Dr Block is Guilty of Faulty Reasoning and Signs of Douchebaggery, But He is not a Racist as far as I Can Tell from One Lecture

JL Wilson comes to the defense of Walter Block http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2009/04/walter-blocks-achievement.html

Dr Block, an economics professor at Loyola in New Orleans, gave a talk at Loyola in Baltimore on the issues of the gender gap and the racial gap in earnings. This led the Diversity Task Force at his school to publish a letter distancing the school from Dr Block's remarks. The letter claimed that the talk had ignored structural conditions in society. Some other folks complained that Dr Block is a racist and/or a sexist.

I took up Wilson's challenge and viewed the repeat performance Dr Block gave of his talk. I have several observations: (1) that's two hours of my life that I will be regretting on my death bed; (2) if I ever decide to study economics, I will not do so at Loyola in New Orleans; (3) Dr Block, who refers to people who disagree with him as "monstrous, vicous and depraved", is not easy to sympathize with; (4) Dr Block's talk was among the lamest I have ever endured; and (5) there is no basis for charging Dr Block with racism based strictly on the content of the talk.

The Diversity Task Force was almost on point when it criticized the talk for ignoring structural conditions. He didn't so much ignore structural conditions as illustrate their very existence and then fail to recognize what was right in front of his nose.

Let's take his discussion of the gender gap. Dr Block sets out to refute the feminist argument (the straw one that he sets up anyway) that the gender gap is due solely to sexist discrimination and is an artifact of the capitalist system. I have read some feminist critiques of the capitalist system in my day, but none were quite so superficial as Block's straw version. He argues that the cause of the gender gap is explained by the "marital asymmetry hypothesis". Women have more responsibilities in the home than men and are, therefore, disadvantaged in the labor market. If women are cheaper than men with equal productivity, then free market folks will hire more of them and make more profit and ultimately get rid of the gender gap. This has not occurred; therefore, either women are less productive than men and should earn less or there is no wage gap.

Dr Block stipulated several times that men and women were equally productive, and he admitted the existence of the wage gap, so the conclusion about variable productivity has to be teased out. What Dr Block failed to recognize was that the domestic asymmetry he describes is a structural condition that imposes on the free market system that he appears to believe we actually live in. Economic actors take the structural conditions of society as they find them. Women are burdened with domestic responsibilities and are, therefore, less productive than their husbands who can ignore sick children and dirty dishes and get lots of face time with the boss. This makes for a feedback loop. Women get paid less than men, so their jobs are the ones that get sacrificed for childrearing, sick kids, what have you. They are the ones that give up their jobs when their husbands get relocated. It's the only rational decison they can make in a society structured to impose the majority of the domestic burden on women. Women without kids, or whose kids are grown get penalized because of the perception that their possession of a vagina necessarily makes them less productive.

It's not enough for Dr Block to recognize that the capitalist system is vindicated in this analysis. Capitalists didn't make marital asymmetry; they just take it into account as a social fact. Dr Black has to take it one superfluous step further and declare that marital asymmetry is due to biology. Men and women are variably productive because in the pleistocene our male ancestors couldn't be bothered to run the vacuum cleaner or empty the dishwasher now and again? Dr Black insists on making marital asymmetry an act of God or Evolution which is utterly unproblematic.

Also, Dr Block seems to deny that a lot of men (and women for that matter) are sexist douchebags who can't work with women and who won't advance their careers. This is not to say that they don't love their wives and mothers and daughters and sisters. They just have some irrational subjective preferences about whom they want to spend time with at work and on the golf course. I'm a corporate tool, and I know whereof I speak.

Because Dr Block goes out of his way to demonize and mischaracterize feminists and, for no apparent purpose, posits an essentialist argument for marital asymmetry, I'm going to classify him as "sexist". I'm not saying he is a misogynist or anything, just that he holds to the view that a great many more gender differences are essential and immutable than is accepted in the mainstream.

On to the part about the racial gap in earnings. According to Dr Block, his talk in Baltimore provided two explanations for the wage gap: (1) lower productivity among blacks being due to existential factors, or (2) black people are stupider than white people. He claimed not to have a position on this, but in his New Orleans recap, he added a number of additional existential explanations (welfare, family instability). He didn't deny that racial prejudice exists, but he spent quite a bit of time trying to rationalize it.

The gravamen of Dr Block's argument with respect to the racial gap is that the capitalist system would eliminate it because folks would have to pay for their prejudice. Well, I'm here to tell you that folks do pay for their prejudice. Also, once again, let me point out that we don't live in the free market paradise Dr Block is counting on. There are structural obstacles put in the way of black people and the folks who would employ them. Reduced black productivity is not the whole story. It may not even be the biggest part of the story.

In the end, though, Block never crossed the line into racialism. He didn't argue that the differences of black folks to white folks are essential. Since he didn't even get racialist, he certainly didn't display racism. It was a mistake to bring up the "black people are stupider" theory since it did not contribute to his argument, and it may have left the impression that he bought into it, in which case you could plausibly suspect him of racism.

Here's where Dr Block disappoints me. He could do a lot of good work by using his free market models and ways of thinking to show what a free market system would look like under ideal conditions and then to show where there are discrepancies from the ideal and how those discrepancies persist. We don't need economists to tell us why they persist. That's not a meaningful social scientific query. We don't need economists to be apologists for the world as it is. We have prozac for that.

I support Dr Block's right to hold contrarian views and expound on them no mattr how stupid I think they are. Hell, I reckon he has a right to racist or sexist views and to express them if he held them. On the other hand, everyone else has a right to call bullshit. I think even Dr Block would agree to that. He read an excerpt from JS Mill's "On Liberty" before his repeat performance, the one where Mill argues that all views should be expressed. I would not want to see Dr Block silenced. I would not want his critics to be silenced, either.

Where's My False Confessions?

The "enhanced interrogation techniques", otherwise known as torture in civilized societies, employed by the Bushcheneyregime were designed to get prisoners to make false confessions for political purposes. Evidently, the Bushchenyregime couldn't even get any decent false confessions out of their victims. This leads me to conclude that (a) the torturers were incompetent, (b) the torturers were sexually aroused by torture for its own sake, (c) both (a) and (b).

It's not that the Bushcheneyregime couldn't have used some false confessions. "I admit it, I smuggled the Iraqi WMD to Syria in my ass." "I arranged a meeting with Saddam and bin Laden to coordinate their secret plan to take over the world." "Damn your warrantless wiretapping and widespread eavesdropping for you have thwarted yet another al Qaeda scheme thereby!"

And yet no such confessions were elicited. I doubt that any significant actionable intelligence was elicited, either. Not that it would have mattered. The Bushcheneyregime didn't need no stinking intelligence to take action. They just made shit up and did whatever they wanted.

Legal Opinions Cover All Sins

If only the war criminals tried at Nuremberg had had some memos from the Nazi equivalent of the Justice Department in their files. They'd have been totally exonerated! Same goes for the Japanese guys who ended up on the gallows.

Recycled Funnies

Since most jokes we know have been around the block a few times, it is sometimes helpful just to recite the punchlines. That way, you get to remember the joke without going through the trouble of hearing the set up. What's more, you get the pleasure of reconstructing the joke. Finally, if you don't know the joke, it can be fun to imagine the set up. This is a great way to recycle the oldies but goodies.

Here are some examples:

"He was charged with transporting gulls across a state lion for immortal porpoises."

"You didn't get one?"

"It's the cat!"

"I wanted to know whether to bargain him down or steal it."

"I've seen shaggier."

"Look who thinks he's nothing."

I enjoy ethnic humor now and then, but I like to use rare ethnicities that aren't likely to be represented in the room when I tell the joke. "An Inuit walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. The bartender says, 'That's neat! Where'd you get it?' The parrot answers, 'In the Yukon. They run wild there.'" Damn. It's even funnier with the Inuit in it. It's also fun to substitute ethnicities so as to transfer stereotypes in novel ways. "What did the Sicilian yell at the football game? Get the quarter back!" "How did the Soviets defeat the Germans. They marched in backwards, and the Germans thought they were leaving." "What's the most confusing holiday in Israel? Fatrher's Day."

Lawyer jokes are ten times funnier when you apply them to novel professions, such as nurses or hostel workers. "What do you call a thousand hostel caregivers on the bottom of the Hudson? A good start."

