Cartoon of the Day

by Jim Toomey at The Cartoonist Group and Center for American Progress

NIN/Jane's Addiction with Street Sweeper Social Club - 5/15/09 - Phoenix,AZ

I'm countin' down to the day deservin'
Fittin' for a king
I'm waitin' for the time when I can
Get to Arizona
'Cause my money's spent on
The goddamn rent
Neither party is mine not the
Jackass or the elephant ...

By the Time I Get to Arizona -- Public Enemy

Street Sweeper Social Club comes on stage to the sounds of Public Enemy. The song is By the Time I Get to Arizona, written during a time in AZ history that disgraced and impeached Governor Evan Mecham impeded the establishment of a holiday honoring Martin Luther King. Mecham's gone and the holiday restored, but the need for bands with a political message is still there. There was plenty of that in guitarist Tom Morello's previous band, Rage Against the Machine. Street Sweeper is his latest band. A similar sound to Rage, with a rapper as frontman, but with an extra guitarist and perhaps a bit funkier. They were high energy. Morello's guitar playing was incredible. And I'm looking forward to their debut album when it comes out.



Next up was Nine Inch Nails. Though I've been a fan since I bought Pretty Hate Machine in college, this was my first time to see the "band". "Band", of course, signifying Trent Reznor and whatever group of touring musicians he might be using on that tour. I was not disappointed. This is supposedly his last tour as Nine Inch Nails. Whatever that means, who knows. If it is, then I'm glad I had the chance to catch them.

With no current album to pimp, played all the major songs from most of the albums, plus some more obscure stuff like Dead Souls from the Crow soundtrack. The show was fairly simple, with no pyro, but with plenty of lights. The band played great on all songs, but highlights for me were Heresy and Survivalism, probably because of the lyrical content:

... he dreamed a God up,
and called it Christianity.

God is dead,
and no one cares,
if there is a hell,
I'll see you there.

... his perfect kingdom,
of killing, suffering and pain.
demands devotion
atrocities done in his name.

Heresy by Nine Inch Nails

An outside concert in Phoenix during an unseasonably warm May day might be some people's idea of hell. But the large, sweaty, dirty sea of humanity seemed oddly fitting to the music.

I should have listened to her,
so hard to keep control.
We kept on eating but our
bloated bellies still not full.
She gave us all she had but
we went and took some more.
Can't seem to shut her legs our
mother nature is a whore.

I got my propaganda I got revisionism.
I got my violence in hi-def ultra-realism.
I'm a part of this great nation.
I got my fist I got my plan I got survivalism.

Hypnotic sound of siren
echoing through the street.
The cocking of the rifles,
the marching of the feet.
You see your world on fire,
don't try to act surprised.
We did just what you told us.
Lost our faith along the way and found ourselves believing your lies ...

Survivalism by Nine Inch Nails

You don't usually think of NIN as political, but Trent has definitely skewed that way with his last couple of albums. Survivalism imagines a future where Bush has been President for 20 years.

Wish off of the Broken EP and Hurt off The Downward Spiral also were standout performances. Hurt, of course, was covered by Johnny Cash to much acclaim.

Click this picture for some photos (not mine ... I wasn't that close) from tonight's show:



Last up was Jane's Addiction. It was also the first time that I had seen them. One of my top 10 albums of all-time, Nothing's Shocking. They looked and sounded great, but I don't have a huge review of them because I was mostly standing off to the side having a few beers with my friend Jeremy during their set. With only two real albums, Jane's Addiction doesn't have the amount of songs to choose from that NIN does. As a result, they pretty much played all of those two albums.

Overall, great show. Glad I went.

Gun Culture

Here's my problem with the American gun culture: It goes beyond defending a constitutional right.

Most everyone agrees that free speech is a good thing, right? But to show people how good a right that was, would you encourage people to purchase porn? Would you create an organization that celebrates the viewing and purchasing of porn? Would you hold big meetings every year with lots of famous "patriotic" speakers and advertise it as a "freedom" rally? Would you give millions of dollars to politicians to assure yourself the continued right to purchase and view particularly sadistic versions of porn? No, of course you wouldn't. But that's what the NRA does. It's gun porn. And semi-automatic weapons are their kiddie porn. Just like you can't seriously defend someone's right to have kiddie porn, you can't defend the right to have a completely useless and dangerous weapon. Get it through your heads, people. Our gun culture in America is not about a constitutional freedom any more. It's about trying to legitimize our gun fetishism under the cloak of patriotism. You'll wrap yourself in the flag to make yourself feel better about liking to shoot things ... or defenseless kids:

HOUSTON - A 7-year-old boy who was allegedly shot in the head by a couple who thought he and three other people were trespassing on their property died Saturday ...

... The boy, his 5-year-old sister, their father and a family friend were off-roading near a residential area about 40 miles northeast of Houston when they were shot after stopping so the children could go to the bathroom.

Authorities said the couple fired after they mistakenly thought the group was trespassing on their property.

Bishop said the area includes a dirt road, trees and overgrown brush and that it wasn't uncommon for people to go off-roading there. The Houston Chronicle reported that a sign in front of the suspects' home reads: "Trespassers will be shot. Survivers will be reshot!! Smile I will."

Liberty County Chief Deputy Ken DeFoor said Sheila Muhs fired a 12-gauge shotgun once, then handed it to her husband, who also fired once.

DeFoor said Sheila Muhs then called 911 and told the dispatcher: "They're out here tearing up the levee, so I shot them."

DeFoor said the levee belonged to the subdivision and was not private property.

Bishop said there was no indication the unarmed victims did anything threatening toward the Muhs ...

Obviously these are not middle-of-the-road gun owners, but they are not as far on the fringe as gun-rights activists would have you believe. It's the glorification of gun ownership and that gives people like this the free reign to be how they are. I won't even go into the second part of this ... the question of property rights over human life. That's a topic for another day.

