In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a woman who was kidnapped and gang-raped by five men has been sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the company of men not related to her. Her sentence is being appealed to the King.

The rapists are in custody, but given the standard of proof demanded by Sharia law it’s not likely they’ll be convicted.

I hope that those lashes are given in installments, with time to recover. 90 all at once would likely be fatal.

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A town in California, after turning a Christmas tree into a “Holiday tree”, has rechristened (um, perhaps I’d better chose another verb) the Easter Bunny – the Spring Bunny.

Never mind that the bunny, the eggs, even the name itself are not the least bit Christian. (Easter comes from the name of the goddess Eoster.) So are the neo-pagans going to get mad and protest?

My wife laughed uproariously. I’m beginning to suspect that she thinks America has arranged this gigantic comedic spectacle for her personal amusement.

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March 4-7 there was a conference of Muslim dissidents in St. Petersburg, Florida, featuring among others, speakiers such as Ibn Warraq, Irshad Manji, Wafa Sultan, and Nonie Darweesh. I don’t recall seeing anything about it on the TV news. What gives? This was a gathering of some of the bravest intellectuals in the country today, discussing matters that will determine the shape of things to come for this century at least.

Each of these people lives in constant danger of violent death – and nobody seems to think it worth noticing when they get together to talk. I’d of been happy to attend as the proverbial fly on the wall – but then I didn’t even know it was happening until it was over.

Did anybody go to observe and report on what was said and done? Or is perhaps the existence of intellectuals who actually put their lives on the line for their convictions a reproach to those who like to posture as heroes from their ivory towers?

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Hillary was recorded on camera trying to talk Black. Not a good idea, she’s got a tin ear but the audience seemed tolerant. Commenters on the Right accused her of being patronizing, but if her audience didn’t think so I suppose you can’t run with that charge. So now is it OK to tell Black jokes again?

A while ago Senator Diane Feinstein got away scot-free after questioning nominee Samuel Alito about conflicts between his Catholicism and his duties on the Supream Court. What would have been the reaction if someone had questioned Senator Feinstein about conflicts between her loyalty to American interests and her Judaism?

And recently questions have been raised about Mitt Romney, and whether some of his Mormon ancestors were practicing polygynists.

Of course I was outraged at the religious bigotry, double standard and all – but then I remembered the Mormon doctrine about baptising your ancestors, and I couldn’t help but wonder if you could register them to vote while you were at it? (As we say in Oklahoma; I know it’s wrong – but I’m weak.)

Hell, it’s been done in Chicago for years.

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I have a new disgusting personal habit.

I am prone to sinus infections, and have been since I was a kid. I’ve tried every over-the-counter medication available. The old reliable Vicks Vapo-rub still rules, but when the sinuses really shut down it feels like I’ve got concrete setting in my forehead and I get the urge to beat myself around the face with a ball peen hammer to break it up.

Well, I’ve found something that works better than anything else, a nose wash. I’d heard of it before, when reading about some of the weirder yoga practices, but never had the desire to try it. Anyone who has inhaled water through the nose in a swimming pool will understand why.

Anyhow, I went to the clinic last time I had an infection, and the doctor recommended this. A simple saline (baking soda optional) solution squirted up the nose. She was of Vietnamese origin, so perhaps the stereotype image helped me overcome my distaste for the idea. (Those Asians know all about exotic healing methods don’t you know).

But I went one better. I went to The Earth (local health foods store) and got a Neti pot. Evidently this practice is old enough to have a name in Sanscrit, or whatever. It’s rather like a tea pot with the end of the spout rounded so it can comfortably fit up your nostril.

Pour it in one nostril and out the other, then alternate. It’s surprisingly easy to get used to and it’s wonderfully entertaining for small children to watch.

I won’t describe the immediate effects, but suffice to say it clears the nose and helps sinuses drain. I use bottled water and warm it to skin temperature in the microwave. I’ve read that there are more advanced practices involving oils and such.

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There is a new Sonic drive-in being built in town. Just across the street there is another Sonic, which is right next to a 50′s Drive-in. Less than three miles down the street is another Sonic – one of three on that side of town.

Drive-ins, and Sonic in particular, are a booming business. Did we all get hyper-busy all of a sudden or what? I mean, I like Sonic just fine but I didn’t think a medium-sized town could support that many.

