The Ark and The Dove

Edumakashun Makes U Stoopid

Gallup reports that Americans with postgraduate degrees significantly favor Obama, well beyond the national average and other education levels.

This suggests a couple of things:
1.) That too much learning makes people go mad.
2.) That higher education either attracts predominantly liberal-minded people, that it indoctrinates its recipients into liberal-thinking, or that it weeds out non-liberals.
3.) That the educated liberal elite really does think it knows something that the rest of the rude mechanicals in this country simply can't understand with their inferior, primitive, monkey brains.

There were some other provocative numbers as well. For instance, education made no change in numbers of approval among those identifying themselves as black (it's pretty much 90% approval across the board). 10% more of post-graduate women approve of Obama than men. And post-graduate men have about the same approval rating as high-school educated men. It's just those with bachelor degrees or some college that don't like the president. I guess a post-graduate degree is kind of like a second childhood for these guys.

Priest Does What Lots of People Do: News at 11

Drudge linked to a news story about a Catholic priest shoplifting at a Walmart.

...and?

That's pretty much the story, so far as the article goes.

I think I missing how this is a particularly meaningful news story. A quick and dirty google search pulled up a site that alleges to study the causes of shoplifting, the conveniently named National Association for Shoplifting Prevention.

According to this clearly legitimate and authoritative source (I mean, I found it on the Internet after all):

the majority of shoplifters...steal for a variety of reasons, mostly related to common life situations and their personal ability (or inability) to cope. They include people who are depressed, frustrated, anxious, influenced by peers, thrill seekers or kleptomaniacs. Non-professional shoplifting is rarely about greed or poverty. It's about individuals struggling with personal conflicts and needs.

So, really, the story is "man pursues extremely challenging vocation might be dealing with turmoil the same way anybody else would." Is the point supposed to be that he is a fool because he isn't turning to God to sufficiently deal with his psychological problems? Is it supposed to expose some kind of inefficacy regarding God's power?

I'm not really sure what the news story is getting at.

Taking a second look at the source hosting the story, though, I think Drudge might be playing with us. The article appears on NBC Chicago. It might be that Drudge is suggesting that things are so bad in Obama's home state that even priests can't escape getting sucked into criminal behavior. That's how Drudge might see it, at least.

Is the Year of the Priest Working?

FoxNews just ran an article about an up-and-coming minor league baseball player who is giving up the game to enter seminary.

Given the choice between a future with the Eucharist or steroids, it's probably better to go with the Eucharist.

Five Media Pundits Who Agree 100% with New Pro-Life Legislation

The Onion is reporting on new legislation requiring women seeking an abortion to name their unborn child and paint a nursery before undergoing the procedure.

(Let the fact that I'm linking to a satirical take on the pro-life movement by a secular fake news source be evidence that pro-lifers can laugh at themselves...)

Books > Video Games, Reason #156

Yet another reason why books are better than video games can be summed up in three words: memory card corruption.

The fact that you can lose a save state on a video game doesn't amount to a whole lot in this crazy world. There are real tragedies out there...but that perhaps makes disappointment in our leisure time all the more telling. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

Anyway, before Isabel bought me The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina in Time, I had been merrily playing through Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (it's very rare I play a game that is less than six year's old). The call of Hyrule overpowered me, so I abandoned my game of R&C and played Zelda through. I'm sure you will all be thrilled to know that I vanquished the evil Ganondorf and restored peace to the land (although the time traveling element of the game left me very confused by its conclusion). During a break from planning paper topics the next day, I thought I'd finish off R&C before starting anything new...only to discover the game won't recognize the save state on the memory card. I even tried swapping the file to another memory card, but it was to no avail. The file is still on the memory card, the game just won't recognize it. I'm assuming this means it is corrupted somehow.

I would approximate that I logged somewhere between 15-20 hours of game play before the file stopped being readable.

Now, lest I turn the blog into some kind of help desk, my point here is the interaction between technology and leisure--and to prove that books are in fact a superior form of entertainment in this case.

First, a book's data is simply more secure. Words on a page don't become unreadable overnight (maybe over decades or centuries, but I'm pretty sure the same can be said for video games). Besides, the books "save state" really isn't the book at all. It's in my head...or possibly the result of a dog-eared page, post-it note, or other bookmark. Even if the bookmark is misplaced of forgotten, I don't have to start reading the whole book over again to find out where I left off (unless it's been a very long time since I last picked the thing up). Even so, even if I can't remember the last page I read, there is absolutely nothing to prevent me from just picking an arbitrary page and picking up from there. Not so in a typical video game. And this is part of what makes games so devious--they are almost all forced marches, a self-enslavement to the narrative will of the game designers.

You can skip pages in books. You can fast-forward DVDs. You can jump to different tracks on a CD.

