My favorite high school English teacher did not, as I feared, quit the profession in despair and wind up an itinerant lettuce-picker in Guatemala after I graduated. She went on to write, often and well. She now pens a blog called EXIT ONLY that I commend to your attention. Of particular interest is today's entry, called I See You (and You’re Naked?)
Enjoy!
“Civil marriage is a civil right and a matter of civil law. The NAACP's support for marriage equality is deeply rooted in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and equal protection of all people,” said NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous. Jealous blinked back tears as he recalled that it was illegal for his own parents to marry. His father was white and his mother was black, and mixed-race couples were forbidden to marry in Maryland. The experience clearly informed his belief that marriage equality is a basic civil right.
That's not what it looks like in the Bizarro World of Brian Camenker. Camenker is the twitnit who heads MassResistance, an anti-gay hate group that used to be called the Article 8 Alliance. Article 8 of the Massachusetts Constitution is about judges not being able to serve as legislators at the same time, and Camenker believed that he could use that article to punish the State Supreme Court judges who ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. He was wrong, so now he's MassResistance. I won't link to his site because I find it utterly repugnant, but if you can stomach it, you can Google it.
That Massachusetts has enjoyed marriage equality for eight years now without anybody but the happy couples much noticing has Camenker's tighty whities in a perpetual twist. His thought processes are equally distorted and painful. Here's what he said recently in an interview with equally hateful loonietoon Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (frothing insanity intended to counter the "homosexual activist agenda.")
LaBarbera started by noting that Mass Resistance, like his own organization, had been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, "…they don't like that Brian Camenker opposes homosexuality. This is the world we are living in and I think it's tempting to laugh at it but if they keep going our First Amendment rights will be gone."
"The problem that they have is that homosexual behavior in it of itself, to put it bluntly, is generally repulsive to large numbers of people if not everybody." Camenker replied. "In order to normalize this in any way there has to be this constant stream of propaganda."
Homosexuality is unnatural," Camenker said, "and you have to have, just like you had to have the Jim Crow laws to keep the races apart, you have to have these laws and diversity trainings and constant propaganda to keep it going."
In other words, gay sex is really very icky and needs constant propaganda so that people won't think about how icky it is. LGBT people are just like racists, and gay civil rights are like Jim Crow laws. And anyone who says otherwise is trying to take away our freedom!
You know, we have words for creeps who are constantly thinking about other peoples' sex lives. I'm pretty sure one of them isn't "patriot."
Some people have been shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear that Richard Dawkins approved of a plan to put Bibles in the hands of school children. Last year was the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible, and British Secretary for Education Michael Gove wanted to send a free copy of the Authorized Version to every school in the U.K. by Easter. Arch-atheist Dawkins thought it was a capital idea.
"It's a thing of beauty, and it's also an incredibly important historical artifact," Gove said of the 1611 translation. "It has helped shape and define the English language and is one of the keystones of our shared culture. And it is a work that has had international significance."
Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, begs to differ. "This is not simply another piece of literature, it is the holy scripture of one particular religion. Is it really the job of the Government to be promoting one particular religion in schools that are increasingly multi-faith?"
He suggested a compromise: distributing copies of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
"I fear that many of these supporters of the project are more interested in the proselytizing opportunity than in the literary value of this book," he said.
Prime Minister David Cameron said that taxpayer money could not be used to fund the initiative, so Michael Gove went in search of philanthropic donors and quickly rounded up the necessary cash. After hearing the news, Richard Dawkins was surprised that he had not been contacted.
"For some reason the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (UK) was not approached for a donation in support of Michael Gove's plan to put a King James Bible in every state school," Dawkins wrote. "We would certainly have given it serious consideration, and if the trustees had not agreed I would gladly have contributed myself."
In The God Delusion, Dawkins listed 129 biblical phrases which any educated English speaker would recognize and probably use, like the salt of the earth; go the extra mile; I wash my hands of it; filthy lucre; through a glass darkly; wolf in sheep's clothing; hide your light under a bushel; and no peace for the wicked. To Dawkins, any native English speaker unfamiliar with the King James Bible is "verging on the barbarian."
