RUSSIAN MOB CONTAMINATES MONEY WITH STAPH TOXIN.
(Though staph is a kind of bacterium, not a virus, as the article suggests.)
Month: February 2005
Reuters Is Behind The Times
At least in
THIS STORY ABOUT COLORADO BAD BOY WARD CHURCHILL
Among other things, it says:
BOULDER, Colo. (Reuters) – A University of Colorado professor under fire for comparing World Trade Center victims to a Nazi war criminal on Tuesday refused to apologize for his remarks.
"I am not backing off an inch," said Ward Churchill, drawing an ovation from a standing-room-only crowd of about 1,200 students and backers gathered in a ballroom. "I owe no one an apology."
That much is fine, but it goes on to say:
Churchill, a veteran Native American activist, first attracted widespread notice last month after Hamilton College in New York canceled a scheduled appearance, citing threats against him and others who had been slated to appear.
There might be some sense in which Churchill could be described as a Native American activist, but there are important facts that have been uncovered by the local Colorado media and the blogosphere that are relevant to this claim and that the story doesn’t mention. In fact, here are a number of interesting things you might want to know about Churchill, none of which are mentioned in the Reuters story:
- Churchill has claimed to be 1/16th or 3/16ths Cherokee, but genealogical research by the Rocky Mountain News failed to turn up any Cherokee ancestors [SOURCE].
- Churchill is disclaimed by the Cherokee nation as a member. He was given an honorary membership in the Keetoowah band of Cherokees. Honorary memberships of this type used to be given out to friends of the tribe irrespective of their genealogy (Pres. Clinton was another recipient), but when people started using these honorary memberships to claim they were Cherokees and enhance their careers, the Keetoowahs cancelled the program. They now accuse Churchill of being an opportunist abusing the honorary membership he was given [SOURCE].
- Churchill claims that the U.S. army created a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan tribe in 1837, but it appears that he has committed academic fraud in this regard: "One has only to read the sources that Churchill
cites to realize the magnitude of his fraudulent claims for them. We are not dealing with a few minor errors here. We are
dealing with a story that Churchill has fabricated almost entirely from
scratch" [SOURCE]. - "Similar charges have been leveled against
Churchill by University of New Mexico law professor John Lavelle, a
Native American scholar who has documented what appear to be equally
fraudulent claims on Churchill’s part regarding the General Allotment
Act, one of the most important federal laws dealing with Indian lands.
(Lavelle also accuses Churchill of plagiarism)" [SOURCE]. - Churchill has no doctorate but only a masters degree from a university that did not grade its students but awarded them academic credit on a pass/fail basis [SOURCE].
So what’s up, Reuters? Get with the program!
Pinker Is Seeing Red?
Y’know about that controversy over the president of Harvard being asked why there are fewer women in certain scientific fields and he conjectured that cognitive differences between the genders, as men score better on certain measures of cognitive ability (e.g., mathematical reasoning) while women score better on others (e.g., verbal reasoning).
Well, it touched off a firestorm of political correctness.
Soon as I heard about it, I wondered what Steven Pinker would say.
Pinker is a linguist and a cognitive scientist who has written a book attacking the regnant idea in much of academia that humans are blank slates whose behavior is exhaustively determined by environment (nurture) rather than genetics (nature). As more and more studies have shown, humans behavior is genetic in far greater degree than many would like to acknowledge.
One chapter in Pinker’s book is on the cognitive differences between men and women.
It’s rather brave of him to take on the subject as, from what I can tell, he is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and a secular humanist, but he’s a smart guy (one can learn a lot from his books) and willing to follow the facts even when they are contrary to the politically correct viewpoint.
So when I heard about the Harvard president controversy, I wondered what his reaction would be.
Now I know.
Lenten Reader Roundup
As I ‘spected, yesterday’s post on Lent Resources put the cat among the pigeons.
I can’t respond to everyone without writing a monster post, but here are a few thoughts:
First, I appreciate the sentiment folks have of wanting to go beyond the law in terms of what is required for Lent. That’s good and meritorious. My job here, though, is to explain what the law currently requires, not what it used to say or what it ought to say.
Second, I also appreciate folks’ attachment to the 40 day idea. As I acknowledged, Lent at one time may have been forty days long. It also may have once excluded Sundays. That’s just not what the current regs say.
READER A writes:
Without getting too technical, what part of the mammal counts as
"meat" – flesh/muscle only? Would liver count (talk about penance)?
I haven’t gone to look this up, but I’m sure that the standard moralists would say that organs (liver, heart, tongue) do count as meat.
