Blog — January, 2008

From Gloria Steinem's Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions:

[F]eminists also tried to be sensitive to other linguistically divisive habits: for instance, using images of darkness or blackness as negative ("the dark side of human nature," "a black heart," "blackmail") and whiteness as positive ("a white lie," "white magic," "fair-haired boy").

Fantastic. But, by parity of argument:

Whitewash: "deceptive words or actions, used to cover up or gloss over faults, errors, or wrongdoings, or absolve a wrongdoer from blame."

White-bread as indicating "bland" or "unconventional."

White belt for a beginner in martial arts, versus the intermediate level of a brown belt, or the highest achievement of a black belt.

White elephant as indicating "a possession unwanted by the owner but difficult to dispose of."

White flag—an "all-white banner or piece of cloth, used as a symbol of surrender or truce."

White livered as "lacking courage; cowardly; lily-livered."

White dwarf, being a star which "has undergone gravitational collapse, and is in the final stage of evolution for low-mass stars."

Don't even get me started on the "dwarf" thing. Could astronomers be any more insensitive?

Short people got no reason to live

—Randy Newman, "Short People"

Read the comments in the link to that song, and marvel at just how clueless the average human being really is.

Personally, I had always taken "white lie" as a negative term. After all, if you're genuinely concerned with truth in life, are any distortions of the facts really "harmless"? Gloria would probably say yes, but I'm not so sure. Avoiding speaking negative truths is quite different from telling falsehoods, even if that's just done to not hurt others' feelings.

I just accidentally rediscovered (d'oh) that, while Skeptical Inquirer magazine posts some of their articles online, you can get a whole lot more of them at the Find Articles website.

So I was listening to a Meat Loaf best-of album last night while again reading into the wee hours. With Ellen Foley doing the female half of the vocals on the classic "Paradise By the Dashboard Light."

And I started to think about the early years of the Night Court sitcom, and the very sexy actress who played the ballsy "Billie" character there for one season.

Wasn't her name Ellen Foley, too?

No, I must be mixing up names. They were both Foley, but ... they were both Ellen, too. Weren't they?

So I looked it up on Wikipedia.

It's not just the same name, it's the same woman.

A burglar who broke into a Greek Orthodox bishop's car made off with quite a haul, but fencing one of the stolen items could prove difficult.

Among the items stolen from Bishop Metropolitan Isaiah's car was a jeweled crown of gold and silver, which Isaiah estimated to be worth between $6,000 and $10,000....

The burglar also made off with a copy of the New Testament, a veil, a cell phone and a black fabric bag. The bag had special meaning to the ex-Marine because it was given to him years ago by the widow of a fellow Marine.

Isaiah offered a reward of at least $1,000 if the crown is returned without damage.

"That was the first gift I received as a bishop 22 years ago," he said. "I feel lost without it."

At a vespers service Saturday night, he was the only priest with no head covering.

"I just hope and pray that those who took it will have a change of heart," he said.

(more)

Yes, perhaps the Lord will "put it into their hearts" to return the booty. Or at least the Bible.

Almost makes you wonder why God lets bad things happen to good people, doesn't it? ;)

And then there's the recent completion of the first version of Douglas Adams' Electric Monk:

An "Electronic Mufti" is currently under development that will use artificial intelligence techniques to issue opinions on contemporary Muslim affairs. (more)

Well, alright; but I wouldn't want to be around when they hit their first "Blue Screen of Death" on that one. Talk about a "crisis of faith"....

And Haiku Error Messages:

Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.

A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.

The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.

The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist

Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down

A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.

You step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

No keyboard present
Hit F1 to continue
Zen engineering?

Out of memory.
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.

Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Screen. Mind. Both are blank.

"It's going to be used in unintended ways by third parties—not just the government, but private investigators, marketers, lawyers building a case against you ..." (more)

On the bright side: Hackers Hit Scientology With Online Attack.

From Gloria Steinem's Revolution From Within:

If a male student earned a "Spinster of Arts" degree, a "Mistress of Science," or had to apply for a "Sistership," would he feel equal in academia? (p. 185)

Indeed—that is precisely the problem which kept coming up at my alma mater (Latin for "nourishing mother," and boy was she built like a brick biology lab!).

Steinem, you may (or may not) know, worked briefly as a Playboy Bunny (waitress) back in 1963, for the purpose of writing an exposé of that lifestyle. Russell Miller's Bunny is actually a very interesting read, concerning the entrepreneurial abilities of Hugh Hefner and the discrepancy between his (unpopular) high-school days and his later, reinvented "smoking jacket" persona. (I only found out about that book because Miller also authored a classic exposé of Scientology, for which he was suitably harassed.)

Regardless, this is from a response given by a twenty-two-year-old college student, to one of Steinem's "parables" about her mother:

"I'm graduating soon with a major in English, am dating one of the few good men on earth, and have embarked on a writing career with a short-story collection dedicated to my mother and to you." (p. 340)

Can you imagine what would happen to any awful, sexist, male-type-person who would say anything like, "Thankfully, I'm dating one of the few intelligent women on Earth"?!! Yet, for Gloria, the above passes without comment.

And that surprises you?

She quotes Chief Seattle too, apparently not realizing that his famous speech (which John Robbins also quotes) was just the product of a Hollywood screenwriter's imagination! (See snopes.com; four of the five references there predate the 1993 [revised] copyright date of Steinem's book, first published in 1992.)

This (from a different book of hers) is worth repeating, though: "[W]riting is the only thing that ... when I'm doing it, I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead." Honestly, that's what keeps me going, too.

P.S. Remember Gloria's carping about how sociobiology and evolutionary psychology supposedly exist only "to prove that the existing social order, unjust or not, is pretty much inevitable"? Well, I just came across this, from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel:

If we succeed in explaining how some people came to dominate other people, may this not seem to justify the domination? Doesn't it seem to say that the outcome was inevitable, and that it would therefore be futile to try to change the outcome today? This objection rests on a common tendency to confuse an explanation of causes with a justification or acceptance of results. What use one makes of a historical explanation is a question separate from the explanation itself. Understanding is more often used to try to alter an outcome than to repeat or perpetuate it. That's why psychologists try to understand the minds of murderers and rapists, why social historians try to understand genocide, and why physicians try to understand the causes of human disease. Those investigators do not seek to justify murder, rape, genocide, and illness. Instead, they seek to use their understanding of a chain of causes to interrupt the chain.

Obvious, really, if you want to think about it at all.

Hey, I've just been "invited to join the ICSANews mailing list at list.icsahome.com by the ICSANews mailing list owner."

Always nice to be reminded that I exist in the cult-studies field. :) Although I do hope that they're not just now finding out about STG, as I had offered PDFs of that book to basically everyone in their online directory back in the spring of 2005.

Um, and I suppose that the fact that I'm not "noteworthy" enough to merit on page on Wikipedia also accounts for how I'm not listed among their Anti-cult organizations and individuals or List of cult and new religious movement researchers.

