Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Visiting my Country of Origin (The US)
For the first time in several years, I am taking my two teenagers to the US for a visit. I have not been back since 2001, while they have not been back since 1998. It should be very interesting, to say the least. I hope to post while back there to give some idea of differences and insights I have, but on the other hand, it's a vacation and I am not all that insightful except on rare occasions. In any case, I am looking forward to it and will be returning to Cairo in 3 weeks.
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
The 18th Century Liberals
On the 4th of July, you usually have a spate of articles discussing the Founders of the US, people that Americans all learned about as children. Most of us admire them and believe that we take them as role models.
I have to admit I find their writings stirring and powerful. I love the Declaration of Independence just for its rhetorical strength. It's more like a religious document to me than a political one.
However, I am starting to get seriously annoyed by modern people trying to claim the Founders as soul mates. Yesterday I read on some of my favorite liberal websites several of these "rant-counter-rant" things mocking Conservative screeds against Liberals, such as this insane Marine's thing that veers back and forth between ranting against Liberals and ranting against Muslims in the strongest possible terms of intolerant misanthropy. Yet the riposte, although it lacked the element of disgusting racism of the original, seemed to me to be equally lacking in truth.
In truth, the Founders were "18th Century Liberals". They were not anything like today's liberals or conservatives as the terms are usually understood in the US. They lived in a time before corporate personhood, government-sponsored research bodies, and many other things we absolutely take for granted now. They were interested in the landed, propertied, male class having full citizenship rights against the monarch, and they were interested in the view that monarchs had no divine right to rule but that all governors should have some sort of legitimacy through the consent of the governed, by whom they meant the landed, propertied, male (and white) elite class.
If they can truly be said to have a counterpart in modern political thought, it would be the more extreme forms of libertarianism - but again, I don't believe they were as ideologically rigid as the modern form is. They did not insist on their beliefs in the face of facts like overwhelming corporate power or government ability to contribute to scientific and intellectual progress. Those facts did not exist yet. Libertarians today seem to have their heads in the sand, wanting to believe that the supreme individual remains the same as he was back when Jefferson wrote the Declaration.
Their writings were inspirational. They bravely fought the greatest military and imperial power of the time, and they won. But they certainly were no closer to being like modern Liberals than they were like modern Conservatives. And such silly claims that are supposed to appeal to our emotions are starting to seriously annoy me. I am particularly annoyed when liberals get all teary eyed and start declaiming how they are wearing the mantle of Franklin or Jefferson.
I believe that you should be honest about people of the past and their political beliefs and how they are relevant or not relevant to the modern day. And I think this sort of posturing is really, really a big waste of time.
I have to admit I find their writings stirring and powerful. I love the Declaration of Independence just for its rhetorical strength. It's more like a religious document to me than a political one.
However, I am starting to get seriously annoyed by modern people trying to claim the Founders as soul mates. Yesterday I read on some of my favorite liberal websites several of these "rant-counter-rant" things mocking Conservative screeds against Liberals, such as this insane Marine's thing that veers back and forth between ranting against Liberals and ranting against Muslims in the strongest possible terms of intolerant misanthropy. Yet the riposte, although it lacked the element of disgusting racism of the original, seemed to me to be equally lacking in truth.
In truth, the Founders were "18th Century Liberals". They were not anything like today's liberals or conservatives as the terms are usually understood in the US. They lived in a time before corporate personhood, government-sponsored research bodies, and many other things we absolutely take for granted now. They were interested in the landed, propertied, male class having full citizenship rights against the monarch, and they were interested in the view that monarchs had no divine right to rule but that all governors should have some sort of legitimacy through the consent of the governed, by whom they meant the landed, propertied, male (and white) elite class.
If they can truly be said to have a counterpart in modern political thought, it would be the more extreme forms of libertarianism - but again, I don't believe they were as ideologically rigid as the modern form is. They did not insist on their beliefs in the face of facts like overwhelming corporate power or government ability to contribute to scientific and intellectual progress. Those facts did not exist yet. Libertarians today seem to have their heads in the sand, wanting to believe that the supreme individual remains the same as he was back when Jefferson wrote the Declaration.
Their writings were inspirational. They bravely fought the greatest military and imperial power of the time, and they won. But they certainly were no closer to being like modern Liberals than they were like modern Conservatives. And such silly claims that are supposed to appeal to our emotions are starting to seriously annoy me. I am particularly annoyed when liberals get all teary eyed and start declaiming how they are wearing the mantle of Franklin or Jefferson.
I believe that you should be honest about people of the past and their political beliefs and how they are relevant or not relevant to the modern day. And I think this sort of posturing is really, really a big waste of time.
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Metaphor
A metaphor is the use of something to represent something else. Metaphors are powerful in language and in visual representation, and therefore quite popular. In Arabic poetry, the use of metaphor is very high "so and so was a lion" and that sort of thing.
Sometimes metaphors are not only used because they are powerful but because there is a social convention against discussing something or other on its own terms. In this case, you have to be pretty creative to make sure that the association is clear enough. I saw a whopper of a visual metaphor yesterday that illustrates this quite brilliantly and ties in with my earlier posts with a sort of theme. (No, just wait for this.)
I was watching 10 minutes or so of a Bond movie on the Saudi movie channel, MBC 2 (it shows American movies pretty much non-stop). It has been doing a Bond kick lately on Saturday nights (we caught Dr. No a few weeks ago which was really funny to watch). I thought I had identified this one as "From Russia with Love" so I watched through the commercials to see from the little announcement of the movie name if I was right.
The commercial showed a fast food cup with a cover on it and a hand trying to insert a straw. The straw was pink and thin, and kept bending. The hand eventually gave up on the attempt and bent the straw a couple of times experimentally before disappearing and re-appearing with a big, thick, blue straw which it jammed into the cup successfully. Then the picture disappeared and a male voice said "Viagra!" while the word and a picture of the pill appeared on the screen.
I sat there for at least a minute trying to figure out whether I was shocked, amused, horrified or what. That is a pretty effective metaphor. More so the first time you see the ad, as (at least in my case - maybe I am just too naive) you really are not psychologically prepared for the punch line.
I plan to provide more neat, salacious Saudi advertising gimmicks illustrating synechdoche or something as they come up. It will make a very amusing series, won't it?
Sometimes metaphors are not only used because they are powerful but because there is a social convention against discussing something or other on its own terms. In this case, you have to be pretty creative to make sure that the association is clear enough. I saw a whopper of a visual metaphor yesterday that illustrates this quite brilliantly and ties in with my earlier posts with a sort of theme. (No, just wait for this.)
I was watching 10 minutes or so of a Bond movie on the Saudi movie channel, MBC 2 (it shows American movies pretty much non-stop). It has been doing a Bond kick lately on Saturday nights (we caught Dr. No a few weeks ago which was really funny to watch). I thought I had identified this one as "From Russia with Love" so I watched through the commercials to see from the little announcement of the movie name if I was right.
The commercial showed a fast food cup with a cover on it and a hand trying to insert a straw. The straw was pink and thin, and kept bending. The hand eventually gave up on the attempt and bent the straw a couple of times experimentally before disappearing and re-appearing with a big, thick, blue straw which it jammed into the cup successfully. Then the picture disappeared and a male voice said "Viagra!" while the word and a picture of the pill appeared on the screen.
I sat there for at least a minute trying to figure out whether I was shocked, amused, horrified or what. That is a pretty effective metaphor. More so the first time you see the ad, as (at least in my case - maybe I am just too naive) you really are not psychologically prepared for the punch line.
I plan to provide more neat, salacious Saudi advertising gimmicks illustrating synechdoche or something as they come up. It will make a very amusing series, won't it?
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Public Shame for Sex Offenders
Below, I posted on the issue of Medicaid coverage of prescription drugs in the US, because I had not been aware that sexual dysfunction drugs like Viagra were covered by this very limited and minimal governmental insurance program for poor people. It just seemed to me to be a very weird priority to use such a limited program to cover something that was not, by any stretch of the imagination, life-threatening.
