theburrow2.0chicagodrift

Please vote

2012-01-18T07:46:00.000-08:00

I need my friends to help me settle a debate I'm having about how I define myself politically. Please read through this quick list of my positions and vote on how you think I should introduce myself to others (left, center-left, center/moderate, center-right, right). Thank you!

Social issues:
-Gays should have equal rights as heterosexuals (govt. should offer civil unions for all people and stay out of marriage entirely, since marriage is a religious sacrament like unto baptism)
-drugs should be legal (esp. marijuana, although others could also be legalized with restrictions) and taxed
-abortion should be completely legal; waiting periods, ultra-sounds, or excessive regulations which are designed to dissuade or badger women into alternatives should be illegal. There is room, however, for reasonable regulation such as ensuring that women understand their options (as long as such does not entail obvious fear-mongering or pseudo-science).

Environment:
-global warming exists and is man-made. Programs (like cap and trade) meant to stop global warming, however, are simply not worth the cost; they raise energy prices and hurt efficiency without actually stopping warming.
-government should invest significantly into basic science research, particularly in technology like fusion which may reduce the cost of clean energy below that of fossil fuels.
-organic foods are a scam.
-bio-fuels are merely an excuse for government giveaways and don't help the environment.
-"green jobs" are a boondoggle and a waste of tax-payer money. Solyndra is the most extreme example, but is a typical illustration of the waste that such subsidies represent.

Economics:
-income-inequality is not intrinsically a problem.
-America's falling social mobility, however, is a major problem.
-market-capitalism, properly-regulated, is the best economic model.
-America's tax code is shamefully complex and inefficient.
-social security needs to be phased out and replaced with a means-tested alternative.

Military:
-the war in Iraq was the stupidest, most wasteful decision America has made since it invaded Vietnam.
-pre-emptive war is never justified, and will ensure that America is constantly at war and less safe because of it.
-the military is far too large.
-military benefits need to become more generous, but given to a FAR smaller force.

Religion:
-God does not exist, at least in the versions He/She/It is understood by the world's major religions.
-there should be a separation between church and state.

29

2011-02-23T22:29:00.001-08:00

I think I’ll continue the tradition of posting something not-jerky on my blog every year on my birthday. It’ll be like a New Year’s resolution of being nice (which, like any resolution, won’t last more than a month), or a State of the Union speech (so someone is in charge of posting “YOU LIE” in the comments section).

It’s tempting to write this post as if it were a Christmas letter; I could easily put on the warm tone of reflection, recounting the many wonderful changes that have happened to me since my 28th birthday. I could also—as I am wont to do—rave about all of the things about this year have been the absolute best in their respective categories. I have a penchant for superlatives, and I imagine that my birthday posts would be as boring for you to read as they would be for me to write. Every year of my life—with 2 notable exceptions—has been better than the last. I won’t bother making it official by reminding you of that every February 24th. If you want the update on what I’ve done over the past year, I can copy and paste the paragraph from my family’s Christmas letter (which I also wrote). I’ll even attach some adorable pictures of my dogs in their Halloween costumes, if it would float your boat.

I once had an interview with Charles Stoddard, my old stake president. Rather than ask me any questions about school, work, or the weather, he started out by asking me what I did for fun; since everybody has to fulfill their duties, he reasoned, what defines us best is what we do when we don’t have to be doing anything. With that rationale in mind, here is a list of things that I’ve been doing for fun in the last year, and things I would recommend to you as well.

Five movies came out in theaters in the last year that I think are worth recommending:
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Easy A (so I like cheesy high-school flicks. Sue me)
Inception
Toy Story 3
How to Train Your Dragon

I watched 4 TV shows this year that I’d recommend to everybody, namely Pushing Daisies, Modern Family, Battlestar Gallactica, and The Tick. True Blood is trashy and crass, but is also great fun.

I also watched 3 non-documentary movies on Netflix that I think were worth recommending. I’d been hearing that they were good, but didn’t get around to them until just recently.

Zombieland
Mary and Max
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

As always, documentaries make up the bulk of the movies that I watch and would recommend. From best to least best, they are:

Collapse (you have to watch this one, not just listen to it. The subtext is told with the film work. )
Our Daily Bread (is the quietly spectacular German answer to the crappy American food documentaries like Food Inc. that I always complain about.)
Restrepo (up for an Oscar this year. I haven’t seen the others, but this one deserved a nomination)
The Great Happiness Space (as is almost always the case, my friend Lina deserves credit for finding this and passing it on to me.)
The Most Dangerous Man in America (not a brilliant art, but worth watching to frame the Wikileaks phenomenon)
Dogs Decoded: Nova (full of cool factoids and experiments.)
Capturing the Friedmans (depressing, but really well-made)
How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (they really did a lot with very little on this one)
Blood in the Face (A movie with Michael Moore that doesn’t suck)
The Garden (warning: this will make you hate humanity)
The Union (worth watching, especially if you don’t yet believe that drug war needs to end)
Born Rich (Solidly made, but not life-changing)
Waiting for Armageddon (watch Jesus Camp instead, if you haven’t seen it. If you liked Jesus Camp, this one is worth watching.)
Atheism Tapes (these are good fodder for discussion, but aren’t intrinsically all that great. They’re a good starting point, but will leave you cold if you’re hoping for a complete argument or a refutation of specific points. Still, they’re short and worth listening to.)

I’d also recommend watching The Daily Show for kicks and giggles and reading The Economist for news, finding an Indian restaurant that sells Papdi Chaat, and watching Mitch Daniel’s speech from CPAC.

On food: my mother-in-law improved on the german pancakes recipes I’ve always used (she cooks hers with 1½ C. milk, 6 eggs, 1 C flour, salt, and vanilla and cooks it at 425, instead of 350. I’ve been experimenting with putting the brown sugar, apples, and pecans below the batter or above it and at various stages of cooking, but still haven’t found something worth passing on yet), I’ve started making Nutella gelato, and have started cooking my own dog food as well. If you have a picky dog, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll forward along the recipes my friend Megan sent me that I’ve been using.

Oh, and documentary recommendations make excellent birthday gifts.

abortion

2011-01-19T08:05:00.000-08:00

One of the most common questions people ask me is whether I think abortion should be legal. Although I’ve recently read some great argumentation on both sides of the debate, it has either been too simplistic or too long to pass off as my own opinion. I will try and be concise with my opinion, but will answer any more nuanced arguments or questions any of you may have. Some of my positions have recently changed, so I’d be curious to know what those of you think who I’ve debated with previously.

I believe that a pregnant woman should have sole discretion and absolute authority in determining whether to abort a fetus or to carry it to term. This right is derivative of the fact that no other person beside the mother and no current technology can provide life to a growing fetus. The right to control one’s own bodily resources holds, even if we consider a zygote a full human, as I will attempt to show. Although this caveat will make more sense later, this paradigm does not justify partial-birth abortions, and I do support laws banning that practice.

Although I do not believe that a zygote should be considered a full-blown human, my position on abortion is not contingent upon this definition. For purposes of my explanation, I will consider zygotes as humans, possessing all rights and privileges that any other human has.

Living in Chicago, I am frequently asked for money by beggars. I often don’t carry much cash (after having been mugged), but I usually give any spare coins I have in my pockets. I take it for granted, however, that I am not legally required to give, no matter how desperately the person asking me needs the money. Even if, for example, I alone had the power to save the life of a fellow human being, I would submit that only a terrible law would mandate that I actually do so. If my freedom to withhold spare change is guaranteed, it should go without saying that my right to keep both of my kidneys—and let’s face it, almost any of us could save a life right now by donating our extra kidney—goes without saying. We can argue all day about whether it’s moral or ethical to refrain from giving, but no brightline of ethicalness exists which should suddenly trump legal rights. What if, for example, you could save 100 lives by killing an innocent person and sharing out their organs to those who need them? Should it be legal to do so? What number of lives would justify such a killing?

I would submit that the freedom to deny an unborn child the right to life is equally absolute as the right to keep both kidneys.

I have heard many compelling arguments which attempt to define the rights of a child based on the intentions and responsibility the mother showed in beginning the pregnancy. A woman who is raped, for example, would have more rights to abort than a woman who willingly practiced unprotected sex. A full gamut of responsibilities and regulations may exist based on the intentions of the mother, the actions she took, and her level of knowledge about the risks she was taking. Although these arguments make logical and legal sense to me, I personally think they are too fraught and complex to be useful or practicable.

In keeping with my philosophy of radical choice, I think that the woman should also have the unabridged right to determine whether the life within her should legally be protected as a human or not. If a woman is planning on carrying a fetus to term, someone who purposely causes her to lose her pregnancy could be responsible for manslaughter. That, ultimately, should be her choice, however, and not merely a function of statute.

If I woman decides that she no longer wants to carry a child at a point when it could survive without her, she should only have the right to induce parturition or have a C-section. If the child can and does survive after separation, she would have no more right to kill it than she would to kill you or me. If giving birth or even having a C-section would prove an unreasonable danger to the mother, more radical abortive procedures would be justified under the same laws that allow for killing another person in the name of self-defense. Again, even considering the fetus fully human does not change this.

I don’t mean to imply in any way that discussing rights is somehow simplistic or clean. Should fathers have a legal right to veto an abortion, since the baby is genetically half his? What about the state’s vested interest in having more children? Although I firmly believe that a woman’s right to control what she does with her own body is a more fundamental right than either of these, I can understand how others—especially those who believe that a fetus has an immortal soul—might weigh another set of rights above a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. I ask only 2 points of consideration from those who want to discuss abortion:

First, allow each person to define their own advocacy. It’s rhetorically effective to demonize your opponent and define for them what they believe—“you are pro-life because you hate women” or “you enjoy killing babies so you’re pro-choice”—but it’s not accurate or helpful in any way. Just because it’s harder to actually engage your opponent than it is to make things up about what you assume they believe, it doesn’t make it honest or responsible to do so.

Second, try to define exactly what you think should be done on a policy level, and be ready to discuss the implications from the extreme cases. If you believe that every fetus deserves the right to be born, do you believe that we should mandate that all fetuses in IVF clinic freezers be implanted in women so they have the chance to be born? How, if at all, do the circumstances surrounding conception define the rights of women or fetuses? What are the disadvantages of allowing unfettered and absolute access to abortions? Should pro-life medical professionals be exempt from performing abortions? What about when the life of the mother is in serious danger?

As with almost any topic, 1000 words doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of what could be said. I’ve promised myself that I’d only spend 2 train rides on this topic, however, so I’m going to leave it at this. Cheers.

Obama's Spine

2010-05-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

The overriding narrative that the Bush administration gave us was that the world changed on 9/11. Sure. The events of 9/11 were undeniably the most horrific thing that has happened to American civilians on our own soil that we didn’t inflict on ourselves (i.e.-the civil war). Many conservative pundits, as well as my conservative friends, however, are quite overselling the change that took place on 9/11, trying to unfairly re-write pre-9/11 history to make Obama look bad and Bush look good (an ambitious project, I will admit).

This post will attempt to address Ann Coulter's post from May 5, and the subsequent discussion I had with my friend Garth about it on Facebook.

Here, in simplified form, is the syllogism that some conservatives make about Obama’s softness on terror:

1) Before 9/11, nobody could have known that America was at risk to terrorist attacks.
2) After 9/11, Bush got tough on terror (the Patriot act, Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.), which has kept us safe ever since.
3) Obama “has no spine” and is weak on terror.
4) Any terrorist attacks on America are derivative of Obama’s weakness and vindication of Bush’s tactics.

I have a few arguments to point out to debunk this annoying set of arguments:

1)
The distinction between pre- and post-9/11 America is a logical fallacy of the first degree. An attack on NYC was neither unprecedented nor unpredictable; 9/11 wasn’t even the first time that the World Trade Center had been targeted.

This said, conservatives are right to argue that Bush was not personally culpable of any gross negligence or conspiracy as regards 9/11. While I do not think very highly of Bush’s skills or even his work ethic, I have seen the evidence presented by both sides that 9/11 was actually preventable, and I think that the problems were systemic, not individual, unfortunate, but not negligent.

The subtle and underhanded logical slip comes when conservatives want to look closely at the run-up to 9/11 in order to forgive Bush, but then do not afford that same diligence to the Christmas day attempt or the Times Square attempt. Bush can’t be held responsible for allowing 9/11 because he could not have done anything personally to prevent it. Obama, however, is damned for anything that happens between 2009 and 2012, regardless of what he could or could not have done about it. If Coulter and Hannity can repeat it into the void enough times without anybody challenging it, however, people will inevitably accept it, even though it’s dishonest and misleading.

2)
The efficacy of Bush’s anti-terrorist policies is still a matter of debate. Although compelling arguments exist on both sides of the discussion (on the one hand that an aggressive approach dissuades potential terrorists from violence or on the other that injustices perpetrated in the War on Terror radicalizes moderates and affected family members to take up terrorism), the logical flaw in this argument is that we can conclude that Bush’s policies are the reason for our span of relative peace, or that any terrorist events must be the result of our deviations from them. This is the same weak-headed logic which causes people to think that antibiotics cure viral infections, homeopathy does anything, or vaccines cause autism. This is, perhaps, why so many people who believe these logical fallacies are also so willing to accept their political equivalents. Ad hoc ergo proper hoc is not sound logic. Furthermore, the likes of Giuliani have to ignore the Richard Reid attempt or the attack foiled in Britain to even make this argument; I can’t decide whether he’s overtly dishonest or just stupid.

3)
This argument is annoying not only because the facts actually refute it completely, but because it would be a fallacious argument even if the facts didn’t contradict it.
Obama has greatly increased the use of drones against suspected terrorists in Pakistan, he’s upped the ante on the war in Afghanistan, and he’s had numerous successes in taking out ranking members of terrorist groups in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Anyone who wants to call Obama weak on terror must ultimately ignore the actual things he’s done and instead focus on his rhetoric or his, GASP!, bowing to world leaders.

Rather than contradict the so-called indictments against Obama that he’s rhetorically weak on terror or too conciliatory with our enemies or rivals, I’ll instead make the more important argument which often gets overlooked in this discussion: the rhetoric of the American president is not an important factor in recruiting terrorist attacks against America or American interests. Anyone who argues otherwise is selecting their cases in a dishonest and selective way (for example, was the bombing in Beirut the result of Reagan’s pussyfooting around with terrorists?), or doing so without any evidence at all, relying on the partisan I’ll-accept-anything-that-Hannity-tells-me-ness of their listeners.

If anybody would like to try and make the argument that trying KSM in NYC is somehow going to anger terrorists, I’d love to see your internal logic. Keep in mind, however, that in order for the trial to be the cause of the attacks, you’d have to argue that these terrorists would not have wanted to bomb NYC before the trial, but would make the attempt if the trial took place. I’ll wait.

4)
This is an ad hoc ergo propter hoc argument waiting to happen. For those of you who weren’t paying attention, the Bush administration made no such claims until they were out of office. When their tenure was over, however, Cheney immediately began claiming that it was his and Bush’s policies which had prevented another attack. They had found the magical incantations necessary to keep us safe, and anything that went wrong from January 2009 until the end of time was no longer Bush’s fault. Rather than refute this unsound argument, I’d like to just pose a few questions for you to consider: what specifically did the Bush administration do to tighten up the no-fly lists (which may have prevented the underwear bomber from attempting his attack, and would have also stifled Faisel Shahzad’s near escape)? Did the Bush administration do anything to increase security in NYC that would, for example, have prevented an inept Pakistani-American from leaving a car bomb in Times Square? Do Bush or Cheney deserve credit or blame for Richard Reid’s failed attacks?

Even Ann Coulter is too smart to rely on such inane argumentation. I conclude that she manages to sell such garbage to her followers (full disclosure, I actually like Ann Coulter and think that she’s both a good writer and an insightful commentator on certain, albeit limited, issues) because it’s what they already want to hear. If she were to honestly call out Bush for his ineptness or forgive Obama for things that aren’t really his fault, we’d have a much better dialogue about terrorism in this country. Unfortunately for Ann Coulter, however, she might not get the attention or book deals that make her so much money if she were to do what’s best for America. Pundits make their money by selling irresponsible half-truths. In a reasonable and rational discussion of the issues, Ms. Coulter would probably not have a place at the table.

on dark urine

2010-04-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

In the past few months, friends and family have e-mailed me links advocating quack science of all kinds. Of all of the things that pass my view that I want to comment on, the quack science claims lauding vitamin megadosing, organic foods, natural cures, perpetual motion machines, healing crystals, magical thinking, or young-earth creationism tend to rile me up the most. Unfortunately for me, however, I find myself consistently unhappy with my own writings on these topics. I often write posts during one sitting, let them ruminate overnight (as is often my M.O.), and realize the next day that I have managed to be both condescending and insulting to my friends and family I am trying to persuade and also essentially unpersuasive.

As it turns out, I am not a great science writer. As passionate as I feel about the value and importance of science, I am not particularly skilled at explaining how and why science is important, and why it makes me so angry that people make so much money by selling false hopes and worthless medical products.

And so I hope you'll take 17 minutes to let Michael Specter's TED talk do it better than I can.

http://www.youtube.com/v/7OMLSs8t1ng&hl=en&fs=1

Some day I may be up to the important challenge of convincing my friends and family not to waste their time, money, and energy on ginko, echinacea, acai, and organic foods. I hope to also prevent them from falling victim to anti-vaccination dogmatism, conspiracy theories, or global-warming alarmism. Until I can find a way to do all of this without angering and offending all of the people I love, however, I think I'll probably stick to 500-word diatribes about contemporary politics, religion, and philosophy; you know, the topics people don't take so personally.

A further revision for the DSM IV

2010-04-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

I need to interrupt my series on the Great God debates to give a shout out to my friend Bruce.

Bruce is a friend from the BYU debate team. While he and I never debated either as partners or against each other at any tournaments, we did always debate fiercely controversial topics on the car rides to every tournament. Although we were very much on different poles of the spectrum on almost every issue when we first met, we’ve both become more pragmatic and moderate as we’ve gotten older, and we actually agree on most things now, and for the same reasons.

Yesterday, however, he pulled off masterfully what I’ve been trying and failing to do for months. I still can’t say whether he’s done it on purpose, or if this was similar to inventing penicillin, but if his method turns out to be reproducible, he may go down in history as the discoverer of the cure for a very serious mental disease.

To make a long story short, he may have cured Obama Derangement Syndrome.

For those of you who have been paying attention to any conservatives or their news sources, you may have been under the impression that the Second Coming of Christ is only days away. Democracy is dead. Capitalism is dead. The American dollar is worth less than the Zimbabwe dollar. Socialism has triumphed. Your freedoms have all been revoked. Obama has single-handedly turned the well-oiled machine of an economy that Bush built and turned it into Russia’s economy circa 1988. Obama needlessly destroyed our government-interference-free utopia of a health care system and replaced it with U.N.-led death panels. In fifteen short months, America has been transformed from an Emersonian paradise into an Orwellian nightmare.

Some of you may not have heard that America is in its final death throes. You might not even believe that others are being so dramatic about it as I am implying. If this is you, I’d urge you to listen to Glenn Beck tonight. Turn on Rush Limbaugh. Shoot me an e-mail and I’ll copy and paste dozens of Facebook status updates from the past week.

So what is this magical cure? How can you convince your friends and loved ones to unload their guns and step away from the brink of an aneurysm? The technique is quite brilliant, actually. Send them to this link. In this piece, an American ex-patriot regales you with dozens of foolish reasons why America is worthless. The author urges you to immediately flee the sinking ship that is America for better countries, of which there are apparently scores.

Suddenly, and without warning, the same people who have been decrying America and Obama will begin to defend him. They will take back all of the apocalyptic and unsupportable pessimism in order to rebuff the unsupported and apocalyptic claims made by an America-hater.

And it will make you smile.

And so, Bruce, I congratulate you on curing our Republican friends of their temporary hatred of America. If your technique works just as well on lefties who blame Bush for 9/11, I might seriously consider nominating you for a Nobel Peace Prize (although apparently that award doesn’t have any cachet anymore either). If nothing else, I award you an honorary degree in civil psychology. Congratulations.

Great God Debates: Part II

2010-03-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

Generalizations and labels are tricksy for me. While I can see the value in generalized scientific claims like “an alkyl halide reacts with an alcohol in an Sn2 reaction” or “copper is an efficient conductor of electricity,” claims like “tomatoes are good” are markedly more problematic. Are all tomatoes good? What exactly does “good” even mean? Isn’t context important, especially in matters of taste?

I should have known that my attention to nuance and definitions would have caused problems in a debate over whether God exists or not, or whether religion is good for the world and its followers or not. All too frequently, the actual theme of the debate wouldn’t come up until the third or fourth speech. The debates were interesting, but they fundamentally fail when no specific questions can be asked or answered, since no position or thesis has to be defended.

The atheists did a horrible job of pinning down Dinesh D’Souza to a particular belief and then hammering him on it. When they mocked Jehovah as a bronze-age genocidal tyrant, D’Souza smoothly told them to talk to a rabbi about it, not him, since the Old Testament is a Jewish, not a Christian holy book. When they criticized the Catholic conception of the pope, D’Souza calmly explained that he, along with most Catholics, does not really believe in papal infallibility. Time after time, the atheists would criticize a common belief and put it to scorn, only to find that D’Souza was unwilling to stand by that belief himself.

While I was listening to the debates on God, I was endlessly impressed with Dinesh D’Souza’s style, skill, and charm. His debate tactics were first-rate; he had a way of convincing you he was answering the charges against him, even when he was utterly ignoring them. After every speech he gave, I felt like he was under control and would have my vote, even when I disagreed with some of his points.

The drawback of such a style, however, is that it leaves me cold once the charisma is forgotten. While I felt at the time that D’Souza won all but one of his debates hands down (the exception being Peter Singer’s), his message has none of the staying power that the atheist’s did because he never clearly staked his ground and defended it. I know what brands of Christianity D’Souza doesn’t believe in, but not which ones he does. He is agnostic about whether a resurrection will take place (and rightly demands that the atheists take the same position), he admits that a belief in Christ is not absolutely necessary for salvation, and he acknowledges that liberal humanism can serve as a basis for pro-social behavior (though he doubts it will ultimately last, and asserts that it owes its origins to religion). This moderate world view has the advantage of being, in all likelihood, true. It also avoids the polemic absurdities of his opponents who claimed that religion has always done far more bad than it has good. What it does not do, however, is justify or defend the type of religion that most religious people actually follow. I mentally voted for D’Souza after almost every debate. In so doing, however, I was silently agreeing that religion really should occupy only a peripheral place in daily and societal life. In refusing to argue with the often justified barbs of his adversaries, D’Souza retreated to an amorphous position where God, even if He or She does exist, is essentially worthless. He may have won the battles, but Dinesh D’Souza definitely lost the war.

Great God Debates: Part I

2010-03-27T15:34:00.000-07:00

I never thought I’d say this, but I’m sick of debating politics. Although I’ve been trying to quell the false notion that Americans are somehow universally opposed to the health care bill that passed, that we’re living in a socialist police state, or that the second coming is only hours away, Nate Silver has pretty much already said everything I’ve been wanting to say better than I can.

Instead, I want to discuss some of the arguments I’ve been thinking about since listening to around a dozen hours of debates between D’Souza and various atheists. I’ve waited about a week since I listened to the debates before writing any of my thoughts down. Rather than be bogged down in the procedural minutia of the debates or even my impressions of who won, I wanted to focus my responses to the broad focus of the questions being discussed and those arguments that have stuck with me.

