HinesSight

We tango, and also get tangled

Laurel and I survived our second Argentine Tango class tonight. Even more: we enjoyed ourselves. Perhaps at least a little bit of Latin blood flows in these primarily Germanic veins.

For a brief moment I even seemed to feel a tinge of macho Tango Attitude, as my lips curled into a proudly passionate expression, which, however, was cut short by our legs getting entangled on that damn cross-step/pause move where one of us always seems to be stepping too slowly or pausing too little.

Whatever. We made progress tonight at the Micah Building Ballroom on State Street. Here in Salem on Mondays for a mere $7 per person ($5 students) you can enjoy an hour-long beginners class at 7 pm and stay for intermediate and guided practice at 8 pm.

We’ve taken a swing dance class before, but never followed up on the lessons by actually dancing in public. I’m hopeful that tango will be different. For one thing, it’s slower, so when you screw up it’s not so obvious. Falling over your partner’s feet is easier to disguise at a lower rate of speed.

With the swing classes I really enjoyed the instructor’s little speech at the start of every session: “Guys, this is the only time in your life when there’s no argument about it. You get to lead the woman around.” The only problem, of course, is that a leader has to know where he is going. And how to get there.

The tango instructor gave me some tips tonight. As I noted in my last post about the Dog Whisperer, there are some evident similarities between being the leader of the pack in your dog/human den, and being the leader on the dance floor. I was told, “You have to be absolutely sure about where you want your partner to go. Then, guide her there.”

I was cut in on near the end of the class by a guy considerably younger and cuter than me. Laurel enjoyed dancing with him. His “shall we dance?” approach was to simply walk up to a woman and hold out his hands. Didn’t matter if she was already dancing with somebody else. He was irresistible. The kid always got the girl.

A friend of ours, Bill Long, also is taking tango lessons. He’s had four now, and we’ve had two, so we consider him a quasi-pro and sought advice from him throughout the evening. Wild Bill Tango is getting pretty good.

(For more info. about the classes call 503-304-8646 or 541-231-7330.)

Listening attentively to the dog whisperer

We’ve become big fans of Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer. The Dish Network should be a fan too, because my wife upgraded our subscription to America’s Top 180 just so we could get the National Geographic Channel, home of Milan’s weekly program.

It was worth buying sixty more channels to be able to watch the Dog Whisperer, though. I’ve warmed up to him more slowly than my wife, but now on Friday evenings I’m right there with her on the television room couch.

Laurel’s interest in the Dog Whisperer was strong right from the start because she’s become a dog walker at the Salem Humane Society. She has to deal with difficult dogs every week. I just have to deal with our own mellow family pet, the aptly named “Serena.”

Even so, Milan has helped me become aware of how little I understand about dogs and how much I’ve been doing wrong in my daily interactions with Serena. Last night’s episode hit home for me when Milan gave a woman some advice about how to handle her overly protective and aggressive dachshund, Chocolate.

After he asked about what they’ve been trying, the woman’s daughter said, “She nags a lot.” Milan laughed and told them:

Yeah, but with dogs that doesn’t count. It’s just “blah, blah, blah, blah.”….In the dog world that really doesn’t count. Have you seen how Cinnamon [her other dachshund] disciplines Chocolate? [Milan makes a biting movement with his mouth]

…So a dog, when he controls another dog, he bites. And then he stays, and looks at him, or her, until the dog surrenders to what he wants. The dominant one never says, “Go to your room, now! You’re not getting a bone today.” That doesn’t exist in the dog world. Because we apply those concepts, we can accomplish what we want.

I talk a lot to Serena. “So, what do you think? Is it time to go for a walk? I wonder if there’s any dog in this house who wants to go for a walk. Hope I can find one. Do you think you might be that dog? Huh, do you?” And so on.

Actually, I often sound a lot more ridiculous than this. Both of us engage in “babytalk” with Serena. You wouldn’t believe what I say to her when I go downstairs to Serena’s dog room and wake her up in the morning. (Well, if you have a dog or cat, you probably will believe it, because most people do the same thing.)

Even before I started watching the Dog Whisperer I’d noticed that Serena is a lot more interested in what I’m doing around dog walk time than in what I’m saying. When I move toward the front door, or look like I’m about to change my clothes, she shifts into her excited “Let’s go, let’s go!” mode.

The cues she is responding to are almost entirely non-verbal. At the most, Serena seems to understand what “walk” means. But even that could be my imagination. So, in line with Cesar Milan’s oft-repeated tenet that dogs live in a dog world, not our human world, I’m trying to communicate with Serena more through body language and less through verbal language.