That's okay: As every superhero knows, doing the right thing to make the world a better place is its own reward. (Plus, I've been approached more than once by leading cult exit-counselors when new yogic groups have popped up, for whether I have any information on them. The people who know this field also know that I know what I'm doing, even if we may disagree about how "safe" traditional religions really are, and about where to draw the line between "cults" and "religions." And for the people who don't know the field ... meh.)

Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy

—Crash Test Dummies

Ah, and a summary and excerpts from Len Oakes' Prophetic Charisma.

"A poet in every home, and a clinical narcissist leading (nearly) every cult."

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks....

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.... (more)

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.

So we've got a recession starting, the continuing muddle in Iraq-nam, and a lot of recent White House saber-rattling going on about Iran—just at a time, with the upcoming election, when the Republicans are going to need every distraction and victory they can get.

As the old saying/curse goes, "May you live in interesting times."

Anyway, it'd be fun (wouldn't it?) to go through all the debunking that's been done of Ken Wilber's ideas, and tally up how many false statements he's made over the years. But alas, I shan't be doing it—too many other things on my plate, all of which are more productive ways to spend my time.

From Steven Dutch's Happy Voodoo Economics Day, Mom:

Attempts to show that some occupations are unjustly underpaid, whether they are housewives, day care workers, or teachers, typically parcel the job out into subtasks, calculate the salary for the subtasks, then total the result. By tossing in a few hours of some highly paid job title like CEO, you can always generate whatever figure you like. The sad reality is that your marketplace value is what the marketplace is willing to pay you, and not some theoretical figure generated by parceling out every microtask and pricing them individually. After all, a car would cost five times as much if you bought it a part at a time (seriously)....

Your market value is what the market is willing to pay you. If you think the market unfairly underprices certain skills or occupations, go generate market forces to redress the inequity. If you think things should be rewarded for their value as God sees it, then we will unfortunately have to wait for God to deal out the rewards.

Dutch's fantasies about himself being a "writer and Web page creator" whose work in basic HTML is worth $100,000 a year are a bit of a stretch—what he possesses, in web-page creation, is a high-school-level skill worth around $10/hour, even when applied by someone with an aesthetic sense which Dutch himself clearly lacks as completely as does James Randi. But aside from that, by all means.

And from his Forest People, Desert People:

One of the ironies of the conflict between science and religion over evolution is there is no book more relentlessly evolutionist than the Old Testament. It doesn't have much to say about genes—the Old Testament would never sanction the practice of societies like Sparta of leaving imperfect infants to die of exposure—but it is merciless in its demands to rid the society of bad memes. It's not so much Darwinian as Dawkinsian. It seeks to rid the society of dangerous memes (Dawkins' word for the fundamental unit of social information) by relentlessly eliminating infected individuals, deterring potential carriers, and isolating carriers by making it suicidal to try to propagate dangerous memes. As a blueprint for selection it has no equal.

From his Historical Background of Evolution:

Victorians have been accused of being prudish about sex. Frankly I don't see it. Their art shows a lot of unclad human forms; their fashions are figure-flattering (even exaggerating—this was the era of bustles and corsets) and discreetly revealing. Cultures that are really sexually hung-up keep women hidden and conceal them in shapeless clothing (the Middle East being the archetypical example). The Victorian era managed to generate enough sexual art and literature to keep an anti-pornography crusader named Anthony Comstock permanently employed.

So what were the Victorians? They were staggeringly, stupefyingly sentimental. Everything about them; their prose, their art, their fashion, is dripping with honey and covered with sugar. It must have been a rough time for diabetics. It would be hard for such a sentimental society to take the utilitarian view of sex or predation that evolution requires. One of the toughest sentimental hurdles to escape in biology is anthropomorphism, projecting human traits onto other species. A housefly can sense its environment, but it's extremely doubtful that it has any more self-awareness than a computer-driven robotic machine. So is the death of a fly any more a moral issue than the junking of an obsolete computer? Much of the problem people had with the alleged cruelty of evolution was simply getting over anthropomorphism.

The sentimentality of the Victorians also explains their seeming indifference to social ills. They weren't indifferent—their concern made Charles Dickens pretty prosperous—but they had an unshakable optimism that things would inevitably get better, that the social ills were transient. And to be fair to them, things were getting better, very dramatically so. Someone born in 1800 would live to see a world with enormous improvements in standards of living, life expectancy, and public health. If the Victorians were all that indifferent to social ills, how did these improvements happen?

From his Emergence of Western Technology course syllabus (with the fascinating course outline here):

I am convinced that there is also an intimate link between technology and Western concepts of individuality. People invent when they see themselves as autonomous agents who can change the world; by empowering people, technology reinforces the belief that we are autonomous agents.

From his Medieval Roots of Science:

Why did clocks appear in Europe? Complex mechanical clock prototypes had been made in China, but never were widely copied. When they appeared in Europe, they were the rage. It appears that clocks are intimately related to Western concepts of individuality. In a world that never changes, time is of no consequence. In a slave society time doesn't matter; working faster only means more work, none of the slave's output benefits him, and there is no liberty to enjoy what leisure time exists anyway. A master in a slave society need not be concerned with time either; he has slaves to do the work. The significance of clocks is this: only autonomous people have agendas; they have things to do, places to go and people to see....

The notion of a transcendent god leads inevitably to the de-sacralization of nature. If there is an omnipotent god, there is no room for minor deities in control of every plague, earthquake, or thunderstorm. At the same time, it seems inherently absurd to believe that this infinite god is going to intervene in every minor event, or as we would say now, micromanage. If there are moral laws that are absolute, it is only a short step to believe in natural laws that are absolute as well. The third idea has had powerful effects both positive and negative. The negative effect, of course, is to reinforce the idea that if one belief is right, all the others must be wrong, with all the attendant religious and ideological warfare and persecution that flow from it. On the other hand, a hard-headed insistence that some ideas are right and others are wrong is essential for the birth of science, and even for philosophy and ethics as well....

For all the harm it has sometimes caused, it seems clear that the Western world's bias in favor of black and white, right and wrong, was indispensable to the development of science. A culture that views things in terms of black and white can learn to see shades of gray; it is not at all clear that a culture that sees only shades of gray can learn to see black and white. A culture committed to right and wrong answers will eventually see that over-zealous application of that concept sometimes fails to agree with reality; it yields wrong results. But in a culture where differences are routinely explained away as a matter of individual perspective, how could anyone deduce the existence of invariable laws?

From Dutch's Aftermath of Evolution:

The sports pages are full of people who are magnificent physical specimens but completely unfit in any other sense; they commit crimes, beat their spouses, and have no skills apart from being able to bounce a rubber ball or hit a ball with a stick.

