Opponents chanted “No mosque, no way!” and carried signs reading, “9-11-01: Never Forget,” as Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” blared over loudspeakers.
Yes, Clemons’ deceits and trespasses are worse than anyone expected–we don’t needn’t run through the entire litany of his chest-thumping professions of innocence and marital infidelities–but putting him behind bars, what good will that do? Apart from giving journalists malicious delight and talk-radio sports jocks another opportunity to roll out their prison-rape jokes, the inevitable references to the hulking cellmate who’s usually given a black name, har har. Whatever the outcome of his trial, Clemons is hardly some menace to society, and I hate the punitive zeal that animates so much of the media and the online inferno, that girds so much of American society. We lock up too many people as it is, our incarceration rate a national shame and a global disgrace.
Look, I understand how “recent events”—ahem—might cause anyone to hand in their walking papers. Droves of people all over the world are doing just that because if you are a baptized Catholic, your name is still counted in the figures. People who are P.O.’d about Holy Mother Church’s complicity in the global rape of children are filling out convenient online forms and getting themselves counted out, officially. I have been tempted to do so myself.But too many people lately seem to have forgotten the spookily great and possibly “cool” parts of Catholicism. I’m a big fan of saints, miracles and devotions. My late-night reading tends towards such subjects as incorruptible corpses and ex-nuns whose struggles seem to mirror my own. I own (and enjoy) many volumes of Lives of the Saints, who tend to meet their ends in rather unfortunate ways, but joyfully. I stumbled upon a copy of The Secret of the Rosary at a church library sale, and by the end of the book I was thinking, St. Louis de Montfort, you’ve made a believer out of this lady. I’ve become a card-carrying member of the Confraternity of the Rosary; I wear a sparkly Miraculous Medal; I carry (and use) a custom-made rosary in my purse.I’ve been to church more in the past year than I have since leaving for college. I’m not just taking Pascal’s gamble—well, not solely. The church’s recent troubles (along with my own) actually seem to draw me closer. I suppose I like losing propositions. I root for underdogs, usher live insects outside, snatch mice from the jaws of my cats and set them free.
You may not want to know this – and it would be sensible to wait until after breakfast before reading any further – but, apparently, lots of German men nowadays routinely sit down to pee… Stand-up men, let it simply be said, are messier than their seated brethren – and almost never bother to clean up. In some German homes, little notices are tacked to the underside of the toilet seat so that seat-raising males are reminded to consider their options.
Isn’t it time we stopped wasting valuable land on cemeteries? Talk about an idea whose time has passed. “Let’s put all the dead people in boxes and keep them in one part of town.” What kind of medieval bullshit is that? I say, plow these motherfuckers up and throw them away. Or melt them down. We need that phosphorous for farming. If we’re going to recycle, let’s get serious.
— George Carlin
I’ve always expressed a wish to be cremated when I die, but I’m open to persuasion that green burial is the way to go:
But hardcore green burial devotees like Mary are not particularly fond of cremation because of the energy costs involved in incinerating the bodies and the pollution it creates. You could drive across the country and halfway back on the energy used to cremate someone. And mercury from dental fillings released into the air with incineration adds up to somewhere between 1,000 and 7,800 pounds of mercury, a quarter of it floating back to earth. Greensprings would rather have your body — your whole body — going back into the earth.
Plus, there’s a whole lot more romance and poetry in the whole imagery of burial and the grave. An urn full of ash just doesn’t quite fire the imagination in the same way, does it? In any event, having already specified exactly how I want to go about shuffling off this mortal coil, let me take a moment to further address the ritual corpse disposal issue. I like Richard Grant’s idea in American Nomads, where he tells his wife that he wants to just be left in the desert when he dies:
“If you can fix it, let me die somewhere in the desert. I hate the idea of dying in the hospital, and I don’t want to end up in a cemetery. Terrible waste of calories. Just leave me out in the desert to get recycled.”
“That’s illegal,” she says, which I hadn’t realized. “But okay.”
The coyotes break the silence from time to time, yammering and howling in the distance, somewhere down in the canyons. I might feel differently when the moment is at hand, but it doesn’t sound like a bad fate right now – to fuel the wanderings of these splendid animals, and the flight of vultures, and get picked clean by ants, and then to enter the bodies of ant-eating lizards and lizard-eating birds and coyotes, while my bones crumble into the soil and nourish a cactus or a juniper tree. It’s enough reincarnation for me.