"I have an ulterior motive for wishing to contribute to Gove's scheme," Dawkins wrote in an op-ed in The Guardian. "People who do not know the Bible well have been gulled into thinking it is a good guide to morality."
"I have even heard the cynically misanthropic opinion that, without the Bible as a moral compass, people would have no restraint against murder, theft and mayhem. The surest way to disabuse yourself of this pernicious falsehood is to read the Bible itself."
"Whatever else the Bible might be – and it really is a great work of literature – it is not a moral book and young people need to learn that important fact because they are very frequently told the opposite," he wrote. "Not a bad way to find out what's in a book is to read it, so I say go to it."
So there you have it - the world's best-known atheist is advising your children to read the Bible. That ought to tell you something.
An organization called American Tortoise Rescue has declared today as World Turtle Day, the twelfth year they've done so. Since I've got two of 'em in my kitchen, I thought I might as well join the fun.
You might remember my entry last December called "What's Chinese for Sucker?" I foolishly brought home a pair of tiny red-eared sliders bought from a street vendor in Chinatown. It's illegal to sell aquatic turtles with a shell length smaller than four inches, but it's not illegal to buy 'em, and I just had to get them out of the cold.
They didn't want to eat at first, but thanks to TLC, one is now three inches across. The other is still a little bitty guy, the sort of turtle that would probably have died in the wild. But they're fed separately, so they’re not competing for food. I’ve been sneaking the little one some scraps of tuna along with the pelleted diet, and he's perfectly healthy - just small.
It's delightful to greet these little guys when I get home from work. They know it's feeding time, and swim up to the front of the tank, looking eager. I'm sharing my kitchen with friendly living fossils. At 200 million years, they're some of the oldest species on the planet. They've carved out an enviable niche which involves lots of sleeping in the sun. Once they get to adult size, they're almost indestructible.
But they do have enemies. They don't move very fast, so when someone fills in a wetland, turtles can't get out of the way. They don't cross roads very well. Offshore oil leaks are deadly for hatchling sea turtles.
And that's where American Tortoise Rescue comes in. Too bad they're fanatics. Their very first directive is "Never buy a turtle or tortoise from a pet shop as it increases demand from the wild."
Rubbish. The pet trade does not like wild-caught animals. The pet trade is the single greatest creator of the market in captive bred animals. We've seen it in tropical fish and snakes, and exotics are rapidly ramping up. Red-eared sliders alone are bred by the thousands, and they're inexpensive as a result - my local pet shop sells adult sliders for $19.99.
Go ahead, buy a pet turtle. Just be aware that they get bigger and they live a very long time. Aquatic turtles need big aquariums with UV lighting (both UV-A and UV-B), hefty filtration systems, and heat in the winter. Land turtles need big terrariums, and will need a place to hibernate in the winter.
I think there is a good environmental case to be made for protecting wildlife, especially habitat-sensitive species like turtles. But you weaken your case when you start citing PETA talking points against pet ownership.
My turtles enjoy World Turtle Day every day.
Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, making him an icon in the LGBT community. Sadly, he served only eleven months, from January 8th to November 27th 1978, before being assassinated in his office by former city supervisor Dan White. White also killed the mayor, George Moscone.
The same year that Milk won his city supervisor seat, Anita Bryant was fronting the Save Our Children campaign. Bryant claimed that gay civil rights discriminated against her right to teach her children what she called "Biblical morality". (Sounds familiar. How dare you take away the stick I'm beating people with. That's discrimination!) Save Our Children was successful at rolling back civil rights measures in Dade County, and influenced the Briggs Initiative, Proposition 6 in California. Prop. 6 mandated the firing of gay school employees and any school employee who supported gay rights. The underlying slur was that homosexuals cannot reproduce and must therefore recruit. They're after your children!
The election of Harvey Milk gave a lot of us hope that things were changing. He began his tenure with a bill that outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation. Only Supervisor Dan White voted against it. In fact, White opposed every single initiative and issue Milk supported. Milk was devastating in his ridicule of the Briggs Amendment. "If it were true that children mimicked their teachers, you'd sure have a helluva lot more nuns running around!" Proposition 6 failed to pass.
