Every kiss begins with... the exchange of material wealth

You know the commercials. The ones in which the thoughtful man surprises his wife for a holiday or anniversary with a piece of diamond jewelery. Her mouth opens in ecstatic disbelief, she looks at him, her eyes mist over with grateful affection, their lips meet...

And then the singsong voiceover: "Every kiss begins with Kay."

Think for a second about what the cynical bastards at Kay Jewelers are actually saying. Every kiss begins with Kay: all romantic love is founded upon the exchange of expensive gifts. Not attraction. Not shared dreams or common interests. Not even sex or the base desire to procreate and raise a family. No - Kay wants you to remind you that the true meaning of love is found in useless, shiny scraps of carbon.

There are plenty of other vomit-inducing commercials around this time of year, but I don't know of any others that make the outrageous claim that the very existence of romantic affection owes itself to the consumption of their product.

Oxymoron of the day: 'Creationist Biologist'

Reuters: Christian biologist fired for beliefs, suit says

A Christian biologist is suing the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, claiming he was fired for refusing to accept evolution, lawyers involved in the case said on Friday.

The zebrafish specialist said his civil rights were violated when he was dismissed shortly after telling his superior he did not accept evolution because he believed the Bible presented a true account of human creation.

If an auto mechanic, a district attorney, or a real estate agent were to get fired for being a creationist, that's discrimination.

But if a marine biologist gets fired for being a creationist, that's just because the moron is too incompetent to perform his job.

It is perfectly acceptable that Nathaniel Abraham was fired for his religious beliefs. His beliefs not only indicate loose epistemic standards - which should discredit any scientist - they also come into direct conflict with the foundations of his scientific field. Just as no physicist can perform his job without belief in the theory of gravity, no responsible biologist can hold that his literal, word-for-word belief in the biblical creation story dislodges the theory of evolution. With some logical stretching, an advocate of intelligent design might be able to fuse his beliefs with evolutionary theory and still be a competant biologist, but no one who is daft enough to disregard a towering amount of essential scientific knowledge in favor of a puerile ancient myth can call himself a scientist.

In its concluding paragraph, the article reports that Abraham is now a biology "professor" at Liberty "University", the pseudo-academic shithole in Virginia founded by Jerry Falwell. Liberty University: where students and faculty alike come to insulate their god-given backward beliefs against the heretical facts and logic that run so rampant in today's world.

Teddy Bears and Prophets

Gillian Gibbons, the innocuous English primary school teacher who was nearly executed because her Sudanese students had the subversive temerity to give a stuffed bear the most popular name in the world, is back home in England. For the time being at least, she is safe from irrational dogma and religious hate.

This ridiculous story is reminiscent of the cartoonist row a few years back, when a European cartoonist was burned in effigy and had assassination decrees on his head for the simple act of drawing an image of Muhammad.

These two situations resulted from the same injustice: non-Muslims were being held accountable, and punishable, for transgressions of Islamic law.

Religion is like a social contract: if I choose to observe or convert to a given religion, I explicitly and implicitly agree to follow the laws, protocol, and moral standards set out by that religion. But those within the religion have no right to carry out an inquisition against outsiders who break arbitrary religious laws they never agreed to follow in the first place.

Also, although I admit that I have only a cursory familiarity with the Sharia, I don't know of what law exactly it is that prevents children from naming an inanimate toy bear after Muhammad. Muhammad is, after all, not only the name of the prophet, but the most common male name in the world. Besides, can you imagine the Catholic Church threatening to kill someone for naming a rubber ducky Jesus? The worst that would happen would be that the Pope would issue an edict against the deification of bath toys.

The Quietly Disappearing Senator

Trent Lott has announced his resignation from the Senate!

Even though this story broke only yesterday, it was completely invisible today on several mainstream news sites I checked. Even that notorious liberal rag The New York Times had this story buried in a list all the way at the bottom of their politics page. I couldn't even find the story listed on the politics page of CNN, although they made room for "Was Obama too honest about drug use?" and, amazingly, "Fifth graders' take on politics and the issues."

Why isn't this story getting more press? A senior Republican Senator is resigning before the end of his term, thereby ending a 35-year career, and it's regarded as a mere footnote? So much for the liberal media!

One FEWER

There is a new ad campaign on TV that's raising awareness for cervical cancer. Launched by the pharmaceutical company Merck, which manufactures an HPV vaccine, the "One Less" ad campaign features young women defiantly proclaiming, "I want to be one less woman who will battle cervical cancer. One less." The website also announces that "You could be 1 less life affected by cervical cancer."

While I applaud cancer treatments, I loathe illiterate mishandlings of the English language. Apparently the good people at Merck forgot to check Strunk and White before making their commercials.

'One less woman' is nonsense; it's the equivalent of saying 'fewer water' or 'many money'.

'Less' is a word for non-numerical quantity: "I want there to be less cancer in the world," or "I have less money than she."

When discussing numbers, however, 'fewer' should be used, as in "I want to be one fewer woman who will battle cervical cancer," or "I want there to be fewer commercials that employ bad English."

So, to sum up: LESS cancer, LESS water, or LESS money, but FEWER women, FEWER commercials, or one FEWER life.

"You could be 1 less life affected by cervical cancer." Laudable sentiment. Terrible writing.

Rice and Vocab

Free Rice
http://www.freerice.com

My kind of website: learn vocabulary while donating rice for the hungry! The edifying AND ethical way to procrastinate at work!

Christianity as antiquity

"When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! this, for a Jew, crucified over two thousand years ago, who said he was God's son. The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed - whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions - is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A got who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer knows the function and the ignominy of the cross - how ghoulishly this all touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed?"

-Friederich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too-Human

"Dollars," but no sense

DOLLAR MAX
YOUR "DOLLAR" BUYS "MAX" HERE

Another purposeless use of quotation marks with an unintended humorous effect. Are they trying to poke sarcastic fun at the weak US Dollar? Or does they just not write that good?

Happy Halloween

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

-Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven, 1845

Colbert For President!

Stephen's presidential bid has become international news! One million strong for Colbert!

On Memorials

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."

-Cato the Elder (234-149)

Experience

I like Barack Obama. He is intelligent, charismatic, and capable. As much as I prefer to remain aloof from this absurdly premature presidential race, I have to say that he's my preferred candidate.

But there are some who argue that he lacks experience. He's young - if 46 can be considered young - and he's 'only' a first-term senator. Thus some say that he lacks the worldly political knowledge necessary to be president.

The flimsiness of this critique becomes apparent when one consults recent history. In the past twenty years, two presidents have emerged as icons: Reagan for the right wing, and Clinton for the left. Both of these men had only been state governors before assuming the office of president; they hadn't even had any federal government experience, let alone experience in foreign policy! And yet each man continues to enjoy the reputation of a very successful presidency.

But if you're still concerned with experience, perhaps you should consider the resume of one of the most experienced presidents in our history. The son of a blacksmith, he had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, attended Stanford University, and made his wealth as a mining engineer. He served as a humanitarian administrator who oversaw food and disaster relief to millions of people inside and out of the US, for which actions the New York Times named him one of the Ten Most Important Living Americans. He then served as US Secretary of Commerce, and he was so good at the job that he often overshadowed the sitting presidents he was serving. He was, thus, a natural choice for the presidency, to which he was elected in a landslide election. That man's name was Herbert Hoover, and his presidency is regarded as one of the most disastrous in US history.

