silly songs

There is a tradition of silly songs in my family. My grandmother on my father's side is particularly famous for this, having a beautiful voice and a marvelous sense of humor. Here's a sample:

"At the boardinghouse where I live
everything is growing old
there are gray hairs in the butter
and the bread has turned to mold (has turned to mold)

When the dog died we had hotdogs,
when the cat died, catnip tea
when the landlord died I left there
spare ribs were too much for me (too much for me)..."

There's also, of course, the Orchestra Song and "Maggie Dear," and a whole host of others but those are the ones I can remember at the moment. (Incidentally, if anyone knows the third verse to "At the Boardinghouse" my entire extended family--and that's a hell of a lot of people--would be indebted to you if you would share it. We can't remember it and always skip to the fourth verse where for some reason the churchhouse is suddenly on fire and we suspect the third verse is the culprit.)

I guess that's why I find myself singing to Clare all day long. Tuneless monotone things with ridiculous lyrics. Or sometimes actual melodic phrases with a decent rhyming structure. Or classic songs with alternative Clare-specific lyrics. I'm no Laura Hays or anything, but Clare's not old enough to know I'm not really talented.

First there was "Who loves Baby Clare?" which really has no melody to speak of, but the virtue of which is that the chorus can list basically everyone in the world and their kitty cat, because of course, everyone and their kitty cat loves Baby Clare. Then, "Who's the cutest (smartest, funniest, fattest, heaviest, most superlative in whatever way is appropriate at the moment) baby in the whole wide world?" which was great because for awhile, Clare would stop crying if I sang it to her. Before breakfast, there's "Twinkle, twinkle little Clare, how I wonder... what you eat for breakfast" (credit goes to my niece Sol for that one). And, to the tune of "O Christmas Tree":

"O Baby Clare, O Baby Clare,
How lovely is your sprouting hair.
O Baby Clare, O Baby Clare,
It is so thin and sparse up there.
O Baby Clare, O Baby Clare,
Your bald patch is beyond compare.
O Baby Clare, O Baby Clare
How lovely is your sprouting hair."

I've also found that, when she's screaming bloody murder into my ear for no discernible reason, that it really helps me retain perspective to sing my mommy pep song:

"Who loves her baby even when she's fussy (angry, tired, screaming, you get it), who loves her baby all the time?
Mama does, mama does, mama loves her baby, mama loves her baby all of the time."

Just my way of getting through the day, dears..."the Samaritans were engaged."

gal328

So, those of you are not (or never have been) CofC may not be interested, but gal328.org is a marvelous website to check out if you are. Since I am already most decidedly convicted on the subject of Gender Justice and Churches of Christ, my favorite part of the site is the forum. Sadly, over the last year the forum has slowed down quite a bit. I faithfully checked it every day for months and months even though there was rarely a new post to read. I now probably check every week (or so). It's not that gender justice is any less urgent or fascinating a topic of discussion among us; just that, I think, everyone who reads and participates in the forum conversation has been there awhile and has had ample opportunity to share and say what they think to a sympathetic audience of like-minded people. And now that we've done that, we exist in companionable virtual silence with each other, just occasionally checking in.

Not that companionable silences are bad, but they make for a boring blog. So I've posted a comment on the forum hoping that it will stimulate some conversation. And my hope is that I can continue to every so often post something that will elicit our lurkers to comment and interact with each other. Since I posted a couple days ago and no one has responded, I figured it couldn't hurt to use this blog to direct people there (since there is some overlap in readership).

And if anyone has ideas about strategies to get the conversation re-started over there, I would love it if you'd share them with me. You can post a comment here or you can email me (my email address is available through my blogger profile).

It's this week!

Check out this link to CCfB's team for the MS Walk on April 22. Clare and I briefly considered walking but...oh yeah, she doesn't walk yet. (She is standing up on her own, though, and cruising along the furniture--but if she really wants to get somewhere, she uses the Old Reliable: crawling.)

There's a donation link available from the site linked above if anyone wants to contribute. I would like to consider myself as performing the service of linking up readers with something resembling "disposable income" with a nice way to dispose of a bit of it. [People who have no jobs, people who are students, people who are living at home with their parents, etc., are excused but the rest of you, c'mon, what are you earning all that money for anyway?]

There's a beautiful sad thought over at Someone Like Me Too.

Campbellites? Nay, Cranmerites!

So, this is really Brent's post except that he's too lazy to write it so I have to do it instead. No, no, that's slanderously untrue. Brent is too busy writing his funereal dissertation to blog, whereas I'm just about to give up the pretense of being an academic altogether after last week's fiasco.

We have noticed over the past couple of years, Brent and I, that an incredible number of discontented CofCers have landed in the Episcopal Church. We're discovering new refugees all the time--mostly through the blogosphere but Brent also met two people while visiting VTS a few weeks ago, someone in the PTS bookstore, and there's a priest here in the Diocese of New Jersey who went to Lipscomb... It's enough to make us wonder, anyhow; and so here are the questions I have, for anyone who happens to be a former CofCer turned Episcopalian (not Episcopal, which is an adjective).

1. Why the Episcopal Church? Why not something closer to home--like Disciples of Christ, for instance?
   
2. How many other churches did you check out before choosing the Episcopal Church as home?
   
3. What continuities do you see between the Episcopal Church and Churches of Christ?
4. What was the last theological/doctrinal "hurdle" to overcome in joining the Episcopal Church?
5. Aren't vestments cool?
6. How long have you been Episcopalian? Do you still maintain any CofC ties? Does your family pray for your salvation or are they cool with your Episcopalian-ness?
7. Have you met many other former CofCers? Why do you think so many turn to the Episcopal Church when they leave the CofC?
8. Give us your vote--do we baptize Clare as an infant or not? (Not that sacraments are a matter of majority rule or anything...)
   

(it's me, Margaret)

Me: hi god
God:Hello there. What is your name?
Me: don't you know?
God:Sure I know. But I cannot tell you right now.
Me: okay. then i can't tell you either.
God:OK with me too. It goes without saying. Why is it a secret?
Me: that is such a good question. why are you so secretive?
God:Thanks. Next question?

My conversation ended when I said "I like people. I don't think they should go to hell." Apparently either God detected the enormous falsity of "I like people" OR God was mad that I think people shouldn't go to hell. In any case, there were no more responses from God.

Have your own conversation here. And eavesdrop on the Feminarian's conversation here.

it's time...

...for another picture of Clare.

on being savonarola

So, the Wild at Heart discussion over at KB's blog, and the related discussion here, prompt me to wonder--not about societally assigned gender roles, really, since I've been reading other stimulating material lately on that topic--but about the ethics of the disposal of books.

See, I own a lot of books. I also married into a lot of books. A lot plus a lot, is, well, a whole lot. So many that Clare's first word, and I assure you that now she most definitely means it, is "book." BooKKKK. Booooooooook! Book-ook. B-gook. Book!

Our books are important to us. They are for work and for play and for comfort and for personal betterment. They are advisors, friends, lullabies, nostalgia. But lurking among their ranks are traitors: books from the past which betray my former self, back before I started, you know, thinking about stuff. Shameful books. False friends and bad advisors. Books that keep me awake at night and remind me of aspects of my past I'd rather forget.

