of filling that vacuum with goblins or spirits, I think you should say, "Science is working on it."
  • DA: Yes, there was a letter in the paper [about Stephen Hawking's comments on the nonexistence of God] saying, "It's absolutely clear that the function of the world is to declare the glory of God." I thought, what does that sentence mean?!
  • What is the most difficult ethical dilemma facing science today?DA: How far do you go to preserve individual human life?RD: That's a good one, yes.DA: I mean, what are we to do with the NHS? How can you put a value in pounds, shillings and pence on an individual's life? There was a case with a bowel cancer drug – if you gave that drug, which costs several thousand pounds, it continued life for six weeks on. How can you make that decision?
  • Weiye Loh on 11 Sep 10
     
    Of mind and matter: David Attenborough meets Richard Dawkins We paired up Britain's most celebrated scientists to chat about the big issues: the unity of life, ethics, energy, Handel - and the joy of riding a snowmobile
Weiye Loh

In Singapore, some thoughts are not All Right « Yawning Bread on Wordpress - 0 views

yawningbread.wordpress.com/...ome-thoughts-are-not-all-right

Censorship Singapore Homosexuality

shared by Weiye Loh on 17 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • If you think R21 is the strictest classification a movie in Singapore can receive, think again. The Oscar-nominated drama The Kids Are All Right has been rated R21 and has also had an additional condition imposed on it. The Board of Film Censors (BFC) says that it can only be released on one print. This is likely to be the first time an R21 film will be screened under such a condition outside of a film festival.
  • Further down the news article, it was explained that the Board of Film Censors issued a letter earlier this week to the film’s distributor, Festive Films: It stated: ‘The majority of the members [of the Committee of Appeal] agreed with the board that the film normalises a homosexual family unit and has exceeded the film classification guidelines which states that ‘Films that promote or normalise a homosexual lifestyle cannot be allowed’.’ In addition, the committee said the fact that the film is allowed for release in Singapore at all was already a concession. It said: ‘Imposing a condition of one-print serves as a signal to the public at large that such alternative lifestyles should not be encouraged.’ – ibid
  • Firstly, can/should the civil service create additional rules at whim? Secondly, why is the idea of two gay persons raising a family considered something to be defended against?
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • s it a proper mission of the State to demand that its citizens not think these thoughts? Is it the proper use of State power to deny or severely limit access to such ideas? It is all the more ridiculous when this film The Kids Are All Right has been nominated for four Oscars this year — for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor. Much of the world is talking about the film and the issues it raises, and the Singapore government is determined to make up our minds about the matter and give Singaporeans as little opportunity as possible to see the film for ourselves. All the while, the propaganda goes on: We are a world-class global city.