Really?

Just a few recent things that have made me go "huh?":

I don't like to call people stupid, but come on. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is criminally stupid. This woman votes on laws for all of us. When trying to argue that manmade global warming doesn't make sense, she reached deep into her ass and pulled out this gem:

"Carbon dioxide, Mister Speaker, is a natural byproduct of nature. Carbon dioxide is natural. It occurs in Earth. It is a part of the regular lifecycle of Earth. In fact, life on planet Earth can’t even exist without carbon dioxide. So necessary is it to human life, to animal life, to plant life, to the oceans, to the vegetation that’s on the Earth, to the, to the fowl that — that flies in the air, we need to have carbon dioxide as part of the fundamental lifecycle of Earth."

It's obvious that there is a shortage of oxygen in the general vicinity of Michele Bachmann.


And with no apparent sense of irony she responded to hate-crime legislation with this:

REP MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): "I feel that this hate crime legislation could be considered the very definition of tyranny."

And lastly, she was almost positive she had a whopper this time, that she had actually came up with something smart that nailed the Democrats:

BACHMANN: I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under Democrat President Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it is an interesting coincidence.

The problem is, the last outbreak began in February of 1976 ... when Gerald Ford was still president.

Moron.

And for another head-scratching occurrence, Phoenix is lucky enough to be hosting the NRA's annual meetings next week.

The events include a free concert of music and comedy on Friday.

Mitt Romney, John McCain and John Bolton speak at NRA'S Celebration of American Values Leadership Forum on Friday night. On Saturday, John Stossel and Oliver North speak at NRA's Celebration of American Values Freedom Banquet. Wait ... I don't understand. I thought the comedy concert was earlier?

On Sunday, there will be a "prayer breakfast". See, the NRA is all about "freedom". Freedom to own semi-automatic weapons and worship a Christian God, that is. Don't tell me the NRA is about liberty and freedoms. It's bullshit that I'm honestly tired of hearing. They are a single-issue advocacy group, impervious to reason, and do not care one iota about making this a better country.

You know you're morally and intellectually bankrupt when you hold up ass-clowns like Bolton and North as heroes and "patriotic" Americans. If being patriotic means worshipping a traitor who sold weapons to Iran, like North, and someone who advocated blowing up the UN, like Bolton, then I guess I'm not patriotic.

A Great Month to be a Republican ... not.

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it." -- John Stuart Mill

It's not a great time to be a Republican (not that any time is). You have today's defection of Arlen Specter to the Democratic Party. With the presumed seating of Franken in Minnesota, you have a filibuster-proof 60. As usual, the party leaders responded with class and decorum:

- Minority leader Mitch McConnel says that Specter's switch is a "threat to the country".

- Rush Limbaugh - "Take McCain and his daughter with you"

- RNC Chairman Michael Steele - "Senator Specter didn't leave the GOP based on principles of any kind."


Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer

A few weeks ago, it was the "astroturf" grassroots populism of the Tea Parties. Grassroots, my ass. I understand the sentiment of the "fair tax" crowd (though I don't agree with it). But the Tea Parties had nothing to do with that. It was something much uglier. From Tea Parties and Teleprompters by David Michael Green:

... I suppose you could find a less spontaneous, less authentic expression of public sentiment if you looked really hard - perhaps by going to the latest Hannah Montana movie, for example - but I don't think it would be very easy. Fox (Hardly Any) News literally ran about a hundred segments on the tea parties in advance of the magical date, a promotional tsunami masquerading as news reporting that would've made any Soviet minister of propaganda blush.

I suppose you could also find political elements more incoherent and less grounded in reality if you tried really hard ... If the low rent, low IQ, low on laundry detergent (non) masses attending these events looked familiar, it was because we saw them on the campaign trail last year, angrily spouting utter fabrications and fulminating their vaguely anti-government screeds at Sarah Palin rallies. What they lack in quality dental care or concern about the health effects of obesity, they fully make up for in sheer gullibility and lumpen selfishness masquerading as vulgar capitalism.

My favorite bit from the coverage of the tea parties was the inadvertent reality intrusion episode, where some smart-ass got up at one of the rallies, got the crowd all excited about taxes and deficits, and then asked them to applaud Barack Obama for cutting their taxes. That little bit of cognitive dissonance produced a long, pregnant, troubled pause, and you could almost hear the rusty gears in their brains jamming into one another, screeching like a subway train, and ultimately shattering from sheer lack of prior use, as the attendees decided to stick with their advance programming after all, booing the mention of the shifty Negro in the White House despite the fact that he is cutting their taxes, just like they claim to want him to.

On the other hand, perhaps the most amazing sight of all was the Republican governor of Texas ... not so vaguely hinting at the possibility that Texas might secede from the union, and falsely claiming that the state had a special legal right to do so ...

Of course, only if deceit happens to be a moral problem need one worry about the hypocrisy of all these red states bitching about taxes and the oppressive federal government while simultaneously receiving far more dollars from Washington than they kick in...

... All of this is emblematic, of course, of a political movement in utter free fall, and completely lacking any sense whatsoever of what to do about it. This week it was tea parties. Before that, he was Obama bowing to the Saudi king. Before that, it was the president giving the Queen of England an iPod. Or was it the fact that he uses Teleprompters when he speaks?

A perusal of some of the signs at these Tea Parties will give you an idea of what they were really about: 10 Most Offensive Tea Party Signs. The Phoenix events were among the most disgusting.

And if you need more proof of the fact that a lot of conservatives do not get when they are being made fun of - from an Ohio State University Study:

This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy ... There was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism ...

God Bless America?

What is the line of patriotism past which it becomes jingoism and blind nationalism? When does honoring your own religion turn into the exclusion of all other viewpoints?

