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Monday 28 February 05


THE SWITZERLAND OF THE EAST...


Headspace-On my stereo: Swiss Movement by Les McCAnn & Eddie Harris; In my backpack: The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On my nightstand: The Broker by John Grisham; On my computer: Riveted by Robyn Sarah; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

For right now I'm just going to bask in the news from Beirut. As is the case in all Middle East politics, there are way too many factors to discuss on a blog as to why what is happening is happening. I don't care about why right now. An occupied people are demanding their occupiers get the ^%$# out and the puppet government of that occupier has resigned. That is all a very good thing. For the views of someone who knows a lot more about the Middle East than I do, take a look at Perhaps Victory In Martyr's Square.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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WANTED: HACKER FOR FREEDOM...


From Dan Gillmor at Grassroots Journalism comes this post concerning a job opportunity for a hacker with a social conscious. The idea is wonderfully perverse and subversive; go for it. Bush will hate this.

A group that wants to assist free speech in authoritarian nations is looking for a technically savvy person—a CTO or lead engineer type—who can do a short term study, possibly leading to a longer-term job. This is a paying gig for the right person. The project is intended, in its initial form, to make possible blogging that is impossible (or at least extremely difficult) to trace. One of the people involved calls it an "anonymous, anti-tyranny blogging service." If you're interested, please send e-mail to Jim Hake.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Sunday 27 February 05


A CENTURY OF GENOCIDE...


Headspace-On my stereo: Saint Dominic's Preview by Van Morrison; In my backpack: The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror And The Future Of Reason by Sam Harris; On my nightstand: The Broker by John Grisham; On my computer: The Marsh in Winter by Timothy Walsh; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

This was a weekend for watching amazing students. It began on Friday with Seven Little Words (25 February) and concluded today with a three-hour bus trip to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, outside of Detroit. We had 33 7th-, 8th- and 9th-grade students and parents on the trip along with myself and our congregational rabbi.

I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the center. I took part in a similar trip a few years ago when I chaperoned a smaller group from another synagogue to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. That trip was overwhelming. It was hard to imagine any lesser memorial coming close. The group of people who came together to conceive and implement the center have exceeded my paltry imagination.

The center is laid out as a journey that begins in the shtetls of Eastern Europe. From that well-lighted exhibit visitors descend down a series of ramps to the darkness that is the Third Reich and the Shoah. In a moment reminiscent of the National Museum walk through a cattle car used to transport Jews to the camps, this center directs visitors to walk under a reconstruction of infamous wrought iron Arbeit macht frei arch at the entrance to Auschwitz.

The national museum offers a walk-around for those who cannot bear the idea of stepping through the cattle car. Visitors to the Holocaust Memorial Center can step to the left and view the Auschwitz exhibit through a conventional entrance.

From the depths of the Shoah, visitors ascend ramps that take them past the memorial wall to those who risked their lives to oppose the Nazis and protect Jews. The tour is completed with a multimedia presentation that emphasizes communication, independence and interdependence as a way to fight prejudice and genocide. Our students had the additional opportunity to speak with a French survivor of the Shoah.

It was during the rabbi's debriefing with the students, however, that I was the most impressed because they finally got to speak. They talked about their reactions and their personal experiences with anti-semitism.

One boy told how in first grade he was always picked last for kickball team. "I always thought it was because I was so small," he said. But then he asked and got the answer he did not expect. "They told me that I got picked last because they didn't like Jews." Other students told similar tales.

Then the rabbi started talking about Rwanda and Darfur. Many of the students had heard of the movie Hotel Rwanda, but when the rabbi started talking about Sudan and Darfur there was a look of confusion of the students' faces. A young woman, one of my students, raised her hand and asked a question about Darfur:

When did this happen?

And in a teaching moment that I know I will remember forever the rabbi replied:

It... is... happening... right... NOW!

If nothing else had happened today, this moment would have made the entire trip worth any price.

We had too little time there. I think the students would have benefited from one or two hours longer so that they could have wandered the exhibits at their own pace.

Dayenu.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Saturday 26 February 05


WHY DO WE GO TO COLLEGE...?


Headspace-On my stereo: Heartattack And Vine by Tom Waits; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Broker by John Grisham; On my computer: Beauty or Flight by Denver Butson; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

My dad suggested that I take a look at Ohio Senate Bill 24, the self-proclaimed: Academic Bill Of Rights For Higher Education. I'd heard about the Bill but hadn't taken the time to actually read it closely. I did so this morning and found much wanting in the 92 lines of bill's text. My major objection is that the Bill's aims are the opposite of what it pretends to say they are. Here's what I mean.

This Bill, the heart of which was crafted by neo-conservative pundit David Horowitz, is not unique to Ohio. The same legislation has been introduced in California, Indiana, New York, Rhode Island and Tennessee. An article on Horowitz's Frontpagemag indicates that its influence also extends to Colorado and Georgia.

Horowitz fears university programs that, he says:

...teach students to identify with America’s terrorist enemies and to identify America as a Great Satan oppressing the world’s poor and causing them to go hungry. The question is: how long can a nation at war with ruthless enemies like bin Laden and Zarqawi survive if its educational institutions continue to be suborned in this way?

What Horowitz, and his supporters, really fear, is dissent. It seems to me that what this legislative hijacking seeks to create is a higher-educational equivalent of the Bush Administration's Free Speech Zone, where students and faculty will be allowed to speak their minds, as long as they do so in the fenced area on the other side of town, down near the rail yard and between the water treatment plant and the solid-waste transfer station.

Horowitz makes it clear that regardless of the density of the language in the Bill, the document's, and his, purpose is to counter a perceived liberal bias in public and private university courses.

Lines 17-22 of the Bill read:

In the humanities, the social sciences, and the arts, the fostering of a plurality of serious scholarly methodologies and perspectives shall be a significant institutional purpose. In addition, curricula and reading lists in the humanities and social studies shall respect all human knowledge in these areas and provide students with dissenting sources and viewpoints.

I wonder what constitutes serious scholarly methodologies. Will each university, or perhaps the legislature, gather a board to make that determination? And can you imagine the checklist a professor would have to maintain to ensure that a reading list respects all human knowlege in these areas and provides students with dissenting sources and view points? How many dissenting sources and view points would be adequate?

A few lines further down the Bill assets in lines 27-29:

Faculty and instructors shall not use their courses or their positions for the purpose of political, ideological, religious, or antireligious indoctrination.

Now there's a loaded word: indoctrination. Indoctrinate: to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments; to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle. One of the things I learned in college was how to develop a point of view. And I learned it by listening to other's points of views and engaging in debate with them.

In the sciences—Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc.—opinions don't count, only those theories and laws that have withstood the scrutiny of the scientific method have any place in the a classroom. In the non-sciences—Economics, History, Political Science (a misnomer and holdover from the Sputnik era), Psychology, Sociology, etc.—however, facts are difficult to come by.

For instance, take the fact that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. Well, not really, he never actually landed on either the North or South American continents and he was preceded by a large number of explorers from both Europe and Asia. Or how about the fact that children from homes with single parents do not do well in school. I can get two Sociologists in a room and get three differing opinions on the importance of stable, two-parent households.

In grade school and junior high students are mostly treated as empty vessels into which we shovel data that we expect them to process and assimilate. In high school and college however, we begin to expect them to think: to take positions. And I think they learn best—I know I did—when they have plenty of models of thinking people to learn from.

But what about professors that give students bad grades for ideas they don't agree with? Lines 21-26 of the Bill read:

Students shall be graded solely on the basis of their reasoned answers and appropriate knowledge of the subjects and disciplines they study and shall not be discriminated against on the basis of their political, ideological, or religious beliefs.

There's another loaded word: reasoned. In the absence of examples of actual papers or tests on which bad grades were given I must speculate. I accept that such an instance might occur, but I think it more likely that a student, believing passionately in their position, may fail to present a researched and reasoned support for that position and gets a bad grade for sloppy work. Must any grade below an A be submitted to an academic review board to check on the reasonableness of the students argument?

There is plenty more in the Bill that I find fuzzy. I would hope that others will read it closely and feel free to challenge me on any point it contains.

After all, that's what a free healthy exchange of idea is all about.

Thanks for the idea, dad. I love you.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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TIME TO SHOVEL THE BLOGPILE...


Headspace-On my stereo: Jazz After Hours on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Broker by John Grisham; On my computer: Beauty or Flight by Denver Butson; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

The blogpile has started to overflow again so, without comment, here are 26 (in no particular order) items that I've come across in the past three weeks that I thought I would enjoy blogging about but just got too buried to deal with. One of the things I've noticed about the blogpile is that it closely mirrors my internal thought processes. My friends know not to ask what I'm thinking about because they're likely to hear something totally divorced from any conversation or event in the past hour; or so they think.

Teri Schivao... Matt Cooper... Murder in the family... Unequal protection...; Clark Howard... Matrix pong... Feministe... Feministing... Jerry Brown... Amazon's vanity press...; Artist Review Today... Life hacker... Marietta watch... MIT OpenCourseWare... Oh My News... Got time...? Orthodox Jews in fiction... Responses to Ayelet Waldman... Costco... Souce Watch nee Disinfopedia... Battle For America... Daou Report... The Moderate Republican... iPodpeople... Your Daily Art... Thomas Merton...

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Friday 25 February 05


SEVEN LITTLE WORDS...


Headspace-On my stereo: Pontiac by Lyle Lovett; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Broker by John Grisham; On my computer: Snowbanks North of the House by Robert Bly; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

At the invitation of one of the students I tutor, I went to see Those Seven Little Words (I love you, so you're probably gay) at Ballard Brady Middle School this evening. The show benefited Orange High School's Gay Straight Alliance. The show was fun in a cabaret kind of way and the audience was enthusiastic in its response to the music and the dialogue. About 100 people attended.

But that wasn't what impressed me; it was the students. That they are learning in an environment where they can belong to the GSA is a wonderful thing. Being a teenager is tough. I can only imagine how tough it must be to be gay as well. I went to a high school where wearing anything green on Thursdays meant you were queer; gay came later. (I Googled the custom and found lots of references, but came up blank for an origin. Anybody have a clue?)

The only experience I had in high school that was even remotely homosexual was a guy paying me a compliment in the locker room. That he might have been making a pass didn't occur to me until many years later. At the time I just said thanks and finished getting dressed.

