In Behind Yon Auld Fell Dyke

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/sadies-question.html

Posted by Dave Hingsburger

(Photo description: Sadie, a four year old, in heated light saber battle.)

I was giving Sadie a ride up to the restaurant where we were all gathering for dinner. I sped ahead, leaving the others in the dust, something that made Sadie squeal with delight. I slowed down at one point and Sadie asked why we were going so slow. She was afraid that the others would catch up.

I told her that I had to go slowly because there were lots of people out and I didn't want to run into anyone or have anyone run into me. She nodded gravely. She understood. We sped up again when the crowd dispersed and as we headed towards the intersection, Sadie said, "You better go slow now because you don't want to hit a car or have a car hit us." I thanked Sadie for the alert and slowed down as she asked.

After we crossed the intersection Sadie, who'd been mulling over this safety thing, asked me, "Why don't people watch out for wheelchairs like your wheelchair?" I wasn't sure of exactly what she meant so I asked her to clarify. "You watch out for people who are walking but people who are walking don't watch out for you. How come?" I began rummaging around in my mind for an answer when she went on to explain that she had seen someone walk right in front of us and they weren't paying attention. This did not make sense to her.

You see, in Sadie's 4 year old mind, people need to watch out for themselves and for each other. For her, independence and being responsible for herself and her movements, are a highly valued and sought after goal. She sees the need for being aware of where she is, the risks in her environment, and for taking care to avoid hurt and to avoid inflicting hurt.

Now let's be clear, Sadie's a kid, she understands these things but yet is still learning them. But the important fact here is that she UNDERSTANDS at 4 what many people will forget by 24 - that there is a personal responsibility involved in caring for self and caring for others. That it is equally the responsibility of me in my wheelchair and you on your feet to watch out for each other.

Sadie doesn't know that she's asked me a question that is hard to answer because it's a complex answer. It's an answer that would involve discussing how people see but don't see people in wheelchairs and about the assumed privileges that come with walking not rolling. So you can understand that I was relieved when we turned a corner and saw a wonderful ice sculpture. I didn't have to explain why it is that I am often in an unequal relationship with casual strangers.

But now I know that 4 year olds know about responsibility and equity.

Now I know that this information is in the head of every one I meet -- the job isn't teaching, it's getting people to remember.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/sadies-question.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/10/just-remember-to-always-think-twice/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21387

Stephen Colbert takes that joke to the next level.

• This and this is why that video seemed appropriate today.

Well played, kid. (Click for full story)

• In church-y circles, I’m sometimes asked the very oddly worded question, “Do you believe in homosexuality?” I like to answer by saying, “Believe in it? I’ve seen it with my own two eyes!”

• Zack Hoag writes: “Upholding the inerrancy of scripture often leads to a hermeneutic of oppression.” Yes, true.

But it’s also true the other way around, which is where the invention of “the inerrancy of scripture” comes from. It was created in defense of a hermeneutic of oppression. It endures to defend that hermeneutic and to defend that oppression.

That is not an unfortunate side effect of biblical inerrancy. That is its purpose — its primary purpose. That is its attraction and its appeal.

That is what it does. And thus that is what inerrantists are doing.

• “These 9 Maps Should Absolutely Outrage Southerners.” Problem is they do, it’s just that their outrage is still focused in the wrong direction.

• Speaking of oppressive inerrantists and Southern outrages, here’s an encouraging follow-up on the devolution at Bryan College: “Faculty Vote ‘No Confidence’ in President over Adam and Eve.” The vote wasn’t close — 30-2, with six abstentions.

The (Chattanooga) Times Free Press report says the college president pushing this creationist dogma has alienated most of the college community for other reasons, too:

Faculty had many concerns over Livesay’s leadership:

“… lack of institutional control, budget was secret, decreases in enrollment, top heavy in administration, neglect for body, poor financial management … authoritarian leadership style — alienated faculty, students, cabinet members. Morale on campus is at all-time low — broken, hurting people.

“We are in danger of losing Bryan College.”

I’m guessing this was another concern of the faculty: There are only 38 of them.

• Michael Medved tells a huge whopper:

“No prohibition — there has never been a state in this country that has ever banned gay marriage,” Medved said. “That is a liberal lie.”

… In fact, 30 states have banned same-sex marriage in their state constitutions.

You’d think Medved would remember those state bans passing, since: 1) Most of those bans were passed fairly recently, within the last 10-20 years; and 2) Michael Medved has spent much of those 10-20 years pushing states to pass the very bans he now says do not exist.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/10/just-remember-to-always-think-twice/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21387

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/10/otter-can-do-zombie-and-great-white-shark-impressions/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8124

Otter Can Do Zombie and Great White Shark Impressions 1

Otter Can Do Zombie and Great White Shark Impressions 2

Via Beginners Blog Otter

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/10/otter-can-do-zombie-and-great-white-shark-impressions/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8124

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/09/true-detective-theories-welcome/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21390

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/09/true-detective-theories-welcome/

The season finale of True Detective arrives this evening. Consider this an open thread for those entangled in the show who want one last chance to speculate where this story is going and What It All Means.

If you’ve never seen the show, please feel free to chime in. Your guess might be just as good as anyone else’s.

• I like Scott Paeth’s “Rosemary’s Baby Theory”:

Everybody. Every. Single. Solitary person that we’ve encountered on the show up till this point has to be involved in the plot. The only exceptions are Marty and Rust, and the two black detectives investigating the new murder. Beyond them, my theory is that everyone the detectives have come across up to this point, including Marty’s wife, including both of his girlfriends, including Rust’s briefly encountered girlfriend, the politicans, police officers, etc. Everybody is involved in this conspiracy. In the end, Marty and Rust will come upon some hideous ritual being performed for the Yellow King (probably the sacrifice of one of Marty’s daughters), and they will realize that they are battling against forces that it is impossible for them to overcome, and so the whole show will end in a note of ultimate cosmic despair in the face of evil.

I don’t think that’s where it’s headed, but it could work. (I’m pretty sure, though, that if there is a grand conspiracy, Maggie’s not in on it. Her dad definitely. And maybe her new, as-yet-unseen, husband. But not her.)

• Chauncey DeVega offers four predictions for the finale. I agree with half of them and/or half-agree with all of them. Maybe.

• The staff of Grantland offers a great big roundup of still-possible theories about the show. They can’t all be right. They can, however, all be wrong.

• One of the better things I’ve read about the show is Willa Paskin’s “The Horrible Things That Men Do to Women.”

Presenting women as a parade of scolds, sluts, and the strung-out typically makes me hate a television series. But I love True Detective. While it is possible — by which I mean undeniably true — that I am completely in thrall to the ever-captivating McConaissance, I think True Detective has not triggered my usual response because it is, at least on some level, very aware of how stereotypically and perfunctorily it treats its female characters. When it comes to women, True Detective is undeniably shallow — but I think it’s being shallow on purpose.

Ignoring women may be the show’s blind spot, but it is also one of its major themes. True Detective is explicitly about the horrible things that men do to women, things that usually go unseen and uninvestigated. No one missed Dora Lange. Marie Fontenot disappeared, and the police let a rumor stop them from following up. Another little girl was abducted, and a report was never even filed. “Women and children are disappearing, nobody hears about it, nobody puts it together,” Rust told his boss Sunday night, outlining what he believes is a vast conspiracy in the Bayou. Rust is haunted by women who aren’t there — his ex-wife and his dead daughter — while Marty cannot deal appropriately with the women who are.

What’s really sharp in Paskin’s piece is her awareness that this defense of the show’s treatment of its female characters might just be wishful thinking. It’s a credible argument that explains at least some of what we’ve seen (and what we haven’t seen), and it may be accurate. But we can’t be sure it is — at least not until we see how this story ends. (Or, as Paskin says, until we see what it has in store for us in Season 2.)

That’s the great fun of watching a show like this unfold, and of speculating and theorizing about it. It invites us to consider all these disparate claims, symbols, and plotlines, and to engage with the various narrators — Marty, Rust, the camera — and to choose how much or whether or when each is being trustworthy. And all the while we must be cautious of our own tendency, need or desire to impose meaning and patterns where none was intended.

And of course that’s not just true of smart TV shows like True Detective. It’s also true of works of literature. Including revered, ancient works of literature. Including the Bible. That’s why, as Morgan Guyton says, “English majors make lousy fundamentalists.”

• In an interview late last month, writer Nic Pizzolatto said, “You can Google ‘Satanism,’ ‘preschool’ and ‘Louisiana’ and you’ll be surprised at what you get.” And so lots of people did just that in the past week, coming across what the Daily Beast headline writer calls, “The Satanic Child Sex Abuse Case That May Have Inspired True Detective.”

That would be the 2005 Hosanna Church case, which initially involved lots of lurid detail about Satanic rituals that seemed to have come right out of some Hollywood movie. And those details, it turns out, did come right out of Hollywood movies. After rehashing all that nonsense about pentagrams and blood rituals, Steven Ward finally comes to this — 20 paragraphs in:

All these years later, it’s still unclear if the devil worshiping and occult details that were given to detectives ever actually happened. There was no physical evidence, such as the existence of pentagrams on the floor or buried remains of sacrificed animals, presented at Lamonica’s trial.

… District Attorney Scott Perrilloux, who prosecuted Lamonica, told The Baton Rouge Advocate in 2008 that the case was never about satanic cults.

“This case, from our perspective, had nothing to do with a church or a cult or any sort of high pressure situation. This case is about child abuse and molestation,” Perrilloux said.

Gotta love that “it’s still unclear” bit. Apart from the utter lack of any evidence confirming the existence of something that has never been shown to actually exist anywhere, it’s still unclear. The Beast’s piece also neglects to mention what became of the Hosanna church building where, it’s pretty darned clear, no such Satanic rituals ever took place. Another church moved in back in 2006:

Early in the investigation, authorities alleged that the abuse was part of a satanic ritual but later said investigators found no physical evidence of such rituals.

Yates said that his church received the building as it was after detectives combed it for evidence. The church members also have found no evidence of occult rituals.

Yates, too, does not believe occult activities took place at the church. To him, it is simply a building that will once again be used as a church.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21390

ursulav_feed

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1579631.html

I'm slowly porting everything over--I've got all the newcomer quests in, Frogquest and all the various grind* quests from Moon-Stuffing Camp.

It takes awhile.

For one thing, the cards grow enormously upon import--one "card" in StoryNexus becomes at least two in Twine (which makes sense--cause, then effect!) but most of them become three or four (and in one epic case, twelve!)

The current arrangement is that when you're in Moon-Stuffing Camp, you'll get access to whatever quest lines are currently "live"--the Frog questline, for example, or talking to the Sorrowful Oryx or whatnot--and then you'll also have a random grind quest available. There's ten possibilities, one of which could come up at any given time. If you want to grind, you can, but you can also just ignore it in favor of something else, which will mean (hopefully!) less tedium than the StoryNexus version--you don't have to keep playing the same cards just to get them out of your hand and hope something more fun will come up.

There will also be a randomized merchant who will appear regularly but not every single time you visit. (Presumably Wool-tribe will be very similar, although I haven't started that section yet--working on Moon-Stuffing and Streamside at the moment.)

Kevin has very kindly built me a skill check function, which is awesome and saves on typing. Skills are probably going to build more slowly in this version (which is good, because they built comparatively fast in SN--a couple turns in Withyjack and you could max out Keen, for example) but since you will probably have unlimited turns, it should all work out. (There will be a lot of re-balancing in playtesting, I expect...)

Despite the fact that it's slow-going--on a good day, I can port maybe five or six cards, which, given there's 450+ in StoryNexus, means it'll be awhile!--there's a lot of cool stuff I'm able to do now. If I want someone's dialog to change based on your species, I can just DO it, not have to tediously set up six different nearly identical click-throughs. And with stuff like Frogquest, when you wander through camp, you actually get the Frog watching you and lurking and you see little wet footprints outside your yurt and things, even if you can't do anything about it until a little later. (Which I think is awesome, although the players may just go mad.)

I'm looking forward to actually getting to the storyline quests, rather than the grind stuff, although it's important to get those worked out, because that's where a lot of the important mechanics are, and if I break one of those, it's not nearly so crucial as if I break a major storyline.

(I am NOT looking forward to porting the Steppes section, although I've got some idea on how to do it--that's gonna require some revamping, and I expect it will take weeks to recreate properly. Oh well...)

*Used in the sense that you can do them repeatedly to build skills/make money, and they don't change significantly or advance the storyline.

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1579631.html

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/2014/03/some-small-surprises/

Posted by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/?p=2106

Hello Poppets. I know it’s Sunday, and I don’t usually post on the weekend, but book tours wipe away all the days of the week. (Although I was trying really, really hard to keep track of Sunday on account the time change but then I realized I was flying to Arizona, and that means there’s no time change until I fly out of Arizona.) I’m in Phoenix (Tempe, technically) and last night there was a really great event at Changing Hands that I’ll tell you about tomorrow, but for now, San Francisco?

A short list of Surprising Things that happened in San Francisco.

Surprise #1. This book signing

What a wickedly good time I had. You can’t tell in that picture but some of the most fun people ever are in that crowd. I loved them. (It was at Books Inc., and I left behind some signed books, if you had your heart set on getting one, and I’m not coming near your home.) Hidden in there are some people who’ve been hanging with this blog (and their own) for a long time, like the lovely Alison H, and Carrie, of Irish Girlie Fame.) Lingering around in the back though, is Julie, from Cocoknits.

When I was done talking and signing, she came up to me and gave me a little present. She gave me a hard copy of one of her patterns that I’d bought online. That “linen vest thing” that I’ve been going on about for the last few weeks, the one that I’d said I was going to finish on the tour? It’s Adrian – one of Julie’s patterns. Debbi and I both tried it on at the Habu booth at Madrona, and we both loved the shape, the flow, how it fit… Killer. So we each bought our three skeins of linen, and we’ve been cranking it out since.

It hasn’t been without incident, both Debbi and I thought something wasn’t right, something just wasn’t looking the way it should, and we checked and double checked the pattern, had conversations about how it really didn’t look right, but all the conversations ended with affirming that we had tried it on, we had loved it, we were getting gauge, and there was no errata. It would come together, we said. Come together it did – sort of. I finished it on Thursday night, but I had lots of yarn left, and a niggling feeling that it wasn’t long enough, so that evening I ripped out the cast on, picked up a million stitches around the bottom, and spent the flight to San Francisco adding a few inches to the bottom.

When I got there, I gave it a wash in the sink…

and blocked it, convinced that it would be fine after that.

It didn’t look anything like I was hoping. I was actually disappointed, but I tried to think it would look better dry – which wasn’t very logical.

Surprise #2 Off I went, with my sad little Adrian on the floor, and at the end of the night Julie comes up to me and says something vague like “Oh, you’re knitting this pattern, I thought you might like to have a hard copy” and she hands me this.

Notice anything? I did. Straight away. Then we had a conversation like this:

Me: Oh, no – that’s not the one I’m knitting. I’m knitting Adrian. Wait, is that the name? Hold on…

Julie: No, you’re knitting the one from Habu, right? That’s ADRIANA. You’ve got the name wrong. The only one at Habu is Adriana. That’s what you’re making.

Me: (Heart starting to pound – world a little black at the edges) Oh. No.

I’ve not got the name wrong, I’ve knit the wrong one. Debbi’s knit the wrong one. It doesn’t look right because it’s not right, it’s not the vest thing we meant to knit at all. We have knit a different pattern. I texted Debbi almost straight away.

We went on.

I felt bad that Debbi was alone when this was going to come over her.

What the f**k did we knit indeed. I can’t tell you what Debbi said after that, or what I said to her, because it was language unbecoming knitters, let me tell you. That thread represents the most civil part of the discourse that followed, and there’s no way I could make it public. We have knit the wrong thing by accident and it was miles of stockinette, and… man. The worst part is that it takes 3 skeins of linen to knit Adrian, and 4 to knit Adriana. I didn’t even have enough to knit the right one. I did know that Verb carried Habu, so I took a wander over there the next day. I didn’t know if I was hoping they had it or not.

Surprise #3

Later today, when I think I can face it, I’m going to start over.

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/2014/03/some-small-surprises/

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/?p=2106

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/iQoWWZm8zGw/

Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61891

Ed, at Gin & Tacos, made a fantastic observation about this photo of a 1960 lunch counter sit-in at a Woolworth’s in Greensboro, NC, protesting the exclusion of black customers.