In the course of the post I referred to the fact that this entire issue came to light because people found that sex offenders were among the Medicaid beneficiaries getting subsidized Viagra. I said that I did not see the point of generally offering it but restricting these people who presumably served their time. (I was arguing that I did not think it should be generally covered at all.) A commenter reacted to this by saying,
"Are you against the public shame programs? Also they haven't served their time, part of their time is public shame for the rest of thier lives. And sexual predator can't be cured from thier problem... it's a mental condition that is incurable. Most psyhcologist would tell you this. So it's not just about publicly shaming them, but about protecting other people from their disease."
Forgive me, but I see a contradiction here. If they are victims of an incurable mental problem, I don't see why sex offenders should be shamed at all. If they are supposed to live in shame for the rest of their lives because of the particular nature of their crime, I don't see how you reconcile it with being a disease.
I still feel that if a person's found guilty of a crime, whatever it is, and that crime has a sentence associated with it, and the person serves his sentence, he's done. I don't really feel that exceptions should be made, because if they are really bad crimes, then the person should have had an indeterminate sentence to begin with.
And I think if a person is found to have a mental disorder that causes him or her to commit violent crimes against others and there is no hope of a cure, the answer would be institutionalization, not public shame.
I am a bit of a civil libertarian, perhaps, and I have been fortunate not to have been a victim of such a crime, so I lack that perspective, but it seems to me that the public shame programs of which I have heard for certain kinds of crimes don't do anything positive.
Sorry for the political interlude - now I will return to the regularly scheduled, very intermittent, posting on educational and language issues.
In the course of the post I referred to the fact that this entire issue came to light because people found that sex offenders were among the Medicaid beneficiaries getting subsidized Viagra. I said that I did not see the point of generally offering it but restricting these people who presumably served their time. (I was arguing that I did not think it should be generally covered at all.) A commenter reacted to this by saying,
"Are you against the public shame programs? Also they haven't served their time, part of their time is public shame for the rest of thier lives. And sexual predator can't be cured from thier problem... it's a mental condition that is incurable. Most psyhcologist would tell you this. So it's not just about publicly shaming them, but about protecting other people from their disease."
Forgive me, but I see a contradiction here. If they are victims of an incurable mental problem, I don't see why sex offenders should be shamed at all. If they are supposed to live in shame for the rest of their lives because of the particular nature of their crime, I don't see how you reconcile it with being a disease.
I still feel that if a person's found guilty of a crime, whatever it is, and that crime has a sentence associated with it, and the person serves his sentence, he's done. I don't really feel that exceptions should be made, because if they are really bad crimes, then the person should have had an indeterminate sentence to begin with.
And I think if a person is found to have a mental disorder that causes him or her to commit violent crimes against others and there is no hope of a cure, the answer would be institutionalization, not public shame.
I am a bit of a civil libertarian, perhaps, and I have been fortunate not to have been a victim of such a crime, so I lack that perspective, but it seems to me that the public shame programs of which I have heard for certain kinds of crimes don't do anything positive.
Sorry for the political interlude - now I will return to the regularly scheduled, very intermittent, posting on educational and language issues.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Help, I have been tagged by a meme. What a first.
I can't believe this, but that's what you get for commenting on other people's sites! Thanks a lot Corpy.
Apparently, this one is about books. That's good. I am all about books. Usually they seem to be about things that are out of my league like IPod preferences or something like that.
Total number of books owned:
I have absolutely no idea - about 500 or 600 I guess. In one of my many moves, I lost a box of books so I keep discovering that a book is no longer "with me" (as they say in Arabic to differentiate actual physical possession from theoretical possession). And, I keep passing on paperbacks to other people and acquiring more. Also, I buy books for my kids and read them as voraciously as they do, so do they count as mine? That would bring it up to about 700, I suppose.
Last book bought:
For myself alone, not my kids: The Golden One by Elizabeth Peters. I have a very limited budget for books and even paperbacks in Cairo are expensive, but this mystery series about an Egyptologist family around the turn of the century is one of the few I actually am sufficiently invested in to keep buying the books. (For my kids: White Fang.)
I borrow books a lot more than I buy them because I speed read and go through them very fast. I recently borrowed The Feminine Mystique and The Second Sex. I am reading the De Beauvoir now having finished the Friedan and returned it.
Last book read:
Well, I read fiction the way other people drink coffee, and read nonfiction sort of simultaneously, so the last book I read was some fiction page-turner or other. I really am very addicted to reading. I am also not very discriminating. I can read bad fiction as well as good. I do recognize the difference though. Oh, I remember now! The last actual really well-written book I read was David Lodge's Nice Work, which was the third book in a trilogy of fun novels about academia (they make it sound like one long party, actually - he must be a secret recruiter for some university or other). My boss is loaning me his entire oeuvre little by little - so far I have read two trilogies and she just left another single novel on my desk this a.m.
Five books that mean a lot to you:
Hm. I hate these things, trying to isolate 5 books from the literally thousands I have read that mean more to me than others!
.
..
...
Oh damn it.
OK, this is not in order of priority. I could not prioritize these. And I know I will think of 5 others in a minute that were just as, or more, important to me as/than these, but let's fish or cut bait here.
1. Adam Bede by George Eliot.
2. The Lord of the Rings (I know, Patrick Nielsen Hayden said this first, but I did read this at the age of 9 or so and still can outquote my kids on arcane Tolkiana)
3. 100 Years of Solitude. Labyrinthine. Beautiful. Scary. Lyrical and full of word play.
4. Collected Poems by e.e. cummings.
5. The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. (A dark horse, isn't it. Read it and you will agree with me that it stays with you for a long time and gives you a profound appreciation for church bells.)
There.
Tag five people to continue this meme:
I have no idea of how to "tag" someone but will try Jon at A Tiny Revolution, Leila at Sister Scorpion, Mark at WitNit who has probably already been tagged by a bunch of people, hmmm that's 3 - Wow, I really don't know that many people well, do I. Hmm, how about an Egyptian blogger, The Dumb North African. He seems fairly erudite.
Update June 9: And here is #5: Yakoub.
Update 2: The Dumb North African and Mark Alexander have responded so far!
Apparently, this one is about books. That's good. I am all about books. Usually they seem to be about things that are out of my league like IPod preferences or something like that.
Total number of books owned:
I have absolutely no idea - about 500 or 600 I guess. In one of my many moves, I lost a box of books so I keep discovering that a book is no longer "with me" (as they say in Arabic to differentiate actual physical possession from theoretical possession). And, I keep passing on paperbacks to other people and acquiring more. Also, I buy books for my kids and read them as voraciously as they do, so do they count as mine? That would bring it up to about 700, I suppose.
Last book bought:
For myself alone, not my kids: The Golden One by Elizabeth Peters. I have a very limited budget for books and even paperbacks in Cairo are expensive, but this mystery series about an Egyptologist family around the turn of the century is one of the few I actually am sufficiently invested in to keep buying the books. (For my kids: White Fang.)
I borrow books a lot more than I buy them because I speed read and go through them very fast. I recently borrowed The Feminine Mystique and The Second Sex. I am reading the De Beauvoir now having finished the Friedan and returned it.
Last book read:
Well, I read fiction the way other people drink coffee, and read nonfiction sort of simultaneously, so the last book I read was some fiction page-turner or other. I really am very addicted to reading. I am also not very discriminating. I can read bad fiction as well as good. I do recognize the difference though. Oh, I remember now! The last actual really well-written book I read was David Lodge's Nice Work, which was the third book in a trilogy of fun novels about academia (they make it sound like one long party, actually - he must be a secret recruiter for some university or other). My boss is loaning me his entire oeuvre little by little - so far I have read two trilogies and she just left another single novel on my desk this a.m.
Five books that mean a lot to you:
Hm. I hate these things, trying to isolate 5 books from the literally thousands I have read that mean more to me than others!
.
..
...
Oh damn it.
OK, this is not in order of priority. I could not prioritize these. And I know I will think of 5 others in a minute that were just as, or more, important to me as/than these, but let's fish or cut bait here.
1. Adam Bede by George Eliot.
2. The Lord of the Rings (I know, Patrick Nielsen Hayden said this first, but I did read this at the age of 9 or so and still can outquote my kids on arcane Tolkiana)
3. 100 Years of Solitude. Labyrinthine. Beautiful. Scary. Lyrical and full of word play.
