Rhinocrisy

A new survey released by the Pew Research Center is receiving widespread attention. The report, entitled “Muslim Americans: Middle class and mostly mainstream” is alarming to many people. Apparently, in the survey of 1050 Muslim Americans, fully a quarter of younger Muslims volunteered to strap on a suicide belt and detonate themselves in the name of Islam without prompting from the interviewer! At least that’s what I was led to believe.

Actually, if you’re going to parse it carefully, 26% of Muslims aged 18 to 29 in the United States said that suicide bombing of civilian targets could be rarely (11%) or often/sometimes (15%) justified. It’s very difficult to read that as support for Islamic extremism. (That’s probably what I would have answered.) Why? Because young people are more likely to take morally daring or morally equivocal positions than old people. No cause for surprise. Unfortunately they didn’t give comparable figures for non-Muslims. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a significant percentage of youngsters who fell into that category.

I have mono!

That is all.

Huh. Since the French have elected an evil fucking maniac in line with our own patriotic Americans’ bloodthirsty, jingoistic and xenophobic tastes, I was curious whether Bill O’Reilly would lift his long-standing absurdist “boycott of France”. What do you know, he did. Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles! Where is my fucking elephant gun?

The IPCC released its third working-group report on climate change Friday, on “Mitigation of Climate Change”. You can read it here.

A number of people quoted the White House response on the subject, as voiced by James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Quoth Connaughton:

And so you see ranges - you know, GDP ranges as high as 3 percent to achieve certain scenarios - well, that would, of course, cause a global recession, so that is something that we probably want to avoid.

Connaughton, here, is referring to the strongest stabilization scenario, of 445-535 ppm CO₂ equivalent. In this scenario, the projected reduction in GDP by 2030 from the expected baseline is 3%. That is, if GDP grows X between now and 2030, in the mitigation scenario it would only grow by 0.97X. That’s not so bad, and it’s certainly not a recession. The per-annum reduction in growth rates is 0.12%. Small beans. So what is Connaughton talking about? One suspects he (or whoever summarized it for him) simply misread the document and interpreted it as a nightmare scenario, 3% total decrease in GDP, which, of course, would be a recession.

His strange interpretation seems to have confused others as well. A reporter follows up:

Q So to follow up, you’re saying that the 445 to 535, which specifically mentions a range of GDP reduction greater than 3 percent [wrong, actually, it's less than 3 percent - ed] - that is what you’re saying is something that it would cause a global recession and something we’d probably avoid - that scenario with the 445 to 535 stabilization level?

CHAIRMAN CONNAUGHTON: That’s an accurate description of that scenario. Again, I want to differentiate between what is happening, what will happen and these various scenarios for what might happen. And certainly there is no leader in the world that is going to be pursuing a strategy that would drive their economies into a deep recession. I think the leaders of the world are focused on strategies that grow economies, that pay for these technologies that make the solution possible.

Q I guess I’m just trying to translate that. In other words, you’re not aiming for that 445 level there - you’re more aiming toward the other level?

MODERATOR: We’ll take another question at this point. Thank you so much. Next question, please.

This seems a bad way to formulate policy.

Other good jokes include this bit taken from the summary:

Improved vehicle efficiency measures, leading to fuel savings, in many cases have net benefits (at least for light-duty vehicles), but the market potential is much lower than the economic potential due to the influence of other consumer considerations,
such as performance and size. There is not enough information to assess the mitigation potential for heavy-duty vehicles. Market forces alone, including rising fuel costs, are therefore not expected to lead to significant emission reductions.

It seems probable that previous editions of this sentence read “due to the fucking Americans” instead.

Forget black lung. Popcorn worker’s lung.

… a group of California food-flavoring workers recently diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans, a rare and life-threatening form of fixed obstructive lung disease. Also known as popcorn workers lung, because it has turned up in workers at microwave-popcorn factories, the disease destroys the lungs. A transplant is the only cure…. Flavoring manufacturers have paid out more than $100 million as a result of lawsuits by people sick with popcorn workers lung over the past five years.

Since my sister brought it up, I suppose I might as well cover my “achaar as prasaad” theory in big, bold letters so everyone can read it.

The first obstacle in appreciating this theory will be unfamiliarity with its components. So, let me review, briefly.

“Achaar” is simply the Hindi word for “pickle”. You’ve probably consumed an Indian pickle before - they’re usually made with fruit of some sort and are heavily spiced, quite salty, usually tart and sometimes make your tongue burn with a righteous fire. I have been a fan of savory foods my whole life and enjoy eating achaar a great deal.

“Prasaad” is the Hindi word for “oblations”, and refers to a bit of food offered as a sort of sacrifice to God during prayer. There’s many problems with this arrangement, such as:

• Why does God need to eat?

• Even if God does need to eat, why can’t he/she/it take care of him/her/itself?
• Is there really any value in symbolically offering food to an omnipotent deity, especially when you’re going to eat it anyway right afterwards?

However, these are only problems for cantankerous individuals such as myself who just can’t wrap their heads around the idea of why God needs or wants to be worshipped in the first place.^* Anyway, that’s not the point: when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and when hanging around with normal, devoted Hindus, play along, even if you don’t find yourself quite believing in everything. Social utility is something I can appreciate.

Prasaad is usually something sweet. In fact, it is nearly always something sweet. Indians are quite fond of sweets and have managed to produce a dizzying number of variations on the theme of sugar, milkfat and flour. The appeal of sweets is quite clear: our biochemistry is based on the metabolism of simple sugars such as glucose or fructose. It’s sensible, therefore, that we’ve evolved a palette that appreciates and even relishes the taste of sugar. Most people love sweets and can gorge themselves endlessly on them.

Not I. I detest sweets. I suspect my palette is a little oversensitive to sugar. I usually react by having strange sugar rushes and mini-seizures when I try to eat something sweet. Un-pleasant!^†

Follow, then, my logic:
We’ve already established that anthropomorphic concepts of God are in order. I’m not prepared to accept this premise, but it seems to be the mode, and so we will take it as given. Wisdom suggests that presenting God with sweets is worthwhile because God, like us, would enjoy eating some sweets. Why? Who knows.^‡ But if hubris is the way we’re operating, why stop at an anthropomorphic God? Surely I should consider a God even more reflective of my ego - a Saurabh-o-morphic God, as it were.^§ I don’t like sweets, I like achaar. Maybe God wants achaar as prasaad, as well.

My theory has merit. There’s almost universal agreement that the world is, generally speaking, a shitty place to live. Most theories of religion blame this on an evil genius of some sort, but it’s at least as likely that the fault is that of endless millions of worshippers, who have for thousands of generations been forcing sweets onto an unhappy and possibly lactose-intolerant God. If we merely corrected our transgression, I predict that a rain of petals would be our reward.

^* I previously described my difficulties with worship here. I’m certainly a fan of awe and humility before the vast, beautiful and unpitying Universe, but I still don’t know how to jump from there to the idea of worship as useful.

^§ Such a god would presumably refuse to be worshipped, would respond to prayer only infrequently, would often leave His stereo blaring upbeat, danceable rhythms across the heavens, and would occasionally manifest in gargantuan, terrifying forms, knocking over buildings and eating random civilians, just to show you-all what’s what.

!