Obama to run as a Republican?

PHLEEZZZZZ

The Publicans DO NOT HAVE a candidate! For better or worse, Bush, Rove and company have redefined the party. How can one be Publican and oppose the Xtian Right Agenda? This makes as much sense as Jesse Jackson ... or for that matter Dan Evans .. running as a Publican!

Ironically, the MOST credible Christian candidates now are all demos! Obama has a story (and a life) that inspire Xtians ... hold that up against Guiliani! Look at what happened in Virginia! ... A devout Xtian beat a posturing Xtian! Hillary, by the way, has spent the last six years attending the fundamentalist prayer breakfasts in the senate. Quietly! Do you suppose McCain was there? Richardson is a devout Catholic with a record of service that has claimed Christian inspiration.

Romney? A believer in Jesus living on as an American Indian? A believer that all people can become God? Running as Christian? Leaving aside dirty campaigning, the fundies are serious folks, they are not going to vote for someone who is a polytheist.

This smells a but like the Reagan era in reverse. It is not hard to imagine that Southern baptists, who have been trying to heal the wounds of the civil war and Civil Rights,
will find a natural alliance with their African Baptist colleagues. Imagine Obama speaking to a Baptist convention where ALL colors are present? Hmmm. Obama, a Christian by choice, a monogamous man with two wonderful (Christian) daughters, running against multiply divorced McCain, Guiliani, or worse .. Gingrich!

Ironically, the closest match to Carl Rove's ideal Publican candidate would have to be Hillary or James Webb or even John Edwards! Any of these people fit the Karl Rove formula better than a divorced catholic who lives with gays, a former house speaker who left under rumors of abusing a past wile, a believer in many Gods, etc. The only believable Christian Republican in John McCain .. or maybe Obama? Lets see .. fiscal conservative, patriotic, 20 year marriage, CHOSE to be a Christian, did voluneter service AFTER being a Harvard success, can EXPLAIN his stands on abortion and prays regularly. Sounds like a compassionate conservative to me.

I smell a new Demo coalition. Built on patriotism, service, America-firstism, and fiscal responsibility. oh yeh, on respect for other nations, jobs, education, jobs, fair taxes, jobs, ....

The Housing Phenomenon on Capitol Hill

We have lived on an area of Capital Hill for over thirty years. We came here to defray our taxes, buying what was for us a very expensive house so as to maximize our tax deduction. What an investment! In the last three decades our $75,000 has become something like a $million.

There is a price for anything. The community we joined was wonderful .. a mix of working class folks, often African American, pioneering Yuppies, UW types like ourselves trying t find housing we could afford near the YooDub, nunneries, priesteries, Rajneeshees, Gayfolk, and the wonderful arts community. Block parties were held at least three times a year.

As time has past, the diversity has declined. No one comes to block parties. Today's owners of homes on our block now range from a few docs, a couple of profs, some Microsoft biggies, a few oddities (us?) left over from the old days and one heir to a major American corporation.

Now we may have gone assymptotic. The house next door used to belong to the O'Briens. A Catholoc family in a neighborhood built for catholic families., Lots kids. dad an ex basketball star from Seattle Univ who went on to a baseball career and ended up as associate manager of the much missed Kingdome. Johny O'Brien was a Seattle Icon. The O'Brien house, a Tudor built on the bones of a Sears' catalog house seemed to be a beauty.

Now for $1.5 million some investors bought Johnie's house. The agent told Johnie that he had hit the Jackpot. What about the investors??? They seem to be afficonadoes of Capital Hill, maybe with romantic ideas about this place. But, as nice as they may be the new owners found a lot of problems .. rot, house built to close to ground ..and now they have utterly gutted the place. All that exists is the framing. The real estate agent tells me they expected most of this! Talking to neighbors .. it seems the investors expect to make a profit! How??????

How can this be? They need to lower the lot by a foot and a half to raise the foundation, replace a lot of the framing, build a new house in the old shell. They MUST have spent a hundred thou just on the disassembly. What is the framing and foundation worth? Do they expect to sell the house for 3 million? Nothing on this street has ever sold for the $1.5 they have already spent. I am not sure what to hope for. I they succeed we could be forced out by the taxes. If they feel, our property values could be hurt. What of they decide to abandon the the project?

Funny thing .. someone emailed we, "Will" claiming I had misspelled "Capitol" as "Capital". Typoes aside, perhaps Freud was helping?

A Funeral

Yesterday we attended a funeral at St Joseph's Church for Bruce Gilliland. Bruce was a Professor at our medical school and one of the calmest, wisest figures i have yet met. This entry is not about him, it is about the funeral.

A lot of people came, many of whom I recognized from the UW Medical School. There was a bagpiper and a priest, 2 daughters, 1 son and a wife named Collins. My understanding is that Bruce was Presbyterian, so the use of St. Joe's .... I assume ... was to comfort Bruce's wife. The odd thing about this is that most of the service was about Jesus and about Bruce going to be with Jesus. This is such a beautiful image. Certainly for the living person it may be a great comfort. Was it Dr. Gilliland's wish as well? I don't think he had converted but perhaps it does not matter. The wish, at the very least, was well meant.

Of more concern to me was the passage from the Roman Bible chosen by Father Paul Fritterer. The choice was Matthew 8. In this passage, Jesus is approached by a Centurion. A Roman Centurion, kind of like a Lt Colonel in Iraq. A Commander of 80 men, Roman soldiers, occupiers of Jesus' homeland.

This Centurion asks Jesus to help, "Et dicens Domine puer meus iacet in domo paralyticus et male torquetur," his servant it seems was ill and the Colonel wanted to ask Jesus to heal the sick person. Jesus was willing but the Colonel demurred, claiming that the home of a Roman Officer was not grand enough to host the great healer. The Officer went further and pointed out that Jesus, as a great man, must have same ability to command that the Officer had himself. Couldn't Jesus just command the healing?

These verses follow:

8:10. And Jesus hearing this, marvelled; and said to them that followed him. Amen I say to you, I have not found so great faith in Israel.

8:11. And I say to you that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven:

8:12. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

8:13. And Jesus said to the centurion: Go, and as thou hast believed, so be it done to thee. And the servant was healed at the same hour.

The good priest saw this as a wonderful message of the faith of a gentile in Jesus. To Father Fritterer the Centurion was being humble about his home, though I wondered if the Roman may have felt unease at asking a Jewish holy man into the hime of an occupier. Perhaps the priest was sending a message to Dr. Gilliland's wife that Bruce's life, while not Catholic, would be seen by Jesus as a life of service and faith?

In that way, Mathew 8 was appropriate and loving. As an aetheist and a Jew I am jealous of those whose loved ones live on in Heaven.

But, I am Jew. I read this differently from Father Fritterer and, that reading is part of the last 2000 years of antisemitism. Why? Imagine that Jesus was a Chassid, a holy Rabbi, in Russian occupied Poland and the Centurion was a Commisar. The Russian is there, and proud of his duty in suppressing the religion and freedom of the Poles. Yet, Jesus not only praises the Comissar for his faith but goes on to exult about the horrors to come under Communist rule. Mathew's Jesus says,

"And I say to you that many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

in simpler words,

"Your faith is well meant to me and I will welcome all gentiles to the worship of the true God, but the Jews will be cast out and suffer pain."

These are the words of the Church of Rome. They are words that forgive the Romans, and their heirs the Church, for what would be millenia of hatred. In the Jewish tradition, the tradition of Hillel the great Pharisee, Jesus may well have said to the Centurion that all good people, even a the lowly servant of a Roman Officer, have equal rights before God. Those words would not have been followed by the prediction of a cruel future for the Jews.

These are words that justify the Jewish wars, the Arch of Titus, the Crusades, the Inquisition and, perhaps, the Holocaust.

I hope it does not offend my Catholic friends to point out how hateful this verse is to a Jew.

The Perils of a Professional Army

Take a look at this blog entry at Huffington on the conditions for Iraqui vets at Walter Reed.

