A Post-Ideology Blog by PatricktheRogue

Tactile aspects of non-verbal behavior

2010-07-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

More in the non-verbal behavior files. What we touch, how it feels, how much it weighs - these all effect us emotionally. Discover Blogs notes that, "In a study of 54 volunteers, those who clutched the heavier board rated a job candidate more highly based on their resume, and thought that they displayed a more serious interest in the job."

Bruce Sheiman (An Atheist Defends Religion) on why the educated tend to be nonbelievers

2010-07-01T09:26:00.000-07:00

Bruce's take on atheism is refreshing, and less aggressive than the so-called
"new atheists." Just because some people lack belief does not mean they must be at odds, unable to civilly engage each other.
As a counter to Richard Dawkins' rather insulting suggestion to relabel atheists as "brights," here is a quote from an interview with Bruce Sheiman:

I have a theory why education is associated with atheism (i.e., that atheists are more likely to have higher educational achievement than believers).
And it is not because religion is associated with ignorance, which is what
sanctimonious atheists would have us believe. Rather, it is because
education’s highest goal is the cultivation of critical reasoning, and too much
critical reasoning serves to undermine any Institution or Ideal. I call this the
“Opening of the American Mind” because it encourages, first, the transition to
relativism (based on the assumption that all cultural truths are equally valid
and that no ideal is better than any other). In time, critical reasoning takes
us a step further, to the view that all beliefs are equally dubious, equally
subject to criticism and skepticism. The result is an inability to see
anything important without great gobs of cynicism. The solution is to take
critical reasoning a step further – to the criticism of critical reasoning.
Whether that will ever take place is open to skepticism… and so it goes.

A Poem for Tuesday

2010-06-29T19:28:00.000-07:00

Deep calls unto deep in the chasm of great waters.
I watch the fish and remember they are the symbols of the children of God;
I stand in wonder as they surrender to the wave
and are crushed against the rocks where destiny brings pain.

Peace… is all I long for and all that I cannot find.
I rush into the temple where I light a thousand candles and I pray one prayer,
and I sing one song, and I heave one heart to the scales of mercy.

Crucify my vanity on the cross of high judgment.
Flay me to the block and unveil the guts of doubt.
Fix me with chains of regret to the steps of Your Calling,
to hear the lament of the Lady named Wisdom.

For I hear her in the city as she whispers from cold streetlamps
and frost-bitten bricks where the hunger never ends.
I call her from the mountains of the sea
where her song is heard by whales and echoed through the riptide and the reef.
I cry out from the sewers where her children wade and scramble,
where they sip from grey streams that trickle down from the noble houses.

I call her,
I cry to her,
I surrender to her flame.
I summon every shadow of remembrance, and I turn to her, flesh to the blaze.

Hammes on Afghanistan: Maybe Joe Biden was Right

2010-06-23T20:26:00.000-07:00

A key exchange that probably passed most people by on All Things Considered today:

SIEGEL:
Well, Colonel Hammes, if the fixed number here is the timeframe as opposed to the strategy, is there something the U.S. could achieve effectively in Afghanistan with a different strategy, as you see it, that could be consistent with starting to draw down forces a year from July?

HAMMES: Yes, because it is a very long process and a very expensive one.
So if we take the 10 years, let's say we're wildly optimistic and we can make this work in only 10 years, that will cost us about a trillion dollars and about 3,000 lives. And if we're very, very good and we get a superb Afghan government and the economy doubles in those 10 years, the best we can do is a country that is poorer than today's Chad. So from a strategic point of view, investing those kind of resources to create another Chad just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Few have more expertise on this subject than retired U.S. Marine Col T.X. Hammes, and what he recommends sounds alot like what Vice President Biden was recommending during the policy review last year, namely, a much smaller force with a mission to maintain intelligence links and continue to target Al Qaeda and their affiliates through direct action raids and air strikes. This is not a great strategy, but it sure is better than the alternative: open-ended commitment to pour our blood and treasure down the endless chasm in the graveyard of empires. Isn't that why many of us voted for President Obama, so he would keep us out of quixotic campaigns with no end in sight? >

Open Letter to the National Pork Board - Protectors of The Only Other White Meat!

2010-06-21T18:36:00.000-07:00

Recently, ThinkGeek reported that the National Pork Board in the United States brought forward a cease and desist order against a completely false product, Canned Unicorn Meat.

But I have been in contact with confidential sources who have confirmed that this report is not entirely true, and they have also revealed a truly stunning conspiracy. This hideous product, Canned Unicorn Meat - The Other Other White Meat, is not in fact a false product, but is very real, and is shipped all over the world. It is routinely consumed by Asian men seeking increased virility and by those enslaved to the black arts: witches, voodoo priests, tribal shamen, and marine biologists. And my source for this information is, believe it or not, the unicorns themselves. I was approached in a glade in which a rainbow appeared to end, where I was seeking a new species of clover. I was sought by these ethereal creatures in earnest desperation. And I promised to tell their story to the world.

They asked me to publish an open letter to the National Pork Board. I do so here.

Dear National Pork Board,
We want to make sure that you, the pork board, understand that we unicorns are in fact real. And we are also sentient! We do not appreciate being turned into canned meat.

Do not pay attention to the "sisters" at Radiant Farms. They are not "sisters" in the convent sense, but sisters in the coven sense. They do not ease and comfort us into our final stages of life as they claim - they poke and prod and measure us for coats. They keep us in chains and cages and then boil us in cauldrons. They are witches!

Please continue your legal efforts to stop their wicked enterprise. We fully and completely support your efforts to end this vile practice! Save us!

Wishfully Yours,
The Real Unicorns

Malcolm Gladwell on running

2010-05-13T08:47:00.000-07:00

Malcolm Gladwell said, "I'm only snobbish about running. Competitive runners disdain listening to music when they run; I want to at least give the impression I am listening only to my body."

I refuse to run with headphones for different reasons - it's my idea time. I get more ideas during a run than atany other time. The rhythm of my pace and breathing has a similar effect as zen meditation. It clears the mind. Oddly, this very active time for the body is a quiet time for the soul. And, by concentrating on nothing, my mind is quiet enough to notice when new ideas arrive. I would lose that if I ran with headphones, whether for music or news radio. I often don't notice how loud life is, that is, how many people and items of interest or vying for my attention constantly. Life is so noisy, until I run.

Thanks Google - Terrain view is now in the drop down menu

2010-05-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

Apparently Google reads this blog, because the day after I raised a fuss on these pages (as well as a couple other forums) they added terrain view to a drop down menu on Google Maps. My operative theory was that since google has no formal customer feedback mechanism, they were probably monitoring blogs and forums for mentions of Google. It probably has no connection, but it seemed to work. Of course, this is likely one of those incidents where correlation does not equal causation.

Google Maps - where is the terrain view?

2010-05-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

Google, while a great (and free) product, I find it frustrating that they do not seek customer feedback when they implement changes. I use Google Maps terrain view all the time. Now it is gone. I would like to tell them how frustrating this is and that I will now seek out another browser that will allow me to see terrain. The satellite views are great, but the terrain view has altitude and contour lines that are necessaary for many of us in our jobs and hobbies. So, Goggle, if you're listening, change it back! Bring back the terrain view on Google Maps.

Quote for the day with commentary.

2010-05-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

If we were to do away with the varying religions, we would find ourselves united and enjoying one great faith and religion, abounding in brotherhood. - Kahlil Gibran

While I doubt this is objectively true, that this would simply happen given our contradictory, selfish nature, this is what Karen Armstong is getting at with her Charter of Compassion. What is known as the Golden Rule is the underlying principle of all the world's major religious traditions. According to the ancient tale, Rabbi Hillel (in a time shortly before Jesus of Nazareth) stated that the heart of the law was "Do not to others that which is hateful to you." the rest of the law - he said - was commentary.

Artists such as Kahlil Gibran and John Lennon offered this observation to the world in various forms, whether through story, poem, or song. They asserted that the underlying notion of compassion for others is what is important, not all the extraneous dogmas the religions of the world pile on to it. In the 19th Century, Lew Wallace, author of Ben-hur, wrote a very long novel, The Prince of India, in which the protaganist seeks to reconcile the major world religions by showing how they are all based on the same philosophy of compassion. So the idea has been around for at least a couple hundred years, probably longer. I believe it speaks to the very passionate core of human beings, the need to identify and sympathize with others, and this is why it is so resonant. But, again, we humans are essentially self-contradictory. While we evolved the capacity for great compassion and charity for those in our tribe, we also developed the ability to practice cruelty and aggression towards those we see as outsiders. So, these yin and yang forces will continue to pull and prod at us, ultimately foiling our attempts to raise compassion on to a throne above us all.

Embracing Doubt

2010-05-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

I just happened to catch Laura Ingraham on the radio a few days ago as she was ridiculing President Obama for speaking about his faith in starkly religious terms at an Easter observance. He was never so forthcoming, she said, using the name of Christ and being very specific about the overtly Christian aspects of his faith. Ingraham suggested that it must be a ploy, a play to manipulate the faithful, and her proof? Well, didn't he talk about doubt once, when speaking on matters of faith? Didn't he mention that America included "non-believers" along with Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc. in his inauguration speech?

Apparently, her implication is that non-believers are not real Americans, that we don't mention those people. Apparently, talking about grappling with doubt in one's spiritual life is a sure sign of cynicism and dishonesty. Apparently, believers must be completely certain, with no reservations, no room for hesitancy. But what would Ms. Ingraham say to Mother Teresa, whose journal writings illuminated a life filled with profound doubts about the existence and nature of God? Would she cast Teresa to the inquisitor's rack along with the President? Of course, that is the logical extension of Ingraham's take on faith - inhuman adherence to an austere standard with no tolerance for dissent or disagreement. In short, the Inquisition. But, then, anyone who listens to Ms. Ingraham will recognize that game already.

My President, Our President...and Confirmation Bias

2010-05-03T21:29:00.000-07:00

A few posts ago, I noted the dangers of confirmation bias. President Obama seems to understand the dangers of succumbing to this phenomenon on a mass scale. As he said when he won the election, he is the president for all the people, not just black, or hispanic, or gay, or union, no, for everyone. And he shows what that means here, in his graduation speech to Michigan University, where he extols the students to keep themselves connected to different ideas than their own, and to people who believe differently than they do. Here is a highlight from the whole speech:

...if you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York
Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while. If
you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the
Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be
changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for
effective citizenship. It is essential for our democracy.

And so, too, is the practice of engaging in different experiences
with different kinds of people. I look out at this class and I realize for four
years at Michigan you have been exposed to diverse thinkers and scholars,
professors and students. Don’t narrow that broad intellectual exposure just
because you’re leaving here. Instead, seek to expand it. If you grew up in a big
city, spend some time with somebody who grew up in a rural town. If you find
yourself only hanging around with people of your own race or ethnicity or
religion, include people in your circle who have different backgrounds and life
experiences. You’ll learn what it’s like to walk in somebody else’s shoes, and
in the process, you will help to make this democracy work.

The perils of rumor

2010-04-21T13:58:00.001-07:00

Jayne Cravens, an expert in development studies and online volunteerism, provides a long list on her website of the damage suffered in developing regions due to rumor, superstition, and urban legends. One story describes an African village that could no longer sell their ginger crop because of rumors that one could be infected with HIV through their produce.
What becomes clear after a perusal of her list, is that these rumors and superstitions are reflective of an inefficient information system. The problem is that this is a huge obstacle to development and the creation of wealth.

As noted in the World Bank's "Where is the Wealth of Nations" report, most of the "wealth" in the developed world is intangible, existing in institutions and rule sets. The most interesting part of this is that this intangible capital is so vital because it actually allows the creation of more wealth. Think of the patent office and the court system that enforces copyrights: this is a system designed to encourage creativity and invention, which in turn enriches the whole society. In a cournty with no protection for inventors, there is little incentive to work hard at developin anything new and useful. The bottom line is these institutions are crucial for the developing world to achieve a better state. What's left to discover is how much this inefficient information distribution system (rumors and superstitions) hampers the development of these economic and social institutions and rule sets.

Pet Peeve: British to American

2010-04-17T22:19:00.000-07:00

In the pet peeve department: I was about to buy a Nick Hornby book in the Chicago airport the other day, (How to Be Good, I think) and, while leafing through it, I noticed that "color" was missing the "u", which of course is inlcuded in the British spelling: colour. There were several other Americanizations throughout the book, such as spelling "realized" with a z instead of an s.
This kind of thing drives me a little nuts. What is the point of this? Do publishers think we don't know Nick Hornby is British? Are they trying to insulate us from foreign spellings?

Maybe I am being too sensitive, but I find it insulting. I read the Economist on most flights (it usually gets me through at least two hours, and as a bonus I get to catch up on what's happening in Sri Lanka or Malawi) and enjoy the fact that they don't make "American editions." On a similar note, I've noticed that some books are given different titles when they are released in the U.S. Maybe a few decades ago I would never even have found this out, but in the internet age of globalism, when I can find foreign reviews of books instantly, what are they trying to do? Why is Philip Pullman's The Northern Lights known as The Golden Compass in the U.S.? I think maybe its the idea that a bunch of publishers are sitting around thinking we Americans are too stupid or too insular to buy a book or product if we find out it has a foreign source. I'm not really sure why, but I don't like it. My thought is that anyone who would read a Nick Hornby book very likely knows he's a Brit already. And, anyway, in the age of Harry Potter, isn't that a good thing?

The hard truth about the budget

2010-04-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

The truth that no American politician will say is that they can't cut the budget because we the people won't let them.

John Sides at the Monkey cage illustrated a recent Economist/YouGov poll on what people are willing to cut - against what the government actually spends money on.

I suspect that some of this has to do with how the questions were asked, but I am also fairly certain that most citizens have very little idea where the government's budget goes. The elephant in the room is the defense budget. Right now we pay not just to raise and keep a military to fight definable threats, such as the very real wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (however questionable the strategy that got us there), we also pay for a lot of weapons, equipment, and capabilities based on wildly speculative definitions of "threat."

The military budget is bigger than the next 20 nation's budgets combined. Even cutting it in half would still leave with us a truly enormous military budget, and such serious cuts are going to have to be considered as the U.S. finds itself as one nation among others, as opposed to the power above all the rest. America will remain a mighty powerhouse, but economic reality will soon dictate that we cannot maintain this unquestioned hegemony for much longer.

