Critters

On Sunday, just as Mrs Vache Folle stepped outside to take a turn in the garden, a hawk snatched a jay off the feeder and made off with it before our very eyes. I had seen the same hawk a few days earlier make a move on a jay on the woodpecker feeder out back. I tentatively identify it as a Swainson's hawk.

Yesterday, two turkeys jumped the fence and wandered around by the outlet to the water supply land next door. Jasper did not know what to make of them and held back. I commanded him to "leave it" until the turkeys got up on the fence rail and then I cut him loose. I want the turkeys to learn to be wary of the premises since I don't want to clean up dead turkeys from all over the yard.

We have sighted downy woodpeckers on the hummingbird feeders lately as well as hummers and bees. This is a new phenomenon for us.

The neighbor's cat practically lives at our house. She keeps me company when I garden and occasionally startles the shit out of me by hiding under a shrub and pouncing on me all unawares. She drives the squirrels away from the feeder sometimes and waits for them in ambush under the peonies. She can't seem to catch a bird, though, so we don't mind her presence.

Crows seem to like bagels and will fly off with a half bagel with ease. You have to throw them pretty far from the house as the crows are very skittish and fly off at the slightest movement even from inside the house.

If the nursery labels a plant as deer resistant, it ain't necessarly so. That's what we found out. The deer ate the hostas this year but have so far avoided the lilies.

FOX is Crazy but not Like a Fox

If I were king, I wouldn't give any information or access to FOX "News". To get info out of my government, they'd need to file Freedom of Information Act requests. If they complained about it, I'd point out that we gave journalistic credentials only to actual journalists and treated as journalists only those individuals working for legitimate news gathering organizations or who were legitimate freelancers. Now and then an offical might go on an entertainment show, but FOX wouldn't be one of them because they masquerade fraudulently as a news gathering organization when in reality they are a propoganda arm of the GOP. Seriously, some folks are duped into thinking they're watching the "news" such is the level of education in this country.

Also, if anyone from the real news media referred to anything said by a FOX "News" talking head or some other right wing smear artist, the official response would always be "Why would anyone listen to that lying sack of shit?"

The same goes for the Washington Times and the New York Post.

I might even hire a team to follow the FOX smear artists and debunk their every utterance.

Let Haters Say All the Hateful Shit They Want

What's to be done about "hate speech"? Nothing, say I. I want haters to self identify so we can keep an eye on them. I don't want to push them underground. What I'd like to see is a transformation in the hearts and minds of haters so that they no longer hated and, therefore, no longer engaged in hateful speech acts. This probably won't happen in my lifetime, so in the meantime let's keep the haters out in the open where we can see them. They're the ones we interview first when there's actual hate crime. They're the ones we keep under surveillance as most likely to blow up a building or murder someone.

Also I like to know who's a hater right up front so I can avoid hanging out with them or associating with them to the extent possible. I hate to develop a friendship only to find out that my new friend is a racist or a homophobe. That's inconvenient.

I Gripe About Worship Services

As he does so often, Steve Scott posted about something that has been troubling me, this time the centrality of the sermon in worship services (http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/2009/06/sermon-centered-life.html). I'm not a big fan of the sermon. They're too long if you ask me. You have to have three points and in our church at least two 1970s cultural references and this takes 30-40 minutes. And considering that the preacher has already done a welcome and announcements and will do a benediction and several prayers, the service begins to look a tad like the Pastor X Show.

I'm not saying our preachers' sermons aren't edifying. They're as edifying as any preaching I've ever heard. We have a couple of fine sermonizers on the staff. It's just that sermons seem to disrupt the mood set by other aspects of the service and make it even more of a spectator sport than I reckon it should be. What I'd like to see is a service without any preaching (except for those aspects of public prayer leading that are actually kind of preachy) and for the preachers to give talks on weekday evenings for as many as want to come out for some edification, admonishment, encouragement, prophecy, what have you. The public worship service could be devoted to music and prayer and fellowship instead of sitting through a lecture.

While I'm griping about worship services, let me say that I really hate it when the flow of the service is interrupted by unnecessary announcements of what we are about to do. It's all scripted in the bulletin. Everyone knows that when the liturgist starts the responsive reading, the congregation is supposed to respond by reciting the part in the bulletin where it is indicated. When the liturgist starts the group prayer, everybody already knows to read along aloud what's printed in the bulletin. When the liturgist reads the Scripture, he should just start reading. The reference is given in the bulletin, and everybody knows that they can follow along in the bulletin or the Bibles in the pews. If we didn't constantly interrupt the flow of the service, newcomers would present an opportunity for oldtimers to help them and to introduce themseves.

We already have a couple of occasions where there is no announcement as when the pastor concludes a prayer "in the name of Jesus who taught us to pray.." whereupon we recite the Lord's Prayer. The preacher doesn' stop and say "And now join with me in the Lord's Prayer as printed in your bulletins." That would ruin the moment. And when the organist or pianist starts the Doxology, nobody has to say "Now please stand and join me in singing the Doxology, the lyrics of which are printed in your bulletin." Everybody knows to stand and knows the words. (It's usually right after the choir's big offertory anthem, so I reckon it's a way to get a cheap standing ovation.)

There's no need to announce the hymns, either, but often the pastor feels obliged to say "Please turn to hymn number x in your hymnals and join me in singing." Pastors can't stand it when they're not talking. Maybe it's one of the few occasions where they get to tell people what to do following which they do it. In any event, the hymn numbers are in the bulletin and the placement of the hymns in the service is set out in the program. Moreover, the numbers are on a placard in front of the church.

What should we do with the time saved by cutting gratuitous announcements and long sermons? More participation and interaction by the congregation would be nice. Maybe some little dramas or a little more music would be nice. Maybe we could just get out on time for a change.

Another beef I have is the false dichotomy between "contemporary" and "traditional" worship. Why are we compelled to choose between a service consisting of sermon plus mindlessly repetitive praise songs flashed on a screen and a service consisting of sermon plus other more complex musical perfomances and dragging old hymns? Can't there be some common ground? Why can't the "contemporary" service feature a really impressive choral number once in a while and why can't the traditionalists be exposed to some interactive singing now and then? Let's get out of the box a little.

Finally, can we do something about the Lord's Supper? Once a month, the consistory serves up croutons and thimbles of grape juice in a really solemn ceremony that I can't help feeling is a pale exercise compared to what it might be. And stay away from the gluten free host if you don't have a problem with gluten. It's so dry that you need ten thimbles of juice to quench it. The consistory frowns on taking more than one thimble.

This and That

Mrs Vache Folle and I went to see The Hangover last night. It was among the funniest movies I've ever seen. Three men take a bachelor party trip to Vegas with the groom and wake up the next morning with no memory of what transpired and with the groom missing. They follow various clues to figure out what happened and where their buddy could be.

My mother survived the Holocaust, but she was way too young to remember anything about it. I wish I had discussed it with my grandmother and recorded her experiences. "What was the Holocaust like, Maw?" "Well, Dagwood (she sometimes called me that), we here in Whitfield County didn't even know there was a Holocaust going on until the war was over. It was a hard time, though, because all your uncles were off fighting in World War II, and I worried about them night and day. I'm sure the Jews had it a lot worse, though."

My neighbor was flying his Confederate Battle Flag the other day, but I don't know the occasion. I don't think it was the race thing. NASCAR races on weekends, doesn't it? Anyway, it seems so out of place in the Hudson Valley. I have mixed feelings about the Confederacy. I'm pretty sure my poor illiterate ancestors in the Confederate Army were hapless dupes who didn't see themselves as fighting for slavery. At least I'd like to believe that. I don't like it when anyone pisses on their graves so to speak by attributing motives to them that I doubt they had. On the other hand, they were traitors, just like their ancestors before them in the Revolution had been. The Revolutioners succeeded, though, so we call them "Patriots". The Confederates didn't, so they're just traitors, or more charitably "Rebels". For the most part, flying the Confederate Battle Flag these days is taken as an expression of racism. Even if you're intention is otherwise, you have to expect that it will be interpreted as racist.

