The Wonder and Glory of FAFSA

I'm starting to dig into getting college financial aid for the boys. Here is a great five minute tutorial.

Palin Quits

I think Palin will be indicted before the month is out-- the upshot of an investigation into the Palin Crime Family's use of state money for private contracting work. Her motive is her family? Hardly. Where was this motive when she was running for the White House? Her lila feeewings were hurt from Mr. Lettermen's naughty words? Will her lila feeewings be hurt from naughty words coming from Iran or North Korea? If she cannot stand the heat, she should go back to the kitchen, where she makes great moose.

I think she may have made a good director of publicity for Coca Cola, but, as Andrew Sullivan notes in the video below, it is frightening that anyone considers this person a credible potential leader of the free world.

Palin's Poetry







"If she cannot stand the heat, she should go back to the kitchen, where she makes great moose."

As I mentioned in another post, the blatant sexism in our country is pathetic.

What is sexist is the elevation of this (ahem) person to a position where she was seriously considered as a potential president, devoid as she was of any foreign policy expertise and even the ability to speak a simple and coherent declarative sentence. If she were twenty pounds heavier and twenty years older, do you think for a second that anyone would consider Palin for the presidency? You have your own blinders of bigotry on, especially the blinder that places ideological purity over endurance, integrity, common sense, and competence.

I had no idea that conservatives were so sensitive to "sexism". Could it be that you are grasping for a way to defend the indefensible?

My Mother's Family

The Frank and Jane White Family, Australia, 1920




My mother Lucinda is holding the flower.

From left to right: Francis, Hilary, Halley, Ruth, Lucinda, Joyce, Dick, Frank

Bad Writing Contest

This is the winner of the annual bad writing Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2009.htm

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

I Chat Calmly With a Conservative

This is too much fun.

He:

These turds are incredible. They wage an absolute unprovoked character assassination on all political enemies with little or no evidence, but demand their politicial and cultural heros be proven guilty in a court before admitting the obvious. These double standard laden morons are so completely twisted, so hypocritical and so sick I have reached the conclusion they are all mentally ill - seriously.

How is it these sickos get up in the morning and manage well enough to get through the day? Surely they must be locked up somewhere and given computer access only as a gesture of good will by their keepers....sick...sick...sick

Me:

Well, aren't you the one who is typing furiously from your mother's basement with you baseball cap on backwards and your jaw somewhat slack? Isn't it time to wrap up your homeschool assignment-- perhaps the Color the Ducky page? You do realize that political thought and discourse is an adult custom, and you still have a few years to go.

He:

I so enjoy these lame efforts at humor - all of which have been scribbled out before by your breathren....face it moron - you can;t defend yourself so you project your own lifestyle on others inhopes that it matters. You're just a case of empties, a phony and a wannabee charlatan who doesn't pack the gear to offer anything factual or at least original in your own defense...

Me:

Republican Whine List

Obama was not born in the US.
His birth certificate is a fake.
Obama is a muslim
Obama is an arab
Obama is a terrorist
Obama uses drugs
Obama bought the election
The 2008 election was rigged
Obama is trying to sell his Senate seat
He smokes cigarettes.
Remember when senators represented the public for state, national and international issues and were qualified to do that? Seems they were elected by the public, not appointed by some bureaucrat. It appears we now have acquired a "royalty" who believe in divine entitlement.
Obama fathered two black children in wedlock!
Obama is a fraud.
Obama will say anything and align himself with the lowest scum job Earth to get ahead.
Obama has dual citizenship and is disqualified of being president!
Obama is racist.
Obama asked for spicy mustard on his hamburger.
Obama's wife insults the poor with her choice of shoes.
Obama habitually thinks before he speaks. Very annoying.

He:

ZERo The Nothing is failing and N Korea would hate to loose him.
Yeah, every one of the leftist trash are sick and twisted, unfit to be called Americans as far as I can tell...

ZERo The Nothing, lying leftard ghetto trash crack head POS communist filth and the single greatest danger to America and freedom ever in the history of this nation.

Me:

I think you're foaming.

He:

I think that you are stupid, but than, stupidity is a prerequisite for being a leftard POS, isn't it?

ZERo The Nothing, lying leftist ghetto trash POS communist filth and the single greatest danger to America and freedom ever in the history of this country.

Me:

Isn't it time to launder your sheets and return to your kkk klavern?

He:

Seems like its time for you to get on back to your ghetto and business on your corner, crack head.

I think that you are stupid, but than, stupidity is a prerequisite for being a leftard POS, isn't it?

ZERo The Nothing, lying leftist ghetto trash POS communist filth and the single greatest danger to America and freedom ever in the history of this country.

Me:

What is POS?

He:

Are you a foreigner?

POS = Leftist = piece of shit..

Me:

Ah, so that what POS means. As a well-educated, church-going liberal, I find there is no need to resort to such gutter crudities to communicate. Naturally, our political superiority is in sync with our moral superiority.

He:

ROTFLMFAO.................know any more funny jokes? Thanks for the comedy.....lol

Me:

I think it puzzles and then destroys you when you realize the simple fact that Obama-- a black man-- is your intellectual, moral, and spiritual superior.

He:

ROTFLMFAO, again, your comedy is funny as it can be. Also full of untruths, first of which is the fact that ZERo is not a 'black man', his mother was a caucasian making him a zebra, bi racial, a halfrican-American, a mullato.ZERo, the Affirmative Action stooge is no ones 'intellectual, moral, and spiritual' superior, except for the stupid leftards that think that he is their 'Messiah'. You fools got snookered and all of America lost big time.

(Mercy! At this point, I tip toe quietly away from this lovely thread.)

Representative Flake: Family Over Politics

"Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake is catching flak from conservatives for missing a key vote Friday on a "cap-and-trade" climate-change bill that is strongly opposed by the GOP. Flake also opposed the bill but said he had to skip the vote to be with his daughter, who was competing in the 2009 Junior Miss pageant in Mobile, Ala
.
"Obviously it was a tough decision to miss voting against the cap-andtrade bill," the District 6 representative said in a statement. "But I've let my daughter down enough over the years, and I felt I just couldn't let her down again."

No flak will come from me. Family must always comes before politics, business, charity, or religion. It is too easy to justify ever increasing sacrifices to your family in the name of "the people's business" or "humanity" or "God." However noble these ends are, the ends do not justify the means if those means involve the subordination of family to achieve those ends. Family comes first.

Jeff Flake did the right thing and he set a good example for all of us.

Letter to Dad - July 1, 2009

Nancy and the boys are looking forward to spending ten days in Chicago starting this Friday. They plan to see the Museum of Science and Industry, Lincoln Park, Zoo, Great America theme park, and relatives in the area. Zach plans to see Northwestern University, one of his college choices. We signed the boys up for their classes. Ben is now three years ahead of his peers in math, and will be taking a high school course—talent that surely didn’t come from me! I’ll probably spend the week moping around the house and trying to work down my honey-do list. Kitty will keep me company.

We’re happy that Peter will be joining his family shortly.

I’m glad you liked my reflections on the ethics of suicide. Like most of what I write, I wrote it quickly-- but it is really the result of many years of thinking, and it grew out of a project I gave myself at Willow Creek’s ironically name Camp Paradise, in Northern Michigan in 1987. My goal was to read through the entire Bible looking for my life-theme that “you matter to God”. One day at the camp, I saw what looked like a star slowly sweep almost parallel to the horizon and then ignite into a flare of orange and purple before descending into the woods miles away. The next day, the paper reported that a Soviet satellite had come through the atmosphere near where we camped. In Arizona, stars of the Milky Way spangle the firmament like salt strewn on onyx. I’m starting to teach my boys what little I know about astronomy. I can show them Pleides in the Taurus Constellation, Vega in Lyra, and Deneb in the constellation of the Swan. One night, I’ll show Zachary and Benjamin a haze of light in the constellation of Hercules. That haze is a great nebula—the light of 50,000 suns 30,000 light years away. In the Grand Canyon State, as in South Dakota, no one grows up without knowing size and distance. (I recall my awe when I saw the Canyon for the first time in 1992, at night under a full moon, the boundless chasm disappearing into a bottomless sea of black while the ridges and mesas were etched in silver and red.) Australia is also a home to vastness. In contrast to my urban experiences, where property is measured by the square foot, my cousin Barbara, the daughter of Uncle Frank White, live on an 11,500-acre cattle station in western Queensland. In the wilds of the western United States or eastern Australia, we learn the relative size of a person compared with the lay of the land. Under an immense sky, a man is small and at the mercy of God. And he is wrong if he thinks otherwise.

There is star that shines brightly in the velvety black of the Arizona sky. It’s a symbol of our future, for one day our descendants may well pioneer among the stars as our fathers did in the Dakotas. And this star is a symbol of our past. Pointing upwards from the two stars, Merak and Dubhe, on the outer edge of the Big Dipper, the Pole Star is positioned one degree from the north celestial pole. This magnitude two star has guided mariners for hundreds of years, sparkling with constancy in the purpling dusk and the diamond night. It’s one star that will never fall. In Lamentations chapter three, clouds of gloom part to reveal a sunbeam of hope: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness.” And the song that was sung so many times at Norbeck echoes those verses:

Thou changest not,
Thy compassions, they fail not:
As Thou hast been, Thou forever will be.

As children, we would sing “This little light of mine/I’m going to let it shine.” And what others will see from our little light is our Christian heritage. (“We are all worms,” Winston Churchill said. “But some of us are glow-worms.”) Eloise and LeRoy Nelson, in their 1986 Christmas card, chart this legacy, our spiritual roots:

Jesus
Apostles
Early Church Fathers
Augustine
Ansgar
St. Francis
Martin Luther
Olaus Petri
Philip Spener
C. O. Rosenius
N. P. Wik

To which of course I should add Harold Wik.

My cousins conclude their card with these words: “And so we build our lives on the foundation of those who have come before us, just as our forebears built on the heritage passed on to them. And now it’s our duty to pass this on to our children—to be another link in the long chain that started with Jesus’ birth.” The Star in the East that twinkled over a manger 2,000 years ago and the Star of the North that guided the captains of ships that brought our ancestors to this country 100 years ago retain their meaning today. And, I hope, will do so for our children’s children until the end of time. It’s this guiding star from which came the name of the ship that took our maternal ancestors to America in 1869– the SS Guiding Star.

Here is some more of Our Story, written about five years ago.

Towards the end of their time in Malaysia, my parents helped the boat people that fled Viet Nam after the war came to an end. After about 70 years of combined service, they returned by way of Athens, Jerusalem, and Amsterdam to retire in the United States on May 17, 1982. “At Singapore, we changed planes for the flight to Athens where we spent four days,” my parents wrote in a circular shortly after their trip. “The main tourist attraction there is the Acropolis. Nearby was Mars Hill, which we climbed and read Paul’s sermon as recorded in Acts 17:22-34. We also visited the National Archeological Museum at Athens and took a bus trip to Delphi, a round trip of about 200 miles. On May 3, we flew to Tel Aviv and when the plane touched down many passengers clapped their hands. The next day, we took a guided walking tour outside the walls of the old city. On two occasions, we walked completely around the old walls. This takes about 45 minutes. On Sunday morning, we joined a large group of Christian worshipers at the Garden Tomb for a Sunday morning service, and were thankful that the tomb in which our Lord was laid is empty. Christ is risen! While we remained based at Jerusalem during our stay in Israel, we were able to visit such places as Bethlehem, Jericho, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and Masada by the Dead Sea. While we did not need to visit Israel to validate our Christian faith, the trip did add to our understanding of our Judeo-Christian heritage.” Mom and Dad later flew on to Amsterdam where they visited famous masterpieces in the National Art Museum and marveled at the beautiful tulip fields. I’m so glad that Mom and Dad were able to visit Israel as it puts a fitting cap on their many years of Christian service. “Truly goodness and mercy have been following us a family and will continue to do so,” they wrote in their last letter from Malaysia, dated April 25th. Thirteen days earlier, Paul and Joyce sent them a telegram informing them of their new grandchild: “PETER NATHANIAL BORN 723 AM APRIL 12 9 LBS 8 OZ 21-1/2 INCHES ALL ARE WELL LOVE PAUL AND JOYCE”. My parents noted in a letter to me that “we appreciate Joyce with her talents and high aspirations. She has put a lot of sparkle into our family.”
Today, both of my parents now in their 80s live active lives in Roslyn, a suburb north of Philadelphia, residing at their home at 1561 Birchwood Avenue. The death of Grandma left Mom money to buy the home. They paid $49,000 for the left side of the 25 year-old ranch duplex, on a lot 39 by 110 feet. Twenty years later, the other side of the duplex sold for about $150,000. Mom enjoys walking to Willow Grove Mall a few blocks away where she can greet a dozen or so of the regulars while Dad likes tending his garden in the back yard of tomatoes and lettuce. He also likes the routine, exercise, augmentation of income, and occasional opportunities for witnessing by working part-time removing trash from some local strip-malls. “Spud, I think you’re the only in the family who is still working,” Uncle Reyn wrote Dad in 1994. “The rest of us are unemployed and on welfare, all waiting for a raise in Social Security.” Ten years later, Dad was still toiling at his jobs at Regents Park and elsewhere. Mom and Dad are both involved in Berachah in Cheltenham, their local church, and the lives of their four children and seven grandchildren. (My sister Anne Birch and her family and brothers Paul and his family and Tim live in the area, all within about an hour of each other.)

On February 10th 2002, we honored their fifty years of marriage with a dinner of baked sugar-cured ham and chicken marsala at Williamson Restaurant in Horsham. Sister-in-law Joyce did much of the planning and constructed a beautiful album of photographs and letters from friends and relatives. “In a time where so much is expendable, it’s wonderful to look to something that has stood the test of time,” I wrote for my family. “Your fidelity through five decades is a model to Nancy and me. And, someday, Zachary and Benjamin will also look to your example with appreciation. Your life’s journey has taken you to distant lands and fantastic adventures. But, through it all, your love for each other as endured. And from your commitment to each other has come your love for us, and I remember with fondness your tender words and actions over the years. Bukit Sepit. Rawang. Chefoo. What memories those names evoke! Ivyland. Chicago. Scottsdale. Although separated by many miles, your love for us has never wavered. And so it is therefore right that we honor and celebrate fifty amazing years of marriage. Nancy, Zachary, and Benjamin also join me in expressing their love for you and in rejoicing in this celebration.”

In 1965, we left Malaysia for Australia by the ocean liner Oranje. Tangerine and blue paper streamers between us and those on the dock stretched and snapped as the ship pulled away. After my parent’s furlough, my parents left Paul and me at a home for missionary kids in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The law office of Grubb & Guest had my parents transfer guardianships to the Grays in the Orphan’s Court of Philadelphia County, “wherefore petitioners pray your Honorable Court to enter a Decree appointing the said Kenneth T. Gray as guardian of the persons of Philip G. Wik and Paul R. Wik.” The sign facing Jacksonville Road read Happy Hollow Farm, but no one called it that, especially after a neighborhood kid painted one day over the word Hollow, as if the farm was an institution for the “differently abled”. We called it “Ivyland”, after the name of the small town where we got our mail. The borough of Ivyland takes on aspects of a Victorian painting at Christmas time, with streets lit by luminaries, and skating and caroling. The boarding home was a colonial-era Georgian mansion on a country farm of about thirty acres. The walls were white with the classic green shutters that are familiar to many colonial homes in Bucks County. It had a two-acre lake fed by a stream that bisected the property, a large red barn with pigeons cooing in the rafters, horses and pastures, and between ten and fifteen other MKs. We went to the local public schools, and I graduated in 1973 from Council Rock High School, in Newtown. Although I was in the choir and the drama club (I was Edward in Charles Dicken’s Christmas Carol), most of my extracurricular activities revolved around Ivyland, with my five-mile paper route and eight pet rabbits.

“I do not think you will have to do much to prepare the children for the new adjustment,” Kenneth Gray wrote to my parents in 1965. “We have animals (ten rabbits, six horses, chickens, ducks, goats, and cats) down here, and the barn and the family are usually sufficient drawing cards for the kids to spend a good deal of their free time down here. We’ve yet to see a child really homesick, for there is almost too much life throbbing around here for them to be lonely for more than an occasional moment.
“There have been trips to the shore, with hilarious times of riding the breakers or sunning on the sand—drinking in the beauty of the riot of color that is Longwood Gardens-- fountains, colored lights, and gorgeous flowers everywhere. Other times, we have gone to Philadelphia, and push buttons in the Benjamin Franklin museum, where there is a seemingly endless array of electrical gadgets to demonstrate some principle or other. All these activities afford wonderful opportunities to get to know the kids better, hearing their chatter and enjoying their enthusiasm.

“Your enthusiasm for the place is the best preparation that you can possibly give your kids. Keep in mind that the sacrifice is on your part far more than on theirs. Our family is very happy, and the kids adjust to life here at home in a wonderful way. You are the ones who take the gaff, and, believe me, we feel for you, but our field experience helps us to know that there is no real alternative worth considering. We have also had enough experience here at home to realize that the educating of children all the way through high school on the field is not without very serious problems for the children when they come home to the States for further education.”

We seemed to have adapted well to our new surroundings, as we read in a letter from Maybeth Gray to Aunt Elsie in 1967: “Paul and Philip both seem happily settled in. They obviously have a good time. The snow and ice-skating has been sheer joy to them, and it’s fun to see them laughing and shouting as they toboggan or skate or build snow forts. I was measuring and weighing Philip this evening—a ritual we go through on the night I wash their hair and he really is gaining and getting taller—at least an inch taller than last September and several pounds heavier too. He weighs 72 pounds now . . . Best wishes to you and your work and thank you so much for all your interest in the Wik boys. You have been so good to them and I know they really appreciate it.”

Christmas in Ivyland was special. Presents piled high around the towering Christmas tree. Outside, neighbors cut figure eights with us on the ice to the music of Broadway tunes, Strauss waltzes, and Gilbert and Sullivan:

My good little butter cup
My dear little butter cup

I earned a few battle wounds playing ice hockey, including stitches in my chin and a gouge in my leg.

