Come, friends, and lose faith in humanity with me. Earlier today, a friend of mine shared this link with me: http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2010/09/14/paper-to-readers-sorry-for-portraying-muslims-as-human/ Yes, it's exactly as dumb as the title suggests. What the hell, America? Seriously, what the hell?
Once I was done raging, I started thinking, and then I started researching. The same friend pointed me to a fantastic comment made on Fark.com by a user called Xai. Here is a the most interesting part: "Whenever you say that it is to protect yourselves from whoever then again ask yourselves is it worth it? America spends well over $300billion/year on anti-terrorism measures, and while to most people a sum that large has little meaning, if you assume that you have prevented an atrocity as large as 9/11 every single year for the last 10 years then the cost would be $100,000,000 per american life saved. I am willing to bet that if you spent even $10million/year on policing, safety improvements or simply healthcare you would save many american lives."
I hadn't really considered the financial cost/benefit approach to combating terror, but this post got me thinking about it. Let's do some math:
The attacks on September 11, 2001 killed 3000 and wounded 6000. (Source: Wikipedia) Common home fires kill 3500 and wound 20000 Americans every year. (Source: US Fire Administration) A 5 person fire department takes about $900,000 per year to operate. (http://www.newellvfd.org/value.htm) So for $100,000,000, the theoretical cost of saving one life in the above example (which is quite generous, as it assumes an attack on the scale of the WTC attack every year), you could operate 111 fire departments, each of which would surely save more than 1 life per year. After all, with 3500 per year killed in fires, we could certainly use more fire fighters.
But no, fires aren't scary. We have to keep pouring money into the possibility of future terrorism, rather than deal with the ever present and very real threats of crime, fires, natural disasters (anyone remember Katrina?), poor education, injury and disease. I haven't done the research yet, but I bet $300 billion would pay for a lot of police departments, hospitals and schools.
tl;dr wtf America, wake up
Showing posts with label wtf America. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wtf America. Show all posts
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Marriage is so Gay
It looks like proposition 8 finally got (rightfully) repealed: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/08/judge_vaughn_walker_hands_vict.html (Maybe this will draw some of the rage away from the Mosque story. =p)
Despite it being a very big topic currently, and one I have a lot to say about, I have thus far not posted about it on this blog mostly because everything I have to say has already been said. However, as this blog is as much to vent and collect my thoughts as to say things that are original and new, I guess I might as well go ahead with a few of them.
So, let's investigate some of the arguments brought to bear against gay marriage. The most common one I hear is a passage from Leviticus: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. (Leviticus 18:22) Well let's investigate this, shall we? When interpreting the Bible (or any text, really), it's important to keep in mind the cultural context in which it was written. Leviticus was, as the name implies, a code of laws written for the Levites, one of the 12 tribes of Israel. This is a culture where infant mortality was high, life expectancy was low and the entire culture was perpetually on the verge of extinction. They needed people constantly making babies, which mean men needed to be sleeping with (and impregnating) women, rather than each other, for the sake of the survival of the culture. In modern times, with overpopulation a huge problem in many areas, this is no longer as big an issue.
Of course, fanatic Biblical literalists will tell us that every word in the Bible is literally true no matter the context and that I just committed blasphemy. If that's true, I hope they never eat shellfish or wear two kinds of cloth together. It also alarming that they feel that handicapped people shouldn't be allowed in church (Leviticus 21:16-23) and that genocide and slavery are acceptable.
Then there are more secular arguments against gay marriage, though no less silly. For example: Gays shouldn't be married because the union will not produce children. Marriage stopped being about just children the moment it had legal benefits like hospital visitation or joint tax return filing attached to it. Also, what about infertile heterosexual couples? Are we going to tell them they can't marry? Or older couples past child bearing age? Or couples that can have children but choose not to? Then of course there's the option of adoption. With so many children in foster homes and orphanages in need of loving parents, it's arguably an even greater service to the species to take care of an adopted child than to make a new one, at least while so many are in need of care.
tl;dr Gay marriage is not going to plunge us into Armageddon.
Despite it being a very big topic currently, and one I have a lot to say about, I have thus far not posted about it on this blog mostly because everything I have to say has already been said. However, as this blog is as much to vent and collect my thoughts as to say things that are original and new, I guess I might as well go ahead with a few of them.
