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By Neece, on March 18, 2010, at 7:51 am
 Remember the other day I told you I was working on my computer, installing some hardware upgrades? That saga continues and is yet to be resolved. Sigh! Unfortunately I know just enough about computers to get myself into trouble and not be able to fully get myself back out again. So I’m telling you because it’s taking up a lot of my brain power, trying to figure out how to get everything to play nice. So that’s that!
Also, I don’t often talk about politics, but I told you about the federal funding of religious schools bill that Joe Lieberman was pushing. I thought you might like an update. In this case, secular values won! Woot!
Here’s what the Secular Coalition for America said about the victory:
Two weeks ago, we alerted you to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s proposed amendment to the Senate jobs bill that would reauthorize the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,” an initiative that forced American taxpayers to subsidize religious institutions through school vouchers.
A July 2009 report by Rutgers University on the D.C. voucher program concluded that the way the voucher program is structured “essentially push[es] students into Christian Association and Catholic schools, pricing out independent (non-religious) schools and Hebrew schools.”
Those of us who do not wish to subsidize religion with our tax dollars would continue to be forced to do so if Senator Lieberman had his way.
Thousands of you responded, writing to your senators to tell them that public funds should be never be used to pay for anyone’s religion. The amendment never made it to the jobs bill–though Senator Lieberman promised he would bring it back as soon as he could.
So the Secular Coalition for America took your message directly to the Senate. SCA staff met personally with over fifteen key senators to make the case that our tax dollars must not be used to fund religious activities, particularly in schools.
Tonight, Senator Lieberman managed to bring the amendment to the floor, attaching it this time to a bill funding the Federal Aviation Administration. Debate was heard, votes were cast, and the amendment was defeated, 42 to 55. We worked together, and helped to stop the unconstitutional public financing of religious education.
It’s only the latest sign that the secular movement is growing. Just last month, the Secular Coalition for America and representatives of the secular movement met with the Obama administration for an official policy briefing-the first of its kind for our movement in history-opening up new lines of dialogue between our community and the White House. Many more issues lay before us, and we need your help to keep up the momentum.
If you are interested, sign up for the SCA Action Alerts. When the rights and values of nontheistic Americans are on the line and you can put in your two cents, the SCA makes it really easy.
Want to see how your senators voted on this bill? Go here. Then if they voted nay, consider going to that senator’s official contact page and thanking them for respecting the separation of church and state.
Please keep commenting about Advertisements and Logical Fallacies. I am still thinking about your input for a follow-up.
By Neece, on March 15, 2010, at 12:40 pm
 I have 2 studies to share with you then a video to cheer you up afterwards.
The first paper is titled ‘Believers’ estimates of God’s beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people’s beliefs’. It found through a series of 7 studies and surveys that people believe that god has the same beliefs that they have. Here is what they concluded:
The researchers noted that people often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God’s standards. ”The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing,” they conclude. “This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God’s beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.”
Isn’t that convenient? It certainly explains how god can hate all the same people they hate, and basically agree with them about everything. It’s like knowing your dad will let you do whatever you want because he thinks just like you. It’s a license to act any way you like, with your god’s blessing.
Also, are you sure people set their compass according to god’s standards? Maybe instead they set god’s compass to theirs. That would be interesting to find out, although I don’t know how you’d do it.
The second paper is titled ‘Socioeconomic Status and Beliefs about God’s Influence in Everyday Life.’ It used data from two recent national surveys of Americans to examine people’s beliefs about god’s involvement and influence in their lives. Here are some of the findings:
Overall, most people believe that God is highly influential in the events and outcomes in their lives. Specifically:
By Neece, on March 12, 2010, at 8:18 am
 Lately I’ve been thinking about logical fallacies used in advertising and marketing. The argument from authority when someone in a lab coat tells you what to buy, argumentum ad populum which is “appeal to the people” because everyone else is buying this product so you should too.
