Reflections, Reflections

From the The Guardian:

Concern over rise of 'happy slapping' craze

Fad of filming violent attacks on mobile phones spreads

Mark Honigsbaum
Tuesday April 26, 2005
The Guardian

In one video clip, labelled Bitch Slap, a youth approaches a woman at a bus stop and punches her in the face. In another, Knockout Punch, a group of boys wearing uniforms are shown leading another boy across an unidentified school playground before flooring him with a single blow to the head.

In a third, Bank Job, a teenager is seen assaulting a hole-in-the-wall customer while another youth grabs the money he has just withdrawn from the cash machine.

Article continues
Welcome to the disturbing world of the "happy slappers" - a youth craze in which groups of teenagers armed with camera phones slap or mug unsuspecting children or passersby while capturing the attacks on 3g technology.

There are so many appalling things with this "craze," I'm having trouble blogging about it. First, it shows how diseased modern, liberal society is regarding violence. Second, in a very irresponsible manner, the article puts the entire emphasis on physical violence and makes the emotional violence in these acts almost invisible. Third it's vile in how it blames the victim if they suffer more than an "ego bruise." I don't know if this woman was quoted out of context, but I found her appalling:

Liz Carnell, the director of Bullying Online, a Yorkshire-based charity set up to combat bullying in schools, said that since the start of the year she has heard of increasing attacks both on children and on adults. But she fears many incidents are not reported.

"In most cases the worst that happens is a minor scratch or a bruised ego," she said.

"What the people behind these attacks have to understand is that technically they are committing an assault. And if they then upload the images on to the internet or a phone system they could be prosecuted for harassment."

1) "In most cases the worst that happens is a minor scratch or a bruised ego" - What? So you come up to a child or adult and you punch them straight in the face and "the most that can happen is a bruised ego?" What!? As in if they didn't have an ego problem, their "ego" wouldn't get bruised and there would be no harm done whatsoever? This is insane.

2) And then look at the wording here: "What the people behind these attacks have to understand is that technically they are committing an assault." Technically!? Has the world gone entirely mad? What these kids have to understand first and foremost is that this is morally, ethically, socially wrong and harmful. Technically and non-technically, this is an assault. The "technical" is the least important when they are so clueless.

3)"...since the start of the year she has heard of increasing attacks both on children and on adults. But she fears many incidents are not reported." No kidding. As if anyone needs to be reminded that usually the kids who are victimized with bullying are not in a position to report things. And when many do, they meet some of the most disgusting living adults on the planet, who dismiss the issue, blame the victim, and ensure the bullying goes on.

4) And what is it with the "happy slap" term? Hello, Orwell. And also what is it with this "bitch slap" slang?

5)And the fact that the kids gang up the victim to film it and display for entertainment. We know where they learned that from. What is it that they watch 24/7 on TV, movies, and pornography?

Modern society is such an open, smelling cancrum.

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From Search Engine Watch:

Those of you who track blogosphere buzz might be interested to learn that BlogPulse (from Intelliseek) has released some new stats today.

Fast Facts:
+ The San Francisco Chronicle and News.com are now top news sources cited by bloggers.

++ Most Cited Blogs
1) Boing Boing
2) Engadget.com (up from No. 13 in 2004)[never heard of it until now :-)]

++ Other Big Movers on the Most Cited List
MichelleMalkin.com (No. 23 to No. 7)
Gizmodo.com (No. 17 to No. 8)

BlogPulse also announced that their now tracking more than 10 million blogs. That's about 700,000 more blogs than were being tracked just two months ago.

I hope that in their next release BlogPulse will provide more info about these numbers. For example:
+ What criteria do they use to determine what is and is not a blog?

[read more...]

I´ve noticed some blog posts are turning up when you do a search in Google News. I wonder what criteria Google is using as well.

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From Ignacio Prado, reflections on the consequences of the Catholic Church not modernizing (click on his name for full post):

There are different ways of modernizing. One is to take the traditional route of main-line Protestant churches and simply abstain from upholding traditional moral doctrines that are out of line with contemporary secular norms (as defined by markets, civil society, and positive law). The problem, as noted to some extent in Ross' article, is that you end up with a very aesthetic, undemanding set of religious commitments that are, at the end of the day, neither very distinctively religious nor very important on any day other than Sunday.

[...]

The other approach, which I will call Modernist, is to recognize that there is human suffering, that this suffering is bad, and that nothing less than the Gospels themselves tell us that it requires no transcendental dogma to make this moral recognition or act upon it. The Church's agential mission then becomes associated with meeting and overcoming suffering. It is hard to see how this can be done effectively through a top-down bureaucratic model and by putting gag orders on renegade theologians.

[...]

The Church will continue to find people who are attracted to its aura of tradition and its ability to provide authority on social and moral questions. Once the appeal of that authority starts to wane at the level of individual conscience, however, the Church, under its Traditionalist model, has no consolations left to offer. The choice for the individual then becomes either the unwilling acceptance of dogma or apostasy, and I am fairly confident that unwilling acceptance of dogma is neither a strategy for success nor a model of what success in questions spiritual should be.

My reply:

I thought you made some good points in your comment.

Ignacio wrote, "The problem, as noted to some extent in Ross' article, is that you end up with a very aesthetic, undemanding set of religious commitments that are, at the end of the day, neither very distinctively religious nor very important on any day other than Sunday."

This problem, however, is seen only if one looks at its detrimental consequences for society, because all the individuals I know who have subscribed to these kinds of religions (including the atheists who don't go to any church, or people who like to apply a religious label on themselves, but who do not commit to real practice of religious teachings) are all delighted with this state of (a)moral or flimsly-moral or diet-lite religions in modern society.

This kind of "religion" (or lack of religion) bloats individual egos and shuns holding these same individuals accountable for many serious things, what more could modern, liberal, egotistical society want?

Regarding who this un-modern Church appeals to, I believe there are still an enormous group of people for whom this kind of Church serves their needs, even though with globalized religion competition, other faiths will increasingly encroach and take over any segment of the population that is not satisfied with traditional Catholic preaching. For the majority of Catholics I know, the Catholic Church is there to provide ritual, not guidance, and certainly not accountability of anything. I would venture, without knowing a lot about the Catholic Church, that Pope Benedict prefers it this way, than to have the Church transformed by "renegade theologians," or to make the Church try to be a moral agent in society and then make these Cafeteria Catholics upset. It is the conservative Catholics I know that are usually more concerned with their religion as a moral force in their lives, and hold themselves accountable to it.

And apparently Pope Benedict prefers to repeat over and over again that homosexuality is a sin, and at the same time, pretend that the lavender mafia and the pink-pedo mafia of Catholic clergy is not a huge problem in the Church, which will only get worse if good, healthy heterosexual men are not allowed to be ordained, and certainly most need to get married when that time comes in their lives. The Catholic Church is behaving towards homosexuality in the same way as if it preached insistently that it was pro-life and thousands of its priests worked in abortion clinics. It's in our faces. I mean, thou shall not lie and insult our intelligence with this mockery. If you are going to be Traditional, fine, but at least uphold in practice what you preach.

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I wasn't going to blog on this, because I found it so disgusting, but why not? This is from Eric Muller's blog, an American professor, who recently visited France, and behaved as a sexual voyeur in his own class, no less!

March 24, 2005 - My Aphrodisiac Qualities

Just taught a really fun class here in France about proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the presumption of innocence, the American criminal jury, and a bit about the privilege against self-incrimination. (Sort of a "Greatest Hits of Distinctive Features of American Criminal Justice").

A young woman in the front row spent much of the last 15 minutes or so of the class with her hand in the lap of the young man next to her. And I mean in his lap. At the end of the class, I grabbed my books to leave and looked up, and there were in complete liplock.

Ah, to be young and in France and in love and in Eric Muller's criminal law class.

I was astounded about the extent of how he views the whole thing as a big ego inflating boost for himself (My Aphrodisiac Qualities). He brags about the incident on his blog! And, in his blog entry, he links to a photo of the hand action and puts emphasis on the action, "And I mean in his lap." He thinks he is the greatest for playing voyeur, I mean, get a clue. Is this the kind of attitude we want in a professor? Is there anything these two kids could have done in class that would make Eric actually tell them to stop? I'm not sure.

Muller hates Michelle Malkin, btw, and a lot of his blog is devoted to sharing his feelings about her. I think Michelle Malkin is a tad extreme with the Asian-American politics, but certainly not with social attitudes and personal values. And a professor who acts like Eric did, wants to point fingers at her.

The world is a circus.

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One Nation Under What?

From quote at Malkin:

And Billy Jones at View from the Foothills has rewritten the entire pledge to conform to P.C. standards:

I pledge [allegiance] some occasional recognition

to the [Flag] symbols of oppression

of the [United States] diverse indigenous peoples

of [America] the land mass referred to by oppressive European conquistadors as "America"

and to the [Republic] totalitarian theocracy, for which it stands,

[one nation,] a Balkanized patchwork of cultures,

[under God,] under each individuals' personal belief system

[indivisible,] divided into innumerable unique communities of culture,

[with liberty and justice for all.] where some are more equal than others.

