Personal Musings category archive

Is it just my imagination, or am I seeing more commercials on the telly vision depicting Not White characters and families as just, well, characters and families?

is a great thing. That must be why I’ve had two of them.

But which tradition? From a letter to the Philadelphia Shrinquier:

Which tradition would they most like to uphold? The biblical version? Solomon, we are told in 1 Kings 11, had 700 wives. The medieval version? Marriage for the nobility was more a matter of property and dynastic control than love. Queen Isabella of France, for example, was betrothed to Edward II as an infant and married off (with the church’s blessing) at the age of 12. According to John Boswell in his Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, marriage was not even a sacrament until the 12th century. Too ancient? Until the 1970s, women could not apply for credit or enter into many legal contracts without their husbands’ consent. That kind of marriage? Of course, until 1967, if you loved someone of a race different from your own, it was illegal in many states to marry.

I can remember when being homosexual was a crime. Persons got arrested for it, and because of that, homosexuals were driven underground. And so on.

More and more, science shows that homosexuality is not a choice; it is simply a state of being, not asked for, not chosen, just there.

As I have said before, my position on gay marriage is a resounding “I don’t care.” That’s why it’s a subject I have seldom addressed here. Nevertheless . . .

Neither of my two marriages crashed and burned because of what other persons did with each other in other houses.

Frankly, I think the political battle about gay marriage is over. It is a done deal.

What’s left is just the mopping up.

Why?

Because, as more and more persons realize that they daily deal with gay folks–folks they never would have thought were gay–they realize that gay folks are not monsters. They are persons. And, like straight folks, some of them are nice and some of them aren’t. But that has nothing to do with their being gay. It has to do with being persons.

As I said to a friend of mine the other day, if gay folks want to know the joys of divorce court, I say, “Let ’em.”

William Astore on education:

What do torture, a major recession, and two debilitating wars have to do with our educational system? My guess: plenty. These are the three most immediate realities of a system that fails to challenge, or even critique, authority in any meaningful way.

(major snippage–all the way to page two)

Perhaps I’m biased because I teach history, but here’s a fact to consider: Unless a cadet at the Air Force Academy (where I once taught) decides to major in the subject, he or she is never required to take a U.S. history course. Cadets are, however, required to take a mind-boggling array of required courses in various engineering and scientific disciplines as well as calculus. Or civilians, chew on this: At the Pennsylvania College of Technology, where I currently teach, of the roughly 6,600 students currently enrolled, only 30 took a course this semester on U.S. history since the Civil War, and only three were programmatically required to do so.

We don’t have to worry about our college graduates forgetting the lessons of history — not when they never learned them to begin with.

In the course of my short and largely-unnoticed stint in Blogistan, one of the things I’ve observed is how many persons know little or nothing about (in this case) American history, freeing them to say most sincerely outrageous and outrageously false things, such as “America was founded as a Christian nation.” That is just not true. It is not just unsupported by the historical record, it is directly counter to it. It is a historical–and a historic–lie. But the ignorant of history may believe it sincerely.

Earlier in the article, Astore discusses the current emphasis on teaching tech. It’s flashy, exciting, and, most of all, quantifiable. Persons like numbers. They are nice and concrete, unlike writing skills. “How many computer labs” is ever so easier to advertise than “how much thought goes on.”

Now, I think tech is a wonderful thing. I spend a good part of my day messing about with tech.

But here’s the kicker: Tech changes. History doesn’t (although historiography does, both as new information is discovered and different perspectives are employed).

I remember in the early days of computers when the educational system was all a-gaga over “computer literacy” (whatever that is–there never was an accepted definition*). A number of outfits decided to make students “computer literate” by teaching them how the program in BASIC.

No one programs in BASIC any more. In fact, no one was programming in BASIC five years later. Hours wasted. Teaching today’s tech does not prepare one to use tomorrow’s tech.

A half-semester class in Boolean algebra, which is the underpinning of programming, would have been far more useful. (Boolean algebra, by the way, is math, not tech.)