For example, Laurel (who knows a lot more about dog behavior than I do) has been telling me that I should always go out the door before Serena does to show my dominance. Usually I do, but when she’s especially enthusiastic about checking out the squirrel family after a long indoor stint I’ve been letting her squeeze by me.

No more. Taking my first faltering steps toward Dog Whisperer apprenticeship, I’ve begun to put my leg in front of Serena when she tries to push through the door first. I take a look outside, utter my “Run squirrels, run!” yell if any are in sight, and only then allow Serena to follow me.

Milan often says that it is a big mistake to treat dogs like people. They don’t want sympathy. They don’t want to be coddled. They don’t want kind words. What dogs want is to know their place in the canine/human “pack.” Dogs crave the security of a pack structure. If you don’t serve as the dominant pack leader, they’ll try to take the position because someone has to fill that role.

It reminds me of when Laurel and I took swing dancing lessons. We spent a good share of the time arguing.

Her: You’re supposed to be leading!
Me: What do you mean? I am.
Her: It doesn’t feel like it.
Me: Well, maybe it’s because I don’t really know what I’m doing. If you want to lead, go ahead.
Her: You’re the man. You’re supposed to be leading!
Me: I am.

It’s questionable how much swing dancing we learned, but we sure got good at going around in circles.

Wenn Gott flüstert, donnert es in der Schöpfung

If you can understand the title of this post, then you should buy the recently-published German translation of my first book. Heck, even if you can’t understand it, go ahead and buy the book with the same name anyway.

Currently Amazon is selling it at a generous discount. So for $10.17 plus shipping you get 300 pages of either comprehensible or incomprehensible German. Either way, that’s a great deal.

Kudos to Matthias Schneider-Marfels, who I know as “Matt,” for having the linguistic fortitude to translate a revised version of my “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder,” which has been out of print for quite a while. Matt lives in New Zealand. We’ve only communicated by email, but I feel like I’ve come to know Matt well. He’s become a friend.

Working on a complicated book project that spanned many months brought us close together. Matt wanted to make my book available to German-speaking readers. So we agreed that he’d contribute his time and energy, and I’d contribute whatever else was needed to get the book in print.

I ended up publishing it under the aegis of my own imprint, Adrasteia Publishing. It’s a print on demand title that gets produced one copy at a time through Lightning Source, an Ingram subsidiary.

One day I’ll write about the benefits of writers setting up their own “publishing house.” It’s not as good as finding a big name commercial publisher for your book, but it’s a heck of a lot better than signing up with a print on demand firm like IUniverse, XLibris, or Trafford—who are going to charge you for the privilege of keeping a good share of the profits from your book sales.

Getting this book successfully published, with the invaluable aid of ace book designer Charles King, has given me the confidence to get the English version of my shorter, simpler, and less preachy “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder” back in print. In my utterly biased opinion, it still is one of the best treatments of how the old mystics and the new physics relate.

“Wenn Gott flüstert, donnert es in der Schöpfung” is available on Amazon Germany, but for reasons known only to Lightning Source, Ingram, and Amazon, at the moment the umlauts are messed up on the book’s listing. This is just one of those many things in the book distribution process that drives writers/publishers/translators crazy.

[Next day update: naturally, after writing the previous paragraph the title now looks fine. I can only wish that every time I blog about some gripe, the world will change according to my wishes.]

Of course, anyone who goes through all the trouble to write, publish, or translate a book that likely will sell only a few hundred (or, if you’re lucky, a few thousand) copies is already demonstrably crazy. So a little more post-publication craziness isn’t bothering Matt and me all that much.

I’d like to close with some profound phrase dragged out of the memory bin of my four years of high school German, but all I can remember is the beginning of the record that I was given my freshman year and listened to so many times it is forever burned into my brain cells.

Guten tag, Luisa. Wie gehts?
Sehr gut. Und dir?

(my apologies to the Germanic world for any spelling errors; 1962 was a long time ago)

How untruths spread over the Internet and talk radio

Here’s a classic example of how political talk radio picks up a falsity and then proclaims it as the Gospel Truth to gullible listeners. Yesterday I forced myself to listen to Michael Savage as part of my ongoing effort to understand the workings of the extreme right-wing mind.

Savage was ranting on about how former President Bill Clinton had called for the conviction of the publishers of the infamous Mohammed cartoons. That seemed highly unlikely to me, but Savage was reading from a news story and, hey, we all know that you can trust whatever news outlets say, right?