:-D I like it. This is my New and Improved PC version:

I pledge [allegiance] some occasional recognition when I feel like it, only if it makes me feel good, and reinforces my desires, my ego, and my bloated self-conception,

to the [Flag] the PC cultural symbol of my choice

of [United States] diverse creatures

of [America] the land mass with a few mountain ranges, rivers, and deserts with homes on the range, specially mine,

and to the [Republic] intolerant liberal dictatorship, for which it stands, but which I love, because it says I'm right about everything,

[one nation,] a Balkanized patchwork of cultures,

[under God,] under God, G-d, the Goddess, Jupiter and Zeus, the whole pantheon, Jesus (who was probably a homo, according to bishup Robinson), the Holy Spirit, not to come before all other Spirits, Mother Earth, Buddha, Mohhamed, stars, comets, and rainbows, and all life forces in the Universe (and we apologize in advance if we left anyone else out, please feel included)

[indivisible,] divided into innumerable unique communities of culture and dellusional concepts of rights,

[with liberty and justice for all.] where some are more equal than others. And anyone who doesn't agree is an intolerant bigot.

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The Navajo Nation on Friday outlawed same-sex marriages on its reservation. The Tribal Council voted unanimously in favor of legislation that restricts a recognized union to that between a man and a woman, and prohibits plural marriages as well as marriages between close relatives.

“Men and women have been created in a sacred manner. We need to honor this,” said Del. Harriet Becenti.

My thoughts exactly. Sacred, and unless honored, desecrated.

Kudos to the Navajo Nation.

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I find these studies about church attendance and religious practices very interesting.

From "Why Men Hate Church by David Murrow - some gender gap analyses regarding church attendance:"

[...]

Tough, earthy, working guys rarely come to church. High achievers, alpha males, risk takers, and visionaries are in short supply. Fun-lovers and adventurers are also underrepresented in church. These rough-and-tumble men don’t fit in with the quiet, introspective gentlemen who populate the church today. The truth is, most men in the pews grew up in church. Many of these lifers come not because they desire to be transformed by Christ but because they enjoy participating in comforting rituals that have changed little since their childhood. There are also millions of men who attend services under duress, dragged by a mother, wife, or girlfriend. Today’s churchgoing man is humble, tidy, dutiful, and above all, nice.

[...]

Who is being touched by the gospel today? Women. Women’s ministries, women’s conferences, women’s Bible studies, and women’s retreats are ubiquitous in the modern church. Men’s ministry, if it even exists, might consist of an occasional pancake breakfast and an annual retreat.

How did a faith founded by a Man and His twelve male disciples become so popular with women, but anathema to men? The church of the first century was a magnet to males. Jesus’ strong leadership, blunt honesty, and bold action mesmerized men. A five-minute sermon by Peter resulted in the conversions of three thousand men.

Today’s church does not mesmerize men; it repels them. Just 35 percent of the men in the United States say they attend church weekly. In Europe male participation rates are much worse, in the neighborhood of 5 percent. This hardly sounds like a male-dominated, patriarchal institution to me.

What’s worse, nobody seems to care about the absence of men. Have you ever heard a sermon on the church’s gender gap? I’ve never heard a pastor or church leader bring it up. Heck, I’ve never heard anybody bring it up. It’s just one of those things Christians don’t talk about.

Lovely updates at the Joshua Scott Family blog, in Guatemala.

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Can anyone recommend a freeware or inexpensive-ware software that allows you to give Windows commands/keyboard shortcut commands with your computer microphone?

I tried installing Talk2Desktop, but it behaved very weirdly, it seemed to have all this automatic inbuilt advertising window popping junk in it, acting just like a virus would, even a harmless one.

I really need to cut down mouse use as much as possible, or my right arm will fall off shortly.

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Ratzinger Implicated In Sex Crime Cover Up: Did Pope Benedict XVI Obstruct Justice?

Breaking News by Dan Riehl

The signature of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is on a confidential letter defending the Church's right to conduct secret investigations into alleged sexual abuse cases and keep the information confidential up to ten years after the victims had reached adulthood. The letter was sent to all Roman Catholic Bishops in May, 2001.

The letter states that the church's jurisdiction 'begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age' and lasts for 10 years.

According to the Ratzinger letter anyone revealing confidential information from the investigations could be subject to discipline up to and including excommunication.

When approached for comment the Vatican press office had no comment as it claimed the letter was not a public document.

The letter is referred to in documents relating to a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a church in Texas and Ratzinger on behalf of two alleged abuse victims. By sending the letter, lawyers acting for the alleged victims claim the cardinal conspired to obstruct justice.

If it's true, I hope they bring the Pope, the Vatican, and the whole lot of anyone else involved in this most horrendous type of criminal obstruction to Justice.

You know what I think was needed, run all these cardinals, bishops, and priests on those lie detectors. Even if these machines aren't totally reliable, it would be very interesting, nevertheless.

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Related:

Exhange of comments between Jack and myself on the Lay post. Jack wrote:

I'm not sure it's appropriate to call Law's position one of power. Sitting on a congregation may not have any power at all; it depends on the congregation. I couldn't follow the links, though, so I can't say, but for instance I once heard that Law works on ecumenism. That congregation would have little power at all; it only speaks with authority on what the Catholic position might be on certain issues, etc.

Of course, NCR routinely conflates "authority" and "power" all the time, and it typically sees "power" everywhere it can, especially when they want to remove the person in a certain position to replace him/her with someone who suits their political predispositions. — at least, that's how NCR was ten years ago, even 5 years ago, IIRC. Maybe they're different now, but I'd be really surprised.

OTOH, maybe Law is on some congregations that do have genuine power, and if he's on one that deals with issues like pedophilia, yeah that would be worrisome. I myself was disappointed to learn that Law is still a cardinal, but then again Mahoney's still a cardinal, too — indeed, he is still in control of the archdiocese of Los Angeles. Why isn't NCR raising a stink about that? Perhaps because Mahoney has taken their side on some "political" issues?

BTW, the note on Mahoney is because Mahoney also suffered quite a bit of embarassment from the pedophilia scandal.
jack perry | Homepage | 04.21.05 - 12:13 am | #

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"I myself was disappointed to learn that Law is still a cardinal, but then again Mahoney's still a cardinal, too — indeed, he is still in control of the archdiocese of Los Angeles. Why isn't NCR raising a stink about that? Perhaps because Mahoney has taken their side on some "political" issues?"

Totally agree.

You know what I also ask, if someone else had been Pope in the past 20 years, would it have made a difference? To me, the Vatican is also culpable for hiding, hiding, helping abscond, using the most expensive powerful law firms to attack and silence victims, sheltering all their criminal priests, bishops, and cardinals.

They are only rivaled by homo activists, who lie about sexual abuse by homos just as much as the Church lied about it for its priests.

It's a disgusting circus.

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Pop psychology, contrary to a snub belief that it is worthless, has brought tremendous benefits to humans, especially in the area of human relationships. An insightful analysis from Jeff Burright.

Many of us in our Baccalaureate education have taken an introductory course in psychology or interpersonal communication, which we all claim lets us understand one another better but really allows us, by academic consensus, to make sure we're not crazy.

There is another consequence of a rudimentary education in the inner workings of the human mind, which I will illustrate with the example of the couple who walked behind me the other day as I came home from school. Below is a transcript of their conversation. Names have been changed because I don't know who they were:

GIRL: Why are you being so defensive?

GUY: I'm not being defensive.

GIRL: Yes you are, you're letting your trust issues cause you to suppress the truth and that affects our intimacy.

GUY: No, Wanda, I don't actively suppress anything. If you choose to interpret that I'm being defensive, then that's your own insecurity.

GIRL: I'm not insecure, but you kept this from me when you could have just shared your feelings and we wouldn't be having this argument!

GUY: ...

GIRL: See, Mitch, you're doing it again! You need to open up and tell me things.

GUY: I was trying to avoid a conflict. If I wanted to communicate something then I'd tell you. Is it not okay for me to sometimes not express everything that's going on in my head?

GIRL: No!

GUY: ... Then what do you want me to do?

GIRL: Look, next time just SAY that you don't like Indian food and we won't go there and pay for something you won't eat, OK?

As you can see from Mitch and Wanda, more than anything else, pop psychology allows the average person to argue with a better vocabulary.

[read more...]

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What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?

A Stick.

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If you are not offended by a little fun, with humorous pope names, this is hillarious.

Best Pope names:

Pope Palpatine

How about "Pope Benny" for short?

The Pope formerly known as Ratzinger

Pope Aratzi

Perhaps if he'd just gone with Pope Loretta I, Andrew Sullivan wouldn't have had that emotionally overwrought reaction.

Diet Pope with Lime
Pope Classic (for you old schoolers)

It's Da Pope!

Ratttttt-ZINGER! (BahBWAHHHH-bwah!) He's the man, the man that they call the Pope! Gives Christians hope! Mister Ratttt-ZINGER! (BahBWAHHH-bwah!) He's the man, the man that the Vatican picked! Now he's Benedict!

