Last Saturday, I was running some errands with my daughters when we passed by a store called “Mystic Valley.”  I mentioned to my daughters (they are six and eight) that some people believe that they can tell the future and read other peoples minds.  My daughters were incredulous.  They thought I was being silly, so they made me “pinky swear” that I was telling the truth.  I pinky swore before making a U-turn to head back to the neighborhood psychic store.

“Come on,” I said.  “Let’s go into the store and check out the people who believe that other people can tell the future and read their minds.”  My daughters were still suspicious that I was making this up, but into the store we went.

The first thing you notice is the smell of incense.  We passed by the rack of psychic magazines, then the shelves of crystals, the piles of drums, and some ethnic carvings before noticing that there were about seven small tables scattered throughout the store, each of them with two people seated facing each other.  Many of the experts were holding the customers’ hands.  If you listened closely, you could hear the psychics counseling the customers.

“Now do you believe me?” I whispered to my daughters.  They didn’t know what to think.

I walked up to the checkout counter and asked the pleasant soft-spoken man what was going on at the tables.  He indicated that some of the people were psychics, others were doing tarot card readings, and yet others were doing things I’d never heard of before.  He told me that the store “carefully checks out the experts who work at the store,” to make sure that the customers are getting the quality they deserve when they purchase the services of psychics and Tarot card readers. I didn’t ask him how these experts get certified, but I assumed it had nothing to do with double-blind studies. The store’s website indicates that the small-table experts do all of the following sorts of things:

• Akashic Readings
• Astrology
• Aura Photography / Aura Readings
• Primary Self-Empowerment  (including a Certified Overlight Facilitator)
• Psychic/Medical Intuitive Readings
• Psychics
• Tarot
• Seer readings
• Reiki
• Thought Field® Therapy

It all sounds impressive and the customers were taking it seriously.   From their expressions, many of the customers seemed to be asking these paid strangers for serious advice, and the experts were complying.  They were charging between $30-$50 per hour.

I asked the man at the counter if the psychics could really tell the future.  It’s a pretty simple question.  Nonetheless, when I ask simple questions like this I quite often get “the look.”  What look?  The look that screams “Who are you?”  I was a customer asking whether the psychics can really tell the future or read minds.  I asked my question again, and the man told me,” well, that psychics can actually tell the future or read minds is a misconception. The future is never entirely clear.  Instead of telling the future, our psychics help you prepare for your future.”  It turned out, then, that the store was full of psychics who don’t tell the future, but who charged $30-$50 per hour to not tell the future.

On the way out of the store, I picked up the March/April addition of Pathfinder, a small newspaper dedicated to “Wellness, Inspired Thinking, Spiritual Holism and Environmental Respect.”  There are many types of articles one can find in this newspaper.  For instance, I am a Taurus, and I learned that “Major change in the spring related to friends or associations which are wasteful, erratic, or controlling.” 

In a column called “The Divine Matrix,” the writer considered whether we are “passive observers or powerful creators.”  He suggests that we should live as though our dreams have already come to life and our wishes already fulfilled.  “In this way, we actively share in… our participatory universe.”

I noticed an ad for the upcoming “psychic fair and holistic health show.  It’s coming to St. Louis County on May 5 and 6.  I’m thinking about going there with my video camera to chat with some of the exhibitors.

Another newspaper column (called “Akashic Records”) cautions that emotional disturbances that are unresolved from prior lifetimes will carry over into subsequent lifetimes.  The author wrote of a woman who figured out what she had done in a past life, and traveled back to Ireland to find some of the eight children she had raised in one of her past lives.  Those children who were still alive were now in their 80s, and “The reunion brought comfort and healing to all.” 

I don’t know what is more interesting in Pathfinder, the articles or the advertisements.  For instance, at Diana Grove’s “Ministry School 2007,” a person can participate in “The ballad of Tam Lin.”  Further, one can “answer the call to go to the wild places… discovered the untamed wildness within you… bring possibility into reality.”  Is this legal, I wondered?

Or you can visit Linda Humphreys, who advertises herself as an “intuitive metaphysician and clairvoyant spiritual counselor.”  She handles those “past life regressions” mentioned above.  She can connect you with “the other side.”  Or, if you get tired of that, you can go to the “Indian head massage workshop,” part of the “Ayurvedic Body.” 

Another interesting at is a company called Celestial Services.  Under one roof, you can get Aura Fluffing, energy balancing, or intuitive readings.  (more…)

Adrianna Huffington argues that there were other options for George Tenet than to stand by silently and watch the “slow motion car crash.”

George Tenet seems to believe there’s a major distinction between lying and standing by silently while others lie, and then proudly receiving a Medal of Freedom from the liars. He could have simply resigned and freed himself to “tell the truth.” Tenet acts as if resignation were not an option. But it was. And the passion and anger he displays now in the service of book sales could have been used then in the service of his country. So here is a plea to all Bush administration officials: Now is the time to resign.

If you’d like to know what curse words are the most offensive, Cognitive Daily has the answer for you, based on a recent survey.

I’m really tired of hearing the sorts of things most patriotic Americans utter to express what they believe to be the national character of the United States.  Consider some of the most common expressions: “The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.”  Or consider “The Greatest Country in the World.”  Many Americans proclaim America to be a “Shining Beacon” or “The World’s Greatest Democracy.”

The problem with these mottos is that they are dead-end declarations.  The people who repeat these platitudes are spending their time spinning propaganda rather than spending their energy and time to improve their country.  This is an extremely important point, because running a democracy is a process that is never ending. The mottos most Americans use to describe America do not inspire Americans to work hard so that their country conforms to these mottos.  Instead, these mottos are questionable declarations that we are an inherently “great” country, no matter what we do.

A couple days ago, I spent some time at the grade school my daughters attend: New City School in St. Louis.  Posted prominently at the school are the following inspirational words:

Truth, Trust, Personal Best, Active Listening, No Putdowns.