“The most interesting thing about it,” he writes:

…is that the employee behind the Whites Only lunch counter is also black. That’s curious, since on the scale of intimate social contact one would think that having someone handle your food ranks above sitting next to a fully clothed stranger on adjacent stools.

This, he observes, tells us something important about prejudice.

When I first saw this picture and learned about this period in our history… I thought that racism was about believing that another race is inferior. Like most people I got (slightly) wiser with age and eventually figured out that racism is about keeping someone else beneath you on the social ladder… If you actually thought black people were dirty savages you wouldn’t eat anything they handed you. But of course it has nothing to do with that. You’re fine being served food because servility implies social inferiority. And you don’t want to sit next to them simply because it implies equality.

When we observe efforts to uphold unequal social conditions, it’s smart to think past notions of hatred and fear (like the term homophobia unfortunately implies) and instead about how the privileged are benefiting and what they would lose along with their superordinate status. Hate may be useful for justifying inequality, but at its root it’s about power and resources, not emotions.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/iQoWWZm8zGw/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61891

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/09/sunday-favorites-136/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21385

Luke 17:11-19

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”

When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean.

Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.

Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/09/sunday-favorites-136/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21385

sexisnottheenemy_feed

http://sexisnottheenemy.tumblr.com/post/79050185456

softerworld: A Softer World: 1067

http://sexisnottheenemy.tumblr.com/post/79050185456

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/09/otter-explores-a-snowy-tree/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8117

Otter Explores a Snowy Tree 1

Otter Explores a Snowy Tree 2

Otter Explores a Snowy Tree 3

Thanks, kashiwaya920! Bonus photo of the same otter rolling in the snow:

Otter Explores a Snowy Tree 4

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/09/otter-explores-a-snowy-tree/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8117

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-necklace-and-my-moment.html

Posted by Dave Hingsburger

(Photo Description: little 7 year old girl carrying a light saber and wearing a skull necklace poses with a man dressed as Wolverine and a woman is dressed as the character Storm.)

If you look at this picture carefully, you can click on the picture to make it larger, you will see that Ruby is wearing, around her neck, a necklace. It was purchased at ComiCon here in Toronto, the event during which this picture was taken. The necklace is a pendant. The pendant is a silver skull and crossbones and their are 'rubies' encrusting the skull. It's cool. It's cute. It looked great with Ruby's shirt.

Some while later, Joe had gone to find a place to sit, his 61 year old feet were a bit tired. I stayed with Mike, Marissa and the girls. Ruby grew thirsty and asked for something to drink. Because we were in a crowded area, Joe took the bag from the back of my wheelchair so I'd have more space to turn around. In that bag was a bottle of water. I suggested that Ruby and I go, find Joe, so she could have a drink. That was settled.

We took about five minutes to find him, Ruby downed a huge drink and then wandered a little bit in the area right in front of us. Soon she was back and said, "Can someone take off my necklace?" Joe busied about taking the necklace off.

I asked her why she wanted to take her necklace off. She held the pendant up and said, "This will hit me in the face when I do cartwheels."

To hell with pretty.

To hell with sparkly.

To hell with rubies.

CARTWHEELS!!!

I said to Joe as she began doing cartwheels, in the empty space around us, 'This is my International Women's Day moment.' Even though Spiderman and Wonder Woman and The Hulk and R2D2 came through the area, some people stopped, to watch a little girl, just joyously doing cartwheels. No costume. No disguise. No sparkly necklace getting in the way. Just a little girl joyously doing cartwheels while a pretty necklace was stored in Joe's pocket awaiting a time it could be worn without getting in the way.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-necklace-and-my-moment.html

wonders_and_marvels_feed

Posted by JackEl-Hai

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2014/03/a-plague-of-locusts.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=13738

by Jack El-Hai, Wonders & Marvels contributor

In the second week of June 1873, a southwest wind carried a strange brown cloud over the border from Dakota Territory into Minnesota. Pioneer families initially mistook the cloud for a rain or dust storm. But as it filled the sky, they could see that it contained millions of tiny animated specks.

The fierce Rocky Mountain locust

The cloud obscured the sun, and suddenly an agrarian nightmare became real. Hordes of winged insects descended upon the fields, devouring virtually all crops and green plants.

Though commonly called grasshoppers, these fiercely hungry insects were Rocky Mountain locusts. They battled humans for control over the American Midwest during the mid-1870s. For five consecutive summers the locusts ravaged farmland, honeycombed the soil with eggs, and forced bewildered state governments to enact drastic and unprecedented measures. Then, even more mysteriously than they had appeared, the locusts vanished.

The Rocky Mountain locust normally lived in the eastern foothills of the Rockies, from Colorado to Canada. Periodic population explosions drove large numbers to seek food beyond their native range, and they took to the winds. Crossing the plains at speeds approaching 70 miles per hour, they reached Minnesota in the summer of 1873 eager to feast and breed.

And they reproduced prolifically, lacing the soil with pods containing up to 28 eggs each. During the next two years, the eggs hatched and the cycle continued. The year 1876 brought the most overwhelming attack of locusts in the recorded history of the Upper Midwest. That year the locusts were particularly voracious and aggressive. When feasting in a field, as a pioneer woman wrote, “the sound of their feeding could be heard yards away. Seldom did they leave a field until every stalk, leaf, and green head was consumed.” Throughout Minnesota, 28 counties reported serious damage.

A new governor, John Pillsbury, toured the state incognito to view the devastation first-hand. He was appalled. The insect invasion destroyed Minnesota’s wheat crop that summer, with only half of the previous year’s total harvested. More than a fifth of the state’s oats and corn went to the locusts, as well.

Desperate farmers tried their luck with the new products of inspired inventors. The Simpson Locust Crusher, a wooden contraption dragged by horses, scooped up and pulverized the insects. The Adams Locust Pan drowned them in oil. The Hopperdozer trapped them on metal sheets coated with coal tar or molasses. Governor Pillsbury also urged farmers to fight the locusts with “loud and discordant noises made by striking tin vessels, and by shrieking and yelling with the voice.”

By summer’s end, the locusts embedded their eggs into the earth of 42 Minnesota counties covering an enormous area. One farmer reckoned that his fields contained 150 eggs per square inch, or “the nice little pile of 6,586,272,000 on seven acres of my farm.” The signs pointed toward another ruinous year in 1877, which would sink the state’s economy. For the forthcoming growing season, the state legislature passed a law requiring all men between 21 and 60 to donate a day per week for five weeks for the collection and destruction of locusts and eggs.

Pillsbury, however, dealt with the threat of crisis in his own fashion. He declared April 26, 1877, a day of statewide prayer and fasting to invoke God’s prevention of the coming disaster. Although religious skeptics protested the governor’s faith in prayer, Pillsbury thought he had proved the skeptics wrong. “The very next night,” he later remembered, “it turned cold and froze every grasshopper in the state stiff — froze them solid.” His recollection was inaccurate. Though retarded by a late frost, the insects did hatch and damaged many sections of western Minnesota. But for unknown reasons the locusts took flight and vanished in July, without depositing any eggs. The bumper wheat crop of 1877 was the best in the state’s history.

One swarm of locusts did return to Otter Tail County, Minnesota, in 1888, and some insects appeared in North Dakota in 1900. The last was spotted in 1902 in Manitoba. After that, the Rocky Mountain locust never again bugged Minnesotans or anyone else. The species is now extinct.

Note: I previously wrote about the locust plague in May 1986 for Mpls.St.Paul magazine.

Further reading

Lockwood, Jeffrey A. Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect That Shaped the American Frontier. Basic Books, 2009.

Yoon, Carol Kaesuk. “Looking Back at the Days of the Locust.” The New York Times, April 23, 2002.

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2014/03/a-plague-of-locusts.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=13738

loveiswhatyoudo_feed

Posted by jgoudeau

http://loveiswhatyoudo.com/2014/03/08/harder-in-practice-than-in-theory/

http://loveiswhatyoudo.com/?p=2308

We’re at the three month mark of meeting Fei; in many ways, it feels like yesterday but it also feels like time has slowed down. We are deep in kairos time right now–I barely watch the clock or know what day it is. Every day is slow, intentional, deliberate. It’s toddler time but in a whole different way than we’ve ever experienced it.

I was texting with a friend from our agency who just brought home her daughter from Shanghai. She wrote that adoption is harder in practice than in theory. That sums it up perfectly.

*****

Fei is sleeping through the night. That fact alone changes almost everything. It is much easier to have compassion on a raging, grieving toddler when I’ve had more than three hours of sleep. Looking back on those first few sleepless weeks, we were brain-addled and beat up.

Her first surgery was last week–tubes in her ears–and she handled it like a champ. Perhaps more importantly, she showed the real mettle of our intense attachment work: a woman whose son was having surgery reached down to pick her up (who does that???) and she struggled to get away from this stranger and back to me. I was thrilled that the little girl who would walk up to anyone knew that I was her mom.

We’ve been working hard on this.

At the same time, there are still so many ways in which she shows how difficult it is to transition from an orphanage to a home. We call her micu, which is Portuguese for those tiny monkeys (the bad guys on Rio) who are famous for grabbing shiny things before you even know they’re there. We’ve found Fei’s stashes under Jonathan’s sink, in my unused purses, behind the couch. We spend hours looking for hair stuff or remotes. She’s wily, our little Chinese chimpanzee.

*****

Two things that we are working on overcoming: Fei’s hyper vigilance and anxious attachment. The hyper vigilance is the cause of the many, many midnight wake-ups. Until I saw her body relax in our home over the last few weeks, I didn’t realize how tense and keyed up she had been. I’m not sure what changed, but she turned a small corner eight weeks after we met her. The difference was subtle but sure–she trusts us more. Not completely, but enough to allow herself to relax with us and sleep through the night.

I’m not sure I can express how grateful we are for that one change.

She is currently in the stage of anxious attachment; adoption experts talk about attachment in ways that are different from the granola movement of attaching to your babies. There is a specific spectrum that children who are from hard places follow (google Karyn Purvis at TCU or The Connected Child–her work is all that has sustained us so far). Anxious attachment is close to secure attachment, what my bio girls have where they’re confident they are trusted and loved.

But close isn’t there yet.

For Fei, anxious attachment means a constant testing of our love and commitment. It means calling out to me hundreds of times a day: “Ma! Ma! Ma!” Said with Chinese inflection and a lot of worry, it’s cute at 8 in the morning but by 8 at night, I’m done. It’s a constant noise in my day. Add to that a whiny dog and two other small children who are not afraid to let their needs be known and you get a small picture of my day. Then add the fact that we’ve had 500 snow days (with no actual snow) this winter and you can see why I sometimes feel totally done.

It’s an intense life we’re leading right now.

*****

There’s no way to fully express the distress, the emotions, the joys and the griefs of these first few weeks. I know because I’ve read everything there is to read on the subject and I still feel woefully unprepared. I feel so sorry for people who stumble into older child adoption for whatever reason; we’ve been preparing for this season for years and years and still it has toppled us like a ton of bricks.

Though it’s getting better slowly, most days I have very few resources left. Everything I have is poured into the love-starved heart of this little girl who needs to know we’re here–RIGHT HERE ALWAYS–and her two sisters who need to know they’re still important to us. Routines take on a weight they never have before. My tone has to be even. I strive every moment to be both kind and firm. My eyes have to convey love when I discipline even when I’m exhausted beyond measure. To do this while still working or cleaning the house or writing thank you notes is more than I can accomplish most days.

It’s a big deal that I get everyone fed, dressed, and out the door on any given morning. And believe me, I totally celebrate if everyone has on socks that match.

*****

To be completely honest, I’ve heard from so many people that it’s like adding a newborn to our home (it’s not–it’s like adding an adopted toddler to our home) or that I just need to let the house go (which means I’d break my feet on all the thousands of small plastic things) or that I just need to embrace this season (I am, but it’s hard and sad too) to the point where I’m pretty done with extra advice. I knew all the answers before we started down this path. Nothing has changed. I know what I need to do.

I’m an expert on the theory behind this sort of intentional parenting.

To do it is something different.

I see it in the tired eyes of fellow adoptive moms sometimes, the whispered comments that you haven’t ruined your family and that life will begin again–that’s the relief and the hope I need right now. I’ll say it up one side and down the other–adoption is not for the faint of heart.

It’s so, so worth it. It really is. When I come out of the room and Fei dances a little jig with excitement that I’m still here, my heart skips a beat out of love for her fat little face.

Or when my girls hug each other casually, like sisters do, while singing along to Frozen covers from youtube, I ache with the realization that we really are making progress.

It’s worth it.

But it is much harder in practice than in theory.

http://loveiswhatyoudo.com/2014/03/08/harder-in-practice-than-in-theory/

http://loveiswhatyoudo.com/?p=2308

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/08/postcards-from-the-culture-wars-3-8/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21217

“It’s shocking because he’s supposed to be a good example to the community and a Christian leader. … It just sets a bad example.”

“Boys will be boys.”

“He would never think of women as victims because, unlike you, he does not hate women.”

“‘Theology of women’ can’t merely consist of a bunch of unmarried men telling women what it means to be female.”

“Our task as a church is to heal the broken places that resulted from the fall and show the world God’s intentions. One of these broken places is the equity and dignity between men and women.”

“The wife is to voluntarily submit.”

“Now you’re putting this woman through risky medical procedures for no good reason.”

“It means women see their bodies damaged, their fertility impaired and their lives threatened.”

“To insist — as do the U.S. bishops in their religious freedom crusade that birth control is not health care, when every major health organization maintains that it is crucial the health of mothers and babies – is downright medieval.”

“Couple this with studies showing that fewer abortions have occurred when Democrats have the White House and any reasonable observer is compelled to ask, ‘Who are you calling babykiller, motherf—r?’”

“The pleasure derived from demonizing abortion providers or Planned Parenthood outstrips any concerns about the immorality of lying about people, but it also outstrips any concerns about people realizing you’re a sleazy, no-good liar.”

“Excluding same-sex couples from marriage has done little to keep Oklahoma families together thus far, as Oklahoma consistently has one of the highest divorce rates in the country.”

“Vince knew Harold was gay and didn’t just believe in ‘tolerance’ but believed strongly that discrimination against gay people was wrong.”

“In short, Staver is taking us mean ol’ gay people to task for getting upset at Robertson’s comparison of gays to terrorists – by directly comparing gays to terrorists.”

“There were mistakes made in the 1930s by Hitler because he wanted to make Germany strong.”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/08/postcards-from-the-culture-wars-3-8/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21217

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/4Ro2qK_yrho/

Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61894

The paradox: masculinity is strength, power, and dominance… but femininity is terrifying. Gender rules insist that men must avoid association with the feminine at all costs because, if they do not, they are weak. They are pussies, bitches, women, girls. Femininity is weakness and yet, oddly, it has the power to strip men of their manliness. It is as if, as sociologist Gwen Sharp once put it, “masculinity is so fragile that apparently even the slightest brush with the feminine destroys it.”

Behold the best example of this phenomenon ever:

Watch on YouTube

Let’s be clear. The reason he’s afraid of femininity is because it’s reviled. It makes you a woman, which makes you worthless. Which is fine for the ladies, but dudes are advised to avoid personal denigration if at all possible.

Thanks Summer’s Eve, you make my job easy.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/4Ro2qK_yrho/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61894

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/08/otter-is-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8114

Otter Is Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Via The Otters Photo Album

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/08/otter-is-between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8114

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/thoughts-on-liking-women-international.html

Posted by Dave Hingsburger

Years ago I had a very odd conversation with a fellow I met in university. We were both young men. He impressed me because he was one of the first people I ever told about my sexuality, this would have been in the late seventies, and he simply didn't care. He came from a very religious family and I sort of expected him to at least be a bit upset, but he wasn't. He just made it clear, in the way straight men feel they need to do when a male friend tells them that they are gay, that he was one hundred percent Canadian STRAIGHT male. Once that was out of the way, we were good.

I had begun to work with people with intellectual disabilities and, once, when talking about my work, he noticed that most of my co-workers had women's names. I smiled and said that I worked in a profession that was peopled primarily with women. Most of my coworkers were women, my supervisor was a woman and my supervisor's supervisor was a woman. I expected him to say that my working closely with women was an experience wasted on me, as a gay man, but instead he said something strange.

"I don't know how you can stand to be surrounded by women all day."

I said, "I thought that as a guy into women, this would be your dream job."

Then he said, jokingly, "I wouldn't mind being in a roomful of naked women, but to have to work with women all day, to report to a woman, that would drive me crazy."