So much for experience.

Tough Call

Christian Science Monitor: Religious Right's Tough Call

WASHINGTON - After two days of wooing by all the Republican presidential candidates, religious conservatives appear no more in agreement on whom to support than they did going in.

The good news, said some of the 2,500 attendees at the Values Voter Summit organized by the Family Research Council, is that most of the GOP candidates share their views on the bedrock issues of the movement: opposition to abortion rights and support for traditional marriage. The bad news is that the strongest Republican in national polls, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, is not with them on those issues.

It looks like the so-called 'values voters' are having trouble finding a candidate who is popular but also sufficiently homophobic and strong against women's rights. Shame that Brownback's out of the race. His 'values' were certainly backward enough.

What about God? Is he available for a presidential bid? Or is He too busy preparing to rapture all of those values voters? I hope he does so soon - then those of us who are 'left behind' can elect a worthy president according to rational criteria.

"Clean"

I've pointed out before (here and here) how quotations can be misused with tragic results.

I say again: quotation marks do NOT add emphasis (that's what italics, boldface, underlining, and capital letters are for). Quotes are used to quote someone (is that so hard?), or to make a sarcastic joke, which is what this unfortunately punctuated sign ends up looking like.

Too bad they don't teach that kind of thing anymore in this nation's public "schools".

Stalling for time

CNN: Craig appeals judge's ruling in sex sting case

Keep stalling, Larry. (Get it? Stalling?) And thanks for all those Democratic votes you're winning over for next year!

Thoughts and Ends

Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of their own.

-The Player King, Hamlet, III.ii

The Idiot

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured."

-George W. Bush, September 2007

"My job is a decision-making job, and as a result I make a lot of decisions."

-George W. Bush, October 2007


This man is the President of the United States of America. That fact, by itself, is the strongest case against democratic representation I've ever heard.

Ghosts, Witches, Pumpkins... and Santa?

You know what they say about Christmas: it comes only once a year. For four goddamned months.

The above photographs were taken in a Costco store on September 29. That's more than a month before Halloween. And sure enough, three aisles away there was a stack of Halloween candy. Halloween treats and Christmas decorations should never, ever meet in the same store.

These obtrusive and unseasonable decorations were accompanied by the loud, odious chords of electronic Christmas music. Hearing a bad adaptation of "Deck the Halls" is depressing in the first place; hearing it in a wholesale retailer in September is enough to make one suicidal.

This perverse extension of "the season to be jolly" will make Scrooges of us all. Bah! Humbug!

The Call of the Puffin

What sound do you think this cute little unassuming birdy makes? A chirp? A squawk? Perhaps even a melodious song?

Guess again. Try a terrifying chainsaw-like roar!

This too.

(These unsettling authentic bird sounds brought to you by http://www.audubon.org/bird/puffin/questions.html.)

The trial of a polygamist 'prophet'

CNN: Polygamist 'prophet' found guilty of aiding rape

Polygamist sect leader Warren Steed Jeffs was found guilty Tuesday of being an accomplice to rape for using his religious authority to push a 14-year-old girl into a marriage she did not want.

Wall [the victim] spent three days on the stand, frequently sobbing as she described how she felt trapped in a marriage she did not want, to a man she did not like.

She said she repeatedly told Jeffs that she did not want to be married and was uncomfortable with her new husband's sexual advances. Jeffs advised her to pray and to submit to her husband, learn to love him, and bear his children -- or risk losing her "eternal salvation," she said.

Thus spake the prophet Jeffs: submit to rape and turn over control of your life to a man you despise, or you won't go to heaven. What could anyone say in defense of this repulsive fraud?

The defense countered that authorities were persecuting Jeffs because of his religious beliefs, which include practicing plural marriage as the way to heaven. "His church, his religious beliefs is what's on trial here, and it's being dressed up as a rape," attorney Walter Bugden argued.

Absolutely right. Ignore this defending attorney's apparently tenuous grasp of grammar and syntax for a second, and consider what he's saying. Warren Jeffs's religious beliefs are being put on trial for rape.

It's true. But his defending attorney says that like it's a bad thing.

Of course this reprobate's religious beliefs are being put on trial. The defending attorney is right about that, but here's the specious turn in his argument: he makes it seem that the beliefs are on trial BECAUSE they are religious.

The beliefs are not being assaulted because they are affiliated with a religion. They are being assaulted because they have led to degenerate and malicious behavior that is patently unacceptable in a free and lawful society.

Notice, though, that it is not the religious beliefs themselves that are being prosecuted, but the actions that the beliefs inspired. This is a free country, and you can believe whatever you want, however outrageous, but it is foolish to expect amnesty for acting on those beliefs. To use a more secular example, take the KKK; they can think and say whatever they want about minorities, but they can't cite the freedoms of belief and expression when they go lynch someone.

This trial is reminiscent of another that took place some eighty-two years ago. In the Scopes trial, the religious beliefs of anti-evolution America were taken to task - not because they were religious, but because they were ignorant, because they supported stultifying the education of our children, because they favored ancient myths over scientific fact.

Is it right that reprehensible, outrageous, or idiotic beliefs take on a sacrosanct aura of legitimacy simply because they are associated with a religion? Should we tolerate things like statutory rape or rejection of scientific knowledge because the 'sacred' preachings of ancient texts and a few sanctimonious frauds in long robes claim it's what god wants?

In a free society such as ours, such beliefs will inevitably come into conflict with reason. And they will lose.

One fewer god

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

-Stephen Roberts

Horowitz

YouTube: David Horowitz Accuses UCSC of Being Too Un-American (and gets totally shot down by Alan Colmes)

For once, Alan Colmes pulls his weight.

Or perhaps David Horowitz is just so cretinous that he can be nailed by Sean Hannity's effete liberal counterpart.

An apostate leftist, Horowitz has become something of a conservative celebrity for his strident criticisms of academia as an institutional hive of leftist indocrination. He's essentially a Joe McCarthy for the modern academy, and brings with him all of the charm, wit, and credibility of his 1950s predecessor.

His books, such as The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America and Indoctrination U, are full of hysterical shriekings about the left's stranglehold on our colleges, and the conniving communist professors who pour red poison in the ears of innocent college students. His books are plagued with errors and deliberate lies (see for instance the Horowitz fact checker), but Horowitz is, after all, an analyst for Fox News; facts are clearly not high on this man's list of concerns.

Peace, friendship, and death to the Jews

CNN: Amadinejad: Iran can help secure Iraq, Israel is 'cruel'

(CNN) -- Iran wants "peace and friendship for all," the country's president said Wednesday while again denying Western assertions his nation is pursuing nuclear weapons and trying to destabilize Iraq.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a hard line against Israel, calling it "an invader" and saying it "cannot continue its life."

So, "peace and friendship for all," but Israel must die?

One of three things is going on here.

1. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not know what "peace" means.
2. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not know what "all" means.
3. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a raving anti-semitic lunatic whose position as the leader of a potential nuclear power is not a little disquieting.

I'll give you three guesses.

Fire Water!

AP: Radio Frequencies Help Burn Salt Water

John Kanzius happened upon the discovery accidentally when he tried to desalinate seawater with a radio-frequency generator he developed to treat cancer. He discovered that as long as the salt water was exposed to the radio frequencies, it would burn.