To get a flavor of the holidays, here are excerpts from letters I wrote in 1970, 1971, and 1972:

“Two weeks ago, we decorated our ten foot evergreen tree with lights, tinsel, and colored balls,” I wrote in 1970. “A small layer of icy snow is on the ground with periodic flurries helps set the Christmas scene. We have had great fun sledding on the hills. The ice isn’t strong enough to skate on yet. Many people are home for the holidays from college. For Christmas, we had about 40 people eating here. My favorite gifts were the presents you gave me—clothes, games, gloves, a radio, and a book about a lioness called Born Free.

“Thank you so much for the gift of the art supplies,” I wrote in 1971. “We didn’t get any snow this Christmas. As a matter of fact, the temperature is about fifty degrees. We did the play The Christmas Carol at the intermediate school in Newtown. On Wednesday night, we put on the lay for the public. On Christmas Eve, we went to a candlelight service at church. When we came home, we opened our stockings. On Christmas day after diner, we opened our presents. I received many things but I especially liked the paint supplies you sent me.”

“I hope you had a merry Christmas in Malaysia,” I wrote in 1972. “On the 16th, the concert choir (in which I sing baritone) put on a Christmas concert. All the Christmas trimmings this year were homemade. Frankly, the result was a mess. Naturally, everyone likes their own creation of half-baked ginger-bread men, fermenting cherries, and roasted popcorn. Periodically, groups of carol singers would start to howl in front of our house. Once, a group of seven came caroling on horses. We woke up early on Christmas morning, ate breakfast, had our devotions, and opened our presents. At about four o’clock in the afternoon, we ate the annual Christmas bird. The Christmas in Ivyland, although quite enjoyable, is but a glimmer of the grand Christmas we had in August in Malaysia together!”

The Grays retired in 1971 to Stroud, Canada. In April, 1973, Ken lifted the oxygen mask off his face and said to Maybeth “Now I’m going home.” There was no funeral as Ken had made arrangements to donate his body to science, but there was a memorial service. In a letter to my parents at the time, I wrote “I shall always remember Uncle Ken for his dynamic, caring personality spiced with a pinch of whimsy. I shall never forget how he helped me countless times in school—on my science projects, on reports, and at home—weeding, seeding the corn, mowing, racking leaves. The fun we had in the snow on Christmas day, reading Dickens around the cackling fire at night, going to Canada’s Expo, New Hampshire’s White Hills, the New Jersey shore, Longwood Gardens, and the operettas in Philadelphia shall always remain in my memory, and I will feel a loss.”

In 1987, an Ivyland Alumni Fred Fry passed on Maybeth Gray’s address. (Leslie Lyle, Maybeth’s brother, was a missionary who traveled with Dad from Shanghai to Hong Kong.) “You get the sense from Fred’s letter that Ivyland casts long shadows over the lives of those who lived there,” I wrote to Maybeth. “That’s certainly true with me. On balance, however, I think the Ivyland experience was good for me. I probably wasn’t the easiest person to manage, and it must have been hard to run things-- taking care of a dozen kids with different abilities, ages, temperaments, and backgrounds, the mansion, and the farm. This is a roundabout way of saying ‘thank you’ for your contribution in raising me during my formative years.

“As time goes by, the past recedes into a misty nostalgia bringing back a collage of associations. Do you remember these snapshots from the past?

Sledding on the hill by the Big House
Canoeing, fishing, swimming, skating
Our pet cats, rabbits, and horses
Our dogs Dale (beagle), Rufus (Irish setter), and Friskie (mixed)
Building elaborate hay tunnels on the second floor of the barn
Chicken picking under a full moon
Uncle Ken playing “Red River Valley” on the living room piano
The mountain of presents around the fifteen-foot Christmas tree
The Gate House, where we would stay during furloughs
Dorney Park with its rickety wooden roller coaster
Salty breezes and taffy on Ocean City’s boardwalk
Sipping a malt at the Tanner Brothers Farm Store in Northampton
Strawberry and cherry picking on a blue and gold autumn day
Annual trips to downtown Philadelphia to see Gilbert & Sullivan
The Philadelphia Zoo and museums
Marcia Haynes, David Cox, Beth Carlson, David Almond
Canada geese swooping down over the lake in autumn
Summer vacations in Franconia Notch, New Hampshire

I’m sure we could go on forever.”

“What a surprise!” Maybeth wrote. “A delightful surprise! After these 16 or more years, it was just great to hear from you and get caught up on your life history so far!”

In the summer of 1972, my sister and I visited my parents in Malaysia. We visited many familiar places of our childhood, including Rawang, Chefoo, and Port Dickson. On the flight from Singapore to Bahrain, the British Caledonian Boeing 707 with its 197 passengers had to make an emergency landing at Changi airport because of a fuel line rupture. We spent a few days at the swank Imperial Hotel, before flying on to London. We visited Westminster Abbey, St. Mary’s, Number Ten Downing Street, The Mall, Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London, and took a trip down the Thames before flying on to Philadelphia. In all, I’ve lived in Malaysia with my parents for just under nine years.

The mission sold Ivyland in 1982. The grounds have been subdivided, the barn razed, and the mansion remodeled. “It’s in a state of decay, with the old marble mantels long gone, paint pealing, extensive water damage, and an overall look of faded grandeur,” I wrote in 1993, before the remodeling began in earnest. “The lake hasn’t been maintained and is half empty. A paved road called Gwyn Lynn Drive meanders through the old horse pastures, now replaced by ten homes selling for $450,000 each. (The Big House is now 148 Gwyn Lynn Drive, but the entire property was 186 and then later 657 Jacksonville Road during my time.) The mansion is on one acre and an additional twelve acres of wetlands were sold to a doctor’s group for $350,000. (In the mid-50s, the OMF bought the farm for about $60,000 and by the mid-70 it was appraised for under $150,000.) Brambles and poison ivy cover the lawn. (When I had just arrived in Ivyland at the age of ten, I made the mistake of confusing the Malaysian vines with Pennsylvanian vines, and made good use of calamine lotion. I thought we should modify the name Ivyland by the word Poison!) Most of the old trees still exist and I could still see some of the remains of my old tree houses.”

I enjoyed climbing some of the two-hundred year trees. A row of mature oaks, pines, sycamores, and spruces mark the path of the original gravel road that now runs through the back yards of the houses that were built in the 1990s. I climbed some of these trees. The lake is now called Spring Mill Pond and no doubt it will someday be but a marsh. But, when I was a kid, it was perhaps six feet higher and far broader and wider, maintained by an input pipe from a dam at the far end of the property that has since washed away. What memories we have of that lake! I learned to swim in that lake and we had a diving board, dock from which to fish for Sunnies, home-made rafts, and canoes. The bottom of the lake was black goop and yellow algae spread across the lake as the summer months went by. But we still loved that lake with its willow trees and painted turtles. In contrast to the almost impassable brambles of today, a dozen horses would keep the pastures surrounding the lake trimmed to look like a park. In the winter time, we would sled down the hills from Almshouse Road toward the lake or skate and play ice-hockey with the kids from Traymore. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that sometimes hundreds of people would crowd that lake in the winter, while music played from loud-speakers throughout the day.

Towards Hunt Drive was the remains of an ancient carriage house. I used to find weathered nails amid the brick. When I went to Churchville Elementary, I would wait for the school bus at Hunt Drive and North Traymore Avenue. But for middle and high school, we would trek through the fall leaves to the end of the lane on Jacksonville Road. Two white stone pillars that no longer exist marked the entrance of our property. Moving leftward was the garden where we weeded carrots and cabbage, the 1950s era ranch called the Canfield House, a shed for tractors and plows, a gasoline fuel pump, and a large sixty-foot-high L-shaped barn. It was brown stone with red wooden walls trimmed in white and with massive interior beams. Further in the back was a pen for chick. At the bottom level of the barn were work shops, stalls for the horses, pens for the chickens, and cages for my rabbits. On the top level was bales of hay. Paul would drive the tractor that pulled the carts up the dirt ramp. We would often arrange these bales into tunnels, sometimes going down thirty feet. We used to play kick the can near the manure pile that was behind the barn. There was also more farm land for corn and potatoes. Continuing our walk in memory was the two-story brick Lane House, which was also of colonial-era vintage. We would stay here on furlough. Today, it has been resurfaced with brown-stone, but the walls used to be white plaster.

The gravel path ended in a circle around the Big House. The only other structures was a horse shed behind the barbed wire and a crumbling smoke house below the lake that is still a home to suckers and toads. I would mow this lawn and join the others in raking the fall leaves. Next to the dock with a diving board below the large Eastern White Pine that still exists were several picnic tables and canoes.

As we open the door to the Big House, we would see a couch with perhaps the Daily Courier, Christian Science Monitor, and back editions of Popular Mechanics. To the left was the living room with its high ceilings, fireplace, many books, and a grand piano. Here is where we would celebrate Christmas. On the other side was the dining room with the marble fireplace. At Christmas time, Maybeth would thread the many cards together to deck the room. We would find letters from our parents and also lists of chores that would be posted each day on the bulletin board, such as “Pots & Pans” or the much dreaded “Eggs”. A staircase ascended to the rooms above. I was adept at sliding down the banisters from my room on the top floor near the roof floor by floor. Moving past the dining room was the powder room – a room that probably hasn’t changed much over the years—and the kitchen—a room that has probably changed a great deal. Ken would snip our hair here while Maybeth and Pat would bake the pies or mix the ice-tea. I remember the distinctive bang! of the screen door when I came in with by school books each days. Stairs for the servants would ascend from one side of the kitchen. On the other side, Dale, our friendly, corpulent beagle, would gaze into the fireplace. My bedroom was always on the top floor, while the girls enjoyed slightly more opulence in the floor beneath. In the back was a walk in freezer—an entire room kept to negative ten degrees. We also had shelves where we could keep our things, such as boots, gloves, and school books.

I enjoyed taking black and white pictures with my twin lens Yashika camera. But perhaps my favorite pastime was biking. I bought a red three-speed Schwinn and put it to good use, making money by distributing The Daily Intelligencer for a few years. I especially enjoyed going on bike hikes, sometimes as far away as New Hope and New Jersey. I bought quite a number of antiques at the flea markets in Lahaska and that honed my interest in American history. I biked with David Cox (whose father worked for twenty-one years among the Mien (Yao) of North Thailand after fighting piracy as a chief officer in the British Navy along the China coast before he joining the CIM). But generally I traveled alone, usually on the back roads that even today retain their verdant beauty. Sometimes, I just had to leave what my brother Tim calls “a feudalistic dreamland” with its weeding and its rules and peddle furiously with the brisk autumn wind in my face through flurries of gold and red leaves down the curving Dark Hollow Road to the Neshaminy Creek.

It is hard to believe that as I write this in 2005, some Ivyland alumni are now in their sixties. “I personally like it when my kids put my wheelchair close to the fire with my dentures close by so that I can munch on health snacks that Anne finds in Prevention Magazine,” Fred Fry writes, with tongue firmly in cheek. “As my head droops in exhaustion, usually about 6:30 or so, I drift off into my memories. Many of my fondest are from that era so many years ago in the big white house …or was it grey…with the Whites…or was it the Grays …? “ “Someone could, and should, write a book about Ivyland,” Fred continues “Is that native Bucks County resident, James Michener, still in business? Who built that big white house? Who lived in it between 1790 and 1958? Our era would occupy many chapters. Who took the marble mantles? Where did all the wood and stone from the barn go? Do the current occupants of those $450,000 homes even know that there was a time when an old John Deere tractor would drag a line of sleds through the snow on the sites where they now watch Oprah and water their petunias?

“I wonder if on some quiet mornings, their eyes play tricks on them and they think they see silent, misty figures up in the trees, riding horses, fishing off the dock, taking out the garbage, ice skating to the amplified Strauss waltzes, playing tackle football, painting shutters, doing dishes, putting together jigsaw puzzles, swimming, studying, driving trash to the dump in the cut-off Chevy, feeding a roly-poly beagle, playing capture-the-flag in the barn, walking the quarter mile to the bus stop at 6:45, gazing longingly at Bobbie Arbor, mowing the lawn a stocky balding bespectacled man doing his accounts at his desk in the hall, a woman in her mid-twenties doing laundry, a lady with her graying hair in a bun reading stories to her own infant daughter, spreading manure behind that same John Deere, celebrating twenty to thirty birthdays a year, stringing barbed wire and yes—slaughtering, picking, and gutting chickens. I wonder.

“If there were, they’d all have names that are very real—Maybeth and Ken, Bob, Peter, Bill, David, Wendy, Pierre, John and Josie, Ian, Doris, Ruth, Pat, John, Esther, Anne, Miriam, Marcia, Paul, Beth, Sue, Timothy, Pam, Margaret, David, James, Ralph, Kathryn, Ian, Sylvia, Rachel, and many, many more.”

“I loved the picture of your two little boys,” Maybeth wrote to me in January 1997. “I bet they are going to have a lot of fun playing together as the baby gets a bit older. Enjoy your children while they are young, for they do grow up so fast and before you know it they are leaving home. I’m fine as I go into my 84th year with no aches or pains, and just very thankful to God for good health. I do tire more easily though and am ready to go to bed when the time comes. It has been nice to hear from quite a number of our Ivyland gang and learn more of what they are doing. But I must stop. I did want to thank you so much for your newsletter and the picture of your darling boys. God bless you in the year 1997. Much love to you both and the boys. Love in Christ. Maybeth Gray.”

Three months later, I got a letter from John Cox. “I assume you will have heard about Maybeth Gray’s death on April 12,” he wrote. “Your letter was the first I heard of this and of course I feel a great deal of sadness,” I wrote back. “ My most recent letter was from January of this year, which I’ve enclosed. I was glad to have renewed our relationship over the past few years, giving me the chance to express my gratitude for her role in shaping my character and interests. Only last week I came across a paper Aunt Maybeth typed for me when I was in fifth grade. It says much for her as a Christian and a person that she is remembered fondly by so many people despite the passage of time—in my case about a quarter of a century. As one of the little boys, I only vaguely remember you. I of course recall Elizabeth and Peter, and I thought of David as one of my best friends. The shadows of Ivyland are long. And in the lingering gloaming, lights and shadows play in the kaleidoscope of memory: Uncle Ken reading “The Christmas Carol” by the fire and playing “Red River Valley” on the grand piano. Aunt Maybeth, much like the card she sent me, looking past her African Violets over the sloping green, watching us swim or play…chicken picking in the morning and an operetta in the evening…bike hikes and vacations, the barn and the lake … lots of work, lots of animals, lots of fun, some tears, but much joy as well.”

“She died on Saturday in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” John wrote. “I called a travel agent on Monday and explained the circumstances, requesting bereavement fare. She asked Maybeth’s relationship to me, and I said she was my foster mother. The agent said, “Let’s just make that “mother,” so I didn’t argue with her.

“People in Vancouver were extraordinarily kind. Pam, Esther, and I borrowed a pick-up truck from someone at Clarendon Court (where Maybeth had lived) and ran errands with it. One of them involved making photocopied enlargements of photographs that were to be displayed at the reception following the memorial service. One of these was in color, and we were unsure how to use to color copier at the little shop where we were doing the copying. The proprietor came over to help us and paused when she saw the picture. “I know that woman,” she said. Esther told her that it was her mother and that she had just died and why were making the copies. The woman gulped and showed us what we needed to do. When we went to pay for the copies the woman told Esther that she recently had cancer and chemotherapy. “Your mother was so kind to me,” she said. “No one else was such a comfort to me.” This from a complete stranger at a shop we just happened to walk into! Esther burst into tears, and the woman became very apologetic, but none of us could explain that the tears were not so much for sorrow as for this chance encounter with evidence of Maybeth’s unfailing goodness to everyone she met. What an amazing legacy.

“The memorial service was wonderful. We sang “I Sought the Lord and Afterward I Knew” and Pam played “Amazing Grace” very impressively on her violin, beautifully accompanied by a pianist from the church. Ian delivered a wonderful eulogy. And at the end of the service, we sang “How Firm a Foundation” to a traditional American melody (rather than Adeste Fidelis) that I remembered singing with Ken around the piano at Ivyland and that I have heard many times as one of the airs that Aaron Copeland weaves into “Appalachian Spring.” We sang all six stanzas, but for the last two Pam grabbed her violin and played along by ear, inventing descants and harmony as she went. Those of us sitting at the front had been doing pretty well for the first four stanzas but we all fell silent when Pam’s violin began to sing.

“It was an utterly satisfying trip, and I was glad I was able to make it. It was sad of course and I still feel sad at the loss of Maybeth, but it was triumphant and happy at the same time. Being whom I am and doing what I do, I inevitably think of something from Shakespeare at this juncture, so I’ll close with Prospero’s loving praise of Miranda in The Tempest, because it applies so perfectly to Maybeth: “She will outstrip all praise and make it halt behind her.”

We hope you continue to be well and remain in our fondest thoughts and prayers.

I laughed, I cried, I remember SO many of the people and events (the pond, ice skating, sledding, swimming, the chickens, etc.). In fact, I remember at least at one point there were 100 chickens at the OMF, and one of the chickens -- no one seemed to know which ONE it was among the others -- layed bloody eggs. We would buy our eggs from the OMF and were told to be aware of that fact. It struck me then and I began to sing that age old hymn (though this time directing it to the OMF Chickens): "There were 90 and 9 that safely lay..."