So women were to be objects of lust and longing, of touch and access, of submission and nakedness but not people to be respected, to be colleagues, to be leaders, to be decision makers. He saw the strange look on my face and asked, "What?"

I said, "I thought you liked women? When I told you I liked men, you made it clear that you liked women."

He said, and I remember this clearly, "I LIKE women but I don't like women. There's a difference."

I explained to him that I enjoyed working with women, that I'd always been comfortable with women in my life. I didn't think that came from being gay, that just came from having met and been influenced by some astonishing women in my life. A teacher at school, Miss Bunting, had changed my life. Dr. Pam Duncan, a professor at university had inspired me with her passion for psychology. Miss Jean MacQueen my landlady who had carved away a life for herself as a single working woman. These were just a few women who I had known to be people of deep talent and integrity.

He was having none of that. "I couldn't cope with all that emotion and all that silliness."

I remember thinking at the time, "Liking women should mean liking women."

It wasn't long after that when I pulled up stakes to move out east to meet up with Joe who had taken a job in Quebec right out of school. I continued to work in the field, continued to work with and for remarkable women. And over the years I have had a few similar conversations with men who don't understand how I can work with women and not 'pull my hair out' in frustration, or bristle at corrective supervision as given by a woman.

What's even odder is that there are women who have remarked to me about how difficult it is to work with women, saying 'women are petty' or 'women are mean' or 'women can't handle power.' These are women talking about women. I said to one woman that I was surprised because I have found that working for and with women has been one of the things that I most like about my job. The women I have had the privilege to meet! The women I have had the honour to work for! The women whose leadership and courage have made a difference. Winifred Kemption cut a path for us to follow, I was lucky enough to have met her, to have spoken with her, and to tell her how much I admired the work she had undertaken. Manuela Dalla Nora, Susan Tough and Marsha Forest were women of vision and passion, all gone now, who are remembered, not as people who lived in the past, but as people whose lives continue to affect the future. These are the names of only a very few of the women who's work has informed me, inspired me and motivated me.

I continue to work closely with remarkable women now. I work on a leadership team headed by a woman and primarily composed of women, these are people who give me guidance and support and directioni. These are women who make my work possible. The five women who work with me in the clinical department are amazing people. Not just gifted clinicians, which they are, but to a one, they are also passionate, caring, powerful, women. They are compassionate and wise and all have independent minds, and while the structure says they report to me, we really just work together with leadership flowing back and forth between people's strengths and interests.

Every day at work I meet with women who work throughout Vita Community Living Services. Women who work within all parts of the agency. They bring into my office such an array of talent but to a one they also bring in passion and caring and deep commitment to the work that they do. These women make the world different and better every day. That's EVERY DAY. Throughout the world, women, like these women, make EVERY DAY DIFFERENT. Every day.

So, on International Women's Day I want to acknowledge that my heterosexual friend was quite wrong, so too were the women who sang soprano in the sexist chorus.

Working with women, taking leadership from women, being in active partnerships with women has enriched me.

To my friend from all those years ago ... a twitter update from Dave:

I may love men but I tell you I really like women.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/thoughts-on-liking-women-international.html

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/KnbNpRBhUq4/

Posted by Jennifer Lee PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61861

The narrative of the American Dream is one of upward mobility, but there are some stories of mobility we prize above others. Who is more successful: a Mexican-American whose parents immigrated to the U.S. with less than an elementary school education, and who now works as a dental hygienist? Or a Chinese-American whose parents immigrated to the U.S. and earned Ph.D. degrees, and who now works as a doctor?

Amy Chua (AKA “Tiger Mom”) and her husband Jed Rubenfeld, author of the new book The Triple Package, claim it’s the latter. They argue that certain American groups (including Chinese, Jews, Cubans, and Nigerians) are more successful and have risen further than others because they share certain cultural traits. Chua and Rubenfeld bolster their argument by comparing these groups’ median household income, test scores, educational attainment, and occupational status to those of the rest of the country.

But what happens if you measure success not just by where people end up — the cars in their garages, the degrees on their walls — but by taking into account where they started? In a study of Chinese-, Vietnamese-, and Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles whose parents immigrated here, sociologist Min Zhou and I came to a conclusion that flies in the face of Chua and Rubenfeld, and might even surprise the rest of us: Mexicans are L.A.’s most successful immigrant group.

Like Chua and Rubenfeld, we found that the children of Chinese immigrants exhibit exceptional educational outcomes that exceed those of other groups, including native-born Anglos. In Los Angeles, 64 percent of Chinese immigrants’ children graduated from college, and of this group 22 percent also attained a graduate degree. By contrast, 46 percent of native-born Anglos in L.A. graduated from college, and of this group, just 14 percent attained graduate degrees. Moreover, none of the Chinese-Americans in the study dropped out of high school.

These figures are impressive but not surprising. Chinese immigrant parents are the most highly educated in our study. In Los Angeles, over 60 percent of Chinese immigrant fathers and over 40 percent of Chinese immigrant mothers have a bachelor’s degree or higher.

At what seems to be the other end of the spectrum, the children of Mexican immigrants had the lowest levels of educational attainment of any of the groups in our study. Only 86 percent graduated from high school — compared to 100 percent of Chinese-Americans and 96 percent of native-born Anglos — and only 17 percent of graduated from college. But their high school graduation rate was more than double that of their parents, only 40 percent of whom earned diplomas. And, the college graduation rate of Mexican immigrants’ children more than doubles that of their fathers (7 percent) and triples that of their mothers (5 percent).

There is no question that, when we measure success as progress from generation to generation, Mexican-Americans come out ahead.

A colleague of mine illustrated this point with a baseball analogy: Most Americans would be more impressed by someone who made it to second base starting from home plate than someone who ended up on third base, when their parents started on third base. But because we tend to focus strictly on outcomes when we talk about success and mobility, we fail to acknowledge that the third base runner didn’t have to run far at all.

This narrow view fuels existing stereotypes that Chua and Rubenfeld play into — that some groups strive harder, have higher expectations of success, and possess a unique set of cultural traits that propels them forward.

For at least a generation, Americans have been measuring the American Dream by the make of your car, the cost of your home, and the prestige of the college degree on your wall. But there’s a more elemental calculation: Whether you achieved more than the generation that came before you. Anyone who thinks the American Dream is about the end rewards is missing the point. It’s always been about the striving.

Jennifer Lee, PhD, is a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine. Her book, The Diversity Paradox, examines patterns of intermarriage and multiracial identification among Asians, Latinos, and African Americans.

Cross-posted at Time and Zocalo Public Square.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/KnbNpRBhUq4/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61861

http://geekfeminism.org/2014/03/07/at-my-signal-unleash-linkspam-7-march-2014/

Posted by gfspamspam

http://geekfeminism.org/?p=10743

Your Critic is in Another Castle: Not a “Real” Gamer: “It’s so insidious. The culture sneaks up on you so easily. And while I watched my husband finish his personal-canon Mass Effect trilogy replay in the evenings, I sat and stewed and lamented that I don’t appear to be a gamer anymore… while holding my 3DS in my hand.”
5 Big Problems with Compassion-Baiting: ‘To ask someone to publicly defend their humanity through “dialog,” and then chastize them for refusing to do so, completely ignores and obscures the additional burden of oppressed people participating in “dialogs” that evaluate their own humanity.’
Sexism in fandom and Bullying: Analysis of recent Ross/Hugo Award article shows how the usual power dynamics, victim-of-bullying appropriation, and gendered slurs came into play when people protested the choice. Bonus ref to Mary Beard’s recent essay on the silencing of women in 2000 years of Western lit.
Capcom can’t include female characters in Deep Down because reasons. (Many images) | Go Make Me a Sandwich: “Stories are things written by people – they don’t spring out of some magical thought vacuum. Neither are they things that are received from on high, perfect and immutable, that must be transmitted without any change from its original form. If you’re incapable of telling the story you want to tell while also including female characters, that says a lot about how you look at the world as a creator, none of it good.”
YC Female Founders Conference | Ellen’s Blog: “So, I’d go to the event again. I wish the industry was far enough along that I was writing about clever lessons I learned and was coming back to apply. Unfortunately, it’s not. The YC Female Founders conference made me realize how far we still have to go.”
Microsoft ads show women focused on how computers can help their wedding planning and children | Slate: “They’re funny, sure, but ads that misrepresent the relationship between technology and women aren’t harmless. They perpetuate the idea that women are less equipped to interact with technology and imply that specific devices must be marketed to women to be appealing. “
Calling IN: A Less Disposable Way of Holding Each Other Accountable: “I picture “calling in” as a practice of pulling folks back in who have strayed from us. It means extending to ourselves the reality that we will and do fuck up, we stray and there will always be a chance for us to return. Calling in as a practice of loving each other enough to allow each other to make mistakes; a practice of loving ourselves enough to know that what we’re trying to do here is a radical unlearning of everything we have been configured to believe is normal.”
Double Union — How not to support women in tech: “In fact, any situation that allows people to be in a position of power over women and/or marginalized people (such as mentorship or volunteer coding workshops) is likely to attract creepy or abusive people. If your organization serves women in tech and/or marginalized people, we argue that your organization has a specific responsibility to screen for, detect, and eject creepy or abusive people. “
Indian Wikimedia community coordinates Women’s History Month « Wikimedia blog: “The Indian Wikimedia community is pleased to invite you to participate in Women’s History Month events, 2014… We have planned events all through this month. They aim at creating new articles, expanding the existing stubs and translating English articles to various Indic languages.”
How to Level the Playing Field for Women in Science – Advice – The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Our study also identified interventions that could help change that disheartening pattern. Some of these policies are now in place at some universities and are being promoted by some federal agencies. We are at a critical point, where the story could change dramatically: The “baby penalty” could be wiped out, or at least greatly ameliorated, by these four reforms: better child care (in many forms), effective dual-career policies, childbirth accommodations, and compliance with Title IX’s prohibition on pregnancy discrimination.”

We link to a variety of sources, some of which are personal blogs. If you visit other sites linked herein, we ask that you respect the commenting policy and individual culture of those sites.

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on Pinboard, Delicious or Diigo; or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

http://geekfeminism.org/2014/03/07/at-my-signal-unleash-linkspam-7-march-2014/

http://geekfeminism.org/?p=10743

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/aJGzcqEhyc0/

Posted by Lisa Wade, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61853

Last month I wrote about how the revival in the popularity of beards was hurting razor sales, causing companies like Proctor & Gamble to ramp up advertising encouraging “manscaping” below the neck. Here’s another response to the trend: hair plugs for your face.

According to a facial plastic surgeon interviewed for an article at DNAinfo New York, the rate at which he is asked to do facial hair transplants has skyrocketed from “ just a handful of beard transplants each year a decade ago” to about three a week. The surgeons mention the hipster beard trend as one cause of the rise in interest, but also cite a wide array of people who might be interested in fuller facial hair:

…clients include men who have struggled since adolescence to grow a beard, those undergoing a gender transition from female to male, men with with facial scarring and Hasidic Jews who hope to achieve denser payot, or sidelocks.

Expense for the procedure ranges from $3,o00 for partial transplants to $7,000 for a full beard.

Watch on YouTube

What a fascinating example of the intersection of race, gender, religion, technology, and capitalism. Which men’s faces have more power to determine appearance norms for men? Or, what does masculinity look like? Men with Asian, American Indian, and African backgrounds are less likely to be able to grow full beards, but a society centered on whiteness can make their faces seem inadequate. If the situation were reversed, would we see white men, disproportionately, going in for laser hair removal? Would transmen feel less pressure to be able to grow a beard to feel fully masculine? Would they feel more if they were part of a Hasidic Jewish community?

Also, is this really about hipsters? How much power does a young, monied demographic have to set fashion trends? To send a wide range of people to surgeons — for goodness sake — in the hopes of living up to a more or less fleeting trend? How do such trends gain purchase across such a wide range of people? What other forces are at work here?

What can we learn from this about other plastic surgeries that we are more likely to take for granted as the result of natural or universal beauty? Breast implants for women, breast reductions for men, liposuction, facelifts, labiaplasty, or eyelid surgery?

Lots of interesting conversations to be had.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/aJGzcqEhyc0/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61853

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/07/christians-and-sex/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21009

• Hännah @ Wine and Marble has an important, insightful post about how Christian youth tends to be ruled by “the worst possible state of mind: horny celibacy”:

Here is my best advice for good Christian kids looking to get married: have sex already.

I’m watching too many couples play Russian roulette with their lives because they aren’t listening to their gut instincts about who they want or need to spend their lives with because they happened to have found one person somewhat enchanting and willing to play the Christian marriage game and the stakes are: your whole future on this decision, made in the worst possible state of mind, horny celibacy.

Is there an e-mail masterlist for all evangelical youth pastors? Because it would be a very Good Thing to send every one of them a link to that post. Read the whole thing.

• Researchers at Case Western have published a study — “Transgression as Addiction: Religiosity and Moral Disapproval of Perceived Addiction to Pornography” — which “found that on the whole, religious people were just as likely to view pornography as nonreligious people.”

Well, yeah, duh.

But that’s not the interesting part. This is: “The differences arose when it came to how they felt about their pornography viewing. God-fearing participants were much more likely to think they were addicted to porn than those who were not religious— even if they viewed the racy content only once.”

• Via Kate Schell, I learn that in some Christian circles, single adults have embraced the term “pre-married.” Ugh. Good Lord, no. I appreciate the intent there, I think, which is to avoid becoming defined by one’s singleness. But defining oneself by one’s not-yet-marriedness is no solution.

My surrogate grandma Myrt liked to say “There’s a lid for every pot.” She meant that as a hopeful expression — there’s somebody for everybody. And she meant it as cautionary advice — don’t settle for a lid that doesn’t fit.

But she most certainly did not mean that lidless pots are useless and worthless and should be defined as being in state of pre-lidded limbo until they attain the legitimacy that can only come from finally finding a lid.

• This is horrible news. I’ve known and admired many wonderful people who were part of the JPUSA community. The Cornerstone music festival was one of the best parties I’ve ever been to.

Yet it’s also a place where I heard one of the most disturbing talks about sexuality I’ve ever encountered. I didn’t then have the mental vocabulary to make sense of the victim-blaming horrors of purity culture in that talk, but I recognized it as the same cruel ugliness I’d heard elsewhere. And hearing it from a “rock star’s” wife while seeing a tent-full of kids with tattoos and piercings nodding along was somehow even creepier and more unsettling than when I’d heard it in a room filled with freshly scrubbed kids who were destined to go off to Bob Jones or Pensacola.

That’s why seeing this trailer last week was shocking, but not surprising.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/07/christians-and-sex/

• Boz Tchividjian, “Christians and the struggle to report child abuse”

Why do some churches and Christian organizations seem to struggle with encouraging members to report the suspected abuse of a child? At the heart of the struggle is a fear that is rooted in the need to self-protect. It is a fear of losing the “good reputation” of a ministry, it is a fear of losing ministry donors, it is the fear of losing congregation members, it is a fear of losing a ministry altogether. All such “fears” are usually masked by a rationale that the reporting of such abuse may “damage the reputation of Christ”. Do you see the great tragedy? It is a fear fueled by protecting self. This has nothing to do with Jesus.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21009

yourheartsontheleft_feed

http://yourheartsontheleft.blogspot.com/2014/03/9-reasons-to-reject-neb-decision-and.html

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/07/otter-is-just-delighted-to-nom-this-snack/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8106

Otter Is Just Delighted to Nom This Snack 1

Otter Is Just Delighted to Nom This Snack 2

Otter Is Just Delighted to Nom This Snack 3

Via Lewis Pope here, here and here

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/07/otter-is-just-delighted-to-nom-this-snack/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8106

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/07/words-have-their-place-but-live-what-you-say/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21290

• Caitlin Flanagan’s “The Dark Power of Fraternities” is a fascinating, disturbing, insightful look at “their endemic, lurid, and sometimes tragic problems—and a sophisticated system for shifting the blame.” It’s a really long read, so just try this: Click over and read the first sentence. Then decide if you want to keep reading.

• Cathy Lynn Grossman of Religion News Service has a nice explainer on the EEOC’s new explainer of the rules on religious discrimination in the workplace. “Businesses cannot refuse to interview a Sikh with a turban or a Christian wearing a cross. Neither can they limit where employees work because of their religious dress.” But can employers forbid all female employees from purchasing health insurance coverage that violates their bosses’ purported religious beliefs? Hobby Lobby says yes, but the EEOC clearly says no.

I second the motion. (Click pic for link.)

• The Wikipedia entry for Patheos is woefully out of date.

