(Berkeley CA) While visiting San Francisco, it became necessary to go to a bank branch that wasn’t the one this columnist usually uses and in the course of a conversation with the manager, he mentioned that if this customer intended to give the teller a tip, it would be better to donate to one of the charities that they suggested and then he dealt out a list of about a dozen good causes. He caught us a bit unaware since we have never tipped a bank clerk. Maybe the rich folks tip them like they tip the croupier when they win a big pot at Monte Carlo?
The sheet of paper he provided was carefully tucked away so that the list could be accurately transcribed at this point in this column. One of the disadvantages of a rolling stone existence is that things get lost and so, despite a sincere effort, no list. The only one that comes to mind is the fog city SPCA.
A clothing store in San Franciso directed their customers to St. Jude’s Hospital (www.stjude.org) which assures donors that the organization in Memphis will never stop looking for cures for the diseases which severely affect children.
Activists on Venice Beach. Recently, were asserting that folks shouldn’t shoot sea lions (www.oceananimals.net)
While staying at the hostel in the Fort Mason National Park (spectacular scenery with a supermarket a just across Laguna St.) we encountered Padma Dorje who was collecting signatures as part of her effort to eliminate torture in the world.
Across the bay from San Francisco, the Asian Community Mental Health Services is conducting the Tiny Tickets effort. Travelers are asked to send in their Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) tickets to help support that good cause. (http://www.acmhs.org/bart.htm)
Fellow columnist (and occasional war correspondent) Jane Stillwater is conducting an online petition urging the reform of campaign financing. For more about that click this link(http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/constitutional-amendment-to-stop-lobbyists)
While traveling in Australia (looks like the folks on Cottesloe beach will have to celibate Christmas without this columnist this year) activists for Greenpeace and Amnesty International seemed to be ubiquitous, but, upon reflection, they may not have been encountered in Kalgoorlie. We assured those eager young workers that since we couldn’t afford to give money to their causes, we would urge the people who read our columns to support the altruistic efforts of both groups.
Now that President Obama is in office and is directing his best efforts towards ending the war in Afghanistan, it will no longer be necessary for this columnist to constantly harangue his faithful readers with diatribes about the absurdity of the continued slaughter and carnage involved in the commendable American efforts to convert that county’s citizens over to advocates of democracy and free elections. Also, this year as Christians celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, it will not be appropriate to suggest that former President Bush, who ignored the precepts of war established at the Nurmberg Trials or the rules of the Geneva Conventions, deserves a severe reprimand in the form of another War Crime Trial for himself and some of the members of his administration. He didn’t know that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (what better reason could there have been for invading Afghanistan?).
Americans have given 43 a “Get out of Jail” card and so it will be necessary for columnists of both the conservative and progressive persuasion to find new and more compelling causes to espouse.
We were pondering the monumental problem of deciding what crap to buy for friends for Christmas so that they could cram their closets with irrefutable evidence that they support capitalistic democracy via their effort to spend the country out of Great Depression 2.0 and not just by mouthing meaningless platitudes such as “Peace on Earth good will to men (who should be tortured to prevent new terrorist attacks),” when we realized that the Christmas scenes that depict polar bears (<I>Ursus martimus</I>) lurking in the background of the images of Santa may become anachronisms when the last polar bear drowns in an ice free Artic Ocean.
Bill O’Reilly made a pledge to America that he would protect them from pinheads in the media who disseminated faulty information. O’Reilly is as much history as is “the Lone Ranger” program which must logically mean that the cry for Climate Justice is a legitimate concern. He’s gone from radio and we’re still here writing columns. Nice try, Bill! Guess the people just didn’t buy your BS, eh? Hence, if we write about global warning, it will now be up to Uncle Rushbo to protect the hillbillies from pro science points of view.
Speciescide happens. Folks who live in Berkeley know that UCB’s mascot is the California Golden Bear (<I>Ursus arctos callifornicu</I>) and many of them also know that the last one of that species was shot in Tulare county in 1922. Therefore we will compose a column which will have the headline: “Dead polar bear walking!” and fictionalize an interview with the plight of a unfairly convicted (that never happens in the USA, but movie fans know that some unjustified executions do occur in places such as Saddam’s Iraq) prisoner on death row.
What will happen in the future when there are summer heat waves and there are no polar bears in the local zoo to photograph? How will the wirephoto division of AP cope with that challenge?
There are good causes and there are bad causes, but are there any uncaused causes?
Hmmm. As an ordained minister this columnist has to wonder: Does the Berkeley cheerleading squad need the services of a volunteer chaplain?
George Carlin has said: “The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.” How many little boys and girls in Iraq would like to ask Santa to bring back their arms or legs?
Now, the disk jockey, who heard this song on Revolution Radio (KREV 92.7 FM in the San Francisco area), will play the new curmudgeon anthem: “I’m beginning to drink a lot at Christmas” (will that become this year’s viral Internet fad?) and this columnist will go Christmas shopping. Have a “ho, ho, ho in Freo” type week.