READER B writes:
Does the details regarding the Ash Weds/Good Friday fast differ
around the world? In other words do Nationial Conferences of Bishops
change anything regarding this? In particular: what is the law in
Poland?
Yes, the national conference does have a role in setting local requrements. Unfortunately, I don’t have any info on the regs in Poland.
READER C writes:
I think you are mistaken about gravies and sauces (and broths, etc.)
made with meat, at least according to traditional moral theology. These
do fall under the rules of abstinence.
It depends on what you mean by "traditional." (It’s also not moral theology but canon law.) If you mean matters as they were under the 1917 Code of Canon Law, you’d be right, as Canon 1250 prohibited the eating of "soups made from meat." However, in 1966 when this norm was revised in the apostolic constitution Paenitemini, the reference to soups was dropped. The way the law reads now, not only broths but regular soup with meat is allowed. (NOTE: I am not saying that I approve of this. As always, my explaining the law means that I’m explaining the law, not that I’m giving my opinion about what the law should be.)
As far as gravies and sauces, these are condiments and are expressly permitted by Paenitemini. They are made principally from animal fat but may have some blood or meat elements mixed in in small quantities. Thus Henry Davis, SJ, notes in his Moral & Pastoral Theology (1938):
By condiment is meant that which is taken–whether liquid or solid–in a small quantity with food to make it more palatable. Butter made from animal fats, and margarine from palm kernel are allowed. Jellies also which are made from fish or animal bones are not meat. Lard, the rendered fat of hog, and dripping, the grease that has dripped from roasted meat [i.e., the principal ingredient of gravy, together with flour], may be taken, as condiments [II:435-436].
The change allowing soups made with meat also has collateral impact on how many meat tracings can be present in gravies and other sauces.
READER C continues:
Also, it’s worthwhile to point out that while fasting, meat can only be taken at the main meal and not at the collations.
This is not a requirement of the law. It may be a practice that some follow, but it is not in the law. (Also, as the two mandatory days of fasting are also days of abstinence, it wouldn’t apply then anyway.)
I’d like to see a citation for the claim about dolphin, too. My
understanding is that the "dividing line" (so to speak) is between
warm-blooded and cold-blooded animals, so that mammals and birds are
off-limits but alligators, turtles, and frogs (etc.) are fine.
Some people do use the warm-blooded/cold-blooded distinction, but this is seen as applicable to land animals. Aquatic mammals are commonly lumped under "fish"–even if they aren’t very fish-like.
The dolphin remark was thrown in as a semi-jest since dolphin meat is unavailable in the U.S. (to most folks). But it is permitted under the understanding of older moralists, who mention other water-dwelling mammals (even ones much less fish-like!) as permitted. More from Davis:
What precisely is an animal, within the meaning of the law, cannot be completely determined. We need not take scientific definitions, but may have recourse to the common usage of the term. In case of doubt, the rule laid down by S. Thomas may well be taken, namely, that by the term are meant animals that are born on land and breathe [ST II-II:147:8]. S. Thomas meant, we believe, animals that are born, live, and mature on land. In the case of amphibians, their similarity to land animals must decide. In case of doubt the law does not bind.
Under fish are included frogs, snails, tortises, oysters, lobsters, otters, beavers, crabs [II:436].
READER D writes:
When did we stop including the Triduum, thus reducing Lent to 37?!?
Who’s brilliant idea was that? If the answer is Vatican II, I might
scream.
Don’t scream. It wasn’t Vatican II. Folks have a tendency to blame the Council for things that actually happened afterward. I don’t have the prior norms for the liturgical year, so I can’t verify that Triduum was part of Lent, but assuming it was, the change would have been made with the release for the new general norms for the calendar in 1969.
READER E writes:
I find it very hard to believe that it’s okay to eat a veggie-burger
during a Lenten Friday. Sure, it may not be technically meat, but it’s
a good enough approximation to it, and the whole point of this Lenten
abstinence is to deny ourselves the very taste of meat, not necessarily
to keep meat-substances out of our body.
As a matter of praxis, I agree with you: It violates the spirit of the day to eat faux meats (though the law permits it). On the other hand . . . you haven’t eaten many veggie-burgers, have you? (The ones I’ve had are only patty-shaped blobs of non-meat-approximating stuff.)
READER F writes:
Ya see, I am planning a very self-denying lent. I am going on a
juice/liquid fast. So I was kinda glad to hear about the boullion/broth
just in case the carrot and spinach juice doesn’t sit right with me.