And when you get to that point, do you realize you are not representing the things this country stands for any more?

I think we've gotten to that point. From the Dan Patrick Show (ESPNRadio) and NY Daily News:

A baseball fan is suing the NYPD for kicking him out of the old Yankee Stadium last summer because he tried to use the restroom during the playing of "God Bless America," lawyers said.

Bradford Campeau-Laurion, 30, a lifelong baseball fan, claimed he was the victim of religious and political discrimination on Aug. 26, 2008 when police officers booted him from the ballpark.

"The role of police officers is to enforce the law," NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman said.

"New York's finest have no business arresting someone for trying to go to the bathroom at a politically incorrect moment," Lieberman said. "That is an abuse of authority and a violation of the constitutional principles that our country is founded on."

Besides the cops, the lawsuit names the Yankee Partnership, for a policy that restricts fan movement during the playing of "God Bless America."

Campeau-Laurion said his clash with cops began when he decided to use the bathroom at the start of the seventh-inning stretch. He got up and made his way down the aisle as the song began playing.

A police officer blocked his path and told him he couldn't leave during the song, the lawsuit alleges.

I got that "God Bless America" was played during the 7th inning stretch of some ballgames after 9/11. I didn't agree with it, but I at least understood it ... for that year. It's 8 years later and most teams are still doing it at one point or another. It's time to move on. Get over it. We are not honoring anyone by continuing to play it. We're trivializing that people died and instead making them into a recruiting poster for the military and police. I used to be halfway patriotic and more respectful of law enforcement, but the things I've seen and heard over the last few years make my blood boil. If you think 9/11 is about the need to make the country more patriotic and more religious, then you haven't a clue and haven't learning a thing.

I don't mind standing for the Star Spangled Banner at the start of games. Though some would have you think that the Banner has always been played before games, it didn't start till after WWII. But, OK, that's fine. I'm not going to make a big deal about that. But let's cut out all the extra BS. Baseball games are not indoctrination meetings.

I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier ...

I don't know if this is a trend or I'm just noticing it more. Pop music, at least some of it, has seemed to become more religious in nature or religion-influenced. Don't get me wrong. I'm not really complaining. I don't really care where artists get their inspiration. Is their music good? Does it say something about the human condition? That's all that matters to me.

But I do find the new-found piety a little curious. Just a sampling:


Paramore - A little pop punk band that has been fairly popular over the last few years.

In an interview with the BBC, Josh Farro stated "Our faith is very important to us. It's obviously going to come out in our music because if someone believes something, then their worldview is going to come out in anything they do. But we're not out here to preach to kids, we're out here because we love music."

Kings of Leon

Nathan, Caleb, and Jared Followill were born to Leon Followill, a Pentecostal evangelist minister ... The brothers spent much of their youth travelling around the South with their father ... The boys learned to play drums, guitar and bass as children while performing gospel songs in the church ...

The Killers - Lead singer Brandon Flowers is Mormon. Their biggest song, All These Things I've Done has undeniable religious meaning:

"When there's nowhere else to run
Is there room for one more son ...
...I need direction to perfection ...
I got soul, but I'm not a soldier
Help me out
Yeah, you know you got to help me out ..."

The " ... I got soul, but I'm not a soldier" line is a good line and has been used by other artists in concert, including U2, Robbie Williams and Coldplay. I think that it's a positive line regardless how you take it. It's popularity probably relates to it's pro-faith, anti-war message. But I think it can be taken as having faith but not being a soldier for it. Meaning: don't push your religion on others.


U2 - U2's always had Christian imagery in their music. From their most recent album, No Line on the Horizon (a very good album BTW), the song Moment of Surrender:

" ... I was speeding on the subway
Through the stations of the cross
Every eye looking every other way
Counting down 'til the pain would stop

At the moment of surrender
Of vision over visibility
I did not notice the passers-by
And they did not notice me ..."

Jonas Brothers - Evangelical Christians, with Assembly of God pastor father. They all wear purity rings, signifying a promise of celibacy until marriage. A noble enough goal, if just a bit unrealistic. And studies have shown it to be ineffective.

But, you know, whatever. To each his own. I don't think that music fans completely buy into whatever their favorite bands are selling anyway. You could probably have a devil worshiper rock star out there that would sell a lot of records as long as his songs made you shake your ass. Actually, there probably have been some of those.

I have a friend that is a huge Springsteen fan but detests his politics. There used to be legions of frat boys at Rage Against the Machine concerts that wouldn't have the first clue about what any of the songs referred to. And that's OK. Probably 3/4 of the allure of songs is the music itself. If you get something out of the lyrics, that's a bonus.

Origins

I took the afternoon off on Monday and attended the Origins Symposium at ASU's Gammage Auditorium. This is a great venue that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Not wanting to pay for parking or to worry about traffic, I rode the Light Rail from it's westernmost point near Christown Mall down to Tempe. Some observations:

- For being a huge baseball fan, specifically of the Diamondbacks, I was apparently unaware of the fact that home opener was an afternoon game (12:40). Wisely, everybody and their mother were riding the light rail to the park. Wise for them, not me. I had to put up with a full train until we go to the park and about 80% of the people got off. I did strike up a great conversation with a guy in a wheelchair who was not going to the game. He was from New York and we chatted about the Mets and their new bullpen. Nice guy.

- Everybody needs to ride mass transit more often. And I'm not talking about the obvious, good-for-the-environment blah-blah-blah stuff. The majority of the people that ride trains and buses are not white, are not rich, are not "proper". The world of mass transit may not always be pretty, but it's real. I'll take real over pretty any day.

Before the conference, I picked up a couple of tacos at a new place called Hippie's Cove on Mill Ave in downtown Tempe. Good stuff.

