Our Very Weighty Situation in America

Well as you can guess from the title, today we’re talking about the subject of weight in America. A sensitive topic? Well, our culture has successfully taught us to think so. So before I can go on and say what badly needs saying, I have two preliminaries. First, this isn’t aimed at any one person, so I don’t want to see angry comments about how I failed to take so and so’s situation into account. If the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t try wearing it. On the other hand if the shoe does fit, step in and lace it up. All of this to say, because I know people get more defensive about their weight than they do about their sex lives, their money and even their religions. Moving on. Preliminary number 2. Who am I to talk about weight? A lot of overweight people have observed that the people most critical of our weighty situation are either skinny or extremely fit people who’ve never had an extra pound of flesh on their bodies in their lifetimes. I have two responses to this. First, that doesn’t mean that what such people say is factually wrong or unnecessary,  even if you resent the person giving you the heads up about yourself. Secondly, I don’t fall into this category. I have always been overweight, and am still so today (6 ft 2 in, and 249 LBS which is down from 288 a year ago). That is to say, I’m doing something about it. So I am as qualified as any other fat person to talk about being fat. Alright. Let’s move on to what’s really important.

There are two phenomena that run in parallel in American society today. One of them is well-known. It’s true that Hollywood is still trying to convince young women that the more skin and bones they show, the better. No personally, I don’t think anorexia constitutes beauty, and a healthy human body shouldn’t be stick thin. There are cultures, in fact, where our supermodels would be considered sickly, since in certain places a healthy filled out figure is considered most suitable for childbearing and for dealing with harsh daily living conditions. So we’re not going to really talk about that side of things, the relationship between anorexia and the media, except to acknowledge that Hollywood, as usual, has got it wrong, and so too does any woman who takes her cue from the movies. Lest you think I’m letting obesity off the hook with those comments, read on.

Now, I have observed that our culture has done an excellent job at:  A, sensitizing people to the matter of weight (we see it in some of the terminology surrounding the issue), and B, convincing people that wherever they are weightwise, they’re ok. I have some anecdotes to illustrate the point.

Let’s deal with the first issue. The word ‘fat’ is déclassé as far as a descriptor. Nobody in this country is ‘fat’ anymore. To borrow from a Hispanic comedian I rather like, you are by turns:  healthy, hefty, husky, fluffy, etc. Those of you who know the skit will know what I’m talking about. ‘Healthy,’ ‘good-sized,’ ‘husky,’ ‘big-boned,’ ‘meat on their bones,’ and ‘persons of size’ are all words and/or phrases that I’ve both seen in writing and heard in speech ranging from formal lectures to chitchat that euphemistically refer to one concept, ‘fat.’ By the way, I’m not joking about ‘persons of size.’ If you fly on Southwest and get one of those colored pre-boarding passes, such as the kind you can get if you’re disabled and need assistance down to the plane, on the back of that envelope it lists the categories of passengers eligible to get that pre-boarding pass. Among the listings is this notation:  “persons of size who may require more than one seat.” Also, when you’re on the plain, you have two options as far as your seatbelt goes. You’ve got the standard adjustable seatbelt that you can lengthen and wrap around yourself, or you can ask for a seatbelt extender. I’ve never seen one personally, but it’s a snap-on extension that lengthens the seatbelt strap and lets you buckle. Or, if you are a “person of size” and have two seats reserved, you can link the seatbelts together and create one seatbelt apparatus.

Now I know that seatbelts and seats for that matter are not of uniform size and dimension from airline to airline and among different models of aircraft, so let’s not have any rejoinders that aim to point out anything about CRJ’s or other smaller planes. My point here is this:  it says something about this country as a whole if our airlines make these items and these concessions available. America is not a healthy nation, not by any means. Let me provide another example.

Our secretary of state recently came into possession of an army report that points out the fact that the army is having difficulties in recruiting fit young adults for service. Most recruits are not fit for service when they walk in and have to be slimmed down or toned up before they can enter basic training. Those who can’t lose the necessary poundage are discharged prior to or during the first couple of weeks of basic. Now again, what do we observe about our country when our military can’t find teenagers, some of the historically most fit youths in the nation, who aren’t already fat as hell? Yes, that’s something of a rhetorical question, sorry about that.

Is this not alarming? Do these things not say something about the nation we’ve become? I think they do. Now let’s move on to point B above. How do people see themselves? To all of you who are losing weight successfully, congratulations. To those of you who are genuinely (not halfheartedly) trying and failing, keep trying. I know it’s not easy. This doesn’t apply to you.

I have observed that, mostly due to the types of weight euphemisms mentioned above, and to the sensitivity and respect given to a person’s weight in our culture, a lot of extremely obese, massively fat people are perfectly ok being where they are weightwise, and any criticism of their lives is, of course, unconscionable. Who am I to attack someone else’s self-image, one might ask? Well let’s take a look at some of the self-image out there. I’ve got a buddy of mine who is 5 ft 11 or so and goes about 345 LBS last time we talked. Now, I don’t know how much you may know about height and weight, but 345 isn’t just a little overweight, it’s freakin ginormously over the top, ok? Let’s lay that on the table and face facts. My pal is morbidly obese, or to put it in layman’s terms, fat as hell. Now, he knows this. And he claims to want to lose weight. I sympathize. But where does he think himself to be. Take this quote, “Well, if I can get down to a good, solid 325, maybe 320, I’ll be doing good.” My response? “Well what about 300?” His response as he laughs, “oh come on Brad I ain’t gonna weigh no 300.”

And is my friend atypical? Well, let’s see. In the past three months alone, I’ve met four people who all fall into the 400 plus category. Now, 300 pounds is overweight; I don’t care what height we’re talking about. Nobody needs or ought to weigh 300 pounds, ever. How much less so do people need to be topping the scales at over 400 pounds? To put this in perspective, most home bathroom scales top out at 300 or 350. My buddy mentioned in the paragraph above actually broke my scale. We say that as a joke, but the man literally broke my bathroom scale, such that I’m out $60 for another talking scale! When you actually think about that, the humor goes out of the situation in a hurry, and I’m not making fun one bit. Now The people I mention here top the scales, wherever they can find scales sufficient for the task of weighing them, at 410, 415, 425 and, last I knew, 450 respectively. Now the American Medical Association has done an excellent job at warning people of the health risks of being overweight. That’s not what I’m here to do. But let’s look at the practical consequences. When you can no longer find clothes in any retail department store, but have to order your clothes from “big and tall” catalogs, there’s an issue there. When you sit down on your friend’s sofa and the bottom of the sofa collapses, you’ve got a problem. My uncle replaced the chairs on his boat last summer, because his most recent guests onboard both topped 400 pounds each and buckled the struts holding the chairs to the deck. My friend who is a social worker and works on a crisis hotline down south recently took a counseling call from a man who was complaining about how his family is critical of him because of his weight, which he claims to be  700 plus pounds. Now you might fairly say that people who weigh 600, 700, or 800 pounds aren’t that common and should be treated as rare cases. You’d be wrong. There are weight clinics, such as the one in New York City whose show airs every New Years, which specialize in treating people in the 600-1000 pound range. This clinic actually takes patients into its residential housing and puts them up for the duration. Most of them have to lose in excess of 3 to 500 pounds. It’s not the only one of its kind out there, and obesity, even that extreme of obesity, is more common than you or even I likely know.

Now America, and Americans, we’ve got a problem. And that problem is not helped when people in this weight class think they’re fine. One man who weighs in the 400’s recently told me, “yeah you know? The doctor said I was doing pretty good for my size, you know? Said I was in pretty good health.” Really? I don’t have a lot of experience with doctors, not compared with some, but from what I do know of their demeanors, if his doctor told him he was fine, his doc’s a quack. It’s likelier that he wasn’t being entirely truthful with me about the doctor visit. My own doctor, when seeing my original weight of 288, gave me a weight loss lecture, and when he saw the revised figure of 249, he was most complimentary of my progress, but I still got the weight loss talk. So I’m not about to sit here and believe my acquaintance, who claims his doctor thought all was in working order. But his, my acquaintance’s, attitude about his weight, his attitude, “yeah I’m a big fella but everything’s basically ok,” is killing him, and it’s killing our country.

