Month: April 2012

A reader writes:

Regarding the necrophilia story – apparently there is zero confirmation that this is true. Numerous people, including Sarah Carr, a journalist who I respect and trust, wrote into the Daily Mail to contest the reporter's story (see her comment on the article time-stamped 11:06):

If Lee Moran had troubled himself to do a little bit of research beyond translating an op-ed and a TV talking head, he would have discovered that in fact, a draft law to allow men to have sex with their deceased wives does not exist. If Mr Moran's googling had been more thorough he would have discovered that this rumour was started by a local wacko who, alas, has a public platform by virtue of the fact that he owns a satellite channel.

There is no evidence that such a bill exists or was under discussion in parliament at any point. Where's the video? Apparently this rumor was started by a TV personality famous for not being particularly accurate, the sensationalism of the story led it to be passed around on Twitter as if it were fact, and the Daily Mail – a true paragon of journalism – picked it up as well. (To be fair, so did Jezebel.) Please don't propagate this unsubstantiated crap.

Allahpundit also casts a critical eye:

A cleric in Morocco did indeed approve the practice of, er, "farewell intercourse" within the past few years, but unless I’m missing something in the Al-Arabiya story, the evidence that the bill exists — and that the NCW has complained about it to the speaker — is purely Samea’s say-so. Half a dozen other articles I read today about this all point back to the Al-Arabiya article; as far as I can tell, no one named in the story has spoken to any media about it or otherwise confirmed that what Samea claims is true.

And who’s Samea? According to the CSM, that’s curious too: "Today, Egypt’s state-owned Al Ahram newspaper published an opinion piece by Amr Abdul Samea, a past stalwart supporter of the deposed Hosni Mubarak … " … Al-Ahram is controlled by the Egyptian government, which I assume means it’s heavily influenced by the ruling military junta. And the junta, of course, is invested in discrediting the Islamists in order to defend its prerogatives against parliament’s growing power.

An Egyptian reader adds:

It's simply amazing how a stupid baseless rumor travels half way around the world and makes its way into one of my favorite blogs. The idea of "farewell intercourse law" was too ridiculous even for the Egyptian twittersphere to believe, and that is saying something. Here's a snapshot (with some commentary) of the article where this idea started. My translation (of the part on the right with white background):

So we hear, in these happy days, those who talk about the necessity of issuing a law that allows for girls to marry at the age of fourteen or another law that acknowledges what some call 'farewell intercourse' which allows the husband to sleep with his wife in the six hours after her death. This is what comes from the traditionalist that aims to take away women's right to work and study and corner them with the most backward and ignorant interpretations of religious text.

The commentary on the left with black background talks about how the article doesn't mention the source of who these are who about these laws. Then it goes on to ask that this person be questioned about his sources and how he is hired by a national newspaper and is paid with tax money. The lines at the top (with red-ish background) introduces the issue.

Let me tell you a bit about the author of the article. This guy used to host a TV show during the days of Mubarak. He was the kind of phony independent "opposing" the actions of the government for not exactly following the instructions of the great leader. This was the route that the smart people would take to grow in ranks in the Mubarak regime.

I'm not an Islamist, and don't like the Muslim Brotherhood and I'm still shocked by the Salafis win in the past election in Egypt. However, I'm shocked that any of this would be linked to Islam in anyway.

Amanda Marcotte blasts the prevalence of inaccurate portrayals:

On TV, torture almost always works. The victim usually knows the information, and gives it up immediately. In rarer cases, they know nothing but are able to stop to torture by stating this fact. Either way, they respond positively to torture, and somehow the tormentor magically knows when their victim is speaking the truth. What we know from real life examinations of torture is that the reality plays out very differently. 

Alyssa Rosenberg points to a plotline in this week's episode of "Game Of Thrones", including the above scene, as an example of a better model:

The Harrenhal interrogators ask the same set of questions to every person they talk to, no matter where that person comes from or their likelihood of knowing any relevant information. These people are torturing their victims because they enjoy doing so. These scenes are all about giving us information about the torturers, to draw a line between the characters who behave like human beings and those who exist and act beyond the laws that govern the rest of us.

Yesterday the Senate passed a USPS reform bill. Kevin Drum doesn't think it goes far enough. He points out that postage is going to have to rise:

Take a look at countries around the world that have smaller volumes of mail than us: they all charge higher postage rates. They have to. And as volumes keep declining in America, we're going to need higher rates here too. Right now, a first-class equivalent stamp runs 75¢ in Germany, 72¢ in Britain, 82¢ in France, 98¢ in Switzerland, 97¢ in Belgium, and 63¢ in the Netherlands. There's no way that we can stay at 45¢ as volumes decline and pretend that somehow everything will be hunky-dory.

Earlier Dish on postal problems here, here and here.

Storyful raises doubts about the authenticity of the horrendous video. A crowd-sourced effort from the Dish:

It looks fake. The victim was vocalizing after his mouth was covered with dirt and rocks. If it was real, we would hear choking sounds, or at least see the dirt around the victim move as his body goes into convulsions from coughing and gagging. The edit was sneaky – the last shovelful of dirt rearranged the stripes on the victims head gear, which was the natural point of reference for telling if the filmmaker swapped the "victim" with a dummy for the last ten seconds.