  • The root problem, as I have argued many times before, is the failure of our government to respect the constitution, which mandates freedom of expression. Instead, their guiding policy is to allow majoritarian views to ride roughshod over other points of view. Worse yet, sometimes it is even arguable whether the view being defended has majority support, since in the matter of film classification, the government appoints its own nominees as the “public”  consultation body. How do we know whether they represent the public?
  • As the press report above indicates, the government is waving, in this instance, the film classification guidelines because somewhere there is the clause that ‘Films that promote or normalise a homosexual lifestyle cannot be allowed’, words that the government itself penned. The exact words, not that I agree with them, in the current Guidelines are: Films should not promote or normalise a homosexual lifestyle. However, nonexploitative and non-explicit depictions of sexual activity between two persons of the same gender may be considered for R21. – http://www.mda.gov.sg/Documents/PDF/FilmClassificationGuidelines_Final2010.pdf, accessed 17 Feb 2011.
  • By the example of the treatment of this film, we now shine new light on the censorship impulse:  gay sex can be suggested in non-explicit ways in film, but gay people living ordinary, respectable lives, doing non-sexual things, (e.g. raising a family and looking after children) cannot. It really boils down to reinforcing a policy that has been in effect for a long time, and which I have found extremely insulting: Gay people can be depicted as deviants that come to tragic ends, but any positive portrayal must be cut out.
  • You would also notice that nowhere in this episode is reference made to the 2009/2010 Censorship Review Committee’s Report. This Committee I have already lambasted as timid and unprincipled. Yet, its (gutless) words are these: It is also not surprising that the CRC received many submissions calling for a lighter hand in the classification of films and plays which contain homosexual themes.  Homosexuality and other nontraditional lifestyles remain contentious issues for Singapore. While the MDA’s content regulators have to calibrate their decisions on ratings according to the majority, the CRC agrees that minority interests should also be considered and that a flexible and contextual approach should be taken for content depicting homosexuality. At the same time, clear and specific audience advisories should accompany the ratings so that the content issues will warn away those who think they may be offended by such content. – http://www.crc2009.sg/images/pdf/CRC%202010%20Report%20%28website%29.pdf, accessed 17 Feb 2011, para 24.
  • The government, in its Response to the CRC’s Report, said 63. Recommendation: A flexible and contextual approach for homosexual content should be adopted. Govt’s response: Agree. The current practice is already sufficiently flexible. Industry and artists must also be prepared to be more explicit in advising consumers on homosexual content. – http://www.crc2009.sg/images/pdf/Govt%27s%20Response%20to%20CRC%20Recommendations.pdf, accessed 17 Feb 2011.
  • And what do the civil servants do? They tighten up. They seize up like frigid vaginas and assholes at the very introduction of an Other. These civil servants create a new rule that limits the classified film to just one copy. They violate their own name and mission — “Film Classification” — by doing more than classification, branching into distribution limitation. To serve whose agenda?
Weiye Loh

