More and more I discover youtube as a resource for documentaries, interviews and debates. Here is another, very entertaining and stimulating discussion about science education with Lawrence Krauss (physicist) and Richard Dawkins (Biologist).
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Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist? from Andrew Ketchum on Vimeo.
Hm, I sense a trend in the current topics here. Anyway, an entertaining debate that again reveals that theist and atheist often can not understand each other because they think so fundamentally different. I felt that on occasion, both debaters could have done a better job in dismantling their opponents* arguments instead of hammering home their own agendas, but compared to most political debates from the German parlament I witness, I am not really complaining. Still, a few points I like to add:
* Still, I love how American debates are basically sports events.
** My answers would be that a) how does assuming an initiator setting off the Big Bang add anything to its understanding? And where would the initiator come from? b) the interesting question is how consciousness is created by molecules alone, morale is a social consequence c) it is not.
Richard Dawkins is interviewed on the Canadian show “The Agenda”. It’s definitely one of the better, more challenging interviews with him, even though the host clearly is a Christian. But he still manages to be a journalist first.
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The first four parts are the interview, after that, it’s a discussion panel that is not that interesting because Dawkins is not present to reply.
For everyone who has not yet found his or her spiritual home, you might want to try out the BELIEF-O-MATIC. It did very accurately predict my “faith” (I’m not saying which one). Let me just say that my beliefs have a 0% compatibility-rate with Jehovah’s Witnesses. But, each to their own.
A 100 minutes documentary about religion. Funny for the most parts, with revealing moments and a strong ending. My favorite part: The saddle on the Dinosaur in the Creationism-Museum! Ridiculous! Or rather, religulous. Watch it!
[youtube]5HKHaClUCw4[/youtube]
Hey, es gibt sogar eine deutsche Version:
[youtube]UvW3y4g2rXA[/youtube]
Via CDT:
Drinking Tea” (喝茶) is now a common vocabulary in online political discourse. It refers to the widespread practices by DSD police or other authorities to harass, intimidate and conduct information-gathering on citizens for their political activities. Although each such “Tea” session always comes with the warning to keep the conversation to oneself, more and more netizens have been sharing their “Drinking Tea” experiences; ...
Here is another example of a “Drinking Tea” experience, from a college student, shared within a private online community, translated by
Luke Habberstad:
This year (2009) I am 23 years old.
For the most part, prior to my 21st year, when I thought about issues it was always the thinking of a government education. Later, I went online and saw some unimaginable things. Then, after going through some personal experiences myself, such as my family being extorted by the police when they did business, I became very disillusioned with reality. I could not accept this completely inhuman government.
Later I started using my own QQ space, QQ screen name, and blog to disseminate some articles, usually by reposting them. Most of the articles were on bullogger, with Ran Yunfei and Ai Weiwei being the most prominent authors. I used my QQ screen name mostly to post some comments from micro-blogs.
Last year on June 4th was the first time that I directly felt the Internet controls. Many domestic websites were temporarily closed, and Twitter and some foreign websites were temporarily blacked out.
That day I was at school in class, and I visited Ai Weiwei’s independent blog. I found an article that he wrote, and I posted it over to the daily journal on my QQ space. I didn’t realize that I had hit upon a taboo word: 64 (i.e. June 4th). The article did not successfully post, and I thought that the taboo words on QQ had increased; I remembered that previously this word was not a problem. Then I added a comma in between the numbers, and was able to post the article.
Half an hour later, a woman who worked as an Internet monitor at the school entered the classroom. She whispered a few words to our teacher and then she came over to my machine to check the computer’s number and then left. Then, the department director came in and ordered me to go to his office. He started to interrogate me with questions, asking if I had entered the Party, if I had considered going abroad, etc. Then he ordered another female teacher to go buy me some food. At noon, I asked him when I would be able to leave, and he said that the school’s Party Secretary was in the Dean’s office waiting for me. Pretending to be naïve, I asked him what for. He also pretended to be native, and said that he did not know, but that they would explain when I arrived. I finished eating and we left. I felt disturbed, and inside I was a mess. The director and this other woman took me to the Dean’s office, and I sat in front of a table. They sat in the seats across from me (the office was large and luxurious), and then told me to wait. After a bit, the school’s Party Secretary came in. He was older, maybe 50 to 60 years old, a shrewd-looking person. He also had a companion who followed him in, carrying a notebook. Then, the old man started to talk.
