miscellany

Ever played that game where you make everything funny (movie titles, book titles, fortune cookies) by adding the phrase "in bed" after it? I've decided it would be great discipline for everyone involved in any kind of public discourse to add the phrase "according to whom?" after every assertion. It might make us more aware of ourselves--our limitations, our assumptions, our presumptions, our false characterizations, our general epistemic laziness.

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Clare's learned how to tattle: after I returned to Dallas from Abilene, she told on her Grandmom for taking away her duckies in the bathtub (they were soaps, and she was about to rub them in her eyes). Imagine piteous toddler voice: "Grandmom TOOK soapy duckies. Clare sooo SAD."

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Had a successful dissertation day today: a section that gave me so much trouble months ago that I moved on without finishing it, leaving it in a mess, is now in a more-or-less final shape after incorporating an insight I gleaned while teaching the ACU Cyborgs & Olive Trees class. Current goal: get this chapter presentable enough to send off to my advisor by AAR, and after AAR's presentation on transhumanism and the body, turn my attention (finally!) to the theology part of this theology and science dissertation.

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I realized tonight while talking to my sister that I'd actually be a LOT happier if I could feel some pride in Sarah Palin as a respectable adversary. Part of me would be very satisfied to see her finally do well on the national stage--to give some solid answers, not just insults and roundabout BS. It would undoubtedly suck for the Obama campaign if she did. Nonetheless, part of me--you know, that part--would feel quite satisfied to see her justify her presence on the national stage, rather than continue to occupy it on the basis of someone else's whim, (um, I mean, calculated strategic choice based on her symbolic value to certain demographics).


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I read an interesting article recently on Obama and the infanticide charge that keeps appearing in those blasted youtube comments that I find so ridiculous. I don't agree with everything in the article, but it does make the point that the difference between the law as it stood and the bills Obama voted against hang on viability; and that makes the ethical situation parallel to end-of-life situations. To call Obama a supporter of infanticide is like accusing people with living wills and DNRs of being suicidal, or calling family members who make the decision to remove medical support murderers. (Of course, there are people who say stuff like that, I guess.) The bottom line, though, is that this is one of those gray-area disputes misleading crammed into very black-and-white categories. Is it really moral to "save" a non-viable life? I find this the wrong point for drastic intervention in any case: if we could reduce unwanted pregnancy with preventative measures like birth control and effective sex ed, if we could reduce the perceived necessity of abortion by making it possible to carry unwanted pregnancies to term without shame and unbearable economic/social consequences, then we will have intervened at points which are actually effective for averting this tragedy.

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I've started re-reading books from my Brit Novel course back in my Harding days. It's an interesting exercise, one that proves that I was truly clueless back then. I didn't notice at the time how many of the protagonists were women: Jane Eyre, Wide Sargasso Sea, Excellent Women, A Passage to India (there were more books, we did a book a week, I think, so the pattern may not hold all the way through--I'm not sure how to verify, since I no longer have the syllabus). I'm also horror-struck in my re-reading of Jane Eyre: it begins with a scene I can only read as a euphemistic rape scene and I know I didn't see that when I was in college. But what really threw me was the character of St. John: reminiscent of the missions type I dated, the result of which was a two-year depression and a whole hell of a lot of emotional baggage. Thank God Jane knew enough to run screaming away back to Rochester! Then, of course, Wide Sargasso Sea retells it all through the eyes of Bertha, the mad wife in the attic; and then Rochester's no prize either.

Excellent Women is much funnier now that I'm a theologian married to an Episcopalian almost-priest; I even get the John Henry Newman jokes and the references to the Oxford Movement along with all the chuckles about the indispensability of excellent women with their ready-to-hand cups of tea.

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Had sincere intentions of blogging more about ACU Summit but honestly, I can't remember any of the things I had mentally tucked away to blog about at this point. Except that, it's wonderful to return to a place where everyone seems to remember you fondly and says outrageously nice things about/to you. Like "she's one of my favorite people." Whaaaa? Really? The gathered-up collective ego-boost from such outrageousness is going to keep me going all the way to next year.

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Looking forward to the arrival of Anna and Sylva tomorrow! Toddlers Unite! (Mothers, cower?)