If you visit the Animal Planet web site and look at their Top Ten lists, you will see a link (http://animal.discovery.com/tv/a-list/creature-countdowns/smartest/smartest.html) for the ten smartest animals on the planet. The first thing that struck me about this list is that Homo sapiens do not appear on it. There are at least a few possible reasons for this; the good people at Animal planet don’t consider people animals; they have reservations about self-evaluation; or we just didn’t make the top ten. Any of these are plausible, but recent political and social trends lend much credence to the last most of the possibilities.
At number ten on the list is the ubiquitous rat. Rats are known for being good at navigating mazes and their fondness for cheese. It has been demonstrated that rats can count, at least up to five, and they are able to recognize and remember complex patterns when properly induced, such as with the possibility of access to food, sex or cocaine (in this respect, the common rat is most comparable to a Republican Congressman). We are not, however, completely comfortable with the intelligence of the rat. Rats know, for example, that dead rats don’t need their intestines anymore and that the extremely intoxicated have little feeling in their extremities. Rats also know that human infants don’t know Kung Fu. Rats are literally everywhere on Planet Earth and will do anything, no matter how selfish or degrading, to survive, sort of like Lindsey Lohan. When you are the creature with which the concept of “rat fuck” is associated, you clearly deserve some credit.
Number nine on the list is the octopus. You would think they would have made the octopus number eight just for irony, but perhaps the people at Animal Planet don’t appreciate irony. The octopus is the cleverest of the invertebrates, smarter even than the spineless asses in Congress. It can navigate mazes and open jars on par with the average citizen of Alabama. The octopus can communicate with complex visual signals produced by changing the pigmentation of its skin. While scientists are not clear on all the intended meanings, “I’m horny” and “piss off” are prominent among them. Most knowledgeable people agree that octopi (3.14 octopuses) would build nuclear weapons and eradicate the human race if they could get some plutonium, which is why we make every effort to recover any nuclear devices lost at sea. The octopus is sneaky, evil, hateful and disgusting, which completely justifies us dumping raw sewerage and other garbage into its environment.
Number eight is the Pigeon. The Pigeon. Allegedly pigeons have excellent memories and can differentiate between their own reflection and the reflections of other pigeons in a mirror. Why they would care is something of a mystery. Pigeons have been known to exploit the mentally ill and the elderly for breadcrumbs. They have an advanced chemical warfare program in which they spread Histoplasmosis through their dung. Their ultimate objective is in all likelihood the eradication of mankind, but in the short term, vandalizing bronze statues appears to be their goal. Pigeons can remember things for years, so if you ever crossed one, you might want to move.
The seventh most intelligent animal is the squirrel. No joke. Hey, I didn’t make the list. The squirrel is essentially an arboreal rat with a bushy tail, but what makes them smarter than a rat is that they know how to be cute. They also know how to hide food and climb up on bird-feeders. In reality squirrels are selfish and devious creatures that have no respect for private property or vehicular rights-of-way. They scamper hither and yon, indifferent to traffic patterns or the length of your dog’s leash. They have been known to torment their canine cousins by repeatedly running along the top of a fence, just out of reach. Squirrels are, however, smart enough not to torment cats, which is what keeps them on the list.
Number six on the list is the pig. Pigs are highly adaptable and adept at problem solving. Part of the esteem for their intelligence stems from the fact that they know housework is a waste of time. Also, pigs will eat anything, which makes picking a restaurant a lot easier. Pigs can be trained to do anything a dog can do, except perhaps bark. Many people keep pigs as pets and say they are as affectionate as dogs or cats, which indicates that pigs will lie for food, an essential element of any definition of intelligence.
Number five is crows. These creepy descendants of the dinosaur are well known for their ability to stealthily purloin your French fries when your back is turned. It is no accident that they were the villains in ‘The Birds”; they would murder you if they had access to firearms, but they have been known to employ the old “beak in the eye” routine. Crows utilize all sorts of strategies to crack nuts, such as leaving them in the road for cars to run over; they would do the same thing with your toddler if they had more lift. It is a myth that crows assemble when someone is about to die; they are smart enough to wait until someone is dead to show up.
Number four is the elephant. They are, of course, known for their extraordinary memory and their habit of all-too-public displays of grief at the death of a herd member. Elephants are vicious and vindictive bastards who hold a grudge for years, thanks, I guess, to their good memory. They use tools in the wild, which means they will throw shit at you if so inclined. Elephants kill people all the time, which shows they have a pretty good handle on the whole ‘badass” thing. In fact, elephants are the only creature to make both the top ten most intelligent and top ten deadliest lists. You would be well advised not to fuck with elephants.
Third on the list is the orangutan. The orangutan looks like a human and acts like a human, except that it’s not an asshole. Speaking of acting like humans, orangutans have been in Clint Eastwood movies, but that’s not necessarily a sign of intelligence. They have complex social structures and solve complex puzzles. Perhaps they should be in Congress, unlike Republicans.
Number 2 is the dolphin. They have complex language structure, and learn complex tasks quickly and easily, when they are properly rewarded that is, a sure sign of intelligence. Dolphins have no hands, which is why they have not murdered any of us for humiliating them with all that inappropriate dolphin touching stuff. Juvenile dolphins remain with their parents for several years, showing great intelligence on the part of the juveniles, although one has to question why this occurs if the parents can swim faster.
Number one is of course the cockroach. No, sorry, that’s the chimpanzee, but the chimpanzee is not smart enough to live in large numbers in my house irrespective of my efforts to eradicate them. Chimpanzees are very clever, but they will also rip your face off if they get pissed. Chimpanzees hunt cooperatively and use sign language, like human males on ladies night. Chimpanzees are much stronger than an equal sized human, so they definitely should not be taught kung fu. That wouldn’t be smart.
What is intelligence anyway? If intelligence is defined as taking actions which are most consistent with one’s own wellbeing, bacteria are probably smarter than we are. There are a lot of other animals you could put on this list, especially the dog, which is smart enough to lie around the house all day and take advantage of free food and healthcare while giving nothing in return but cuteness, sort of like teenage children, except for the cuteness part. Anyway, animals are not so different from us in most ways, except they’re not arrogant and they don’t make lists about shit.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Who Shot J.R.?
It was 32 years ago today that 918 people died in various ways in the jungles of Guyana, mostly from drinking poisoned Kool-Aid. Leo Ryan, a California Congressman, was shot dead as he concluded his mission to assist those desiring to abandon Jim Jones’ totalitarian, theocratic utopia. Ryan’s death was a great loss to America, as he remains one of the few chosen representatives of the People who had the balls to see his leadership role as more than just cashing lobbyist’s checks. As a California State Assemblyman, he went undercover as both an inner-city school teacher and a prison inmate to gain firsthand knowledge of conditions in schools and prisons. He was ambushed by members of the People’s Temple as his plane sat on the runway preparing to return to Georgetown, Guyana’s capitol. Congressman Ryan’s death set off a chain reaction of lunacy that resulted in the suicide or murder of 909 members of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, which had been established in 1974 as an example of “apostolic socialism”, whatever that is. Jim Jones’ claim to holiness ended in horror, as most putative holiness does. The human capacity for illogic and self-delusion is well documented and, one might argue, is a primary driving force in history. In my view, the sad truth is that the distance from Main Street to the jungles of Guyana is not that great. Many of the world’s primary religions have elements of apocalyptic cultism in the context of their sense of exclusive knowledge of the truth and obedience to orthodoxy, and God knows the subculture of paranoid, Luddite xenophobes in America is quite ready to explode in an orgy of self-righteous destruction and fevered cleansing to prepare for Jesus’ return or armed revolution, or both.
But the political process in America was never intended to be an eternal struggle between good and evil. We have already established those truths which we hold to be self-evident. The people we elect are only supposed to respond to changing circumstances as they relate to ensuring domestic tranquility and providing for the common welfare, not to battle daily for the souls of mankind. Government has truly overreached its bounds, although not through excessive taxation, burdensome regulation or bureaucratic inertia, but through the arrogant presumption of those of every philosophical stripe seeking political office with claims of insight into absolute truth or the paths of the righteous. With our electoral process awash in the filthy lucre of corporate personhood and politics becoming little more than the race to define and emulate the lowest common denominator, it would appear the Grand Republic is in danger of entering a terminal death spiral, and all we get is bombastic moralizing from the right, left and center with not a qualified economist or logistician among them. My own bombastic moralizing notwithstanding, I’d cut a deal with Leon Trotsky, John Boehner or King George III in a heartbeat if it would create a few hundred thousand jobs. Whatever happened to good old enlightened self-interest? Adam Smith can’t be pleased.
Anyway, the TSA is presently very popular. Apparently Washington has gotten the idea that the average American no longer wishes to plunge earthward at 700 miles an hour in the flaming wreckage of what used to be a commercial airliner because some miscreant strapped C-4 to his wiener and tugged the Johnson at 35,000 feet. For this reason, the federal Government has implemented innovative wiener surveillance processes which include your choice of either the undignified viewing of your shriveled manparts or your confusing ladyjunk, or a humiliatingly intimate caress to ensure there are no explosives in your cleavage or butt crack. The new x-ray vision scanners, which were likely procured through the back pages of a comic book, are apparently quite realistic in their representation of an individual’s flabby nakedness, which mortifies the image-conscious American public, over 25 percent of whom are clinically obese. Obese is the Latin word for gross. I should know. Of course, all of this self imposed abuse is done in the name of security, because we know that there are people who aren’t afraid of flying who want to kill us. Unfortunately, most of us still don’t understand why. There are probably people in various places around the world who are asking themselves very similar questions about our motives. Fortunately, God is on our side, and even though God has not been completely successful in protecting us against every horrid assault on our national pride, we pray he will assist us in our quest for an infallible underwear scan.
The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has wasted no time in addressing the out of control US budget. The US budget deficit in Fiscal Year 2009 was $1.42 trillion, an amount many consider excessive. Even though the new Republican majority in the House will not take office until January, John Boehner and his associates have struck a blow for fiscal accountability by attempting to eliminate all Federal funding for NPR. NPR is a well known propaganda arm of the world-wide socialist movement and has often advocated un-American activities like telling the truth. NPR receives about 15 percent of its total funding from government sources, including about $16 million form the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Eliminating this allocation would reduce the 2010 Federal Budget by .000004 percent. Unfortunately, the anti-American Democratic majority defeated the brave effort, but they’ll get what’s coming to them.
Lastly, for you beleaguered parents out there. Good luck. Preparing a child to live successfully in the coming world is a challenging task, to understate it significantly. We parents can’t begin to imagine the technological, social, political, economic and environmental circumstances that our children will face in the next four, five, six, seven or eight decades. The best we can do is try to prepare them to use reason and logic, guided by principle, to adapt to what life presents and try to find meaning and satisfaction in what ever may come. But just remember this; my wife is not always correct. She says my two sons have learned their facial expressions and mannerisms of annoyance from me, but this is not true. They only appear to be mimicking me; the fact is, they are me, sort of. They received half of their DNA from me. I would even suggest the better half of their DNA, but that is still an issue of some dispute domestically. Nonetheless, when you observe your children manifesting undesirable behaviors similar to your own, do not doubt your parenting skills. Do not fault your own weakness and inability to conceal your flaws from your highly imitative offspring. Do not regret that you have not made more effort to be tolerant, understanding and charitable. Simply accept that you have passed on the crappy genes that have ruined your life and that there is little hope for the future.
But the political process in America was never intended to be an eternal struggle between good and evil. We have already established those truths which we hold to be self-evident. The people we elect are only supposed to respond to changing circumstances as they relate to ensuring domestic tranquility and providing for the common welfare, not to battle daily for the souls of mankind. Government has truly overreached its bounds, although not through excessive taxation, burdensome regulation or bureaucratic inertia, but through the arrogant presumption of those of every philosophical stripe seeking political office with claims of insight into absolute truth or the paths of the righteous. With our electoral process awash in the filthy lucre of corporate personhood and politics becoming little more than the race to define and emulate the lowest common denominator, it would appear the Grand Republic is in danger of entering a terminal death spiral, and all we get is bombastic moralizing from the right, left and center with not a qualified economist or logistician among them. My own bombastic moralizing notwithstanding, I’d cut a deal with Leon Trotsky, John Boehner or King George III in a heartbeat if it would create a few hundred thousand jobs. Whatever happened to good old enlightened self-interest? Adam Smith can’t be pleased.
Anyway, the TSA is presently very popular. Apparently Washington has gotten the idea that the average American no longer wishes to plunge earthward at 700 miles an hour in the flaming wreckage of what used to be a commercial airliner because some miscreant strapped C-4 to his wiener and tugged the Johnson at 35,000 feet. For this reason, the federal Government has implemented innovative wiener surveillance processes which include your choice of either the undignified viewing of your shriveled manparts or your confusing ladyjunk, or a humiliatingly intimate caress to ensure there are no explosives in your cleavage or butt crack. The new x-ray vision scanners, which were likely procured through the back pages of a comic book, are apparently quite realistic in their representation of an individual’s flabby nakedness, which mortifies the image-conscious American public, over 25 percent of whom are clinically obese. Obese is the Latin word for gross. I should know. Of course, all of this self imposed abuse is done in the name of security, because we know that there are people who aren’t afraid of flying who want to kill us. Unfortunately, most of us still don’t understand why. There are probably people in various places around the world who are asking themselves very similar questions about our motives. Fortunately, God is on our side, and even though God has not been completely successful in protecting us against every horrid assault on our national pride, we pray he will assist us in our quest for an infallible underwear scan.
The Republican leadership in the House of Representatives has wasted no time in addressing the out of control US budget. The US budget deficit in Fiscal Year 2009 was $1.42 trillion, an amount many consider excessive. Even though the new Republican majority in the House will not take office until January, John Boehner and his associates have struck a blow for fiscal accountability by attempting to eliminate all Federal funding for NPR. NPR is a well known propaganda arm of the world-wide socialist movement and has often advocated un-American activities like telling the truth. NPR receives about 15 percent of its total funding from government sources, including about $16 million form the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Eliminating this allocation would reduce the 2010 Federal Budget by .000004 percent. Unfortunately, the anti-American Democratic majority defeated the brave effort, but they’ll get what’s coming to them.
Lastly, for you beleaguered parents out there. Good luck. Preparing a child to live successfully in the coming world is a challenging task, to understate it significantly. We parents can’t begin to imagine the technological, social, political, economic and environmental circumstances that our children will face in the next four, five, six, seven or eight decades. The best we can do is try to prepare them to use reason and logic, guided by principle, to adapt to what life presents and try to find meaning and satisfaction in what ever may come. But just remember this; my wife is not always correct. She says my two sons have learned their facial expressions and mannerisms of annoyance from me, but this is not true. They only appear to be mimicking me; the fact is, they are me, sort of. They received half of their DNA from me. I would even suggest the better half of their DNA, but that is still an issue of some dispute domestically. Nonetheless, when you observe your children manifesting undesirable behaviors similar to your own, do not doubt your parenting skills. Do not fault your own weakness and inability to conceal your flaws from your highly imitative offspring. Do not regret that you have not made more effort to be tolerant, understanding and charitable. Simply accept that you have passed on the crappy genes that have ruined your life and that there is little hope for the future.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
I Declare
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” They don’t write ‘em like that anymore, which is kind of ironic since the Declaration of Independence is a sort of break up song. Anyway, you can feel the power of these words resonating with logical symmetry and you can envision the quaking of tyrants as they cower before the inexorable tide of freedom called forth by this mystic incantation. I still marvel at the prescience of the Old Dead White Guys and their ability to concisely capture and summarize the most fundamental yearnings of the human race in seven simple words.
But here is where we return to the cold realities of human social intercourse. Seven simple words. But nothing in real life is simple, and words are but the Platonic shadows of the true thought flickering upon the cave walls. It is often suggested that the authors of our nation’s founding documents always said what they meant, and meant what they said, but much is read into these documents that is far from clear by right of syntax and semantics. It was probably not the intent of the Founding Fathers that each citizen should be an expert in the oratory and written missives of each signatory, and it is certainly arguable the extent to which a collective effort can concisely represent the convictions of each of multiple individual participants. I can only conclude that words of the Declaration of Independence are intended to be sufficient unto themselves to convey the sentiments of its authors.
It is interesting, therefore, that the word “God” is used the sum total of once in the Declaration, in reference to “the laws of nature and of nature's God. “Nature’s God” is a somewhat ambiguous term, all the more noteworthy since it could have simply been clarified to “the God of Abraham” or “Our Savoir Jesus Christ”, but it wasn’t. Most 21st Century Americans will likely assume that it is in fact an allusion to God-Almighty, the Scourge of Sodom and spiritual father of Jesus, but there is nothing in the document’s words or context to support that. The reference could very well be to Pan, Circe or Yoda, but Mr. Jefferson didn’t elaborate. The term “divine appears once also, in the context of “Divine Providence” and the term “Creator” also appears one time only, as that power which has endowed Man with his “unalienable” rights. Whether this force of creation is divine or natural is not discussed and whether such “unalienable rights” devolve from the authority of the divine or arise from the natural structure of human society cannot be established from the text.
