Is blood *really* thicker than water?
The family is watching Sons of Anarchy tonight. One of the characters accused another of not taking care of his family:
“Is that the way you protect blood?”
That got me to thinking. Why does it make a difference whether my children (or other family members) share my DNA? What possible difference does it make whether my offspring and I have common genetic material? (As it turns out, none of the six of them do.)
Fixating on genes strikes me as a particularly primitive fascination. Spouses don’t share your genetic material (at least I hope they don’t). Doesn’t it make far more sense to most highly value those whom you love and love you back? Why wouldn’t one want to protect those with whom one has a close relationship, regardless of the genes involved?
And with the advent of same-sex marriage, the phrase “blood is thicker than water” makes even less sense.
(Warning: Wikipedia entries about movies and television shows are rife with spoilers. Enter at your own risk.)
Thank you so much, Mr. Rickman
Alan Rickman, the superlative actor who played Severus Snape in the Harry Potter stories, wrote a lovely (public) thank-you letter to Ms. Rowling and published it in Empire Magazine:
I’m not an overly enthusiastic Potter fan, particularly because of the last two books; they read as products rushed into print without that crucial final edit.
However, the final point in Rickman’s letter is spot-on.
…and you think *you’ve* had a bad week
Last year Tsutomu Yamagachi died. He was 93.
He was a 28-year-old ship designer for Mitsubishi Heavy Industry at the end of World War II. During a business trip, air raid sirens blew in the city he was visiting. As he had been instructed, he jumped into a ditch to try to avoid the bomb blasts.
Several minutes later the first atomic bomb used in warfare was detonated directly over Hiroshima and 3 kilometers (just short of two miles) from Yamaguchi’s ditch. The blast ruptured his eardrums, and burned him badly.
The next day he managed to return home. He had his burns bandaged and insisted upon immediately returning to work…
…in Nagasaki.
He was also 3 kilometers from the Nagasaki blast but escaped further injury.
“Off we go in our Spaceship of the Imagination.”
“The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights – I don’t know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate. For example, I have spent some time high looking at the work of the Belgian surrealist Yves Tanguey. Some years later, I emerged from a long swim in the Caribbean and sank exhausted onto a beach formed from the erosion of a nearby coral reef. In idly examining the arcuate pastel-colored coral fragments which made up the beach, I saw before me a vast Tanguey painting. Perhaps Tanguey visited such a beach in his childhood.
“A very similar improvement in my appreciation of music has occurred with cannabis. For the first time I have been able to hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint. I have since discovered that professional musicians can quite easily keep many separate parts going simultaneously in their heads, but this was the first time for me. Again, the learning experience when high has at least to some extent carried over when I’m down. The enjoyment of food is amplified; tastes and aromas emerge that for some reason we ordinarily seem to be too busy to notice. I am able to give my full attention to the sensation. A potato will have a texture, a body, and taste like that of other potatoes, but much more so. Cannabis also enhances the enjoyment of sex – on the one hand it gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of image passing before my eyes. The actual duration of orgasm seems to lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of time expansion which comes with cannabis smoking.”
–from Carl Sagan in Marihuana Reconsidered by Lester Grinspoon
The irony-o-meter just pegged and melted
Rick “Frothy Mix” Santorum is now using a campaign motto that goes, “Fighting to make America America again“.
Any of you 20th-century American literature nerds recognize the turn of phrase? (I didn’t until I was reminded of it.) The piece in question starts (emphasis mine):
O, let America be America again–
The land that never has been yet–
For those that responded, “Hey! That’s Langston Hughes‘ ‘Let America be America again‘!”, you’d be right.
The irony is that Hughes was a staunch supporter of labor unions and gay rights; Santorum is neither.
I wonder how the former senator is going to reconcile inspiration derived from an ardent supporter of gay rights (read Hughes’ “Cafe: 3am”, “Waterfront Streets”, and “Joy”) when Santorum has previously compared homosexual acts with bestiality.
(Thanks to Think Progress for the tip.)
104 months
At 8 years and 8 months, Americans can now mark Operation Enduring Freedom as the longest war in which our country has been involved. The war in Afghanistan now beats out the war in Vietnam.
The war in Afghanistan has cost America almost $277 billion and 1000+ military casualties. The parallels between this conflict and the Vietnam war are multitudinous and unsettling:
- Confusing and dangerously restrictive rules of engagement.
- Ineffective pacification (community/social interaction) programs.
- CIA and contractor over-involvement.
- Multiple diplomatic blunders.
- Kleptocratic states propped up by the U.S.
- Vietcong activity kills more civilians than enemy, and the U.S. gets blamed. Taliban kill indiscriminately, and the U.S. gets blamed.
- The Vietcong/Taliban have no “law of armed conflict” restrictions, while the allied coalition invokes the Geneva conventions.
- North Vietnam Army and the Taliban both fund war with dope, and the U.S. doesn’t/can’t control the harvest.
- Border countries become sanctuaries for the bad guys, and the U.S. gets hammered for “Hot pursuit”. (Vietnam–China/Laos/Cambodia; Taliban–Pakistan/Iran).
- Overextension of U.S. forces caused marked rise in family breakups, suicides and mental health issues.
Iraq has cost the U.S. 4200+ deaths and $726 billion. (That’s 3/4 of a trillion dollars, for those numerically-challenged among us.)
