40 Days of Lent: Day Eighteen

Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial

I just finished watching the NOVA program Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (entire program is available, in ten minute segments, here). The documentary is about the trial that resulted when members of the Dover, PA school board tried to have Intelligent Design included in science classes. Oh, Pennsylvania, my home state, you never disappoint.

Granted, I am a little biased, but what amazes me is the disingenuousness of those on the pro-intelligent design side. Even when all they propose is a small disclaimer to be read before teaching evolution ("this is not the only theory about life on Earth..."), they act as if they have no agenda and what they're doing is actually for the benefit of the students. Not surprising that two of them committed perjury during the trial.

My thought has always been that you should be able to teach intelligent design in schools, just not during science class because it is not a science. In fact, it is anti-science. As one lady states in the program "The fundamental problem with intelligent design is that you can't use it to explain the natural world. It's essentially a negative argument. It says, "Evolution doesn't work, therefore the designer did it. Evolution doesn't work, therefore we win by default....You can't build a science on a negative argument." It makes as much sense to teach during science as it would to teach it in math or gym class. So teach it when you teach Greek or Roman myths (do they still teach Greek and Roman mythology in schools?) Intelligent design has more in common with literature than it does with science.

This point was made better, and with more wit than I can manage, during the trial:

WITOLD "VIC" WALCZAK: So supernatural causation is not considered part of science?

KENNETH R. MILLER: Yeah. I hesitate to beg the patience of the Court with this, but being a Boston Red Sox fan, I can't resist it. One might say, for example, that the reason the Boston Red Sox were able to come back from three games down against the New York Yankees was because God was tired of George Steinbrenner and wanted to see the Red Sox win. In my part of the country, you'd be surprised how many people think that's a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened last year. And you know what? It could be true, but it certainly wouldn't be science. It's not scientific, and it's certainly not something we can test.

One more comment: it took the judge a month to come up with his verdict?

40 Days of Lent: Day Seventeen

I was thinking about writing about the recent death of someone I met once, a friend of a friend, when I realized that this seems to be a recurring motif on this blog. I've already already written similar posts here and here and I never intended this to turn into John Hanlon's Rollicking Review of Death; if so, I would have named it that.

But there is an interest, not necessarily morbid and certainly not as intense as it was when I was a teenager, in death. Don't know if the source of my interest is something individual or part of my heritage. As I said to a friend today, "What's another word for an Irish family reunion? 'Funeral.'"

It's not far from there to think that after I die, my words, these words, on this blog, will be floating around somewhere. Anything on the internet is there forever and I like the notion that the thoughts of those long gone will still be accessible. Yes, it has been that way for anyone who left any kind of record, but the convenience of the internet means that parts of anyone's conscious will be preserved so that future generations can share it. In his novel Ubik, Philip K. Dick imagines a future in which the deceased are cryogenically frozen, and for a period of time until their brains completely decay, can be communicated with. Seems like a nice premonition of the internet.

So...Greetings to those from the future! Sorry about all the pollution we made and the fact that we ate all the shrimp - they were just too delicious.

40 Days of Lent: Day Sixteen

The Coming Evangelical Collapse
An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise.
By Michael Spencer

from the March 10, 2009 edition of Christian Science Monitor

Let me just editorialize here and say "1. You brought it on yourselves, and 2. So long and don't let the church doors hit on you on the butt on the way out."

Oneida, Ky. - We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap ofbelieving in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

What will be left?

•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.

•Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.

•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.

•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

•Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy.

•Evangelicalism needs a "rescue mission" from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?

•Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before – a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.

Is all of this a bad thing?

Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains?

Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches.

Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones.

The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.

Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to "evangelize" Protestantism in the name of unity.

Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church's problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.

Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success.

The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a "godly society." That doesn't mean they'll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of "empire subversion" will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.

Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, "Christianity loves a crumbling empire."

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.

I'm not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential?

• Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself as "a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality." This essay is adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com.

40 Days of Lent: Day Fifteen

Our Wonderful Bodies!







The above images come from a schoolroom biology presentation on rollers that hangs next to my computer. I have no idea what parts of the body are supposed to be depicted, but it looks like biological functions as drawn by Bosch. I bought it a few years ago from a second hand store on Houston Street. I had seen it, loved it, but then proceeded to some art galleries in Soho and Chelsea. When I realized that nothing in the galleries was as fascinating as this biological presentation, I worried that I had missed my chance and couldn't get back to the shop fast enough.

40 Days of Lent: Day Fourteen

In Today's Moron News, This Just In...

NY man claims NJ psychic defrauded him of $250,000
Mon Mar 9, 9:06 pm ET

MORRISTOWN, N.J. – A New York man is suing a New Jersey psychic, claiming she defrauded him of nearly $250,000 he paid her to craft a golden statue that was supposed to ward off negativity. Charles Silveira, 38, of Seaford, Long Island, claims he never received the statue.

On Monday, he filed suit in New Jersey Superior Court in Morristown seeking to recover the money from 32-year-old Ava Miller of Mendham. Silveira also wants Miller removed from a $700,000 home he bought for her last year.

The lawsuit claims that Silveira met Miller online in 2007, and that he made several large cash payments to her over a period of several months.

A telephone listed for Miller's Mendham address rang unanswered Monday night. Reached earlier Monday by the Daily Record of Morristown, she declined comment.

40 Days of Lent: Day Thirteen

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

So because I was a young man in the late 1980s who liked comics and thought he was smart, I went to see Watchmen this past weekend. For those who don’t know, Watchmen is based on a groundbreaking 12 issue comic book series that takes as its central thesis that if superheroes existed in the real world, they wouldn’t be able to effect any significant positive change because, being human, they would have emotional, psychological, sexual and political problems just like everyone else.

The movie isn’t the disaster that some film adaptations are, but its best moments come directly from the comic. The film has a ponderousness, a heaviness of tone, that the comic did not have. There is no pleasure in watching the movie, or rather, the only pleasure comes when it recalls favorite parts of the comic. But despite material that ranged from melancholy to nihilistic, reading the comic was always a pleasure. Much of this comes from the cleverness of writer Alan Moore’s words, but mostly this pleasure comes from watching how words interact, support, subvert or contradict the images with which they share a panel. Watchmen was, to use a word that would become a cliche a decade after its publication, "interactive" in a way unlike any other comic or media of its time. Loaded with repeating images and words, the reader had to make connections between scenes or bits of dialogue, like solving a puzzle. The driving plot was a murder mystery, and the reader’s gathering of clues and noticing things echoed what the characters were doing. Based on lurid pulps and pushing comic book stereotypes to the point of no return, it was fun: that’s why I loaned my issues and gave copies of the book to so many people. The movie, whatever its merits, is not a fun experience.

