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Saturday, June 11, 2005My inner capitalist winces as I type, but Cicero is quite right in this post.
posted by gbarto at 12:00 AM Friday, June 10, 2005Is the left starting to wake up? Instantman passes along a report that Dutch feminists are starting to see the anti-immigrant right's point where backward misogynist homophobe Muslims are concerned.I, myself, am at a loss as to how anyone claiming to "respect all peoples" could view the mutiliation of a Koran with more concern than the mutilation of young girls, murder of young women and massacring of gays. It's good to see that in Holland, at least, human life is gaining some respect versus the oh so delicate sensibilities of hysterical Muslim men. F. Scott Fitzgerald said homosexuality is nature's way of getting rid of the soft boys. But it's increasingly apparent that the real soft boys are Muslim "men" incapable of enduring any challenge to their faith, masculinity, marriage or self-decreed authority.
posted by gbarto at 11:04 PM Thursday, June 09, 2005We could blather about Iraq or something like that. But tonight, we're doing important news:Tom Cruise is 1) dating a young lady quite junior to him 2) having left one of the most glamourous actresses in the world a) with whom he was said to have no chemistry, no idea what to do on the set of Eyes Wide Shut 3) thinks psychiatry is ridiculous and unnecessary and 4) thinks everyone should take Scientology seriously. Oh, and he thinks we should take him seriously. Part of the psychology bit was beating up on Brooke Shields for seeking treatment for post-partum depression. For a guy who has all the answers, Cruise's life is a wee bit turbulent and his thoughts are just a touch too concerned with what's wrong with other people. Sounds like a midlife crisis to us. Bet an analyst could help him work through some of this. It's not like he couldn't afford it.
posted by gbarto at 10:41 PM Tuesday, June 07, 2005So, the Mac is going to Intel. And Chizumatic is enjoying himself (see post 20050607). You knew Den Beste couldn't stay out of this one.A horrible confession: A few months ago I was in Fry's and saw a little G4. It was so cute, the keyboard was okay and the screen wasn't half-bad... No, I didn't buy it. But I could see myself owning one, except that, well, it's old and on the way out. But if they come out with something cheaper on an Intel platform but with the same look and feel, I don't know. I've long been a big Windows user, but more and more of my computer time is spent on the net and in writing plain old text. Wintel isn't as big a deal as it used to be and if Apple can make a computer at a reasonable cost that isn't so godawful slow, I might trade in my blue screen of death machine some day.
posted by gbarto at 11:25 PM Monday, June 06, 2005How to alleviate budget shortfallsThe Supreme Court ruled today, in effect, that if the Congress may regulate intrastate, non-commercial activity under the auspices of the Commerce Clause if there is a potential interstate commercial impact. As we all know, when times are tough, people stop hiring contractors and start buying do-it-yourself kits. This deprives contractors of labor - and the government of income tax revenue. It deprives suppliers of revenue, since do-it-yourselfers buy cheaper equipment and materials. This also depletes sales tax revenues, altering the balance of revenue sharing programs administered by the federal government. Do-it-yourselfers are more likely to improvise projects with scrap wood and the like, not only depriving suppliers of revenue but reducing the work for interstate truck drivers bringing professional quality materials. It is clear to see that when, instead of calling the plumber, we buy a little plumbing caulk and hope it holds, or nail in an old board instead of calling a contractor to fix a door jamb, we are engaged in non-commercial activity that nonetheless cumulatively has a broad impact on interstate commerce as well as the federal treasury. Of course the materials you use to fix your wiring or make structural adjustments are already regulated by state and local governments. But there's no reason the federal government shouldn't be involved too. Has anyone considered the environmental impact of do-it-yourselfers buying too many board feet for projects, depleting our forests? Or their use of cheap equipment, leading to the landfilling of quasi-disposable handtools and ever greater consumption of light metals for those tools' manufacture? Up until now, this travesty against our economic system has been allowed to go on, untouched. But with the Raich decision, Congress may finally have the power to act, reigning in the subversion of tax laws and the distortion of orderly markets by people using cheap tools and tax free labor in their homes. Henceforth, people claiming themselves or their children should be required to pay taxes on the unpaid income from mowing of lawns, raking of leaves and washing of laundry. Do-it-yourselfers should know that depriving the plumber of his pay is one thing, but denying the government funds to help the poor must stop. In hard times, the rapid growth of use of tax free labor is particularly troubling, depriving the government of the funds needed to help the poor. How selfish can these tinkerers be when the next generation is at stake? * * * If you're reading this in Washington D.C., turn off your computer and pretend you never saw it. Please. For those wondering if the TurkeyBlog has gone socialist, we're actually just a bit concerned that Justice Thomas is uncannily prescient about what happens when a new justification is always at ready for the further growth of the federal government and its power at the expense of everything else. * * * For the curious, the whole thing was inspired in part by O'Connor, cited here: It will not do to say that Congress may regulate noncommercial activity simply because it may have an effect on the demand for commercial goods, or because the noncommercial endeavor can, in some sense, substitute for commercial activity. Most commercial goods or services have some sort of privately producible analogue. Home care substitutes for daycare. Charades games substitute for movie tickets. Backyard or windowsill gardening substitutes for going to the supermarket. To draw the line wherever private activity affects the demand for market goods is to draw no line at all, and to declare everything economic.
