The Lost World

A new Hollywood treatment of Sherlock Holmes is scheduled for release this Christmas, perhaps. The movie is currently “still in production”, so everything is subject to change, especially in light of what the Christmas release competition turns out to be. Movies are, after all, business, not art. This particular effort is directed by Guy Ritchie, who is a study in professional contradiction. He directed two of the finest comedy of errors criminal plot movies ever, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, but he was also responsible for the unwatchable Swept Away and the incoherent Revolver. In his defense, the latter two were made while he was married to that skank Madonna, which indicates he was in a period of mental decline.

The movie stars Robert Downey Jr. in the title role, with Jude Law as the faithful Dr. Watson. I have a hard time visualizing these two as the famous duo, but I will reserve judgment until I see the movie. Having enjoyed the pairing of the baritone Basil Rathbone and the obtuse Nigel Bruce in my youth, and having subsequently become completely enamored of Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke in PBS’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a very high bar has been set, and Guy Ritchie, for all his intermittent talent, doesn’t inspire much faith. I will, however, inevitably be one of the first to view the movie, being a Sherlock Holmes junky in the way that I am a Star Trek junky; if someone stamped “Sherlock Holmes” on the side of a turd, I would probably buy it.

There are so many interesting themes and issues within Sherlock Holmes’ world, and, by extrapolation, the world of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that one scarcely knows where to begin. Holmes exists in the time of the late industrial revolution in London, the political and financial capital of the world’s most massive empire. It is the age of Faraday and Darwin and many long-standing misconceptions about the nature of things are beginning to erode under the pressure of scientific empiricism. You might say that Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is the first installment of several now popular television series; call it CSI London. Holmes uses the principles of experimentation, observation and deduction to resolve otherwise mysterious and inexplicable events and bring society’s miscreants to justice.

Sherlock Holmes is as imperfect a hero as can be imagined. He suffers bouts of severe depression which he treats with cocaine (a seven percent solution), and he is an unrepentant misogynist, repeatedly decrying the emotionalism of the female mind. In the course of his investigations, he does find a woman he considers to be his intellectual equal, but she is of a criminal bent, and thus begins an unrequited love affair that underlies a number of Holmes’ adventures. Holmes borders on autistic with his inability to appreciate the standard formalities of interpersonal discourse and is often thought to be rude by even his close associates.

On the plus side, Holmes has phenomenal powers of observation; nothing escapes his clinical gaze, and he has an organized and disciplined mind which is well suited for dispassionate, objective rationalism. He is able to put aside normal, human reactions such as fear and revulsion, and focus on observed conditions without the distortion which results from powerful emotion. Holmes presages 21st century information management techniques with his massive database of criminal and forensic records which he mines for obtuse correlations. For me, the ultimate self-indulgent analogy is to view Holmes as a 19th Century Mr. Spock; beneath his cold, logical exterior lays a commitment to all the principles of fairness, decency and protection of the weak that make us human.

Conan Doyle was a physician, like Holmes’ associate John Watson, and he spent much of his adult life campaigning for reform of the justice system and was a vocal advocate of humane policies in European colonies. His medical practices, in their various incarnations, were generally unsuccessful, which Conan Doyle credited for giving him the freedom to indulge his penchant for writing. Ironically, following the death of his second wife, Conan Doyle turned to spiritualism for solace, in contradiction to his life-long adherence to empiricism. He cultivated a brief friendship with the American illusionist Harry Houdini, but the association foundered when Conan Doyle persisted in his belief that Houdini had some supernatural power; a claim Houdini patently rejected. Perhaps the greater irony is that roughly four out of five Americans now know of Sherlock Holmes, but well less than one in five have any idea who Arthur Conan Doyle is, but maybe this is the truest form of success for an author, to be transcended by their fictional creation.

In many ways, the character of Sherlock Holmes embodies everything we like to believe modern civilization represents; rational, objective analysis, reliance on facts, progressive experimentation and research and dispassionate acceptance of established truth. Sadly, Holmes remains a flawed ideal which serves to highlight the fundamental contradictions in human nature. We are a confused tangle of the rational and the emotional, and Conan Doyle’s surrender to fantasy in the face of sadness and loss only serves to confirm Holmes’ cogent observation that “passion is the enemy of precision”.

The Strange Case of the Aye-Aye

Consider the Aye-Aye, a small primate that occupies the dwindling rain forests of eastern Madagascar. For those of you who are public school graduates, Madagascar is an island near the east coast of Africa; Africa being the enchanted land from which the sun rises each morning. The Aye-Aye, also known to Poindexters as Daubentonia madagascariensis, is a nocturnal insectivore that eats insects at night. A distant cousin of Homo sapiens, the Aye-Aye has nonetheless never asked to borrow money or sleep on the couch for a few days. An adult Aye-Aye stands approximately 14 inches in height, unless it is lying down, and has a tail of about 18 inches. Males and females are just about the same size, although, as with all primates, the females are clearly more intelligent.

Most Aye-Ayes are covered with dark fur and their large ears and big, highly reflective eyes give them a very gremlin-like appearance. This is compounded by their freaky looking hands, which have long, narrow fingers, the middle most of which is grotesquely elongated for use as a tool to extract tasty grubs from holes in tree bark. This finger can also be extended to indicate disrespect or irritation. The general aesthetic effect is rather poor and these gentle creatures look about as frightening as anything one foot tall, which is not a spider, can look. Like most inhabitants of Madagascar, the Aye-Aye sleeps all day, but it does not sell cheap handicrafts to European tourists.

The Aye-Aye is a threatened species, which is just a step away from endangered, mainly due to habitat destruction, but the Malagasy people generally regard the creature as an ill omen and are known to kill it when it wanders out of the forest into inhabited areas, which is occurring increasingly as the rain forest is denuded. The unfavorable opinion of these tree-dwellers seems to be principally the result of their creepy appearance, but they are known to steal fruit from villagers when their normal food supply is diminished. This vicious cycle of habitat destruction and ass-beatings at the hands of Madagascar’s citizens is a complete bummer for the Aye-Aye, which could easily be history by the end of this century if present trends continue.

The island of Madagascar is about as close to a living Garden of Eden as exists on Earth. Because of its millions of years of physical isolation from the continent of Africa, it hosts thousands of species, including the Aye-Aye, which are found nowhere else on the planet, but with a growing population of 20,000,000 humans, pressure on the environment is significant and only about 18 percent of the island’s ancient forest cover remains. Over one-third of it has been lost in the past 40 years alone. Madagascar is the world’s largest exporter of vanilla, which, by the way, is a major component of the secret formula for Classic Coke, in case you didn’t know. Unfortunately, vanilla is grown on plantations and not in rain forests.

While the Aye-Aye has freaked out many a late night visitor with its ghoulish visage over the centuries, it is a masterpiece of evolutionary adaptation and a gentle, if thieving, denizen of one of the world’s most unique environments. It is an unfortunate victim of senseless prejudice and the lack of foresight of a civilization that has no ability to control its thirst for stuff, including carbonated beverages. One day the human race may awake to find that we have fouled our own nest past the point of salvation and all that we got from it was plastic lawn chairs, Styrofoam and disco, but the Aye-Aye and most of the rest of our distant cousins won’t be around to see it, and that’s the creepiest thing of all.