I’ve become more interested lately in how the human brain works, how it processes different kinds of information. What parts of the brain does music stimulate? Why do you feel different after two hours of reading as opposed to two hours of watching television? Does representational work make us think differently than abstract? I was once discussing this in a bar with a neurologist (really!) and he said that the popular “right brain/left brain” model was an oversimplification and inaccurate. So while I’d like to avoid being dualistic, there does seem to be a fundamental divide between how we “read” words versus images. This would make comics an important form to study, but most comics aren’t as conscious as Watchmen of the dance between words and pictures. As mentioned before, they vary between harmony, opposition, ironic comment, and surprising coincidence. You draw meaning from the words and pictures: sometimes in synthesis, but not always. It was, if not new, then at least a subtly different, way of thinking.

40 Days of Lent: Day Twelve

It's my favorite scene from Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ, a movie that, surprisingly, I liked, perhaps because I saw it in terms of the traditional passion play rather than anything contemporary. My favorite scene exists as its own little mystery. Jesus the carpenter shows His mother His new innovation. The Son of God has created the first kitchen dining set: a table and long legged chairs so that you no longer have to sit or kneel on the ground to eat. Mary slowly, cautiously sits in one of the chairs, as if it is going to collapse beneath her. Soon she is excited about Jesus' new idea, which eventually gets forgotten in the course of later events. On the way to His death, Christ is mocked as "The King of the Jews" not "Inventor of Really Tall Chairs."

It's a funny scene in and of itself and one of the few moments of levity in the film. I'm not entirely sure what it it trying to say, except perhaps that Jesus of Nazareth would have changed the world even if he hadn't be divine? Was saving humanity's lower backs as well as their souls part of His mission? A nice kitchen set is a gift from God? Or that perhaps certain ideas get lost in the sweep of historical events and because the world is not ready for them, only to re-emerge when the people are ready? But this last interpretation is close to Gnostic teaching. Is Gibson parodying Gnostic ideas, saying that forgotten or lost knowledge is no more significant than a comfy place to park your *ss?

40 Days of Lent: Day Eleven

01:44 SPY: The Funny Years
Edited by Kurt Andersen, Graydon Carter, George Kalogerakis

My first book report this year fits in with the Days of Lent, given that those who worked at SPY magazine seemed motivated by the Deadly Sins of Pride and Envy.

I can remember searching for the first issue of Spy after reading an Associated Press article about a sharp new satiric magazine. It sounded like everything I was looking for. Unfortunately, I was looking in the wrong place: Wilkes-Barre, PA, to be exact, where I was living at the time. We might have gotten Associated Press articles, sure, but sophisticated “New York Monthlies?” No way.

As related in the combination memoir/anthology SPY: The Funny Years, I wasn’t alone on either count. People who lived in New York had trouble finding early issues, and there were others across the nation who were excited about a monthly satire magazine. The first issue I saw was April 1988, The “Nice” Issue. I picked it up at a stopover in Chicago while taking the train across the country and was quickly initiated. Things that hadn’t mattered to me (like cover boy Donald Trump) now did, once I learned of their inherent odiousness through SPY’s clever, nasty articles. The nastiness became more apparent (actually, inescapable) later, but what initially impressed me was how much fun the magazine was to read. The crazy charts, the articles in tiny print that ran alongside the margins, columns that gave the inside scoop about The New York Times or professional critics. There seemed to be so much in that issue, yet I didn’t feel sated after I had read, and re-read, everything it contained. Just the opposite, in fact.

And so it seemed with the issues that followed. Looking at the covers reproduced on The Funny Years’ endpapers, I can remember where I was when I first saw the 1988-89 issues. June ‘88, with Graham Chapman as a “coaster:” I flipped through it at Cody’s Books in Berkeley before buying. March ’89, with a smug Chevy Chase representing the Irony Epidemic: couldn’t wait for my break, kept flipping through the issue while at work. I didn’t have much money when I lived in California – I was on the macaroni and cheese diet most of the time – but I always bought SPY magazine. I can remember at the time thinking that, as good as the magazine was, it wasn’t quite “there” yet. It was a good magazine (very good, I suppose) but not great. The issues were getting better and better but it hadn’t peaked, which I looked forward to with anticipation.

That peak never really came. Looking back, you can choose a run of issues and say that it was the magazine at its best, but examine those issues and a sense of repetition, a formula, becomes apparent and annoying. I think this was one of the magazine’s fatal flaws. Magazines have a house style and a consistent tone, true, but SPY, after fairly quickly finding its voice, didn’t do anything but repeat, but with diminishing returns. Just as every young man eventually has an epiphany and realizes that every issue of Mad magazine is basically the same, so it was with SPY. The other fatal flaw was not just the repetition but also the tone itself. Being mean can be cathartic and liberating, for a while, but consistent meanness becomes tiresome, and as a tool for satire, ineffective because it eliminates point of view. If everything is corrupt, why should anyone care about the special loathsomeness of Donald Trump?

The memoir section of The Funny Years is obviously for fans of the magazine*. Its insights run along the lines of “we had fun – you shoulda been there!” The editors and writers come across as clever and sensible people who, you know, sat at their desks and worked. More interesting is how the magazine was always a shoestring operation given that each issue “seemed” rich in that 1980s kinda way. It’s disappointing that so little from the actual magazine is reprinted. Pages are reprinted in their entirety to give a sense of the interplay of graphics and text that was a hallmark of the magazine, but unfortunately, at a smaller than original size, which makes reading more of an effort. Even though I have all my old issues, I was disappointed that most of what’s reprinted are fragments rather than entire articles. There are pieces that justify the magazine’s reputation: I was amazed at how good the “Great Expectations” essay written by Kurt Andersen was. The quality of the writing, dense yet paced to zip along, is rarely found in magazines anymore. An article about “Yuppie Porn” (making and marketing mundane items like knives and telephones as luxury goods) makes the distinction: “…pornography – the objectification of bodies…[whereas] yuppie pornography – the objectification of objects.” You can substitute “materialism” for “yuppie pornography” but I think the idea of “objectification of objects” is just about perfect.



*Are there still fans of the magazine? I picked up my copy of this book for $2.99 at the bargain table at Borders. I can't imagine paying the list prices of $39.95.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Ten

There's an older man in our office lobby who recently had a stroke. He's surrounded by some younger businessmen respectfully gathered around him while he sits in a comfortable chair and talks. He speaks clearly though slowly, but because he takes his time, you can follow the pattern of his thoughts as he begins a sentence, veers off to make a dirty pun, which reminds him of something from his youth in Brooklyn, which he then relates to the ongoing current stock market panic. It's not much different from how other minds work, but because the stroke has slowed his thoughts to a speed at which he can express them and he's not being interrupted by those listening to him, I'm able to watch a slowed-down model of how consciousness works.

I don't want it to end, especially since he what he says is as interesting as how he says it, but his meeting is starting so now he must take baby steps into our conference room and close the door.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Nine

The Dr. Seuss Bible

I was going to write about LSD today, but then I read on my friend Carol's blog that Monday was Dr. Seuss' 105th birthday. So, in sort of honor of Dr. Seuss, one of my favorite bit of parody: The Dr. Seuss Bible by The Kids In The Hall.