But why is anyone upset? When we did awy with the Draft, we hired a professional Army. We pay these guys and gals to die and suffer and be glorified for doing so. Why pay attention to those who have been injured on the job?

We should have mandatory, universal service. Everyone should serve, not just to be fair but to share responsibility.

Think of the opportunities for service and the effect of knowing that OUR kids were in service. A Teacher Corps might revolutionize education not just be droppi9ng the labor costs (conscripts are cheaper then Union members) but be raising awareness of the crappy conditions in many of the schools these soldiers who serve in.

Imagine the good it would do to the polity if American Peace Corps kids safety depended on the support the receive while distributing AIDS drugs in the Congo!

And howsa about them illegals? You snuck in? Now you wanna be a citizen? Kool ..sign up here for your two years in Baghdad!


The image was taken at Fort Lewis. Seems to be a soldier, a boy in drag? Don't ask and I won't tell!

Decline of Radio Talk

Seattle once had pretty good talk shows. Then something happened. The right erupted with tabloid vitriol ... Rush Limbaugh, the drugged voice of anti feminazis everywhere, engendered Medved, Lapin and Savage. KIRO remained an island of middle roadism. Some of this reamins ... their all star property is Dave Ross, a voice of reason. KIFO also runs Ronnie Reagan II, a pleasant voiced liberal apologist for his Dad. Then there is a guy called Monson, more or less Rush without the hate speech. Otherwise KIRO this has gone down the tubes, so to speak. Now we have hosts whose erudition is well represented by Ron and Don ...
These guys (the two book ends), prove that one can look as dumb and dumber as one sounds. They chase each others inane comments ... pitying each other for having fled from Katrina threatened jobs in N'Awlins' Big East for the Big Wetness of Seattle. If these guys have abny cultural value it is growing as a fungus on the walls of their former apartments in the French Quarter.

This began with an email from a colleague of mine, Gina. She is an African American with a great deal of concern and commitment to her community. Gina knows I am interested and shared some legislation she was interested in. This legislation, if passed would allow use of State funds to help AA students attend traditional Black colleges.

My response:

Gina

Thank you for sharing this. I respect you a great deall for participating in this sort of activity.

I would like to share my own, rather negative response to this sort of legislation. Personally I would disagree with this bill and even if it were passed I suspect it might have serious constitutional issues.

A. Concerns

1. From An AA Perspective

I apologize if this is presumptuous. I am obviously not an AA. However, as it happens my life has often become intertwined with your community and I do have feelings about tha AA community. Crudely put, I admire many AA and feel an identity between the modern AA story and my own people’s story over a longer period.

a. The choice of one of these schools is something I would applaud BUT it is a very personal one. Asking the State to support it has a supplicant flavor that I think looks bad because it makes it appear as if AA wish to be treated not only as a minority but as having special needs that do not apply to other under represented minorities.

b. Rather than recognizing these special schools for their unique qualities, the act singles them out as places for dealing with a minority problem. If it is desirable for an AA t g to Morehouse, why isn't it also desirable for a Lumni person or for that matter a farmworker Hispanic kid? Or .. why wouldn't some rich white kid from the Highlands benefit as well?

2. From a WA state perspective

a. Our interests as a State should be in improving the numbers of Americans who represent our mixed heritage who want to live and work here. This does the opposite. In effect it says, we can not serve this need at home so we are sending our kids away to other states.

b. These schools are only unique because of theoir relationship to the AA community. There are other similar schools that apply t other communities. To cute an extreme example ... Dartmouth was FOUNDED esp for indigenoous Americans and still has a special scholarship for these kids. If WA state has historic ethnic debts, as we do, this has to be #1.

3. From a Jewish perspective

The term "people of color" is to me, a Jew who has been persecuted for crimes unrelated to my skin color, intrinsically racist. I feel we ... not Jews but all Americans .. need to get out of this "people of color trap." The term raises a false issue. America's race issues are NOT based on color, bigotry is a lot more complex than that and we have under and over represented groups whose prejudicial issues certainly do not reflect skin color. Here are a few examples:

a. Appalachia
The US still has not recovered from the coal-mining era. We have a sizeable community of poor whites whose children have little hope of ever being educated in a competitive way. Washington state has what I fear are the beginnings of a similar issue with the unemployed folks of former lumber areas.

b. Caribbean and African immigrants
I think you know what i am going to say. Skin color is NOT a gtood criteria for defining a deserving AA. 75% of the "black" kids at Harvard are now of non-american parentage. As an effort toward diversity, this means this group is way OVER represented at Harvard. In my experience with the STAR program, the same is true here. Of the URM students I see every summer, it is RARE to meet someone whose parents are both of American descent and frequent to find kids whose "colored" parent is not of American birth. Statistics form City College in New York also show that "colored" Caribeans and Africans folks achieves right up there with Koreans and SE Asians.

c. Hispanics

This irritates me greatly. I have met Brazilian immigrants who are receiving help because they are Hispanic. (Actually the case in my mind was a Brazilian-African). By what weird perspective are Hispanics more people of color than Italians or Iranians? Are white skinned Hispanics of US origin less deserving than dark skinned ones?

d. "Asians"

Isn't this obvious? Equating Japanese Americans with their high level of success with Pacific Islanders is absurd. The US really abused the Phillipino people. In my own lifetime, the US Navy enlisted Phillipinos as personal servants to American born (I assume this include AA) officers.

4. From the perspective of other “people of color.”

Why would this be more reasonable than supporting a Catholic American, esp. a Hispanic, in her desire to attend Gonzaga? Color is poor criteria for meeting Dr. King's dream.

B. An Alternative

I think the AA community has not yet understood one wonderful change. Many Americans regard the AA as leaders. Barack Obama is not an aberration nor is his success simply an issue of his being African/American vs. the descendent of an AA family. In many ways, AA have taken on the mystique of Asian immigrants and before them of my people. There is an intrinsic American respect for a people whose immigrant vigor drives them to success. This is the clear message of the silliness of the reaction to Senator Biden’s words. What I am sure he meant to say is that Obama, along with Mfume, Bill Gray, Condy Rice, Norm Rice, Duvall Washington, Ron Sims, and others of their generation have climbed to a new level. Unlike previous African descended Americans who we see as heroes because of their are fights as blacks or for blacks, these are all folks admired by other Americans because of the values of an African heritage. This is similar to Asian and Irish and German heritages of similar folks in the past ..it makes these people better Americans. I believe all these Americans represent the success of Dr. King’s dream speech.

The contrast with previous Black candidates for President is obvious. Shirley Chisholm and Jesse Jackson were articulate candidates. But their candidacies were not seen as credible in the sense that no one took the possibility of Jesse or Shirley seriously. There as no one who wondered, would ALL Americans benefit from Jesse or Shirley’s backgrounds? I won’t mention Sharpton. As someone who identifies more than a bit with your community, he is an embarrassment.

Let me give you some historic examples form other peoples, Brandeis is widely seen not only as a great Justice but as having brought his heritage as a Jew, our struggle and beliefs, to the Supreme Court. The elder Kennedy brothers are seen asparadigms of the contributions of the Irish to America. Thurgood Marshall is seen as much more than the first AA Justice, he brought his experiences to the court in a way that served all Americans.

What I am trying to say to the people behind this legislation is that they diminish themselves by trying only to serve the needs of AA kids. I would propose something like the following instead:

Realizing The Dream in Washington State

In the years since the Dream Speech, America has come a long way toward achieving Dr. King’s vision. Today’s Americans treasure and benefit from cultural diversity. This is especially true of the contributions to all of us by underprivileged groups who have had to transcend the prejudices of our society based on differences in religion, race, or ethnicity.

Washington State has, in some ways, not had the full benefit of these changes because our ethnic mix does not represent the mixture of all Americans. At the same time we have our own unique history due to the recent advent of non native peoples in the Northwest. It is in all of our interests, as citizens of this state, therefore to seek cultural diversity in education. The purpose of this Act is to develop a pilot program designed to increase the diversity in our institutions of higher education by supporting exchange programs between our State institutions of higher education and American schools with traditional focus on minority groups that are under represented or underserved in our State. Our hope is to encourage attendance at these other schools by Washington State students fro all ethnic groups and to encourage students form those institutions to attend Washington State colleges and universities.