Boullion/broth is indeed okay (as noted above), but be careful if you’re going to do a liquid fast for more than a day or so. Talk to your spiritual director and doctor about what is needed to do such things safely if you intend to do it for any appreciable time!
Happy Moveable Blogiversary!
This is my first moveable blogiversary!
A blogaversary, of course, is the anniversary of the day a blog went online.
I wrote my first blog entry on February 25, 2004. (HERE.)
So why is this my moveable blogiversary when it ain’t February 25th yet?
Because last year February 25th was Ash Wednesday, a movable feast on the Church’s liturgical calendar.
Today is Ash Wednesday 2005, so by the liturgical (as opposed to civil) calendar, today is my blogiversary.
Rejoice with me!
That’s one liturgical year down. . . . Hopefully many more to come!
VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!
. . . in the Cyber Catholics 2005 blog awards, that is!
JimmyAkin.Org has been nominated in the best apologetics blog category.
Your support is much appreciated. 🙂
Comic Book Recommend!
This weekend I went to my local comics shop and picked up the books that had accumulated for me in December and January. As a result, last night I read the December and January issues of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
The Legion is, for sentimental reasons, my all-time favorite comic. I started reading it as a boy and fell in love with it.
It’s about a group of young superheroes in the 30th (now 31st) century. It’s also the longest-running super -hero team in existence (having first graced the pages of DC comics in 1957).
It hasn’t always been well-written or well-drawn (and so I haven’t always read it uninterrupted), but hey, it’s a boyhood favorite, and everybody’s entitled to at least one of those.
I’m mentioning it here because I’d like to recommend that comic books fans go out and pick up the two most recent issues.
The reason is that the Legion has just been "rebooted," though they aren’t using the term "reboot" in the industry literature (they’re saying it’s been "re-envisioned").
For those who may not be aware, comic books periodically write themselves into creative corners and the creators decide that the best thing to do is to start over and tell the story afresh, honoring the spirit of what went before while jettisoning all the continuity that has boxed the writers in to a corner creatively. This "do over" is known in the industry as a "reboot."
The biggest reboots in history were the transition from the Golden Age of comics to the Silver Age, which occurred in the 1950s, and the 1988 event Crisis on Infinite Earths, in which the entire DC Universe was rebooted, with the most dramatic changes happening for Superman and Wonder Woman (Batman saw his way through the Crisis relatively unscathed).
Unfortunately, Crisis didn’t do all the work that needed to be done in some corners of the DC Universe, and some titles, like the Legion of Super-Heroes have been rebooted several times since.
The last time the Legion was rebooted, DC went to comic writer wunderkind Mark Waid to do it, and he did a great job. The new Legion was more fun to read than the title had been in some time. Unfortunately, Waid left the book and eventually the writing level declined as subsequent writers boxed themselves in creatively. By the end of that run, I’d basically stopped reading the comics (though I still bought them).
In December, DC brought Waid back to reboot (er . . . "re-envision") the title once again.
After reading the first two issues of the reboot, I’m sold.
Waid has done it once again.
The book is bristling with creativity. There are lots of nods to established Legion tradition, but it’s accessible enough that a new reader can jump in and enjoy it (this being one of the principal goals of a reboot).
The art (by Barry Kitson) is really nice, with a good eye for detail and design that rises well above the pedestrian pencilling that the Legion has suffered from in recent times.
Most important for me, though, are the story and the characters.
As far as the story goes, the Legion is still a super-hero team of about twenty (!) members from different planets and that dwells in the 31st century. What’s different is that it’s now at the center of a youth-movement with more than 75,000 affiliate members. Any kid on any planet who endorses the Legion philosophy can consider himself a legionnaire, even though the core team is still just the twenty-or-so we spend most of our time reading about.
The Legion philosophy is radical for its time. For the last thousand years, humanity has lived in a near-utopian environment with scarcely a breeze to ruffle a bird’s feathers. But it’s a world with a dark side whereby parents have their kids hooked into an invisible Internet that monitors everything they see and hear . . . for their safety, of course.
The opening narration to the Legion explains:
Ours is an age of peace and tranquility. By the dawn of the 31st century, an Earth-based network of worlds has created a rigidly mannered serenity throughout the cosmos–a near-utopia. All we, our parents, and their parents have ever known is security, stability, and order.
We’re so sick of it, we could scream.
The Legion is determined not only to fight bad guys, but to bring back to society a sense of fun, adventure, and excitement.
The first two issues are a good start!
