Praying for you & Free Will

I saw someone pull the old "I'll pray for you" to an gynecologist the other day on Twitter, and one of the videos I was watching on YouTube (I can't recall which one, sorry) had been talking about God's position on free will.

Generally, most of the Christians that I've talked with have insisted that God doesn't interfere with human free will.  There are a couple of reasons why they have to argue that, both Biblical and related to the problem of evil.  After all, if all evil in the world is caused by the fall of man, and Christians have salvation in Christ, one might expect God to intervene to protect Christians or perhaps the innocent.

Spoiler alert, that doesn't happen.

If everything is the fault of free will, including death and disease and etc., then that allows Christians to side step the issue of what God could be doing while still blaming humans. Humans brought any pain and suffering on themselves and others, and any interference in that would somehow meddle with free will, somehow.

Also, just to point out, the belief that god doesn't interfere in free will is explicitly contradicted in the Bible.  God hardens Pharaoh's heart multiple times, preventing him from making reasonable choices in the face of the plagues that Moses is bringing down on his people.  And just to note that these choices are directly linked to the possibility of Pharaoh's salvation.  If he believed the miracles that he was witnessing first hand, he might have decided to worship the god of the Bible.

I suppose I should also point out that faith instead of knowledge being required for salvation is also murky.  After all, if early Christians witnessed the miracles of Jesus of Nazareth, they didn't need to have faith in him, as Christians today will define the concept. 

So, ignoring Pharaoh, if God really doesn't interfere in free will, what exactly are people asking for when they say "I'll pray for you"?  the vast majority of those people are praying to a God that they themselves don't believe will change a human's mind.  Not because he can't but because he actively refuses to do so.  So . . . they're praying for God to do something that they know he won't?  Actively praying against the explicit will of God?

There's an atheist meme, "Prayer: How to do nothing and pretend that you're doing something."  However, assuming that the people aren't pretending but actively hoping for a change, saying "I'll pray for you" is even worse, because as honestly as you might hope for a change you're also sure that it's not going to happen.

It's quite literally praying for nothing.

The Lack of Objective Morality in Religious Morality

To lay out the basis of this post, I was debating with a polite conservative Catholic on Twitter a few months ago, and he asked me about where my morality comes from if it doesn't come from God.

So, I tried to explain, briefly (as befits Twitter), that my moral system is based on a couple of basic principles.  At the time I feel like I only really worked through the first, but I've added two additional principles here to try to further explain my thought process.

1. It is possible to differentiate between moral and immoral acts based on a framework of empathy and relative harm.  Eventually this devolved into "feelings are meaningful" but obviously there's substantially more to it than that.  A large part of why this is a basis for morality can be described as the "Golden Rule."  Treating people the way you would want to be treated is good, treating them as you wouldn't want to be treated is bad.
2. Morals are situational.  That is, the more that is known about a situation, the more well understood the morality of the situation.  Saying that "hitting someone" is moral or immoral is difficult if not impossible based on the vague nature of the presented situation.  Additional information can easily turn an immoral act into a moral act.  However, the morality of a situation can be judged from the best, if imperfect, understanding of any situation.  
3. Morality is not relative.  If two situations are precisely the same, then the morality of both those situations is the same.  Any differences between two situations, no matter how slight, might change the morality of those situations.

Additionally, because I was debating a Christian on this, at some point I stipulated two additional things:

• The world exists.
• People exist.

I should have additionally stipulated that there are moral, immoral, and amoral acts.  That sometimes choices have no real moral content.  I didn't think about that at the time, but I'll try to recall that for next time.  As it was, I'm glad I stipulated to at least the two things above because they headed off the worst of the "How do you know?" and "What if you're wrong?" questions.

Just a note, Matt Dillahunty's talk on secular morality, "The Superiority of Secular Morality" helped me understand and phrase my own point of view of this subject.  Thanks to him for his excellent discussion there, and on episodes of The Atheist Experience.

So, I was trying to understand the conservative Catholic's framework for understanding morality so I asked a series of questions, which all really boiled down to "where does your morality come from?"  I'm paraphrasing here, obviously, but he stated that moral and immoral acts should be clear to people because of his god's revelation, especially to Catholics.  When I asked how some Catholics could disagree about morality, his reply was that one of the Catholics would be wrong, and that wrongness would derive from the failure to understand or submit to God's will.

That's where I started getting really interested, because to me it seems pretty clear that this is where we split on my principle number 1.  While I think that morality is based on empathy and relative harm, he thinks that it's based on the will of God.  In that sense, I think he would accept my second principle, but only where better understanding of the situation can be clarified by the Bible or his god's will.

I kind of followed that through to my third principle and realized that while there was a difference of opinion in principle number 1, the third principle fell apart completely.  We were both talking about objective morality and we were talking about two completely, completely different things.  I wanted to try to focus on that, but first I wanted to talk more to establish a larger basis of common terms and ideas with which to discuss it.

I don't generally use the term "absolute morality" but when I followed that thread down, my understanding was that "absolute morality" was the morality of his god, and that while it existed to him, it could not be perfectly understood by imperfect beings.  So it was a real existent thing, but it also wasn't something that we humans couldn't completely grasp.

To underline that he said "Morality isn't determined by men but by God."

We spent most of the rest of the conversation talking about why people's feelings matter to morality, and how morality can be based on harm, societal impact, feelings, and all of the other things upon which I base my premises.  He views feelings as evidence of moral law, which I obviously don't.  I pretty much view things from the opposite direction, moral law is evidence of feelings.  Human morality is what we build up on top of the basic observable effects of our actions on other people (which, if you'll recall, I had to stipulate existed). People are hurt by cruelty and abuse, and they suffer and society suffers as a result.  Being nice and moral lead to better outcomes, both for individuals and society.

I do need to clarify that all of this is based on the idea that people are physical beings, and that feelings and harm are physical states.  Society is also a construct made up of many people, all of whom are physical beings.  Since I'm observing physical people though, I can make objective statements because the statements I'm making literally relate to objective reality.  

I continued to consider this after the conversation had finished, and I came to a few additional realizations.

First, given two situations that are morally equivalent but not exactly the same situation.  A simple moral situation to use could be two men, acquaintances but not friends or relations, one of whom is jealous and kills the other to rob him.  So we have four people, two murderers and two victims.

To me, given similar moral circumstances (neither of the murderers was acting in self defense or for the defense of another, the motivation was robbery in both cases, and the murderer wasn't coerced or forced in any way) I can say that both of these situations are bad because the actions of the murderers are both immoral.  The murderer is clearly wrong to do what he did.

I can say, given the situations, these killings are objectively bad.  Does it result in good outcome for both parties?  No, half of them end up dead.  The killers' financial windfall doesn't mitigate the loss of life by the victims.  Murder 1 is objectively bad, and Murder 2 is objectively bad.

There is a major missing factor for some other conservative Catholic to judge the situations though, which is the will of their god.  Let's assume that Murder 1 occurs without countenance from God.  Then my hypothetical Catholic friend clearly says that the murder is objectively wrong and bad.  Assume though that Murder 2 occurs but is condoned by God (for any reason, known or unknown).  Well, then my hypothetical friend would have to say that the murder is objectively good.

Aside from the opinion of God, what has changed in the situation?  Well, nothing.  Two people have still murdered two other people.  The direct circumstances of the situation haven't changed, and to me the opinion of God doesn't change anything, both are still bad.  To me, the actual situation matters, not what the opinion of a third party is.

To my hypothetical philosophical sparring partner, the situation doesn't actually matter at all.  What matter is the opinion of that third party.  So "robbing and killing" someone isn't actually an objectively immoral act, because the determination rests on the subjective opinion of a third party.

I think it's obvious that the immediate response to this would be "God wouldn't condone killing."  Except, clearly he has.  He condoned and even ordered significant amounts of killing in the Bible.  Some Christians argue that this was a moral thing because killing is not against the command of God, but murder is.  To some extent I agree about the difference between "killing" and "murder," but my agreement is all situational: was it in self defense or in the defense of another?  For the hypothetical Catholic though, again, the actual situation doesn't matter, what matters is the approval of God.

And, of course, I'm assuming the manifestation of God to the Catholic to make his will known, which I know is unreasonable.  As my real Twitter acquaintance made clear, it's impossible to perfectly understand the mind of God.   That just makes me more confused about why they think that their morality is "objective" though, because the opinions of God are unknowable.  Who can say that God wouldn't prefer stoning of atheists, idolators, and blasphemers today or that our society has violated the will of God to forbid Biblical slavery?

There might be an assumption, especially for non-prophets, that certain acts are acceptable or forbidden by God according to the dictates of the Bible, but those are just assumptions.  It would be impossible to discern the exact feelings of their deity on each specific case. 

Thus, it strikes me as completely ridiculous that Christians claim that their morality is objective.  It certainly has nothing to do with the objective reality of the situation, or even really of their own laws or opinions.  It's clearly a subjective morality where the "subject" is their god.

Certainly, the more accurate assessment would have to describe secular morality as more "objective" than the muddy and subjective morality that requires a constant stream of opinion from God.  After all, it's much easier to say "robbery and killing" or "kill their men and capture their women" are immoral in the secular system than in the religious one.

Using the internet to redo politics, again

You know one thing that the internet is really good at?  Accessing large databases from anywhere.  That's Google, Facebook, Twitter, and just about any message board in the world.  Those are massively huge databases, and those websites are pulling content out of them on the fly.  Often people are adding content, and it's filing that into the database and feeding it to your friends when they scroll down the Facebook wall in nearly real time.

There's a database that's really important to elections: voter data.  Especially the public voter data of registered voters that they can get from election districts which has a name, an age, a political party, an address, and maybe a phone number.  When you volunteer for a campaign you generally end up doing one of two things, both of them connected to that data.  The first is make phone calls to people to ask them for money, ask them to volunteer, or ask for their vote in the election.  The second is to go out on the street and actually knock on people's doors and ask them to come out to vote, called canvassing.

Those work. They show your neighbors that the candidates have dedicated people working for them, and it really sticks the name of the candidate in a percentage of people's heads, and going house-to-house gets a certain percentage of people out to vote.

But the way that that data is handled is a disaster.  For both previous presidential campaigns I made phone calls at least once.  Both times I was handed a sheaf of paper printouts with the names of the people that I needed to call, and I called down the list and marked a box with the responses.  The given responses were usually "no answer," "refused," "willing to volunteer," and "willing to donate."