B.R. Myers on the great matron: Kim Jong Il - North Korea's pathology revealed

2010-04-03T20:12:00.000-07:00

I remember hearing army Gen Bill Livesay (former commander of U.S. Forces Korea) say that the toughest thing about dealing with the North Koreans was you just couldn't ascribe any rationality to their actions. Livesay is a shrewd thinker who hides behind a southern good-ole boy facade, so it is quite an admission on his part that he could never figure the North Koreans out. They do not maneuver on the world stage in anyway similar to their communist forebears, such as the Soviets or the Red Chinese. As a long time cold warrior, Livesay and the other strategists of the cold war era were used to anticipating, or at least understanding, what the the Soviets and Chinese were up to. There was almost always method to their madness. But the lessons they gleaned from dealing with the two communist great powers proved useless against the North Koreans.

B.R. Myers, a professor in South Korea, recently offered a very unique perspective on why the North Koreans proved so inscrutable to the West, and even to their supposed allies, China, and Russia. His talk featured on C-Span's BookTV (BookTV - I freely admit I am addicted), was quite illuminating for those who've had to concern themselves with the situation.

He notes chiefly that North Korea is primarily a racist, nationalist regime built on militarism. It is communist only secondarily. They consider themselves to be a pure race, plagued by jealous, evil outsiders, meaning chiefly the U.S. and other westerners, but also including their Asian neighbors, the Japanese and Chinese. His observations about the matronly characterization of the regime in its own propaganda were completely new to me. And I have quite a bit of exposure to American strategic thinking on North Korea over the last couple decades. For anyone interested in the Korean Peninsula, his presentation is worth the time. I definitely intend to read his book.

Is There Free Speech in the U.K.?

2010-04-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

Philip Pullman at an event plugging his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, delivers a solid, and rousing, defense of the right to freedom of speech. I wonder what Pullman thinks of this case in Scotland, where a preacher was arrested and fined for speaking about his religious convictions regarding homosexuals (that they are going to hell.) While I find the preacher's views slightly offensive, and truthfully, rather silly, I don't like the idea of arresting people for voicing their opinions. I am fairly certain Mr. Pullman is in my corner on that one. Once down that road, there is no end to it. It seems quite odd that the country that germinated the idea of the rights of man, including free speech, should now be denying it to those within its borders.

The best April Fool's broadcast from Performance Today

2010-04-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

Violinist Daniel Hope contributed to the best, most convincing, April Fool's gag on the radio yesterday. Here it is - I will admit, they had me going for a few minutes, until I realized what day it was.

A Mormon fakes it

2010-03-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

Here is a fascinating blog. A woman converted to the Mormon faith to marry the man she loved, but now is stuck with living in a faith community she doesn't believe in. She is finding it harder and harder to "fake it," and blogging is apparently her stress outlet. It's got drama, tension, tragedy - what's not to love?

Trying to eat healthily? The U.S. Govt isn't helping.

2010-03-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

Here is a very illustrative graph depicting how the government subsidizes food in complete opposition to its own recommendation:

Unbelievable prescience - the Atomists

2010-03-05T17:21:00.000-08:00

I remember vaguely hearing about the Atomist school of thought in Ancient Greece, either in college or high school, I don't remember. I do remember that whoever was teaching breezed past these guys to get to the Greek heavy weights, Aristotle and Plato, who rejected atomism. So, recently when I read the following passage by Edward Humes in his book, Monkey Girl, I was stopped in my tracks:

Atomists...theorized that all living things and all matter were made of
invisibly small particles they called atoms. In their view, the universe
was born through the random and purposeless combination, interaction, and
crashing together of these atoms, a cyclic and eternal process that did not
require divine intervention...undergoing continuous cycles of change, the
atomists dispensed with the need for a creator. The gods were dismissed as
the products of superstition and the all-too-human desire to blame others for
misfortune; the atomists preached that personal responsibility, not appeasing
false gods, was of ultimate importance.

Now, this was all more than 2500 years ago. Before the microscope, before the telescope, basically before almost all of science. Humes goes on:

The atomist point of view would turn out to be eerily prescient
anticipation of modern chemistry, particle physics, and the big bang theory,
complete with a suggestion that stars and planets condensed from swirling
clouds of cosmic dust.

I couldn't help but pause in wonder at these incredible seers - how they came to these conclusions with virtually none of the knowledge that would lead physicists to reach similar conclusions 2500 years later is baffling. and quite wondrous.

I should note that this observation is simply an aside in Humes' brilliant book, which is actually about the (so far unsuccessful) efforts to bar the teaching of evolutionary theory in high schools in America.

Rational Actor?

2010-02-17T09:27:00.000-08:00

I took about 20 hours of Economics before I switched to Geography for my undergraduate degree. Not only because reading Toynbee and Mackinder is downright riveting compared to Keynes and Hayek, but because I started to get the feeling that the whole subject of economics is a house of cards. It's a bunch of models, which are only useful if tied to reality, but the assumptions economists make to build their models are based on half-baked, or outright false, theories of human behavior.

Take the idea of the Rational Actor. Economists presume that human beings act rationally and all those thousands of small rational decisions and choices create unbeatable efficiencies in the marketplace. Now, by using the word rational, they mean simply that people weigh cost against benefit before taking an action. But they never address the fact that people often do not act rationally, even in this limited sense. People are social, emotional, hormonal, impressionable, tribal, and so much more, but rarely, oh so rarely, rational.

The American Scientist has a well-developed discussion of the problems with the rational actor theory in the context of game theory and other developments in the behavioral sciences. In the vein of E.O. Wilson's idea of consilience - where he suggests that the hard physical sciences and the life sciences need to converge their fields of study, so should Economists and other behavioral scinces, such as Psychology and Sociology, so we can gain greater insight into what is actually happening in the marketplace.

Why people believe Conspiracy Theories

2010-02-16T10:48:00.001-08:00

One cannot go through too many days on this planet without running into a conspiracy theory or two. My first experience with a believer in one of these theories was many years ago, when I ran into a John Birch Society representative. They actually believed in quite a few conspiracies at once, but the foundation stone of their theories was that Dwight Eisenhower was the chief communist agent operating in the Western World. How else to explain his meteoric rise from Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army to (Four-Star) General in three short years? Of course, the easiest explanation would be that he was good at his job, and that the U.S. entered the Second World War during that time which saw the need for active officers increase twelve fold. Additionally, lots of people on active duty in 1941 were quickly promoted after the war began in earnest. Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Patton, three of the most famous American generals of the war, all started out as (Full-bird) Colonels in 1941, before the U.S. entry on 8 Dec. 1941. All became Four-star Generals by 1945.

As I spoke with the Bircher, I suggested there were four simple, and believable, factors that influenced Eisenhower's quick promotion: there was a war; officers who fought and commanded well were needed; a lot of officers died, so those who lived were promoted quickly to fill in gaps; and finally, his reputation for exceptional personal and organizational skills - exactly what a high-placed general officer needed to put together such huge operations with multi-national forces. But this was too simple for my Bircher acquaintance: he preferred to believe a vast communist conspiracy placed Eisenhower in just the right positions, and ensured he was promoted quickly, so he would be in position to be President -as if anyone could predict all of the events that culminated in his ultimate election. I suggested that such a belief defies simple logic. But the Bircher would have none of it.

Many skeptics and debunkers, such as Michael Shermer, point out the obvious shortcomings in many of these theories. For instance, to pull off a faked moon landing would require that thousands of people were in on the hoax, and stayed quiet all this time. A similar problem plagues Kennedy assassination theorists.

As David Aaronovitch states, "After the JFK assassination, it was unbearable to many people that they could live in a country where a lone gunman could kill a president. In those circumstances, it’s not surprising that an overarching conspiracy theory emerges." In his new book, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History, he posits that it simply makes people feel more secure to think that organized human agency was responsible for horrific acts such as the JFK assassination than to allow the chaotic power of a crazed gunman to intrude into their comfortable worlds.

Recent examples include the various 9/11 theories, which suggest everything from blaming Israel to blaming an enormous conspiracy within the Bush administration, and the Obama birthers, lest we be accused of partisanship, who contend that President Obama was not born in the U.S. and that his parents faked their announcement in the Honolulu newspaper in order to ensure he could be President someday. Numerous flaws can easily be demonstrated in all of these theories. Obviously, these theories fill an emotional or psychic need within their advocates, and very few will allow reason to intrude as long as their need is met by their conspiratorial claims.

David Simon on the Drug War and the death of policing

2010-02-09T16:31:00.000-08:00

In a compelling interview with Bill Moyers, the producer of The Wire, David Simon outlines how the drug war has destroyed the profession of the policeman. First, he points out how 25 years ago 30-35% of prisoners were incarcerated for violent crimes, and now violent crimes account for only about 7% of prisoners. He then explains how police get promoted by valuing "easy to go after" cases, and drug cases are easy. You find a guy who has drugs on him, and you charge him. Easy. And a cop can make an arrest every few days by just shaking up some guys in the right neighborhoods. So he can make a lot of arrests. Whereas the cop who spends his time investigating murders and rapes has to put in many, many hours to gather enough evidence to make a bust. So the guy who makes the drug collars (which is basically a non-violent crime) gets promoted.

And the guy who tries to solve crimes where citizens were actually hurt? He gets passed over and told to go make more arrests.

A Poem for Monday

2010-01-25T20:57:00.000-08:00

...The wild grass rustles over Babii Yar.
The trees look ominous like judges.
Here all things scream in silence,
and, baring my head,
Slowly I feel myself turning gray.

And I myself-
one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here-
I am each old man
here shot down.
I am every child
here shot down.
Nothing within me
will ever forget.

Let the "Internationale"
thunder
when the last anti-Semite on earth
is buried forever.

In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage all anti-Semites
must hate me now
as if I were a Jew.
And for that reason
I am a true Russian!

-Yevgeny Yevtushenko,
translated from Russian by George Reavey

The truth about Haiti's deal with the devil

2010-01-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

Reverend Pat Robertson explained, yesterday, how Haiti was in such bad straits these days because its founders made a pact with the devil. This is what passes for Christianity in America these days. Of course, not all Christians believe such drivel, even in the U.S.. There are compassionate and erudite Christian believers such as Dr. Cornel West, who espouses a quite reasonable and moderate Christian message. But Rev. Robertson is from the extreme rightwing of the Evangelical movement in America. Given recent events, I thought I would tackle this assertion that Haiti is poor and destitute because of its pact with the devil head on. So, first of all, is it true? Robertson offered no proof for his assertion, so I looked it up.

Just to see exactly what we are talking about, here is another version of this "historical fact" making the rounds in Evangelical circles:

It is a matter of well-documented historical fact that the nation of Haiti
was dedicated to Satan 200 years ago. On August 14, 1791, a group of houngans
(voodoo priests), led by a former slave houngan named Boukman, made a pact with the Devil at a place called Bois-Caiman. All present vowed to exterminate all of the white Frenchmen on the island. They sacrificed a black pig in a voodoo ritual at which hundreds of slaves drank the pig's blood. In this ritual, Boukman asked Satan
for his help in liberating Haiti from the French. In exchange, the voodoo
priests offered to give the country to Satan for 200 years and swore to serve
him. On January 1, 1804, the nation of Haiti was born and thus began a new
demonic tyranny.

But is it "a matter of well documented fact?" Here is the report of a Dr. Gelin, a Haitian scientist and minister, who researched this question because, as he notes, "the idea that Haiti was dedicated to Satan prior to its independence is a very serious and profound statement with potentially grave consequences for its people in terms of how they are perceived by others or how the whole nation is understood outside its borders." I appreciate that his concern is the consequences for Haiti in terms of its image abroad and not the "spiritual" ramifications of the curse itself, because that is quite a reasonable concern. You can read his whole article, but, in short, he found no historical proof for it. Furthermore, as a believing Christian he joined a group who decided to go to the fabled spot of this Satanic dedication and undo any curses that might have been activated, just in case. So, why didn't Robertson know this? Why was he not informed by God that the cursed had been lifted? Must have his wires crossed.

I have searched through several sources of Haitian history and found no proof of this pact with the devil. It was not the devil who set the slaves in Haiti free from their tyrannical French masters, it was some damned fine guerrilla fighting on the part of the Haitians themselves. In fact, in an era of increasing worldwide dominance by European military forces, the former slaves assembled a very effective military that repulsed three different European invasions (British, French, and Spanish.) The nation's troubles since then are due to a number of different factors, from American and European meddling to an acute lack of education, skills, and resources, all historically documented, and none attributable to Satan.

Haiti in the balance

2010-01-14T07:52:00.000-08:00

A post of mine picked up by the Daily Dish:

I was on the ground in Haiti with the Marines in the 2004 peacekeeping operation. After what would have been a fairly mild tropical storm in the U.S., our peacekeeping op turned into a full-on relief and rescue effort near the town of Fond Verette. Because of deforestation the ravines in the mountains became swift-moving rivers of mud, swallowing up whole villages. Then, as now, news was slow to come in. What we thought initially was a few hundred dead turned out to be thousands within three days.

The only positive side at the time was that Port-au-Prince was spared.
We had staff estimates then on what the impact to the city would have been, and it was truly frightening. The abject poverty of the area, and the lack of resources to respond to something like this, cannot be underestimated. From that experience I can guess that we have only begun to realize the full extent of the damage. I suspect that the final toll will be in the hundreds of thousands. If the people in this country have any compassion for "the least of these," they will support quick and massive assistance to that beleaguered country.

A poem for Monday

2010-01-11T16:52:00.000-08:00

O star above a starless world
O flicker in a cave of stone despair
O feather plucked from flightless love
Blow the rippled horns to the searchers

O sail danced on whispered wave
O petal stretching for the sun
O dream of boys beyond high fences
Blow the child’s dream a hymn of muscle

O errant knight on shadowed hill
O flavor on the tongue of fear
O message to the muddy trench
Awash in heaving death and weary moon
Blow the meaning clear
Blow the road before them
Blow the wayward home

Blow the wayward son
A song of true direction
To fly on strength of wood
And blaze into a vow

O leper chased from hollow streets
O judge above the bloody host
O diamond in a dungeon
Trapped in cages that lock beauty from the day
Blow dying eyes a promise
Blow the newborn to tomorrow
Blow the hero to the moment of his need

O god of earth and wind
Blow the storms of your decree
Through crackling trees and frozen bone
To burst into the artery of hope
-PTR

The Jefferson Bible

2010-01-08T16:02:00.000-08:00

It is fairly well known that Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian. He was probably a deist, but he was definitely a skeptic, who advocated rigorous examination of the evidence for one's beliefs. He was also an admirer of Jesus Christ, but he found the Christ of the New Testament gospels to be unbelievable, a victim of mythmakers who distorted what Jefferson thought to be the prophet's actual philosophy with fantastic tales of miracles and divine fanfare.