To achieve this end, we will establish a fund to support Washington State Dream Scholarship Grants. Any Washington State Institution or group pf Institutions may apply for one of these grants along with a participating traditional minority school located in another state or territory of the United States. Institutions applying for these grants must agree to accept exchange students from the partner schools with full academic credit for course work completed at either site.

Sister institutions participating in this program must agree to accept tuition as paid to each other as covering the full non residential costs of education during the exchange.
Washington Sate students participating n the State prepayed education program would be
free to sue those funds to apply for positions in the exchange program. Degrees will be
awarded from the sponsoring school.

Use of Dream Funds:

Programs will be developed at the discretion of the partnering institutions subject to the following guidelines:

a. Priority for financial support for students while in the Dream program, must go to students on the basic of financial need. This is intended to allow those students
not in need of additional support to participate in the exchange. b. Funds may be used to cover costs of tuition differences between institutions as well as travel and housing costs incurred by students during the exchange. c. No more than 20% of the entire fund may be used to administer the program including fund allocated to faculty exchanges ot promote the interaction.

d. The Dream program will not include institutions explicitly religious intent that would violate the Washington State Constitution.

e. The Dream program may be used for professional education including the health sciences, law, business, and technology lading to advanced degrees.

f. Priority will be given to a matching fund meant to assist Washington State and the partner institutions raise private funding to support the Dream effort.

On Public Sevice

The Seattle POst Intelligencer ran an editorial on Feb 19 endorsing a raise in judicial pay to levels more competitive with the private, legal sector.

Unfortunately, The editorial misses a fundamental
accounting issue: the current value of having a life time salary!

200,000 dollars paid for a lifetime is an lot more valuable than
200,000 dollars per year. A Justice would need about 4 million
dollars in an annuity fund to provide comparable value. I doubt many
law firms offer that sort of recompense.

While I sympathize with Chief Justice Roberts, an appeal based on the
excessive pay to recent law graduates is not as convincing as a free
marketer, like the Justice, should know. When we hear that candidates
are turning the job down or when any of the justices leave for better
pay, then we may need to worry.

A better issue may be financial issues other than salary. Moving to
DC, as one example, may make huge demands on a Justice's housing
costs, especially if she or he wishes to maintain their original home
as well. There are also likely costs in the form of loss of business
opportunities due to ethical concerns. The latter issue may be
unsolvable, but we obviously can deal with the former issue by
offering a generous, non taxable allowance for housing and
transportation. We already do just this for the heads of the
Executive Branch and I have not noticed a deficit of candidates for
those jobs.

This is a general issue in paying public servants even without the life time service. Dwight Eisenhower entered the White House with the minimal finances of a General. he left as
a multi-millionaire. Similar magic enriched Bob Dole, Harry Truman, Bill Clinton, etc. Clearly high office entail financial benefits not immediately obvious on the W2.

I also suspect President Obama or President Clinton would be pleased
to see some of Mr. Bush's appointees seek better pay in the private
sector!

Witness to a Crucifiction

I was recently in Ventura California where I spent the afternoon photographing in Grant Park ... atop the hills above this coastal town. As I drove into the park there was disclaimer posted by the city .. in effect claiming no responsibility for the cross in the park. It appears that the cross is somehow on private land, a slip of land just 30 feet or so from the western edge of the park and conveniently overlooking the city. Ah, the Constitutionality of it all.

Anyhow, while i was there this guy crucified himself .. or seemed to. He stood before the rough hewn cross, absorbing the rays from Apollo, sometimes stretching his arms, lost in a trance most of the time. He saw nw raking pictures and smiled.

I have never understood the mystery of all this. "What would Jesus do?" Crucify himself? Suffer? Glorify inhumanity of man? Of course, if you are a polytheist or a believer in the Deity as multiple personalities, and accept the Jesus persona as a manifestation of The One Deity, then what Jesus would do is not your concern, all you need to to glory on the light of Jesus' care for you. The image of a loving God transends our objective vision of the reality of the world.


I wonder what sort of person crucified himself that day?

A Christmas Message to a Friend in Israel

Part of what I like abut Israel is actually meeting the crazies ... the cheredi. As with the fundies here, they are .. imo .. suffering from a psychosis.
Isn't it odd that we live in a world where anxiety as a treatable illness, anger is a disorder, alcoholism is a bad disease, but but belief in
a superhuman, demonic dictator, amoral being who kills his only begotten son is considered normal? Well, at least in Israel the crazies are my own.

We had a funny experience one day in Jerusalem. A smallish fellow, peyes and scraggly beard, dressed in medieval black and sweltering clothes with the deepest dark eyes came over to get me to doven with him. I do not mind this, though an atheist, I accept worship as part of tradition. But the guy .. he looked out of place. Turns out he is an Afghani Jew who had "accepted" membership in a cheredi sect. I wonder if there any Ethiopian Jews with dreadlocks (peyes) and fedorahs?

BTW .. do you know the Catholic meaning of NY Day? It is, vu denn, the feat of the holy prepuce! .. they celebrate a bris! Imagine an excavation in Bethlehem. An old synaguogue has been found, dating from the E year (as in CE and BCE). In the synaguougue are found an ossurary within which are the tools of a Mohel and small fragmetn of human skin, dried out over the millenia. ..................................

Of Races .. a dialog

This is a dialog between me and a fellow named Richard Harris. The exchange, began, of all places, on a photography website. I am not sure, but suspect Richard is a pretty literate non scientist who has read too muych about how the term "race" has been misused. I began the responsa because he seems sincere and because I feel that polical correctness can poison science by blocking the use of terms.




As one example, I was very fortunate to take some of my psychology education form Richard Hernstein. Unfortunately for him, Professor Hernstein had the gall t make an effort to look at the role fo race in intelligence. A hard subject, difficult enough without the assorted strains of bigotry but no less reasonable than attempting to measure anything else. Anyhow, Prof. Hernstein had the grace to die young, but not before he was pilloried and verbally tar ans feathered by none other than Steven J. Gould. Now, I have a disclosure to make. I am a card carrying memebr of the Society of Steves and contribute money in Gould's memory to the fight against creationist obscurism. But Gould was as blind as a Fallwell on this issue. His book, the mis-measure of intelligence, is full of major statistical errors and ad hominem attacks.

In my own world as a scioentist, this topic is bizar. Ont he one hand the NIH takes "race" seriously and demands "race" data in our studies. On the other hand, when I have suggested obtaining valid genetic data on race, I get yelled at. Sad.

Here is the post:

___________________________________________________________________________________

First,

No, you can not use any arbitrary criterion and do the same thing as "race." There have been real isolation events in human history just as with Darwin's Finches. As a semite I am closer to an Arab genetically than to an Irishman. We are both close than either of us would be to an Amerind, the Amerind from Tierra del Fuego is closer to an Incan than she is to a Manchu, etc.

Choke points occur when small numbers of humans are isolated .. the ancestors of most Europeans were a small group of folks living in the Urals about 15k yrs ago. About the same time a choke point occured in Nigeria .. qand their ancestors today comprise southern Africa .. the "Blacks."

These distinctions are real enough that when we set up panels of DNA to collect genetics markers (SNPs) we try to ise a mix of "races." to get the greatest diversity. If we SNPs the genome with just Euros we would NOT get an adequate sample.

Second,

The term is, of course, often misused. Here in the US I have argued against the way we classify people for medical studies as Black or White. it is not that I do not think there is value in this, it is that I know that the &(*%^% slave owners intentionally bred Africans vs. Amerinds. That plus the normal mixing means that an "African-American" is a wonderfullly interesting cross between two of humanities' branches.

