Dr. Metablog

Zeus: the Apology

If I've offended anyone, I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to; I have tremendous respect for pretty and desirable women. 10s, all of them. So let me just start by saying that many years ago, decades or centuries I can't remember exactly when, I had a thunderous crush on Io. She claims that she signaled me that she wasn't interested, but I did not stop. You know, when you're a god, they let you do it. You can do anything. It was probably a mistake to have turned her into a heifer but I think she enjoyed it then -- even if she complains about it now. Same thing with Leda; it's possible that I misinterpreted her but I honestly thought that her "no" meant "maybe" or "yes," so I turned myself into a swan and grabbed her by the pussy. Maybe I should have backed off, especially since she had already spent that same night with her husband Tyndareus, who had, as everyone knows, very small hands, if you know what I mean. It's good to be a god. And then there was Semele. I mean, she was one of my very own priestesses, and I realize now that your own priestesses ought to be off limits. But she provoked me by bathing nude in the river Asopus. And I happened to be flying by in the shape of an eagle. What happened, happened. It was definitely wrong of her to ask to look at me face to face and I regret that I incinerated her, but it wasn't my fault. Europa was also an error, but she should have known better than to come near to me when I'm in the shape of a white bull. And the same with Taygete who came to me as a doe with golden horns. I couldn't stop myself. I've always had a thing for golden horns, though I think Pindar made a bit too much of it. And then there was Dia, who happened by, so she says, when I was in the shape of a stallion. What can you expect of a stallion? Alcmene, that's another story. She was tall and beautiful, with eyes that reminded me of Aphrodite. I definitely wanted her. I had to disguise myself as her husband Amphitryon to make love to her. Maybe it was wrong to do so, but I don't think she ever figured out what actually happened, which kind of excuses me. And then there was my adventure with Antiope, where I disguised myself as a satyr; and once you're a satyr well, you know, a satyr does what a satyr does. To seduce Callisto, I had to transform myself into Artemis, which sounds a little like girl-on-girl action, but it really wasn't because it was me. Come to think of it, I can't remember exactly how we did it. And also: I blame Acrisius for shutting up his daughter Danae in a bronze tower. I took it as a deliberate provocation. I had to sneak through an air vent to impregnate Danae in the form of a shower of golden rain, which, I have to tell you, wasn't entirely satisfying and just a little bit kinky.

But what can I say?  I don't want to play the victim, because, after all, I am a god, but I had a hard childhood, what with my father castrating my grandfather and then me being suckled by the goat Amalthea. You get off to a bad start when you're suckled by a goat. 

Why I Am So Damned Pissed at Charles Grassley

Inasmuch "on horror's head horrors accumulate" every single Trump day, I wonder why an atrocity out of the mouth of Senator Charles Grassley (of once progressive Iowa) pisses me off to the top of my bent. Over the top, actually, even though he's probably no worse than the others. 

In an aha!! moment with the Des Moines Register, Senator Grassley defended his vote against the inheritance tax thusly: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it's on booze or women or movies."  His very words. Out of his own ignorant head.

Why am I so enraged? Let us count the ways.

First, it goes without saying that Grassley doesn't know that most ordinary citizens have a hard time making ends meet. That they raid the kids' piggy-bank at the end of every month. That they regularly postpone filling that prescription or repairing the car until next month's paycheck arrives. That they can't invest in stocks because they're busy "investing" in bananas and oatmeal and potatoes, not because they're frittering their money away on playthings. Grassley is completely out of touch with reality -- with the way real people live.

But it's worse than that. It's not only that he's unconnected to his constituents  --  he oozes contempt for them (and therefore for me). Wasting their money on movies, the poor ignorant slobs. If they had self-control and brains of Chuck Grassley quality, why they'd go out and buy a couple of hundred shares of a good growth stock and contribute to the American economy. He's worse than Marie Antoinette, who, bad as she was, never said, "let them buy stocks."

And therefore it follows in the universe of Grassley values that the tax system should penalize the improvident and reward the rich. (Which it already does in myriad ways, most obviously by taxing unearned income -- e.g. capital growth -- at half the rate of sweat labor). 

And in Chuck Grassley's view, to reward the rich and penalize the poor is the higher morality -- because  the rich will invest and the poor will do nothing but spend every darn penny.  To those who have much shall be given, even if they don't need or want it.

And while I'm stoking my indignation, let me add that I'm offended by the Chuckster's sanctimonious "darn" -- he can thieve from the working class but he's too prissy to swear while doing so. And I'm also just slightly off my gourd that he includes "women" among the vices of regular Iowans -- as though (if I understand his point) all money is earned and spent by "men." I think that the dumb Chuck slipped -- let down his guard for a second -- and revealed that in his heart he doesn't acknowledge that women are wage-earners nor that they are wage-earners who vote. 

And I am also pissed because the whole argument against the estate tax is fraudulent. The case for repeal has nothing to do with small farmers or small businessmen. It already excludes the first $11,000,000 of estates and therefore affects only a very small number of multimillionaires and billionaires who can well afford to contribute a bit to the general welfare. The sole purpose, and the intended effect of the repeal, is to satisfy the greed of a handful or plutocrats who want to pass their wealth to their heirs and therefore maintain a perpetual class of wealthy aristocrats. Just like France before the revolution, when the titled were exempted from taxation. Chuck -- do  your realize that your sentiments are profoundly unAmerican.  

So let me say to Senator Charles Grassley, with respect for the high office that you hold and with as much love as I can muster, Chuck, you are a moron, and you can take your insulting opinions, roll them up, and stick them where the sun don't shine. 

Representative Markwayne Mullin Back in the News

Four years ago, I listened to a radio interview with Markwayne Mullin, a new member of the House of Representatives from eastern Oklahoma, and was absolutely flabbergasted. Astonished and dismayed, I wrote a few paragraphs about him. Here''s what I said then: "It wasn't that he was inarticulate or stupid. It was that he was so utterly smug, so absolutely and entirely certain of himself. He has no doubts. He knows exactly what ails the country -- too much government -- and he knows how to fix it -- lower taxes, less regulation, more free untrammeled capitalism. He does not seem to be aware that the United States of America is a big, complicated, multi-faceted country. Markwayne Mullin possesses all the arrogance of ignorance, in spades."

And here he is, Representative Markwayne Mullin, smiling in front of the mandatory flag.  

