The Ark and The Dove

Life Imitates Ancient Greek Art

In Sophocles' Lysistrata, the women of Greece comically (and somewhat implausibly) bring the Peloponnesian War to a screeching halt by going on a sex strike.

Apparently, women are bringing that plot to reality in Kenya by refusing sexual favors to their men until the current internal political strife is halted.

I guess abstinence is the best policy...

Earth Day

Some of my students thought to remind me that today is so-called Earth Day.

Just keep in mind, Mary is your Mother, not Gaia.

Actually, the Earth is hardly maternal at all. What has she actually ever given us? When's the last time man ever found a long-term food source that he didn't have to labor to create or acquire? How many resources does the Earth ever give up willingly? When has the Earth ever sacrificed on our behalf?

Nature is not a Mother. Nature is competition, tooth and claw.

Ecosystems are merely stalemates between species -- not harmonious networks of interdependent organisms.

Do we have a responsibility do steward creation? Of course. Even if it weren't a moral obligation, it would be stupid to squander our plunder...er...I mean the rich bounty of the generous Earth.
But let's not forget that the Earth is here to serve us. We do not serve the Earth.

Or, as Milton observed, God made Adam and Eve to be lovers, not gardeners.

Neo-Neo-Platonism

Since I can't seem to go to any news sites or blogs today without again looking at Miss California in a bikini, it seems like a topic worth revisiting. In my attempt to intellectualize beauty pageants, it strikes me that, at least for Christians, this is one of those cases where Neo-Platonism seems...to hold up uncannily well.

Platonism (and I don't mean to insult the intelligence of our regular readers) argues that earthly matter is the shadowy, distorted reflection of some ideal form residing in some ethereal plane. It has a tendency to spill over into a form of aesthetics that then associates beauty with perfection, purity, and goodness. As a corollary, that which is imperfect, impure, and bad is generally also brutish and ugly.

For the most part, human experience, and Renaissance love poetry, proves this is horribly, horribly not true. That which is most beautiful is usually a deceptive trap, a mask concealing murky nastiness beneath.

But then you have this refreshingly Platonic case of Miss California: a moment where truth just happens to come in the form of beauty. She seems a pretty sincere, straightforward, Christian girl.
We might still have our suspicions about her as a private individual -- she might not be perfect, but she's at least appears to be one of the good guys until someone can find an incriminating Facebook photo of her.

On the other side you have her antagonist: Perez Hilton. Nasty, cruel, vindicative, ugly, and morally dubious.

It plays out like a war of Neo-Platonic stereotypes: the upstanding, sincere, attractive, heteronormalized beauty queen juxtaposed with the slimy, subversive, repugnant, gay gossip queen.

And, of course, every time potty-mouth Perez Hilton has used derogatory language and cusswords to describe his adversary, she has responded with Christian proclamations of love for those who hate her (at least on the FoxNews interviews I've seen).

But if God doesn't want us becoming to enamored of Platonic ideals, however, there's always Susan Boyle waiting in the wings to remind us that looks, in the end, can be deceiving...

Fat People / Hot People

A quick thought on the recent Drudge Headline: "Fatties Cause Global Warming."
How do we know it's the fatties causing the problem?
What if its all the skinnies with insanely high metabolism?

A quick thought on Miss California.
I have absolutely no interest in beauty pageants...other than the typical puerile ones.
Now, I have no idea what kind of person Miss California is morally. It's not my business to judge her soul. I will give her kudos for sticking up for marriage, though.
What does it gain a woman to win Miss USA and lose her soul?
Of course, I think some of this has been overplayed. She did start her statement with a concession that it is great to live in a country where people are being allowed to make these choices, even if she doesn't think they should be.

Part of me actually hopes she lost the pageant on account of her beliefs -- her reward will be greater than a tiara (and by reward I don't merely mean a favorable mention on this blog...as covetous a prize as that is).
Another thought on this issue is that it now means we can use her to stick it to public leaders who won't take a stand on these kinds of issues. If I were one of the squirrely, noncommital bishops, it would seem quite shameful to me to be getting shown up by a Miss California (although it does seem like more and more bishops are fighting the good fight).

At Least its not a Hypocritic Oath

My brother-in-law sent me an e-mail about the current state of the Hippocratic Oath.