Most of those men generally recognized as “Founding Fathers” came from fairly mainstream Christian backgrounds in the context of the late 18th Century, although we have little information on things such as regularity of church attendance or the sum of donations to religious organizations. The writings of the individual Founding Fathers provide quite a variety of theological perspectives, but generally reflect a bias against religious bureaucracy and the involvement of the clergy in the political life of the nation, which is completely consistent with the Protestant thinking of the age. What is largely absent from the record is significant evangelism or strident condemnation of Moors, Buddhists or other nonbelievers. On balance, there is little indication that the men who founded America articulated any consensus either before or after that it was their intent to found a “Christian” nation, though they were clearly mostly believers in some degree of “divine” influence in the affairs of men. Neither the Articles of Confederation nor the United States Constitution contain the word “God”, a fairly serious omission for a “Christian” nation. References to “God” are common in 18th and 19th Century America political dialog and speeches, but are usually in a general context like “oh my God, the dog just shit on the carpet”, or “the God-damned dog just shit on the carpet.” Aggressive and persistent religious partisanship as a feature of the political process appears to be a fairly recent development, and is coincidental with the rise of social freedoms and associated public debate of issues like Gay Rights, abortion and pornography, as well as the expansion of the role of the electronic media in the daily life of the average citizen.
Anyway, somewhat completely changing the subject, here I sit in my post Election Day 2010 funk, contemplating the apparent repudiation of Liberalism midst angry cries of creeping socialism and various doomsday prophecies, and I wonder what the signatories to the Declaration of Independence would think about their fickle 21st Century progeny. Ben Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had just taken up arms against the most powerful empire in the world with little more than their convictions to shield them. They commanded no real army, could not be certain of the allegiance of their fellow colonists and could hope for little support from other monarchs who would likely see their insurrection as an invitation to global chaos. They had enumerated a list of grievances against the Crown that went well beyond “I can’t afford a new car this year” and “black people make me nervous” and they went out on quite a political limb to say that the rich and the powerful shouldn’t be able through the instrument of government to suck every possible dime out of the working man to fund their insatiable lust for acquisition and conquest, especially if they had no intention of reinvesting any of the spoils to the collective benefit. These guys weren’t saints, but they were brave and they were among the first to articulate a concept of social and political equity that extended beyond the bounds of class by “natural” right. The fact that they didn’t conceive of equity extending beyond white guys with walking-around cash doesn’t reduce the radicalism of their ideas; their slap in the face to King George was the first trickle in what would become a historical torrent that ultimately allowed women and blacks and gays and dwarves and geeks throughout the world to say “why not me? why not freedom?” The world of 1789 and the world of 2010 are so incomparably different that it is impossible to define what modern political party, if any, has its true analog in the ideals of our Founders, but we do know that they had a commitment to social justice in the context of their time that would have made Abbey Hoffman blush.
So I watched the TV pundits expound grotesquely upon the sometimes absurd and sometimes tragic circus that representative democracy can be and I cheered the many defeats of Tea Party patriots with their constitutionalism and doctrine of original intent and other comfortable fantasies of solid rock beneath the ever evolving truth of human civilization. I despaired as legions of grandmas on Social Security voted against redistribution of wealth and packs of grandpas on Medicare voted against socialized medicine. I sat in amazed silence as people living in cheap houses built largely by illegal laborers voted against humane immigration reform. I seethed as the rich who have taken advantage of every public investment ever made to live a life few can imagine voted to correct the unfairness of their tax burden and I was heartened by the few unexpected victories and the closeness of other losses which implied that not everyone in America had lost their mind. It did occur to me that perhaps, when swiftly tumbling towards the ground from a lofty height, left and right loose most of their significance and that fear and anger offer less resistance than reason, but mostly I just marveled at the Divine Providence that continues to preserve the unalienable right of we the people to govern ourselves in accordance with the faithfulness and abilities of our chosen representatives. Sometimes that’s the best we can hope for.
But here is where we return to the cold realities of human social intercourse. Seven simple words. But nothing in real life is simple, and words are but the Platonic shadows of the true thought flickering upon the cave walls. It is often suggested that the authors of our nation’s founding documents always said what they meant, and meant what they said, but much is read into these documents that is far from clear by right of syntax and semantics. It was probably not the intent of the Founding Fathers that each citizen should be an expert in the oratory and written missives of each signatory, and it is certainly arguable the extent to which a collective effort can concisely represent the convictions of each of multiple individual participants. I can only conclude that words of the Declaration of Independence are intended to be sufficient unto themselves to convey the sentiments of its authors.
It is interesting, therefore, that the word “God” is used the sum total of once in the Declaration, in reference to “the laws of nature and of nature's God. “Nature’s God” is a somewhat ambiguous term, all the more noteworthy since it could have simply been clarified to “the God of Abraham” or “Our Savoir Jesus Christ”, but it wasn’t. Most 21st Century Americans will likely assume that it is in fact an allusion to God-Almighty, the Scourge of Sodom and spiritual father of Jesus, but there is nothing in the document’s words or context to support that. The reference could very well be to Pan, Circe or Yoda, but Mr. Jefferson didn’t elaborate. The term “divine appears once also, in the context of “Divine Providence” and the term “Creator” also appears one time only, as that power which has endowed Man with his “unalienable” rights. Whether this force of creation is divine or natural is not discussed and whether such “unalienable rights” devolve from the authority of the divine or arise from the natural structure of human society cannot be established from the text.
Most of those men generally recognized as “Founding Fathers” came from fairly mainstream Christian backgrounds in the context of the late 18th Century, although we have little information on things such as regularity of church attendance or the sum of donations to religious organizations. The writings of the individual Founding Fathers provide quite a variety of theological perspectives, but generally reflect a bias against religious bureaucracy and the involvement of the clergy in the political life of the nation, which is completely consistent with the Protestant thinking of the age. What is largely absent from the record is significant evangelism or strident condemnation of Moors, Buddhists or other nonbelievers. On balance, there is little indication that the men who founded America articulated any consensus either before or after that it was their intent to found a “Christian” nation, though they were clearly mostly believers in some degree of “divine” influence in the affairs of men. Neither the Articles of Confederation nor the United States Constitution contain the word “God”, a fairly serious omission for a “Christian” nation. References to “God” are common in 18th and 19th Century America political dialog and speeches, but are usually in a general context like “oh my God, the dog just shit on the carpet”, or “the God-damned dog just shit on the carpet.” Aggressive and persistent religious partisanship as a feature of the political process appears to be a fairly recent development, and is coincidental with the rise of social freedoms and associated public debate of issues like Gay Rights, abortion and pornography, as well as the expansion of the role of the electronic media in the daily life of the average citizen.
Anyway, somewhat completely changing the subject, here I sit in my post Election Day 2010 funk, contemplating the apparent repudiation of Liberalism midst angry cries of creeping socialism and various doomsday prophecies, and I wonder what the signatories to the Declaration of Independence would think about their fickle 21st Century progeny. Ben Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had just taken up arms against the most powerful empire in the world with little more than their convictions to shield them. They commanded no real army, could not be certain of the allegiance of their fellow colonists and could hope for little support from other monarchs who would likely see their insurrection as an invitation to global chaos. They had enumerated a list of grievances against the Crown that went well beyond “I can’t afford a new car this year” and “black people make me nervous” and they went out on quite a political limb to say that the rich and the powerful shouldn’t be able through the instrument of government to suck every possible dime out of the working man to fund their insatiable lust for acquisition and conquest, especially if they had no intention of reinvesting any of the spoils to the collective benefit. These guys weren’t saints, but they were brave and they were among the first to articulate a concept of social and political equity that extended beyond the bounds of class by “natural” right. The fact that they didn’t conceive of equity extending beyond white guys with walking-around cash doesn’t reduce the radicalism of their ideas; their slap in the face to King George was the first trickle in what would become a historical torrent that ultimately allowed women and blacks and gays and dwarves and geeks throughout the world to say “why not me? why not freedom?” The world of 1789 and the world of 2010 are so incomparably different that it is impossible to define what modern political party, if any, has its true analog in the ideals of our Founders, but we do know that they had a commitment to social justice in the context of their time that would have made Abbey Hoffman blush.
So I watched the TV pundits expound grotesquely upon the sometimes absurd and sometimes tragic circus that representative democracy can be and I cheered the many defeats of Tea Party patriots with their constitutionalism and doctrine of original intent and other comfortable fantasies of solid rock beneath the ever evolving truth of human civilization. I despaired as legions of grandmas on Social Security voted against redistribution of wealth and packs of grandpas on Medicare voted against socialized medicine. I sat in amazed silence as people living in cheap houses built largely by illegal laborers voted against humane immigration reform. I seethed as the rich who have taken advantage of every public investment ever made to live a life few can imagine voted to correct the unfairness of their tax burden and I was heartened by the few unexpected victories and the closeness of other losses which implied that not everyone in America had lost their mind. It did occur to me that perhaps, when swiftly tumbling towards the ground from a lofty height, left and right loose most of their significance and that fear and anger offer less resistance than reason, but mostly I just marveled at the Divine Providence that continues to preserve the unalienable right of we the people to govern ourselves in accordance with the faithfulness and abilities of our chosen representatives. Sometimes that’s the best we can hope for.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Further Musings on Physics, Metaphysics and Stuff
I’m not going to pretend that I actually understand M-theory, or even that I understand what understanding it would entail, but being that M-theory is an elaboration on Superstring theory, which is an elaboration on String theory, which was an effort to reconcile Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, there is little surprise that it’s comprehension escapes the remaining part of my brain that the zombies didn’t already eat. Incidentally, zombies violate the rules of thermodynamics, so either they don’t exist or they remain in a state of quantum superposition after the collapse of the probability wave; either way, they sadly linger as only creatures of our imagination.
According to Wikipedia, the source of all my wisdom, the M used to sort of stand for Membrane when M-theory first arose, but latter evolved to just M when it became clear that the concept of a membrane was only partially apt for the theoretical structure that the comprehensive theory proposed to use as an analog for reality. Nonetheless, M-theory is simply summed up, and I quote, as “asserting that strings are really 1-dimensional slices of a 2-dimensional membrane vibrating in 11-dimensional space.” Everything we know or can know results from this fundamental and underlying truth.
I was going to go on to P-branes and “lose ends” and such, but you can read Wikipedia just as well as I can. The thing that I find remarkable about these theoretical constructs in physics is that, however bizarre they are, they only survive the fatally selective marketplace of ideas by being mathematically consistent with what is observed. It has long been argued amongst quantum mechanics toiling in the chalk-infused filth of their subterranean lairs as to whether there really is such a physical thing as a “probability wave” or whether it is just an analog to an unobservable physical reality. There was a major insurrection in Quantum society over this very notion resulting in the emergence of “schools” of quantum thought. Are there really 2-dimensional membranes vibrating in 11-dimensional space? Hell if I know, but we are so far from really understanding even the most fundamental of realities, how can we claim knowledge of good and evil, being and nothingness, Starsky and Hutch? Like, you know, the Universe; it’s here; it’s queer; get used to it.
I have to stay away from politics as much as possible because my cerebral artery walls are weakening. Anybody who reads this blog is both bored and already knows what I think about current American politics anyway, but what about the Germans? Frau Merkel, the Chancellor of the Reich, has declared that “Germany's attempts to build a multicultural society have utterly failed.” Well, so did their attempt to build a monocultural society. What’s a Volk to do? Before you get all “who are you to judge the German people?” on me, I did live there for three years 30 some odd years ago, and I wasn’t inebriated the whole time. My observation then was that the “Guest Workers”, mostly Turks and Italians with a component of Balkan and Pan-Slav minorities, were more or less relegated to the economic and cultural fringes. As one would expect, some of this was the result of clannishness on the part of the immigrants, but I never got the sense that they were welcomed in the same way I was as a blond, blue-eyed American soldier. Perhaps this was because the Germans knew I would eventually leave, but I’m not sure that a multicultural society can be created just by dumping disparate cultures into the same physical space and expecting assimilation or some other form of equilibrium to establish itself. In the case of Germany, the principle problem is that most of their immigrants have been exclusively pursuing economic opportunity and have been viewed by the broader society as mainly inputs into an economic equation. Capitalistic views on labor combined with an innate sense of cultural superiority may not in this case be the best recipe for success. Successful multicultural societies are based upon mutual respect, acceptance and tolerance, and the ability to sometimes agree to disagree. However, tolerance without respect is just paternalism and respect without acceptance is only fear. Nations need to ask themselves some very serious questions and give themselves some honest answers before they open their borders in pursuit of cheap labor, shouldn’t they?
Finally, Juan Williams got fired from NPR because he was doing his part-time gig on Fox and told Bill O’Reilly that people in “Muslim” dress on airplanes “made him nervous”. He used the reasoning that people who were committed enough to their religion to dress in accordance with its tenets might be committed enough to engage in more drastic forms of religious fervor. NPR was correct to fire Mr. Williams, but not because of his blatant bigotry; rather, because he is a dumbass. For the record, the Quran limits its directives on clothing to suggestions that it be “modest” and a little technical advice on what parts of the body need to be covered to achieve modesty. Hillary Clinton routinely meets the requirements of Islamic modesty in her dress, if only accidentally, as do most American women over 50, or who are at church in the South. American male business dress is one-hundred percent consistent with the Islamic dress code, as is, ironically, most Rap inspired male dress. The point here is that when Juan Williams identifies something as “Muslim dress”, he is really referring to a cultural or ethnic manifestation. The dress is Arab or perhaps “South Asian”, but it is not Islamic.
Being a dumbass on Fox News is no crime, since Fox News is specifically directed at dumbasses and they clearly have a right to pander to their target market. NPR, on the other hand, has some responsibility for objectivity and factual correctness, both of which Mr. Williams is apparently lacking. I believe we live in a country now where ignorance and failures of reason are seen as “fair and balanced” and studied and researched presentations of unpleasant fact are nothing more than Liberal propaganda. Pointing out factual error is now censorship and criticism of hate is itself hatefulness; and don’t forget, reality is, perhaps, nothing more than 1-dimensional slices of a 2-dimensional membrane vibrating in 11-dimensional space. Sigh.
According to Wikipedia, the source of all my wisdom, the M used to sort of stand for Membrane when M-theory first arose, but latter evolved to just M when it became clear that the concept of a membrane was only partially apt for the theoretical structure that the comprehensive theory proposed to use as an analog for reality. Nonetheless, M-theory is simply summed up, and I quote, as “asserting that strings are really 1-dimensional slices of a 2-dimensional membrane vibrating in 11-dimensional space.” Everything we know or can know results from this fundamental and underlying truth.
I was going to go on to P-branes and “lose ends” and such, but you can read Wikipedia just as well as I can. The thing that I find remarkable about these theoretical constructs in physics is that, however bizarre they are, they only survive the fatally selective marketplace of ideas by being mathematically consistent with what is observed. It has long been argued amongst quantum mechanics toiling in the chalk-infused filth of their subterranean lairs as to whether there really is such a physical thing as a “probability wave” or whether it is just an analog to an unobservable physical reality. There was a major insurrection in Quantum society over this very notion resulting in the emergence of “schools” of quantum thought. Are there really 2-dimensional membranes vibrating in 11-dimensional space? Hell if I know, but we are so far from really understanding even the most fundamental of realities, how can we claim knowledge of good and evil, being and nothingness, Starsky and Hutch? Like, you know, the Universe; it’s here; it’s queer; get used to it.
I have to stay away from politics as much as possible because my cerebral artery walls are weakening. Anybody who reads this blog is both bored and already knows what I think about current American politics anyway, but what about the Germans? Frau Merkel, the Chancellor of the Reich, has declared that “Germany's attempts to build a multicultural society have utterly failed.” Well, so did their attempt to build a monocultural society. What’s a Volk to do? Before you get all “who are you to judge the German people?” on me, I did live there for three years 30 some odd years ago, and I wasn’t inebriated the whole time. My observation then was that the “Guest Workers”, mostly Turks and Italians with a component of Balkan and Pan-Slav minorities, were more or less relegated to the economic and cultural fringes. As one would expect, some of this was the result of clannishness on the part of the immigrants, but I never got the sense that they were welcomed in the same way I was as a blond, blue-eyed American soldier. Perhaps this was because the Germans knew I would eventually leave, but I’m not sure that a multicultural society can be created just by dumping disparate cultures into the same physical space and expecting assimilation or some other form of equilibrium to establish itself. In the case of Germany, the principle problem is that most of their immigrants have been exclusively pursuing economic opportunity and have been viewed by the broader society as mainly inputs into an economic equation. Capitalistic views on labor combined with an innate sense of cultural superiority may not in this case be the best recipe for success. Successful multicultural societies are based upon mutual respect, acceptance and tolerance, and the ability to sometimes agree to disagree. However, tolerance without respect is just paternalism and respect without acceptance is only fear. Nations need to ask themselves some very serious questions and give themselves some honest answers before they open their borders in pursuit of cheap labor, shouldn’t they?
Finally, Juan Williams got fired from NPR because he was doing his part-time gig on Fox and told Bill O’Reilly that people in “Muslim” dress on airplanes “made him nervous”. He used the reasoning that people who were committed enough to their religion to dress in accordance with its tenets might be committed enough to engage in more drastic forms of religious fervor. NPR was correct to fire Mr. Williams, but not because of his blatant bigotry; rather, because he is a dumbass. For the record, the Quran limits its directives on clothing to suggestions that it be “modest” and a little technical advice on what parts of the body need to be covered to achieve modesty. Hillary Clinton routinely meets the requirements of Islamic modesty in her dress, if only accidentally, as do most American women over 50, or who are at church in the South. American male business dress is one-hundred percent consistent with the Islamic dress code, as is, ironically, most Rap inspired male dress. The point here is that when Juan Williams identifies something as “Muslim dress”, he is really referring to a cultural or ethnic manifestation. The dress is Arab or perhaps “South Asian”, but it is not Islamic.