Got to Gammage, which was about a half mile walk from the Light Rail stop on Mill. There was about a half hour until the afternoon session began, so I sat in the hall outside the auditorium with other attendees. Now, I consider myself fairly nerdy, but I'm frickin' the coolest guy in the world compared to this crew. But I meant that in the most positive sense. I wish I hung out with more of these types.

The main point of the conference was to discuss the following questions:

How did the Universe Begin?
How did life arise?
How does life evolve?
What is the Origin of Human Uniqueness?
What is the origin of disease?
How does consciousness arise?
How do human institutions arise and develop?
What will be the technologies of the future?

The conference started and the first speaker was introduced and came out. This was the main person I was coming for, Richard Dawkins. Nowadays, most people know him for his book, The God Delusion, but he was a hugely influential evolutionary biologist and that is what he was speaking on this day. He spoke for about an hour and took some questions at the end. They primarily dealt with evolution but one questioner tried to bring up atheism and was rebuffed by the moderator. This symposium was to deal with the "origins" of the universe, of life, etc. If you opened up the can of worms of religion, you could fill several more symposiums. Dawkins was funny, conversational, intelligent and I'm glad I finally had the chance to see him in person.

The second speaker was Craig Venter. He is generally considered to be the first to map the human genome. There is some controversy on this point, but Venter is very active in genomic research and we haven't heard the last from him. He has a non-profit organization with over 400 scientists that continue to work in this field. His talk was a bit dry for my taste, not as funny as Dawkins. And I wasn't as nearly interested in his subject matter as the other speakers. The questioners at the end of his talk generally seemed to ask about the ethics of genomic research and of patenting of genomes.

Lawrence Krauss, the head of the Origins Initiative at ASU and a world-renowned author and theoretical physicist, was the third speaker. I didn't know a a lot about him going in but was very impressed. He was very charismatic and funny. He organized the symposium and was able to assemble a large number of Nobel winning physicists and chemists plus a collection of some of the most popularly known scientists and intellectuals in the world (Dawkins, Brian Greene, Christopher Hitchens, Venter, Stephen Pinker, etc.) He primarily talked about the origins of the universe, its age, and its expansion. Though it was a scientific conference, he couldn't resist a gentle dig -- Krauss commented that the universe has been measured to be about 13.7 billion years old, except for those people in Texas at the school board he just spoken to the previous week.


The last presentation was a round table of 6 Nobel Prize winning scientists moderated by Ira Flatow of NPR's Science Friday. Flatow led the sometime contentious discussion by the following scientists: Sheldon Glashow, David Gross, John Mather, Frank Wilczek, Walter Gilbert and Baruch Blumberg. Though they were all courteous and generally amusing, you can sense some fundamental differences in how they viewed popular physics subjects such as string theory, supersymmetry, and the Large Hadron Collider. It was all incredibly fascinating and I wish I could listen to people like this all the time.

This presentation again ended with some audience questions and you knew someone would just have to put a fly in the ointment. Flatow had begun the presentation with a comment about how it was nice for science to now be viewed in a more positive sense and for it to have a seat at the table, unlike the last 8 years. This is a point that no rational person could disagree with and I would guess that 99.9% of the audience agreed with. Well, that one person that disagree had to ask a question. A lady came up and said that she had no idea what he was talking about when he said that science has not been appreciated politically or popularly recently. And even before she said it, I knew she was going to somehow dovetail this into a religious question. She brought up Francis Collins as a means of saying that religion and science can coexist. For those who don't know who he is, he is a geneticist very instrumental in the mapping of the human genome, a contemporary of Venter. Christians love him because he is the one scientist in a 1,000 who will admit to being a Christian. It's sad really ... kinda like saying there are Republican actors by bringing up Stephen Baldwin or Angie Harmon. If you have to bring up Stephen Baldwin or Angie Harmon in any discussion, your argument is already lost.


Flatow was polite with the lady but opened up the discussion to the scientists in the panel who, to a man, brought up how science was the search for truth, where ever it may lie. They were all gracious, intelligent and profound and were met with raucous applause ... answer enough to the lady whose intent was to reconcile faith and science, at least in her own mind.

Overall, the conference was very enjoyable. It's encouraging that a show with a bunch of crusty old scientists talking can sell out a 3,000 seat theater in a conservative, largely religious and sometimes distinctly anti-science state. Maybe times are changing.

Opening Day ... my favorite day

"People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring." -- Rogers Hornsby

"I see great things in baseball, it's our game-the American game. It will take our people out of doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us." -- Walt Whitman

12 not-so-angry men (and women)

"We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read" -- Mark Twain

"Jury: A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him." -- Henry Louis Mencken

I just got finished serving on a jury (6 total days). It was a case where a guy was riding his bicycle without lights or reflectors, drinking a beer, and going down the middle of Central Ave (a busy street normally) in south Phoenix at 1 in the morning. For those of you that haven't been there, south central Phoenix is not unlike "south central" in any other major city ... a place that you don't want to be at 1 in the morning.

An unmarked Tahoe with 3 gang enforcement police tried to get him off the roadway for his own safety and that of traffic, he ignores them, chucks a beer at their vehicle and continues on. This goes on for awhile, the cops get out, there's a scuffle and a couple of the cops got hurt.

Once they got him in cuffs, he said that they better arrest him because he was going to "fucking kill them" and then he starts saying that he is Sur Trece and a Sereno (Latino gangs). Interesting case. 8 total counts including aggravated assault and resisting arrest but they also tagged on several gang-related charges.

We ended up convicting him on the assault and resisting arrest charges because they were all evidence-based. But the gang charges just didn't stick for many reasons. The guy was 36 (kinda old for a gang banger) and riding a bicycle. He was certainly a moron and probably was involved with a gang when he was younger but it just seemed like the police were trying to tag on some extra charges because they were gang-enforcement police. There were no witnesses besides the cops to his proclamation. Most of us felt that he did make the threats but he didn't do it until he was already in cuffs. He had a zillion opportunities to flash gang signs or say something before then, but didn't. He was just spouting shit once he got caught. Trying to puff himself up. He had no weapons of any kind and no normal gang paraphernalia or clothing. Gang-enforcement police have a vested interest in making it into a "gang" case.

