Mrs Vache Folle and I went out Saturday to the comedy club “Bananas in Poughkeepsie. It’s not so much a club as a conference space in the Best Western where they stuff in plywood tables on weekends and have comedians come in. The patrons are packed in like sardines, and you are lucky if you get anyone to sell you a drink. Nobody served us on Saturday. So we saved a few bucks.
The featured performer was Jim Norton, whom we had seen down in Greenwich Village back in 2001 and who had been a regular on Colin Quinn’s Comedy Central show “Tough Crowd”. Lately, Jim has been sitting in with Opie and Anthony, a couple of clowns with an entertaining radio show during the morning drive time. I listen just about every day since I can’t get Air America any more, and the news is too damn depressing. It is a guilty pleasure, and I usually claim to listen to NPR. It is a seriously puerile show, and the crowd at Bananas was composed mainly of an unsavory collection of what I figure is the typical Opie and Anthony constituent. Twenty-something, mostly dateless white blue collar guys with baseball caps worn askew. Salt of the earth, if you will.
Jim killed. His performance this time centered almost entirely on sex, and it was very graphic and very funny. Jim’s comic persona, and perhaps Jim in real life, is a sex maniac, and he is absolutely unapologetic about it. His shamelessness and vulnerability are key to his performance. He speaks of the unspeakable without hesitation or embarrassment, and this leads to some of the funniest observations ever about human sexuality.
Jim handled a table of chatterers in an entertaining manner, much to the room’s delight. He called them out and booted them from the show, even though one of them was proclaimed to be a “breast cancer survivor”. She supposed that this status entitled her to talk incessantly during the performance. Jim skillfully deflected the breast cancer survivor card and a claim that he liked to belittle women with wit. It was an uncomfortable moment, and I fretted a little that a Michael Richard’s moment was unfolding with the “C-bomb” instead of the “N-word”. But it passed quickly without escalating. Kudos to the Bananas staff for ejecting them.
I laughed until tears ran down my face. I was exhausted from laughter by the time the show ended. I wish Jim got to speak more on Opie and Anthony.
Monday, March 05, 2007
There is No Such Thing as an "Illegitimate" Child; They're Just Bastards
In a discussion with the conspecifics the other day, the normative proposition that “children do better in intact families” came up. What this boiled down to in the end was that intact families generally had more money than non-intact families. The male role model thing could be tacked on to bolster the argument, but the main thing was financial stability. A related proposition is that “women who are not married should not have children”, presumably because the offspring will often not be as well off as they might with a husband in the picture.
But how perfect does the situation have to be before it is morally appropriate to reproduce? Children with nannies are better off than children without them, so should everyone wait to reproduce until he or she can afford a nanny? Children with loving extended families are better off than children in mere nuclear families, so should those who are estranged from their kin eschew reproduction until reconciliation? At some point, the situation is presumably good enough since the anti-bastardy advocates among my conspecifics all have children even though their situations are not perfect in every particular. And they had children even though they knew that one of them might die or that a divorce might ensue, in which cases their children would be less well off and better off never having been born.
For my part, I am indifferent to bastardy. If you don’t expect me to pay for your childrearing hobby, then I don’t care if you are married when you have a child. Alas, money is extorted from me for the support of other people’s children, and most of them are not even bastards. They were whelped by married couples and live in intact families which, despite being able to afford to take care of their own children and to educate them, nonetheless demand by force that I pay for public schools and other amenities for their kids. When they stop robbing their neighbors, I will listen to them moralize about bastardy. Until then, their moral credibility is strained to the breaking point.
But how perfect does the situation have to be before it is morally appropriate to reproduce? Children with nannies are better off than children without them, so should everyone wait to reproduce until he or she can afford a nanny? Children with loving extended families are better off than children in mere nuclear families, so should those who are estranged from their kin eschew reproduction until reconciliation? At some point, the situation is presumably good enough since the anti-bastardy advocates among my conspecifics all have children even though their situations are not perfect in every particular. And they had children even though they knew that one of them might die or that a divorce might ensue, in which cases their children would be less well off and better off never having been born.
For my part, I am indifferent to bastardy. If you don’t expect me to pay for your childrearing hobby, then I don’t care if you are married when you have a child. Alas, money is extorted from me for the support of other people’s children, and most of them are not even bastards. They were whelped by married couples and live in intact families which, despite being able to afford to take care of their own children and to educate them, nonetheless demand by force that I pay for public schools and other amenities for their kids. When they stop robbing their neighbors, I will listen to them moralize about bastardy. Until then, their moral credibility is strained to the breaking point.
East Fishkill's Extortion Demands Increase Significantly
We were just informed that our real estate taxes are going up to almost nine large. By New York standards, this is still a bargain. If I still lived in Westchester, I’d probably have to pay $20K a year for the privilege of living in my own house. But this is East Fishkill, Dutchess County for crying out loud!
My mother in Georgia pays a small fraction of what we pay in real estate taxes and gets just about the same level of “services” as we do, so what is East Fishkill doing with all the extra money? It can’t be snow removal, can it? As far as I can tell, that’s the only major difference in “services”. We have a well and a septic tank, so we don’t get water and sewer service. The road hasn’t been repaired in three years we have been living on it and, judging from its condition, many years have gone by without a visit from the highway department.. I never even see a cop unless I’m at the police station. The fire department is volunteer and supported by donations. The town website does not have budget information, so I don’t know what the city fathers are squandering our money on.
A big chunk goes to the schools, of course, but even there my mother’s county is apparently way more efficient at educating the youngsters than ours is. We pay over twice as much per pupil!
We can’t move further away from the city or our commutes would be prohibitive. They are a real strain as it is. Perhaps we can start a revolt and take a stand in East Fishkill.
My mother in Georgia pays a small fraction of what we pay in real estate taxes and gets just about the same level of “services” as we do, so what is East Fishkill doing with all the extra money? It can’t be snow removal, can it? As far as I can tell, that’s the only major difference in “services”. We have a well and a septic tank, so we don’t get water and sewer service. The road hasn’t been repaired in three years we have been living on it and, judging from its condition, many years have gone by without a visit from the highway department.. I never even see a cop unless I’m at the police station. The fire department is volunteer and supported by donations. The town website does not have budget information, so I don’t know what the city fathers are squandering our money on.
A big chunk goes to the schools, of course, but even there my mother’s county is apparently way more efficient at educating the youngsters than ours is. We pay over twice as much per pupil!
We can’t move further away from the city or our commutes would be prohibitive. They are a real strain as it is. Perhaps we can start a revolt and take a stand in East Fishkill.
Fashion Police Want New Uniforms
Death Wore a Feathered Mullet is dead on in asking why the fashion police are such wierdos: http://vivalasvegass.blogspot.com/2007/03/these-are-people-who-set-beauty.html
Fashionistas heal thyselves.
Fashionistas heal thyselves.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Krauthammer to the Moon!
I nominate Charley K as the first lunar colonist, and I would contribute to sending him to the moon ASAP: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/01/AR2007030101291.html
No Accounting for Taste in Songs
Some songs, no matter how awful, are beloved because I associate them with some happy time or event. Others, no matter how good, are hated because they coincided with some unpleasantness.
I spent a glorious summer when I was 13 or 14 (I’m no longer sure what year it was) on Lake Chatuge. The local radio station seemed to have only a handful of records that they played over and over again ad nauseam. Because I was so happy at the lake, I love these songs. I even sing them from time to time. They included such masterworks as “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”, “Lime in the Coconut”, “Paper Roses”, “I Can’t Stop this Feeling (with ooga chakas)”, and “Sooner or Later”. My cousin had an 8 track tape of Steppenwolf that we played repeatedly at full blast. “God Damn the Pusher Man” still makes me smile. “Born to be Wild” is my personal theme song that plays in the opening credits of the imaginary movie about me.
On the hated song front, Meatloaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” reminds of getting dumped. “Tainted Love” reminds me of getting dumped again a few years later. Luckily, these songs suck anyway so I’m not losing anything through the bad association. I would probably have hated them in any event.
My kid sister was a big fan of American Top 40, and she would spend her allowance on hit 45s which she would then play until you wanted to scream. “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” still makes my skin crawl. “You’re So Vain” likewise was played to death. On the other hand, I can’t get enough of “I’ve Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates” and “Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl”. Go figure.
Some songs just sucked, no matter how I felt when they played. “Muskrat Love”, “Afternoon Delight”, “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero”, “The Night Chicago Died”, “Seasons in the Sun”, and “Daisy a Day” come to mind.
Other songs were awesome: “I’ve Got a Name”, “Crocodile Rock”, “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road”, “Knowing Me Knowing You”, “Thunder Road”, “Those Were the Days”, “Don’t Play B17”, “Nights in White Satin”, “Maggie May”.
They stopped writing songs after the 1970s.
I spent a glorious summer when I was 13 or 14 (I’m no longer sure what year it was) on Lake Chatuge. The local radio station seemed to have only a handful of records that they played over and over again ad nauseam. Because I was so happy at the lake, I love these songs. I even sing them from time to time. They included such masterworks as “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”, “Lime in the Coconut”, “Paper Roses”, “I Can’t Stop this Feeling (with ooga chakas)”, and “Sooner or Later”. My cousin had an 8 track tape of Steppenwolf that we played repeatedly at full blast. “God Damn the Pusher Man” still makes me smile. “Born to be Wild” is my personal theme song that plays in the opening credits of the imaginary movie about me.
On the hated song front, Meatloaf’s “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” reminds of getting dumped. “Tainted Love” reminds me of getting dumped again a few years later. Luckily, these songs suck anyway so I’m not losing anything through the bad association. I would probably have hated them in any event.
My kid sister was a big fan of American Top 40, and she would spend her allowance on hit 45s which she would then play until you wanted to scream. “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” still makes my skin crawl. “You’re So Vain” likewise was played to death. On the other hand, I can’t get enough of “I’ve Got a Brand New Pair of Roller Skates” and “Brandy, You’re a Fine Girl”. Go figure.
Some songs just sucked, no matter how I felt when they played. “Muskrat Love”, “Afternoon Delight”, “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero”, “The Night Chicago Died”, “Seasons in the Sun”, and “Daisy a Day” come to mind.
Other songs were awesome: “I’ve Got a Name”, “Crocodile Rock”, “Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road”, “Knowing Me Knowing You”, “Thunder Road”, “Those Were the Days”, “Don’t Play B17”, “Nights in White Satin”, “Maggie May”.
They stopped writing songs after the 1970s.
Swiss Invade Liechtenstein by "Accident"!
It seems that World War III was narrowly averted: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Mistaken-Invasion.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
The Swiss Army “accidentally” invaded the Principality of Liechtenstein. I’m not buying it. This was a scouting mission, and next time it will be for real. Switzerland has always coveted its neighbors’ lucrative postage stamp business.
The Swiss Army “accidentally” invaded the Principality of Liechtenstein. I’m not buying it. This was a scouting mission, and next time it will be for real. Switzerland has always coveted its neighbors’ lucrative postage stamp business.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Home Depot Sucks
Home Depot sucks for several reasons: there are never enough registers open; our local HD has been out of DuraFlame logs for 6 weeks; they don’t sell pet friendly de-icer; and almost everyone who works there is a complete ignoramus about HD’s wares. Moreover, the associates, or whatever the clerks are called, are decidedly unhelpful. I understand that the company treats them like crap, so it is not surprising that this gets paid forward to the customer.
Occasionally, a TV ad for HD comes on. The delighted customers are shown being helped by knowledgeable and enthusiastic workers. This must be the Home Depot in Bizarro World, because it doesn’t resemble any Home Depot I’ve ever been in.
Occasionally, a TV ad for HD comes on. The delighted customers are shown being helped by knowledgeable and enthusiastic workers. This must be the Home Depot in Bizarro World, because it doesn’t resemble any Home Depot I’ve ever been in.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Murphy Brown Still Pisses Off Some Folks
The conspecifics astonished me today at lunch by announcing that Dan Quayle had been right about Murphy Brown. How so, asked I? She was a role model, and it was her obligation to set an example for the lower orders.
I reminded them that Murphy Brown was a fictional character, but they replied that the TV show sent a message in the “culture” that it was OK for unmarried women to reproduce. I pointed out that Murphy Brown was wealthy and perfectly capable of bringing up a child with every advantage, more so in fact than most couples of modest means. A child is generally better off in a two-parent family, they insisted, and poor women might see the show as validating bastardy in their case.
In a nutshell, a wealthy woman who wants a child (but who is not keen to marry) is supposed to forego motherhood as an example to poor women who can’t afford children on their own without husbands. By the same reasoning, I should not buy a stereo, because a poor person who can’t really afford one might try to acquire one based on my example. They might be tempted to rent a stereo and pay too much.
By this reasoning, I shouldn’t engage in any hobbies or consume anything beyond the bare necessities because I want to set an example for the poor.
I reminded them that Murphy Brown was a fictional character, but they replied that the TV show sent a message in the “culture” that it was OK for unmarried women to reproduce. I pointed out that Murphy Brown was wealthy and perfectly capable of bringing up a child with every advantage, more so in fact than most couples of modest means. A child is generally better off in a two-parent family, they insisted, and poor women might see the show as validating bastardy in their case.
In a nutshell, a wealthy woman who wants a child (but who is not keen to marry) is supposed to forego motherhood as an example to poor women who can’t afford children on their own without husbands. By the same reasoning, I should not buy a stereo, because a poor person who can’t really afford one might try to acquire one based on my example. They might be tempted to rent a stereo and pay too much.
By this reasoning, I shouldn’t engage in any hobbies or consume anything beyond the bare necessities because I want to set an example for the poor.
Bad News and Good News
The bad news is that the universe is going to expand to a point where matter and energy are so thinly spread that everything fizzles out in the “heat death”, or the expansion will reverse with the universe falling back into an information destroying singularity. The good news is that this is more than 10 billion years away, so we still have time to plan.
The bad news is that long before the universe dies, the sun will explode and wipe out the inner planets, including Earth. The good news is that this is still at least 5 billion years from now, and humanity should be able to find new digs before then.
The bad news is that long before the sun blows up, the moon will escape from Earth’s gravity and fly off into space. This will mean that the stabilizing influence of the moon will be gone, and Earth will wobble on its axis and experience hellacious shifts in climate such that complex life forms will not be able to survive. The good news is that this is still over a billion years away.
The bad news is that an asteroid is probably going to smash into Earth and cause another mass extinction at some point in the next few hundred million years. The living, if any, will envy the dead. The good news is that this is not likely to happen within the next century, except for that thing in 2036, so we have time to work out an asteroid deflection system.
The bad news is that humans have developed weapons capable of killing everyone on Earth but have not evolved moral capacities beyond those of their hominid precursors. The good news is that these will not become widely available for another thirty or forty years, and then nutcases will only be able to afford a few such devices. Accordingly, there will be substantial numbers of survivors.
The bad news is that environmental degradation due to global warming, the detonation of numerous nuclear devices, and other causes will result in widespread famine, disease, and pestilence. Weakened humanity will fall prey to new strains of microbes and viruses. The good news is that a remnant will survive, albeit with primitive technology.
The bad news is that the remnant will not be able to deflect asteroids and will be wiped out in the mass extinction event described above. The good news is that some life forms will survive, and Earth will become replenished. The Age of the Slime Mold will begin.
The good news is that there are alternate universes in which this fate is avoided.
The bad news is that long before the universe dies, the sun will explode and wipe out the inner planets, including Earth. The good news is that this is still at least 5 billion years from now, and humanity should be able to find new digs before then.
The bad news is that long before the sun blows up, the moon will escape from Earth’s gravity and fly off into space. This will mean that the stabilizing influence of the moon will be gone, and Earth will wobble on its axis and experience hellacious shifts in climate such that complex life forms will not be able to survive. The good news is that this is still over a billion years away.
The bad news is that an asteroid is probably going to smash into Earth and cause another mass extinction at some point in the next few hundred million years. The living, if any, will envy the dead. The good news is that this is not likely to happen within the next century, except for that thing in 2036, so we have time to work out an asteroid deflection system.
The bad news is that humans have developed weapons capable of killing everyone on Earth but have not evolved moral capacities beyond those of their hominid precursors. The good news is that these will not become widely available for another thirty or forty years, and then nutcases will only be able to afford a few such devices. Accordingly, there will be substantial numbers of survivors.
The bad news is that environmental degradation due to global warming, the detonation of numerous nuclear devices, and other causes will result in widespread famine, disease, and pestilence. Weakened humanity will fall prey to new strains of microbes and viruses. The good news is that a remnant will survive, albeit with primitive technology.