4. Collected Poems by e.e. cummings.
5. The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. (A dark horse, isn't it. Read it and you will agree with me that it stays with you for a long time and gives you a profound appreciation for church bells.)
There.
Tag five people to continue this meme:
I have no idea of how to "tag" someone but will try Jon at A Tiny Revolution, Leila at Sister Scorpion, Mark at WitNit who has probably already been tagged by a bunch of people, hmmm that's 3 - Wow, I really don't know that many people well, do I. Hmm, how about an Egyptian blogger, The Dumb North African. He seems fairly erudite.
Update June 9: And here is #5: Yakoub.
Update 2: The Dumb North African and Mark Alexander have responded so far!
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Medicaid and Viagra - I am Confused in Cairo Again...
Recently many blogs have referred to a study done in the state of New York showing that many convicted sex offenders were able to get Medicaid reimbursements to buy Viagra. People thought this was really shocking. Both liberals, especially feminist ones, and conservatives, quoted it.
I guess this is one single issue where I (normally the most liberal person I know) really have a conservative type of reaction - I am not so much exercised about sex offenders specifically getting government benefits to buy Viagra, as I am about anyone at all getting government benefits to buy such a frivolous medication that treats a non-medically threatening condition (impotence).
In fact, if we decide that Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs are, in principle, a Medicaid-reimbursable thing, how would we be able to differentiate between sex offenders and the general public without getting our society that much closer towards 1984? They already have these public shame programs towards sex offenders who have served their time, which don't seem to do much good in any practical sense, but satisfy our need for revenge - they would need a very complicated track-keeping system to make sure that Medicaid does not reimburse only a certain group for a certain drug, and I am not really in favor of all this monitoring.
But back to the idea of government funding for such a treatment on its face. Men won’t die if they aren’t able to perform, will they? Are other frivolous medications also covered by Medicaid - such as Retin-A or cosmetic surgery? How about Rogaine? If so, why? What is the possible argument for this?
It occurs to me that I know very little about how Medicaid works. I thought it probably was geared towards medical procedures and drugs that are needed because a person has an illness. I did not think it covered non-threatening things like men's inability to perform sexually, which may be too bad and annoying for them, but is not going to lead to death or even poor health.
I am actually in favor of socialized health care and I like the European model (I lived in France for a year, and while I saw some abuses of the system -- people getting out of work for weeks complaining of headaches, for example - nothing there compared to our heartless system where people without money could be refused treatment or go bankrupt when they have a medical emergency).
However, I simply don't think that taxpayer money should go to purely elective health treatments or medicines.
I also have heard, anecdotally, that some anti-depressants are not covered by Medicaid and therefore many mentally ill poor people end up on the street or suicidal because they cannot afford them. To me, this is a travesty and wrong. But I am hoping my informant was wrong, as many Americans don't seem to really know what government programs target and what they don't.
So if anyone feels like enlightening me on what is really going on with Medicaid in these areas, I would be most grateful. (I would particularly appreciate someone telling me that my informant is wrong - please, please help me think our system makes any sort of sense at all.)
I remain Confused in Cairo (one of my regular nicknames on the Internet).
I guess this is one single issue where I (normally the most liberal person I know) really have a conservative type of reaction - I am not so much exercised about sex offenders specifically getting government benefits to buy Viagra, as I am about anyone at all getting government benefits to buy such a frivolous medication that treats a non-medically threatening condition (impotence).
In fact, if we decide that Viagra or other erectile dysfunction drugs are, in principle, a Medicaid-reimbursable thing, how would we be able to differentiate between sex offenders and the general public without getting our society that much closer towards 1984? They already have these public shame programs towards sex offenders who have served their time, which don't seem to do much good in any practical sense, but satisfy our need for revenge - they would need a very complicated track-keeping system to make sure that Medicaid does not reimburse only a certain group for a certain drug, and I am not really in favor of all this monitoring.
But back to the idea of government funding for such a treatment on its face. Men won’t die if they aren’t able to perform, will they? Are other frivolous medications also covered by Medicaid - such as Retin-A or cosmetic surgery? How about Rogaine? If so, why? What is the possible argument for this?
It occurs to me that I know very little about how Medicaid works. I thought it probably was geared towards medical procedures and drugs that are needed because a person has an illness. I did not think it covered non-threatening things like men's inability to perform sexually, which may be too bad and annoying for them, but is not going to lead to death or even poor health.
I am actually in favor of socialized health care and I like the European model (I lived in France for a year, and while I saw some abuses of the system -- people getting out of work for weeks complaining of headaches, for example - nothing there compared to our heartless system where people without money could be refused treatment or go bankrupt when they have a medical emergency).
However, I simply don't think that taxpayer money should go to purely elective health treatments or medicines.
I also have heard, anecdotally, that some anti-depressants are not covered by Medicaid and therefore many mentally ill poor people end up on the street or suicidal because they cannot afford them. To me, this is a travesty and wrong. But I am hoping my informant was wrong, as many Americans don't seem to really know what government programs target and what they don't.
So if anyone feels like enlightening me on what is really going on with Medicaid in these areas, I would be most grateful. (I would particularly appreciate someone telling me that my informant is wrong - please, please help me think our system makes any sort of sense at all.)
I remain Confused in Cairo (one of my regular nicknames on the Internet).
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Star Wars - What Character are You?
I found this quiz funnier than most. I tried consciously to be a Jedi - as they are kind of like Sufis and I would love to be one. When you answer questions purposely to get to a certain result, it usually ends up turning out. (I should create a test called "what kind of test taker are you?" I am Qui-Gon Jinn. (I was actually hoping for Obi-Wan.)
Thursday, May 19, 2005
A Sound Drubbing
I just noticed something that should have been obvious to me long ago - the Arabic word for "beat or hit" is "d-r-b" (that's the root) and when it is conjugated it sounds a lot like the word "drub" in English, an archaic word meaning.... "to beat or hit." Weird. I wonder if there is any linguistic connection besides mere coincidence? However, I note that the archaic English "drub" was used also to denote "beat as in win" - "He drubbed him soundly at tennis" - and in Arabic I have always heard people use a completely different word for that context.
I also note that the verb "drub" is very associated with the adjective "sound" - in most of the contexts I have seen it they are used phrasally. Whereas the word "d-r-b" in Arabic is often used as a stand-alone. Hmmm.
I also note that the verb "drub" is very associated with the adjective "sound" - in most of the contexts I have seen it they are used phrasally. Whereas the word "d-r-b" in Arabic is often used as a stand-alone. Hmmm.
Monday, May 09, 2005
Honor Killings of Women- Lying about them in order to save them
I am a member of several discussion lists, one of which is concerned with women and Islam. Recently someone there posted a review of a book about "honor" crimes committed against women in the West Bank. For those interested in the review, it skewers the book, marketed as a true story by a woman who underwent horrible torture and mistreatment, as being basically completely made up. The evidence the reviewer marshalled to prove her point was pretty damning. The book was riddled with inconsistencies and falsehoods that anyone who had lived in the West Bank or even had a very basic knowledge of Arab culture would recognize.
Now, this discussion list is pretty progressive, and people on there are very feminist and all of them are horrified by "honor" crimes and loudly denounce them and try to fight them in various ways, such as doing Amnesty letter-writing campaigns and similar things to fight the medieval practice. I have been a member of the list for several years.
A new person to the list, however, seemed to think that a critical review of the book was a whitewash for the practice of honor killing, and stated the following amazing idea:
"I did say that it does not matter whether it is true or not and I
am not going to take that back. The point and the main aspect of
the story was the matter of "honor killing" and the treatment of
women. So, what if she glaring mistakes in reference to important
matters of area and the Palestinian people, for all you know the
story could have been written by someone here in the U.S. who has
never set foot in the Middle East, but to dwell solely on her
mistakes and ignore the plot and meaning of the story then "honor
killing" will remain an hidden secret."
I read this statement over and over again. She really is saying that a book full of lies is supposed to be read without noticing the lies and instead merely focusing on its polemics, or else "honor" killing has no solution.
