Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Bush Living In a Magical Fairy Tale World

Bush: Naive to Think Iraq War Invited Terrorism – washingtonpost.com
President Bush on Tuesday said it is a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, disputing a national intelligence assessment by his own administration.

He’s got to be drinking again, right? Or smoking peyote or something? Because no sober, sane person would say the totally bizarre things he says. Astonishingly enough, he’s still trying to connect Iraq with the attacks on 9/11. He’s crazy. Crazy, I tell you.

Orange and the Price of Creativity

Debbie Does Duluth-MN
See, that is the first step down a dangerous path…orange can make you feel warm and happy but in the wrong hands, it can maim and kill. Search the newspaper obituaries as much as I do and you’ll find many deaths where the color orange was the culprit.

Heh, heh…. I just thought that was funny… heh…I mean, orange is a dangerous color, no? It’s easy to go wrong with orange. Horribly, monstrously wrong.

I just recently bought a red-orange colored t-shirt and — while I love the way the color makes me feel when I look at it (warm and yet also excited) — I’m concerned about how the color looks on me. I think it might make my skin and hair look sort of… greenish. Orange can do that, you know. It’s a duplicitous color.

Anyway, Debbie in Duluth is writing here about a bag she’s creating for next year’s state fair “fiber arts” entry. You’ll need to read her entire post. I never dreamt there was such Sturm und Drang in the world of fiber arts.

I know nothing about fiber arts other than that I admire the talent and creativity of people who make these amazing sewn or knitted or crocheted pieces. Wow. I started knitting a scarf last winter. Just a simple thing — straight knitting, nothing fancy — and I still haven’t finished it.

Maybe I’ll pull it out and work on it a bit today.

Love Your Enemy

5 Reasons Torture is always Wrong – Christianity Today Magazine
It is past time for evangelical Christians to remind our government and our society of perennial moral values, which also happen to be international and domestic laws. As Christians, we care about moral values, and we vote on the basis of such values. We care deeply about human-rights violations around the world. Now it is time to raise our voice and say an unequivocal no to torture, a practice that has no place in our society and violates our most cherished moral convictions.

Many thanks to This Modern World for pointing out this article on the Christianity Today website.

If you’re a Christian and you’re having trouble deciding whether it’s okay to torture terror-suspects, I encourage you to read this article. I’d also remind you that even the worst person imaginable is still a creature of God — deserving of respectful treatment and, yes, even love.

Nigger

George Allen and the N-word | User Comments
Eeny, meeny, mighny, moe, catch a n*gger by his toe …

So Allen never used that little rhyme? And Allen never, ever called Brazil nuts “n*gger-toes”? And he never, ever called a duct-taped muffler “n*gger-rigged”?

I apologize to those who may be offended by these references, but they were as much a part of Southern vernacular as “Ya’ll,” when I was a kid. It didn’t mean that we all grew up to be racist, but it is just ridiculous to claim never to have used it.

Did you see that??

I actually wrote out the word NIGGER.

I did it because I’m an adult and I understand that words are only symbols. I did it because, frankly, it’s ridiculous for adults to play all cutesy with words like this.

Nigger.

Kike.

Gook.

These are ugly words — and they represent ugly ideas. I think it’s best to face that kind of ugliness straight-on. Recognize it for what it is.

I do understand that the people who write stuff like “n*gger” are trying to be polite. Ugliness of this sort doesn’t deserve to be treated politely, though. George Allen didn’t (according to reports) use the term “n*gger” regularly. He called people niggers.

Let’s tell it like it is.

And…by the way…it’s not just in the south that kids learned “catch a nigger by the toe” and “nigger-toes” for Brazil nuts. I’m from Minnesota and I grew up with those expressions, too.

I Should Write a Self-Help Book

Arianna Huffington, the accidental feminist. By Meghan O’Rourke – Slate Magazine
Arianna Huffington was explaining fearlessness over lunch in her New York office. “Fearlessness is not the absence of fear; it is the mastery of fear,” she said as she calmly explored a formidable plate of smoked salmon.

Now, see… I read stuff like this review of Huffington’s new book, On Becoming Fearless..in Love, Work, and Life, and all I get from it is that there must be an awful lot of pathetically messed-up people out there. Who are the people who buy books like this??

