Cross-Cultural Convergence at Work

Darwin's theory has been proven wrong even by science back in the 1960's, so why they are still teaching a bogus theory in public schools is ridiculous. That means they do not want our children to know the truth. There is a book called Forbidden Archeology which has recorded thousands of artifacts and bones that show advanced human life even millions of years ago. (Way more advanced than we are today) And monkeys were still the same monkeys we have today. If you need proof then I suggest you get the book.

Mouth-breathing theocratic Christian fundamentalist?

No, proselytizing Hindu mystic!

Catholic Literary Action

Alumni of the Robert Southwell Literary Workshop have begun a blog called The Mahwah Literary Review.

I had applied for this workshop but was not accepted. My rejection was deserved, since I have yet to write a decent completed work of short fiction, and my health would likely have hindered, if not entirely precluded, my full participation.

One of the lovely young women in attendance at this workshop, a lady kind enough to date yours truly for a few happy months, has been published in the newest issue of Dappled Things. Congrats to Stephanie.

Colorado Archaeology

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. A bronze relic that may have been a cross carried by 17th century Spanish explorers has been found in the drawer of a Pueblo priest nearly 40 years after it vanished following its discovery in Colorado, according to a report in The Colorado Springs Independent newspaper.

Historians say the relic could help in their quest to learn more about the work of the Spanish in the West. The 5-inch-long piece carries images of the Vision of King Constantine, an armor breastplate and a cross with a crown encircling it.
CBS4 Denver

It seems inaccurate to describe this as a relic, since any possible association of the artifact with a saint is not described. Very neat discovery nonetheless, especially since the man who reported its location is a 94-year-old monsignor who can't have many years left in him.

More Egg Donation Problems for ESCR

MercatorNet: Obtaining eggs from women volunteers is essential for Harvard?s experiments. Do you foresee any problems?

Sherley: Very knowledgeable human endocrinologists, bioethicists, and women's rights advocates have provided prescient warnings regarding the potential for exploitation of women in meeting the demand for egg donors that may be created by human embryo cloning research. There is already an active unregulated service economy based on provision of human eggs for IVF in the US. Currently, women receive significant financial compensation for undergoing an invasive procedure for harvest of their artificially hormonally-matured eggs. The US National Academy of Sciences has recommended that women who donate eggs for human embryo cloning experiments receive no compensation beyond the costs they incur for participation. This is the policy to which Harvard reports that its scientists will adhere.

Even Economics 101 is not required to realize that this is plan may potentially reduce the plight that cloning experiments pose for human embryos. Harvard scientists are likely to find that they cannot recruit sufficient women who will volunteer their eggs to make embryos that will be killed for cloning research, when instead they could receive as much as US$15,000 for eggs that will be used to conceive babies for infertile parents.
-MercatorNet interviewing James Sherley

This is a good follow-up up to my post on the much-ignored ethical problems of human egg donation.

Against Neo-Jesuits

I am up to my ears in 16th century Jesuitdom because I am researching a project. Therefore I know that the Society of St. Ignatius and the Society of Pedro Arrupe have little to do with each other. And most Jesuits on the planet today are disciples of Pedro Arrupe, not disciples of Inigo de Loyola. And most of them realize it, in that they will acknowledge the morphing of the Society, but they think that St. Ignatius is smiling on the change. Thus the rationalization, "He was a man of his time." Which makes me want to wheeze fabada out of my nostrils at them.

I am convinced that he would tell them that he was a man of his time before the cannonball, and that afterwards, he was a man of God's time, as they should be. I am convinced because *I* could not have come up with something that eloquent, so it must have come from him whispering in my ear.
Some Have Hats

The comments to the post are similar in tone. "Supress the Jesuits!" and the like. We've all seen it before and my eyes roll like a busted slot machine. But THEN some Jesuit guy (one of the solid, orthodox, good ones, too) responds. And it's the SAME rote response. That is to say: "Problem? What problem?" and he goes to (rightly) make mention of all that is good, holy, decent and admirable about the current state of the Company to bolster the notion that all is both hunky and dory in Jesuitville. But it isn't. This isn't a spreadsheet where Fr. X's lunacies are canceled out by Fr. Y's holiness. On this blog and Karen's group blog, I make an effort to exalt the positive aspects of the Jesuits such as I see them. But that doesn't mean there aren't problems, and gravely serious problems at that, in the Society of Jesus.