I went on to report on Mullin's views, which were the usual list of utterly unoriginal, thoughtless, simplistic tea party talking points. I concluded by offering the hope (or might I say it) the prayer, which was "that Markwayne Mullin, who as he begins his congressional career is superficial to the very core of his being, will come to Washington, meet some folks from different parts of the country and from different ethnic backgrounds, learn a little about the world, come to an appreciation of the complexity of things, and grow up to be a useful broad-minded compassionate public servant. It's not impossible, but it's not going to happen until Mullin realizes that he doesn't know everything about everything, and that the practices that made Mullin Plumbing such a success may not be the same practices that will promote the general welfare over all of the US of A. I'm hopeful, but frankly, I'm not at all optimistic."

Well, the calendar has shed a few leaves, and it's come to pass as I feared. Representative Markwayne Mullin has no more brain than earwax. He's learned nothing.

He's back in the news: 

"An Oklahoma congressman is facing scrutiny after a video posted Monday showed him telling constituents at a town hall that they do not pay his salary.

“You say you pay for me to do this? That’s bull crap. I pay for myself,” Rep. Markwayne Mullin told constituents at a town hall in Jay, Oklahoma. "I paid enough taxes before I got here and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go.”

“Pays you to go where?” a constituent objected.

“This is a service for me, not a career, and I thank God this is not how I make my living,” Mullin responded.

“Oh please, then don’t run,” a constituent said."

As I understand the exchange, Mr. Mullin believes that inasmuch as the taxes that he paid before he became a congressman exceeds the salary he now draws, that he has limited or no responsibility to his constituents. Not at all a persuasive argument, because like the rest of us, Mullin's taxes go to the defense department and to HEW with a few dribs and drabs left over for social programs and only a trickle for paying for the House of Representatives

But that's not the heart of the matter. The important question is this:  why the heck is Mullin in congress? Obviously, he hates the job and and even more obviously he hates his constituents. He has no respect for government.

Perhaps it's time for Mr. Mullin to reconsider his career. What everyone wants in a representative is someone who will inform himself, be sensible, broad-minded, be able to work with all parties, and be respectful of his constituents. Mr. Mullin fails on all counts. Let's assume he's a good plumber. Look, Oklahoma needs  good plumbers. Please, Mr. Mullin. Do the work you were called to. Markwayne, go back to where you came from, fix those pipes, and stay away from government. Please, don't run again. You've done your bit; let someone else take a crack at it.  

And Now He's Come out of his Coffin to Advise Trump!!

I wrote the following long ago, republished it once. Here it is, relevant again.

What Doesn't Dick Cheney Commit Suicide?

Why doesn't Dick Cheney put a bullet in his brain? It would do him (and his reputation) a world of good. What could possibly stand in his way? Once he sprinkles the ratsbane on his porridge -- and, of course, leaves behind a detailed and humble letter of apology --  he will begin to free his soul of sin and to enjoy some peace of mind. When he has fallen on his sword, his lackeys and toadies will be able to claim that although he was a black-hearted knave, at least he wasn't a shameless black-hearted knave. They can try to persuade us that although he was egregiously and dangerously wrong, he was, like another suicide, Othello, "great of heart." But if Cheney continues in his surly, obstinate, unapologetic lip-curling silence -- why then, he'll go down in the books as an unrepentant demi-devil like Iago ("From this time forth I never will speak word"). 

Cheney has brought disgrace upon our beloved nation and upon himself. Using faked spy data, he suckered the ignorant, feckless Decider and almost the entire Congress into invading Iraq. His war has been a monumental disaster. "Full of scorpions [should be] his brain." At this moment of writing, Cheney is guilty of killing 3260 American soldiers and maiming (by official count -- who can possibly guess at the truth?) 24,314 others. If Cheney has even the most rudimentary of consciences, on it lies the heavy burden of 60,000 to 100,000 Iraqi souls. The Dickster has cost America $414 billion dollars, loss of prestige and the squandering of oceans of good will. Like Anthony, he "has lived in such dishonor/That the gods detest [his] baseness." But Antony took the proper course. When Cheney dispatches himself -- "after the high Roman fashion," let's hope -- he'll have taken the first step toward rehabilitating himself and the nation. For him not to do the deed would be ignoble. 

Dick:  I know that you're hunkering in your bomb-proof shelter. I know that you're up late at night, sleepless with guilt. You're cruising the internet, perchance googling "Cheney + suicide," and you're wavering in your purpose. Dick -- take my considered advice. I'm thinking of your place in history.  At this point, "you have no friend,/ But resolution and the briefest end."  You'll immediately feel better. It's a no-brainer. Go for it.

April 10.  Spike Schapiro comments:  "Dr. M. -- I've read your exhortation to suicide. You are, as usual, falsely optimistic. Cheney can't off himself because a) he's shameless and b) he's a total coward, and c) he has no self-knowledge and d) he can't point a shotgun. You cite the precedents of Othello and Anthony but they're both great spirits and therefore irrelevant. Cheney is a slug. Moreover, Cheney can't be "great of heart" -- he has no heart of his own --it's either a transplant or some mechanical contraption." 

April 4, 2014  Why is this man still alive?  Allowed to give interviews?  Is there no justice in our sublunary world? 

December 22, 2016  Only a silver stake in his heart is going to do it. Mirrors, garlic. Too late for prayers.

Pussygate

A textbook example of the unthinkable actually happening:

"It's good to be the king," says Mel Brooks (as Louis XVI) in The History of the World, Part I, lifting the skirt of one of his lovely courtieresses in order to dry-hump her. It's make-believe Hollywood pseudo-licentiousness. It's outrageous, beyond the pale, and hilarious as long as it stays in the movie.

"It's good to be star," says Trump, bragging about his license to kiss women and grab them by their "pussies."

What in comedy is amusing is in real life simply grotesque -- as is the perpetrator of the atrocity, the maniacal Republican candidate for the most powerful office on earth.  

Elsa Morante on Mussolini

Elsa Morante, the distinguished Italian novelist, spent the war years in what might be called internal exile, holed up, hungry, with her friend and later husband Alberto Moravia in a one-room hut in Sant'Agata (both Morante and Moravia were half Jewish). After Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were arrested and shot, hung upside down for all to see, Morante wrote about her countrymen that "all of Mussolini's faults were either tolerated or encouraged and applauded. Thus a people who tolerate the faults of their head of state are complicit with these faults. But if they encourage and applaud them as well, it is worse than being an accomplice, it makes them an accessory to these faults." Mussolini was, according to Morante, a mediocre man, a crude man, a man outside the culture. But Mussolini was also a perfect exemplar of the Italian people who, she claimed, were such that they would rather given their vote to a strong man than to a just man, and if they had to choose between their duty and their profit -- even if they knew what their duty was -- they would choose their profit.