As I read this, it struck me that the Bush administration aspires to be the antithesis of each and every element of this school motto.  This thought stopped me dead in my tracks.  Isn’t it surreal that our government leaders have excelled at trashing the words of wisdom that we teach to our children?  Consider these words, one by one:

Truth?  Not from this administration.  We’ve seen this administration uttering a quantity of bald face lies that was unthinkable prior to the 2000 election.

Trust?  They got to earn it and they haven’t.  The current administration is living in an alternate reality. We can only trust that members of this administration, the inner cabal, who will continue to act out their fantasy world until they are removed from office.  Trust a Muslim country?  Only at the end of a barrell of a gun or a barrell of oil.

Personal best?  Iraq?  New Orleans?  Investigating 9/11?  Abu Ghraib & Guantánamo, the firings of federal prosecutors?  Dozens of other things to choose from, so take your pick.

Active listening?  Forget about it.  Instead of active listening, they have staged press conferences and transparent doublespeak shamelessly shoveled to the citizens.  They talk at other people, not with them.

No putdowns?  Consider all of the neocon putdowns we’ve heard: Thoughtful citizens who were opposed to the Iraq invasion.  Gays.  Democrats.  Liberals. Those who believe that the Patriot Act stripped Americans of their civil liberties.  Those who question the President are the enemy. 

My point is that what is good for children is good for our country.  We would be much better off to adopt a national motto that inspired us to become a better nation.  Therefore, I hereby nominate the inspirational words used by my daughters’ school as the new national motto for the United States of America: Truth, Trust, Personal Best, Active Listening, No Putdowns.

Oh yeah, and for all of those neocons that haven’t yet jumped ship, implicit within these principles is the right to defend our country when it is actually being attacked, but only by using physical force against those who are actually attacking the United States.  Or is that too radical an idea?

I recently had a chance to talk on the phone with an old high school friend who was an extremely talented artist. Paul (not his real name) took a few college courses, none of them in art, but dropped out before getting any degree.

I have vivid memories of glancing over during high school classes to see Paul doing something he did extremely well: drawing. He used a standard #2 pencil to do his magic. He cranked out dozens of expressive and lifelike bodies, faces, and hands. He did his work on the backs of class handouts, envelopes or any other scrap of paper he could get his hands on. I know I’m not exaggerating Paul’s abilities, because I’ve saved dozens of his drawings. The hands Paul drew might have been his best work. I remember Paul drawing, from memory, a vivid Sistine Chapel reproduction of God’s hand reaching out to touch Adam’s.

After the bell would ring, students would sometimes gather around Paul to see what he had been drawing. I can’t count the number of times that students would ask him how he did what he did. Paul was reluctant to discuss how. Maybe he didn’t understand how. His approach was to show, not tell.

Paul failed to pursue art in college. After struggling through general liberal arts classes for a few years, he dropped out of college to take jobs involving manual labor. He has always been a diligent worker, but his jobs have never really challenged him. When I spoke with Paul today, he indicated that he still has a passion to draw, but hasn’t pursued it.

Talking with Paul today reminded me of an encounter he had two decades ago. Paul attended a party where one of the other guests was Maurice. Back then Maurice had already gone to college and successfully obtained an art degree. Maurice played up that he was an “artist,” and that he had a job as an artist. This annoyed Paul, especially when he personally heard Maurice bragging of his art degree and artist job. At that party two decades ago, some of the other guests, including several attractive females, appeared to be impressed with Maurice. You could see the tension building in Paul.

Toward the end of the evening, Paul walked up and challenged Maurice in front of the other guests:

“Maurice, what kind of artist are you? Maurice, draw a hand!”

Maurice looked confused. The other guests looked at Maurice.

Paul grew louder: “Maurice, draw a hand. You are an artist, right? Then draw a hand! A hand, Maurice. Just draw a hand!”

The party grew quiet. The air was tense, as though two gunslingers with twitchy fingers were facing off. (more…)

Not nearly enough, I think, has been posted on DI about things which I consider just as important as politics, economics, and social issues.  That’s all well and good–DI offers a necessary forum for viewpoints which, while becoming more available in the public discourse, nevertheless need all the voices it can find.  But if we’re talking about the “human animal” then some attention ought to be paid to the things that feed into the soul, if you will, of human beings.  And they can be just as political, just as inflammatory, just as controversial as stem cell research or new taxes or who the A.G. fired this week.  We need to remember occasionally why we even have something called Civilization.  So I want to talk about something important.

Music.  Specifically some discs I’ve acquired in last year or so that I think need some attention.

I live inside music. Sometimes I have a soundtrack playing inside my skull during the day. Growing up going to movies as a weekly ritual with my parents, it always seemed sad to me that “real life” didn’t have a score–things would be so much sweeter, you would know when the momentous event was imminent by the way the string section swelled ominously, or when you were about to get kissed…

Anyway, I sometimes joke that if I had it do all over again, I’d be a jazz pianist. I stumbled on jazz rather late in life, after having first gone through rock’n’roll and classical. I don’t play well enough to actually make money as a musician, but I’ve been gigging once a month at a church open-mic for the past year (I know, I know, I’m an atheist, what am I doing at a church?  Well, there are friends involved and it’s music and…never mind), and it’s been pure joy. So who knows? I may yet find myself with a third career.

But what I wanted to talk about here is some newer music that most folks, I’ll wager, don’t even know about.

Classical.

Probably like most people, I used to think of classical (which includes Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Neoclassical, and so forth) as just “old music” written by dead guys with no amps. The three Bs–Bach, Beethoven, Brahms–and all their musical progeny. I always believed it was sacrosanct–that if, for instance, you didn’t like something, the problem was yours, that you didn’t understand it, not the music’s. It never occurred to me as a teenager that this kind of music had continued to be written and performed, continuously, even up to the present day, even with one example hitting me in the ear every time I saw a movie.

