Café Philos: an internet café

Moving to Wordpress

2007-12-03T09:07:00.000-07:00

Hi Folks!

I've finally decided to move this blog over to Wordpress. It was a tough decision, but I feel it is the right one. Please click on this link to visit the new blog site!

Also, I would very much appreciate it if you would update your blog rolls with my new link:

http://cafephilos.wordpress.com/

Thank you!

Paul Sunstone

Fatherless Girls

2007-12-02T04:19:00.000-07:00

I've noticed for sometime now a steady stream of traffic to this blog because of a brief post I made back in May on fatherless girls. So, tonight, I was trying to count all the fatherless girls I've known in this town.

I would count a few, think I'd finished, then remembered another one or two. In the end, I simply gave up. It's overwhelming. Not the numbers, but the faces. Overwhelming.

I wonder if we will ever again be a society in which it is unusual to grow up without a father. My own father died when I was two years old. At the small school I attended, I was the only child in my class of about 100 students without a dad at home. What are the numbers today?

When I came to Colorado at midlife, I landed in a coffee shop that was a hang out for an eclectic crowd that included everyone from the mayor of the city to a group of homeless gentlemen. The coffee shop was also two blocks from the city's largest high school, and it attracted very many mildly disaffected youth who enjoyed its eclectic atmosphere as much as I did. Most of the first 200 or so people I met in this town were mildly disaffected kids.

Some of those kids attached themselves to me. When I look back it strikes me that the boys who attached themselves to me usually had fathers. But the girls who did were usually fatherless.

I wonder why most of the boys had fathers, while most of the girls didn't?

Growing up a male myself, I knew the boys at that age are not usually looking for a father figure when they attach themselves to an older man. Instead, they are most likely looking for help in entering the adult world. That is, at that age, they want to work out how to relate to adults who are not their father. I suppose the girls wanted pretty much the same thing.

Yet, I don't know. I don't know why most of the boys who wanted to associate with me had fathers while most of the girls who wanted to associate with me didn't have fathers. Nor do I know whether there was any difference between the boys and the girls in why they wanted to associate with me. Some things seem bound to remain a mystery.

At any rate, my experience of fatherless children -- or more precisely, my experience of fatherless girls -- has convinced me they are especially vulnerable, they are often overlooked, and that we all could do more by them. So, I've decided to make my own small contribution to their cause by blogging from time to time about some of the fatherless girls I've known, what kinds of problems they've faced, how they met those challenges, and what wonderful people they are. I hope you'll be interested.

Seventeen: The Age of First Sex in the West

2007-12-02T01:29:00.000-07:00

How old, on average, is a person in the West before they first have sex?

Well, according to Julien O. Teitler, the median age for first sex among people living in Western industrial nations dropped steadily from 1960 to 1995, before stabilizing at around age 17.

(Damn! If I'd only known that sooner, I wouldn't have held out until 50.)

Although the median age for first sex has declined, the median age for marriage has risen in those same countries. Clearly, it is now normative in Western industrialized countries to have sex before marriage. In America, for instance, fully nine out of ten people have sex before marriage.

(Damn! If I'd only known that sooner, I would never have promised my latex love doll a wedding ring after our first night together.)

The problem is our ideals have not kept pace with our actual morals. So many people in the West still act as if it is reasonable to expect kids to hold out until marriage, even when they themselves failed to do it! Instead of merely expecting kids to hold out until marriage -- something only one in ten of them will do -- we should be teaching kids how to deal with premarital sex.

Teaching kids how to deal with premarital sex involves much more than merely teaching them to use a condom. Among other things, it involves teaching them a whole morality, a whole sexual ethics, and even a sexual etiquette.

A few years ago, when I was hanging out with dozens of kids here in town, I was often asked questions about ending relationships. Naturally, if you are going to start having sex years before you get married, you are almost certainly going to face the prospect of ending one or a few relationships. But when and how is it best to break up? Kids need to be taught a practical morality that addresses those issues.

That's only one example. There are many more moral, ethical, and etiquette issues that are not being adequately addressed in part because we still hold to the ideal of waiting for marriage to have sex.

Our failure to adequately address those issues goes beyond idle interest. Morality, ethics, and etiquette are ideally ways in which generations pass down what they've learned of life. When all we pass down are failed ideals, we are relinquishing our responsibility to the next generation to share what real wisdom and learning we have to share.

Jeff's Abuse of Suzanne

2007-11-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

I've heard models described as vacuous airheads, but that doesn't describe Suzanne unless someone can be both a vacuous airhead and an intelligent, creative, buoyant, and artistic woman.

I believe she was all of 14 years old when she first modeled lingerie for Victoria's Secrets, the catalog and store company. She couldn't have been much older because I met her when she was 16 and she was no longer modeling by then.

Over the years, Suzanne has revealed a persistent talent for getting fired from employments, so I strongly suspect she was no longer modeling by the time we met because Secrets had refused anything more to do with her. She's not a vacuous airhead, but she is dysfunctional.

The story I'm prepared to tell you today concerns Suzanne, Victoria's Secrets, and her abusive boyfriend. I've already introduced Suzanne and Victoria's Secrets, so I'll turn now to the boyfriend.

Meet Jeff.

He's one of those males who prey on women much younger than themselves. Jeff is 20 years older than Suzanne, and very few women his own age have ever sustained an interest in him. Jeff can be charming. He can be witty. He can be exciting. He can sweep a naive and inexperienced girl off her feet. Yet, most women see the looser in him. So Jeff has learned to specialize in the young, naive and inexperienced women he has some chance of getting.

Once he gets them, he doesn't know what to do with them. He turns the affair into a drama, the drama into a tragedy, the tragedy into a nightmare. When you take some fish out of the water, their colors at first fascinate, then fade. Latter, the fish begin to stink. Any girl who lands Jeff sooner or later learns that in a relationship, he's a fish out of water.

Young people almost invariably overestimate the odds in their favor of significantly changing someone, and especially they overestimate their odds of changing a lover. Maybe that's because they are always being told by their parents, preachers, and teachers to change themselves, and so they assume it actually works when you tell people to change themselves.

In truth, the only person likely to change someone is the person themselves. And even then, seldom, if ever, is a person capable of a fundamental change: It's not in the nature of water to become stone, nor of stone to become air.

In the few years Jeff and Suzanne were together, Suzanne wanted two things, both absurd. She wanted to change Jeff against his nature. And she wanted her own nature to bloom. The latter was absurd because Jeff had her under his thumb and was abusing her emotionally, psychologically, and physically. No one blooms under those conditions. At best, they merely endure.

If you yourself have seen a few abusive relationships, you know they are all alike, except for the details. The only detail of the relationship between Jeff and Suzanne that surprised me was that Jeff apparently never tried to keep Suzanne from seeing me.

I'm clueless why he didn't. It's a classic pattern of abuse that the abuser tries to prevent his victim from having any friends who are outside of his influence or control. But through out the time she was with Jeff, Suzanne saw me almost daily. It's true she seldom associated with me in Jeff's presence, but we spent hours together while he was at work or off somewhere else. That sort of thing normally doesn't happen in an abusive relationship.

Suzanne would look me up almost every day. We'd then go to a coffee shop, a movie, the mall, "The Well" -- which was her favorite nudist resort -- or we'd go hiking, or drive around Colorado for a few hours. Whatever amused us.

Once, we even went to Victoria's Secrets. That was three or so years into Suzanne's relationship with Jeff. That day, we'd gone to the mall.

When we were passing the Victoria's Secrets store, Suzanne wanted to go in. The racks, of course, were full of lingerie, and Suzanne excitedly asked me to choose three sets for her to try on. She then took me back to a dressing room where she stripped and modeled the sets for me.

Christmas was a month off, so I asked her a lot of questions about each of the three sets, including which one felt the most comfortable -- if I'm going to give lingerie to a woman, it damn well better be comfortable, especially at Victoria's prices.

Looking at a young nude woman is at least as fascinating to me as watching a beautiful sunrise. Yet, I'm not attracted to most young women's sexuality, and especially not to Suzanne's. Their sexuality is more likely to depress me than to stimulate me, although I'm not quite sure why. At any rate, I certainly do not make a point of telling young women they aren't sexy -- I have my life to protect! So that day I told Suzanne, "This is a lot of fun for me -- watching you model that sexy lingerie. If I'm having so much fun, think of how much fun it would be for Jeff! Why don't you bring him out here?"

Suzanne didn't answer immediately. When she did answer, her voice had gone strange. There was a tone in it I'd never heard before. In a way, it was a little girl's voice. But perhaps it only sounded like a little girl's voice because she was having difficulty controlling it. She said, "Jeff wouldn't like it. If I did this with him, he'd call me a slut."

We fell into silence. Then she began taking off the last set of lingerie in order to get back into her own clothes, but she was trembling.

When you abuse a woman, you prevent her from being true to herself. At it's core, that's what abuse really is -- it's preventing someone from being true to themselves.

Sometimes it comes out in ways that are large enough and important enough to easily describe. Like the woman whose husband prevents her from developing her musical genius so that the world looses a classical pianist. But much more often, abuse comes out in ways that are harder to see, such as when a woman trembles in a dressing room because her lover will not, or cannot, accept her sexuality whole and complete, just as it is, without condemning it.

Those harder to see ways are as criminal as the other. You don't need to beat a woman to abuse her. You can just as well kill a person's sense of themselves, their self-esteem, their self direction -- by a thousand tiny cuts.

By the time I met Suzanne I was too old and had seen too much wickedness to harbor any fantasy that I could reason with her into leaving Jeff. I knew she was confused beyond reason, frightened into uncertainty, blinded by her feelings, and emotionally dependent on him. So, I did the only things I thought I could do, which were never that great nor enough.

For the most part, that amounted to just accepting her for herself.

An Amazingly Bad Movie Review!

2007-11-26T02:09:00.001-07:00

It's got to be the worse movie review of the decade to date. If there's one that's worse than it, I don't want to read it for fear my eyeballs will explode.

The review is of Beowulf and here's a sample insight from the review: "Beowulf the movie, based on the epic poem of the same name, is quite probably the most heinous culprit for stealing childhood from children ever made."

The review is done by a professed Christian who actually goes so far as to make up facts about the Bible in order to damn the movie for its nudity. Are you feeling up to full strength this morning? Then you can read the review here. There's also a lively commentary on the review itself here.

Many thanks to DOF for alerting me to this atrocity.

The 11th Humanist Symposium is Up!

2007-11-26T01:44:00.000-07:00

The 11th Humanist Symposium is up at Greenbelt and it looks like a good one. Check it out here.

Stanislaw Lec on Youth

2007-11-23T14:21:00.000-07:00

"Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art."

- Stanislaw Lec

Three Lessons From My Mother on Youth

2007-11-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

I blame my mother for teaching me three truths about youth.

The first of her truths is that all girls are pretty and all boys are handsome. I used to hate being taught that one by her.

She taught it to me throughout my childhood and adolescence. She did it simply: Merely by praising the beauty of myself and my young friends. I hated it when she did that because it sounded false to my naive ears. Especially during adolescence, I couldn't believe she was anything but a lunatic when it came to beauty, because I had a markedly different standard of beauty than hers.

I had internalized the standards of my peers. Among ourselves, we had no sense of the universal beauty of youth. We didn't see that truth. One of us might be beautiful, but certainly not all of us. Certainly not our classes' ugliest girl nor most homely boy. So I would shrink in fright each time my mother pronounced that one or another of my classes' "less attractive" boys or girls was beautiful. I'd think, "Has anyone overheard her besides me? I'll die if they discover my Mom is an idiot! "

Roughly around 40, I discovered for myself the universal beauty of youth. That is, I finally saw what my mother had been talking about all those years. The beauty of youth transcends whatever happens to be fashionable beauty. It is timeless and universal.

The second truth my mother taught me was how transparent a youth is to an adult.

Mostly she did that by instantly seeing through my every pretension. Many times when we're growing up, we want to put on a front, we want to have pretensions, and we especially do not want our mothers to see through those pretensions. Instead, we want the sense of privacy that comes with imagining no one else knows we're bluffing.

Yet, just as a six year old is transparent to a 16 year old, so is a 16 year old transparent to a full adult. To this day, I have mixed feelings about that truth.

On the one hand, I've learned over the years that it is basic human nature to play at being something before one becomes something. Like all mammals, humans in most cases learn best through play. If you want to be a charitable person, first "play pretend" you are a charitable person. If you want to be a good lover, first "play pretend" you are a good lover. Playing/pretending kicks in whatever gears there are in our brains that allow us to learn very complex behaviors. So, to the extent we put on fronts as part of that learning process, it's not all that helpful when your mother tells you to "quit pretending to be something you're not."

On the other hand, when your mother tells you to "quit pretending", it can be a great lesson in the futility of living inauthentically. The trick is whether your mother knows you well enough to steer you away from trying to become something untrue to your nature, and instead tries to steer you towards becoming things true to your nature. That's largely what my mother did, and today I'm grateful to her for it.

She allowed and even encouraged me to play pretend at things that developed my natural talents into skills. She discouraged me from playing pretending at things I had little or no natural talent for, or which were anti-social. She was able to do that because she was some 39 years older than me and my own true nature was transparent to her.

At 37, I moved to Colorado. Through a strange set of circumstances it happened the first 200 or so people I met here were mostly kids. Some of them attached themselves to me, and I used to wonder why they willingly attached themselves to a man two decades their senior.

One day the answer came to me: I was doing for them what my mother had done for me. I was encouraging them to be true to themselves in the same persistent and often subtle ways my mother had encouraged me to be true to myself. That's what they wanted and even needed from a man two decades their senior -- someone who could see through their insecure fronts, and encourage their true selves.

The final truth my mother taught me about youth is the tragedy of wasted potential. This was something she taught through her comments on people. As I was growing up, she would occasionally point out how this or that person had wasted their talents. She never made a big deal of it, and her comments were always more or less in passing, but her point nevertheless sank in.

