Month: April 2009

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The Homogenized Enterprise

“It tells the story of a reckless 23rd-century youth named James T. Kirk (played by Chris Pine) who enrolls in the Starfleet Academy, driven in part by the death of his father, a starship officer who sacrificed his life for his crew.” NY Times Article on New Trek Movie, April 28, 2009

Ho hum.

So his father sacrificed his life for his crew. And Kirk is “reckless”. Shocking! How on earth do those TV people dream up these ideas? It’s almost as daring as a new one-hour drama on doctors, or police. Or even lawyers. I’ll bet Kirk proves to be tough but “with a heart”. I’ll bet he argues with Spock and the audience discovers, hey ho!, that ignoring logic and science is a lot more fun than making reasoned judgments based on proven facts. A lot more entertaining too.

There was at the core of the original Star Trek– I refer to year 1 of the original TV series, an overt humanism that I liked. The multi-racial crew has become a cliché today– but where do clichés come from? Someone broke the mold first, and “Star Trek”, in 1965, truly did boldly go where no man had gone before– they even had a Russian navigator! And let’s not forget television’s first interracial kiss, between Kirk and Uhura.

The later Star Trek– by that I include most of seasons 2 and later– is just plain embarrassing.

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John Maxwell’s Useless and Ephemeral Leadership “Wisdom”

There is only one real irrefutable law of leadership: Anyone who doesn’t already have what it takes to be a good leader will not know what it is they need in order to become a good leader.

And the obvious corollary: anyone who already is a good leader does not need leadership training and would be better off spending this time productively… doing something. Like have a sex change operation if you are a woman, because Maxwell doesn’t ever refer to a good leader as “she” or “her”.

Here it is — in the simplest possible terms: all “leadership training” sounds great in the workshop and works perfectly as long as you don’t let reality intrude. That’s all there is to it. The minute you leave the seminar and immerse yourself into the real world again you will find that your problems are no simpler and the answers are no clearer. And if you had weaknesses as a leader before the seminar, you will have the same weaknesses afterwards. I guarantee that.

However, a considerable number of people make a considerable amount of money trying to persuade middle managers and executives otherwise.

Almost without exception, none of these “leaders” have any real-world accomplishments: they are all preachers, essentially, or what they used to call “snake-oil salesmen”: glib speakers who charm and amuse you and persuade you that you can purchase that glib goodness itself and take it back to your place of employment and do magical things that you could never have done otherwise.

Not only are they unashamed of their lack of real world accomplishments — they sometimes seem to revel in it.

Have any of these geniuses ever actually accomplished anything in the real world? You would think a few would– just for PR value. Just to convince us that someone, somewhere actually used these principles in a real workplace with real problems and actually succeeded because of them. Just to show us that some people care about whether or not people who preach a lot of leadership actually know what they’re doing, in the real world.

Come on– do it! Just to prove– and here’s the most important thing– that the examples given in these workshops and presentations are not simplistic and unrealistic. In other words, nothing like the real problems real leaders will face in a real world.

Not one.

Well…. if you include celebrities like football coaches and Oliver North… But that sort of proves the point, doesn’t it? How wonderful it would be if you could run your company like a football team? Your team accomplishes exactly what your individual players are capable of accomplishing, and you get to credit yourself with some abstraction called “leadership” that miraculously appropriates your players’ talents.

How wonderful if you are a successful athlete– born with a gift– and people will pay to hear you talk about how you invented the gift, nurtured it, developed it, with your hard work and determination. What you have with these people is an attempt to cash in on their celebrity.

Maxwell gives Churchill as an example of a great leader. Why? Because he stood up for democracy and human rights? No. Because he defied the most efficient and powerful military machine in Europe? No. Because he was determined to win. Well, so was Hitler, and so was Custer, and Marc Antony, and Lee.

