Armstrong and the Prophet, again

"Muhammad: a prophet for our time" is the second Karen Armstrong biographical book on the founder of Islam. (Does she actually like wearing big "kick me" signs taped on her back?) It's been out for a couple of months but seems to have attracted little in the way of reviews.

This weekend, a review in The Tablet starts off seemingly well, but it doesn't last:

In her elegantly composed and absorbingly narrated story of Muhammad's life and achievements, Karen Armstrong aims at doing just this and even more. She sees Muhammad not only as "a moral exemplar" but also as no less than "Prophet [and not only a prophet] for our time". Her account is based partly on a straightforward and uncritical reading of the work of Muhammad's earliest biographers, taking the Qur'an as her main source of information.

....Armstrong arrives at what seems a contrived interpretation of Muhammad's life: "Muhammad literally sweated with the effort to bring peace to war-torn Arabia, and we need people who are prepared to do this today. His life is a tireless campaign against greed, injustice, and arrogance ... he wore himself out in the effort to evolve an entirely new solution."

For Armstrong, the violent phase in the career of Muhammad must not be taken as its climax: Muhammad "eventually abjured warfare and adopted a non-violent policy". This statement is bizarre and corresponds to no Muslim account. It is highly questionable also in the light of all the bloodshed during the early history of Islam, starting with the Medinan period of Muhammad's career. Is it really historically convincing to claim that the battles of Muhammad and his immediate successors "had no religious significance"? Or that the first four caliphs, the "rightly guided ones", "in expanding the Arab Islamic empire by diplomatic and military means", were "responding to a political opportunity ... rather than a Qur'anic imperative"? The Qur'an clearly indicates that Muhammad's first great victory, at Badr, was to be understood as an act of divine intervention, vindicating Muhammad in his struggle against the enemies.

Other anti-Armstrong reviews:

From a University of London academic Efraim Karsh (this was noted in LGF in September):

Ms. Armstrong goes out of her way to whitewash Muhammad's extermination of the Jewish presence in Medina, especially the beheading of the entire 600 to 800 male population of the Qurayzah tribe. "[T]he Qurayzah were not killed on religious or racial ground," she claims, adding that "Muhammad had no ideological quarrel with the Jewish people." This is of course a travesty of the truth. Muhammad might have had no ideological quarrel with "the Jewish people," but he was seething with anger at the Medina Jews, who had not only spurned his attempts to woo them into his incipient religion (for example, by adopting a number of religious Jewish practices and rituals) but had also become his fiercest critics. Reflecting this outrage, both the Qur'an and later biographical traditions of the prophet abound with negative depictions of Jews. In these works they are portrayed as a deceitful, evil, and treacherous people who in their insatiable urge for domination would readily betray an ally and swindle a non-Jew.

And from the Boston Globe:

Readers will find her style stilted: At her best, she makes use of her intellectual skills to explore the tension between the personal and the historical, presenting Muhammad as an average individual doubting his choices, a visionary testing the limitations of his epoch; at her worst, she's didactic, frequently making sermonizing comments about thinking critically about jihad that are a mere rhetorical device. For Armstrong isn't a savvy, inquisitive thinker: She tells rather than shows, assumes rather than explains.

Vague cause for optimism

While not arguing with Israel's right to take steps to stop the never ending random rocket attacks on its territory, shouldn't they be reconsidering the use of shelling (with its inherent risk of error) as an appropriate method? Sure, missile attacks from helicopters and drones kill passersby too, but their explosive force is usually must more limited than a shell coming through the roof of a house (or hitting a beach.)

That said, I continue to wonder why the Palestinians think their rocket attacks are worthwhile when they are (in comparison) causing few deaths but, as a terror tactic, make it impossible for any Israeli government to say to its citizens that they should just ignore it.

I see from this BBC report that at least some Palestinians seem to share this view:

An old man called Muhammad Hussein broke down as he talked of the deaths of his sister and other relatives.