While the story is good (an inter-stellar war is about to start), the characters are also good.
These are important for a long-time fan who has known and loved these character (literally, in my case) for decades.
One of the things that happens each time a title reboots is that the creators adjust the characters in ways they hope will create interesting story potential. Sometimes they are successful; sometimes they are not.
For example, last time the Legion rebooted, one of the most easy-to-look-at legionnaires, the gorgeous Princess Projecta, became a giant snake! (Bad move! My philosophy is: If you want to introduce a legionnaire who is a giant snake, fine, just don’t mess with an established character who is easy to look at.)
In the Legion’s latest incarnation, that hasn’t happened (yet), but other changes, good and not-as-good, have occurred.
I don’t mind the character changes if they serve a conceptual purpose. For example, I was tickled pink by what they did with Colossal Boy.
Originally, Colossal Boy was an Earthling who had invented a serum that allowed him to grow to . . . well . . . colossal proporitions. In the new version, he’s a man from a race of giants who has the ability to shrink himself down to being six feet tall and who wants to be called "Micro Lad" (he doesn’t get his wish).
Ha!
That’s great!
Another creative change centers on Dream Girl, who is from a planet where people have visions of the future, often in their dreams. Dream Girl has always been a hard character for writers to handle, but Waid has broadened the character’s conceptual background immeasurably in the new reboot. In the past she’s been kind of ditzy, but now she spends enough time in the future that she forgets things like . . . we haven’t yet defeated the bad guy in front of us.
Especially nice is the way the second issue plays Dream Girl off the ultra-rational Brainiac 5 (a super-genius from the planet Colu). Brainiac 5 resents here because he spends untold amounts of mental effort deducing the likely outcome of events from gigaquads of seemingly-unrelated data, only to have a precognitive like Dream Girl waltz in and come up with the same conclusion by sheer intuition.
At the end of the second issue, we get this exchange between the two of them regarding Dream Girl’s seemingly infallible predictions:
BRAINIAC 5: All it would take is for one future casualty–just one–to find the will to break the lockstep of destiny. If that happens, all probabilities shift.
The universe is more unpredictable than we give it credit for.
Your predictions don’t have to be infallible.
DREAM GIRL: . . . (pauses) . . . (smiles) . . . You’ll feel different when we’re married.
Hah!
Yes!
(Previous Legion continuity has already established that Brainiac 5 has a thing for blonds, and Dream Girl is a blond).
Not all of the character changes are ones I would have made. For example, Star Boy (who has the power to increase an object’s mass) has inexplicably been changed into a black guy for no apparent purpose relating to the story. There are already people in Legion history who could (and should) be introduced to establish adequate black representation on the team: the second Invisible Kid and both of the Kid Quantums, for example. New characters also can be introduced. Unless they have a special story to tell relating to the new Star Boy’s ethnicity, I don’t see the point of the switch.
That being said, I do like the new Star Boy’s character. He looks really cool, and he gets some of the best comedic lines.
In any event, I’d like to recommend the new Legion title for any comic book fans in the audience.
(Saturn Girl had just better not turn into a giant star-nosed mole!)
An Eldritch-Nosed Horror
The monster proceeded, ever so carefully, to crawl out of its carefully-constructed and benighted burrow.
Its many-clawed hands, one claw to a finger, stretched forward and pullled the black dirt back toward its fur-covered body.
As this happened, its many-tendriled snout probed further into the darkness that was soon to become light.
As it did so, it encountered a bit of its standard food-prey and sucked it up in an instant–quicker than the humsn eye could follow!
Fully twenty-two tentacles reached forward from its nose, forming a hideous moustache that could only be possessed by a blind, elder-horror envisioned first by the kind of mind possessed by a demented, soul-shattered, day-gaunt such as the Master of weird horror, H. P. Lovecraft himself!
Even the name of the horrible abnormality itself conveyed the nature of its blasphemous, crawling chaos:
It was the Star-Nosed Mole!
Tremble, worlds of sanity! Tremble! For here is its deadly, maddening visage!
THIS IS NOT A DREAM!!!
THIS IS NOT A HOAX!!!
THIS IS THE TRUE FACE OF ELDER-COSMIC MADNESS STARING YOU IN THE FACE!!!
Yes-less languages
Down yonder, a reader writes:
My daughter has been learning some Mandarin, and she advised me that
the expression for "yes" in Mandarin is "shi" (it is so) or "hao"
(okay). I checked it out at the following webpage:http://www.elite.net/~runner/jennifers/yes.htm
That page also cites expressions for "yes" in Latin and Irish.