I went to the gym today for the first time in weeks only to find that it was closed. The sign on the door said "temporarily" and laid it off to a landlord dispute. I went on line and found out that the chain was in Chapter 11. You wouldn't know it from the Sport & Wellness websites. They make it seem as if it's business as usual when clearly it's not. A reputable company would have some FAQs about the bankruptcy and information about how it was expected to play out on its websites. So I'm assuming that the club is not going to reopen unless somebody buys it. Here I was feeling guilty for the last month about not going to the gym when it was closed the whole time.

My nutcase neighbor who was disappointed in the election last November finally took down his sign that decried the Unites Socialist States of America and referring to Obama as Redistributor-in-Chief. It doubled for a while as an advertisement for Free Kittens. They really need to spay their cat. They still have their harpoon cannon aimed across the road.

I skipped church today. The choir is on hiatus for the summer, except for the women who sing on Father's Day. They get Mother's Day off while the men sing. In summer, the music is more ad hoc with small groups singing. In August, we have church outside under a tent. Anyway, I might not go to church all summer. I'm just not into church services if I have to be a spectator. I'm not a big fan of sermons and would just as soon skip that part.

My friend who was in the horrible car crash last summer finally had his innards reattached and enjoyed his first bowel movement in eleven months. I can't tell you how relieved I am that his recovery has gone so well. He's going to be in a lot of pain for a while yet. I didn't visit him in the hospital because I am phobic. The level of anxiety that being in a hospital as a visitor creates in me is intolerable. The place is crawling with sick people and germs. The only thing I hate worse is going to a funeral home.

The GOP is Still Evil

I have become convinced over the years that Democrats, for the most part, mean well. They really believe that good government can improve people's lives. Only, they're stupid. Republicans, on the other hand, do not have good intentions. They just want power and access to the treasury. They'll say or do anything to get and keep power because they don't give a shit about this country. They want what they can get for themselves, that's all. They're evil.

Democrats seem to think that they should be able to work in a bipartisan way. And they can as long as the other party is not the GOP. They don't seem to want to attribute to their counterparts in the GOP the evil motives that they seem to possess. The GOP will gladly attribute evil motives to anyone if it helps their cause even if the attribution is unsupportable.

Republicans don't care about being lying sacks of shit. It works for them. One or more of their surrogates may some outrageous claim or accusation which is then picked up by one of the right wing's captive "news" outlets (Washington Times, FOX, Weekly Standard, etc.). The surrogates and "news" outlets complain that the "liberal media" is ignoring the story, and then it filters into the mainstream media, The lazy assed talking heads at CNN and MSNBC and the like don't bother to look into the substance of the myths being created and disseminated and talk about them as if they were anything other than made up batshit lunacy. That's being "balanced" when you are too stupid or lazy to look at the facts. The mainsteam media has some right wing moles in it who make sure that the product of the right wing myth making machine get aired.

This works again and again because Democrats are too afraid or too stupid to stand up and call bullshit and shine a light on the machine. Except Al Franken.

I Fight Nature; Nature Wins

I feel as if I'm back in Seattle what with the almost constant grey skies and rain. Of course, the rain is different. In Seattle, it just sort of misted and drizzled all the time. Here in the Hudson Valley, it comes in downpours with thunder and lightning and an agitated Carpathian Shepherd keeping me up all night even though he's mostly deaf. Quite a bit of the mountain drains through my creeks and pond and parts of my yard, and I sustained a little damage to a pachysandra patch that got in the way of a flash flood that the creeks could not contain. I have fixed it, and I am proud to say that I think I came up with a solution to divert the flow coming down off the mountain from the west side.

Earlier, I put in some "levees" where the flow from the bedrock heads into the pond to channel the water into a waterfall that I had erected with big rocks. The "levees" I made by making two berms of pond muck and planting grass on them. The flow from the fencelline now is contained between them and does not wash put my perennial beds. I can't believe I didn't think of this before. When I saw what happened to the pachysandras, I nailed some planks to the fence behind the pachysandra bed to stop (or at least slow) the flow off the mountain and divert it toward the southern creek bed. Smart, huh? I have put in a layer of sand and aim to plant grass in a layer of pond muck to fight erosion even more. I reckon anything short of a deluge will be covered.

Oddly, the basement has not gotten filled up with water due to excessive rain as it had in the past. In times past, it has been necessary during some storms to run a second sump pump to keep up with the inflow. The basement water comes from underground, and I have no idea why the groundwater flow would have changed.

Making Your McMansion Pay

I bet McMansions would make good boarding houses. They usually have extra bedrooms and even bonus rooms that could be let, and their large kitchens make cooking for a group a breeze. Let's say you have a five bedroom house in a high end subdivision. You put your kids in one room and yourself and your mate in another, and you let the rest to strangers. I bet you could get $750 a pop if meals are included. It's hard to get an apartment for that little in the Hudson Valley, and solitary folks would be so much more comfortable in a family atmosphere instead of comng home to an empty flat. It's a win-win situation for everyone.

Would the neighbors have grounds to complain? Only if your boarders made nuisances of themselves. The neighbors would probably thank you for giving them the idea to take in boarders themselves.

If you got to know some Honduran landscapers, you could probably fit 10-15 boarders in your three spare rooms at $500 a pop. That would go a long way toward paying your jumbo mortgage.

Scripture

Steve Scott is starting a new series on how we really read the Bible. http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/2009/06/scripture-american-style-1.html He's using red font to express the real meaning that we seem to give it. I look forward to the series.

When I was a kid, my King James Bible used red font to indicate the words of Jesus. Also, it had italics where words had been supplied in the translation. Only I didn't know that. I reckoned the italics meant I should emphasize those words when I read them, so I did. I sounded pretty stupid, let me tell you.

Anyway, I'm reading up on some of the books that didn't make it into the Bible. Some discoveries suggest that the Gospel of Mark was edited a great deal to remove content that the orthdox bishops deemed objectionable. It makes sense when you think about it. Mark is pretty choppy in places, and it ends rather abruptly. And what's up with the young man in the linen loincloth in Gethsemane? That seems like such a non sequitur. Was linen loincloth dude a bigger part of the story in the original Mark?

I suppose that the orthodox viewpoint was the only one that could have survived and flourished through the Dark Ages. The chirch had to be authoritarian and institutional. It is only now that it is safe for other versions of Christianity to be practiced, and I reckon it would be interesting to play around with different canons.

"Responsible White Separatists"

A spokesman for the white separatist movement remarked about the shooting at the Holocaust Museum: "The responsible white separatist community condemns this," he said. "It makes us look bad."

Holocaust Museum Shooting Suspect Had History of Hate, Signs of Breaking Point - washingtonpost.com

You know what makes white separatists look bad? Being white separatists.

And the Nominees for Worst Legislature in the Country

Are New York State, especially the Senate, where a couple of crooks that the Democrats thought they had bought refused to stay bought and sold themselves to the Republicans. The worse of the two was made President Pro Tempore of the Senate and would become Governor if David Paterson died or was incapacitated. God help the State of New York.

Divorce

My carpool companion is getting divorced, a process that's been in the works for months now. Meanwhile, he and his not soon enough to be ex-wife still live under the same roof, a situation that he once reckoned was a good idea for the sake of the kids but which is becoming increasingly intolerable as he embraces the divorce.

I reckon he's lucky to have a former divorce lawyer to commmute with, because I have been able (for free) to put him through the paces to get to the point where he can make rational decisions. He was the one who was blindsided by his adulterous wife, stay at home mother of three small children to whom my companion has devoted everything. He is a family man through and through, so the idea that he was going to lose his family was the ultimate blow. Seriously, his whole life revolves around hearth and home.

He went through the typical stages of the wronged spouse. At first, he was sure that his wife didn't really mean it, that she was just trying to get his attention, that the whole thing would blow over. I was pretty harsh with him during that phase. I pointed out that she was fucking somebody else and not him, that she did secretly set up a bank account, and that she was pretty adamant about getting divorced. I explained that she had been preparing for this for months, maybe even years, so that she was emotionally ready and poised for action. That's why it didn't seem upsetting to her. Her mind was made up. Say hello to reality.