John Maxwell is at his most offensive when he tells you that the only way to cultivate effective leadership in your church is… surprise! By buying more and more John Maxwell books and video tapes. No– wait– even better! By subscribing to his various leadership clubs so that you receive something in the mail every month– along with expensive ongoing subscriptions.

It is a tribute to Maxwell’s charm, I guess, that he can get away with these blatantly self-serving stratagems in front of an audience that has paid to hear him speak! Wow. That is leadership!

It is even more wildly amazing that while telling this audience that leaders can’t be herded like cats because they think for themselves and ask critical questions and think outside the box…. he insists they all need to buy his tapes and books and videos, and they all nod obediently and scribble down the names of the stuff they need to buy from John Maxwell to realize their potential.

The real purpose of all this stuff? To make you feel entitled to your position. To give you the illusion of authority and influence. To convince you that you are really more necessary and more valuable than the people who actually produce products and ideas but don’t know how to suck up to those in authority.

The results from all this “training”? Mission Statements that consist of a platitudinous enunciation of the obvious, and Strategic Plans (a redundancy: a “plan plan”).

And I imagine that most of them probably do. They reach their potential. Just as you will and I will.

John Maxwell does not take questions. Real world issues must not intrude, because they introduce complexity that reveals the utter uselessness of most of his “wisdom”. John Maxwell does not take questions, but he probably could– because this audience does indeed look like sheep.

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“Heaven is a Place Where Nothing Ever Happens”

When I was a child I thought that heaven would be a land of free ice cream and pop and salt & vinegar chips and I would be able to fly and no one would ever, ever have sex.

When I was in high school, I was taught that there would be no wars or conflict in heaven and that, in fact, heaven would be a lot like earth, except perfect. But still no sex.

In college, some of my professors admitted they had no reasonable idea of what heaven would be like. Others sustained my denomination’s embrace of the idea that heaven was really something like a new earth, wherein the lion would lie down with the lamb. Lions do not kill animals and eat them in heaven. Do birds still kill worms?

It’s about 30 years later… I still have no idea of what heaven will be like. I’m pretty sure it won’t be a separate place. It’s going to be here. It might even be a lot like life here and now, except that we would have God with us. We’d know he was here, with us. Maybe we would just think everything’s fine.

Maybe the Talking Heads are right.

 

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Shacked: “Sin is it’s Own Punishment”; So is “The Shack”

[If you really enjoyed “The Shack” you may want to skip this.]

I don’t believe that any of the millions of readers of “The Shack” ever really believed that God, if he appeared to them in the flesh, would take on the appearance of a mighty old man with a beard and thunderbolts and a stern visage. But they believe that’s what other Christians think, and what non-Christians think they think, and therein is the essential appeal of the book: this is so wise! God is an obese, middle-aged, singing and chortling black woman baking in the kitchen, just loving you to death, and smiling indulgently at all those misperceptions you can then pretend to be enlightened of.

“Mack” even claims to be surprised that Jesus isn’t handsome, or Caucasian. He’s “surprised” that God doesn’t enjoy punishing bad people and casting them into a pit of fire. The fact that not a single one of those misperceptions is really upsetting to a conventional, conformist view of Christianity is beside the point. It just feels wise. It feels deep. They remind you of those tedious youth ministers some churches hire specifically to minister to young people, who wear jeans and listen to DC Talk to show that they’re hip, and admit that they sometimes feel tempted to, gosh, darn it, curse right out loud. These revelations will not, as the cover claims, “astonish” you. If you like the book, they will simply confirm what you already believe, and make you feel smarter about it. The same way Morgan Freeman makes you feel like you’re not a racist.

Making God a middle-aged black woman is actually as predictable as the old man with the beard and the staff.  What would have been fresh is making God a door-to-door salesman, or a Puerto Rican bathroom attendant, or Jerry Falwell.

