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Talk the Talk: Gorilla Baby-Talk

19 June 2012 / / Comments Off on Talk the Talk: Gorilla Baby-Talk

I’m fascinated by the origins of our language. I feel like I’m always building up more of the picture of how it came about, and today’s podcast features two new pieces.

Piece one: Some linguists hold to social interactionism, or the idea that young humans acquire language in a social context. And what do you know: apes appear to use simplified gestures to their young.

The other piece is lip smacking. Macaques smack their lips, and that’s the kind of coordinated fine mouth movement that could have provided the bridge from grunts to discrete sounds.

Language appears to have left its traces in other species, leading all the way up to us.

One-off show: Here
Subscribe via iTunes: Here
Show notes: Here

Coming soon: “No religion” in the 2011 Australian census

18 June 2012 / / 3 Comments

Data for the 2011 Australian census is coming out on Thursday, and I’m like a kid on Christmas Eve. I can’t wait to see what percentage of people listed themselves as ‘No Religion’.

Why do I care? Am I insecure in my atheism, and I need backup to feel validated? Not really; it’s just that we’re on the brink of a moment in history here. More and more of us are coming out as ‘not religious’, and it’s cool to see it grow. Sure, Thursday’s data dump gives us more numbers to crunch, but the numbers represent the stories of people who have walked away from religion (and in some cases but not all, gods and supernaturalism). This weakens the hold of religion in our society, and provides an ever-larger pool of people that could be turned on to skepticism, humanism, and other positive values.

So what should we expect the numbers to do for 2011? I grabbed the “no religion” numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics website, and did some plotting.

The Numbers application will give you trendlines, but it doesn’t let you extrapolate beyond the data. (Boo.) So I took the linear trendline, and laid a longer red line over it. That’s kind of bodgy; sorry about that.
Anyway, if you enlarge, you’ll find that the line crosses the 2011 axis just over 20 percent. So that’s my prediction — a little over 20%; anything more is gravy. Maybe the AFA’s “No Religion” campaign did its work, and we’ll see 22 or 23. I’d be ecstatic with 23, but I think that’s a bit high.
Place your bets in comments. More on Thursday.

Talk the Talk: Search Insights

12 June 2012 / / 1 Comment

Search histories are pretty honest. Under the cover of (supposed) anonymity, we search for things we wouldn’t admit. But it all goes into the data pile, and then I talk about it on the radio! You see, today’s podcast is about Google Insights for Search, which is a very cool way of browsing through Google’s query data for all the things people are looking for, by location.

That’s where the fun begins. Near the end of the podcast, I mention a few sexual paraphilias, and in which Australian state they’re most searched for. The strange thing is that Western Australia doesn’t seem to come in at number one in any of them.

Which is where you come in. If you can find out what sexual practises WA leads the nation in, I’d be most grateful if you’d post it in comments. Please — I’ve got to know what people around me are getting up to. It’s driving me crazy.

One-off show: Here
Subscribe via iTunes: Here
Show notes: Here

A mixed-orientation marriage that works?

10 June 2012 / / 4 Comments

So there’s this gay guy, right? And he’s Mormon, and married to a woman. Sadly, not as uncommon as you’d think.

But the story of Mr and Mrs Weed is a bit different because they both knew going into the relationship. He’s come out of the closet to tell their story.

I guess the premise of this post is to share that not only am I homosexual, but I’m also a devout and believing Mormon. And that I’m very happily married to a woman, and have been for ten years now.

And for the first time, we’re talking about it publicly.

So he’s gay. She knew about it. But they’re in love, have three kids, and a working relationship in which they both seem very happy, including a functioning sex life.

This story has garnered a lot of love among Mormon women on Facebook. Friends of mine are saying

  • I loved this xx
  • Very very very cool.
  • I think he is a hero.

I can see why they’d think that because his story is tremendously affirming for the beliefs of Mormon women, two core beliefs in particular:

  1. Gay people ought to abstain from gay sex for the entirety of their lives, and this is proof that it can work!
  2. Sex isn’t very important to a relationship. Why should men get to have the kind of sex they want, and why won’t my husband quit bugging me about it?!

So you can imagine the Facebook fury when I tell them that this is a terrible idea, and I give the whole thing ten years.

Am I a hater? No, I just realise that sex is important, and while you may be able to bury yourself in the kind of lifestyle you think you should want, a lifetime is a long time not to be getting the kind of sex you really really want. It’s a setup for cheating, and then he’d be the bad guy for a) having gay sex, and b) cheating.

Sure, it can be pulled off, and I hope they do. But how does it sound to you? Let’s just say there was a church that only allowed gay people, and you really believe in it, although you’re straight. If you really really tried, could you find a nice person of your own gender that you liked and respected, and maybe even have sex, even though you know you don’t find that kind of sex appealing? You probably could, especially if you regarded it as a sacrifice of faith. (And if you believed that God would fix everything in the life beyond.) But acting contrary to your orientation is just that — acting.

