Stopping the strangler

What do you know about diphtheria?

If you're like most of us, you probably know it's one of those bad childhood diseases pretty much no one gets any more, and that it is the "D" in the DPT shot.  That's about it.

So let me tell you more about diphtheria.  You'll see why in a minute.

According to the Mayo Clinic, diphtheria is a "serious bacterial infection of the mucous membranes of the nose and throat."  The most definitive symptom is a "layer of thick grayish material" across the back of the throat -- in fact, the name of the disease comes from the Greek word διφθέρα, meaning "leather" -- which can completely block the airway and cause the victim to suffocate.

That's not all, however.  The disease can affect the skin, causing deep, painful, silver-dollar-sized ulcers.  Patients run a high fever, with all of the accompanying misery.  The toxin produced by the bacteria can damage the heart, liver, and kidneys, so even with treatment, some sufferers are left with permanent debility.  Prior to vaccination, the epidemics it caused were devastating; repeated outbreaks in the United States in the 1920s caused an average of 14,000 deaths per year, mostly among children under the age of ten.  An epidemic in 1613 in Spain was so dreadful that it was called "El Año de los Garrotillos" -- "the year of strangulations."

Have I made the picture vivid enough?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The reason I bring this up is that a six-year-old child from the city of Olot in Catalonia, Spain is currently in the intensive care unit in a hospital in Barcelona because he contracted diphtheria.  It's the country's first case since 1986, which is why doctors have had to initiate a worldwide search for sufficient quantities of the antitoxin to treat the boy's symptoms.  It wasn't on hand in any hospital in Spain, because no one gets the disease there any more.

Because of the vaccine, remember?

But the child's parents are anti-vaxxers.  They elected not to have their son vaccinated against this completely preventable disease, despite (1) the vaccine's demonstrated effectiveness, safety, and nearly 100% freedom from side effects, (2) the known deadliness of the disease, and (3) Spain's policy of offering free vaccination to anyone.  They preferred to put their child at risk for illness, and potential long-term debility or death, because of their belief in fear mongering and conspiracy theories and discredited studies linking vaccines to autism and autoimmune disease.

I'm a pretty tolerant guy, most of the time.  But I think these parents should be prosecuted for child endangerment.  They are no more responsible parents than the people who watched their 17-year-old son die in agony from appendicitis because they believed in the power of faith healers, and the people who let their sixteen-month-old son die from bacterial meningitis because their religion forbade them to seek conventional medical treatment.

All of these stem from a trust in non-scientific foolishness strong enough to put a child's life in danger.  I fail to see how they differ.

The fact that enough parents have been swayed by the fear talk is why California recently passed a bill to end personal opt-out provisions for vaccinations.  Supporters, such as Senator Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) -- who was a pediatrician before he went into politics -- put it succinctly: "Vaccines are necessary to protect us.  That protection has been eroding.  The science is clear: Vaccines are safe and efficacious."

If you needed further illustration of that, consider the outbreak of measles -- another dangerous, and entirely preventable, disease -- last year that sickened 169 people in eight states between December 2014 and March 2015, and which was traced back to unvaccinated children who had visited Disneyland.

It's a shame when the government has to step in to protect children from their parents' ignorance and superstitiousness, but that's what's needed here.  If you want to put your own life at risk -- fine.  If you'd rather let yourself die of a treatable or preventable disease because you think it's against god's will to go to the hospital, or because you're so fearful of conventional medical treatment that you'd rather the alternative, that's your choice.  I might think you're being ridiculous, but there's no reason to prevent you from making that choice for yourself.

But when you start making dangerous and irresponsible choices for your children, that crosses the line into child endangerment.  At that point, there should be a legal way to step in and stop you from putting the life of an innocent young person at risk.

Swing votes, squirt guns, and prayer

Most of you probably know that the United States Supreme Court is likely to announce a decision on the federal legalization of same-sex marriage some time this month, and that the decision is likely to come down to how one man votes -- Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is in the uncomfortable position of being the "swing voter."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The more liberal-leaning justices -- Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Elena Kagan -- seem likely to vote in favor.  The remaining four more conservative members are likely to vote against.  That means that Kennedy will almost certainly be the one who casts the deciding vote.

