Or So He Said

Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal that has the true religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

And with that we begin another round--a long one, I'm afraid--of quotations that have been piling up for the past three months or so. Yikes! As usual, most--indeed, I think all, this time--are culled from the wonderful e-mail newsletter A Word a Day. You should subscribe. But then you probably wouldn't read these quotations...

Well, be that as it may, continuing for a moment on the theme of religion, here's another interesting little quotation:

Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in. -Sam Harris, author (1967- )

The above is all the more interesting to me because I have seen Harris quoted by pastors of my acquaintance, and to make wholly different points. Reminds me of a book we had floating around the room back in my high-school debate days: How to Lie with Statistics.

Here's more--no particular order, no particular subject...though it seems I do cant rather toward the ironic:

I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989)

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek. To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers. -Terry Tempest Williams, naturalist and author (1955- )

People like to imagine that because all our mechanical equipment moves so much faster, that we are thinking faster, too. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty. -Stephen King, novelist (1947- )

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. -Roger Miller, musician (1936-1992)

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen. -Louis L'Amour, novelist (1908-1988)

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way. -Rollo May, psychologist (1909-1994)

The world is a skirt I want to lift up. -Hanif Kureishi, author (1954- )

All kids are gifted; some just open their packages earlier than others. -Michael Carr

It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all. -James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic. -Barry Jones, politician, author (1932- )

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. -William Arthur Ward, college administrator, writer (1921-1994)

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. -George Baker (1877-1965)

Some people change when they see the light, others when they feel the heat. -Caroline Schoeder

Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it. -Henry Thomas Buckle, historian (1821-1862)

A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we ever do evil, that good may come of it. -William Penn, Quaker, founder of Pennsylvania (1644-1718)

Your neighbor's vision is as true for him as your own vision is true for you. -Miguel de Unamuno, writer and philosopher (1864-1936)

To find a person who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness. -Robert Brault, software developer, writer (1938- )

Silent gratitude isn't much use to anyone. -Gladys Browyn Stern, writer (1890-1973)

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them. -Alvin Toffler, futurist and author (1928- )

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person. -William Feather, author, editor and publisher (1889-1981)

Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are the engines of change, windows on the world, "Lighthouses" as the poet said "erected in the sea of time." They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind, Books are humanity in print. -Arthur Schopenhauer , philosopher (1788-1860)

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics". All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. -George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt. -Otto von Bismarck, statesman (1815-1898)

O Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name! -Jeanne-Marie Roland, revolutionary (1754-1793)

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking. -John Maynard Keynes, economist (1883-1946)

There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration. -Andrew Carnegie, industrialist (1835-1919)

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)

My two favorite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library. -Peter Golkin, museum spokesman (1966- )

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked for forgiveness. -Emo Philips, comedian (1956- )

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal. -Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author (1900-1980)

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action. -George Washington, 1st US president (1732-1799)

As long as a man stands in his own way, everything seems to be in his way. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

The only gift is a portion of thyself. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

He who would be a leader must be a bridge. -Welsh proverb

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them. -T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965)

Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it. -Shakti Gawain, teacher and author (1948- )

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full. -Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)

He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day; I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way. -Edgar Guest, poet (1881-1959)

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. -Dr. Seuss, author and illustrator (1904-1991)

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax. -Arthur Schopenhauer, philosopher (1788-1860)

As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler. -Calvin Trillin, writer (1935- )

At times it may be necessary to temporarily accept a lesser evil, but one must never label a necessary evil as good. -Margaret Mead, anthropologist (1901-1978)

Humor may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof. -Stephen Leacock, economist and humorist (1869-1944)

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law. -Louis D. Brandeis, lawyer, judge, and writer (1856-1941)

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. -Richard Feynman, physicist, Nobel laureate (1918-1988)

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not. -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they're in the game. -Paul Rodriguez

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation. -Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

This Could Be Serious

Those who know me know that one of the cornerstones of my existence is peanut butter. I can do without a lot of things in the cupboard, but peanut butter is not one of them. As Bill Cosby said, "Man does not live by bread alone. He must have peanut butter."

So you can imagine how shaken up I've been these past couple of weeks about ongoing reports of salmonella found in ConAgra peanut butter products.

First it was merely Peter Pan and some store brand--Great Value, Good Luck, whatever it might have been--neither of which is usually to be found in my pantry. But now it seems to be spreading. Ice cream products. Questions about Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (Hershey's makes its own peanut butter, so, whew). And now comes the news that a kid in North Dakota has been sickened...after most of the previous cases have been confined to the South, especially Virginia. (The ConAgra plant that seems to have been the culprit is in Georgia.)

None of this has prompted me to take the pledge peanut-butter-wise. But it does give sober men pause: As more and more food production and processing seems to be controlled by a mere handful of conglomeroids, how long before a truly disastrous occurrence?

Having grown up in the Cold War, I've always assumed that the end would come in some great conflagration between nations. Now it might come from my grocer's case.

***

Relatedly, but lighter: Yesterday was National Peanut Butter Day, so I hope you're recovered from your revelry. One of the many things I've learned about peanut butter is that is is apparently very difficult to photograph. All of the NPBD e-cards that I contemplated sending to friends and other innocent bystanders displayed the most putrid, gray-looking photos of peanut butter than I couldn't bring myself to send a single one. Likewise, most of the news photos I've seen during the recent salmonella scare have had serious color-balance issues--or so I assume: If the peanut butter actually was of the color indicated in most of the photos I've seen, I can't imagine anyone eating it--not even me!

Bumper Stickers

A far-flung correspondent sent the following list of "Bush Bumper Stickers." Many of them have been around for awhile; a few are new to me:

Bush Bumper Stickers

1. Bush: End of an Error
2. That's OK, I Wasn't Using My Civil Liberties Anyway
3. Let's Fix Democracy in this Country First
4. If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran
5. Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.
6. If You Can Read This, You're Not Our President
7. Of Course It Hurts: You're Getting Screwed by an Elephant
8. Hey, Bush Supporters: Embarrassed Yet?
9. George Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to Fight
10. Impeachment: It's Not Just for Blow Jobs Anymore
11. America: One Nation, Under Surveillance
12. They Call Him "W" So He Can Spell It
13. Whose God Do You Kill For?
14. Jail to the Chief
15. No, Seriously, Why Did We Invade Iraq?
16. Bush: God's Way of Proving Intelligent Design is Full Of Crap
17. Bad President! No Banana.
18. We Need a President Who's Fluent In At Least One Language
19. We're Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them
20. Is It Vietnam Yet?
21. Bush Doesn't Care About White People, Either
22. Where Are We Going? And Why Are We In This Handbasket?
23. You Elected Him. You Deserve Him.
24. Dubya, Your Dad Shoulda Pulled Out, Too
25. When Bush Took Office, Gas Was $1.46
26. Pray For Impeachment
27. The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century
28. What Part of "Bush Lied" Don't You Understand?
29. One Nation Under Clod
30. 2004: Embarrassed 2005: Horrified 2006: Terrified
31. Bush Never Exhaled
32. At Least Nixon Resigned

Ingenious, but...