To make matters worse, in the US, the politicians have made up "racial" categories that have no genetic meaning ... as arbitrary as the examples you use. Hispanic is the funniest one .. as if grwoing up in a Latin speaking country conveyed a LeMarkian change in ones herdity. On the other hand, such genetically distinctive groups as the Ainu, the Tamil, and I suppose the Lembda are not recognized.

Third

Could we, should we get rid of the concepts?

I do not think so. There were major historic human choke points that correpond to the major "racial" categories ... Koisan, Bantu. Semite, Asian, Sami, Amerind subgroups, Euro ... these are all real and have genetic meaning and lingusitic meaning that means culture too has a racial identity.

Look at it this way, if we were dogs in a postMan world, we would be horrible if we did not recognize the doggness of chihuahuas as well as huskies. If the Dalmatians wantedd to keep their breed "pure" there is no harm in that. But if we, the dog scientists ignored the diversity of canines, we would be doing our species a disservice.

So, I do not think you and I disagree on facts or on the need to oppose racism. However, s a scientist, I fear the left's political correctness as much as I do that of the Bushists. I do not want to do away with the concept of identity just because the Bushies believe a zygote has a personality.

Now, doing away with "soul" .. that would be good.
- Show quoted text -


On 12/23/06, Richard Harrison wrote:

Sure, what the hey!

Sickle cell is actually significantly more prevalent in India than in
Africa. It is a mutation that seems to arise whenever malaria is an issue.

The main problem with "races" is that, well, we pretty much just made
them up as we went along. We are pretending that there are these
obvious dividing lines through humanity that just don't exist.

If you have ANY group of people, just any random group mind you. One
side of a random street instead of the other for example, there will be
average differences between the two groups. One will be taller, or
shorter, or heavier, or darker. One will have more smokers, or more
people with a criminal record or more decent athletes. One will have
more people that have had cancer or relatives with sickle cell or
familial dysautonomia or....

This applies to ANY GROUP of any size at all that you can select. So,
does that make one side of the street a different race than the other?
And, if the average difference was that they were taller, does that mean
that the shorter people on that side aren't really a member of the "left
side of the street race"?

But, you can use which side of the street you came from for medical
diagnostic purposes so it must be valid. After all, thanks to the
redhead family there, that side of the street goes under when given
anesthesia measureably more quickly. And, they have two people with
emphysema while the other side has none. So, we should always ask which
side of the street someone comes from. If the left, don't bother
checking for emphysema. And pass a law that you must ask which side of
the street you live on before you knock them out!

That is all races are really. Groups that were arbitrarily selected.
They were defined by a mythical "average" member of that group and then
we pretended that there was some magical but obvious dividing line
between these groups. And some pretty stupid laws have been passed to
prolong this myth. Look at the "one drop of negroid blood" laws
throughout much of this country. Or how they determine if you qualify
for the federal student aid given to "Native Americans" (one of your
parents before about 1970 had to say he or she was decended from a
native, no proof had to be offered, then you were officially a "native
american" and eligible for funds).

We are all different. If you clump us into groups, ANY groups, then
each of the groups will average differently in some measurements than
the other groups.

But, to use this fact to try to justify the groupings is just ignorant.
No matter how many races your personal mythology leads you to believe
in, and the numbers range from 3 to about 30 depending on where in the
world you are and your "classical education", not a single one of them
are any more justifiable from any scientific standpoint than my "other
side of the street" example.

You mentioned your pride in your ancestry. Stephen, I admire you, you
are an intelligent person and can hold a reasonable discussion on a
touchy subject which is a rare and wonderful thing. I hope I don't
insult you here but, well, here goes.

I have long felt that pride in one's ancestry or race is the pennadir (a
cord I coined, pen = the one before and you know what nadir means) thing
that a person can be proud of. You might be honored and even humbled,
that would be reasonable and I feel it about my ancestry (there are also
members in my gene pool that I'm glad aren't public knowledge :) ), but
proud? Pride is something that should be reserved for your
accomplishments, NOT for things that you had no control over.

I have my ancestry traced back to the early 1700's. Of that 10 or so
generations (about 1024 people), I am pretty sure about 8% of them which
is MUCH higher than average. What percentage for you? I think you
mentioned a time equivalent to about 14 generations. That would be a
few over 16,000 people. How many of them do you have the names for?
Within the approx 10% "psst, he wasn't really the father" compensation
that is?

That wasn't trying to be insulting actually. It was just pointing out
that, well, we are all mongrels. If race ever did exist, it has long
since been whiped out. There have been no significant "isolated"
peoples for about 600 years now. The definition of isolation is that
NONE of them interbreed with others. For as soon as any do, then that
group just become a small blip on the spectrum that has a very shallow
slope (where a cliff used to be) merging them with the rest of
humanity. It only takes 3-4 generations and that time has WAY passed
for all (racial) groups.

Richard (AKA DIPics)

Stephen Schwartz wrote:

> If you want we can continue the thread here or on my blog.
>
> --
> Stephen M. Schwartz
> Pathology





--
Stephen M. Schwartz
Pathology


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Richard Harrison
Stephen, Yours are in Blue, mine in Black, old stuff in red. Sure you can. Ok...
11:08 am (6 hours ago)


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5:16 pm (14 minutes ago)
RH .. sorry bit whatever SW you are using. my gmail is not showing the colors. I will use ## SMS and ##RH



## SMS >
> No, you can not use any arbitrary criterion and do the same thing as
> "race." There have been real isolation events in human history just
> as with Darwin's Finches.

##RH

Sure you can. Ok, I'll give you an example. I'm going to draw a circle
around Central Texas. This circle will extend 150 miles out with Austin
as it's center. I'm going to define as a race everyone that had at
least two ancestors in this circle in 1880.

Now, let's examine this new "race" genetically. The average person in
it has is closer genetically to the current mayor of Munich Germany than
they are with the current mayor of Birmingham England (assuming that the
former is of mostly German heritage and the latter mostly English, not a
valid assumption but we're just playing here). There are obvious
differences in the average from the Germans though. They average out
significantly darker than either of the above. So, they are obviously a
race, right?

If not, why not? If so, why?

## SMS responds ...

Sure.. if that is how you want to define it, but that is not what anthropologists or geneticists mean because the branching is too recent. The branching called "race" is not at all precise, but it older than the settlement of Texas.

Obviously, there are those who use the word race for different things .. the Japanese claim to be a different race than the Koreans, but their common branch is so recent that I do not know anyone who thinks this is reasonable.

Returning to the human genome project, if all we did was use your Texans in out sample, we would leave out a great deal of the complexity of our species.

## SMS
> As a semite I am closer to an Arab genetically than to an Irishman.
> We are both close than either of us would be to an Amerind, the
> Amerind from Tierra del Fuego is closer to an Incan than she is to a
> Manchu, etc.

##RH

There is no denying that, but then obviously just from your description,
you are describing an obvious spectrum, NOT a collection of seperate
groups. Hence, not races at all.

SMS answers

Again., I think you are trying too hard to be precise. No geneticist thin ks that race is a precise term. It is less precise, for example, than species and that is less than Newtonian! If you want o refer to major branchings in oir origins, that is OK too. The bottom line is neither that Australian indigenes and Samsk of Finland are different in any absolute way, but the last common ancestor was about 40-60k years ago. Even this does nto have to be absolute. There have been some suprising evidences of ol' Ghenghis Khan's genes migrating far from the amazing circle of women he impregnated. But, if there were to be evidence in an Australian of pre-European or Asian discovery, I would guess we would have to consider that some very talented explorer got a long way form Eurasia early on. The aboriginal and the Samsk would still be "races" or "branches."

##SMS

> Choke points occur when small numbers of humans are isolated .. the
> ancestors of most Europeans were a small group of folks living in the
> Urals about 15k yrs ago. About the same time a choke point occured in
> Nigeria .. qand their ancestors today comprise southern Africa .. the
> "Blacks."

##RH
The only legitimate way you could have worded it would have been to add
the words "a significant amount of the" in front of the phrase
"ancestors of most Europeans". The people in the Urals, while a small
group, were not seperated from the rest of humanity to a degree to count
them as a "sub-species". And, to the extent that they were seperated,
this seperation dissapeared thousands of years ago.

