Prairie Ayatollahs
This is almost breathtaking, coming* as it does from a small town in my home state of Kansas, a state that's been having some high-visibility troubles lately with religious extremists on its State Board of Education: it's an editorial in The Hutchinson [KS] News called
"The Prairie Ayatollahs". It begins this way:
Members of the State Board of Education can believe that God created the world 6,000 years ago. They can believe that intelligent design actually holds up to scientific scrutiny.
Privately, they can believe whatever they wish.
But when they begin imposing their religious beliefs on the public, they overstep their authority.
They become prairie ayatollahs.
It summarizes how Republican member Kathy Martin insists that schools teach abstinance-before-marriage, else risk losing their accreditation. Republican Ken Willard thinks thinks teaching abstinance should be required, although if they already do it, that's fine; he's not exactly sure what they teach, to be honest.
Then there's Republican Connie Morris, who made something of a name for herself during last year's ridiculous hearings on teaching so-called "Intelligent Design" in Kansas Schools. She saw a cartoon of the now-famous Flying Spaghetti Monster on a teacher's door in a Witchita middle school and she was not amused.
Morris, a St. Francis [Kansas] Republican, believes that God created the world about 6,000 years ago. She and Martin proved instrumental in a board decision last fall to adopt new science standards critical of evolution.
The board turned to promoters of intelligent design, religion cloaked as science, to develop the new standards. An artist in the Pacific Northwest developed the Flying Spaghetti Monster creation myth to poke fun at the board.
Seeing the drawing on a classroom door angered Morris.
Some societies value freedom of expression. Some defend the right of individuals to think for themselves, even if their beliefs run contrary to those held by government leaders. Some societies also enjoy a good joke. But not Morris.
She rejects the values that separate the United States from a theocratic republic like Iran.
In their concluding paragraphs, the editors of the The Hutchinson News ventures to write what big-city editors have been too timid to say:
Societies that value integrity promote academic inquiry and seek objective truth. Kansas, for the time being, remains that kind of society.
But when members of the State Board of Education begin promoting their personal religious beliefs as public policy, they create a society that discounts critical analysis, study and fact – a society that promotes indoctrination in state religion.
They set themselves up as prairie ayatollahs, arbiters of all that is right and true.
———-
*First seen at Josh Roseneau, "Hutchinson News comes out swinging", Thoughts from Kansas, 20 April 2006.
Bunpeepegg
Some years ago, I was fascinated by the experiments that some people performed on Hostess Twinkies to determine their physical properties (conductivity, Young's modulus, stuff like that). Later on, that seemed to have inspired various fun stuff that could be done with marshmallow Peeps.
Although I've never tried it myself, I'm fascinated by the idea of microwave Peeps jousting: two Peeps combatents are each given a toothpick to hold on to and placed on a paper-plate jousting field in a microwave. Turn the power on. The first Peep that inflates and pops the other Peep is the winner of the joust. Manifestly, Peeps-Jousters have limited careers.
Then, in a seemingly unrelated development, along comes mention of the Turducken: a festive Thanksgiving or Christmas treat made of a boneless chicken stuffed into a boneless duck stuffed into a turkey, with stuffing between each of the fowl segments. A unique presentation, to be sure.
Evidently this concept of food as Matryoshka doll can be developed in myriad ways. Enter* the … the … well, even its creator isn't sure what to call the thing, so he refers to it as the "Easter Turducken" in homage to his inspiration.
At any rate, this creation makes use of Cadbury cream eggs, marshmallow Peeps#, a hollow chocolate Easter bunny, and a Dremel tool. Follow the link to see the photos, and don't overlook the comments, either.
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* Seen first at Elayne Rigg's blog.
# Sure, you knew there'd be a connection somewhere.
In: All, Curious Stuff, Food Stuff
Condoms Please!
Laura Barcella wrote* about another irritating skirmish in the war against conservative extremists and their encroaching prudery — they just seem to keep getting sillier and pettier and ever-more exasperating, don't they?
The war on safe sex in America just keeps heating up – to conservative Bushies' delight.
As Suz Redfearn in the Washington Post reports, almost half of the CVS pharmacy stores in Washington DC [also the most common drug store in our Maryland suburb] keep their condom supply locked behind glass cabinets:
"An informal survey found that almost half – 22 of 50 – of the District's CVS pharmacies lock up their condoms; this in a city where one in 20 residents is HIV-positive. Most of those stores are in less affluent areas where the incidence of HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy – all preventable with condoms – are highest."