Mommas and the Pope-as

The Pope-enator

Similar comment made about homo Sullivan being a-Pope-letic with Benedict. :-)

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Another Scrappleface gem. I had been missing good Scrappleface satire, it seems Ott was dealing forever with issues I don't find that interesting, but now, to make up for all that time, a delightful post...

In one of his first official moves, Pope Benedict XVI today announced that the Vatican would "spin off" the U.S. division of the Roman Catholic church, but retain a 49-percent stake in the new entity, called R.C. Lite.

The partial divestiture of its holy-owned subsidiary comes as a new CNN poll reveals that 74 percent of U.S. Catholics say they're more likely to follow their own conscience than the teachings of the church.

R.C. Lite will elect its own leader to the largely cermonial post of New-World Pope. Thorny moral questions in the new religious sect will be decided by Internet polling, the results of which will provide non-binding guidance to church members.

To counter Pope Benedict's dogmatic conservatism, several church sources said America's leading Roman Catholic politician, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-MA, is considered a shoo-in for the New-World Papacy.

"We need a pope with nuanced ideas," said one unnamed U.S. Bishop. "He needs to be a uniter, not a divider. He can't be afraid to change his deeply-held convictions in light of shifting public opinion. He must be courageous enough to keep his beliefs separate from his behavior and decision making."

If Mr. Kerry accepts the R.C. Lite leadership post, insiders say he will assume the name Benadryl XIII.

R.C Lite! :-))) That's too perfect to describe a ton of "Catholics" I know. Another excellent label was given at WorldMag: Cafeteria Catholics - they pick and choose which beliefs they want to uphold at that particular moment. :-)

Benadryl XIII - too funny... Benadryl XIII, the Flipflop Pope...

I was in need of this... you have no idea what a bad day I had today... snif.

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Related post at Dr.Adams'.

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Update April 24:

Is this 16,000 number correct??!! I'm dumbfounded if so. From Human Events:

Along with all those pick-and-choose American Catholics our pagan media is shocked -- shocked -- that the cardinals have picked a new Pope who is a real, honest to goodness Catholic!
[...]

Actually, they have plenty of other options if they insist on affiliating with a church.

There are 16,000 Protestant sects in the United States.

They offer a huge variety of dos and don’ts -(mostly dos.) You can pick and choose.

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Excellent editorial by the National Catholic Reporter:

The flap over Cardinal Bernard Law’s appearance as celebrant of one of the nine Masses at St. Peter’s Basilica during the period of mourning for the late Pope John Paul II may seem a minor dustup in the long trajectory of the clergy sex abuse scandals.

After all, only two people showed up to protest, the Mass went on as scheduled, the controversy was not expected to have an effect on the conclave, and the headlines faded quickly.

What will not fade, however, is the power of symbol to evoke deeper truths and to raise unsettling questions. Law’s presence in the limelight once more -- not before the media answering long-standing questions about the diocese he left in disarray, but as a representative of the church in a high-profile setting, a place of honor -- was an unbelievably inept and insensitive move.

Offensive as that was to victims of sexual abuse, even more damaging to the wider church is Law’s continuing membership on some of the most powerful congregations and councils in Rome. Someone who has caused such great damage to a major diocese through mismanagement and ultimately the cover-up of child sex abuse should not be allowed near the levers of power in the church.

[read more...]

Daily in Washington:

At the UW, a group of 10 students has come together to explore the world of pornography, sex and the political issues surrounding them.
[...]
The Amateur Porn Club was started last quarter by members of the WAC. This is the first club on campus that has wanted to base itself around sex and pornography issues.

The club's goals are to provide a safe place to talk about, view and create independent pornography. They also want to educate members about the debates and history surrounding pornography and sex.
[...]
Allyson Kolan, a freshman, is the club president. She has spearheaded the concept of talking about individual sexuality and the making of pornography within the club.

The group is continuing WAC's feminist principles of anti-sexism, anti-oppression and pro-consent methods.

Freshmen students making porn is anti-sexism? anti-oppression? pro-consent?

And what is a safe place to talk about porn? One where all the members echo your idiotic pro-porn views?

This is scary, how culture produces idiotic individuals, no conscience whatsoever. It's so sad to see young women like this.

One of these idiots adds, "I find it hard to talk about these things within groups of friends because there are no parameters, and it can turn into a big anti-woman, sexist discussion," said Ranger.

I'm scared to think what her idea of pro-women is. It's frightening.

And I predict that students making porn won't stop at this university, it will spread to others.

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I happened to check out the American Scene today and it was a good thing, doesn`t happen too often.

They had a very nice passage from (then) Ratzinger`s sermon, two days ago:

The other element of the Gospel to which I would like to refer is the teaching of Jesus on bearing fruit: “I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain” (Jn 15, 16). It is here that is expressed the dynamic existence of the Christian, the apostle: I chose you to go and bear fruit….” We must be inspired by a holy restlessness: restlessness to bring to everyone the gift of faith, of friendship with Christ.

In truth, the love and friendship of God was given to us so that it would also be shared with others. We have received the faith to give it to others – we are priests meant to serve others. And we must bring a fruit that will remain. All people want to leave a mark which lasts. But what remains? Money does not. Buildings do not, nor books. After a certain amount of time, whether long or short, all these things disappear.

The only thing which remains forever is the human soul, the human person created by God for eternity. The fruit which remains then is that which we have sowed in human souls – love, knowledge, a gesture capable of touching the heart, words which open the soul to joy in the Lord. Let us then go to the Lord and pray to him, so that he may help us bear fruit which remains. Only in this way will the earth be changed from a valley of tears to a garden of God.

Ross adds his comments, including what I found out to be a link to homo Sullivan's blog, who is trashing Ratzinger/Benedict and wailing about the choice made by the conclave. I don't understand why people bother reading Sullivan.

I think Pope Benedict is going to surprise many people, in more ways than one. I differ with him on the question of married priests. I think the Catholic Church would be much better off if it were like the Jewish faith/practice in that sense, rabbis should be married, it's much better, but they can, in certain exceptions (I believe) be single.

Homo Sullivan posted an email he received:

The guy's 78 years old. I give this papacy 3-5 years tops, given that guys like him don't exactly jog 3 miles a day and stick to a low cholesterol diet. His election was for a classic "stay the course" place-holder to give the church a few years to take stock of where it wants to go in the long term.

Most of the Sullivan crowd is clearly already counting the days until he is gone. If bad thoughts could kill a pope... Anyways, I don't think Ratzinger/Benedict looks at all frail. Then again, we could all depart tomorrow...

It's a little nice to see this obscenely self-pitying, self-centered homo froth at the mouth with the choice of Ratzinger for Pope.

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update April 20:

From EagleSpeak - NYTimes: New Pope is Catholic

NY Times, apparently still stunned that some people hold consistent beliefs announces :Thousands Cheer in St. Peter's Square as New Leader Emerges:

"He has been described as a conservative, intellectual clone of the late pontiff, and, as the dean of the College of Cardinals, he was widely respected for his uncompromising - if ultraconservative - principles and his ability to be critical. As cardinal, he had shut the door on any discussion on several issues, including the ordination of women, celibacy of priests and homosexuality, defending his positions by invoking theological truth. In the name of orthodoxy, he is in favor of a smaller church, but one that is more ideologically pure. On Monday, at a Mass before the conclave convened, he delivered an uncompromising warning against any deviation from traditional Catholic teaching."

I guess the Unitarian applicants missed out.

Update: Although I quit reading Mr. Sullivan some time ago, Professor Bainbridge has discovered that Andrew Sullivan is an Ass. Sullivan's latest hissy fit seems to center on the problem that the Catholic church does not revolve around his "sexual preference."

So why is Sullivan so worked up? Here's his real gripe in his own words:

... the impermissibility of any sexual act that does not involve the depositing of semen in a fertile uterus ....

It's always about sex with Andrew, isn't it?

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And a very interesting questioning of the mantra Catholicism-causes-AIDS-specially-in -Africa:

The AIDS Libel: Among the (admittedly small) group of serious Pope-bashers, the running line has been to cite "the millions who will die needlessly from AIDS," as Christopher Hitchens put it in his tub-thumping way, because of John Paul II's teaching about contraception. (This line has been particularly popular with the British press.) Now Brendan O'Neill, who is neither anti-contraception nor pro-Pope, points out some obvious problems with the Catholicism-causes-AIDS narrative:

The most striking thing about these articles claiming the Vatican makes Africans die from AIDS is the dearth of factual material . . .
[read more]

The two worst-hit countries (not only in Africa, but the world) are Swaziland, where the rate is 38.8 per cent, and Botswana, where it is 37.3 per cent. Yet these countries have low numbers of practising Catholics: in Swaziland, between 10 and 20 per cent of the population is Catholic . . . in Botswana fewer than 5 per cent are Catholic, with 85 per cent of the population subscribing to ancient indigenous beliefs.

