Sunday, June 29, 2008

Embrace the Fog

I've made the observation in the past that Post Modernism, with its love of arcane theory expressed in the form of obscure, specialized terminology, tortured semantics and unparseable language, bears a striking resemblance to Catholic theology. Two essays on the First Things website bear out that observation.

In Scripture as Participation Peter Leithart reviews Matthew Levering's book "Participatory Biblical Exegesis":
From the rise of nominalism in the Late Middle Ages through the modern period, history has been conceived in an atomistic and “linear” fashion. History consists of discrete events, and the forces of historical causation are all immanent within history. It’s not surprising that secularists would gravitate to a linear notion of history, but theologians and biblical scholars have eagerly accepted the same theory. The result for biblical studies, Levering shows, is a gradual but unmistakable drift from theological interpretation of Scripture toward a purely immanent understanding of the history recorded in the Bible and of the goals of exegesis.

He traces this drift by examining selected interpreters of John 3 from Aquinas, whom he arrestingly describes as the last great patristic-medieval biblical commentator, through Nicholas of Lyra and Erasmus, to Raymond Brown. By the twentieth century, historical interpretation of the text has been severed from theological consideration. Brown is an advocate of sensus plenior, but he doesn’t see it as part of exegesis strictly speaking, and in his later work he hands it over to the theologian rather than to the exegete. Levering neatly summarizes the rift between theology and exegesis by noting that neither Scotus nor Ockham wrote commentaries, leaving the task to mystics.

A “participatory” understanding of history, by contrast, recognizes that history is an “ongoing participation in God’s active providence.” To understand history, it’s necessary to consider its “vertical” as well as its “horizontal” dimensions. The implications for exegesis are obvious. If history is purely human, then a nontheological interpretation of the historical record suffices. If, however, “history” is humanity’s participation in God’s providence, then “history” includes robustly theological/metaphysical events and realities, such as creation, the call of Abraham, exodus, exile, return, incarnation, Pentecost, and the ongoing participation in Christ that is the Church. History writing is a record of divine interventions, and if this is history, then a “historical” interpretation of Scripture has to reckon with theological and metaphysical realities.
At times it appears that theological exegesis should be “added” to historical-critical endeavors, leaving the latter modes of exegesis more or less in place. Yet that is at odds with much of what Levering writes. Taken in a stronger sense, Levering is arguing that historical-critical exegesis is simply illegitimate, since the object of its study—immanent history—doesn’t exist. Historical-critical tools, forged precisely to exclude participatory history, need to be retooled in fundamental ways, and all the energy and resources devoted to that centuries-long project should be redirected toward faith-driven theological exegesis. This is what Levering seems to intend, but if so, his proposal is broader than he indicates, because history didn’t stop being “participatory” after the canon of Scripture closed. Should modern historical scholarship as such be abandoned in favor of “theological history”? And what about the other social sciences: If history is participatory, can sociology be anything but “theological sociology”? Aren’t there “vertical” as well as “horizontal” dimensions to economies and polities? A strong Levering thesis sounds quite radically orthodox.

Though centrally concerned with history, Levering also uses “participation” to describe various facets of the practice of biblical interpretation. The goal of studying Scripture is sapiential rather than strictly scientific. Theological interpretation seeks transforming communion with God the Teacher. Biblical exegesis is not interpretation of a dead “text” but a living communion in which the words of Scripture mediate God’s transforming, saving presence. Interpreters should engage in specific “participatory” practices, by which they participate in the Christological and pneumatological realities they study in Scripture. The object of investigation—God’s providential history—is not “out there”; interpreters participate in the reality they study.

To summarize, Leithart/Levering are saying that history is not an objective reality which one seeks to uncover through research, but is created by the observer in accordance with his/her faith commitment. So history bears out Christian truth when you study history from the standpoint that Christianity is true. Is there any clearer way to say it? If this is not a refutation of objective truth, I don't know what is. And I dare anyone to point out to me how this differs in any qualitative way from Post Modernist circularity.