The bad news is that the remnant will not be able to deflect asteroids and will be wiped out in the mass extinction event described above. The good news is that some life forms will survive, and Earth will become replenished. The Age of the Slime Mold will begin.
The good news is that there are alternate universes in which this fate is avoided.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Conservapedia Rocks
Tom Tomorrow reckons “Conservapedia” is awesome: http://thismodernworld.com/3584. I agree.
I can’t figure out if it’s for real or is a parody. Would anyone be able to tell the difference? Dinosaurs on the ark, indeed. Everyone knows that the velociraptors would have gotten loose and eaten all the other animals plus Noah and his family, except maybe the Tyrannosaurus would have survived.
In addition to the one describing Noah’s exciting visit to Australia to gather up the marsupials and monotremes, I would love to read the lost books of the Bible that describe Noah’s trip to the New World to collect the llamas and New World monkeys and other species indigenous to the Americas. I speculate that he must have sent his sons on these amazing expeditions.
I can’t figure out if it’s for real or is a parody. Would anyone be able to tell the difference? Dinosaurs on the ark, indeed. Everyone knows that the velociraptors would have gotten loose and eaten all the other animals plus Noah and his family, except maybe the Tyrannosaurus would have survived.
In addition to the one describing Noah’s exciting visit to Australia to gather up the marsupials and monotremes, I would love to read the lost books of the Bible that describe Noah’s trip to the New World to collect the llamas and New World monkeys and other species indigenous to the Americas. I speculate that he must have sent his sons on these amazing expeditions.
Presidential Prognosticating
I’ve decided to do some early presidential prognosticatin’ in the wake of Tom Vilsack’s withdrawal from the race. I reckon it was a good idea to call it quits since his election would have been unprecedented. The American people have never elected anyone president with “sack” in his name. We’ve had adopted presidents before, such as Leslie King a/k/a Gerald Ford, but none of them was saddled with a “sack” in his surname.
One assumption I make in my predictions is that the unprecedented will be avoided.
No Mormon has ever been elected, nor has a publicly announced follower of Reverend Moon, so I don’t expect that to happen in ’08. (Although having your Messiah handy to talk to on the phone regularly could be a real plus). JFK opened the door for the Roman Catholics, so I don’t see Catholicism as a bar to the office, as long as the candidate isn’t one of those really Catholicky Catholics. It will be some time before we see a Scientologist in the White House. Still, my money is on a mainstream Protestant in ’08, and I imagine that the more credible candidates will belong to Protestant denominations.
Nobody with a vowel, other than a silent ‘e’, at the end of his name has ever been elected, that is to say we have never had an “ethnic” president. I don’t really count Irish as ethnic since there have been Irish and Scots-Irish folks in America for centuries. Accordingly, Guiliani’s election would be unprecedented, and I am hopeful that his political career will come to a close soon. The only way we’ll have an Italian-American president any time soon is if Nancy Pelosi succeeds Bush and Cheney after they leave office early for some reason. Bill Richardson, being 75% Mexican, is out also.
No woman has ever been elected (tough luck Senator Clinton). Nobody of admitted recent (within the last three centuries) African descent has ever been elected (so long Senator Obama). Nobody over 70 years old has ever been elected (sayanara Gravel and McCain). Nobody under 42 years old has ever been elected.
Since the War Between the States, nobody, other than Herbert Hoover, who was not an incumbent or a sitting or former Vice President, Governor, Senator, or war hero general officer (Grant, Garfield, Eisenhower) has been elected. There are lots of general officers running around, but none are what we might consider “war heroes”. The incumbent is ineligible, and Cheney is slightly less popular than the BTK murderer, so we are looking at a former VP (Quayle and Gore are all that fit the profile), a current or former Senator or a current or former Governor, between 42 and 70 years of age, male, of Northern European descent, mainstream Protestant or Roman Catholic. Others need not apply.
That means the only Democrat candidates (mentioned so far) who can be elected are Biden, Dodd, and Edwards. (I reckon a draft Gore campaign is in order.) The GOP so far has Brownback, Gilmore, Huckabee, Thompson, and Hagel who could be elected without setting a precedent.
Maybe this would be a good election for something unprecedented after all.
One assumption I make in my predictions is that the unprecedented will be avoided.
No Mormon has ever been elected, nor has a publicly announced follower of Reverend Moon, so I don’t expect that to happen in ’08. (Although having your Messiah handy to talk to on the phone regularly could be a real plus). JFK opened the door for the Roman Catholics, so I don’t see Catholicism as a bar to the office, as long as the candidate isn’t one of those really Catholicky Catholics. It will be some time before we see a Scientologist in the White House. Still, my money is on a mainstream Protestant in ’08, and I imagine that the more credible candidates will belong to Protestant denominations.
Nobody with a vowel, other than a silent ‘e’, at the end of his name has ever been elected, that is to say we have never had an “ethnic” president. I don’t really count Irish as ethnic since there have been Irish and Scots-Irish folks in America for centuries. Accordingly, Guiliani’s election would be unprecedented, and I am hopeful that his political career will come to a close soon. The only way we’ll have an Italian-American president any time soon is if Nancy Pelosi succeeds Bush and Cheney after they leave office early for some reason. Bill Richardson, being 75% Mexican, is out also.
No woman has ever been elected (tough luck Senator Clinton). Nobody of admitted recent (within the last three centuries) African descent has ever been elected (so long Senator Obama). Nobody over 70 years old has ever been elected (sayanara Gravel and McCain). Nobody under 42 years old has ever been elected.
Since the War Between the States, nobody, other than Herbert Hoover, who was not an incumbent or a sitting or former Vice President, Governor, Senator, or war hero general officer (Grant, Garfield, Eisenhower) has been elected. There are lots of general officers running around, but none are what we might consider “war heroes”. The incumbent is ineligible, and Cheney is slightly less popular than the BTK murderer, so we are looking at a former VP (Quayle and Gore are all that fit the profile), a current or former Senator or a current or former Governor, between 42 and 70 years of age, male, of Northern European descent, mainstream Protestant or Roman Catholic. Others need not apply.
That means the only Democrat candidates (mentioned so far) who can be elected are Biden, Dodd, and Edwards. (I reckon a draft Gore campaign is in order.) The GOP so far has Brownback, Gilmore, Huckabee, Thompson, and Hagel who could be elected without setting a precedent.
Maybe this would be a good election for something unprecedented after all.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Boycott Evil Connecticut
The Poughkeepsie mall and the Danbury mall are about the same distance from my house, and the latter is a hundred times nicer. I will not shop there, though, because I am boycotting Connecticut. I decline to visit Connecticut or buy anything from there or support the Nutmeg State with my consumer dollars until the denizens thereof repent of their evil ways. I am slapping sanctions on Connecticut because of that state’s evil fruits, the evilest of which is Joe Lieberman. I urge my fellows to follow suit and shun Connecticut until the Nutmeggers recall or otherwise stop inflicting Joe Lieberman on the world.
In fact, from now on, let Connecticut be known as the Nutbag State and its denizens Nutbaggers as long as Joe Lieberman holds an office therefrom. There is something seriously wrong with the Nutbaggers for them to have returned Lieberman to the Senate as he has no redeeming qualities. I have heard that he was not even cute when he was little.
In fact, from now on, let Connecticut be known as the Nutbag State and its denizens Nutbaggers as long as Joe Lieberman holds an office therefrom. There is something seriously wrong with the Nutbaggers for them to have returned Lieberman to the Senate as he has no redeeming qualities. I have heard that he was not even cute when he was little.
Where Political Power Comes From
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours."
Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”
Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”
- The Gospel According to Luke
This was part of one of the readings on Sunday morning. The part where the devil claims that all earthly government is in his gift really stood out for me. Note that Jesus does not dispute this claim, but declines to worship the devil. How are we to interpret this? I don’t reckon that there is any inducement the devil could offer to entice Jesus to worship him, but it would be a feeble temptation indeed if the devil were lying about his ownership of earthly government. I reckon that the devil spoke truly in this instance and that this represented what would have been a great temptation. So, I conclude that political power derives from the devil, and those who seek it must somehow please the devil to gain it.
Friday, February 23, 2007
The Solution is to Disqualify Evil and Stupid People from High Office
I have been thinking about whether people are mostly evil and stupid and what the implications of the distribution of evil and stupidity within society might be. For my part, I am not entirely misanthropic. I recognize that all of us are sinners who fall short of the glory of God, but folks seem to me to lie somewhere on a continuum between complete depravity and saintliness. I tend to think that their level of goodness/evil is normally distributed with most folks clustered around an average that is more or less honest and peaceful but not perfectly or consistently so.
It has also been my experience that cleverness/stupidity and goodness/evil are independent variables. Accordingly, you can be evil and smart or evil and stupid or good and smart or good and stupid.
Now, the proportion of the population that is very good and very smart will be very small indeed, and they would be just the kind of folks that would make a good ruling elite. The trouble is that the rest of the population will probably not be able to distinguish among the smart folks who are evil and those who are good and there won’t be any way to make sure that only the smart/good combination acquires power. By what principle will the rulers be chosen? If it is the hereditary principle, what is to say that the heirs of the good and smart will in turn be both good and smart? I reckon intelligence might be hereditable, but goodness/evil surely is not. If the people choose, they won’t be able to choose wisely because the evil candidates will pretend to be good. Moreover, actually good folks might well want to avoid positions of power and wouldn’t seek office in the same numbers as evil pretenders. The government will, therefore, inevitably be evil.
How can a government be chosen that would give goodness a fighting chance? First off, you would want to disqualify the evil and stupid quarter of the population right off the bat. The good but stupid fourth is a little harder to cope with. Do you disqualify them because they might easily be manipulated, like Jar Jar Binks when he was inexplicably given Princess What’s Her Name’s proxy? It should be easier to distinguish between the good and evil among the stupid because they may be less adept at concealment, and I would recommend trying to devise a way to keep the good but stupid eligible for public office. This would mean that there would be twice as many good people as evil people eligible to govern and twice as many smart people as stupid people in the candidate pool.
If the legislature were chosen at random from the eligible population, then you would be likely to have one that is two thirds good and only one third evil. Of course, all the evil legislators will be smart, while only half the good ones will be, but there will be just as many smart good legislators as evil ones. I reckon goodness is more important than smartness in any event. Also, the smart but evil will probably have to pretend to go along with goodness because they won’t be willing to identify openly as The Evil Coalition. Besides, each evil legislator will be absorbed with self aggrandizement more than the good ones and might not be able to come together to do organized evil as they do now in the mostly evil Congress and state Capitols.
If we could come up with a way to identify evil, in crafty smart folks, then we could get them out of the picture altogether and limit positions to the good no matter how stupid they might be.
Of course, this scheme will only work if I get to set the criteria for what is evil and what is good.
It has also been my experience that cleverness/stupidity and goodness/evil are independent variables. Accordingly, you can be evil and smart or evil and stupid or good and smart or good and stupid.
Now, the proportion of the population that is very good and very smart will be very small indeed, and they would be just the kind of folks that would make a good ruling elite. The trouble is that the rest of the population will probably not be able to distinguish among the smart folks who are evil and those who are good and there won’t be any way to make sure that only the smart/good combination acquires power. By what principle will the rulers be chosen? If it is the hereditary principle, what is to say that the heirs of the good and smart will in turn be both good and smart? I reckon intelligence might be hereditable, but goodness/evil surely is not. If the people choose, they won’t be able to choose wisely because the evil candidates will pretend to be good. Moreover, actually good folks might well want to avoid positions of power and wouldn’t seek office in the same numbers as evil pretenders. The government will, therefore, inevitably be evil.
How can a government be chosen that would give goodness a fighting chance? First off, you would want to disqualify the evil and stupid quarter of the population right off the bat. The good but stupid fourth is a little harder to cope with. Do you disqualify them because they might easily be manipulated, like Jar Jar Binks when he was inexplicably given Princess What’s Her Name’s proxy? It should be easier to distinguish between the good and evil among the stupid because they may be less adept at concealment, and I would recommend trying to devise a way to keep the good but stupid eligible for public office. This would mean that there would be twice as many good people as evil people eligible to govern and twice as many smart people as stupid people in the candidate pool.
If the legislature were chosen at random from the eligible population, then you would be likely to have one that is two thirds good and only one third evil. Of course, all the evil legislators will be smart, while only half the good ones will be, but there will be just as many smart good legislators as evil ones. I reckon goodness is more important than smartness in any event. Also, the smart but evil will probably have to pretend to go along with goodness because they won’t be willing to identify openly as The Evil Coalition. Besides, each evil legislator will be absorbed with self aggrandizement more than the good ones and might not be able to come together to do organized evil as they do now in the mostly evil Congress and state Capitols.
If we could come up with a way to identify evil, in crafty smart folks, then we could get them out of the picture altogether and limit positions to the good no matter how stupid they might be.
Of course, this scheme will only work if I get to set the criteria for what is evil and what is good.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Miscellany and Progress Report
I was doing great on my diet and exercise regimen until I had to go to Montana for two weeks. The gym in the hotel sucked, and I contracted the Norwalk virus and just didn’t feel like working out. On the positive side, I didn’t feel like eating either, so I didn’t gain any weight. I actually lost three pounds and found myself at 232 when I got home. I worked out for a week then contracted a lingering case of bronchitis and missed another week and a half of working out. Because I was down about being sick, I ate too much comfort food and gained back the three pounds I lost in Montana. Now I’m better and have been to the gym three times this week and am getting back in the swing of things.
The bathroom remodel has been something of a nightmare. The downstairs bathroom is almost done and is usable. The steam generator is great, especially if you are stuffed up. All that is left is to install the shower door (we are using a curtain for the nonce) and to put up two square inch finishing tiles in a couple of places. We painted last weekend, but Mrs Vache Folle is going to want to put on another coat. She always does. Of course, all this took a month to accomplish and went way over budget.
The upstairs bathroom has been gutted. The contractors came over late last week, gutted the room, and disappeared for several days. As of last night, we had a whirlpool tub sitting on the living room floor and a lot of questions about just how the contractors are going to get that behemoth up our narrow stairway and into the bathroom. I’m betting they will have to remove an exterior wall and bring it in from outside as the contractor suggested might be the case. They had to saw the old hot tub into pieces to get it out of the room.
We are very happy with how the downstairs turned out and are keen to see the upstairs completed. All the dust that is getting kicked up is killing my lungs and contributed, I suspect, to my bout of bronchitis. I have been sneezing and dripping nonstop for weeks.
In the “it’s always something” department, the new shower drain has started giving off the odor of sulfur. Either we have inadvertently tapped into a wormhole straight to hell, or there are some sulfate reducing bacteria somewhere in the system. I poured bleach down the drain to some good effect, but we are having the Culligan people, the contractor, and the boiler maintenance folks take a look at various parts of the system to try to find out where the bacteria dwell. The problem seems limited to the shower drain so far. The water tank may be the culprit, or even the water softener. It might even be the well, in which case we’ll want to shock it with some chlorine.
The most recent storm buried the pond deicer under two feet of ice, so I unplugged it. I hope the fish make it.
We actually socialized with other human beings this last weekend. On Saturday, we met some other couples at a bar and listened to a pretty good jazz trio. On Sunday, we had a couple Mrs VF knows from the train over for dinner and cards, and a good time was had by all.
The bathroom remodel has been something of a nightmare. The downstairs bathroom is almost done and is usable. The steam generator is great, especially if you are stuffed up. All that is left is to install the shower door (we are using a curtain for the nonce) and to put up two square inch finishing tiles in a couple of places. We painted last weekend, but Mrs Vache Folle is going to want to put on another coat. She always does. Of course, all this took a month to accomplish and went way over budget.
The upstairs bathroom has been gutted. The contractors came over late last week, gutted the room, and disappeared for several days. As of last night, we had a whirlpool tub sitting on the living room floor and a lot of questions about just how the contractors are going to get that behemoth up our narrow stairway and into the bathroom. I’m betting they will have to remove an exterior wall and bring it in from outside as the contractor suggested might be the case. They had to saw the old hot tub into pieces to get it out of the room.
We are very happy with how the downstairs turned out and are keen to see the upstairs completed. All the dust that is getting kicked up is killing my lungs and contributed, I suspect, to my bout of bronchitis. I have been sneezing and dripping nonstop for weeks.
In the “it’s always something” department, the new shower drain has started giving off the odor of sulfur. Either we have inadvertently tapped into a wormhole straight to hell, or there are some sulfate reducing bacteria somewhere in the system. I poured bleach down the drain to some good effect, but we are having the Culligan people, the contractor, and the boiler maintenance folks take a look at various parts of the system to try to find out where the bacteria dwell. The problem seems limited to the shower drain so far. The water tank may be the culprit, or even the water softener. It might even be the well, in which case we’ll want to shock it with some chlorine.