The adversarial system of debate has its advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, these debates avoided what I call the Colmes problem; both sides were represented by equally intelligent, prepared, and devoted debaters. Additionally, both sides also avoided the easy-out option of agreeing to disagree or finding an ecumenical peace. While such an agreement may be the ultimate goal of watching such a debate, I believe that moderatism should be borne of a fair consideration of good arguments from both sides, not the contention-is-of-the-devil-so-we-shouldn’t-talk-about-controversial-things intellectual laziness that I’ve seen so much.

The major drawback of the debate model is that both sides have incentive to make arguments they don’t necessarily believe are true, simply because they are effective. In debate, making arguments which are untrue, but which take a long time to debunk, is called “spreading.” I saw far too much of this coming from both the Atheists and D’Souza. What’s worse, however, there were debates where some of these arguments went unaddressed, meaning that an argument that the debater knew was untrue (as shown by the fact that in other debates he acknowledged that it was misleading) stood out in the audience’s mind as being accurate.

In the interest of keeping close to my 500-word goal for each post, I will not address my most serious concerns with the debates now; those merit their own posts. There are a few quick judgements worth noting, however:

Hitler may have been a closet atheist, but the outward religious message he used to sell his philosophy deserves at least part of the credit for the Third Reich, Mr. D’Souza.

The USSR, on the other hand, was actively antithetical to religion, even though it tolerated it. Atheists: do not try and dispute that Stalin is yours. It only makes you less credible when you correctly disown Hitler.

Faith, as it is defined by D’Souza, is actually a useful category. He is right that science is based upon it, and he lays a fine theoretical foundation for the value of faith in a god. I disagree with his specific application of his faith into Pascal's wager, but I think he gets the first half of his argument exactly right.

Drama!

2010-03-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

Every time I pass a group of tweens I am filled with a deep sense of shame and sorrow. For all of my attempts to deny that I, myself, used to be eleven years old, emotional, awkward, and embarrassing in public, my memories always convict me in my conscience. I was there, after all.

In my calmer moments I realize that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being eleven. Sure, I was a dweeb in the early nineties. There's no reason to feel particularly guilty at having acted my age, is there? When I got a little older, I put most drama behind me. I grew up.

For me, drama is any time we give more emotional importance to a situation than is helpful or warranted. Billy just broke up with you? Crying about it some or eating a whole pan of brownies is a commensurate response to the emotional pain. Claiming that the world is going to end because you were dumped, slitting your wrists, or drinking an entire fifth of vodka would be overly-dramatic. You can find another boyfriend, but only if you don’t die from alcohol poisoning.

For as much as I profoundly love having conversations with people about politics, the drama is reaching epic, almost middle-school proportions. I'd like us all to try this simple breathing exercise.

Breathe in slowly over the course of five seconds. Hold your breath for two full seconds. Breathe out over the course of five seconds. Repeat.

While you're doing that, please allow me to clarify a few basic facts about democratic government. For those of you who suffered from Bush Derangement Syndrome (believing that Bush personally planned 9/11, that Cheney literally comes from Hell, or that Rove is an evil-genius), this applies equally to you. I will copy and paste this post next time the Republicans are in power.

1) We live in a democratic republic. We elect congresspeople, senators, and the president. These men and women ultimately make laws.
2) America has been like this for a long time. This system is not new.
3) There are always disagreements on almost every issue. Although you may think that you have the 100% absolute and indisputable truth about something, I guarantee that an equally intelligent, upstanding, and articulate American citizen fundamentally disagrees with you on that point.
4) That person has as much of a right to believe their opinion as you do yours.
5) That person is not horrible for disagreeing with you, nor does he or she deserve to be unfairly slandered.
6) You deserve that same protection when your party is back in power.
7) In case you didn't notice, about half the country was disappointed with your side being in power last time.
8) America, democracy, and apple pie didn’t come to an end when Bush made mistakes. It won’t now either.
9) This isn't your country any more than it is mine. It's ours. Equally. Any intimation otherwise is just offensive.

Now I understand that many people hate Obama's health care plan. I understand that almost all of us hate Congress. We're all justifiably worried that things aren't quite right with the world or with our government.

But for goodness sakes, get some perspective. This isn’t a nuclear holocaust. This isn't the end of democracy. Obama isn’t the anti-Christ. The sky isn't falling. You'll get another boyfriend.

Now go make yourself a plate of brownies.

you're to blame for making me mad

2010-03-07T18:16:00.000-08:00

A thought experiment:

My religion insists that nobody should ever wear yellow clothes. One day, I see you wearing a yellow shirt. In my religious fervor, I demand that you burn your yellow clothes, join my church, and give my god all your money. You refuse, so I kill your family.

Who is to blame for the death of your family members?

Obviously, there is a distinction between reason and a responsibility. The reason I killed your family is because you were wearing yellow. I, however, am responsible for my actions, even if you could have theoretically prevented it by acceding to my demands. You had no way of knowing how I would enforce my god's rules. Furthermore, you like the color yellow, and you rightly place significant value on your freedom to wear whatever color shirts you like, regardless of what crazy people like me demand you wear.

My previous post addressed D'Souza's claim that liberals are more to blame than conservatives for 9/11. I argued that conservatives, since they equally participate in activities like pornography use and divorce, wear just as many yellow shirts, as it were, as liberals do.

For the purposes of today's post, I don't really care which political wing in America angers crazies more. If you believe that all conservatives honor their marital vows and are all heaven bound and that all liberals are heroine-using pornographers, it won't make a difference for today's arguments.

Mr. D'Souza rejects political considerations like America's support of Israel as being the primary impetus for the 9/11 attacks. Although I disagree with him, I accept his premises while analyzing his argument.

There is a distinction between pragmatic ideas and categorical blame. The FAA could have implemented better security before 2001 which may have prevented the attacks of 9/11. THE FAA's failings were sins of omission, imperfections manifested by imperfect institutions and people.

The sin of commission on 9/11 was the wanton barbarity of 19 murderers and those who purposely helped them. They alone bear the guilt and responsibility for these heinous acts.

Passing blame from the hijackers to people who wear yellow shirts or who could have appeased unjust demands is an implicit forgiveness of those how actually committed the crimes.

It is only possible to forgive the 9/11 murderers if you empathize with their rationale for committing those acts.

If you believe that 9/11 was misguided vengeance for murdered Arabs, the actions are at least understandable; unforgivable, but understandable.

I refuse to empathize with the urge to kill someone else because they are wicked. We Americans owe the false god of these psychopathic men absolutely nothing. We will wear yellow shirts if we choose. We allow freedom of speech, even if such allows the creation and distribution of pornography on the internet. We reserve the right to believe in our own god, or none at all, if that is what we decide.

If you do not wish to have MTV or Hollywood pollute your youth, ban it in your own countries. If you do not wish to be corrupted by pornography, avoid it; I have done so my entire life, even though it is readily at hand.

You are not free to try to convert Americans to your particular beliefs through violence and terror. I do not care how strongly you believe that you are correct. I do not care what your god wants or expects from me. Let your god punish me directly, if he is displeased with me. I will not lie down and allow you to punish on his behalf, just because you believe it just.

I used to think that every American would stand behind these notions of freedom of religion 100%. It was, in my view, the very quintessential element of what it meant to be an American.

Mr. D'Souza has proven this hope wrong, however.

Shame on you, Mr. D'Souza, for trying to blame the horrors of 9/11 on Americans who use their God-given freedom to wear what they want.

The Enemy at Home

2010-03-02T08:13:00.000-08:00

I just finished listening to Dinesh D'Souza's The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and its Responsibility for 9/11. I downloaded it from Audible after my friend Jon, a self-described conservative whose opinions and fairness I trust, spoke highly of D'souza.

To put it mildly, I was underwhelmed by Mr. D'souza. Before I can even engage in most of the issues he raised in this work, I feel like I have to decode a number of rhetorical tricks he's trying to play, and even square basic definitional problems.

I take the task of being fair and balanced very seriously. While I intend on devoting at least one more post to Mr. D'souza's arguments, I am worried about coming off as overtly liberal in my criticisms. For my conservative friends, please be aware that I have also listened to Howard Zinn's History of the United States, and found it equally lacking. If you take issue with this series of book reviews, please know that I’m not attacking you. If I get riled up, it is because I thought I was engaging a respectful, careful theorist, and instead got half-baked talking points.

The most damning criticism I could give of this book would be to point out Mr. D'souza's failed attempt to define "cultural left." Although he gives numerous examples of ideas he takes issue with, as well as politically liberal politicians who champion those ideas, the essential root of cultural liberalism is what religious conservatives call "sin." Although the thesis of the book can be analyzed further by merely replacing all uses of the world "left" with "sin," the intent of the book evaporates if you do so. This book is not a universal call to religious and cultural repentance, it is an attempt to blame a political movement for the collective "sins" of the entire nation. Although he admits the glaring fact that political party is neither a cause, nor a predictor of sins like divorce--self-described liberals and self-described conservatives have similarly high rates--he attempts to blame the sins of conservatives on the cultural influence of liberals and their Godlessness. Since liberals are to blame for changing social gender roles, and since they continue to fight for a further decline in cultural patriarchy, THEY are to blame when conservatives cannot or will not live their own religions well.

Here's a dialogue between a conservative and God, as imagined by D'souza:
"You don't understand, God, I WOULD have kept the commandments, but my neighbors were always talking about how fun sinning was"
"You know, you're right! Even though you committed just as much sin as they did, you always talked a lot about how righteous you were, and how righteous all people SHOULD be. There has to be bonus points for drawing near to me with your lips, right? Come on, son, let’s go torture Hillary Clinton."

If you’re offended, I’m sorry to parody the final judgement like that. Given the wild illogicality of the idea I am critiquing, however, satire was the only tool strong enough to do the trick. Has anybody read this book? Am I being unfair? If any of you want to defend D’souza, we can probably find a way for you to log on to my audible account and listen to the book—not that I can recommend it.

repetition is not the same as an argument

2010-02-25T11:51:00.000-08:00

I do not eat organic food.

It's not that I categorically oppose spending $2 for red peppers. I already spend a significant amount of money on food, and it's not that I would stop buying or eating produce if I suddenly had to pay the organic price.

It's also not that I think organic food is any worse than normal produce. Actually, I can't tell the difference between organic and non-organic produce; I'd be willing to bet that none of you could tell the difference either.

My problem with organic food is that it's a political distinction which masquerades as a health distinction.

Let me be clear: organic food is not healthier than non-organic food. Scientific studies have confirmed this fact. If any of you doubt this, or have evidence to the contrary, please let me know and we can discuss it further.

What I have found, however, is that all sorts of people--journalists, hippies, and even scientists--will acknowledge that organic produce is no healthier than regular produce when pressed with the facts, yet continue to use the use the word as an equivalent for "fresh" or "raw" produce.

In a documentary I just watched, the film makers were trying to offer solutions to America's unhealthy lifestyles. One of their solutions is that schools should stop selling cheese fries and coke for lunches, and start offering real food alternatives, including lower-fat, higher-nutrition meals made with fruits and vegetables. I am personally a HUGE fan of such proposals.

The crime that this documentary film made, however, is one that I see being made increasingly more by careless people: the program's chef stressed the fact that he only feeds the kids organic foods, yet he ignored the more salient facts of his diet. While I do not take issue with this chef's political passion for sustainable farming methods, local foods, or a pesticide-free world, why did he have to muddy the waters of the argument by bringing in something completely tangential to the point? The kids in his program are not healthier or happier because they are eating organic produce instead of conventionally-grown produce, they are healthier because they are eating low-fat, low-cholesterol diets with sufficient vitamins and fiber instead of Twinkies.

I'm not sure whether this mistake is being made on purpose, a calculated effort to instill an unproven fact into the minds of uncritical listeners, or whether it's simply well-meaning, yet ultimately negligent act.

Whatever the answer to that question, the fact remains that the filmmakers are doing more harm than good to their stated goal. Some schools will be dissuaded from implementing healthier school lunches because they're unable to afford the jacked-up organic prices, and don't realize that conventional produce is JUST AS GOOD. Someday Little Debby will come out with organic Creme Pies. Some poor sod will eat even more of them because he thinks that they're healthier for being made with organic sugar.

Mostly I'm just annoyed that the repetition of a lie somehow replaces arguments or proof for something.

Nostalgia

2010-02-24T09:13:00.000-08:00

Today is my 28th birthday.

For those of you who know both me and my brother well, you know that of the two of us, he is the more nostalgic of the two of us by far. He journals diligently, puts together beautiful compilation books of his images and sentimental items, and makes wonderful lists which summarize his activities or favorite things.

I'm generally suspicious of sentimentality. It leads otherwise intelligent people to accept the flagrant lie that things used to be better, to see the past as a golden age where everything was simpler or somehow more moral. Observe. Furthermore, the high-schoolish mentality to divide into warring factions based on musical preference, fashion sense, or even age (or school year) has always seemed pretty dumb to me. Sentimentality needs to be kept in a safe box, defining us and giving us our own signature set of preferences and ideas, yet not unnecessarily balkanizing us into hateful clans.

Every once in a great while, I indulge in uncharacteristic sentimentality. I made myself deviled eggs this morning because I wanted something that I had fond memories of, but which I hadn't eaten in a long time. I wanted to post something today about health care reform, Glenn Beck's offensive CPAC speech, my annoyance with the organic foods movement, or give a book report on some books I've read lately (Wingnuts by John Avlon is fabulous, by the way). After making a list of documentary films for my friend Lina, however, I've been in a list-making mood. I think I'll keep things friendly for my birthday, following a tradition my sister often follows on her blog, I'll include a list of things that I love, rather than only things that are wrong with the world. Today seems as good a day as ever.

Here's a list of my favorite movies from the last decade:
20. The Village
19. Volver
18. Amélie
17. Snatch
16. X2: X-Men united
15. Children of Men
14. Unbreakable
13. Bourne Identity
12. Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
11. Spy Game
10. The Hours
9. Once
8. Goodbye Lenin!
7. Wall-E
6. Brick
5. Royal Tenenbaums
4. Spirited Away
3. Mean Girls
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
1. Fountain

Other favorite movies that weren't mentioned above (sorry Lina, this isn't as artistic of a list as the one you provided):
The Man Who Planted Trees
Run Lola Run
The Seventh Continent (warning: Haneke films are prone to bruising your soul)
The Incredibles (The best family movie ever)
Meet Joe Black (no snide comments, please. I realize that you probably think this movie is boring, but I still think it's one of the most beautiful films ever. So there.)
You've Got Mail (best romantic comedy that doesn't have Audry Hepburn in it, in my opinion)
Brazil
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
The Trial (Franz Kafka + Orson Welles = delicious)
M
Stalker

I don't think it's possible to have favorite books, since they are so contingent on when you read them, what state you were in, and what they've done for you. Even still, here's a list of books which either are, or have been influential on me, and that I still have a love for:
Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander
The Beach by Alex Garland
Anthem by Ayn Rand
Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut
Welcome to the Monkey House by Vonnegut
Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky
Blood Meridian by McCarthy
Atonement by McEwan
A Clean Well Lighted Place (short story by Hemmingway)

Other random things I love, and which may or may not shine light on who I am as a person:
Rodin's The Gates of Hell
Giving food for people I like
Talking politics
Grocery shopping
Editing (it's convenient for me that Amanda's getting a PhD in English)
Cooking, esp. crepes, Indian food, and desserts
Angel food cake (if I knew what to do with all of my extra egg yolks, I'd probably cook myself one twice a week)
Mocking stupid movies
Public speaking
I like both Chicago- and New York-style pizzas. In my view, they're totally different foods which should not be compared.

Random things I don't particularly like (you knew I wasn't going to be able to keep it positive the whole way through, didn't you?):
Pictures of myself
Swimming
Spiders (The Burrow had brown recluses, which did not a happy Daine make)
Plain pickles. I can eat relish on hot dogs, tuna, or in deviled eggs, but I never eat pickles plain. It's one of the very few foods I don't enjoy.

All of this is probably far too much information to post publicly. I've got to go change all of my security questions, lest someone try and use this information against me. In the meanwhile, however, I've got an angel food birthday cake to bake. . .

documentaries

2010-02-19T14:16:00.000-08:00

One of my friends and I recently chatted about our love of documentaries. As she recommended a number of documentaries to me, I realized that I haven't been keeping track of which ones I liked, and which ones aren't really worth recommending. This is a list of documentaries I've watched in the last year according to my netflix account. This post is specifically addressed to Lina, but any of you are welcome to either take these recommendations for yourself, or take issue with my taste in documentary film. By the way, this doesn't count against my 500-word limit I've set.

Best documentaries I've seen in the last year:

Helvetica
Deliver us From Evil
Jesus Camp
The King of Kong
The Education of Shelby Knox
The Conscientious Objector
Ken Burns' America: The Shakers
Born Into Brothels
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Manufacturing Dissent
Objectified
Street Fight
The Order of Myths
Lewis and Clark: The Journey

Echelon 2 documentaries, somewhat sorted from top to bottom, best to worst:

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Girl 27
Cocaine Cowboys
Ken Burns' America: The Congress
Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man
Speaking Freely: (multiple volumes)
Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
Ken Burns' America: The Statue of Liberty
Plan Colombia
The Weather Underground
The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg
Waco: The Rules of Engagement
In Search of History: Salem Witch Trials
The Dark Ages
Ken Burns' America: Empire of the Air
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Maxed Out
Life and Debt
The Devil Came on Horseback
Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains
The Goebbels Experiment
Escape from Suburbia
King Corn

Documentaries on war, most of which aren't really all that mind-blowing or persuasive:

No End in Sight
Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers
Frontline: Bush's War: Part 2
Frontline: Bush's War: Part 1
Taxi to the Dark Side
Body of War

Documentaries not worth watching:

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Sideshow: Alive on the Inside
Strange Culture
Constantine's Sword

referees

2010-02-13T09:12:00.001-08:00

During my first year at college, BYU had a pretty good basketball team. Although I've never really been a big sports fan, I was exposed to quite a bit of BYU basketball that season, attending a few games live, and watching a few on the TV in the Morris Center.

Basketball, for those of you who don't know, is a surprisingly violent game. Each player is allowed 5 fouls (in college) before they are ejected, and the strategic use of fouls is an integral part of team play. Unlike penalties in football, for example, breaking the rules in basketball is often advantageous; players who "foul-out" are not met with scorn by fans, but with gratitude for having used their fouls to benefit their team.

The importance of fouling elevates the referees to an important position in any basketball game. They set the tone for how much physical contact is allowed, how assertive the coaches and players can be (before they are given technical fouls), and how much of the game is spent shooting free-throws.

I quickly noticed some disturbing habits of my fellow watchers. Whenever BYU was called for a foul, people would scream and curse the referee for his "bad call." Whenever the other team was credited with the foul, however, these same fans would clap, looking as if justice had been restored to an otherwise chaotic and cruel world. At first, I credited this phenomenon to my relative inexperience with basketball and its rules. Perhaps I just wasn’t seeing what really made some of the calls good and others bad.

I'm sure you already know the conclusion to this post. It only took me a few minutes of watching to realize what these fans were doing. They were very purposely conflating calls that they didn't like with calls that were patently unfair. When a pretty obvious call was missed in the MWC championship game against New Mexico, the BYU students cheered, claiming that it "made up for previous missed calls which hurt BYU."

There are bad referees. There are bad calls. I'll be there right with you calling a spade a spade when bad calls are made or when the system is actually unfair. Decrying everything which doesn’t go your way, however, puts the system in very real danger. NCAA basketball would not last more than one season if my fellow freshmen from BYU had the power to perfectly control referees.

Furthermore, I had less respect for these student’s opinions in other matters because of how they acted as basketball fans. If literally every call which went against them was necessarily “unfair,” I come to the conclusion that their unfairness meter is broken. I think that we should just stipulate that extremists are die-hard fans of their philosophies, that their opinions are hopelessly biased, and that we should ignore them, trying to build the fairest system possible without them.

Annoying pattern III, split advocacy

2010-02-02T23:01:00.001-08:00

I see this one all the time, and it makes me really angry. In essence, this tactic is a slash-and-burn operation. Argumentative techniques are employed, not to reflect what the person actually believes, but rather as a weapon against what they don't. You throw everything including the kitchen sink at your opponent, trusting that at least one of the mean, snarky, nasty things you've pointed out will cause a bystander to learn to hate what you yourself hate. For example:

Opponent: I hate D.
Me: why?
O: Well for one thing he/she is extremely E.
me: really? I don't see D as being that extreme.
O: Also, D is not nearly E enough.
me: Wait, what? How is it possible to be E and not E at the same time?
O: Whatever, you've just drunk the D kool-aid. You wouldn't understand.

Or

Opponent: Hey look at this, I've found evidence from source F that D is horrible.
Me: Do you really trust source F?
O: Not at all. I think that F is an absurd source, actually.
me: So you don't even think that people who read source F should trust them?
O: No. Source F is normally full of lies.
me: Then the only reason you're citing them is that they agree with you in this case?
O: Is that bad?

In short, this style of argumentation is not only dishonest, it's the root cause of the general malaise of jadedness that exists in our society today. There IS room for debating from the other side ("even if you start from a position of G, you should still dislike D"), but such a tactic requires that you take apart the black box of the other argument. There is an internal logic to other points of view. Posting or citing mean, hateful, and often inaccurate sources of journalism, however, is not the answer.

Annoying pattern II

2010-02-02T10:11:00.000-08:00

This next pattern is just as wide-spread as the first pattern I pointed out, but even more intellectually dishonest and damaging, in my opinion. It takes many forms, so I've got a few examples to illustrate it.

Example One

Me: X is true.
Opponent: That's what person A says, and person A is a jerk/idiot/ideologue for the opposite party as me, so it must be false.
me: I don't agree with person A, and I agree that they have many shortcomings, but I still stand by X.
O: Person A is pure evil. If you believe in X, then you agree with person A and thus you're dead to me.

Example Two

Me: X is true.
Opponent: You just say that because you're a/an B (note: this is a variable for a slur, not a shortening of a particular swear that begins with B).
me: I'm not a B, actually. But even if I were a B, does that mean that X is not true?
O: All Bs believe in Y as well, which is wrong/offensive/against my moral code.
me: Please stop changing the subject. We're not talking about Y, I'm not a B, and you're ignoring the fact that X is still true.
O: Whatever, B. That's what they teach you in your B literature. You've drunk the B kool-aid, you B-kool-aid drinker.

Example Three

Me: X is true
Opponent: Person C disagrees with you, and I trust person C implicitly.
me: I can show you both why person C believes what he/she does, but also why he/she is wrong.
O: Person C is never wrong/is a good person/is way smarted than you.
me: What about in this case D, in which person C has been proven to be wrong/admitted to being wrong? Is it not then possible that person C is also wrong in this situation? Can we at least talk about the warrants for X?
O: You're just a C-hater. You cannot be trusted, since you think that person C could be wrong.

These examples are often mixed and matched. Is there any defense against them? I'd like to know your thoughts on how to combat these tendencies, if they're actually justified, or if you've ever seen me use any of these tactics.

Annoying pattern I

2010-02-01T21:40:00.000-08:00

I write, on average, 6 blog posts for each one I type out and post. I engage people in debates almost constantly, either on message boards, on blogs, or in face-to-face conversations. I also surround myself almost constantly with podcasts, audiobooks, or TV shows like the Daily Show which feed my desire to comment publicly or at least write my thoughts and opinions down for later use.

As a result of a number of failed conversations I've had lately, I wanted to write down some generalizable patterns I have been running into. Perhaps some of you can help me to understand why this is happening, what I'm doing wrong in trying to argue my cases, or if this pattern is an inextricable part of being human, and I should get used to it rather than be annoyed by it.