But wait, it gets worse. If a poor soul actually wants to (gasp!) buy a pack, s/he must press the "Push for Assistance" button (sounding an alarm throughout the store), then wait for a salesperson to unlock the case.
She goes on to describe how this is embarrassing to the customers and is, therefore, having the desired effect of making it harder for people to get condoms. The extremists think this will encourage abstinance.
Anyway — and I'm writing now as a gay person with emotional experience of this phenomenon — shame is the reaction that makes this an effective tactic, and there is no reason for shame. As these same extremists (the ones who can't sleep at night for fear that somewhere, someone is enjoying sex) have been discovering to their dismay for the past few decades with gay people: lean hard enough on the shame button and you finally get pushed back. Now they are forced into their corner, whining about "in your face homos" — let's remember who whouldn't let whom keep quiet about it in the first place.
But that's not my point here. My point is that the shame that the extremists are exploiting is pointless, without reason, and capable of being overcome; it's a classic case where the oppressors can only win if the oppressed let them win.
Here is my suggested tactic, to be carried out as frequently as possible by as many as possible: Go to your local drugstore where the condoms are locked away, press the little red call button, and then ask for "condoms, please" as loudly as possible. Trust me: the prudes and sex-control queens tend to give up the shame tactic really fast when it's pointed back at them, and those who need to feel better about the situation will feel much, much better.
One may, optionally, request "the large size", but it's, um, icing on the cake.
———-
*Laura Barcella, "Barrier Methods", Comment is free…, 20 April 2006.
The Expectation of Disbelief
Egalia, writing at Tennessee Guerilla Women ("Duke Rape Scandal: Disbelieving Women"), offers "snippets" from a piece by Jesse Jackson about the Duke Rape Scandal ("Duke: Horror and Truth").
The Jackson piece is good, but here I'd rather emphasize Egalia's potently distilled introduction:
Jesse Jackson weighs in with a calm and rational voice on race, sex, class and the Duke rape scandal. Jackson reminds me of some of the reasons I am always inclined to believe a woman when she says she has been raped. This country reeks of misogyny, as well as racism and classism, and so has a very long and a very shameful history of disbelieving women, especially poor and black women.
In my view, the expectation of disbelief is one of the primary reasons that so few women report rape. As a member of the class of people that is so commonly disbelieved, I choose to believe women until there is a very good reason not to.
Yeah, I believed/believe Anita Hill too.
Witchcraft in Georgia
From the Gwinnett [County, GA] Daily Post and the continuing saga of the woman who filed the complaint to have the Harry Potter books removed from school libraries because they promote witchcraft, come these tidbits*:
“I want to protect children from evil, not fill their minds with it,” Mallory said. “The ‘Harry Potter’ books teach children and adults that witchcraft is OK for children.”
[…]
At Thursday’s hearing, Mallory spoke against the books along with four other parents and students. One of them was Stacy Thomas, a mother of five, who said reading the “Harry Potter” series made her daughter turn to witchcraft, ultimately causing their Christian family to lose friends, finances and their reputation.Her daughter, Jordan Fusch, 15, testified that she began experimenting with tarot cards, curses and seances after reading the books.
“As a former witch, I can tell you that witchcraft is not fantasy. … I felt I could not escape the clutches of witchcraft,” Fusch said. “It has taken several years of counseling to get to where I was before witchcraft and reading ‘Harry Potter’ books.”
Not surprisingly, I have two problems with this. At least two.
What in the world do these parents really think they're protecting their children from? As the article points out, children can tell that the books are fiction, and I think the books are a lot less scary than the evening news, a lot less indoctrinating than, say, a Republican convention or a broadcast church service. Okay, more likely these "concerned parents" are just making a publicity play for their extremist point of view, but still.
Second point is this: witchcraft is not real. I'm a scientist; I don't believe in silly supernatural superstitions like witchcraft. How the school board could sit through this testimony about the child in the clutches of witchcraft without howling with laughter, I'm sure I don't know. However, I suppose that for religious extremists who believe the patently incredible stories about Jesus and God and miraculous images in tortillas and melted cheese, witchcraft must be a scary thing.