Now this took some ingenuity:

Not long ago I received this e-mail at my workplace. It purports to be from one m_cliford107@yahoo.co.uk, to a semadco@semadco.com, with me as the BC recipient:

It is our pleasure to inform you that you have emerged as a Category "A" winner of the International Premier Lotto United Kingdom.

Congratulations

You are entitled to a prize sum of Four Million Five Hundred Thousand British Pounds; Reference number for your prize is PILS/SA/UK/69-810278, ticket number A/04-3919.

As a category A winner, you have been selected from a total number of Twenty Five Thousand names drawn from Asia, Africa, Europe, Middle East and America.
After the computer ballot of our International Promotions Program, only six winners emerged in the category and therefore both are to receive payouts of Four Million Five Hundred Thousand British Pounds from the total Twenty Seven Million British Pounds for second category winners.

This is part of the Country's Programme to fund for the Olympic Games in 2012 The £1.5bn Olympic lottery puzzle (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4719851.stm)
The Lottery must raise £1.5bn over the next seven years to pay its share of the
public money going into the Olympics.

A further £650m will be raised from council tax in London and another £250m from the London Development Agency, while similar sums will be raised from ticket sales, marketing, sponsorship and the sale of television rights.

Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our European booklet representative office in Europe as indicated in your play coupon. In view of this, your £4,500,000 Four Million and Five Hundred thousand British Pounds will be released to you by any of our payment offices in Europe.

To immediately collect your prize, please contact our Category "A" financial handlers with information below:

Mr. Richard Spencer
Premium Finance & Trust Ltd
United KingdomEmail : ricsp2006@accountant.com
Tel: +44-703-590-1074
Fax: +44-87-1239-7031

Provide prize reference number-PILS/SA/UK/69-810278 and winning ticket number-A/04-3919 for confirmation.

In your best interests, you must initiate contact within one week of receipt of this correspondence. You are also advised to send a copy of this Email, either by fax or email, to your financial handler Mr. Richard Spencer when contacting him.

You are to keep all lottery information from the public as we will not entertain cases of multiple claims processing or compromise the privacy and security for all winners.

We congratulate you once again and it is our hope that you participate in any of our international programs in the nearest future.

Thank your sincerely,

Mrs Veronica Mallory
The lottery Coordinator,
International Premier Lotto United Kingdom
Great Surry House
203 Black Friars Road,
London SE 1 8NH

Pretty cool, no? As these spam “prizes” go, this one is fairly convincing—indeed, if one follows the link in the e-mail, one is taken to an honest-to-gosh BBC article about the lottery…not about my winning the lottery, mind, but about the inauguration several years ago of the lottery, designed to help fund the 2012 Olympics.

Of course, despite the apparent cleverness of the spammers, there are--even beyond the too-good-to-be-trueness of it all--a few red flags:

• Doesn’t one ordinarily have to enter a lottery in order to win it? My local 7-11 doesn’t seem to sell UK lottery tickets.
• Why is the original e-mail addressed to some third party if I’m the supposed winner? Does it make any sense to have the “winner” addressed via the blind-copy field?
• Would the real lottery commission be using a Yahoo address for official correspondence?
• Why doesn’t the sender’s alleged address (m_cliford107@yahoo.co.uk) not match the name on the notification (Mrs Veronica Mallory)?
• Ordinarily one expects to see “Surrey” and not “Surry” in British connotations. A Google search of the address (203 Black Friars Road) brings up hits for several apparently legitimate businesses at Great Surrey (not Surry) House, 203 Blackfriars (not Black Friars) Road. However, the SE 1 8NH part seems to be correct.
• "Thank your sincerely"? What kind of a complimentary close is that? That your sincerely what?
  

And so—“E” for effort but, alas, no sale. Perfection remains something to be striven for.

1,000 Words

Tony Auth in today's Philadelphia Inquirer:

Dem Bones

Ah, the pleasure of predictability. James Cameron et al. come across with the startling (and, methinks, insupportable) claim that they have found "the bones of Jesus and his family" retrieved from what they say may be the final tomb of Jesus. An AP story, with photos, is (among many other places) here. The most salient line in the story is this: "The claims have raised the ire of Christian leaders in the Holy Land."

Do tell. And only in the Holy Land, you think?

Well, The Lost Tomb of Jesus--Cameron's account of the discovery, which is to air next month on, naturally, The Discovery Channel--sounds like interesting speculation...but how could it every be anything but speculation? Much is made of "DNA evidence" from the ossuaries, but I fail to see how that could prove much beyond whether the various bones belonged to people who were related to one another. It would certainly be impossible to show that they belonged to the Jesus and family, for the very simple reason that we have nothing to compare the DNA to.


So it's all a bit of a tempest in a teacup, and yet here comes the Christian Ire. And why? Because this speculation doesn't jibe with the account given in the New Testament, that's why, and as we have previously noted, there is something in the psyche of "good" "Christians" that cannot permit them to allow anyone to have a different point of view, or speculate on a different idea, or just not believe. It is seemingly impossible for these folks to simply shrug it off, dismiss the other guy as misguided, or nuts, and move on.

No...no matter what, they always rise to the bait, bless 'em.

Interesting, too, how they adopt the position that the biblical account is "fact," and therefore any other idea is fiction (or, if you like, heresy). Here's a telling tidbit from John Gibson's "My Word" column at Fox News--or, more accurately, Fox "News":

..."There aren't supposed to be any bones of Jesus around. After all, he ascended to heaven, didn't he? Well, yes that is the history billions of Christians have believed true, and, in fact, the documentary doesn't much debunk that history because no bones were found in these boxes, called ossuaries."...

Did you spot it? The New Testament account of the Ascension is portrayed by the fair-and-balanced crowd as "history." Obviously a new definition of history that is not to be found in a standard dictionary.

But then for literal-factual interpreters of the Bible, it and it alone is "true"--true science, true history, true everything down to the Nth degree--and so any "evidence" of anything else must, by definition, be false.

No room for faith in there, from what I can see.

And that, for me, is the ultimate test. So James Cameron and Co. think they may have found the bones of Jesus (contradicting the Ascension story...not "history"), and not in the grotto beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where tradition (not "history") says Jesus was laid after the Crucifixion. So what? He can't prove it...and even if he could--so what? Is our faith such a fragile and shaky thing that anything that suggests a hint of an innuendo of a deviation from the story (not "history") portrayed in the Bible causes it to collapse? I hope not!