Milk's brief political career wasn't just about LGBT rights. It was also about the importance of neighborhoods in city politics, and about making government accessible and responsive to individuals.
Recently, Californians brought up the idea of having a U.S. Navy ship named after him. Milk was a lieutenant in the Navy during the Korean conflict, so there's a direct connection. There’s also precedent: Just two weeks ago, the Navy named a supply ship after Latino activist Cesar Chavez, who served in the Navy during World War II. Naming a ship for Milk would be a tangible symbol that this is a new post-Don't Ask Don't Tell Navy, one in which lesbians and gay men serve proudly.
Representative Bob Filner, a Democrat from San Diego and the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, made a formal request to the Secretary of the Navy. And then the detractors scurried out of the woodwork. Conservative bloggers posted pictures of pink battleships and derisive text. But not all of those who objected were anti-gay. Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a gay activist, weighed in.
"Why not name a bomber after Gandhi?" he asked. "The purpose of the military is to kill people, no matter how we look at it. I know Harvey opposed the Vietnam War, and if he were alive, he would be against the wars we are in now. I think it is inappropriate."
Speaking on the other side was retired Navy Reserve captain Bob Dockendorff, a gay man who spent a quarter century in the service. He and Milk had often talked about their Navy days. "Harvey would have absolutely loved the idea that a naval ship was named after him," Dockendorff said. "He loved the Navy. He thought the Vietnam War was a mistake, but we all did. He wasn't antimilitary at all."
C.W. Nevius, a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, summed up the appeal of a ship named Harvey Milk best. "The name would be on the bow, the crew would wear it on their uniform, and wherever it went people would ask: Who was Harvey Milk?
"And the men and the women of the U.S. Navy would tell them."
You have a bell tower with a set of tuned bells. A rope attaches to each, and each rope has a person at the end of it pulling. A series of mathematical patterns are played as each person pulls the rope as directed. It's not a peal, a toll, or a melody. No song or hymn is played like with a carillon. It's just variations on bells, endlessly fascinating and beautiful.
Here's an example:
The Bells and Queen Victoria
"Gay go up and gay go down
To ring the Bells of London Town."
When London Town's asleep in bed
You'll hear the Bells ring overhead.
In excelsis gloria!
Ringing for Victoria,
Ringing for their mighty mistress--ten years dead!
THE BELLS:
Here is more gain than Gloriana guessed--
Then Gloriana guessed or Indies bring--
Then golden Indies bring. A Queen confessed--
A Queen confessed that crowned her people King.
Her people King, and crowned all Kings above,
Above all Kings have crowned their Queen their love--
Have crowned their love their Queen, their Queen their love!
Denying her, we do ourselves deny,
Disowning her are we ourselves disowned.
Mirror was she of our fidelity,
And handmaid of our destiny enthroned;
The very marrow of Youth's dream, and still
Yoke-mate of wisest Age that worked her will!
Our fathers had declared to us her praise--
Her praise the years had proven past all speech.
And past all speech our loyal hearts always,
Always our hearts lay open, each to each--
Therefore men gave the treasure of their blood
To this one woman--for she understood!
Four o' the clock! Now all the world is still.
Oh, London Bells, to all the world declare
The Secret of the Empire--read who will!
The Glory of the People--touch who dare!
THE BELLS:
Power that has reached itself all kingly powers,
St. Margaret's: By love o'erpowered--
St. Martin's: By love o'erpowered--
St. Clement Danes: By love o'erpowered,
The greater power confers!
THE BELLS:
For we were hers, as she, as she was ours,
Bow Bells: And she was ours--
St. Paul's: And she was ours--
Westminister: And she was ours,
As we, even we, were hers!
THE BELLS
As we were hers!
Atheism isn’t about knowledge, I explained. Theism and atheism are about belief. Gnosticism and agnosticism are about knowledge. An agnostic (literally “one who lacks knowledge”) says that there is no proof that a god exists or doesn’t exist. That lack of proof may stem from a lack of evidence, or may be more fundamental. One philosophical position holds that the finite cannot know the infinite; the material cannot know the transcendent. Hamlet may know Polonius, but can never know Shakespeare. God is essentially unknowable.