• Intersectionality.

• I never realized that Rick Warren’s publishers pulled an “Achy Breaky Heart” to help The Purpose Driven Life become a best-seller. That’s a bit shady. (I’ve never read the book — I couldn’t get past the lack of a hyphen in the compound adjective in the title.)

• The previous link isn’t mainly about Warren, but about Mark Driscoll, whose latest book was apparently also nudged onto best-seller lists with buy-backs in the hopes of creating buzz. Speaking of serial plagiarists with contempt issues … Paul Ryan is in trouble again, this time for stealing someone else’s story and adopting it as something told to him by another Wisconsin Republican. (It’s a sweet story and a true story — originally told as part of a campaign to fight against Ryan’s slashing of food stamps.)

I understand the story-telling impulse to embellish and enhance such tales when retelling them. That part of it is more art than deception. But Ryan, like too many preachers implausibly rewriting hackneyed sermon illustrations, takes that next step of misrepresenting where the story comes from in order to pretend he’s personally involved in it. That’s not just a bit of storytelling flair — that’s just a lie. Part of the difference is that it’s a deliberate change introduced not to enhance the story, but to enhance the prestige of the storyteller.

• Former Spy Jamie Malanowski offers a delightful rebuttal to Rush Limbaugh’s claim that 12 Years a Slave won the Oscar for best picture solely because “It had the magic word in the title: Slave.” (Yes, Limbaugh resents slaves, because, apparently, he’s sure that somehow Solomon Northrup was getting a sweet deal at the expense of white people.)

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/07/words-have-their-place-but-live-what-you-say/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21290

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/for-first-time-at-centre.html

Posted by Dave Hingsburger

Yesterday I was honoured to be asked to speak at a celebration wherein the new name of an agency, that I have worked with for over 31 years, was announced. Behaviour Management Services of York and Simcoe and I have had some kind of relationship from the day I first started there until today. I started there in 1981 and over the years though I left and worked at other places and lived in other provinces, I have maintained a role, actively, as a consultant to the agency and it's a connection that really matters to me.

When preparing to speak, I had only five minutes and that's way more difficult for me to do than a whole day, I glanced back at my resume and found things there that had memories flooding back. Chief amongst those was an article that I was the lead author on, called 'Dealing with sexuality in a community residential service.' It's a relatively benign title, given it by the journal editors because they thought a more 'fully informed title,' would have people simply refusing to read it. See it was written in 1986 and it was about providing service to LGBT people with intellectual disabilities. In my awareness it was the first published article that suggested that people with intellectual disabilities had a right to three things: to adulthood, to love and to choose the object of their affections.

The article had been inspired by a call from a residential agency who had opened a group home for men with disabilities who had moved from a large facility. We were told that there had been an 'outbreak of homosexuality' in the group home. You can imagine what the expectations were - we needed to stomp out the fires of deviant passion. And, they got me as a consultant. No way was there going to be any kind of stomping.

That year I was aware of seven people, five men and two women, who had been fired from their places of employment, service agencies to people with disabilities, because they had been 'discovered' to have been gay (there wasn't the sophisticated language around sexual differences back then). I felt that I needed, if I was to do my work well and without fear, to come out to my boss and my fellow employees. I knew I was taking a chance. I was not fired and I was supported in my work to ensure that the 'outbreak of homosexuality' would be met with tolerance and that no one was going to be punished.

The work turned out to be enlightening from a number of different perspectives. One of the men, for example, engaged in homosexual behaviour willingly and with both knowledge and consent, but he did not identify as gay and had to 'think of women' in order to perform with his partner. He'd only ever lived in all male environments and was actively anxious about any contact with females. He is now happily married to a woman, having conquered the deficits of hetero-social skills that develop in all male environments. His rights to his sexuality had to be supported and encouraged even as we supported those men who identified as being gay and who wanted to love without fear and without suffering from the harsh attitudes of some who were paid to support them.

So the paper was written. In it the suggestion that people with disabilities would have the same range of sexualities and means of sexual expression as exist in the typical population was stated. Further it stated that if we were to serve the people who have disabilities then we have to serve the diversity that comes with being human.

This paper was not well received.

I was called a lot of names.

I went on to present this paper at a large conference. My heart beat rapidly in my chest, gay people I knew in service all were too terrified to come and hear the presentation, they didn't want to be identified as even knowing me. I understood that at the time and I understand that now, I had the support of an agency behind me. My employment was never in jeopardy. When I was done that presentation, I found that my demand as a public speaker had almost dried up. No one wanted to know me, to hire me, to work with me.

But that didn't last as long as I thought it would.

A few brave people invited me to present at conferences, at work shops and at staff trainings. Usually on less controversial subjects, but not always. And ... my career came back to me.

So, I thought of all of that as I looked through my memory box of a resume ... I found an earlier publication 'Appropriately Inappropriate' which was the title chosen by the journal, changing the original from ' The Inappropriateness of Age Appropriateness' wherein we championed the right of people with disabilities to have a full range of choices and suggested that the concept was being used to bully people with disabilities, to rob them of their possessions and to limit their choices. Yikes, did people respond poorly to that one!

Anyways ... I had five minutes to talk about the agency and it's history. So, that's what I did. I talked about how the agency grew in it's understanding of the context of the behaviours that people with disabilities sometimes performed - about getting meaning from context and that meaning needed to guide our actions ... and the broader we made that context the deeper meaning we would find. I said it differently than what I'm saying here, but that was the theme of what I said.

The name change was announced shortly after I spoke and I am now proudly a consultant to The Centre for Behaviour Health Sciences. It's been 31 years and counting.

I congratulate them all, I wish them well on their continued journey and hope that I can walk with them a while longer. I will never forget the courage of an agency that would allow me to be me in it, that would be willing to challenge orthodoxy and prejudice, and that would believe, before it was trendy to do so, that rights and choices were the underpinning of good practise.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/for-first-time-at-centre.html

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/2014/03/and-then-it-was-seattle/

Posted by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/?p=2101

I left Portland in a cab, with my bag and my coat and my scarf, except it wasn’t really a scarf, it was my birch. I knit birch way back in 2005, that’s nine and a half years ago, and I have loved it to death ever since. I knit it out of three balls Rowan’s Crack Silk Haze in a colour called “Jelly” and let me tell you, that yarn is good stuff. I don’t decide a yarn is good because it’s pretty, or because it’s soft – I decide a yarn is good when it stays good for a long, long time, and I’ve been jamming that shawl in pockets and bags for almost a decade. Winding it around my face in the winter, draping it over my shoulders on planes, wearing it over dresses when I wanted to pretend I was elegant. It’s been washed many times, and it’s been through the washer, once by accident, and it still looked new. Totally new. Not a speck of wear, and man, has it been worn. I loved the colour, I loved the texture, I loved (with a passion that knew no bounds) the way it looked with my orange coat. So yesterday, when I left the hotel in the morning, I tucked it in the sleeve of my coat (like I always do) so that it wouldn’t get lost, but that didn’t work, because when I arrived in Seattle, it was gone. I stepped out of the cab and went into the lobby of the hotel, tossed my coat on my bag and saw it wasn’t peeking out of the sleeve. I snatched up the coat, ran my arm quickly down both sleeves to see where it was, and then almost burst into tears right there. I left my purse and bag in the lobby and ran back outside to the cab, and he was still there, but my birch wasn’t, and then I knew.

Somewhere between Portland and Seattle, there’s my birch. I’m pretty sure I had it when I got on the plane, so I don’t think it was PDX. I’m pretty sure I put it around my neck when I stood up to board the flight too, and I think I remember putting it down the sleeve of my coat again before I stuffed it in the overhead bin. I even think (but maybe I am just dreaming it now) that I saw it in the sleeve when I left the plane, and I think that means that somewhere between the plane and the cab – it slipped free of the sleeve and my possession, fell to the floor, and I, rather unbelievably, walked away from it.

I went up to my hotel room without it, and the sense of loss was really something. I know it’s just an object and objects don’t matter that much, it’s not like someone was hurt or died or anything, but it does feel sad, and I’ve done everything reasonable I can to get it back, but I just think it’s gone. (I’ve called everyone important, and I went to the lost and found at the Seattle airport when I went back this morning, and I’m going to call all those people again tomorrow too.) It was funny, because when I put on my coat to go to the event, I realized that I might not love my orange coat the way I thought I did. I think I love my orange coat with the lime birch, and I think I might have not bought myself a coat, but rather – I may have unbelievably accessorized an accessory. A wardrobe for birch.

I put it right out of my mind when I got to Third Place books though, because look what it looked like to be me.

I can’t believe how many of those people I knew, which is really, just about the only way to make that number of people looking at you less terrifying. Seattle, you know how to show an author a good time, let me tell you that. You were all charming, totally charming, but let me show you just one person.

That’s Nikolis, and he was there to get a book for his Fiancé Jessika, because she couldn’t make it. He dutifully sat through the event, waited in line, delivered a little something that Jessika told him to bring me, got the book signed, and then asked if he could have a picture with me and the book. I looked at him for a second, and then I got it.

“Proof?” I asked.

“Yup.” he said, and I got up and we took the picture, but then I thought blogging him might be even better. Jessika? He seems nice.

See you all tomorrow. I’ve got an event tonight in San Francisco.

(PS, if you follow that link, it looks like Books Inc. would be happy to send you a signed book, but you might have to ask them before I get there which is super soon. (7pm, San Francisco time.)

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/2014/03/and-then-it-was-seattle/

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/?p=2101

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/06/pope-francis-says-maybe-to-civil-unions/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21349

From a legal point of view, “civil unions” just don’t cut it.

To see why, just consider why the idea of civil unions as a separate-but-equal marriage-like thing for same-sex couples seems initially appealing for some folks. Anyone who views civil unions favorably arrives at that point because they’ve recognized that there’s an injustice — an inequality under the law — that needs to be corrected. They’ve recognized that it’s fundamentally unfair for opposite-sex couples to have access to more than a thousand legal benefits that come with getting married while same-sex couples are barred from access to such benefits.

That’s wrong, and those who advocate for civil unions see that it’s wrong.

So far so good. Recognizing an injustice and wanting to correct it is a Good Thing. But proponents of civil unions balk at the obvious next step. If you’re upset by inequality, the simplest solution is to establish equality. Civil unions are an attempt to get that result without quite actually doing that. They are an attempt to allow same-sex couples access to all the legal benefits of marriage except that of being legally married — an attempt to grant legal equality while still denying social equality.

And like all separate-but-equal schemes, that can’t work. All such schemes rely on mechanisms to enforce and perpetuate separateness, and all such mechanisms deny the possibility of real equality.

That’s why civil unions, here in the U.S., can’t be squared with the Constitution and its guarantees of equal protection under the law. As Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, the Constitution doesn’t allow us to grant one set of citizens marriage while offering others only “skim-milk marriage.”

For all of that, though, this is still a big deal: “Pope Francis: Church could support civil unions.”

Pope Francis reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage on Wednesday, but suggested in a newspaper interview that it could support some types of civil unions.

The Pope reiterated the church’s longstanding teaching that “marriage is between a man and a woman.” However, he said, “We have to look at different cases and evaluate them in their variety.”

States, for instance, justify civil unions as a way to provide economic security to cohabitating couples, the Pope said in a wide-ranging interview published Wednesday in Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily. State-sanctioned unions are thus driven by the need to ensure rights like access to health care, Francis added.

A number of Catholic bishops have supported civil unions for same-sex couples, including Pope Francis when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2010, according to reports in National Catholic Reporter and The New York Times.

But Wednesday’s comments are “the first time a Pope has indicated even tentative acceptance of civil unions,” according to Catholic News Service.

Roman Catholic thinking on the relationship between church and state is … complicated. John Courtney Murray is still dead and in many ways it seems his ideas about how the Catholic church should behave in pluralistic societies under secular government were buried with him. But Murray’s theology suggests that Francis’ “tentative acceptance of civil unions” is a positive step for the church.

In the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, this couple is in a civil union. Bruce and Patty have been legally married for more than 22 years, but because Mr. Springsteen’s previous marriage ended in divorce, the church refuses to recognize his second marriage. Yet it still allows that second marriage as a legal right. (Getty Images photo by Jon Raedle.)

Again, civil unions just don’t cut it legally. Separate-but-equal cannot be squared with the legal system of any country whose constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. So it would be inadequate and wrong — both unjust and illogical — for the pope and his church to advocate civil unions as a legal reality in America or in any other country. Marriage equality — the full and equal legal recognition of same-sex marriage — is the only just aim, and the church should never stand opposed to justice.

But for the church itself, and for how it regards legally married same-sex couples, I think the framework of civil unions can be helpful.

This is, after all, how the church already regards most legally recognized marriages — including most “traditional” legal marriages between opposite-sex couples.

My marriage, for example, is really only a “civil union” in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church. My wife was previously married in the Catholic church. That marriage ended in divorce (just as my previous marriage did — although the Catholic church doesn’t care about that one so much because my first wife was Protestant). But the Roman Catholic Church does not recognize divorce. In its eyes, my wife’s first marriage wasn’t just a legal covenant, but a “sacramental, indissoluble union … established by God” and “it is impossible for any human power to break the God-made bond, or sacramental covenant, between husband and wife. ”

And thus, since the Catholic church can never recognize that divorce, it also does not recognize my wife’s current marriage — to me — as legitimate or real.

But note the important thing here: Despite this firm commitment to its doctrine of marriage, the Roman Catholic Church is not attempting to bar Catholics from access to legal divorce. It is not lobbying to make it illegal under secular law for anyone to obtain a civil divorce. Nor is it attempting to prevent divorced people from access to legal, civil remarriage. Divorce and remarriage are, in the eyes of the Catholic church, sins. But the church acknowledges that they are also a legal right that it would be unjust and immoral (i.e., sinful) to deny others.

There’s no reason — no Catholic reason — that Pope Francis and his church could not take the same approach to same-sex marriage.

A further point on this: Official Catholic doctrine says that my marriage is actually the sin of adultery. My wife, the church says, is thus an adulteress living in sin, and must therefore be denied the sacraments. That’s not merely false and unjust, it’s rude — which is why I think it was utterly appropriate for the ‘vixen to respond with a hearty “Same to you, buddy”* and never look back.

Yet for all this sacrament-denying, soul-damning-for-eternity condemnation, the Catholic church is also able, however grudgingly, to admit that my marriage is a Good Thing. Without compromising its condemnation of our shameful wickedness and adultery, the church also acknowledges that, granted that regrettable context, it’s nice to see a couple of wicked adulterers settling down together and getting along so well. There’s a sense in which the church is even able, somewhat haltingly, to be happy for us. It’s able on some level to recognize that there are a lot of wicked adulterers and other “intrinsically disordered” people in this world and that, all else being equal, if some of those adulterers or intrinsically disordered people find love and make lifelong commitments to one another then, well, that’s something that deserves to be celebrated.

There’s a sense, in other words, in which the Catholic church regards my marriage as no different from any other marriage that occurs outside that church. A couple of lifelong atheists are legally wedded by a justice of the peace in a courthouse? That is, in the eyes of the church, not the same as a sacramental, indissoluble union established by God and overseen by a priest. It’s not what the Catholic church thinks of as a marriage, merely a “civil union.” But it’s still nice, isn’t it? It’s good for them and good for the whole community. Sure, yes, they’re hell-bound sinners, but we can still honor the commitment they’ve made to one another and smile as we wish them a happy anniversary every year.

There’s no reason the Catholic church cannot take that exact same position toward legal marriage equality for same-sex couples.

That is, in fact, the most just course of action for this pope and this church. That is what the Roman Catholic Church ought to do if it is to be faithful to its own teaching. It needs to get out of the way of legal equality and abandon all opposition to the full legal recognition of secular same-sex marriage just exactly as it has done with the full legal recognition of secular opposite-sex divorce and remarriage.

I think it should also reconsider and reform its teaching on the ecclesiastical and sacramental validity of same-sex marriages and opposite-sex remarriages, but that’s a separate matter. That step would involve a change in Catholic theology, and Catholic theology is their business. It’s their prerogative to work out their business on their own. If they want to continue denying the sacraments to Catholics who are divorced and remarried or to Catholics in same-sex marriages, that’s a mistake and an injustice (a harmful, hurtful sin) that the Catholic church is free to continue. Within their own church, they have every right to keep being utterly and perversely and cruelly wrong in that way.

But the Catholic church’s legal opposition to legal marriage equality is not occurring within their own church. This is an injustice the church is committing outside of its own jurisdiction. That’s wrong. And it’s wrong according to Catholic principles and Catholic teaching.