“The Shack” is fiction, in more ways than one. Mackenzie Phillips’ youngest daughter, Missy, is abducted and murdered while “Mack” is in the water rescuing his son from an overturned canoe. The police, who behave like New Age saints in this story (always tenderly sensitive to Mack’s feelings), can’t find Missy, but they do find a small wooden shack with her dress and blood on the floor. Later, a bitter Mack receives a note from God to come to the shack. Is it a hoax? Or will his experiences there “change his life forever”?

Yes, that does sound a bit cheesy. It is a necessary convention that Mack is reluctant to go to the shack. It is also necessary, for the conceit of this book, that Mac was not just sitting on a dock fishing, or checking out girls at the beach, or washing dishes when Missy is abducted. Or that the police never seem to hold any suspicions at all about Mack, even when he knows something that only the murderer would know. Unless you believe in miracles. Do all cops believe in miracles?

There is an explanation (but it’s a spoiler) about why the three beings sound so much like youth pastors– and it is an artistic weakness of the book that all three sound alike– but it doesn’t explain or illuminate why Mack would ever be surprised at the revelations. I mean, it would have been fun if he had found a clever way to allude to some aspect of his own personality but… well, that’s asking a lot.

I am reminded, whenever Young tries to describe a scene of overwhelming magnificence, of Mark Twain’s observation that most people would describe heaven as consisting largely of the same activities that bore them to tears in real life: singing and harp playing and floating around in gossamer chaste ecstasy. When Young describes a host of children, and Mack’s father, emanating light and song and colour– it sounds a lot to me like that kind of weird picture of the afterlife.

There’s nothing particularly awful about Young’s book. There’s just nothing particularly amazing about it either. Why is this so popular?

I’m not sure that a real victim of violent crime would find “The Shack” all that comforting. Or enlightening.

This is to music what “The Shack” is to film:
An alternative example of theological inspiration.

My comments on another contrived excursion into “authentic” faith: Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz”.

My apologies for my views on “The Shack”. This is an incredibly popular book and people I love and respect do like it and claim that it has healing properties. I still like and respect those people but I also believe “The Shack” is really not as great as they think it is.

I would feel poorly served if I read a favorable review about some book or record or film and then found out the reviewer was kind to it because people he knew liked it.

The heart of this book is a relatively mundane writer speaking for God, trying to teach the reader theology by expressing it–stiffly– as dialogue between “Mack” and the Trinity, represented as a three persons living together in a shack.

That’s all. Since a real human can’t really even begin to explain, adequately, a real God, it all sounds more like a youth pastor to me than real characters. I’m not saying it couldn’t be done– a far more talented writer could do something with the idea, but that would require more poetry than William P. Young is capable of. A lot of it sounds like the villain carefully explaining all his nefarious plots to the hero who is tied to a chair and about to escape. After the explanation, of course.

I also find it really amusing that some conservative commentators, including Chuck Colson, don’t like “The Shack” and accuse the author of heresy. Wow. You would think there was something genuinely provocative in this book. Well, maybe there is. Young seems to take a fairly liberal approach to the idea of Hell, but then, so does Hollywood. He also suggests that all people, of all religions, are children of God– though it’s not very clear what the implications of that thought are, to him.

“The Shack” is essentially an attempt to explain the existence of evil in a world created and ruled by God. Is God just? It’s an old problem and I’m not particularly impressed by Young’s crack at it.

In a nutshell: “The consequences of selfishness are part of the processes that bring us to the end of our delusions, and helps us find you (God). Is that why you don’t stop every evil?” God replies, “All evil flows from independence and independence is your choice.”

No, it’s not. Either we’re independent or we aren’t. If we are independent, it’s because God planned the world that way. We didn’t choose to sign on to this arrangement. And we didn’t willingly bargain the sufferings of children for independence (see below).

And of course, if we are independent, God cannot be omnipotent.  If he is omnipotent, he can stop the Nazis, the Stalins, the bombs, the land-minds, and James Dobson.   If he can than he must, or God cannot be good.  [It would take a book to elaborate why exactly.]