Then he went through the "I'll do whatever it takes to save this marriage" stage where he floated all kinds of offers about how he would change, that they could work it out, get counselling, what have you. "Won't someone think of trhe children" also came into play. The dude was ready to live in a loveless marriage just for the kids and because he secretly believed that, given time, the bitch would come around and love him again. Again, I was pretty harsh. "She doesn't love you any more, if she ever did, and nothing you do or say can change that. You can't make her love you. If she changes her mind and begs you to take her back, great, but meanwhile don't be stupid. Look to your interests on the assumption that you're getting divorced. Your wife will use your vulnerability against you, so don't settle on anything until you get your head out of your ass."

Then he alternated between depression and anger for a while. This was understandable, but I told him that he had to make plans and decisions with a cool head. He wouldn't always feel this way. Eventually, he'd get over his hurt and anger enough to move on with his new life. And he'd be glad to be free of the shrewish harpy, at least as free as you can be with children together.

Now he's ready to protect himself and to work with his lawyer to get the divorce done with as little inconvenience to himself as possible. He still claims that he wants to have the kids with him way more than he probably really does, but that's what fathers are expected to say. If the ex-wife wants to saddle herself with a disproportionate amount of the burden of parenting, let her. You can always trade days with the kids for economic concessions. Down the road, she'll be begging him to take the kids more often.

One thing he can't seem to get past is that the court doesn't care whose fault it was that the marriage failed or that his wife cheated on him. I'm working on convincing him that the "Justice System" has nothing to do with justice. It really took him aback when I remarked back when the divorce process started that "nobody held a gun to your head". "This is what you sign up for when you get married and have children with someone. Didn't anyone warn you?" I reckon every marriage license should include a conspicuous warning: MARRIAGE MAY RESULT IN DIVORCE WITH YOUR SPOUSES TAKING HALF YOUR STUFF AND A LOT OF YOUR INCOME.

I Will Never Get Up Early and Go to the Gym

Yesterday, I decided that today was going to be the first day of the rest of my life, that I was going to get my shit together once and for all. I set my alarm for 5 am and resolved that I would get up and go to the gym in the wee hours of the morning. It's so much more righteous to work out in the early morning and the opposite of my nature.

I reckon I was unconciously setting myself up for failure. I didn't sleep a wink all night and couldn't even dream of going to the gym at 5 when the alarm went off. What a maroon I am. I am dead tired at my desk and apt to fall out any minute. A power nap might not be a bad idea.

Anyway, I decided that there is no way that I will ever get up at 5 in the morning to work out. It's not in my nature. I shouldn't even think of resolving to get up earlier than I absolutely have to.

When I had drill sergeants screaming at me, I could get up and exercise. Otherwise, it isn't going to happen.

Vacation Plans Made

I booked a cruise in the Western Mediterranean for late November. We haven't done anything cultural in a while, so we're visiting a sampling of cities. We'll have a few days in Barcelona before the cruise.

I was amazed at how inexpensive the actual cruise part is (less than $500 per person for a week), and the whole thing with air, hotel and cruise is less than $4K. Of course, excursions are extra, but most of these are under a $100 per person. Alcohol is extra, and the bar tab broke the bank on our last cruise. This time I have a plan to moderate alcohol consumption by putting off my first drink until our predinner visit to the wine bar. Also, I will drink only when Mrs Vache Folle drinks, so unless she turns into a boozehound between now and then, we'll spend way less on beverages.

Another costly item for us on our last cruise was the spa. We had massages, facials, manicures, pedicures, what have you. And it added up, let me tell you. Nowadays, we have regular appointments for massages and facials and nail care, so we won't feel any need to treat ourselves to these things at three times the cost while we are on the ship. I am used to my regular masseur and nail care professionals who are way better than the staff on the ship. Instead, we aim to get the "spa package" which for about a $100 each gives us access to the sauna, hydrotherapy pools, whirlpools, steam, and the "quiet room".

With excursions and souvenirs and wine, I'm hoping to do the trip for under $5K.

Bugaboo Creek

Mrs Vache Folle and I went out to dinner with some friends on Saturday to Bugaboo Creek, a steak restaurant in Poughkeepsie, presumably one of a chain, that has as its "theme" the Canadian Rockies. The food was palatable (I had smoked spareribs) and a "Bunyan Onion" appetizer. The latter is the same as a "Bloomin' Onion" that you'd get at the Outback, but it's name reflects the fact that Canada has forests, perhaps even some that legendary giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan visited. There were unlimited refills on nonalcoholic beverages, and I must have downed a gallon of iced tea before I realized that the waiters were surreptitiously replacing my beverage container any time it got to half empty.

The main dining rooom, where we were seated, featured an animatronic mounted bison head that would come to life at intervals and crack wise. The first couple of times, it was amusing. Even more annoying was the policy of commemorating birthdays with a parade of chanting and singing waitstaff, one of which was carrying a muppet mounted moose head that would maul the celebrant. There must have been thirty birthday celebrations during our dinner. Every few minutes, waitstaff would come over and ask us "How's everything tasting?" I had to admit that everything tasted pretty good. I hope that there are defibrillators strategically placed around the premises, because arteries are acloggin' at Bugaboo Creek. That's the only thing that makes the talking decapitated ruminants and the birthday celebrations bearable.

It Sucks to Be Me

I learned from my doctor the other day when we were reviewing my lab results that my triglycerides are way too high. I need to lose weight to get them down. My doctor suggsted that I check out Medifast because my antianxiety medication causes me to gain weight and makes it hard to lose weight. It's not my fault! It was the meds all this time. Self loathing can now be moderated. My plan is to taper down on the meds and quit drinking alcohol since it interferes with the meds in the first place. Also, I'll eat better and less and get more exercise. At least that's what Morning Guy aims to do. Evening Guy or Tomorrow Guy may have other ideas.

One of my big issues is guilt. I feel guilty all the time. Often I know that what I am about to do is going to result in intense feelings of guilt, but I do it anyway. I never made the leap to guilt as a deterrent. I blame my mother for this since she played the guilt card so much that it became meaningless. My guilt is unceasing and serves no purpose. It's like a phone that rings all the time whether or not anyone is calling. I feel bad about maligning my mother just now. I am a shitty, shitty son. Anyway, if only I could channel my guilt into helping me take healthy decisions. I am such a worthless wretch.

Also, my testosterone is way low, another side effect of my meds. Aside from reduced libido, this doesn't have any adverse impacts. I've been married to the same woman for over a quarter of a century, and I don't reckon I want to do anything that would upset our routine of quarterly sex, so I'm not going to get treatment for the hormone level. I might take some OTC supplements or some such thing, but no testosterone cream for me, thank you. Sex=guilt. I don't blame Mom for this. This was the Baptists. After sex, I want to apologize right away. Thanks for nothing, Baptists.

Other than the two anomalies, my blood and urine read normal. My good cholesterol was high and my bad cholesterol was only slightly high instead of astronomically high as it would be if I didn't take meds. I feel OK except for some fatigue (meds again). Now I'm worried about some hidden defect that, having been lulled into a sense of healthfulness by the lab results, I will fail to observe in time to treat. Damn it! I can't feel good about anything for even a minute.

Forget Personhood

When we ascribe personhood to an individual or category of individuals, this is ultimately based on arbitrary metaphysical assumptions about which it is pointless to argue. What we can do is discuss the practical, real world ramifications of the ascription or denial of personhood in particular cases. Even then, we will ultimately bump against subjective value judgments about costs and benefits and priorities, but it is nonetheless useful to get past the stage of "x is a person" versus "no it isn't" and to engage in constructive dialogue.

Suppose that I adhere to the irrational normative proposition that all spermatazoa are "persons" entitled to the rights and privileges apputenant thereto. After all, given access to an egg and a womb and just the right conditions, the sperm could become a human. This implies that I might support measures, however inconvenient or costly or draconian, to prevent the mistreatment or unnatural death of sperm. What do we gain by ascribing personhood to sperm? Nothing other than the satisfaction of appeasing me and my ilk in the "masturbation is murder" movement. In fact, we take on an onerous burden with no objective payoff for the social order. After all, sperm can't reciprocate. I don't deal with sperm in any manner that resembles my dealings with other "persons". Sperm don't respect my rights or personhood, and they can't even violate them of their own volition. Ascribing personhood to them seems ridiculous for these reasons and because of the difficulty of enforcing spermatazoa rights.

