When I said I'd expected him to continue until he dropped in the traces, I had no idea how close that would be to reality.
This story fills me with sadness.
It's meant, of course, to be amusing to its audience, as evidenced by its posting in CNN's "Offbeat News" section. And you have to admire the subject's plucky, go for it attitude, despite how badly it's misplaced. But what I really take away from this story is an appreciation of what sharing a loving life should be.
Mr. Rountree attributes his change in behavior to the death of his wife. The impression given is that robbing banks was a way for him to lend significance to his life, to *feel* alive again, in the wake of that loss. I can't feel anything but sorrow, that someone's life could be so completely reduced to nothingness. But it's not a sympathetic sorrow, because to be utterly devalued by the loss of a partner is to dishonor that partner's memory.
Mr. Rountree obviously loved his wife a great deal. But in allowing himself to go "kind of crazy" without her daily influence, he makes a powerful statement, that his wife loved a man without any intrinsic worth as a person.
My grandfather predeceased my gran by well over a decade, and it was a devastating loss. She was his sweetheart, from the first moment he had met her, over fifty years before. After she passed, he struggled with depression, and the aches and pains of his years...but he honored her memory for every minute of his life. Her soul was present in his life every day. And, when he passed, just short of his 99th birthday, almost the first thing those of us who loved him said to one another in comfort, was "He's with his sweetheart now."
So, I'm saddened by this article. Not at what "Red" has done, but for what he failed to do...and what he missed out on as a result.
Ironic, but not surprising -- that's how I'd sum up recent events relating to the the President's Council on Bioethics. The rate of religious doctrine's intrusion into the realm of scientific truths has steadily worsened since Bush's questionable election in 2000, and doesn't appear likely to improve during the remainder of his term.
I generally spend my lunchhour perusing my favorite news sites, foreign and domestic; straight news, quirky news, science and technology news, they're all fascinating. It's not unusual for one news story to lead me through a dozen different sites as my curiosity is kicked into gear. Foraging off the beaten trail is a lot more interesting than eating pablum. So, when I start from different sites, on different continents, and via completely different stories and routes, wind up at sources with a common theme, I generally figure that the Universe is trying to make a point.
The two sources I came across today are titled:
They're not redundant, but complementary, touching on some core themes from different angles.
The first article describes a concept called 'the wisdom of repugnance':
"In other words, the feeling you get in your bones that something is wrong is a reliable guide to what really is wrong. The Council on Bioethics [has] declared that happiness exists to let us recognize what is good in life, while real anger and sadness reveal to us what is evil and unjust. "Emotional flourishing of human beings in this world requires that feelings jibe with the truth of things, both as effect and as cause," they write. By extension, repugnance is a good guide for making decisions about bioethics. If cloning gives you the creeps, it?s wrong.But what exactly produces those creeps? In recent years neuroscientists and psychologists have made huge strides in understanding both emotions and moral judgments. They've scanned people's brains as they decide whether things are right or wrong; they've looked at the brain's neurochemistry, and they've gotten insights from the brains of animals and the fossils of ancient hominids as well. And their conclusions seriously undermine the philosophy of the council.
[...] one of the leaders in this new field of "neuro-morality," [is] a philospher-neuroscientist named Joshua Greene at Princeton University. Greene argues that feeling that something is right or wrong isn't the same as recognizing that two and two make four, or that the sky is blue. It feels the same only because our brains respond to certain situations with emotional reactions that happen so fast we aren't aware of them. We are wired to get angry at deception and cruelty; even the thought of harming another person can trigger intense emotional reactions. These "moral intuitions" are ancient evolutionary adaptations, which exist in simpler versions in our primate relatives.
When our ancestors stood upright and got big brains, Greene argues, these moral intuitions became more elaborate. They probably helped hominids survive, by preventing violence and deception from destroying small bands of hunter-gatherers who depended on each other to find food and raise children. But evolution is not a reliable guide for figuring out how to lead our lives today. Just because moral intuitions may be the product of natural selection doesn't mean they are right or wrong, any more than feathers or tails are right or wrong."
