I wonder whether PZ Myers knows about it

Vatican opposes de-criminalising same sex unions -Times Online: “The Vatican has said it opposes a European Union proposal for a United Nations declaration formally condemning discrimination against homosexuals, which it claims would ‘de-criminalise’ same sex unions.

Monsignor Celestino Migliore, the Holy See’s permanent observer at the UN, said the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church forbade ‘unjust discrimination’ against homosexuals. However outlawing discrimination by means of a UN declaration meant that states which did not recognise same sex marriages would come under pressure to do so.

All countries of the European Union have signed a draft declaration drawn up by France, which currently holds the rotating EU Presidency, condemning “discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity”. France is due to submit the draft declaration at the UN General Assembly on 10 December, the sixtieth anniversary of the UN declaration of human rights.

Over 80 countries in the world currently outlaw same-sex relations, with punishments range from short prison sentences to life imprisonment and even death by execution.”

Let me see if I get this right: 80 countries discriminate unjustly against their citizens on the basis of their sexual orientation alone. The EU wants to stop this, at least verbally. The Vatican, on the other hand, opposes this resolution, basically because it thinks it would put pressure on some of the discriminators.

The point is that the proposed resolution does not endorse same-sex marriage in any way. So the Vatican does not want the UN to condemn states who harass, imprison, torture and kill homosexual, because it thinks doing so would put undue pressure on states who do not recognize gay marriage, including those states, such as Italy, who signed the declaration?

Are you fucking kidding me? Can there be an organization which is more abject, twisted and morally disgusting than the Catholic Church?

Well, I guess one could reply that any church or any form of organized religion is similarly despicable, and one would have a point, I’m afraid.

For those who do not speak Italian, the title is a bad pun on the name of Monsignor Migliore. “Migliore” is Italian for “better”.

That seems not to be the case, if any idiot with an axe to grind, like Daniel Henninger, can simply write down a list of fallacies and non-sequiturs, depicting an alternative universe that has no basis in reality, and still get published.

Witness this column, where he can do no better than to blame atheists and secularists, and the war they are supposedly waging against Christmas, for the current financial meltdown. As if your poor, wrecked, fucked-up, war-mongering country, had not been run for the past eight years by a gang of corrupt, self-professed Christians, whose ideological pillars were evangelical faith and unbridled laissez-faire.

And now, when you are so deeply in shit because of these people and of the evangelical base that contributed to elect them, you Mr. Henninger have the gall to ask for more of the same? You are so completely out of your mind, Sir!

Also, you claim that “responsibility, restraint and remorse” were the ballast that stabilized free markets, and that somehow religious people possess these qualities in larger quantity than no-religious ones.

Bullshit! I say.

The only quality that the people governing financial institutions and big companies have ever exhibited is remorse. Naturally, some of them, show some form of remorse after the damage is done and exposed. Witness Ken Lay (a good Christian, by all accounts).

They seldom, if ever, demonstrated responsibility, and only the force of the law taught them some restraint.

Blaming the descent of secular values from the North onto the good, old religious values of the South for this situation is blaming the victim for the crime, which just adds insult to injury. The reason why restraint was lost is not because of a supposed decadence in moral values fostered by the “war on Christmas”. It’s because the gang of thugs you elected for governing your country, Mr. Henninger, lifted all forms of regulation in order to benefit their cronies, creating the biggest example of a privately-run socialist state in the process. A state where profits are private and losses are public.

And all of this while lighting up Christmas trees and going to church every Sunday.

Sadly, Roman Catholics and their bozo-in-a-funny-hat jefe supremo, El Papa Ratzo, usually fail this test, as exemplified once again by the recent brouhaha raised around an art exhibit held in Italy, where a statue of a crucified frog is on display. The silly Pope itself wrote a letter calling for censorship of the frog and the head of the local council even started a hunger strike. Too bad for them, I guess, as the museum board voted to keep the frog on display until the end of the exhibit and not bend over backwards to please the would-be censors, as too often happens in Italy and elsewhere. Kudos to them!

I think I should petition the Italian government to prohibit the display of crucifixes in public places: seeing an image of a man tortured and killed in the most horrible way deeply offends my sentiments, so it’s my right to demand that it be censored, right?

I also would like certain vignettes that appeared in a certain Danish newspaper to be censored as well, not to mention the display of beef in supermarkets, as it deeply offends Hindu religious sentiments.

You can read more about the whole affair on Pharyngula. Minor nit: Bolzano (Bözen in German) is actually in Italy, not Germany, though in a region where the majority speaks German, so the confusion is understandable.

Via: PZ Myers.

Did somebody in the audience say “Ahmadinejad”? No, sorry, I was referring to Mike Huckabee.