And this is why he is currently the target of prayer rallies.

The effort is being organized by "Coach" Dave Daubenmire, who came into the public eye after an ACLU suit to stop him from forcing the players on his high school football team to pray.  Daubenmire and the school district he worked for settled out of court (the school district lost $18,000 in the process), but Daubenmire now spends a lot of time on the lecture circuit telling everyone how he beat the ACLU because of god's power and the power of prayer.

And now Daubenmire, who in his post-coaching days runs a ministry called "Pass the Salt" (further increasing the WTF factor in the whole thing), is organizing a nationwide series of prayer rallies that have as their goal persuading god to persuade Anthony Kennedy to vote no:

We're going to have a solemn assembly of prayer and repentance, asking God, please God, help us rescue marriage.  And we're going to totally focus on Justice Kennedy, we believe he is the swing vote, and we're just going to ask the Lord to forgive us of our sins and turn the heart of Justice Kennedy that he might see the error of his ways and protect marriage. The neat part about it... is that we're asking people from all across America.  Clear out there in California, you can't come to Washington D. C., but could you organize a prayer vigil at the same time we're doing it, noon to three o'clock Eastern Time on June 14?  Could you get the people in your church to come to a prayer rally?  It's not where we're asking the politicians to do something, it's not where we're marching and carrying signs and rebelling, it's where we're saying "Lord, forgive us, how did we ever get in this mess, please, Lord, forgive us."  

Can I paint a picture here, real quickly?  I like to use the illustration of Super Soakers, the little squirt guns that look like big cannons that kids like to play with.  That's they way I see prayer.  Everybody has a Super Soaker.  There a lot of people who are praying, and they're squirting their guns, they're doing all they can, but there's a difference between putting a lot of people out in a field and telling them to shoot away, and bringing them into your living room and putting a dot on the ceiling and saying, "Hey, everybody, point your Super Soaker at the dot on the ceiling."  The end result of that, if we got a hundred people to point their squirt guns at the dot on the ceiling, eventually there'd be a hole in the ceiling.  Concentrated, focused prayer.  That's why we think the Salt and Light Brigade is so important.  They don't have to come, we'd love for people to come, but we realize they can't.  But what if they all gathered in their local churches, or with their prayer groups, or with their families, and we told them who to pray for... We're going to focus all of our power in the same direction rather than just sporadically squirting our guns up in the air.  We're going to focus our guns on the same target, and punch a hole in the heavenlies. 

So far, this all Super Soakers For Jesus business seems to fall into the "No Harm If It Amuses You" department, but I do have to wonder how this could possibly work even if you accept Daubenmire's premise that there is a god who somehow likes to micromanage affairs here on Earth.  Daubenmire and his ilk always go on and on about how god knows everything and is all-good and all-powerful and will ultimately make everything work out; so it seems a little odd that anyone who believes that would think that prayer would accomplish anything.  Either your opinion is in line with what god already intended to do (in which case god was going to do it anyway, and your prayers are unnecessary) or it isn't (in which case god has no intent of doing what you say, so your prayers are futile).  Either way, it doesn't accomplish much.

Even C. S. Lewis, whose writing is usually pretty clear-headed and rational -- not that I agree with most of his conclusions -- seemed troubled by all this.  In his essay "Does Prayer Work?", he is up front that you can't change god's mind, but he thinks that petitionary prayer still somehow makes sense:

Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men?  For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it.  But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries.  Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will.

Which, frankly, strikes me as a little petty.  It's like a parent saying to his child, "I know you're hungry, but I'm not giving you food unless you ask, and you have to ask in exactly the right way."

And it also brings up the problematic situation for Daubenmire if Kennedy votes "yes."  Was god not listening?  Did the devil persuade Kennedy to vote in a more infernal way?  Did the prayers not work for some other reason?  Did they not have enough people praying?  ("You know, if there'd been 1,284,733 people praying, I'd'a had a chat with Justice Kennedy.  But 1,284,732 people just didn't quite do it for me.")