And it’s not just adults. Our kids are fat too. I’ve met and have been told about a number of fat (not chubby, but fat) toddlers and a number of overweight babies. Our preadolescents aren’t exempt. I have a cousin, a boy I love dearly, who has been majorly overweight his whole life. Another young man, one I won’t name but who is also very dear to me, is borderline diabetic and majorly overweight at age 12! And oh yes, let’s not forget the famous case of the woman who sued MacDonalds a few years ago because she claimed her son had gotten fat from MacDonalds supersized French fries. She won her lawsuit, by the way, which is why supersizing has disappeared from MacDonalds.

Now let’s stop and think for one minute. What’s going on with our children? My guess? The computer age. When I was growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I didn’t have the internet, a cell phone, a game gear, a Nintendo, an Xbox, etc et al. Now I have no complaints against any of these technologies. What I do have a problem with is parents who let their kids spend every waking moment glued to a TV screen or computer monitor rather than encouraging them to get outside, get dirty, climb trees, play little league, etc. Now again, in the ghetto this isn’t always possible, and little league’s gotten pricier (not that I played it), but there are still plenty of outdoor and quite a few indoor activities that will keep these youngsters as healthy and in shape as kids ought to be.

For our teenagers, what happened to basketball, football, wrestling, running, and outdoor energy-burning and calorie-burning activities? Teens used to have little difficulty being in, getting into or remaining in shape. Now, of course, the landscape has changed, and our armed services can’t find teens who aren’t verging on heart attacks.

For adults, stop blaming your weight on your damned genes! I’m sick unto death of people using medical maladies and genetic predisposition as an excuse for not losing the 300 pounds they desperately need to lose! Now, are there people whose genes predispose them towards weight gain? Yes. I’m one. My father’s side of the family, to a man, is massively overweight. My father is arguably the fittest person of his generation, and it was a lot of hard work for the man. I’m not as fit as I ought to be either; I’m not done. But these people who sit on their voluminous asses and complain about this condition or that condition or this set of genes or that relative whose existence in the family tree predisposes them towards the proportions they’ve currently attained, need to stand up and start doing some jumping jacks. They’re not hard. What’s required, above all, is a little motivation. Again, it’s not easy to lose weight. I know that. But it’s certainly not as impossible as most people have been led to believe. Diabetes kicked me into high gear, for example. I did not become, and am still not, a health nut. I don’t care for exercise, I still need to take more exercise, and you won’t catch me eating salads as a main meal. However, just that notion that my perpetual laxness regarding my own weight had actually triggered subsequent health issues—frankly, I was somewhat scared. Well, whatever it takes. For some it’s being rejected by a romantic interest because your body is so disgustingly out of proportion that there’s nothing physically or sexually appealing about you. Check. For some, it’s having a coronary while walking to work (assuming you bother to walk). Check. For some, it’s simply the realization that your pants size has gone beyond a size 50 (or 30 in women’s), and that your clothes shopping just got a lot harder. Got it. But whatever the motivation, people need to get kicked into gear. If this whole blog sounds stern and lacking in compassion, it’s not that I lack compassion. But compassion and tolerance about obesity have led us to the state we’re in. It’s time for a cold dose of reality. People are too damned fat. Time to start losing, and believe it or not, I say that with love.

on God and Philosophy

How do I start to write about this topic? Looking at the title, you might be wondering just now whether what I plan is some sort of sermon or some sort of rationally-based rejection of God. To automatically assume my business is one or the other of those things would be, possibly, to allow you to stop reading right here with an, “oh well I know what he’s gonna say.” Real life, C.S. Lewis points out, is often not so simple, and nor is this. I'm neither a preacher nor a philosopher, though it is true that I have studied philosophy extensively and I've given a few sermons in my lifetime. Still, I'm not a preacher and I'm not a philosopher.

I am, however, going to take a look at the uneasy relationship that rationalist thinking has with the matter of God's existence. And then we’re going to talk about what postmodern attitudes have to do with tolerance or lack thereof. Let me say at the outset I'm not concerned with supporting one particular thinker or with refuting some other, but there are some common threads I see running through all the talk on the discussion of God. Whether we're talking about logical proofs of his existence like Anselm of Canterbury's or Kurt Gödel’s, or whether we're talking about other attempts to reason ones way towards God such as Descartes meditations, the writings of Gottfried Leibniz or Pascal's wager, everyone I've read who wants to prove God's existence has started from a point of belief. That is to say, Anselm may have attempted a logical proof of God's existence, but he sets up an argument to support something he believes apriori (apriori being Latin for 'from the former' and referring to arguments that don't need to be proved with empirical evidence). Not that the argument itself reasons apriori, but we know Anselm believed in God. Thus, his proof, and many arguments like it, assume, at least implicitly, belief in God either on the writer's part or on the reader's. Put another way, I've never seen a professed atheist convinced by an ontological argument or other theistically oriented set of arguments.

Now that brings me to atheism. Atheism as a way of thinking has several interesting characteristics that bare thinking about. First, atheistic thinking requires as much belief in what it supposes about the universe as does theistic thinking. Put another way, a Christian believes in God largely by faith, and an atheist must believe, largely on faith, in God's non-existence. If we could observe God through a telescope or spy on him with our high tech surveillance equipment, all this talk about proving or disproving his existence that we've been engaged in over the centuries would be so much nonsense. But we can't observe God in the same way that we can observe atomic fission or the growth and development of a life form. And so, thinkers on one side of the great chasm argue mightily for God's existence through reason and thinkers on the other side argue with equal vehemence against it.

Now as it happens, I've read some of the best arguments both for and against God’s existence. All of them reasoned pieces of discourse and very well written. On the pro-God side, I’d recommend William Lane Craig, Peter Kreeft, C.S. Lewis and Ravi Zacharias. On the other side of the great chasm, Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennet and, arguably, Sam Harris are only a few in a long string of writers who have attempted to disprove the existence of God; I only reluctantly include Harris. I don’t include him because he’s a good thinker. Truth be told his reasoning is shoddy and his knowledge of his subject matter demonstrably in error (and that’s according to other atheists, folks), but his books have proven to be bestsellers and so I have to deal with him.

            First, there is no argument out there which, by virtue of its internal structure or its plausibility or its conclusions, will unassailably argue God’s existence or his lack of existence. I realize that statement opens me up to attack from both sides. A comedian once gave this piece of advice, “only antagonize one section of your audience at a time.” I seem to have disregarded that tidbit, sorry about that. But it is true. Christians,  you cannot arrive at the knowledge of God or the tenets of Christianity via pure reason in such a way that you do not leave yourselves open to attack. Even Lewis, one of the most well-respected Christian apologists of the last century, has been attacked by theologians and atheistic thinkers alike, despite presenting what many consider very sound reasoning. Now Lewis never claimed to be a theologian in his own right, and if I cared to, I could undoubtedly find and exploit holes in Lewis’s or Zacharias’s thought. But that’s just my point. You cannot argue the case for Christ in an invincible and unassailable display of human reasoning, even if your reasoning is sound and valid by most definitions. But don’t worry, the atheists don’t get off free.