So, one day, he sat down and edited out all the things he thought invented after the fact, in an attempt to reveal the natural history of the sage, Jesus Christ. Here is his finished product. I find it to be still quite interesting and often profound, but not nearly as compelling without the mythological elements. But then, my reaction is probably a vestigial holdover from a fervent Christian upbringing. I wonder how those not inculcated as children into the Christian mythos react to it?

One thing is for certain, though. In the current political climate, we would definitely not be raising rapturous monuments (it is my favorite) in the nation's capitol to a man who figuratively chopped up the bible in such a way. Could you imagine if President Obama, in an effort to hone, say, St. Paul's message, had, in his student days, edited the epistles down to their bare philosophical bones? (Actually, I could see him doing this, simply as an exercise in intellectual rigor.) Well, he would certainly not be the president today, and probably not even a senator any longer. Such is the mob fervor gripping the populace.

Why Lean Six Sigma isn't good for everything

2010-01-05T17:30:00.001-08:00

I have run into, now and then, very slick efficiency-improvement systems such as Lean and Six Sigma that are billed as the answer for every problem in an organization. They are always billed as brand new, the latest thing, but they are not. Years ago there was TQL, or total quality management. Before that something else. Even reading about these systems just makes my soul die in place. I am sure that these systems are good for running a factory, but managers and leaders in every area of life get swept up in the hype and start trying to apply these (to me) stultifying systems to every type of organization. Renowned Oxford Scholar and Tolkien expert, Thomas Shippey, while speaking of the state of academia, addressed these programs better than I could:

Managerial programs work best where there is a clear and quantifiable
outcome and an easy way of checking what the work-force is doing. Neither of
these apply to teaching, or research. Really productive researchers are often
staring at the wall, or going for walks -- and their product tends to turn up
ten years later. Good teaching is not measured by the number of degrees you turn
out, or even how highly the students rate you at the time. But unsophisticated
management systems (and those are the ones we have) insist on counting
something.

Clarence Bass weighs in on coffee.

2010-01-04T14:24:00.000-08:00

The fittest 71 year old on the planet, Clarence Bass, (he is 65 in this photo) has weighed in on coffee here, subject of recent posts on this blog. As on most subjects, he is well reasoned and advocates moderation. He drinks three cups a day himself, so coffee drinkers, rest easy. He covers all aspects of diet, health, nutrition, and exercise on his site. Anyone who desires to live long and stay agile, mobile, and healthy would do well to keep Mr. Bass on his/her must read list. See how he looks at 70 here

A poem for Wednesday

2009-12-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

Love rejected
hurts so much more
than Love rejecting;
they act like they don't love their country

No
what it is
is they found out
their country don't love them.
-Lucille Clifton

:Hat tip to Ta-Nehisi Coates for posting this on his blog. I understand his reaction, "this stopped me cold." It is a powerful piece and works on so many levels at the same time. So many things unsaid that the reader must bring to it: this effect in the best poetry allows the writer and reader to unite in a way prose seldom does.

A poem for Monday

2009-12-28T15:15:00.000-08:00

From you alone to you alone, everlasting to everlasting, all that is not you is suffering, all that is not you is solitude rehearsing the arguments of loss. All that is not you is the man collapsing against his own forehead, and the forehead crushes him. All that is not you goes out and out, gathering the voices of revenge, harvesting lost triumphs far from the real and necessary defeat. It is to you I speak, solitude to unity, failure to mercy, and loss to the light. It is you I welcome here, coming through the coarse glory of my imagination, to this very night, to this very couch, to this very darkness. Grant me a forgiving sleep, and rest my enemy.

-This is from Leonard Cohen's Book of Mercy, a collection of personal psalms that are honest and profound. For believers of all stripes, the book speaks from a centerpoint of faith. For non-believers and skeptics, this collection of psalms in modern poetic form can speak eloquently to the power of human expression through art, as the master artist struggles with the ineffable.

Ahmad Tea - A tea to remember

2009-12-26T07:53:00.000-08:00

I am no connoisseur, but I do love tea. And I drink it both black and the Irish way, with full fat milk (in America we call it whole milk). But I'm not fussy about it, I'll even use cream. Now my English wife (half English anyway) will tell you that's properly called 'the English way,' but my grandfather called it the Irish way and that's good enough for me. Of course, if I were to apply reason to the debate, I would probably lose, because it is very unlikely that the Irish had enough money to splurge on milk for their tea, if they could afford tea, so it is probably more accurate to describe tea with milk as an English phenomenon, which the Irish adopted as they peered longingly at their richer English neighbors' milky tea cups. But why would one ever let reason into a marital debate?

Again, I am no expert, but I have drunk thousands of cups, from quiet contemplative sips in the temples of Siam and Nippon to rowdy, roaring cups in the caravan tents of Jordan and Oman. I've even had the good fortune to enjoy traditional English tea service in my grandmother-in-law's delightful coastal bungalow on the South coast of England. The latter experience was probably the most self-conscious one, as the hostess was a very formal English Tory, and I am a lowly descendant of Irish immigrants to the New World, and thus completely out of my element in such rarefied environs. Fortunately my wife coached me through it and I emerged unscathed, but delightfully full on crumpets.

My favorite tea is Ahmad Tea of London. Their English Tea No.1 is a sublime riff off of the more traditional Earl Grey - there is just a hint of bergamot. Also, their fruit teas are phenomenal. Normally I don't go for anything like apricot or apple teas, not only because they are bit frilly for my taste, but also because the fruit flavor often seems a little off and overbearing against the tea. But Ahmad Tea makes a mango tea that is out of this world. And their apricot is also impressive. The fruit flavor is hinted at, but the experience is still a full black tea experience.

So, since I routinely buy their products, I looked into the company's background. One assumes from their delightfully designed tea caddies that the company has a history that stretches back into the time of the Raj and the height of the British Empire. Which, apparently, is exactly what the company is going for with their designs. The look and feel of the tins instantly recall an earlier era, and the label artwork is richly evocative of England, at least the England of myth.

But the truth is the company was started in 1985 by Iranian immigrants to the UK. Though apparently the family has some four generations of tea making experience in Iran, they capitalized on the worldwide reputation of English tea when they got to London. And good for them. I must admit, if their label had an Iranian theme and was named Ahmad Tea of Teheran I probably would not have given it a try, and would have been the poorer for it. As I look at their products, there is nothing that claims a long company history, but the impression is so strong, one assumes it. Which I suppose means they did their marketing well. Fortunately they also make their tea very well too.

Blue eyed devils on the wane

2009-12-23T11:10:00.001-08:00

I remember years ago while reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, how the Nation of Islam preachers would constantly refer to "blue-eyed devils." It was alarming to me, first, because I have blue eyes, but secondly, I found it curious that they would single out a fairly rare aspect of (mostly) white folks. Surely, I thought, this particularly extreme group held grievances against all whites, not just those with blue eyes.

A recent article in the Associated Press shed some light on this. Apparently blue eyes are much rarer than they used to be. While nearly half the country (USA) peered through blue-tinged orbs at the beginnning of the Twentieth Century, only 10% of Americans do so today. So, back in the formative years of the Nation of Islam, the 1940's and 50's, blue eyes were much more common than they are now, hence the applicability of the "blue-eyed devils" comment. Otherwise, why would they single out only a sixth of the "white race," their stated enemy?

Thus it appears that my children and I are in a rapidly disappearing cohort. According to a study in Human Genetics the appearance of blue eyes in the human race began between 6,000-10,000 years ago via a genetic mutation in one single human being near the Black Sea. This characteristic was passed down through the generations, appearing mostly in Northern Europe, but also in a few areas in Africa and Asia as well. And now it is on the wane. Steadily disappearing in North America and Northern Europe, where inter-marriage and inter-cultural exchange has allowed the dominant brown eye color to slowly filter out the recessive blue.

While we blue-eyed individuals have been alternately favored and vilified, it appears that we can state, as a group, to the Nation of Islam, that soon, in the words of Richard Nixon, "you won't have us to kick around anymore!" And while I adore many brown-eyed individuals (my wife included) I would sorely miss the bright blue eyes of my children, as they dance and shimmer in the morning light. Alas, soon there will be no more debate about which are more beautiful, genetics will settle that score forever, as the succeeding generations of humanity slowly evolve into billions of copies of Tiger Woods (hopefully without the philandering!)

With a nod to Gully Foyle

2009-12-16T18:46:00.000-08:00

Patrick is my name
And blogspot is my nation
Cyber space is my dwelling place
The truth my destination

-A quatrain of appreciation for Alfred Bester

A Poem for Monday

2009-12-14T17:43:00.000-08:00

A Brief Encounter

We ride into life alone,
no horse,
bare ass;
chords singing to the wind.
We gather toys and buttons,
cat’s tails.
Soon we gather wisdom.
We stay away from electric sockets,
rabid dogs.

Days come with enough to share.
We learn about bank accounts and love affairs.
We give what we can,
We help whom we know.
It’s all we can do.

Even our children ride alone.
Free, but alone.
They may take our buttons and abide our wisdom.
They may not.
It’s all we can do.

We ride out of life alone.
We follow friends and we leave friends…
Riding into nowhere.
-PTR

Confirmation Bias: A Testimony

2009-12-14T17:38:00.000-08:00

I was on an airplane yesterday and a friend had given me a book to read, Sam Harris’ The End of Faith, the fairly well-known, even infamous, New Atheist tome. As I sat in the waiting area I pulled the book out of my bag and the thought immediately struck me that some of the people around me are bound to make judgments about me simply because of the book I am reading. There, in a very religious, conservative city on the Southernmost border of America, where 67% of the population claim to attend church service weekly, I was mildly concerned about generating ill will in my fellow travelers. Now, the fact is, since my beliefs are decidedly in the undecided column, I probably do fit into most of these folks' definition of an atheist. But I do not consider myself in full agreement with Mr. Harris on all points in his book and I would not want to be painted with a broad brush in that manner. But here is a larger question.

Why did I think most of the people around me would assume that I was reading this book because I agreed with it? And was I wrong for thinking it? I will admit that I assume the same things about others, if I see someone reading say, the Koran, on a flight, I assume that the reader is probably not a Baptist minister. Of course, he could be, and I could come up with several scenarios in which a Baptist minister might study the Koran: to find out more about an increasingly important faith in the world, or in preparation for a sermon denouncing said faith, or simple curiosity. Who knows? But the likelihood is that the person reading the Koran is a Muslim. Why would I say that? Because of confirmation bias. What, one might say? Again, that is confirmation bias - the idea that most people willingly consume information that reinforces already held beliefs, and ignore or avoid contrary points of view.

Now, do I know absolutely that confirmation bias is widely practiced? No, I don’t, but I suspect that it is, primarily because of my own susceptibility to it and my observation of the propensities of others. In my own case, for years I read almost exclusively authors that I agreed with. I listened to speakers and preachers that I agreed with. I let a certain set of spokesmen and authors shape my beliefs to a great extent. Then I learned about confirmation bias, and realized that I had been guilty of practicing it. I then determined not to do so in the future. I assumed that what I believed at the time was true and would not seriously change as I examined other points of view. But, I also knew that whenever I had read far afield from what I was used to, it was a mildly uncomfortable experience. So I knew that I was setting out on a difficult course. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that my entire concept of the universe and my place in it was to change as a result of my newfound determination to erase my own ignorance.

In my case, I was raised around politically conservative Christians (those whom Andrew Sullivan calls Christianists), and when one is raised in these circles, a favorite past time is finding and excoriating enemies - nothing unites a group like a common enemy. So, my only experience with a lot of alternative view points to my own was through the lens of my group’s spokesmen. For instance, I heard a lot of denunciations of secular humanists (quite the bogeymen in my group) but I had not actually bothered to meet, read, or consider anything actually written by a self-proclaimed secular humanist. A clear symptom of confirmation bias. And I suspect that this scenario plays itself out in many different circles. If I had been raised by raging Leftist environmentalists, I could likely tell a similar tale.

Thankfully, I shed myself of this limiting and debilitating habit (not completely, but it is a work in progress). Over the years I have read hundreds of works by all the old bogeymen: secular humanists, and leftists, and socialists, and atheists, and evolutionary psychologists, etc. And guess what, encountering these points of view changed my own forever. And I don’t regret it in the least. Confirmation bias be damned. My life has become eminently richer by encountering a much greater swath of humankind. Of course, I have also been scared and alarmed in having to question many of my own assumptions, but I believe I would rather continually question and seek knowledge “to the utmost bound of human thought” than to remain in the shackles of group-think and confirmation bias.

Dulce et Decorum Est

2009-12-09T20:25:00.000-08:00

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

8 October 1917 - Wilfred Owen

It is an enduring truth that no one knows the price of war like those who have to fight them. The title, translated from Latin, means, “It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s country,” and, of course, the author writes to show the lie of that statement.

In the first stanza, the "Five-nines" are 5.9 inch mortars which impact behind them as they march away from the front. In this scene the soldiers are too tired and spent to even care how close they are. Then they turn out to be gas rounds.

This poem startles with its ghastly imagery, to drive home its point. In the second stanza, the use of the word, "ecstacy" to describe the frantic fumbling with one's gas mask when under a chemical attack is spectacularly inappropriate. His description of a luckless soldier who didn't get his mask on fast enough is a direct challenge to all those who were propagandizing war in Britain at the time. There is no way this awful, squirming death scene could be described as glorious.

The author was a British soldier who was killed in World War I, then called the Great War. -PTR

Coffee is a drug, but some drugs are useful.

2009-12-07T19:46:00.000-08:00

As a follow up to my earlier post on coffee, where I noted the drug-like characteristics of caffeine, I should give fair hearing to the other side of the issue. While caffeine does act like a drug in that we build a tolerance to its effects, that is only one aspect of caffeine. Many benefits have been noted over the years by medical researchers, including decreased incidence of diabetes and Parkinson disease, and, believe it or not, enhanced athletic performance. Of course, as with everything, it's a trade-off. Still, for me, just the smell of brewing coffee is electric.