The Mormon angle is bugging me, too. They’re making this decision because, yes, they love each other and want a family. But they also believe the Mormon Church is the One True Church, and it’s telling him that gaysex is wrong, and that he should abstain. I’m a big believer in informed consent, but it needs to work all the way around; they know what’s going on with each other, but they’re not aware that the church is — frankly — a mess of men’s opinions, built on lies. If this man came to realise that, the anguish might be considerable. Or not, if he felt lucky to have been with his wife, which he well might. But you need to know, you know?

He writes movingly about God’s love for gay people:

I want you to know that God loves you, and that even though you are attracted to people of the same gender, you are a completely legitimate individual, worthy of God’s love, your family’s love, and the love of your friends. You are no more broken than any other person you meet. You are not evil. You are a beautiful child of God.

This would be news to the God of the Bible, who couldn’t stand gay people, won’t let them into his kingdom, and has commanded that they be killed. But I guess since Mr Weed has come this far, he’ll believe in whatever kind of god he needs to. Theism is so often projection and wish-fulfillment.

Another sad thing: despite the author’s best intentions, this will be used as a stick to beat gay people. “Hey, this guy can do it. Why can’t you?” Mixed-orientation LDS marriage is one of the tragedies of the Mormon experience, and this may tip a few people to try it. (It should be noted though that the author doesn’t recommend this lifestyle for everyone.)

Maybe they can manage it. I really hope they do — we don’t need more unhappy relationships. At this stage, he’s a data point. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My hope is that they can keep it together, or at least work together and remain friends, when he moves on to his real sexual orientation in his early-to-mid forties.

UPDATE
Another thing: Notice how he talks about ‘authenticity’, and claims that by having an LDS lifestyle, he’s being authentic to himself.

No, you’re being authentic to the Mormon Church. I’ve written before about how Mormonism is so all-consuming that Mormons often conflate their own goals, desires, and even their identities with that of their religion, so much so that when I insult the church, they think I’m insulting them. This is another manifestation of that.

Talk the Talk: Lost in Translation

5 June 2012 / / 4 Comments

Ordinarily I’m not into unusual words from other languages. Yes, they exist, but why make them into some weird curiosity? Even so, I thought this article was interesting

25 Handy Words That Simply Don’t Exist in English

and I thought there were some things to say about language categories and lexical gaps.

Plus the fact that English would be so much better with a word like ‘tartle’. Let’s all borrow it.

One-off show: Here
Subscribe via iTunes: Here
Show notes: Here

Apologies in advance

3 June 2012 / / 2 Comments

Blame the Bible

1 June 2012 / / 2 Comments

Just noting to myself that I’ve seen two (not one, but two) stories of people doing exactly what the Bible says, with disastrous or horrifying consequences.

The first was this:

Serpent-handling pastor profiled earlier in Washington Post dies from rattlesnake bite

Mack Wolford, a flamboyant Pentecostal pastor from West Virginia whose serpent-handling talents were profiled last November in The Washington Post Magazine, hoped the outdoor service he had planned for Sunday at an isolated state park would be a “homecoming like the old days,” full of folks speaking in tongues, handling snakes and having a “great time.” But it was not the sort of homecoming he foresaw.

Instead, Wolford, who turned 44 the previous day, was bitten by a rattlesnake he owned for years. He died late Sunday.

Yep, the Bible says that if you’re a believer, you can pick up snakes and they won’t harm you. So what happened? Did he not believe enough? Or is the Bible full of crap? Is anyone in that congregation asking these questions? Probably not; the news story tells how Wolford’s father died the same way.

The other story is, of course, this video about a four-year-old singing a charming ditty: “Ain’t No Homos Gonna Make It to Heaven”. I won’t embed it — I can’t even watch the whole thing.

People are up in arms about it, but isn’t he just quoting Paul?

Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind…shall inherit the kingdom of God.

One criticism I get here on the blog is that I go after the extremists. Not true. These are people who believe what the Bible says. If that’s extreme, it means that more ‘moderate’ believers are picking and choosing what they like from the Bible, using their own moral sense. Which makes the actual Bible kind of extraneous. Why not skip a step and ditch the Bible entirely? You get bitten by fewer snakes that way.

At any rate, if you’re horrified by these items or find them distasteful, don’t blame the believers — blame the Bible.

Talk the Talk: Rape

31 May 2012 / / Comments Off on Talk the Talk: Rape

I have to say, I approached this show with a bit of trepidation, since ‘rape’ is such a potent word and I thought people would be angry about whatever I said. But you have to tackle the tough ones sometimes. And some people do throw the word around, so I wanted to address it. One politician referred to ‘raping companies‘, which does seem trivial. And then Fox’s Catholic priest referred to the government ‘raping their rights’. Don’t you think that of all people, a Catholic priest would want to divert attention away from that word? I’ve never noticed him being so concerned about actual rape.

