SEPARATED AT BIRTH?
Month: October 2005
The Planet That Couldn’t Come In Out Of The Sun
If a study currently being reported on holds up, a major crack in the global warming rhetoric has just developed.
Standard global warming rhetoric holds (a) that the earth is getting warmer on average and (b) that this is due to a buildup of "greenhouse gasses" in the atmosphere.
There are problems with both of these assertions, and a new study reluctantly points out a problem with the second.
The authors of the study are still advocates of global warming theory, but they concede that it appears that a significant chunk of global warming appears to be due not to greenhouse gasses but to something that most definitely warms the earth: the sun!
According to the study 10 to 30% of the warming "documented" in the last twenty or so years is due to changes in the sun’s activity.
That’s a striking first admission.
Future admissions might include that more than just 10 to 30% is due to solar activity–or even that the earth hasn’t warmed as much as we think. (There is reason to think that the data we have may not be reliable.)
LiveScience carries a brief story on all this, and as usual LiveScience is firmly in the standard global warming camp (as reflected in the article), but it’s still worth your while to
Mary’s Assumption
Nod to the Curt Jester for this cartoon.
The cartoon reminded me of a letter to the editor in a long-ago issue of This Rock in which a reader proposed that the Assumption of Mary should be understood to mean that "we assume Mary is in heaven."
Catholic-Orthodox Sacramental Issues
A reader writes:
I have been asked to sponser a young man for his confirmation. I am catholic, and he is attending a catholic school. However he was baptised in a Greek Orthodox church many years ago. The priest at our parish is saying that that was not valid and he can’t be confirmed and shouldn’t be receiving Holy Communion. I thought as long as someone was Baptised in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit with water, that the Catholic church recognized it.
Does the Greek Orthodox church Baptise in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
It does, and Greek Orthodox baptisms are valid. I suspect that what is happening here is a miscommunication.
The priest is probably not saying that the boy’s baptism isn’t valid. He’s likely saying that he is not allowed to confirm the boy or even that it would be invalid if the priest attempted to confirm him.
Here’s the deal: Catholic priests are only allowed to give three sacraments to those baptized into an Orthodox Church: penance, the Eucharist, and holy anointing. They are not allowed to confirm them. Here’s the relevant passage of canon law:
Canon 844 §3. Catholic ministers administer the sacraments of
penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick licitly to members of Eastern
Churches which do not have full communion with the Catholic Church if they seek
such on their own accord and are properly disposed. This is also valid for
members of other Churches which in the judgment of the Apostolic See are in the
same condition in regard to the sacraments as these Eastern Churches.
In light of this, it makes all the sense in the world for the priest to say that he can’t confirm the boy (unless the boy is converting to the Catholic faith and the priest is empowered to receive him into the Church).
It is less clear why the priest would say that he should not be receiving Communion if he is seeking it on his own and is properly disposed. The priest may be thinking of the sacramental discipline of the church to which the boy belongs, though for its part the Catholic Church would not object to him receiving Communion under the noted conditions.
“PRIVACY, Senator!”
HERE’S AN INTERESTING PIECE IN THE L.A. TIMES.
I’m not sure what’s more interesting about it–its content or the fact that it appeared in the L.A. Times at all.
The author takes to task California Senator Dianne Feinstein and others like her who display what he dubs "machisma."
Of course, you’re familiar with machismo–insensitive masculinity that frequently leads to blunt, silent behavior.
The author of the piece seems to conceptualize machisma as an insensitive femininity that frequently leads to blunt, talkative behavior. In particular, it leads to demands that others talk about their feelings.
EXCERPTS:
Feinstein asked Roberts how he would handle right-to-die cases. She told him to answer "as a son, a husband and a father." She wanted a personal, emotional response, not the cool logic of a jurist. Contrary to instructions, he answered dispassionately and not as a son, husband or father. She was displeased.
Her question was offensive on a human level, for reasons having nothing to do with the judicial context. She demonstrated a disturbing and widespread phenomenon: A powerful person insists that someone’s private feelings must be spread out for public viewing, like rugs in a Mideast bazaar. Roberts’ feelings as a father, son and husband are none of the country’s business.