When we travel, we like to stay off the interstates whenever it’s convenient and stop for meals in any place in a small town that isn’t part of a chain. We’ve had some great meals and it’s a great way to show my wife the real America.

She is not, by the way, a Euro-food snob. I courted my wife with American food: BLTs, chilli, pork and beans, real American hamburgers and my home made beef jerky. We used to hold hamburger parties for our friends to show them that the real American hamburger is more than MacDonalds, it’s high art.

I used to get requests to bring my chilli for pot luck suppers, and recently I got a phone call from the Russian-Polish joint venture I used to work for, demanding my beef jerky process.

Did you ever hear of the four stages of intimacy classified according to food? Stage 1) sharing cold drinks, 2) sharing hot drinks, 3) cold food, 4) hot food. The theory is that each successive stage takes more effort to prepare, indicating increasing intimacy.

Speaking of food and intimacy, I remember one of the wittiest observations from Louis L’Amour, writer of first-rate potboiler Westerns. He advised that when you travel in a land where you do not speak the language, you must first learn to say two things. You must learn how to ask for food, and you must learn to tell a woman that you love her. And of these, the second is more important, because if you tell a woman you love her she will certainly feed you.

My students (mostly adult women) used to love that one.

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* The Battlestar is back, after what one reviewer called an agonizingly long wait – two months. Tough – last year I think it was six months.

Galactica has been moved to Sunday. Usually a move is a sign that the show has jumped the shark and is being put out to die. But in this case I think it’s because it now has a fan base that will follow it anywhere. If you put it on at 1 a.m. Monday morning some of us would be staying up to watch it.

As I said here http://rantsand.blogspot.com/2006/11/great-political-discussion-of-our-time.html Battlestar Galactica is where the really important political debate of our time is going on – and I was only sort-of kidding. Actually, I’m not kidding at all.

That debate is over the question, How can a society survive as a free people under extreme stress?

* Started what are possibly my last semester of classes at this university. I finally managed to find an opportunity, and an excuse, to study Rhetoric. It’s something that has interested me for a while that I never had a chance to study formally.

Did you know that when you use an expression of the form (for example), “Donald Trump is not exactly a poor man” that that kind of expression has a name? It’s called “litotes” (lee-TOE-tays).

Or that the old piece of doggerel, “I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotoby” is called “chiasmus” (ki-AS-mus), Greek for “criss-cross”. It doesn’t matter whether it’s ridculous, like the bottle, or sublime like Winston Churchill’s,

“You were given a choice between war and dishonor.
You have chosen dishonor, you will have war.”

It’s the form that counts, the criss crossing of words or phonemes.

If you look here http://rhetoric.byu.edu/ you’ll find the Silva Rhetoricae, a site that explains it all, from “abating” to “zeugma”.

* Speaking of jumping the shark, what are we going to say when James Woods’ show Shark, jumps the shark?

* The other day we caught Republican Gov. Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton announcing their respective candidacies for president. My impression: Richardson said “I’m going to… I’m going to…” a lot. What he was going to do to fix this country. Oh are you? All by yourself or will you have help? And if you can, is there something preventing you from doing it now, or do you absolutely have to be president before you can start helping your country?

Hillary on the other hand, came off far more humble (the effort must have nigh killed her) and spoke of “working with…” people.

I mentioned this and my wife said, “I was thinking exactly the same thing.” Remember, she knows my prejudices but as a Polish citizen she doesn’t have a dog in this fight. (Though admittedly a lot of Eastern Europeans would probably be Conservative Republicans if they could vote in our elections, just on the foreign policy agenda.)

Hillary has a lot of personality issues that handicap her. But, reports have it that the lady entered the senate with cap in hand and asked the old pols to show her the ropes. Who’d a thunk it after her arrogant behavior as First Lady?

If I’d never seen either of these people before (and in fact I haven’t seen a whole lot about Richardson, I’m only barely aware of the name) I’d go for her. I don’t know who the nominees will be come election time, but if it were these two I’d say Hillary would kick his ass.

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You want to know the difference between Libertarians and Conservatives? The Democrats now have control of congress. After assailing the Republican “culture of corruption” the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (notorious for using “undocumented” Mexican labor on the vineyard she and her husband own) nominated John Murtha, unindicted co-conspirator in the ABSCAM sting operation, as House majority leader (voted down), and former Federal judge Alcee Hastings, who was removed from office (by Democrats to their credit) after being compromised in a solicitation of bribery case, as chair of the Intelligence Committee. Hey, if he could squeeze money out of defendants in criminal cases, imagine how much he’ll be able to get from terrorists for intel!