There’s just not much of anything in Young’s rather lengthy and dry explanations. In fact, the more “God” goes on about how wonderful the entire scheme is, even if a few children have to suffer and die, the more unconvincing he is. And this makes it doubly insufferable when Mack professes such astonishment at the “wisdom” he puts into God’s mouth. He sounds like a bad TV ad: and you mean I get all this for only $19.95— why that sounds too good to be true. “It does– but wait– there’s more…”

From the time I was in high school, I have heard this argument and I’ve never accepted it.

Dostoevsky’s twist on the idea was this: what if I refuse the bargain? What if I say, you can keep your “independence” or freedom. I refuse any deal that assumes, as a precondition, the suffering of innocent children. I refuse my ticket. God’s reply, in “The Grand Inquisitor” is that Jesus, because he was innocent, had a right to accept the bargain.

The flaw in Dostoevsky’s argument is that this does’t change the objection:  it doesn’t matter if Jesus accepts the bargain: Jesus is not me.  I still do not.

February 12, 2009

A lot of “The Shack” consists of a very orthodox Christian theology rendered in insipid dialogue, with the distressing frequency of self-satisfied chuckles or laughter from the three persons representing God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. What is the purpose of “Jesus chuckled in the dark. ‘Since I am human, we have much in common…’ ” Does theology presented with chuckling seem more folksy and down-to-earth, and not at all some pie-in-sky abstraction?

Good and evil? Simple. Humans should never rely on their own judgment– God is truth. Why didn’t I think of that? Maybe because the real problem is that humans tend to spend a lot of time and energy telling us that they know what God thinks and it happens to coincide with their own personal beliefs. The real problem which “The Shack” neatly sidesteps, is how do you know what the will of God really is? Isn’t there always some interpretation going on? How do you know it’s even God’s voice you hear when you claim He is telling you, clearly, to do this or that?

Is it supposed to be delightful to think that God might want to lie on a dock at night and look at his own stars? It would have been more amusing if he would have a special fondness for “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Friends”, or fresh cut fries. I checked to see if Young’s God is a vegetarian. Don’t know.

We do know, thanks to Young, that God likes Bruce Cockburn’s “Lord of the Starfields”. Well, that beats “Just as I Am”, I guess.

Alternatives: without question, the most accomplished version of this approach to theodicy is “The Grand Inquisitor” from “The Brothers Karamazov by Fydor Dostoevsky. If you have never read the whole book, you should– it’s one of the two or three greatest novels ever written.

 

 

[If you really enjoyed “The Shack” you may want to skip this.]

I don’t believe that any of the millions of readers of “The Shack” ever really believed that God, if he appeared to them in the flesh, would take on the appearance of a mighty old man with a beard and thunderbolts and a stern visage. But they believe that’s what other Christians think, and what non-Christians think they think, and therein is the essential appeal of the book: this is so wise! God is an obese, middle-aged, singing and chortling black woman baking in the kitchen, just loving you to death, and smiling indulgently at all those misperceptions you can then pretend to be enlightened of. “Mack” even claims to be surprised that Jesus isn’t handsome, or Caucasian. He’s “surprised” that God doesn’t enjoy punishing bad people and casting them into a pit of fire. The fact that not a single one of those misperceptions is really upsetting to a conventional, conformist view of Christianity is beside the point. It just feels wise. It feels deep. They remind you of those tedious youth ministers some churches hire specifically to minister to young people, who wear jeans and listen to DC Talk to show that they’re hip, and admit that they sometimes feel tempted to, gosh, darn it, curse right out loud. These revelations will not, as the cover claims, “astonish” you. If you like the book, they will simply confirm what you already believe, and make you feel smarter about it. The same way Morgan Freeman makes you feel like you’re not a racist.