SMS ..

I used the word "most" for exactly the reason you suggested. Nor have I ever used the word "sub-species." Humans are all pretty closely related. If there is anything like speciation it is hard to see. Maybe pygmies and Massai would be mutually incapable of producing viable offspring.

##SMS

>
> These distinctions are real enough that when we set up panels of DNA
> to collect genetics markers (SNPs) we try to ise a mix of "races." to
> get the greatest diversity. If we SNPs the genome with just Euros we
> would NOT get an adequate sample.

##RH

You do? Exactly what "races" do you use? The three classic races? 4?
6? 10? 30? what? Aah, there is the problem. How do you justify calling
one arbitrary group a "race" and not another? Unless you can answer
this, then your argument is lost.

##SMS replies

The "You" here is not "me" it is the world community of human genetics. The sample tries to include people whose origins are as diverse as possible .. I am nto sure of the number of geographic/erthinc groups but at a minimum I suspect it inblcudes, Bantu (major African population), Han, Euro, Indian subcontinent, American indigen, .. I am not sure what else.

See, what you are actually doing in my opinion, is you are trying to
sample from varied enough parts of the spectrum that we call humanity to
get the greatest diversity. After all, trying to do it by "race"
automatically limits you, doesn't it?

##SMS ...

You are the one harping on the term race. It has to be called something and that is the term most or all geneticists use while understanding exactly as you do that it is an imprecise term.

#SMS
> Second,
>
> The term is, of course, often misused. Here in the US I have argued
> against the way we classify people for medical studies as Black or
> White. it is not that I do not think there is value in this, it is
> that I know that the &(*%^% slave owners intentionally bred Africans
> vs. Amerinds. That plus the normal mixing means that an
> "African-American" is a wonderfullly interesting cross between two of
> humanities' branches.

##RH


Branches that were mixed long before the American slave trade. Look at
the Lembda. It's not as if they were the only lighter skinned peoples
to migrate south... As soon as a sub-species ends it's isolation, it
takes about 3-4 generations to blur the edges enough that it is no
longer considered a sub-species. Why should race be any different?
IMHO it shouldn't.

##SMS

I am not sure when the Lembda migration occured by it is proabably not all that long ago .. it can not be more than a2k yrs.

Again, given that species itslef is hard to define and that none consider humans to have subspecies, I do not see what point you are trying to make.

> To make matters worse, in the US, the politicians have made up
> "racial" categories that have no genetic meaning ... as arbitrary as
> the examples you use. Hispanic is the funniest one .. as if grwoing
> up in a Latin speaking country conveyed a LeMarkian change in ones
> herdity. On the other hand, such genetically distinctive groups as
> the Ainu, the Tamil, and I suppose the Lembda are not recognized.

##RH

So, what defines a race? If you cannot define it, then you cannot
pretend it is scientific.

So, define one for me. Tell me a characteristic or set of
charasteristics that are shared by ALL members of any race but not by
any person outside of that race.

##SMS

YOU are creating a defnition not I. I would simply use the term "race" in a general way to refer to subgroups of a species that have collected, as a population, sets of markers resulting from their partial isolation form other members of their species over a long time.

There are many scientific terms that lack the sort of precise definition you want .. including evolution itself.

#SMS

Or, from another perspective. To be an American Indian, exactly what
percentage of your ancestors had to be pure Amerind? And, please
justify your answer...

##SMS

Well, first of all I am not of any of the American indigenous peoples so I can to speak for them. I know, however, that some fo the peoples, like my own people, accept others who wish to become of their kind.

On the other hand, if you mean what percent one has to be to claim 100% origin from American indigenes ... that is pretty easy. It ia 100%. We can measure that by reading a person's code.

Not really diffcult.

##RH
If you cannot define it, how can you call it science?

##SMS again, there are many terms in scoence that can nto be defined precisely. Are you aware that the "speed" of light is an average?

SMS

> Third
>
> Could we, should we get rid of the concepts?
>
> I do not think so. There were major historic human choke points that
> correpond to the major "racial" categories ... Koisan, Bantu. Semite,
> Asian, Sami, Amerind subgroups, Euro ... these are all real and have
> genetic meaning and lingusitic meaning that means culture too has a
> racial identity.
>
> Look at it this way, if we were dogs in a postMan world, we would be
> horrible if we did not recognize the doggness of chihuahuas as well as
> huskies. If the Dalmatians wantedd to keep their breed "pure" there
> is no harm in that. But if we, the dog scientists ignored the
> diversity of canines, we would be doing our species a disservice.

##RH

Hmm, the term inbreeding comes directly to mind about the "no harm in
that" thing. You want the healthiest dog? Get a mutt.

##SMS

Not necessarily. If you want the fasted rce horse, you would breed for that. Hybrid vigor is not simply magical. It involves having two distinct sets of chromosomes, enough mix to slect against recessives, etc.

##RH

But, breeds are a significantly different thing than the myth we call
"races" today. To put your example into reality, imagine these dog
breeds 300 years AFTER we humans have left. I bet you would not be able
to find a single "purebred" dog anywhere. This is the actual state of
humanity now.

##SMS ...

Not necessarily true. The dingo evolved in Australia as a result of isolation of the dogs brought there by man. Chihuahua and St. Bernards may now be speciated. But, again, the issue is NOT speciation. No one thinks humans are speciated.

##RH

And, dividing the humans into "races" is IGNORING, not celebrating their
diversity. It is an ignorant attempt to limit the range of this
wonderful diversity by trying to categorize small divisions of it and
then trying to place everything into those small, artificial divisions.
There ARE small humps and clumps in the genome. They tend to have VERY
smooth, gradual edges to them that "seperate" them from the rest of the
genome. This edge is not a cliff, it is barely even a slope. So, where
on that slope does that "race" end? And which of these humps are
"races" and which aren't?

##SMS

Sorry, I can not see how recognizing diversity is a bad thing. Pretending it does not exist is as bad as pretending it is something it is not. Americans who equate all Asians with one "people" are as racist as Americans who think white skin defines race.

> So, I do not think you and I disagree on facts or on the need to
> oppose racism. However, s a scientist, I fear the left's political
> correctness as much as I do that of the Bushists. I do not want to do
> away with the concept of identity just because the Bushies believe a
> zygote has a personality.
>
> Now, doing away with "soul" .. that would be good.


##RH
I don't think that I have ever been accused of being politically
correct. After all, I am actually a member of both the ACLU AND the
NRA. :)

##SMS
I am not a member of either because BOTH practice politcal correctness albeit of different kinds.

##RH
Identity? What identity? Race is nothing but an attempt to REMOVE
personal identity by associating people with a mythical average of that
"race". It is a quasi-scientific attempt to pigeonhole people by
assuming (pretending actually) that the averages of one of these
mythical races actually apply to them as individuals.

##SMS why do you say this? Part of MY identity is my Jewish ancestry. I ahev a friend who is Karite and has proven ancestry of over 2000 years. I see nothing wrong with peole taking pride in their genetics.

Actually, my experience is usually that folks who oppose such rpide want their own great amalgam.. often euro-Christian, as the norm. I am sure you are not that way, but why would we want one world without ethnic or racial identities???

##RH
We are ALL different. There is no way to deny this. The biggest
genetic leap between people is that of parent to offspring. That is 50% on average. Each step further away is smaller. So we use a division
that is removed from us by 50 or more generations, something where the
difference between our "race" and another "race is so small it is pretty
much totally nonexistant and pretend that this non-division division
helps define us? Right.

##SMS .. I am not sure what you are trying to say here. Yes, you received about 50% of your genome from each parent. Depending on their origins, a variable part of the contribution from each aprent will be unique. If both parents are of the same family, as with the typical Bedouin, there may be a lot of homozygosity (same genes on both chromosomes). If Dad is an IBO and Mom and Ainu, there will be much less homozygosity.
- Show quoted text -




On 12/24/06, Richard Harrison wrote:

Stephen,

Yours are in Blue, mine in Black, old stuff in red.

