How Idiocy Happens -- Imagine if you combined the efforts of an earnest, but scientifically-misinformed, hippie art teacher, a trying-to-hard-to-be-hip, cluelessly pandering youth pastor, and the incomparably bad taste of Larry Flynt in order to produce a short sex education film. The result would look something like “How Pregnancy Happens”, a flash animation produced by Planned Parenthood. Using gross-out humor to appeal to the thirteen year-old boy demographic might be excusable; using scientifically inaccurate terms such as “pre-embryo”, however, is not. This one has to be seen to be believed. It provides further evidence that PP has no shame – or integrity. (HT: Dawn Eden)
Video Game IQ -- Steven Johnson’s new book sums up the controversial thesis in the title: Everything Bad is Good For You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. As Adam Tierney notes in his brief review, there is not a shred of evidence to back up that claim. Still, as Tierney points out, popular cultural artifacts such as video games are a topic worthy of further study:
Video games, for example, can--and I speak from all-too extensive personal experience--seize the mind like a vice. What is it about the combination of violence, scavenging, exploration, and steady but variable reward that proves so frighteningly addicting? Why are people willing to spend their free time pretending to mine imaginary minerals in badly drawn fantasy worlds, just so they can get enough play money to buy houses that don't exist? What does the spontaneous social organization of such online worlds tell us about human social behavior? Can the elements that make video games addicting somehow be abstracted and applied to education? If players had to learn organic chemistry in order to get past a certain section of Half-life 3, would they diligently do so? The study of human behavior cannot afford to overlook such a widespread, bizarre, and potentially enlightening aspect of today's culture.
Carnival Watch -- Telic Thoughts is collecting entries for the second Meeting of the Minds, a carnival on the topic of Intelligent Design.
Trumpeting Gideon's Comments -- Comments sections can often be as interesting as anything in a blog post. One prime example is a discussion over at the blog of Gideon Strauss, a Canadian philosophy professor (and fellow Kuyperian/neocalvinist). The debate about Christianity and the morality of war is taking place between Keith Pavlischek (a Marine colonel and political philosopher), Byron Borger (a pacifist and bookstore owner), and Caleb Stegall (editor of the New Pantagruel). The posts can be found here, here, and here.
My First, Last, and Only Comment on Michael Jackson -- Michael Jackson's lawyer said Tuesday that the singer will no longer share his bed with young boys. "He's not going to do that anymore," attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. told NBC's "Today." "He's not going to make himself vulnerable to this anymore." Um, is that vulnerable to lawsuits or to temptation? (HT: OTB)
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Nice point re: Michael Jackson. And look what you made me do: I commented on the latest debacle in criminal justice.
posted on 06.15.2005 11:56 AM2
How Idiocy Happens:
More proof that no matter how weird & extreme you can get for comedic effect (like South Park), there's going to be someone who'll be twice as weird, twice as sick, twice as extreme -- and as Dead Serious as a religious fanatic.
posted on 06.15.2005 11:56 AM3
I don't know, the PP piece may have been a bit sophomoric, but I would think you'd support something like that. After all, it takes pains to point out that you don't even have to have penetration to get a girl pregnant, thus cautioning against some of the "technical virgin" type stuff you'd rail against. And you act as though the term "pre-embryo" is some term of convenience that PP made up for this, when in fact it's an accepted term, used by the NIH, including by some who argue that a preembryo constitutes life. So where's the beef?
posted on 06.15.2005 2:31 PM4
I don't know, the PP piece may have been a bit sophomoric, but I would think you'd support something like that. After all, it takes pains to point out that you don't even have to have penetration to get a girl pregnant, thus cautioning against some of the "technical virgin" type stuff you'd rail against.
Calling it sophomoric is an insult to sophomores. But I agree that they did at least point out that penetration is not required in order for pregnancy to occur. So kudos to PP for getting at least that much right.
So where's the beef?
My problem with the use of “pre-embryo is that it is a political term meant to obfuscate rather than a scientific term used to clarify. As Ronan O’Rahilly and Faiola Muller note in their textbook on embryology:
“The term 'pre-embryo' is not used here for the following reasons: (1) it is ill-defined because it is said to end with the appearance of the primitive streak or to include neurulation; (2) it is inaccurate because purely embryonic cells can already be distinguished after a few days, as can also the embryonic (not pre-embryonic!) disc; (3) it is unjustified because the accepted meaning of the word embryo includes all of the first 8 weeks; (4) it is equivocal because it may convey the erroneous idea that a new human organism is formed at only some considerable time after fertilization; and (5) it was introduced in 1986 'largely for public policy reasons' (Biggers). ... Just as postnatal age begins at birth, prenatal age begins at fertilization." [emphasis added] (Human Embryology (p. 88))
If PP wants to claim ignorance then I can accept that (and wouldn’t be too surprised). But I suspect that their choice of words is intentional.
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Joe:
Also, when pro-life groups use the unscientific term "baby," you don't seem to complain too much.
In this case, I think PP's use of the term "pre-embryo" was intentionally selected to convey the idea that a woman is not pregnant until the embryo implants in the uterus. This is technically correct, though I'm sure you have moral and ethical objections. Of course, if you prefer a definition that claims that pregnancy begins at conception, then better than 75% of all pregnancies end in miscarriages, a veritable holocaust of life. We should do something about this!
And for the record, I thought it was funny. I guess that makes me an insult to sophomores, too. :)
posted on 06.15.2005 9:32 PM6
As someone who beat the abominable emerald monster in the US version of Final Fantasy VII, I can say, yes, if it took organic chemsitry to beat a game, someone out there would do it.
posted on 06.16.2005 2:04 AM7
Nathan is not kidding. It takes over 100 hours of gameplay to destroy the Emerald Weapon.
posted on 06.18.2005 7:36 PM