Brent used to turn the spines backwards on books he preferred to pretend weren't infiltrating our bookshelves (oddly, he has the same habit with old evangelical T-shirts; he still wears them--but inside out). Now, quite a lot of our books are boxed and in storage (displaced by the small but disproportionately powerful presence of Clare). Most of the shameful titles are therefore now safely tucked away out of sight in the perpetually damp storage space provided for use--at the tenant's own risk--in the basement: Book Hell. Our multiple copies of James Dobson's marriage book, all wedding gifts, are down there. Transforming Your Workplace for Christ--a random title I picked up at an estate sale for use as a resource of example text for a Christianity in Culture final exam a couple years ago, is down there. The Purpose-Driven Life, and workbook, are down there. Who Stole Feminism, which I wrote a book review of my first semester at Harding, is down there...back before I was a feminist.

I'd like to get rid of these books, I think. But how?

There's a dilemma in getting rid of the traitorous books of one's shameful past. What, exactly, can you do with them? You can't give them away to people you know--unless you want to try explaining 1) why you no longer want to be associated with that book and 2) why you think it's just perfect for them... Perhaps, then, you can sell it: at the annual PTS book sale, enormous and anonymous, or half.com. But then you think, wait. How can it be okay to give away a harmful book? And even worse, to make someone pay you for that harmful book?

Of course, there's always the bonfire option. But Fahrenheit 451 is not on my list of traitorous books.

damn it.

Dear blog readers, please forgive the fact that the intended audience of this post is not (originally) you. I just don't have the strength to explain it all again.


The Metametaphor of Information,
or, You are What You E-Know,
or, How/Why I Forgot my Lecture and the Nam-Shub of Enki

Were it on purpose, it might be clever to offer virtuality in place of Real lecture. (Or perhaps some of you would like to comment on whether there is any substantial difference…)

The Story of How I Forgot to Lecture is a simple one: a narrative which involves the (mis)coding of information. Once upon a time there was a conversation: a dissemination of information via sound waves, which, when received and properly internalized, is encoded chemically in the brain for later data retrieval. This process is, of course, sometimes hit-or-miss; so once upon a time there was also a dayplanner, into which the same information could be coded into written symbols, a different code repeating the same information received by the sound waves and encoded chemically in the brain. But these symbols can be misunderstood, corrupted, lost or obliterated over time…Or dayplanners can simply go unopened, and like long-lost clay tablets with vital information on them, if they go unread, the information therein is ineffective.

The nam-shub of Enki turns out to translate from the cuneiform as, “isn’t Dr. Osmer still in Germany?”

Indeed.

The plot of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash hangs on the supposition that Information is All. Why can a human being get a virus from a computer? Answer: what is a computer?—a machine that codes information/ what is a virus?—a tiny bit of self-replicating information/ what is a human being?—a conglomeration of genetically coded information. As Hiro Protagonist, broke and recently unemployed resident of U-Stor-It, Greatest Swordsman in the World and Warrior Prince of the Metaverse, gradually realizes, not only is the Metaverse an instantiation of Information, a collection of coded protocols written in languages that manipulate the basic binary code of computer-existence, Reality itself is constituted by information, a collection of physical, biological, social and cultural patterns of information enacted and embodied by various artifacts: machines and people and ideas, animals and franchulates and religions. Information is the substratum of Life and Reality.

We as readers must, just as Hiro must, negotiate these intersecting media of information, tracing the virus across these intersecting levels of genetic/biological, linguistic, cultural and virtual instantiations. Snow Crash is first presented to us as a computer virus, encoded in binary form; then a neurolinguistic virus coded in glossalalic syllables; then a biological virus, genetically encoded in infected blood cells. The virus, variously instantiated, is the same Information, which, regardless of its medium, enacts the same disruptive result on those who contract it—through religion, through exchange of bodily fluids, or through the binarily coded information on a bitmap accessed through the optic nerve. The destination of the virus is to coil like a serpent around the human brainstem, and it may travel in whatever way is convenient to get there.

To say that Information is All is to say something basic about, well, everything. To say that human beings are genetically coded Information says…what? It is commonplace now to refer to genetic code as “blueprints,” to think of our human genes as an instruction kit for the various proteins to meticulously assemble themselves into a human being over a 9-month (give or take) period of construction. Human being=a certain pattern of information assembled out of a supplied medium. What anthropological assumptions are at work here? And what are the implications for humans as mobile biological information systems?

It is no coincidence that the posthuman appears again in Snow Crash. If we are embodied patterns of information, and Information is All, then we (like the Snow Crash virus) may be variously instantiated in media other than the strictly biological. Information is pattern; and pattern can be replicated using different materials.

But Stephenson gives us more than a vision of The Posthuman; he gives us a variety of posthumans, and a companion cyborg species. (Post-dog as post-man’s best friend.) Ng is perhaps the most grotesque of the posthuman figures Stephenson gives us: “a sort of neoprene pouch about the size of a garbage can suspended from the ceiling by a web of straps, shock cords, tubes, wires, fiber-optic cables, and hydraulic lines…At the top of the pouch, Y.T. can see a patch of skin with some black hair around it—the top of a balding man’s head…Below this, on either side, where you’d sort of expect to see arms, huge bundles of wires, fiber optics, and tubes run up out of the floor and are seemingly plugged into Ng’s shoulder sockets. There is a similar arrangement where his legs are supposed to be attached, and more stuff going into his groin and hooked up to various locations on his torso” (225-6). Bizarre though this physical manifestation is, as Ng coolly explains to Y.T., the van is nothing more than a really souped-up motorized wheelchair. The apparatus attached to him enables the informational pattern that constitutes Ng to resist disintegration; it is an alternative medium, but the Information is Ng.

Likewise, Ng’s creation of Rat Things allows for a certain psychological continuity in which the instantiation of Information in the purely biological medium is retained in the memory, and forms the informational pattern that makes the Rat Thing the same dog it always was: B-782 is Fido, and Rat Thing B-782 loves Y.T. because Fido loves Y.T. (443-4). Most telling is Ng’s explicit statement to Y.T. countering her disgust at both him and the Rat Things: “Your mistake is that you think all mechanically assisted organisms—like me—are pathetic cripples. In fact, we are better than we were before” (248). [Here, the really interesting question of the overlap Ng achieves between Metaverse and Reality, symbolized for us in the virtual masseuse that gives a Real massage through the electrocontractive gel Ng's Real body is immersed in, prompts us to wonder, with the Velveteen Rabbit, what is Real? Which Ng is the real Ng? A question we will return to with regard to our Hiro.]

In contrast to Ng and the Rat Things, who are Information preserved in alternative media, are the wireheads of L. Bob Rife. The wireheads are still fully biological in terms of life-sustaining systems; their cyborg parts are in addition to, rather than substitution for, their biological ones. Yet despite their higher degree of biological integrity, the wireheads are the truly frightening posthuman figure, for they are corrupted Information, rather than preserved Information. L. Bob Rife has left the medium more or less unmolested, but the Information—that which carries identity—has been purposefully hijacked by the virus.

Occupying a gray area between Ng and his Rat Things, and L. Bob Rife’s wireheads, are the gargoyles, and Hiro himself. And the difference between Hiro as freelance hacker, sometime Warrior Prince of the Metaverse, and Hiro as gargoyle (265) is a matter of degree so slight as to disappear. Which brings us to the question: is the difference between Hiro’s access of technology and our own interface with it also a degree so slight as to disappear?

This indeed would be the question that Donna Haraway would put to us via her "Cyborg Manifesto." To be a cyborg is not only to have machine literally grafted into flesh. It is also simply to be so dependent on technology that one cannot function without it—and this, I dare say, describes every single one of us, members of the technological elite, who interface with our technology multiple times a day.