There’s no good Catholic reason for them to be fighting against the secular, legal right of same-sex couples to get married. That is a mistake and a sin and an error and an injustice that Francis and his church have no business continuing.

They need to, in a word, repent.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

* Not her actual words, but this is a family friendly blog.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/06/pope-francis-says-maybe-to-civil-unions/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21349

pervocracy_feed

http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2014/03/lets-read-fifty-shades-of-grey-chapter.html

I'm back! Unfortunately, I've been going through some bad depression once again, so... yeah. That's why. I'm getting treatment and hopefully will be on the up-slope soon.

(No, I'm not depressed from reading Fifty Shades of Grey. I'm depressed from the stuff that made me so good at spotting abusive behaviors in Fifty Shades of Grey.)

In our last installment, our Brave Hero threatened to rape the heroine, and then they went off and had consensual sex, or as consensual as it can be immediately after a rape threat. Making jokes about this book has become increasingly difficult. It's like, I want to write about things besides abuse, but literally nothing else happens!

Content warnings for this chapter: Kidnapping, extremely graphic physical abuse, sexual assault for the umpteenth time, homophobia, even more emotional abuse than usual.

“Why don’t you like to be touched?” I whisper, staring up into soft gray eyes. “Because I’m fifty shades of fucked-up, Anastasia.”

Damn skippy.

Hang on... how does he know the title of the book???

“Do you have something to tell me?” his voice is suddenly stern. I frown . Crap. “I had a dream this morning.” “Oh?” He glares at me. Double crap. Am I in trouble?

Your eyes do not deceive you. Stone PunchBeef is having an abusive episode over the possibility that she dreamed something he wouldn't approve of.

“You need to sort out some contraception.” He is so bossy. I stare at him blankly. He sits back on the bed as he puts on his shoes and socks.“Do you have a doctor?” I shake my head. We are back to mergers and acquisitions – another 180-degree mood swing. He frowns. “I can have mine come and see you at your apartment – Sunday morning before you come and see me. Or he can see you at my place. Which would you prefer?”

Ewww. ("Mergers and acquisitions" is how Ana refers to the contract-y, weirdly formal aspects of their relationship. It's also an American Psycho reference but I'm not sure if E.L. James knows that.) If the issue is money, just give her cash to cover the appointment and prescription. Having his doctor see her is just incredibly inappropriate and suggests that he's planning to make the doctor violate her confidentiality bigtime.

“I’d like to do a scene with you. But I won’t until you’ve signed, so I know you’re ready.”

He sure does a lot of rapid back-and-forth between "nothing until we sign a contract!" and "except for repeated sexual assault, hitting you, domination, bondage..."

“You’d kidnap me?” “Oh yes,” he grins. “Hold me against my will?” Jeez this is hot. “Oh yes,” he nods. “And then we’re talking TPE 24/7.” “You’ve lost me,” I breathe, my heart is pounding… is he serious? “Total Power Exchange – round the clock.” His eyes are shining, and I can feel his excitement from where I sit. Holy shit.

God dammit, whoever's teaching E.L. James kink-related words and then leaving her to imagine the definitions on her own, could you knock that off? Or at least teach her some fake ones so we can have some fun when her characters start saying things like "I'm going to give you the Ostrich Valentine tonight, my little Weasel."

Total power exchange is, like the name implies, an exchange. It's where a person says "I have power, but I am giving control of that power over to another person." (I need to do an entire post elaborating on this, but "power over someone" doesn't just mean "hurt them all you like." You can use power to care for them as well.) You can't do total power exchange with someone you're holding as a hostage, because they have nothing to exchange. They can't give you anything if you've forcibly taken it all already.

...And that was far more gentle and reasonable than I needed to be when explaining why it's wrong to kidnap and torture people, holy shit indeed.

Anyway, the context for this conversation was Ana asking what would happen if she didn't sign the contact. Y'know, it's one thing to have a flawed romance between characters who still have a lot of issues to work out. It's another to make the reader want to call in a SWAT team.

"What did I say I’d do to you if you rolled your eyes at me again?” Shit. He sits down on the edge of the bed. “Come here,” he says softly. I blanch. Jeez… he’s serious. I sit staring at him completely immobile. “I haven’t signed,” I whisper. “I told you what I’d do. I’m a man of my word. I’m going to spank you, and then I’m going to fuck you very quick and very hard.”

Okay, buddy, she didn't fucking sign. If you're not going to do a scene until she signs, don't fucking do a scene. "Oh, but it's different, because she was bad." Bite me.

My insides practically contort with potent, needy, liquid, desire. [...] Should I run? [...] Do I let him do this or do I say no, and then that’s it? Because I know it will be over if I say no.

This is "Fifty Shades of Grey," summed up, here in this quote. She claims she's turned on by BDSM... then goes on to talk at much greater length about how she's terrified and doesn't want this and is only putting up with it so she won't be a lonely cat lady forever.

He places his hand on my naked behind, softly fondling me, stroking round and round with his flat palm. And then his hand is no longer there… and he hits me – hard. Ow! My eyes spring open in response to the pain, and I try to rise, but his hand moves between my shoulder blades keeping me down. He caresses me again where he’s hit me, and his breathing’s changed – it’s louder, harsher. He hits me again and again, quickly in succession. Holy fuck it hurts. I make no sound, my face screwed up against the pain. I try and wriggle away from the blows – spurred on by adrenaline spiking and coursing through my body.

She is not a bottom. She does not like pain. She is not a sub. She does not like punishment. The book is stunningly clear about these facts. Which means we're just reading a description of a woman being beaten. Which makes it really hard for me to consider wanking to this.

He hits me again… this is getting harder to take. My face hurts, it’s screwed up so tight. He strokes me gently and then the blow comes. I cry out again. “No one to hear you, baby, just me.” And he hits me again and again. From somewhere deep inside, I want to beg him to stop. But I don’t. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. He continues the unrelenting rhythm. I cry out six more times. Eighteen slaps in total.

Different people have different styles of BDSM, so your mileage may vary on this part, but even if this were consensual it would be an absolutely wretched spanking scene for me. The top's not doing any warm-up and he's not checking in with the bottom. His technique is probably terrible because he's never had any education or solicited any feedback. The bottom is getting nothing positive out of this and the only reason she's not safewording is because she knows her top would be a shit about it.

“Enough,” he breathes hoarsely. “Well done, Anastasia. Now I’m going to fuck you.”

Do we have to even discuss whether she consents to this? She doesn't run away, is about all I can say. Except that if she did run away, it's pretty clear (he already did it when she struggled during the beating) that Three WolfMoon would just physically restrain her and then he'd be angrier. So our definition of "consent" is basically down to "doesn't teleport away" at this point.

So he fucks her, and:

He gently strokes my hair. I’m on his chest again. But this time, I don’t have the strength to lift my hand and feel him. Boy… I survived. That wasn’t so bad. I’m more stoic than I thought.

Survived. Wasn't so bad. Stoic. This is not how you spell enjoyment, E.L. James. This is not how kinky people feel after good scenes.

I rise stiffly and put my sweatpants back on. They chafe a little against my still-smarting behind. I’m so confused by my reaction. I remember him saying – I can’t remember when – that I would feel so much better after a good hiding. How can that be so? I really don’t get it. But strangely, I do. I can’t say that I enjoyed the experience, in fact, I would still go a long way to avoid it, but now… I have this safe, weird, bathed in afterglow, sated feeling. I put my head in my hands. I just don’t understand.

I guess this is supposed to be our "realizes she was kinky all along" moment, but honestly, it still sounds like she hated it and is basically just glad it's over.

“I found some baby oil. Let me rub it into your behind.” What? “No. I’ll be fine.” “Anastasia,” he warns, and I want to roll my eyes but quickly stop myself. I stand facing the bed.

You have to remember, this book was written. Like, E.L. James decided what to put in it. She could've decided to put in Ana wanting and welcoming the baby oil, or Slab BulkHead going "okay then, suit yourself" when she said no. But she did not make these decisions.

I close the door and stand helpless in the living room of an apartment that I shall only spend another two nights in. A place I have lived happily for almost four years… yet today, for the first time ever, I feel lonely and uncomfortable here, unhappy with my own company. Have I strayed so far from who I am? I know that lurking, not very far under my rather numb exterior, is a well of tears. What am I doing? The irony is I can’t even sit down and enjoy a good cry. I’ll have to stand. I know it’s late, but I decide to call my mom. [...]“Ana? What’s wrong?” She’s all seriousness now. “Nothing, Mom, I just wanted to hear your voice.” She’s silent for a moment. “Ana, what is it? Please tell me.” Her voice is soft and comforting, and I know that she cares. Uninvited, my tears begin to flow. I have cried so often in the last few days.

So I didn't realize this needed saying, but... constantly crying and hating yourself is not a sign of a good relationship or a good BDSM dynamic. This isn't one of those "the more you suffer, the more you're earning your true love" dealies. It's just suffering. It's not okay, it's not romantic, and it's not much fun to read about, for that matter.

[Ana's mom:] “Honey, you sound so unhappy. Come home – visit with us. I miss you, darling. Bob would love to see you too. You can get some distance and maybe some perspective. You need a break. You’ve been working so hard.”

[Kate:] “Just tell him to take a hike, Ana. You’ve been so up and down since you met him. I’ve never seen you like this.”

It's things like this that occasionally make me pause and wonder about E. L. James' personal life. Because she's hardly what I'd call an astute observer of natural human behavior, but her details about an abusive relationship are always pitch-perfect. Friends and family voicing their concern, telling her she isn't herself, that they can see how he's making her miserable? Something about this is harrowingly realistic.

I don't want to make assumptions, but it worries me that E.L. James thinks Portland is north of Vancouver and people in the US say "pram" a lot, but she knows exactly how abusive relationships develop. It worries me a lot.

[Kate:]“Are you okay?” “I fell over and landed on my behind.”

"I walked into a door." ROMANCE!

...Okay, I've lied about where I got bruises, but the difference is that I actually enjoyed getting those bruises.

So she chats with Kate for a while and has one of those rare moments of actually seeming comfortable (GO TEAM KATE), then trades some inanely pissy emails with Prick ManMeat, she breaks down crying and hating herself again, then goes to sleep. And then Splint ChestHair breaks into her house, again, but this time Kate is there.

“Do you want me to throw this asshole out?” she asks, radiating thermo-nuclear hostility. Christian raises his eyebrows at her, no doubt surprised by her flattering epithet and her feral antagonism.

Oh the writing. E.L. James certainly can turn a phrase... into complete hash.

Still - GO TEAM KATE!

“Talk to me,” he whispers. “You told me you were okay. I’d never have left you if I thought you were like this.” I stare down at my hands. What can I say that I haven’t said already? I want more. I want him to stay because he wants to stay with me, not because I’m a blubbering mess, and I don’t want him to beat me, is that so unreasonable?

“I take it that when you said you were okay, you weren’t.” I flush. “I thought I was fine.” “Anastasia, you can’t tell me what you think I want to hear. That’s not very honest,” he admonishes me. “How can I trust anything you’ve said to me?”

Ana having an emotional breakdown because she was beaten against her will--yet another thing Buck BurpSteak can make all about himself and his needs!

Have I mentioned yet that I have never hated a fictional character this much in my life? I mean, I feel downright cozy with Sauron and Cruella De Ville, compared to this fucker. And he's supposed to be some kind of too-good-to-be-true swoon-object. I can't believe it.

The "you have to be honest with me" thing really sets me off, because I got a lot of that. A lot of "how can I trust you, you have to tell the truth" silently accompanied by "but it better be a very specific truth or you're in big trouble."

“How did you feel while I was hitting you and after?” “I didn’t like it. I’d rather you didn’t do it again.” “You weren’t meant to like it.”

Well, there you go. I mean, there's nothing that can really follow that in the discussion. What's she supposed to say now, "I don't want you to do stuff I don't want"? We've established he doesn't care. There's basically nothing left now except the decision of whether to try to physically escape.

"I’ve wanted to spank you since you asked me if I was gay.”

There's a really weird undercurrent of homophobia in this book, on top of everything else. Ana repeatedly asks if Brick HardMeat is gay (and at one point tells some women that he's gay so they'll stop swooning over him, then titters over her cleverness), and both of them agree that this is the worst thing you could possibly say to a man. It's really unpleasant.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he murmurs. I frown. Jeez what have I done now? “I don’t have any condoms, Anastasia, and you know, you’re upset. Contrary to what your roommate believes, I’m not a priapic monster."

Oh, the "I'm not a monster" line. I remember that one too. The way it works is, they hit you a bunch and make you afraid of them, and then they raise their hand, and when you flinch, they yell at you about "Did you think I was going to hit you? What kind of monster do you think I am?" I've been there.

“You beguile me, Christian. Completely overwhelm me. I feel like Icarus flying too close to the Sun,” I whisper. He gasps. “Well, I think you’ve got that the wrong way around,” he whispers. “What?” “Oh, Anastasia, you’ve bewitched me. Isn’t it obvious?”

What a lovely romantic exchange, if we can sort of forget somehow that this whole discussion started with "how dare you be upset that I beat you."

Holy cow. Christian Grey is sleeping with me, and in the comfort and solace of his arms, I drift into a peaceful sleep.

By holding such petty things as "being able to sleep with him" hostage and treating them like unreasonable requests, he's able to make the most basic gestures seem extravagant. Wow, he didn't beat her again and he didn't make her sleep alone, that's basically winning the lottery as far as that relationship goes.

http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2014/03/lets-read-fifty-shades-of-grey-chapter.html

sexisnottheenemy_feed

http://sexisnottheenemy.tumblr.com/post/78763045050

georgiagraceartthird:

i don’t only have glitter in my veins, 2013

http://sexisnottheenemy.tumblr.com/post/78763045050

sexisnottheenemy_feed

http://sexisnottheenemy.tumblr.com/post/78751557739

(via smolderingphoenix)

http://sexisnottheenemy.tumblr.com/post/78751557739

wonders_and_marvels_feed

Posted by AdrienneMayor

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2014/03/rivers-as-weapons-in-ancient-war.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=13707

by Adrienne Mayor (Wonders & Marvels contributor)

Semiramis, queen of Assyria (seventh century BC) boasted in an inscription that she had extended her borders with courage and cunning: “I compelled rivers to run where I wanted, and I wanted them to run where it was advantageous.” Diverting rivers is an age-old environmental tactic in the history of war. According to Stratagems by Frontinus, a Roman commander and Manager of Aqueducts in Rome, Semiramis had conquered Babylon with a brilliant water trick. The Euphrates River flowed through Babylon, dividing the city in two. Semiramis ordered her engineers to divert the river, allowing her army to march in the dry river bed right into the heart of the city. The very same feat was attributed to the mythical sorceress Medea and to two historical conquerors of Babylon, the Persian king Cyrus and Alexander the Great.

A stream was diverted to literally flush out an enemy by the Roman commander Lucius Metellus, fighting in Spain in 143 BC. The Spanish army camped in an easily flooded plain alongside a stream. The Roman legionaries damned the stream and waited in ambush to slaughter the panicked Spaniards as they ran for high ground.

In 78-74 BC, Rome was embroiled in a difficult campaign in Isaura, a rugged region of eastern Turkey. The Isaurians were fiercely independent mountaineers labeled as “brigands and bandits” by the Romans. Publius Servilius finally defeated the fortified towns of Isauria by diverting the mountain streams where the Isaurians drew their water, “forcing them to surrender in consequence of thirst.”

Julius Caesar, in Gaul in 51 BC, used the same trick against the city of Cadurci. Because the town was surrounded by a river and many springs, his river-diversion plan required his troops to dig extensive networks of underground channels. Then Caesar stationed his archers to cut down the parched Gauls as they attempted to reach the river. The stratagem was successful: Cadurci surrendered.

Polyaenus, a Macedonian lawyer, wrote a military treatise for the Roman emperors Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius in AD 161. In it he claimed that the mythic hero Hercules had changed the course of a Greek river to destroy the Minyans because he was afraid to face such skilled cavalrymen in open battle. This story was intended to give the co-emperors a way to justify resorting to devious ruses instead of facing risky face-to-face battles, as they were preparing to enter a daunting war against the invincible Parthians of Central Asia. The Parthians, feared for their heavily armored cavalry and formidable horse archers, had just invaded the Eastern Empire—and, in fact, they were never defeated by the Romans.