First,

>
> No, you can not use any arbitrary criterion and do the same thing as
> "race." There have been real isolation events in human history just
> as with Darwin's Finches.

Sure you can. Ok, I'll give you an example. I'm going to draw a circle
around Central Texas. This circle will extend 150 miles out with Austin
as it's center. I'm going to define as a race everyone that had at
least two ancestors in this circle in 1880.

Now, let's examine this new "race" genetically. The average person in
it has is closer genetically to the current mayor of Munich Germany than
they are with the current mayor of Birmingham England (assuming that the
former is of mostly German heritage and the latter mostly English, not a
valid assumption but we're just playing here). There are obvious
differences in the average from the Germans though. They average out
significantly darker than either of the above. So, they are obviously a
race, right?

If not, why not? If so, why?

> As a semite I am closer to an Arab genetically than to an Irishman.
> We are both close than either of us would be to an Amerind, the
> Amerind from Tierra del Fuego is closer to an Incan than she is to a
> Manchu, etc.

There is no denying that, but then obviously just from your description,
you are describing an obvious spectrum, NOT a collection of seperate
groups. Hence, not races at all.

> Choke points occur when small numbers of humans are isolated .. the
> ancestors of most Europeans were a small group of folks living in the
> Urals about 15k yrs ago. About the same time a choke point occured in
> Nigeria .. qand their ancestors today comprise southern Africa .. the
> "Blacks."

The only legitimate way you could have worded it would have been to add
the words "a significant amount of the" in front of the phrase
"ancestors of most Europeans". The people in the Urals, while a small
group, were not seperated from the rest of humanity to a degree to count
them as a "sub-species". And, to the extent that they were seperated,
this seperation dissapeared thousands of years ago.

>
> These distinctions are real enough that when we set up panels of DNA
> to collect genetics markers (SNPs) we try to ise a mix of "races." to
> get the greatest diversity. If we SNPs the genome with just Euros we
> would NOT get an adequate sample.


You do? Exactly what "races" do you use? The three classic races? 4?
6? 10? 30? what? Aah, there is the problem. How do you justify calling
one arbitrary group a "race" and not another? Unless you can answer
this, then your argument is lost.

See, what you are actually doing in my opinion, is you are trying to
sample from varied enough parts of the spectrum that we call humanity to
get the greatest diversity. After all, trying to do it by "race"
automatically limits you, doesn't it?

>
> Second,
>
> The term is, of course, often misused. Here in the US I have argued
> against the way we classify people for medical studies as Black or
> White. it is not that I do not think there is value in this, it is
> that I know that the &(*%^% slave owners intentionally bred Africans
> vs. Amerinds. That plus the normal mixing means that an
> "African-American" is a wonderfullly interesting cross between two of
> humanities' branches.


Branches that were mixed long before the American slave trade. Look at
the Lembda. It's not as if they were the only lighter skinned peoples
to migrate south... As soon as a sub-species ends it's isolation, it
takes about 3-4 generations to blur the edges enough that it is no
longer considered a sub-species. Why should race be any different?
IMHO it shouldn't.

> To make matters worse, in the US, the politicians have made up
> "racial" categories that have no genetic meaning ... as arbitrary as
> the examples you use. Hispanic is the funniest one .. as if grwoing
> up in a Latin speaking country conveyed a LeMarkian change in ones
> herdity. On the other hand, such genetically distinctive groups as
> the Ainu, the Tamil, and I suppose the Lembda are not recognized.


So, what defines a race? If you cannot define it, then you cannot
pretend it is scientific.

So, define one for me. Tell me a characteristic or set of
charasteristics that are shared by ALL members of any race but not by
any person outside of that race.

Or, from another perspective. To be an American Indian, exactly what
percentage of your ancestors had to be pure Amerind? And, please
justify your answer...

If you cannot define it, how can you call it science?

> Third
>
> Could we, should we get rid of the concepts?
>
> I do not think so. There were major historic human choke points that
> correpond to the major "racial" categories ... Koisan, Bantu. Semite,
> Asian, Sami, Amerind subgroups, Euro ... these are all real and have
> genetic meaning and lingusitic meaning that means culture too has a
> racial identity.
>
> Look at it this way, if we were dogs in a postMan world, we would be
> horrible if we did not recognize the doggness of chihuahuas as well as
> huskies. If the Dalmatians wantedd to keep their breed "pure" there
> is no harm in that. But if we, the dog scientists ignored the
> diversity of canines, we would be doing our species a disservice.


Hmm, the term inbreeding comes directly to mind about the "no harm in
that" thing. You want the healthiest dog? Get a mutt.

But, breeds are a significantly different thing than the myth we call
"races" today. To put your example into reality, imagine these dog
breeds 300 years AFTER we humans have left. I bet you would not be able
to find a single "purebred" dog anywhere. This is the actual state of
humanity now.

And, dividing the humans into "races" is IGNORING, not celebrating their
diversity. It is an ignorant attempt to limit the range of this
wonderful diversity by trying to categorize small divisions of it and
then trying to place everything into those small, artificial divisions.
There ARE small humps and clumps in the genome. They tend to have VERY
smooth, gradual edges to them that "seperate" them from the rest of the
genome. This edge is not a cliff, it is barely even a slope. So, where
on that slope does that "race" end? And which of these humps are
"races" and which aren't?

> So, I do not think you and I disagree on facts or on the need to
> oppose racism. However, s a scientist, I fear the left's political
> correctness as much as I do that of the Bushists. I do not want to do
> away with the concept of identity just because the Bushies believe a
> zygote has a personality.
>
> Now, doing away with "soul" .. that would be good.


I don't think that I have ever been accused of being politically
correct. After all, I am actually a member of both the ACLU AND the
NRA. :)

Identity? What identity? Race is nothing but an attempt to REMOVE
personal identity by associating people with a mythical average of that
"race". It is a quasi-scientific attempt to pigeonhole people by
assuming (pretending actually) that the averages of one of these
mythical races actually apply to them as individuals.

We are ALL different. There is no way to deny this. The biggest
genetic leap between people is that of parent to offspring. That is 50%
on average. Each step further away is smaller. So we use a division
that is removed from us by 50 or more generations, something where the
difference between our "race" and another "race is so small it is pretty
much totally nonexistant and pretend that this non-division division
helps define us? Right.