The latter article has a broader scope, but is nonetheless a biting indictment of the current administration's pathetic performance in the science and bioethics arenas. In particular, it contains a pointed quote from John Kerry, who in addition to being the opposing candidate in the current presidential race, is a member of the US Senate's Science Policy Committe:
"there have always been the few with a distaste for progress and a fundamental distrust of the American people to have the morality and strength to handle the consequences. Unfortunately, today some of that deep distrust of new discoveries and of the American people has found a home in George Bush's White House. George Bush has proved a ready ally for those who seek to impose their private moral vision on the American people. Over and over again, this President has put partisan politics above scientific and medical advancement. Whether it is global warming or stem cell research, President Bush has appeased his party's right wing by ignoring scientific fact and slowing medical progress..."
I'm sure the President is a legitimate man of faith. I only wish he were also someone who valued truth above doctrine. We need, and require, a moral compass for the country, a leadership that governs by ethics rather than politics. What we're getting instead is an executive who thinks that ethics and religion are the same thing. And there is no surer path to Hell than that fallacy.
Why is it, that liberals have no problem laughing at themselves, while conservatives take offense at the silliest jibes?
Last week, I assisted Curious George in writing a letter to my youngest nephew, who was having a challenging time coping with some of life's recent twists. To give the letter a little cheerful accent, I went looking for illustrations of the literary monkey online.
To my delight, and much subsequent hilarity, I came across these items:
Fred and I printed them out, and took them down to share with his (liberal) mom -- who was immediately consumed with laughter. Then we passed them down the table to his (conservative) sister -- who looked at them, put them down, and said she didn't see anything funny about them.
She did, however, mention that she had seen this picture, which she found highly amusing:
Personally, I think it's damn funny, too. My only question is, how on earth can you consider the Kerry/Gomer to be hilarious, but not the the Bush/Monkey?
I've noticed this trend before - I'll send a funny poke at a conservative, to a conservative family member, and in response I almost always get a serious article expounding the merits of their favorite conservative and the deficiencies of the opposing liberal.
Lighten up, people. If you can't laugh at yourself once in a while, your perspective is seriously out of whack.
Found a great piece by Phil Plait. I hate spoilers, but in this case, the closing paragraph works just as well as a teaser for the entire article:
"Before you wonder if it's Jesus or Mary paying you a visit, remember, sometimes it's not really Lenin in the shower. It's just dirty bath water."
Three cheers for Oregon's Benton County, for taking such a logical action in the melee over gay marriage. Finally, FINALLY, someplace that is willing to take a meaningful stand on the issue.
I continue to wonder, why a government constitutionally separated from religion has any interest whatsoever in defining the concept of "marriage".
The formal life commitment of two individuals to one another has two major aspects: religious and socio-economic. In the United States, we have historically used a single term to describe both, "marriage", but it would be more accurate to refer to them as "marriage" (religious) and "civil union" (socio-economic). Why? Because the state really has no defensible interest in requiring the registration of religious status or affiliations.
What goes on inside a church, synagogue, mosque, or other place of worship, is absolutely none of the state's business. A prime example of this is the continued exclusion of women from the Catholic priesthood -- something which blatantly violates the concept of Equal Opportunity, but which, as a religious practice, is solely the pervue of the Catholic church. Similarly, marriage in the context of faith is defined by religious texts and tenets, and ONLY in this context can references to passages from the Bible and spiritual sanctity have any bearing, or in fact, meaning.
Meanwhile, the state, via municipal and county marriage licensing processes, controls the socio-economic aspects of the married condition: the management of property, the assessment of taxes, the custody of progeny, and the general protections of law. In this context, it does not make an iota of difference what has transpired in history, in the Bible, or in Congress. (Not that I would equate any two of those venues with one another.) Clinging to historical precedent on this issue is no better than expounding the benefits of slavery, or decrying the victories of suffragettes. What matters here is only, ONLY, the non-religious aspect of the married state, in this particular day, age, and location. And the plain unvarnished truth is that there is absolutely no objective difference between a gay couple and hetero couple in this context.
A government operates via forms, whether they be paper or electronic. A form doesn't care about the sex (or sexual orientation) of the person completing it. Oh, there may be a space for their sex to be indicated, but that's just a tally -- the form itself really Just Doesn't Care. Bits is bits, data is data, and the computer will take whatever information is fed into it, without judgement or discrimination. There is no rational argument that can be made for denying a gay couple the rights of marriage in this context. No new processes need be developed. No new tax tables need be compiled.
There is immeasurable hand-wringing over the "weakening" of marriage by legalizing the institution for gays, but there has yet to be given any concrete example of how this accusation can be quantified. Does it lessen a hetero couple's legal rights? Nope. Does it change their taxes, property, or custody arrangements? Nope. Does it violate their faith? In many cases, sure. But that's their problem. Not society's, not the government's, and sure as heck not gay couples'.
