PWSA

Just wanted y'all to know I just installed Google Chrome, am using it right now, and it is awesome. Because of that, you won't be seeing any of those annoying extra lines between paragraphs. Download it.

Well, on to today's post...

(Note: see the lack of an extra line)

Democrats for Life of America is urging everyone to support the Pregnant Women Support Act (the one I urged President Obama to support earlier). Regardless of your stance, pretty much everyone want a lower abortion rate. All PWSA does is provide services to pregnant mothers. Yup, no restrictions on abortion or anything like that (though correct me if I'm wrong). Nothing in this bill should offend anyone, except maybe hardcore freemarketers. Visit DFLA's website for more.

Is abortion genocide?

Main Entry:
geno·cide 
Pronunciation:
\ˈje-nə-ˌsīd\ 
Function:
noun 
Date:
1944
: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group 
— geno·cid·al \ˌje-nə-ˈsī-dəl\ adjective

No.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one's even calling for all prenates to be aborted.

It is, however, quite analogous, as expressed brilliantly by Augustine of Pro-Life America's Forums:

In 1996 Gregory Stanton the president of Genocide Watch presented a briefing paper called "The 8 Stages of Genocide" at the United States Department of State. In it he suggested that genocide develops in eight stages that are "predictable but not inexorable". 

-Stage Characteristics of Genocide 

1.Classification 

People are divided into "us and them". (the born vs the unborn, person vs fetus, mother vs baby, etc...) 

Women and unborn persons are portrayed as competitors human rights in a adversarial manner. The prospect of motherhood is seen as a conflict between the right of the child to be born and the desire of the woman to be unburdened from the inconveniance of carrying a child to term. 

2.Symbolization 

"When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups..." (reproductive choice, a womans right to choose, reproductive freedom, womans health, family planning etc...) 

The unborn are portrayed as burdensome, unwanted, malicious, threatening, dangerous; as infringing on the rights of women, while women are portrayed as victims, carrying children "against their will" and having their rights taken away by the unborn. 

3. Dehumanization 

"One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases." (clump of cells, blob, fetus, parasite, comparisons to tumors, not a person, mutant, tec...) 

The unborn are portrayed as not being persons. It is said they are only a clump of cells, they are not sentient, they are not "persons", they are unaware, they are different from adults, undeveloped and only potential human beings. 

4. Organization 

"Genocide is always organized... Special army units or militias are often trained and armed..." (abortion providers, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Emilies List, NOW, ect...) 

Organization that claim to represent to women's health give large sums of money and exert political influence in order to protect and preserve the practice known as abortion. They fight any attempts at restrictions or safeguards against certain types of abortion, age of the women/child receiving abortion and prevent parental notification where and when possible. 

5. Polarization 

"Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda..." (information promoting abortion on websites, radio, blogs, publications) 

Abortion rights groups and abortion providers portray the pro-life movement as being radical, anti-women, intolerant, bigoted while making abortion seem as normal as possible rejecting any negative consequences of abortion including negative effects of the health of women. 

6. Preparation 

"Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity..." (in this instance the commonality is conceived unborn persons who are deemed not persons, undeveloped, weak, sick, deformed, unwanted, ill timed, etc...) 

Unborn persons are deemed a threat to the welfare of the mother either physically or mentally, considered a financial burden, are deemed unworthy to live because of health problems or physical defects which may or may not be life threatening. They portray the practice as compassionate shifting the focus away from the conceived person to the woman, identifying rare instances and exceptions to justify what is normally and largely an elective practice. In 96% of all abortions the health or welfare of the mother or child has no bearing on the decision to abort. 

7. Extermination 

"It is "extermination" to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human." (abortion, partial birth abortion, saline abortion, medicated abortion, etc...) 

Unborn persons are ripped apart, dismembered, euthanized in the womb prior to delivery, have the brains removed in partial birth, are frequently not given anasthetics; wombs are injected with saline to cause premature delivery to crush the unborn when expelled from the womb or are left to die or are killed if they survive the abortion technique. 

8. Denial 

"The perpetrators... deny that they committed any crimes..." (abortion is not killing, abortion is not murder, it's my body, abortion is a right, right to privacy, etc...) 

People say that abortion is not murder. They say that abortion does not kill a person. They call abortion a medical precedure. They stack the courts with people who believe the same, have passed numerous decisions and laws allowing abortion to remain legal; they claim that abortion is a right, deny the personhood of the unborn, and reject any and all evidence and testimony to the contrary.