The Irrationality of the Anti-Sex Lobby - 0 views

www.freedominapuritanage.co.uk/?p=1511

Pornography Sex Sexuality Ethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 24 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • with so little ethical and credible research on children in this area, the case is far from closed. See, for instance, the recent Scottish Executive report on the topic, with indications that both children’s and parents’ understanding of sexualised imagery is rather more nuanced than the media and government give them credit for. [i] However, as far as the public are concerned, there is no debate to be had. And so the endless ‘childhood in crisis’ nonsense is trotted out again and again.
  • when it comes down to Facts vs. Fear Related To Your Kids, most people will choose the fear option “just to be on the safe side”.
  • So what are the options? Basically, to find the trigger issues that will help people understand why restricting adult access to adult materials is in no-one’s interest, why it is important to support the rights of sex workers to work, and why deciding what children are and are not exposed to is a job for families and communities, not governments.
Weiye Loh

Revenge Rape and Reason is Ty Oliver Mcdowell a Rapist or a Victim - 0 views

factoidz.com/-mcdowell-a-rapist-or-a-victim

Rape New Media Internet Social Media Social Network Sites

shared by Weiye Loh on 24 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Most people who have heard about the Craig’s list rape by proxy of the Wyoming woman that occurred in December have been shocked by not only the brutal rape of a woman who was an innocent victim of an ex boyfriends sick mind, but also by the rapist who actually committed the crime. Many people believe that both men should get what they deserve. But what exactly does that mean in the case of Ty Oliver McDowell? Should the man be convicted of a Rape? Or is he perhaps a victim in the diabolical scheme of Jebidah James Stripe?
  • Posing as the victim, Stripe placed an ad complete with picture on Craig’s list. He stated in the ad that he was the woman and that she wanted to fulfill a sexual fantasy in which she was raped. Stating specifically in the ad that she was looking for an aggressive male who had little regard for women.
  • If McDowell is telling the truth, he saw the ad and emailed the woman, who was stripe posing as the woman, and they communicated by messenger back and forth as she detailed her fantasy and exactly what she would like done. After, discussing the fantasy. McDowell then on December 11, 2009 broke into the woman’s home, tied her to a chair, held a knife to her throat, and raped her. Thus fulfilling what he claims he believed to be the woman’s fantasy. At this stage we have no reason to disbelieve his story. But, was his belief and actions based on that belief reasonable?
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • In determining how reasonable a persons actions are we have to look at what a normal person would do in the same situation.
  • The idea that women have rape fantasies have been perpetuated by men’s magazines, and pornographic movies and books. A certain segment of the male population is going to believe that such as a fantasy exists in the minds women. And sadly, though rare, it does exist in the minds of a few women, as hard as that is for most of us to accept. This fantasy obviously appeals to many men or they would not be watching these movies or buying these magazines, even normal men who would never commit a rape may harbor such fantasies. So, while the idea makes most people’s skin crawl it was “reasonable” for McDowell to believe that a woman could harbor this fantasy.
  • But, would a reasonable man act upon it? Everything within most of us shouts no. But, the truth is there are many couples who in the privacy of their homes act out fantasies include bondage fantasies. So, is it less reasonable that a man who has such a fantasy would, if he could find a woman that shares that fantasy act on it? The truth is that his actions may well be considered reasonable in the face of the facts as we now know them.
  • There are those who claim this man was a rapist ready to happen, and while I don’t necessarily disagree I also believe we will never know. There are probably thousands if not millions of people who have sexual fantasies both big and small that they have never acted upon. This man could have been one of them. On the other hand his enthusiasm in acting out this fantasy may well be an indication that he would have at sometime committed such an act on a woman he knew to be unwilling.
  • What is most disturbing is Stripe’s actions. By setting up the rape fantasy the way he did, by communicating with McDowell while pretending to be the victim, he set up a situation where the victim herself could not stop what was happening. No matter how many times she told McDowell to stop, how tearfully she begged, he was primed by Stripe to believe that this was all part of the playacting.
  • Let’s not forget Craig’s list. Until we make laws making it illegal for such ads as these to get posted there are going to be sites such as these who will make their money uncaring who gets hurt in the process. In fact, the more notoriety this site seems to get, the more people seem to want to use it.
  • Just on the rape fantasy for women part, a number of studies show it to be a fairly significant fantasy that about 1/3 to 2/3 of women have. Nothing can condone what he did, but it's easy to believe he may have thought she was okay with it. There are many people who play out bondage and torture fantasy and we can't judge them.
  • Well, it doesnt look like the Judge bought McDowell's story. He was sentenced to 60 years to life in prison. The same sentence that Stipe received.
  • It does say something of McDowell that he voluntarily changed his plea from "not guilty" to "guilty." From reviewing many reports on this case, it appears that, once he realized what really happened, he wanted to make this as easy on the woman as possible. His remorse at what he accidentally did must be mixed with the horror he knows he unwittingly created.Perhaps the real case yet to come is McDowell's teaming up with the woman in a civil case against Stipe, the real criminal.
Weiye Loh

