It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.
Remember how Barack Obama promised that he would bring a serious consideration of science back to the White House if he were elected President? Looks like he might not have been so serious about that after all.
Barack Obama has invited a Creationist, extremist preacher Rick Warren, to kick off his Inauguration with a religious ritual. Here’s what Rick Warren teaches about evolution:
“The Bible’s picture is that dinosaurs and man lived together on the earth, an earth that was filled with vegetation and beauty… Although it cannot be stated with certainty, it appears that dinosaurs may have actually been mentioned in the Bible. The Bible uses names like “behemoth” and “tannin.” Behemoth means kingly, gigantic beasts. Tannin is a term that includes dragon-like animals and the great sea creatures such as whales, giant squid,
and marine reptiles like the plesiosaurs that may have become extinct. The Bible’s best description of a dinosaur-like animal is in Job chapter 40. We don’t know for certain if these are actually dinosaurs or are some other large creatures that became extinct.
This should not sound so strange. After all, God tells us that he created all the land animals on the sixth day of creation, the same day that he created mankind. Man and dinosaurs lived at the same time. There was never a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth. From the very beginning of creation, God gave man dominion over all that was made, even over the dinosaurs.”
After eight years of suffering under George W. Bush’s attacks on science, doesn’t America deserve better than this? A Creationist’s official religious ritual on Inauguration Day?
Ram Bomjon is back. The boy Buddha that brought fame, and tourist income, to his small village has stepped out of the jungle, where he pledged to meditate in peace for six years, and is doing his public relations schtick once more.
Bomjon’s special appeal is that he sits. He sits and sits and sits, not doing anything else for a long time, convincing people that he is meditating, and achieving enlightenment. His supporters say that he sat for about 8 months straight without eating or drinking or moving at all… although those same supporters refused to allow medical doctors to examine him, and during this supposed 8 month marathon of meditation, Bomjon’s supporters wouldn’t allow anyone to come see Bomjon’s nighttime meditations. They put up screens around him to hide him during these times - for his protection, you understand.
Now that Bomjon is back, he’s got a much fancier get up, with a stage, and colorful banners, and he’s laying his hand onto visitors in a kind of blessing. Ram Bomjon has become something like a shopping mall Santa Claus for Nepal.
The thing that really tickles my fancy about all this is that Ram Bomjon’s devotees claim that he is the reincarnation of the Buddha - Siddhartha Gautama.
The odd thing about the idea that Bomjon is the Buddha reincarnated is that the Buddha’s claim to fame is that he would not be reincarnated. The Buddha said that he had discovered a way out of the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. He regarded existence is inherently painful, and not worth having. A reincarnation of the Buddha is a contradiction in terms. If the Buddha were ever reincarnated, it would be a sign that he had failed in his task.
So, when Ram Bomjon’s supporters say that he’s the reincarnation of the Buddha, they’re unwittingly exposing Bomjon as a sham. Either they’re wrong about Bomjon being the Buddha’s reincarnation, or Bomjon is the reincarnation of a failure.
Besides all that, Ram Bomjon’s supposed extreme asceticism is a repudiation of one of the Buddha’s core teachings - that of the Middle Path between the extremes of self-indulgence and self-denial. The Buddha didn’t suggest going completely without food and water, but said that such efforts were inherently flawed.
Ram Bomjon makes a great sideshow, until you realize that it’s just show. If you don’t accept Buddhist ideology, Bomjon’s act is an obvious hoax. If you do accept the tenets of Buddhist ideology, however, Bomjon plainly fails to make the grade.
Of course, consistency is a hobgoblin of the world outside of faith. If you’re a believer, you can just say hush-hush to the monkey of the mind that tries to make actual sense of the world, and sink into warm tingles of belief for the sake of belief.
Preachers tell us that we must accept Jesus into our hearts, but have they thought through the consequences? What are the health risks of accepting Jesus into our hearts?
(a short video podcast from someone who is not a doctor, and does not even play one on TV)
A: Boy, that John McCain sure is a foreign policy expert!
B: Why? What foreign policy has John McCain been right about recently?
A: Well, how about Iraq, for instance.
B: You mean the way that John McCain supported invading Iraq based on the belief that it had arsenals of weapons of mass destruction so huge that they threatened the stability of the entire world?
A: Well, what about the threat posed by the Russian invasion of Georgia?