The Other White Meat

I recently watched Woody Allen’s Shadows and Fog for maybe the tenth time. I think this movie is much underrated; while not nearly Allen’s best work, it has a combination of menace and irony which I find appealing, and nothing is more neurotic than a neurotic in a fog shrouded village with a strangler on the loose. The movie has literally a dozen “A” list stars playing minor parts; even Madonna has a role commensurate with her meager skills. Woody Allen is truly a genius.

Having said this, I am only using Woody Allen as a segue into a more morbid avenue of thought. There is a line in the aforementioned movie where one of the characters contemplates the recent crimes and muses, “where does madness end and evil begin?” I was indulging my fascination with all things horrific, as I periodically do, when I came across a list of particularly gruesome criminals and crimes. Many of the references were familiar, although some I had either forgotten or never been aware of. America, it seems, has a rich history of homicidal maniacs and it gave me pause to consider the previous question; is there really such a force as evil, or are the behaviors we perceive as evil just the result of insanity? You could, of course, write a doctoral dissertation on the subject, and I have neither the stamina nor the commitment to explore the subject in such detail, but it is an important question in the context of trying to explain ourselves to ourselves. If it is perhaps true that neuroscientists have a better handle on what drives men to senseless brutality than the Priests do, then why do we continue to look at the world in terms of good and evil?

For example, there is the repulsive yet curious case of Albert Fish. I am much surprised that I was not already familiar with Mr. Fish’s disturbing adventures, but I suppose he wasn’t prominently mentioned in most American History texts. Fish was something of a monster, having molested and/or raped an unknown number of young boys in the 1920’s and 1930’s, slowly progressing to murder and cannibalism. He is known to have killed three children and was suspected in at least three more deaths, but his extensive movements throughout the country made it almost impossible to state with certainty what the extent of his crimes were.

Fish was undoubtedly a sadist and a pedophile and a certified douche-bag. Six years after he murdered and ate a 10-year old girl, he wrote a letter to her parents describing in unpleasant detail how the girl met her fate. He was ultimately apprehended due to the paper trail left by his vicious missive, and was tried for the girl’s murder. Fish had basically been a freaking weirdo most of his life and he had a long family history of serious mental illness; he had been previously committed for mental treatment, in addition to his history of criminal incarcerations. He had long claimed to hear voices, including those of God, and engaged in masochistic self-impalement, among other socially unacceptable habits.

None of this made much difference to the jury and Fish was electrocuted in 1936 in Sing Sing Prison. If one defines evil as indulging one’s own desires and compulsions with complete disregard for the wants and needs of others, then Albert Fish was certainly an evil man. Not only did his victims suffer, but he actively sought to increase the suffering of the victim’s loved ones by, much like a credit card disclosure statement, tormenting them with unnecessary information. What pleasure he derived from this is difficult to imagine, but he was, after all, nuts, which is of course the whole point.

I know there are people who truly believe that there is a dark, malevolent force in our world which thrives on human suffering and despair. It goes by many names, but in America we typically refer to it as Satan (or the Republican Party, depending on your point of view). This is the easy explanation for Ted Bundy, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Charlie Manson, Josef Stalin, Jeffery Dahmer, Vlad Tepes, Karl Rove, Michelle Bachmann and Carrot Top, but the reality is almost certainly more complex. Evil, I propose, is comprised of strands of DNA, unique and specific patterns of neurons, and the electro-chemical activity that is the foundation of consciousness. Evil is born of both random chance and every act of carelessness, unkindness and neglect that we perpetrate. Albert Fish killed because he had bad genes and bad luck and there was no mechanism in society to identify or prevent the evolution of his madness. Albert Fish ate children because his mind was dysfunctional and McDonald’s was not yet invented. Albert Fish was crazy as hell. No demons are necessary to explain this.

Ghost Story

Every now and then even the most intellectually self-satisfied among us have an epiphany of sorts with respect to the true nature of issues we thought we had long since sorted out. This happened to me this week as I followed the actions of our resolute Senate with respect to President Obama’s request for funds to begin the deactivation and closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Somehow, 90 percent of the members of that august body felt it would be inappropriate at the current time to fund the President’s effort to erase this stain of hypocrisy from the nation’s record. They were apparently concerned that the President had not given due consideration to the potential complications resulting from doing the right thing. Such an overwhelming consensus is seldom seen in the Senate, unless they are defeating an ethics bill.

It is apparent that despite the total rout of the Republican Party in the recent national elections, and despite the internal disorder of the Republican Party, and despite the declining popularity of virtually every potential Republican spokesman, the Democratic Party is still afraid. Like the abuse victim who has just escaped after years in some sociopath’s torture dungeon, the Democratic Party cannot accept the reality of their situation and, for the first time in years, relax. My epiphany, which in retrospect seems simple enough, is that it isn’t that the Democratic Party and its leaders lack confidence in themselves, but that they completely lack faith in the American people.

I used to believe that the Democratic Party was so weak and ineffective in national leadership because the Party was too diverse, lacked consensus on specifics and was doomed forever to disintegrate when pressure was applied. The fact that only six of the 57 Democrats in the Senate voted to assist the President in bringing the detention, interrogation and prosecution of Guantanamo inmates under the rule of law seems to give the lie to Democratic inability to achieve consensus. The Democrats can be remarkably united when it comes to running scared.

In fairness, perhaps there is some room for debate on the implications of shutting down the Guantanamo prison, but I find none of the arguments compelling. I do not accept that the first priority of the government is the safety of the American people; the first priority has always been implementing and upholding the nation’s principles, but even if you are concerned about safety, what’s the issue? Our prisons are full of wretched scum. There are thousands of inmates in American prisons who are crazier, meaner and just generally less pleasant than any of the half-assed Al Qaeda James Bonds housed at Quantanamo. Two weeks in Angola and these “hardened terrorists” will be trying to swim down the Mississippi to get back to Cuba.

I really believe that the Democratic Senators know what is fundamentally right and most of them probably believe that President Obama can properly manage what may be a complex and difficult process; they are just afraid that the American people are too shortsighted, fickle and vulnerable to bullshit to be relied upon. They are afraid of putting their political careers on the line when they know the Republicans will try to hang them with every failure, real or imagined, resulting from closing Guantanamo. In that respect, the Republican Party continues to have more integrity than the Democrats; Republicans actually stand behind their mediaeval principles, no matter the consequences. You can look at what has transpired since the 2008 election if you disagree.

I had hoped that the Democratic Party was beginning to emerge from the years of the mentality of victim-hood that had resulted from being consistently out-maneuvered by the more ruthless and determined Republicans. Alas, this is not yet so. Lee Atwater and Karl Rove still haunt the uneasy sleep of Senate Democrats and these ghosts will not be exorcised until the Senators commit to the ideal that the welfare of the nation is more important than their individual political livelihoods and that truth, honor and decency cannot be measured by either logistical efficacy or electoral success.

