Yes. That does say 'WOGs'.

Dear Mr Wrotniak,

I am writing to ask politely that you respect the very clear ‘No Junk Mail’ sign next to my mail box. The purpose of this sign is to decline unsolicited marketing material. This includes but is not limited to menus for takeaway restaurants, flyers for home-cleaning companies, and invitations to indulge in the consumption of the charred corpses of fellow mammals with members of a death cult which hopes a probably fictional (and if not long dead) Palestinian will return and absolve us of the need to make responsible use of resources such as paper.

I note from this hilarious conversation (should it be genuine) that you are, as am I, opposed to unsolicited communication. I would, however, not be inclined to address you in quite such strong terms. For example, I would not go so far as to say:

You’re probably a faggott too. Your self righteous,aggro, judgemental highhorse attitude is a characteristic of most faggs. Keep your hand off it,looser.

It’s spelled ‘loser’, above all else.

As this is the second time that I have had to contact your church regarding this matter, I am making this an open letter.

Kind regards,
Dave The Happy Singer

Mott The Hoople's All The Young Dudes

(I like Hyperbole and a Half)

Catholic Medical Association Bioethics FAQ

FAQs

Bioethics Questions

• Should a Physician Prescribe Viagra to Unmarried Men?

  Catholic physicians are increasingly encountering requests by patients, including their unmarried male patients, for Viagra and are unsure of how to respond. This FAQ discusses how to approach this issue on sound clinical,  ethical and practical grounds.

As Stephen Fry said, in his unmissable debate alongside Christopher Hitchens:

It’s the strange thing about this church: it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now they will say: “we with our permissive society and our rude jokes are obsessed”. No. We have a healthy attitude, we like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly. Because it’s a primary impulse, it can be dangerous and dark and difficult.

It’s a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. And that, in erotic terms, is the Catholic church in a nutshell.

Of all the hard and important bioethical questions that face our troubled species, the question of whether unmarried men are allowed erections is a pretty easy one. The answer is yes. Unless they’re priests.

Here’s Meryl Dorey, of the Australian Vaccination Network confirming this fact in her usual way. That is, by asserting the exact opposite:

Vaccines may sometimes contain aborted human foetal tissue – a fact which some people may consider a cause for concern

And here’s the reality:

Two different strains of human diploid cell cultures made from fetuses have been used extensively for vaccine production for decades. One was developed in the United States in 1961 (called WI-38) and the other in the United Kingdom in 1966 (called MRC-5).

WI-38 came from lung cells from a female fetus of 3-months gestation and MRC-5 was developed from lung cells from a 14-week-old male fetus. Both fetuses were intentionally aborted, but neither was aborted for the purpose of obtaining diploid cells.123. The fetal tissues that eventually became WI-38 and the MRC-5 cell cultures were removed from fetuses that were dead. The cellular biologists who made the cell cultures did not induce the abortions.

These two cell strains have been growing under laboratory conditions for more than 35 years. The cells are merely the biological system in which the viruses are grown. These cell strains do not and cannot form a complete organism and do not constitute a potential human being. The cells reproduce themselves, so there is no need to abort additional fetuses to sustain the culture supply. Viruses are collected from the diploid cell cultures and then processed further to produce the vaccine itself.

See the difference? What Meryl Dorey calls ‘aborted human foetal tissue’, are in fact cells grown in a lab, whose distant ancestors were harvested from two foetuses 50 years ago, foetuses which had already died for other reasons. And the cells aren’t even an ingredient of the vaccine, but more akin to part of a biological production line.

Sad Meryl Dorey

The Catholic church is, of course, infamous for its extreme and inhumane view of abortion. But even the Catholic church refuses to ally itself with the hysterical idiocy of anti-vaxxers. In a typically windy digestion of a very easy ethical question, the church is clear. It would understandably prefer to avoid any vaccines historically connected with foetal tissue. However:

Moreover, we find, in such a case, a proportional reason, in order to accept the use of these vaccines in the presence of the danger of favouring the spread of the pathological agent, due to the lack of vaccination of children.

[...]

The lawfulness of the use of these vaccines should not be misinterpreted as a declaration of the lawfulness of their production, marketing and use, but is to be understood as being a passive material cooperation and, in its mildest and remotest sense, also active, morally justified as an extrema ratio due to the necessity to provide for the good of one’s children and of the people who come in contact with the children (pregnant women).

Even if there is anyone left on the planet who still thinks the Vatican’s pronouncements overrule child welfare, there is only one clear choice here.

Vaccinate.

I don't even.

There needs to be a word for that kind of ignorance.

Can I propose ‘Perry’?

Homeopathic first aid

Homeopathic first aid: it’s great if you’re suffering from dehydration. Not much good for anything else.

Meanwhile, Stop The AVN’s Vaccination Saves Lives banner went down pretty well. There was an article in Brisbane’s Courier Mail and prominent international blog coverage of our efforts at Woodford Folk Festival.

Well done to all involved. I love you guys.

(Homeopathic First Aid photo by Skeptimite, who has posted lots of other awesome photos from the Woodford Folk Festival)

Meryl Dorey

Despite our campaigning, the spineless dolts at the Woodford Folk Festival are this afternoon hosting Meryl Dorey of the Australian Vaccination Network.