Is some part of youth's universal beauty the almost tangible sense of potential that young people exude? I don't know. But I know potential is thick on youth. I know that youth is a time when crucial steps are taken -- or at least should be taken -- to realize that potential. And I know that a thousand pitfalls await youth which will prevent all but a minority of them from ever fully realizing their genuine potential. That last strikes me as an especially poignant tragedy, and I think the reason the tragedy of wasted potential affects me as deeply as it does is in part because of my mother's teachings.

Again, this is something I saw most clearly in my late 30s and 40s, and if you have kindly read this essay, you will know by now that's a pattern with how I've absorbed my mother's teachings about youth. In each case, she pointed me to look. But in each case, I either didn't look, or perhaps couldn't look, at what she pointed until I was middle-aged. Yet, once I looked, I saw clearly what she had been all those years talking about.

Now, if I add all three of those lessons together to make a sum, then I get something like this: My mother prepared me through her teachings to clearly see, once I was older, how beautiful youth is, how important it is that youth learns to be true to itself, and how tragic it is when it doesn't.

All in all, I think those are some pretty profound lessons.

Suzanne's Gift to Me

2007-11-23T02:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, I had a pleasant surprise. A friend I hadn't seen in over two years showed up on my doorstep, healthy and happy.

The healthy and happy bit was very much part of the surprise. Suzanne has suffered over many of her 28 years from a nearly debilitating emotional disorder. But yesterday she was quite happy and seemed healthier than I remember as being usual for her.

So far as I know, Suzanne is the world's only former Victoria Secrets model to join a traveling circus.

She lasted a year in the circus job, which is a long time for her to last in any job. She's energetic, exceptionally intelligent, and hard working. But then there's that emotional disorder thing. It impairs her judgment, and she tends to screw things up with the result that she's had very little stability in her life.

She was 16, I was 39, when we first met at a coffee shop. It's been a dozen years now, and that circus stint is still the longest she's held onto a job. She says she's known me longer than nearly anyone else in her life outside of family, and I believe her. I've lost count of the number of apartments and rental homes she's had. It's as if Suzanne repels stability.

Like so many people with an emotional disorder, Suzanne has been in a protracted abusive relationship. He was twenty years her senior and the sort of man who habitually preyed on much younger women. Quite charming at first.

She had two sons by him. She finally left him when he began to abuse her sons, too.

I've always admired Suzanne's buoyancy. No matter what else that emotional disorder has done to her, it hasn't taken her resilience. She always bounces back. And maybe her buoyancy has something to do with the fact she and I can laugh together at even the worse of her misadventures. Yesterday, during her visit, we laughed so hard recalling her miscalculations and misjudgments that I had to wipe my eyes -- several times.

I don't recall who started it, but there's a running joke between us. It's a bit crude, and she's a bit more likely to express herself crudely than I am, so maybe she started it. At any rate, each time I bail her out of some distress she's gotten herself into, she swears she owes me a blow job for it. In return, I tell her that I'm not feeling like one at the moment, and so I'll put it on her tab. Yesterday, she reminded me that she now "owes" me 53 blow jobs for the number of times I've bailed her out of some mess since we started that joke years ago.

In truth, Suzanne has taught me a great deal about giving. Even before I met her, I had learned to give without most strings attached, without most expectation, or most hope, of gaining anything in return. But there was something I hadn't yet learned. There was something I still expected to come from my generosity.

I expected improvement.

Without being consciously aware of my expectations, I hoped when giving to someone that they would learn from their mistake -- from whatever mistake put them in a position to need a hand out -- and that they would improve themselves. I even unconsciously considered a gift wasted if the person did not learn from their mistakes.

Someone once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. That's a pretty good insight into what a severe emotional disorder can do to a person's judgment. Suzanne is like that.

Suzanne will repeat a mistake again and again, without being aware that she is doing the same thing over and over with only insignificant variations. Her disorder is a cruel one.

At first that frustrated me. When I examined my frustration, I saw it was because I expected her to improve. When I thought about my hope she would improve, I discovered my hope for her was a string I was attaching to my gifts to her. And then I was struck by how unrealistic and unfair to her it was of me to do that.

It was through giving to her I learned to give without even that expectation of any reward for my generosity.

If you yourself make a practice of giving without strings, then you know how liberating it is to do so. And because I myself know that feeling of liberation, and value it, I am grateful to Suzanne for helping me realize it. Perhaps that's her greatest gift to me. If so, it's a good one.

She has many fine qualities, and there's nothing genuinely evil or humanly indecent about her. If life were a child's fantasies of life, then life would be fair; and if life were fair, the Suzannes of this world would never be afflicted with cruel emotional disorders. For someone with her talents and abilities could accomplish a lot of good, both for herself and others -- if only she were healthy and not such an habitual screw up.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

May your day be blessed with happiness.

The Undiscovered and Unsuspected Door

2007-11-20T23:55:00.000-07:00

D.H. Lawrence somewhere says that youth should not be misled into believing that it must rebel against authority and tradition in order to achieve freedom. Lawrence asserts that those battles have already been fought and won. Youth is largely free to do as it pleases today, and so it is misleading youth to tell them that they should be battling against authority and tradition.

On the other hand, Lawrence points out that the real revolution youth must accomplish is "to find the undiscovered and unsuspected door." That is, to find and exploit the aspects of life that youth does not even as yet suspect are part of life. Doing so will bring about a greater revolution in youth than will battling against authority and tradition.

What do you think of this? Is the real job of youth to find the undiscovered and unsuspected door, or is it to battle against tradition and authority? Which brings greater freedom? Which is more revolutionary?

Kenyon Road

2007-11-18T11:10:00.000-07:00

We tried a little house on Kenyon.
You bought curtains, some furniture,
And had me nothing to do
But take the garbage out.
It was all you could stand,
You said, "In a male".

I suppose I wanted
To stack up blocks like sane people:
House and car, flowers and work;
As if ever I could pile those blocks
Somewhere up
Beyond crazy for us.

I wonder now
How I thought that was my place.

That last night, I noticed the lunatic moon
Didn't really stop at the door, and astonished,
As if I'd forgotten something three times repeated,
Left Kenyon Road.

Red

2007-11-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

I like the red
the red of the Z-Teca sign
the Z-Teca sign
the Z-teca sign outside
outside in the sunlight
outside in the sunlight
now.

I Remember...

2007-11-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

I remember
Laughing under summer skies --
Would have thought we could fly --
And the winds pass on by.

I remember
Holding hands while the river flowed --
Came a time to let you go --
And the waters pass on by.

Now for all that I know
You have a good life
Filled with the stars
And the trees.

But all that I do know --
It's the life you should have,
So beautiful
You were to me.

Of the Guru's Firm World and Dancing with Fire

2007-11-18T00:39:00.000-07:00

On a forum I frequent is a person who wants to be your guru. He's had some mystical experiences (He claims they are beyond counting), and has reached firm conclusions about the nature of god, the self, and the universe.

Whoever doesn't agree with him is a fool, he says, because he has had so many more profound experiences than they. Better yet, he's even brighter than they are too. How can you beat such reasonable qualifications?

Some of the people on the forum are even impressed by this man. He's witty in his put-downs, you know. A sure sign he's the Buddha.

Some years ago, I did a stint as a firefighter. In the ready room, the room where we waited for the calls, the men would bullshit. "Captain, what do you think of abortion?"

"Simple! Abortion is always wrong."

"Lieutenant, what do you think of abortion?

"It's murder, plain and simple."

"Anderson, what do you think of abortion?"

"There's no two ways about it: A woman has a right to choose."

The men would bullshit like that until a call came in.

Then they'd get real.

A fire does not favor firm conclusions. Fighting a fire is a game of odds. A game of probabilities. You cannot be certain what the fire is going to do. You can't bullshit a fire.

In a fire, you calculate the odds, take your best chance, and go with it. You don't look for absolute truth. There is none. You don't reach absolute conclusions because you're not a fool. You stay alert. You remain open to the changing reality.

Reality is always changing. It's just that most of our time is spent in the ready room where we don't notice it changing. So, we relax and bullshit. We speak with absolute conviction. We even call that kind of talk, "being serious". But it's light years from being serious. It's light years from reality.

I suppose it's possible that "seeing god" somehow leaves a person with absolute convictions about god, the self, and the universe.

But if I had to bet on that, I'd bet those absolute convictions are simple, fundamental misinterpretations of what he or she experienced. I'd bet what they really experienced was just as uncertain as dancing with fire.

(Photo courtesy of Ernest von Rosen, www.amgmedia.com)

Disagreeable Agreement

2007-11-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

I once lived with a woman who took sharp offense if my opinion did not agree with hers. Among other things, the experience taught me few domestic arrangements are more disagreeable to me than living with someone who demands agreement.

Erotic Art vs. Pornography

2007-11-17T03:38:00.000-07:00

I think of erotic art and porn as being two different but similar things.

To me, porn is something that reduces its subject to no more than his or her sexuality. In doing that it degrades the person in much the same way that reducing anyone to just one thing degrades them.

For instance: If you reduce a person to no more than the fact they are Black, Jewish, Mormon, a particular nationality, or a member of this or that political party, then in some sense you are degrading them. Likewise, if you reduce a person to no more than his or her sexuality you are degrading them.

Yet, I think erotic art is distinct from porn in the sense that erotic art, as I use the term, reveals someone's sexuality without entirely reducing them to their sexuality, just as you can acknowledge someone's race without entirely reducing them to their race.

It interests me that those who would reduce people to just one thing also -- perhaps almost invariably -- distort that one aspect of them. So, for instance, when the Nazis reduced Jews to "just Jews" they also characterized Jews in unrealistic and lying ways. Again, when the KKK reduces Blacks to "just Blacks" they also lie about what it means to be Black. And when the porn industry reduces a man or woman to just their sexuality, it almost invariably ascribes to them an unrealistic sexuality.

Those two things so often go hand in hand: First, reducing someone to just one aspect of themselves, and second distorting what that aspect means.

I don't think it can be denied that the human tendency to reduce others to no more than one thing and then distort that thing is a cause of much misery in this world.

Having said all that, I would much rather put up with porn -- or even racism, etc. -- than with censorship. I think the proper way to take on such evils is through debate in the free market of ideas, rather than through government censorship.

Am I onto something here, or should I drink some more coffee this morning, wake up, and try again?

See also Chanson's essay on porn -- which inspired this one.

From Around the Net

2007-11-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't get around to reading as many blogs this week as I usually do. Instead, I found myself wrapped up in less pleasurable things. But here's what I managed to discover nevertheless:

Mo writes about two things that improve brain performance -- physical exercise and socializing.

You might want to take a look at the rather daunting air pollution in Beijing, China, where the Olympics will be held. James Fallows posts three photos of Beijing at noon here.

Chris Hedges writes extensively about the near take over of the US military by the Religious Right. Very scary stuff.

Time for some romance? Here's a short, passionate piece by Rambodoc. Some of the commentators love it, some think it's cliche. Since I don't read much romance fiction, it was all fresh to me -- and thought provoking too!

Anyone who's seen his work knows Steve is an outstanding photographer. In this article, he divulges for the first time the single most important tip he ever received on how to get great photos -- and it's a tip anyone can use!

Looks like the US Catholic Bishops are raising hell this election season. DOF gives 'em some hell in return.

Zeno's true life story of an event that happened in his math class spun my irony meter until the needle broke off and impaled my chest.

I loved this post on a flawless act of kindness written by Marylin.

I think anyone who appreciates Ed's science writing -- and that's probably pretty much anyone who reads his science writing -- should nominate an article or two of his for the Open Lab 2007 Award. He deserves it. His writing deserves it. And you'll feel good for having done it.

Ordinary Girl writes poignantly about the almost estranged relationship she has with her family here. This is so worth reading because it is not only true for so many families, but it's forceful and honest too.

Here's a general link to Robin's site, which in my opinion contains some of the most poetic photography that I've come across on the net.

Mike O'Risal blogs about the Governor of Georgia praying for rain. Nothing like violating the Constitutional separation of church and state to pander to the Medieval mindset.

Chanson has the next installment of her novel up here. In my opinion, her characters are just as alive as my neighbors.

Nita analyzes the root causes of child labor and finds that the causes are not just poverty.

Debra Haffner blogs about a strange case in which a mother was arrested for discussing her sex life with her kids.

Cyclone Sidr

2007-11-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

A catastrophic cyclone has made landfall in Bangladesh with winds up to 150 mph (240 kph). The storm has so far prevented any accurate accounting of its devastation, but the potential is for many tens of thousands of people to drown.

BBC report.

Associated Press report.

An Alarming Discovery

2007-11-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Married to the Sea

The Notion of God Shall Not Perish From the Earth

2007-11-15T08:19:00.000-07:00

Now and then, I run across someone who wishes to ban all religion. Yet, as many people know, that's impossible. It doesn't matter how bad it gets. Even if religion were identified as the sole cause of a thousand wars, a hundred thousand famines, a billion murders and a zillion cruelties -- and even if everyone knew religion was the sole cause of those horrible things -- religion would never be rejected by the vast majority of people.

At best, people would soundly reject the use of religion to justify wars, famines, murders, and cruelties. But the large majority would not reject religion itself. And that's not because people are stupid. Instead, it's because there are at least two reasons why most of the world's population is religious, and neither reason has much to do with people being stupid.

To understand those two reasons, let's imagine for a moment that some future world wide society idealistically decides to do away with all religion. And to make this a little bit interesting, let's say everyone in the world -- without exception -- agrees that religion should be done away with. Furthermore, they agree the best first step to doing away with all religion is to abolish the core belief of so many religions: God.

Everyone fully cooperates in this program to abolish god. They quite talking about god. Then they zealously search out every reference to deity in the world's literature and censor those references out of existence. They tear down all the holy houses around the world. They burn and blow up all the holy art. Finally, there is not a single reference to a deity in all the world, and moreover, not even one person in all the world is left who will talk about deity.

If all that could happen, the notion of god would still be reborn within the next generation.