The second article, by Matthew J. Milliner, chronicles the despair of religious academicians over the state of higher education:
There is reason, however, to think this is not the whole story. Were the sixties really a golden age when the humanities were “liberated from religion but not yet subordinated to science and specialization”? The statement caused me to wonder. Might there be a connection between such “liberation” and any subsequent subordination? Furthermore, should the collapse of the humanities, wrenched from any transcendent horizon, come as any kind of surprise? The New Criterion leaves the religious aspect of the academic crisis unexplored, the very perspective that provides a measure of hope. There is a new openness in academia to matters religious, and though frequently artificial and always inconsistent, I find in it cause for excitement rather than despair.

I quoted this paragraph because it highlights a point of overlap between the secular/post modernist and religious/pre modernist academy. Each feels aggrieved by science. Each thinks that science undermines their philosophical commitments and tramples on their authoritarial turf. Each, in their own way, is opposed to some notion of objective truth that science represents.

If the academy is destined to be won by one of these schools, then I'd say that we may as well just close them down. The public is not well served by either of them. Keep the schools of science, engineering and medicine, the useful ones, and scrap the rest. The theological and post-modern schools are really just different strains of literary culture, and until someone can demonstrate to me literature's utility function, then I'd say that they are both just glorified book clubs. Forms of recreation and entertainment.

I recalled a recent hard-hitting article by the Reformation historian Brad Gregory in an academic journal that finally calls “secular confessional history” to task. Gregory mandates a “thick description,” thicker than the kind famously proposed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz. He unearths the materialist assumptions that unconsciously inform so many of his colleagues and makes a compelling case that historians need to “proceed as if the religious beliefs of their subjects might be true.” Examples of such an “open” methodology, at least in my field of medieval history, are not difficult to find. Thinking along the same lines as Gregory, University of Chicago professor (and recent Guggenheim award recipient) Rachel Fulton writes that medieval historians must “explain what it means to have faith and thus to act in the conviction that there is a reality other than that which may be ‘objectively’ perceived.” Her historiographical approach is nothing less than a declaration of independence from postmodern skepticism. Barbara Newman, a medieval historian at Northwestern, goes even further. She represents a new generation of feminist historians, ones unafraid to trample tired orthodoxies. Thus her rather striking declaration: “It was not because of their commitment to feminism, self-empowerment, subversion, sexuality, or ‘the body’ that [medieval woman] struggled and won their voices; it was because of their commitment to God.”

Or consider art historian Jeffrey Hamburger, who recently called for a reconsideration of neglected theological sources in medieval art history. “The critique of theology,” Hamburger wryly suggests, “must itself be deconstructed.” A keen sensitivity to theology is a mark of all of Hamburger’s scholarship. He takes pains to show that, when pitted against theory, theology–long a domain of sophisticated, multivalent textual engagement–can more than hold its own. Hamburger’s rhetoric is all the more interesting considering his position. Tenured at Harvard, his is not exactly a voice from the margins.

Does anyone else see the irony of these religious academicians adopting/coopting the tropes of their post-modern antagonists? So medieval women "won their voices?" What does that even mean? But they've learned to mimic the most important tactic of their opponents. Get students to drink the Koolaid first, then set about to teach them. Don't try to prove or persuade students that Christian religious dogma is true. Make them assume it is true from the outset, and then teach the humanities in a manner that is slanted to that dogma.

A pox on both houses!

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Environmentalism is a luxury

Along with nerves and bank accounts, the environmental movement is due for a shock over the dawning reality of continued oil shortages. Robert Tracinski documents the sudden reality check that the Left is experiencing, most recently with the failure of a Senate cap and trade bill sponsored by democrats:
Since the Florida primary, when John McCain decisively pulled ahead and became the presumptive Republican nominee, I have argued
that the passage of some kind of "cap-and-trade" energy rationing scheme is inevitable. Since both McCain and Obama are firm supporters of cap-and-trade, we know that when Congress convenes next year, the new president will ask it to pass the legislation.

But it turns out that cap-and-trade, like Hillary Clinton, might not be inevitable after all.