Fast forward 30 mumble years and I was seeing a very different high school crowd where some 30 students (two of whom I know) could wear GSA t-shirts with It's about equality! printed on the back. Someone with gaydar would probably be able to point out who in the group was gay and who was straight but that wasn't important. The students were having a great time and publicly showing their support for each other. In a world where homophobia is resurgent that is important.

When I see things like this it gives me hope that we're not backsliding as badly as I sometimes fear we are.

The show's star, Greta Rothman talked a bit about how she came to do the show as a benefit for GSA. She works at the Western Reserve Academy in Hudson and after performing the show on a small club stage at Playhouse Square for two months (her brother, Andrew commented that the stage at Ballard was larger than the whole club) agreed to present the show at Western Reserve. Says Rothman:

Perhaps the most beautiful thing of all is that when I performed the show at Western Reserve Academy it triggered dialogue about a subject that people there had been afraid to address.

The positive response from students and administration there, she said, moved her. So much so, that she has embarked on what she calls the Cafeteria Tour.

There's no mention on the website of where the show may appear next. Watch for it. Go see it. And pay as much attention to the audience as you do to the show.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Sic'm...!


Maureen Dowd weighs in: Once again, just as W. runs into political trouble, he floats above the fray while the help takes out his opponents. ...Swift Boat assassins can rid the president of any meddlesome adversaries now.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Thursday 24 February 05


WHY BOTHER...?

Headspace-On my stereo: Jazz After Hours on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Broker by John Grisham; On my computer: In the Apartments of the Divorced Men by Sue Ellen Thompson; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

Last week at the Cleveland Bloggers' MeetUp (Dinner Conversations..., Thursday 17 February) one of the topics that arose was that of bloggers posting to cleveland.com, the website maintained by our sole daily newspaper: The Plain Dealer. Our immediate response was how much are you going to pay us? The rational was that we all were very cheaply and conveniently publishing our own blogs, so why should we provide free content to a for-profit publication? The conclusion was, we shouldn't.

I raise this because this morning I read Steve Outing's In Defense of Citizen Journalism at Editor & Publisher. (I found the story via Dan Gilmor' Defending Citizen Journalism. Outing discusses issues raised by 16 editors and news directors concerning blogs in Julie Moos' News Leaders Debate: Building Audience With Blogs.

The point that caught my eye in Outing's piece was No. 6:

"In our newsroom, we try not to say no, rather we say 'how'. ... So, how can we add these very important voices while maintaining our journalistic oversight? One way might be to identify community members who uphold our ethical and journalistic beliefs and invite them to send in opinion and commentary. It would take some time to identify them, but it would be worth it to have intelligent people adding new perspectives to the community conversation."

The problem with this news director's statement is obvious: He's stuck in the old mindset of "only we know what's best." His idea of opening up to the community is hand-picking those whose voices will be heard on his site. Sorry, but in an age when technology has made it possible for any and everyone to inexpensively share their thoughts, wisdom, and nonsense [Emphasis mine.] with the rest of the world, this old-style gatekeeping increasingly is out of step. Newsrooms that ascribe to this philosophy will find their influence waning as competitors truly open up to their communities—gaining loyalty in the process.

There's nothing wrong with seeking out the best voices and giving them a home on a news site; that's laudable. But if that's all you're doing, that's exclusionary in a time when technology makes exclusion undesirable.

There will be some bloggers, of course, who will think that being hosted on the local newspaper's website is prestigious, but I think that number is small and shrinking. There is the argument that a newspaper (or other local media outlet) can offer greater exposure to a blog, but I think that reasoning falls flat if a reader has to wade through dozens, or hundreds, of blogs.

If the media outlet is acting as gatekeeper it defeats the purpose of publishing blogs. If it doesn't act as gatekeeper, it's no better than any other hosting service.

I think old-style media outlets will spin their wheels for a few years trying to figure out how to make a buck (and that is truly the only thing they are driven by and that is not a bad thing) off of this blog thing while bloggers, and whatever communication technologies follow, continue to leave them farther and farther behind.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Wednesday 23 February 05


A FOLKSTORY FROM CHINA...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Broker by John Grisham; On my computer: Job by William Baer; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

Yesterday while tutoring a sixth grader we read a story about Logic. The gist of the story was that an old man asked a young boy, "Which is closer, the Sun or Ch'ang An?" [An ancient capital of China.] The boy replied, "The Sun, of course, I can see the Sun but I can't see Ch'ang An." The next day the old man took the boy to the marketplace along a main road where they watched many people dressed in exotic clothing walking by.

The boy watched in wonder at all the strange sights. Again the old man asked the young boy, "Which is closer, the Sun or Ch'ang An? This time the boy answered, "Ch'ang An, of course."

When the old man asked why the young boy had changed his answer, the young boy replied: "Today I've seen many people from Ch'ang An, but not one person from the Sun."

What made me think of this story is a posting by PZ Meyers concerning James Lileks' article Can Intelligent Design Be A Compliment To Evolution? In James Lileks on Intelligent Design creationism and evolution, Meyers does his usual focused dissection of the fuzzy logic that those driven my superstition and ignorance cling to to keep their fantasies alive.

Right from the beginning of his argument, Lileks flounders when he says: To the proponents of intelligent design, the facts suggest the hand of the Big Guy. Meyers jumps right in and correctly says that there are, in fact, no facts that suggest the hand of the Big Guy. (I have to wonder if Lileks thinks he's showing that he's not some Bible-thumping troglodyte by referring to God in such an impersonal way.)

Lileks' argument seems to me quite like that of the young Chinese boy. In both cases the young boy makes logical assumptions based on erroneous data. In the first case he believes that which he can see must be closer than that which he cannot see; and in the second case he believes that a place from which a person visits his village must be closer than a place from which no person visits.

In the same way, Lileks, and his ilk, make bad assumptions—there must be a god—based on incomplete data—they don't understand the mechanisms of biology and the mathematics of probability.

By pretending to be reasonable, Lileks seeks to dumb down the science education of our youth. In a global economy where our competitors are not wasting precious educational time on this nonsense, it is a dumbing down that we can ill afford.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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THEY HAVE NO SHAME...II


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Jazz After Hours on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Broker by John Grisham; On my computer: Job by William Baer; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

I was way too young to have ever been called before the House Unamerican Affairs Committee, but it's starting to look that I may get a chance this fall when I turn 50 and become eligible for membership in the AARP. I can hear the question now: "Mr. Hess, are you now or have you ever been a member of the American Association for Retired People?"

The first ad from USA Next has come down on the American Spectator page. Instead, you'll find this one (aptly named usareplacement.gif):

Newsday compares the team putting together this piece of slimy work to the crew from Quentin Tarantino's 1992 masterpiece Reservoir Dogs. Ellis Henican writes in Bash-The-AARP Effort Off To A Smarmy Start:

Finally rested up from their cynical assault last year on John Kerry's patriotism, the most ruthless smear squad in American politics is back together again.

And they're revving up for another nasty job.

Their latest ugly enterprise? Sliming the AARP, which had the nerve to come out against President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security.

This is the same gang of rhetorical hatchet men behind the deceptively named Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. During last year's presidential campaign, they were telling vicious lies about Kerry's combat record in Vietnam. Now, they're turning their trash talk on the nation's largest and most effective senior citizens lobbying group, which they'll try to tar as an extreme left-wing cabal.

Any reason not to name names?

Ex-Marine Chris LaCivita, who wrote the incendiary Swift Boat commercials ripping Kerry's war record, is coordinating the anti-AARP media campaign.

Rick Reed, whose Virginia-based ad agency Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm handled production on the Swifties' print and broadcast ads, will be standing over the editing console again.

Creative Response Concepts of Arlington, Va., the Swifties' public relations firm, is handling PR this time, too.

And lurking in the shadows nearby, ready to rush out any late-breaking anti-AARP books, is the hard-right print shop known as Regnery Publishing. These are the ruthless knife-twisters who published the hateful anti-Kerry screed, "Unfit for Command."

I think that I'd much rather hang out with Mr. White and his spectrumed buddies than the crew from USA Next.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Tuesday 22 February 05


THEY HAVE NO SHAME...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Fresh Air on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Broker by John Grisham; On my computer: To Capitalize Ungodly by Matt Cook; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

[Update II, 23 February] I inadvertently overwrote this file this morning (this is what I get for waking up so early) and have had to recreate it from memory. For those of you who might have read the original, I apologize for the stumble.

[Update I, 23 February] The American Spectator has pulled down the original ad below and posted the aptly named usareplacement.gif. I have to wonder if they see the irony in that name. I doubt it.

Just when I am beginning to think that there might be reasons to believe that the Bush administration is not as bad as its opponents say it is, the people at the top pull this kind of shit. (You say the White House doesn't control these people? If you think there's anyone who sneezes without Karl Rove getting a request in triplicate, I've got great options on river-front property in Baghdad.) The internet ad above appeared on the website for the American Spectator and linked to the website for USA Next.

Glen Justice said in his New York Times article A New Target For Advisors To Swift Vets:

Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.

In the story Justice names names:

To help set USA Next's strategy, the group has hired Chris LaCivita, an enthusiastic former marine who advised Swift Vets and P.O.W.'s for Truth, formerly known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, on its media campaign and helped write its potent commercials. He earned more than $30,000 for his work, campaign finance filings show.

Officials said the group is also seeking to hire Rick Reed, a partner at Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, a firm that was hired by Swift Vets and was paid more than $276,000 to do media production, records show.

For public relations, USA Next has turned to Creative Response Concepts, a Virginia firm that represented both Swift Vets - the company was paid more than $165,000 - and Regnery Publishing, the publisher of "Unfit for Command," a book about Senator John Kerry's military service whose co-author was John E. O'Neill, one of the primary leaders of Swift Vets.

[snip]

Formerly known as the United Seniors Association, USA Next was founded in 1991 by Richard Viguerie, a Republican pioneer and mastermind of direct mailings, who raised millions of dollars from older Americans using solicitations that sent alarming messages about Social Security. In 1992, there were allegations that the group was used as a device to enrich other companies owned by Mr. Viguerie, drawing criticism from watchdog groups and Democratic lawmakers.

One name in Justice's story set me back in my chair: Art Linkletter.