The discovery has scientists excited by the prospect of using salt water, the most abundant resource on earth, as a fuel.

Rustum Roy, a Penn State University chemist, has held demonstrations at his State College lab to confirm his own observations.

The radio frequencies act to weaken the bonds between the elements that make up salt water, releasing the hydrogen, Roy said. Once ignited, the hydrogen will burn as long as it is exposed to the frequencies, he said.

The Meaning of Religious Freedom

"The meaning of religious freedom, I fear, is sometimes greatly misapprehended. It is taken to be a sort of immunity, not merely from governmental control but also from public opinion. A dunderhead gets himself a long-tailed coat, rises behind the sacred desk, and emits such bilge as would gag a Hottentot. Is it to pass unchallenged? If so, then what we have is not religious freedom at all, but the most intolerable and outrageous variety of religious despotism. Any fool, once he is admitted to holy orders, becomes infallible. Any half-wit, by the simple device of ascribing his delusions to revelation, takes on an authority that is denied to all the rest of us."

-H.L. Mencken, in his coverage of the Scopes Trial, 1925

Scandalous

About a year ago, Mark Foley, a Republican congressional representative from Florida, resigned because it was discovered that he had sent sexually explicit electronic messages to teenage boys.

And now, not to be outdone by his erstwhile colleague, Republican Senator Larry Craig has utterly shamed himself by allegedly soliciting sex in an airport bathroom.

Big surprise: these politicians, who are members of the party that considers itself the American model of moral probity, are also enormous hypocrites. But there's a disturbing trend that emerged in the media coverage of both of these stories. With both the Foley scandal and the current Craig scandal, the media have put too much emphasis on the question of whether or not these men are gay.

Being gay shouldn't be the issue here; the issue in both of these stories should be that these men are violating the law and exhibiting moral depravity. But by the way the media cover the scandals, they often make it seem like being gay itself constitutes the entire scandal.

Who cares if Mark Foley is gay? He was sending sexually explicit messages to teenagers! Isn't that awful regardless of whether the teenage victims of his perversion were male OR female?

And again, with Larry Craig: he, a married man, was cruising for sex in an airport bathroom. Isn't that reprehensible whether or not the complete stranger he wanted to proposition was a man OR a woman?

The homosexual leanings of these men should only enter the story insofar as to expose the hypocrisy of their conservative positions against gays. When the media make it seem like being gay is a scandalous issue in and of itself, they're simply contributing to the same damaging national atmosphere of homophobia that these hypocritical Republicans and their colleagues have worked so hard to perpetuate.

Read A Fucking Book

CNN: Poll of US Reading Habits

One in four Americans read no books last year.

That reminds me of something Mark Twain once said: that the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who can't.

Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales has resigned!

Asked what his most meaningful experience was during his two years as Attorney General, Gonzales replied, "I... don't recall."

Impiety

Impiety, n. Your irreverence towards my deity.

-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Lessons

BBC: Bush Compares Iraq to Vietnam

President George W Bush has warned a US withdrawal from Iraq could trigger the kind of upheaval seen in South East Asia after US forces quit Vietnam.

Is this man serious?

When I think of the phrase "Lessons of Vietnam", I have to say that the first thing that comes to mind isn't that we should have stayed there longer.

No - when I think of the Vietnam War, I think of a war begun in a land far away, with an enemy we knew nothing about, for reasons that represented a total lack of understanding of that part of the world and its relationship to us. I think of a war in which the costs were severe and the rewards nonexistant. I think of a war in which we had trouble telling friend from foe. I think of a war in which we floundered for years with no objective and a scattered, ad hoc strategy. I think of a war that sapped the morale and tarnished the international reputation of the United States. I think of a war that went down in history as a military disaster, a governmental error, and a national tragedy.

There are indeed lessons to be learned from Vietnam's place in American history. But President Bush has not learned from our country's past mistakes; he has repeated them.

Jet Lag

Probably the only fun thing about the primary campaigns starting so damn early is that we get to see all of the candidates' sundry mistakes, gaffes, and blunders lampooned on the Daily Show. Until the primaries close enough to become actually relevant, Jon Stewart is going to be my only source of news on the subject.

Bill Richardson has, for the most part, escaped the mockery that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert heap on much of the other candidates. But recently, he did something extraordinarily stupid, which I think deserved even more derision than it received.

The event in question, which was lambasted last night on the Daily Show, involved a gay TV Station Democratic debate in which Melissa Etheridge asked Richardson if he thought homosexuality was a choice. First he said yes. Then he said that he's, well, "not a scientist". Meaning, of course, "yes but I don't want to sound homophobic".

But that's not even the outrageous part. Apparently, in a clumsy attempt to backpedal, he now attributes his statements to not understanding the question because of jet lag.

Come now. Even if you had not slept for days, it's pretty clear what's being asked if Melissa Etheridge is the one asking the question and it includes the words "homosexuality" and "choice".

Richardson's excuse is an absurdity on several levels. First, of course, it simply insults the intelligence of anyone who hears it. But on a deeper level, we are considering this man for the office of President of the United States - a job that carries with it significant stressors and probably a lot of travel-related fatigue. If he "didn't understand" such a simple question due to a bit of jet lag, what kinds of awful mistakes would he make as President, at, for instance, international summits? Would he get us into a war with North Korea because he didn't get a nap on the plane?

Bad move, Governor Richardson. You'll have to do a lot better than that - or else the only place you're going to be popular is on late-night satire.

"Sales Event"

Since when did selling cars turn into an 'event'?

Most car commercials you see on TV have a sentence that never deviates from this formula: "The (insert corporate name here) sales event: on now at your local (insert corporate name here) dealer." I suppose 'sale' doesn't sound exciting enough anymore.

And that's not all. Lexus, who seem to have a peculiar knack for pompous indulgence in their advertising, apparently now find the 'sales' part of the formula too pedestrian; I saw a Lexus commercial recently that simply announced "The Event."

"The Event"? How nauseatingly pretentious. I guess this is what marketing executives are paid for, though: to make selling cars sound like a black-tie ball at the royal palace.

Life Imitates Art

In the episode "HOMR" of the twelfth season of the Simpsons, Homer finds out via a doctor's X-Ray that, when he was a child, he shoved a crayon up his nose and into his head. The crayon had stayed lodged there throughout his entire life, and the pressure it put on his brain accounted for his characteristically low intelligence.

Haha. Ah, the world of animated fiction. Surely nothing like that would ever happen in real life...

BBC: Pencil removed from German's head

A woman in Germany who has spent 55 years with part of a pencil inside her head has finally had it removed.
Margret Wegner fell over carrying the pencil when she was four. It punctured her cheek and part of it went into her brain, above the right eye.

The 59-year-old has suffered headaches and nosebleeds for most of her life.

Life really does imitate art.

Naive

It's sometimes said that if you're a conservative when you're twenty, you have no heart, and if you're a liberal at fifty, you have no head. A gross oversimplification, perhaps, but - so some think.

But indeed, political liberals in America have more of a reputation than conservatives of having their heads in the clouds. Whenever conservative pundits aren't making the case that liberals have actively malignant designs against our country, they're arguing that liberals are naive and out of touch with reality. (The potential incompatibility of these two portrayals - self-consciously subversive elements versus hapless, bumbling fools - is not discussed, and it's usually assumed that liberals somehow embody both caricatures.)

