October 2005 – Page 9

Friends, Americans, Bloggers…

Maybe it’s my current interest in all things Shakespearean — having just read The Winter’s Tale and now about to take on The Merchant of Venice — but this piece of political satire linking the Miers nomination to Julius Caesar had me screaming with laughter:

"Friends, Americans, bloggers, lend me your ears
I come to bury Miers, not to confirm her.
The evil that Justices do lives after them;
The good is oft preserved by rejecting their nominations;
So let it be with Miers.

"The noble Bush hath told you Harriet is conservative;
If it be so, ’tis a glorious qualification,
And gloriously may Miers answer it in her hearings.
Here, under leave of Bush and the rest,–
For Bush is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men,–
Come I to speak before Miers’ hearings."

GET THE POST.

The Call Of Cthulhu!

A BIG, Texas-sized CHT to the reader who e-mailed me a link to the just-released DVD of The Call of Cthulhu!

For those who may not know, The Call of Cthulhu is one of the keystone stories of early 20th-century weird fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft.

The story dates from 1926, and now the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society has adapted the story to film–done in the style of a 1926 silent film!

This was an outstanding choice.

Though there have been a number of Lovecraft film adaptations, they are generally regarded as unworthy by Lovecraft fans. Too much of Lovecraft’s ability to create mood depends on his narration, and when you have characters speaking to each other in naturalistic dialogue, the same effect just can’t be created. Also, many filmmakers who have adapted his stories have been notoriously unfaithful in doing so, changing elements left and right so that the film bears little resemblance to what Lovecraft wrote.

This film, being done by a historical society, is extremely faithful to the story and, by chucking out naturalistic dialogue in the manner of a silent film, it is able to capture the eerie mood of a Lovecraft story through the power of image and music.

This film is a REALLY good adaptation. Lovecraft (who did go to the movies and even had a job as a ticket salesman at a movie theater for a while) would have LOVED this flim if it had been made in 1926 so that he could have seen it. He would have raved about it in his letters to friends.

Continue reading “The Call Of Cthulhu!”

I Seem To Be Having Tremendous Difficulty With My (Creative) Lifestyle

I know some of you loyal JA.O readers have been wondering where you can find my artwork online, and whether it is available for purchase. Some nice person even made a bid for my last piece in the comments box, which was real flattering.

That particular piece is bound for our state Eucharistic Congress at the end of October, but will be available afterward.

I have been hinting at a web page of my own for some months, but as yet it has not come together (Soon, honest!).

I have been in a kind of transition period, professionally, and things have not always developed in a linear way.
Let me ‘splain-

No, there is too much… let me sum up…

After closing my art gallery in May of ’05 (another story), I endeavoured to set up a working art studio in my home, with the idea of painting on a regular basis. I had other freelance work as well, but the painting would now be my main focus. My immediate goal was to produce a well-rounded portfolio (at least twenty pieces) so that I could begin to approach some serious regional and national galleries, as well as having some to enter in competitions.

But running my gallery had taken me away from other duties for almost a year, and I found I needed a few weeks just to catch up on chores that I had left undone.

My beautiful family was also home on their summer break, and I found it hard to work with alot of people and activity going on in the house.

So I didn’t really paint that much all summer.

Then fall came, the family was back in school and I could get things really rolling… except my studio wasn’t right. It took me another week to figure out a workable layout and to control the lighting, etc… . Proper lighting is crucial.

Finally, everything was set. All my ducks were in a row. I was in my studio, by myself, all day, with nothing to do but paint.

That’s when I ran into a serious case of "painter’s block". Ugghh.

Discipline was called for, but with prayer and a few weeks of self-examination, I was really, really ready to paint.
And so that’s (finally) what I have been doing.

So with apologies to those who have been so encouraging about my art, I ask for just a little more patience. I should be online within a month or so.

In the meantime, the act of painting has got me thinking about possible parallels to writing, especially in the area of the Gospels and what we might reasonably expect of the gospel writers.

But that is another post.

Mythic Art

"Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are the artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world." –Joseph Campbell

The day after I saw a fabulous performance of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale — although, to be honest, just about any performance would have been "fabulous" to me since I had never seen Shakespeare performed onstage before — was the feast day of St. Wenceslaus, King of Bohemia. If you know the play, then you know that the King of Bohemia is an important character in that play. If you know Shakespeare, then you know that nothing in Shakespeare is coincidental, so I wondered if the play had any connection to the old English Christmas carol Good King Wenceslaus.