B: What threat? Russia pulled out of Georgia all on its own, without John McCain doing anything about it. Meanwhile, John McCain’s top campaign advisor’s consulting firm took money from the Georgian government.
A: Okay, but John McCain knows how to win wars!
B: He does? How many wars has John McCain won?
A: Hmm. Boy, that John McCain sure is an expert on the economy!
This is not a day for supporters of John McCain or Barack Obama to be proud.
As Jim reported late last night, memos signed by George W. Bush that explicitly order waterboarding torture have been discovered.
The current Attorney General of the United States, Michael Mukasey, refused to answer questions during his confirmation hearings about whether he considered waterboarding to be torture - although it’s clear by U.S. law that waterboarding is torture, and illegal. Once he became Attorney General, Mukasey said he would not prosecute anyone who had been involved in a conspiracy to commit waterboarding torture. Now we know why - Bush, having ordered waterboarding torture himself, was not about to allow any Attorney General to start a prosecution of the Bush White House’s criminal behaviors. In other words, George W. Bush would not allow the Attorney General of the United States to enforce the law - as his job required.
Oh, but that’s in the past, isn’t it? Let’s consider, then, how America goes forward into the future. Three of the four big-party White House candidates were members of the United States Senate at the time of the confirmation of Michael Mukasey. John McCain, Joseph Biden and Barack Obama had the opportunity to demand that Mukasey commit to enforcing American laws against torture - including waterboarding. So, which of them did so? Which of them stood up against torture, and voted against Michael Mukasey?
None of them did. McCain, Obama and Biden didn’t even show up to work in the Senate that day. They didn’t bother to cast a vote on the confirmation. They were absent when it came time to take a stand against torture.
Given this bipartisan neglect, how can these new revelations of torture ordered personally by George W. Bush be a relevant campaign issue? They can be - if we consider more than just the person of the next President, and consider the institution of the Presidency and the many people who will constitute that institution.
I am not a Democrat, and I am not a fan of the Democratic Party. Over the last eight years - no, the last sixteen years - no, since I can remember, the Democratic Party has failed over and over to support the progressive policies that its base voters support. They’ve consistently caved in to right wing ideology and pandered to extremism, operating as a center-right party.
However, the Democratic Party is not as far to the right as the Republican Party. The Democratic Party has supported torture less than the Republican Party has. I would like to state that the Democratic Party has consistently stood against George W. Bush’s torture policies, but that’s not true. Many Democrats in the U.S. Congress voted for the pro-torture Military Commissions Act, and the Democratic Congress has failed to repeal the terrible law.
However, there is a difference between the Republicans and the Democrats in their degree of support for torture. Many Democratic politicians, have acquiesced to torture. However, few Democratic politicians have been so enthusiastic in their support for torture as Republican politicians have.
Consider the slogan that appeared on the official web site of the Sacramento Republican Party: “Waterboard Barack Obama”.
That wasn’t an isolated statement. Consider the bumper sticker being sold by a web site called Americans Against Obama. It has the same slogan - “Waterboard Barack Obama”. Republicans are buying that bumper sticker.
Democrats have been gutless cowards refusing to stand against torture, but Republicans have been the cheerleaders of torture. That’s not the difference I would like to see, but it is a difference, and it’s enough of a distinction that I can’t ignore it.
Practically, what this means is that I think I’ll need to vote for the Obama-Biden ticket, and then, after Obama and Biden get elected, do everything in my power to push them to uphold the Constitution as they have been too timid to do in the Senate. I won’t be an Obama-Biden cheerleader, but I will also not be a McCain-Palin enabler.
I passed by a restaurant named Protein Planet this morning. It’s a cafe that promises low carb meals to the people who come there.
It struck me that this restaurant exists in the middle of a vast metropolitan area, a high carb, low protein environment. Something in our species wants to pave over protein, encapsulate it in artificial plains of rock over which we drive in vehicles powered by burning pure carbs.
Is the only way that we can persist in our low protein environment to eat a high protein snack? Can we find protein anywhere besides a dinner plate?
I admit that when I learned about Spore, the new game out from Electronic Arts, I really wanted to get myself a copy. It’s a great creation, with an engine for the creation of a huge range of bizarre creatures that look really spiffy, and a broad-ranging application for letting those creatures go, to populate a world and eventually invade foreign worlds that other Spore users have created. Even just looking at the Spore Creature Creator, I was impressed, and found the whole experience to be a whole lot of fun.