Wrong. Especially if the outlet is the Daily Times of Pakistan, which indeed has a story about what Clinton said to reporters after a meeting in Islamabad. It’s titled “Clinton urges EU to convict publishers of caricatures.” Savage has it linked on his web site (right under a photograph of a beheaded Indonesian girl; this Michael Savage is one classy guy).

Only problem: the Daily Times story doesn’t have any direct or indirect quotes from Clinton where he says the European Union should convict those who published the Mohammed cartoons.

That didn’t stop Savage, of course. He blathered on and on about how Bill Clinton was on the side of the Islamic demonstrators who were killing people around the world, and didn’t give a damn about free speech. “See, this is what we’ll get if Hillary is elected,” he said.

A man phoned in and said that he hadn’t heard about Clinton’s comments, but now was shocked by them. “The mainstream media doesn’t want you to know about this story,” Savage said.

Well, here’s the real reason the mainstream media didn’t report that Clinton had called for the conviction of those responsible for the cartoons: almost certainly, he never said that.

Danial, a blogger from Pakistan, sets the story straight in his “Daily Times Not Reliable Anymore?” post. He sent this email to the newspaper:

I am a blogger from Pakistan and I always thought that the Daily Times is a good resource when it comes to finding news stories from Pakistan. I just found that the newspaper falsely reported former US President Bill Clinton, asking EU to convict publishers of Muhammad cartoons. Some other bloggers including myself didn’t find any such thing from countless other news sources covering Clinton’s stay in Pakistan. If there was some mistake I would like to know about it and would appreciate if you apologize for the confusion it caused. Otherwise, please let the world know that you are firm on the authenticity of your report.

Danial requests that people contact the Daily Times and ask them if they still stand by their story. Good idea. I love the Colbert Report, including its devotion to spreading subjective “truthiness.” However, this cartoon controversy is too serious for anything other than the truth when it comes to pronouncements made by world leaders. I mean, opinion is one thing and truth is another thing. They need to be distinguished (in my opinion, at least).

Mark in Mexico has details about how Clinton’s comments were reported by dozens of other news organizations. Stories from outlets such as the BBC and the PakTribune have no mention of Clinton calling for convictions. He did say that religious convictions need to be respected, so Mark theorizes that the Daily Times needs a new translator.

So here’s a great example of how one newspaper gets it wrong. Then that untruth is picked up by others with a vested interest in spreading trash about someone they don’t like. For example, conservative sites such as NewsBusters and WorldNetDaily passed along the unfounded Daily Times story without question, which almost certainly is how Savage and other right-wing talk show hosts got the untruthful news.

The (obvious) lesson from all this is that you shouldn’t believe without question what you find on the Internet, or elsewhere. Verify, verify, verify. I can’t tell you how many times people have passed on to me a breathless “can you believe this!” email that is making the rounds. It usually takes me just a few minutes of Googling to demolish the rumor.

I always think to myself: “Why couldn’t the first recipients of this message have done the same thing, and thereby stopped the untruth from spreading?” That’s a good question for Michael Savage. And Pakistan's Daily Times.

Court allows religious hallucinogenic tea

Now that the Supreme Court has said that it is all right to use a hallucinogen to better understand God, I expect that the Church of Reality and Church of the Universe are going to have an upsurge in membership. When marijuana is a sacrament, you’ve got a darn good recruitment tool.

Plus, it’s been proven: Jesus used marijuana.

But seriously…does it make sense that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal to use medical marijuana for clearly evident health problems, while it is legal to use an otherwise illicit drug to worship an invisible God?

A tale of two toothpastes

A man who doesn’t have any grandchildren yet, but who looks forward to telling bedtime stories one day, needs to be prepared. And dream…

“Grandpa Brian, tell me the Tale of Two Toothpastes. Oh, please, I love your stories so much!”

“Dear Grandchild, I just told you this story last night. Are you sure you want to hear it again?”

“Yes, yes, yes! I could hear it every night and never, ever get tired of it. Grandpa, I love your stories of the old days. And especially, especially about what you used to write about on your blogs. Did I tell you that my friends and me have started kindergarten blogs?”

“No, honey. But we can talk about you later. Bedtime is all about my stories, remember?

“Yes, Grandpa. Now, please tell me the Tale of Two Toothpastes. I can’t wait!”