From his Circumnavigations of the Globe to 1800:

One incident in Shelvocke's account was the nucleus for a literary image: the ship was followed by an albatross for several days, which a crewman finally shot, thinking it a bad omen. This incident was worked into Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, although Shelvocke's ship was not followed by the same misfortunes.

From Dutch's Laws of Just About Everything:

The best idea I ever heard was that voters should have to recite the Bill of Rights verbatim before being allowed to vote. Failing that, we could attach a ten-question multiple choice exam to each ballot. Votes would be weighted by percent correct. With electronic voting, we could scramble the questions to prevent cheating. Certainly if you're too dumb or slack to follow an arrow from the candidate's name to the correct punch hole, or make sure the ballot is correctly done, you have no right to complain about the outcome.

Of course, while we're on the topic of people who are "too dumb" to have their best attempts at voting count, the above leaves unanswered the question as to whether someone who can parrot a particular document without necessarily understanding it, or who is otherwise unable to think at a minimally adult level, should be considered fit to have an adult say in how a country is run. Or, conversely, whether a precocious ten-year-old who can think at a level of cognitive development from which from one-half to two-thirds of adults have either regressed or will never get to in the first place, and who can thus understand issues which those adults cannot, should be given a vote.

Why not make similar points as the above, about "second tier" versus "first tier"? Simply because, as much as developmental studies today may be in "complete disarray," Piaget's conop and formop stages have a hell of a lot more science and reality behind them than do the "third tier" conjectures and misrepresentations of Wilber, et al. Whatever its neurological origins may be (e.g., in the activity of specific brain modules), formop is (to a good approximation) the minimum level of cognitive development you need to have reached in order to understand basic social issues at an adult level, and thus to form adult opinions on the questions at hand, independent of your race, ethnic background, degree of formal education, or system of beliefs.

As a practical example, anyone who doesn't understand how basic probabilities (see the "Statistics" section in the link), abstract combinations/permutations, and classes work, does not understand how evolution works well enough to have an informed opinion on it, even if he may be able to parrot a few of its popularized ideas, e.g., that humans descended from monkeys (wrong! it's from a common Great Ape ancestor; monkeys are our evolutionary cousins, not our ancestors). Such a person is not merely uninformed while yet imagining that his opinion matters; he is rather in principle unable to understand the subject upon which he is voicing an opinion. Yet those same people vote-in members on boards of education, who in turn set high-school curricula, e.g., in the teaching of Intelligent Design along with evolution, if the latter is even taught at all to any depth in biology class.

(Regarding the relation of probabilities to evolution: Consider not only the frequency of random mutations but also Fred Hoyle's [flawed, see #10 in the link] calculations of the odds of cells forming, and his attempt to discredit evolution by comparing its likelihood of evolving life to that of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling a 747 out of spare parts. There's also Gregor Mendel's percentages [i.e., probabilities] of smooth vs. wrinkled peas, etc., which come right out of the abstract consideration of all possible recombinations of the [not-open-to-our-concrete-experience-of-them] genes involved. And, species are abstract classes of animals: If you can't think in terms of abstract classes in general [e.g., "autos," "fathers," etc.], you can't think in terms of species, either. That's all high-school-level stuff, but it's still beyond the ability of the average adult, even in the developed world, to understand.)

I really must enjoy getting myself in trouble and making enemies, eh?

From Dutch's Anti-Science of the 1960's and 1970's:

I am profoundly unimpressed by [Bertrand] Russell, whom I regard as the single most overrated figure of the 20th century....

Ah, but he's never read Ken Wilber's books, has he?

Finally, from his Two Literary Non-Mysteries:

I have never been particularly impressed with Sherlock Holmes. Most of the stories I have read involve banal and inconsequential mysteries. Furthermore, the stories are rarely mysteries in the modern sense, where clues are presented that challenge the reader to solve the problem as well. Mostly the evidence appears without warning, Holmes explains what it means, and follows it to a conclusion of Doyle's own choosing while myriad other possible interpretations of the evidence are simply ignored.

Hmm, not unlike Wilber's Kosmic, Erotic "mysteries"....

"It serves a really useful evolutionary role probably, which is you defend territory; you defend your mate; if you're a female, you defend your offspring." (more)

Gloria may not like it, but that's evolution (and evolutionary psychology) in action.

P.S. Idea for a sitcom: Ego and Ed. A successful, high-strung, ladies-man Freudian psychologist, who sees sex everywhere as part of his job, shares his Manhattan townhouse with his underachieving younger brother (Ed), while the latter recovers from a nervous breakdown brought on by an overbearing Jewish mother. Sort of like the Frazier character, as Charlie Sheen would play him, meets The Odd Couple in a looney bin.

Jefferson was a strong advocate of meritocratic types of government, believing they are superior to all other known forms of government.... (Wikipedia)

Now why wouldn't that get mentioned more often?

The Apache Software Foundation is an example of an (open source) organization which officially is explicitly a meritocracy.

Granted, that's a case where the competition benefits everyone working on the project(s), and you don't have a "next generation" of programmers inheriting the rights to the code which their parents wrote, to create an "upper class" of software developers. But still, leave it to the hard-core geeks to get it right, not just in principle but in practice.

I just received this email in my inbox. In consideration of how the person who sent it refrained from hysterically insulting me about STG, etc., I'll withhold his name:

Hi Geoffrey. I just found your "Stripping The Gurus" website and I am sad that you feel that way about so many people I admire.

Thank you though for expressing what you think is right in your heart. I think the beauty of it is that your writings advertise gurus to those that are likely seeking some spiritual guidance. It's likely that some of those reading your book or website will find their way to a successful relationship with the gurus that you've tried so hard to discredit.

I think that's the beauty of the "guru" that they can take your animosity towards them and your attempt to discourage people and turn it around. They've actually used you as a tool to promote them despite your best efforts. It brings to mind the saying, "There's no such thing as bad publicity."

I look forward to more of your future "guru promotion." Until then.

Namaste,

Well, you know what? In a sense he's right. But you know what else? I had thought of that very same point long ago, at least in terms of NE. Because, realistically, when my music career finally kicks in, there are going to be people who "discover" Ken Wilber's writings and ideas through my debunkings, who would never have heard of him otherwise. And a (hopefully) small percentage of those people will indeed be so "second-tier" as to find that his ideas "resonate" with them, and will not only take up meditation but end up as enthusiastic members of I-I, IN and IU as a result.

Because, after all, there are always people who just don't get it and who never will. And for them, no amount of objective facts and debunking will ever make a difference.

And that, you see, is how "God" even uses "Satan" to further his Divine Plan. :p

Bwuuuaa-haa-haa!!!

Still, full props to the writer and sender of that email: He's probably the only critic (not supporter) who's ever contacted me calmly (i.e., in living what he believes), and who actually made a valid point, however obliquely, "against" what I've written.

If you contemplate, though, how mixed-up a person looking for a guru would have to be to read STG (or NE) and still think that any of the figures covered there were worth following ... well, yikes. It will happen with NE, but for STG, I truly hope not.