Is the BBC the future of journalism?

2009-12-04T21:18:00.000-08:00

John Nichols, veteran journalist, paints a very bleak picture about the future of journalism funded by free enterprise. Government subsidy of journalism is the only answer, according to him. We in the US already have publicly funded press outlets (PBS, NPR). But the UK has had probably the best record of a pubicly funded news service in the form of the BBC, historically very independent from government pressures. His assertion that the press in America began with government was a revelation to me. I will have to research more on the history of which he speaks. I suppose if George Washington and John Adams supported public funding of the press, it will be harder for people to oppose it.

Hat Tip to Hans at The Nordic Link for the video.

My Caffeine Tolerance

2009-12-03T20:19:00.000-08:00

On a recent podcast episode of Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, the hosts have an interesting conversation about caffeine. Apparently, caffeine does diminish in its effects as tolerance in the body builds, but the details are illuminating. This is especially important for those of us who partake daily. I drink both coffee and tea just about every day. Fortunately only a cup or two total, usually one or the other.

According to Dr. Steven Novella on the aforementioned podcast, caffeine is an adenosine inhibitor. Of course, I don't pretend to know what that means, but it seems that adenosine keeps the brain calm, so when it is inhibited by caffeine, the brain is more active, which is not quite the same thing as being stimulated, but the effect is the same. However, this effect diminishes over time, because the body simply produces more adenosine when the current amount proves inadequate. Then more caffeine is needed to inhibit the additional adenosine, then more adenosine is produced, and so on and so on. Thus tolerance for caffeine builds in the body, and apparently pretty quickly. Apparently after less than two weeks, users (which includes me) are simply drinking caffeine to return to normal.

Basically it is the classic definition of drug tolerance and addiction, and apparently it is an addiction shared by quite a few people. According to the Canadian Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 80% of adults consume the caffeine equivalent of at least one cup of coffee a day. That's a lot of people just trying to get back to normal.

After finding out all this out I thought I might want to reset my caffeine tolerance, to go back to zero, and only use caffeine on those occasions when I actually need heightened mental acuity. And I am in the middle of this effort, but I confess I failed today - broke down and had a cup of tea. How long it takes to reset all this neural receptor business is somewhat unknown - it depends how long one has been using and how much. But I think in my case about 5 days should do it. We will see. If I fail, well, I will have a lot of company.

Carlene Bauer, former Evangelical

2009-12-03T08:05:00.000-08:00

Carlene Bauer talks, in an interesting interview at More Intelligent Life, about her deconversion experience, "There was always a tiny voice inside me saying “That can’t be right” whenever I heard something that seemed to contradict who I understood God and Jesus to be from reading the Bible—all-loving, all-forgiving."

I am personally drawn to deconversion experiences due to my own startling experience. I have served in combat, lost my Dad to Cancer, been divorced, and generally seen alot of bad things happen in the most desperate parts of the world. But I still consider the most jarring event, the most inner-peace shattering event, in my short 40 years to be the moment when I lost belief in God. For a person who was raised in a very religious home, and accepted those beliefs fully, it was a very alarming experience. I didn't know where to go or who to talk to about this. Normally, when believers ("believers"-that's what we called each other) have a problem, especially some faith-pertinent problem, they tend to call other believers, or ministers, and get their faith "bolstered." But when I no longer had faith to bolster, I knew I couldn't call my fellow (or former fellow) believers anymore.

It was quite comforting when many others in America started to tell about their own faith-loss experiences. Those of us who are skeptics, or outright unbelievers, are a set-upon minority, at least in this country, and we can use all the company we can get.

Insightful discussion on Obama's China visit

2009-11-24T13:29:00.000-08:00

James Fallows of The Atlantic is discussing in much more depth and clarity than any other MSM (main-stream media) outlet, President Obama's recent trip to China. One of his readers who is based in China writes

,"...based on my observations of these things over the years I'm very much leaning toward the White House insider's view -- that the reach was vast and deep, in the many millions or tens of millions, though not necessarily entirely positive. But the comment from President Obama that I think will have the most impact inside the firewall was not the one about US principles that you quoted in your followups. It was this one:

'Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn't flow so freely because then I wouldn't have to listen to people criticizing me all the time. I think people naturally are -- when they're in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that's irresponsible, or -- but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear. It forces me to examine what I'm doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States.'

"Wow! As a resident of China for two decades and a Mandarin-speaking China-watcher for three decades, I can say without any doubt that those words will resonate far more deeply -- and potentially more "subversively" or "destabilizingly" -- than any overt thumb-in-the-eye hectoring that any foreigner or foreign leader might muster, in public or private. Those words are ***precisely*** the kind that Zhongnanhai [Chinese term equivalent to "the Kremlin"] fears the most, and rightly so."

-This is exactly what I hoped to see from the man. I can't think of a better, more disarming explanation of the strength of societies that practice democracy and protect free speech. His whole approach sums up the word, diplomacy. It's subtle and it's slow, and the US media outlets can't squeeze it into a five second sound bite, so they deride it, but I suspect one day, in a few years, we will look back and realize that there has been quite a bit of incremental progress going on. In short, while the Nobel prize was a bit premature, I think he will earn it in the end, and for incidents just like this one, where he subtly wins, not just his point, but hearts as well.

Untitled

2009-11-22T22:19:00.000-08:00

I watch I do
I study I copy
I rehearse I perform
Everyline prepared

I see I record
I play the tapes
I stand my mark
I enter on cue

I fear I act
Because I fear
An unprepared line

-PTR

Alicia might remember this one.

A Poem for Monday

2009-11-22T21:54:00.000-08:00

To Each in His Own Tongue

A FIRE-MIST and a planet,--
A crystal and a cell,--
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave-men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod,--
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.

A haze on the far horizon,
The infinite, tender sky,
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields,
And the wild geese sailing high,--
And all over the upland and lowland
The charm of the goldenrod,--
Some of us call it Autumn,
And others call it God.

Like tides on a crescent sea-beach,
When the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in,--
Come from the mystic ocean
Whose rim no foot has trod,--
Some of us call it longing,
And others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty,--
A mother starved for her brood,--
Socrates drinking the hemlock,
And Jesus on the rood;
And millions who, humble and nameless,
The straight, hard pathways plod,--
Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.

-William Herbert Carruth

I think the strength of this poem is demonstrated by the diversity of its admirers. I've seen it quoted by Christian preachers in sermons against evolution and by scientists in essays stating that evolution does not make claims against belief in the divine. It's sweeping and startling imagery also bolsters its popularity, I am sure. As a skeptic I am comforted by the author's assurance that the overwhelming nature of life defies explanation. In fact, the author seems to be saying that labels don't matter, since their power to explain is ultimately wanting.

Pets versus clean energy

2009-11-14T20:55:00.000-08:00

This article on the World Bank site details how the world spends more on pet food than on research and development of clean energy sources. The comments following the article are worth reading as well. Let's hope that, at least, the author is wrong in predicting that we will "get the energy we deserve

Pre-Katrina Revisited

2009-11-09T15:03:00.000-08:00

If you ever hear any politicians tell you that they had no idea such a thing as Hurricane Katrina could happen, please wave the bullshit flag. Here is an All Things Considered broadcast from 3 YEARS BEFORE Katrina hit that warned about the real possibility of a big storm hitting New Orleans and overwhelming the levees. Numerous experts are interviewed, even some from the Army Corps of Engineers, who were sending up reports warning of the increasing danger to the dilapidated levee system.

I know it's a bizarro world notion, but somehow I got the idea that our political leaders are supposed to be looking ahead and trying their best to protect the people from just exactly this kind of very foreseeable disaster. If an asteroid comes out of nowhere, or a solar storm flares up and grills the Earth, I will give them a pass. But for something that was so predictable, the lack of readiness is unforgivable. I realize that books full of outrage over this sad episode have already been published, but it still bears remembering, don't you think?

The wit of Russell Brand

2009-11-08T19:52:00.000-08:00

Some things are funny because they true, sadly. Here's the English comedian, Russell Brand, while hosting the MTV Video Awards, "I should explain, we English are a little different from you [Americans], instead of truck we say lorry, instead of elevator we say lift, and instead of letting people die out in the middle of the street, we have free health care!"

The look on pop star, Pink's face said it all - achingly funny.

Google Tracker

2009-11-08T18:34:00.000-08:00

Here's a bit of technical blog stuff I just discovered. I am not by any means a techie or IT expert so I did not realize that when I changed the background template for this blog, I would also have to repaste the google tracking code into the Layout - Edit HTML page of the blog.

I was wondering why I was seeing zero traffic on the site for the last 9 days or so, when I knew from a few emails and a couple comments that there had been at least a few visitors. Well, apparently the tracking code disappears, so one must keep that in mind when changing to another template.

This is obviously not a high traffic blog, but to go from 10 or 15 visits a day to 0 for more than a week was puzzling. So, I think the puzzle had been solved. I will find out over the next couple days I guess. Or maybe the entire webworld has given me the about-face salute for reasons unknown. Time will tell.

The Case for God

2009-11-06T13:36:00.000-08:00

In Karen Armstrong's recent book, The Case for God, she outlines how the great philosophers of the axial age (Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Rabbi Hillel - and by extension, Jesus) all came to similar great insights about the human condition. Out of this time we were given what is known as the Golden Rule, or the law of compassion - that we should "treat others as we would want to be treated," or, in another configuration, "do not do harm."

Armstrong asserts that these early versions of the world's religions were not interested in doctrine and the other most divisive aspects of religion, but in how to be good. They were reacting to the great waves of violence that were ripping the ancient world apart, trying to find a way out for mankind. She states that religion is at its worst where it draws up its standard and declares all must concede "this" or be wrong -and suffer the consequences, from shame to death to eternal hellfire (whatever it is is always bad.) She also contends that those who do so are acting in opposition to the original intent of the great sages. The point is not to be right, but to be good; not to believe correctly, but to act compassionately toward our fellow human beings.

She cites the famous quote where Rabbi Hillel (a Jewish scholar slightly before the time of Christ) was asked to cite the whole of the Torah while standing on one leg, and he replied, "Do not do unto others that which is hateful unto thee. That is the whole of the Law. The rest is commentary." This is the law of compassion that religions today should be teaching, if only they would be true to their origins.

I must confess I am a uniter at heart and I love Armstong's narrative. But is it true? I am not aware that the world has ever been particularly peaceful. In fact, from the dawn of human history, the world has been one long slaughterhouse from that day to this. I suspect that these great insights were simply logical extensions of behavior codes left over from a nomadic, tribal existence. We learned how to act reciprocally, even sometimes charitably, within our tribe. But as human civilization formed, the concept of tribe expanded beyond the 100-200 strong village-group to allied regions, then cities, then city-states, and empires, etc., and philosophies to incorporate previous enemies into the "in" group were hatched. The Golden Rule as we know it today evolved out of much more brutal codes, in fits and starts, slowly over the centuries.

But it was never pure; always the compassionate aspects of the religions came with a lot of cultural baggage that Armstrong rightly decries, but she also tries to wish it away. If the aspects of these religions that cause such trouble, such as clashes of doctrine concerning the role of the divine, the purpose of human existence, and the nature of the afterlife, are mistakenly over-valued by the great masses, where is the proof? To Armstrong, these matters are not important, and were not considered to be important by the original sages. But if that were so, why did those same sages teach anything at all about these subjects? Why lead everyone astray by allowing the chance of misinterpretation? Why not say, "all the rest of that is rubbish, concern yourselves with this alone." I suspect that Armstong herself has moved past these issues, and would like all of us to do so as well, but to say that the great religions also do so if only they are correctly understood is, I suspect, more a wish than a fact.

Quoted.

2009-11-05T15:42:00.000-08:00

This blog has been quoted in a new book on the human voice in the UK, The Voice of Influence, by Judy Apps. Ms. Apps quotes an earlier post on nonverbal qualities of the 2008 candidates for president that suggested how the resonant character of (then Sen.) Pres. Obama's voice favored him in the election.

Isn't the web world a remarkable thing? That an author in the UK can simply reach out and find a small blogger's post on a relevant subject in Japan (I was living in Japan at the time) - just fifteen years ago such a thing was basically impossible.

The Sway of Irrational Behavior.

2009-11-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

Here is a very thorough review of the popular book, Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori and Rom Brafman. The psychiatrist-reviewer, Dr. Grohol lays out the core of the Brafmans' book in a clear and succinct manner, so I won't do that here. The gist of the Brafman brothers' argument is that humans are subject to irrational urges and fears which overwhelm their critical faculties, often at the most innopportune moments. No matter how reasoned and logical we think we are, we are not.

Of course, from the standpoint of Evolutionary Psychology this makes perfect sense. Since we are, after all, simply high-functioning cognitive predator-animals, it would make sense that we resemble hot blooded mammal predators in our decision-making processes.

Through several entertaining anecdotes, the Brafmans illustrate many of these irrational tendencies, such as overreacting to impending losses, and falling prey to diagnosis bias by acting as is expected of us.

Many of these "sways" are already known to most people as oft-heard maxims and proverbs. Value attribution, where people imbue something or someone with certain qualities based on perceived value rather than on objective data, is a concept well-known through the sayings, "take someone at face value," or "don't judge a book by its cover." Diagnosis bias refers to the power of a first opinion; we all know how difficult it is to see past our own first impressions and reconsider things upon learning new information; this is why we have the saying, "first impressions last."

It is likely (again, purely my guesswork) these behaviors developed in humans because they conferred survival value to those who displayed them. If I were to guess, I would suggest that, in a world of limited information such as in the small-group, tribal existence of nomadic plainspeople, one must learn to assess quickly whether others can be trusted, or should be feared. And holding on to a first opinion is probably wise when life is often violent and brutal and a single mistake can be one's last. In such a tooth and claw world, it is no surprise that irrational, or highly emotional, behavior held sway on humankind.

Given the likely source of these irrational impulses, I have to agree with Dr. Grohol that the weakest part of the book is the last chapter, where the authors suggest ways to overcome these tendencies. The solutions suggested by the brothers Brafman really amount to little more than an exhortation to do better, with little reason, and no proof, that we as a species can.

A Poem for Monday (on Friday)

2009-10-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

This Love

I don’t understand this love;
It is not like the others.
It did not ignite like a rush of summer fireflys,
Nor consume with equal parts elation and pain.
Other loves did.

