Layperson’s Terms

The number of identified civilian casualties from the Iraq War has officially reached 90,616 (rounding up, because half a person is silly as well as grisly).

I was ghoulishly anticipating this, the day when I can provide other people with a nice, round number—90,000 dead—for a body count. “Why yes,” I can say, “over 90,000 civilians have been killed in the Iraq War.” Simulaneously, I feel incredibly guilty for looking forward to this numerological milestone, and wonder if there is something wrong with me.

In a recent post, PZ Myers of Pharyngula relayed a letter from Nathan Acks about the mass arrests outside the Democratic National Convention arena. After which Myers (predictably) expressed:

Where is this country going? We seem to be on the road to mindlessness and tyranny. We are descending into madness.

Mindlessness (again)! Tyranny (again)! Descents into madness (again)! Why, this is just like… like the 1968 Democratic Convention!

Actually, I dare say, things have improved since then. I mean, for a horrifying civil rights abuse, I didn’t hear one word about the National Guard being mobilized, with orders to shoot to kill—like in 1968. What’s that you say—someone got sprayed with pepper spray? And they didn’t even get clubbed viciously? What’s this country coming to!—at a convention, I expect to see people clubbed viciously. Dear God, we’re not even at the level of the 2004 Republican Convention.

You see, Myers, we are not descending into madness. We’re ascending into a slightly less-mad madness!

I still won’t be available as much as I’d like to be, but I will be here.

Until such time as I have obtained employment, all of my internet endeavors, including this blog, are on hiatus for an indeterminate period of time.

I have appreciated your readership (all five of you : ) ) and your comments. Wish me luck!

In a recent post by PZ Myers of Pharyngula, he opined that the outrage over the “theft” of a holy wafer from a Catholic church is uncalled for—their reaction is not “reasonable”, it’s “just a cracker!”.

From a strictly rational/materialistic point of view, yes, it is just a cracker. But that overlooks what gives things value in the first place: our feelings. Once we invest our feelings in something, it becomes valuable. It can be anything, from abstract concepts to gold ingots, from something sellable to something seemingly worthless.

But, you may argue, religion’s investments of value pose a greater danger to society than, say, a child’s investment of value in a teddy bear. That may be true, but nonetheless, in this time and place, that valuation still exists, and that cracker is therefore much more than a cracker.

On a related note, to address a certain comment I saw: so what if it you can buy Eucharist wafers in bulk over the internet? That may make them worthless, but not because they can be so easily bought. They are rendered worthless because the priest did not hand it to them and say the magic words—the difference is the emotional investment we make. And If you judge them for that, then you must also judge anyone who values receiving a gift from someone more than being handed cash by the same person and told, “Go buy it yourself”.

(To qualify my argument, I am taking issue only with Myers’ “it’s just a cracker” sentiment, as well as the above-mentioned comment. The hyperbolic reactions by a few reactionary Catholics certainly do demean real human suffering. But Myers, and doubtless others, have already adequately addressed that issue—that is not what I am here to talk about.)

Why is Technorati rejecting my “quick claim”? Great, I have to do this the hard way now.

Technorati Profile

Note: When I added the Iraq Body Count web counter June 26, 2008, the median of the ranges on the counter was 89,112. As of this post, the median is 89,196.

When I first came across the Iraq Body Count web counter, it was just something to dress up the spare sidebar to my blog (it being the opposite of my brother’s, who crams his blog’s sidebar with an unbelievable amount of crud).

But now, looking at the innocuous counter to my side, I wonder:  How many is 89,112?

My first reaction is numerological.  89,112 is…

twice the population of my town…

the annual death toll from car accidents in the U.S…

the number of children killed by guns between 1979 and 2001[1].

1.11 times the approximate annual number of visitors to Carhenge.

This isn’t helping any.

My second reaction?

Numbers are meaningless.

A single death is unfathomable.

How would I feel if I lost my father?  My brother?  My mother?

A single death can drive a person insane with grief.

Now there are 89,112 dead mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters.  Sons and daughters.  Each death alone is something unfathomable. Together they are something horrifying and monstrous.

That is 89,112.

I need to write this down now, before my anger absents me in my sleep, and I wake up tomorrow morning, forgetting and forgiving. This one time I will consider this ability a weakness. (I wish I could hate.)

I got into a argument with someone today. It was not with a Believer, of the sort atheists so often argue with. I can handle them. Not with a Denialist, of the sort PalMD fights. I will learn to handle them. The one I argued with was someone far worse; a wrong yet frustratingly untouchable person—an Unbeliever.

I don’t remember how or what we started arguing about. I wish I had a recording, so I could figure out how we got where we did, so I could express how untouchable this person was in his own words. Instead I must use my own, inadequate words.

Ah, I remember now, how we started. We were talking about school.

He: Why did they teach us how to write research papers? No one reads them, they just skim them. No one checks the sources .

I: But that doesn’t change the truth! Once science discovers the reality behind something, it is still the reality, regardless of politics!