See how much mileage you can get out of your old jokes with just a few minor changes?

Stuff About My Boring Life

I thought Jesse Lou Baggett wasn't going to make it for a while. His vestibular disease hit him hard. He has made a good recovery, although he is slightly slower and clumsier than he once was. Back in his day Jesse was a graceful speedster. So was I. Now we're both slower and less steady on our feet. His appetite came back with a vengeance. Since he has been off steroids for a few weeks, he has stopped pissing all over the potted plants and the TV stand. For a while there, I would come home to five or six piss puddles.

Jasper has been more uppity than usual, perhaps sensing that Jesse's alpha status is not so secure. Eventually, Jesse will tear him a new one, and the old regime will be restored completely.

Jasper is back to frog hunting and spotted Brad the Water Snake on Sunday last. This is the earliest we've ever seen Brad. Two comets appear to have survived the winter, but there's still no sign of the koi or the other thrity comets who made it through the autumn. Are they hiding under the leaves and muck? I've been mucking a little to get some detritus for various projects, and that's when the comets appeared.

I built raised beds 12 by 6 feet and am tilling the herb garden, so we'll have over 200 square feet of crops. We planted the one bed that I finished filling with topsoil on Sunday, and I hope to have the other bed filled by this weekend. I bought six yards of premium topsoil, but I don't reckon it will be enough for all the stuff I have planned.

Mrs Vache Folle has been very helpful with the garden this year so far. I try to get her to do the actual planting and detail work while I push wheelbarrows of dirt, mulch and rocks and shovel muck out of the pond. This division of labor seems to work for us.

We hired our neighbor to clean our house every week. She's already our dog walker. This way we can avoid spending our weekends on housework and can have a little fun for a change.

Cheney Speaking is Torture

According to my morning briefing from Red State (I don't know why I get these), Dick Cheney claims that if the torture memos are released, then all the good results gained by torture should be publicized. Bullshit, say I. If there were any good results the Bush administration would have been crowing about them. Moreover, I would be afraid to see what Dick Cheney considers "good".

As far as I am concerned, it doesn't matter if torture yielded any useful information. It's still wrong. I could rob some banks and point to how rich I got as a result, but that wouldn't make robbing banks OK. Scott Petersen could, if he folllowed Cheneyist moral logic, have argued that the murder of Lacy yielded good results for him and should be excused. Hitler's genocidal rampage was OK because it helped his cause in some way. Mao was able to get rid of a lot of hungry mouths in the purges of the Great Leap Forward, so good for him.

The bastards who wrote the torture memos should be disbarred and prosecuted. Those who followed the memos should be investigated and prosecuted if it is suspected that they knew better. If they didn't know better, they should be fired, because they're too damn stupid to occupy positions of trust.

Another Business Idea

As soon as it's legal in New York, I reckon I'll open up a payday lending office. Returns are something like 1000%, so how can I lose? This won't just be a payday lending office, though. It'll be a whole shopping center for the working poor. There's an abandoned mall off Route 9 that could house the whole shebang.

Inside the payday lending office, we'd also sell lottery tickets. Next door we'll sell cheap liquor and beer and cigarettes. Just down the way, you can rent furniture and appliances. Why wait when you can get it now for just a few dollars a week? There'll be a pawn shop, a tattoo parlor and piercing center, and a jewelry store that will let you buy on time. All the shops in the mall will have layaway.

We'll also have a dollar store area where folks can pick up gewgaws for next to nothing and a huge flea market where they can buy and sell NASCAR memorabilia and knick knacks and inexpensive clothing.

The food court will feature fried dough, those onions made into flower shapes and deep fried, and other fried stuff. Of course, folks can bring a picnic if they like. We'd love for them to make a day of it.

We'll also have a 99 cent theatre and show all kinds of movies.

In the center of the mall, we'd have live entertainment on weekends. We'll have both kinds of music, country and western.

In the parking lot, we'd encourage folks to work on their cars and share parts and such like. If your ride won't run, there's a used car lot, and your job is your credit. Also, you can have a tag sale out of the trunk of your car or the bed of your truck for all we care. You can live in your RV in the parking lot if you like.

I think I can make money on this.

Expel Texas from the Union

Word has is that some Texicans are talking secession. That's been tried. Some New England states balked at the War of 1812 and made noises about nullification and secession, but they thought better of it. South Carolina made a fuss about secession in 1832 or thereabouts, but Andrew Jackson blew their arguments out of the water. We even had a bloody war over the issue back in the 1860s. The secessionists lost. Whatever the Founders may have intended with respect to secession or whatever Constitutional argument one might have had in favor of secession the fact is that the issue has been decided in favor of perpetual union.

That's not to say that circumstances might not arise under which secession would be possible. A wekened federal government, widespread sentiment in favor of dissolution of the union, alliances by traitors with foreign powers, or what have you could make secession a reality.

In the case of Texas, I would support its secession. I'd like to see it expelled from the union if it won't secede. Let's amend the Constitution to expel Texas. We should, in all fairness, cede Texas back to Mexico from which we stole it in the 1840s as a token of reparations to that country.

Hide Your Penis or Else

I wonder why the state cares so much about penises. There's just about nothing that gets the state as riled up as allowing photons that bounce off your penis to enter the eyeballs of other people except in rare circumstances, such as in locker rooms and at the doctor's office. And if those photons enter the eyeball of a human not yet 18 years of age, you are a particular target of the state. Even photons from a two dimensional representation of a penis are not permitted to enter eyeballs most of the time. If the penis itself is attached to a juvenile human, woe unto those who behold it.

What's the big deal? Half of us have penises, and the other half surely know what a penis looks like. I don't reckon anyone was ever damaged by the sight of a penis. So what is the state's interest?

It's not just the sight of the penis that the state cares about. It cares about where you put it and who touches it. Why?

I suspect that it's sex. Penises are part of sex, and they must be mystified and subjected to policing. The state would like to control all aspects of sex. Nobody should experience pleasure that it is not either controlled by the state or that does not result in a benefit to the state.

To the extent that sex leads to reproduction, the state gets new subjects. Otherwise, it's just useless pleasure that people can, if the state isn't vigilant, enjoy without state intervention. In a perfect world, the only time anyone would experience sexual pleasure would be incidental to attempted reproduction at times and under circumstances dictated by the state. It may even be possible with technology to render it unpleasureable or even painful some day. In vitro fertilization may render it obsolete and pave the way for total prohibition. This is probably decades away, though.

Already, as far as the state is concerned, the only officially sanctioned sexual activity is vaginal intercourse by heterosexual couples who have been licensed by the state. Everything else is illicit. Within the permitted arrangements, the state can be more or less indifferent to whether the participants take pleasure in their state sanctioned sex because this pleasure will not last very long. It will fade, and the frequency of the act will diminish steadily until most couples are all but asexual. Penises will not be unduly visible even within the homes of married couples.

Ghosts and the Afterlife

A couple of issues that I had been confused about came together this week. Firstly, what happens to us when we die according to my religion? Secondly, why are the ghost hunters on the TV always so damned scared? The ghosts they're hunting can barely manifest themselves let alone do them any harm.

I have always believed that when we die we "rest in the Lord". We cease to exist except in the mind of God until the Resurrection whereupon we exist again. We die, then as if no time at all has passed we rise again in Paradise with everyone else. When I explained this to a coreligionist one time, she asked how that could be if Jesus had promised one of the thieves on the cross that he would be with him that day in Paradise. I was stumped. Did Jesus go to Paradise on Good Friday to get the thief situated? The creeds don't mention it. They have Jesus descending into Hell and then rising with no stop in Paradise.

Having been raised as a fundie, the idea of Jesus in Hell is difficult to reconcile with the concept of Hell as a place of eternal torment. Then again, if we think of Hell as the place of the dead, like Hades, it would make sense for Jesus to visit there and interact with some of the dead. Is there a place of the dead where some aspect of each of us, our souls perhaps, wait for the Resurrection? Or do we believers ascend to Heaven to wait? Is that what Jesus meant when He promised that believers would never die? How would we exist in Heaven or Hell without bodies? What would existence even mean? I'm still drawn to the idea of nonexistence before the Resurrection for the sake of simplicity. Since I reckon that the End of Days won't occur for billions of years, it would be more merciful to the dead for them to sleep in the Lord. Of course, it doesn't make any difference to how we live here and now, does it?