The most recent storm buried the pond deicer under two feet of ice, so I unplugged it. I hope the fish make it.
We actually socialized with other human beings this last weekend. On Saturday, we met some other couples at a bar and listened to a pretty good jazz trio. On Sunday, we had a couple Mrs VF knows from the train over for dinner and cards, and a good time was had by all.
A Person of Faith in 2008!
Mitt Romney reckons that the next President should be a “person of faith”. It doesn’t matter what irrational belief incapable of demonstration the candidate harbors, as long as he has “faith”. A scientologist would do, as would a follower of Ramtha. The latter would at least have the benefit of the wisdom of the spirit of a warrior dead for millennia conveniently channeled by some woman out west. Talk about historic perspective! A candidate who believed in the “Left Behind” eschatology would know just what to do to hasten the end of the world. A follower of the Christian Identity Movement might have some new ideas, let me tell you. Whatever the faith of the candidate might be, the country stands to benefit, albeit in dramatically different ways. In Romney’s favor, he will have the infallible guidance of the President of the LDS church to fall back on, and that has got to be a comfort to his supporters. I’m holding out for a Tiplerite who will devote the resources of the country to the colonization of space and conquest of the whole universe. A snake handling, poison-drinking President might be a refreshing change.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Wherein I Pile on that Wanker George Will
bk marcus reports that George Will had a cup of coffee with libertarianism before he went to England and became an authoritarian twit: http://bkmarcus.com/blog/2007/02/george-will-libertarian
I wonder if Will likens himself to an old style aristocrat or if he just acknowledges his inferiority and the necessity for the world to be ruled by his betters. Perhaps Will fears that he will run wild if he is afforded too much freedom. I read Will’s “Statecraft as Soulcraft”, and I resent that I will never get back the hours I spent doing so. The basic premise is that most folks are evil and stupid and must be ruled over strictly by the small minority of worthy elites. These elites should, as part of statecraft, cultivate in their subjects desirable ways of thinking and moral values, the “soulcraft” part. This requires a pretty substantial apparatus for propagandizing and surveillance of the riff raff.
I confess that, in some misanthropic moments, I have flirted with this notion from time to time, but I always come back to the realization that I am the riff raff the elitist authoritarians are talking about. To adopt their position would be to embrace my moral inferiority and accept that I should be made to pay for regulation and surveillance by my betters. Liberty should be defined as the right to do and think as my betters decree, not as the right to do and think as I wish. The latter is the dreaded “license”, the giving in to which would see the ruling elite cast aside.
Of course, if I could delude myself into identifying with the ruling elite and thinking that I am one of them, I might be able to adopt the authoritarian elitist mindset. I know some folks who have managed to convince themselves that they are more like the robber barons than their working class neighbors, and they manage to hold on to this delusion despite their complete lack of influence in the world and their sharing much more in common with working folks in the way of concerns and lifestyle and what have you.
The worthy elite that Will and his ilk lionize do not exist, and there is no way to manufacture an appropriately public spirited aristocracy. Jet setters can’t be bothered with surveilling and regulating the hoi polloi, and no true gentleman would want any part of politics. The ideal of the aristocrat with his sense of noblesse oblige has never been found in nature except in isolated cases. It is nothing more than a part of the legitimizing discourse by which would be elites claim authority.
The authoritarian elitist position has at its core a paradox. If humans are naturally evil and stupid, then their human rulers will probably be evil and stupid as well. Accordingly, any government constructed by humans will inevitably be the fruit of evildoing and stupidity and not a check thereon.
I wonder if Will likens himself to an old style aristocrat or if he just acknowledges his inferiority and the necessity for the world to be ruled by his betters. Perhaps Will fears that he will run wild if he is afforded too much freedom. I read Will’s “Statecraft as Soulcraft”, and I resent that I will never get back the hours I spent doing so. The basic premise is that most folks are evil and stupid and must be ruled over strictly by the small minority of worthy elites. These elites should, as part of statecraft, cultivate in their subjects desirable ways of thinking and moral values, the “soulcraft” part. This requires a pretty substantial apparatus for propagandizing and surveillance of the riff raff.
I confess that, in some misanthropic moments, I have flirted with this notion from time to time, but I always come back to the realization that I am the riff raff the elitist authoritarians are talking about. To adopt their position would be to embrace my moral inferiority and accept that I should be made to pay for regulation and surveillance by my betters. Liberty should be defined as the right to do and think as my betters decree, not as the right to do and think as I wish. The latter is the dreaded “license”, the giving in to which would see the ruling elite cast aside.
Of course, if I could delude myself into identifying with the ruling elite and thinking that I am one of them, I might be able to adopt the authoritarian elitist mindset. I know some folks who have managed to convince themselves that they are more like the robber barons than their working class neighbors, and they manage to hold on to this delusion despite their complete lack of influence in the world and their sharing much more in common with working folks in the way of concerns and lifestyle and what have you.
The worthy elite that Will and his ilk lionize do not exist, and there is no way to manufacture an appropriately public spirited aristocracy. Jet setters can’t be bothered with surveilling and regulating the hoi polloi, and no true gentleman would want any part of politics. The ideal of the aristocrat with his sense of noblesse oblige has never been found in nature except in isolated cases. It is nothing more than a part of the legitimizing discourse by which would be elites claim authority.
The authoritarian elitist position has at its core a paradox. If humans are naturally evil and stupid, then their human rulers will probably be evil and stupid as well. Accordingly, any government constructed by humans will inevitably be the fruit of evildoing and stupidity and not a check thereon.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
If I Denied the Holocaust, it was Accidental
JL Wilson reports on Canada’s sending a resident to Germany to be prosecuted for holocaust denial that took place in Canada: http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2007/02/next-they-will-extradite-blasphemers-to.html
I don’t have any reason to believe the Holocaust didn’t happen. Sadly, genocide is not all that unusual. My uncle was in on the liberation of a concentration camp and told me what he saw. I visited Auschwitz. I watched a TV miniseries back in the 1970s. I have spoken with some survivors. I’ve seen some documentaries on the History Channel. That’s all I really know about the Holocaust. I’m pretty sure it happened. I wish that it hadn’t.
I’m a little worried about Canada’s dealings with its resident, though. I could be inadvertently in trouble if the US follows suit. If you take my Last Thursday Creationism Theory, wherein I speculated that the universe was created last Thursday complete with memories and records that give the appearance of a prior history, I suppose that might constitute holocaust denial. It denies all history from before the Creation. Then again, I don’t really advance this theory as being true, only that it is an extremely remote possibility, one that cannot be proven either to be true or false. Would this get me jail time in Germany? If this blog is available in Germany, can I be extradited to Germany for holocaust denial based on the Last Thursday Creation concept?
I suppose that I could change the concept to the Creation Just When the Holocaust Started Theory to get around this potential legal problem. I would point out to the authorities that the Holocaust is not singled out in the Last Thursday Creation Theory as being more of an apparition than any of the rest of history. If any of the rest of apparent history happened, so did the Holocaust.
I don’t have any reason to believe the Holocaust didn’t happen. Sadly, genocide is not all that unusual. My uncle was in on the liberation of a concentration camp and told me what he saw. I visited Auschwitz. I watched a TV miniseries back in the 1970s. I have spoken with some survivors. I’ve seen some documentaries on the History Channel. That’s all I really know about the Holocaust. I’m pretty sure it happened. I wish that it hadn’t.
I’m a little worried about Canada’s dealings with its resident, though. I could be inadvertently in trouble if the US follows suit. If you take my Last Thursday Creationism Theory, wherein I speculated that the universe was created last Thursday complete with memories and records that give the appearance of a prior history, I suppose that might constitute holocaust denial. It denies all history from before the Creation. Then again, I don’t really advance this theory as being true, only that it is an extremely remote possibility, one that cannot be proven either to be true or false. Would this get me jail time in Germany? If this blog is available in Germany, can I be extradited to Germany for holocaust denial based on the Last Thursday Creation concept?
I suppose that I could change the concept to the Creation Just When the Holocaust Started Theory to get around this potential legal problem. I would point out to the authorities that the Holocaust is not singled out in the Last Thursday Creation Theory as being more of an apparition than any of the rest of history. If any of the rest of apparent history happened, so did the Holocaust.
Wherein I Admonish the Religious Right
Is the United States a “Christian nation”? No, the USA is neither Christian nor a “nation”. The USA is a fictitious entity, an organizing principle around which the powerful legitimize their claim to rule over some 300 millions. Its subjects are of many nations. Some of its subjects are Christians, but the USA itself is by no means Christian. Behold its works. The emissaries of the USA kill and maim people in Iraq and elsewhere and provide no witness of the Good News of Jesus Christ. The agents of the USA and its subordinate political units imprison many thousands of its subjects. They forcibly extract wealth from its subjects and burden them with countless regulations and surveillance. These are not the fruits of an organization inspired by Jesus.
There are among those who call themselves Christian who support the USA in its acts of violence and its plunder of the people. They are the religious right, and their influence is great. If they will repent and recall that Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers”, they can put an end to war and serve as a blessing to the whole world. They can be a great witness of the revelation of Jesus Christ to the Muslim world if they will open their hearts and submit themselves to Jesus’ teaching and the transformative workings of the Holy Spirit. I pray that God will convict them of the error of their ways and that a great awakening will occur among them so that they may become the light of the world and not bringers of grief. But they are burdened with false prophets who preach war instead of peace, hate instead of love, judgment instead of mercy, slavery instead of freedom. May God grant the people the discernment to cast out these spawn of serpents from among them.
When Jeremiah spoke the truth that the Chaldeans would destroy the city, he was called a traitor and an abettor of the enemy. They cast him into a cistern to die because his words might make the doomed warriors’ courage fail them. So it goes with prophets even now. They who speak out against war are called abettors and comforters of the enemy and demoralizers of the warriors even though they speak the truth. The warriors cannot be trusted with the truth. War cannot be sustained without falsehood. The warmongering preachers of the religious right are the guiltiest liars of all, for they libel God with their lies and are responsible for so much grief. I pray that the people turn from them and turn to Jesus. They have a tremendous opportunity to bring peace and to secure the blessings that inure to peacemakers.
There are among those who call themselves Christian who support the USA in its acts of violence and its plunder of the people. They are the religious right, and their influence is great. If they will repent and recall that Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers”, they can put an end to war and serve as a blessing to the whole world. They can be a great witness of the revelation of Jesus Christ to the Muslim world if they will open their hearts and submit themselves to Jesus’ teaching and the transformative workings of the Holy Spirit. I pray that God will convict them of the error of their ways and that a great awakening will occur among them so that they may become the light of the world and not bringers of grief. But they are burdened with false prophets who preach war instead of peace, hate instead of love, judgment instead of mercy, slavery instead of freedom. May God grant the people the discernment to cast out these spawn of serpents from among them.
When Jeremiah spoke the truth that the Chaldeans would destroy the city, he was called a traitor and an abettor of the enemy. They cast him into a cistern to die because his words might make the doomed warriors’ courage fail them. So it goes with prophets even now. They who speak out against war are called abettors and comforters of the enemy and demoralizers of the warriors even though they speak the truth. The warriors cannot be trusted with the truth. War cannot be sustained without falsehood. The warmongering preachers of the religious right are the guiltiest liars of all, for they libel God with their lies and are responsible for so much grief. I pray that the people turn from them and turn to Jesus. They have a tremendous opportunity to bring peace and to secure the blessings that inure to peacemakers.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
GOP on the Horns of a Dilemma
How can a GOP presidential candidate win in 2008? Nominate someone who will pander to the Christianist authoritarian base of 25% who will then convince more than third of the rest of the electorate that he was just pandering to those nutjobs and didn’t really mean any of it. It would help if the Christianists played along and pretended that they were unhappy with the candidate’s positions but would vote for him anyway while holding their noses. That’s the tried and true method that has worked so far since 1980. Of course, in 2008 there will be the Bush fatigue factor to reckon with, and anyone who can be tied to Bushevik policies will have a hard row to hoe.
The dilemma facing the GOP is that a peace candidate or a libertarian leaning candidate might have a genuine shot in the general election, but the Christianists are rabid for war and hate freedom and wouldn’t support him in the quest for the nomination. Accordingly, the GOP must pin its hopes on (a) a favorable outcome in Iraq, something they aren’t going to be able to bring about; (b) some way to blame Democrats for the unfavorable outcome, something that we have to hope the Democrats will be able to fend off; or (c) a dramatic escalation of the conflict that will make the electorate nostalgic for the current debacle. A monumental disaster of epic proportions may be what the Busheviks are building up to, because they know that massive failures by government are often rewarded and that a frightened populace will act irrationally and against its own interests. If the Busheviks can put us all in some kind of real danger, the fear factor may throw everything wide open. The electorate won’t be looking for a capable statesman, but will be looking for an apparent action hero.
The dilemma facing the GOP is that a peace candidate or a libertarian leaning candidate might have a genuine shot in the general election, but the Christianists are rabid for war and hate freedom and wouldn’t support him in the quest for the nomination. Accordingly, the GOP must pin its hopes on (a) a favorable outcome in Iraq, something they aren’t going to be able to bring about; (b) some way to blame Democrats for the unfavorable outcome, something that we have to hope the Democrats will be able to fend off; or (c) a dramatic escalation of the conflict that will make the electorate nostalgic for the current debacle. A monumental disaster of epic proportions may be what the Busheviks are building up to, because they know that massive failures by government are often rewarded and that a frightened populace will act irrationally and against its own interests. If the Busheviks can put us all in some kind of real danger, the fear factor may throw everything wide open. The electorate won’t be looking for a capable statesman, but will be looking for an apparent action hero.
"What Paul Meant"
I was blown away by Garry Wills’ “What Paul Meant”: http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780670037933,00.html .
I have always felt uncomfortable with some of the utterances attributed to Paul as being inconsistent with his overall program. It turns out that almost half of Paul’s letters were definitely not written by him, but were written later by unknown authors with theological agendas. Moreover, a few items in the genuine letters are generally regarded by scholars as interpolations.
An exciting aspect of “What Paul Meant” is the invitation to read the authentic letters of Paul for what they were. They were letters to particular gatherings dealing with specific crises. Paul didn’t set out to write books of a Bible but to deal with immediate issues which arose in the various gatherings. His views appear to have evolved over his 17 year ministry and can be related to the unique circumstances of the gatherings he was addressing. Your theologically smug Corinthians wanted different advice than the Romans with their clashes between Jewish and Gentile believers.
A point I had never reflected upon before is that Paul’s letters preceded the Gospels by decades and reflected concepts in circulation immediately after Jesus’ ascension. By the time the Gospels were composed, Christianity was becoming more institutionalized, and the authors may have had an interest in bolstering emergent ideas about church governance and hierarchy and precedence. Even if this were not the case, a reader in the present century brings a lot of institutional baggage to the terms Paul uses. For example, the concept of a “church” is loaded with two millennia of semantic additions when Paul was referring simply to a “gathering” or assembly of believers. The “offices” familiar to us today were “functions” in Paul’s day.
Another intriguing aspect for me of “What Paul Meant” is the author’s problematization of the emphasis in modern Christianity on “personal salvation”. When Paul wrote about rescue, he was writing about the rescue of nations and the whole of Creation. The life in Christ was a life in community, not one of isolated individual personalities in separate communion with God.
“What Paul Meant”, especially when read alongside “What Jesus Meant”, is liberating. If I am willing to accept responsibility for interpreting Scripture in the light of the authors’ likely intentions and the context of authorship, I am rewarded with new insights and wisdom. I have come to have a new appreciation for Paul and the beauty of his letters and the significance of his mission.
I have always felt uncomfortable with some of the utterances attributed to Paul as being inconsistent with his overall program. It turns out that almost half of Paul’s letters were definitely not written by him, but were written later by unknown authors with theological agendas. Moreover, a few items in the genuine letters are generally regarded by scholars as interpolations.
An exciting aspect of “What Paul Meant” is the invitation to read the authentic letters of Paul for what they were. They were letters to particular gatherings dealing with specific crises. Paul didn’t set out to write books of a Bible but to deal with immediate issues which arose in the various gatherings. His views appear to have evolved over his 17 year ministry and can be related to the unique circumstances of the gatherings he was addressing. Your theologically smug Corinthians wanted different advice than the Romans with their clashes between Jewish and Gentile believers.