A few weeks ago, the Senate refused to allow a version of cap-and-trade to come to a vote. The legislation was not expected to overcome a presidential veto, but the vote was supposed to serve as a show of strength by cap-and-trade advocates. The show of strength wasn't very strong. Only 48 senators voted to allow the bill to proceed, far short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster. Even that number is deceptively high, because ten of the 48 votes were cast by Democrats who oppose cap-and-trade. They flipped their votes only after they knew the legislation would not go forward, in order to save the Democratic leadership from the embarrassment of having the bill fail by a 46-38 vote against it.

Since then, while legislative momentum has stalled on passing "cap-and-trade," momentum is growing to lift restrictions on offshore oil drilling and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The policy now being advocated by many politicians, including McCain, is the exact opposite of cap-and-trade: drill-and-burn.

It seems that the first time Americans begin to experience anything like the economic consequences of global warming regulations -- $4-per-gallon gasoline is just a down payment on the green agenda -- they begin to have second thoughts about whether they really want to reduce their carbon footprints.

Can it really be that easy to defeat cap-and-trade-just to point out, "Hey, this will raise the price of gasoline"? Why does this argument work?

Invoking high gasoline prices works, not just because of the immediate pain it inflicts on politicians' constituents, but because it exploits a fundamental contradiction at the foundation of the current "green" fad.

The contradiction behind the green lifestyle fad is the idea that we can reject industrial civilization -- and the fuel that powers it -- while still enjoying a modern, prosperous, "First World" standard of living.


If John McCain were a smart politician, and I've yet to be convinced that he is, he would reverse himself on cap and trade just as he has done on offshore oil drilling, leaving Obama and the Democrats to explain to their working class constituents why they have to bear the crushing burden of skyrocketing fuel bills in order to preserve the scenic ocean vistas and ecological values of globetrotting Democratic elites. The cracks in the environmental movement are beginning to show. Even in tourist worshipping Florida, the middle class is getting tired of offshore drilling bans.

It will be preciously ironic if, in the moment of their seeming ascendance into political hegemony, the Democrats are undone by a revolt of the working class masses that cedes ultimate political victory to a new breed of political animal, the WalMart Republican.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Who's afraid of the Daily Kos?

Kos indulges in conservative bashing and some delusional bravado when it comes to the practice of political fearmongering:
The conservative mind
by kos
Fri Jun 27, 2008 at 10:05:31 AM PDT



They do live in a state of fear, and what's more, they want everyone else to join them hiding under their bed, in their pool of urine.

Oh, they'll talk tough. They'll bluster and pound their chests like the neanderthals they are.

But inside, they are scared little children, terrified of the world, of people not like them, of change.

And they can't fathom any other way to live.

So Liberals have nothing to fear. Except..

1. Intrusive phone taps by shadowy, overzealous intelligence operatives.
2. Being shot by gun-crazed rednecks.
3. Being drafted and sent to fight an imperial war.
4. Being brought before an inquisition perpetrated by Christian theocrats.
5. Being drowned by rising ocean levels.
6. Legalized rape.
7. Rampant violence against Muslims, homosexuals and people of color in the wake of government conspiracies disguised as terrorist attacks.
8. Government internment camps for people who are different or who speak truth to power.

Don't buy any of Kos' bravado and bluster. Politics is always about fear-mongering, and there is nothing wrong with that. People are motivated by fear, as well they should be. When we think we have nothing to fear, as we did for a short period in the 1990s, we are most at risk.

The right politics are those that identify the right things to fear. People are generally pretty bad at identifying risks. Many times we fear the wrong things, but we are more at risk for not fearing the right things. Global Warming may or may not be caused by greenhouse gas emissions, or may or may not be even happening on a sustained, long term basis. But the risk of a catastrophic worldwide depression brought on by a too rigid policy of capping carbon dioxide emissions is a very real threat.

The next four years and the choices we will make in the areas of economic, energy and foreign policy will be very decisive for our long term prosperity and security. I just hope the leaders we elect this year are fearful enough about the right things.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Dialog of the Deaf

The June 14th issue of The Economist carried a fairly lengthy article about interfaith dialog, When Religions Talk (registration required).

Even by The Economist standards, there was a fair amount of throat clearing before sidling up to the apparent issue at hand:
[At] almost all these gatherings, there are some huge subjects that participants either do or don't mention... One is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ...

