Supply and Demand...and "stuff"

Richard Bennett has a response to my post below on peak oil. Biomass is an intriguing technology to be sure, and the promise of cleaning up those hog farms' slurry is also quite attractive. But...

• No system is ever lossless. I haven't yet seen how this is also a solution to global warming. That CO₂ has to go somewhere, and the "C" of course means less renewable resources. But I guess the next answer is to try to suck CO₂ out of the air. How many watts will that cost per cubic foot?
  
  
• Richard links to a link for a technology from Changing World Technologies, which is near where I used to live (and also near the Clear Mountain Zendo, appropriately named because it's located on the fabled Hempstead Plain, and to see the Zendo, you'd have to go to a part of town that brings the phrase "light industrial zoning" to mind.) Changing World claims an 80% efficiency Joule-wise, but that's only 1/2 the story. The other 1/2 is that it takes 200 tons of stuff to make 500 barrels of oil, (assuming 80 tons of oil assuming I've done the math right -see this link) from poultry waste.
  
  
• There are approximately 20 (19.4 according to this source) gallons of gasoline per barrel of oil.
  
  
• Assuming the 200 tons of stuff per day is what the poultry plant produces as waste, this is bascially a few moderately busy gas stations' amount of gasoline.
  
  
  
• US oil demand per day is 20 million barrels a day.
  
  

We do have a heck of a lot of garbage, but do we have enough to meet the demands of US drivers?

And how much of a cut will the Cavalcante family want?

Seriously, I suspect the efficency of the process in terms of garbage per barrel - or lack thereof- might surprise us in a hundred years or so as to how really finite our reources are. But, admittedly, I haven't done all the math.

Peak Oil and the Mind

The big buzz, when one's attention is not distracted by a dead Pope or Michael Jackson is Peak Oil. (Wolcott has another link to a Rolling Stone article here, which is far more apocalyptic.)

The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away. The turbulence of the Long Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers, and many of these will be members of an angry and aggrieved former middle class.

Food production is going to be an enormous problem in the Long Emergency. As industrial agriculture fails due to a scarcity of oil- and gas-based inputs, we will certainly have to grow more of our food closer to where we live, and do it on a smaller scale. The American economy of the mid-twenty-first century may actually center on agriculture, not information, not high tech, not "services" like real estate sales or hawking cheeseburgers to tourists. Farming. This is no doubt a startling, radical idea, and it raises extremely difficult questions about the reallocation of land and the nature of work. The relentless subdividing of land in the late twentieth century has destroyed the contiguity and integrity of the rural landscape in most places. The process of readjustment is apt to be disorderly and improvisational. Food production will necessarily be much more labor-intensive than it has been for decades. We can anticipate the re-formation of a native-born American farm-laboring class. It will be composed largely of the aforementioned economic losers who had to relinquish their grip on the American dream. These masses of disentitled people may enter into quasi-feudal social relations with those who own land in exchange for food and physical security. But their sense of grievance will remain fresh, and if mistreated they may simply seize that land.

The way that commerce is currently organized in America will not survive far into the Long Emergency. Wal-Mart's "warehouse on wheels" won't be such a bargain in a non-cheap-oil economy. The national chain stores' 12,000-mile manufacturing supply lines could easily be interrupted by military contests over oil and by internal conflict in the nations that have been supplying us with ultra-cheap manufactured goods, because they, too, will be struggling with similar issues of energy famine and all the disorders that go with it.

As these things occur, America will have to make other arrangements for the manufacture, distribution and sale of ordinary goods. They will probably be made on a "cottage industry" basis rather than the factory system we once had, since the scale of available energy will be much lower -- and we are not going to replay the twentieth century.

This will happen slowly, but this is an excellent opportunity to practice non-attachment, as this "long emergency" gradually develops and transforms American culture.

We are very attached to petroleum in America; as Kevin Phillips has noted this has been a big driver of our foreign policy and our hegemony strategy.


In 1996, Tricycle had a very good issue which featured an article on "The Money Mind," which was an exploration into how our use of money reflected our desire or repugnance.

We can substitute "oil" or "energy" for money and do a similar exercise:

To what extent do we need oil/energy?

Does our use of oil/energy help us and others?

How does our use of oil/energy affect other beings?

If we did not have as much oil/energy what would we do? What kind of life would we have? Could we make sure that we would be OK, (albeit perhaps seriously disrupted from our present lives) if oil/energy suddenly got very expensive?

How can we use Peak Oil as an opportunity to build community rather than struggle to try to get more of a share of a dwindling supply?

What emotions do we feel if we consider the thought that we might not be able to heat our homes, drive our automobiles, etc?

We most likely, will have to make serious changes in our lives. There is no panacea- our economy- and our personal lives, and those of our children will be affected by peak oil. Biomass may or may not get there in time. Shale oil might still be 4 or 5 times more expensive to get than the current price of oil. Nuclear? Solar?

This is not to mean we are to live only for a coming crisis, but, to reiterate, it is an opportunity to imagine how to live with less, so all might not have trauma.

Tom DeLay and the politics of morality

The blogosphere is abuzz today over 2 new breaking scandals involving Tom DeLay. (Atrios has 'em here and here.)

This is just the latest in several ongoing scandals and investigations involving DeLay.

DeLay, though has been in high dudgeon over his previous scandals, pleading "persecution" to the Family Research Council.

Now by now it's obvious that groups like Family Resarch Council, and Focus on the Family are more concerned with propping up Republicans, no matter how morally bankrupt, as long as they're PC with their "pro-life" policy than they are with maintaining a consistent moral stance.

From my Buddhist perspective, this is tragic, as the amount of suffering they are creating is greater than there would be otherwise. We just don't know much money is being funnelled to special interests that could actually help people.

Hopefully, after the Pope's funeral this will get bigger play in the media.

Interesting reading on the papal election

Here's the official document.

There's an interesting aspect to that document:

87. When the election has canonically taken place, the junior Cardinal Deacon summons into the hall of election the Secretary of the College of Cardinals and the Master of Papal Liturgical Celebrations. The Cardinal Dean, or the Cardinal who is first in order and seniority, in the name of the whole College of electors, then asks the consent of the one elected in the following words: Do you accept your canonical election as Supreme Pontiff? And, as soon as he has received the consent, he asks him: By what name do you wish to be called? Then the Master of Papal Liturgical Celebrations, acting as notary and having as witnesses two Masters of Ceremonies, who are to be summoned at that moment, draws up a document certifying acceptance by the new Pope and the name taken by him.

88. After his acceptance, the person elected, if he has already received episcopal ordination, is immediately Bishop of the Church of Rome, true Pope and Head of the College of Bishops. He thus acquires and can exercise full and supreme power over the universal Church.

If the person elected is not already a Bishop, he shall immediately be ordained Bishop.

89. When the other formalities provided for in the Ordo Rituum Conclavis have been carried out, the Cardinal electors approach the newly-elected Pope in the prescribed manner, in order to make an act of homage and obedience. An act of thanksgiving to God is then made, after which the senior Cardinal Deacon announces to the waiting people that the election has taken place and proclaims the name of the new Pope, who immedi- ately thereafter imparts the Apostolic Blessing Urbi et Orbi from the balcony of the Vatican Basilica.

If the person elected is not already a Bishop, homage is paid to him and the announcement of his election is made only after he has been solemnly ordained Bishop.

What this apparently means is that any Catholic can theoretically become Pope.

If I were a liberal Catholic blogger, I'd advocate that a non-clergy person be elected Pope.

It's about time, after all.

But if he'll have been there for four days, he'll stinketh

Link

VATICAN CITY - Departing from tradition, Pope John Paul II was not embalmed, only "prepared" for viewing by hundreds of thousands of mourners, the Vatican said Tuesday.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls did not elaborate on the procedure, but an embalmer in Rome said it appeared John Paul's remains were only touched up with cosmetics.

Massimo Signoracci, whose family embalmed three other popes, said he could not be certain what had been done without examining the body.

Signoracci said even a light embalming is necessary for a body that is exposed for several days.

John Paul died on Saturday, and his remains were put on public view late Monday on an open platform in St. Peter's Basilica. He will be buried Friday...

Signoracci said his family had embalmed the remains of John XXIII in 1963, and of Paul VI and John Paul I, who both died in 1978.

Paul VI was only lightly embalmed before his body was placed before the public during Rome's hot summer. But after two days the skin and fingernails began losing their color.

Things could get interesting if there's a hot spell in Italy this week.

The Pope's Funeral

Although critics may decry the wall-to-wall coverage of the Pope's funeral, for sheer pomp and circumstance it can't be beat. To paraphrase what Che Guevara sang in Evita,

Oh what a circus
Oh what a show
When they're bringing your curtain down
Demand to be buried like John Paul II

And I don't really mean that in a cynical way. This is rivetting TV, because of what it says about what people think about death. I've mentioned on this forum and elsewhere that it's still true that in the West we tend to suppress death. This is good medicine for that.