Being a dumbass on Fox News is no crime, since Fox News is specifically directed at dumbasses and they clearly have a right to pander to their target market. NPR, on the other hand, has some responsibility for objectivity and factual correctness, both of which Mr. Williams is apparently lacking. I believe we live in a country now where ignorance and failures of reason are seen as “fair and balanced” and studied and researched presentations of unpleasant fact are nothing more than Liberal propaganda. Pointing out factual error is now censorship and criticism of hate is itself hatefulness; and don’t forget, reality is, perhaps, nothing more than 1-dimensional slices of a 2-dimensional membrane vibrating in 11-dimensional space. Sigh.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Columbus Day 2010
I have never worked at a bank, or lived in the Northeast, so Columbus Day is just some print on a calendar to me, but Al Capone used to celebrate it enthusiastically, I hear. In October of 1492, the intrepid explorer Cristoforo Colombo made landfall somewhere in what is now the Bahamas, only days ahead of starvation, dehydration and mutiny. The naively friendly Arawaks hosted Columbus and his men for a few weeks before he moved on to Cuba and Hispaniola. The ultimate result was that the Europeans bartered smallpox for syphilis and the Native Americans were largely doomed. I don’t think America and Europe have yet come to terms with the enormity of the devastation brought by European colonization and America’s manifest destiny, but I feel relatively certain that if the victims of this historical inevitability had been white, there would be a few more memorials for the certainly tens of millions of people who eventually died as a direct result of the voyages of Columbus and his successors.
Elsewhere, Carl Palidino, the Republican/Nativist Party candidate for Governor of New York recently decried the “brainwashing” of children to accept homosexuality as being “equally valid”. There are a few interesting subtexts to Mr. Palidino’s lamentation, the first being the use of the term “brainwashing”. Apparently Mr. Palidino feels that if I attempt to pass my value system to my children, they are being brainwashed; unless, perhaps, he happens to share those values, which is admittedly unlikely. Maybe Mr. Palidino was only objecting to societal institutions, such as schools, engaging in the practice of promoting open-mindedness about sexual identity issues, in which case he should also bemoan the schools being used as a platform for promoting other values, but, here again, the litmus test appears to be whether he personally agrees with what is being taught. I can respect any honestly held belief as a matter of conscience, but no one should have the power decide which ideas have official sanction and which don’t. Mr. Palidino is a scary fellow. He might even be a Douchebag. Anyway, allowing for the possibility that human society is complex and that people are diverse and everything is not black and white is not brainwashing where I come from; it’s common sense.
And before I absent-mindedly wander off to some other subject, why is the question of the “legitimacy” of homosexuality in America not seen and discussed as the purely religious issue that it is. If a state legislature somewhere was debating a law about whether you could eat pork or work on the Sabbath, nobody would have any doubt that it was simply an attempt to impose religious orthodoxy on people who had already consciously rejected it. Of course, in some states that might make it more popular, but the anti-Gay forces in America are nothing more than Old Testament literalists trying to force their beliefs on the nation though the power of government. How can this be ok? I realize it’s nothing new; just ask anybody in Georgia wanting to buy a case of beer on Sunday, but these “social conservatives” are simply the Spanish Inquisition in sheep’s clothing. I’m not saying that they don’t truly believe that they are doing what’s right; on the contrary, that’s what makes them so dangerous, but as a nation we have already crossed this bridge and the issue is settled; we are guided by Constitutional principles, not partisan religious ones.
I got some hostile feedback from my immediately previous blog where it turned out all the weekly Douchebags were somehow associated with the Republican Party. It was suggested to me that I was not fairly addressing the objectionability of certain persons on the more Liberal end of the political spectrum. I accept this criticism as completely valid and will attempt to do better in the future. The Obama Administration in general is really making me question my anti-senile old man from Arizona vote in 2008. I’m too tired to provide a complete litany of failings, but they all pretty much fall into the category of being too scared of the Republicans and too desirous of keeping the support of Wall Street, which may amount to about the same thing. We voted for a revolution and got a surrender. I generally leave the Democrats alone in my attempts at sarcastic critique, mostly because they are so helpless. The Republicans are a much more serious threat to liberty than any Democratic regime could ever be, simply and solely because they have a greater power of organization and party loyalty. I have repeated this mantra incessantly; I fear the Republicans and pity the Democrats and generally respect neither, and the Tea Party patriots don’t even get an honorable mention, except in the Weekly Douchebag Roundup.
The Mid-Term elections are just about three weeks away. Polling data, as usual, is contradictory and ever-changing. It does seem clear that there is something of a tendency towards replacing the incompetent with the insane, but we will have to await election night to see if this is sustained. Americans usually talk a lot of nonsense and then go with the familiar, especially in politics, but this may be a new, post-apocalyptical political paradigm where all bets are off. People may just be angry enough with the status quo to actually put people like Sharon Angle in the Senate, for example, but the problem is that it’s sending a message that carries a six year contract with it. I am truly at a loss to identify a path to resolution of this nation’s problems; other than the one President Obama tricked me with, which involved ending useless war, investing in education and research, reforming health insurance, treating all citizens with respect and taking real measures to ensure LONG-TERM, sustainable physical solvency. Apparently none of that stuff is important anymore. Obama may find himself on the Douchebag list if he doesn’t straighten up.
And finally, this is Breast Cancer Awareness month in the United States. Each year somewhere around 40,000 women die of breast cancer in the United States. While the incidence of breast cancer has risen slightly since 1975, the death rate has fallen significantly, especially for Caucasian women. This would tend to indicate that medical progress is being made in fighting the disease. Science, not superstition, prayer or voodoo, is prevailing, albeit agonizingly slowly, against our bad genes and bad habits, and it is likely that if we put the same effort and resources into preserving life that we put into destroying it, many, many more diseases could be cured and prevented. Since 1971, the American Cancer Society has funded almost $390 million in breast cancer research. Just for reference, the United States is spending approximately the same amount in 2010 alone for building the Stryker Light Armored Vehicle, which I guess we need to fight lightly armored enemies. God knows we are making enough of them.
My mother died from breast cancer on December 2, 1972. She had a radical mastectomy, months of debilitating radiation therapy, and further surgery to remove lymph nodes where the cancer had spread. She spent the last weeks of her life in a morphine induced stupor and at the end barely recognized her own children, which may have been a blessing for all of us. My mother once washed my older brother’s mouth out with soap for using the “N” word, in Georgia, in the 1960’s. She would unwisely pick up hitchhikers because she said they might be “unfortunates”; she couldn’t stand Richard Nixon. I still miss her and I understand the sorrow and anger of those who are prematurely deprived of their loved ones, by whatever cause. This is why I despise the bringers of death and destruction, whatever flag they may wave. Stop the wars; spend the money on destroying misery instead and quit cynically manipulating the ignorant and the frightened and the foolish. Grow up, damn you. My mother has a bar of soap with your name on it.
Elsewhere, Carl Palidino, the Republican/Nativist Party candidate for Governor of New York recently decried the “brainwashing” of children to accept homosexuality as being “equally valid”. There are a few interesting subtexts to Mr. Palidino’s lamentation, the first being the use of the term “brainwashing”. Apparently Mr. Palidino feels that if I attempt to pass my value system to my children, they are being brainwashed; unless, perhaps, he happens to share those values, which is admittedly unlikely. Maybe Mr. Palidino was only objecting to societal institutions, such as schools, engaging in the practice of promoting open-mindedness about sexual identity issues, in which case he should also bemoan the schools being used as a platform for promoting other values, but, here again, the litmus test appears to be whether he personally agrees with what is being taught. I can respect any honestly held belief as a matter of conscience, but no one should have the power decide which ideas have official sanction and which don’t. Mr. Palidino is a scary fellow. He might even be a Douchebag. Anyway, allowing for the possibility that human society is complex and that people are diverse and everything is not black and white is not brainwashing where I come from; it’s common sense.
And before I absent-mindedly wander off to some other subject, why is the question of the “legitimacy” of homosexuality in America not seen and discussed as the purely religious issue that it is. If a state legislature somewhere was debating a law about whether you could eat pork or work on the Sabbath, nobody would have any doubt that it was simply an attempt to impose religious orthodoxy on people who had already consciously rejected it. Of course, in some states that might make it more popular, but the anti-Gay forces in America are nothing more than Old Testament literalists trying to force their beliefs on the nation though the power of government. How can this be ok? I realize it’s nothing new; just ask anybody in Georgia wanting to buy a case of beer on Sunday, but these “social conservatives” are simply the Spanish Inquisition in sheep’s clothing. I’m not saying that they don’t truly believe that they are doing what’s right; on the contrary, that’s what makes them so dangerous, but as a nation we have already crossed this bridge and the issue is settled; we are guided by Constitutional principles, not partisan religious ones.
I got some hostile feedback from my immediately previous blog where it turned out all the weekly Douchebags were somehow associated with the Republican Party. It was suggested to me that I was not fairly addressing the objectionability of certain persons on the more Liberal end of the political spectrum. I accept this criticism as completely valid and will attempt to do better in the future. The Obama Administration in general is really making me question my anti-senile old man from Arizona vote in 2008. I’m too tired to provide a complete litany of failings, but they all pretty much fall into the category of being too scared of the Republicans and too desirous of keeping the support of Wall Street, which may amount to about the same thing. We voted for a revolution and got a surrender. I generally leave the Democrats alone in my attempts at sarcastic critique, mostly because they are so helpless. The Republicans are a much more serious threat to liberty than any Democratic regime could ever be, simply and solely because they have a greater power of organization and party loyalty. I have repeated this mantra incessantly; I fear the Republicans and pity the Democrats and generally respect neither, and the Tea Party patriots don’t even get an honorable mention, except in the Weekly Douchebag Roundup.
The Mid-Term elections are just about three weeks away. Polling data, as usual, is contradictory and ever-changing. It does seem clear that there is something of a tendency towards replacing the incompetent with the insane, but we will have to await election night to see if this is sustained. Americans usually talk a lot of nonsense and then go with the familiar, especially in politics, but this may be a new, post-apocalyptical political paradigm where all bets are off. People may just be angry enough with the status quo to actually put people like Sharon Angle in the Senate, for example, but the problem is that it’s sending a message that carries a six year contract with it. I am truly at a loss to identify a path to resolution of this nation’s problems; other than the one President Obama tricked me with, which involved ending useless war, investing in education and research, reforming health insurance, treating all citizens with respect and taking real measures to ensure LONG-TERM, sustainable physical solvency. Apparently none of that stuff is important anymore. Obama may find himself on the Douchebag list if he doesn’t straighten up.
And finally, this is Breast Cancer Awareness month in the United States. Each year somewhere around 40,000 women die of breast cancer in the United States. While the incidence of breast cancer has risen slightly since 1975, the death rate has fallen significantly, especially for Caucasian women. This would tend to indicate that medical progress is being made in fighting the disease. Science, not superstition, prayer or voodoo, is prevailing, albeit agonizingly slowly, against our bad genes and bad habits, and it is likely that if we put the same effort and resources into preserving life that we put into destroying it, many, many more diseases could be cured and prevented. Since 1971, the American Cancer Society has funded almost $390 million in breast cancer research. Just for reference, the United States is spending approximately the same amount in 2010 alone for building the Stryker Light Armored Vehicle, which I guess we need to fight lightly armored enemies. God knows we are making enough of them.
My mother died from breast cancer on December 2, 1972. She had a radical mastectomy, months of debilitating radiation therapy, and further surgery to remove lymph nodes where the cancer had spread. She spent the last weeks of her life in a morphine induced stupor and at the end barely recognized her own children, which may have been a blessing for all of us. My mother once washed my older brother’s mouth out with soap for using the “N” word, in Georgia, in the 1960’s. She would unwisely pick up hitchhikers because she said they might be “unfortunates”; she couldn’t stand Richard Nixon. I still miss her and I understand the sorrow and anger of those who are prematurely deprived of their loved ones, by whatever cause. This is why I despise the bringers of death and destruction, whatever flag they may wave. Stop the wars; spend the money on destroying misery instead and quit cynically manipulating the ignorant and the frightened and the foolish. Grow up, damn you. My mother has a bar of soap with your name on it.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Weekly Douchebag Roundup
I read somewhere that Christine O’Donnell is a witch, or something. I seem to remember some tests that can be conducted for witchery (or witchiness, or witchism), but I think they involve dunking a candidate in water and observing their buoyancy. This sounds very scientific, so I’m not sure Christine would approve. I do recall that Sarah Palin has a buddy in Africa who is a certified witch hunter, so maybe he could lend a hand. It is very important that we keep witches under control, since they may turn people into newts, and we don’t need any more Newts in America.
Speaking of witches, Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for the Governorship of California, has been accused of employing at least one illegal immigrant as domestic help in the past, but I am sure it’s all just a misunderstanding, what with the language barrier and such. After all, the woman, Nicky Diaz, only worked for Ms. Whitman for nine or ten years, not really enough time to get to know anybody’s individual circumstances. Ms. Whitman has been very clear about her concerns about illegal immigration, so this misunderstanding is quite the irony and has fueled substantial criticism from her Leftist opponents. What the Socialists have failed to understand, however, is that the rules don’t apply to rich people. That’s why they spend all that time getting rich.
The same type of criticism has been lodged against Lou Dobbs, the eloquent and completely objective former CNN contributor. Dobbs, best known for his humility and self-effacing humor, has been accused by no less than “The Nation” magazine, the official publication of the American Socialist/ Marxist Freedom Haters Party, of knowingly hiring workers not legally eligible to work in the United States. The blasphemous expose’ even went so far as to imply that Dobbs is a cheap ass who took advantage of his employees by virtue of their illegal status. Whatever happened to American respect for thrift? Why would you pay any more than you have to? It’s really sad that people can’t see that the rules don’t apply to rich people. That’s why we should elect some and avoid all those messy rule compliance issues.
A recent poll by the Associated Press finds that Caucasian Americans without college educations support Republican candidates for Congress about 2 to 1 over Democratic candidates. I shouldn’t have to explain how this makes complete sense, but just for the record, education is defined as “the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.” I could go on, but what would be the point? The thing that I find interesting about this general subject area is that it appears that intellectual elitism is widely disparaged in America, but economic elitism is not simply tolerated, but expected and endorsed. If I possess greater knowledge, I will be resented, but if I possess greater wealth, I will be envied and admired. Too bad I’m a poor genius, along with being relatively unattractive and having a borderline personality disorder.
A recent poll by the Public Relations Research Institute indicates that 2/3rds of Americans believe the minimum wage should be raised significantly. Presumably few of these people are Caucasians with no college education, a potential beneficiary of such an action. The arguments against raising the minimum wage are compelling. Principle among them is the idea that it will cost businesses too much and they will have to reduce their campaign contributions to the Republican Party. Joe Miller, a Republican candidate for Senate in Alaska says that the minimum wage is unconstitutional, and he is a Yale educated lawyer. By his same extraordinary reasoning, which I am too indifferent to summarize here, child labor laws are also unconstitutional, as are environmental regulations, civil rights legislation and the Federal income tax, all things that have admittedly been ruining America since our pinnacle of 19th Century greatness.
At least there are some sane people in America. Take John Reed, for example. Mr. Reed is the pastor of the church attended by one Sharon Angle, Republican candidate for Senator in Nevada. Mr. Reed recently spoke out against Ms. Angle’s opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Part of his criticism was that Mr. Reid’s church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was a “cult”. Thank God someone finally had the courage to say what we have all been thinking. How absurd is it to believe that Jesus Christ died by crucifixion, descended into Hell for three days, rose from the dead, and THEN flew over to North America to live and teach among the Native Americans? What kind of a simpleton would believe such a thing? Mr. Reed should be applauded for pointing out the clear difference between his completely legitimate and entirely rational religious enterprise and the brainwashed minions of Mormonism.
Anybody ever heard of Jim DeMint? He’s a Senator from South Carolina; one of the great progressive states of THESE United States. He doesn’t believe in separation of church and state or abortion in cases of rape or incest. He believes we need to make English the official language of the country and that all illegal immigrants should be expelled so that they can return to their country of origin to begin the process of legally applying for the right to immigrate to the Confederate States of America. Whoops. I wonder if Meg Whitman and Lou Dobbs know about this. Anyway, Senator DeMint has written a book, Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America's Slide into Socialism (Fidelis, Nashville, 2009). I haven’t read it, but I can tell it’s cool by its title. Stopping socialism; yep, that’s America’s most pressing issue right now.
At this point, two very comforting things occur to me. In five billion years, the sun will exhaust its supply of hydrogen and begin fusing helium into beryllium, raising its surface temperature substantially, and thereby expanding massively, and engulf the inner planets, which will be completely incinerated. The other thing is that I’m playing golf next Friday. Don’t worry; be happy.
Speaking of witches, Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for the Governorship of California, has been accused of employing at least one illegal immigrant as domestic help in the past, but I am sure it’s all just a misunderstanding, what with the language barrier and such. After all, the woman, Nicky Diaz, only worked for Ms. Whitman for nine or ten years, not really enough time to get to know anybody’s individual circumstances. Ms. Whitman has been very clear about her concerns about illegal immigration, so this misunderstanding is quite the irony and has fueled substantial criticism from her Leftist opponents. What the Socialists have failed to understand, however, is that the rules don’t apply to rich people. That’s why they spend all that time getting rich.
The same type of criticism has been lodged against Lou Dobbs, the eloquent and completely objective former CNN contributor. Dobbs, best known for his humility and self-effacing humor, has been accused by no less than “The Nation” magazine, the official publication of the American Socialist/ Marxist Freedom Haters Party, of knowingly hiring workers not legally eligible to work in the United States. The blasphemous expose’ even went so far as to imply that Dobbs is a cheap ass who took advantage of his employees by virtue of their illegal status. Whatever happened to American respect for thrift? Why would you pay any more than you have to? It’s really sad that people can’t see that the rules don’t apply to rich people. That’s why we should elect some and avoid all those messy rule compliance issues.