So maybe Jesus' tomb was at Point A and not Point B. So maybe he was married. So maybe he had siblings. So what? Does any of it detract one iota from his sacrifice or his saving message?

And if so...how?

God versus...Who?

My friend Jerry sent a copy of today's Robyn Blumner column, "Flat-Earth Society's Warriors," about Texas state representative Warren Chisum circulating a bizarre memo, ostensibly originated by a Georgia state representative, Ben Bridges, but evidently really written by one Marshall Hall, the president of something called the Fair Education Foundation and the mind behind a web site called www.fixedearth.com. You really must read the column for yourself--for there is no way I can do justice to the convoluted Froot-Loopiness of it all (there's a copy of the original memo here; reports are all over, including this one at Accidental Blogger and this one at the New York Times Select), but a few lines from the Blumner column is as good as anything for summing up the gist of the Chisum/Bridges/Hall memo: "Darwin's theory of evolution was described as nothing more than a Jewish plot."

"'Indisputable evidence - long hidden but now available to everyone - demonstrates conclusively that so-called secular evolution science is the Big Bang 15-billion-year alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion,' the memo said."

Well then. Good to have that settled.

But I once again find myself puzzling over the slavering fury of the "religious" right. (The quotation marks are there because their actions and attitudes invariably strike me as being at odds with what one traditionally associates with religious people; we won't even discuss their insistence on labeling themselves "Christian" when they seem so contrary to that which Christ taught.) Why does it seem so important to them to prop up their "faith" and "beliefs" by defaming others'? Why all the frantic--and, usually, embarrassingly misguided--attempts to discredit science and scientific curiosity? Why isn't their "faith" enough for them?

And why would they think God cares?

It strikes me for not the first time that I seem to have a much higher opinion of God than those who consider themselves his biggest fans. For instance, I think God has an ego sound enough to survive the thought of people not believing in him. Or professing their devotion to him in different, even contradictory ways. And I think that when his son suggested we should love our neighbors, he probably meant what he said, and what he said was not "love thy neighbor who is in lock-step agreement with thee" or "love thy neighbor who is morally upright as defined by thee" or "love thy neighbor who has the same skin tone or belongs to the same political party as thee."

I don't go around bragging about what a swell Christian I am, partly because I think I'm pretty bad at it most of the time, but I have read the Bible a few times (well, only one trip through the entire Old Testament: too many "begats") and what I mostly come away with--especially from the words of Jesus, whom "Christians" purport to revere and emulate--is love, peace, tolerance, and ethical behavior...all that namby-pamby crap that the "religious" right despises.

So then (and setting aside for the moment that I think God is probably big enough to fight for himself whatever battles he thinks need fighting), precisely what is it that these "Christian" soldiers see themselves as marching off to war against? Or for? Apparently not the ideals of Jesus of Nazareth, who is tellingly silent on such subjects as evolution, gay marriage, or the Democratic party. They seem uninterested in promulgating any definition of "love," or "peace," which seem to me the central messages of Jesus' ministry; indeed, they seem to thrive on exactly the opposite--on perpetual rancor, on intolerance, on hatred.

Because, after all--if the true Christian ideal were ever realized, they'd all be out of work...some of them literally. Their very existence depends on perpetual antagonism.

Any resemblance to the Bush Administration is probably not coincidental.

Well, if you depend on perpetual antagonism, you need a perpetual enemy. Science is a good one. For one thing, it isn't going to go away. For another, it's big and multifaceted--you can attack evolution, you can attack medicine, you can attack anthropology and astronomy and physics. And for another, it doesn't march in step with the accounts laid out in the Bible.

Ah! Now we're getting somewhere.

Whenever Time or Newsweek or anybody else does their periodic "God vs. Science" article, they invariably fall into a clever trap set by the "religious" right, viz., making it seem like someone is attacking God (who, in their view, needs them to defend him...again, I seem to have a higher opinion of God than they do, which is pretty sad for God)--when in fact the real discussion should be "Science vs. the Bible," or, even more accurately, "Science vs. Literal-Factual Interpretation of the Bible." (And it is to numerous publications' shame that their editors seem not to understand this, or do understand it but prefer the catchier-though-inaccurate "God vs. Science.")

God doesn't enter into it. Undoubtedly there are scientists who are atheists: so what? Let God worry about that (which I doubt he does). The question is whether the world needs to bow to a bunch of noisy religious fanatics who insist that every syllable in a series of books written over several millennia by various human beings who had various tales to tell and points to prove must be regarded by everybody else on the planet as literal-factual "truth." That's the whole versus.

But I misspoke--God does enter into it, for, to those of us who believe in a Creator, science is the tool by which we decipher and understand his creation. It is not something to be feared, let alone something to be reviled. Would that we could get back to a time when Science and Religion were seen as companions on the same journey, not antagonists heading in opposite directions.

But Religion is a jealous institution, and will brook no other gods but itself.

Actually, far from "God vs. Science," the more pertinent subject might be "God vs. Religion."

Miscellany

A couple of random thoughts/questions on a wintry day...

Item 1: What is it with conservatives and global warming? Make that, "conservatives and the environment." I have never understood the insistence of so many right-wingers that anyone concerned about environmental concerns is just being an alarmist Chicken Little; that any evidence that shows we're wrecking the planet is perforce trumped-up "liberal" propaganda; that things can't possibly be as bad as "those liberals" say; or--my favorite--that it doesn't matter what we do to the earth since God has everything under control.

Wouldn't it make more sense for conservatives to be interested in, you know, conservation? Which brings me back around to the old, old question: Precisely what it is they're supposed to be conserving, anyway?

The above is sparked by yet another bonehead who, not content on being a bonehead for his friends and family, decides to prove his boneheadedness to others by sending a letter to the local rag, where other boneheads decide it should be printed. I can't lay hands on the letter at the moment--it was several days back, and if TLR archives these things it's not at all obvious and I am insufficiently motivated to spend any time looking--but the gist of it was, he's looking out his window and it's snowing, so how can anyone say there's global warming?

Golly, but it's hard to argue with "logic" like that.

Item 2: Having spent my entire life in the upper Midwest (where, despite global warming, it still occasionally snows), I have been in a position to observe what I have come to dub Midwestern Machismo. This mindset holds that to be concerned about winter weather is, in a nutshell, to be a pussy. No matter how dire the forecast--indeed, no matter how inclement the current conditions--those beset by Midwestern Machismo never conclude anything except "it doesn't sound so bad" or "it's not so bad" or "I've driven in way worse weather than this."

I got to observe a bit of this condition yesterday. The regional forecast for this weekend consists of nothing but rain turning to freezing rain turning to snow--six to eight to twelve inches across the area--with high winds to top it off. My son's drumline, Groove Inc., was to travel to Minneapolis-St. Paul for competitions today and Sunday. By noon yesterday, Weather Service bulletins were advising against travel in exactly the part of the world where we purported to travel. And yet there was some considerable resistance to canceling our plans. (I'm pleased to report that wiser heads prevailed--although I had decided that there was no way my family was going out into the teeth of the storm no matter what the group decided.)