I have fond memories of Uncle Ken and Aunt Maybeth, and of Pam (and her horse Charger). I also remember one of the smaller brown horses had a propensity to buck riders off! I also remember the manure pile outside the barn, and the fact that in the gloaming, the wretched pile became a beautiful pile of glittering fireflies! I also remember having sleep overs with Anne, and when I stayed over, I was expected to contribute to the chores of the day. I remember one time particularly: buttering countless pieces of bread to make grilled cheese sandwhiches in the oven! I also have fond memories of the barn, playing in and on the hay and the rope swing there. So much of what you wrote triggered memories I have that center on the OMF. I remember the "Happy Hollow Farms" sign as well along with the stigma attached to it. Hence, we always called it "The Mission" or "OMF." I remember the Mission lane, and the countless ruts (which were impossible to see in the rain, until l your vehicle was swallowed up)!

One of my last memories of your mother was when my family lived in Roslyn one street over from your folks. I went to visit with her one time when Anne was visiting. My husband and I were in the process of adopting from China, and I wondered if your mum could teach me to sing "Jesus loves me" in Chinese. I had learned part of it, but needed help remembering and with pronunciation. She delightedly obliged me, and sung that sweet song without hesitation or inhibition (wish I'd thought to tape it)! "Jesu Ai Wah."Thanks for sharing your musings and too your thoughts on suicide. Sometimes life can get awfully bleak, and then, unable to pray for ourselves we plead, "Holy Spirit, pray for me!"

Grace and Peace be yours in abundance,

Martha Hacken

Against Suicide: Why We Matter

This is part of a recent letter to my father in which I reflect on the roots and ethics of suicide.

Thanks for your recent letter, in which you make reference to an OMFer who recently hanged himself. Here is an essay I wrote on this topic when Zach was three months old now a decade and a half ago.

One of Nancy's favorite catch-phrases is "Who is better than me?" (Strictly speaking, the phrase should be "Who is better than I am?", but we're not strictly speaking!) Nancy's strong sense self-worth, which took a battering when she was a teenager as her parent's were divorcing, is one of her most attractive qualities. Our boys have clearly benefited from having a mother who is so self-assured, and I think that is the secret to Nancy's confidence in advocating and negotiating so effectively on behalf of our family. She is quick to note that the phrase doesn't mean that she is better than you or I. It simply means that from her perspective, she is the best and she would like nothing better than for you to also say without blushing as a mantra of self-esteem Who is better than me?

My self-esteem was flaccid when I was in grade school. As I did more and experienced more and achieved and failed and then achieved some more, my self-esteem grew. I think my self-esteem was also retarded by a theology that stressed our sinful nature, that we were conceived in iniquity, born in sin, and all we like sheep have gone astray and will continue to do so. There was the conflation of self-esteem with pride, the former having to do with a clear self-appraisal and the latter having to do with attaching excessive significance to status and achievements in comparison to others. There are dangers to pride, and that pride can go before a fall. False pride and any kind of boasting is a sign of low self-esteem rather than a healthy self-esteem, which merely set you up for manipulation by others. On the other hand, I think there is both a distinction and a relationship between our spiritual well-being and our psychological well-being. Damage to our self-worth damages us spiritually, although one can clearly have a strong self-esteem and can still be rotten to the core. But the mere fact of original sin in no way erodes the prevailing fact that we are forever children of a King and ambassadors of His kingdom. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, the lost son said to his Dad "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in they sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." But the father embraced his son, assuring him that he was still is on, and had a party. "It was fitting that we should make merry and be glad," the father said to his other son. "For this, thy brother, was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found."

So many Christians in particular lack a sense of self-worth to the point of depression. It is as if they have over internalized to their harm the hymn that God saves "a wretch like me." My thoughts when I hear "Amazing Grace" is that while I've done bad things in my life, I'm far from wretched. So perhaps it is worth asking: why do we matter?

All theology is, I think, a restatement of this song from our nursery days:

Jesus loves me this I know
For the Bible tells me so
Little ones to Him belong
For I am weak but He is strong

But what does the Bible tells us and why is there warrant it that?

We matter because we were made whole. Genesis 1:27-28: “God created man in His own image, and in the mage of God created He him: male and female created He them. And God blessed them.”
We matter because Jesus died for us:

They stretch Him on a cross to die,
Our Lord who first stretched out the sky.

Whose countenance the cherubim dare not gaze on,
They spat on Him.

He prays for them “Father Forgive.”
For He was born so that all might live.

We matter because God has promised us peace of mind in the storms of life, the peace, as Pascal writes, of “being in a storm-tossed ship and knowing that it will not sink.”

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled.” John 14:27

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1

“The peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:7

The Bible has a word of advice for all people who feel sad and alone. The word is: Rejoice. “Rejoice in the Lord always,” said Paul under more difficult circumstances than we face today. “Again I say rejoice.” That we matter is indeed warrant for the joy that cannot be dampened under any circumstances. Lift up your hearts. Be joyful. Be thankful. That advice is just as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago. If we can accept nothing more about Christianity, I ask you to accept the proposition that you matter. For the jump from “I am” to “God is” isn’t nearly as great as the chasm that separates “I am nothing” to “I am someone.”

So how can we believe that we matter when we believe that we don’t matter? We do it by believing the affirmation of others, by seeking supportive relationships, but letting go of the negatives of life, by accepting our limits, by daring to say yes and by daring to say no, by closing some doors and knocking on other doors, and by treating ourselves kindly and gently.

A healthy self-esteem manifests itself in awareness of and love for others. Our personality is a blade that can either heal or kill. Oscar Wilde’s melodrama The Picture of Dorian Gray portrays the depravity of Dorian that was reflected in his painting but not in himself. Dorian surrenders his soul to be young. But it is the painting that corrodes with viciousness even as he retains his youth. And so as we look at the mirror, we see an image—but what is in and behind that image? Are we unaffected by pain, as Dorian was when his girlfriend Sibyl Vane killed herself? The outer world—what we falsely call the real world—is not nearly as dark and foreboding as our inner world. It’s this world of impulses and feelings that I write about in this section. We’re like spiders at the center of the web of existence, but it ought not to be for narcissistic reasons that we look inward. Rather, we do so that we can penetrate the consciousness of others. Like the surgeon who sees the skull behind the face, we must be able to perceive the soul behind the artifice. By understanding and mastering the forces that compel men and women to act as they do, we can through will or sometimes charm get what can not be achieved in ignorance.

From the 5th through the 12th grade, I was at a boarding home for missionary kids in Pennsylvania. Perhaps because they were former missionaries themselves, the first set of foster parents were exemplary. The second set were a young couple who came out of Arizona’s juvenile delinquency system. Suffice it to say that proof that they were in the wrong job was confirmed years later in the suicide of my foster mother, not privately and painlessly but publicly and painfully.

“I must admit that I found your conclusion that Josie’s suicide confirmed her unfitness for the parenting role a bit harsh to take,” my sister-in-law Joyce Wik writes. “Remember that Josie was on quite a bit of pain medication as a result of a car accident that had left her with permanent injuries. Who knows how that medicine affected her emotional and chemical balance?

“All my interactions with her were very positive. Of course, I was relating as one adult to another. She and I were not that far apart in age. The Ivyland alumni that came to her home obviously loved her fiercely.

“On the other hand, I did observe a somewhat adversarial feeling about the missionary parents. More than once she made comments that reflected her belief that the parents were wrong to ‘abandon’ their children. Perhaps some of that was communicated to the children too.”

In a letter from 1984, Joyce wrote that “a visit with the Reuters is always pleasant. They are still struggling financially. I wonder if they’ll ever really get on their feet. Josie has a permanent limp since the car accident two years ago. But they seem happy.” And so we continue to peal the onion looking for answers that elude us.

Just after I moved into my house in Lake in the Hills in 1990, I wrote that “the lake stretches in from of me like a huge backwards “C”. The apple tree is starting to blossom and most ice has gone. From my living room window, I can see on the peninsula the house in which a twenty year-old girl shot herself last week, two houses from mine. So there is pain even while surrounded by beauty.”

Here are two all too typical news clippings.

“Sitting on a bed of oak leaves in the woods behind school, Melissa and her twelve year old cousin finished their picnic lunch and swallowed the last of their wine. Twelve minutes before noon, a tiny white fleck of light appeared far down the railroad tracks. Ten seconds later, the crescendo of engines going 100 miles per hour. Amtrak 141 was on time. Melissa ran to the tracks, knelt between the rails, and clasped her hands in prayer. Her cousin, Pearl, tried to stop her, but Melissa had always been bigger and stronger. Melissa Courtney Putney made the sign of the cross. On that warm Tuesday mid-day last week in rural Maryland, a troubled eighth grader died.”

“Lynn Ann Miller, 13, an exceptionally bright but shy girl, worshipped television star Freddie Prinzie and kept his autographed picture of “Chico” close by her. When Prinze committed suicide, firing a bullet through his brain, Lynn Ann made up her mind. Three hours after Prinze was buried Monday, Lynn Ann took her father’s .38 caliber pistol while her parents were out of the house, put the gun to her right temple, and pulled the trigger.”

One year after I graduated, Donald Wilkerson ’77,a friend of mine and like me a missionary kid, lay down in front of a Chicago Western freight train at the Chase Street crossing in Wheaton after he broke up with his girlfriend. “We were sad to hear of the death of your fellow student during your Wheaton College days,” my parents wrote to me. “It’s hard to imagine the depths of disappointment that this lad was suffering. This tragedy need not have been. No matter how big the disappointment or overwhelming the problem our God is bigger than all these. He has provided a way of escape in the severest trial (I Corinthians 10:13) and we need not succumb to the lies and devices of the devil but should rather resist him. In times of crisis and calamity, our minds focus on the calamity. However, the Biblical corrective is to focus not on the problem but the problem solver: ‘Looking to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith’ (Hebrews 12:2). Our hearts go out in sympathy to all those who are affected by this untimely incident.”

The pianist Arthur Rubinstein writes in his autobiography My Young Years a moment of despair when he tried to kill himself with a belt from a bathroom clothes hook. He pushed the chair away, the belt tore apart, and Rubenstein fell crying to the floor with a crash.

“When one stops crying, the suffering subsides, the same as when laughter dies, the fun is gone. And so, nature claiming its own, I began to feel hungry. “This time I shall have two sausages,” I decided.

“Out in the street, however, a sudden impulse made me stop. Something strange came over me, call it a revelation or a vision.

“I looked at everything around me with new eyes, as I had never seen any of it before. The street, the trees, the houses, dogs chasing each other, and the men and women, all looked different, and the noise of the great city—I was fascinated by it all. Life seems beautiful and worth living, even in prison or in a hospital, as long as you look at it that way.

“I felt as if I had been reborn.

“Well, on that night, right there in the street, on my way to Aschinger’s for my dinner de luxe, my brain was full of philosophical thoughts, and it resulted in a new conception of life and a new criterion of values, all for my private use. Let me say only in this chaos of thoughts I discovered the secret of happiness and I still cherish it: Love life for better or for worse, without conditions.”

There are people who kill themselves in the grip of insanity, and my sympathy goes to them and those they leave behind. Most people who commit suicide kills themselves quickly, but some die slowly, stunned over a long period of time by inertia. But I do strongly believe that if we’re cogent, we should never take our lives for any reason. I speak from experience when I say that suicide leaves a wake of grief that stretches decades. I don’t deny the complexity of reasons for suicide. I think it’s simplistic to say that suicide is the product of a diseased mind. But it appears that it is a combination of biological, psychological, sociological, and spiritual factors produce an inimical feeling about existence itself—a need to stop unbearable anguish-- by doing to escape being. There are answer—within us—from others—clergy, social workers, friends, psychologists, doctors—and also from our faith. But I do believe that suicide in the main is an act of selfishness masquerading as desperation. I believe that there are always options and there are always people that can provide us with options. But destructive hate turned inward is never an option.

Some people that kill themselves are insane—they have no mind, no cognition, no sense of proportion, no sense of past, present, and future, no values, no intentionality, and thusly no will that can prevent their own annhilation. However, I don’t think this is true with most people who kill themselves, and for such people I do think they are committing the unforgivable sin. “ According to Mark 3:28-29, there is but one unforgivable sin. “Verify I say unto you,” Jesus says, “All sins shall be forgiven unto the sins of men, and blasphemies with which they blaspheme; but he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.” Some people interpret this verse as God’s condemnation against anyone who is impious or irreverent to God, Christianity, a creed, or the church. However, this interpretation puts the focus on the act of impiety, rather than the object of blasphemy, who is the Holy Spirit. According to John 14, Jesus leaves with us the Spirit’s indwelling. “And I will pray the Father. And he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.” And in chapter 16, we read “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” So, to the question, how do you blaspheme the Holy Spirit, I would say from these verses you do so by denying the comfort and truth that God provides. So it is not a denial of creeds or even God that is the greatest sin as much as it is our lack of confidence in the Holy Spirit that causes us to lose that faith in God and that faith in our own humanity.

William Buckley quotes in Execution Eve a last sermon by fifty-year old Charles Pinckey Luckey of the Middlebury Connecticut Congregational Church, perhaps one of the most moving credos of the Christian faith I’ve read. Two weeks after he read this letter, he died, on January 20, 1976, of Jakob-Creutzfelds disease.

“What does the Christian do when he stands over the abyss of his own death and the doctors have told him that disease is ravaging his brain and that his whole personality may be warped, twisted, changed? Then does the Christian have any right to self-destruction, especially when he knows that the changed personality may bring out some horrible beast in himself?

“Well, after 48 hours of self-searching and study, it comes to me that ultimately and finally the Christian has to always view life as a gift from God, and every precious bit of life was not earned but was by grace, lovingly bestowed upon him by his Creator, and it is not his to pick up and smash.

“And so I find the position of suicide untenable, not because I lack the courage to blow out my brains, but rather because of my deep, abiding faith in the Creator who put the brains there in the first place. And now the result is that I lie here blind on my bed and trusting in the sustaining, loving power of that great God who knew and loved me before I was fashioned in my mother’s womb.

“But I do not think it is wrong to pray for an early release from this diseased, ravaged carcass. Loving given to my congregation and to my friends if it seems in good taste”

“Three months ago, you came into our lives,” I wrote in my diary on May 24th, 1994, about my son Zachary. “Today, you’re a pink-cheeked boy with big, brown eyes and a cooing smile. We want to give you the world. But the world isn’t easy. Your peers will grow up in well-manicured neighborhoods, attend first-rate colleges, and flaunt the trappings of affluence. But there’s trouble in paradise. Last month, two girls gassed themselves after a party in a suburb not far from here. A local TV report documented a new fad among children called carving. Kids use acid, blades, and fire to mutilate themselves. We see young lives trashed by drug abuse, alcoholism, and depression. At the root of this lie a sickness of the soul called self-hate. Self-hate tries to claim that I’m worthless, undesirable, bad. And out of this soul death comes that most fundamental question of existence:

I.
Why?

To be or not to be, that is the question. What is the answer? Beloved child, there’s nothing we want to give you more than a foundation of granite self-esteem that can stand the stresses of life. “Give me a place to stand,” Archimedes said 2,000 years ago, “and I will move the world.” We want you to stand on a place of unconditional self-acceptance. We want you to accept yourself without condition, and thusly to accept others and life itself without condition. This we want you to know. You matter. You’re special. You’re wanted. Believe it. Hold on to it. Cling to it with the tenacity of a terrier. Make it part of you. You are because you are. Your existence needs no justification. It’s not based on achievement, what you look like, what you wear, what your grades are. You are—not because of what you do—but because you are. Dearest Zachary, here at home, you’re safe and free. Safe to have roots, free to have wings. Here you’re free to experiment, to make mistakes, to grow. Here you’re free to be you. Zachary, we love you!”

A Few Of My Favorite Things

Justice Thomas OKs Strip Searches

Said Clarence Thomas in his dissent: "Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments. Nor will she be the last after today's decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school."

But wiser heads prevailed.

It's a strange conservative who consistently sides with the state in distinction to the individual.

Burglars Love Facebook

Social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and group e-mails can tip burglers when you are on vacation. Use discretion in telling your audience when you will be away from your home. Sometimes, a whisper in a wind-- a friend tells a friend who is not your friend-- can cost you.

Thinking About Michael

Andrew Sullivan

"There are two things to say about him. He was a musical genius; and he was an abused child. By abuse, I do not mean sexual abuse; I mean he was used brutally and callously for money, and clearly imprisoned by a tyrannical father. He had no real childhood and spent much of his later life struggling to get one. He was spiritually and psychologically raped at a very early age - and never recovered. Watching him change his race, his age, and almost his gender, you saw a tortured soul seeking what the rest of us take for granted: a normal life.

"But he had no compass to find one; no real friends to support and advise him; and money and fame imprisoned him in the delusions of narcissism and self-indulgence. Of course, he bears responsibility for his bizarre life. But the damage done to him by his own family and then by all those motivated more by money and power than by faith and love was irreparable in the end. He died a while ago. He remained for so long a walking human shell.

"I loved his music. His young voice was almost a miracle, his poise in retrospect eery, his joy, tempered by pain, often unbearably uplifting. He made the greatest music video of all time; and he made some of the greatest records of all time. He was everything our culture worships; and yet he was obviously desperately unhappy, tortured, afraid and alone.
I grieve for him; but I also grieve for the culture that created and destroyed him. That culture is ours' and it is a lethal and brutal one: with fame and celebrity as its core values, with money as its sole motive, it chewed this child up and spat him out."

Don't Cry For Me, Argentina

I asked my boy, a high-school freshmen, in the wake of Mark Sanford's field trip to Argentina if Governor Sanford was a Republican or a Democrat. Without a moment of hesitation, he said Republican. Spitzer, Edwards, and of course Clinton had their sexual misconduct, but the Republicans seem time and again to be the ones with the fidelity to their vows issue. Newt Gingrich, Larry Craig, David Vitter and John Ensign are but only a few of the Republicans who not only castigated others for their sins of the flesh but have sometimes orchestrated their political assasination.

Karma will also get you in the end.

So why is it that Republicans tend to be the sex vandals and wife cheaters?

Maybe Republicans are sexually wayward . . .