Were it not for the success of Stop The AVN, our Facebook collective of citizens, skeptics, scientists and medics, Meryl would now be giving a talk entitled ‘Autism Emergency, 1 child in 38′, in which she rambles on about her half-baked misunderstandings of a particular South Korean study. Dorey, of course, has no medical qualifications whatsoever and has demonstrated many times that she is incapable of grasping even basic high-school science and statistics. So we stopped that.

We even had a statement from the Queensland Minister for Health, Geoff Wilson, decrying Dorey’s ‘nonsense’.

Now Dorey is taking part in a ‘forum’, along with actual experts who are more or less familiar with reality.

Not good enough, Woodford. The more people think Dorey’s viewpoints are a legitimate alternative to well established science, the more caring parents will misjudge the benefits of vaccinations versus the risk. That informed choice mad Meryl so worships will become a badly informed choice.

It’s not about censorship, and it’s not about free speech. Bill Hauritz, Woodford’s cowardly lion, should be ashamed.

Vaccinations Save Lives: the plane-towed banner at Woodford

But Stop The AVN is having the last laugh. As Meryl Dorey takes the stage for her watered-down, expert-infested forum on vaccination (what does that have to do with autism, Meryl?), Stop AVN is launching a new campaign.

And as the decent folk at the Woodford Folk Festival look to the sunny Queensland skies, a banner towed by a light aircraft will broadcast our simple message: Vaccination Saves Lives. A bold, positive message, costing less than 1% of the annual revenue of Dorey’s anti-vaccination media business and paid for by grassroots Stop AVN members personally.

With extensive blogosphere coverage, a social media push, a fresh, positive brand and possible mainstream media coverage, with Vaccination Saves Lives hope to counter Woodford’s life-threatening cowardice.

If you have a blog, you can help us too! Write about the campaign, and use our blog-post banners and sidebar badges. It’s easy!

As Australia faces the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases, it is vital that we increase our vaccination rates. In particular, the rate of adult booster jabs needs to pick up. While all rational parents understand that children must be vaccinated, many of us overlook the adult vaccinations we need to prevent the spread of vaccine-preventable diseases in the community.

See your doctor. Get your boosters up to date. Stop The AVN.

Vaccinations Save Lives.

Queensland Minister for Health Geoff Wilson

UPDATE:

Meryl’s noticed.

Meryl notices

And here’s the plane:

Stop The AVN's plane at Woodford

Offhand, I let two books recommend themselves: the obligatory God is Not Great, the most politically and historically insightful of the Gnu Atheists’ works. And my favourite, the handbook for thoughtful troublemakers, Letters to a Young Contrarian. If you haven’t read it, please do!

Letters to a Young Contrarian

Hitch, of course, died within 24 hours of my suggestion. It was not unexpected, but it came as a shock nonetheless. And as I picked up my worn copy of Contrarian, I was jolted by the aptness of the spent cigarette on it’s cover: risky, brief in existence, full of pleasure, widely criticised and iconic.

As his Vanity Fair editor notes:

Christopher was the beau ideal of the public intellectual. You felt as though he was writing to you and to you alone. And as a result many readers felt they knew him.

And so it was. A friend of mine once got an e-mail from him, and I saw him squiffily sing Monty Python’s Philosopher’s Song in the Sydney Opera House. That’s the closest I ever came to shaking his hand, but I knew (as did thousands) that he was as warm and kindly as he was forthright, and as likely to disagree with you as agree. He was unpigeonholable, and I wish we were all a little more like that.

As any lettered reader will assume, I am deplorably poorly read. I think I will try to honour Hitch (in addition to the obligatory dram of ‘Mr Walker’s Amber Nectar’), by reading a little more than I have been lately.

And I will start by re-reading Letters to a Young Contrarian, and doing it better.

Ade, Hitch.

Western Sydney Freethinkers drink a Johnny Walker to Christopher Hitchens

Behold!

Update: It’s a pun, you see.

It occurs to me that this is good news on another front though: a major party is no longer pandering to the christian vote.

Australian Christian Lobby Media Release on Gay Marriage

Of course, the faithful warriors for Jesus are up in arms. The Australian Christian Lobby has put out a barely coherent media release:

Advocates of same sex marriage in the ALP made much of the fact that the party shouldn’t be on the wrong side of history, but today in defiance of their leader Julia Gillard, they have chosen to be on the wrong side of truth.

It is the wrong side of truth where gay activism has made a lie of children’s birth certificates by directing that fathers’ names be removed in favour of two lesbians’ names.

The wrong side of truth where gay activism has made a lie of biology so even a single man can “get” a child, as if there are no natural rights of the child to a mother.

Man, someone’s stretching their wings at the moment! Yesterday the Brainy Brigadier Jim Wallace taught us all about logic, and now he’s telling us all about biology. I don’t quite know how Jimbo thinks the children of gay men are conceived.

He babbles on in similar vein for ages. It has a distinct curtain-call vibe to it. When the Downfall parody video is made it will be one of the most apt.

Fred Nile’s emission

Meanwhile, Fred Nile‘s jostling for his share of outraged column inches. Here’s the thrust of his comments:

“I thought it would happen, going by the lobbying and the penetration of the Labor Party by homosexual activists and homosexual individuals,”

I’m not kidding.

Fred Nile, who has 'never seen pornography'