"Macha" characters delight in emotional disembowelment; in ordering their victims to let it all hang out. But lots of people have no desire for heart-to-hearts with strangers in public, much less on national TV. Macha is just as toxic as macho, or more so, because it’s harder to laugh off. "How do you feel?" has become a standard media question, a substitute for eliciting actual information. Oprah and her imitators use it; news reporters covering hurricanes use it. Macha helps demolish the emotional walls that protect people, just as hurricanes demolish their physical walls.
In the long-ago age before macha, you called a person Miss Hepburn, say, until explicitly invited to use her first name — which helped English recapture the ancient distinction between "thou" (once the friendly, easygoing form of address among friends) and "you" (for addressing strangers or superiors). Lacking this distinction, English is all sweatsuits and no tuxedos.
When two people were not on a first-name basis, that fact indicated what kind of behavior was suitable and what wasn’t. No child presumed to call an adult by his or her first name; no doctor did so with a patient. Friendships moved forward in small, graceful steps instead of lunges. Keeping a respectful distance and recognizing authority made the world not cold and forbidding but comfortable, reassuring.
In school, my boys have often been harassed by macha teachers demanding that they tell the class their feelings. One teacher had the nerve to tell one of my sons that his book report must "critique without judging" — and she marked him down for trying to analyze what was good and bad in the story instead of saying which passages got him all choked up. (How many teenage boys do you know who like getting all choked up — or talking about it?)
Granted, the demand strikes different people in different ways. Some students welcome it. My boys don’t. Lots of people don’t. For a person in authority to insist that lower-downs reveal their emotions is an abuse of power, a form of emotional groping that can leave the targets feeling violated and mad as hell.
That’s the truth!
The author is on to a real social phenomenon here. I don’t agree with everything he says (notably, I don’t agree AT ALL with his assertion that Sen. Feinstein is "a sensible person who usually says sensible things"–but then this is the L.A. Times).
It is ironic that Sen. Feinstein’s probings of Judge Roberts’ emotional life constitutes a violation of what most of us would regard as private matters that we have a (moral) right to keep private.
Isn’t Sen. Feintein supposed to be kinda big on a right to privacy?
Guess Who Came To Dinner?
Although I have seen howls of indignation from certain right-fringe corners of the Catholic cyberspace, personally I was tickled to see that Pope Benedict XVI met at Castel Gandolfo last week with his onetime colleague and friend, Fr. Hans Küng:
"[W]hy did Benedict, 78, open his doors to Küng? The first answer may be as simple as the desire to catch up with an old friend and colleague: the two men had taught together at the University of Tübingen, and both had served as theological advisers during the Second Vatican Council. Küng , 77, was quoted in the Italian daily Corriere della Sera on Tuesday as saying the Saturday dinner meeting at the papal summer residence in Castel Gondolfo was ‘a reciprocal joy to see each other after so many years.’ A Vatican statement said that the pair’s standing doctrinal disputes were not broached. Among the topics reportedly covered were the relationship between faith and science, and interfaith dialogue.
"But if this was simply a personal catching-up or theological rap session, Ratzinger might have invited Küng for dinner during his two decades as a Rome-based cardinal. Instead, it appears that the new pope wants to establish an ongoing open dialogue with those who may have different views. The Küng dinner is, in fact, Benedict’s third potentially controversial encounter in the past month. In late August, the pope met with the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci, who has penned fiercely anti-Muslim books since 9/11, and then two days later he welcomed Bishop Bernard Fellay, the excommunicated head of an ultraconservative movement founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
"It’s hard to know the specific motivation behind Benedict’s desire to meet with each of these surprise visitors. But it is by now clear that the new Pope is conscious that his job description has radically changed. As Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for 20 years, Cardinal Ratzinger had been responsible for keeping certain arguments on theological lock-down. But when you become father to a flock of 1 billion, your dining-room door must be kept as open as possible."
I think in these stories of Pope Benedict’s meetings with various individuals, representative of different movements of concern to the Church, we can see one difference in pastoral approach between John Paul II and Benedict. John Paul was a master at connecting to crowds of people and, by doing so, showing them how they were united; Benedict is proving himself to be a connector with individuals, and perhaps, by his approach, will show individuals — and possibly their representative movements — how they can connect themselves to the wider human family and ultimately to Christ.