I'm just going to cut and paste it below rather than bothering to paraphrase it for mere originality's sake:

I was watching a NOVA recently about becoming a medical doctor (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath.html)

... and I thought you would be interested in a bit of the discussion regarding the Hippocratic Oath.  The program mentioned that medical schools have had to "modify" the original oath...

"even as the modern oath's use has burgeoned, its content has tacked away from the classical oath's basic tenets. According to a 1993* survey of 150 U.S. and Canadian medical schools, for example, only 14 percent of modern oaths prohibit euthanasia, 11 percent hold convenant with a deity, 8 percent foreswear abortion, and a mere 3 percent forbid sexual contact with patients—all maxims held sacred in the classical version"

Here is a link to the original : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/doctors/oath_classical.html

One line that is missing from all modern versions:

"I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art."

We named the dog Indiana...

Isabel and I were talking about the new first dog. According to news sources, the dog's name is Bo:

The Washington Post reported that the girls named the pet Bo in part because their cousins have a cat of the same name, and perhaps after Michelle Obama's late father's nickname Diddley, after the late rock 'n' roll legend Bo Diddley.

So, am I just a total cynic (pun!) for noting that the dog's name is also it's owner's initials?

I won't make any observations on the dog's two colors, though, because that smacks of racism.

The Greatest Love...

...is to lay down one's life for one's friends.

It's worth keeping that in mind on this Good Friday, as Captain Richard Phillips remains a hostage to pirates.

As the story goes, Phillips offered himself as a hostage in exchange for the release of his crew.

Once freed, his crew attempted to negotiate the release of Phillips with a pirate they were holding hostage, but the pirates double-crossed them, and, more recently, Phillips attempted to escape the life boat where he is prisoner, but was recaptured.

Pray for Captain Phillips's safe release

My Idiot President, II

Hey, I have a good idea...let's appoint to a presidential panel on faith-based initiatives someone who called the pope a "discredited leader" for publicly opposing homosexual activity .

Sounds like just the kind of open-minded person who will allow the other members of the 25-person panel to speak freely on their religious beliefs.

And let's pollute the environment some more to return it to its natural state...

While we're at it, let's appoint some anti-capitalists to financial committees.

Giving unto Caesar

Just filled my taxes.

Brain hurts.

The saddest part is that I don't even do itemized deductions or anything nearly as complicated, and I still had moments where I was just staring blankly at the TurboTax window.

Perhaps the most anguish was felt when I was supposed to determine my local school district...I have no idea what my school district is, so I clicked on the link that was supposed to take me to a website that would tell me. It should have been easy enough; all I had to do was enter my address.
But the Website said my address didn't exist.

Blaaaargh!

There has to be an easier way.

And did you know that PA residents are supposed to pay "use taxes" on anything they buy in another state? What the heck is that about?!?

My Idiot President

I've been struggling to resist that subject header for a while, now.

The president, after all, deserves a certain degree of respect no matter how much I disagree with his boneheaded policies.

Sure, I've expressed my displeasure with the election of Obama...but I don't think I had ever lost respect for the guy...at the very least, I had reserved the healthy respect of one's enemy.

Things have changed, however, now that the White House is trying to convince me that the President did not bow to the king of Saudi Arabia. Whether or not bowing was a good idea or bad idea is besides the point at the moment. The guy bowed and is trying to say he didn't.

It's like the little kid saying he didn't go into the cookie jar even though he has the remnants of cookies on his face.

Or like an episode of Fawlty Towers when John Cleese has to develop a convoluted string of clear and embarrassing lies to excuse some faux-pas (maybe we should start referring to him as Basil Obama...which I guess would make Biden his gaffe-ridden sidekick "Manuel").

The liberals like to accuse Bush of having been a liar about WMDs--but at least if he lied (and I don't think he did), they were plausible lies whose reality was hid behind a curtain.

It's easy to overuse the term "Orwellian," but, come on...we've all seen the video on YouTube.

We're being told that we haven't seen what we saw.

What's next? Have rat-filled cages strapped to our faces when we refuse to say that bowing isn't bowing.

I still have some hope for Obama, though. He seems to be on a roll for making apologies to the rest of the world...maybe he'll turn around and apologize to us for lying to us and treating us like we're stupid proles.