But, when it came to actually getting and using Spore, it wasn’t so easy. It turns out that my best computer, which was top of the line just two years ago, isn’t good enough to run the program. A lot of brand new computers that you’d get off the shelf right now aren’t powerful enough to handle Spore, it turns out.
So, I could go ahead and enhance my computer, with yet more additional memory and graphics cards. That would end up costing several hundred dollars, plus the cost of the Spore software itself. For a short while, I was tempted to try to find a way to go that route.
Then I considered what I was doing. Spending hundreds of dollars on this game meant spending a lot of time working, just for the privilege of playing around with pretend monsters on screen. With the economy the way it is, that felt like an extremely irresponsible choice. I realized that there was a low-cost alternative that’s always been available to me: Getting out a pencil, and drawing a creature on the back of a piece of paper in my recycling bin.
Using my imagination, or a piece of less costly software, I can even animate the drawing.
The issue is about a lot more than just a way to be frugal with limited amounts of money. It’s about the responsibility we take for our own urge to create. Who are you going to let be the creature creator? Will it be you doing the creating, or will you need to hire the software super geniuses over at Electronic Arts to give you a paint-by-numbers canvas?
Post Script: If you’re suspecting that this is all some kind of rationalization for the fact that I don’t have enough money these days to just go off and buy software like Spore, well, then you’ve got a really good point. But, I say that it’s going to take a lot of rationalizations, including a lot of sour grapes, to get us through these lean times, and if we can use this as an opportunity to spark the renewal of our culture, so much the better, I say.
[Uptight legal disclaimer: I am not by explaining my experience suggesting that you, yes you, little Timmy, smoke salvia. Surely, if you do it, then your head will explode. Besides, if you really are little, Timmy, it will make your 'nads shrink. Seriously, people who behave recklessly with salvia around have gotten hurt. So you over there, yes, you, little Timmy's mom, reading over his shoulder, don't you even think of suing me when you find little Timmy exploring with his stash. Because I clearly said it would make little Timmy's head fall off and his 'nads shrink. It's not my fault. It's all that heavy metal music. And Dungeons and Dragons. And the existence of gay people somewhere in the next county. P.S. Ask Timmy what 'nads are.]
In June of 2006 I decided, after much reading, consideration, consultation and chastisement, to inhale.
Specifically, I made it my business to inhale salvia divinorum, a plant of the mint family that has a hallucinogenic effect. My experiment with salvia (recorded in twopodcasts) was motivated by curiosity upon the discovery that somehow a hallucinogen had made it into the 21st Century without being declared illegal. Indeed, shortly after my move to Columbus in that year I’d noticed signs advertising salvia in the head shops that line High Street in my neighborhood, in between the the x-rated novelty stores and the bondage shop, two doors down from the purveyor of ironic sculpture and across the street from the club with the best 80s night in Columbus.
I learned enough to know that there was a bad way and a better way to try salvia. The bad way: in a foul mood, unsupervised, in a unfamiliar and uncomfortable place, and using concentrated liquid extract that doesn’t leave room for error in dosing. The better way: in a leavened mood, with someone watching, in a familiar and comfortable place, and smoking leaf to obtain a slower, more controllable dosing. Home, not club. Yo Yo Ma playing Bach Cello suites in the background, not Rob Zombie channeling the torment of hellfire. With the right set and setting, and with the right equipment (a torch to burn the leaves at a sufficient heat, a water pipe to keep me from burning my lungs), I was ready to go.
My experience, as you can hear for yourself, was a mainly positive one. My mood was elevated, although I found it somewhat difficult to maintain rational concentration as much as I’d have liked. My perceptions were altered in a most interesting way. In vision, I found that lines of demarcation between light and dark colors in my vision were accentuated and glowing in rainbow colors of their own. Those glowing lines in my vision appeared to gain depth in some fourth dimension, and if I allowed myself to go with the flow I could feel my body moving along with those glowing lines through that fourth dimension while remaining still in the three dimensions I experience every day.