Other loves pushed forward with the involuntary embrace
Of primal instinct and spiritual fascination,
So alive and desperate,
They made me feel.
But not this love.

This love is a new page
When I thought I had already read them all.
This love is a quiet joy,
A goose on the lake,
A ripple in the leaves,
A purple hue on the waking mountain.
This love is a knowing laugh and a long sigh.
It settles calmly like the rhythm of pleasant tinkering,
And it is my home now.

-PTR

Long lost Sarah Vaughan

2009-10-25T19:38:00.000-07:00

The first time I ever heard Sarah Vaughan was at the end of "Master Harold and the Boys," a play by the South African playwright Athol Fugard. It was a filmed version of the play with Matthew Broderick, Zakes Mokae, and John Kani in 1985. It was a superb production (with the exception of Broderick's poor excuse for a South African accent) and it ends with the two black South Africans dancing as the credits roll. The voice of perfection I heard singing as they danced was completely transformative. It opened up a entirely new musical landscape for me. As a young kid in the 70's and 80's, any kind of music popular before 1960 was completely unknown, and, presumably, uninteresting, since that was what my parents listened to.

I asked my mother who the singer was and she said she was pretty sure it was Sarah Vaughan. I immediately began to listen to everything I could find by her. There were no credits noting what the song was, so I found the play in a library and checked the end. The play only says that, "Sarah Vaughan sings as Sam and Willie dance."

After going through fifty or so albums and looking all over the web, I found what I was looking for just a few months ago. That song that started my infatuation with Sarah Vaughan was on Count Basie/Sarah Vaughan. It is, "Little Man You've Had a Busy Day." It was recorded in the early sixties when Sassy was at the height of her powers. She had honed her delivery over the previous two decades, and time (and her continuous smoking) had not diminished her vocal instrument at all. She never really lost her voice or much of her range, but it did deepen quite a bit in her later years and her notes stayed out of the stratosphere.

But anything before 1970 (which includes hundreds and hundreds of songs over three decades) by Sassy will be exquisite. I know ella Fitzgerald is known as the clearest voice ever, but for me, I place Sassy just a bit higher in the jazz all-stars. When I hear her sing, I think that must be what they mean when they speak of Heaven.

King of the Gun

2009-10-19T08:49:00.000-07:00

Here's a tale of mine picked up by Andrew Sullivan on his blog on how one gay Marine became "King of the Gun."

The Afghan Campaign

2009-10-18T15:34:00.000-07:00

There's an incident depicted in Steven Pressfield's "The Afghan Campaign," in which Macedonian soldiers threaten a Mesopotamian shopkeeper that they will cut off his son's foot unless he returns a stolen purse. The shopkeeper feigns innocence until, as the blade descends upon the boy's foot, the boy's young sister screams and points to the money's hiding spot. As the soldiers leave, the senior one points out to the junior ones that the shopkeeper and his wife were going to let them cut off the boy's foot. He then adds that even now, they were very likely thrashing the young girl to within an inch of her life for giving up the purse, even though she saved her brother's foot (and probably his life) in the process.

This incident reminded me that nothing much has changed in the region in 2000 years and that cultural barriers to understanding are often immense. When I was working at the U.S. Embassy in Bahrain, one of the Marines who provide security to the post fell ill. He was down hard and on bed rest at the Marine House for several days. One of the secretaries, a local Arab girl, was friendly with the Marines and asked her friend to drive her by the Marine House so she could drop off some hot soup for the sick Marine. When they arrived, noone was there except the bedridden Marine and the gate guard, so the guard told her to leave the dish inside on the foyer table. She did so and left.

She didn't show up to work for two weeks. When she did she still bore the bruises from the severe beating her brother administered upon hearing that she had entered a house alone with other men, and infidels on top of that. Even though she was in the house for the briefest of seconds, the family honor had been jeopardized. So she was beaten. This was not the only such incident I had heard about while in that region of the world, but this was the closest to me. I had chatted with the young lady. She was bright and smiling most of the time before her assault. Very reserved and withdrawn afterwards.

Such events cause me to wonder, along with Christopher Hitchens, why Western liberals seem to give a pass to this barbarism under the name of multiculturalism. I rarely hear it addressed by feminists, Ayaan Hirsi Ali being at least one exception. Why is this?

I don't pretend to have a grand framework of cultural understanding by which to pass judgement, but I feel strongly that free people, right, left, or center, must stand against this kind of thing, of whatever culture.

Ode to the Far Kingdoms

2009-10-06T16:10:00.000-07:00

O Babylon unmake your name;
Unfurl your sheets of veiled shame.
Disband the guard across your gates
And let us wander to our fates.

Jerusalem, break down the wall
That wails and weighs upon us all.
Fling our God-prayers to the wind
And heap the ash on those who’ve sinned.

From Damascus down to Tel Aviv
I saw her naked body grieve;
I saw her brothers pray for war
And sisters hide who knew the score.

O Babylon returned to dust;
Jerusalem, your gates are rust;
Damascus down to Tel Aviv;
Grieve, grieve, grieve.
-PTR

A bit of doggerel before heading home to a fine Scotch. Tonight I think it will be Tomatin.

Grab bag

2009-10-05T20:23:00.000-07:00

I heard a woman on the radio today talking about getting ready to evacuate her house due to approaching forest fires. She said she was placing same irreplaceable items in her pickup truck - paintings and heirlooms, and locking up her family's important papers in a firesafe.

That reminded me of a conversation I had with a lady whose house did burn down in California (San Diego) four years ago. She also left important papers behind in a firesafe. She'd only had about five minutes warning before the fire took her house, so she can't be faulted. And when she returned to the pile of ashes that used to be her home, she found the fireproof safe intact and still locked. But when she opened it, as soon as oxygen hit the contents, everything crumbled. Apparently fireproof safes will keep the flames away, but the temperature will still reach several hundred degrees and bake everything inside until its brittle.

Her advice? - put all your important stuff (birth certificates, marriage certificates, deed to the house, passports, etc.) in a grab bag that you can get to in under a minute and take with you.

Bound by lines on the map

2009-10-05T15:12:00.000-07:00

One central lesson of geography is that humans are bound to the earth around them. Globalism has indeed made the world seem smaller (or flatter, acccording to Thomas Friedman) but the supremacy of typography and the tyranny of distance have not been transcended yet. Over the years I have lived on both sides of the U.S. and have spent about a decade outside the United States in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Far East. And I noticed that in most places people generally have at least two names to describe where they live: a poltical name and a geographically descriptive name. The political name is official, usually recognized by other political states and organizations such as the United Nations and usually gives no clue as to the physical environment of the place; it has no descriptive value. The descriptive name is normally unofficial, often not known widely outside the area, but universally known and used by the residents.

Those who live in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Suffolk, or Hampton Virginia (yes, they are all rip offs from English towns or counties) are united by the knowledge that they live in the Tidewater region. It describes their litoral existence on the Virginia coast and unites them to their common geography. Their are many such regions. In Texas there is the Hill Country. In Kentucky, the Bluegrass. In New Mexico, the Otero Mesa. The Ozarks unite Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri in common customs and lifestyle and is more of an identity for the people there than the imaginary border between them. In fact, this is often the case.
People use these alternate names because they often feel tied to these geographic realities much more than to the artificially drawn state boundaries that were often simply the result of expedient compromises reflecting the political landscape of centuries past.

By ignoring natural boundaries in favor of statute and treaty-drawn ones, we impose artificial restrictions on ourselves and, often, sow the seeds of conflict where otherwise there might flourish cooperation. Where I currently live is one example. The city of El Paso should rightfully be part of New Mexico. El Paso shares a common heritage, trade routes, climate, an aquifer, and the Rio Grande river. El Paso, technically part of Texas, is nearly 600 miles from the nearest major city in Texas, San Antonio. It is only 30 miles from Las Cruces. El Paso and Albuquerque, the largest city in New Mexico, are 3 1/2 hours apart by car. For decades there has been a heated clash over water rights, El Pasoans arguing for more water, New Mexicans turning a deaf ear. All of El Paso's water originates in New Mexico. The residents of New Mexico decide what to do with the Rio Grande without much thought or consideration to El Paso, not to mention Juarez in Mexico. This situation produces no end to the consternation and debate in the region. But what if the political boundaries were drawn just a bit differently? What if El Paso county were ceded to New Mexico? Wouldn't it be better for all involved to address the issue of shared resources more democratically? Indeed, why not include Juarez as well? Think how the fortunes of Juarenses would be different today had the Texas border been drawn twenty miles to the south?

Elsewhere, the problems generated by haphazardly drawn boundaries often result in more than hard feelings and thirsty farms, they result in war. In Africa, boundaries drawn by the European colonial powers in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars created political divisions right through indigenous tribal nations, administratively separating them forever. In Nigeria, for instance, major ethnic groups who shared neither language nor religion, and often fought each other, were thrown together and told they were fellow countrymen. Conflict continues there to this day along tribal and religious divisions, as Ibo Christians clash with the Muslim Fulani and Hausa. It is a dire situation resulting from the sad combination of ignorance and power wrought into imperial imposition. Quick and thoughtless decisions by conquering powers 200 hundred years ago, in complete ignorance of the internal social or physical geography, continue to cause needless suffering. All because of lines on the map.

The Human Paradox.

2009-10-01T21:17:00.000-07:00

The human paradox is that nothing can be known with a deal of certainty, yet we are forced to act. - Morris West

America does not have an immigration problem.

2009-10-01T12:37:00.000-07:00

Pat Buchanan's alarmist screeds notwithstanding, America really doesn't have an immigration problem, at least when compared to Europe. Yes we have several million people pour over the southern border every year. But they are coming to work. And most go back when they are done. And those who stay assimilate. And they come to become Americans. They do not come to turn America into Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or even Mexico. They come for the same reasons immigrants have come here for the last three centuries, because of the promise of a better life in exchange for hard work.

Yes, Europe has a serious problem, and I don't think it makes one a nazi to wonder whether bringing millions of poor Muslims from North Africa and Asia into the heart of Old Europe is a good idea. The problems can be seen across the communities of Europe as they struggle to reconcile this vast new, teeming, strange, and often severe culture into their refined, socialized environment. The French revulse at the Hijab. The Dutch ignore honor killings as too foreign to deal with. The Germans riot against a Turkish "invasion" in their small towns.

The situation in America is wholly different. Immigrants, legal or otherwise, from Mexico and points south, already share the predominant religion, speak at least Spanish, the second most common language in the country, and often share community ties across the borders.

In The Border, by David Danelo, he relates a tale by the owner of Pilgrim's Pride, the company that provides most of the chicken eaten on America's tables. Apparently, Bo Pilgrim's greatest challenge is "an inability to find laborers" willing to work hard ten hours a day processing 9 million chickens a week. Even though they pay more than $10 an hour, the company has has trouble finding Americans willing to work there. According to the CEO, they've gone to homeless shelters, halfway houses, temp agencies, and college campuses. They found no one willing to pick up chicks for ten hours a day. Most of their workers are hispanic. They had to present documents to the company, but most are probably false, and most are probably in the U.S. illegally. But what are we to do? Is the United States going to give up eating chicken anytime soon?

Echoes from the Dead Zone - Cyprus

2009-06-03T04:58:00.000-07:00

While visiting the island, I have been reading Echoes From the Dead Zone by Yiannis Papadakis, which chronicles his attempts to reach across the Greek/Turkish divide in Cyprus. The "dead zone" refers to the no-man's land that sits between the borders of the UN patrolled DMZ that splits the island in two. Papadakis grew up on the Greek side and wasinculcated with the usual one-sided viewpoint that an aggrieved population often develops. Students here are taught about the many atrocities committed by Turks and Turkish Cypriots over the centuries, with special emphasis on events surrounding the Turkish invasion of 1974, that has divided the island ever since. The Greek students are not taught, however, about any Greek or Greek Cypriot atrocities. Papadakis' journey of discovery reveals two sides who have been deeply wronged, but also have not been completely innocent. For anyone familiar with the island, and the usual biased, predictable drumbeat of offense one hears from its residents (both Greek and Turk), Papadakis' honest portrayal of the view from both sides is refreshing. His attempts to sit astride two cultures and perceive each openly and honestly remind of Richard Rodriquez' Hunger of Memory in that regard.

To quote President Obama in his latest speech at Cairo University, “If we see this conflict only from one side or the other then we will be blind to the truth.” He was speaking of Israel and Palestine, but Cypriots would do well to heed this advice. One side blustering on about the other with no attempts at honest engagement is getting very tiresome. Hopefully Papadakis is in the vanguard of a swelling movement.

Cheryl Burke is not fat.

2009-05-05T05:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, things on here have been a bit rarefied of late as I've been on a poetry kick, but I must weigh in on some of the more important issues as they arise. No,not the swine flu, but dancing with the stars. My wife started me watching this show and I admit I'm mesmerized, mostly by Cheryl Burke. I recently saw some furious bloggingabout how she gained 5 pounds and is now fat. To which I must say, "What?!" Take a walk to any local Walmart and within the first five minutes I am sure you will see someone who truly is overweight. I actually wrote a fairly long report for my master's on the obesity epidemic and have a pretty good appreciation for the dangers of letting weight get out of control, but this young dancer is not one of those people.

I realize there is no accounting for taste and every man and woman has different aspects of the opposite sex (or same sex, if so inclined) that they find attractive, but I still react viscerally to this type of pettiness. Not only is the woman not fat, she is pretty much an ideal for beauty in my opinion, and could probably even stand to gain about ten or fifteen pounds to achieve real perfection. I just have never understood the attraction to thin, stick women who resemble prepubescent boys more than anything else. I think I would be concerned about myself if I was infatuated only with women who look like young boys. Now, I harbor no animosity for any thin women reading this, nor for prepubescent boys, I just don't consider them sexually attractive. And I realize this is just my opinion, just my taste, if you will, but the thing that gets me riled up is how the skinny-women lovers assume their (weird) taste is somehow the universal ideal, and they feel free to level accusations that anyone above 110 pounds is overweight. I tend to find women who are fuller figured attractive, women who obviously look like women, but I don't necessarily assume everyone shares my preference. But most of the men who love rail-thin women do make this assumption, and they call people fat who are obviously not. Give me a break.

From another time, and another world.