The guy was definitely not a brain surgeon but these were all serious charges and you really have to make sure. It's a weird feeling having someone's fate in your hands. Someone who has 3 young children. Being on a jury is an experience I'd recommend for anybody that gets the chance. Seeing the court system's workings from the inside definitely paints a different picture than what you see on TV.

As it was, he had some previous convictions on unrelated stuff and the 3 guilty charges that we gave him ended up in a sentence of 25 years on top of whatever else he had. I wonder if he's thinking he should have handled that situation that night a little differently. If he'd have just stopped, he'd have probably been sent home with a warning or, at worst, a charge for an open container. But a series of boneheaded decisions will keep him locked up for a long time, away from his family. Crazy stuff. I now know more about Latino gang culture that I ever did before.

"I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system -- that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up." -- Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird

America, One Nation Under No God?

America, One Nation Under No God?
The number of secular Americans is rising faster than any other religious group. But faith will continue to influence politics
by Michelle Goldberg

In recent years, non-religious Americans have won a modicum of public acknowledgment. Not long ago, politicians insulted them with impunity or at best simply overlooked them. But the heightened public religious fervour of the Bush years led the country's infidels to organise as never before, turning atheist authors like Sam Harris into celebrities and opening lobbying offices in Washington, DC, just like religious interest groups do.

Politicians have responded. In his inaugural address, Barack Obama - doubtlessly realising that secularists constitute a big part of his base - described America as a "nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus ... and non-believers." Even Mitt Romney came to express second thoughts about leaving atheists and agnostics out of his high-profile campaign speech on faith. The United States is not Europe - it will likely be a long time before we have a publicly agnostic president - but it is becoming more tolerant of the godless.

It has to be: no religious group in the United States is growing as fast as those who profess no religion at all. The latest American Religious Identification Survey, which Trinity College published last week, shows that the number of non-religious Americans has nearly doubled since 1990, while the number of people who specifically self-identity as atheists or agnostics has more than tripled. An astonishing 30% of married Americans weren't wed in religious ceremonies, and 27% don't expect to have religious funerals. This suggests whole swaths of the culture are becoming secular, since one can assume that non-believers in religious families often acquiesce to traditional marriage rites and expect to be prayed over when they're dead.

The irony, though, is that even as the country becomes more secular, American politics are likely to remain shot through with aggressive piety. What we're seeing is not a northern European-style mellowing, but an increasing polarisation. In his recent book Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, the sociologist Phil Zuckerman described the secularised countries of Scandinavia as places where religion is regarded with "benign indifference". There's consensus instead of culture war. That's not what's happening in the United States. Instead, the centre is falling out.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey, Christianity is losing ground in the United States, but evangelical Christianity is not. Just over a third of Americans are still born-again. Meanwhile, the mainline churches, beacons of progressive, rationalistic faith - the kind that could potentially act as a bridge between religious and non-religious Americans - are shrinking. "These trends ... suggest a movement towards more conservative beliefs and particularly to a more 'evangelical' outlook among Christians," write the report's authors.

In some ways, there's a symbiotic relationship between evangelicals and secularists. The religious right emerged in response to a widespread sense of cultural grievance stemming from the social upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Today's newly organised atheists and agnostics were mobilised by the theocratic bombast of Bush-era Republicans. More than ever, one's religion is tied up with one's political choices rather than family history.

That means faith won't fade into the background. If European secularism is defined by disinterest in organised religion, American secularism is largely defined by opposition to it. Thus non-believers in the United States are increasingly becoming an organised interest group, demanding their share of civic respect. The more they want to escape organised religion, the less they can ignore it.

"Benign indifference" -- that'd be nice. It really does seem like religion has gotten so tied up with politics in America. You go to any congregation and they are 80% Republicans or Democrats.

If it was more like Europe over here, atheists and agnostics wouldn't feel so compelled to vocalize their angst. You are beat over the head with religion everywhere here -- parents of your child's classmates, at the polls, by your political leaders. If they did that in the UK, I'm guessing it would be viewed rather amusingly.

And, as the article states, it makes rock stars out of people like Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm among that group.

I guess I should be glad that it's not as much of a Scarlet Letter to be an atheist any more. It's nice to have a voice in the discussion. But, personally, I'm hoping for those days where a person's faith, or lack of it, shouldn't matter at all.

"So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code." -- Mark Twain

Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?
by Harvey Wasserman

As a dominant form of transportation, the automobile is dead. So is GM, which now stands for Gone Mad.

But the larger picture says that the financial crisis now enveloping the world is grounded in the transition from the automobile---and the fossils that fuel it---to a brave renewable world of reborn mass transit and green power.

If GM lives in any form, it must be owned and operated by its workers and the public.

But the larger transition is epic and global, based on a simple structural reality: the passenger car is obsolete. Auto sales have plummeted not merely because of a bad economy, but because the technology no longer makes sense.

Franklin Roosevelt took GM over in 1943-5 to make the hardware to beat the Nazis. Barack Obama should now do the same to beat climate chaos.

Make streetcars, not passenger cars.

Hybrids are too little, too late, with problems of their own. Solar-powered electric cars will help phase out the gas guzzlers.

But in the long run, the automobile itself needs to be dismantled and re-cycled, not retooled or rebuilt.

Cars still kill 40,000 Americans/year, and thousands more worldwide. No matter how much less gas each may burn, they all consume unsustainable resources to manufacture, operate and terminate.