Feminism

I noticed NOW is now opposing conscience protection. Conscience protection has nothing to do with ensuring equality for women. Conscience protection doesn't even restrict abortion. It doesn't restrict pro-choice doctors, or even pro-life doctors, from performing abortions. All it does is not force pro-life doctors to perform abortions. Not only that, but the source of the controversy is a rule that merely calls for the enforcement of laws already on the books!

I hate it that feminism has been taken over by Roebots.

Feminism is about affirming the rights of females human beings. Being pro-life is about affirming the rights of unborn human beings. Not only are the two compatible, the two groups overlap! It's not about "the right to choose when to have a child". Men have the same right. You choose by having sex and not using protection. A man does not have a right to kill the unborn child. Nobody has a right to kill the child once the child's existence begins. Once you have a child, you can't choose to not have a child by killing him or her.

Nobody has a right to choose to abuse their child. Feminism is not about letting women do whatever they want regardless of how immoral it is.

 2. [After F. féminisme.] Advocacy of the rights of women (based on the theory of equality of the sexes). (Cf.WOMANISM.)

Statements by the original feminists such as calling abortion child murder can't be dismissed by saying abortion was illegal and dangerous back then. Those are statements of the worth of the child. Not merely stating that the procedure should be avoided, they state that it is morally wrong.

On a related note...

Being a nonpartisan organization does not mean all your members must be nonpartisan. Sarah Palin's membership in Feminists for Life in no way makes them conservative.

Modern Art

According to Google, today is Jackson Pollock's Birthday.

I feel it reflects badly on society as a whole when someone can get rich off of cleaning their paintbrush on parchment, or by superglueing random crap together.

Actually, no. I think I'll take advantage of this craze on Restraint of the Heartless to turn it into a masterpiece of persuasive-expository literature.

Ahem.

eruig   IiooIObf#$6$%^4%36 b65436erW#$ ew;f    hOI8O IGE8GWifuew bfeb 89235$%26#^T25^@$364

Rape and Incest

Actually, just rape. Why are the two so often grouped?

Let's say a woman is kidnapped for over two years. While she is there, her captor rapes her, gets her pregnant, and she gives birth to a baby boy. Should she be allowed to kill this child, who she never wanted in the first place, even if every time she looks at him she is reminded of the rape and kidnapping?

No.

Her inconvenience, or even mental distress or anguish, does not outweigh his life.


I hate ad misericordiams.

Clinic Bombings

FYI:

1: The pro-life movement condemns clinic violence.

2: Clinic violence is typically comitted by distraught boyfriends, not activists.

3: Clinic bombing is in no way mainstream.

Censorship 3/2

Have you seen that Hormel Compleats (or whatever) commercial? In the chaos that ensues, it used to show someone smashing open a vending machine to get food, then someone pushes him aside, and a croud grows plucking stuff from it. Guess what? It now shows a guy fumbling in his pockets for change, who is then pushed aside. Why do you think they changed that?

Recently, curses were edited out of a Joe's Crab Shack commercial, such that it didn't really make sense any more.

Responding to intellectual pro-abortion arguments 01

This'll pretty much just be quotes since these have been refuted before.

"Imagine you are sailing your boat along at sea, minding your own business, when you hear a noise behind you. You turn around and find a bedraggled looking man climbing from out of the waves onto your craft.

"Thank God you happened by!" he says. "My ship sank, and I’ve been clinging to the mast for a day now. I had almost given up hope."

You nod solemnly at him, walk across the deck, pick him up, and throw him back in the ocean. "You see," you explain to an imagined audience of shocked onlookers, "he was trespassing. I came out here for some solitude, and the idea that now I’m compelled to accommodate him makes me into kind of a slave, doesn’t it?"

In most people's view and in most legal regimes, this justification is pathetic and you are guilty of murder. And I think that verdict is correct. (I realize some libertarians may disagree, and my argument may be unconvincing to them.) But what of your complaint that you are being enslaved by being forced to take this unwelcome passenger?

The fact that you cannot toss the man off your ship does not compel you to go anywhere you were not going before. If the interloper says he would really prefer to be let off in Boston rather than your destination of New York, you can tell him to bugger off. Most importantly, you are not compelled to keep the man aboard one moment longer than is necessary to get him to safety. At the first moment you reach a populated land, your responsibility for the man’s fate ends. Yes, you are inconvenienced, but that is all – and in a decent society, when you are in a unique position for being able to save someone’s life at the cost of a minor inconvenience to yourself, you are obliged to do so." - Gene Callahan

"The point of abortion is to kill the child, and most abortions dismember and/or poison the child. But some abortion choicers frame abortion as merely termination of the pregnancy; if a child dies because she can't survive being evicted into the hostile environment outside, that's tough, they say. Still, eviction is clearly gross negligence, and if it results in harm, all who participated in the eviction caused the harm and violated the non-aggression principle."