Cunning tricks like diverting rivers to gain access to a city or to cause floods are examples of creative unconventional warfare. Unless such ploys killed entire populations by drowning (as occurred in some Islamic attacks by flooding towns in the early Middle Ages), diverting rivers aroused few moral qualms, because a well-prepared city or army should be able to anticipate or counter such tactics. But secretly poisoning water or food was another matter and raised ethical questions in most ancient societies.

About the author: Adrienne Mayor is a Research Scholar in Classics and History of Science, Stanford University. She is the author of “Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World” (2009); and “The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy,” a nonfiction finalist for the 2009 National Book Award.

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2014/03/rivers-as-weapons-in-ancient-war.html

http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/?p=13707

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/06/underwater-shot-of-an-otter-pups-swimming-lesson/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8101

Underwater Shot of an Otter Pup's Swimming Lesson

Pictured above is otter Tilly teaching her young otter pup Ziggy how to swim at the Oregon Zoo. As readers may know, swimming does not come intuitively to otter pups, and they rely on their parents to show them the ropes. For more, check out a video of Tilly giving Ziggy’s older brother Molalla swimming lessons in this post, and another post about swimming lessons here!

Photo via Zooborns

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/06/underwater-shot-of-an-otter-pups-swimming-lesson/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8101

forget_what_did_feed

Posted by John Finnemore

http://johnfinnemore.blogspot.com/2014/03/thank-you-for-thank-yous.html

Sorry if this is a rather self-indulgent post, but I really do have to thank the extraordinary and talented fans of Cabin Pressure for some of the astonishingly creative ways they've been saying thank you since the final recording.

First, this wonderful video. Never have so many people, in so many places and in so many languages, done quite so many silly things with so many lemons, hats, yellow cars and Toblerones. I absolutely love it (and the Arthur-in-a-box it came with) - thank you all so much!

Not only that, but the organisers of it have also been fund-raising for the National Literacy Trust , an excellent cause for which they have raised an amazing £2,265, and counting! Thank you so much to everyone who donated, and for the lovely comments on that site, all of which I have read.

Next, at the recording I was given a copy of this incredible book, which is a compilation of the work of some extremely talented artists and cartoonists, and their portrayals of everything from Carolyn presenting Herc with Finn McCool III, to Martin in the back of the goose truck, to the crew's favourite meals to… well, to what the crew would look like if they were all cats. It's absolutely tremendous, though I am sickened by how much better than me at drawing you all are.

Last but not least, thank you for all the individual cards and letters that have been sent to me, or given to me at the recording. They mean an awful lot, and I will reply to all the ones with return addresses eventually - sorry if it takes a while.

Maybe everyone who writes a show thinks this, but I really do feel the people who like my show are an unusually talented, generous, thoughtful and, above all, deeply silly lot. Thank you so much! You are truly… (here it comes, I've been using similes all through this post so I can save it up for the end)… Brilliant!

http://johnfinnemore.blogspot.com/2014/03/thank-you-for-thank-yous.html

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-long-day.html

Posted by Dave Hingsburger

I am exhausted.

I had to go see a specialist yesterday. All I had was a name and the address of the hospital in which she is part of a clinic. I spent my day working, distracting myself from the appointment, as I waited for the time to head out.

My big worry was really my BIG worry.

A few days ago I read an article about how doctor's sometimes don't wish to serve fat people and, even those who do, often have an inability to 'see' anything other than the weight. Putting myself into the hands of someone who's attitude might affect my future isn't an easy thing. But, what are you to do? I simply prepared myself to be prepared for what ever came.

I had a faint hope when I waited in the waiting room. They had a monitor there that flashed information on a variety of subjects. Did you know that falls are the number one cause of death of those over 65?! I had thought that being over 65 was the leading cause of death of those over 65 ... but no, just don't trip and you can live forever. But as I mused these kinds of musings they surprised me.

The monitor showed a picture of someone with a physical and, I think, intellectual disability. The quote below it stated that people with disabilities need to be seen as a person and that medical concerns must be investigated not simply attributed to disability. The actual quote is much cooler that what I've written here. Once I saw it I got out a pen and a piece of paper so that I could write it down, knowing I'd be blogging about it, when it came round again. (Un)Fortunately I was called in to see the specialist before it made another full rotation. But, that simple picture along with the accompanying sentiment was reassuring.

In the end, I had nothing to worry about. I was treated kindly and with respect and I was pleased with the care I received. When I go back, you never really go once to these things, my stress level will be non-existent.

I am reminded, again, and profoundly, about how much trust I am given by those I serve. Trust that my attitude will be welcoming, that my prejudices will be kept in check, that my eyes will see what's in front of me not what's in my imagination.

It's a helluva trust.

I struggle to be worthy of it.

If it takes a visit like today to remind me of that, I'm glad of it.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-long-day.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/05/most-evangelical-college-grads-have-a-story-like-this-one/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21342

Here’s a bit from the first chapter of Jonathan Dudley’s important book Broken Words. He’s describing his time at Calvin College:

In my freshman biology class, I sat riveted as the professor explained why scientists believe in evolution (I had never learned about the subject in high school). The summer after my first year, I pored over a summer-school psychology book by an evangelical professor, who argued (shockingly, to me) that gay people don’t choose their orientation and cannot readily change. Over the course of my second year in college, I learned why scientists think there is an environmental crisis. And during my last year of college, a bioethics professor argued against popular evangelical thought on abortion. I was surprised to find out during an office visit that many other evangelical scholars shared his view, though not surprised when he said they would rather not speak up about it due to the avalanche of protests it would generate from college donors. …

My bioethics professor reinforced a conclusion I had drawn from my undergraduate and seminary years: There is a significant gap between the opinions that dominate the popular evangelical culture (which is the only part of evangelicalism with political muscle) and the opinions that prevail among leading evangelical scholars.

Most evangelical college graduates have a story like the one Dudley tells. They can relate to the trajectory he relates there — the shock of new ideas as an underclassman and then, later, the candid conversations during office visits in which a professor explains what is and is not allowed to be said and how it differs from what is and is not true.

That office visit conversation usually only comes after the professor has learned that the student is headed off to graduate school (Dudley was on his way to Yale for seminary). On arrival at grad school, such students will be ill-served by what Peter Enns describes as:

… The same apologetically driven, and inadequate, answers to perennially difficult questions [that] keep being repeated in the classroom. Once students leave the environment where such apologetics is valued, they find that the old answers are often inadequate, and in some cases glaringly so.

That’s from a post last fall in which Enns describes the desperation he’s heard from many, many academic colleagues in evangelical institutions:

I had the latest in my list of long conversations with a well-known, published, respected biblical scholar, who is under inhuman stress trying to negotiate the line between institutional expectations and academic integrity. His gifts are being squandered. He is questioning his vocation. His family is suffering. He does not know where to turn.

I wish this were an isolated incident, but it’s not.

I wish these stories could be told, but without the names attached, they are worthless. I wish I had kept a list, but even if I had, it wouldn’t have done anyone much good. I couldn’t have used it. Good people would lose their jobs.

Yep. That. It’s pandemic.*

And it’s not just in academia. I’ve heard similar stories from clergy, journalists, musicians, missionaries and aid workers — all wrestling with the conflict between what they know to be right and “institutional expectations” shaped by the threat of an “avalanche of protests” from donors with political muscle. Not healthy. Not good.

- – - – - – - – - – - – -

* Update: For those too lazy or too deliberately obtuse (cough *Kevin* cough) to read this in context with the previous post, here again, from that post, is the link to Barna’s research providing the data from one of many, many surveys that confirms Dudley’s experience is not unusual.

Of course, survey data is only one way of exploring the claim above that “most evangelical college grads have a story like this one.” Another way to explore that claim would be by, you know, talking to evangelical college grads. Or maybe reading one of the dozens of post-evangelical-schooling memoirs published recently.

Listening to other people’s stories and reading other people’s stories is often a good way to learn about other people’s stories. Listening to other people’s stories also tends — anecdotally, at least — to make the listener more inclined to regard those people and their stories as legitimate, worthy of respect and not just something to be dismissed because people and stories lack a sufficient number of digits after the decimal point. Listening to other people, in other words, is one way to avoid being a tedious pedant.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/05/most-evangelical-college-grads-have-a-story-like-this-one/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21342

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/05/bible-secrets-concealed-how-lying-is-mandatory-for-white-evangelical-institutions-part-2/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21321

I learned a couple of important things when I took pre-med biology my freshman year of college. I learned that I didn’t want to be a doctor (sorry, Mom). And I learned that the science of evolution is true and beautiful and good, and nothing like the menace to my faith that I’d been warned against growing up attending a fundamentalist church and private school.

I went to an evangelical Christian college, but my alma mater — Eastern University, near Philadelphia — is forthright about the fact that neither its biology students nor its biblical studies students are being taught the nonsense of young-Earth creationism now being mandated by places like Bryan College.*

That’s true for many other evangelical colleges as well. I know that biology students at Messiah College study evolution. I suspect the same is true for biology students at Gordon College and at Westmont and at Asbury.

It’s probably also true at Wheaton College, although it also seems as though Wheaton would very much prefer that we not say anything in public that might associate them with the E-word. (I’m not really sure what’s going on at Wheaton these days. The school’s president, Philip Ryken, hasn’t yet proposed a statement of faith like Bryan College’s, but he’s personally endorsed the same ideology. At the Evangelical Theological Society, Ryken spoke on the topic, “We Cannot Understand the World or Our Faith without a Real, Historical Adam.”**)

This is a second way in which dishonesty becomes mandatory for these evangelical institutions. Duplicity is built into the structure of these institutions — colleges, seminaries, publishing houses, magazines. There is a gap — a chasm — between what they know to be true and what they are expected or required to pretend to believe. There is a great deal that they know to be true but fearfully avoid talking about.

The crude dishonesty of a place like Bryan College isn’t the usual expression of this duplicity. Bryan hires biology professors, but then forbids them from teaching their students the truth of what they know as scientists. It demands that these professors not profess what they have learned in their discipline.

But as we discussed yesterday, that’s not how it works at most evangelical schools. Most evangelical colleges do not require biology professors to lie to their students in the classroom. What many of them require, instead, is that these professors — and the institution as a whole — lie outside the classroom, hiding or even denying that students are being taught the truth. It’s a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for the teaching of evolution. Do it, but do it quietly — don’t do anything to attract the attention of the tribal gatekeepers, because then folks like Marvin Olasky and Al Mohler and David Barton will start attacking us. Those gatekeepers may have a shameless disregard for the truth, but they also have a lot of influence with a lot of donors. Mohler has already destroyed several once-proud schools, we don’t want him coming after us next.

So these schools, commendably, refuse to lie to their students. Those students are not taught the lie of young-Earth creationism in either their science classes or their theology classes. Good. But while such schools are not completely tossing away their academic integrity in a bid to be listed as one of Ken Ham’s “Creation Colleges,” they’re still so intimidated by the potential of costly “controversy” that they keep this classroom-truth-telling a secret.

And thus they wind up participating in, and reinforcing, the structural duplicity that sickens the entire white evangelical subculture.

It is not healthy to say one thing in private while saying something else in public. It is not healthy to say one thing in the faculty lounge while saying the opposite in the hallways. It is not healthy to say one thing in your seminary dissertation while saying something else from the pulpit. But this sickness, this duplicity, is pervasive in evangelicalism.

I wrote last year about the way Books & Culture functions as a kind of “faculty lounge” for educated evangelicals, a forum for:

Candid, unapologetic discussion of taboo knowledge and subject matter that had to be tip-toed around delicately when writing for a wider evangelical audience. If you are an evangelical scholar writing for Christianity Today, there are a host of Things That Cannot Be Said without sparking a heated controversy — even though none of them is actually controversial even among very conservative evangelical scholars. Whether the topic is the authorship of the pastoral epistles, or the archaeological evidence for (i.e., against) the conquest of Canaan, or more secular subjects such as the age of the Earth, Books & Culture allowed evangelicals to discuss what we’re learning honestly and openly without having to worry about setting off the hair-pin trigger alarms of either the culture warriors or the inerrantists patrolling the pages of CT for anything they perceived to be a deviation from their factually challenged version of God’s Own Truth.

There are many such “faculty lounges” in evangelicalism.*** Most evangelical seminaries also play this role. They are places where tribally taboo knowledge and ideas are discussed free from the meddling of censorious gatekeepers opposed to that knowledge. The same popular/academic split can be found in the catalogs of most evangelical publishers. Neither Eerdman’s nor InterVarsity Press would try to “get away with” publishing a popular mass-market book defending the truth of evolution. But they’ve also both published long, dense, footnote-laden academic books in which that truth is discussed as an unremarkable given — as something that even those books’ evangelical readership is presumed to already know to be true. Those books haven’t produced firestorms of controversy because no one reads them outside of the faculty lounge, and because outside of the safety of the faculty lounge, none of the faculty fesses up to reading or writing such things.

That duplicity is harmful for everyone involved. It eats away at the integrity of those forced to keep their knowledge hidden in the faculty lounge. And it promotes and reinforces the ignorance of those on the outside. It drives scholars and scientists out of the church.

And it chases away young people, as Karl Giberson discussed earlier this year at the Daily Beast.

Giberson, a physicist, was a professor at Eastern Nazarene College and an outspoken defender of evolution. A bit too outspoken, it turns out, for Eastern Nazarene, so like many other respected evangelical scholars, he’s fled to a Catholic institution. In January, Giberson wrote:

Most evangelical colleges teach evolution, albeit quietly, carefully, and often tentatively, although there are exceptions. And almost all public schools, of course, are required by law to teach evolution. In an ideal world these efforts should slowly trickle onto Main Street, where they would inform ordinary evangelicals, including those who run for Congress. In time, Darwin’s dangerous idea should become widely accepted, just as Christians gradually gave credence to Galileo’s dangerous idea about the motion of the earth.

But that is not what is happening.

For a quarter century I taught scientific theories of origins — evolution and the Big Bang Theory — under a cloud of suspicion that waxed and waned but never totally disappeared. With few exceptions, my mostly evangelical students accepted these ideas. I took informal polls indicating that most of the 50 percent of my students who rejected evolution at the beginning of my course accepted it by the end. My colleagues at other evangelical colleges report similar experiences. We were hopeful that these evangelical students would become leaders of their faith communities and gradually persuade their fellow evangelicals that evolution was not a lie from hell — which was what many of them had been taught in Sunday school. But instead scientifically informed young evangelicals became so alienated from their home churches that they walked away, taking their enlightenment with them.

An alarming study by the Barna group looked at the mass exodus of 20-somethings from evangelicalism and discovered that one of the major sources of discontent was the perception that “Christianity was antagonistic to science.” Anti-evolution, and general suspicion of science, has become such a significant part of the evangelical identity that many people feel compelled to choose one or the other. Many of my most talented former students no longer attend any church, and some have completely abandoned their faith traditions.

No, these students have not abandoned their faith tradition — that tradition has abandoned them.

That tradition — white evangelicalism — taught them and told them that their only options within the tradition were duplicity or a defiant ignorance. Pick one or the other. That tradition told them that truth can never trump tribalism — that the gatekeepers must always be feared, respected and obeyed, even when they’re wrong. Especially when they’re wrong — because that’s when they’re angriest and most powerful.

The tradition taught them that it doesn’t matter if you’ve got all the evidence, all the science and all the facts, and that it doesn’t matter if what you’re saying is perfectly orthodox and fully squared with the best biblical scholarship. It told them that, even so, if your conclusions might upset the DeVoses or the Ahmansons or the Greens, then you need to keep quiet and keep it to yourself.

Those students didn’t reject their faith, they rejected this shameful duplicity. Good for them. Given the choices presented to them, that was the only one that allowed them to keep their integrity.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

* Eastern has managed to avoid much of the supposed “controversy” surrounding the teaching of evolution at evangelical schools. Eastern’s science curriculum is strong, in part, because the school allows dancing.

That — along with other factors like its ties to a (gasp!) mainline Protestant denomination and the presence of dangerous “liberals” like Tony Campolo — means that twitchily anti-evolution evangelical parents and donors don’t want to have anything to do with the place. And that, in turn, means Eastern is able to teach science without the pressure from such parents and quasi-extortion from such donors that prevents some other evangelical schools from openly admitting that their biology classes teach actual biology or that their biblical studies classes teach actual biblical studies.

I think there’s a lesson here. Any evangelical university that wants the academic freedom to teach science and the Bible without interference from ideological gatekeepers ought to hire some DJs and start holding dances. Think of this as a corollary to the Parliamentary Principle: Free your ass, and your mind will follow.