posted by gbarto at 3:51 PM Re: Raich Am I reading this correctly? If Congress discovers a potential interstate commerce effect in an intrastate non-commercial activity, it has the authority to regulate. Right? Does this mean that the government can regulate how you sew your own clothes? How much salt you put on your food? I think the text supports this interpretation. Makes you glad that Justice Thomas is one of the young'uns. But it makes one worry when, for all the chatter about uncaring conservatives, it's Thomas, O'Connor and Rehnquist who think that if AIDS patients are choking to death on their own vomit from nausea, the several states ought be allowed unconventional approaches to alleviating the circumstance.
posted by gbarto at 3:42 PM Todd Zwycki points to a wonderful idea from some Cleveland Wal-Mart bashers: set up a barter system among local businesses to... to... I don't get it. If you're a small business owner, that's nice. But if you're a consumer? Ah, but the anti-Wal-Mart coalition isn't concerned about customers. Not primarily. It's mostly elitists who think Wal-Mart déclassé and those who, sad but true, have a hard time of it in the face of superstores. The bigger problem, though, is that the "barter points" system proposed isn't really bartering; it's just the creation of a small-scale currency - only without anything resembling a central bank to assure to universal convertibility or a reliable standard of value, nor a large enough market for the invisible hand to help sort out such problems. It's also illegal unless every bartering transaction has a dollar value put on it at the end for tax purposes. Zywicki pointed out that the "barter" so fondly espoused was once more prevalent, only it was called - and properly - a tax dodge. He didn't point out how much hassle would be involved to prevent it from being an illegal tax dodge. So there you have it folks: The working classes of Cleveland don't need a low-priced superstore; they just need an illegal faux economy to sustain the small businesses already there! Whew!
posted by gbarto at 3:02 PM I see the Supremes ruled against medical pot. Not surprising. Relief of pain and nausea is nice enough, but can't compare to the compelling state interest in keeping people from abusing the substance for other purposes. Next they're going to ban Oxy-Contin. Right? Not with the campaign bucks from Big Pharma. If you want medical marijuana, don't bother trying to speak common sense to legislators. Find a way for Phizer to patent and license it. Then the GOP will be all for its unhindered distribution. While the Dems demand it be sold below cost to the uninsured. Update: I see a KnoxNews commenter beat me to the punch on the Oxy-Contin hypocrisy.
posted by gbarto at 2:25 PM Sunday, June 05, 2005How much humanity hath a fetus? Cicero has an interesting look. Interesting question raised: Was Jesus holy before He was born? Was He human? Not nice to point out questions like this to squeamish pro-choicers.
posted by gbarto at 2:25 PM Below, I wrote a post with somewhat snarkish implications for what I think of the work of Neil Douglas-Klotz. Having also looked at his The Hidden Gospel  , I'd like to suggest something a touch more nuanced.A long time ago (In the early forties!), Robert Heinlein wrote a novelette, Lost Legacy (featured in the collection, Assignment In Eternity  ), that had a surprising view of where religion comes from. Said Heinlein, the earth was once inhabited by a superior man-like race that ruined its paradise through power struggles. Those on the side of peaceful co-existence left for another planet, but first left records of how to find peace and joy, so that future generations would have a shot at starting over. Unfortunately, those who discovered these universal truths later all brought a personal/cultural mindset that led to individual, warring religions rather than the re-establishment of peaceful unity.Heinlein's story foreshadows a lot of what's being pushed in the New Age these days. A lot of his fiction does, in fact, making one wonder if he wasn't in fact one of those authentic soothesayers who should have been shot on sight (see The Notebooks of Lazarus Long). Douglas-Klotz is in a curious place in the New Age, a place most people hadn't heard of until the Da Vinci code: he has a view of Christianity rooted in ancient texts that raises serious questions for how the Catholic church defined the faith. Brown's The Da Vinci Code  and the superior Angels & Demons , though, are the lite version: they look at stuff that's been floating around at the margins a long time (I was reading about the sacred feminine, the masculinizing of Greek mythology, etc before I left high school), simplify the mystical elements, toss up a conspiracy to hide the story and run from there. Douglas-Klotz, on the other hand, deals in the actual mystical stuff, and doing the heavy lifting of working with ancient texts in original languages and more.Where Douglas-Klotz and others go wrong, I think, is in their violation of Occam's razor: Were there as much hidden meaning in the text as such scholars see, there would have arisen wisdom traditions to make sure the true meanings of the words weren't lost, a Talmud for 1st c. Christianiyt. Douglas-Klotz offers enough serious commentary to make you think about Jesus' message in new ways, but then he decodes a single word and finds so much