“The Shack” is fiction, in more ways than one. Mackenzie Phillips’ youngest daughter, Missy, is abducted and murdered while “Mack” is in the water rescuing his son from an overturned canoe. The police, who behave like New Age saints in this story (always tenderly sensitive to Mack’s feelings), can’t find Missy, but they do find a small wooden shack with her dress and blood on the floor. Later, a bitter Mack receives a note from God to come to the shack. Is it a hoax? Or will his experiences there “change his life forever”?

Yes, that does sound a bit cheesy. It is a necessary convention that Mack is reluctant to go to the shack. It is also necessary, for the conceit of this book, that Mac was not just sitting on a dock fishing, or checking out girls at the beach, or washing dishes when Missy is abducted. Or that the police never seem to hold any suspicions at all about Mack, even when he knows something that only the murderer would know. Unless you believe in miracles. Do all cops believe in miracles?

There is an explanation (but it’s a spoiler) about why the three beings sound so much like youth pastors– and it is an artistic weakness of the book that all three sound alike– but it doesn’t explain or illuminate why Mack would ever be surprised at the revelations. I mean, it would have been fun if he had found a clever way to allude to some aspect of his own personality but… well, that’s asking a lot.

I am reminded, whenever Young tries to describe a scene of overwhelming magnificence, of Mark Twain’s observation that most people would describe heaven as consisting largely of the same activities that bore them to tears in real life: singing and harp playing and floating around in gossamer chaste ecstasy. When Young describes a host of children, and Mack’s father, emanating light and song and colour– it sounds a lot to me like that kind of weird picture of the afterlife.

There’s nothing particularly awful about Young’s book. There’s just nothing particularly amazing about it either. Why is this so popular?

I’m not sure that a real victim of violent crime would find “The Shack” all that comforting. Or enlightening.

Here’s an alternative example of theological inspiration.

 

All Contents Copyright © Bill Van Dyk
2009 All Rights Reserved

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Almost Lucy

I’ve been listening to Al Stewart’s “Almost Lucy” for about 30 years now. I just looked it up on Google and gave out a short, desperate gasp: I had no idea it was 30 years since Stewart’s album “Time Passages” was released. I’m a little stunned.

[I can’t find a good live version of it: too much talking and bad audio.]

“Almost Lucy” has a wonderful lead acoustic part in the bridge– exquisitely symmetrical and tidy– I like it in spite of it’s prettiness. I like the whole song but that’s the part I listen for.

Lucy is an aspiring singer whose “heart was never in it”. She stays around “just long enough to get paid”. She doesn’t dream of becoming famous, and doesn’t believe she is going to become famous– she almost seems to just be putting in her time, her dues. That’s a bit odd– it’s sober. This is not a fiery song about illusions crashing down– they were never up– t’s about a sober reassessment of one’s position in life.

The chorus:

Hey, hey, hey, I think you almost
feel the pain coming on inside
Hey, hey, hey, I think you almost
feel it now and you don’t know why.
You don’t know why

Lucy never bought entirely into the false hopes, so she buries her grief inside, gives up, moves to California. She even, ruefully, insists that her aborted musical career was not a “waste”. That’s an insightful little comment– that’s something real people do all the time: rationalize away what they now see as a foolhardy investment of time and passion.

I like the fact that Stewart presents us with a portrait of a relatively sensible, down-to-earth woman with a fairly realistic grasp of things. In general, the public prefers the melodrama, the flaming ambition followed by success, the drugs, the revelation of the childhood trauma, the catastrophic failure, despair, and then the cosmetic surgery, the comeback, and Brad Pitt.

A star is born. Not Lucy, though.

Why?

Because then it doesn’t go to our hearts. It doesn’t affect us, really. It creates rivers of phony tears to show everyone that we have feeling, but not a single real emotion. “Almost Lucy” is heart-breaking because it reveals a larger truth… one that most of us would rather not believe.

Almost Susan

The popular illusion that we audiences judge performers and entertainers on talent rather than looks is getting a glorious go round because of the Susan Boyle story. Don’t we all feel better about ourselves?