All the while ignoring the real crux of the problem. By definition, religions assert mutually exclusive metaphysical claims; otherwise, there would be no reason for their distinct existence.

One would think, when faced with this Gordian knot of contradictions, that participants in these gabfests -- torture tests for even titanium Random Noun Generators -- would come away with far more humility, and without any certainty.

Far from it, particularly for those whose metaphysical claims lean towards the Islamic, who insist upon curbing anything offensive to Muslim sensibilities.

Irony meters around the world hit their pegs.

Of the three Abrahamic faiths, none of which look particularly good in this regard, Islam is the most virulent when it comes to non-, or other-, believers. One can start with the admonition to kill all disbelievers* wherever they might be found, and march from there with a goodly distance remaining before exhausting all Islams (other) faith offending contents.

If these interfaith dialogs had any value, they would yield the conclusion so obvious that one wonders why anyone need leave their recliner to grasp it: your religion is every bit as false as all the others.

Fat chance.

* Update: David pointed out there is no admonition in the Quran to kill all Jews. Since I was unable to find the quote, I have corrected the original sentence.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

We flirt with Pollyanna, but we always go home to Cassandra

Phil Bowermaster decries our evolutionarily developed apprehension of future tragedy:


That's all fine and dandy, except that I don't think that our hunter/gatherer forbears had any meaningful concept of the future beyond the cycling of the seasons. Likewise, if the earliest religious traditions are a good judge of early man's proto-philosophy of time, then their concept of the distant future as well was cyclical, although that might be too colored by the impact of agricultural development, which required some planning beyond the current season's harvest. So I doubt that our most primitive forbears had any meaningful fears or hopes for the future.

The idea that the future might be drastically different than the present is a recent phenomenon, historically speaking. The pace of technological change has historically been so slow as to be considered nonexistent, from the perceptual viewpoint of any historical observer. Because of that I would have to conclude that our negative view of future change must be due to the fact that we are living in an environment, rapid social and technological change, that we are not evolutionarily adapted to. We're out of our league, and we know it.

But that is not Bowermaster's chief error in this essay. This is:



This is just so silly on so many levels. For starters, if Bowermaster thinks future fears are increasing in intensity, then he just doesn't know that much about history. Compare today's angst against the end of days panic that gripped the Jewish nation in the first century. How many people that you know are joining end of world cults, renouncing sex and liquidating their 401k programs to be free of earthly possessions in time for the Apocalypse?

I have been known to take Cassandras to task on this blog, especially those of the "worship of suffering" persuasion. But I've never advocated suspending all skepticism of a rosy future. Long time Duckians/Juddians will remember my epic battles with the forces of rosy optimism regarding the prices of oil, gold and commodities and the fates of the dollar and real estate, on which I was prescient but, I am sad to report, insufficiently pessimistic. To argue that such skepticism is akin to racism in its promulgation of human injustice and suffering is beyond bizarre. It's bad enough that the meaning of racism has expanded beyond its rightful bounds to encompass anything and everything that offends anyone in an officially designated "aggrieved" ethnic group without trying to expand it to modes of thought that don't even have a tangential relationship to race.

Bowermaster misses one very important psychological insight when formulating his curse on pessimism: the notion that our happiness is related to the the level of beneficence in the outcomes we experience in relation to our expectations for beneficial outcomes. Lowered expectations for future success and happiness is actually a way to improve the odds for future happiness. So if anything Bowermaster's advice is counterproductive to human happiness. Does that make him the moral equivalent of a racist?

He also ignores the empirical studies which find that happiness is largely genetic, not circumstantial. So if you can't get happiness genes, take happiness pills, and don't mind the hecklers.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Screwy Theist Tricks

For those of my readers who have ever had the patience to slog through C.S. Lewis's smarmy and tedious attempt to smear the non-believer, The Screwtape Letters, I offer you a glimpse at a paler and far more nauseatingly smarmy imitation, "The Loser Letters", now running at the National Review Online. Mary Eberstadt, the author, apparently thinks atheists are all young males experimenting with disbelief as a way to pick up girls or to fit in with the cool crowd. The letters are written from the point of view of a stereotypical "bright" bemoaning the lack of success in spreading the atheist gospel. This one excruciating example should be convincing enough to save you the ordeal of reading the whole thing:
Dear Major Atheist Author BFFs,

I just LOVE calling You that! Is it okay with You if I do? The Director said it was fine with him, because he knows that the “B” means “Best” and the “F’s” mean “Friends Forever” (and not the You-know-what word, which as You know is verboten in here!). So before going into one more Letter that I hope will help this new atheism of ours get off the ground, let this convert to godlessness tell You just how much You’re all my BFFs, and why it’s so important that You are.