1. Because they marry young, and, as they years go by, their regrets lead them into other arms.

2. Because they don't know any better.

3. Because they stoke up on a haze of Viagara and alcohol.

4. Because they don't care what they do, so long as they believe the right things.

5. Because they are bored with the silliness and sameness of their sad existence.

6. Because their stpford Republican trophy wives drive them bats.

7. Because their slacker Republican kids aren't worth the trouble.

8. Because their church likes tales of redemption-- the more sordid the better.

9. Because they don't care how life is conceived, only that it is conceived.

10. Because they usually can get away with it.

Two Pop Icons Are Gone

Michael Jackson: 1958-2009



Farrah Fawcett: 1947-2009

The Smithsonian Writes A Letter

Paleoanthropology Division
Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC
20078

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled "211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull."

We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents "conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston County two million years ago." Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the "Malibu Barbie". It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings.

However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to it's modern origin:

1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.
2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-hominids.
3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the "ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.

This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it.

Without going into too much detail, let us say that: A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on. B. Clams don't have teeth. It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in it's normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record.

To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results. Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino."

Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin. However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum.

While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your back yard.

We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the "trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix" that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe Curator,
Antiquities

Blue-Collar/Intellectual Snobbery

Letter to The New York Times Book Review

To the Editor:

As a “knowledge worker” who is all thumbs, I do not feel superior to people who work with their hands. I do not feel inferior to them, either, despite Matthew Crawford’s claim (described in Francis Fukuyama’s review of “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” June 7) that “most forms of real knowledge,” as Fukuyama writes, “come from the effort to struggle with and master the brute reality of material objects.” Rather than replacing intellectual snobbery with blue-collar snobbery, why can’t we recognize that the types of knowledge gained from struggling with material objects and from struggling with abstract arguments are equally “real”?

FELICIA NIMUE ACKERMAN
Providence, R.I.

The writer is a professor of philosophy at Brown University.

Iran: What's Next?

Reuters asks the right questions.

ARE IRANIANS LIKELY TO OBEY KHAMENEI'S ORDERS TO STOP THE DEMONSTRATIONS?

HAS THE REGIME LOST LEGITIMACY AND IF SO CAN IT REGAIN IT?

KHAMENEI'S MESSAGE WAS BACKDOWN OR CRACKDOWN, BUT CAN THEY AFFORD THE REPERCUSSIONS OF A CRACKDOWN?

WILL THESE EVENTS FORCE U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA TO ABANDON HIS POLICY OF ENGAGEMENT WITH IRAN?

DOES KHAMENEI HAVE THE SUPPORT OF SENIOR IRANIAN CLERICS?

My view is as follows. Democracy and civil rights are worthy universal aspirations. But, in the case of Iran, we need to be careful for what we wish. Political instability in this volatile region can have unknown, significant, randomizing implications to the rest of the world. One of those implications can be increased terrorism and world-wide economic dislocation. Furthermore, I'm skeptical as to how truely democratic is the opposition. The US needs to stay out of even symbolic support of any faction in Iran at this time. Iran remains a dangerous country, and political instability is making it more dangerous.

Teach Your Children Well

A great father's day song.

Letter to My Dad June 12

I write to my father at least weekly, who lives in a retirement home in Lancaster, Pennslvania.

Dear Dad,

The calendar reminds me that your 93rd birthday is soon arriving. I dropped a package in the mail, which perhaps you will get sometime next week. Here is my account of your earliest days.

“Births were routine matters that caused little excitement because they happened every two years,” Reyn writes. “Babies were welcome because no expense was involved. New infants came free (F.O.B) with no payment for prenatal care, hospital fees, or doctor’s bills. In our case, Mrs. Steffenson who lived 2 ½ miles north of us acted as midwife and ushered us into the world. The absence of doctors may explain why we were all so healthy.” Dad was born June 22, 1916, in the southwest corner of the first floor of the Millard home. His birth certificate lists his father as Nicholas Wik, age 41 from Sweden, and Emma C. Olson, age 39 from Iowa. Lena Steffenson is listed as the midwife.

A picture taken about 1917 shows Dad with a fluff of hair and his mouth open in amazement. The girls look sweetly mischievous, and the older boys look handsome but bored. In another early picture, Dad with his tousled hair is a twin of our three-year-old Benjamin. Elvera holds younger brother Nick, who looks like a cherubic Santa Claus.

A family committee sometimes picked names for the babies. (“The naming committee is news to me,” Viola writes. “I was told that Mom chose our first names and Dad our second ones. They considered ‘Ella’ for me but went with ‘Viola.’ ”) I once thought dad’s middle name was a salute to Lord Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), the Victorian poet buried in Westminster Abbey. But the romance of that name deflated when I found that Dad was called Tennyson because he was the tenth child, just as Viola was given a middle name of Octavia, the “sweetheart of Rome”, because she was the eighth child.”

I note also that father’s day arrives this year one day before your birthday. So happy father’s day as well.

We were at a pot luck yesterday at church mainly to recognize the efforts of the work team that Zach was involved in. He was involved in painting at an institution for the blind. They sent back a thank you letter with an overlay in Braille. He also worked at an animal shelter as well. Zach got a certificate for being a “cutie pie”—perhaps because he is so cheerful.
Nancy interviewed for another job at the high school on Thursday.

The book on COs was finally published, and I’ve mailed that to you. I wrote the following to Dr. Steven Taylor: “I just wanted to let you know that I received your book Acts of Conscience. All I can say is wow! What an impressive volume it is! In fact, I spent much of the evening reading it. It is well-written, thoughtful, and majesterial in its scholarship. I'm passing this along to my father as a birthday present, as he turns 93 this month.

“I was watching a documentary last night on the Tiananmen Square massacre. In reflecting on your point that acts of conscience by the WWII COs had little lasting institutional impact, the same could be said for the Beijing University students who lost their lives in 1989. And yet in both cases the potency of their ideas-- the idea of conscience and the idea of freedom-- continues to have enduring significance.

“Thanks again for your book and your scholarship. It has been my pleasure to have a small part in it.”

He responded:

“I'm delighted to learn that you like the book. I do think the lessons of the book can be generalized to various persons who have committed acts of conscience in the name of benefiting humanity. Thanks again for your help. Please send my regards to your father. ”

Here is an e-mail from Richard and Jean.

“It has been awhile since we've communicated with you re: Grace so thought perhaps an update would be timely. She has continued to improve in the lung area. She is still on oxygen at all times but there is no evidence of pneumonia at this point. On Monday of this week she moved back into the Health Care Center-the same room 204 that she was in before the hospitalization in March. She felt she could not live out her life in a hospital so it was her choice to move. While the care is not quite the same with the staff ratio being almost one on one in the hospital, she is being cared for. She is completely dependent on staff for all her personal needs. Her phone has been reinstated to her old number, so she can be reached at 605-598-4236. Her mail is still being forwarded to Steve's so Janet brings her mail and helps her open and read it. We do appreciate all your cards, letters and prayerful thoughts. She really is an "amazing" Grace. God Bless you all.”

Finally, here is a bit more of your story.

On May 1, 1946, Dad arrived in Shanghai and proceeded by rail to Chengchow, Honan province. He worked with a Mennonite relief organization on several agricultural projects, such as teaching students how to use tractors and raising milk cows. A Mennonite bulletin from 1947 describes Dad as “the fellow that eats and sleeps Chinese. Harold is our agricultural man. When he first arrived, he was assigned to the tractor project. Later, he was put on the agricultural and cotton loans. Now he is working on the heifer project.” Uncle Frank White, an Australian army officer, worked with Dad in China when Dad was serving in the Friends ambulance unit. “Australia had sent some cows as a present to China as the Japs had left nothing,” Frank writes. “One of the cows died and Harold who had a degree in animal husbandry was asked to go out with me to try and determine the cause of death—accident, exotic disease, or sabotage. To our horror and dismay, Chinese butchers had already skinning the cow with the carcass a welter of blood and gore lying on the raw side of the skin with the butchers hastily slicing off chunks of meat and packing it into buckets to sell to an unsuspecting public. To the best of my memory, we were unable to determine the cause of death.”

In 1981, Dad got a letter from James Liu from the Hengyang, Hunan Province, the People’s Republic of China. Lieu worked with Dad in the China Relief Unit, and he and his wife Hazel taught Dad Chinese. “When we saw you for the last time, that was in Shanghai,” Lieu writes. “In 1951, we went back to Hengyang and continued to work in the orphanage. After the liberation, Hazel was asked to work in one of the hospitals and I was asked to teach in one of the high schools. We are not young any more. Hazel is 70 years old and I am 77 years old. We want to live for Jesus during the rest of our lives.”

“In 1946, the United States sent General George C. Marshall to China to reconcile the Nationalists and the Communists,” I write in my book How to Do Business With the People’s Republic of China. “Marshall’s efforts continued until 1947 when he announced abandonment of his mediation. The U.S. State Department ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from China. The civil war became more widespread. Battle raged not only for gaining territories but also for winning allegiance of populations. Within three year, the Communists forced the Kuomintang to set up a truncated regime on Taiwan. In January 1949, the Communists took Beijing without a fight." The Communist takeover of China forced Dad’s evacuation back to Shanghai in 1948. “We received good treatment at the hands of the Communists,” Dad wrote in 1947 from Kaifeng. “There is little doubt in my mind but that far reaching agrarian reforms are in order in China, and that the central government is failing in meeting the needs of the people. Nevertheless, resort to armed revolution and bloodshed as an accepted method in extending an economic or political ideology contrary to the prevailing one is, in my opinion, morally indefensible.” In 1979, Dad wrote that the “takeover was relatively bloodless as the Nationalist forces by then had little heart to resist the onslaught of the Communist armies. The CIM, which was the largest Protestant mission working in China, suffered no casualties as a result of the Communist takeover, though a number of the missionaries were held under house arrest, some like Arthur Miller for a few years.” The Chinese, Dad notes, are “patient, resilient, hard-working people. Many have learned to live with little.”

Dad was accepted into the China Inland Mission in February 1949, three months before China fell to the Communists. “We were happy to have an interview with you at our headquarter staff meeting yesterday, and after further prayer, we are prepared to accept your application and receive you as a member of the China Inland Mission”, writes Bishop Frank Houghton, the general director. You can sense Dad’s exaltation and excitement as he anticipates his adventure, in a letter written from Shanghai to Aunt Viola and Uncle Henry in February, 1949. “Greetings over the way and brace yourself for some news relative to my application to the China Inland Mission. Read—here it is … They have accepted me!” Dad ends the letter noting that “relations with my best girl are looking good. I’m now looking for the Lord to send her out to China.” In March 1951, Dad left China and three months later went to Malaya, which was then a British colony.

In October 1948, Mom went to China under the China Inland Mission, later renamed the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. In 1949, Mom wrote that “I was walking to school alone and the hot morning sun was shining brightly. As I was nearing the market place, the familiar sound of a battle plane made my ears prick up. Immediately, there were loud reports of defensive ack-ack fire. In no time the street cleared. I saw a woman quickly dart across the street to collect her children who were unconcernedly continuing their game of marbles. On other occasions, I have watched the bombs dropping. They would come down with a thundering noise above the roar of the engines, thick volumes of dark smoke marking the spot where they had fallen.” Mom saw “two large excavations where thirteen graves had been dislodged and large trees cut down” and also saw a plane crash. Mom supervised hospital wards and was also in charge of training Chinese girls. Mom and Dad met in a language school in Shanghai. They learned Mandarin and then later the Hakka dialect used by the Southern Chinese. On July 20th 1951, Dad was engaged to Mom.

My parent’s letters, now fragile and yellowing after fifty years, evokes a romance conducted with a literary flair that has today all but vanished. “Leisurely, our boat cuts her way through the calm blue seas so that traveling becomes a delight,” Mom wrote on June 23, 1951. “The scenery yesterday was a particular joy as we skirted by the islands at a very close distance. Much could be seen of the islanders in their huts surrounded by the coconut plantations while on the hill slopes farming seems to be the order of the day.

“Yesterday morning, my waking thoughts were of you and this continued throughout the whole day as I remembered your birthday. To say that I have missed you is putting it mildly. The Lord has been good to us in allowing us to have three weeks crammed full of happiness."

“Darling, you know that I would account it a small thing to circumvent the globe if that seemed necessary,” Dad wrote shortly afterwards. “I trust that God will be directing you clearly in respect to the timing of your coming to this land.

Darling, I think that you will love living here in this land. I am really beginning to fall in love with the place. So do come soon my love to share the wonders of this land with me. It’s God’s mission field for us, and my heart is really not hankering after another.”

“This is truly the happiest of all days for me,” Mom wrote from Australia on July 20, 1951. “The Lord has been good in making it clear that you are His choice so that I need not hesitate longer in answering your question. How I would love to be with you at this moment while I whisper clearly in your ear “Yes.” Harold, darling, I do belong to you and you belong to me because of Him.

“As long as I live, I will have a testimony to give concerning the Lord’s guidance as He began to unite our hearts. I cannot help but love you and now long for the day when we will share each other in a more perfect way.

“Even while I write this letter, I am wearing the ring (precious to us both) which will continue to remind me that you are not very far away, at least in thoughts.”

We hope you continue to be well and remain in our fondest thoughts and prayers.

Much Love.

State Secrets

The CIA's rendition and torture program is not a "state secret." It's a national disgrace.

We must not protect torturers and their enablers from accountability for their actions. And we must not let the government hide behind the overly-broad use of state secrets.

Ask your representative to co-sponsor the State Secrets Protection Act of 2009 and limit the claim of "state secrets" to specific evidence.

Lettermen and Palin

It may be my age, but I don't entirely get Lettermen, with humor that is more sophomoric and ironic than knee-slapping and funny. And Lettermen, unlike Leno and O'Brian and in an earlier era Carson, would not be the kind of person I would want at my BBQ. Nor would I want the right-wing, swarmy Dennis Miller either, who reminds me of the kind of creep who hangs out at adult stores or children's playgrounds. That said, I don't understand the sudden conversion to political correctness from the right with talk of boycotts and firings. So long as the advertisers get their numbers, neither Miller nor Lettermen are going anywhere. I've never seen such touching sensitivity from FoxNation on feminist or class issues. So here is my small suggestion to all those folks who are in a lather about either Lettermen or Imus, either Miller or O'Brian exercising their First Amendment rights:

TURN THE CHANNEL!

Uighur Terrorists in Bermuda?

Says a reader:

These uighurs are terrorists and nothing more. What other possible reason could they have for being in Afghanistan during US operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda? Tourism? Picnicing?

Me:

Can you please make an effort to research the facts before your spout off? There is such a thing as being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Further, and this concept may be totally new to you, there is such a thing as a presumption of innocence and due process.

Here are the facts.

http://m.npr.org/news.jsp?key=516195&rc=in&p=0

"The four were among a group of Uighurs -- members of a Turkic ethnic group from China's Xinjiang province -- who fled China in the summer of 2001, claiming religious persecution. They slipped across the border into Afghanistan. Later, they crossed into Pakistan, where they were swept up by Pakistani security services. They were eventually jailed in the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.The Uighurs were later declared innocent of terrorism, and the U.S. has been trying to place them somewhere ever since. Returning them to China would probably mean torture."

Lifetime Spending Rules

1. You don't need to buy to enjoy.

2. The best things in life are free.

3. There are always killer deals when things aren't free.

Politicians and Sexual Misconduct

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) has acknowledged an extramarital affair with a campaign staffer in a statement released by his office. "I deeply regret and am very sorry for my actions," said Ensign.

What is it with politicans and sexual misconduct? I don't think political affiliation has anything to do with that. Rather, I think it is the result of a toxic mix of isolation, arrogance, the need to be adored, and the need to control.

Postscript. I must of struck a nerve. I posted that on a political website, and within a day, there were more than 70 responses.

Iran and North Korea

Iran

The elections are an epochal moment in Middle Eastern history, and something I'll be following closely.

North Korea

The nuclear weaponization tests and threats? All non-events-- kabuki theatre orchestrated from Beijing. If there was a genuine threat to South Korea and Japan, and if war should break out, a million refugees would head for China.

The Bagpiper Pays His Respects

As a bagpiper, I was asked by a funeral director to play at a graveside service for a homeless man who had no family or friends. The funeral was to be held at a cemetery in the remote countryside and this man would be the first to be laid to rest there. As I was not familiar with the backwoods area, I became lost and being a typical man, did not stop for directions. I finally arrived an hour late. I saw the backhoe and the crew who were eating lunch but the hearse was nowhere in sight. I apologized to the workers for my tardiness and stepped to the side of the open grave where I saw the vault lid already in place. I assured the workers I would not hold them up for long but this was the proper thing to do.. The workers gathered around, still eating their lunch. I played out my heart and soul. As I played the workers began to weep. I played and I played like I'd never played before, from Going Home and The Lord is My Shepherd to Flowers of the Forest . I closed the lengthy session with Amazing Grace and walked to my car. As I was opening the door and taking off my coat, I overheard one of the workers saying to another:

"Sweet Jeezuz, Mary'n Joseph, I never seen nothin' like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for twenty-some years."

Deontological Ethics

Says a reader:

All humans are selfish by nature, and those who attempt to deny themselves for others, cannot succeed in their attempt, unless it ends in their own demise. Not even these people are selfless though, because they are attempting to be moral--according to the morality of altruism-- because they want to do what is right, and they want to do so for some selfish reason, even if it is to be free themselves from the shame that they are supposedly immoral.

Because of this, a man cannot be truly selfless (while remaining in existence at least). I am not the best person to explain this rational belief (I say rational, because many associate belief with faith, and it is not a belief based off of faith, but based off of reason), so in answer to name and question of the original topic, I will refer you to the philosopher, Ayn Rand, who's philosophy I "believe."