So, let's investigate some of the arguments brought to bear against gay marriage. The most common one I hear is a passage from Leviticus: Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. (Leviticus 18:22) Well let's investigate this, shall we? When interpreting the Bible (or any text, really), it's important to keep in mind the cultural context in which it was written. Leviticus was, as the name implies, a code of laws written for the Levites, one of the 12 tribes of Israel. This is a culture where infant mortality was high, life expectancy was low and the entire culture was perpetually on the verge of extinction. They needed people constantly making babies, which mean men needed to be sleeping with (and impregnating) women, rather than each other, for the sake of the survival of the culture. In modern times, with overpopulation a huge problem in many areas, this is no longer as big an issue.
Of course, fanatic Biblical literalists will tell us that every word in the Bible is literally true no matter the context and that I just committed blasphemy. If that's true, I hope they never eat shellfish or wear two kinds of cloth together. It also alarming that they feel that handicapped people shouldn't be allowed in church (Leviticus 21:16-23) and that genocide and slavery are acceptable.
Then there are more secular arguments against gay marriage, though no less silly. For example: Gays shouldn't be married because the union will not produce children. Marriage stopped being about just children the moment it had legal benefits like hospital visitation or joint tax return filing attached to it. Also, what about infertile heterosexual couples? Are we going to tell them they can't marry? Or older couples past child bearing age? Or couples that can have children but choose not to? Then of course there's the option of adoption. With so many children in foster homes and orphanages in need of loving parents, it's arguably an even greater service to the species to take care of an adopted child than to make a new one, at least while so many are in need of care.
tl;dr Gay marriage is not going to plunge us into Armageddon.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
What are we afraid of?
So a brief bit of backstory: I’ve been spending some time reading MLIA, or a site called “My Life is Average” for those not familiar with it. It’s just a place where people share (hopefully) amusing stories. There are a lot of recurring trends on the site though, and one I’ve noticed a fair bit is one that follows this formula: “My young [relative] asked me about [awkward sexual topic] and to preserve their innocence I told them it was [something else]. They then went and asked [adult] about [awkward sexual topic] thinking it was a [something else].”
Let’s think about this a moment. “To preserve their innocence.” At what point did our society determine that ignorance and naivety are virtues to be preserved? Why do we struggle so hard to shield our youth from things that, frankly, they need to know? We lie to our children and tell them “You heard about STDs from someone at school? Oh, it’s, uh a kind of candy. It’s bad though!” and then we wonder why STD rates are so high. We refuse to teach our children about contraception and then wonder why we have teen pregnancy. Why are we so opposed to knowledge?
That was a rhetorical question. The answer is not that hidden. Our society is afraid of it’s own sexuality, and there’s really no good reason why. It’s not just when talking to kids, grown men and women are afraid of talking about it to each other as well. Why do we try to cover up and hide this perfectly natural facet of who we are? What’s so scary about sex? (That one’s not rhetorical, though I do have some theories, most of them, as usual, related to older social traditions that outlived their usefulness.)
Edit: A friend's mother recently posted this on Facebook, and it is disturbingly relevant: http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/menifee-schools-ban-dictionary-pull-book-shelves
Let’s think about this a moment. “To preserve their innocence.” At what point did our society determine that ignorance and naivety are virtues to be preserved? Why do we struggle so hard to shield our youth from things that, frankly, they need to know? We lie to our children and tell them “You heard about STDs from someone at school? Oh, it’s, uh a kind of candy. It’s bad though!” and then we wonder why STD rates are so high. We refuse to teach our children about contraception and then wonder why we have teen pregnancy. Why are we so opposed to knowledge?
That was a rhetorical question. The answer is not that hidden. Our society is afraid of it’s own sexuality, and there’s really no good reason why. It’s not just when talking to kids, grown men and women are afraid of talking about it to each other as well. Why do we try to cover up and hide this perfectly natural facet of who we are? What’s so scary about sex? (That one’s not rhetorical, though I do have some theories, most of them, as usual, related to older social traditions that outlived their usefulness.)
Edit: A friend's mother recently posted this on Facebook, and it is disturbingly relevant: http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/menifee-schools-ban-dictionary-pull-book-shelves
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