One of my pet peeves is multigrain labels emblazoned on foods lately. Technically the food has more than one grain in it, but they are touting the product as something healthy when they have still stripped all fiber and goodness out, so the health benefits are still lacking. This is very popular in cereals, and unless you read the label you’d think you were buying something healthy, when really it’s just as junky as cocoa puffs.
The “no sugar added” label is another one I find quite vague. There are several different iterations of this one. No sugar added, sugar free, the list goes on. What do they all mean? Again, you have to carefully read the nutrition facts and ingredients to get a better picture of what you’ll be buying.
I guess it’s basically the idea that advertisers must follow the letter of the law but not the spirit of it. So for something like Airborne (which I’ve ranted about before), they can make vague claims that basically say nothing to skirt the issue that there is no science behind their product. Then, to make it worse, they strategically make sure it’s placed near the pharmacy to appeal to authority. I think in some places they have signs saying that pharmacists recommend Airborne. But really, to make that claim you only have to pay two pharmacists to say what you want to be truthful.
I find it all incredibly frustrating and discouraging. And the only solution is to be aggressively proactive about shopping and watching ads or commercials. Be skeptical!
This is part one of tackling this topic for three reasons.
- One, I don’t think we can do it justice in one post.
- Two, I really want your feedback. What are your pet peeves in advertising? What examples stand out for you? What logical fallacies do you see in advertising and marketing?
- And three, I just got the new parts for my computer and have to build my newer, better, faster computer today (with the help of my geek friend, Gary. Thanks Gary!).
 This is my birthday present from my sweetie. Thanks, my love! 
Ok, I’m off to go fiddle with my new computer parts. Hopefully it all goes well. I look forward to hearing from you about fallacies in advertising! 
By Neece, on March 10, 2010, at 8:29 am
By Neece, on March 7, 2010, at 2:26 am
 Stumbling around the interwebs, I found a site that I think you might love. It’s called Information is Beautiful. David McCandless takes all kinds of data and ideas and visualizes it in appealing ways.
The one I found that I thought was amazing was Snake Oil?: Scientific evidence for popular health supplements. (That link takes you to the interactive version. See the static version here.) On the side is a show me button that flies out a list of uses and types of supplements. Choose what you’re interested in to filter the results. The bigger the bubble, the more popular the supplement is. The higher on the chart, the more evidence there is that it works. Notice how many bubbles are below the Worth It line. Remember, the supplements are only good for the conditions listed inside the bubble, which you can see by hovering over it.
What David says about the evidence:
We only considered large, human, randomized placebo-controlled trials in our data scrape – wherever possible. No animal trials. No cell studies. Many of the health claims made by the $23 billion supplements industry are based on non-human trials. We wanted to cut through that.
This piece was doggedly researched by myself, and researchers Pearl Doughty-White and Alexia Wdowski. We looked at the abstracts of over 1500 studies on PubMed (run by US National Library Of Medicine) and Cochrane.org (which hosts meta-studies of scientific research). It took us several months to seek out the evidence – or lack of.
The information is generated from a Google Doc, so when new research comes out it can be easily updated. Very cool indeed. The data has web addresses to the source of the research so you can see it for yourself. It’s not just anecdotal evidence.
David also has a chart on caffeine and calories. He even shows how much exercise it will take to work off that large iced mocha you had for breakfast.
He does two interesting charts about politics. The Left vs the Right. A world version and an American version. These are chock full of information.
His 2012 chart is also great. The left describes the believers, the right describes the skeptics, with information refuting what the believers say. Sources are listed at the bottom, and are available in a Google Doc.
His climate change chart shows global warming deniers vs the scientific consensus.
He has many more on his site as well. That’s just a few of my favorites.
By Neece, on March 5, 2010, at 5:45 pm
 Awhile ago I wrote about the 10 commandments. I then rewrote them for my personal moral code, calling them Neece’s Principles. No need to have anyone commanding anyone.