We need to dig up roads, not build more. We need rails and coaches, bio-diesel buses and self-propelled trolleys, Solartopian super-trains and in-town people movers, not to mention windmills, solar panels, wave generators and geothermal piping.

In America's corporate-conceived “love affair with the automobile,” our first spouse---mass transit---was murdered. Now the unsustainable obsolescence of the private passenger car is collapsing a global financial system built on the illusion of its constant growth.

Mother Earth can’t sustain the old four-wheeled carry-one-person-around-the-block paradigm, be it hybrid, electric or otherwise.

If the automobile and its attendant freeways continue to metastasize in India, China and Africa as they did in the 20th Century United States, we are doomed.

Our true challenge is to envision, engineer and build a Solartopian transportation system that moves people and things cleanly around a crowded planet with diminishing resources and no margin for ecological error.

For that we need every cent and brain cell devoted to what’s new and works, not what’s failed and could kill us all.

Harvey Wasserman ... is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

"The car has become a secular sanctuary for the individual, his shrine to the self, his mobile Walden Pond" -- Edward McDonagh

Is it any wonder we're disconnected from each other? We spend 2 hours a day in a car ... alone. As we are driving, we listen to mind-numbing talk radio that further panders to the glorification of the one over the many (Beck, Hannity, Rush, etc.). When we get home, we pull into our attached garages and immediately close the garage doors, never to converse with our neighbers. Many of us don't even know our neighbors.

Think of all the money, lives and sanity that would be saved by plowing under all of these bloated highways and parking lots and replacing them with parks. Are cars really adding anything to our lives? They are endless money pits that are wasteful and polluting. They had their time and undoubtedly hastened a lot of the prosperity of the past century, but at what cost ... sprawl, pollution, etc.? And are we really more prosperous? We work more than ever and spend less time with our families. When we replaced one of our cars with a scooter, it was one of the smartest and most satisfying things we have done. If we were to lose our remaining car tomorrow, I wouldn't shed a single tear. I really don't get people's fascination with the automobile. I have an inkling on the male fascination with cars (as would Dr. Freud). But it's time to get over it. For everyone's sake.

Nerd-dom Sacred Cows

This last week I saw Watchmen and finished the book, Dune: The Butlerian Jihad by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson. Not really related, you say. You're probably right, I say. But humor me ... I find it amusing to try and link disparate things. It gives me an excuse to do a blog post.

My premise is that there are several sci-fi/comic/fantasy artistic sacred cows out there that other artists have been reluctant to adapt or expand upon because of the anticipated backlash from "fanboys".

The first of those "sacred cows" that I'm going to discuss is the original Dune by Frank Herbert. It is one of the classic sci-fi novels and probably my favorite book of all time. I read that book and the others in the original series when I was in my teens. Loved 'em.


Starting in the late '90's, Frank Herbert's son Brian, along with co-author Kevin Anderson, expanded upon a lot of the back story that is mentioned when you read Dune. A lot of the information was firsthand from Brian's own conversations with his dad before he passed away and from his dad's notes. Since that time, they've written about 10 books, I believe.

While it is not the original Dune, and lacks the artistry of Frank Herbert, it's still quality sci-fi and serves the purpose of illuminating a lot of events and characters mentioned in Dune. These books chronicle events thousands of years before the events of Dune. I don't think it takes away from the original at all. I'm actually looking forward to rereading Dune with the added info.

With this generation of fanboys, Alan Moore's graphic novel, Watchmen, is held in even higher regard than Dune. A movie adaptation has been bouncing around for years with directors as diverse as Terry Gilliam, Darren Arronofsky and Paul Greengrass attached. Much in the same way that the LOTR movies were entertaining, Watchmen adds on to the world of the graphic novel without taking away from it. They are not meant as replacements but more as one fan's interpretation. And Zack Snyder is certainly a respectful, knowledgeable fan in the same way Peter Jackson was. While the Tolkien family viewed the LOTR movies more favorably than Alan Moore views Watchmen, that says more about Moore than it does about the movie. Moore does not even watch the adaptations of his novels and is openly hostile towards them.

I don't think that Snyder changed anything drastically that hurt the movie overall. Some of the flashbacks to the older super heroes were done in the intro. The comic within a comic about the sailor from a couple of hundred years ago is not included. How could it? It really wouldn't make any sense unless you had read the graphic novel. As it is, I'm sure that there are a lot of people that have seen the movie that don't understand everything because they haven't read it.

The casting in the movie is fine with the high points being Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan and Patrick Wilson as the Nite Owl II, but especially Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. He's fantastic. The low point being Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre II. She may be nice to look at, but she can't act.


The look of the movie is very faithful to the novel ... almost shot for shot. Snyder is the right guy to adapt graphic novels as his previous one, 300, did a great job with the look also.

The ending was changed a bit but there has always been some criticism that that was one of the weaknesses of the original story. I had no problem with the change.

So, overall, for fans of Dune, I recommend the Brian Herbert/Kevin Anderson collaborations. And for fans of the Watchman graphic novel, I do recommend the movie. Fans of all types need to lighten up a bit and not hold things quite so sacred. You're missing out on truly entertaining stuff. And just because you may enjoy an updating or reinterpretation of a story, doesn't mean the original is in any way diminished.

"Sacred cows make the best hamburger" -- Mark Twain

Richard Dawkins - Origins symposium

You know you are a nerd when you get as stoked about seeing Richard Dawkins and Craig Venter speak in person as you would a movie star or rock star. I just got tickets for the afternoon session of the Origins symposium at Arizona State University next month. The session that I'm seeing:

Richard Dawkins (author of The God Delusion, Blind Watchmaker, etc.)
Craig Venter (instrumental in mapping of human genome)
Lawrence Krauss

Noble Panel, moderated by Ira Flatow (from NPR):
Baruch Blumberg
Walter Gilbert
Sheldon Glashow
David Gross
John Mather
Frank Wilczek

The whole day is awesome with about a dozen authors I've read including Steven Pinker (I have his books The Language Instinct and the Blank Slate ...) and Brian Greene (Fabric of the Cosmos ...) in the morning. And in another session in the evening, which I couldn't get tickets for, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Hawking and others. That one would have been sweet.