This drives me UP THE [insert bad word]ING WALL. Yes, there are good, solid, orthodox Jesuits. Maybe even TONS of them. But they are being done a grave disservice by the attitude that, because there are solid/orthodox Jesuits, everything is just peachy-fine. Boston College is not Barely Catholic, Fr. Drinan is an exemplary servant of Christ, that whole "gays in the seminary" thing doesn't really mean anything nudge-nudge-wink-wink, legalized abortion is "lamentable" but military action in Lower Elbonia is an abomination, and Jesus certainly would have favored a confiscatory tax rate and socialized medicine.
AMDG Blog

"The reasons why Saint-Simonianism remained stuck at the stage of a sectarian cult were primarily to do with its lack of cosmic drama. Talleyrand put his finger on the limitations of all such secular cults when the creator of a new religion asked 'what would your Excellency recommend' regarding his failure to make many converts. 'I would recommend you to be crucified and rise again the third day' was the deadpan reply.
Burleigh, Earthly Powers, p. 228

The Downsides of Assimilation

A funny thing happened on the way from the '60s. Children of immigrants, instead of exhibiting better health than their parents, began to show signs of deterioration: The more acculturated teens were, the more risky behavior they displayed.

Marielena Lara and colleagues, in a 2005 review of the literature, notes the overall health findings are complex. But "the strongest evidence points toward a negative effect of acculturation on health behaviors overall -- substance abuse, diet and birth outcomes (low birth weight and prematurity) -- among Latinos living in the United States." This was true even though acculturated Latinos were more likely to use preventive health services of various kinds.
-Maggie Gallagher, "America's Other Assimilation Problem"

Jim Kalb provides a similar discussion:

...increased English use by immigrants leads to teen sexual activity. The numbers are impressive. Among Hispanic teenagers in Arizona, 13.6% of Spanish speakers, 24.4% of bilinguals, and 30.7% of English speakers have engaged in sexual intercourse. (The rate for whites is the same as the rate for bilingual Hispanics.)

[...]

Neocon immigration enthusiasts point out that assimilation still works: the children of Chinese immigrants like the same pop culture American teenagers like. That's believable, but is it a good thing? It may be if we want the things that unsupervised teenagers pick up from a radically commercialized and bureaucracy-ridden environment to be the basis of our national way of life, but perhaps not otherwise.

Medieval Robots

Daniel Mitsui reports on a medieval oddity:

"References to automatons devised by western Europeans in the Middle Ages cite such distinguished names as Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, both of whom are credited with constructing androids - Bacon, a talking head, and Albertus, an iron man.
-Encyclopedia Britannica

Additional information on this iron man has proven elusive - most sources on the internet seem to repeat the same bit of information. Those that elaborate are occultist websites that claim St. Albert was using the Philosopher's Stone, or the invocation of demons, to animate the machine.

There is a general agreement that the word android is St. Albert's coinage. The invention itself was reportedly destroyed by St. Thomas Aquinas, either because he was defeated by it in argument; because he was annoyed by its incessant talking; or because he regarded it as a demonic abomination.

My vote is for "annoyed by incessant talking."

Monastic Blogging

A retreatant at Oklahoma's Clear Creek Monastery has been blogging his retreat diary.

I hope to make a retreat there someday, myself.

More Denver Election Commission Incompetence?

I mentioned the missing Denver voter registration information below. A few follow-ups are warranted.

I am not the only one worried about vote fraud, and certainly not the only one in my family. My cousin Dennis is pressing the issue:

City Auditor Dennis Gallagher prodded Mayor John Hickenlooper on Tuesday to better monitor the Denver Election Commission, alleging that more voter data are missing and the upcoming elections are in jeopardy.
Denver Post

The article discusses lots of political in-fighting which I am glad to have no part of. I don't envy my cousin.

Also, Denver blogger Heartbroken Tiger has spent the past month compiling all the dirty details on the hundreds of thousands of voters whose information has gone AWOL, and apparent attempts to cover up the failures at the Denver Election Commission. Not being a resident of Denver, this isn't my fight. Nonetheless, it makes me worry how vulnerable to fraud the voting system is.