The first and most powerful reason that would happen is humans are innately wired with the basic concept of deity. God is in our genes. That's not to say any particular god is in our genes. We certainly are not genetically programed to believe in the god of the Bible. Nor the god of the Gita. Nor the god of the Qur'an. But, as Scott Atran points out, we are genetically programed to view the world in certain ways -- ways which easily predispose us to a belief in deity. Unless we humans genetically engineer that way of viewing the world out of our nature, the concept of deity will be reborn with each generation.

While the first reason affects nearly all of us, the second reason affects only some of us. It seems some people experience god. More precisely, they have experiences they interpret as experiences of a god. Quite often, people who "experience god" come to believe their experience is proof that deity exists. So, even if you eliminated in a single generation all references to deity, there would still be in the next generation some people who experienced deity and concluded that deity exists.

There will always be people who wish to ban religion, but if only for those two reasons, the task is impossible, unless people somehow change human nature.

Are there any lessons to be drawn from this?

Perhaps the single most important lesson that might be drawn from the above is that trying to convert believers into non-believers is probably less likely to succeed than trying to convert irresponsible believers into responsible believers. You need not abolish religion to ameliorate all or most of its negative effects. So far as I know, there is little evidence the European Enlightenment significantly reduced the number of people who believed in deity. But it certainly reduced the number of people who believed in burning heretics at the stake.

What other lessons, if any, might be drawn from all this?

The Search for Someone to Blame

2007-11-13T08:03:00.000-07:00

"The search for someone to blame is always successful."

- Robert Half

Asking the Right Questions

2007-11-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

"Asking the right questions takes as much skill as giving the right answers."

- Robert Half

"He's Not Busy Being Born Is Busy Dying"

2007-11-13T05:33:00.001-07:00

When Bob Dylan sings the words, "He's not busy being born is busy dying", he offers us an important insight into human psychology. Namely, if we ever are so foolish as to refuse rebirth and renewal, then we are "busy dying". For the only way a human can stay alive spiritually, or psychologically, is to be reborn -- again and again and again.

I am often reminded of that truth these days because of a friend of mine. He has reached old age and, unfortunately, ceased being reborn.

Even on a relatively superficial level -- the level of one's opinions -- my friend has turned to stone. The opinions he has today are substantially no different than the opinions he held a decade ago. His intellectual curiosity has evaporated. He merely repeats himself.

Somewhat more profoundly, he has come to isolate himself as much as possible from new experiences. His routine is set. His day contains few challenges. He no longer wishes to be bothered with the new, the novel, the unexplored.

Old age can do that to us; it can be merciless. I do not point to him in order to blame him for what so many of us experience -- or will experience -- if we live long enough. Instead, I merely wish to illustrate how "He's not busy being born is busy dying".

Yet, we need not look to old age alone to illustrate in what ways Dylan's observation might be true. Society in many ways puts a great deal of pressure on all of us to be as unchanging, as constant, as ossified, as possible. Nor does one have to look far to see great and small examples of that pressure. Didn't society teach you the only valuable love is unchanging? Didn't it teach you any love which comes and goes is "mere infatuation"?

Or, look at class distinctions in so many societies -- the social sanctions that are leveled like canon against anyone who dares to break out of the social class they were born into.

Again, take even the most trivial example: How often have you heard someone called a "flip-flopper", a "waffler"? How often have you heard it said changing your opinions shows a lack of firmness and character? Demanding that someone never change their opinions is tantamount to demanding they learn nothing from one day to the next. Yet, society generally values the person who learns nothing during the course of a day over the person who learns something new.

I cannot begin to cover here the myriad ways society tries to pressure people into remaining constant. Yet, remaining constant is not at all the same thing as being true to ourselves.

"He's not busy being born is busy dying". How else can you stay genuinely true to yourself without being reborn -- again and again and again? For the self is always changing.

I think that becomes obvious once you give up trying to be a self and instead just observe yourself day to day. When you have learned to observe yourself like a scientist would observe a fruit fly -- as dispassionately as that -- you see how much you change. But to clearly observe yourself, I think you must neither condemn nor praise what you observe. A dispassionate scientist would neither condemn nor praise a fruit fly -- why should we think we need to condemn or praise ourselves? Condemnation and praise seem to be mere ways of escaping from clear observation.

I do not believe it is necessary -- and I believe it can even be detrimental -- to set for ourselves a goal of change or renewal.

Instead, once we learn how to dispassionately observe ourselves, we will understand ourselves -- and with that understanding comes change. But if we set a goal of renewal, we will only achieve a little change -- far short of a rebirth -- and then backslide. Everyone has seen that happen to those people who pray fervently to become better people, go for two weeks or two months, and then backslide. It's even true some people spend their whole lives doing that without ever catching on to how worthless it is. Yet, merely learn how to dispassionately observe ourselves and the rest will come naturally.

D. H. Lawrence somewhere writes beautifully of another reason we should avoid setting a predetermined goal for how we want to change. Speaking to young people, he reminds them they have often been told that the challenge of youth is to throw off the chains that oppress them. He then explains how they have been misled by that, and how throwing off the chains that oppress them is by no means the primary challenge of youth. Instead, he tells them their job is to "discover the unexpected door" to their lives. Why is that true?

I think it is true because, as Heraclitus long ago said, "No man steps into the same river twice, because either the river has changed, or the man has changed, or both." Now, if that's a simple fact, then how can anyone stay true to themselves without being reborn -- without "discovering the unexpected door"? Perhaps when we set a predetermined goal to how we want to change, we close off that unexpected door, and with it, our chance for genuine rebirth.

A Reader Writes In About International Nude Blogging Day

2007-11-12T06:30:00.001-07:00

Dear Café Philos,

I devotedly wish to support International Nude Blogging Days, but I have a question. A while back, my dear husband made it abundantly clear that he believes it is entirely inappropriate for me to blog stark naked nude.

As you can see from the accompanying photo, I have compromised by assiduously blogging while fan dancing. My question is: Is fan dancing while blogging a good way to support the International Nude Blogging Movement?

Respectfully yours,

Sally "Flaming Feathers" Smith

Dear Flaming Feathers,

Blogging while fan dancing is a perfectly appropriate way to support the International Nude Blogging Movement. After all, the purpose of the Movement is to protest against prudes who foolishly equate any state of undress with rampant immorality. Since fan dancing involves a state of undress, it is highly likely to scandalize prudes, and is therefore a good thing. Carry on!

Yours in Undress,

Café Philos

How the Net Fascinates Me

2007-11-12T04:12:00.000-07:00

For me, one of the most fascinating things about the net is how the net makes it easy to meet and know exceptional people.

I am not talking about famous people here.

Frankly, all but a few of the world's most famous people cause me to despair of humanity. Really, is there anything about a Bush, a Putin, or a Musharraf that makes you want to celebrate humanity? Is there anything about a James Dobson, a Britney Spears, or a Bill O'Reilly that makes you want to cheer? Have you ever praised The Cosmic Weirdness for gifting you with a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? I strongly suspect most of the world's most famous people became famous because they were driven to covet fame, power, or money above all else in their lives. In other words, because they were shallow.

When you turn away from the most famous and instead surf the net for the much less famous, though, you seem to turn away from some of the worse people humanity has to offer and turn towards some of the best it has to offer. That has been the great discovery I've made about the internet -- it allows you to meet and know people who lack fame, but who are genuinely exceptional.

That point tends to pop up in my mind each time I surf blogs. If all I knew of humanity were the world's most famous people, I would become a cynic. I could not believe in humanity. I would despair of it.

Yet, so very many of the people I've met on the net have proven themselves kind, gifted and even wise. That's not to say everyone I've met is those things. Yet, I'd rather take my chances of meeting a very decent person on the net, than take my chances of meeting a very decent person at a White House dinner.

On the net, I have met people who are not famous, but who are world class writers, poets, or photographers. I have met people who are extraordinarily intelligent or exceptionally wise. I have met people who are better informed and more intellectually honest than most of the world's famous pundits. I have met people who I suspect have an unrivaled capacity for kindness. I have even met people who have either the luck or the talent to lead quite interesting lives. In short, I have met dozens of people who should be world famous if that sort of fame was based solely on one's human merit. Largely because of these people, I do not despair of humanity.

So, what effect can meeting so many great, but largely unknown, people have on us? Perhaps I can only speak for myself here, but one effect all of this has on me is to create a longing to become -- not merely a good American, not even merely a good Westerner -- but a good citizen of the world.

This is coming from someone who does not consider himself sentimental about humanity. I know humanity can be ugly. I know we are the least sane of the Great Apes. I am aware we are destroying the only world we have, and I recognize it's a long shot the world will ever come together in a sustainable peace. Yet, I still wish to become a good citizen of the world. It seems to me the sanest course in an insane world. What hope I have for such sanity comes to me in some large part from having met so many wonderful people on the net.

If the world is ever to be a decent place for most of us to live, it won't be because of the Bushes and Cheneys, the Dobsons and Spears, the politicians, pundits and preachers, but because of the common people.

Great Moments in Diplomacy

2007-11-12T02:58:00.000-07:00

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez shares with his friend Fidel Castro a fondness for inflicting marathon speeches on his audiences. But when the Venezuelan was motormouthing his audience at a recent summit of Latin leaders, "Juan Carlos, the Spanish monarch, could take no more. He flashed a withering look at the president and uttered five words likely to go down in diplomatic history: 'Why don't you shut up?'"

The stunning breach of protocol, did shut up the socialist revolutionary. For about two seconds. Then he regained his voice.

Chávez's detractors at home and abroad have gone wild over the event, playing it and replaying it, sending each other high-fives, and in general seeing it as a long overdue comeuppance.

It's not entirely clear, however, whether the King was most put off by Chávez's long windedness or by Chávez's repeated references to a former Spanish Prime Minister as a "fascist".

I wonder if the Spanish would be willing to lease out their king to attend a Cheney speech?

Reference:

'Shut up!' Spanish King Tells Chávez

Great Moments in Science

2007-11-11T00:55:00.000-07:00

From "Married to the Sea"

New Study Damns Abstinence Only Sex Education

2007-11-10T08:36:00.001-07:00

According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy:

Despite a one-third decline since the early 1990s, the United States still has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and birth among comparable countries. In 2004, the U.S. teen birth rate was 41.1 births per 1,000 teens aged 15-19. By way of comparison, the U.S. teen birth rate is one and a half times higher than the teen birth rate in the United Kingdom (26.8 per 1,000) which has the highest teen birth rate in Europe, more than twice as high as the teen birth rate in Canada (14.5 per 1,000), seven times higher than the teen birth rate in Japan (5.6 per 1,000), Denmark (5.7 per 1,000) and Sweden (5.9 per 1,000).

Why does America lead the industrialized world in teen pregnancies? Let me suggest the reason might have something to do with the willful stupidity of American policy makers.

The nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy (NCPTUP) released on Wednesday a comprehensive review of research into teen sexual behavior. The review utterly damns America's cherished "abstinence only" sex education programs. Abstinence only sex education programs are programs that teach kids only one way to deal with their sexual feelings -- and that's by abstaining from sex.

The NCPTUP review failed to find even a single abstinence only program anywhere in the country that works -- despite that they looked at a total of 115 studies. They couldn't find one program that delays the initiation of sex. They couldn't find one program that hastens the return to abstinence. And they couldn't find one program that reduces the number of sexual partners. In any sane country, policy makers would study the NCPTUP report and abandon all support for abstinence only sex education.

This not a sane country.

Instead of abandoning abstinence only sex education, the Federal Government is about to increase the funding for it. Just a few days ago, the Democrat controlled Congress agreed to Bush's demand for an additional $28 million to fund abstinence only sex ed. That brings the annual funding for the Federal CBAE program to $141 million -- more than enough to wreck a few teens' lives. Can anything be more willfully stupid than that?

The CBAE program even requires those it funds to lie to kids about their sexuality. "For example, any program that receives CBAE funds has to teach [kids] that 'sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.'" Yet, if a kid is so young or fragile they are going to experience "harmful psychological and physical effects" from sex, marriage isn't going to make much difference.

In stark contrast to abstinence only sexuality education, the NCPTUP report found that, "Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect." Comprehensive sex ed programs do not fail to teach abstinence. Instead, they teach abstinence as the preferred behavior and the use of condoms and contraceptives as the second, fall back behavior. The "positive behavior effect" of comprehensive programs included delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use.

Opponents of comprehensive sex ed have often promoted myths about it. One thing that makes this NCPTUP report especially interesting is that it confronts the lies told about comprehensive sex ed by its opponents:

The study, conducted by Douglas Kirby, a senior research scientist at ETR Associates, also sought to debunk what the report called "myths propagated by abstinence-only advocates" including: that comprehensive sex education promotes promiscuity, hastens the initiative of sex or increases its frequency, and sends a confusing message to adolescents.

None of these was found to be accurate, Kirby wrote.

Instead, he wrote, such programs improved teens' knowledge about the risks and consequences of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and gave them greater "confidence in their ability to say 'no' to unwanted sex."

So, there you have it. Not only does abstinence only sex ed utterly fail, but comprehensive sex ed succeeds more times than not. Yet, abstinence only sex ed is Federally funded while comprehensive sex ed receives not a penny in Federal funds. Small wonder the US leads the industrial nations in teen pregnancies.

References:

Emerging Answers 2007: Report of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy

Report: Abstinence Programs Don't Work

One More Time: Abstinence Only Programs Don't Work, Comprehensive Programs Do

Just Say No To Increases In Abstinence Funds

Aaare Ruukk.. Jaa.....Re.... Bande....

2007-11-09T23:33:00.001-07:00

Indian Ocean, my new musical obsession.

This Blog's Reading Level?

2007-11-09T22:54:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. I have long felt I could vastly improve my prose style. I have wanted from the beginning of this blog to discuss complex ideas in a very easy to read and understand manner. And I thought I was making some progress towards that goal until... until I took the test. You see the results of the test: This blog has a college level reading level. Yikes!

Naturally, I blame the condom commercial. Obviously, the condom commercial skewed the results. After all, it can't be me. I've worked way too hard cleaning up my prose for it to be me. Damn that condom commercial!

The irony here is it took me six tries to figure out what I was doing wrong to get the very simple, user friendly "reading level program" to work -- yet supposedly, I've somehow managed to write at a college level despite that I cannot for the life of me get a very simple, user friendly program to work on the first try.