I’m partial to the mountains on the East Coast myself, but the sentiment is the same. I trust that one of you can make sure that happens if need be.
In an excellent essay on the often-underappreciated value of friendship and the high estimation intellectuals have placed on it throughout the centuries, Daniel Akst works in references to Asimov, Aristotle, Emerson, Thoreau, Byron, Freud, Cicero, Goethe, Bacon, Montaigne, Wordsworth, the Beatles and Tony Soprano, just to name a baker’s dozen, but somehow manages to ignore Epicurus! As Ebonmuse once summarized it:
Epicureanism put the emphasis on pleasure, not as mindless hedonism but as reasonable indulgence in the good things available in life. Valuing intellectual pleasure more highly than sensual pleasure, it recommends the cultivation of friendship, an ethic of simplicity, and an attitude of tranquility in the face of life’s trials. Ironically, “epicure” in popular parlance has come to refer to a connoisseur of food and drink, which Epicurus arguably considered the least important of life’s pleasures.
Nearly one in five people, or 18 percent, said they think Obama is Muslim, up from the 11 percent who said so in March 2009, according to a poll released Thursday. The proportion who correctly say he is a Christian is down to just 34 percent.
Probing a more universal measure of knowledge, Gallup also asked the following basic science question, which has been used to indicate the level of public knowledge in two European countries in recent years: “As far as you know, does the earth revolve around the sun or does the sun revolve around the earth?” In the new poll, about four out of five Americans (79%) correctly respond that the earth revolves around the sun, while 18% say it is the other way around. These results are comparable to those found in Germany when a similar question was asked there in 1996; in response to that poll, 74% of Germans gave the correct answer, while 16% thought the sun revolved around the earth, and 10% said they didn’t know. When the question was asked in Great Britain that same year, 67% answered correctly, 19% answered incorrectly, and 14% didn’t know.
65% couldn’t describe the basic facts about Watergate56% think in war, the media should support the government over questioning it48% say the news media acted responsibly during the Clinton Wars45% characterized Watergate was “just politics”43% attended religious services in the previous 7 days40% believe the media was biased in favor of Bill Clinton35% say the government should not fund stem cell research34% think Rock and Roll has had an overall negative impact on America33% believe a wife should “submit herself graciously” to a husband30% say the Bible is the “actual word of God” to be taken literally29% think people will be “more likely” to afford college for their kids in 202028% disapprove of labor unions on principle28% say the government should have the right to control news reports27% believe divorce is “morally wrong”26% thought various disasters in 1999 might “foreshadow the wrath of God”26% think grade-school teachers should be allowed to spank their kids24% describe themselves as interested in what celebrities think21% told a pollster they’d never met that they had cheated in a relationship21% say justice was served in the O.J. Simpson case20% approve of the how the Catholic Church handles pedophilia20% believe that the killing of civilians in Vietnam was “relatively rare”15% were upset at Diana Spencer’s death like “someone you knew”12% think the United States should have a British-style royal family11% stockpiled food and water in advance of Y2K11% think “Titanic” was the best American movie of the 20th century11% would like “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” as their personal physician10% would eat a rat or an insect on a “reality” TV show10% think it’s advantageous to be a woman in American society10% believe Oswald acted alone10% say they are “very likely” to become rich someday8% could not name a single TV network8% fear they are “very likely” to be shot or badly hurt by a stranger7% think Elvis is possibly still alive6% say Garth Brooks is the best male singer of the 20th century5% are ?very afraid? of thunder and lightning5% would be “more likely” to buy food labeled as genetically modified3% wanted to see the questions on “Millionaire” become less difficult
So, we’ve recently learned that printed books and blogs are both dead. Anything else? Any more traditions or trends on their way — oh, what’s that, Wired magazine? Gasp! The web itself is dead? Goddamn! How can it— ? What the— ? I just saw it yesterday, and…*sniff*…and…oh gods, we were just talking about how we had finally gotten to a good place and there was still so much to look forward to! *Sob*
I hereby proclaim the death of fatuous, sensationalist proclamations of death from hipsters who can’t be bothered to differentiate between hyperbole and analysis. Let the word go forth.
