Our Lady of Whatever

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

The apples in my family tree don't fall very far. I grew up with my grandparents living next door. My nieces had the same experience, growing up next door to my parents. Now the eldest of my nieces is raising her children in close proximity to both their grandparents and great-grandparents. No, the apples stay close to home.

There are, however, exceptions. While my parents and siblings and nieces and nephews and various cousins are concentrated in a couple of Central California counties, a couple of us escaped to the wilds of the north state. Not too long ago, my parents decided they had one more long road trip in them and spent some hours on the freeway to drop in on the son and grandson who had wandered away. We braced ourselves for the visit.

Events back home are organized around family anniversaries and church holidays. Up here my life and the life of my nephew are governed mostly by the academic calendars of our respective schools. He is busy arranging a postdoc as a research scientist at his university and I am a full-time college faculty member. Although we stay in touch with the folks down home (and my nephew heads south at frequent intervals for visits), our orbits bear scant resemblance to the trajectories of most of our other family members. We both knew that it was time to dig out the mass schedule of the local Catholic churches because Mom & Dad were coming up on a weekend, and they would insist on going.

Of course, their son and grandson would be dragged along in their wake. It may seem a bit odd, but on their home turf my parents no longer try to enforce church attendance. They're just happy to see us. By contrast, however, once they've made the long trek to come visit distant family members, it would be the height of rudeness not to accompany them everywhere. I guess it makes sense.

Mass confusion

My folks arrived at my home, whereupon I alerted my nephew that we were on our way. Mom & Dad were taking us all out to dinner, but first we were picking up their grandson and going to Saturday evening mass (which many Catholics attend in fulfillment of their weekly obligation, which is more commonly discharged on Sunday). My nephew (who is also my godson) had informed us that the only opportunity in his small town was a bilingual service. That was more of a problem for him, a monolingual anglophone, than for his bilingual relatives. My parents and I are accustomed to Portuguese and decades of exposure to Spanish have made it easy to follow along at a Spanish mass. As it turned out, however, the bilingual mass really was a two-language affair. They didn't have supertitles, like in an opera house, but the priest said everything twice, first in English and then in serviceable Spanish. My nephew tuned in and out in turns as we attended the longest Saturday mass we had ever experienced this side of an Easter vigil.

Ordinarily I think my parents would have been pleased that their wayward kin were getting a double whammy, but we were all waiting dinner till the service was over, so they were getting restive, too. Then, just as we were running through the final responses and champing at the bit to dash for the doors, we were ambushed by the Virgin Mary.

Mary is a very busy woman. In addition to haunting a wide variety of edibles (particularly Mexican ones, although she's not too proud to appear in a humble cheese sandwich), the Blessed Mother has been racking up a most impressive series of avatars. Even non-Catholics are quite familiar with some of them: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Fatima (very big in my family because of the Portuguese connection), Our Lady of Lourdes, etc., etc., etc. Like I said: busy, busy, busy.

The Blessed Virgin is not content to rest on her laurels. No, on the particular evening when my parents, my nephew, and I had finally reached the end of a long bilingual mass, the priest cheerfully announced (twice, of course) that we were about to be treated to a special presentation. I knew right away what was going on, and I suspect that my parents did, too. When a middle-aged woman with a very earnest expression on her face rose in response to the priest's summons and moved to the front of the church, I had no doubt at all. She bore all the traditional stigmata of the Marian advocate, of which an intense earnestness is the most visible.

We had had ample warning. Prayer cards had been handed out at the door to everyone who attended the mass. They bore an unfamiliar image of the Virgin Mary on the front (see the picture at the top of this post) and included a devotional prayer on the back. Although I could scarcely be more lapsed as a Catholic, I dare say I do as good a job as my weekly-attentive parents in keeping tabs on what the church is up to. If I had never seen this Marian icon, it was likely new. We were about to be treated to a pitch for a new devotional practice.

The woman with the earnest expression briefly reminded us of the long tradition of Marian devotions in the Roman Catholic Church. No kidding. She said that she was introducing us to the Virgin's new aspect as “Our Lady of All Nations.” She asked us to fish out the prayer cards that had been distributed before mass and then she led us through the prayer (yes, twice).

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father,
send now Your Spirit over the earth.
Let the Holy Spirit live in the hearts of all nations,
that they may be preserved from degeneration, disaster and war.
May the Lady of All Nations, who once was Mary,
be our Advocate. Amen.

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Not bad, as Marian prayers go. Staring off with an invocation of Jesus is a good move, since it helps guard against the accusations of Mary worship often leveled against Catholics. I had already perused the card a couple of times during lulls in the mass and quickly homed in on what I knew would be a trouble spot. Sure enough, Mom was on it the moment we left the church.

“What does it mean—‘who once was Mary’?”

I didn't spend years in catechism for nothing and I knew that it would do no one any good for my mother to be distressed.

“I'm sure the intent is simply to distinguish between her life on earth and her subsequent reign as Queen of Heaven.” (Yes, that's one of her many titles in Catholic dogma.)

“But why does it say ‘was’ Mary?”

Time for the big guns.

“Don't worry about it too much, Mom. If you've never heard of this before, then it's probably not yet an authorized devotion. You noticed that the presentation was by a laywoman rather than a cleric, so I doubt it's official. At some point Rome will make a decision on it.”

Ah, the advantages of a church with a hierarchy and a magisterium! Mom calmed right down. What I said was undoubtedly true. (She never seems to fret about getting explications on points of Catholic practice from her nonpracticing son, whom she hoped would someday be a priest. But then, priests provide marriage counseling, so why shouldn't a former Catholic give advice to Catholics?)

I was mostly right, by the way. The devotion to Our Lady of All Nations is a recent upstart. The seer in this instance was Ida Peerdeman of Amsterdam. (Mary prefers to appear to others of her sex, although the boy Francisco got to play a bit part at Fatima. Guadalupe would be the main exception, allowing for the unfortunate likelihood that Saint Juan Diego never existed.) The bishop of Haarlem denied in 1956 that Peerdeman's visions were supernatural and banned public devotions to Our Lady of All Nations. The cult persisted, however, and by degrees has become more mainstream. A new bishop in Haarlem, however, issued a decree in 1996 that permitted public devotions, although without specific church endorsement. This is a bigger step than many might realize, because even the famous apparitions of Fatima and Lourdes are not part of church doctrine; Rome endorses them but does not require belief in them as truths of the faith. Eventually, in 2002, yet another bishop of Haarlem declared that Peedeman's visions were miraculous: “I have come to the conclusion that the apparitions of the Lady of All Nations in Amsterdam consist of a supernatural origin.”

Persistence pays off.

And the part of the prayer that disturbed my mother? Devotees of Our Lady of All Nations have offered this explanation, quoted on the Eternal Word Television Network website:

This refers to the fact that Mary is no longer just Mary but rather The Lady, The Woman at the foot of the Cross. These words refer to her Eternal Motherhood over all of us, for she is Mother Whom Jesus gave to us from the Cross with the words: Woman behold thy Son!

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Well, that certainly clears it all up, doesn't it?

Prometheus, proto-creationist

Bringer of fire, not light

The novels of Jasper Fforde are ridiculously entertaining. He writes in a fantasy genre that treats fictional characters as denizens of a parallel universe. It can be awkward when they get feisty, such as Ophelia launching a hostile takeover of Hamlet because she's sick of the title character's dithering—and besides, her part is too small.

Fforde is best known for his Thursday Next series of novels, four books in which Thursday gets herself in trouble in such venues as Jane Eyre, gets trained by Miss Havisham of Great Expectations as an agent in Jurisfiction, and hides out in an unpublished novel so that she can bring her pregnancy to term in peace. This was not a genre with which I was previously familiar, although I suppose Tom Holt has been mining a similar vein for a longer time (e.g., Snow White and the Seven Samurai). Fforde, however, holds my attention better.