Nearly immediately I ran into a ton of problems.  The first was "That's not me, I just got this phone number."  That's not a no answer, and it's not technically a "refused to answer" either.  It might mean that the number was listed wrong, it was changed to another person, or that the person is lying and doesn't want to talk to me.  But that doesn't mean that the person couldn't be contacted through another number or by email, or that the lying person wouldn't mind getting emails.

The second was "I was just called by the campaign five minutes ago" or "I've been called five times by the campaign today" and one caller actually said "If I get another phone call tonight from you I'm not going to vote for Obama."  You know why that was happening?   Because in the database that the Obama administration was keeping listed these people as "need to be contacted" and multiple call locations would just print out the top of the list.  At the end of the day, all that data needed to be put back in the system so that people could be marked as "contacted." That meant tons of confusion about who needed to be contacted, who had been contacted, and who didn't need to be contacted again, and another round of volunteers who had to input the data.

The third was, "I'd love to volunteer or donate . . ." As the person on the phone with them though, there was no way for me to take a donation over the phone.  You're not going to be having volunteers taking credit card information, and without access to their email address, there was no way to actually follow up with that specific individual to remind them to donate when they aren't on the phone.  Once you say "go to the website" then you have to hope that they will follow through on their own.  The same is true for volunteering, where I would often check the "willing to volunteer" box on the sheet of paper, but couldn't give them any up-to-date information on ways to volunteer in their area without asking them to go to the website on their own.

A secure xml database with a every person's basic information input (no credit card information) that volunteers could access directly could have solved all of those problems.  First, it would have been much easier to change between phone contact and email contact, and incorrect numbers could be marked without necessarily deleting the person entirely off the lists (you could even email them to check if they'd moved or changed phones).  Second, marking responses could be done directly to the database to make sure that people weren't called five times in a row.  Third, a system that allowed flags for different kinds of follow up would have made the lives of the campaign directors much easier by tracking those requests.

Let's say you have that information in a database already.  Perhaps you create an iPhone app that can access one or two records at a time.  The app could allow a volunteer to contact the next person on the list with one touch, and lock out the entry for 15 minutes so that it wouldn't pop up for anyone else.  At the end of the call, the app could present questions for the volunteer with buttons as simple as "Yes" and "No" that would allow the campaign to control the information gained, such as "already contacted," "needs follow-up," or create flags and messages that later volunteers could follow up on.  That information can flow directly into the database, or it can be sent to a trusted supervisor anywhere in the country to be reviewed before being input. 

The flags could be used to create lists of people that need assistance getting to the polls, or who want to volunteer.  If the person contacted speaks Spanish, it could be tagged for follow-up by a Spanish speaking volunteer.  The system could keep track of issues that voters care about and call scripts could add specific information based on what the system knows about the political views of a particular candidate.  All of this could basically function in real time. 

With the prevalence of smart phones, a similar system could be used by canvassers going door to door, getting information to the campaign as people are contacted.  You could even have multiple rounds of canvassers hit the same neighborhoods at the same time without fear that you would knock on the same door multiple times.

And having that better data would improve the analytics of the campaign by a thousand fold. How many people need follow up?  What kinds of questions are they asking the volunteers who are calling?  How many people in a given location need rides the day of the election?  Are certain canvassers getting better responses, and if so what are they doing to be more effective?  Are certain people better at talking to people on the phones?  And you can have records of which person contacted which other person and perhaps even have the same people following up. Imagine the experience of knowing that "Jackie from the Obama campaign" is the only person who will call you, and you can ask her questions and she'll get back to you if she doesn't know the answers.  She speaks your language, and can arrange a local ride to your specific polling place for you.

Let's go back to the watch party I mentioned in the previous post.  People might be uncomfortable inviting other people over for a watch party in their homes, but what if they know that campaign has all the information on those people, and it will usually be the same people coming to events every time?  It's the same concept as Uber, you have a trusted group of people whose information is on file getting electronically matched together to create a better experience for the host and for the participants. By building a community of people with the same views, you get them more involved in the process.

From the perspective of the volunteer, this system also makes so much more sense.  You can make calls from anywhere, at any time, for just a few minutes or a few hours.  You can canvass in your own neighborhood for 30 minutes after work instead of needing to take four hour shifts.  You can even reward the volunteers who canvass and do the most calls with campaign swag that they can show off in person.  Perhaps the best caller and the best canvasser in an area can get VIP passes to a candidate event when Obama is in the area, and get to shake hands and get a picture?

Supervisors could also review new input from anywhere, even while out canvassing themselves, or even across the country.  The system would allow people in Maine to help out people in Hawaii if Hawaii volunteers got overwhelmed.  Programmers could even create different user interfaces, as long as the architecture of the database was properly structured, analogous to the way that Facebook on a desktop computer is different than on a phone, or the way that Tweetdeck allows different access to twitter than the native app does.

Finally, this kind of system could be useful even more for down ticket races.  What if Jackie called you back for the midterms to ask you to vote?  Maybe even for your mayor or city council person?  By building relationships between volunteers and voters you could drastically impact local races.  You could print up direct mailers specific to individuals to keep them informed about their specific local elections, and the issues that they care most about.

This is the system that the Democratic Party needs to build to mobilize the next generation of political supporters.  The paper and pen canvassing and random calls make the party look disorganized and out of touch with modern technology.  The party will also be moving into step with the current culture of personalized information technology and using technology to connect local volunteers together toward common local, state, and national goals.

Serious Politics

A liberal approaches an evangelical voter and asks: "If you had to choose between (a) outlawing abortion and seeing the number of abortions, especially unsafe abortions, go up, or (b) keeping abortion legal but seeing the number of abortions reduced overall, which would you choose?"

If you've ever actually tried to ask an evangelical Christian voter the answer to this, you know what the answer is.  It's (c): They want to outlaw abortions and see the number of abortions reduced overall.

This isn't the only question to which the answer is (c).  Fiscal conservative voters want taxes lowered and the national debt to go down.  Many voters want to pay less for schools and hire better teachers.  Law and order types want to reduce drug use and continue to spend money on enforcement only when treatment would work better.  The majority of Americans want to see healthcare costs go down but don't want to try any of the numerous systems that European countries have used to reduce their costs far below ours.  Certain parts of the right want to see Islam banned and religious freedom upheld at any cost.

I've seen so many people give these kinds of answers so many times, and I want to address it for what it is.  The answer (c) is the answer of wishful thinking.

The question itself is a serious one.  When someone offers a choice, (a) or (b), generally these choices are informed by evidence and research.  We know that unsafe abortions go up when the procedure is banned (we're even seeing that resurgence in parts of Texas right now).  We know that reducing taxes from current levels inflates the national debt.  We can see that all other countries pay less than Americans do right now for healthcare.  The question understands these connections and is asking for the priorities of the person being questioned.  Yes, we understand that you oppose abortion on moral grounds, but given the reality of the situation, would you prefer standing by your principles or accepting the lesser evil?

Whenever you get the answer (c) you know that you're dealing with someone who doesn't take politics seriously.  They're not willing to make real choices with consequences, so they deny that there is a choice at all.  To them, there are no correlations or causations between related things, there are only good things and bad things.  Abortion bad.  Lower taxes good.  National debt bad.  War good.  None of those decisions is allowed to have a consequence that isn't intended or even mildly detrimental.

These people have been around for years, but this year I think we're seeing a massive increase in them.  They're the current supporters of Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump isn't politically correct, but most of the time he isn't correct either.  He gives answer (c) constantly.  He wants a multi-billion dollar border wall and he will get Mexico to pay for it.  He'll be a complete jerk to other leaders and they will all respect him and capitulate to his demands.  Trump will cut taxes and balance the budget within a year and create the best economy the world has ever seen.  Trump will be sexist and racist and a bigot and he'll be the best possible president for everyone in the country.

None of those are serious positions.  I get why his positions are attractive: he wants his cake and to eat it too.  In a fantasy land, they sound lovely and magical.  But anyone who only gives (c) answers isn't a serious politician.  He may be in the lead and thus a "serious contender" for the nomination, but he's not a serious person.

The people that follow him are also not serious.  They may shout and (may) vote, but they're not seriously interested in making this country better.  They're not even willing to listen to the truth, much less hard truths.

You can tell just by listening to them talk.  They don't weigh positions.  They don't make hard choices.  They simply find something that sounds good and rally around it mindlessly without doing a basic check to tell if the proposal makes sense.

Conservatives, true ones anyway, aren't rallying around Trump.  They don't even understand him, even though they are partly to blame for him.  They're the ones that have been preaching the political prosperity gospel: believe in True Conservatism and God shall deliver, but that's because conservatives have the most serious of motives: winning.  They looked at the numbers and recognized that they were in trouble, and so pushed a narrative and a situation that would allow them to win despite demographics that were working against them.  Now they're overwhelmed by the voting population that they created, one that isn't happy to work with any conservative serious positions just like they won't work with any liberal serious positions.

I'm not saying that Trump supporters aren't dangerous.  They are.  They're seemingly willing to ignore any criticism and their chosen focus is definitely unhinged.  If he's elected, I think he would be a terrible President of the United States.

But there are two things that I think need to be recognized.  First, it's not Trump that created this group.  If anyone is ultimately responsible it's probably Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, but even they can't claim total credit.  Instead, it's this group that is creating the Trump candidacy and the popularity of Fox News.  The power is flowing upward from the choice (c) voters and is creating a space for a crazy person to stand on.

Second, everyone else, all of the reasonable people, need to recognize when they're dealing with choice (c) voters.  I don't think that talking to most of them will do much good (as per the adage "You can't reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into") but instead of wasting time and energy, you have to accept that these people are real-life trolls and that attention only feeds them.  You can't rely on them to let you know that they're being crazy and irrational, you need to take that responsibility on yourself.  

A Meditation on Colton Haynes

There's usually some actor or artist that I've fixated on for some reason or another.  I've certainly posted enough about Erik Rhodes and Fredrik Eklund to imply that, but sometimes it's a more mainstream actor as well (and I'm not going to pretend that it's an actor OR actress because while I am loving every moment of Jennifer Lawrence's celebrity, I'm talking about another level of desire).

For a long time, for example, it was Jonathan Taylor Thomas, or JTT as he was known in the teen beat magazines.  Huh, have I ever actually said that before publicly?  To anyone?  I don't know, I don't think so.