I respond:

I understand normative ethics to be the study of what makes an action right or wrong. Thus, the motivation behind that action-- selflessness or selfishness-- is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the behavior-- not the thought that animates that behavior-- is ethical. Also, any such action must be rational, so long as it is predicated with thought, or, to use a philosophical expression, an a priori. That principle might be "does it pay" (pragmatism) or "the greatest good for the greatest number" (utiliterianism) or "do your duty for the Dear Leader" (the leadership principle). So long as actions coherently derives from such principles, such an action would be both ethical and rational by definition. Is it possible to construct a meta-ethics that transcends such deductions? I find the deontological ethics of Kant the most persuasive, as it attempts to cast actions as inherently good or bad, based on a realistic picture of humans as autonomous, freedom-seeking, and intentional.

A reader responds:

This is it. You are there. It doesn't really matter what you like or don't like. Kantian ethics just treats morality as brutally and cold-hearted as reality treats the law of gravity. It doesn't matter if it is Mother Teresa or Charles Manson that is dying from falling off a cliff. Physics speaks the truth about the matter, either way. So, too, it doesn't matter if it is Mother Teresa or Charles Manson that is evil, ethics tells us the truth, either way. Reason holds no particular sentiment in favor of Mother Teresa or Charles Manson. It doesn't matter how much "it pays." It doesn't matter how many "people benefit from it." Your FEELINGS do not matter. YOU do not matter.

There is ONE cold-hearted REALITY that is he sum-total of the TRUTH of morality. It is cold, and it is hard, and if you cannot handle it, then go off and study anthropology. There is plenty in the world that will never ask you to confront this. Do something else.

Another reader weighs in.

Regarding selflessness, Adler points out here: http://radicalacademy.com/adleraristotleethics2.htm that Aristotle showed in his ethics that to live a truly good life we must desire the right things for the right reasons and that a person who is truly self serving, that is, doing what is best for himself, will do what is good for all men when he serves himself. So like others have said, selfish or selfless, doesn’t matter. But it doesn’t matter because it becomes two sides of the same coin for the truly ethical man (woman).

And yet another:

The function of morality is to submit an individual will to the communal will.
It's methodology is simple and grounded upon simple dualistic, survival tactics. Good/Bad are conscious determinations of what is good for me and what is bad for me, based no empirical factors. The social and cultural trick is to redefine self so as to harness this dualistic determination to social convention. Buddhism and Christianity use similar methods, as does humanism and a variety of other social and cultural dogmas. They are methods used by armies across the globe.
First stress the mind to the point of impressionability. Then break down its sense of identity, by slandering, insulting, degrading and shaming etc....a Nihilistic process. Once this is done you have before you a tabula rasa awaiting as new identity. In most cases the mind is trained to identify with a whole - a nation, a culture, a religion, a god, an ideal. At this point the mind cannot think of good without thinknig of what the system deems is good for it, even if this entails its own sacrifice or its own demise. You've just created an automaton.

You raise some interesting points, but I disagree with your premises and conclusions. Is morality merely a matter of socially-conditioned response, or is it something more? What at the ground justifies good or right action? Is it just a matter of responding to teachers, priests, and parents brainwashing us over our lifetime into believing that "four legs good, two legs bad"?

During the 1960s, the Episcopalian priest Joseph Fletcher developed the theory of situational ethics, that placed morality within the context of a particular situation rather than under an absolute rule. Other people would say that situational ethics is an oxymoron, as ethics must be based on something more persistent and transcendent than personal feelings. I’m suspicious of moral relativists with their fluid sense of right and wrong, that so often opens the door to having no morals, claiming as they do that . . .

It all depends on how you’re raised

It all depends on what is praised

What’s right today is wrong tomorrow

Joy in France is England’s sorrow

It all depends on point of viewAustralia or Timbuktu

In Rome do as Romans do

If taste just happen to agree

Then you have morality

When there are conflicting trends

It all depends, it all depends

Shakespeare’s Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice” gives the Kantian proof that moral universality resides in our human commonality: “If you prick me, do I not bleed? If you tickle me, do I not laugh? If you poison me, do I not die?" It is this shared physicality and emotionality that is my reply in the negative to the question: how can you have moral law without a lawgiver? That the human condition in every land and clime is made up of people that are essentially the same mix of people you find everywhere suggests to me that there might be a universality of moral values, once we strip away the layers of culture. But culture, history, and genetics make such a revelation almost impossible, but not impossible. When the facts came to light, all of humanity was appalled at the genocides inflicted on three separate continents—German Europe in the 1940s, Cambodian Asia in the 1970s, and Rwandan Africa in the 1990s.

But I’m equally suspicious of moral absolutists. Frankly, they scare me, not because of their beliefs, which they are free to hold, but because of the consequences of their beliefs, which are sometimes both immoral and illegal. A parent forgoes a blood transfusion for her ailing child as a demonstration of fidelity to God’s word, and the consequences are crocodile tears over a tiny coffin. There are some Christians, for example, if given the choice to deny Jesus or have their kids killed by terrorists, they would choose the latter with a clear conscience. But this is a false choice as I’ve been deprived of my ability to freely choose. Morality cannot exist in the absence of freedom, or, to put it another way, morality cannot be compelled as that would turn the us-- agent of morality-- into an automata governed by unaccountable forces. Thus, the situation itself is immoral. Any kind of response could only be immoral. So, since lying or not lying under the circumstances are both immoral, I would naturally lie in this case to save my children. The moral absolutists would insist that lying violates the Ten Commandments. Perhaps they would remember how Ananias and Sapphira were struck down in Acts 5 for lying to the Holy Spirit. Despite whatever rationalizations can be made not to lie, this is an example where the more moral course of action would be to lie to save a life. The immoral course of action is to elevate their conscience over the life of another person. This isn’t “trusting God”. They are just trusting their own weakly-rationalized understanding of what God requires in situations like this.

I disagree that morality is merely a submission of the individual will to the communal will, as history and current events tells us that the communal will from lynchings to the holocaust can be immoral. Nor is morality merely subjectivism, as in "I feel it is wrong to consume food that once had faces." It isn't a response to fear, as in "if you steal, you will go to hell." It is rather a feedback between individual intellect, conscience, and courage and the situation and context, rooting responses in what is sometimes absolutely true and good and leaving open for dialogue a civilized, patient, difficult, dialectical approach to respolving the grey areas, such as, for example, the administration of the commencement and conduct of war and the death penalty, the lifeboat scenerio, and start of life and end of life debates.

Whimsical Theories of the Afterlife

"One (possibility) is that we are, in fact, immense beings tasked with the physically demanding job of maintaining and upholding the cosmos. However, God entitles us to a vacation from time to time, and this we take as tiny, insignificant human beings, born into a resort called Earth. While here, we enjoy parochial pleasures, interesting ourselves in very small matters like watching movies, falling in love and so on. At the end of our lives, we return to work, terribly disappointed to be leaving our tiny earthly bodies.

"Strange enough? Well, here’s another possibility. “There are three deaths,” Eagleman writes. “The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” In this scheme, when we die, we go to a cosmic waiting room where we mark time until our name is never again mentioned. The famous are trapped here, of course, for a very long time; they wish for obscurity, but it may take an eternity to arrive.

"How about another afterlife, in which God is a microbe whose real concern is the battles and triumphs of other microbes? Our problem here is that we are simply too big. Our fate is irrelevant to the real show, which is the one in which microbes participate."

(Alexander McCall Smith's book review in the New York Times of David Angleman's Forty Tales From the Afterlife.)

Wingnuttery Rising

A prediction.

Connect the dots. The abortion provider murder. The holocaust museum shooting. Angry pro-life, pro-gun, anti-immigrationists are on the march.

So expect more of the same.

"I Always Lie"

I am pondering the verse from Titus 1:12 and wondering if I can turn it into a truth table. "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, "The Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons."

From the Book of Psalms in the Old Testament we have,

PSA 116:10 I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted:
PSA 116:11 I said in my haste, all men are liars.

If this true, then it was a lie making all men true. Liars can be true, but not lies.

Every proposition is a sentence, but every sentence is not a proposition.

A proposition is a judgement expressed in words; and a judgement is a direct comparison between two concepts.

The material form of the copula is an accident of language, and a matter of indifference to logic. 'The kettle boils' is as logical a form of expression as 'The kettle is boiling.' For it must beremembered that the word 'is' here is a mere sign of agreement betweenthe two terms, and conveys no notion of actual existence. We may use it indeed with equal propriety to express non-existence, as when we say 'An idol is nothing.' (George Stock, Oxford)

Chinese Executions

How countries execute their citizens is always disturbing. But, with the death penalty for more than 60 crimes, the People's Republic of China takes execution to another level.

Here is a step by step.

1. They allow especially women prisoners to look pretty before they are executed.

2. The criminal has a rice bowl before execution.

3. The criminal has a final walk of shame

4. The criminal is killed with a hollow bullet to the head, and then bill the family for the cost of the bullet.

5. The prisoner's arms are shackled behind them and they are made to kneel down before receiving a single bullet fired at close range into the back of the head or neck by a soldier or policeman or by a bullet fired into the heart from behind using an automatic rifle.

6. The state may then harvests body parts, such as kidneys, hearts, and corneas.

Obama's Egyptian Speech

A reader says:

"As an Israeli, Obama's speach in Egypt and comparing the holocaust with the Palestinian suffering is really tasteless and back stabbing."

I reply:

Instead of riling up everyone with your false characterization of Obama's Egyptian speech, why not take the time to read Obama's speech?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/

Obama states:

"America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied."

Now these are the two paragraphs that I believe you are referring to.

"Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed -- more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction -- or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews -- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

"On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people -- Muslims and Christians -- have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years they've endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations -- large and small -- that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own."

It takes a warped reading to suggest that Obama is saying that Palestinian suffering is the moral equivalent of the holocaust. No where do he suggest that. Rather, he states the indisputable facts-- the fact of the holocaust and Israel's right to exist and the fact of the Palestinian diaspora and their yearning for statehood. The denial of either set of historical facts is dishonest. Given the realization of those two sets of facts, is there common ground? The essence of Obama's speech is that there is indeed.

The Foreign Guy

. . . who is chill.

That what my boys tell me their friends call me. I suppose that's a good thing.

Land of the Lost

For our 17th anniversary, we say the comedy-adventure movie Land of the Lost. You need to suspend judgment on its plot line, but it was funny. Not for everyone. I saw a half dozen people elave throughout the movie, but we like it.

And Can It Be

The best gospel song.

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

(Charles Wesley)

Hey Jude

"You've found her/Now go and get her." The greatest Beatles song ever.

You'll Never Walk Alone

Jordin Spark's performs my life-long anthem. "At the end of the storm is a golden sky/And the sweet silver song of the lark."

Kitty the Somali

Our pet of the last five years is Kitty, a Somali cat.

The Somali is a breathtaking cat to behold. It bears an uncanny resemblance to a little fox, with its large ears, masked face, full ruff and bushy tail. The Somali’s wild, feral look is what immediately draws fascinated attention.

Somalis are intelligent cats, and while active, they have soft voices and are usually quiet. They communicate with human family members through soft mews and possess a charming trill. They are extroverts and very social. Possessed with a zest for life, they love to play, solicit nuzzles and pats, and thrive on human companionship. Somalis have bursts of energy several times a day, at which time they will take off through the house, jumping into the air. They toss balls and toys in the air, fetch them back and begin the game anew. Tail and back arched, the Somali will run sideways like a monkey, and even hold objects and food the way a monkey does. Adept at opening cupboards and drawers, Somalis sometimes hide inside their secret areas. Many Somalis can manipulate faucets, and they love to play with water.

Beethoven Symphony No. 9

No music is better.

O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern lasst uns angenehmere anstimmen
und freudenvollere!

Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken.
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.

David Carridine's Lonely Death

It is starting to look like the grasshopper's death was due not to suicide but to something kinky that went awry.

BANGKOK (AP) -- The body of American actor David Carradine, best known for the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu," was found in a hotel room closet with a rope tied to his neck and genitals, and his death may have been caused by accidental suffocation, Thai police said Friday.

David was a great actor and it is a sad death. I enjoyed Kung Fu in my high school days, and would try snatching stones from my friends hands.

James Edmund Scripps

About a decade ago in Chicago, I bought a leather-bound Bible published in 1860 with a faceplate with the name James Edmund Scripps.

James Edmund Scripps (March 19, 1835–1906) was an Illinois newspaper publisher

Scripps was born in 1835 in London to James Mogg Scripps and Ellen Mary (Saunders) Scripps. His father was a prominent bookbinder and came to America in 1844 with six motherless children. Scripps grew up on a Rushville, Illinois, farm. Securing employment at the Chicago Tribune in 1857, Scripps moved to Detroit in 1859 and in 1862 became manager of the Detroit Tribune and also became at length part owner and manager of the Detroit Daily Advertiser. When the paper was burned out in 1873, Scripps took his $20,000 insurance money and with it start his own newspaper.

In 1873, Scripps decided to tap the growing class of working men and women by launching a newspaper, The Evening News (later, The Detroit News). Running with an idea new for its time, he filled the paper with inexpensive advertising and instructed his reporters to write "like people talk." His competitors called The News "a cheap rag" and labeled his reporters "pirates," but Detroiters loved it.

With his younger half-brother, E.W., James later had an interest in newspapers located in Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Chicago. After a lengthy European acquisition tour, James aided prominently in founding the Detroit Museum of Art (later, the Detroit Institute of Arts), in 1889 presenting it with a collection of old masters costing $75,000 (in 1889 dollars). Scripps died in 1906.

James's sister and one-time partner, Ellen Browning Scripps, was the founding donor of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography located in La Jolla, California and was the founder of Scripps College, located in Claremont as part of the 5Cs. She was also instrumental in helping younger brother E.W. get started in the newspaper industry, resulting in the E.W. Scripps Company media conglomerate.

Back in Detroit, James’ eldest daughter, Ellen Warren Scripps (1863-1948), married George Gough Booth, who subsequently became the publisher of the Evening News Association and independently founded Michigan’s Booth Newspapers chain (acquired by S.I. Newhouse's Advance Publications in 1976). Together, George and “Nellie” also founded the world-renowned Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Gaze At the Dazzling World of Tomorrow

Damien Defies Gravity

Best watched with the sound on mute.

Google Sent Me Moolah

My Mall & News is one blog that makes a profit. Thanks Google, and keep the clicks coming!

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

Our Buggy Moral Code

This would explain why some people who are, for the most part honest hard working employees, would never take $5.00 out of the cash drawer, but would have no problem using a half-hour or more reading personal e-mails, playing minefield on their computer, or doing thier nails.

You Are My Sunshine

A great song to end the perfect day.

Christianity and Torture

Christianity is incompatiable with the use of torture, and Christians that promote or rationalize its use are wrong. Period.

I have a somewhat lengthy post in my blog on the Jay Bybee memos, and I was one of the first to call for his impeachment. Bybee, sad to say, is a self-described Christian.

http://www.mymallandnews.com/2009/04/impeach-jay-bybee.html

I do want to address a proof text for subserviance to government from Romans 13. That chapter starts: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher power. But there is no power but of God; the powers that are ordained of God."

So the question is: who or what is that power? The interpretation used by most conservatives is that power is synonymous with the executive branch in the United States. But, for anyone who has taken fifth grade civics, this is not true. Authority is derived from the people as embodied in the constitution: "We the People of the United States... establish this Constitution for the United States of America." The books of the prophets are replete with examples of individuals standing in opposition to state-ordained injustice. The Bible doesn't support as I read it blind "my country right or wrong" conservatism.

.

Name That Fallacy

Interesting thread on logical fallacies.

Here is my contribution.

No rice is snow
No snow is hot
Thus, no rice is hot

This is a syllogistic fallacy.

Says a reader:

The fact that "No snow is rice" is sort of accidental in Philip's formulation of the fallacy.

His fallacy has the form:
No A is a B
No B is a C.
*. No A is a C

For instance, the following is the same fallacy:

No horse is a centaur
No centaur has wings.
*. No horse has wings

Notice that in this case, every one of the lines is in fact true (in Greek mythology at any rate). However, the argument is still fallacious. So while it is still a bad argument, you can't really reply "No centaur is a horse, false conclusion".

The Good Old Days

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be..

Here are some facts about the1500s: Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water..

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying . It's raining cats and dogs.

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence. The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, Dirt poor.

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying a thresh hold.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.. Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous. Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a ..dead ringer..

Que Sera Sera

"When I was just a little girl/I asked my mother what will I be?" I like mortifying my kids by singing this delightful Doris Day song. "The future's not ours to see/What will be will be."

A Life on the Ocean Wave

This just makes me just plumb happy. It reminds me of my second grade in a British boarding school where we lisped


A life on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep,
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!

Photos That Changed The World

The Photos

A Divine Coincidence?

A reader writes:

The Illinios lottery "evening pick 3 "on the day of the first anniversary of 9-11 was 911.

On November 5, the day after the Illinios senator, Barak Obama, was elected president, the Illinios "evening pick 3" was 666.
I have read that coincidences mean "heads up, pay attention".
I know that 666 was picked a couple of more times over the years, but who was the Illinios senator? The point is it was picked the day after Obama was elected president. I think the 911 pick on the anniversary of 9-11 was a warning and a "pay attention" . I just don't know from who. Is the lottery rigged? I doubt it. Was it God? Probably. I just cannot believe that those two picks on those particular days were simply coincidence.There's way too many numbers out there for such coincidences. I'm not saying he is antiChrist, but I am not saying he's not. He's something that has to do with antiChrist and the end times. That should be obvious to anyone. It's obvious to me.

It is obvious to me that you are predisposed against President Obama and you are looking for a mystical reason to support that pre-disposition.

A concidence does not mean "heads up, pay attention." It simply means that you are making a causal link between two unrelated events. It is an "after this, because of this" fallacy. A number coming up in a lottery has no more to do with Obama than a rooster crowing has to do with the rising sun.

North Korea's Atomic Motivations

There are five ways of attacking with fire. The first is to burn soldiers in their camp; the second is to burn stores; the third is to burn baggage trains; the fourth is to burn arsenals and magazines; the fifth is to hurl dropping fire amongst the enemy.