“Almost Lucy” is a corrective– even Lucy doesn’t quite expect audiences to really respect her. “They kick you ’round so much when you’re not a star”.

She just hopes, for that night, the contract won’t be broken.

“Leroy got a better job so we moved”… is Michelle Shocked’s “Anchorage” a sly prescient portrait of Sarah Palin?

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Hard Boyled

Over 30 million people have now been duped into watching the video of the frumpy middle-aged woman who can sing. Everyone is astonished. Who would have thought a frumpy middle-aged woman could sing?!

Who would have thought anyone would be surprised that a frumpy middle-aged woman can sing?

Either the average person is far more dull-witted than ever previously imagined, or we are all fooling ourselves. You’re at a talent show. You watch various attractive young people march across the stage, with varying levels of talent. Then you see a frumpy middle-aged woman. You think– obviously she has no talent.  Right.

In fact, any reasonably astute person would have likely thought, she’s certainly not here for her looks. Obviously, she must be able to sing.

Now, this is a program which introduces emerging talents and then processes them like hamburgers through the obscene rituals of fashion makeovers, stylists, image consultants, deportment experts, etc., with the goal of rendering them into mental frumps– celebrities. Why the real frumpy woman? To convince the viewers that they are not like those shallow, crass people who only appreciate art if it is packaged in sexy, youthful flesh. No no no– I don’t judge people by their appearance– only by their abilities.

And after Susan Boyle has had her meaningless moment on the stage, these same people will go back to choosing the singer with the biggest bosom, and only watching movies that star sexy young Hollywood starlets. Except for Meryl Streep movies– because she is the Susan Boyle of Hollywood films: the exception that proves we are decent, intelligent people after all. We like serious actors. My enjoyment of their films is a badge of culture and good taste. I’m glad you know that. Besides, Meryl Streep may be flat-chested but she is sort of pretty. She’s prettier than Mrs. Doubtfire.

Now, it has occurred to me that my enjoyment of obscure films by Japanese directors like Ozu might be taken for the same thing. I’ve had that reaction before: you can’t seriously like “Late Spring”– it’s excruciatingly slow moving and, it’s black and white. Or, more likely, “I watched that film you were so hot about– I couldn’t believe how boring it was!”

It’s probably true. Though I must admit, it’s not that much fun at work to casually mention, at lunch, that I watched an obscure Japanese film last night.

You just do that to make us think you’re smarter than we are.

Yeah, that’s what you get.

What I liked about my college experience is that it was one of the few times in my life when most of the people I hung out with respected elite artistry, drama, and music.

Nowadays, the elite is there to be mocked, even by the elite.

The Inevitable “Make-Over”

The latest: Susan Boyle has undergone a modest “make-over”, using a local hair stylist instead of a fancy one from the big city. The idea is to make it more digestible for the average viewer to maintain the illusion that they appreciate her for her voice and don’t care at all about the fact that she looks like a real person.

The Un-Boyle

Diana Krall seems like a perfectly fine lady. She looks very nice. She gets a lot of airplay on the CBC.

She is the opposite of Susan Boyle. Diana Krall looks absolutely ravishing– if your taste runs to big-boned blonde Visigoths– but, truthfully, is a rather average singer.

Norah Jones is in the same category: really, a mediocre singer with a pleasant voice, and, most importantly, a pretty body.

Just think– if you could combine Susan Boyle’s voice with Diana Krall’s looks, you would have the perfect entertainer. Right? Wrong. Nobody really cares about the voice part. Diana Krall has the only advantage that matters already in hand.

And actually, Susan Boyle’s singing talents really are quite over-rated as well.

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The New Yankee Stadium

Here is a picture of the New Yankee Stadium, from behind home plate.

I know the Yankees used to think of themselves as being the “class” of professional sports franchises. They refused to allow advertising along the board behind home plate because that would be tacky, like hockey.