I remember reading that in countless rural, uneducated communities, men force women/teenagers to be promiscuous and have sex with no protection available, such as condoms, this being cited as one of the greatest structural problems of AIDS in Africa.

Ross adds:

I'd only add this: Whatever you think about the ethics of birth control, there's no question that widespread use of condoms can help slow the spread of HIV, and the occasional remarks to the contrary by Church officials are idiotic. But there are a host of other factors at play in the African AIDS epidemic -- economic underdevelopment, societal and familial breakdown, political instability, a lack of basic medical care, and so on. And on every single one of these issues, the Catholic Church is doing more than any Western journalist could imagine to improve the lot of Africans -- running hospitals and clinics, working to shore up marriages and discourage promiscuity, pushing for political reform, and encouraging Western governments to share their wealth (and their retroviral drugs) with the developing world.

Very good points, I agree.

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From wikipedia, the gentle persuasion applied to cardinals who were taking too long to decide on a Pope was nothing short of starving them to death...

In earlier years, papal elections sometimes suffered prolonged deadlocks. To resolve them, authorities often resorted to the forced seclusion of the cardinal electors. (conclave: from the Latin phrase cum clavi - "with a key"). The method was adopted, for example, in 1216 by the city of Perugia and in 1241 by the city of Rome. After the death of Clement IV in 1268, the city of Viterbo was also forced to resort to the seclusion of cardinals in the episcopal palace. When the cardinals still failed to elect a Pope, the city refused to send in any materials except bread and water. As a result, the cardinals soon elected Gregory X, ending an interregnum of almost three years.

Effective, eh? :-)

To reduce further delays, Gregory X introduced stringent rules relating to the election procedures. Cardinals were to be secluded in a closed area; they were not even accorded separate rooms. No cardinal was allowed to be attended by more than one servant unless ill. Food was to be supplied through a window; after three days of the meeting, the cardinals were to receive only one dish a day; after five days, they were to receive just bread and water. During the conclave, no cardinal was to receive any ecclesiastical revenue. Coralpequena blog says they also exposed them to the cold, by removing the ceiling...

If such means had not been used, I wonder how many years they would have debated the matter...

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If you didn't know what an antipope was... you can find out here. (It's not a synonym to "liberals" :-)

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From a tip at Commotion:

The process of selecting a Pope might be surrounded today by solemnity and tradition, but it wasn’t always so.

* Pope Stephen VI so hated a predecessor, Formosus, that he had him dug up, dressed in vestments, and placed on trial for heresy. Once convicted, his fingers were cut off and the corpse was thrown into the Tiber River.

Formosus was excommunicated, then reinstated, then elected Pope. And even after he died, the battle over him continued! Amazing, the power of symbols. Read more here:

Under Stephen VI, the successor of Boniface, Emperor Lambert and Agiltrude recovered their authority in Rome at the beginning of 897, having renounced their claims to the greater part of Upper and Central Italy. Agiltrude being determined to wreak vengeance on her opponent even after his death, Stephen VI lent himself to the revolting scene of sitting in judgment on his predecessor, Formosus. At the synod convened for that purpose, he occupied the chair; the corpse, clad in papal vestments, was withdrawn from the sarcophagus and seated on a throne; close by stood a deacon to answer in its name, all the old charges formulated against Formosus under John VIII being revived.

Can you imagine the scene? The dead corpse of the Pope in decay sitting there? And can you imagine the deacon answering in the name of the corpse? The theatrics of it!

The decision was that the deceased had been unworthy of the pontificate, which he could not have validly received since he was bishop of another see. All his measures and acts were annulled, and all the orders conferred by him were declared invalid. The papal vestments were torn from his body; the three fingers which the dead pope had used in consecrations were severed from his right hand; the corpse was cast into a grave in the cemetery for strangers, to be removed after a few days and consigned to the Tiber.

Just look at the back and forth with these synods! Approve, condemn, approve, condemn, what a circus...

In 897 the second successor of Stephen had the body, which a monk had drawn from the Tiber, reinterred with full honours in St. Peter's. He furthermore annulled at a synod the decisions of the court of Stephen VI, and declared all orders conferred by Formosus valid. John IX confirmed these acts at two synods, of which the first was held at Rome and the other at Ravenna (898). On the other hand Sergius III (904-911) approved in a Roman synod the decisions of Stephen's synod against Formosus; all who had received orders from the latter were to be treated as lay persons, unless they sought reordination. Sergius and his party meted out severe treatment to the bishops consecrated by Formosus, who in turn had meanwhile conferred orders on many other clerics, a policy which gave rise to the greatest confusion. Against these decisions many books were written, which demonstrated the validity of the consecration of Formosus and of the orders conferred by him (see AUXILIUS).

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From Futuremd, on a post regarding who might be the next Pope:

Unfortunately for Cardinal Ratzinger, he'd better be prepared to face the collective cold-shoulder of the progressive press in the few hours before he enters the Sistine Chapel -- for in his sermon in Italian during the Pre-Conclave Mass, he made sure his fellow cardinals understood that they should not be tempted to heed the calls of passing ideologies. He further intoned,

We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.

Perfectly to the point.

I don't have any favoritism for anyone at the moment for the next Pope, there may be a few Cardinals I would not like as future Pope, fortunately Rowan Williams is not part of the Catholic Church :-) I feel sorry for Anglicans at this moment, even Williams' hairstyle/beard/eyebrows bother me. I think he should change his current post for an actor's part in the next Harry Potter sequel, like some weird sorcerer character.

I just blogged the Ratzinger quote here because I agree with him completely regarding what a malaise this liberal relativism dictatorship is in our world.

And by coincidence, today I had class with a relativism dictator :-P

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From Paul at Off the Beaten Track:

The Rt Rev Gene Robinson (he whose appointment caused the current rift in the Anglican church) has stated that 'Jesus might have been homosexual'. He made his comments in a recent address at the Christ Church Hamilton and Wenham in Massachusetts - of which he is Bishop.

It has crossed my mind recently that there would be no reason why Jesus could not have been homosexual; but I think Bishop Robinson's reasoning is somewhat naive. The gospels do not tell us that Jesus was not married, which would indicate that he may well have been. It was quite common for teachers and rabbis to have all-male groups of followers; and as in previous posts it is quite probable that there were women in the group as well, one of which was Mary Magdalene, who it seems shared a close relationship with Jesus.

According to homos, Jesus, Lincoln and many other symbolic historical/cultural figures could well have been homosexual. They are desperate to attach homosexuality onto positive figures. This is a cultural strategy to legimitize a particular dogma or politics, in this case, modern liberal homosexuality.

I am surprised homo Robinson didn't elaborate on his homo Jesus theory, which could go like this: Judas was really a homophobic bigot, who was just afraid to admit he was a homo at heart, and betrayed Jesus because he was jealous of the attention and sodomy Jesus practiced with John or Paul or Peter, who must have been all homos as well. I mean, why just Jesus? Make them all homos, it's a Gospel homo sauna. Why not bisexuals? Maybe, occasionally going after sheep? Rural, primitive communities is one setting where bestiality occurs.

There is nothing to stop anyone from impinging any kind of sexuality on anyone they want to fantasize about.

And if Jesus was a homo, why isn't God a homo too? Like father, like son. We could have a homo holy spirit; Mary, a lesbian (did Jesus have brothers and sisters? was the marriage consummated? No, so that must mean she was a lesbian), and on it goes.

I sense by your post, however, since you have already erred in legitimizing homosexuality, you probably won't understand what I am addressing here.

Nevertheless, how surprising that homo Robinson made that statement, eh? The homo is made bishop and the next second, whadyoknow, "Jesus could have been a homo!" Really...

Look what I just thought! Dan Brown really missed a powerful, not dreamed by anyone ending to the Da Vinci Code!!! The Grail is proof that Jesus was really a transgendered lesbian in disguise, all that lesbian-phobia and misogyny forced her to disguise herself as a man, and Mary Magdalene was another homo, and the two were homo lovers, occasionally sleeping with the other apostles, or maybe the apostles just liked to watch the two lesbians (aren't a lot of pro-homos like that? what do porn consumption patterns show us?). What did homos recently unearth next to the Holy Shroud, that the Vatican kept secret? An ancient fake beard. Oh! The sacred homo feminine! Oh, how progressive homos are! Jesus was transgendered! And there was a conspiracy by the Church to hide it all from us for centuries!

So what can we expect now? As the Anglican Church (and others) appoint more and more self-legitimizing homos, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendereds, all of a sudden, half of the biblical figures will be "discovered" to be... guess?

I apologize for the racy tone and suggestions made here, but I am really tired and upset regarding how pro-homos insult our intelligence again and again with their homosexuality legitimizing obsession and never think there is a problem to that.

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Update April 24:
Someone who seems to have good reasons to question the news on this wrote:

Of course I was excited, but the story rang a few alarm bells. First, as I mentioned above, I'm reading some of these texts in class with papyrologist David Martinez, who specializes in Egyptian papyri and would be one of the first people to know if there were any major breakthroughs coming out. Usually, rumors of any really big news in this fairly obscure field circulate through a very small grapevine before bubbling up into the mainstream media. Surely work as earth-shattering as that described in the news article wouldn't be totally unknown to the rest of the papyrology field, and if my professor did know about it then it certainly would've gotten a mention by now.