USA Next has been portraying AARP as a liberal organization out of step with Republican values, and is now trying to discredit its stance on Social Security. USA Next's campaign has involved appearances by its leaders, including Art Linkletter, its national chairman [Emphasis added.], on Fox News and various television programs. Its commercials are to be broadcast around the country in coming weeks.

I fondly remember Linkletter for his weekday afternoon show and the Kid's Say The Darndest Things segment. One of the things Linkletter would do was go out into the audience and ask women if he could look in their purses. He once got caught flatfooted when a woman pulled out a breast pump and Linkletter couldn't figure out how to disengage gracefully.

A Google turned up the website for Sterling International which represents Linkletter. His position as national chairman for USA Next is not mentioned in his bio. I emailed Sterling using its speaker request form and asked if Linkletter really believed that the AARP was against our troops and for homosexual marriages.

Any one want to give me odds on my chances of getting a reply?

I didn't think so.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Monday 21 February 05


THE PLACE OF DEFINITIONS...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Rule Of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason; On my computer: Song by W.H. Auden; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

Hunter S. Thompson is dead at age 67. For whatever reason, Thompson chose to turn a gun against himself and end his life. Thompson, more than any other person, is responsible for my decision to become a writer. I remember the moment clearly. It was nine o'clock on a fine summer morning in 1969, a month before I would enter high school and I was a nearly fourteen-year-old, clueless, skinny red-haired kid with glasses and freckles living in the countryside near Marietta, Ohio.

On the ground next to me was a stack of books, about as many as I could carry the hundred yards or so from my house to the barbershop parking lot where the Washington County Library bookmobile would pull up and I could exchange one stack for another. My reading was chaotic. I never knew what I might like. Because the driver had to get to the next stop on time I just pulled volumes from the shelves and added them to the stack I scooted along the linoleum floor. On that morning I spotted the title "Hell's Angels." I grabbed it.

Then my favorite reading place was in the grass beneath a weary weeping willow on the bank of our small pond. I propped the stack against the trunk and opened Thompson's masterpiece and didn't look up until I hit the last page. Never in my short and vapid life had I felt the buzz his words gave me.

I had read about Magic. There, in the hot, green shadows, I felt it. I knew two things that morning. First, that I had to get out of Marietta as quickly as possible. Second, that my grail would be to someday write something that could make another human know how I felt when I read the ending of Thompson's book.

So, it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking to run a few long curves to clear my head… but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming upon the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz… not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the away is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach.

There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

Then into first gear, forgetting the ears and letting the beast wind out… thirty-five, forty-five… then into second and wailing through the night at Lincoln Way, not worried about green or red signals, but only some other werewolf loony who might be pulling out, too slowly, to start his own run. Not many of these… and with three lanes on a wide curve, a bike coming hard has plenty of room to get around almost anything… then into third, the boomer gear, pushing seventy-five and the beginning of a windscream in the ears, a pressure on the eyeballs like diving into water from a high board.

Bent forward, far back on the seat, and a rigid grip on the handlebars as the bike starts jumping and wavering in the wind. Taillights far up ahead coming closer, faster, and suddenly—zzaapppp—going past and leaning down for a curve near the zoo, where the road swings out to sea.

The dunes are flatter here, and on windy days sand blows across the highway, piling up thick drifts as deadly as any oil slick… instant loss of control, a crashing, cartwheeling slide and maybe one of those two-inch notices in the paper the next day: "An unidentified motorcyclist was killed last night when he failed to negotiate a turn on Highway I."

Indeed… but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the head-light beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-burning eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes.

But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right… and that's where the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and the vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it… howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica… letting off now, watching for cops, but only for the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge… The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others—the living—are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now or Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both means to an end, to the place of definitions.

Res Ipsa Loquitur...

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Sunday 20 February 05


WAITING TO EXHALE...


From Susie Bright in an interview for The Boston Phoenix: For me, reading’s like the inhale and writing’s like the exhale. Which part of the oxygen process do you want to cut off? Thanks to John Ettorre at Working With Words.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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I'VE GOT A SECRET...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Rule Of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason; On my computer: Written for a Personal Epitaph by Dylan Thomas; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

Could you bear to tell the world that "This finger has killed;" that you "enjoy funerals;" that you "liked yourself better as a boy" or that you "talked someone into suicide?" These and many more confessions are on Postsecret, turned loose in my world by Virtual Lori. I cannot help but contemplate what I might put on such a postcard. How about you?

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PEOPLE ARE STARING...


But I don't care. This bit of silliness comes courtesy of Colette. Without a doubt the one that turned heads here at the Arabica on Lee was Pants Error: Do These Pants Make My Ass Look Fat? Yes, No, Ignore.

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ANOTHER RIF FROM RIFKIN...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Rule Of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason; On my computer: Written for a Personal Epitaph by Dylan Thomas; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

In every generation there are prophets. In ancient, and not so ancient, times prophecy was attributed to contact with the metaphysical, i.e. superstition and fraud. But there are genuine prophets; visionaries able to see a future with uncanny accuracy though anthropological, sociological and tecnoligical understanding. Jeremy Rifkin is one such prophet.

I first discovered Rifkin in the late '80s when I read his Time Wars. I was fortunate enough to meet and interview him in the mid '90s after he published The End of Work. Both books are excellent and that is the reason I'm looking forward to reading The European Dream.

Jill Owens a reviewer for Powell's writes:

Rifkin's thesis is that the goals of human rights and the flexibility afforded a post-modern, network- and community-based system of government found in the EU experiment is the better contender for success and progress in the global world order—a compelling, if not revolutionary, idea. But his major achievement in The European Dream is to draw together and cohere the complex historical, philosophical, and theological forces that have created such very different worldviews for shaping the future for us and our neighbors across the pond. Rifkin's enormous scope and clarity of vision is fascinating exploration of all sides of the equation, and his engaging and intelligent prose is a welcome vehicle for these ideas.

At a time when a large segment of the United States is quick to condemn anything European, Rifkin is sure to get a lot of flack for even suggesting that they're on the right path and we're not. I'll withhold final judgment until I've had a chance to read the book, but at a minimum, I expect to have my understanding of the world once again jolted more than just a little.

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LAUGHING... HARD... CAN'T BREATHE...


From Bill Maher on Jeff Gannon, with Leslie Stahl, Sen. Joseph Biden, HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and Robin Williams, who steals the show with the final line: Uptight? Better latent than never. Call now.

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OVERHEARD IN A COFFEE SHOP...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Rule Of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason; On my computer: Written for a Personal Epitaph by Dylan Thomas; On my screen, The Office: Christmas Special (***) directed by Stephen Merchant and written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

Beware of people with laptops in coffee shops. Sitting at Arabica this afternoon I eavesdropped on two old-school Cleveland Heights politicos and heard the phrase New Urbanism come up. (Eavesdropping was actually a skill assignment in journalism school, along with learning to read documents upside down on someone else's desk.) This wasn't a phrase I was familiar with so I Googled it to grasp a better understanding of the conversation. Google came up with 155,000 hits.

The top hit was for NewUrbanism.org which carries the tag line: Giving more people more choices about where and how they want to live. Going deeper into the site I found a section on Smart Growth. This is something my friend David Beach has been talking about at EcoCity Cleveland for more than a dozen years.

Here in Cleveland Heights we're conducting a number of experiments in this New Urbanism. Across the street from the Arabica on Lee, the old Ohio Savings bank building will be torn down to make room for Domain On Lee, a mixed-use development that will have commercial and residential space built on and around a parking garage. The idea, as I understand it is like the Coventry parking garage only with apartments/condos added to the upper floors.

The goal, said one of my eavesdropees when I queried him, is to get people out onto the street. He cited the bad example of how people visiting Playhouse Square seldom have to actually walk along Euclid Avenue to get from their parked cars to the shows. As a result, the downtown experience is isolated. You have sold-out theatres and no one is walking down the sidewalk. The support establishments, such as restaurants and bars, are missed.

It certainly makes a lot more sense than a convention center.

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Saturday 19 February 05


SOMEBODY CALL DAVID KAY...


Says U.S. Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA) at the Conservative Political Action Conference: "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." Can you say loony tunes?

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NERF MISSILES...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: In the Ancient Tradition by David Budbill; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

Because I'm a firm believer in the maxim, Nothing Is Sacred, I offer up a funny line quoted by Pike Speaks concerning the commissioning of the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter, SSN-23. From Conan O'Brien, "This week the U.S. Navy launched a nuclear submarine named after Jimmy Carter. Experts say the sub will be ineffective for four years but tremendously respected once it's retired." And from John's link to Scrappleface:

The U.S. Navy on Saturday will commission its newest nuclear-powered attack submarine, the Jimmy Carter, with many new features, including multiple-warhead Nerf missiles.

President Carter, who brought peace to the middle east, vigorously defended America's right to give away the Panama Canal and, in 1994, convinced North Korea to abandon talking about its nuclear weapons, said he's honored to have his name on "one of the most powerful peacemaking devices on earth."

On a more serious note, the formal commissioning ceremony for the Carter is today. According to a Salon's 3.2B Cater Enters Fleet Today:

The USS Jimmy Carter enters the Navy's fleet as the most heavily armed submarine ever built, and as the last of the Seawolf class of attack subs that the Pentagon ordered during the Cold War's final years.

The $3.2 billion Jimmy Carter will be commissioned Saturday, signaling the end of an era in submarining and more uncertain times for the multibillion-dollar industry.

The 453-foot, 12,000-ton submarine has a 50-torpedo payload and eight torpedo tubes. And, according to intelligence experts, it can tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them.

Sadly, the Carter marks the end of an era in. Just as the demise of the Apollo program saw the end of the greatest rocket ever built—The Saturn V—so too is the Carter the last of a long line of mammoth peace keepers in the Silent Service that have protected the United States for nearly 50 years.

The future of the submarine Navy now lies in smaller, less expensive boats like the Virginia class, SSN-774.

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Friday 18 February 05


SNIIFFING THE TRAIL...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: In the Ancient Tradition by David Budbill; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

In Jimmy Carter Is A Traitor, my friend John Pikes linked earlier this week to a story from Powerline that claims to support that assertion. The last time I checked, being a Traitor is a capital offense. A quick read of the legal language finds that a traitor is one guilty of treason, i.e. "the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance or to kill or personally injure the sovereign or the sovereign's family."

