On the pursuit of happiness

On this independence day holiday, I am repeating a post on what to me is one of the most intriguing phrases in the US Declaration of Independence. It is contained in the famous sentence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

I have always found the inclusion of “the pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable right to be appealing. One does not expect to see such a quaint sentiment in a revolutionary political document, and its presence sheds an interesting and positive light on the minds and aspirations of the people who drafted it. [Read more…]

Film review: The Artist (2011)

Over the weekend I watched this film that won five Oscars (including best picture, best director, and best actor). It tells a story of love and redemption, the kind that used to be a staple of the early days of black and white silent films, and it tells it in the form of a black and white silent film, with a music soundtrack only. The story is about actors and filmmaking set in the period around the 1930s during the transition from silent films to talkies, so it is an interesting exercise in self-referential filmmaking at various levels. [Read more…]

Anniversary of US shooting of Iranian civilian airliner

On this day in 1988, a US warship in the Strait of Hormuz shot down a civilian Iranian passenger airliner, killing all 290 people on board. After being found culpable by the International Court of Justice, the US paid reparations but never apologized for the shooting, with then vice-president and later president George H. W. Bush famously saying, “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” Because as god’s chosen people and nation, we are never wrong. [Read more…]

Should you take the first cab that comes along?

In an article in Salon titled Don’t Trust the Godless, Jesse Bering says that even though he is an atheist, he trusts religious people to do the right thing more than the godless. As an example, when he looks for a cab in a strange city, he prefers to take one that has prominently displayed religious icons such as crucifixes and Bibles over those that don’t. He seems to have swallowed whole the idea that belief in god makes people behave better because of their fear of divine retribution. [Read more…]

Should Iran get nuclear weapons?

Once again, war rhetoric against Iran is being ramped up. That reliable warmonger Tom Gjelten of NPR had a report this morning about Iran threatening to blockade the Straits of Hormuz in retaliation for the increased economic sanctions that are being applied by the US and its allies in order to force Iran to give up its nuclear program, which the US and Israel claim is aimed at developing nuclear weapons and which Iran denies. As usual, Gjelten framed his report on whether the sanctions would be effective in forcing Iran to bend to the will of the US and Israel. [Read more…]

The nonexistent benefits of circumcision

Those who defend the practice of circumcision tend to fall into two camps. The first argue that to forbid it is to violate the religious freedom of the groups (mainly Jews and Muslims) who practice it. This is absurd. No one is saying that people should be forbidden from getting circumcised. What we are saying that circumcision should not be forced on anyone else. If any adult wants to get circumcised, they should be allowed to do so. But to allow parents to mutilate their babies to satisfy their own religious beliefs is simply wrong. You shouldn’t be allowed to establish your bona fides with god by mutilating your children. [Read more…]

The Roberts puzzle

Following the surprising alignment of Chief Justice John Roberts with the so-called liberal wing of the US Supreme Court to hand president Obama a victory on the Affordable Care Act, there has been much speculation as to why he ruled the way he did. Speculating on the private motives of public figures is usually a waste of time (but fun!) and we will have to wait for his memoirs to find out if his reasons were different from his stated ones. But the nature of such speculations do tell us a lot about the state of our political discourse. [Read more…]