New Advent Gets a Blog

Kevin Knight is on-line at the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Neglected Soundbite of Last Week: Hawking on Euthanasia

Stephen Hawking's speech set people all atitter about space colonizations. It sent Catholics into a quote-hunt, seeing if he had misrepresented John Paul II at an old papal academy of science meeting. So courtesy of Spiked On-line, here's some good cheer left out of the media spotlight:

Hawking made other remarks in Hong Kong that received less coverage than his space comments, perhaps because they go against today's consensus. On euthanasia he said: "I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope." On research priorities he argued that "fundamental science has to be directed by scientific considerations, not economic ones". Out of hundreds of press reports on Hawking's talk, these statements only seem to have appeared in the Chinese People's Daily (3). Everyone else seemed to think the big story was "The End is Nigh (Again)".

Some People Fear Not Change, But Stasis

One reason for the epidemic of self-destructiveness that has struck British, if not the whole of Western, society, is the avoidance of boredom. For people who have no transcendent purpose to their lives and cannot invent one through contributing to a cultural tradition (for example), in other words who have no religious belief and no intellectual interests to stimulate them, self-destruction and the creation of crises in their life is one way of warding off meaninglessness. I have noticed, for example, that women who frequent bad men - that is to say men who are obviously unreliable, drunken, drug-addicted, criminal, or violent, or all of them together, have often had experience of decent men who treat them well, with respect, and so forth: they are the ones with whom their relationships lasted the shortest time, because they were bored by decency. Without religion or culture (and here I mean high, or high-ish, culture) evil is very attractive. It is not boring.
-Theodore Dalrymple

Calls to mind Pascal's line "All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."

A Thin Shadow Cast on Rep. Bailey's "Human Face on Abortion" Speech

Below I noted Rep. Bailey's story of the brouhaha he caused by bringing an abortion survivor to the Colorado legislature on the day it was considering a resolution honoring the anniversary of Planned Parenthood, a resolution which, sad to say, passed the Senate 24-11.

I was wondering why it took so long for Harvey to put his story out, which was promulgated via Focus on the Family's mailing list.

It seems that there is a primary challenger to Rep. Harvey who has impressive pro-life credentials. ColoradoPols.com, as is its habit, reprints a campaign press release:

The campaign of former Senate District 30 Chairman and current Senate District 30 candidate Mark Baisley today asked Rep. Ted Harvey to pull false information linked to the Harvey web site that illegally states that "establishment multi-millionaires" upset with Harvey's pro-life stance are funding the Baisley campaign.

"Ted obviously doesn't keep up with the news or talk to many pro-life activists," Baisley deadpanned. Baisley is being supported by an impressive array of pro-life leaders and has worked on putting together a pro-life summit to build an effective partnership for his terms in the Colorado Senate.

"Mark is the consistent social and economic conservative. He has practiced his beliefs all his life," said Senator John Evans of Parker, a Roman Catholic, pro-life legislator. Harvey was endorsed by NARAL when Evans defeated him in Harvey?s previous Senate race.

[...]

"Ted is so desperate to revive his failing political career that his campaign strategy revolves around inventing an evil cabal that wants him out because he's pro-life. We want him out because he's not an effective advocate of the causes he says he cares about. And the comments on his web site just prove it," said Baisley.

I make no claims for the accuracy of candidate Baisley's statements. But they do suggest that Rep. Harvey knew he needed to emphasize his pro-life credentials to the national movement to attract out-of-state funding, the local pro-lifers apparently being split between the two candidates. Harvey is a Baptist, while Baisley is a Catholic. Since being a self-described Catholic has been the best predictor of pro-abortion rights support in the Colorado legislature, I would like to see more pro-life Catholics in that body. But even more I'd like to see the best man win.

New Age--Rhymes with Sewage: The Enneagram at the Movies

A web search for Debunking the Enneagram led one reader to my link to friend Chris Rees' excellent essay. Following through on his search, I discover that there is a discussion board dedicated to analyzing films through the funhouse mirror-lens that is enneagram analysis. Johnny Mnemonic, whose Jabootu.com MST3K treatment was excerpted here, receives an analysis from trained enneagram practitioners. The Keanu Reeves vehicle was a cyberpunk sci-fi failure remarkable for its utter lack of redeeming qualities. The Enneagram movie analysis website suggests the monumental failures of the faddish pop-psychoanalytic system.