But who is this child who could not "escape its clutches"? Didn't we get over this in Salem, MA several centuries ago? And how many "years of counseling" could she have had to regain her witchcraft virginity — she's only fifteen now, after all! And where was her concerned mother while she was turning to witchcraft — doesn't she supervise any of her child's activities? Can one really become an ex-witch anyway, once one has fallen prey to the black arts? Perhaps the school libraries just need more copies of The Exorcist.
I know this is a cheap shot, but the people in Gwinnett county might want to reconsider the names of their schools. Three are mentioned: Alton C. Crews Middle School, Trickum Middle School, and Dacula High School. Now, "Alton C. Crews" sounds normal enough, but is it any wonder that children are drawn to witchcraft with names that sound like "Trick 'Em" and "Dracula High"?
Last word on this for the moment comes from the article (my emphasis):
The possibility of their beloved books being taken off school shelves inspired many Potter fans to attend the hearings. Some high school students silently sat in the back, wearing T-shirts that read, “Censorship Destroys Education.”
[I first saw the story at Shakespeare's Sister: Misty's "more on the scary that is Harry", 21 April 2006.]
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*Rubina Madan, "Trouble With Harry", Gwinnett Daily Post, 21 April 2006.
In: All, Plus Ca Change..., Splenetics
Becoming the Worst President?
Some time back, I happened to write* that, in my opinion, it is the current president's destiny to be The Worst President Ever. I would claim extraordinary prescience, except that it's such a bloomin' obvious prediction. However, I'm please to discover# that Rolling Stone magazine has jumped on board with "The Worst President in History? One of America's leading historians assesses George W. Bush" (Sean Wilentz, 21 April 2006).
Here's just one paragraph from this extraordinary analysis.
Bush's faith-based conception of his mission, which stands above and beyond reasoned inquiry, jibes well with his administration's pro-business dogma on global warming and other urgent environmental issues. While forcing federally funded agencies to remove from their Web sites scientific information about reproductive health and the effectiveness of condoms in combating HIV/AIDS, and while peremptorily overruling staff scientists at the Food and Drug Administration on making emergency contraception available over the counter, Bush officials have censored and suppressed research findings they don't like by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture. Far from being the conservative he said he was, Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science — dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to "the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends."
Comparisons are rather easy to make to previous Presidents who found themselves faced with "enormous difficulties" to overcome — Washington, Lincoln, & Roosevelt to name the three mentioned who found a way to overcome them — but no cases are mentioned in which the "enormous difficulties" were largely the President's fault in the first place. With Bush, he's created most of his own "enormous difficulties" himself: the war in Iraq, massive deficits, No Child Left Behind, Social Security "reform", immigration "reform", corruption and scandal, and notable failure with Katrina to name a few. So much for the "compassionate conservative uniter"!
We know now about W's messianic faith in himself and his personal feeling of destiny, but does anyone else get the feeling that — in addition to being childish, irresponsible, and self-important — he has an addictive personality? Here we have to listen as he goes through the same charade to puff up urgency about his hope of invading Iran that we went through with Iraq, knowing at the time that it was all puffery, too. Is he like the gambler who has lost everything at the tables and begs for one more stake so that he can win it all back and redeem himself? Does he believe that he can now invade Iran and, perhaps with yet another "shock and awe" campaign, "win" so handily that all will be forgotten about Iraq?
I realize, too, that the title of this piece is a bit ambiguous, but it should be clearer if I answer: "Already is". How reassuring it must be to have one's destiny secured so early in one second term, except for this apparent desire to redeem his "legacy" at all costs.
———-
* "Presidential Destiny", Bearcastle Blog, 7 December 2004.
# First seen at Shakespeare's Sister, "Worst President Ever", 19 April 2006.
Beard of the Week
This past Friday night — Good Friday to Christians — was a busy night for Isaac at the church where he's music director (St. Matthew's United Methodist Church in Bowie, MD) and organist. This Friday evening service is the one during the year that he creates, organizes, and operates. Bringing to bear his years of experience as a former Catholic priest and Benedictine monk, it's his chance to present something a bit more liturgical than the usual talk-show format.
As a result, I'm frequently involved in one way or another. Some years I sing with the early-music octet and we do, say, a passion — a few years ago it was a passion setting (one of two) by Tomas Luis da Vittoria (1540-1613). I've been very fond of passion settings ever since I played 'cello for Bach's St. John Passion in college. And some years I play 'cello for something in the Good Friday service. One year we did the marvelous "Seven Last Words" by J. Haydn — listen sometime to the profound version that extracts just the string-quartet music.