It is difficult not to see an analogy to our beloved country at this election season.

At the Getty Museum

Dr. M.  "How long have you been a guard here?"

Guard:  "Seventeen years. You can't stand still. You have to change your position, move around." 

Dr. M.  "Has anything ever happened. Someone try to steal a painting?

Guard.  "No nothing. Nothing has ever happened."

Dr. M.  "No one descending on ropes from the ceiling, trying to snatch a sculpture."

Guard.  "Nothing has ever happened. Wait, I forgot. Something did happen. Two or three years ago, there was a woman, she had a can of soda in her bag. She leaned over to look at one of the bronze sculptures, and the soda fell out of her bag. It broke and sprayed some soda on the statue. They called a special crew in to clean the sculpture. We closed down the entire wing."

Dr. M.  "Must have been exciting."

Guard.  "No, not really."

Predictions -- 2016

As is well known, Vivian de St. Vrain, fully accredited prophet (Senior Fellow, American Society of Prophecy), has an unparalleled record of accurate prognostication.  Vivian has once again retreated to the mountaintop and has returned with a new set of predictions for the coming year.

Read and be dazzled, fit audience though few. Here's what's going to happen!

1)   there will be unusual weather patterns in North America;

2)  a famous Hollywood actress will sue for divorce;  moreover, another (or possibly the same) Hollywood star will become pregnant; another (or possibly the same) actress will gain and lose a great deal of weight; 

3)  a well-known American or possibly European athlete will be accused of taking drugs;

4)  a politician will be accused of taking bribes;  

5)  questions will be raised about the safety of America's food supply;

6)  there will be either a monsoon, an airplane crash, or a capsized ferry in Asia;

7)  there will be fluctuations in the stock market;

8)  there will be turmoil in the Middle East.

9)  a religious leader will be involved in either a financial or a sex scandal.  Or perhaps both.

You read it here first. Loyal readers: check back at the end of 2016.  Let's see whether a senior but world-class professional prophet still has enough left in the tank to foretell the future one more time. 

Welders Versus Philosophers

I asked some friends how they understood Senator Marco Rubio's very blunt statement that "Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers."  I received a variety of answers.

My linguistically conservative friends asserted that we obviously need grammarians more than either philosophers or welders, because Rubio doesn't respect the difference between "less" and "fewer." I admit that "less philosophers" clanks on my sensitive inner ear; nevertheless, I don't think that it's wise to hold presidential candidates to high standards of usage. It would be enough for them to grasp the issues. No one I know is so very prescriptivist that he or she will vote for the candidate who knows the difference between less and fewer. I confess to a longing for a more perfect language from our leadership, but traditional  grammar is too much to ask, especially since it's evident that our electorate easily acclimated to the barbarisms of bushlingo.     

Others of my friends took issue with Rubio's unabashed materialism. They parsed his statement to mean "welders make more money than philosophers and therefore we should have more welders than philosophers." Welding is better than philosophizing because it makes the bucks, gathers the green. If this is what Rubio meant, then his argument is not only crass but wrong. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics proves that both graduates with a philosophy degree and professional philosophers (meaning professors of philosophy) enjoy much larger salaries on average than welders. But even if welders did outearn philosophers, Rubio's argument would still be monumentally vulgar. I don't know anyone who, if push came to shove, assigns value strictly on the basis of earnings. Do we not value men of the cloth, social workers, nurses, small farmers, G.I's, smoke-jumpers and sometimes teachers more than we value pornstars and slumlords? Einsteins more than reality TV celebrities? And as much as we respect the crafts -- electricians, plumbers, tractor and auto mechanics -- we also know that it is not the craftsmen but the philosophers who now as in the past are going to help us think our way out of our plight. Just as Locke and Hume got us out of Aristotle and the Bible and into the age of reason, and Darwin laid the foundation for all the advances of the last hundred and fifty years in biology and medicine, so we now need someone, desperately, equipped with deep learning and an insightful brain, to generate the ideas that will get the new messy electronic world, bedeviled with fundamentalists/terrorists, into some kind of intellectual order. Welders are good, especially when you want something fastened to a steel I-beam, but philosophers have their place as well. Rubio is just too downright short-sighted for most of us. We know that money ain't everything and we want our statesmen to know it as well. Rubio's assertion that welders do more valuable work than thinkers participates in bottom-line American anti-intellectualism. We're a can-do practical people; we can see what welders do. Who knows what the heck those airy liberal philosophers do at those lefty universities? Can they fix a fuse? Can they meet a payroll?

Another bunch of my friends objected that there's no reason why a person can't be both a welder and a philosopher. Why set limits on human versatility?  As it happens, I have in my own family a fellow who makes his living with his brain but who also builds his own furniture, can wire a house, and has, strange but true, taken up welding. But I think he'd be the first to admit that he's not a pro at any of these crafts. We live in a world of specialists and it's hard to be perfectly skilled at two crafts, let alone a craft plus metaphysics or epistemology or logic. I understand the longing for the philosopher-welder, but I don't think it's a realistic wish. It's utopian, prelapsarian, perhaps even Marxist. After all, it was Marx who developed the vision of post-capitalist communist society "where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, [where] society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, philosophize after dinner, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or philosopher" (German Ideology [1845]). This is Marx at his least practical. I suspect that his hunters and fishermen would return empty-handed, his herdsman would find that his cows never come home, and his part-time philosophers would boggle over some elementary error in logic or language. So no dice to the philosopher-welder, I'm afraid. Not a starter, Karl.

What I myself would want to ask Rubio is this: how does it happen that there are not enough welders?  Rubio puts his faith in the perfect workings of the free market. In theory, the market should have solved the problem of the missing welders by raising their salaries to make the job more enticing. And similarly, it should have lowered the wages of philosophers to dry up the supply. Wait a sec!!  Is it possible that the free capitalist market is not doing its job. And if I or Marco Rubio propose that we establish more community colleges and offer potential welders training in their craft at little or no cost, are we not interfering with the proper working of capitalism and the free market? Picking winners and losers, in the dread phrase.  t's centralized planning, almost socialism to do so-- certainly anathema to the wing of the party to which Rubio belongs. Riddle me that.