Anyway, I didn't write STG or NE to save people who insist on being fooled, or who are too stupid to know the difference, from themselves. (When such people choose to throw their lives away in following the abusive purveyors of fairy tales, the phrase "Not much lost" comes to mind.) Rather, I wrote it to save people like myself from wasting time believing in nonsense purveyed by delusional, narcissistic frauds. Not that I fully appreciated, at the outset, just what a high percentage of our species eagerly swallows pleasant lies while gagging on the truth; but I'm "learning," in that regard.

Regardless, anyone who was up for playing the "guru game" as a follower would, I'm pretty sure, find some such "God in the flesh" to follow, with or without me. The Internet and the offline literary world is littered with gushing paeans to the likes of Ramakrishna, Krishnamurti, Rajneesh/Osho, Trungpa, Muktananda, Cohen, Yogananda, Ammachi, etc.; you can hardly avoid them if you're looking in the field at all. It's the criticisms and the documented abuse that take time and effort to find. Close to eight thousand hours of research, in my case, which I'm happy to have put largely behind me, to be able to move on to more interesting and less "repetitive" work.

Like, you know, my next book, on the astronomical/neurological origins of spiritual symbols, and the neurological basis of altered states of consciousness (and hence religion, from shamanism onward), for which I've already done roughly half the research....

P.S. New essay by David Lane! Yay!!

[T]he greatest progress in psychology has not come from Freud or Jung.... It has come from those pioneers who have grounded their studies in evolutionary brain science....

Hey, wasn't I just sayin' something like that? :)

This is from Malidoma Somé's hopelessly pre-rational Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic, and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman. I hope you're sitting down.

I decided to do a little experiment of my own with "reality" versus "imagination" when I was home visiting my village [in Burkina Faso] in 1986. I brought with me a little electronic generator, a television monitor, a VCR, and a "Star Trek" tape titled The Voyage Home. I wanted to know if the Dagara elders could tell the difference between fiction and reality. The events unfolding in a science fiction film, considered futuristic or fantastic in the West, were perceived by my elders as the current affairs in the day-to-day lives of some other group of people living in the world. The elders did not understand what a starship is. They did not understand what the fussy uniforms of its crew members had to do with making magic. They recognized in Spock a Kontomblé [i.e., spirits that live in the underworld] of the seventh planet ... and their only objection to him was that he was too tall. They had never seen a Kontomblé that big. They had no problems understanding light speed and teleportation except that they could have done it more discreetly. I could not make them understand that all this was not real. Even though stories abound in my culture, we have no word for fiction. The only way I could get across to them the Western concept of fiction was to associate fiction with telling lies.

My elders were comfortable with "Star Trek," the West's vision of its own future. Because they believe in things like magical beings (Spock), traveling at the speed of light, and teleportation, the wonders that Westerners imagine being part of their future are very much a part of my elders' present. The irony is that the West sees the indigenous world as primitive or archaic. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the West could learn to be as "archaic" as my elders are?

Uh, no. It would not be. Not wonderful at all. Big step backwards, from science into sympathetic magic, talismans, and voodoo dolls. (Somé also claims that he could see the answers to exam questions floating in the auras of his professors, and that he just had to write them down from there. That goes straight past Alpha Centauri, right into the Delusional Cluster.)

You see what an Everest-size mountain of nonsense a person has to wade through, to write even one book that makes sense?

Oh, the book's endorsed by Stanley Krippner. I'm guessing that the picture on the home page of his website is no ordinary hay bale, but perhaps a crop-circle hay bale.

Just beam me up, already....

I just saw this rant/response from Robert Carroll and, since it so neatly summarizes my own perspective, I thought I'd reproduce it here:

By "professional victims" I am referring to those people, of any race or gender, who can find just about any remark or behavior "offensive." The PVs whine about everything: if a new building goes up, they demand "tests" to prove there are not environmental poisons in the atmosphere. After the tests are done, they complain that the agency who did the tests was biased. If a remark about being the "black sheep" of the family is made, they launch into a diatribe on the evils of racism that have kept black people oppressed for centuries. If they are passed over for promotion, it is never because they don't deserve it: it is because the boss doesn't like the Irish, or women, or Hispanics. If they do not get admitted to a school or get hired for a job, it is never because they are undeserving; it is because they are "white" and "male" and don't get preferential treatment like blacks and women do....

I was once told by a Dean of Instruction at a College I had applied for a position at that "I was the wrong race and the wrong sex." Now, I know that this discrimination against me was not the same as that experienced by blacks and women because there was no hint that being the wrong race or gender implied I was inferior in any way. Still, you and I and other white males have other things to fear. If we travel in certain foreign places, we too can experience the "joys" of being hated because of our skin color, religion or nationality. Blacks are not the only ones who have their professional victims....women have theirs, and so do white males. There are many white males who piss and moan about everything bad that happens and blame it on "blacks" or "women" or "affirmative action," etc. They use their racism as an excuse to blow up public buildings or commit hate crimes. There are women who think physicists studied solids before fluids because of gender bias! I don't use the term "professional victims" casually...I use it with vehemence. Nobody every improved their lot in life by blaming other individuals or groups for all their problems and difficulties. I find it pathological to blame racism, sexism, affirmative action, the government, etc., for all one's problems or for all that is wrong with the world. On the other hand, I don't deny that there are legitimate cases of injustice and that those cases have every right to be heard in court (or other appropriate government agencies). Those who harass or discriminate illegally should pay for, or otherwise be made to suffer, for their behavior. It is not those who have legitimate grievances who are keeping this country from achieving a more equitable society.

You remember the scene in the Borat movie where Cohen's character was trying to tell the trio of feminists that a doctor in Kazakhstan had proved that women have smaller brains then men do? And, of course, they knew it couldn't be true, and therefore that Borat could only be a sexist pig himself for even suggesting that?

I just found this, on Carroll's site:

Brain mass is smaller in women than in men, but not in ratio to body weight. (Why doesn't an elephant's big brain translate into big intelligence? Because the big brain is needed to control those massive muscles and handle the enormous potential for sensation from the huge skin area, etc.)

Well, not exactly, though, as one of Carroll's own links shows: "adult female brains are significantly smaller than male brains—about 8% smaller, on average—even when you adjust for men's larger body size."

And yet,

[Arthur Jensen] felt that the brain-size differential could be accounted for in many different ways. One possibility, for which there is in fact some recent evidence, is that neurons in the female brain are "packed in" more densely....

[Jensen] has factor-analyzed the data from five huge test batteries, including the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and the Labor Department's General Aptitude Test Battery, and concluded: "The sex difference in psychometric g [i.e., general intelligence] is either totally nonexistent or is of uncertain direction and inconsequential magnitude."