The picture that I had of Jonathan was so nice and familiar and uh, . . . cute.  I had such a big crush on him that I couldn't imagine that people didn't think that he was the prettiest most-beautiful most-special . . . yeah, you get the picture.  There are still characters that live in my head that started off their fictional lives as Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Perhaps some of them as already fictional characters as portrayed by JTT that were further ficitonalized and adapted into the worlds in my head.

There are lots of guys living in there like that.  Who else?  I've had crushes on so many actors . . . all the way from A-listers like Ryan Reynolds, Taylor Lautner, Chris Evans and Josh Hutcherson to guys whose names you'll likely not recognize at all like Alexander Ludwig and Dan Wells.  And athletes like Alexi Nemov and *cough* Tom Daley and Matthew Mitcham.

So, anyway.  My current pop-culture crush is on Colton Haynes who, aside from being just about the most gorgeous guy that has ever lived, was on the show Teen Wolf and is now on Arrow.  Teen Wolf was/is my guilty pleasure.  For a show that should be crap though, it seems really well written and many of the side characters are just as lovable as the main characters.  In that it reminds me of Veronica Mars, I suppose.

When I first started watching Teen Wolf I found Colton Haynes to be rather shallow in the character of Jackson.  Jackson's the white, athletic, captain of the lacrosse team and he's dating a cheerleader. He's basically the epitome of shallowness, actually, and the guys that they usually get to play the shallow white male characters are themselves shallow white males.  Funny how that works out, yeah?  So at the beginning I gave more love to Tyler Posey (werewolf), Tyler Hochtlin, (werewolf), and Dylan O'Brien (brilliant comedic sidekick).

Anyway, there aren't that many guys in the age range that are could convincingly play teenagers in high school that are great actors, especially the ones that are selected to play characters that fit those good looking popular kid roles.  So I saw Colton Haynes playing such a character and didn't give him much of the benefit of the doubt.  To be clear, even though he was an actor in a show, I presumed that he was likely as superficial, conceited and bitchy as the character that he played.  I assumed that he was just as pretty in real life as he was in television land, but that's just television for you.

And then the character had additional characterization, as is the wont for characters in well written television series, and all of the sudden I found that I was actually feeling for this rich, gorgeous jock that was supposed to be the major high school (re: "normal life") antagonist.  Because I had, unwittingly, granted Colton Haynes a powerful version of suspension of disbelief: that he was the character that he played.

So when the character showed off fear and anger and confusion and pain I was surprised because I believed it.  It was acting, I know that, but it was excellent acting.  It was a powerful and professional and amazing performance given by someone that had to have really worked at it, thought about it, and then made the role his own in a way that few great actors can.

Or perhaps not.  Maybe Colton Haynes really was afraid, angry, confused and deeply hurt when those scenes were filmed and he and the director used them to get a good performance.  But he's pretty and a television star and honestly I doubt his life has held enough fear, anger, confusion and emotional pain to draw on them so brilliantly, so I'm just going to have to chalk it up to being a very good actor and playing a character.

Here's where I have to complain for a moment.  Jackson was the focus of the second season of Teen Wolf.  It was around his character that a lot of the mystery and action takes place, and it leads up into a grand reveal and a hint at the following season and then . . .

Colton Haynes leaves Teen Wolf and moves over to the show Arrow.  Well, crap.  It was hard to watch Teen Wolf stumble over that, because it was clear that they'd written Jackson into way too much of the third season and they didn't want to change all of the plans that they'd laid out so carefully.  So they had to force some of the characters into awkward positions and do some things that were sloppy before (and I hope this is true) being able to settle back into the flow of things.

I have to say that at first I had a bit of nasty feelings toward Arrow for poaching one of my favorite things about Teen Wolf.  Arrow does have a lot going for it.  Stephen Amell, the male lead, is very attractive (albeit not as hot as Colton Haynes), and it has both John Barrowman and Summer Glau in it, both of whom I like.

But it's not as well written.  It has some issues with how tightly plotted it is, and there are also some serious characterization problems where characters vacillate on what should be core beliefs and principles.  It has some opacity on moral questions: is it wrong to kill someone as a vigilante or not?  The show hasn't decided, and so the characters don't know what to think about it either.

The other issue is that Colton Haynes is woefully underused in his role as Roy Harper.  Roy has an interesting story line, with his life as a poor mugger/thief conflicting with dating one of the richest women in the city and his obsession with following "the Hood" changing what his life means.  But he's on the second rung of supporting characters, being a supporting character's significant other in a show with a surprisingly large cast.  So he doesn't have enough screen time.

I will say though, Colton is a good enough actor to add some great detail to his limited screen time.  In one of the most recent episodes of Arrow that I watched he walked into his girlfriend's mansion with her so that she could interact with her mother (does it still count as passing the Betchdel test if one of the women's male partners is present but nearly silent as they talk about non-men related issues?) and he stares around, wide eyed, because the character has never been there before, and honestly the character has probably never been in such an expensive home in his life.

As I've said, Colton is a good actor, perhaps even a great actor.  And he's got the movie star looks to back up his actual skills (although I can't decide whether that will help him or hurt him in the future).  And we get to see the occasional snippet of him behind the scenes in the social media presence that actors are required to keep these days.  And I've pretty much fallen for what I see of him.  That doesn't mean that he wouldn't absolutely hate me if he ever met me, but I've crushes on plenty of guys that didn't return the feelings before.

Speaking of which, I will say that I wish he was gay. It doesn't matter to his attractiveness whether he is or not, but it's harder to have a crush on a guy when you know for a fact that they can't return those feelings.  Not impossible, just harder.

Anyway, in the meantime, I wish him a good life.  Happiness, privacy, and moments of fun and peace.  

Please Stop Lying

Look, we both know that you're lying to me.

I know why I support Barack Obama.  He's not a perfect President, but he's done a lot of good things during his time in office. When I weigh the positive things that he says he will do (and the positive things that he has done) against the points where I disagree with him I come out with a net positive.  He's a worthwhile person to vote for on his own merits, although I remain hopeful the Democrats will present even better  candidates in the future.

But I have absolutely no clue why you support Mitt Romney, and that's because you keep lying to me about it.

This isn't a politician or a political pundit problem, this is the problem that happens when you, as a Republican voter, try to explain to me why you support Willard Mitt Romney, especially after having supported George W. Bush.

You don't like East Coast ivory tower elitists?  Bush went to Yale.  Romney has two degrees from Harvard.  They both have rather advanced degrees in business too.  It seems like you're pretty comfortable with East Coast elitists, actually.

You want business experience?  You know that Bush's oil company eventually had to be shuttered and bought by family friends, right?  And both of them started in management because of their fancy educations, it's not like they worked their way to the top of a company through the sweat of their brow. And don't get me started on the multi-million dollar loans that Romney got from his father in order to found Bain.  He didn't inherit anything from his father, right.

"Someone that you can have a beer with?" That's bull.  Obama drinks beer.  Bush is an alcoholic and doesn't drink, Romney just doesn't drink for religious reasons.

A good Christian man?  Okay, just to point out that the only Protestant in the race for President or Vice-President this year is Obama, and that Mormonism is generally considered a cult by evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.

But remember when you Republicans said that we needed someone with military experience (which neither Romney nor Ryan has), a Washington outsider (which neither Romney nor Ryan are), someone that understands middle class values (please), and then attacked Kerry for being a flip-flopper (because consistency is key to winning conservative votes or something)?  All of those things are lies.  Obvious lies, because when Democrats put forth candidates that fill those qualifications, Republicans don't vote for them.

I'll grant you that Romney and Bush have had more business experience than Obama and Clinton have had (possibly combined . . . did Clinton run his own law firm? I don't think so.), although I'd be more than happy to argue the content of that experience with you.  Romney's experience is in capital investment, so are we going to stipulate that the experience that running the U.S. government requires right now is giving massive amounts of money to private corporations?  But you know what, Republicans also ran John McCain, a man with zero business experience and teamed him up with Sarah Palin, a woman with zero business experience.  So, you know, it's not even like Republicans have this single issue as a consistent thread through their candidates.

Altogether, the general comments about why you should vote for the Republican are transparent lies, because your criteria change from election to election.

I vote for the person that (1) can win and (2) best represents my opinions on national issues.  That's just me, not every Democrat in the country, but it's better than the 50 million people in this country that are going to vote for a Republican candidate for reasons that they're not actually going to talk about truthfully.

And after all that, all the lies about why Bush/Romney/McCain are just the kind of guy that you want in the White House, then there are all the things that the specific accusations that you make about Obama that are patently false.

He's a communist or a socialist?  Hardly.  He's a darn good capitalist with minimal regulatory impulses. Oil drilling permits are up, banks are still allowed to speculate with invested money still, and Obamacare was a massive boon to private insurers.

Speaking of Obamacare, he's not going to sentence your grandmother to death panels, doctors don't hate him, and repealing Obamacare would cost America billions of dollars.  Heck, even the "he's cutting $700 billion dollars from medicare" thing is a transparent lie under even cursory examination.

He doesn't believe in America? Okay, aside from the ludicrous nature of accusing the President of a country of "not believing" in the country that he leads, every action he takes as President and speech he gives just underlines the lie in this.  A President that didn't believe in America wouldn't have necessarily have fought for American jobs in the car companies.

He apologizes for America?  No, he really hasn't and anytime anyone asks for actual video footage of these world-wide apology tours that he's rumored to have done, the answer is "Well he has!" Gods, what terrific lies.

He's bribing voters with government handouts . . . ?  That argument would make a lot more sense if the Bush taxcuts hadn't involved sending out checks, poor white people on government assistance didn't vote for Republicans in such high numbers, and the number of government workers wasn't falling under Obama.

Obama is so weak that terrorists are going being emboldened to attack the USA?  Again, that's bull.  He killed Osama bin Laden, he's the one that conducted operations in Libya, he's not the one that couldn't even declare a date for leaving the countries he invaded because he didn't know what he was doing.

I'm not even going to touch the insanity that is birtherism or the claims that he's a Muslim.  I'm just going to pretend that you don't believe that stuff for a minute.

He's a divider not a uniter?  He bent over backward to work on Republican proposals and plans, and couldn't even get votes on their own legislative agendas.  They just quit working to prevent him from having any achievements for even the smallest things.

