Thursday Cat Blogging

It’s been a criminally negligent amount of time since I posted kitty pictures, so I am making up for it now. As you can see they are doing quite well.

Posting Kitty photos comes on the heels of the latest announcement from the John McCain camp. It seems that they have hired one Fred Malek as the national finance co-chair for his presidential campaign. Who is Fred Malek, one might ask? Well, in addition to being a prodigious fund raiser for the Republican party, he has some less-than-savory things in his past.

First of all he used to work in the Nixon administration, keeping himself busy by counting the number of Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

‘…Nixon summoned the White House personnel chief, Fred Malek, to his office to discuss a "Jewish cabal" in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The "cabal," Nixon said, was tilting economic figures to make his Administration look bad. How many Jews were there in the bureau? He wanted to know. Malek reported back on the number, and told the President that the bureau's methods of weighing statistics were normal procedure that had been in use for years…’

But doing odd jobs for Tricky Dick pales compared to the other noteworthy event in Mr. Malek’s past. Namely that he is apparently a cat person, or at least not much of a dog person:

‘…On a Friday in August 1959, five men in their twenties were arrested about 2 a.m...

After checking the blood-spattered pants of one of the men at the state crime laboratory in Springfield, it was determined that the stains were animal and not human blood. [Sheriff Harry] Backes said the men then changed their story and said they had "caught a dog and were barbecuing it."

Police then found the skinned animal on a spit in the park. The insides of the dog had been removed, and a bottle of liquor was found on a nearby park table. Backes said the men told him they had been drinking earlier in the evening at a West Bluff tavern.

One of the men arrested in the incident, in which a dog was killed, skinned, gutted and barbecued on a spit, was Frederick V. Malek, 22, of Berwyn, Ill…’

Should Mr. Malek ever get bored with his job with Senator McCain, he can always peruse the web and head over to this site for his latest fix.

Melts in Your Mouth

What Digby Says.

Adding that it's important to reinforce his opening paragraph. While I certainly don't feel that the Church (Catholic or otherwise) is responsible for confirming or denying every last utterance of some batshit insane crank who claims to speak for them, Donohue, and his merry Catholic League, are public figures who get plenty of airtime to pontificate on matters of import under the banner of 'speaking for the Catholic Church.' In this case, like all of the others, the silence of the church is the same as an endorsement of his views.

While there are certainly more pressing issues facing the church, their reaction to an anatomically correct confection is definitely the sort of idiocy that fascinates me more than most. The Catholic Church's abominable silence on the Iraq invasion, however, is more pressing and is appropriately being addressed by my brother on his blog, as he directly confronts the seven generations of hatred that we are going to be faced with.

But what else would one expect from a Church that on June 14th, 1978 gave Sam Cohen, the inventor of the Neutron Bomb, Pope Paul VI's peace medal.

Soylent Green is Kitties

Like most pet owners, I recently received the same apology letter and pet food recall list from Petsmart regarding the recall of certain types of dog and cat food, tainted with rat poison no less. What does create the undercurrent of astonishment is the range of the ‘brands’ involved. How could all of the different brands all get contaminated the same way? Of course we know the answer – the contamination happened all at one plant operated by Menu Foods, which is an outsourced provider for all of the food made by these different companies.

Of course, that’s not entirely true. This event reveals a rather unsavory secret in the industry, which is that despite the incredible proliferation of pet food options for those worried about getting the food ‘just right’ for their precious little furry ones, there is no difference between what’s in the different brands. Because all of the brands are just the creation of fevered minds in marketing departments.