The war in Vietnam cost us $686 billion (in 2008 dollars) and 58,267 military deaths (with 1,719 still MIA).
Warning: tearjerker ahead
The Spouse® and I got married on 5/18, and she suggested that we do something which really resonated with me:
Together, we bought a wedding rose.
Lady Emma Hamilton is a David Austin rose, and ours is coming up very nicely.
(taken with my iPhone, whose camera can barely be called one)
It has a strong fruity fragrance (we require our roses to look and smell wonderful), and is supposed to be very hardy. It is blooming quite freely, with dark red buds and beautiful coppery-coral blossoms.
May our marriage bloom and thrive like this beautiful flower.
Boobquake 2010!
The Fiancé© had a brainstorm when we saw Jen’s announcement of Boobquake, so of course we made this modest contribution:
Not to fear about the earthquake we experienced–false alarm.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
One of the commentariat in Professor Myers’s blog Pharyngula mentioned a website called Wallbuilders. Woe be onto that person, for they have drawn that pile of drivel to my attention–and now of course I can’t leave it alone.
From the site:
“Presenting America’s forgotten history and heroes with an emphasis on our moral, religious, and constitutional heritage”
Every time I see the terms “moral” and “religious” in juxtaposition, I break out in hives.
One story on the site is entitled “Understanding Illegitimacy”, which is of couse is a misnomer. Bastardy is an antiquated concept that was fostered by the religious powers-that-be to try to keep the faithful (married) “legitimate” and the unfaithful (unmarried) not.
The link takes you to a National Review article by Robert Rector (a golden boy of the Heritage Foundation) that goes on at some length about how marriage and education are the dividing lines delineating a “two-caste system in America”. Among other oddities is
“The disappearance of marriage in low-income communities is the predominant cause of child poverty in the U.S. today. If poor single mothers were married to the fathers of their children, two-thirds of them would not be poor.”
Now if that statement was meant to be an Aristotelian syllogism, it’s fallacious.
One poor human + one poor human + one or more poor children != a not-poor family
Not even in New Math.
Also from Rector:
Most liberal academics regard marriage as an outdated, socially backward institution; they have shed no tears over its demise.
All very interesting, but the attitudes of liberal academics have little or no bearing on what goes on in culture. People aren’t getting married because the people involved choose not to (for better or worse).
Marriage will be around as long as humans are social, but what most conservatives ignore is the fact that “marriage” and “religion” in western culture became synonymous only with the advent of Christianity. Christianity loves the “we’re saved and you’re damned” game, and marriage is just one more of them.
Fable, revisited
This story is one I’ve used before to illustrate a point. The point is relevant again.
~~~
Once upon a time, Horse had an enemy: Wolf.
Wolf could not run as fast as Horse, but Wolf was far craftier. Horse was prey to Wolf’s predation when it came to Horse trying to protect Colt.
Man also had Wolf for an enemy. Man could not outrun Wolf, but Man had Fire and (more importantly) Man had Weapon. The long stick with a spearhead on the end could be deadly to Wolf.
One day Horse came to Man and said, “Man! I fear you as I fear almost everything. However, we have a common enemy. I will allow you to use my superior speed if you will use your Weapon and vanquish Wolf, to the betterment of all.”
Man agreed. Man jumped upon Horse’s back. Together, Horse’s speed and Man’s weapon vanquished Wolf and made everyone safer.
When they were done, Horse neighed in triumph. “We have done it, Man! We have defeated our enemy. Now we will both live in peace, and our tribes can expand safely.
“You may now get off me and march triumphantly to your tribe with the good news.”
Man grabbed Horse’s mane and said, “The hell you say, Dobbin. I’m riding in comfort. Giddyup!”
The moral: when you want to use someone for your own gain, you must accept the costs of doing so. (Stealing from them is a bad thing.)
China needs to wake up and realize that America (this time in the guise of Google) has been exporting culture and values to other countries for centuries. If a given country wants the advantages of America (technology and trade, for two), they are going to get American culture whether they want it or not.
*Now* the truth comes out
I’ve wondered why the Trophy Fiancé® wants me to go to the gym, and until now I just assumed that it was over concern for my health and fitness, both of which could be better.
But now I *know* why she wants me to go.
Who’da thunk it? Religiosity implies racism
A meta-study of 55 independent studies has shown that there is a proportional relationship between the level of religiosity within a community in the U.S. and the level of racism within that community.
From the abstract (the full paper is available here):
- Other races might be treated as out-groups because religion is practiced largely within race, because training in a religious in-group identity promotes general ethnocentrism, and because different others appear to be in competition for resources.
- Religious racism is tied to basic life values of social conformity and respect for tradition. In support, individuals who were religious for reasons of conformity and tradition expressed racism that declined in recent years with the decreased societal acceptance of overt racial discrimination.
- The authors failed to find that racial tolerance arises from humanitarian values, consistent with the idea that religious humanitarianism is largely expressed to in-group members.
This one ought to raise a few eyebrows:
- Only religious agnostics were racially tolerant.
Definite proof that God supports gay marriage
Hawaii allows gay people to get married.
Hawaii dodged a potentially disasterous tsunami from this morning’s 8.8 earthquake off the Chilean coast.
Therefore, God supports gay marriage.
Right?