Because I know John to be a reasonable man I followed his link back to Powerline to see just what was being charged. In a 16 February entry, Jimmy Carter Revisited, Powerline writes:

We've been pretty tough on Jimmy Carter, but with hindsight, probably not tough enough. If you search our site for "Jimmy Carter," you'll find all of his disgraceful acts that we've commented upon. His history is a sorry one: he started out as a Midshipman and served honorably in the Navy. But at some point, his leftist politics took hold and he started aligning himself with America's enemies.

I did not do the search on the site, but I did follow the particular link associated with this news story. The link jumps back 16 months to 17 October 2002 and Frontpagemag's Carter, Democrats Asked Soviets To Stop Reagan. Frontpagemag's story is based on a review of the book Reagan's War: The Epic Story of His Forty-Year Struggle and Final Triumph Over Communism by Peter Schweizer. The review of Schwiezer's book is posted on NewsMaxStore, part of the NewsMax group.

Schwiezer, the Frontpagemag story tells us:

...after scouring once-classified KGB, East German Stasi and Soviet Communist Party files, discovered incontrovertible evidence that the Soviets not only played footsie with high-ranking Democrats, they also worked behind the scenes to influence American elections.

Whenever someone used the word "incontrovertible" my lemmings' meter starts ticking. Schwiezer's core charges are that in 1980 and 1984 President Carter attempted to influence the outcome of our presidential elections by enlisting the aid of the Soviet Union.

I haven't read Schwiezer's book so I don't know if he reprints photostatic copies of these documents or not—I doubt it since they would be written in Russian—but didn't we just bring down Dan Rather because of phony documents? (And, at least Rather produced something.)

Given that I had never heard of NewsMax, and in light of the James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon/Talon News debacle, (See Daily Kos for the best total coverage) I thought I should do some cursory surfing to see what had been written about it. Wired News reported back in December 2000 that:

On a shoestring budget compared to other media sites, NewsMax has attracted a loyal audience of a few hundred thousand visitors a month, many of whom swear that it offers the only unbiased news available in the United States.

If its growth trends continue, NewsMax's founder, Christopher Ruddy, says the site will one day become "the CNN of the Internet." That's because, Ruddy said, NewsMax is reporting something that others in the media are skipping: the truth.

To be sure, the truth according to NewsMax is very different from the truth according to, say, The New York Times. On a given day, NewsMax will feature headlines like "Gore's Swan Song: Hail to the Cheat!" and "Democrats Plot Against Bush."

Truth is a very flexible thing when it comes to reporting at NewsMax. When Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) received the German Media Prize for 2004, NewsMax led with:

Senator Hillary Clinton has been awarded the "German Media Prize" of 2004, the organizers said Friday.

The prize is awarded to left-wing political figures.

But, according to Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid, Hillary is not the only New York politician to be honored with this award for left-wing political figures. Surprise, surprise, reports Willis, the 2001 honoree was that left-wing pinko Mayor Rudolph Guliani.

Recently I called Bill Moyers to account for sloppy fact checking and his lazy attribution of a caustic quote to Interior Secretary James Watt in my Monday, 7 February entry: Attribute, Attribute, Take Two....

I voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980. He remains the only president who I've voted for that I continue to believe is a good and honorable man. His public writings and actions continue to support my opinion. If Powerline or NewsMax or Schwiezer have documentary proof that President Carter is a traitor, then they should make those documents public and allow the full scrutiny of politicians, journalists and bloggers to fall upon them.

For the record, I'm not holding my breath.

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Thursday 17 February 05


389 TO 38... &^%$#!


Headspace-On my stereo: Talk Of The Nation on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

Better to trash the 1st Amendment to the Constitution rather than risk being tarred as a lover of smut. That's the message the Ohio delegation—with the exception of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH, 10th)—sent to us yesterday with the passage of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005. I don't listen to Howard Stern, his humor just isn't for me, but I may have to start just to support a dwindling voice for freedom of speech. Says the Center for Creative Voices in Media:

As a result of today’s House vote, the American public will be denied even more opportunities to view quality programming, repeating the tragedy of last Veteran’s Day when broadcasters fearful of an FCC fine abruptly canceled “Saving Private Ryan”—a multiple Oscar-winning tribute to veterans. Today’s House action revokes the public’s right to choose what to watch—and what not to watch—and turns that choice over to Big Brother: the FCC, the Parents Television Council, and the giant media conglomerates who will self-censor programming to avoid these exponentially increased penalties.

I feel a lot more threatened by those who want to return to Father Knows Best than I do by a nanosecond exposure to Janet Jackson's right nipple.

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WHY IT'S SO HARD TO BE A MENSCH...


Cailin pointed me to David Kirkpatrick's For Democrats Rethinking Abortion Runs Risks in the New York Times. You run a huge risk being alive because you're going to end up dead. Deal with it. And learn to live.

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SAY YOU'RE SORRY...


In the March issue of The Progressive, Barbara Ehenreich puts down her two cents worth in God Owes Us An Apology. Superstition and ignorance are still the real enemies of reason and intelligence.

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DINNER CONVERSTIONS...


Headspace-On my stereo: Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

Last night was my second experience with the Cleveland Bloggers Meetup group. It was again a positive experience. The turn out was larger than the first with: Bill Callahan, Callahan's Cleveland Diary; Collette, Dancing on Collette's Grave; Steve Fitzgerald, Lakewood Life; Adam Harvey, Organic Mechanic; Will Kessel, Collison Bend; George Nemeth, Brewed Fresh Daily; John Palmer, Verity Media; Chas Rich, Sardonic Views; and Jerry Ritcey, Red Wheelbarrow in attendance.

George, line with his Blogs Are... post, asked us to talk a bit about why we blog. Because I was next to last to talk I had some time to consider what my answer might be. I'd not really thought about it before and I surprised myself with my response.

I told the other bloggers that Have Coffee Will Write is dinner-time conversation. When I was growing up in rural Southeastern Ohio we had dinner seven days a week. Not the meal, the experience. I sat down every evening with my father, brother, grandmother and grandfather at the dinning table. We ate, of course, but more importantly, we talked. I think that a great deal of how I think was shaped by those conversations.

If it shows up here in my daily musings, that is a good thing.

Pass the potatoes, please.

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CAPTAIN REAGAN, U.S. ARMY AIR FORCE...


Headspace-On my stereo: Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

I like to set the record straight when I can. I've been guilty for many years for holding an erroneous opinion of President Ronald Reagan. Long before I knew him as a politician, I knew him as a Hollywood actor. Like most boys growing up I liked action movies. The genre contains a healthy dose of both westerns and war movies, and Reagan appeared in a quite a few of them. The one I remember most vividly was the 1943 This Is The Army.

During WW II Reagan served in the U.S. Army in the 1st Motion Picture Unit. Here is where I've been wrong. Because of my prejudice against him, I assumed that he got his cushy job through connections. That was not the case.

Reagan enlisted in the reserves as an Army private in 1937 and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the cavalry that same year. Following Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Reagan went on active duty, but not without some difficulty. He initially failed an eye exam and only his persistence enabled him to be accepted for active duty with a limited-duty classification.

Like many in his generation, Reagan volunteered for overseas duty, but his classification prevented him from accomplishing that goal. He served our country honorably throughout the war and rose to the rank of Captain. His term of service concluded in 1953. Of Captain Reagan, Major General James P. Hodges, the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff for Intelligence, wrote that he:

...has proven himself to be an officer of exceptional ability, demonstrating unusual initiative, and performs his duties in a superior manner. Captain Reagan has received a 'superior' efficiency rating continually since 1 July 1943.

I was wrong about this aspect of President Reagan's life. I wish I could say the same about all the real chicken hawks out there.

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Wednesday 16 February 05


A FITTING TRIBUTE...


Headspace-On my stereo: Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: Not Only The Eskimos by Liesel Mueller; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

Today the United States Navy honors our 39th president and one of my personal heroes—James Earl Carter Jr.—with the commissioning of SSN 23, the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter, the third and final submarine in the Seawolf class. President Carter is our only president to pass muster and join the elite of the elite: the officers of Admiral Hyman Rickover's nuclear Navy. Only about 20 percent of those who run Admiral Rickover's grueling qualification gauntlet finish it. Carter rose to Lieutenant Commander (O4) during his seven years of service.

I do not know for certain, but I think this may be unique. I am not aware of a president honored by the naming of a vessel, on which he might have served, for him. It is specially fitting that President Carter should be so honored by having his name placed on one of the Seawolf class. The Carter and her sister boats (not ships) USS Seawolf, SSN-21 and USS Connecticut, SSN-22 are truly submarines of the 21st century.

The Carter is particularly innovative. According to one website, she is differentiated "from all previous undersea vessels by its Multi-Mission Platform, which includes a 100-foot hull extension to enhance payload capability. The MMP enables Carter to accommodate the advanced technology required to develop and test new generations of weapons, sensors and undersea vehicles for naval special warfare, tactical surveillance and mine-warfare operations."

Smooth seas and safe returns to all the crew of the USS Jimmy Carter.

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IT'S A COOK BOOK...!


Headspace-On my stereo: Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: Not Only The Eskimos by Liesel Mueller; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

OK, as PZ Myers notes in A Visitor From Space! Err, Ummm, I Mean, Canada!, it's a Science Fiction cliche, but outsiders do help us see that which we are too close to. Myers comments on Rapture Awaits In Florida Panhandle by the Toronto Star's Tom Harpur. The reporter writes about a trip south from Toronto to the panhandle of Florida where he encounters "some of the most intense conservative evangelical activity in the entire U.S. Superchurches, training schools, and all kinds of crusades abound."

The money quote from Harpur is:

Gary Frazier shouted at the top of his lungs: "Wake up! Wake up!" And roughly 800 heads nodded approval as he added that the left-wing, anti-Israel media—"for example, CNN"—will never tell the world the truth about Islam. According to these three and the millions of Americans they lead, Muslims intend ultimately "to impose their religion on us all."

The whole Left Behind series would be silly on the level of L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth series if it were not so wildly successful and read as gospel and not bad fantasy.