A Brief Primer on Criminal Statistics « Canada « Skeptic North - 0 views

www.skepticnorth.com/...-primer-on-criminal-statistics

Crime Statistics

shared by Weiye Loh on 20 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Occurrences of crime are properly expressed as the number of incidences per 100,000 people. Total numbers are not informative on their own and it is very easy to manipulate an argument by cherry picking between a total number and a rate.  Beware of claims about crime that use raw incidence numbers. When a change in whole incidence numbers is observed, this might not have any bearing on crime levels at all, because levels of crime are dependent on population.
  • Whole Numbers versus Rates
  • Reliability Not every criminal statistic is equally reliable. Even though we have measures of incidences of crimes across types and subtypes, not every one of these statistics samples the actual incidence of these crimes in the same way. Indeed, very few measure the total incidences very reliably at all. The crime rates that you are most likely to encounter capture only crimes known and substantiated by police. These numbers are vulnerable to variances in how crimes become known and verified by police in the first place. Crimes very often go unreported or undiscovered. Some crimes are more likely to go unreported than others (such as sexual assaults and drug possession), and some crimes are more difficult to substantiate as having occurred than others.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Complicating matters further is the fact that these reporting patterns vary over time and are reflected in observed trends.   So, when a change in the police reported crime rate is observed from year to year or across a span of time we may be observing a “real” change, we may be observing a change in how these crimes come to the attention of police, or we may be seeing a mixture of both.
  • Generally, the most reliable criminal statistic is the homicide rate – it’s very difficult, though not impossible, to miss a dead body. In fact, homicides in Canada are counted in the year that they become known to police and not in the year that they occurred.  Our most reliable number is very, very close, but not infallible.
  • Crimes known to the police nearly always under measure the true incidence of crime, so other measures are needed to better complete our understanding. The reported crimes measure is reported every year to Statistics Canada from data that makes up the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. This is a very rich data set that measures police data very accurately but tells us nothing about unreported crime.
  • We do have some data on unreported crime available. Victims are interviewed (after self-identifying) via the General Social Survey. The survey is conducted every five years
  • This measure captures information in eight crime categories both reported, and not reported to police. It has its own set of interpretation problems and pathways to misuse. The survey relies on self-reporting, so the accuracy of the information will be open to errors due to faulty memories, willingness to report, recording errors etc.
  • From the last data set available, self-identified victims did not report 69% of violent victimizations (sexual assault, robbery and physical assault), 62% of household victimizations (break and enter, motor vehicle/parts theft, household property theft and vandalism), and 71% of personal property theft victimizations.
  • while people generally understand that crimes go unreported and unknown to police, they tend to be surprised and perhaps even shocked at the actual amounts that get unreported. These numbers sound scary. However, the most common reasons reported by victims of violent and household crime for not reporting were: believing the incident was not important enough (68%) believing the police couldn’t do anything about the incident (59%), and stating that the incident was dealt with in another way (42%).
  • Also, note that the survey indicated that 82% of violent incidents did not result in injuries to the victims. Do claims that we should do something about all this hidden crime make sense in light of what this crime looks like in the limited way we can understand it? How could you be reasonably certain that whatever intervention proposed would in fact reduce the actual amount of crime and not just reduce the amount that goes unreported?
  • Data is collected at all levels of the crime continuum with differing levels of accuracy and applicability. This is nicely reflected in the concept of “the crime funnel”. All criminal incidents that are ever committed are at the opening of the funnel. There is “loss” all along the way to the bottom where only a small sample of incidences become known with charges laid, prosecuted successfully and responded to by the justice system.  What goes into the top levels of the funnel affects what we can know at any other point later.
Weiye Loh

Fascinating Facts About Internet Sex - 0 views

jezebel.com/#!5794158/fascinating-facts-about-internet-sex

Pornography Stereotype Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 29 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Rather than using these facts to make sweeping statements about the difference between men and women, it's more useful to recognize that a lot of the generalizations people make about desire, especially male desire, just aren't true. At least in private, not all straight men are looking for thin, young ciswomen — or even for ciswomen at all. And what Internet porn can teach us is that while there may be some differences in sexual preferences between genders, there's enormous variation within them.
Weiye Loh

Free Speech under Siege - Robert Skidelsky - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...English