The Thursday Next series appears to be complete now, or at least on hold, while Fforde branches off into his new Nursery Crime project. The first installment, The Big Over Easy, is a murder-mystery/detective thriller concerning the apparent murder of Humperdinck Jehoshaphat Aloysius Stuyvesant van Dumpty, a.k.a. Humpty Dumpty. Of course, given Mr. Dumpty's notorious problem with alcohol and his penchant for sitting on walls, it's difficult to be sure that foul play was involved in his fall.

Characters from classical mythology are as likely to stroll through the pages of Fforde's novel as any nursery rhyme character, so we get to meet Prometheus, a Titan who is seeking asylum in the United Kingdom while fighting extradition to Mount Olympus, where he is wanted for a prison escape. Prometheus finds lodging in the home of Jack Spratt, Detective Inspector with the Nursery Crimes Division, and eventually has a pleasant chat with Spratt's grown daughter, who is named Pandora:

Prometheus and Pandora continued talking as the fire gradually burned itself down. Prometheus pointed out the flaws in evolutionary theory, such as how a bird could possibly have evolved wings without having useless appendages for thousands of years that would have hindered its survival. Pandora countered by saying that rule number one of the cosmos was that unlikely things do happen. Indeed, given the time scale involved and the size of the universe, unlikely things, paradoxically enough, became quite commonplace.

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Nice! I don't know Fforde's own convictions on the matter, but he provides us with a neat juxtaposition of a specious criticism of evolution and a significantly flawed counter-argument.

These days it's just embarrassing when yet another creationist demands to know the utility of “half an eye” or “half a wing.” The answer is the same one that lays waste to claims of “irreducible complexity”: preadaptation and co-option. Intelligent design creationists love to argue that the bacterial flagellum is so finely tuned a mechanism that it cannot be reduced in any way without destroying its functionality; therefore it could not possibly have evolved from any simpler predecessor. Unfortunately for the creationists, it has now been shown that the flagellum has likely precursors in certain protein secretory systems. The secretory systems were not propulsion systems, but evolution is pragmatic and opportunistic. The secretory systems were co-opted for a function other than their original. (See Ken Miller for more details of the argument.)

By contrast, Pandora's counter-argument has a nugget of truth at its core: a lot can happen in deep time. Nevertheless, she is depending entirely too much on the probability of random occurrences. So the proto-birds will have trouble managing their clumsy half-wings for millions of years until they manage to get airborne? Yes, it's very unlikely, but if you wait long enough...

No, no, no. The point is that any “half-wings” will have a useful function of their own. It won't be flying, because they aren't “designed” for flying. Of course, we weren't there as observers (as creationists love to point out), so we are limited to working with the limited evidence that survives in the fossil record and the DNA of today's living species. By slow patient degrees (there is something to that argument about time), the story is coming together. It is making perfectly fine progress without the intervention of any divine beings, whether creator spirits or fire-bringers.

Speaking of fire-bringers, let's give the last word to Detective Inspector Jack Spratt, who muses on the conversation going on between his daughter and the exiled Titan:

“Science meets mythology. It'll be interesting to see what conclusions they draw before the night is out. I'll be fascinated to hear what Prometheus has to say about the fossil record.”

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Melanie Morgan, née Goebbels

The angry update

In a previous post, I reported how Melanie Morgan of KSFO radio in San Francisco used an article in WorldNetDaily to lie about Iraq. She said we were definitely “winning” because American troop deaths were dropping every month. That's a questionable criterion for success in the ill-advised Iraq war—surely a necessary condition but hardly a sufficient one. Furthermore, her claim is demonstrably untrue. She could give it a certain truthiness only by truncating the month of August. The day after she published her WorldNetDaily column, her claim had already been invalidated.

One of the truly damnable things about Morgan and her ilk is how they make easily refutable statements about Iraq, terrorism, patriotism, or what have you, and, when you refute them, they claim you are glad they are wrong. Yes, aren't we all delighted that the rising body count quickly gave the lie to Morgan's specious claims? It's nasty, but it's how they do business. “The Iraq war is foolish and unnecessary,” you say. “Oh, well then you support terrorists!” they say. “We're going to lose hundreds (now thousands) of men and women in our armed forces in this unnecessary war!” you say. “Aha! You hate America and you're happy about our casualties!” they scream.

The September casualty count has been compiled now and here is the “happy” result. Morgan penned her propaganda with several days left in August, enabling her to float the fiction that the U.S. body count was still dropping. Instead, however, we see that the August result was a secondary spike, jumping back up to 67, just short of the May total of 69. We are continuing to feed our troops into a meat grinder for no better reason than that George W. Bush wanted to “get” Saddam Hussein, to show that he's a bigger and tougher man than his Daddy (who was smart enough in the first Gulf War to stop after achieving the goal of liberating Kuwait).

As I write this, on September 11, the U.S. body count for the month is already at 26, with nineteen days left to go. At this rate, September will match or exceed August. This is miserable, galling news. I keep forgetting how pleased I should be that the loons who support the Iraq war are always being proved wrong. What comfort is there in being right when it doesn't matter? The man in the White House will keep staying the course, even if he has trouble explaining what that course is, and there'll be no improvement in the lot of our military until he is hobbled and neutralized. Even a determined Democratic congress, however, will have trouble reining in our imperial president, who thinks that “commander-in-chief” means “king.”

It makes you want to vomit.

Smoking or nonsmoking?

Separate but unequal

In the 1970s, when I was in a graduate program in mathematics, I frequently stopped at a 24-hour restaurant near the university for a bite on my way home in the afternoon or evening. I usually sat at the counter, where the service was quick, and read a book while munching a sandwich.

Those were the days when smokers felt entitled to light up and fumigate any venue they occupied, so it was by no means unusual to find myself sharing the smog bank generated by the fellow on the next stool. I've hated cigarette smoke all my life, but enduring second-hand smoke was a commonplace of everyday existence back then. The only surprising departure from standard practice would occur when your neighbor at the counter would turn toward you and ask, “Do you mind if I smoke?” This was an exceedingly rare courtesy.

My grateful response would be, “Oh, thanks for asking. I would really appreciate it if you didn't.” More than once, however, I discovered that I was not being asked for my permission at all. No, I was being notified. The smoker would smirk, brandish a lighter to ignite the cigarette already in his mouth, and favor me with the first cloud of smoke.

Perhaps smokers were more polite where you grew up, but it was exceedingly rare in my experience to meet a smoker who was willing to refrain from his god-given right to pollute the local environment. As you can imagine, I therefore never took seriously the plaintive cries of smokers who wanted to know why we needed smoking bans when human kindness and courtesy would suffice. Yeah, right. Tell me another one.

Sometimes I drop in for lunch at the restaurant that I used to frequent thirty years ago. It's gone through three new names and a couple of major remodelings over the decades. The counter is long gone, replaced by small booths. It is also, of course, a nonsmoking establishment.

All restaurants are nonsmoking in California. So are bars, for that matter. That one stuns me when I think about it. Bars are nonsmoking? I would never have predicted that. Although the Golden State is rather in the vanguard of the antismoking movement, the ban on smoking in drinking establishments came as a shock. It doesn't much affect me, since I'm a nondrinker and seldom have occasion to be in bars, but it's still difficult for me to imagine clean air in drinking establishments.