One day God said
"This is what I will do
I'll send down my Son
I'll send him to you
To clear up this humpity
Bumpity hulabaloo

"His name will be Christ
And he'll never wear shoes
And his pals will all call Him
the King of the Jews!"

He didn't come in a plane
He didn't come in a jeep
He didn't come in the pouch
Of a high jumping voveep

He rode on the back of a black sasatoo
Which is the blackiest creature
You ever could view

He rode to Jerusalem
Home of the grumpity Jews
Where false prophets are worshiped
Some even in two's

There was Murrary Von Mer
And Genghis Vo Vooze
The one you could worship
By taking a snooze

Christ spoke from a mound
Which is a pile of ground
And people gathered around
Without making a sound
And thus he spake

"Sin in socks
Socks full of sin
How do we quiet this
Jehoviadin din?

"Do unto others as
They do unto you"
That includes you,
Young Timothy Foo

One pharisee said to another he knew
"What do we do with this upitty jew?"
"We can wash him in wine
And make him all clean
And into Sam Zittle's
Crucifixion Machine"

Twirl the gawhril
And relase the gavlease
And in go the nails
As fast as you please!

And it is said that He
Said as he bled:

"Forgive them Father
For they know not what they do

"For they walk through this life
In toe crampity shoes."

Do you?

Amen.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Eight

Bad Deeds

Below is an article from today's New York Times about debt collectors manipulating the next of kin to pay their deceased family member's debts. Legally, you are not responsible for the debts of a deceased loved one; hence, the heinous manipulation. Originally, I was going to include my mortified reactions, but then I found that all I was doing was typing "Oh my God" and "there's got to be a special circle in Hell" and "AAAAAAAAAAgh!" over and over.

--------------------------------

You’re Dead? That Won’t Stop the Debt Collector
By DAVID STREITFELD

MINNEAPOLIS — The banks need another bailout and countless homeowners cannot handle their mortgage payments, but one group is paying its bills: the dead.

Dozens of specially trained agents work on the third floor of DCM Services here, calling up the dear departed’s next of kin and kindly asking if they want to settle the balance on a credit card or bank loan, or perhaps make that final utility bill or cellphone payment.

The people on the other end of the line often have no legal obligation to assume the debt of a spouse, sibling or parent. But they take responsibility for it anyway.

“I am out of work now, to be honest with you, and money is very tight for us,” one man declared on a recent phone call after he was apprised of his late mother-in-law’s $280 credit card bill. He promised to pay $15 a month.

Dead people are the newest frontier in debt collecting, and one of the healthiest parts of the industry. Those who dun the living say that people are so scared and so broke it is difficult to get them to cough up even token payments.

Collecting from the dead, however, is expanding. Improved database technology is making it easier to discover when estates are opened in the country’s 3,000 probate courts, giving collectors an opportunity to file timely claims. But if there is no formal estate and thus nothing to file against, the human touch comes into play.

New hires at DCM train for three weeks in what the company calls “empathic active listening,” which mixes the comforting air of a funeral director with the nonjudgmental tones of a friend. The new employees learn to use such anger-deflecting phrases as “If I hear you correctly, you’d like...”

“You get to be the person who cares,” the training manager, Autumn Boomgaarden, told a class of four new hires.

For some relatives, paying is pragmatic. The law varies from state to state, but generally survivors are not required to pay a dead relative’s bills from their own assets. In theory, however, collection agencies could go after any property inherited from the deceased.

But sentiment also plays a large role, the agencies say. Some relatives are loyal to the credit card or bank in question. Some feel a strong sense of morality, that all debts should be paid. Most of all, people feel they are honoring the wishes of their loved ones.

“In times of illness and death, the hierarchy of debts is adjusted,” said Michael Ginsberg of Kaulkin Ginsberg, a consulting company to the debt collection industry. “We do our best to make sure our doctor is paid, because we might need him again. And we want the dead to rest easy, knowing their obligations are taken care of.”

Finally, of course, some of those who pay a dead relative’s debts are unaware they may have no legal obligation.

Scott Weltman of Weltman, Weinberg & Reis, a Cleveland law firm that performs deceased collections, says that if family members ask, “we definitely tell them” they have no legal obligation to pay. “But is it disclosed upfront — ‘Mr. Smith, you definitely don’t owe the money’? It’s not that blunt.”

DCM Services, which began in 1999 as a law firm, recently acquired clients in banking, automobile finance, retailing, telecommunications and health care; DCM says its contracts preclude it from naming them.

The companies “want to protect their brand,” said DCM’s chief executive, Steven Farsht. Despite the delicacy of such collections, he says his 180-employee firm is providing a service to the economy. “The financial services industry is under a tremendous amount of pressure, and every dollar we collect improves their profitability,” he said.

To listen to even a small sample of DCM’s calls — executives played tapes of 10 of them for a reporter, electronically edited to remove all names — is to reveal the wages of misery, right down to the penny.

A man has left credit card debt of $26,693.77, the legacy of a battle with cancer. A widow says her husband “had no money. He pretty much just had debt.” Asked about an outstanding account of $1,084.86, a woman says the deceased had no property beyond “some tools in the garage” and an 18-year-old Dodge.

Not everyone has the temperament to make such calls. About half of DCM’s hires do not make it past the first 90 days. For those who survive, many tools help them deal with stress: yoga classes and foosball tables, a rotating assortment of free snacks as well as full-scale lunches twice a month. A masseuse comes in regularly to work on their heads and necks.

Brenda Edwards, one of DCM’s top collectors, spoke with a woman in New Jersey about her mother’s $544.96 credit card bill.

“She had no will, no finances, nothing,” the daughter said. “Nothing went to probate.” The $200 in the checking account was used for funeral expenses. But the woman also said the family “filed a form with the county,” indicating that perhaps there was a legal estate after all.

“Is anyone in the family in a position to pay this?” Ms. Edwards asked, adding: “I’m not telling you it needs to be paid at all.”

The woman reached a decision. “I will talk to my brothers and sisters and we will pay this,” she said.

Ms. Edwards has a girlish voice that sounds younger than her 29 years. “If you plant a seed and leave on a good note, they’ll call back and pay it,” she said.

DCM started a Web site called MyWayForward.com to provide the bereaved with information, tools and, some day, products. “We will never sell death. But it’s O.K. to provide things that could be helpful to the survivor,” Mr. Farsht said. Death will be the end of one customer relationship but the beginning of another.

Some survivors are surprised, and a few are shocked, that they are hearing from a collector.

Eric Frenchman, an online consultant, said a DCM agent inquired about his late father’s $50 Discover card balance before the bill was even due. Since Mr. Frenchman had been planning to pay it anyway, he emerged from the experience vowing never to get a Discover card himself.

The major deceased-debt firms say such experiences are rare. Adam Cohen, chief executive of Phillips & Cohen Associates of Westampton, N.J., said his team of 300 collectors “are all trained in the five stages of grief.”

If a relative is more focused on denial or anger instead of, say, bargaining, the collector offers to transfer him to the human resources company Ceridian LifeWorks, where “master’s level grief counselors” are standing by. After a week, the relative is contacted again.