I'll sue the makers of the condom commercial. That's what I'll do. Yes, I'll sue them.

Condom Song - Telugu

2007-11-09T07:41:00.001-07:00

At first glance, this public service video from India is insufferably cute. But that's only at first glance. It's actually quite informative -- packing a huge amount of information into a cheesy but fun format. I only wish there were equally informative condom ads in the States.

By the way, that light-hearted tune is now stuck in my head and will probably be there all day -- evidence of how effective it is.

How Consciousness Experiences Something

2007-11-09T06:37:00.000-07:00

"When the soul wishes to experience something she throws an image of the experience out before her and enters into her own image."

- Meister Eckhart

From Around the Net

2007-11-09T03:08:00.001-07:00

Marissa is a 13 year old soccer star who wants to be a doctor. She started a blog a while back to showcase her poetry, but hardly anyone noticed her poetry, which is sad. She's got some pretty good stuff for her age -- albeit mostly angst ridden love poems. Check out one of her best here. And don't forget to post a compliment if you feel she deserves one!

Last week, I linked to someone who predicted the Religious Right in America was on the wane. This week, I'm linking to Ed, who says predictions of that sort are premature. Find it here.

Amuirin has a short post up about Chris Jordan, and artist who makes environmental statistics concrete and visual. Here you go.

Just in time for Thanksgiving -- a new theory of the universe. Specifically, a theory that states time is cyclical rather than linear, and hence the universe is cyclical rather than linear. Interesting reading here.

Trinifar has put up a post that I think is useful and important for understanding the overall role of science and technology in solving environmental problems.

Digby asks a disturbing question about the ability of scientists to communicate their side of the creationism/evolution debate here. At least, it's a disturbing question if you're on the side of science in that debate -- if you favor creationism, you might be dancing a jig after reading Digby.

Ms Ti looks aghast at some of the ingredients in the world's highly processed fast food meals here. Some of the things she finds make Chinese lead paint sound appetizing.

Pr3rna raises a lot of questions about both the role of the state in child rearing and the over involvement of modern parents here.

Oemar fearlessly tackles one of the most difficult questions in aesthetics: When is something porn, and when is something art? The article is here.

Ready for an outrage? Read how some high school students in Illinois were severely punished for exercising their rights as citizens. The story's over at Webs place.

I cannot recall reading a more clear and concise description of the psychological states that can occur through meditation than Mystic Wing's description of them here.

David writes beautifully about the nature of human strengths and weaknesses here.

Traveller analyzes the relationship between loss and our ability to experience empathy here. Although this is an old post, it's withstood the test of time.

I love this photo from Steve. I want it. I covet it. I need it. But when I went to download it for my personal photo files, a mean little sign popped up calling me "Cheeky" and I couldn't download it. Visit Steve's site and make him give it to me! Please! I'll be good and brush my teeth for a whole year if you do.

I have never in real life seen the gorgeous species of ducks Loren captures in these photos.

In a brazen attempt to get more Google hits, Rambodoc offers up many quaint and interesting facts about the human penis here. Little does he suspect, however, that as far back as March, I blogged on a fossilized 425 million year old penis belonging to an extinct species of water flea and I've been getting Google hits off of that one ever since.

AOS thoughtfully discusses the serial killer in fiction and film here, and identifies some interesting trends.

This is an old post, but if you haven't seen it, you haven't lived a full life yet. It's "The Mean Kitty Song" put up by Bibliomom, and it's funny, entertaining, and so witty it's probably illegal in seven countries.

Gary writes about his classes' field trip to an art museum here. The true life story has some nice twists to it, well worth a read.

Harlequinn has put up a personal memoir of how she first got an office job in the Ohio porn industry and then became a political activist because of it -- all without having much love or use for porn.

Chanson has been publishing a novel on her blog in installments. It's a fascinating read, and one place to start is here. But be warned! It's addictive! You can really get into her characters.

Theraaa surprised me with his views on the reunification of Germany. Apparently, Germany is still in many ways divided more than a decade after its political reunification. Read about it on Theraaa's blog before Time Magazine picks up the story.

Brendan posts a well written and comprehensive analysis of the abortion debate here.

Priyank's blog seems to be working this week, something that's not always the case, so jump on this chance to check out his travelogs! But hurry! His blog has a way of going down at times.

A Matter of Priority

2007-11-07T08:39:00.000-07:00

In life, it is far more important to develop your strengths than to compensate for your weaknesses.

Assuming God Exists Is Not Mysticism

2007-11-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

This morning I was surfing blogs. One link led to another and I found myself on a site devoted to "mysticism". But as I read the site's introduction, I was struck by the author's insistence that God exists ontologically:

"Basically all religions teach the same basic truth: man's existence has a metaphysical basis, to which man wants to relink his life. This metaphysical basis is usually referred to as God, Brahman, Allah etc. But it is the same in every man. This magnificent and unspeakable source of life and happiness will here be called the God/Brahman, but you can give it any name you want, according to your own convictions."

Man's existence has a metaphysical basis? I doubt anyone wisely begins a study of mysticism by assuming god exists ontologically, as some kind of metaphysical entity. That's like preparing to shop for groceries by assuming you already have enough food in your house: It's a foolish assumption that will retard your progress until you discard it.

The spirit and substance of mysticism is to discover whatever there is to discover through one's own experience. Mysticism is not theology, and, unlike theology, it is not fundamentally speculative, nor is it hearsay. Instead, mysticism is grounded in direct experience, in personal discovery.

Personal experience is open ended and uncertain. Hence, mysticism is open ended and uncertain. I cannot today tell you with absolute certainty how I will feel tomorrow. Perhaps I will bounce out of bed feeling like a new man. Perhaps I will wake up with a cold. If I cannot even tell you with absolute certainty how I will feel tomorrow, how much of a fool must I be to pretend it is absolutely certain God is an ontologically existing metaphysical entity?

Popular Culture and Love

2007-11-06T22:21:00.000-07:00

A young couple I know were arguing the other night about love. Specifically, one of them held the position that love ends at divorce, while the other was equally insistent that love didn't need to end at divorce.

The point hardly seems worth arguing for the truth is obvious: It's certain some couples who divorce are not in love, while other couples who divorce are in love yet somehow incompatible (the whole notion that you can be in love yet still not be compatible doesn't seem to occur to most young people -- I think you need a few more years and to have seen it a few times to realize it's quite common). So, why were they arguing it?

I might speculate it's because our society -- actually, our popular culture -- has such a narrow view of love and relationships. From Hollywood we learn that a couple who love each other never divorce unless they are going to remarry by the film's end. We also learn true love overcomes all difficulties, life is meant to be lived for love, and no one is better off single than in a relationship. Popular music and romance novels pretty much tell us the same things. If that's all you've been taught to expect of love and relationships, it is small wonder you might argue over whether love ends at divorce.

Real life is much richer than the cartoons of love and relationships presented to us by popular culture. So, I thought I would list a few scenarios that are not typically portrayed in popular culture:

You can love someone you're incompatible with, and many people do.
Most often, there's no reason or explanation for why you love someone: You just do.
So very often lovers part because they cannot overcome some difficulty having little or nothing to do with love or even with psychological compatibility, such as a difference between them of race, age, lifestyle, or religion.
People can and do love more than one person.
There is no guarantee the greatest love of your life will marry you.
People in love with each other can prefer to live apart.
Divorced people can still love each other, and yet not wish to remarry.
Not all love is constant -- many times love comes, goes, and returns like a breeze.
The most significant thing about love is surely not how long it lasts, and merely how long a relationship lasts proves nothing in itself about the quality of love in that relationship: After all, mere co-dependencies tend to last forever.
Most people, at one time or another, will confuse love with emotional dependency.
Some people can be much happier single than married.
Not everyone who loves, loves well, nor ever learns how to love well.
The intensity of one's feelings does not necessarily indicate the quality of one's love. Just because you love intensely does not mean you love well.

So, what other scenarios that aren't typically found in popular culture have I forgotten here?

The Most Successful Peasant Revolt In European History

2007-11-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

According to some historians, during the thousand year long Middle Ages in Europe there was on average one peasant revolt per year. All of them failed.

There are several reasons for the failure of the peasantry to successfully revolt against the elites of the Middle Ages, but I'll mention only one reason to illustrate the difficulty the peasants faced. Before the advent of the hand-held firearm, it required years of training to produce someone highly competent in the best weapons of the Middle Ages. Most peasants didn't train in those weapons, and as a consequence, were usually over-matched when they revolted. Sickles against lances, hammers against swords.

But why did the peasants so frequently revolt in the first place? The most usual reason seems to have been famine. During most of the middle ages, transportation was so poor that it was almost unheard of to ship food in bulk for any distance. So, if the crops failed in one locality, that locality could experience famine even though there might be a surplus of food a mere 30 miles away. When famine struck a locality, the elites had custom, law and force all on their side -- they got what food there was, despite that the peasants produced the food. That left the peasants starving and prone to revolt.

Broadly speaking, at least three things came together to end the thousand year landscape of the Middle Ages. The first was the rise of capitalism, which can be traced back to very early beginnings around 900 A.D. The second was the British Agricultural Revolution -- a remarkable increase in agricultural productivity -- that can be traced back to around 1500 A.D. And the third was the Industrial Revolution, which began around 1700 A.D.

Those three factors, working together, created Europe's most successful peasant revolt. For, while all the revolts of the Middle Ages failed, capitalism, the British Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution eventually brought not only wealth and long lifespans to the peasantry, but arguably contributed to their political liberation.

It seems odd to me that nowadays so many of us have come to resent those three developments. We see the many serious problems they have created and we sometimes imagine it would be a good thing if we were rid of capitalism, industrialization, and even large scale agriculture. Yet, to get rid of those things would surely plunge us back into an age when most people lived a short life of scarcity and want. So, I think the real problem is not to get rid of the very things that have lifted societies out of poverty, but to "update" them. We do not need, for instance, to abolish capitalism so much as we need a newer, more useful version of it with the most pressing bugs worked out.

A final consideration here is my gripe against ideologies. Not just any ideology, but all ideologies suffer from the fact they are either impossible or cumbersome to change. The world moves on, but the world's ideologies merely turn into retarded and retarding dogmas. I have never met an ideology that didn't turn to stone all it touched. If a software company were ever to adopt an ideology of software, you can bet they would go out of business -- because they would never update their product in any meaningful or useful way. Version 2.0 would have the same bugs as version 1.0 -- and only the marketing department would say it was better than 1.0. If we are ever so unwise as to leave the future of capitalism, the agricultural and industrial revolutions entirely to ideologists, we will surely get the disasters we deserve for our folly.

After all, it wasn't Christianity, the ideology of the day, that brought about Europe's most successful peasant revolt. Nor should we expect the ideologies of our day to bring about a successful social and economic future for humanity.

Teen Spirit?

2007-11-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

Is it just my imagination or has anyone else noticed that when teenage girls talk about having "spiritual yearnings" it means they're horny?

I don't mean to put down teenage girls here. They face a lot of challenges and don't need to be dumped on. Yet, at the same time, I believe I've noticed on many occasions how the word "spiritual" can seem almost synonymous with the word "horny" as it's used by teenage girls. Not always, but often enough to be noticeable.

I even have a theory about it (why, of course I do!). My theory is that most of us, when we enter puberty, don't make an instant connection between the new feelings we experience and horniness. In both boys and girls, feelings of horniness are created by the hormone testosterone. But those feelings don't come labeled "horniness". Instead, we must learn to interpret them as horniness. And while we are learning to properly interpret them as horniness, we often interpret them as something else, such as a "spiritual yearning".

What are the feelings produced by testosterone? Well, one of the most common feelings is sometimes described as "a desire or longing to hit the road". You can see how easily that feeling could be interpreted as spiritual if you listen to Led Zeppelin's famous "Stairway to Heaven" while Plant sings, "There's a feeling I get when I look to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving."

Testosterone also produces a feeling very akin to "emptiness" -- and I've long noticed that when adolescent girls talk about their spirituality, they often talk about it in terms of feelings of longing and emptiness.

I speculate it might be a little harder for girls to make the connection between the feelings produced by testosterone and sexual yearning because girls don't come equipped with an appendage that frequently rises up and points out the connection to them. Boys do. But perhaps a bigger reason it might be more difficult for girls to make the connection is that society expects and accepts that boys will get horny, while at the same time, society more or less still frowns on girls getting horny. Therefore, there might be some pressure on girls to find a more socially acceptable label for their testosterone induced feelings than "horniness". What could be more socially acceptable than a "spiritual yearning"?

None of this is meant to discount the genuine spiritual needs of adolescent girls. I merely wish to point out my impression that girls (more often than boys) sometimes confuse horniness with "spiritual yearning". Adolescence is usually the first time in our lives that we become intensely concerned with spiritual matters. It is also usually the first time in our lives that we become intensely concerned with sexual matters. Since both concerns are in many ways new and unfamiliar to us, it seems possible that we might at times confuse the two.

If so, I wonder how often an exceptionally fervent teenage interest in religion is due to good, old fashioned horniness?

Trailer Park Politics

2007-11-05T05:51:00.000-07:00

I wonder if Americans will ever get tired of trailer park politics? Will they someday decide that demonizing your opposition, seeing the world in black and white, slandering your opponents, and allowing your ideology to do your thinking for you are no way to run a household, let alone a nation? Or will the disease of trailer park politics continue indefinitely?

Politics has always been a dirty business, yet there are times when it's a dirtier business than usual. We seem to be living through one of those times.

What do you think? Do you see any signs that the trend towards trailer park politics is abating? Or are things just likely to get worse?

Colin Powell on America and Terrorism

2007-11-05T05:41:00.000-07:00

"What we cannot do, can never do, is change who we are as a people. We are an open, welcoming nation. So let's not be afraid, America. Let's stand tall, welcome the rest of the world, and show terrorism what democracy and freedom is all about."

- Colin Powell

At the End of the Journey

2007-11-05T04:47:00.000-07:00

"It is always our own self that we find at the end of the journey. The sooner we face that self, the better."

