Why 2004 Was Important

The supreme court just heard a case involving whether partial-birth abortion can be banned without a health exception.

Six years ago, they heard a smiliar case involving a Nebraska law, and five of the injustices voted that it was unconstitutional: Darth Breyer, Darth Ginsburgh, Darth Souter, Darth Stephens, and Darth O’Conner.

But Darth O’Connor ain’t there no mo.

Now there’s Justice Alito.

And also Justice Roberts.

Will they vote with Justices Scalia and Thomas–and even Darth Kennedy?–who voted in favor of upholding the Nebraska ban on partial-birth abortion in an apparent rare moment of being torn between the Light Side and the Dark Side.

GET THE STORY.

Stomach In A Bowl

When it comes to the culinary arts, presentation is not everything, but it is something.

Kentucky Fried Chicken seems to have forgotten this.

Lately I’ve been seeing ads for what KFC calls its "Famous Bowls."

That itself is offputting. I always hate it when marketers suddenly proclaim some newly invented product that nobody has ever heard of before "famous." Fame is not something you can simply proclaim right out the gate. It is something that only can be known with the passage of time, and it is a form of dehumanizing marketing that treats consumers as objects rather than subjects to proclaim something "famous" from the very first moment it is released to the public.

Same thing goes for declaring things "hits" or "best-sellers" before they are, in fact, hits or best-sellers. I remember back in 1978, when the original (and ultra-campy) Battlestar Galactica was about to debut and I saw an add in a sci-fi magazine for some product (a toy or something) based on the "hit" TV show Battlestar Galactica–which wasn’t a hit at all in that it hadn’t even hit the airwaves yet!

Didn’t like this kind of deceptive, dehumanizing marketing then, and don’t like it now.

I suspect, however, that KFC’s "Famous" Bowls may come to be regarded with time as its infamous bowls–and for reasons that have nothing to do with the adjective.

The fact is, the product strikes me as simply disgusting. Basically, they’ve taken everything they happen to already have on hand at KFC and jammed it all into a bowl. It’s like taking everything you might eat at a KFC meal and mixing it all up together (especially onces your spoon, or fork, or spork starts digging into it).

Here’s how their web site describes it in an attempt to make it sound appetizing:

We start with a generous serving of our creamy mashed potatoes, layered with sweet corn and loaded with bite-sized pieces of crispy chicken. Then we drizzle it all with our signature home-style gravy and top it off with a shredded three-cheese blend. It’s all your favorite flavors coming together.

Seeing the thing doesn’t make it seem any more appetizing:

Bowls_potato

If you see them layering these things together one at a time in a TV ad, it’s even more disgusting.

This morning at Catholic Answers, two of my colleagues and I were discussing this, and we were all appalled at the fact KFC would even consider marketing something like this. One of my colleagues referred to it as "a heart attack in a bowl."

(Which is not surprising since sudden, massive jolts of carbohydrates can cause arrhythmias–one of the reasons heart attacks spike after Thanksgiving and Christmas.)

They don’t exactly make finding the nutritional information on this monster easy, but if you poke around enough, you can come up with it. Here are the stats:

Calories: 720
Fat: 32 grams (that’s half the fat the USDA wants you to have in a day)
Saturated Fat: 9 grams (again, that’s half the saturated fat the USDA recommends for a whole day)
Cholesterol: 65 milligrams
Sodium: 2390 milligrams (that’s all the salt you’re supposed to have for a whole day)
Carbohydrates: 81 grams (it takes me three days to eat that many on my diet)
Protein: 29 grams
SOURCE.

So . . . you wolf one of these things down at lunch and your system gets hit with a massive load of fat, carbohydrates, and salt all at once. Just what your heart and circulatory system needs.

This bad boy is thus high-fat, high-carb, high-salt. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

But the most startling thing is not how unhealthy the "Famous" Bowls are. It’s the idea that KFC would think that people would actually find this combination appetizing.

Yes, I know that when you eat a meal it all goes to one place and gets mixed up there, but–as I noted at the outset–presentation is an important part of the culinary arts, and this product completely ignores that fact in a lazy attempt to get a new product by simply dumping ingredients they already have on hand into a bowl.

I might not have had a problem (when I was on a high-carb diet) eating deep-fried, breaded chicken and mashed potatoes at the same meal, but I didn’t want deep-fried breaded chunks of chicken in my mashed potatoes. Nor do I want gravy on corn or cheese on gravy.

