New site launched – The Pirate Perspective

I have been busy the last week or so setting a new website set up.

The Pirate Perspective is a blog that discusses topics such as file sharing, copyright law, fair use, and other miscellaneous Internet and technology issues.

(via Talking in Circles)

Sigmund Freud on Religion

Sigmund Freud (born 6 May 1856, died 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and psychologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology.

While many of Freud’s theories about psychoanalysis are no longer believed to be fact by most modern psychologists, he often had very profound things to say, both about his field of psychology and about other subjects.

On the subject of religion, he had the following things to say:

• A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.
• Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.
• Our knowledge of the historical worth of certain religious doctrines increases our respect for them, but does not invalidate our proposal that they should cease to be put forward as the reasons for the precepts of civilization. On the contrary! Those historical residues have helped us to view religious teachings, as it were, as neurotic relics, and we may now argue that the time has probably come, as it does in an analytic treatment, for replacing the effects of repression by the results of the rational operation of the intellect.
• The whole thing is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life. It is still more humiliating to discover how a large number of people living today, who cannot but see that this religion is not tenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions.

(via Talking in Circles)

We already have “death panels” — they’re called health insurance companies

So, the new talking point from the far-right is that Obama’s health care plan is a secret plot to kill your grandma (as seen on Fox News and Sarah Palin’s Facebook page). They claim that the bill will create “death panels” to decide whether elderly people are worthy of care or not.

There’s no truth to this conspiracy, of course. The provision they point to is one for voluntary end-of-life counseling, which was actually proposed by a Republican and is overall a pretty good idea.

However, there already is an entity that will sit in judgment of you when you get sick, deciding whether you are worthy of treatment. It is official policy among the private health care providers in the US to look for ways to deny care to sick people.

They are perfectly happy taking your money when you aren’t sick, but once you try to make a claim they will scour through your record looking for any reason to deny your claim. A small error on your application form, even an insignificant one or one that you could not have known about or fixed, becomes justification for revoking your coverage and handing you the hefty bill for your treatment. For many patients unable to pay for the treatment, this is a death sentence.

Forget a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor; this is a profit-driven corporation standing between you and your doctor.

Why does the right worry about their fake, hypothetical “death panels” when a more serious and sinister problem already exists, and is already killing innocent people?

(via Talking in Circles)

Richard Feynman on light.

Mind. Blown.

(via Talking in Circles)

Doctored photo of Obama smoking

Politics Daily reports that the Arizona Republican Party is running a photo of Obama with a cigarette dangling from his mouth as part of their campaign against health care reform. The image appeared on AZGOP news, but appears to have since been removed.

Look how hopeless he looks — irresponsible even with his own health. Surely a great PR strategy.

Except the photo is doctored. Photoshopped. The original photo was taken by Kwame Ross on Aug. 3, 2004.

I’m not alleging that the Arizona GOP doctored the photo themselves — just that they didn’t bother to do any research before posting the photo. Obama does smoke. This doesn’t bother me but might bother some people, so it makes sense that the GOP would try to use that against him in their propaganda. Hard for the Arizona GOP to pass up an opportunity to use a photo that shows him looking so tired and hopeless while smoking, though, even if it’s a fake photo.

(via Talking in Circles)

Richard Dawkins interviews a creationist

In this 7 part series, biologist Richard Dawkins interviews Wendy Wright, a creationist.

Parts 2 through 7 below the fold.

(via Talking in Circles)

Richard Dawkins interviews a creationist

In this 7 part series, biologist Richard Dawkins interviews Wendy Wright, a creationist.

Parts 2 through 7 below the fold.

(via Talking in Circles)