Part of the "reasoning" seemed to be that, if we could cram everybody onto our bus (instead of bus and a caravan of private vehicles), all would be well...since everybody knows that motor coaches are immune to weather conditions.

Then there was the "not as bad as predicted" faction, those who innately know that whatever the National Weather Service and other meteorologists are reporting is by definition wrong...and that they know better by virtue of not being a meteorologist.

My favorite, though, was the friend who had spoken with a friend in Iowa who had been listening to a Twin Cities radio station that allegedly was reporting that the storm was going to hit several hours later than forecast. Okay. Setting aside for the moment that that information was not supported by any other sources, one is still left with the burning question: So freaking what? That might be of some help if we planned to go up Saturday morning and stay a few days. But since we planned to go up Saturday and come back Sunday afternoon, having the storm delayed a few hours isn't really of much help.

But it's all part of that Midwestern Machismo, which somehow sees shame in canceling plans for something a paltry as ice storms or blizzards. Indeed, there were those who argued for waiting until 4:00 or 5:00 this morning before making a decision. For crying out loud. How much advance warning do so people need? Better to disappoint the kids (and their parents!) than to knowingly risk life, limb, and lawsuit by heading into a storm that had been forecast well in advance.

Do Editors Read Headlines?

It is a question I often ask myself: Do editors read headlines? Or do they read the articles for which they are inventing headlines? (It appears to be an oddity of newspapers in particular that headlines are crafted by editors, not the writer of the piece. This, I believe, is how things like this, which actually occurred in my local paper a few years ago, happen: The headline is something like, "100s Sickened by Tainted Ice Cream" while the article begins, "Nearly 100 people became ill..."

Anyhow, here's this gem from ABC News: "Can Earth Dodge Asteroid Heading This Way?"

Um, it's only a guess, but I would have to answer no. I find the earth to be extraordinarily un-nimble when it comes to dodging things. It's pretty good at that rotation-and-revolution stuff, but that's all very predictable and, frankly, hidebound. I have no confidence whatsoever that the planet can move out of the way of an asteroid.

Later on, the article (which is here, by the way) tells us, "Scientists believe that if advance warnings of dangerous asteroids like Apophis can be made decades in advance, there will be enough time to try and knock them off course."

Setting aside the clumsiness of "advance warnings...decades in advance", one is left to wonder why scientists would believe that advance warning of dangerous asteroids will do any good. Were they not around when Hurricane Katrina struck? What makes them think that our political "leaders" will be any more prepared for a potentially bigger catastrophe?

Gotta Love 'Em!

As annoying as they are, I have to admit to a certain grudging admiration for spammers. For instance, now that I'm hip to a new (to me) technique of theirs, I find their ingenuity rather noteworthy. This technique involves sending e-mail that really, truly looks like a news item. The subject is always timely and, as far as I can tell, "real." I was first tooken in by what purported to be a report on the health of my state's senior senator, Tim Johnson. "Sen. Johnson's condition upgraded MORE ..." read the subject line; the sender purported to be "C. Mcgill - News Service", a monicker unfamiliar to me, but since it is a subject of interest to me...

Well, of course, it turned out to be yet another IPO come-on ("could be your big break!"), and since then not a day goes by that the inbox is not littered with similar "news" items. Annoying, yes, but ingenious!

(And lest you fear: I was not so gullible as to open a suspect message in my e-mail client: The item in question came to my workplace e-mail account, which is safeguarded by the truly remarkable Barracuda filter, and it was in the Barracuda window that I safely viewed the e-mail's spammy content.)

On the other hand, sometimes--lots of times--the spam mongers are just stupid. Or lazy. Or think their audience is (probably can't go wrong thinking that). F'rinstance, this morning I have no fewer than four items in my Yahoo! Mail "bulk mail" folder (out of 95) indicating a "4th Notice" that " You're a YAHOO winner!" Uh-huh. How can I have four "fourth notices" staring me in the face? And what happened to notices one through three?

As with so many things in life, why do it if you're not going to do it well? I mean, there you are in an internet cafe in Nigeria or someplace and you and your buddies are sending out spam to the big wide world out there--how come you're all using the same subject line? Does it not occur to you that your 500 pieces of spammery will all end up in my mailbox more or less at the same time, and that I might, just might be suspicious if I have 500 messages that all say "Urgent message for wjreynolds@yahoo.com"?

Come on--you guys aren't even trying. And if you don't care about your work, well, why should I?

Again I Ask: What WOULD Jesus Do?

Here's a headline from this morning's New York Times online edition:

Anglican Prelates Snub Head of U.S. Church Over Gay Issues

Yes, it's another one of those charming examples of religion in action in the world today: These self-proclaimed leaders of their church have philosophical disagreements with positions held by their American colleague, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church USA, so, as men of God, what do they do? Why, naturally, they "refused to take Communion here on Friday with the new head of the American Episcopal Church, to protest her support of gay clergy members and blessings for same-sex unions." Read the entire article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/world/africa/17anglicans.html

Well, naturally, this is in keeping with the example set by whom they purport to be a follower of, viz., Jesus of Nazareth. The Bible makes it clear that Jesus turned his back on everyone who did not think the same way he did. He certainly would not endorse comporting with those whom we perceive to be sinners--that's why he studiously avoided contact with the downtrodden and outcasts of society, and made sure to traffic only with yes-men and sycophants. (That's sarcasm, by the way.)

As the years go by, it becomes harder and harder to view religion as anything other than a great big speedbump on the road to Heaven, a colossal man-made obstacle designed to stand between Creator and creation. How can any institution that engenders so much rancor and violence and even death be seen as doing "God's work"? Quite the opposite, much of the time.

One hates to be so negative toward "organized religion" (an oxymoron if there ever was one)--and in brighter moments one does have to point to the good that religious institutions can do and occasionally have done in areas of education, health-care, poverty and disaster relief, and so on. When they are good they are very, very good...but the rest of the time--yikes!

Make no mistake: The culprit here is not God, of whom I maintain a very high opinion--Father, Son, and Spirit alike; no, the bad guy in this scenario is good ol' Homo sapiens, who seems incapable of developing any institution without a gilt-edged list of rules, regulations, doctrine, dogma, theology...and the insistence that everybody must subscribe. You have a question? A doubt? A different idea? Heretic! Blasphemer! Apostate! Out with you--if you're lucky we'll merely excommunicate you; if not, we'll stone you to death. (The Bible makes it clear we're allowed, nay, expected to do that.)

P.S.: Homo sapiens wrote the Bible, too. Make of that what you will.