The Philosophy of Time Travel

There is an interesting article on the SkyNews website today about the discovery of a 47 million year old primate fossil which is either a monkey-like lemur or a lemur-like monkey, but which is thought by some to be the long missing “link” in the evolutionary chain between the monkeys (not the take the last train to Clarksville Monkees) and the apes, including humans. This has evolutionary biologists all a-titter, since they are engaged in an on-going battle to try to prove to people who don’t understand science that evolution by natural selection is a real process. In my view, this is a foolish waste of time because I don’t think that people who deny science for religious reasons or misunderstand science for intellectual reasons will accept good science, no matter what the preponderance of evidence is.

Ironically, this particular fossil was extracted from some central German rocks in 1983, but it hung on the wall of the extracting dude’s house for a couple of decades before it was sold, and it ended up in a museum in Oslo in 2007. They are just now revealing it’s potential significance because expert paleontologists have been examining it for a couple of years. The creature itself is about the size of a house cat and has a long tail. The researchers suggest it is one of the best preserved early primate fossils ever found, being approximately 95% intact. There are even fossilized remnants of the poor girl’s final meal present. Of course, there are dissenting opinions which suggest that the fossil of the arboreal creature, while remarkable, is not necessarily instructive with respect to human evolution. Some even suggest that it is not even in our family tree (ha ha). The discovery of this fossil is certainly useful to flesh out something’s evolutionary record, but the significance of any single fossil is almost certainly overblown; the evolutionary record is already akin to a murder scene where there are six shell casings and the victim was hit by five bullets; you don’t need that sixth bullet to be certain what happened.

While this is an interesting find, what I find interesting is the reaction many people have when it is suggested that humans evolved from some less human-like creature. I have seen the cliché image of the redneck in countless Public Television documentaries, red-faced and veins bulging, declaring “I ain’t related to no monkey!”, but even more sophisticated persons often have misgivings about evolution, if for no other reason than it relegates humans to the same level of significance as all other creatures in God’s creation. Evolution implies that we are just big-brained apes that discovered the wheel and cirrhosis of the liver. All available evidence indicates that this is, in fact, correct, but either because we value Nature too little, or ourselves too much, we just can’t seem to accept where we really stand.

The more scientific minded among us will perhaps find adequate wonder in a process which, without conscious direction, has resulted in the Earth’s incredible diversity of life and has even produced self-awareness, but our religious brethren can at least comfort themselves in the fact that humans are the only creatures valued enough by God and the Devil to be the subject of an on-going struggle for possession of our eternal souls. The point that I believe most religious people miss, however, is that as a species we made a conscious choice to leave the Garden of Eden. We try to blame tricky old Satan, but everybody knows we are too damn curious to have left that apple alone for much longer, even if Old Scratch hadn’t egged us on. We chose knowledge over bliss because that is at the core of what we are, and we need to quit whining and run with it.

Sneaky Monsters

So what’s up with the Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) these days? I haven’t heard much from them since the monkey suit in the freezer scam blew up. These apparently widespread bipedal primates are pretty much out of sight and out of mind most of the time, but every once in a while some dentally challenged relative of mine in Arkansas will show up on the Discovery Channel regaling the public with their tale of a near almost pretty sorta close encounter with something. The viewing public is left to determine for themselves if the encounter was with an alien, a bear, el Chupacabra in an unfrozen monkey suit, the bottom of a quart of Jack Daniels, a petit mal seizure or deliberate falsehood. What is most amazing is that these “reports” show up on these “reputable” cable channels “dedicated” to educating the public on “natural history”. I won’t bother to waste the time recounting all the compelling arguments why these various cryptomorphs can’t really exist. Instead, I will suggest that they, in fact, do.

I have to confess that I have probably been wrong all along on the issue of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster and Ogo Pogo and the Mothman and all the rest of those fellows who inhabit the fringes of human society, especially in nations with large church-going populations. I have allowed myself to be taken in by a broad conspiracy of television producers, governmental agents and the mysterious creatures themselves. Each element in this conspiracy has its own motives for taking part, but the result is same; the American people are being kept in the dark about something that has great relevance to their daily lives.

It is no accident that the only people we ever see on the television recounting their experiences with whatever such improbable creatures happen to fall into one or more of the following categories:

A) People who appear to have jaundice;
B) People whose teeth have been destroyed by methamphetamine addiction;
C) Current/Former Chairpersons of the Republican National Committee;
D) People whose eyes do not point in the same direction;
E) Obese women who live in trailers;
F) Obese men who live with their parents;
G) Young males in camouflage who appear to have recently smoked dope;
H) Long-haired PhD’s employed by the East/West/Northern State Community College.
I) People with strangely shaped heads.
J) Lonely middle-aged women who would be attractive if they just did something with their hair.
K) Earnest hippy/environmentalist types who are fungi experts.

These societal rejects have no credibility and so the conspirators know they can continue to conceal the presence of the extraordinary creatures like Bigfoot by making the thinking public believe the only people who see them are emotionally troubled, stoned or unpopular. For their part, the creatures avoid paying taxes and serving in the military, and are never troubled by Jehovah’s Witnesses. They can marry their gay lovers, have late-term abortions and spend D.B. Cooper’s money. The powerful people assisting them also benefit because they avoid paying taxes and serving in the military, and are never troubled by Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The reason that those camera traps the “investigators” always place in the woods never capture anything but mangy raccoons abusing cow corpses is that it’s pretty much the only thing that ever happens in the woods. Dick Cheney and Bigfoot just watch from the shadows.

Changes in Lattitude, Changes in Attitude

The adventurous repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope this week has inspired a number of print and visual media retrospectives on all that this fine machine has accomplished since its deployment in April of 1990. There have been repeated displays of the stunning photographs of celestial objects generated by the telescope and even some rather high level discourse on the cosmological implications of what Hubble has revealed about our universe. It is one of those rare moments of scientific introspection here in America where at least some of us reconnect with the sense of wonder that undoubtedly inspired both the authors of the Book of Genesis and Edwin Hubble himself.

It remains an irony, however, that much of the American public is still scientifically illiterate and that as a nation we often have the same sense of wonder when viewing alleged photos of UFOs or spirits on the stairway. Most Americans know the name of the famous space telescope, but don’t know anything about the man for whom it is named. Among many notable accomplishments, Hubble was the first astronomer to conclusively demonstrate that the Universe was composed of a number of galaxies, further relegating humanity to a place of insignificance. Adding insult to injury, he laid the foundation for the determination that the Universe itself is expanding, making us a smaller and smaller part of whatever it is we are a part of. For this cosmic reality check, he surely deserves our gratitude.

While all this was going on this week, there was also a semi-controversy surrounding the release of the movie Angels and Demons, Ron Howard’s visual interpretation of Dan Brown’s best selling mediocre thriller. For those of you who are interested, the plot involves somebody trying to blow up Vatican City with a matter/anti-matter bomb, perhaps in retribution for the Catholic Church’s historically poor attitude toward scientific inquiry. I admire Tom Hanks as an actor and most of Ron Howard’s directorial efforts have been outstanding, so I will probably eventually get around to seeing the movie, but I doubt it will stand as a landmark in the philosophical debate over the extent to which religious faith and scientific empiricism conflict.