I am a trainer by trade (and a historian by training). When persons ask me the difference between training and education, I tell them that

The goal of training is to teach someone how to do. The goal of education is to lead someone how to understand.

Someone who can understand will be able to do. Someone who can do may not be able to understand.

_________________________

*”Computer literacy” seems to boil down to being able to do whatever the person using the term thinks you should be able to do, whether or not you’ll ever have to do it in your real life.

California is proof that the ballot initiative is a bad idea.

Self-righteousness is a cardinal sin.

A self-righteous fruitcake with a gun is a very dangerous thing.

Anyone who thinks abortion is an easy or casual decision has never known anyone who had one.

Those who commit acts of hate in the name of the God of love do blaspheme.

She keeps leaving the carcasses of her conquests for me.

At least she doesn’t do what a friend’s cat used to do.

His cat would tuck little mousey presents in his shoes while he was sleeping.

Remind me to add Dijon Mustard to my shopping list.

If Obama had nominated Jesus Christ himself to the Supreme Court, the wingnuts would have left (their hate-full version of) the Christian faith rather than support the nomination.

Newark (Del.–ed) City Council approved an ordinance Tuesday making it illegal to idle a vehicle for more than five minutes in an hour.

Not sure how I feel about this.

On the one-hand, idling vehicles don’t seem to be the eleventh plague.

Rant below the Fold

Military personnel have no protection from medical “errors.” Follow the link for full details:

. . . Wilson never got to hold her baby. According to her medical records, a uterine artery was cut during the delivery, causing massive internal bleeding. The estimated blood loss was equivalent to the total blood volume of an average adult.

Then, during frantic efforts to repair the damage, two surgical sponges were left in Wilson’s abdomen. Twelve hours after giving birth, she was dead.

In civilian surgeries, the doctors and nurses routinely count sponges. Indeed, they count everything.

Leaving a sponge or a piece of apparatus in a patient is ipso facto evidence of error, if not malpractice. Penalities attach; a doctor or nurse could easily lose his or her license, even if no legal action takes place.

Because of the Feres Doctrine, no such accountability attaches itself to military medical staff.

Whereas some of the aspects of the Feres Doctrine may make sense in the fog of war or on the field of combat, it does seem a stretch for it to apply to a routine obstetrical delivery at a stateside hospital.

If I were a Sharpie, now where would I hide?

A friend of mine, knowing I would delight in the full wingnuttery of it, forwarded me this email referring to a report on CNN. You can read the full CNN story here.

Let’s see – covers up religious symbols at a catholic school, his car is named the beast, doesn’t go to church and now this –
Umm – what has America come too ????

(CNN) — For the past eight years, the White House recognized the National Day of Prayer with a service in the East Room, but this year, President Obama decided against holding a public ceremony.

“Prayer is something that the president does everyday,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday, noting that Obama will sign a proclamation to recognize the day, as many administrations in the past have done. Asked if Obama thought his predecessor’s ceremonies were politicized, Gibbs said, “No, I’m not going to get into that again.”

(snip)

I won’t even waste my time on the wingnut claptrap with which the original emailer prefaced the quotation. You can find more here, here, and here.

There’s some history here.

The United States was not founded as a “Christian nation.” Indeed, for most of the colonial period, the colonies were not particularly religious, with the exception of the descendants of the Puritans and the Pilgrims in New England. And their vaunted desire for “religious freedom” had nothing to do with religious freedom for others; rather, they wanted freedom for themselves, but were quite intolerant of those whose religious practices differed from theirs (they are the spiritual ancestors of today’s Religious Right).

Indeed, in most of the colonies, the Church of England was the established church; the fellow who founded the little Baptist Church in which I grew up spent time in jail for his missionary activities on behalf of Baptist beliefs. (Which makes it doubly ironic that many of today’s Baptists seem to want to return to the days of establishmentarianism. Ah, well, those who forget history and all that.)