To what degree, I keep saying to myself (I don't remember the coverage before the 1980's on this)is this a "traditional" service and how much of this was made up for JPII?

There is certainly a great deal of praying for the man. I had critical words about him, but I have to say, my bar for sainthood is rather low. If I ran that church (and I don't of course), I'd saint him even though, in my opinion he does bear command responsibility for the pedophilia scandals, but I'd note both items in big neon signs. So if it were me running his funeral, I'd cut down on the "Lord have mercy" stuff. Look, God, whatdaya want? You sent Jesus- or at least JPII believed so. If you don't let folks like that into Christian heaven, you aren't much of a loving deity are you? I had the same feeling for my dead relatives when I was a Christian...I just can't understand this begging god stuff when there's a manifestly devout dead person as the center of attention. I personally see very little benefit in it. Of course, others' mileage might vary.




Three other observations:

1. When I was a kid, I remember the prayer "Eternal rest grant unto him and may perpetual light shine upon him" (or with some other object of the preposition.) Now, for the first time last night it hit me: How could I actually get any rest- let alone eternal rest- if light was perpetually shining on me? Just asking. But I suspect the real answer is, "It doesn't matter, it's chanted in Latin and sounds cool." I can deal with that, I guess. We Buddhists like our chanting too- heck we even mangle the languages as we go from Pali to Chinese to Japanese to English.


2. As a real reminder of death, check out the shoes of the fisherman. No, I don't mean the movie, I mean JPII's shoes. The assymmetry of his feet say more about the impermanence of life than all the pomp and ritual you'll see this week.

3. Those pillows his head was resting on- I had the same ones, I swear, on a sofa I used to own. It's really amazing where things turn up.

This is a test...

to see if this blog is working. You can never be sure...

Judeo-Christian Morality in an Ethically Pluralistic Society

Joe Carter has more grist for the mill: an EO symposium on the aobve topic.

The hard thing is how you define it. And how you live it.

Some rabbi somewhere commented on Sripture to the effect of "Love God above all else. Love your neighbor as yourself. All the rest is just commentary."

Korean Zen master Seung Sahn reportedly had this exchange with a student:

Student: What is love?
Seung Sahn: I ask you, what is love?
(Student was silent)
Seung Sahn: I ask you. You ask me. That is love.

Assuming both the rabbi and Seung Sahn were on to something, at least among Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity there should be no contradiction, at least in practice. Sure we Buddhists don't do the "Love God above all else" part in a way that's recognizable to many Christians, perhaps, but in practice many other Christians would not see a problem here. That gets towards a whole discussion of the god-concept in Buddhism, which is the subject for another post. Suffice it to say here that this god-concept in Buddhism (or lack thereof- Shaku Soen through D.T. Suzuki wrote on this, and not all Buddhists would agree with him), while radically different from a Christian deity, functionally call one to a moral life (and better in my opinion, even if I disagree a bit with Suzuki's rendering of Shaku Soen on specifics.)

The problem is this practice of love is hard work. And we'd rather therefore try to make "public policy" or "argue for it in the public square" when really love requires 10,000 purely pedestrian actions, which if performed, and if coupled with wisdom, is more eloquent than anything we could say about public policy or how to argue for it in the public square.

John Paull II and I

As somebody who stopped being Catholic under John Paul II's watch, I think I have something to say.

The Catholic Church could have had a a worse pope- and there were plenty of examples in history: the popes that instigated the Crusades, the pope that said labor unions were bad, the Renaissance popes were all pretty nasty men. John Paul II, whatever you say about him, was a better person than most of the people the paparazzi chase after.

Except for the fact that he pretended to be the vicar of Christ on earth, he might have been an OK fellow to know, albeit somewhat somber.

There were reasons I stopped being Catholic, and ultimately John Paul II's a part of that, although of course, at the end of the day, I take full resposibility for walking out of that theatre. Among those reasons:

• Well, chief among them was the theology of the church which tended to vest people with authority but no accountability. You can't impeach a pope. This attitude permeates the Catholic church, all the way down to the child abusing priests and nuns. (Update note: not all priests and nuns are child abusers, of course. ) The structure of the Catholic church breeds a kind of arrogance, an arrogance I have known personally.
  
  It has slapped me in the face even after I stopped being Catholic. My father had been a founding member of his parish, and at his wake my family had asked the priest to say a few words about that. We'd also asked for a few words to speak at my father's funeral. The priest not only arrogantly refused, but lied to us about canon law to our faces, and thought he could get away with it because he was a priest. I did mention - quite loudly- that an organization that was paying out millions of dollars due to damages from child sexual abuse scandals would generally have more concern over its public image.
  
  
  
• I should mention the main reason I'm not a Christian: I found Buddhism simply more effective than Christianity. Still, this is really a part of the item above: Buddhism is more effective than Christianity precisely because it focuses on interior behavior, not somebody else's book or pope, and because of the focus on interior behavior, tends to inherently denigrate the kind of hubris noted above. I ain't nobody's vicar of anybody.
  
  
• Still, while I have my disagreements with those who would only say we are all the same, I must agree with Thich Nhat Hanh in his response to JPII's On the Threshold of Hope re: "Jesus is the only way..." Who among us is not unique?
  
  
  

Regarding JPII, I want to point out his good and bad points. Good:

• He did agitate against communism.
  
  
• He did decry capital punishment.
  
  
• He did decry euthanasia
  
  
• He did decry robber baron capitalism.
  
  
• He was against the war in Iraq.
  
  
  

Bad:

• The hubris of the presumed moral monopoly noted above didn't change a bit under his era, in fact it got notably worse.
  
  
• He didn't canonize Romero.
  
  
• He marginalized the important Catholic doctrine of the supremacy of following one's conscience (yes it's true: it is official Catholic doctrine that if your conscience conflicts with Catholic teaching, you are obligated to follow your conscience.) Thus, increased power in the church hierarchy, pressure on politicians to abandon their positions on the right to an abortion and so forth.
  
  
• The big thing, of course, was the pedophilia scandals. But there were also the Irish woman slavery scandals, the general return to the more oppresive measurs in schools after the 1970's and early 80's, etc. JPII bears command responsibility for this. His response to Bernard Law - the organizational arabesque into the Vatican - was reprehensible.
  
  
• Finally, and appropos of the last item, he has failed to address the moral hubris of his church's structure and theology. It is patently absurd for this group of celibate men, among whom are a larger than average number of people with the tendency to molest children, to claim they can proffer moral leadership and advice on issues related to human sexuality. This clergy needs a mass equivalent of an AA-like intervention, and pronto.
  
  

There ain't 95 of those points up there, but here we are today. We could have done much worse than John Paul II, but we deserved much, much better from him.

Update:

• Joe Carter reminds me of another good point about JPII (inadvertantly):
  
  
  
  
  • JPII refused extraordinary medical means in the end, putting the "save Terri" folks in an awkward position of being more pro-life than the Pope!
    
    
  
  
  
• Atrios has an amusing pointer here.
  
  
  
• Yglesias ignores most of the real popery stuff but gives a good point: being fascist and not communist still sucks.
  
  
  
• Richard Bennett reminds me that the pope wasn't out to lunch on evolution, unlike some extremists in this country.
  
  
• The NY Times inadvertantly reminds me that the Pope was playing footsie with the fascist-inspired/founded Opus Dei, and never really spoke out against fascism - other than Naziism, perhaps- during his papacy.
  
  

  Lay movements of all kinds are proliferating. Opus Dei, a conservative movement of clerics and laity, has been gaining in numbers and influence in the United States with the help of the pope, who declared it a "personal prelature," making it answerable only to Rome. Meanwhile, the sexual abuse scandal and the hierarchy's secretive handling of it have given rise to the Voice of the Faithful, a mobilization of Catholics who have demanded greater public accountability and more lay input in church affairs, so far to little effect.

  
  
  
  
  

書道

"Big Dream"

Eating our seed corn...

link

SAN FRANCISCO, April 1 - The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon - which has long underwritten open-ended "blue sky" research by the nation's best computer scientists - is sharply cutting such spending at universities, researchers say, in favor of financing more classified work and narrowly defined projects that promise a more immediate payoff.

Hundreds of research projects supported by the agency, known as Darpa, have paid off handsomely in recent decades, leading not only to new weapons, but to commercial technologies from the personal computer to the Internet. The agency has devoted hundreds of millions of dollars to basic software research, too, including work that led to such recent advances as the Web search technologies that Google and others have introduced.

The shift away from basic research is alarming many leading computer scientists and electrical engineers, who warn that there will be long-term consequences for the nation's economy. They are accusing the Pentagon of reining in an agency that has played a crucial role in fostering America's lead in computer and communications technologies...