Some of the best 20th Century classical music is locked up in soundtracks. We all know about Korngold and those glorious Robin Hood-type excursions. John Williams is an heir to Korngold. As pure music, some of that material is incredible, and some very heavy composers wrote some of it. Vaughan Williams did a few soundtracks, and Leonard Bernstein did the soundtrack to “On The Waterfront.” It’s snobbery that implies “serious” composers never did movies–Stravinsky did stage plays, as did Prokofiev, so what’s the difference?

That said, however, as pure music, the form has suffered a bit of neglect on the part of audiences. I’ve been to symphony premiers of new pieces and seen empty seats in the hall. It’s a shame and we should be ashamed. This is the fountain from which musical aesthetics flow to all forms, whether we recognize it or not, and it deserves attention.

I have in front of me three CDs I’ve acquired in the last couple of years, one I just bought this weekend, and I want to recommend them.

I have little patience with those “orchestral” versions of rock band oeuvres. The first one I heard, decades ago, was an Andre Kostelanetz album of Chicago’s music. Chicago only had three studio albums out at the time. Mr. Kostelanetz, like so many of his generation, really didn’t “get” rock music, and it showed. He sensed there was meat there, something substantial, that had things to offer the musical connoisseur, but he failed to capture it, and the album was awful. I’ve never heard much improvement.

Until. Youth and Jaz Coleman got together and produced an orchestral album of Pink Floyd. The London Philharmonic plays it. The thing that makes this light years ahead of all the other orchestralizations is that these two gentlemen Got It. They did not do transcriptions of the Pink Floyd originals and then arrange them for orchestra–they took the music apart and rewrote it as if it had been intended for orchestra in the first place. They caught the soul. It is a glorious album. (An example of this reimagining is demonstrated on the album itself by the presence of two versions of Time, and while both are the same melody and theme, they are very different renderings.) All the tracks are taken from Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall. The breadth of what orchestral music can do is there, to be turned up and immersed in.

The second album is by another rock artist, guitarist Steve Hackett formerly of Genesis. Hackett is an incredible guitarist. His solo work has transcended most of what he did with Genesis, and when he was with Genesis the band was at a creative peak. I would argue that Genesis in the 70s was the quintessential bridge band, between rock and classical/romantic. Live they were superb. Most of Hackett’s solo work has been in electric guitar, rock format, but I found this one offered through a Classical Music club–A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Acoustic guitar with the Royal Philharmonic. They are tone poems and program pieces set to the Shakespeare, Hackett’s impression of the play. He proves here to be a composer of the first water. It’s sort of a concerto format, the orchestra counterpointing his solo guitar work, but it’s not composed in traditional concerto style. Eighteen tracks, blending together artfully, more like a motion picture soundtrack, but without the obvious predetermined aspects–you know, the love theme, the chase, the revelation, etc.

Now we come to the reason I decided to write this. The newest one. Not quite so new, it was released in 1997, but new enough.

Conversations In Silence, conducted by Paul Gambill leading the Nashville Chamber Orchestra.

There are six pieces on this album, two of them compositions by a woman who has clearly drunk deep of Aaron Copland–Conni Ellisor. She wrote the two pieces under commission for the NCO, and the one that caused me to buy the disc is called Blackberry Winter. This is a remarkable piece. First, it’s a concerto. A dulcimer concerto. Right, I thought, a dulcimer…but the range she manages to draw out of it is stunning, and the string sections are redolent of autumn mountains, cold springs, and the possibilities of–

Well, everyone has their own response. I lie listening this music and am continually amazed at the emotions that rise to the surface, drawn by the deep confluence of motif and theme, and the complexity of sounds possible only through the vision of someone who really understands what music can do.

She has another piece on here, Conversations In Silence, which seems based on a different American composer’s template (I’ll let you guess who), and there are four other pieces by different composers.

One of these composers is Samuel Barber, who died in 1981. I was surprised he was still alive then myself. Barber was one of the best American composers of the 20th Century, but also one of the most neglected and underappreciated. His Adagio For Strings has become a movie soundtrack staple–almost a cliche–but a good deal of the rest of his body of work is considerably less well known, which is tragic. He was truly great. He had the range of the finest European composers of the day–like Benjamin Britten and William Walton–but with that uniquely American voice throughout. I have read that Barber was a bitter man in his later years. The piece included here is one of his last.

I have a reasonably good classical collection–not nearly as comprehensive as I’d like, but not bad–and one of the sections in it that has grown is the 20th Century section. I do not believe that, outside of a self-selected group, most of the American composers of that century are known. One of my favorite composers is Howard Hanson. He was a self-defined romantic composer and he can take his place beside Dvorak and Saint-Saen easily. Another American composer I admire greatly is Walter Piston–again, relatively unknown. Both these men should be in the libraries of any serious collector.

Sometime in the 50s, I think, an unfortunate event took place–the splitting of American culture into “popular” and “high”. Radio, 45 rpm records, the juke box, and, finally, television all contributed to divide the public. Now, people chose their taste all on their own, since no one forced them to stop listening to “serious” music. Many stations then played a great deal of the stuff, with educational commentary, some of it live performance by the best orchestras and conductors on the planet. But taste is something that all too often needs time and patience to acquire, and the advent of the “hit” record worked against that patience. The last truly serious music that had broad popular appeal in this country was jazz, and it very nearly died of neglect by the end of the Sixties.

You could argue that rock became serious. Much of it did. But it was not serious music when it drove jazz out of the marketplace, it was largely two-minute hit wonders with a catchy tune and a cute hook. Later, when serious musicians entered the rock idiom and tried to make substantial music with the form, another division occurred and the spectacle of people fighting about what was “good music” in rock centered on the difference between “danceable” and “listenable”. What the argument really was about had to do with whether one could assimilate all the nuance of a given tune on the first listen–popular–versus music that required–huh–patience and attention and maybe several listens.