Haraway’s ultimate goal in the "Manifesto" is not to laud the imminent arrival of the cyborg as a technophile. Rather, she is deeply suspicious of the oppressive economic possibilities of technology in a way resonant with the landscape of Stephenson’s future America of Burbclaves and franchulates. Stephenson draws for us a caricatured but logical extension of tendencies already present and at work in American culture: to identify with people who are “like us,” and paradoxically at the same time, to manufacture identity as image. The nearly infinite fracturing of group identities is obvious in the ever-growing list of ethnic identities that includes “jeeks” and “Nips” but also “the Military” and “skateboarders” as distinct ethnic groups. The fracturing of the United States government into independent franchises mirrors the ethnic fracturing in a literal way: each Franchise is for “people like us” and some, such as the New South Africa Franchulate, are violently racist. Stephenson offers no anodyne for this disturbing social development. There seems to be no possibility for identity and solidarity other than that of natural identity and origin—those “like us.” Haraway, too, pegs this tendency in her "Manifesto," and prescribes as nam-shub, “affinity,” that is, “related not by blood but by choice, the appeal of one chemical nuclear group for another, avidity.” When one is hybrid, identification by natural origin is precluded—and this, Haraway and Stephenson both tell us, is a good thing. It is not by accident that Hiro is racially hybrid, ethnically hybrid, and occupies an intersecting set of economic and class categories, in addition to becoming something very close to the cyborg of Haraway’s essay.

Which brings us to the question: who is Hiro Protagonist, Really? Is the real Hiro the penniless former-Deliverator freelance hacker in the U-Stor-It, or is Hiro indeed the Warrior Prince that he is in the Metaverse? Is the Warrior Prince a manufactured image, much as the facades of Uncle Enzo and the daffy Chenglish-speaking Mr. Lee are? Or is it that Hiro, unburdened by the limits of circumstance, becomes more fully himself in the Metaverse than anywhere else? If this is so—again, what does this say about what constitutes a human being? As Hiro’s identities converge, leading to a Metaverse triumph with very Real consequences, what might this say about the connection between image and identity in a world of malleable information? If Hiro is Information, can he be re-imaged/re-written/re-programmed?

Of course he can: for this is the threat of the Snow Crash/Asherah virus. And this brings us, finally, to the question of religion as virus, a metaphor Stephenson puts forward in several places. Religion, like any other cultural meme (or in Stephenson’s term, me), spreads like a virus: through contact, specifically, linguistic contact, for language is the medium of interpersonal informational connection. Consider "truthiness." Consider, if you will, Wikiality. Like truthiness, religious doctrine is more or less contagious, depending on the susceptibility of those exposed to it: a conceptual virus that enacts itself by re-patterning behavior of those who catch it. But in Stephenson’s conception, religion is a cultural meme like any other: praise God, bake bread. It is simply information that generates behavior. Is this what religion is—simply a set of more or less compelling ideas? Is religion is so thoroughly naturalized that the metaphysical disappears into the social?

Or does it? The mystical reappears under the same guise that quashes it: Information. For Information is All. And Information must come from somewhere—and for this, Stephenson reaches for the Metavirus from Outer Space. The Fount. The Source. The Logos. Hiro observes during the course of his researches with the Librarian that the Metaverse is a single vast nam-shub, enacting itself on L. Bob Rife’s fiber-optic network (211). But the Metaverse is simply another version of Reality, a single vast nam-shub enacting itself variously on the biomass, spoken into existence by the Metavirus from Outer Space. Information acting itself out in various media.

But religion as virus is not unambiguously negative, for the Snow Crash/Asherah virus through which L. Bob Rife the paranoid egomaniacal Texas wants to control all Information (and therefore everything), is countered by the nam-shub of Enki, the Babel/Infocalypse, a counter-neurolinguistic virus which is Reality’s salvation from undifferentiated, centralized Informational Control. Religion, then, is a medium for information, rather than Information itself, a constant of human nature (as Juanita points out, 200-1) that may be exploited for either good or ill.

There is, perhaps, an underlying Good that may be identified in Stephenson’s narrative of the Babel incident, and that is, the value of diversity. In the fractured landscape of Burbclaves and franchulates, where every group has its label, (its mascot, and its company motto), diversity has become estrangement. But Stephenson also offers us the information that diversity is necessary, valuable, and in a certain sense, salvation. Monocultures, like fields of corn, are vulnerable. “Maybe Babel was the best thing that ever happened to us” (279).

…In conclusion, I would point out that you, fellow members of the elite techno-priesthood, are also en with powers over multiple nam-shubs. Every day you work your magic through simple speech: 'I love you' is as transformative an utterance as one might ever give or receive, in any language. And as I again beg your indulgence for my personal snowcrash this week, I would most humbly remind you, so is, as well, absolvo te.

JTB

an explanatory note

Since I've never bothered to define "posthuman"...

There is an ambiguity at play that is really very significant. When I use "posthuman," I mean something like this. But it seems that quite a few people critiquing the idea of the posthuman use the word to refer to this. I think this second definition is properly considered a specific, and deficient, vision of posthumanity.

posthuman Dawn

This past week for ED 325, "Science Fiction, Social Criticism and Eschatological Thinking," we read Octavia E. Butler's Dawn, the beginning of her Xenogenesis trilogy. This is a fascinating novel about the posthuman, not least because it recasts the possibility of the posthuman into a fate not necessarily chosen by humanity itself or wrought by human technological achievement.

This is such a departure from the typical portrayal of the posthuman as the monstrous result of out of control (human) technology that it demands scrutiny. Why does Butler reconceive the posthuman in this way, and what does it say about her anthropology?

Throughout the novel Dawn, human beings are portrayed as a species uniquely constituted and conflicted. Twice, human uniqueness is affirmed as the contradiction of being "so full of life and death" at the same time. The Oankali, a three-gendered (male, female and ooloi), non-hierarchical species driven by a need for genetic exchange with nearly all other species they encounter, seem to regard humanity with a mixture of horror and irresistible romantic attraction--a reaction inspired by the uneasy mix of bipolarities that describe human nature. As the plot unfolds, we are given no unambiguously admirable human character (nor, for that matter, any unambiguously admirable alien character); even the protagonist, Lilith, with whom I as a reader sympathized immensely, is not without the flaws that seem to be definitive for human nature for Butler. Violence erupts with a slow, inexorable, tragic inevitability that no amount of foresight on Lilith's part can avoid. Misunderstanding, self-loathing, shame and desire, the need for expiation and punishment--all are incomprehensible to the Oankali, who not only are unified within themselves and never experience such inner conflict, but achieve unity, through the ooloi, with each other that humanity cannot properly conceive and cannot experience except through the ecstasy made possible through union with the ooloi--are presented by Butler as both the human flaws that trigger violence and tragedy, and the defenses which preserve the essentially human, or even the strongholds which enshrine the essentially human, and as that which is endangered by the posthuman future offered by the Oankali through the genetic blending of the two species. To be essentially human, and remain so, is to remain flawed. The dualism of humanity is both its uniqueness and its doom.

This view of humanity is one in which technology can never become a means of salvation, but only a means of destruction. Technology in the hands of fatally flawed humanity can only mean bigger, better, faster and more total means of self-destruction. And indeed, the book begins there: in post-nuclear-war devestation, from which humans must be rescued if they are to survive at all.