Of course, ecclesiastic sleight-of-hand does a pretty good job of tricking the audience into thinking that religion is God--and more specifically, our religion is God--and therefore any criticism of the former is an attack on the latter. Which is nonsense.

There is a joke that tells of a rough-hewn sort who one Sunday attends services at a very upscale and well-heeled church. The man appears to be a laborer of some sort and, while he and his clothes are clean and neat, they definitely do no compare with the finery of the others in the congregations, who make no bones about their distaste for his style of dress. Indeed, afterward the pastor approaches him and suggests that he go home and pray to God, asking what God thinks would be the proper way to dress for a church such as this one.

The following Sunday the man is in his pew again, and dressed as before. Afterward the pastor comes up to the man. "I thought I encouraged you to go home and ask God how he thinks you should dress for this church," he says pointedly.

"I did," the man assures him. "And God said, 'Boy, I don't know--I've never been to that church!'"

"Church" is not God. "Religion" is not God. "Bible" is not God. To the extent that these human inventions bring us closer to God, they are good; to the extent that they stand between us and God--on the basis of doctrine, or theology, or tradition--they are evil.

Meanwhile, back in the ECUSA: Blessed are those who persist in trying to see the positive in things: "Liberal Episcopalians, on the other hand, were encouraged that the number of primates — the term for the leaders of Anglican provinces — who refused to take Communion at this meeting was only seven, about half the number who refused two years ago."

Noise

Am I the only one to note a recent uptick in internet noise? By this I mean sites and ads within sites whose creators seem to think that I want to hear whatever junk they feel inclined to spew? This has long been a bane of home-made web pages (and, believe me, there is absolutely NO ONE who wants to hear your dirgelike midi of "Amazing Grace"), but of late I've noticed it in "professional" applications as well. To wit:

I was playing Text Twist at Yahoo! Games when I became aware of a kind of clicking sound that was not part of the game. Turns out there was a commercial for Cascade playing off to the right of the game panel, and the nice folks at Cascade thought I would like to hear the click and clack of a woman putting away dishes as she removed them from her dishwasher. Wrong!

I'm a member of MyPoints, which is usually a lot of fun--they send you e-mail offers, you click on the link and get a certain number of points for reading the message, a greater number for responding to the offer, etc.; and then you can redeem the points for, you know, stuff. Works like a charm. Except some big thinkers behind some of the offers have decided that it's not enough to show me their come-on--they think they should tell me all about it. Usually loudly.

Likewise, I occasionally take online surveys for fun and...well, okay, so far just for fun. Every so often I land on one that, unannounced, plays me an ad for my input. Or at least it starts to. If they haven't the courtesy to forewarn me, I immediately close them down.

Considering that I usually have music playing, this extraneous noise is really annoying. Do these advertisers really think that the nuisance click and clatter of someone putting away dinnerware while I'm trying to listen to music inclines me favorable toward their dishwasher detergent? If so, here's my advice to them: Think again!

The Sad State of "News" Today

I subscribe to several "news alert" features from various national and local sources. From them I received the sad word that Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized this morning, which I grant you is newsworthy. But from none of them did I hear that Robert F. Drinan, S.J., died yesterday. Father Drinan was a lawyer, law professor, college administrator, and the first Catholic priest elected to the United States House of Representatives. (He also was an unabashed liberal and anti-war activist, which I have always felt was the real reason the Vatican ordered him, after 10 years of service to his Massachusetts district, to either leave politics or leave the priesthood. Father Drinan decided to stick with his vows to the church and to the Society of Jesus, which probably was good for him but not so swell for the rest of us. I suspect that, had he been a right-winger, his marching orders would not have come. As it was, being the first member of the House to call for the impeachment of Richard Nixon probably did little to endear him to the pope.)

On balance, it seems to me that Father Drinan's passing deserves at least as much attention as a racehorse's.

The Importance of Accuracy in Advertising

I subscribe to an interesting newsletter from the New York Times, Stuart Elliott/In Advertising. (I was involved in advertising in a past life.) One of the most entertaining parts of the weekly mailing is the question-and-answer section, which this week included the following:

Q: [Reader]

I read your story in The Times about penguins in advertising. I love penguins, and applaud the use of penguins in advertising.

However, advertisers get a few basic penguin facts wrong, such as that penguins and polar bears do not live together. Penguins live in the Southern Hemisphere, and polar bears live in the Northern Hemisphere.

While I understand that it's advertising, not science class, such incorrect ads perpetuate myths. The Coca-Cola ads with penguins and polar bears are obviously targeting kids, and I think we would like children to know where penguins and polar bears live. I guess we hope they will learn from other sources.

A: [Stuart Elliott]

Thanks, dear reader, for sharing your thoughts. I am of two minds on the issue of accuracy in advertising (as opposed to truth in advertising, which I endorse 100 percent).

On one hand, one would hope that what you see in ads is accurate, at least to some degree. You don't want your child watching that Coke commercial and then, years later, answering "true" to a true/false question on a science test asking whether penguins and polar bears can be found in the same hemisphere.

On the other hand, ads are attempts at creativity intended to put over a particular point of view to sell something, meaning that in the pursuit of persuasiveness they will likely do whatever it takes to peddle the product.

If the creators of fictional TV shows and movies take creative license for dramatic or comedic purposes - for instance, showing cavemen and dinosaurs alive at the same time - I don't see why advertisers cannot do the same, within limits, of course. (One can imagine how much work teachers have had the last four decades undoing the false perceptions generated by "The Flintstones.")

So while I do not get too upset if I watch two animals that do not actually co-exist in nature becoming friends over a bottle of Coke, I would be upset if the ad claimed Coca-Cola was a cold remedy, for instance, or nutritious.

If viewers worry their children are getting inaccurate information from commercials, there is a solution. In this instance, after watching the Coke spot, a parent could share with a child a book about penguins or visit a Web site together to learn more about them.

Maybe the fact that ads ought to be taken with a grain of salt in how they depict the world is good in that it may help parents teach children that not everything they see or hear in ads is the gospel truth.

Okay, so here’s the skinny: This guy is watching a TV commercial in which a family of (computer animated) polar bears happens upon a flock or gaggle or herd or whatever of (computer animated) penguins having a big party. The party stops upon the intrusion of the bears. A little penguin offers the polar bear cub a Coca-Cola. The cub accepts it. The party starts up again with penguins and polar bears dancing and enjoying Coke. And this guy is upset because polar bears and penguins don’t live on the same continent??!

In the interests of scientific accuracy, then, it should be pointed out that polar bears enjoy Coca-Cola at the North Pole while penguins enjoy Coca-Cola at the South Pole.