YUCK!

So while what you eat does all go to one place, I have no desire whatsoever to eat a KFC version of "Stomach in a Bowl."

Now, I know what you’re thinking: De gustibus non disputandum est, interpreting rhe de gustibus part quite literally in this case.

I’m sure that KFC has done some market research that shows at least some people will like this thing. Some here on the blog may even find it appetizing. But I can’t shake the feeling here that we’re looking at a potential marketing disaster.

I mean, not one of "New Coke" caliber, but . . . say . . . the kind of product flop that met Ray Kroc when he found his burger sales plummeting in Catholic areas in Lent back in the 1950s and–since he didn’t want to allow his McDonalds’ restaurants to sell fish sandwiches so that fish would be "stinking up the place," he proposed an alternative and let the customers decide which they preferred.

Which did they prefer?

Let’s just say that McDonalds started serving Filet-O-Fish sandwiches.

Americans Are From Mars; Romans Are From Venus

John Allen has a very good piece on the culture gap between America and Rome and how it affects relations within the Church. The article sums up a lot of the differences that you find out if you spend serious time studying Rome and how it operates and is well worth reading.

Allen initially explains the cultural difference like this:

It would be flip to say that “Americans are from Mars, Romans from
Venus,” but there’s more than a smidgen of truth to the perception of
being on different planets.

As an illustration, he compares the American and Roman attitudes toward time:

To take just one small but telling example, consider the difference between American and Roman views of time. In the United States, we have a “microwave” culture. If we perceive a need, we want that need satisfied immediately. If there is a problem, we want a plan to resolve it by the close of business. If you don’t have such a plan, it’s either because you’re lazy or you’re in denial, and either way it’s unacceptable. Our motto tends to be that of Homer Simpson who, when told that it would take 30 seconds for a fried meal, responded: “But I want it now!”

Rome, on the other hand, is a culture notoriously accustomed to thinking in the long term. Its motto tends to be, “Talk to me on Wednesday, and I’ll get back to you in 200 years.” Rome is in that sense a “crock-pot” culture. The idea is that the food simmers for a much longer period of time, but if you get the ingredients right, it will be much more satisfying.

Although Allen doesn’t use the terms I’m about to, America (like England and Germany) has what some anthropologists have called a "low context" culture, while Italy (like the Middle East) has what is called a "high context" culture.

The difference has to do with how much background knowledge you are expected to have in order to function successfully in the culture. Low context cultures don’t require you to know that much of the local cultural lore in order to function successfully. That’s why, in America, if you can speak English and obey a few basic laws which are easy to look up, you can get along well. You don’t have to know all of the unwritten laws and lore and customs and tribal alliances that you would have to in a high context culture.

High context cultures, by contrast, assume that the individual does know the local lore. Among other things, this allows high context cultures to communicate in a way that is less explicit, more allusive. This is one reason that the Bible is as mysterious as it is: It was written in a high context culture that assumed the reader already knew the background to the documents, so it doesn’t waste time explaining that background. If you don’t have that background, the resulting document can seem obscure and mysterious.

(That background, or at least the theoogically salient bits, are preserved in the form of Sacred Tradition, which is why Sacred Tradition is needed to correctly understand Sacred Scripture. It’s the missing background material you need to make sense of Scripture. It’s also notable that sola scriptura arose in a low context culture of Germany, which assumes you don’t need extensive background information to understand a document.)

One of the ways in which high and low context cultures differs is in how they write law: Low context cultures spell everything out in detail in law since they aren’t relying on people to use their knowledge of the unwritten law in interpreting the text. They write law rigorously and, as a result, they expect it to be rigorously obeyed.

High context cultures, by contrast, use law to gesture at what they want to happen, but they admit a thousand unwritten exceptions. Consequently, the laws of high context cultures abound in legamorons.

Allen describes the situation like this:

For Anglo-Saxons, law is a lowest common denominator of civil behavior, and hence we assume that laws are meant to be obeyed. If we find that people aren’t obeying a given law, it’s a problem, and we either crack down or change the law. In Mediterranean cultures, on the other hand, law is more an expression of an ideal, and there’s tremendous room for subjectivity in interpretation and application in a concrete set of circumstances. Anyone who’s ever driven the streets of an Italian city knows what I’m talking about. The bar tends to be set high, with the implicit understanding that most people, most of the time, will far short to varying degrees.