He's attacking freedom?  Okay, first, the party of George W. Bush is making that claim, really?  How can you mantain a straight face. Secondly, how exactly is he rolling back, attacking, or otherwise limiting freedom?  A reminder that Obama's not proposing a constitutional amendment to limit your ability to form relationships, nor your ability to control medical decisions regarding your own body.  Those are Republican proposals (so much for the limited nature of the federal government, eh?).

You get what all of this stuff has in common, right?  All of the personal attacks on Obama, all of the party attacks on the Democratic Party, and all of the bizarre policy attacks?

They're all f*cking lies.

None of this bullshit is true at all.  Seriously, look through the list.  None of those positions or accusations are true.

So here's what I'm asking you to do.  Please, just stop lying to me.  In the meantime though, while you continue to spew this filth all over yourselves and your reputations, I'm just going to have to stand back and try my best to ignore you.

Maybe, when you've stopped lying about every conceivable political stance that you and your party hold I'll reconsider.

Racism

Sometimes the thing that scares me the most about racism is how abjectly people deny racism. And then they ten times more strongly deny their own racism.

If you can't see the issue of race when an unarmed black teenager is shot after being chased by a neighborhood watch, then you are denying the existence of racism.

If you can't see the issue of race when saying that making a character black instead of white makes her death less emotional, you are denying your own racism.

I'm racist sometimes. It sucks to say that, but it's true. And instead of trying to deny that, I try to realize when it happens so that I can correct myself.

Were I to pretend to not be racist though, I would have to actively pretend not to care when I slipped up or white-washed a character (I thought Cinna was white. I also think that Lenny Kravitz did a great job in the role). And that's the most harmful bit about all the racism that's floating around right now. If you're denying it, you're actively making racism worse, not better.

BestSFBooks Ranking System

So, since I'm sort of obsessed with Speculative Fiction awards (you may have noticed), my boyfriend emailed me a link the other day:

BestSFBooks

I took one look at it and decided that I have serious disagreements with the rankings generated by that site, although they generally do what I do, which is count various awards that books get and then rank them by the number of awards and nominations.

The first issue that I have with their method of ranking is that they count the wins and the nominations at the same value. Which has some merit, I admit. I also maintain a straight count of nominations and wins counted as "1" each. You can look at that and get a 2 vs. a 6 and generally tell that if that first book has two wins and the second book has six nominations, that second book is probably more widely liked among a general audience.

But I also maintain a "weighted" score which provides me with a different look: where wins are worth 1 and nominations are worth .5. A book with three wins should have a higher ranking than a book with 3 nominations or even a book with 5 nominations. And so you can easily differentiate in that way between the big winners and the big nominations.

If you're looking for a list of the best speculative fiction, I don't think the straight number of awards gets you to that book. The BestSFBooks site gives second place over the last 3 years to Anathema and The Dervish House each with a count of 7. But The Dervish House has 4 wins and Anathema has 3. If you're looking for an actual ranking of the books, then I would rank Dervish House higher than Anathema, although I would still rate Anathema higher than a book that got 3 wins and two nominations (like Blackout).

The second quibble that I have with their rankings is that they're weighted toward British Books.

Several of the awards that they rank are international. Hugo Awards, Locus SF/Fantasy Awards, John W. Campbell Awards, and World Fantasy Award are (as far as I can determine) all open to books published anywhere in the world. Hugo Awards are explicitly open to books in any language, although the general voting membership is English speaking and I don't think a non-English book has ever made the shortlist.

But BestSFBooks also lists the British Fantasy Society Award, British Science Fiction Association Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Awards, all of which are only open to books published in the U.K.

Those Awards directly compare to only one strictly American award: the Nebula Award. And, while the American Nebula Award can go to either a science fiction or fantasy book, those categories are split out amongst two of the previously listed British awards, giving double weight and twice as many nominations to the British awards before even taking into account the Arthur C. Clarke excess.

There is one more American award on their list, the Philip K. Dick award, but the Philip K. Dick award can't be directly compared to the British awards, or even the other American awards. The Philip K. Dick award is specific to a subset of American speculative publishing: original paperback science fiction publications, which means that usually the awards go to books that aren't nominated in any of the rest of the categories. There are notable exceptions (Yarn, Nova Swing, The Devil's Advocate), but mostly the Philip K. Dick award targets an entirely different category or book than the other American science fiction awards do, so it doesn't tend to boost the numbers of awards from American authors. In fact, since the Philip K. Dick targets some books that are paperback reprints of British books, it can further inflate the number of wins or nominations of British works (such is the case with Nova Swing, for example).

So the top books on the recent lists are British, and there are a lot of British authors on top as well. This year, skipping the obvious winner of The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (sometimes the out-and-out winner is British, I have no quibble with that) there are two British books and two British authors on top of the first American in either category. Overall, there are five British books and five authors writing in the British scene on the top 10 award winning lists of the last year.

Over the last three years, you can see much of the same. Five of the site's best speculative fiction books are from British authors, but there is a shift as 6 of the top 10 "best" authors are writing for a primarily British audience as well.

Over ten years, the 10 best books have Americans in only three spaces. And there are only four Americans on the authors top 10 list.

All of this shouldn't be construed as implying that British science fiction authorship isn't enjoying a bit of a golden age at the moment, with authors like Mieville, Stross, Gaiman, McDonald and Clarke, but I do think that the way that BestSFBooks counts it's points skews toward British writers and books.

Third, I'm not sure that I would count the SFsite Reader's and Editor's choices as awards with the same weight as the Hugos, Nebulas, and Locus awards. Or even smaller awards like the Philip K. Dick. That's just a personal choice though, in the same way that I count the "big three" as the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards (I freely admit my Amerocentrism, and my list is primarily for me) despite the John W. Campbell awards' claims.

Fourth, and I agree that this is a bit quibbly with regard to a website called BestSFBooks, but they're really doing a disservice leaving off all of the rest of the categories beyond novel. There are some amazing short stories out there, and there are plenty of novellas that get limited publication as their own books. Heads by Greg Bear jumps instantly to mind.

Finally, i wish they had an "all-time" option. There are lots of great older books that could easily rank against more recent books if BestSFBooks gave them the chance to compete. Let's see some Ursula K. Le Guin toward the top.

Kudos to them for maintaining a usable, clear and professional site though. That isn't easy and they should be lauded for that.

Why isn't Connie Willis really famous?

So, one of my four favorite science fiction authors won another Hugo award yesterday. I haven't read her latest duet of novels, Black Out/All Clear, but I own them and they'll be read soon. Nearly everything that I've read by her has been brilliant though, even her book of science fiction Christmas stories (it works surprisingly well).

That Hugo Award win means that Connie Willis joins the tiny club of Robert Heinlein, Lois McMaster Bujold, Vernor Vinge and Isaac Asimov as the winner of more than two Hugo Awards for Best Novel, although Asimov and Heinlein have the slight asterisk of having won a retro Hugo (given for a year prior to the establishment of the Hugos in retrospect) among his honors. Bujold and Asmiov have four, and Vinge and Willis have three.

But that doesn't mean that she's just won three Hugo awards. She's won eleven total in all categories including short stories, novellas, and once for a novelette. All four major fiction categories. And she's won seven Nebula Awards, again in all four categories.

And there's the additional matter of the ten Locus awards, again in all four categories and the additional category of best collection (twice). Granted, she's missing the fantasy novel category at the Locus awards, but she was nominated once for it.

So, she's won all of the major science fiction awards, in all twelve of the categories that they have for them (and a Locus thirteenth).

Asimov was writing before and while the three major categories of awards here were being formed. His Foundation series, which is still brilliant, missed the start of the Nebula and Locus awards by more than ten and twenty years respectively, but did win the previously mentioned retro Hugo award for one of it's sections, and a special Hugo (ish*) award for "Best all-time series." Overall, he still won 6 normal Hugos (missed the novella category), 2 special Hugos, 2 Nebulas (for novel and novelette), and 7 Locus awards (again, no award for novellas but he did win for Nonfiction [twice] and for anthology). Were you to weight those wins the same, that's 17 major wins across his lifetime.

Bujold is next. She's won those four Hugo awards for novels but only one other Hugo category, novella for The Mountains of Mourning. Bujold also has 3 Nebula awards, two novels and a novella (again for The Mountains of Mourning). She also has three Locus award wins, two for science fiction novels and once for fantasy novel (the locus splits those two up). That's eleven total.

Heinlein, similar to Asimov, was writing before the major awards were completely established, and I actually suspect this hurt him more than Asimov. He's got those four Hugo awards for best novel, one retro Hugo, and one retro Novella Hugo for a total of six. Unfortunately, he doesn't have any Nebula awards, but again, they started late and he finished rather early, although he was still nominated for best novel four different times. He does have two Locus awards, once for Job: A Comedy of Justice (fantasy novel) and a nonfiction book. So that's only eight total.

Vernor Vinge, whose work I also love, has five Hugo award in total. Three of his Hugo awards are for best novel, and two are for novella. He also has no Nebula awards (that just amazes me, actually) even though unlike Heinlein he began writing after the start of these awards. He also has two Locus awards, one for novel and one for novella (The Cookie Monster, great story, I highly recommend it). That's only six major wins across the three major science fiction awards that I'm tracking here.

Before I get back around to Connie Willis, I'm going to throw two other names out there that are required on this list: the first is Ursula K. Le Guin. She's won an astonishing number of awards. Like Connie Willis, she's won all four of the major Hugo categories (and she was the first woman to win for best novel), plus a second Hugo award for best novel for a total of five Hugos. She's won six Nebula awards (four novels, one short story, one novelette). And get this, she's won twenty-one Locus Awards in basically everything that you can possibly win, all five of the major categories (sf novel and fantasy novel, novella, novelette, short story) plus nonfiction, plus collections (five of them). And, just to make this complicated, she's also won two World Fantasy Awards, one for best novella and novel, too. That's 32 major wins without the two WFAs, and 34 with.

The second is Neil Gaiman. He's won four Hugos, with two novels and a novella and short story. He's won two Nebulas, one each for novel and novella. And he's won 15 Locus awards, including being the only person on the list to win for the Locus best YA novel category (he's won it twice) although like Asimov he doesn't have one in the Novella category. Gaiman, like Le Guin, has also won a World Fantasy Award, although in his case it's for short story. That's 22 major wins with the WFA, and 21 without.

So let's get around back to Connie Willis. As I pointed out, she's won those eleven Hugos, seven Nebulas, and ten Locus awards. That's 28 major award wins. 28 major award wins including just about every major science fiction category and major novel wins. Doomsday Book won all three major science fiction awards for best novel, incidentally.