meaning that one is reminded of the queer theorists who prove such and such author was gay because he mispelt "biscuit" in a first draft and we all know what that really means. This makes it hard to know how to relate to his message short of becoming an Aramaic scholar yourself to see if such things are really possible. Which is a shame, because Douglas-Klotz is on an important mission: In a day and age where evangelical sects are turning up all over the place to assert that they're the only ones who have a real pipeline to God and too bad for the rest o' y'all who are gonna rot in hell, Douglas-Klotz is offering a loving, open understanding that asks us to recognize the spirit of God that dwelleth in us all, seeing a real relationship between our earthly life and whatever may come next that is focused not just on gittin' into heaven, but on increasing love, joy and understanding here and now. Considering that this is what Jesus did - most of His miracles bettered the lives of those He touched - one is a bit mystified that such notions would be controversial. And yet we stop singing "Yes Jesus loves me..." the second we're out of Sunday school, almost as though a conviction that God loves us in ways we could fathom is among those childish things Paul wants us to put aside in adulthood. The most fervent - or rabid - believers one sees on the news are those making sure we all know for whom there isn't any room in heaven, suggesting that if you're not on their mailing list you're likely headed for hell. The New Age is, in many ways, the logical response to the finest idiocies of the various churches - it carves out a place to escape from a world where Jesus loves us all so much that He's gonna send us to hell for our own good. Douglas-Klotz stakes new ground in the New Age: New Age values represented in a new interpretation of Christianity. Whether this means that Christianity is universal or that universal values inform a particular understanding of Christianity I'll leave to the reader to decide. One simply wishes that he'd offer a stripped-down version of what he seeks to share, something that would be a little harder for the "God of thunder" types to dismiss and easier for those recovering from fundamentalist upbringings to consider as a possible new understanding of fundamental truth.
posted by gbarto at 12:14 PM The French mystic strikes... Stumbled across the Lord's Prayer in the original Aramaic, thought it would be interesting to find out how it compared to what we're used to uttering. I found several translations. This one was a little interesting: Therefore, this is how you shall pray:And then there was this one by Neil Douglas-Klotz: O, Birther of the Cosmos, focus your light within us -- make it usefulI don't speak Aramaic, so who knows. Assuming moderately close correspondence between Hebrew and Aramaic stems, I checked the roots for keywords in the first four or five lines and think this is the closest: Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.But it's the second translation, purporting to capture hidden shades of meaning, that intrigues. Especially when you read about how he came up with it. It tells us something, something that moves us to think in new directions. In the last few days, there's been much ado about the French and Dutch rejections of the EU Constitution. I don't know much about Holland, but I do know about France, and so I offer The Mystic's Interpretation of the French dévise as a way to understanding. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité Liber means free, as in a man freed from slavery. But it is very similar to the root for book. The French, who make maximum use of words, rely on this "coincidence" to convey the notion that knowledge or received wisdom hold the key to true freedom. Égalité is a very special word. English speakers will recognize in it something similar to "equal," but the real root is "gal," a compacted form of the name of their ancestral home, "Gaul." Égalité captures the sense that French blood equals French land, that there is a shared unity or oneness with the land if you are Gallic. Fraternité has the old root, "frater," meaning brother. It reveals that those with ties to French land have implicit ties to each other, existing as a single family with mother France, the land, providing a sacred feminine to root this masculine energy. As important is the ending of the word, "aternité," similar to the Latin aeternum and French éternité - eternity. This is a brotherhood that endures forever. Now that we have seen the true and multiple meanings contained within, let us consider the real translation of "Liberté, Églalité, Fraternité": Freedom in shared Gallic wisdom Oneness in shared Gallic ancestry Family in the ever-joined masculine Gallic will and the feminine Mother France Understanding the true meaning of the French dévise, we see why a "non" to the EU was necessary. While France welcomes the expansion of her family, others joining her brotherhood by devotion to Mother France and the wisdom traditions of her people, an undermining of that tradition that fails to nourish and grow the Gallic spirit by adding of human spirit or French dominion is contradictory to the very meaning of the three words by which the French understand themselves. - - - We also sell bridges...
posted by gbarto at 11:24 AM |
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