Bottom line:  it's helpful for Rubio to advocate for more welders. It's not helpful (nor a credit to his candidacy) to set up a false antagonism between welders and philosophers. Below the bottom line:  a democratic electorate need thoughtful voters (let us call them philosophers). Welders need to be philosopher-enough that they don't let themselves be snookered by some demagogue who himself is bookless and factless and history-less. It's a challenge to identify a thoughtful candidate when one of our major parties is offering a full slate of empty but noisy barrels.

Liberal Water on Mars??

Egregious Rush Limbaugh, who ranks number three on my list of the people who, in the course of my lifetime, have done the most damage to the United States of America (Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia are one and two and Dick Nixon only slithers in at number 6) speaks a language that is extraordinarily difficult to parse. His sentences are shapeless, wayward, and undiagrammable, equally indifferent to the conventions of language and the rules of logic. When you're fact-free there's no compelling reason not to be grammar-free as well. 

Now there's a new and appalling example of Limbaugh's resistance to reality. NASA recently announced that the planet Mars must once have had flowing water and might still have underground water. Limbaugh, if I read his tangled language aright, not only rejects the discovery but claims that water on Mars is evidence a "left-wing agenda"  at work. Wow, we are tempted to exclaim. Double wow. Paranoia run amok. 

How can Limbaugh present such a counter-factual notion with a straight face?  In order to coherently present his "thoughts" on this subject, I will now extract and re-assemble some of his phrases from the linguistic rats' nest in which they are embedded. Here's his chain of "thought" reduced to its essence. First of all, global warming is a myth. Secondly, NASA has been "corrupted by the current regime" and has falsified climate data. Inasmuch as NASA is a mendacious organization, its discoveries about flowing water must therefore also be false. And because NASA is subject to a leftist regime, its claims must be not only false but "a technique to advance the leftist agenda." A watery Mars is therefore a "leftist' Mars. And so the circle is almost complete. Limbaugh knows he's correct but hasn't quite figured out how it all works:  "I don't know what it is, I would assume it would be something to do with global warming."  So round and round we go. 

While Limbaugh's logic is roundabout, his perspective cramped and his evidence, how shall I say, perhaps a bit on the skimpy side -- all assertion and no fact --  I feel that I must agree with his conclusion. Yes indeed, the discovery of ancient flowing water on Mars is definitely "leftist"-- and is leftist in at least two different ways.

Let us try to connect the subterranean dots inside the Limbaughian skull. What is it that is so paranoia-inducing and threatening about Martian water? Well, water on Mars might indicate life on Mars. If there is life on Mars, then there might be life elsewhere in the universe. If life elsewhere in the universe, then the creation story in Genesis is certainly incomplete and probably false. No creation myth, no biblical absolutism. Moreover, if there is life elsewhere, there are probably intelligent beings who are highly likely not to worship our earthly gods and are probably not -- horror of horrors --  subscribe to Baptist fundamentalism. Water on Mars therefore challenges his local and provincial Truth. Limbaugh is therefore correct to see Martian water as 'leftist" in its implications.

Watery Mars is yet another blow to conservative "thought." It's just like evolution or the big bang -- in actuality like any truth that comes to be discovered either by hard science or social science or by the unbiased study of history. Truth and fact are anathema to radical conservative Limbaughians. Of course they are repelled and confused by scientific discoveries.  Martian water is still another manifestation of the continual drip drip drip of facts that challenge their provincial world view and animate their paranoia. 

Little Old Ladies

I know that I'm not the only person in the world who's prone to snap judgments and easy stereotyping.  I say this in apology, because yesterday I was guilty of a spectacular misjudgement, a wildly incorrect speculation.  It's time to kneel on ground glass, to scourge myself (metaphorically speaking).

One of the attendees of a support group that I attend is a "little old lady." Elderly, gray in complexion and attire. Wizened, juiceless. She looks as though nothing of any moment happened to her in all her eighty or eighty-five years.

Her husband, Steve, died last week. Here's the piece of her story that she revealed. 

"I was Steve's third and fifth wife. He was an airline pilot, so we traveled together all over the world.  Steve had two children by his first wife; I had five children by my first husband. I had so many babies because they started to come in pairs. At his funeral I played some of the Bach preludes."

You, gentle imaginative readers, can fill in the blanks. There are many, several novelsworth, in fact, starting with the obvious question, "who was wife number four; tell me about her?"

On the Mall

On the mall, smoking, wheels (i.e. bicycles and skateboards), and pets are prohibited. Between forty and fifty signs and icons state the case very clearly. Nevertheless, the rules are often flouted.

Smokers are furtive: they can't help themselves even though they show, by their demeanor, that they are well aware that they're doing wrong. The bicyclists are apologetic. Skateboarders are oblivious, totally. The dog-owners are defiant. "No bureaucrat is going to tell me where I can walk my dog." The beggars are entitled. This morning, one disheveled youth carried a sign that read "Why lie?  I need to get fucked up." (I used occasionally to donate to our "homeless" until I was taught that meals are readily available and that the begged money goes to support alcohol and drug habits. Also I was taken aback when a man to whom I gave two quarters returned them to me, saying, "I don't take coins".)  Some of the buskers are fine musicians and earn their one or five dollar bill but I think that there is something rather sad about their forced cheer.

On the other hand, the strolling young folks, holding hands and radiantly in love, are wonderful to behold, especially when there's a toddler or two trailing them. And I also enjoy watching the strolling old folks, fifty or more years into marriage, sometimes holding hands, sometimes wheelchairing it. Dyads of all ages and kinds cheer and encourage me.

Why Don't Chimpanzees Suffer from Alzheimer's?

Why Indeed?  And also, while we're considering the question, why don't chimpanzees get atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, endometriosis, myocardial infarction, falciparum malaria, HIV infection, or epithelial cancers?  Chimpanzees are, after all, our closest living relatives. We share a common ancestry and we only embarked on separate path some six or seven million years ago --a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. Why is it that we human beings, so superior, as we like to think, in so many ways from our cousins -- in our big brains and delicate hand manipulations, for example -- are subject to an array of diseases to which our inferior relations are immune. What's the deal? 

Here's the current thinking on this important problem (which I draw from Eugene E. Harris's informative and up-to-date monograph Ancestors in our Genome [Oxford, 1914]). As I understand it, human beings went through a sort of bottleneck sometime in our recent (say 200,000 years ago) history and our effective breeding population was reduced to a mere 10,000 or so souls. When a population becomes so small, random genetic drift dominates over natural selection, and so moderately deleterious but not incapacitating mutations can survive and even thrive. The defective genes that would be weeded out in larger populations persist in our genome. Hence our many inherited susceptibilities and disorders.