Another problem with the story is that it implies that the Oxyrhynchus texts are this hidden hoard of texts that we just can't read, and this breakthrough will somehow magically unlock all of them and make them instantaneously readable. Certainly many of these texts are damaged to the point where the letters are hard to make out, but the really big problems arise not so much from deciphering the letter forms as from piecing together numerous small but individually legible fragments into the proper order. And often when fragments are fitted together, there are huge gaps in the text, called lacunae, where text is missing. As the Independent article does indeed mention, the Oxyrhynchus collection is a lot like the world's most vexing jigsaw puzzle. But no amount of spectral analysis is going to solve the problem of how to put the pieces back together.

And then there's the fact that infrared imaging and multispectral analysis of the Oxyrhynchus papyri has been going on for over two decades. In the aforementioned seminar's introductory lecture, Martinez described these techniques, so it's not like using IR and multispectral analysis on these texts is a new thing.

[read more...]

Are the Oxford professor folks featured in the news just another academic bunch using the media to make a hype of something so that they can vie for a salary increase or some larger funding to their research?

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Posted April 19:
Article by David Keys and Nicholas Pyke from the Independent

Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world. Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome.

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (see wikipedia), and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

Suspense...

See also Nag Hammadi at wikipedia.

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Update April 18:
Comment from Blogcritics.org:

Personally, I'm a big fan of Sophocles, and hope to read his newly discovered works as soon as it's translated.

SFC SKI:

Great, now I'll be even further behind on my reading.

:-)

Update April 19:
And, if I had ever known the following Egypt history passage, I had completely forgotten:

Egypt was Christianized during the first century A.D., when the country was part of the Roman Empire. The Coptic Church claims to hold an unbroken line of patriarchal succession to the See of Alexandria founded by Saint Mark, a disciple of Christ. Egyptian Christianity developed distinct dogmas and practices during the more than two centuries that the religion was illegal. By the fourth century, when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, Coptic traditions were sufficiently different from those in Rome and Constantinople (formerly Byzantium; present-day Istanbul) to cause major religious conflicts. Dissension persisted for 150 years until most Copts seceded from the main body of Christianity because they rejected the decision of the Council of Chalcedon that Christ had a dual nature, both human and divine, believing instead in Christ's single, divine nature.

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And on an extremely important note, regarding what is now the prevailing theory of the cause of the extinction of dinosaurs:

Dinosaurs Become Extinct - 65 Million Years BP

An asteroid or comet slams into the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This world-wide cataclysm brings to an end the long age of the dinosaurs, and allows mammals to diversify and expand their ranges.

I think, without another second to waste, we should institute a Thank-Our-Lucky-Comet Holiday. Has any proper thought been given to just how lucky we are because of this sole comet, what an altruistic service it provided for us, the future human race?

In its humble, "What are you doing in my path? Get out! Get out!" way, it beautifully crashed into the Earth and wiped out those roaring larger idiots, who were terrorizing all other nice little mammal creatures, including our forbearers.

I mean, how many hundreds of billions of years would the pesky dinosaurs go on living and eating everything in sight if it weren't for this nice, albeit a little direction challenged, comet? And not even a measly little holiday for our comet friend.

Where is the gratitude, I ask?

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Subtitle at this blog:

Don't piss me off. I'm having a bad year!

:-)

Awhile back, I commented on how problematic nudism is, and cited a restaurant in NY that promoted a "nudist evening." Now, someone left this comment on my blog:

I NEED TO KNOW THE NAME OF THE NUDIST RESTAURANT, PLEASE.

too funny...

If it's any consolation, I need to know many things as well.

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Ace wrote something Clayton and I have posted a lot before:

The "Progressive" Left's Inconsistent Standard on Questions of Sexuality

The best case for allowing "transgendered" (broadly defined) persons to use the restrooms of their choice is that their sexuality is not directed towards the persons they will be sharing the bathrooms with. A man who identifies as "female" is probably not aroused by women himself. (Although he may actually covet female sexual organs in a different way -- in that he wants to possess them -- which may cause a different sort of discomfort for actual women he shares a bathroom with.)

That does, I admit, make a certain amount of sense.

But the progressive left is wildly inconsistent on this point

Witness their insistence that gay men be allowed to serve as troopmasters for the Boy Scouts.

Now, if it's the case that someone who is male but female-identifying should be allowed to use women's bathrooms -- on the theory that he is simply not sexually attracted to women -- shouldn't we say that gay men ought not to be allowed to lead Boy Scout troops, because they are, in fact, attracted to males?

In the one case, it's "sexual preference decides; actual biological sexuality means nothing." In the second case, it's "actual biological sexuality controls; sexual preference means nothing."

Am I alone in feeling there's a bit of an inconsistency here?

[read more and see comments...]

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My comments to the post and thread:

A good majority of the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal victims were adolescent boys (11 yr olds and older and not less than 10 yr old kids). Most of the abuse happened with *no* physical violence involved. Several environments of abuse included overnight stays, trips. The media reported the scandal as the Church *pedophilia* scandal, as if it were straight pedophiles going after little kids, insinuating little girls, not as homo priests abusing adolescent boys.

For scholars, a distinction is usually made between pre-pubescent children (less than 10 yrs old) and teenagers. Adults who abuse adolescents do not necessarily abuse pre-pubescent children and vice-versa. Adults who are attracted to adolescents (11 yr olds and up) are called ephebophiles. The distinction is important. Not that a person can't be both, but there are some important differences.

Another double standard, Ace, regards how much abuse male homos or bisexuals perpetrate. When a homosexual (two males) abuse case is reported, obsessed pro-homos will say, "but just because it was an adult male and a male child/adolescent, it doesn't mean the adult is homosexual. Straight adults abuse boys, because pedophiles have no adult sexuality. In fact, the majority of child abusers are straight men." while all of this can be true in certain cases, for all the gazillions of homos who abuse, it is false.

Now you take the same situation, an adult male and a female child/adolescent, and immediately, in a frothing at the mouth response, pro-homos will say, "See! He is straight !" And not " this guy isn't straight because he does not have a straight adult sexuality. So he is neither straight, nor bi, nor homo in the adult sense - just pedo"

Adults can simultaneously have an adult, an adolescent, and a pre-pubescent focus of sexual feelings and actions. Or any combination of the previous. You can have a homo that has sex with men and boys, little or adolescents. Or you can have an adult male that has not developed adult sexuality (towards any sex), and is geared towards children only.

The other imbecility regarding modern mass sexuality concepts is the "identity" question. Moronic sexuality dogmas go like this, "if a person identifies as a heterosexual, then they *are* heterosexual."

Identification here means what this person thinks they are. The reason this is very stupid (and part of the double standard issue you are addressing) is that a person can have the most unrealistic and loony self conceptions, including ones about their own sexuality. For example, we have millions of bisexuals who "identify" as heterosexual. In reality, they are bisexual, in their stupid minds, they are straight.

What happens if you do a study about how many people abuse children or adolescents and you ask your study population what they identify with, and you do not verify what they are in reality? The result is a really slanted version of the type of perpetrators. Slanted in which way? It obliterates how many non-straights are abusers, and inflates the "straight" category.

Which is one reason why pro-homo researchers adore to employ this biased form of identification for tabulating research results regarding perpetrators. And the masses of pro-homo morons in society go on repeating, like a mantra, "99% of all abusers are straight males."

Another thing that caught my eye in this discussion is the obliteration of the bisexual category. People rightfully talk about homos not being allowed to be scout masters, but not homos and bisexuals. Which regarding the abuse problem, is an equivalent danger.

Also, the erasure of lesbian abuse, as if, a) it didn't happen, or, b) because it seems it happens in less raw number of cases, it is a less important issue than if the abuse is perpetrated by a male. Really senseless and a horrendous double standard.

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This looks like a good comprehensive introductory site on Meditation.

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or we haven't been able to explain adequately.

Very interesting article. This is one:

The horizon problem

OUR universe appears to be unfathomably uniform. Look across space from one edge of the visible universe to the other, and you'll see that the microwave background radiation filling the cosmos is at the same temperature everywhere. That may not seem surprising until you consider that the two edges are nearly 28 billion light years apart and our universe is only 14 billion years old.

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there is no way heat radiation could have travelled between the two horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now.

This "horizon problem" is a big headache for cosmologists, so big that they have come up with some pretty wild solutions. "Inflation", for example.

You can solve the horizon problem by having the universe expand ultra-fast for a time, just after the big bang, blowing up by a factor of 1050 in 10-33 seconds. But is that just wishful thinking? "Inflation would be an explanation if it occurred," says University of Cambridge astronomer Martin Rees. The trouble is that no one knows what could have made that happen.