So, as far as this little survey goes, Connie Willis is the second most award winning science fiction/fantasy author in English, trailing Ursula K. Le Guin by four or six wins depending on how you count. And she leads Neil Gaiman, Vernor Vinge, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein by sizable margins. And, if this wasn't already clear she's the only person, ever, to dual win both the Hugo and the Nebula award in every single category.

And tonight, the day after she won her 28th major award, we had some friends over for dinner. We talked science fiction for a bit and I recommended Connie Willis. And despite being a consistent reader of science fiction, he'd never heard of her before. We would have loaned him a copy of To Say Nothing of the Dog on the spot, but apparently we've already lent it out. That still staggers me. She's one of the most award winning science fiction writers of all time, and she's still completely unknown, even among many devoted science fiction fans.

Why isn't Connie Willis really famous? I just don't understand.


* Just to be clear, the best all-time series was a special Worldcon award, but since the Hugo rules apparently allows the Worldcon to tack on awards, I'm not exactly sure why it isn't explicitly a Hugo award.

Understanding Christians and Everyone Else Too

I used to deal with lots and lots of Christians online. I was a moderator for one of the largest atheist message boards and dealt with the largest group of Christians there. I'm also a member of the largest "Christian" message board. Depending on your definition of Christian, obviously.

Renaissance Guy: We do not believe that Christians are good and other people are bad.

Great. That's definitely one of the biggest issues that I've had with Christians over the years. People like Angel4Truth, Emmy, angellica, or ShieldOfFaith absolutely believe that Christians are the only good people. It's really hard to evangelize when you've already set yourself up as perfect and morally superior.

I guess the question that I have for you is: When do you believe that you are saved? (Slactivist's answer is "About two thousand years ago" but his answer avoids a serious theological question that is absolutely necessary to answer before discussion about Christianity between believers and non-believers becomes possible.) When you become a Christian, are you wiped of any desire to sin? Do you stop sinning? Because if you believe this to be the case, the conversation ends. It's obvious that Christians do sin, that they are sinners. They are not more perfect than we are.

There is also the problem of pride, however. It isn't just the attitude that "we know what sin is" but "we know what's best for you." The former is not necessarily harmful during communication but the later is. When you are required, as you have previously said that you are, to tell people they are sinners you are absolutely a member of the later.

As an atheist, I know what's best for you. It's to give up Christianity and learn the Truth. Capital T, Truth.

Notice how your eyes glazed over during the first sentence in the previous paragraph? How you suddenly find me pushy and stupid as soon as I implied that I know what's best for you? And using Truth with a captial T? Ludicrous. How do I know? I'm just an atheist . . .

Right. That's also exactly how I feel when you tell me your Good News with the knowledge that I need to hear it.

The problem is that I have heard it. I know the Bible. Not as well as you, but better than a lot of Christians and I'm definitely familiar with the basic theological arguments and the story contained within the Gospel.

Let's bring this back on track. I said there was a problem of pride and it's the same problem of pride that Chick tracts have: If you assume that your audience isn't familiar with Christianity, you've already lost most of them by failing to understand where they're starting from.

You might be shocked at how many Christians came to the atheist message board where I moderated and thought that posting the story of Jesus would convert people. Or that letting us know that we're going to Hell would suddenly make us realize that we need Jesus in our lives.

I've previously mentioned that there are people that have seriously made me reconsider my atheism. Not a single one of them ever got me to that point by starting by telling me that I am going to hell. Or that Jesus died for my sins.

Rather, they listened. They realized that I am human and have human wants and needs. They listened to me and when I talked about my life they empathized. When I was lonely they were there, when I was sad they were sad, when I was happy they were happy.

They talked about their beliefs too. Never requiring them, never asserting primacy, but offering them up the same way that I would try to talk about atheism: this is what I believe and this is why I believe it.

I think that my point in all of this is that to understand non-Christians, Christians have to understand that to a certain extent we do understand them already. The difference isn't that great. The gulf between us is not vast. In most cases it's only a thin holy (or unholy) line.

I want to go off on a bit of a tangent now.

This is related to the treatment of gay people by "Bible-believing, orthodox Christians."

If you really do accept that all Christians are sinners, then accept that all gay people are sinners as well. They're just not lying about that particular sin. If Christians aren't led away from temptation when they become Christians (and they aren't) then it won't change homosexuals to become Christians. They'll just be gay Christians now, and they'll still have the same problems, inclinations, and sex drives as they did before. Only now they'll be saved in Christ.

It's fairly obvious to me that if becoming a Christian doesn't grant super powers, then one of the sins that homosexuals are going to have to have forgiven is the fact that they're going to be homosexuals. They can try to be the best people in the world and some gay Christians are going to choose a life of celibacy (I'll point them out, if you email me) but there are always going to be gay people for whom celibacy is not an option, just as there are Christians who can't live with celibacy.

So, they've got two options: monogamy or promiscuity. It makes me wonder when these Bible-believing, orthodox Christians are so weirded out by the fact that some people sin in this way that they will actively oppose these people from trying to form stable unions. If you're going to try to prevent sinners from getting married, don't you think that there are a lot of heterosexuals that they should be worried about first?

But they're not. They blithely vote against gay marriage, pat themselves on the back, and then go on to say that they can't support sin when in fact they just did. Support of gay marriage? It's a sin. But opposition to gay marriage also supports sin: more sins.

And to those that want to claim that marriage is a Christian institution that shouldn't be changed? The Jews are over there. Go talk to them about that.

Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

"Love the sinner, hate the sin" is something that I used to hear all the time when I spent a lot of time on sites like CF or IIDB. After all, there needs to be some way to dismiss Jesus' exhortation to "Love Thy Neighbor."

After all, "judging" people is bad in most Christian traditions. It usurps God's place. However, if what you judge is the intangible sin, then that's just fine. Completely acceptable. Informative even!

Recently, through a link over on Jesurgislac's blog, I came across a link to Renaissance Guy's post To judge or Not to Judge, where Renaissance Guy sort of backhands his way into that argument, arguing that Jesus shows what a great guy he is by telling the prostitute how she's a sinner and damned to hell. Or something to that effect. He thinks that being gay is a sin and he thinks that Christians should say so and speak out about it.

The point is, it got me thinking about that specific idea again; that you can love the sinner while hating the sin.

Then I just found a clip of a 20/20 investigation about same sex couples involved in public displays of affection. The police are called on a male gay couple making out in public in AL, but you don't have to watch the whole thing. The part that I'm concerned about starts at 8:38 and lasts about 10 seconds.

See it here:



20/20 official site

The voice over and the next line that I'm referring to are: "But while some like what they're witnessing, a silent minority can't hide their disapproval. Their faces say it all. 'To me, it's not that appropriate.'"

So, what is a gay person going to feel when they see that? I guarantee that it isn't going to be loved. As a sinner or anything else. All they'll feel is judged, even if the person says nothing at all.

Love the sinner, hate the sin may sound good to various denominations of Christians, but it's not the way that reality works. If you try it, hate of the sin is going to spill over onto the person no matter what.

The Bar of Entry

So, the holy grail of the internet seems to be online communities. If you've got it, you get page views by the thousands and people will follow your every move and buy products that you recommend and basically make your life a joy worth living. Or at least that's how it seems to me from the outside.

I think that a person that doesn't live their life on the internet can maybe belong to five online communities without running into trouble. Big ones, that is, and they can replace a big one with two or three small ones without issue.

Take me. I used to be a IIDBer, a CFer, a nominal Farker, a Myspacer and I read a few webcomics (Ooh, I forgot those. They don't require much time. You can probably read ten to twenty comics regularly before it sucks up as much time as a big online community).

Now I'm a TFarker, a Facebooker, a slactivist witness, a Qweerty/TowleRoader, and I read a few webcomics and I'm on the periphery of being a TalkRatter.

Your affiliations change from time to time. IIDB rejected me. MySpace suddenly wasn't cool any more. And some of the webcomics that I used to read don't update any more.

When that happens, you're lost to the winds for a while. You can't spend more time at the places that you frequent than you already do without suffering from boredom or overload, so you drift about and check profiles and eventually find another community to join.

But even though I've got logins at dozens of places, I don't really pay much regular attention to them.

So what prevents me from becomming invested in a new online community? The Bar of Entry. Dun-dun-dun.

This imaginary object, the Bar of Entry, is set higher or lower by the conditions of the community and makes it either easier or harder for people to join and form a community at. This is probably written in some guide to forming stable online communities so that business people can make money off of them, but let me see if I can recreate it from deduction.

1. Design
   
2. Broad Appeal
3. Stimulation
4. Ease of Application
   
5. Consistency
6. Prior Community
7. Popularity
   

First, Design. Some sites are badly designed and some sites are well designed. And this isn't necesarily just measure of how visually pretty a site is but also how easy it is to use.

One of my favorites pieces of widely used community software is vBulletin. vBulletin is a great piece of software. It usually looks good, it's nearly infinitely customizable and it presents a profession and polished user interface that is easy enough to understand and take from vBulletin site to vBulletin site.

On the other hand, the typepad comment system that slacktivist currently uses blows chunks. It only shows 50 comments per page, and the typical slactivist post gets around 300 or so. Navigating between pages is a pain in the ass. It won't tell you how many pages the thread has, and it only provides forward and back buttons. If you read 100 comments the first day and then come back to read the next few hundred posts the next day, you still have to scroll through the first and second pages to get to the links to the next page. Nor does it allow you to put all of the comments on one page so you can scroll up and down to see which comments link with comments that are more than 50 responses removed.

Facebook also has some issues with the way that it operates, especially around photos. This entire post exists because BoingBoing just ate one of my posts, and I started to wonder if it was worth the trouble to try to get myself invested there.

Despite my love of vBulletin, only the community that I'm peripherally involved with uses it. In fact, I would hazzard to say that slactivist is one of my favorite communities, despite all the usage issues. So even though in this catecory it has a high bar, that didn't prevent me from joining the community.

Broad Appeal is the next notch on the Bar of Entry that I came up with. The more broadly the site appeals to people, the more people will want to join it. The number of Christians is greater than the number of atheists, so CF > IIDB. This will always be the case.