Three cheers for Benton County, for pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.
It's Spring. Well, technically, anyway. Fred's mom has tulips starting to poke up in her garden, and the local college kids have just come back from Spring Break. Soon, life will start to reassert itself, sending a green blush across the brown lawn outside my office window, and renewing the flowerbeds that serve our resident moose, deer, and groundhogs as salad bars. I'll be able to leave my bedroom windows open all night, and wake up to fresh air and chirping finches.
And, yet...
People that I care about are in pain, or dying. My favorite uncle is battling multiple cancers. My new niece is facing months of surgeries and difficult medical procedures. My best friend's eldest son is fighting for time against a brain tumor which has become inoperable. And an old family friend is in hospital, struggling to breath through a trach tube as an infection assaults his respiratory system.
Is it deliberate cruelty, that Life sends such awful tests to us in a time that should be ripe with new growth and fresh starts? Some days, it seems unspeakably horrific that the season is almost gloating at human suffering.
I have been reading a tumor diary posted by the BBC. It hits very close to home, given the similarities to my friend's son. But the latest entry there seems in some strange way reassuring, as though in the midst of the pain there is coming a Spring for the soul. And I wonder, how well I would make such a journey. I have been amongst the mourners many, too many, times. But how would I mourn myself, were I were in Ivan's stead?
This just sucks. I expect this sort of stupidity from commercial networks, not from NPR. And, coming as it does at the start of the latest pledge drive, this announcement can only be described as stupidity at its finest.
Came across an account of an odd hobby this afternoon. I have to wonder, what drives a person to undertake such an odd endeavor?
I suppose in many ways it's no different from people who create huge spheres of collected string or rubber bands, although I've always found such activities to be somewhat mystifying. And even they could be said (if one stretches a bit) to be of some general value, given that their composition allows their creators to perpetually reorganize their kitchen drawers, tame stacks of old National Geographics, and control the proliferating wires that seem to pervade everyday life these days. Their ponytails will stay tightly tied, their packages will be neatly bound, and their children will have endless hours of fun playing cat's cradle and shooting rubber bands at the neighbor's cat.
But paint? What can one do with a big ball of paint? If being labeled a record-breaking oddity is the goal, then perhaps this qualifies, but the appeal escapes me. 18,000 coats of paint...my arthritic hands ache at the thought alone. Do you suppose it's all the same color? Was it purchased specifically for the task, or was this merely a way to dispose of excess pigment without dumping it into a landfill? Whose baseball was sacrificed to the cause, and why on earth did someone ever think to paint it in the first place?
People get crazier by the day. Next, they'll probably be obsessing about how many red M&Ms are produced in a year, or cataloguing all the occurrences of the word "frell" in Farscape.
Um. Never mind...
Where do we draw the line, between traditions that have outlived their usefulness, and traditions that define who we are, distinct from other people, places, and cultures?
Yesterday was Town Meeting Day in New Hampshire, the traditional day when communities across the state hold their annual gathering of citizens, to discuss and vote upon proposed budgets and municipal activities for the coming year.
In my home town (the town where I grew up, rather than the one I live in now), the last vestiges of this form of government have finally been eliminated.
I was present at the Meeting in 1988, when the town voted to try running matters via a Town Council (elected) and a Town Administrator (hired by said Council). I voted against the change then, and I'm just as firmly opposed to it today. The argument in favor of the change, was that the town had grown too large to effectively manage its duties with only a single day per year to conduct the year's business. And, in many respects, that argument is not without validity. But leaving communal goverment behind in favor of representative government nonetheless weakens a community at its most basic level.
When you govern by Town Meeting, there is no separation between the concepts of "Town" and "citizens". They are one and the same, and governmental activities are woven into the fabric of normal, everyday community life. To choose instead a representative form of government, is to separate the one from the other. Instead of the Town being a "we", it becomes an "it". What kind of impact does this have on individual investment in the community? When you are no longer part of the core structure of a town, maintaining a high level of social discourse among an informed electorate is made monumentally more difficult.
Our Town Moderator for many, many years, Joe Michaels, was the epitome of the classic New England Town Moderator - with good humor and a wry intelligence, he kept Meeting rolling right along, giving fair opportunity for folks to speak for and against each measure, while holding us to a focused progress through the agenda. On the evening the final Town Meeting vote was passed, he commented, that only time would tell if the change would prove to be a golden goose...or a rotten egg.