The conversation goes something like this:
Opponent: Y is true.
me: I don't believe in Y, can you explain to me why you do?
O: Y is true because of X.
me: Now there's our problem. X is undeniably false. You yourself have admitted to me in the past/earlier in this conversation that X is [figurative and not literal/a patent falsification/extremely unlikely].
O: You're right. I don't stand behind X.
me: So do you still believe in Y?
O: Most definitely.
me: What is your reason for believing Y, now that we've established that X is not true?
O: Since Y is true, then X must have led to it, so X must be true as well.

Are people just appeasing me when they admit that X is false, or is it just innate to stick to our favorite lies, even in the face of overwhelming evidence against them?

Most importantly, please let me know if you've ever seen me pull the type of garbage that I'd like to critique in the next few posts.

Evolution

2009-12-31T09:42:00.000-08:00

In writing on other topics of late, the issues of epistemology, logic, pragmatism, truth, and fairness have all led me back to the issue of evolution. After reading that only 22% of Mormons believe in evolution, and then after watching the terrible movie Expelled, I thought I’d try and tackle the topic of evolution before the New Year (when Darwin’s anniversary year ends).

Evolution is the scientific principle that populations of living things adapt and change in response to their environments. Over time, adaptive changes and mutations lead to populations that are measurably different, both from the previous, ancestor population and from the other sibling populations that adapted differently.

As I’ve grown up, I’ve posited any number of theories about how I could square my own beliefs in a creator (and literal interpretations of the Bible) with what I knew and was studying about science. I’ve toyed with the ideas that God planted fossils in the Earth to test our faith; that fossils are remnants from other planets, put here when God organized matter from other places into Earth; or that all other creatures were evolving whilst Adam and Eve waited in a post-fall Eden until God kicked them out. These theories were useful thought experiments, and are all equally likely today as they were when I first posited them, but I have since learned enough about evolution to realize that it is a much more likely explanation for biological diversity than a literal interpretation of the Bible.

Not every evolutionary pathway and claim is equally compelling. There are still many unanswered questions, many fossils we’d like to find, and the possibility that simple life was transplanted to Earth from a meteor, rather than forming here de novo. That being said, there are two critiques of evolution that I hear often that are not, in fact, weaknesses of evolution.

First: ALL fossils are transitional fossils. Even you and I are part of a transitioning species. Even if we have not found every point on every evolutionary branch, it does not mean that a link does not exist. The argument that evolutionary theory has millions of “gaps” is simply misleading and ignorant.

Second: A weakness in one theory is not proof FOR a second theory. Ben Stein tries to point to what he sees as weak links in evolutionary theory and then tries to claim that those weaknesses lend proof to I.D. Even if I were to accept such a false dichotomy, I.D. simply does not answer any of the questions it proposes to answer any better than evolutionary theory does. If Darwin is wrong, Ben Stein can be too.

I’d love to answer any questions any of you have about what evolution means, or how we can still square it with a belief in a creator. If you’ve had the unfortunate experience of watching Ben Stein’s travesty of a film, please go to expelledexposed.com, trove Wikipedia, or write me to fact check any of the manifold lies in that film.

verbosity

2009-12-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

I’ve decided that I’m going to try and keep all of my blog posts less than 500 words from now on. Although my debate about Iraq was fun, I realized in posting it that 3000 words each is just way more than anybody really wants to read. It will probably mean that I’ll just post more often, rather than actually writing less, but setting a goal for short posts might just mean I’ll do another edit and cause me to ask whether I need to be writing anything at all. We’ll see.

Do you know how when you go into a mechanic or a dealership they are always telling you that you need to pour hundreds or thousands of dollars into preventative maintenance? Does it ever confuse you that they can say “hey, your car is in great shape, there’s nothing wrong with it whatsoever. Give me $1000 so I can replace things on your car that aren’t broken”? Well, when you’re sifting through the advice as to what to replace and what to let slide, make sure you actually replace your timing belt when they tell you it’s time. It will cost you around $400, but if you drive it until it breaks, you can apparently bend a valve, which will cost thousands to fix later on. I’m still waiting to find out how well a car with a bent valve will drive (I don’t plan on repairing it), but I’m kicking myself for not having replaced the timing belt when I should have. I’m also cursing Hyundai for not highlighting that the timing belt repair is actually necessary, unlike replacing the spark plugs, changing my tires, and flushing my radiator, none of which were actually necessary in my situation, but which were all recommended at the same time the timing belt was.

I love getting into arguments with people on-line. In my recent spats on various message boards, I’ve been called “a liberal,” “a Bush-hater,” and “a Kool-Aid drinker.” Although I realize that all of these “insults” were given to try and hurt my credibility, and were by no means a reflection of what these people think I believe, I also realize that the best course of action is to write down what I actually do believe. I’ve already written about how much it bothers me when people hypocritically change their positions to suit their arguments. Perhaps if I write down what I believe and allow my opponents to comb for inconsistencies, I’ll have more credibility to call others out for their hypocrisy and special pleadings. If nothing else, perhaps some of you will find elements of my belief system which are hypocritical and which I need to change. Whenever I debate something I really believe in, I always offer the stake that I will publicly admit that I've been wrong. If anything I write is just wrong, please let me know. If I’m wrong, we can discuss it, come to common ground, and I’ll confess my mistake.

No longer if, but where

2009-12-22T16:24:00.000-08:00

Two years ago I started applying to medical schools. My MCAT scores were great, my application was solid, and I was fairly confident that I would be a good doctor. I interviewed at some top schools, but I was put on waiting lists for admission, rather than accepted outright. The schools all seemed to be saying that I'd be a good medical student somewhere, but that I wasn't a good fit for their school in particular. After interviewing at the University of Illinois, I came to the conclusion that perhaps I hadn't done enough to prepare myself to be the best doctor I could be. I withdrew my applications everywhere, applied for admission to a Master's program in Neurobiology and Physiology from Northwestern, and decided to gain some more scientific bona fides before applying again.

As some of you have maybe noticed, I've largely avoided discussing my plans for the future for the last few years. I've still wanted to be a doctor, but the underwhelming responses to my application from medical school admission committees caused me to doubt my chances. I started hedging my language, saying "if I become a doctor...", and also started looking into alternative career paths if med school was unattainable. I seriously considered becoming a teacher, a lawyer, or a nurse. I'm quite certain I would have been happy and successful in those careers.

Finally, however, and after multiple tries, I'm happy to report that UIC medical school thinks as highly of my abilities as I do. I've been offered admission for the class of 2014, and will matriculate in the Fall of 2010.

There's still a chance that I'll get into the University of Chicago instead (which would be closer and, since my chances of being classified as an Illinois resident are slim, cheaper), and that means that my plans might change as to where I went to med school. Thanks to UIC, however, the question is no longer if I become a doctor, but where I get my training.

Iraq debate round 1

2009-11-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

What follows is a 3-round debate I had over e-mail with my friend Tyler. If you're interested, please read it and give your judgment of who you think is the winner. Feel free to comment on any of the notes, write me a personal message on Facebook, or send me an e-mail if you have questions, arguments, or complaints. This debate is available on my facebook page in a public format, so if you want your arguments to be seen by a slightly wider audience, you may want to put your comments there.

Daine:

The war in Iraq has quietly left the public debate. As the violence and turmoil of Iraq has been pushed off of the front pages, there is the danger of losing sight of the importance and costs that the war represents. In this debate, I will show that the Iraq War has, on balance, been a major and costly mistake. This debate should not be seen as an attempt to Monday-morning-quarterback the Bush administration or to convince anyone that President Bush is personally culpable of any crime or purposeful malfeasance. It is my hope, however, that as we collectively acknowledge that the Iraq War was a dreadful and preventable mistake, and as we see the reasons why and how this mistake was made, that we will be able to prevent similar mistakes from being made in the future.

I propose that we should analyze whether the Iraq war was a good decision or not based on a cost-benefit analysis. In discussions about the Iraq War, it’s common practice for one half of the partisans to accuse Bush of “trading blood for oil” and the other half to accuse the first half of hating America and apple pie. Motivation surely plays an important part of the discussion, but I have no intention of accusing Bush, the Illuminati, or any of our secret supreme overlords of a conspiracy. In point of fact, the War in Iraq has largely been a tragic string of errors, miscalculations, and ad hoc justifications that don’t hold much water. How America chooses to proceed, if it learns anything from these mistakes, or whether we ever reach a consensus on how similar situations should be handled in the future are topics for another debate; no amount of discussion can undo what has been done, unspend money that’s been spent, or resurrect the thousands of American and Iraqi dead. Regardless of whether Tyler wins this debate or I do, in a very real way we’ve both already lost the important competition: the War in Iraq.

There are three basic reasons why, in hindsight, America should not have gone to war in Iraq: the war was founded on some crucial assumptions, all of which turned out to be false, the war has cost more than it could possibly be worth, and the war has uniquely caused and exacerbated a number of problems, each of which is likely more harmful than the original problem the war was meant to fix.

I. Incorrect assumptions

1. Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States. Whether or not Saddam Hussein ever had a credible nuclear weapons program, our occupation failed to recover any of it. Even our unpreparedness, our lack of a long-term plan, and our inability to immediately secure Iraq post-invasion could have been excusable lapses, had they been for the purpose of capturing a weapons program. Whether or not such a weapons program ever existed, it is not in the hands of the American military.
2. We would be greeted as liberators and would be able to hand over power to a credible political force. The naivete of this assumption makes me want to cry. To say that the Bush administration should have known better doesn’t begin to explain my disappointment in our past leaders.

2a) We have had recent experience trying to do nation building and playing with puppet governments. We assumed, however, that our current governments would somehow be more credible than the ones we set up in Iran or Vietnam, and with better results.

3. The Iraqi regime had ties to international terrorism that posed a threat to America. Although this was an implicit and explicit link that helped convince us to support this war, no evidence exists or existed that such was true, Bush officials have confirmed this fact, and we’ve all got egg on our face for believing this in the absence of any credible reasons.

II. Costs

1. Thousands of American troops have died (3477 in combat since 2001). Many thousands more (31571) have been wounded. It’s hard to put a value on the costs that our troops and their families pay. Our troops sacrifice willingly, which speaks volumes to their greatness, but makes our unpreparedness and flippancy in sending them to needlessly die all the more tragic. They deserved better.
2. PTSD. In order to keep enough combat-ready troops, the military has not done nearly enough to diagnose and treat psychological effects of the war like PTSD. The effects of this are both private tragedies within the soldier’s lives and public tragedies like the ensuing suicides and murders that are committed by afflicted troops.
3. $700 billion dollars and counting. Call me crass if you will, but I’d rather have spent that money in America.
4. The war in Iraq represents an opportunity cost on any number of policies that could have actually made us safer. I don’t want to debate the war in Afghanistan here, but for those who think that we need more troops there in order to win, the war in Iraq is uniquely preventing us from winning a war which is likely more important for our safety.

III. Results of the Iraq War

1. Knocking out Iraq has caused a power vacuum in the Middle East. Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas were all too glad to fill in that power gap.
2. We have further inflamed tensions between Muslims and the West. We no doubt helped recruit some amount of new terrorists and future enemies.
3. We made Americans easier to attack. Whereas as borders, anti-terrorist measures, and law enforcement efforts make it more difficult for terrorists to hurt and kill Americans, moving thousands of troops into a country with porous borders, embedded enemies, and a native population which includes people who hate us makes it much easier for them to inflict their revenge upon us.

Conclusion:

The war in Iraq is the unfortunate consequence of poor planning, making incorrect assumptions, and in jumping to action before all the facts were in. We could and should have been aware of the magnitude of the decision we were making, yet the rhetoric supporting the war, the results on the ground, and the fact that we still have 145,000 troops in Iraq bear witness to the fact that the action in Iraq was superbly poorly planned, devastatingly expensive, and rife with unintended consequences. In my opinion, the costs of the Iraq war far outweigh its benefits.

Tyler: How would Iraq be different today if Saddam were in power? Specifically, are you assuming he would be acting the same way he has the entire time he was Iraq's leader?

Daine: I'm not sure how to extrapolate what Saddam would be up to in 2009 had we never invaded. It's likely that he would be doing as much as we feasibly allowed him to do. More importantly, he would probably be talking a much bigger game than would actually be playing. It's important to note that there were many ways we could have handled Saddam. The choice wasn't between giving Saddam status in the WTO or invading and executing him. My argument is that, of all possible actions we could have taken with Iraq, that invading was perhaps the single worst, least intelligent option given the data.

Tyler: Without getting too specific or opening an entire Afghanistan debate, why is it a priority for us to win there? Is defeating Al Qaeda a strong priority for the United States? What is defeating Islamic terrorism worth?

Daine: I'm not exactly sure whether the war on terror was necessary or prudent. The fact remains, my candidate lost in 2000, so I must defer to the style and tactics of the Commander in Chief. While I may not have chosen the tactics that Bush did with regards to Afghanistan (I supported, at the time, a tactic similar to what Biden now advocates), I admit that there was good evidence that Al Qaeda trained in Afghanistan, that Bin Laden was living there, and that not acting could have posed a significant threat to U.S. security. What should be noted for purposes of this debate, however, is that the logic and gains from Afghanistan are completely separate from the logic and gains of going into Iraq. There may be the incorrect linking of the two wars as part of a "global war on terror," but the evidence which led us to invade Afghanistan would not have been reason to invade Iraq.

I think a fair price for defeating terrorism is anything less than we could reasonably assume we would lose by not defeating terrorism.

Tyler:

On September 12, 2001, Americans and the entire free world gasped as we tried to comprehend what had happened and how we would move forward. We faced an enemy based out of Afghanistan, a place where empires go to die. Most of all, Americans realized that we had a very real enemy in international terrorism.

On that day, if we had been told that two years later the central front of the war on terror would be moved from the mountainous wasteland and hostile population of Afghanistan to a more open and familiar terrain, I suspect we would have liked our chances.

This is exactly what happened. As side benefits, we also:

1. Removed a brutal dictator who had a long history of causing trouble for the world
2. Established a democracy in the Middle East
3. Turned most of the Arab world decidedly against Al Qaeda and Iran
4. Removed a principle financier of terrorism against Israel
5. Secured a large oil supply for the world
6. Scared Libya into giving up its nuclear ambitions
7. Exposed serious corruption and embezzlement in the United Nations

I cannot and will not argue that the Iraq war was handled perfectly – no war ever has been. However, I contend that for the above reasons, the war in Iraq has had more benefits than costs for the United States.

I will now address the benefits I listed and then answer Daine’s reasons for opposing the war.

To what extent Al Qaeda was involved in Iraq prior to our invasion is a matter for another debate; however, no one can doubt that Al Qaeda poured numerous resources and fighters into Iraq after our invasion. Osama Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders labeled Iraq a must-win and made it part of their jihad.

Unlike Afghanistan, where order has never really existed, Iraqi citizens knew stability and preferred it. So, a few years into the war, when Iraq was getting stabilized, Al Qaeda began bombing Islamic edifices in order to start a “civil war.”

Now let me make a very important distinction. Until this point, rank and file Muslims had been horrified by and mostly opposed to the actions of Al Qaeda; however, leaders of Arab nations (which, in their entirety, comprise a very small minority and relatively extreme group of Muslims) had mostly either been indifferent toward or tacitly supportive of Al Qaeda’s actions. This small minority was horrified by Al Qaeda intentionally killing Muslim civilians. They turned on Al Qaeda, and though they did not and do not love the United States, they were less willing to help Al Qaeda. This, by itself, was a huge long term step in the war against Al Qaeda.

When the United States implemented a troop surge, it gave Iraqi tribal leaders the cover to begin supporting us. The truth about “the surge” is that it won the war in Iraq largely by allowing citizens of Iraq to begin reporting Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to our soldiers, without the fear of reprisal.

The result of all this turned Iraq into a quagmire for Al Qaeda, turning the Arab world against them, and giving us a venue to fight them with the help of a population.

Now let me address the other benefits previously mentioned.

1. Nobody denies that Saddam Hussein was a problem for the world.

1. In 1981, he built a nuclear facility, which was destroyed by Israel.
2. He later used chemical weapons against the Kurds.
3. He had biological and chemical weapons programs following the Persian Gulf War. We still do not know what happened to them as he refused to account for their destruction.
4. He murdered thousands, if not millions of his own citizens, to the point that the United States was regularly flying planes over parts of his country to prevent any future attacks.

And, worst of all, he stood to leave his kingdom to his two sons – both of whom were evil enough to have caused problems for the world for years to come. What other harm Saddam would have done to the world is questionable. However, giving the kingdom to one of his psychotic sons would likely have caused serious problems in the Middle East.

2. We have also established a democracy in Iraq. While the rest of the Arab Middle East struggles under brutal dictators, Iraq now is a democracy and supports the human rights we support. There is a reason no two democracies have ever fought a war with one another. America’s greatest allies today are nations we have fought wars with. While we won’t always agree with Iraq, and they may not become as close to the United States as Japan or Germany, they certainly are not and will not be the bitter enemy they have been since the creation of Israel.

3. This was addressed throughout the initial section on Al Qaeda.

4 & 5. In addition, as a democratic nation, Iraq is less likely to clamp down on its oil supply and cause further problems for the world. They are also less likely to fund terrorism against Israel – something Saddam did often. Alan Greenspan argued at the time for the invasion purely for this reason, calling Saddam’s removal “essential.”

6. Two final benefits must quickly be addressed. The invasion of Iraq scared Gaddafi of Libya into giving up his nuclear weapons program. He was building weapons of mass destruction to oppose the west, and was frightened enough by the invasion of Iraq to stop.

7. Also, the war exposed a serious problem in our system of diplomatic sanctions. A number of world leaders, including the family of the United Nations’ Secretary General, were trading around the sanctions. This rendered them ineffective and less likely to be successful.

Now I will briefly address Daine’s arguments.

Reason 1 – Incorrect Assumptions

This is irrelevant to a cost benefit analysis of whether or not the war was worth fighting. It may serve as an indictment to Bush-Cheney and it preempts some arguments I may have chosen to make; however, none of these arguments are reasons to accept Daine’s arguments based on a cost-benefit analysis.

Let me still address some of these issues.

I will grant point 1 & 2, insofar as they do not contradict my earlier discussions of these issues

Regarding 2a.

There is no question that the government we have established in Iraq is more legitimate than those created in Vietnam & Iran. It has been legitimately elected, and the local tribes have come to embrace it. This government can and probably will be a US ally in the Middle East (a region where we really need it).

1. Granted, though Saddam was involved in terrorism against Israel, as mentioned above.

Reason 2 – Costs

Daine has me here. This is where the real debate will be decided. It is indisputable that we have spent a lot of money and lost many good soldiers fighting in Iraq. I would contend that these resources would have been lost elsewhere had we not invaded Iraq (as mentioned above).

Reason 3 – Results of the War

Responding to Daine’s arguments.

1. It is difficult to determine how much of Iran / Hamas’ ascension has been due to Saddam’s removal and how much was due to rising oil profits. Regardless, these organizations are “small potatoes” compared with Saddam and Libya. Daine’s argument presupposes that Iraq would have been an issue if it had not been removed. We removed a problem here. Will others step up? Certainly, but we still removed one problem and a prime financier of the Middle East’s problems.

2. We may have inflamed Muslims against the West, but we also inflamed them against Al Qaeda. For the first time, Arab Nations have actively opposed Al Qaeda and rank and file citizens have helped in the fight. Nobody seriously contends that Arab nations will ever like the United States so long as it supports Israel; however, they now hate our enemies as well.

3. Turn: I believe we actually made Americans less likely to be attacked for two reasons:

1. We moved much of the fight from the mountainous difficult terrain of Afghanistan to Iraq. We were going to fight Al Qaeda somewhere. We chose to fight it in a country that was easier, not harder.
2. Al Qaeda used its terrorist attacks in Iraq against our soldiers. Had they not, they would likely have spent more energy attacking civilians on our soil. Our soldiers can better defend themselves than our civilians can.

If anything, our invasion saved civilian lives and put soldiers in a more friendly environment.

Daine: What, if anything, has Iraq's contribution to the world supply of oil accomplished?

Tyler: Iraq possesses a large portion of the world's oil and could significantly influence our economy by distributing it. By invading Iraq, we secured this oil supply and protected our economy. This is what Greenspan said and I agree.

Iraq debate round 2

2009-11-29T11:25:00.002-08:00

Daine:

Arguably the hardest part of debating someone about the war in Iraq is that its beginning was so shrouded in innuendo, half-assertions, scare-tactics, and secret information. Even in Tyler’s first speech, he alternately talks about American and Israeli interests, problems with the U.N., genocide in Iraq’s countryside, and even Democratic Peace Theory. Before I address the individual arguments Tyler has given, I will uncover the glaring and dangerous logical failings that led us into this disastrous war in the first place.

As I see it, Tyler essentially makes two broad arguments in his first speech: that Iraq has been a beneficial battlefield against international terrorism, and that the war in Iraq has brought a number of benefits, making America and her allies safer. Although I do plan on addressing all of his specific arguments individually, I would like to start by addressing the flawed notion that “we’re fighting the terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” that Tyler’s first speech is founded upon.

The argument that we can make America safer by killing people in Iraq rests upon 2 key assumptions: that those being killed would have otherwise posed a threat to America or Americans, and that fighting in Iraq imposes some opportunity cost on their operations, that killing Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq decreases Al Qaeda’s ability to perform other, more damaging operations in America.

These assumptions are verifiably and logically false for the following 7 reasons:

1. The overwhelming majority of potential terrorists (people who are committed to hurting Americans) are simply not in any position whatsoever to actually follow through on their desires. Even without any barriers of any kind, a potential terrorist would need to be able to afford a plane ticket and a weapon in order to do harm to an American in America. The more barriers that are in place (counter-intelligence operatives, visa requirements, background checks, law enforcement, etc.), the less likely it becomes for a terrorist to actually succeed in hurting an American.
2. Most, if not all of the people killed in Iraq were probably fighting for reasons other than an unquenchable hatred of American values. Other, more plausible reasons for wanting to kill American soldiers include, but are not limited to: wanting to evict imperialists, getting revenge for family members killed in either Gulf war (or by Blackwater Inc.), fighting against Christian hegemony in a Muslim nation, financial gain, or simply not believing that America was trying to be benevolent by invading. Those reasons were created by the war in Iraq. These people are not people we would have had anything to fear from in America, had we not invaded Iraq.
3. Those being killed in Iraq are largely monolingual, poor, and uneducated, all things which would make them practically incapable of striking America.
4. The Al Qaeda troops fighting in Iraq are doing so of their own-free will. Since Iraq is not their homeland, they, essentially, are “fighting the [infidel] over there, so that they don’t have to do it [in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the UAE, etc].
5. Any valuable Al Qaeda troops or leadership (Bin Laden, for example), or any troops capable of harming America are free to stay away from Iraq, leaving the fighting to the local Iraqis, the expendable troops, and the hired hands.
6. Chaos is easier to create than order. Relatively few Al Qaeda operatives could keep Iraq on the brink of chaos and civil war for decades. Guerrilla warriors always hold the trump cards.
7. We still saw numerous terrorist attacks in Europe, as well as major attempted attacks on America. These attacks happened or were attempted in spite of the war in Iraq. Excellent intelligence, coordination, and alertness on the part of Britain prevented further attacks against us, not a depletion on the part of Al Qaeda due to losses in Iraq.

On Tyler’s arguments briefly:

1) Saddam’s most egregious sins were a matter of history. Was he a war criminal? Yes. Were his sons psychotic? Probably, but there’s no reason to believe that they would have been any more of a problem than we let them be. Keep in mind, we’re not debating whether we should have allowed Saddam total free reign, just if it was necessary to invade and oust him.