Well, that's a relief. Or at least it would be, if "general intelligence" was widely regarded as being a valid marker. But this is Stephen J. Gould, from his chapter in The Bell Curve Wars:

Spearman used factor analysis to find a single dimension—which he called g—that best identifies the common factor behind positive correlations among the [mental] tests. But Thurstone later showed that g could be made to disappear by simply rotating the dimensions to different positions. In one rotation Thurstone placed the dimensions near the most widely separated attributes among the tests, thus giving rise to the theory of multiple intelligences (verbal, mathematical, spatial, etc., with no overarching g).... In this perspective g cannot have inherent reality, for it emerges in one form of mathematical representation for correlations among tests and disappears (or greatly attenuates) in other forms, which are entirely equivalent in amount of information explained.

And, of course, if g isn't really a valid indicator of "intelligence" (whatever that may be), the fact that it's the same for men as for women, on the average, doesn't actually mean anything—the sexes might just as well drive the same average miles per hour, it makes no difference as far as comparing intelligence between them.

Ah, well. Regardless, to put the whole "brain size" issue in perspective, there's also this, from Joseph Campbell's Masks Of God: Primitive Mythology:

[The brain] of Neanderthal was from 1250 to about 1725—considerably greater at the upper range, that is to say, than the norm for man [and woman too!] today, which ... is a mere 1400 to 1500 cc.

Not that the numbers particularly matter to me either way; it just annoys the hell out of me when people try to make reality fit their preconceived biases about what MUST BE TRUE, and then call anyone who disagrees with them "prejudiced" (or "first-tier"), regardless of how much that "unallowed" and politically incorrect viewpoint may be based on objective, scientific facts, and the best available theories.

Take Gloria Steinem, for example:

Testing [for IQ, etc.] has lost some of its ability to justify hierarchies, however, and so yet another branch of science has been born. In 1975, "sociobiology" was officially named and defined as "the study of biological bases of human social behavior." Though this new specialty bows to social change by regretting rather than celebrating birth-determined hierarchies, it still devotes itself to proving their inevitability. Here are some quotations from the latest scientists of human difference:

• Richard Dawkins: "The female sex is exploited, and the fundamental evolutionary basis for the exploitation is the fact that eggs are larger than sperms."

• Edward O. Wilson: "It pays males to be aggressive, hasty, fickle, and undiscriminating. In theory it is more profitable for females to be coy, to hold back until they can identify males with the best genes.... Human beings obey this biological principle faithfully."

• W. D. Hamilton: "I hope to produce evidence that some things which are often treated as purely cultural in man [sic] [that's Gloria's gratuitous "sic," not mine]—say racial discrimination—have deep roots in our animal past and thus are quite likely to rest on genetic foundations."

• Lionel Tiger and Robin Fox: "Nothing worth noting has happened in our evolutionary history since we left off hunting and took to the fields and the towns.... We are still man the hunter, incarcerated, domesticated, polluted, crowded and bemused."

It isn't difficult to counter arguments like those. [You go, girl! This oughtta be good!] For instance: Eggs are actually hardier and longer-lived than sperm.

So what? That by itself means nothing. Even if it took less total energy to create one egg than to create millions of sperm, that still wouldn't negate the after-conception responsibilities of the mother, as opposed to the far lesser need for the father. Sorta funny that she's carping about this particular point, because in any other context Gloria and her ilk would surely be trumpeting about how much thankless work and responsibility is involved in motherhood. "The commitment just never ends," etc. Well, good point!

If a female is interested in searching out a male with the best genes, she is being active rather than passive and "coy."

You're just playing word-games there, girl. If you wanted to counter Wilson's arguments on the same level as they were intended, you'd come up with an argument as to how promiscuity could be a "more profitable" mating strategy for females of all species in which the female gestates the offspring. (There are species of sea-horses where the male gestates the fertilized eggs. In those species, it's more profitable for the males to be selective in choosing a mate, and for the females to be promiscuous.) A woman may well be actively seeking out the best male partner; more power to her. But unless she's "putting out" to every guy who crosses her path in the interim, and immediately fucking that "best guy" when she finds him, she is indeed still being "coy," in the sense in which Wilson uses the term, i.e., as being selective about whom she procreates with. D'uh!

If racial discrimination were genetic, why would so many barriers against intermarriage have been necessary.

Hamilton's point, I would think (without having seen the original text and context), was that in-group/out-group prejudices have an evolutionary basis in our tribal past; racism is just one application of that border-drawing. You don't have to read far at all into evolutionary psychology to encounter the obviously valid idea that trusting the in-group members of your tribe as a starting point, and distrusting the out-group, confers a survival advantage. That applies to groups of blacks, Jews, apes ("animal past"), and feminists, just as surely as it does to "prejudiced" groups of white men. And if that drawing of borders between "us" and "them" has a genetic basis (in terms of how the human brain evolved to execute that activity), then so too does racism. Mixed marriages just happen between people who draw their in-group/out-group boundaries along different lines than skin color; it doesn't mean that there isn't an evolved neurological and genetic basis for the ability to do that boundary-drawing.

You need to think, Gloria; you can't just superficially bumble your way through this, and expect to contribute anything valuable to the knowledge-base.

If biology rules, where does the will not to have children come from? Or the determination to regulate fertility?

For the bulk of the evolutionary time of our species, having sex meant having children. If you wanted to enjoy the former prime motivator for human activities, you dealt with the long-term consequences of the latter. It is only relatively recently that any separation has been made between sex and childbirth, in terms of widely available contraception. (In the absence of that availability, it makes no difference to the outcome whether you are trying to reproduce, or just trying to get laid. So, there's no selection pressure one way or the other, i.e., no reason for the species to evolve in the direction of wanting to have children, versus just wanting to have sex. No surprise, then, that a substantial proportion of today's population just wants the former, without the latter.) What will be the long-term effects on our species, of couples who don't want to have children effectively selecting themselves out of the gene pool? Who knows? Perhaps the Catholics will take over the world! Or consider the implications of this:

When women in some African societies were asked if they would limit the sizes of their families, they said first of all they would not go against their husbands' wishes, and second they would not want to face the ridicule of other women. This attitude is not limited to foreign societies. I know of a young black woman with two children who was asked by her family "you're 26 and only have two children? What's wrong with you?"

Anyway, back to G-L-O-R-I-A:

And finally, men were never all hunters in every culture, humans were never all men [no? egad! I've been misled!], and the question of what is "worth noting" depends on who's doing the noting.

First, "every culture" isn't the point, as anyone with even half an understanding of this topic would know. What is important, in this context, as Tiger and Fox indicate, is the roles and responsibilities of men and women in pre-agrarian societies. Why? Simply because those are the only societies that go back through enough generations for the effects of Darwinian selection to be felt on the human species. It's how we evolved over (d'uh) evolutionary time-spans, not merely over cultural time-spans. And, aside from the occasional effete shaman, how do you think a primitive tribe of hunter-gatherers would deal with any male member who "wasn't a hunter"? You think he'd have much chance to pass his genes on to offspring, when the boys who are good at tracking and killing game are so dreamy?