Back to ghosts. I reckon that there are no ghosts. I once heard a preacher argue that there are ghosts but that they're really just demons pretending to be dead people. I suppose if that's true, then ghosts would be scary. If you're scared of ghosts, though, why be a ghost hunter? It seems to me that ghosts are extremely easy to avoid. Most folks have never seen one. I'm scared of grizzly bears. You don't see me traipsing around in grizzly habitat looking for trouble, do you? The ghost hunters should follow my lead.

Is Legal Pot Good for the State?

Lately, I've been hearing arguments about how decriminalization of marijuana would be good for the state. It would allow the state to devote scarce resources to other areas and would constitute a source of tax revenue. These arguments, while true in a sense, are misguided.

First off, police resources are not especially scarce if seat belt check points and undercover airport bathroom surveillance operations are any indicator. The police devoted to pot would probably not be transferred to anything more helpful. And forget about cutting police budgets! How would that be good for the state?

Secondly, the War on Drugs isn't really about stopping drugs. It's about providing an unquestioned rationale for massive programs of surveillance and harassment in poor neighborhoods. It's about providing cops and prosecutors with leverage against suspects in other offenses. It's about creating an atmosphere in which eavesdropping, snitchng, no-knock raids, and other violations of basic rights are tolerated and celebrated by the public.

Thirdly, the tax revenue generated by taxes on drugs would not be enough to make up for the massive infusions of revenue that the public gleefully pays now in order to fight the War on Drugs. The state needs the crisis of drugs to frighten the populace into funding a police state, a bloated prison system, and programs of indoctrination. Won't someone think of the children?!?

Decriminalizing marijuana would be the thin end of the wedge, a dangerous precedent which could lead to calls to decriminalize other substances. The state would place at risk an important source of revenue and power, and, what is worse, would take the risk that demystifying the War on Drugs might lead to further demystification.

Perhaps an argument could be made for decriminalization as a benefit to the state along the lines of public lotteries. In that case, gambling, a terrible evil the state had to combat, became a positive good when controlled by the state. Perhaps one could argue that state run and state controlled marijuana production and sales, with the proceeds going to some benign program such as Head Start or Physical Fitness, would transform pot into a good thing. This would mean no loss of revenue and no loss of power (the state would still have absolute power to interdict non-state sources) and would allow trhe state to be seen as the beneficent provider of pot induced bliss. Everybody wins. The state stays powerful, and the subjects get to smoke pot to help them forget about the state.

I Love Social Conservatives and Dumb People

In a comment to my recent post on the teabaggers, JL Wilson seemed to suggest that I have been too hard on dumb people and social conservatives. I would like to take the opportunity to deny this. I am not hard on dumb people per se, just dumb people who do things that annoy or inconvenience me. In this regard, I am equally hard on smart people who inconvenience and annoy me. Also, I don't have a beef with social conservatives per se; it's the ones who want to force everyone else to adopt their preferences who get me riled up.

In many ways, I am a dumb person. I grew up with my head up my ass in rural North Georgia where I received a fourth rate public education. Once I got out of there, I made plenty of boneheaded blunders and held idiotic opinions for many years. I'm still prone to stupid moves, but I am more comfortable with my opinions nowadays, especially since I have a better sense now of what they're worth than I did when I was younger. I have also taken the time to become better educated. I have become more tolerant of my fellow man and their foibles over the years, and I have a special love for the intellectually challenged. I hate to see them manipulated to act against their own interests, but I recognize that they are probably doing the best they can, bless their hearts.

On the other hand, I reckon it's my duty to speak up when my countrymen of the dimmer persuasion are hell bent on self destruction and get enlisted in the cause of authoritarianism. They don't mean to be authoritarians most of the time; in fact, they often think they're working for freedom because that's what their manipulators have told them.

It also turns out that I'm a social conservative. My personal preferences by and large line up with the socially conservative template. Am I a heterosexual with deep rooted sexual repression? You bet. Am I faithfully monogamous? Yes. Do I like to have a quiet life puttering around the garden and doing wholesome activities? Yes. Do I dress and behave like the whitest white man who ever lived? I do. I'm even an evangelical Christian! I hate rap music, and kids with baggy pants and trucker caps askew annoy me.

The difference between me and the social conservatives whom I criticize is that I don't reckon that my preferences should be enacted into law or otherwise privileged in any way. I like to mind my own business. I want society to evolve naturally and for there to be a free market in culture and ideas. If socially conservative preferences are "superior", they will prevail without the need for social conservatives to enforce them with autos da fe.

I'll even take it a step further. Not only do I tolerate that other people have different preferences, I celebrate and embrace it. It makes me happy. It means that I live in a society that is in some sense free. It seems that many of my fellow social conservatives hate freedom unless it's the freedom to do as they say you should. What's conservative about that? It seems radical to me. Take it to its logical conclusion, and you end up with something like the Taliban.

Easter Life

Easter was pretty nice. We sang in two services, and we botched only one piece, the final movement of Handel's Messiah. Most folks couldn't tell, or they were too kind to mention it.

I got to hear the same Easter sermon twice. The point was that the resurrection and the life aren't something we sit back and wait for; rather, we are to live them now. All in all, it was some pretty good preaching. Two points gave me pause, however.

In the first instance, the pastor went on about atheists and agnostics and how their worldview lacked meaning. He read an excerpt from Bertrand Russell about how we are lumps of impure carbon and water on a speck in space and return to the elements. He remarked that this was depressing. I don't find it depressing at all. It's rather wonderful that the universe is so expansive and that we have our moment in it. If that were all we got, it would be something to be grateful for and to praise God for. It's no more than we deserve, as we Calvinists like to remind ourselves.

Atheists and agnostics are not bereft of meaning. They just endow their lives with meaning based on other irrational metaphysical assumptions than we are famiiar with. We Christians (supposedly) endow our lives with meaning informed by our irrational belief in Jesus Christ as Divine Savior and Lord. It is hard for us to imagine other core assumptions, but our lack of imagination should not make us too quick to charge nonbelievers with nihilism.

My second issue was with the pastor's assertion that death was not part of God's plan for us. How can this be so? How can anything happen that God did not ordain? If God's will is that none should die, then none would die. Is God thwarted in His will? I just don't get the whole Fall and Redemption narrative. I tend to look at the coming of Jesus as God's plan from the beginning. I'm no theologian, though, so what do I know?

Childfree

I had to explain why I don't have children today to the woman at the nail salon and to the hairstylist. I don't usually have to explain it, but these women were aliens who had a hrd time understanding that anyone would voluntarily forego the joys of parenting.

"You don't like children?" each asked in a different accent, one Chinese and the other Ecuadorian. I like them fine, just not enough to want to keep one in my house. I like chimps, too, but I don't want to share living quarters with one.

I didn't have kids because the numbers did not add up for us. The amusement we might have gotten from children did not seem to exceed the value of their direct costs and the opportunity costs they presented. In fact, we were rendered skeptical about the amusement value by the apparent misery of so many of our acquaintances who were parents. Accordingly, the amusement value had to be discounted by a factor that accounted for the uncertainty that it would be realized. This tipped the scales ever further toward the childfree lifestyle.

Other factors that influenced us were the degree to which Mrs Vache Folle's nephews were unbearable ingrates and whiners. We couldn't take a chance on ending up with kids like that.

Also, the creepiness of little children was a consideration.

I suppose if you could get your child at age 5 and up, when creepiness falls off, and could be sure that he or she was not a total douche, we might have considered it.

Do I regret that I never reproduced? It was the logical choice for us. If I have a regret it is that I live in a society that renders having children too costly and too risky.

Tea Bagging

Here's how the wingnut teabagging stunts resemble the Boston Tea Party:

Both involved tea.

Here are some of the ways that they differ:

The Tea Party was a protest of a tax on tea, so dumping tea was pretty much right on point, whereas the tea baggers don't seem to have much of an idea of what they're protesting.

The Tea Partiers were subject to the tax on tea, whereas the tea baggers are probably going to get tax cuts. They seem to be protesting tax increases for their betters who make more than $250K.

The Tea Partiers had a legitimate beef in that the tea tax was imposed upon them without their having any representation in Parliament, whereas the tea baggers all had a chance to elect Congresscritters and are represented.

The Tea Partiers were committing a crime and exposing themselves to prosecution for their political convictions, whereas the tea partiers are just out on a lark.