Law Freedom of Speech Discrimination Libel Political Correctness Truths Opinion

shared by Weiye Loh on 21 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Breaking the cultural code damages a person’s reputation, and perhaps one’s career. Britain’s Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke recently had to apologize for saying that some rapes were less serious than others, implying the need for legal discrimination. The parade of gaffes and subsequent groveling apologies has become a regular feature of public life. In his classic essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill defended free speech on the ground that free inquiry was necessary to advance knowledge. Restrictions on certain areas of historical inquiry are based on the opposite premise: the truth is known, and it is impious to question it. This is absurd; every historian knows that there is no such thing as final historical truth.
  • It is not the task of history to defend public order or morals, but to establish what happened. Legally protected history ensures that historians will play safe. To be sure, living by Mill’s principle often requires protecting the rights of unsavory characters. David Irving writes mendacious history, but his prosecution and imprisonment in Austria for “Holocaust denial” would have horrified Mill.
  • the pressure for “political correctness” rests on the argument that the truth is unknowable. Statements about the human condition are essentially matters of opinion.  Because a statement of opinion by some individuals is almost certain to offend others, and since such statements make no contribution to the discovery of truth, their degree of offensiveness becomes the sole criterion for judging their admissibility. Hence the taboo on certain words, phrases, and arguments that imply that certain individuals, groups, or practices are superior or inferior, normal or abnormal; hence the search for ever more neutral ways to label social phenomena, thereby draining language of its vigor and interest.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A classic example is the way that “family” has replaced “marriage” in public discourse, with the implication that all “lifestyles” are equally valuable, despite the fact that most people persist in wanting to get married. It has become taboo to describe homosexuality as a “perversion,” though this was precisely the word used in the 1960’s by the radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse (who was praising homosexuality as an expression of dissent). In today’s atmosphere of what Marcuse would call “repressive tolerance,” such language would be considered “stigmatizing.”
  • The sociological imperative behind the spread of “political correctness” is the fact that we no longer live in patriarchal, hierarchical, mono-cultural societies, which exhibit general, if unreflective, agreement on basic values. The pathetic efforts to inculcate a common sense of “Britishness” or “Dutchness” in multi-cultural societies, however well-intentioned, attest to the breakdown of a common identity.
  • The defense of free speech is made no easier by the abuses of the popular press. We need free media to expose abuses of power. But investigative journalism becomes discredited when it is suborned to “expose” the private lives of the famous when no issue of public interest is involved. Entertaining gossip has mutated into an assault on privacy, with newspapers claiming that any attempt to keep them out of people’s bedrooms is an assault on free speech. You know that a doctrine is in trouble when not even those claiming to defend it understand what it means. By that standard, the classic doctrine of free speech is in crisis. We had better sort it out quickly – legally, morally, and culturally – if we are to retain a proper sense of what it means to live in a free society.
  • Weiye Loh on 21 Jun 11
     
    Yet freedom of speech in the West is under strain. Traditionally, British law imposed two main limitations on the "right to free speech." The first prohibited the use of words or expressions likely to disrupt public order; the second was the law against libel. There are good grounds for both - to preserve the peace, and to protect individuals' reputations from lies. Most free societies accept such limits as reasonable. But the law has recently become more restrictive. "Incitement to religious and racial hatred" and "incitement to hatred on the basis of sexual orientation" are now illegal in most European countries, independent of any threat to public order. The law has shifted from proscribing language likely to cause violence to prohibiting language intended to give offense. A blatant example of this is the law against Holocaust denial. To deny or minimize the Holocaust is a crime in 15 European countries and Israel. It may be argued that the Holocaust was a crime so uniquely abhorrent as to qualify as a special case. But special cases have a habit of multiplying.
Weiye Loh

Nature Follows the Internet Into Children's Hearts - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...net-into-childrens-hearts.html

Nature Digital Representation Future Technology

shared by Weiye Loh on 23 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • So what exactly are tomorrow’s protectors of biodiversity watching? Everything from the weirdly adorable, like a slow loris being tickled, to the shocking, like an eagle throwing a goat off a cliff, to the oddly fascinating, like a hamster pretending, on cue, to get shot and die, to the graphically sexual — I’ll leave these to you to discover — to the hilarious and disturbing, like one in which the violent sneeze of a baby panda panics its huge mother. If all of this just looks like a lot of time-wasting silliness, ask yourself: Could flash cards more effectively acquaint children with the slow loris? Could there be a more memorable illustration of the “apparent death” response than the performance of this Oscar-worthy hamster? And could anything make you feel more connected with giant pandas, the whole species, than watching one comically startle at the sound of its cub’s crazed sneeze?
  • If the Internet is unavoidable and ubiquitous — and it is — then nature is following right along with it, shining out through screens everywhere. Young people are knowledgeable about organisms in a global way we could never have been as children. They may not often wander the local patch of forest — we won’t let them most of the time anyway — but they wander the natural world through the Internet.
  • Weiye Loh on 23 Jun 12
     
