Month: August 2008

It just keeps getting Flickred:

Constant Setting is a simple website that displays in real time, any sunset images taken and posted to Flickr as creative commons that correspond to the cities where the sun is setting at the moment.

Many readers have noted that versions of this story – attributed to Solzhenitsyn by Chuck Colson – have been a staple of evangelical sermons for a very long time. They aren’t always attributed to Solzhenitsyn, but this sermon, preached by Father Luke Veronis, is a classic of the genre. It’s a trope, a kind of urban legend in evangelical circles – and, of course, rooted in deep spiritual truth. Used in a sermon as a way to talk about Christ’s redeeming power is one thing. Actually saying it happened to you in a specific place and time is another. And of course, none of this would be salient were it not for the obvious motive for coopting the story. McCain has never been a very devout man. He doesn’t come across that way in his first account of the story; and he doesn’t come across that way now. But as the Christianists took over the GOP, he must have understood that this was a problem – especially against Bush in 2000. So in 1999, the story, already poignant and true in its particulars, changes into a much more grandiloquent and sectarian affair, echoing deep evangelical themes and tropes. And it would not be salient if McCain hadn’t deployed the anecdote in his own words – with a misleading image – in a campaign ad, and used it again in front of an evangelical audience Saturday night. And it would not be salient if religious fanatics had not a strangle-hold on the Republican party, seeking doctrinal assurances and echoes of their own type of faith in political candidates.

Here are the perfectly legitimate questions reporters should now, in my opinion, ask McCain:

why did you not mention this transcendent story in 1973? Why, in discussing three Christmases in captivity in Vietnam, was this story – far more powerful than any of the other anecdotes – omitted? How was it possible for the gun guard of May 1969 to be present at Christmas that year when McCain had been transferred to another camp? Is it possible that McCain’s memory has faded with time and that he has simply fused his own memories with other stories – as Clinton did with Bosnia sniper fire and as Kerry did in remembering another Christmas he could not have actually witnessed where he said he did?

And why are we not allowed to ask these questions, when they relate to one of the most important questions anyone can ask about a president: the question of integrity? If McCain has fabricated a religious epiphany for political purposes, it is about as deep a betrayal of core integrity as one can imagine, and the latest example of how pernicious the religious domination of political life in America has become.

Beatbox cooking:

Harry Brighouse has a long post arguing that there is little evidence that grade inflation exists or that it is bad. He targets Harvey C- Mansfield. All I can say is that I graded for Harvey. I’ll never forget the day I brought my grade sheet in, handed it over, and as he looked over it, he glanced up and said, in his inimitable, mischievous whisper:

"Can we turn any of these B-minuses into C-pluses?"

Yes we can! It was a heroic effort, doomed to failure. But at least we knew the students really wanted to be there.

"The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous," – the McCain campaign. Can anyone explain the logic of that statement?

Robin Masters, a former Bush Administration speech-writer, recommends that speech-writers for both candidates aim low.

Strangemaps summarizes the conclusions being drawn from this map and related data:

Genetically speaking, Finns and Italians are the most atypical Europeans. There is a large degree of overlap between other European ethnicities, but not up to the point where they would be indistinguishable from each other. Which means that forensic scientists now can use DNA to predict the region of origin of otherwise unknown persons (provided they are of European heritage).

Here’s McCain, in his now-famous "agents of intolerance" speech, recounting the Good Samaritan story as if it happened to an anonymous American POW:

Many years ago a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam was tied in torture ropes by his tormentors and left alone in an empty room to suffer through the night. Later in the evening a guard he had never spoken to entered the room and silently loosened the ropes to relieve his suffering. Just before morning, that same guard came back and re-tightened the ropes before his less humanitarian comrades returned. He never said a word to the grateful prisoner, but some months later, on a Christmas morning, as the prisoner stood alone in the prison courtyard, the same good Samaritan walked up to him and stood next to him for a few moments. Then with his sandal, the guard drew a cross in the dirt. Both prisoner and guard both stood wordlessly there for a minute or two, venerating the cross, until the guard rubbed it out and walked away.

That is my faith; the faith that unites and never divides; the faith that bridges unbridgeable gaps in humanity.

You can see how this story moved McCain as it would move anyone. You can see why McCain would use it against the abusers of religion on the Christianist right. But why, under those circumstances, did he not say that this prisoner of war was himself? It could be explained by literary indirectness. But it would have served his purposes far more effectively in the first person, and he had already told the story in his 1999 book. Might it be that McCain knew that these stories had become mashed up, that Salter had enhanced the anecdote, and felt queasy owning the story in his own words? Salter had already exploited McCain’s war record in ways McCain might once have balked at. Could this violation of a sacred moment have pricked his conscience a little too much? Or could including it in a very contentious speech have led him to be more careful about his sourcing?

Jonathan Adler wonders about fewer people calling themselves environmentalists:

Roger Pielke Jr. cites some interesting polling data purporting to show the percentage of Americans considering themselves to be "environmentalists" has declined dramatically over the past 20 years. Today just over 40 percent of respondents answer "yes" to the question “Do you consider yourself an environmentalist or not?”

Does this mean that Americans are less supportive of environmental protection than in the past? I doubt it. One possibility is that an increasing percentage of Americans reject the idea that the environmentalist movement has a monopoly on what it means to be "pro-environment." Americans who support environmental protection may feel uncomfortable with either the tactics or policy prescriptions embraced by establishment environmental groups.

Ross counters Abe Greenwald:

…it takes a strange view of global politics, to put it mildly, to accuse America – a power that’s presently conducting massive counter-insurgency operations in not one but two strife-torn Muslim-majority countries, while patrolling the world’s sea lanes, maintaining garrisons from Western Europe to the Pacific Rim, engaging in delicate counterproliferation efforts in the Middle East and Northeast Asia, and running secret anti-terror missions in God knows how many countries – of lapsing into 1920s-style "isolationism" because it’s unwilling to simultaneously police every border dispute in the Caucuses.