I'm a scientist groupie. How sad is that?

BTW, Wunelle, posted a link to a great hour show with the Four Horseman of atheism, as it were: Dawkins, Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. Check it out.

Atheism's Four Horseman

Overdue Oscar Musings

A little late, but I'll give a few thoughts on the Oscars and a response to the following comment by Great White Bear:

"okay, I am impatiently waiting to see your Oscar thoughts!

I eventually saw all the best picture nominees except "The Wrestler" My thought.... Clint Eastwood got jobbed! Gran Torino was easily better than any of the nominated films, and Changeling was better than all but Frost/Nixon.

And Frank Langella's Nixon was better than Penn's Milk!"

Best Picture - I saw all the Best Picture nominees except The Reader. We're going to see that tonight for our anniversary (15 years ... yay!!). I did see one of my favorite actresses, Kate Winslet, in her other big movie this year, Revolutionary Road with Leo DiCaprio. That movie was good and very representative of the suburban malaise of that period (and this period, for that matter) but maybe just a tad depressing. It reminded me a bit of the movie The Ice Storm, also set in suburban Connecticut, which hit upon the same subject but was set in the 70's instead of the 40's and 50's.


I didn't get to see The Wrestler, Gran Torino or The Changeling but want to see all of them.

Frost/Nixon was great and it was my pick for Best Picture until I had seen Slumdog Millionaire. Slumdog had everything - setting, music, anguish, redemption, fresh faces. I wholeheartedly agreed with all the awards it took in.

Best Actor - I do agree that Langella was better in Frost/Nixon than Penn in Milk but I cannot fault Penn's performance at all and I think he's owed an Oscar or two. His acting is consistently great and this is such an un-Penn-like role that he pulled off. He got jobbed big time last year for directing and Best Picture with Into the Wild.

Langella truly transcended in that performance and you don't hear a lot of people giving credit, but I thought Michael Sheen as David Frost was fantastic.

Overall, I think it was a great year for Best Actor nominees. I would have had no problem with any of the nominees winning, save Pitt. And that's not a knock on Pitt. I thought he was fine, but the other four nominees gave the performances of their careers.

Best Actress - I saw none of these movies but I'm happy to see Winslet win. I'll let you know what I think of her in the Reader this weekend.

Best Director - I think Danny Boyle had the most complicated job of any of the nominated directors - A couple of countries, iffy working conditions, non-English speaking non-actors, an unconventional narrative. And he pulls it off. Plus I dig him because he directed one of my favorite movies of all time - Trainspotting.


I also like the subtle directing job of Ron Howard for Frost/Nixon.

Music - The Academy consistently fucks up the nominations in this category and slightly redeems itself with the winners. Last year, they didn't nominate any of the songs from the best soundtrack of the year, for Into the Wild, but the winner from the good movie Once slightly made up for it.

This year, Springsteen didn't get nominated for the Wrestler song. I mean, WTF? Why were only 3 songs nominated in this category? All that being said, I liked the noms and win for Slumdog and I always like Peter Gabriel.

Best Supporting Actor - I saw 4 of these performances. I've already ranted about the advanced screening of Tropic Thunder that I saw. I love Robert Downey but did not like this movie. Nuff' said.

I really like Josh Brolin in Milk and felt that Emile Hirsch and James Franco could have easily been nominated also. Brolin is turning into quite the character actor the last few years (No Country, W, Milk) and is at the top of his game. But this category was going to go to Ledger, and rightly so. It takes quite an original performance to make you forget Jack Nickolson's portrayal of the Joker.

Best Supporting Actress - I only saw Henson in Benjamin Button and she was good.

As for the telecast itself, I thought it was fine. I like how they have several former winners present the acting awards. But, I'm a sucker for awards shows, so my threshold for being impressed might be lower than other people.

War on Drugs

artwork courtesy of IPW artist Linda Eddy

I don't often find reason to agree with Ron Paul, but on Bill Maher's HBO show on Friday, I found a big reason:

... Speaking live from Clute, Texas, the libertarian-leaning Republican did what few other members of Congress will and openly called for the United States' War on Drugs to be abolished ...

"I don't like pot," said the congressman. "But I hate the drug war, so I would repeal all of prohibition. But, I wouldn't even bother taxing it. People have the right in a free country to make important decisions on their own lives. If they want to make mistakes, they can. They just can't come crawling to the government to get bailed out or taken care of if they get sick.

"I believe in freedom of choice in all that we do, as long as the individual never hurts anybody else. So that means I would get rid of all the federal laws. I would dispose with the drug war. We're spending tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars on this, then we march into places like California, override state law, arrest sick people and put them in prison."

"It makes no sense whatsoever," he insisted ...

"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced." -- Albert Einstein

The Scourge of Modern Civilization

• they are like Muslim terrorists


• ---------------------------------------------


• "... the greatest threat to America going down."


• ---------------------------------------------


• "They're mean. They want to talk about being nice. They're the meanest buggers I have ever seen."


• ---------------------------------------------


• "What is the morals of a ____ person? You can't answer that because anything goes. So now you're moving toward a society that has no morals"


• ---------------------------------------------


• they are trying to get into our schools and indoctrinate our children

Bar your doors!! Head to the bomb shelters! Be very afraid because they are apparently some pretty bad dudes. Where can you find them? In our schools ... in our workplaces ... in our families. Who are these people? They are us. They are not some fringe group hell-bent on destroying us. They are not any more immoral than the rest of us.