** Is Ryken’s biological Adam something that is taught in Wheaton’s biology department? Or is it perhaps something that Ryken mistakenly thinks is taught in Wheaton’s biology department? In any case, there’s some kind of duplicity at work here. If this is being taught in the classroom, then students are not being told the truth. If this is not being taught in the classroom, then either that truth is being kept hidden from Ryken, or else Ryken is helping to hide that truth from the constituency of donors he hopes to appeal to with his ETS paper.

Full disclosure: I’ve linked to Peter Enns’ face-palming response to Ryken’s ETS presentation. Enns now teaches at Eastern University. He arrived there long after I graduated, landing at Eastern after getting booted out of Westminster Seminary for what its board regarded as theological impurity. Philip Ryken was a member of the board of Westminster at the time when that board voted to purge the heretic Enns.

*** None of these safe spaces is ever entirely safe, though. And they all, at some point, have to take pains to stay hidden. Here, for example, are three pages from the Nov./Dec. 2009 issue of Books & Culture in which Andrew Chignell discusses the future of academic freedom at Wheaton College. But these galley pages never actually appeared in the magazine. The story was killed without explanation by Christianity Today’s CEO. Chignell’s discussion of how Wheaton deals with Things That Cannot Be Said turned out to be another Thing That Cannot Be Said.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/05/bible-secrets-concealed-how-lying-is-mandatory-for-white-evangelical-institutions-part-2/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21321

ursulav_feed

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1579505.html

AAAAAUGH THINGS ARE BREAKING they're not allowed to break we playtested the hell out of it why are they broken how are they broken why can't I fix it oh god, this other thing is broken oh crap oh crap but this worked before WHAT WENT WRONG AAAAUGHHHH...

Ahem.

That is to say, the Leatherette Tortoise quest line is weirdly bugged. It is my fault! (of course!) but I am unsure of how to get a workaround going, looking into it, that will retroactively apply. It should be fixed going forward--probably--I think. (Basically a variable was set wrong so if you were sorry for killing the Tortoise, the Tortoise could show up again. Which is a nice thought, but unrealistic.)

So...um...we will fix it in the next version.

(Why did a weird shudder go down my spine when I said that? As if a thousand game designers gave a short bark of humorless laughter and then dropped their heads into their hands and wept?)

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1579505.html

http://geekfeminism.org/2014/03/05/quick-hit-foss-outreach-program-for-women-internships/

Posted by gfguestblogger

http://geekfeminism.org/?p=10732

This guest post is from the Outreach Program for Women (OPW), and is edited from their outreach materials.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that gives the user the freedom to use, copy, study, change, and improve it. FOSS contributors believe that this is the best way to develop software because it benefits society, creates a fun collaborative community around a project, and allows anyone to make innovative changes that reach many people.

In an effort to improve the gender diversity in FOSS, a number of organizations are offering Outreach Program for Women internships through a program organized by the GNOME Foundation. These internships are open to women (cis and trans) and genderqueer. The internships have the same structure, the same stipend and similar program dates. The application deadline for the Outreach Program for Women is March 19 and the program dates are May 19 to August 18. Unlike in Google Summer of Code, participants do not need to be students and non-coding projects are available. In addition to coding, projects include such tasks as graphic design, user experience design, documentation, bug triage and community engagement. Internships are typically remote and available worldwide. The stipend is $5500 (USD).

More information on the May to August 2014 round of OPW is available, including a list of participating organizations such as GNOME, Linux kernel, Wikimedia and OpenStack, and application instructions. Remember, applications close March 19, and you need to have made a contribution to a participating project before the application deadline.

http://geekfeminism.org/2014/03/05/quick-hit-foss-outreach-program-for-women-internships/

http://geekfeminism.org/?p=10732

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/2014/03/hello-portland/

Posted by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/?p=2092

I’m on my way out the door from Portland as I type this, but as usual, Portland brought it last night, in it’s own wonderfully funky way. (Where else can you get gifts of coffee, beer, fabulous wool underpants, yarn and blackberry jam?

That says Portland all over it, if you ask me.)

I don’t have much time to talk with you, but I can tell you a few things.

1. One of the coolest things about being on a book tour is seeing repeat offenders, people that I haven’t seen in years, especially if they’re kids, on account of most grown-ups aren’t changing fast enough to be really exciting that way. Last night I had a bunch of returning readers, but I loved these especially.

That’s Katie, a little knitter who played “Mary had a little lamb” for me back in 2011.

This is her last night.

I love the teenager that’s come over her, and that she’s trying to shove her photobombing mum out of the picture with one hand. She’s still a knitter.

This was Ira, Libby and Gertie, back in 2011

And this was them last night.

Still all knitters. Crazy, eh? It’s like a time warp. (I like the way Libby’s hair is exactly the same. Very grounding.)

2. I still like seeing first socks, but there’s a kind I like especially. Terrible ones. You’re supposed to be terrible at something when you start, and I love the knitters who bring me first socks that look like they were recombined out of a malfunctioning teleporter. Such was the case last night when Tara brought me these to see:

They’ve got heels that don’t match, the toes square and on sideways, and the best part? They’re well worn and loved. Gotta love knitters man. You gotta love them.

3. I can tell you that so far, so good. Last night on the way to the event I was so nervous, so worried, and then I got there, and it was great. Really great. The reading was scary, like it always is, and especially scary because it was the first time I was reading from the new book, and until last night, really the only person who had really read it was my mum. (This probably helped a lot, now that I think of it, because I don’t have the lying kind of mum. If the book was bad there’s no way my mother would have let me leave on tour without telling me.) People seemed to like it though, and I think it’s going to be okay. The biggest mistakes I made yesterday were getting lost in the PDX airport (did you know there are tunnels under it? Don’t go down there.) and the fact that I’m the idiot dragging a wool coat, scarf and mittens all over Portland, where it’s 16C and raining. The winter is so entrenched at home that it didn’t even occur to me that it wasn’t like that everywhere, which is so ….

I’m going to look like a moron in Arizona.

(PS. Debbi and I have opened registration for the April Strung Along Retreat at Port Ludlow. Just drop us a line at StrungAlong@yarnharlot.ca if you want a little more info.)

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/2014/03/hello-portland/

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/?p=2092

http://geekfeminism.org/2014/03/05/gf-classifieds-march-and-april-2014/

Posted by Mary

http://geekfeminism.org/?p=8354

This is another round of Geek feminism classifieds. If you’re looking to hire women, find some people to participate in your study, find female speakers, or just want some like-minded folk to join your open source project, this is the thread for you!

Here’s how it works:

Geeky subjects only. We take a wide view of geekdom, but if your thing isn’t related to an obviously geeky topic, you’ll probably want to give a bit of background on why the readers of Geek Feminism would be interested.
Explain what your project/event/thing is, or link to a webpage that provides clear, informative information about it. Ideally you’ll also explain why geek women might find it particularly awesome.
Explain what you’re looking for. Even if it’s not a job ad, think of it like one: what is the activity/role in question, and what would it involve? What is the profile of people you’re looking for?
GF has international readership, so please be sure to indicate the location if you’re advertising a job position, conference, or other thing where the location matters. Remember that city acronyms aren’t always known world-wide and lots of cities share names, so be as clear as possible! (That is, don’t say “SF[O]” or “NYC” or “Melb”, say “San Francisco, USA”, “New York City, USA” or “Melbourne, Australia”.) And if you can provide travel/relocation assistance, we’d love to know about it.
Keep it legal. Most jurisdictions do not allow you to (eg.) advertise jobs for only people of a given gender. So don’t do that. If you are advertising for something that falls into this category, think of this as an opportunity to boost the signal to women who might be interested.
If you’re asking for participants in a study, please note Mary’s helpful guide to soliciting research participation on the ‘net, especially the “bare minimum” section.
Provide a way for people to contact you, such as your email address or a link to apply in the case of job advertisements. (The email addresses entered in the comment form here are not public, so readers won’t see them.)
Keep an eye on comments here, in case people ask for clarification or more details. (You can subscribe to comments via email or RSS.)

If you’d like some more background/tips on how to reach out to women for your project/event/whatever, take a look at Recruiting women on the Geek Feminism Wiki.)

Good luck!

http://geekfeminism.org/2014/03/05/gf-classifieds-march-and-april-2014/

http://geekfeminism.org/?p=8354

ursulav_feed

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1579011.html

Got an inquiry as to the nature of the binding on the Digger Omnibus edition, from someone wanting to buy it, but concerned about bindings on a book large enough to beat someone to death with.

This is a good question. Binding is very important. I turned to Jeff of Sofawolf for the info, and here's what I've got.

The softcovers are called "PUR" perfect binding, which has to do with the chemical composition of the adhesive. It lays flatter than vinyl acetate and is very durable for standard usage. As with anything, it's not immortal, but it'll hold up as well as any other professionally produced, non-mass-market softcover, with all the usual caveats about not soaking it in water and taking a hammer to the spine and so forth. But it should hold up pretty darn well.

The hardcovers are smyth-sewn, which means the pages are collected in bunches and actually stitched together -- then backed with fabric and adhesive before being bound into the hard covers. This is very durable and considered "library-quality" by some (I get the impression that there are debates over the nature of library bindings, and it is not a settled matter, so we won't get into that--I caught a vague whiff of flame wars past in the air, as one sometimes does.) Anyway, this is uber-durable, give-to-your-heirs stuff--which is why it's more expensive.

Either should last a goodly long time, but the hardcover of course is going to last longer, same as any other book.

I hope that helps!

You can order either version of the omnibus through Sofawolf Press.

http://ursulav.livejournal.com/1579011.html

tanehisicoates_feed

Posted by Ta-Nehisi Coates

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ta-nehisiCoates/~3/9jg0xQh5puQ/story01.htm

The NFL and Fritz Pollard Alliance's effort to ban the word the nigger from the NFL is not just, as Richard Sherman smartly points out, borderline racist but actually racist. Any effort to raise a standard for African-American humans that does not exist for non-African-American humans is racist.

As I've explained before, the meaning of human language changes with context. That is why you may call your wife honey, but I probably should not. That is why Toby Keith referring to himself as "White Trash With Money" will never be the same as me accusing Toby as being "white trash with money. That is why Dan Savage proposing a column entitled "Hey Faggot!" will never be the same as me seeing Dan Savage on the street and yelling "Hey Faggot!" This is how humans use language, and it is wholly consistent with how black humans use language. The effort to punish this use, like all respectability politics, is an effort to punish black humanity, is racism.

It does not matter that black people of a certain persuasion are making this charge. Black people of a certain persuasion also supported the kind of laws that now find one third of all black men under state supervision. This is not an appeal to a crowd, it is an appeal to the basic rules of language, without which we would all be soon reduced to babble. When people claim that the word "nigger" must necessarily mean the same thing, at all times, spoken by all people, one wonders whether they understand how the very words coming out of their mouth actually work.

The great Harry Carson illustrates the point here:

I find it very disheartening that in our society today we're having a debate about the n-words being used as a term of endearment. If that's a term of endearment, go up to your grandfather, or an elderly black person, and use it on them. See how they react. For those who use it, I say they have no sense of history.

This is deep ignorance masquerading as expertise. As anyone whose spent time with the literature, testimonials, and music of enslaved black people knows, the use of "nigger" by black people to describe themselves is ancient. And as anyone with any familiarity with human beings knows, there are great many things you would not say to your grandfather that you would say to your friends, your wife, or your brother. And as anyone familiar with black people knows, our grandfathers certainly used "nigger" themselves.

In a particularly sad portion of the Wells Report, Jonathan Martin laments being derided as a nigger to his face by Richie Incognito. Martin's father's response is, "They think nigger is okay because black people use it." I read these words as the testimonial of someone coping with the trauma of rape. I am not sure that this is far off. Black America was birthed in a spectacular act of rape—literal and symbolic and our oppression has often been born as such. They enslave us because we are heathen. They spit on us because our hair is too nappy. They beat us because we are too dark. They enslave us because we are too loud. They oppress us because we are too rude. They kill us because we are too human.

The religion of nigger-cleansing gives one a sense of power, a belief that a individual respectability can somehow best the big machine. But the actual record of nigger-cleansing is dubious. Booker T. Washington could not stop the Red Summers. Racism neither needs, nor seeks, black people's permission. The wolf does not care if the sheep is respectable.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Ta-nehisiCoates/~3/9jg0xQh5puQ/story01.htm

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/qnvy0dfob_w/

Posted by Philip N. Cohen, PhD

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61826

Let’s imagine that a woman — we’ll call her “you,” like they do in relationship advice land — is trying to calculate the odds that a man will call back after sex. Everyone tells you that if you sleep with a guy on the first date he is less likely to call back. The theory is that giving sex away at a such a low “price” lowers the man’s opinion of you, because everyone thinks sluts are disgusting.* Also, shame on you.

So, you ask, does the chance he will call back improve if you wait till more dates before having sex with him? You ask around and find that this is actually true: The times you or your friends waited till the seventh date, two-thirds of the guys called back, but when you slept with him on the first date, only one-in-five called back. From the data, it sure looks like sleeping with a guy on the first date reduces the odds he’ll call back.

So, does this mean that women make men disrespect them by having sex right away? If that’s true, then the historical trend toward sex earlier in relationships could be really bad for women, and maybe feminism really is ruining society.

Like all theories, this one assumes a lot. It assumes you (women) decide when couples will have sex, because it assumes men always want to, and it assumes men’s opinion of you is based on your sexual behavior. With these assumptions in place, the data appear to confirm the theory.

But what if that those assumptions aren’t true? What if couples just have more dates when they enjoy each other’s company, and men actually just call back when they like you? If this is the case, then what really determines whether the guy calls back is how well-matched the couple is, and how the relationship is going, which also determines how many dates you have.

What was missing in the study design was relationship survival odds. Here is a closer look at the same data (not real data), with couple survival added:

(Graph corrected from an earlier version.)

By this interpretation, the decision about when to have sex is arbitrary and doesn’t affect anything. All that matters is how much the couple like and are attracted to each other, which determines how many dates they have, and whether the guy calls back. Every couple has a first date, but only a few make it to the seventh date. It appears that the first-date-sex couples usually don’t last because people don’t know each other very well on first dates and they have a high rate of failure regardless of sex. The seventh-date-sex couples, on the other hand, usually like each other more and they’re very likely to have more dates. And: there are many more first-date couples than seventh-date couples.

So the original study design was wrong. It should have compared call-back rates after first dates, not after first sex. But when you assume sex runs everything, you don’t design the study that way. And by “design the study” I mean “decide how to judge people.”

I have no idea why men call women back after dates. It is possible that when you have sex affects the curves in the figure, of course. (And I know even talking about relationships this way isn’t helping.) But even if sex doesn’t affect the curves, I would expect higher callback rates after more dates.

Anyway, if you want to go on blaming everything bad on women’s sexual behavior, you have a lot of company. I just thought I’d mention the possibility of a more benign explanation for the observed pattern that men are less likely to call back after sex if the sex takes place on the first date.

* This is not my theory.

Cross-posted at Family Inequality and Pacific Standard.

Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog Family Inequality. You can follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SociologicalImagesSeeingIsBelieving/~3/qnvy0dfob_w/

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/?p=61826

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/05/sea-otter-wants-to-visit-his-friend-in-the-next-enclosure/

Posted by Daily Otter

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8097

Sea Otter Wants to Visit His Friend in the Next Enclosure

Pictured above is Vancouver Aquarium’s Elfin trying to get into the next enclosure to visit sea otter Wally.

Thanks, Maggie!

http://dailyotter.org/2014/03/05/sea-otter-wants-to-visit-his-friend-in-the-next-enclosure/

http://dailyotter.org/?p=8097

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/being-three-ways-out.html

Posted by Dave Hingsburger

It felt nice being out. I was dressed in layers, in fact so many layers that I looked a bit like the Michelin Tire man, but Tire man or no, I was warm. We had banking to do and were on our way over to the post office to pick up a parcel that was waiting there for us when I decided to stop off, on the way, at the bookstore. I'm reading the first in a series of crime novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen and am loving it. I want to follow up immediately with the next in the series.

Being in the bookstore was a bit weird because it's usually a busy, busy place full of shoppers and book browsers. There's lots of places for people to sit and those spots are usually full of people looking at magazines, texting or talking on their phones and, occasionally, napping. But there were several spots empty and the store felt a bit zombie apocalypse with only a few people around. The clerk I chatted to said that people just weren't coming out into the cold. "Everyone is just weary of it," she said.