"They were all killed - pieces!" he shouted as he wept. "Thrown in pieces. I saw them! I put them in a sack! Eighteen people - they were killed."

But he said there should be no retaliatory suicide bombings.

"I don't like it," he said. "I myself don't like it. I am more than 70 years old. I want to live in peace!"

A much younger man called Nasser Hamad agreed.

"Palestinians should think carefully," he said.

"Palestinians should go to the peace process. We should not stop negotiating with the Israelis because they are pressuring us to lose our control and do unjustified actions against them."

He described suicide bombings as an ineffective tool.

They are talking about suicide bombings, but I presume that they would not agree with the rocket attacks either. It's a start, although I imagine it is a little hard for grass roots peace movements to get going within Gaza.

The yearning Tracee

Tracee Hutchison's column in The Age today is easy to ridicule in part:

A COUPLE of weeks ago, Silverchair's lead singer Daniel Johns made a bold political statement with a spray can at the annual ARIA awards. Having paid homage to ARIA Hall of Fame inductees Midnight Oil with a powerful rendition of the Oils' 1981 anthem I Don't Wanna Be the One, 27-year-old Johns spray-painted "PG 4 PM" on a strategically placed piece of plasterboard.

It was a fascinating moment.

Maybe for those who pay attention to the political opinions of an overly sensitive, arty musician who was far too successful far too early for the good of his own mental health. (Well, you go read the transcript of the Enough Rope interview he gave. It made me feel very uncomfortable watching it.)

Talking about Midnight Oil, Hutchison writes:

In truth, there are probably more bands making political statements in their lyrics now than there were when the Oils were in their prime. It's just that the Oils were an extraordinary rock'n'roll band first and foremost and their powerfully persuasive lyrics came wrapped in wonderful melodies, so their message reached more people than most.

I may be a musical ignoramus, but I am very surprised at the suggestion that Midnight Oil were big on melody.

But I shouldn't be too tough on this Hutchison column, because she does express cynicism about the relevance of things like this:

Now, more than ever, young, and not so young, people are looking for something, someone, to show them the way.

How else can you explain U2 lead singer Bono's ability to persuade 50,000 fans at U2's Brisbane concert to send a text message to the Make Poverty History organisation while pointing their mobile phones at the moon?

Exactly how 50,000 texts to the ether helps anyone but the shareholders of the phone companies is a mystery...

Quite true. But Hutchison's only source of inspiration in politics today? :

Activist-turned-Greens leader Bob Brown aside, the absence of inspired political leadership in Australia has never been starker. And the need to give people something to believe has never been more crucial. As a twentysomething, Peter Garrett sang about not wanting to be the One. Maybe so. But we need more Garretts, Browns and Stott Despojas engaged in the political process and we need them being heard.

I don't know. It seems to me a large part of the problem is this: teenagers, as a general rule, have always thought they know more than their hopeless parents who are running the world. Nowadays, psychological teenage-hood often extends into the early 30's, and so the class of disaffected "youth" had accordingly increased. (And, if they are all convinced of coming global catastrophe, they will probably have fewer children and avoid the life lessons that child rearing often entails.)

There are issues with how Western youth and society as a whole now chose to find meaning in life. But just complaining that oldies don't listen to and don't know how to lead the disaffected youth is not exactly a helpful contribution.

Bush and a carbon tax?

While it seems to be based on pretty slim evidence, Timothy Noah in Slate speculates that maybe Bush will become a carbon tax convert. It would be some surprise...

The baby flap

I haven't posted anything about Japan for a while, but this article in the Japan Times caught my eye:

KUMAMOTO (Kyodo) A hospital here plans to create a drop box where parents can anonymously leave unwanted babies, hospital officials said Thursday.

Jikei Hospital said it will begin the work to create the drop box as soon as it obtains permission from local public health authorities. The hospital wants to set it up by the end of the year.

Drop boxes for abandoned babies have been introduced in Germany, where they are known as a "babyklappe" (baby flap) or "babyfenster" (baby window) in German. In Italy, they are called "culle per la vita" (cradle for life).