As a fairly provincial fellow who doesn't travel much, I'm usually at rather loose ends on those occasions when I'm away from my usual haunts. In 1998, on a trip to Colorado for a friend's wedding, I was momentarily discombobulated when the hostess at a restaurant asked my party whether we wanted smoking or nonsmoking? I had not been asked that question in many years, although we in California had gone through a lengthy “separate sections” period before making the restaurant ban total. Today it no longer even occurs to me to think I might have to sit in or near someone else's smoke cloud. Smokers have dwindled in numbers and we have them on the run—out into the alleys where they furtively congregate to catch a few puffs before going back inside among the less addicted people.

This morning's newspaper prompted my reminiscence about the bad old days. The journal had picked up an Associated Press story about restaurants in Georgia that were trying to work around the ban on smoking in eating establishments. In Georgia. Think about that, folks. Southern states—tobacco states—are enacting smoking bans. Gosh and damn. The revolution arrived without anyone quite realizing it.

AP reporter Russ Bynum filed his report with a dateline of Dublin, Georgia:

A year after Georgia forced restaurants to extinguish their smoking sections, the sign outside Chuck and Kay Fordham's diner defiantly invites customers to “Bring Your Butts On In.”

Inside, ceiling fans stir the smell of frying bacon and hash browns and clouds of blue cigarette smoke as patrons puff away over cups of coffee. Butts pile up in the ashtrays on the tables and lunch counter.

Folks who don't want a side order of secondhand smoke with their eggs and burgers should probably stay away from the Smoker's Cafe.

The Fordhams found a way around the smoking ban by exploiting a loophole that was created to exempt bars from the law. Instead of banning cigarettes, the couple banned children from their restaurant.

“The biggest thing with me was the government telling you that you can't do this,” Chuck Fordham said. “Most smokers, after they eat, want a cigarette. And to get up from the table to smoke, it's just a pain.”

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I love that line about “the government.” Whether you like it or not, Mr. Fordham, when you live in a representative democracy, you are the government. We all are. Smoking bans, with loopholes or otherwise, would never be enacted without sufficient support from the public. The smoking ban in Georgia represents a sea change in the status of tobacco, which even in the deep South is no longer sacred. There are cities in Alabama that ban smoking in bars (although the state as a whole has yet to follow suit).

What the Fordhams have discovered is that smokers no longer have the sympathy of a majority of the population. They now belong to an oppressed minority. An oppressed minority that is killing itself off at a rate faster than the general population.

The antismoking trend is here to stay, so we can breathe a little easier.

Greenbacks and Ham

Putting the “cult” back into “culture”

The mail brings me yet another begging letter from Ken Ham, president of the Answers in Genesis ministry (also known as “AiG”). Ham is shaking the money tree once again on behalf of his organization's Creation Museum, a deluxe temple to wilful ignorance. Maybe you believe that you descended from a long line of ape-like ancestors, but Ken Ham says he never evolved at all! (And from his picture, you can see his point.)

It would never do to just come right out and cry “Send money!” Ham favors his targets with an over-wrought narrative of wicked atheists assembling to battle against God's anointed and to prey on children with their non-bible science camps. Ham is pleased to recount that God has seen fit to smite the enemy (their science camps enroll fewer than AiG's Bible camps) and their activities have reportedly backfired, garnering more publicity and contributions for their target: Ken Ham's Creation Museum.

Notwithstanding a succession of brilliant victories, Ham needs more money, so out comes the open palm and the pitch for dollars. But instead of my telling you all about it, here is what Ham says. No doubt you will be moved to tears. (It's up to you whether those tears are of laughter or grief.)

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September 2006

Dear web visitor to AiG,

Did you know that a camp that trains children in atheism/secular humanism started—not so coincidentally—in Kentucky, and in the same year we had a highly publicized zoning battle over our Creation Museum a few miles away?

Sad to say, these atheist camps are now spreading to other states.

Now, who would have ever thought of Kentucky as a battle ground between Christianity and humanism! We expect such battles in the highly populated liberal parts of the country—like the West and East Coasts—not in relatively conservative family-friendly states.

Ten years ago this month, Mike Zovath (our VP of the Creation Museum) was handed a copy of a local newspaper that had the following front-page headline and subhead: “Museum plans spark debate.”

We were all shocked! You see, we thought it would be easy to rezone a piece of property to build offices and a small (at the time) Creation Museum!

An atheistic organization called “Free Inquiry Group” (FIG)—headed by atheist, attorney Ed Kagin (who is currently the director of the American Atheists Society in Kentucky)—led a charge in opposing the Creation Museum

And what a battle it was! AiG was front-page headlines on and off for months! On the evening news one night, a local Cincinnati TV station led off with a story about the opposition to the museum ... and put President Clinton's re-nomination for president (at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago) as the second story.

At first, it was so obvious that most of the opposition was because we were Christians. I remember being at a public zoning meeting where one person actually said that “the separation of church and state” forbade us building a Creation Museum in Kentucky!

Think about it: a private museum … funded by private donations … shouldn't be built on privately owned land because of the (non-existent supposed Constitutional clause of) separation of church and state! Incredible!

At one of the zoning meetings, a lady stood up and pointed at me and vehemently said, “He's Jim Jones [the suicide cult leader] coming to get our kids!”

Actually, we were instead “AiG, coming to teach kids the truth concerning God's Word, praying that they would trust the Lord Jesus for salvation, and thus live forever with the Lord in Heaven!”

The reality was that the atheistic/humanistic FIG organization that opposed us was out to get kids themselves—to train them in a philosophy of hopelessness and purposelessness … and end up separated from God for eternity.

In the same year that the zoning battle began (sparked by the Free Inquiry Group and Ed Kagin, one of the FIG leaders), so did “Camp Quest” for children.

Mr. Kagin's website states:

Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States for the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural, world view.

Camp Quest is now operated by Camp Quest, Inc. an independent non-profit Kentucky Corporation …

On the same website, the Camp Quest canon states:

Camp Quest was conceived, and has been operated for the past ten years, as a summer camp for the children of the irreligious, for those who have accepted Atheism, or lack of a belief in a supernatural world, by whatever name such may be called, as a conclusion, not as a belief.

Camp Quest has spread from Kentucky to: Ohio, Minnesota, Michigan, Ontario (Canada), California, and Tennessee.

Interestingly, the average number of students attending these damps is only 20, ranging in ages from 7-17. A very small number, but no doubt will continue to grow.

By comparison, though, I think of the hundreds of thousands of K-12 students who have attended our Bible-upholding assemblies since 1996. Praise the Lord!

Ten years ago, when we were going to build the AiG offices and Creation Museum on the first property we were looking to buy, we had planned for a 30,000-sq.-ft. building, and it was 10 minutes from the interstate.

Well, the Lord allowed the opposition (led by Mr. Kagin) and the subsequent loss of that first property to guide us to a new property adjoining I-275 instead. Because of the larger, better-located property, we also decided to build a 95,000-sq.-ft. building—over 3 times the size of the original plan!

In addition, Patrick Marsh, living in Japan at the time, contacted us to ask if he could be our exhibit designer. Patrick had worked with Universal Studios, the 1984 Olympic Games in LA, Asian theme parks, etc.

Patrick came on board, and during the delay in finding a suitable piece of land, we decided to take the Creation Museum to a whole new level of technology and with themed exhibits … and thus a whole new level of excellence.

Now, prior to even opening to the public, the Creation Museum has expanded even further. Because of recent research and now bigger-than-originally expected attendance, we have already expanded the café and have made a new and larger lobby (creating a portico out front).

As a result of the opposition of Mr. Kagin and others to the Creation Museum in 1996, AiG will now be reaching hundreds of thousands more people a year—with the truth of God’s Word and the wonderful message of salvation!

Truly, “… we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

On the 10-year anniversary of the beginning of the battle for the Creation Museum, how we praise God for his faithfulness! The AiG ministry has grown: around 200 staff involved in many different outreaches to take the message of the authority of the Word of God—and the creation/gospel message—to literally millions.