But that's not the end of the story.  Yesterday there was a report that the Ashkenazim went through "a severe bottleneck" six or eight hundred years ago which reduced its population to about 350 individuals. O my, what a boon to genetic drift, what a recipe for genetic disaster or genetic success, or more exactly, both success and failure simultaneously. 

And so our talents, our deficits, our strengths and weakness, our brains and our bodies, are determined by arbitrary aleatory long-ago events. No surprise, really, but another event in the continuously unfolding revelation.

Henotheism

As a born-and-bred third-generation atheist, I never made much of an effort to understand theology, which is, I gather, the study of the nature and attributes of god or gods. But no god, nothing to study. No problem. Theology will always be for me "the subject without an object." And therefore when I read Michael Coogan's The Ten Commandments  (Yale, 2014), I was surprised by own ignorance. For example, I had taken it for granted that the Bible was a document of monotheism. No god but god, Jahweh. And also  that the monotheism of the ancient Hebrews was their gift to civilization (though why to believe in one god was a better idea than to believe in a plethora of godlings will always remain a mystery to me). But Coogan makes it clear that I've gotten it all wrong. The commandment "you shall have no other gods before my face" distinctly postulates the existence of "other gods."

These other gods appear in the Bible in a number of guises and particularly as '"the host of heaven." Some were apparently worshipped even in the Temple itself. It is reported in Kings that the reformer Josiah ordered "all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven" be removed from the sacred precincts. The ancient Hebrews were therefore not monotheists, but henotheists (a lovely word new to me), which Coogan defines as "the recognition that while other gods may and do exist, only one is to be worshipped" (14). 

So it seems that what has been represented to naive ol' me as a case of moral development, from polytheism to monotheism, is better understood as a kind of religious nationalism or jingoism: our god is better than your god -- so let's everyone pay him exclusive attention. Or perhaps, more vulgarly but just as accurately, in the words of the spiritual leader Hank Williams, move over little god, big god moving in -- have I quoted this exactly right? -- just as Jahweh moved in on El Shaddai and the rest of the crowd. One of my friends says that the essence of organized religion is "my prince of peace can beat up your prince of peace."

The Return of the Prophet

Vivian de St. Vrain, fully accredited prophet (Senior Fellow, American Society of Prophecy), has retreated to the mountaintop and has returned with predictions for 2015. Here they are: 

1)   there will be unusual weather patterns in North America;

2)  a famous Hollywood actress will sue for divorce;  moreover, another (or possibly the same) Hollywood star will become pregnant; another (or possibly the same) actress will gain and lose a great deal of weight; 

3)  a well-known American or possibly European athlete will be accused of taking drugs;

4)  a politician will be accused of taking bribes;  

5)  questions will be raised about the safety of America's food supply;

6)  there will be either a monsoon, an airplane crash, or a capsized ferry in Asia;

7)  there will be fluctuations in the stock market;

8)  there will be turmoil in the Middle East.

9)  a religious leader will be involved in either a financial or a sex scandal.  Or perhaps both.

You read it here first. Loyal readers: check back at the end of 2015.  Let's see whether a senior but world-class professional prophet still has enough on the ball (a crystal ball) to foretell the future one more time.

Unfriendly Skies

I bought a February airline ticket to The Big Easy. I bought it online, as we all do nowadays (whatever happened to travel agents?) I figured that they would try to squeeze a few dollars in extra charges out of me, but I  was surprised that the airline had the balls to demand $25.00 for my one piece of carry-on luggage (not checked -- carry on!). And then I was completely floored to discover that Frontier now adds an extra charge for a seat. Yes, a seat! A seat is an additional charge, even though an airplane is not like a subway, where you can strap-hang. Nor can you sit outside, on the wing. A seat is not a an option or, goodness gracious! a luxury. And yet Frontier now exacts a few bucks for the privilege of sitting down.

Frontier, I can tell you, lacks any sense of irony.

"Would you like air with your seat. There will be a small extra charge for breathing."

I know we're supposed to feel sorry for the struggling airlines, but that's a myth, a canard. The airlines are not starving. thank you very much. The International Air Transport Association, the airlines' trade group, estimates that the industry's profits were $11 billion in 2013, will be $19.9 billion this year and will rise to $25 billion next year. (Billion!, not million.)  Why so much? Because fuel costs continue to drop. And also because we passengers have become accustomed to being crammed into smaller and smaller spaces and have been taught to pay extra for every glass of orange juice. And to enjoy the luxury of a chair.

Hey, fellow passengers!  Remember when oil prices spiked a few years ago and the airlines added "fuel surcharges"? Well, fuel is down. Raise your hand if you think you're going to get a "fuel rebate." Let me count the hands. Hmm. Not so many.

Where do you think the $25 billion in profits will go. I'll give you three guesses. A) Increase the salaries of stewards, baggage handlers and other airport workers?  B. Lower the cost of airline travel for passengers in the economy (i.e. steerage) classes?  C. Improve amenities for first-class travelers?

Shock!!  The correct answer is C. According to The New York Times, improvements in service "have been directed at the airlines’ most lucrative passengers, who are flying in business class or paying for full-fare coach seats. Delta Air Lines, for instance, announced on Monday that it renamed its business section Delta One, instead of BusinessFirst, and said it would glorify the seats with brand-new quilted covers. American Airlines announced this week that it would spend $2 billion to improve customer experience at the airport and inside its planes. Part of that investment includes adding more lie-flat seats for business class passengers.

For the rich: "lie-flat seats," and "quilted seat covers." And what is American Airlines doing for the rest of us, the not-rich. "In the back of the plane, it introduced a class of fares called Basic Economy, the cheapest fares. Passengers with those tickets, though, will not be able to book their seats in advance and will not be able to refund or change those tickets."

It's still another example of the way the good ol' USA is becoming more and more a class-ridden society. Billions for the few, sub-minimum wage for the many. I wonder why the airlines don't go whole hog and separate passengers not by front and back of the plane, but by plane itself. Class I planes -- all sleek and shiny with free champagne supper and lie-flat quilted seats, and Class II planes -- no seats at all, just a few square feet on the corrugated metal floor. For only a few extra dollars, you will be able to reserve your very own couple of square feet. Do you think I'm imagining some sort of wild dystopian future? I don't think so. The way things are going, it's an inevitability. 