Thanks to Google, I found this extremely interesting article on the influence of the English holiday cycle on Shakespeare’s plays. But I’ve also learned that if you surf the host site when Google points you to extremely interesting articles, you can oftentimes find extremely interesting sites. This is not always true. I still remember my consternation when I found that the only online host I could find for the introduction to Dr. Ludwig Ott’s classic Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma was a rabidly radical traditionalist site that seriously proposed that John Paul the Great was a murderer. (The site is so repugnant that you’ll have to Google for it yourself if you’re really that interested in reading its ramblings. If you want to find the Introduction to Ott’s book, just Google "Introduction Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma Ludwig Ott" for that link alone.)

In any case, the host for the Shakespeare article was much more interesting. It is called The Endicott Studio and is a kind of online gallery for mythic art. The art it hosts is from various disciplines: fiction, poetry, articles, and artwork. It’s a secular site and the secularism shows, but it is interesting. It’s worth a visit.

THE ENDICOTT STUDIO

Cyborgs ‘R Us?

A reader writes:

Hi, Jimmy,

How much of a person could you replace with prosthetics before they cease to be human?

Okay, first a caution. I hope that you are asking this question for purely theoretical reasons and are not planning on acting on the answer. Doing so is likely to result in unpleasant consequences like imprisonment and damnation.

Arms and legs? Digestive tract? Lungs? Heart? A percentage of the brain?

Yeah, all of those can go and still leave a person human. The key one is the brain, which is the indispensible one. Clearly people can lose parts of their brains and remain human, but if you totally get rid of the brain then you ain’t got a human anymore. A brain in a vat would qualify as a human (albeit a severely disfigured human), but an adult body with its brain cut out would not. How much of the brain one could lose and still have a human well . . . there’s not a single identifiable chunk that you could take out–probably you could take out a lot of different chunks–but if you took out so many that as a whole the disembodied brain experiences systemic failure and irretrivably dies then you’ve taken away so much that what remains ain’t a human. It’s a brain corpse.

(NOTE: See previous remarks on "brain death" for the complexity of this question.)

Supposing that you could replace a living body with 100% artificial organs (leaving aside problems of consciousness) – would it continue to be a person but cease to be human?

I’m not sure what you mean here: Do you mean replacing the entire body with synthetic organs INCLUDING the brain or EXCLUDING the brain?

If the former then the resulting brain-in-a-synthetic-body is still a person and a human (although a severely prosthetized human).

If you mean the latter then the question becomes: What do you mean by "synthetic organs"?

If you mean ordinary human organs with a human genetic code that you’ve grown synthetically (e.g., from a stem cell shoggoth) then you could grow an entire person synthetically, which would be either a clone or a designer clone. Such individuals would be both persons and humans.

You might mean something else by "synthetic organs," though. For example, you might mean mechanical organs (like a mechanical heart) or organs that are made of inorganic material or even organic material as long as they don’t have a human genetic code.

If that’s what you mean by synthetic organs then if you totally replace the body, including the critical parts of the brain needed to keep it a live and functioning whole, then what you have is not a human any more. It’s an android or a synthezoid, but not a human being.

Would it be a person, though?

Maybe.

You don’t have to be a human being to be a person, as illustrated by angels and the three Persons of the Trinity. If the resulting entity had a rational intellect then it would be a person.

The problem would be telling a genuine rational intellect from a false one, though. Computers may some day be sufficiently advanced that they can pass the Turing Test and intellectually pass for human beings. Should that ever happen, though, I’m with Justice Katherine Pulaski that they still ain’t persons and have no rights. They’re not really thinking–exercising an intellect–they’re just following very complex programming.

Sorry, no "Android Rights" for Mr. Data!

It could be, though this is a practical impossibility, that someone could design a non-human life form (possibly even based on inorganic molecules) that would have a rational intellect. Such a being would be a person.

Would thus replacing your body be considered suicide?

If you replace the whole thing, including the brain, yep. That’s killing you. It doesn’t matter if you transfer your memories to a new medium. The death of the old medium is the death of YOU, and that’s suicide.