This is amazing to me, considering that many conservatives believe that:

-it is unimportant to have an intelligent, or even functionally literate, person occupying the office of President of the United States

-evolution is false, because a book written two millennia ago says so

-abstinence education actually works on teenagers

-homosexuals choose to be gay (but somehow, heterosexuals don't have to choose to be straight)

-if everyone is armed, then society will be safer for it

-our Founding Fathers were evangelical Christians

-the ninth amendment doesn't exist

-the first half of the second amendment doesn't exist

-the environment's capacity for abuse and exploitation is limitless

-we don't need to understand anything about a country in order to invade it and set up a new government

-we can keep doing what we're doing in Iraq and somehow everything will turn out swell

Now, of course, liberals aren't without their fair share of mistaken theories and unrealistic notions, but how do they get labelled as the head-in-the-clouds party, while by contrast the conservatives can bill themselves as worldly pragmatists? Sounds a little naive to me.

Irony

Irony is using Lisa Simpson as a promotion for Burger King.

"Support free speech," eh? You know what Lisa Simpson also supports? Protesting obtrusive corporations that abuse the environment and kill billions of animals. But I suppose that's a minor detail.

Kwik-E-Mart, Manhattan, NY

Simpsons, eh?

Warning: Spoilers Below.

After nearly twenty years of animated brilliance, The Simpsons finally have a movie. Matt Groening no doubt had many opportunities to write a movie that was guaranteed to cash in on a wildly successful series, but it is to his credit that he waited. The result is a fine movie indeed.

Of course, there's nothing entirely new; the movie essentially feels like a 90 minute episode (which is a decidedly good thing, since it was made for the millions of us who love the episodes). But you can tell that the writers and animators had fun trying some techniques and tricks that wouldn't work in a normal TV episode. First of all, it's the first time we've ever seen the Simpsons in widescreen, and seeing Springfield projected on the big screen feels odd after watching it for so long on TV. Also, the cinematography is different; they played more with sweeping camera shots and panoramic views. You could tell that the style was slightly dressed-up for the big screen, but they didn't change anything drastically, which is why it worked so well.

They also pushed the envelope in the realm of obscenity, but again, just enough to try a couple things they wouldn't do on TV. I've certainly never heard Marge use the expression "god damned..." in a sentence before, and there's a scene with Bart-- well, I won't give that one away.

A couple things, though, kept it from being the "Best.. Movie.. Ever." Lisa's crush on the kid from Ireland, for instance, was fairly pointless; the writers don't go anywhere with it, and we don't even really see any substantial humor come out of it.

But mainly, I would like to have seen more of peripheral characters like Krusty, Groundskeeper Willie, Principal Skinner, Snake, Apu, Police Chief Wiggum, Ralph, and especially Mr. Burns. One of the strengths that the Simpsons has always had as a show is that it develops these characters as much as the family itself, so that each person in the town has a distinct identity that adds to the mosaic of Springfield as the American Everytown. On the other hand, I can see how trying to fit as many characters as possible into the movie would have diluted the plot and made the movie into a pointless (albeit funny) string of one-liners and cameos, so I don't hold it against them. Maybe Mr. Burns simply needs his own movie.

It was nothing short of amazing, though, to hear Green Day sing the Simpsons theme at the beginning. And the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon was sheer genius.

All in all, an excellent movie that draws on all of the absurd, topical, high-brow, low-brow comedy that has long made The Simpsons the perfect satire of the American Family. Go see it!

What a piece of work

Shakespeare was not only the greatest poet who ever lived; he had more direct influence on the English language than any other single person in history. We owe an amazing number of commonly used words and idiomatic expressions to his pen.

If you have never read Hamlet - and if you haven't, you should - you'll be amazed at how many lines are already familiar to you.

Idioms and expressions first coined in Hamlet:

In my mind's eye

Foul play

Murder most foul

Far gone

Method to his madness ("Though this be madness, yet there is method in it")

What a piece of work

In my heart of heart

It smells to heaven

Cruel to be kind

Hoised with his own petard


Famous dramatic lines from Hamlet:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be

To thine own self be true

Brevity is the soul of wit

The play's the thing

To be or not to be

Get thee to a nunnery

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

Alas, poor Yorick

A hit, a very palpable hit

Good night, sweet prince

Oftentimes a classic work of literature has one famous line that everybody knows, e.g. "Call me Ishmael," or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Hamlet has at least ten such lines - and it's only 100 pages long! Is there any other work of such short length that has made so many lasting contributions to our language?

Potter

In a conversation I had with an acquaintance a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I was in the book publishing business. He remarked, "Man, I sure hope people are still reading books ten years from now."

Nice of him to say that, but his worries have no basis in reality. For, despite the rise of the internet, despite television's enduring popularity, despite the glitz and lights and sounds of the information age, despite the temptations for kids to turn on their playstation instead of read a book -- despite all of this, we still live in a world where records in book publishing can be utterly shattered.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final installment in the Harry Potter series, sold 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours of sales. That's five thousand books sold per minute, and that just in the US - the worldwide figures must be much larger.

This is not only a victory for Ms J.K. Rowling or for the books' publishers (though I extend my congratulations to them) - it is a proud and unmistakable sign that books will continue to be read for a long long time, no matter what flashy gadgets or other advances in circuitry are made.

Congratulations, Mr. Potter. And long live the book!

A Human Stain

It takes a uniquely odious brand of asshole to have torturing and killing dogs as a hobby. Falcons quarterback Michael Vick is one such asshole.

This contemptible piece of human excrement bought, trained, tortured, and slaughtered pit bulls for what his primitive nervous system considered fun.

Some have come out in his defense, arguing that, after all, the victims of his sadism were "just dogs".

Yes, so they were. And Michael Vick is just a retarded nonce who enjoys watching animals suffer, because it's appealing to his reprobate sensibilities. Plus, he can't read, so what else is he supposed to do with his time?

Too bad the dogs never got ahold of him. That would be a QB sack I'd like to see.

Critiquing the 'New New Atheism'

Writing in this past Sunday's Wall Street Journal, Peter Berkowitz constructs an interesting critique of the recent atheist publishing boom. Referring to the views espoused by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris as 'the New New Atheism', Berkowitz has this to say:

Profitability is not the only feature distinguishing today's fashionable disbelief from the varieties of atheism that have arisen over the millennia. Unlike the classical atheism of Epicurus and Lucretius, which rejected belief in the gods in the name of pleasure and tranquility, the new new atheism rejects God in the name of natural science, individual freedom and human equality. Unlike the Enlightenment atheism of the 18th century, which arose in a still predominantly religious society and which frequently went to some effort to disguise or mute its disbelief, the new new atheism proclaims its hatred of God and organized religion loudly and proudly from the rooftops. And unlike the anti-modern atheism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, which regarded the death of God as a catastrophe for the human spirit, the new new atheism sees the loss of religious faith in the modern world as an unqualified good, lamenting only the perverse and widespread resistance to shedding once and for all the hopelessly backward belief in a divine presence in history.

Essentially, Mr. Berkowitz seems to think that the caustic, mean-spirited, uncompromising nature of the atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et al is unprecedented in western intellectual history, and he strongly implies that past generations had better sense than to be so dismissive of religious ideas.