A recent poll by the Associated Press finds that Caucasian Americans without college educations support Republican candidates for Congress about 2 to 1 over Democratic candidates. I shouldn’t have to explain how this makes complete sense, but just for the record, education is defined as “the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.” I could go on, but what would be the point? The thing that I find interesting about this general subject area is that it appears that intellectual elitism is widely disparaged in America, but economic elitism is not simply tolerated, but expected and endorsed. If I possess greater knowledge, I will be resented, but if I possess greater wealth, I will be envied and admired. Too bad I’m a poor genius, along with being relatively unattractive and having a borderline personality disorder.
A recent poll by the Public Relations Research Institute indicates that 2/3rds of Americans believe the minimum wage should be raised significantly. Presumably few of these people are Caucasians with no college education, a potential beneficiary of such an action. The arguments against raising the minimum wage are compelling. Principle among them is the idea that it will cost businesses too much and they will have to reduce their campaign contributions to the Republican Party. Joe Miller, a Republican candidate for Senate in Alaska says that the minimum wage is unconstitutional, and he is a Yale educated lawyer. By his same extraordinary reasoning, which I am too indifferent to summarize here, child labor laws are also unconstitutional, as are environmental regulations, civil rights legislation and the Federal income tax, all things that have admittedly been ruining America since our pinnacle of 19th Century greatness.
At least there are some sane people in America. Take John Reed, for example. Mr. Reed is the pastor of the church attended by one Sharon Angle, Republican candidate for Senator in Nevada. Mr. Reed recently spoke out against Ms. Angle’s opponent, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Part of his criticism was that Mr. Reid’s church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, was a “cult”. Thank God someone finally had the courage to say what we have all been thinking. How absurd is it to believe that Jesus Christ died by crucifixion, descended into Hell for three days, rose from the dead, and THEN flew over to North America to live and teach among the Native Americans? What kind of a simpleton would believe such a thing? Mr. Reed should be applauded for pointing out the clear difference between his completely legitimate and entirely rational religious enterprise and the brainwashed minions of Mormonism.
Anybody ever heard of Jim DeMint? He’s a Senator from South Carolina; one of the great progressive states of THESE United States. He doesn’t believe in separation of church and state or abortion in cases of rape or incest. He believes we need to make English the official language of the country and that all illegal immigrants should be expelled so that they can return to their country of origin to begin the process of legally applying for the right to immigrate to the Confederate States of America. Whoops. I wonder if Meg Whitman and Lou Dobbs know about this. Anyway, Senator DeMint has written a book, Saving Freedom: We Can Stop America's Slide into Socialism (Fidelis, Nashville, 2009). I haven’t read it, but I can tell it’s cool by its title. Stopping socialism; yep, that’s America’s most pressing issue right now.
At this point, two very comforting things occur to me. In five billion years, the sun will exhaust its supply of hydrogen and begin fusing helium into beryllium, raising its surface temperature substantially, and thereby expanding massively, and engulf the inner planets, which will be completely incinerated. The other thing is that I’m playing golf next Friday. Don’t worry; be happy.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Think, Don’t Care
(Warning: Plentiful Foul Language and Sexual References Ahead. I Mean It!)
I must applaud the Republicans in Congress for once again defending the freedoms of the American people against the Trotskyite Democratic menace. This time they have put aside petty political considerations and their ritual pandering to ignorance and hate and courageously sustained a filibuster in the Senate, effectively preventing a vote to determine the majority stance on the clearly immoral attempt to repeal the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” accommodation with the Devil for Gays serving in the military. God bless these stalwart defenders of truth and virtue. What the fuck is a filibuster anyway? It sounds like it should be a condom brand. “The New Filibuster Magnum XXL, For the Manliest Among You!” That would be the Republicans for sure.
I have to confess that I don’t really understand the Gay thing, but I don’t understand Calculus or covalent bonding either. Anyway, this lack of understanding is principally why I believe sexual orientation is largely genetic, because you can’t have that sort of attraction if you aren’t made that way, but whether it’s choice, chance, or some combination of the two, how can private sexual behavior have any bearing on whether you can serve in the United States military? You can certainly be a backwards-ass motherfucker and serve in the Senate; I don’t see how a little anal intercourse or some occasional all-girl scissoring clitorama action would make you unfit to go to foreign countries and kill people in the name of freedom and justice. This is the kind of crap that keeps me from ever considering voting for a Republican. I am well aware of the intellectual and accounting flaws of the Democratic Party, but I would truly rather live in an economically dysfunctional, bankrupt shithole of a country than labor under the oppressive theocracy of people who don’t understand what getting government out of the private lives of its citizens really means and who attempt to pervert the wisdom of Christianity into some sort of allegory of juvenile male embarrassment at anything that makes them uncomfortable. The ironic fact here is that Mitch McConnell is a way bigger cocksucker than Barney Frank ever considered being. The sick hypocrisy of these “Christian” “patriots” makes me want to puke, really. I’m already heaving.
Ok, so you can’t be Gay and serve in the military. Wait, I’m sorry; I misstated the policy. You can’t be Gay and tell the truth and serve in the military. I suppose it’s ok to be a Gay liar and serve, whatever advantage that may bestow on the nation. What’s next? You can’t admit you’re Gay and vote? If you admit you’re Gay, you can’t be a hairdresser? (Ouch) Where does it stop? You can’t serve if you have a leather fetish? You haven’t had heterosexual contact in the last two years, so you’re out? What is up with this nation’s fascination with who’s doing who? I just don’t get it. We are trying to fight half a dozen wars of world domination in God-forsaken places that no American would visit for 15 minutes without a tour-guide, a tank and air cover, and we are turning away patriotic Gays who weirdly enough want to serve in the military at a time of pointless and seemingly endless war. Who comes up with this nonsense?
Here are the facts as I personally know them. There are Gays in the military right now. I was in the Army in the late 70’s and there were known Gays serving right alongside the rest of us, male and female. Us guys knew there were some girls you shouldn’t waste your vodka on unless you wanted help tuning up your Jeep, and there were guys clearly queerer than Malaysian money cleaning their rifles just like the rest of us. Now that I think about it, it is suspicious that the high command never noticed that those rifles were a bit TOO clean. Anyway, nobody cared, except the usual handful of maladjusted simian homophobes and assorted drowned-in-the-blood-of-Jesus types, and that one guy who pined away for the cute, chubby Mexican-American lesbian girl with the spider tattoo; I felt bad for him. Otherwise, Communism was defeated in short order and nobody was turned any more perverted than they already were to start with.
None of the arguments that anyone makes for preventing Gays from openly serving in the military make any sense, unless you are pursuing the implementation of your religious principles with my tax money, in which case you can go fuck yourself. Let’s just let all the Gays serving keep it on the down low so the homophobes have to suspect that everyone in the shower is eying their Johnson. Let’s accommodate in our soldiers the very irrational fear and illogical hatred that we are fighting to eradicate from the ass ends of the Earth. Let’s think like the Taliban, act like the Taliban and reap the benefits of a Taliban controlled society for ourselves. All John Boehner needs is a turban, four wives in shuttlecock burqas and an eye patch and he can compete in the Mullah Omar be-alike contest. Thomas Jefferson was probably too busy sneaking down the alley with Sally to worry about shit like this, but I don’t think he would be on board, and you now fucking-aye that Ben Franklin would not party with the Republican Party.
We Americans enjoy the hard-won right to express our opinions and participate in our own governance, and the common defense; well, most of us anyway. I am willing to bet that there were some queer sons-of-bitches on the beaches in Normandy, although they probably had to hide who they truly were from just about everybody and perhaps even died there as emotional ciphers. There were probably also some desperately wanting-to-be-flaming faggots on both sides of the line at Chickamauga, where the creeks ran red with blood. With all the help the French gave us, you know there was some of that love that didn’t even know it couldn’t speak its name trailing around with the Continental Army. The fact is, Gay people are just people; people, who have participated in the life of this country since the very beginning and have paid for freedom with their blood, sweat and tears, and their very lives, just like the rest of us. Fuck you Mitch McConnell, and the horse you rode in on.
I must applaud the Republicans in Congress for once again defending the freedoms of the American people against the Trotskyite Democratic menace. This time they have put aside petty political considerations and their ritual pandering to ignorance and hate and courageously sustained a filibuster in the Senate, effectively preventing a vote to determine the majority stance on the clearly immoral attempt to repeal the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” accommodation with the Devil for Gays serving in the military. God bless these stalwart defenders of truth and virtue. What the fuck is a filibuster anyway? It sounds like it should be a condom brand. “The New Filibuster Magnum XXL, For the Manliest Among You!” That would be the Republicans for sure.
I have to confess that I don’t really understand the Gay thing, but I don’t understand Calculus or covalent bonding either. Anyway, this lack of understanding is principally why I believe sexual orientation is largely genetic, because you can’t have that sort of attraction if you aren’t made that way, but whether it’s choice, chance, or some combination of the two, how can private sexual behavior have any bearing on whether you can serve in the United States military? You can certainly be a backwards-ass motherfucker and serve in the Senate; I don’t see how a little anal intercourse or some occasional all-girl scissoring clitorama action would make you unfit to go to foreign countries and kill people in the name of freedom and justice. This is the kind of crap that keeps me from ever considering voting for a Republican. I am well aware of the intellectual and accounting flaws of the Democratic Party, but I would truly rather live in an economically dysfunctional, bankrupt shithole of a country than labor under the oppressive theocracy of people who don’t understand what getting government out of the private lives of its citizens really means and who attempt to pervert the wisdom of Christianity into some sort of allegory of juvenile male embarrassment at anything that makes them uncomfortable. The ironic fact here is that Mitch McConnell is a way bigger cocksucker than Barney Frank ever considered being. The sick hypocrisy of these “Christian” “patriots” makes me want to puke, really. I’m already heaving.
Ok, so you can’t be Gay and serve in the military. Wait, I’m sorry; I misstated the policy. You can’t be Gay and tell the truth and serve in the military. I suppose it’s ok to be a Gay liar and serve, whatever advantage that may bestow on the nation. What’s next? You can’t admit you’re Gay and vote? If you admit you’re Gay, you can’t be a hairdresser? (Ouch) Where does it stop? You can’t serve if you have a leather fetish? You haven’t had heterosexual contact in the last two years, so you’re out? What is up with this nation’s fascination with who’s doing who? I just don’t get it. We are trying to fight half a dozen wars of world domination in God-forsaken places that no American would visit for 15 minutes without a tour-guide, a tank and air cover, and we are turning away patriotic Gays who weirdly enough want to serve in the military at a time of pointless and seemingly endless war. Who comes up with this nonsense?
Here are the facts as I personally know them. There are Gays in the military right now. I was in the Army in the late 70’s and there were known Gays serving right alongside the rest of us, male and female. Us guys knew there were some girls you shouldn’t waste your vodka on unless you wanted help tuning up your Jeep, and there were guys clearly queerer than Malaysian money cleaning their rifles just like the rest of us. Now that I think about it, it is suspicious that the high command never noticed that those rifles were a bit TOO clean. Anyway, nobody cared, except the usual handful of maladjusted simian homophobes and assorted drowned-in-the-blood-of-Jesus types, and that one guy who pined away for the cute, chubby Mexican-American lesbian girl with the spider tattoo; I felt bad for him. Otherwise, Communism was defeated in short order and nobody was turned any more perverted than they already were to start with.
None of the arguments that anyone makes for preventing Gays from openly serving in the military make any sense, unless you are pursuing the implementation of your religious principles with my tax money, in which case you can go fuck yourself. Let’s just let all the Gays serving keep it on the down low so the homophobes have to suspect that everyone in the shower is eying their Johnson. Let’s accommodate in our soldiers the very irrational fear and illogical hatred that we are fighting to eradicate from the ass ends of the Earth. Let’s think like the Taliban, act like the Taliban and reap the benefits of a Taliban controlled society for ourselves. All John Boehner needs is a turban, four wives in shuttlecock burqas and an eye patch and he can compete in the Mullah Omar be-alike contest. Thomas Jefferson was probably too busy sneaking down the alley with Sally to worry about shit like this, but I don’t think he would be on board, and you now fucking-aye that Ben Franklin would not party with the Republican Party.
We Americans enjoy the hard-won right to express our opinions and participate in our own governance, and the common defense; well, most of us anyway. I am willing to bet that there were some queer sons-of-bitches on the beaches in Normandy, although they probably had to hide who they truly were from just about everybody and perhaps even died there as emotional ciphers. There were probably also some desperately wanting-to-be-flaming faggots on both sides of the line at Chickamauga, where the creeks ran red with blood. With all the help the French gave us, you know there was some of that love that didn’t even know it couldn’t speak its name trailing around with the Continental Army. The fact is, Gay people are just people; people, who have participated in the life of this country since the very beginning and have paid for freedom with their blood, sweat and tears, and their very lives, just like the rest of us. Fuck you Mitch McConnell, and the horse you rode in on.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The Basics of American Electoral Process
I used to think a tea party involved a little girl sitting around a table with dolls and stuffed animals engaging in a fantasy ritual which involved tiny plastic teapots and a childlike suspension of rational understanding in favor of the excitement of the impossible. Turns out I was right all along. Recent primary election results in several of the fine states of this wonderful Union have confirmed that when Mommy and Daddy fight, or a family member is very ill, or a big dog frightens you, a retreat into comfortable fantasy is the most psychologically convenient course of action for people who don’t understand the world and feel weak and helpless in the face of its powerful and mysterious forces.
Fear is one of the most potent of human motivators, competing for primacy with hope, love and the possibility of gain. In 2008, the majority of citizens who bothered to vote were principally motivated by hope, the hope that there could really be a change in the slow decline of America’s economic and moral significance and change to the selfishly poisonous political processes which make addressing the nation’s real problems impossible. We took a chance on a charismatic but completely untested young fellow from Illinois and gave him majorities in both Houses of Congress with which to implement the desired change. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama turned out to be a much more charismatic and decisive campaigner than chief executive and his allies in congress consistently played one of the main roles from “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken”, and it wasn’t “The Ghost”. The net result is that, despite some significant positive legislative accomplishments, the changes that American Progressives (i.e. Liberals, hippies and Buddhists) were hoping for, have not materialized and are, in fact, not even on the horizon.
I’m not going to take the time to go down the extensive list of the things I thought President Obama was going to try to do which he hasn’t. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and not call them promises, but nonetheless we are still at war, still spying on our own citizens, still denying all those unfathomably gay people out there an equal right to participate as full citizens of this great nation, still not focusing on investments in education and research, and we still haven’t freed the Federal Government from the stranglehold of corporate lobbyists and the corrosive impact of corporate cash in the electoral process. I suppose Mr. Obama can’t really resolve all these issues by himself, but I don’t hear him even talking about them anymore. He seems to have lost the fire. I’m still mad as hell, and he isn’t.
So back to the fear thing. The question we are currently faced with is how to conduct a comprehensive search for a hero while we are busy circling the drain. I have come to understand the anger and frustration that a lot of Americans are feeling, and displaying, including our fine Tea Party affiliated citizens. I suppose many people who support “Tea Party” candidates are decent, honest and hardworking Americans who have simply lost faith in the standard political choices, although I remain unfortunately convinced that the majority are just born again racists or failed artists, but there can be no doubt that there is a genuine sense of fear among most Americans about what the future holds, and rightly so. We are facing a list of ills that rival the Great Unpleasantness of 1861 or the Nippon Nastiness of 1941, but we now have the additional bonus of the least competent national leadership of any stripe in 10 generations and the whiniest and most self-absorbed populace of any nation since France became a country.
I like Mr. Obama’s analogy of the Republicans being the ones who drove the car into the ditch. Indeed they drove it through the ditch, out the other side and into the forest striking several trees and ejecting all the passengers before plunging into the abandoned quarry and sinking 186 feet into the murky, chartreuse water. No way I want those freaks driving again, but the Democrats are like the group of strapping, able-bodied eco-tourists who witnessed the whole thing and are just standing around plaintively whining “please, won’t someone please do something!?” Obama, being the leader, just paces back and forth mumbling to himself and you can only catch snatches of “hope”, “change”, “new paradigm” and “shit” as he meanders around. The Tea Partiers, my favorite analogy villains, are the inbred country cousins who are slowly shambling out of the woods to sodomize and eat the corpses. Lacking a fully developed forebrain, they claim to be Republicans, but they actually eat flesh instead of just sucking blood. This ain’t no way to run a superpower.
So here comes Election 2010, the year of fear. Christine O’Donnell is courting the anti-masturbation vote, which I would never previously have considered to be much of a strategy, but maybe there is something about Delaware that I don’t know. In Nevada, Sharon Angle has done everything but put out a contract on Harry Reid’s life, worthless toad though he may be, and across the nation money flows into the Republican coffers in anticipation of a return to Lady Liberty getting molested and the rich getting richer. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and probably again until I can come up with a new idea; we are so very fucked.
If there were 535 Democrats in the Congress, they couldn’t pass gas. The only glue that holds the Democrats together is their fear of the Republicans. Democrats have the organizational skills of a rabid howler monkey and the foresight of a horny teenager. Democrats cannot save themselves, let alone the country. The good news is that we have the Republicans. The Republicans are a foul cesspool of self-serving hypocrisy, messianic delusion and good, old fashioned Southern dumbassedness. You might as well drop your children off at a halfway house for convicted pedophiles as to put the Republicans in charge of anything. There is the so called “Tea Party”, I guess, which is really just the armed militia of the Republican Party, but they have the added advantage of humorously sanctimonious “Constitutionalism” and no sense of shame. I’m pretty sure Ben Franklin would eat his wig before he would debate topiary with Sarah Palin, but Ben had an eye for the ladies and would probably have stove-piped her ass until she spoke Latin. I love this country. I can’t wait for November.