Are there a lot of people out there that think lying is OK in order to get people involved in an issue? Why is the truth not just as OK, or more OK? I want to say more about this but it will take some thought. There is just so much wrong with the idea that I am unsure of where to start.
Now, this discussion list is pretty progressive, and people on there are very feminist and all of them are horrified by "honor" crimes and loudly denounce them and try to fight them in various ways, such as doing Amnesty letter-writing campaigns and similar things to fight the medieval practice. I have been a member of the list for several years.
A new person to the list, however, seemed to think that a critical review of the book was a whitewash for the practice of honor killing, and stated the following amazing idea:
"I did say that it does not matter whether it is true or not and I
am not going to take that back. The point and the main aspect of
the story was the matter of "honor killing" and the treatment of
women. So, what if she glaring mistakes in reference to important
matters of area and the Palestinian people, for all you know the
story could have been written by someone here in the U.S. who has
never set foot in the Middle East, but to dwell solely on her
mistakes and ignore the plot and meaning of the story then "honor
killing" will remain an hidden secret."
I read this statement over and over again. She really is saying that a book full of lies is supposed to be read without noticing the lies and instead merely focusing on its polemics, or else "honor" killing has no solution.
Are there a lot of people out there that think lying is OK in order to get people involved in an issue? Why is the truth not just as OK, or more OK? I want to say more about this but it will take some thought. There is just so much wrong with the idea that I am unsure of where to start.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
I Am Quitting the Mind Games with Rush Series (for now)
I have thought a lot about this exercise I started, analyzing the transcript of a Rush show from an outside perspective. I decided that Mark was right. As I am critiquing Rush for oversimplifying a person, yet I am evaluating his views based on this single transcript, and according to Mark, Rush himself thinks you should not judge him until you have listened to 30 hours of him. I have no time (or inclination, to be really blunt) to do that, even if I lived in a place where he was on the radio (which I don't), and I am not going to spend the time to read that number of transcripts. So I will jump to no conclusions about him as a person. I will say that I still think the small portion of a radio show that was represented here by the transcript, which may not even be a complete show, apparently, sounds pretty much like he is jumping to the same conclusions that he asks others to avoid about him, about Ward Churchill. But I may be wrong; there is a possibility that Rush treated the issue in depth and fairly at some earlier or later point, and made a crystal-clear logical argument for why Ward's metaphor represents all that is wrong with the "left" and what is "being taught" in our universities.
Seismology Thriller Writing
I love the thriller as a genre. I think it is very instructive to see the technique good thriller writers use to keep your suspense mounting and keep you from closing the book.
Right now, I am reading an older thriller,The Fourth Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders, which is quite entertaining, though the male/female interplay sounds very stilted to me. I have very high standards for thrillers and have read many, so I think I am a pretty good judge. And I have a great thriller beginning for you.
Not only is it a great thriller - it's non-fiction! That is really the best kind of thriller, because you feel the extra "frisson" of knowing it really happened.
It is over at WitNit. Anyone who knows a good literary agent, please tell them about Mark Alexander, the writer of the one and only conservative blog I ever bother to spend the time to read.
Right now, I am reading an older thriller,The Fourth Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders, which is quite entertaining, though the male/female interplay sounds very stilted to me. I have very high standards for thrillers and have read many, so I think I am a pretty good judge. And I have a great thriller beginning for you.
Not only is it a great thriller - it's non-fiction! That is really the best kind of thriller, because you feel the extra "frisson" of knowing it really happened.
It is over at WitNit. Anyone who knows a good literary agent, please tell them about Mark Alexander, the writer of the one and only conservative blog I ever bother to spend the time to read.
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Silly Quiz of the Week
I thought it sounded funny and bet I could beat all the liberal bloggers for "liberalness" and non-republicanness, and I have, I think. (I bet this will really disqualify me from commenting on Rush Limbaugh according to most. It clearly shows I am pretty darned one-sided.)
Are You A Republican?
-6% Republican. | "You're a damn Commie! Where's Tailgunner Joe when we need him?" |
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Mind Games with Rush, Part 3
After yesterday's post, I thought a lot about how I can evaluate the rest of this transcript fairly without going back and reading original articles about the Churchill thing. Also, the original Churchill article itself. So I spent quite a bit of time doing that.
Then I read this transcript again. And I had some general thoughts on this experience and what it is turning into.
It strikes me, at least twenty times a day, that my long residence outside the US has made me very unaware of how the discourse is progressing there. Most of the things Rush says seem to be code phrases that he and his listeners have internalized that I don't share. At times it seems that he is speaking a different language, the language of oversimplification.
Many times I get upset by American pundits who try to write about things I have some knowledge of; for example, Middle Eastern culture, history, religion, whatever. They simplify everything to the point that I feel it is not only too simplified, it becomes incorrect.
The last time I was in the US and I tried to watch network news I had this reaction to everything they said. I wanted more detail. I wanted to know upon what they were basing all the glib phrases, all the catchwords. It seemed that the entire process was in a shorthand code and that there was an active avoidance of giving people too much information. It seems Americans would rather be told things that are wrong than to be told too much and get confused.
But the real world is confusing and very, very complicated. And I think Americans need to realize this.
When Rush reads a sentence about this Churchill professor and then says to his listeners, "That's the Left for you!" he is drastically simplifying everything to the point that it is no longer even coherent.
First of all, he is defining the guy himself (Churchill) by a single sentence taken out of context.
Second, he is defining the metaphor that Churhill used (comparing World Trade Center financial analysts and other employees to "little Eichmanns") as outrageous, presumably because Eichmann was a Nazi. There's no attempt to even understand why Churchill chose Eichmann as a metaphor (if he were just trying to call the financial people in the World Trade Center Nazis, surely he would have picked someone less obscure? Does it not matter to Rush what he actually meant or was trying to say?).
Third, having identified Churchill's term as outrageous and Churchill as equatable with the term, he identifies a group called the "left" as being completely equatable with Churchill just as he has already simplified him.
I have an idea that it would be fairly unfair for me to equate a huge group of people with Rush - even if they listen to his radio show and like it, I would still accept the fact that they are complicated human beings, and so is he, and he is not an emblem of them or vice versa.
I also can't dismiss Rush based on a single dumb thing he said. I have heard that Rush created the term "Feminazi". I could feign outrage with that term and categorize Rush Limbaugh as 100% outrageous because of that term, but I think this is kind of intellectually dishonest, in spite of the fact that the term is very annoying to me - because Rush is more than the sum of some silly things he may or may not have said - as is Churchill, I would assume.
But Rush himself practices this type of supercompression throughout this particular transcript. I have to admit it does not leave me breathless to read more of them. Perhaps I will try to listen to his show once or twice while I am back there this summer so that I can be positive that I am not being unfair or biased here.
I'll continue with the transcript next week. I feel very tired, for some reason.
Then I read this transcript again. And I had some general thoughts on this experience and what it is turning into.
It strikes me, at least twenty times a day, that my long residence outside the US has made me very unaware of how the discourse is progressing there. Most of the things Rush says seem to be code phrases that he and his listeners have internalized that I don't share. At times it seems that he is speaking a different language, the language of oversimplification.
Many times I get upset by American pundits who try to write about things I have some knowledge of; for example, Middle Eastern culture, history, religion, whatever. They simplify everything to the point that I feel it is not only too simplified, it becomes incorrect.
The last time I was in the US and I tried to watch network news I had this reaction to everything they said. I wanted more detail. I wanted to know upon what they were basing all the glib phrases, all the catchwords. It seemed that the entire process was in a shorthand code and that there was an active avoidance of giving people too much information. It seems Americans would rather be told things that are wrong than to be told too much and get confused.
But the real world is confusing and very, very complicated. And I think Americans need to realize this.
When Rush reads a sentence about this Churchill professor and then says to his listeners, "That's the Left for you!" he is drastically simplifying everything to the point that it is no longer even coherent.
First of all, he is defining the guy himself (Churchill) by a single sentence taken out of context.