Angels and Demons and Edwin Hubble sort of ran together in my mind as I watched a review of the current speculation over Dark Matter, Dark Energy and the fate of existence (this was just before I flipped over to the Ray’s game). To greatly oversimplify, the observed Universe doesn’t behave the way it ought to based upon assumed gravitational laws applied to the amount of visible matter. So either our understanding of gravity is fried, or there’s a lot more junk out there than meets the eye. The Hubble Space telescope has (no pun intended) shed a great deal of light on the Dark Matter issue, but it turns out that there is still a lot of the Universe theoretically missing, and even counting all the crap in my garage, scientists still can’t figure it out.

To add to the confusion, there is apparently an anti-gravitational force cleverly named Dark Energy which is speeding up the expansion of the Universe. Darth Vader’s gleeful chuckles aside, this theoretical force has just about ensured that the Universe will continue to expand infinitely into a cold, dead, nearly absolute vacuum where life is not possible (much like the interior of a Republican’s head). This sort of depressing outcome is the more likely scenario than the equally depressing outcome where the Universe is slowly dragged back upon itself by gravitational forces until it collapses into an infinitely dense point where, coincidentally, life is not possible.

For those of us that may have faith in an afterlife safely remote from the cosmological fire or ice, these are minor points, since God will punish fornicators and reward the righteous, but for those of us who are less than certain about this happy ending, it scientifically becomes an obligation not just to accept our own mortality, but to recognize that all human endeavor, no matter its magnificence or duration, will ultimately be wiped away with no one left to mourn. Science can really be a bummer sometimes.

On the plus side, as I write this, our lazy overpriced mutt-like purebred is sleeping next to the window with full benefit of a gentle afternoon breeze and there are big, puffy white clouds hovering in a crystal blue sky. One of my teenage sons is sweatily doing the yard work once reserved exclusively for me, the water temperature in the pool is 72° and there is a driving range five minutes away with large buckets of balls for only $6.00. Dark Matter may be stealthily lurking out there somewhere up to whoknowswhat, and Dark Energy may be destroying the Universe faster than God can create it, but it is a beautiful Spring day on the coast of Florida and at this very moment, you, me, Dan Brown, the Pope, the Hubble Telescope, the dog, and all of the Universe’s darkness are stuck dead in the middle of eternity, where we shall always remain.

Secessionist Redux

The Kappa Alpha Order at the University of Alabama has recently attracted some attention to itself through its traditional “Old South” celebration wherein the fraternity brothers dress as Confederate officers and ride around on horses. They get some lovely sorority girls in hoop skirts to join in and just have a grand old time playing dress up. With the exception of the horse manure, the whole thing is relatively harmless in a practical sense, but the symbolism does not sit well with some folks. In this particular instance, the KA brothers had the lack of judgment to parade past the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority house while the sorority was celebrating its 35th anniversary on the Alabama campus.. AKA is a historically black sorority and probably doesn’t have much use for the Confederacy. Participants on both sides acknowledged after the fact that there was no deliberate intent in the incident, but it is Alabama and they were dressed as Confederate soldiers and there were a whole lot of black ladies on the scene.

This particular occurrence probably doesn’t rate much notice in and of itself; it is just part of the grand and varied pageant that is life in the South. No doubt many people, black and white, have come to view these “traditional” displays as simply part of the culture and no more significant than dressing like a leprechaun and puking up green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. To many it is one of the small compromises required of a multi-ethnic society. Others, however, still find the associations with the slave-owning and secessionist Confederacy to be offensive.

I was born just a few minutes after 9:00 AM in the Macon Hospital in Macon, Georgia in October of 1960. At that point, it had been just over 95 years since the Confederate rebellion was put down by President Lincoln and his cadre of able Generals. My family has deep roots in Georgia and many of the streets in the City of Macon bear the names of my ancestors. Apparently the family fortunes were well on the decline by the time I came along (and I haven’t done much to change them), but in the 1850’s we were major land owners with large agricultural operations and, yes, slaves. Genealogical records show that I had ancestors who fought, and died, in the Confederate cause, so I am about as true a son of the South as currently remains.

So I find myself in this peculiar position of seeking to connect with the history that led to my presence on this earth, while at the same time being deeply concerned about the moral qualifications of my forbearers. Slavery is a transparent abomination, and not just from the perspective of post-industrial modernity; there were many who opposed slavery before it was even established in North America and many more who worked tirelessly against it afterwards. Unfortunately my great, great, great-grandfather wasn’t one of them. He profited from the immoral confinement and exploitation of other humans who were actually bred to be profitably sold into the slave market and who existed wholly outside the protection of law. I think we have all seen Gone With the Wind too many times to really come to terms with what a cruel and ugly business slavery was.

Not that the Kappa Alpha Order is promoting slavery or that slavery was the only issue that brought about the Confederacy’s insurrection against the U.S. Constitution, but wearing Confederate uniforms and waving Confederate flags (and looking nostalgically back to those fiercely independent and noble men who bravely fought against overwhelming odds to protect their way of life) just tacitly endorses a culture and practices that we should by rights be ashamed of. We try to separate the positive from the negative in our minds and honor only the courage and patriotic dedication of our Southern ancestors, but ultimately it is just a self-deceptive sophistry that allows us to avoid acknowledging the evil of slavery and the destructive rebellion perpetrated by those that endorsed it.

I grew up in a place where “Stonewall” Jackson and James Longstreet were heroes and racial epithets were common. In my mind, these conditions are inseparable. Even now I sometimes have to stop myself from parroting the derogatory racial humor of my childhood and I still must make a conscious effort to remind myself that a person’s value cannot be divined by their appearance. This “innocent” hatred that I absorbed from family and friends has over the years largely been replaced by reason and objectivity, and it disappoints me greatly to see another generation of the South’s youth indulging in the fantasy that men can participate in evil and not be diminished by it.

Reader Mail

Today’s blog will be devoted to reader questions. Since there are no apparent readers, I’ve had to make the questions up, but they are probably way more interesting than any real ones I might get.

1) Why do you dislike Republicans so much?

I’m not sure where anyone would get that idea, but the fact is that I don’t dislike Republicans; I just dislike ignorance, bigotry, hypocrisy, superstition, arrogance, inequity, prevarication, greed, stupidity and pomposity. Of course all Republicans do not share these characteristics, just like all Democrats are not wise and caring, but in my opinion the public face of the Republican Party is one of the most dismal collections of sociopaths, cynical manipulators and intellectual failures since the Borgias. My objection is that all I perceive in the Republican message is an appeal to the worst elements of human nature; fear, selfishness and intellectual laziness. People who are honest, decent and smart can disagree passionately about virtually anything, but it is fair and necessary to critique the reasoning that underlies any intellectual position, and I just don’t feel that there is any actual reasoning underlying most Republican positions.

2) How do you know when a worm hole needs to be repaired?