A Few Words

A few more quotations that have been gathering dust on the hard drive. Again, many if not most are culled from A Word a Day:

Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period. -Nicholas Sparks, author (1965- )

Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors. -Lewis H. Lapham, editor (1935- )

Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. -Brigid Brophy, writer (1929-1995)

The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god. -Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) [Beyond Good and Evil, 1886]

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages. -Jacques Deval, writer and director (1895-1972)

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true. -Nathaniel Hawthorne, writer (1804-1864)

For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of evil, you're lucky to find one who's hacking at the roots. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principle. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts. -Bertrand Russell

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. -Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)

Ecclesiastic Sleight-of-Hand

My wife received an end-of-year letter yesterday over the signature of the senior pastor of her church. The gist of it was how everybody needs to contribute money to the church because every year the budget is barely being met.

Aside from the obvious (to me) conclusion--viz., perhaps the budget is overblown--the letter stands as a fine example of what I've come to regard as ecclesiastic sleight-of-hand. Specifically, it slides rather subtly from "giving to the church" to "giving to God" or "giving to Jesus." (This is hardly unique to my wife's church or denomination, by the way: I've had fifty years of hearing the same sort of slippery phraseology coming from Catholic pulpits, too, and I have absolutely no reason to believe it doesn't take place across the board.)

One is left with the question of what God needs money for.

And the answer, of course, is that he has no need of it whatsoever.

To which I would expect the rejoinder to be that, no, God has no need of filthy lucre himself, but money is what it takes to do God's work on earth, so contributing money to the church is in effect to contribute it to God's work.

Okay. But there is more sleight-of-hand at work there, too. Because every church that I've ever trafficked with, as member, visitor, or member-in-law, has insisted that its share of the take must come right off the top--what some churchy enterprises insist on referring to as "first fruits"--and that everyone and everything else must vie for whatever is left. Indeed, in some churches that I've been around, the powers that be even go so far as to describe certain undertakings as "second mile" giving, meaning that they sure as heck don't want you to deduct your contribution from what you put in the collection plate. The sleight-of-hand at work here is the presumption that God's work is done only through "the church"--which is to say "this church"--or most importantly through "the church," and so everything else is subordinate. And yet, is not a donation to charity "doing God's work"? What about a donation to "a good cause" (as defined by yourself)--I can think of several that are about the Lord's work just as much as any parish, congregation, or denomination is. But I suspect that most churchy folk will say that such contributions, though admirable and good, must come only after one's tribute to the local institutional church.

To which I say: Baloney.

God's work in the world boils down to helping other people. Thus the money donated to the local food bank, or homeless shelter, or Salvation Army is dedicated to God's work no less than the money placed in the collection plate. Maybe even more so, depending on circumstances. Ditto for dollars sent to a particular mission or relief endeavor.

This is not to say that giving to one's church is not important. It is of course. It's just to say that the church's insistence that it needs to be at the head of the line doesn't mean it really deserves to be at the head of the line.

"The first shall be last"...now, where did I read that...?

I am left equally cold by various church's insistence on tithing. My conscience and I are perfectly capable of determining what we feel should be our contribution to the church, thank you very much. I heard tell of one pastor who insisted that no one who didn't tithe could be a member of the church council. This strikes me as a pretty hot idea, inasmuch as I'm not too fond of meetings and am usually looking for a way to avoid serving on board and committees. It also strikes me as just shy of charging a membership fee to belong to a church, which is not such a hot idea.

Once again the sleight-of-hand is fully evident: You must tithe, traditionally ten percent of the gross, to "God's work." But what is really meant is, again, "the church"--"this church"--and not any other manifestations of "doing God's work." So to say, "Ten percent of my gross income is X dollars, and I'll divvy those dollars up among the food bank, the women's shelter, the orphanage, the Maryknoll Missioners, the community chest, and my church" is not acceptable to the church. The church, indeed, insists that the full ten percent belongs to the church, and that anything else you may care to donate to any other worthy cause must come from the remaining 90 percent of your income.

And, again: Baloney. God's work is God's work, no matter who is doing it.

The sad fact is, the pie is only so big and can be cut into only so many pieces, and "the church" wants to make sure it gets its piece, and the biggest piece, first.

Shame on them.

Thoughts on Gerald Ford's Passing

Watching coverage of the various memorial services for Gerald Ford brings to mind a number of things:

• How grand of the current president to decline to cut his vacation short a day or two in order to be in D.C. when Ford's remains (and, more important, family) arrived. Yes, indeedy, a class act all the way. Goes to show how poorly the current occupant of the White House compares to his predecessors, especially the one who will be buried this week.
• Gerald Ford is the only Republican presidential candidate for whom I have ever voted (and unless the GOP changes mightily in the future, the only one). It was the first year I was eligible to vote. I felt (still do) that Ford had been handed the most unimaginable mess--war, inflation, Watergate, just about everything short of frogs and locusts--and had done an admirable job of dealing with it. I felt (still do) that he deserved "his own" term. I further felt (still do) that Jimmy Carter was simply not the right man for the job, and am among those who feel Carter is a better ex-president than president. My feeling 30 years ago was that Ford was an honorable man trying to pull the country back together, and nothing in the interim has caused me to change my mind.
• I read a comment on CNN.com from someone who felt that Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon is what defined Ford's presidency, and not for the better. I disagree. At the time, I was one of those who believed the fix was in and that the pardon only showed the bottomless corruption of the Nixon bunch and the GOP. With the passage of time, however, I came to believe that pardoning Nixon was perhaps the only way to get the country past Watergate. The fact that it was unpopular, that Ford must have known it would be unpopular, and that he probably realized it jeopardized any chance he may have had to be elected in his own right only serves to illustrate the character of Gerald Ford.
• What the hell has happened to the Republican Party that in a mere three decades it has gone from the likes of Gerald R. Ford (decent, honest, committed to the nation's best interests) to the likes of George W. Bush (duplicitous, deceitful, and committed only to his cronies' best interests)?
  

Monsters and Straw Men

This letter appeared in my local newspaper last week. I started to draft a pithy reply to it, but quickly realized that to meet the paper's parsimonious word count would require me to edit it down to a nubbin, which I was loath to do. Anyhow, here's the diatribe:

Did vote match philosophy?
By Cindy M. Flakoll
legislative liaison Concerned Women for America of South Dakota
PUBLISHED: December 19, 2006

South Dakota's abortion ban failed on Election Day.

Which group's philosophy aligns with your personal philosophy?
Organization No. 1 believes:

# Abortion hurts women and kills unborn children. Babies conceived in rape/incest deserve prenatal care and birth just as much as babies conceived under other circumstances.

# A woman confronting an unplanned pregnancy should be supported medically, emotionally, spiritually and financially so she can give birth to a healthy child, then choose to raise the child or choose adoption.
Organization No. 2 believes:

# The woman's need to kill her own child is all-important. Her child's needs should not be considered.

# No matter how the child is conceived, the woman should utilize any means to kill her child rather than allow "it" to become burdensome - medically, emotionally, spiritually or financially - for herself and her chosen partner or rapist.