It’s fun to troll the web and see the debates between those who prefer Iams over Eukenuba and vice versa, but they are actually owned by one company (Iams), who treats those two brands differently (they have two separate websites, etc). But of course that is only a small part of the story. For Iams is not a company itself, but is instead a division of Procter and Gamble. Science Diet is ‘owned’ by Hills. But ‘Hills’ is a division of Colgate-Palmolive. Pedigree and Royal Canin are owned by Mars. And of course Purina owns half of what else is out there. Except Purina is owned by Nestle. There are almost no ‘mom and pop’ healthy pet food companies. And those that do exist end up within a few years being part of the big machine. And yet another ‘brand’ is created, owned by one of 4 companies who either originally made chocolate or household chemicals.

So it's hardly a surprise to find out that half the pet food brands in existence all have the same contamination. When we pick Iams over Science Diet, all that we're doing is picking a favorite color or type font. The manufacturing process that Procter and Gamble uses to make their pet food and their shaving cream is going to be the same, whether or not we are paying any extra for a brand with 'nutro-' or 'orgo-' or 'healthy-' in the title.

Of course much the same is true about what people eat. All of those healthy drinks and stuff make for fun reading. Tropicana, SoBe, Quaker, Aquafina, Lipton… all owned by Pepsi. Dasani, Dannon, Earth and Sky, Eight O’Clock, Fruitopia, Five Alive, Hi-C, Minute-Maid, Mutivita, Nestea, Nature’s Own, Odwalla, Powerade, Schweppes, Sobo, Vital, Viva and Vegitabeta…all owned by Coca Cola.

Mona Lisa Smile

Today it’s raining, but overall this week it’s been quite beautiful, especially after the icy snow storm this past weekend that dumped 10 inches of slop onto our streets. And with the new lovely weather comes our bulbs in the front yard, which are now starting to poke their heads out and bloom. In a week or so I will try to get some pictures posted, once they’re more photogenic.

In the neck of the woods around my office the warmer weather has allowed for another blossoming of sorts. The sidewalk con artists are out in force again, after a long cold spell. Tuesday brought two of them. The first is the old tried and true ‘I’m locked out of my apartment’ scam. This guy, complete with crutches no less, was quite pathetic looking, but before he got too much into his long sad story asking me for 40 dollars for the locksmith, I had to gently remind him that he had tried that one on me only last year, and while I was sorry to see him on crutches this time, he plainly had to work out a better system of storing his keys. Upon which he quickly trotted off, carrying his crutches. Oddly enough this is the fourth time someone has tried that scam on me in this town, each time twice by the same person.

The more interesting one, which I ran into not two minutes later, is a long con, not really aimed at the quick buck. The sidewalk artist scam is more popular in Europe, where there is more of a sidewalk artist tradition, but here in New York it occasionally pops up. In Europe, it is aimed more at tourists, where a guys tapes down a painting (classically of the Mona Lisa) to the sidewalk, lovingly adds to it a bit at a time, and hopes to collect some money from gullible tourists, who want to be bohemian and support the arts.

In New York the scam goes after the locals, not the tourists. Instead the focus is to have some local think that he has discovered a major unrecognized talent. If all goes well, the rube will make arrangements to have the ‘artist’ do a mural or some such large project in his home, give the guy a 50% retainer, and oddly enough the artist vanishes. The sidewalk artist will hang out in the same spot for a day or two, hopefully collecting as much as he can, and then he bolts town. Sometimes he can net over 10 grand.

The guy I ran into was painting the buildings across the street from my office, although oddly enough the skyline didn’t look anything at all like what was there. This begs the question – where do these (non-painter) ‘artists’ get their pictures? The answer, of course, is the same as where we get everything else – from China. China graduates 10,000 fine artists from their universities every year. All of those starving artist ‘sofa-sized’ wall paintings for sale at convention centers? From China.

I’ve always been interested in cons, mainly because of their insight into what motivates people. I actually have respect for con artists who use the greed of their target as the motivation. In a certain way they are charging for important life lessons. But these guys that I ran into are just thugs, preying on the willingness of people to want to help others, whether it be a poor schmuck locked out of his apartment, or an artist left behind in a culture that values only money. Hopefully as the weather keeps warming up, the three-card monte players will return to their usual spot across the street, in front of the empty store.