DCM executives say some of the survivors not only gladly pay but write appreciative notes. They offered up a stack, with the names deleted, as proof.

One widow wrote that a collector “was so nice to me, even when I could only pay $5 a month a few times.” Saying that money was “so tight” after her husband died, she added: “It was very hard for me, and to get a job at my age. Thank you.”

40 Days of Lent: Day Seven

Good Deeds

I'm stuck late at work tonight, helping to straighten out my boss' vacation plans, which begin, appropriately enough, on Friday the 13th of this month. I'm thinking about karma, Islam's good deeds, Christian charity, and, of course, being a martyr.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Six

Indulgences Are Back!

Until June 29th of this year, the Vatican is offering indulgences in honor of the 2000th birthday of St. Paul (as opposed to how the Church normally honors St. Paul by having an ambivalent attitude towards women). Unlike the previous indulgences that so upset dreary fussbudget Martin Luther*, you do not have to pay. You simply have to, with sincere heart,

1. make a full confession to a priest (much easier than it was in the days of the Inquisition)

2. pray for the intentions of the pontiff

3. make a pilgrimage to a site dedicated to St. Paul

and you will have some of your time in Purgatory forgiven.

Not a bad deal at all.

_________________________________________
*currently residing in Hell.

40 Days of Lent: Day Five

The Milky Way
Directed by Luis Bunuel

For a number of years, Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Bunuel's film The Milky Way was one of his unknown films. People knew Un Chien Andalou, made with Salvador Dali at the beginning of their careers, The Discreet Charm of The Bougeousis, made towards the end and nominated for an Oscar, and sporadic films in between, but there was a whole category of his films that were talked about but seldom seen. These films were considered either lost classics or failures; The Milky Way being one of the latter. All I could knew was that it was about people on a religious pilgrammage and it wasn't as good as the Bunuel films that followed.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered the first time that I saw The Milky Way that I loved it. I suppose critics at the time were disappointed that it was a straight-forward depiction of religious argument rather than a mocking of the middle-class. It's a film in which everyone talks about Catholic doctrine the way people in the real world discuss celebrities or sports or the news. It's like the movie was made for me: I find the history of heresy and religious arguments endlessly fascinating. The dialogue consists of much of what goes on inside my head all the time, like the voiceovers of another favorite film of mine The Thin Red Line. For me, the key scene is one in which workers at an expensive restaurant are getting ready for that evening's customers but discuss Christian theology as they do.


Bunuel's characters discuss religion the same way Godard's go on endlessly about politics. Reminding the viewer of the number of passionate arguments in the history of religion and of the many now heretical ideas cast out in the name of forming a universal faith, we see how religion has never been a fixed thing, but subject to the arguments of man.


In addition to being an interesting history of heresy, The Milky Way can also be seen as the autobiographical musings of an old surrealist. "Do you want to know why I'm so fascinated with how the unexpected and the supernatural intrude on our mundane lives? Well, I was brought up to believe in a malleable logic that could explained supernatural events." Bunuel's deadpan film style doesn't hold religious arguments up for ridicule: there's something sad, rather than satiric, about characters earnestly arguing about things that can never be proven. The best example of this is the scene where two 18th century noblemen have a duel because they disagree about the notion of free will. Seems funny, but people really did die over such arguments.

40 Days of Lent: Day Four

What? I Believe?

In her comments on yesterday's post, Carol asked: "Um, do you even believe in purgatory?"

So I began thinking about what I believe*, which inevitably reminds me of an old routine by Steve Martin ("I believe in 8 of the 10 commandments"), J. G. Ballard's surrealist manifesto ("the lunacy of flowers...the gentleness of the surgeon's knife"), or the misanthropic rant unleashed by the main character in The Singing Detective ("I believe...not properly labeling fatal poisons"). But do I believe in Purgatory?

No. Or Heaven or Hell, for that matter.

If there is an afterlife, and the fact that I'm willing to even begin this sentence with an "if' separates me from those who are of the "you die, you end, that's that" school, I suspect it echoes this life in that it is an on-going growth process. We come into this life and don't know anything -- infants are not very bright -- but eventually grow, learn and change. It is a fundamental part of our biological, intellectual and (again, this is controversial) spiritual existence. Since life is ongoing change why would the afterlife be stasis? Your place in eternity is going to be determined by, if you're lucky, 80 or 90 years in the physical realm after which, your place is fixed with no hope for movement or improvement? This is too much like a caste system and makes about as much sense.

Instead, I suspect that if any part of an individual continues on after physical death, he/she goes into the next realm as the equivalent of a newborn baby and then has to go through...well, think of it as spiritual diaper training. Just as everyone here has to learn how to not soil themselves, I suspect that if there is a next world, new arrivees are taught by those who have been there a while to do the spiritual equivalent. It is an ongoing learning process, an ongoing growth process, and eventually you evolve into something else.

I believe this view of the afterlife is based on the fact that I like my existence and like learning for its own sake, and would like that process to continue rather than simply end. Purgatory, Hell and even Heaven represent as much of an "end" as "you die, that's that."




______________________________
*Freudian typo (which is a written Freudian slip): Initially, in this sentence "what I believe" was capitalized, but then I decided to make it lower case. While changing the letters, I accidentally typed an "s" instead of a "w" so that it read "shat I believe." I'm sure some of you will agree.

40 Days Of Lent: Day Three

What I Gave Up For Lent This Year

I gave up cursing. I could have/should have given up alcohol, but I already had made plans to visit a friend for drinks, and on Ash Wednesday, no less, so so much for that idea.

How am I doing? Well, okay, although I am aware that I've fallen twice, though each time I was quoting or imaging what someone else might say, so I don't see why their foul language should translate into more days in Purgatory for me.

One of the curses occurred while my friend Clare was telling me about her mother's various dogs. Her mom has a Great Dane, who has learned how to knock on the front door when he wants to be let in. It drives her crazy to answer her front door, only to see the dog standing there wanting to be let in before his time. Even worse, she has begun ignoring knocks at the door, assuming it's the dog, only to find out later that it was either a friend or a deliveryman.

This being Lent, I think the dog who knows how to knock at the door should qualify as a miracle of some sort.

40 Days of Lent: Day Two

Stephen Teaches Sunday School, Motherf***er...

Interesting interview and argument about theology. Best part begins around 4:34.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Philip Zimbardo

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Funny Political News

Christian Bale Parody
Joke of the Day

40 Days Of Lent: Day One

Karma, or Why You Should Forgive People Rather Than Chastise Or Banish Them



Chart depicting Kellogg's reputation dropping from 9th most favorable brand to 83rd after the company ended their contract with Michael Phelps when it was discovered that he smoked marijuana.

Ha ha.

Why, Johnny Can't Read

I’ve had the same New Year’s Resolution for the past two years: take my age and finish that number of books in the calendar year. There were a couple of reasons for this resolution: the most obvious was to force myself to read more, but the second was to have something to consistently write about on this blog. Unfortunately, I failed each goal each year. Perhaps I should have tried this when I was in my twenties; seeing as I’m in my mid-forties, trying to polish off 42 or 43 books in a year is, personally, no easy task.