Noted without comment. Chalmers Johnson:
Thirty-five years from now, America’s official century of being top dog (1945-2045) will have come to an end; its time may, in fact, be running out right now. We are likely to begin to look ever more like a giant version of England at the end of its imperial run, as we come face-to-face with, if not necessarily to terms with, our aging infrastructure, declining international clout, and sagging economy. It may, for all we know, still be Hollywood’s century decades from now, and so we may still make waves on the cultural scene, just as Britain did in the 1960s with the Beatles and Twiggy. Tourists will undoubtedly still visit some of our natural wonders and perhaps a few of our less scruffy cities, partly because the dollar-exchange rate is likely to be in their favor.If, however, we were to dismantle our empire of military bases and redirect our economy toward productive, instead of destructive, industries; if we maintained our volunteer armed forces primarily to defend our own shores (and perhaps to be used at the behest of the United Nations); if we began to invest in our infrastructure, education, health care, and savings, then we might have a chance to reinvent ourselves as a productive, normal nation. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening. Peering into that foggy future, I simply can’t imagine the U.S. dismantling its empire voluntarily, which doesn’t mean that, like all sets of imperial garrisons, our bases won’t go someday.Instead, I foresee the U.S. drifting along, much as the Obama administration seems to be drifting along in the war in Afghanistan. The common talk among economists today is that high unemployment may linger for another decade. Add in low investment and depressed spending (except perhaps by the government) and I fear T.S. Eliot had it right when he wrote: “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”
What’s good about both the Stanford study and the durability of even not-so-cool sites like eHarmony is that being proactive about connection is no longer viewed as unromantic or loserish. Somewhere along the line, enough friends and friends-of-friends started meeting cool people and even falling in love to make the “Let’s just say we met at the deli” cover story moot.But as eHarmony’s new campaign makes clear, love — or even a really good hookup — isn’t always a simple matter of what matches up perfectly on a survey. “What if you were loved for you?” it asks. What if? What if we had a way of finding people who share our interests and like our pictures, so we could be out dancing instead of sitting at home lonely? And what if, along with all the practicality and purposefulness and monthly fees the Internet brings, it turns out we still hope, in our hearts, for something approaching magic?
I have always been a great admirer of Isaiah Berlin, the Russian-Jewish-British political scientist who spent his life cautioning the West about the dangers of coercive systems such as that of the former Soviet Union. In his famous Oxford University inaugural lecture of 1958, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” Berlin defined “negative freedom” as freedom from; it is the freedom to do what the heck you please as long as you don’t infringe on anyone else. “Positive freedom,” on the other hand, is freedom to; it is the freedom of a directive ideal, one that holds up a vision of the good life (whatever that might be) and encourages–or forces–people to conform to that image. Going back to at least the 17th century, negative freedom is the Anglo-Saxon conception of what it means to be free; and as far as Berlin was concerned (as a good British subject–he became Sir Isaiah the year before his inaugural lecture), that was the only freedom around; the other variety, he believed, was inevitably dangerous. The only problem is, without a positive vision of the good life, the good society, what are we? How could we be anything else except a ship without a rudder? This, to me, is the Achilles heel in the Berlinian edifice, for negative freedom finally affirms nothing–as the example of contemporary America clearly demonstrates…
There is no doubt, of course, that “vision” can get out of hand; this was Isaiah Berlin’s whole point. But what Berlin failed to understand was that lack of vision can also get out of hand, as Harvey Mansfield makes abundantly clear.
I don’t think Berlin “failed to understand” that point; I think he simply accepted that we might not be able to hammer out any sort of consensus on what the good life is, how we can achieve it, or what we need to do and when we need to do it. Just like how it was understood early on that a functioning democracy required an informed and engaged citizenry, the possibility (or even likelihood) of failure was always part of the deal. The price of freedom and all that.
And of course, Berlin wasn’t merely focused on extreme examples like the former Soviet Union; his point was that when an Enlightenment-derived faith in the ability of reason and science starts to assume that social questions can be investigated and their answers determined with the same sort of accurate practical results that the natural sciences had demonstrated, a refusal or inability to get with the program in any way would eventually lead to some sort of oppression “for your own good”, since you were obviously too mentally ill or otherwise deviant to clearly see what you needed to do to fulfill your proper role in the scheme of things. It’s the same reason why Sam Harris’s latest endeavor has caused such a furious uproar.