Because if god is so dead-set against same-sex marriage, you'd think he'd find a way to make sure it didn't happen regardless, right?

So the whole thing seems to turn on a philosophical point that doesn't, honestly, make a lot of sense.  It's far from the only thing in this worldview that I can't make sense of, of course.

As I said before, however, there's no real harm in it.  If they want to spend their time trying to change a presumably all-knowing deity's mind, they can knock themselves out.  At least that's less time they'll have to try to convince politicians, who not only can be swayed, but who actually exist.

Bias testing

We're all biased.  It's inevitable.  Even the most clear-headed and rational of us has opinions, judgments, political leanings.  We can't help but jump to conclusions with little evidence, now and again.  I distinctly recall one student who signed up for my intro-to-neuroscience class a while back, whose appearance made me think "Trouble" -- multiple piercings, longish hair, t-shirts for bands whose names alone were barely school-appropriate -- and who turned out to be one of my best, most interested, most intellectually passionate students that year.  (To my credit, I figured out my mistake after one class session with him.)

So we can't escape bias, but the key is to keep the light shining on them.  And I'm going to propose a test that can be applied in just about any situation to determine whether you are coming to a logical, evidence-based conclusion, or whether you're falling for your own unconsidered predilections.

Take, for example, the story that hit the news a couple of days ago about the young Muslim woman who had an unpleasant experience aboard a United Airlines flight.  Tahera Ahmad, director of Interfaith Engagement for Northwestern University, was being served by the flight attendant, and asked for an unopened can of diet soda, and was refused.  She didn't want an opened can, citing reasons of hygiene, but the flight attendant allegedly said, "Sorry, I just can't give you an unopened can, so no Diet Coke for you."

When the man sitting next to her was brought an unopened can of beer later in the flight, Ahmad questioned the flight attendant again regarding why she wasn't allowed to have one.  The flight attendant said, "We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people because they may use it as a weapon on the plane."

When Ahmad understandably objected to this rather peculiar policy, not to mention its unequal application, a nearby passenger shouted at her, "You Muslim, you need to shut the fuck up -- you know you would use it as a weapon, so shut the fuck up!"

And no one stood up for her.

The experience left Ahmad in tears from humiliation, as most of us would be in her situation.

Tahera Ahmad [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Now, I don't mean to go into the details of what happened; according to United Airlines, they are now "investigating the situation."  And honestly, at the moment, we have only Ahmad's account of the incident.  But what interests me more is the reaction of people who have written about Ahmad's experience -- because a great many of them have questioned its veracity.

"I find it hard to believe," one woman wrote, "that someone could be treated this way in full view and hearing of dozens of passengers and the flight crew, and no one put a stop to it.  This doesn't have the ring of truth.  It seems more like something she'd make up, one of those invented stories of discrimination that allow her to get undeserved sympathy.  I bet when the airlines investigates, they'll find that none of this happened."

As far as the woman's claim that it's unimaginable that someone wouldn't have intervened on Ahmad's behalf, I hardly need to point out that there have been many documented cases of actual physical violence -- assault or rape -- that have occurred in full view of passersby, none of whom chose to get involved.  But if you read the commenter's objections, and thought, "Yeah, she has a point...", I want you to do a little thought experiment for me.

What if we changed things around?  What if, instead of a young Muslim woman in a headscarf being taunted and humiliated by people who are more than likely white American Christians, it had been a young white American Christian woman on Saudia Airlines, who had asked some innocent question and had been ridiculed and jeered at by a bunch of Muslim men?  Would you have questioned her story then?  Is your outrage the same?

Because if not, you are biased.

