Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

To Be Truly Pro-Life…

Bush Hails Progress Toward ‘Culture of Life’ (washingtonpost.com): “President Bush told thousands of antiabortion marchers yesterday that his administration is making progress toward fostering a ‘culture of life’ by enacting measures that limit abortion and stem cell research while expanding the legal definition of life.”

That’s great. Really, it is. But it takes a whole lot more than limiting (or outlawing) abortion and stem cell research. You’ve got to provide free, easily obtainable contraceptives for EVERYONE who is old enough to reproduce. Teenagers should not need their parent’s permission in order to get contraceptives. Access to them is a natural right. If a kid is having sex and they don’t want to talk about it with their parents (which is pretty likely to be the case), then at least give them a way to easily, safely, and effectively prevent pregnancy!

Oh…and I suppose I ought to give at least one sentence to promotion of my favorite hobby-horse. To be truly pro-life is to honor all life. Not just American human lives, but all human lives. And not just human lives, but ALL life of every kind. To be truly pro-life is to oppose policies that are anti-life. War. Practices that harmful to the environment. And so on. That’s the only morally consistent way to go.

The Post article goes on: “”We’re also moving ahead in terms of medicine and research to make sure the gifts of science are consistent with our highest values of freedom, equality, family and human dignity,” Bush said. “We will not sanction the creation of life only to destroy it.”"

Yeah, he probably came up with that line over a lunch of fried chicken.

Hypocrite.

Live Free or Die!

Salon.com News | Long live secession!: “‘We are enmeshed in a global system of conquest and destruction in which Corporate America and the United States government manipulate and control the lives of millions of ostensibly free individuals,’ [secessionist Thomas Naylor] writes in his ‘Vermont Manifesto,’ published in 2003. ‘How many Americans are prepared to die to make the world safe for McDonald’s, Wal-Mart, 747s, gas-guzzling SUVs, the Internet, Bill Gates, and the rest of the Forbes 400 richest Americans?’”

Erm….well, maybe for the Internet. But not for any of those other things. The Internet, though, is one of the very best technological developments of the late 20th century. It’s brought people together in wonderful new ways. Information wants to be free–and the Internet helps that happen. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if not for the Internet. I truly believe that. It’s one of my very favorite means of communication and it’s provided me with knowledge that I might never have otherwise acquired–certainly it’s knowledge that couldn’t have been easily acquired. It’s brought me friendships with people I’ve never met in person. (My friend Bernie, who lives somewhere in Belgium, for example. Hi Bernie!) I’m smarter–and more politically active–because of the Internet. And it’s not just me who has benefited. This would be a fantastic time to be a kid. If I’d had access to the Internet when I was a kid…jeez…I can’t even begin to guess how much I’d have got out of it. It’d have been huge. I was a curious kind of child and spent a fair amount of time reading the encyclopedias we had at home. If we’d had the Internet, though… Wow! Fabulous wealth of information.

Anyway. Enough praise for the Internet.

Let’s talk about secession. Jeez, can you blame people for thinking about it? Or emigration. New Zealand, perhaps–they’ll take people as old as me and Mark–providing we’ve got skills they want. (And Mark does.) I’ve checked it out. It could be do-able.

It’s really disturbing–the direction the United States is headed. Almost half the people in this country believe “creationism” should be taught in the schools. They think homosexuals aren’t entitled to the same civil rights enjoyed by heterosexuals. They’re okay with gutting the environment if it means they can keep driving the mini-van. They think the war in Iraq is a good idea and that it’s making the US a safer place, for Pete’s sake!

I can’t explain that level of stupid. All I can do is rage against it–impotent rage, I suppose. Since secession is likely impossible and emigration would be…really complicated…all I can do is try to persuade people that there are better ways of handling things than what we’re doing now. The Internet–this blog–help me to do that. (I hope.)

So…secession. Do read this salon.com article. (As usual, if you’re not a salon premium member, you’ll need to view an ad before getting to the article.) The author, Christopher Ketcham, does a really fine job of it. He talks about the history of secessionist movements in the US, about Lincoln, about the constitutionality of secession. It’s all very interesting.