The Raw Story | Huckabee: Amend Constitution to be in ‘God’s standards’: “‘I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,’ Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. ‘But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.’”

(Via PZ Myers.)

Massive Gas Cloud Speeding Toward Collision With Milky Way: “A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is speeding toward a collision with our Milky Way Galaxy, and when it hits — in less than 40 million years — it may set off a spectacular burst of stellar fireworks.”

Looks like we’re safe, as “the cloud will likely strike a region somewhat farther from the Galactic center than our Solar System and about 90 degrees ahead of us in the Milky Way disk.” And we’d have at least 20 million years before starting to worry.

Even if this is the case, though, it’s impossible not to feel awe at the way the cosmos, far from being an orderly, peaceful, and predictable place, is full of chaos and violence on a scale that cannot even be fully understood. Witness the recent discovery of a gigantic beam of matter ejected from a massive black hole and smashing into a nearby galaxy, literally tearing it to pieces like the jet from a garden hose tears apart an ants’ nest.

You might think that those planets that are being hit by such phenomena are not hosting any kind of civilization, or that their inhabitants are not protected by a loving god, or that it’s all part of god’s plan, which we cannot know.

Or you might think that we’re the lucky ones who get an opportunity to live for a brief (on the time scale of the Universe) instant of time, thanks to random chance or contingency, and nothing is pre-ordained or in any way predetermined.

Guess which one I think is the sensible opinion to hold.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Pope says family promotes peace: “‘The family is the first and indispensable teacher of peace,’ the Pope told worshippers at St Peter’s Square in Rome.

The pontiff said that ‘whoever, even unknowingly, circumvents the institution of the family undermines peace in the entire community’.

Pope Benedict has made defending the traditional family a priority.

The Vatican opposes granting legal recognition to gay and unwed couples, though the Pope did not touch on such controversies directly in his New Year prayer on Tuesday.

‘Everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman… constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace,’ he said.”

I guess the people killing themselves in the streets in Kenya, Pakistan, Palestine these days are not doing so because of sectarian hatred that is very often grounded in religion. No, they must be fighting for gay marriage, evidently.

The real shame here is that Pope Ratzi can say such boldfaced lies and yet most politicians and so-called intellectuals—at least here in Italy— are applauding him. Personally, he makes me want to puke.

Three Wise Men are just a legend, says Archbishop of Canterbury | the Daily Mail: “During an interview on Radio Five, the Archbishop of Canterbury dismissed the well-known version of events as legend saying: ‘Matthew’s Gospel doesn’t tell us there were three of them, doesn’t tell us they were kings, doesn’t tell us where they came from.

Oh, really?

‘It says they are astrologers, wise men, priests from somewhere outside the Roman Empire, that’s all we’re really told.’

Oh, really?

Turning to the topic of when Jesus was born, he said it was ‘very unlikely’that there was snow.

Oh, really?

He said there was no evidence of animals present – a popular theme of Christmas cards.

Oh, really?

He dismissed the idea that the star of the North stood still in the night sky – because stars just don’t behave like that.

Oh, really?

For good measure, he added Jesus probably wasn’t even born in December. He said: ‘Christmas was when it was because it fitted well with the winter festival’.

Oh, really?

Next time the good Archbishop will tell us that maybe the virgin birth is a legend too… oh wait, he alredy did! What’s left then, the resurrection? After all, there’s just as much proof that Jesus rose from the dead as there is for his birth in a manger. It’s all a bunch of unsubstantiated myths, so why not get over it once and for all?

You can call him Jesus, if you like, it’s just the same old shit.

Obviously God is American: most Americans would not be able to place Bangladesh on a map. Well, maybe not even Georgia .

While I wasn’t able to determine how much placing a bid on a limbo unique item costs, it’s very clear from Bidplaza’s website that each bid will set you back 2€ (that’s almost USD 3 nowadays).

Since online forums in Italy are ablaze with questions about Bidplaza, with people wondering whether it’s a scam or a legitimate business, I figured I could do some research about it. Here are my conclusions. Take them with a grain of salt and remember that I am not a lawyer, I an not in any way involved in Bidplaza, nor I have any other knowledge beside what can be gleaned from the Web.

What is the business model?

The business model is very clear, so people should stop wondering how they can give away cameras, computers and cars for such low prices. If they put up an iPod Touch 16GB (list price 399€) for bidding and 200 people bid on it, the site will have made a 1€ profit. If 400 people bid, they will have made a 100% profit on the sale. Of course, this implies that they will get a high enough number of bidders, but if they have some capital they can afford losing some money at the start while the media-driven buzz heats up and the site becomes sufficiently popular.

Is this an auction site?