Thanks for the input, but what your daughter told you isn’t strictly correct.
In Mandarin, "shi" is the verb "to be," and it is used to signal agreement, but it isn’t a direct equivalent for "yes."
"Yes" is a particle that is used to signal agreement irrespective of the content of the question it answers. Questions like "Are you an American?" or "Can you speak English?" both get answered in English by "yes."
In languages that don’t have "yes," like Mandarin, agreement is signalled in a different way that generally depends on the content of the question. Typically, yes-less languages will grab the main verb of the question and use it to signal affirmation.
Thus if someone asks you in Mandarin "Ni hui shuo Yingwen ma?" ("Can you speak English?") , you’d grab the main verb "hui" (sounds like "whey", means "can") and use it where you’d use "yes" in English.
Similarly, if someone asks you "Ni shi Meiguo ren ma?" ("Are you an American?"), you’d grab the main verb "shi" (sounds like "sure", means "is/are/be") and use it in place of "yes."
(NOTE: These transliterations are very rough as the English alphabet is not designed to convey the sounds used in Mandarin; for example, "shi" actually sounds more like the English word "sure" clipped short, or just "shr!")
Other yes-less languages tend to do the same thing. That’s why, in translations of the liturgy, questions like "Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?" get answered with "I do" (grabbing the main verb) rather than "yes."
The same is true of Irish.
A while back I was reading a 20th century British apologist (Chesterton?) who noted that Irishmen who speak English tend to do this even in English as it’s the way their culture’s native language handles questions. Ask an Irishman "Are you a Catholic?" and you’re more likely to get the answer "I am" than you would if you asked an English or American Catholic the same question (they’d be more inclined to use "yes"). Upon reading this, I recognized that my friend from Dublin would do this all the time, but I hadn’t noticed it before.
As to the yes-in-550-languages page, pages like that are neat, but you have be careful. The people who put those pages together don’t really speak 550 languages, nor (so far as I can tell) are they linguists who could responsibly handle data from a language they don’t personally speak. As a result, there are errors and oversimplifications on those pages.
Lent Resources
Okay, Lent is about to begin again, and that generates questions (and quarrels) every year. We may as well get the annual Lenten controversy underway with a bang.
Here’s a basic fact sheet (with some surprising facts that I’ll probably have to follow up on–trust me, after answering Lent questions every year for the last twelve years, I’ve researched these points quite thoroughly):
- Lent begins at midnight Ash Wednesday and ends at the beginning of the
Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, at which point Triduum
begins. - We are obliged to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
- The law of fast binds everybody from ages 18-59 unless they have a
medical condition that would interfere significantly with fasting. - The law of fast allows the eating of one full meal plus two smaller
meals, provided the two smaller- meals are not as large as a regular
meal if combined. This law, of course, is hopelessly confusing as many
people tend not to eat similarly-sized meals. - We are obliged to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, the Fridays of
Lent, and Good Friday. - The law of abstinence binds everyone who is fourteen years old and up
unless they have a medical condition that would interfere significantly
with abstinence from meat. - The law of abstinence forbids the eating dishes principally or
substantially comprised of the flesh of land-dwelling mammals and birds (trace
amounts of meat and other parts of the body besides meat do not count).
According to the common and contant opinion of learned persons, as found
in the older moral and pastoral theologies, the law of abstinence does
not affect reptiles, amphibians, insects, or anything that is a water-dwelling animal (even if it is a
mammal, so dolphin is okay). It also does not affect gravies or other
sauces (even if these are made with meat), and it does not affect
anything made from parts of land-dwelling animals other their meat (so
milk, cheese, eggs, things made with animal fat, and Jell-O, which comes
from hooves, are okay). - Despite hymns to the contrary, Lent is not forty days long. It may
have been at one time, but the way the Church’s liturgical documents are
written today, Lent is just under 44 days long. (It would be forty-four
if it didn’t end on the evening of Holy Thursday.) The number 40 is thus
only an approximation. - The way the Church’s documents are written, Sundays are part of
Lent, but since penances other than fast and absinence on the required
days are voluntary, you can cut yourself a break on Sunday from whatever
other penance you may have decided to do. - To fulfill our Easter duty,we are obliged to receive Communion at some
point between Ash Wednesday and Trinity Sunday, which is the Sunday
after Pentecost (unless for a just cause this requirement is fulfilled
at another time of year).
More info on Lent here:
And here:
http://jimmyakin.org.master.com/texis/master/search/?q=lent&s=SS