Duck Soup
I really like the Marx Brothers brand of zany humor.
Recently I re-watched their movie Duck Soup and it reminded me of just how funny the brothers can be.
Duck Soup is my favorite of all the Marx Brothers films–at least of all the ones I’ve seen thus far (there are still some I have yet to watch). It’s also widely considered the best of their films by film critics.
One note for readers who aren’t native English-speakers: The title of the movie is not to be taken literally. Americans almost never eat duck soup. Instead, the phrase "duck soup" is a metaphor that refers to something that is very easy. If you say, "That’s just duck soup," you mean "That’s very easy" (not that many folks use this phrase much any more; presumably it dates to an era when more Americans went duck hunting).
The film was made in 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. It shows the Marx Brothers at the peak of their form. (In fact, this was the last Marx Brothers film to feature Zeppo–the Marx Brother who served as "romantic interest" in their early films. After this, Zeppo stayed behind the scenes and let Groucho, Chico, and Harpo completely take over the spotlight.)
Among other classic bits, Duck Soup contains the famous "mirror gag."
In this scene, Groucho is confronted with Harpo (and later Chico) dressed exactly as he is.
They mimmic his behavior to an impossibly exact degree, creating the illusion that he is looking into a mirror when he is really looking at someone mimmicing him.
This was not the first or the last time the mirror gag would be used. It was previously used in a couple of silent films and was later used by Lucille Ball (with Harpo Marx) and on The X-Files.
In addition to physical comedy involving Harpo, there’s also a lot of wordplay involving Groucho and Chico. Recently here on the blog we were talking about the nature of comedy and the subject of wordplay came up as a form of (frequently) unhurtful humor that doesn’t presuppose that anyone is unfortunate. It can just be a game where we see how cleverly words can be bounced off each other.
The Marx Brothers were great at that. (Though some of their wordplay does contain barbs–particularly toward their regular leading lady Margaret Dumont–as well as occasional politically incorrect remarks since these films were made in the 1930s.)
I don’t remember when but I apparently saw this films as a boy.
How do I know that if I don’t remember it?
Because the film messed me up with respect to American history. We Americanistas all know of "the midnight ride of Paul Revere"–a famous event in our history in which the silversmith Paul Revere made a . . . uh . . . midnight ride and warned the countryside that British troops were coming in from Boston.
This occurred in 1775, the year before we threw off the shackles of Our British Oppressors (now Our British Best Buddies).
According to the story, Paul Revere was supposed to watch the tower of the Old North Church, where he would see one lantern if the British troops were coming by land and two lanterns if they were coming by sea. In HISTORY, he saw two lanters and rode off telling people that the British Redcoats were coming by sea, but in Duck Soup‘s re-enactment of the scene there’s a joke where Groucho sees three lanterns, and he declares that "They’re coming by land and sea!"
I saw that as a boy and that one image sank into my brain. The image of those three lanterns being lit stuck with me, and I thought I’d seen it in one of those stiff, formal "you are there" history reenactment films they’d show us in school.
I was in my twenties or thirties before I realized that this was A JOKE and not what really happened.
The film makes fun of all kinds of history–including the contemporary European history of when it was made. It features the fortunes of an imaginary European country named Fredonia, which is locked in conflict with the neighboring country, Sylvania. It deals with the problems of taxes and economics and national pride and self-defense that plagued the nations of Europe between the two World Wars.
Evil dictator Benito Mussolini thought it so closely reflected the events of the day in Italy that he BANNED the film, much to the delight of the Marx Brothers.
The movie is a regular history-slaw, which must have used just about every historical costume that Paramount Pictures had in their wardrobe department.
Despite the fact that Duck Soup is commonly regarded as the greatest of the Marx Brothers films (by me and others), it was for many years unavailable on DVD.
It was apparently released on DVD early on, but went out of print and was only available at insanely expensive prices (like $300 a disk!).
But it has recently been re-released and is now available again at HUMAN prices!
GET IT AS PART OF A 5-DISK MARX BROTHERS SET FROM PARAMOUNT.