Written in 2007, but as True Now as Then

Why doesn't Dick Cheney put a bullet in his brain? It would do him (and his reputation) a world of good.  What could possibly stand in his way? Once he sprinkles the ratsbane on his porridge -- and, of course, leaves behind a detailed and humble letter of apology --  he will begin to free his soul of sin and to enjoy some peace of mind. When he has fallen on his sword, his lackeys and toadies will be able to claim that although he was a black-hearted knave, at least he wasn't a shameless black-hearted knave. They can try to persuade us that although he was egregiously and dangerously wrong, he was, like another suicide, Othello, "great of heart."  But if Cheney continues in his surly, obstinate, unapologetic lip-curling silence -- why then, he'll go down in the books as an unrepentant demi-devil like Iago ("From this time forth I never will speak word"). 

Cheney has brought disgrace upon our beloved nation and upon himself. Using faked spy data, he suckered the ignorant, feckless Decider and almost the entire Congress into invading Iraq. His war has been a monumental disaster. "Full of scorpions [should be] his brain." At this moment of writing, Cheney is guilty of killing 3260 American soldiers and maiming (by official count -- who can possibly guess at the truth?) 24,314 others. If Cheney has even the most rudimentary of consciences, on it lays the heavy burden of 60,000 to 100,000 Iraqi souls. The Dickster has cost America $414 billion dollars, loss of prestige and the squandering of oceans of good will. Like Anthony, he "has lived in such dishonor/That the gods detest [his] baseness."  But Antony took the proper course. When Cheney dispatches himself -- "after the high Roman fashion," let's hope -- he'll have taken the first step toward rehabilitating himself and the nation. For him not to do the deed would be ignoble. 

Dick:  I know that you're hunkering in your bomb-proof shelter.  I know that you're up late at night, sleepless with guilt. You're cruising the internet, perchance googling "Cheney + suicide," and you're wavering in your purpose. Dick -- take my considered advice. I'm thinking of your place in history.  At this point, "you have no friend,/ But resolution and the briefest end."  You'll immediately feel better.  It's a no-brainer. Go for it.

April 10.  Spike Schapiro comments:  "Dr. M. -- I've read your exhortation to suicide.  You are, as usual, falsely optimistic. Cheney can't off himself because a) he's shameless and b) he's a total coward, and c) he has no self-knowledge and d) he can't point a shotgun.  You cite the precedents of Othello and Anthony but they're both great spirits and therefore irrelevant.  Cheney is a slug. Moreover, Cheney can't be "great of heart" -- he has no heart of his own --either a transplant or some mechanical contraption." 

April 4, 2014  Why is this man still alive?  Allowed to give interviews?  Is there no justice in our sublunary world? 

Last Words

A friend of a friend, dying, was asked by the hospice nurse, "Are you afraid?"  He replied, "Only of Republicans."

Post-Friendly Skies (reposted)

It had been a while since I last flew Frontier --the airline with the cute furry anthropomorphic talking mammals on their tails. There have been changes -- all of them for the worse. There's now an extra charge for each piece of luggage. Those free meals are a thing of the remote past.  So are the days when you would get the entire can of ginger ale or tomato juice. It's now a splash of juice in a cup of ice. No free TV -- you swipe your card, they swipe your cash. The seats are smaller, too. More rows, less leg room.  Wasn't there a time when air travel was glamorous?  Now it's just a big Greyhound in the sky, a warehouse on wings. 

Not only was my seat compressed, but the back didn't recline. Somehow I had been assigned a seat that backed onto the emergency exit row. In earlier planes, such seats used to recline, but I'm guessing that Frontier has gained a few inches by rendering the backs immobile -- at the cost of my comfort (but not at reduced cost).

Adding to the insult is an unapologetic sign on the back of the seat in front of me inscribed with the words  NO RECLINE THIS ROW. I wonder what language the author of this sign thinks he is using. Not English, that's for sure.  "No recline this row" does not even come close to parsing. What would it have cost Frontier to affix a sign that read "the seats in this row do not recline."  Where do they outsource their signs -- to the writers of 1940s cowboy and faux-Indian movies?  No recline this row! Come on, frontiersmen; you can do better than that. If you have no respect for me, at least have a little respect for the language. The talking animals speak better English.   

To the chief of sign-makers at Frontier I say, "No hire this job."

There was another sign for me to stare out while I sat there, miserably cramped, watching the clock.  "LIFE VEST UNDER YOUR SEAT." Isn't Frontier banging the frugality drum a little too hard?  The sentence might have read, "Life vest IS under your seat." How much could a trifling copulative verb cost?  If Frontier wanted to be truly prodigal, it could even have raised the cash to provide an indefinite article:  "A life vest is under your seat."  Wow. A complete sentence!. What a concept!

(Orignally posted 2011:  2013 update: no free beverage at all nowadays;  the cart is only for paying customers. I didn't bother to ask how much for the plastic cup of water. My prediction:  next time, there will be a charge to use the bathroom.)

An Early Introduction to Political Foreboding

I was thirteen years old when Eisenhower-Nixon defeated Adlai Stevenson. I was of course horrified. In what sort of nation, I thought, could a doddering simpleton with a dark mccarthyite machiavel at his ear defeat an intelligent, educated, humorous progressive. Ghastly, ghastly.

Mullling this over this morning, I remembered that while Truman was still in office, postage stamps would be cancelled (hand-cancelled in those days) with the inscription, "Twenty-five years of Social Security." But right after the Eisenhower inauguration, the slogan was altered to "Pray for Peace."

A message about a concrete program that actually helped people suddenly turned into a meaningless, faux-religious instruction. "Pray for Peace" did not seem then, nor now, like a viable political position. "Pray for Peace" did not speak to me.

Sixty years later and the Republicans are still beating the same meaningless drum, still going backwards.

Not only have the damn Republicans not caught up with the age of reason, but they're still embracing the dark ages. The hole into which they've inserted their collective heads is not only deeper but considerably more vacuous.   

Why We Love Kenneth Faried

Because he plays with infectious enthusiasm. Because he's undersized for his position but unfazed. Because he plays a better game today than he did last week. Because he's so often the first man down the floor, outrunning and outhustling his opponent. Because he's not the most gifted athlete in the league, but he makes the most of his abilities. Because he plays within himself and doesn't force up bad shots. Because he can score fifteen or twenty points a game without a play being called for him.

Sure, he's occasionally out of place on defense.True, he hasn't yet learned how to play the pick and roll. His offensive games is limited to putbacks and short jumpers. And sometimes he has a bad game because the opponent is bigger and better.