This is patently false. Mordant, no-holds-barred criticism of religion is far from being a new development. Friederich Nietzsche, Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow, Robert Ingersoll, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ambrose Bierce, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Paine, Percy Bysshe Shelley - all of these thinkers and more have expressed atheistic arguments in even more uncompromising and mean-spirited terms than the 'new new atheists' who Mr Berkowitz pretends to be unique.

Consider Nietzsche, who wrote that "prayer has been invented for those people who really never have thoughts of their own", and that "in Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point." (I have no idea where Mr Berkowitz gets the lunatic notion that Nietzsche thought the death of god to be a "catastrophe"; Nietzsche despised religion and thought the death of god to be a prerequisite for the rebirth of the human spirit. But I digress.)

Or consider Robert Ingersoll, who is little remembered today but who toured the US in the mid-nineteenth century giving lectures on atheism. He was one of the most popular speakers of his day, drawing record crowds in a country which had only recently gone through a second great awakening. He once said that "religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery."

These thinkers of the past made no such efforts to "disguise or mute their disbelief"; indeed, they proclaimed their hatred of religion "loudly and proudly from the rooftops" every bit as stridently as the new atheists. But I think Mr Berkowitz errs in saying that any atheists, new or old, possess a "hatred of God". You can't hate a being in whom you don't believe. All of these thinkers hate the idea of god - the notion itself that there exists a supernatural being in whom one is supposed to have faith. That's a big difference from hating the being itself - which makes it sound like atheists simply resent god, instead of thinking the belief in him irrational.

All this being said, Mr Berkowitz does make a couple of good points. First of all, he points out that nitpicking at religions - finding sundry contradictory or false statements in the Bible, for instance, or interpreting religious stories like the binding of Isaac in a strictly modern framework - is to miss the point of the religious experience. Although I personally think that these criticisms are not without merit, since so many people do interpret their religions in the same "slavishly literal sense" that Mr Berkowitz says atheistic critics should avoid, I see his point: it's not the big picture.

Berkowitz also makes a sound point in arguing that it is beyond the scope of the new atheists to prove that there is no god. No one will ever be able to prove that beyond doubt, just as no one will ever be able to prove that there is a god.

But I'm not so sure that that is what Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris are saying. I think that their argument is not so much that "we are certain that there is no god", but rather that "we are certain that there exists no good reason to believe in a god". As I have not read all of the books in question, I will not say for sure; but I suspect Mr Berkowitz may be conflating these two approaches to atheism.

The final thrust of Berkowitz's criticism seems to be this:

Playing into the anger and enmities that debase our politics today, the new new atheism blurs the deep commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals that binds atheists and believers in America. At the same time, by treating all religion as one great evil pathology, today's bestselling atheists suppress crucial distinctions between the forms of faith embraced by the vast majority of American citizens and the militant Islam that at this very moment is pledged to America's destruction.

With this I disagree. If anything, the new new atheism confirms America's commitment to freedom, because it is emblematic of the free exchange of ideas that make freedom worthwhile. The mere fact that these criticisms are harsh does not mean that they are undemocratic, and the mere fact that these thinkers consider religions to be false does not mean that they think people should be prevented from practicing them.

And although the new new atheists may indeed blur the distinctions between different forms of faith, that is no flaw, because the focus of their criticism is what all religions share. They are attacking what religions have in common, from militant Islam to Mormonism to Orthodox Judaism: faith. It is faith - believing things without reason - which draws the fires of their abuse.

Mr Berkowitz concludes his piece by suggesting that "the variety of religions" deserve "a fair hearing." Have they not had a fair hearing for the past several thousand years? If there is indeed "nothing new under the sun" in the criticism of religion, certainly religion can offer nothing new in its own defence.

Eternity's sun rise

Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

-William Blake (1863)

Meat's Pressures on the Planet

Many people assume that there are only two reasons to become a vegetarian: health concerns and ethical considerations. But the widespread consumption of meat has effects on the environment that go far beyond human nutrition or the well-being of animals.

BBC online has begun a new series, Planet Under Pressure, which explores six of "the most pressing environmental issues facing the human race today": food, water, energy, climate change, biodiversity, and pollution. All of these crises are directly or indirectly linked to eating meat.

FOOD
More agricultural crops in the world today are grown to feed the animals that feed humans, rather than to feed humans directly. Meat-eating is one of the most insanely inefficient processes that free markets tolerate.
In the world's oceans, overfishing has depleted many fish populations to critical levels. If demand continues to rise and stocks continue to shrink, some fishing stocks will disappear entirely.

WATER
Livestock, and the huge amounts of crops grown to feed livestock, consume epic amounts of water that could be supplying our homes and human-intended crops instead.

ENERGY
The huge amounts of land that are being used now for raising livestock and growing the food that feeds them could be used for wind or solar energy, thus easing our reliance on coal and nuclear power.

POLLUTION, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND BIODIVERSITY
Meat-eating is a leading cause of deforestation, since large tracts of land are required not only to graze livestock, but to grow the aforementioned crops that feed livestock. And deforestation, in turn, is a leading cause of species extinction. Moreover, we need forests in order to keep the air in our atmosphere clean, and as we chop down more forests, pollution will worsen and global warming will accelerate.
In the sea, overfishing has heinous effects on biodiversity. The fact that many fish populations have been depleted to less than 10% of their original levels not only threatens the survival of those individual target species, but other species in the food web as well. According to oceanographer Doug Segar, overfishing may constitute "a far greater threat [to marine ecosystems] than the oil spills or industrial and domestic sewage discharges that often dominate media coverage."

The planet is indeed under pressure - and much of the pressure comes from humans' insistence on eating cows, chickens, pigs, and fish. Keep these animals off your plate more often and you'll be giving Mother Nature a break she desperately needs.

Not all those who wander...

Occassionally on the street you might encounter a bumper sticker that reads, "Not all who wander are lost". Sadly, it is almost invariably written without citation, and so most people probably assume that it's just a cute invention by the same creative minds that brought you bumper stickers like "I go from zero to bitch in 2.5 seconds", or "My other ride is a..."

But the line was actually penned in Middle-Earth, and it refers to Aragorn, son of Arathorn, also known as Strider. The full quote is below.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not whither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

-J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings

Some clarifications on my views concerning religion

A reader of my blog recently wrote me with this objection:

Dear Mr. West,
I find your Blog to be a mystery. It mentions tolerance towards religions yet shows none, if tolerance has anything to do with respect. To modify a concept from Heidegger, I would recommend an attitude of Gelassenheit towards spirituality. I expect future posts to be either more sensitive about religion or at least more honest about your own biases. Thank you sir.

First of all, I would like to thank this reader for taking the time to read my blog and construct a respectful criticism. I shared a couple of classes with this person in college, and I continue to hold his thoughts in high esteem. I hope that this response can do justice to his objection.

I do not believe that I, on this blog, have ever made any pretension of objectivity. The opinions advanced herein are my own. I thought that the very nature of the forum would have made that clear. This blog is nothing more than an editorial outlet for my own thoughts and views, and that is meant to be implicitly understood without my having to write “I think” before every statement I make here.