Myers muses:

In a rational world, here’s what I would like: our media to treat these nutballs as totally clownshoes poison—the only stories about them would mock their lunacy, rather than putting up a respectful facade. For our politicians to denounce them as dishonest frauds who are dragging our country and the world into the sewer. For our electorate to shun any politician who so much as shakes hands with one of these scamming hatemongers.

Seems reasonable to me.

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OVER OUR DEAD BODIES...


Headspace-On my stereo: Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: Not Only The Eskimos by Liesel Mueller; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

Today is the first day of the Kyoto Protocols. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when the process leading up to today began—I remember reading about Green House Gases when Richard Nixon was president—but by any political measure it has been a long journey. While the United States is still not a signatory of the protocols, the rest of the world is and despite White House hubris, we are all now going to live with the effect of the Kyoto.

In Ten Gallons of Kyoto, Viridian's Bruce Sterling offers what he sees as a comprehensive and objective look the protocol by The Gallon Environment Letter, a Canadian environmental group.

Colin Isaacs, editor of The Gallon writes in the introduction:

Preparing this issue has been a particular challenge: we know that some of our readers are Kyoto experts while others still have no truck with Kyoto. There is so much nonsense being written and said about Kyoto in the daily and electronic media by writers who just do not understand the complexities of the Kyoto Protocol that we have tried to set the record straight, providing information and analysis to help the ordinary business and typical citizen get a good grounding in this most complex of subjects.

We could have written several books on Kyoto, and many have, but we hope that in the brief format for which the Gallon Environment Letter is known we have been able to provide at least a few gems of information for everyone, whether Kyotophile or Kyotophobe or somewhere in between.

Lisa Hymas over at The Gristmill, however, offers a sobering caveat in It's Too Late To Stop Climate Change. Her basic, and valid point, is that global climate is an aircraft carrier, not a swift boat; the beast just doesn't stop, or turn, on a dime. Hymas quotes Mark Hertsgaard from the San Francisco Chronicle:

At the core of the global warming dilemma is a fact neither side of the debate likes to talk about: It is already too late to prevent global warming and the climate change it sets off.

Environmentalists won't say this for fear of sounding alarmist or defeatist. Politicians won't say it because then they'd have to do something about it. The world's top climate scientists have been sending this message, however, with increasing urgency for many years.

This is not to suggest that, in any sense, we're a day late and a dollar short. It took us the better part of a century to get where we are now and it's going to take us at least that long to restore the balance.

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Tuesday 15 February 05


EVOLUTION IN THE ISLAMIC WORLD...


Headspace-On my stereo: Talk Of The Nation on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: Publication-is the Auction Of the Mind of Man by Emily Dickinson; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

The ignorance that is heralded by those who reject Evolution is not restricted to Christians in the United States. In yet another example of the commonality of all fundamentalists, an engineer from Kuwait in An Insider's View Of Islam has written about how the anti-evolutionary movement in his country is crippling the educational system and threatening the health and safety of citizens.

The writer, who sent his essay to the James Randi Educational Foundation, warns:

To these factions, evolution is a really dirty word, and some fanatics go to extreme lengths to discredit evolution and Darwin by resorting to tactics similar to those which are embraced by the believers in "The Protocols of Zion," for to the fanatics everything is a conspiracy against Islam. To them, the goal of the evolutionists is to cripple religion, and preach science as the ultimate truth. If this sounds familiar to you, at least in the US evolutionists are not termed "apostates," and ultra-fundamentalists will not demand their blood!

James Randi, famous for the debunking One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge responds to his correspondent:

The Koran shows the ignorance of The Deity—of whatever name—by quoting pseudoscience and myth, repeatedly mentioning the supernatural skill of bees in producing sweet honey "from the bitter juices of plants." The Bible, Book of Mormon, Hindu Veda, Koran, Talmud, Torah, and ancient writings of China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, rave about the supposed curative powers of honey. Says the Koran in Chapter XVI, "The Bee," "There comes from their bellies a liquor of varied color, wherein is medicine for men." The Prophet himself says, "Honey is a remedy for all diseases."

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WHAT NEXT... AUDITIONS FOR CHRIST...?


Headspace-On my stereo: Talk Of The Nation on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: London Bridges by James Patterson; On my computer: Publication-is the Auction Of the Mind of Man by Emily Dickinson; On my screen, Cracker: Lucky White Ghost (***) directed by Richard Standeven and written by Paul Abbott.

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! Anyone who has ever visited my digs has seen the very large black-and-white poster of Janis Joplin framed over my couch. That poster has been with me since I was 16 and first heard Pearl. I think I paid less than $2 for it new and laid out nearly 10 times that much five years ago to have it framed. An insane waste of money? Maybe. But to me that poster represented everything that was good about my own teen angst.

Now some very evil people want to subject the memory of Janis to the ultimate degradation: a reality show. Billed as a Search For Pearl, this travesty will hold American-Idol like auditions to find the next Joplin. As our webgoddess, and fellow Janis worshiper, remarked:

Anyone with enough Blues to sing like Janis would never be sober enough to show up for the audition.

Ah-mein.

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Monday 14 February 05


ANOTHER DAY OF PAGAN LUST...


Headspace-On my stereo: Jazz After Hours on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns; On my screen, Cracker: Brotherly Love (***) directed by Roy Battersby and written by Jimmy McGovern.

From Garrison Keillor at The Writer's Almanac comes this: Today is Valentine's Day, originally the Roman feast of Lupercalia, a celebration of fertility. In 270 A.D. the holiday was Christianized (and the date changed from February 15 to 14) to commemorate the martyred Saint Valentine. By the late Middle Ages, the modern tradition—of exchanging paper love declarations, called 'Valentines'—evolved.

For even more on this yet-another-pagan-holiday-co-opted-by-early-Christianity take a look Brandie Minchew's Getting To The Heart Of The Matter.

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Sunday 13 February 05


THE PERFECT URBAN EXPERIENCE...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Jazz at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Love Poem by Linda Pastan; On my screen, Cracker: Brotherly Love (***) directed by Roy Battersby and written by Jimmy McGovern.

Christine Borne at Really Bad Cleveland Accent writes about what she thinks would be the perfect urban neighborhood in A Dose Of Urbanity. I like her list. Where I live, halfway between the Coventry and Cedar-Lee neighborhoods is about perfect. To Christine's list I would add at least one tavern with a minimum of two full-sized pool tables, a used bookstore and an art gallery.

Here are her picks:

One coffee shop, preferably one cramped with pitted wood tables, rickety chairs with fake wrought-iron backs, and an exposed brick wall. A smudgy black markerboard would do best for the menu, especially if there are artistic dry-erase representations of dessert present.

Five places to eat, ranging from the quick-and-dirty local bagel shop to the über-swanky, "rose-petals-on-the-table" black-tie affair, complete with $65 prix fixe menu. Preferably 5 different ethnicities, although 5 Indian buffets for less than $7 a pop would be nice too.

One place to make copies

Three banks

One place to buy band-aids, gum, cat litter, and shampoo

Two news agents

One full-service, traditional grocer

Two hair salons; the kind where the stylists are all between the ages of 20 and 38 and don't look like they were up chain-smoking at a bus stop all night long a disgustingly lavish array of public transportation options

One dry cleaner and laundry

Three different ethnic supermarkets. Any combination will do: Indian, Polish, Chinese; Korean, Lebanese, Caribbean; African, Mexican, Greek. The kind where those $8 "specialty items" collecting dust at A&P will now cost 79 cents. The kind where, if you don't speak the language, you can't totally tell if you're buying a bottle of morello cherry syrup or duck blood.

What would you add?

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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DOUBLE-PLUS UNGOOD...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Love Poem by Linda Pastan; On my screen, Cracker: Brotherly Love (***) directed by Roy Battersby and written by Jimmy McGovern.

Estaphania in Calling All Ohio Residents... on It's The End Of The World As We Know It (is there a longer blog name out there?) raises the alarm over Ohio's version of the misnamed Patriot Act. She writes:

By unnecessarily expanding police powers, the Ohio PATRIOT Act attacks free speech and allows for indiscriminate invasions of privacy. To date, five Ohio municipalities (Cleveland Heights, Oxford, Oberlin, Toledo and Yellow Springs) have passed resolutions expressing concerns regarding the state of civil liberties. If successful, this legislation would pull Homeland Security funding from these communities simply because concerned citizens exercised their right to free speech. Residents of Ohio should not have their security jeopardized for voicing concerns about the PATRIOT Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union is on the case and offers concrete actions to combat this latest attempt to erode liberty in the false name of security.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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DEEP THROAT...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Love Poem by Linda Pastan; On my screen, Cracker: Brotherly Love (***) directed by Roy Battersby and written by Jimmy McGovern.

With the release of a documentary on the movie that prompted the code name associated with the ruin of the Nixon administration, Deep Throat has re-entered our conversational milieu. I was 16 when it all went down back in 1972 and I learned about Woodward and Bernstein before I got a chance to know Reems and Lovelace.

It was more than 10 years later in a basement classroom of Ohio University's school of journalism that I got the chance to meet one of the key figures in the Washington end of the story: Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee. There were about a dozen of us in Dr. Dru Riley Evarts' Communication Law class. (Evarts was fondly known as Conan the Grammarian for her take-no-prisoners attitude toward bad editing.) After a few softball questions, Deep Throat came up and my recollection is that Bradlee said this: there was no one person who was Deep Throat. The figure was a composite, the code name was a cover for a number of sources inside and close to the Nixon administration.

Is Bradlee lying now when he says that Deep Throat is near death and he has already written his obituary? Was Bradlee lying more than 20 years ago? Or was Bradlee having a little fun at the expense of a class of naive Woodward wannabes?

At a minimum, four people know the truth: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee and, of course, the person or persons who fed the Nixon White House into the shredder. Woodward has repeatedly said that he will reveal the truth only after the people involved are dead.

I think that truth is going to reach far beyond any grave.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Saturday 12 February 05


GETTING IT RIGHT THE SECOND TIME...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Love Poem by Linda Pastan; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

Several years ago in a supplementary religious school where I was teaching a parent stood there with his 10-year-old son and told me: "I make sure he goes to Hebrew school every week because I hated it so much." My jaw hit the floor and for a moment I was sure that I had misheard him. But he went on to tell me about all the things he used to do to try and convince his parents that their lives would be easier if they didn't force him to waste his Sunday mornings listening to boring Jewish stuff.