A final quote from the salon.com article:

“”Secession is not possible today without violence,” exclaims MIT’s [Pauline] Maier, the author of the acclaimed “American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence.” “To assume something different is mad. It’s to follow the example of the Southern secessionists who thought that they could just leave the union peacefully — and, nuttier still, get a part of the unsettled territory as a parting gift. It’s almost as crazy as the idea that once you topple a dictator, democracy happens, much as weeds appear on a plowed field. Isn’t it time that Americans began learning something from history? Or must we again bleed ourselves into wisdom?”"

Implicit Association Tests

See No Bias (washingtonpost.com): “Overall, according to the researchers, large majorities showed biases for Christians over Jews, the rich over the poor, and men’s careers over women’s careers. The results contrasted sharply with what most people said about themselves — that they had no biases.”

For some reason, the Washington Post neglected to include a link to these online tests. You can take some of the Implicit Association Tests by going here.

I had already heard of these tests and had taken a few of them before reading this article in the Post. I’m happy to report that, according to the tests, I don’t have any particular bias against Jewish people or in favor of Christians. Neither do I have a bias with respect to women and science careers. Disturbingly enough, I also have no particular bias against Bush and the Republicans. Heh, heh….well…I’m going to interpret that to mean that I don’t have an unfair bias against Bush!

I didn’t take the light vs dark skin test because I fully expect that I would have some bias against dark-skinned people. I say this because I am light-skinned and I grew up surrounded only by other light-skinned people. I have no doubt that my early experiences have affected my preference. In general, a person naturally prefers what they’re most familiar with. It’s sort of surprising, though, that dark-skinned people often also have a favorable bias towards light skins. I’m supposing that it has a lot to do with what people see in the media. Although things are changing, there’s still a preponderance of white faces on television and movies and in magazines.

Interestingly (and surprisingly!), the test shows that I have “a moderate automatic preference for gay people relative to straight people.” Hmm… Since I’m straight, maybe it’s related to my deeply felt belief that gay people are unfairly discriminated against in this country. That’s on my mind fairly often lately–as anyone who is a regular reader knows–so I suppose that could explain it.

Whatever. These tests are thought-provoking. Check ‘em out.

How Low Can We Go?

Salon.com Comics | This Modern World

“The Disturbingly Brief Journey From Unthinkable To Mundane”

Click on the image to see the entire Tom Tomorrow cartoon. If you’re not already a salon.com premium member, you’ll need to view an ad of some kind before they let you see it. It’s worth taking the time to see the ad, but I encourage you to join salon.com’s premium service. Not only do they provide a refreshing source of news BUT they give you all sorts of swag when you join up!

Read This Editorial. Do It Right Now.

The New Republic Online: Twist My Arm: “We badly need to show the people of the Muslim world why they would be better off in a democratic society than in a totalitarian one. And, as long as we employ torture, indefinite detention, and kangaroo courts, we aren’t giving them a very good reason.”

I generally try to add some pithy comment to these kinds of things, but this editorial on The New Republic site is so well written that there’s nothing I can add.

Read it right now. It’s not long.

Indiana Court Rules On Same-Sex Marriage

Salon.com News | Debate over same-sex marriage rages on: “The appeals court said that opposite-sex couples were distinguished from same-sex couples because they can produce children and that the couples who filed the lawsuit did not establish that they had a ‘core value’ right to marry. ‘Opposite-sex marriage furthers the legitimate state interest in encouraging opposite-sex couples to procreate responsibly and have and raise children within a stable environment,’ the ruling said.”

These people have their heads up their asses.

First of all, by this way of thinking, infertile heterosexual couples shouldn’t have the right to marry. Second, the ruling is based on the invalid notion that homosexual homes are, by definition, “unstable.” Third, I seriously question whether increasing the population is a “legitimate state interest.” If humans were on the verge of becoming extinct, that argument might work. Obviously, though, we’ve got plenty of humans. Too many, really. Fourth, the whole idea of procreation as the primary purpose of marriage is archaic. It’s based on the charming idea that women, as property, would only be having sex with the man they’re married to so that way a man could be sure a kid was his biological offspring.