Frankly, I never understood Huffington’s appeal.

But, anyway, I think I give much better advice than most of the people who get rich selling advice books. And I’m smarter. AND I’m funnier.

My advice tends eventually to become somewhat curt, though. Often it just comes down to, “Quit your fucking whining and buck up. You think you’re the only one who ever shed a tear? Honestly, just get a grip and move on.” I’m like Dr. Phil — but with profanity and without all that Oprah-baggage.

[Huffington's] motivation, she explained, was to start a “fearlessness epidemic” that would transform the lives of women.

Feh. She sounds like a Scientologist.

Blech.

The Situation in Iraq is FUBAR

Three Retired Officers Demand Rumsfeld’s Resignation – washingtonpost.com
[Major General John R.S. Batiste] told the committee, “If we had seriously laid out and considered the full range of requirements for the war in Iraq, we would likely have taken a different course of action that would have maintained a clear focus on our main effort in Afghanistan, not fueled Islamic fundamentalism across the globe, and not created more enemies than there were insurgents.”

Rumsfeld has always really given me the the creeps. He’s just…icky. Scary-icky. He reminds me of Jon Voight’s “Thomas Brian Reynolds” character in Enemy of the State. He even looks a little like Jon Voight.

Slight sidetrip here for a moment: If you haven’t seen “Enemy of the State”, you really should. It’s a great movie, well-acted, lots of action. Perhaps most interesting, though, is how it depicts the government’s ability to invade your privacy — certainly something we’re all a little more aware of now that Bush & Company are running the shop.

Anyway. Rumsfeld. Ick.

While I’d prefer that it weren’t necessary, it’s certainly a relief to see these retired officers telling it like it is. Active-duty officers, of course, realize it would be career suicide for them to criticize Rumsfeld at this point. I have no doubt, though, that MANY of them would heave a huge sigh of relief if he were to retire.

“Secretary Rumsfeld’s dismal strategic decisions resulted in the unnecessary deaths of American servicemen and women, our allies, and the good people of Iraq,” Batiste said. “He was responsible for America and her allies going to war with the wrong plan and a strategy that did not address the realities of fighting an insurgency.”

Now, Major General Batiste is a military man who make me proud to be an American.

Crazy Chris

I’m just now listening to the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s performance of “Crazy Chris” — from the album Stardust. God damn. Those guys were so good. Brubeck is, of course, still alive and working. Alas, Paul Desmond — genius sax player — died in 1977.

My dream — secret no more — is to play jazz on the flute 1/10th as well as Paul Desmond could play it on the sax.

I need to go practice now.

Though, Desmond once said, commenting on the value of practice:

“I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.”

Not Much A Person Needs to Say About This…

Just Had to Add This Bit

From the same article about the brain’s “mirroring system”.

How Brain’s ‘Mirrors’ Aid Our Social Understanding – washingtonpost.com
“In fact, when I started investigating these things, I became a vegetarian,” [researcher, Arthur] Glenberg said. “It became clear to me as a consequence of these theories of embodied cognition that virtually all animals are thinking, and it is difficult to draw a line between those who are thinking and those who aren’t.”

I Know What You’re Feeling

How Brain’s ‘Mirrors’ Aid Our Social Understanding – washingtonpost.com
The mirror system seems to be involved in the human capacity for language, and people with stronger mirror neuron responses to sounds seem to also have a larger capacity for empathy, suggesting the mirror system is part of the brain mechanisms that produce altruistic behavior.

Oh, look! the Washington Post has another article about social psychology today!

There is one thing I wonder about, though, as regards this “mirror system” and empathy. I think I’m pretty good at detecting how other people are feeling about things. In my own experience, though, I’m not seeing any necessary linkage between understanding what a person is feeling and caring about what they’re feeling. Yet, I believe myself to be at least as altruistic as the average person.

I think there are different sources for altruism. There are people who are altruistic because they are empathic — they are literally “feeling” the pain of others. And there are people (like me) who are altruistic because it follows logically from their personal moral code.

So… I believe any theory that the brain’s “mirror system” is involved in altruistic behavior is flawed. Empathy is not the only source of altruism.