Usually somebody calls you. Most people don’t know much about worm holes, but simply put, if a Minkowski spacetime contains a compact region Ω, and if the topology of Ω is of the form Ω ~ R x Σ, where Σ is a three-manifold of nontrivial topology, whose boundary has topology of the form dΣ ~ S2, and if, furthermore, the hypersurfaces Σ are all spacelike, then the region Ω contains a quasipermanent intra-universe wormhole. Most repairs can be accomplished with duct tape..

3) Who is the best left-handed second baseman currently playing in the major leagues?

This is clearly a trick question since it is 10:00 AM my time and there are no games currently underway.

4) Are you really as much of a genius as your appear to be?

Probably. With the exception of personal and professional success, I have been able to accomplish pretty much everything I have set out to achieve. I know more about most stuff that nobody cares about than the people who don’t care about it, which makes me pretty knowledgeable. I am probably going to receive a Nobel Prize for blogging or something pretty soon.

5) What is a Palatinate?

A palatinate is a long cylindrical metallic object with handles on each side which can be packed with explosives or used for aging cider. It was invented by the Hungarian cabaret transvestite Markvald Schwinger in 1875 in response to an inquiry. The object is featured prominently on the Hapsburg coat of arms and is found in trace amounts in chicken broth.

6) Who is the biggest idiot in America?

This is a tough question. We must first establish the parameters of the possible answers. Since I do not know, or know of, all persons in the United States, it is possible that I don’t know the biggest idiot in America, so I can only indicate the biggest idiot that I am personally aware of. Also, there may be some Americans who are candidates for the position who are currently outside of the United States, and while they may be pretty big idiots, they aren’t in America and therefore are not eligible. Also, persons who are idiots may be in America, but not be Americans, which may not be the answer you are looking for. If I had to guess, I would say Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck, or virtually anybody who appears on Fox News in the morning, although Joe Scarborough might also qualify.

Keep those cards and letters coming.

Deja Vu All Over Again

As the sainted President Reagan says, here I go again.

I know that former Vice President Dick Cheney is just trying to irritate me personally with his nonsensical rhetoric on the Obama administration and the subject of national security, and I realize that I am just playing into his hands by allowing myself to even suppose that he has any other intent than riling me up on the subject. The former Vice President has singled me out individually because of my outspoken criticism and continued references to him as Count Dracula. He is a bitter and cynical old man with bad knees and piles, and he hates everybody, including himself.

There are some things, however, that demand a response, if only because of the opportunity they present to expose the hypocrisy and nuttiness of the lunatic fringe. In a national television appearance this weekend, Count Cheney suggested that Rush Limbaugh was a more appropriate ideological leader for the Republican Party than General Colin Powell. My first reaction was to ask how even Darth Cheney could have the unmitigated temerity to make such a ridiculous statement, but the more I thought about it, the clearer it became that he was actually right.

Let’s look at the facts. Rush Limbaugh is a college dropout with no formal training in any recognized intellectual discipline. General Powell has an undergraduate degree in Geology and a MBA, which he earned while in military service. General Powell is also a graduate of the United States Army War College. This is completely consistent with the Republican Party’s disregard for the value of education and its rejection of scientific reasoning. A fat, blow-hard dropout who practices voodoo and phrenology is clearly a more honest philosophical father of the Republicans than any educated man.

Rush Limbaugh has been married and divorced three times. General Powell has been married to his first wife since 1962. This is consistent with the Republican Party’s bogus “family values” posture, since fat, blow-hard white guys can do pretty much what they want without penalty, including frequenting prostitutes, so long as they parrot the party line. In fact, it appears many elected officials in Washington of both parties look to Mr. Limbaugh as role model for domestic behavior.

Rush Limbaugh is an admitted narcotics addict. General Powell is a decorated veteran of military service with multiple combat tours in Vietnam, a place with a lot of narcotics. This is completely consistent with the Republican Party’s policy of making sure anybody who is poor or black gets to go to jail, while wealthy white men get to go to the country club to complain about how unfair it is that they are indicted for something so traditionally American as doctor shopping.

Since the 1970’s Rush Limbaugh has been mostly involved in radio; since 1984 he has been the host of his own syndicated talk show (where he does all the talking). During that same time General Powell has been a Major General, a Lieutenant General, a General, President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the United States Secretary of State. This would be completely consistent with the Republican Party’s worship of amoral, narcissistic megalomaniacs who wave the flag but never pursue military service and who pontificate to the whole world about everything while having accomplished nothing but hypnotizing America’s intellectual sludge with bombast and racist innuendo. Dick Cheney, Lord of the Sith, is more correct than even he knows when he anoints Rush Limbaugh as the ideological leader of the Party.

As a fat, more or less useless white guy myself, I feel I have the right to rabidly hate all over Rush Limbaugh, because he gives people like me a bad name. Some may observe that ad homonym attacks do not constitute a reasoned argument, but I postulate that if such attacks are accompanied by enough unverified derogatory gossip, then this meets the test of intellectual substance which is standard in 21st Century America. It is upon this contention, and five minutes on Wikipedia, that I base my claim that Rush Limbaugh represents all that is wrong with humanity and that he is, in fact, a hairy turd.

I suppose there may be some persons who identify themselves as Republicans who may resent the implications of my meandering diatribe; if so, I would have a question and an observation; who read it to you?; and pound sand.

Yesterday's Enterprise

Important Note: For anyone who actually reads this, please be advised that I am going to talk about the new Star Trek movie. I am not going to discuss key plot twists, or even the story line in general, but if you don’t want to know anything about the movie because you haven’t seen it, or you don’t really care, move on to something else. Thanks.

J.J. Abrams has quite a varied resume as an actor, writer, producer and director. He is the principle creative mind behind Lost, which I must confess I have never seen, Fringe, which I unfortunately have seen, and a host of other well known projects. In fairness, I must say I greatly enjoyed Cloverfield, which was an interesting twist on the Godzilla theme, Joy Ride, which was a purely guilty pleasure in a gory sort of way, and even Forever Young, despite the fact that it was a contrived, syrupy piece of crap. Not much to my credit, I even liked Mission Impossible III, which I boycotted for some time because of my pathological dislike of Scientology.

With Star Trek, Mr. Abrams has truly outdone himself. It is a magnificent two hour and eight minute escape from the mundane reality of our short, nasty, solitary, brutish and poor existences which takes us to a world where even misguided, sociopathic mass murderers have some honor, and sentient beings work together under the most difficult of circumstances to accomplish great things. As benefits a prequel that takes place 250 years in the future, the movie both looks back with appropriately irreverent reverence and flies forward at warp speed into a new telling of an old tale. This is a New Year’s Eve of a movie where we are invited to reflect on what has gone before and encouraged to hope for even better things to come.

The casting meets the challenge of carefully walking the tightrope between honoring the faces and personas many of us have come to adore, and injecting youth and vigor into a mythology that entropy has been assaulting for some years now. Actors both familiar and unfamiliar reprise the roles established by other actors who over the decades have become iconic, and it all hangs together such that you could really foresee Simon Pegg evolving into James Doohan (although perhaps Mr. Pegg might take exception to that). And, as is required of all Trek, the green babe is smoking hot.