Our website has been mightily blessed. It's this year's “website of the year” as selected by the 1,400-member National Religious Broadcasters. And the museum is nearing completion—to be open this coming spring.

As the secular media and others visit, all are amazed at what has been accomplished. The quality—the professionalism—and the fact that this whole facility can be built for only $25 million (plus $1.4 million for the recent expansion of the cafe and lobby/portico), of which $23 million has now been supplied. Praise God!

While the end is in sight to open the museum debt-free, please don't forget the many core ministry outreaches that require support through our general fund. These include the popular website, correspondence to all ages, our radio program, the new curriculum materials, video productions, speaking events, the Answers magazine, etc.

We see the Lord's hand of blessing every day at AiG, including how so many young people are being impacted. Here is a recent, wonderful testimony about a young girl and her mother that we received through our website:

“The AiG conference [near Knoxville] was wonderful. Ken [mentioned] one book in particular, A is for Adam, had more children come to know Jesus than any other [AiG book]. My ears perked up and I bought the book.

“My 4 1/2 year daughter and I read the book every day for a week. One day she looked up at me with tears in her eyes and said she didn't want to go to hell. She said she wanted to be where Jesus—and where her mommy and daddy—was going to be.

“My little girl bowed her head and prayed to ask Jesus into her heart that day. It was glorious. thank God for how you have touched our lives.”—G. D., Knoxville, TN

Thank you for using our website. It has been raised up for this time to battle the culture war at a foundational level … and take the gospel around the world (in 11 languages so far).

Your help is crucial. Your gift will help see more lives changed—as God blesses—as the authority and accuracy of the Bible are proclaimed.

Sincerely,

Ken Ham
President

P.S. Can you believe that atheists are deliberately targeting young people with a message of hopelessness … with eternal consequences for the “good” of our children?

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Do not forget Ken Ham's message, gentle readers! The children won't believe in eternal happiness with a benevolent Creator unless we remedy the lack of evidence with diligent brainwashing and museums devoted to pseudoscience. Oh, and send money.

Don't hate me because I'm smart

Did I say “smart”? I meant “pretty”!

Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers has posted a link to Who's the hottest scienceblogger? If your personal list of pin-up models is lacking in depictions of science bloggers, you might wonder just what they have to work with. In fact, you might even be thinking, “Not much, I'll bet!”

If so, you're just capitulating to nerd stereotypes: Jocks are hunky and nerds are chunky. Athletes are hot and math geeks are not. Really, it's a wonder that science types ever manage to reproduce. (It may help that a lot of those athletes get fat and gimpy after school, while nerds remain preternaturally young and sound.)

The August 15, 2006, issue of The Advocate struck another blow at the nerd stereotype. I suspect that edition of the magazine got passed around in more math departments than normal. “You are not going to believe this!” What's not to believe? An article titled Is porn an option? delves into the burning question of how one pays one's way through school. Here's the part that drew our attention:

Tom Stephenson, 21, doesn't fit the typical image of an amateur porn star. He's a junior [in college], has been on the dean's list every semester, and was president of his high school class.... Stephenson says he isn't worried that his porn work will affect his dream of becoming a college math professor.

What?!

Okay, that took me by surprise. I should consider this a test of my laissez-faire attitude toward life and lifestyle. My current colleagues came to our college math department from such diverse venues as industry, secondary education, the military, government service (me!), and right out of grad school. We mostly know these things about each other's past, especially since candidates tend to pitch their backgrounds as part of their qualifications for faculty appointments.

So what do we do if one day Tom Stephenson (a nom de porn, I presume) is sitting before our hiring committee and it's time for the ice-breaker at the beginning of the interview? “So, Tom, please tell us a little bit about yourself, where you were educated, and what experience you would bring to the job. And oh, by the way, I really admired your work in Tommy does Tensors.”

I'm sure we'd be cool about it. Mostly. But I do worry a little about competing for students in low-enrolled classes. “Dammit! Professor Stephenson's section has a waiting list again and my section is on the verge of being cancelled!” Unfair, I tell you. Unfair.

The etiquette lesson

Pay attention, jackass!

My own family has provided me with quite enough junk mail already, thank you, so it was not a happy experience to discover that some stranger had added me to her distribution list. I figured it was a mistake based on a coincidence in last names. For a while I ignored it, but finally I had had enough. She sent out the “Kevin Archer” hoax to everyone on her list. That's the one that warns you about children dying from heroin overdoses from discarded needles in the playgrounds of fast-food restaurants. Yeah, right. This particular urban legend has been kicking around for at least six years. It's both old news and false news.

It was time to tell my unwitting correspondent about Snopes.com and to ask her to remove my name from her mailing list. My message was a bit acerbic:

How gullible do you have to be to believe an obvious Internet legend like fatal accidents with heroin needles in McDonald's playgrounds? While such places might not be the neatest in the world (and you should always check where your children are playing), no one dies of an overdose from a discarded needle. The actual danger from discarded needles is infection, but you don't find them lying around in many playgrounds. Stop worrying about microscopic possibilities. Do you carry steel umbrellas around to protect your kids from meteorites? You do know that falling rocks can kill you, right?

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I closed with “please remove me from your mailing list.”

In return I received a very polite note from the person in question. She said I was included in her mailings by mistake and she promised to be more careful in the future. I wrote back and thanked her for her consideration. All was well. Or so I thought.

My inadvertent correspondent seemed like a very nice lady. I soon found out, however, that her children did not take after her. I had used the “Reply to all” in replying to her original message, as I customarily do whenever I send out a correction to someone's ill-advised forwarding of Internet chain mail. The first volley came from people I took to be the woman's son and daughter-in-law. The daughter-in-law uses a signature block that says “Little Miss Attitude,” so I have to give her credit for truth in labeling. Her message was in an extra-large font and included a postscript from her soft-spoken spouse:

Zeno...
Don't know who you are... thank god for that!!
That was very RUDE!!!!
Next time you receive an e-mail that you perceive to be "nonsenses" ....click "delete" and keep your rudeness to yourself! Lxxxx

Zeno, this is coming from Exxxxx
Watch your fucking mouth before you get punched in it!!!

---

Duly chastened, I thanked the couple for their wise counsel:

And to think I went to all the trouble to say “please” in the subject line.

You people have no business lecturing others on rudeness.

Thanks for your polite and considerate advice.

---

Other family members turned out to be just as polite, logical, and literate. Fxxxx declared:

IGNORANCE is EXCUSABLE. On the other hand, STUPIDITY is DEPLORABLE.

---

That message cheered me up immensely, so I quickly chimed in with

Well said. I quite agree. Exxxxx's message was a perfect example.

---

I think Fxxxx is Exxxxx's brother, so he should know. Then Rxxxx weighed in:

I would like to let you know that I DO NOT appreciate you insulting my mother. Just to let you know, I pray to God that you and I don’t ever meet in person. That’s a promise…

---

That confused message deserved a cheery response to show I had understood the key point:

As it turns out, Rxxxx, your mother is entirely capable of speaking for herself without issuing crude threats and she sent me a nice note thanking me for the correction and the information. I do, however, congratulate you on your ability to write an e-mail message without obscenities. I also appreciate the promise that we will never meet.

---

The next missive came in the favored format of the calm and reasonable—ALL CAPS. Her last name indicated she was a sister or a spouse, but that's an irrelevant detail compared to the pithiness of her advice:

DON’T TAKE YOUR PATHETIC LIFE ONTO THIS EMAIL….GET A LIFE… YOU LOSER…

---

I have to admit, though, that I'm not sure how one takes one's life—pathetic or otherwise—onto an e-mail. Perhaps this is some new idiom that the kids are using today. The next sister (or spouse) was wordier:

I agree with what Lxxxx wrote. The delete button is on our keyboard, one click away vs having to type that nasty words from Zeno Ferox. Zeno could have handled it in a decent way but he chose for all of us to see what kind of person he is.