2) I’m not displeased that Iraq is a nominal democracy now, but it’s important not to oversell its advantages. We’ve traded a despotic Iraq that was a useful enemy for a democratic friend that can’t check Iran, is probably little help in furthering our regional goals, and that will probably need hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds more American lives in continuing support to even have a chance of survival.

3) Al Qaeda turned the Arab world against them without our help. Although I’ll acknowledge that regional victory in Anbar came only with local help against Al Qaeda, it’s still not enough. This effect in Iraq, by the way, has not done anything to help against terrorists in Pakistan or Afghanistan, nor has it won us “The War on Terror.”

4) Israel can take care of itself (Tyler cited 1981). Furthermore, the power vacuum has only increased Iran’s influence, which poses a much greater risk to Israel than Saddam ever did.

5) Is Tyler really saying that we did trade blood for oil? Even still, it wasn’t worth it. Maybe if they give us the first $700 billion worth of oil we’ll talk parity.

6) Libya had essentially zero chance of attaining a nuke. Even if it did, they would not have posed a threat to America or our allies.

7) The war may have exposed corruption in the U.N., but it did nothing to actually solve it. Fine, I’ll agree that the French, Germans, and Russians are pricks. Happy?

I realize that the point of this debate is to show that the war in Iraq has, in hindsight, not been worth it. I never would have debated this topic, however, simply to point out that we’ve largely failed, or that Al Qaeda has irreparably damaged America’s reputation and power. I love America, and I want it to be a powerful force for good. Before this war started, I was fairly consistently harangued as being “anti-American” for questioning the rationale and wisdom of invading Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein. Rather than addressing the facts, gauging the danger of inaction, or looking for more realistic alternatives, we collectively allowed a small faction of Neo-Conservatives to question our patriotism, scare us with unrealistic threats of mushroom clouds, and rush the decision and execution of a war that has been immeasurably costly to American troops and families. In addition to showing you all that Iraq has cost us more than it’s been worth, I hope to convince all of you that this mistake could and should have been avoided. In setting the terms for this debate, I offer the following criteria: if I have failed to show you that Iraq has cost more than it was worth AND that our government could have and should have known better before hand, I urge you to vote for Tyler.

Finally, in accordance with debate tradition, I would like to extend my arguments from my first speech and bring them to your attention once more.

1. America started the Iraq war under the shockingly naïve assumptions that we would be greeted as liberators, that building a democracy in Iraq would be simple, that no significant planning had to be done, that no precautions for security needed to be taken for after the Iraqi regime was toppled, and that Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMDs would be easily found and secured. We as a public were also fooled into believing that Iraq posed a threat to America and her interests, without any credible evidence backing such assertions up. The evidence (both a close reading of the then-available evidence, as well as the more accurate evidence that exists now) shows that Iraq had essentially nothing to do with international terrorism against the United States. The fact that Tyler framed his arguments around the fear and angst we all felt on 9/12 only emphasizes the degree to which the legitimate war on terror has been (and please excuse this pun) hijacked by those who argued for an Iraqi invasion.
2. The costs of this war have been tremendous. We probably all know someone who has fought or died in Iraq. For this heroism and sacrifice, however, we have collectively paid them back by ignoring the psychological costs they’ve paid and continue to pay. The immense burden and responsibility of the war in Iraq was a blank check written to the future, on the gamble and hope that it would pay for itself eventually. For now, our expenditure represents a cost of $30,000 for each Iraqi man, woman, and child. Maybe next time we’ll just consider writing them a check?
3. The unintended consequences of the Iraq war far outweigh the possible effects of having another democratic partner in the Middle East. Iraq, if it does survive as a democracy, is much more likely to follow the democratic model of Palestine or Iran than it is Israel (as if even that were a good model!). Many in the Arab world have, for the time being, turned against Al Qaeda and its allies. To presume that our foray into the Middle East has built any bridges or made any friends, however, is simply foolish.

Tyler:

Daine makes a lot of interesting arguments, but he also concedes a number of powerful benefits to the Iraq war that I mentioned in my first “speech.” I think these benefits will definitively prove the value of the Iraq war.

Let’s address the underlying assumptions of the conflict:

There is no question that the beginnings of the Iraq conflict are a difficult discussion to have. The intelligence information presented to us was incomplete and incorrect. Many have alleged malfeasance by the Bush administration. The classified nature of the documents and dishonesty (by both sides) make it difficult for us to determine what actually happened or determine fault.

For this reason, I suggested to Daine that our debate be purely based upon a cost-benefit analysis of the Iraq war from what we know now. I appreciate that he has given himself an added burden, and I will grant that he meets it. There were flawed assumptions in the run-up to the war.

Please extend my analysis that this argument is irrelevant to the debate at hand. We are evaluating the costs and benefits of the war. There is no specific cost that Daine has identified in our false assumptions so there is no reason to evaluate this is making a decision about the debate.

Now to the benefit of changing the battlefield. Daine makes some good arguments here, but he misunderstands my point. In addition, he asserts that my rhetoric was inappropriate; however, if I demonstrate that the War in Iraq has benefited us in the war on terror, then my rhetoric is totally justified and appropriate. If not, please disregard it. Let’s get to the subject.

Al Qaeda sent a number of its top lieutenants to fight us in Iraq. Had they not come to Iraq, they would have probably fought us in Afghanistan or may have come to the United States. Which of those two options they picked is irrelevant. In either case, they would be attacking Americans (soldiers or civilians) in a setting that was more difficult for the Americans to defend themselves. Please extend my analysis that explains how Afghanistan is a more difficult terrain to fight in than Iraq. Any move to Iraq (from Afghanistan or America) is better for us because it means our troops or civilians are in a safer environment.

Daine also concedes the Arab world turned against Al Qaeda because of terrorist bombings in Iraq. Had we not invaded, this clearly would not have happened. It is hard to overstate the importance of this event. The Arab world has been the prime financier of Al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist organizations. Without that money, Al Qaeda will eventually die. Seriously, they have been reduced to hiding out in the caves of Afghanistan and Pakistan. With Arab support, they would always have been able to rebuild and fight us. Without it, it is just a matter of time until they are destroyed.

Let me briefly address Daine’s 7 points:

1. This argument actually works for me. Back when Al Qaeda was able to recruit and get financing in the Arab world, Al Qaeda would provide the ability (visa, flights, etc.) for would-be terrorists to attack us. Since we’ve already demonstrated that their money supply and ability to recruit in the Arab world has been severely limited, this actually becomes an additional advantage for me.

2. Fine. Some of the people fighting us in Iraq would not have fought us in Afghanistan or in America. However, many would have. The leaders who inspired them mostly would have. The Sunni insurgency really ended long before catastrophic violence happened during 2005 and 2006.

The advantage gained against existing terrorists, the limiting of their fundraising, and the other benefits I will discuss severely outweigh any cost Daine can get from this.

3. See 1 & 2

4. This is exactly my point. It was easier for us to fight them in Iraq than it would have been in Afghanistan or in other places.

5. We have captured a number of Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. They were moved in to fight that battle. Bin Laden himself called it critical to their success. While the leaders don’t strap explosives to themselves, they do need to be on the ground to direct activities. This has helped us capture them.

6. It is well acknowledged that Iraq is looking more and more stable every day. Iraq’s police have begun taking control of cities and handling things relatively well. Very few, if any, experts are saying Iraq will be chaotic decades into the future. As such, we have no reason to assume it will.

7. We don’t know what would have happened to other attacks had the Iraqi invasion not occurred. We do know that many Al Qaeda leaders were killed in Iraq. We can deduce they would have been fighting elsewhere had the invasion not occurred. Where that was is a matter of speculation, though it is doubtful that an Arab populace would have been helping us to fight them.

Next, let’s review some of the additional benefits of the invasion that I previously mentioned.

1. Saddam’s war crimes: Daine concedes that they occurred and that Saddam’s sons were crazy. There was a tangible cost for us controlling him. We frequently flew planes over Iraq, based many troops in Kuwait and were bombing Iraq every few years.

If Daine wants to assume we could control him, that is fine. But there is a cost for that in troops and finances. President Clinton nearly invaded at the end of his presidency. This cost would be an indefinite commitment of the United States, and would probably get worse when his sons took power. Also, there is a very real chance one of his descendants would be crazy enough to launch an attack on the United States. Please extend my analysis on this point.

2. Middle East Democracy: Establishing Iraq as a democracy has costs, but let’s look at the value. The last two nations we have done this with (Germany and Japan) are now two of our closest allies. Even if we don’t become this close to Iraq, it still isn’t likely to turn into the enemy that Saddam was. In addition, Iraq provides another democracy in the midst of a very totalitarian Middle East. This can be an example for other Arab nations.

This is not like Iran. The people there are voting and participating. Iran is a fake democracy with a dictator. Iraq’s government has the support of the tribal leaders and will inevitably be successful. Iraq is far more likely to look like Turkey in 10 years than it is to look like Iran. Please extend my previous analysis on this point.

3. Al Qaeda Funding: As mentioned above, Al Qaeda is now an enemy of the Arab world, which will cause its inevitable destruction. Al Qaeda is responsible for more American deaths than we have seen in Iraq. This is in addition to the huge cost of fighting a war on terror indefinitely. This, in and of itself, makes the Iraq war worth fighting.

4. Israel: There is a contradiction here. First Daine tells us that Saddam was more powerful than Iran and kept them in check; however, he then states that Iran is a bigger threat than Saddam was to Israel and the United States. But fine, I’ll drop any potential benefit to Israel discussed here because, as Daine said, they can take care of themselves.

5. Greenspan: Daine completely concedes Greenspan’s assertion that fighting the Iraq war was worth it if the only benefit we received was preventing Saddam from disrupting the oil supply. (He notes, as well, that this was not Bush’s intention.)

Our economy is incredibly dependent upon foreign oil. Saddam’s ability to cut us off from his oil could seriously shock the economy. Greenspan, probably the most respected economist in the United States by both political parties, says this alone would have made Iraq worth it. Daine concedes this benefit, which a leading expert says was worth the cost.

6. Libya: The presence of a nuclear Libya cannot have been good. They were trying, and they were certainly funding terrorism--something they stopped after our invasion.

7. UN: The corruption at the UN is a big deal because it removed the only weapon (short of war) that the world has in dealing with rogue nations. We’re currently dealing with Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. In each of these cases, we would be more likely to go to war had Chirac and Kofi Annan been trading around the sanctions.

There are many benefits of the invasion of Iraq. Whether or not you agree with President Bush or think he was correct to invade at the time is NOT the subject of this debate. Our agreed-upon criteria is a cost-benefit analysis to America based upon what we know now. Please evaluate these serious benefits and recognize that what you may believe started as a blunder has turned out to be a beneficial move for the United States.

Daine: How many American troops died between the Gulf Wars, when we were keeping Saddam in check?

Tyler: None of which I am aware. I meant this purely in terms of the financial cost, and the eventual cost if his successors became more violent.

Iraq debate round 3

2009-11-29T11:25:00.001-08:00

Daine:

Tyler’s entire case rests on a few patently illogical and amazingly naïve assumptions. It would be wonderful to assume that what happened in Anbar province is going happen everywhere, but it’s just not real world. Even if it were, Tyler’s internal logic doesn’t show how this result would have justified our war, since neither Iraq’s government nor its civilians had anything to do with 9/11. Any theoretical reduction in terrorism relies upon believing in a threat for which there is neither proof nor precedent. It would be wonderful to believe that Iraq will be just like Japan in 20 years, and that the entire Middle East would follow suit, but we simply don’t see democracy spreading from Palestine, Israel, or Iran in any appreciable way. If all a country needed for stability were democracy, what is wrong with Palestine, Iran, and Afghanistan? If democracy wasn’t spreading before, why should we trust that it will happen now? Perhaps it’s just a bit overly-optimistic to believe that democracy alone will be enough? Finally, and most offensively, Tyler claims that waging a war to prevent Saddam from disrupting the oil supply was a good idea because Greenspan said it would be. Even if Greenspan were right, his plan didn’t work. Or was I the only schmo paying $4 for a gallon of gas last year? More importantly, the question still remains about how many barrels of oil are equal to one American troop. Did we at least get fair market value for them? All of Tyler’s benefits are specifically refuted by the continuing problems in the status quo. We still have Al Qaeda and attempted terrorist attacks, we still have conflicts with democratic countries, and we still have oil instability.

And so in summary, I give you the actual benefits of the war in Iraq. We toppled the government of maybe the 5th worst dictator in the world, even though he was already pretty well prevented from doing any real harm. We killed some of the troops that Al Qaeda sent to fight against us in Iraq. Finally, now that we’ve exposed the corruption and perfected the U.N., we’re only a baby step away from World Peace.

All of these benefits came at the cost of 3,477 American troops, 31,571 wounded, rampant untreated PTSD, the highest suicide rate among our troops ever recorded, almost a trillion dollars, tens of thousands of dead Iraqis, and chaos in the Middle East that led to an ascendant Iran and Hamas.

Is oil stability really worth sending our troops to die? I believe that our troops deserve better than to be sent on foolish mission trips for democracy. Whether out of incompetence, irrationality, or naïve optimism, George W. Bush sent our troops into a country that had no WMDs (that we captured, at least) and that posed extremely little, if any threat to Americans. Whether we’ve crippled Al Qaeda by fighting them in Iraq is something that only time will prove. What we do know, however, is that Al Qaeda was able to fight us by hiring unemployed Iraqis, angering local partisans, and inciting a civil war in Iraq that made our job harder and exposed our troops to unnecessary dangers; we gave Al Qaeda every advantage possible by fighting them in Iraq. We also know that Al Qaeda is still strong enough to keep Usama Bin Laden safe, carry out attacks in Europe, and attempt further attacks on America. On 9/11, 2,671 Americans died. In the war in Iraq, 3,477 Americans have died. All of these deaths are tragedies. All of these deaths were preventable. If we are to trust the evidence, very few, if any of these deaths has made any of us at all safer. If you believe that Iraq posed a threat to American security, you believe it on faith alone, since no evidence has ever surfaced to convince you otherwise. I urge you all to agree with me that the war in Iraq has cost us far more than it has been worth.

Tyler:

Daine set the parameters for this debate in his first speech; however, he has repeatedly gone off topic. This debate is to be judged by a cost-benefit analysis of the war. As such, his arguments about our assumptions going in are completely irrelevant. We are debating how the war has influenced our country, whether for better or worse.

Simply put, there are 2 reasons, each strong enough on its own, to justify a the Iraq war based on a cost-benefit analysis.

Daine conceded that Alan Greenspan, the United States’ most respected economist, has argued that the war was necessary to secure our oil supply. Daine finally addressed this in his rebuttal after previously conceding it. His argument; however, actually makes my position stronger.

Our $4 per gallon gasoline last year was the result of India and China increasing demand, as the Middle East (Iraq included) was pumping out oil as fast as it could. Imagine if Saddam had decided to stick it to the world by cutting off his oil for a month or two. We could have faced much higher prices. We are still feeling the ripple effects from $4. Any higher and we could have faced dire consequences. Greenspan feared this and tells us the invasion was imperative for this reason.

Next, we shifted the battlefield from Afghanistan to Iraq. Al Qaeda sent a number of lieutenants to Iraq. Zarqawi is a prime example as he fought in Afghanistan against us and then moved to Iraq after the Taliban was overthrown. There are a number who were like him. In moving the battlefield to the deserts of Iraq, we found a better battlefield for our troops to fight Al Qaeda. Zarqawi could have hidden forever in Afghanistan (like Bin Laden has), and killed many of our soldiers. The shift to Iraq’s deserts and stability-minded populace made him vulnerable. The same has been true for a number of Al Qaeda operatives. Bin Laden shifted his focus to Iraq and repeatedly called it a must-win. There we were able to fight and we have won. (If you buy his Anbar comment, read a newspaper dated later than 2007--we’ve won the country.)

The move to Iraq caused Al Qaeda to lose its funding and recruiting pool. Al Qaeda relies upon money and recruitment from the Arab world. Prior to 2006, the Arab world was happy to quietly provide support. However, Al Qaeda became desperate and tried to start a civil war by attacking mosques. This alienated the Arab world and has limited Al Qaeda’s funding and recruitment opportunities.

An organization like Al Qaeda would always have been able to regroup since guerrilla operations only require popular support and funding to be successful. When they alienated the Arabs, they signaled their own downfall. This never would have happened had the war stayed in Afghanistan. We would have been perpetually fighting a guerrilla force with regular funding and recruits arriving from the Middle East. This sounds remarkably similar to the Russians in Afghanistan and our involvement in Vietnam. It was a no-win situation.

The invasion of Iraq moved the battlefield and showed Arab nations the costs of Al Qaeda. This has saved large numbers of American lives going into the future, and allowed an indefinite war in Afghanistan to be won.

I don’t care much for the politics of our invasion, but I do know that the United States is better off for the above reasons. We have saved lives by changing the battlefield and our economy by securing the oil supply. I urge you to vote accordingly.

Coming soon...

2009-11-27T20:52:00.001-08:00

Friends,

I am just finishing up an e-mail debate with my friend Tyler about the war in Iraq. I will be posting it here on this blog, as well as on my facebook account as a note. If any of you do read it, I would ask two favors of you: that you read the debate in the proper order (I'll post round 3 first, so that it's last on your Google Reader), and that you weigh in with who you thought won the debate.

I'm not asking you to leave your biases behind; if you already believed that the war in Iraq was worthwhile and I failed to convince you otherwise, that's still a legitimate vote for Tyler. If any of you have arguments or critiques with anything either of us (or a fellow commenter said), I also welcome any corrections or criticisms. That being said, I would appreciate it greatly if you would cast your vote before you read any other comments.

Thanks in advance.

On Snake Oil

2009-11-02T21:18:00.001-08:00

For as little as I blog, I absolutely love reading other people’s ideas and blogs. Given that the work I do with my research is so solitary, and that I have almost 4 hours of commuting every day, I have the liberty of listening to much more media than at any time in my life. I try and get a balanced dose of many different opinions and viewpoints and think that I have a decently broad view of what is being said at any given time on the most important issues. I’ve noticed a growing trend among many news outlets, blogs, and even facebook notes I read. Simply put, I’ve been noticing a lot of hypocrisy.

I should probably start off by mentioning that I’m not intrinsically opposed to any particular viewpoint or idea. I realize that there are great arguments to be made on almost any given argument, from veganism on the left to the benefits of torture on the far right. Furthermore, I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with interpreting the world through one’s own beliefs and opinions, even when I disagree with that worldview or those opinions.

Truly, the real danger in democracies, and the trend that I have been noticing more and more, is that people are completely reversing their opinions now that a new political party is in power. Pundits who were opposed to rendition when President Bush was allowing it are suddenly actively for it now that President Obama makes the same decision. My conservative friends who wanted tax cuts and increasing deficits between the years of 2000 and 2008 are coming down hard with a convenient case of newfound fiscal conservatism since January.

Hypocrisy carries with it the exact same dangers as any other form of dishonesty. People who indulge enough in wanton paradigm shifts and partisan flip-flops are bound to either be given their own show on FOX /MSNBC or the people around them will realize that their allegiances are not to any ideals or truths, but to their own warped sense of what their political party expects them to tout.

Many people, especially the youth (and Jesus, I would point out), have a special hatred in their hearts for those they see as hypocrites and traitors; every American knows who Benedict Arnold is, but very few probably know the British generals who openly fought against the American Revolution.

Hypocrisy fundamentally comes from dishonesty about one’s actual motivations. In one of my favorite examples, John Stewart points out when Bill O’Reilly criticized Jamie Lynn Spears for having a baby out of wedlock, yet defended Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, claiming that it was nobody’s business but the family’s, since the society wouldn’t have to pay for Bristol’s baby. Now even ignoring that Jamie Lynn Spears and her family could buy and sell 100 Bristol Palins, and that that Mr. O’Reilly’s stated concerns are verifiably untrue, the important part of the coverage is that Mr. O’Reilly accomplished his goals during both shows: he raised the hackles of his largely conservative, religious audience against a safe punching bag with Ms. Spears, and stroked that same audience’s sense of forgiveness with Ms. Palin. In both cases, O’Reilly sold his audience something easy that they already wanted to feel, giving them something pleasant and boosting his own ratings in the bargain. It’s not that Bill O’Reilly is the king of the hypocrites, he’s just an entertainer and a snake-oil salesman masquerading as an intelligent person and a good citizen. Back when I considered myself a conservative (during high school) I used to watch The No Spin Zone every night. It wasn’t until I knew how to debate well that I was able to clearly see how and when Bill O’Reilly is selling what he actually believes, and when he’s simply saying what he thinks his audience wants to hear.

In the age of the internet, where archival footage and fact checking is the new standard, and where fewer and fewer people in America are willing to accept things simply because they’ve always been done that way, I’m frankly a little shocked and disgusted to see so many pundits (and even people I know) trying to pass themselves off as something they were the opposite of only 18 months ago. People can still change their minds, repenting of previous, youthful indiscretions and ignorant opinions. They are also more than welcome to see a fine distinction between the profligate spending (as I saw it) that went on during Bush’s tenure as being qualitatively different or more justified than the spending that President Obama isdoing (I think it’s a foolish proposition to lump all spending together in one category, criticizing spending on the FDA with the same brush that one would criticize spending on a bridge to nowhere). Please tell me if I’m just over-reacting or missing all of these complexities, but from where I’m sitting, the criticisms I have been hearing and reading from the poles seem rather half-baked and hypocritical. I hope that all of us can leave the asinine drivel that’s spewed on MSNBC and FOX and simply stop watching/listening to people who are not interested in building our society. Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck are not racists or demons, as they’re often portrayed in the mainstream media, they’re simply entertainers who make their money by selling uncritical people outmoded and obsolete ideologies. The same could be said of Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann.

Those who criticize Obama for the same things that they lauded Bush for doing (and vice versa) are the suicide bombers of the marketplace of ideas. Such inconsistency and partisan wrangling is always harmful and should not be tolerated by thinking people anywhere. I, of all people, see the value in having two sides to any debate. When so many voices in our media sell out their ideologies, simply to play the profitable role of devil’s advocate, however, the national debate is debased and all of us are made less capable of engaging with our democracy. Building a society, much like a building, requires a lot of energy and shared consensus. From my perspective, all that pundits like Mr. Limbaugh give us, however, is a hatred of gravity.

G.O.B.

2009-10-31T21:43:00.001-07:00

Here's G.O.B. and his brother Dex. G.O.B. is on the right.

I don't think there was anything G.O.B. was looking at necessarily, he was probably just contemplating the universe.

This is all of us after the Holloween party we went to. I'm on the right wearing Amanda's old modern dance uniform. We went as Sigfried and Roy and G.O.B. went as the tiger who attacked Roy. Amanda drew a bite mark on her neck and applied copious amounts of blood.

G.O.B. hated his hood. We had to give him lots of treats to get him to keep it on for any amount of time.

The Boys

2009-10-31T15:12:00.000-07:00

Change I believe in

2009-10-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

I recently contacted two of my friends, some of the fiercest and smartest debaters I know, and challenged them to debate me on health care and a topic of their choice. I wrote the following starting essay as a beginning of our debate, but life has gotten hectic and I'm not sure if the whole debate will ever take place. If they finish a complete rebuttal, or if any of you have any thoughts, I will be glad to post them on this blog or have a public debate on things you feel strongly about. In case they never get back to me with a full rebuttal, however, I wanted my thoughts to be public as soon as possible, so that we, as Americans, can start to have the national discussion about what, if anything, needs to be done with health care.

I believe that we should pass the health care reforms that President Obama outlined in his address to Congress.

Although there are many things that could be written for or against this plan (and I have conscripted a friend to help me elucidate the other side to my arguments), I will show that overall, passing the plan advocated by President Obama would bring about substantially more benefits than costs.