But he's learning. He's coachable.

And because he's the first NBA player to pledge support for gay rights. (Kenneth has two mothers and he "loves them both.") Congratulations, Kenneth Faried, for speaking out.

Large Mammal News from Boulder, Colorado

Mountain lions frequently wander from the foothills right into the heart of town. It's routine for them to "take" a pet cat or dog. A full-grown mountain lion can jump over the 8-foot chain link fence behind which you've sequestered your golden retriever, kill it, and then grab it with its mouth and bound back over the fence. The young lion pictured above has found itself on someone's back deck. Good thing that there are no children enjoying themselves on the swings to its left.

The lion doesn't seem to be fazed by her near-cousinhood to behind-glass-door domesicated kitty. Stay inside, Muffy! You'll have a better day. .

A few months ago, wildlife officers killed a lion that had followed the deer downtown and "showed no fear of humans." More commonly, officers shoot the lions with tranquilizer darts and then banish them deep in the mountains west of town. 

Mule deer are totally at home in our city. They're so common that no one pays them much mind, except when they eat the shrubbery and the early spring flowers. They're so acclimated to humans that they don't even shy when you come right up to them. They just stare right back at you and go on eating your tulips.  

Black bears are also frequent visitors. They patrol unsecured garbage cans, especially in the fall when they're fattening up for hibernation. Recently, one of them became quite a celebrity: 

It was shot with a tranquilizer dart and dropped from its perch in a tree on to a mattress, and was then transported back into bear country.

We have another celebrity animal this week, but the story behind it is not so felicitous. A bull elk has been hanging out, for the last few years, right at the western edge of town. He's become a friend, or perhaps a totem, to his human neighbors. But for some stupid reason, two police officers (one of whom owns a taxidermy studio) decided to kill it. Which they did, with a shotgun. The "Mapleton Elk" has been mourned with a candlelight vigil; the police officers have been charged with "suspicion of forgery, tampering with physical evidence, attempting to influence a public official as well as unlawful taking of a trophy elk, conspiracy, killing an elk out of season, unlawful use of an electronic device to unlawfully take wildlife and first degree official misconduct." I'm not proud of them.

Our local coyotes have also been in the news. Although we've always known they were around, they've been discreet. But lately, they've taken to harassing joggers on the Creek Path. 

The plan is to "re-educate" them, but "lethal control" has not been ruled out.

Be sensible, coyotes! Stay out of sight. No nipping at the heels of strollers or bikers.

Guns in the Classroom? Why Not Swords?

The ancient Romans did not allow swords to be carried within the pomerium, the sacred central precincts of their city.

They were able to maintain the prohibition because they did not have a National Sword Associaion to argue that if swords are banned, only criminals with have swords; or that swords don't kill, people kill; or that it's a violation of personal liberty for free men to be forced to check their swords at the city wall. Nor was there a fanatic Roman electorate ruthless enough to donate to the campaigns of every soft-brained aedile, quaestor, praetor, or consul willing to proclaim the sanctity of swordsmen's rights.

Is it the case that swords were also prohibited in the Roman classroom?  I don't know -- but I suspect as much.

Here at the University of Colorado, in the infant millenium, guns may not be carried into the sacred precincts of the football stadium. However, they're sure-as-hell legal in classrooms, and have been ever since a State Supreme Court ruling forced the U to allow students with Colorado concealed weapon permits to carry their guns on campus -- even on days when exams and papers are returned to students by an historically-unarmed faculty. 

So what about swords? Why should guns be allowed in class and swords prohibited? I don't mean the modern rapier, which is so long that their presence would create, in every classroom, a noisy clatter and might even cause unwary students to trip and fall. I'm thinking rather of the Roman short sword, the famous gladius, which can easily be worn, in an unthreatening manner, under the toga or ski jacket.

Rapier (noisy and prone to cause accidents):

Gladius (inoffensive):

  
In point of fact, why the pusillanimous resistance to gladii at football games?  Fifty-thousand spectators, highly-partisan fans, gargantuan quantities of illegal booze and dope, and short swords -- what could possibly go wrong?

A New Look at the Republican Anus

What in the living heck did Republican elder Haley Barbour mean when, discussing his party's recent electoral disasters, he announced that "we’ve got to give our political organization a very serious proctology exam. We need to look everywhere”? 

I've got to guess that he "misspoke." Surely he didn't mean to claim that GOP office-holders have their heads so far up their own asses that it's going to take a  proctoscope to locate them? 

In a related development, the chief of Maine's Republicans Charlie Webster was astonished to discover that black people and Asians were voting in his state. It must be, he guessed, voter fraud (although a better guess would be that his neighbors of color have always been invisible to him). "We've got to nip this in the butt," he told a reporter for TPM.

More Coffee-Shop Conversation

At Ozo's, a woman jumps the queue. A man standing on the line taps her on the shoulder. "Excuse me, but you've jumped the line." Woman: "You ought to keep your hands to yourself." Man: "Wow, you crash the line, and you have the grievance. So 'entitled.' You must be a Romney supporter." Woman (outraged): "I am not a Republican." Man: "Then stop acting like one."

A Man and a Woman

I find it utterly fascinating that Romney and Obama, who are so unlike in so many ways and yet both to the best of our knowledge good "family men," are both descended from polygamists. 

Barack's great-grandfather Obama Opiyo had five wives and his grandfather, Hussein Onyango, had at least four. Such was the Luo tradition. Barack's father's bigamy was unlawful rather than traditional -- he left what used to be called a "grass widow" behind when he escaped Kenya.

Both of Mitt's great-grandfathers, Miles Romney and Helaman Pratt were polygamists. Miles had four wives and thirty children, Helaman had five wive and who knows how many offspring. Both families fled the U. S. en masse when a divine revelation and the enforcement of the Morrill Act ended polygamy in 1890.

And yet preachers and politicians continue to proclaim that "marriage is between one man and one woman, and always has been, since the time of Adam and Eve." 

It ain't so. Nothing could be more ahistorical or more false. The biblical patriarchs were all polygamists and King Solomon himself, a model of wisdom, we are told, collected an astonishing, exhausting household of 300 wives and 700 concubines. Plural marriage was part of Jewish tradition way into the first millennium. Another Abrahamic religion, Islam, is notably polygynous even as it is furiously anti-polyandrous. Marriages over the world have taken every shape imaginable, sometimes formally, sometimes informally. The idea that marriage is  permanent and unchanging is a canard belied by the immediate and symmetrical family histories of our two candidates. 