Finally, what is "worth noting" depends not only on who's doing the noting, but also on the context in which the notes are being taken. And in the evolutionary-time-span context of which Tiger and Fox were speaking, they are quite correct to observe that nothing of interest has happened since the domestication of agriculture. Needless to say, that same statement (by Fox and Tiger) would not still be correct if it were to be made fifty thousand years from now. That, however, has nothing to do with "who's doing the noting," as such.

So, there you have it. Sociobiology—which became the evolutionary psychology of Steven Pinker, et al., and which is thus responsible for some of the most valuable insights into human nature that have been generated over the past thirty years—"disproved" by a few half-baked, dismissive arguments on the part of Ms Steinem. Or so she conveniently imagines, while either dismally failing to understand the discipline which she's trashing from the beginning, or outright misrepresenting it in her counter-arguments. In the former case, she's academically incompetent; in the latter, academically dishonest. Take your pick. Either way, she's doing nothing to demonstrate her own supposed intelligence or insight in the process. (She's also blatantly confusing explanations for why things are the way they are, for justifications of that status quo—a common error to which evolutionary psychologists regularly and explicitly object.) All she's really doing is showing her own willingness to reinvent science until it matches her a priori dictates about what Reality Must Be in order for it to fit into her preferred ideology.

And that surprises you?

Anyway, if the average size of the brain in women (including the scientific-only-when-she-wants-to-be Ms Steinem) really was the same as for men, women's heads would also have to be as large, on average, as the heads of men, right? But women are shorter and lighter than men, on average. (There are evolutionary reasons for that, which are the same as for any species with a similar differential, and which have a lot to do with men fighting over, and protecting, women, back in our hunter-gatherer days.) Given that undeniable fact, if their head sizes (and cranial capacities) really were the same, on average, don't you think some artist would have noticed that discrepancy over the past, oh, few thousand years, and remarked on either men's heads being disproportionately small, or women's disproportionately large, relative to their bodies? Don't you think everyone and his dog would already have noticed the aesthetic effect of that?

Of course, now I couldn't help but conceive of a hypothetical Borat sketch, about women in Kazakhstan who had simultaneous breast enhancements ... and brain reductions. Presumably done by his same famous doctor.

"They take a-meat, from inside her brain, and put it a-here instead. Borat like."

P.S. If it needs to be stated explicitly, I have no doubt whatsoever that women, on average, are every bit as intelligent as are men, on average. Or every bit as clueless, if you prefer. Either way, had I personally been born as a woman, rest assurred that I'd be doing exactly the work I'm doing now, with the same degree of courage, and a comparably saucy "tone."

From Frank Waters' Book of the Hopi:

According to both precedent and prophecy, the Hopis would lose their land by secular law. Then the higher forces would inexorably mete out justice. World War III would break out. The United States would be destroyed by a foreign nation just as it, as a foreign nation, had destroyed the Hopi nation. Land and people would be contaminated and destroyed by atomic bombs. Only the Hopis, on the homeland granted them by the Creator, would be saved to make an Emergence to the future Fifth World.

By contrast, according to the Mayan calendar:

At sunrise on December 21, 2012 for the first time in 26,000 years the Sun rises to conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. This cosmic cross is considered to be an embodiment of the Sacred Tree, The Tree of Life, a tree remembered in all the world's spiritual traditions. Some observers say this alignment with the heart of the galaxy in 2012 will open a channel for cosmic energy to flow through the earth, cleansing it and all that dwells upon it, raising all to a higher level of vibration.

Hmm. Well, I supposed that's something to look forward to. You know, more than World War III, anyway.

[S]keptics will have a tough time brushing this one off. (more)

Doesn't surprise me, having read Robert O. Becker's books around a decade ago.

It'll surprise James Randi, though, as back when I was trying to interest him in Ken Wilber's and Barbara Ann Brennan's near-worthless work—he "hadn't even heard of" either of them—he also didn't know of Becker's work with DC magnets in healing, didn't consider himself to be in a position to evaluate it, and dismissed it as having no paranormal claim. (The latter is true enough, but is hardly an excuse for Randi not informing himself about something which bears so directly on the whole Florsheim shoes issue, etc. There's a general debunking of magnetic therapy here, but it too doesn't even mention Becker's work.)

In February of 1982, the third conference of the International Transpersonal Association was held in Bombay. The much-respected (at that time) Muktananda was an honored guest, speaking there; as were Mother Teresa, Father Bede Griffiths, Jack Kornfield, Karl Pribram (!), Fritjof Capra, Rupert Sheldrake, biofeedback pioneers Elmer and Alyce Green, Frances Vaughan, shaman Michael Harner, Claudio Naranjo ... and Joseph Chilton Pearce (disciple of Muktananda). (The Dalai Lama was originally scheduled to open the conference, but had to bow out due to illness.)

The LSD psychotherapist Stanislav Grof edited a book of the talks given there, as Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science. From which, this is Frances Vaughan, one-time associate editor of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology:

I was impressed by the fact that the editors of the Journal engaged in very lively discussion about papers that were submitted. Sometimes editors would have totally opposing viewpoints, and diversity of opinion was encouraged. Everyone was heard, and nobody seemed attached to any opinion. All were great friends despite their differences. This was my first experiential contact with the idea of not being attached to an opinion or a point of view, seeing how powerful that kind of diversity could be, how much love came out of it, and how an organization could work with cooperation and caring. (p. 27-8)

Yeah, "honor among thieves," honor among transpersonal psychologists. "You respect my delusions, I'll respect yours."

So tell me, Franny (Friend of Ken, along with your husband, Wocket Wodger): Given all that "love, cooperation and caring," why have I still not received a judgment from the JTP regarding the publication of the Wilber and Bohm paper I submitted to them back in November of 2003? Why have I not received an email response, or a royalty cheque, from Paul Clemens (technical editor of the JTP) since I turned publicly skeptical about woo-woo and gurus (in publishing STG), back in early 2005? (I'd already give away the PDF of that book for free, since he's the one who has long been in breach of contract, but the content and writing are by now just an embarrassment to me.)

But what really threw me for a loop was the chapter by Joseph Chilton Pearce. It is, without a doubt, the most nonsensical, garbled set of ideas I have ever encountered in my years of familiarity with the transpersonal and integral fields. To wit:

Piaget uses academic example of concrete operational thinking, but its non-academic uses are demonstrated in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and remote parts of Greece, and Africa, where many thousands of people walk across beds of fire coals every year and are not burned. The alteration of ordinary consciousness this walk requires is concrete operational thinking, available to children between age six and seven, but only when it is modeled for them. (p. 184-5)

Holy moly! I had to stop for a gin and orange juice after I read that. Never mind that the "walking on fire" thing is the oldest (non-paranormal) trick in the book. But to relate that to concrete operational thinking?! (So that younger children, presumably, wouldn't be able to walk on hot coals, in spite of the physics which says that they can?) The mind truly boggles: This is someone who has absolutely no idea what he's talking about, in physics or psychology, yet he was respected enough in the field of transpersonal psych to be invited to speak in India at one of the industry's major conferences!