2009-05-03T04:46:00.000-07:00

A snippet from "Horatius":

...Then outspake brave Horatius.
The captain of the gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers
And the temples of his gods...
-Thomas Babington Macauley

And an observation on current events from Kipling:

...In the Carboniferous epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled, and they began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold the Glitters, and Two and Two make Four-
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more...
-Rudyard Kipling

Some things are eternal. By the way the "copybook headings" referred to in the poem are those phrases, mostly proverbs and axioms, children used to copy to practice handwriting in the 19th century.

A Poem for Monday

2009-04-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

Epiphany

Unclench your fists
Hold out your hands.
Take mine.
Let us hold each other.
Thus is his Glory
Manifest.

-Madeleine L'Engle

Comment: One may wonder why a blogger who professes profound doubt on matters of God's nature and existence might find L'Engle's work compelling. I admire her because she grounds her reflections on the divine in the realm of humanity. It is not the faith of vaulted cathedral ceilings she writes , but barnyard chores and workshop tinkering. So, I must agree with Karen Armstong that one may admire the great gift of religion, the Golden Rule, or as she calls it, the Law of Compassion, without necessarily thinking those religions to be true. I remain Unconvinced, but hopeful.

Why Jim Webb is my favorite Senator right now.

2009-03-31T17:14:00.001-07:00

For a junior senator, only two years in office so far, this guy gets things done. He quickly got the New G.I. Bill passed for vets who have served since 9/11. The difference between the old one (the Montgomery GI Bill) and the new one is that this one will actually pay for college instead of about 1/3 of it. And he did this in spite of fierce Pentagon opposition, which position was that it would cost too much and give too much incentive to military members to get out after their first term and go to school instead of back to war again.

Now he is taking on crime and prison reform, and it's about damn time. I will let him speak for himself, "We have five percent of the world's population; we have 25 percent of the world's known prison population. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice." - It's hard to argue with that kind of common sense. What we are doing in our prisons is atrocious, and in a country where a majority claim to follow Christ, there does not seem to be much concern for the "least of these" in prison.

A great site for Fort Worth locals

2009-03-30T22:21:00.001-07:00

FortWorthology is a wonderful site dedicated to rethinking the ways we live together in cities. I would love to hear about more examples of local-focused blogs dedicated to new urbanism, or suburb rethink, or whatever you call this new move toward considering our metro areas holistically. I do not live in Fort Worth, but I am glad there are people there giving serious thought to sustainable cities designed for human beings, as opposed to cars.

Did O.J. take the rap for his son?

2009-03-19T15:19:00.000-07:00

I have watched a bit of this and for those interested in the case it might be compelling. I had a friend back in the '90s in the Marines who grew up with Jason Simpson and had been to their house many times.. His first reaction when hearing about the whole affair was that Jason probably did it. He said Jason hated Nicole and was one crazy cat. He also said that he wouldn't be surprised if O.J. took the rap for Jason. Might be something to this after all.

Brandi Carlile is a raging talent.

2009-03-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

I have written songs on and off since I was 11. Some are better than others, and some are damn good, so when I run across a song writer who impresses me, I tip my hat.

Brandi Carlile - hat tip to you.

"I'm like the rain in a downpour,

I wash away what you long for..."

Check out her song "Downpour" on The Story.

Just about any song on the album is brilliant. She has quite a knack for matching a lilting melody with a starkly honest turn of phrase. I must admit I didn't expect to like her stuff just by description because her kind of homegrown Americana-ish pop is not normally my kind of thing, but I have listened to this album constantly for a week and this girl has skills.

Hallelujah

2009-03-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

I've heard the new movie Watchmen uses Leonard Cohen's original version of Hallelujah instead of one of the many covers out there (some glorious, some hideous). As a one who had declared myself a huge fan of Cohen I guess I should weigh in on these covers.

My first reaction to the huge and growing popular response to this song is somewhat unexpected, at least by me. And I am dismayed at it. Because now, this beautiful thing I had discovered and was known by only a few others and was special to us all has been appropriated into the huge crass marketplace of the unwashed. It has already become treadworn and tired through relentless repetition. Which is so sad for such a brilliant song.

The first time I ever heard it, or anything by Cohen was in the mid-90s while in bed with a randy co-worker who had coaxed me to her apartment with promises of desperate passion. She was playing some rather weird music in the background as we consummated our unfaithful (for her) relationship. I found out she was cheating when she answered the phone as it rang in mid-coitus... and she talked to her long-distance fiance. As the call stretched into minutes I started listening to the singer more closely and realized that it was some kind of odd genius coming out of those speakers. It was Cohen's live version of Hallelujah.

But Cohen's unusual lyrical mingling of sex and spirituality, which pervades his work, is always colored, for me, by the circumstances of our introduction. Cohen's alluring and sensual melodies settled across the dark room of that young girl's flat as I lay still, still, well, intimately connected to her, while she carried on a very intimate and passionate conversation with her half-a-world-away fiance. It was a strange experience, sharing this woman's bed as she cried and whispered "I love you" to someone else. Kinda chips away at one's belief in other people, doesn't it? Of course, I didn't leave either so I suppose that says a lot about me too, at least the younger me. Looking back, I can't think of a more fitting soundtrack for such an occasion than the bard of tortured love. It was the start of a long relationship - with Cohen. I don't remember her name.

As for the endless cover versions. The one most spoken of is Jeff Buckley's, but I prefer John Cale's to his. However, the top prize must go to k.d. lang, who wrenches unbelievable emotion from this performance at the Canadian Juno Awards in 2005.

Cadillac Records

2009-03-11T20:46:00.000-07:00

While it's not strictly historically accurate, the movie Cadillac Records captures the major moments in the history of Chess records and its legendary blues titans. While Jeffrey Wright and Beyonce Knowles have gotten alot of critical notice, and for good reason, especially in Wright's case, it was Eamonn Walker's portrayal of Howlin' Wolf that stole the show for me, though he was afforded only a minor part in the film, which really follows the careers and relationship of Muddy Waters and Leonard Chess as the main storyline.

Here is Walker's rendition of Smokestack Lightnin' in the film. His performance of Howlin' Wolf's inhuman growl is even more startling if you hear the actor's natural, fairly refined London accent.

I enjoyed the film so much, I watched it twice in a row on a flight from Tokyo to D.C..

Reminiscence - a homecoming

2009-03-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

I am in my Dad's old neighborhood. I took a drive around his hometown in Massachusetts. I wasn't raised there, nor anywhere close. I only ever visited the area as a very occasional visitor - mostly at family reunions. But seeing this area has brought to mind events I have tried not to think about for awhile now.

My father died while I was at war, about four years ago now. I spoke to him from a satellite phone from Fallujah as he lay in his death bed. I don't remember much of what was said. He was having traouble speaking. He managed to get out, "I love you," and something about being proud. I couldn't make it all out clearly.

When I said goodbye and hung up the phone, I was paralyzed for several minutes; very still and alone in the middle of a vast desert stillness. I had said goodbye for the last time. I got on a helicopter to Taqqadum, a base where I would catch a plane to Kuwait, then a long flight back to the world.

At Taqqadum, I slept for a few hours, awaiting the next flight south. When I woke I called my brother from a green phone at the field air terminal and found out from my brother that Dad was dead.

I wanted to be mad at God, but I found that I didn't any longer think there was one. As fantastical and crazy as it sounds to say that this is all a big accident, this world, this universe, this precarious life, is an accident, it is the only thing that made sense to me.

The misery I saw in Iraq, in Haiti, in Afghanistan, and a dozen other miserable countries; the deep, deep sorrow that was gripping me; the sheer madness of this healthy, pious, non-smoking, non-drinking, 68 year-old tri-athlete dying of lung cancer - it seemed to me that all of it could only be excused, if we are all indeed just products of chance, because if there is a God, he has a lot to answer for.

Leonard Cohen on Travel

2009-02-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

Leonard Cohen is such a favorite of mine, almost a guilty pleasure but even more so. He is the kind of close held thing that I cherish and don't tell others about. I would be too wounded if they didn't like it, or maybe my view of them would be diminished forever in the event they didn't appreciate or "get" him.

As a poet and songwriter, I knew his talents were supreme, but as commenter on the nature of daily life I hadn't seen much from him. This latest tidbit in a New York Times interview about his return to public performance stood out. Of course, he is talking about a very peculiar kind of travel known to touring performers, but I think it translates to a lot of jobs people do that involve a lot of travel:

“There’s a similarity in the quality of the daily life” on the road and in the monastery, Mr. Cohen said. “There’s just a sense of purpose” in which “a lot of extraneous material is naturally and necessarily discarded,” and what is left is a “rigorous and severe” routine in which “the capacity to focus becomes much easier.”

Grass - A Poem for Monday

2009-02-16T02:13:00.000-08:00

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work -
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?Where are we now?

I am the grass. Let me work.

-Carl Sandburg

Commentary: This well known poem compels me not for the simple anti-war theme, but for its reflection on the fleeting nature of humanity. By evoking the names from horrific battles, the poet conjurs the great demons, but then, almost undetected, he contrasts the simple, mundane situation of a passenger on a train asking where they are, against the vanishing sweep of time. The grass stands for nature, or time, or a combination of all the forces of the universe that grind against us mortals, I am not sure, but under its slow, inexorable work, even the most terrible events bleed into forgotten history.

A poem for Monday

2009-02-08T20:31:00.001-08:00

A real one this time. Instead of the popular habit of posting a poem for contemplation and spiritual enrichment on Sunday, as is popular on many blogs, I have decided to post poems for Mondays, to encourage a brief meditation in the midst of the chaos and industry of Monday.

For your quiet moment, on Monday:

"Strategic Air Command" - Gary Snyder

The hiss and flashing lights of a jet
Pass near Jupiter in Virgo.
He asks, how many satellites in the sky?
Does anyone know where they all are?
What are they doing, who watches them?

Frost settles on the sleeping bags.
The last embers of fire,
One more cup of tea,
At the edge of a high lake rimmed with snow.

These cliffs and the stars
Belong to the same universe.
This little air in between
Belongs to the twentieth century and its wars.

VIII, 82, Koip Peak, Sierra Nevada

Inaugural Poem

2009-02-03T00:46:00.000-08:00

For those who appreciated the very unique and talented Elizabeth Alexander, the inaugural poet, I offer my own humble scribble, from a tortured former Catholic (is one ever really former?), Andrew Sullivan would approve:

We ushered in Hope
And got rid of the Dope
Now let's see what we can do
About this idiot Pope.

Iraq makes it through another election

2009-02-02T22:56:00.000-08:00

I have no inside information on the latest election, but I was on the ground for the 2005 rounds of elections in Fallujah, and can shed some light on what happened. As your sources noted, the Sunnis of Anbar province boycotted the first round of elections in January, 2005. Out of a city with an approximate population of 180,000, Fallujah saw 8,000 turn out to vote. What was never revealed, maybe until now, is that those numbers were significantly padded by the 4,300 Iraqi Army soldiers stationed in Fallujah. And these soldiers were nearly all Shi'a from Baghdad or Basra. So, in the end, less than 4,000 Fallujans actually voted in that first election.

The job of that first assembly, as you may recall, was to draft a constitution, like our Constitutional Convention of 1787. The Sunnis of Al Anbar, and especially Fallujah, realized quickly that their boycott had only resulted in ceding all the power to the Shi'a and the Kurds. So they decided to participate in the next round of elections. First came the constitutional referendum, which saw more than 100,000 Fallujans vote (nearly unanimously against it) in October of 2005. Then, in December, even more Fallujans, 130,000+ by the Iraqi Election Commission's reckoning, voted in the Iraqi National Assembly elections.

Setting the conditions to allow this election was the major objective of my unit at the time, and we all did everything we could to encourage the large turnout. But it seemed to me then, and still does, that this early emphasis on elections was certain to backfire. Our political leaders were selling elections as if they were a magical cure for all the problems of Iraq, that, simply by voting, Iraq would become like all the other democracies in the world. And this clearly was not the case.
Elections in the absence of stability might have even made things worse, offering false hope to the soon-to-be disillusioned Sunnis of Al Anbar. The riots and uptick in violence in Anbar province that occurred when the election results were announced (in early 2006) would seem to confirm this view.

Before the election I talked with a lot of Fallujans about what the election would mean to them and what they expected from it. To a man they were convinced that Sunnis were the majority population in Iraq and once they all voted, Sunnis would take their rightful place at the head of government. It was impossible to counter this idea. If I suggested that generally accepted figures by the U.N. placed Sunni Arabs at about 20% of all Iraqis they would dismiss it out of hand. Who gave you those figures? The Shi'a? Iran? I remember the old men saying, "How can this be? Look around you, everyone here is Sunni. Everyone I know is Sunni. You Americans are so naïve to believe everything the Shi'a tell you."

During these conversations, I recalled our training on Iraqi culture prior to our deployment. A professor from Georgetown University had warned us (mostly college educated officers) how different it would be to interact with illiterate people. Most people in Al Anbar could not read, she said, and therefore they had only their limited personal experience, and the words of their elders, to provide context to their reality. For a literate person, it is virtually impossible to comprehend how an illiterate person processes information. How true this observation turned out to be. The idea that our civilian leadership thought liberal democracy would spring up naturally in this environment still seems incomprehensibly foolish to me.

I think the folly of introducing "democracy" with the hasty election scheme was disastrous and foreseeable. Any serious student of geopolitics knows that the rule of law is the fundamental precursor to a functioning democracy - institutions, culture, accepted norms... need to be shaped and accepted thoroughly over generations. Our own democracy did not drop out of the sky in 1776, it was a product of centuries of British history. As the already sixty year rise of South Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc. reveal, the transition from rule of law to democracy occurs in different ways in different cultures, and typically takes several decades, not months.
As the recent election reveals, Iraq might very well be on that path of transition at last, but I hope our leaders finally understand that it will happen in Iraqi fashion, and will likely be a decades-long process. So hopefully we will ask ourselves whether we want to take the ride with them, or if we have found a good spot to get off.

Armistice (Veteran's) Day

2008-11-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

On this day to remember those who served: all I ask from my leaders is that they consider before they commit troops to battle whether the cause is important enough, not just to sacrifice the lives of the warriors themselves, but to take a little girl's daddy away forever. I would ask President-elect Obama to look at his own precious daughters and ask himself that question as he takes office. As a man who had to leave his daughter behind to go to war, I will confess that that was by far the toughest part. Everyone else in my life would eventually be fine without me, but I feared for that little girl more than anything else. As I contemplate future possible deployments that is really the only thing that causes trepidation.