- Ella Maillart

Addiction should Never be Treated as a Crime

2007-11-05T04:41:00.000-07:00

"Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users."

- Ralf Nader

The 10th Humanist Symposium is Up!

2007-11-04T23:46:00.000-07:00

There's some great reading over at Chanson's site, "Letters From A Broad" -- the 10th Humanist Symposium is up! Chanson has done an excellent job bringing together a diverse and fascinating collection of articles for the 10th Symposium, despite the fact she included one of my articles in the selection. Please check out the Humanist Symposium here.

Near to Home

2007-11-04T01:08:00.001-06:00

The above photo was taken in the late afternoon at a park close to where I live in Colorado.

Who's Got Time For Ghosts?

2007-11-03T10:09:00.001-06:00

Via Evolutionary Middleman

Objective Reality?

2007-11-03T08:48:00.000-06:00

Objective reality -- that's any reality one objects to, right?

Rich and Poor

2007-11-03T04:39:00.000-06:00

"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."

- Plutarch

From Around the Net

2007-11-02T19:33:00.001-06:00

Some of the articles I found on the net this time around are a week or two old, but I think they're good articles and still interesting.

Rambodoc posted an award winning design for an environmentally friendly city car of the future here. The car has details you won't believe possible -- but the technology is entirely feasible.

Susan blogs on an American school that has banned hugs here. The school apparently can't distinguish between a hug and sexual harassment.

Nita writes here about the tendency in India to wedge children into the sciences even when the kids have no aptitude for them. Doubtless, this practice creates numerous adults who feel they are in the wrong careers.

Orcinus has an alarming investigative post here on how Latvian fundamentalists are coming to the United States specifically to attack gays -- often violently.

Amuirin has an intriguing post on the Days of the Dead celebration here. This was the first time the holiday made sense to me.

Enreal posts a poem on the aftermath of a relationship here. I thought it captured well how we all feel at some moments in the fallout from a failed relationship.

The Atheist Ethicist writes about the Maine decision to provide birth control upon demand to middle schoolers here. This decision has been sensationalized elsewhere, but the Ethicist looks at it with remarkable rationality.

Over at An Unquiet Mind, Mahendra has prompted one of the most interesting economic discussions I've seen in a while here with his post comparing the economies of Dubai and the States. The comments are extensive, but very much worth reading as several people with extensive information weigh in.

A photographer who goes by the name Markablue just began a photography blog here. Her main theme is nature and she starts off with an excellent selection of fall material that strikes me as very reflective.

Maha looks at corporate funding in American politics and finds good news: The Christian Right is being marginalized this election cycle. Story here.

Bill Hulet posts an exceptionally insightful essay on fundamentalism, reason and religion here. In this case, the religion in question is Daoism.

AOS asks whether reading a book matters if we forget that we've read it, he and comes up with an interesting take on that question here.

David defines genius in an amusing yet thoughtful way here.

After a hiatus of about two months, Brendan has started blogging again here.

Ybonesy posts an hilarious open letter to the makers of digital cameras here.

Eric writes about the neurochemistry of motherly love here.

I began with Rambodoc and will end this week's round up with him too. Here is an absolute must read post -- a gripping, true life account of his care for an aged patient written in beautiful prose.

Was the World We Know Created Out of Nothing -- Or Out of Something?

2007-11-01T23:11:00.000-06:00

If one thinks of creation stories as containing psychological truths, rather than physical truths, then perhaps those stories in which the world was created out some pre-existing substance are more psychologically true than those stories in which the world was created out of nothing.

I've tried to point out in the post that follows this one how our awareness of the world is limited. That is, we are not aware of the world as is, but only as interpreted. This psychological truth seems to imply, however, that our interpretation is derived from some kind of information we get from the world. Our eyes detect photons. The photons are of the world and pre-exist our interpretation of the world. We then interpret those photons. That act of interpretation can be seen as an act of creation in which we make the world -- not out of nothing -- but out of something (photons).

Yet, if all that is true, and if one wants to look at creation stories as psychological truths, then those creation stories which state the world was created out of pre-existing matter would seem to be more psychologically accurate than those creation stories which state the world was created out of nothing.

Coping with the World on Instruments Alone

2007-11-01T22:12:00.000-06:00

My senses tell me I'm sitting in a solid chair. On the other hand, physics tells me the chair I'm sitting in is mostly empty space. How can it be there is a difference between my subjective impression of the chair and what physics tells me is objectively true about the chair?

The short answer is that my brain and nervous system (very much including my senses) do not reconstruct reality as it is. My eyes do not, for instance, see the atoms of my chair, nor the empty space between the atoms. Instead, my eyes take in photons that have bounced off the atoms of the chair. My eyes and brain then process and interpret that information. In the end, what I see bears little resemblance to what is actually there according to physics.

One way to understand the relation between my subjective impression of the chair and what physics tells me is objectively true about the chair is to consider the analogy of a pilot landing an aircraft on instruments. Although the plane's instruments give the pilot very little information about the world -- and even though what information they give him is highly processed and interpreted -- the information he gets is sufficient for him to navigate. Just so, our brains and nervous systems give us very little information about the world and the information they do give us is highly processed and interpreted -- yet it's usually sufficient for us to cope with the world.

We are all like that pilot -- we must cope with the world on instruments alone. That's the position our brains and nervous systems leave us in.

Bill and Monica Revisted

2007-10-31T14:09:00.000-06:00

I suppose the short answer is: Evolution. That is, the short answer to the question, "Why is understanding human sexuality so important to understanding human nature?"

From the theory of evolution, we know that reproductive success determines which species will hang around. Then when you combine that with the simple fact we reproduce sexually, you get the short answer. It's not sexual desire that makes understanding our sexuality so important to understanding human nature. It's evolution.

That understanding human sexuality is crucial to understanding human nature is so obvious even some of our politicians know it. That's why they seldom speak of the future in abstract terms -- instead, they speak of "the world we will leave to our children". The distant future is just a fantasy to most people -- until you link it to their reproductive success. Then, of a sudden, it becomes something to be taken seriously.

Sex, of course, is not everything. Human nature is not synonymous with human sexuality, and all efforts to reduce human nature to human sexuality have failed. Yet, our sexuality so pervades us that it is impossible in many ways to understand people without understanding their sexuality. The affair Bill Clinton had with Monica Lewinsky told us at least as much about Bill Clinton the man as his decision to bomb Serbia.

I have always wondered why Clinton chose Lewinsky. A president can pick from a host of women. Why didn't he pick an extraordinarily gifted, talented, sophisticated, and intelligent woman? Put differently, why didn't he pick someone who challenged him, inspired him, made him want to be the best he could be?

Familiar Thoughts

2007-10-31T12:26:00.000-06:00

This morning, I poured myself a glass of milk and noticed as I poured it that I was thinking the same random thought I'd had the day before when I poured myself a glass of milk. But that wasn't all, for yesterday I'd noticed that very same thing repetitious thought when I poured myself a glass of milk.

Moreover, in recent days, I've discovered more repetitious thoughts. It seems when I put on my shoes, the same thought pops into my head as when I last put them on. When I brush my teeth, I have the same thought as the last time I brushed my teeth. These are all different thoughts -- I don't think the same thing putting on my shoes as I do brushing my teeth -- but they are in each circumstance the same thought today as they were in that same circumstance yesterday.

It seems so many of the spontaneous thoughts I have on a given day are repetitious.

I can guess at a simple explanation for it. Some of the neurons in my brain have made more or less random associations between, say, putting on my shoes and my memories of the weather on a certain day last week. So, when I put on my shoes those neurons are prompted to fire and I remember the weather on that day. It doesn't surprise me that happens. What has surprised me in recent days is how much it happens.

So many of my thoughts are familiar to me that I'm beginning to suspect the brain is an extraordinarily repetitious animal. It seems to like ruts. As I was going to the laundry room a few minutes ago, it occurred to me (for the first time, apparently), "These repetitious thoughts are comforting. They reassure me I am the same person I was the day before. They provide a semblance of stability in an ever changing world. Yet, that semblance of stability is based on the mere repetition of thoughts, the repeated firing of the same neurons, rather than on the stability of events. Is it therefore illusionary?"

I didn't pursue the idea very far. It's one of those notions that can be tested through observation, so I decided to simply wait and watch rather than try to reason it out.

Holmes on Real Thoughts

2007-10-31T11:12:00.000-06:00

"Every real thought on every real subject knocks the wind out of somebody or other."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Holmes on Tact and Courtesy

2007-10-31T11:04:00.000-06:00

"Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Irony of Our Times?

2007-10-29T14:24:00.000-06:00

I think it's ironic that at the very moment communication and transportation technologies are creating a "global world", specialization is fragmenting each of our societies into expert little niches that often do not understand one another.

It's no longer much of an exaggeration these days to say the only people who understand the law are lawyers, the only people who understand medicine are doctors, the only people who understand information technologies are IT specialists, the only people who understand plumbing are plumbers, and the only people who understand carpentry are carpenters.

Yet, all of those people are increasingly using each other's products and services. I'm typing this on a computer whose components are made in several countries to be read by people from several countries -- and yet much of what I know about the world is so highly specialized that I avoid discussing it except in general terms. Likewise, I can only follow general discussions of what my friends for whom I'm typing this know about the world.

It's not just that we are becoming one world: We are also at the same time dividing into many worlds. I think that is one of the reasons the internet is so important to the future of humanity. It seems to have the power to bring together people from diverse backgrounds, from diverse skill and information niches, into unified online communities. Without that, the world could unite economically -- and even politically -- but perhaps not in a very humane way.

On Philosophy

2007-10-29T13:43:00.000-06:00

Formal philosophy is just as much a matter of unlearning the mistakes of the past as it is a matter of creating new mistakes for future generations to unlearn.

The Universal Moral Grammar

2007-10-29T12:08:00.000-06:00

I pulled up an old article published on the web by Discover Magazine this morning and read, "Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser's new theory says evolution hardwired us to know right from wrong." Yet, that's not quite what Marc Hauser is saying.

Instead, it would be more correct to say, Hauser is asserting something along these lines: Our concept that there is such a thing as right and wrong is hardwired into us by our evolution. We have a sort of universal "moral grammar", but not a universal "moral language". For instance: The notion it is wrong to harm an innocent person is universal, but specific notions of who is innocent and who is not innocent are far from being universal.

Yet, most certainly, Hauser is not saying right and wrong exist independent of us. In Hauser's world, man is the measure of right and wrong -- not some metaphysical standard of right and wrong.

Oddly enough, saying "man is the measure of right and wrong" does not preclude a god having something to do with that measure. For, if I were religious, I could always say something like, "God inscribed a universal moral grammar upon the human heart."

Of course, were I both religious and uncomprehending, I could say something like, "God inscribed morality upon the human heart." But that implies there is only one true morality -- and implying that is just as silly as asserting there is only one true human language.

Another way of illustrating the distinction between moral grammar and moral language would be to say morality is hardwired into us much like tool use is hardwired into us. Humans naturally create and use tools. But the specific kinds of tools humans use can vary from culture to culture. And how tools are used can even vary from person to person. So, too, morality is hardwired into us on one level, yet is determined by our culture on another level, and on yet a third level is individual.

Along the Phantom Canyon Road

2007-10-28T21:52:00.000-06:00

Earlier, Don and I drove out of town south into a hazy fall afternoon. We speculated the haze could be coming from the large California fires, for there seemed no other source for it. It's happened before that smoke has drifted hundreds of miles into Colorado from large fires as far away as California. Was that happening today?

No way of to be certain. But the distant mountains to the south and west were obscured by the haze while above us the sky still embraced the royal blue depth of a perfect autumn day.

I hadn't driven south of Colorado Springs in well over two years. You forget how beautiful the hills and canyons are. The colors are mostly understated and subtle in the fall. Olive junipers dot the yellow grasses, cling to the sandy red cliffs like freckles. The deeper greens of Ponderosa and pinon pines crowd the junipers, and the scrub oak has copper leaves. All respectable earth tones. But then along the water courses, the light bursts as it falls into the luminous yellow leaves of the cottonwoods.

Gorges and canyons, mesas and buttes. The land seems eternal here. It's hard to believe people own it -- you think more of the land owning them.

There's defiance of the land in some of the houses people have built. Houses whose architecture is traditional in distant parts of America -- in the northeast, for instance -- but not here in Colorado. You can't look at those houses without imagining some newcomer has tried to transplant a bit of the lush eastern United States, complete with well watered bluegrass lawns, to the rocky, thin soils of the arid west. Maybe he got homesick for a more congenial landscape. Maybe he's in denial he no longer lives in Massachusetts, Georgia or Kentucky. Whatever the case, it's not really your problem -- yet in this land, his home is an alien.

Some miles south of the Springs, Don and I turned off the main road and, after a few miles, entered Phantom Canyon. Phantom Canyon is a narrow gorge whose rock walls rise 150 or 200 feet. It winds for miles up into the Rockie Mountains -- right into the heart of the high gold country. The road changed from asphalt to gravel, and then from gravel to earth. The walls were mostly red rock deeply fractured by the weather, like an old man's face; and brilliant cottonwoods lined the floor of the canyon.

It's strange how in some parts of Colorado you can see everywhere the evidence of people -- you are after all, traveling a road built by people -- and yet you almost feel you are the first person to explore the land. Twice in the Canyon cars passed us coming from the other direction and each time the occupants waved to us as if we were the first people they'd seen all month. I think that feeling of being a little bit beyond the boundaries of society doesn't just come from the scarcity of people on the Phantom Canyon road. I think it comes from the way the world rises up 150 to 200 feet above you. I think it comes from the way the trees, the grasses, and the brush obey their own laws -- not some gardener's laws. I think it comes from the uncivilized quiet that confronts you when you finally stop and step out of your car. But whatever the source of it, the effect is to give you a slightly different perspective on yourself.

It's not the beauty of nature that most inspires me to reflect on myself. Nature is not always beautiful. But nature is always indifferent. And it's that indifference that inspires both thought and feeling about the human condition.