A point I had never reflected upon before is that Paul’s letters preceded the Gospels by decades and reflected concepts in circulation immediately after Jesus’ ascension. By the time the Gospels were composed, Christianity was becoming more institutionalized, and the authors may have had an interest in bolstering emergent ideas about church governance and hierarchy and precedence. Even if this were not the case, a reader in the present century brings a lot of institutional baggage to the terms Paul uses. For example, the concept of a “church” is loaded with two millennia of semantic additions when Paul was referring simply to a “gathering” or assembly of believers. The “offices” familiar to us today were “functions” in Paul’s day.
Another intriguing aspect for me of “What Paul Meant” is the author’s problematization of the emphasis in modern Christianity on “personal salvation”. When Paul wrote about rescue, he was writing about the rescue of nations and the whole of Creation. The life in Christ was a life in community, not one of isolated individual personalities in separate communion with God.
“What Paul Meant”, especially when read alongside “What Jesus Meant”, is liberating. If I am willing to accept responsibility for interpreting Scripture in the light of the authors’ likely intentions and the context of authorship, I am rewarded with new insights and wisdom. I have come to have a new appreciation for Paul and the beauty of his letters and the significance of his mission.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Steve Scott Makes Me Think on a Monday
I’m a faithful reader of Steve Scott’s blog “From the Pew”. Steve writes about Christianity from the perspective of a layman and struggles with many of the same issues that I do as a churchgoer and believer. Two recent posts were intriguing to me. In one, Steve wonders why the Lord’s Supper is so skimpy and formalistic:http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/2007/02/jesus-stuck-in-my-molars.html. In another, he suggests that the doctrine of “justification by faith” has become a kind of gnosis: http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/2007/02/reformed-gnostics.html.
I’m with Steve on the Lord’s Supper. Once a month, our church hands out little cubes of white bread and mini shot glasses of grape juice, and we celebrate “communion”. I reckon we “commune” with Jesus and one another every time we gather and that we might do better to have an actual meal together, during which we would remember Jesus and the sacrifice of His Body and Blood. The ritual itself seems like an afterthought.
I’m not so sure I follow Steve on the doctrine of “justification by faith alone”. He does not seem to view it as central. I am a firm believer in the sufficiency of grace and that repentance and right living flow from grace, not the other way around. No amount of righteousness or law abiding will ever render any person deserving of salvation. On the contrary, we don’t “deserve” it, not one of us. There is nothing any of us can do to earn it, and if we become loving and faithful followers of Jesus, it is the Holy Ghost at work within us that brings this about.
This point is central for me. The grace of God frees us from the power of sin and enslavement to purity codes. It in principle allows us to live in perfect freedom and unity in Jesus and not subject to any earthly authority. I recall a discussion with a Baptist acquaintance who argued that my conception of grace did not provide an adequate basis for social control of the people! I don’t reckon Jesus was about granting some men power over others. I concede that my view of things undermines claims to authority, but I don’t have a problem with this.
There are lots of “Christians” who reckon that they have earned their salvation and that they are, therefore, justified in imposing their codes of righteousness on their fellow man. They are entirely comfortable declaring who is in and who is out, who deserves salvation and who does not. They regard my idea of a completely sufficient grace as “promiscuous” and a scandal. This leads them to authoritarianism and enslaves them to impossible standards of righteousness in the confines of which they can scarcely move. Their Jesus is wrathful and judgmental and unrecognizable to me. Their religion has little resemblance to mine. They might as well be followers of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of the Aztecs, such is the magnitude of the difference as I see it.
A problematic aspect of my view of grace is that it does not necessarily translate into the individualistic type of Christianity that has become so prevalent in America. If the emphasis is on “personal salvation” or a “personal relationship” with Jesus, the focus tends to be on self improvement and self criticism, and this gets you back to codes of righteousness and measuring how much Bible study and quiet time you squeeze in. If the emphasis is on the community of believers, on the gathering and how we love one another and interact in unity, then my view of grace is easier to absorb. We love others as ourselves because they are ourselves, our being one in Jesus. We are siblings in Jesus and stand in perfect equality one to another, the highest calling’s being to serve not to rule. What could be less loving than self righteous condemnation of our neighbors and fellow believers? Doesn’t self righteous condemnation minimize the sacrifice of Jesus?
If I understand Steve right, he is problematizing an attitude about the doctrine of “justification by faith alone” wherein the faith itself becomes secondary to knowledge of the doctrine or is replaced by this knowledge, in which case the knower of this knowledge can go about his business more or less untouched by it. The knower can know the doctrine and yet decline to live the faith, comforted in the assurance of his personal salvation. I confess that this may well be one of my failings. I struggle with a sort of social phobia and have to force myself to get out of my cocoon and enjoy fellowship or seek opportunities to be helpful or supportive of others. A lot of this is because I am tired after work and a long commute, and I fail to recognize how rejuvenating fellowship can be. “Good thing God has extended His grace to me since I can’t be bothered to expend any effort on behalf of my fellow man.” I am grateful to Steve for inspiring me to think this through.
I’m with Steve on the Lord’s Supper. Once a month, our church hands out little cubes of white bread and mini shot glasses of grape juice, and we celebrate “communion”. I reckon we “commune” with Jesus and one another every time we gather and that we might do better to have an actual meal together, during which we would remember Jesus and the sacrifice of His Body and Blood. The ritual itself seems like an afterthought.
I’m not so sure I follow Steve on the doctrine of “justification by faith alone”. He does not seem to view it as central. I am a firm believer in the sufficiency of grace and that repentance and right living flow from grace, not the other way around. No amount of righteousness or law abiding will ever render any person deserving of salvation. On the contrary, we don’t “deserve” it, not one of us. There is nothing any of us can do to earn it, and if we become loving and faithful followers of Jesus, it is the Holy Ghost at work within us that brings this about.
This point is central for me. The grace of God frees us from the power of sin and enslavement to purity codes. It in principle allows us to live in perfect freedom and unity in Jesus and not subject to any earthly authority. I recall a discussion with a Baptist acquaintance who argued that my conception of grace did not provide an adequate basis for social control of the people! I don’t reckon Jesus was about granting some men power over others. I concede that my view of things undermines claims to authority, but I don’t have a problem with this.
There are lots of “Christians” who reckon that they have earned their salvation and that they are, therefore, justified in imposing their codes of righteousness on their fellow man. They are entirely comfortable declaring who is in and who is out, who deserves salvation and who does not. They regard my idea of a completely sufficient grace as “promiscuous” and a scandal. This leads them to authoritarianism and enslaves them to impossible standards of righteousness in the confines of which they can scarcely move. Their Jesus is wrathful and judgmental and unrecognizable to me. Their religion has little resemblance to mine. They might as well be followers of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god of the Aztecs, such is the magnitude of the difference as I see it.
A problematic aspect of my view of grace is that it does not necessarily translate into the individualistic type of Christianity that has become so prevalent in America. If the emphasis is on “personal salvation” or a “personal relationship” with Jesus, the focus tends to be on self improvement and self criticism, and this gets you back to codes of righteousness and measuring how much Bible study and quiet time you squeeze in. If the emphasis is on the community of believers, on the gathering and how we love one another and interact in unity, then my view of grace is easier to absorb. We love others as ourselves because they are ourselves, our being one in Jesus. We are siblings in Jesus and stand in perfect equality one to another, the highest calling’s being to serve not to rule. What could be less loving than self righteous condemnation of our neighbors and fellow believers? Doesn’t self righteous condemnation minimize the sacrifice of Jesus?
If I understand Steve right, he is problematizing an attitude about the doctrine of “justification by faith alone” wherein the faith itself becomes secondary to knowledge of the doctrine or is replaced by this knowledge, in which case the knower of this knowledge can go about his business more or less untouched by it. The knower can know the doctrine and yet decline to live the faith, comforted in the assurance of his personal salvation. I confess that this may well be one of my failings. I struggle with a sort of social phobia and have to force myself to get out of my cocoon and enjoy fellowship or seek opportunities to be helpful or supportive of others. A lot of this is because I am tired after work and a long commute, and I fail to recognize how rejuvenating fellowship can be. “Good thing God has extended His grace to me since I can’t be bothered to expend any effort on behalf of my fellow man.” I am grateful to Steve for inspiring me to think this through.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
My Purpose
We filed our tax returns this week, and this reminded me of my true purpose in life. My primary function is to finance six levels of government. I serve the state. I am a serf. In return, the state lets me keep a portion of my earnings and to maintain a household. The state has calculated how much to let me keep so as to maximize its return from me. It does not let me keep too much, for that would mean less money in the hoard; rather, it lets me keep just enough that I have an incentive to be as productive as I can.
My secondary function is to feed an army of contractors. The bathroom remodel has progressed glacially. Four weeks in, and the downstairs bathroom is not done, and the upstairs one has not even been started. We ran out of wall tile and had to order more from Italy. The commode hasn’t been delivered. The vanity is sitting in the middle of the room. The shower fixtures are in boxes in the foyer, and the shower door hasn’t even been ordered. The floor has not been grouted, and we have had to go to a Laundromat the last couple of weeks because our washer and dryer are in the foyer. On a positive note, the tile we picked out looks great, and the oversize shower promises to be quite satisfactory. The floor is no longer on the verge of collapsing and is level. The room is warm thanks to an expansion of the radiator and a heating system under the floor tiles.
My tertiary function is to satisfy the desires of my canine masters, Jasper and Jesse. I walk them. I pet them. I play ball with them. I let them in and out a hundred times a day. I share my meals with them. I maintain a large fenced yard and pick up their feces for them. I put up with dog hair in my ice cubes.
My quaternary function is to keep the 35 plus species of birds that visit my house well supplied with bird seed and suet and to maintain the pond for the benefit of the goldfish, shiners, crawdads, water snakes, frogs and salamanders who dwell therein.
My secondary function is to feed an army of contractors. The bathroom remodel has progressed glacially. Four weeks in, and the downstairs bathroom is not done, and the upstairs one has not even been started. We ran out of wall tile and had to order more from Italy. The commode hasn’t been delivered. The vanity is sitting in the middle of the room. The shower fixtures are in boxes in the foyer, and the shower door hasn’t even been ordered. The floor has not been grouted, and we have had to go to a Laundromat the last couple of weeks because our washer and dryer are in the foyer. On a positive note, the tile we picked out looks great, and the oversize shower promises to be quite satisfactory. The floor is no longer on the verge of collapsing and is level. The room is warm thanks to an expansion of the radiator and a heating system under the floor tiles.
My tertiary function is to satisfy the desires of my canine masters, Jasper and Jesse. I walk them. I pet them. I play ball with them. I let them in and out a hundred times a day. I share my meals with them. I maintain a large fenced yard and pick up their feces for them. I put up with dog hair in my ice cubes.
My quaternary function is to keep the 35 plus species of birds that visit my house well supplied with bird seed and suet and to maintain the pond for the benefit of the goldfish, shiners, crawdads, water snakes, frogs and salamanders who dwell therein.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Why Conservatives Aren't (Intentionally) Funny
Why aren’t “conservatives” funny? http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=it%E2%80%99s_time_for_conservatives_to_take_comedy_seriously&ns=DougGiles&dt=02/04/2007&page=full&comments=true
The answer seems obvious to me. It’s not, as Doug Giles suggests, that they are too nice. On the contrary, they’re mean, and mean is rarely funny. They like to bully, and bullying is rarely funny. The butts of their jokes are often the poor and the oppressed, and that’s just not funny most of the time.
“Conservatives” are funniest when they are just being themselves, when they don’t intend to be funny. What could be more comical than Ted Stevens’ explaining how the internets work, for example? The linked to column by Doug Giles is also a hoot. Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly are veritable self-parodies. Nobody is more uncomfortably hilarious than William Donohue, self appointed defender of Catholicism. "Conservatives" can't tell a joke, but they can be a joke.
I put “Conservative” in scare quotes because I don’t think the label means what it might once have meant. In fact, one of the funniest things about the “Conservative” movement is how radical it is. How is it that big government, interventionism, authoritarianism and such like came to be an integral part of the “Conservative” agenda in just a few decades? Hypocrisy is fodder for comedians, and “Conservatives” have taken hypocrisy to a whole new level. Using the label “Conservative” as it is used nowadays is analogous to calling oneself a vegetarian even though one eats meat or calling oneself a libertarian even though one supports a massive federal national security and surveillance apparatus.
All my life, “Conservatives” have seemed a mirthless lot, tolerable only because of their unintentional ridiculousness. They were the crotchety old fart who would shoot at us schoolchildren if we wandered onto his land and who railed against the Jews at every opportunity. They were the geeky dateless guys in YAF in college that didn’t have the social skills to get into a D&D game and hung out together and rooted for their favorite Central American death squad. They were my Idiot Brother In Law ™ who destroyed almost as many brain cells listening to Rush Limbaugh as he did by drinking and who, while employed by the County, railed against those “tax eating parasites” in government. They were fat little fundamentalist preachers who, with a straight face, proclaimed from their pulpits (or cushy couch on a TV set) that Jesus had sent some catastrophe somewhere to kill a bunch of sinners, because that’s what the Prince of Peace is all about, killing people.
Maybe some real funny comedians have “Conservative” political leanings, but they aren’t making a living by being political in their acts. Dennis Miller became a lot less funny when he became a warmongering stooge. His rants are just mean spirited now.
“Liberals” are generally better at humor. Of course, there are joyless nannies on the “Liberal” side that are as authoritarian as any “Conservative”, just about different things. Nannies have no sense of humor, but they can be made sport of just like “Conservatives”.
The answer seems obvious to me. It’s not, as Doug Giles suggests, that they are too nice. On the contrary, they’re mean, and mean is rarely funny. They like to bully, and bullying is rarely funny. The butts of their jokes are often the poor and the oppressed, and that’s just not funny most of the time.
“Conservatives” are funniest when they are just being themselves, when they don’t intend to be funny. What could be more comical than Ted Stevens’ explaining how the internets work, for example? The linked to column by Doug Giles is also a hoot. Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly are veritable self-parodies. Nobody is more uncomfortably hilarious than William Donohue, self appointed defender of Catholicism. "Conservatives" can't tell a joke, but they can be a joke.
I put “Conservative” in scare quotes because I don’t think the label means what it might once have meant. In fact, one of the funniest things about the “Conservative” movement is how radical it is. How is it that big government, interventionism, authoritarianism and such like came to be an integral part of the “Conservative” agenda in just a few decades? Hypocrisy is fodder for comedians, and “Conservatives” have taken hypocrisy to a whole new level. Using the label “Conservative” as it is used nowadays is analogous to calling oneself a vegetarian even though one eats meat or calling oneself a libertarian even though one supports a massive federal national security and surveillance apparatus.
All my life, “Conservatives” have seemed a mirthless lot, tolerable only because of their unintentional ridiculousness. They were the crotchety old fart who would shoot at us schoolchildren if we wandered onto his land and who railed against the Jews at every opportunity. They were the geeky dateless guys in YAF in college that didn’t have the social skills to get into a D&D game and hung out together and rooted for their favorite Central American death squad. They were my Idiot Brother In Law ™ who destroyed almost as many brain cells listening to Rush Limbaugh as he did by drinking and who, while employed by the County, railed against those “tax eating parasites” in government. They were fat little fundamentalist preachers who, with a straight face, proclaimed from their pulpits (or cushy couch on a TV set) that Jesus had sent some catastrophe somewhere to kill a bunch of sinners, because that’s what the Prince of Peace is all about, killing people.
Maybe some real funny comedians have “Conservative” political leanings, but they aren’t making a living by being political in their acts. Dennis Miller became a lot less funny when he became a warmongering stooge. His rants are just mean spirited now.
“Liberals” are generally better at humor. Of course, there are joyless nannies on the “Liberal” side that are as authoritarian as any “Conservative”, just about different things. Nannies have no sense of humor, but they can be made sport of just like “Conservatives”.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Incitement to Genocide
The indispensable Wm Norman Grigg problematizes an evil neo-con cabal’s efforts to bring about war on Iran under the pretense of enforcing the Genocide Convention: http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2007/02/genocidal-war-to-prevent-genocide.html
It seems that some of the neo-con ilk reckon that the Iranian president’s advocacy of destroying Israel amounts to “incitement” to genocide and that the rest of the world (the US and Israel) should invade Iran to apprehend its president and to try him for that crime. If necessary, the US and Israel should kill every last Iranian to accomplish this. Mr Grigg aptly points out the irony of advocating genocide in order to punish advocating genocide.
Let me add my two cents. Alan Dershowitz is one of the jackholes making this argument. He is a lawyer and should know that advocating something and inciting it to happen are not the same thing. If he does not know this, he is a bad lawyer. If he knows it and advances this idiotic argument anyway, he is a bad person.