This week, in responding to a query from the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Darpa officials acknowledged for the first time a shift in focus. They revealed that within a relatively steady budget for computer science research that rose slightly from $546 million in 2001 to $583 million last year, the portion going to university researchers has fallen from $214 million to $123 million...

As a result of the new restrictions, a number of computer scientists said they had chosen not to work with Darpa any longer. Last year, the agency offered to support research by Leonard Kleinrock, a computer scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles who was one of the small group of researchers who developed the Arpanet, the 1960's predecessor to today's Internet.

Good for you, Kleinrock, who is also an very good writer of texts and papers.

Look, this is what happens when you elect a prodigal son as president: the profligacy and giveaways to the Halliburtons, the over-arching militancy, etc. has left us unable to fund not only for troops medical needs, but also basic research.

Things are not being put in their proper place, it seems... For the billions Halliburton's been overcharging us, we could have returns on R&D that paid off in the 10's of billions.

This is going to hurt us, I suspect.

The first noble truth and its transcendance in the media....

This article from National Review doesn't exactly convey a Buddhist viewpoint on suffering, certainly not mine...

The principal task of the pope is not the effective management of the Church bureaucracy — it is to serve as an effective witness for Christ in the world. John Paul does this more eloquently today, through his silent suffering, than he ever did with words. It does not really matter if he can use his voice intelligibly — or at all. By carrying on, despite his afflictions, he stands as a living rebuke to our utilitarian culture — and a living witness to the value of every life, especially the elderly and infirm.

In carrying on, John Paul also offers us a precious gift: his suffering. It is hard to see him suffer. But this pope does not ask for relief from his sufferings. To the contrary, a bishop once told me that the pope used to refuse medication precisely because it interfered with his suffering. He has a mystical relationship with his suffering, offering it up for us, and for the whole world — a world that increasingly embraces the culture of death, euthanasia, and the abortion of disabled fetuses, because it mistakenly believes there is no greater moral good than relief from suffering. In bearing his pain, John Paul says to us, in union with the Apostle Paul, "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions."

We need his example in this world filled with suffering. We need the lesson he is teaching us: that suffering is not useless; that it can have meaning, and salvific power. As John Paul wrote in his 1984 encyclical On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, once this meaning and power are discovered, suffering actually becomes "a source of joy" because "faith in sharing the suffering of Christ brings with it the interior certainty that the suffering person...is serving, like Christ, the salvation of his brothers and sisters. Therefore he is carrying out an irreplaceable service."

Suffering exists for its transcendance, and to teach us and others how to transcend other suffering. While it may be true that the Pope is using a technique well known to Buddhists- "the relaxation of thoughts" to transcend his suffering, it is not, should not, and cannot imply that is incumbent on us, and cannot because we are to be responsible for how we transcend suffering, and the moment the "Pope specifies what we should do" in cases like this, the moment we create additional suffering.

The other thing that goes through my mind is that this is a questionable gambit: it is not a good idea to publicly pretend you're Christ on the cross by dying of old age-related ailments publicly, especially when somebody with more foolishness and a more virulent terminal illness than John Paul II will be inclined to throw away his oxycontin for pains for which John Paul II's seem only like a mosquito bite's.

But all that's kind of moot...

ROME, April 1 - The condition of Pope John Paul II was "very grave," the Vatican said on Friday morning, and he had been given last rites after suffering heart failure on Thursday.

But the pope, 84, whose health has taken a steep dive in the last two months, had decided himself not to go to the hospital, and on Friday morning he was still "conscious, lucid and tranquil," his chief spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said in a statement.

This latest health crisis - only a day after doctors fitted him with a feeding tube - was set off on Thursday by a urinary tract infection. That infection, the Vatican said on Thursday, caused a high fever in the already frail and weakened pope, who has suffered for more than a decade from Parkinson's disease.

Doctors began treating him with antibiotics at his apartment in the Vatican, and Vatican Radio reported overnight that the pope was responding well and that his condition appeared to have stabilized.

But the new Vatican announcement on Friday morning made it clear that the John Paul II, the 264th pope and one of the longest serving in history, was close to death.

It said that he had suffered "septic shock with cardiovascular collapse."

Evidently for the pope, unlike Terri Schiavo's parents, (follow Kos link therein) there are limits to heroics (no amputating papal limbs ), and even this pope knows that eventually the suffering person becomes the dying person.

Religion and Science....

Joe Carter's site often provides grist for the mill, and today is one of those times when Carter deserves a response not just from a Buddhist perspective, but from a scientific/engineering perspective.

Claiming that there is a “gap” between science and religion, for instance, is generally a sign that a person knows nothing about either science or religion. That appears to be the case with Pinkerton. He correctly notes that Christianity is based on revealed metaphysical truths. What he fails to recognize is that science is also based on revealed metaphysical truths.

Take, for instance, one of the most basic foundational assumptions necessary for scientific inquiry: the universe exists. That statement is revealed (we know it is true because it is revealed to us by our senses), metaphysical (based on an ontological assumption about existence) and true (if it weren’t true then science would be futile). In fact, as anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the history of science knows, religion provided the foundation for scientific knowledge to take root and flourish.

But this is merely picking the straw from his strawman. The clash of worldviews is not between “scientific” and “religious” worldviews but between a selectively applied utilitarianism and other non-utilitarian moral theories. A purely “scientific” worldview would, of course, be neutral on the Schiavo case since science makes no claims about what is and is not moral. Even if it were used to inform ethics, however, the scientific facts are rather clear. Schiavo is a living being who can continue to live with the use of medical technology. There is no “scientific” justification for removing her feeding tube.

Carter's viewpoint is wobbly creaky all around it seems:

• Sciences' basis in "metaphysical" truths is, from the standpoint of science, largely irrelevant. Science is phenomenological: it deals with phenomena - observed things. There is perhaps the "metaphysics" in assuming "science works," i.e., that a repeated observation/experiment will yield consistent results when there are no unaccounted for variables, causes, etc., but other than making sure everything is controlled, there is no great deal of attention that needs to be paid to this metaphysic other than acknowledging that it exists. As to why this metaphysic is true, from a scientific viewpoint, who cares?
  
  
• Carter's use of the word "revealed" needs to be explored. ("Christianity is based on revealed metaphysical truths...science is also based on revealed metaphysical truths.") Carter is making an equivalence between the "revelation" of scripture and the eyes and ears and nose and tongue and body and mind. This should be profoundly disturbing to anyone with a scientific background: Anybody could claim a revelation from anything on a par with "eyes ears nose tongue body and mind. Take your pick: Ramtha, Joseph Smith, Pope John Paul II, Joe Carter. One side note: we Buddhists don't really talk of such "revelations," we are lamps unto ourselves. But more on that below.
  
  
• As far as "truth" of science, again, science is phenomenological, and so statements of "truth" are always contditional, provisional, or tentative. Scientists don't do ontology, and engineers as applied scientists don't even go near words like that.
  
  
• Carter's statement about what "science" would have to say about "Terri" would apply to a piece of skin I might cut off while chopping onions; the deeper question is what science, as we know it today, would leave unsaid or unkown. We are pretty convinced, based on the evidence, that there's a connection between a lack of conciousness and the CT scans we've seen. Carter left that out, and that's the nub of the argument: when does a human being transition to/from a clump of cells that may/may not ever be human? This may be a scientific question, and that's what Pinkerton was pointing at, and that's what probably really disturbs Carter.
  
  

That said, what about "science" and "Buddhism?"

My physics professor in school (where all students studying physics were engineering stucents), when asked how specifically charge was a property of the electron (decomposing an electron into quarks only really pushes the question one level further on the stack) replied, "Who cares? I'm a plumber."

And so were we being trained to be plumbers: we were taught that it is good to teach yourself enough to understand a problem in as much depth as expressible, but to provide solutions with maximum efficacy. And so, by and large, are Buddhists: we have a lot to do, and we can't afford to go down tangents that lead to things that will wind up as clutter rather than be used.

There's folks around who'll claim that Buddhism is "most scientific" of the religions, and I will admit to cringing at that. Why? Because even if it's true (and I think based on epistemological reasons alone a good argument can be made for its truth), it's irrelevant. I don't practice Buddhism because I'm an engineer, I practice Buddhism because I have experience with its transformative power in regards to suffering. I stop practicing Buddhism, I think, if I get into the game of "my religion has deeper truths, and is more 'scientific' than yours!"

Besides, my son will be up soon, and very skillful means must be used to rouse him without feeding into an expected temper tantrum from him...

New Blogs Added...

I have much updating of blog links to do. There are quite a few more Buddhist blogs out there than I'd originally found with Blogpulse. But I've added Danny Fisher's blog (always wondered what type of folks they have at Naropa) as well as WoodMoor Village.