Sun Tzu

North Korea's motivation in rattling the nuclear saber is to achieve ultimately unification with South Korea. They are playing a long game, and consistent with Sun Tzu's Art of War, North Korea wants to achieve its goals through guile and without bloodshed. "Therefore one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful. " While China's historic motivation has been to maintain a buffer state between itself and the west, it appears that China's ability to control North Korea is dangerously waning.

On April 5, 2009, North Korea tested the Taepodong-2 Rocket again and it was successfully launched. However, even if it was a satellite rocket test, the test is still violates the UN Security Council's decision. Because Taepodon-2's first stage engine is same with "Musudan (Nodong-B)" [31], North Korea claims they have demonstrated Musdan Mobile 4000 km MRBM's reliability.

This means North Korea may be able to develop/deploy several hundreds mobile ICBM -- which can survive from first strike by US ICBM-like DF-31/RT-2UTTH Topol M-- within 7–10 years. (The Soviet Union deployed 3000 km R27U in 1971 and deployed next model 9100 km R29D in 1978.) [32]

Japan Ministry of Defense's analyst Takesada points out that North Korea's desire of unification is similar to North Vietnam, and warns of the possibility of North Korea's compulsory merge of South Korea by threats of nuclear weapons, taking advantage of any US possible decrease in military presence from South Korea, after North Korea deploy few hundreds Mobile ICBM aimed at the US. [33]

If By Whisky

Weasals love this fallacy.

Remember

We remember those who have laid down their lives that others might live. Keep them in our memories. Keep them in our hearts.

Margaritas Joy

Margaritas from Zach Klein on Vimeo.

Yikes!

Love and Quantum Entanglement

Interesting discussion on NPR radio on how relationships can effect health through "quantum entanglement."

Once two particles have interacted, if you separate them, even by miles, they behave as if they're still connected. So far, this has only been demonstrated on the subatomic level.

But Radin wonders: Could people in close relationships — couples, siblings, parent and child — also be "entangled"? Not just emotionally, and psychologically — but also physically?

"If it is true that entanglement actually persists, by means of which we don't understand," he says, "if they are physically entangled, you should be able to separate them, poke one, and see the other one flinch."
This idea — that we may be connected at some molecular level — echoes the words of mystics down the ages. And it appeals to some scientists.

But it infuriates others — like Columbia University's Sloan. The underlying idea is wrong, he says. Entanglement just doesn't work this way.

"Physicists are very clear that the relationship is purely correlational and not causal," Sloan says. "There is nothing causal about quantum entanglement. It's good to be open-minded, but not so open-minded that your brains fall out."

Is Abortion A Civil Right?

A reader asks:

"President Obama said this yesterday; "So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.

I have one question. Why do liberals now say that they "want to reduce the number of abortions"? If there is nothing wrong with abortion why would you want to limit it? If there IS something wrong with abortion why do you claim it's a "civil right"?"

That was three questions. But I'm not aware of any pro-choicer who thinks that there is nothing wrong with abortion or promotes it as a form of birth control. Abortion is an invasive medical procedure that carries both physical and mental risks to the patient. Women would want to undergo this procedure with reluctance and in consideration of alternative consequences-- in consultation with their doctor not their legislator. Abortion per se is not a civil right any more than driving a car is a civil right. The process to privately decide whether or not to abort is a privacy issue and is indeed a civil right. From this perspective, it seems to me that traditionalists and liberterians-- those who fear and resist the intrusion fo the state into the sphere of individual and family rights-- would have to be pro choice. The president's goal of making abortion legal, safe, and rare while promoting education and adoption seems appropriate.

Sean Hannity's Courage

The coward of cable.

Glen Beck is a Lying Sack of Dog Mess

The Dog Mess

Tattoo Malfunction

Hayden Panettiere's misspelled tattoo. Someone commented: "friend of mine was very proud of his new ink that was supposed to say "Peace Love and Long Life" in Chinese,until a mutual friend, born in the People's Republic of China, said it actually read, "Brocolli Chicken $6.99".

A Red Tribute to Colonel Sanders

A Love Letter From the Right

As I've said to some of your coven...If you boiled GWB in oil, and ate him and killed all the believers in the country, you still wouldn't be happy. You leftists are addicted to power and debauchery. And, like any addict, you destroy yourselves and everybody around you.

The debate continues.





"President Obama and former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke on torture yesterday. Obama spoke out against torture, and Cheney gave more of a "how-to" discussion."

Jay Leno

"A new survey shows that the happiest Americans are elderly, male Republicans. In other words---Republicans."

Jimmy Fallon

"You know I miss the Bush administration. At least with those guys, you knew where you stood, which was occasionally on a box while holding electrodes. That's why I was glad to see former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ... featured in the latest issue of GQ. ... The story is that during the Iraq war, Rumsfeld's briefings to President Bush had cover pages featuring war photography and passages from the Bible. Because obviously, briefings about a war you just launched are a snooze unless you add a little pizzazz. So they added quotes like this one from Isaiah: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Of course, the answer was, 'The same soldiers, over and over again.'"

Stephen Colbert

"Newt Gingrich yesterday was all over TV. He called Nancy Pelosi a 'trivial politician.' ... A 'trivial politician,' as opposed to Newt himself, who is a very serious, unemployed fat guy who runs a think tank out of his basement."

Bill Maher

Don't Attack Obama's Dog

A lesson from history.

The Basic Substance of the Universe?

Here is an example of a debate I had on a science forum this morning.

Topic: Is there a basic substance that everything else is made of?

Energy

energy isnt a substance

what is substance? atoms? time, love, hope, faith?

...no interactions of energy fields/probabilities? most of matter is empty space

but there is an equivalence between matter and energy

no between mass and energy

why isn't energy susbtance?

mass is no more substantive

what is matter?

because it's a potential

why isn't energy actuality?

to say energy is a substance is like saying 'motion' is a substance

to put it another way, from whence did matter derive?

big bang, everyone knows that

i.e. energy - subatomic particles smashing together in a violently expanding singularity something like that

Postcards From My World

Cubs Slaughter the Diamondbacks



"Do you mind?"


Motorcycle Accident on Hayden Road, Scottsdale


Our Neighborhood

Flip Flopping

When a Republican politician changes his mind, he is prudently responding to new information. When a Democratic politican changes his mind, he is an unprincipled flip-flopper.

Cheney and the GOP

Cheney is hurting the party.

Cheney is helping the party.

Political Plays of the Week

Why did President Obama give a commencement speech at ASU? It is for the same reason that Clinton gave a major speech in front of a veterans group and Reagan launched his successful presidential campaign in New York City. He wanted to demonstrate strength in a place where he was ostensibly weak-- the heart of McCain country. I don't think Obama will neutralize opposition to his stand on abortion by going to Notre Dame later this week. But it will demonstrate once again his desire for dialogue and fairness-- not an insignificant accomplishment in these polarized times.

I watched on our local cable station ASU graduates file past the chancellor to shake the president's hand. I was struck by the warmth Obama showed to each graduate with a bright smile and a few words, and some responded with hugs. It's a moment they will remember for the rest of their lives.

What about his so-called flip-flop on the interrogation photographs? Again, I see this as a superb political play. First, he promoted the existence of those Bush-era photographs, leaving it to our imagination what those photographs would reveal. Then, in consultation with the military, he blocked their release, knowing well that they will most likely be released by court order. Thus, he insulates himself from any blow-back should they get released while reinforcing the distinction of his administration from the prior administration. It is a rebuke at his base that affirms the sense among the general public that he is a moderate in touch with new information from military advisors.

Despotism Under the Law

The Bush military tribunals provided the following protections for war crime defendents, including:

— the presumption of innocence
— the imposition of the burden of proof on the prosecution
— the right to counsel, both to a military lawyer provided at the expense of the American taxpayer and to a private attorney if the combatant chooses to retain one
— the right to be presented with the charges in advance of trial
— access to evidence the prosecution intends to introduce and to any exculpatory evidence known to the prosecution
— access to interpreters as necessary to assist in understanding the proceedings
— the right to a trial presumptively open to the public (except for portions sealed for national defense or witness security purposes)
— the free choice to testify or decline to do so
— the right against any negative inference from a refusal to testify
— access to reasonably available evidence and witnesses
— access to investigative resources as "necessary for a full and fair trial"; — the right to present evidence and to cross-examine witnesses.

At least that is what Andrew McCarthy says in a recent article.

Those may indeed be stated protections, but the reality appears to be closer to the Soviet model, where law is sucked of the substance of justice. During the Stalanist purges in the 1930s, identifying and eventually liquidating enemies of the state followed a meticulous legal path that began with signed search warrants and ended with signed death warrants. The death of each enemy of the state was accompanied by a thick folder of forms, documents, and confessions.

I've been trying to understand why some conservatives still continue to support the amorality of rendition, torture, or incarceration without trial. It may come from a residual loyalty to our last president and a concern that dispensing with such approaches will invite terrorism. Perhaps there is something to be said for that, but that doesn't justify brushing away 700 years of jurisprudence that has developed to promote justice and to prevent despotism under the law.

No Trump Job Security

No past apprentice winners still work for the Trump organization, but they all seem to have done well.

Does Time Exist?

Says a reader:

I tell people that it is a mistake to believe that time began in the Big Bang, and that duration and time are not one and the same like many people believe, so I of course "have to put up or shut up" and then explain when time did actually begin.

I personally believe that time began back in prehistoric times with the first generation of prehistoric man. I also believe that timekeeping was very near the beginning of man's knowledge and he learned and developed many other things from this(Logic, fractions, geometry, math, etc.)

My response:

I think you are confusing two very different questions. You answer your question by saying in effect that time began when humans recognized duration as evidenced by the path of the sun or the changing seasons. But this doesn't address the underlying question as to what time is or even if it exists in any real sense. I think you can convice me in the existence of three dimensions. But how do we know for sure that there is a fourth dimension of time-- that there is "something" other than the now and that "something" causally relates to the "now"?

You apparently consider that there is such a thing as an absolute factor as 'time' outside of human belief systems. My rationalization is that nothing exists for us humans, including the notion of 'reality' (you mentioned 'real time') unless it exists in our minds first. We are addressing the question of "When did time begin?"So 'time' began with a notion of our ancestors, and probably long before the construction of the stone edifices.

I think Einstein put to rest the notion that time is an absolute factor. But is it merely an artifact of human consciousness? Much of the natural world is influenced by time, such as circadian rhythms. It doesn't seem to make sense that humans "invented" time. The Humean skeptic would say that only "now" manifestly exists, not yesterday or tomorrow. Thus, David Hume would insist, we cannot make any claim whatever that the sun will rise tomorrow or the pencil that drops from my hand at this instant will drop from my hand at this next instant. I have trouble understanding your claim that "nothing exists for us humans unless it exists in our mind first." Humean skepticism may defy common sense, but that flavor of solipsism also defies common sense. Thus, it would seem, the music I hear and the colors I see is my (possibly delusional) consciousness, not objectively real air vibrations or light waves. But the question I would ask is: if time is more than a mere comprehensive human apprehension, what exactly is it then? Perhaps the answer is the same answer I would give to the question: when did energy exist? It always was, it always is, and it will always be. Time, like energy, never began. They simply are.

While I agree that humans did not "invent" time (when time is understood to be what others on here have called "duration") I disagree with your reasons for supporting this claim. Einstein put to rest the notion that time is an absolute factor in a particular sense. But what Einstein did not do was to make it something subjective. What Einstein did was to show that time is different when observed from different inertial reference frames in the same way that my pen looks different when viewed from different angles. There is a measure which can be defined on spacetime which is invariant under Lorentz transformations (i.e. transformations from one reference frame to another.) These are called space-time intervals. Understood from this perspective, transformations from one reference frame to another can be understood as rotations in spacetime which turn spatial dimensions (x, y, z, or mixtures thereof) into time or vice versa. So while the absoluteness of time was put to rest by Einstein, he discovered for us a deeper absolute quantity (spacetime intervals).

Camille Paglia's Hate Radio Epiphany

This student of populist AM radio opines.

Talk radio has been seething with such intensity since Barack Obama's first week in office that I am finding it very hard to listen to it. How many times do we have to be told the sky is falling? The major talk show hosts, in my opinion, made a strategic error in failing to reset at lower volume after Obama's election. When the default mode is feverish crisis pitch, there's nowhere to go, and monotony sets in. Lately, I've been doing a lot of tuning in and impatiently tuning out. As a longtime fan of talk radio, I don't think this bodes well for the long-term broad appeal of the medium. I want stimulation and expansion of my thinking -- not shrill, numbing hectoring and partisan undermining of the authority and dignity of the presidency. Rabidly Bush-bashing Democrats shouldn't have done it to the last president either, but that's no excuse for conservatives, who claim to revere our institutions, to play schoolyard tit for tat.

Not that Obama's policies and conduct shouldn't receive sharp scrutiny. Despite my disgust at the grotesquely bloated stimulus package which did severe early damage to this administration, I am generally happy with Obama's eagerness to tackle long-entrenched social problems, although there is sometimes a curious disconnect between what he says and what he does. The degree to which Obama is or is not a stealth socialist remains to be seen.

My giddy aunt, Obama is a stealth socialist?

A reader responded to Paglia's new found disappointment to hate radio's best hits, thusly:

What a refreshing and superb piece by Paglia!

NOT!!!

Yesterday, Xrandadu Hutman, on the comments after Joan's latest, predicted Paglia's latest would go like this:

"I was bemused and controvanklemuddled by Wanda Sykes' classless disembowabblement of Rush Limbaugh at the narcissistic White House Correspondents Dinner. Whereas Limbaugh, that rapaciously churlish master of spoken-word artistry, has a highly successful radio program, what has Sykes done that's left more than a fleeting fingerprint whorl on the collective political consciousness? Limbaugh proves why Republicans lord over the airwaves like Marlene Dietrich vamping for a gape-jawed audience of dilglumptious potanicals; Sykes shows why liberals can't even attend dinner without choking on the arrogant wanklinobbishness of their insouciant bilfonkery. Did I mention that I wrote a book called 'Sexual Personae'?"

What's the difference between this and what she actually wrote? This one is at least funny.

Need I even bother asking Salon again to please, for the love of God, Kick. Her. Out.

The Frustration of Will

Epictetus postulated that it is desirable to will whatever occurs; in this way one's will is never frustrated.Is this a plausible position? Is it possible for a Stoic to live a human life, or merely "the life of a stone"?

I prefer Nietsche's "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." Fatalism of any kind is not reasonable. The corollary is that we must welcome the frustration of our will to do anything that really matters.

Easy Google Profit's Scam

Easy Google Profits is a scam.

Buyer beware.

B & B's Mother Day's Greeting

This is a bit too close to home with my own Frick and Frack.

Do What Thy Manhood Bids Thee Do

From none but self expect applause
He noblest lives and noblest dies
Who makes and keeps his self-made laws.

Sir Richard Francis Burton

A Life With Religion, and Without

Here is a letter to the editor as published in today's New York Times.

Related

Op-Ed Columnist: Defecting to Faith (May 2, 2009)

I am grateful for Charles M. Blow’s summary of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey on religious affiliation (“Defecting to Faith,” column, May 2). But I was surprised when he claimed that “science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious.”

As one raised by atheist parents with college and graduate study in physics, plus a doctorate in the philosophy of religion from Columbia, I believe I know a thing or two about these items.

First, if you follow John Dewey in his assertion that “whatever introduces genuine perspective is religious,” then there is no such animal as the nonreligious. Furthermore, historians of science now know that biblical religion was a major factor in the rise of the empirical side of modern science.

Finally, since following Dewey and many others, if everyone has a worldview, whether implicit or explicit, and none can be proved to anyone else who does not share it, then we all “walk by faith, and not by sight,” as Paul put it.

Owen C. Thomas
Berkeley, Calif., May 2, 2009

The writer is professor emeritus of theology at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.

Happy Mothers Day, Mom

This will be the first year where I cannot say that to my mother, who died five months ago.

Motion Picture Sickness

I tried to watch Peter Fonda's low budget 1967 plot-free LSD commercial "The Trip" last night, but I turned it off after 45 minutes of torture. I can take only so many "groovie, man"s.

I think I've found the worst movie of all time.

Play It Again, Kitty

A Pirate's Nightmare

USS Freedom

Specifically designed for the "Global War on Terrorism," the 378-foot craft aims at pirates and oh so much more. According to a fact sheet, Freedom can also defy "asymmetric 'anti-access threats such as mines, quiet diesel submarines and fast surface crafts."

Why the Republican Party Is Dying

Here is a thought experiment, especially for those of you who are pro-life. The next time you get your oil drained or your tooth filled, ask the mechanic or the dentist whether or not they are pro-life. I hope you have the integrity to take your business elsewhere if they don't give you an answer you like.

This, in short, is what has happened to the Republican Party. It has been hijacked by Christianists-- people who wear the title of Christian to advance political goals.

Christianists have populated both parties. On the left, many of the early civil right leaders and feminists were devout Christians. Many prominant abolitionists, war protestors, and union leaders were also Christians.

However, something happened on the Christian right that didn't happen on the Christian left. And, to understand this, we have to got back to 1976 with the origin of the Moral Majority. Jerry Falwell rejected the traditional Baptist principle of the separation of church and state to raise awareness of social issues. These planks included rejection of homosexual civil rights, anti-communism, anti-feminism, and pro-life.

Although Falwell disbanded the Moral Majority in 1989, it gave rise to a network of political active conservative churches across the country. The Christian left never had an analagous religious-political structure. With the perspective of history, it is clear that this confederation of political active churches was a Trojan horse that has almost succeeded in bringing the Republican Party to its knees.

Republican politics became victim to a king of Gresham's Law, where the most inflamatory and the most intolerant conservatives marginalized and then eradicated the socially moderate, fiscally conservative wing of the party. The Christianists allied themselves with the neo-conservative internationalists to create Christian triumphantism-- an ideology of Christianity as a universally prevailing political force rather than a universally prevailing moral force. And the rest is history.