The movie is a masterpiece of movement with just the right element of optical confusion and fuzzy focus to imitate a real visual experience (it should be noted, I watched it in Imax).Putting aside biology, it is sort of like Michael Bay and David Lynch had a baby and it was called Star Trek. Everything just looks really cool, but familiar. The pace of the movie is excellent, such that 128 minutes fly by, but adequate attention is given to important plot elements, so even Trek novices are not lost. You never get the sense that the story is dragging or spinning out of control and you are allowed to know everything you need to know to know you like what you know, ya know? There are adequate allusions to persons and events in the established Star Trek universe to allow those of us in the know to feel completely superior to the average ignorant citizen, but not such that our clueless friends ever get the “what the hell was that all about” feeling.

Of course, as with all Trek, there is enough technological psychosis to make a physicist blush. Putting aside all the time travel paradoxes, we are actually asked to believe that creating a massive energy release through a matter and anti-matter annihilation will create enough force to drive a metallic object past the closed, time-like curve of a singularity’s event horizon without degrading the integrity of the object itself. Can you imagine? The device the villain uses to perpetrate his evil is at once low-tech, no-tech and whoa!-tech, and I had to ask, why such a complicated process? But the bad guy is just using the tools at hand and it all makes sense when you think about it.

What the movie does not do is overwhelm its audience with quantum gobbledygook and graduate level theory; it is plain and simple a story of loss and revenge, self discovery and platonic bonding, and the courage of youth making peace with the wisdom of age. There is nothing here that the Ancient Greeks (and Gene Roddenberry, and Rick Berman) had not already done to death, but baby’s got a new pair of shoes and J.J. Abrams has polished them nicely.

Star Trek
128 minutes
Rated PG-13
In theaters now.

High Times and Misdemeanors

Governor Schwarzenegger has suggested that the time is now right for a national dialog on the potential legalization of Marihuana. Schwarzenegger, who once killed an alien wearing dreadlocks, was apparently something of a pot smoker himself during the heyday of his body building career in the 70’s. Of course, if you were a Baby-Boomer and didn’t smoke weed in the 70’s, you must have had asthma or been imprisoned in some pervert’s dungeon for the whole decade. The Governor believes legalization is a revenue opportunity for California and that it probably won’t have any severe consequences, mostly because half the State is already regularly stoned.

I have mixed feelings about the possibility of such a debate. I was 16 in 1976 and spent a lot of time listening to Frampton Comes Alive, Destroyer and Hotel California while in an altered state of consciousness. My attorney advises me that I have to provide the disclaimer that I never actually inhaled the 7,358 times I was exposed to that end of the marihuana cigarette which was not burning, but it was a long time ago and it’s really hard to remember. I’m pretty sure the corporate records of Church’s Fried Chicken can provide more detail on specific times and places.

However, I now have teenage children of my own and I do not want them to necessarily repeat every stupid mistake I made in my youth. I had a lot of fun in the 70’s, but I also dropped out of high school, ended up in the Army at the advanced age of 17 and worked on the loading dock at a pants factory for a couple of years before finally getting my act together in the age of disco. I’m not suggesting that marihuana was the sole cause of this, but escaping from reality delays acceptance of reality, which is a prerequisite for any sort of personal progress. For me, marihuana was part of a culture of the moment; an attempt to freeze the now so that the impending arrival of responsibility and soul-crushing conformity could be avoided. The problem was that whatever relativistic time dilation was occurring in my mind, the real world was still rocking along, and I got left behind.

I’m not much for panic mongering and I know kids will be kids, but I’m not sure legalized marihuana would be good for America’s youth. Smoking anything is generally unhealthy and smoking marihuana can make you go blind. Ok, maybe that’s masturbation, but you definitely shouldn’t drive a car, operate heavy machinery, negotiate contracts, do metric conversion, be alone with teenage girls or go grocery shopping while under the influence. Young people have enough trouble with pretty much being nuts; adding the smoky disorientation of cannabis will not likely improve things.

Other than laziness, horniness, uncontrollable laughter and profound hunger, the side-effects of ganja are relatively mild, but the real danger of marihuana is that it makes life seem so simple and obvious; when in fact, life is complex and confusing. Youth is a time to experiment and explore, but it is also a time to begin understanding the condition of adulthood in which you will spend the rest of your life (unless you are male, but that’s another blog entirely). The Doobie Brothers ☺ said it best in the title of their 1974 album, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits; it’s easy to get lost in the smoke.

I am sure that Governor Model T-100 has some valid points; we could raise a boatload of cash, empty half the prisons, greatly reduce violence along the Mexican border, dramatically increase the value of California real estate and drive McDonalds’ stock through the roof by legalizing marihuana, and maybe we should. Maybe responsible adults should be able to sit in the privacy of their own homes and listen to Frank Zappa the way it was meant to be heard without the threat of Big Brother kicking in the door. Maybe Ed Wood’s movies should be popular. Maybe freedom demands that something that cannot empirically be demonstrated to be a significant threat to the health, safety or welfare of society should, by principle, be allowed. Maybe marihuana can be regulated, controlled and limited as a legal substance in such a way that America’s youth can be protected and individual choice honored. Maybe. I don’t know.

After all, we’re doing a pretty good job with alcohol, aren’t we?

It's a Wonderful Life

I know that there is a whole class of Americans who turn to me on a daily basis to have their thoughts and opinions directed; this is evidenced by the three hits on my blog site today. Of course, two of those were me editing my profile to make myself seem cooler, but there was somebody who clicked “next blog” at some point today; to that person I apologize for the lack of fresh, insightful commentary.

Truth is, I am an overpaid, bureaucratic functionary and I had a public meeting, which kept me well after my usual 2:30 PM departure time. By the time I returned home and fixed the leak in the refrigerator, yelled at the dog and beat the children, or was it beat the dog and yelled at the children? Anyway, after tending to my paternal responsibilities and watching the last couple of innings of the Rays spanking the hapless Yankees (yes, hapless), and then checking out Olbermann for a few, I am, as Elton John says, entirely too fagged out to write any of my usual clever, topical, relevant, thoughtful, incisive, brilliant, evocative, and whimsical narratives.

I probably won’t be here tomorrow either; I’ve got to go watch Kirk and Uhura get it on in Imax. Pity me.

Watch Out Gunther Octavius

This fine looking fellow in the picture here is a sea spider, a proud member of the subphylum Chelicerata (although some Poindexters dispute this), which includes horseshoe crabs, spiders, scorpions and mites. This is perhaps only impressive to me, because until I stumbled upon them in a totally unrelated Internet search (you’ll have to guess), I had no idea they existed. They have apparently been on Earth at least as long as Larry King, that is to say some 500 million years, but they show no signs of being nearly as gullible and irresponsibly uncritical.

Sea Spiders are widespread throughout the world’s oceans and can grow as large as three feet in length in the cold, deep waters of the Antarctic, but most are only around three to four inches long. They feed by virtue of a proboscis which they stick into soft-bodies creatures like sea slugs, or me, for example, and extract nutrients. Much like Geraldo Rivera, they survive by sticking their nose in other folks’ business and sucking. Interestingly, the males guard the eggs and the young hatchlings. Whether the female sea spiders sit around and bitch or do something else during this period is unknown. The offspring of certain species begin life as parasites which attach themselves to a host until they are ready to leave, much like human children.