Rinzai on line...

Follow the link from WoodMoor Village to read The Zen Teachings of Rinzai on line.

Cool.

"You have misspoken"

I was going to comment on this piece by Dennis Prager, in a more reflective manner than the somewhat amusing send-up on Sadly No, but the computer decided otherwise.

So instead, I'll write a bit on the following:

A monk once wanted to ask Yunmen a question and started to say, "The light serenely shines over the whole universe." Before he’d even finished the first line, Yunmen suddenly interrupted, "Isn’t that the poem of Zangzhuo Xiucai?"
The monk answered, "Yes, it is."
Yunmen said, "You’ve missed it."
Later Master Sixin took up this koan and said "Now tell me, why has this monk missed it?"

The Commentary

In this koan if you can grasp how lofty and unapproachable Yunmen’s Zen working is and why the monk missed it, then you can be a teacher in heaven and on earth. In case you’re not yet clear about it, you will be unable to save yourself.

The Capping Verse

A line is dropped in a swift stream;
Greedy for the bait, he’s caught.
If you open your mouth only a little,
Your life is lost!

Yunmen was one of the most amazing people in literature almost nobody knows, but that's not the point to be made here. Rather:

What was Yunmen trying to get the monk to see? Was this monk simply seeking Yunmen’s authority or wisdom? Is there anything wrong with that? Where is authority ultimately? We think being the authority means having all the answers, being in control. The fact is that none of us is in control. Ever. Think about it. Try to find a single thing that you can control. You’ll never find it. So what does it mean to be the master? What does it mean to be the authority? How is it to realize that who we are is one great body, the whole universe? There is nothing outside.

Once we realize this Buddha body, then when we chant "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form," we’re not repeating the words of Avalokiteshvara. "The light serenely shines over the whole universe" is not someone else’s reality. We’re simply speaking of our own experience. It all comes down to this — all the Buddhist teachings and Zen practice — to help us recognize that which we already are. This is our Buddha-nature. This is the vow we take when we receive the precepts: to live the life of a bodhisattva. Not to model ourselves after a bodhisattva, not to aspire to be a bodhisattva, but to be a bodhisattva.

Before the Buddha died, his students wanted to know: Who’s going to be our teacher now? Who’s going to help us? The Buddha said, "Be a lamp unto yourself."

Rather than going abstractly trying to voice what a "culture of life" should be, or whose religious tradition is right (Prager rails against about "opponents of Judeo-Christian values" including "those in the non Judeo-Christian West who lack a moral problem with abortion for whatever reason...and the secular culture's contempt for those who call themselves 'pro-life' or believe that Terri Schiavo had a right to live [who are] examples of the contemporary attempt to undo the life wish of Judeo-Christian values and affirm the natural death wish that resides in the human soul."), it might be useful to authentically live one's own life, in a Buddhist's case, to help others transcend suffering.


Prager, to me, has misspoken: Is this really his experience of life and death?

The Buddha once was met by a woman who had a child die; rather than bring her back to life as Jesus reputedly did, the Buddha asked the woman to get some seeds from homes where members had never known anyone who died. Needless to say, after a while the woman figured it out: death is our lot in life, and until we personally come to terms with that, all the railing against immoral secularists yadayadayada and their "culture of death" will only reek of narcissism.




Here's another great commentary on this number 39 from the Mumonkan...

The Religious Right. Characterized

Digby, Jarvis and Hewitt have a nice confluence of posts...which also "conflows" with a discussion I had yesterday over "spirituality" from a self-described skeptic/atheist/rationalist.

Hewitt, in particular, would like to know:

Who is a theocrat/theocon? Anyone who's politics are informed by their faith? Catholics adhering to their Church's teachings and voting that way?...

Hewitt goes on:

What Jeff [Jarvis] has done in his essay --something Andrew Sullivan does often-- is attempt to delegitimize a series of political positions without arguing the merits of those positions, but rather by asserting that the people who hold them --people he does not identify-- are fanatics and dangerous as well as powerful. It is a useful exercise to run through Jeff's piece and substitute "the Jews" for the "religious right" and all pronounces referring to the "religious right." Jeff is of course not anti-Semitic, but he has fallen into the trap of arguing from rhetoric that brands a shadowy minority as powerful beyond their numbers and thus in need of marginalization. It hasn't worked and cannot work because the center-right coalition agrees on 90% of the agenda,...

Many e-mailers have tried to define "the religious right" thus far this morning, but their definitions are either ad hominem attacks or way too broad

I can cite two criteria for characterizing the "religious right," and I'm afraid that Hewitt will have to accept the fact that it does, indeed, involve moral failings on their part. It may peeve him, but my understanding of Christian Scripture indicates that the religious conservatives of ancient Judea were peeved by Jesus Christ, as well. Anyway, here are the two criteria:

1. Members of the "religious right" tend to ignore the Sermon on the Mount and the Sermon on the Plain, or, if they are Jewish, ignore Hillel. They tend to emphasize Old Testament passages that indicate an angry, vengeful, jealous deity, and tend to exhibit an enjoyment and identification with this angry, vengeful, jealous deity. Again, I would submit this has to do with the fact that, at least on the part of "conservative Christians" (an oxymoron, actually) are actually quite uncomfortable with the notion of Jesus, for reasons outlined above. I'd also note that this identification with anger, revenge, etc. is often directed at those who want to preserve democratic institutions, civil liberties, and religious as well as non-religious pluralism in this country. Focus on the Family is a prime example of this; regarding the recent decision in Colorado overturning a death sentence apparently based on "Old Testament" justice, FOTF said:

"Today's ruling further confirms that the judicial branch of our government is nearly bereft of any moral foundation," said Tom Minnery, the group's vice president for government and public policy.

2. This second part is particularly important, and a useful razor for determining who might be a member of the "religious right" and who might not: members of the religious right share in common this aspect of the "New Age" movement (see here and here): they actually don't get that 99%+ of what they tell themselves is usually bullshit (sorry if that offends your sensibilities, Hugh) and thereby tend to exhibit a greater degree of narcissism and a certain lack of humility than they would otherwise. This last part is pretty key; we can see it in Hewitt's lame assertion above that somehow he's a member of a "center-right" coalition, despite the fact that in all the biased reporting over the Schiavo case (e.g., every day Aaron Brown on CNN leads off with an interview of the Schindler family), 80+% of Americans understand Michael Schiavo's point of view. And at the same time, Hewitt's own post belies any notion that he accepts critics' positions as in any way as legit.

View the 無門関 (Mumonkan) on line...

Here.

An original 12th 13th century manuscript.

(I've been meaning to correct that for several hours, but Blogger wouldn't let me.)

Also not helpful...

is posts such as this one at "Counter-cult Apologetics."

Rather than deal with issues I've already mentioned, let's go to this "also recommended" article by one Rev. Ralph Allan Smith in that post, and note additional misstatements and falsities there...

• The author makes the typical Christian apologist's mistake about zen by looking for a "proof text" and attempting to falsify it. D.T. Suzuki wrote many valuable things, but for Zen Buddhists, Suzuki's writings are not authoritative.
  
  
• The "monism" of zen, while alluded to by Suzuki, is in actuality a poor choice of words. However, even Suzuki notes that "pantheism" is in effect erroneous as a descripton of the zen view of the world, but, rather penentheism. Now I think even that is inapt as a descriptor; to state that would be like having a "philosphy" that rigidly guides how you play tennis. You may have a style of game that suits you, but the part of the brain that conjures up philosphies is not really heavily involved.
  
  
• The following text is particularly strange, misleading, and invites a response:
  
  

  It is remarkable that living through a century that is characterized by its political theories and atrocities, Suzuki has so little to say on the subject. What he does say, however, is important:
  
  

  Zen has no special doctrine or philosophy, no set of concepts or intellectual formulas, except that it tries to release one from the bondage of birth and death, by means of certain intuitive modes of understanding peculiar to itself. It is, therefore, extremely flexible in adapting itself to almost any philosophy and moral doctrine as long as its intuitive teaching is not interfered with. It may be found wedded to anarchism or fascism, communism or democracy, atheism or idealism, or any political or economic dogmatism. It is, however, generally animated with a certain revolutionary spirit, and when things come to a deadlock -- as they do when overloaded with conventionalism, formalism, and other cognate isms -- Zen asserts itself and proves to be a destructive force. [21]

  
  
  Now, perhaps it is profound honesty which says in the face of the foulest historical facts that Zen can be wedded with the likes of Hitler or Stalin. It is possible, of course, that though Suzuki referred to these political philosophies, he would have repudiated their representatives. But by 1959, when the revised edition of his Zen and Japanese Culture was published, should it not have been sufficiently clear that the history of fascism and communism was written with the blood and tears of untold numbers of men, women, and children who suffered the most outrageous oppression not merely from the inhuman leaders who have become the infamous symbols of those ideologies, but from the faceless and nameless bureaucratic monsters which those systems brought forth in abundance? And even if, in spite of the values of enlightenment, Suzuki could have been uninformed in 1959 about communism, is it at all conceivable that he was ignorant of the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazis, or that he would not have realized the complicity of the German nation in the murderous crimes of its leaders?
  