However, there are limits to Broad Appeal. Yeah, if you run a site that talks about fast cars you have broader appeal than a site that caters to Mustang owners only. (# of Fast Car owners > # of Mustang owners). Unfortunately, you'll also have a really difficult time creating an interesting community for the owners of all fast cars because people want to engage with what you're talking about.

Thus, the counter to Broad Appeal is Stimulation, by which I mean having interesting things for people to come look at and interact with.

If you try to create a site for all fast cars, it's pretty much impossible for one (or two or three) people to really do the sort of research and writing that will people coming back and getting engaged.

Stimulation also covers a few other things: How often are things posted, how well are they written, and what can I do to respond/interact with the community?

Whatever, John Scalzi's blog is usually posted multiple times a day, creating a high level of interest because every day I can visit and find something new.

Slactivist only posts one to three times a week but the quality of the articles is incredibly high.

Fark scores incredibly well in this category though, the highest of all my communities. It gets posted multiple times an hour (once a minute or so for TFark), the article headlines are diverse and funny, and not only does it provide a way for me to submit my own headlines, it has huge comment threads (and TFark has even more). Digg is another community that just hits this out of the park.

MySpace and Facebook also have lots of stuff for a person to do. MySpace has infinitely customizable pages and Facebook has the wall and games.

Ease of Application is how easy things are to join. I just need to leave a user name and email address on Making Light and Slactivist, and they don't even bother to verify them. Registration is the next step up (which will keep a surprising number of people from joining, See Bugmenot.com). After user name registration, the next step is actually forcing people to gain human verified approval (IIDB required all new users to go though Admin approval) and the final step is requiring money. TFark costs five dollars a month. Something Awful requires a one time $9.95 fee.

Consistency is easy enough to understand. Qweerty has a semi-daily post with hot guys in it. I've already mentioned that slactivist is consistently high quality. On the other hand, some days Fark will be bouncing off the walls and some days nothing that gets posted catches my eye.

This blog happens to be terrible at consistency. I mean, you never know when one of these things is going to go up. There was a six month period where nothing got posted (visibly, anyway). The only three posts that people care about are: The Hot Gymansts post, the 10 Intellectual Sci-fi Movies post, and the review of Little Brother so I'm not even consistently boring.

Prior Community is a little more difficult for an aspiring blogger to control. Some places are generally genial and nice to new people. Making Light is good at this. Slacktivist is okay at it, although people there tend to use big words like "consistency" and "dominionist" and other four syllablers.

Fark treats newcommers like tumors on toliet scum. TFarkers look down on Farkers, and join date and user number is sometimes used like a badge. Most swearing isn't censored and implied and outright insults go unedited.

Part of prior community is definitely the people that run it. The way that Fark is run shapes that community. The way that slactivist writes shapes the community there.

Finally, the last on the list is Popularity. When someone is searching for a new community to join they can only join the communities that they can find. An intensive search for their perfect community might reveal a small place with six other members but they're more likely to find a place where those six members exist among a thousand other members. If everyone lists "BoingBoing" on their list of blogs that they follow a new person is more likely to wonder what all of the fuss is about.

The weird thing about Popularity is that it's inextricably linked with the popularity of the person running it. Rosie O'Donnell blogs and probably gets hundreds of thousands of people that read her blogs even though they don't appear to be particularly engrossing or well written. But she's popular, so her blog is too.

Sometimes this creates a recursive loop. Wil Wheaton was just an actor. Then he started blogging. Now he's more famous as a blogger and writer than I think he was as just an actor. Scalzi was a blogger first, and blogging led to writing, and now people that read his books can become invested in his blogs. Now they've got slowly expanding audiences that will someday take over the earth.

So now that I've explained all of the parts of the Bar of Entry, there's still the bar itself.

If you start a blog or website looking to build a community of users, all of the notches get added together. Even if you have the best designed blog on the planet, if it's about Ukrainian Easter Eggs, gets posted twice a year, requires a registration, and the only other member is your foul mouthed Aunt Ester you probably don't have a winning combination.

On the other hand, if you're a internationally famous actor, blog every day in perfect English about your life and the behind the scenes exploits of your costars (immensely broad appeal), and have a site that is designed that makes your users want to pull their own teeth out in frustration, you'll still have thousands flock to you.

It's all a balancing act. Control the variables that you can and see where it takes you.

One final caveat that I want to repeat about all of this though: not all users are looking for a new home. No matter how interesting, easy to use, and how broad your appeal is, not everyone is going to be interested. Perez Hilton doesn't have a 100% of the market share, although I'm sure he's working on it.

He does have millions of people that check his blog daily though and I'll bet that he's mostly happy with the community of people that check him everyday.

If I had millions of people reading my blog, I think I would be.

But Mr. Card

OSC: "What is odd is that in every case they called me intolerant. They misunderstood the meaning of 'tolerance.'"

You are intolerant. You say that Mormons have a long tradition of rejecting the social customs of the surrounding culture. Great! Wonderful! Congratulations!

But now you and your church have intervened to change the law to match your beliefs even when the particular cultural issue had nothing to do with you. So much for being able to go your own way, no?

You've imposed your beliefs on your neighbors.

That is what the problem is.

We don't care what you teach. We really don't. You can teach your children that I'm a demon that drinks blood and tortures small animals and breaths black clouds of sin as long as you give us the right to get married.

Once you've interfered with the way that we interact with other gay people in the ways that we choose, that is when we start to get upset.

A Refutation of Ender In Exile in OSC's Style

First off, I don't think that I'm remotely good enough to convincingly emulate Orson Scott Card's style but this is my attempt to do so anyway. I've noticed that there are often scenes in which someone intelligent explains something to someone not so intelligent, and this is my attempt to riff off of that.

Second, I loved Orson Scott Card books . . . once upon a time. But I picked up Empire, flipped through it, and didn't like it. Didn't like it enough to tell myself that I wouldn't buy them new anymore. It's tough enough to make ends meet without second hand book stores. So when someone offered me a copy of Ender in Exile, I was quite ecstatic.

Then I read it. And most of it was good. But there were certain sections that were . . . very bad. Including some that were thinly veiled attacks on gay marriage (and adultery [by a women], and premarital sex [by a woman]). Of course, with the defeat of prop 8 by Mormons (Orson Scott Card is a Mormon) I decided to focus on the gay marriage attacks in Ender In Exile.

Considering that his books are set in the future, and so many other cultures are given a more balanced treatment in the books than OSC gives gay people in real life, I've been thinking recently, "What would Ender say to a gay couple?" Of course, Ender is a copyrighted character, so here's my attempt at a OSC scene from my perspective instead of OSC's.


Andrea went searching for Dad Derrick because he was much more likely to give her a real answer to her questions than Dad Christopher. Dad Chris sometimes avoided the answer to questions he didn't want to answer but Derrick always spoke to Andrea as an adult and had ever since she could remember. If she'd scraped her knee she called for Chris and if she wanted a serious question answered she went to Derrick.

Derrick was sitting at his desk his office, which overlooked their courtyard garden and didn't look up when I came to the door.

"Dad?" I asked after a moment and he looked up momentarily.

"Hey sport," he said before turning back to ruffling through his papers. "What is it?"

"Could I ask you a question?"

"Always. Shoot."

"Why are you and Christopher in a relationship if it isn't the optimal social arrangement?"

Dad Derrick looked up sharply and looked at Andrea, the papers forgotten. He looked genuinely shocked and suddenly Andrea regretted asking. She hadn't realized that this was going to be a big deal, but she could tell already that this was going to be a Big Issue.

"Whoa now, Andrea. Where did you hear that?"

She hesitantly pulled out the book that she'd taken from one of the office bookshelves and read over the previous week.

"Ender In Exile," he read from the title and then leaned slowly back in his chair. Andrea knew the expression on his face; he was trying to remember everything from the book and keep it from mixing up with the rest of the books that he'd read.

It was one of the expressions that defined Derrick to her because she never saw it on Erik or on people on television. She thought it was because Derrick had so many books. Not just book files, but actual bound paper books, and they covered the walls of his office and filled boxes that he kept up in the attic. He'd read so many books that Andrea sometimes thought that he must have lived for a thousand years, even though he was only in his early forties and was younger than most of her friends parents.

"Where did you come across this?" he asked Andrea. He'd lost the tone of shock and now seemed more amused than anything so Andrea relaxed a bit and realized that he'd probably just been really surprised by her question.

"You said that anything not on the top shelf was okay for me to borrow, as long as I put it back. You even recommended the first one and I just kept reading them all until I got to this one."

"I guess that was more of a rhetorical question," Derrick smilingly said. "Pull up a chair, sport. Let's talk about this."

There was an easy chair in the corner that tended to attract books like garbage attracted flies but Derrick pushed them off and offered the seat to Andrea, who climbed up and sat on her feet. Dad Chris would have been annoyed, but sometimes Andrea had seen Derrick sitting the same way and he didn't say anything about it and she saw a flicker of a smile. Maybe Chris said the same thing to Derrick sometimes.

"Tell me what the book says," Derrick suggested.

"There's a part that talks about relationships and it says . . ." Andrea twisted up her head and thought about it for a moment, " . . . monogamy is what works best for any society. That that's why half of us are men and half are women, so that it comes out even. So why are you and Chris in an relationship when it would be better for the society if you were with women instead?"

"There are actually lots of answers to that question," Derrick began. "The one that I have to tell you about because you don't have the experience to figure it out for yourself yet is that you can't choose whom you fall in love with."

"I picked out Charger when we went to the pound and I love him." Charger was her little white puppy, still only a few months old.

"But if you hadn't liked him or if he hadn't liked you we could have returned him or found him another home. You chose to bring him home but you didn't necessarily choose to love him, did you?"

That was a line of thinking that she hadn't expected. He'd replied so quickly that at first she didn't know what to say.

"I guess."

"And it's not optimal for Charger to live with us. He'd probably get more exercise with a more outdoorsy family, and I know that Chris sometimes feeds him table scraps so his diet isn't great. He also costs a lot, not just in food but time and maintaining the yard. There are other places, other families, that would run him every morning and feed him the best dog foods and maybe train him so that he could go win medals at dog shows. So should we give Charger up to another family just because it would be optimal?"

"No!" Andrea was severely dismayed. "I don't want to give him away!"

"And I don't want to break up my relationship with Chris. Hopefully, he doesn't want to break up with me, either," he said in a joking tone but Andrea saw that he had a serious look in his eyes. "That's life. It's not optimal."