I know [the woman who forwarded the hoax]. She's a very very good person and she does not deserve to be treated that way. I am glad I don't have friends like Zeno Ferox.

We forward emails because we are concerned for our friends, whether is a hoax or not. For ppl who know its a hoax, consider the email a message saying “I care about you, I heard about this and I want you to be safe.” Or just ignore and delete.

---

This one fascinated me with its logic. It's okay to forward hoaxes and inflict unnecessary worries on people you care about, and you want them to be safe from imaginary dangers. How dare an unappreciative recipient of such a caring hoax offer a correction!

The death of irony

Not everyone who wrote me was upset. The original sender, after all, took my rebuke in stride and responded very nicely. Another person on the original mailing list also thanked me for the information and sent a separate e-mail asking Lxxxx and Exxxxx to stop using “Reply to all” if they were going to broadcast obscenities. This request set off Lxxxx all over again. Little Miss Attitude wrote that she was quite upset:

You can't speak for EVERYONE. So why would you send to all? Next time you have something to say to us.... please use ur same advise!

---

You tell 'em, girl! Who the hell does that person think she is, suggesting to everyone on the list that they keep obscene messages private? Loud and proud, honey. Loud and proud.

Update: 9/13/2006

A dozen days have passed since I kicked the rock over, but some critters take longer than others to get their bearing when exposed to the light. One more scathing missive has popped into my in-box, duly flagged by my mail program as likely to be offensive. I wonder whatever gave it that idea?

Im wxxxxxx mxxxxx, dont hide behind the computer. you want beef, be a man and expose yourself. if you think your half the man you think you are dont pick old ladies. though i know who the fuck you are, your joes son. in a few years, i'll be back to fuck your ass up- sxxxxx.

---

Oh, now I get it. This message is offensive in its lack of

• capitalization;
• apostrophes in contractions and possessives;
• grammar;
  
• ability to distinguish between homonyms; and
• civility.

I would also ask why someone who says his first name is wxxxxxx signs off as sxxxxx, but I'm sure we could always find out from his rap sheet if it were necessary to do so. And since my father's name is not Joe, I wonder who the big genius plans to go stalking.

Osama's big chance

That's what friends are for

Now that September is here, planning for the pre-election “October surprise” must be in high gear. Mere weeks are left for the White House to engineer some suitable domestic or foreign crisis that triggers the electorate's deeply ingrained reflex to rally round the flag in times of trouble.

One could reasonably point out that the Bush administration has been nothing but a series of genuine disasters interspersed with the occasional ginned-up emergency (usually accompanied by a Homeland Security press release about raising the threat advisory level to Code Orange or Code Red). It will be a challenge for the Bush league to come up with a crisis that looks more immediately threatening than business-as-usual by the administration's bumblers and fumblers. Some people are betting on an attack on Iran, so we can easily imagine White House aides on their hands and knees amid the political posters, carefully daubing out the “q” in “Iraq” so that they can replace it with an “n.”

Would a supposedly pinpoint strike on Iran's nuclear facilities by U.S. forces sufficiently rally the country about the president? Even the slow thinkers who surround Bush might hesitate in the face of the impossibility of anticipating the consequences. In fact, a new military adventure might backfire disastrously in the face of the president and his political party. A fed-up citizenry could very well recoil at more ill-advised adventurism by the White House saber-rattlers.

So what is a beleaguered president to do?

A win-win situation

The best possible October surprise for George Bush and the Republican Party would be the capture of Osama bin Laden. The problem is that Bush genuinely doesn't know how to lay hands on the fugitive terrorist leader. The president missed his chance to catch him at Tora Bora and no longer knows where the al Qaeda leader is hiding (although it seems likely to be somewhere in the rugged area along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan). Bush has even gone so far as to dismiss Osama as irrelevant, claiming not to care where he is. That's the lame excuse of someone who has no idea how to catch him.

But what if Osama decides to surrender? He could make it look good, of course, arranging for a dramatic showdown and capture instead of simply turning himself in. I'm sure the president would quickly strike a deal to make it happen in accordance with whatever script Bin Laden might suggest.

Of course, with Osama in custody, Bush would immediately change his mind about the terrorist leader's importance. He would address the nation from the Oval Office to brag about the thrilling capture and to take credit for a great victory in the global war against terror. The sycophantic press and the Republican noise machine would crank up waves of raucous applause for our glorious leader and GOP candidates would suddenly begin touting their association with the man in the White House. The Republicans might even retain control of one or both houses of Congress. Oh, it would be such a coup for the Bush league!

But why, you ask, would Bin Laden agree to such a thing? Simple. Osama is a true believer. Only the struggle matters. Religious fanatics do not reason like sensible people do. Their obsessions control them. Bin Laden knows that al Qaeda and its extremist form of Islam have prospered during Bush's tenure. He even released a video tape on the eve of the 2004 presidential election (that year's October surprise), certainly knowing that his denunciation of the president should be good for a significant Bush bounce in the polls. (That Bin Laden also dismissed Senator Kerry in the video hardly matters, since the insults of Osama on the eve of the election were of much greater benefit to the incumbent than to his challenger.)

It would be contrary to Bin Laden's wishes if the United States were to cease being an international pariah and no longer played the part of a self-righteously unilateral thug. Bush administration policies have turned Iraq into a spawning ground for suicide terrorists and alienated most of the nations of the world. A Democratic Congress would serve as a check on Bush's excesses and give the president an advanced case of the lame-duck illness. It would pave the way to more cooperative ventures with other nations who oppose terrorism.

Bush and his cronies have been the principal enablers of the terrorists' success in intimidating our society. Once Bush is crippled by the rout of the GOP in the mid-term elections, he will no longer be able to pursue his program of curtailing American freedoms and turning our nation into an autocracy. His policies are the means by which the terrorists attain their goals of destroying and terrifying this society. Clearly, therefore, continued success and power for Bush are key elements in Osama's campaign against the United States. If his unwitting agent is hobbled, Osama's war against the West suffers a great reverse. Since Bin Laden is a close observer of events in the United States, he may even now be thinking how it might be possible to rescue his single most important ally.

Many of Bin Laden's recruits have sacrificed themselves as suicide bombers, eager to give their lives in what they believe is a sacred cause. Could Osama ask less of himself? He can sacrifice his freedom to ensure the continued progress of his jihad. And it might not even be that big a sacrifice. George and Osama have many business connections through the various members of their families and a reasonable accommodation could be struck in which Bin Laden would get high-quality Western medical care while living in a comfortable and secure facility. Then, for reasons too complex to explain, he might get swapped in some kind of prisoner-exchange deal with Syria in, say, December 2007.

It could happen.

One year old

Happy birthday to me!

Halfway There marks its one-year anniversary this week. It's a naïve domestic blog without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption. I launched it on August 29, 2005, without any special expectations or plans, but it's kept me amused. Perhaps it's amused some of you, too. Thanks to everyone who visits regularly and those who comment sporadically. It keeps things interesting!

During this next year, I will stay true to my lack of special expectations or plans. See you around the blogosphere.

Once upon a time

Do-it-yourself miracles

If it made sense, it wouldn't have to be a religion, now would it?

Robbie Coltrane in Nuns on the Run (1990)

---

The miracle-mongers are ever with us, relying on faith because evidence fails. Believing in miracles is harder work than you might think, since we are told they are everywhere around us. Such ubiquity should keep us in a constant state of wonder and adoration. But no. Transubstantiation and Virgin Mary apparitions in tortillas and oil stains fail to impress. Most (all?) of these miracles fall prey to more parsimonious explanations than divine intervention. The Roman Catholic Church, which has cornered the market on the creation of saints, has to settle these days for nothing more exciting than unexplained recoveries from serious illnesses in cataloguing miracles in the canonization casebooks.