Yes, we do discuss the word ‘rape’ and its history, but we’re really talking about how to navigate language change. Is it okay to use the word ‘rape’ metaphorically, like “raping the wilderness”? Or does that trivialise real rape? On the other hand, the word ‘rape’ has been stricken from actual trials where sexual assault is the real issue! I was a juror in a sexual assault trial years ago, and I don’t recall the word ‘rape’ being used.

Hang out ’til the end — there’s a little bit of post-show chatter.

One-off show: Here
Subscribe via iTunes: Here
Show notes: Here

Creepy Jehovah’s Witness video

30 May 2012 / / 8 Comments

Uh-oh! Looks like little Caleb has brought home some competing fiction! Mom knows that her Bible fiction won’t survive against it — it’s far more interesting — so it’s time for a guilt trip at the family table! (Fast forward to 2:58 for the video.)

Maybe AC Grayling was wrong — he suggested substituting ‘God’ with ‘Fred’ or some other name, just to show how silly the whole thing is. But ‘Jehovah’ sounds pretty silly to me, and they’re still buying it.

I imagine this is intended to help JW parents remove unwanted elements like ‘Harry Potter’ or ‘critical thinking’. It’s really terrible parenting, but it’s disguised as good parenting. Notice that Mom doesn’t yell or scream, or throw the toy in the trash. What she does is much more sinister: she manipulates the boy into caring for the feelings of an invisible bronze-age Hebrew deity, and acting accordingly. Check him out; he’s absolutely gutted.

Do you want Jehovah to be sad?

How stupid! Jehovah’s a big guy; he can look after his own feelings. Or is that a not-so-subtle threat? You don’t want Jehovah to be ‘sad’ with you, do you? Remember how we read about the Midianites? Jehovah was ‘sad’ with them, too.

What if you disobey Jehovah, and play with toys he doesn’t like?

I’ll turn horrible and old like those poor fuckers Adam and Eve!

Even creepier is how the kid is encouraged to be Jehovah’s ‘friend’. People sometimes talk about having a ‘relationship’ with their favourite deity, but what they don’t realise is that it’s hard to make a relationship work when there’s a significant power imbalance. When the other person in the relationship has all the power in the universe, knows everything you do and think, imposes arbitrary moral demands on you, and will ultimately decide your eternal future, that’s not a relationship. It even goes beyond ‘abusive relationship’; it’s a hostage situation. How is this a model for successful relationships?

You made Mommy very happy!

Hmm. Something about her seems familiar.

Nah.

Afterwards, they sang “I Am a Slave of God”.

UPDATE: Hey, look what the Internet made! A Sparlock t-shirt!

Best of all, Café Press will give you a 25% discount if you use the order code 3XNEYLRKATMK. Apparently.

Celebrate this, the best of all possible worlds!

Stuff Republicans don’t like

26 May 2012 / / 2 Comments

I was checking out this Gallup poll: Americans, Including Catholics, Say Birth Control Is Morally OK.

That’s interesting, but what’s more, they provide a breakdown of what people think is okay and what’s not. Here’s the list.

Okay, so people mostly approve of birth control, divorce, and gambling, and they disapprove most of suicide, polygamy, and (for some reason) cloning humans. Singled out for special condemnation is people who have affairs, which is surprising because haven’t a lot of people done that? Gallup says that’s their most consistently disapproved item. Interesting.
But the best part is that they break it down by political tendency. This chart shows the same things, but it’s  sorted by Republican minus Democrat approval. In other words, the top of the chart is things Democrats don’t approve of, but Republicans do (comparatively), and the bottom of the chart is stuff Republicans don’t like, but Democrats are like ‘meh’.
Top of the list of things Republicans like: the death penalty, medical testing on animals, and wearing fur. (Although I actually approve of medical testing on animals — not cosmetic testing.)
Cloning animals is a wash.
Most revealing, however, is the bottom of the list — the stuff that Democrats don’t mind, but that Republicans don’t approve of. I notice suicide — not many people like it, but GOPers slightly less. So let’s take a look at the issues that cut across the political divide more than suicide:
  • Porn — I doubt the Republicans are using less porn than Democrats, but maybe they disapprove more while still looking at it.
  • Sex between an unmarried man and woman
  • Having a baby outside of marriage
  • Gay or lesbian relations

In short, anything having to do with people having unauthorised sex. So really, Republicans don’t just hate gay sex — they hate straight sex too, if it’s not sanctioned by marriage. On the other hand, Democrats approve of unmarried straight sex about as much as they approve of (probably unmarried) gay sex — at 66% approval for both, it’s all the same to them.
Could this explain why conservatives are fighting gay marriage so hard? For them, marriage is what legitimises sex. So if gay people can get married, for them that’s like saying gay sex is okay. And for them, that’s not okay.
I’m trying not to read too much into these results, but this is an idea I hadn’t thought of before. Am I onto something?
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