Well, here we are:

Now you might think this is the triumph of commercial considerations over artistic considerations. I say it isn’t. I say it’s the triumph of stupidity over wisdom– the commercial advantages will be short-lived because the damage to the Yankee brand will be long-term. Think of the impression children — future baseball fans– will have of this stadium. Think of the impression they would have had if there had been no advertising visible in the above shot. Think of how that plays on the imagination year after year after year– until a franchise has a clearly defined luster.

Not any more. What is the new Yankee Stadium? A bunch of billboards with people in front of them and grass in front of the people. That’s all. You’re uglier than Susan Boyle.  You’re tackier than roller derby.  You’re cheaper looking than professional wrestling.

Thank you and good bye.

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The Courteous Gun

Mr. Wong told the man that he had probably shot 10,000 rounds in about a year’s time. “He was pleasant,” the man recalled. “He was courteous. You would never suspect that he would pose a threat to anyone.” NY Times, April 11, 2009

You mean, aside from shooting 10,000 rounds?

What more information do you need? The man who didn’t want his name used happened to be using the shooting range next to Jiverly A. Wong one day. He noticed that Wong was practicing the art of firing his hand gun rapidly and accurately. This is America, where “you would never suspect” that someone practicing using a handgun would pose a threat to somebody. After all, Mr. Wong had a permit.

If that statement– “would pose a threat to anybody”– doesn’t alarm you, you must a red-blooded red-state rural American.

The NRA would probably respond, as they have in the past, that if only someone else in the room had had a gun, Mr. Wong would have been stopped.

Okay– let’s say someone else in the room had a pistol strapped to his leg. Mr. Wong fired 98 shots and killed most of his victims in the first 60 seconds. So this potential hero is sitting in the classroom working on his forms and a stranger walks in. The stranger pulls out his pistols and starts firing, quickly, randomly. Let’s say we’re really lucky and our hero isn’t one of the first ones hit. Let’s say we’re even luckier and he doesn’t happen to be directly in front of the shooter. The potential hero, quick as he can, gets to his feet and pulls out his own heroic tool. Is he going to stop Mr. Wong with an accurate shot, under terrifying circumstances, before the damage is done?

Maybe the hero gets lucky and gets his gun out before he is himself hit, and maybe he draws it without drawing Mr. Wong’s attention, and maybe he isn’t too nervous and excited and is able to aim and keep his hand steady and get off an accurate shot or two. Even under the best of circumstances, several people will already be dead. And anyone who has seen real footage of people engaged in a gun battle know that it is very difficult to shoot calmly, accurately, under those circumstances.

I wonder if the families of Mr. Wong’s victims consider themselves martyrs to the second amendment. They died so Americans can be free to own guns without the slightest impediment.

On this website a writer argues, remarkably, that if we allow the government to abridge the rights guaranteed under the second amendment, they will feel free to take away the rights guaranteed under any of the other amendments.

Okay. Would this person be amenable to the argument that if we allow the police to tap our phones, they will then feel free to plant hidden cameras and microphones in our bedrooms? If we allow the government to ban pornography, will they soon come after our editorials? If you let your child have a sip of beer, will he then feel free to do drugs?

From the same hilarious pro-gun website:

To deny a human the right to defend him- or herself from any threat is the most grievous crime against humanity that I can think of. Human enslavement, you say? Genocide? Well, that kind of thing can’t happen to an armed populace. Hitler’s holocaust, together with a world war, began by disarming the German people. So to own a gun for the purpose of defense is one of the most universal and basic human rights – period.

That’s pretty amazing.  Aside from the historical inaccuracy (the Nazis never “disarmed” anybody) the writer essentially asserts that the only way to preserve freedom is through violent resistance.  Virtually every developed nation in the Western world is a vigorous example of the contrary.

And when, pray tell, have Americans ever used their guns to defend liberty?  And you really think you will stop tanks and aircraft with your pistol and your AK-47?

What’s even more amazing is that after years and years of solid majorities favoring some form of gun control, the NRA has been able to stymie every effort to do it.