When proposing a plan (or a debate platitude), the most important first step is showing that there is a problem with the status quo.

The second most insidious lie surrounding health care (behind the whole 'death panels' thing) is that “we have the best medical system in the world.” This is a pretty standard deflection in debate, make a verifiably true, but also totally unrelated point in order to support your claim. It is true that America leads the world in medical advances, new drug developments, and quality of top-tier doctors, the problem that needs addressing, however, is that a significant portion of Americans are outside the medical care system. Warren Buffett and rich foreign nationals may be able to get the best medical care in the world here in America, but their good fortune is poor reason to continue with a horribly flawed medical system, in which 46 million people have no insurance.

This leads to the question: are the 46 million uninsured going completely without health care? In point of fact, many of the uninsured in America are still getting health care when they need it. The 46 million number, although fun and effective to throw around (as I myself do all the time), does not tell the whole story. When an uninsured person gets critically sick and needs to go to the hospital they do so. Very few people, it seems, are willing to endure a gunshot wound or broken arm, simply because they don’t have the money to pay a doctor. If we were living in a purely capitalistic society, the sick poor would be kicked to the curb, made to soothe their lacerations only with the knowledge that capitalism has justly condemned them. Surely only a few generations will go by before the poor wise up, recognize that they have incentive to escape the soul-crushing poverty which they so enjoy, and get a good job which gives them health insurance.

As with any externalities, this free health care that we’re dispensing in emergency rooms all over the country needs to be paid by someone. It shouldn’t take a PhD in economics to realize that we are all paying that cost, either directly through the government, who needs to bail out failing hospitals, or in the form of higher hospital and insurance costs; just like retailers needs to raise their prices to compensate for losses to shoplifters, we are already paying for the uninsured in the status quo.

The real losers in the current system are not the uninsured poor, who can fairly easily get access to free clinics or Medicaid, or who can simply discharge their debts through bankruptcy (my plan, should I ever get seriously ill while I don’t have insurance), but the under-insured members of the middle class and those who can no longer get insurance in the market. When a middle class person gets in a serious accident or comes down with a life-threatening illness, their assets are in danger. A significant portion of bankruptcies are a direct consequence of medical bills.

We’re in the worst possible middle-ground with American health care. We’re socialist enough that there is very little incentive for people to take care of themselves or avoid expensive medical costs, since society will pay them one way or another. This is at least partially why there are so many uninsured in America. On the other hand, we’re capitalist enough to have private insurance companies in the marketplace as well. Those companies provide a service to their customers, but are free to pick and choose whom they want to cover (even sometimes utilizing recision to retroactively revoke the health care policies of customers who should have been covered), sucking the marrow from the bones, as it were, but leaving the ill to be covered by public moneys. There is a good argument to be made that we’d be better off either competing for the fees from the healthy to subsidize the risks of the poor (this is the purpose of insurance, I would point out) in a government program, or dropping government involvement in health care at all, leaving the market to solve our problems if it can make a profit, allowing the sick and aged to die off and “reduce the surplus population.”

For those of you who believe that there are better tweaks to Obama’s plan in the vapor or in the hands of the Republicans, I would ask where those ideas have been for the last decade. During the whole time that the Republicans had control of the congress and the White House, the changes made to the American health care system probably did more harm than good, funneling public money to private insurance companies without really giving benefits to their consumers. It is time to acknowledge that the market system is not only failing to fix the problems in our health care system, they are likely the very root of the problems.

The audacity of hope, the inevitability of angry old white people

2009-08-15T23:04:00.001-07:00

This week I listened to an interview of Orley Taitz, spearhead of the “birther” movement and noted Obama detractor. Although I don’t buy her “proof” that Obama’s a bi-sexual or that he played a part in having someone killed, I really enjoyed listening to her crazy ideas, mostly because listening filled me with a guilty schadenfreude. Ms. Taitz seems to me to be a walking, talking straw-man; she says and believes things that most normal, grounded people would reject without a second thought. Given that the crazies have been dominating the news lately, however, and that unfounded rage can be contagious, I thought it might be fun to address this blog post to beating up on the right-wing extremists (I think of them as the American Taliban) and disrespect-mongers.

The news is very fun to listen to these days. As I listened to the Sotomayor confirmation hearings and the associated media blitz that the Republicans made over Ms. Sotomayor’s reverse-racist statements I had a smile on my face the whole time; Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck calling Obama and Sotomayor racists in the subtle and intelligent manors that they are known for had all the wit and persuasion that I have come to expect from such gentlemen scholars.

Now that we’re in the midst of a debate on health care policy in America I was eager to start having debates with people about the proper role of government, the ethics of medical coverage, the marginal costs of insurance, or externalities inherent in various health care plans. Instead of giving arguments, however, militant right-wingers have come out in droves to interfere with actual conversations and town halls. When persuasion and democracy failed them and delivered the congress and white house to the Democrats, some bitter Republicans have found solace in all they have left—volume. Although their plans may work and reform may indeed fail, I have to smile when a debate devolves into screaming like it has. Whenever I had arguments in high school, I would consider myself the winner as soon as the other person swore at me or threatened me with physical violence (I’m amazed that I never actually got punched). When a war of words is clearly lost and the moral high ground is ceded, there’s nowhere else to go than insulting the other person’s mother or beating them into submission.

To you screaming, angry town-hall crashers or conspiracy theorists hell-bent on getting Obama disqualified, I have some advice for the future:

Dear Ms. Taitz and co.,

First, although I’m sure you’re already aware, bringing about chaos and destruction is always easier than order and construction are, so you absolutely have the advantage right now. Although it costs billions of dollars and thousands of brilliant people to build things like the World Trade Center towers or Boeing 767s, it only took a few angry Saudi Arabians with box cutters to reduce such things to smoldering pits of carnage. Democracy, consensus, compromise, rational law, and peaceful order take a lot of patience, debate, and shared values to bring about. If you feel that you’re being left out of the conversations entirely, or that your place at the table has been unfairly taken away from you, a proportionately small wrench can destroy a complex machine when used in the right way. I don’t support your methods, even if I agreed with your cause, but I’m not so idealistic that I can’t see the elegance and wisdom of your idea.

The lurch you find yourself in, however, would have been much easier to avoid in the first place than digging yourself out is likely to be.

Contrary to what you might have heard, the world is not exclusively divided between the absolutely righteous and the pure evil, Olbermann fans and O’Reilly fans, or even jocks and geeks. In fact, most of the country and even the world is full of pretty moderate, apolitical people (just look at how many people don’t even vote). There’s a pretty significant constituency who will always vote for Republicans and another constituency who will only ever vote for Democrats no matter what. The rest of the voting public, however, is open to persuasion and decides based on their circumstances and impressions. Although I have my beefs with how and why this population sometimes decides, there really isn’t much point in arguing or complaining about the decisions they make; the swing voters, independents, and occasional voters play the largest role in tipping the balance of power in both Congress and the Executive branches. Furthermore, this group probably gives more intelligent thought to political matters than the people on the extreme poles of the spectrum, who largely only indulge in media and spin which reinforces their extant world views (this is where O’Reilly and Olbermann come in). Sure, sometimes this swing group sometimes decides based on things as asinine as which politician has the better tie, but neither political party is the exclusive victim of such flippant behavior, so neither really has much reason to complain.

In case you didn’t notice, dear Ms. Taitz, most of the moderate people in the country have decided that your brand of reality is simply not worth having. Right or wrong, these people—not some socialist conspiracy or the illuminati—simply stopped buying what you are selling. We can debate later whether they were right to do so, but priority number one should be to take a deep breath, acknowledge that something is wrong with your brand, and take steps to correct the perceptions that people have of you. It only took you one election cycle to get over Nixon, so don’t give yourself heart attacks or high blood-pressure just because you lost your power for now.

The thing to keep in mind is that most Americans support market capitalism, not because they’ve read Adam Smith or Ayn Rand, but simply because they know that America is a mostly capitalist country and they are pretty well-off, especially in comparison to the rest of the world. The paradigm that most people actually use is one of subtle negative-feedback. When their house feels too warm they crack a window or turn their A/C up a little; most people don’t have strong moral arguments about how hot or cold their house should be. The implication of this is that the Democrats picked up the seats that they did and have gotten the political mandate to try Keynesian economic fixes of the economy exclusively because Bush was considered such a disaster. After the economy utterly tanked last year under the seemingly incompetent hand of the Republicans, a good chunk of moderate and independent voters decided that maybe the Democrats might do a better job. Throwing T.E.A. parties or raging against socialist doctrines is likely a waste of time, since people don’t support Obama because they necessarily believe in his philosophy, but because the G.O.P. screwed up; the problem is not creeping socialism, but visibly failing capitalism.

It probably shows what I horrible person I am that I so revel when people I have no respect for—Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck—are so profoundly angry and scared about Obama and the democrats having power. Even though I have my own conflicts with some things the Obama government is doing or will do, I think that the tone and style that these pundits bring to the world (and have taught to the town-hall crashers) makes it an actively worse place and uniquely harms democracy. My only consolation to the anger I feel when Obama is called a racist or when medicare benefits for talking about end-of-life issues is called a “death tribunal” (which I feel is a measured, purposeful lie, told by unethical people to fool stupid people) is the knowledge that the propagators of these half-truths are decidedly out of power. I do not need to rant against or even argue with such insidious and half-baked arguments primarily because they are not working.

My parting advice to the jilted Republicans is to keep in mind that it’s probably easier to discredit your opponent than it is to actually rule well. Since few people are actually focusing on what, if anything, this crisis says about capitalism in general, there’s a good chance that all they’ll care about in 2012 is whether or not the economy has improved or if the Democrats have passed health care reform. So, even though I do think that the current financial crisis is proof that there is a critical flaw in the philosophies that the Bush government practices, you might just be more likely to win more voters in the 2010 and 2012 election with unbridled rage and incoherent screaming; if this is indeed your strategy, Limbaugh and Beck are absolutely the right people for the job.

Open Letters

2009-07-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,

I’ve been applying to medical schools again lately. After getting rebuffed in my attempts at getting into med school for the past 2 years, I think I’ve been subliminally trying to sabotage my chances at getting in. I spun my wheels on my letter of intent for weeks, hiding in my other work and doing everything other than my med school application. In order to get the application in, I’ve been hiding from everything else, not answering e-mails, not reading or commenting on blogs, not even taking time to cook. Things are a little less crazy for me now that the application is done so If you’ve written me an e-mail lately I’ll get back to you when I start to empty out my account.

Dear Lina,

Thanks a ton for all the help writing my letter of intent. There’s a metric ton of pie that will be waiting for you next time you visit Chicago.

Dear Oasis,

Your song Wonderwall has been my favorite song since it first came out. Recently, however, I have decided that Lali Puna’s Faking the Books is my new favorite song. I’m not sure if I love it so much because I learned to appreciate European techno dance beats while in Germany, because of her charming pronunciation of the word “books,” or because I like the rest of Lali Puna’s music so much that it’s biasing my opinion of my favorite of her songs. By the way, with few exceptions, I think most of your other music is mediocre at best. In any case, the song makes me want to smile and cry at the same time. Give it a listen (it’s better with headphones than speakers).

Dear St. Vincent,

Amanda and I caught your concert last month at the Metro and it was fabulous. Although my favorite songs of yours are on your first album, Actor is very solid as an album, and well worth the good reviews it’s been getting. By the way, I think Amanda might like you more than me because of your music video, but I will be rather upset if you seduce her away from me. In fact, if Amanda leaves me for you, I will make an active effort to not recommend your music anymore. You’ve been warned.

Dear absentee landlord of my new apartment,

First off let me say how much I love the place; I particularly love the kitchen and Amanda is thrilled with the wood floors. That being said, your policy against dogs is absurd so I’ve decided not to follow it. Amanda and I recently bought a mini-poodle puppy and named it Gob (in honor of Will Arnett’s character from Arrested Development, although I love the homophonic parallel to the Biblical Job). Amanda’s been teaching him tricks and he’s also already litter trained, so your floors are safe. On a side note, Amanda gave him a haircut but spared the hair on his legs so that we can dye it. For now, it looks like he’s wearing a pair of really baggy pants. A-freaking-dorable if I do say so myself. If you ever decide to enforce your no dog rule—despite Gob’s adorableness—we’ll have to loan our dog to family or friends, which would be very sad for us and for Gob. If you do crack down, however, we’re pretty sure that someone on the third floor has a dog too, and it’s likely that any stray dog poop came from that dog, not Gob.

Dear messers Ensign and Sanford,

I’ll say the same thing I said while you were vehemently calling for President Clinton to step down: your sex life is none of my business and has zero determination on whether you can or should be a politician. Even still, I find irony rather funny and giggled inside when you were caught. I still feel sorry for Mrs. Ensign.

Dear Mrs. Sanford,

You are supremely ridiculous. I won’t even dignify your argument by refuting it. (Evan has pointed out that this was satire. Sorry Ms. Sanford).

Dear Ms. Palin,

I actually rather like you as a person. I think your opinions on abortion are medieval (or Italian) and your notions on science are damaging and ridiculous, but my ire for you only extends to your ability to use your crazy notions to make policy. Now that there’s no chance of you having access to a red button or the chance to slash science funding, I wish you all the best in writing books or working for FOX news. If you run for the presidency in 2012, however, we’re no longer friends.

Dear squirrel that keeps eating the tomatoes we’re growing on our back porch,

If you insist on stealing my tomatoes, is it too much to ask that you eat the whole thing, rather than just half? I have enough tomatoes on my plant that I probably won’t notice if you take a few, but I’d swear you’re taunting me by leaving an uneaten half right in front of my door. There are starving squirrels in China who would love those tomatoes, young man.

Dear Harry Potter movies,

I’m going to have to ask you to scale back the tween romance a lot. I know you might be tempted to cash in on the Twilight craze that has the kids shelling out good money to lust after rather awkward-looking heartthrobs, but Rupert Grint is actively hard to look at; ask J.K. if you couldn’t just write him out of the next few movies as much as possible. On your latest installment: although there were some things that could have been done better, the cave scene was excellent, as was Alan Rickman. I do have to say, however, that all of your movies end approximately 30 seconds too late. Please make an effort not to end on awkward anti-climaxes or freeze-frames in the future.

Dear President Obama,

Please focus; Professor Gates should not be on your radar right now. Health care is broken, nobody else is going to bother even trying to fix it, and it will not bode well for you if congress can’t get its crap together and pass a bill. Even a broken plan would probably be better than what we have got now and there will always be time to tweak later what you pass right now. Perhaps I’ll write more on the health debate later.

Dear Hyde Park Ward,

Thank you for not celebrating Pioneer Day or assigning the sacrament speakers to talk about pioneers. If I have to listen to one more person tell me that their great great grandparents were more righteous than mine because theirs were driven at gunpoint to Utah and mine weren’t I think I’m going to pitch a fit.

Dear clutch from my 2002 Hyundai Accent,

I thought we were tight. You’d been going strong for almost 100,000 miles and then you decided to try and strand me in rural Kansas, rather than lasting another 150 miles until I got to Wichita? Luckily for me I have really cool in-laws who have AAA and were able to bail us out and foil your scheme. I have a new clutch that’s apparently worth $800, so I don’t need you anymore. You’re dead to me. I hope they melt you down and turn you into something really awful and degrading like parts for public toilets or limited edition Jonas Brothers wrist watches.

Food blog

2009-03-28T23:35:00.000-07:00

Amanda and I have decided to start a separate blog for our cooking. You can read that at amandaanddaine.wordpress.com.

Don't you love the double a and then the double d in that address? Maybe I'm just easily entertained.

-est

2009-03-03T22:01:00.000-08:00

So I normally won't even consider posting unless I've been able to read and re-read what I've written for cohesiveness and style; I'm not so much concerned with documenting or saying anything with this blog as I am about writing and exploring my own thoughts. My life and mind have been full enough with superlatives of late, however, and I thought it might be appropriate to run through them in a blog, even though the inevitable product will be yet another superlative--the worst, least polished post that I've blogged.

Depending on which of my friends you ask, they will either tell you that I am illiterate (in the sense that I don't read, not that I can't), or that I actually rather enjoy reading and do it frequently. Since so many of my friends are fantastically brilliant and literary--my friend Lina just got into the Iowa Writer's Workshop and my friend Ryan has an agent and is working on publishing his first novel (which I will promote here further when it's out, btw), for example--I generally err on the side of telling people that I essentially don't read; I read more than most Americans do, sure, but I'm still by far the least well-read person in my circle of friends (by virtue of who they are, not because of me). I mostly dabble in literature, reading the high points of authors who come recommended to me. I re-read the Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander every year or two, and I generally try to avoid reading things which are "classics," but which aren't particularly beautiful, uplifting, or engaging (can I have the time I spent on the unabridged Les Miserables back, please?). So when I saw that Atonement was being made into a movie a few years ago, and one that received middling reviews from the people I trusted, I assumed it would be a fun, Divinci Code-esque piece of fiction that I could wait to borrow from a friend or find in a paperback blow-out bin at some point in the distant future. With such low expectations for it, I was blown away when Alea--one of my hyper-literate friends and most trusted recommenders of books--told me that it was his favorite book ever (or did he say he thought it was the best? I can't remember any more). I bought it a few weeks ago, put it into my queue of books to read, and finally finished reading it through yesterday. I want to avoid giving an in-depth review of it right now because I would not do it justice under such time constraints. I will say, however, that in the past two days, totally unrelated trains of thought have been interrupted by the overwhelming feeling of amazement at how fantastically good that book was. When Alea claimed that Atonement was his favorite book he set the bar and my expectations pretty high. I'd still say he understated his case.

A surprisingly large number of you remembered that it was my birthday last week and sent me your best wishes. Although such thing always makes me feel a little bad since I don't know the birth dates of even my closest friends, it was very nice of so many of you to inquire how I am doing and wish me well on my birthday. I gave different answers to different people depending on how willing I was to share my disappointment at once again failing to get into medical school this year (there is still technically the chance that I'll hear back, but the fact that only one school has even given me an answer is a pretty clear indication that I'm being received with a resounding "meh" from the universe). The past week has given a little more perspective on my lot in life, however, so I'd like to upgrade my answers from last week from "I'm ok" to "quite well, thank you."

My other parents--not in a Coraline sense, but in the sense that I married in to their family--sent me a gift certificate to Amazon.com. Although Amanda and I do most of our non-food shopping on Amazon, and generally have a long list of things we want to buy from Amazon when extra money shows up, I have actually been somewhat stumped as to what I should get with my birthday money. Since Christmas, I have been given a series of the best and most thoughtful gifts I have ever gotten in my life: a bread maker, a cuisinart food processor, the most amazing thermoses ever, a fabulous cookbook, some kitchen items I use every day, a winter coat, and dozens of other really useful and cool things. It's not that I won't be able to find something fabulous to buy on Amazon with my gift certificate, but my moments of being stumped helped remind me just how well I'm doing and how content I am right now. And so, even though I'm still a bit upset that I've spent another thousand dollars we don't really have applying in vain to medical schools, I'm terribly excited that I might be able to teach science to middle- or high-schoolers next year. My absolute back up will be to work as a CNA in a hospital or nursing home, which has become something I truly love doing.

As always, there are dozens of things I could bring up that have happened to me in the past weeks or months that have been awesome or annoying. Right now, however, I'm sitting on my couch next to Amanda, eating some delicious corn bread I just baked, listening to Vince Guiraldi's Charlie Brown Christmas music. And so to answer your inquiries into how I'm doing, I guess my answer is that, as always, I'm sure things could be better. The fact that I'd have to think about how they could be better, however, is probably the most articulate answer I could give.

with his learner's permit in his pocket, he swerved, to avoid a porcupine, and drove straight into a large tree.

2009-01-06T14:04:00.000-08:00

As a child, my family went camping at Pioneer Park on the shore of Lake Michigan. I remember once spending the better part of a day building a sand castle. When I went back the next day, eager to continue adding on to my fantastic creation, I found that someone had wantonly destroyed it. Although I had realized from the start that building sand castles is a very transient pleasure, and that weather would undo my labors very quickly, I was nonetheless very disappointed that my work had been purposely and needlessly wasted.

I learned this week that BYU has once again decided to kick down my sand castle.

There are few things that I am as unabashedly proud and excited about as the things I did for BYU Speech and Debate. When I joined the team in January of 2004, there were only a handful of people coming to the meetings. Clinton and Lee, the founders of the group, told me that the team was only quasi-official, that permission had been granted to form the club and debate on weekends, but that traveling or officially representing BYU was expressly forbidden; BYU had had an official CEDA-style team in the 80's that had been caught cheating before the team was disbanded. Of course, we did travel to tournaments and officially represent BYU, but we drove there in our own cars, paid our own admission fees, and rented just one hotel room for each sex, regardless of fire-code prohibitions or questions of comfort. With so much work to go around, I was given responsibilities from day one, whether it was to register the teams, find new fund-raising methods, or teach lessons on a current event that I had studied the previous week. I loved debate and spent hundreds of hours preparing, practicing, and discussing it.

After a few years, I had become the most senior person on the team. I had gone to every tournament twice, I had phone numbers for bishops in Wyoming that would let us sleep on couches while we were there for tournaments, and the improvements we had made to our fund-raising high-school debate tournament had made the venture profitable, which made it much less expensive to be on the team. All in all, I think I did a pretty good job of running the debate team and training the next group of kids how to debate well; we regularly won tournaments against teams with full-time debate coaches and school-funded transportation.

Despite my advice to the following generation of debaters to keep the team on the down low and to keep our rituals hidden from the BYU administrators, however, the team applied for and got funding through the political science department, started renting BYU vans to drive to tournaments, and published their successes in the Daily Universe for all to see. Then, after a BYU baseball player sued the school because he had hurt himself while driving to an away game, BYU cracked down and canceled all traveling clubs. The debate team's official status became the weapon that BYU used to dismantle it.

Although someone might someday reconstitute a traveling team or even successfully lobby the powers that be for permission to travel to tournaments, their labors will be their own. My contributions, and the sense of pride I felt in passing on a better-organized, more prestigious team is now gone. Someone was foolish enough to trust that BYU would let something beautiful, educational, and totally harmless survive. I only wish I could muster a sense of surprise.

And so I will admit my public defeat. I am not ashamed to pay maudlin tribute to something that shaped me so profoundly, and that I loved so much. I'm not going to moralize, nor will there be an afternoon-special-style lesson that will put this into a greater context. I knew that someone down the line would drop the ball and BYU Speech and Debate would die. Debate was mine. It still is. Maybe now even more than ever.

then I developed a drinking problem

2008-12-20T18:20:00.000-08:00

For as long as I can remember, I have had a leaky epiglottis. Even as I started to write this post, some of the hot chocolate I was sipping started going down my trachea, causing me to cough uncontrollably. I’m not complaining too loudly about this physiological quirk—when so many people inherit higher risks for diseases like diabetes, heart disease, or cancer, I got lucky and only inherited baldness, poor circulation (which causes me to wear gloves 9 months out of the year), and an epiglottis that sometimes makes a weak seal.

Growing up thus with the habit of choking on beverages, I very often heard the phrase “it looks like your drink went down the wrong pipe.” Because of this turn of phrase I envisioned metal pipes in my body (floating in cavernous space), one for food and one for air throughout much of my young life. As I grew up and learned more things, my vision of the two-pipes-theory was corrected and expanded; the original model I had been given was not necessarily incorrect, just too simple to be functionally useful or to mesh with deeper understandings of biology and anatomy.
As many of you know, the last few months have been very contentious in the world of Mormonism. I’ve devoted most of my blog time to arguing against the Church’s position on gay marriage and I’ve been in e-mail and phone debates with a few of you about the role of women in society and the Church. Although I am a fierce debater when I want to be (or when I am doing it competitively), I also pride myself on being fairly respectful and even-handed with the other side, conceding points readily, admitting where my argumentation is weakest, and not being purposefully manipulative (although I think I could do it better than some, if I really wanted to). One argument I’ve been hearing a lot of lately, and one that I want to clarify here, is that the gospel is simple.