This is a constant source of misunderstanding when the Vatican issues a draconian-sounding decree, which immediately elicits howls of protest from the United States about it being unrealistic or inhumane. Vatican officials are routinely exasperated by the reaction, since they fully expect that pastors and bishops will exercise good judgment about how it ought to applied in individual cases. Most recently, we saw this dynamic with the document from the Congregation for Catholic Education on the admission of homosexuals as seminary candidates. No one in Rome, including the authors of the document themselves, believes that it means absolutely no candidate with a same-sex orientation should ever be admitted to Holy Orders. They saw it as a call to careful discernment, not a blanket ban. (Admittedly, American Catholics can to some extent be forgiven the protest. As the old joke goes, we often have the worst of both worlds – Roman law applied by Anglo-Saxon bishops!)

Ultimately, Allen concludes that America and Rome–despite their culture gap–need each other, and he’s right.

GET THE STORY.

Way To Go N.Z. Bear!

Over at TruthLaidBear, N.Z. Bear has developed an election tracker that nicely consolidates the info that most folks will be concerned with nationally in the election results: Which parties will control which houses.

I’d much rather check this thing periodically than wait for the behemoth MSM networks to get the chattering nabobs of nothingism to shut up long enough to give us actual data.

USE THE TOOL.
(CHT: Instapundit.)

And there was this story out of Kentucky about a poll worker choking a voter.

Turns out it wasn’t over a Dem/Repub thing, though. The guy didn’t want to fill in his ballot on the judicial races since he didn’t know enough about the judges and the poll worker told him he had to or he couldn’t vote. Things got worse from there.

It raises a question, though, that I wondered about myself: Do you actually have to fill in those things? You shouldn’t have to, but . . .

I voted early by absentee ballot, and I found myself not wanting to leave those blank since I had no idea what the judicial philosophy was of the judges. On the other hand, I thought California might have a crazy rule that would disqualify my ballot if I didn’t vote one way or the other, so–figuring California judges will be a bunch of kooks as a rule–I voted against all of them.

I’d still like to know about the mandatoriness of whether you have to vote in each race, though.

One More Reason To Use Firefox

As if we didn’t have enough already.

My sincere apologies to everyone who experienced problems with the blog yesterday.

Something happened yesterday that caused the blog not to display with all the posts it should have on the top page for those using Internet Explorer. I was initially unaware of this–and then unable to confirm it when people pointed it out–because I don’t use Internet Explorer (normally).

With the assistance of the good folks at TypePad, I was able to track down the source of the problem and correct it.

It turnsout that there was hidden code buried in the text of the e-mail from Fr. Frank Pavone that caused Internet Explorer not to display the posts below the one in which this coding appeared.

 

Fr. Frank may want to check with the people coding his e-mail blasts to see if they can avoid this problem and allow other people to help him get out his message.

For the rest of us, this is another illustration of Internet Explorer’s inherent problems.

So once again my sincere apologies to all, and my recommendation that you get Firefox (or Opera, or ANYTHING besides Internet Explorer), Firefox being a FAR, FAR superior browser that has immeasurably enhanced the online experience of myself and countless others.

GET FIREFOX.

An Important Issue This Election Day

Orson Scott Card has a really interesting and worthwhile article in which he writes:

[A]s a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government
threatens many values that I hold to be important to America’s role as
a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be
gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party
seems hellbent on losing it — and in the most damaging possible way —
I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its
hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again
to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its
own temporary partisan advantages.

Objectively speaking, the current war and terrorism are not the weightiest issues in determining how one casts one’s vote. Neither one of them kills remotely as many people as abortion does, and thus they should not be–as Card terms them–"the only issue this election day." But they are still issues of massive importance that deserve to be treated with the utmost seriousness and should weigh heavily on voters.

Card’s analysis of the present situation–while lengthy–is carefully reasoned, insightful, and definitely worth reading in its entirety.

GET THE STORY.

Italian Translation Bleg

I am in need of a volunteer to translate a short (2,000-word) homily of Paul VI that is only available on the Vatican web site in Italian.

This is a very controversial homily that regularly crops up in apologetic discussions. In fact, it’s the famous "smoke of Satan" homily.