It seems logical to expect, then, that the Oankali are god-like beings--and such indeed they are. Personally, I am convinced that the Oankali are not simply god-like, but are Butler's image and theological critique of God--the Christian God--specifically, the Baptist God. The Oankali are a unified three-in-one, a trinity, in which the ooloi (the third gender) act much like the Holy Spirit in Augustine's description of the Trinity, as the "bond of love" between the other two. They are, in comparison to humans, omniscient (or close enough), and they are (or believe themselves to be) benevolent; they are powerful and in control of individual human lives as well as the collective fate of humanity; they make of Lilith a kind of prophetic leader; they intend the transformation of flawed human nature into something better.

And yet the Oankali are not, in contrast to humanity, completely harmonious and unconflicted moral beings. There are disagreements among them as to how to best handle their contact and interaction with humans. They seem to desire, above all, a mutual and reciprocal relationship with humans; but at the same time, they are distant, controlling, manipulative, ostensibly beneficent but unbearably patronizing. And they propose to transform humanity in ways that they refuse to describe, and proceed to do so without anything resembling consent. Lilith, whose relationship with the Oankali is the only one which comes at all close to one of equality and respect, resents the "need-to-know" justification for her ignorance, the callous disregard for her feelings, the deaf ear which the Oankali turn to her well-founded misgivings, and most disturbingly, the physical changes they effect in her without her knowledge. If relationship is indeed their goal, the means by which they try to achieve are incredibly counterproductive. The Oankali, too, are flawed. And this is what I think Butler wants to say about God: that if this is how God deals with humanity, an ostensibly beneficent but unbearably patronizing deity, then God too is flawed.

MS Walk

Hi everyone,

After you've spleened all over the last post, here's something you can do to restore your sense of goodwill and faith in humanity.

Check out this link to CCfB's team for the MS Walk on April 22. Clare and I briefly considered walking but...oh yeah, she doesn't walk yet. (She is standing up on her own, though, and cruising along the furniture--but if she really wants to get somewhere, she uses the Old Reliable: crawling.)

There's a donation link available from the site linked above if anyone wants to contribute. I would like to consider myself as performing the service of linking up readers with something resembling "disposable income" with a nice way to dispose of a bit of it.

the temptation of theodicy

I received the following as an email forward a few days ago. I thought about "replying all" with my response but decided against it since I don't have any idea who most of the other people on the address list are. I reckon theological ranting is really only barely tolerable when you know someone well, and from a virtual stranger, completely uncivilized. But that's what blogs are for!

Here it is:

Explanation!
This is one of the best explanations of why God allows pain and suffering
that I have seen. It's an explanation other people will understand.

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed. As the
barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation. They talked about
so many things and various subjects. When they eventually touched on the
subject of God, the barber said: "I don't believe that God exists."

"Why do you say that?" asked the customer.

"Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't
exist. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people? Would
there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering
nor pain. I can't imagine loving a God who would allow all of these things."

The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want
to start an argument. The barber finished his job and the customer left the
shop. Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long,
stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and un-kept.

The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the
barber: "You know what? Barbers do not exist."

"How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber."I am here, and I am a
barber. And I just worked on you!"

"No!" the customer exclaimed. "Barbers don't exist because if they did, there
would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man
outside."

"Ah, but barbers DO exist! What happens is, people do not come to me."

"Exactly!" affirmed the customer. "That's the point! God, too, DOES exist!
What happens, is, people don't go to Him and do not look for Him. That's why
there's so much pain and suffering in the world."

BE BLESSED & BE A BLESSING!

Now, don't you feel blessed? Come on, don't you? I know you do. If you don't, well, it's your own damn fault and don't blame the barber. But, on second thought, why expend all my ranting energy myself? Really, there's too much else to do, people. Kitchens to clean. Laundry to fold. Sick babies to make well, or, since I can't really do that, sick baby's unhappy wailings to endure. Books to read, lessons to prep, dissertations to write.

So I invite you, loyal readers with untapped ranting potential and capabilities, read on, and unleash your Inner Angry Diatribe! Fill my comments with bitter invective! Theological vituperation! Righteous outrage and scorn! Go ye forth!

Who's posthuman

I grew up on that most marvelous of BBC creations, "Doctor Who." I still love it. Partly of course it's the nostalgic affection one inevitably has for any childhood love, but as an adult one can appreciate the deliberate comedic aspects so much more clearly. One of the many joys of going home to visit Mom and Dad is re-watching favourite episodes from their vast VHS collection of Doctor Who, all recorded sans commercials from the PBS station, although the occasional fund-raising blip does rear its ugly head every once in a while. Though Brent holds this element of Thweatt family culture in utter disdain, we don't care. It's fun to tease him with quoted lines of obscure dialogue and bits of family history like Emily's childhood fear of "tappers" and fondness for the "molopoligans."

Sometime in the 90's, there was an American made-for-TV movie attempt at resurrecting Doctor Who. It sucked. I don't remember much else about it, other than that it sucked and that a major reason for its suckiness was that they--clueless American They!--introduced a romantic angle into the Doctor's relationship with whatever chick was a part of that movie. So not the Doctor. We didn't have high hopes for it, really, and it still managed to disappoint us.

So I was suspicious of the new Doctor Who I heard about, even though it was BBC and being carried by the SciFi channel. But in due course my local Battlestar Galactica suppliers threw in the 2005 season of Doctor Who, and then then 2006. It took a few episodes but I ended up hooked. I'm still uncomfortable with all the hugging--the Doctor I grew up with only ever offered people jelly babies if he wanted to be friendly. But I can (just) overlook it.

So, not that Doctor Who is on the more philosophical end of the SF spectrum or anything, but the posthuman theme crops up every now and again. There's the universe's "Last Human"--a piece of flesh stretched out on a framework with a face in the middle, female of course, who keeps demanding "moisturize me, moisturize me!" in a riff on the perils of too much plastic surgery. But, more seriously, there is also the return of some classic Doctor Who villains: Daleks, and Cybermen.

It's the Cybermen that seem the more significant posthuman figure, despite the long history of Time Lord warfare with the Daleks, because we are offered a story of Cybermen origins in the double episode "The Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel." Here, in a human world closely parallel to Rose and Mickey's own, Cybus Industries has established a monopolizing hold on information technology, and introduced the innovation of earpieces that allow users to access the Cybus internet wherever they are. There's a great scene on the street, where, inexplicably, everyone around the Doctor, Rose and Mickey stop moving, wait for their daily download to complete, laugh in unison at the downloaded daily joke, and then resume walking. Of course, the earpieces become invasive technology in the hands of their insane inventor, the head of Cybus, John Lumic. Terminally ill and desperate to stave off physical weakness and imminent mortality, Lumic has invented the Cybermen: transplanted human brains in robotic metal bodies, bodies which, unlike their fleshly counterparts, do not wear out. As the plot unfolds, the earpieces become devices which override personal agency and people begin to march zombie-like into the factory for "uploading" (or alternatively, "deletion").

What is interesting to me, however, is not how the plot unfolds, which is of course predictable. The commentary on the posthuman along the way are the intriguing bits, as well as some of the specific features of Cybermen as posthuman figures.