So contemporary orchestras struggle for funding and societies are established for the express purpose of “preserving” great music. Static art–paintings and sculpture–have it a bit easier with museums. Music needs musicians to live and breathe and that requires more than a building in which to house the work.

I went through what may be a typical cycle for someone like me. Pop tunes led to hard rock led to a rediscovery of some of the classical underpinnings of progressive rock led to jazz led to…

Led to what? Led to a place where I can perceive music as a pure abstraction and hear it on its own terms, whatever the idiom. I listen for depth and richness and intent. The three combine in most of what we think of as “classical” music, and a lot can be found in jazz. It’s a mistake not to learn how to hear it, but once you do find your way into that level of soundscape, a lot that passes for “good” music just isn’t. The trouble is, it can take a long time to learn how to hear it.

In school, we may be exposed to compressed courses of classical music, which more often than not does to our music taste what lit classes do to our reading tastes–leach the joy out of the music (the books) and leave us feeling that if it was written by dead white males, it’s stale and useless.

Do yourself a favor and check out the three discs I’ve mentioned here. Between the three, you may discover that joy you thought this music lacked, and come to find that it’s not so dead after all.
 

I recently had the opportunity to view “Maxed Out,” a feature-length documentary directed by James Scurlock.

The movie is one-sided, in that it gives scant recognition that some debtors have brought their financial problems crashing down upon themselves with no one else to blame.  On the other hand, this movie presents a point of view that is not generally considered by the media.  Not all debtors are irresponsible.  There are many debtors who are generally innocent, who got tripped into debt by sophisticated and despicable measures used by disreputable creditors, with Congress turning the blind eye. 

On the issue of irresponsible creditors, Exhibit A, featured in the movie, was a severely disabled woman who lived in a nursing home.  She had no income, but was offered $30,000 in credit through the mail.

Here’s what else I learned from Scurlock’s movie:

1. Credit card companies make 4 billion offers of credit cards every year.  Fees for these cards have risen 160% over the past five years.  The average household now bears over $9,000 in credit card debt, costing the average household $1300 in interest every year.  One analysis of people going through bankruptcy showed that for each dollar in principle borrowed, the average person going through bankruptcy owed two dollars in interest and fees.

2. What is overall problem?  According to Elizabeth Warren (a professor at Harvard Law School and a recognized expert on the issue of consumer debt) we are in great danger of turning our nation into a two-tiered society, and none of us is completely safe. A single tragedy can turn any middle-class person into a poor person.  Warren cautioned that there is a new type of credit card coming out that is linked to the debtor’s pension fund.  If one falls behind on the credit card, the company has access to one’s retirement funds.

3. Many people are driven into debt for honorable reasons.   A pawn shop owner featured in “Maxed Out” mentioned that 15 different families came into his store to hock their personal belongings so that they could afford to send body armor to relatives serving in Iraq.  In other words, not all debtors are irresponsible.  Many of them were thrown into debt because of an illness or the sudden loss of a job.   Nonetheless, many people take the view that all debtors are irresponsible.  “Maxed Out” showed that the people filing for bankruptcy were tarnished as undeserving of help by President Bush and members of Congress who voted for the Bankruptcy “reform” bill.   The bottom line regarding blameworthiness?  The truth is that there are debtors who are blameworthy and others who aren’t.  As I’ve written before, the willingness to group all desperate debtors together is a sign of a feebleminded intellect.

4. According to Elizabeth Warren, the big banks admitted to her that they don’t want to cut out their most marginal borrowers (those who struggle the most to make the payments).  They want to continue handing credit to them.  Why?  These desperate people are the banks’ most profitable customers.  These are the people who end up paying enormous amounts to the banks in fees and penalties, as well as interest payments.

5.  Credit card companies can’t wait to offer credit cards to college students who are living away from home for the first time.  No job?  No problem.  Many of these kids run up thousands of dollars of debt quickly, paying off the debt by taking out many new credit cards or by getting help from their families.  The film features interviews with the sad mothers of two separate students who had become so desperate at the credit card debt they were amassing at college that both of the students hanged themselves.

6. Our national financial health resembles the financial health of our families.  Each American families share of our national debt is now $90,000.  By 2005, the United States government had spent every cent of the Social Security trust fund.

7. Once you’re in debt, beware that credit reporting companies are not well motivated to fix inaccuracies in your credit report.  Credit reports are rife with errors.  Many an innocent person has had his or her credit tarnished by errors that credit reporting companies are ill-motivated to correct. (more…)

I’ve been feeling rather stressed at work lately. There’s a lot to get done every day and the sun sets entirely too fast.  Every day I face 50 real emails, constant phone calls, dozens of litigation deadlines and lots of foot traffic, while I’m trying to write complicated legal memoranda or prepare to argue my cases.  Some lawyers seem to just go out and do it all proficiently, seemingly detaching their emotions from the situation.   Not me.  I’m a worrier and I’m somewhat driven to control things that I really can’t.  So, I do feel some stress.  I monitor it carefully and I try to take care of myself.  Everyone who survives high-stress jobs needs to keep a finger on the pulse.

During one of my recent stressful days, a friend (also a lawyer) sent me this link about a lawyer who had way more stress than he could handle.  He jumped to his death from the 69th floor of the Empire State Building.  I really didn’t need to read something like this, because I work high enough –on the 14th floor . . .

Lawyers commonly trade stories, lots of war stories, about how they were really smart or innovative or eloquent during a trial and they figured out how to get some justice for their clients.  But at the end of the day, when things are quieter, small groups of lawyers sometimes trade stories about the effect of all the stress on other lawyers.  There are many sad examples.  I know several stories up close and personal.  People do burn out, and when it happens, the symptoms are awful.  Entire families suffer the consequences when the lawyer turns to desperate measures to find relief.   There are many versions, such as alcoholism, drugs, bad judgment on handling cases, gambling.