This year I played 'cello in a small ensemble with two violins and organ continuo for Vivaldi's "Stabat Mater". This also is a profound work and musically very moving; to those for whom Good Friday has an emotional, religious aspect, I suspect it is also profoundly moving for different reasons. The service was lovely, our performance was quite nice (although I wasn't my best for two of the movements when my G string slipped — if you'll pardon the expression — and I tried to get it retuned during the rests).
Anyway, afterwards a few of us went out for dinner at our favorite local Chinese Restaurant. During conversation, some of the women made an offhand reference to the fact that they dye their hair. (This is, at best, a poorly kept secret — we are all of a certain age.) That led JJ, the other guy at the table who was not Isaac, to mention the he dyed his beard. The women all wondered why? "Well," said JJ, "if I didn't, it would look like Jeff's!" The reader may decide for himself or herself whether this was an entirely complimentary remark.
Now, it is true that my beard is haphazardly multicolored in shades of dark brown, light brown, and white, as in this week's beard (at left, which is not my beard, however). One might think of it as calico or, like the mineral, Picasso marble. To some, no doubt to JJ, it looks blotchy, which many do not esteem aesthetically.
I do, however, esteem blotchy, mottled, Picasso-marble colorings highly. Certainly beards that are uniform in color, dense, and beautifully shaped have an appeal, rather like the formal control of the patterns in a French garden. But, a multi-colored beard can exhibit an abundance of personality, rather like the best English cottage gardens. While I admire French gardens, I prefer to spend time in English cottage gardens.
I've known some guys who despair over the white patches in their otherwise "perfect" dark beards. Please! Every artist knows how an accent of complementary color is often necessary to bring a monochrome presentation to life. Is it not the snow cap on Mount Kilimanjaro that makes it an instantly recognizable artistic wonder?
I had an obsessive crush on a guy in high school whose dark-brown hair had a blond patch in it, right above his forehead. I must have eroticized that color variation: since then I've always been susceptible to getting a bit of a charge out of a color patch in someone's hair, white patches in eyebrows, or the white patches in a beard on either side of the chin. It doesn't reach the heights of a fetish by a long shot, but it does enhance my appreciation of the unique and infinitely varied colorations of the "mottled beard", and I don't mind that one bit.
Farewell, Muriel Spark
I just this evening learned* that Muriel Spark has died at the age of 88. Dame Spark was an author — an uncommonly good author — of novels, most famous for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Although I haven't read a novel of hers in some 13 years#, her writing and my sense of her reputation are is as vivid in my mind as if I had just finished her latest novel.
Whenever the topic turns to books, and I'm not talking with crime-novel afficianadoes, I always suggest to people that they read something by Muriel Spark. I've read now some interesting remarks about her sense of irony, her relationship with reality, her catholicism's influence on her writing, but I always enjoyed her books really for two reasons: fantastic, fabulous stories and the uncommon grace of her writing. She is the author about whom I say every sentence is a treat to savor, and the paragraphs are great, too.
Those things were evident in the first book of hers that I read,$ Loitering With Intent. Exactly what it was about escapes me after all these years, but I can remember the thrill of uncovering the irony when the book's protagonist, talking about having her publicity photo taken for the jacket, suddenly seemed instead to be talking about the book I was holding in my hand. The book instantly became delightfully self-referential and transported me to a literary hall of mirrors — a bit disorienting but still great fun. My response was to whip the book shut and stare for some time at the picture of Muriel Spark on the back of the jacket. I felt for a brief moment a very intimate and uncanny connection with the author; calling her a "stylist" doesn't come close to the effect her words can have. Halfway through my first book and I think I was a fan devoted for life.
From a remarkable obituary by Ian Rankin+ — another Scottish author I'm very fond of reading — I learned a number of things about Dame Spark I hadn't known. Among them: that she started out writing as a poet, which no doubt has something to do with her extraordinary use of words. Here are the first and final two sentences of Rankin's remembrance:
MURIEL Spark was the greatest Scottish novelist of modern times, the irony being that she departed Scotland as a teenager and returned thereafter only for brief visits.
[…]
My own admiration for her contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent – the crème de la crème.
No equivocation necessary: she was the best.
———-
*Thanks to Maud Newton. See a delightful photograph of Spark there.