If your ancestor was a Tea Partier you might brag about it, whereas if your idiot brother in law is a tea bagger you'd be ashamed.

The Tea Partiers would be mortified if they knew that their protest was being demeaned in this way by its association with wingnuttery.

Speaking of Pantloads

Why would anyone pay any heed to Newt Gingrich? The man is an archetypal douchebag. He was a mediocre academic at a fourth rate state college who convinced the slack jawed yokels in his district in Georgia to send him to Congress. It is evidence of the GOP's bankruptcy that he became the Speaker of the House, arguably the least effective ever. He resigned in disgrace.

He has nothing to say of any interest to anyone. He is an idiot.

By the way, when he scoffed at President Obama's goal of eliminating nukes, he could as easily have scoffed at GOP God Ronald Reagan who espoused the self same goal back when the nukes were moments from launch.

I grew up with hundreds of nuclear missiles aimed at me. It was always ten minutes to the end of the frakking world. That sucked. A world without nukes would be wonderful. A world without Newts would also be nice.

Pantloads on the Moon

When the astronauts walked on the moon, they walked around with pantloads of shit. There was no toilet on the spacecraft. Their spacesuits were their toilets. Kind of takes the shine off the whole enterprise.

I don't recall ever hearing anything about the astronaut's having to shit themselves, and I was an avid follower of the space program. Come to think of it, the logistics of crapping never came up.

Raised Beds Installed

I built my raised beds with some pressure treated lumber, and now I have to fill them up with silt and soil to get them ready for planting. They are in the sunniest spot in the yard, so I have high hopes for the garden. I aim to plant maters, squash, string beans, peas, cucumbers, spinach, four kinds of lettuce, cabbage, scallions, a variety of herbs, and I don't know what else. There will be salads at the Folle house this summer.

With the discovery of Fleisher's free range, organic, grass fed meat and the planting of a salad garden, I reckon we'll be grilling and munching on raw veggies just about every evening when the weather turns. So far the spring has been too damned cold and wet for my liking, although Palm Sunday was quite nice.

David Frum is a Dumbass

Bill Maher brings on conservative "intellectuals" and lets them speak their minds. Most recently, he had on David Frum who kept going on and on about how going green comes with a price. It never seemed to occur to him that not going green also comes with a price. Going green will mitigate certain potential environmental catastrophes which, if unmitigated, will be plenty costly. Yes, David going green is not free, but not going green is not free, either.

He was also a douche about nuclear power and framed the debate about whether to use nuclear power as "if you have concerns about nuclear power, you are not serious about the environment". I have concerns about nuclear power. I want the nuclear power plants to be situated far away from where I live and work in case something goes wrong. Maybe David Frum would like a nuclear power plant in his back yard. I would not. I'm not saying we shouldn't go nuclear. I'm just saying that we should go nuclear away from population centers. We could run wires from them to transmit electricity to where it's wanted, and if they melt down relatively few folks will be injured.

Anyway, that's all David Frum had to contribute except that he claimed that religious nuts are also totally pragmatic about worldly issues. I bet he doesn't know any fundie wingnuts, because if he did, he'd know better than to make a claim like that.

FEMA Camps

I am getting sick and tired of wingnuts' complaining about supposed "FEMA Camps". First off, they're not "camps"; they're fully equipped re-education centers with all the amenities of a regular college campus, only with better security. They have state of the art treatment facilities for all the latest mental disorders from the yet to be published DSM, such as Freeperism and Being Jonah Goldberg.

Treason? Now?

The wingnuts are getting wingnuttier by the minute. The country is ruled by a political party that is only slightly ideologically different from their own preferred party, and they're talking about taking up arms. Detention without trial? No problemo. Perpetual pointless war? Down with that. More oversight of Walll Street? Get your rifle, Cletis, the country is gone to hell!

As far as I can tell, the differences between the GOP and the Democratic Party amount to differences in what they choose to regulate (nothing is out of bounds for either party) and whom they choose to benefit (they both redistribute like crazy). And it happens that at this moment in history the GOP is full of incompetent mulletheads. And to make things worse for them the conservative intelligentsia doesn't have the intellectual wattage to run a night light.

A pox on them all, say I; provided, however, that I prefer to be on the receiving end of redistributions (as long as they're inevitable, why not?), I don't want fundie loons to have much of a say about how I live my life, and I prefer competence to incompetence (it costs less).

That said, treason is as American as apple pie, so the wingnuts are just enacting the American tradition, albeit in an armchair fashion. Washington and Jefferson, both traitors, have huge monuments in the capital and their faces carved into Mount Rushmore. Stone Mountain has a monstrous carving of revered traitors Lee, Davis and some other guy, and their horses, too.

Mos Def Serves Chris Hitchens

Here's how I remember an exchange among Christopher Hitchens, Salman Rushdie, and Mos Def on "Real Time" the other day:

SR: I hope Obama turns out not to be a pussy.
CH: I hope he gets serious about the threat of a nuclear armed Iran.
MD: If we're going to get all preachy about nonproliferation, perhaps we should get our own house in order and disband the nuclear club. Nobody should have nukes.
CH: (His trousers darkening with urine stains) I'm glad you realize the Iranians are lying about their intentions, silly Negro with your silly nom de guerre. Muslim extremists are the only people to have declared that they want nukes so they can use them.
SR: Hezbollah has a mushroom cloud on its flag.
MD: America has actuallly used nukes and caused a huge humanitarian crisis.
CH: Why won't you listen to the wog next to you who is smart enough to agree with me. The Muslims want to kill me.

It went something like that. I expected Maher to jump in and call bullshit at some point, but he never did. Mos Def held his own, most definitely. He had convictions on his side whereas Hitchens had only his trademark smarminess.

Update on Jesse Lou Baggett

Mr Baggett seems to be recovering from his vestibular disease. He's off the steroids, so I'm hoping that his constant urinating will stop soon or that he'll at least have more time to go outside before he unloads.

He's back to stalking us when he wants something, eg a walk, pork. He's his old beggar self again. He's a little slower and less bright eyed and bushy tailed than before, but I no longer fear that death is immanent.

He's eating again, and that's a huge relief. He's milking our sympathy for all it's worth, too. He refused to eat anything at first except sausages and lamb. Then the dog walker discovered that he would eat Friskie's turkey and giblets cat food. When I ran out of cat food, I discovered that he would eat sardines. When I ran out of sardines, I discovered that, if he got hungry enough, he'd eat his damned dry dog food just like before he was sick.

It's good to have my friend back.

Fear

It turns out that I made a difference in the life of a child.

Last Sunday while I was waiting to rehearse before the service, a woman came in with her three year old daughter. They approached me, and the woman said that my peformance in a church event some weeks ago when I had dressed in drag and worn a purple wig had traumatized her daughter. The child had been having nightmares, and the mother wanted the child to see me as an ordinary man in the hope that this would console her. The girl could hardly look at me, so I don't know if my ordinary appearance was any consolation to her.

It was not my intent to frighten children. My get up was supposed to be comical, and it seemed so to the vast majority of the audience. Scaring a kid was a bonus.

You never know what will freak out a kid. My little sister feared an animatronic clown at Euclid Beach amusement park. Other clowns have always been OK. Daddy long leg spiders also scared the hell out of her. This fear persisted until her teens as frequent experiments I performed over the years proved. She never seemed to become desensitized no matter how many of the spiders I exposed her to. I tried to help, but she is an ingrate.

Daddy long legs do not scare me, but every other spider does. Not just the deadly ones. All of them. I also maintain the superstition that it is bad luck to kill a spider, so I'm in a fix. I don't know how I acquired arachnophobia, because it's been with me as long as I can remember. It's not so bad that I can't go outside and garden or anything. I just go into spasms if I get a spider on me. I wear gloves when I dig so the eight legged bastards can't bite me. I will never go to Australia, though, because of the deadly spiders. That and the eternal plane ride.

I confess that it is sometimes fun to scare kids. But I reckon it's good for them to be desensitized to various frightening circumstances, and I take pleasure in helping others. My nephews will one day thank me for desensitizing them to the fear of monsters in closets and under beds. It's not a monster; it's your uncle! Fear becomes hilarity. That's how I saw it anyway. I don't care what their therapist says. She wasn't there.