I found the book I was looking for and headed over to the cash desk. There was a very short line up so we'd be done quickly. I wanted to veer off and look at some of the home decor stuff so Joe agreed to get into the line and buy the book. There are times that living with someone who isn't an inveterate shopper is a good thing. He'd rather stand in a line than browse any day of the week.

Over by the cards I saw a fellow with Down Syndrome who is a neighbourhood regular. He is usually accompanied by his mother but sometimes, like today, he's with a support staff. I think he bristles at being with a staff when he believes that he can do his shopping perfectly well without a minder. I headed over to say hello, as I always do. I like him, and I like his mom, we've gone from nodding acquaintance stage to the stop and chat stage of stranger relationships.

Just as I was pulling up I heard him say to his staff, "I'm buying the card, not you. This is the one that I want." The staff fellow said, "Do you think it's appropriate?" He put his hands on his hips and said, "She's a little girl who likes trucks, I am getting her a card with trucks on it. You don't have to be a boy to get a card with trucks on it." Then he turned, saw me, smiled and used his thumb to point at the fellow behind him rolling his eyes. I said hello. He showed me the card he'd bought, it was a cute kids card with trucks, all with faces, racing each other to say Happy Birthday. I said, "Nice card."

We chatted a bit, I introduced myself to his staff, who seemed, at that moment to be reacting with hurt to the rejection of his input. I understood, when I was a young staff, it was hard for me to learn, very hard for me to learn, that my opinion wasn't always wanted, welcomed or valued. I wanted to say something encouraging - but there was no entry point to do so.

After a brief chat, we said our goodbyes, and they were on their way. I met up with Joe and I was telling him about this on the way home. I was buoyed up by what I'd seen and heard. There was a time when our opinion ruled, when people did what they were told and when we set the agenda. This was living proof that some things are going right. Here was a guy who knew his own mind, was appropriately assertive, and made his own decisions. Too, here was a young staff who, once his opinion was dismissed, didn't push it and, even more important, didn't punish the disagreement.

It was nice to be out in the fresh air.

It's also nice to be out of the oppressive room in which we provided service for so very long.

http://davehingsburger.blogspot.com/2014/03/being-three-ways-out.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/05/nra-feathering-the-throttle/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21307

Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist; pp. 221-227

It’s always fun to try to picture the action as Jerry Jenkins describes it in this book:

When Michael docked at the mouth of the Jordan, he and his fellow guards scanned the horizon and then casually walked to his tiny car and crammed themselves inside. Michael drove to his home, which had a tiny lean-to that served as a garage.

Despite what this says, Buck Williams and Tsion Ben-Judah are not still sitting in a boat on the shore of the Dead Sea. Michael’s riverboat is actually docked, I think, at the mouth of a some unnamed navigable tributary of the Jordan River. And I think Buck and Tsion also “crammed themselves” inside Michael’s tiny car. In any case, the whole group seems to be together there at Michael’s house and we don’t seem to be anywhere near the mouth of the Jordan where it meets the Dead Sea.

But before we can make sense of that scene, we get this brief summary of the first three books of the series so far:

While Buck was on the phone he was aware of all the activity around him.

He’s calling Ken Ritz, his charter pilot buddy, to arrange his flight out of Egypt because Buck had a dream in which he was Joseph having a dream in which God told him (Joseph/Buck) to flee to Egypt.

The fact that two days ago the Antichrist nuked Cairo into oblivion does not seem to have factored into this plan of Buck’s. Why should it? If the nuclear destruction of Chicago doesn’t even complicate traffic in Evanston or flights out of Milwaukee, then Egypt probably works the same way and everything outside of the Cairo city limits will be unperturbed.

We might dwell on that for a moment, pausing to ponder what it takes for a writer to give us a book in which a city of 9 million people can be wiped out by a nuclear bomb and then, two chapters later, all the characters and even the writer himself seem to have forgotten this even happened. But we’ll instead just move on. I’m inclined to cut Jenkins a bit of slack today because of three things in the section we’re looking at this week.

First, there’s this: After settling his plans with the pilot, Buck tries to speak to Michael’s wife, to thank her for the risks her family were taking to help him. On learning she doesn’t speak English, he gestures awkwardly “to express his gratitude.”

This is, literally, an empty gesture. Saying thank you is nothing more than the very least that anyone in Buck’s situation ought to do. Commending Buck and Jenkins for remembering to do this means setting the bar as low as it can possibly be set. But having done that — they cleared the bar. Buck Williams thanked someone. One of our protagonists behaved for a moment, however briefly, as though other people existed for something other than providing him the praise and assistance to which he is entitled. I’m pleasantly surprised to see it.

She was a tiny, fragile-looking, dark-eyed thing. Sadness and terror were etched on her face and in her eyes. It was as if she knew she were on the right side, but that her time was limited. It couldn’t be long before her husband was found out. He was not only a convert to the true Messiah, but he had also defended an enemy of the state. Buck knew Michael’s wife must be wondering how long it would be before she and her children suffered the same fate that Tsion Ben-Judah’s family suffered.

Maybe she isn’t pondering such dreadful things — it might just be that she’s in pain from having her eyes etched like that. That’s got to be very painful.

We discussed this whole Christian-killing Jews fantasy last week — an example of what I think psychiatrists call projection. That’s reflected here again in that phrase “the true Messiah.” This isn’t just how Buck and Michael and Tsion think of things. In this story, it seems the evil, Christian-killing Israelis think this way too — like they sit around saying things like, “Ben-Judah has forsaken our false religion and begun following the true Messiah. True religion is forbidden — he must be stopped!”

She said something in Hebrew and he recognized only the last two words, “Y’shua Hamashiach.”

Buck recognizes those two words as meaning “I have Lamb Trilogy on vinyl.”*

He and Tsion get on board the old school bus and Buck fires up the engine.

Michael signaled him from outside to slide open his driver’s side window. “Feather it,” Michael said.

“Feather it?”

“The throttle.”

We read a great deal more over the next page and a half about feathering the throttle and trying not to ride the clutch in the old school bus. Part of this is to reassure readers that Buck Williams knows how to drive a manual transmission vehicle and is thus a legitimate manly man. (I’m not sure how the ability to shift gears in a car — something millions of women do every day — came to be seen as a shorthand measurement of masculinity for that segment of the population that seems to spend a lot of time worrying about measuring masculinity. Maybe it’s because of that idiom “drive stick.”)

But I suspect that part of what we’re seeing in these pages of feathering the throttle is Jerry Jenkins’ personal experience driving an unreliable, unresponsive, uncooperative old church bus. That’s the second thing in these pages that makes me want to cut Jenkins a bit of slack this week. I’ve spent a lot of time riding on such buses, and so anybody who’s spent time driving them has my appreciation.

The overlong discussion of driving instructions is followed by an overlong discussion of driving directions — a slaw of place names and alternate routes that can be skimmed over to read:

Blah blah blah [three paragraphs worth] … “take the southernmost … border crossing.”

That’s how this would have read if Jenkins had followed Elmore Leonard’s advice to “leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.” It’s also all that matters as far as the story goes: “take the southernmost border crossing.”

But if you actually go back and read all those place names and directions you’ll notice something unexpected: These are actual places and the directions correspond (roughly) to a map of southern Israel.

Sure, Jenkins’ reference to these places doesn’t always make sense here — such as when he mentions the “heavily patrolled” border crossings “at Rafah on the Gaza Strip.” In the world of this novel, the Palestinians who lived in the Gaza Strip were long ago relocated — cheerfully and voluntarily. The Gaza Strip was then sprinkled with Chaim Rosenzweig’s miracle formula and converted into farmland. That farmland remains “heavily patrolled,” though, apparently out of habit.

Still, even if the Gaza Strip has no business existing in this story, Jenkins locates it in the right place on the map. He also locates Hebron south of Jerusalem — and Hebron really is south of Jerusalem.

Jerry Jenkins finally looked at a map.

No, that doesn’t constitute an impressive level of research. It’s the bare minimum of a bare minimum — like making a feeble “thank you” gesture to someone whose family might be killed because they helped you. But here at the beginning of Chapter 12, finally, Jenkins actually did this bare minimum. Considering that Chapter 11 had Buck and his friends rowing down a wadi, I’d say that’s a tiny step, but a big improvement.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

* Lamb was the name of a Messianic Jewish “rock band” in the 1980s. Except it wasn’t really a band, just one guy with a keyboard mostly. And it wasn’t really rock, more like praise choruses with a “Hava Nagila” beat. Anyway, one of Lamb’s most popular songs was called …

You know what? Nevermind. I don’t think I can explain that joke. But if you were in a church youth group in the early ’80s and you recall standing in a circle of evangelical goyim awkwardly trying to dance the hora to an earnest keyboard-and-drum-machine pop song, well, then you understand that joke.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/05/nra-feathering-the-throttle/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21307

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/2014/03/day-one-really-were-at-5/

Posted by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/?p=2087

So far so good. I’m out of the house and in Vancouver, waiting for my connection to Portland, and I feel pretty positive. Today isn’t just the first day of the tour, it’s the day that The Amazing Thing About the Way It Goes is released and people are starting to get their copies and nobody has told me that it sucks yet – in fact there have been some very nice compliments. All my clothes are clean, I had enough sleep, I’m not too nervous now that I’m moving, and today I did two things that are very nice.

I wrote “Author Copy” inside the cover of my copy of the book, so that at the bookstores it doesn’t get mixed in. (On account of one time, I lost/misplaced my book, and I had to buy another one, and buying your own book is super weird.) Writing the word “Author” doesn’t get old.

Then I knit almost the whole five hour flight (except for the part where I accidentally fell asleep) and I read 81% of Rachael Herron’s new book Pack Up the Moon which I got on my ipad this morning because her release date was the same as mine, and I’m delighted to report that it’s a great book, and I’m not going to have to think of anything delicate to say to her. So far, I’m pro book tour. (The tour page is here, and the links for where I’ll be when are over there. ——->>>)

PS. I know that Amazon is sold out, but don’t forget that your local independent might have it, or could order it, and Barnes and Noble has it too.

PPS. Thanks for caring.

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/2014/03/day-one-really-were-at-5/

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/?p=2087

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/04/misstatements-of-faith-how-lying-is-mandatory-for-white-evangelical-institutions-part-1/

Posted by Fred Clark

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21292

Peter Enns has a pretty terrific rant in response to the latest effort by Southern evangelical Bryan College to ensure that its biology students aren’t allowed to learn biology and that its biblical studies students aren’t allowed to learn biblical studies.

This is, as Enns says, a tiresome story. The Dayton, Tenn., school is an accredited undergraduate program. For $28,750, you can enroll there as a student and you can study science. But if you study science at Bryan College, you will be learning from professors who are now required to sign the following “clarification” of the school’s Statement of Faith:

We believe that all humanity is descended from Adam and Eve. They are historical persons created by God in a special formative act, and not from previously existing life forms.

Even worse, you will be learning from professors who have been warned that they are being watched, carefully, and that someone is always looking over their shoulder to ensure that they never say or teach or acknowledge anything that might cast doubt on that statement.

There’s a word for charging students $28,750 for that. It’s called stealing. “The Lord detests differing weights, and dishonest scales do not please him” (Prov. 20:23).

Selling biology that is not biology is a fraud. Selling biblical scholarship that is not biblical scholarship is a fraud.

It seems to me that putting young people and their families thousands of dollars into debt for a fraud is more than just a little bit evil and more than just a little bit sinful. It looks a bit like grand theft — a Class C felony in Tennessee.

Here’s Peter Enns:

A school can govern itself any way it wishes and can believe what it wants to believe. It can govern itself intellectually back into the Stone Age for all I care (provided that Stone Age didn’t begin more than 6000 years ago), and students and their parents are free to pay nearly $30,000 a year for the right.

The shame, the travesty, and I will even say the injustice, is that thoughtful people who are academically trained in various disciplines, who are supportive of their tradition, who have given their lives to be thoughtful men and women of faith, and who in their experience and wisdom see the need to bring their disciplines into some conversation with that tradition, are barred from doing so, because … well … we just don’t do that around here.

This is what a dying tradition looks like.

Enns links to a newspaper report from Kevin Hardy of the (Chattanooga) Times Free Press, which clarifies that this tale of fraudulent Devolution in Monkey Town is even more depressing.

Like any good reporter, Hardy follows the money. In this case, though, that wasn’t hard to do — Bryan College is so eager to appease its conservative donors that it makes no effort to disguise the fact that they’re enthusiastically allowing them to dictate academic content:

In 2010, Ken Ham, a nationally known creationist who runs the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., wrote a scathing article criticizing Bryan College because of a graduate’s book. The graduate, Rachel Held Evans, wrote about how she had questioned the nuances of her evangelical upbringing and had come to new realizations about the world, including the belief that evolution was part of God’s creation plan.

So Bryan College is fleeing from the one thing it can be proud of — being the alma mater of Rachel Held Evans — because Ken Ham is out there instructing donors to punish the school.

Ham also criticized biology professor Brian Eisenback, who was quoted in USA Today saying that he taught all origin views and theories — including Genesis and evolution — without revealing his own beliefs.

Genesis is a book in the Pentateuch. It is not an “origin view and theory.” I understand why the timid administrators of Bryan College, desperate to stroke their donors, would frame things so dishonestly and inaccurately. I do not understand why a journalist like Kevin Hardy would do so.

Eisenback and Bible professor Ken Turner gained attention last year for their grant from the BioLogos Foundation to write a new curriculum on science education that will marry scientific evidence with evangelical Christian perspectives on interpreting Scripture and science. BioLogos is a nonprofit that believes God created the world over billions of years and works to further the ideas of evolutionary creationism.

In the same year, Bryan’s Center for Origins Research was eliminated amid budget cuts. Todd Wood, who is one of the most well-respected young-earth creationist researchers in the country, was left without a job.

I cannot fathom what the phrase “one of the most well-respected young-earth creationist researchers in the country” can possibly mean.

It’s like the introductions for the various “experts” featured on those basic-cable shows about UFOs or cryptozoology (“Giorgio Tsoukalos is the world’s leading Ancient Astronaut expert …”). What, exactly, constitutes young-earth creationist “research“? I’m picturing someone in a lab coat with his eyes clamped shut and his fingers jammed into his ears, muttering “Don’t look at the stars … don’t look at the rocks … don’t look at the fossils … don’t look at the DNA …” (This doesn’t do much to dispel that image.)

Last month, a chapel talk at Bryan featured a discussion with Wood and well-known evolutionary creationist Darrel Falk. At the end of their conversation, [Bryan College President Stephen] Livesay said he wanted to make a statement about Bryan College’s stance on origins. He said he did not agree with the views of BioLogos.

“Scripture always rises above anything else. Scripture rises above science. … Science at some point will catch up with the scripture,” Livesay said, according to an online podcast of the event.

[Bryan's board president John] Haynes, the trustee, said Livesay has brought up the need for clarification several times to the board. Christians have increasingly begun to question traditional interpretations of Genesis, though he believes the Bible is clear on the matter.

“When you review these things, the first thing you must do is go back to the scripture and make sure what you’re saying is compatible with scripture,” he said. “Scripture judges you.”

Let’s repeat that with the subtext included.

“When you review these things, the first thing you must do is go back to what your donors say about the scripture and make sure what you’re saying is compatible with what the donors want you to say,” he said.

You can pay thousands of dollars to study biology at Bryan College, but you won’t be allowed to learn biology because your tuition payments don’t carry the same weight as the thousands of dollars given outright by a donor who doesn’t believe in biology. You can pay thousands of dollars to study the Bible at Bryan College, but you won’t be allowed to learn about the Bible itself as it actually is because your tuition payments don’t carry the same weight as the thousands of dollars given outright by donors who don’t believe in the Bible itself as it actually is.

Those donors write the big checks so those donors write the rules.

And the rules at Bryan College are clear: Biology professors and biblical studies professors are contractually obliged to lie to their students.

That’s not how it works at most evangelical colleges — most of the other 175 schools associated with the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. At most evangelical colleges, biology professors and biblical studies professors are permitted to teach the truth of their disciplines in the classroom. They are not required to lie to their students.

But at many, perhaps most, of those schools, those professors are instead required to lie outside of the classroom. They’re required to play a dishonest game of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in which, in effect, they’re required to lie to everyone else about the truth they’re telling their students.

That’s a longer, more complicated discussion, so we’ll get to that in part 2.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/03/04/misstatements-of-faith-how-lying-is-mandatory-for-white-evangelical-institutions-part-1/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=21292