  My third illustration is related to the second and may be summed up in the question, Why does Suzuki say nothing to say about Japan's political life in the twentieth century? According to Christmas Humphreys, Suzuki, who was born in 1870, attained enlightenment in the 1890's, which means that he lived through the war between Japan and Russia, World War I, Japan's political transformation, her invasion of Korea and China, and World War II. During the first half of the twentieth century, Suzuki taught in various Japanese universities and traveled frequently to the West. He wrote numerous books, gave lectures and met prominent intellectuals from all over the world. In 1934, he visited Korea, Manchuria, and China. He spent World War II in Kamakura writing books.
  
  Here, then, we have a well-traveled, well-read, well-informed Zen master who lived through the worst days of the twentieth century as a mature and even "enlightened" adult. The history of Japan in the first half of the twentieth century includes political assassinations beyond number in a time when Japan's political parties are described as "legal mafias," [22] a secret police no less monstrous than that of the Nazis or Soviets, and the exploitation and cruel oppression of Japan's oriental neighbors. Concerning all of this brutal history, Suzuki has no comment, no wisdom to teach us, and no apologies for his Asian neighbors.

  
  
  The responses I would enumerate to this are as follows:
  
  
  
  
  
  • Christianity also can be and has been wedded to democracy, anarchism, fascism and communism in the 20th century.
    
    
  • No serious Zen practitioner will argue that Zen was misused by the Japanese in World War II; taking Suzuki's writings here as any kind of proof-text on Zen here is especially misleading. While many Japanese did misuse Zen to support the war (although it was Shinto that emphasized the cult of the emperor) there were also cases of Zen priests who used Zen specifically to subvert the dictatorship in Japan, among them, Dharma-heirs of Suzuki's teacher Shaku Soen. In addition, Zen teachers were specifically involved in helping to terminate Japan's war effort in Japan. The fact that people did not employ Buddhist precepts did not mean the Buddhist precepts were "false," but merely that they were not practiced. Apologies by Zen teachers have been made, but this guy would rather not consider them, or doesn't know about them. "Reverend" Smith would do well to focus instead on the historical record of his own religion.
    
    
    
  
  
  

Bodhidharma had only two disciples

And one of them had only one arm...

Link...

In his recent book ''The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith,'' Alan Wolfe, a professor of political science at Boston College, writes that ''American faith has met American culture -- and American culture has triumphed.'' Radiant [Assembly of God Church in Surprise Arizona] seems the embodiment of this assertion. And yet not exactly. [Pastor] McFarland's long-term plan for his congregants involves much more than playing video games and eating doughnuts. He says that his hope -- his expectation, really -- is that casual worshipers will gradually immerse themselves in Radiant's many Christ-based programs, from financial planning to parenthood and education, until they have eventually incorporated Christian values into every aspect of their lives.

This is the vision of the new megachurch, and it's far more expansive than those of yesterday's megachurches and today's smaller churches. ''The larger church expects a much higher level of commitment,'' says Dave Travis, who runs Leadership Network, a strategic consulting firm for megachurches. ''The larger church expects you to be a more passionate follower of Christ, not just in the church, but in your community, your workplace and your home.''

As an evangelical strategy, it seems to be working. Weekly attendance at most American churches has either plateaued or is declining. But megachurches continue to expand -- and multiply. (According to John Vaughan, who runs the Megachurch Research Center in Bolivar, Mo., there were 10 non-Catholic megachurches in America in 1970. Today there are 282.) McFarland is clearly doing something right. There are now 27 other churches in Surprise, but none of them are growing at anything approaching the pace of Radiant. One day in Surprise, I met a pastor who moved there four years ago with his wife and children from Kalamazoo, Mich., to plant a church. After drawing fewer than 10 people for about a year, he folded up shop. When I ran into him he was auditioning for a part-time job with Radiant's band...

Expanding the flock through evangelism is a core principle of Christianity, but the modern church-growth movement traces its roots to Donald McGavran, a Christian missionary who worked in India during the first half of the 20th century. What McGavran discovered and articulated in his 1955 book, ''The Bridges of God,'' was that churches can't operate like mission stations, rigidly insisting upon their ways and inviting people to come to them on their terms. Rather, they had to go into villages and make followers of Christ. There was simply no other way to build a dynamic Christian community, which McGavran considered a prerequisite for reaching the unchurched.McGavran's words were written for overseas missionaries who would be encountering people who knew nothing about Jesus, but they resonated powerfully in America. As the 60's progressed, a new generation came of age, one that felt increasingly alienated from the churches in which they'd been raised. At the same time, more and more families were relocating from the cities to outlying areas. It was clear to church leaders that if they wanted to capture these new suburbanites (and a little later, exurbanites), they were going to have to go after them on their turf. The problem was that most pastors had been taught plenty of theology at seminary, but very little about how to actually build a church. So church leaders turned to McGavran for guidance. A nascent industry of church-growth experts adapted his model, encouraging pastors to engage their local communities by treating potential worshipers as consumers.

The modern master of church growth is Rick Warren. In the early 1980's, Warren, a fifth-generation Southern Baptist, applied McGavran's philosophies to his Orange County church, Saddleback. Warren's community was cut from a very different cultural cloth than his own family's; things like altar calls, a Southern Baptist staple in which worshipers are exhorted to come to the front of the church and accept Jesus, would never play in the wealthy suburbs of Southern California. Instead, Warren set about building a profile of ''Saddleback Sam''; once he had a sense of his average worshiper's likes (i.e. contemporary music) and dislikes (preachy, guilt-inducing sermons), he built Saddleback to accommodate him. A result was the so-called seeker-sensitive church.

There has been extensive adaptation of Buddhism for Americans, although many Americans wouldn't know it. Despite that, the main point of Buddhism, especially in its Zen form is still there: the emphasis on focusing inward, as opposed to drinking in and introjecting somebody else's message as your own.


Maybe it's my ex-New York Catholic upbringing, but so much of this "seeker sensitive megachurch" stuff just rings so phony to me; when you market to me you lose any authenticity about you.

We let true Dharma continue by being ourselves. If you want to know about Buddhism, I can tell you my experience with it, but if you don't want to know, it is better for me to focus on my practice rather than trying to fool you with slick advertising and marketing techniques to try to get you to practice something for which you don't see a need, though you suffer.

The wrong way to approach a dialogue...

Link

I mildly remonstrated against Shokai about saying "Jesus is a Boddhisattva," because of the import of that statement to Christians...

However, of course, the real issue, for Buddhists, is that Christians frequently misrepresent Buddhism...

Here's a few pointers for would-be Christian apologists:

• The founders of Buddhism knew about self-referentiality. So "the permanence of impermanence" applies to impermanence. They thought through this stuff.
  
  
• When we speak of "The Four Noble Truths," these are truths as experienced. Maybe, the Christian apologist does not apprehend life as suffering, but I do, and also apprehend the cause and remedy to transcend suffering. They may or may not be permanent. I don't care, and neither did the Buddha- the arrow's owner's brand of shoes is kind of irrelevant to the poison coursing through my veins...
  
  
• Regarding meditation, the Christian apologist asks, " how does Buddhism account for the belief that the future will resemble the past if its concept of impermanence were true?" Meditation is not a way to "get rid of our problems," but rather to watch from a vantage point to be able to either solve them or at least discover how to live with them. Perhaps, to argue the above, going to that vantage point won't give me "a view," but that's irrelevant. I may, if I'm playing tennis, not hit the ball between the lines and give my opponent the point, but if I don't play, if I just stand there, I lose anyway.
  
  
• Re: "Nirvana is an illusion." Again, you have to remember the guys who thought about this thought this stuff through: Illusion is an illusion. Nirvana is not simply an "impersonal void," - it is not multiple, and not one.
  
  
• Finally, don't rely on Christian apologists to describe what Buddhism is like; Buddhism and Christianity are in many ways "perpendicular" or "orthogonal" to each other, and speak languages that don't really exist in the other. That is why many Christians do have no problem practicing Buddhism, and many Buddhists don't have a problem proclaiming Jesus as boddhisattva.
  
  
• One final snarky comment: Buddhism is not a landlord, and thus does not have "tenants." It is arguable (see Stephen Batchelor's Buddhism without Beliefs) whether it has tenets, but Buddhism the religion clearly doesn't get rental income.
  
  
  

The cicrucs continues

• "Terri" tried to speak!
  