We know nothing about Tahera Ahmad except for her gender, occupation, and religion.  The leap to the conclusion that she might have made the whole thing up in a ploy for appearing oppressed was made on the basis of nothing but the above, because we have no other evidence to go on.  And I would argue that it's likely that the sole reason for skepticism was her religion.  (For another vitriolic attack on Ahmad based explicitly on her religion, check out this post at The Conservative Treehouse.)  If you questioned Ahmad's story, and would not have questioned the story of our hypothetical young Christian woman, you are making the judgment that a Muslim is more likely to lie than a Christian -- in effect, making a pronouncement about the ethics of 1.57 billion people, or 23% of the world's population.

Now, I'm not saying that I like Islam as an ideology.  I'm no apologist for religion in general, as regular readers of this blog know all too well.  I don't need to point out that there have been horrific things done by Muslims, in the name of Islam.  What I am saying is that to make an assumption that all billion-and-a-half Muslims in the world are equally kind, ethical, and compassionate, or equally dangerous, violent, and threatening, is patently ridiculous -- and worse, it's lazy thinking.

The same standard applies in politics.  Consider the response by Fox News regarding allegations that former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert had sexual contact with a male student while he was a high school teacher.  Knowing nothing more than what's been released about the case, Fox has already cast Hastert as the victim.

Commentator Brit Hume said on Sunday, "There’s, evidently, a blackmailer, extortionist… and all indications seem to be no charges will be brought against the person who was blackmailing the former speaker."  And if that wasn't enough, Geraldo Rivera spoke up with a similar view, when he tweeted, "Sex misconduct from yrs ago was gross but Speaker Hastert is now a victim who should be given pass in exchange for testimony vs blackmailer."

That's it?  Sex with a minor is "gross, but?"

But let's do the little flip-around again.  Suppose that the allegations of homosexual contact with a minor had been levied against a prominent liberal Democrat.  What do you think Fox News's response would have been?

Makes it clearer, doesn't it?

As I said in the beginning, it's not like we all don't jump to unwarranted conclusions sometimes.  But our willingness to stay there, not to consider the reason for our leap, is troubling.  The world is not a simple place, and people seldom do things for one single, unambiguous reason.  Deciding that a woman claiming discriminatory treatment is lying solely because she's a Muslim, and that Dennis Hastert is an innocent victim of blackmail solely because he's a prominent Republican, is not only biased, it's simplistic foolishness.

And to accept those conclusions without examining them is the epitome of intellectual and ethical laziness.

Royal baloney

Sometimes I wish that if people want to espouse crazy worldviews, they'd jump right in and do it, and not claim that there's a logical argument and evidence that supports it.

I mean, just go for it, okay?  No half-assed looniness, here.  If you believe that the universe was created by a Giant Glow-In-The-Dark Bunny from the Andromeda Galaxy, then believe it.  Don't try and convince us by claiming that the DNA fingerprint of rabbits matches the spectral lines of the stars in the Andromeda Galaxy.  Because then you've crossed the line from Interesting Woo-Woo to making yourself look ridiculous.

Which is something that someone should explain to Eric Dubay, a blogger whose "About Me" states that he is a 32-year-old American who lives in Thailand, teaches yoga and wing chun part time, and is a full-time exposer of the New World Order.  Because Dubay, who predictably enough thinks that the United States is being run by a cadre of Illuminati, has put together an argument for his views using genealogy.

Dubay says that every American president has royal blood.  34 descend from Charlemagne, and 19 from King Edward III of England.  This can't be a coincidence:

If America declared its Independence from the European monarchies in 1776, how is it possible that every single president has descended from European monarchs?  If presidents are democratically elected as we are told, what are the odds that we would always choose members of British and French royal bloodlines to lead us?

The whole thing is one big conspiracy to keep the aristocracy in power, Dubay says:

Researchers like David Icke, Michael Tsarion, and Fritz Springmeier, along with foundations like the New England Historical Genealogy Society, Burkes [sic] Peerage, the Roman Piso Homepage, and other reliable genealogical sources have documented these royal presidential bloodlines.  Actually, by branching out far enough on the presidential family tree, the dedicated researcher will find that all 44 presidents share kinship, belonging to the same general ancestry, often called the 13th Illuminati bloodline, the Merovingian line, and/or the Windsor-Bush bloodline.