If you’re offended by these ideas, you should be! Marriage is about more than popping out kids, right? Of course it is! Pretty much everyone understands that–even the more “evangelical” among us. If you’re among that “evangelical” group, I urge you to take just one more small step along the path of understanding. Recognize that homosexual people are not so different from you. Recognize that, just like you, they want to spend their lives united with the person they love. Recognize that, just like you, they deserve the legal benefits that come along with marriage.

It’s the right thing to do. You know it is.

The Devil’s In The Details

Salon.com Life | The exorcist: “These were not cases of standard psychopathology. I stumbled on the first case not thinking I would find signs [of possession] because I wanted to scientifically prove that the devil did not exist. But the evidence I found defied my belief and I ended up being converted.”

This salon.com article features an interview with psychiatrist M. Scott Peck where he discusses his new book Glimpses of the Devil. The book details his two experiences with “demonic possession”.

The above quote from Peck comes fairly early in the interview and it immediately tipped me off to one of the problems with his supposed “scientific” research into the existence of demonic possession. Anyone who’s learned even the basics of logic and research technique would be able to tell you that you can’t “prove” a negative of this sort. I can’t prove there’s no such thing as a purple cow. I can only say that I’ve never seen a purple cow–after having looked at a LOT of cows–so the chance of there being such a thing as a purple cow is very slim. The more cows I examine without finding a purple one, the greater the likelihood that there are none. However, I can never prove that purple cows absolutely don’t exist because there will always be a chance that there’s one hiding somewhere that I just haven’t yet come across.

Likewise with “the devil.”

Peck entered into his “research” with a predisposition to think in terms of absolutes: proof or disproof. Since absolute disproof is a logical impossibility in this case, he concluded (illogically) that this was proof of the existence of demonic possession. A real scientist would have concluded that these cases were nothing more than unusual. Once Peck clicked his mind into the “possession” slot, though, he was pretty much off and running. All of his subsequent investigations into the cases were seen through the filter of this “possession” mindset and the mindset itself was reinforced thereby.

It’s a common logical error.

At this point in my harangue, it’s probably a good idea to define one of our terms. When Peck talks about “demons”, he’s not referring to destructive impulses or violent ideas that might exist within a mentally ill person’s mind. He’s talking about actual other beings–evil beings–that have taken up residence inside these people. Okay? Just so we’re clear on that.

Peck goes on: “I feel that the devil knows who I am. The book is called “Glimpses of the Devil” after an early Christian theologian who was trying to tell people that god is spirit, and that the most we can hope for is to get glimpses of his footprints on the ramparts he has walked. The devil being spirit, although a lesser spirit, is even harder to get glimpses of. You can if you look for them, but there’s a great deal we can’t begin to know about the devil and we won’t know unless this is scientifically investigated.”

Oy vey. This guy ought to be kept far, far away from mentally ill people. Imagine the damage he could do! There is a theory that exorcisms can be helpful to people who are severely delusional. The idea is that if a person really believes they are possessed by demons, then an exorcism ceremony can help them to believe the demons are gone and the person can calm down and get back to a more normal kind of life. The danger here, though, is that while you’re returning the patient to a calmer state, you’re still just reinforcing the delusion. Ultimately, the problem still exists. The patient will very likely have a relapse of some sort. It’s my opinion that you’re probably not really doing the delusional person any favors by providing them with an exorcism to scare off illusory demons.

What Peck’s been involved with is even worse than this sort of “therapeutic” exorcism. He actually believes the patient is possessed by demons! Jeesh…he and John Mack, the psychiatrist who believes in alien abduction, should get together.

Dark Shadows

The New Republic Online: Weighs and Means: “TV’s pernicious contribution to pudginess is by no means all from the propagandizing effects of advertisements. One study, for instance, has suggested that watching TV may actually reduce resting metabolism lower than sleeping, although the evidence is mixed. But whether or not that’s true, watching TV comes at the steep opportunity cost of not doing aerobic activities–or even reading, which burns more calories than television watching.”