The video game, however, is one of the few forms of digital entertainment that requires you to meet certain conditions--consume a designated amount of media--before it will allow you to consume the next helping. You can't have your pudding until you eat your meat. For most games, this really just involves a very long easter egg hunt of finding keys to unlock gates (although games usually dress the keys and gates up to look like something very un-key-like just for variety).

For whatever reason, gamers like it that way. They derive a sense of satisfaction for having accomplished the tasks that the programmers lay before them. And for what? Most games don't even have that much to show for all of your effort--usually just rolling credits of Japanese names that I can't pronounce. (The only exception I can think to this are the Ico and Shadow of the Colossus games, each of with are the closest I've come to experiencing bona fide catharsis in a game--particularly Ico).

Both books and video games can be challenging for different reasons. I suppose the gamer can boast of the physical dexterity it requires to beat a particularly nasty miniboss (this has become harder for me as age takes its toll on my artist's hands). Few games, however, challenge the player to have the same mental dexterity of even reading light fiction. Sure there are riddle-type games of the Maniac Mansion variety, but even these usually are simply a matter of juxtaposing disguised keys and locks.

Books have their keys and locks as well. They are usually even more hidden than those in video games...but the keys and locks in text are usually relate to longitude rather than latitude. That is, the keys and locks in a video game bar you from accessing the linear narrative. The keys and locks in a book bar you access not from linear narrative but from depth of meaning.

There really is nothing to stop you from reading a book of reasonable length all of the way through (heck, you can read a book in a foreign language all the way through if you wanted--you just might not get that much out of it). But to understand the book is a different matter. This requires an interpretive skill set that allows you to descend into the books structures, patterns, form, and metaphors.

I suspect that most video games lack the depth of text. Sure, their plots are becoming more complicated. Their themes may become more dramatic and "mature." But, for the most part, video games have yet to match the complexity of literary works (unless, of course, I'm just as bad at finding that as I am at beating mini-bosses).

Fortunately, I only spent ten bucks on Ratchet & Clank...and I guess twenty-hours of button-mashing entertainment is worth ten bucks. I guess I'll cut my losses and move on to Marvel Ultimate Alliance...or maybe Metroid Prime...

Earth Quakes; World Goes Mad

I just saw on a Drudge link that Danny Glover, I kid you not, is arguing that Haiti is somehow karmic retribution for political complacency on climate change.

Brendan O'Neill's provocative column that Pat Robertson's mistake was blaming God, rather than Gaia. O'Neill goes on to list a rather shocking assortment of columnists who make virtually the same argument as Robertson only by way of neo-paganism instead.

This strikes me particularly because I was just saying that I thought this earthquake made Copenhagen seem even more absurd--we could spend trillions in global currency trying to fend off meteorological catastraphe only to have even more carnage ensue with a year of geological disaster (and have far less capital to repair the damage).

Haiti really is turning into a nightmare, especially as reports come in that frustrated Haitians are lashing out against each other and relief groups. It makes the upcoming Hollywood blitz of fundraisers and benefits seem a little doomed, doesn't it? I'm sure all of the celebrities who are coming out to raise awareness and support for the Haitians mean well, but I don't entirely trust that the resources they pool together will ever even make it to those who need it. Look what happened to the relief we tried to send to our own New Orleans. At least our hearts are still human enough to sympathize with suffering...

If It Weren't Life and Death, We Should Strike

The site Big Government has posted audio from the Democratic senatorial contender for Massachusetts that, in essence, discriminates against Catholic medical practitioners. Headlines seem to be summing it up as "Devout Catholics 'Probably Shouldn't Be Working in Emergency Rooms.'"

Now, to play devil's advocate, I suppose there is a sort of logic to what she's saying. If you constructed an analogy, you might see how it plays out. From her point of view, she probably thinks it is no different from saying that Catholics getting involved in a profession that typically does things they find morally repugnant would be like Muslims working at a beer distributor or an Orthodox Jew running a bacon processing plant.

Or, I suppose I could grant her her argument if medical workers were refusing care based on a morality rooted in some kind of prejudice. Surely, we wouldn't want doctors who would, say, refuse to treat a patient because of their race or creed or lifestyle. If Catholics were refusing to treat gay men because they were gay, I'd agree with her. But that's not even remotely close to what happens when a Catholic refuses to prescribe or hand over an abortifacient.

The problem, of course, is that most analogies don't really hold up. We're talking medical care--which is more than just another industry or profession. Healthcare is that thing we're trying to reform, right? The one where there are complaints of incompetency, price gouging, and corruption? Why would you discourage competent, skilled doctors on the basis of moral belief?

On that note, should Catholic hospitals just shut down and get out of the business as well?

If people with moral convictions have no place in the emergency room, do emergency rooms have no place in hospitals with moral convictions?

Is that really going to help the healthcare situation? Close down all the good guys?