In 2007, I only finished 28 books. A failing grade, no doubt, but I consoled myself with the fact that I read throughout the year and, better yet, enjoyed a number of books on my list. Any disappointment came from not finding time to post book reports on this site. There were a number of things I was looking forward to discussing, but it seems the time has passed.

If 2007’s report was cloudy with a chance of silver lining, 2008 was a complete washout. Not only did I not finish much that I started (I have 30 pages left in Proust and The Squid. 30 lousy pages! But I haven’t picked it up since November), but looking over what I did read, there’s little that I loved. Perhaps there’s a connection. I’m loath to completely abandon a book. I soldier on with a pigheaded determination to finish what I’ve started, even if I don’t like it. As a teenager, shortly after I began Something Happened by Joseph Heller, a friend told me his father was unable to finish it. In some private act of literary machismo, I was determined to finish the book, inspired perhaps by the fact that my friend’s father was a college English professor. It wasn’t until I finished the book – it took me all summer – that I realized that perhaps my friend’s father was right all along. Something Happened is deliberately repetitious, a statement on the trap the main character finds himself in. I can justify it, but did I have to read all of it?

Apparently yes, and it’s a habit I can’t break. If I begin a book, I have to finish it whether I like it or not. This might be a nice example of commitment, but it also means that some books become blocks. I won’t read something new until the current book is finished and if I don’t like the current book, then I don’t read. The cycle can be as monotonous as the experiences of the main character in Something Happened. O, the irony.

There are other reasons for the sharp decline in number of books I read, and you’re staring at one of them right now: I spend much of my leisure time on the computer or watching television. I don’t feel bad about either of these activities: there are a number of movies or tv shows I want to see (I never random channel surf – the DVR has truly changed how I watch tv and for the better). When I am online, I am reading. But it is a different kind of reading. Text online is closer to magazine-style writing. Easy to comprehend, it consists of facts and, invariably, a heavy dose of attitude. You can read online for a couple of hours, zipping from site to site, only to discover that you’ve retained very little, apart from “this is cool!” or “that sucks!”

So why devote so much time to reading online or watching tv, especially when I have a resolution (which, let’s face it, is like a contract with God) to read so much? Well, I’ve noticed that with visual media (defined here as the computer and tv), my attention is immediately riveted, whereas with literary media (books – comics and magazines are excluded) it takes me a while to settle in to what I am reading. I fidget, I look at the cover for the umpteenth time, I glance at things around the room. It takes time and effort, it’s almost a process, for my attention to be fully pulled by the string of words. But once there, once a book has my attention, I don’t want anything else. Visual media captures my attention more quickly, but the hold is almost never as strong.

I didn’t consciously realize the other reason I wasn’t reading until late in the year. It was simple: I needed glasses. Reading isn’t much of a pleasure when you have to hold a book at arm’s length in order to see, and even then, the words are all soft grey. Something I forgot but instantly recalled was how nice black letters look on a white page. With my glasses on, the text just pops! off the page. It really is a pleasure.

So we’ll see if the third time is the charm. I’ll be 44 this year, so I’m trying to finish and write about 44 books before December 31, 2009. I’m already behind, but at least I’m currently reading (and enjoying) The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano and only have 30 pages left in Proust and The Squid.

25 Random Things About Me (In Which I Finally Hop on the Bandwagon)

This list, like most things lately, has to do with facebook. I received a tag from my college friend Sue Starsinic along with her list of 25 Random Things, and before I could even finish my list, there was an anti-list article on Time.com (the backlash) and a pro-list article on Salon (the backlash to the backlash). Everything moves so quickly nowadays

In any case, here's the list for those not on facebook, and a distraction from the fact that I haven't posted anything here in over two months.

1. I’m a Gemini.

2. I dress to the right.

3. I like books (the objects) more than I like reading (the activity).

4. I believe I’m more at peace with chaos than most people…

5. …however, this doesn’t mean that I crave or seek out chaos: I’m not a sociopath.

6. I don’t believe in Freudian psychoanalytic theory. I think Freud was wrong about almost everything.

7. This list is not as random as it should be: it took me several days and a number of drafts to get it right.

8. I like the cool colors: greens, blues, greys. I don’t like warm colors: reds, oranges, yellows.

9. I painted my kitchen an orange-yellow.

10. I lost my taste for Chinese food after my appendix exploded.

11. I love thai food.

12. I like bars, pub culture, and drinking….

13. …but not as much as I used to.

14. I would like to learn to surf before I die.

15. I believe in love.

16. I believe the world is not so bad.

17. I live more in my head than in my body.

18. I’m not graceful or athletic by any stretch of the imagination, but there are times when I surprise myself and others. Rock-climbing, for example.

19. I’m an Anglophile, especially if you expand “anglo” to include all the lands they colonized.

20. I like email. I don’t like telephones. I don’t like the sounds they make, I don’t like talking on them, I don’t like how they interrupt what you’re doing and I don’t like how, after 11:00pm, they’re harbingers of doom.

21. I sometimes cut my own hair. If you saw me, this would not come as any surprise.

22. I’d rather be deaf than blind. Losing music would be a shame, to be sure, but losing literature, the cinema and all the visual arts would be immeasurably worse. Plus deaf people seem to be an insular, loyal community, whereas blind people need help crossing the street and often knock things over.

23. I believe biology trumps everything: it wins out over sociology, individual psychology, economics and spirituality.

24. I will have fries with that.

25. I don’t like games, apart from Monopoly, Clue, and poker.

Today's Unfortunate Choice of Words

From the article "Amsterdam to Close Many Brothels, Marijuana Cafes"

[City council member] Asscher underlined that the city center will remain true to its freewheeling reputation.

"It'll be a place with 200 windows (for prostitutes) and 30 coffee shops, which you can't find anywhere else in the world — very exciting, but also with cultural attractions," he said.

"And you won't have to be embarrassed to say you came."

"Rove planning to ‘name names’ of Bush haters in his new book."

Hanlon. John Michael.

H-A-N (as in "November") L-O-N (another "November").

Just want to make sure you get it right.


(Story below)

Rove planning to ‘name names’ of Bush haters in his new book.»
Karl Rove is reportedly one of the key architects overseeing the “Bush legacy project,” predicting that the President will be remembered as a “far-sighted leader.” In a new interview with Cox News, Rove rails against all the people in America who never “accepted the legitimacy of George W. Bush,” saying that he plans to call them out in his new book:

Rove sees a presidency clouded by the way it began.

“There were people who never accepted the legitimacy of George W. Bush and acted accordingly,” he said. […]

Also reserved for between the covers of Rove’s book is his checklist of the “great many of the political actors in this town (who) never accepted him as a legitimate president.”

“I’ve got behind-the-scenes episodes that are going to show how unreceiving they were of this man as president of the United States,” Rove said, adding: “I’m going to name names and show examples.”