One might make the same arguments about human egg cells. What's the point of making them persons and recognizing rights? It is possible that a proponent of ova rights would use the ova as person argument as a justfication for the consequences of such a stance. It might suit the advocate of ova rights to limit the movement and freedom of women and to maintain an intrusive surveillance apparatus for reasons utterly unrelated to ova with ova rights being a tool to bring unwitting dupes on board with his program. Otherwise, nothing is to be gained by recognizing ova as persons.

The same goes, I reckon for an ova which has been fertilized by a spermatazoa. The fertilized egg is in no better position to recognize my rights or to violate them or to reciprocate with me in any way than the sperm or the egg that it once was. Affording it personhood does nothing other than diminish human freedom with no payoff other than appeasement of the subjective, irrational beliefs of a portion of the population. Those who call the fertilized egg a person must expect consequences to flow from the ascription, and it is likely that many who do so understand their position as a means to obtain mass support for the application of measures which protect fertilzed eggs at the expense of actual sentient human beings.

Suppose the egg successfully plants itself in the uterine wall. Nothing has changed really for the purpose of our analysis. Nothing is gained by calling it a person, and a big burden is shifted onto actual sentient human beings. The cell divides and begins to differentiate, and all along the way it remains incapable of respecting another human or reciprocating with us in any way.

At some point, protecting the fetus becomes sufficiently less costly and inconvenient that it begins to make sense to offer it some legal protection. It is not necessary to characterize it as a person in order to do this. And the interests of the actual sentient human being who carries the fetus should certainly weigh heavily and take precedence in most cases.

Let's not get caught up in whether a fetus is a person. Let's just decide what protections a fetus ought to have under various circumstances and leave it at that. After all, children aren't persons, at least not in the full sense of the word. Their rights are hugely constrained, and we expect little of them as moral agents. We afford them protections commensurate with their situation, and their personhood doesn't really play into it. Personhood for children has implications that are very complicated and that contradict traditional social norms. It is only when we come to those who have attained majority that the concept of personhood has any meaning.

Roe v Wade was, in my opinion, rightly decided. If one accepts that the enumeration of rights in the Constitution is not exclusive and that other rights nonetheless exist, that the notions of what those rights might be can evolve over time, that courts traditionally make law to deal with social developments as they have done in the creation of the evolving common law since time immemorial, and that certain rights carve out areas of life where the government is simply not empowered to act, Roe v Wade rings true. Given the development of jurisprudence vis a vis the 14th amendment and the application of federal constitutional rights to state actions, we can set aside the states' rights objection for the time being. It is one of the few decisions that stand for the proposition that the sovereign's power is not unlimited.

Tools Against Terror

The power of the executive to detain terrorists without trial for preventive reasons would come in handy in the investigation of anti-choice terror cells in the wake of the assassination of Dr Tiller. If you even knew the assassin, you're probaably a terrorist and eligible for preventive detention. You can't be too careful, so if in doubt detain, dtain, detain. Those FEMA camps will come in real handy, too.

Thanks to the ability to use "enhanced interrogation techniques", which the government would have to do to prevent any ticking time bomb scenario from unfolding, the confessions and the informing will come quickly. The government will, if it deploys all the tools the prior administration claimed the authority to use, can rid us once and for alll the anti-choice domestic terror movement.

Murder by Domestic Terrorists

Let's say I'm a hacktacular TV commentator who wants to see an abortion doctor get killed. How do I go about it without risking liability? I know that there are domestic terrorists, many of whom are regular viewers of my show, who are willing to kill abortion doctors, so I'll just vilify the particular doctor on my show and wait for a domestic terrorist to do my dirty work.

I'd be just like one of those clerics who issues a fatwa, except I wouldn't ever say out loud that I wanted the docttor killed. My domestic terrorist viewers know what I mean. Wink wink.

Of course, the public will be horrified, but that won't have an impact on me because I work at FOX and my viewers are douchebags who will approve of what I did.

Whom should I choose as the next target for domestic terrorism?

Empathy is Good

Why wouldn't you want a Supreme Court Justice to be empathetic? We already have our quota of psychopaths on the court.

Most of the justices have lived lives that insulated them from adversity, and this is bound to color their worldview and the way they interpret the law. Frankly, I don't think the Supreme Court really understands or much cares about how its decisions impact ordinary people. Other than their servants, they rarely encounter anyone ordinary.

Someone like Roberts can claim that he's just calling balls and strikes because he reckons that his worldview is the only one. He doesn't get it that his background and life experience color his interpretation of the law as much as anyone else's.

North Korea Solved

At long last, someone has an idea for how to deal with North Korea's Dear Leader: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/merrill-markoe/i-know-what-to-do-about-k_b_208210.html

For world peace, I'd buy a ticket to River of Blood.

Bring Back Peasantry

At some point, industrialization led many from the laboring classes to abandon the plow and become wage earners in cities and towns. Later, we mechanized, automated and computerized a great many of these folks out of jobs. Then we exported manufacturing and decided to become a nation of bankers and folks who serve burgers to bankers. The low skill manufacturing jobs that pay at least half a living wage are almost all gone, and about a third of us are fit for little else. Some have suggested that these folks can be retrained and educated to handle high tech jobs. This is probably not true.

I propose as a solution to the plight of the urban poor a return to the family farm. Just about anybody can farm with the right training, and peasant farmers enjoy a degree of economic independence that the urban poor can only dream about. Society would benefit from having small family farms widely dispersed throughout the country, and these would add to greater food security.

The return would have to be subsidized, of course, and a training program in sustainable agriculture would have to be maintained. Land, mainly from public holdings, would be provided free of charge and free of property taxes as long as the homesteader or his or her heirs held it and farmed it. A market for their produce would be supported by requiring public schools to purchase local peasant farm products for use in school cafeterias. Also, the formerly blighted neighborhoods now abandoned by the newly made peasant farming class could be gentrified, and the peasant farmers could come in on weekends and run farmers' markets for the yuppies who live in their old apartment buildings.

I reckon that sustainable agriculture and organic farming would be the best market niche for the peasants, in part because the program would have a less furious reaction by Big Food if it didn't compete directly with it. Frankly, small farms can't compete with the mega farms when it comes to providing crops and meat for the processewd food industry. Also, the peasant farmers would have less need for expensive equipment and fertilizers and would not require as much in the way of credit. We don't want them to fall into the debt trap that has all but killed the family farm. We want them to stay on the farm for generations to come.

Peasant farming also builds character. Families work together in a common enterprise, and folks deal with one another on a person to person basis. A peasant farming class would provide a counterweight to our overly depersonalized culture. It might also make for some interesting politics.

Tax Deductions I Favor

I have been thinking about the mortgage interest deduction and have concluded that it's a sop to the middle class. While we're giving ourselves sops, why don't we lobby to have other aspects of the "American Dream" made tax deductible.

For example, what young bride wouldn't want a lavish Guinea Wedding, and what parents wouldn't want to throw them for their daughters? If the costs of a Guinea Wedding were tax deductible, families could afford to go even more over the top. Cocktail hour with all you can eat snow crab legs and an omelet bar, an eight course meal, a live band with an open bar, a Vienna Room and stretch limos for the whole wedding party would be available to more brides and grooms. The catering hall industry, dressmakers, and other folks who make their money on weddings would benefit mightily, so this could be a boon to the economy. Also, the tax code would be promoting marriage, wouldn't it?

Or how about the costs of education for the kids? If these were tax deductible, folks could afford to spend more, and schools could charge more and pay teachers better. What middle classer wouldn't want the best possible education for his or kids? It's the American Dream to give your kids a better life than you had.

Americans love dogs. Every household should have at least one dog. Dog ownership builds character and makes for better citizens. Dogs also deter crime. Let's make the costs of keeping dogs tax deductible! Hell, let's establish a tax credit for dog related expenditures. (I work from home a lot and keep confidential files there. I have dogs to protect the house; ergo, I should be able to write off their upkeep as a business expense. Mrs Vache Folle, CPA, disagrees, says it would invite an audit.)