            Atheists, particularly the self-styled New Atheists who have emerged in the last decade, are as guilty of assuming the infallibility of their reasoning. Dawkins believes his argument from improbability, also known as the “ultimate bowing 747,” can and does prove once and for all that there is no God. Sam Harris argues that religion has proven to be humanity’s most divisive invention and that we are, on the whole, better off without religion and religious thinkers altogether. Harris’s books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, as well as Richard Dawkins The God Delusion have proven so persuasive in America today that Christian apologists have felt the need to respond with books of their own. I don’t know how many times Harris’s or Dawkins’ work has been quoted or referenced among students around here. That, I suppose, is a tribute to their selling power. But their reasoning, especially Dawkins who at least attempts to reason and who writes cogently and logically, is no more unassailable than Lewis’s, Zacharias’s or Anselm’s. All of these thinkers, each and every one, starts their writing from the point-of-view of having believed, or not believed, in a God who made the universe. Fare enough.

            Is that to say that reason plays no role in belief? By no means. But to employ reason as the sole way and the chief means of belief is rather like praising flower as the be all and end all of cake baking. Do we need flower to bake a cake? Most certainly. Can we bake a cake without flower? Well I’m not an expert baker, but probably not. But is flower all we need, to the exclusion or minimalization of all the other ingredients? Now what kind of cake would that be, I ask you. I wouldn’t be eating it. So, continuing the analogy, your theist, (we’ll say your Christian apologist) bakes one kind of cake, and your atheist, another. So then, you ask, what’s to choose between them? Does it make a difference which one I ask for?

            Well let’s keep our cake metaphor as we turn to postmodern thought. That is, we’ll hang on to it until such time as we can’t use it anymore. Now, I’ve spent most of my life in school. I’ve spent my entire adult life walking the halls of our universities. I’ve gone to three of them, from which I’ll have three degrees when it’s all said and done. All that to say, if anyone has been well and truly exposed to the thinking that prevails in our colleges and in our society, I have. And so I’ll discuss it. Don’t worry, we’ll get back to faith and reason in a minute.

            Today, especially in the humanities and social sciences:  history, philosophy, literature, sociology, psychology, etc, there are certain words that have become the bywords of study and, more generally, of thought. “Multiculturalism,” “pluralism,” “interdisciplinary,” “cross-cultural,” “inclusion,” and “tolerance” are only a sampling of the nouns and adjectives that have entered into our classrooms, our research, our teaching and our thinking. Am I going to attack these concepts and say they’re horrible, you ask? No. But I do want, in a moment, to look at their consequences where religious thought is concerned.

            Let’s deal with something other than religious thought first. One of the consequences of these terms in our discourse has been that you can’t make any sort of value-driven statements or express any opinions or reasoned judgments about anyone or anything whatsoever without being branded as closed-minded, exclusive, or, most damning at my level of study, “non-scholarly.” For example, in the course of a term paper, conference presentation or dissertation I cannot say anything that resembles the following:  “Hitler was a genocidal egomaniac,” “female genital mutilation is damaging,” and “the Spanish Inquisition’s methods of extracting confessions were counterproductive.” No, I would have to say something like:  “Hitler was misguided in his racial and ethnocentric beliefs,” “female genital mutilation is an accepted cultural practice in certain places,” and “the Spanish Inquisition believed certain interrogation methods to be most conducive to its aims.” Only the first statement retains any notion of judgment or value, because I’m not sure that Hitler has been so sanitized that we couldn’t get away with calling him what he was. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the university mindset and the American mindset as accurately presented as I can make it. Now where am I going with that?

            Let’s go back to our cake metaphor. The postmodern climate in which we live has made it such that you could only express an opinion about the cake so long as you didn’t attempt to say that your opinion was true. For instance, if you are presented with a chocolate cake, you expect certain things to be present, namely chocolate. But our universities would teach you that it is wrong of you to dispute someone else who says that their carrot cake or their fruit cake is also chocolate. You might hear this: “Brad, now that’s pretty insensitive and exclusivist of you. my fruitcake is just as much a chocolate cake to me as yours is to you. You need to be more considerate of my culinary position. Who are you to say that this isn’t a chocolate cake!” Are you laughing yet? I am, and I’m writing the thing! Now that little example doesn’t touch on preference. If you prefer fruitcake to chocolate cake, fine. There’s little I can do to persuade you that chocolate is better, but the error would be in calling your fruit cake a chocolate one. It’s not, and no amount of wishful thinking can make it so.

            Now, at last, we come back to religious thought. What is the current religious climate in the United States? Let’s have a look. We exist, as Ravi Zacharias states it, in a climate of thought in which you can hold any religious opinions you like so long as you don’t tell someone that yours are the true ones. He goes a step further. It’s interesting how eastern religious practices and mentalities, Jainism, Daoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc, are given a pass, but western religious thought is subjected to the most critical attacks. I’ve seen this in action. If you claim you’re a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Jainist or a Shintoist, you’ll be left alone. If you claim you’re a Muslim, you’ll be left alone at least where your notion of God is concerned (the current political climate in America notwithstanding). But if you say that you’re a Christian, people will happily line up and demand, “how can you possibly say that your Jesus is the only way to God?” Again, I’m just sketching some of the characteristics of the climate of opinion in which we live today. Anyone want to tell me it’s not so?

            Leaving aside the novelty effect of some eastern religions, the most popular opinion going in America today has got to be, “there’s lots of ways to get to God, and my way’s just as good as yours.” Or you get angry statements like this, “I know X was a kind and caring person who did a lot of good for other people. So how can you say that he’s not in Heaven just because he didn’t believe in your Jesus?” This latter, I’ve heard often. The so-called new-age religions like Wiccan are on the increase, and so is anything that espouses the, “all paths lead to God,” mentality.

            So that’s where we are in the year 2011. It’s not new. This mentality, we’ll call it moral relativism, has been on the rise for the better part of a century. A century ago, we had a moral consensus in this country. Not everyone followed it, but most people could recognize it. And while it wasn’t what most thinkers I know of would call strictly a Christian moral consensus, it was quite close to it in many respects. To borrow a metaphor from a favorite novel, it used to be that a ruler unequivocally measured one foot. That is, everyone knew that 12 inches equals one foot of measurement, and even if they didn’t like the ruler, they operated by its measure. Now what we have done in our postmodern climate of moral relativism is to break the ruler into pieces and say that a foot is three inches to you and four inches to me and six inches to someone else, and by the way, how dare you claim that your six inches of ruler measures the true foot when my three inches is just as good as yours. Now going along with our ruler metaphor, what would happen if we actually tried to conduct measurement in such a situation? Chaos, naturally. No two sets of measurements would agree with any regularity, we wouldn’t build anything with any degree of consistency, and we would be in perpetual doubt as to the reliability of anything in our world that was based on measurement. Well, I’ve just described where we are in terms of religion, have I not? Would anyone like to claim we’re on any more sure footing here in America when it comes to the question of God’s existence and nature than what I’ve just described? I don’t think you could make such a claim.

            Now is it true that one foot equals four inches, or six inches, or eleven inches, or that one foot equals all of these? Of course not, and attempting to operate as though it did is unthinkable. So why do we think we can reason this way when it comes to God? But we try. We surely try. The statement, “all paths lead to God,” is logically and demonstrably untrue. Take Christianity and Islam as two examples. Each has very definite notions of the nature of God and the requirements to get to Heaven. Fare enough. So then, is it true that both a Christian and Muslim will get there?
I am probably going to say a bit more about Islam, because it’s the Abrahamic religion Christians both know the least about and assume the most about without any research of their own. Sloppy work there, Christian folks. But I’ve seen it too often not to have to level the charge. Islam portrays God as one being, undivided in nature or aspect. One sura (or book) in the Koran even says, “In the name of  Allah, … The One without  partner or equal.
The One who does not beget, nor was begotten.
The One who does not resemble nor relies on His creation.” There you have it, a God with no son and no holy spirit. That equals no trinity. Let’s go on. Islam recognizes the life of Jesus, or Isa in Arabic, and in the Islamic tradition, Isa is a prophet in a long line of them stretching back to Ibrahim i.e.  Abraham. Yes, the same prophets as found in the Old Testament. There’s an Adam and Eve story in the Koran, a story of Isaac and Ishmael, and there’s a sura in the Koran devoted to Mary (Mirium in Arabic) and that recounts the life and words of Jesus, not the same stories as found in the canonical gospels, but the important point is that he appears. Jesus also occupies a special place in Heaven for Muslims. Now then, the central statement of Islam here is the key. Does it revolve around Jesus? It reads in Arabic, “أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله و أشهد أن محمد رسول الله” In English, “There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his messenger.” Keep in mind that Allah is not only the name of the God of Islam, but is the Arabic word for God generally. Therefore, an Arabic-speaking Christian prays to Allah in the name of Isa his son. Just so we avoid any linguistic confusion.