The only really good miracles remain confined to the pages of the various holy books. The Bible, for example, offers such decidedly remarkable events as the healing of lepers, the bestowing of sight on the blind, the restoration of a severed ear, and even resurrection from death. Those are definitely good miracles, but we never see the like today.

This appears not to trouble the irremediably devout. Cartoonist Johnny Hart continues to find something ostensibly humorous in the doubts of nonbelievers and likes to use the panels of his B.C. comic strip to preach at his readers. Today's installment is unusual in that it goes beyond his customary sermonette (see his stillborn sally at science, for example). Hart doesn't just lament the absence of miracles in contemporary life—he does something about it!


All of you doubters out there should feel properly chagrined now. As we can plainly see, a pagan mountain-sitting guru can, after a brief perusal of a complimentary Gideon Bible, generate so much godawful faith that he can topple his mountain into the sea! Ye of little faith had better sit up and take notice, because Johnny Hart's cartoon god is a mighty god. We know this, because it can perform stupendous miracles on behalf of its believers. Mountains into the sea! Wowee!

If I hadn't seen it for myself, I would never have believed it. See you in the funny papers.

When liars figure

It's not the figures that lie

Right-wing radio talk-show host Melanie Morgan is trying her hand at a little journalism. When she's not ranting on San Francisco's KSFO, a bastion of neo-conservative cant in the Bay Area, she's heading up a couple of pressure groups (Move America Forward and the Censure Jimmy Carter campaign) or writing for WorldNetDaily. The latter is an on-line news journal whose relationship to reality is similar to that of The Onion, but it's not intentionally funny.

In her guise as an intrepid reporter, Morgan tenders up an amazing scoop—a story you'll never see on one of the responsible news outlets. She used her Move America Forward mailing list to send out a press release (and, no, she didn't forget to include a pitch for monetary contributions):

Move America Forward Chairman, Melanie Morgan, has broken a story that the mainstream media refuses to report: for the past several months the number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq has consistently fallen.

This blockbuster information is contained in this WorldNetDaily Exclusive column, “Separating the Men From the Boys”

---

While Morgan may be one of the least responsible radio voices out there, certainly this is welcome news. Is it too good to be true? What is Morgan's evidence for her startling claim? She adds just a little more detail in the actual column:

So far this month, there have been fewer U.S. troops killed in Iraq than died in the month of July. July's fatality figures were lower than those of June. June's were lower than May's. And May's fatalities were lower than April's. The news is that we are WINNING!

Does this information surprise you?

It should, because the mainstream media has done everything it can to paint Operation Iraqi Freedom as a failure. The progress that is made in rebuilding Iraq on a daily basis is seldom reported.

---

Okay, she didn't give any numbers, but there are specific claims in her article. The monthly death toll among U.S. troops in Iraq has been dropping since April. When we count May, June, July, and August, that's four straight months of declining death counts. Is Morgan misleading us?

Of course she is. Morgan is part of the Republican noise machine and a typical specimen of the right-wing propagandist. They lie bravely and boldly in the service of their ideology. The fig leaf covering Morgan's lie consists of the two words “so far” in describing the August body count. There were at least six days left to go in the month when she penned her column, which was published on-line on August 26, 2006. She had to trim off 20% or more of August in order to make her talking point stick and, sadly, it has already unraveled.

The website antiwar.com maintains a tally of fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan (counting deaths among civilians and foreign troops as well as our own). I checked the monthly totals for U.S. troops yesterday, the day that Morgan's column came out. At that moment, her claim was barely true. U.S. casualties had spiked in April with a shocking death count of 76, after which the numbers slowly receded, till in July it was down to 44. As you can see, the August count was even lower, at 40 to date (and the date was August 26).

The moment I saw the actual count, I knew there was no way that we would be fortunate enough to make it the rest of the month without enduring enough American deaths to break the July numbers. After all, we are still losing our men and women at a rate that averages more than one a day. Does Morgan not know this? I dare say she does, but remember: her job is not news reporting, it's propaganda. A day later, and the August count had tied the July count. Lucky Melanie Morgan: she published her misleading column just in the nick of time!


Morgan brags in her column that tough gals like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham have to take up the slack left by the girlie-men reporters (she cites Tucker Carlson, an apt choice) in encouraging (fooling?) the American public to support the war. By the evidence of her latest WorldNetDaily column, Morgan has learned the first lesson of Coulterism: the blatant falsehood is your friend whenever the truth is against you.

Step on it

Well, that could work

I read very quickly. This is usually an asset, although I have been chided by people who give me humorous birthday cards: “You could at least read it!” “But I did! Why do you think I was laughing?” I guess flicking it open and bursting into laughter was not a credible response in the eyes of those whose reading speed is linked to the dexterity of their lip muscles.

This morning I read Dan Piraro's Bizarro cartoon at a glance, and stopped, bewildered.


Huh? Gas? I immediately thought of three: Nitrous oxide? Ether? Chloroform?

Yes, seems like that ought to work. I am not experienced in child care, but it appears likely that anesthetizing a youngster would cause it to behave very nicely for a while.

Then I took another look at the illustration. Gas? Oh! Gasoline. Now I get it. The mother was driving the baby around for the well-known soporific effect on little ones. And gasoline is very expensive these days. Yes, yes. Quite droll.

I have got to read the comics more slowly.

The more you know

A considerate student

The fall semester is well under way and my e-mail in-box is flooded with students responding to their first assignment: e-mail your instructor. It's a good way to make sure I have all of their e-mail addresses (they don't all use their campus accounts) and I also ask them for some background: Why are you taking this class? What are your academic goals? I get swamped reading all that stuff, but it's enlightening and often useful.

As you might imagine, some of the messages stand out because of their humor or cleverness or weirdness. This year's crop is no exception. I must admit, however, that I've never seen a message before that is quite like the one that I received from “MM,” a student enrolled in my early morning precalculus class. He thought it would be to my benefit to know a little something about his approach to academics:

Hi there Professor,
basically my plans are to get a degree in engineering, mainly civil but I want to double major in architectural as well since its only a couple more classes to take so why not. My story regarding school is, I don't usually take notes, nor I study for tests. The stuff just naturally comes to me during tests and usually the only mistakes I make are some really dumb and simple ones. I am thinking about getting a pretty good grade in this class, although, I don't really like to do homework so sometimes I will be slacking. There are also going to be times when I am going to sleep in class, getting up at 6am is just too much for me. I stay up late so I can't get up that early, so far I was okay. That's about it, I hope I fulfilled your assignment there and if not just let me know and I'll write some more.

See you in class,
M*** M****

---

I paused in working my way through the backlog of student messages to ponder MM's words. Usually you don't get students telling you about their unstable equilibrium between brilliance and slacking. He reminded me of someone. Namely, me. In my first two years of college I was a whiz who cruised through classes almost effortlessly. Yes, I did my homework, which MM says he doesn't enjoy, but I did not work hard. Things changed just a bit when I transferred to one of the toughest schools in California to work on a bachelor's degree in math and suddenly discovered that I was no longer a Wunderkind. Acquiring decent study skills became an overnight emergency, and my first academic quarter in Pasadena was tough.

I wondered how MM expected me to respond. This is what I came up with:

Thanks for your message, MM. I hope you don't slack your way to a lower grade than you're capable of. Your situation sounds familiar, since I was able to coast through my own math classes—at least until I got to my junior year and they got quite a lot harder. While things are easy is a good time to practice a few basic study skills, just in case you're going to need them later.