"In the book though, there's a section where two people want to have a baby but they don't because the man says that it isn't right, that they have to respect monogamy. If what you want matters more than what's optimal, then why did he have to do that?"

Derrick gestured for the book and Andrea passed it over to him. "Well, first off, even though I think that the man who wrote these books was brilliant, I disagree with him on several things. The situation that you just described is one of them. Allowing those people do what they wanted, with certain limits, would have been a better solution than the one that he proposed in the book. The reason that he wrote it that way isn't hard to figure out, especially for someone as smart as you are. Do you remember back when we were talking about what I do for a living and I told you that writers put a lot of themselves into the books that they write?"

Andrea nodded.

"This author is doing that when he wrote that. Can you guess what he meant?"

Andrea thought about it for a moment. "Maybe he wanted it to be like that?"

"Correct. I've read a few of his other writings and you're correct, he did want everyone to live in relationships of one man and one woman. Back in those days they had questions about whether two men or two women should be able to get married to each other and the author wrote letters trying to stop it."

"Why would he want to do that?"

"There are still people out on different planets that are trying to do that, although not many here on Prospero. Do you know what reason they usually give?"

"Religion . . . Christianity, right?"

"Right again, sport. This author is a Mormon, which is . . .," Derrick paused considering, "well, sort of like Christianity. For now we might as well consider it to be Christianity."

Andrea shook her head, "I don't understand that at all. If they're Christians, why would they care what non-Christians do?"

"Religion is a complicated and very difficult thing to discuss. People have been debating religion for thousands and thousands of years. Sometimes people get it in their heads that they're right and that everyone else needs to go along with them. So those people go out and try to covert everyone to live in a particular way and they usually hurt a lot of people doing it."

"What if someone decides that they're right and goes out and tries to force the people converting other people that they're right?"

"That's what causes wars, sport."

"Why do they think that they're right if it always leads to bad things happening?"

"This is why religion is such a tricky thing. People are afraid of things like death, or crime, or people that are different and one of the ways that they cope with all of that fear is by creating religion."

Andrea thought about that for a moment. "Like if someone's afraid of death they'll invent heaven so that even if they die they'll be able to think they're living forever?"

Derrick laughed. "You're too smart for your own good, sport."

An unpleasant thought had occurred to Andrea though. "What if we're not right? What if the Christians are?"

Derrick shrugged, his face now carefully impassive. "That's a good questions, and it's the hardest one in the bunch to answer. Unfortunately there isn't any evidence for all of their claims than there is for our—I should say my—lack of claims. Some day you'll probably have to weigh all of the things that people claim and make a decision about what you are going to believe. But there's a big difference between us and the Christians that told other people that two men getting married was, uh, not the "optimal social arrangement" and I think it's what defines us."

"We don't try to force our views on other people."

"Got it one. So even if we're wrong we aren't forcing other people to be wrong too. These days most people agree with that, and we let people live and let live as long as they respect everyone else’s choices to do the same thing." Dad Derrick paused one more time. He was always so careful about speaking and writing things. "I just want to make one thing clear to you. Do you remember Carol and Steven? They stayed with us for a few days a few years back?"

Andrea pinched her face together, but try as she might she couldn't recall them. Chris, and Derrick to a lesser extent, had friends from all over that would sometimes come and stay in their guest house for a few days.

"Okay, what about your friend Dustin? You know his parents?"

Dustin's birthday party had only been two weeks ago and he'd had a huge party in the desert biome on the southern continent with dino rides. She couldn't have forgotten his tall and pale parents as quickly as that. She nodded.

"Dustin's family are all Christians. So are a lot of people on Prospero. After the Neopagans and the Buddhists, they're next largest religious group on the planet."

Andrea's eyes widened, but Derrick wasn't done yet.

"What I'm trying to say is that not all Christians are the sort of people that try to impose their beliefs on other people. Most of them are really nice people, and a lot of Christians are people that will fight for the rights of people everywhere to keep living their lives. Just because a few of them are wrong, that doesn't mean that all of them are. Do you understand?" he asked seriously.

Andrea nodded.

"Okay. Well. Do you have any more questions about the book?"

Andrea considered that. "No. Not right now."

"Alright, but if you have any other questions, you can always come and ask me."

She smiled, "I know dad," and went over to give him a hug.

10 Best Flamewar Subjects

As a long time member of Fark, I was recently considering the queue and thinking to myself "There hasn't been a good existence of God flamewar for a while." This got me to thinking, what are my favorite flamewar topics and why? Just for fun, I decided to compile a list of them, and that list grew into this list of the ten best flamewar subjects.

As is the case with most people's "10 best" lists, "best" is probably better defined as "my favorite," but since no one else bothers with that distinction, why should I? Further, I have a preference on all of these issues except for one, and I can't promise to be neutral at all times.

Also, thanks so much to xkcd's Randall Monroe for the totally appropriate comic to use.

Update: Duh. I knew I'd forgotten something. I've added it, reduced Apple vs. PC to runner up, and reorganized an issue that I think was misplaced in the order.

10. Star Trek vs. Star Wars.

A contentious battle rages between fans of Star Trek and Star Wars as to which universe could beat up the other universe. As a geek it should be obvious that they aren't easily comparable, but that doesn't stop them. Oddly, since the fan base overlaps to a wide degree, you'd think that most fans would be able to find some common ground and sit around and watch the shows that they love on an alternating basis.

Hardly. Just like sports fans, geeks have a massive set of numbers, statistics, off hand comments and other trivia with which they can wage month long vicious battles that set friend against friend. Their contests are merciless.

Unlike some of the later examples of flamewar subjects, Star Wars vs. Star Trek flamewars tend only to happen when there are deliberately provoked. Many Star Wars of Star Trek threads continue without issue and only deteriorate when deliberate comparisons are drawn with the opposing franchise.

Considering the viciousness, it's worth pointing out that the two intellectual properties were developed with wildly different intentions and themes. Star Wars is more closely related to an epic fantasy than the optimist futurism of Star Trek. Star Trek endeavors for a realistic future feel and offering commentary on real social situations and technology while Star Wars is meant to be entertaining and flashy and impressive.

That means that most Star Wars ships will win in a fight. As long as you ignore the Borg.

9. Circumcision.

If you've never been involved in a circumcision flamewar, consider yourself lucky. They are surprisingly heated ordeals in which cut men and "nice, all-American" girls argue for circumcision ("I just like the way that it looks" and "they're normal") against uncut men and "sluts" who argue against it ("It feels better" and "It's more fun"). It doesn't help matters that both sides also have well-intentioned authoritative supporters: nurses are often against the procedure and AIDS researchers are for it.

Many nurses apparently often argue that not only is it cruel and painful to the child but that it's a risky cosmetic procedure done without the informed consent of the patient. On the other hand studies in Africa have indicated that there is a reduction in the chance of HIV transmission for men that are having unprotected sex if they are circumcised.

There are second level arguments on both sides. Proponents will argue that it's a fairly safe and approved cosmetic procedure that normalizes the appearance of the penis. Those against it point out that condoms are many times more effective at preventing HIV transmission than circumcision.

Usually when circumcision threads show up they seem harmless at first. After all, compared to abortion most people wouldn't consider circumcision a big deal. However due to it's popularity in America, and the fact that men feel attached to what happens to their penises, a lot of people have developed strong feelings for or against the procedure. A few words about one person's uncut penis as opposed to what another person did to their kids and those strong feelings can erupt in a heated manner.

8. The War in Iraq (and Terrorism).

Although they have produced a lot of rhetoric and name calling, the war flamewars are surprisingly tame when it comes to a fundamental level. After all, most people seem to agree on the basics: winning, supporting the troops, and defeating the terrorists are good things while losing and getting attacked on American soil are bad. If you agree on so much, there's really only the minutia to fight over before the argument moves on to something else.

Basically, what these flamewars tend to do is drastically distort people's actual positions to produce controversy, or devolve into personal competency arguments involving politicians (which results in a Dem vs. Rep flamewar, see #2). This means that while the words thrown back and forth are heated, they don't seem to score as many hits as more vitriolic flamewars.

While the best war flamewars will be partisan, you can also get minor flamewars wherever someone suggests a specific strategy.

The major exceptions to the war flamewar as outlined above are those that erupt between those people that want to examine why the terrorists hate us, and those that think that ascribing human reasoning to terrorists is somehow material help to those terrorists. I've never understood why a minority of people believe that talking about the history of the Mideast is somehow problematic. These people can make war flamewars especially vitroilic but have been mostly shouted down recently, lowering the subject of the war one or two notches down this list.

7. Gay Marriage.

The general agreement among the largest number of people is that the government shouldn't be involved in marriage, just in granting civil unions. Since civil unions aren't "marriages" then religious people don't care if the government gives them to homosexuals and homosexuals and their allies don't feel like they're getting the short end of the stick.

The problem is that the government is deeply involved in "marriage." It exists in the tax code, in state constitutions, in inheritance law and all other sorts of crazy legal facets. It's really hard to change. Additionally, there's a minority on both sides that really want the word "marriage" to continue to be administered by the government because they think that the changes will suddenly render their relationships loveless. Or something.

Thus, the gay marriage flamewar is born. Even though there seems to be a fairly reasonable middle ground, the people on the fringe keep everyone else from getting close to some sort of agreement on the issue.

Often there's a religious undertone to gay marriage flamewars, which provides a little extra fuel for the fire, and allows for all sorts of "Leviticus 18:22" one liners to commonly appear. Sometimes someone will claim that if gay marriage is legalized their personal church will be forced to perform the services (although this idea is patently ridiculous).

Interestingly, although gay marriage can result in some very large flamewars, they typically only erupt around major announcements, like a judges ruling or a major statewide vote. There's a certain "gay marriage" critical mass required before the sparks really start to fly but once it's reached things heat up quickly.

6. Gun Control vs. Gun Ownership

I don't think there's another issue on this list, with the possible exception of the first place finisher, in which the opposing sides spend so much time ranting about things that their opponents are not saying. Each side constructs elaborate straw men that have nothing to do with their actual position on the issues that matter, and then foam at the mouth about them.

It doesn't help that the Second Amendment is out of date. Militias? Nobody today is in a militia, so what does that amendment even mean? But most gun control advocates are not advocating taking people's guns away from them (notice the key word "most") and most gun owners are in fact law abiding citizens that arm themselves for personal, family, and social protection.

Thus, you have the people that are pro-gun control and the people that are gun owners.