"Writing in Power and Market, economist-philosopher Murray Rothbard points out the sufficiency of "Every man may act as he freely chooses" as a definition of liberty. The proviso usually added -- "provided he respects the like freedom of others" -- is rendered redundant by the universal quantifier "every." For, as Rothbard notes, if one man's freely chosen action is the assault or robbery of another, then the victim is deprived of living or acting as he chooses and liberty does not obtain.1 This is just the situation with abortion: The control being sought is not over one's own body but over another's. That is not freedom, there being no coherent notion of freedom for all which includes the freedom to coerce."

- Both quotes are from Libertarians for Life; look here for more on this argument.

"You are kidnapped and dragged aboard an airplane right before a transatlantic flight. A while into the trip, the owner of the airplane insists that you are trespassing, and orders you to leave. Of course, you are thousands of feet above the middle of the Atlantic, but this does not matter. Neither does it matter if the owner was the one to kidnap you, as the owner retains the right to withdraw consent at any time. All that matters is that you, at the current moment, are on the owner’s property without consent. Now, the owner opens a door, and pushes you out. Through a meat grinder. Keep in mind that this is entirely justified, as the owner has the right to remove you from the plane. Not letting the owner do this would be forcing her to let you out when the plane reaches its destination.

Of course, this is absurd." - Me (also adresses the claim that those who are anti-abortion want to force women to give birth)

Actually, Libertarians for Life has addressed pretty much all of the even semi-intelligent pro-abortion arguments. Comment on this post if you have one they have not adressed. If you have a problem with one of their rebuttals, tell them; they're always interested in constructive criticism.

Activism

I took action yesterday. Did you? Among other things, I was silent. Of all the things duct tape can fix, I hope America is among them. It's a wonderful feeling to know you're helping make the world a better place. Abortion has been legal for three dozades and one day too long, and President Obama is not going to make things any easier.

Tell me in the comments what you did yesterday to make the world (or even America) better, especially in the field of prenatal rights.

On a sidenote, I will no longer be debunking Amanda Marcotte. Her stupidity is making me physically ill. Roebot does not even begin to descibe her.

Today...

is a momentous day for pro-life dozenalists such as myself. Instead of the typical pwnage, I will leave you with a quote:

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

And two words:

1. Take
2. Action

Now go do some pwnage of your own!

Abortion Donuts

After the Krispy Kreme - American Life League thing, I realized I need an anti-abortion equivalent of "Roebot". While ALL is not dumb in the way Roebots are, it's only a matter of time.

Anyone got a suitable pun?

An Open Letter to President Obama

Dear Barack Obama, 

I would like to congratulate you on your historic inauguration, and hope you will continue advocating social change, though I am more a Green myself, and supported kat swift(1) until she lost the nomination. 

The mark of the left has always been its defense of the underdog. The unborn child is much more vulnerable than the farm worker or the single mother welfare recipient. I've noticed change.org has a section for animal rights but not one for prenatal rights. You said that abortion is not something decided lightly, and, while that may be the case, it does not mean abortion should be legal; a poor man deciding to kill his daughter to collect on the life insurance may be making the hardest decision of his life, but that does not mean no one should stop him, though it doesn't mean he shouldn't be given welfare either. While we should continue fighting poverty and other societal ills, we must eventually stand up as a nation and as a party and declare that all are equal: male or female, young or old(2), black or white, gay or straight, born or unborn, theist or atheist, rich or poor, American or foreign. Because of this, I strongly urge you to support a Constitutional Amendment defining "personhood" as beginning at fertilization, at which point modern medical science tells us a unique human individual is present. I also suggest you abandon ESC research in favor of the much more promising adult stem cells, or iPS cells (equal in all regards to ES cells, but with the added bonus that they do not involve the distruction of human embryos).

Being pro-life is not merely a stance of "the religious right", as is so wrongly believed by many. We are much more diverse than that. I, myself, am at once pro-life, liberal, feminist, and an atheist. I am anti-war, pro-universal health care, pro-ERA (The ERA's original author was pro-life, by the way), pro-gay marriage, pro-comprehensive sex ed, and anti-religion. 