Another aspect of the American Dream that the tax code overlooks is the maintenance of a healthy lawn. Shouldn't lawn care costs be deductible?

Snake Encounters

The long weeked was marked by close encounters with water snakes. On Saturday, Jasper caught Brad, the mack daddy of the water snakes in our pond, and I had to intervene to keep Brad alive and Jasper unbitten. On Monday, Mrs Vache Follw was weeding the daffodils by the pond when two water snakes chased a large frog right where she was kneeling. The frog got away, and the snakes made themselves comfortable and started screwing in the daffodils. The frog seemed way to big for thos particular middling sized snakes. Later that day, Mrs VF happened on a baby water snake in the grass by the deck, further from the water than we've ever seen a water snake before.

Today, I went down to the pond to try out a new net I bought for mucking, and I ran into Brad on the berm with the ass end of a huge frog sticking out of his mouth. His jaw had unhinged, and he was swallowing what seemed to me to be an impossibly large meal. Jasper came over, so Brad swam across the pond to the Jasper free zone where the dog is not permitted to go. Slowly but surely, Brad swallowed that frog and slithered off with a huge lump in his middle. He'll likely not need to eat again for some time.

Mortgage Interest Deduction Doesn't Make Sense (to Me)

We take advantage of the mortgage interest deduction. We considered the impact of the deduction when we determined what we could afford to pay for a house. If the deduction went away, we'd be screwed. I suspect, however, that the deductibility of mortgage interest was somehow factored into the price of our house before we bought it and that we simply paid more for the house than we would have if mortgage interest hadn't been deductible. The real beneficaries of the deduction are real estate brokers and mortgage lenders, since they get bigger commissions and write bigger mortgages.

If the mortgage interest deduction were repealed, it would probably result in a significant fall in the value of houses. Unless existing mortgages were grandfathered in, there would be a glut of houses on the market as folks tried to unload houses they could no longer afford. There doesn't seem to be a way out at this point. The suppression of the wealth effect that comes from elevated home equity would hurt the overall economy.

Yet, the mortgage interest deduction does not appear to serve any useful purpose. It doesn't really promote home ownership since house buyers are paying up front for any value added by the deduction. Moreover, why would the government want to promote house ownership in the first place? What's it to the federal government if I own or rent? If I own, and there's an economic downturn, I'm stuck in my house and can't readily move for a job. If I rent, I'm more mobile.

Are house owners supposed to be better citizens? Do they yield more revenue to the government as a result of their owning a house?

Prophylactic Detention

Some folks seem to think that the government should be able to detain people for no other reason than that they might commit a crime in the future. It starts with potential terrorists, but we all know that it will end up with the preventive detention of anyone with a criminal profile. Actually, it started some time ago with the civil commitments of "sexual predators" who had served their prison sentences.

When I was a prosecutor for the child welfare apparatus in Florida, I was confronted with a case in which the state had taken a child into custody away from its mother solely on the basis that the mother might abuse or neglect the child. It seems that the child welfare bureaucrats had a list of "red flags" with points assigned to them and that enough red flags could add up to a risk assessment that required removal. In the case at hand, the mother was a teenager with a colicky baby, and her own mother who was her main source of help was going on vacation. Add in some factors such as poverty, not having a high school diploma, and what have you and you get to enough points to remove the child even though the law required an immanent threat of abuse or neglect or abandonment. The child welfare bureaucrats were aghast that I had any scruples about prosecuting a speculative case based on their point system. Why wasn't I totally on board with protecting children? What possible objection could there be to such a sensible scheme?

Think about what preventive detention would mean for law enforcement. Police could generate profiles and lock up anyone that fit them whether or not they had actually committed an offense or were even thinking about committing an offense. And the detainess wouldn't have a defense unless they could show that they did not, in fact, meet the profile.

Nowadays, police agencies have to wait until criminals conspire with one another or try to commit a crime in order to act. Or they have to set up crimes and entice criminals to commit them. Soon, they will be able to dispense with all that and detain criminals before they commit crimes. It will be a crime to be a criminal, i.e. to fit the criminal profile.

Law abiders need not worry about their rights in such a system because they will never fit the profile, and if they happen to fit it then they're criminals aren't they? The streets will be safer, and law abiders will enjoy more freedom from crime. At least until law enforcement realizes that it can profile victims and then control their movements for their own protection.

I'm not saying there won't be due process. The police will have to prove that detainees fit the profiles. Since it won't be a criminal trial, they will be able to this by a preponderance of the evidence. Since it will be a matter of civil commitment, juries won't be needed, either. Except for the costs of detention, this will be an inexpensive program.

Separation of Church and State Is in the Constitution, Only not in So Many Words

I had a discussion with one of my conspecifics some time ago about the "separation of church and state". He insisted that these words are nowhere to be found in the Constitution. True enough. The Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause are in the Bill of Rights, and these are the two provisions of the Constitution which give rise to the doctrine of Separation of Church and State.

How else can the government avoid running afoul of the two clauses about religion? It can't establish an official religion, and it can't regulate your irrational beliefs about the supernatural. Anything the government does to entangle itself with churches or religious ideas or movements is bound to have the effect of privileging or prejudicing, and that amounts to establishment or interference with free exercise. It's best to keep the government as far from religion as is practicable.

Of course, government is run by folks with religious beliefs, and they will likely govern their own behavior in accordance with their consciences, so religion will necessarily play a role, albeit indirect, in the functioning of the state. It's best not to make a big show of it, though, because carved in stone religious pronouncements are inconsistent with a democratic polity. At some point, one set of normative propositions predicated on a supernatural premise will lose out to a competing set of propositions, and the adherents of the former set will have to be prepared to live with it. Otherwise, sectarian strife ensues. The differences among Protestant denominations are quite sufficient to set Christians to murdering one another if you put religion and politics together too much. God forbid that the religious right should ever get its wish to establish a theocracy, because there would be a bloodbath over the precise nature of theo before too long.

Unamerican

Some folks like to characterize other folks who disagree with them as "unAmerican". What the hell does that even mean? 7Up used to be "the UnCola", and that was taken to mean "not a cola". If one is said to be ungentlemanlike or unladylike, everybody knows what that means. But unAmerican?

Being an American involves nothing other than a geographic accident; therefore, the only way you could be unAmerican would be to hail from somewhere other than the Americas, or since we have coopted the word, the US. There is no way to be American other than to be in America. You can hold all kinds of beliefs and opinions and engage in a variety of practices, all of which would be American because you are in America.

There are no distinct and nearly universally held ideas that comprise an American ethos. So, when someone says of another person or idea "that's unAmerican" this translates to "that's quack woof kerblah"! It's nonsense.

Another nonsensical statement is to attribute something to the "Blame America First" contingent. This label is applied to anyone who criticizes US government policy abroad, and there is already a perfectly cromulent expression "critics of US policy abroad" that is much more accurate and descriptive. The use of Blame America First as a label is an ad hominem attack that says more about the user than about those he or she attacks.

Another idiotic exercise involves exchanges about whether one's patriotism has been questioned or whether it is subject to question. A patriot is one who loves one's country, but some would add an additional requirement that a patriot also be an unquestioning supporter of the government. When someone talks about patriotism, we don't necessarily know what the speaker means, so we should ask for clarification and definitions or just ignore this as nonsense. Patriotism has more often been a cover for douchebaggery than a sign of anything good.

Additional Star Trek Questions

Star Trek 's extraterrestrials have over the years gotten less lame (with the exception of the Kazon in Voyager, a race distinguished entirely by very bad haircuts). The effects have gotten better and better. Why then haven't they also been able to get rid of the split infinitive in "to boldly go"? It's "to go boldly", for crying out loud.

Isn't it strange that the English language has not changed much in several centuries? Based on past developments, I'd have expected a lot of borrowings from extraterrestrial languages, especially for newfangled stuff. And how come nobody ever cusses, even when they're under pressure or really pissed off or frightened?