A Jikei Hospital official visited Germany, where they are usually set up at hospitals or social centers, in 2004.

Jikei Hospital said its baby drop box, called "konotori no yurikago" (cradle of storks), will be a boxlike chamber similar to an incubator, accessible from outside the hospital by opening a window. When a baby is dropped off, an alarm will alert nurses.

I had heard of this idea before, but did not know it was already well established in Europe.

It's a peculiar idea in some respects; and I find it odd that giving up a baby this way doesn't cause all sort of problems for the mother in explaining to neighbours and relatives what happened to the baby.

Further down in the article, the depressing figure of the number of abortions in Japan is mentioned:

According to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, in fiscal 2004, the number of abortions in the prefecture stood at 5,619, while the nationwide figure came to 301,673. No figures were available on abandoned babies in Japan, which is struggling to find ways to stem a falling birthrate.

Just how big a difference to the population problem in Japan would a reduction in abortions mean? According to the BBC in August 2006:

Almost 550,000 births were registered in the six months from January to June, up by more than 11,600 from the same period last year.

So, that means (if this increase holds up), about 1,100,000 births a year. The number of deaths in 2005: about 1,077,000. (More people died in 2005 than were born.)

The point is, if they are going to insist on very low migration as a source of population growth, then halving the current abortion rate would stop the population slide by a substantial number.

UPDATE: by coincidence, I see that there is a recent Japundit post about the birth rate, and the strange attitude of Japanese to immigration.

Good news/bad news on greenhouse gases

Good news on the greenhouse gas front is rare to find (and not exactly over-reported.) But it turns out that atmospheric levels of methane, an important greenhouse gas due to it having a larger effect than CO2, has stopped increasing. From American Scientist:

This happy development wasn't entirely unanticipated, given that the rate of increase has been slowing for at least a quarter-century. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicated many of its conclusions on scenarios in which methane concentrations would continue growing for decades to come. Thus the recent stabilization of methane levels is something that some scientists are trying very hard to explain.

Edward J. Dlugokencky, an atmospheric chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has tracked atmospheric methane for many years. He says that "even as the reduction was happening, people doing emission scenarios weren't accounting for it." Dlugokencky maintains that the evolution of methane levels in the atmosphere mostly just reflects the attainment of a chemical equilibrium, such that methane production is balanced by its destruction. In sum, he says, atmospheric methane "looks like a system approaching steady state."

But now for the bad news. Over at Real Climate, there is a recent post about how much additional CO2 in the atmosphere might be "safe".

As usual with their site, they don't believe in over-simplifying their explanations for easy understanding, but the figures suggested, although appearing fairly "back of the envelope" look pretty bad:

This is a bit of a guessing game, but 2°C has been proposed as a reasonable danger limit. This would be decidedly warmer than the Earth has been in millions of years, and warm enough to eventually raise sea level by tens of meters. A warming of 2° C could be accomplished by raising CO₂ to 450 ppm and waiting a century or so, assuming a climate sensitivity of 3 °C for doubling CO₂, a typical value from models and diagnosed from paleo-data. Of the 450 ppm, 170 ppm would be from fossil fuels (given an original natural pCO2 of 280 ppm). 170 ppm equals 340 Gton C, which divided by the peak airborne fraction of 60% yields a total emission slug of about 570 Gton C.

How much is 570 Gton C? We have already released about 300 Gton C, and the business-as-usual scenario projects 1600 Gton C total release by the year 2100. Avoiding dangerous climate change requires very deep cuts in CO₂ emissions in the long term, something like 85% of business-as-usual averaged over the coming century. Put it this way and it sounds impossible. Another way to look at it, which doesn't seem quite as intractable, is to say that the 200 Gton C that can still be "safely" emitted is roughly equivalent to the remaining traditional reserves of oil and natural gas. We could burn those until they're gone, but declare an immediate moratorium on coal, and that would be OK, according to our defined danger limit of 2°C. A third perspective is that if we could limit emissions to 5 Gton C per year starting now, we could continue doing that for 250/5 = 50 years.