One, I hope Everybody gets that just because I use “BFF” in the plural doesn’t mean I’m taking any one of you for my BFF in particular. This is important! I don’t want, say, Mr. Christopher Hitchens to feel excluded because He thinks I’m talking about, say, Mr. Daniel Dennett as my particular BFF.

If you were able to read that passage without regurgitating your breakfast, then you may be able to handle the whole article. There are others in the series located on the NRO site somewhere. This letter bemoans the damage that is being done to the atheist cause by all the high profile defections to the other side, notably in recent years by the renowned scientist and infamous former atheist Anthony Flew.

Flew's "conversion" is a much overrated victory for the theist side. In this interview with Gary Habermas he explicitly states that he is more akin to a Deist, and that he has not accepted special revelation or any of the tenets of Judaism or Christianity, including the idea of an afterlife:
HABERMAS: Given your theism, what about mind-body issues?

FLEW: I think those who want to speak about an afterlife have got to meet the difficulty of formulating a concept of an incorporeal person. Here I have again to refer back to my year as a graduate student supervised by Gilbert Ryle, in the year in which he published The Concept of Mind.

At that time there was considerable comment, usually hostile, in the serious British press, on what was called “Oxford Linguistic Philosophy.” The objection was usually that this involved a trivialization of a very profound and important discipline.

I was by this moved to give a talk to the Philosophy Postgraduates Club under the title “Matter which Matters.” In it I argued that, so far from ignoring what Immanuel Kant described as the three great problems of philosophers—God, Freedom and Immortality—the linguistic approach promised substantial progress towards their solution.

I myself always intended to make contributions in all those three areas. Indeed my first philosophical publication was relevant to the third. (18) Indeed it was not very long after I got my first job as a professional philosopher that I confessed to Ryle that if ever I was asked to deliver the Gifford Lectures I would give them under the title The Logic of Mortality. (19) They were an extensive argument to the conclusion that it is simply impossible to create a concept of an incorporeal spirit.

But these are the kinds of small victories that Christianity has to be satisfied with nowadays, it seems.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Reverends for choice, against God

A recent study has apparently conclusively found there are distinct brain structure and activity similarities between lesbians and straight men, as well as gay men and straight women.

The most likely explanation is gender incorrect exposure to androgens during gestation.

Which makes medical intervention to ensure straight sexual orientation is an eventual possibility.

In response, a couple clergymen recommended doing just that:
Last year, the Rev. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote: "If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use." Mohler told the Associated Press that morally, this would be no different from curing fetal blindness or any other "medical problem." The Rev. Joseph Fessio, editor of the press that publishes the pope's work, agreed: "Same-sex activity is considered disordered. If there are ways of detecting diseases or disorders of children in the womb … that respected the dignity of the child and mother, it would be a wonderful advancement of science."

"Same sex activity is considered disordered ..." Hmmm.

As ever, beware the passive voice. By whom is it considered disordered? If God, then that is surpassing odd, since God has created the disorder in the first place, in order for men to punish it in the second.

On the other hand, if it is considered disordered by humans, then isn't just that little but hubristic to be messing with God's plan?

Never mind, of course, that religion has long treated homosexuality as a moral phenomena, when it turns out to have been nothing of the sort.

Finding an in utero treatment to prevent homosexuality is indeed a great advancement for science. But, unmentioned by the august theologians, this makes a mockery of yet another religious moral claim.

Also, one suspects this will gather no congratulations from the LGBTs among us.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Okay, It's not the Odyssey, but still ...