I took Mrs Vache Folle's two younger nephews on the haunted house ride at Rye Playland when they were way too young for it to be appropriate. I made up for this by pretending to be terrified myself and expressing the anxiety that we were to be killed and eaten at any moment. I reckoned my own apparent fear would distract the boys, but it seemed to heighten the scariness of the ride for them. They can thank me for teaching them that rides like that can't really hurt you, but they haven't yet. Again, I am stricken with the ingratitude of some people.

May the Rescue Plan Succeed

Which is more to be feared? Bankers who own the government, or a government that owns banks? I have heard it argued that bankers ought to own banks since they are motivated by and regulated by profit, but this does not seem to have been the case for some time now.

Am I less free now that the government has stepped in to rescue the economy? I think not. Whatever freedom I enjoy has always been at the sufferance of the sovereign. Whatever it is convenient at the moment for the sovereign to regulate, it regulates. If it is inconvenient to the sovereign or a matter of indifference to it, I am "free" to act and think and speak in the fields the sovereign ignores. For the moment.

If the economy is "rescued", I will be better off than if it is allowed or caused to descend completely into the shitter. I am inclined to hope for success for the rescue plan. Its failure may see me living under a bridge.

Selfless and Stateless

My issue with the state is that I would prefer to live under organizing principles that are not predicated on violence. I differ with some other advocates of statelessness in that I reserve no special reverence for property rights. These are also predicated on violence inasmuch as they must be enforced by states or private defense agencies.

I am also not an advocate of individualism or selfishness. Rather, the perfect society in my view would be characterized by selflessness and love.

How do we (assuming you agree with me) get to the selfless, stateless society? Is it necessary to embrace the total state in order to destroy it? Because man has not yet been transformed into a perfectly loving and selfless being, what intermediate stages must we endure on the path to utopia?

Bible Verses that Baffle

The emergency back up preacher delivered a sernon on Jesus as "The VIne". Sure enough, he took it too far and asked what Jesus meant when he talked about bearing "fruit". As I see it, the point is that we as branches bear fruit, i.e. have value and efficacy, only when we are attached to the vine. There's no need to inquire about what kind of fruit and whether it's tart or sweet.

What the preacher didn't talk about from the Biblical passage where Jesus likened himself to the vine was the part where Jesus promised that if we abide in him we can ask for anything and get it. I've never heard a plausible explanation about what this is supposed to mean. It seems pretty straightforward. Abide in Jesus, ask for anything you want, and you'll get it. Also, there are a number of verses where Jesus says very similar things about how anything is possible with faith and about how God, who loves us more than any earthly father, will give us anything we want. Finally, Jesus promises that whosoever lives and believes in him will never die.

I struggle with these promises. If the explanation is that abiding in Jesus means that we want only what God wills, ie whatever in fact happens, then why didn't Jesus just say that? Maybe nobody has had enough faith to cheat death or move mountains. Maybe we just aren't abiding hard enough to get our wishes fulfilled.

Can the faithful alter reality itself if their faith is strong enough?

Biblical Metaphors

The sermon on Sunday was about how Jesus is the Good Shepherd and how we are like sheep. This metaphor works to make the points that Jesus knows his own and his own know him, that he takes care of us, that he seeks us out when we go astray.

But I don't think it should be taken too much further. I don't want to get into how we sheep might get fleeced or slaughtered. I don't reckon Jesus was going there when he compared himself to a shepherd. He never mentioned having a border collie.

The theme of the sermons in Lent revolves around the names and metaphors that Jesus used for himself. Many of these, such as the shepherd, the gate, the way, the light, the vine, the door are useful until you take them too far. Jesus is like each of these things in some ways, but not in all ways. Jesus is like a vine in that he bears metaphorical fruit, but he is not like a vine in that he does not engage in photosynthesis, nor is he subject to fungal attack on his roots. Jesus is the light in that he enlightens us, but he does not travel at light speed and does not have the characteristics of both a particle and a wave.

You see where I'm going here? You have to make interpretive choices when you read the Bible because of all the allegory, poetry, parables, metaphors and other literary devices. You can't, as I've heard some claim, take the Bible "just as it is" with no interpretation. Well, you can, but it won't make any sense.

BSG Ends in an Unbelievable Way

The final episode of Battlestar Galactica ended on a weird note. The 38,000 surviving humans landed on what is clearly Earth around 150,000 years ago. They spread themselves over the globe and went native and presumably interbred with the archaic human population they found there.

What are the odds of humanity's evolving twice on two separate worlds? Wouldn't the 38,000 souls show up in our gene pool and skew the evidence of genetic diversity? Wouldn't signs of agriculture and metallurgy from 150,000 years ago have turned up? What about the human presence in Australia and the Americas so long ago?

I can believe in Cylons and faster than light travel, but it all fell apart for me in that last episode. What the frak?

Toxic Assets

I am willing to buy up all the toxic assets held by financial institutions on the following terms:

A) The federal government has to front me the money.
B) I don't have to pay back the government until I sell the assets.
C) If I lose money on any of the assets, I don't have to pay back the difference.
D) If I make money on any of the assets, I get to keep it.

Isn't that fair for the man who is offering to save the banking industry?

Jesse Lou Baggett is a Sick Puppy

Jesse's not in hospital any more. We picked him up Saturday evening. He is able to walk albeit like a drunk. He drinks a lot and pees even more, but he won't eat anything. He turns his nose up at all his favorites. I may need to score some pot for him and give him a shotgun. That's what friends do. He'd do it for me if he knew how to smoke.

His eyes aren't jiggling like they were. He just looks sad. He spoke yesterday for the first time in a week, and I take this as a positive sign. He also tried to get up on his favorite sofa instead of just passing out on the floor. I pray that this signifies progress.

Jesse has been my friend for almost 10 years and has lived with me for 8 years. He is a damned fine dog considering his background as an urban stray. So he mangled a couple of cats in his day? Haven't we all done things in our youth that we're sorry for? And that shitzu had it coming.

We don't have an emergency back up dog since Trudy died several years ago, so both the boys are indispensable.

What's Better Than a Gold Medal at the Special Olympics?

Not being retarded.

I made the mistake of telling this joke to my then 8 year old nephew who retold it in my presence to his feebleminded great uncle. I was very uncomfortable when this happened, and my brother seemed to take great delight in this. "Hey Uncle Floyd! What's better than an Olympic Gold Medal?", asked the kid. "What?" replied Floyd. "Not being retarded!!" The kid laughed, so Floyd laughed, too. Nobody laughed more than my brother.

Leter I realized that neither the kid nor Floyd had a clue about the joke's meaning. And the kid's mangled version of the joke seemed to me to be even funnier for some reason. If I had to choose between an Olympic Gold Medal and not being retarded, I'd go with the latter. Who wouldn't?

Special Olympics

When President Obama likened himself to a Special Olympian on Jay Leno, it never occurred to me that anyone would take offense and that the drooling heads on CNN would be all over it. If I were a Special Olympian, I would be proud that President Obama would characterize his efforts to raise his level of bowling proficiency by practicing as akin to the efforts of Special Olympians. That's if they had the sense to understand what he was saying, which I'm pretty sure they don't. But them as are not feebleminded and who have loved ones who are special should have been proud for them.

Seriously, what was offensive about President Obama's remark? The analogy was spot on. Moreover, he was comparing himself to the Special people. What kind of insult is that? Is it that he is still not much of a bowler even though he tries that offends the sensiblities of those whose business it is to get offended on behalf of the Special? That's just stupid. Special Olympians are by and large not very good athletes, but the point is that they try and should be honored for trying despite the challenges they face.

Have you ever been to the Special Olympics? I have. They're great. The participants are wonderful people, and if they were capable of understanding what President Obama meant, they would chastise their spokespeople for being wankers.

Travel

On my way home from Chicago yesterday, my pack of baby wipes was mistaken for a threat by the Transportation Security Administration, so my bag was searched. The day before, some TSA wankers in Stewart came into the gate area and demanded that a woman submit her coffee, which she had just purchased at the Euro Cafe by the gate, to a test for chemical agents. Do they have any idea how ridiculous this nonsense makes them appear? I don't carry toiletries any more just so I don't have to go through the indignity of having some TSA bureaucrat check to make sure I have less than 3 ounces of shampoo in a one quart zip lock bag. I note that the threat level is orange, so I have adjusted my routine accordingly.