Uttering  the statement quoted above, known as the shahada, in sincerity, is the only act necessary to convert to Islam and it contains within itself the most differentiating element that separates the two religions in this example. Mohammed is considered God’s final prophet, his final deliverer of his, God’s message. That is not to say that Mohammed is considered divine, though Muslims are commanded to follow his, Mohammed’s, teachings and exhortations and even daily living habits, Sunah, as being what I, for lack of a better descriptor, will call best practices of human living. Therefore, the person who gets to Heaven is the one who most faithfully keeps the commandments of God as delivered by Mohammed and who is most virtuous in act and deed and in penitence. The Muslim is told in Sura 99 that on the day of judgment or al-qiyamah, Allah will open each person’s Book of Deeds and will consider their deeds and weigh their life in the balance:  “Then shall anyone who has done an atom’s weight of good, see it! And anyone who has done an atom’s weight of evil shall see it.” And the person is judged based on what they believed and what they did. Yes I know, there are as many interpretations of al-qiyamah out there as there are of the Christian day of judgment. Heck, there’s even some doubt as to the fate of Christians and Jews in Islamic eschatology, but let’s keep it plain and clear. Clearly, true Muslims who lived in submission to the will of Allah and lived in accordance with the teachings of Allah’s final messenger, Mohammed, stand to enter Jana, or Heaven. Good enough. Now let’s turn to the Christian side of the discussion. How is God presented? Let’s see:  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believed in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (john 3:16). Probably the most well-known New Testament verse. Or consider the very end of the book of Matthew:  “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” (Matthew 28:18-19). Ok, so from the outset we have a father, one who has a son, and a holy spirit. Now you could write books on the trinity, and people have. There are entire courses taught on it. I’m going to let it suffice here to say that Christian doctrine supports a God who has a son and a holy spirit as aspects of himself. Very different from Islam, no? Now some biblical scholars will try to bog you down by quibbling over whether or not Jesus actually claimed in so many words to be that same son of God. We’re not going to go there either, not because I lack for an answer, but because it would sidetrack us from the discussion. Let’s look, rather, at what Jesus says about himself:  “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me” (John 14:6). That’s quite a statement. To put it in today’s terms, that’s quite an exclusivist statement, isn’t it? Yes that’s what’s been said about it many times. Now in the Christian view of judgment, Jesus will welcome in those who believed and worshiped in his name. Think of the sheep and the goats analogy that’s found in several places throughout scripture.

So there we have it, Christianity and Islam. And we return to the question we started with a couple pages back. Are both our Christian and our Muslim going to Heaven? The society in which we live would answer, “but surely they would if they were both kind and compassionate and caring people who didn’t do any harm to anyone.” But does that make sense? If what the Bible portrays of God’s nature, particularly in the New Testament, is at all true, than is the Muslim view of God true? Can God both have a son and holy spirit, while simultaneously being a deity who does not beget and has no other aspects outside of himself? Let me ask this question, can Jesus be the way the truth and the life, and Mohammed be the final messenger of God? Can Jesus be the son of God, and just another prophet? Can Mohammed be God’s final messenger, and no messenger at all? The answer to any and all of these is, logically, no. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Christian or a Muslim or whether you’re an atheist looking at the structure of both of those belief systems and answering my questions, the answer remains, “no.” One of them cannot possibly be true without the other necessarily being false. This isn’t theology people, it’s logic, pure and logic. You cannot have them both.

We must, therefore,  make an end to this nonsense about all roads leading to Heaven and all ways that lead to God being equally valid. This postmodern philosophy of ours is a comfort to some, no doubt, but it’s nonsensical and doesn’t hold any water. Truth, by its nature, is exclusivist. If you have a mathematical equation, it has one solution. The simple equation, 2x-8 = 10, when solved, will always yield the solution, x = 9. There’s nothing I can do about that. It doesn’t matter whether I like the math teacher, the math book, the base 10 numbering system or whatever unit of numbering, or the letter X. The equation admits of no other solution, and therefore, all other solutions, X = 8, x = 10, X = whatever, no matter how close they are to our solution, X = 9, are not themselves, X = 9, and are as false as the solution is true. And would we want it to be otherwise? Consider the value of teaching mathematics if that equation could just as easily be answered with some other number besides 9. If 11, 13, and -2.7 were all equally valid and right answers, what would be the point in teaching me how to solve that particular kind of equation? The answer? None at all.

Yet when we attempt to say this of religion, we are criticized and told that we are bigoted, intolerant and closed-minded. Yet it’s true that if Christianity is true, Islam can’t be, Hinduism can’t be, Buddhism can’t be, etc. And if Islam is true, then Christianity can’t be, Hinduism can’t be, etc. Now I haven’t written this to persuade you of my own beliefs. Rather, in this society, we have to start by persuading our hearers to give up this nonsense about all ways to God being right and true. Choose one, would you? Once a choice has been made, then we can talk about whether it’s the right one or not. That’s its own discussion. But getting people to take a stand other than the postmodern bull that we’re flooded with these days, well, that would be a place to start. Don’t you think?

Openminded? Or trashy

Hi again Everyone,

This is going to be something of a longer post because I have included a couple of texts that matter to the topic. My apologies if my copying and pasting have made the extra text look strange, but it’s important to the story. Today we’re going to talk about a couple of words that have become buzz words in our universities and our society as a whole:  open, and open-minded. Before I get too much further into this, let me paste here below a recent WGN news story that is the subject of my ramblings today.

EVANSTON, Ill. — Sex toys take center stage at Northwestern University after a couple demonstrated how an altered electric saw can be used for pleasure.

Students in psychology professor J. Michael Bailey's human sexuality class on February 21st were invited to the unusual post-class activity in which the man and woman demonstrated the use the sex toy and female orgasm.

About 100 students chose to attend the optional demonstration.

Bailey invited Ken Melvoin-Berg, a Chicago tour guide, to discuss human sexuality, fetishes, and female orgasm. He says, "Both Professor Bailey and myself gave them five or six warnings about what was about to happen and it would be graphic."

The woman undressed and got on stage with her male partner who penetrated the woman using an explicit sex device.

Melvoin-Berg says the couple enjoys having people watch them have sex, "It was a fun and educational experience," and the students, "seemed to be incredibly pleased. We had a number of them that got closer and closer."

Although the couple was not paid, Melvoin-Berg said he typically gets paid $300 to $500 for an hour-long lecture.

He declined to say exactly how much Northwestern has agreed to pay him.

Northwestern University Spokesman Al Cubbage confirmed that the university has agreed to pay Melvoin-Berg and released a statement, "Northwestern University faculty members engage in teaching and research on a wide variety of topics, some of them controversial and at the leading edge of their respective disciplines. The university supports the efforts of its faculty to further the advancement of knowledge."