According to a chart that was part of my last post on CO2, the atmospheric level of CO2, on a "business as usual" basis, would be reached by about 2040. (We're already at about 380ppm.)

These figures are not good. However, the argument goes on in the comments section about whether Kyoto is a help or hinderance. Post number 105 comes up with some fairly imaginative ideas about reducing CO2 with self replicating robots and such like, and ends on this note, which neatly summarises conservative's concerns about Kyoto:

..many of the problems associated with CO2 is best solved with wealth. Indeed technology induced wealth solves both CO2-related problems AND all other sorts of nasty problems unrelated to CO2 such as poverty, disease, hunger, misery and disasters. By insisting on strangling economic growth, not only are you robbing the world of the best way to cope with climate change -- technology -- but also robbing the poor of the world the opportunity to cope with just about anything.

I haven't read the Stern report, or many of the articles criticising it yet, so I can't comment helpfully yet. But the main point of this post is just how bad the figures look for how hard it will be to keep that much carbon out of the atmophere.

Uncommon medical advice

I like stories about doctors who have gone mad, assuming no harm is done in the process:

A doctor at a family planning clinic told a patient that she needed an exorcism because there was something sinister moving around inside her stomach, a medical tribunal was told yesterday.

Joyce Pratt, 44, allegedly told the patient, who was seeking contraceptive advice, that she might be possessed by an evil spirit and needed religious rather than medical help.

She gave the woman crosses and trinkets to ward off black magic, allegedly told her that her mother was a witch, that she and her husband were trying to kill her, and suggested that she visit a Roman Catholic priest at Westminster Cathedral in London.

During the consultation at the Westside Contraceptive Clinic in Central London the doctor was said to have told the patient that she had black magic powers that could help to alleviate the problem.

I am sure Queensland Health could find a place for her in any event.

On the US elections

Complicated system, this having a separate executive from the legislature.

As far as Iraq is concerned, it's hard to see how a Democrat controlled house is going to help come up any time soon with a concrete change of plan in Iraq. The Guardian helpfully points out that important Democrat figures are all over the place:

....suggestions that Democrats have the answers on Iraq appear sadly misplaced. In the first place, they lack decisive power. Mr Bush remains arbiter-in-chief of America's foreign and security policy. More to the point, they have no coherent, collective view - and are scared of being accused of betraying frontline troops.

Hillary Clinton, the 2008 presidential hopeful, opposes an Iraq withdrawal timetable. John Kerry, beaten by Mr Bush in 2004, wants a firm deadline. John Murtha, who will control the House committee that appropriates cash for the Iraq war, has demanded an immediate pullout. Joe Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, is advocating a tripartite division of Iraq. And there are many other points of view. All that unifies them is criticism of Mr Bush's performance.

The paper also points out how new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has previously spoken of the President:

While the two have appeared together at some social functions, their relationship has been marked by mutual disdain.

"He is an incompetent leader. In fact, he is not a leader," she said in a 2004 interview. "He's a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide on." Bush, for his part, has painted Pelosi has a tax-loving Democrat, although during the midterm campaign he left the mud-slinging to party operatives who depicted her in political adverts as a stereotypical San Francisco liberal.

I have not paid attention to the nature of the Republican attacks, but I see that some say Fox News spent a lot of time on her.

Interesting times ahead.

A realistic military option with Iran?

This article makes a very plausible argument for a type of military option for dealing with Iran if the need arises.

(My idea of using electromagnetic pulse weapons does not get a mention, but maybe someone in the Pentagon reads my blog. Or perhaps I have to type in the words "Praise Allah, here are the plans for nuclear weapon" to be sure that will happen.)