> On 12/23/06, *Richard Harrison* <> > wrote:
>
> Sure, what the hey!
>
> Sickle cell is actually significantly more prevalent in India than in
> Africa. It is a mutation that seems to arise whenever malaria is
> an issue.
>
> The main problem with "races" is that, well, we pretty much just made
> them up as we went along. We are pretending that there are these
> obvious dividing lines through humanity that just don't exist.
>
> If you have ANY group of people, just any random group mind you. One
> side of a random street instead of the other for example, there
> will be
> average differences between the two groups. One will be taller, or
> shorter, or heavier, or darker. One will have more smokers, or more
> people with a criminal record or more decent athletes. One will have
> more people that have had cancer or relatives with sickle cell or
> familial dysautonomia or....
>
> This applies to ANY GROUP of any size at all that you can select. So,
> does that make one side of the street a different race than the other?
> And, if the average difference was that they were taller, does
> that mean
> that the shorter people on that side aren't really a member of the
> "left
> side of the street race"?
>
> But, you can use which side of the street you came from for medical
> diagnostic purposes so it must be valid. After all, thanks to the
> redhead family there, that side of the street goes under when given
> anesthesia measureably more quickly. And, they have two people with
> emphysema while the other side has none. So, we should always ask
> which
> side of the street someone comes from. If the left, don't bother
> checking for emphysema. And pass a law that you must ask which
> side of
> the street you live on before you knock them out!
>
> That is all races are really. Groups that were arbitrarily selected.
> They were defined by a mythical "average" member of that group and
> then
> we pretended that there was some magical but obvious dividing line
> between these groups. And some pretty stupid laws have been
> passed to
> prolong this myth. Look at the "one drop of negroid blood" laws
> throughout much of this country. Or how they determine if you qualify
> for the federal student aid given to "Native Americans" (one of your
> parents before about 1970 had to say he or she was decended from a
> native, no proof had to be offered, then you were officially a "native
> american" and eligible for funds).
>
> We are all different. If you clump us into groups, ANY groups, then
> each of the groups will average differently in some measurements than
> the other groups.
>
> But, to use this fact to try to justify the groupings is just
> ignorant.
> No matter how many races your personal mythology leads you to believe
> in, and the numbers range from 3 to about 30 depending on where in the
> world you are and your "classical education", not a single one of them
> are any more justifiable from any scientific standpoint than my
> "other
> side of the street" example.
>
> You mentioned your pride in your ancestry. Stephen, I admire
> you, you
> are an intelligent person and can hold a reasonable discussion on a
> touchy subject which is a rare and wonderful thing. I hope I don't
> insult you here but, well, here goes.
>
> I have long felt that pride in one's ancestry or race is the
> pennadir (a
> cord I coined, pen = the one before and you know what nadir means)
> thing
> that a person can be proud of. You might be honored and even
> humbled,
> that would be reasonable and I feel it about my ancestry (there
> are also
> members in my gene pool that I'm glad aren't public knowledge :)
> ), but
> proud? Pride is something that should be reserved for your
> accomplishments, NOT for things that you had no control over.
>
> I have my ancestry traced back to the early 1700's. Of that 10 or so
> generations (about 1024 people), I am pretty sure about 8% of them
> which
> is MUCH higher than average. What percentage for you? I think you
> mentioned a time equivalent to about 14 generations. That would be a
> few over 16,000 people. How many of them do you have the names for?
> Within the approx 10% "psst, he wasn't really the father"
> compensation
> that is?
>
> That wasn't trying to be insulting actually. It was just pointing out
> that, well, we are all mongrels. If race ever did exist, it has long
> since been whiped out. There have been no significant "isolated"
> peoples for about 600 years now. The definition of isolation is that
> NONE of them interbreed with others. For as soon as any do, then that
> group just become a small blip on the spectrum that has a very
> shallow
> slope (where a cliff used to be) merging them with the rest of
> humanity. It only takes 3-4 generations and that time has WAY passed
> for all (racial) groups.
>
> Richard (AKA DIPics)
>
> Stephen Schwartz wrote:
>
> > If you want we can continue the thread here or on my blog.
> >
> > --
> > Stephen M. Schwartz
> > Pathology
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Stephen M. Schwartz
> Pathology

More on Drinking Liberally

This is a continuation of a previous post.

So, as the year draws to an end, I have made a video about the 2006 election. The video is built around my photographs at the Montlake Tavern, where each Tuesday night liberals from Seattle gather to beerify and gather about the liberal blogger in chief for Seattle, David Goldstein. The essay begins at Move-On headquarters at a meeting to make phone calls for Move-On sponsored candidates and progresses through the election season at the tavern.

I have posted it to YouTube as a video .. quality there is pretty bad so anyone who know me can come by and get a DVD. Hope you enjoy the essay and lets hope for a better future post Bush the lesser.

A Response to a Post Blaming Israel for the Iraq Debacle

Background: The original post was by a person arguing that Bus was motivated by oil, esp, by the big companies. Then, there was a counter post claiming that Bush was motivated by suport for Israel. The second poster went on to accuse Israel of being corrupt, illegal, and so on.

I agree that Bush, while naive, illiterate, ill informed, and ill advised id not simply a tool of the big oil companies. I suspect, moreover, that those companies would have been all to happy with a rapprochement with Saddam rather than his deposition.

BUT, you go to an equally absurd extreme by blaming this disaster on us ... the Jews or Zionists .. whatever term you want to use.

First, calling Israel names is bigoted. Israel is a small country, in a tough place, trying hard to survive. Of course it deserves criticism, but calling it criminal, corrupt, etc is just nuts .. espe. when you look at the countries it stands against. If you can find a country more criminal, more corrupt, then Syria I will give you three points but it would take a lot to find good things to say about Saudi Arabia. So, you are correct, the interests of big oil and the interests of Israel do NOT overlap .. other perhaps than in the befuddled mind of our dear leader.

As a Jew, I am frightened of people like you. Israel is a refuge for us, one possible answer to the two millenia of of oppression by Christian and Islamic societies. If it fails, I suspect we will die as a people, Hitler, Torquemad, Pious IX, the KKK, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Iranian President, all these bigots will win and 3000 years of a very special history will have been destroyed.

I say this while also feeling that we have real responsibility for Bush's screw up. The Neocons may have a majority of Jews and certainly we are prominent in the top ranks of those who made this horrid decision.

The challenge to Jewish survival is not just from Islam but from our choices of allies. Israel, for example, made the horrid choice of siding with the apartheid regime of S. Africa. Only a nation faced with obliteration would ever make such a choice and it has yet to be learned whether the reward for that alliance,some say this was the source of Israel's atomic bomb, was worth it. Now e .. or our leaders .. chose to ally themselves with the Bushies .. a group of naive believers in the Chrsitian good of the world. They, the Bushies, believe that their fight is so good, so inevitable that all advice form "experts," military or political could be ignored. They even sent in missionaries with the invading force! We chose to support Bush and that may be a fatal error.

All this said, the challenge is not just to OUR survival. Much of what is said about the danger os Islamo-fascism is quite real. Saudi Arabia is like an overgrown tomato, already rotting. The potential evil of a Wahaabi regime that is more extreme than Iran's Shia regime is very real. Atomic bombs, Shariay, and oil .. are a dangerous mix for the whole world.

IMO, there is only one viable answer. The West/democratic part of the world needs to replace the US as a cop with some new, bigger alliance. Europe, the US, India, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Australia and part sof South America have a great deal of self interest in working with China and even the former Soviet Union in creating a ... new world order. Bush could have led such a movement post 9/11. He could have taken time, pursued confinement vs. invasion as alternatives and built the allinace needed to achieve pacification if invasion were the outcome. he did not do that. he wasted his presidency, huge amount of American wealth, and the possible piece of the world in pursuit of a naive, amateurish view of the world.

Finally, and this is the hardest part, I am NOT convinced Israel can now survive. Our alliance with the Christian right may have doomed Israel. There is, IMO, one barely possible alternative. We .. the Jews ... have a natural affinity for the Muslims. In a choose up between Islam and Christianity, the ease of the true strict monotheisms being allies is clear and historic. We also have another allie. Our times of great success in the world, post exile, have included two enlightenments .. Andalusia and later Europe. While Christianity treated us horrible, the enlightenment .. a child of Christinaity .. has been the time of great growth in our culture.
Islam may be, I emphasize maybe, finally in a time where it can enter the enlightenment. A Muslim enlightenment would be different than Europe's but it might be something we and our semitic brothers could join in together.

Call it a dream.
--
Stephen M Schwartz
SeattleJew.blogspot.com

Election 2006

Nuff said.

Of Burkhas and Pastors

I ran into trouble this morning after I tried to read more about the outing of Ted Haggard, a Bush confidant and evangelical gay bating pastor. Haggard scares me because he is part of a community of right wing evangelicals that envelope the US Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. The same Air Force Academy that last year admitted to its officers' efforts to indoctrinate Jews into Jesus worship.

The problem? Google gave me too many hits. I began coming upon other news stories about fundamentalists in trouble over sex. I began to wonder, are fundamentalist Christtians obsessed with sex? Then I ran into this post from the personal blog of Marc Driscoll, a fundamentalist Christian pastor in Seattle:

....I started the church ten years ago when I was twenty-five years of age. Thankfully, I was married to a beautiful woman. I met my lovely wife Grace when we were seventeen, married her at twenty-one, and by God’s grace have been faithful to her in every way since the day we met. I have, however, seen some very overt opportunities for sin. On one occasion I actually had a young woman put a note into my shirt pocket while I was serving communion with my wife, asking me to have dinner, a massage, and sex with her. On another occasion a young woman emailed me a photo of herself topless and wanted to know if I liked her body. Thankfully, that email was intercepted by an assistant and never got to me.