Atheism (literally “lacking gods”) is the answer to a single question, do you believe in God? There’s a big difference between saying “I do not believe there is a god” and “I believe there is no god.” It is the difference between “Not Guilty” and “Innocent”.
Some temporize by saying they don’t know, and therefore claim agnosticism, but this is incorrect. Belief is a conviction in the truth of a proposition. If someone considers the existence of a god and comes to the conclusion they don’t know, they cannot believe. Such people are, in fact, atheists.
The two terms are sometimes combined in a “weak” and “strong” form. Weak atheism is agnostic atheism: I don’t know if there is a god, so I don’t believe. There may be proof not yet encountered, or the infinite may reveal itself to the finite. Strong atheism is gnostic atheism: I know no god exists, therefore I do not believe. And then of course, there is gnostic theism: I know god exists, and I believe. For symmetry’s sake, agnostic theism would be the belief that a god exists without any knowledge that this belief is true, but such a stance is untenable.
The Vicar was right about one thing. It is impossible to claim knowledge that there is no god, so long as he gets to define the meaning of “knowledge” and “god.”
While knowledge retains its usual meaning in most things, Christian apologists create a special meaning when arguing whether one can know if God exists. In so doing, they try to define atheists out of existence. The argument works like this:
• Atheists have faith God does not exist.
• In order to know that God does not exist, the atheist would need to be omniscient.
• The atheist is not omniscient, therefore atheists do not exist.
The flaw, of course, is in the equivocation in the first premise. “Faith” does not mean “absolute knowledge.” By that standard, nothing is absolutely knowable. My computer may be run by invisible pixies (big ones - megapixies) cunningly disguised as circuits, capacitors, and chips. Can you prove it’s not?
The Vicar decided it was late and the dogs were getting restive, so I wasn’t able to complete the argument. But hey, what’s a blog for?
Define “god” as “an infinitely powerful transcendent being who created the universe,” and there’s no way to prove anything because the claim is untestable. However, the moment it is claimed that this god answers prayers, performs miracles, and otherwise interacts in the physical world, the claim becomes testable. The moment divine attributes are strung together, their logical coherence can be questioned.
But those questions will have to wait for another chat.
Because he knows full well,
That today's young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow's clientele.
-- Tom Leherer, The Old Dope Peddler
The first taste is always free. The Unindicted Co-Conspirator's siblings gave her the first two seasons of NCIS for Christmas. They're a Navy family - Dad captained ships in three wars - so they had an instant point of connection with a show about the Navy Criminal Investigative Service.
NCIS was a spinoff from JAG, a series pitched as a combination of Top Gun and A Few Good Men. Where JAG was a courtroom drama (the name is an acronym for Judge Advocate General, the military's legal branch), NCIS is more of a police procedural. Compelling central characters interact and develop with humor and occasional pathos, determining whodunnit on the A story and driving a large B-story arc. Because NCIS is a federal agency and this is a post-9/11 show, there are elements of international intrigue, especially involving the Israeli Mossad. Characters have backstories, secrets, and hidden motivations.
Strictly speaking, the pilot episode of NCIS was a two-part episode of JAG, which we haven't seen. We started with the introduction of the taciturn team leader, Gibbs, and a new character picked up from the Secret Service, Agent Caitlin Todd. And so it went. The first season was solid, the second season had a couple lame episodes but was otherwise pretty good, right up until the end. In the last episode, an Israeli assassin, a rogue Mossad double agent, intends to take out a member of the team. We're on a rooftop, a sniper's shot rings out, Caitlin falls.
The other team members rush to her, and we are relieved to learn she was wearing a kevlar vest and is only bruised. She is helped to her feet and stands alone, when Bang! The sniper hits her right between the eyes.
It was a hell of a season ender. Now what? What did they do? What happens next? Should we add NCIS to the Netflix queue? That'll take weeks!
Well, it just so happened that I had recently set up a bedroom TV with an AppleTV box, the little black hockey puck that streams content from iTunes. A couple clicks later, and we were watching Season 3.