An interesting take on Stern report

This short article from TCS daily argues that cost of fighting global warming, as suggested in the recent Stern report, is much higher than it first appears. (Roughly $400 billion annually.) The writer suggests that if this is the sort of money involved, then maybe some global engineering solution (of the mirrors in space variety, for example) is not so out of the question after all.

Speaking of which, here's another suggestion for such a solution:

Angel and colleagues propose launching a constellation of trillions of small free-flying spacecraft a million miles above Earth into an orbit aligned with the Sun, called the L-1 orbit. The spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer.

Some 10 per cent of the sunlight passing through the 97,000 kilometre length of the cloud - pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the Sun - would be diverted away from our planet. The effect would be to uniformly reduce sunlight by about 2 per cent over the entire planet, enough to balance the heating caused by a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

But the trick is how to get them there:

According to Angel and colleagues, the sunshade could be deployed by a total 20 electromagnetic launchers launching a stack of 1 million flyers every 5 minutes for 10 years.

Oh. Suddenly sounds less than plausible. Do it from the moon instead would seem a much better bet!

This idea also made me wonder whether anyone has suggested nanotechnology as a possible shielding solution. I quite liked Michael Crichton's novel "Prey", about swarms of nano gnats that start eating people. Of course, that such devices will ever exist seems farfetched, but if something like them could be made on an industrial scale, and launched to live high in the atmosphere, could the swarm form a controllable high altitude dusty sunshade? Just thinking outside of the circle, folks...

About Saddam's verdict

You can always trust Huffington Post to run some Hollywood star, comedian, or ex-journalist with the most anti-Bush take possible on current events. (OK, occasionally they have someone with an opinion I can agree with.) But today, Joan Z Shore (apparently an aging former journalist) makes this ridiculous comparison on Saddam's guilty verdict:

How can anyone in a civilized world justify or condone what has
happened? Invading (preemptively) a sovereign nation, occupying it,
capturing its leader, setting up a kangaroo court, and sentencing him to
hang for crimes against his own people.....

Did we dare do this with Idi Amin, with Joseph Stalin, with Chou
En-lai, with Pol Pot?

Of course not. Maybe those nations were too big too tackle, or too
far away, or maybe there were no economic interests (e.g., oil) hanging in
the balance. Or maybe our leaders then simply had a commendable sense of
caution, before waging a unilateral attack on a foreign dictator.

Emphasis mine.

So, George W is meant to suffer by comparison with the "caution" of past presidents who failed to invade Communist Russia and China? Joan: if, as you virtually concede, it is bleeding obvious that they is no comparison, why make the comparison?

As for the fairness of the trial, despite the chaos surrounding it, Radio National this morning spoke to Mark Ellis, the executive director of the International Bar Association, and he did not seem to have major issues about that. I felt that Fran Kelly had a twinge of disappointment that Ellis did not get on a high horse about how procedurally unfair it had been. Instead, he made it clear that the evidence was there and it was a compelling case.

Christopher Hitchens has turned up on Lateline tonight (transcript should be available soon) making it clear that while he doesn't support capital punishment, he can see that the execution will at least serve the practical purpose of ending the substantial fear in many Iraqis that he will some day return to rule again. This argument is surely persuasive when you consider the amount of insurgency still going on in the country. I don't support capital punishment for your run of the mill murderer or criminal either, but the difference between them and former charismatic but murderous national leaders is the potential for more deaths caused by the latter's supporters.

Finally, a string anti American and British comments can be found on the BBC's comments section. My favourite so far (from "Julie in Stourbridge") is this:

Okay, i feel like the little boy in the emporers new clothes for saying this but how on earth do we know this is the real Saddam and not just an actor or a double.
Saddam was known to have many doubles and his wife did say many months ago that this was not her husband on trial.

Is the whole thing just a stage show for the benefet of the public while the real Saddam is playing Golf with George Bush?

That's worthy of Daily Kos, that one.

UPDATE: Ever since the turmoil in Iraq has increased, there have been a few voices from some the anti war, anti-death penalty Left who have actually suggested that Saddam should be re-instated. The fact that such voices exist at all only further strengthens my argument that it is too dangerous for him to left alive, as the Sunni insurgents would always have the hope of his return as an incentive to keep creating enough chaos.