If you’re just talking about replacing everything except the brain, then no. That’s not killing you and so is not suicide. It is, however, immoral to do that without a very good reason (and some might argue that it would be immoral even though, though it wouldn’t be suicide).

How would such a person relate to the church? The sacraments? They’d lack a human nature …

How non-human physical persons would relate to the Church is a theologically open question. I suspect that if they asked for the sacraments on their own then they would be given them, at least conditionally.

How your brain in a synthetic body would relate to the Church is a more clear matter. You would be able to receive the sacraments, but since some sacraments depend on physical contact (e.g., baptism, confirmation), you’d have to let your brain be touched as part of the process. I highly recommend using sterilized water and oil in a sterilized environment for that due to the risk of viral or bacteriological infection.

Would their salvation depend on their status before becoming a machine? Would nothing they do after transformation effect their chances of getting to heaven?

If what you’ve got continues to be you (the brain in a synthetic body model) then you can continue to act as a moral agent and affect your salvation.

On the other hand, if it continues to be you but there’s an accident of some kind so that you can’t function properly mentally (e.g., your brain accidentally gets cooked in the process of transferring it to the new body) then your situation is like that of anybody who goes into a coma during a medical procedure. If you went into it with unrepented mortal sin on your soul, you’re doomed. If you went in with attrition for your sins and receive the anointing of the sick then you’re saved. If you went into it with contrition for your sins or no mortal sins then you’re all set.

If what you’ve got is a synthetic but nonetheless real person then he is capable of acting as a moral agent and affecting his salvation.

Similar considerations apply for a synthetic person who is mentally impaired (as when you went into the coma in the previous example).

If what you’ve got is an imitation person that does not have a real intellect (e.g., a Mr. Data) then he is a non-person and thus has no salvation to gain or lose, regardless of how good an impression of a human being he’s able to pull off.

This applies even if the android (or whatever) thinks that it’s you because your memories have been loaded into it.

Prophetic Shopping Advice?

A reader writes:

In light of the recent events (Katrina, Rita, etc.) some folks are attaching prophetic significance to daily events pointing toward a culmination, and encouraging people to store up 6 months worth of food, among other things. Some of this was given out (verbally) at our prayer meeting.

I told the people to use a lot of caution and discernment for such a message. I privately corresponded with the person who gave the message and told her I had some major problems with it, including making definitive statements about God chastising New Orleans and the US.

My wife is from a country affected by the tsunami and they lost 15 to 20 K children in the tsunami. Who was God chastising for that? I just don’t think we can make specific judgments about these things. This person is also making connections between withdrawal from Gaza and hurricanes/natural disasters (I believe some of that may be coming from 700 Club and others).

I told the person that if they really believed these warnings and instructions were from the Lord the they should be shared with a priest/bishop in union with the Magisterium of Rome. If that priest/bishop concluded that this was "from the Lord", then perhaps ( and only perhaps) some credibility could be lent to them.

Do you have any thoughts on this? We went back and forth with this person by email about five or six times and still she keeps defending the storing of food, etc. My wife was wondering how in the world most of the poor nations would be able to store up anything, particularly when they generally don’t know where there next meall is coming from.

Since I’m not familiar with the messages, I don’t know if they were meant for folks in other countries or just for the U.S. (i.e., is this supposed to be a worldwide disaster that necessitates the food storing or just one that hits the U.S.) I’d also think that the advice would be "Store it if you can," but in parts of the world where folks can’t, that’s obviously not an option.

That being said, it sounds to me as if you have a pretty good take on the situation. Skepticism here is warranted, and any kind of warning this dire ought to be run past the bishop before people are told to do something as dramatic as storing up six months worth of food for their families.

Not that it’s a bad idea to have that much food in reserve. You never know what may happen in this day and age, and it’s not at all unreasonable to have some food an water available as emergency supplies. Virtually everybody could be hit with a disaster of some kind–natural or artificial–in which they might need supplies until disaster relief can get established.

As regular blog readers know, my grandmother is living in such a situation RIGHT NOW due to Hurricane Rita, and I could join her at any time since the San Andreas Fault can have "The Big One" at a moment’s notice.

No matter where you live, something like that is a possibility (even if it’s just fallout being blown over from from terrorists detonating a nuke in a city a couple of states away).