Lyin' Ryan? We Report, You Decide

There's been so much noise about Governor Romney stonewalling calls to release his tax returns and so much commentary about the one he did release, that the anomalies in running-mate Paul Ryan's tax returns have been overlooked. 

When Ryan made his 2011 taxes public, he had to "amend" what he and his lobbyist wife had initially reported. It seems that he had "inadvertently" failed to report $61,122 in income. Now sixty grand might be chicken feed for the Governor, but it's a big hunk for the Representative. It raises his total income to $323,416 and bumps up his taxes by $19,917. The sixty-thousand bucks comes from an income-producing trust that he inherited from his wife's mother, a successful Oklahoma attorney. Moreover, on June 6 of this year, Ryan amended two years of financial disclosure reports that he filed with the clerk of the House of Representatives which show that the trust produced income of between $100,001 and $1 million.

So Ryan "forgot" that he had inherited a small fortune from his mother-in-law, and he "forgot" to report to the IRS just about 20% of his income.  Fortunately, he remembered both of these facts when he began to come under consideration for national office and knew that his finances would be closely scrutinized.  

Ryan is a supposedly a policy wonk, touted for his attention to detail. He's an expert in taxation and expenditure -- or so we're told.  But he's not, apparently, attentive to his own affairs.

He's also the person who claimed to have run a sub-five minute marathon and to have climbed o-so-many of Colorado's mountains.

So, constant reader, here are your choices. Either Paul Ryan (a) "inadvertently forgot" to include $60,000 worth of income on his 2011 taxes, or (b) he's a untrustworthy, lying scumbag who suits the facts to the situation, and who was hoping to get away without paying his fair share and only came clean when it looked as though someone would notice. 

We report;  you decide.

(I'm trying to think, if I were the recipient of a $60,000 a year inheritance, which I'm not, whether I could possibly "forget" to report it as income. Nope, can't imagine such a circumstance.)

A Tumbrilism Revival

When rich people betray that they don't have the least clue how ordinary people live, they might coin a "tumbrilism." The perfect tumbrilism is callous, contemptuous, supercilious, insulting, and grotesquely ignorant.

The word "tumbrilism" seems to derive from tumbril, the cart that carried victims to the guillotine during the French Revolution. The mother of all tumbrilisms is Queen Marie Antoinette, who when told that the peasants had no bread, is supposed to have replied, "qu'ils mangent de la brioche," usually translated as  "let them eat cake." This classic trumbrilism derives from Rousseau and was not assigned to Marie until a couple of generations after she took her tumble.

Here are two good Congressional tumbrilisms: a) Fred Heinemann (R-North Carolina): "When I see someone who is making anywhere from $300,000 to $750,000 a year, that's middle class." b) Congressman John Fleming (R, Louisiana): "The amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 ... and so by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over." And a gubernatorial tumbrilism: Paul LePage (R, Maine): "Maine's welfare program is cannibalizing the rest of state government. To all you able-bodied people out there: "Get off the couch and get yourself a job.'"

Here's a classic tumbrilism from the world of sports, courtesy of Jose Canseco, who once had a ball bounce off his shoulder and into the stands for a home run: "You know my life, this financial thing, is a very complicated issue. Obviously, when you make all that money, people think, 'OK, let's assume it is $35 million.' People have to understand that $35 million, you're paying the government 41 percent. That leaves you with about $17 or $18 million, not even. Then you're taking care of your whole family."

But the modern master of the tumbrilism is Mitt Romney, who, when asked about his worth, replied, "It’s between $150 and about $200 some-odd million dollars, I think that’s what the estimates are.”

Other priceless Romney tumbrilisms:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there."

"This feels good, being back in Michigan. You know, the trees are the right height. The streets are just right. I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pick-up truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs, actually."

"I like being able to fire people who provide services to me."

"Even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, 'Well that's heartless.' And I said, 'No, no, I'm willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It'll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.'"

Unlike the dubious provenance of "let them eat cake," these tumbrilisms, though astonishingly naive and self-satisfied, are pure and genuine. Their Mittness is well-witnessed.   

Why are Dog Owners Such Scofflaws?

Why are dog owners such horrid scofflaws?  According to our local police-lady, there are fifty-three signs distributed around the downtown mall that either say, in clear language, No Pets, or else picture a dog bisected with a diagonal line. But it's impossible to take a walk without encountering two or three or half a dozen people obliviously or defiantly parading Rover or Spot.

I think it's reasonable to assume that the owners can read, or if "No Pets" is too difficult to construe, that they could interpret the icons. It's possible that they're just unobservant, and don't notice the signs, but I suspect not. The signs are hard to miss.

I suspect that the dog people just assume that they're above the law. They love their pooch, love its barking, love its scat, love the way it playfully lunges at small children, and they can't imagine that anyone in the world would take exception to their prerogative.  

It's the same on the mountain trails. Just because the sign says, All Dogs Must Be On Leash, doesn't mean that the law applies to Me.

I once said to a dog owner who was walking his big dogs off-leash, "You know that you're breaking the law." He barked at me: "Get a life." Another time a bulldog attacked me on the street, and I was warding him off with my briefcase when the owner called him back. I said, "Dogs are supposed to be on leash." He said, "What are you, the dog warden?" A friend was knocked off her bicycle by a large, aggressive dog. The owner, who should have knelt on ground glass in apology, said only, "He doesn't like bicycles."

And many other such stories, but you get my point.

"Look at Me."

On our pleasant, prosperous downtown mall, we have entertainers and buskers of many stripes --everyone  from fire-eaters, magicians, and left-behind 50s folkie guitarists to Zip Code Man. Some are excellent (the occasional string quartet or visiting bluegrass band) and some are horrible (the bam-bam-bam drummers and the pathetic didgedoorists.

We also have a contortionist, whom I personally find difficult to watch.

To me, the contortionist is not so much an entertainer as he is an allegory of the human condition. He's what they used to call in earlier centuries an emblem.

While other performers try to attract an audience by subtlety and guile, our contortionist merely shouts, "Look at me. Everybody, look at me" -- which I take as a metaphor or icon or emblem. When he calls out, "Look at me," he's simply doing what the rest of us want to do but don't have the courage to do: call attention to ourselves, ask for praise. We're all saying, "Look at me," but, becaused we're civilized and mannerly beings, we strive to do so by being indirect or ironic or clever.  Not the contortionist. He's honest about himself and about the true, elemental state of mankind. He shouts, "Look at me" -- and then he ties himself into knots.