Second, he is defining the metaphor that Churhill used (comparing World Trade Center financial analysts and other employees to "little Eichmanns") as outrageous, presumably because Eichmann was a Nazi. There's no attempt to even understand why Churchill chose Eichmann as a metaphor (if he were just trying to call the financial people in the World Trade Center Nazis, surely he would have picked someone less obscure? Does it not matter to Rush what he actually meant or was trying to say?).
Third, having identified Churchill's term as outrageous and Churchill as equatable with the term, he identifies a group called the "left" as being completely equatable with Churchill just as he has already simplified him.
I have an idea that it would be fairly unfair for me to equate a huge group of people with Rush - even if they listen to his radio show and like it, I would still accept the fact that they are complicated human beings, and so is he, and he is not an emblem of them or vice versa.
I also can't dismiss Rush based on a single dumb thing he said. I have heard that Rush created the term "Feminazi". I could feign outrage with that term and categorize Rush Limbaugh as 100% outrageous because of that term, but I think this is kind of intellectually dishonest, in spite of the fact that the term is very annoying to me - because Rush is more than the sum of some silly things he may or may not have said - as is Churchill, I would assume.
But Rush himself practices this type of supercompression throughout this particular transcript. I have to admit it does not leave me breathless to read more of them. Perhaps I will try to listen to his show once or twice while I am back there this summer so that I can be positive that I am not being unfair or biased here.
I'll continue with the transcript next week. I feel very tired, for some reason.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Mind Games with Rush, Part 2
OK, I am now ready to go through the first part of this transcript.
"A University of Colorado professor..." How about this? How about this story on the heels of Senator Kennedy's speech yesterday at Johns Hopkins? The American left is just something!"
It is too bad i have no idea of the context. I think the first point to be gained here is that a liberal person who does not listen to this guy every day may miss a lot of context because he refers to (presumably) what he had talked about the day before.
In this instance, Rush recently had obviously discussed some speech given by Ted Kennedy, that he probably disliked (I infer this from the generally accepted view of Ted K as a liberal and Rush L as a conservative). I guess he sees whatever Ted said as somehow emblematic of "the left" as he is going to contend about Churchill as well.
This strikes me as Rush using the very "Pygmalian effect" that Mark thinks we liberals use against him. Of course, one would have to define "the left" and who it includes and on what topics these people agree and on what topics they differ from Rush, but he assumes that his shorthand reference is perfectly clear.
Let's move on. The next paragraph seems to consist of just reading a newspaper article aloud.
"A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims. Students and faculty members at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., have been protesting a speaking appearance on Feb. 3 by Ward L. Churchill, chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department. They are upset over an essay Churchill wrote titled, 'Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.' The essay takes its title from a remark that black activist Malcolm X made in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Malcolm X created controversy when he said Kennedy's murder was a case of 'chickens coming home to roost.' Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War."
OK, that was the article. Now back to Rush.
"So here you have a Colorado University professor, the chairman of the ethnic studies department, asserting something that nobody in the US government has, and that is that Iraq was behind 9/11. Not bin Laden, not Al-Qaeda, not Mullah Omar, not the Taliban. It was Iraq, because of the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 US bombing -- and do you know how many children this man says we killed? Five hundred thousand. He says we killed 500,000 Iraqi children in a bombing raid, plus the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN following the Persian Gulf War."
Oh boy. It could not be possible that a non-Iraqi group could see the number of Iraqis that died under economic sanctions as a problem worthy of punishment? That might be a possibility, but Rush pushes the listener towards the assumption that Churchill's listing of the US-catalyzed fatalities in Iraq as a factor in the anger of the 9/11 perpetrators means that the Iraqi government was the perpetrator. I don't think this is really an honest argument.
He also is angry that Churchill used the 500,000 figure, which is a pretty acceptable figure used by many, many people. I am very unclear on why he thinks it is an exaggeration. It is also very dishonest for him to tie it to the 1991 conflict first and the sanctions second. People who have followed the conflict and its aftermath know this figure is regularly used to describe the effect of the economic sanctions, not the conflict itself. And this is something that should not discompose Rush. This mostly took place on Clinton's watch, after all. Albright was the one who was asked on national TV if half a million children was too high of a death toll for the economic sanctions and she responded, "well, we think the price is worth it." Even she did not question the figure itself.
Moving on.
He seems to go back to reading the article at this point. (Question to those who listen to Rush on the radio: As he's on the radio, how does he differentiate his own opinions from the stuff he reads out loud? Does it ever confuse you?)
"The essay, written by Ward Churchill, contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "combat teams," not terrorists. His essay says, "'The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.' The essay maintains that the people killed inside the Pentagon were 'military targets.' 'As for those in the World Trade Center,' the essay said, 'well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break.' The essay goes on to describe the victims as 'little Eichmanns,' referring to Adolph Eichmann, who executed Adolph Hitler's plan to exterminate Jews during World War II."
Again, I am not clear as to whether this is the article he is reading, written by someone else, or if it is him talking. Also, whether whoever it is directly quotes the Churchill article about the chickens, or paraphrases it.
So far, the information provided by Rush to me has by no means been particularly clear or helpful.
One of the reasons I chose this particular transcript was because i have actually recently read a book on Eichmann and have studied other books on Nazi tactics, propaganda, and politics in the distant past, so it interests me to explore Churchill's analogy and the outrage it has engendered from Rush, and probably many other people.
I will continue this later - perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next week.
"A University of Colorado professor..." How about this? How about this story on the heels of Senator Kennedy's speech yesterday at Johns Hopkins? The American left is just something!"
It is too bad i have no idea of the context. I think the first point to be gained here is that a liberal person who does not listen to this guy every day may miss a lot of context because he refers to (presumably) what he had talked about the day before.
In this instance, Rush recently had obviously discussed some speech given by Ted Kennedy, that he probably disliked (I infer this from the generally accepted view of Ted K as a liberal and Rush L as a conservative). I guess he sees whatever Ted said as somehow emblematic of "the left" as he is going to contend about Churchill as well.
This strikes me as Rush using the very "Pygmalian effect" that Mark thinks we liberals use against him. Of course, one would have to define "the left" and who it includes and on what topics these people agree and on what topics they differ from Rush, but he assumes that his shorthand reference is perfectly clear.
Let's move on. The next paragraph seems to consist of just reading a newspaper article aloud.
"A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims. Students and faculty members at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., have been protesting a speaking appearance on Feb. 3 by Ward L. Churchill, chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department. They are upset over an essay Churchill wrote titled, 'Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.' The essay takes its title from a remark that black activist Malcolm X made in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Malcolm X created controversy when he said Kennedy's murder was a case of 'chickens coming home to roost.' Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War."
OK, that was the article. Now back to Rush.
"So here you have a Colorado University professor, the chairman of the ethnic studies department, asserting something that nobody in the US government has, and that is that Iraq was behind 9/11. Not bin Laden, not Al-Qaeda, not Mullah Omar, not the Taliban. It was Iraq, because of the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 US bombing -- and do you know how many children this man says we killed? Five hundred thousand. He says we killed 500,000 Iraqi children in a bombing raid, plus the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN following the Persian Gulf War."
Oh boy. It could not be possible that a non-Iraqi group could see the number of Iraqis that died under economic sanctions as a problem worthy of punishment? That might be a possibility, but Rush pushes the listener towards the assumption that Churchill's listing of the US-catalyzed fatalities in Iraq as a factor in the anger of the 9/11 perpetrators means that the Iraqi government was the perpetrator. I don't think this is really an honest argument.
He also is angry that Churchill used the 500,000 figure, which is a pretty acceptable figure used by many, many people. I am very unclear on why he thinks it is an exaggeration. It is also very dishonest for him to tie it to the 1991 conflict first and the sanctions second. People who have followed the conflict and its aftermath know this figure is regularly used to describe the effect of the economic sanctions, not the conflict itself. And this is something that should not discompose Rush. This mostly took place on Clinton's watch, after all. Albright was the one who was asked on national TV if half a million children was too high of a death toll for the economic sanctions and she responded, "well, we think the price is worth it." Even she did not question the figure itself.
Moving on.
He seems to go back to reading the article at this point. (Question to those who listen to Rush on the radio: As he's on the radio, how does he differentiate his own opinions from the stuff he reads out loud? Does it ever confuse you?)