Conservatives find this appalling, Libertarians find it side-splittingly funny.

Republicans responded by bringing Trent Lott, famous for making a racist gaff, back from exile as minority leader.

For anyone with a sense of humor, it just doesn’t get any better than this.

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My wife drew my attention to an article from the Polish press. The European Jewish Council has declared Poland to be the most pro-Israel country in Europe.

Polish-Jewish relations have always been more than a bit on the thorny side, very much so since the end of WWII. On the one hand, Poles are the most represented nationality on the roles of the Righteous Among Gentiles at Yad Vashem. On the other hand, since the rise of a democratic Germany made beating them up for the holocaust a matter of bad taste, some Jews responded by choosing to beat up their fellow victims – the Poles, who were a little further down on the list of peoples to be exterminated. Just below Gypsies. (By the way, Polish Jews I know object strenuously to this.)

Poles have been a bit ambiguous about Israel. On the one hand, they don’t like being blamed for the Holocaust one bit, while Germany – and France, get away scot-free. On the other hand, during the Soviet occupation they got a big kick out of the Middle East wars when “our” Jews beat “their” Arabs. And I remember Poles proudly telling me that Israeli Air Force pilots used Polish in combat, because the Egyptian intelligence had Hebrew translators but not a whole lot of Polish speakers.

Now that anti-Semitism is again fashionable in Western Europe, it seems that the ancient Polish-Jewish connection is being revived.

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You want to know what the neighborhood around our apartment in Warsaw looks like? Rent the DVD of The Pianist. The area in the first scenes, CGI’d to look like it did during the Nazi occupation, is about four blocks east. About the same distance north of our place was the edge of the ghetto and the site of the great Tlomatski Synagogue, destroyed by the Nazis at the end of the ghetto uprising as a symbol of the extinction of European Jewry.

Under our apartment window is a plaque where people still leave flowers and devotional candles. It marks the spot where 44 hostages were murdered by the Nazis. The plaque is a common form, fill-in-the-blank for date and number of the dead, common all around the city. Around the city center they average about one every three blocks.

So why am I bringing this up? It seems to me that part of the cultural blindness of Americans, and after 60 years of peace the West Europeans too, is that we have forgotten that bad times always return.

We don’t have the education or monuments to remind us and teach our youth about this immutable truth. That’s OK though, history has a way of calling this to our attention.

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At my age I’m a grad student again – and we have a new baby. It’s been hard to describe for anyone who doesn’t have kids how tiring this is, but I think I’ve found a way. One new baby equals an extra grad-level class and a part-time job.

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It’s a lovely day outside, and the leaves on the trees finally look like autumn. My wife remarks, “Yes, and it’s ONLY mid-November.” That’s Oklahoma.

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I’ve been thinking about a title for the random thoughts posts. “Random thoughts of the day” was derivative of Thomas Sowell’s columns “Random Thoughts” and I feel a bit presumptuous treading in that man’s footsteps.

Then I remembered an English lesson I used to teach for fun in Eastern Europe; all the words in English meaning different kinds of thinking: cogitating, mullling, musing, pondering, reflecting, etc – and ruminating.

The literal meaning of ruminating is what a cow is doing when chewing the cud. A pretty stupid animal, nonetheless it looks like it is thinking deeply when it stands and chews. There – I’ve just given people who don’t like my opinions a great straight line!

Nevertheless, Ruminations it is.

P.S. I also taught fun lessons on words for different ways to laugh: snicker, titter, giggle, chortle, guffaw, bray, etc, and cry: weep, snivel, sob, whimper, etc.
It was a lot of fun because you can show the meaning by acting it out.

English is a language unusually rich in words for highly specific things. I had occasion to explain the play on words involved in the movie Widows Peak (Joan Plowright, Mia Farrow, Natasha Richardson – quite funny) to a class in Warsaw. One lady looked at me with an amused expression and said, “English is a funny language, it would never occur to us to have a word just for the shape of your hairline!”

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The other day my wife took the baby with her to see her best friend, a Mexican woman, and a few of her friends and relatives. We have the youngest baby in the group, so of course I knew it was going to be all about the ladies passing the baby around, taking turns holding and making a fuss over her. It’s a woman thing.