The friend who sent me this link about the poor fellow who jumped to his death had, just a few weeks prior, told me that she had seen a TV show that “proved” this sort of thing was an urban legend.  Actually, that show tested office windows to conclude that stressed office workers can’t really crash through an office building window to jump to their deaths.  Well, now we know a way around it, at least in older office buildings.  The secret is to open the window rather than jumping through it.   

When high-stressed workers flame out, it really bothers those of us who must live with this stress.  It bothers us because society tells us that we’re supposed to just live with the stress and “deal” with it.   But tragedies like this touches a deep nerve.  They taunt us with a statement and ugly questions.  We know that someone is going to flame out next.   Who is it going to be?  Who is next?   

We know, of course, that someone will be next, and that’s why we distract ourselves with the sardonic sort of humor you can find at this site, Anonymous Lawyer.

[Upon proofreading --Just in case my words might be misconstrued, I'm merely ruminating here--personally, I'm doing fine and I look forward to a long life ahead!]

On Wednesday evening, Bill Moyers’ Journal presented “Buying the War,” a terrific special describing the failure of the U.S. media during the run-up to the Iraq invasion.   If you missed it, you can watch the entire show here.  

Here’s the official description of the special:

Four years ago on May 1, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln and delivered a speech in front of a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner. Despite profound questions and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House’s claim that the war was won. How did they get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 continue to go largely unreported?  

Moyers devastatingly exposed the deeply rooted failures of the corporate media, point by point.  The alleged October 6, 2003 “White House press conference” has to be one of the lowest and most embarrassing moments in American media history.  You’ll have your chance to squirm through that event during the first five minutes of Moyers’ special.  

Did I say that “Buying the War” vividly exposed the failures of the corporate media?  Indeed.  For me, the most telling part of Moyers’ special was the announcement of the list of sponsors at the very beginning.  There were nine sponsors to “Buying the War” and all but one (Mutual of America) were private non-profit foundations. 

Moyers will be back every Friday night with another one-hour show.  Tonight, Moyers’ show will feature Jon Stewart, the topics being “Why do so many get their news and analysis from his fake news show?” Also, blogger Josh Marshall will give his perspective on role of politics in the recent firings of federal prosecutors.

It is wonderful to see the true center of American Political spectrum given some air time.  I write “center,” because Moyers has a long and established history of inviting guests representing points all along the spectrum of political opinion. 

Having the opportunity to view the terrific journalism of Bill Moyers’ Journal made me wonder whether Moyers could ever have had a chance to bring his show back to PBS had the Democrats not taken back Congress.

According to Alternet, instead of applauding those new solar panels you just installed, your homeowner association might sue you:

On April 14, in more than 1,400 locations from coast to coast, Americans rallied around the goal of reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent within the next four decades. On April 22, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Earth Day editorial spoke for millions of us when it urged, “The whole planet, with billions of people and scores of governments, must work together on the same page. It’s the only way to curb the global threats of rising temperatures, dirty air and polluted and life-depleted oceans. One day in late April isn’t enough.”

But too many cities, counties, towns and subdivisions are still working off the wrong “page” by banning ecologically sound practices and even mandating consumption and waste. Rooted in outdated aesthetics and plain old snobbery, those regulations make less sense than ever on a planet in peril . . .

Homeowner association regulations often make environmental responsibility impossible by outlawing clotheslines, solar panels — even gardens.

Mrs. Bush recently made it clear to the American people that with regard to Iraq, “no one suffers more than their President and I do.”

Yeah, right . . .

In my opinion, our Narcisist-in-Chief has a psychological 12-foot high wall that prevents him from feeling true empathy. How else could you explain the willingness to keep blasting weapons and refuse any meaningful diplomacy with a surreal hope that he can solve complex political conflicts? That’s our frat-boy president . . .

Why not? Two reasons, according to Ellis Weiner on Huffpo.  “There are two reasons. One is that they’re not funny. The other is that they’re not conservatives.”  

Not funny?  Weiner describes conservative humor:

Whereas political humor, by definition, is anti-power. It makes fun of those in power — that’s what makes it political humor to begin with.

But while Republican comedians may be willing to indulge in some harmless joshing about their political leaders, they ultimately don’t want to mock, and thereby kill, Daddy. (Does anyone think a right-wing “humorist” will make fun of Bush the way that Stewart, Letterman, or Conan made fun of Clinton?) They need Daddy to stay alive, and retain his authority, so they can please him. That way, his strength can be theirs.

And not only his strength. If they defend Daddy, it’ll pay off. Daddy will give them a job at the Heritage Foundation, either pretending to fix the Iraqi stock exchange or writing lame-brain books (about how great Daddy is) that will be bought, in bulk, by the Heritage Foundation.

Instead, when they’re not mocking Mommy (i.e., liberals, and “caring,” “hugs,” “self-esteem,” etc.), they do what nasty children do to make Daddy think they’re all grown up: they impugn the sexuality of their target.

Thus, Hillary is a “bitch.” John Kerry is “French.” John Edwards is “a faggot” or “a Breck girl.” There’s your Republican humor: sneering cafeteria put-downs from the dumbest jocks in school.

Here’s how Weiner deals with the second point–that “conservatives” aren’t actually conservatives:

If it has accomplished nothing else, the Bush administration has scoured and, so to speak, “cleansed” the right of actual conservatives. These, you will dimly recall, are people who believe in limited government, balanced budgets, fiscal probity, individual rights coupled with personal responsibility, the sanctity of the Constitution, constrained foreign adventurism, and a respect for tradition, knowledge, and common sense.

I sometimes shake my head at the futility of debating the dedicated faithful.  By that I do not mean those who are serious about their religion and think it through, but those who attached themselves, limpet-like, to a movement and then abandon all introspection and attack all dissent aimed at it.  Creationism vs Evolution is a good example.