I note that the Guardian has published what appears to be a serious "tribute" to Saddam, although there appears to be some suggestion that it might be satire. Satire should be clearly recognisable as such in order to work, though, shouldn't it? Certainly, some of the argument is so egregious as to be truly breathtaking. As one of the comments following says:

What next. Joseph Stalin: a Tribute. "Yes Uncle Joe murdered millions of people and was a despotic tyrant, but at least he got tractor production up in the urals and made the Moscow metro run on time". You are mad

What is worrying is that a lot of comments are semi-supportive, or at least along the lines of "if he hangs, so should Bush and Blair". As Jim Nolan argues today, such comments are:

"...confirming yet again, if confirmation were needed, that new depths of moral obtuseness not seen since the Hitler-Stalin pact are resurgent."

Go John Kerry

On a lighter note, some of the commentary on the disastrous John Kerry "joke" is pretty funny. Gerard Barker writes :

IN John Frankenheimer's electrifying 1962 thriller The Manchurian Candidate, an American soldier is captured by communists during the Korean War, brainwashed and programmed to return to the US and, years later, to assassinate a presidential candidate.

There is compelling evidence now that John Kerry is a kind of Manchurian Candidate of Democratic politics.

Read it all.

Conan O'Brien's segment on Late Night (shown on Comedy Channel here last night) was also very funny. Unfortunately, no clip of it is available on his website yet, but maybe one will become turn up later. Before Google came into the picture, I would have expected to find it on You Tube, but much of the posting of TV clips has sadly come to an end.

More war with Lebanon?

A pessimistic assessment from John Keegan in the Telegraph about Israel having to go to war again soon. Within a year, he reckons.

In Gaza, killing continues, and women who heed the call to act as human shields get killed.

As if there weren't enough problems in Israel already, a fight is going on about a planned gay pride parade in Jerusalem next week. The police think it is more trouble than it is worth, and want it stopped. If it goes ahead, at least Conservative Jews and Muslims will be meeting on the street with a common aim, for a change. Somehow, I don't think that is the point the march organisers want to achieve.

This Jerusalem Post article about the whole issue is interesting. Apparently, many areas of Jerusalem are being abandoned by secularist and left to the religious conservatives. (Incidentally, the parade is planned to be through the secular commercial areas.) But what is life like in Jerusalem for gays? I was a little surprised to read that it's not so bad:

The leaders of Jerusalem's gay community are obviously pleased at the enormous amount of publicity their parade has been receiving. But they are aiming for a Pyrrhic victory. Jerusalem is not the most difficult Israeli city for gays to live in. The capital has a vibrant gay scene, with a number of bars operating peacefully, while the Open House social center is funded (under a Supreme Court order) by City Hall, where there is an openly homosexual City Council member. Of course, there is some degree of homophobia, and a number of cases of harassment - but no more, and probably much less, than can be found in many other places around the country.

And the need for a march therefore is....?

Fiddling with life for the benefit of Chad

The LA Times certainly brings attention to the culture wars with a series it has run this week about what 2 gay men did to get a baby:

...they had decided to have a child through a gestational surrogacy arrangement. They would pay one woman to provide her eggs and then, after fertilizing them in vitro with their sperm, pay another woman to carry the resulting embryos to term.

Section one is here. (To avoid having to register in to see following pages, click on the "one page" choice at the bottom.)

By and large, the article strives for a very non judgment tone, with lines like this:

It was a quest that would take them to the frontiers of medicine, bioethics, technology and the law, as well as to the front lines of the culture wars.

And:

Rather than creating a life in the privacy of a bedroom, Chad and David would plot this conception in law offices, doctors' suites and Internet chat rooms. It would take a village to manufacture their child.