1. Cybermen are transplanted brains in metal bodies. Perhaps I notice this particularly, having just finished Robert Sawyer's Mindscan, another narrative of a posthuman vision based on the desire to rid oneself of pesky mortal fleshly bodies. In Mindscan, however, the brain is not transplanted; instead, Sawyer offers a scenario in which one's mind is scanned and then recreated in another medium, so that Sawyer's posthuman is, physically, wholly artificial, with no organic component. The human element of Sawyer's posthuman is the mind, and it is the mind unattached to the organic brain. Doctor Who, on the other hand, presumes that the mind/brain is a single entity which must be physically transferred. There is still a dualism that must be presumed, but it is nowhere near as hardcore as Sawyer's, due to the slippage between the material/immateriality aspect.
   
2. Lumic himself resists being uploaded, and it is his Cybermen who force the issue by removing life support and making it a necessity; so that we, as audience, are presented with the fact that the creator of the Cybermen himself in the end holds an ambivalent attitude toward the "Good" of this posthuman destiny that he is forcing others to embrace. This is less about the ambivalence of the posthuman (after all, the posthuman in this scenario is unambiguously horrible) than it is about the hypocrisy of power: what is mandated for humanity's own good is so often something power exempts itself from.
   
3. Cybermen, like Daleks, are inhuman posthumans not because of the material of their bodies or the fact of cyborg hybridity, but because of a chosen/enforced inability for human emotion. The Daleks deliberately purged themselves of emotion; Lumic builds an "emotion inhibitor circuit" into the Cybermen. It is this that is the effective cause of the monstrous disregard for the other that is the common failing of both Daleks and Cybermen. When Mrs. Moore asks the Doctor why there is an emotion inhibitor chip, the Doctor replies, "because it hurts": that is, the fall (Fall?) from human into monstrous posthuman is emotionally unbearable, and so emotions, "the one thing that makes them human," must be eliminated. Cybermen are all rigorous logic and thorough application. The human brain is transplanted, but not the human heart (metaphorically speaking, of course). Cybermen are no longer human because the underlying anthropology at work here is one in which cognition as simple rationality is not, by itself, definitive of humanity. Rationality and emotion cannot be separated without doing violence to the meaning of being human. (In addition, empathy is predicated on emotional capacity, and morality on empathy, supposing a Humean view of morality.)


4. Alongside this, the elimination of all individuality is characteristic of the Cybermen. Reduced to mere logic, all individuals are merely parts of a technologically interconnected whole, with no volition or desires of their own. This seems to be an inescapable corollary to the elimination of emotion, and together, these lacks constitute a weakness exploitable for the Cybermen's defeat.


5. The restoration of emotion to these pitiable posthumans is the means by which they are defeated. The moment of realization of their posthuman state gives rise to a self-annihilating anguish expressed by wordless mechanically vocalized screams. Quite eerie, really. In the conversation leading up to the Cyber defeat, the Doctor cites imagination, emtion and personal agency as distinctives of humanity that make humans far superior to their posthuman Cyber-counterparts. But the final comment here is the most intriguing: when Lumic (the only Cyberman to retain an individual personality) demands, "what have you done?" The Doctor replies, not with a literally descriptive, 'I destroyed their emotions inhibitors' but with the statement, "I've given them back their souls." Souls!
6. But interestingly, in confronting Lumic, the Doctor also comments that everything Lumic has done is to fight sickness, and that this is brilliant and "so human." The problem the Doctor identifies is that the negativities of human life serve as the motivation for the struggle to overcome; without them, human striving for the good will cease. Cybermen are static; humanity is progressive. The implication is that there must be a human hope of utopia, but never a human-achieved consummation of that hope; humanity must exist within this eschatological paradox. When Lumic very logically counters with an exposition of the negativity of emotion and the offer of a "life without pain" the Doctor, like John the Savage of Brave New World, opts to embrace pain as the better (the human) choice.

hmph

Today's AWAD quote:

Rudeness is a weak imitation of strength. -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

on abortion

Here is a comment I made on a recent blog discussion over at Scott Freeman's free thoughts. I am posting it again here because, upon review, I think I managed to articulate exactly what I feel--not a common enough occurrence, generally speaking, and even more rare in the blogosphere.

"Caring for the unborn and for the mothers both is exactly what I’m trying to advocate for. Nor do I assume anyone here is unconcerned with this matter. But here is the difference. I don’t think it constitutes “care” for the mother to explain to her why she is wrong. Women who have abortions know exactly what it is they are doing. They know it better than any of us, because they know it from the first person perspective. They don’t need an ultrasound to show them it’s a baby. Their own bodies tell them in a way that it is impossible to appreciate until you experience it. Having my own baby radically changed my thinking on abortion–not in the sense that I “switched sides” but in the sense that I finally understood what it meant to have an abortion. It meant experiencing the anticipation of pregnancy as terror. It meant experiencing the growing life within you with dread. It meant agonizing over the fact that the tiny life completely dependent on you for survival is one whose blind trust is misplaced. It meant knowing in a place far deeper than the brain that the wrongness that marks our world runs so incontrovertibly deep that the possibility of new life is not always a good one. I firmly believe that most women who have abortions do so out of a sense of care for their unborn child–care that emerges in this monstrous and perverted form not because the mother is at fault or is morally deficient or ignorant, but because the world in which we live offers her no options than a choice between horrific evils. Is it caring for a child to bring her into a world where hunger, abuse, neglect are as inevitable as destiny? If you loved the baby in your womb, would you condemn her to that? What about women whose lives are so marginal that they physically cannot adequately nurture a child even in pregnancy? Is it caring to carry that pregnancy to term, knowing that you cannot provide even in the womb what that new life requires in order to flourish? Guilt lies in every direction for these women. Guilt for being pregnant–whether or not it’s their “fault.” Guilt if they birth a child they can’t protect and nurture. Guilt if they don’t. Yes, we don’t want her to live with guilt. So let’s recognize that no matter what the decision, guilt is there to be absolved. And that is certainly our job as the church. But we as the church cannot even begin the task of addressing and absolving this guilt unless we are also doing what is necessary to create a place for women to see beyond these desperate, guilt-inducing options. We have to make it possible for these babies to be born, and not just born, but nurtured and cared for in the same security we seek for our own. And we have to make this not only a fragile possibility but a stable reality that women can count on and expect, so that it is no longer necessary to end a life before it begins out of fear of what that life will mean. That is our real task. Legislation be damned."

For further reflection, here are a couple links to follow: "A Place to Turn when a Newborn is Fated to Die," (thanks to Joe for this link) and "Italy Takes High-Tech Tactics for Abandoned Babies" (thanks to Brent).

Baby Einstein

Clare's been addicted to Baby Bach since she was a couple months old. Couldn't get enough of it. Brent and I could, though: I started hearing Bach as performed by the Baby Einstein Music Box Orchestra in my head while grocery shopping, I would hum along while cooking dinner, it was the soundtrack to my dreams at night. So for Christmas we requested some more Baby Einsteins for Clare, looking for a little relief from the awful monotonous tyranny of Baby Bach. Unfortunately for us, Baby Mozart doesn't play on our DVD player, so now we are sampling as many Baby Einsteins as we can get through Netflix to find the best replacement.

There are a LOT of Baby Einsteins. Baby Monet, Baby van Gogh, Baby da Vinci, Baby Shakespeare, and on it goes. Right now Clare is watching "Baby Einstein: On the Go," which I guess was a hard concept to find a genius for (Henry Ford? Wright brothers? James Watt? Pierre Lallemont? Really, with Google all you have to do is type in "bicycle inventor"!). It's okay: organized around vehicles that go on land, on water, in air...and I was all set for another segment for "in space," but apparently we don't want to encourage our babies to leave Earth no matter how fast and cool the vehicle is.