Sea spiders do not breathe, but rather absorb oxygen through diffusion. Their long, narrow hearts beat 90 to 180 times per minute, which is similar to me walking up a slight incline. Sea spiders can crawl or swim, or just sit there. They have a rudimentary nervous system, like most Republicans, two pairs of eyes, although if they live in the dark they don’t work, and a body divided into a cephalothorax and an abdomen, just Like Rosie O Donnell. Freaky spider scientist guys know very little about their mating habits, although they are really interested, but it is suspected that sea spiders are unaware of doggies or missionaries.

I never cease to be amazed by the diversity of life on this planet and how even the most grotesque and unnerving creatures, like Michelle Bachmann, possess a unique and fascinating charm. I’m a firm believer in the process of evolution by natural selection, but I can forgive my fellow hominids if they ascribe this bounty of wonder to some marvelous creator. Those of us who appreciate how cool nature is ”just because” and those of us who think it is God’s creation need to work together to protect the Earth's environment against greed and stupidity (see, I didn't use the "R" word). Working as a team, sort of like those kids that summon Captain Planet, we can ensure that these ugly-ass sea spiders will be around to creep us out for another 500 million years.

The Uncertainty Principle

I just visited our good friends at http://www.ziztur.com/ who proclaim that “Atheism is Freedom of the Mind”. I highly recommend the site for anyone with at least a couple of neurons wired together. I found more intellectual substance in five minutes of perusing the site than I got in two years of graduate school. I can well imagine that a single one of the participants in their most recent conversation thread (excepting myself, of course) generates more intellectual horsepower than the entire Republican Party or any 1374 Baptists chosen at random. But you know I cannot take anything on faith, not even Atheism.

As a practicing South Georgia Muslim, I can tell you that practice does not make perfect, but in reality I am more of an Apatheist (its in Wikipedia), that is I’m indifferent to the question of the existence of God or gods, primarily because whatever God or gods there may or may not be, they just don’t figure into anything that has anything to do with us. I realize that there are several billion people who beg to differ with me and that’s ok, because I don’t care.

The problem that I have with Atheism is the same issue I find with belief; how the hell does anyone really know what the truth behind all of this is? Faith is a matter of choice; the reasoning behind the choice is more or less irrelevant since no one can logically be certain that they know how something comes from nothing, or how something could exist without a beginning or the other flock of spooky questions that might obsessively circulate in one’s mind without an adequate dose of Fluoxitine.

It seems to me that the Atheists have more of a problem with ignoramus morons who use God as an excuse for crappy behavior than they really do with unproven theological assertions. In that respect I am in complete agreement with their objections, however I believe that (borrowing from Shakespeare) the fault dear Ziztur is not in our religions, but in ourselves. We evolved from less psychologically complex creatures (with or without God’s help) and we have dragged a few billion years of selfish survival baggage with us. As a species, we do show some progress over time, but it is largely 2.1 steps forward and two steps back, followed by a period of immobile introspection.

The socio-biological explanation for man’s predilection for religious belief is pretty powerful and has to do with the mind seeking to understand cause and effect relationships in order to control environmental variables to enhance the probability of survival unto procreation. It doesn’t matter if the control is just an illusion; humans have been habituated to this thought process over time. Religious belief is part of what we are and it will take some pretty sophisticated genetic engineering to eradicate it. Until then, the Atheists will have to fight their lonely, but perhaps worthy, battle against the corrosive effects of religious belief with only the strength of their certainty to comfort them.

Of course, none of this means that the universe was not created by some conscious force or that there isn’t some objective purpose to our existence, but I’m in no position to confirm or deny such speculation; I’m just a humble worm hole repairman; but I do know that virtually all philosophy that qualifies as religion focuses on being cool, helping old ladies and thinking about somebody besides yourself. It’s just that part about disemboweling everybody that doesn’t agree with you that sucks.

IQ Test

Taking a break from my allegedly misguided hero worship of President Obama, I have to take exception to the President’s milquetoast stance on investigating and possibly prosecuting the human rights violations perpetrated by the previous Presidential administration. I understand that President Obama is doing his best to try to forge a moderate consensus in American politics and that he doesn’t want to play into the portrait of liberal zealot painted by the “Conservatives”. I also imagine he probably feels there is room for legitimate debate on the limits of Presidential authority and the process of legal “reasoning” utilized to justify many of the actions in question. And above all, he probably doesn’t want to put the nation through the national shame and disgrace of potentially having former Vice-President Tojo, I mean Cheney, dragged off to the stockade.

While I appreciate all of these concerns, it seems abundantly clear that respect for law demands some sort of inquiry. I have heard the plaintive cries of the Bush apologists that we shouldn’t criminalize legitimate policy differences because “that is what they do in Third-World countries”. Well, if somebody were trying to put Bush and his cronies on trail for lying to the American people to manipulate them into supporting a catastrophically idiotic war, they might have a point. If president Obama sought to indict the thankfully former President Bush for bankrupting the country by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and covering up the cost of our wars, then that would probably fall within the area of legitimate policy differences. If we wanted to hang former Vice-President Himmler, I mean Cheney, for promoting the policy of attacking Iraq and depleting the resources necessary to combat Al-Qaeda so that they could continue to rain death and destruction on innocent people throughout South Asia, then it would be a valid point, but all we are talking about is determining if somebody broke the law. We do it all the time; we even have this thing called the “Justice System” that handles these matters.

I keep hearing that the President is concerned about allowing CIA employees who participated in “interrogations” to be investigated and perhaps prosecuted because their superiors told them at the time that what they were doing was not only legal, but necessary for America ’s defense. Well, I guess it would be a shame is these patriotic Germans, I mean Americans, were deprived of the defense that they were just following orders. Ok, maybe I am going a bit too far with that comparison; certainly we want dedicated public servants in the CIA who are willing to take on dangerous and unpleasant tasks in defense of freedom, but this is a simple matter of right and wrong, which as a nation we address through the rule of law. US law and international treaties to which we are a party clearly specify that mistreatment of persons in confinement, even prisoners of war, is illegal. We imprisoned and hung people after the Second World War at least in part for the very acts that the renowned legal scholar Alberto “Solon” Gonzales has argued are legal under American law. Now I have already spent enough time proclaiming my opinion of the twisted logic that says bad things are ok if they accomplish a good purpose and I will not further critique the slippery slope reasoning that has ruined every human impulse towards freedom in recorded history; just know I don’t accept the idea that people who break the law should be absolved as long as they thought they were doing the right thing.

President Obama needs to remember that our nation’s principles are more important than his political convenience or the potential exacerbation of political divisions in America. If investigations are fair and open and any suspected persons are afforded proper due process, how can anyone, Republican or otherwise, complain? On the other hand, if we are afraid to confront our own moral failures, fearful to even ask if crimes were committed in our names, how will our nation retain the moral credibility upon which our power truly rests? Benjamin Franklin told us way back when that “they who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security”. For all President Obama’s fine qualities, he’s not smarter than Ben Franklin.