Fear is one of the most potent of human motivators, competing for primacy with hope, love and the possibility of gain. In 2008, the majority of citizens who bothered to vote were principally motivated by hope, the hope that there could really be a change in the slow decline of America’s economic and moral significance and change to the selfishly poisonous political processes which make addressing the nation’s real problems impossible. We took a chance on a charismatic but completely untested young fellow from Illinois and gave him majorities in both Houses of Congress with which to implement the desired change. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama turned out to be a much more charismatic and decisive campaigner than chief executive and his allies in congress consistently played one of the main roles from “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken”, and it wasn’t “The Ghost”. The net result is that, despite some significant positive legislative accomplishments, the changes that American Progressives (i.e. Liberals, hippies and Buddhists) were hoping for, have not materialized and are, in fact, not even on the horizon.
I’m not going to take the time to go down the extensive list of the things I thought President Obama was going to try to do which he hasn’t. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and not call them promises, but nonetheless we are still at war, still spying on our own citizens, still denying all those unfathomably gay people out there an equal right to participate as full citizens of this great nation, still not focusing on investments in education and research, and we still haven’t freed the Federal Government from the stranglehold of corporate lobbyists and the corrosive impact of corporate cash in the electoral process. I suppose Mr. Obama can’t really resolve all these issues by himself, but I don’t hear him even talking about them anymore. He seems to have lost the fire. I’m still mad as hell, and he isn’t.
So back to the fear thing. The question we are currently faced with is how to conduct a comprehensive search for a hero while we are busy circling the drain. I have come to understand the anger and frustration that a lot of Americans are feeling, and displaying, including our fine Tea Party affiliated citizens. I suppose many people who support “Tea Party” candidates are decent, honest and hardworking Americans who have simply lost faith in the standard political choices, although I remain unfortunately convinced that the majority are just born again racists or failed artists, but there can be no doubt that there is a genuine sense of fear among most Americans about what the future holds, and rightly so. We are facing a list of ills that rival the Great Unpleasantness of 1861 or the Nippon Nastiness of 1941, but we now have the additional bonus of the least competent national leadership of any stripe in 10 generations and the whiniest and most self-absorbed populace of any nation since France became a country.
I like Mr. Obama’s analogy of the Republicans being the ones who drove the car into the ditch. Indeed they drove it through the ditch, out the other side and into the forest striking several trees and ejecting all the passengers before plunging into the abandoned quarry and sinking 186 feet into the murky, chartreuse water. No way I want those freaks driving again, but the Democrats are like the group of strapping, able-bodied eco-tourists who witnessed the whole thing and are just standing around plaintively whining “please, won’t someone please do something!?” Obama, being the leader, just paces back and forth mumbling to himself and you can only catch snatches of “hope”, “change”, “new paradigm” and “shit” as he meanders around. The Tea Partiers, my favorite analogy villains, are the inbred country cousins who are slowly shambling out of the woods to sodomize and eat the corpses. Lacking a fully developed forebrain, they claim to be Republicans, but they actually eat flesh instead of just sucking blood. This ain’t no way to run a superpower.
So here comes Election 2010, the year of fear. Christine O’Donnell is courting the anti-masturbation vote, which I would never previously have considered to be much of a strategy, but maybe there is something about Delaware that I don’t know. In Nevada, Sharon Angle has done everything but put out a contract on Harry Reid’s life, worthless toad though he may be, and across the nation money flows into the Republican coffers in anticipation of a return to Lady Liberty getting molested and the rich getting richer. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and probably again until I can come up with a new idea; we are so very fucked.
If there were 535 Democrats in the Congress, they couldn’t pass gas. The only glue that holds the Democrats together is their fear of the Republicans. Democrats have the organizational skills of a rabid howler monkey and the foresight of a horny teenager. Democrats cannot save themselves, let alone the country. The good news is that we have the Republicans. The Republicans are a foul cesspool of self-serving hypocrisy, messianic delusion and good, old fashioned Southern dumbassedness. You might as well drop your children off at a halfway house for convicted pedophiles as to put the Republicans in charge of anything. There is the so called “Tea Party”, I guess, which is really just the armed militia of the Republican Party, but they have the added advantage of humorously sanctimonious “Constitutionalism” and no sense of shame. I’m pretty sure Ben Franklin would eat his wig before he would debate topiary with Sarah Palin, but Ben had an eye for the ladies and would probably have stove-piped her ass until she spoke Latin. I love this country. I can’t wait for November.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Book of Fire, Chapter One; Verse One
The Reverend Terry Jones ironically shares a name with another modern surrealist, the Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, the man who directed “Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life”, a movie the Reverend Terry Jones could clearly benefit from viewing. I point this out simply to avoid any confusion on the part of readers who may appreciate the absurdist humor in the self-indulgent clown show of Burn-a-Koran Day being brought to us by the good people at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. The right Reverend Jones, a man with a history of Messianic delusions, wants some attention and clearly knows how to get it, and the world, including this humble Wormhole Repairman, has certainly consented to indulge him.
I have sometimes been accused of being a cynic, principally I think, because of my predilection for pointing out the logical inconsistencies and contradictions that are so prevalent in human actions. In all fairness, I can appreciate the irony in much of my own behavior, so I don’t think it would be too hypocritical to suggest that the good Reverend is a douchebag, hayseed, barleycorn punk with a bad Doc Holiday mustache. I’m not going to suggest this though, because name calling is immature and counter-productive and beneath the dignity of substantive debate on issues of importance. Suffice it to say that I have significant disagreements with the implied positions of Reverend Jones with respect to the role of religion in human affairs and the public priorities of decent and thoughtful people.
Here at the Love World Outrage Center in Clearwater, Florida, we have done some checking on facts and stuff and have concluded that an irony alert should be issued. Reverend Jones has stated that his justification for creating all this uproar is to defend the “truth” of Christianity against anti-Christian theologies such as Islam; apparently Islam does not recognize the divinity of Jesus Christ and is therefore a dirty lie. The Reverend will have to be a busy man, since two-thirds of the population of the world does not share his beliefs and Christianity is actually down a percentage point or two over the past 110 years. The irony, however, is that you will not see a Burn-a-Bible Day in Saudi Arabia anytime soon, because Islam prohibits disrespect to the Holy texts of Christianity and Judaism. In the Islamic view of things, Jesus is a Holy Prophet born of a virgin and the Bible is the divinely revealed wisdom of God, albeit slightly adulterated by the impure hands of man. When the Prophet Mohammad took his famous night trip to Jerusalem on the flying donkey and ascended briefly into heaven, the last dude he encountered before coming into the presence of God Almighty was Jesus, indicating a special place of honor for the Christ. Isa, the Arabic transliteration of Jesus, is a relatively common boy’s name in the Islamic world. Why, then, Reverend Jones chooses to insult his theological cousins when there are all sorts of real pagans out there is a mystery to me.
Anyway, book burning, like witch burning, is an old trick which is useful precisely because of the smoke it produces. Motives and facts are obscured by a gaseous cloud and demons are conjured from the everyday diversity of human thought. The Nazis burned books in huge ceremonies, metaphorically cleansing the national soul of impure ideas. As it turns out, the books burned were apparently mostly copies of “The History of the Napoleonic Wars”, leaving Mr. Hitler with a decided lack of strategic understanding. This is what book burning does; it makes us dumber. There are a lot of books that one might consider useless, or even dangerous, but knowledge of the useless and the dangerous is also knowledge that may be useful and beneficial. We cannot erase, deny or destroy any significant element of the history of the world by burning anything; even the ashes will tell a tale worth hearing. Reverend Jones and his followers have apparently not learned that truth cannot be created out of destruction any more than I can renovate my house by burning my neighbor’s house down.
Reverend Jones would do well to look to America’s past to understand his failure as both a sentient being and a man of God. Many of our forefathers knew what it was like to be persecuted for their religious beliefs and they abandoned the nations of their birth by the thousands to come to a new land and find a new hope. What we must all understand is that they didn’t come seeking a land of theological diversity and religious tolerance, they came seeking a vacant wasteland where through faith and determination they could carve out an island of religious purity that met their theological preferences. This observation is not at all un-American slander, but rather essential American pragmatism; everybody knows that you cannot compromise eternal truth and the only way people with different views on truth can peacefully coexist is if theology is kept out of the public dialog and everybody minds their own damned business. It is our social contract that we grant the functional equivalent of tolerance and respect to the beliefs of others only and solely in exchange for the same consideration. We are not obligated to try to understand or empathize with anyone’s beliefs, although we may if we choose; we are simply bound to be at least reasonably indifferent when we meet on the street.
This poorly understood fact is ironically one of America’s great strengths; by allowing us to be inflexible and uncompromising within the context of a flexible compromise, we are able to sustain both religious dogmatism and secular pluralism in a single national framework. This allows people of all religions to engage in commerce, recreation and even have sex with each other without having to feel like we have abandoned our primitive and irrational divinely revealed truths. Some might waggishly observe that this amounts to gross self-deception, but in the context of human imperfection, a certain amount of self-deception is necessary for moral progress to be made; one of the fundamental aims of monotheism is to convince us that we are not animals so that we will quit acting like animals. The great religious teachers, Zoroaster, Mohammad, Jesus and the Buddha, to name a few, all hypnotized their followers with astounding acts of character and regaled them with tales of the miraculous in order to instill a belief that there are human possibilities beyond the socio-biological imperatives of survival-unto-procreation and that the wretched, morally ambiguous practice of daily life was not the only course a soul might follow. The fact that application of these religious principles has generally proven to be as flawed and contradictory as people themselves should be of no surprise to anyone.
So the fact is that Reverend Jones is fucking up our sweet deal with his idiotic anti-Islam crusade. Religion is the atomic bomb of social conflict and there is no cure for this on even the distant horizon and all crap like Koran burning does is stir up trouble for decent people of all beliefs. Reverend Jones may think Islam is a tool of the Devil, but good and evil can only be discerned to the extent that we are willing to look honestly and objectively at our own moral failures; without this perspective such terms are meaningless and the flames of a billion Korans will not illuminate the selfish conceit of the absolute certainty of a small, fearful mind. Religion is often a trap for the ignorant and sometimes a luxury for the wise, but I am sure that the Holy Koran is equally as holy as anything else in this world, even if that is the supreme example of damning with faint praise. I, for one, welcome my Muslim brothers to the great debate, the Gordian knot which is freedom, and ask only that they hate and ridicule in private, like the rest of us patriotic Americans are sworn to do; otherwise we will ultimately have to invite the good Reverend to pull up a chunk of rubble, have a seat and throw another Koran on the fire, because the nuclear winter of the human soul is bound to be lengthy and harsh.
I have sometimes been accused of being a cynic, principally I think, because of my predilection for pointing out the logical inconsistencies and contradictions that are so prevalent in human actions. In all fairness, I can appreciate the irony in much of my own behavior, so I don’t think it would be too hypocritical to suggest that the good Reverend is a douchebag, hayseed, barleycorn punk with a bad Doc Holiday mustache. I’m not going to suggest this though, because name calling is immature and counter-productive and beneath the dignity of substantive debate on issues of importance. Suffice it to say that I have significant disagreements with the implied positions of Reverend Jones with respect to the role of religion in human affairs and the public priorities of decent and thoughtful people.
Here at the Love World Outrage Center in Clearwater, Florida, we have done some checking on facts and stuff and have concluded that an irony alert should be issued. Reverend Jones has stated that his justification for creating all this uproar is to defend the “truth” of Christianity against anti-Christian theologies such as Islam; apparently Islam does not recognize the divinity of Jesus Christ and is therefore a dirty lie. The Reverend will have to be a busy man, since two-thirds of the population of the world does not share his beliefs and Christianity is actually down a percentage point or two over the past 110 years. The irony, however, is that you will not see a Burn-a-Bible Day in Saudi Arabia anytime soon, because Islam prohibits disrespect to the Holy texts of Christianity and Judaism. In the Islamic view of things, Jesus is a Holy Prophet born of a virgin and the Bible is the divinely revealed wisdom of God, albeit slightly adulterated by the impure hands of man. When the Prophet Mohammad took his famous night trip to Jerusalem on the flying donkey and ascended briefly into heaven, the last dude he encountered before coming into the presence of God Almighty was Jesus, indicating a special place of honor for the Christ. Isa, the Arabic transliteration of Jesus, is a relatively common boy’s name in the Islamic world. Why, then, Reverend Jones chooses to insult his theological cousins when there are all sorts of real pagans out there is a mystery to me.
Anyway, book burning, like witch burning, is an old trick which is useful precisely because of the smoke it produces. Motives and facts are obscured by a gaseous cloud and demons are conjured from the everyday diversity of human thought. The Nazis burned books in huge ceremonies, metaphorically cleansing the national soul of impure ideas. As it turns out, the books burned were apparently mostly copies of “The History of the Napoleonic Wars”, leaving Mr. Hitler with a decided lack of strategic understanding. This is what book burning does; it makes us dumber. There are a lot of books that one might consider useless, or even dangerous, but knowledge of the useless and the dangerous is also knowledge that may be useful and beneficial. We cannot erase, deny or destroy any significant element of the history of the world by burning anything; even the ashes will tell a tale worth hearing. Reverend Jones and his followers have apparently not learned that truth cannot be created out of destruction any more than I can renovate my house by burning my neighbor’s house down.
Reverend Jones would do well to look to America’s past to understand his failure as both a sentient being and a man of God. Many of our forefathers knew what it was like to be persecuted for their religious beliefs and they abandoned the nations of their birth by the thousands to come to a new land and find a new hope. What we must all understand is that they didn’t come seeking a land of theological diversity and religious tolerance, they came seeking a vacant wasteland where through faith and determination they could carve out an island of religious purity that met their theological preferences. This observation is not at all un-American slander, but rather essential American pragmatism; everybody knows that you cannot compromise eternal truth and the only way people with different views on truth can peacefully coexist is if theology is kept out of the public dialog and everybody minds their own damned business. It is our social contract that we grant the functional equivalent of tolerance and respect to the beliefs of others only and solely in exchange for the same consideration. We are not obligated to try to understand or empathize with anyone’s beliefs, although we may if we choose; we are simply bound to be at least reasonably indifferent when we meet on the street.
This poorly understood fact is ironically one of America’s great strengths; by allowing us to be inflexible and uncompromising within the context of a flexible compromise, we are able to sustain both religious dogmatism and secular pluralism in a single national framework. This allows people of all religions to engage in commerce, recreation and even have sex with each other without having to feel like we have abandoned our primitive and irrational divinely revealed truths. Some might waggishly observe that this amounts to gross self-deception, but in the context of human imperfection, a certain amount of self-deception is necessary for moral progress to be made; one of the fundamental aims of monotheism is to convince us that we are not animals so that we will quit acting like animals. The great religious teachers, Zoroaster, Mohammad, Jesus and the Buddha, to name a few, all hypnotized their followers with astounding acts of character and regaled them with tales of the miraculous in order to instill a belief that there are human possibilities beyond the socio-biological imperatives of survival-unto-procreation and that the wretched, morally ambiguous practice of daily life was not the only course a soul might follow. The fact that application of these religious principles has generally proven to be as flawed and contradictory as people themselves should be of no surprise to anyone.
So the fact is that Reverend Jones is fucking up our sweet deal with his idiotic anti-Islam crusade. Religion is the atomic bomb of social conflict and there is no cure for this on even the distant horizon and all crap like Koran burning does is stir up trouble for decent people of all beliefs. Reverend Jones may think Islam is a tool of the Devil, but good and evil can only be discerned to the extent that we are willing to look honestly and objectively at our own moral failures; without this perspective such terms are meaningless and the flames of a billion Korans will not illuminate the selfish conceit of the absolute certainty of a small, fearful mind. Religion is often a trap for the ignorant and sometimes a luxury for the wise, but I am sure that the Holy Koran is equally as holy as anything else in this world, even if that is the supreme example of damning with faint praise. I, for one, welcome my Muslim brothers to the great debate, the Gordian knot which is freedom, and ask only that they hate and ridicule in private, like the rest of us patriotic Americans are sworn to do; otherwise we will ultimately have to invite the good Reverend to pull up a chunk of rubble, have a seat and throw another Koran on the fire, because the nuclear winter of the human soul is bound to be lengthy and harsh.
The Book of Fire, Chapter One; Verse One
The Reverend Terry Jones ironically shares a name with another modern surrealist, the Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, the man who directed “Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life”, a movie the Reverend Terry Jones could clearly benefit from viewing. I point this out simply to avoid any confusion on the part of readers who may appreciate the absurdist humor in the self-indulgent clown show of Burn-a-Koran Day being brought to us by the good people at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida. The right Reverend Jones, a man with a history of Messianic delusions, wants some attention and clearly knows how to get it, and the world, including this humble Wormhole Repairman, has certainly consented to indulge him.
I have sometimes been accused of being a cynic, principally I think, because of my predilection for pointing out the logical inconsistencies and contradictions that are so prevalent in human actions. In all fairness, I can appreciate the irony in much of my own behavior, so I don’t think it would be too hypocritical to suggest that the good Reverend is a douchebag, hayseed, barleycorn punk with a bad Doc Holiday mustache. I’m not going to suggest this though, because name calling is immature and counter-productive and beneath the dignity of substantive debate on issues of importance. Suffice it to say that I have significant disagreements with the implied positions of Reverend Jones with respect to the role of religion in human affairs and the public priorities of decent and thoughtful people.