The Enneagram Analysis of Johnny Mnemonic is an abominable pantomime of thought. It endangers the proper functioning of the mind as the absence of gravity withers the muscles. It affects reason as tear gas affects the nasal cavity: overloaded by one singular, putrid sensation, the mind seizes like a fuel-deprived engine, shut down by the pure irrationality it has encountered.

In short: Caveat Lector. Here are some mind-crippling excerpts:

Keanu Reeves plays Johnny Mnemonic/Mr.Smith - E9 character
Everything seems to happen to him (passive) and he's stuck in it. He's unpretentious, distracted and forgetfull. When his bored E3 girlfriend ('Just getting some ice') asks him 'so where is home Johnny?' he answers 'Would you believe?I don't even know?we've got?.ice?.' He plays himself; a mildly narcotized stubborn E9 character. In the movie he's also relativating situations 'Double cheese, ansovis' when all guns are pointed to him by the E5 bunch of Chinese nerdy ('Your storage capacity?') computer R&D scientists. (same as Hugh Grant's E9-ish 'minimizing' movie humor). When he's with Spider he's also minimizing; 'This is a full service shop'


Ice-T (a very secretive real life person with regard to his biography) plays J-Bone - E6 character He's alert, vigilant for potential dangers; xenofobic. Also loyal to his Lotek group/company. Over-armed for protection against dangers. About Jones: 'He's a friend'. 'Watch your ass man..'

Dolph Lundgren plays Street Preacher/Karl - extreme E4
The hateful neurotic freak , spiritual fantasy; imagining himself as Jesus: 'And who is this lost soul--this sinner unrepentend behold your savior!?' J-Bone said about Street Preacher; 'He doesn't have one natural bone in his body'. Anybody's having the opinion he's a megalomanic E8?

The immigrant scanning computer at Newark - E5 'character'
Objective diagonosis - analysing robot/computer; clinical voice; 'Implant detected--neural failure within 24 hours?'

The Horror, the Horror...

Home Cooking Without a License

MURFREESBORO — The state Department of Agriculture is enforcing food safety rules that prevent jams, ice cream and bread and certain other processed foods made in home kitchens from being sold at the local Farmers Market.

The rules that began being enforced last month have affected some longtime food vendors who were preparing their goods in the same kitchen where they cook for their families.

[...]

Agriculture Department officials said the rules aim to prevent food poisoning by requiring that such goods be prepared in a commercial-style kitchen with washable floors, walls and ceilings, tight-fitting doors and screened windows.

"Basically, no food can be made in your residence. It must be in a separate kitchen, which could be in the same house," said Buddy Woodson, a food and dairy administrator with the Tennessee Department of Agriculture.

Associated Press,
Rules shutting down foods sales from home kitchens

The article even lacks any of the de rigeur horror stories about E. coli poisonings of children or concealed razor-blades slicing innocents' tongues. "Preventive laws" are too often only the manufactured illusions of bureaucratic foresight. One of Rod Dreher's better sections in his Crunchy Con book described how food, the literal victuals of family life, has had its preparation outsourced from the home. Now government has impoverished local culture a little bit more, acting yet again to fix what nobody thought was broken.

Vice is a monster of such frightful mien
As to be hated, needs to be seen
Yet seen too oft, familiar with its face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
-Alexander Pope, Essay on Man

Brain Death: Too Convenient a Concept?

Drake was invited to debate prominent bioethicist Peter Singer at a private school in Chicago in 2004. In his speech, Singer said that the brain death criteria did not exist in medical literature until its invention by a group of bioethicists who used it to "sell brain death" to the public.

Singer said that in the last 30 years nations have all amended the definition of death to include brain death, not because of any medical breakthrough or scientific discovery, but as a result of changes in ethics policies and advances in transplant medicine.
New Jersey Looking to Harvest More Organs by Easing "Brain Death" Criteria

A Human Face on Abortion: Gianna Jessen in Denver

Ted Harvey, a Republican in the Colorado Legislature, reports on his guest Gianna Jessen's visit to the capitol:

I was leaving the House chambers for the weekend when our Democrat speaker of the House announced that the coming Monday would be the final day of this year's General Assembly. He went on to state that there were still numerous resolutions on the calendar which we would need to be addressed prior to the summer adjournment. Interestingly, he specifically mentioned that one of the resolutions we would be hearing was being carried by the House Majority Leader Alice Madden, honoring the 90th anniversary of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.