Professor Bailey released a statement Wednesday night saying, "Do I have any regrets? It is mostly too early to say. I certainly have no regrets concerning …

            Ok, Bailey’s full statement is in a separate PDF document, and I’ll be referring to it. Let’s deal with the obvious. How do you argue against this? How do you say, “this is wholly inappropriate.” Our culture has made it so hard to do so successfully. If you are anything less than absolutely tolerant, even enthusiastic about even the most wild of ideas today, you are labeled as being “closed-minded,” “narrow,” “intolerant,” or “bigoted.” By inference then, being “open-minded,” “fare minded,” “broad-minded,” and even “innovative,” has come to mean embracing almost anything and everything actionwise or thoughtwise, anything at all. Now, I’m not a prude when it comes to sex. I don’t mind discussing it and contemplating it. I even think the church needs to say a bit more about it than it currently does, even within the context of marriage. Ask my exes, or ask Nicole if you don’t believe me. I say again, the topic of sex doesn’t discomfit me in the slightest. So then, reasons our culture, I should have no problem with Bailey’s after-class activities. On the contrary, I do.

            Now he worms out of any trouble of course, because the activities were after class, optional, and according to his statement, not exam material of any kind. Fine. I’m not worried about legalities here. What concerns me is a notion that has disappeared from most of our public discussions and, it seems, from the psychology department at Northwestern, common decency. Even within a class devoted to human sexuality, there ought to be standards. This class’s aim is, allegedly, a serious attempt to examine the sexual behavior of humans. So fine, talk about sex toys, orgasms, even gay and transsexual behavior, and show powerpoints if you must, as he has. He could have even shown a porno flick and not gotten my blog response. But my friends and fellow readers, isn’t there a difference between showing a film or a PowerPoint or holding a discussion, and inviting two people to come on stage and have exhibitionist sex in front of a hundred eager, drooling students? I think there is a difference, quite a difference. And I haven’t even touched on the modified electric saw that was used as a toy, see the above headline.

            Now let’s consider the professor’s own explanation of his actions. Below is his full statement issued to WGN News. Because of the pdf, I had to copy it word for word, so please do me the kindness of reading it:

I teach a large (nearly 600 person) human sexuality class at Northwestern university. During class I lecture about the science of sexuality. Many days after class I organize optional events. These events primarily comprise speakers addressing interesting aspects of human sexuality. This year, for example, we have had a panel of gay men speaking about their sex lives, a transsexual performer, two convicted sex offenders, an expert in female sexual health and sexual pleasure, a plastic surgeon, a swinging couple, and the February 21^st panel let by Ken Melvoin-Berg on “networking for kinky people.” These events are entirely optional, they are not covered on exams, and I arrange them at considerable investment of my time, for which I receive no compensation by Northwestern University. The students find the events to be quite valuable, typically, because engaging people in conversation provides useful examples and extensions of concepts students learn about in traditional academic ways. I recruited Ken Melvoin-Berg, Ken MV henceforth, because past speakers had not been very interesting-they had merely given PowerPoint presentations, of which students get too many already. They were also unwilling to answer questions about their sex lives, which defeated the purpose of that particular presentation. I had met Ken and believe he is articulate, open, knowledgeable, entertaining, and, yes, kinky. Sexual diversity is surely a reasonable thing to address in a human sexuality class. I certainly had no hesitation inviting Ken MB, and I asked him whether he could recruit others as well to give the presentation. (I especially thought it would be useful to have a woman as well as a man). On the afternoon of February 21^st Ken MB and colleagues arrived while I was finishing my lecture, on sexual arousal. I was talking about the female G-spot and the phenomenon of female ejaculation, both of which are scientifically controversial. I finished the lecture and invited the guests onstage. On the way, Ken asked me if it would be ok if one of the women demonstrated female ejaculation using the equipment they had brought with them. I hesitated only briefly before saying “yes.” My hesitation concerned the likelihood that many people would find this inappropriate. My decision to say “yes” reflected my inability to come up with a reason why students should not be able to watch such a demonstration. After all, those there had stayed for an optional demonstration about kinky sex and had been told explicitly what they were about to see. The demonstration, which included a woman who enjoyed public sexual interaction with a machine, surely counts as kinky and hence as relevant. Furthermore, earlier that day in my lecture I had talked about the attempts to silence sex research and how this largely reflected sex negativity. I have had previous experiences with these silencing attempts myself. I did not wish, and I do not wish, to surrender to sex negativity and fear. Ken MB and friends spoke to the class for a while and then informed the students they were about to perform their demonstration. The presentation seemed to have lasted about 5-10 minutes of their hour-long presentation. While I watched, I experienced some apprehension. None of this apprehension had to do with the possibility of harm to any observer, and none of it had to do with a lack of educational value. As I alluded, some experiences are educational and interesting in non-traditional ways. Rather, I was worried that there could be repercussions that would threaten the valuable speaker series I have built over the years.

            Student feedback for this event (I routinely collect feedback for all events) was uniformly positive. Although most students mentioned the explicit demonstration—which they mostly enjoyed and thought was a singular college experience—most also said that the most valuable part was engaging in a dialogue with Ken MB et al. Do I have any regrets? It is mostly too early to say. I certainly have no regrets concerning Northwestern students who have demonstrated that they are open-minded grown-ups, not fragile children. I have not enjoyed the press, because I have assumed that reporters will sensationalize what happened and will not provide my side. A welcome exception to this, mostly, was the Daily Northwestern article. I suspect that my dean is not enjoying this publicity and I do not like displeasing my dean. TO the extent that this event provokes a discussion of my reasoning above, I welcome it. I expect many people to disagree with me. Thoughtful discussion of controversial topics is a cornerstone … [The PDF text is unreadable to me beyond this point, but this is also the end of the statement text].

            Ok, in the best tradition of evenhandedness and collegial refutation, I’ve presented his side. His statement his there, his side shared. I’ve read it, I’ve thought about it, and what he did was still reprehensible professional behavior. Let’s take this discussion for a moment out of the realm of sex, which many people my age take a prurient interest in displaying, and make it relevant to my field. Let’s pretend that I’m not a doctoral candidate, but an assistant professor at my university, and let’s pretend that Andrea isn’t my doctoral advisor, but my dean in the college of liberal arts and sciences. She is, in fact, an assistant dean in LAS. Now let’s translate this event into something equivalent for German studies. Let’s suppose I want, in the course of a class on the holocaust, to talk about Nazi concentration camps and what went on in them. Well let’s think. I could lecture. I could show images, films and recordings. Check. I could bring in guest speakers and ask them to talk frankly  about whatever may have happened to them in Dachau or Buchenwald. Check. I can bring in memorabilia, if available, old SS uniforms or a pistol from the period. And none would complain. Nor should they I’m sure. But suppose I did something like this:  walk into class wearing the uniform of an SS Obersturmbannführer, replete with swastikas etc, and, as part of my lecture, hired people to come in, set up a scaled replica of a gas chamber and act out the rolls of SS guards and protesting Jews being beaten and forced into the chamber, and then play recorded screams and choking noises as the simulated gas jets begin to hiss. Would you be offended by that? Were you slightly disturbed at my description? I was mildly disturbed by what I just wrote, and I just wrote it! Now let’s imagine a possible conversation with my dean afterwards. She is one of the most innovative, and professional Germanisten I know. But somehow, I don’t think our conversation would be replete with praise for what I’d done. I think it likely that she would be offended, and if she were not, she would make me aware of many others, Germans, Jewish people, Germans of Jewish heritage, and many others, who were deeply offended by it. I would expect her to instruct me to issue a public apology, and it would not surprise me if I lost my job over it. It might not come to losing my job, but I would expect some form of censure. In actuality, I myself would be offended by a display like what I described, and the Nazi period is the period of German history that interests me most. So, why would I be offended then?