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The Value of a Human Life

How many times have you heard someone say that– “you can’t put a value on human life”. Yes, you can. Yes, we do. All the time.

We love to say it but we don’t mean it ourselves. If the government proposed raising our taxes by 50% to pay for a ream of new hospitals, clinics, emergency ward staff, helicopters, and defibrillators, they would be tossed out of office at the very next election. We don’t mean it.

We know that millions of people are starving to death at this moment in Darfur and Somalia. I don’t think a single person in Canada has proposed increasing our aid to those people since the economy went into the tank. How can you possibly put value on a life?

What we mean is, “you can’t put a limit on how much we want other people to pay for a human life that matters to us.”

The irony is that we often, in fact, end up putting less value on a human life when we have these knee-jerk responses to a crisis.

It is this kind of thinking that leads governments and individuals to spend huge sums of money on services and products that seem to protect life, when the same amount of money spent more wisely, on prevention, for example, would save far more human lives. It’s that same old human impulse. When a section of road is unsafe because it is too “expensive” to build a proper bridge or change the angle of the curve or widen the pavement, we panic and buy more ambulances and end up spending more money than it would have cost to fix the problem in the first place.

Case in point: a few years ago a child strangled to death playing on a jungle gym in a school play-ground in Toronto.  “You can’t put a price on a- human life” said the Toronto school board.  They removed all of the play ground equipment at all the schools in Toronto, eventually replacing them with better playground equipment that was deemed more safe.  But the children who normally played in these school years went elsewhere to play while the equipment was on order, and more of them were killed in accidents than could possibly have died from strangulation on the old equipment.

Besides, the whole notion that you “can’t put a value on human life” cuts two ways. In the case of a lawsuit against a corporation whose negligence caused a wrongful death– might not a judge decide that it would be crass to aware a specific amount of money to a plaintiff, because, you can’t put a value on human life.

“I heard about it and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ How can they possibly put a value on a life?’ ” said Debra Moran of Preston, who credits Life Star helicopter with helping to save her 16-year-old son last summer. He was critically injured in an ATV crash in Ledyard, 55 miles from Hartford and the nearest trauma center. “Would they say a respirator is too expensive and they are not going to have an I.C.U. anymore?” she said.

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Information Highway Robbery

Apparently there a lot of orphaned books out there. These poor little documents have no mothers or fathers or other living relatives. They reside in research facilities and libraries. But fear not little books– Google wants you.

Google has cut a deal with an association of publishers and an association of authors: we will take all those books. Thanks. Goodbye.

Google wants to scan in all these books. I don’t think they plan to sell access to them directly– they will profit by having you end up at their websites whenever you do an online search for any text in any of these books.

This is not all bad. In fact, this could be wonderfully useful. What has some people upset is that Google, in order to protect their investment, is demanding exclusive rights to this material. And they must have paid some money to the people in charge at the publishers and authors associations– people in charge– for these rights. Will any individual publishers and authors ever benefit? Almost certainly not as much as the people who negotiated the deal will benefit. This is the same principle behind the government giving away oil and gas and water: we citizens get nothing. They get lavish campaign contributions and parties.

Google would probably argue that if they don’t get exclusive rights, it won’t be in their interests to scan all these books in, so they won’t do it, and nobody else will either.

You also have to understand that this agreement is not the same as legislation. Google has simply paid off the only groups likely to be able to muster a legal battle against them. If you were to start scanning in all these books yourself and then offer them online on your own web page, Google would likely resort to the standard corporate practice of threatening you with their lawyers with no intention of ever actually allowing the case to go to court.

The article in the New York Times.

Need some therapy? Apparently those librarians do. They are angry about this deal. They think it stinks. And they are “mad”, “angry”, “upset”.

A good therapist could provide an effective solution to this problem: they just need to get some therapy. They aren’t “angry”– they have “anger issues” that need to be addressed.