  
  

  After a federal appeals court panel rebuffed them yet again, Terri Schiavo's parents made another desperate attempt to keep their brain-damaged daughter alive, telling a judge that she tried to say "I want to live" just minutes before her feeding tube was removed a week ago.
  
  Pinellas Circuit Judge George Greer was expected to announce a decision by noon Saturday on the motion by Bob and Mary Schindler claiming their daughter said "AHHHHH" and "WAAAAAAA" when asked to repeat the phrase "I want to live."
  
  The appeal is seen as a long shot because Greer was the judge who ordered Schiavo's feeding tube removed March 18. Doctors have said Schiavo's previous utterances were involuntary moans consistent with someone in a vegetative state. Attorneys for Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, argued the Schindlers had abandoned all pretense of the law and were simply making "a pure emotional appeal."

  
  
  
  
  
• "Jeb" Bush (quotes all around folks!) sent thugs to seize "Terri," but were stopped by local police actually upholding the rule of law...
  
  

  Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo wasn't to be removed from a hospice, Florida law enforcement agents went to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted.
  
  They stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Miami Herald is reporting today.
  
  Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding. For a brief period Thursday morning, local police — who have officers around the hospice to keep protesters out — prepared for what some sources called a showdown.
  
  In the end, the state agents and the Department of Children and Families backed down, apparently concerned about confronting local police outside the hospice.
  
  “We told them that unless they had the judge with them when they came, they were not going to get in,” a local police source said.
  
  

  
  
  
• Finally, Hunter's diary on Kos is well worth reading. I quote at length:
  
  
  

  
  If you have been paying attention to cable coverage of the Schiavo case, you will see two major themes repeated over and over. First, the repeated bookings of and citings of "witnesses" and "experts" that have previously been debunked, claiming that among other things Ms. Schiavo is "alert and oriented". A neurologist who touts himself as a nominee for "The Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine", an utterly false claim regarding an award that does not exist, has been given apparent run of the airwaves in order to repeatedly assert that Ms. Schiavo is "not that bad", and would be able to "communicate verbally" and "use her arms and legs" under his treatment plan -- a miraculous treatment plan for which, according to Judge Greer, he has been able to offer "no names, no case studies, no videos and no test results". We have even, as many have pointed out, been treated to "psychic" John Edward asserting he was in contact with Terri Schiavo.
  Against this background of exploitation and misinformation, the usual bevy of archconservative media pundits has in the last several days begun to increasingly endorse a premise that is, to any rational mind, remarkable: the notion that because the courts have ruled in this particular fashion, it is now time for individuals and government figures to disregard the courts, and take matters into their own hands.
  We now have a situation in which two dangerous elements are coming together in a manner that is ratings gold for exploitative "news" outlets. Yellow journalism, finally returned in all glory.
  1. Excite and incite viewers with tales that Ms. Schiavo, awake and alert, is being "murdered" within the walls of her hospice by a conspiracy between an abusive husband, bloodthirsty "expert" doctors, and every single state and federal judge to hear the evidence in the case.
  2. Endorse the notion that it may now be time to take Ms. Schiavo by force.
  Unless you are deeply stupid, you can see where this is leading. There have now been about a dozen individuals arrested for trying to enter the clinic to give Terri food or water, an action that (because she cannot swallow) in and of itself stands an excellent chance of killing her. Both Judge Greer and Michael Schiavo are under police protection; Florida lawmakers are finding their pictures on "Wanted" posters; home addresses of Greer and other judges are being distributed. Now we have this report: Media ::
  
  

  SEMINOLE, Fla. -- A man was arrested after trying to steal a weapon from a gun shop so he could "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo," authorities said.
  Michael W. Mitchell, of Rockford, Ill., entered Randall's Firearms Inc. in Seminole just before 6 p.m. Thursday with a box cutter and tried to steal a gun, said Marianne Pasha, a spokeswoman for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
  Mitchell, 50, told deputies he wanted to "take some action and rescue Terri Schiavo" after he visited the Pinellas Park hospice where she lives, Pasha said. [...]
  Randy McKenzie, the owner of Randall's Firearms, said Mitchell pulled out the box cutter and broke the glass on a couple of display cases.
  "He told me if I wasn't on Terri's side then I wasn't on God's side, either," McKenzie told The Associated Press.

  
  
  Now, there are times when the news media is simply sloppy; there are times when journalists simply get stories wrong, and there are times when, as in the trials of Michael Jackson, Kobe, O.J., Martha Stewart, etc., the news channels are simply swept away by their natural tendency towards low-cost voyeurism. But this isn't one of those times. This isn't petty irresponsibility or sloppiness, to be chalked up to the dwindling resources of corporate newsrooms.
  
  

  
  
  

I have heard so much falsities on this- Robert Bork fulminating against "activist judges" on this when those "activist" judges, as it turns out, were Republican appointed conservative judges, that I tend to agree with Hunter here.

My only wish is that if violence were to come of this, and it could be linked to Rupert Murdoch directly, we could revoke his citizenship, seize his assetts under RICO, and deport him.

That Cheshire cat...

So it turns out that the guy who's not the "Nobel prize nominee" who's being touted by Jeb Bush as the guy with "new evidence" is within quite a bit fewer than 6 degrees of separation to Joe Carter...

Dr. Cheshire directs a laboratory at the Mayo Clinic branch in Jacksonville dealing with unconscious reflexes like digestion, and he is director of biotech ethics at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, a nonprofit group founded by "more than a dozen leading Christian bioethicists," in the words of its Web site.

In an article last year in Physician magazine, published by the evangelical group Focus on the Family, Dr. Cheshire, 44, said doctors are too quick to declare that a patient is in a persistent vegetative state.

"I'm not sure the diagnosis is used consistently," he told Physician. "I am sometimes asked if a patient is in P.V.S., but it's only been a few days. By definition, you have to wait at least a month." ...

Mr. Bush called Dr. Cheshire a "renowned neurologist," but he is not widely known in the neurology or bioethics fields. Asked about him, Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, replied, "Who?"

Dr. Cheshire, who graduated from Princeton and earned a medical degree at West Virginia University, did not return calls to the Mayo Clinic seeking comment. The clinic said in a statement that his work on the Schiavo case was not related to his work at the clinic and that the state had invited his opinion. "He observed the patient at her bedside and conducted an extensive review of her medical history but did not conduct an examination," the statement said.

Dr. Caplan said that was not good enough. "There is just no excuse for going in and making any pronouncement about the state that Terri Schiavo is in unless you're going to go in and do some form of technologically mediated scanning that would overturn what's on the record already," he said.

Dr. Ronald Cranford, a neurologist and medical ethicist at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has examined Ms. Schiavo on behalf of the Florida courts and declared her to be irredeemably brain-damaged, said, "I have no idea who this Cheshire is," and added: "He has to be bogus, a pro-life fanatic. You'll not find any credible neurologist or neurosurgeon to get involved at this point and say she's not vegetative."

He said there was no doubt that Ms. Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. "Her CAT scan shows massive shrinkage of the brain," he said. "Her EEG is flat - flat. There's no electrical activity coming from her brain."

I wait with baited breath to see how folks over at Evangelical Outpost (almost wrote "outburst") spin this...

Everyday Zen

• If you want a well behaved child, spend time and attention with him. The most valuable gift you can give someone is your time- you are literally giving your life for that person.
  
  
• You can't make a good omelette without paying attention to the heat of the pan, the temperature of the ingredients, how far along it's cooked, and being careful to get it out of the pan.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Quadruply pretentious....

This gripe about Atrios, to me, falls somewhat flat.

Especially pretentious, to me, is this bit:

Here's my main problem: Atrios has be lifted to where he is by readers like me and others who came to expect something from his blog. Now that he's in a highly visible position, you would think that he would thank his fellow Liberals and Democrats for putting him in that position by at least saying "thanks" first off, and then by listening to what his readers are saying and letting all of our voices be heard.

What, is he some kinda god to you, some rational, down-to-earth people's substitute for the extremist fringe's Hugh Hewitt? (And yes, folks, let's abandon the pretense that those who clamor around Hewit are anything but the extremist fringe. And I mean that with all due respect.)

I don't really think that much about Atrios, or really Hugh Hewitt, or any other bloggers other than those I personally interact with on a daily basis. On the other hand, I do try to be mindful of the fact that I am interacting with other human beings (as far as I can tell) on others' blogs.

As for the guy complaining about Atrios, all I gotta say is: biofuels are a nice idea, but only part of the solution. But I'll check my portfolio just to make sure and see if Archer Daniels Midland has good representation, JIC.

Yeah, I gotta admit, Joe Carter probably puts more thought into his posts than Atrios does. Take the above link, for instance. First he quotes Matthew Yglesias, whom I generally like, but frankly, Joe, he's a kid, and he doesn't even remember stuff before the 1990s (Yglesias has written that he thought Greenspan did a good job until recently.)