The fact that he goes to David Icke as a source should put you on notice right there.  And he goes on to say that not only have the elected presidents all been cousins, so are the people they ran against.  So we'd have elected members of The Family even had the other candidate won.  As an example, he says that George W. Bush and his opponent, John Kerry, are...

*cue ominous music*

16th cousins.

That was the point where I started laughing.  Because if you're not conversant with all the once-removed lingo of the genealogists, "16th cousins" means that Bush and Kerry share one set of great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents.  At an average generation time of 28 years, this means that this set of great-etc. grandparents lived almost 500 years ago.

Let's throw in a few other inconvenient facts.  If all two presidents share is descent from Charlemagne, that pushes back their common ancestry to about 1,200 years ago.  Meaning that Charlemagne and whichever of his various wives and mistresses were involved were the pair's mutual 40-times-great grandparents.

Besides just being ridiculous, which is problematic enough, there's another major flaw in Dubay's argument -- and that is that just about everyone with ancestry in Western Europe is likely to be descended from Charlemagne.  Charlemagne, when he wasn't ruling the Holy Roman Empire, seems to have spent a lot of his time doing one other thing, if you get my drift.  So if you're of western European descent, congratulations -- you have royal blood.

The difficulty is that you're also descended from most of the rest of Europe at the time, including the peasants.  The total population of Europe in the 8th century was about 30 million, give or take; but consider that from a purely mathematical standpoint, if you trace your family tree back that far, doubling at each generation, you would have 2 raised to the 40th power ancestors -- or about 1.1 trillion people.

This means that at that point, you (1) are descended from lots of people multiple times, (2) are probably descended from every single individual who left descendants, and (3) are related to every single person currently alive who has European ancestry.

Including Charlemagne.

Let me put this in a personal way.  I'm a descendant of Charlemagne at least twice, through my descent on my dad's side from the Lyell family (landed Scottish gentry, although they certainly didn't have much money to speak of by the time they got to the United States) and on my mom's side from the de la Tour family (petty French nobility, whose scion kind of blew his reputation by going to Nova Scotia and marrying a Native American).  So is my wife, who not only descends from Charlemagne, but from the aforementioned King Edward III of England (through her descent from the Hylton family, including the "Mad Baron Hylton," about whom I should tell you some time).

So yes... my wife and I are distant cousins.  Maybe one of us should run for president.

I see a resemblance, don't you?  [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So sorry, Mr. Dubay, but there's no conspiracy going on here, unless you count the fact that every president thus far has had at least some western European ancestry.  Until we elect a president who is of 100% Chinese descent, we're pretty much stuck with Charlemagne's progeny.

And of course, it still doesn't matter, because anyone of Chinese descent almost certainly has Genghis Khan as an ancestor, because old Genghis proved pretty conclusively that you can make love and war more or less simultaneously.

So that's that.  And now I'm going to go get some breakfast, and figure out how many people my wife would have to bump off in the line of succession before she could become Queen of England.  I wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life as Prince Consort.  Seems like a good gig.

Opening the floodgates

I was discussing with a friend a couple of days ago the devastating floods that have hit Texas, caused by an aberrant weather pattern that is showing no signs of going away any time soon.

"Given that there are so many climate change deniers in Texas," my friend asked, "what do you think they'll blame it on?"

"Oh, I dunno," I responded.  "Probably gay people and President Obama, I'd guess."

You know, there are times I'd rather not be right.

Flooding in Houston [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Just yesterday, a woman who called into Bryan Fischer's American Family Association-sponsored radio talk show Focal Point had the following to say:

If God is judging Texas, it’s because of the witchcraft and sodomy that we’ve allowed to run rampant...  [T]he places that are underwater [are] are overrun with witchcraft and sodomy.  If you go into those areas, you can just see it...  Houston has a whole area that is like Sodom and Gomorrah.  It even has a sodomite mayor.