"The essay, written by Ward Churchill, contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "combat teams," not terrorists. His essay says, "'The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.' The essay maintains that the people killed inside the Pentagon were 'military targets.' 'As for those in the World Trade Center,' the essay said, 'well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break.' The essay goes on to describe the victims as 'little Eichmanns,' referring to Adolph Eichmann, who executed Adolph Hitler's plan to exterminate Jews during World War II."
Again, I am not clear as to whether this is the article he is reading, written by someone else, or if it is him talking. Also, whether whoever it is directly quotes the Churchill article about the chickens, or paraphrases it.
So far, the information provided by Rush to me has by no means been particularly clear or helpful.
One of the reasons I chose this particular transcript was because i have actually recently read a book on Eichmann and have studied other books on Nazi tactics, propaganda, and politics in the distant past, so it interests me to explore Churchill's analogy and the outrage it has engendered from Rush, and probably many other people.
I will continue this later - perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next week.
What gender is your brain?
OK, I have to preface this with saying that I must be the only person who always gets irritated by quizzes like this. Because often they give you two choices that are by no means mutually exclusive but you must treat them as so. This maddens me. How can I make a "either or" statement on whether I discuss family and personal stuff with friends, or politics? Ever heard of "both about equally" or "impossible to gauge with any real validity" or just "what a stupid question and what the hell does it say about me in either case anyhow"?
That said, I took this quiz recommended by Mark Alexander of Witnit
and my results were almost exactly mirrors of his. We must have answered that question about a friend gaining weight differently.
That said, I took this quiz recommended by Mark Alexander of Witnit
and my results were almost exactly mirrors of his. We must have answered that question about a friend gaining weight differently.
Your Brain is 53.33% Female, 46.67% Male |
Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve |
Monday, April 18, 2005
Teaching Science and Sex Ed in Egypt, Part 2
So back to my son's science textbook. My son is in "Third Preparatory" which is the Egyptian equivalent of 8th grade.
The section on "The Reproductive System" in the science textbook includes diagrams of the internal body parts of the male and female human reproductive systems, as well as the reproductive system of some sort of plant (I am writing this from memory).
Then, there is an abrupt segue into various sexually transmitted diseases, which are described very briefly. They include syphilis, AIDS and herpes (I am not sure about herpes, actually, but there was a third one). The treatments are given very briefly for each disease. Then there is a list of bullet points for prevention. They include (drum roll):
* Listen to your elders, such as your teachers, parents, and imams
* Follow moral values
* Observe hygienic practices (this is how it is stated, in English - there is no clearer injunction such as "take baths" or "wash your hands" or "use a condom" so it is entirely unclear to what they are referring)
* Attend prayers
The Egyptian approach to sex education seems to be that if you pretend sex just does not happen and don't use the word in your science text on the reproductive system, it will not occur to kids to have it. This approach seems to me to be overly based on wishful thinking.
There is no information in the Egyptian curriculum about birth control or actual protection against sexually transmitted diseases, nor is there an explanation of how sex occurs, except the description of reproduction on a cellular level.
What seemed to me, however, to be most misleading, was not the information that they chose not to give to the kids (understandable for 13 year olds in a conservative society, after all) but the information they gave on disease prevention. I felt that listing prayer and hygiene as ways to prevent AIDS and syphilis was downright dishonest. These diseases are spread through sex alone, basically. If you have sex with someone with AIDS, it is doubtful that taking a bath and going to the mosque will help you.
Even if you think that faith can help you prevent diseases, this is a belief, not a scientifically proven fact, and therefore there is no place for it in a science textbook.
I have had a series of long conversations with my son about the facts of life, so that he does not get himself into a mess through a lack of information. I do not think I am encouraging him to be sexually active, particularly as I don't think he's ready at all. But I don't think that lying to kids this age is going to do anything positive at all.
The section on "The Reproductive System" in the science textbook includes diagrams of the internal body parts of the male and female human reproductive systems, as well as the reproductive system of some sort of plant (I am writing this from memory).
Then, there is an abrupt segue into various sexually transmitted diseases, which are described very briefly. They include syphilis, AIDS and herpes (I am not sure about herpes, actually, but there was a third one). The treatments are given very briefly for each disease. Then there is a list of bullet points for prevention. They include (drum roll):
* Listen to your elders, such as your teachers, parents, and imams
* Follow moral values
* Observe hygienic practices (this is how it is stated, in English - there is no clearer injunction such as "take baths" or "wash your hands" or "use a condom" so it is entirely unclear to what they are referring)
* Attend prayers
The Egyptian approach to sex education seems to be that if you pretend sex just does not happen and don't use the word in your science text on the reproductive system, it will not occur to kids to have it. This approach seems to me to be overly based on wishful thinking.
There is no information in the Egyptian curriculum about birth control or actual protection against sexually transmitted diseases, nor is there an explanation of how sex occurs, except the description of reproduction on a cellular level.
What seemed to me, however, to be most misleading, was not the information that they chose not to give to the kids (understandable for 13 year olds in a conservative society, after all) but the information they gave on disease prevention. I felt that listing prayer and hygiene as ways to prevent AIDS and syphilis was downright dishonest. These diseases are spread through sex alone, basically. If you have sex with someone with AIDS, it is doubtful that taking a bath and going to the mosque will help you.
Even if you think that faith can help you prevent diseases, this is a belief, not a scientifically proven fact, and therefore there is no place for it in a science textbook.
I have had a series of long conversations with my son about the facts of life, so that he does not get himself into a mess through a lack of information. I do not think I am encouraging him to be sexually active, particularly as I don't think he's ready at all. But I don't think that lying to kids this age is going to do anything positive at all.
Mind Games with Rush, Part 1
I am following, with great interest, WitNit Mark Alexander's series on the mind and how it works. The latest edition of it, called "The Pygmalian Effect" is exhorting people to realize that we often evaluate what other people say based on preexisting biases we have towards those people. Mark's example is Rush Limbaugh, the radio personality. He says that liberals can't listen to him properly as they have already decided against him just because he's Rush. Now I have never heard good ol' Rush because i have lived outside of the US for so long. So it struck me that I was the ideal liberal American to test this bias by reading a transcript. I guess reading is not the same as listening, but it is the best I can do.
Here is a transcript of a January 8, 2005 radio address by Rush Limbaugh regarding Ward Churchill, a professor from the University of Colorado. Read through it and see what you think. Remember, don't think to yourself "This is Rush." Just read it for content as if it were written by an anonymous person. (I found this transcript from the Free Republic website using Google.) After you read it, and I think about it for a day or two, I will try to post reflections on what he said, hopefully avoiding any preconceived notions I may have about him as a person. Can I do it?
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
"A University of Colorado professor..." How about this? How about this story on the heels of Senator Kennedy's speech yesterday at Johns Hopkins? The American left is just something! "A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims. Students and faculty members at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., have been protesting a speaking appearance on Feb. 3 by Ward L. Churchill, chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department. They are upset over an essay Churchill wrote titled, 'Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.' The essay takes its title from a remark that black activist Malcolm X made in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Malcolm X created controversy when he said Kennedy's murder was a case of 'chickens coming home to roost.' Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War."