#According to my Book of Books, I've read these books by Spark, in this order (first to last):
- Loitering with Intent
- Memento Mori
- The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
- The Mandelbaum Gate
- Not To Disturb
- The Bachelors
- The Only Problem
- Territorial Rights
%Serendipity plays its part: I happen to see the book on a remainder table and the title and jacket appealed to me — probably the price did, too.
+ Ian Rankin, "Dame Muriel Spark dies aged 88", The Scotsman, c. 15 Apirl 2006.
Sex, Sensibility, & Science
This is cool. Most everyone knows that I'm a scientist of some sort — at least I am when I can hold down a paying job. Also, most everyone knows that I'm secretly a pornographer, although it's hardly a big secret given the link to Jay Neal's website that you can see at the top and on the right.
So, like how often do "science" and "sex" get mentioned at the same time? By Susie Bright* no less!
Our Onward-Christian-Bullshitter administration is on a crusade to crush sex, sensibility, and science. They don't separate one from the other.
[Susie Bright, "I Want to Be Disinhibited– Whether W. Likes It or Not", The Huffington Post, 14 April 2006.]
The article, by the way, is about the efforts by religious extremists to suppress the newly developed HPV vaccine because they believe it might lead to sex. It's a good piece.
While on that subject, she quotes David Baltimore as saying "I never thought that now, in the twenty-first century, we could have a debate about what to do with a vaccine that prevents cancer." Quoting him further
We are talking about basic public health now. What moral precepts allow us to think that the risk of death is a price worth paying to encourage abstinence as the only approach to sex?
Exactly so.
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*Unfortunately, it is not true that all pornographers know each other, even though it's a smallish world, so — alas — I don't know Susie Bright. Not yet, at least.
Don't Need No Science Advisor
Sometimes Bob Park, who writes What's New (for physicists and others), is just too funny for words (except his own) — at least to his fellow physicists who, it must be admited, are not reallly noted for their outrageous senses of humor.
Anyway, from today's edition (Friday, 14 April 2006):
DOE: SECRETARY OF ENERGY BODMAN DISBANDS HIS ADVISORY BOARD.
He has never met with SEAB. A DOE spokesman explained that the Secretary, a chemical engineer, has "a science background," and doesn't need advice. Besides, President Bush doesn't have a science advisor, and look at how well things are going. When Ronald Regan became President, he initially declined to name a Science Advisor. He explained that he knew an engineer back in California he could call if anything ever came up.
In: All, Laughing Matters, Speaking of Science
Love the Warrior, Hate the War
Representative John Murtha quotes one of my favorites:
As President Theodore Roosevelt said, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
[Rep. John Murtha, "It's Not the Questioning of Bush's Policy in Iraq That Brings Down Morale", The Huffington Post, 14 April 2006.]
He also suggests [in my words] a "love the warrior, hate the war" approach to the President's elective war in Iraq. I particularly relish that idea, I admit, because of my long experience with the coded message of the gung-ho group's similar "love the sinner, hate the sin" when it comes to respecting gay people. The delicious irony, of course, comes via all those little yellow "support the troops" magnetic ribbons on the rears of their SUVs, a message usually taken to mean "accept the word of the president unreservedly" rather than suggesting actual regard for the welfare of our troops. As for unquestioningly accepting the word of the President: see above.
Ol'-Time Religion
Finally, the new Pope sets about reminding us of all those things we didn't like about the Catholic Church but hadn't thought much about for awhile:
THE Pope will deliver a blistering attack on the “satanic” mores of modern society today, warning against an “inane apologia of evil” that is in danger of destroying humanity.
In a series of Good Friday meditations that he will lead in Rome, the Pope will say that society is in the grip of a kind of “anti-Genesis” described as “a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family”. He will pray for society to be cleansed of the “filth” that surrounds it and be restored to purity, freed from “decadent narcissism”.
Particular condemnation is reserved for scientific advances in the field of genetic manipulation. Warning against the move to “modify the very grammar of life as planned and willed by God”, the Pope will lead prayers against “insane, risky and dangerous” ventures in attempting “to take God’s place without being God”.
[quotations from Ruth Gledhill, "Pope condemns geneticists 'who play at being God'"), Times Online, 14 April 2006; first seen at Pam's House Blend.]
The "blistering attack" (wouldn't "welt-raising whipping" be more appropriate?) will come in the form of meditations that Benedict will peform during the ritual stations of the cross. He did not actually write the meditations himself, but is mouthing the words of Archbishop Angelo Comastri, Vicar General at Vatican City.