If I say that the Amish are a scourge on the land and ought to be dispersed or destroyed, this is not incitement to genocide. I don’t have the means to bring this about, and I am not addressing anyone with the means or will to bring it about. Moreover, in order to count as incitement, the action I am inciting should be capable of being carried out imminently and there should be a strong likelihood that it will be carried out imminently. Suppose I urge the Adjutant General of the Pennsylvania National Guard to wipe out the Amish. The Guard certainly has the means to carry out my plan, but there is very little probability that they will do anything of the sort based on my say so. Accordingly, I have not committed incitement to genocide. If I am part of an angry Amish hating mob marching on Lancaster County and I give a rousing speech exhorting mayhem and murder, that might be an incitement to genocide even if it does not come off.
The president of Iran has allegedly argued that the destruction of the state of Israel would be a good idea. I don’t know if he advocates killing Jews. He apparently does not have the means or inclination to attack Israel or to commit genocide, nor does anyone whom he was addressing. Those entities with the means to commit genocide against Israel are ostensibly allies of Israel or, at worst from the Israeli standpoint, indifferent to Israel. There is no basis to argue that imminent genocidal action based on his words was likely, especially since no such action has yet occurred. Accordingly, the Iranian president is not guilty of incitement to genocide, and no indictment should be returned against him.
There is a better case to make against Dershowitz for inciting genocide against Iran. He has influence on the Bush regime and its main constituency, the insane religious right, and the Bush regime is itching to attack Iran.
It seems that some of the neo-con ilk reckon that the Iranian president’s advocacy of destroying Israel amounts to “incitement” to genocide and that the rest of the world (the US and Israel) should invade Iran to apprehend its president and to try him for that crime. If necessary, the US and Israel should kill every last Iranian to accomplish this. Mr Grigg aptly points out the irony of advocating genocide in order to punish advocating genocide.
Let me add my two cents. Alan Dershowitz is one of the jackholes making this argument. He is a lawyer and should know that advocating something and inciting it to happen are not the same thing. If he does not know this, he is a bad lawyer. If he knows it and advances this idiotic argument anyway, he is a bad person.
If I say that the Amish are a scourge on the land and ought to be dispersed or destroyed, this is not incitement to genocide. I don’t have the means to bring this about, and I am not addressing anyone with the means or will to bring it about. Moreover, in order to count as incitement, the action I am inciting should be capable of being carried out imminently and there should be a strong likelihood that it will be carried out imminently. Suppose I urge the Adjutant General of the Pennsylvania National Guard to wipe out the Amish. The Guard certainly has the means to carry out my plan, but there is very little probability that they will do anything of the sort based on my say so. Accordingly, I have not committed incitement to genocide. If I am part of an angry Amish hating mob marching on Lancaster County and I give a rousing speech exhorting mayhem and murder, that might be an incitement to genocide even if it does not come off.
The president of Iran has allegedly argued that the destruction of the state of Israel would be a good idea. I don’t know if he advocates killing Jews. He apparently does not have the means or inclination to attack Israel or to commit genocide, nor does anyone whom he was addressing. Those entities with the means to commit genocide against Israel are ostensibly allies of Israel or, at worst from the Israeli standpoint, indifferent to Israel. There is no basis to argue that imminent genocidal action based on his words was likely, especially since no such action has yet occurred. Accordingly, the Iranian president is not guilty of incitement to genocide, and no indictment should be returned against him.
There is a better case to make against Dershowitz for inciting genocide against Iran. He has influence on the Bush regime and its main constituency, the insane religious right, and the Bush regime is itching to attack Iran.
Look at Me; I'm Dancing!
I attended my first ballroom dance class last night with Mrs Vache Folle. I missed last week’s class, so I was at a severe disadvantage. At least I hope that is why I was so hopelessly clumsy and singled out by the instructors several times for remedial instruction and to serve as a cautionary example to the other students. At one point, the lead female instructor had her hands around my throat. Despite my ineptitude, I had a very good time and look forward to the next class. I now have a rudimentary command of the waltz, box step, foxtrot, rhumba, and meringue.
I reckon my main problem, besides my being rhythmically challenged, is that my movements are too broad and dramatic, a legacy no doubt of having come of age in the disco era. I aim to take smaller, more controlled steps from here on.
I’m not looking to dazzle anyone with my dancing skills, just to keep from embarrassing myself on social occasions when dancing is called for. Until now, I couldn’t dance a lick and had to content myself with “free style” or disco moves that, now that I think of it, must have looked ridiculous.
When I was in Barbados, I recall feeling very awkward when people were dancing (as they usually were at some point in social gatherings). The popular dance at the time was “wukking up” which looked a lot like vertical dry humping from the back. I figured that I could perform the moves, but I didn’t know the etiquette. How do you ask someone to “wuk up” with you? “Pardon me, Miss, but would you like to simulate anal intercourse on the dance floor with me?” And are you supposed to remain flaccid or to manifest turgidity? Maybe my classes will get to “wukking up” later in the course, and these mysteries will be solved at last.
Once again, I blame the Baptists for another of my shortcomings. Dancing was evil, you see. This was because it was fun, for one thing, and all joy was forbidden. We were supposed to live joylessly and look forward to the release of sweet, sweet death. Secondly, dancing was seen as an occasion for other sins. Dancing would lead to lust, which was bad enough in and of itself, but this might also lead to sexual contact, than which there was no worse sin. Thanks a lot, Baptists!
I reckon my main problem, besides my being rhythmically challenged, is that my movements are too broad and dramatic, a legacy no doubt of having come of age in the disco era. I aim to take smaller, more controlled steps from here on.
I’m not looking to dazzle anyone with my dancing skills, just to keep from embarrassing myself on social occasions when dancing is called for. Until now, I couldn’t dance a lick and had to content myself with “free style” or disco moves that, now that I think of it, must have looked ridiculous.
When I was in Barbados, I recall feeling very awkward when people were dancing (as they usually were at some point in social gatherings). The popular dance at the time was “wukking up” which looked a lot like vertical dry humping from the back. I figured that I could perform the moves, but I didn’t know the etiquette. How do you ask someone to “wuk up” with you? “Pardon me, Miss, but would you like to simulate anal intercourse on the dance floor with me?” And are you supposed to remain flaccid or to manifest turgidity? Maybe my classes will get to “wukking up” later in the course, and these mysteries will be solved at last.
Once again, I blame the Baptists for another of my shortcomings. Dancing was evil, you see. This was because it was fun, for one thing, and all joy was forbidden. We were supposed to live joylessly and look forward to the release of sweet, sweet death. Secondly, dancing was seen as an occasion for other sins. Dancing would lead to lust, which was bad enough in and of itself, but this might also lead to sexual contact, than which there was no worse sin. Thanks a lot, Baptists!
Monday, February 05, 2007
Security Overkill
In going to court every day over the past couple of weeks, I was vexed by the security measures at the federal building. At the main entrance, we had to empty our pockets, have our bags x-rayed, and walk through a metal detector. If we made it beep, we had to be examined with a wand by a security officer, one of three or four on duty in the lobby. Then we had to show ID and have our name, address and phone number written down. Finally, we were issued numbered badges. When we got to the floor where the court was, we had to go through security all over again, this time under the aegis of federal Court Security Officers, four or five of whom appeared to be on duty at all times, doing a whole lot of nothing. Metal detector, x-ray, and wand all over again.
This added a lot of time to getting in and out of court and doubtless represents a large expenditure of tax dollars. On the other hand, I am heartened by the idea that it might reflect a healthy contempt on the part of the public for the federal government. In any event, the federal government, particularly the judiciary, is so fearful of the public that it finds it necessary to screen everyone who has business before it and to deploy a squad of goons to protect itself. This fear is not, I hope, entirely misplaced. Unfortunately, the security measures taken are probably disproportionate to the actual threat.
I reckon the most likely threat to the court is from accomplices of detained criminal defendants who might attempt to liberate their colleagues by force during a court hearing. Such defendants are usually accompanied by law enforcement officers who ought to be able to fend off all but the most organized and well planned of such attempts. Moreover, armed rescue attempts seem to be mighty rare and were extremely rare even when courts had little security besides a somnolent bailiff or two. Accordingly, we ought to be able to dispense with one or both of the screening operations and to make do with one or at most two security officers. Spread out over the whole federal judiciary, this would represent a substantial cost savings and free up thousands of bureaucrats for productive employment. The only downside to these cuts would be a marginally increased risk to court and prosecutorial personnel from what is already a miniscule threat. If these cuts result in a lot of killings or hostage takings, then they could be revisited.
This added a lot of time to getting in and out of court and doubtless represents a large expenditure of tax dollars. On the other hand, I am heartened by the idea that it might reflect a healthy contempt on the part of the public for the federal government. In any event, the federal government, particularly the judiciary, is so fearful of the public that it finds it necessary to screen everyone who has business before it and to deploy a squad of goons to protect itself. This fear is not, I hope, entirely misplaced. Unfortunately, the security measures taken are probably disproportionate to the actual threat.
I reckon the most likely threat to the court is from accomplices of detained criminal defendants who might attempt to liberate their colleagues by force during a court hearing. Such defendants are usually accompanied by law enforcement officers who ought to be able to fend off all but the most organized and well planned of such attempts. Moreover, armed rescue attempts seem to be mighty rare and were extremely rare even when courts had little security besides a somnolent bailiff or two. Accordingly, we ought to be able to dispense with one or both of the screening operations and to make do with one or at most two security officers. Spread out over the whole federal judiciary, this would represent a substantial cost savings and free up thousands of bureaucrats for productive employment. The only downside to these cuts would be a marginally increased risk to court and prosecutorial personnel from what is already a miniscule threat. If these cuts result in a lot of killings or hostage takings, then they could be revisited.
Gentlemen of the Bar
I had the misfortune of spending the last two weeks in a civil trial and in the company of an army of lawyers. I am not so naïve as to believe that lawyering is a gentlemanly profession (or that it ever was), but I have become spoiled over the years by my association with lawyers who, without exception, have represented my employers with honor, integrity and honesty. It is a testament to my employers that we retain only the most gentlemanlike of counsel and we avoid spurious arguments and dishonorable or misleading tactics. This is, on the one hand, a tactical decision since we have determined that civility, integrity and professionalism play better with jurors. On the other hand, it reflects the moral and ethical ideals of the folks with whom I work, and I could not imagine any of them tolerating any sharp or dodgy practices by our lawyers.
At trial, our lawyers were their usual civil, honest, and honorable selves and put on a hell of a case. Argumentation was genuinely helpful to the jurors. In contrast, most of our opponents’ lawyers were ill mannered, contentious and devoted to sowing confusion. They were partners in a large “respectable” firm from Chicago, but their conduct in the trial was deplorable. They took every opportunity to confuse and mislead. Fortunately, this seemed to be transparent to the jury. That the judge seemed to condone this conduct was disappointing to me, but I suppose that this is the state of law practice these days. That judge usually hears criminal matters, so I reckon he was used to shady practices by prosecutors and probably didn’t even notice what was going on.
If I ever have to go back to practicing law, I hope I manage to do so in a gentlemanlike manner. I know that it can be done.
At trial, our lawyers were their usual civil, honest, and honorable selves and put on a hell of a case. Argumentation was genuinely helpful to the jurors. In contrast, most of our opponents’ lawyers were ill mannered, contentious and devoted to sowing confusion. They were partners in a large “respectable” firm from Chicago, but their conduct in the trial was deplorable. They took every opportunity to confuse and mislead. Fortunately, this seemed to be transparent to the jury. That the judge seemed to condone this conduct was disappointing to me, but I suppose that this is the state of law practice these days. That judge usually hears criminal matters, so I reckon he was used to shady practices by prosecutors and probably didn’t even notice what was going on.
If I ever have to go back to practicing law, I hope I manage to do so in a gentlemanlike manner. I know that it can be done.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Friday, January 19, 2007
PhDs for Everyone!
Sunni links to and discusses an article by Charles Murray in which the author advocates more vocational training and less college prep: http://www.sunnimaravillosa.com/archives/00000890.html
I pretty much accept the premise that we are more or less born with a certain degree of smarts and that we are never going to get any smarter. There are things that can make us stupider, such as poor nutrition, disease, head trauma, watching Fox News; however, we can’t add to our intelligence. Each of us is equipped for just so much schooling, and going beyond our capabilities is a waste of time and money and energy. Accordingly, schooling might be more efficiently and cheaply provided if efforts were made to identify the potential of pupils as early in the process as possible so they could be placed in appropriate tracks. A pupil of low normal intelligence is not college material, and it would be better to equip that pupil for adult life by teaching her the skills she will need to succeed.
I was lucky to have been born relatively smart and with a good memory. School was a breeze for me, and I backed into a full ride scholarship from a local manufacturer. I ended up with a college degree and almost no prospects. I sold calculators, a job for which college was superfluous but which was required as a qualification by the company. I managed a movie theater, and I drifted up and down the coast doing this and that (but not the other). I decided that I had to go to law school or that I would never do very well financially with my liberal arts credential. Many of my classmates had their sheepskins from the same expensive private university and ended up working at jobs that required no college at all. One went to a short tech school and got into computers. Another became a TV cameraman. Yet another became a stand up comedian. Others went into various sales jobs or police work or bureaucracies. Others went to grad school like me to delay their dates with destiny.
Frankly, I don’t reckon that a college degree was really necessary for me to have gone on to law school (which I loathed every minute of). You don’t need any of that undergraduate book learning to study lawyering, and you could easily crank out lawyers in an undergraduate course. College was just a sorting mechanism and was not preparatory at all. Frankly, I went to college because I felt like I had to. By the time I went to college, it had become the equivalent of a high school diploma from my father’s day. You had to have the credential to do much of anything white collar, and you had to have graduate level training to match what college used to mean.
In fifty years, I predict that all but the most profoundly retarded will have college degrees, that 75% will have masters or professional degrees and that the other 25% of the population will have doctorates. You will need a bachelors degree to take tickets for the tilt’ a’ whirl and a masters to sell encyclopedias. Kindergarten teachers and cashiers at Barnes & Noble will have PhDs. Every third person will be a lawyer or MBA. By today’s standards this will seem like a success, but at that time the goal of the Department of Education will be doctorates for everyone!
Because of the premium placed on Ivy League degrees, it will be necessary for the Ivy League schools to expand and open franchises all across the country. By 2057, 90% of all college degrees will be granted by Ivy League franchise institutions. State colleges will specialize more and more in graduate schooling.
I pretty much accept the premise that we are more or less born with a certain degree of smarts and that we are never going to get any smarter. There are things that can make us stupider, such as poor nutrition, disease, head trauma, watching Fox News; however, we can’t add to our intelligence. Each of us is equipped for just so much schooling, and going beyond our capabilities is a waste of time and money and energy. Accordingly, schooling might be more efficiently and cheaply provided if efforts were made to identify the potential of pupils as early in the process as possible so they could be placed in appropriate tracks. A pupil of low normal intelligence is not college material, and it would be better to equip that pupil for adult life by teaching her the skills she will need to succeed.
I was lucky to have been born relatively smart and with a good memory. School was a breeze for me, and I backed into a full ride scholarship from a local manufacturer. I ended up with a college degree and almost no prospects. I sold calculators, a job for which college was superfluous but which was required as a qualification by the company. I managed a movie theater, and I drifted up and down the coast doing this and that (but not the other). I decided that I had to go to law school or that I would never do very well financially with my liberal arts credential. Many of my classmates had their sheepskins from the same expensive private university and ended up working at jobs that required no college at all. One went to a short tech school and got into computers. Another became a TV cameraman. Yet another became a stand up comedian. Others went into various sales jobs or police work or bureaucracies. Others went to grad school like me to delay their dates with destiny.
Frankly, I don’t reckon that a college degree was really necessary for me to have gone on to law school (which I loathed every minute of). You don’t need any of that undergraduate book learning to study lawyering, and you could easily crank out lawyers in an undergraduate course. College was just a sorting mechanism and was not preparatory at all. Frankly, I went to college because I felt like I had to. By the time I went to college, it had become the equivalent of a high school diploma from my father’s day. You had to have the credential to do much of anything white collar, and you had to have graduate level training to match what college used to mean.
In fifty years, I predict that all but the most profoundly retarded will have college degrees, that 75% will have masters or professional degrees and that the other 25% of the population will have doctorates. You will need a bachelors degree to take tickets for the tilt’ a’ whirl and a masters to sell encyclopedias. Kindergarten teachers and cashiers at Barnes & Noble will have PhDs. Every third person will be a lawyer or MBA. By today’s standards this will seem like a success, but at that time the goal of the Department of Education will be doctorates for everyone!