Don't expect to sleep in class too much. I tend to call on students who are nodding off.

Good luck in class.

Dr. Z

---

So—? Have I put him on notice, or was I too subtle? He should at least pick up on my rather direct statement that class time will not be nap time.

Oh, yes. This morning our class had its first quiz, so I can report that MM is rather accurate in describing his quiz results. He clearly knows the basics, but his work is rather slipshod. And his mistakes? Exactly as advertised: “really dumb and simple.”

Liar, liar!

So why aren't her pants on fire?

The pretentious D. James Kennedy is pounding the drum for his forthcoming special program on Darwin's Deadly Legacy. You see, Darwin's theory of evolution is responsible for Nazis and many other bad things, so it must be false. That's not only bad history, it's bad reasoning. Even if Hitler's theory of the Aryan master race owed anything to the survival-of-the-fittest aspect of evolution, the abuse of a theory says absolutely nothing about the validity of that theory. But one goes to D. James Kennedy for overweening faith, not logic.

For his assault on evolution, Kennedy has recruited some high-profile allies. One of them is Ann Coulter, noisy rightwing propagandist. It's a marriage made in heaven. She was prominently featured in a lengthy promo that appeared at the end of this weekend's broadcast of The Coral Ridge Hour. (The main program itself was devoted to a recycled attack on the ACLU, a particular D. James Kennedy bête noire.)

As the Coral Ridge announcer reported, Coulter's most recent book devoted a third of its length to a sustained attack on the theory of evolution. Kennedy and company must presume that this gives her credibility to Kennedy's audience, and I dare say they are right. Coulter provided a smooth segue from the ACLU portion of the program to the denunciation of Darwin:

I think there's still some misguided people who think the ACLU cares about civil liberties. They are purely an anti-Christian organization, an anti-American organization. That's what they do and what is there to say about them? They rush in whenever anyone mentions any science that contradicts Darwinism.

The ACLU wins in the courts. We win when Americans know what is going on.

---

Despite her oracular pronouncements, Coulter is willing to defer to the expertise of others when the occasion warrants. For example,

I'll let the scientists decide what should be taught in science class, but it seems to me the one thing that shouldn't be taught in science class is a crackpot 19th century mystery religion, as David Berlinski calls it.

---

Yes, let the scientists decide. Unless they disagree with fellow pseudointellectual David Berlinski. Coulter chooses her experts very carefully, doesn't she?

Unsurprisingly, Ann also has a problem with public schools. A diligent student of the Republican playbook, Ann calls them “government schools,” of course:

What the government schools do, it is the left's madrassahs. And they propagandize to the children six hours a day, twelve years of the child's life. I would give them the presidency, the house, the senate, if we could have children for six hours a day to give them our religion. But no.

That used to be the purpose of school, oddly enough. To teach biblical truths. No, that is absolutely prohibited.

---

Given Ann's lack of charity, you might be puzzled by her reference to “our religion.” If you didn't realize it, Ann pretends to be Christian. But not to worry: It's only a pose.

Ann, by the way, is all in favor of free speech. She construes “free speech” generously so as to encompass things like efforts to smuggle creationism into public school classrooms. She's all about the freedom thing, as witness this sentence fragment clipped out by Kennedy's video editors:

In Dover it indicated that there was other evidence out there that students could read in their free time, but not on sanctified government property. And merely being alerted to the fact that there was other information out there that might contradict a complete crock of a theory that is no more scientific than palm reading...

---

Yes, folks, the Dover decision was all about censorship. That's pretty surprising to those of us who read big chunks of it, but Ann must be smarter than you and me.

Postscript: While my focus in this post is on the inane Ann Coulter, a brief segment on Cobb County's textbook sticker controversy caught my eye. Here's what the voice-over announcer was saying as the video played out:

While reviewing the [biology] textbooks, parent Marjorie Rogers was dismayed by what she found.

---

As the word “dismayed” is intoned, you see Ms. Rogers scanning an open book, a jaundiced expression on her face. Actually, her scowl was quite appropriate. From the camera angle you could easily tell that she was looking at Icons of Evolution, the pathetic anti-evolution book by Jonathan Wells. Perhaps Kennedy's editors will have fixed this awkward juxtaposition by the time this sequence is enshrined in the final cut of Darwin's Deadly Legacy.

Monkey see, monkey do

Casual racism, homestyle

Yes, Senator George Felix Allen of Virginia is a racist. Defenders of the junior senator from Virginia claim he was misunderstood, but they are wrong. Most of them probably know they are wrong, but they may hope Allen's insult was sufficiently obscure that most people will shrug and let it pass.

This is not a complicated matter. Allen's disdain of racial minorities is so ingrained, so bred in the bone, that he can casually apply a derogatory epithet to a dark-skinned young man who is actually recording his words and actions on video. “Macaca” flows trippingly off his tongue. He pauses to say, “whatever his name is,” but that's only a rhetorical dig. Allen's not stumbling at all. When he repeats the insult—“Let's give a welcome to Macaca”—Allen demonstrates that it is a studied and deliberate slur. Perhaps Allen is thinking he'll get away with it because no one will understand the epithet. Perhaps Allen's not thinking at all. Racists are like that sometimes. Just shooting from the hip and letting the words gush from their mouths.

I know the word macaca well, having heard it throughout my life. In my Portuguese-speaking family, it was a word applied to my sister whenever she was acting up or behaving foolishly. It means monkey to the Portuguese (and Brazilians), just as it does to other cultures on or near the Mediterranean. When it was applied to me, the word was rendered macaco, with a masculine ending.

The adults in my family used it as a term of admonishment to children. It was never addressed to adults. That would be gravely insulting. It seems that the insulting connotation was common among the Mediterranean cultures that employed it. In particular, George Felix Allen's French-Tunisian mother grew up in a culture that employed it as a racial slur against blacks. Where else did Senator Allen pick it up than from his mother? Did she use it on him when he was little, or did she teach him to use it as a convenient substitute for the n-word? How very subtle!

Senator Allen's insult of S. R. Sidarth was no accident, but it was a mistake. The senator outed himself much more effectively than he realized. The origin and connotation of macaca were quickly uncovered, as well as Allen's familial connection to the source of the slur. What many suspected before, everyone now knows for sure.

Senator George Felix Allen is a racist. É stupid, também.

Stupid and dishonest, but polite

Tangled in my own web

I called a dying friend and lied to her. I told her I was running errands in town and was “just a couple of minutes away.” Was she up to receiving a visitor?

I wasn't in town at all. I was standing in my living room, using my cell phone instead of my land line so that Caller ID wouldn't reveal that I was calling from home. The idea was to make my friend think it was a casual impulse call. No big deal. It wasn't like I was going out of my way or anything. All part of the plan to abide (or appear to abide) by her wish that no one make too much of a fuss.

She told me to come on by.

It wasn't like I was far away. We live in the same town. But I was more than “a couple” of minutes from her house. (More like “a few.”) I didn't actually have any errands to run. I was venturing out specifically to visit her. But she wasn't to know that. Like I said: It's all casual, see?

Some minutes later I was on her doorstep and knocked on the door. No response. Her husband had answered my call before giving her the phone, so I knew he was at home. Where was he? My friend is bedridden, so I knew she couldn't come to the door. I waited, puzzled.

I am talented at worrying, long years of practice having honed my pessimistic edge to a razor sharpness. I hoped that no emergency had arisen. I was thinking my friend's husband was tending to one of her many awkward physical needs (with the various tubes, fluids, and painkillers involved) and couldn't come to the door right away. I waited patiently for a while before knocking a second time.

Nothing.

Something was definitely wrong. My concern grew. I gently tested the handle. The latch moved slightly. Not locked, I thought. Another minute had passed. (They're long when you're waiting. Go ahead. Count one off slowly. They're long.)