Election day - who did I vote for?

2008-11-04T04:57:00.000-08:00

I voted for Sen. Obama twice, once in the primaries and once in the general election (I cast my vote by mail a month ago.) I am an independent who has voted for Republicans far more than I have for Democrats, but I voted for Obama for conservative reasons. I concede the point that experience counts, but it is not the only consideration. Judgment counts. Temperament counts. Intelligence counts. Intellectual curiosity counts.

As for all the guilt-by-association accusations of Obama, they do not seem very relevant to me because hobnobbing with undesirables is just the way things get done in politics. Obama wanted to be a successful politician in the southside of Chicago, so associating with Wright, Rezko, Ayers, Pfleger, etc. was part and parcel of that desire. What noone has ever demonstrated is how exactly he was influenced by these people. Basically, it seems like he used these people for their local prestige and pull, and then cast them off when no longer useful. While ruthless, this is exactly the kind of thing a President needs to be able to do. Machiavelli would approve.

One key to Obama is that he is an intellectual, so you need to look at what he reads. In his books and many interviews, he has talked about some of the books and authors he considered important in his formative years at Columbia: Herman Melville, Toni Morrison, E.L. Doctorow, Shakespeare, Philip Roth, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Friedrich Nietsche, etc. He noted Reinhold Neibuhr as his favorite philosopher. He recently positively reveiwed Doris Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Politcal Genius of Abraham Lincoln." A fairly conventional list, to the left, but mainstream.

If you want to know who is influencing his ideas, look at his actual advisers, not people he shook hands with to make political deals. He is known to consult with a wide variety of people on the big issues, (none of whom are noted by the McCain campaign in their constant guilt by association campaign.) As for his actual policy advisers, apart from the big names like Warren Buffett, Colin Powell, Zbigniew Brzezinski, etc., on a daily basis he surrounds himself with a team of slightly leftist but mostly non-ideological pragmatists. It is very different from the team of big idea guys that Pres. Clinton surrounded himself with.

Here is a rather long article that notes what I have seen in many places: his very pragmatic approach to issues.
Money quote: "...As opposed to the ideological Clintonites, the Obama wonks tend to be inductive--working piecemeal from a series of real-world observations. One typical Goolsbee [Obama economics adviser] brainchild is something called an automatic tax return. The idea is that, if you had no tax deductions or freelance income the previous year, the IRS would send you a tax return that was already filled out. As long as you accepted the government's accounting, you could just sign it and mail it back. Goolsbee estimates this small innovation could save hundreds of millions of man-hours spent filling out tax forms, and billions of dollars in tax-preparation fees.... Think of the contrast here as the difference between science-fiction writers and engineers. Reich and Galston [Clinton's advisers] are the kinds of people who'd sketch out the idea for time travel in a moment of inspiration. Goolsbee et al. could rig up the DeLorean that would actually get you back to 1955."

And: "The Clintonites were moderates, but they were also ideological. They explicitly rejected the liberalism of the 1970s and '80s. The Obamanauts are decidedly non-ideological. They occasionally reach out to progressive think tanks like the Economic Policy Institute, but they also come from a world-- academic economics--whose inhabitants generally lean right. (And economists at the University of Chicago lean righter than most.) As a result, they tend to be just as comfortable with ideological diversity as the candidate they advise."

Everything that I have read from serious sources indicates Obama's deep pragmatism and light take on ideology. Here is a quote from his second book, The Audacity of Hope: ""I think my party can be smug, detached and dogmatic at times. I believe in the free market, competition and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don't work as advertised ... I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military. I reject a politics that is based solely on racial identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, or victimhood generally. I think much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP." - It is a very pragmatic, even conservative approach (in the Burkean sense.) To me, he appears to be a fairly moderate liberal, but a liberal who has taken on board the intellectual critique of 60's liberalism by the conservative movement.

In contrast to that is a man who served his country well as a Naval Officer. As a Marine combat veteran I appreciate that, but I also know that it doesn't necessarily mean that he should be in elective office. He's a hero, fine. But he freely admits that he doesn't know much about economics. He, in fact, has never been regarded as a particularly strong intellectual force in his party in the way that Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, or Orrin Hatch were.

He consistently reacts viscerally to events. He consistently seeks to understand issues, all issues, in terms of white and black. He only wants to know who the villains are, so he can "fight" them. His only reactions during the banking crisis were to seek out who to blame so he could seek to have them punished. His very simplistic call for "victory" in Iraq is another example, as if any of us know what "victory" is there. I fought there for a year and I certainly don't know. But he does. Just ask him.

No, I have had enough of this unthinking reactionism that only seeks enemies to lash out against and can't understand a world of grey subtlety and complexity. McCain's very irresponsible choosing of Gov Palin, who is obviously unready to perform at the national level, is just one more example of McCain's gut decisions, and a perfect demonstration of how they can so easily go wrong. I voted against John McCain as much as I voted for Barack Obama.

Carlton Pearson leaves rigid doctrine behind

2008-10-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

I am a late comer to this news. I did not realize that Bishop Pearson had formally left the fold. He still believes in God, but not hell. And even his idea of God is pliable and humanity affirming.
At the end of the article are comments from the fold; one has to revisit the religious nutjob universe every now and then to remember the insanity. One Bea K. writes, "I’d... be quite upset, more than you realize, if I’d have done everything possible to help mankind (my creation, if I was God that is), and they turned on me by literally spitting in my face and choosing another ‘religion’ over mine. In other words, “I’ve given you everything you could have ever wanted, but I really don’t need you God”. How humiliating is that?"
My response to Bea:

I am so glad to see Carlton Pearson make this journey. He was always such a jovial person, it is nice to have him as company. As one who was brought up steeped in the illusions of the Christian religion, I am heartened to see others freed from its false fears and lies.To all of you who are still in your religious cocoon, this is why someone like Carlton Pearson, or me, would leave. Bishop Pearson could not reconcile the idea of eternal hellfire for the great majority of mankind simply because they did not embrace one, particular conception of faith, millions of whom had never even heard of it. To any one who thinks clearly about it, it just is not fair. In fact, it goes to the central question of suffering that is the singular failure of the Christian religion (and most others, for that matter.)

I left the idea of a just and loving God behind because it did not square with the world I saw as I traveled through more than sixty countries. I saw the teeming millions in India, China, and Africa. Millions born into misery, living miserable, painful lives, and dying miserably, never knowing hope or cheer. It is the sad reality of most humans who are born today. They are born with no hope. For those in the rich west this is a hard concept to grasp.Bea K., you have it exactly wrong. In what sense did God “do everything possible to help mankind?” That contention would be a great surprise to more than 3/4 of the world’s population, who are born into lives of misery with no clue about where they came from or for what purpose they are here. They are simply cast adrift into a tooth and claw creation, with little to guide them on their way. In fact, the opposite of what you say is true. There is such pain and suffering, in so many lives, not even to mention your horrific idea of eternal damnation, that it is God himself who stands accused. How could he have created such a vicious, merciless world?

I have been to two wars and several disaster operations and have witnessed the most wrenching and ferocious mutilations of the bodies of men, women, and children. If there were a God responsible for setting a world in motion that resulted in such unending sorrow, he would, infact, deserve to be hammered to a cross every single day it spins its rounds through the cold expanse of this universe. So, now we come to the brass tax. I suggest to you, Bea, that your only real concern is your own safety, because you fear hell. The likelihood is that you are in fact a coward, too afraid to face the all too apparent conclusion, that there is no God to indict. I think that most Christians are only Christians because they fear the logic of Pascal’s wager - that one has nothing to lose by believing, but risks hell by not believing. But this is the logic of cowardice. The best response to Pascal is Thomas Jefferson’s advice to his nephew as he searched for a religion, “Fix reason firmly upon her seat. Bring to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question boldly even the existence of God, for if there be one, he surely must more approve the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”

I have been purged.

2008-10-29T16:25:00.000-07:00

If you have reservations about Sarah Palin, you have been purged by Robert Stacy McCain :
http://spectator.org/blog/2008/10/28/the-sarah-party

If you are one of the purgees, don't be surprised. This is really not unprecedented. National Review, in the '60s, used to haul itself up as the judge of all "true" conservatives. They made sure to loudly denounce Birchers on the one hand and Randites (Objectivists) on the other. They were quite the opposite of the big tent. So, I suppose it is fitting that the son of the great purger himself (WFB) finds himself purged. And for what better reason than a completely arbitrary one? Notice, it is not about principle, not about small government, or the free market, or protection of private property...nope, it just comes down to whether you can swallow hard and vote for a clearly unprepared candidate. That's it. That's the new shibboleth.

So, I hope Republicans and Conservatives, now that you have purged me and all other libertarian leaning voters from the GOP, that you have great fun by yourselves in the loser's column, because that is where you have consigned yourselves for the foreseeable future.Still, 'tis a strange standard to raise, this Sarah Palin test.

I remember seeing the women of the right in the '80s, when I came to the movement, women like Margaret Thatcher and Jeane Kirkpatrick and Peggy Noonan. These women were full of substance and presence. They were not vapid cheerleaders who could mouth a bunch of rightist platitudes with a smile and a wink. They didn't wail against the media and cry about being misportrayed as lightweight. They didn't need "fair treatment." They went into the fray and gave better than they got. Who here thinks that Jeane Kirkpatrick could be set on her heels by Katie Couric? This is what we have been reduced to, defending a third stringer who has no business at the national level. I am not waiting to be purged. I'm out. Will the last libertarian turn off the lights, please?

Why the guilt-by-association sideshows about Obama don't matter.

2008-10-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

Ove the last few weeks, the guilt by association machine has been run on overdrive by the McCain campaign and their allies. Ayers, Wright, Rezko, Khalidi, etc. As we go into this election, we should all remember what's at stake, and what is really important.
I have served this country in two wars. I have traveled to more than sixty countries, been on every continent other than Antarctica, and worked with several foreign govts and companies on behalf of American interests. So, I will humbly suggest that I have learned a few things about the world.
I admit that I have voted Republican most of my life, but in this election, I agree with Colin Powell. Obama has the temperament, the vision, and the decisionmaking skills needed in this moment. McCain is too reflexively violent, blunt, and self righteous. He believes that war solves things. And it does, sometimes, but more often it does not.

All of these sideshow stories about who associates with whom really don't matter and I'll tell you why, especially for those of you who live in your partisan or ideological bubbles and don't understand the way the world works. When you want to get something done in the real world of space, time, and history, you saddle up to the people who can help you do it. Sometimes it means making associations with people who are not perfect, or even admirable, but a pragmatist has to deal with the world as it is, not as one might wish it were. Ayers, Wright, and the rest of these people were those who could get things in done in the political landscape of Chicago poltics that Obama was entering. That's simply what politicians do. But McCain's reflexive self righteousness leads him to deny this reality (even while he hypocritically does the same thing, such as chumming up to Falwell when everyone knows McCain despised him.)

This is why McCain's support of Bush's current stance toward Iran is a tell tale sign of his unsuitability for the Presidency. Especially now, with Iran on the verge of becoming a nuclear power while simultaneously exploiting the U.S. intervention in Iraq to exponentially increase their power and status in the region. Bush's (and McCain's) approach states that we won't even initiate diplomatic talks at any meaningful level until they capitulate to a long list of demands, half of which are completely impossible for Iran to do given the current state of their internal politics. This lack of understanding and subtlety just won't wash in these times. So, partisan bubble dwellers, have all the sideshows you want, but please stay home on election day and let the adults decide this one.

Was Hiroshima terrorism?

2008-10-02T23:47:00.000-07:00

My new comment on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog:
re: " I've never understood why Hiroshima (necessary as it may well have been) wasn't an act of terrorism." and "There's no civilized way to make war." and "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
This is a subject I had to confront as Marine. I served in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2005-6), as well as Haiti (2004) and more than sixty other countries across the globe. I am writing this from Japan, where the US military has been since we conquered the place. Think of the word, conquer. We didn't conquer this country by being nice or civil, we brutalized them terrorized them, caused the most severe hardship and pain, before they surrendered. That is simply what war is. The subject of war and how to wage it is more than a preoccupation with me, it is my profession.

First, I have learned that is always easy in hindsight to second guess the actions of those who served in combat years before. So some perspective is necessary.
My grandfather was in the battle of Okinawa along with his brother (who left his right leg on the island). Afterward, he was set to invade mainland Japan where he would most certainly die, when the bomb was dropped. He credited the bomb with saving his life. My mother vividly remembers, as a six year old, saying goodbye to her Dad with the certain knowledge that he would never return. That was the world as they knew it.

I have walked the battlefields of Okinawa, Iwo Jima, and Saipan and studied the events there closely. We should all remember the ever escalating brutality with which the war was waged. Certainly Americans had racist vews of the Japanese, but the opposite was also true. Almost certainly, the need to dehumanize the other side is neceassary to generate the will to kill in the human animal. Believe it or not, there is generally found in humans a natural reluctance to commit violence on other human beings. That's why it is very often done in a ritualized or a severe social context.

In WW II specifically, as one side committed atrocities against the other, the viciousness increased all around. On Tarawa, U.S. platoon positions were marked by stakes with Japanese heads stuck on them. But also, Americans captured by the Japanese were mutilated and tortured all night before they died. Just thirty or forty feet away, their fellow Marines had to listen as the captives' genitals were cut off, and they were skinned, and disemboweled, slowly. There is no mercy after enduring such a thing. This is the nature of war. As the famed military historian and theorist, John Keegan, notes, whatever the initial reasons for war, once begun they take on a logic and momentum of their own that often become completely disconnected from the original reasons for the war. This is why they should be entered to with great trepidation.

So, having said that, let's remember what war is, one side seeks to bend the other to its will. There are alot of fancy definitions but they all come down to simply that - a battle of wills. In a total war, such as World War II, where entire civilizations are battling for supremacy and even survival, one can expect the battle of wills to extend to every aspect of life.

Of course Hiroshima was an act of terrorism, because it was intended to cause terror in the other side's population, causing them to lose the will to fight. That is what war is all about, producing terror and causing the other side to exhaust themselves, to give up, to decide that the horror can be endured no longer. So, that is a long post to say that all those quotes are true. War is terror. Freedom fighters are terrorists. It only depends on your perspective.