Never the twain shall meet in polite discourse.

You'd think that since this amendment was part of the original bill of rights, it would have become a quiet academic concern. Instead, a mention of gun control or a particularly violent killing (usually in Texas) can spawn a horrific flamewar about this subject.

5. Free vs. Regulated markets.

A laissez-faire system will result in untold wealth for everyone, says the free market enthusiast. Except that corruption, croynism and class stratification will occur, so economic systems have to be closely controlled, retorts the market regulator.

Although addicting, emotional, and interesting, this central battle of economics has never been resolved. There really has been no workable anarchist economic system feasible to give the Objectivists their try, and attempts at incredibly restrictive economic conditions have mostly failed.

A capitalistic mix seems to work well, but no two people seem to agree on exactly where the line should be drawn. The economic conservatives today suggest that the current economic problems are the result of over regulation of industry, and the economic liberals see it as the opposite. Since economics is more closely related to palmistry than a statistically rigorous science, no one knows who is correct.

It doesn't help that the issue is closely related to the existence of social programs. The libertarians find it unfair that they have to support those that have failed and the bleeding hearts find it unacceptable that we would allow people to starve or freeze due to market conditions.

Thus, the major divide in economics continues to provoke flamewars.

4. The Existence of God.

Considering that this question attacks the very fundamental nature of the reality in which people live, it isn't surprising to me that people feel so strongly about the subject that they're willing to lay out everything they can to either rally support or attack the other side.

Another sticky issue is that neither side can actually prove it's case, resulting in long frustration for both sides, who often end up lost in tiny bits of minutia or at a dead end when a believer says "Because I have faith" or an unbeliever says "Prove it."

Although there are specific instances in which the flamewar is based on a particular provocation (like a Richard Dawkins letter to the Times), this is a flamewar subject that doesn't necessarily have to be provoked. A casual mention of God, or an offhand comment by an atheist can sometimes create a flamewar where there was only a peripheral connection before.

Another problem with this kind of flamewar is that it only very rarely strays from certain fixed tropes or one liners. Keep a watch out for the "Problem of Evil," Ockham's Razor, various incarnations of Pascal's Wager, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

3. Abortion.

Considering that it is based on a small range of medical procedures, abortion is one of the most contentious of all internet topics. It has spawned entire real world organizations with members numbering in the millions beyond the numerous websites and message boards that some of the previous topics have to back them up.

Basically, the arguments boil down to a question of whether you support murder or slavery, and neither side is willing to accept "no answer" as acceptable.

One of the most interesting things about abortion flamewars is that the implications of each side have real world application. In a world that has banned abortion, you would be either locking women up for the protection of their unborn children or punishing them for getting rid of unborn children. In the current system, hundreds of thousands of what could considered to be lives are being lost. This is an important ethical question that is worth major consideration.

This is basically the "single issue voter" issue, and every election thousands if not millions of dollars are spent over the slightest steps back and forth. There are even linguistic breaks that are used to differentiate the sides and cast each other in a negative light.

Also, even though you'd think that both sides would want to keep the number of abortions down, that isn't always the case. Thus, the abortion question is sometimes related to the question of abstinence and abstinence plus sex ed, which barely missed the cut-off for this list.

Personally, considering the consequences of a person's stance on the position, I do understand why this is one of the big questions facing Americans today.

2. Democrats vs. Republicans.

If there's anything that the two party system has taught me, it is that populations are easily polarized. One of the clearest examples of this is in the virulent hatred of the opposing political parties here in the U.S.

People can't just disagree with each other, they have to stand up to the evil which is the opposing political party.

There are a few exceptions to the rule, a few bipartisan elected officials that do their job well and are widely liked on "both sides of the aisle." However, once on the national stage, they pretty much no longer exist. No matter what they do, they'll be torn down by the opposing side, who doesn't want the other guys to get a political advantage over them.

One of the biggest problems with these flamewars is that there can be no rational discussion. The sides talk past each other and since people personally identify with their parties they are personally hurt when any criticism surfaces.

Then there is the further problem that there are actually (at least) two axises of political thought in the United States, social and economic. Thus, half the time when you are talking to someone of one political party, they will only disagree with you on one axis and not the other. Socially liberal Republicans are tarred with the "right wing anti-choice anti-gay marriage" label and fiscally conservative Democrats are called "left wing 'tax and spend.'" As you can imagine, this can creates bad feelings on both sides, even though by supporting one party or the other you are implicitly endorsing both their economic and social policies.

Political flamewars recently have also seen the rise of the "concern" troll, someone that pretends to be affiliated with a party only to offer backhanded compliments and misinformation. Unlike a normal troll, concern trolls are harder to detect and can gather a substantial backlash on the way to a flamewar. While usually these types of trolls would be used to mock the opposing side, in the political arena they can actually rise to national and political prominence.

It also helps that many people strongly identified with parties are also incredibly divisive. George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Nancy Pelosi, Karl Rove, Ted Kennedy, and Rick Santorum are all easy ways to lead into a political flamewar. Sometimes an individual figure can kick off a Dem vs. Rep flamewar by themselves, such as the way that Sarah Palin recently has been able to do or George W. Bush managed for years by himself.

Sometimes the best Democrat vs. Republican flamewars merge with one of the previous flamewar subjects to create a super flamewar (although usually not "Star Trek vs. Star Wars"). After all, if you've got the above mentioned controversial figures to point to during a flamewar about economics, you can anger more people at once. And find a way to bring in abortion. And dis circumcision.

One of the only problems with political flamewars is that they're one of the few kinds of debates that can get over saturated and lose their focus. So much political stupidity can happen in a single day that people won't know which thread to post in. Sometimes instead of one daily political flamewar there will be a slew of smaller ones that don't get nearly as vicious and tend to peter out quickly.

1. Evolution and Creation.

Absolutely the top of the pile for utter raving insanity, the debate between evilutionists and creatards is the current major battlefield between science and religion and the only thing capable of overthrowing political parties as the best flamewar subject. Nothing seems to bother the deeply religious more than an insinuation that we might not be the result of God's plan and nothing seems to bother the scientific community more than the insinuation that their years of study and careful examination are wrong because an old book says so.

Thus, the best flamewars are born.

Considering that unlike presidential or party politics the vocal supporters of creationism are a minority in the U.S., it would be easy to assume that this flamewar doesn't get much play, but nothing seems to provoke a flamewar faster. After all, both sides believe that they have the "truth" and there doesn't seem to be a quicker way into the heated flames of online battle than that.

Interestingly, unlike the Existence of God flamewars mentioned above, the existence of actual evidence does nothing to reduce anger and force with which these arguments are put forth. In fact, I would argue that it increases it. While the question of the existence of God is something of a stalemate, the debate between creationism and evolution has become a question of "Who do you trust?"

Specifically, evolution and creation flamewars are the nexus of debate between fundamentalist Christianity and atheism, even more so than the Existence of God. While the middle of the road might argue about the existence of God, the extremists are the ones that argue creation and evolution. Added to that are the examples of Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers, biologists and atheists that characterize the evolution supporters that have become famous in their own right for their outspoken opinions on this particular topic. As a farker, there are a couple of notable creationists as well. No, I'm not talking about Michael Behe or Kent Hovind but Bevets, the oft summoned indicator of a true Fark evolution/creation flamewar.

Probably the most legendary troll on Fark, it's hard to think of another internet user that is as defined by a particular subject more than Bevets and his creationism. Possibly Scalzi and bacon, but I doubt it. Almost without a subject break in years, Bevets is the tireless apologist for creation, even going so far as to host his own website with common arguments so that he can throw up links to longer rants without needing to retype them. Granted, there are sites like TalkOrigins that refute him, but Bevets does his long and exhaustive work on his own, thus earning him recognizable card game adaptations on Fark.

These debates also led to one of my favorite eponymous law: Poe's Law, which basically states that it is nearly impossible to determine the difference between a parody and a true believer. Although born in the evolution/creation debates, I've found Poe's law useful in other arenas (particularly politics).

Creation/evolution flamewars can be started over the smallest provocation. A mention of a 40 million year old fossil will sometimes provoke one, as can articles on geology, epidemiology, genetics, Mideast history or even meteorology (see vapor canopies). Then there are the subjects that can suddenly morph into creation vs. evolution debates. For example, someone arguing about the existence of god/God might use evolution or creation of proof of one of the positions. The same with the inerrancy of the bible, or carbon dating, or even a discussion of different scientific theories. If you accidentally mention that the cute kitten in the photoshop contest evolved you might have a flamewar on your hands.

Of course this is in addition to the multiple creation museum articles, advances in evolutionary biology and school board "teach the controversy" or evolution banning threads that seem to appear on a weekly basis.

Considering the nearly one hundred and fifty years that these debates have been raging, not to mention the entire religions and governments that have weighed in, this is also a historically weighty flamewar. Mentions of Darwin (both as evidence for the science supporters and as a "Darwinist" insult from the religion supporters) and shepherds that have been dead for 2000 years (mostly as an insult to Biblical literalists) abound.

Finally, I'll end on a high note and point out that it's fairly easy to Godwin a creation/evolution flamewar. After all, the Nazis were evolutionists, no?


The runner up subjects were sex education in schools, various sports team rivalries, "activist judges" (i.e. rulings that we don't like), and breastfeeding. Yup. Breastfeeding. You'd be surprised.

The Honorable Mention is:

Apple vs. (Microsoft) PC.

Starting the list off is one of the most pointless debates that I can think of, yet one that manages to devolve into a name calling match most times it appears. Any time there's a comparison of some kind between Mac computers and PCs, there's always some people that feel the need to belittle people that don't own the same sort of computer that they use.

This is partly due to the Apple marketing campaign which goes to such great lengths to establish the duality of the products and promote their brand as the hip and cool alternative. This does overlook the fact that they are a niche family of products, and even if they could compete with the wider PC market, doing so would probably drag them down to encompass some of the same problems that PCs embody.

Additionally, then there's the Microsoft angle, in which people get to hate on Microsoft. Unfortunately, in this monopoly of hatred, there isn't another company that can take on a serious mantle of opposition to the mighty "M$" more than Apple, and so Apple receives the bulk of the attention. The real rivals to most Microsoft products are unknown to the bulk of Americans, and thus invisible during the flamewars between Apple fanboys and Microsoft drones.

Thanks to the long term "We're better than they are" campaign run by Apple, these flamewars have been surprisingly persistent.