Agreement on the nature of the “good life” and the means of living it is never going to be workable beyond small groups anyway, in my opinion; certainly not on the level of a modern nation-state. How could it?
I heard someone earlier ranting about how often you see obese people in Walmart riding around on those electric mobility scooters, sometimes even having the audacity to be buying groceries despite being fat enough already, and it got me thinking.
Reading Ross Douthat’s astoundingly feeble attempt to justify opposition to gay marriage only made me think of a passage from Nietzsche:
[O]ne lied, mendaciously inventing reasons for these laws, simply to avoid admitting that one had become used to these laws and no longer wanted things to be different. The same process occurs, and always has occurred, in every prevalent morality and religion: the reasons and purposes for habits are always lies that are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes. At this point the conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest: they add lies.
From the people who brought you this brilliance.
And introverts are better at thinking in their heads than on their feet. However, even if you contribute to advances in the sciences, technology, the arts, and the humanities, just being an introvert comes with a stigma. You may be passed up for a promotion because you don’t speak up more, or seen as a snob because you don’t attend a social event, or assumed to be depressed because you want to reflect rather than talk.Introversion and extraversion have long been seen as normal variations of personality, and there’s physiological evidence for these differences. Research shows that the brains of introverts are more active than those of extraverts. This explains why introverts limit how much comes in, while extraverts go where the action is.
When evening comes, I return to my home, and I go into my study; and on the threshold, I take off my everyday clothes, which are covered with mud and mire, and I put on regal and curial robes; and dressed in a more appropriate manner I enter into the ancient court, of ancient men and am welcomed by them kindly, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born and there I am not ashamed to speak to them, to ask them the reasons for their actions, and they, in their humanity, answer me; and for four hours I feel no boredom, I dismiss every affliction, I no longer fear poverty nor do I tremble at the thought of death; I become completely part of them.
As I settled down to read through the beginning of the propaganda campaign to bomb Iran, I said to myself, I said: “Self, how long will it take before we hear you-know-who invoked?”
In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people.
“In World War II, the Jews had no power to stop Hitler from annihilating us. Six million were slaughtered. Today, 6 million Jews live in Israel, and someone is threatening them with annihilation. But now we have the power to stop them. Bibi knows that this is the choice.”
“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs,” he said. “When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the world should start worrying, and that’s what is happening in Iran.”
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”
No sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons; or anyone. One obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East. The issue arose (again) at the NPT conference at United Nations headquarters in early May 2010. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.Washington still formally agrees, but insists that Israel be exempted — and has given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself. The time is not yet ripe for creating the zone, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated at the NPT conference, while Washington insisted that no proposal can be accepted that calls for Israel’s nuclear program to be placed under the auspices of the IAEA or that calls on signers of the NPT, specifically Washington, to release information about “Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.” Obama’s technique of evasion is to adopt Israel’s position that any such proposal must be conditional on a comprehensive peace settlement, which the US can delay indefinitely, as it has been doing for 35 years, with rare and temporary exceptions.At the same time, Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, asked foreign ministers of its 151 member states to share views on how to implement a resolution demanding that Israel “accede to” the NPT and throw its nuclear facilities open to IAEA oversight, AP reported.It is rarely noted that the US and UK have a special responsibility to work to establish a Middle East NWFZ. In attempting to provide a thin legal cover for their invasion of the Iraq in 2003, they appealed to Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), which called on Iraq to terminate its development of weapons of mass destruction. The US and UK claimed that they had not done so. We need not tarry on the excuse, but that Resolution commits its signers to move to establish a NWFZ in the Middle East.…One practical step in this direction is establishment of NWFZs. Another is to withdraw support for the nuclear programs of the three non-signers of the NPT. As often, rhetoric and actions are hardly aligned, in fact are in direct contradiction in this case, facts that pass with as little attention as most of what has just been briefly reviewed.Instead of taking practical steps towards reducing the truly dire threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the US is taking major steps towards reinforcing US control of the vital Middle East oil-producing regions, by violence if other means do not suffice.