I was chuckling at the thought (there’s another laugh list item!) when I remembered what a former professor of mine had mentioned in an Osteology class. (Osteology is the study of bones, living or fossil. In Anthropology it includes the study of the comparative skeletal anatomy of the primates.)

At any rate, he mentioned once that humans are the only primates who adopt. There are other animals who can be made to imprint on young not their own – and even on young not of their own species. But that goes on at a level rather below conscious thought, the great apes are just too smart to be fooled that way. So not only do they not adopt, they are often a danger to the young of other mothers in their bands when the environment is under stress, as Jane Goodall first found out observing chimps in Africa.

Only humans go beyond the needs of kin survival and act to insure the survival of the most helpless members of the human community, whether related or not. That’s pretty marvelous to think about.

It’s also pretty sickening to think about some godawful countries who prevent the adoption of children in unbelievably miserable circumstances by well-off Westerners because they are embarrassed by it.

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I had to make the title a little wordy. Thomas Sowell uses “Random Thoughts” and while I don’t think he’s got a lock on the title, I’d feel a bit presumptuous using it myself. For the record, I’d read the man’s laundry lists, which ought to tell you quite a bit about where I’m coming from. And, “ahem”, I have signed copies of Basic Economics and The Vision of the Anointed that he sent me after an email exchange.

I highly recommend, A Clash of Visions by Sowell. Reading it was one of those “Ah-ha!” experiences that made an awful lot of things clearer to me. Mostly about why I believe the things I do and where people I disagree with are coming from. An interesting side effect was that I became a bit more compassionate about those I disagree with passionately.

But what made even more of an impression on me was his two-sentence observation that the Law of Diminishing Returns applies to morality. That it is possible to be “too moral”. That one set my head spinning. I’ll have more to say about that later.

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I couldn’t help but notice yesterday that alongside the TV news coverage of the North Korean nuclear test was a lot of coverage of a 21-year-old college student in Maine who has gone missing. This kind of news is sometimes derided as sensationalism of the “If it bleeds, it leads” kind of journalism. My own reaction was, what a humane society we have, in spite of everything else you could say about it. A nation of 300 million people or thereabouts, routinely shows its concern about the plight of one individual.

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Just had to break and change a diaper and let my wife sleep a little longer. My wife is not a morning person like I am, she doesn’t wake as easily or as quickly as I do. A lot of this has to do with being a mother. I do the good male feminist thing and help as much as I can. I believe I change diapers at least as often as she does. (I’m motivated, I know as an older father that this could be my one shot to enjoy my kids, I may not get a second chance with grandkids.) But the irreducible fact is that motherhood is physically hard on women in ways I can do nothing to help with and it shows sometimes.

And yet, is there anything more beautiful than her smile when our five year old comes in to hug her awake, or when I lay the baby down on the pillow next to her?

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And speaking of wisdom expressed in brief remarks, has anyone ever defined love better than Robert Heinlein? “Love is when another person’s happiness is essential to your own.” And the earthy, descriptive corollary, “Love is what goes on when you’re not horney.”

And Raymond Chandler on manhood; when a woman asks Phillip Marlow, “How can a man who is so tough be so gentle?”

“If I weren’t tough, I wouldn’t be alive. If I couldn’t be gentle, I wouldn’t deserve to be alive.”

I recently quoted this is a class, and I swear I heard sighing around the room from several women.

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Something I noticed recently was that every time I’ve read someone quoted as having said that the world is a dangerous place (usually in the context of foreign relations), it’s done in a sneering, condescending sort of way that strongly implies that the person quoted is provincial (or “ethnocentric” in the Soc. sci. jargon), xenophobic and paranoid.

Well damn it, the world is a dangerous place. We can agree on that while disagreeing about how to deal with it.

It seems to me that the denial of that fact expresses a dangerous kind of cowardice. Running away from danger is not necessarily cowardice, America was populated by a great many people who ran away from tyranny, oppression, war etc. Sometimes running away is the best or only available option. When I teach martial arts, I like to remind my students that military experts regard the highest command skill as the ability to lead a retreat in good order. A retreat from an enemy attacking with overwhelming force too easily turns into a rout.

But denying that a danger is real? That’s the kind of cowardice that gets you killed.

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