I use the words “appeared” and “feel” carefully, because it’s important to remember that’s what the experience was… all about appearance and feeling, an internal experience. I have no notion that I was unlocking a key to a bigger world, or anything mystically spirit-filled like that. After the effect wore off, I wasn’t really a changed man, except for the mundane sort of change we all manage through the accumulation of new experience. In the more than two years since, I haven’t had an urge to smoke salvia again. I haven’t gotten addicted to any illicit drugs, although I still drink more coffee than I’d like. Not once have I had a flashback. Neither have I developed a tendency to mousse my hair in weird directions, pick up an axe and go running naked through the neighborhood screaming about the nuthatches.
In fact, to tell you the truth, I’d mostly forgotten about salvia until I found out this week that here in the state of Ohio, the state House has passed and the state Senate is considering a bill, HB 215, that would make salvia divinorum an illegal drug. Specifically, it would classify the herb as a “schedule 1″ drug, putting it in the same category as heroin, hashish, cocaine, and some interestingly-spelled narcotic called “thebacon” (how about thesausage?). State analysts have determined that during the current economic crash outlawing salvia divinorum would cost the state of Ohio over $100,000 per year.
Placing salvia divinorum in the same legal category as “thebacon” rouses my curiosity. Declaring a non-violent activity illegal raises my eyebrows, especially when research is beginning to uncover evidence that salvia divinorum may actually be psychologically therapeutic in some circumstances. Legislators are throwing around bullying arguments that colleagues who don’t vote to outlaw salvia divinorum are endorsing it while the Deputy Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy states outright that there is an “absence of good hard cold information” on any potential harmfulness of salvia. Without good hard cold evidence of harm, what is the government doing restricting the use of this plant?
When the government tells me that I can’t do something, and it doesn’t have solid evidence of the harm in doing so, then I feel somewhat inclined to do it in defiance. Freedom gets rusty when it isn’t exercised; undue restriction leaves me chafing and with a not-so-fresh feeling.
So in the spirit of liberty, with the window on this particular liberty closing, I’m doing the deed again.
As you can tell by the fact that I’m posting this, I’m not dead. You’ll have to trust me when I tell you my hair isn’t wigged out and I’m not toting an axe.
The financial crisis continues! Today, the Dow Jones Industrials Average has plunged an entire 79 points! Augh! Panic now! Do whatever George W. Bush says! Give giant tax cuts to the rich plus a welfare handout to corporations or we are all doomed!
Update: The Dow Jones is now down by 70 points, suggesting that the crisis is deepening! No, don’t think! Just give the 700 billion dollars away now, before it’s too late!
Thanks to Max Blumenthal for doing what corporate journalists refused to do: Reporting on what happened at the Wasilla Assembly of God church last weekend when Sarah Palin’s witch hunting spiritual mentor, Thomas Muthee, came back to his favorite little village in Alaska.
Muthee took to the stage and told members of Sarah Palin’s home church to crush “the spirit of witchcraft! We come against the python spirits!” Another pastor upped the ante, and told members of the Wasilla Assembly of God “We stomp on the heads of the enemy!”
The language is outrageous just in itself. Who ever heard of python spirits? Oh, yeah - the woman who Thomas Muthee chased out of Kiambu in fear of her life. She had her pet python shot to death when police stormed her house at the instigation of Muthee.
But, here in America, who is the “enemy”, the “python spirits” that Sarah Palin’s church says it will stomp?
Chances are that they mean you.
Are you not a Christian? Then you’re the considered the enemy of the Wasilla Assemby of God. Are you a Christian, but not an evangelical? Are you Catholic? Do you not believe in the literal truth of the Bible? Well, then, you’re one of those python spirits.
If Sarah Palin gets elected to the White House in November, prepare to get stomped.
New video has come to light that reveals Sarah Palin knowingly invoked what she believed to be the supernatural powers of a witch hunter, Thomas Muthee, in order to give spiritual power to her campaign for Governor of Alaska. We’re converting the video to a smaller format right now, so that you can see it for yourself without waiting 10 minutes for the download, (Update 1: The Video is now in a more compressed, easier to download format) but let me offer this preview:
In this video, Sarah Palin stands in front of the entire Wasilla Assembly of God church while Thomas Muthee prays for Palin to become Governor, and prays to remove “every form of witchcraft” that opposes Sarah Palin’s campaign. Witchcraft was opposing Sarah Palin’s political career? Who knew?
As you can see, Sarah Palin stands there, and accepts this protection from witchcraft gratefully… and this is the special witch protection that Palin, just a few weeks ago, spoke approvingly of, again on video, before the Wasilla Assembly of God church.