La vérité est dehors là

Perhaps it has something to do with the upcoming elections there, but the French Space Agency has just made France the first nation to open up all of its secret U.F.O. files to the general public. The website they created is here, but I would bookmark the link and visit in a week or two, because the traffic is so intense that the server constantly crashes.

Bush Pilot

Both Glenn Greenwald and Digby at Hullabaloo have excellent posts on the role of gender in the marketing of the modern conservative movement. Atrios bats them home with this recollection of the fawning media coverage of the pinnacle of the conservative movement: The President's Carrier Landing.

Though I would never want to generalize my personal experiences to cover an entire group of people, such as the attendees of CPAC, every single person I have ever met in my life who has presented themselves in a hyper-masculine way turned out to be homosexual.

Without exception.

Someone's Stoned, My Lord, Kum Ba Yah...

Following up on an earlier post on the role of tobacco in the Bible, I became curious about the next obvious leap - the role of marijuana. After all, there are no proscriptions against tobacco use in the Bible as tobacco is a new world plant, and wasn't in the old world until the time of Columbus. However, marijuana is an old world plant, assumed to originate in Central Asia, and hemp was widely known about and used in the ancient world in a multiple of ways - clothing, paper, rope, etc. So presumably its intoxicating effects were known, and one would assume that, like alcohol, it's use would be frowned upon in scripture.

Once again, one would be wrong. The word 'hemp' is not mentioned in the Bible, although I am only able to do word searches through specific translations. The lack of any mention in scripture, like with tobacco, is not a hindrance for those who would take a stand on marijuana use. With tobacco, however, there are only people who try to interpret scripture to condemn it's use: no one uses the Bible to support tobacco use. In the case of marijuana, though, both sides use scripture to support their position.

Those opposed to marijuana use generally refer to the same scripture used to proscribe tobacco use. And the arguments are obviously the same as well, since those verses are only subject to interpretation and aren't specific. The true fun comes from those who use the Bible to support marijuana use.

I've gone to a number of websites that do so, and they are all identical, down to the same wording, so they are copying each other's arguments word for word. Someone wrote it originally, but I have no idea who. For the purposes of this post, I will refer to this article, not because I think it the original source (though I suppose it could be), but only because it is the least graphically offensive. Gotta make choices somehow.

Most of the scriptural basis is interpretive (as the word 'hemp' is not mentioned) but there is one mention in the book of Exodus that is regarded by the pro-marijuana group as a mention, that of the recipe for 'Holy Anointing Oil' in Exodus 30:22-29:

'Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane, 500 shekels of cassia—all according to the sanctuary shekel—and a hin of olive oil. Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil. Then use it to anoint the Tent of Meeting, the ark of the Testimony, the table and all its articles, the lampstand and its accessories, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the basin with its stand. You shall consecrate them so they will be most holy, and whatever touches them will be holy.'

For reference, 500 shekels is about twelve and a half pounds. The key issue is the words 'fragrant cane' which has been argued to be marijuana. And at six and a quarter pounds of bud, that would be a holy oil with some punch. Some of the evidence is essentially circumstantial, but the linguistic argument is interesting. The basic problem is that the original Hebrew word is 'kaneh-bosm' (say it out loud and compare it to the word 'cannabis'). The word is untranslatable, as it is an ancient word whose specific source is unknown. What is known is that it refers to some sort of herb.