You can never really put what you learn about yourself from nature in words because what you learned, you didn't learn from words. Rather, you simply experienced a truth. You can write all the commentaries you want about your experiences, but you cannot recreate them through those commentaries. Words never brought a fractured rock cliff into existence.

At times, it seems that societies revolve around the ego. Perhaps it can even seem they are huge conspiracies to make the ego primary in this world. I think the ego is just as much a part of us -- of who we are as a species -- as our eyes and noses, and I reject any ideology that calls for the annihilation of the ego. Yet, I don't think the ego is of primary importance. I think it has its place, but that place is not central.

I believe I see that most clearly when I am out in nature, away from society, away from its tendency to make the ego primary. Yet, it is also out in nature when I feel I am being most true to myself. Is that a paradox?

You Can Always Count On Americans...

2007-10-28T00:52:00.000-06:00

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing… after they’ve tried everything else.”

- Winston Churchill

How Do Parents Do It?

2007-10-27T22:07:00.000-06:00

I spent today with my brother, sister-in-law, and my two nephews. Although my brother and his family live just an hour's drive north of me, both my brother and his wife are often traveling on business (one of today's two career families) and so the time we have together is somewhat rare and always precious.

I'm far from being an expert on parenting, so I might have missed a lot of what was going on, but I was amazed at how gentle and patient the two adults are and how well behaved, yet confident, spontaneous and alive, the two boys are.

They are five and six years old -- and I unexpectedly found myself worried about their future.

The last thing I expected today was to be worried about my nephew's future. But there are so many traps laid for children as they grow up. Drugs, bullies, consumerism -- to name just three. As I watched the kids take delight in anything and everything today, I reflected that no matter what opportunities the boys are given in life, no matter how excellent their parents, and no matter how good their education, the risk of tragedy will always be there for them. How do parents do it?

How do parents live with the uncertainty of life without going nuts? If an uncle can feel how fragile the future can be for his nephews, how much more must that feeling be for the parents themselves?

It seems to me that one must learn how to deal with such thoughts.

Four Stone Hearth

2007-10-26T14:51:00.000-06:00

Four Stone Hearth -- an excellent anthropology carnival -- is up at Primate Diaries. The available articles cover all major branches of anthropology, and Eric's descriptions of them are intriguing and concise. Visit the carnival here.

What's Wrong With Teen Nudity?

2007-10-26T14:34:00.000-06:00

The other day I was listening to a bimbo talk show host who was scandalized that a nudist resort in Virginia or someplace allowed teens. He seemed to feel that while it was OK for consenting adults to practice nudity, it was horrifying that teens would be allowed to practice nudity. In fact, he thought it was downright immoral of the resort to allow teens in.

Now, I happen to think the talk show host was making a moutain out of a mole hill. For some years ago, I was acquainted with many teens in this town, several of whom would invite me to go along with them on their various excursions, which were often to a nude resort up in the mountains. I recall a number of things about those trips, including staying up until three in the morning in the sauna listening to the teens discuss relationships, sex and God, or being sought out by one teen or another for private chats about their anxieties, but I don't recall that any kids were traumatized by their experiences on these trips. So, I tend to think the bimbo talk show host was just being a bimbo.

But what do you think? Do you think the bimbo talk show host for once had a point? Is there a danger to teen nudity that I didn't see (wouldn't be the first time I haven't seen something)? Should teens be allowed in nudist resorts?

Thank You For Such Excellent Comments!

2007-10-26T14:04:00.001-06:00

Folks have been leaving some excellent comments on this blog. I've been at a loss responding to them, but I wish you to know that I've been reading the comments with pleasure. I'm deeply grateful to all who have been commenting. Thank you so much for the happiness you've given me!

My Brain Took A Break

2007-10-26T13:35:00.000-06:00

I've begun to notice that every three months or four months, my brain spontaneously takes a break from blogging. That's what's happened this past week or so -- and it also happened about three or four months ago for a couple of weeks.

I think it's a bit like what happens when you eat too much of your favorite food. You sooner or later get to a place where your favorite food fails to excite your enthusiasm for a while. This past week or two I've been at a loss for ideas of what to write about. Or, more precisely, the ideas I've had have seemed bland and unappetizing to me. I suspect, though, that I'm coming out of it -- otherwise I might not be writing this.

My blog is a long term project. I plan on keeping it up for years. But perhaps I should just accept as natural that I will want a vacation from it every now and then. Otherwise, I might get permanently burnt out -- which would be as life negating as getting permanently burnt out on chocolate.

Comment Moderation

2007-10-26T13:26:00.000-06:00

I'm sorry to say the blog is getting hit by spam for medications so I've enabled comment moderation for a while. That means your comments will not appear immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hangs Head in Shame

2007-10-20T22:08:00.000-06:00

I'm aware that it has been a very long while since I have posted here. It makes me feel guilty to see my name at the side of this page, particularly because I haven't even conversed with Paul in quite a while.

I hate being one of those subtly-stressed floundering career women who always blame everything on not having enough time. I know that I waste a lot of time chain-smoking and petting my cat. So it would be lame of me to try and justify my prolonged absence. I do enough of that when I call in sick (three cheers for mental health days!).

Instead I will kiss all of your virtual feet and beg for your quiet forgiveness.

An incredibly brief synopsis: Migraines not yet subsided, life in splinters, cat box perpetually dirty, can't find ANY of the twenty some-odd spoons I know are in this house somewhere.
And that is the extent of my knowledge regarding my latent realization that I haven't been happy in months.

Enough whining.

After reading Paul's frighteningly visceral post, "Changes", I felt compelled to share a little secret of mine that makes seasons more bearable and beautiful, even if one hates all four of them.

A long time ago I decided to rename the seasons to suit what they actually DO to me. It's obvious that changes in weather aren't gentle in their violent rearrangement of my outlook and substance. In fact, it may have nothing at all to do with the weather, but rather, my life may follow some twisted cycle of phases that lines up perfectly with Mother Nature's, and it's all pure coincidence.

(Thanks go out to my grade twelve sociology teacher for drilling it into my brain that "correlation is not causation", and forcing me to remove all natural assumption from my daily thought process.)

I don't suggest that anyone adopt the same labels for seasons that I have, as they're likely influenced by my own experience, and the fact that I live in Canada. However, I think 'renaming' the seasons to accommodate one's feelings toward them can promote self-awareness. Because really, who actually knows what the heck "summer" means anyway.

These are mine, respectively:

Boring, Rainy, Miserable Days

Arid, Thoughtless Days crammed full of Denial

Sleepy Days when everything smells Pleasantly Dead

Desperate, Freshly Frozen Days

Also, my personal blog, Lipstick Without Borders, has been flagged for objectionable content. *VICTORY DANCE*
Cheers to my no longer being viewed as the Milk and Cookies of the online literary world.

Changes

2007-10-18T06:08:00.000-06:00

The wind sounds so beautiful this morning. Now and then, it brings a burst of rain. With the windows open, I can smell the rain and feel the chill of Fall.

I know I shall refuse to close those windows until at last it becomes too cold this year to leave them open. I don't want to miss the change in the seasons -- not even when I'm inside. Not even for a moment.

I wonder this morning why that's so. What is it about the change in seasons that I love it so much? It's more to me than just the novelty of a new season.

Sometimes I think it's the absolute proof of nature's power I love so much. Inexorable, nature puts me in my place. Only our egos, it seems, want us to be the biggest thing in the world. Something else, something much deeper than ego, wants only to have its proper place in this world. Perhaps it's only when we have found that place that we can connect to the world -- authentically.

Seven Countries In Five Years

2007-10-16T05:30:00.000-06:00

In his new memoir, Wesley Clark relates being told by a high up in the Pentagon that neocons in the US had plans to invade seven Middle Eastern countries in five years. Joe Conason has the story here.

Zen Crossword Puzzle

2007-10-14T07:10:00.000-06:00

Via WobbleWax

The Intellectual Blogger Award Moves Forward

2007-10-14T06:39:00.000-06:00

Eric, at the Primate Diaries, has posted his picks for the Intellectual Blogger Award here, while Hume's Ghost, at the Daily Doubter, has posted his picks here. Both have selected what look to be exceptional and excellent blogs for the award, well worth checking out.

UPDATE:

Ed, at Not Exactly Rocket Science, has put up his picks for the award here. They, too, look well worth checking out.

True To Yourself or True To Your God?

2007-10-14T06:15:00.000-06:00

Suppose your favorite deity commanded you to do something that was not true to yourself? Would you be justified in not obeying your god because s/he commanded you to do something that was not true to yourself?

Suppose you believed your favorite deity had created you, and that, consequently, you are being true to your deity by being true to yourself. If you believed that, and your favorite deity commanded you to to do something that was not true to yourself, would you be justified in not obeying your god?

Wrestling With Satan

2007-10-14T05:05:00.000-06:00

"Satan is the one who plants wicked thoughts in our minds." I read those words on a site yesterday and they stopped me for a while as I wondered what kind of fearful struggle their author must experience to believe that each time he has a wicked thought it comes from Satan. Can you imagine?

Suppose he thinks, as it seems so many religious people do, that even his sexual desires are wicked? Well, according to some psychologists, one thinks of sex every few minutes. Does he feel he's wrestling with Satan every few minutes?

How can one cope with such a monstrous notion -- the notion one's mind is wrestling with Satan? How could one ever be at peace with oneself?

I'm certain I have thoughts he would consider wicked, and therefore from Satan. But I don't see my thoughts the way he does. I'm not in a struggle against any of my thoughts -- to struggle against an unpleasant thought just prolongs it in consciousness. To be frightened of a thought reinforces it, makes it stronger. To condemn a thought just fixes it in memory.

As best I can, I watch my thoughts. I'm attentive to them. But I don't struggle with them. I don't condemn them. I just idly watch them come and go.

I think that poor man must go around in circles, like a puppy chasing his own tail. Perhaps he's struggled so hard against his wicked thoughts that he's committed all of them to memory, where they ever lie in wait to pop up again and again. Perhaps he's reinforced the neural pathways of those wicked thoughts so much they are extremely robust and crowd out most other thoughts.

It would be ironic if I had more wicked thoughts than he did with the difference being I forget my many while he never forgets his few.

From Around the Net

2007-10-12T17:20:00.000-06:00

The net was full of good articles last week. Here are a few you might not want to miss:

Ed Brayton analyzes the threat of the Religious Right to pull its support of the Republican Party if the Republicans fail to nominate a candidate who is socially conservative enough for them here.

Dan Harlow discusses the history of nudes in art here as a way of explaining why he believes Spencer Tunick is the most important living artist. (Thanks to DOF for alerting me to this fascinating article).

Chanson vividly discusses the morality of the Judeo-Christian God here and finds it wanting. Her essay is sharp, illustrative and damning.

AOS writes about the quite disturbing fact that life feeds on life in his essay aptly titled, "I Exist, Therefore I Destroy", which is here.

Mystic Wing writes a beautifully styled essay on the passage of all things here.

Loren has put up a series of insightful posts on the poetry of Howard Nemerov which begin here, and continue here, here, and here. Loren's introductions to poets are beautiful in their simple intimacy -- like a good conversation.

The worse epidemic of rape in the world is currently taking place in the Congo -- unknown to most people. Captive Diaries has the story here.

McCullagh creates a new law of politics and convincingly explains how it works here. (Thanks to Mahendra for alerting me to this great article.)

Eric has somehow managed to combine two seemingly unrelated topics -- evolution and erotic lap dancing -- in a way that could shake up your preconceptions of female sexuality. His article is here.

What strengths should a writer have? That's a meme currently making its way around the net. In separate posts, four remarkable writers share their insights and wisdom: Nita, Mahendra, Ordinary Girl, and Rambodoc.

Ed has put up a post on the evolution of verbs in the English language here. Interestingly, there is now a way to predict how verbs will change in the future!

Decrepit Old Fool posts on the astounding story of Curt Herzstark, who was captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp to die -- He not only survived but thrived. Article here.

Eolake briefly reports the next new horror in bad taste here.

I absolutely cannot resist mentioning the poignant beauty of this photograph by Steve.

Gary writes engagingly about the remarkably beautiful working relationship he has with his co-teacher, Lauren, here.

Is Pride Ever Justified?

2007-10-12T02:44:00.000-06:00

"Pride is never justified. It is based on a mistaken evaluation of oneself, or on successes that are only temporary and superficial. We should remember its negative effects. We should also be aware of our defects and limitations, and realize that fundamentally we are no different from those we see as inferior."

- Dalai Lama

Carter Blasts Bush, Scorches Cheney

2007-10-11T08:09:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, former President Jimmy Carter went on record stating the United States tortures prisoners in violation of international law.

But first some background: The New York Times disclosed on October 4th the existence of secret Justice Department memorandums supporting the use of "harsh interrogation techniques", including "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures."

In response to The Times article, President Bush defended the techniques last Friday and said, "This government does not torture people."

Yesterday, Carter went on CNN and all but called the President a liar.

The CNN interview was conducted by Wolf Blitzer, no friend of Carter's:

BLITZER: President Bush said as recently as this week the United States does not torture detainees.

CARTER: That's not an accurate statement. If you use the international norms of torture as has always been honored, certainly in the last 60 years, since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was promulgated. But you can make your own definition of human rights and say, we don't violate them. And we can — you can make your own definition of torture and say we don't violate it.

BLITZER: But by your definition, you believe the United States, under this administration, has used torture.

CARTER: I don't think it, I know it, certainly.

BLITZER: So is the president lying?

CARTER: The president is self-defining what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners, yes.

I suppose this means presidents no longer lie -- they merely "self-define". Yet, whatever one might think of his euphemisms, Carter pretty much stated what the world knows -- the US is torturing prisoners and the Administration is bullshitting. Carter, it seems, is one politician who is being honest with us -- and he's likely to get crucified for it.

After the CNN interview, Carter went on BBC World News America. This time his target was Dick Cheney:

He's a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military and he has been most forceful in the last 10 years or more in fulfilling some of his more ancient commitments that the United States has a right to inject its power through military means in other parts of the world.