“OK. Here we go…”
----------------------------------
Once upon a time there was a man, a lot like me, who went to the dentist. The man didn’t like to go to the dentist, even for a teeth cleaning. He especially didn’t like to see the dentist’s black Porsche parked out back, because he knew that his crowns and cavities had helped pay for that very nice car. And that bugged him.

So the man wasn’t in a wonderful mood when, after his teeth had been x-rayed, and cleaned, and polished, and fluorided by a hygienist, which already had cost the man more money than he wanted to think about, the dentist who owned the very nice black Porsche came in to look at his teeth for a few seconds so he could call it an “exam” and add even more to the man’s already outrageous bill.

And then what the dentist said made the man even more upset. “You got the bad luck of the genetic draw when it comes to your saliva. Your mouth is a natural breeding ground for nasty tooth-destroying stuff.”

Now, the dentist talked more dentistly than this, but the man, who was a lot like me, stopped listening closely after he heard “bad luck,” because he knew that these words, when said by a dentist, meant that the man likely was going to be helping to buy an even nicer black Porsche.

“You’ve got several choices,” the dentist said. “You could brush your teeth many times a day. You could brush with Listerine mouthwash, like I do. Or, if you don’t want to have Listerine running down your arms and chest, like what happens to me [eew! the man thought, wondering if the dentist brushed his teeth in his very nice black Porsche and, if so, how this affected the leather seats], you should at least brush with Listerine toothpaste.”

The man, who had a razor-sharp logical mind, a lot like me, ran through the possibilities in a flash and picked the very best idea, meaning, the easiest idea, because the man wasn’t interested in letting increased teeth-maintenance take time away from all the much more important things the man had to do—like look on the Internet for photos of that cute blonde member of the Russian women’s curling team he had seen on TV.

So after he had written a check to the dentist’s receptionist for more money than a new car cost not so many years ago, the man went to his local Fred Meyer store and bought a tube of Listerine toothpaste. He liked the looks of it. The outside had words like “clinically proven,” “powerful,” and “kills germs.”

This toothpaste, thought the man, would help keep him from buying the rich dentist an even more expensive Porsche. Plus, it would help him keep his teeth healthy. But that was a secondary consideration.

He had a new friend. He would call him “Listy.”

The only problem was, the man already had a toothpaste friend, “Remy.” Remy was what he called his Rembrandt toothpaste that supposedly whitened his teeth—which the man believed with all his heart, because it said “whitening” on the tube, and he felt that the government wouldn’t let someone make a claim that wasn’t true, though when he thought about what was happening in Iraq he sometimes wondered if his teeth were really getting any whiter.

Anyway, the man had been told by his dentist to use Listy, so he reluctantly put Remy away on a bathroom shelf. He often thought that he could hear his old friend Remy crying at night when he used his new friend Listy instead. The man was happy that he had a new clinically proven powerful toothpaste that killed germs, but he was sad that his teeth weren’t getting whiter anymore.

He would think to himself during the two minutes that he timed on his atomic watch every time that he brushed his teeth, “I am going to have germ free ugly teeth soon.” And that made him even sadder, especially when he thought about what a nice Porsche the dentist was going to be able to buy if the man’s Aging Ego ever led him to want ceramic veneers.

Then, one day, the man had a epiphany. Suddenly he felt wonderful! He wasn’t sad any longer. For one thing, he knew that now, if he ever had grandchildren, he could tell them a story with the word “epiphany” in it, which would do a lot for their vocabulary.

But just as important, he knew that he didn’t have to choose between his old friend Remy and his new friend Listy. And he didn’t need to brush his teeth any more often either to spend time with his old friend. The epiphany was so, well, ephiphanous, the man felt like the cosmos had opened up and revealed a Great Truth to him.

He could have it all. He didn’t have to choose. He had been thinking of Remy and Listy as separate things who couldn’t be combined. Yet, they could. There could be two toothpastes on one brush. He had been caught in a dualistic dream from which he'd been awakened by Unity.

“Come together. Right now. On my toothbrush.” The man, who was a lot like me, could hear the Beatles singing. Which might have been a flashback (but that’s another story, dear grandchild).
----------------------------------
“Tell me the moral, Grandpa! You forgot the moral!”

“All right. The moral is…don’t get caught in the Twosies Trap. It’s easy to believe that you have to choose between two things, two people, two ideas, two beliefs, two political parties, two religions, or two whatever. Our Twosies mind likes to divide stuff up, but Onesies is more how the world really works.”

“Thank you, Grandpa Brian. I love the Tale of Two Toothpastes. They’re really one toothpaste, aren’t they?”