Another pro-marijuana website which aims at scholarly accuracy, but ultimately succumbs to the Q.E.D. problem, at least has a long series of footnotes for its arguments. This is the summary of the etymological argument:

'...But, what are the etymological arguments? Many ancient languages had 'kan' as a root word that had a double meaning: hemp or reed. In Hebrew, it is 'kaneh.' References to 'kaneh shirt' in Hebrew texts supports the hemp translation since shirts used to be made from hemp (cannabis). While the basic etymological argument (minus my medical argument) was made decades ago by etymologist Sula Benet, hardly anyone has attempted to counter it. I was able to find only one counterargument and that was from Ernest Abel, author of 'Marijuana- The First Twelve Thousand Years.' His two objections rest on the assumptions that marijuana would not be called a 'spice' as required by Exodus 30:23 and that marijuana would not be described as 'sweet-tasting' as potentially (depends on which translation is correct) required by Isaiah 43:24. Both these assumptions are incorrect since depending on the type of marijuana, it can be spicy and sweet...'

And of course pot can be both spicy and sweet. so if true then the argument by Ernest Abel is easily refuted. Of course, in the end it may yet be another biblical curiosity that is ultimately unresolvable. Nonetheless, the use of hallucinogens in religious ceremonies has a proud and ancient history, so the idea that marijuana is the active hallucinatory ingredient in an ancient sacred Jewish ointment hardly requires a stretch of imagination.

The same article refers to uses of the same holy oil in New Testament times, but as I mentioned, the rather unprofessional tone of the article makes me somewhat suspect, and I am unfamiliar with the sources mentioned (such as the reference in the Didascalia Apostolorum - how are we to know that the holy oil mentioned is of the same recipe found in Exodus?)

Ultimately I am intrigued but remain unfortunately unconvinced, despite the obvious enticements of the arguments, and the seductiveness of what it would all mean. That is an unfortunate by-product of the complexities and contradictions of ancient holy books.

But in the end there is one fun fruit to my research into this. I came across some articles about former Attorney General John Ashcroft when searching for references to 'Holy Anointing Oil.' It turns out that Mr. Ashcroft has a fetish for the stuff:

'..."'The act of anointing,' he wrote in his largely autobiographical book [Lessons From a Father to His Son], replicated the practice of 'the ancient kings of Israel, David and Saul,' who Ashcroft said 'were anointed as they undertook their administrative duties."...'

Ashcroft anointed himself before both terms as Missouri Governor. Of course he was unable to acquire 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, let alone the other ingredients, including the 'fragrant cane.' So he used the next best thing.

He covered himself in Crisco Oil.

Greetings from Jupiter

Today they released the latest photos from New Horizons, the space probe that was launched a year ago on a mission to Pluto, and due to arrive there in 3057 days (according to the clock on the website). Currently the probe is passing by Jupiter for a gravity-assisted flyby. The pictures are glorious, and worth checking out. Planned flybys in the next few days include several of Jupiter's moons - they already have several way-cool shots of Io on the site.

Dr. Keith

My sister-in-law Helen and her husband Betty were on the Dr. Keith show recently. Some of their friends have posted the segment on YouTube. The first part is available here, and the second part is available here.

While they did a bang-up job, I found the segment disappointing somewhat, as they didn't mention Helen's latest book, the superbly written 'She's Not the Man I Married,' which just got published, and is available from Amazon. Flood your local bookstore with requests.

I confess that the segment got me to think. Betty, a superb actor, has been reluctant to appear on stage for the past several years in large part to a reluctance to portray what are essentially traditionally defined masculine roles.. I have known of that for some time. Yet recently I asked her to do a voiceover for some TV spots that my company was hired to do to promote a condo development. I naturally hired her for her masculine voice, a glorious sound, without making the obvious connection. Betty has a different voice when presenting as a woman, and I had completely ignored that when I blithely hired her to essentially present as a man. For that I owe her an apology.

Smokin'

Earlier this month the Governor of Texas, a religious Republican named Rick Perry, issued an executive order requiring the state to immunize girls aged 11 and 12 against HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that is known to be a cause of types of cervical cancer that kills and estimated 3-4000 women each year. This new vaccine has given social conservatives across the country a major case of heartburn - they were responsible for the year long delay by the Bush administration in getting the FDA to approve the drug in the first place. The concern is that by offering protection against an STD it in effect encourages these girls to have sex by eliminating all of the downside of engaging in intercourse.