You know he's been a disaster for our country. I think he's been overly persuasive on President George Bush and quite often he's prevailed.

At the rate he's going, I'm definitely going to miss Carter when he passes on. The man was a failed president, but I think he has since redeemed himself through his moral activism as an ex-president. Basically, he's turned himself into a statesman. And whether one agrees with him or not, one most likely does not get the impression that Jimmy Carter is hiding what he genuinely thinks or feels.

A couple more quotes from Carter -- this time on the GOP candidates for president:

They all seem to be outdoing each other in who wants to go to war first with Iran, who wants to keep Guantanamo open longer and expand its capacity -- things of that kind.

They're competing with each other to appeal to the ultra-right-wing, war-mongering element in our country, which I think is the minority of our total population.

Yesterday, Jimmy Carter spoke more truth to the world in two interviews than the Bush Administration speaks in twenty.

References:

Carter Says US Tortures Prisoners

Jimmy Carter Unplugged: Former President Takes Aim at Bush and Cheney

Jimmy Carter Calls Cheney a "Disaster" for US

Jimmy Carter: US Tortures Prisoners

The World Cannot be at Peace Unless Christians and Muslims are at Peace

2007-10-11T04:30:00.000-06:00

Today, 138 leading Muslim scholars from around the world will present an unprecedented open letter to the Pope and many other Christian leaders.

The letter calls for peace between Christians and Muslims, and notes that:

Together they [Christians and Muslims] make up more than 55 per cent of the population, making the relationship between these two religious communities the most important factor in contributing to meaningful peace around the world. If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace.

The scholars state:

As Muslims, we say to Christians that we are not against them and that Islam is not against them - so long as they do not wage war against Muslims on account of their religion, oppress them and drive them out of their homes.

The scholars then continue:

With the terrible weaponry of the modern world; with Muslims and Christians intertwined everywhere as never before, no side can unilaterally win a conflict between more than half of the world's inhabitants. Thus our common future is at stake. The very survival of the world itself is perhaps at stake.

Well, they've got that right -- a religious war between Muslims and Christians would turn the whole world into a Northern Ireland.

Yet, what makes this letter remarkable is, not just the call for peace between Christians and Muslims, but -- and this may be of more lasting importance -- the Muslim scholars assert that Christianity and Islam share a profound common ground: "The Unity of God, the necessity of love for [God], and the necessity of love of the neighbour is thus the common ground between Islam and Christianity." According to the BBC radio this morning, the 29 page letter even asserts that Christians and Muslims worship the same god, and that all the prophets, including Jesus and Mohamed, were revealed the same truths. The 138 scholars are from every school in Islam.

The way I figure it, this is a necessary and long overdue -- but rather small step -- towards peace.

For it to be of any lasting significance, it must lead to much greater things than a few conferences. The notion that Islam and Christianity are not inherently at odds with each other must become commonplace wisdom everywhere in the world. For something like that to happen will certainly take a lot of time and effort -- if it happens at all. Still, a journey of 10,000 miles begins with one step. This could be that step.

References:

Pope Told 'Survival of World' at Stake if Muslims and Christians do not Make Peace

Muslim Statement on Peace Among the Religions 'Historic', Says Academic

What One Wants In Art?

2007-10-11T04:07:00.000-06:00

"What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration."

- Elizabeth Bishop

Is It Time to Abolish the Word "Atheist"?

2007-10-10T02:59:00.000-06:00

Some people believe that atheists should quit calling themselves "atheists".

Atheist means "non-theist", and many people feel it is no more appropriate to call oneself a "non-theist" than it is to call oneself a "non-astrologist" or a "non-UFO believer". Sam Harris, for instance, writes extensively about the issue here. Why should anyone define themselves by what they are not?

So, do you agree with Harris and others that it's silly for atheists to call themselves "atheists", or is there something Harris et al. are not seeing?

Do Atheists Neglect Transformative Experiences?

2007-10-08T05:34:00.000-06:00

"One problem with atheism as a category of thought, is that it seems more or less synonymous with not being interested in what someone like the Buddha or Jesus may have actually experienced. In fact, many atheists reject such experiences out of hand, as either impossible, or if possible, not worth wanting. Another common mistake is to imagine that such experiences are necessarily equivalent to states of mind with which many of us are already familiar—the feeling of scientific awe, or ordinary states of aesthetic appreciation, artistic inspiration, etc."

"As someone who has made his own modest efforts in this area, let me assure you, that when a person goes into solitude and trains himself in meditation for 15 or 18 hours a day, for months or years at a time, in silence, doing nothing else—not talking, not reading, not writing—just making a sustained moment to moment effort to merely observe the contents of consciousness and to not get lost in thought, he experiences things that most scientists and artists are not likely to have experienced, unless they have made precisely the same efforts at introspection. And these experiences have a lot to say about the plasticity of the human mind and about the possibilities of human happiness."

"So, apart from just commending these phenomena to your attention, I’d like to point out that, as atheists, our neglect of this area of human experience puts us at a rhetorical disadvantage. Because millions of people have had these experiences, and many millions more have had glimmers of them, and we, as atheists, ignore such phenomena, almost in principle, because of their religious associations—and yet these experiences often constitute the most important and transformative moments in a person’s life. Not recognizing that such experiences are possible or important can make us appear less wise even than our craziest religious opponents."

- Sam Harris

The Cause of Much Suffering?

2007-10-08T05:27:00.000-06:00

"[O]ur habitual identification with discursive thought, our failure moment to moment to recognize thoughts as thoughts, is a primary source of human suffering."

- Sam Harris

I Hereby Tag Mark!

2007-10-06T15:45:00.000-06:00

"There's No One Driving the Plane" is largely a political blog -- and one of the funniest I've come across on the net. It's written by Mark (a.k.a. "Marxsny") who brings to it not only his sharp sense of humor, but also his background in both science and business.

The articles are not overtly intellectual. They are neither footnoted, nor cry out for footnotes, and Mark sometimes buries the weight of his analysis under a sort of uncertain fatalism -- or perhaps, "a light hearted despair" -- that at the last moment turns away from emphasizing his conclusions in a typically intellectual manner. But those things are just issues of style: "There's No One Driving the Plane" is an intellectual blog.

Along with the exceptional analytical skills he probably honed by studying science and business, Mark uses sarcasm to cut through the smoke of politics and get to something approaching the truth -- as close as anyone ever gets to the truth. He is both incisive and insightful. But I sometimes think Mark would be happier writing about music and the arts than about politics. So far as I know, writing about music and the arts seldom makes you want to take a shower afterwards, whereas writing about politics so often does.

In a typical post, Mark strings together several seemingly unrelated ideas in a way that might disconcert someone who does not love ideas -- but if you love ideas, then it's easy to think of his string of ideas as a string of diamonds. At least, that's what I imagine them to be.

For those and other reasons, I am very pleased to tag Mark and "There's No One Driving the Plane" with the Intellectual Blogger Award.

I Hereby Tag Amuirin!

2007-10-05T21:48:00.000-06:00

As I was writing my tags for the Intellectual Blogger Award, the realization came to me that, time and again, when I've needed to be reassured there is beauty in this world, I've turned to Amuirin's blog, "Stop and Wander", to find beauty not only in the wonder of her poetic prose, but also in her wisdom. (Thank you, Amuirin!)

People sometimes complain that intellectuals are so in awe of ideas they turn them into clumsy, ponderous things. If so, Amuirin is certainly the exception. She is either such a gifted intellectual -- or she is such a gifted writer -- or she is both -- that she makes ideas dance.

She is so creative, unassuming, and even casual in the way she offers up an idea that you are almost never aware until later that she's actually smacked you upside the head with something quite profound. I find this is especially true of her writings on love, living, and spirituality.

She is an independent, creative thinker, who happens to be a beautiful thinker too, and so I am very pleased to tag her for the Intellectual Blogger Award.

I Hereby Tag Hume's Ghost!

2007-10-05T20:54:00.001-06:00

Hume's Ghost is the author of "The Daily Doubter", whose motto is taken from Voltaire: "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." His blog is one of the most perfectly intellectual blogs I've come across on the net, and so I am tagging Hume's Ghost and "The Daily Doubter" with the Intellectual Blogger Award.

What makes "The Daily Doubter" a perfect example of intellectual blogging at its best? To be sure, it is certainly not because Hume's Ghost writes mainly about politics. Instead, it's the almost unique way in which he writes about politics.

Most of the political writing I've come across on the net is far from intellectual. At times it's about political reportage, at times about drama, and at times about scoring points for one's own views, but it is rarely about the lasting and underlying principles involved in politics. "The Daily Doubter" is different.

Hume's Ghost has one of the most sure footed grasps of the principles at stake in politics that I've yet to encounter on the net. His insight into those principles makes his writing universal. Even though he is nominally talking about American politics, the fact he talks about those politics in terms of the principles involved should make his discussions relevant to nearly everyone. In that respect, he's very much like Mahendra, who created the Intellectual Blogger Award, and Nita, one of the first bloggers to win it. All three authors are capable of transcending their own cultures to get at things in ways that are universally relevant and important.

"The Daily Doubter" is also one of those blogs I turn to when I need to be reassured there is reason and sanity in this world. Hume's Ghost thoroughly documents his reasoning, fairly quotes the other side to any argument, and is prepared to change his views if presented with compelling evidence that contradicts them. His intellectual honesty is beyond reproach. He's the sort of person you could point an intellectually gifted child to, saying, "See! That's the kind of intellectual you should aspire to become!"

For those and other reasons, I am very pleased to tag Hume's Ghost and "The Daily Doubter" with the Intellectual Blogger's Award.

I Hereby Tag Eric Michael Johnson!

2007-10-05T19:51:00.000-06:00

"The Primate Diaries" is one of those blogs I gratefully turn to after I've had a day dealing with the inanity and hysteria that, at times, so many humans seem slave to. Eric's combination of reason, insight and deep sense never fails to refresh me. On more than a few occasions, he's been an oasis.

Another reason I love "The Primate Diaries" is because Eric challenges me to think sharper and better, to improve my reasoning, and to grow in my understanding.

Some of the best articles I've read on the net have been Eric's. I'm especially fond of when he writes about how common human traits -- such as altruism -- came about through evolution. But Eric writes engagingly on a wide variety of subjects besides the evolutionary origin of human behavior -- including articles on politics, culture, and religion.

For all of those reasons and more, I am very pleased to tag Eric and "The Primate Diaries" with the Intellectual Blogger Award. Congratulations, Eric, and thank you so much for your wonderful blog!

I Hereby Tag Ed Yong!

2007-10-05T18:58:00.000-06:00

Hear ye! Here ye! Let it be known far and wide by this proclamation that, by the powers invested in me by Mahendra, I hereby tag Ed Yong and his most excellent "Not Exactly Rocket Science" with the Intellectual Blogger Award.

Ed describes his mission thus: "This blog is my small attempt to celebrate science and to make it interesting and fun, by giving jargon, confusion and elitism a solid beating with the stick of good writing."

The thing is, Ed lives up to that mission. Anyone who wants to see a mission statement turn into reality (as opposed to empty words) should visit Ed's blog for that reason alone. But there are other reasons too, besides his integrity, that I'm pleased to tag Ed's blog.

What Ed has done on "Not Exactly Rocket Science" is make genuine science accessible to people who do not hold an advanced degree in the fields he writes about. His articles not only lay out the conclusions of scientific papers, but also the reasoning behind the conclusions. And he often corrects mistakes made by the popular media in reporting science news.

Beyond that, Ed is a superb writer. He is a genius at clarity, a master of the apt phrase, and he is even downright witty. I've said this before, but Ed's writing is not mere reportage -- it's literature.

I strongly suspect Ed of being a genius in more ways than in his writing -- how else can any one person read, understand, and explain the findings of so many different branches of science?

Ed richly deserves the Intellectual Blogger Award, and it gives me immense pleasure to tag him with it.

From Around the Net

2007-10-05T17:52:00.000-06:00

For the first time in months, my blog reading was forced to take a back seat to other concerns last week. So, while I have some articles that I think you will find interesting -- and even excellent -- I have certainly missed others I would have liked to post here. That's why I think I'm going to post the first few now, and then update this list over the next day or so.

If you have a child in the house, you probably already know just how extremely important it is that you are well informed about which dinosaurs had feathers and which didn't. Other than that, it's simply fascinating to find out about those critters. There is now very good evidence that velociraptor had feathers, which you can read about on Ed's blog here.

Ken Ham recently updated his site "Answers in Genesis" with an article that argues science should be redefined to allow for supernatural explanations of why the universe works as it does. Zeno takes on Ham's absurd notion here.

Bill Hulet discusses those sometimes very subtle social walls we throw up between ourselves and others here.

In a brief, humorous article, The Rational Fool writes about "vocal terrorism" -- a form of terrorism we might all see one day and should prepare ourselves for. For some reason, I can't establish a permanent link to the exact article, so this link is just to the Rational Fool's blog. But search down the sidebar for the article, "Vocal Terrorism".

Glenn Greenwald writes here about a mystery that's puzzled me: Why are so many "liberal Democrats" voting with the President on the key issues on which they should have ideological differences with him?

The Daily Doubter has put up a really beautiful essay that on the surface only discusses the politics of DDT, but on reflection says so much about ideological thinking in general. Find it here.

Think Buddha looks very deeply into the relationships between various religious views and the tendency of people to murder their fellow humans here. I found his article both illuminating and thought provoking.

Good news (for some)! The Religious Right in America might pull out of the next presidential election by refusing to vote -- or by voting third party -- thus in all likelihood handing the election to the Democrats. Read about it on Ed Brayton's blog here.

Those are the "first ups" for this Friday, but I will be adding more to this list soon, so look for updates!

UPDATE:

Steve has put up an interesting article on his response to some rap lyrics here, and a genuinely awesome photo here.

Mahendra researches and reports on a threat to internet free speech here.

Café Philos Wins Intellectual Blogger Award!

2007-10-04T02:43:00.000-06:00

Very recently, Mahendra over at An Unquiet Mind absolutely stunned me by granting Café Philos the Intellectual Blogger Award.