    The inanities of the Internet may be exactly what save us all, at least as far as getting the next generation to love and cherish the living world.
Weiye Loh

Religion's regressive hold on animal rights issues | Peter Singer | Comment is free | g... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...gressive-hold-on-animal-rights

Ethics Religion Animal Rights

shared by Weiye Loh on 09 Jun 10 - Cached
  • chief minister of Malacca, Mohamad Ali Rustam, was quoted in the Guardian as saying that God created monkeys and rats for experiments to benefit humans.
  • Here is the head of a Malaysian state justifying the establishment of a scientific enterprise with a comment that flies in the face of everything science tells us.
  • Though the chief minister is, presumably, a Muslim, there is nothing specifically Islamic about the claim that God created animals for our sake. Similar remarks have been made repeatedly by Christian religious figures through the millennia, although today some Christian theologians offer a kinder, more compassionate interpretation of the idea of our God-given dominion over the animals. They regard the grant of dominion as a kind of stewardship, with God wanting us to take care of his creatures and treat them well.
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  • What are we to say of the Indian company, Vivo Biosciences Inc, which takes advantage of such religious naivety – in which presumably its scientists do not for one moment believe – in order to gain approval for its £97m joint venture with a state-owned Malaysian biotech company?
    • Weiye Loh
      Weiye Loh on 09 Jun 10
       
      Isn't it ironic that scientists rely on religious rhetoric to justify their sciences? 
  • The chief minister's comment is yet another illustration of the generally regressive influence that religion has on ethical issues – whether they are concerned with the status of women, with sexuality, with end-of-life decisions in medicine, with the environment, or with animals.
  • Weiye Loh on 09 Jun 10
     
    Religion's regressive hold on animal rights issues How are we to promote the need for improved animal welfare when battling religious views formed centuries ago? Peter Singerguardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 June 2010 14.03 BSTArticle history
Weiye Loh

Rights of Conscience vs. Civil Rights - Pew Research Center - 0 views

pewresearch.org/...ion-protections-in-health-care

Health Care rights

shared by Weiye Loh on 06 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Should doctors, pharmacists and other health care workers have the right to refuse to provide services that conflict with their religious beliefs?
  • n March 2009, Julea Ward, a student at Eastern Michigan University (EMU), was dismissed from her graduate-level counseling program when she refused to counsel a gay man about a same-sex relationship.
  • The supervisor claimed that Ms. Ward's refusal violated the ethical obligations of a counselor not to discriminate against clients based on sexual orientation or to impose one's personal beliefs on clients. Based on this judgment, the school expelled Ms. Ward from the counseling program.
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  • Ms. Ward filed suit in federal district court in the Eastern District of Michigan, alleging that the school violated her constitutional rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech.
  • she argued that counselors do not have a professional obligation to counsel all clients about all issues. Instead, she said, they are permitted to refer clients to other counselors if a client's needs conflict with the counselor's moral convictions.
  • Weiye Loh on 06 Jul 10
     
    Rights of Conscience vs. Civil Rights Are Health Care Workers Obligated to Treat Gays and Lesbians? June 3, 2010
Weiye Loh

Hermits and Cranks: Lessons from Martin Gardner on Recognizing Pseudoscientists: Scient... - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

