Shorts

by tristero

[Update: Tip of the prop to Steve Silberman, the author of the Wired article discussed below, who is participating in the discussion in comments. Thanks so much for taking the time to do so! He also corrected some information about the legal status of model rocket engines that I misremembered from his article (it was not in front of me), which I appreciate. Sorry to have misrepresented it.

I was thrilled to hear from from a longtime model rocketeer, who will be attending the National Sport Launch in Waco, TX this weekend. He wrote to inform me that there has been a significant increase in the number of women involved in the sport, which is great news. I’m hoping I can persuade him to write a little bit about his experience down in Waco!

Finally, I’d like to address the issue of mandatory vaccination against cervical cancer, which came up in comments. If – a big if – the cervical vaccine is as safe and as effective as is claimed, then it is immoral – no, make that evil – not to require the widest possible vaccination of youngsters. Period. That protecting your child from cancer has become a political football for the rightwing is simply beyond belief.

Of course, if there are serious reasons not to vaccinate an individual child – eg certain medical conditions, for example – there should be available some mechanism for opting out. But there are ways of creating an opt-out without indulging the rightwing’s perverse desire to place the lives of their children in danger’s way from this kind of now-preventable cancer.

As far as I know, however, there may be some scientists who are urging commonsense, but there are no serious plans to mandate vaccination in the US, nor will there be, for the simple reason that ignorant rightwing creates will create too much of a fuss. The lack of a mandatory vaccination program doesn’t make such neglect any less evil simply because a large part of the presently acceptable cultural discourse has been hijacked by crazy people. This campaign against a non-existent mandatory vaccination program is merely a way to limit, as much as possible, the distribution of the vaccine to those who, if they knew about it, would insist upon having their children protected from a ghastly, deadly cancer.

The only conclusion I can reach from this is that the evilosity of the right knows no bounds. Even children are endangered by their idiocy? Yes, even children.]

Cervical Cancer Vaccine – The Times has an article that mentions the rightwing opposition to the wide distribution of a truly astounding vaccine that could seriously reduce the incidence of cervical cancer. I discussed this recently in the War On Fucking series. If ever there was an issue in which the utterly evil stupidity of the rightwing agenda is exposed for what it truly is, this is it. No genuinely serious system of moral values could ever justify a campaign to minimize the distribution, if not the outright witholding, of a significantly important life-saving medicine from a child (which is the best time for this vaccine to be administered). For most of us, this is a given. But not for the extreme right of Dobson, Robertson, and their numerous allies in the Bush administration. It would be extremely interesting to get Bush himself on record as to what he thinks should be done.

The War On Brains – Wired magazine has an article in the current issue (not yet online) about the increasing discouragement of real science opportunities for kids. Chemical sets, which were once boxes filled with wonder and (carefully circumscribed) danger, have been emasculated due to liability concerns. And some scientific supply houses have undergone extensive harassment, all in the name of fighting terrorism of course, in order to shake out information on who orders what chemicals and when.

The upshot is that it is becoming increasingly difficult for smart kids to get hands-on experience in chemistry and other sciences. And under the Bush administration, it is becoming near hopeless. As Wired explains it, the problem is not only that it deprives many of our children of a wonderful hobby, but that it seriously stunts the educational development of scientists, who should learn to “speak” chemistry – by doing chemistry – as young as possible. Nearly every scientist I know traces their interest, not surprisingly, to a childhood fascination with their science toys. Yes, there are potential dangers with some of this stuff but the article responds “So what?” and makes a good case.

This fear of science has been taken to ludicrous extremes by political opposition (Schumer, among others) which has led to attempts to ban the sale of model rocket engines. I’ll have more on this later when I’ve had a chance to do more research, but it seems as if the article is mistaken [UPDATE: Not so, see Steve Silberman’s discussion in comments for details], that model rocket engines aren’t being banned exactly, but some legal things are still being left up in the air -so to speak. The larger point of the article, tho, is right on: This country should be doing everything possible to encourage scientific curiousity and experimentation among our kids, not finding excuses to lock up bicarbonate and vinegar so that a science teacher has to check the stuff out whenever he wants to do a demo. Given our shameful ignorance of science and its methods, this is close to being a serious national emergency.

As I said, more later. I think model rocketry is a very important subject – recreationally, educationally, culturally, and politically – which deserves more attention than it’s received.

Christianism – Due to some other stuff, I missed out on my regular sojourn amongst the blogs last week and learned that Andrew Sullivan recently suggested the use of the term “Christianism” to denote the political ideology that makes use of Christian symbolism.

Dave Neiwert credits me with the original coinage of the term three years ago, and links to this post from back then. Not quite, which I’ll explain in a second. But it’s the larger issue that needs to be emphasized:

There is a difference in kind between religious belief and politics that hides behind religious belief to escape criticism. Whether you call such politicians “Christianists” or “Dominionists” as Dave Neiwert suggests isn’t terribly important, I think.

What is crucially important is that such a distinction be drawn. The christianists have co-opted not only the symbols of Christianity but have succeeded in forcing the media to mislabel their political behavior as “Christian.” Thus, we hear about “Christian values” such as opposition to the teaching of science, which have nothing whatsoever to do with the religion that worships Christ as Savior. Christianists, of course, are free to call themselves whatever they like. But there is no excuse for permitting them to hijack the term “Christian” for their specific political purposes, let alone the symbols of that religion.

Regarding coinage of the term, according to William Safire, Andrew Sullivan first used the term “Christianism” 1 day before I did. For the record, I never read, and still haven’t read, Sullivan’s post. (He’s not on my list to read, which is long enough, thank you very much. In fact, I doubt I’ve read more than two or three of his posts, total.) While I’m quite sure I used the term online before that post, I don’t care that much about priority to bother to search it out. (Besides, as Safire’s article points out, the word goes back to Milton.)

What I did do regularly, and what I still do regularly, is discuss the importance of calling christianists to account for their hijacking of religion – Dave and I had an interesting discussion about it, which he mentions in his post, and I initiated others as well. I gather Sullivan just used the term and dropped it – like I said, I have no idea what he writes or says.

If, by pushing the term “christianist” I helped some folks distinguish between genuine religious devotion and cynical political activism hidden under the skirts of priests, then I am glad. But my efforts are minor compared to the work of many priests, ministers, rabbis, mullahs, and other devoutly religious people who have been struggling for decades – often futiliely – with a concerted right wing assault on their congregations and institutions.