In the Cox interview, Rove also refused to acknowledge the role of Bush administration officials in various scandals, including the Valerie Plame, instead blaming “Washington partisanship.”

Last Night's Dream

Last night I dreamed that I was back in college, hanging out with college friends. I told them I had been to and seen the future (which was my waking life, my life now) and while it wasn't perfect, it wasn't too bad. I reassured them that even though things wouldn't be what they expected, it wasn't too bad.

More Graffiti Murals From My Neighborhood

06:43 Several Perceptions / 07:43 Remainder

Several Perceptions
Angela Carter

I bought this previously unknown book at The Strand because I love Angela Carter’s work and because the cover features the tarot card from which this website gets its name and that I have permanently marked on my body. It was a sign.

The slim novel takes place in late 1960s London, but it’s not the groovy hippie Sixties. It is a time when social turmoil is happening elsewhere but has left characters everywhere lost and unsure of what to do. The main character Joseph is reminiscent of the directionless and angry young men Dostoyeski wrote about and Carter is able to nail the waste of his nihilism in one sentence: “Joseph had the chance of a fine education but threw it away; he had free choice on the self-service counter and voluntarily selected shit.” He attempts suicide but fails, and the rest of the novel is the rather shaggy-dog story about how he loses his death wish.

It’s the sort of novel in which a large party at the end pairs up various characters, reveals secrets and ties up storylines. It doesn’t come across as contrived due to Carter’s skill and compassion for her characters, even the most unlikable. However, it’s a fairly realistic novel and I missed the rich imagination evident in Carter’s later fantasy or folk-tale based work.


Remainder
Tom McCarthy

Tom McCarthy’s Remainder is also about a man disconnected from the world and his curious attempts to interact. The settlement from a never-explained accident has left the unnamed main character with over 8 million pounds. He spends the money recreating visions and moments of déjà vu, making sure the re-enactments are accurate down to the smallest detail. A simple moment of looking out the window of his apartment becomes a major production involving the purchase of the building, hiring actors to recreate what occurred in his field of vision and other actors to make the ambient noise heard. Everyone is then paid to repeat these actions nonstop, whether they are frying liver or practicing the piano, so that the main character can enter this déjà vu any time he wants.

McCarthy’s work is similar to J. G. Ballard’s novels about men who pursue their unique obsessions in a rational, almost scientific manner. The language of the novel seems quintessentially British: informed and eccentric, surprised by emotions. “Forensic procedure is an art form, nothing less. No, I’ll go further: it’s higher, more refined, than any art form. Why? Because it’s real.” This passage goes to compare forensic procedures to abstract paintings, butterfly wings and cricket. The unnamed main character is obsessed with the real and towards this end, keeps staging imitations. But he doesn’t want the “real” as in the everyday, but the “real” as in transcendent, the feeling gotten during déjà vu in which you are hyper-conscious and aware of everything around you.

Unfortunately, this hyper-consciousness can lead to passages like the following:

“Each time a gun is fired the whole history of engineering comes into play. Of politics, too: war, assassination, revolution, terror. Guns aren’t just history’s props and agents: they’re history itself, spinning alternate futures in their chamber, hurling the present from their barrel, casting aside the empty shells of the past.”

I hate this kind of writing in fiction. Hate it. It shows the influence of Don Delillo, who fills his novels with his “profound” ruminations about What Things Mean. His ideas have never impressed me and strike me as less insightful than they are self-serving and annoying.

Authors who begin with strange premises can trap themselves. Once the premise is explained and disbelief satisfactorily suspended, what then? Return the story to the “normal” and realistic and repudiate what was strange and unique? Repeat, perhaps try to top the oddity that began the story? McCarthy and his character repeat, moving on to new reenactments, and you sense that they are both hoping that some meaning will become apparent. Instead, it just leads to a Very Bad Idea (recreating a bank robbery) that manages to close the novel on a note of suspense rather than philosophizing.

What's New

Beyond the obvious (I voted for him) there's another reason why I'm glad Barack Obama won.

Unlike McCain, Obama ran a campaign without mudslinging, free of dirty tricks. He focused on issues and specifically what he wanted to do if elected, rather than on cynical publicity stunts to impress his party's base and the base in all of us. He treated his listeners as if they were intelligent adults rather than easily frightened children.

Part of our basic moral code as humans is that if you are honest and play fair, you will be rewarded. But such sentiments have no place in politics where it seems those who win are those most clever at deceit and manipulation and are willing to sacrifice anything in their pursuit of power. But every once in a while, I need to see the triumph of those who play fair.

When McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate and subsequently received a rise in the polls (not a double-entendre), the Obama campaign played it smart. Rather than attack her, they bided their time and let her self-destruct as it soon became apparent that, chuztpah aside, she was not qualified for high office.

Watching someone take the high road can sometimes be frustrating. Whenever William Ayers' name was brought up, I thought "why aren't the Democrats making more about Palin's husband belonging to a secessionist organization as recently as two years ago?" Everytime Obama or Biden had to pay lip service to John McCain as a great American, only to be met with McCain's barely hidden contempt and Palin's sarcasm, I wondered "when are they going to stop praising their opponent? That can't be helping." But Obama had to play it cool. Any display of anger or extreme emotion (think of Howard Dean's yell) might have branded him as the Scary Angry Black Man -- lock up the women and children! -- and the election would have been over. It must have been difficult for him at times.

You could argue that Obama never had to play dirty since he was leading in the polls since mid-September; that McCain's tactics were born of desperation (as McCain claimed "if he had just agreed to my proposed town hall meetings, I wouldn't have had to go negative"). But after the last eight years, it's nice to make decisions based on hope rather than fear or despair. Fear is a legitimate reaction in life, but it is not healthy for individuals or societies to live that way for long. Hope and the belief that we can make things better is the more psychologically healthy way to live. Perhaps now we can have the paradigm shift that should have occurred on September 12, 2001 but did not. I'm horrified by all that's happened to bring us to this state (as The Onion puts it: "Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress") but for the first time in eight years, I feel as if being good has triumphed over being cynical.

05:43 Conversations On Consciousness

Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human

Edited by Susan Blackmore

Susan Blackmore spent thirty years trying to find scientific evidence of various paranormal activity (esp, out of body experiences, psychokinesis, etc.) before concluding, as she puts it on her website “I found no psychic phenomena -- only wishful thinking, self-deception, experimental error and, occasionally, fraud.” Her focus then shifted to studying consciousness and her methods changed from scientific experiments and the academic life to research and journalism. “Conversations on Consciousness” is a collection of interviews with neuroscientists and philosophers as they wrestle with the latest discoveries about how our brains work, how thought is created, and who is this “I” that is thinking.