What I'm wondering is how god could design a flood that would only hit witches and gay people.  I mean, it's not like there's any way to stop flood waters from wiping out pretty much anyone in their path, so unless god in his Infinite Wisdom and Mysterious Ways induced all of the sodomites and witchcraft practitioners to build their houses on low ground, he's pretty much smiting everyone at the moment.

It brings up the rather amusing mental image of god at a a giant computer that has a map with flashing red lights every time someone has the wrong kind of sex, and a pull-down menu for different kinds of natural disasters that can be unleashed.  "What?  Fellatio in Tulsa, Oklahoma?  THIS CALLS FOR A TORNADO."

But you'll be relieved to know that there's not just sex and witchcraft behind the floods, there's also the looming, sinister, evil, all-powerful figure of...

... Barack Obama.

Why would President Obama send floods to Texas, you might ask?  Is it just because Texas is conservative?  Because if that's it, he should be flooding most of the southeastern United States.  There has to be more to it, right?

Of course, right.  Obama is flooding Texas because they caught on to what he was doing regarding Jade Helm 15.

For those of you who have not been keeping up with the latest conspiracy theories, Jade Helm 15 is a set of military maneuvers taking place in Texas that were a front for a government takeover of the state that was so top-secret that the Army announced what they were intending to do three months early.  That's how sneaky these guys are.  "I have an idea!  Let's confuse and confound them by telling them all our plans!  They'll be so baffled by this ploy that when we follow through with them, they'll be caught completely unawares!"

So apparently Obama got mad that the Texans were on to his cunning plot, and weren't just cooperating and letting him and his thugs declare martial law and herd everyone into FEMA Death Camps conveniently disguised as WalMarts.  He got so mad, in fact, that he used his super-powerful weather weapons to teach Texas a lesson.  Says writer Susan Duclos:

As I'm looking through breakingnews [sic] headlines, and seeing the continuous references to the extreme weather so concentrated over TX, and coupled with the continuous chemtrailing that happens throughout the US, I can't help but think that what is going on right now as part of the Jade Helm "exercize" [sic], could not actually be the domestic roll out of weather warfare on an agressive [sic] scale. We know they can control the weather to at least some degree. We know that the chemtrailing over CA and in the Pacific moddifies [sic] the jet stream to both keep CA dry and to force that precipitation east towards TX and other southern states.  We know that Jade Helm is "pretending" that TX is a hostile enemy that must be engaged.  The millitary is already rolling out across the state as part of this "drill".  Why then, is it not reasonable to assume that as part of this "mock civil war drill" that they would not practice using the tools that they have in their arsenal?

Let me just recommend, Ms. Duclos, that you not only use your computer's function called "spell check," that you consult a dictionary and look up the definition of the word "reasonable."

So there you have it: this isn't a weather event, it's either a punishment by god for gay sex and witchcraft, or it's the result of a weather weapon wielded by Barack "Professor Evil" Obama.  Myself, I just hope that the rains stop, because there's been enough devastation and death already.  And also so that these loons will shut up and go back to their previous hobby, which is probably pulling on the straps of their straitjackets with their teeth.

On a mission

There's something inherently odd about missionaries.

Now, I've met some nice ones.  There were a couple of Mormons who dropped by last fall to chat with me about religion, and when I told them (amiably) that I was an atheist and really didn't think they'd convince me otherwise, they offered to help me stack firewood.  I told them no, but I was kind of touched that they thought that since they couldn't help me in one way, they'd give a shot at helping with another.

Then, there were the Jehovah's Witnesses, both female, who rang my doorbell on a blisteringly hot day a couple of summers ago.  I was in the front yard weeding the garden, and heard them talking -- and I came out from around the corner of the house, shirtless, dripping with sweat, and disgustingly grimy.  They looked a little shocked, but it was too late to retreat gracefully.  That was one conversion attempt that I think they were perfectly glad to terminate unsuccessfully.

So it takes a good degree of bravery to go on a mission, even in the relatively safe territory of the rural United States.  You never know what you're going to run into -- and it could, of course, be much worse than half-naked gardeners.  Add to that the additional risk of missionary work in other countries, where you could be putting your safety or even your life at risk, and you have to have some grudging admiration for these folks.