I had the good fortune of sitting in first class for one leg of the journey home. First class means that you are treated as a human being with some modicum of dignity and get to sit in a seat in which an ordinary human body actually fits. And there's free booze.

The airport in Philly is as seedy as it gets. The toilets are filthy. There was a toilet at O'Hare, though, that took the prize for dysfunctionality. So much of the commode was taken up with an automated dispenser of a plastic seat cover that one's turd production apparatus was barely situated over the turd disposal area. And forget about peeing at the same time. The urination production apparatus was left suspended in space over one's trousers and feet.

Luckliy, I flew in and out of Stewart, the small regional airport just 25 miles from my house. I was able to jump in my car parked 100 yards from the terminal and drive home in about a half hour. Had I used Newark or La Guardia, it would have taken 30 minutes to find my car and a couple of hours to drive home.

A Post About Nothing

I haven't posted much lately because I've got nothing. Just a few random observations of no interest to anyone. Wait, that's what my blog is for!

Did you ever notice that the Ghost Hunters are always scared shitless of ghosts? Why is that? Ghosts can barely manage to manifest themselves in the slightest and subtlest ways, so I'm pretty sure they can't harm you. Besides, shouldn't they be happy to find a ghost, what with being ghost hunters and all?

I am addicted to "The Wire". In honor of that show, I have added liberal usage of the words motherfucker and cocksucker to my vocabulary. I also am drawn to "Big Love". It's creepy, but it sucks you in. "Battlestar Galactica" is ending. How will I go on?

My dog Jesse has vestibulitis and is in the hospital. He's getting on in years, so we can look forward to a period of prolonged illnesses and incontinence. It still won't make us glad to see him go.

My second cousin invited me to his wedding. I reckon he had to, what with my living so close by. I reckon the best gift I can give is to decline the invitation and make room for somebody he and his bride to be actually know and like.

I just finished Spencer Wells' "Journey of Man". I like the subject matter, how polymorphisms on the nonrecombinant portion of the Y chromosome can be used to make inferences about human migration, but he keeps using an annoying soup analogy that just doesn't work for me. Genetic polymorphisms are not very much like soup recipes, so the soup analogy isn't all that helpful. Aside from that, it's a good read. Now I'm on Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos" or some such title. It makes sense to me, Mr Mathematical Retard, and is enjoyable to read.

Mrs Vache Folle and I are making slow but steady progress on our Rosetta Stone Spanish lessons. The program has a hard time accepting her voice, even when her pronunciation is spot on. I have no such difficulty. I try to talk like the announcers on Telemundo. It seems to work.

Preparation for Good Friday and Easter in choir is freaking me out. The other tenors never show up for practice so I have to carry the whole section, and I suck at reading music and keeping time. Our recently departed director was particularly good at helping me figure out my part. She understood that she could not underestimate my abilities.

I've been working a lot. That's good news for the bank account, but it really cuts into my sitting around time.

I got a Blackberry, a hand me down from one of Mrs VF's former co-workers. I actually use it to read e-mail and get on the internet. I never used a cell phone before except in emergencies.

Now posterity will know what I was up to at this point in spacetime.

Andy Breitbart Makes People Stupid by Osmosis

On Real Time, some wanker by the name of Andy Breitbart represented conservatives and Republicans. He spent almost the entire time whining about how he was afraid to say anything because it might be construed as racist. The rest of the time he spent denying that Rush Limbaugh is racist. He came off as an idiot. Not all conservatives who appear on Real Time are so transparently stupid, and I reckon he won;t be back on the show any time real soon. Bill Maher doesn't make a habit of booking the dumbest people he can on the right. He wants an interesting show and not simply for some fool like Breitbart to embarrass himself.

At first I felt a little sorry for the guy, but he was such a douche that empathy wore off within a minute or so. I just wanted him to go away.

Note to self. The name Breitbart is code for stupidity, so don't waste any time on anything he has written or where he appears. If anyone starts a sentence with "Andy Breitbart says..." feel free to stop listening.

Thousands of Domestic Terrorists Per Chuck Norris

Chuck Norris claims that there is a large domestic terrorist network ready to overthrow the United States: http://www.examiner.com/x-2071-DC-Special-Interests-Examiner~y2009m3d9-Chuck-Norris-claims-thousands-of-right-wing-cell-groups-exist-and-will-rebel-against-US-government

I don't suppose any of them would squawk if they were indefinitely detained without charges or trial, since those were the gnarly powers they once thought the president of the US should have. Back when he was a white dude. Just a few months ago as a matter of fact.

Who are these domestic terrorists? Folks making over $250K pissed about their taxes going up? We'll soon find out when they have a giant conference call on the 13th!

The Snow is Gone

Except for the massive piles made by the plow, the snow is all gone. The ice on the pond is over half melted. Alas, one of our koi was found dead. The fate of the others is not yet known for they remain under what's left of the ice. The yard has been deformed by the series of freezes and thaws this winter, and I don't know if it will revert to its previous state once the temperature settles above freezing. If not, I'll have to fill in some of the depressions with my new abundant supply of silt in the pond.

My efforts to shore up the pond by the weir paid off, but the excess water found other unapproved outlets. The damage is much less than in years past, but more rocks will have to be mined from the mountainside and installed at the water's edge.

Mrs Vache Folle and I removed 7 grocery sacks of dog feces from the yard this weekend. Ordinarily, we keep the yard clear of fecal matter in a weekly "treasure hunt", but snow on snow on snow concealed the treasure until the recent thaw.

The yard is a soggy mess, so Jasper and Jesse have been tracking in mud. We can't seem to impress on them the importance of wiping their paws.

I see that there is a lot of cleaning up to be done what with leaves and sticks and other detritus all over the place. The deer ate a few of our plants, most notably the rhodies, but we are hopeful that they will grow new leaves. We tried to distract them with corn, but there's only so much corn you can put out. The pond overflow damage cost us a couple of perennials.

My scheme to terrace the back of the pond worked fairly well, and erosion from the mountainside was limited.

I aim to drag the deck furniture out of the shed this weekend. This action will insure that there will be at least one more snowstorm.

The New GOP Platform

I understand that the GOP is rooting for our entry into a full blown postapocalyptic dystopia. Apparently, they figure that's the only environment in which they can thrive or, failing that, in which their agenda will have some traction. I reckon they're right as long as they are still in thrall to the Christianist fascist part of their coalition.

If civilization collapses, the family will be strengthened. It will have to be stronger because folks will have to join together in lineages to survive.

Religion, or at least some kinds of religion, will be more influential as folks turn to God or gods to pray for salvation from starvation or zombie invasion.

Science, that pesky obstacle, will be set back as we enter a new Dark Age or as the wingnuts call it "The Good Old Days". Stem cell research won't be an issue because... what's a stem cell? Evolution won't be taught because nothing will be taught except Bible stories. Eventuially these will be taught from memory because reading will fall out of favor.

Liberal media? No problem. All news will be delivered from pulpits and by town criers and gossip.

Abortion? Nobody will know how to perform one. On the down side, about a quarter of women will die in childbirth and a quarter of the children will die before they are one year old.

Medical care will be universally unavailable.

Taxes will be low, mainly because incomes will be low. Most of us will simply work for our feudal warlords 60% of the time in lieu of paying taxes.

Limbaugh is the Real King of the GOP

Rush Limbaugh is a big giant douche who lacks any redeeming social value. He makes the stupid people who listen to him even stupider.

And he is what passes for the "intelligentsia" in the GOP.

This and That

I was wrong in my wishful prediction that some anomalous early appearances by some species of birds presaged an early spring. Way wrong. There's nigh on a foot of snow on the ground, and it's in the single digits in temperature.

On the plus side of the ledger, I have been eating my grass fed, free range meat from Fleischer's and enjoying it more than I can describe. The pork tastes like pork tasted when I was a kid on the farm. The beef is flavorful and rich. The chicken tastes delicious. I haven't tried the lamb yet, but I have high hopes based on experience so far. After eating the pork chops we prepared last Friday, I almost wept for joy.

Mrs Vache Folle found an interesting recipe for pesto in a magazine, and we tried it Sunday. Instead of basil and pine nuts, you use baby spinach and walnuts. It's worth a try.

I've been seeing lots of turkey vultures lately, perhaps drawn to the thawing casualties of winter. Also, red tailed hawks occasionally appear in the tree line along the back meadow. Some critter has been stealing the woodpecker cakes as fast as we can put them out. I suspect a coon.