Blackmore asks essentially the same questions to each interviewee, so there is a certain amount of repetition. She is curious about the brain creates consciousness: if we eventually account for how specific functions of the brain create consciousness, then will we have explained away the individual sense of self and free will? The focus of her questions is a “philosopher’s zombie,” a theoretical creature who has all the brain functions of a normal human but does not have corresponding consciousness. Could such a creature exist? I understand the concept and its use: Blackmore is trying to work out if consciousness is just a result of brain activity or if there is something extra, an ingredient X, which different and separate from brain processes. I have to admit, however, I was sick of reading about the philosopher’s zombie halfway through the book, to the point that I mentally cheered at the following comment by philosopher Petra Stoerig:

In fact I hate zombies because there’s so much paper wasted on a thought experiment. I think they are logically possible and they may be interesting in that respect for philosophers – well, obviously they are! But as a biologist I think it’s a waste of all the trees that go into this paper, because it’s not biologically possible; there is not a single being that we know of that’s able to behave like you and me but with nothing inside.

This argument is, in essence, why I’ve studied very little philosophy.

The best explanation of brain activity creating consciousness which doesn’t account for an ingredient X is from John Searle.

So you can summarize the relation between consciousness and the brain by saying, first, brain processes cause consciousness; lower-level neurobiological processes cause conscious states; and second, these conscious states are themselves high-level features of the whole brain system. So it’s a bunch of neural firings that cause the conscious state, but the conscious state is not identified with any particular neuron: you can’t pick one out and say, this one is thinking about your grandmother.

My favorite passage comes from Thomas Metzinger, discussing how philosophical theories of self may effect the real world. It’s a long passage but worth reproducing in full, as it seems to me the heart of the book.

But what I think many people, including many professional philosophers, don’t understand is that nobody ever said self-knowledge is emotionally attractive, or that it cannot also as sobering or outright depressing effects on you.

There are hard theoretical issues, which can only talk about with philosophers and scientists, but they are also what I call “soft issues” and these soft tissues had been making me more and more concerned recently, because I think something is coming towards us as mankind, and it’s coming very fast, and we are not prepared for it.

Let me give you some examples. There is a new image of man emerging out of genetic and neuroscience, one which will basically contradict all other images of man that we have had in the Western tradition. It is strictly unmetaphysical; it is absolutely incompatible with the Christian image of man; and it may force us to confront our mortality and much more direct way than we have ever before in our history. It may close the door on certain hopes people have had, not only scientists and philosophers but all of us, such as that maybe somehow consciousness could exist without the brain after death. People will still want to believe something like that. But just as people will actually still think that the sun revolves around the earth – people whom you basically laugh at it and don’t take seriously any more. So there’s a reductive anthropology that may come to us, and it may come faster than we are prepared for it; it may come as an emotionally sobering experience to many people particularly in developing countries, who make up 80% of human beings, and still have a metaphysical image of man, haven’t ever heard anything about neuroscience, don’t want to hear anything about neural correlates of consciousness, want to keep on living in their metaphysical world–view as they have for centuries.

Now here we come in these rich, decadent, non-believer Western countries, and we suddenly have theories which work very well in medicine and in treating psychiatric disorders, and which say “there is no such thing as a soul,” and “you’re basically a gene- copying device,” and it is not clear what that will do to us. A chasm will open between the rich, educated, and secularized parts of mankind on the planet and those who for whatever reason have chosen to live their lives outside the scientific view of the world, and outside the scientific image of man.

Our image of ourselves is changing very fast, but there’s a problem associated with it: that image, in a very subtle way, influences the way we all treat each other everyday life. One question is, for instance, whether a demystification of the human mind can take place without a desolidarization in society. What has held our societies together and has helped us to behave have been metaphysical beliefs in God or psychoanalysis or other substitute religions like that.

The question is, can science offer anything like that to keep mass societies coherent after all these metaphysical ideas have vanished, not only in professional philosophers and scientists, but in ordinary people as well? If everybody stopped believing in a soul, what effect would that actually have in the way we treat each other? All this may have cultural consequences which are very hard to assess presently; it may have a broad effect on the way we view each other, and it is very important that crude, vulgar kind of materialism is not what actually follows on the heels of this neuroscientific revolution. For this, transported through the media, makes people believe in simplistic ideas such as that human beings are just machines, and that the concept of dignity is empty, and there never has been such a thing as reason, or responsibility.

Not Bragging, Just Saying

So tonight after work I stopped in one of my favorite dive bars in Manhattan, Grass Roots on St. Mark's Place. I have been there countless times before and at one point was enough of a regular that the bartender John would include me in his private jokes that inevitably revolved around the foolishness of other patrons.

So tonight I walked in and the bartender, who has waited on me before, carded me.

I realize this blog is mainly read by those who know me; either my relatives or friends. But for those who have never met me, who landed here by either by happenstance or some strange internet algorithm, let me just point out this one odd fact about being asked for identification to prove that I am old enough to drink legally:

I was born in 1965. I'm forty-three years old, for Christ's sake.

I realize I look younger than my years, but not that young. If I had impregnated someone on my 21st birthday, my child would now be old enough to drink legally.*

Yes, I know I should feel complimented. But tonight I was more worried about the fact I couldn't find my driver's license, given the fact that I have a new wallet and live in New York, which means the license is less important to me than my library card or MoMA membership card.


*Sadly, there was little chance of me impregnating anyone on my 21st birthday. I turned 21 the summer I was living in Ocean City, Maryland, and try as they might, my friends were unable to make my birthday particularly memorable. They had made me a cake but wanted to wait until our friend Amy got home from work before celebrating. Unfortunately, on this evening (June 19, 1986) Amy was late getting home from the restaurant where she waitressed because a family had come in 20 minutes before they closed and no-one else would wait on them. Not because they were late, mind you, but because they were black. After Amy finally arrived, we had the cake and then headed to a bar that had a JRR Tolkien-theme, complete with Hobbits, broadswords and faux old trees. I didn't drive at the time, so I couldn't offer an ID to get free drinks from the bartender and it was early enough in the summer that all my friends were too broke to buy me a drink.

Arrrrgh!

Just discovered today is Talk Like A Pirate Day, everyone.

Or, rather: I just spied that todee be Talk Like A Pirate Dee, scurvy dogs!

Just A Moment Of Self-Righteousness

From Yahoo!Finance and Reuters

Stock Futures Soar On Plans To Stabilize Markets

By Ellis Mnyandu

Stock futures soared on Friday, indicating Wall Street will add to its gains after the best day in six years, as investors cheered a series of sweeping steps by governments worldwide to contain the spiraling credit crisis...

Early Friday U.S. securities regulators joined regulators from other countries in temporarily banning short sales of financial shares...

"The ban on the short sales is what's having the immediate impact on the market. That should calm the market down," said Paul Mendelsohn, chief investment strategist at Windham Financial Services in Charlotte, Vermont.

Oh, wait a minute, so regulation is actually good for markets? De-regulated markets are actually potentially catastrophic to society at large?

Really?

Who'd a thought?


Alright, I'm done.