I would also like to discuss the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). The only good thing about it is its abolishment of parental consent and notification laws; it is insulting, when millions of young children are being denied equality, to turn around and strip older, biological adults, of equality as well. Ignoring the issue of abortion's immorality, FOCA completely deregulates abortion, and, thus, puts the lives of mothers in danger. It allows doctors not trained in the practice to perform abortions, abolishes laws requiring operational emergency equipment standing by, abolishes informed consent laws, and even allows unsterilized equipment to be used. Not to mention it would also force doctors to perform abortions, regardless of their moral convictions. Catholic hospitals have threatened to close before performing abortions, and will follow through on it.

Instead of signing FOCA, I suggest signing the Pregnant Women Support Act, which is endorsed by Democrats for Life of America, does not restrict abortions, and would dramatically reduce abortions by providing support to pregnant women; sadly, many women feel abortion is their only choice, and college campuses often default to directing pregnant students to abortion clinics because the colleges do not know what else to do, a fact lamented by Feminists for Life of America. 

This is one of the main reason Crisis Pregnancy Centers exist, supplying everything from ultrasounds to baby clothes free of charge. We need more federal funding for these charitable organizations if we really want to decrease the abortion rate. These are needed because women do not want abortion like a kid wants a candy bar; they want it like a bear in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg. 

I would suggest that you read Democrats for Life: Pro-Life Politics and the Silenced Majority by Kristen Day and The Liberal Case Against Abortion by Vasu Murti. 

If you've read this far, or even read this post at all, I am extremely grateful and sincerely apologize for this post's length. 

Yours in the fight for freedom, fairness, and equality, 

Nulono

(1) That's how she writes it, not a typo. 

(2) Youth rights is a bigger topic not discussed here, but I suggest you look into the National Youth Rights Association and read their arguments. I was disturbed, yet not surprised, by your statement on the drinking age. Youth rights was a main reason I support(ed) kat swift.

Restraint of the Heartless

"Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you've got to change the heart and you can't change the heart through legislation. You can't legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion. Well, there's half-truth involved here. Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.

[APPLAUSE]

So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government."

~ Exerpt from a speech by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Just when I thought they couldn't get any dumber...

I saw this.

I was understandably [miffed].

So I emailed the author:

This blog post was borderline slander. There are many secular pro-life arguments. I should know.

I am a pro-life atheist.
So is Nat Hentoff. So is the Raving Atheist.

Might I suggest:
Atheist and Agnostic Pro-life League
Libertarians for Life - their arguments are entirely secular
Democrats for Life
Feminists for Life - continuing the legacy of Susan B. Anthony and other original feminists
Pagans for Life
Restraint of the Heartless - a pro-life liberal atheist's blog, did a good rebuttal of your anti-Personhood Reality Check episode

She replied:

I never said atheists can't be sexist. But in order to promote the idea that you think an embryo is a life that has more value than that of a living, breathing, feeling woman, you do have to believe in magic. Here's the argument.

http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/theocratic_or_pro_choice_not_much_middle_ground_between_them/

Non-religious arguments about women's subjection don't really make a lot of sense when you tease them out. Given the choice between his atheism and his sexism, Raving Atheist chose to convert to Christianity. Perhaps you should think harder about these things! But you should do it by yourself, because demanding that I hold your hand through email "debates" about my own right to live my life is something I don't have time for.

Baffled by her stupidity, I responded:

Main Entry:
sex·ism 
Pronunciation:
\ˈsek-ˌsi-zəm\ 
Function:
noun 
Etymology:
1sex + -ism (as in racism)
Date:
1968
1: prejudice or discrimination based on sex ; especially : discrimination against women
2: behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex
— sex·ist \ˈsek-sist\ adjective or noun

Being pro-life just means you recognize that one person's right to live overrules another person's right to not be inconvenienced. We hold unborn children as equal, not superior to, women. We don't think men should be allowed to kill unborn children either.

http://www.feministsforlife.org/

She, of course still as Roebotic as ever, replied:

Okay, you will get to waste one more minute of my time on you, even though you're clearly unwilling to think about things. But yes, it's sexist to suggest that women's basic rights to bodily autonomy should be restricted in order to punish them for having sex. The double standard with sex is the oldest there is. I reject the idea that "pro-life" has anything to do with the preciousness of fertilized eggs, except insofar as a lot of men have patriarchal fantasies about how babies are made by men ejaculating. It's an attempt to erase women's enormous effort in creating a baby through 9 months of hard work. Unshockingly, most atheist anti-choicers I meet are men with major issues regarding women.