In the mid-1700s and then again in the early 1800s, there were waves of revivalism, usually referred to as the First and Second Great Awakenings. In the succeeding years, the place of religion in the public square waxed and waned.

But, frankly, the National Day of Prayer has nothing to do with that.

Public religious observance increased right after WWII with the beginning of the Cold War. That’s when “under God” got added to the pledge of allegiance to the United States.

It was part of a larger effort to publicly differentiate between western democracy and “godless” communism. It was, if you will, religion as a Cold War weapon, not true religious feeling. I remember public service ads urging persons to “attend the church of synagogue of your choice,” as if some religion–any religion–were better than no religion.

The truth, as far as moral behavior is concerned, is that some persons’ religions are better than some other persons’ religions. In some cases, at least as far as public conduct is concerned, no religion is better than many religions.

One of my friends is relentlessly and fiercely atheistic. I will take her as an example of moral, humane, kind, and loving behavior over James Dobson and his flock of intolerant sycophants any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Three times on Sundays. I have another friend whose theology is extremely heterodox and would not pass the creed test for any mainstream church (except possibly the Unitarians)–certainly not the litmus tests of the Religious Right–but who is one of the kindest, most caring and considerate persons I know.

I also notice the descriptions of the Bushie “ecumenical” services in the CNN story refer to Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. No mention of Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Confucians, Sikhs, Rastafarians, or (gasp!) Muslims.

(Imagine the howls from the Religious right at a truly ecumenical service.)

Politically, no service is probably a lot safer than a truly ecumenical one.

Symbolic acts are important, but only insofar as they reflect sincerity. I prefer leaders who do not attend church but who try to lead with integrity and morality to those who loudly profess their religious beliefs while, say, for example, just hypothetically speaking you know, facilitating greed, condoning torture, and committing unjust war.

I reserve my respect for someone who quietly lives with integrity; I do not grant it to someone who believes in the kind of God that you have to wind up on Sundays.

There is a doctoral dissertation lurking in the sociology of Facebook groups.

I disagree with the United Kingdom’s decision to ban Michael Savage from their country.

The UK does not have a written Constitution and has no codified protection of freedom of anything. For all their talk about the “rights of Englishmen (and women),” the Brits are quick to publicly and overtly violate civil liberties which citizens of the United States (except for the Bushies–natch) hold inviolate.

At the same time, one does take a perverse and quite uncharitable joy in seeing a purveyor of hate called out for his purveyance thereof.

James Randerson in the Guardian. Read the whole thing:

So anyone who clings to the notion that MMR causes autism is just plain wrong. Worse, if you opt not to have your child vaccinated, you are reducing the “herd immunity” and putting other children at serious risk.

(snip)

According to the Health Protection Agency there were 1,348 cases of measles last year, compared with 56 in 1998. In 2006 a 14-year-old boy died of measles – the first fatal case for 14 years. The reduction in herd immunity is causing unnecessary suffering.

The decision by many of my neighbours not to vaccinate their children is on a par with the drunk who decides to get into his car to drive home. It is a personally reckless action that also endangers the lives of everyone else on the road. Society should view the MMR refuseniks with the same degree of scorn.

I understand the psychology of the MMR refuseniks.

They want something or someone to blame and some way to act.

One of the harsh truths that separates grown-ups from children is this: Sometimes bad stuff happens and there is no one to blame and no way to prevent it. It just is.

As usual, I am late to the party, but I must comment on this story (emphasis added).

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

As someone who is a white, evangelical Protestant (contrary to how many behave, “evangelical” does not refer to a political philosophy), I must say, these folks haven’t read the same Bible I have.

They must have found some kind of anti-Gospels which counsel hate and cruelty in the name of the God of love.

Dan Froomkin explains.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

I don’t read Cal Thomas any more because Thomas is just a hate-full idiot.

The primary purpose of computers is to train persons to talk to themselves.

What kind of moral code has as its central tenet the right to torture?

You can’t control the deal.

You can only play the cards.