            Probably for the same reason you might be. The display I just described is over the top. It’s extravagantly graphic and sensationally staged for shock value, gas chamber, screams, beatings, even if they’re mock beatings, and the SS uniform for good measure? Yes if Andrea saw me do that, even after class, I would likely get a thorough and precisely logical dressing down. Not, I repeat, because of the subject matter, the Nazis, gas chambers, concentration camps, and the brutalization of people in the Third Reich. These are legitimate topics of discussion and are still very much the subjects of scholarly study and are very much still lodged firmly in the collective memory of many peoples. No, the reason for my hypothetical censure would stem from the methods I used to make my point. One of the questions that the dean would ask me is undoubtedly, “now, was it really necessary to do all of that in order to discuss this?” And I would have to answer, “nein.”

            Now let’s return to Professor Bailey’s area of expertise, sex. Granted, this is a class whose aim is to discuss and explore human sexuality. In principle I’m not bothered by that. I’m also not bothered by Bailey’s wish to explore non-traditional i.e. kinky sex. I’m not sure I’d cover some of those topics myself were it my class, but it’s not my class. What bothers me here is, just as with the example I depicted from my own field, the overly extravagant and kitschy display. Bailey himself says at a number of points in his statement that he hesitated before allowing the display to go on. Let’s think about why that might have been. He claims that he was hesitant because, “I was worried that there could be repercussions that would threaten the valuable speaker series I have built over the years.” What sort of repercussions? Objections such as the one I’m making? Undoubtedly. Most university ethics codes, including the University of Illinois’s and Northwestern University’s, include language that tell you to avoid activities which, while being within the letter of the law, might bring disrepute or the appearance of impropriety or the appearance of illegality down on yourself or your university. This language is there to warn people such as professor Bailey. He might win any legal contest arising from what he’s done, but he’s certainly, as he somewhat acknowledges, dragged his department, his dean, his university, and his university president kicking and screaming into the spotlight. Were I his dean, I’d be thoroughly upset about it. I bet he didn’t ask his dean for an opinion before doing this too. Now then, I notice that the president of Northwestern has launched an investigation into the matter. This article appeared today, March 3, in the Chicago Sun Times:
Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro said Thursday he was launching an investigation into an on-campus presentation involving a live sex act performed for students as part of an optional after-class lecture.

Schapiro described himself in a statement as “troubled and disappointed” about the use of a high-powered sex toy on a naked 25-year-old woman by her 45-year-old fiance in front of more than 100 students. The couple, Jim Marcus and Faith Kroll, were part of a group of four adults brought to speak to the students about the world of kink and fetish in an optional seminar that followed Prof. J. Michael Bailey’s “Human Sexuality” class.

“I feel it represented extremely poor judgment on the part of our faculty member,” Schapiro’s statement said. “I simply do not believe this was appropriate, necessary or in keeping with Northwestern University’s academic mission.”

The live sex act happened on Feb. 21 and students in the class who witnessed the act were largely not bothered by it. They were repeatedly warned it was about to get explicit and some students chose to leave before Kroll stripped down on a stage in the Ryan Family Auditorium.

Schapiro said school officials want to know exactly what happened, and why.

“I have directed that we investigate fully the specifics of this incident, and also clarify what constitutes appropriate pedagogy, both in this instance and in the future,” he wrote.

Bailey said Wednesday it was too early to say if he regretted allowing the couple to perform for the students.

While students may not have been bothered by watching a naked female be brought to orgasm by a sex toy, Schapiro was.

“Many members of the Northwestern community are disturbed by what took place on our campus,” his statement said. “So am I.”

   Going back to Bailey’s contrast between “grown-ups and fragile children,” I guess we have to ask Mr. Baily, is President Schapiro a fragile child? Hmmmm. I seem to be one of the few people I know speaking out against this? Take this comment from the facebook posting of the person who linked this to my page and got my attention,  “Brad, Prof. Bailey said his students "enjoyed it and thought it was a singular college experience". He said that Northwestern students have demonstrated that they are open-­‐minded grown ups rather than fragile children.
The university supports Prof. Bailey's efforts to further the advancement of knowledge :O Can we only see this in private schools?? I love Northwestern :D”

          Now in all this talk about the subject, I have not, as yet, come to the Christian side of things. I don’t presume that any of my readers are Christians, aside from those I know to be so, and I could not use Christian arguments to persuade them. Nor can I censure this professor as a Christian, because I don’t know that he’s a believer, and you cannot logically or fairly expect a non-Christian to behave like a Christian. However, now I’m going to switch modes and bring the Christian element into this conversation. Let’s leave aside the whole, “no sex before marriage argument.” It’s not really relevant here, since this couple could’ve been married. They’re not, but again we’ll leave that be. Let’s ask ourselves, what sort of message are we sending people about sex? What place does it have or what value are we assigning to it today?

It seems to me that we have observed a moral shift, almost an inversion, concerning the subject of sex over the last half century. In the 1950’s, we saw an extreme of silence. It wasn’t really talked about, contemplated, or studied much. The McKinsey report issued in 1949 shows that most Americans of the day were sexually unaware and uninformed. It was very much a taboo subject. Then, starting in the 60’s, we saw a shift in attitude towards  discussing sex, the sexual revolution, rated R movies, etc. I could write pages on that, but I won’t. Suffice it to say, sex became an acceptable thing to talk about, write about, sing about, display in film, and it got into our classrooms. With this more open discourse on sex came a slackening, almost a disappearance, of any moral consensus on the subject. And that has continued to today. In fact, we have taken the matter to the other polar extreme. Now, nothing is too out there, too radical to be displayed in the most open and unabashed fashion. Needless to say, as a society we have wholly done away with any moral notions about sex. Even abstinence, even when discussed solely as a means of STD prevention and not as any sort of moral decision, is largely no longer talked about. Instead, schools hand out condoms and some high schools will even dispense birth control, so I’ve heard. And what sort of people does this climate produce? Well, the short answer is people like Professor Bailey, Jim Marcus and Faith Kroll. People who have not only abandoned any sense of the sanctity for the act of sex or the appropriateness and decency standards, even the minimal ones, we once observed, but people who will lower it to the level of B-rated film, produced for trashy sensation and shock value. My girlfriend said it best not too long ago,  “I just wonder why everything has to be extreme. It's either, sex is a bad word and we must not ever mention it for fear of corrupting our minds, or let's display sex to the world. … I mean, it's especially sending young people the wrong message. Teens and young adults are at the point where it's time to make up their minds about their beliefs, whatever they may be, but how can they do that when our society is so skewed? People wonder about the rising rate of teen parenthood or other similar evils...look what we're advertising.” What we’re advertising indeed.

I’m not sure what constitutes an adequate closing statement here. But I take this whole episode as representative of America’s utter lack of a moral compass. It’s crept into the academy too it seems. Or should we not take Professor Bailey’s actions as representing the general tendency of our higher ed institutions. Perhaps I should show this blog entry to a few trusted professors and get their opinions. As for what President Schapiro ought to do, well, everyone’s going to have an opinion on that, and I’m not different. I think at the very least, a public apology is in order, and it would be advisable for this professor’s teaching assignments not to include this course in future. Should he be dismissed? Possibly. It depends on how much of a breach of ethics the president sees this as being. But let’s say that if he were dismissed, I’d have no sympathy for him. None. Now then, your comments should prove interesting.

The State of the Union?

Well I have to say the title of this entry is apt. The state of the union is, in fact, the question under consideration in two, possibly three states. As I sit here at my lonely keyboard, Indiana’s democratic reps are holed up in, of all places, Urbana Illinois according to the LA Times, where I write. So that leads me to the question, where are Wisconsin’s fourteen democratic senators? Probably across Right Street in Champaign IL for the duration. Now I don’t know what you may think of collective bargaining associations, AKA unions. Me personally, I have little enough experience with them. I’ve read enough about them to realize that they are as fallible and as susceptible to corruption as any other entity of human beings, but having said that, I suppose I support the notion of union in principle. I recall the grad student strike of 2009 in which I took part I might add. It was a just cause with legitimate grievances, and the resolution attained would’ve been out of the question had a strong and well organized union not been active. So as someone who has personally seen what unions can do up close and personally when they act rightly, I suppose I’d have to say I’d prefer to have the union and not need its resources, than to find myself in a situation where I wish I’d had a union to hand and not have one.