Speaking of woodpeckers, we have had three species (downy, hairy, red bellied) so far. I have yet to tempt a pileated woodpecker to our place, although I have seen one just south of here.

I Got a Dell

I suppose I should count myself lucky that I got nigh on 8 years out of my Compaq. Looking back, I don't know what I was thinking buying a computer with 256 MB of memory. A couple of years ago, I added an additional 256 MB, but when I installed my Rosetta Stone language program, I killed the Presario. Now I have a Dell with 3 GB and new Office software. Yeehah! Things are fast again.

I need a computer for work as well as screwing around, and I would like to have a fast one for both business and pleasure. I seem to have gotten my wish with this Dell Studio machine.

Rosetta Stone actually has a voice recognition feature that didn't work on the Presario. Who knew? My only anxiety with the new machine is Windows Vista.

Well, I did my patriotic duty and consumed. Let's see if it doesn't ripple through the economy and turn it around.

Women's Work

In an interesting post at Shakesville about unpaid carework by young women http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/02/unfair-burdens.html Shaker M points out that women's carework often involves difficult to quantify services like remembering birthdays and such like. Mrs Vache Folle is in charge of this in our household, and I suppose I should appreciate it. But. to be honest, I just don't care enough about birthdays to keep track of them. If Mrs VF stopped doing it, I definitely would not pick up the slack. We'd just be birthday forgetters if it were up to me.

The other carework described in the post can probably not be dispensed with, but I reckon the sexes could meet each other halfway. Men could help out more, and women could lower their standards.

What I'm Sacrificing for Lent

Probably nothing. Pre-Lent Vache will almost certainly resolve to lay off the alcohol, eschew gluttony and sloth, and be an all around better and healthier person. Lenten Vache will have other ideas. Pre-Lent Vache is a lot like morning Vache, full of promise and resolution, and Lenten Vache will be like evening Vache who reckons morning Vache can stuff it. In fact, says evening Vache, he reckons that the best time to hit the gym would be early in the morning after a night of winebibbing. We'll just see about that, says morning Vache.

Is Our Pastor Agnostic?

Yesterday was the last of the "Doubt" series of sermons. It was supposed to be about seeing clues for the existence of God in nature, but so much time was taken up with extra music for the departing Music Director's last service that the preacher cut it short (he is loathe to do that). I don't know what the longer version was like, but this one was pretty good. The preacher went all Calvin on us and reminded us that we believe because we were predestined to belief, that our belief is a gift from God. We're lucky to believe, he said.

Right on. I'd take it even further. There's no way to persuade anyone of our beliefs, and they are not susceptible to proof. We tend to see God's hand in the wonders of the universe and the findings of science because we already believe. If we didn't believe, looking at nature wouldn't persuade us. And the universe doesn't tell us much so far about God and His plans. Rather, we tend to see facts about the world as confirmations of things we already believe.

I'm agnostic because I acknowledge that my Christian beliefs aren't provable. Although the preacher probably wouldn't out himself as an agnostic, he's probably a Christian agnostic, too.

Ancestors of Quality

When I reconstruct my family history, I'm going to go about it a little differently this time. I'm going to be a lot more skeptical of other people's research especially if it points to connections with people of quality.

You have to go back over seven generations in my family tree to find anyone even close to being an aristocrat. My ancestor Thomas Dillard was a Virginia planter and a Colonel of militia. He was a vestryman of the church and a respectable gentleman all around. He pulled up stakes in the 1780s and moved to what would become Tennessee. He died there, and I had the misfortune to be descended from one of his minor sons. The older children were already set up in life and did well. The minors? Not so much. My branch of the family descended into the yeomanry and at last into the working class thanks, in part, to some ill timed premature deaths.

I used to get excited to find people of quality in my ancestry, but now I take more delight in finding that I am the scion of slack jawed yokeldom for the most part. This enables me to feel less ashamed of my ancestors as slavekeepers and Indian murderers and evildoers, as the quality were apt to be when you really think about it.

I have royal ancestors as it turns out. Who doesn't? My royal connections were mostly bastards, and that takes some of the sting out of being descended from the leaders of various criminal syndicates in the Middle Ages. With luck, some of my royal connections will turn out to be fables.

Lost Family History

For over ten years, I have been meticulously recording genealogical data on Family Tree Maker software. Yesterday, when I went to open it to find something out for a distant cousin, I discovered that it was missing. There was still a file Family Tree Maker but it was empty. No data, no program, nothing. I can't figure out what happened, and I wish I had backed the damned thing up in the last five years.

It's Not Socialism if a Republican Does It

My Republican conspecifics at the office have come full circle. I have heard them many times remark that Jimmy Carter messed up the economy and that Ronald Reagan fixed it. Now, however, they are saying that the federal government has no impact on the economy. Bush and the GOP didn't screw up the economy,see, and Obama can't do anything to fix it. This is totally different from the Carter/Reagan scenario somehow.

I lived through the Carter and Reagan years, and I was under the impression that Reagan stimulated the economy with tax cuts and deficit spending. And Reagan is the Republican God. The current stimulus has fewer tax cuts, and way fewer perks for the "supply side" (rich people), but it's basically the same trick as far as I can tell.

Of course, it may well be that the recession in the Carter and Reagan years would have fixed itself and that the Reagan stimulus didn't do anything to help. If that's the case now for Republicans, I reckon the apotheosis of Reagan should be rescinded.

Fleischer's of Kingston

I drove all the way to Kingston (a little over 50 miles) to check out Fleischer's, a butcher shop that carries only free range, grass fed meats from local farms. I bought $250 worth of pork (not the other white meat kind, but dark and marbled pork like grandpaw used to raise), beef, chicken, and lamb. The beef came in steaks, ground, and in stew chunks. The pork came in loin, chops, sausage and kielbasa. The supply I laid in should last about three weeks. The butcher said he'd be glad to deliver my order if it was $250 or more, and I might just take him up on that except that Kingston is nice to visit, and I like to see the meat before I buy it.

Fleischer's has everything you could want, and they have a device that freezes your meat instantly if you want it frozen. The service was great, and the shop was clean. I haven't tasted the meat yet, but I'm pretty sure it will be fabulous.

Strange Sermon

Our pastor preached on Sunday in response to the assertion "You can't take the Bible literally". I was interested to find out whether he would admit that, in many cases, you can't take the Bible literally. A lot of it is poetry, allegory, metaphor and what have you and was never meant to be taken literally. If Jesus said "I am the door", he didn't really mean he was a door. He was, rather, like a door in some way. The prophets' visions are mostly allegorical.

The preacher didn't really address the question. He argued that Scripture was reliable in three ways (historically, personally and purposefully) and used the Gospel of Luke as an example. Luke is clearly historical in nature and not merely legendary, and the preacher seemed to imply that this meant everything in Luke was, therefore, true and that since Luke was true, the rest of the Bible was true. Or maybe he didn't mean to imply these things at all. The literalists in the congregation would have no argument with the sermon, and the non-literalists among us could accept the sermon as well as long as we didn't push the issue. It was kind of pointless except for the admonition for Christians to stay in the deep end of the pool and not to get wrapped up in small differences of opinion.

I don't care if other people are literalists mainly because it shouldn't have any practical impact on how we live our lives or treat one another. Authoritarians tend to be literalists in my experience but there is no reason that a literalist has to be an authoritarian. What difference does it make, for example, whether Jonah was ever really inside a great fish? Or if someone really believes in the Deluge? As long as they love God and their conspecifics, there's no issue as far as I'm concerned.

I once had a discussion with a literalist at church in which I proposed that I had the authority to interpret Scripture in accordance with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, whereas he argued that such a stance would permit too much freedom and undermine authority. I suspected that he didn't really believe in the Holy Spirit. I really believe in the Holy Spirit, that it dwells within me, and that it is responsible for transforming my life and guiding me in my spiritual journey. I trust in the power of the Spirit more than in any authority.

The best part of the sermon was a mangled John Calvin quote: "If you build a man a fire, you warm him for an evening. If you set a man on fire, you warm him for the rest of his life." The bass behind me muttered: "About 15 minutes, I'd say."

Early Birds

I don't know if it signifies, but I have had a number of spring and summer birds already at the feeder. Cowbirds showed up a couple of weeks ago instead of mid-March as has been usual. This weekend, I had a goldfinch, redwinged blackbirds, and a common grackle weeks before usual.