Christopher Hitchens just wrote a 3 page piece for Vanity Fair about the 10 commandments titled The New Commandments. He goes through the KJV version and talks about where they are good and where they are not so good. Here is his summation:
What emerges from the first review is this: the Ten Commandments were derived from situational ethics. They show every symptom of having been man-made and improvised under pressure. They are addressed to a nomadic tribe whose main economy is primitive agriculture and whose wealth is sometimes counted in people as well as animals. They are also addressed to a group that has been promised the land and flocks of other people: the Amalekites and Midianites and others whom God orders them to kill, rape, enslave, or exterminate. And this, too, is important because at every step of their arduous journey the Israelites are reminded to keep to the laws, not because they are right but just because they will lead them to become conquerors (of, as it happens, almost the only part of the Middle East that has no oil).
So here is a rundown of how he fixes them:
- One to Three can go, “since they have nothing to do with morality and are no more than a long, rasping throat clearing by an admittedly touchy dictator. Mere fear of unseen authority is not a sound basis for ethics.” (the invisible sky daddy flexes his muscles and demands worship.).
- He also says we don’t have to ban sculpture and art (idols).
- Four. Gone. Pointless. (don’t work on the sabbath, except black sabbath, of course!)
- Five, respect elders, sure. But also ban child abuse. What a concept! (I’d add that parents should only get respect like anyone else, when they earn it.)
- Six, taken care of by modern law. Don’t murder. (Don’t kill under almost all circumstances.) (although I think assisted suicide for terminally ill people should be legal)
- Seven, he seems to destroy too. (adultery) (and yeah, what about saying rape is bad? especially pedophilia and that kind of stuff?)
- Eight, ok. This one is good. Don’t steal. (stealing)
- Nine, don’t lie. Also basically good. (lying about your neighbor)
- Ten, women aren’t property. This one is pointless and harmful in that it makes you a sinner just from your thoughts. (don’t lust after your neighbor’s goods or wife)
Other evils of human society that should be denounced, according to Hitchens:
- genocide
- slavery
- rape
- child abuse
- sexual repression
- white-collar crime
- wanton destruction of the natural world
- people who talk on cell phones in restaurants (and movie theatres, or who talk on the phone or text while driving!)
- people who blow themselves up while shouting ‘god is great!’ (and any other kind of jihadism or crusade)
- racism
- using people as private property
- condemning people for their inborn nature (like homosexuality, etc)
And this is how he finishes:
“Be willing to renounce any god or any religion if any holy commandments should contradict any of the above. In short: Do not swallow your moral code in tablet form.”
Good advice! I think I stand by the principles I came up with for myself. What are yours? Do you agree with Christopher Hitchens?
By Neece, on March 4, 2010, at 12:43 pm
 Last night Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) filed a D.C. voucher amendment to the second jobs bill under consideration by the Senate. The D.C. voucher program uses taxpayer funds to pay for parents to send their children to private religious schools. The program is called the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program,” but a 2007 government report found that these vouchers do not give D.C. students seeking a private school education sufficient secular choices, forcing them to attend religious schools or remain in the failing public school system.
By design, voucher programs aid struggling Christian schools. A July 2009 report by Rutgers University on the D.C. voucher program concluded that the way the voucher program is structured “essentially push[es] students into Christian Association and Catholic schools, pricing out independent (non-religious) schools and Hebrew schools.”
By continuing this program, those of us who do not wish to subsidize someone else’s church will continue to be forced to do so through our federal tax dollars.
The vote will occur sometime today. Please take five minutes and email your Senators below and tell them to vote against this amendment that would re-authorize this program.
The Secular Coalition for America opposes the use of government funds for religious purposes, including vouchers for religious schools. We agree with the founders of the United States that no individual taxpayer should be required to pay for someone else’s religion. We agree with James Madison. Senator Lieberman wants us to go in a different direction.
The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, with your tax money, funds and enables proselytizing and religious discrimination. Recipients of the vouchers who attend religious schools are not even allowed to opt out of religious activities at their school—a direct affront to religious freedom.
It is critical that you write your Senators today and ask them to oppose Sen. Lieberman’s amendment that would re-authorize this program and spend your taxes to fund the religious education of children in D.C.
Go to Secular Coalition for America to send a letter today.
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