This Stephanie Piro cartoon is funny and deadly serious at the same time. The SixChix rotation is more often insightful than not.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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AT LEAST THE EDITOR CARED...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Pubic Radio's Morning Edition Saturday on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Love Poem by Linda Pastan; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

Writers, like all artists, need very thick skin because the one experience that we all have more than any other is that of rejection. Sometimes you get let down softly, but most of the time it is in the form of "We're sorry, but your submission does not meet our requirements at this time." And often it is the coldness of the rejection rather than the rejection itself that hurts.

That's why this Wiley Miller cartoon put a knowing smile on my face this morning. I think Miller is the dark evil twin of Gary Larson and that's why I love his work so much.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Friday 11 February 05


I'M SO JEALOUS...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: For My Daughter in Reply to a Question by David Ignatow; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

Reason No. 2,734 why I'm glad I've never had children. A good friend of mine passed this along. Her 15-year-old son sent it to her. Kids these days have it so easy. We had to work hard to give our parents gray hairs. Does this generation understand how many hours we used to spend lying in our beds thinking up new ways to aggregate mom and dad? No. All they have to do is surf the Internet for 30 seconds and they can guarantee near cardiac arrest for the rents.

You can read the lyrics to the song by the Australian group TISM (This Is Serious Mum), and order more music, on their website.

Sigh.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Thursday 10 February 05


DAVE BARRY DID IT FIRST...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: For Laurel and Hardy on My Workroom Wall by David Wagoner; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

It had to happen sometime. From Amman, Jordan comes this story of Bakr Melhem and his wife Sanaa who re-kindled their dying romance over the Internet. The problem is that Bakr thought he was starting an affair with Jamila. And Sanaa thought she was starting an affair with Adnan. And when it came time for that all-important face-to-face meeting, well...

(With homage to Dave Barry who wrote a version of this story with Al and Tipper Gore in the title roles in his Dave Barry In Cyberspace...)

I am not making this up.

[Update: But, as an astute reader points out, somebody else my be. Since the AFP has outed the woman in Jordan, her life is in serious danger if the story is true. Anybody have any follow up on this?]

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Wednesday 09 February 05


I CAN'T DO THIS...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: For Laurel and Hardy on My Workroom Wall by David Wagoner; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

One of my students used that phrase several times yesterday as we were working through a written-answer (three sentences) response for the 6th grade proficiency test. I believe that he was sincere. He has some learning challenges and part of my job as tutor is to help him over the hump. But it got me thinking about the larger issues surrounding how we choose to do or not do things and the way that conflicts with an underlying paradigm in American culture.

The paradigm I'm referring to is this: with a strong will and American ingenuity, anything is possible. It has been manifested in recent years in the attitude that "failure is not an option." But the reality is that we fail all the time. Perhaps the greater American quality is that when we fail, we pick ourselves up, consider what went wrong, and then try again with a fresh approach.

But sometimes there are things that are just beyond our ability: physically, intellectually, emotionally. When it is a matter of physical or intellectual short falls, most people don't have a problem. I will never be a most valuable player in the National Basketball Association. Ain't going to happen. And nobody is going to think less of me for that admission. Or, I will never hold the Isaac Newton Chair at Cambridge. Stephen Hawking has deeper thoughts about the nature of a passing cloud than I will ever have about anything. It's just the nature of our brains and, again, nobody is going to berate me for that failure.

But emotionally; there's the one that people get indignant about. Which leads me to an article this morning from Ayelet Waldman on Salon. In Looking Abortion In The Face, Waldman discusses her own abortion. She writes:

I had a second trimester abortion. I was pregnant with a much-wanted child who was diagnosed with a genetic abnormality. I made a choice to terminate the pregnancy. It was my third pregnancy, and I was very obviously showing. More important, I could feel the baby move. We had seen him on the ultrasound; I have a very clear memory of his two tiny feet, perfect pearl toes, footprint arches, round heels. This was, for me, a baby, not a "clump of cells" as an older woman, steeped in the arcane language of the early feminist movement, called him. He was my baby, and I chose to end his life.

Part of me wants to think that this is another of those planted stories from the anti-abortion advocates. But I know that abortion has real psychological consequences for the mothers who face the decision. In many ways it's a no-win situation. Either way they face a lifetime's worth of questions.

Can it be any wonder that this is the single greatest issue in our society?

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Tuesday 08 February 05


BUT HE'S A BIOLOGIST AND A SCIENTIST...!


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Things by Lisel Mueller; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

One of my loyal readers alerted me to this op-ed in yesterday's New York Times. Michael Behe in Design For Living attempts to give credence to the dangerous silliness of intelligent design which, in the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire, is neither intelligent nor a design. Here's the huge problem. Michael Behe is not some right-wing, bible-thumping, knuckle dragger. He's a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University and a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture as well as the author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.

On the Department of Biological Sciences' page for Dr. Behe (PhD. University of Pennsylvania, 1978, Evolution of protein structure) at Lehigh University he lists nine publications in his field in the past four years.

How does someone with those kinds of credentials write such drivel?

One of my favorite blog sources on all things evolutionary, PZ Myers at Pharyngula skewers the errant doctor in Behe Jumps The Shark.

Is it any wonder that well-meaning people think there is really a debate about all this?

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Monday 07 February 05


Attribute, Attribute, Take Two...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: That's the Sum of It by David Ignatow; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

On Tuesday I blogged about a speech given by Bill Moyers in which he repeated a quote attributed to former Secretary of the Interior James Watt. (Attribute, Attribute, Attribute...) The quote ticked over my Lemmings Meter. And I started digging.

The first sign I had that something was wrong was that Google only came up with references to Moyers' speech. A quote that flammable should have been all over the Internet. The second sign came when I got a hold of a copy of the book from which the quote was taken and found that the author, Austin Miles, provided no citation at all for his quote.

This evening, as I sat down to fire off emails to Miles, Moyers and Glenn Scherer (the author of the Grist article that quotes Miles and from which Moyers pulled his information), I made a second check of Google and found another blogger who was also digging into the story and who had turned up some answers.

Brian Carnell in Grist Does The Right Thing reports:

Grist Magazine has done exactly the right thing in responding to the questions raised here and elsewhere about the quote Glenn Scherer attributed to James Watt in an October column for that magazine. [snip]

I spent about an hour talking this weekend with a gentleman who is doing a story on the whole Watt/Scherer/Moyers fiasco.

One of the things I emphasized is that I would hope that newspapers, both online and off, would learn from this lesson and others and realize that bogus quotes that end up getting recycled, reused and embellished generally share similar features, including bogus or completely lacking attribution, and that quotes that are really outrageous and just fit someone's preconceptions too snugly need to be fact-checked.

The gentleman Carnell was talking to was Frank Lockwood, a reporter for the Lexington, Kentucky Herald-Leader currently on leave as a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan studying the Pentecostal movement. Lockwood wrote at length about his findings today. He says:

It’s an Internet myth about a former Reagan cabinet member. Pure fiction. But leading American newspapers have reported it as fact and it may be a difficult story to dispel.

In a page 1 article in yesterday’s Washington Post entitled “The Greening of Evangelicals,” staff writer Blaine Harden said some Christians believe it is pointless to protect the environment because the end of the world is near.

The article included the following quote:

"James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first interior secretary, famously made this argument before Congress in 1981, saying: "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."

Watt adamantly denies ever making such a statement on Capitol Hill – or anywhere else.

Friday, the website that originally broke the story posted a correction, saying that Watt "did not make such a statement to Congress." The Seattle-based online environmental publication, Grist Magazine, is now “aggressively looking into the accuracy of this quotation,” its website states.

Grist has published a correction, but its credibility is severely damaged by this mistake.

*[Correction, 04 Feb 2005: The asterisked section of the article, above, originally read:

But a scripture-based justification for anti-environmentalism—when was the last time you heard a conservative politician talk about that?

Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.

Today's Christian fundamentalist politicians are more politically savvy than Reagan's interior secretary was; you're unlikely to catch them overtly attributing public-policy decisions to private religious views. But their words and actions suggest that many share Watt's beliefs. Like him, many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future.

In fact, Watt did not make such a statement to Congress. The quotation is attributed to Watt in the book Setting the Captives Free by Austin Miles, but Miles does not write that it was made before Congress. Grist regrets this reporting error and is aggressively looking into the accuracy of this quotation.]

Now, if we can just get the other side of the aisle to be as strident and forthright about correcting such obvious errors and lies, we might make some progress.

No word as of yet from Moyers.

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TOM PETERS STILL ROCKS...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: That's the Sum of It by David Ignatow; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

I've been a devotee of Tom Peters since the '80s. George Nemeth at Brewed Fresh Daily links today to Peters' website and 100 Ways To Succeed, No. 39: Blog As If Your Life Depends Upon It.! via Gapingvoid. In his Dispatches From The New World Of Work, Peters says: Blogging, I firmly believe, is the premier emergent marketing-brandbuilding-lovemarkcreating tool of our times! It is the premier way to have intimate-engaging-informative-WOWing "conversations" with Clients and prospects!

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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COLLECTIVE BENEFIT AND RESPONSIBILITY...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: That's the Sum of It by David Ignatow; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

One of my coffee shop friends brought this story to my attention this morning. The problem as I see it is two fold: first, people want to enjoy the collective benefit of group healthcare insurance but not pay the additional costs engendered by their personal behaviors; and second, we expect healthcare insurance to be one size fits all when we do not have the same expectation for any other kind of insurance.

I can sense Howard Weyer's frustration, but he's taken the wrong tack. If there is one core value that we Americans hold dear, it is that liberty is sacrosanct. If my pursuit of happiness doesn't stop you from pursuing your happiness, then leave me alone. But, by the same token, I shouldn't expect you to pay for my pursuit.

Employer-paid healthcare is a desirable benefit. (Blame it on the Eisenhower administration's use of a wage freeze, by the way, which caused companies to get creative with benefits to attract and retain good employees.) When you are a bad driver, your car insurance goes up. If you smoke three packs a day, weigh 400 pounds and have a family history of heart disease you are going to pay a lot more for life insurance than you will if you are a life-long non-smoker, have a body-mass-index in the green zone and have great-grandparents still living. Insurance is a business based on mathematical formulas that predict what's likely to happen to you based on the way you live your life.