I therefore consider it advisable for folks to have a certain amount of emergency food and water on hand–at least a few days to a couple of weeks worth–as well as other disaster survival equipment (medicines–particularly prescription medicines you need to take–flashlights, radios, matches, maps, weapons, batteries, iPods, etc.).

Six months, though, is a LONG TIME, and it would require something REALLY AMAZINGLY HUGE to disrupt the economy so severely that anybody would need six months of food. I mean, we’re likely talking about someting on the order of a civilizational reboot at that point (it can’t take FEMA that long to get supplies into the area following a lesser disaster; you only need six months of food if you expect government aid to not be there for six months, and it’s hard to see how that could happen in the current media and political environment without a civilizational reboot in progress). The only things that springs to mind that would be that severe would be something like an asteroid strike or a nearby star going supernova or a doomsday bug or something.

So it sends a really scary message to be telling folks that they need six months of food, and anything that alarming–and EXPENSIVE for a family–ought to be run past Church authorities. That’s not just so people won’t be put to needless worry, it’s also so that if there really WERE a huge disaster coming, folks could be warned.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that the bishop will rule the right way, but one needs to turn to the authorities that Christ has given his Church.

Furthermore, skepticism regarding any message so dire is the appropriate strategy. The accuracy rate of people with dire messages like this is remarkably LOW, and that has to take that into account when evaluating new cases of folks with dire warnings–particularly if they have no track record of accurate predictions or other evidence that their messages are anything other than the product of their imaginations.

Hope that helps!

AAP: “Prevent Crib Death By Putting Babies In Cribs!”

Okay, BIG RED DISCLAIMER: I’m not a parent (yet) or a medical expert on this type of thing, or a medical expert on any type of thing, and you should not be getting infant-care advice from a stranger on the Internet. That said, I couldn’t help but note this recent release from the American Academy of Pediatrics:

"Infants should be put to sleep on their backs only, not their sides, and pacifiers can be used to help prevent sudden infant death syndrome [SIDS], U.S. pediatricians said on Monday.

"Revised guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP] issued on Monday also discourage parents from sleeping with their infants at all, saying babies are safer in their own cribs.

"SIDS, the sudden, unexplained death of an infant in the first year of life, is the third leading cause of infant mortality in the United States, causing the deaths of 2,500 infants each year.

"Campaigns to encourage parents and other caregivers to put babies to sleep on their backs instead of their tummies slashed the death rates from SIDS, also known as crib death or cot death, in countries such as Britain and the United States in the 1980s and 1990s."

GET THE STORY.

Does it strike anyone else as strange that the AAP is advising parents to avoid SIDS, also known as "crib death," by advising parents to put their babies in cribs? I might also note that SIDS is extremely rare outside of Western society. In developing societies, parents routinely sleep with their babies and are bemused that Western parents put their infants in cribs that are often in separate rooms from the parental bed. (One very interesting book that explores these differences in parenting styles between Western society and developing societies is Our Babies, Ourselves: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent by Meredith F. Small.)

Now, whether the "family bed" or some variant of it, such as a sidecar crib attachment, is the right solution for families is something that each family will have to study and decide for itself, and families should definitely consider what medical science has to say when doing so. But it just seems strange to me that the AAP thinks the solution to the tragedy of crib death is to encourage parents to use cribs.

Evil Reptillian Kitten-Eater From THIS Planet!

Canada may be home to evil reptilian kitten-eaters from another planet, but Florida is home to terrestrial kitten-eaters:

Miami Gardens, Florida – Elidia Rodriguez of Miami Gardens had been looking for her year-old Siamese cat for two days when her son pointed out the bulging Burmese python slithering in her backyard.

Experts say that bulge in the 12-foot snake is probably the missing 15-pound cat.

They python reported has not exploded since eating the cat, suggesting that cats cause less internal combustion in pythons than alligators.

GET THE STORY.
CHT to the reader who e-mailed!

Virus Vs. Bacteria

A reader writes:

hello im currently at college studying beauty therapy. could you tell me what actually is a virus and a bacterial infection is please?

Sure thing. I’m not sure what those have to do with beauty therapy, but then I know nothing about beauty therapy, so here goes:

A virus is basically a kind of molecule that reproduces itself but needs your cells in order to do that. It can’t reproduce on its own, so it invades your cells and forces them to manufacture more of its genetic material so that it can make copies of itself. Some viruses can do that without harming us, but other viruses cause nasty side effects (like death) when they force our cells to reproduce.