No points for guessing which outcome I think was achieved...
I've made it halfway through Zeldman's book, and I'm liking what I'm reading. But, naturally, there's a very non-silver lining.
The cloud hovering overhead is the whole issue of transitional coding. I buy into the concept, but in practice I'm less sanguine: there are not-infrequent occasions when sites using CSS completely munge on me.
In some instances this may be due to outdated browsers, since I'm surfing on multiple platforms, with multiple brand browsers, in multiple versions. There's really nothing I can do on this aspect - I'm always going to have users on older equipment and software, and it's been a hallmark of Snurcher's from the beginning that that's okay. Users should be able to get in, get want they want, and get out, with only the smallest modicum of fuss necessary.
In some instances, perhaps even the same ones as above, it may be due to poor CSS coding. In theory, this is completely avoidable on a well-designed and implemented site. But this is also my first time out of the gate, CSS-wise, and managing a site the size of Snurcher's perfectly would be a tough first assignment.
And yet, now that I look back on this Winter's redesign, all I can say is, "Ick! Look at all those FONT tags! All those ALIGN and BGCOLOR tags! All those nested TABLE structures!"
Sigh. A little knowledge is *such* a dangerous thing...
Okay, so it's been just over a week since I installed the blogging software. I've got several blogs established, I've got folks actually participating in communal discussions, and it's been fun playing with a new toy. The problem? Well, once you learn one new thing, you realize that there's this other, related thing, that you really ought to know more about, and that leads you to an interesting tangent, which cross-connects to this other technology, which leads to discovering something totally unrelated but really cool, and suddenly you're in the middle of this run-on sentence because there's so doggone much fun stuff to figure out and it's an endless quest. And it's all the fault of those crazy standards people...
I mean that in jest, of course. Although I've been uber lax about implementing them, I do (philosophically, at least) support the concept of web design standards. The stumbling block for me has always been time - I've had too much raw content to process, to be able to come up for air and get a better perspective on how that content should be managed. (Ironic, as a better management system would make processing the raw content much quicker and easier. It's a circular situation. I really hate those.) There is structure, of course, to the websites I've built, and I'd like to think the structure is both logical and intuitive. It's the GUI that's the sticky wicket.
When I first installed MovableType (the software used to run the blogs on this domain), I immediately hated the default layout for the main page. Ick. Tres ick, in fact. No offense to the software-maker's efforts, mind you - since the layouts are completely customizable, it makes perfect sense that they'd start with a very plain vanilla template, knowing that users could then apply whatever design changes their hearts desired. Sure enough, right away I went looking for alternate layout designs.
As usual, I wanted to run before I'd learned to crawl; it's a character flaw that annoys me no end, but there you are, it's how I'm wired, and on the upside, I do seem to learn best by doing. The few sites I found which provided alternate blog layout styles for download, were very light on the "how to" department, apparently figuring that if you knew enough to want to download a skin, you'd know how to split out the template from the stylesheet and load them appropriately on your own site. Via my usual trial by fire approach, I figured it out with only a modicum of frustration. Problem was, none of the styles I found really "clicked" for me, aesthetically.
And that's when I discovered that I was gonna have to bite the bullet and learn CSS. (Okay, Pye, you can say "I told you so!" now!)
A few days later and some dollars poorer, yesterday Amazon delivered its latest contributions to my coding shelf. Most of the books are reference manuals, because I love coding dictionaries (that's coding as an adjective, not a verb), but I did order a couple volumes on concept and approach. First up on the reading list? Jeffrey Zeldman's "Designing With Web Standards". Amusing guy, Jeff - I like his writing style, which means I'll probably actually read this book straight through instead of piecemeal. And we'll see where the road leads from there...
Alistair Cooke is retiring, and I must say that I'm surprised. After over 50 years, I had expected him to keep on until he dropped in his traces.
I suppose it shows my age, that I have such a remarkable fondness for the gentleman. He was certainly a notable influence on my cultural upbringing, via his work on PBS. But what really draws me to him on a more personal level is the manner in which he reflects the best parts of an earlier era, when conversation was an art form and graciousness was not only common but expected. There is so much about him that reminds me of my beloved grandfather, himself a remarkable example of intelligence and generous civility; I miss him on a daily basis, and I will miss Alistair as well. I'm not sure we will ever have another journalist like him.