Although racism among humans seems to have been cured, how come those standards aren't applied between species? It seems to be perfectly OK to express hatred for an entire species, as Ryker does about the Ferengi in at least one episode, or to make sweeping generalizations about them.

Is there a chaplain on board the Enterprise? Or has all religion gone by the wayside (other than Bajoran worship of the wormhole aliens)? Perhaps the concept of the chaplaincy has been put aside in view of the likely extreme diversity of beliefs.

What does it take to get a colony on another planet authorized? It seems to me that it would cost a hell of a lot for private individuals to set up their own planet and that you'd have to get Federation permission and protection.

God Hates People Who Claim to Know Whom God Hates

I don't know whom or what God hates, and I would never presume to speculate about whether some unfortunate event or another is divine wrath directed at some sin or another. That would be blasphemy, wouldn't it?

Edwardsville

There was supposed to be a trial in Edwardsville, Illinois this week, so I went there. I drove to Newburgh, NY, took a plane to Philly, another plane to St Louis, and a rental car to Edwardsville. Then I found out the trial had been continued because the plaintiff had had the nerve to die over the weekend without consulting me or considering my convenience and travel plans. So I spent the night in Edwardsville and changed my flight, which for reasons unfathomable became twice as costly. Is US Airways trying to alienate my client, a huge conglomerate that could buy and sell it a hundred times over?

Anyway, I made it home alive, although I had the misfortune on both return legs to have seat mates even fatter than me. I thought we should raise the armrest between us and let our folds of fat interlock, but each considered the armrest indispensable.

I had been keen to go to Edwardsville for this trial because I thought it would give me a chance to look for the grave of my great great great great great grandmother who moved to the vicinity with her two older sons back in the 1830s. Her youngest son, my ancestor, had died young, and his children were being raised by their maternal uncle Samuel Morrow in Knoxville, Tennessee. My branch of the family stayed in Tennessee for a while longer, although my ancestor's daughter, Ann Eliza Warnack Connick, spent some time with her uncle Isaac E. Warnack in Madison County, Illinois.

Isaac E. and Henry D. and their progeny, my ancestor's brothers, used their patrimony from Frederick Christian Warnack II's, their father's, paper company, Eagle Paper, to buy thousands of acres in Illinois and to establish themselves in the stoneware business. My ancestor was apprenticed out to a tailor, an occupation which he took up at the age of 19 in Marysville, Blount County, Tennessee. What became of his patrimony we will never know, but the Morrows were a prosperous lot. Just saying.

Frederick II had been born in Prussia about 1770. His wife, Elisabeth, was born in Pennsylvania of German parents around 1773, and she moved with her sons to Madison County in the late 1830s. Her husband had died in 1821. The paper company was sold after Frederick's death. Family legend has it that Eagle Paper supplied newsprint for the Cherokee Phoenix, the newspaper published in the Cherokee phonetic alphabet. Of course, family legend says a lot of things that can't be verified.

Elisabeth Warnack was still alive in 1860, but I found her not in the 1870 census. Presumably, she died between 1860 and 1870, and I expect she was buried in Upper Alton, Illinois. Alas, I had no opportunity to troll around in old boneyards in Upper Alton on my client's dime.

This abortive trip was not a complete waste, however. I did learn that my progarm of avoiding the gym and overeating had not helped with my hunkification project and that I had to buy new, larger clothes for the trip. Will this be the wake up call that inspires me to lose weight and get in shape? The odds are not good.

Turning Failure to Success by Lowering the Bar

When I was a kid, I had some big career ambitions. My first aspiration, at about age three, was to be a "taxi". When I learned that the best I could hope for would be to drive a taxi, I gave up on that dream. At five, I started shooting for president of the US, but the Kennedy assassination cooled me on that. I thought astronaut for several years, but a documentary suggesting that a Mars landing would happen in 1973 made me believe that I'd miss out on all the glory. Although the Mars mission did not occur, I was right that being an astronaut during my young adulthood would have been less than glorious. The Space Shuttle was kind of lame.

In high school, I flirted with foreign service, but I never pursued it. By the time I got to college, I had no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up. I majored in anthropology, so I was not prepared for any particular occupation when I graduated. I tried my hand at sales and sold calculators to government and business. A four function calculator with a display was $489, so they were a hard sell. I discovered that I had no talent for sales and that I hated selling. People know what they need, I reasoned, so isn't kind of presumptuos of me to tell them what they need in the way of a calculating machine? Besides, sales was no occupation for an aspiring gentleman.

That's when law school beckoned, the home of the feckless and unskilled. I confess that I didn't have any idea what being a law talking guy entailed. My only model was Perry Mason. I knew after the first semester that I wasn't going to like it, but I stuck it out anyway because I had nowhere else to go. So there I was, a lawyer. I tried several times to escape lawyering. I got my stockbroker's license, but my aversion to sales made that a no go.

I fantasized about becoming an academic. I figured that nothing could be sweeter than to be paid to expostulate anthropological bullshit. Graduate school showed me that academics are actually a miserable lot and that the career had a lot of downside and relatively low pay to boot.

So it was back to the law. I decided that the best I could hope for in a job was for it not to make me want to kill myself. I wish someone had told me that 30 years ago (as if I would have listened). Instead, my mind was filled with "follow your bliss", "find fulfillment in your work", "do what you love", and other such frakked up guidance. They might as well have said "arbeit macht frei". Thanks for nothing, dream inspirers.

I tell young people the truth. I tell them that work is work and that it isn't likely to be fulfilling. For fulfillment, have a life outside work, and good luck with that, too.

I never amounted to anything, and it would have been nice if I hadn't neen led to believe that I was supposed to amount to something. That just makes me feel like a failure. I am trying to get myself to understand that I did alright even if I never became famous or rich or admirable. I did the best I could in light of my abilities, character defects, and origins. In that sense, I am a success. I never really had a shot at amounting.

Hummers and Other Things I'm Thankful For

Yesterday was rainy, and I had the blues. I managed to pull myself out of my depressed state by pondering those things that give me joy.

For instance, I love hummingbirds. I don't exactly know why, but nothing cheers me up like a hummer. Multiple hummers are better yet.

Birdsong is a delight beyond compare. We feed the songbirds so they'll hang around, and this has really paid off with a veritable choir of birds.

Spotting wildlife makes me very happy. Having a moose in the backyard was one of the coolest moments ever. The foxes playing with the dog toys in the snow were very exciting. A buzzard on the fence or ducks in the pond gave me great joy.

I can't have too many flowers in the garden. Right now the lilacs are blooming, and I love their fragrance.

I love my pond. I even love mucking the pond. I love nothing better than sitting out back watching the pond.

Some other bliss inducers:

Eating dead animal parts grilled over charcoal.

Lemonade.

Watermelon.

Playing monkey in the middle with the pit bull.

Mega Sudoku.

My steam shower.

Singing.

Mowing the grass.

Torture is Evil

My main objection to torture is moral. I ascribe to the normative proposition that torture is evil. There is, however, no way to argue this position rationally. Someone else might very well reckon that torture is not evil or that torture is evil but excusable under certain circumstances. And there we'd be at an impasse in ten seconds flat. It's evil. No, it isn't.

I have other more rational objections that are subject to discussion up to a point. One is an ethical consideration. We ought not to torture because to do so subjects us or our compatriots to torture and it makes us appear barbaric. These have serious consequences for the success of our government in its pursuit of foreign policy and national security objectives.

The question then turns to whether these consequences are outweighed by the benefits to be gained from torture. I rather think not. It is my understanding that statements elicited by coercion are unreliable and that the best that we can hope for with torture are false confessions for propaganda purposes. A little questionable propaganda is hardly worth taking the low road.

Of course, one may dispute the factual bases for my opinions, but I have yet to have the pleasure of discussing the issue with anyone who knows anything about the supposed benefits of coerced statements.

Finally, torture is unlawful. If the adminsitration wanted to torture lawfully, it could have gone to Congress and asked for legislation that made torture lawful. It did not do so even in a political atmosphere where the Congress probably would have gone along with it. To allow the administration to evade the law with impunity sets a dangerous precedent and erodes the balance of powers.