I replied:

It's not about punishing anyone for having sex. I'm fine with nonviolent forms of birth control. I'm fine with embryo "transplants". The only thing I'm not fine with is homicide: the killing of one human being by another. I am not "anti-choice" any more than you are. Neither of us support the right of a man to choose to rape a woman, or of a person to rob a bank. I am no more "anti-choice" than you are "anti-life".


Abortion, like corporal punishment, is saying it's okay to use violence (against thosew you feel are beneath you) to get what you want. You say, "I reject the idea that "pro-life" has anything to do with the preciousness of fertilized eggs". First of all, there are no "fertilized eggs"; when the sperm and egg meet they become a zygote by definition. Second of all, I think I know my reasons for what I believe better than you do.


I am a full supporter of women's liberation. However, as with the feminist foremothers, I reject the notion that a mother has the right to kill her own child out of mere inconvenience.

[Note: The following paragraph is a quote from SciVille of Eight Mine Fortress.]
I get sick of being judged for it like it makes me a monster for believing the embryo's right to life should take precedence over the mother's convenience. Because that is all this is. If the mother's right to not want to be pregnant take precedence over the embryo's right to live, then you're pro-choice. If the other way around, you're pro-life. People like to throw in other reasons, like population or economic status or whatever, but it's irrelevant.

She didn't respond, so I sent another email:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-life#Secular

This time, she responded:

I told you initially that I have yet to meet an atheist anti-choice nut who isn't a misogynist with massive issues regarding women and sex, and your relentless emailing has proven the point. Thanks!

I replied:

1. That's because nobody is "anti-choice". Do you support the right of parents to choose to rape their children? Do you support the right of men to choose to beat their wives? By your logic, pro-gun control is anti-choice (choice to own a gun). [Note: And if pointing out the obvious fact that the child's right to live overrules the mother's convenience makes me a "nut", then call me nutty!]

2. I am not a misogynist.

3. The simple act of holding an email conversation does not make me misogynist.

Reading more of her post, and not yet recieving a reply, I said:

Two words: Jen Roth

She replied:

Your ongoing entitlement issues are doing nothing to convince me that this isn't about sexism.

I replied:

1. I have no idea what you're talking about.
   
2. That's an ad hominem. 
3. I just linked you to a female pro-life atheist.

So, faithful readers, do you think you can find a dumber Roebot than Amanda Marcotte?

I'll also be trying to pull some of the "Raving Theist"'s former subscribers over here, so expect some more antitheistic posts in the future.

Tim Kaine

I would like to congratulate Obama for picking pro-life Democrat Kaine for DNC chair. He's not as pro-life as I'd hoped, but it's a step in the right direction.

The bigots at Democratic Underground

I just wanted to warn you that, as far as progressives go, I have never seen more hidebound, illiberal, intolerant, narrow-minded bigots as those at Democratic Underground. I spent less than a day there before I was banned for heresy. I am very supportive of progressive ideals, yet I disagreed with them on abortion, so I was banned. Never mind the fact that my opposition to abortion comes from an entirely secular progressive viewpoint. Never mind that I was completely civil in my posts.

I'm not surprized, though. Their demeaner is entirely that of a group protected from any and all opposition or criticism. They regularly call those who support the rights of the preborn "anti-choice" or "Jesus freaks" that "have a Bible to sell you", and generally show bigotry towards and prejudiced stereotypes of those who disagree with them. They are Roebotic to the extreme.

Now, not all of them are like this. Those that debated me were very civil and rational. I'm not talking about them.

Reminder

Just wanted to remind everyone that the three-dozenth anniversary of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton is in one week.

Hello?

Anyone there?

I'm getting worried I'm talking to an empty room.

If you're reading this, reply.

Slavery

I am going to depart from my usual format and use this post to collect similarities between pro-abortion and pro-slavery arguments.

Black Genocide covers a lot of this, and also has comparisons to the Holocaust.

Check back here when you can.

"There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of higher order than the right to life. I do not share that view. I believe that life is not private, but rather it is public and universal. If one accepts the position that life is private, and therefore you have the right to do with it as you please, one must also accept the conclusion of that logic. That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existence or treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside of your right to concerned." ~Jesse Jackson

"Question 10

Does the following seem to you a reasonable statement of the pro-choice view?:
If each person will only agree to mind his own business, and leave his neighbors alone, there will be peace forever between us... I am now speaking of rights under the constitution, and not of moral or religious rights...It is for women to decide ... the moral and religious right of the abortion question for themselves within their own limits.... I repeat that the principle is the right of each woman to decide this abortion question for herself, to have an abortion or not, as she chooses, and it does not become a pro-lifer, or anybody else, to tell the her she has no conscience, that she is living in a state of iniquity... We have enough objects of charity at home, and it is our duty to take care of our own poor, and our own suffering, before we go abroad to intermeddle with other people's business.