Kangaroo Court

Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court David Souter has announced that he has about had his fill of public service and is going to go back to New Hampshire to fish. A spokesman for the fish in New Hampshire has called Souter a “cold-blooded killer” and suggested that he remain in Washington where the rest of the cold-blooded killers reside. For his part, Justice Souter doesn’t care what the fish think and President Obama is currently evaluating an undisclosed list of potential appointees for the important post.

Appointed by President George Bush (the reasonably reasonable one) in 1990, Souter has frequently disappointed the nation’s Conservatives by joining in thoughtful, intellectually defensible rulings on a range of issues of importance to America. Many decent, loyal Americans, and even a few Republicans, believe Souter’s retirement is a loss to the nation. In an effort to do my part to ensure that a qualified replacement is found, I would propose to assist the President by recommending and evaluating a few potential nominees, as follows:

Me – I could use the money and since I’ve been married for twenty years, oral arguments are second nature. Also, I would be the largest Justice since W. H. Taft and an excellent dancer. My main liability is that I am a white guy and don’t know anything.

Keith Olbermann – Second-best choice. Knows the rules of rugby and could compile the “Worst Lawyer in the World” list. Also, Bill O’Reilly hates him.

Don King – Show me anybody smarter than this guy and I’ll show you an Asian. A self-made multi-millionaire who went from prison to having the most recognizable hairstyle in America, Don King is the epitome of the American Dream. His main liability is that he stole most of his money from Mike Tyson.

Michael Steele – Will need a job soon.

Madonna – She’s been around the block a few times and has learned a few tricks. Also, Guy Ritchie’s first three movies were dope. Main drawback is that she might try to adopt the other justices.

Jabba the Hut – Even larger than me and speaks in a language nobody can understand, similar to Antonin Scalia. Supports the right to keep and bear Banthas. Main drawback is potential sexual harassment claims from Princess Leia.

Joe the Plumber – Anybody that can make Sarah Palin look smart has got a lot to offer this country. If nominated, he might actually get a plumbing license.

The Pope – Knows quite bit about legalism and is comfortable in robes. Principle advantage is that membership in the Hitler Youth will deflect Republican criticism.

Master Shake – Quiet, thoughtful and empathetic. Has a straw sticking out of his head.

Borat – Sensible fellow with a good heart. First Central Asian Justice. Very nice.

Go Speed Racer Go

It is now time for the Japanese to feel the insufferably oppressive weight of my moral indignation. I can sense their fear.

As I was exploring the Web this morning in my never ending quest for knowledge (and Scarlet Johansson photos), I came across an article about the vestigial impacts of the Samurai era caste-system on modern Japan. It seems that back during the Shogunates there was a class of citizens known as the Burakumin who were the social equivalent of the Hindu caste Untouchables. These were the folks who butchered animals, dug graves and prepared the dead for whatever it is the Japanese do with corpses. These Burakumin were the lowest of the low and were relegated to their own ghettos. Now oddly, they were not genetically unique in any way; they were just plain old Japanese who got stuck in a family tradition of dead-end jobs (again, pause for groans). They looked the same and spoke the same as everybody else, but they were not allowed to have spiffy pigtails or hang out with anybody cool.

Now I am not going to waste time beating up our BBF’s the Japanese over some stuff that happened before my great-grandmother was born; after all, among so many other moral failures, America once had a Constitution that said a slave was three-fifths of a person, and we stuck our Japanese-American citizens, Burakumin or not, in internment camps in 1942; so let’s not get all righteous over ancient history. The problem is that there is apparently still latent prejudice against the descendants of the Burakumin in Japan and, due to that nation’s extensive and detailed records of family history, many romantic and business arrangements are affected by a negative report on an ancestor’s profession.

This has to be the most egregious form of institutionalized idiocy that I have recently encountered. The Japanese eat some pretty weird stuff and they censor their pornography in the most useless ways (so I am told), but I always respected them for being industrious and inventive and having a code of honor as close to the Klingons as exists on our planet, but I am not giving them a pass on this one. This report implies that people will often do research on the caste background of their potential employees and marriage or business partners. So these guys are saying that if they find an adorable little Japanese girl who is the public picture of decorum and virginity, makes a good income, likes baseball, tolerates their drunken friends, doesn’t complain about getting stuck with most of the housework, is not flatulent, who at least smiles, if not outright laughs, at their lame jokes, and who acts like that girl from the Exorcist in the bedroom; they are not going to marry her because her great-grandfather was an executioner?!

God bless America. We are so screwed up in so many ways, but the overwhelming majority of Americans, no matter how bigoted they may think they are, will never pass up a chance to make money (or marry for money) or get it on with somebody hot because of something so irrelevant as family history. How else would Chelsea Clinton ever get a date? In our American heart of hearts we know that every individual is just as useless as everybody else, including ourselves. We play a lot of stupid social games and we are clearly burdened by both a history of ignorance and an ignorance of history, but ultimately in America nobody is too good to marry, or do business with, anybody else. We rock because here in the Land of the Free, the Burakumin are in charge, and that is reason enough for hope.

Testament

A recent survey of 742 adult Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center indicates that the more regularly a person attends church, the more likely that person is to say that torturing terror suspects is sometimes or always justified. Among persons who identified themselves as “white, Evangelical Protestants” more than 60 percent indicated torture was at least sometimes ok. Not surprisingly, at least to me, those persons who reported no religious affiliation were least likely to support torture under any circumstances. I have to admit that I am not a statistician and I cannot critique the reliability of Pew’s methods, but they are an accepted source of national polling data and there is little reason to believe that the results are skewed. It would also be fair to say that the poll didn’t determine who was more likely to contribute to charity or help a stranded stranger in need, but the fact that my reaction to reading the poll results was “oh duh” does not constitute a public relations victory for Evangelicals.

We all know Christians who are exemplary people and who are kind, charitable, tolerant and loving. Many of us also know persons of other religious affiliation who display the same characteristics, so I am not trying to repudiate Christianity specifically, or religion in general, but it is more than just an irony that the most vocal of Christ’s self-proclaimed followers are generally the ones who endorse violence, aggression, exclusion and harsh treatment of the defenseless. I can imagine the howls of righteous indignation emanating from deep in the heart of Texas, but I know what I see.

Christ, who was himself mercilessly tortured to death by the Romans, was pretty much the quintessential drug-free hippy, whose message of love, forgiveness, tolerance and rejection of material wealth is not so much denied as parodied by the modern American “Religious Right”. The problem is that many “Christians” are just Old Testament literalists who are in love with an angry God and are misanthropic despisers of human diversity. No sane person can read the Bible and tell me they can imagine Jesus turning up the voltage on the testicle electrodes or stuffing the wet sock in some douche-bag’s mouth.

2nd Peter, Chapter 2, Verse 1 says, “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily (sic) shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.” Peter was trying to prepare the faithful to understand that cynical, sociopathic, manipulative, self-interested deceivers would try to hijack Christ’s message of hope and forgiveness and turn believers into an army of soulless automatons doing their evil bidding, and that this would pretty much suck. Thanks to the Pew Research Center we can confirm that Peter’s concerns are still valid.