Now, there are some Creationists who know perfectly well that their arguments won’t sustain a scientific examination, but it doesn’t matter.  They see their mission as one of “saving” those who can’t (or won’t) parse such distinctions from the murkiness of science, and in that cause they have adopted what amounts to a tactic–formulate their arguments in the language of science so as to reassure those who already dislike Evolution that there is no monopoly on reasoned analysis, and that god can be found in the epistemology of creation science just as in evolutionary science god is eliminated. 

Why bother with this?  Well, for aesthetic reasons.  We live in an age wherein the jargon of science, wherein the fruits of a scientific approach, wherein the Scientist has enormous cachet.  Even while rejecting the conclusions of much science, people sort of know that there’s something to it, even while they don’t understand it.  And that if you can couple your old wive’s tales, folkore, New Age poppycock, or religious viewpoint with a scientific explanation you can pretty well cover all bases and stop worrying about Anything Changing.

That last bit is important.

What the faithful follower really wants is a cake that never disappears, even after you eat on it for a whole lifetime.

Science is just a downer.

Example.  My father is an engineer.  My whole childhood, we had conversations that went something like this.

“I want to go to the moon.”

“Okay.  You need X amount of fuel per pound.”

“But that means the ship will be too big.”

“Too big for what?”

“For everyone I want to take along.”

“You need several ships then.  You’ll need x amount of fuel for each one.  And when you get there, you have to have oxygen to breathe.”

“How come?”

“There’s no air on the moon.”

“Where will I get it?”

“You’ll have to bring it with you.”

“But that means the ships will be even BIGGER!”

Frustrating.  I just wanted to jump in the family car and launch it moonward and NOT WORRY ABOUT ALL THE DAMN DETAILS THAT SEEMED INTENT ON TELLING ME IT COULDN’T BE DONE!

Better to just fantasize about going to the moon.

Or, when a bit older, and the subject was pollution.

“I think we should go back to using horses instead of cars.”

“Why?”

“Less air pollution.”

“Okay, but everyone would have to have a barn to store the hay for them to eat.  A horse needs x amount a day.”

“The garage isn’t big enough.”

“No, it isn’t.  And then there’s another thing.”

“What?”

“What do you do with all the feces?”

“What feces?”

“The horse feces.”

When you’re young, these kind of “How do you pay for it?” arguments are intensely frustrating.  Some on your most cherished ambitions get shot down by bookkeeping, it seems.

To the followers of creationist arguments, I think something like this is in play.  What they adamantly do not want is to think about how all this stuff–the universe, you know?–works.  They want to repeal the three laws of thermodynamics and continue on as if nothing they or their parents or their children do to live “good lives” has any impact on anything.

For their part, though, Evolutionists and the like seem to misunderstand this psychology and get frustrated by the appeal of the religious approach.  The psychology is different, the aesthetics are different, and for the most part the two sides are speaking different languages.

What the faithful do not want is to feel (a) powerless and (b) responsible.  They avoid both by allying themselves with an omnipotent god who does good things for them when petitioned by prayer (evidence notwithstanding) and by believing that this same god has a plan and wouldn’t let all the dire consequence those scientists keep harping on about happen. 

Unless we deserve them to happen, which means we’re sinners and deserve it anyway, so trying to do something about it is human arrogance and in defiance of god.

But ultimately it’s the ducking of responsibility that’s so wired into the antiscience religious approach that’s attractive.  That cake will never vanish even as we eat our fill day in and day out.

The other part of this, of course, is the way people take things so personally.  I recall back in the Seventies when a prominent scientist announced that the sun will burn out in eight billion years and following day the stock market took a serious dip.  People are reactive and, at least in aggragate, seem incapable of a sense of proportion.

Not that we should stop trying to debunk Creationism.  But I think we need to realize that as we argue with these folks, we’re facing desires and needs we may not be acknowledging.  All they see is an argument that’s bent on telling us the cake isn’t there.  Or that we’re diabetics and can’t have any.  They’re not seeing the positive side.

Anybody have a spare fork?

This important breaking science news was reported by the BBC:

When it comes to tongues, melting chocolate is better than a passionate kiss, scientists have found.
Couples in their 20s had their heart rates and brains monitored whilst they first melted chocolate in their mouths and then kissed. Chocolate caused a more intense and longer lasting “buzz” than kissing, and doubled volunteers’ heart rates.

The research was carried out by Dr David Lewis, formerly of the University of Sussex.

Dr Lewis said: “There is no doubt that chocolate beats kissing hands down when it comes to providing a long-lasting body and brain buzz. “A buzz that, in many cases, lasted four times as long as the most passionate kiss.”

Garrison Keillor has written a Salon.com article titled “The chosen president: For the Current Occupant, it’s enough to believe that he’s been ordained by God. What does it matter what anyone else thinks?”  Here’s an excerpt:

Clearly the Current Occupant sees himself as a chosen president, though his theology is simpler than Calvin’s: really just four points — blindness as vocation (if you don’t remember it, you’re not responsible for it), unquestionable authority (the president is the president is the president), sustenance of faith (God has ordained you and it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks) and heckuva job (never admit a thing, let a smile be your umbrella). If you ran a business on those principles, you’d be in big trouble. Just look at General Motors.

To see why Twinkies are cheap and fresh produce is expensive,”you need look no farther than the farm bill,” according to this article in the New York Times:

This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

the nation’s agricultural policies operate at cross-purposes with its public-health objectives. And the subsidies are only part of the problem. The farm bill helps determine what sort of food your children will have for lunch in school tomorrow. The school-lunch program began at a time when the public-health problem of America’s children was undernourishment, so feeding surplus agricultural commodities to kids seemed like a win-win strategy. Today the problem is overnutrition, but a school lunch lady trying to prepare healthful fresh food is apt to get dinged by U.S.D.A. inspectors for failing to serve enough calories; if she dishes up a lunch that includes chicken nuggets and Tater Tots, however, the inspector smiles and the reimbursements flow. The farm bill essentially treats our children as a human Disposall for all the unhealthful calories that the farm bill has encouraged American farmers to overproduce.