I confess I've secretly coveted the Award ever since I first saw it displayed on Nita's site. But being the dense person that I am at times, I didn't realize that Mahendra himself had created the Award until he granted it to me in this post.

Have you ever gotten something you really wanted but didn't think you had a shot at? If so, then perhaps you can imagine my astonishment at being granted the Intellectual Blogger Award -- and by no less than the creator of the Award himself! I've been walking on air for a week!

Mahendra describes the purpose of the Award thus:

This award is intended for those bloggers who demonstrate an inclination to think on their own. This is what I think is needed in today’s blogosphere. The term ‘Intellectual’ has often been derided in recent times, and this is one way to resurrect the true meaning: “An intellectual is one who tries to use his or her intellect to work, study, reflect, speculate on, or ask and answer questions with regard to a variety of different ideas.”

And he gives the simple rules here:

If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with nominations for 5 blogs that you think are of “Intellectual Bloggers”.
Optional: Link to this page so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
Optional: Proudly display the ‘Intellectual Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.

So, it is now my duty to tag five other bloggers with this wonderful Award. I have already decided on three of them, and will give each a brief separate post to follow this one.

Thank you so much, Mahendra for the honor you do me.

UPDATE:

Tags:

Ed Yong at "Not Exactly Rocket Science" tagged here.

Eric Micheal Johnson at "The Primate Diaries" tagged here.

Hume's Ghost at "The Daily Doubter" tagged here.

Amuirin at "Stop and Wander" tagged here.

Mark at "There's No One Driving the Plane!" tagged here.

I'm Back!

2007-10-04T01:48:00.000-06:00

I'm back -- and twice as sexy as before!!!

Thank you, everyone, for sticking with me during my recent unexpected one week hiatus. It's deeply appreciated. I've been reading everyone's comments and finding them wonderful -- although I haven't had the time to respond to them.

Also, I will be putting up links to blogs from around the net on Friday. It is great to be back! My heart is with this online blogging community.

God's Hair

2007-10-04T01:23:00.000-06:00

Does God have a pompadour like so many of his preachers?

"Religion is the Idol..."

2007-10-04T01:09:00.000-06:00

"Religion is the idol of the mob; it adores everything it does not understand. "

- Frederick II

"The Dogs Bark..."

2007-10-04T00:49:00.000-06:00

"The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

- Anonymous

Been Busy Lately

2007-09-28T21:52:00.000-06:00

I've missed a couple of days of blogging because my brother, his wife, and my new nephew have come to visit. Also, a Forum I help administer has required more attention than usual. But I'll be back to excessively prolific blogging very soon!

What's Happening to the Right?

2007-09-26T04:04:00.000-06:00

Here are the "issues" I've been hearing the Right Wing froth about on blogs and radio this past ten days or so:

1) The MoveOn ad that called General Petraeus, "General Betray Us".

2) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's desire to visit Ground Zero.

3) Hillary's sweep of the Sunday talk shows.

4) Dan Rather's law suit against CBS.

Yup. That's what the Right has most focused on, near as I can see. Which seems to raise the question: Has the Right gone bonkers? What kind of issues are those?

Does anyone know why the Right considers those issues so important?

How to Save Time Thinking?

2007-09-26T03:39:00.000-06:00

"A political ideology is a very handy thing to have. It's a real time-saver, because it tells you what you think about things you know nothing about."

- Hendrik Hertzberg

Saying Adam and Eve Aren't Real Might Get You Fired

2007-09-26T01:43:00.000-06:00

Until last Thursday, Steve Bitterman was an instructor in Western Civilization at the Red Oak campus of Southwestern Community College in Iowa. It was on Thursday, according to Bitterman, that Linda Wild, the College's vice president of instruction, called him on the phone to fire him.

His offense?

He told his students the story of Adam and Eve was not to be taken literally.

From Inside Higher Education:

This fall, [Bitterman was] teaching Western civilization at Southwestern’s Red Oak campus, and his lectures [were] broadcast to students at the Osceola campus, with a live hook-up so he [could] see students. Much of early Western civilization focuses on the myths and beliefs of ancient peoples. Gilgamesh was no problem for students, Bitterman said. But when he got to the Bible on Tuesday, a student walked out of the Osceola section when, Bitterman said, when he wouldn’t agree with her that the story of the Garden of Eden was historically true. Several other students appeared disturbed by the incident, he said. From their questions and statements, he believes that they are evangelical Christians.

Furthermore, according to the DesMoines Register, in a conversation with a student after Tuesday's class, Bitterman called the myth of Adam and Eve a "fairy tale". He was then told some of "the students had threatened to see an attorney."

Bitterman says that, when Wild called him to fire him Thursday, she told him, "several of the students and the parents had threatened an unspecified lawsuit", and that "the parents said that I was there to teach history and not religion and that she agreed."

Meanwhile the Community College is being vague about why it fired Bitterman:

Sarah Smith, director of the school’s Red Oak campus, declined to comment Friday on Bitterman’s employment status. The school’s president, Barbara Crittenden, said Bitterman taught one course at Southwest. She would not comment, however, on his claim that he was fired over the Bible reference, saying it was a personnel issue.
“I can assure you that college understands our employees’ free speech rights,” she said. “There was no action taken that violated the First Amendment.”

And Linda Wild is responding neither to emails nor phone calls.

Bitterman himself is unrepentant:

“A few of the students thought I was knocking their religion by not promoting it,” he said. “They were upset that I didn’t say that the Bible was literally true.” Bitterman said that he treats the Bible as a historically significant, important work, but that he does not accord it status beyond that. “That really seemed to come as a shock to some of them,” he said.

And:

“I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,” Bitterman said.

So who to believe? At this point, it's just a "he said, she said" situation, but the College seems somewhat cagey in how it's responding, which gives a bit more creditability to Bitterman's side of the story.

At any rate, there can be no doubt evangelical and fundamentalist Christians these days often act aggressively to quash views that contradict their cherished belief in the literal truth of the Bible. If Bitterman's story is true, it wouldn't be too far out compared to other things we've been hearing about the extreme Religious Right. Consider this quote from Gary North, the Dominionist son-in-law of R.J. Rushdoony:

"We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God."

References:

Prof Says He Was Fired Over Bible Reference

Adjuncts and Gods

War with Iran: The Plot Thickens

2007-09-24T06:21:00.000-06:00

The commander of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon, was recently interviewed by Al-Jazeera television, which released a partial transcript of the interview Sunday.

According to Al-Jazeera's transcript, the Admiral made several statements about Iran, including the following:

This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me, which is not helpful and not useful.

I expect that there will be no war and that is what we ought to be working for.

We should find ways through which we can bring countries to work together for the benefit of all.

It is not a good idea to be in a state of war. We ought to try and to do our utmost to create different conditions.

His remarks put him at odds with Vice President Cheney's camp, which is reportedly pushing hard for bombing Iran.

On the very same day that Al-Jazeera released its partial transcript of Admiral Fallon's remarks, Newsweek Magazine published a report that Vice President Cheney is considering an underhanded and devious method to plunge the US into war with Iran:

Newsweek Magazine reported Sunday that Vice President Richard Cheney may have considered a plan for Israeli missile strikes against an Iranian nuclear site in an effort to draw a military response from Iran, which could in turn spark a U.S. offensive against targets in the Islamic Republic.

Citing two unnamed sources the magazine called knowledgeable, the magazine quoted David Wurmser, until last month Cheney's Middle East advisor, as having told a small group of people that "Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz - and perhaps other sites - in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out."

According to the report, "The Iranian reaction would then give Washington a pretext to launch strikes against military and nuclear targets in Iran."

Steve Clemons, the Washington blogger who first broke the story of Cheney's deviousness, has argued for some time that, "[A war with Iran] would most likely be triggered by one or both of the two people who would see their political fortunes rise through a new conflict -- Cheney and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

Meanwhile, the UK Sunday Times revealed that a secret US Air Force team, called "Project Checkmate", has been set up to perfect the plans to attack Iran:

The United States Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions rise with Iran.

Project Checkmate, a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War’s air campaign, was quietly reestablished at the Pentagon in June.

It reports directly to General Michael Moseley, the US Air Force chief, and consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defence and cyberspace experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

What makes Project Checkmate especially interesting is that it bypasses Admiral Fallon's command:

Detailed contingency planning for a possible attack on Iran has been carried out for more than two years by Centcom (US central command), according to defence sources.

Yet, by by-passing his command (which is Centcom), Project Checkmate can hope to do an end run around the military opposition to war with Iran. Not surprisingly, according to some sources, Dick Cheney is the man in the Administration most responsible for setting up Project Checkmate.

UPDATE: Perhaps a little background on Admiral Fallon. There is an unconfirmed report that around the time of his confirmation as Centcom chief, Admiral Fallon privately expressed his intentions regarding war with Iran:

A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch".

Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, "You know what choices I have. I'm a professional." Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, "There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box."

I don't know how likely the story is to be true, but it is at least consistent with Admiral Fallon's recent remarks on Al-Jazeera television.

UPDATE II: Juan Cole is arguing in Salon that, "Demonizing the Iranian president and making his visit to New York seem controversial is all part of the neoconservative push for yet another war."

UPDATE III: Think Progress is reporting that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's influence in the Administration is on the wane while Vice President Cheney's influence is again on the rise.

References:

Military Chief: "No War" with Iran

No Iran War Says US Admiral

Report: Cheney may have mulled pushing Israel to hit Iran

Will Bush Bomb Iran?

Secret US Air Force Team to Perfect Plan to Attack Iran

Commander's Veto Sank Threatening Gulf Build Up

Turning Ahmadinejad into public enemy No. 1

Related Articles:

Will Bush Bomb Iran

US Administration Gives Fox News Its Marching Orders

Prediction: Administration Will Attack Iran

Statistics on the Deaths of Journalists

2007-09-24T05:15:00.000-06:00

Since 1992, 636 journalists have been killed worldwide.

73% (or 462) were murdered.

Reference:

Committee to Protect Journalists

Alliance Defense Fund Wants Ban on Sale of Playboy and Penthouse to Troops

2007-09-24T03:13:00.000-06:00

In a time of war, the very last thing you want young soldiers doing is looking at photos of naked women in the pages of Playboy and Penthouse. That, at least, seems to be the trenchant conclusion of the moral experts at the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).

The upright band of bimbos at the ADF recently began lobbying the Department of Defense to ban Playboy and Penthouse from being sold on military bases.

According to Wikipedia, the ADF,

is a conservative Christian non-profit organization with the stated goal of "defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation." ADF defines "Truth" according to a socially conservative Christian perspective. In practice ADF is opposed to all forms of abortion, same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, allowing LGBT persons to serve in the military, and sex education in schools that includes comprehensive education on contraception. ADF also works to establish public prayer in schools and government events, and to protect religious displays in government settings, like crosses and other religious monuments built on public lands.

In short, the ADF thinks Jesus Christ arrived on the scene 2000 years ago in order to limit human freedom -- except the freedom to be a socially conservative Christian. So, it is little wonder the moral experts at the ADF are passionately demanding that soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines give up their right to buy magazines containing photos of naked women.

Some years ago, Congress passed a law, called "The Military Honor and Decency Act", to prohibit sexually explicit material from being sold in military exchanges and elsewhere on Defense Department property.

Fortunately, Congress left it up to the military to define "sexually explicit material." In May of 2006, the Defense Department board tasked with defining "sexually explicit material" determined that Playboy and Penthouse were not "sexually explicit", thus allowing the magazines to be sold on bases.

A year later, the ADF launched it's campaign to reverse the board's decision:

Patrick A. Trueman, attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, said the members of the review board need to use “a little common sense” in determining which materials cannot be sold on Defense Department property.

“The law is not complicated in its definition of ‘sexually explicit,’ ” Trueman said. “The porn magazines that are allowed such as ‘Nude Playmates,’ ‘Playboy,’ ‘Penthouse,’ etc. are sexually explicit.”

Trueman also noted that Congress has the ability to limit troops’ First Amendment rights: “Military men and woman are not permitted to wear anti-war symbols and may be required to shave and wear their hair at a certain length, for example.” He said the intent of the Military Honor and Decency Act is clear.

“Congress was concerned about sexual harassment in the military and making military duty more accommodating to servicewomen,” he said. “It was also attempting to protect military families, particularly children, who frequent the exchanges and should not be exposed to porn.”

So, the ADF is all in favor of further limiting the First Amendment rights of military people, even to the point of banning the mild nudity found in the pages of Playboy and Penthouse.

Furthermore, the moral geniuses don't mind stretching the truth when it suits their agenda: There is little or no scientific evidence to draw a causal link between pornography and sex crimes, despite numerous studies on the subject. There is even less evidence that children who view the covers of Playboy and Penthouse in base exchanges grow up to become sex fiends. But who cares about the truth? After all, truth is only what socially conservative Christians believe is truth.

Moreover, the last time I saw a Playboy or Penthouse, the nudity was pretty mild. Admittedly, that was some years ago, but I doubt much has changed with those magazines.

I myself find it baffling that anyone would begrudge a man his Playboy or Penthouse when that man is prepared to risk his life in defense of others and their freedoms. But then, I'm not one of the moral experts at the Alliance Defense Fund.

References:

Wikipedia

Stars and Stripes: Military defends ruling on sales of adult material on DOD property

Pentagon Okays Sale of Certain Porn Magazines at Military Exchanges

The Functions of Ritual in Religion?

2007-09-23T08:32:00.000-06:00

Over on Religious Forums yesterday, I stated, "Anthropologists have identified rituals in every religion they've studied", and then asked, "Why are rituals so wide-spread in religions? What function(s) do they serve?"

Laurie, who blogs at "Just Another Day", answered:

Rituals raise the ordinary to the extraordinary by imbuing them with greater significance. Repetition of actions and words fix the rituals deeply into our brains so we access the meaning of the ritual without really even thinking about it. It also creates a shared experience which bonds a community together and taps into the history of the people and gives them a unified context from which to talk about their religious experience.

It occurs to me that's the best explanation of how rituals function in religion that I've yet to hear.

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