Elder Caussé gave a rather good talk on this subject in the Sunday morning session of General Conference. He points out that, although God will always work on our level of understanding, and that faith and righteousness do not require a PhD in theology, that God does expect us to constantly be improving our knowledge if we expect to attain salvation. Simplistic, pat answers, laundry lists given during Sunday School (“go to Church, read your scriptures, etc.” given as an answer to every question), or a profoundly weak understanding of scripture or doctrine are good enough for those who are new in the Church, but are unacceptable for members who should have learned more in their time in the Church. I feel that there is the erroneous belief in the Church that a “simple faith”—complete with an understanding which is totally stripped of any nuance or individual opinions—is somehow superior in a gospel or righteousness sense to what those fancy-pants intellectual members believe. If you can’t already tell from my tone what I think about this stance, I would simply like to point out that Christ knew the scriptures on a very deep level and debated it often with the students of the law.

At its most fundamental level, there is an amazingly simple beauty in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Faith in the doctrines and examples of Jesus Christ can provide the basis of ethical, socially-responsible behavior and can lead to well-adjusted, psychologically-stable development. When followed appropriately, the teachings of Jesus coordinate very well with just laws, many different political systems, and within the confines of different cultural backgrounds and perspectives.

The belief that “the gospel is simple,” however, is currently being used as poetic license to oversimplify complex issues and defend a reductive, reactionary worldview. Even if “the gospel is simple,” ethical, political, or philosophical decisions rarely if ever are. In any case, the self-satisfied, check-and-mate-attitude the Christian right exudes when debating their points is unbecoming, both to reasonable, thoughtful people but also to those who follow Christ’s examples from the scriptures (but not the political movement that has attempted to co-opt His name). Evangelicals might smugly point out that Paul preached against homosexuality, but they must then be able to defend the fact that he also recommended against marriage of any kind. I’m not trying to say that the Bible is too contradictory to serve as a basis for argument, simply that the Bible is an incredibly complex book with a complex history. You will have to forgive me for finding it scary if people believe that the Bible is a word-perfect transcript from the mouth of God, uninflected by history, culture, or the opinions and weaknesses of the individual writers.

When all is said and done, there really are two pipes that my hot chocolate can go down—the trachea or the esophagus. Although further nuance or understanding of the glottal system do not fundamentally change the two-pipe model, they do allow for an understanding why the epiglottis works like it does. If someone were to perform a surgery on my epiglottis to fix my propensity to choke on water, I would demand that they know a lot more about the organ (can I even call it an organ?) than I did when I was six (what nerve innervates it, how it interacts with its surroundings, how surgery might affect it, etc.).

We need to trade in our child-like understanding for a child-like faith. We need to trade in a culture which glories in ignorance for one that seeks to understand everything that God would have us understand. We need to abandon the notion that a testimony of the truth is based on feeling the spirit, rather than having the spirit teach us through our minds and our hearts. We need to come to a fundamentally sound understanding about what the Bible is and what it teaches before we use it as a weapon against societal change. In the long run, such tactics will only lower the credibility of the Bible as a holy book and our Church as a voice of faith and reason. If we collectively make religion a simpler, less well-thought-out alternative to science and reason, we may just find that science and reason will eventually replace religion in the public sphere entirely. There are intelligent arguments and philosophies that can be based upon Christian thought. In as far as Christians insist that the gospel is simple, and thus not worth serious argumentation or analysis, they will continue to fallaciously defend misogyny, racism, homophobia, and theocracy in the name of the "simple" gospel. Important parts of the gospel are undeniably simple; defending bad arguments by an appeal to a tacit orthodoxy, however, is worse than blasphemous--it’s simple-minded and just bad debate.

shaken, not stirred

2008-12-19T06:19:00.000-08:00

Last night I experienced my most unique, and also unwanted stories I have ever collected. While traveling home on the train, I was robbed at gunpoint. Although the robbers only took my wallet and Zune, and the Zune was recovered when one of the suspects was arrested by the police shortly after the robbery, I had to spend almost 8 full hours identifying the suspects, filing reports, waiting for the state attorney to arrive, and then making another statement. Perhaps if I went to bed right now, rather than staying up to write this post, I might have a much more flippant or jocular take on tonight's events. As it is, however, I can't help but feel immensely lucky and maudlin in my gratitude for almost everything in my life.

For as much as I like to complain and whine about the way things are in this world, I cannot imagine loving my life any more than I do. Fear of death probably always reminds people just how much they owe to the people and organizations they love. I am no exception to this. If I haven't told you just how much I love and appreciate you all lately, shame on me.

I am pained to tears that 3 people felt that the best possible use of their time and energies would be to take and gun onto the red line and try and make their own luck. Before any of you judge these people too harshly, try and imagine how much of your own life would need to be stripped away before you would seriously consider such an option to be your best possible choice. With a gun to my chest, I realized just how much I had to lose, and how little the robbers probably felt they had to lose. These individuals are ultimately responsible for their own actions (probably to the tune of 5 years in prison, to be exact), but I cannot help but feel sad and a bit ashamed that society has left these people with such bad options. When the choices I make revolve around whether to study for a few extra hours or to watch a Tarkovski film from Netflix, there's a pretty stark difference between the life opportunities and paths afforded to me versus what was afforded them.

I am grateful for a relatively just and responsive society. When I called 911 after the robbers left the train, I was expecting my story to be filed under the crime statistics and a half-hearted search effort to be made in a few days. Instead, a dozen police responded within minutes and two out of the three suspects were arrested within half an hour of my call. They say that there are no atheists in foxholes. I would submit that there are no Lockeans in police stations; society and how we get along matters a whole lot when civility breaks down and crimes are committed.

My sleepiness is starting to overwhelm my emotions and excitement, so I will end this here and go get some sleep. I plan on returning to my normal, philosophical, sometimes belligerent posts soon. Before I had time to really reflect upon, edit, or even rationalize my thoughts and feelings, however, I felt I should get them down. It normally takes me days or weeks to find the inspiration to write and edit a post for this blog. Today, all it took was a pistol.

A new leaf

2008-12-14T23:06:00.001-08:00

If any of you have ever kept up a correspondance with me--any form of relationship which does not involve me seeing you and offering you food--you know that I tend to write in spurts. When I have the time, I check my e-mail every hour, write back immediately when written to, and do my best to find pithy things to say or funny things to link you to to illustrate my points. When time is not so plentiful, however, my inbox fills up with friendly letters that I want to respond to, but which I put off until I have more time to kill.

As far as I can tell, this pattern is pretty normal behavior. I read everyone's blog who reads and comments on this blog (if there are more of you who read this, let me know so that I can keep up with your blog too. I didn't realize that most of you even had blogs until you posted and I could see your profile) and I notice that my reader fills up much slower when schools have finals or midterms coming up.

My problem has always been that I have a hard time writing short e-mails or posting something here without devoting a lot of my time and chi to it. When I forget to write one of you for six months or more, I feel like it would be inappropriate to re-establish contact with a "hey [insert neglected friend's name here], how's life? I'm doing well. Talk to you later." Instead of writing something polite, yet managable, however, I feel like I need to write something epic to make up for my jerkiness in not having written in so long. Inevitably, said epic e-mail rarely gets finished; it sits in my draft folder until the details and wittiness have withered away and I delete it in shame. The longer this cycle goes on, the more awkward it becomes for me to re-establish contact with you. I usually just wait for you to write me and tell me that you've gotten married and had 2 children since I last talked to you. Somehow this seems less awkward to me than writing an e-mail that I can finish in one sitting.

So, in an attempt to combat this neurosis, and in celebration that my first quarter at Northwestern has come to a close, I decided to finish a post, just to prove to myself that I can. I have significant starts on posts on half a dozen subjects I've been thinking about for the last month but most of them will probably never materialize into a form that I would post it here.

So for those of you who still read this (I know that my mother has dropped out), I really appreciate that you still want to keep in touch with me and read what I write. If you're reading this to see how I've been doing since the last time I wrote you an e-mail allow me to apologize--there's a long message waiting for you in my draft folder somewhere, I promise.

My Darling From the Lions

2008-11-22T21:07:00.000-08:00

So Amanda and I collect offensive books. OK, that came out wrong. We collect books which are products of their time, which now seem offensive because the world has (in my view) improved, especially with regards to gender, sexuality, and racial relations. Because we have a bookshelf full of titles like The Secret Power of Femininity, The How to Catch a Man Handbook, or Dare to Be True Adventure Series: A Prophet in Palmyra (a choose your own adventure style book based on the founding of the gospel in which even mundane choices lead to either eternal, unmitigated happiness or sure eternal damnation) our friends are wont to chip in to the collection when they find more that would fit the theme. Recently, our friend Alea shipped us My Darling From the Lions by Janice Barrett Graham. I'd been hearing about this book for months; Ms. Graham's out-spokenness and proud-to-be-not-PC attitude had caused even Deseret Book to shy away from her manuscript. I had read some of her blog posts at her website and was flabbergasted by her lack of respect, her dogmatic view that everything is either a black or white issue, and her revelry in saying things "the world" disagrees with. I decided to read enough of her book that I could at least post the most offensive parts for all of you to enjoy. As it turned out, however, I managed to stomach the whole thing (there are some advantages to 4 hours on a train or bus every day) and was surprised that there were a lot of redeeming things to say about the book. There are, however, more than a few glaring flaws as well.

Simply put, the narrator (and author) is insufferable, dramatic, over-wrought, and quite probably manic-depressive. The entries--the book is a series of cobbled-together journal entries spanning a number of years--alternate between drastic lows and extreme, maudlin highs. As if the whiplash of the narrative weren't already enough, Ms. Graham sees fit to ascribe each new high or low to some new-found blessing of the Spirit or to the buffetings of Satan, she sees herself as a pawn in some epic game of chess. Such moralizing made me suspicious that she had been writing her journals with an outside observer in mind from the very beginning; no experience or emotion can remain uninflected or unanalyzed, lest her posterity read her journal and not be certain that greater forces were at play in her day-to-day life. Even near the beginning of the book, it is painfully clear that many of Ms. Graham's difficulties are often the direct result of the decisions she is making, her very unhealthy attitudes towards the gospel, and her painfully obvious emotional problems. I was very often moved to compassion for her, not only because her problems were so often beyond her power to solve them, but because her own instability inevitably exacerbated the already difficult times her family goes through.

For those of you who have never heard of the book, it documents the story of Daniel Graham's struggles with homosexuality. His experimentation with pornography and live homosexual encounters are only disclosed well after they have taken place, and in dramatic and painful ways. Although I was moved with compassion towards Daniel, who obviously regretted his behavior and wanted to change, Ms. Graham's reactions to the experiences were disturbing and very off-putting. In the moments where you would most assume Daniel would need the most comfort and love, his mother was frantically blaming everyone in her life for allowing this horrible thing to happen, was shockingly disappointed with Daniel, and at times could not even bring herself to talk to him. The good will and empathy I felt for Daniel's struggles were blunted by my horror at Ms. Graham's untoward attitudes toward her own son.

If any of you do read this book, I think that you will be surprised at how absolute and pat her answers are to every struggle. She is constantly reading or listening to a book from Deseret Book which offers her a panacea to solving her gospel difficulties. She does seem to gain some amount of comfort from her books and tapes, but it makes me a bit nervous just how much faith and time she puts in to gospel commentaries and pop-psychology. She delivers her own conclusions in the same absolutist tones as the morals in her books are delivered to her; given how many of Deseret Book's products she endorses in her book, and how well her work would have fit in with so many of their products, it must have stung to have them reject her manuscript.

Daniel is eventually "cured" of his homosexuality. He is disappointed that he can't go on a mission because of his sins, but he seems to be happy enough to be free of his homosexual feelings. I buy the thesis of the book that Daniel turned to homosexuality out of curiosity, discouragement with his lack of success with a girl he loved, and the fact that his traits and interests (music, theater, and clogging) were better appreciated within homosexual circles. Furthermore, Daniel had apparently been teased and hated by many of his peers for his un-manly ways. I suppose there is a chance that his hyper-masculine culture actually constructed and convinced Daniel that he must be gay, and should act the part.

There are parts of this book that are well worth reading. Ms. Graham learns valuable lessons about trying to love her son no matter what he does, her defense of him against ridicule in a judgmental and ridiculous culture is touching, even if it comes too late, and both she and Daniel seem thrilled that they have pulled Daniel back to a life-style that both are more comfortable with.

Ms. Graham's defense of her son unfortunately reaches a non-sequitur fever pitch by the end of the book, such that she seeks to blame her own short-comings as a mother, Daniel's poor choices, and the emotional attrition they have all suffered on "the world" and its wickedness. I will agree with her that pornography use and casual sex can be emotionally stunting or even mentally scarring, but Daniel was not trapped or even fooled into his mistakes under false pretenses; his own weaknesses lead him down his road and he willingly followed. For a woman who claims that all homosexuals can be cured of their same-sex attraction with a little self-control and counselling, she seems comically unwilling to acknowledge that her own actions, namely her frantically full schedule while her children were growing up, her draconian punishments for minor mistakes, or her unconcealed shame and disappointment at Daniel after his first confession might have been part of the impetus for Daniel's secrecy and emotional insecurities.

At various times in the book, Ms. Graham blames the wickedness of the world on Darwin, John Kerry (who refused to concede, thus dividing the nation), Bill Clinton (for shaming the US with his Lewinsky scandal), and internet chat rooms. Although she is quick to forgive herself for her unkind words to someone at church she was mean to because she "know[s] that [she is] still loved and of infinite value" (even though she does not repent or apologize), she does not grant the same forgiveness to anyone else in her life except eventually her son. Her intimation that all homosexuals must feel the exact same way as Daniel, and can thus be treated in the same way as Daniel seems to be the same form of over-simplification that led Daniel's peers to judge him as necessarily gay for liking music and theater. I know that Ms. Graham only wants to help other people like her son, but I wonder if the way she goes about trying doesn't eventually end up doing more harm than good.

For those of you who think that rampant hypocrisy is funny, or if The Office's Michael Scott isn't enough of any anti-hero for you, I would recommend reading My Darling From the Lions. The book is actually quite enjoyable if you treat the characters as fictitious and can laugh at them for their absurdities. If you slip back into a real-life paradigm, however, and are depressed by Ms. Graham's naked hatred and judgmentalism, just don't say that I didn't warn you.

absurdly long post about Prop 8

2008-11-17T21:34:00.000-08:00

I have spent the last few weeks stewing over the gay marriage debate. Although I kept my fingers crossed that Prop 8 would fail, that we Mormons would look dumb for investing so much money into a symbolic measure, and that we could all move on in relative peace. Instead, the bill passed and we are looking down the barrel of a PR nightmare for the Church, the culture wars are only starting to get heated up, and I'm faced with another pit in my stomach from the anger and shame that we spent $20 million as a people on Prop 8.

This will probably be the longest post that I have ever done, or that I plan on doing again. Hopefully, if I do this well, I will be able to sum up my positions clearly and be able to leave the issue behind; I'd much rather be blogging right now about the heinous new wallpaper they have installed in the lobby of my apartment building, the Decemberists concert we went to last week, and my thoughts on President-elect Obama. My last posts on Proposition 8 were written more for me than for any of you, however, and I want to have one more go at convincing you all that Proposition 8 was wrong.

First things first, the Earth is a lot more than 6000 years old. Claiming that traditional marriage has remained the same for 6000 years makes a good slogan for a 30-second campaign ad or for a t-shirt, but it simply isn't true. Strict Biblical literalism is totally indefensible to anyone who knows about the history of the book, its translation, or anything about the themes and messages actually contained within the Bible. In fact, if any of you want to argue that marriage has always been between a man and a woman for Bibilical reasons, I will expect a thorough denunciation of Abraham, Jacob, Soloman, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young as well, not to mention the members of the 12 who are sealed to their second wives as well. While I'm on the topic of the Bible, I should probably touch on the shaky underpinnings of the mainstream Christian assault on homosexuality. It is true that there are a number of verses in both the Old and the New Testaments speaking out against deviant sexual practices. Asserting that these scriptures were written for our day, and with monogamous homosexual relations in mind, however, is much less clear-cut. I am not trying to argue here that homosexuality is condoned through ancient or modern scripture, but I do know my Bible well enough to assert that Christians should by no means feel that the Bible forces them into condemning it. In fact, I would guess that it doesn't make the top ten of scriptural injunctions or lessons taught by the Bible. There are many people who look to the story of Sodom as rock-solid proof that homosexuality is the harbinger of our destruction--sometimes I wonder if any of them have actually even read the story, or if they've only read the Cliff's Notes. I would submit that the story of Sodom, wherein a gang of men tries to rape a stranger and Lot offers his own daughters as sexual proxy instead, tells us much more about the wickedness of their society than a simple "gays are bad" epithet really expresses. But hey, if you are still insistent on joining the mainstream Christians in condeming gays, can we pass a law against eating strangled things next?

In all seriousness, however, I do think that religious reasons are potentially the most persuasive in convincing me that the support the Church gave to Prop 8 was not a mistake. If the Church were to come out and tell me that God--for reasons unknown and unexplainable--wanted me to support Proposition 8, I might have less venom for it. As it is, however, the Church has come out with all sorts of reasons for why they supported Prop 8. When the reasons given are as ludicrous and intellectually insulting as what they were, I am hard pressed to believe that they came from God (who I believe is far more intelligent and thoughtful than to dictate such things). I'm wondering why God hasn't come out with a list of reasons why the Word of Wisdom is a good idea, or explanations for why we keep the law of chastity? It seems to me that when God speaks, He usually just commands us to do something and expects us to realize that it is for our own good; I first grew suspicious that the Yes on 8 action was the work of men when they felt the need to justify themselves to me. Furthermore, I have prayed about this issue and feel that I am not in the wrong to speak out (Michael, as you have pointed out to me, this is absolutely not the most important issue in the world, I mean exactly what I say here that my efforts are not wrong, it is not that I feel a religious duty to speak up, just a religious confirmation that it is OK if I so choose). I'm still waiting for a "thus saith the Lord" on this one. If I get one, I'll delete this post immediately. For those of you who do believe that God has spoken on this issue, might I recommend that you keep your reasons for supporting Prop 8 to just that. The discussion need not get any messier than our simple disagreement over whether God has spoken in the case or not. When you try and enter the realm of logic and reasoning, however, you must expect to be challenged on the field of logic (cue sound of cracking knuckles here).

When I wrote my first post blasting a ban on gay marriage I hadn't really culled the internet for what others were saying about the issue yet. My first post on gay marriage was essentially a straw man because the statement by the Church was so bad; even those of you who adamantly supported Proposition 8 agreed with me on almost all of my criticisms of what the Church news room was putting out.

I read a rather brilliant bit of argumentation from the Yes on 8 campaign titled "Six Consequences if Prop 8 Fails" (I've included the link to one with a rebuttal attached to it). Although I think that the author is fear-mongering and purposely misleading, they are also very effective and as a debater, and I can respect effective argumentation, even if it is patently evil (I still listen to Bill O'Reilly's talking points, for example). Although I can appreciate such argumentation, I also think that it is the root cause of the backlash the Church is now facing; gays in California are upset, not only because they no longer have the rights they feel they should have, but that they lost those rights to what was, to them, a very misleading, fear-mongering, and unethical campaign (by the way, this might be a good time to condemn the violent reaction that has since ensued. I’m all for democracy, picketing, and protesting, but I think we can all agree that violence and vandalism are pretty universally undemocratic). I try to be manipulative or overly harsh when I'm in a debate round, but I will try and be more even-handed in picking apart the arguments I have heard and read for Proposition 8 than they were themselves. If I get a little overly-animated in my criticisms, however, please don't take them personally--I'm only trying to distance myself from some argumentation and philosophies that I feel are unbecoming of any self-respecting Christian.

A generally recurring theme within the Yes on 8 camp is that gays only want marriage in order to anger conservatives, to "normalize" what they know is really just a sinful lifestyle, or to promote their liberal agendas; gays already have equal access to everything that heterosexuals do through civil unions and a little bit of legal arrangement, easily accessible through legalzoom.com. These arguments are problematic (and false) for a wide number of reasons.

First, gays do not have equal rights with heterosexuals’ marriages, no matter how much time or effort they expend with lawyers. For example. Even if equal rights were available to them after spending lots of money on legal fees, however, is it really just to force them to do that paperwork and legal wrangling in order to attain rights that come so easily to heterosexuals? I'd be curious to know how the Mormons would react, for example, if the government suddenly started charging us ten times as much for a marriage license as they charge for other Christians, simply because a majority of voters in America passed a law singling us out for our inadherance to the doctrine of the Triune God. The argumentation coming out of the Yes on 8 camp has little to do with why homosexual unions should be singled out to have fewer rights than heterosexual ones; instead, they rely on scare tactics, inherent prejudices, and Biblical injunctions against those icky, icky gays.

Debates about normalization or toleration always rile me up a bit. I hear people talking about the ills of tolerating evil all the time; however none of them seem able to explain to me where the doctrine comes from. The Christ I am aware of "tolerated" publicans and sinners, Roman rule (much to the chagrin of the powers that be), adulterers (a sexual sin, I would point out), and every person He has spoken with, past or present. This leads me to believe that we don't need to attack and punish all evil-doers in order to be righteous ourselves or build a righteous, godly society. We can call homosexuals to repentance and still give them political rights. Christ was not concerned about punishing these people in public, simply to avoid the appearance of tolerating them too much. The religious drive to not tolerate evil in society is very reminiscent of Christianity (the crusades, the Inquisition, the witch trials of America, to name a few), but is only very loosely related to Christ's doctrines or examples (the cleansing of the temple is the closest I can come up with, although an intra-religious conflict seems much different to me than Christ over-throwing the law of the land in order to set up religious rule). Is it unreasonable to assume that God is powerful enough to punish the wicked without our help? I think the rub against "normalization" of homosexuality in society seems to me to rest upon the belief that sin will become more prevalent if we do not stigmatize it. Even if this were true, since when has the role of the government been to stigmatize sin? Am I missing a clause in the Constitution that grants government the mandate and the powers to provide for the common religiosity? On a more scriptural level, I would like to point Mormons to D&C 121:41. I am all for having laws which punish societal evils like violent crime and breach of contract, but I do so in order to make society safer and more livable, not because I want to stigmatize or scare people into a more Mormonly life. I would submit that Mormons are dangerously close to abusing their priesthood powers when they seek to use it (and the Church's resources and credibility) to pass laws which, as their stated purpose, are there to make homosexuals feel less loved or comfortable in society (lest they feel that we are tolerating their evil, or think it a normal or acceptable lifestyle). The proper venues for correcting sin are the pulpits and missionary messages we send out to the world, not additions to state constitutions. It is not as if the Church is really in any danger of being seen to tolerate or condone the sins of homosexuals. Moreover, since when did we really care whether the world sees us as being harsh enough on sin? I would point out that although Christ was much maligned for tolerating and loving the sinful echelons of society, he was never mistaken for an adulterer himself, nor was his doctrine confused with advocating such sins.