Because of the premium placed on Ivy League degrees, it will be necessary for the Ivy League schools to expand and open franchises all across the country. By 2057, 90% of all college degrees will be granted by Ivy League franchise institutions. State colleges will specialize more and more in graduate schooling.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Polygyny Is Good for Women
I made “The Red Queen” my “bathroom book”, so I’m still reading it and probably will be for some time. I found out that we have only two sexes because of compromises necessitated by conflicts between cytoplasmic genes. Species engaged in fusion sex that did not settle on the male with small manifold gametes and the female with a few large gametes tended to be wiped out by competition between genes from the organelles. I don’t really understand it all that well, but I’ll take the author’s word for it.
I have finally reached the part where all the background about sexual selection is applied to humans, and I am learning quite a bit that surprises me. I did not know that ruling elites over the millennia had so damn many wives and concubines and that so many lower class men were forced into celibacy as a result. Having a royal ancestor would be the norm rather than anything special given the breeding prowess of kings and emperors. Even ostensibly monogamous medieval lords kept harems of “serving girls” and sired large broods of bastards.
If you were a lower class schmendrick in such a highly polygynous society, investing in daughters would be the best way to make sure that you had many descendants. Your son might not breed at all, but your daughter had a shot at being concubine to a powerful man. Peasants would, therefore, tend to leave their wealth to daughters and to exhibit more of a matrilineal family structure in the lower classes while the upper classes, where males could expect to have many mates, would do the opposite and invest in sons. Elite families would be patrilineal.
Foragers tend to be monogamous since there is not much chance to accumulate the wealth needed to support multiple wives. Farmers can get richer and support several wives at the expense of their less fortunate or capable fellows. Warlords, with their hoards of treasure, can accommodate hundreds or thousands of wives and concubines.
Enforced monogamy benefits those men who would be left without a partner in a polygynous society. It restricts the strategic options of women who, to paraphrase one of the quotes in the book, might rather be the second or third wife of John Kennedy rather than the first wife of Bozo the Clown.
Enforced monogamy also makes hypergamy more difficult for women since it means that the highest social class will be more apt to intermarry within itself rather than to look for wives in the lower orders. In a polygynous system, middle class women might become supernumerary wives to rich and powerful men rather than settling for some mook from their own class.
It looks to me as if enforced monogamy is bad for women and good for less attractive men. I probably benefit from it whereas Mrs Vache Folle could have done way better in a polygynous society.
I have finally reached the part where all the background about sexual selection is applied to humans, and I am learning quite a bit that surprises me. I did not know that ruling elites over the millennia had so damn many wives and concubines and that so many lower class men were forced into celibacy as a result. Having a royal ancestor would be the norm rather than anything special given the breeding prowess of kings and emperors. Even ostensibly monogamous medieval lords kept harems of “serving girls” and sired large broods of bastards.
If you were a lower class schmendrick in such a highly polygynous society, investing in daughters would be the best way to make sure that you had many descendants. Your son might not breed at all, but your daughter had a shot at being concubine to a powerful man. Peasants would, therefore, tend to leave their wealth to daughters and to exhibit more of a matrilineal family structure in the lower classes while the upper classes, where males could expect to have many mates, would do the opposite and invest in sons. Elite families would be patrilineal.
Foragers tend to be monogamous since there is not much chance to accumulate the wealth needed to support multiple wives. Farmers can get richer and support several wives at the expense of their less fortunate or capable fellows. Warlords, with their hoards of treasure, can accommodate hundreds or thousands of wives and concubines.
Enforced monogamy benefits those men who would be left without a partner in a polygynous society. It restricts the strategic options of women who, to paraphrase one of the quotes in the book, might rather be the second or third wife of John Kennedy rather than the first wife of Bozo the Clown.
Enforced monogamy also makes hypergamy more difficult for women since it means that the highest social class will be more apt to intermarry within itself rather than to look for wives in the lower orders. In a polygynous system, middle class women might become supernumerary wives to rich and powerful men rather than settling for some mook from their own class.
It looks to me as if enforced monogamy is bad for women and good for less attractive men. I probably benefit from it whereas Mrs Vache Folle could have done way better in a polygynous society.
Musing on Libertarian Totalitarianism
David Friedman has an interesting take on the libertarian-liberal alliance: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2007/01/liberals-libertarians-objectivists-and.html. The conclusion (in the sense that it concludes the post):
David refers to a Cato poll that showed that 15% of the American public is “libertarian”. They are libertarian in the sense that they are relatively socially liberal AND economically conservative, as those characterizations are popularly understood. Anti-state hard core libertarians are much rarer. Even the 15% identified by Cato is not even enough to counter the wingnut authoritarian right with its 25% let alone counter the remaining 60% who otherwise embrace the state wholeheartedly. Unless the libertarians win over a lot more people and become even more libertarian in their leanings, there is no way that the democratic process is going to do anything for libertarianism. On the contrary, the democratic process will mean more and more government until every aspect of our lives is completely managed by the state right down to our bowel movements.
With the democratic process, the best libertarians can hope for is to put a slight drag on the inevitable slide into totalitarianism.
Perhaps a free society will come only with the seizure of power by revolutionaries. History has shown that a small ideological minority can take the reins of power in a state and impose its will on the masses if it has an army. It would not be enough for libertarians simply to destroy the state, because the masses will simply sell their freedom to any master who will reconstitute it at the first opportunity. Rather, libertarians must take over the state and monopolize the initiation of force in order to prevent the development of any other nascent state-like institutions. Powerful institutions of voluntary civil society would not be problematic, but no person must be able to impose any involuntary obligations on another except under the authority of the revolutionary party.
Could such a state devoted to entirely to inactivity on its own part other than the defense of its subjects from internal and external enemies be maintained without succumbing to the corruption of power? It could be maintained only so long as its apparatchiks were selected based on ideological purity. Party membership must be restricted to those who profess only the profoundest commitment to liberty. Selection to the people’s congress would be from party members by lot rather than by election; therefore, the congress would not necessarily be comprised of the most ambitious and power hungry people. Sponsors of legislation and those who vote in favor of any legislation, other than to repeal something already on the books, will be considered to have resigned from the congress and will be ineligible for the central committee or the chairmanship or other high office. This will ensure that activist legislators do not gain advancement. The chairman will have a veto which cannot be overridden.
The state will have only such personnel and perform only such functions as are absolutely necessary to perform its "essential" obligations:
Defense of the realm;
Criminal justice and dispute resolution;
Self Preservation;
Maintenance of party power.
Insofar as possible, the defense of the realm should be in the hands of voluntary militia. Criminal justice should be handled by a voluntary constabulary and trials presided over by party members with paty member juries. Dispute resolution should be done by courts convened and paid for by the litigants, subject to review by local party apparatchiks. Self preservation and maintenance of party power may require the maintenance of a substantial security and surveillance apparatus. Despite this, rule by the party will be far less costly than the current system of government, and the tax burden on the people will be miniscule. It may be difficult for the opposition to develop much interest in the masses to revolt, since about the only limitation the party will place on the people is to restrict their ability to meddle with their neighbors.
The only way to defeat the state may be to capture it and tame it.
“Politically speaking, if Republicans supported less government instead of more,
they would be natural allies for libertarians, whether those libertarians
reached their conclusions via Catholic philosophy, natural rights,
utilitarianism, skepticism, or hedonism. Since Republicans at the moment support
more government—more even than Democrats as of the last time they were in
power—it is worth looking for other allies.”
David refers to a Cato poll that showed that 15% of the American public is “libertarian”. They are libertarian in the sense that they are relatively socially liberal AND economically conservative, as those characterizations are popularly understood. Anti-state hard core libertarians are much rarer. Even the 15% identified by Cato is not even enough to counter the wingnut authoritarian right with its 25% let alone counter the remaining 60% who otherwise embrace the state wholeheartedly. Unless the libertarians win over a lot more people and become even more libertarian in their leanings, there is no way that the democratic process is going to do anything for libertarianism. On the contrary, the democratic process will mean more and more government until every aspect of our lives is completely managed by the state right down to our bowel movements.
With the democratic process, the best libertarians can hope for is to put a slight drag on the inevitable slide into totalitarianism.
Perhaps a free society will come only with the seizure of power by revolutionaries. History has shown that a small ideological minority can take the reins of power in a state and impose its will on the masses if it has an army. It would not be enough for libertarians simply to destroy the state, because the masses will simply sell their freedom to any master who will reconstitute it at the first opportunity. Rather, libertarians must take over the state and monopolize the initiation of force in order to prevent the development of any other nascent state-like institutions. Powerful institutions of voluntary civil society would not be problematic, but no person must be able to impose any involuntary obligations on another except under the authority of the revolutionary party.
Could such a state devoted to entirely to inactivity on its own part other than the defense of its subjects from internal and external enemies be maintained without succumbing to the corruption of power? It could be maintained only so long as its apparatchiks were selected based on ideological purity. Party membership must be restricted to those who profess only the profoundest commitment to liberty. Selection to the people’s congress would be from party members by lot rather than by election; therefore, the congress would not necessarily be comprised of the most ambitious and power hungry people. Sponsors of legislation and those who vote in favor of any legislation, other than to repeal something already on the books, will be considered to have resigned from the congress and will be ineligible for the central committee or the chairmanship or other high office. This will ensure that activist legislators do not gain advancement. The chairman will have a veto which cannot be overridden.
The state will have only such personnel and perform only such functions as are absolutely necessary to perform its "essential" obligations:
Defense of the realm;
Criminal justice and dispute resolution;
Self Preservation;
Maintenance of party power.
Insofar as possible, the defense of the realm should be in the hands of voluntary militia. Criminal justice should be handled by a voluntary constabulary and trials presided over by party members with paty member juries. Dispute resolution should be done by courts convened and paid for by the litigants, subject to review by local party apparatchiks. Self preservation and maintenance of party power may require the maintenance of a substantial security and surveillance apparatus. Despite this, rule by the party will be far less costly than the current system of government, and the tax burden on the people will be miniscule. It may be difficult for the opposition to develop much interest in the masses to revolt, since about the only limitation the party will place on the people is to restrict their ability to meddle with their neighbors.
The only way to defeat the state may be to capture it and tame it.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Cully Stimson Should Pick Up HIs Medal of Freedom and Go Home
Here’s a puff piece on the reptilian Cully Stimson for his alma mater’s paper http://bulletin.kenyon.edu/x336.xml . If you look at his experience and education, the man is no more qualified for his job as master of detainees than I would be. He was a Navy JAG, and that’s about the only thing in his background that remotely prepared him for the job. Except for some brief work at some prep schools, he has never had a real job. He is a career parasite.
Anyway, why hasn’t he been fired yet? This is the guy that wants corporations to pressure law firms financially so that their lawyers won’t represent detainees. Is this the kind of lawyer that George Mason turns out? Is he speaking for the regime even while the Pentagon distances itself from him? He’s not distant enough if he still works there.
I want to know which companies pressure the firms so I can boycott their products.
Anyway, why hasn’t he been fired yet? This is the guy that wants corporations to pressure law firms financially so that their lawyers won’t represent detainees. Is this the kind of lawyer that George Mason turns out? Is he speaking for the regime even while the Pentagon distances itself from him? He’s not distant enough if he still works there.
I want to know which companies pressure the firms so I can boycott their products.
Meritorious or Just Obedient?
Kevin Carson posts about folks who blame the masses for their own degradation: http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2007/01/you-dont-get-to-be-pharoah-by-working.html
It seems clear to me that the myth of the meritocracy is a means for the ruling elite to persuade the smarter proles to identify their interests with the elites rather than their working class comrades. Middle managers, such as myself, are taught to think of ourselves as successes by virtue of our worthiness and merit. Those poor slobs who aren’t as successful have only themselves to blame, since the system that advances us is nothing more than an unbiased mechanism for sorting folks into categories of the worthy and the unworthy. That being the case, the elites above us must be the worthiest of all.
This myth inspires us to work to maintain the system. We are convinced of the necessity of the state to keep the unworthy in line and to manage their affairs down to the most niggling detail. That this impairs our own freedom does not occur to us because we have already surrendered it voluntarily like well trained domesticated animals. We love the leash and take delight in the praise of our masters. We enjoy our relatively better appointed homes and the other rewards of our relative prosperity and think we are the right kind of people.
We don’t pass much time with the elites themselves. We may get glimpses of the fringes of the power elite from time to time, so we don’t realize just how far above us in wealth and power they are. This allows us to think that we are more like them than those folks lower down on the socioeconomic scale with whom we actually have much more in common.
If the meritocratic system does not sort for merit, what does it sort for? Domestication.
It seems clear to me that the myth of the meritocracy is a means for the ruling elite to persuade the smarter proles to identify their interests with the elites rather than their working class comrades. Middle managers, such as myself, are taught to think of ourselves as successes by virtue of our worthiness and merit. Those poor slobs who aren’t as successful have only themselves to blame, since the system that advances us is nothing more than an unbiased mechanism for sorting folks into categories of the worthy and the unworthy. That being the case, the elites above us must be the worthiest of all.
This myth inspires us to work to maintain the system. We are convinced of the necessity of the state to keep the unworthy in line and to manage their affairs down to the most niggling detail. That this impairs our own freedom does not occur to us because we have already surrendered it voluntarily like well trained domesticated animals. We love the leash and take delight in the praise of our masters. We enjoy our relatively better appointed homes and the other rewards of our relative prosperity and think we are the right kind of people.
We don’t pass much time with the elites themselves. We may get glimpses of the fringes of the power elite from time to time, so we don’t realize just how far above us in wealth and power they are. This allows us to think that we are more like them than those folks lower down on the socioeconomic scale with whom we actually have much more in common.
If the meritocratic system does not sort for merit, what does it sort for? Domestication.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Better than American Idol
American Idol sucks. Death Wore a Feathered Mullet sums up how I feel about it: http://vivalasvegass.blogspot.com/2007/01/american-idol-once-more-with-hatred.html
I have an idea for a better reality show. Let’s call it “American Genius”. The idea is to locate the brightest potential engineers and mathematicians and scientists from the lower classes. The winners will get a full ride to good schools and all the help they need to fulfill their potential right through postdoctoral research. This would inspire American youth to study maths and sciences (I love using the plural of maths although Word tells me it’s wrong). This would make it cool to be smart. I am having some trouble figuring out how to make the show entertaining, though.
I have to figure out how to work sex and backbiting into the show. I suppose if The Apprentice or The Biggest Loser can make it on TV, a bunch of smart kids can be made watchable. Sponsorships shouldn’t be too hard to get.
The panel of judges could be superstar scientists and mathematicians. Stephen Hawking would be the Simon of the show and would insult losers with his mechanical voice. Bill Nye the Science Guy could be tapped as host. Or we could just use Ryan Seacrest.
The core of the competition would be manifold, involving experimental design, written and oral exams, and presentations. It would be like academia to some degree, only with sexy models hanging around as lab assistants and proctors.
I have an idea for a better reality show. Let’s call it “American Genius”. The idea is to locate the brightest potential engineers and mathematicians and scientists from the lower classes. The winners will get a full ride to good schools and all the help they need to fulfill their potential right through postdoctoral research. This would inspire American youth to study maths and sciences (I love using the plural of maths although Word tells me it’s wrong). This would make it cool to be smart. I am having some trouble figuring out how to make the show entertaining, though.
I have to figure out how to work sex and backbiting into the show. I suppose if The Apprentice or The Biggest Loser can make it on TV, a bunch of smart kids can be made watchable. Sponsorships shouldn’t be too hard to get.
The panel of judges could be superstar scientists and mathematicians. Stephen Hawking would be the Simon of the show and would insult losers with his mechanical voice. Bill Nye the Science Guy could be tapped as host. Or we could just use Ryan Seacrest.
The core of the competition would be manifold, involving experimental design, written and oral exams, and presentations. It would be like academia to some degree, only with sexy models hanging around as lab assistants and proctors.
Stuff
Translating dentist-speak:
What the dentist says: What it really means:
“This may pinch a little.” The pain will be exquisite.
“This may be uncomfortable” You are going to weep.
“Let me know if you feel this.” Is it safe?
I had my top braces removed on Friday. I had been looking forward to it. That’s because I did not know how brutal the removal process is and that I would have to wear a retainer 24-7 for several months. I spent the weekend talking like Mush Mouth and drooling uncontrollably. I can finally talk again, but I have to speak with my natural southern accent instead of using Standard English. The drool problem went away. I know not what horrors will befall me when the lower braces come off.