So here you have a Colorado University professor, the chairman of the ethnic studies department, asserting something that nobody in the US government has, and that is that Iraq was behind 9/11. Not bin Laden, not Al-Qaeda, not Mullah Omar, not the Taliban. It was Iraq, because of the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 US bombing -- and do you know how many children this man says we killed? Five hundred thousand. He says we killed 500,000 Iraqi children in a bombing raid, plus the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN following the Persian Gulf War. The essay, written by Ward Churchill, contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "combat teams," not terrorists. His essay says, "'The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.' The essay maintains that the people killed inside the Pentagon were 'military targets.' 'As for those in the World Trade Center,' the essay said, 'well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break.' The essay goes on to describe the victims as 'little Eichmanns,' referring to Adolph Eichmann, who executed Adolph Hitler's plan to exterminate Jews during World War II. Churchill said he was not especially surprised at the controversy at Hamilton, but he also defended the opinions contained in his essay. 'When you kill 500,000 children in order to impose your will on other countries, then you shouldn't be surprised when somebody responds in kind,' Churchill said. 'If it's not comfortable, that's the point. It's not comfortable for the people on the other side, either.' The attacks on Sept. 11, he said, were 'a natural and inevitable consequence of what happens as a result of business as usual in the United States. Wake up.' A longtime activist with the American Indian Movement, Churchill was one of eight defendants acquitted last week in Denver County Court on charges of disrupting Denver's Columbus Day parade. His pending speech at Hamilton has drawn criticism from professors and students, including Matt Coppo, a sophomore whose father died in the World Trade Center attacks. 'His views are completely hurtful to the families of 3,000 people,' Coppo said. A spokesman for Hamilton College released a statement noting that Hamilton is committed to 'the free exchange of ideas. We expect that many of those who strongly disagree with Mr. Churchill's comments will attend his talk and make their views known.'"
Now, Jeanne Kirkpatrick has been suspended from making speeches. Thomas Sowell has been shouted down on stage at liberal universities. You know the drill. No conservatives are ever invited to give a commencement speech anywhere -- and here this guy, who claims we've killed 500,000 Iraqi children, that Iraq sought revenge by blowing up the World Trade Center, that the victims of the World Trade Center bombing are just a bunch of little Eichmanns and, "What do we expect? We brought this on ourselves," this is the American left today. This man -- you may think this is kooky and it is -- but I'm going to tell you, something, folks. If you go to a bunch of Democratic websites, these little -- you know, they've got their own new media out there and the Democratic Party had better figure this out real fast.
These Moveon.orgs and Americans Coming Together and all these other little web sites, these people think they're running the Democratic Party now. If you go to those websites, you'll find sentiment not that far removed from what you just heard me quote from Ward Churchill, who is the chairman of the ethnic studies department at University of Colorado. This is not a minor institution, not a minor department, and he's the chairman of it, and he's running around making these statements. Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying we should squelch things. I want these people to keep talking. I want these people to keep saying what they really believe. I want the spokespeople of the left to keep identifying their own beliefs. It may be hurtful, and it may be outrageous and it may be a pack of lies, folks, but it's about time people found out who the American left in this country is. It's about time we found out what is being taught on college campuses. It's about time. You may disagree, you may think this is over the top, over the line, that this guy's insane and he's a wacko, and he shouldn't be given a voice, that they ought to cancel his speech and so forth. It's only going to make him a martyr. It's only what he wants. Let him speak. Let him be heard. Let the American left continue to properly identify itself and themselves to all in America who can hear it.
END TRANSCRIPT
Here is a transcript of a January 8, 2005 radio address by Rush Limbaugh regarding Ward Churchill, a professor from the University of Colorado. Read through it and see what you think. Remember, don't think to yourself "This is Rush." Just read it for content as if it were written by an anonymous person. (I found this transcript from the Free Republic website using Google.) After you read it, and I think about it for a day or two, I will try to post reflections on what he said, hopefully avoiding any preconceived notions I may have about him as a person. Can I do it?
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
"A University of Colorado professor..." How about this? How about this story on the heels of Senator Kennedy's speech yesterday at Johns Hopkins? The American left is just something! "A University of Colorado professor has sparked controversy in New York over an essay he wrote that maintains that people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were not innocent victims. Students and faculty members at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., have been protesting a speaking appearance on Feb. 3 by Ward L. Churchill, chairman of the CU Ethnic Studies Department. They are upset over an essay Churchill wrote titled, 'Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens.' The essay takes its title from a remark that black activist Malcolm X made in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Malcolm X created controversy when he said Kennedy's murder was a case of 'chickens coming home to roost.' Churchill's essay argues that the Sept. 11 attacks were in retaliation for the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 U.S. bombing raid and by economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the United Nations following the Persian Gulf War."
So here you have a Colorado University professor, the chairman of the ethnic studies department, asserting something that nobody in the US government has, and that is that Iraq was behind 9/11. Not bin Laden, not Al-Qaeda, not Mullah Omar, not the Taliban. It was Iraq, because of the Iraqi children killed in a 1991 US bombing -- and do you know how many children this man says we killed? Five hundred thousand. He says we killed 500,000 Iraqi children in a bombing raid, plus the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq by the UN following the Persian Gulf War. The essay, written by Ward Churchill, contends the hijackers who crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were "combat teams," not terrorists. His essay says, "'The most that can honestly be said of those involved on Sept. 11 is that they finally responded in kind to some of what this country has dispensed to their people as a matter of course.' The essay maintains that the people killed inside the Pentagon were 'military targets.' 'As for those in the World Trade Center,' the essay said, 'well, really, let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break.' The essay goes on to describe the victims as 'little Eichmanns,' referring to Adolph Eichmann, who executed Adolph Hitler's plan to exterminate Jews during World War II. Churchill said he was not especially surprised at the controversy at Hamilton, but he also defended the opinions contained in his essay. 'When you kill 500,000 children in order to impose your will on other countries, then you shouldn't be surprised when somebody responds in kind,' Churchill said. 'If it's not comfortable, that's the point. It's not comfortable for the people on the other side, either.' The attacks on Sept. 11, he said, were 'a natural and inevitable consequence of what happens as a result of business as usual in the United States. Wake up.' A longtime activist with the American Indian Movement, Churchill was one of eight defendants acquitted last week in Denver County Court on charges of disrupting Denver's Columbus Day parade. His pending speech at Hamilton has drawn criticism from professors and students, including Matt Coppo, a sophomore whose father died in the World Trade Center attacks. 'His views are completely hurtful to the families of 3,000 people,' Coppo said. A spokesman for Hamilton College released a statement noting that Hamilton is committed to 'the free exchange of ideas. We expect that many of those who strongly disagree with Mr. Churchill's comments will attend his talk and make their views known.'"
Now, Jeanne Kirkpatrick has been suspended from making speeches. Thomas Sowell has been shouted down on stage at liberal universities. You know the drill. No conservatives are ever invited to give a commencement speech anywhere -- and here this guy, who claims we've killed 500,000 Iraqi children, that Iraq sought revenge by blowing up the World Trade Center, that the victims of the World Trade Center bombing are just a bunch of little Eichmanns and, "What do we expect? We brought this on ourselves," this is the American left today. This man -- you may think this is kooky and it is -- but I'm going to tell you, something, folks. If you go to a bunch of Democratic websites, these little -- you know, they've got their own new media out there and the Democratic Party had better figure this out real fast.
These Moveon.orgs and Americans Coming Together and all these other little web sites, these people think they're running the Democratic Party now. If you go to those websites, you'll find sentiment not that far removed from what you just heard me quote from Ward Churchill, who is the chairman of the ethnic studies department at University of Colorado. This is not a minor institution, not a minor department, and he's the chairman of it, and he's running around making these statements. Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying we should squelch things. I want these people to keep talking. I want these people to keep saying what they really believe. I want the spokespeople of the left to keep identifying their own beliefs. It may be hurtful, and it may be outrageous and it may be a pack of lies, folks, but it's about time people found out who the American left in this country is. It's about time we found out what is being taught on college campuses. It's about time. You may disagree, you may think this is over the top, over the line, that this guy's insane and he's a wacko, and he shouldn't be given a voice, that they ought to cancel his speech and so forth. It's only going to make him a martyr. It's only what he wants. Let him speak. Let him be heard. Let the American left continue to properly identify itself and themselves to all in America who can hear it.
END TRANSCRIPT
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Favorite Poem for National Poetry Month
For National Poetry Month I want to post my all-time favorite poem, which is by e. e. cummings. I love cummings' poetry because of the way he plays with punctuation and spacing. I also love his metaphors and images. Also his irreverence for the conventional and corresponding deep reverence for real life and love and all that good stuff.
somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with this colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
You can read more e. e. cummings here. Enjoy National Poetry Month. Yes, I don't live in the US. But I am an American, so I can still celebrate American national events here.
Also, go read a very beautiful poem at Feministe by Nikki Giovanni.
somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with this colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
You can read more e. e. cummings here. Enjoy National Poetry Month. Yes, I don't live in the US. But I am an American, so I can still celebrate American national events here.
