Interesting Links for 9-3-2011

[andrewducker]

• MAWWIDGE (nicely written article on marriage, and the amendments currently being proposed in the UK)
  (tags: marriage uk lgbt)
• Lilliput and the Alternative Vote - a nice visualisation/explanation of its advantages.
  (tags: av voting)
• Tory crisis talks over threat of AV. They're terrified that there would never be a majority Tory government again.
  (tags: conservatives uk government av)
• England healthier than the US
  (tags: health uk usa)
• Why education alone will not fix America's problems
  (tags: education technology globalization)
• Study identifies changes to DNA in major depression and suicide
  (tags: depression suicide dna)
• Why you shouldn't tick "Jedi" in the upcoming UK census.
  (tags: jedi census starwars religion uk)
• Three ways George Lucas' wife saved Star Wars
  (tags: GeorgeLucas StarWars women movies)
• The State of Version Control
  (tags: versioncontrol cvs git mercurial subversion)
• Inside Egypts secret police HQ. Warning - descriptions of torture.
  (tags: egypt crime revolution torture)
• On disliking the term "privilege"
  (tags: privilege feminism)
• Fox tries to censor its own censorship - Gets caught in a perpetual legal loop
  (tags: law fox censorship EpicFail dmca)
• Stephen King pens 1,000-page JFK time-travel novel
  (tags: stephen_king jfk writing)
• Google is developing a music service in the cloud. Legal cases will follow very shortly after launch...
  (tags: music google law android)
• Has Lesotho bridged the gender gap?
  (tags: gender lesotho africa equality)
• Spotify now has 1 million subscribers (15% of their 6.67 million users)
  (tags: spotify music technology internet)
• Should all financial innovation be curbed? Interesting argument.
  (tags: finance banking investment)

Comments

[birguslatro]

Jedi and the census. I'm curious about the "You are our only hope" bit. Who are they, and what'll become of them should there not be enough 'No Religion' ticks?

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

We got our census forms in yesterday's post. Contrary to popular rumour, and despite its popularity last time round, there is no tick-box for Jedi. You could till write it in under "other" of course.

[andrewducker]

I hadn't even heard that rumour. Did people really think that the census people were that stupid?

[innerbrat]

Bobdammit, I dislike Blogger blogs. I didn't WANT to leave a comment under my Google profile!

This utterly pointless comment brought to you by my deisre to leave a comment on Andrew R's post despite the blogging platform.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

MAWWIDGE (nicely written article on marriage, and the amendments currently being proposed in the UK)

Very nice article, although I don't entirely agree on the State's 'disinterest' with unions not likely to produce children. Firstly, particularly with changes to adoption laws and the existence of turkey basters same-sex couples may well produce children, and secondly, I don't think it's true that that's the State's only investment in romantic partnerships, as evidenced by the very existence of CPs. Although I suppose the Tories might be swinging back in that direction...

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I do think though that it's interesting, the idea that as the Established church the CofE would be obliged to perform CPs where other churches would have the option not to. I suspect it wouldn't work out that way, but it's an interesting thought.

As an aside, what happened to the LDs campaigning for gays to just be able to get married? That would sort of circumvent the issue, wouldn't it?

[skington.livejournal.com]

"Mr Cameron also wants to highlight the potential boost to minority parties such as the British National Party."

I suppose this is just another of the "many bites at the cherry" argument, where the No to AV camp claim that people who vote for minority parties have their vote counted many times, which is unfair - ignoring the obvious point that their votes are counted many times and lose every single time, and the only time their vote actually matters in the last count, where it almost certainly gets redistributed to a major party.

But it's especially daft in the context of "Tories worry that they'll never be a majority government again", as the BNP's second preferences would almost certainly go to the Tories. In the context of AV, the Tories should want the BNP to do well! As long as they never out-vote the tories in first preferences, they should be safe.

[andrewducker]

It is, in fact, an argument I pretty much only hear from anti-gay-marriage people who are trying to find something that sounds plausible.

If marriage rules only affected things to do with children, they'd have a point, but they cover a lot more than that, so they don't.

[andrewducker]

Blooger used to support OpenID comments.

Apparently no longer.

Also - the "send responses to me" bit only appears after you've posted your comment - how useless is that??

[andrewducker]

I think the LD gay marriage thing is part of a consultation thing that's supposed to start in May:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/17/civil-partnerships-marriage

So we get the "civil partnerships can be religious" stuff soon, and the other stuff once the Daily Mail has had its chance to scream about it.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, the BNP can't win under AV, because nobody is going to move their votes from a centre party to an extreme one. Either they have the extreme views in the first place (and will vote BNP->UKIP->Tory), or they don't and will just vote Tory in the first place.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

By the time they're done, if they pass everything they're proposing, there'll be a bit of a choice paralysis situation going on...

[andrewducker]

Because people will be able to choose either a civil partnership or a marriage, and the two will be utterly identical in all respects?

Yes :->

Of course, marriages tend to be recognised overseas, whereas civil partnerships aren't so much. Although that will probably slowly change as well...