I choose to delude myself that these visitations are signs of an early spring.

Rebranding the Religious Right

I heard that the religious right doesn't want to be called that any longer. They prefer to be called "socially conservative evangelicals". Religious right has taken on a pejorative connotation and is associated with fascism.

It was the conduct and rhetoric of the religious right that disgraced the name. Rebranding isn't going to help. "Socially Conservative Evangelicals" will in short order suffer the same pejoration and associations with fascism and craziness. This is because the SCEs are fascists and nutcases.

I reckon they should embrace their fascism and run with it. A little truth in advertising is in order. I would go with "Christofascist". Or they might pick up on the neologism "Christianist" to describe themselves.

Losing a Teacher

Our polymath choir director is leaving at the end of the month to do something else. I am very sorry to see her go as it is a joy to make music with her, but I affirm her discernment of how the Spirit is moving her. She aims to peform more widely, and this will be a blessing to anyone privileged to hear her.

I haven't heard anything about a search to replace her, and I suspect that we won't have a choir director until next fall at the earliest. We muddled through during the incumbent's sabbatical with volunteers from the choir, and that was OK for our regular church services. I don't reckon we'll be doing a complicated recital for Good Friday this year or anything special for Easter. That's a disappointment for me since I especially liked the challenging pieces that we did for special occasions.

I don't see how we can get anyone in the incumbent's league to replace her. She was patient, good humored and kind. She was an incredible teacher who got performances out of us that were far beyond what you'd expect given our level of talent. I was lucky to have sung and played for her.

The choir is what keeps me involved with church. It's my principal activity and contribution to the church. If it falls apart, I would be tempted to find another church with a decent choir.

Republics Always Devolve Into Dictatorships, Except When They Don't

Mrs Vache Folle got me the DVD set of "I, Claudius" for my birthday, and I watched the whole thing already. I also watched the first season of "Rome" again and started reading both Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" and Suetonius's "Twelve Emperors". My bathroom book is Meacham's bio of Andrew Jackson "American Lion".

Is it just me or do the deaths of the Roman and American republics look a lot alike? In each case, a strong executive harnessed the popular will and overrode the institutions set up as checks and balances. A bonus question: Were the Praetorian Guard and the Legions better at selecting the executive than the American electorate (setting aside Caligula and GW Bush)?

Chuck Todd is a Dumbass

Because it was on every channel, I caught a little of President Obama's press conference the other day. Unfortunately, I caught the part where Chuck Todd, apparently an economic illiterate, asked the president why he wanted to stimulate consumer spending when consumer spending got us into our economic fix in the first place. The president acknowledged that Americans' savings rate had been low but pointed out that the present crisis was not one in which we could be overly concerned about the savings rate. In my view, Todd's perspective would be analogous to denying a patient a transfusion because he had been careless with his blood in the past.

Demand fuels the economy. The stimulus is designed, in theory, to increase overall demand in the economy with government spending until indvidual consumer demand increases. Individuals are cutting back on spending because they are worried about their jobs, because their wealth in the form of real estate and other investments has diminished, or because they are jobless. The economy slows down, and thrift is imposed on us by our circumstances. The personal savings rate is way up, but this is not a good thing in the current context.

Why weren't Americans thriftier during the last twenty years? One reason, in my view, is that the income of workers did not keep up with inflation, so there was less left over after the bills were paid. Others who might have had more savings saw their wealth in the form of realty and stocks rise precipitously such that they did not feel the need to set as much aside. I don't really see the relatively low savings rate as some kind of moral failure on the part of the American people.

Stuff I'm Quitting

I'm boycotting Kellogg's because of their mistreatment of Michael Phelps. So he smokes pot? What of it? Doesn't his pot smoking make his achievements all the more remarkable? By dropping their sponsorship of Phelps, Kellogg's is essentially admitting that it was the pot and not their nutritious cereals which propelled Phelps to glory. I urge everyone to boycott Kellogg's and to let them know what we think of their sanctimonius prattery.

I'm quitting beef that isn't free range and grass fed or pork that isn't free range and feeding on mace. I aim to increase my ratio of Omega 3s to Omega 6s, and to do this I must avoid factory farmed meat. It's going to be inconvenient, but I'm just not going to support factory farming with my consumer dollars any longer. In the interim, I'm eating more fish, lamb and duck.

I'm still off the TV news and glad of it. The only news I watch now is Telemundo, and that's just because I'm trying to learn Spanish. Once I start to understand it, I'll quit that, too.

Week in Review

I got home early on Friday and found two red foxes exploring the back yard. One of them was practically on the deck and seemed interested in one of Jasper's toys that had been buried in the snow. I tried to take a picture of him through a window, but he spotted me and ran over to the western gate and fled into the woods. His conspecific hung around for a while. It was only when he reached the west gate that I felt it was safe to let Jasper out. Stupid fox freaked out and ran all the way across the yard and nearly got himself cornered. Jasper chased it for over five minutes before it got away. Lucky for Jasper, I reckon.

I was home early because I was tuckered out from a trip to Chicago that ended the day before. I was on US Airways, the employers of the heroic Sully, and I found that, because I had given myself more than enough margin for error and had avoided checking a bag, the trip wasn't all that crappy. It was cheap because US Air charges for everything. Check a bag? $15. Want an in flight soda pop? $2. PIllow and blanket? Ka ching! It was still free to use the lavatory (for now).

I stayed at the Omni in dowtown Chicago and was impressed with the service. Everyone was eerily solicitous and competent, and my suite was very comfortable. I had to eat out with the lawyers on the first night, but they turned out to be very good company. That was a bonus.

I turned 51 on Saturday, middle aged given that I expect to attain 150. Everyone agrees that 51 is a cute age. Both my parents called me on my birthday for the first time ever. For Dad it was a coincidence since he doesn't keep up with birthdays. I don't like to make a fuss over them myself. I mean I'm glad I cheated death and all, but that's something to celebrate every day.

It was also my favorite holiday last week, Ground Hog Day or Imbolc. I favor the day because it means that winter is half over.

Capital Gains

Some of my conspecifics at lunch were touting a capital gains tax cut or elimination as a good way to stimulate the economy. Folks who weren't selling their capital assets would be motivated to do so. Who would buy them and with what money was not part of the equation, nor was how encouraging the sale of assets, most depreciated significantly and not subject to tax on a sale, would help the faltering economy. That''s because it wouldn't. It's just a scheme to get more tax benefits for the better off at the expense of the wage earner.

The bailouts, what with their being spent on bonuses and junkets, aren't necessarily leading to the flow of credit, but they are least convincing people that rich people are not morally superior while the idea of supply side economics is based on the erroneous assumption that they are. Put money in the hands of those wealth builders and job creators, not those stupid consumers, and you'll see the economy take off in the right direction, so the supply side mantra goes. In truth, consumers are the real wealth builders and job creators, so you've got to get money into their hands. Consumption is the engine of the economy.

Tee way the arrogant bankers and financiers are going, I'm thinking of investing in guillotine manufacturers.

A Loving God and Hell

The sermon yesterday was about hell, a topic almost never brought up in our church. After all, it's not a fear of hell that informs our church, but the Holy Spirit. What happens when we die is not the emphasis except at funerals. The preacher rightly pointed out that Jesus spoke of hell a few times, using the words Gehenna, the local garbage dump and Hades, the realm of the dead. In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, the rich man suffers and Lazarus, poor in life, is comforted. The rich man's life was founded on his wealth, and its loss meant that in Hades he was nothing. Abraham was in Hades, too, as indeed were all the dead.

The preacher remarked that the people in hell are beloved of God and forgiven their transgressions but that their choices in life put them in a place of separation from God. My take on heaven and hell is that we all end up in the same place but that folks who are self centered and proud won't like it there for some reason.

One bit of the sermon that I took issue with was when the preacher said that God doesn't send anyone to hell but that he respects our choice. That doesn't sound very Calvinistic to me. Them as end up in hell were ordained to be there from the beginning of the age. In what sense did they have a choice?

The whole narrative of fall and redemption makes less and less sense to me every day. I'm beginning to think that a better narrative is to think of mankind as becoming sentient and in need of God's intervention. Before sentience, we were as innocent as the other wild beasts. After sentience, we wanted looking after.