Joe Carter tales the following statement from Yglesias:

Legalizing gay marriage will be one more step down the road to dissolving these dual binaries and creating a more androgynous (or perhaps just gender-free) world. Unlike social conservatives, I regard this as a normatively good outcome, but I think their positive analysis is much more correct than the self-serving "nothing to see here" line coming from gay rights advocates who (understandably) are trying to upset as few people as possible. [emphasis added]

And thoughtful Joe Carter claims that would make a world of Ziggy Stardust clones.

But Carter doesn't realize that the Ziggy Stardust clone is merely itself a reaction to the dual binaries to which Yglesias refers; the Ziggy Stardust clone is a slave of the dual binary mindset, dependent on it, in much the same way that some atheists are atheists in a way that presupposes the existence of, is a reaction to, and is dependent on theists. Yglesisas is speaking about something else, but I think his post is simplistic at best. Even if there were such a dissolution as Ygelsias writes, it woudln't happen the same way everywhere, to the same degree to everyone; at least I suspect that, and I also suspect that is a normatively good outcome.

Carter doesn't even offer, I think a good response here, despite the wider verbiage than the average Atrios post, other than, I guess, liberals and conservatives should be nice to each other.

To which I agree, with the proviso and understanding to note when one or the other is full of feces, or their emperor is butt-nekkid.


As for the title of this bit here, all I have to say is: Atrios, In Search of Telford, Joe Carter and myself are all pretentious. But I think we're sincerely pretentious...

One thing we've learned from the Schiavo case...

link




Beatrix Kiddo would never have survived a Texas hospital.

Good summary debunking of the nonsense on Schiavo case

This diary on Kos points to a good document (linked via Abstract Appeal) which gives an unbiased look at the case:

After Florida passed “Terri’s Law” in 2003, Jeb Bush had to appoint a Guardian Ad Litem (GAL). I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that a GAL is a neutral party who helps the court cut through the mud slinging and get to the truth. This GAL was to spend 30 days investigating and report back to Gov. Bush. His report,, (pdf) is excellent reading for anyone who is interested in the history of this case. The GAL details everything from the family relations to the court cases to the medical information. It is also very readable which is helpful.

Good reading folks. It destroys much of the slime that's been heaped at Michael Schiavo in recent weeks.

Atrios steals my paradgim...

link

OK, maybe, maybe not, but frankly this whole Schiavo thing keeps bringing back Monty Python sketches to me...I quoted the Dead Parrot sketch below, but I also think that the Undertaker's Sketch is apt too.

Cut to an undertaker's shop
Undertaker Morning.
Man Good Morning.
Undertaker What can I do for you, squire?
Man Um, well, I wonder if you can help me. You see, my mother has just died.
Undertaker Ah well, we can help you. We deal with stiffs.
Man What?
Undertaker Well, there's three things we can do with your mum. We can bury her, burn her, or dump her.
Man Dump her?
Undertaker Dump her in the Thames.
Man What?
Undertaker Oh, did you like her?
Man Yes!
Undertaker Oh well, we won't dump her, then. Well, what do you think? We can bury her or burn her.
Man Well, which do you recommend?
Undertaker Well, they're both nasty. If we burn her, she gets stuffed in the flames, crackle, crackle, crackle, which is a bit of a shock if she's not quite dead, but quick. (the audience starts booing) and then we give you handful of ashes, which you can pretend are hers.
Man Oh.
Undertaker Or, if we bury her she gets eaten up lots of weevils, and nasty maggots, (the booing increases) which as I said before is a bit of a shock if she's not quite dead.
Man I see. Well, she's definitely dead.
Undertaker Where is she?
Man She's in this sack.
Undertaker Can I have a look? She looks quite young.
Man Yes, yes, she was.
Increasing protests from audience
Undertaker (calling) Fred!
Fred's voice Yeah?
Undertaker I think we've got an eater.
Man What?
Another undertaker pokes his head round the door
Fred Right, I'll get the oven on. (goes off)
Man Er, excuse me, um, are you suggesting eating my mother?
Undertaker Er ... Yeah. Not raw. Cooked.
Man What?
Undertaker Yes, roasted with a few french fries, broccoli, horseradish sauce ...
Man Well, I do feel a bit peckish.
Voice From Audience Disgraceful! Boo! (etc.)
Undertaker Great!
Man Can we have some parsnips?
Undertaker (calling) Fred - get some parsnips.
Man I really don't think I should.
Undertaker Look, tell you what, we'll eat her, if you feel a bit guilty about it after, we can dig a grave and you can throw up in it.
A section of the audience rises up in revolt and invades the set, remonstrating with the performers and banging the counter, etc., breaking up the sketch. Zoom away from them and into caption machine; roll credits. The National Anthem starts. The shouting stops. Mix through credits to show audience and everyone on set standing to attention. As the credits end, fade out.

The Federal Appeals court backs the institution of marriage...

link

There really do seem to be many otherwise right wing bloggers who are appalled at this...

But still "social conservatives" don't get it. If our society means anything about marriage, it means that a married couple can make decisions like Mr. Schiavo's regarding his wife- even if he has done something that might be "divorceable." Social conservatives like Carter at Evangelical Outpost are looking for everywhere to cast the blame, but as is often the case with the righteous, they haven't even begun to cogitate on why they've been lapping up so much false information from sources like Focus on the Family:

"Questions linger about why simple tests, such as an MRI brain scan, have not been ordered by Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge Greer," who issued the order that Schiavo's feeding tube be removed, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said. "Judge Greer dismissed any motion for basic tests despite more than 33 affidavits from doctors and other medical professionals contending that Terri's condition should be reevaluated, and that Terri could respond favorably to therapy."

Indeed, Dr. William Hammesfahr, a world-renowned neurologist who has examined Schiavo, told reporters a few days ago that he believes she could eat and swallow on her own.

"They are truly withholding food from a person who is awake, alert, and can eat and swallow," Hammesfahr reportedly said.

Anybody who's been to my blog, or has been a regular reader of things like the Daily Howler knows that Focus on the Family doesn't mind a bit of false witness when it can be used to stir up the flock about Tom Delay....er...uh...."Terr-i."


Folks on the religious right read the following very carefully and let it sink in: your chain was jerked.

As spring comes, so do the rampages

link

I just can't do these things without irony folks. You'll have to forgive me... but folks, even if the world has peed on you for decades, please lighten up. Please? Let's leave the insanity to war planners, where it belongs...

I do feel bad for the people hurt here, but this stuff has gotten so regular, and the causes are still so ignored, that maybe what I'm writting has good effect if only it gives them a good shock or laugh... yeah, it's not about "Terri" and it's not about "the right" kind of people, but still, read on...

CHICAGO, March 21 - A high school student went on a shooting rampage on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota on Monday, killing his grandparents, five fellow students, a teacher and a security guard, as well as himself, the authorities said...

Chicago is as close as a Times correspondent will go to Minnesota.

A dozen others were injured in the barrage, which erupted at the 300-student Red Lake High School about 3 p.m., officials said. The grandparents were apparently killed at their home earlier in the day, and the authorities were investigating whether guns used in the shooting were taken from the grandfather, a veteran officer on the tribal police force...

Mr. McCabe did say that "we do have evidence that we believe that the shooter is dead," and that "we believe he was acting alone."

He identified the gunman's grandfather as Daryl Lussier, a longtime officer with the Red Lake Police Department and said Mr. Lussier's guns may have been used in the shootings, The Associated Press reported...

Oh my god- Ralph Wiggum is at risk...

The shooting was the worst at a school since 15 people were killed at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo., in 1999, and came just 18 months after two students were fatally shot at Rocori High School in the central Minnesota town of Cold Spring, 200 miles away...

The Red Lake reservation, about 240 miles north of the Twin Cities and about 120 miles south of Canada, is home to about 5,000 Ojibwa Indians, commonly called Chippewa. The tribe operates three casinos and other tourist attractions on some half-million acres.

Clyde Bellecourt, founder of the Minneapolis-based American Indian Movement, said he could not "remember anything as tragic as this happening" on a reservation.

"Everyone in the Indian community is feeling really bad right now, whether they're a member of the Red Lake or not, we're all an extended family, we're all related," he said. "Usually this happens in places like Columbine, white schools, always somewhere else. We never hear that in our community."

Mr. Bellecourt and his brother Vernon, another longtime American Indian leader, said that the gunman's grandfather had been on the local police force for perhaps 35 years, and belonged to one of the tribe's most prominent and respected families.

"No one would ever think that that type of violence would visit itself in our communities, it's not part of our culture and our traditions, so we're kind of puzzled by it all," Vernon Bellecourt said.

I just love those quotes. I can see a Times guy, on the phone, calling up his list of "Injun" contacts- and gets AIM, and thereby gets Clyde Bellecourt who responds with the obligatory condescension but gives his brother's contact.