My problem is that when I read something like this:
At the Third Station of the Cross, where Jesus falls for the first time, Archbishop Comastri has written: “Lord, we have lost our sense of sin. Today a slick campaign of propaganda is spreading an inane apologia of evil, a senseless cult of Satan, a mindless desire for transgression, a dishonest and frivolous freedom, exalting impulsiveness, immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication.”
I can't help thinking of our affliction by today's un-holy trinity: G.W. Bush, the neo-conservatives, and the evangelical extremists.
- "Slick campaign of propaganda"? Think of all those spontaneous "town meetings" where Bush delivers lie after lie — well, perhaps "untruths" is kinder! — about social security, weapons of mass destruction, the "mission accomplished" in Iraq, not to mention the money secretly paid to "journalists" to promote "No Child Left Behind" [sic]. Really, the list, if not strictly speaking endless, is far longer than any rational person can keep track of.
- "inane apologia of evil" clearly refers to the ever-engaging, ever-changing neo-con newspeak. Some of us of a certain age can remember laughing at the absurdity of Reagan's "peace keeper" missiles. Now every bill in congress comes with its misdirecting title to hide the continuing assault on the less-than-rich to the benefit of the more-than-rich. "The rising tide floats all boats", unless the tide is directed to an exclusive marina protected by locks.
- "senseless cult of Satan"? Greed has always been thought the root of all evil, personified by Satan. The free market will provide! Don't bite the invisible hand! There is a reason why the CEO of your company makes over 700 times your income. Just trust us!
- "a mindless desire for transgression": Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, Swift-Boat Veterans, Bush, Guanonamo Bay, Plamegate, Iraq, "Patriot" Act, Illegal "Wiretapping"….
- "a dishonest and frivolous freedom"– curtailing the Constitution in the name of fighting terrorism, etc.
- "exalting impulsiveness"? To keep it simple, let's go with W's believing that he's told by God what to do, when policy advisors might give him better advice.
- "immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication" = "the Republican Party is the party of new ideas".
Murderers or Not?
Avedon Carol:
…I keep waiting for someone to lay it on the line: The anti-choice people have to dissemble about their real goals[*], and down-play the fact that the logical conclusion of a "principled" position for someone who believes abortion really is murder is to treat women who have abortions as murderers. [italics in original]
[an excerpt from Avedon Carol, "The tangles of my mind", The Sideshow, 12 April 2006.]
———-
*Quoting further
[…] you really, really have to think that controlling women is a worthier goal than saving the lives of people who have already been born to support the anti-abortion movement's obvious conclusions. They don't believe abortion is murder. Hell, most of the time, they don't even believe that murder is murder. "Abortion is murder" is just rhetoric. They don't mean it. What they mean is that women should not have control of their reproductive lives. Since that is not a saleable position, they must lie. [Given t]he fact that they stop caring about the lives of babies within mere minutes of birth, this is obvious.
Beard of the Week
About a decade ago, I learned how to crochet. I bought some thread, a crochet hook, and with Isaac's help I began decoding a doily pattern and worked my way quite clumsily through it. I've gotten better at it over time of course. I also learned to discriminate a large number of different crochet threads.
Now, to a person who does not crochet doilies, most cotton crochet threads will feel pretty much the same. Not so to the person who has had so many miles of thread pulled through the fingers as I have by now. There are three sizes in common use, and of course it's possible to feel the difference in size after a time. But there's also a different feel to each different thread made by each different manufacturer: some are smooth and polished, some are coarse as burlap, some are more flexible, some more stiff, and let's not even mention metallic threads that have tiny strips of metal in them that feel like they're slicing through one's flesh. Incredibly, some dyes create a different feel to a thread compared to other dyes used on the same thread strock. The point is that after long study, the connoisseur achieves a level of discrimination that the average person does not experience.
The same is true for beards. I wasn't joking when I said before that to many, many people, particularly little old ladies, all men with beards look alike. If I had a dime for every person who asked Isaac and me whether we're brothers, I'd never have to work again, and we don't look a thing alike, really.