And does that really sound like a sound future for healthcare? Should the government stand up and say, "Okay, we'd like all the people who would refuse to perform an operation or distribute medicine based on moral reservations to leave the room. We only want people who have no moral reservations doing whatever we tell them."

I'm crossing my fingers for, MA. Here's hoping the seat goes back to the people.

h/t Jawa Report

The Orthodoxy of The Silmarillion

I really can't adequately describe how much I enjoy reading The Silmarillion.
It's one of those texts that always reminds of The Far Side cartoon with the two gorillas sitting in the trees eating bananas. The one gorilla says, "I know we all like bananas...but I really like bananas."

I guess the best word for it is "pleasure."

It is just a pleasure to read these stories. They aren't all happy stories either. Some of them are horrible stories--horrible like the ancient Greek myths that Western culture just can't seem to get out of its imagination.

Tolkien must have fallen in love with the stories, too, which might help explain why he was so anxious to make them plausible (at least from a Catholic perspective). He wanted to make them as close to possible as possible--he wanted stories that could have been even if they weren't.

When describing the supernatural beings he calls the Valar, he writes in his book proposal: "On the side of mere narrative device, this is, of course, meant to provide beings of the same order of beauty, majesty as the 'gods' of higher mythology, which can be accepted--well, shall we say baldly, by a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity."

On the one hand, I think it's arguable that part of Tolkien's concern might be practical. He doesn't want to write some whacky neo-pagan story that's going to land him on some kind of Vatican list of banned books. But I think he's also tapping into real anxieties of a Christian if not Catholic audience. How often is the illusion of fantasy broken by our own religious beliefs? By building a fictional supernatural world that was compatible with the actual supernatural world (if such a concept is philosophically valid to describe), Tolkien makes it easier to suspend one's disbelief (I might even say he makes it too easy to suspend one's disbelief).

I'd say he's pretty true to his word as well. For instance, I was just re-reading the tale of Beren and Luthien. My take on this story is that its conclusion essentially rewrites the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to have a happy ending (one of the few happy endings in all of The Silmarillion). When the human warrior Beren falls his elf-wife Luthien eventually passes into the Halls of Mandos, where Beren's soul has been put in a kind of limbo. Luthien sings a song that convinces Mandos to show mercy--and he gets permission to allow Beren and Luthien to return to life. But Tolkien takes great pains to explain that Beren's soul isn't really under the jurisdiction of the Valar:
"But Mandos had no power to withhold the spirits of Men that were dead within the confines of the world, after their time of waiting; nor could he change the fates of the Children of Iluvatar...it was not permitted to the Valar to withhold Death from him, which is the gift of Iluvatar to Men."
Now, a non-Christian reader can read this and just see it as a set of mythological rules of engagement. A Christian, I would argue, reads it and inserts Christian doctrine in-between the lines.
Beren has to go to Heaven or Hell...that's the way it works. It's not even as though he describes them being reincarnated in the sense of being reborn. They seem much more like Lazarus figures, which, of course, would have biblical precedence, and the Halls of Mandos, as a place of waiting, seem like the Limbo of the Fathers or possibly even purgatory.

Prayers for Haiti

The devastation in Haiti really is beyond my imagination, despite all of the disaster films that Hollywood has made since the evolution of computer graphics.

Not to politicize the unfathomable loss of hundreds of thousands of people, but it really does make the entire international stage of climate conferences, terrorism, and economics look like a pageant of absurdity. All those people worried about sea levels rising or bombs going off or just having a job tomorrow seem utterly misguided juxtaposed to the sheer volume of destruction by a quick geological shift.

We really are tiny creatures on this world...and the planet is just a very big machine that doesn't care a thing for us.

Oh, and for the Pat Robertson's out there, I refer you to Luke 13:

1^{1 2} At that time some people who were present there told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices.

2He said to them in reply, "Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?

3By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!

4Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them ³ --do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?

5By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!"

Blow Winds, and Crack Your Cheeks!

Isabel and I just watched Akira Kurosawa's Ran. You might know Akira Kurosawa as that Japanese director that George Lucas was always ripping off...er...paying homage to, although you probably are more likely to know him as that guy they mention in the Bare Naked Ladies song that prompts the singer to talk about samurai.
Ran is, if you haven't clicked the hyperlink above, Kurosawa's fairly lose adaptation of King Lear, retold as a samurai epic. We have the Criterion Collection version, so I'll probably start watching the educational commentaries and learn all kinds of smart things to pass along to my students.
In the meantime, you get my gut reactions to the film.
I can certainly understand why this film gets the praise it does. Visually, he has some totally amazing shots...and I suspect they are even more amazing if put in context of film history. There are some amazing scenes of figures on distant cliffs or hilltops that must have been a bear to shoot, and there are some massive battle sequences that must have been logistically staggering in an age where you couldn't just generate a vast army using three guys in uniforms and Adobe Photoshop.