Another reader:

In the article you linked to, it says the man being buried "is then accused of carrying a camera to capture footage of Assad's forces to send to television networks". I'm wondering why they would do themselves what the victim was accused of doing, which was videotaping Assad's atrocities and releasing to the pubic. Doesn't make sense. Plus the voice seems dubbed in, and the jump cut, as you said, looks fishy.

Another:

I do a bit of volunteering for Syria Tracker (though do not claim to speak for them), so have seen a number of violent videos in the course of tracking human rights abuses. All videos like this must be taken seriously until definitively proven otherwise, but the video doesn't ring true to me.

A classic rule of forgeries are that they try to do too much in one fell swoop, like the infamous Habbush letter that purportedly showed that Iraq not only trained a 9/11 terrorist and by the way, here's the uranium yellow cake you wanted from Niger. From an intelligence perspective, if its too good to be true, it probably is. So a video depicting brutal torture techniques and verbal abuse while UN observers are on the ground might be a little too convenient. The Syrian regime is committing enough atrocities that fabrications aren't necessary.

That said, keep praying. The people of Syria are experiencing horrors like this almost daily. And thanks to blogs like yours that can get the word out.

Another:

The Daily Mail has a different version, with subtitled translation and no interruption at the :47 mark.

Whoa:

 

Carl Zimmer explains the science behind the trick:

As you’ll notice, the circles seem to rotate in response to where you look at the illusion. So [Stephen] Macknik and his colleagues tracked the movement of people’s eyes as they gazed at two of these wheels on a computer screen. Their subjects kept a finger pressed on a button, lifting it whenever they seemed to see the wheels move. Macnick and his colleagues found a tight correlation between the onset of the illusion and a kind of involuntary movement our eyes make, known as microsaccades. Even when we’re staring at a still object, our eyes keep darting around…the pattern of colors and contrasts in the Rotating Snakes Illusion causes our eyes to send rapidly changing signals to the brain even during microsaccades. The motion neurons switch on, and the snakes start to slither.

Male homemakers face it most of all:

Along with the assumption of male domestic ineptitude, [stay-at-home dads (SAHDs)] deal with the persistent equation of masculinity with income and career achievement. Stay-at-home dad Christopher admits, "You hear from a wide variety of sources that it’s a man’s duty to provide for his family, and it stings when I hear it. I get teased in my own family about it sometimes." But, he adds, "When I’m with my daughter and watching her grow up and not missing it, it’s then that I really don’t give a flip what anyone might think of me."

And Russ, a Minnesota stay-at-home father of two young daughters, thinks that "When you overlay the gender role a man is supposed to have in our society with the notion of being a stay-at-home parent, there’s a lot that’s very hard for people to understand." He says that one of the first misconceptions is that a man at home is a man who has it easy. "It’s really hard," he says. "It’s really, really hard to be a man in a traditional women’s role. Nurturing children is an extremely difficult job. I have guys say to me, ‘How did you get this gig?’ My response is that if more men stayed home with their children, they’d be getting their wives a lot less pregnant."

The above cartoon is from the cleverly titled "The Stay At Homer," a blog recently recommended by a Dish reader. A sample:

[My son] Noble has taken an interest in science.  This is great because there are a vast array of science questions that I, myself, need answered.  Questions that would have me put in the category of "total moron" if I were to express my ignorance in public.  For instance, what is density? What fool doesn’t know that? I didn’t. Or what the hell is an amp or an ohm?  Or how do you trap a quantum particle in a box?  You know, questions that anyone using a measly 11% of their brain could tell you.

But I am picking it all up now.  I can use my 5 year old to get the answers I need!  I disguise it as a “science experiment” and little does he know that I’m not just explaining something that his amazingly smart dad already knows, but I’m actually learning it as well!

Probably not:

Consumer Reports has done studies on repair rates for a variety of small electronics and home appliances, and the percentages range from 5 to 37 percent, which generally indicates that you're unlikely to need a repair. Considering this, it often makes more sense to save the money on an extended warranty and put it toward a repair instead, on the off-chance you'll need one.

Flirting with the fourth wall:

Both Obama and Romney want to keep student loan rates low. Josh Barro disagrees:

The clear instinct of Democrats (and some Republicans, including Romney) is to defend cheap Stafford Loans in an effort to be on the side of education. But subsidizing education need not mean subsidizing borrowing. We’d be better off letting student loan interest rates rise and augmenting the other ways we help students pay for college.

Wilkinson seconds him. Mike Konczal, on the other hand, notes that the current low rates make the government money:

As Alan White notes, according to the "Congressional Budget Office, $37 billion will flow IN to Treasury from student loans made this fiscal year at the 3.4% rate (on a net present value basis and net of about $1.5 billion to administer them.) "  If anything we should make rates lower than 3.4%.

May soon be reality:

The purpose of Planetary Resources is to seek out and extract resources from near-Earth asteroids. In particular, the company intends to mine water (for space travel purposes as fuel and for life support) and precious metals. In particular, they are looking for platinum group metals - ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum.

There is big money behind the venture:

My biggest initial skepticism would be the investors — with no hope of profit for years, would they really stick with it?But look at the investors: Film maker James Cameron. Google executives Larry Page & Eric Schmidt, and Google investor K. Ram Shriram. Software pioneer Charles Simonyi. Ross Perot, Jr. These are all billionaires, some of them adventurers, and all of them have proven to have patience in developing new ventures. I don’t think they’ll turn tail and run at the first setback.

(Image from NASA)