                Now I’m a native son of the southern US, and while I am not southern in all my ways and thought patterns, my background leads me to a few choice and naturally sardonic observations. It seems to me that these people in the mid-west don’t know what to do with their money. That is, they have no idea how to hang on to it. Illinois, for example, is one of the most historically corrupt states in the union. State and local corruption on the widest scale dates back as far as the drawing of the state’s borders; hint:  Illinois doesn’t have frontage on Lake Michigan because the cartographers came by it honestly. Most of Illinois’s recent governors are behind bars, and I wonder whether Blogoyovich has joined them yet. Probably not. The state has been running its budget on empty for years, and currently owes state entities, such as, oh, let’s see, the University of Illinois, hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in back budgetary allotments. As an aside, I remember a mass mail sent out to the U of I community at the beginning of the academic year by our vice chancellor. It was one of those things that tried to be upbeat as he told us all the wonderful things U of I is doing to “combat current financial difficulties.” I couldn’t help noting that one of those measures was to offload nearly a hundred tenured faculty and just as many support staff using terms such as “voluntary separation incentive,” and “early retirement incentive.” Read between the lines for yourselves. Now that brings me to Wisconsin. Admittedly, I’ve never set foot in Wisconsin, though were I to do so it’d merely be to visit a cheese shop. I do, however, have a good friend in Madison, Hi Amy, and so I follow the developments there with something more than passing interest. First of all, as a matter of principle, if sixty thousand people take to the streets of your capital, whatever the reason, you’ve got some cause to consider what they have to say. Wisconsin is not a large state, and sixty thousand people swarming the streets of the state capital is not a force that can, or ought, to be ignored. Now without deconstructing the minutiae of the governor’s reasoning, Wisconsin has a fiscal problem. Translation, cheese and beer just aren’t doing it for revenue. Governor Scot Walker wants to pass a bill that, among other things, would force state workers to pay half their pension costs and a substantial portion of their own health care coverage. Ok as far as it goes, which is to say I won’t quibble with numbers and percentages. The alarming part of the bill is that it would strip state workers of their rights to bargain collectively. This is known as union busting, though that term is déclassé. It is this provision of the bill, the part that would deprive workers of the rights to bargain with the state purse string holders, that is causing tens of thousands of people to go to the streets.

                Now let’s think about Indiana. Indiana deserves a paragraph because as yet, the goings on in Indianapolis haven’t gotten as much press as those in Madison. They are, nevertheless, as significant. Now I’m not as clear on the basis for the protests in Indianapolis, because again, information is harder to find, but it has to do with giving companies in that state under collective bargaining terms the right to prefer hiring non-union members over union applicants. Admittedly, this is not as obvious a powder keg as what’s happening in Madison, but it’s caused enough of a firestorm that the democratic representatives, all but three according to the Indianapolis Star, to leave the state in protest. Governor Mitch Daniels isn’t saying crap, though I note with dismay that state house speaker Brian Bosma was considering having state police round up the absent legislators. No wonder they fled across the border. I originally wondered whether it’d occurred to any of them to just, I don’t know, vote ‘nay’ on the bill and have done with it? Probably. My guess is they don’t have enough votes to kill it on the state house floor (this applies to both Indiana and Wisconsin) but they do have sufficient power to see to it that no quorum is reached and thus, no vote taken. Good for them.

                Now I said back at the start of all this that I am a southern man in many ways, and now it’s time to tell you what that has to do with the price of tea in China, or more aptly, the price of labor in Wisconsin. I note with interest that Nashville isn’t currently filled with angry protesters. So far as I know, people aren’t swarming the streets of Montgomery, Raleigh, Atlanta, Jackson or even, God forbid, Little-Rock in angry protest of states’ fiscal decisions. That’s because, whatever else the south’s failings might be, to put it succinctly, it ain’t broke, or not as, anyway. There are two types of brokenness as demonstrated by current events, broke, and flat-ass broke. Broke is what you are as a state when you need a new budget bill, and pass one. E.g. consider Tennessee in the summer of 03 (I think it was 2003 anyway), when state institutions came within a day of closing their doors for lack of money. I was there. They stayed open. So far as I know, nothing like that’s recurred in my home state. Flat-ass broke is what you get when you’re from the mid-west, apparently. When it comes to money management, Illinois and Wisconsin could learn a few things from Arkansas and Mississippi, states who, while being the butt of every other southern state’s worst jokes, still manage to avoid governor Walker’s and governor Quinn’s sets of difficulties. People crack jokes about southern states keeping their money buried in mason jars rather than in investments, but mason jars have this in their favor. When you need to dig them up, they’re still there. Unlike the budget allotments in, say, Wisconsin’s and Illinois’s state treasuries. People of the north could apply this principle if they tried, you think? Next time, I’ll ponder the state of the nation and the world. Have a good night.

Food?

As you can guess from the title, this one’s about … well, food. I’ve noticed a phenomenon among highly educated people as I accumulate more time behind the walls of the university, and it concerns their food. There seems to be a correlation between the level of education attained and the avoidance of what most of us would call normal fare in favor of exotic, or in many cases, downright disgusting comestibles. I’ve observed a trend towards what I call yuppie fare, and it is the nature of yuppie fare as well as the causes for seeking it out that I wish to explore.

                First, what do I mean by yuppie fare. Yuppy fare is hereby defined as food eaten with an accompanying sense of pretention, or an accompanying scorn for plainer fare. For example,  go to the Bread Company on Oregon in Champaign and attempt to order a grilled cheese. What you will get is a sandwich that does indeed have melted cheese on it; however, last time I checked, the preparers felt it necessary to put either tomatoes or black olives on the sandwich, other toppings available upon request. Now since when did this simple comfort food, which is not healthy and is not generally supposed to be so (not that I have anything against healthful foods, but everything in its place if you please) need to take on the attributes of yuppiedom? Don’t like that example? Let me offer a few more. Go to the Golden Roast in Knoxville Tennessee and order a tuna salad sandwich. You won’t get one. You will get an open-faced half pita, first of all. In this pita there will indeed be tuna fish, but you will in it mixed with a distressing admixture of sliced apples, chopped nuts and several other vegetables and fruits which, at first glance, do not appear to belong to a good old tuna salad sandwich, or wrap, or pita, or … whatever it is. At this same coffee shop you can order gazpacho in summer. Now if you like gazpacho, fine, but most Americans, especially those like myself who were born south of Mason and Dickson’s line, do not like, or in academy speak, disprefer cold vegetable soup, which is essentially what the stuff is, a chilled tomato-based broth filled with raw veggies. Hence, cold vegetable soup. Nothing, in short, that a microwave couldn’t fix. Now before anyone charges me with not liking dishes of foreign origin such as gazpacho, I should put out there that I enjoy a wide variety of ethnic foods on a regular basis, so keep quiet. As a further example, let’s consider hummus. Now I personally like hummus. But I like it as it is intended to be eaten. That is to say, as a ground puree of chickpeas that is consumed with small slices of warm pita bread. This is a snack, appetizer or in some places a breakfast throughout the Middle East. Yet at several places in Champaign, as well as in other college towns such as Knoxville, hummus has become a sandwich topping. I have seen perfectly good hamburgers and chicken sandwiches topped with “cheese and a generous portion of humas”’ note the misspelling, according to one menu. Hummus is not, repeat not, a sandwich topping. But places like Knoxville’s Copper Seller pride themselves on it. Let me include one final illustrative example. The Chicago River Hotel is a decent hotel in downtown. I forget its star rating, but it’s prices are low considering where it is, that is, just off the start of Chicago’s magnificent mile. Now then, order a turkey and cheese from room service. What might you expect. Well it’s an Italian restaurant, so we’ll change the name to a Panini and get on with it. Turkey, cheese, lettuce and tomato, maybe onion and some sort of mayo or some such, right? … almost. The sandwich, as is, comes with turkey, brie cheese, a green apple slice and, I kid you not, cranberry mayonnaise. I’ve tried it. Now is there any reason to do this? As for me, being as well-exposed to food as I am, I didn’t even know cranberry mayo existed, nor would it have occurred to me to put an apple slice on a hot toasted sandwich. But then, if I’m room service and am charging $14 for the sandwich, maybe it would then have occured to me to do so.