Think of the examples from history, our founding fathers were terrorists to the British King. People like Yizhak Rabin and the other founders of Israel were hunted as terrorists by the British before they were ever accepted as diplomats. Leaders of the IRA now sit in chambers of democracy in Europe. And, yes, Ahmadinejad, who stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, is now the President of Iran. It is all a matter of perspective.
Semper Fi,PTR
Link here: http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/10/about_that_john_brown_analogy.php#comments

Remember: how rulers rule

2008-09-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

As we move into high gear in the election season of 2008, as we listen to the moving life stories, the lilting oratory, the accumulating promises, let us all remember Machiavelli's observation from Discourses on Livy, Book II, Chapter 13: "All rulers rule by force or fraud, more often fraud." He goes on to explain why ruling by fraud is actually better than by force; because fraud kills fewer people.

Hard-easy: a lifestyle program

2008-05-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

In his review of Play as if Your Life Depends on It, by Frank Forencich, Clarence Bass writes:
This hard-easy activity pattern is built into our genes. “[It] must have been repeated with variation millions of times throughout our history,” Forencich writes. It’s what we’re born to do. And it’s a proven formula for athletic success.
“An essential part of being a good animal is establishing a cycle of activity and rest that is appropriate for your species, your age and the conditions you live in,” Forencich writes. “From a coach’s point of view, the Paleolithic hunters and gatherers were following an ideal pattern for athletic excellence as well as general health.” When you train, train hard—and then take a few days off for rest and recovery.

As the fittest 70 year-old on the planet, Clarence's recommendations are worthy of attention by anyone interested in living long and well.

Walk the Line: Johnny Cash and the tie that binds...

2008-05-19T22:12:00.000-07:00

I recently saw the movie, Walk the Line. I realize that I am late to this party, but, hey, I have young kids. before I saw the movie, I was aware of complaints from some religious viewers that the religious side of Johnny Cash was largely left out of the biopic. I must agree, but not with a qualification.

I knew that Johnny Cash was religious, and I also knew that he was a hell-raiser. This dichotomy is not too rare in the South. I didn't miss the religious element very much because the movie covered part of his life when Johnny was not very religiously inclined.

Right at the end, though, the movie did make it seem that June Carter and the Carter family were mostly to credit for his turnaround. In fact, there was a long, montagious shot where he is at the depths of despair that could have easily concluded at the Nickajack cave (which happened in late '67, just before the end of the period the movie covers.)

I googled Johnny Cash after the movie was over because I assumed that at some point he had a moment of embrace of religion. That's when I read about the Nickajack cave episode where Johnny went as his (first) marriage was dissolving and he intended to commit suicide by wandering into the cave and getting irretrievably lost. In the cave, Cash says he had a vision of light and heard the voice of God say that He wasn't through with Cash yet. And then the way out of the cave was made clear to Cash by a light and wiff of air. He addressed this episode in detail in his autobiography. He wasn't a perfect religious man after this incident, but he clearly points to it as transformative. It would have fit easily into the movie. It seems to have been left out on purpose by the filmmakers to avoid the uncomfortable inclusion of religion.

That is unfortunate. To be honest, revelatory religions, such as Christianity, generally infuriate me. So I am no disgruntled Christianist, but it is pretty clear what Johnny Cash thought was important in his life, and his story is not complete without Nickajack Cave. The filmmakers were cowards, and probably not very good business men either, given The Passion of the Christ's billion dollar box office take. Again, unfortunate.

Obama by voice, McCain by phenotype

2008-05-15T05:26:00.000-07:00

During a recent review of literature on nonverbal behavior, I ran across some interesting factoids that have implications for the presidential race.

Voters tend to prefer candidates that fall into the mesomorph phenotype. During the past fifty years, every time an ectomorph (tall, thin) has run against a mesomorph (proportional - not fat or thin) the mesomorph has won. Think John Kerry (ecto) against George Bush (meso). Researchers in numerous studies have improved upon Prof. Sheldon's initial work on phenotypes in the 1940's, and shown that while personality types do not necessarily match body types as he claimed, often people's perceptions of others are based on the other person's shape. Endos (fat, round) are perceived as jolly and contented, ectos are perceived as intellectual and aloof, while mesos are perceived as attractive, confident leaders.

This disadvantages Sen. Obama, who is clearly an ectomorph, while Sen. John McCain is a very proportional mesomorph. In fact, a lot of the recent criticism of Obama is in line with the common perceptions researchers have found people have about endomorphs: they are detached, aloof, reflective, cautious, sensitive, withdrawn. Many people are not connecting to Obama, and I'll bet they can't quite tell you why exactly, just a feeling that he is a bit of an intellectual snob. Of course some of this is racism, sure, and some of it is identity politics, but the subconscious assessment of body type and how it shapes people's perceptions should not be disregarded.

That said, however, Obama has a clear advantage in voice quality. It appears that in every matchup of the last forty years, the candidate who had the most resonant, deeper and more expressive voice, won. In 2002, researchers Gregory and Gallagher from Kent State University conducted audio-spectral analysis of 19 presidential debates including Kennedy/Nixon, Carter/Ford, Reagan/Carter, Reagan/Mondale, Bush/Dukakis, Clinton/Bush, Clinton/Dole, and Bush/Gore. They found that the candidate who registered a more dominant fundamental voice frequency in the debates won the popular vote (this means Gore in 2000). Since voters favor voices that convey power and leadership, this clearly favors Sen. Obama, whose voice is unparalleled in modern politics.

Also, there is another characteristic in Obama's favor. Research indicates there is statistically significant discrimination against persons of short stature. This bodes ill for John McCain. If he wins the Presidency, at 5' 7", he will be the shortest President in over a hundred years, since William McKinley. Barack Obama, at 6'1" is actually just a little taller than the average height for twentieth century presidents, 6' and 1/2".

McCain seems to have the biggest hurdles in the nonverbal perception arena. While Obama could conceivably start a weight program and eat more to fill out a bit, McCain can't hope to change his height or his voice.

The implications for campaign strategies are clear. If Obama's people are smart, they will try to place him right next to McCain as often as they can. Also, they could manipulate the video on his ads to widen him a bit and project a mesomorph image. McCain's staff will likely add resonance in the vocal channel on his ads and show him standing above people as often as possible. Look for these and other subtle nonverbal approaches to building these candidates images as we progress toward the election.

A Darwinian conservative, with a small "c"

2008-05-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

On the Darwinian Conservative blog, a rather astute commenter, Les Brunswick remarks Link here that scientists "have determined that human nature is not as bad as these people [religionists] claim," but also not as good as "utopian leftists" claim captures the fascinating implications of recent developments in understanding the brain and human nature. I find it interesting that many scientists, like Steven Pinker and E.O. Wilson, are politically left, while I read their works as confirming my traditionally conservative, "tragic" view of human nature. In other words, we are not blank slates, not perfectable, and subject to some 10-20 strong inherent drives that impel much of our behavior, with some modifications possible. This idea has implications across the fields of public policy that are only beginning to dawn on those who have stakes in the old party lines. Wait for the assault from both sides on these scientists, I am certain it is imminent.

A Crisis of Responsibility

2008-05-11T19:02:00.000-07:00

From frivolous lawsuits to an increase in laws designed to protect us from ourselves, few desire to take any responsibility for anything anymore.

The most recent example of this phenomenon is the cries for a bail out of those with mortgages in default. As someone with a young family, I would like to see house prices continue to fall so that I might be able to afford one. I have long considered these prices to be unreasonably inflated. Anyone who decries the inaction of government in this regard and considers those involved as victims should consider the real causes of this "crisis."

A higher degree in economics is not required to understand this. Many people simply bought houses they could not afford. Often, they purchased the houses not to live in, but as investments. According to statistics from Bloomberg.com, possibly as many as one-third of all homes purchased since 2000 were bought by speculators hoping for a quick profit. Many speculators were buying homes from other speculators, and even worse, construction companies built homes based on that false demand. There was never a market of people who actually wanted to live in these houses. To make these bad developments worse, lenders were granting loans to people who should never have qualified for them. The end result of all this is similar to the end of any common pyramid scheme: a few make big profits by selling out early and everyone else is left with nothing, or in debt.

The fact that people engage in this kind of reckless behavior should surprise no serious student of human nature. But, sadly, this appears to me to be just one more aspect of a larger trend that may be unavoidable.

As free, liberal societies have matured and enlarged, a crisis of responsibility has emerged within their people. Somehow the cornerstone of freedom, individual responsibility, is discarded as a weight too burdensome, replaced by a culture of blame and victimhood. He who most successfully ascribes his failings to another is the victor in this paradigm. How one arrests such a depressing trend in fellow citizens is a mystery.

The renowned psychologist and Holocaust survivor, Dr. Victor Frankl, suggested erecting a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast of the United States as a counterbalance to the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast. He taught that these concepts were dependant on each other and a public acknowledgement of this truth was appropriate.

A link to the wikipedia article about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Responsibility

A link to the Statue of Responsibility website here: http://www.sorfoundation.org/

Sadly, the effort to build the statue appears to be as stalled as the desire of free people to assume responsibility for their lives.

A Nation birthed by the Enlightenment - not Judeo-Christian, whatever that means exactly

2008-05-08T19:58:00.000-07:00

Whenever I hear that the United States is a Judeo-Christian nation, I try to refer the speaker to our first documents. Read Federalist No. 10, read the writings of the founders, hell, read the Constitution. Nowhere is this stated. These documents conspicuously do not refer to any religion as their source.
In fact, here is a great quote dug up by Andrew Sullivan from The Conservative Soul:

In 1797, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved the "Treaty of Tripoli," an attempt to deal with Muslim piracy and terrorism in the Mediterranean. One of its clauses read:
"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
It is hard to think of a leading contemporary Republican insisting that American government "is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." In the early republic, not a single senator dissented.

Support Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2008-05-03T21:39:00.000-07:00

I recently finished Ms. Ali's autobiography, Infidel. It is a somber and moving account of a girl born in third-world hopelessness who makes a daring dash for individual freedom when she sees a chance. I found it to be a powerful indictment of Islamic cultures that keep their women oppressed as virtual slaves.
Because she spoke out against these Islamists, she is hounded to this day. A Fatwa calling for her death was found stuck to the murdered body of Theo Van Gogh with a butcher's knife. The Dutch government no longer pays for her security as it did when she served in their parliament.
In my opinion she is a heroine and ally of all who support individual rights.
You can support her here:
http://ayaanhirsiali.org/support.html

Fitness for females

2008-05-02T21:53:00.000-07:00

Here is a fantastic link for all you ladies who want to get in shape.
http://jasonferruggia.blogspot.com/2007/09/effective-training-programs-for-females.html
He blasts through all the crap you think you know about getting fit and gives the bottom line info.

Haiku - Death Poem

2008-05-02T00:14:00.001-07:00

I periodically attempt a death poem - traditionally a haiku written by samurais who were anticipating death. The experience focuses one's creativity to answer the question: What is the statement with which I want to leave the world? What is my final observation on this life?

I have written maybe four in the past years. Remember Haiku calls for a three line poem with the syllable set of 5-7-5. The rules are quite complicated (see the wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku ) but I don't hold strictly to all of them.

Here is my latest effort:

Winds caress a child,
Yet, they are the same winds that
Wing flies to a corpse.

Feel free to post yours.

Response to Embargo, Shmembargo, It's All Greek to Me

2008-05-01T23:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.moreintelligentlife.com/node/858

This article comparing Cyprus to Cuba belies the author's ignorance of both situations. One government came into being as the result of armed insurrection, the other is the puppet state of an armed invader. There is a difference, in history and in view of international law.
First, my full disclosure: My wife is half-Greek Cypriot. My father-in-law spent a year and a half in a Turkish prison camp upon capture in the 1974 Turkish invasion. So, if you want to discount the following remarks, be my guest. However, I was posted to the US Embassy in Cyprus for two years, I have roamed every area of the island, and have found friends and admirable people on both sides of the divide. Suffice to say I am intimately familiar with the argument on both sides.
Indeed, in the midst of such contentiousness, it is surprising how many folks on both sides have substituted rage for resignation, and even acceptance. Even my father-in-law is surprisingly understanding of the Turkish Cypriot cause. And, ultimately, the realist in me understands that Greek Cypriots begged their fate by dancing with the ENOSIS devil and preparing insufficiently for Turkish military action.
Key lesson: if you are going to oppress an ethnic minority in your country, first make sure they don't have cousins forty miles away with a ferocious military. Or arm yourself appropriately. The Greek Cypriots did neither and suffered the fate of those who ignore the great axioms at their peril.
This does not, however, completely excuse the Turks' actions, during the invasion or, especially, since. Simply put, they deprived tens of thousands of private citizens of their property rights without compensation. They have not even attempted compensation, and they have redistributed the property with abandon while the Greek side has held every last bit of property owned by a Turkish Cypriot in readiness for their return.
The contention that if a "enough people, in a credible area, want independence enough to grab it, I reckon it's reasonable to agree, like the result or not" would condone the ethnic cleansing of the entire northern half of the island and permanently deprive residents on the south of their property and their options to "buy and sell, to borrow or lend, where they choose." If the Greek Cypriot refugees were allowed to return and vote, the TRNC would be dissolved with certainty.
Do you wonder why Greek Cypriots gave the "two-fingered salute" to the Annan Plan? Perhaps you can put yourself in their shoes. My wife's family owned six houses, three businesses, and a few hundred acres of land near Kyrenia. The Turkish government stripped them of this land and property. Everything was gone, including family photos and heirlooms. The Annan plan would have given those from the Kyrenia area no compensation and no right to even purchase their own land back. These facts do not preclude increased economic engagement of the TRNC, to include steps to diplomatic recognition, but they should not be dismissed out of hand as simple obstinance and a "two-fingered" salute. TRNC should be accepted and integrated in a way that will bolster the rule of law, not enrich a corrupt thugocracy.

A link to my posts at Slate's The Fray

2008-05-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

A glimpse at part of my journey across the web. I post in all sorts of forums as PatricktheRogue. Here is a link to the Fray at Slate.com:
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:4n-usyk10LQJ:fray.slate.com/discuss/members/patricktherogue.aspx+PatricktheRogue&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us

A Rogue's Entry

2008-04-15T02:54:00.000-07:00

This post marks my entry into the world of weblogs. Welcome to the log of a rogue's journey through the world of space, time, and history. Welcome one and all.