But even so, there's something a little... condescending about the concept of missionaries.  "Hey, you're probably wrong about everything you believe," they seem to be saying.  "And since I'm right, let me tell you all about it!"  Where they've been successful, missionaries have done a pretty fine job of eradicating not only preexisting religions, but local culture, artifacts, traditions, and sometimes language as well.

Which is why the proposal by Pope Francis I to canonize Father Junipero Serra, the founder of 21 missions in 18th century California, has met with some pretty stiff opposition.

Serra has been hailed by Catholic leaders as the man who brought Catholicism to California, and who was responsible for educating the Native Americans who lived there -- the latter claim being pretty patronizing in and of itself, given that people who had lived successfully in a place for millennia can hardly be regarded as "uneducated" just because they couldn't read and write Spanish.  As far as Serra's treatment of the Natives -- while he and his followers didn't rush in and kill them all, like their countrymen the Conquistadors did in Central and South America, he certainly didn't treat them like equals.  Serra wrote:

The view that spiritual fathers should punish their sons, the Indians, with blows appears to be as old as the conquest of the Americas; so general in fact that the saints do not seem to be any exception to the rule.

Whatever you think of his intentions and his methods, the outcome is certain; the Natives were forced to abandon their languages, customs, and kinship ties in favor of Serra's imposed Spanish culture and religion.  Miranda Ramirez, whose Native ancestry can be traced back to people who were part of the Carmel Mission, said, "We lost everything (because of Serra)...  We were not allowed to be with our people. We lost contact with cousins, we lost the family ties.  Our language was gone."

Steven Hackel, who has written a biography of Serra, was equally critical.  "One can point to certain moments in the historical record when Serra does protect Indians," Hackel said in an interview with Al Jazeera America.  "But the larger story I think is one in which his policies and his plans led to tremendous pain and suffering, most of it unintended on his part, among Native peoples.  If one looks at the legacy of Serra's missions and what he was trying to do in California, there's no question that his goal was to radically alter Native culture, to have Indians not speak their Native languages, to practice Spanish culture, to transform Native belief patterns in ways that would make them much less Native.  He really did want to eliminate many aspects of Native culture."

Not only did Serra's actions eradicate the cultures that were already there, his insistence that the Natives abandon their villages and land has led to a further injustice -- the United States government only recognizes Native American tribes who have had uninterrupted cultural identity as meriting legally recognized membership.  Since the tribes that Serra converted back in the 18th century lost everything, even their languages, today they can't get federal recognition of their status as Natives.  Writes Karen Klein, in her piece for the Los Angeles Times entitled "What California Indians Lost Under Junipero Serra":

Because the missions mixed different Native American groups together and forced all of them to give up much of their cultural identity, many of these groups cannot meet the requirements of continuous cultural and geographical identity required to be federally recognized tribes, with the many benefits such recognition bestows. It’s one of the most painful ironies in California history — robbed of their culture by white missions the first time, and then, because of that first theft, robbed by the U.S. government a second time. 

The pope cited Serra’s role as the “evangelizer of the West” in announcing his canonization. But many see his role more as one of forced conversion rather than persuasive evangelism. I’m sure the pope realizes this; the church has recognized in the past, at least, that there were some serious problems with California’s early mission history. Perhaps that seems like a regrettable but small part of the story from the viewpoint of the Vatican, but here in California, the irreparable harm done to Native Americans is not easily minimized.

I know the argument in Serra's favor -- that he was a man of his time, that he honestly thought he was helping the Natives because he believed that without his intervention, they'd burn in hell for all eternity.  Nonetheless, there's the troubling fact that his efforts pretty much singlehandedly destroyed an entire culture.

So what do you do with someone who is acting out of what, for them, are pure motives, but who nonetheless (1) uses questionable means to attain those ends, and (2) is probably wrong in any case?  The Muslim leaders in the Middle East who advocate publicly flogging and/or decapitating heretics are, after all, operating from much the same worldview.  Better to punish one person severely for errors of faith rather than have everyone face the wrath of Allah.