I arrived at that quotation by taking one of Stephen Douglas's defenses of slavery, and substituting "abortion" for "slavery"; "woman" for "state"; and "a pro-lifer" for "Mr. Lincoln."

I've done the same with the following response from Lincoln:
The doctrine of freedom of choice is right--absolutely and eternally right--but it has no just application, as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such just application depends upon whether a fetus is not or is a human being. If it is not a human being, why in that case, she who is a human being may, as a matter of freedom of choice, do just as she pleases with it. But if the fetus is a human being, is it not to that extent, a total destruction of freedom of choice, to say that it too shall not have freedom of choice itself? ... If the fetus is a human being, why then my ancient faith teaches me that 'all men are created equal;' and that there can be no moral right in connection with one human being's aborting another.

Doesn't the similarity between your defense of abortion, and Douglas' defense of slavery, bother you in any way? Does it raise in your mind any suspicions at all that you might just be on the wrong side?" ~Michael Pakaluk

"If the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court...the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned the government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." -Abraham Lincoln, on the Dred Scott case

12 > 10

For my twelfth post, I want to adress a flaw in your lives that you've probably never evan noticed, and you probably didn't even realize there were alternatives.

Yes, I'm talking about ten.

We've been taught (indoctrinated) since birth that counting goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and then we move over to the tens' place. That's just how counting works, no alternatives. I'm sure you're aware by now of binary and hexadecimal? Dozenal is the same except you roll over at, you guessed it, a dozen.

You are probably more familiar with "duodecimal". Most dozenalists (including myself), however, despise this term because of its decimalist bias.

The reasons to support the dozenal numeral system are many, but I will point out the main thing going for it.

Factors

Twelve is the smallest supercomposite natural number out there. This means it's great for fractional numbers. Below is a table of fractions in dozenal and decimal from Wikipedia

Okay, the table won't post right. Here's a link to the section it's in. I'll wait.

...

You can see the benifit, can't you? In fact, ten is one of the worst bases factor-wise, save maybe nine or a prime.

For more reasons to support dozenal, research the Dozenal Society of America or the Dozenal Society of Great Britain. Or I could just link to them. I think I'll do that.

America: http://www.dozenal.org/

Britain: http://www.dozenalsociety.org.uk/index.php

Please promote dozenalism and help fix this rediculous problem.

Debate me.

I'm running out of material here at Restraint of the Heartless. I'm calling on you, the readers, to present your views, your suggestions, your criticisms!

A fish by any other name...

tastes just as delicious.

Check this out.

I thought PETA had struck a permantent low with the breast milk ice cream thing, but this is just stupid.

Pascal's Wager

I hate Pascal’s Wager; it's a huge false dichotomy.

Imagine you're going about your business, and read online that you will eventually be called to defend yourself at the local court. This is listed on many sites, and each suggests a different way to insure you are found innocent. None of these sites provide any evidence. One site suggests you wear a pink baseball cap, another a purple top hat, another an orange beret with a picture of an elephant on it. Every site claims you'll be found guilty if you wear a different hat. The fuscia-fedora-with-a-monkey-on-it-ists say that you had better wear a hat, because if they're wrong and you wear a hat, you lose nothing, but if they're right and you don't, you lose everything. However, the penalty is the same if you wear the wrong hat. Remember that none of these sites have any proof that this trial will ever occur, let alone if the judge has any hat preferences, let alone what they are.

Some say “I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out there isn't, than live my life as if there isn't, and die to find out there is.”

But if you live your life according to the wrong god (which is overwhelmingly the statistically probable case), the punishment is the same.

Also, let's say you're on a jury and the defendant’s lawyer says he'll reward you if you rule in your favor, and punish you if you don't. You may rule in his favor to avoid the punishment and get your reward, but you don't really believe that the defendant is innocent; you're just saying you do. If the judge could read minds, he wouldn't be fooled.

I also get it confused with Loki's Wager too much.