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I suspect that even a marriage between two people of the same sex wouldn't be recognised by any of the countries/states who don't recognise gay unions of any kind.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Or, and I concede this is very unlikely, they thought census people had a sense of humour...

I mean, it wouldn't be unreasonable that they DID, in advance, come up with a standard for determining what new tickyboxes they would have, and then reasonably decided to stick to it even when the jedi thing happened, just so they didn't risk their own bias affecting the results by choosing which religions "counted" and which didn't. But I agree that it's probably more sensible and more likely that they used their common sense (or some research) to establish that for all practical purposes Jedi is NOT a real religion.

I always find it ironic/sad that people object when someone in an organisation uses their common sense and discretion right. I agree granting people discretion to asusme what is a real religion and what isn't is a risk, but to me it seems a good one: I don't have any particular evidence that the census people will disenfranchise an actual religion. And it seems premature to panic about that when there's lots of things the government are ALREADY doing wrong, or are exercising discretion in a way which is EXCEPTIONALLY PRONE to going wrong later. Times when they used common sense and got it right seem to me to be... you know, ok :)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Re MAWWIDGE:

From first-hand experience, you can't, in England, have songs or readings at a civil ceremony that even mention the word "God" and no doubt a list of other religiously-affiliated words. Not even stuff like "for god's sake" (yes, precisely this prhase debarred a poem from being used at a civil cermony).

[andrewducker]

Oh, probably not. But a gay marriage will be recognised by other countries that recognise gay marriage, but as far as I understand nobody recognises foreign civil partnerships.

[andrewducker]

It would be more sensible to say that Jedi or Pastafarianism wouldn't count under "Other" but under "Not Religious".

But I bet that they did, in fact, count under Other.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Yes, the rumour 10 years ago was that if it made the top 6 religions or whatever then it would be officially recognised by the government and they would have to include it in the list of religions at the following census.

[andrewducker]

Aaah, I remember the stupidity then - but I didn't think people still believed it.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah, good point. I think I heard once which they did, but I can't remember. Yeah, I'm now leaning towards it being not-that-helpful, even though I still think it won't make much difference.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

We had a long discussion in our household yesterday about where my wife put her tick. She said Christian but I pointed out she didn't believe in God. She agreed but said she was still a culture Christian so she wasn't going to tick no religion. In the end she ticked Other.

[andrewducker]

Yeah - that's the problem with the poll, it's very much down to people's interpretations, and people have very vague feelings about some of this stuff.

If you don't mind me asking, how culturally Christian is she? Does she ever go to church (even at Christmas)? I'm curious as to what she means by the phrase more than "I was subjected to RE in school, and can't get it out of my head."

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

She does go to church at Christmas when she is in her home town. Her dad is like the alter boy there (I don't know the real term for this) and her local church has been an important part of her life.

[andrewducker]

Aaah, that makes sense. So she has a personal connection with the church/faith, and feels an attachment to it.

That's a lot more sensible than a lot of the people who seem to identify as Christian but never even go near a church outside of funerals/weddings.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

I had Into My Arms by Nick Cave at my wedding and the first line of that is "I don't believe in an interventionist God".

[andrewducker]

Awww.

I rather like that song. One of my exes used to play that album a lot.

[naath.livejournal.com]

From
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=954

No religion includes people who ticked 'None' at the religion question plus those who wrote in Jedi Knight, Agnostic, Atheist and Heathen and those who ticked 'Other' but did not write in any religion.

So the ONS interpreted "Jedi" as a joke by agnostic/atheist types and boxed it accordingly.

They don't give a full list for "other" but do have
In England and Wales, 151,000 people belonged to religious groups which did not fall into any of the main religions. The largest of these were Spiritualists (32,000) and Pagans (31,000), followed by Jain (15,000), Wicca (7,000), Rastafarian (5,000), Bahà'ì (5,000) and Zoroastrian (4,000).


I don't know what they would do with other fake religions like Pastafarianism.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I think it's reasonable to believe in Christianity without being a member of any organised Church. For instance one might feel that all available churches insufficiently reflect one's interpretation of the Bible (whilst urban areas tend to offer a wide spectrum of churches rural areas often don't).

Also I think there are probably people who aren't especially clear on what they do believe, and not unreasonably view themselves as Christians because "they always have been".

[andrewducker]

Thank you! That is better than I was expecting.

[andrewducker]

I'm sure there are also people who are Christians who have a purely personal connection with Christ, and that's fine too.

It's people who have a vague idea that Christianity is what people are, because they were dragged to church when they were a kid, and so tick that, despite not actually having religious beliefs, that bother me. Largely because they distort the figures.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Hmm, then clearly vetting levels on lyrical content vary.

I understand the silliness of a blanket OTT ban - saves endless arguments over edge cases.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

We had to submit a tape of songs and texts of readings in advance specifically so they could be vetted for religious content. But I think the registrars round our way do have a lot of trouble with that, so they're very hot on it.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

It's up the individual registrar to decide what constitutes religious content. Hymns are obviously out but I suspect for many the mere mention of the word 'God' depends on the context. A friend of mine was allowed a reading with the word 'soul' in it.