04:43 Sex And Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons

Sex and Rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons
John Carter

Sex and Rockets is the biography of John Whiteside Parsons, a man so divided in his interests that the author sometimes refers to him as “John” and other times as “Jack,” almost like Highlights magazine’s Goofus and Gallant. Jack Parsons was one of the pioneers of America’s rocket program, responsible for such innovations as the fuel that got our rockets to the moon. John Parsons was an eager, enthusiastic occultist, a follower of Aleister Crowley who strove to establish an occult church in California. Never have the seemingly disparate personalities of “the scientist” and “the magician” existed so clearly within one man; never has the link between science and science fiction been so obvious. Parsons was killed in 1952 by an explosion in his home that has never been fully explained. Was he experimenting with something for rocket propulsion? Was he experimenting with something occult? Was it murder? An accident?

Carter’s book is well researched but unfortunately Carter refrains from offering much insight into Parsons’ personality. The first half of the book details Parsons’ experiments with rockets at a time when most rocket research in the United States was a grassroots effort, conducted by enthusiastic amateurs in their garages or nearby fields. This section is rather dry, relying too much on superfluous details discovered by Carter’s painstaking research.

Not surprisingly, the biography becomes more interesting when Parsons becomes involved with the occult. Gossipy, true, but definitely more interesting. In addition to Parsons’ Oedipal relationship with Crowley and his friendship with L. Ron Hubbard (founder of the Church of Scientology who manages to steal Parson’s wife), there are tales of orgies and other illicit behavior. But it’s not until he summarizes Parsons’ life at the end of the book that Carter offers much insight into the man:

“In contradistinction to the underestimation in the field of rocket science in the aerospace industry, Parsons accomplishments in the arcane sciences have been highly overrated and grossly exaggerated. As a magician he was essentially a failure…He loves Crowley’s “law” (“do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”) but could not adhere to it – though he tried harder than most. He violated the rules, undertook unauthorized and unorthodox magical operations, and claimed the grade of Magister Templi without first completing all the grades below. He couldn’t handle working under authority – his ego was too big. His record of failure is valuable in that regard. He was a great promulgator of Thelemic ideals in his essays, but as an idealist his elitism ruined his work.”

The above image came from Zak Snyder's "Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow." Actually, "Sex and Rockets" would make a good alternative title for Pynchon's novel.

03:43 Backwards Into The Future: The Recorded History of The Firesign Theatre

Backwards Into the Future: The Recorded History of The Firesign Theatre
Frederick C. Wiebel, Jr.

As a child I was acutely aware that there were two worlds: the adult world and the kids world. The adult world was caught only in glimpses, perhaps an overheard conversation on the telephone, or when I would wake late at night and quietly sneak downstairs where my father was watching “The Tonight Show.” I would sit with him and never fully understand what I was watching, but know the broadcast originated from another world, one in which I did not live. This idea of two separate worlds is hard to imagine now; we all live in kids world. As a child, I remember the sense that, once I learned the rules and the codes of the adult world, I would then be an adult.

Other than manners and rules, adults didn’t really teach you about their world. No, you slowly learned the codes and hidden rules from older kids who were further along the transitional path from kids world to adult world. Older kids were objects of fascination because they were still kids, but had more experience and knowledge.

There are things that always remind me of this period of my life: the Marx Brothers, the Beatles, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and the Firesign Theatre. I first heard about all of them from older kids (either my cousins or my friends’ older siblings) whose enthusiasm about them held me spellbound. All four exhibit a combination of sharpness and absurdity, and all four were very funny. They were part of the adult world but also made fun of it. I believe this was when I decided that, in order to make fun of something, you really had to understand it.

The Firesign Theatre is the least known of the four. They were a comedy group consisting of Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman and Phil Proctor, formed in the late 60s. Their primary media were improvised radio shows and surreal, longform stream-of-conscious skits released on albums. One of their most famous skits, “Nick Danger,” is in the form of an old 1940s radio detective show. At the climax, Nick instructs everyone to “take off your…” But you never find out what he was going to say, because the broadcast is interrupted by President Roosevelt, announcing that Pearl Harbor has been attacked by the Japanese. America has met its Date with Destiny and can only offer her unconditional surrender to the Japanese. As a boy heading towards puberty, I couldn’t imagine Nick’s instruction as anything but “take off your clothes!” I remember telling my mother about the skit, and when I got to the interruption, she said without missing a beat: “masks.” When the album was released on cd in the early 90s, Phil Austin wrote in the liner notes that he always thought the missing word was “guns.”

The group’s heyday was roughly 1968 – 1974, after which they succumbed to the personal differences that seem to inevitably sink all group endeavors. They’ve reunited sporadically since then, to varying degrees of success. Backwards Into The Future: The Recorded History Of The Firesign Theatre is a collection of interviews from a fanzine in the 1990s when the group was experiencing a bit of a renaissance. Complaints first, mainly with the book’s production rather than its content. The design is a little amateurish, the photographs look like Xerox copies, and the entire text needed another round of proofreading and editing. Well-known playwright Tom Stoppard’s name is written as “Tom Stofford” and some of the redundancies in the interviews should have been trimmed. I also wish that more recent follow-up interviews had been included. At one point, David Ossman mentions he’s transferring his radio archives to DAT tape and all I could think was “Oh, David, nobody uses DAT anymore,” my heart sinking at his wasted efforts. I would have liked to hear what they think of America’s various fiascos of the last eight years.

However, for fans like myself, the book is a wealth of information. The interviews convey the sense of four older gentlemen looking back on their lives, trying to explain how they came up with such amazing work for a few years and then were not able to anymore. Their work, though satiric of our world, seemed to come from a completely alien one. But this book shows how it was the result of four men dealing with political, social, and personal issues. The fact that they were so funny given the turmoil of the times makes their work that much more impressive. The interviews reveal how their best work was the product of a specific time (the paranoid new-age of the late 1960s) and place (California, where else?).

“Diana Dew, who had invented electric strobe flashing clothing back in the mid – to late 60s…She invested clothes that strobed. There was this translucent plastic material that would retain an electrical charge and glow. She created a line of men’s ties and men’s and women’s unisex belts and disco dresses and vests and things with this potentiometer that was connected to the side of the dress that would work rhythmically. So that if you are on the dance floor you can adjust the beat of your tie so that it would flash in time to the music. One of her dresses, her most startling, was a black – and – white, plastic vinyl dress, with these strips of plastic material, kind of up-and-down zebra like, slatted, and she could maybe go round circle stroke would not only be a rhythm but we go round in circles even, to the right or to the left. It was amazing! It was great stuff, great disco dresses. It ended up the company went bankrupt and she… sold it to Salvador Dali, who bought everything. So that’s the only so-called straight job I ever held.”
- Phil Proctor

There are lots of other little gems in the book: Proctor’s stories about getting high with Cloris Leachman; Peter Bergman referring to Bob Hope as “one of the most successful unfunny men ever to live, but what a trooper;” and David Ossman mentioning “this one guy who was heavily alcoholed (sic) or something in the front row of an audience in Washington DC and Phil Austin had to go ask him to leave because he was yelling continually.” I was at that show, I remember that guy and no, it was not me.

Reading these interviews reminded me of reading the letters of Robertson Davies. These are stories of men moving beyond middle age into old age, looking back and making sense of their time on Earth and once again acting as guides for people like me as we move further into the adult world.