Exodus 21:22-23

Anti-Personhood people love to cite Exodus 21:22. I've even seen atheists cite it for some strange reason! Ignoring the fact that the Bible is clearly not a reliable source, and that Christians consider Exodus binding only to Jews (even Jews don't accept all of it, like Exodus 21:17), I'l address why this should not be used. Anti-personhood people will generally usae a translation like this:

Exodus 21, v. 22 When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined according as the woman’s husband may exact from him, the payment to be based on reckoning. 23 But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

However, the original Hebrew does not mention a miscarriage. The verb used is "to go forth", a verb used elsewhere in the Bible to refer to a live birth. There is another verb that refers exclusively to a miscarriage, which is used elsewhere in the Bible. However, "to go forth" is ambiguous in this context. That's why it's clarified by "and no harm is done". If the baby is born and no harm is done, it can't be a miscarriage.

Yes, they are using a mistranslation of an obsolete section of a questionable source.

If two men are fighting and one hits a pregnant woman in the crossfire, causing her to give birth early, he must pay for her inconvenience. But if there is any harm (notice harm is not specified as to the mother), the man must pay eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

Censorship 2/2

Censorship can also occur on the listening end. One very prominent form is internet filters. Not only are these unjust, they can be downright ridiculous. Some schools block political advocacy groups. One school blocked this page because "manga" was in the title. Never mind the fact that it doesn't even mention manga, because "manga" is Spanish for "sleeve". Never mind that anime porn is called hentai. Another school blocks Pro-life America's site as "Tasteless and Offensive". They can also often be surpassed by something as simple as the Google Cache. Google Translator is blocked at one school. Some parents censor their children's Internet access, either to "protect" them or to maintain mindless obediance (for example, blocking hothotbabesXXX.com and youthrights.com respectively).

We clearly are not doing well preparing our children for the real world. If we were, we would be able to trust them online. We would trust that they would not give out personal information, or download a virus, or be traumatized by porn when we never tell them what sex is. A computer is not going to kidnap your child and sodomize her in a dark alley. In fact, children are far more likely to be abused by those close to them than the shady man hiding in the bushes or some pervert they meet online. In fact, that pervert they meet online can't do anything to them over the computer. What scares me is that some people want to get rid of online anonymity. This may mean less jerks online, but it will also mean a more dangerous world. And jerks online can't do much. That is, as long as you remain anonymous.

This all goes back to the underlying notion that young people are bad people. All teens are doing drugs. Teen sex is bad. And so on.

Teach your teen. Trust your teen. Treat your teen as an equal.

LOL J/K!!!1

Restraint of the Heartless will remain active. I just wanted an intersting segway into today's post.

Censorship.

The first amendment to the US Constitution gives all persons the right to Freedom of Expression. This is important. However, it is frequently being infinged, frequently by schools against students (there are many other examples, but this is the most prevalent and most highly accepted.

An important thing to point out is students have a right to free speech as granted by the First Amendment and upheld by the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines Supreme Court case. While this right was later restricted by Morse v. Frederick in 2007 in regards to free speech condoning the use of illegal drugs, the right overall still stands.

Schools restrict freedom of expression in a multitude of ways. They may ban certain words that are considered "profane" or "offensive". They may prohibit the distribution of an unofficial school paper, or prohibit students from passing out leaflets. They may also institute a uniform or dress code, thus forcing the students themselves to become an outward sign of their homogeny, placing punishments on unapproved clothing, and putting unnecessary financial strain on families, forcing them to buy a second wardrobe for a student. There are also other violations such as bans on certain haircuts, or students forced to shave their eyebrows due to having shaved lines in them (allegedly a “gang sign”, which is what gets many things banned), students being suspended or expelled for drawings, or students being forced to attend therapy due to the use of a drug “look-alike” an anti-drug commercial, but these are far too numerous to go into.

Related to the Right to Speak is the Right to Listen. This is obviously frequently infringed upon, and I will go into this in more detail tomorrow.

Goodbye

EDIT: I'd originally used this post to announce that I'd just finished reading Democrats for Life: Pro-life Politics and the Silenced Majority; It was very informative and I suggest everyone here read it.

However, due to recent events involving overreaction to the little profanity in this blog (as if words, mere collections of lines and curves, had some magical power to maim innocent kittens), warnings that some may commit the style over substance fallacy (fallacies being, ironically, one of the reasons this blog was founded), and threats of censorship, I have decided to shut down Restraint of the Heartless.

Goodbye, and have a rational 2009.

Responding to Christian [nonsense] 0001

Here I'll respond to some t-shirts form Virtuous Planet.