The not-so-little man and I just returned from a five day/50 mile canoe trip with his Boy Scout troop in the Kenai National Wilderness. Despite weather that wasn't always pleasant -- a couple days had more or less continuous rain -- and 16 portages, Eric was a real trooper every inch of the way. He handled everything without the tiniest dent in his sense of humor, never mind actually whining. Speaking of portages, a couple were roughly a mile. Actually, a mile portage is three miles: one transit with the canoe, another with the pack, and the return trip in between. Despite being one of the youngest guys on the trip, with a body weight to payload ratio much less favorable than the bigger guys, he powered through them all.

To put it briefly, I am very proud of him.

This link (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2001132) will take you to a map I made of the trip. Here is a screen grab:

The only real downside was in the area of the Moose River, the last two days of the trip. The flat, swampy area around the river meant mosquitos in the kind of swarms nightmares are made of. Thank goodness for DEET.

Here are some pictures:

Eric after his first portage

All in all, there are worse things

The troop leader arranged for a surprise airdrop on the third evening. The rainbow came at no additional charge.

The package contained individually wrapped filet mignon and fresh corn-on-the-cob.

Approaching the end, the scouts broke out the troop and American flags. Eric, unwittingly, is doing a credible George Washington imitation.

Being new to all this, I mostly kept to the background during the trip. However, at this point, I used my fighter pilot experience to cajole the guys and their 11 canoes into a tolerable semblance of a V-formation. Guess which boat I am in.

Absent a short backpacking trip last month, this was my first real experience with both living in the wilderness -- we didn't see anyone other than ourselves until midway through the last day -- and the Boy Scouts.

Regarding wilderness living, I can do with, or without, it. It is a unique experience to get that far off the beaten path, but getting through the daily necessaries takes a whole bloody lot of effort.

The experience the 17 boys got, though, was incredible. Never mind getting to do things most boys scarcely dream of, the whole approach is aimed at building leadership skills. The troop leader issued the bare minimum of instructions (e.g., we are getting up at 0730, and want to be in the boats by 1000). The four adults then stepped back and left the boys, divided into four teams with one overall leader, to their own devices, with a critique after all was said and done. They got to make mistakes, and we were there to keep things from getting out of hand.

At the risk of having the NOW emergency response team show up at my front door with pastel truncheons, the trip made strikingly clear ineradicable differences between boys and girls.

Last month a friend of mine helped lead his daughter's Girl Scout troop on a two-day canoe trip along the Colorado river along the Arizona-California border. He said it was one of the worst experiences of his life. Most of the girls never figured out how to keep the canoes pointed in remotely the proper direction. The days were rife with crying, backbiting, and hysterics. And that was before putting up with camping overnight.

In contrast, over half the boys had never canoed. Yet, despite that, nearly all of them figured out in short order, and with scarcely any instruction, how to stop being headless vectors -- all speed and no direction. With the exception of a couple boys, they quickly cohered into teams: the pack instinct is far greater among boys.

Most strikingly, perhaps, is the difference in accountability. None of the girls really cared whether they could paddle a canoe, or work effectively towards a common goal. Kind of like a dog walking on its hind legs: the point isn't that the dog walks badly, but rather that it walks at all.

Among the boys, though, it was very different. The guys who couldn't figure out how to paddle a canoe, or didn't pull their weight in camp (the same boys in both cases), while not tormented in any way, were clearly viewed as not having the right stuff. One could sense that life just isn't going to go as well for them.

More sadly, it was all too easy to imagine the gulf between these boys and the vast majority of African-American children. Here there were boys whose parents -- emphasis on the plural -- cared enough to get them into Scouting, and enough dads willing to make the trip possible by being there.

The contrast with most African-American boys could scarcely be more stark. And that is before addled city councils prove once again, as if further proof is needed, that "progressive" is the long way to spell "idiocy".

Comparing the boys' obvious joy parading their flags that last mile with fatherless children in the 'hood, who may not see in their whole lives the kind of fatherly guidance the Scouts took for granted in five days was one step of analysis I could have done without.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Geek Chic

Rock & Roll unleashed the primal, the sensual and the animalistic impulses of raw male energy into popular culture. By the 1970s, amid the excesses that followed in rock's wake - disco, funk and country/rock fusion, a small countertrend representing all that rock opposed - emotional repression, control, precision - found expression in the realm of electronic music. The geek finally found his niche in the music scene. Groups like Devo and the Talking Heads explored the appeal of the anti hunk - the awkward, thin, stunted, spastic beta male who found his escape from the demands of the wide open mating rituals of the era in the realms of science fiction and technology.