But although this blog is inherently subjective, I take issue with the contention that it is biased. ‘Bias’ carries the connotation of an unreasoned prejudice or a deceptively subtle favoring of one side of an issue. I do not think that my views on religion are biased. I do not reject religion because of some visceral distaste or underlying prejudice; I reject religion because I find it to be a fundamentally unsound set of ideas.

As I see it, the foundation of religion is faith. To have faith means to believe something without having any reason to believe it – to believe something merely because you want to believe it, regardless of any supporting or contradictory evidence. I can imagine no greater stupidity than that, and I reserve no respect for any system of beliefs founded on such an intellectual farce.

Faith is the most dangerous intellectual precedent imaginable, and it has given rise to much violence and misery over the course of human history. It is primarily because of faith that religion retards scientific and social progress, and engenders the holding of unreason in equal or higher esteem than reason itself.

Moreover, it seems to me that the sociological, anthropological, psychological, and historical records make it clear that religions are social conventions created to satisfy the base needs of human beings to comfort themselves and to explain the mysteries of the world around them. Simply put, religion is born out of ignorance and fear, and as such, in the words of James Madison, it "shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."

Clearly I make no secret of my opposition to religious ideas. But let us not conflate intellectual opposition with intolerance. The position I take is that of Voltaire, who once wrote to the Jesuits (a people with whom he had fierce conflicts of opinion): “I disagree with what you say, but would defend to the death your right to say it.” I believe in intellectual freedom. I do not believe in banning books, or persecuting people, or forcibly stamping out beliefs (all things that religions have done at one time or another, and not by mistake). I believe in the free marketplace of ideas: you are entitled to your own opinion, and I to mine. But watch out: this also means that I am entitled to my own opinion OF your opinion, and you to your own opinion OF mine! Thus, you have right to believe in God, and I have the right not to. I have the right to point out why I think your belief in God is irrational and cowardly, and you have the right to think that I’m morally and spiritually bankrupt for saying so. And I have the right to think that that’s absurd. And so on. The free marketplace of ideas thus renders intolerance unnecessary, because at the end of the day, reason and logic should prevail of their own accord.

Of course, I’m not always so highbrowed in my criticisms. I often express my opposition to religion with disparaging mockery or sarcasm. But the apparent immaturity of such derision belies the purpose it serves. Religion, after all, rejects reason as an epistemic standard, and one cannot reason with the unreasonable; thus condescension and mockery are sometimes all one can employ against such bankrupt ideas.

I started this blog as a forum dedicated to reason and observation as the only responsible sources of knowledge and the only reliable guides against error. I think that the harsh tone that I take against religion is in better harmony with that ideal than anything else I write here.

So to conclude, dear reader, I will not alter the nature of the position I take against religion. To be, as you suggest, “more sensitive toward religion” would be, I think, to compromise intellectual honesty, which demands that criticism not be afraid of its own conclusions. Intellectual honesty also demands considering arguments opposed to your own positions, and I frequently do this; I welcome any sound rebuttal to my positions, but I have yet to hear a pro-faith or pro-religion argument that was not fatally flawed in its logic. Thus I will continue to give religious faith only the intellectual credit it deserves, which as far as I can tell, is none.

The Use and Abuse of Philosophy

I'm always interested - and not infrequently disappointed - in how people react when I tell them I majored in philosophy. A college acquaintance of mine, for instance, once told me that she didn't like philosophy, because she found it to be too abstract. This puzzled me, especially because she herself was majoring in government. She seemed not to understand that all fundamental questions in her field - and, for that matter, in all of the humanities - go back to philosophy.

Philosophy is to the humanities what mathematics is to the sciences: it is the foundation upon which everything rests. Philosophy, like mathematics, appears at first to be abstract, even detached from reality. And for this reason, many people dismiss it as being too difficult, or of too little use in daily life to warrant serious study.

But philosophy is not at all abstract - it is eminently pragmatic and practical, and your mind can't live a day without it, any more than your body can survive without water or food. Philosophy is not some head-in-the-clouds pastime involving ridiculous questions about what sound a tree makes when falling in the forest. It is simply the practice of rational, critical thought.

My friend majoring in government, for instance, would have done well to consider that the core questions in her field are all philosophical considerations: what is the most just form of government? Is the death penalty just, or is it cruel and unusual? Is it fair to tax the rich and redistribute wealth to the indigent, or is true justice characterized by letting people keep what they earn? Does bigger government expand the borders of liberty, or does it limit them?

The other fields in the humanities also grow out of philosophy. One cannot study history, for instance, without considering why we should even care about the past in the first place. One cannot study art without aesthetics, anthropology without a theory of human nature, or sociology without an examination of social norms.

Even the sciences require an implicit study of philosophy. The scientific method is nothing more than an organized approach to dealing with the central challenges of epistemology: how do we know what we know, and what is the most responsible and reliable way of acquiring knowledge? And of course, all of the sciences rely on mathematics, which in turn rely on logical reasoning. One could thus go so far as to explain the project of science as the use of one branch of philosophy - logic - to pursue another branch - epistemology.

Simply put, philosophy is thinking - nothing more, nothing less. And the last time I checked, thinking is a fairly pragmatic and important activity in daily life (though ironically, one too often taken for granted by the very people who pride themselves on being pragmatic).

The Court

Well, it's Supreme Court decision season again, but did you know that the highest court in the land has occupied its current building for only the past seventy years? Before the 1930's, the Court didn't have a home of its own - it met in the basement of the Capitol building. Then, in the 1920's, Chief Justice (and former President - the only man ever to have served in both Judicial and Executive Branches) William Howard Taft proposed that a Supreme Court Building be erected a short distance from the Capitol. Taft, along with such justices as Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., oversaw the planning and construction of the building, which was completed in 1935.

If you're ever sightseeing in Washington, go see the Court! It's not heavily touristed and is well worth a trip.

Memory

"Das habe ich gethan" sagt mein Gedächtnis. "Das kann ich nicht gethan haben" sagt mein Stoltz und bleibt unerbittlich. Endlich - giebt das Gedächtnis nach.

-Friederich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse


"I have done that," says my memory. "I cannot have done that," says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually - memory yields.

-Friederich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

You call this archaeology?

A new series on the History Channel, Ice Road Truckers, debuted about a week ago. A description on the show's web site reads:

The History Channel embarks upon an unparalleled adventure revealing the virtually unknown occupation of ice road trucking, considered to be one of the world's most dangerous jobs. ICE ROAD TRUCKERS charts two months in the lives of six extraordinary men who haul vital supplies to diamond mines over frozen lakes that double as roads. The livelihood of many depends on these tenuous roads, which through the years have been responsible for the deaths of dozens of men.

Always prepared for the ice to give way under the weight of their trucks, these drivers put their lives and financial security of their families on the line in an exhilarating dash for cash. Beginning Sunday, June 17 at 10pm ET/PT, this adrenaline packed series reveals the raw, gripping quest of ice road truckers.

Ok. First of all, I can see maybe an episode or two about this particular profession, but an entire series? Are they so strapped for ideas that they need to stretch this out through a whole season?

Secondly - and much more importantly - this is the History Channel. Exactly what does "Ice Road Trucking" have to do with history? Wouldn't this be a program more appropriate for the Discovery Channel? Or the Travel Network? Or Fox?