Oh yeah: Chilton was also "a faculty member on child development at the Jung Institute in Switzerland." Yikes.

Ten years ago, when Uri Geller was on television doing such things as bending metal without touching it, there were thousands of children all over the world—Japan, France, Germany, England, United States—who, as a result of seeing him, could then immediately do these tricks themselves. ["Tricks" is indeed the correct word.] Brian Josephson, 1973 Nobel Laureate in physics, observed one of these children at the University of London and concluded the laws of physics should be completely reorganized, but the children's magical abilities to bend metal or tie into knots metal encased in [inadequately] sealed glass simply illustrates what Piaget defined as operating on concrete information with an abstract idea [i.e., using thought to alter the physical world with real magic, which of course has nothing at all to do with Piaget's legitimate research]. (p. 185)

The reptilian brain [i.e., of Paul MacLean's "triune brain," though the editor Grof has the author of that idea as "McLean"] is clearly the modus operandi of David Bohm's explicate order energy, the physical body, or the wake state of the yogis. The old mammalian brain is clearly the implicate order of energy, the dream state, or the subtle body state of the yogis. What David Bohm calls pure potential and the yogis call the causal body, the deep sleep state, is the new brain. (p. 189-90)

But you know, if you try and tell that to young people today, they won't believe you....

Nick Lowe used to eat a lot of oatmeal too (maybe). What with growing up in an orphanage (maybe) in Dickensian England and all.

GRUEL TO REMIND

Oh, we drew straws, I got the short one
So now I've got to ask, but crike' it's a hard task!
You eat a meal fit for a king
While us boys here are starving, with ingratitude
And when I ask you for some more, you roar

You've gotta eat
Gruel to remind, life is a ladle
Gruel to remind, when you sit down to dine
Gruel to remind, that you're an orphan
Ollie, you've gotta eat gruel to remind

Got cared for by an undertaker
Went to work as a mute, mourned in a dark suit
Folks saw me and started to cry
'Til there wasn't a dry eye, for miles around
But still the misses underfeeds, poor me

You've gotta eat
Gruel to remind, life is a ladle
Gruel to remind, when you sit down to dine
Gruel to remind, that you're an orphan
Ollie, you've gotta eat gruel to remind

Well I ran away to dirty London
But I won't pull the dodge, Fagin's pickpockets!
I got caught in a robbery
And the old butler shot me, was nursed back to health
But when I see you in the jail, you flail

You've gotta eat
Gruel to remind, life is a ladle
Gruel to remind, when you sit down to dine
Gruel to remind, that you're an orphan
Ollie, you've gotta eat gruel to remind

On a completely different note, I just discovered the following fascinating website:

Say It Ain't So, Joe: things you must unlearn before you die.

Whatever happened to MC Hammer? (Aside from, you know, becoming a preacher in the 1990s and now working as a show host on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.)

Until he saw what YouTube was doing, Hammer had doubts about the Web's entertainment value. "When everybody started raving about the Internet, I always wondered, 'If it's so great, why can't you see my videos on the Internet?'" Hammer said. "It looks like technology has finally caught up with my vision." (more)

Well, that "impaired vision," MC, had (and has) a little something to do with copyright issues. If you want to give your videos (and music) away for free, no one (aside from maybe your record company) has ever stopped you from doing that, even if that meant putting them up on your own website.

It's just that, you know, the jury is still sort of out as to whether that's a sustainable business model. (Flash [and webcams] existed for ages before becoming the standard for YouTube videos—since 1996, actually, which was before "Internet" was a household word: Back in '95, only 11% of the population in the U.S. could even define what the Net was. It was never a question of technology needing to catch up with MC's self-absorbed "vision.") Hammer-head already managed to blow over $30 million on frivolous toys and bling, and wind up bankrupt. I'd think twice about putting him in any position where he has too much of a say about how a company's (venture capital) money is spent, beyond just having him be the "idea guy" for the marketing strategy.

But hey, whether or not The McHammer ("You want rap-fries with that?") wants to give his music away for free (i.e., without collecting any royalties on it), there are people who are already doing that for him. In BitTorrents, too. That's how technology has "caught up" with the music industry.

Well, at least MC Bankrupt Preacher gave us this (indirectly, via Weird Al):

You know you're out on the fringe when you can't even get a hearing from the "intelligent design" astronomer Fred Hoyle.

Yet, I used to believe every word and idea published by Bentov, placing him second in wisdom only to Yogananda. Barbara Ann Brennan would have been third.

No, Wilber was never in the same category, even during the six months when I bought into the "Einstein of consciousness research" nonsense about him.

Of course, that's back when I thought that (this is in one of the SRF Lessons) chanting "Om" while facing East could make you levitate....

What the hell must I have been smokin'?

P.S. Completely different topic, but: Lifehacker's 2007 Guide to Free Software and Webapps.

From Richard Rudgley's Essential Substances:

One of the sensations of fly-agaric intoxication is the perceiving of things or persons out of scale, either larger (macroscopia) or smaller (microscopia). This became widely known in the West through the work of Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), who had read a review of Mordecai Cooke's work on British fungi, containing an account of Amanita muscaria and its macroscopic and microscopic properties. This notion was used to good effect in Carroll's popular Adventures of Alice in Wonderland.

Alright, but also this, from Oliver Sacks' Migraine (p. 73-4, 80):

Lilliputian vision (micropsia) denotes an apparent diminution, and Brobdignagian vision (macropsia) an apparent enlargement, in the size of objects, although the terms may also be used to denote the apparent approach or recession of the visual world—these representing alternative descriptions or hallucinations or disordered size: distance constancy. If such changes occur gradually rather than abruptly, the patient will experience zoom vision—an opening-out, or closing-down, in the size of objects as if observing them through the changing focal lengths of a "zoom" lens. The most famous descriptions of such perceptual changes have, of course, been provided by Lewis Carroll, who was himself subject to dramatic classical migraines of this type....

Lilliputian hallucinations [cf. elves] are notoriously associated with alcoholic deliria, and, less commonly, with intoxication by ether, cocaine, hashish, or opium.... Fasting, inanition [i.e., exhaustion caused by lack of food or water], and infected flagellations may have played a part in causing the minute hallucinations of certain mystics (e.g., Joan of Arc).

Ah yes, the hallucinations of Joan of Arc. And you know where she leads us, don't you? Yep, right back to the catholic meanderings of the Integral Pope himself.