Health insurance should be structured the same way. Establish a base line for some model healthy individual and a cost figure for providing health insurance to that individual. If an employer wishes, it can pay for any percentage greater than that base number. However, if you smoke, expect to pay a premium. If you're in the yellow or red zones on the BMI, expect to pay a premium. If you've lost both of your parents and all four of your grandparents to heart disease and take no steps to minimize your own risk of dying young, expect to pay a premium.

Choices have consequences and we should accept responsibility for those choices: including seeing our paychecks shrink a bit so that we can enjoy our liberty.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS...


Headspace-On my stereo: Satellite Radio's Classic Rock at Arabica on Lee; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: That's the Sum of It by David Ignatow; On my screen: The Merry War (**) directed by Robert Bierman and written by George Orwell, novel and Alan Plater, screenplay.

I am sick and tired of the use of three words by people in general and journalists in particular. The first is anything ending in Gate. It happened 33 years ago. Get over it.

The second and third words are Nazi and Holocaust when they are applied to anything other than the National Socialist Party and the genocide involving those deemed socially undesirable—including, but not restricted to: the mentally deficient and handicapped, Romani (Gypsies), homosexuals, Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Jews—by the aforementioned National Socialist Party. (I would also include other minor related words associated with the National Socialists: fascist, Gestapo, Hitler, Eichmann, Goebel, etc.)

When intellectually lazy people attempt to link their particular cause with either our only president to resign from office or the systematic slaughter of more than 11 million Europeans, they lessen the horror of those events in our collective memories. I equally object to uses such as memogate and Iraqgate or Rush Limbaugh's use of feminazi and those who attempt to associate our current administration with that of the Third Reich.

[deep breath] There, I feel much better now.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Sunday 06 February 05


SUPERBOWL COMMERCIALS...


Headspace-On my stereo: Briefcase Full Of Blues by The Blues Brothers; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: My Son by Susan Cataldo; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

I didn't watch the Superbowl for two reasons. First, I don't like spectator sports and second, I don't own a television. But I do realize that I miss a lot of popular culture because of my viewing decisions and so I appreciate people like Estephania at It's The End Of The World As We Know It... for her blogging about what is really important about the Superbowl: the commercials. She puts three commercials at the top of her list.

Her No. 3 spot goes to FedEx, No. 2 goes to Ameriquest, and No. 1 to... Ameriquest. She links to both the FedEx and Ameriquest websites and both websites are perfect examples of current American marketing stupidity. You just spent a gazilion dollars developing and broadcasting commercials on the single most expensive television broadcast of the year, hoping that millions would see your commercial and then you don't put those commercials on your main webpage?

What are they thinking? If the commercials were good and people like Estephania are going to be talking about them in the office on Monday morning, wouldn't you think they'd want to make them available so that people could do more than just talk about the them?

That's just another example of 20th century thinking.

[Update: Chas Rich at Sardonic Views has a complete list of commercials with comments.]

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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TABASCO MEMORIES...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: My Son by Susan Cataldo; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

One of the things I like about Will Kessel's Collision Bend is the way he structures the literary strolls through his conciousness. In today's Hot Stuff, Will roams from a local eatery to the website for Tabasco to the health benefits of capsaicin to a personal recipe for a Tabasco and honey marinade. For me it's like taking a walk through a park with a friend on a sunny afternoon.

Will's evocation of Tabasco spun me back to the '80s and my time as a Staff Sergeant in the Ohio Army National Guard. For the vast majority of the time we had excellent food. Our cooks knew what they were doing and took pride in their work. But when we went into the field for annual training we had to fall back on the Army standby of C (canned) Rations.

Entrees such as lima beans and ham, scrambled eggs, ground beef and beans or tuna that were probably put into the can sometime during the Vietnam conflict did little to brighten your day. Specially when you had to eat them cold. That was why no one went into the field without a large bottle of Tabasco in their kit. It was the only thing that made the food eatable. And I hadn't thought about those days in a long time. Thanks Will.

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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SHOVELING OUT THE BLOGPILE...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Sunday on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: My Son by Susan Cataldo; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

I call my virtual junk drawer my blogpile. When I come across a webpage that interests me but don't have the time to write about it that moment, I bookmark it to the blogpile. But of course there is a never ending stream of new, interesting websites to blog about. So, without further ado (and in no particular order), I've shoveled the intellectual compost into the blog. Happy digging.

What the Superbowl can teach us about men touching men...

The emperor's new hump...

The Ohio Democratic Party's blog...

Hotel Rwanda...

The DNA of literature...

The State Party Blog Project...

There is no crisis...

Statisticians refute 'explanation' of exit poll...

The top 100 U.S. historical documents...

U.N. says Darfur not genocide...

John Naisbitt on global ethics after 11 September...

Wolf Blitzer and Paula Zhan in Sandwich...

To comment, see below. For longer musing, try our symposium.

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Saturday 05 February 05


A NEW VOICE...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Prairie Home Companion on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Messy Room by Shel Silverstein; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

A new voice has stepped into the blogosphere. Sherry Chandler is a sublime poet and thoughtful observer of life. I had the honor and pleasure of hosting Sherry and the splendiferous Mary, Ernie, O'Dell, for a reading at Mac's Backs last fall. (You can listen to the recording of the reading in The Ernie And Sherry Roadshow!)

For your reading delight, here's one of Sherry's poems:

WALKING TO RAMSEY’S

Late April rain, the dogwoods in bloom,
redbuds, and verbena just coming out,
little golden baby leaves right out of Frost.
Jean and I sit in the back room,
order greens and cornbread, talk
downtown renewal and comparative dieting.
I drink two cups of coffee and my cuffs
but not my shoes dry out.
How much is that Collected Lowell
in the window I ask the man in Unique
Books. We just got that in yesterday, he says.
Do you smell that incense? Nickel
a stick patchouli from next door.
Happy Turtle. We got an illustrated
fairy tales over here that’s gonna be worthless.
We can’t keep the good poets, he says,
students love the beats, but I told my buyer
if he brings me any more Kahlil Gibran
I’ll do him some serious damage.
Do you see how many copies of The Prophet
we got back there? But he wrote this book called Jesus.
We can’t keep that one in stock.
I buy the Lowell and a Kenneth Rexroth,
play my umbrella sail out onto the sidewalk.

Published in
Wavelength # 10, Winter 2004-2005

Welcome, Sherry.

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KILLER TRACTORS...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Prairie Home Companion on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: The Muse Is Always Half-Dressed In New Orleans by Andrei Codrescu; On my nightstand: The Poet by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Messy Room by Shel Silverstein; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

On Talk Of The Nation's Science Friday yesterday Ira Flatow interviewed Helen Greiner, chairman and co-founder of iRobot. As always Flatow conducted a great interview and I found Greiner an interesting woman with real passion for the work her company is doing. While it's best known for robot vacuum cleaners, it's also involved in military development. And this was the part that had me spewing coffee out my nose.

When I was growing up the boys in my school debated the merits of John Deere vs Massey Fergusen. While my home was too small for a real tractor we did have a semi-large John Deere riding mower on which my dad cut about four acres of grass every couple of weeks, and that put me firmly in the Deere camp.

So, when Greiner mentioned that iRobot is working with John Deere on a new generation of military robots I could not help but envision huge green, Transformer-like John Deere tractors lumbering across the corn fields spewing flame and death from multiple turrets and weapon pods. And for those 12-year old boys out there who still argue about which tractor is best, even imagining battle tractors is a great trump card.

Top that Massey Ferguson!

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Friday 04 February 05


SAND CASTLES IN THE SURF...


The sand castle that was the Iraqi election has started to get battered by a rising tide of scrutiny. Comparisons to the greatly over-hyped elections in South Vietnam in 1967 and El Salvador in 1984 are obvious. Thanks KOS.

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EXPECTING STUDENTS TO SPELL...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: Exuberance, The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: The Narrows by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Poem For The Family by Susan Calaldo; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

Nearly every day I work with students who have problems with reading, writing and arithmetic. In writing, basic spelling is always a challenge. (Full disclosure, I'm as guilty of typos as the next person.) It doesn't help matters when sales and marketing people purposely create cute spellings for words as a way to garner attention.

I can hold my nose when it comes to things like lite foods, but I don't think that my state should intentionally misspell words in a program targeted at students.

That's exactly what Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell has done with his Xpect More program. On the home page expect is misspelled five times and spelled correctly (in expectation) only once.

Silly and cute? Probably, but we know that it's silly and cute. Does a high school student recognize that? My anecdotal experience tells me that a significant number assume that if they see it in print, it must be right. As Blackwell notes on the page, we should expect more from our leaders.

[As a kicker, the poll question on the page is: "Should a candidate's religious beliefs be considered when voting?" Got an agenda Ken?]

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VOTE, ER TORT REFORM...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: Exuberance, The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: The Narrows by Michael Connelly; On my computer: Poem For The Family by Susan Calaldo; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

The man voted to top the list of the 50 Most Loathsome People in America for 2004 (warning, the link is swamped and may not load) is doing his best to top the list again in 2005. Ohio's Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, through his shyster Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro, is asking Ohio's State Supreme Court to sanction attorneys who have challenged the state on voting irregularities in the November election.

The New York Times said yesterday in an editorial:

Even though their case was weak, these lawyers did a public service by raising concerns that many voters shared. The burden put on Ohio's courts by their challenge was minimal. Courts know what to do when they get a weak case: throw it out.

Imposing sanctions would be likely to deter people from raising concerns about future elections, and ultimately undermine public confidence in the electoral process. The Ohio Supreme Court should make it clear that people have the right to challenge election results without fear of retribution.

If people keep asking questions and looking behind the curtains, we might find something that we're not supposed to see. Imagine that.

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Thursday 03 February 05


PEACE IN OUR TIME, CUE HELICOPTERS...


This was the headline in the New York Times on 4 September 1967: U.S. Encouraged By Vietnam Vote; Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror. Thanks to Dan Gillmore.


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KUNG FO FOOD...


Will Kessel at Collision Bend leads us from carved watermelons to Benjarong magazine to Phuket (poo KET), Thailand, and dozens of photos of how life there is returning to normal after the tsunami in Diversions.

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THE CLAWBACK PROVISION...?