Viruses themselves are not cells. In fact, they’re kind of on the border between living and non-living matter, so often people will say that they’re not really alive. They’re more like complex chemicals that will reproduce themselves if they come into contact with your cells.

Medicine is NOT VERY GOOD at fighting viruses (at least, not YET). Most of the time the only thing to do for a person who has a virus is to treat their symptoms, make them as comfortable as possible, and let the virus run its course. That’s why there’s no good cure for the common cold–it’s caused by a virus.

The best defense against a virus is to avoid getting it in the first place (e.g., hygiene, not having intimate contact with people you aren’t married to, etc.). Watch the TV show Monk for additional hints.

A bacterial infection is an infection caused by bacteria. (A viral infection, by contrast, is an infection caused by a virus).

Unlike viruses, bacteria ARE alive. They are tiny little cells that live and move and reproduce on their own (they do the latter by splitting themselves in two as a form of self-cloning).

Bacteria are all over the place and (here’s the good news) SOME OF THEM ARE BENEFICIAL TO US. In fact, you couldn’t digest food properly if you didn’t have beneficial bacteria living in your stomach.

Other bacteria, though, are harmful, and if we get infected with these, we can get sick. Fortunately, medicine is MUCH BETTER at fighting bacteria than it is at fighting viruses. That’s what antibiotics do. They fight bacteria, though they are completely useless against viruses.

(NOTE TO MEDICAL FOLKS: Sorry if I’ve oversimplified anything in this. I’m trying to keep it non-technical.)

Here are some links to learn more about viruses and bacteria, though the articles at the first two links are kind of technical.

LEARN MORE ABOUT VIRUSES.

LEARN MORE ABOUT BACTERIA.

BUY STUFFED DOLLS OF VIRUSES AND BACTERIA!

Do You Know What Your Kids Are Up To?

You may think that you have an open and honest relationship with your children. You may think that of course they’d know that they could always tell you anything, no matter how bad. And you may even be right. But, in this day and age, they may be out arranging for an abortion behind your back.

"In 1985, the summer after my freshman year in high school, my 16-year-old sister told me she was pregnant. Andrea, a National Merit Scholar, knew two things: She wanted an abortion and she didn’t want to tell mom and dad.

"’I’ll help you,’ I said, honored that she’d turned to me.

"Andrea wasn’t worried that my parents would throw her out or beat her. She, like many minors who become pregnant, was more concerned about preserving her relationship with her family.

"’I remember feeling like I can’t add this to the official roster of things I’ve done,’ Andrea told me recently. ‘I was too young emotionally to have sex, but physically I wasn’t. Any conversation I would have had with mom and dad would have ended with them telling me not to do it.’ She didn’t want them to know anything about what felt to her like ‘a big mistake.’"

From the point of view of a teenager, it might seem reasonable to help your sister hide an embarrassing "mistake" from your parents, but surely the adults to whom this duo turned would encourage them to tell Mom and Dad anyway, particularly since the pregnant girl knew her parents would not hurt her and even more particularly since there was a parental notification law in place requiring that both parents consent to this young woman’s abortion.

If you were naive enough to think that, you thought wrong.

"Andrea had $60 saved from her job at Burger King. I helped her raise the additional $200 she needed by borrowing it from an acquaintance at school. Although North Dakota had had an abortion clinic since 1980, there was also a law, in place since 1981, stipulating that both parents consent to a minor’s abortion. Andrea went through the process of getting a judicial bypass. The clinic steered her though an interview with an amenable judge, I got her the money just in time and Andrea got her abortion. Although the experience was difficult for her, we were rather proud that we’d gone through it alone."

GET THE STORY.

Two young girls, one sixteen and the other probably fourteen or fifteen, managed to go to court and obtain a "judicial bypass" around their state’s parental consent laws, all without their parents ever being the wiser… at the time. Once Mom and Dad found out, they were rightly "heartsick and frustrated." The author of this essay professes "understanding" for their pain, yet still piously pronounces that parents should only know that their minor daughter is undergoing a major medical procedure — setting aside the fact that the major medical procedure in question also kills their grandchild — if their daughter "willingly" wants to tell them.

Words fail to capture just how mind-bogglingly stupid our society has become. But then, as Mark Shea has so pithily put it, sin makes you stupid.