Where are you? If you believe like Organization No. 1, you should have voted "yes" to ban abortions. If you voted "no" on the ban, then you voted against your own beliefs.

If you believed the ban was too extreme, your philosophy matches Organization No. 2. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, on Election Day you became a supporter of the culture of death in America.


Well. You can imagine how gratifying I find it when someone who doesn't know me presumes to know what my innermost thoughts and feelings are. For the record, I voted against this state's near-total ban on abortions because I felt that it was bad law--unnecessarily harsh and drafted for no other reason than to force the issue into the court system, ultimately to the Supreme Court. I fail to see why every taxpayer in the state should be shanghaied into such a blatantly illegal undertaking. (Legislators take a vow to uphold the Constitution. To pass legislation that contravenes the Constitution violates that vow. As far as I'm concerned, every legislator who voted for the ban should be impeached and possibly prosecuted for treason. Same goes for the governor who signed the measure.)

Ms. Flakoll's hardly unbiased letter does serve as a shining example of the Straw Man argument, one that my old high-school debate coach would have been proud of. See, she gets to present both sides of the argument, and in so doing gets to portray The Other Side as morally monstrous, evil, and all kinds of other bad things, while Her Side is virtuous, noble, and full of sugar and spice and everything nice.

And so, in the spirit of Ms. Flakoll's dishonest and spurious presentation, I proffer my own:

Which group's philosophy aligns with your personal philosophy?
Organization No. 1 believes:

# The government should be in the business of making health-care decisions for women, no matter what the woman and her doctor think best.

# Women are simply too emotional to know what's best for them, so the totalitarian state must make decisions for them

# There is no room for sympathy or mercy if a woman is the victim of rape or incest, and the government forcing her to continue her pregnancy is for her own good

# It's probably her own fault that she's pregnant, anyway.

Organization No. 2 believes:

# Abortion is a hard choice, and we should feel great empathy toward women who are faced with making that decision.

# Women are intelligent enough to be able to make their own medical decisions, in consultation with their physicians and with the support of their family.

# A woman or girl who has been the victim of rape or incest should not be further victimized by the legislature, the governor, social activists, or others who always know what's best for everybody else.

# It's very easy for someone to dictate what other people "should" be doing, when the consequences do not weigh on him or her at all.

See? With no one to refute or rebut, you may simultaneously slander and demonize people who don't agree with you to your little heart's content. Loads of fun, and you can do it in your own home!

What, Me Work?

"Keeping us up here eats away at families," is what GOP Congressman Jack Kingston of Georgia told The Washington Post. Democrats, he said, "could care less about families -- that's what this says."

And what was Mr. Kingston complaining about? Why, the incoming Democratic leadership of the House has this bizarre notion that members of Congress should actually, you know, work. Like, in their offices. Which these days are located in Washington, DC.

Yes, our representatives will actually be forced to return to work on January 4--whole weeks before the State of the Union address, which is when they’ve been accustomed to wandering back in under GOP “leadership.”

As The Post points out in an editorial this morning, “Do-Something Congress”, the current 109th Congress will have been in session for a grand total of 103 days this year, seven days fewer than the "Do-Nothing Congress" of 1948.

The Post also points out that “an ordinary full-time worker with a generous four weeks of vacation would have clocked 240 days of work during that same period.”

In addition, says The Post, quoting to the American Enterprise Institute's Norman Ornstein, “the average number of days in session for a two-year Congress has dropped from 323 in the 1960s and '70s to just 250 during the first six years of the Bush presidency.”

“This,” writes The Post, “saps lawmakers' ability to get much done. It's one explanation, though not the only one, for why they were able to finish work on only two spending bills this year. It takes a toll, too, in less measurable ways, on congressional civility and bipartisanship. How can lawmakers forge friendships -- or even learn to get along -- when they're barely in town long enough to learn each other's names?”

As to Rep. Kingston: I too have noticed how having a job really cuts into one’s free time. Perhaps the voters of his district can help him out with that in a couple of years.

Strangely Familiar?

Here is a picture of the familiar old Civil Defense emblem, which was retired yesterday after almost 70 years of service. We Cold War kids remember it well, if not fondly:


Here is its replacement, the Emergency Management logo:

And here is the current symbol for DC Comics, publisher of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.

Is it just me, or do logos #2 and #3 look an awful lot alike?

I leave it to your imagination to determine what this strange resemblance might mean, if anything...

Although I like to think I'm as cynical as the next guy, this news summary from this morning's New York Times struck even me as a little crusty:

Pope Backs Turkey’s Bid to Join European Union
The gesture of good will, a reversal of his position, was aimed at blunting Muslim anger toward him.

Short of Benedict himself saying, "I'm doing this to blunt Muslim anger toward me," it seems unlikely that we really know what Il Papa has in his heart. Mind, I'm sure that anger-blunting was part of the package (see above re my cynicism), but is it not also possible that the pope has re-thought his previous opposition to Turkey's joining the EU, that he has had a legitimate change of mind and/or heart—and that perhaps that instead of or in addition to anger-blunting is behind his new position?

But our society does not allow for that. To change one's mind is to flip-flop, to waffle, to bow to political correctness or some other pet bugaboo. Stubbornness has become a virtue. Real men "stay the course"; real men are consistent, and consistency requires one to be as ignorant today as he was yesterday.

Growth? That's a funny word…

It's the Holiday Season!

The "Quotation of the Day" in this morning's online edition of The New York Times:

"It's like a mosh pit. You get pushed everywhere." --LEXIE DEWEGEL, 19, a shopper at Fashion Place Mall in Murray, Utah, where fighting erupted among 12,000 bargain hunters.

One hates to always be the spoilsport, but this Black Friday free-for-all strikes me as pandering to the worst impulses of the American public. Everybody likes a bargain, and retailers must make money, but does that translate into "anything goes"?

Is there no major retailer in the country with enough intestinal fortitude to say, "No, we think we can be better than that"?

Well, of course not. What am I thinking? Obviously been hitting the cranberry sauce a little hard,

But as I watch the images of holiday shoppers stampeding into Wal-Mart like a herd of wild pigs, as pushing and pulling degenerate into fistfights, I cannot but think that sooner or later somebody's going to get killed. Someone will stumble in the mad rush, and be trampled by the wild pigs. A fight will turn deadly. Someone will produce a gun or knife in order to secure the season's version of Tickle-Me Elmo.

Black Friday, indeed.

And, since we live in a litigious society, the victim, or the victim's survivors, will sue. The retailer will argue that the victim was there voluntarily, and that it is blameless. The survivors will argue that the victim was, well, the victim of the retailer's endless hyperbolic advertising, that nonstop insisting that those who snooze will be those who lose created an imperative in the victim's mind that he or she was helpless to resist. And anyway the store should have had better security.