I finally knocked a third time and leaned close to the door, listening as I grasped the door's handle and opened the door a crack.

I heard my friend's voice. She was telling me to come in. I closed the door behind me.

“Back here,” she said faintly, weakly, from a distance.

I walked down the hallway to the master suite.

“Well, thank goodness,” she said. “You know I can't yell at you. I called out earlier, but you didn't hear me.”

I was horrified at the thought that she was exerting herself, drawing on her precious reserves of energy, to try to yell at the idiot at the front door.

“It's always unlocked,” she continued. “People just knock, stick their heads in, and yell ‘Anybody home?’ It's the easiest way.”

I hadn't gotten the memo. I apologized profusely and guiltily. She just waved me to the chair next to her rented hospital bed and asked for the latest gossip from the math department. She's a colleague.

The visit was great and lasted longer than I expected. Her husband had taken the opportunity of my imminent arrival to go run errands himself. He hadn't realized it would be less imminent than I implied in my conversation with his wife. That's why I got to spend a few additional minutes on the doorstep, hovering about indecisively. And that's why my friend had to sit through that, hearing me knock three times on the door before I managed to knock enough sense into my head to open the damned thing. So sorry! Don't want to intrude!

Each of my last several visits seemed likely to be our last meeting. So far, however, my friend has outlasted all the time markers that typically describe her condition. The doctors told her last year that the median survival time was six months. As a math teacher, she was more than ready to point out that median requires half of those who receive the prognosis to outlast that statistic. A year later, her outlier status is secure and growing ever more remarkable.

Still, the doses of pain medication go ever upward. Her strength level slips ever downward. At some point, those trend lines intersect and there will be no more milestones. When, no one can say.

But soon. Too soon. Yet there might still be time for one more conversation.

Perhaps I'll try to visit again this weekend. I should probably give up on the lying stuff, though. It just complicates things. No, I'll just say, “Hey, feel like a visit?” No cover story or excuses. Wanting to see my friend again and spend time with her is quite reason enough.

She's still teaching and I'm still learning.

Motes and Beams

Do as I say

---

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye,
but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Matthew 7:3

---

David Vroon is unhappy. David Vroon is often unhappy. Editor of the American Record Guide, Vroon has a regular platform from which he can share his unhappiness. The July/August issue of ARG is no different. Oh, is he unhappy!

I am just like David Vroon, except that I am a cheerful person. When ARG appears in the mail, I snatch it up happily. Each issue is stuffed with hundreds of mid-length reviews of classical music recordings and lengthy surveys of the works of individual composers or essays on particular music genres. I love it.

I even love Vroon's curmudgeonly essays, although some of my enjoyment is at Vroon's expense. He inveighs against the barbarisms of the day, of which there are many, and I confess an abiding sympathy for his point of view. What aficionado of classical music could fail to sympathize with a critic of our popular culture? Vroon himself, however, does not come across as a particularly sympathetic character. He may be aware of this and perhaps dismisses it as beneath the concern of an upright connoisseur such as himself. Perhaps. However, Vroon does not seem to have any talent for self-examination. He's right, damn it! Disagree, and be damned! So there. He is in awe of his own accomplishments, as exemplified by a recent brilliant conversation with a friend:

We tend to start on a simple subject like “The Crisis of Attentiveness” and then move deeper and deeper into the subjects we both know. By the end of an afternoon it is no longer clear who thought of what: we have built a whole thought-edifice together. Somebody should record those sessions.

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Someone should quickly secure the distribution rights to these monuments of contemporary thought and culture. Can you imagine the market for the recordings? I can. Oh, yes.

The July/August installment of Vroon's Critical Convictions column reads as an unconscious self-parody. He's a censorious finger-wagger on a cultural crusade, but the depths of his convictions do not protect him from running into the pots-and-kettles trap. His topic here is one of his favorites: short-attention-span young people and their dearth of refinement:

Kids won’t sit still long enough to understand or appreciate our music. It demands an attention span and a concentration of attention that they never had and never learn to develop. Perhaps it was just permissive parents; I’m sure one of the earliest things I had to learn as a child was to sit still. Perhaps it is overstimulation, too many distractions, too much clamoring for their attention (our music becomes just one more of those things)....

[W]e can hope age will mellow some of these people so they will begin to pay attention to life and the world around them. (But in my experience very few people ever really grow up.) I always saw and heard and noted everything around me.

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Yes, Vroon is a whole lot more perceptive than you, and he doesn't mind telling you about it. And you'd appreciate just a bit more if you were as attentive as he is—and really, really smart, like he is.

There's nothing like finger-wagging to put oneself at risk of poking out one's own eye. Vroon manages to give himself a couple of sharp jabs without even realizing it:

I never passed thru a place without registering all there was to see or hear about it. I never lay on a beach with a radio playing; I listened to the waves and the birds.

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Uh, David—“thru”? That's what the kids write in their text messages (or perhaps I should say “txt msgs”). You're not being trendy, are you? Or did you learn your spelling from the Department of Motor Vehicles? For a moment there, I thought you were also misusing “lay on the beach” for “lie on the beach,” but I see you are using past tense. Close one! I do wonder, though, how you can be sure that you register “all there was to see or hear.” After all, if you missed something, you would not know it. Right?

Vroon, by the way, is dreadfully unhappy about the Internet:

Note: thanks to the internet any idiot can write anything and no matter how bad it is it looks the same as anything else out there. The internet makes no judgements. The internet is chaos. Everything is there, and there’s no way to decide what to bother with. All its information is on the same cheap level, and all its merchandise is the same. There is not even a human salesman to give you advice or confirm your choice, as there is in a store or on the phone. You’re on your own. And every two-bit composer knows that and hopes to take advantage of it.

Anybody can put anything on the internet and sell anything on it. He need not have an education; he need not be accredited (credentialed?) by a reputable school, taught by outstanding teachers, screened by a faculty committee. He can be anybody—self-educated even.

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Oh. My. God. Can you imagine? Even self-educated! We must protect ourselves from the scary autodidact. No doubt Vroon learned everything sitting at the feet of credentialed professionals. (In which case I wish one of them had told him that “Internet” is a proper noun and that proper nouns are capitalized in English.)

Vroon favors attentiveness. I agree. He favors fine music. I do, too. He likes contemplation and quiet reflection. Ditto. He believes in high standards and discriminating tastes. I have no problem with that (although he should practice more of what he preaches). Ultimately, though, I wonder why Vroon spends so much time preaching to the choir. The readers of ARG are mostly on his side, although I imagine that many of us roll our eyes at his myopic sallies against “multiculturalism” and “political correctness” (which appear to mean whatever he wants them to mean—and he means bad stuff).

To all of those things that Vroon favors, I think I'd like to add one more: Human kindness. Vroon thinks this automatically involves suspension of critical judgment (which he likes to spell in an affected British way as “judgement”), but that's too facile a response. Adults have always decried the excesses and irresponsibility of the young. High culture has always been the province of a small (and usually pampered) minority. If we want fine music to survive, it behooves us to share it, spread it around, and promote it. Yet Vroon decries all such outreach to the masses as pandering to uncultured tastes. “Greatest hits” excerpts of single arias from major operas are so ni kulturni! He should listen to himself, since he claims to listen to everything so very carefully. How else will people with short attention spans get drawn into classical music and opera? If you subject a novice to all four hours and three acts of some grand opera, you're likely to see them sprinting for safety. If you ravish them with a single dramatic aria, you might set a hook that draws them back for more. Vroon wants his favored art forms to survive and thrive while he mans the barricades and smites in the face any untutored wretch who might try to clamber aboard.

Geez, David, I mostly agree with you, but can you try not to be such a prig?