The Daily KOS is calling this Alice In Wonderland Stuff. I think he's right. The Washington Post, in a corrected story offers its insights. Why do I feel I'm watching a three-card monte game and the patter is working?

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SOCRATES CAFE...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Talk Of The Nation on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: Exuberance, The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: The Narrows by Michael Connelly; On my computer: from Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

Next Tuesday evening the monthly Socrates Cafe group gets together at Nighttown at the top of Cedar Hill. It's a great time to share conversation and philosophy without someone shouting "shut up!" all the time. The discussion starts at 7:30 p.m. and wraps up at 9:30 p.m. Everyone is invited to bring a topic, the more the better, and the group votes to select what we will dive into for the two hours. Food and drink are great at Nighttown and table manners do not get in the way of pointed retorts.

Over the past three years we have discussed:

2004
Dec: To what degree should we try to live a just or moral life?
Nov: Are gay rights akin to the civil rights movement of the '60s?
Oct: How do fairy tales influence children's expectations?
Sep: What is the function of marriage today?
Aug: Is there significance to the current 50-50 split on the election?
July: Do you have a right to pursue your own happiness?
Jun: Is loyalty a vice or a virtue?
May: Is the media dumbing down American discourse?
Apr: What is the nature of evil?
Mar: What role ought irrationality play in our lives?
Feb: What does it mean to live a successful life?
Jan: Is the U.S. anti-intellectual?

2003
Dec: What was the most important event in history?
Nov: Does science matter?
Oct: Is there a place for revenge?
Sep: Do we value wisdom?
Aug: Does humor require saying something bad about someone?
July: Would becoming a blended, race-less society be a good thing?
Jun: Why do we glorify the past?
May: Is there an unselfish reason to have children?
Apr: What is motivation?
Mar: What is love?
Feb: Is mankind becoming more or less moral over the centuries?
Jan: What is the difference between good art and bad art?

2002
Dec: Why is there genocide?
Nov: Can you have change without stress?
Oct: Can you know truth without knowing God?

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REMEMBERING OUR POET LAUREATE...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: Exuberance, The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: The Narrows by Michael Connelly; On my computer: from Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

Daniel Thompson, the Poet Laureate of Cleveland, left us last May. On Saturday, 12 February, those who remember Daniel, and those who would like to know something of him, will gather in the Algebra T-House, 2136 Murray Hill in Little Italy, at 7:30 p.m. The free event is to honor Daniel and to raise money for placing a marker on his grave. Featured will be scheduled readers and performers, as well as an open mic session, in an evening of poetry, polemics, and performance.

To date the fund has raised $500 of the $3,000 it needs to place a marker on Daniel's grave in Section 63, Lot No. 72 of Lakeview Cemetery. The goal is to place the stone on the anniversary of Daniel's exit.

Shortly before his death from leukemia, Northern Ohio Live profiled Daniel in it's February 2004 issue. The piece includes two poems written by Daniel after his diagnosis. This one I thought was simply beautiful:

The Rain Poet

Save
My poems
For rainy
Days. Say
Them out
Loud. Listen
The rain
Applauds…

I'll be there, sipping Turkish coffee and blogging the event. Stop over and say hello.

If you can't attend, checks should be made out to "The Daniel Thompson Poet Stone Fund" and sent to Mac's Backs ~ Books on Coventry, 1820 Coventry Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118.

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GOD WEIGHS IN...


The ultimate reader checks in with some comments on my Lost Feathers... commentary from Wednesday, 26 January. For the record, It personally selected our president. That's comforting, isn't it?

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Wednesday 02 February 05


THE NATURE OF AUTHORITY...


Headspace-On my stereo: Canadian Public Radio's As It Happens on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: Exuberance, The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: The Narrows by Michael Connelly; On my computer: To Ireland in the Coming Times by Galway Kinnel; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

Who died and made you God? is a question I used to hear occasionally in the military. The context was always a sailor or soldier being told to do something that they didn't want to do and refusing to recognize the authority of the person delivering the order to make them do it. Now, you might think that an extra stripe or two would automatically settle any such questions, but in any military organization there are always subtle chains of authority that have to be followed.

The point being that only God, or a chief petty officer—God's manifestation on the Seven Seas—had the authority to tell anyone, anytime, anywhere, what to do.

John Peak in A Civilized, Moral People Do Not Need Religion (part 1) tackles the question of whether or not humans need the threat of eternal hellfire and damnation to make them behave in a moral way.

My initial response is that the whole hellfire and damnation thing is a smokescreen because we have plenty of "religious" people committing heinous acts of depravity on a regular basis. The short answer to John's question is that even the threat of eternal suffering cannot keep an immoral human from acting immorally.

I'm not even touching the question of what is moral. For my purposes here, I'll accept that moral is whatever the majority of rational reasoning humans in a society decide it is. And if that isn't a slippery slope, I don't know what is.

What, then, keeps someone from acting immorally? From my perspective it is enlightened self-interest and the basic human understanding of the universal golden rule: if you don't want to be squashed like a bug, don't go around squashing others like bugs. (OK, so it's not usually phrased that way, but I like the image.)

But, for the purists out there, here is how Judaism phrases it in the Talmud, B. Shabbat 30b-31a:

... it happened that a certain gentile came before Shammai and said to him, “Make me a proselyte on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” [Shammai] knocked him over with the builder’s cubit that was in his hand.

He went before Hillel, who converted him. [Hillel] said to him, “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary; go and learn it.”

Hard to say it any better.

[Update: John has sparked an interesting dialogue by Mark Jaquith (Tempus Fugit) in Morals Without Religion.]

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Tuesday 01 February 05


PARTY RULE NO. 1 IS...


Headspace-On my stereo: Legends by Bob Marley and the Wailers; In my backpack: Exuberance, The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: The Narrows by Michael Connelly; On my computer: The Sow Piglet's Escapes by Galway Kinnel; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

(according to a friend) that no party may be concluded, and still be called a party, unless at least one Bob Marley song has been played. This week marks the 60th anniversay of his birth and Neal Conan on National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation opened the show today with Bob Marley and the Culture of Reggae. The teaser for the show says:

His music came to symbolize a religion, an entire musical style-and the country of Jamaica. On the 60th anniversary of his birth, fans celebrate the genius who brought reggae to the world. We discuss the legacy of Bob Marley. Guests: Roger Steffens, reggae historian Chris Wilson, A&R director, Heartbeat Records Tanya Stephens, reggae singer and DJ.

Time magazine named Marley's Exodus Best Album of the 20th century. On 3 January 2000, The New York Times said, "Around the world Bob Marley may be the most influential musician of the second half of the century."
I've tried in vain to find a the cover of the Rolling Stone issue from 1976 or 1977 on which I distinctly remember reading the cover lines: This man smokes a pound of ganja a week; and talks to God. Maybe, in recognition of Marley's greatness, my memory isn't quite what it should be.

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ATTRIBUTE, ATTRIBUTE, ATTRIBUTE...


Headspace-On my stereo: National Public Radio's Morning Edition on WCPN, 90.3; In my backpack: Exuberance, The Passion For Life by Kay Redfield Jamison; On my nightstand: The Narrows by Michael Connelly; On my computer: The Sow Piglet's Escapes by Galway Kinnel; On my screen: Touching Evil's What Amathus Wants (**) directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Russell T. Davies.

[Update: see Attribute, Attribute, Take Two on Monday, 7 January.]

If a lunatic walks into your house with an axe and starts swinging at the furniture and walls you don't stop to have a dialogue concerning their motives or feelings. You take them down by any means possible to stop the destruction. If Bill Moyers is right, and he made a very convincing argument in an acceptance speech back in December, the lunatics are swinging wild and furiously. Who are they? The politicians, and a significant portion of those who support them, who are driven by ideology and theology rather than reason.

Moyers gave his speech on 1 December in New York City in acceptance for the Global Environmental Citizen Award from Harvard University's Center for Health and the Global Environment. The whole speech is well worth reading, but this is the portion that caught the eye of traditional and Internet journalists. It is spreading rapidly across the Internet, and there's a problem. Here's what Moyers said:

Remember James Watt, President Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, “After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.”

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn’t know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true – one third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent
citizens went to the polls believing in the
rapture index.

That’s right – the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding). Once Israel has occupied the rest of its ‘biblical lands,’ legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon.

As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the Messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

The Watt quote bothers me. I've read a lot of really bad things about him over the years, but I hadn't come across that one. That doesn't mean he didn't say it or that it wasn't printed somewhere. So I went looking.

Moyers pulls the quote from The Godly Must Be Crazy by Glenn Scherer. The full quote used by Scherer is:

Odds are it was in 1981, when President Reagan's first secretary of the interior, James Watt, told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back," Watt said in public testimony that helped get him fired.

Scherer uses the quote with only the vague attribution, in public testimony. I wasn't the only one troubled by this and at least one reader wrote to Grist to call Scherer into account for the quote. At the end of a 21 January letters column in Grist he replied:

Several readers asked where I got the James Watt quote: "God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." It is found on page 229 of the book Setting the Captives Free by Austin Miles. In a letter to Grist, Peter Bakken pointed me to research that reveals the deeper complexity of Watt's fundamentalist views.

While the "last tree is felled" quote takes a dominionist position (that God gave nature to humanity for us to use and abuse as we please until the rapture), Bakken notes that other Watt statements support a stewardship approach: "I don't know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns," Watt said, but, "... whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to have the resources needed for future generations."

These contradictory quotes illustrate just how hard it is to pin down the religious beliefs of officials like Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), or George W. Bush. Personally, I think the struggle between Christian dominionist and Christian stewardship theologies will help determine the ultimate success (or failure) of the U.S. environmental movement.

The problem is, of course, that Scherer doesn't tell us where Miles get's the quote. I've ordered the 1990 book from my library and it should be waiting for me by the end of the week. A quick Google of the phrase "After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back" turned up 861 hits, most of them from blogs referencing Moyers' speech. That means that the quote is spreading across the Internet. I checked a few of the entries and the ones I read are treating the quote as, you'll excuse the use, gospel.

There has been a lot of venom leveled at the Bush administration for its apparent dependence upon the idea that if you tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth. It would not be a good thing for those of us who oppose the current administration's policies to jump down into the filth and wallow along with them.

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