This last point regarding the poor nutrition available to students is one I’ve heard before. 

The most compelling point of this article is that un-nutritious cheap food isn’t just cheap by the machinations of a “free market.”  It’s cheap because government money is subsidizing it.   This disgraceful state of affairs points to a potential solution, however.  The government could (in a rational world) change its ways and start subsidizing healthy food.  This NYT article suggests that the way to turn things around is to enact a new type of farm bill.  With all the politically-tainted money at stake, though, that might be too much to hope for.

Why? Because he’s afraid to allow Richard Dawkins a chance to talk. Here’s the proof:

Next time, O’Reilly could save Dawkins the trouble of showing up. O’Reilly could simply place a cardboard facade of Dawkins opposite O’Reilly’s desk and just talk at the facade, for hours, if he’d like.

Such twisted hysterical people!  Or consider the other new stories now available on the Onion News Network.  Check out this story that something is happening in Haiti or this report that having a friend with cancer is good for one’s health.

Dead unbaptised infants throughout the universe are undoubtedly breathing a sigh of relief at this breaking news from the Vatican (as reported by Reuters):

The Roman Catholic Church has effectively buried the concept of limbo, the place where centuries of tradition and teaching held that babies who die without baptism went. In a long-awaited document, the Church’s International Theological Commission said limbo reflected an “unduly restrictive view of salvation.”

Pope Benedict, himself a top theologian who before his election in 2005 expressed doubts about limbo, authorized the publication of the document, called “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptised.”

So, it took the Catholic church 2000 years to figure out the inequity of Limbo.  I’ve got to give the Church credit, though.  Those theologians showed their true character when they put their collective heads together and got the job done.  Check out the key parts of the Commission’s report:

“The conclusion of this study is that there are theological and liturgical reasons to hope that infants who die without baptism may be saved and brought into eternal happiness even if there is not an explicit teaching on this question found in revelation,” it said.

“There are reasons to hope that God will save these infants precisely because it was not possible (to baptize them).”

Limbo, which comes from the Latin word meaning “border” or “edge,” was considered by medieval theologians to be a state or place reserved for the unbaptized dead, including good people who lived before the coming of Christ.

“People find it increasingly difficult to accept that God is just and merciful if he excludes infants, who have no personal sins, from eternal happiness, whether they are Christian or non-Christian,” the document said.

So let’s see if I can follow the Catholic Church’s new-fangled reasoning here . . . hmmmm . . . Don’t punish innocent babies.  I think I understand . . .

Now that the Church has figured out that God should be kind to innocent babies, perhaps the Church (as the supreme teacher of morals for hundreds of millions of people) can turn its attention to some other important issues.  For example, 1) whether it’s OK for a priest to have sex with a young altar boy and 2) whether it’s OK for a married couple to use birth control to decide how many babies to have in a world that is already congested.  I’ll be setting my clock for a few thousand years to give the Church sufficient time to ponder these additional issues.

I found this eight-minute video on reddit.com tonight. It was “Penned, Shot, chopped, and Scored by Jamin Winans.” I enjoyed it for it’s clean execution and thoughtfulness. According to this site, Spin has been the “winner of 35 film festival awards worldwide.”

While watching this video, I couldn’t help but think of chaos theory:

chaos theory describes the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that under certain conditions exhibit dynamics that are sensitive to initial conditions (popularly referred to as the butterfly effect).

[Wordpress seems to be acting up tonight--it's not offering comment ability on the home page for this post. If you'd like to comment, hit the title of this post (which takes you to the permalink), then comment to your heart's content].

Bill Maher hits the nail on the head–again:

Last week I asked: If it solved global warming, would you give up the TV remote and go back to carting your fat ass over to the television set every time you wanted to change the channel. If that was the case in America, I think Americans would watch one channel forever. If it comes down to the cell phone vs. the bee, will we choose to literally blather ourselves to death? Will we continue to tell ourselves that we don’t have to solve environmental problems — we can just adapt: build sea walls instead of stopping the ice caps from melting

Maybe you don’t need to talk on your cell phone all the time. Maybe you don’t’ need a bag when you buy a keychain. Americans throw out 100 billion plastic bags a year, and they all take a thousand years to decompose. Your children’s children’s children’s children will never know you but they’ll know you once bought batteries at the 99 cent store because the bag will still be caught in the tree. Except there won’t be trees.

Today’s topic is high heeled shoes.  Why do women wear the damned things, I sometimes wonder.  Those women wobble around, they take longer to get from here to there, they often trip on small sidewalk imperfections, and they regularly fall and get hurt. 

I will confess: my gut reaction is that a woman’s IQ relates inversely to whether that woman tends to wear accident-inducing high heeled shoes.  I think of women who flock to such shoes as women who aspire to become Barbies or Princesses.  Before you write a comment to protest, I realize that my gut feeling is a gross over-simplification.  I also have an analogous gut feeling with regard to men who aspire to higher forms of masculinity by rushing to engage in dangerous activities such as motocross or hang-gliding . . .

I never understood high heels.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, I don’t think that women who wear high heels are “hotter” than those who don’t.  To the contrary, I’m annoyed by high heels.  Most woman who wear them look uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that they become objects of my pity, not lust.  But many other men (and women) disagree with me.  For proof, take a look at almost any advertising (and see here and here and here (for 8” heels!)).

Because I appear to be obtuse regarding this particular slice of human sexual responsiveness (and a tad bit concerned about my lack of responsiveness!), I have chosen this subject of high heels as yet another port of entry into the compelling field of evolutionary psychology (I’ve written about evolutionary psychology and consumer issues before).