They are gays. And if Utah State Senator Chris Buttars is to be believed, they are a bigger concern than the economy or global terrorism. It would be comforting to say he's just some wack-a-doodle that doesn't represent a larger portion of the population. But that would be a lie. His views are very representative of a large portion of the state of Utah and of the Mormon Church. A chuch that was tacitly encouraging it's members to fund the anti-gay Proposition 8 in California. A church that just recently admitted an even larger role in Proposition 8:

The Mormon church has revealed in a campaign filing that the church spent nearly $190,000 to help pass Proposition 8, the November ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California.

The disclosure comes amid an investigation by the state's campaign watchdog agency into whether the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints violated state laws by not fully disclosing its involvement during the campaign.

While many church members had donated directly to the Yes on 8 campaign – some estimates of Mormon giving range as high as $20 million – the church itself had previously reported little direct campaign activity.

But in the filing made Friday, the Mormon church reported thousands in travel expenses, such as airline tickets, hotel rooms and car rentals for the campaign. The church also reported $96,849.31 worth of "compensated staff time" – hours that church employees spent working to pass the same-sex marriage ban.

I'm sick of the purveyors of intolerance using the crutch of accusing their accusers of religious intolerance. It's akin to the KKK getting upset if we call them on their racism. Ignorance given credibility by a large church is still ignorance. And I'm sick of a federal government that ignores the separation of church and state and that doesn't threaten churches like this with the taking away of their tax-exempt status. They are certainly allowed to have their views, but let's see how freely they would use their money to influence legislation if they had to pay taxes like the rest of us.

"The Bible itself is intolerant, and true followers of God's word should be as well." -- Bob Jones III, president of Bob Jones University

"Don't get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance." -- Bill Maher, from his one-person show Victory Begins At Home

My haul from the VNSA Used Book Sale

I talk about this sale every year ... because it's awesome!

Here are the highlights of the books (almost all hardbacks) that I picked up at this year's VNSA Used Book Sale -- 52 years of selling gobs of used books to benefit local charities (AZ Friends of Foster Children, Literacy Volunteers of Maricopa Country, and Toby House:

Sci-Fi

The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
A World Out of Time by Larry Niven
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert


Achlles' Choice by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow (I just read Towing Jehovah by this author ... very good)

Science Non-Fiction

The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene
The Riverkeepers by John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Political

Nickel and Dimed
This Land is Their Land
both by Barbara Ehrenreich
Right is Wrong
Fanatics and Fools
both by Arianna Huffington
Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman

Misc

Beyond Good & Evil by Nietzsche

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

Do the Evolution

Do the Evolution by Pearl Jam
Woo..
I'm ahead, I'm a man
I'm the first mammal to wear pants, yeah
I'm at peace with my lust
I can kill 'cause in God I trust, yeah
It's evolution, baby

I'm at piece, I'm the man
Buying stocks on the day of the crash
On the loose, I'm a truck
All the rolling hills, I'll flatten 'em out, yeah
It's herd behavior, uh huh
It's evolution, baby

Admire me, admire my home
Admire my son, he's my clone
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
This land is mine, this land is free
I'll do what I want but irresponsibly
It's evolution, baby

I'm a thief, I'm a liar
There's my church, I sing in the choir:
(hallelujah, hallelujah)

Admire me, admire my home
Admire my son, admire my clones
'Cause we know, appetite for a nightly feast
Those ignorant Indians got nothin' on me
Nothin', why?
Because... it's evolution, baby!

I am ahead, I am advanced
I am the first mammal to make plans, yeah
I crawled the earth, but now I'm higher
2010, watch it go to fire
It's evolution, baby
Do the evolution
Come on, come on, come on

Happy 200th Birthday Mr. Darwin!

Hard Work

"Hard work is a misleading term. Physical effort and long hours do not constitute hard work. Hard work is when someone pays you to do something you'd rather not be doing. Anytime you'd rather be doing something other than the thing you're doing, you're doing hard work." -- George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

This morning was not "hard work". Getting up each morning to go to clients ... that's hard work. I took part in the restoration, road removal & clean-up of a section of the Sonoran Desert National Monument with the Arizona Wilderness Coalition:

"A significant part of the Sonoran Desert National Monument is currently closed to vehicular access because of the excessive damage it is receiving from illegal off-road vehicle use, trash dumping, etc. The area we are restoring is inside a wilderness. We will be removing a road that has been illegally created inside the wilderness boundary ..."

About an hour drive SW of Glendale, it was a great way to spend a Saturday morning. Great scenery, nice weather and a worthy mission. We swung hoes or pick axes to break up the ground hardened by illegal vehicle traffic. The hardened ground does not allow the desert plant life to grow. By breaking it up, grasses will reestablish themselves ... and quickly. We moved dead logs and dug holes to put dead bushes in. This was done to discourage the use of these paths again.

The leader of the restoration showed us a different area that they had worked on last fall and you could barely tell anything had been there. It had been a large parking area that had remnants of fires and rutted paths, and now it looks like normal desert with grasses and creosote bushes.

I guess that's the heartening thing about fixes to our environment -- changes made can make a difference and can allow the earth to recover.

It sucks that this type of work has to be done. Shooting guns, littering, and a complete disregard for designated wilderness areas -- not things that will endear a person to me. And not exactly things that will convince me of your intelligence. But despite my disappointment of a section of our society, I was heartened and encouraged by the selfless effort of a different section of our society - the volunteers.

Large off-road vehicles, recreational gun use, and Budweiser (the most popular litter item) are things either informed by a lack of knowledge of Freud or perhaps by too much knowledge of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh:

"The Earth’s ecosystem is not fragile, and humans are not capable of destroying it" - Rush Limbaugh

One wishes that Rush's influence was more fragile, but people will always look for views that reinforce their prejudices. Our hope should be to rid people of their prejudices and then his idiocy will have nothing to take hold of.