First, I'll let Snopes deal with the laminin molecule.

http://www.snopes.com/glurge/laminin.asp

We'll start, of course, with the homophobic propaganda.

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I support Civil Rights! Blacks should have the same right as whites do to marry someone of the same race!

See this comic from I Drew This.

This was listed under "Funny"!

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Christians: Strenghtening marriage by protecting it from people that want to get married. Although, if you aren't changing anything, wouldn't that technically be keeping its strenght the same? And if we'd never redefined marriage, interracial marriage would still be illegal. Hell, blacks wouldn't've been allowed to marry at all!

This is strengthening marriage the same way genocide strengthens the human race: eliminate a whole class of it.

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We do not live in a theocracy. Your particular God's law does not apply here. Some churches are fine with gay marriage, If you want to get your way, you must present it in a secular manner. 

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Who's keeping score? Evolution's winning everywhere:

in the Supreme Court

in schools

in the genetic record

in the fossil record

et cetera.

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They already have.

...

Wait, I didn't see that human print in the middle; black doesn't show on dark brown. The "finders" of that example admitted to faking it to con tourists out of their money.

Though, even if humans and dinosaurs walked together, they could've done so millions of years ago. False dichotomy!

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Okay... Let's see...

My God, The Almighty Grxfg'ftevgë, has a bigger penis than your God. She also has the power to defy all laws of the Universe. Necromancy is not a very impressive feat for a God. And, no matter how powerful you imagine your God to be, he is still imaginary.

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And:

Only one road leads to Muhammad.

Only one road leads to Thor.

Only one road leads to the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

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I assume you're referring to the Scientific Method? Perform repeatable experiments that support your idea, use it to make predictions, submit it for peer review, and we'll see if it stands up to scrutiny. If it does, you'll probably win the Nobel Prize! Since your claim is supernatural and basically equates to "Magic Man dunnit", it will not last long.

Your idea is not even useful. How did Magic Man do it? Many Christians think God did it through natural processes. That's because 100% of the evidence supports the current scientific explanation. If we found any contrary evidence that couldn't be explained by the current theory, we'd alter the theory. That's how science works.

Also, "Darwinism" does not exist. If it does, then I am a proud Newtonist.

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Technically, humans are apes. This isn't evolution; this is basic taxonomy. We are all members of the Hominoidea superfamily.

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Oh, come on!

This is based on an ancient three-tiered vision of the sky. If this were true, spacecraft would've flown through a magically floating ocean and ended up in heaven. What did they find instead?

The firmament does not exist.

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Science is, by definition, the study of the observable, the knowable, the repeatable, the explainable, the demonstratable, the natural world. The supernatural is not science by definition.

Personhood

With several Supreme Court seats about to open and President-elect Obama's inaugaration in 17 days, many think that the anti-abortion movement is doomed for a major setback. I argue that this will only push us to rethink our approach.

Instead of taking the juciciary approach, we need to take a legislative approach. How is this possible?

What is the Blackmun Hole?

The following is a quote from Blackmun, in the majority opinion of Roe v. Wade:

"The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, [410 U.S. 113, 157] for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. 51 On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument 52 that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.

...

The pregnant woman cannot be isolated in her privacy. She carries an embryo and, later, a fetus, if one accepts the medical definitions of the developing young in the human uterus. See Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary 478-479, 547 (24th ed. 1965). The situation therefore is inherently different from marital intimacy, or bedroom possession of obscene material, or marriage, or procreation, or education, with which Eisenstadt and Griswold, Stanley, Loving, Skinner, and Pierce and Meyer were respectively concerned. As we have intimated above, it is reasonable and appropriate for a State to decide that at some point in time another interest, that of health of the mother or that of potential human life, becomes significantly involved. The woman's privacy is no longer sole and any right of privacy she possesses must be measured accordingly.

...

We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."

Basically, if personhood were ever granted to the unborn, Roe would collapse; the pro-abortion arguments would fall apart. Roe avoided this question. Of course, embryology is much more advanced now than it was in 1973. It is for this reason that the legislative branch has the power to overturn Roe. This approach has more promise because the legislature is elected more directly by the people and sees a more frequent turnover.

Who is Personhood USA?

Personhood USA is taking the approach the antiabortion movement should have taken all along. There sole purpose is to grant legal personhood to the unborn. Microsoft is a legal person, but an unborn child is not! They aim to fix this.

Please comment on this post if you are an Ohioan and interested in putting a Personhood Amendment on the ballot.