Why did they chose this method of getting a baby:

They had considered adoption, but Chad, 33, and David, 35, wanted to participate more fully in the process of bringing a child into the world. They longed to see the first ultrasonic images of a tiny pumping heart and even to provide coaching in the maternity ward, just like straight fathers.

Why did they decide on such a complicated procedure (rather, say, than impregnating a volunteer mother)? Because this method reduces the chances of the mother making claim to any parental rights (the child is not genetically hers). So, take the riskiest path possible for this manufactured child, hey boys?

Despite the writer's efforts, some creepiness gets through:

For weeks, they had evaluated virtually any woman who entered their field of view. One night, when David met friends at a Georgetown bar, a striking woman with olive skin and dark eyes asked him to dance. When he later told Chad how flattering it had been, Chad could only ask: "Do you think she would be our egg donor?"....

They didn't want to consider appearance at the exclusion of all else, but they couldn't deny, in the privacy of that room, that it mattered.

"You can't ignore it," David said. "I mean, who wants an ugly child?"

"David, some people would be happy with that," Chad scolded.

Did I say the article was non-judgement? This description of the young David, and the perfect nature of their relationship, goes beyong that:

David's materialism made friends roll their eyes. But beneath the Neiman Marcus veneer they found a razor intellect, a generous heart, an optimistic spirit, and an almost effortless charm. By the time David came to grips with his sexuality, a lacerating tongue had mellowed into a quick and often wickedly entertaining wit.

From the outset, Chad and David seemed perfect complements. David grounded Chad, and made him more secure. Chad softened David, and made him more sensitive.

(Look, even if it was a straight couple, you would have to question this in anything resembling journalism.) It wasn't even as if both of them had life long desires to be fathers:

It wasn't until Chad and David went to couples counseling in 2001 that David revealed he had serious reservations about being a parent. He liked their life as it was, he said, and he wasn't convinced he was the nurturing kind.

This section here just about sums up neatly the zenith of the commodification of reproduction that this story represents:

Now that the technology existed, they asked themselves, why shouldn't gay men have the same right as straight people to produce a genetic heir? All they lacked were eggs and a womb. As it turned out, they could buy the first and lease the second.

Chad gets his way. They don't have much luck:

It was their fifth attempt in 15 months to create a pregnancy through a gestational surrogacy arrangement. To get to this point, they had gone through two egg retrievals, 58 eggs, 43 embryos, two embryo freezes, three frozen embryo thaws, four failed embryo transfers, two surrogates and more than $100,000.

Part 2 of the story is here.

Long story short: Chad's sister ends up being the surrogate (how perfectly liberal this family must be). What's more, it's twins.

Happy ending? No way. Babies born at 24 weeks. Chad and David rush to hospital. Of course, they are the perfect grieving parents:

It didn't take long for the hospital staff to conclude that Chad and David were more devoted than many parents who passed through the unit.

Both babies die. Teary scenes by everyone, because, you know, they are just such a loving couple.

Chad and David are trying again. Through double implantation again. Did I mention that they are both Christians?

I find this story just appalling on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin. I don't think I will even try.

Scott Adams' humour

I was aware some time ago that Dilbert writer Scott Adams had a blog. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting to read it. Must add him to blogroll.

His recent entries on the Sheik Hilali ruckus, and the Slate story I mentioned about the internet and rape, are both funny. (The Sheik has sure made an international name for himself, hasn't he?)

As used by Chris Masters and Phillip Adams

From Japundit, a Japanese English label.

Tim Dunlop goes professional

I am pretty surprised by this. Tim Dunlop is turning into a professional blogger for News Limited.

I know that in the past, Tim has been on friendly enough terms with Tim Blair, and makes the occasional comment that is sort of respectful to opposing opinion on going into the Iraq war. However, it has seemed to me that he has become increasingly nasty and afflicted by Howard (and Bush) Derrangement Syndrome over the last 18 months or so that I have read him. Those who regularly comment on his site are worse. It is an unpleasant place to raise dissent.