But before these groups was the trailblazing band from Germany named Kraftwerk, and the song that exemplified the new brand was "We are the Robots" from 1978.

Sunday, June 08, 2008

The Great Seduction

It's becoming ever more apparent that Barack Obama is exerting a pull on the electorate that goes beyond the normal affinities of partisan interest group politics. He is becoming an object of worship, not so much persuading followers as seducing them. How else to explain this essay by SF Gate columnist Mark Morford?

Is Obama an enlightened being?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, June 6, 2008


I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.


Ready? It goes likes this:














Not this time.

Karmic antennae? I admit that I have none, but my bulls**t detector works just fine. And who are these "spiritual wise ones"? Names please! I want to check references.

If you thought the Republicans owned faith based politics, then you haven't seen nuthin yet. If Morford is any indication (I know, he's from San Francisco, which isn't a very good place to find indications of the sensible middle), then Obama's presidency will ooze faith like you haven't seen before. And I do mean ooze. Mike Huckabee's treacly video Christmas Card may have spiked your blood sugar, but Morford's New Age slather threatens to bring on full blown type II diabetes. Can you imagine four years of listening to Obama love talk from such an adoring press corps?

If he isn't outright seducing them, Obama is at least convincing members of the press of his inevitability, such as with this missive from Bryan Appleyard's Thought Experiments:

Some of us take our cues from "spiritual wise ones", others from Rupert Murdoch. Some of us flip coins or read tea leaves. None of the standard indicators have worked at all this year, so I don't put much faith in anyone's prediction of inevitability.

There may be rational reasons to vote for Obama, especially if his politics align with yours. But I get the feeling that even for his natural ideological constituents Obama's appeal is emotional and irrational. Equally irrational is this impulse to concede to Obama's mighty inevitability, whether one wants to see him elected or not. A week earlier Bryan blogged about the unknowable future and also published his essay on Nassim Nicholas Taleb in the Times Online, who makes the point in his book "The Black Swan" that uncertainty and randomness rules the world in spite of the misguided forecasts of the expert classes.

Perhaps with the increase of uncertainty in the past four years, with the unexpected (by the experts) rise in the price of oil, and the unseen (by the experts) collapse of the housing market people are willing to embrace someone who is brimming with self confidence and hope just to feel certain, for once. The wish for certainty is a powerful, seductive force, as Andrew Sullivan explains in Time magazine. We have a charismatic, attractive man selling certainty, why not give in to him? You know you want to. Things can't get worse.

Can they?

Update: The seduction meme has run far and wide in the pundit sphere. Elizabeth Scalia finds the perfect metaphor for Obama - the Trophy Wife:





Saturday, June 07, 2008

Stuff you can't make up

Here are two words that I never thought would be combined to describe something - bathtub cheese:


Demand for Hispanic cheeses has skyrocketed in California, where 108 million pounds of legal, properly pasteurized queso fresco and other cheeses were produced last year, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

Last year, Moser was concerned enough about dangerous, illegal varieties to launch a public health campaign that included ads on Spanish-language television stations and new brochures that warned families to beware of infected cheese.

Officials seize illegal cheese

Agriculture officials have been cracking down on illegally produced cheese, including more than 375 pounds of so-called “bathtub cheese” seized from an open-air market in San Bernardino last year, according to Steve Lyle, the agency’s director of public affairs. Such cheeses have been found to be colonized with salmonella, listeria, E. coli and M. Bovis TB.

At least they know enough to brand it under a more appealing name - "Queso Fresco". I guess "Queso de Bano" doesn't "cut" it. Bathtub Cheese sounds like something you'd find collecting in the tub's drain trap.

Don't Mexican Americans have enough problems with the legal system to not compound them by smuggling illegal cheese into the country? How good can this cheese be? Does it get you high? It would have to be really good cheese.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Solutions Without Problems













Wow, what a breakthrough!