From Ken Wilber's Sidebar A: Who Ate Captain Cook?:

A person at any level/wave/stage of development can have an altered state or peak experience. These peak experiences not only happen to most people at some time, they have been crucial motivators in many great historical events. Whether you see them as "mere hallucinations" or glimpses into "higher realms" (or both [huh??]), you probably cannot understand history very well without them. From Joan of Arc to Rasputin, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Moses, altered states have been primary motivators of humanity.

And then, from Wilber's Introduction to Volume 8 of the Collected Works:

More than one world leader, in the course of the formative events in his or her life, has had a powerful peak experience or altered state, often religious in nature, that profoundly molded their subsequent worldviews and agendas, and not necessarily for the better (Hitler was a mystic of sorts, as was Rasputin). In some cases we deeply admire the results of this religious infusion (say, Joan of Arc or Martin Luther King, Jr.). In other cases we are repelled (Himmler, Charles Manson).

Finally, from Lew Howard's Introducing Ken Wilber:

Those who followed the path of ascent to its inevitable conclusions, were in danger of being "examined" before the Inquisition on charges of heresy. Thus, people who achieved high levels of spiritual realization, such as Meister Eckhart, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Bruno, Joan of Arc and countless others, were called to "explain themselves" before the Inquisition.

Bless her well-meaning, French peasant heart, but the girl was looney tunes. Not fully "integral," perhaps; but nutty as a fruitcake nonetheless, and certainly a sad, unstable model indeed for "religious infusion."

Sirens continued to be used as a symbol for temptation regularly throughout Christian art of the medieval era; however, in the 17th century, some Jesuit writers began to assert their actual existence, including Cornelius a Lapide, Antonio de Lorea, and Athanasius Kircher, who argued that compartments must have been built for them aboard Noah's Ark. (Wikipedia)

Well yes. That's obvious, really, if you think about it....

I'm just a jealous guy

—John Lennon

JUST A JEALOUS GOD

I created all the past
When we walked, and talked, and laughed
Then you tried to hide from me
Naked, so you hid from me

Thou shalt not have fun without Me
I'll cast you out, to till the ground (Oy vey)
I'll smite you if I have to
I'm just a jealous God

Powerful but insecure
I had to know you love me more
Circumcise your promised child
Sacrifice your promised child (Oy)

Thou shalt have no graven idols
No golden calves or demigods (Oy vey)
I'll smite you if I have to
I'm just a jealous God

<whistle bridge>

Thou shalt have no gods before me
Moloch, Baal, Nabu or Mot (Oy vey)
I'll smite you if I have to
I'm just a jealous God

If you think you'll run away
Remember Jonah, Nineveh
He was swallowed by a whale
He got swallowed by a whale

I even kind of liked him
But spoil the child and spare the rod (Yah, weh)
Don't tempt me, wretched sinners
I'm just a jealous God (Watch out)
I'm just a jealous God (Armageddon)
I'm just a jealous God

I'm gonna burn in hell now for sure....

(Idea for an opera: Die Monstersinger von Sesamestrasse.)

What if Queen's Freddy Mercury had owned a deli ... or a student café....

BOHEMIAN RASPBERRY

Is this fresh cheesecake?
Is it low calorie?
Only one piece left
Who gets it, him or me?
The free-market type
Or that Trotskyite? Let's see

Upmarket deli, micro-economy
Because it's just supply, and demand
I want it, you can't have
Back off, Joseph Stalin!
Your rhetoric has no effect on me
On me

New York, the market crashed
In nineteen twenty-nine
Got Depression on my mind
Worthless, all my stocks and bonds
Just tear them up and throw them all away
Tuesday, ooh
The day the market died
Sad and broke, tell Peggy Sue I love her
To the coast, to the coast, as if money really matters

Dropped out, smoked dope a lot
My hair was doing fine
Grew it halfway down my spine
One day, Western Union—inheritance!
But now I've changed, and want to change the world
Chairman, Mao—(cheesecake and a coffee)
Better Red than dead
It sometimes seems like freedom don't work at all

I spy a budding Proletarian highbrow
Working class, working class, will you join the revolt now?
Labor exploitation limits wealth creation, see?
Marx and Engels, Marx and Engels
Marx and Engels, Marx and Engels
Marx and Engels, Communist—Manifesto!

I was a spoiled kid, parents had money
He's petty bourgeois, damn his whole family!
Join in our war against the bourgeoisie!
Money talks, bullshit walks—how much do you want?
Ben Franklin! No, we will not sell Karl out—Take the dough
Ben Franklin! We will not sell Karl out—Take the dough
Ben Franklin! We will not sell Karl out—Take the dough
Will not sell Karl out—Take the dough (Never)
Never take the dough—Take the dough
Never take the dough—Ohhh
No, no, no, no, no, no, no!
Oh Mama Blitzstein, Mama Blitzstein, Mama Blitzstein needs the dough
The deli clerk's taking money on the side from me
From me
From me!

Do you think I'm a Commie? Go jump in the lake!
I have crushed your revolt for the last piece of cake!
Oh Trotsky—how does this taste to you, Trotsky?
Raspberry is the best—'berry is, ah, the best cake there is

Ooh yeah, ooh yeah
Money is a good thing
Anyone can see
Money really matters—money really matters ... to me

Cheesecake and a coffee ... Ahhh

I can't believe Weird Al Yankovic has never done a parody of Aerosmith's Walk This Way. 'Cause in hindsight it's so obvious how it should be done:

I'm a dairy-bred boy
If it's lactose, I'll enjoy
Though your daddy can't remember the brand
He said you ain't seen a tuffet
Till you met yer Miss Muffet
You'll be eatin' right on out of her hand
If you didn't break fast and you're down to your last
And your stomach's loud rumbling at noon
Then the best part of lunch
If you share when you munch
Only started with a little spoon
Real soon

Cheese, half-and-half, while the little dog laughed
And the cow jumped over the moon
Singin' hey diddle diddle
With a pussy and a fiddle
'Til the dish ran away with the spoon
Then a spider came down on a thread with a frown
To the tuffet where Miss Muffet was on
But I ain't ridiculin'
I was hungry, I was droolin'
And I never seen her takin' so long
When she fed me some

Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Curds and whey

Just gimme a spoon
Real soon

No black widow, just a girl in the meadow
It was perfect for a romantic brunch
But a real mean spider came and sat down beside her
Me, I just kept on eatin' my lunch
No I didn't act hurt when it crawled up her skirt
And I wondered just how far it would go
Then she smiled like a tease, and she even said please
So I offered her a little more
Like so

Sport, second half, while the little dog laughed
And the cow jumped over the moon
Singin' hey diddle diddle
With a pussy and a fiddle
'Til the dish ran away with the spoon
Then the spider crawled out from her skirt, thereabout
To the tuffet where the young lady sat
No, I ain't ridiculin'
I was hungry, I was droolin'
And I never seen her frightened like that
But she left me some

Curds and whey
Ran away
Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Curds and whey
Ran away

Just gimme a spoon
Real soon

Tomorrow: Bohemian Raspberry.

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