The Republican Party is now a twitching shell of itself from twenty years ago and the prognosis is grim. The only chance for the Grand Old Party to rise as a potent political force is to cast the preachers out of the temple and bring back the money changers. A party dominated by moral issues irrelevant to the majority of the electorate is surely a recipe for failure.

Wolfram Alpha

The biggest internet revolution for a generation will be unveiled this month with the launch of software that will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before.

The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.

Random Factoids

One of my small pleasures is to read the Sunday New York Times each Sunday afternoon. Its writing is consistently excellent and I always learn something. Here are a baker's dozen of factoids that I wasn't aware of before today.

1. The pay gap between college graduates and those people who did not graduate is 54 percent as of last year, a record high.

2. William F. Buckley was buried with his favorite peanut butter and the ashes of his wife.

3. Henry David Thoreau accidently burned down 300 acres of Concord forest in 1844.

4. Warren Buffett's Bershire Hathaway stick has fallen 39 percent since December 2009.

5. Mine that Bird, with 50-1 odds, wons the 2009 Kentucky Derby six and a quarter lengths ahead of 18 other horses.

6. Carol Ann Duffy was named Britian's poet laureate, the first women in 340 years. Example:

I give you an onion.

Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,

possessive and faithful

as we are,

for as long as we are.

7. Evidence to date suggests that the swine flu is no more dangerous than the average flu.

8. The 1970 Pontiac GTO The Judge" had a hood-mounted tachometer.

9. Red Sox's Fenway Park, built in 1912, holds 33,000 seats.

10. Microsoft is shutting down Encarta, their online enclopedia, next year.

11. Calcutta is now called Kolkata. Its other names: City of Palaces, Black Hole, Graveyard of the British Empire.

12. Odds of having three multi-platinum albumns: 1/1,650,000.

13. Odds of having a child diagnosed with autism: 1/150.

Souter To Resign

A prediction. This will be the first of three Obama Supreme Court nominations.

Pots and Pans and the Virgin Mary

Scratch that comment in my last post about Americans been practical.

CALEXICO, Calif. (AP) - The hottest thing on the griddle at the Las Palmas restaurant these days isn't the food—it's the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that a cook says she saw on the griddle.

Restaurant manager Brenda Martinez says more than 100 people have flocked to the small town of Calexico on the California-Mexico border to gaze at the likeness of the Virgin Mary since it was discovered as the griddle was being cleaned.

Among the awe-struck was a group of masked Mexican wrestlers who arrived Thursday for an exhibition at a nearby swap meet.

One, known as Mr. Tempest, says: "This is amazing. It's a true miracle."

Since the discovery, the griddle has been taken out of service and placed in a shrine in a storage room

Are They That Bad?

That was the question I asked my boy as we watched the Cubs batter the Diamondbacks on Tuesday, 11 to three. They really are, he said. And that was the thought that occurred to me as I took in Wednesday's politics. Republican Arlen Specter's decision to become a Democrat now makes the Democratic Congress veto proof. It's a nice present for Obama's on his 100 day victory lap.

While I'm ideologically tilted to the Democratic Party, I don't see one party rule as good this nation removing as it does the accountability a vibrant minority party should provide. However, the Republican Party has by its own choice ceased to become relevant. They are a midway sideshow, a mildly crazed Greek chorus of hooters and naysayers, a walking abortion of talking heads and flat taxers, an ever narrowing slice of humanity. It's great fun to watch, but it isn't good for our country.






Here is a gentle suggestion-- not a bum steer-- to Republicans from someone who used to be a Reagan Republican but who is now a Democrat.

Build trust.

The kind of rhetoric you see in that video and on right wing cable doesn't develop credability.

Americans, as a people, are fair minded and practical, and it's a mistake-- a politically losing proposition-- to assume that they are simple minded and ideological. Americans can hold strong pro-life opinions, for example, but they will vote for a pro-life candidate if they think that the candidate will represent them reasonably. The Republican brand has tarnished not because the brand was bad but because the people who represented that brand were stupid or evil. The messenger is the message, and the Republican party needs better messengers. If they don't find better messengers, the elephant party will become the dinosaur party.

Interstellar Love is a Winding Road

Parallelostory from impactist on Vimeo.

Cheney's Truth Commission

Former vice president Richard Cheney wants the government to declassify information that supports his claim that torture produced results favorable to the national interest. "Ye shall know the truth", says John 8:32, "and the truth shall make you free." But in Cheney's case, I wouldn't bet on it. The release of ostensible answers have a way of opening the door for yet more questions and possibly indictments.

I hope Cheney's request is granted.

The Pandemic of 2009

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

T.S. Eliot


Breaking news suggests signs of a possible pandemic of swine flu. With the relentless news of wars and rumors of wars, could it be that mankind will succumb to an invisible terror-- a malignant microscobe? Maybe. But the data needs to become more robust before anyone can come to any kind of conclusion. I recall during the Gerald Ford years in 1975 and 1976, there was mounting hysteria to vaccinate everyone because of a small outbreak of swine flu. In reaction to the vaccine, about 500 people developed Guillain-Barre syndrome and more than 25 people died. I was never vaccinated, but the memory of my grandfather who died during the 1918 pandemic weighed on me.

Here is a paragraph from my geneology of that time.

At just this time, the United States was about to be hit by the greatest natural disaster in its history. In a ten month period, this catastrophe would claim the lives of more than a half million people in this country and up to fifty million lives worldwide. In India alone, twelve million people would perish. Incubated in the trenches of Verdun and Flanders, the so-called Spanish Flu attacked with staggering virulence. Schools, churches, and factories were decimated. In South Dakota, the influenza would infect a member of an Indian tribe. Tribal members would chant around the body through the night. Within a few days, everyone in the tribe would be dead. The virus attacked the strongest, and most people that died were between the ages of 21 and 29. By the fall of 1918, the death rate in major cities was up by 1000 percent and coffins were stacked on sidewalks. But, with the first frost of winter, the flu finally subsided, leaving behind empty homes and playgrounds and a ghostly lullaby:

I once had a bird named Enza,
I opened the window and in flew Enza.

Mum and Pup and Me

Christopher Buckley, the son of the conservative writer and thinker William F. Buckley, writes an elegaic portrait of the final days of his parents. Here are some excerpts.

The nurse buzzed me into the Critical Care Unit. The chic and stunning Mrs. William F. Buckley — the society columnists used to call her that — lay on her bed, shrunken, open-eyed, unseeing, a thick plastic respirator tube protruding from her mouth, making a loud, rhythmic bellows noise as it pumped and withdrew air from her lungs. I’d driven eight hours through a storm to get here and knew pretty much what to expect, but I lost it and began to sob. The nurse kindly left.

I drew up a chair and held what I could of her hand, which was cold and bony and edematous with fluid. The nurse returned shortly and said that Dr. D’Amico was on the phone. Joe D’Amico was her orthopedist, a kindly, attentive and warm man. The week before, he amputated three dry-gangrenous, mummified toes on her left foot. She stubbed them the previous November and, having fallen and broken so many bones in her body over the years, she, in the fashion of Victorian ladies, took to her bed to die. Sixty-five years of smoking cigarettes, with attendant problems of circulation, had taken their toll. A few days before, an operation to install a stent — to forestall additional amputations — went wrong, and a mortal infection set in.

Joe came on the line. He said how sorry he was, that she was a wonderful lady. He said: “What you’re seeing there isn’t her. She’s already in heaven.”

Joe and I had never discussed religion. I doubt, for that matter, that he and she had ever discussed it. I don’t think I ever once heard Mum utter a religious or spiritual sentiment, a considerable feat considering that she was married for 57 years to one of the most prominent Catholics in the country. But she rigorously observed the proprieties. When Pup taped an episode of “Firing Line” in the Sistine Chapel with Princess Grace, Malcolm Muggeridge, Charlton Heston and David Niven, Mum was included in the post-taping audience with Pope John Paul II. There’s a photo of the occasion: she has on more black lace than a Goya duchess. The total effect is that of Mary Magdalene dressed by Bill Blass.

I stammered out my thanks to Joe for everything he’d done for her. He asked, “Do you want to leave the respirator in or let nature take its course?” I said, “Let’s remove the respirator.”

I’d brought with me a pocket copy of the book of Ecclesiastes. A line in “Moby-Dick” lodged in my mind long ago: “The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.” I grabbed it off my bookshelf on the way here, figuring that a little fine-hammered steel would probably be a good thing to have on this trip. I’m no longer a believer, but I haven’t quite reached the point of reading aloud from Christopher Hitchens’s “God Is Not Great” at deathbeds of loved ones.

Soon after, a doctor came in to remove the respirator. It was quiet and peaceful in the room, just pings and blips from the monitor. I stroked her hair and said, the words coming out of nowhere, surprising me, “I forgive you.”

Pup and I had engaged in our own Hundred Years’ War over the matter of faith. Our Sturmiest und Drangiest times were over religion. Pup had the most delicious, reliable, wicked, vibrant sense of humor of anyone I knew, yet his inner Savonarola was released at the merest hint of (to use his term) impiety. Finally exhausted, I adopted — whether hypocritically or cowardly or wisely — a Potemkin stance of being back in the fold. My agnosticism, once defiant, had gone underground. I no longer had the desire to nail my theses to his church door. By now I knew we didn’t have much time left, and I didn’t want to spend it locking theological horns, making him heartsick with my intransigence.

I think about them every day. Orphanhood proceeds, tanned — as Leon Wieseltier hoped —and otherwise. It comes in waves. One moment you’re doing fine, living your life, even perhaps feeling some sort of primal sense of liberation — I can stay out as late as I want, and I don’t have to make my bed! Then in the next instant, boom, there it is. It has various ways of presenting, as doctors say of disease.

Sometimes it comes in the form of a black hole inside you, sucking the rest of you into it; at other times it is a sense of disconnection, as if you had been holding your mother’s hand in a crowd and suddenly she let go.

The summer after Pup died, I got a midnight call with the news that my friend Rust Hills, the editor and writer, had died. Rust was a great admirer of Montaigne. I thumbed through my copy of the “Essays” and found this: “The ceaseless labor of your life is to build the house of death.” It’s probably too downbeat a sentiment by American smiley-face standards to make it onto a refrigerator magnet, but . . . pas mal. You want to be able, when the end comes, to look the Reaper right in the eye and say, “Oh, puh-leeze.” I’m sure that’s how Mum did it. She’d have added, “And what, pray, is that preposterous costume supposed to indicate?”

“Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death,”Hazlitt wrote, “is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern — why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?”

Any English major can quote a good game. Ask me how I feel when my doctor says with a frown, “I’d like to do one more P.S.A. test.”

Recently, I was driving behind a belchy city bus and suddenly found myself thinking, not for the first time, about whether Pup is in heaven. He spent so much of his life on his knees in church, so much of his life doing the right thing by so many people, a thousand acts of generosity. I hesitate to put it this way, but I’m dying of curiosity: how did it turn out, Pup? Were you right, after all? Is there a heaven? Is Mum there with you? Grumbling, almost certainly, about the “inedible food,” and saying, “Bill, you’ve got to speak to that absurd St. Peter creature about getting Christopher in — I mean, it’s all too ridiculous for words.”

Here are three letters in response to that article.

I have long been a fan of both Buckleys — William F. Jr. and Christopher. However, the younger, in writing about the elder, has proved again that a son should think twice before writing publicly about his father. It is always a complicated relationship, and to blame William F. Buckley Jr.’s parental shortcomings — and some of them were simply astonishing — on the “Great Man” syndrome does an injustice to the average guy who works two jobs, pays the bills and still finds time to coach his kid’s Little League team. If only he were “Greater”: he could justifiably skip the ballgames, the hospitalizations and the graduations. And who could blame him? Worse, for those unfortunate kids stuck with paternal miscreants who don’t also happen to be Great Men, is there any convenient way for them to explain their plight? I agree that the elder Buckley was a great man. But I prefer the story of my mother, who never wrote a book or appeared on a television show but raised six happy children. At her funeral, someone described her as “an extraordinary woman who lived a very ordinary life.” She was, in other words, a great mom.

AL LARKIN

Milton, Mass.

I never had the pleasure of knowing William F. Buckley Jr., the private man — only the profound displeasure of knowing his public persona. While I am touched by Christopher Buckley’s grief, we needn’t overlook some less-than-savory facts about his father. W.F.B. began his career vehemently defending the worst excesses of McCarthyism; throughout the civil rights movement, opposed integration and black suffrage; during the Vietnam War, advocated using nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese; supported unconditionally the racist apartheid government of South Africa; cheerled for the genocidal C.I.A.-backed coup against Allende in Chile; and, in the early years of the AIDS pandemic, recommended that H.I.V.-diagnosed patients be forcibly tattooed on their buttocks. Despite the virtues of his intellect and charisma, W.F.B.’s only legacy to us is that mixture of homophobia, greed, racism, hypocrisy and military recklessness that is 21st-century conservatism. And, of course, a first-rate novelist son — Christopher is twice the prose artist his father ever was, for all the elder Buckley’s greater facility.

DAVID A. MURPHY

Providence, R.I.

Christopher Buckley’s remembrances as the only child of his celebrated parents, especially those of the sad last days of his father, cast William Buckley in a warmer light than that in which I had previously viewed him. The son’s generosity of spirit and endless devotion to his father is quite moving, given the often-challenging nature of their relationship. Still, even from a loving son’s perspective, William F. Buckley is portrayed as a relentlessly self-serving and self-centered person. Should that surprise us about the father of modern conservatism?

JOHN MUSGROVE

San Francisco

I Sign The ACLU Petition

I just signed the ACLU's petition calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the illegal torture of detainees in the war on terror.

To restore America's commitment to human rights, we need a thorough criminal investigation.

Watch a short video and join me in demanding accountability:

Investigate Torture

We Have Not Melt Before

Complement of the day,

Although you might be apprehensive about my email as we have not melt before, my name is Mr. Song Lile I work with the Hang Seng Bank.

There is the sum of $19,500,000.00 in my bank Hang Seng Bank", Hong Kong. There were no Beneficiaries stated concerning these fundswhich means no one would ever come forward claim it. That is why I ask that we work together so as to have the sum transferred out of my bankinto your account.

Please endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this issue.

Once the funds have been transferred to your nominated bank account we shall then share in theratio of 70% for me, 30% for you.

Please Answer the Below Question for Reference Purpose.

CAN YOU HANDLE A TRANSACTION ENTITY OF LARGE SUM?

CAN YOU TRAVEL WITHIN A SHORT PERIOD?

WHAT IS YOUR LEVEL OF INVESTMENT?

Should you be interested please send me your,

1, Full names,
2, private phone number,
3, current residential address,

My Contact Number Is: +852-367-86701

Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated.

Please do not contact back if not interested.

Kind Regards

Mr Song Lile.

C.S. Lewis's Crisis of Faith

Here are comments I made on the C.S. Lewis wikipedia article.

Would it be appropriate to expand on Lewis's crisis of faith towards the end of his life in its impact on his theological thinking? It was more than just the death of Joy but also a debate that he had with G.E.M. Anscombe. While Lewis didn't disavowal his apologetics, not did he publish or preach any more apologetics for the remainder of his life. The article seems suggest that his "trilemma" and "universal morality" ideas were the apotheosis of his thinking on these matters, while the reality may have been more complex. (There is a paragraph of this encounter in the Wikipedia entry on Elizabeth Anscombe.)

On whether we should use Lewis's or Lewis'.

Strunk and White's Elements of Style support the construction Lewis's. The example they use is Charles's friend.

On Becoming A Renaissance Person

A reader asks:

The term ‘Renaissance Man’ suggests a wo/man of many accomplishments. S/he is a person who is not a specialist but a generalist, a person who knows a significant amount about many domains of knowledge rather than knowing more and more about less and less as does the specialist.

Some will whine that today, with all of our knowledge, it is impossible for anyone to become a Renaissance Person. I say non-sense! With the world’s accumulated knowledge at our finger-tips anyone who has practiced the art and science of navigating knowledge can quickly gain an educational acquaintance with any domain of knowledge in a matter of weeks rather than a matter of years as would be required in ancient times.

Is a modern day Renaissance man or woman impossible?

I do not think that is impossible. Today becoming a Bacon or a Thomas is, relatively, a piece of cake.

I reply:

Since I am myself a Renaissance man, I can say that a modern day Renaissance man is not impossible. :) But nor is it a piece of cake. It is a difficult journey and those that make the journey are like Bacon and Thomas exceedingly rare.

A Renaissance person is not merely someone with a command of information at his fingertips. With google and wikipedia, that is true with almost everyone. It is not someone who is merely very smart. Those who wrote torture manuals and planned the holocaust were erudite, but they are not exemplars of the humane tradition of the Renaissance. Nor is it someone who is able in different areas-- someone, for example, who can ride horseback, write poetry, raise children, and manage a corporation. A person can do of of that but lack ethics, empathy, and humanity. I think a lot of it has to do with disposition, humility, and balance-- looking for ways to wisely integrate knowledge in such a way so that it illuminates the human condition in wholesome and meaningful ways.

Another reader's response:

"Since I am myself a Renaissance man, ...................I think a lot of it has to do with ... humility--"

Nice one.

"Those Dear To God Want Nothing"

"Cari Deo nihilo careat." That is supposed to be our Wik family motto. (I expected to see at least one cat on our family crest!) The implication is that the Wik family is dear to God and thus don't want anything. Nice motto, bad theology, and it has nothing to do with my family as my paternal ancestors came from Sweden, not from England. Our family's name was originally Mard (anglicized to Martin), but was changed to Vik in the middle 1800s and then morphed to Wik a generation later. It's all described in here.

Professor Kingsfield

Professor Kingsfield lives.