So, in effect, inflation solves one mystery only to invoke another. A variation in the speed of light could also solve the horizon problem - but this too is impotent in the face of the question "why?" In scientific terms, the uniform temperature of the background radiation remains an anomaly.

See more here at wikipedia's "Unsolved problems in physics."

Did the Universe Have a Beginning?

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Does this idea that the universe is expanding make sense to anyone? If the universe is space, how can it be expanding? It's weird. If the universe is space, it can't be sitting and expanding inside some empty space, otherwise, the latter empty space would be the universe.

So how can the universe expand? It doesn't seem to have logic to me, according to rational principles in geometry. Unless we are talking about something with a circular logic.

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Update April 16:

I am glad someone (Lineweaver) has addressed what I am questioning:

"...the standard big bang theory says nothing about what banged, why it banged, or what happened before it banged. The inflationary universe is a theory of the "bang" of the big bang." - Alan Guth (1997).

Although the standard big bang model can explain much about the evolution of the Universe, there are a few things it cannot explain:

1) The Universe is clumpy. Astronomers, stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies and even larger structures are sprinkled about. The standard big bang model cannot explain where this hierarchy of clumps came from- it cannot explain the origin of structure. We call this the structure problem.

2) In opposite sides of the sky, the most distant regions of the Universe are at almost the same temperature. But in the standard big bang model they have never been in causal contact - they are outside each other's causal horizons. Thus, the standard model cannot explain why such remote regions have the same temperature. We call this the horizon problem.

3) As far as we can tell, the geometry of the Universe is flat - the interior angles of large triangles add up to 180°. If the Universe had started out with a tiny deviation from flatness, the standard big bang model would have quickly generated a measurable degree of non-flatness. The standard big bang model cannot explain why the Universe started out so flat. We call this the flatness problem.

4) Distant galaxies are redshifted. The Universe is expanding. Why is it expanding? The standard big bang model cannot explain the expansion. We call this the expansion problem.

I'm reading a bit on this stuff, but re #3, flat? I hope to find some explanation to what flat here means, because it's obviously not flat as a piece of paper.

#4) I don't think space expansion of the universe makes sense, because linear infinity in space does not make sense, and space expanding itself does not make sense. If an object is inside a space and the space expands, does the object expand too? Or is the object the same, but bigger, because it was the space that expanded? Or does the object remain with the initial dimensions, but space only changes? See this explanation, saying it is the latter. In order for space to expand, it must have a physicality, like that conception of time also having a physicality. I am trying to find a tutorial on Einstein's relativity space-time model, because, as I recall I was able to understand it a long time ago, but then I completely forgot it all. Or maybe at that time, I just read it, and wasn't really able to think about if it really made sense.

Also, in the balloon example linked above, there is always a center, how can you talk about expansion without a center, or a reference point?

OK, I got it. I have pictured a 3D spatial region, full of spheres. With the passage of time, all the distances between all the spheres are bigger than at the beginning, but the size of the spheres does not change. So there is no center of expansion, and the bigger distances can only be explained if the space itself expanded. Conceptually, it makes sense, but is it real? And then you need to throw in time as expanding too?

Confusing, but interesting. Is there another (and better) explanation to this issue? Is this a real explanation or a paradox? Is there something wrong with the measurements?

So this idea of space expanding is an attempt to explain the increasing difference in distance measurements between universe objects in all directions. Obviously a lay person can't measure, verify, or follow the math/physics reasonings for any of this.

You know what I don't get now? Assume the space expansion explanation. If something, like a force or event put space expansion into motion, that is, space is physically changing (expanding), why wouldn't this same force act on all the objects that are within that space region? Why doesn't everything dilate? Why does only space expand and not space plus everything that is within the space expand? It seems not to make sense again. Not at all.

On the other hand, I need to check this out, but why does space need to expand to explain this distance difference? Take a simple model, and maybe the problem lies with the simplicity of my model. Put 5 spheres in a space region. Then increase the distance between them, regarding all distances. They are further apart, but space itself didn't change or expand for them to be further apart. Why is this supposedly wrong regarding objects in the universe that it won't explain the distance differences?

And why would space start expanding in the first place?

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In Germany:

Ethics lessons, which Berlin is poised to make compulsory, were introduced in neighboring Brandenburg as early as 1996. And according to the head of the region's institute for education, Jan Hofmann, the subject has been a success.

Conservative politicians in Germany are up in arms over the decision made by the ruling SPD-Green government to make lessons in ethics and religion compulsory in Berlin, because the course is not solely focused on Catholicism or Protestantism.

"There’s only a very small group of school students whose parents categorically object to these lessons," he said. "And then there are those who have opted for lessons in religion offered by either the Catholic or Protestant church. These children do not have to attend ethics classes. I think that despite initial criticism our system has worked quite well and might serve as a model for other federal states."

It is possible that Berlin may have to soften the compulsory status of its planned general ethics lessons, because Germany’s conservative parties are intending to bring the issue before the federal constitutional court in Karlsruhe.

That would be a pity, I thought the flexible options structure is a great idea, certainly to be emulated in other countries. Better to have general ethics and religion, and options for specific religions, than to have nothing at all.

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Scroll down to the Wedding pics and be sure not to miss the comments people left. Too funny (don't drink tea while reading) ;-)

I thought Camilla looked very elegant, a total surprise, I liked all her choices, specially the gown.

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Update April 13:

And a rarity, something written at Slate that isn't trash:

In an age when preposterously coiffed tycoons engage in serial matrimony with ever younger and more beautiful partners, Charles is doing his bit to atone for the sins of rich, middle-aged men everywhere. He's making an honest woman of his age-appropriate partner, a woman with whom he is well-matched in looks, habits, and hobbies, whom he has known and loved for more than 30 years. Charles' mistake was to get his weddings out of order: He married his first wife second and his trophy wife first.

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I left this comment at Jack's blog, which I was going to wait to write something here, but since the subject came up there...

You know, ever since I stumbled in my philosophy readings and discovered there is such a thing as infinity math (the cardinality thing, right?), I came to wonder if the concept of infinity is really sound. Can we truly conceive of the infinite? I have my doubts at this moment, but it's nothing conclusive, just something I've been wondering now and then. I don't have much time to spend elaborating on why the concept itself may be beyond our minds or our frame of thinking, but it doesn't sit very well with me.

What image(s), if any, comes to your mind when you think about infinity?

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Update April 13:

Jack replied:
We can certainly imagine things that are infinite (from the Latin: without an end). So I would say that we can "conceive" them. There is certainly an immense amount of mathematics that has been done regarding infinity. In fact, without a good understanding of infinity, one doesn't have Calculus, and Calculus must be valid in some respect, because its applications work so well in the real world!

On the other hand, I would agree that we cannot really "comprehend" the infinite. We are finite, and we can only comprehend finite things, and in fact most mathematics involves reducing questions about infinitely-sized sets (which we can't answer) to questions about finitely-sized sets (which we can).

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I replied:
I was thinking along the lines of the problem that infinity is outside the scope of rational thought, or logical thought.

With infinity, everything we know does not make sense anymore.

Like in your math example, I think we always employ this reduction to the finite as if we were still being able to handle the infinite, like fooling ourselves, but the infinite seems outside our capability of precision. I'm not sure your conception/comprehension distinction is what I am trying to posit as the problem. I'm having difficulty wording it.

You said:
'We can certainly imagine things that are infinite (from the Latin: without an end). So I would say that we can "conceive" them.'

For example, what can you conceive as infinite?

Update April 15:

Math is not physical, that's why I think it makes sense to talk about infinite things in math (like numbers and quantities, they are abstract things).

I understand what the definition of infinite material things is (unbounded), but I question that physical things can be infinite. And it all has to do with space. No material thing can be infinite in any aspect if there is no infinite space. And I don't see how space can be infinite going outwardly, unless that "outwardly" turns around back to itself. Even the closed universe model (pictured like a globe) is impossible to make sense visually.

I wish I could take this Cosmology course.

Update April 16:

My problem with the mathematical concept of infinity applied to the physical world (someone wrote it better):

What I believe to be the basic misconception of modern mathematical physicists - evident, as I say, not only in this problem but conspicuously so throughout the welter of wild speculations concerning cosmology and other departments of physical science - is the idea that everything that is mathematically true must have a physical counterpart; and not only so, but must have the particular physical counterpart that happens to accord with the theory that the mathematician wishes to advocate. [Herbert Dingle, Science at the Cross-Roads, pp. 124-5.]

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La France vue par une Québécoise, ou le Québec vu par une Québécoise qui arrive de France, ou la France vue par une Québécoise qui revient en France après un voyage au Québec, ou le Québec vu par... vous avez compris le principe.

(delightful blog subtitle by coyote des neiges)

See my big post on it here.

Update April 15:

Found another nice summary of the book:

Caught in a whirling paradox of religion and science; of murder and love; of chaos and complexity; of peanut butter and chocolate; peas and mayonnaise; while riding a wave of pack mentality, served with a nice, tall glass of mediocrity. A symbologist (apparently all the semioticians at Harvard were busy) receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher it reads “be sure to drink your Ovaltine…and this book is a steaming pile…”

A steaming pile… a steaming pile of what? What could it be?