So I'm disappointed. But rather than just sulk about it, I'd like to encourage Julie Aigner-Clark (the inventor of the Baby Einstein stuff; you may have seen her singled out for recognition in GWB's State of the Union address) to produce a "Baby Armstrong," or maybe--this is even better--"Baby Buzz." Our kids need to know that Earth isn't the center of the universe, right?

While we're at it, I'd also like to see a "Baby Margaret Mead"--let's teach our kids that America isn't the only country in the universe as well (maybe we have a philosophical disagreement on this point--after all, Julie was lauded by President Bush)...just please, oh please, not "Baby Columbus."

Oh, but here's the best idea of all: how about a "Baby X"? Oh, okay, fine; I can settle for "Baby MLK, Jr." (although James Cone would advise you to partner them up for effectiveness). While we're teaching basic shapes and colors, why not add a little dose of political activism? All sorts of possibilities here: teaching babies how to march, make the peace sign, shout slogans, make signs...these all incorporate practice of basic skills! Brilliant!

Any other suggestions for Julie while we're at it?

Update/correction: Julie sold Baby Einstein to Disney...so now who do we talk to??? But surely a quick word from her would hold some weight still...

what can Clare do now?

1. eat Cheerios...and more Cheerios...and nothing but Cheerios
2. look at books instead of eating them
3. say "book" rather indiscriminately
4. pull herself up, chase the cat 'round the apartment, and stand on her own momentarily
5. screech like a chimpanzee
6. play nicely beside others...
7. and bully those others.

Clare discovers Cheerios. And how to get them to her mouth. Yay!

O Happy Clare!

Clare loves her Elmo book. Thanks, Grandmom!

Everybody meet Sylva!

Clare meets Sylva and discovers the joy of playing beside another baby.

We have matching hats! Huzzah!

Oops...

yao bu yao

So, yesterday I was feeding Clare lunch--yummy yummy baby oatmeal, green beans, mashed banana, and the inevitable Cheerios since nowadays she gets frustrated after too long without being able to take control of her own eating process. I was sneaking in spoonfuls of green beans in between the Cheerios and her attention began to wander: the cat had walked over to our corner and Clare got all maniacally happy like she does when she sees the kitty. So I attempted to get her attention. "Clare," I said, to no avail. "Clare! Clare!" and holding out a spooful of green bean mushiness, "Clare! Yao bu yao?" That got her attention. And she started giggling maniacally at me...every time I asked, "yao bu yao?"

"Yao bu yao" is Chinese for "do you want it?" although literally it's more like "want-no-want." I guess I've never spoken Chinese to Clare before. I wasn't planning on making lunch a Chinese lesson yesterday, but it was such a simpler way of asking "do you want more green beans?" Chinese is such an economical language--all kinds of meaning packed into a few single syllables.

So why was it so funny? She kept laughing so much every time I said it that she nearly spewed green beans all over both of us and everything else in the vicinity including the cat. I don't know. Maybe after 8 months of incomprehensible English noises coming at her she somehow knows that these syllables don't make sense? Could she know somehow that this is a different language? Even before her own Chomskian black box of language acquisition apparatus starts humming?

Well who knows. But I am going to start incorporating some of my favorite and more useful Chinese phrases into our daily one-sided conversations. Mei wen ti. Hao bu hao. Mei guan xi. Zou ba. Kuai le! Maybe even the Wuhan-hua "ni he wo!" Because although I, as a kindergartner, found it dreadfully inconvenient that my teacher couldn't understand me when I told her, "I have to go xiao bian" (xiao bian means pee, and da bian means poop. "xiao" is little and "da" is big; I don't know what "bian" is, but Chinese is nearly always politely euphemistic so it can't be too bad) it's also really cool that I have tidbits of Chinese in my childhood vocabulary, and something of Thweatt family history that I'd like to pass along.

Of course, she's also going to have to learn Spanish if she doesn't want to be shown up by her cousins...

PTS blogs

Okay, so I found one of you through statcounter and I know who you are...so I have added you to my links and you are, for now, the sole representative of the category "PTS bloggers." But surely there are others. Not everyone can be so driven that they haven't discovered the Great Timewaster, the internet's Gift to All Procrastinators and Free Thinkers, the Electronic Abyss into which we type our best thoughts...ah, blogging.

Are there any other PTS bloggers out there who want to 'fess up?

today's AWAD quote

Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them.

--Alvin Toffler, futurist and author (1928- )

"The Glove of Power" vs. "Power Glove"

This semester, I have my dream job: I get to read SF books, and then get together with other people and talk about them, and get paid for it. Oh, there are a couple things I'd change about this job if I could: 1) I'd make it permanent and 2) I'd pay myself a lot more. But really, to be paid at all for doing something you love and would do anyway...who can beat that?

One of the things we've discussed is, what is the difference between SF and fantasy literature? There are a lot of definitions floating around there proposed by critics who spend their time doing things like defining genres and getting paid for it. I guess that's their dream job. Or at least I suppose it pays the bills. But I have yet to read a definition that beats the distinction proposed by my OR friends: "When the title is 'The Glove of Power,' you know it's fantasy...when it's 'Power Glove,' it's SF."

As I child, I probably gravitated toward the fantasy end of the SF-fantasy spectrum. I read Narnia, of course, and L'Engle, and Lloyd Alexander's series, and Earthsea, McAffrey's Pern books, and a whole host of other things that were less worthy but equally enjoyable for a kid. I also read early Heinlein (Dad kept Stranger in a Strange Land out of my hands till high school) and later on Asimov. And as I got older I found myself gravitating more to SF. I still enjoy a good fantasy series, as long as the author has the sense enough to end the story well before it dies the death of a thousand wordy sequels. But it's SF that most often gets my mind going in the speculative directions I enjoy most.

I'm unsure why this is. It could perhaps simply be a personality thing, a quirk of temperament and preference. But it seems that fantasy, as genre, offers the same possibilities as a good SF story for exploring the matters that concern me most, both philosophical and socially critical. Perhaps the mode of exploration differs a bit; but in the creation of any alternate world, whether it is built on magical or technological systems of manipulating physical reality, there is the possibility of commentary on the sorry state of things as they are through the simple juxtaposition of the world of the text and the world of the reader. So why is it that I find this so much more often in SF than fantasy? Is fantasy inherently escapist? SF inherently realist?

While I'm at it, just for fun, here's a list of Heinlein novels that I read as a kid and still regularly re-read today, that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone who enjoys a good SF yarn. In all of these are direct and indirect commentary on social matters such as education, sexual taboo and norms, systemic economic injustice, racial oppression, politics, gender, and religion; in all, a sense of both the potential and depravity of human beings. (Yes, depravity: I used the Presby word. I wonder why that might be.) Most of these are not terribly philosophical, except perhaps for the first, which asks some direct questions about criteria for life, sentience, and humanity.

1. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
2. Have Space Suit--Will Travel
3. Sixth Column
4. Citizen of the Galaxy
5. Podkayne of Mars
6. Tunnel in the Sky, Starship Troopers and Space Cadet

big feet

I've heard about this quiz before but never bothered to take till now. Find out how big my ecological feet are...and yours too.

how NOT to do it

Those of you interested in the religion and science stuff, don't miss this article from the New York Times (thanks to Brent who always leaves up the interesting articles in our browser for me to read).