My own view, of course, is pretty unequivocal; the whole shebang is really just a bunch of antiquated superstition, and no one has a right to push anyone else into belief.  Or disbelief, for that matter.  We all are capable of using our brains, and if given the freedom, to evaluate the evidence we have and decide how we think the universe works.

No missionaries necessary.

And to put it bluntly, that the Roman Catholic religion produced people like Serra should be more a cause for shame than celebration.

Whole lot o' shakin' going on

To all of my readers in California:  I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but you're all gonna die.

I know, I know, I should have told you about this sooner, so you could do something about it, but I didn't even know about it myself until yesterday, and by then it was too late.  I mean, just think if everyone had tried to leave the state yesterday evening.  The traffic would have been worse even than usual, and where would they all have gone?  I mean, it's not like Oregon wants 'em.

If you're wondering what all this is about, I'm referring, of course, to the fact that California is going to be destroyed by an earthquake today.  9.8 on the Richter scale, no less, and caused by the alignment of Mercury and Venus, or something.  Scary shit.

How do I know this?  Well, there's this article in IN5D Esoteric Metaphysical Spiritual Database, which as authoritative sources go, is pretty much unimpeachable.  In it, we learn that Nostradamus predicted this, and since Nostradamus's predictions have proven as accurate as you'd expect given that they're the ravings of an apparently insane man who did most of his writing after a bad acid trip, we should all sit up and pay attention.  Here, according to IN5D, is the quatrain in question:

Le tremblement si fort au mois de may,
Saturne, Caper, Jupiter, Mercure au boeuf:
Vénus aussi, Cancer, Mars, en Nonnay,
Tombera gresle lors plus grosse qu’un oeuf. 

English translation: 

The trembling so hard in the month of may,
Saturn, Capricorn, Jupiter, Mercury in Taurus:
Venus also, Cancer, Mars, in Virgo,
Hail will fall larger than an egg.

The site goes on to clarify:

On May 28, 2015 towards the end of the day UTC time, and continuing on May 29, there will be a series of very critical planetary alignments whereby Venus and Mercury are really being charged up on the North-Amerca [sic] / Pacific side.

Wow.  Pretty scientific.  Bad things happen when Venus and Mercury get "really charged up."  Time to get outta Dodge, apparently, not to mention Los Angeles.

Okay, astronomer Phil Plait says we should all calm down.  In his wonderful column Bad Astronomy in the magazine Slate, he says:

First, there is simply no way an alignment of planets can cause an earthquake on Earth. It’s literally impossible. I’ve done the math on this before; the maximum combined gravity of all the planets under ideal conditions is still far less than the gravitational influence of the Moon on the Earth, and the Moon at very best has an extremely weak influence on earthquakes. 

To put a number on it, because the Moon is so close to us its gravitational pull is 50 times stronger than all the planets in the solar system combined. Remember too that the Moon orbits the Earth on an ellipse, so it gets closer and farther from us every two weeks. The change in its gravity over that time is still more than all the planets combined, yet we don’t see catastrophic earthquakes twice a month, let alone aligning with the Moon’s phases or physical location in its orbit.

He goes on to say that Mercury and Venus aren't aligning anyhow, at least not the way the prediction claims (I mean, they're always aligned with something; two objects always fall on a straight line, as hath been revealed unto us in the prophecies of Euclid, and said line includes an infinite number of other points).  So the whole thing is pretty much a non-starter.

This hasn't stopped it from being shared around on social media, of course.  It'd be nice if articles like Phil Plait's would get shared around as often as the idiotic one in IN5D, but that, apparently, is not how things work.  People still gravitate toward predictions of doom and destruction, even though said predictions have had an exactly zero success rate.

So my guess is that if you live in California, you have nothing to worry about above and beyond the usual concerns over wildfires, mudslides, droughts, earthquakes, and Kylie Jenner spotting 75 chemtrails in the sky and posting a hysterical claim that they're killing honeybees.

The usual stuff, in other words.