精進料理 (しょうじんりょうり): Vegetarian Japanese cuisine

I often find myself in Japan in the company of vegetarians, who often find it difficult to find food that they can enjoy. Normally I take them to 居酒屋 (いざかや) restaurants; but, as I've always expected there is indeed a vegetarian Japanese cuisine based on temple cooking.

Zen is austere and meditative. It is the practice of ascetic self-denial on the path to serenity and satori. It is the cult of monochrome and minimalism. Above all, it is serious -- and so is its food, the vegetarian tradition known as sho[h]jin ryori.

Sure, if that's what you want. We will gladly point you in the direction of temples where your sustenance will be little more than a bowl of thin brown-rice gruel served with crunchy, salty takuan pickles. Our path, though, is one that leads straight to Sosaibo's welcoming door.

A rustic lantern spills light onto a narrow alley in a sleepy, residential area of Meguro. Two small jizo statues stand among vegetation in front of a simple, single-story shack. All too often, shojin restaurants feel uncomfortably earnest, self-righteous, bland. No such problem at Sosaibo -- you can tell by the way you're greeted by owner-chef Katsurou Noguchi and his wife, Mieko.

Noguchi has the wiry frame, gleaming pate and warm smile of a contented bonze. He studied the Zen culinary arts among the temples of Kamakura, then returned home and molded the tradition to his character -- honest, unpretentious, thoughtful and with a homespun aesthetic all his own....

Sosaibo
4-1-9 Meguro-Honcho, Meguro-ku, tel: (03) 3710-4336
Open: 6:30 p.m.-midnight Mondy-Friday, also second Saturday of month.
Closed: Saturday (except second) and Sunday.
Nearest stations: Musashi-Koyama (Meguro Line)
How to get there: From the station, walk alongside the Meguro Line tracks (in the direction of Denenchofu) to the first large street, then turn right. At the third set of lights (Meguro-Honcho 5), continue for a further 50 meters, then take the first side street to the left (by a large green sign for a dental clinic). Sosaibo is on the left after 20 meters.
What works: Zen and fine sake -- now that's what we call enlightenment.

While everyone in America's pondering the fate of "Terri"

Japan had a huge earthquake in Kyushu...

FUKUOKA -- A strong earthquake jolted northern Kyushu on Sunday morning, leaving at least one person dead and 400 injured.

The quake, which measured a preliminary magnitude of 7.0, brought railways across most of the region to a halt, crippled essential utilities and disrupted telephone services.

In the city of Fukuoka, Mitsue Itoyama, 75, who was trapped by a collapsing wall later died in a hospital. Two other women, aged 56 and 83, were unconscious and in critical condition, Fukuoka police said.

More than 400 people received treatment at hospitals in Fukuoka Prefecture alone, including at least 15 with fractures and other serious injuries. Some 780 people took refuge at facilities in Fukuoka city.

Buddhism, Christianity, sickness and medicine

Shokai had an interesting post yesterday on Buddhism and Christianity, which, yet again, provokes some thoughts by me when juxtaposed against something from, say, Joe Carter...

First, from Shokai:

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, so let me first point out that I generally have little patience for those who define their religious beliefs by bashing the beliefs of others. This applies not only to televangelists, but also to some so-called Buddhists that I've met, who seem more interested in rebelling against their Judeo-Christian upbringing than in really embracing Buddhism. I've also been dismayed to read Japanese Zen masters who try to talk about Christainity, when it's painfully obvious they have no clue what they're talking about. So I offer my comments on Jesus here not to criticize the belief of others, but to provide an alternative view of Jesus as bodhisattva.

Next from Carter:

Like 20th century Germans, most Americans have never heard of Biding and Hoche. But the arguments presented by these two men who devoted their lives to reason, logic, and science, raise an interesting question: Does accepting the first category of lebensunwerten Lebens also require that we accept the second? If mental functioning is the criteria for determining whether life is worth living then why should we not also be “merciful” and kill those who suffer from incapacitating mental defects such as Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, or Down syndrome? I’d be curious to hear where these bloggers think the line should be drawn between lebenswertes Leben (“life worth living”) and lebensunwertes Leben (“life not worth living”). If we are justified in killing some people who have lost their capacity to be "persons" why should we not also kill others who lack similar mental capacities?

I often find myself, in the blogosphere, as well as in ordinary life, engaged in discussions with self-avowed Christians. There is a natural tendency of one type of Christian (as well as types of Buddhists, as Shokai notes) to define one's self as opposed to another's beliefs.

Often, this is the inevitable result of the worldview/mindset employed: Carter, for example insists, "Where do we draw the line?" as though a line has to be drawn, whereas, in my response, I would have to object to the uniformity of a drawn line, as running counter to human experience and detrimental to human compassion.

The Schiavo case is instructive: it is fast degenerating into a pandering circus for social religious conservatives.

There is a point at which we must say, there is a moral deficit, from a Buddhist perspective, in insisting on an absolute irremediable human life value.


This has to be done, though, from a standpoint of authenticity, and one must be careful to make sure a dialogue doesn't degenerate into something hateful.

Levity in the Terri Schiavo case....

Rather than simply repeat what Digby and Atrios have so nobly focused on, I thought I'd take an entirely different angle and note that, yes, folks, once again, life imitates art:

The sketch:

A customer enters a pet shop.

Mr. Praline: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint.

(The owner does not respond.)

Mr. Praline: 'Ello, Miss?

Owner: What do you mean "miss"?

Mr. Praline: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!

Owner: We're closin' for lunch.

Mr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, the Norwegian Blue...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?

Mr. Praline: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. 'E's dead, that's what's wrong with it!

Owner: No, no, 'e's uh,...he's resting.

Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.

Owner: No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'! Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn'it, ay? Beautiful plumage!

Mr. Praline: The plumage don't enter into it. It's stone dead.

Owner: Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!

Mr. Praline: All right then, if he's restin', I'll wake him up! (shouting at the cage) 'Ello, Mister Polly Parrot! I've got a lovely fresh cuttle fish for you if you
show...

(owner hits the cage)

Owner: There, he moved!

Mr. Praline: No, he didn't, that was you hitting the cage!

Owner: I never!!

Mr. Praline: Yes, you did!

Owner: I never, never did anything...

Mr. Praline: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) 'ELLO POLLY!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock alarm call!

(Takes parrot out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)

Mr. Praline: Now that's what I call a dead parrot.

Owner: No, no.....No, 'e's stunned!

Mr. Praline: STUNNED?!?

Owner: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin' up! Norwegian Blues stun easily, major.

Mr. Praline: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've definitely 'ad enough of this. That parrot is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour
ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein' tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk.

Owner: Well, he's...he's, ah...probably pining for the fjords.

Mr. Praline: PININ' for the FJORDS?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got 'im home?

Owner: The Norwegian Blue prefers keepin' on it's back! Remarkable bird, id'nit, squire? Lovely plumage!

Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining that parrot when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the
first place was that it had been NAILED there.

(pause)

Owner: Well, o'course it was nailed there! If I hadn't nailed that bird down, it would have nuzzled up to those bars, bent 'em apart with its beak, and
VOOM! Feeweeweewee!

Mr. Praline: "VOOM"?!? Mate, this bird wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it! 'E's bleedin' demised!

Owner: No no! 'E's pining!

Mr. Praline: 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e
rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the
bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

(pause)

Owner: Well, I'd better replace it, then. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry squire, I've had a look 'round the back of the shop, and uh,
we're right out of parrots.

Mr. Praline: I see. I see, I get the picture.

Owner: I got a slug.

(pause)

Mr. Praline: Pray, does it talk?

Owner: Nnnnot really.

Luckily for Terri, and us, Monty Python has been revived for Broadway, and hopefully, eleswere....

Favorite routines first created by that surreal British comedy team for the 1975 movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" were performed with an attention to detail found among obsessive history buffs who re-enact Civil War battles on weekends. Python songs were sung with the giggly glee of naughty Boy Scouts around a campfire. And festive decorations were provided in the form of medieval cartoon costumes and scenery helpfully described in the show as "very expensive."

It seems safe to say that such a good time is being had by so many people (including the cast) at the Shubert Theater that this fitful, eager celebration of inanity will find a large and lucrative audience among those who value the virtues of shrewd idiocy, artful tackiness and wide-eyed impiety. That includes most school-age children as well as grown-ups who feel they are never more themselves than when they are in touch with the nerdy, nose-thumbing 12-year-olds who reside within.

書道: 3月 18日

"No"

Further update on "Terri"

Most people support Mr. Schiavo's position... (HT Atrios.)




"Terri's" brain...the light blue stuff is what's left of her cerebrum.

And, in the interests of "balance," weblinks from the University of Miami's ethics program related to this issue.