Once Rick Perry signed the executive order, the shitstorm began. Religious conservatives attacked Governor Perry,saying, 'The mandate makes sex seem permissible.' Allegations have also be swirling that the decision has something to do with the governor's former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, who is a lobbyist for Meurk, the company who developed the vaccine.

Perry, however, has fought back. Pointing out the obvious, that taking anti-malarial medication doesn't increase one's desire to get bitten by mosquitoes, he said:

'...Providing the HPV vaccine doesn't promote sexual promiscuity any more than providing the Hepatitis B vaccine promotes drug use...If the medical community developed a vaccine for lung cancer, would the same critics oppose it claiming it would encourage smoking?...'

Reading that quote about 2 weeks ago, got me to thinking. There exists a clear scriptural base to the sexual concerns of the religious right; sex is mentioned many times in the Bible - according to the New International Version, sex/sexual is used 28 times in the Old Testament and 28 times in the New Testatment - and usually not in a postivie light, which is to be expected for any scripture that advocates transcending the material in favor of the spiritual.

But what about the tobacco comment? Would the religious right go after a cure for lung cancer? Does the Bible mention Tobacco? Not at all, again for obvious reasons - tobacco is a New World plant, unknown to the denizens of Europe and Asia until the time of Columbus. In the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity and Islam there are no specific proscriptions against tobacco use. Smoking of course is frowned upon in those three religions, even rejected by some members as immoral. However the scriptural basis for such proscriptions is interpretive, not literal.

For instance, most modern Christian writing on the evils of smoking continually refers to the same passage in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20: 'Do you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.' This famous phrase is constantly being used out of context (oddly enough a common occurrence by those who take the Bible literally): it specifically refers to sex (1 Cor. 6:18 - the immediately proceeding verse - 'Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.')

That arguement also ignores the passage in Matthew 15:10-11: 'Jesus called the crowd to him and said, "Listen and understand. What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.'. This passage is clearly not in the context of smoking but is a reference to the hypocritical nature of the temple Pharisees in Jerusalem. Matthew 15 is one of the many passages in the gospels where Jesus and the disciples violate the laws of Moses (in this case not washing their hands before eating.) thereby earning the wrath of the Temple Pharisees. These passages pretty much consistently lampoon the Pharisees as prisoners of an almost bureaucratic focus on scriptural rules and regulations. In Matthew 15:8-9, Jesus quotes the book of Isaiah:

'These people honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules taught by men.'

So kudos to Governor Perry, fighting the good fight against the Pharisees. It's good to know that not all religious conservatives have read the Bible with their head instead of their heart.

Conservapedia

Friends of mine have wondered (and worried) about my constant reading of the New Testament over the better part of the past year. As I have explained to them, I've been doing this out of a realization that our culture and national discourse is utterly dependent on the Bible and, more importantly, its interpretation by Christian churches. I had managed to live this long without reading the entire New Testament, which is shameful, and so I began reading and studying the books. Along the way I have developed a deeper respect for Christianity, and at the same time a profoundly diminished respect for self-professed Christians.

I have not seen a better example of this than in the new 'Conservapedia'. Founded '...in November 2006, as the class project for a World History class of 58 advanced homeschooled and college-bound students meeting in New Jersey...' and run by a number of conservative bloggers and their ilk, they are apparently fixated on the 'liberal bias' of Google and Wikipedia. Evidence of this is mentioned on the front page:

'...Conservapedia is a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American. On Wikipedia, many of the dates are provided in the anti-Christian "C.E." instead of "A.D.", which Conservapedia uses. Christianity receives no credit for the great advances and discoveries it inspired, such as those of the Renaissance. Read a list of many Examples of Bias in Wikipedia...'