Here at the Love World Outrage Center in Clearwater, Florida, we have done some checking on facts and stuff and have concluded that an irony alert should be issued. Reverend Jones has stated that his justification for creating all this uproar is to defend the “truth” of Christianity against anti-Christian theologies such as Islam; apparently Islam does not recognize the divinity of Jesus Christ and is therefore a dirty lie. The Reverend will have to be a busy man, since two-thirds of the population of the world does not share his beliefs and Christianity is actually down a percentage point or two over the past 110 years. The irony, however, is that you will not see a Burn-a-Bible Day in Saudi Arabia anytime soon, because Islam prohibits disrespect to the Holy texts of Christianity and Judaism. In the Islamic view of things, Jesus is a Holy Prophet born of a virgin and the Bible is the divinely revealed wisdom of God, albeit slightly adulterated by the impure hands of man. When the Prophet Mohammad took his famous night trip to Jerusalem on the flying donkey and ascended briefly into heaven, the last dude he encountered before coming into the presence of God Almighty was Jesus, indicating a special place of honor for the Christ. Isa, the Arabic transliteration of Jesus, is a relatively common boy’s name in the Islamic world. Why, then, Reverend Jones chooses to insult his theological cousins when there are all sorts of real pagans out there is a mystery to me.
Anyway, book burning, like witch burning, is an old trick which is useful precisely because of the smoke it produces. Motives and facts are obscured by a gaseous cloud and demons are conjured from the everyday diversity of human thought. The Nazis burned books in huge ceremonies, metaphorically cleansing the national soul of impure ideas. As it turns out, the books burned were apparently mostly copies of “The History of the Napoleonic Wars”, leaving Mr. Hitler with a decided lack of strategic understanding. This is what book burning does; it makes us dumber. There are a lot of books that one might consider useless, or even dangerous, but knowledge of the useless and the dangerous is also knowledge that may be useful and beneficial. We cannot erase, deny or destroy any significant element of the history of the world by burning anything; even the ashes will tell a tale worth hearing. Reverend Jones and his followers have apparently not learned that truth cannot be created out of destruction any more than I can renovate my house by burning my neighbor’s house down.
Reverend Jones would do well to look to America’s past to understand his failure as both a sentient being and a man of God. Many of our forefathers knew what it was like to be persecuted for their religious beliefs and they abandoned the nations of their birth by the thousands to come to a new land and find a new hope. What we must all understand is that they didn’t come seeking a land of theological diversity and religious tolerance, they came seeking a vacant wasteland where through faith and determination they could carve out an island of religious purity that met their theological preferences. This observation is not at all un-American slander, but rather essential American pragmatism; everybody knows that you cannot compromise eternal truth and the only way people with different views on truth can peacefully coexist is if theology is kept out of the public dialog and everybody minds their own damned business. It is our social contract that we grant the functional equivalent of tolerance and respect to the beliefs of others only and solely in exchange for the same consideration. We are not obligated to try to understand or empathize with anyone’s beliefs, although we may if we choose; we are simply bound to be at least reasonably indifferent when we meet on the street.
This poorly understood fact is ironically one of America’s great strengths; by allowing us to be inflexible and uncompromising within the context of a flexible compromise, we are able to sustain both religious dogmatism and secular pluralism in a single national framework. This allows people of all religions to engage in commerce, recreation and even have sex with each other without having to feel like we have abandoned our primitive and irrational divinely revealed truths. Some might waggishly observe that this amounts to gross self-deception, but in the context of human imperfection, a certain amount of self-deception is necessary for moral progress to be made; one of the fundamental aims of monotheism is to convince us that we are not animals so that we will quit acting like animals. The great religious teachers, Zoroaster, Mohammad, Jesus and the Buddha, to name a few, all hypnotized their followers with astounding acts of character and regaled them with tales of the miraculous in order to instill a belief that there are human possibilities beyond the socio-biological imperatives of survival-unto-procreation and that the wretched, morally ambiguous practice of daily life was not the only course a soul might follow. The fact that application of these religious principles has generally proven to be as flawed and contradictory as people themselves should be of no surprise to anyone.
So the fact is that Reverend Jones is fucking up our sweet deal with his idiotic anti-Islam crusade. Religion is the atomic bomb of social conflict and there is no cure for this on even the distant horizon and all crap like Koran burning does is stir up trouble for decent people of all beliefs. Reverend Jones may think Islam is a tool of the Devil, but good and evil can only be discerned to the extent that we are willing to look honestly and objectively at our own moral failures; without this perspective such terms are meaningless and the flames of a billion Korans will not illuminate the selfish conceit of the absolute certainty of a small, fearful mind. Religion is often a trap for the ignorant and sometimes a luxury for the wise, but I am sure that the Holy Koran is equally as holy as anything else in this world, even if that is the supreme example of damning with faint praise. I, for one, welcome my Muslim brothers to the great debate, the Gordian knot which is freedom, and ask only that they hate and ridicule in private, like the rest of us patriotic Americans are sworn to do; otherwise we will ultimately have to invite the good Reverend to pull up a chunk of rubble, have a seat and throw another Koran on the fire, because the nuclear winter of the human soul is bound to be lengthy and harsh.
I have sometimes been accused of being a cynic, principally I think, because of my predilection for pointing out the logical inconsistencies and contradictions that are so prevalent in human actions. In all fairness, I can appreciate the irony in much of my own behavior, so I don’t think it would be too hypocritical to suggest that the good Reverend is a douchebag, hayseed, barleycorn punk with a bad Doc Holiday mustache. I’m not going to suggest this though, because name calling is immature and counter-productive and beneath the dignity of substantive debate on issues of importance. Suffice it to say that I have significant disagreements with the implied positions of Reverend Jones with respect to the role of religion in human affairs and the public priorities of decent and thoughtful people.
Here at the Love World Outrage Center in Clearwater, Florida, we have done some checking on facts and stuff and have concluded that an irony alert should be issued. Reverend Jones has stated that his justification for creating all this uproar is to defend the “truth” of Christianity against anti-Christian theologies such as Islam; apparently Islam does not recognize the divinity of Jesus Christ and is therefore a dirty lie. The Reverend will have to be a busy man, since two-thirds of the population of the world does not share his beliefs and Christianity is actually down a percentage point or two over the past 110 years. The irony, however, is that you will not see a Burn-a-Bible Day in Saudi Arabia anytime soon, because Islam prohibits disrespect to the Holy texts of Christianity and Judaism. In the Islamic view of things, Jesus is a Holy Prophet born of a virgin and the Bible is the divinely revealed wisdom of God, albeit slightly adulterated by the impure hands of man. When the Prophet Mohammad took his famous night trip to Jerusalem on the flying donkey and ascended briefly into heaven, the last dude he encountered before coming into the presence of God Almighty was Jesus, indicating a special place of honor for the Christ. Isa, the Arabic transliteration of Jesus, is a relatively common boy’s name in the Islamic world. Why, then, Reverend Jones chooses to insult his theological cousins when there are all sorts of real pagans out there is a mystery to me.
Anyway, book burning, like witch burning, is an old trick which is useful precisely because of the smoke it produces. Motives and facts are obscured by a gaseous cloud and demons are conjured from the everyday diversity of human thought. The Nazis burned books in huge ceremonies, metaphorically cleansing the national soul of impure ideas. As it turns out, the books burned were apparently mostly copies of “The History of the Napoleonic Wars”, leaving Mr. Hitler with a decided lack of strategic understanding. This is what book burning does; it makes us dumber. There are a lot of books that one might consider useless, or even dangerous, but knowledge of the useless and the dangerous is also knowledge that may be useful and beneficial. We cannot erase, deny or destroy any significant element of the history of the world by burning anything; even the ashes will tell a tale worth hearing. Reverend Jones and his followers have apparently not learned that truth cannot be created out of destruction any more than I can renovate my house by burning my neighbor’s house down.
Reverend Jones would do well to look to America’s past to understand his failure as both a sentient being and a man of God. Many of our forefathers knew what it was like to be persecuted for their religious beliefs and they abandoned the nations of their birth by the thousands to come to a new land and find a new hope. What we must all understand is that they didn’t come seeking a land of theological diversity and religious tolerance, they came seeking a vacant wasteland where through faith and determination they could carve out an island of religious purity that met their theological preferences. This observation is not at all un-American slander, but rather essential American pragmatism; everybody knows that you cannot compromise eternal truth and the only way people with different views on truth can peacefully coexist is if theology is kept out of the public dialog and everybody minds their own damned business. It is our social contract that we grant the functional equivalent of tolerance and respect to the beliefs of others only and solely in exchange for the same consideration. We are not obligated to try to understand or empathize with anyone’s beliefs, although we may if we choose; we are simply bound to be at least reasonably indifferent when we meet on the street.
This poorly understood fact is ironically one of America’s great strengths; by allowing us to be inflexible and uncompromising within the context of a flexible compromise, we are able to sustain both religious dogmatism and secular pluralism in a single national framework. This allows people of all religions to engage in commerce, recreation and even have sex with each other without having to feel like we have abandoned our primitive and irrational divinely revealed truths. Some might waggishly observe that this amounts to gross self-deception, but in the context of human imperfection, a certain amount of self-deception is necessary for moral progress to be made; one of the fundamental aims of monotheism is to convince us that we are not animals so that we will quit acting like animals. The great religious teachers, Zoroaster, Mohammad, Jesus and the Buddha, to name a few, all hypnotized their followers with astounding acts of character and regaled them with tales of the miraculous in order to instill a belief that there are human possibilities beyond the socio-biological imperatives of survival-unto-procreation and that the wretched, morally ambiguous practice of daily life was not the only course a soul might follow. The fact that application of these religious principles has generally proven to be as flawed and contradictory as people themselves should be of no surprise to anyone.
So the fact is that Reverend Jones is fucking up our sweet deal with his idiotic anti-Islam crusade. Religion is the atomic bomb of social conflict and there is no cure for this on even the distant horizon and all crap like Koran burning does is stir up trouble for decent people of all beliefs. Reverend Jones may think Islam is a tool of the Devil, but good and evil can only be discerned to the extent that we are willing to look honestly and objectively at our own moral failures; without this perspective such terms are meaningless and the flames of a billion Korans will not illuminate the selfish conceit of the absolute certainty of a small, fearful mind. Religion is often a trap for the ignorant and sometimes a luxury for the wise, but I am sure that the Holy Koran is equally as holy as anything else in this world, even if that is the supreme example of damning with faint praise. I, for one, welcome my Muslim brothers to the great debate, the Gordian knot which is freedom, and ask only that they hate and ridicule in private, like the rest of us patriotic Americans are sworn to do; otherwise we will ultimately have to invite the good Reverend to pull up a chunk of rubble, have a seat and throw another Koran on the fire, because the nuclear winter of the human soul is bound to be lengthy and harsh.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Diamonds are Definitely Not a Girl’s Best Friend
I recently had an encounter with a venomous serpent that chose to challenge me for supremacy over the swimming pool. Given the nearly toxic levels of chlorine necessary to prevent the proliferation of scum during the sultry Florida summer, the snake probably found the environment less than hospitable and was exiting the chemical warfare facility when observed by my wife, who promptly informed me that there was a “huge” snake in the pool. The intruder proved to be a 24-inch long Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake who had somehow evaded the complex security to enter the critter exclusion zone in pursuit of whatever self-actualization is available to reptiles. My years of allegedly “useless” television viewing paid off in spades when I was quickly able to identify the triangular head as belonging to a deadly pit viper, not a creature to be incautiously addressed, even at only 24-inches.
With the aid of the pool skimmer and its eight foot aluminum handle, I was able to subdue the beast without incident or apparent harm to the creature itself, although it did strike at the plastic frame of the net numerous times during the encounter. The young lad vigorously shook its tail throughout, although, due to its immaturity, it didn’t do much better than mustering a barely audible buzz. Once perched upon the skimmer net the bemused snake was transported to the back yard where it was unceremoniously dumped over the fence with an admonition not to return, especially not to return when it was fully grown. The snake played it cool, slithering away into the brush without any hint of appreciation of the indignity of having been bested by the superior Homo sapiens.
A mature Eastern Diamondback can be as long as seven feet in length and packs some serious venom, which has both hemotoxin and neurotoxin components. It is estimated that untreated adult bites have a human fatality rate of approximately thirty-percent, so it probably makes sense not to antagonize a grownup Crotalus adamanteus. While the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake is apparently very common throughout its range, I have spent most of my life in Georgia and Florida, quite a bit of it in the woods, and had never seen one in the wild prior to this adventure, if a swimming pool counts as “the wild”. I can only assume that they don’t much like human company, although they are particularly fond of rats and rabbits, but not as Facebook friends.
My wild encounter with this lethal reptilian assassin got me to thinking about snakes and stuff. Everything in nature, it seems, has a place, an identifiable function, except us. In a balanced system, the snakes keep the rabbit population under control, thus the rabbits don’t denude their environment of vegetation, avoiding both rabbit famine and snake starvation. In turn, the snakes don’t eat too many rabbits because they only need to feed once every few weeks. This particular predator/prey relationship is just one of probably hundreds of thousands which make up the very complex web of interactions that sustain our planet’s ecosystem and, by extension, our lives. However, with the possible exception of Ted Nugent, the human race exists largely beyond, and often in contradiction to, this system, primarily by choice.
With managed herds of genetically controlled livestock, much of our need for protein is met outside of the normal predator/prey relationship, which has allowed our populations to swell dangerously. In cases where we still exploit the natural system, we often foolishly over-use resources, resulting in the long-term loss of sustainability. Of course, everybody knows these things, yet we still resist acknowledging our own responsibility on a personal level. We are in the awkward position of being both in the audience and in the movie at the same time; we are so disconnected from nature by both process and philosophy that most of us really don’t know where we fit in the scheme of things. We are just somewhere between the animals and the angels, an assessment which provides little guidance in global ecological responsibility.
Ironically, one thing that is probably true about us is that, of all nature’s creatures, we are the only ones capable of appreciating nature, and ourselves, in the abstract. It is very unlikely that the Cape Buffalo marvels at the stealth and speed of the Nile Crocodile or appreciates the evolutionary refinement which provides such tremendous power with such a conservative metabolism. The Cape Buffalo probably just thinks “oh shit”, if it really thinks at all. We, on the other hand, can marvel at the intricate electrical sensing apparatus of the Tiger Shark and the perfected design of its aquadynamics, even as it circles in curiosity. Of course, if it turns towards us with an opened mouth, we will probably be thinking much the same as the buffalo.
Perhaps then this is what the role of humanity is in the big picture; we are entrusted with the knowledge of the beauty and wonder and mystery of nature. We are assigned the task of seeking to understand that which all other creatures are simply programmed to accept. Entrusted by whom, you may ask? Who knows; divine writ, random chance, Greenpeace? I just know that in my epic battle with the deadly serpent, I felt more like the babysitter than like St. George, and I didn’t see the snake as the embodiment of evil, but as a test of whether I would submit to the evil of fear and unreasoning prejudice and destroy something beautiful and wonderful and hissing just because of the hissing thing. For my next act, I will reduce my weekly visits to McDonald’s by fifty-percent. Cockroaches are, on the other hand, the disciples of Voland and shall be shown no mercy.
With the aid of the pool skimmer and its eight foot aluminum handle, I was able to subdue the beast without incident or apparent harm to the creature itself, although it did strike at the plastic frame of the net numerous times during the encounter. The young lad vigorously shook its tail throughout, although, due to its immaturity, it didn’t do much better than mustering a barely audible buzz. Once perched upon the skimmer net the bemused snake was transported to the back yard where it was unceremoniously dumped over the fence with an admonition not to return, especially not to return when it was fully grown. The snake played it cool, slithering away into the brush without any hint of appreciation of the indignity of having been bested by the superior Homo sapiens.
A mature Eastern Diamondback can be as long as seven feet in length and packs some serious venom, which has both hemotoxin and neurotoxin components. It is estimated that untreated adult bites have a human fatality rate of approximately thirty-percent, so it probably makes sense not to antagonize a grownup Crotalus adamanteus. While the Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake is apparently very common throughout its range, I have spent most of my life in Georgia and Florida, quite a bit of it in the woods, and had never seen one in the wild prior to this adventure, if a swimming pool counts as “the wild”. I can only assume that they don’t much like human company, although they are particularly fond of rats and rabbits, but not as Facebook friends.
My wild encounter with this lethal reptilian assassin got me to thinking about snakes and stuff. Everything in nature, it seems, has a place, an identifiable function, except us. In a balanced system, the snakes keep the rabbit population under control, thus the rabbits don’t denude their environment of vegetation, avoiding both rabbit famine and snake starvation. In turn, the snakes don’t eat too many rabbits because they only need to feed once every few weeks. This particular predator/prey relationship is just one of probably hundreds of thousands which make up the very complex web of interactions that sustain our planet’s ecosystem and, by extension, our lives. However, with the possible exception of Ted Nugent, the human race exists largely beyond, and often in contradiction to, this system, primarily by choice.
With managed herds of genetically controlled livestock, much of our need for protein is met outside of the normal predator/prey relationship, which has allowed our populations to swell dangerously. In cases where we still exploit the natural system, we often foolishly over-use resources, resulting in the long-term loss of sustainability. Of course, everybody knows these things, yet we still resist acknowledging our own responsibility on a personal level. We are in the awkward position of being both in the audience and in the movie at the same time; we are so disconnected from nature by both process and philosophy that most of us really don’t know where we fit in the scheme of things. We are just somewhere between the animals and the angels, an assessment which provides little guidance in global ecological responsibility.