As annoyed as I get at people's refusal to accept responsibility for their own actions and the consequences thereof, I hope that when--not if--the lawsuits start flying, some of these retailers are hit with whopping great fines. Money being the only thing that seems to matter to them only the threat of having money taken away from them will make them see (maybe) that just because base impulses exist in the American public, they needn't feel obliged to pander to them.

In the meantime, I was sound asleep at five a.m. when the local stores started their "doorbuster" sales. It was noon before I was looking at the newspaper ads telling me about all the great bargains I had missed. (One wonders: If Best Buy boasts a "minimum of 10" copies of an attractively priced LCD TV, what are the odds of my getting one even if I'm in line at the store in the middle of the night?) I am hard-pressed to think of anything I want or need so badly, any bargain that is so irresistibly attractive, that would compel me to eat Thanksgiving dinner in a tent in front of the mall.

And the holiday season begins!

Morning in America

By Tony Auth, Philadelphia Inquirer

Voter Turnout

The official voter-turnout count in South Dakota for Tuesday is 67.2%--a good number, by modern standards, but neither a record nor the 72% that Secretary of State Chris Nelson was guessing at.

Nelson's guess, and that of others who predicted lines around the block, was based on an odd bit of reasoning, to wit: The number of absentee ballots taken out before the election (well, of course: they don't let you vote after the election) was higher than usual, therefore overall voter turnout would be higher than usual.

Except that various sources were encouraging people to vote absentee even if they were going to be around on election day, once again on the grounds that turnout would be high, lines would be long, and you could save a lot of hassle by voting before November 7. Well, if enough people did that, then you would see fewer people at the polling places, since so many would already have voted...not that more people were voting, mind, just that more were voting in advance.

I haven't heard if any records were set for absentee ballots.

Granted, more people voted than in recent years. But only one person I've spoken to had to wait in line more than a couple of minutes. Me, I got to my polling place at about 7:25 a.m., chatted in the parking lot with the school custodian a few minutes, went in for my ballot (number 53), took the only open voting booth, marked the aforementioned ballot and turned it in at the lockbox, went back outside and chatted with one of the candidates for a few minutes, and was still at my office by 7:50.

Reflections After the Fact

Yesterday, the day after Election Day, was an odd one.

For one thing, I am long since used to being in the wilderness, politically speaking. It is a rare occurrence for "my" candidate to win, a rare occurrence for me to be on the same side of a given issue as my voting peers. And yet. My gubernatorial, attorney general, and one state representative choices failed, but everyone else I voted for was elected, Bizarre.

Likewise on the ballot issues. As you know, South Dakota had a mess of 'em this year: eleven constitutional amendments, initiated measures, and referred laws. Phew. Again, though, I found myself in league with the majority on an unsettling number of them, most notably our infamous abortion ban, which was defeated, but also such oddities as who gets to decide when school starts (I thought that's what we elected school boards for, and it seems the majority of my fellow residents felt the same) and whether the governor can use a state-owned plane to go to his kid's football game (no).

Add to that the wonderfully bizarre turn of events in Our Nation's Capital--Democrats taking back the House of Representatives and nearly (at that point) the Senate (now an apparent reality), precipitating the ouster of Donald Rumsfeld (one-third of the Axis of Evil that got us into the mess(es) we're in today)--and you can about imagine how disoriented I felt all day!

(I do not for a minute believe that Rummy's departure means that the president or anyone else on Pennsylvania Avenue "got" the message. Mr. Bush did a fine job of ducking the question of whether this signifies a change in approach to the war, leading me to conclude that it's just a new actor in the old role. See "Bush Replaces Rumsfeld with... Another Rumsfeld" by Joshua Holland.)

I'm much more used to waking up the morning after and cursing the imbecilic electorate for being so easily duped.

What accounts for this strange turn of events? I hardly think, after all these years, that I am somehow an exemplar of Mainstream America. So I'm left to conclude that the political pendulum, having swung so far to the right these past several years, has now swung back to the center, perhaps even a bit left of same, where I believe I have stayed all along. Presumably it will now settle back in the moderate mid-range, where the majority of the country (by definition) is.

Of course, it's not all fish and chips in America now. The we-know-what's-best-for-you right-wing extremist morally superior shove-it-down-everyone's-throat lobby has already vowed to "continue the fight" to ban all abortions in South Dakota. Predictable. And the constitutional amendment to "define" marriage (one man and one woman, in case you were wondering) passed rather handily, which is disappointing. I can't decide if it was a win for fear and prejudice (anti-gay) or a case of the electorate not fully understanding that, despite its billing, this amendment doesn't just close the door on gay marriage but also on certain rights afforded to straight couples who are living together without benefit of clergy. What my friend Jerry would refer to as the Law of Unintended Consequences.

I was amused by some people's reaction to the defeat of the mean-spirited and hard-hearted abortion ban...not the diehard wild-eyed right-wing extremists, but otherwise normal and rational-seeming folks. Some of them seemed ignorant of the fact that legal abortion has been available in the United States of America for some decades now, and honestly seemed to believe that Tuesday's election meant that abortion will now be coming to a medical clinic near you. Others (well, actually some of the same people) seem intellectually incapable of separating the concepts of "against banning all abortions" and "in favor of abortion." The truth is, nobody is "in favor" of abortion. I think there is widespread agreement across the board that abortion leaves no winners. The question is not whether one is "for" anything, but rather who gets to make a woman's health-care choices: the woman, or the government?

I think this is why I so often hear, and in very definitive tones, that it is "impossible" for me to be pro-choice and pro-life. Nonsense: It is by definition not impossible, since I am both of those things; rather it just takes a little bit of intellectual discrimination to realize that the two are not mutually exclusive. I think abortion is bad news. My prayer would be that no woman would ever find herself in such a position that she felt abortion was her only or best option. But, meanwhile, we must live in what I hilariously refer to as the real world, in which women do find themselves in that predicament. Given that, I fail to see how adding to her distress by turning her into a criminal, by sending her back into the good old alleyways and into the unsanitary, unsafe hand of butchers (or worse) helps her in any way. I fail to see how this "protects" women, as the anti-abortion lobby insisted the total ban would do.

But for a brief interlude, now, it's possible to bask in the glow of some political success. Not across the board--but as I said, it's so odd for me to have several of my votes among the majority, let alone most of them, that I can do nothing else but enjoy what will most likely be a once-in-a-lifetime event!
__________________________

Worth a look:
GOP Myths Fall Short Of Reality, by CBS News political consultant Samuel J. Best.
A Victory for Progressive Values, by Nathan Newman, TPMCafe.
Bush Urges Bipartisan Cooperation After Cabinet Meeting, by William Branigin, The Washington Post. (For comic relief, the headline alone is a knee-slapper.)