Finally, torture is evil.

Star Trek Entertains

We saw the new Star Trek movie on Saturday night. I was heartily diverted, although the picture was so action packed that I felt a wee bit overstimulated. It felt more like Starship Troopers than Star Trek, but in a good way.

Here are the spoilers. This is not really a prequel; it's a reimagining. The time line starting in 2232, the year James T Kirk was born, has been altered by a vengeful Romulan from the future. So Kirk grows up fatherless and wild in Iowa and signs up for Star Fleet at the urging of Captain Pike where he defies authority while achieving excellence. Apparently, in the future people will learn to appreciate talent even if it isn't obsequious. Meanwhile, the crazy future Romulan, after waiting 25 years for future Spock to come through the same wormhole that brought him to the past, deploys a planet destroying weapon and implodes Vulcan, killing 6 billion Vulcans. This is in revenge for Spock's failure to prevent the destruction of Romulus (he was too late) in the future. When crazy future Romulan sets out to destroy Earth, the Enterprise and the cadet class are called into action. The rest of the fleet is conveniently tied up elsewhere.

Anyway, a borderline mutinous Cadet KIrk becomes Captain of the Enterprise and saves the world. A grateful Star Fleet makes his rank and position permanent. Meanwhile, Kirk has managed to meet and assemble the familiar crew and have them take up their stations on Enterprise several years before they would have in the old time line. I got the feeling that this film was a set up for a new franchise of Star Trek with younger actors who don't have to get fat and have perms.

Saving the world together bonds the crew, and I bet they'll have lots of exciting adventures. Best of all, they won't have to deal with a 20 year time lag between the cancellation of a series and the introduction of a string of movies.

Wherein I Repent

Yesterday's scripture readings and sermon really got to me. The theme was using communication to build up rather then to destroy, to be clothed in love and kindness rather than in wrath. I feel that I have been way too critical of my conspecifics, and I aim to mend my ways.

I really do love my conspecifics, and I understand that each of them has been made in God's image. Moreover, most of them are doing the best they can under the circumstances in which they find themselves. They don't know any better or different, and they probably never will. They should elicit pity more than anger on my part.

As a Christian anarchist, I look forward to the day, perhaps millions of years in the future, when the transformation of humanity by the Holy Spirit will end any perceived need for government beyond the Kingdom of God. It has pleased God for reasons that I cannot fathom, that this transformation should be deferred and for much of mankind to remain selfish and hostile and a source of self inflicted woe. I must learn to treat my conspecifics with gentleness and love, even those who annoy me and threaten my freedom, if I am to contribute to progress toward the Kingdom.

This is not to say that I cannot disgree with folks. I should just try to do so without being disagreeable. Let's see how well I do.

Secession

bpsycho puts the secessionist talk into perspective: http://www.psychopolitik.com/2009/05/olbermann/

No state lasts forever.

In my opinion, the US will eventually be absorbed into the Planetary Union along with all the other countries (except Switzerland and the Cayman Islands).

Star Trek Questions

I love Star Trek. I loved it when I was a kid when the series first came out. I don't own a Sterfleet uniform, and I never go to Trekkie meetings, but I catch all the movies and the shows. I'm bummed that there is no current iteration of Star Trek on the tube nowadays.

One of the things that was supposed to make Star Trek so popular was that it was optimistic about the future. Humans would go on to do great things and solve a lot of our problems.

I have a few questions, though.

What happened to all the Chinese people and the Mexicans?

Do people in the future still go to the bathroom? If so, why would the uniforms in the Next Generation consist of one piece jumpers with no fly?

When all the other systems go off line all the time, the artificial gravity never seems to fail. Why is that?

When people go "out of phase" they can walk through bulkheads. How is it that they don't go through the decks as well?

If a transporter malfunction can make people younger, as in the episode where Picard and some others are turned to children, why wouldn't people rejuvenate all the time by tinkering with the transporter controls?

Do members of Starfleet get paid? Is there an accounting department?

How is it that species from different planets can interbreed? Wouldn't it be bestiality to mate with another species?

If you ride a horse on the Holodeck, won't you eventually run into the wall? If you have sex with a holographic character, where does the semen go when you end the program? Remember when Whorf's brother had a village of aliens in a Holodeck? What happened to all their poop?

How could a society as antiintellectual as the Klingons have developed warp capabilities?

Is the Federation of Planets really just an organ of Imperial Earth?

Why We Chose Homeschooling (or would have if we had ever had kids)

One of my neighbors tried to homeschool her children. She called the Carmel Central School District for some guidance. The bureaucrat on the other end of the line told her she was "on her own" and hung up on her. Why the hell wouldn't the school district provide support for homeschoolers. Every homeschooled child means one fewer pupil, so I expect that we'd save the $20 K or so we spend on each pupil by having parents do most of the work. Even with the cost of support to homeschoolers, I reckon it would still mean a boatload of savings. Everybody wins.

If I were on the school board I'd advocate for a program to assist homeschoolers and to allow homeschoolers access to all the resources of the school system such as libraries, gyms, extracurricular activities, specialized classes that parents can't provide, guidance counselling, and what have you. After all, the homeschoolers are still paying the exorbitant school tax.

I never had children and am not aiming to have any in the future, but if I did, I have decided that I would have homeschooled them as long as I liked them. If they turned out to be annoying, then I'd pack their asses off to school, possibly even boarding school depending on how awful they were.

Anyway, there's lots of reasons to homeschool. Your kids aren't institutionalized right away. They will get more instruction in less time because they don't have to share the teacher's time and attention with a bunch of other kids (unless you're a grand multiparous superbreeder). The kids will receive individualized instruction tailored to their needs and interests (unless you're an idiot). The kids won't be bringing home all kinds of diseases all the time, so you'll be sick less often. The kids won't be exposed to even worse kids on a regular basis.

Advice to the GOP

Forget about trying to have a "big tent". You're all about exclusion, so stick to what you know best. Throw out all the "moderates" and become a smaller, purer GOP. Let the New England GOP Senators become Democrats. You don't need them. All you need are the dittoheads and loons and authoritarians. That's a guaranteed constituency of 25% of the population. Don't risk alienating that solid base by trying to be less crazy in order to attract votes from nonlunatics.

If the last eight years taught you anything, it's that you can't govern. You might as well embrace the role of crackpot opposition party.

My Prejudices

When I see a guy on the street with a swastika on his armband and he's goose-stepping and shouting "Heil Hitler", I automatically assume that he's a Nazi.

When I see a guy with a Confederate Battle Flag in his front yard on race days together with a huge pennant of a race car driver, I automatically assume that he's a NASCAR enthusiast.

When I see a guy driving a Hummer, I think to myself "that's probably a douchebag."

When someone says they were listening to or watching Limbaugh or Hannity or any of their ilk, I assume that I'm dealing with a dumbass.

These assumptions have never failed me yet.

Supreme Court

I reckon it would make sense for Obama to appoint a woman to replace Justice Souter. For nigh on thirty years or more, more than half of law students and new lawyers have been women. Women should be represented on the court, and it is doubtless an artifact of sexism that at least three or four justices aren't female.

Women live longer than men, so a female appointee could be expected to last longer than a male.

I would advise Obama to look beyond the usual pool of federal appellate judges and find talent anywhere he can. Having been a judge before is not really all that important, if the performance of the former appellate judges on the court is any indication. Let's have somebody with some real life experience or a political career for a change, not some crusty ideologue. How about somebody who has actually worked as a lawyer?

Spam

One of my work e-mail addresses is overwhelmed with spam. Hundreds of folks want to help me "Be her love general" or "get a bigger bulge so you can indulge". Others have inexpensive Viagra on offer. Others assure me that a Submariner watch will make me irresisitible. Still others claim they can make me appear to be rich to others around me, although I don't have any notion as to why I'd want to do that.

A lot of folks offer acai berries and other weight loss solutions, which I suppose I should go for before I bother with enhancing the old member. Who wants to have sex with a fat, poor looking dude with a crappy non-Submariner watch? Nobody, that's who!