This is only marginally related to our usual themes here on the American Housewife site but, frankly, I wanted to leave my Philip Glass post up at the top on the main site for a while longer. I think it’s good and I want everyone who’s interested to be able to easily find it.

Anyway, so this article in The New Republic is all about kids getting fat from watching television (and/or watching junk food ads on television.)

When I was a kid, we almost never watched television during the day because there simply wasn’t much on at that time that was worth watching! Instead, we either played outside or read a book. (Or played inside if it was raining–we used to rollerskate in the basement.) I can tell you exactly when all that began to change, though. It all started with the television show, Dark Shadows. Dark Shadows came on at 3 pm on weekdays in my part of the country. I remember quite clearly that my friends and I wouldn’t want to play outside like we’d normally done when we’d get home from school because we didn’t want to miss Dark Shadows. I have a clear recollection of, one beautiful summer day, cutting a tennis game short so I could get home on time to watch Dark Shadows. Pretty sad stuff.

You see? That show was the work of the devil in many ways.

Getting fat and lazy is just one of the problems kids face when they watch too much television. I firmly believe that the fast pace of many children’s shows “programs” kids at a young age to respond only to similarly fast-paced stimuli. Computer and video games just reinforce this.

Gee, do ‘ya think there might be a connection between these television shows and games and the increasing number of kids being diagnosed with Attention Deficit type disorders? Do ‘ya think it might be more than coincidence that more boys than girls are interested in fast-paced stimuli and more boys than girls are diagnosed with ADD? Do ‘ya think?

Now you might believe I’m confusing correlation with causation. My defense is that I’ve seen way too many parents plunk their little little kids down in front of the television to believe that ADD causes an interest in fast-paced stimuli and not the other way around.

Parents have created these monsters themselves. And, like Frankenstein, now that the monsters are out terrorizing the villagers, their creators haven’t the slightest clue about how to get them under control.

Duh! First thing, get rid of the TV and the video games! Duh!!!

God damn but people are stupid sometimes.

The Genius of Philip Glass

 I originally published this post in 2005. It’s one of my favorites, though, so every few years I stick it back up at the top of my blog for everyone to see. 

(Listen to some Philip Glass music while reading this blog entry! How cool is that?)

Nothing Less (washingtonpost.com): “During [Philip Glass's] second year with [Nadia] Boulanger, he was engaged to transcribe a film score by [Ravi] Shankar into Western notation for some Parisian studio musicians. ‘What came to me as a revelation was the use of rhythm in developing an overall structure in music,’ Glass later wrote. ‘I would explain the difference between the use of Western and Indian music in the following way: In Western music we divide time — as if you were to take a length of time and slice it the way you slice a loaf of bread. In Indian music (and all the non-Western music with which I’m familiar), you take small units, or ‘beats,’ and string them together to make up larger time values.’”

What this made me think of is how a lot of the work of J.S. Bach unfolds. At first, Bach can seem mechanical–like that sliced bread Glass talks about–but, after repeated listening and allowing oneself to become immersed–it seems to me that Bach can be like this. Not division and sub-division and sub-sub-division but, rather, assembling a whole from tiny bits. I think only a very few Western composers have ever accomplished this. I love Mozart but…I don’t think Mozart was capable of it.

Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot about J.S. Bach lately. About his incredible genius. And I’ve got an idea that’s pretty much guaranteed to offend a whole bunch of you. (In fact, this idea’s potential for offending is the reason I’m posting this on my REBECCA HARTONG page instead of on my MUSIC page. I’ve got this goofy idea that the MUSIC page should remain relatively bland.) Anyway…the germ of this idea came a few days ago while I was rehearsing some flute trio music with a couple of friends. Bach came up for some reason and I mentioned how much I loved his music. I said, “Bach must be God’s favorite son….uhhh….second-favorite son!” (Both my friends are Christians and I didn’t want to offend… Do you detect a recurring theme here?) But that got me thinking. Why shouldn’t Bach be God’s favorite son? It seems to me that a God of love–a God who is The Creative Force In The Universe–would best be represented among human beings as a person with a gift for creating works of timeless beauty. Yes? A person whose work pretty much everyone in the world could look at and say, “Yep. There’s great beauty there!” no matter who or where they were. Yes? Yes! A God of love–a God of Creation–wouldn’t be into this whole sin and sacrifice thing. Any God who was really all about Love and Creation would choose Bach over Jesus any day. (I think Jesus had some really great things to say but, come on, what kind of God would insist on killing his only kid? Especially to “atone” for “sins” that humans were supposedly born with in the first place. That’s just nuts.) Soooooo….. If God has been incarnate in any human, in seems to me that person must be Bach.