I therefore have no idea why News Limited finds him a good bet for hosting a blog, although it is clear that puts a lot of time into his own.

I am also very curious as to what such a job pays.

Sunlight good for at least one cancer

An interesting suggestion from this study:

Using newly available data on worldwide cancer incidence, researchers at the Moores Cancer Center at UCSD have shown a clear association between deficiency in exposure to sunlight, specifically ultraviolet B (UVB), and ovarian cancer.

It's all to do with vitamin D.

On drinking for health

I like this post by Bryan Appleyard, especially the last line.

Religion and women

Some good points are made in this opinion piece in the Times:

It is the asymmetry that I object to in Muslim thought, the fact that men can wear what they like while women cannot. Are women supposed to be more evolved than men, more in control of their passions? In that case it seems odd that they are not even allowed to enter many mosques, let alone preach in them.

No, Muslim men seem to want to have it both ways. They want complete leadership of their community, with women’s voices seldom heard, but then they are happy to reduce themselves to the status of animals — feral cats in the Mufti’s sermon — when it comes to sex, unable to resist the charms of a woman with an uncovered head.

The issue ranges beyond the Muslim community. For it’s not much fun for the rest of womankind, dressed perfectly modestly in their own eyes, to know that, because their heads are bare or their calves exposed, many Muslim men will see them as tarts.

What is more, Western women are prepared to cover right up if they visit a strict Muslim country where local people would be offended by skimpy shirts or shorts. Yet there are still many Muslim women living in liberal Britain who continue to wear the full veil, hiding their face, whatever offence or alienation it might cause here.

The Anglican Archbishop of Perth, however, uses the debate about Islamis views on women to criticise the conservatives in his own church who are against the ordination of women:

The thought forms that treat women as second-class human beings have foundational elements that are similar in many repressive religious traditions.

One of the leading academics from Moore College, Dr Mark Thomson, made it clear that there was nothing to discuss regarding women in ministry as "God has not left us alone to guess what any part of Scripture is saying. God is a very good communicator — we have been convinced that the teaching of Scripture is authoritative — we rejoice in the word God has given us".

Hilali in his logic reiterates that Allah is forgiving and merciful yet wise and all powerful, so the word that is given must be for the good of humanity. Women just fall into this divine pattern of submission — it is the way things are — and it is good.

The divinely sanctioned world view authenticated by the selective use of Scripture by these Islamic and Christian scholars keeps women in subjection and gives a clear passport to heaven for the chosen. Those who see the Scriptures differently will find their destiny in the fires of hell.

Is this really a fair or correct representation of what the Anglican opponents to women's ordination say?

The Archbishop goes onto say:

In Christianity, as I am sure in Islam and in other faith and non-faith systems, there are other texts and a humbler interpretation given by many other scholars that gives rise to a different, equally divinely sanctioned world view. All humanity and the whole created order are loved into a dignity that invites all to move from slavery to freedom.

Yes, the Bible is funny like that, can be interpretted to support a wide variety of propositions. That Catholics and Anglicans are not fundamentalists in the generic sense is therefore a good thing. The use of reason is good.

But the pro-women's Ordination argument that it is all about overcoming ancient prejudice against women I find very tiresome. It assumes an inherent unreasonableness on the part of their opposition for refusing to recognise their own prejudice.

I don't think it is helpful if the conservatives really do claim that their opponents are destined for hell if they ordain women. But I equally find it unacceptable for pro-ordination forces to claim that the opposition is inherently unreasonable, as I think they are inclined to do.

The fundamental problems of faith in the modern world are not, in my view, really to do with issues about rights and social justice anyway. Those churches that concentrate on those matters at the expense of emphasising their, um, supernatural or metaphysical (I am not sure of the right way to characterise this) role in the life of their individual church members are losing ground in popularity anyway, because those churches have dealt themselves out of having any special value or purpose anyway.

In this way, concentration on an issue such as women's ordination is a side issue and hurts churches, but in exactly the opposite way to which most liberal churches think.