Sadly, No! linked to it, noting with tremendous satisfaction the Conservapedia posts on Orwell's 1984 '...a utopian book because it talks about a place where everyone is watched over by Big Brother, who makes sure people are doing what they are supposed to...Thre [sic] is something about rats at the end, but it is confusing. The end is probably supposed to be ambigous [sic]...' and unicorns '...Secular opinion is that they are mythical. However, they are referred to in the Bible nine times which provides an unimpeachable de facto argument for their once having been in existence...'

For such a 'Christian' focused site, one would expect a rigorous series of articles on Christianity. One would be wrong - here is the article on the Bible, in its entirety:

'The Bible is the collection of canonical religious texts in Christianity. Most Christians believe these men were under Divine Inspiration, and/or that the Bible is God's infallible Word to men. Exactly what is included in the Bible is a matter of some dispute. In particular, certain books counted as part of the Bible by the Roman Catholic Church are regarded as non-canonical by many Protestants and vice-versa. Accordingly, it is impossible to be certain which books of the Bible are truly canonical. However, it is certain that those books that are canonical, whichever they may be, are Divinely inspired and infallible.'

So apparently some of the books in the Bible are the Divinely Inspired Word of God but we don't know which ones.

Because of the open nature of wiki posting, the site is probably going to collapse soon. The original article on religion (again, in its entirety) read, 'There is only one type of religion, Christianity. The others are frauds.'. To that has been added by one wag, 'Christians used to look to the Bible for God's word, but now they have the Blog of the Gods, which relays His word directly in modern language people can understand. It is also less silly than the Bible.'

So as Sadly, No says, 'Enjoy it now before it becomes a wholly-infiltrated parody site!.'

Still going to Heaven

I meant to post on this earlier, so it’s a bit out of date, but it’s important to keep everyone abreast of the latest developments in the ongoing saga that is Ted Haggard, former pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs who got caught using meth. and having sex with a gay prostitute.

On February 4^th, Ted Haggard sent an email to his friends, helpfully posted by the Denver Post here. Some informative bits:

“…As part of New Life's efforts to help me, they sent Gayle [his poor wife] and me to Phoenix for a three week psychological intensive [sic] that gave us three years worth of analysis and treatment…”

I want to know what that program is, that can give you three years of treatment in three weeks. Sort of like those Department of Defense language courses. But it continues:

“…Gayle and I have decided to move from Colorado Springs to go back to school. We love Colorado Springs so much, and will always regard the believer's at New Life Church as family, but we have to go in order to let the church determine its own course and for us to retrain. We haven't decided where we are moving but so far have been offered two places, one in Iowa and one in Missouri. We are both planning on getting our masters in Psychology so we can work together serving others the rest of our lives. Since we are taking our classes on-line, we can live anywhere that's affordable…”

Clearly they need to Get out of Dodge by Sundown. They are taking ‘on-line classes’ to get their Masters in Psychology, so they wouldn’t need to leave Colorado Springs for that.

Then on February 6^th, it was announced that Ted Haggard is ‘completely heterosexual.’ Now having read into it I’ve discovered that the initial news reports, and more lighthearted reporting such as on the Daily Show, got it wrong. It was reported that Mr. Haggard was ‘cured’, when in fact the report from the overseer at the New Life Church doesn’t say that:

“…Ralph [the overseer] said three weeks of counseling at an undisclosed Arizona treatment center helped Haggard immensely and left Haggard sure of one thing. ‘He is completely heterosexual,’ Ralph said. ‘That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing.’…"

In fact it looks like he wasn’t cured of homosexuality, because he was never gay in the first place.

So if I have sex with a man, with or without meth., apparently that doesn’t mean that I’m gay. Which is sort of cool in a way. Because even though I’ve never met a man I would want to have sex with, it’s nice to know that the option still exists whereby I can maintain my non-threatening and get-out-of-hell-free-card hetero status.

Stay tuned for a follow-up: On February 18^th, the New Life Church will be getting another progress report from the oversight board.