....I would like to share some practical suggestions for fellow Christian leaders, especially young men:

• Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. .... It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.
  

• Every pastor needs a pastor. Too often the pastor is seen as a sort of little God and his wife as some glorified First Lady. Every pastor needs a pastor with whom he can regularly have accountability and the confession of sin. Every pastor’s wife also needs a godly woman chosen for her maturity and trustworthiness.
• ... There is no reason a pastor should be sitting alone at the church at odd hours (e.g., early morning and late evening) to study when anyone can drop in for any reason and have access to him. .......Some years ago I found that lonely people, some of them hurting single moms wanting a strong man to speak into their life, would show up to hang out and catch time with me. It was shortly thereafter that I brought my books home and purchased a laptop and cell phone so that I was not tied to the church office.
• (if) a flirtatious woman shows up to a Bible study at the pastor’s home, the pastor and his family have the right to request that they never return.
• ..... Too often the pastor’s assistant is a woman who, if not sexually involved, becomes too emotionally involved with the pastor as a sort of emotional and practical second wife. I have been blessed with a trustworthy heterosexual male assistant who can travel with me, meet with me, etc., without the fear of any temptations ........
• Pastors must speak freely and frankly with their wives about their temptations. Without this there really can be no walking in the light and sin always grows in darkness.
• Pastors must not travel alone; the anonymity and fatigue of the road is too great a temptation for many men.
  

In conclusion, I say none of this as moralism.

The reader can judge for themselves but for me, this sounds like the stuff of a very serious mental illness. Mr. Driscoll sounds really obsessed. Is he also frightened of men? I wonder if this sort of fear motivates men in Saudi Arabia to enforce the burkha? And how does such thinking effect sex itself? After a day in the company of males and burkha-ed females, does the Saudi Prince come home to perfumed flesh?

I am personally sexually conservative, I believe that heterosexual sex is normative and see no reason to have a public debate about other forms of play in bed. To me, most fo this is a private affair. But, how can the same people who consider homosexuality a sin worthy of electing G. Bush as President and NOT see the illness implicit in Marc Driscoll's writings?

Impersonating Harold Ford

Last night I watched Harold Ford on Bill Maher. Or ... I watched someone who at times looked like Harold Ford. The actor worked hard at his Tennessee accent and at expressing support for prayer n the schools and totin guns as a civil right. He explained how his business cards carry the 10 commnadments on their backsides, to remind Mr. Ford of such important moral issues as not having any God but your own God. Hmmm ... must be the commandments Moses receives on a trip to Tennessee.


I feel bad. I really admire Mr. Ford and hope he will be elected. But the act was dreadful. This can not be the same articulate, well thought out young congressman I have watched parry the cable heads for the last four years. True, stripped of the weird accent and the Suthern patois, the underlying ideas were solid .. all Tennesseeans believe Their kids have a right to go to school, healthcare should be guaranteed to the kids of the poor and the rich, and more. I have tasted this man's spirit in his speeches to the Demo. Convention and know .. as much as nay of us can in this era of media deception, that MY Ford is the real one.

Silence of the Professors

We are one week from a potentially pivotal election. The sleeze is dripping from this campaign in a way I have never seen before. The media have become tamed, made obsolete, or fauxized. And where are the much feared academic liberals in all this?

The attack on SCHOLARLY writings in Virginia is going without protest from academics!

Webb vs. Allen, the Senate race in Virginia, is what caught my attention this morning. I am pretty agnostic in politics. The fuss over Allen's use of terms like Macaca and claims that he is a secret Jew were reasons for me to doubt Webb .. as were the claims that Mr. Webb has actually, horror of horros, used the N word at some time. PFEHHGH ... of both sides, as my grandmother said in Yiddish.

So, when I read the cites from Webb's novels I put it down to more of the same. OK, so this guy made a buck writing cheapo porn. Tsk Tsk. Next week, I expected to read, that Allen rented the "Story of O" or donated sperm and asked for a copy of Hustler to help his efforts.

Was I wrong! The Washington Post today finally got around to reporting on Webb's books. Read it! The "porn" cited is part of novels published by such sleeze houses as the U.S. Naval Institute, an independent organization that produces books about the military. " "Fields of Fire," a novel about the Vietnam War, has been on the Marine Corps reading list for 20 years and is the "most-taught piece of literature regarding the Vietnam War on college campuses."

In other words, these are serious works by a serious guy who actually served in Vietnam. The sort of material that is essential to our primary challenge .. educating people about reality. What happens if the keepers of intelelctual integrity, the faculty of Universities, allow this sort of distortion of the truth?

I do not know how to find out if Webb's book is required at the UW, but here are some comments from Amazon:
“In my opinion, the finest of the Vietnam novels.”
— Tom Wolfe

“Few writers since Stephen Crane have portrayed men at war with such a ring of steely truth.”
— The Houston Post

“A novel of such fullness and impact, one is tempted to compare it to Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.”
— The Oregonian

And more of the same. Clearly this is a classic book.

If Webb can be smeared, who is next? Darwin?

Imagine what would happen if some UW professor were to run for office after writing a novel about the complex life of Lenin ? Something is very wrong when WE are silent when this sort of anti-intellectual activity is NOT discussed on campus.

Summers vs. The National Academy

Recently the National Academy of Sciences published a report on women in science that seemingly was a retort to the comments of Larry Summers as the then President of Harvard. In brief, Summers raise the issue that the lack of women in high level academe was due to complex issues and perhaps not largely doe to old boyism. The NAS report focussed on the issue of old boy prejudice and dismissed claims of any innate differences relevant to achievement at the high level needed to become a chair or prominent scientist.

The claim that the NAS Committee was impartial and did not see itself as contrapunctal to Summers seems to implausible. If the intent was NOT to respond to Summers or at least to promote an agenda that he somehow also addressed why was the Committee overwhelmingly female and feminist?

The tragic thing, in all this, is the lack of attention to issues he raised that should ring a bell with ANYONE.

It is foolish to argue about something as hard to test as the effects of X chromosomes on extreme mathematical ability while utterly neglecting the real fact that the lifestyles expected of most female careerists in America, as addressed well by Summers, are served very badly by our current rules. Sure, there are some women who will want to pursue male patterned, traditional career paths but doing so does mean losing real perogatives women have had.

Is it biological for women to have children outside of ones' teens and age 30? It seem unlikely, but even if women can have children later or if some women choose not to have children or even if we throw families into the lake .. the effect of our current system robs women of a right they have had and is destructive of families for the mifddle and upper classes.

So, to me, a report devoted to women's issues should have had issues of career path and day care as central.

Back at the "man"power issue, I think Summers point about women's choices has merit. At least the public media report that a much higher portion of female MDs than males choose alternative ife styles to full time careers. So, in one area, if we want enough docs and want to serve women's wishes, we simply need to turn out more docs. Is that such a bad thing?

Finally, the issue of finding people to fill the extreme jobs at a Nobelist level is a fascinating subject. While I did not read the original research in the NAS report, I find it very hard to believe anyone can provide an objective answer to the questions Summers asks about this ... nor do I think Summerca can though I admire his asking an interesting question. However, I do not think it makes sense to address the need for such folks simply by affirmative action efforts .. directed at women or at minority groups. Such an effort may be good civil rights but it is horriby inefficient. The most efficient means is immigration. The Bush laws are idiotic and need to be dumped.

Here too, however, I suspect the lifestyle issues are more relevant than biology. The debt load alone is enough to deter all but the children of the reach to pursue the extreme academic goals both the NAS and Summers describe. How few people WITH ability can affairs a debt of 100,000 while pursuing a Math PhD? If we want to compete we need to make huge changes in how we support graduate study and in providing jobs for junior faculty that do not depend on so much risk.