[...]

Following a committee hearing, I rushed into the House chambers just as the opening morning prayer was about to be given. Between the prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, I wrote a quick note to the speaker of the House explaining that Gianna is an advocate for cerebral palsy. I took the note to the speaker and asked if I could have my friend open the last day of session by singing the national anthem. Without any hesitation the speaker took the microphone and said, "Before we begin, Representative Harvey has made available for us Gianna Jessen to sing the national anthem."

Gianna sang the most amazing rendition of The Star Spangled Banner that you could possibly imagine. Every person in the entire chamber was completely still, quiet and in awe of this frail young lady's voice.

[...]

As I looked around the huge hall I listened to the unbelievable melody of Gianna's voice being accompanied by a choir of over 100 voices. I had chills running all over my body, and I knew that I had just witnessed an act of God.

As the song concluded the speaker of the House explained that Gianna has cerebral palsy and is an activist to bring awareness to the disease. "Let us give her a hand not only for her performance today, but also for her advocacy work," he said. The chamber immediately exploded into applause -- she had them all in the palm of her hand.

[...]

Members, I would like to introduce you to a new friend and hero of mine -- her name is Gianna Jessen. She is visiting us today from Nashville, Tennessee, where she is an accomplished recording artist.

She has cerebral palsy and was raised in foster homes before being adopted at the age of four.

She was born prematurely and weighed only 2 pounds at birth. She remained in the hospital for almost three months. A doctor once said she had a great will to live and that she fought for her life. Eventually she was able to leave the hospital and be placed in foster care.

Because of her cerebral palsy, her foster mother was told that it was doubtful that she would ever crawl or walk. She could not sit up independently. Through the prayers and dedication of her foster mother, she eventually learned to sit up, crawl, then stand. Shortly before her fourth birthday, she began to walk with leg braces and a walker.

She continued in physical therapy and after a total of four surgeries, she was able to walk without assistance.

[...]

As the applause began to die down, I raised my hand to be recognized one more time.

Mr. Speaker, members, if you would allow me just a few more moments I would appreciate your time.

My name is Ted Harvey, not Paul Harvey, but, please, let me tell you the rest of the story.

The cause of Gianna's cerebral palsy is not because of some biological freak of nature, but rather the choice of her mother.

You see when her biological mother was 17-years-old and 7-and-a-half months pregnant, she went to a Planned Parenthood clinic to seek a late-term abortion. The abortionist performed a saline abortion on this 17-year-old girl. This procedure requires the injection of a high concentration of saline into the mother's womb, which the fetus is then bathed in and swallows, which results in the fetus being burned to death, inside and out. Within 24 hours the results are normally an induced, still-born abortion.

As Gianna can testify, the procedure is not always 100 percent effective. Gianna is an aborted late-term fetus who was born alive. The high concentration of saline in the womb for 24 hours resulted in a lack of oxygen to her brain and is the cause of her cerebral palsy.

Members, today, we are going to recognize the 90th anniversary of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood?"

BANG! The gavel came down.

The Rocky Mountain News reports that Harvey angered the punctillious adherents of the sacred rituals of the legislature, including some of his fellow Republicans:

"I came this close to standing up and saying something," said Rep. Mark Larson, R-Cortez. He and others said Harvey violated House rules and protocol.

"It was despicable," said House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder. "Ted Harvey doesn't care about proper decorum or the rules. He just wants to push his narrow agenda."

Such an indecorous human face is Ms. Jessen's.

The Denver Post also reports the reaction:

Rep. Ted Harvey Monday was rebuked Monday for introducing on the House floor a woman who said her cerebral palsy was caused by a botched late-term abortion.

Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, said he told the woman's story on the same day the House planned to consider a resolution to recognize the 90th anniversary of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains because, "I just wanted to put a face to this celebration."

But Kate Horle, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, said "There's no statistical evidence that cerebral palsy has been caused by failed abortions."

Students said they were offended when Mansfield said the only gentlemen left were either gay or conservative.

"If I was a gay man I'd be offended," said Rebecca Goetz, a fourth year graduate student in history who attended the speech as a guest of an Eliot undergraduate.
Harvey Mansfield Decries Harvard's Sex Scene