However, to the connoisseur, beards come in variety as diverse as the number of men who wear them, and every new shape, growth pattern, and color variation is something to rejoice in. Even with what some would describe as a "white beard" there is variety: watch carefully and you'll discover that there are many shades of "white" corresponding to different colorings before the beard turned white. One of my favorites is the white that comes from previously red hair; it carries a certain mellowness that I find irresistable.*
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*This week's beard is not the post-red white — we'll see an example of that sometime later. This white, as is evident from the color gradients near the crown of his head, is the brilliant white that derives from previously very dark brown, nearly black hair.
The Sun & The Moon
I have a friend upon whom I can rely to send me, with some regularity, unbelievable photos and incredible stories, most of which turn out in the end to be fabricated photos and urban legends. Someplace in the forwarding of these things, someone will often add a wishy-washy "I don't know if this is true, but…." and then carry on anyway.
Sure enough, the last photo I got from him was a beauty: an arctic landscape with a bright, tiny sun hovering on the horizon and, above it, an enormous crescent moon. It was quite a lovely image. The text with it said
This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point. And, you also see the sun below the moon. An amazing photo and not one easily duplicated. You may want to save this and pass on to others.
"…not easily duplicated" is correct! While the image is pretty, it's a complete fabrication, and I'd like to think that should have been obvious to anyone seeing it. But then, I'd like to think a lot of things that turn out to have nothing to do with reality.
Happily, snopes.com says plainly that the photograph is a fabrication, created digitally by a German astrophysics student. (Follow the link for the details and to see the image.)
However, Snopes missed their chance to state the obvious: the photograph could not possibly be a real image of "sunset at the North Pole" for one simple reason that everyone should be able to spot — the image of the moon, compared to the image of the sun, is far, far too large.
But how could anyone be expected to know this*, you ask? Well, I claim, nearly everyone knows the cause of total solar eclipses, even if they've never seen one: the moon passes between the Earth and the sun and exactly covers the disk of the sun for a short time.
The simple deduction, then, is that the apparent size of the moon, as seen from the Earth, is very nearly the same as the apparent size of the sun. Thus we know that this image, in which the moon is some 20 times the size of the sun, must be a fabrication.
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* This is an interesting question, particularly since in films, night scenes are often created with a looming, full moon shot with a telephoto lens; the same is rarely done for the sun, unless it is near the horizon into which the movie's heroes are riding. People often seem ready to accept that the apparent size of the moon is substantially larger than it is in reality, whereas they seem to imagine the apparent size of the sun to be rather smaller than it actually is. These mistaken notions are exploited in the north-pole "sunset" image.
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
Feeling Illiterate
In one of those moments when I thought I'd relax a bit and do something useless, I searched alexa.com for this blog. Among several expected or predictable results, I found one that struck me as unusual. It was a reference to an article that began this way:
??????? ? ??????? ?? "????????????? ???????????"
?????? ????????
with what I presume is a title and an author's name. It turns out that one of my blog articles ("New Illiteracy") is part of reference number 5 in this article.
[Added a little bit later: It seems we guessed right about the second line being a name. Looking further I found a photograph of a young woman, presumably the author, whose name transliterates as Melina Tsvetkova. Her e-mail address is in the top-level domain for Bulgaria.]
It all makes me feel very scholarly and cospmopolitan being an authority for a paper [?] whose title I can't read because my memory of Cyrillic is very, very rusty. I tried to deduce what the nature of the paper might be by looking at the other two parts of reference #5, but the only thing I could see in common among the three of us is that the word "Literacy" or "Illiteracy" figured in each of the three titles, and my article really had little to do with illiteracy except in a vaguely ironic way.
So, I may be more in the dark than before, but at least it's a cosmopolitan darkness. If anyone can illuminate the situation, please feel free to leave a comment.
One Post, Two …
Okay, check out this cosmic confluence.
You may — or more likely, will not — remember my post from some time back, "Sequences of Integers", about Neil1 J.A.Sloane's fascinating project, the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences2 with over 100,000 sequences of integers and lots of exceedingly fascinating details. It appeals mightily to my quirky, geeky side.
Then, appealing to my quirky, gay side is this site: Hey, gay Eric! (via Queerty). It's the creation of a guy ("Gay Daniel"), who happened to have a session with a psychic who told him he would settle down with a guy named "Eric". Thus, he created a website to attract the attention of 30+ gay Erics and invite them to apply to be his boyfriend.
Now, what do these two sites have in common?
The answer should be obvious: a sequence of integers! (Rather obvious, I know.)