So, this dude writes a dissertation that's "good science, great science" in paleontology, a dissertation that accepts completely and works within the current paradigm of millions of years of evolution in the fossil record...and yet personally is a young-earth creationist who sees no problem with juggling two completely incompatible paradigms in his academic and personal life.

Or should I say lives? Because, in the end, whatever this guy has, it's not a life. To be completely honest, perhaps he should have adopted a pseudonym for the dissertation and all academic work; then no one would have to deal with the utter confusion I feel when trying to apply the same nominal designation to the two lives this one bifurcated person is attempting to lead. What kind of intellectual integrity can you have, when you've only avoided lying to yourself and others by a strategy of self-induced religio-academic schizophrenia? How can what he produces be "good science," and how can what he professes be real faith?

See, people, this is just not how to do science and religion. I don't know what this guy is afraid of, but this non-solution he's adopted and trying to live with can, in my opinion, only be the result of fear. Maybe he's afraid of going to hell. Maybe he's afraid of his father and of disappointing his family. Maybe he's afraid there is no hell, and no God, and a fossil record millions of years old is a poor substitute for the security blanket of his faith, and he's not ready to give it up. Maybe he's afraid to realize that what he's got, in the end, is no kind of faith at all, really. Because if dead stuff in the ground can poof your faith away...well...what exactly is it that you think you're holding on to anyhow?

All these concerned professors interviewed in the article, with their varying opinions of this dude Marcus Ross, and their investment in "academic integrity" and institutional reputations, even the ones who know him and seem to like him and granted him a degree--none of these people see the real problem and underlying tragedy in this situation, and that is, someday this piss-poor strategy of living with contradiction is going to fail Marcus Ross, and he will be shattered, and someone is going to need to help him pick up the pieces. And what help with all these people be then? Even if they care enough about this guy to be around, none of them seem to have thought through the real issue of how religious belief intersects with science; the only ones who even address the issue seem to endorse the separatist strategy that's doomed to fail, because their only concern is that he produce "good science," despite his kooky religious convictions, regardless of the personal cost. He's gone further than I would have thought possible with this lamentable coping strategy--all the way to a Ph.D.--and the further he goes, the harder he'll fall.

May I ever so humbly recommend something for Marcus Ross' reading list? Give this a try: The Shaping of Rationality by J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, and follow it up with Alone in the World: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology. Not that I'm partial or anything, but there's a guy who gets it right. And takes paleontology a hell of a lot more seriously than does Marcus Ross.

about Brent

Yesterday, I had a clumsy-ass day. Maybe y'all don't have those, but I do. Not every day, but often enough that these days are a phenomenon with a label. On those days I do a lot more cursing than usual. I refer to myself as 'clumsy-ass bitch,' usually more than once, because once the clumsy-ass starts happening, it's rampantly contagious and starts happening everywhere with everything.

So last night, after spilling hot soup out of my bowl down my jeans, onto my socks and slippers and all over the kitchen floor, twice, and then knocking a whole bunch of DVDs clattering down onto the floor after Clare was finally asleep in bed, it's miraculous that Brent could somehow make me laugh at myself after all that elaborate and totally sincere cussing. But he did. Just one more reason to love him.

That, and the fact that he can't hear that little sound that old people aren't supposed to be able to hear and I can.

"it's all due to the chickpeas"

So tonight, I was grading some papers and, sorry to say, despite the extremely riveting essays I was reading, my mind wandered a bit. I was reading all these summations of Calvin's view of baptism, all of which kept mentioning that baptism is initiation into the church. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder why it was that the Church of Christ so vociferously opposes this view of baptism. Given that the basic, broad theological concern of the Churches of Christ is ecclesiology (I mean, what are we supposed to be restoring in this Restoration Movement, anyway?) it seems like, systematically speaking, one would actually expect a theology of baptism that reflects this strong ecclesiological emphasis. And yet we repudiate it. So, I wondered, why is that? At first I couldn't think of any good reason, and so I tentatively concluded that our hermeneutics had once again triumphed over any systematic impulse in our theologizing...But a few hours later, after having gone to precept and returned to my ever-present though slowly dwindling stack of exam papers, I realized that it was probably that Alexander Campbell just really hated the Calvinist doctrine of election. Baptism is the means by which one is saved in the Churches of Christ because it is the means by which one knows one is saved.

TOOTH!

No pictures, because it's hard to see, and she's shy about it. But it's there, all rough and pointy, on the bottom, left (as you look at her, not her left). Yay!

update

rude sermons has a new post: the first one in months and months. All you sermon-starved readers out there, go check it out. The rest of you normal people, avoid the weirdos who read sermons in spare time.

shake those Harding hips

I just got an email from a friend and fellow Harding alumna with these links:

http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/littlerocking/2007/01/review_robert_randolph_at_sear.aspx

http://www.markaelrod.net/2007/01/27/robert-randolph-show-mayhem

See also Malibu Librarian's post, which has several additional links as well.

Ah, I remember me a time when I joined a very subversive conga line during a TMBG concert in Benson Auditorium. Yes, and sure enough, the conga line, or perhaps it was the equally subversive performance of the song "S-E-X-X-Y," got them never invited back. Bloody miracle they were invited in the first place, not being country singers. And doubly miraculous that they came! But of course no good deed goes unpunished, not even might-be-giants'.

Unfortunately for me, this little story of my alma mater, like most I suppose, leaves not just the warm fuzzies thinking of all those innocent little undergrads shakin' their hips on the Benson stage to the greater glory of God, but leaves me with a little tingly feeling of dread and dismay as well. It's not that I'm surprised by the rank hypocrisy of a school that forbids dancing while simultaneously endorsing the overblown spectacle of euphemistic choreography dubbed "Spring Sing" every year. No, that's just to be expected; part of the quirkiness of Harding life.

It's the appearance of "CABs" [Campus Activity Board] in special uniform green T-shirts that bugs me. College students deputized to enforce the kyriarchy's arbitrarily decided standards of morality. Can we think of any precedents for this move toward empowering young people as a police force against their peers? Hmmm...Dolores Umbridge's "Inquisatorial Squad" comes to mind, as do more obvious historical examples, and none of them are at all positive. Does Harding really want to be teaching its students that the most moral way to relate to the other is as adversary, watch dog, policeman? That the path to Christian living is marked by a readiness to use force in order to ensure conformity? That control over others is the moral goal of any pious Christian? That other people simply cannot be trusted to exercise good judgment over matters such as how to properly move their limbs?

CAB, IS, or any other acronym you care to add, it doesn't matter. The creation of any such organization, and the lessons it teaches, are the same, no matter what the ostensible moral concern to be enforced is. Sure, quibbling over dancing is nowhere near the level of moral seriousness that, say, racism is. But empowering one subset of people over another within a general population teaches the pernicious lessons of moral superiority, endorsement of force as a moral means to an end, and the disrespect of others.

Shake your booty down to the floor, y'all. If dancing is all it takes to be subversive, well, start small. Sooner or later your moral senses will escape the appalling damage being done to them and you'll wake up to the issues in the world that are really worth fighting for.

Children of Men

So, what could possibly make me want to see a dystopian near-future sci-fi flick? (Who am I kidding...you all know by now I'm addicted to sci-fi dystopias.) But hearken to this amazing and only slightly ironic endorsement from newly-wed mei mei Emily: "It made me want to have a baby."