And there’s more! Much, much more! We’ll be reporting on this story all day long.
We’ll have a smaller version of the video for you within 30 minutes to 45 minutes, so that you can see the details for yourself without such a huge download.
Explain, McCain just where is on Earth is Spain? McCain says Spain is somewhere near Fort Wayne.
McCain is strained maintaining his campaign.
His brain refrains from overseas terrain.
I just got done cleaning up the damage in my yard that was left by Hurricane Ike’s surprising inland surge. I live about 250 miles to the north and east of Jim’s home in Columbus, Ohio, so we didn’t receive the kind of storm they did, yet we still had a lot to clean up.
Among the casualties was a 50 year-old maple tree with a trunk about 15 miles in diameter. Half of the tree is still up, and I have hopes that it will survive. The other half of the tree came crashing down to the ground when Ike came through, though.
The problem is that the two parts of the tree were growing in very different conditions. One half of the tree lived in the light of nearly a full day’s sun. The other half grew in the shade of a nearby spruce tree that stands about 120 feet tall.
This difference meant that, when Hurricane Ike hit, half of the maple tree had already lost most of its leaves, while the other half of the maple still had strong, green leaves growing on it. So, half the tree was barely moved by the hurricane’s winds, and the other half caught the storm like boat with all its sails still up. One part of the tree was moved, while the other remained still.
I’ve been cutting the fallen limbs of that tree the old-fashioned way, by hand with a bow saw, and so I’ve had a lot of time to think about that tree and what led to its split. This morning, it occurred to me that the United States of America are a lot like that tree.
Those of you who know American history will understand why I use the word are, referring to a plural, when I describe the United States of America. For the first few generations after the creation of the USA, people still regarded the United States as more of a collection of sovereign states than as a single entity. More recently, Americans have emphasized the unity of the United States, but it may not remain that way for long.
Like the maple tree in my yard, the USA is in danger of splitting apart because it is comprised of two halves that have grown under radically different conditions. The right branch of the USA has grown in relative darkness, holding itself tight and closed, out of fear. The left trunk of the USA has grown in the light, more open in its habits.
So far, the nation has been subjected to a few big gusts. It was nearly split apart in the 1860s, but was grafted back together again.
Nonetheless, the inherent division in the structure of our nation has remained unresolved. There is no strain when times are good, but when the United States of America are presented with another storm, one branch of our nation may remain unmoved, while the other branch is torn away.
There has been a great deal of derision at Sarah Palin’s history of support for the Alaskan secessionist movement. However, that idea of secession reflects a real fissure in American culture. I was reminded of that fissure when looking at the messages left by Sarah Palin’s supporters in reaction to the story about Thomas Muthee, the Christian witch hunter who has been a spiritual mentor to Palin.
To many of Sarah Palin’s supporters, the idea of hunting down women who are accused of casting dark magical spells in league with Satan makes perfect sense. To the rest of us, the idea seems archaic and insane.
There isn’t much middle ground on this issue, and as much as politicians love to play the game of calling themselves centrists, the truth is that there isn’t much real material remaining in the American center that unites our nation. Most of it has turned rotten and soft, and politicians who claim to be in the center actually promote policies from the left or the right.
With a division as deep as there is in the United States of America, every national election is close, and leaves one branch feeling profoundly unrepresented. So, maybe a final split is inevitable, though we cannot say how soon the storm will come that will rip us apart.
Wouldn’t it be better to make a pre-emptive split ourselves, with one clean, sure, deliberate cut, rather than to allow our nation to be roughly ripped apart in a violent crisis?
Bomjon’s special appeal is that he sits. He sits and sits and sits, not doing anything else for a long time, convincing people that he is meditating, and achieving enlightenment. His supporters say that he sat for about 8 months straight without eating or drinking or moving at all… although those same supporters refused to allow medical doctors to examine him, and during this supposed 8 month marathon of meditation, Bomjon’s supporters wouldn’t allow anyone to come see Bomjon’s nighttime meditations. They put up screens around him to hide him during these times - for his protection, you understand.
As 
That wasn’t an isolated statement. Consider the bumper sticker being sold by a web site called Americans Against Obama. It has the same slogan - “Waterboard Barack Obama”. Republicans are buying that bumper sticker.
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