                Now I said at the start that I wanted to consider the types of people who regularly order such things as I’ve listed above. I realize that there are exceptions to what I’m going to say, and if you are an exception, it is so noted. My girlfriend, for instance, doesn’t go in for this sort of food, but she did enjoy the turkey sandwich, unfortunately. I am talking about the greater majority of people I’ve observed eating this crap. Remember I said there was a correlation between education and food choice? I’ve noticed that it’s mostly grad students and professors, mostly in the humanities, who order this swill. For instance, you’ll never see barbecue or fried chicken at an academic function, ever. If you did, I’d enjoy them a lot more than I do. Lastly, you tend to see a disproportionate number of vegetarians in the ranks of the humanities. Why? Well there are a lot of reasons for becoming a vegetarian, but the one I have the least patience for is the social protest. There are people who don’t like how our meat-production industries kill, clean, sing about, package, price and otherwise handle meats intended for human consumption. So, to protest these practices, they go veggie on you. I’ll never forget my encounter with a grad student in another department, who engaged me in a lengthy discussion, trying her hardest to convince me of the moral rightness of her position. This tendency to attach ethical or moral concerns to vegetarianism is the bit that really causes me to lose patience with this type of person. Her concluding remark was, “as intelligent as you are, if you continue to eat meat, then that tells me you’re either willfully uninformed, or there’s something morally and ethically lacking in your character, because how could you knowingly eat meat, being fully aware of what happened to that animal.” My response? “One bite at a time.”

                So, I launch my own protest. I do this in full knowledge of what I am demographically speaking, namely a highly educated person pursuing an advanced degree at a research 1 institution. Ok, having established my bonifieds as far as my entrée into yuppiedom is concerned, here’s my pledge. You will not find this crap, either the aforementioned crap or the myriad dishes and wanabee foods I haven’t listed, in my home or at any function over which I have charge. When I, in future, invite fellow faculty to our home for a get-together, real food will be served, including meats. Real drinks will be served, not simply wines and sparkling water, and it will taste good. It will taste good, not because it satisfies the elitist nature of the academy’s food choices, but because it will actually … be … good. Take five. And thanks.

come on in

So just what does belong in one’s initial blog post? I suppose it’s reasonable to explain why I’m doing this. The answer is because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Ergo, I’m doing it. Journaling has always been hard for me, though I suppose having a public forum, even a forum that is only visited by my friends and a select few interested parties, would be sufficient motivation for keeping up a blog. That being said, it is a public forum, and not every aspect of my life will be on display. So if it’s personal and I don’t mention it, or mention it only briefly, kindly don’t dissect it in public view. I can always remove your comments you know. :P! We’ll see. Who knows, maybe it’ll be bigger than I expect. But a blind doctoral student ought to be able to find a few things to say every now and again. And that leads me to the subject of … subject matter.

I make no claims that this blog is dedicated to any one subject. My posts will be as varied as my interests. For a list of those, see my profile. And then there’s my life, which some find of interest, me most of all. We’ll see. Your comments will be welcome. Having said that, fare warning, I pull no punches. I’ll express my opinions and views as I see them, and if they’re not liked, that’s going to be unfortunate … for the reader, that is. So I suppose I’ll start with the present, the things most relevant.

You know, the problem with human subjects-driven studies is, well, human subjects. I’ve got only 4 participants at the moment, and I’m not even sure I can use two of them. It makes me wish I’d chosen to write a purely theoretical dissertation. At least then all I’d have to do is read and visit archives. Working with people occasionally sucks. But my advisor is hopeful. She seems to be of the opinion that the present recruitment snag is just that, a snag. I’ll operate on that assumption until I have reason to do otherwise. What worries me much more is the slump in the German job market. Had an email from Cori, a prof in the department, asking us to be thinking about and showing our support for a German teacher at a local high school, an excellent teacher with very high pass rates and very successful students, who’s district contract isn’t being renewed. That, combined with the fact that German departments are downsizing across the country. I still haven’t forgotten that USC’s is closed, and Iowa’s is being folded into the World Languages and Literatures Department, or whatever they’re calling it. And the upside? I’m told that my specializations, applied linguistics, foreign language pedagogy, translation, are the areas left where the job market is at least lukewarm. It’s rather scary though. I don’t want to be standing in the social security line, PhD in hand, reapplying for benefits. It won’t come to that. I’m doing my utmost to see to it that it does not. Still, the thought that it may come to that keeps me from mounting my high horse too terribly often. I’ve heard it said there should be a God-shaped hole in our lives in which he works, or something to that effect, and that’s one of mine. He’s going to have to do it, because it’ll be a minor miracle if/when it works out. Just being realistic. Now you can all remind me that I should’ve studied Zulu. And maybe you’d have a point.

In other news, the ring is more than half paid for. Yes, ring. This may be news to a few of you, so here goes. Nicole just left here after a two-month-long visit. One of the upsides to her being forced, by deplorable circumstances, to switch schools, was and is her semester off. So she spent some significant time here. You can’t stay with someone that long and not learn a substantial amount about them. Enough so that a ring is a reasonable investment. So, I invested. No, we won’t be tying the knot right away. I’m not that unwise. But I want that ring on her hand in any case. Being somewhat old fashioned, I won’t call it an engagement until she’s wearing it, and it’ll be May or June before that happens. I’m done playing around though. It’s time to take this relationship to the next level.

As for the ring, I must say picking it out was challenging. I knew she didn’t care what it was, which left the decisions up to me. I knew, firstly, that I didn’t want to buy a $3000-4000 rock. Why should I? Our culture, particularly the diamond companies and chain jewelry conglomerates, have sucked us into the idea that your engagement ring ought to be expensive as all get out. I disagree. I wanted something that would be pricy enough for me to have to work on paying for it, but not so pricy as to be absurd. And I refused to buy it on credit. The second thing I knew was that I did not, repeat not, want a diamond of any kind, no diamond center stone, no diamond accents, none of it. You see, we Americans have been taught that a diamond is practically the only acceptable stone. Again, I disagree. I went for a modest sapphire. She will be pleased. My godparents seem to approve of this step, and I admit I find that comforting. She’s the first Christian I’d ever been with, and that makes Nicole radically different in many respects from others I’ve dated. Not to detract from anyone else’s good qualities, but in thinking about who I ought to marry, it seemed right to go for someone who holds certain values, namely values having to do with the place of the family versus the career and the sanctity of marriage versus the easy split. In this culture those ideals seem only to be found in more conservative Christians anymore. We’ve lost those values as a culture, I’m sad to say. Our divorce statistics are proof positive of the trend.

Now I have to take her to Tennessee. She’s spoken to my family; as far-flung as they are, that’s the most reasonable thing we could’ve hoped for. And she’s met Alfred and Dee, I’m glad to say, who, in turn, have taken their report of her to Amelia, I hope. But I want to take her to Memphis and introduce her to the Connollys, to Clarksville, to introduce her to my own mother, and to Nashville, because that’s where the happenings are. I’ve met her family, most of them anyway. … That’s another post. I miss the siblings though, all of them, and Nana too.

Right then. I’m off to bed. I think my next post will be something only a few will find interesting, but my buddy Aaron Rushton inspired it. Let me work on that one. Good night.