Death By Flu

Mrs Vache Folle informed me last night that over 30,000 Americans die every year FROM THE FLU! Not even swine flu; just plain old flu. According to a chart I found on the Intertube system at
http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/death_stats.html flu and pneumonia kill over 65,000 Americans every year. So what's with the panic about swine flu and its one measly fatality? 65,000 deaths a year and we haven't declared War on Lower Respiratory Disease?

The same chart indicates that more than 40,000 Americans a year are killed in traffic accidents. Doesn't that warrant a War on Bad Driving? How can any parent who loves his children put them in an automobile and subject them to this risk?

Over 13,000 folks die from falls each year in America. Let's declare a War on Gravity. 3,800 plus Americans drown, so a War on Water seems like a good idea.

28,000 Americans are killed by gunshots every year. That, of course, is just a small price to pay for easily obtainable firearms.

You'd think cable news would go wall to wall with one or more of these other causes of fatalities.

Miley Cyrus Seems Nice

Some folks are everywhere all the time, and I start to hate them for it. Paris Hilton, Donald Trump, you know about whom I am talking. Others are such nice people that I can't get enough of them. Rachael Ray has TV shows, a magazine, does commercials and is exposed as much as anyone ever, but doggone it I love her. Can there ever be enough Oprah Winfrey? I reckon not. That little Miley Cyrus is another one. She seems so nice that it didn't bother me one bit to observe that she has her own breakfast cereal. You go girl!

Now Miley's in trouble with the hatemongers of the religious right because she is not a gay hater. Via AmericaBlog http://www.americablog.com/2009/04/religious-right-now-trying-to-punish.html, we learn that the wingnuts are up in arms for comments Miley made about gays, such as:

"Everyone deserves to love and be loved and most importantly smile."

"Jesus loves you and your partner and wants you to know how much he cares! That's like a daddy not loving his lil boy cuz he's gay and that is wrong and very sad! "Like I said everyone deserves to be happy."

"God’s greatest commandment is to love. And judging is not loving."

"I am a Christian and I love you - gay or not - because you are no different than anyone else! We are all God's children."

It seems to me that Miley Cyrus is a pretty good role model and has a better understanding of the teachings of Jesus than her detractors in the religious right. Thank you, Billy Ray Cyrus. If having to endure "Achy, Breaky Heart" was necessary for us to have Miley so famous and popular, then it was worth it. God works in mysterious ways.

All Scriptue

When I was a kid in the Bible Belt, religious folks explained to me that the Bible was true because it said so, right in a Pauline letter to Timothy. You know the passage: "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-17. To the fundamentalists who tried to instruct me, the passage itself was Scripture, self authenticating. The passage applied to the whole Bible as they knew it.

Yet, just before this passage, Paul, or someone writing as Paul, refers to "the sacred writings" that Timothy has known "from childhood". Clearly, the author was not referring to his own letter as Scripture. Moreover, Paul or Pseudopaul as the case may be wrote letters before the Gospels were written, so he couldn't have meant the Gospels, or Acts, or the Apocalypse. He couldn't have meant any of the New Testament.

Scripture clearly refers to some part of the Old Testament as "sacred writings" which are efficacious for certain purposes. Nowhere in tis passage does Paul or his impostor claim that Scripture is a law book or a history book, only that is inspired by God and useful to equip the man of God. Perhaps the letters of Paul were inspired by God in some sense and are useful. Perhaps someone right now is writing something under the influence of the Spirit and this will be useful. Some sermon to be delivered this Sunday may well be God breathed and useful for a man of God.

Bad Negotiators Get Deals Killed

I had the rare pleasure today of trying to negotiate with some clueless old pettifogger who had no idea how to negotiate at all. His strategy? Tell us that our concerns were silly nonsense that didn't need to be addressed. In his view, the contract language covered us and our requested additions would be superfluous. He didn't have any issues in principle with what we wanted the contract to do, but his literary sensibilities would have been offended by making the implicit explicit. I killed the deal because of him, and I'm sure his client will be pissed about it. That's what they get for hiring a shitty lawyer.

I even tried to help him negotiate. Hows about we each share with each other what our concerns are, and then we can put our heads together and see if we can work out some language that covers us both? He didn't bite. "I've told you again and again that you don't need any additional language!" Here's a tip for would be negotiators: you don't get to tell the other side what they need. They know what they need.

It's amazing to me how many bad negotiators there are in positions where they have to negotiate. I've worked with general counsels who couldn't negotiate at all and who would only work with redline drafts going back and forth. Most bad negiotiators are grateful to have a skilled individual, even if they're on the other side, to provide some structure and a basis for proceeding. I can't tell you what a joy it is to work with other skilled people and solve probems to get deals done on good terms.

The douche today was not a joy to work with. He wasted everyone's time.

Garden and Bird News

We saw our first hummingbird of the season yesterday, the earliest I have ever seen one on Hosner Mountain. Mrs Vache Folle starts putting out nectar in mid-April in case any migrant hummers would like a drink of sugar water on their way to the Maritimes. Our resident birds didn't show up until May 9 last year, but I suspect we'll see them sooner if the temperature stays hot.

Also making appearances this weekend: rose breasted grosbeak, tree swallow (first ever sighting on the property), and a pileated woodpecker (first ever on the property). The pileated woodpecker has a call that sounds a bit like Woody Woodpecker, and that's what allowed me to sight him.

We planted the raised beds. It took nearly six yards of topsoil on top of a layer of detritus. Now we have to figure out a way to keep Jasper from wallowing in them. He likes to swim in the pond after frogs and then roll around in the garden beds until he is covered with dirt before he goes back in the house. Thank goodness we have housekeeping help now.

I got in the pond on Saturday and took out a great deal of muck from the sump. I have a lot more to get out, so I expect to spend some time in the pond over the next few weekends. I have figured out that using a net works better than a shovel, although the full net is pretty heavy. The methane under the rotting leaves and detritus is a little hard to take sometimes, but the pond ain't gonna muck itself. I have lots of swampy places where a little pond muck would be welcome. Grass grows great on pond muck.

Mrs Vache Folle and I improved the retaining wall and the planting beds on them, and it looks way better. She is very helpful at keeping me from doing a half assed job even if she does sometimes try to work out of sequence.

Suppressing Black Fertility

My Idiot Brother in Law loves "the black family". Black people? Not so much. He wants to see "intact" black families and an end to the high rate of bastardy among black people. He uses the term "illegitimacy", but I prefer bastardy because it has a nice ring to it. What he really wants to see is an end to the births of bastards. He wants poor black women to wait until they are married and are established financially to reproduce and then to reproduce at less than replacement rates like white people. It's for their own good, you see. Those bastards would be better off if they had never been born. How does he propose to suppress black fertility? Cut off all public asistance of any kind. That's it. That's the solution to the "problem" of too many black births.Ultimately, underlying all of IBIL's talk of helping blacks by not helping them and freeing them from the cycle of dependency is his conviction that black people are the problem.

IBIL doesn't propose to do anything about the particular constraints under which black folks live or to make marriage any more of an option than it already is. He reckons that their community and families will grow stronger through suffering and that, best of all, fewer black children will end up being born than under the current system. This is not likely to be the case if impoverished populations in other parts of the world are illustrative, but it would nonetheless satisfy IBIL because it takes away benefits from black folks whom he hates.

I reckon that a more humane means of suppressing fertility among young black women would be to increase their opportunity costs of reproduction by taking steps to ensure that they actually have opportunities to sacrifice. This assumes that suppression of black fertility is your goal.

Religulous

I rented Bill Maher's "Religulous" in which he pokes fun at religious people. It was painful, but still funny, for me to watch many of my co-religionists make complete asses of themselves. Every damned one of them (except for a senior priest at the Vatican) fell into the trap of arguing that their religous beliefs have been "proven" to be true. Even the smart guy from the human genome project went off on how the New Testament is clearly a historical document, blah blah quack woof. Wrong answer! Bill Maher will eat you alive!

The only right answer is something along the lines of: "I came to believe in [insert religious belief here], and my conviction in the truth of it has been sustained through my own experience. I don't claim that this conviction is rational. Rather, it is a matter of faith and conscience. And, by the way, I don't actually believe in a literal talking snake."