Science Pseudo-Science

shared by Weiye Loh on 09 Jul 10 - Cached
  • In 1950 Martin Gardner published an article in the Antioch Review entitled "The Hermit Scientist," about what we would today call pseudoscientists.
  • there has been some progress since Gardner offered his first criticisms of pseudoscience. Now largely antiquated are his chapters on believers in a flat Earth, a hollow Earth, Atlantis and Lemuria, Alfred William Lawson, Roger Babson, Trofim Lysenko, Wilhelm Reich and Alfred Korzybski. But disturbingly, a good two thirds of the book's contents are relevant today, including Gardner's discussions of homeopathy, naturopathy, osteopathy, iridiagnosis (reading the iris of the eye to deter- mine bodily malfunctions), food faddists, cancer cures and other forms of medical quackery, Edgar Cayce, the Great Pyramid's alleged mystical powers, handwriting analysis, ESP and PK (psychokinesis), reincarnation, dowsing rods, eccentric sexual theories, and theories of group racial differences.
  • The "hermit scientist," a youthful Gardner wrote, works alone and is ignored by mainstream scientists. "Such neglect, of course, only strengthens the convictions of the self-declared genius."
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  • Even then Gardner was bemoaning that some beliefs never seem to go out of vogue, as he recalled an H. L. Mencken quip from the 1920s: "Heave an egg out of a Pullman window, and you will hit a Fundamentalist almost anywhere in the U.S. today." Gardner cautions that when religious superstition should be on the wane, it is easy "to forget that thousands of high school teachers of biology, in many of our southern states, are still afraid to teach the theory of evolution for fear of losing their jobs." Today creationism has spread northward and mutated into the oxymoronic form of "creation science."
  • the differences between science and pseudoscience. On the one extreme we have ideas that are most certainly false, "such as the dianetic view that a one-day-old embryo can make sound recordings of its mother's conversation." In the borderlands between the two "are theories advanced as working hypotheses, but highly debatable because of the lack of sufficient data." Of these Gardner selects a most propitious propitious example: "the theory that the universe is expanding." That theory would now fall at the other extreme end of the spectrum, where lie "theories al- most certainly true, such as the belief that the Earth is round or that men and beasts are distant cousins."
  • How can we tell if someone is a scientific crank? Gardner offers this advice: (1) "First and most important of these traits is that cranks work in almost total isolation from their colleagues." Cranks typically do not understand how the scientific process operates—that they need to try out their ideas on colleagues, attend conferences and publish their hypotheses in peer-reviewed journals before announcing to the world their startling discovery. Of course, when you explain this to them they say that their ideas are too radical for the conservative scientific establishment to accept.
  • (2) "A second characteristic of the pseudo-scientist, which greatly strengthens his isolation, is a tendency toward paranoia," which manifests itself in several ways: (1) He considers himself a genius. (2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads....(3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to "enemies" for review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to error in his work....(4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein....(5) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.
  • "If the present trend continues," Gardner concludes, "we can expect a wide variety of these men, with theories yet unimaginable, to put in their appearance in the years immediately ahead. They will write impressive books, give inspiring lectures, organize exciting cults. They may achieve a following of one—or one million. In any case, it will be well for ourselves and for society if we are on our guard against them."
  • Weiye Loh on 09 Jul 10
     
    May 23, 2010 | 31 comments Hermits and Cranks: Lessons from Martin Gardner on Recognizing Pseudoscientists Fifty years ago Gardner launched the modern skeptical movement. Unfortunately, much of what he wrote about is still current today By Michael Shermer   
Karin Tan

Pornography as a living? - 8 views

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/104278 This article illustrates the profitability of the pornography market today, and also claims that about 12 percent of the websites available on...

pornography

started by Karin Tan on 02 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

Unique Perspective on Pornography - 13 views

"These women will have forever have to live with the social stigma of being a "porn star" and whatever negativity that is associated with that concept. " The patriarchal ideology is the underlying...

pornography debate abcnews face-off

started by Jianwei Tan on 01 Sep 09 2 follow-ups, last by Weiye Loh on 03 Sep 09
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