And this isn't the first History Channel series to stray from the historical path. Though dubbed "the Hitler Channel" several years ago by critics who (justifiably) thought that there was too much WWII coverage, the History Channel nowadays would more appropriately be nicknamed "the Construction Channel". Shows such as Modern Marvels and Mega Movers (the producers of the History Channel seem to have a passion for alliteration with m's) focus on modern technology and large-scale construction, and have nothing to do with history. Unless one accepts the weak caveat that today's modernity is tomorrow's history, these shows deserve no place on the History Channel.

Shame on you, History Channel. Keep living in the past - it's where you belong!

Thou Shalt Not Tailgate

CNN: Vatican issues ten commandments for drivers

Out of touch with reality as usual, the Vatican has issued its official stance regarding the moral use of automobiles. The document is full of weak, sententious 'commandments' that should have already been covered by a driver's manual and plain common sense. Except, of course, for the recommendation that you pray before or while you drive. As if that drunk driver wouldn't have hit you if only you had recited the Lord's Prayer at the stoplight.

So keep your eyes open for people who are DWP: Driving While Pious. They're even more dangerous than cell phone drivers; at least people who drive while on their cell phones are talking to somebody real, not having an imaginary conversation with a man in the sky who they think is magically protecting them.

Ole

AP News: Spanish matador back in the ring

Bullfighting. There are many who would call it a beautiful sport. But I fail to see the beauty or sportsmanship in leading an innocent creature into a stadium, taunting it for a while with a red bedsheet, and then heartlessly stabbing the poor thing.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm usually quite tolerant of other cultures' views and customs. But bullfighting is obviously and patently cruel. Why have a 'sport' that involves slaying an animal? Why not kick a fucking ball around?

I reserve no sympathy whatever for anyone who dies while participating in this barbaric and primitive bloodsport. It's only fair that the bull pay you the same courtesy that you would give it. I only wish it happened that way more often.

Tear Down This Myth

Imagine that I have a bowl of fruit on my kitchen table. I walk into the kitchen and proclaim, "Bowl of fruit - I command you to rot!". Lo and behold, a week later the fruit is brown and rotten. Clearly, my strongly worded imperative resulted in the fruit's decomposition.

Sound specious? Try this one. Twenty years ago today, Ronald Reagan gave a speech in Berlin in which he exhorted Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall". A couple years later, the Berlin Wall indeed came down. Therefore, Reagan's uncompromising rhetoric and hard-line policies caused the fall of the Berlin Wall and led to our ultimate victory in the Cold War.

These two stories are textbook examples of the logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc - 'after this, therefore because of this'. Such a fallacy asserts that because A occured before B, A must have caused B. This is a fallacy because the simple fact that A happened before B is not sufficient evidence to conclude that A actually caused B. Many other factors could have been at work.

In the story of the fruit bowl, my command had nothing to do with the organic processes that would lead to the fruit's decomposition. And the case of Reagan's speech is similar: although he was in the right place at the right time to make it look like his leadership hastened the end of the Cold War, his efforts had little to do with the developments that would lead to the opening of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR.

The popular argument for Reagan’s cold-war legacy, which is embraced by American conservatives as gospel truth, usually goes like this: Reagan won the Cold War for the USA and the Free World. He defeated the Soviet Union peacefully and brought freedom and democracy to the citizens of the Soviet Bloc. He accomplished all this by drawing a hard anti-communist line in foreign policy, fueling the arms race to exacerbate Soviet economic problems, and making stringent, no-nonsense demands for arms reductions and for freedom for citizens under communist rule. A true hero and visionary, he made the world a safer place.

But in reality, Reagan’s hard-line, anti-communist policies didn’t accomplish all that much; in fact, they may have even prolonged the Cold War. For the entire first term of Reagan’s presidency, despite the staunch ideological stances of Reagan and Thatcher, no progress whatsoever was made in ‘winning’ the Cold War for the West. There were no talks or agreements between the superpowers, and Reagan’s harebrained SDI program (Star Wars), intended to scare the Soviets into overspending on the arms race, did not have the desired effect (the only significant changes in the Soviet military budget during the 80s were reductions). In addition, Reagan’s penchant for flexing nuclear muscles alienated the USSR, and once again made our sudden extinction as a species a distinct possibility (and it didn’t help that Reagan’s Soviet counterparts were equally wizened, cantankerous and obstinate).

In 1985, however, things took a turn for the better – not because of Reagan, but because of Mikhail Sergeyevic Gorbachev. Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union and, on his initiative, the leaders of both countries met for the first time since before Reagan came to office. At the summit meetings, Gorbachev advocated arms reduction, an unheard-of step in the Cold War peace process. Gorbachev was the first Soviet leader since Krushchev to realize that the arms race had been harming the Soviet economy, and he sought peace with the West in the interest of mutual survival and progress. Progressive change was not limited to foreign policy; behind the Iron Curtain, Gorbachev strengthened civil liberties (such as freedom of speech), and allowed the Eastern Bloc more leeway in self-governance. These developments, intended to strengthen the USSR, ironically ended up destroying it, but it would be wrong to attribute such effects to Reagan.

So if you want to award credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall, blame glasnost and perestroika. Blame Soviet bureaucratic incompetance. Blame a long-standing popular yearning east of the Iron Curtain for the freedoms enjoyed by the Western world. Blame the Soviet imbroglio in Afghanistan. Blame Mikhail Gorbachev. But don't give the credit to Ronald Reagan. Actor that he was, he just happened to be on stage at the right time to steal the limelight.

A friend I made at the Bronx Zoo

Those eyes are so strikingly human. I wonder if he was thinking about how my eyes were so strikingly apelike.

CPR

You know what the motto of the New York Police Department is? It's written on all of their cop cars: "CPR: Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect." Three words that mean exactly the same thing. I mean, could one really be respectful without being courteous? Could one be professional without being respectful?

You can tell that they thought of the catchy abbreviation before they came up with the words themselves. Here's a better version of CPR: Control Police Redundancy!

Olympic Politics

During tonight's Democratic primary debate on CNN, the candidates were asked what they would do to stop the Darfur genocide. Bill Richardson was the first to answer, saying that among other things, he would threaten to boycott the 2008 Olympics in China, because the Chinese acquire much of their oil from Sudan. To threaten to boycott the Olympics, he argues, would send China a message to stop funding genocide.

The US has made the mistake of an Olympic boycott before. When Jimmy Carter had the US sit out the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, he not only cheated our own athletes, but he undermined the very meaning of the Olympic Games themselves.

The Olympics were first held in Greece in 776 BC, and they continued almost without interruption for the next millennium. In an age when warfare among city-states was the rule rather than the exception, the Olympic Games provided a rare break in the bloodshed: a time when Greeks put down the spear and the shield, picked up the javelin and the discus, and came together - not to fight, but to compete.

The Olympics were thus about putting aside political and geographical differences. And that is the spirit of the modern games as well - and in more than just theory. For instance, the US participated in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, when Germany was under Nazi control. What would have happened if FDR had decided to have America sit out? Jesse Owens never would have been able to embarrass the Nazis by proving that for all their talk about being the master race, they certainly weren't the masters of the footrace.

And one must consider the athletes themselves. These people dedicate their lives to a sport, in order that every four years they have a shot at personal glory, national recognition, and international victory. It is unfair to deny them their dreams, and to render their daily efforts moot, in the name of a squabble about international trade.