While I'm on this issue, I want to attack the notion that we can and do "love" homosexuals, even as we are trying to take away their equal treatment under the law. I was struck by the following quote in the interview that Elders Oaks and Hickman gave:

PUBLIC AFFAIRS: At what point does showing that love cross the line into inadvertently endorsing behavior? If the son says, ‘Well, if you love me, can I bring my partner to our home to visit? Can we come for holidays?’ How do you balance that against, for example, concern for other children in the home?’
ELDER OAKS: That’s a decision that needs to be made individually by the person responsible, calling upon the Lord for inspiration. I can imagine that in most circumstances the parents would say, ‘Please don’t do that. Don’t put us into that position.’ Surely if there are children in the home who would be influenced by this example, the answer would likely be that. There would also be other factors that would make that the likely answer.
I can also imagine some circumstances in which it might be possible to say, ‘Yes, come, but don’t expect to stay overnight. Don’t expect to be a lengthy house guest. Don’t expect us to take you out and introduce you to our friends, or to deal with you in a public situation that would imply our approval of your “partnership.”
Is anyone else bothered by the intimation that parents wouldn't want to introduce their son or daughter to their friends, lest they be seen to be tolerant of their own children? Maybe it's better for the world that I don't have any children, but I would like to think that I would love and be proud of my child, no matter how sinful I thought they were. More than that, I am confused about how homosexuality is so qualitatively different from other sins that a theoretical child could commit. Would these hypothetical parents be ashamed to introduce their hypothetical child to their hypothetical friends if the child were a smoker? What if the child were sexually active, but with members of the opposite sex? I am pretty certain when I say that my parents would love me no matter what I ever did, even if they couldn't respect me. I have no doubt that my parents would come to my arraignment if I were ever arrested for some crime. I will furthermore go so far as to say that if my parents were openly ashamed to claim me, I would doubt whether they loved me any more. I will admit that these reactions that Elder Oaks is condoning (I was tempted to be a jerk and use the word tolerating, let the record show that I didn't) are probably normal. I personally think, however, that we should expect more from our members (...as I have loved you, love one another). I also think that we should be more empathetic when gays feel that we are being hateful of them with our rhetoric in supporting Prop 8; we are strongly implying that their parents were right in shunning and being ashamed of their children for having same-sex attraction. No amount of telling a child that you love them will be effective in communicating that idea when you otherwise show them that you are ashamed of them, and that God supports our efforts to sweep them under the rug (or into the closet, if you will).

Before I move on to the supposed societal harms that gay marriage may pose, I want to address the issue of language change which seems to be oh so troubling to so many people. Homosexuals did not steal the word gay, nor is our language any less communicative because the word means something else. I've never met anyone who still speaks in Shakespearean iambic pentameter or still declines their nouns to mark their parts of speech, like we did in the Old English phase of our language. Language is constantly changing, and society is both helping to cause that change, and adapting to the changes in language. There are always multiple ways to describe any action, group, or political stance. Just as we have been asked to call ourselves "members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" rather than "Mormons," in order to avoid the stigmatized label which brings up negative stereotypes in the minds of some, any political movement will seek to define itself using politically neutral or favorable terms like "pro-choice" rather than "pro-abortion" or "pro-life" rather than "anti-abortionist." I think the key to understanding the issues at hand are to cut through the convenient, but often misleading labels and focus on what each really stands for. Although the meaning of words and concepts is important in our society--much of law is an attempt to find socially agreed upon standards of words and concepts ranging from where life begins and ends or what constitutes taxable income--it is equally important that we never slip into the fallacy that the meaning of words defines us, rather than the other way around. Our spirituality or righteousness is not contingent on how our society defines our beliefs, rather on how God judges us. I detect an intense fear within many people that if society can redefine what marriage means, that our marriages will somehow be less important or valid in the sight of God. Are we really so insecure in our own beliefs? Does it really matter to you that other people claim to be married (keeping in particular mind our beliefs in eternal marriage, and that no marriages are complete in the sight of God unless they are sealed in a temple)? I would submit that, from a Mormon perspective, a gay marriage is no more or less valid in the sight of God than any marriage that is not sealed in a temple. There, I know that that will sound really offensive to some, but it was the elephant in the room and needed to be pointed out.

The issues of how gay marriage can affect society will be markedly more difficult to parse because there is so little data out there and so much double speak on the issue. People seem Hell-bent on citing civilizations that have collapsed "because of gay marriage or homosexuality," but then walk away from historicity when I can cite dozens of better studies, or even religious quotes to prove that such was not the case. I'm not going to stage both sides of the debate for you, especially since most of you won't agree with everything that Sonja Eddings Brown believes in anyway. Instead, I'll address what I think are the most persuasive arguments that I've heard and also anything that I have heard from any of you.

"Children have a right to be raised in a home with a mother and a father." This statement is an abuse of the word right. Children might be better off in a home with both a mother and a father, but such does not translate into a legal right. Seriously, should we ban the raising of children in single-parent homes? If so, Prop 8 does not go nearly far enough, and ends up doing essentially nothing; the law would be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

"Gay marriage steps on the rights of our children... by changing marriage for everyone." The notion that gay marriage somehow cheapens heterosexual marriage frankly baffles me. For those of you who are married, please respond to this post (if anybody is actually reading this far!) and tell me if you love your spouse less because people you disapprove of have been allowed to marry. If so, did your love go down when Massachusetts allowed gay marriages? How about the recent change in Connecticut? I don't mean to be rude, but if you honestly love your spouse less because other people are joining the same club you're in, I sincerely think that you should never have gotten married in the first place. I wrote my last post with the subtext that I would not leave the Church simply because there are some people in it who I consider jerks. Marriage is valuable and beautiful, even if people you do not like or respect are able to take part in it. Do we really owe our children a society where only men and women can marry each other? Go ahead and show me the data (or at least the internal logic) which shows that banning gay marriage will increase a given child's chances of being raised by both a mother and father. Barring that, Ms. Brown's statements are more of a smokescreen than really an argument. If you want a society in which all children are raised by both a mother and father, pass a law that demands that all children be raised by a loving mother and father. Good luck making it work, but it will be really fun for me to watch you try.

"Having a traditional definition of marriage is a society stabilizer." Really? Do you have any examples of this? If traditional marriage really has been around for 6000 years, where are all those societies which had traditional marriage? Besides, what is really the definition of a "stable society?" Iraq was pretty dang stable under Saddam, so was the USSR throughout most of its history. Rather than argue for anything sane, the Yes on 8 group is spinning long strings of positively-connotative words (preserve and tradition, to name just 2 that show up frequently) together and hoping that most people won't look at them hard enough to realize that they're making this up as they go along. Once again, I have to respect them for pulling it off--they clearly won this round of the game. What I'm trying to show is that it's not true, even though lots of people in California believed it. If you want something to chew on for examples of stable societies which rejected the traditional definitions of marriage, I would urge you to do a little research into ancient Greece or Rome. They clearly rejected the notion that marriage is one man, one woman, and 2.3 children living a luxurious middle-class life-style. If homosexuality was the poison that eventually led to the down-fall of their empires, it sure took its sweet time about finally collapsing them; they are arguably the two most successful and longest-lasting civilizations the world has ever seen. Seriously though, I invite any of you to ask me to do this research for you if you honestly believe that there are historical traces of societies collapsing due to gay marriage. You must, however, do me that favor in return of not asserting that there are societal ills that will come from gay marriage if we allow it unless you can prove that fact.

"Gay parents will teach all children--especially those that they are raising--that it's OK to be gay." I would submit that it is a fundamental right of parents or guardians to teach their children whatever they feel is right. Had we put it up to a vote in 1850, how many people in America would have voted that it was a "societally good" thing that Mormons be allowed to teach their children the doctrines of polygamy? How about the pre-1978 doctrines on race? Would any of you have been down with the government coming in and raising our children for us, because they didn't like what we were teaching them? How much sociological data would they have to bring in before we caved, finally acknowledging that our pedagogy was causing "societal harms" like functionally single-parent homes (how many children can a polygamist father really be a good father to?)? I'm sorry to be so blunt on this point, I just feel like we Mormons should have recognized by now that we have the biggest glass house ever, yet we're still throwing the most stones out of anyone (20 million of them at last count).
There's yet another problem with this argument, however. I don't think that any studies have shown that gay parents raise a higher percentage of gay children than straight parents do. I haven't done extensive research on this, but I'd be willing to wager a nickel that there is not a statistically significant difference between the different types of marriages and number of gay children that come out of them (as long as I can count the numbers of gay children in extremely religious and conservative homes that commit suicide rather than face the shame (ahem, stigmatization) of "coming out"). By contrast, do gay children only come from being taught poorly by bad or broken homes? Anyone who knows any homosexuals knows that the unequivocal answer to that question is absolutely not. Even if you believe that homosexuality (and same-sex attraction) is 100% a choice, I feel that it is unjustifiable, offensive, and ignorant to assume that people become gay because of some parental deficiency. If any of you reading this have gay children, you did not "turn them gay." If any of you reading this are gay, you are not broken, or the product of bad parenting. I invite any rebuttals on this point if any of you have read good research on this issue. Be forewarned, however, that I am a scientist myself, and I will demand that the research be both credible and quality--no Kinsey please.

I think the real shame about this whole debate is what was said between the lines. Claiming that children would be better off in state custody or in a single-parent home than in the home of a loving homosexual couple says one of a few things about that couple: either they cannot really provide a stable, loving environment for a child, they cannot teach a child how to flourish in society any better than a foster-home could, or they are such intrinsically horrible people because of their sexuality that society is at a net-loss if they are allowed to raise children. I'm actually fine with any or all of these things being said, if you actually believe them, but please don't do us the disservice of pretending that that is not what you are actually saying, if you actually are. This is where the Sonja Eddings Brown interview gets rather ridiculous; if she is so quick to praise the loving, successful relationships of the gay people she knows, how can she then turn around and claim that gays in general are damaging children? I might be more likely to believe that gays should not be given marriage rights if some overwhelming number of their marriages or child-rearing led to abuse, pedophilia, or socially inept and maladjusted children. If that's what you are claiming, however, it's probably not a very good idea to praise homosexuals up and down--just a bit of free debate advice, Ms. Brown.

I know that there are some of you re-reading the Proclamation to the World, worried that "the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets." Although I do not wish to argue that this is not true, I would submit that homosexuals being allowed to form marriage-like monogamous units in which they love each other in every substantive way except for one is not a disintegration of anything, but rather a closer approximation to the model of the family that society so desperately needs. I would like to also point out that the members have been called upon by the Church to spend anywhere near $20 million to stop the more serious problems in the status quo (or at least they are not doing it if they’ve been asked). In our society that is rife with pornography, prostitution, rape, incest, pedophilia, and adultery, I somehow doubt that God is pacing the floor that we might get to call gay civil unions marriages in California. If you want to look to the disintegration of the family, don't look to the symbolic, but the real-life degradation of marriage as witnessed by crime, abuse, divorce, and unwed motherhood. Also, please allow me to feel that the Christian right was being a tad bit disingenuous by clamoring to defend the family, while simultaneously supporting John McCain, a known philanderer, for the highest office in the land. Also, the notion that heterosexual marriage is intrinsically holy for including only one man and one woman, and gay marriage is intrinsically bad, regardless of other indices is the same logic that claims Hitler (or Bush) will be exalted for being a Christian, yet the Dali Lama is Hell-bound, despite living like one.

If you'll permit me to be a bit snarky for a moment, I would like to give a few examples of marriages that the Yes on 8 crowd would like to call godly: Britney Spears had a "just for fun" marriage for all of 55 hours in 2004 before it was annulled. Anna Nicole Smith married a billionaire 63 years her senior and spent the years after his death fighting legal battles for his money. Hundreds or thousands of people (far too many of them LDS) meet and get married after knowing each other for only a few weeks or months, only to later get divorced.

In closing, I would like to once again ask what right we have to define marriage on a pubic policy level. Is it only because this issue is important to our theology? I would submit that baptism is far more important for the salvation of humankind that marriage is, and yet there are no laws dictating proper baptism (thank heavens). Is homosexuality worse than other sins in our society like adultery? Will Proposition 8 actually prevent any sin from taking place? Barring any real answers to these questions, I esteem the efforts to define marriage as irrational, reactionary, and totally wasteful.

If homosexual marriage really were the harbinger of the apocalypse, I think that we should be galvanizing internal strength in Christ, rather than concerting efforts to punish and restrict the outer world for its sinfulness. If you want to avoid catching a cold, the most effective way to respond is by washing your own hands, not by eliminating all pathogenic bacteria in the world (because you never will). This fight against Prop 8 has been a bruising, costly, and marginalizing distraction from the very serious, very urgent issues of perfecting the saints, redeeming the dead, and sharing the gospel.

If I feel like it, I might respond later to the post-prop-8 conflict between the gays and the Mormons. Although I think that both sides have committed lots of sins (Garth, I'll send you an e-mail on this, because I don't want to make accusations and expose our specific sins in public), and both sides share some of the blame. Mostly I just think it's funny that we Mormons get off on feeling persecuted and hated. Freedom of speech is wonderful when it gives us the right to speak out against gay marriage and get our laws passed, but it is suddenly horrible when it is used to criticize and mock us after we get our way (even though, in this case, the other side has gone too far, unfortunately turning us, the aggressors, into martyrs). If churches are too holy to be picketed, they are too holy to be used as political staging grounds. Referees in football are usually wise enough to give both sides of a fight a penalty, even if they only see one punch; I think you have too much faith in the virtue of people, Garth, if you want to lay all the blame for this conflict on the angry gays. I'm also very hesitant of the "by their fruits ye shall know them" scripture because I know so many horrible people on both sides of the conflict. If I strictly applied that scripture I don't know if there would be any good people left worth knowing at all (myself included).

Caveat to my rage

2008-11-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

While I was an undergrad at BYU, a student organization ran a soapbox. Once a week, students could stand on the quad with a microphone and bellyache about whatever they wanted to; needless to say, I was an active participant. One of the rules was that no student could "speak evil of the Lord's anointed." I was never kicked off of the soapbox, so I'm pretty sure that I never broke this rule, but I must admit that I am not sure that I even knew what the prohibition meant. Now, after my own (failed) personal campaign against California's Proposition 8, and after a lot of anger and doubt, I think I finally understand what that rule meant.

Throughout my life as a Mormon, I have been taught to defer to the prophet and the apostles with reverential awe. Watching General Conference every 6 months only added to their aura of other-worldliness; these men spoke from a massive wooden pulpit, their image projected on a movie-screen-sized wall in the darkened chapel, and they said things, not only that I had been taught, but things that I knew and felt were true. It's not so much that the theatrics of it all were meant to confuse me--I was regularly taught about their personal histories, their families, and the fact that they were people just like me--but for whatever reason, I still believed that they were somehow different--better even--from mere mortals like myself.

I still believe that these people are apostles and prophets. I honestly think that God has chosen these people to lead His Church, to try and help people to live better lives, and to do the administrative chores that come with any organization as large and complex as the Church.

I'm also coming to realize, however, that these leaders are also people.

Maybe BYU's rule of not "speaking ill of the Lord's anointed" is not so much an attempt at unrealistic optimism--holding to the belief that the glass is half-full, even when it clearly isn't--but rather an acknowledgement that nobody ever does anything that is totally good, no matter how well-intentioned they may be. Focusing on mistakes and personal flaws of Church leaders unduly detracts from the good things they undeniably do. Furthermore, the belief that sins or mistakes necessarily invalidate good deeds is the quickest way to nihilism and total gridlock. If only perfect people were allowed to be apostles then there wouldn't be any. Or if, for example, serving in a community organization with someone who had sinned (maybe even committed acts of domestic terrorism) in the past made the whole endeavour an act of "tolerating" their evil, then nobody could join any organizations at all. Isn't the whole foundation of Christianity that everybody, to some degree or another, is a horrible sinner?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't consider myself an apostate, just because I feel that the Church is totally dropping the ball on this whole gay marriage thing. I don't plan on leaving just because they have made, are making, and will most definitely make mistakes in the future. I just think that it's important to acknowledge when mistakes are being made and try to correct them. I am still going to rail against policies and actions that I feel are unbecoming of God's church.

There is a natural tendency in the Church to try and hide our mistakes from others. Perhaps it's because we don't want our "enemies" to know that we are human and prone to the foibles of our historical time and culture. We don't want anti-Mormons to gloat over our mistakes as proof that we are not what we claim to be, God's church restored to the Earth through a prophet.

I guess I can only hope that my ranting about the mistakes of my Church does not distract you from the fact that it is, on balance, a great organization. I want to speak out against the mistakes we Mormons make for the same reasons that the Church speaks out against sins during General Conference--to correct them and to improve our standing with God.

I realize that for many of you, this caveat is meaningless. Either you won't accept that the Church is making a mistake with its stance in California, regardless of what I say, or you have been complaining with me for months and already need no convincing. Before I started my next post, however, which will be another indelicate assault on the faulty logic and PR nightmare that is Proposition 8, I wanted to make sure that all of you (myself included) knew exactly where I stand. Isn't that what blogs are about?

www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts

2008-10-11T18:29:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason, I have always placed a lot of importance on being able to define myself, rather than being defined by others. Although I would like to think that other people's opinion of me means very little--and for the most part that is true--I have a pretty strong internal need to feel justified in what I'm doing.

I've been going through somewhat of an existential crisis lately with my opinion of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Although I still feel passionately about trying to live a good life, and I still believe that the Church holds a uniquely important role in distributing critical ordinances, I take serious issue with its recent official stance in favor of California's Proposition 8. I didn't really want to have to do my dirty laundry in public, but I don't think it would be enough to simply say that I disagree; there are some fundamental untruths being told that I want to distance myself from.

First, the Church reports that it "has a single, undeviating standard of sexual morality: intimate relations are proper only between a husband and a wife united in the bonds of matrimony." Although I do not take issue with this standard, it does not necessarily follow that this standard need necessarily lead to supporting a law against sexual immorality. Furthermore, the Church does not, as far as I am aware, support legal bans on other violations of its sexual code (although I personally think that adultery should be tried as a breach of contract). And lastly, how does banning same-sex unions prevent any violation of this sexual standard? Are we to believe that there are droves of celibate homosexuals who are waiting to have sex until after they get married? For those who have married since the CA Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, are they going to return to their celibate lifestyle if Prop 8 passes?

I would really like to know who wrote this "The Divine Institution of Marriage" document. Here are just a few of the things which are fallacious, disrespectful, and extremely poorly written about the treatise.

"The sacred nature of marriage is closely linked to the power of procreation"

It is true that the sacred, religiously valuable part of marriage has to do with procreation. The societally beneficial part of marriage (monogamy as a tool to curb STDs, a public health problem, just to name one), however--something this document often conflates with Mormon dogma--has absolutely nothing to do with procreation.

"Marriage is not primarily a contract between individuals to ratify their affections and provide for mutual obligations."

The writers of this cannot even bring themselves to use the word "love"; it would be totally unacceptable to believe that homosexuals could feel the same way about others as they might feel about their spouses. Moreover, even if I buy that marriage is "primarily" about raising children in a Christian-friendly manner, the very wording here implies that there are other reasons for marrying. Surely, ratification of "affections" or mutual benefits are at least marginally important, are they not? Am I to believe that a union based on these motives is intrinsically bad, just because no biological children can come from it? If so, let’s unmarry anyone who either cannot or will not reproduce naturally, reserving this sacred title for those people who create and then raise their own progeny.

"throughout the ages governments of all types have recognized and affirmed marriage as an essential institution in preserving social stability and perpetuating life itself"

Either the writers are being willfully deceptive about marriage's history (examples of marriage as a political tool, for example, are not hard to find) or they are dangerously naive. In any case, historical examples, especially those which are so vague as to details or consequences, seem to me to be disingenuous. After all, governments of all types have also recognized and affirmed slavery, brutality, corporal and capital punishment, needless wars, and demagoguery as essential institutions and practices to preserve social stability. If the Roman Empire jumped off a cliff would you?

"It is true that some couples who marry will not have children, either by choice or because of infertility, but the special status of marriage is nonetheless closely linked to the inherent powers and responsibilities of procreation"

This makes sense because it makes sense. Hey look over there! If I use the word "nevertheless" it will make it sound like I have a rational, well-thought out position without actually having to have one. Genius!

"This is not only because of the substantial personal resources that two parents can bring to bear on raising a child, but because of the differing strengths that a father and a mother, by virtue of their gender, bring to the task"

I do not believe that all males or all females have certain characteristics simply because of their gender. Even if there were magical characteristic inherent in every man or every woman that is unique to people of that gender, surely there are indices that are infinitely more important in deciding who would make the best parent. Also, it is a difficult argument to make that a woman’s talents cannot be at least partially (and probably tolerably) reproduced by a man. Furthermore, since all people are different, chances are good that neither partner in a marriage will have all of the “personal resources” that these writers would need necessary to raising good children.

"Marriage is fundamentally an unselfish act: ... Societal recognition of same-sex marriage cannot be justified simply on the grounds that it provides self-fulfillment to its partners"

No action or belief is automatically altruistic. A heterosexual marriage is not fundamentally unselfish (even when children are involved, as this document is implying), nor is a homosexual marriage automatically a merely selfish desire for self-fulfillment.

"the all-important question of public policy must be: what environment is best for the child and for the rising generation?"

Is it really our right to define what the best environment for children should be? If I teach my children incorrect things, is the CA constitution going to step in and decide that another family might provide a better environment for my children to learn, and take them away?

"Traditional marriage provides a solid and well-established social identity to children. It increases the likelihood that they will be able to form a clear gender identity, with sexuality closely linked to both love and procreation."

Wow. I don't even know where to start.

"These developments will create serious clashes between the agenda of the secular school system and the right of parents to teach their children traditional standards of morality."

My telling you something does not take away your right to tell your children something else.

I’m realizing now that writing this post has only agitated me further. Although I would love to continue, picking apart wanton lies from the pro-prop 8 campaign, expounding on the history of marriage, homosexuality, or the politics of marriage, I don’t want to spew any more venom here than I already have, lest I isolate anyone still reading (my family reads this blog too). My purpose in writing this was to distance myself from what I feel to be an unacceptable politicization of my religion, not attack or defend the Proposition 8 movement. I suppose that I should probably define what I still do believe in another post, for those who are interested, but for now I want to leave it at this.

By the way, for those of you who are interested, I actually do not support gay marriage, per se. I personally believe that marriage is a religious sacrament, not a political designation. As such, the government should, in my opinion, not recognize any marriages, my own included, but should instead give everyone equal civil unions. If I want to go to a church and designate my union as a marriage in a religious ceremony, that’s my right. If homosexuals want to either find a denomination that will call their unions “marriages”, or if they want to start a new church that will do so, their being married takes nothing away from my being married any more than your being baptized takes anything away from my being baptized. For you Catholics out there, you probably believe that my baptism is moot before God; I’m OK with that. The reason for all of these culture wars is that religion insists on claiming special rights for itself, even at the expense of trying to legislate religious definitions, and those shafted by the religious establishments are trying to gain redress through the power of the government. If anyone wants to try and explain to me how defining marriage isn’t a violation of the establishment clause, I’d love to hear it. Also, I would be willing to post any rebuttals any of you might want to write, if you would prefer to write something longer than will fit in the comments section.

We'll always have Paris (?)

2008-10-08T17:48:00.000-07:00

America has apparently been much maligned lately because our little credit meltdown has accidentally destroyed the economy of the entire world. Rather than defend America and its actions, I figured it would be much easier to defame Europe to prove that they deserve what they are getting. Don't think about it. It makes sense.

This wedding took place in a mall in Magdeburg. That's right, a mall. This is a continent full of beautiful, needlessly ornate churches that nobody is using for any other reason and you chose to get married in a mall? What were you even doing getting married in the first place? Europeans are just supposed to co-habitate, spurning the religious institution of marriage.