I’ll start things off with the downside to dangerous and uncomfortable high heel shoes.  It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that wearing high heel shoes contribute to numerous serious injuries.  Here’s a list of high heel shoe-related injuries published by the Mayo Clinic:   

• Corns and calluses. Thick, hardened layers of skin develop in areas of friction between your shoe and your foot.  . . .
• Toenail problems. Constant pressure on your toes and nail beds from being forced against the front of your shoe by a high heel can lead to nail fungus and ingrown toenails. 
• Hammertoe. When your toes are forced against the front of your shoe, an unnatural bending of your toes results. This can lead to hammertoe . . .
• Bunions. Tight fitting shoes may worsen bunions — bony bumps that form on the joint at the base of your big toe.  . . .
• Tight heel cords. If you wear high heels all the time, you risk tightening and shortening your Achilles tendon. . . 
• Pump bump. Also known as Haglund’s deformity, this bony enlargement on the back of your heel can become aggravated by the rigid backs or straps of high heels. . . 
• Neuromas. A growth of nerve tissue. . .A neuroma causes sharp, burning pain in the ball of your foot accompanied by stinging or numbness in your toes. 
• Joint pain in the ball of the foot . . . This causes increased pressure, strain and pain in your forefoot. Shoes with tightfitting toe boxes can lead to similar discomfort. 
• Stress fractures. Tiny cracks in one of the bones of your foot.

High heels have also been linked to overworked or injured leg muscles, osteoarthritis of the knee and low back pain. You also risk ankle injuries if you lose your balance and fall off your high heels.  See here. High heels can even be dangerous, resulting in trips to the emergency room.

Rupert Evans, an accident and emergency doctor at University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff said injuries could lead to long-term problems. Women should stick to shoes with heels less than 4cm (1.5in) if they wanted to avoid a trip to hospital, he advised. Dr Evans said he has seen an increase in the number of women being admitted to hospital with injuries caused by the fashionable footwear. Injuries ranged from sprained ankles to broken bones and dislocations - and in some cases caused permanent damage.

What kind of permanent damage?  How about chronic knee pain, sprained ankles and back problems.

My interest in high heeled shoes was re-ignited when I started reading a brand new book by Gad Saad, The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption (2007).

I’m only about 75 pages into Saad’s book, but I am impressed with his scholarship and clear writing.  He has spent much of these first 75 pages making the case for the need to use the relatively new paradigm of evolutionary psychology when analyzing consumer spending issues.  The status quo among most consumer and marketing researchers is to ignore evolutionary psychology, but this quite often leads to an incomplete and erroneous explanation for consumer spending issues. 

I’ll get to what Saad says about high heels in a second.  It is important to note that high heels are merely one of thousands of illustrations of consumer purchases that can be better understood using evolutionary psychology. Why are so many marketing researchers and psychologists ignoring evolutionary psychology?  Mainly because it’s a relatively new field, and most established researchers prefer to stay within the paradigms with which they are more familiar.  To ignore evolutionary psychology, though, is to have an unanchored and incomplete picture.

In many ways Saad’s book parallels arguments suggested by Geoffrey Miller (see “Shopping for Sex: wasteful consumerism and Darwin’s theory of sexual selection”).  

Saad cites studies showing that 80% of shoe purchases are for sexual attraction.  It has been suggested that wearing high heels creates “the visual illusion of lordosis (arching of the back when a female is in a sexually receptive position) and furthermore accentuates the body curves that are particularly appealing to men.” (Page 75). Saad cites further research showing that a 2-inch heel results in a 20 degree “lift of the buttocks:

High heels may well be the most potent aphrodisiac ever concocted.  When worn by women, the high heels sensuously alters the whole anatomy-foot, leg, thigh, hips, pelvis, buttocks, breasts, etc…. men are perfectly frank in admitting that high heels stimulate their sexual appetite.  They seldom fail to express their predilection for them, and women, consequently, assign to stilted shoes all the magic of a love potion. (more…)

Do you ever wonder what happens to neo-cons after they leave the corrupt, nepotism-ridden Bush Administration?  Some, like Paul Wolfowitz (George W.’s former Deputy Secretary of Defense), go on to create their own corrupt, nepotism-ridden administrations.

While investigating Wolfowitz’s resume, I came upon a particularly frightening neo-con organization called the “Project for the New American Century,” which counts Wolfowitz among its past members, along with nutcases like George W., Cheney, Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, Jeb Bush and Ellen Bork (daughter of former judge Robert Bork).  This psychotic little group of war-mongers strongly advocates American military “pre-emption” as a central tool of foreign policy, and lists among its fundamental principles the notion that “American ‘leadership’ (read:  military imperialism) is both good for America and good for the world.”  The organization strongly advocated invading Iraq, and now calls for the U.S. to (among other things):  (a) abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the former Soviet Union, (b) take military control of outer space, and (c) “globalize” the U.S. military.  If you want to know where insanity takes root in America, this group would be a good place to start looking.

Some of us of are having a discussion in another thread about military recruitment strategies. Personally, I think those of us opposed to the war should be directing our energies toward counter-recruitment rather than accepting the poverty draft as a fact of life. We should also do everything we can to support AWOL and deserting soldiers who have experienced the futility of our presence in Iraq firsthand. If you know anyone in the military who wants to get out, please give them the GI rights hotline number: 1-800-394-9544 and the GI rights web site: http://girights.objector.org
This leads me to the title of this post: a documentary about the last real revolutionary working-class social movement in this country’s history: the GI movement against the Vietnam war.
From the Sir! No Sir! website:

In the 1960’s an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn’t take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services. Yet today few people know about the GI movement against the war in Vietnam.

You can watch the theatrical trailer here, the extended 12 minute trailer here, and the punkass crusade counter-recruitment spot here.

President Bush has ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of the 33 people killed this week at Virginia Tech.  So, here’s my question:  why hasn’t he ordered flags to be flown at half-staff every day, in honor of the U.S. (and coalition) soldiers who die every day in Iraq?