I’m not saying we should start a new religion where we worship Bach. That’d be stupid. Bach was a human being. And besides, what kind of Supreme Being even wants or needs worshippers? I’m just saying, doesn’t it make sense that if a Supreme Being were going to incarnate, it’d be in Bach?

Makes sense to me.

Okay. So, I was originally talking about Philip Glass–who, although a wonderful composer–is no J.S. Bach. The Washington Post article goes on to describe one of Glass’s more famous works: Einstein on the Beach.

The flutist Ransom Wilson, who would later conduct and record some of Glass’s music, has left a vivid impression of a New York performance of “Einstein on the Beach”: “As I listened to that five-hour performance, I experienced an amazing transformation. At first I was bored — very bored. The music seemed to have no direction, almost giving the impression of a gigantic phonograph with a stuck needle… Then, with no conscious awareness, I crossed a threshold and found that the music was touching me, carrying me with it. I began to perceive within it a whole world where change happens so slowly and carefully that each new harmony or rhythmic addition or subtraction seemed monumental.”

That’s a wonderful description of how a lot of Glass’s work is. It’s almost hypnotic. It…builds. And then, without you even realizing how it happened, you find yourself somewhere else entirely. When finally you return, everything seems…different. Better. It somehow makes sense in ways that you hadn’t expected.

Doesn’t that remind you a lot of Bach’s “Musical Offering”?

Yeah. It’s like that.

Or…it’s like the end of T.S. Eliot’s poem, Little Gidding:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

That’s what Philip Glass’s music is like. It takes you places and then, when you come back to the beginning, it’s all new and transformed somehow. (Or is it you that’s transformed?)

Whichever.

The fire and the rose are one.

Some of you may be more familiar with Glass’s commercial music. For example, he composed music for the movie “The Truman Show.” He’s also responsible for the score in the film Koyaanisqatsi (and in the later Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi.) You all remember Koyaanisqatsi, right? Hopi language? Translates to “Life Out Of Balance”? Very interesting film. Anyway…Philip Glass music is all over the place. Kinda makes you wonder what movies Bach would be writing for if he were alive today, eh?

So, that’s the genius of Philip Glass. Visit his very interesting web site by clicking here.

Malcom Gladwell and “Blink”

Salon.com Books | Before you can say …: “[Gladwell creates] an entire nomenclature to describe the intricacies of rapid cognition. We get, first, ‘thin-slicing’ — ‘the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.’ By thin-slicing, our minds can just know; we can look at a situation, gather its essence in a few seconds or so, and extract meaning, order and truth amid the chaos of the moment.”

But not always. Particularly when what we’re looking at is very unusual or otherwise unfamiliar to us.

Since I was just writing a few days ago about the cognitive difficulties scientists face when they rely too heavily on what their “instincts” tell them about a situation, I was particularly interested to see that Malcolm Gladwell has written a new book discussing some related ideas.

I had never heard of Malcolm Gladwell before. Apparently, he’s big with the New Yorker magazine. I like the New Yorker but I don’t subscribe and, to tell the truth, I haven’t read one in years. It’s seeming like maybe I should start up again! Follow this article’s links to some of Gladwell’s pieces and I think you’ll see why. Interesting!

Anyway. I just wanted to point out Gladwell’s comments because they fit in so well with what I was talking about in my last couple of posts–how our minds have evolved to find patterns and assign meanings.