Oatmeal? ;-)

p.s. I hope to finish reading the book this weekend.

Update April 17:

I have finished it. Let's say the ending could have been worse. He spent 400 pages building up a huge expectation in the reader of an explosive ending and it just withers quietly away at the end. At around page 400 I started thinking, "He's not going to be able to pull it off," a real good ending, I mean. Then I dreaded the ending would be seriously lame. But it wasn't also.

And, you know, I kept thinking, how hard can it be to write such a book? 25 million sold, he gets 50 million. If I could write something that would sell 250 thousand books, I'm happy. Religion, police chases, twists and turns, esoteric stuff, secrecy, a little romance, cat and mouse, word games. There must be tons of books out there like that. It's the central "Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene that really caught fire, along with the pro-feminine stuff, liberal style" I think.

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I was irritable and upset most of today. When I´m irritated, everything in the world that normally irritates me just a little swells to enormously irritating levels. I had to make myself not get swept into obnoxious traffic disputes, given that the streets were full of utterly detestable road rage drivers. It seems on days that I am not so irritated, these driving jerks stay at home. Among the many lovely experiences I had today, I waited the whole day for a very important professional call that might have happened and it didn't. This impacted another important call I am counting the minutes to make, but it depends on the first, so I couldn't do it either. Waiting and waiting in Casablanca and time is running out. I had to do a lot of small talk with a guy who not too long ago apparently was planning to stab me fully in the back, and maybe still is. I had to witness a group of immature, pesky people make a huge, unfair circus of a complaint and gang up on someone they had absolutely no good reason to target, but were masking how obnoxious they themselves are. I got uncalled for harsh and unfriendly reactions when talking to two different people who apparently make a point of not caring how they treat others. And when I turned on the radio, there was this very popular program with one of these chatty, thoughtless commentators talking about life in the most banal, stupid 1-2-3 recipe way. And I made the mistake of listening to it.

I had to keep pushing away thoughts of inventing a special deadly virus that would target only mediocre people. That is so mean, and not the answer, I know. But, c´mon, wouldn't it be nice? Ok, Ok... How about throwing a brick at masses of people that are irritating me? :-P

Aside from the above, lots of other thoughts kept surfacing today. They included:

- For about 2 months now, I´ve constantly seen a young woman, a student, who is in a wheel chair. She has a deformed body with hardly no legs and one functioning arm. Fortunately, she seems to have good people in her life. But I keep thinking, what if it had to be like this?

- I went to see "Ray," the movie. I found it very engrossing, it is very well cast, and there's amazing acting by Foxx. However, I read a review afterwards that raises some sharp questions about how adulating the script was crafted, specially regarding Ray Charles' heroin addiction. I thought a lot about the fact that despite being blind, Charles went so much farther than most people, and he lived such a full, even if turbulent life. There is one line in a review that clinches this, it says Ray Charles didn't let his blindness get in the way, in fact, he even used it to his advantage in certain situations. It is amazing that he actually did that. A disability not being a disability, that is grand.

- It's sad the way Ray looked at relationships with women; the nice, Christian wife waiting at home, all the other hot affairs waiting at the studio. Since they are not a minority, I currently know men like Ray. They are all married and they can care less about faithfulness. And when they have become interested in me, it just astounds me to see, since they hardly know me, that they pressupose that I would be just like them, that I can care less about anything and am prowling for affairs just like they are. For so many people, faithfulness means something that should only be part of a performance to fool others. By a myriad set of attitudes and behaviors, it's clear to me that they have no qualms whatsoever about their unfaithful mindset and all the varied forms of disrespect and betrayal it involves. In fact, these men seem very surprised that any woman that interests them will not go along with them. They have a distinct feeling of entitlement to all these affairs and being unfaithful that they petulantly wave around. On their part, there is a considerable level of surprise to find that I am not anything that they stupidly pressuposed, matched by my being considerably surprised that they would pressupose such a thought about me in the first place. The blatant disrespect with which they view me as a potential idiotic affair target apparently escapes them, because they are so full of themselves as sexual prowlers. I am so tired of this.

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Speaker ponders if women own their sexuality - From the Orion (CSUC), where a professor discusses the issue and asks questions such as:

[...]
While the women on "Sex and the City" are sexually explicit, their conversations revolve around non-threatening topics such as men and shoes, Ellingson said. [This if you don't count just how stupid and problematic so many of the views and attitudes of the 4 characters are]

"We're thinking we've come a long way," she said. "But have we really?"

Women today can wear whatever they want. While Ellingson believes it is a positive sign that women are no longer labeled as "sluts" for risqué clothing, she questions the reasons behind the behavior.

"Is it a sign of liberation that we can wear what we want, or is it just another round of objectification?" she asked the audience.

Ellingson, along with Chico State professor Diana Flannery, used overheads listing differences between the "old model" of sexuality and "new model" to see how things have progressed over the years.

In the old model sex was for procreation, and women had a passive role in the act. Today women can be sexual, but more restrictions apply to them in comparison to men.

Although she asked several questions a good number of people who have a "Sex and the City" mindset are completely incapable of questioning, what struck me as I read the whole article was that she is obsessed with comparing women's behavior with men's, and, if she finds a difference, it means women should change to be just like men. Equality = Progress! She is preaching a very idiotic version of equality. What we need to do instead is to stop and reflect if whatever male model she is striving after has any problems. And we know full well that it does. The article further states:

A study was read that showed that only 25 percent of women regularly achieve orgasm from intercourse, 66 percent had faked orgasms and 10 percent were what Flannery called "routine fakers."

In half of these cases, women faked to make the man happy, she said. The other half did it to get the act of sex over with.

If this study is really representative of a good number of women, it does raise many questions, the first one in my mind, "Why so much faking?"

That in itself already reveals several problems regarding relationship dynamics. I noticed too what I would deem a certain obsession with orgasm, when sexual experience needs much more breadth of focus. If a man has orgasms 99% of the time, but he is not emotionally involved with his partner, this is something good? One trash of a relationship. So what if a woman has tons of orgasms and is also not involved with her partner? What kind of a measure is this? It's a boys locker-room mentality applied to human relationships and sexuality.

And the "fake to make him happy or end it quickly?" Hello, is any real communication possible in such a relationship? Sex becomes a programmed ritual, a theatrical performance along a prescribed plot, but with no room for more "human" ways to experience sex. There's nothing wrong with helping people have more orgasms, as long as you don't fall into a trap of thinking that a satisfying sexual experience amounts only to this, and forget to look at more complicated relationship issues.

The article ends with,

"We're all adults," she said. "We should be having great sex." [emphasis mine]

Great sex is a result of great values, attitudes, and relationships, in my definition of "great." And that usually doesn´t just fall on your lap on a silver platter, nor can it be reduced to putting a cabbagehead orgasm counter on your bedside table.


p.s. And the "should" above bothers me on so many levels, as in, we should be having great jobs, great lives, great professors, great weather, great families, great food, great clothes, great everything... always, 24/7.

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Nice, brief article from Le Figaro today:

La querelle sur la morale sexuelle ne s'est pas éteinte avec le Pape

Pape d'aujourd'hui, Jean-Paul II a cherché à mettre dans l'actualité la morale la plus constante de l'Église. Il ne s'agissait pas pour lui de réformer la doctrine, mais l'homme. Le contraire aurait été trahir sa mission divine et les préceptes du Décalogue. D'autre part, avec sa longue expérience de professeur, de prêtre et d'évêque auprès des jeunes, il poursuivait son enseignement de Cracovie : «Goûter le plaisir sexuel sans traiter pour autant la personne comme objet de jouissance, voilà le fond du problème moral sexuel», écrivait Karol Wojtyla en 1960 dans Amour et responsabilité, bien avant d'accéder au trône de Pierre. Sitôt élu, il développera lors des audiences du mercredi, entre 1979 et 1984, une catéchèse sur «l'amour humain dans le plan divin». L'un de ses biographes, George Weigel, estime : «Si la critique classique se représente si souvent de manière déformée la pensée de Jean Paul II, c'est qu'elle ne perçoit guère le lien qui existe et que lui même a voulu souligner, dans l'Eglise entre tradition et innovation, entre le stable et le dynamique.

[more...]

Interesting that this was written in 1960 and society has not improved one bit regarding this question.

I also think the other big axis in Sexual Morality are all the forms of sexual violence, not that dehumanized, obejctifying sex does not encompass in itself several aspects of psychological disrespect and/or aggression, but regarding sexual violence, the Catholic Church fails more than with the above question, IMO.

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(In)totalidades

Blog description by its author, Pedro Mendonça: "Textos diversos, tendencialmente literários e filosóficos."

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From comments on Scrappleface:

Sign over a Gynecologist's Office:
"Dr. Jones, at your cervix."

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On a Plumber's truck:
"We repair what your husband fixed."

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On a Maternity Room door:
"Push. Push. Push."

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At an Optometrist's Office
"If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."