I will briefly describe his points:
1) During a routine examination, Internet monitors had discovered that my QQ space contained “unharmonious” speech. They called to inform him, at the same time as the city’s Internet censors also called him.
2) He asked how I had obtained this article, since it had appeared on my space. I made something up, saying that I had seen the article on a Baidu bulletin board while surfing, and just posted it on my space, and that I hadn’t really read its content.
3) Then he started to talk about June 4th. He said that the Party and the nation had long since come to a conclusion about the affair, that it was an XXXX rebellion. He said that the Falun Gong from abroad is an anti-Party group, and took advantage of the Internet to corrupt young people inside the country. He said that my actions were extremely serious, harmful to social stability, etc. In the end, he wasted an hour jerking off like this. In order to not fuck up my ability to continue in my studies, I played naïve and stupid, and finally I went back and deleted the article off my QQ space.
…
Und da fragen sich die Politiker, warum sie so einen schlechten Ruf haben. Die Klimakonferenz endet damit, dass die Teilnehmer die Abschlusserklärung “zur Kenntnis nehmen“. Ich lach mich tot. Auf Spiegel Online heißt es “Kläglicher Kompromiss verhindert totales Scheitern”. Kläglich stimmt sicherlich, aber wie sieht denn totales Scheitern aus, wenn nicht so? “Zur Kenntnis nehmen”, was soll das denn heißen? Schließt das ein “aber wir ignorieren es komplett” in irgendeiner Weise aus?
Gab es die Formulierung eigentlich schon früher? Hat die iranische Regierung die Proteste in Teheran auch “zur Kenntnis genommen”? Muss sie ja, schließlich hat sie die Demonstranten verprügelt und verhaftet, ohne Kenntnisnahme ja schlecht vorstellbar. Nimmt ein Richter den Protest eines Angeklagten zur Kenntnis, den er zum Tode verurteilt? Ich könnte diese Reihe mit vielen passenden und unpassenden Vergleichen weiterführen, aber wohin?
Ich lehne mich mal aus dem Fenster und behaupte, dass kein Skandal dem globalen Ansehen von Politikern so sehr geschadet hat wie diese Konferenz. Noch nie hat die ganze Klasse der Staatstragenden so sehr gezeigt, dass sie eben nicht ist, für was sie sich hält: Die Vertreter der Menschen dieser Erde. Mit Ausnahme der Fussballweltmeisterschaft gibt es wohl kaum eine Angelegenheit auf der Welt, bei der sich die Bürger aller Länder so einig sind wie bei dem Wunsch, das Klima unseres Planeten davor zu bewahren, aus dem Ruder zu geraten. Aber dazu wird es nun mit ziemlicher Sicherheit nicht kommen.
Ehrlich gesagt, ich hätte selbst bei einem Erfolg der Klimakonferenz meine Zweifel gehabt, ob das überhaupt gelingen kann, schließlich herrscht ja selbst unter Klimaschützern eine bemerksenswerte Uneinigkeit darüber, wer und was denn genau wie und für wie viel verantwortlich ist. Über den richtigen Weg zum Ziel will ich gar nicht reden. Ist aber auch egal, ohne Führung unserer Führer führt das eh zu nichts. Der einzelne kann eben auch nur so viel CO2 einsparen, oder? Oder nicht? Nein, dafür hab ich nicht mehr genug Illusionen, als dass ich mir vorstellen könnte, dass die Menschen an ihren Regierungen vorbei die Sache selbst in die Hand nehmen. Viel Glück beim Abschalten der Braunkohlekraftwerke! Die meisten schaffen ja nicht mal das richtige Abschalten des DVD Players ohne Standby.
Nun werden wir also weitertaumeln in eine Phase der Erderwärmung, bei der viele Menschen und viele Tierarten auf der Strecke bleiben werden. Im Großen und Ganzen nun keine Katastrophe für unseren Planeten (im Kleinen aber natürlich millionenfach). Mutter Erde wird die paar Jahrhunderte homo sapiens eh irgendwann als unbedeutenen Abschnitt abhaken, bestenfalls noch als Beginn eines neuen Evolutionsschub, an dessen Ende vielleicht strahlenresistente, beschwimmheutete Neumenschen stehen, die sich von Zivilisationsmüll ernähren. Das wär doch was.
Aber was weiß ich schon? Nichts. Deshalb halte ich jetzt mal die Klappe. Ist auch besser fürs Klima.
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Ich dachte, es gibt mittlerweile Gesetze gegen Lügen in Werbung?