The Bathroom Remodel continues, albeit slowly. The infrastructure of that part of the house wanted rebuilding from scratch, and this has set us back days and dollars. By the end of today, there should be a sub-floor and roughed in plumbing at least together with insulation. The contractor inadvertently unplugged the sump pump on Friday, so the basement flooded and submerged some of the supplies left there.
I met my revised goal of 235 pounds this weekend but blew it by going out for Indian food at Tanjore in Fishkill. We didn’t realize how big the portions were and ordered enough food for a platoon. It was among the Best Indian food I have ever had, and we will be a regular there from here on out. Hat tip to the preacher’s wife for suggesting the place.
What the dentist says: What it really means:
“This may pinch a little.” The pain will be exquisite.
“This may be uncomfortable” You are going to weep.
“Let me know if you feel this.” Is it safe?
I had my top braces removed on Friday. I had been looking forward to it. That’s because I did not know how brutal the removal process is and that I would have to wear a retainer 24-7 for several months. I spent the weekend talking like Mush Mouth and drooling uncontrollably. I can finally talk again, but I have to speak with my natural southern accent instead of using Standard English. The drool problem went away. I know not what horrors will befall me when the lower braces come off.
The Bathroom Remodel continues, albeit slowly. The infrastructure of that part of the house wanted rebuilding from scratch, and this has set us back days and dollars. By the end of today, there should be a sub-floor and roughed in plumbing at least together with insulation. The contractor inadvertently unplugged the sump pump on Friday, so the basement flooded and submerged some of the supplies left there.
I met my revised goal of 235 pounds this weekend but blew it by going out for Indian food at Tanjore in Fishkill. We didn’t realize how big the portions were and ordered enough food for a platoon. It was among the Best Indian food I have ever had, and we will be a regular there from here on out. Hat tip to the preacher’s wife for suggesting the place.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
A Cunning Plan
Via Daily Kos comes this exchange between Captain Blackadder and his commanding General:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/11/84226/3452
General: Now, Field Marshal Hague has formulated a brilliant new tactical plan to ensure final victory in the field.
Captain Blackadder: Ah, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy, sir?
Captain Darling: How could you possibly know that Blackadder? It's classified information!
Captain Blackadder: It's the same plan that we used last time, and the seventeen times before that.
General: Exactly! And that is what is so brilliant about it! It will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard. Doing precisely what we've done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time! There is, however, one small problem...
Captain Blackadder: That everyone always gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds?
General: That's right. And Field Marshal Hague is worried that this may be depressing the men a tad. So, he's looking to find a way to cheer them up.
Captain Blackadder: Well, his resignation and suicide would seem the obvious.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/11/84226/3452
General: Now, Field Marshal Hague has formulated a brilliant new tactical plan to ensure final victory in the field.
Captain Blackadder: Ah, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of our trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy, sir?
Captain Darling: How could you possibly know that Blackadder? It's classified information!
Captain Blackadder: It's the same plan that we used last time, and the seventeen times before that.
General: Exactly! And that is what is so brilliant about it! It will catch the watchful Hun totally off guard. Doing precisely what we've done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time! There is, however, one small problem...
Captain Blackadder: That everyone always gets slaughtered in the first ten seconds?
General: That's right. And Field Marshal Hague is worried that this may be depressing the men a tad. So, he's looking to find a way to cheer them up.
Captain Blackadder: Well, his resignation and suicide would seem the obvious.
I could almost hear GW Bush start his speech last night with “I have a cunning plan….” Baldrick would make a better preznit than GW Bush.
Progress Report
Here’s a piece of free advice. If you are having the bathroom remodeled and the floor is torn out, don’t try to use that bathroom in the middle of the night. That’s what I found out. If it weren’t for my catlike reflexes, I would have fallen through to the basement. As it was, I barely managed to get on the one piece of plywood on the joists without impaling myself on a wrecking bar. I have a few scrapes and bruises but am otherwise none the worse for wear and doubtless a wiser man for the experience. The demolition and infrastructure aspects of this phase are taking longer than expected because the floor joists and beams have to be replaced. It turns out that they were rotten and sagging, and I prefer that my new bathroom not collapse into the cellar.
I finally broke through my weight loss plateau and am down to 236 pounds buck naked at home in the morning and 245 clothed and shod on the scale at the gym. I can’t account for the difference since I know my gym clothes and shoes probably don’t weigh nine pounds. I choose to regard my home scale as accurate. I am gradually increasing the weight on all the exercises in my circuit training routine, and I am gradually getting faster on the treadmill. I’m still pitifully out of shape even after 12 weeks of working out, but I can really feel the difference. I reckon that I have been able to fight off the nasty bug everyone’s been getting thanks to my improved condition.
I am getting the braces on my upper teeth off tomorrow morning, and I’m really looking forward to getting all this hardware out of my mouth. The lower braces may come off next month. The procedure has been a success, and I now have a normal bite and don’t bang my front teeth together. I can masticate a lot better, too. This should help me keep my incisors longer. I should have done this long ago instead of just living with the malocclusion.
I increased my Zoloft dosage by 50%. This has taken care of my anxiety and compulsive behaviors, and I have the added benefit of having my sex drive disappear altogether! Having just celebrated a 23rd wedding anniversary, I don’t really need a libido at this point in my life. Seriously, are middle-aged women really all that happy about Viagra? Just when the fat slob stops bugging her so much for his semiannual intercourse, along comes a pill that makes him as randy as a rooster. Come to think of it, if someone opposes homosexuality, what better way to reduce the amount of homosexual sex going on than to encourage homosexuals to marry?
I am still on my mainstream media news fast except for Keith Olbermann’s show. That is one quality news program. Olbermann and Jon Stewart are the best journalists on TV right now. The best pundit is Stephen Colbert. I missed the season opener of Battlestar Galactica, but it looked as if it was turning into an interstellar version of Melrose Place.
I have decided to give up on Lost. I think the writers are just making it up as they go along. There is more recap than show, and the flashbacks don’t add anything to the story. I watch too much TV as it is.
On the literary front, I'm still reading the "Red Queen" by Matt Ridley. I finally finished "Rough Crossings", the book about American slaves who defected to the British during the War for Independence and were emancipated. A lot of them ended up in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and then migrated to Sierra Leone. They were hosed every inch of the way, but at least they were free. I have started a biography of Mao, and it turns out that he was not even cute when he was little. So far, I'm only up to his early 20s when he was a minor Communist functionary. I just found out that there is a new novel in the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, and I may have to drop everything and get it right away.
I finally broke through my weight loss plateau and am down to 236 pounds buck naked at home in the morning and 245 clothed and shod on the scale at the gym. I can’t account for the difference since I know my gym clothes and shoes probably don’t weigh nine pounds. I choose to regard my home scale as accurate. I am gradually increasing the weight on all the exercises in my circuit training routine, and I am gradually getting faster on the treadmill. I’m still pitifully out of shape even after 12 weeks of working out, but I can really feel the difference. I reckon that I have been able to fight off the nasty bug everyone’s been getting thanks to my improved condition.
I am getting the braces on my upper teeth off tomorrow morning, and I’m really looking forward to getting all this hardware out of my mouth. The lower braces may come off next month. The procedure has been a success, and I now have a normal bite and don’t bang my front teeth together. I can masticate a lot better, too. This should help me keep my incisors longer. I should have done this long ago instead of just living with the malocclusion.
I increased my Zoloft dosage by 50%. This has taken care of my anxiety and compulsive behaviors, and I have the added benefit of having my sex drive disappear altogether! Having just celebrated a 23rd wedding anniversary, I don’t really need a libido at this point in my life. Seriously, are middle-aged women really all that happy about Viagra? Just when the fat slob stops bugging her so much for his semiannual intercourse, along comes a pill that makes him as randy as a rooster. Come to think of it, if someone opposes homosexuality, what better way to reduce the amount of homosexual sex going on than to encourage homosexuals to marry?
I am still on my mainstream media news fast except for Keith Olbermann’s show. That is one quality news program. Olbermann and Jon Stewart are the best journalists on TV right now. The best pundit is Stephen Colbert. I missed the season opener of Battlestar Galactica, but it looked as if it was turning into an interstellar version of Melrose Place.
I have decided to give up on Lost. I think the writers are just making it up as they go along. There is more recap than show, and the flashbacks don’t add anything to the story. I watch too much TV as it is.
On the literary front, I'm still reading the "Red Queen" by Matt Ridley. I finally finished "Rough Crossings", the book about American slaves who defected to the British during the War for Independence and were emancipated. A lot of them ended up in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and then migrated to Sierra Leone. They were hosed every inch of the way, but at least they were free. I have started a biography of Mao, and it turns out that he was not even cute when he was little. So far, I'm only up to his early 20s when he was a minor Communist functionary. I just found out that there is a new novel in the Sharpe series by Bernard Cornwell, and I may have to drop everything and get it right away.
The Speech I Would Have Written for Bush
Against my better judgment, I caught Bush’s speech last night. The guy is demented. I reckon he aims to provoke Iran and Syria into war and make an even bigger mess. Then we’ll be nostalgic for the days when the armed forces were just mired in a civil war in Iraq.
Here’s the speech I thought he ought to have given:
“My fellow Americans. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me. And let me tell you, it has been one foul up after another from the get go. Worse than that, I lied to get us in this mess, and I have used the war I sold the country as an excuse to crap all over the Constitution. My conduct has been inexcusable, and I am not fit to serve as your President. If there was ever a case for impeachment, my administration is it. To save time and resources and to allow the country to make a smooth transition, I am resigning effective noon tomorrow. I urge Vice President Cheney, who is an even bigger wanker than me and is just plain evil, to do the same so that Speaker Pelosi can get to work as the new Commander-in-Chief without delay.
God bless America.”
Here’s the speech I thought he ought to have given:
“My fellow Americans. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me. And let me tell you, it has been one foul up after another from the get go. Worse than that, I lied to get us in this mess, and I have used the war I sold the country as an excuse to crap all over the Constitution. My conduct has been inexcusable, and I am not fit to serve as your President. If there was ever a case for impeachment, my administration is it. To save time and resources and to allow the country to make a smooth transition, I am resigning effective noon tomorrow. I urge Vice President Cheney, who is an even bigger wanker than me and is just plain evil, to do the same so that Speaker Pelosi can get to work as the new Commander-in-Chief without delay.
God bless America.”
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Bathroom Remodel Begins; Contractor Shows Up Even After Advance Payment
It is Day Two of our Bathroom Remodel. It was supposed to be Day Three but the contractor didn’t make it on Monday, not a promising start. So far, everything in the downstairs bathroom has been ripped out except part of the floor. That should come out today. The washer and dryer are on the deck under a tarp along with the commode (which we are moving upstairs in the second phase of the Bathroom Remodel). We’ll be visiting the Laundromat for a couple of weeks, and we’ll have to trudge upstairs every time we have to relieve ourselves until the new toilet is installed.
I was amazed at what a hodgepodge that part of the house was under the drywall and tile. It looks as if the builder just made do with whatever materials he had lying around. Some of the wall is block and some is brick. There was no insulation! No wonder the bathroom was so cold.
The dogs are not too happy about all the hullabaloo and noise and being locked in the downstairs bedroom instead of having the run of the house. They don’t derive any benefit from the Bathroom Remodel. In fact, since we might actually spend more time in the bathrooms once they are done, they are going to be spending more time whining outside the bathroom doors and wondering what we are up to in there.
I hope the contractor knows what he is doing and that this turns out well. He has done good work on other things in the past and usually shows up. He is also cost conscious and strikes me as honest. But he is a contractor, and they are apt to disappear for days at a time while you have a big gaping hole in your house.
I was amazed at what a hodgepodge that part of the house was under the drywall and tile. It looks as if the builder just made do with whatever materials he had lying around. Some of the wall is block and some is brick. There was no insulation! No wonder the bathroom was so cold.
The dogs are not too happy about all the hullabaloo and noise and being locked in the downstairs bedroom instead of having the run of the house. They don’t derive any benefit from the Bathroom Remodel. In fact, since we might actually spend more time in the bathrooms once they are done, they are going to be spending more time whining outside the bathroom doors and wondering what we are up to in there.
I hope the contractor knows what he is doing and that this turns out well. He has done good work on other things in the past and usually shows up. He is also cost conscious and strikes me as honest. But he is a contractor, and they are apt to disappear for days at a time while you have a big gaping hole in your house.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Dos and Don'ts at Hangings and Autos da fe
The execution of Saddam Hussein was spoiled by the rudeness of the executioners and witnesses. To keep future hangings civil and decorous, I thought I would remind everyone of the etiquette of hangings.
Executioners should be silent and professional. Witnesses should be quiet and respectful, like at a golf match when the players are putting. Imagine that it is your mother that is being hanged. How would you like it if witnesses were noisy and heckling your mom's execution? You wouldn't, unless you really hated your mom, in which case you have other problems beyond the scope of this post.
Wear a tie, if you are a man, and a nice suit if you are a woman. A hood is de rigeur for the hangman.
Small children are out of place at hangings and are apt to disturb the other witnesses and the condemned with their mewling. Leave your pets at home as well.
Take off your hat if you are a man when the deed is being done. You are at a judicially sanctioned murder, for crying out loud, and you had best show some respect.
Do not chew gum, smoke, eat or drink at the hanging. There will be plenty of opportunities at the reception afterwards. No whistling or humming, please.
It is not customary to applaud the executioner's handiwork, although a discreetly offered gratuity would not be out of place.
If the condemned is being burned alive, it is absolutely improper to toast marshmallows or roast wieners or otherwise use the fire for any purpose other than burning the condemned. At drawings and quarterings, do not gamble on which piece will be the biggest (place any such bets before the event, and never collect winnings at the site of the execution). At stonings, let the family members of the victims of the condemned have the first tosses. Don't go for a quick kill by showing off your rock throwing skills; rather, cooperate with others to extend the agony of the condemned so that more stone throwers will get a chance to be part of the execution. At decapitations, stand back far enough that you won't get blood on you. This is not a Gallagher performance, so you can't bring a tarp.
If these rules seem too complex, just think about how you would want to be murdered by the state and act accordingly.
Executioners should be silent and professional. Witnesses should be quiet and respectful, like at a golf match when the players are putting. Imagine that it is your mother that is being hanged. How would you like it if witnesses were noisy and heckling your mom's execution? You wouldn't, unless you really hated your mom, in which case you have other problems beyond the scope of this post.
Wear a tie, if you are a man, and a nice suit if you are a woman. A hood is de rigeur for the hangman.
Small children are out of place at hangings and are apt to disturb the other witnesses and the condemned with their mewling. Leave your pets at home as well.
Take off your hat if you are a man when the deed is being done. You are at a judicially sanctioned murder, for crying out loud, and you had best show some respect.
Do not chew gum, smoke, eat or drink at the hanging. There will be plenty of opportunities at the reception afterwards. No whistling or humming, please.
It is not customary to applaud the executioner's handiwork, although a discreetly offered gratuity would not be out of place.
If the condemned is being burned alive, it is absolutely improper to toast marshmallows or roast wieners or otherwise use the fire for any purpose other than burning the condemned. At drawings and quarterings, do not gamble on which piece will be the biggest (place any such bets before the event, and never collect winnings at the site of the execution). At stonings, let the family members of the victims of the condemned have the first tosses. Don't go for a quick kill by showing off your rock throwing skills; rather, cooperate with others to extend the agony of the condemned so that more stone throwers will get a chance to be part of the execution. At decapitations, stand back far enough that you won't get blood on you. This is not a Gallagher performance, so you can't bring a tarp.
If these rules seem too complex, just think about how you would want to be murdered by the state and act accordingly.
Which is Scarier?
Identify the bigger threat to world peace:
(a) a country that is enriching uranium for nuclear energy and is years away from enriching enough for weapons.
(b) a country that has nuclear weapons and is making noises about using them preemptively on the country described in (a) above.
(a) a country that is enriching uranium for nuclear energy and is years away from enriching enough for weapons.
(b) a country that has nuclear weapons and is making noises about using them preemptively on the country described in (a) above.
Friday, January 05, 2007
If Sex is so Great, Why Don't We Have More Sexes?
I’m reading Matt Ridley’s “The Red Queen” about the evolution of sex and its utility in reshuffling genes so as to thwart parasites. The “Red Queen” is an allusion to a character in a Lewis Carroll story. The Red Queen was always moving just to stay in the same place. Sexual species are always reshuffling just to stay abreast of corresponding evolutionary changes in parasites.