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Sandy Berger Guilty, Suffers Wrist Inflammation
by Scott Ott

(2005-04-01) -- Ex-Clinton administration national security advisor Samuel 'Sandy' Berger entered a Virginia hospital today suffering from an "acute skin inflammation on his wrists" minutes after learning of the punishment he'll face for smuggling top-secret documents out of the National Archives.

[more...]

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Best comment:

THEY took away his library card! Oh! the humanity!

Posted by: Big Java

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Other nice comment:

As Berger said, "it was an honest mistake." Depending on what your definition of "honest" is.

Posted by: Evon

Link to article from Drudge

Related entries: God Save Our Wedding Imbroglio; Charles and ...

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From the Pullitzer site:

For a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single article or series, Ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

Awarded to Nigel Jaquiss of Willamette Week, Portland, Ore., for his investigation exposing a former governor's long concealed sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Diana B. Henriques of The New York Times for her revelations that thousands of vulnerable American soldiers were exploited by some insurance companies, investment firms and lenders, and Clark Kauffman of The Des Moines Register for his exposure of glaring injustice in the handling of traffic tickets by public officials.

From the Jaquiss article that won the prize:

When the story of late-20th-century Oregon is written, Neil Goldschmidt will tower over most other public figures. His accomplishments as mayor and governor have stood the test of time.

It is also true, however, that his incomprehensible involvement with an adolescent babysitter changed both of their lives forever and—although few people knew about it—the secret profoundly affected Oregon history. No one can say with certainty how much of the arc of the woman’s life was shaped by the man who molested her starting when she was 14. But it is clear that today, on her 43rd birthday, living a thousand miles from her friends and family in Portland, she is a haunted woman.

I was struck by the use of the term "sexual misconduct" in the Pullitzer website description. Is planned murder a mild maneuver misconduct with a gun? Is purposely running over someone in the street a vehicle misconduct? I don't have time to read the article now, but it sounds like this is one more example where this whitewashing term ("sexual misconduct") was employed. Specially since the introduction of the article seems to spell out sexual abuse (which does not need to include physical violence nor intercourse to be seriously harmful).

On the Willamette Week site, the header says:

WW REPORTER WINS TOP PRIZE: Willamette Week reporter Nigel Jaquiss won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting on Monday. Jaquiss won journalism's top award for his work on former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt's long-concealed sexual abuse of a teenage girl.

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Even though I had tons of seriously more important deadlines to fulfill, most of which are already very late (the story of my life), I was completely led astray and started reading the Da Vinci Code today, sigh. This is how evil works in the world... :-) I got up to page 145, and although I have a few things to remark, I'll just jot down my biggest first impression so far: is this all that was required to sell 25 millions books? It would have been impossible to predict such a book would be so popular, it's so fluffy... I wish I wanted to write books like this... ;-) (I saw only one article mentioning figures, but apparently Brown is quoted at having made no less than 50 million dollars off the Da Vinci Code - and he is complaining he's lost his anonimity - oh, the poor sacrificial lamb)

It's almost like a "007 and Alias meet Opus Dei and the Goddess" script. I can just imagine what the movie will be like... Actually, this will certainly be a very fun script to direct, I'd certainly like to apply for the job!

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Update April 10 - I'm tired and don't feel like writing a coherent piece on the book, so I'll just jot down some comments:

I am astounded at how much the book really reads like an action movie script! 300 pages and only a few hours of murders, escapes, police chases to keep you on the edge of your seat and wanting to know what will happen next! I was waiting to find at any moment in the text: CUT. Next Scene, Teabing enters from screen left. Dim lighting.

25 million books sold - The Opus Dei must be delighted ;-)

Aren't liberals a joy? Dan Brown, this very liberal middle-age author creates a middle-age professor as the main character and pairs him up with a 32 yr old babe, all to represent how much he honors the divine in women. The female character is young, beautiful, smart, dynamic, does spy/police work - I mean, it's whose fantasy? And the conservative Opus Dei are the ones with problems with women... You can tell how much he hates conservatives by the endless ways he demonizes the Opus Dei... At times, I thought I would need to get a paper towel to wipe the bile coming out of the text on the page. Not that they don't have problems, but...

Sophie is the role for Jennifer Garner (Alias TV series), except she's not French. But the Sophie in the book isn't either, she is very American, so the problem wouldn't be with Garner, it starts at the book. I bet the author can't really tell he's not smart enough to construct a more realistic French woman. He must think that building a French female character equals making one totally American, then slap on a French name and voilà, a French character. But the author is very appreciative of women in a nice way too, so I really liked that.

I am praying they won't cast Tom Hanks as the professor, although I think the Langdon casting will be disgusting, because they'll want a big name, and this role would be well played by someone who we haven't seen too much. Langdon's just a nice professor, there's nothing about him that requires good acting or a famous face. That will ruin the movie, because it will ensure that absolutely artificial feeling to the guy the whole time, destroying anyone's willing suspension of disbelief, no matter how willing.

I did find it highly amusing how "educational" this book is, I mean, the guy has a mission, it's not just money. And to think that millions of people would love to discover these religion symbolism wars if it's all watered down and dispersed in a police chase story with word puzzle games, and not some dense and difficult academic book. That is what amazes me, how much the book has sold. Nice to know, nevertheless, that education is quite possible this way.

Every time the author presents a word/poem puzzle, I get the urge to try to solve it with just the clues he has provided up until then, at the same time that I tell myself that it's not possible, having the feeling that these first clues are never enough, and that as the characters try to solve the puzzle, you, the reader, receive more clues and information, so it is impossible to solve any of the puzzles when they first appear in the text. So I was delighted to have solved the language puzzle inside the wooden box, before I read on.

The secret sexual ritual - you can bet some dysfunctional group of people somewhere will want to do this just like in the book, and forget that the author is clueless about the myriad of ways humans can use sex in abusive ways, while preaching it is something sacred and divine.

And the albino as the Frankenstein character, I mean, isn't that some kind of vile discriminatory thing? I kept flashing that 007 character, the very tall guy with the metal teeth. Why do authors need to make these Frankenstein characters have some kind of body disability or with a corporal difference to the norm? Isn't there something ignoble regarding such choices? It's obvious Dan Brown would never make a vile character be a homo and present to his readers the reality of so many homosexuals. But albinos, or very tall, or very short, hey, make them as malignant as you please.

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Update April 12:

comments with a smile:

First... the book itself. It's a great read, and I'm enjoying every minute of it. But let's face it, people: this isn't War and Peace.

Someone else said Langdon was just like Indiana Jones

And look at the title of this nice little satire piece:
The D'oh! Vinci Code, Chapter Two

As Robert Langdon tore the half-eaten croissant out of Sophie Neveu's hands, he pondered the meaning of the ancient gesture with which she responded to his precipitate act of pastry-snatching.

The well-gnawed nails of her Gallic, alabaster hands were clutched tightly to her palm, an obvious association with the ages-old cult of Isis, the desert-goddess of godly desserts. Save one finger, the Sacred Index, which was extended skyward, as the Mid-Lothian Gnostics reputedly so extended their Middle Digits when cut off by rude donkey-cart drivers in the agora.
[more... off color satire follows, but not crude]

I also found this equally adulating note:
à savoir que Robert Langdon n'est qu'un bête crétin à l'image de... [find out :-) ]

And another blogger is currently re-reading the "Da Vinci Code". Don't mean to pounce but, re-reading? :-)

If you are wondering why it's taking me forever to finish the book, it's because I refused to buy it. I am reading the luxuriously photo illustrated, glossy paper, hard cover edition at my friendly neighborhood megabookstore. For free.

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A note about the "woman" in the Last Supper. While examining carefully the figure in the printed photo in the book, it didn't seem like a woman to me. The figure seems like a very young 16th century man, with long, limp hair. Da Vinci didn't draw (most of) his women in that way. See a nice pic of the Last Supper here. The figure with the red tunic, 3rd on the right from Jesus, no beard, has as much of a "woman" look, if we are going to view every guy with no beard and no heavyset features as a woman in the Last Supper. Compare with several other of da Vinci's women paintings here. The Last Supper guys seem different, not like a da Vinci woman.

In fact, I've always thought the Mona Lisa has something of a transvestite air, which I find considerably disgusting. And given that da Vinci was probably a pile of trash in his sexuality, that's probably the joke played on the public with the Mona Lisa.

Not to mention "John, the Baptist," da Vinci's homo porn, an in-your-face disgusting homo painting, not because it is sexually explicit. This John looks exactly like all puffs that would swarm the royal French courts in the 17th and 18th century.

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Update April 13

Nice short post on the control of information by the Church in the first centuries. However, he is blind to all the liberal aggression in the Jerry Springer Opera and its barrage of religious insults.

A nice conclusion at the end of this post.

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Related entries:
Last Supper Ad Controversy; Jesus as a Woman in Italian Re-enactment of the Passion of Christ; Past Veronese "Last Supper" Painting Controversy; Harry Potter for Adults - Tom Hanks; another recent post.

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