That's a potato with a condom on it. The writing on the poster warns Germans to buy condoms before they go on their vacations because AIDS is very prevalent all over the world and the quality of condoms might be lower outside of Europe. Although I can support the message of this poster, I'm pretty sure that I disapprove of putting condoms on potatoes for any reason.

Since when did the Europeans start having children again? They have obviously started copying us, they've started having children like we do, they invested in cdos, and before they knew it, their economy was tanking, NYSE-style.

Don't the Europeans know that the basis of any healthy economy is large automobiles? This offering from Amsterdam could easily fit into the trunk of an Escalade.

There are many sins hidden in this picture. First, who decided that this vending machine would look good in fuscia? Second, this vending machine sells Warcraft and Magic: the Gathering trading cards. And last, look how many of their packs are sold out. Some of the selections that have been snatched up cost upwards of 10 euros a pack. American sub-prime mortgage defaults? I think the blame for your financial ruin lies sqaurely with Wizards of the Coast.

While our aging women shop at Forever 21 to regain their youth through over-priced, chintzy fashion, the Germans have decided to one up us, keeping themselves 3 years younger looking. Of course the lack of a drinking age means that the Germans can get away with convincing their customers to look younger; Americans wouldn't want to have to choose between looking young and being able to drink alcohol. You win this round, Germany.

six-pack

2008-10-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

I was wondering how to broach this subject of experience without a) being overly political or b) without rehashing things all of you have heard a million times in the last 6 months. I think it might help if I mention that Sarah Palin, although the impetus for this post, is not the only reason I'm writing this. As I am in the process of gaining deep specific knowledge for the first time in my life, and grappling with fears that I may never get into medical school, issues of knowledge, expertise, and training have become increasingly pertinent for me.

I'll just come out and say it: I am scared to death that someone as unapologetically average as Sarah Palin could possibly become our next president.

Sure, I've whined a lot in the past 8 years about George W. Bush not being as bright as some sixth-graders I've known, but at least he'd gone through the motions; he pretended that he was competant. Ms. Palin hasn't gone to college. More than that, she seems to demean the importance of intelligence and experience, relying on the innate goodness that supposedly comes from being normal.

For these last two weeks I have been going to a graduate-level Principles of Neuroscience class. During the course of the three-hour class, Dr. Singer seamlessly switches between complex physics concepts, math I've never seen, biochemistry, and evolutionary biology. Although I'm not expected to have as deep of mastery on all those subjects as he has, it's becoming clear to me that it is simply not possible to understand the human nervous system without having a pretty substantial chunk of other branches of science down pat.

I'll admit that it can be uncomfortable (read: humbling) to listen to Dr. Singer lecture. His brilliance adds a layer of seperation between himself and anyone who hasn't done the preparatory work to understand his lectures. It's not that he can't explain difficult concepts simply, it's that difficult concepts need to be understood within their natural context if they are going to be of any use; "Shia=good, Sunni=bad" might get you through a high-school history test if it's multiple choice, but would-be presidents require a slightly more nuanced understanding.

Palin has proven that she can be charismatic, but I worry deeply about her ability--in the same way that would worry about any other Joe six-pack--to understand the world in complex enough ways to lead our country.

I recognize that I am in no position to pass judgement. Ms. Palin has had a lot of success and some real-world experience in governance. Furthermore, she is probably much more intelligent than the Couric interview would lead us to believe; heaven knows that I stumbled over arguments all the time in debate.

I guess what finally gets me angry in the end is that I am struggling so hard to gain expertise, only to have the very concept mocked by national politics. Since when was being average a virtue? What self-respecting company would hire the most middling applicant they could, simply because they were unexceptional? Do you go to the most average mechanic you can find? The most average dentist? So for those of you Republicans out there (and I know that some of you read this blog), when you vote for McCain/Palin, please do so because you think they will be the best suited to run the country, not just because you can relate to them better.

Note: I stand corrected about Palin attending college. I misinterpreted her statement in her interview with Katie Couric in which she said: "I’m not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world.No, I’ve worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life until I had kids. I was not a part of, I guess, that culture. The way that I have understood the world is through education, through books, through mediums that have provided me a lot of perspective on the world."

Thanks to Charles for pointing that out to me.

Laodicean health care

2008-10-05T00:10:00.000-07:00

Having as much time as I do, I listen to podcasts constantly. Quickly depleting my old wave of standbys, I recently found a podcast of the Intelligence Squared debates and have been working my way through their archives. In much the same what that you will hear a newly-learned word a half dozen times in the week after you learned it, the subject of health care policy kept popping up this week after I listened to the debate on this subject.

I promise that I am not going to turn my blog into a forum for me to continue my days of college debate. As much as I miss debating, an activity where I could be unnecessarily mean to nice kids from Colorado and could argue passionately about meaningless platitudes or policy decisions that would never possibly be considered, it too often devolved into a pedantic exercise in defining terms or nit-picking the rules of debate. Instead of trying to have a debate with all of you, I wanted to point out a few things about health care in America that are somehow missing from the national debate. I'm not trying to indoctrinate anyone to my particular view--you'll see that I am still very torn on the issue myself--but rather to raise the level of dialogue beyond what can easily be found in the popular media.

Do you realize that we already have socialized medicine in America? In most debates about what America can do about their health care system, the socialists line up against the capitalists to debate whether America should switch to a one-payer system or whether we should keep the market-based system that we have now. Individual anecdotes are then traded ad nauseam about the beauties or horrors of either system.

In actual fact, U.S. law prevents hospitals from refusing basic care to anyone who shows up at at an emergency room. This prohibition means that emergency rooms nationwide have turned into the primary care facilities of everyone who can't afford normal health care. This continues until the emergency room goes out of business (someday the national government will learn the same lesson: you can't keep on spending without taking anything in before you eventually become insolvent). After a hospital goes bust, the government steps in to shore up the hospital's finances if it decides that that hospital is necessary for the public health of that area.

My point is simply that we should stop pretending that nationalized health care would be such a departure from where we are right now. Either we should have the resolve to be capitalists, shooing the poor out of our hospitals to die of their gunshot wounds, diabetes, and emphysema (I mean really, they should have moved out of the ghetto if they didn't want to get shot), or we should simply embrace the fact that we're going to pay for them anyway and try and find the cheapest way possible to do it.

While I'm talking about uncomfortable issues, I should probably mention rationing. No one is so naive as to believe that we can give away MRIs, chemotherapy, and AZT for free and still have enough for everybody. The classic argument against nationalized health care is that the rest of the developed world--all of whom have a one-payer system--has long lines (I guess they would be queues, since they're in Britain) for specialized care. The rich, as well as the poor, have to wait for months to get treatment for diseases such as lung cancer; many of them die as a result because the most important factor in surviving such diseases is how soon you start treatment. Clearly, rich Americans, the ones who directly or indirectly end up paying for most of the medical costs in this country, are not going to stand idly by while a poor person gets life-saving treatment instead of them. Most of you would probably chaff at the thought too; how many of us are really so charitable that we would give our lives so that a poor person can get top-rate care (on our dime)?

In closing, I just want to point out that health care in America could probably be better. We spend more than any country in the world yet we have, by many measures, a system which is wildly inefficient and ineffective. We have neither a free-market system nor a universal one. If the government is unable to reform health care in any meaningful way, might I recommend that you do what I do--lie to BYU about having health insurance, put away the money saved by not having insurance, and then blow your entire bank account by traveling to Europe if you don't get sick.

P.S.-if any of you are religious, please pray for me that I don't get a horrible disease that isn't covered by my cut-rate insurance; you'd end up paying for it anyway after I declare bankruptcy, so I suppose it's already in your best interest.

We believe in the literal gathering of Israel . . .

2008-10-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

Speaking of Y-groups, I was a Y-Group leader once. I still have as proof the verdantly green shirt with its cute little circles of slighter lighter, slightly more emetic shades. Even though I have never been known for my school spirit, I am still puzzled by the color choice. So yes, they entrusted me with a new batch of bright-eyed Freshmen. I was to show them around, encourage them to participate in activities, and yes . . . galvanize excitement with some rousing rounds of duck, duck, goose.

I'm sure it is of little surprise that the first thing I did with my little Freshmen was to tell them that they were not special. "Everyone else here is just. Like. You," I said. "If you think these buildings are ugly on the outside, just wait until you're stuck in one of them." I wasn't completely a demotivator: I did give practical advise for each person based on their majors, I clued them into Smith's as being the place to get caffeine. I told them which religion teachers to avoid and how to get out of compulsory dating (most of the students were amle). I taught them to say "hell." Game time was to be conducted during and after lunch. I stood awkwardly half in and half out of the globular circle my little group had attempted to form and told them to do what they wanted. After a half-hearted attempt at some head-tapping goosery ended in several people in the circle refusing to chase when goosed, they all gave up and started mocking the other group members, who earnestly ran the requisite goose-laps, determined to convince themselves that they were having fun. As orientation activities dragged on, I told my students truncated, disillusioned versions of what they would learn at the activities and encouraged them to skip. I was most adamant about skipping the Honor Code song. By the last activity, not a single student in my group showed up, and I got to go home, mission accomplished.

My last year at BYU, I saw one of those students. He was apparently very excited to see me. He said I gave "awesome advice." I thought it was funny. Anyway, if there was a point to that anecdote it was probably this: Daine and I were officially put in charge the Little Ones this last week at church.

or of good report

2008-10-02T21:15:00.000-07:00

During my first week at BYU I went to a "Y group" activity, basically a day camp for disabled 9-year-olds that has been appropriated, unchanged, as a bonding activity for new BYU students. As I struggled to think of something to draw on my name tag (we had to draw things we liked so that other people could see a rudimentarily drawn basketball and know immediately that they wanted to be your friend), I feared that I had gone to the wrong university. That feeling grew stronger as my group, following the cues of every group on DT field, started playing Duck Duck Goose. Finally, after we had all shared our thoughts on why we loved BYU football so much, I was able to escape while they were dividing us into teams for Red Rover. I was in full-blown existential crisis. Although I had never fit cleanly into any group in high school (my best friends and I shared no discernible demographic or overriding interest), I always held out hope that I made sense within the broader LDS community. That first "Y-Day" activity showed me that my impressions of what I thought the Church to be were wildly mistaken. I was annoyed by much of what I saw in Mormon culture and I gravitated towards people and things which were often critical of it.

Now this is not to say that I plan on leaving the Church, just because it has made embarrassing mistakes in the past, has a membership I don't particularly like (speaking collectively and not individually), or because I strongly disagree with some of the current policies and stances (I will probably rant against a few specifics in later posts). The reason I bring this all up is actually because I have seen some things lately that make me proud to be alive, proud of other's accomplishments in ways that I am so rarely proud of my own, or my Church's actions.

First off, I just got back from seeing Wicked. I was blown away. It wasn't merely the fantastic singing, fabulous spectacle of costumes and dancing, or even the distractingly cool Oriental Theater as much as I was impressed by the fact that the show had profoundly good messages. Too often I hear derisive comments directed at "the World" as if non-LDS people were some homogeneous group, hell-bent on killing babies, kicking puppies, and burning American flags. I must admit to feeling a pang of shame that I felt more uplifted by Wicked than I feel most of the time that I go to church. As with all good art, however, I do feel proud to appropriate it into my theology, believing that God has directed me to seek out things that are virtuous, lovely, praiseworthy, or of good report.

Earlier this week, I listened to the latest episode of This American Life entitled "Go Big" which documents Geoffrey Canada's attempt to make Harlem a better place. I won't go into the specifics, because I think that all of you should listen to the first part of this episode yourselves, but this show has made me happier and full of renewed hope for humanity since I listened to it.

At such a time as this, where my anger and disillusionment are being stoked almost daily by the presidential race, Proposition 8 (again, more to come later), and ball-jointed dolls, I wanted to share some hope that there is some good still in the world. If you find yourself in a situation where you need something to draw on a name tag, might I recommend a tiny caricature of Ira Glass or the Wicked Witch of the West? On second thought, I think I would recommend that you leave immediately when asked to make such a name tag. Duck Duck Goose is sure to follow.

Schadenzwiespältigkeit

2008-09-30T20:33:00.000-07:00

My title for today would roughly translate into "ambivalence at other people's sorrow."

So the bailout failed. I would love to deliver a long diatribe about whether it was a good thing that it failed or about how the world is now going to careen out of control, killing us all. Unfortunately, I don't think that I have a good enough grasp on what is really going on to have that passionate of an opinion either way. But for whatever reason, it made me really happy to learn that the bailout had failed.

On the one hand, I am kind of scared about the possibility of a recession. It would be rather unfortunate if people lost their jobs, got evicted from their houses, or were unable to, say, take out massive student loans to get superfluous Master's degrees in Neurobiology and Physiology. For all the damage that big business sometimes does to hurt the environment, screw over customers, and enslave the third world, it also makes electricity, chocolate, and Harry Potter books, all things that I'm rather fond of. Maybe I've just read too much Ayn Rand (a little goes a long way, I'm learning), but a functioning world economy still sounds like a good idea to me.

The rest of me, however, wants a lot of people to suffer for this whole sub-prime collapse. People have been recklessly chasing the idea of owning a home--chief among suburbanite concerns--to such an absurd degree that they borrowed more than they should have, spent more than they had (take out that second mortgage to pay for those much needed cruises and extravagant weddings!), and gambled on the fact that the economy would always pay for their irresponsibility. The lenders were equally the blame, convincing poor, stupid people that they should borrow more than they could ever repay, just so long as the closing costs get paid upfront.

When the dust settles I think we (or any of us who do or will pay taxes in the future) are going to have to pay for the irresponsibility that so many of us indulged in. The idea of handing Henry Paulson, someone who has apparently done a wretched job keeping our economy from tanking, $700 billion dollars to give it another go just doesn't really sound all that appealing. I'm rather glad that they're going back to the drawing board to come up with something better.

I can't really resist taking a pot shot here, so feel free to stop reading now if you don't want to indulge in the vile sentiments that inevitably come from horrible people like myself.

When the world starts to fall apart like this we are supposed to be able to look to a leader to console us, explain the problem, and take positive steps towards fixing whatever is broken. Unfortunately for all of us, however, we don't really have a leader in America anymore. George W. Bush has done such an abysmal job, shown himself so unbelievably incompetent, and has practiced such mind-bogglingly irresponsible and obvious nepotism and corruption for his tenure in the White House, even his own party wants nothing to do with him. When he most wanted to step in and do something to help prevent the world from falling apart, he realized that he'd so badly botched his previous chances that nobody is listening to him anymore. The Republicans won't listen to him, Americans don't trust him when he tells us that the world needs this plan, and people like me smile contentedly when his best efforts now fall on deaf ears (even when it's possibly to my own detriment). Maybe Mr. Bush finally got a little bit of what was coming to him. Maybe we all did.

Behold your little ones

2008-09-29T21:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Amanda and I started our first day of our new church calling, teaching the CTR 6B class (there are two, of which we were given the tamer group). Now as a general rule, kids make me rather uneasy; children, much like dogs, can sense my fear and (justifiably) like me less for it.

Unfortunately, the calling means that we're gong to have to be much more punctual than we're used to being. Sunday school might start twenty minutes late, but primary actually starts almost on time; the kids with late parents just miss the opening song. On the plus side, however, I get to be with Amanda for the whole block of church.

Who, you might be asking yourself right now, would trust us with their children? Ironically enough, the second councillor in the bishopric, the father of one of our class, is the one who offered us the calling. He didn't even seem worried that we might teach him things that he might not agree with.

We told our class that Jesus drank wine.

I know that their well-intentioned parents were simply trying to keep their world a little simpler. It's also possible that their parents honestly believe that Jesus actually drank grape juice, citing the fact that the Greek words would be the same. Still, I don't believe in teaching half-truths or faith-promoting lies; how can we expect kids to be able to the tell the difference between Santa or the Tooth Fairy (who are patent fabrications we claim are real) and God (who is real but whose characteristics are complicated and often uncertain)? Why should they believe us when we tell them that God is real after they find out we lied to their faces about where their Christmas presents come from?

All told, I'm surprised at how attached I already am. Our kids, Taft, Anna, Kaela, and Tayan (I think I screwed up the spelling of that last name, but that's what you have to expect when you invent names), all seem incredibly smart and earnest. We made cranes and colored them during class and Kaela's turned out better than mine (this is the girl who said that she wanted to be an artist when she grows up. Once, she apparently made a plate into a frisbee!). They seem to like me well enough too--they picked me to wear the silly sombrero (picture forthcoming when I remeber to bring our camera to church) when they won the contest for who could sing loudest. I have some ideas already about how I make class fun for them as well as teach them some things that will probably help them.

I think I might just be overwhelmed the by sentimentality of it all. I still have very fond memories of teachers I've had the past. The Holts, Brothers Krieg, Aamodt, Birkensha, Jefferson, Carter, and Sanders, as well as Sister Price all taught me to be a better person. I'm optimistic that I'll be able to be a good and memorable teacher to those kids like I've had in the past. That is, of course, if they don't release me from my calling first for teaching them that Jesus drank alcohol.

NPR Overload

2008-09-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have heard my ranting against the suburbs, you have probably already guessed that I love living in a big city. Mostly I am loving the fact that I haven't had to drive my car for over a month.

According to mapquest, my commute would be 45 minutes if I drove (it actually takes longer with Chicago traffic). Instead, I take a bus to downtown and then the "L" up to Evanston. Depending on when I leave, if I can catch the express train, and how long it takes me to walk from the train stop to my lab, it takes me between an hour and a half to an hour and forty-five minutes each way.

As a result, I have tons of time to listen to music and podcasts and I have turned into a podcast fiend. Every day I listen to NPR's story of the day, most e-mailed stories, Marketplace (secretly and unexplainably my favorite show), and The Onion's audio program. I also listen to Science Friday, This American Life, The Economist, Science, Cell, the Brainscience podcast, Futures in Biotech, Word of Mouth (the BYU writing center podcast--you're welcome, Lina) and some stuff from the BBC when they are new.

Soon enough I'll have exhausted the available archives for most of these podcasts and will be forced, either to find new podcasts to listen to, start listening to music, or, heaven forbid, interacting with my lab mates while I work.

Right now I'm very much enjoying being well caught up in what's going on with the stock market, technology, politics, and even pop culture (I have opinions on which shows should have won the emmy, for crying out loud). Classes start for me on Friday, so I'll have to wait and see just how much that class work takes away from my NPR time. If the class doesn't end up being terribly time-comsuming, my current life-style will guarantee that I'm well on my way to becoming one of those self-satisfied and arrogant "city-folk." You all might want to just spam my e-mail address now before I start sending you mail about how you can reduce your carbon footprint, that one funny joke Paula Poundstone told last Sunday, or how you can donate to your local NPR station.

Playing God

2008-09-22T18:54:00.000-07:00

Surprised by how many of you ask about what I'm doing at Northwestern, I figured I could answer in a blog.

I am trying to answer how and why fruit flies sleep. I turn off genes in flies brains one by one and then measure how it affects how that affects sleep.

For the most part my research is pretty mundane; I have to transfer the flies pretty regularly so that they don't die, I have to plan way ahead so that the right amount of flies are being born in the weeks that I need them (it takes 10 days for an egg to hatch into a fly), and I have to load the flies into lots of little vials so the computer can count count when they are asleep.

Eventually the research will get pretty interesting. Once I find genes that make a big difference, I'll run more genetic tests and even dissect the fly's brains to check it's chemistry.

In case any of you find a fruit fly and want to know it's gender, I'm including a chart for easy reference.

John is Dreamy

2008-09-21T09:07:00.000-07:00

In tardy refutation of my colleague's previous post on McCain (he has been going wild with blogging, eh?), I would like to dedicate this entry in praise of the dream-boat that is John.

OMG, the first reason for my love of John is that he was in the army. What doesn't scream walrus-like masculinity like heroically wielding a gun and getting captured and romantically imprisoned for the glory of our beautiful country in the name of Vietnamese imperialism? When deciding on my crushes (with which my vote goes naturally hand-in-hand), I definitely seek someone who can doggedly follow orders.

Next, will you just check out Cindy? I mean really, she is gorgeous. And has money. If she thinks he's worth it, I'm definitely on board. I totally want to be her when I grow up. I mean, did you see her volunteering to help all those yucky poor people in front of the film crews? She's so great. And, even if, as my colleague suggested, he left his old wife for Cindy, at least we all know he got it right the second time. We all make mistakes, right?

And finally, I looove McCain becaus he stands for The Family. You can tell, because his daughter loves him so much, that she marketed propaganda about him to children! And she even started a "blogette" about him to prep the crowds my age! This campaign isn't just about winning the election. It's about a lot more to John. It's about priming the world to swallow him, his slightly-watered-down version of the Bush Doctrine, and The Family for years to come.

Focus on the Family

2008-09-21T09:04:00.001-07:00

At the risk of becoming one of "those" bloggers, I'd like to dedicate today's post to presidential politics.

Personally, I think that so called "Christian morality" has no place in politics. I was furious to see the Republicans attacking President Clinton over his extra marital affairs. I do think that it was OK to impeach Clinton for lying about Lewinski, but I don't think it was kosher to ask him about it under oath in the first place.

Since oh-so-many republicans thought it was a good idea to elect George W. Bush because he was "a good man," I ask you, is John McCain "a good man"? I'll give you a hint: here's a picture of his first wife Carol. She actively campaigned for John to be released from Hanoi and stayed faithful to him while he was in Vietnam for 4 years.

Here's a picture of John McCain's second wife Cindy. I won't dwell on the fact that he traded in his old model for the newer, prettier one, but I do find it inappropriate that he didn't wait until he was divorced before he started dating Heiress Barbie. So I ask you, Mr. Dobson, what is the greater threat to traditional marriage: homosexuals who want to practice monogamy, or heterosexuals who don't?

In an ideal world, enough Republicans would realize that their candidates are dirtbags, and then the Christian right could stop adulterating our politics with fallacious religious sentiments. Until that day comes, however, I suppose it would be alright with me if they wanted to vote for the more moral of the two candidates.

2008-09-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

Hungary
Sure, your next-door neighbour Austria was home to Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Schubert, and Freud, but don't forget, you make pretty good stuffed cabbage.

Robert pointed out that I neglected to include pictures of our trip to Budapest. Here's a picture of me.

We were only able to take a picture of the outside of our hostel because the pack of 4 batteries I bought only took 3 pictures total. By the time we could by some not-Hungarian batteries we had already checked out. In any case, we shared a one-bedroom private room for 15 euros a night; the bed was smaller than a twin but neither of us toss or turn at night so it was good enough.

Note to anyone planning on traveling to Hungary any time soon: beware the exchange rates. I made the mistake of exchanging some dollars for Hungarian money so that we could take the subway to our hostel, only the realize in hindsight that they gave me about half of what the money was actually worth. For whatever reason, it would have been cheaper for me to trade my dollars for euros and then my euros into forint than to just change dollars to forint. Luckily, we used our credit card for most of the expensive stuff (our anniversary dinner, the hostel bill) and Wells Fargo gave us the standard exchange rate, only taking a 3% cut.

If you were a hot dog and you were starving, would you eat yourself?

2008-09-18T22:45:00.000-07:00

I think it might be time to replace the eagle with this. What better image could we show the world than an anthropomorphic hot dog cannibalizing himself with a smile on his face? What lovely optimism.

2008-09-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

So here's Europe. We actually have a lot more pictures (we'll include some of them later, so that you too can enjoy the living hot dog squirting him/herself with condiments), but this should do for now.

Bergamo, Italy
Salzburg
Versailles
Amsterdam
The Arch de Triomphe
guess
Louvre
Musee de Orsay
DresdenBrusssels

Prague's absurdly deep subway system
Prague
Sony Center, Berlin

Holocaust Memorial, BerlinCopenhagen