This is not an auction in any way. It’s more akin to a lottery, as guessing the lowest possible amount that no one else will bid on is more a matter of luck than anything else. I’m not sure there can’t be a playing strategy that gives a better change of winning, but if there is it isn’t obvious and the odds must be only marginally better than a strategy based on picking values at random. If it’s a lottery indeed, is it legal according to Italian law? I have no idea, I’m not a lawyer.

Who is behind Bidplaza?

The bidplaza.it domain is registered by a company named Es Media Srl, based in Segrate (MI). They do not seem to have a website, but if the company is real, anyone could go to the Chamber of Commerce in Milan and ask for information about it. However, their CEO Semih Sadi has a profile on LinkedIn and he’s listed as the admin contact for the domain.

The only entry mentioning Bidplaza on LinkedIn is for Sadok Kohen. Sadok has a blog and if he keeps an eye on his incoming links and notices this one, he is welcome to visit and leave a comment.

By the way, where do these guys come from, since their names are obviously not of Italian origin?

Turns out they’re apparently Turkish. Just to be clear, this is a fact I have no problems with.

Who are all those smiling Scandinavians driving Porsches and Ferraris show on the website?

I have no idea. Various articles on the Italian Web hint at Bidplaza being an emanation of some nordic entity, but I could find no trace of this. One article references bidplaza.co.uk but that website is just a page with an address and some phone numbers. The bidplaza.com domain is registered to the same people who registered bidplaza.it and indeed www.bidplaza.com redirects to the Italian version.

My educated guess is that their business just started, but they wanted to show some history to make it look more legitimate. Unfortunately, you just can’t hide anything in the era of Google and it’s not true that on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog. If you’re a dog, somebody will find out sooner or later and this kind of strategy risks backfiring. Of course it’s entirely possible that those Swedes are real and I welcome Sadok or Sami or any other representative from the company to come here and tell us more about them.

Would you play on Bidplaza?

Matter of fact, I already did. I registered on the site and gave my mobile phone number, so I could get the 2€ bonus, which I used to place one bet. Unfortunately I bet on an amount which was not unique, so I lost. I guess that if it cost much less than 2€ per bet, I’d be tempted to try playing some more. I would feel relatively safe in doing so, since I could simply budget 10€ via PayPal and not risk anything more, but I’m not a gambler.

Update: I found where the happy Scandinavians come from: bidster.com. The graphics of bidster.com and bidplaza.it are obviously the same, so I wonder what exactly the relationship between bidster.com and bidplaza.it is. A bit more transparency would be appreciated.

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Shock at archbishop condom claim: “The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected ‘in order to finish quickly the African people’.”

Of course, if Pope Ratzi and his minions had any decency they would have fired the lying scumbag already, but I’m not holding my breath. They will probably do nothing or, at most, move the dickhead (the picture on the right is an actual depiction of the brand of condoms the archbishop uses) to a different diocese where he will be able to continue misleading and harming his flock.

They should also have the decency to ask Chimoio to reveal the name of the other European country that is infecting condoms with HIV. We all know the first one is the Vatican, right?

Technorati Tags: chimoio, condoms, mozambique.

So it was with delight that I saw the review written by another of those Uppity Atheists™, none other than Richard Dawkins at The Times Online and I will do no more than promptly point you to it, since I—obviously— couldn’t have said it better.

Speaking of Dawkins, I had previously read his own The God Delusion. Dawkins’ book reads more like a reasoned, scientific discussion of why we can’t call ourselves theists without giving up a good share of our rational thinking, whereas Hitchens’ one is more like a collection of essays, witty and scathing. To each his own style, I guess, but I suggest you read both to have a good picture of what all this New Atheism is all about. Hint: it’s nothing more than good old atheism, but finally we are coming out of the closet and are stopping to pay undue reverence to religion’s supposed virtues and all that nonsense about non-overlapping magisteria.

Well, if there is any physical similarity, it is purely coincidental, because the guy on the left is Cosimo Mele, a member of the Italian Parliament elected with a Catholic party (UDC), whereas the vignette on the right represents a “sanctimonious, moralizing Republican”.

The coincidence, however, is stunning: on the same day the strip was published, it was revealed that Mele—with all probability a sanctimonious, moralizing Catholic but definitely married with children and a member of a political party that defends “traditional family values”— had spent last Friday night in a Rome hotel with “a lady, or maybe two, who was later admitted to a hospital with problems apparently due to cocaine and alcohol abuse”.

Now, a lady or maybe two is not the same as a lady, a clown, a lift boy and a giraffe, but the similarity is striking.

You can read more about this story here. The (as usual) hilarious Google translation is here (don’t be fooled by the reference to “Apples”, it’s just that “mele” in Italian means “apples”, as in the fruit).