I was astonished to learn that some fungi have hundreds of sexes, and I am looking forward to finding out why we humans have only the two and are not all hermaphrodites. I can see why asexual reproduction would not be advantageous in an environment of predation and parasitism, but I don’t yet know why sexes don’t proliferate so that we can reproduce with more people. As it stands now, I can only reproduce with the just over half the population that is female. If there were three sexes, that would mean that two thirds of the population could reproduce with me, and I would be fitter, or so I think now not having read far enough in the book to find out why I’m wrong.
A three sex society could be interesting. Suppose that you had sexes A, B and C where A could impregnate B, B could impregnate C, and C could impregnate A. What would religious fundamentalists reckon would be the divinely sanctioned household organization? If everyone is potentially both a pitcher and a catcher, what would that do to notions of power in sexuality?
Everyone would have a slot and a tab, of course. If a B inserted his/her slot in an A’s tab, which would not contribute to reproduction, would that be wrong or deviant? Would folks go about complaining that it was “unnatural”? Presumably, the three sex species would be driven both to pitch and catch, so it is likely that threesomes would be common and that reverse slot to tab sex would be a substitute for a proper third party. There would still be same sex partners and threesomes, I reckon. Auto-erotica would doubtless still be practiced.
Porn would be way different. I imagine that orgies with chains of slots in tabs would be a common theme, and folks would fantasize about “making the beast with twelve backs”, “doing the horizontal conga”, or “making a benzene ring”. Strap-ons would not be in much demand.
Families would be different. An adult in a family might be mother to one and father to another child and genetically unrelated to a third child. Children could be full siblings or half siblings. Come to think of it, that’s not so different from the families that emerge from serial monogamy. I have a full sibling, a half sibling and several unrelated step-siblings, and I am a member of a two sex species. Extended kin would get weird and complicated.
In developed societies, ideal family size would be one child of each sex.
.
I was astonished to learn that some fungi have hundreds of sexes, and I am looking forward to finding out why we humans have only the two and are not all hermaphrodites. I can see why asexual reproduction would not be advantageous in an environment of predation and parasitism, but I don’t yet know why sexes don’t proliferate so that we can reproduce with more people. As it stands now, I can only reproduce with the just over half the population that is female. If there were three sexes, that would mean that two thirds of the population could reproduce with me, and I would be fitter, or so I think now not having read far enough in the book to find out why I’m wrong.
A three sex society could be interesting. Suppose that you had sexes A, B and C where A could impregnate B, B could impregnate C, and C could impregnate A. What would religious fundamentalists reckon would be the divinely sanctioned household organization? If everyone is potentially both a pitcher and a catcher, what would that do to notions of power in sexuality?
Everyone would have a slot and a tab, of course. If a B inserted his/her slot in an A’s tab, which would not contribute to reproduction, would that be wrong or deviant? Would folks go about complaining that it was “unnatural”? Presumably, the three sex species would be driven both to pitch and catch, so it is likely that threesomes would be common and that reverse slot to tab sex would be a substitute for a proper third party. There would still be same sex partners and threesomes, I reckon. Auto-erotica would doubtless still be practiced.
Porn would be way different. I imagine that orgies with chains of slots in tabs would be a common theme, and folks would fantasize about “making the beast with twelve backs”, “doing the horizontal conga”, or “making a benzene ring”. Strap-ons would not be in much demand.
Families would be different. An adult in a family might be mother to one and father to another child and genetically unrelated to a third child. Children could be full siblings or half siblings. Come to think of it, that’s not so different from the families that emerge from serial monogamy. I have a full sibling, a half sibling and several unrelated step-siblings, and I am a member of a two sex species. Extended kin would get weird and complicated.
In developed societies, ideal family size would be one child of each sex.
.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
More Mooching Parents
One of my conspecifics at work lives in Maplewood, NJ where middle schoolers have been so troublesome that the local library is closing for part of the day to keep them out: http://1010wins.com/pages/166312.php?contentType=4&contentId=277057
It turns out that the parents of these kids see the library as a free babysitting service, and they tell the kids to go to the library and hang out there until they can be picked up when the parents get off work. These are middle schoolers, so I reckon that they are beyond the age where they want constant surveillance. Are there no sandlots or parks for these kids to play in? Why can’t they just go home and hang out there?
These parents already foisted their kids on the public for most of the day since they attend a public middle school, and now they expect others to provide after school programs for them. Having kids is a great hobby, so I’m told, and it’s great if you can get other people to subsidize your entertainment (if you can live with yourself, that is).
My conspecific, who is understandably pissed at the prospect of more taxes, suggested that the situation was comparable to my saving money on a dog walker by taking my dogs to the town library every day and releasing them there.
It turns out that the parents of these kids see the library as a free babysitting service, and they tell the kids to go to the library and hang out there until they can be picked up when the parents get off work. These are middle schoolers, so I reckon that they are beyond the age where they want constant surveillance. Are there no sandlots or parks for these kids to play in? Why can’t they just go home and hang out there?
These parents already foisted their kids on the public for most of the day since they attend a public middle school, and now they expect others to provide after school programs for them. Having kids is a great hobby, so I’m told, and it’s great if you can get other people to subsidize your entertainment (if you can live with yourself, that is).
My conspecific, who is understandably pissed at the prospect of more taxes, suggested that the situation was comparable to my saving money on a dog walker by taking my dogs to the town library every day and releasing them there.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Free Advice for Parents: Maximize the Elves
Parents have a pretty good weapon in the notion that Santa Claus has children under constant surveillance and that the quantity and quality of Christmas presents are functions of how good the children have been. I know some parents who claim to have Santa on speed dial and threaten to call him and rat out their kids when they’re bad. The best part is that this tool is available when kids cannot be reasoned with when they are small and stupid.
The down side is that parents can’t keep the charade up forever. Moreover, it only works at most in the three months leading up to Christmas. I reckon parents could keep the elf surveillance system on their kids’ minds and working for them for the better part of the year if they worked at it a little. I would tie it in with birthdays and other events. Let your kids know that Santa and the Easter Bunny share intelligence, that you are in regular contact with Santa and that you receive reports on their goodness level, especially when a birthday is coming up.
Parents also make the mistake of assuming that kids won’t figure out that they get presents even when they are bad and that even their worst behaved siblings and friends get pretty good presents every Christmas notwithstanding their evildoing. They begin to have doubts about the elf surveillance system’s efficacy, and the whole thing begins to unravel. Every now and then, let one or more of your kids wake up on Christmas morning to no presents or, at most, socks or a sweater. Their siblings will revel in their fantastic gifts while the target child is reinforced with the idea that Santa knows what he or she has been up to. The lesson won’t be lost on the others, either.
How do you choose which of your children to target in any given year? One way is to pick the one that you are pretty sure has been the worst behaved in the previous year. If you aren’t sure, just pick randomly. Your kids have done a lot of stuff that you don’t know about, and they’ll just figure that they are getting their comeuppance.
This program will strengthen the elf surveillance program child control strategy and may actually help to extend the time that it works on your kids.
The down side is that parents can’t keep the charade up forever. Moreover, it only works at most in the three months leading up to Christmas. I reckon parents could keep the elf surveillance system on their kids’ minds and working for them for the better part of the year if they worked at it a little. I would tie it in with birthdays and other events. Let your kids know that Santa and the Easter Bunny share intelligence, that you are in regular contact with Santa and that you receive reports on their goodness level, especially when a birthday is coming up.
Parents also make the mistake of assuming that kids won’t figure out that they get presents even when they are bad and that even their worst behaved siblings and friends get pretty good presents every Christmas notwithstanding their evildoing. They begin to have doubts about the elf surveillance system’s efficacy, and the whole thing begins to unravel. Every now and then, let one or more of your kids wake up on Christmas morning to no presents or, at most, socks or a sweater. Their siblings will revel in their fantastic gifts while the target child is reinforced with the idea that Santa knows what he or she has been up to. The lesson won’t be lost on the others, either.
How do you choose which of your children to target in any given year? One way is to pick the one that you are pretty sure has been the worst behaved in the previous year. If you aren’t sure, just pick randomly. Your kids have done a lot of stuff that you don’t know about, and they’ll just figure that they are getting their comeuppance.
This program will strengthen the elf surveillance program child control strategy and may actually help to extend the time that it works on your kids.
The Universe Could Be Only Six Days Old
If Kirk Cameron wants to believe that the universe is a tad over 6,000 years old and that evolution and cosmology and most of science are elaborate demonic hoaxes, then who am I to stand in his way? Belief is involuntary, so he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter, and I reckon that the marketplace of ideas can handle this one just fine. Besides, it’s not as if the world has lost a great scientific mind to creationism. Kirk Cameron was never going to be a scientist, and folks who believe as Kirk believes wouldn’t make good scientists, either. In a way, Kirk and his ilk are doing the world a favor by helping us identify folks who should be discouraged from scientific endeavors.
I suppose that an agnostic creationist could be a passable scientist. By this I mean a person who believes in the whole 6,000 year old universe thing but who acknowledges that it is not susceptible to scientific proof. That person could apply the canons of science and do scientific work without necessarily believing in the metaphysical truth of falsity of the results, and he wouldn’t be looking to make his observations fit into his young earth paradigm. This could conceivably happen, provided that the agnostic creationist could get past the gatekeepers of the profession, which he couldn’t. He would likely be relegated to some fringe institution where any effort to do science independent of the preferred creation myth would not be well received.
Let’s suppose that I believe that the entire universe, with its appearance of great antiquity and everything in it pointing to a history, spontaneously came into being last Thursday. This is highly improbable, but it is not entirely impossible that this is so and that all my personal memories from before the creation of the universe are just so many false patterns in my newly minted brain. Kirk Cameron never really acted in “Growing Pains” even though I think that I remember his artistic oeuvre as actually happening. No. He came into being last Thursday just like everyone else complete with a fabricated past that will fool him into thinking that the universe is at least several millennia old. Poor deluded sap.
What harm does my Last Thursday Creation idea do? I’m not a professional scientist. I’m pretty sure that I can’t prove that the universe came into being last Thursday, so I’m not going to advocate any kind of Last Thursday Creation Science or demand that it receive full attention in government schools. Others may insist on the teaching of LTCS (it already has an acronym!) and be publicly and vocally skeptical of the 6,000 year old universe theory and those other theories that rely on the appearance that the universe is billions of year old. Even then, what harm could come of the adoption of the belief in LTC by a substantial number of people? None, as long as they don’t become so numerous that they endeavor to impose this belief on others by force.
I reckon that LTC will never become such a potent force as to overwhelm the marketplace of ideas. It has to compete with Last Wednesday Creationism, 3/15/1992 Creationism, Biblical Creationism, and science. Even the adherents of LTC will break into schisms, based on which hour of the day creation took place. The Last Thursday Morning Creationists won’t even be on speaking terms with the Last Thursday Late Afternoon About Sixish Creationists.
I suppose that an agnostic creationist could be a passable scientist. By this I mean a person who believes in the whole 6,000 year old universe thing but who acknowledges that it is not susceptible to scientific proof. That person could apply the canons of science and do scientific work without necessarily believing in the metaphysical truth of falsity of the results, and he wouldn’t be looking to make his observations fit into his young earth paradigm. This could conceivably happen, provided that the agnostic creationist could get past the gatekeepers of the profession, which he couldn’t. He would likely be relegated to some fringe institution where any effort to do science independent of the preferred creation myth would not be well received.
Let’s suppose that I believe that the entire universe, with its appearance of great antiquity and everything in it pointing to a history, spontaneously came into being last Thursday. This is highly improbable, but it is not entirely impossible that this is so and that all my personal memories from before the creation of the universe are just so many false patterns in my newly minted brain. Kirk Cameron never really acted in “Growing Pains” even though I think that I remember his artistic oeuvre as actually happening. No. He came into being last Thursday just like everyone else complete with a fabricated past that will fool him into thinking that the universe is at least several millennia old. Poor deluded sap.
What harm does my Last Thursday Creation idea do? I’m not a professional scientist. I’m pretty sure that I can’t prove that the universe came into being last Thursday, so I’m not going to advocate any kind of Last Thursday Creation Science or demand that it receive full attention in government schools. Others may insist on the teaching of LTCS (it already has an acronym!) and be publicly and vocally skeptical of the 6,000 year old universe theory and those other theories that rely on the appearance that the universe is billions of year old. Even then, what harm could come of the adoption of the belief in LTC by a substantial number of people? None, as long as they don’t become so numerous that they endeavor to impose this belief on others by force.
I reckon that LTC will never become such a potent force as to overwhelm the marketplace of ideas. It has to compete with Last Wednesday Creationism, 3/15/1992 Creationism, Biblical Creationism, and science. Even the adherents of LTC will break into schisms, based on which hour of the day creation took place. The Last Thursday Morning Creationists won’t even be on speaking terms with the Last Thursday Late Afternoon About Sixish Creationists.
Wherein I Reluctantly Accede to the Necessity to Hang Politicians
I’m not an advocate for capital punishment, but James Bovard makes a pretty good case for applying it to presidents: http://jimbovard.com/blog/2007/01/02/what-if-nixon-had-been-hanged/
If Nixon had been tried and punished for his many crimes, would that not have deterred later politicians and high ranking officials from engaging in similar wrongdoing? What if aiding and abetting death squads in El Salvador had been punished as accessory to murder? If everyone responsible for the mass murder at Waco, right up to Janet Reno, had swung for their crimes, wouldn’t that have had a chilling effect on the excesses of abusive cops thereafter? If Clinton thought that he might be held accountable for bombing folks in the Balkans, would he have undertaken that campaign?
If Presidents and their minions had been held to account over the last few decades, GW Bush would never have even run for office, what with its being so much less fun for sadistic bastards like him and his henchmen. The hangman would be busy indeed if the logic applied to the condemnation of Saddam Hussein were applied to the Bush administration.
I hate granting the state the authority to kill people, but I might just twist myself into an intellectual pretzel to rationalize making exceptions for politicians. No, I'm going to stand my moral ground and oppose hanging even folks in the current regime. It's not that I would go on a hunger strike or launch a protest or anything. I'd just refrain from going to the hanging and cheering the executioners on.
And for lesser offenders, such as those in the senior executive service who have not been complicit in murder, let’s consider bringing back tar and feathers and the riding out of town on rails. There is really no need to hang every official.
If Nixon had been tried and punished for his many crimes, would that not have deterred later politicians and high ranking officials from engaging in similar wrongdoing? What if aiding and abetting death squads in El Salvador had been punished as accessory to murder? If everyone responsible for the mass murder at Waco, right up to Janet Reno, had swung for their crimes, wouldn’t that have had a chilling effect on the excesses of abusive cops thereafter? If Clinton thought that he might be held accountable for bombing folks in the Balkans, would he have undertaken that campaign?
If Presidents and their minions had been held to account over the last few decades, GW Bush would never have even run for office, what with its being so much less fun for sadistic bastards like him and his henchmen. The hangman would be busy indeed if the logic applied to the condemnation of Saddam Hussein were applied to the Bush administration.
I hate granting the state the authority to kill people, but I might just twist myself into an intellectual pretzel to rationalize making exceptions for politicians. No, I'm going to stand my moral ground and oppose hanging even folks in the current regime. It's not that I would go on a hunger strike or launch a protest or anything. I'd just refrain from going to the hanging and cheering the executioners on.
And for lesser offenders, such as those in the senior executive service who have not been complicit in murder, let’s consider bringing back tar and feathers and the riding out of town on rails. There is really no need to hang every official.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Progress Report
Despite working out religiously and eating sensibly, I did not lose any weight in December. Not an ounce. This is pretty frustrating, and I reckon that I need to eat even more sensibly and work out even harder if I am to leave the ranks of the morbidly obese other than in a box. Here’s my plan for victory: cut out most carbs and add some more cardio workouts to my routine. I aim to lose 10 pounds by the end of January even if I have to go on Scarsdale to do it (shudder).
On the positive side of things, I am getting progressively stronger and fitter, albeit slowly. The gym has become a good habit, and there is little risk now that I will skip workouts because I enjoy them so much. I have made a huge change in eating habits by having balanced meals that include vegetables. I have cut out snacking and most sweets (other than fresh fruit). I no longer overeat at meals and stop when I have finished my allotted portions.
On the positive side of things, I am getting progressively stronger and fitter, albeit slowly. The gym has become a good habit, and there is little risk now that I will skip workouts because I enjoy them so much. I have made a huge change in eating habits by having balanced meals that include vegetables. I have cut out snacking and most sweets (other than fresh fruit). I no longer overeat at meals and stop when I have finished my allotted portions.
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