Among the questions on the application to be Gay Daniel's boyfriend, there appears this question:
Q17. What is the next number in the series 20, 23, 28, 14, 17, 22, 11?
12, 14, 15, 16, or 17?3
Sadly, this sequence does not appear in the OEIS, so you'll have to work it out for yourself.
———-
1 Yes, he does have a Ph.D., but so do I so we call each other by our first names because only medical doctors are insecure enough to insist on using "doctor" as their universal first name.
2 In fact, the OEIS has been in my mind since Neil contacted me to, um, assist in getting the spelling of his name correct. But trust me: the OEIS is cool stuff.
3The answer is evidently 14; ask me why if you don't see it and your name is not "Eric".
In: All, Curious Stuff, Eureka!
Fast-Growing Leeches
Why is it that so many continue to believe the propaganda of the oil companies, the drug companies, and the insurance companies when 1) they tell us that times are hard and they can barely make any profit; and 2) they post incredible profits and are the fastest growing industries?
BusinessWeek in a recent cover article listed their annual ranking of the 50 fastest growing corporations. But they failed drawing any conclusions from the fact that after Apple Computer landed in the number one spot, the computer maker was followed by three companies that make all their money on administering drugs and healthcare to sick Americans; WellPoint, the nation's biggest health insurer, Caremark Rx, one of the largest pharmacy benefits managers (a company that manages prescriptions for patients and pharmacies), and UnitedHealth Group which provides health insurance and other services to 65 million Americans. Guess who is paying for their growth?
[Dr. Peter Rost, "Universal Healthcare Passes in Massachusetts", The Huffington Post, 6 April 2006.]
Freedom & Truth
My dad has been visiting us for the last two weeks, using as his primary excuse coming to see us perform "Crazy for You" — all 5 performances and the dress rehearsal, no less. Anyway, we relaxed and entertained ourselves last night by watching "Good Night and Good Luck", which we thoroughly enjoyed and thoroughly praised for its contemporary relevance, but we are a bleeding-heart liberal family after all.
Anyway again, we discussed the nature of democracy and those who, despite their apparently best intentions, try to "preserve" our freedoms by destroying them in the fashion of McCarthy, with overzealous patriotism and paranoic secrecy.
I made the claim — one that I'm still thinking about but that still seems to me to be true — that democracy is something that one can't trust politicians to pursue: what elected official in his right mind would choose such a slow-moving, unwieldy system as democracy? Instead, democracy must rest in the hands of the people electing the politicians, and the people must see to it that the politicians are kept honest. Democracy may be the worst governing system ever invented save all the others, but it seems definitely not a system under which the governed should simply trust their leaders and hope for the best, because then we get the worst.
In my mind I started comparing the idea of elected officials doing their work out in the open versus doing it in secret — for our own good, of course — with my own life before and after coming out as gay. Not surprisingly, I found many similarities and resonances that I could probably write about for years to come. But the big point in my own thoughts was that, before coming out (BCO) as gay, secrecy seemed so natural and necessary a way of life that one dreaded the thought of being without; one would feel undressed and horribly exposed and vulnerable.
But the truth — and it's a truth known to every gay person whose ever come out — is that the secrecy and half-truths are an incredible burden that leave one vulnerable and open to exposure. And what's to expose? Nothing but the real person, but a person ashamed. After coming out (ACO), I discovered that the truth is powerful and protecting; the vulnerability vanishes like the insubstantial will-o-the-wisp it turned out to be.
The problem with this lesson about the difference BCO vs. ACO is that the closeted gay person in the BCO era never believes it. It can only be experienced personally, although it helps that there are many, many gay people these days who can testify to the effect.
This may not seem relevant to anyone except me, but I think the lesson is the same for elected officials: doing a job honestly in the open-air of truth seems like a horrible idea, but is really the best way to get the job done in the end.
And then, this evening I read the following:
…you can’t have freedom without the truth.*
— Al Franken, 4 April 2006
It seemed to sum everything up quite nicely, at least for now.
———-
* Franken went on to say this:
"You can have freedom without jokes, as has been proven by the Dutch and the Swiss."
True as it may be, it didn't seem to fit the mood I wanted to present above.
A Democratic Motto
A little while back, Shakespeare's Sister asked for some suggestions for what amounted to a campaign motto for the Democrats. Without further comment, I simply wanted to note that I was very fond of Litbrit's exceedingly clever suggestion:
Blowjobs are better than no jobs.