Breaking the Monty Python Argument addiction
The famous philosopher Montague Python devised the most popular circular argument of all times when he posited the hypotheses that contradicting is a legitimate, scholarly method of argumentation and he subsequently spawned a cottage industry in academic circles for professors and PhD candidates to assert the converse theorem: “No; it isn’t!”
The Republicans have adapted the Python-esque attitude regarding the possibility that global warming will kill off all the polar bears (even the massive colony of expat white bears living in zoos around the world?) by disqualifying any scientific preditions designed to elicit sympathy for the gigantic brutes.
The Democrats have embraced the challenge in such a wholehearted and enthusiastic way that some observers are alarmed about the possibility that the Democrats are showing symptoms of addiction in their compulsive responses to the Republican invitations to put aside substantive topics and, instead, waste some campaign time by continually injecting new scientific information into the argument which, by the Republican ground rules, automatically disqualifies the material that is (in the Republicans’ august opinion) worthy of a room of its own in the Mad Scientists Hall of Fame.
Here is a hypothetical transcript of how to play the game:
Dem: A new scientific report says that all polar bears will drown because the polar ice cap is melting.
Rep: Where does it say that in the Bible?
Dem: But if you read the report, surely, you will admit that without a polar ice cap, the polar bears will soon disappear form this earth.
Rep: Don’t call me Shirley.
Dem: So you don’t care if all the polar bears drown?
Rep: Polar bears are known for their remarkable long distance swimming ability, polar bear skeletons have been found on Samoa. (Republicans are not confined to reality. For Democrats, truth is a self imposed restriction limiting their retorts.)
Dem: Don’t you care about Global Warming?
Rep: If you could prove it exists, I most certainly would, but for now, I think it’s like the “theory” that if I flap my arms fast enough, I’ll start to fly. Aren’t scientists the ones who say that, according to the laws of aerodynamics, bees can’t fly?
Dem: I’ll do anything I have to, to prove that Global Warming really exists.
Rep: Anything? . . . ?
Dem: Science has proved conclusively that global warming is occurring and that polar bears are in peril.
Rep: No! It doesn’t!
Here’s a suggestion for Democrats who want to argue logically and simultaneously break out of their addiction to the Monty Python game: issue this challenge: given the fact that you don’t believe in Global Warming because you don’t’ believe in science, how about this: The Democratic Party will build you a World Headquarters for the Science Skeptics (AKA the Republican elite SS Society) Association on the atomic proving ground’s “Ground Zero” conveniently located close to Las Vegas! Whatcha say? Free!
At that point the Republicans would face a philosophic crisis. They must accept the dare because if they decline the offer, the discussion will then put them on the defensive. If they want to decline the offer based on any scientific reasons, then they have been proven to be hypocrites; if they decline and attribute it to “common sense,” then they can be asked what common sense tells them about the photos that show a shrinking polar icecap. If they don’t believe in photos; ask them if you can buy all their family album photos, home movies, and negatives. Do they use family snapshots to remind themselves that grandpa and grandma really existed (and looked groovy in their youth?)? If they don’t believe in photographic evidence, then they don’t need family snapshots and should jump at the chance to sell them off. Isn’t offering a Republican a chance to make some easy money just like offering a drink to an alcoholic?
If they accept the offer, the Democrats should use reconciliation to get legal permission to build such a facility and then they should build it and turn it over to the Republican Society of Science Skeptics.
If the Democrats wanted to use methodology as mean and crooked as the Republicans utilize, they might want to run ads showing victims of disabilities acquired by fighting in territory where Agent Orange was used. The spokesmen could then say that only scientists disapproved of using Agent Orange and that there was absolutely nothing in the Bible that would indicate that there was any reason to avoid waging war with or living where it had been used for defoliation. Has the use Agent Orange been abandoned in the Bush Wars just because of scientific evidence? (Have you noticed that there are no trees or vegetables growing in the Tora Bora pass?)
What does the Bible say about accepting this generous offer (a free headquarters building on Ground Zero) from the Democrats? Did any polar bears offer to testify at the Scope’s Trial?
Question: If Bible thumping conservatives are diagnosed with cancer do they seek help by going to an African witch doctor or do they head for an American doctor who relies heavily on science? What does the Bible say about chemo-therapy? Shouldn’t Republican Christians turn down any and all recommendations for such cancer treatments?
The Global warming circular argument might, in the final inning, boil down to an old Republican election slogan’s advise: “If God meant for man to fly; He would have given him wings!” Amen, brother!
Now, the disk jockey will play the Foreigner’s song “Blinded by Science,” Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me With Science,” and Elvis’ “Viva Las Vegas.” Whew, we need to go take a reinvigorating look at some photos taken back when it was clever to ask a girl: “Wanna see my Walmetto?” Have a “Sock it to me!” type week.