I’m looking for a translation that is as literal and accurate as possible so that we can finally see the quote in its original context and get a better idea of what the pope meant or didn’t mean.

I think it would be a significant service to the Catholic community if
we can get a good translation of it (not just a Babelfish machine translation), and I’ll post the results online
so that others can benefit from the results.

The volunteer can be either anonymous or nonymous. Feel free to e-mail me or comment in the combox.

Any takers?

UPDATE: I now have a translation of the homily in hand. More soon! Thanks to all who offered!

The Other Kind Of Voters Guide

Catholic Answers produces the Voters Guide for Serious Catholics (and the Voters Guide for Serious Christians), both of which focus on the moral principles that need to be brought to bear in voting.

There is another kind of voters guide, though: One that documents the positions or voting records of candidates.

I’ve had some requests for where folks can find guides of that kind, but I haven’t had good resources to point them to.

This morning, though, I got an e-mailing from Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life, and I thought folks might be interested in what he had to say, so here goes:

    I have communicated with you and many others regarding tomorrow’s elections. You may also be among those who have been working hard to mobilize voters. Now, the moment has come for the voters to do their job.

    If your state has early voting, and allows you to vote today, please do so. For information, please visit www.priestsforlife.org/states/early-voting.htm. Take advantage of the opportunity to cast your vote today rather than tomorrow, so that unforeseen obstacles don’t prevent you.

    The big question, of course, is “How do I find information about the candidates?” We have set up a web page, www.priestsforlife.org/candidates, to assist you.

    You can find candidate information in several places, such as newspapers, television news, voter guides, and on the internet. You may also run into people on the street handing out candidate literature. Don’t refuse them, but take and read what is being offered to you.

    If these sources fail, you can always contact the candidate’s campaign to make an inquiry about his or her position.

    Frequently politicians make statements like, "I have always been personally pro-life," or, "I would never encourage a woman to have an abortion." Rather than offering comfort to pro-life voters, statements like these should raise red flags, as they are typically followed by, "but I would never impose my personal beliefs on anybody else," or some similar statement.

    Even in cases in which these words do not follow, they are often implied. In such cases, be sure to look for a clearer statement of the candidate’s position, again, in writing if possible. Moreover, don’t only ask what the candidate believes. Ask what he or she intends to do to protect the unborn.

    You should also look at a candidate’s voting record. This is extremely easy with members of Congress as you can simply contact any one of a number of national organizations, like National Right to Life, that track votes as part of their regular activity. They will be able to inform you how your Congressman and Senator voted on the bills that have come before them. You can often obtain similar information about state candidates from pro-life organizations within your state.

    Finally, remember that elections not only put candidates into power, but they put parties into power, too. In voting for a candidate, you should know the positions of the candidate and also the positions of the party to which he/she belongs.

    Some organizations have provided specific voter guides, and we have placed links to many of those at www.priestsforlife.org/candidates.

    If you have further questions about how you should evaluate candidates, please contact our office at (888) 735-3448.

    Along with candidates, there are also important measures on the ballots in various states.

    Detailed information is at www.priestsforlife.org/elections/state-initiatives-referenda.htm. Even if you don’t live in these states, you can influence the vote by urging people you know in that state to vote the right way.

    California – Proposition 85 – Parents’ Right to Know and Child Protection Initiative – Vote YES. See www.priestsforlife.org/legislation/proposition85.htm for more information.

    Oregon – Measure 43 – Parental Involvement and Support Act – Vote YES. See
    www.priestsforlife.org/legislation/oregon-measure-43.htm for more information.

    South Dakota – Referred Law 6 – Women’s Health and Human Life Protection Act – Vote YES. See www.priestsforlife.org/legislation/south-dakota-referendum.htm for more information.

    Missouri – Amendment 2 – Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative – Vote NO.  See www.priestsforlife.org/legislation/missouri-amendment-2.htm for more information.

    Additional reminders: Join today and tomorrow in the final days of the Election Novena; prayers are found at www.PrayerCampaign.org and my booklet “Voting with a Clear Conscience” is found at http://www.priestsforlife.org/vote/voting-clear-conscience.pdf

    OK – that’s all I have to say. Let’s go make November 7 a day of progress for the pro-life cause!

    God bless you!

    Fr. Frank Pavone
    National Director, Priests for Life