Ironically, one thing that is probably true about us is that, of all nature’s creatures, we are the only ones capable of appreciating nature, and ourselves, in the abstract. It is very unlikely that the Cape Buffalo marvels at the stealth and speed of the Nile Crocodile or appreciates the evolutionary refinement which provides such tremendous power with such a conservative metabolism. The Cape Buffalo probably just thinks “oh shit”, if it really thinks at all. We, on the other hand, can marvel at the intricate electrical sensing apparatus of the Tiger Shark and the perfected design of its aquadynamics, even as it circles in curiosity. Of course, if it turns towards us with an opened mouth, we will probably be thinking much the same as the buffalo.
Perhaps then this is what the role of humanity is in the big picture; we are entrusted with the knowledge of the beauty and wonder and mystery of nature. We are assigned the task of seeking to understand that which all other creatures are simply programmed to accept. Entrusted by whom, you may ask? Who knows; divine writ, random chance, Greenpeace? I just know that in my epic battle with the deadly serpent, I felt more like the babysitter than like St. George, and I didn’t see the snake as the embodiment of evil, but as a test of whether I would submit to the evil of fear and unreasoning prejudice and destroy something beautiful and wonderful and hissing just because of the hissing thing. For my next act, I will reduce my weekly visits to McDonald’s by fifty-percent. Cockroaches are, on the other hand, the disciples of Voland and shall be shown no mercy.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
On a Clear Day, You Can Seethe Forever
The dark forces of silliness are truly at work in America these days, but, then again, it is difficult to identify a time in our nation’s history when that wasn’t to some extent the case. Silliness, it appears, is often a by-product of freedom, and freedom is what it is all about, baby. I most often get frustrated by silliness not so much because people don’t agree with my opinions, but because often I can’t even find common ground on what the facts are. I am not a subscriber to factual relativism, and while questions like “what does God want us to do?” can only be answered speculatively, a question such as “how many quarters do you presently hold in your right hand?” has a specific answer and, if you have three but you say you have four, then you are simply wrong; you don’t have a “different perspective” or an “alternate view”; either you can’t count, have poor vision or you’re a liar. This is an important point, especially when you are trying to reconcile the disconnect between what a group of people say they stand for and the principles their actions imply.
So, anyway, Glenn Beck has this circus of some sort in Washington, D.C. which is attended by either 1,200 or 2,000,000 people, depending on whether you watch MSNBC or Fox, and he goes on and on about something of which I have no idea since I didn’t participate, but which looks like praying with indigestion. Christopher Hitchens, the terminally ill, atheist, Libertarian curmudgeon whom I love and hate and admire and despise, called it the “Waterworld of white self-pity”; apparently not having thought much of Kevin Reynolds’ meandering 1995 cinematic magnum opus about what happens to the world when all the ice melts. Mr. Hitchens very insightfully puts his finger on exactly what is going on in America right now which I had as yet not been able to piece together.
Undereducated and generally conservative white America, opines Mr. Hitchens, is essentially in mourning over the impending doom of the Eurocentric foundation of American culture and the resulting loss of racial and cultural arrogance which has fueled our smug sense of superiority as God’s chosen nation for so long (my words, not his). Despite years of Internet and decades of television, large, mostly white, segments of America’s population, are genuinely ignorant about, and afraid of, most of the rest of the world. Because the churches have fanned the flames of orthodoxy forever to keep their meal tickets from wandering off and the Government has demonized half the world in order to justify wars of economic convenience and the expansion of the military/industrial complex, many Americans really feel we are about to be overrun by the Visigoths. Christianity is in peril, cornbread is endangered and the missionary position will be a thing of the past. This sense of desperation is resulting in things like the armed civilian border patrols and all the cock-a-doodle-do over the “Ground Zero Mosque”. The coalescing event for these disparate concerns was the election of Barrack Obama as President. Here’s a guy with a foreign sounding name who is not like the guys who were over last Sunday watching NASCAR, a man who had a Muslim father and who actually lived for a time in a foreign country (if he wasn’t born there!). Then he wants to quit killing Arabs and mend fences with the Islamic world. What’s a working class white person to think?
It really had somehow not occurred to me that there was anything going on with the silent soon-to-be minority other than the usual Lee Atwater/Karl Rove manipulation of the ignorant masses combined with the trauma of the worst economy in most everybody’s adult lifetime; but after reading Mr. Hitchens’ missive, it finally dawned on me why I am so uncomfortable with the current state of affairs in our wonderful nation. There are large numbers of my fellow citizens who really believe that something important, irretrievable and wrong is happening in America right now. What I am talking about is not simple racism or the commonplace apocalyptical nonsense of the religiously deranged, but a real fear that a valuable, even paramount, element of human culture is being lost. As wacky as it sounds to some of us, the avalanche of brown skin, open homosexuality, indecipherable religions, unintelligible languages, unfathomable technologies and funny looking people who are clearly just as smart as white folks has evoked a palpable fear that this nation will soon not be under the control of the descendants of the founders, with God-only-knows what consequences for the patriotic and the faithful.
As a 50 year-old white guy from Macon, Georgia, I can actually understand the roots of these sentiments, even if I am prone to laugh when I see them expressed. These irrational feelings are the reason “Constitutionalists” forget that the Constitution says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” and that the 14th Amendment prevents States from depriving citizens of rights that the U.S. Constitution guarantees. These illogical fears are the reason Christians forget that they are commanded to love their neighbors as they love themselves. This nuttiness is the reason Glenn Beck has a TV show, not visa versa.
During the course of my interesting but largely wasted life, I have learned that human beings are way more alike in every way than they are different in any way. I have learned that wisdom and fear seldom occupy the same space; and I have learned that ignorance and hate are twins separated at birth and both raised by really bad parents. I know that what my fellow citizens fear is a figment and that the power of the idea of freedom and commitment to the principle of fairness will be irresistible to all who come after us, no matter their cultural roots or genetic heritage. I know that despite the enduring presence of ignorance, fear and intolerance in America that there will always be a place for minority views, even stupid ones, because of the insight, courage and tolerance of the majority of Americans, of every race and creed.
God bless you Mr. Hitchens, even if he doesn’t exist. Mr. Beck, prayer and hard work are empirically demonstrated to work better than prayer alone. Angry looking old white lady, chill; the die is cast and the nation and the world will be better for it. Peter, put away thy sword. E.T, phone home. Thomas Jefferson, you old scoundrel, the father of freedom and race-mixing, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
So, anyway, Glenn Beck has this circus of some sort in Washington, D.C. which is attended by either 1,200 or 2,000,000 people, depending on whether you watch MSNBC or Fox, and he goes on and on about something of which I have no idea since I didn’t participate, but which looks like praying with indigestion. Christopher Hitchens, the terminally ill, atheist, Libertarian curmudgeon whom I love and hate and admire and despise, called it the “Waterworld of white self-pity”; apparently not having thought much of Kevin Reynolds’ meandering 1995 cinematic magnum opus about what happens to the world when all the ice melts. Mr. Hitchens very insightfully puts his finger on exactly what is going on in America right now which I had as yet not been able to piece together.
Undereducated and generally conservative white America, opines Mr. Hitchens, is essentially in mourning over the impending doom of the Eurocentric foundation of American culture and the resulting loss of racial and cultural arrogance which has fueled our smug sense of superiority as God’s chosen nation for so long (my words, not his). Despite years of Internet and decades of television, large, mostly white, segments of America’s population, are genuinely ignorant about, and afraid of, most of the rest of the world. Because the churches have fanned the flames of orthodoxy forever to keep their meal tickets from wandering off and the Government has demonized half the world in order to justify wars of economic convenience and the expansion of the military/industrial complex, many Americans really feel we are about to be overrun by the Visigoths. Christianity is in peril, cornbread is endangered and the missionary position will be a thing of the past. This sense of desperation is resulting in things like the armed civilian border patrols and all the cock-a-doodle-do over the “Ground Zero Mosque”. The coalescing event for these disparate concerns was the election of Barrack Obama as President. Here’s a guy with a foreign sounding name who is not like the guys who were over last Sunday watching NASCAR, a man who had a Muslim father and who actually lived for a time in a foreign country (if he wasn’t born there!). Then he wants to quit killing Arabs and mend fences with the Islamic world. What’s a working class white person to think?
It really had somehow not occurred to me that there was anything going on with the silent soon-to-be minority other than the usual Lee Atwater/Karl Rove manipulation of the ignorant masses combined with the trauma of the worst economy in most everybody’s adult lifetime; but after reading Mr. Hitchens’ missive, it finally dawned on me why I am so uncomfortable with the current state of affairs in our wonderful nation. There are large numbers of my fellow citizens who really believe that something important, irretrievable and wrong is happening in America right now. What I am talking about is not simple racism or the commonplace apocalyptical nonsense of the religiously deranged, but a real fear that a valuable, even paramount, element of human culture is being lost. As wacky as it sounds to some of us, the avalanche of brown skin, open homosexuality, indecipherable religions, unintelligible languages, unfathomable technologies and funny looking people who are clearly just as smart as white folks has evoked a palpable fear that this nation will soon not be under the control of the descendants of the founders, with God-only-knows what consequences for the patriotic and the faithful.
As a 50 year-old white guy from Macon, Georgia, I can actually understand the roots of these sentiments, even if I am prone to laugh when I see them expressed. These irrational feelings are the reason “Constitutionalists” forget that the Constitution says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” and that the 14th Amendment prevents States from depriving citizens of rights that the U.S. Constitution guarantees. These illogical fears are the reason Christians forget that they are commanded to love their neighbors as they love themselves. This nuttiness is the reason Glenn Beck has a TV show, not visa versa.
During the course of my interesting but largely wasted life, I have learned that human beings are way more alike in every way than they are different in any way. I have learned that wisdom and fear seldom occupy the same space; and I have learned that ignorance and hate are twins separated at birth and both raised by really bad parents. I know that what my fellow citizens fear is a figment and that the power of the idea of freedom and commitment to the principle of fairness will be irresistible to all who come after us, no matter their cultural roots or genetic heritage. I know that despite the enduring presence of ignorance, fear and intolerance in America that there will always be a place for minority views, even stupid ones, because of the insight, courage and tolerance of the majority of Americans, of every race and creed.
God bless you Mr. Hitchens, even if he doesn’t exist. Mr. Beck, prayer and hard work are empirically demonstrated to work better than prayer alone. Angry looking old white lady, chill; the die is cast and the nation and the world will be better for it. Peter, put away thy sword. E.T, phone home. Thomas Jefferson, you old scoundrel, the father of freedom and race-mixing, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Today in History
The thing I like about history is that it gives one hope. Not necessarily hope that things will get any better, but hope that human civilization will continue in some form, despite the collective arrogance, ignorance, foolishness and stupidity of the human race. It’s not like we’re not smarter than gophers and mina birds and stuff, but gophers don’t have a military/industrial complex to keep under control. One theme that is consistent in history is the prevalence of political and religious extremism in collapsing empires. There’s always some agitated group or another claiming that if we just sacrifice more children to the gods, or kill all the Jews, or cut taxes, or give away all our possessions and worship Bhagwan Buttercup that the situation will stabilize and we’ll be fine in the long run. The problem with these simple solutions is that they are seldom comprehensive enough to address the complexities of the global political and economic conditions that drive change. The problem with complexities is that they are complex, which means they are complicated which means excited people don’t score well on the test.
And so it was, 94 years ago today, that the brave forces of glorious Romania moved against the less-than-brave and glorious forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the last of the Dual Monarchies, in the region of Transylvania. Romania had entered into a secret treaty with the Anglo-Franco-Russian Alliance which guaranteed them substantial territorial gains if the Allies were victorious. Perhaps the Romanians anticipated the substantial tourism economy created by vampire movies, or maybe they just wanted to control the vast mineral wealth. Anyway, based upon the recent successes of the Russian Army against the Austro-Hungarians, they bet on the Allied horse and set their sights on running the demoralized Austro-Hungarians out of Transylvania.
Unfortunately for the Romanians, Russian successes would be short lived as the political unrest in Russia spread and detracted from the commitment to the war. In addition, a scant few weeks after Romanian forces moved into the nearly impenetrably mountainous and heavily wooded terrain, all armies of the Central Powers were placed under the control of the German General Staff, which meant the incompetent Austrian aristocrats that had been mucking up the Empire’s war effort were sacked and replaced with Prussian officers who were way more interested in killing the enemies of the Fatherland than their predecessors had been. German General August von Mackensen had won the Iron Cross in the Franco-Prussian War as a young lieutenant and was in no mood to gratify Romanian territorial ambitions or opportunistic war-making. He set to work beating the crap out of the Romanian army, and by December of 1916, he had routed them and captured the capitol, Bucharest.
Ultimately, in May of 1918, Romania surrendered unconditionally to the Central Powers, but by then the Germans were on the verge of collapse themselves. Following the conclusion of the war, Romania was rewarded by the victorious Allies with most of the territory they had sought to take by force, although the Allies were unable to restore the 335,000 casualties suffered by the Romanians in less than two years. In exchange for their soul, they got the Dacian gold mines which had so drawn the Roman Emperor Trajan 1800 years before. It would appear that vampires are not the only blood-suckers one might encounter in Transylvania.
Anyway, to America’s credit, we have seldom displayed the military opportunism inherent in Romania’s actions in World War One, unless you count the invasion of Canada during the Revolution, the war with Mexico, the war with Spain, the seizure of Hawaii, various invasions in the Caribbean, wholesale genocide of the Native Americans and the depopulation of Diego Garcia, but all those things happened at least 20 years ago. Now that President Obama is in charge, we can rest assured that America’s military will never be used as an instrument of economic policy; that we will never again descend like jackals on the decaying corpse of a foreign empire with the intention of securing lucrative mineral rights or advantageous terms for our corporations. I can feel the change and it feels pretty familiar.
And so it was, 94 years ago today, that the brave forces of glorious Romania moved against the less-than-brave and glorious forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the last of the Dual Monarchies, in the region of Transylvania. Romania had entered into a secret treaty with the Anglo-Franco-Russian Alliance which guaranteed them substantial territorial gains if the Allies were victorious. Perhaps the Romanians anticipated the substantial tourism economy created by vampire movies, or maybe they just wanted to control the vast mineral wealth. Anyway, based upon the recent successes of the Russian Army against the Austro-Hungarians, they bet on the Allied horse and set their sights on running the demoralized Austro-Hungarians out of Transylvania.
Unfortunately for the Romanians, Russian successes would be short lived as the political unrest in Russia spread and detracted from the commitment to the war. In addition, a scant few weeks after Romanian forces moved into the nearly impenetrably mountainous and heavily wooded terrain, all armies of the Central Powers were placed under the control of the German General Staff, which meant the incompetent Austrian aristocrats that had been mucking up the Empire’s war effort were sacked and replaced with Prussian officers who were way more interested in killing the enemies of the Fatherland than their predecessors had been. German General August von Mackensen had won the Iron Cross in the Franco-Prussian War as a young lieutenant and was in no mood to gratify Romanian territorial ambitions or opportunistic war-making. He set to work beating the crap out of the Romanian army, and by December of 1916, he had routed them and captured the capitol, Bucharest.
Ultimately, in May of 1918, Romania surrendered unconditionally to the Central Powers, but by then the Germans were on the verge of collapse themselves. Following the conclusion of the war, Romania was rewarded by the victorious Allies with most of the territory they had sought to take by force, although the Allies were unable to restore the 335,000 casualties suffered by the Romanians in less than two years. In exchange for their soul, they got the Dacian gold mines which had so drawn the Roman Emperor Trajan 1800 years before. It would appear that vampires are not the only blood-suckers one might encounter in Transylvania.
Anyway, to America’s credit, we have seldom displayed the military opportunism inherent in Romania’s actions in World War One, unless you count the invasion of Canada during the Revolution, the war with Mexico, the war with Spain, the seizure of Hawaii, various invasions in the Caribbean, wholesale genocide of the Native Americans and the depopulation of Diego Garcia, but all those things happened at least 20 years ago. Now that President Obama is in charge, we can rest assured that America’s military will never be used as an instrument of economic policy; that we will never again descend like jackals on the decaying corpse of a foreign empire with the intention of securing lucrative mineral rights or advantageous terms for our corporations. I can feel the change and it feels pretty familiar.
Monday, August 23, 2010
The Truth of Horror and the Horror of Truth
It’s almost football season and school starts soon for my two developmentally disabled teenage sons. Before anybody gets all sentimental and feels sorry for them, my sons are completely normal in all respects; which is, of course, what is wrong with them. I have no teenage daughters, so I cannot speak knowledgably about their behavior, but teenage boys are natural born Republicans; arrogant, narcissistic, self-centered, indifferent to the suffering of others and completely opposed to contributing a dime to the common maintenance. If you are a Republican and are offended by this, so am I. Anyway, my father voted for Richard Nixon three times and I never hated him for his politics, just his lousy parenting skills. What my kids think of me is anybody’s guess, since they will only mumble it under their breath.
Speaking of bigotry and xenophobia, I see that the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy continues to consume the interest of many decent, hard-working Americans. I have already waxed poetic on this subject, and there’s not much more to say, but this is an opportunity for me to further promulgate one of my key rules, this one being the Wormhole Repairman’s Law of Public Discourse. The law simply states that “the amount of time devoted to the discussion of a public policy issue shall always be inversely proportional to the actual significance of the issue discussed”. It has been pointed out that there are “Ground Zero” strip clubs and other such disrespectful goings-on in the vicinity, but I guess there aren’t many Muslims in the strip clubs, so they’re ok. But really folks, who gives a rat’s ass what they do in New York? I suppose strippers are generally more helpful in getting things like towers to stand up than bringing them down (I emphasize “generally”), so maybe there is an ironic synergy at work. Nonetheless, I must repeat for the sake of emphasis that when “right” and “wrong” are defined by who screams the loudest, this country will be damned well fucked.