Perez Hilton Is A Little Man

I've tried to avoid to hoo-hah over Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr's behavior at the Miss USA 2009 contest. Part of the reason is because I think Donald Trump, who owns the contest, put Perez Hilton (as he calls himself) up to it, on the theory that any publicity is good publicity. Another reason is that I don't think much of these kind of contests, fixating as they do the most epheremal of qualities-- physical beauty.

There is an old saying that "what Jack says about Jill tells us more about Jack than Jill." Here is the question that Jack asked Jill:

“Vermont recently became the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?”

Carrie Prejean responded thusly:

“Well I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one way or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. You know what, in my country, in my family, I do believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was raised and I believe that it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you.”

These aren't my opinions, and when the issue made the ballot last year, I voted in favor of wording to support gay marriages. I am also a free speech absolutist, in so far as fringe opinions, including the opinions of social and religious conservatives, need to be protected as a fundamental right. Also, these contests, as silly as they are, do test contestents on personality and poise. Political debates and job interviews always have these kind of questions, and it takes a certain mental agility to turn a difficult question to an answer in your favor without walking from core beliefs. Miss Prejean could have answer that question better.

That said, Hilton's subsequent hissy fit is no victory for gays. Just as right-wing commentators in their outrageousness play to the stereotypes that large number of people have of them, so too did Hilton's comments play to negative stereotypes about gays. He may indeed see himself as on the vanguard of homesexual civil rights, proudly marching under the flag of faggotry. But what he is really doing is inciting homophobia. Editor of The Advocate Corey Scholibo perhaps said it best: "I have to question the character of a man who attacks others on such deeply personal levels, without provocation and for self-benefit, monetary or otherwise."

Saturn

Words don't do these photographs of Saturn justice.

Amazing.

Ceasar's Bust Is On the Shelf

I don't feel so great myself.

Had a nasty touch of food poisoning but I'm still in the land of the living. I saw my life flash before my eyes-- or at least the last several meals.

Insider Secrets for Crusing

Cruise lines can drop the price of their cabins to rock bottom because that’s not how they make their money. Their profits come from cruisers spending money on and off the ship. And that means they’ll do whatever it takes to get passengers in the cabin, and then once they’re onboard, push them to spend, spend, spend.

Nuke It

Hawks love this website.

The Dog Barks

. . . but the caravan moves on.

- Persian proverb.

With God, All Things Are Possible

A reader asks:

In Sunday school today, the question was asked "Can God create a rock that he can not move?" It seems to challenge the idea that all things are possible with God. I think there is an answer if we look at it from God's will. My answer to the question is Yes God can create a rock he can not move if he wanted to. You might answer "then there is something he can not do". My answer is that "he does not want to". If he wanted to create a rock he can not move then he does not want to move it.

My response:

Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to pose an analogous question: Can a cat fly? To answer that question, we must ask: what we mean by cat and fly. Once we do that, we have a probable answer.

What you are basically doing is posing what in Zen would be regarded as a koan-- a counter-rational question and answer. One koan was: "What is Buddha?" The answer: "Three pounds of flax." The most famous koan in Christianity in my view is: "What is God?" and the answer is: "The trinity."

Your question contains assumptions about the nature of God that inform your question but may not have much scriptual foundation, if the foundation to your view of God is Christian scripture.

For example:

1. God is omnipotent.
2. God is a "he".
3. God not merely created but creates.
4. God is a physical force.
5. That the "things" as referenced in Mark 10:27 ("With God. all things are possible") refers to God's omnipotence.

(The context of the passage make no such implication. "Things" refers to the salvation of a rich man. Jesus in fact evokes another koan in verse 25 to make this point: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.")

It seems to me that you are looking at images to resolve paradoxes. These paradoxes cannot be resolved because they transcend definitions and logic.

If your view of God is source other than Christian scripture, then that source will provide you the answer.

Impeach Jay Bybee

Jay Bybee is a caring husband, a devout Christian, and a brilliant jurist. He is also the author of a legal opinion that defended the use of water boarding and similar actions.

According to a memo released last week, these actions do not constitute torture.

1. Attention grasp
2. Walling
3. Facial hold
4. Insult slap
5. Cramped confinement
6. Wall standing
7. Stress positions
8. Sleep deprivation
9. Insects placed in a confinement box
10. Water board

Judge Bybee's 18 page memo concludes: "Based on the foregoing, and based on the facts that you have provided, we conclude that the interrogation procedures that you propose would not violate Section 2340A (of Title 18 of the United States Code's prohibition against torture)."

Here is Jay's impressive resume:

Federal Judicial Service:

Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Nominated by George W. Bush on January 7, 2003, to a seat
vacated by Proctor R. Hug, Jr.; Confirmed by the Senate on March 13,
2003, and received commission on March 21, 2003.

Education:

Brigham Young University, B.A., 1977
Brigham Young University, J. Reuben Clark Law School, J.D., 1980

Professional Career:

Law clerk, Hon. Donald Russell, U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Fourth Circuit, 1980-1981
Private practice, Washington, D.C., 1981-1984
Attorney, Office of Legal Policy, U.S. Department of Justice,
1984-1986
Attorney, Civil Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 1986-1989
Associate counsel to the president, The White House, 1989-1991
Professor, Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State
University, 1991-1998
Professor, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada,
1999-2000
Assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S.
Department of Justice, 2001-2002

Based on this description on a Latter Day Saint's web site, he comes across as likeable and astute, a model jurist.

On the day the U.S. Senate confirmed Jay S. Bybee’s nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the largest appellate court in the country, this new judge went home to celebrate in his usual unaffected way—by helping his kids with their homework and washing the dishes. This ability to balance priorities in his personal life is a reflection of the balance and perspective that Bybee brings to the law, which leads friends, colleagues and law school students to respect him for his fair-mindedness, scholarship, and decency.

To this influential court comes a husband and father of four, an eagle scout, a returned missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a legal scholar who has been on the fast track since he was a Hinckley scholar at Brigham Young University. Bybee’s distinguished career already spans academic, private, and governmental arenas, and his legal analyses on such topics as the First Amendment, Separation of Powers, and Federalism have appeared in top law reviews and journals throughout the U.S. Generally considered a conservative, he is tenacious in his pursuit of careful and precise legal analysis.





Jay Bybee on the U.S. Capitol steps with his family
left to right: Ryan, Judge Bybee, his wife Dianna, Scott, Alyssa, David

Since he is a Nevada appointee to the Ninth Circuit, he and his wife Dianna Greer Bybee and their four children, Scott (15), David (13), Alyssa (11), and Ryan (9), are in the process of relocating from their home in the Vienna Ward, Oakton Virginia Stake, to their former home in the Sunridge Ward, Henderson, Nevada Anthem Stake. Sister Bybee, the daughter of Harvey and Nada Greer of Fair Oaks, California, is also a graduate of BYU. The couple met at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. at a showing of the film, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” and were married in the Oakland Temple in 1986. She has worked for a public relations firm in Nevada and recently taught family and consumer sciences at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia.

Bybee attributes much of interest in the law to family influence. His grandfather George Hickman was an attorney and city judge in Albany, California, and his parents, Scott and Joan Bybee instilled in each of their children a respect for the laws of the land. Raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Louisville, Kentucky, Bybee said his parents encouraged academic excellence with family discussions and games. All four siblings, Jay, David, Karen, and Lynn served missions and married spouses who served missions. Bybee served in the Chile, Santiago Mission from 1973-75 and his wife served in the Paraguay, Asuncion Mission from 1980-81.

The Constitution is the bedrock of Bybee’s professional life, and one of the hallmarks of his career has been articulate and thought-provoking constitutional scholarship. He became interested in the Constitution as a child when a teacher taught him that “the people are truly in charge, that this is a government of the people, not a government of the leaders.”

Regarding the law itself, Bybee said he appreciates the role of law in a society which must ask the fundamental question, “How are we going to conduct ourselves?” He explained that there is a system of rules and standards in the law as well as in our personal lives. In his own home, for example, a standard is, “Be nice,” and a rule to encourage that is, “Don’t hit.” He also pointed out that standards are always harder to enforce because it is difficult to define exactly what the standard is. “How do you define honesty,” he asked, “and who is applying the definition?”

It’s no surprise that Bybee’s interest in the rule of law extends to a study of ancient law, notably in Old Testament times. As the Gospel Doctrine teacher in his ward, he saw parallels in the way people interpreted and applied ancient law to the way many individuals do so today.

“People in the Old Testament were absolutely devoted to the law of Moses and required exact obedience to it,” he explained. “Their main concern was that they not find themselves on the wrong side of the law, and they spent their lives trying to bring themselves and each other into conformity with it. While we should admire their zeal to follow the rule of law, we nevertheless have to recognize that without understanding the spirit or purpose of the law, there aren’t enough rules in the world to make a person be good.”

Bybee believes that society would function better if people demonstrated an attitude of reconciliation rather than revenge. He said some lawyers become entrenched, and instead of finding common ground and shared values between contending parties, such lawyers tend to “litigate to the death.” Bybee has witnessed the effect on those individuals and families who fight over everything and become estranged.

Bybee says he is honored by his new judicial appointment, but feels the tremendous responsibility of his new position. “Talk is cheap,” he says. “There’s a difference between the theoretical discussion of the law and its practice. I take very seriously the fact that I have people’s economic interests, liberty, and very lives in my hands.”

And what kind of judge will he be? Only half in jest, Judge Bybee adds, “I would like my headstone to read, ‘He always tried to do the right thing.’”

Judge Bybee did not do the right thing. He did the wrong thing. Jay did the easy wrong rather than the hard right, by giving specious legal cover for war crimes. This speciousness is most apparent in Bybee's distinctions between pain and suffering, mental suffering and physical suffering, momentary pain and prolonged pain, pain that results in death and pain that does not result in death, and the threat of pain and actual pain. It is frightening word play and people died because of it.

Perhaps Bybee wrote his memo because of his fear that terrorists could decapitate the federal government-- that the United States and its institutions and values were in mortal peril. That fear may have been well grounded but it justifies nothing. The answer to terrorism is not to destroy those very institutions and values that distinguish us from terrorists. This country has encountered and have overcome challenges not less daunting without having to compromise those institutions or values, including the Civil War and World War II.

The best way to understand Bybee is to understand what drove Adolf Eichmann to orchestrate the Final Solution against Jews and other people during World War II. Perhaps, like Eichmann, Bybee was a careerist, willing to abdicate this conscience to advance his career. Eichmann himself said he joined the SS not because he agreed or disagreed with its ethos, but because he needed to build a career.

In Eichmann in Jerusalem, political theorist Hannah Arendt concluded that, aside from a desire for improving his career, Eichmann showed no trace of an anti-Semitic personality or of any psychological damage to his character. She called him the embodiment of the Banality of Evil, as he appeared to display neither guilt nor hatred. Stanley Milgram interpreted Arendt's work as stating that even the most ordinary of people can commit horrendous crimes if given certain incentives. He wrote: "I must conclude that Arendt's conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one might dare imagine."

Bybee shares the banality of evil that Eichmann manifested with his lack remorse and his lack of self-understanding that he was an instrument of the state in the conduct of crimes against humanity, and his self-reinforcing rationalizations.

What seems to elude Bybee in particular is how profoundly unconstitutional he is, using argument and power to circumvent constitutional and democratic principles of accountability and ethics.

The core principle that Bybee seems to uphold is that the ends do justify the means-- that the protection of his family and the nation from terrorists requires the torture of those he believe are terrorists. And why not? In a ticking bomb situation, in which innocent lives are at risk, why not round up, torture, and kill? It is a question that we need not answer because it is a false choice-- between the absence of law and the preservation of our national security.

The way to see this most clearly is to personalize it. Yes, I would feel good lynching Osama bin Laden, the man who brought so much pain and death to our country, just as I would feel good at hurting anyone who hurt my family. But legal process is just as much a protection for me as it is for bin Laden and anyone else, as some day that process could be turned against me. It is this lack of process that opens the way up to witch hunts and far worse.

Bybee perverts judicial conservatism and the law of the land by making law nothing more or less than a mutable instrument of state power.

Jay Bybee loves his wife Dianna and his children Scott, Ryan, Alyssa, and David. But history tells us that liberty is a fragile flower that can be crushed by personality and expedience. What if the wheel of democracy should someday turn to totalitarianism and Bybee is brought before a Stalanoid kangaroo court? What if he is asked to prove that he is not and never has been a member of al Qaeda? But his persecutors are sure that he is a sleeper and his protests only increase their doubts until their doubts becomes the most compelling fact of his guilt. Would it now be acceptable to introduce to Jay walling and water boarding until he confesses to that which he is not? In Orwell's 1984, Winston has a primal fear of rats, and it was a rat cage of starving rats that turned Winston into a true believer. Everyone has their tipping point, their point of vulnerability, and Stalin, ever the cynic, once said "that if you deliver to me a prisoner, he will be claming that he is the King of England by morning." Perhaps in Bybee's case, it might be the water boarding of Dianna Bybee and their winsome children or their liquidation. For if the ends justify the means, the deaths of Dianna, Ryan, Scott, Alyssa, and David are merely justifiable means to a state-sanctioned end.

Instead of the principle that the ends justify the means, the alternative principle was best stated by 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end." So, instead of using the name Zubaydah, the operative in question that is sprinkled throughout the memo, let us as a thought experiment now use the name Jay Bybee or Dianna Bybee or Ryan Bybee or Scott Bybee or Alyssa Bybee instead.

Bybee's memo not only fails this test but sweeps away the last 700 hundred years of western jurisprudence. And for this he was nominated to the Ninth Circuit Court?

It is not enough that Bybee thought that he was a patriot and that he thought that he was doing the right thing. The same can be said of every war criminal and of every serial killer almost without exception. Whatever his motivatation, the effect was to undermine respect for the constitution and to provide legal cover for crimes against humanity. By so doing, he did not protect our country and uphold our constitution as was his oath. To the contrary, he provided a recruitment tool for yet more terrorists that exposed our country to yet more peril while eroding all meaning for the constitutional premise of judicial due process.

For these reasons, I agree with Yale professor Bruce Ackerman that Bybee should be impeached. That said, I doubt that he will be impeached, and perhaps it is sufficient that we simply lift the rock and expose the depravity that was the Bush justice policy.

The Golden Swan Formation

I haven't day traded in more than fifteen years. But, for five years, I was an aggressive trader. I was on the phone sometimes several times a day with Olde Discount and charting and wielding my Quotrek. The approach I took was technical analysis, the theory that stock prices and volume best predicts future prices as all information that exists is contained within those metrics, and trend analysis, the theory that buy and sell trends persist-- until they don't.

After observing the market, I noticed one re-occuring money-making pattern, which I call the Golden Swan. Here is an example of the last six month's stock prices of J.P. Morgan.






Janaury through March formed the back of the swan-- a gentle curve reflecting negative sentiment. In early April, the neck grew on good volume. Prices then broke above the swan's back into virgin territory (at least in the perspective of the last three months)-- a positive sign of recovery for J.P. Morgan.

Two caveats. As enthusiasm mounts, there will be price gaps. Prices jump above the close of a prior day, sometimes by dollars. These gaps almost always get filled, and these are buying opportunities to load up on a sound stock. Also, if you look at the one, two, and five year trend, there is a lot of upstream resistence-- bearish investors waiting to unload JP Morgan at higher levels. However, the overall trend in my view is strongly positive. And you can take that to the bank.

Mad Hatter's Day

Mad Hatter: Would you like a little more tea?
Alice: Well, I haven't had any yet, so I can't very well take more.
March Hare: Ah, you mean you can't very well take less.
Mad Hatter: Yes. You can always take more than nothing.

From what I can tell, the national tea party was weak Earl Gray indeed. The crowd at Boston's tea party was 7,000, equal to 46 percent of Boston's population. The crowd at Boston's teabagger's confederation of fools was 500, equal to 0.08 percent of Boston. Some estimates put the count at 100 plus fifty onlookers-- or 20 sign waving folks and five onlookers after the Fox reporters left. This movement isn't going anywhere. They were your usual collection of kooks and clowns, flat taxers and flat earthers-- a conservative mirror of the Grant Park yippie parties of 1968.

I must admit I'm not totally getting this Alice in Wonderland tea soaked gala. Did suddenly Republicans finally decide that deficits did matter? Did those same Republicans believe that the big banks should fail? It's actually none of that, and Jesse Taylor nails the reason.

Tea Partiers are hoping that if they mimic the energy of anti-war protests and the savvy of Obama’s new media operation, that at some point an actual movement will spawn. Getting together a bunch of pissed off middle-aged white people with no clue about how the tax system works in public areas will generate a coherent agenda designed to combat the stimulus; if it gets enough media coverage, they will DOMINATE THE AGENDA.

It’s like taping a horn to a horse and waiting for it to alight on a magic cloud of stardust and pixies.

Is Metaphysics Possible?

A reader asks:

I have always been haunted by the question:is Metaphysics possible?Does the quest of "true meaning" of the reality makes sense?Is there anything to discover beyond the world of senses (phenomena) and how much credibility our statements will have?Maybe we should leave all that is still unknown to other scientists to discover.And if we want more ,why not just attribute all metaphysical properties to God?Or should we, as Wittgenstein suggests, limit ourselves in "showing" the "supernatural",performing vague statements that will never be tested empirically.If Metaphysics is dead,isn't that a sign that philosophy itself will be the next victim?

I reply:

It has been said that philosophers bake no bread-- that metaphysics is otherwordly and inpractical. However, it is nevertheless a metaphysical question that it is worthwhile to break bread, i.e. to live. Does the quest for true meaning make sense? Yes, if the meaning is in the quest and not on the truth. It is integral to our humanity to be metaphysical.

A Wolf Likes Pork in 2D

Bill in Portland Evokes A Chuckle

Judge me on the content of my character, not the underwear on my head.

He Is Risen!

Happy Easter!

16 Years And What Do You Get?

It was our 16th anniversary on Friday. We went on a dinner date and saw the comedy I Love You, Man. Very funny, very vulgar-- not for everyone-- but we liked it.