Normally, I think attempts to make sci-fi movies are doomed to cheesy failure. This isn't sci-fi's fault, but the exceptions are few. Enemy Mine (1985), with Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr., is one of the few exceptions (I re-watched it while hanging out in WA this past week. It's still pretty awesome.) And this movie. I thought the portrayal of the near future (the 2020's) was visually realistic, and the technological flourishes were well-chosen and not too brash, except for maybe the scene at the dinner table with the virtual keyboarding, but that didn't bug me (it probably bugged Brent). But there are no big pointy shoulders in shiny clothing; what a relief to look into a future where people wear things still recognizable as clothing.

The basic premise, and I'm not giving away anything you don't pick up in the opening scenes of the movie, is that for some undiscovered reason, human beings have lost the ability to procreate. It's been roughly 20 years since the last baby was born, and the world is going to hell in a handbasket. What's the point of...well, anything, when there's no future to anticipate?

So of course, the plot unfolds around the figure of a pregnant girl. Unwed, marginal, and vulnerable, she is very much a Virgin Mary symbol (even makes a virgin birth joke before admitting she has no idea who the father is). And of course the baby is a baby Jesus figure, a concrete embodiment of restored hope for humanity. One interesting aspect of the story is the reversal of the assumption of the male gender of the baby, an assumption made by the mother and then later by a traitorous Judas character. That the baby is a girl underscores the break the baby represents from the violence presupposed in the worldview of the men in control of this anarchic future. The most arresting scene of the movie (despite the awesome moment where you get to see the baby come out, and let me say how excited I am that they included that, and also add, don't worry, it wasn't "gross") is the escape from the bombarded building: mother and baby and protector simply walk out, and as the soldiers hear the baby's cries and comprehend the significance of them, the fighting simply ceases...Until fired upon from afar, and then the frantic and ineffectual violence breaks out anew.

But for all that, the movie ends optimistically: Tomorrow really exists.

I cannot help but add one small pet-peevish criticism. I have no idea why, especially in a movie where the director was brave enough to give the audience a close-to-real birth moment, there would be no concern for continued verisimilitude regarding care. That poor baby went at least a whole night and a day without eating once. I was so concerned about this that I leaned over to Brent and hissed, "that baby needs to eat! why doesn't she feed her?" Is there some reason I don't know about that breastfeeding cannot even be hinted at in a movie? I know this is a small thing to pick on, but honestly. Wouldn't it be nice to have at least one movie remind us that breasts are not just pointless lumps of bodyfat that men (well, mostly men, I suppose) have arbitrarily decided to get off on? For myself, I had never regarded my breasts as anything but pointless, and if they had been any bigger I would have regarded them as pointless and annoying (friends not as lucky as me tell me that they really do have to wear bras...an awful way to have to live, in my opinion). Now, however, I am quite absurdly proud of them. I like them. I think they're beautiful. And they have a point (so to speak). I truly think this movie would be better if someone had thought of this and included a breastfeeding scene; it would have added to the feminist theme, the peace theme, the nurture theme, as well as reinforcing the point, first made visually and symbolically by the sight of the pregnant belly, that humanity's biology had been restored to rightness.

favorite Seattle pictures

mobile!

As of January 23. Forward crawling motion achieved and perfected in a few short hours. Bonus milestone: she pulls herself up to her feet now using any available surface.

But where oh where are those teeth she's been promising for months now???

"vacation"

So, here we are in Seattle!

It's been great. I slept in till 9:30 this morning, pretty awesome, I must say. I've watched some Battlestar Galactica with my mom, and tonight we will get me caught up on season 3 in time to enjoy the premier tomorrow night. And I'm reading the new posthumous collaborative Heinlein novel, Variable Star.

But I am also:

1. grading TH 222 term sheets and exams
2. writing up a paper proposal for a conference opportunity I just learned about, with a deadline of Jan 31
3. working on my sermon for Feb 4
4. prepping for precepting next semester's theology & sci fi course (ED 325)--PTS readers (all 2 of you), if you're looking for an awesome course for spring semester, check this one out!

So, basically, vacation means time to do all the stuff that I don't really have time to do at home. Except, you'll notice, the one thing I should be doing prominently not on my list...

on breastfeeding

Now that Clare's a little older, her singleminded devoted intensity to the eating experience has given way to distractability and some new habits.

1. Hand on head, elbow out, in the "don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful" gesture.
2. Hand raised up in the air in the "praise God!" gesture. I suppose she's praising God from whom all (milky) blessings flow.
3. Hand grasping big toe in what I will call The Multitasking Yogi Pose.
4. Hand reaching up to touch my face in her most endearing new habit. It's nice to think that she's realizing there's a face attached to the boob, and Mommy is more than just a milk dispenser.
5. Hands grasping the boob on either side in the desperate "isn't there any more in there???" gesture. That one being, obviously, my least favorite.

A concluding theological thought: if more theologians were mothers, perhaps we would have an understanding of kenosis linked to breastfeeding as a symbolic and physical "emptying" on behalf of others.

nonresolutions

I don't make resolutions. Not really. I mean, not consciously. I don't write anything down and don't pick any goals or deadlines. This would be a great time for me to resolve, for instance, to start working on getting back into shape, or more specifically (I read somewhere that generic resolutions are the first to go) to not skip any more yoga classes. But I don't resolve. I'm not sure why I don't join with the millions of people who make promises to themselves upon the occasion of the new year, but I just don't.

However, I find that I mark the clean slate beginning of a new year in other ways. I just cleaned out my hotmail inbox. I had nearly 500 messages in there, stretching back to before Clare was born, before I was pregnant even. I don't know when it was that I lost control over my inbox. But messages just kept compounding.

But now, it's all gone. With a few clicks of the mouse I ruthlessly deleted almost everything. I didn't go through the messages. I deleted whole pages of missives without a glance, a hundred at a time. I saved an email from Brent with the subject line "I love you" and a couple messages from people I wanted to remember to write. And that was it. Now I have 5 messages in my inbox.

And boy do I feel good.

I also shaved my legs today for the first time in a long, long time. And I cleaned out the closet this week. And gathered up all Clare's outgrown clothes to pass on to friends. And yesterday I reorganized my desk.

It should be a good year, 2007.

things Clare is doing now, and Christmas '06 pics

things Clare is doing now:

1. babbling: ga, la, da, na, ba, wa, even ma. She likes reduplications and Malda swears she heard "mama" while we were in TX. And she's definitely saying "dada."
2. sitting up--she's an old pro at this by now. I saw her pull herself up from her tummy to sitting up during our visit.
3. nearly crawling. I'll keep you posted.
4. getting frustrated when I take a toy away. Not a very welcome milestone, let me add.
5. eating her veggies with gusto. Once at Harding I had to take a psych test as part of the app process for becoming an RA. It had this question on it: "Do you eat your food with more gusto than other people?" I've been paranoid about my level of enjoyment of food ever since, but luckily, Clare has not inherited this neurotic anxiety.
6. closely related to #5, pooping a lot more solidly than before. Yay.
   

Christmas Day at Granddad and as-yet-unlabeled grandmother's house


five generations: Zada Belle Finley Gravette, Clare Madalyn Thweatt Bates, Malda Lyn Coulson Bates (bottom, right to left); Delphene Gravette Coulson, James Brent Bates (top)

three 2007 beautiful things

1. watching a husband be a daddy.
2. Sol's first US Christmas with all the family.
3. five-generation pictures. We go to Whitesboro, TX (yeah, I know, maybe someday the Chamber of Commerce will decide that's awful...) today to get a picture with Clare, Brent, Malda, Mimi (Brent's grandmother Delphene) and Nana (great-grandmother Zada Belle).