I grow weary of transcribing everything that passed between us. Suffice to say, we touched upon many things. More on ADD/ADHD, scientific studies, the politics of science, relativity and quantum mechanics, the nature of facts… (This sounds like many a many-houred discussion, but it was only ten minutes.) I shall skip to the crux of it all:

I: But the raw numbers!…

I: But…! [another lecture on the truth of reality]

Eventually, we ended. We had touched upon so many things. At one point I even asked him if this was a post-modernist effort to break down the constructs we operate by in our lives, to acknowledge their nature as mere constructs and then continue on accepting those constructs; or if he was being unbelievably cynical. I don’t remember his answer. All I know is that I lost in the end.

He left after that. I grew so frustrated with him that I shut down and just glared at him, jaw set. He teased me for this and then announced he needed to go home.

I refused to hug him as he made the rounds, saying goodbye and hugging everyone.

“You know he just likes to pick on you,” reassured Mom. I couldn’t articulate myself beyond, “I know. But that still makes him an asshole.” (The effort necessary for this to be “just teasing” verges on the sociopathic. I think I would prefer he be merely cynical.)

How could I have lost? Rather, how could anyone have triumphed against such a person? Him, sitting in Dad’s recliner, toad-fatuous and smug, always knowing how the argument will end. Always knowing exactly what to say to set me off on another futile lecture. There can be no triumph in this.

I fought an unbeliever. And the unbeliever won.

Donating to an internet cause: $110

Failing my classes because of a website: $66 a credit

Dominating someone else’s blog for 1 1/2 hours: priceless

Wandering through the cottage industry of anti-Wikipedia sites, one hears the occasional flippant remark suggesting that if you “want reliability, read [Encyclopedia] Britannica“[1] . And we are inclined to believe them. They are, after all, skeptics—they would never thoughtlessly direct us to a resource they hadn’t vetted themselves, right?

So thought I. Then I found Encyclopedia Britannica’s libertarianism article. I hope you’re appalled as I am.

What is so objectionable about it? Click the link to the article above.

Scroll down.

Down.

Lower.

Keep closing the “Sign up now!” popup that reappears every eight seconds (no exaggeration—I timed it).

Still lower…

There—bottom of the “Criticism” section. The article was written by none other than David Boaz.

Ah, David Boaz. How do we know thee? As vice president of the Cato Institute? Author of Libertarianism: A Primer? Rich white male? Executive in a think tank that conducts no primary research of its own and receives inordinate amounts of money from environmentally harmful corporations? Person on whom I wax negative?

David Boaz is one of a growing number of people who are professional libertarians; he makes a living pimping libertarianism as much as humanly possible. Hence my objection to EB choosing him to write their libertarianism article: a professional evangelical libertarian is not a reliable source on libertarian theory. He is far too close to be able to credibly expound upon it. For example, he paves over about half of all libertarian theory, clearly only interested in expounding on his favorite parts, and ignores the parts he can’t be bothered with. He also explicitly ties libertarianism to classical liberalism (as espoused by John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and the other dead people I can’t be bothered to name right now), thus asserting a libertarian creation myth as fact and vaporizing his credibility as a historian.

Most damning is his treatment of the criticism of libertarianism. (To spare you the aggravating task of working through EB’s pop-up windows or paying $70 a year, you can find a reproduction of the text here.) Boaz forgets that it is supposed to be a “Criticism” section, not a “Criticism and Rebuttal”. He writes that “some critics” have [insert criticism here], but always follows through with a rebuttal (i.e. “Libertarians respond that…”). This tactic effectively minimizes the impact and severity of the criticisms, encouraging the audience to dismiss them—”See? He already refuted it!”—despite the fact that his rebuttals amount to little more than hand-waving.

Britannica made the choice of allowing someone with a powerful incentive to whitewash unfavorable information write their libertarianism article. This is peculiarly inconsistent—EB did not hire a communist to write their communism article. Instead, they had Lewis S. Feuer and David T. McLellan write it. Note that neither is a communist. Also note their qualifications: they proclaim their academic degree and academic position front and center. As opposed to Boaz, whose proudest accomplishment seems to be that he is very successful at pimping libertarianism[2]. That he even went to college—Vanderbuilt University—is almost a footnote[3]. (Suspiciously, he declines to specify what his major was—who wants to bet it’s political science and not economics?)

On an amusing side note, Boaz also claims to be an expert in such non-academic fields as “the failure of big government, the politics of the baby-boom generation, drug prohibition, and educational choice”[3]. That’s amazing, David. My father is an expert in the fields of “failure of big sprinkler to water the lawn,” office politics, and “sorting out the recycling”.

My point is not that Encyclopedia Britannica is biased as a whole, or that it is less reliable than Wikipedia. Far be it from me to make such a weighty accusation based off a single case. My point is that we should constantly evaluate the credibility and bias of even trusted sources.

You never know when they may try to slip a whopper past you.