I understand that the great Kentucky paragon of virtue, Senator Mitch McConnell, has graciously condescended to take President Obama at his word that Mr. Obama is a Christian. Well, goody; I am quite relieved now. I was afraid that the President might start looking after orphans and widows and stop blowing up Afghans and Arabs to the tune of $300 billion a year. God only knows where we would be if anyone with actual religious principle were to have some influence in what goes on in Washington. Unfortunately, I cannot extend the same courtesy to Senator McConnell; having read all that stuff in the Bible about not throwing stones, and camels and needles, and taking care of the poor and the meek inheriting things, I have come to the conclusion that Jesus was a filthy hippy socialist who wanted to heal the corrosive hatred in men’s hearts and that Senator McConnell is not playing on the same team as Jesus. I did also read that “judge not” thing, so I am officially classifying this observation as an opinion, not a judgment. I’m sure Senator McConnell is a wonderful person and I can only pray that he gets to the gates of Heaven as quickly as possible so that he can begin to reap his well deserved eternal reward.
Did I mention that I am leading the movement to have Glenn Beck’s citizenship revoked? Well, actually no; that would require effort, but I am going to rest upon my overly broad buttocks and pontificate about the Teapublican Party’s intermittent discussions on refining the qualifications for American Citizenship. The system that has served us so well for over 140 years is apparently broken, as indicated by the increasing numbers of citizens who are not of purely European descent. Pretty soon, good old fashioned white people will be in the minority in this country. Clearly this is not what the Founders anticipated when they declared slaves to be 3/5ths of a person. Stupid me; I had always felt that being an “American” was all about believing in the ideals of America; the rule of law (yes, even immigration law), clearly defined and vigorously defended rights, economic opportunity and faith in the ability of a free people to rule themselves in both prosperity and security. I support better control over our nation’s borders for a number of practical reasons, but I am not in favor of turning our borders into killing fields, nor am I in favor of changing the definition of American Citizenship to influence demographic outcomes. I suspect that, if the truth be known, Pedro and Juan, who have just arrived in the country by means contrary to law, may be more committed to a tolerant and pluralistic society than some of the folks who were born here. Now, that doesn’t make their presence any less illegal, but it makes me way less worried about the future of this great nation. Glenn Beck is entitled to his opinion, and, as long as Glenn Beck doesn’t have his way, I am entitled to mine.
In other news, failed Napoleon look-alike contestant, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, has announced that the Persian nation has produced a pilotless drone which can be utilized as a platform for launching cruise missiles. It is important to note that an anagram for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “Jehad Humanoid Madam”. I will have to consult the Kabbalah to determine what this means, but it can’t be good. Every time Iran duplicates a 1972 U.S. defense technology, they have a big parade and talk trash about raining scorpions on our heads for seven generations and such. Unfortunately, nuclear weapons are a 1945 technology, so they are probably not far off. I am greatly torn on this issue, as I am not a big proponent of blasting people into dust for reasons of political disagreement, but I am also not comfortable with Iran having the ability to produce nuclear weapons. Just for the record, I’m not too comfortable with the idea of anyone having the ability to produce nuclear weapons, us included, but that horse is out of the barn and across town; we still have a chance to address the issue of further proliferation. I only hope we can do it without further baby killing. It should be noted that if Sarah Palin were to be elected President of the United States, we would have the same problem Iran has now with an arrogant dumbass front and center on everything.
Finally, last Friday (August 20th) was the 120th anniversary of the birth of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, American Gothic horror writer and generally sickly dude. He died on March 15, 1937 at the ripe old age of 46 from colon cancer. Lovecraft was not particularly well-known or admired during his lifetime, but after his death he became something of an American Icon and is, in my view, clearly the father of America’s (and by Hollywood extrapolation, the World’s) fascination with mutant creatures lurking in the abyss and all sorts or horrific mutilation and haunted madmen. As a connoisseur of all things horror, I can attest to Mr. Lovecraft’s inky New England fingerprints on literally half of all the stories, books and movies in the horror genre produced in the last 50 years, even if the authors themselves are not aware of their debt to the master. There were a lot of unsavory aspects to Lovecraft’s ideology to be sure; he was clearly bigoted and a social elitist, but perhaps not overly so for the age and place in which he lived, and a few of his stories convey some rather dangerous presumptions about the value of racial purity, but these ideas fit well with his general theme of the decay and corruption of human civilization and the inevitable fall of scientific culture and return to a more natural state of primitivism. To Lovecraft, humanity was created out of the boredom of indifferent, or even malevolent, gods who cared nothing for our fate, and at the heart of all creation lurked a truth so profoundly disturbing that madness was the only possible consequence of human enlightenment; all that and he never even had teenage children. So here’s to you, H.P. Lovecraft; prophet and beggar, visionary and bigot, weak and sickly and a truly frightening man. May Cthulhu welcome you to his watery exile in the infinite abyss, dude.
Speaking of bigotry and xenophobia, I see that the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy continues to consume the interest of many decent, hard-working Americans. I have already waxed poetic on this subject, and there’s not much more to say, but this is an opportunity for me to further promulgate one of my key rules, this one being the Wormhole Repairman’s Law of Public Discourse. The law simply states that “the amount of time devoted to the discussion of a public policy issue shall always be inversely proportional to the actual significance of the issue discussed”. It has been pointed out that there are “Ground Zero” strip clubs and other such disrespectful goings-on in the vicinity, but I guess there aren’t many Muslims in the strip clubs, so they’re ok. But really folks, who gives a rat’s ass what they do in New York? I suppose strippers are generally more helpful in getting things like towers to stand up than bringing them down (I emphasize “generally”), so maybe there is an ironic synergy at work. Nonetheless, I must repeat for the sake of emphasis that when “right” and “wrong” are defined by who screams the loudest, this country will be damned well fucked.
I understand that the great Kentucky paragon of virtue, Senator Mitch McConnell, has graciously condescended to take President Obama at his word that Mr. Obama is a Christian. Well, goody; I am quite relieved now. I was afraid that the President might start looking after orphans and widows and stop blowing up Afghans and Arabs to the tune of $300 billion a year. God only knows where we would be if anyone with actual religious principle were to have some influence in what goes on in Washington. Unfortunately, I cannot extend the same courtesy to Senator McConnell; having read all that stuff in the Bible about not throwing stones, and camels and needles, and taking care of the poor and the meek inheriting things, I have come to the conclusion that Jesus was a filthy hippy socialist who wanted to heal the corrosive hatred in men’s hearts and that Senator McConnell is not playing on the same team as Jesus. I did also read that “judge not” thing, so I am officially classifying this observation as an opinion, not a judgment. I’m sure Senator McConnell is a wonderful person and I can only pray that he gets to the gates of Heaven as quickly as possible so that he can begin to reap his well deserved eternal reward.
Did I mention that I am leading the movement to have Glenn Beck’s citizenship revoked? Well, actually no; that would require effort, but I am going to rest upon my overly broad buttocks and pontificate about the Teapublican Party’s intermittent discussions on refining the qualifications for American Citizenship. The system that has served us so well for over 140 years is apparently broken, as indicated by the increasing numbers of citizens who are not of purely European descent. Pretty soon, good old fashioned white people will be in the minority in this country. Clearly this is not what the Founders anticipated when they declared slaves to be 3/5ths of a person. Stupid me; I had always felt that being an “American” was all about believing in the ideals of America; the rule of law (yes, even immigration law), clearly defined and vigorously defended rights, economic opportunity and faith in the ability of a free people to rule themselves in both prosperity and security. I support better control over our nation’s borders for a number of practical reasons, but I am not in favor of turning our borders into killing fields, nor am I in favor of changing the definition of American Citizenship to influence demographic outcomes. I suspect that, if the truth be known, Pedro and Juan, who have just arrived in the country by means contrary to law, may be more committed to a tolerant and pluralistic society than some of the folks who were born here. Now, that doesn’t make their presence any less illegal, but it makes me way less worried about the future of this great nation. Glenn Beck is entitled to his opinion, and, as long as Glenn Beck doesn’t have his way, I am entitled to mine.
In other news, failed Napoleon look-alike contestant, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, has announced that the Persian nation has produced a pilotless drone which can be utilized as a platform for launching cruise missiles. It is important to note that an anagram for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “Jehad Humanoid Madam”. I will have to consult the Kabbalah to determine what this means, but it can’t be good. Every time Iran duplicates a 1972 U.S. defense technology, they have a big parade and talk trash about raining scorpions on our heads for seven generations and such. Unfortunately, nuclear weapons are a 1945 technology, so they are probably not far off. I am greatly torn on this issue, as I am not a big proponent of blasting people into dust for reasons of political disagreement, but I am also not comfortable with Iran having the ability to produce nuclear weapons. Just for the record, I’m not too comfortable with the idea of anyone having the ability to produce nuclear weapons, us included, but that horse is out of the barn and across town; we still have a chance to address the issue of further proliferation. I only hope we can do it without further baby killing. It should be noted that if Sarah Palin were to be elected President of the United States, we would have the same problem Iran has now with an arrogant dumbass front and center on everything.
Finally, last Friday (August 20th) was the 120th anniversary of the birth of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, American Gothic horror writer and generally sickly dude. He died on March 15, 1937 at the ripe old age of 46 from colon cancer. Lovecraft was not particularly well-known or admired during his lifetime, but after his death he became something of an American Icon and is, in my view, clearly the father of America’s (and by Hollywood extrapolation, the World’s) fascination with mutant creatures lurking in the abyss and all sorts or horrific mutilation and haunted madmen. As a connoisseur of all things horror, I can attest to Mr. Lovecraft’s inky New England fingerprints on literally half of all the stories, books and movies in the horror genre produced in the last 50 years, even if the authors themselves are not aware of their debt to the master. There were a lot of unsavory aspects to Lovecraft’s ideology to be sure; he was clearly bigoted and a social elitist, but perhaps not overly so for the age and place in which he lived, and a few of his stories convey some rather dangerous presumptions about the value of racial purity, but these ideas fit well with his general theme of the decay and corruption of human civilization and the inevitable fall of scientific culture and return to a more natural state of primitivism. To Lovecraft, humanity was created out of the boredom of indifferent, or even malevolent, gods who cared nothing for our fate, and at the heart of all creation lurked a truth so profoundly disturbing that madness was the only possible consequence of human enlightenment; all that and he never even had teenage children. So here’s to you, H.P. Lovecraft; prophet and beggar, visionary and bigot, weak and sickly and a truly frightening man. May Cthulhu welcome you to his watery exile in the infinite abyss, dude.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
It Sure is Dark in Here
What’s the story with the Vampire Squid, you ask? Well, Vampyroteuthis infernali, as we refer to it in Ancient Rome, is about a foot long and does not sensually drain the blood from the necks of lusty Victorian virgins. In fact, I’m still a bit uncertain about this whole Victorian virgin concept. Let’s face it, people are people and even wealthy 23 year-old women like sex, if only under specific conditions, one of which is, of course, that I’m not present. We know all that Virgin Queen stuff was crap and a Victorian virgin was probably just someone who had never had sex with their clothes off, or something similar, but less acceptable.
Anyway, that has nothing to do with the Vampire Squid, which is really the last known survivor of a line which originated way back near the Octopus/Squid evolutionary split. In fact, the Vampire Squid was actually identified as an octopus when first classified in 1903, but further research found that it was more sort of like a squid and less sort of like an octopus, although still kind of like both. The Vampire Squid spends its life in the complete darkness at 2000 to 3000 feet down in the temperate climes of the ocean where it need never fear bursting into flames from the sun’s ultraviolet rays or encountering unsavory garlic cloves. Dr, Van Helsing, having no access to the Bathysphere, is also not likely to show up wielding any stake-firing contraptions.
The Vampire Squid gets it name from a couple of interesting physical characteristics. It has silky flaps of skin between its tentacles which make it look like it is wearing a cape, like Bela Lugosi at the opera. Its dark, reddish black coloration, along with its red or blue eyes, contributes to this image. In addition, it has a pair of small fins on either side of its head which have the appearance of bat ears, giving it an overall bat-like form, which is how vampires look when they are flying home at the crack of dawn after having stayed out too late. Vampires, it seems, cannot tell time. There are probably a few other names the Vampire Squid could have been given, such as the “weird-ass looking squid” or the “it’s so damned dark down here I can’t see a frigging thing squid”, but all in all, I think Vampire is just fine.
Vampire Squid have very low metabolic rates due to the lack of oxygen at such depths, so they mostly just float around and get with the cosmic groove. Of course, they have to eat, so they do occasionally grab a passing shrimp or jellyfish which is also just about unconscious from oxygen deprivation. In addition to its caped tentacles, the Vampire Squid has a pair of long filaments which it trails along behind it in the darkness. When these filaments contact something, the squid reverses course and envelopes its prey with its cape. The prey may momentarily think to itself “it sure is dark in here”, but probably not.
On the other hand, if the filaments encounter something that is not a proper prey item, natural selection may occur. In fact, the Vampire Squid has been found in the stomachs of a range of customers as diverse as sharks, whales and sea lions. However, the Vampire Squid has a few tricks up its sleeve(s) for any potential predators. Its entire cape is covered with small, light-emitting organs which can be activated in any of an endless combination of sequences. When threatened, the Vampire Squid will launch into a disorienting light show which confuses the predator long enough for the squid to say a prayer and try to inconspicuously float away. Fish of a certain age may feel they are having a flashback, or that the Good Fairy is coming to give them a pony; in either case, they may forget what they were actually there for. In addition, the Vampire Squid has a pair of larger light-emitting organs on its head which can be employed to mimic the reflective eyes of a larger creature. This may frighten off some predators which may think to themselves “it’s awfully dark around here and I really can’t tell what the deuce that thing is, so maybe I’ll just mosey along”. Of course, the larger predators, like the shark and whale, just might think to themselves “Wow! That’s a big fish! It’s probably way tastier than that skinny-ass Vampire Squid”. Nature, unfortunately offers only what is needed to survive, not perfection.
There’s not much more to the Vampire Squid story. Like the rest of us, they eat and make babies and try not to be eaten themselves, or fall victim to any ponzi schemes. Not to change the subject, but I read a short-story once about a vampire that was on the Titanic when it sank. He couldn’t wait for the rescue boats because they wouldn’t arrive until after dawn, so he had to dive deep down to where there was no sunlight. While he couldn’t drown or starve, the cold and lack of fresh blood made him so weak he sank to the bottom where he remains to this day in a semi-conscious state, waiting for James Cameron to come dredge him up, hopefully at night. A lot of us are like that, waiting for someone to dredge us up, so perhaps we can once again wonder at life and miracles like the dark sky of stars. The Vampire Squid doesn’t care; it is at peace with itself and its place in the Universe, and it makes its own stars.
Anyway, that has nothing to do with the Vampire Squid, which is really the last known survivor of a line which originated way back near the Octopus/Squid evolutionary split. In fact, the Vampire Squid was actually identified as an octopus when first classified in 1903, but further research found that it was more sort of like a squid and less sort of like an octopus, although still kind of like both. The Vampire Squid spends its life in the complete darkness at 2000 to 3000 feet down in the temperate climes of the ocean where it need never fear bursting into flames from the sun’s ultraviolet rays or encountering unsavory garlic cloves. Dr, Van Helsing, having no access to the Bathysphere, is also not likely to show up wielding any stake-firing contraptions.
The Vampire Squid gets it name from a couple of interesting physical characteristics. It has silky flaps of skin between its tentacles which make it look like it is wearing a cape, like Bela Lugosi at the opera. Its dark, reddish black coloration, along with its red or blue eyes, contributes to this image. In addition, it has a pair of small fins on either side of its head which have the appearance of bat ears, giving it an overall bat-like form, which is how vampires look when they are flying home at the crack of dawn after having stayed out too late. Vampires, it seems, cannot tell time. There are probably a few other names the Vampire Squid could have been given, such as the “weird-ass looking squid” or the “it’s so damned dark down here I can’t see a frigging thing squid”, but all in all, I think Vampire is just fine.
Vampire Squid have very low metabolic rates due to the lack of oxygen at such depths, so they mostly just float around and get with the cosmic groove. Of course, they have to eat, so they do occasionally grab a passing shrimp or jellyfish which is also just about unconscious from oxygen deprivation. In addition to its caped tentacles, the Vampire Squid has a pair of long filaments which it trails along behind it in the darkness. When these filaments contact something, the squid reverses course and envelopes its prey with its cape. The prey may momentarily think to itself “it sure is dark in here”, but probably not.
There’s not much more to the Vampire Squid story. Like the rest of us, they eat and make babies and try not to be eaten themselves, or fall victim to any ponzi schemes. Not to change the subject, but I read a short-story once about a vampire that was on the Titanic when it sank. He couldn’t wait for the rescue boats because they wouldn’t arrive until after dawn, so he had to dive deep down to where there was no sunlight. While he couldn’t drown or starve, the cold and lack of fresh blood made him so weak he sank to the bottom where he remains to this day in a semi-conscious state, waiting for James Cameron to come dredge him up, hopefully at night. A lot of us are like that, waiting for someone to dredge us up, so perhaps we can once again wonder at life and miracles like the dark sky of stars. The Vampire Squid doesn’t care; it is at peace with itself and its place in the Universe, and it makes its own stars.
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