Also, go read a very beautiful poem at Feministe by Nikki Giovanni.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Teaching Science and Sex Ed in Egypt, Part 1
Although I wanted to confine this website to language oriented posts, I think I'll cast the net a bit broader to include education issues - like my beloved guru the Underground Grammarian (Yes, she CAN be taught how to do god-damned links) who is online thanks to Mark Alexander of WitNit, and describe to all the religious people in the US what an education looks like in a country with a national religion. Let me preface this by saying I myself am a practitioner of this particular national religion, so that people don't think I am out to get it as a religion. What I am out to get is the infiltration of education with religion.
Not everyone agrees on why we send our kids to school. I had well-educated middle-class parents who taught me that I was there to learn stuff and become a mature, responsible grown-up capable of thinking, and therefore open to learning more and more on my own once I left school and started to work, have a family, etc. But the people who run the education system seem not to share that view. I (like the UG, god bless him, if that's what he wants) believe that they would like to mold kids to have certain opinions, rather than to think for themselves. Unfortunately, the main debates in the US are not so much what is the point of education, but which cookie cutter we want to use on the poor kids. Thinking is not in the equation. Either we want them to believe X, or Y. But religion is about belief and I think education should not be; it should be about thinking.
Now I hear that people in the US are demanding to bring religious beliefs into science masquerading as theory. They also want to teach kids about avoiding sexual diseases simply by telling them not to have sex. I wonder if they still teach sex ed at all in the US (they did, in embarrassing detail, when I was in public school in the 80s).
Well, I advise those people to come here and look at the textbooks my kids have. They go to a school in Egypt. There's a national religion here, Islam. There are other religions here too. There are hardly any non-believers.
There are several different subjects that use religious material as a source, mostly Quranic verses and "Hadith" (reports on stuff the Prophet of Islam, Mohamed, peace be upon him, supposedly said). I must mention that these are all government issued and approved textbooks. The Egyptian educational system is completely centralized and all kids in the nation have the same textbooks for the basic courses. Among those subjects:
* Arabic (the verses and hadith are used as texts, which must be memorized and deconstructed according to their use of metaphor, simile, other rhetorical forms in Arabic, grammar, and everything else)
* Social studies (particularly the section of Egyptian history having to do with the Islamic period, also it is the use of verses and hadith)
* Religion class (yes, religion is a separate course of its own in spite of already being inside of all the other courses)
* Science (more on this below)
* Math (the ratio sections in 5th and 4th grades use Islamic inheritence laws to teach kids how to use the ratio concepts)
The only subjects where I have not noticed religion being used as an example are the English and French language government issued textbooks. And I have probably just not looked closely enough.
If you are Western and reading this, you may wonder "Science? How?" And well may you ask.
The first time I noticed the religious stuff in the science text was when my older kid was in 5th grade. There was a section in the book about the Earth and the solar system. It mentioned a verse from the Quran "and we brought forth from the water everything". It was highlighted in a little blue box.
Well, I thought that was relatively innocuous. And as the years went by I saw other relatively harmless insertions like that. It seemed to me that Muslims tend to take the reverse approach of Christians to the challenge posed by science. They tend to go back and radically re-interpret their verses to match scientific discoveries, rather than contradict those discoveries. They are quite good at it, actually. To Muslims, it seems quite natural that science should have been foreseen in the Quran, given that it is the Word of God, so you can always find a verse that says something that might have connotations of some recent discovery. There is an entire book on this called "The Quran and Science" for people interested in how they do this.
But yesterday, I was talking to my son about his studying for a science exam, and he mentioned he was taking the reproductive system and what passes for sex ed in Egypt, which made me kind of interested to see how they handle the topic. And boy was I shocked.
Check this space tomorrow for the rest of the story.
Not everyone agrees on why we send our kids to school. I had well-educated middle-class parents who taught me that I was there to learn stuff and become a mature, responsible grown-up capable of thinking, and therefore open to learning more and more on my own once I left school and started to work, have a family, etc. But the people who run the education system seem not to share that view. I (like the UG, god bless him, if that's what he wants) believe that they would like to mold kids to have certain opinions, rather than to think for themselves. Unfortunately, the main debates in the US are not so much what is the point of education, but which cookie cutter we want to use on the poor kids. Thinking is not in the equation. Either we want them to believe X, or Y. But religion is about belief and I think education should not be; it should be about thinking.
Now I hear that people in the US are demanding to bring religious beliefs into science masquerading as theory. They also want to teach kids about avoiding sexual diseases simply by telling them not to have sex. I wonder if they still teach sex ed at all in the US (they did, in embarrassing detail, when I was in public school in the 80s).
Well, I advise those people to come here and look at the textbooks my kids have. They go to a school in Egypt. There's a national religion here, Islam. There are other religions here too. There are hardly any non-believers.
There are several different subjects that use religious material as a source, mostly Quranic verses and "Hadith" (reports on stuff the Prophet of Islam, Mohamed, peace be upon him, supposedly said). I must mention that these are all government issued and approved textbooks. The Egyptian educational system is completely centralized and all kids in the nation have the same textbooks for the basic courses. Among those subjects:
* Arabic (the verses and hadith are used as texts, which must be memorized and deconstructed according to their use of metaphor, simile, other rhetorical forms in Arabic, grammar, and everything else)
* Social studies (particularly the section of Egyptian history having to do with the Islamic period, also it is the use of verses and hadith)
* Religion class (yes, religion is a separate course of its own in spite of already being inside of all the other courses)
* Science (more on this below)
* Math (the ratio sections in 5th and 4th grades use Islamic inheritence laws to teach kids how to use the ratio concepts)
The only subjects where I have not noticed religion being used as an example are the English and French language government issued textbooks. And I have probably just not looked closely enough.
If you are Western and reading this, you may wonder "Science? How?" And well may you ask.
The first time I noticed the religious stuff in the science text was when my older kid was in 5th grade. There was a section in the book about the Earth and the solar system. It mentioned a verse from the Quran "and we brought forth from the water everything". It was highlighted in a little blue box.
Well, I thought that was relatively innocuous. And as the years went by I saw other relatively harmless insertions like that. It seemed to me that Muslims tend to take the reverse approach of Christians to the challenge posed by science. They tend to go back and radically re-interpret their verses to match scientific discoveries, rather than contradict those discoveries. They are quite good at it, actually. To Muslims, it seems quite natural that science should have been foreseen in the Quran, given that it is the Word of God, so you can always find a verse that says something that might have connotations of some recent discovery. There is an entire book on this called "The Quran and Science" for people interested in how they do this.
But yesterday, I was talking to my son about his studying for a science exam, and he mentioned he was taking the reproductive system and what passes for sex ed in Egypt, which made me kind of interested to see how they handle the topic. And boy was I shocked.
Check this space tomorrow for the rest of the story.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Another silly quiz from Leila
This is supposed to be a blog about language, dammit! But I broke down and took the silly quiz that Leila told me about in the "sapphire" comments below. I guess i missed the Sufi bar by a question or two (the one I was hoping for) and I was a "Progressive Muslim."
You are a PROGRESSIVE Muslim. You could be from
any sect, religious or not, and may have
leftist/activist tendencies. Anything goes
with you. Everyone else is some sort of
fanatic.
Sigh...I have started hating the very word "progressive," as it has recently been used by so many different kidns of people to mean so many different things, and has now become one of those emotional type cue-words devoid of meaning like "freedom," "democracy," and "terrorism." Well, it was a cute quiz, thanks, Leila. The issue of the word "progressive" is for another, more serious, post.
You are a PROGRESSIVE Muslim. You could be from
any sect, religious or not, and may have
leftist/activist tendencies. Anything goes
with you. Everyone else is some sort of
fanatic.
Sigh...I have started hating the very word "progressive," as it has recently been used by so many different kidns of people to mean so many different things, and has now become one of those emotional type cue-words devoid of meaning like "freedom," "democracy," and "terrorism." Well, it was a cute quiz, thanks, Leila. The issue of the word "progressive" is for another, more serious, post.
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