And what better way to stick it to a country than to enter the games and beat them on their own turf? Look at not only Jesse Owens, but at the famous 1980 Winter Olympics hockey finals, when the USA beat the USSR in a surprise upset. That victory was huge. What further victories could we have won if Carter had let us trounce the Russkies in the summer games as well? Gold medals speak louder than boycotts.

Sitting out the games was a bad idea in 1980, and it remains a bad idea. Bill Richardson has visited the Darfur region; he should have less petty and more efficacious proposals for a solution.

Blind

"Haven't you noticed that all opinions without knowledge are ugly? The best of them are blind. Or does one who has a true opinion without knowledge seem any different than a blind man who just happens to be traveling on the right road?"

-Plato, The Republic, Book VI

Right on Redundant

I took this picture in Washington DC this past weekend. "Except authorized vehicles only"? Isn't 'only' implied in the word 'except'? That's bureaucratic redundancy for you!

We Won!

BBC: Mars gets veggie status back

Mars has abandoned plans to use animal products in its chocolate, and has apologised to "upset" vegetarians.

The firm had said it would change the whey used in some of its products from a vegetarian source to one with traces of the animal enzyme, rennet.

Mars said it became "very clear, very quickly" that it had made a mistake.

"There are three million vegetarians in the UK and not only did we disappoint them, but we upset a lot of the consumers," [Mars said].

The Learned Pig applauds Mars's correction of what was indeed a grave mistake. Granted, this change of heart was induced by a threat to profits rather than a moral epiphany, but at least now I won't have to support the veal industry when I buy a Milky Way.

Now, if we can only get Junior Mints to stop including gelatin in their recipe, we'll be all set.

Wall of Separation

Ever wonder where the phrase "a wall of separation between church and state" comes from? It was coined by our nation's third president, who couldn't have made it any more clear that he didn't want religion mixing with politics:

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State."

-Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, 1 January 1802

English

Idaho Legislature Declares English Only Language They Know

BOISE, ID—The Idaho Legislature passed a unanimous resolution Monday declaring English the only language the elected assembly knows how to speak, write, or understand.

"We're putting into law a general feeling that everyone here has had for years: English is the only language we know, and English is the only language we want to know," Lt. Gov. James E. Risch said during a press conference outside the State Capitol building. "It's a good language, serves us well in matters of communication, and we can't think of any good reason to go around knowing some other language that we have no use for."

The legislature is expected to pass a separate resolution later this week officially declaring out-of-towners "suspicious."

He should have prayed for lower cholesterol

Today we celebrate the passing of a man whose life was a blight on the moral and intellectual state of the nation. The Reverend Jerry Falwell is dead. For the past several decades, his puritanical morality, stunted intellect, and expansive waistline have made him the shining model of right wing evangelism. Who can forget his incisive commentaries on American immorality, like the time he told us all who was really to blame for 9/11:

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say: "You helped this happen."

Brilliant. Falwell's other accomplishments included starting the Moral Majority, an organization that opposed the rights of anyone who was not a wealthy, white, straight, male Christian, and founding Liberty 'University', a place for especially backward Christians to insulate their ignorance from the kind of rational examination that is so pervasive in most other institutions of higher learning.

Goodbye, you obese Jesus-loving freak. You will be missed, but not by me.

Milk Chocolate, Creamy Nougat, and Bovine Stomach Acid

Damn it. I used to love eating Snickers, Milky Way, and Twix. But now, if I want to eat any of those, I also have to eat the stomach of a tortured calf.

BBC: Mars starts using animal products

Masterfoods [owner of Mars chocolate] said it had started to use animal product rennet to make its chocolate products.

"If the customer is an extremely strict vegetarian, then we are sorry the products are no longer suitable, but a less strict vegetarian should enjoy our chocolate," said Paul Goalby, corporate affairs manager for Masterfoods.

A 'less strict vegetarian' should still be able to enjoy their chocolate, eh? Well, let's see what exactly this rennet stuff is:

Natural rennet is produced in the inner mucosa of the fourth stomach of young ruminants. These stomachs are a by-product of veal production.
Deep-frozen stomachs are milled and put into an extracting solution – in this solution the enzymes are extracted. The crude rennet extract is then activated by adding acid...

So rennet is extracted from the stomach of a veal calf - an animal that lived out its short, miserable existence in a narrow box, so that its soft, atrophied flesh could appeal to the palate of sophisticated diners.

I fail to see how anyone who considers him/herself to be a vegetarian - or even anyone who harbors an ounce of real compassion - could 'enjoy' a product made with such barbarous and vile methods.

Looks like I'll be a strict Hershey man from now on. No animals need to die in order for them to make their chocolate.

Two H, One O, No Matter What You Pay For It

What's in a name? That which we call Dasani
By any other name would taste as refreshing....

Truly the biggest triumph of coporate marketing in the past 10-15 years has been the rise of the bottled water industry. Every day, millions of suckers buy water for a cost that is several thousand times its actual value, just because it comes in a plastic container and has some artist's depiction of a mountain spring on the label.

Guess what? The water that comes out of my tap is H-O-H, just like the water they're buying. It has the same nonexistant taste, the same chemical composition, and the same thirst-quenching properties. Except I get it for free.

We don't live in Russia, people. The water is safe. Buy a Brita filter, fill it up a few times a week, and stop shelling out piles of cash for the cheapest and most abundant liquid on Earth.

Today's Most Popular Beatdowns

Notice how the four "most popular" videos on CNN today all have to do with beatings.

Ah, the 24-hour news networks. If they're good for anything, it's perpetually sating our society's thirst for violence.

Highway to Hell

Religious Bondage

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."

-James Madison, in a letter to William Bradford, 1 April 1774

Thou Shalt Not... Pluck?

Know this, ye faithful: hair gel is hateful unto the Lord.

CNN: Iran bans Western haircuts, eyebrow plucking for men

I understand that hard-line Muslims want to discourage vanity. I think that's it's idiotic to heap moral condemnation upon metrosexual hairstyles, but I understand that the negative perception of vanity is the religious context from which this puritanical nonsense emanates. But where does one draw the line? Are brushing teeth or taking baths next on the list? Does wearing deoderant make me sinful in the eyes of the Lord? Will owning a mirror in my house condemn me to eternal damnation in the afterlife?

Solely Because of Their Race

The Civil Rights movement may have taken place four decades ago, but apparently some of us still have catching up to do.

CNN: Students Attend First Integrated Prom

Yes, you read that correctly. The students of Ashburn, Georgia were still holding segregated proms right up through 2006.

But don't worry, it's not as bad as it sounds! Mindy Bryan, a student who attended a segregated prom back in 2001, had this to say:

"There was not anybody that I can remember that was black," she said. "The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs. It's nothing racial at all."

Nothing racial at all. Yes. The segregation of black people from white people was nothing racial at all. That's the dumbest goddamned thing I've ever heard in my life.

Apparently, though, Mindy isn't the only Rhodes Scholar in the bunch. Nichole Royal, who attended a white prom and commented that black students could have attended too but didn't, said: "I guess they feel like they're not welcome."

Now there's a startling sociological inference: black people might not feel welcome attending a prom for white people!

I think it's appropriate to end this heated post with a dispassionate analysis from Earl Warren's opinion in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Note that this was written 53 years ago. We should be past this.

To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.