And then Season 4. And Season 5. And last night, we finished Season 6. (This was the season they introduced their own spinoff, NCIS: Los Angeles.
This morning, I checked my Comcast bandwidth usage, and found that so far this month, we've burned through 207 GB. Comcast's cap is 250 GB. I think I'm downloading HD content twice - to iTunes, and separately streaming from the iCloud to AppleTV. I clearly need to check my settings. D’oh!
Comcast just announced that they will soon be increasing the cap to 300 GB, but not quite yet. We're going to have to cut back. We may even need to quit cold turkey for a while. How am I going to tell the Unindicted Co-Conspirator she can't have her Gibbs fix? It's gonna be real bad, man….
Here's the truth about my situation: I'm fine. I'm on track to a comfortable retirement, if the market doesn't crater and the Four Horsemen keep their horses stabled. I would like to tell you that it is due to our own virtue - we save, we don't take expensive vacations or have expensive vices, et cetera ad Puritan. But I promised to tell the truth: I Got Lucky.
My first stroke of luck was being born a white male in America in the latter half of the twentieth century. It doesn't get much better than this.
I luckily had parents who introduced me to reading at an early age. People who read have an instant advantage. I used it to teach myself about computers, and was lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of computer networking and Linux. I've luckily had jobs that enabled me to keep learning and increasing my value to my employer.
But luckiest of all: I married extraordinarily well. I married someone who I adore and love to be with. Our favorite thing in the world is just being together, and it's amazing how little that costs. We have similar interests, values, and careers, and luckily also have no interest in having children of our own. It's a lot easier to save for retirement when you don't have to fund college educations.
We lucked out and bought a house together in the doldrums of the mid-Eighties, and when we refinanced in the halcyon Nineties, we were able to lower the interest rate and switch to a 15-year note. We really don't like debt - luckily this mortgage is the only debt we owe, and it'll be paid off before retirement.
We've been extraordinarily lucky in our health. We've both lucked out and been steadily employed, contributing the max to our respective retirement accounts. (Hers is better managed than mine, but at least we're diverse.)
If today the economy craters, if we have to dig up the front yard to plant turnips, if we're struck down by changes and chances of life, I am still a man to be envied. The love of the Unindicted Co-Conspirator is the most precious thing in the world, and I have it.
Any retirement with her will be golden.
Note that - it's Constitution Day, not Norwegian Independence Day.
On May 17th, 1814, the Norwegian Constitution was signed in Eidsvoll, traditional site of the court and the assembly of free men. The Norse word for assembly is thing. Eidsvoll was a thingstead and had been so since the 11th century.
The Constitution declared that Norway was an independent nation. In fact, Norway did not become a free and independent nation until 1905.
But it is the Constitution that merits a national holiday.
The Norwegian Constitution is the oldest single-document constitution in Europe and the second-oldest still in continuous force in the world. It is among the most liberal constitutions.
In 1380, after being decimated by the Black Death, Norway was absorbed in union with Denmark. After Napoleon's defeat at Leipsig, the crown prince of Denmark-Norway started an independence movement, culminating in the constitution. In response, Sweden invaded and took control, but allowed Norwegians to keep their constitution so long as they recognized the Swedish King as sovereign.
Two days ago, the Norwegian Parliament unanimously moved to amend this constitution. All 169 members, including the Christian Democratic Party and the Conservative Party, voted to separate the nation permanently from the state church. The Church of Norway was formed after the Lutheran Reformation of 1536. Traditionally, every citizen of Norway is baptized into the Church of Norway at birth and remains a member for life.
However, only 20 percent of Norwegians make religion a large part of their lives, and only two percent actually attend church regularly. 72 percent do not believe in a personal god.
Under the new amendment, the government will no longer have a minister of churches, and the state will no longer be responsible for the appointment of bishops and deans. All religions and philosophies will be treated equally.
Ironically, the oldest constitution in continuous force is our own. It was written expressly to prevent the establishment of a state church. Perhaps someday we'll respect our constitution as much as the Norwegians respect theirs.
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