“That’s right, dear grandchild. If you see them as Onesies, they are. Good night.”

[Next day update: as noted above, this is how I spent the time I saved by not brushing twice with two different kinds of toothpaste. Except, it took a lot longer than two minutes to find a photo of Ludmila Privivkova, skip (whatever that is) of the Russian women's curling team. If it weren't for hoos Mike, who asked, and Guy, who provided, I'd still be trying to prove to myself that anything can be found on the Internet if you search diligently enough.]

Israeli anti-Semitic cartoon contest: I love it!

While Muslims are rioting and killing to protest cartoons of Muhammad, an Israeli guy has sponsored an anti-Semitic cartoon contest (only Jews may enter):

Amitai Sandy (29), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing, from Tel-Aviv, Israel, has followed the unfolding of the “Muhammad cartoon-gate” events in amazement, until finally he came up with the right answer to all this insanity - and so he announced today the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest - this time drawn by Jews themselves!

“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” said Sandy “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

I love it. Muslims of the world, observe. And learn.

When I heard Sandy interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air program last night, the contrast between his civilized response to an Iranian newspaper’s competition for cartoons on the Holocaust, and the crazy riots in the Islamic world, was striking.

As far as I could tell, so far Sandy has only put this single anti-Semitic cartoon submission up on his web site. He’s promising more, so check back to see if other Jew-bashing cartoons drawn by Jews have been posted.

On Fresh Air Sandy described another submission, which I recall went like this: A man is looking at a used car. He asks the salesman, “How many Jews will this car hold?” The salesman says, “Lots. You can get two in the front seat, three in the back, and six million in the ashtray.”

The NPR interviewer obviously was shocked. So was I. When was the last time you heard a Holocaust joke? She asked him how Jews are responding to his anti-Semitic cartoon contest. Sandy replied that overwhelmingly, they think it’s a great idea (check out the comments on his blog).

Laughter is one of the best responses to the closed-minded Islamic fundamentalists who are deeply offended by a few cartoons of the Muhammad, but take lightly all the atrocities committed in the prophet’s name. The cartoon above, along with many others, can be found on a great compilation of professional cartoons about the Muhammad cartoons.

Another response, predictably, is Muhammad cartoon online T-shirt sales. If you want to support free speech, and aren’t worried about being beheaded, head on over to these infidel merchants: Café Press, T Shirt Hell, Metrospy.

I liked this offering: “A Danish newspaper published my cartoon and all I got was this lousy Jihad.”

The Independent Bandwagon starts to roll in Oregon

A political groundswell back towards the middle is underway. This is great. May the center not only hold, but expand.

Here in Oregon, Ben Westlund has dropped out of the Republican party and is running for governor as an Independent. Moderate presidential candidate Michael Smith wants to go to the Republican National Convention in ’08 and shake up the party’s right wing.

Perhaps most significantly, John and Leah Frohnmayer are organizing The Independent Bandwagon that, they hope, will reach voters in every community in Oregon. I learned about this much-needed movement from their recent letter in the Portland Oregonian:

Your editorial on independent voters (Feb. 3) is exactly right. That is why we are starting "The Independent Bandwagon" to encourage voters to register independent; vote on merit, not party affiliation; and to encourage independent candidates in Oregon.

The Oregon Legislature is hopelessly partisan, with both parties bringing dishonor to the legislative process. If we can't talk to each other, we can't solve our problems. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats will reform themselves, and neither has a lock on all the good ideas.

If enough independents vote, we can choose nonpartisan candidates who are interested in the issues and in communicating to solve our problems.

If you are interested in The Independent Bandwagon, contact us at frohn@comcast.net.
JOHN and LEAH FROHNMAYER, Corvallis

I did just that, and heard more about what the Frohnmayers are up to via their emailed reply.

Thanks for responding. The Independent Bandwagon is a movement, not another political party. (The reason we don’t want to be a political party is because then we, too, would become partisans. We want to be free to champion the good ideas wherever they arise.)

We are individuals who are tired of watching our elected representatives of both parties bicker instead of solve problems. We believe our society’s problems are real: education, environment, jobs, fair taxes and dozens more; and that neither party can respond because both are captives of big money.

We believe to take back our government we have to elect enough Independents that political parties will need us to help find answers. As such, Independents can be the honest brokers in our political system and reestablish communication.

We believe that any candidate, regardless of label, has to earn our vote by persuading us she or he will work for us, not for a party.

We do not claim to own the truth or the answers, but we do know the present system is broken and it won’t fix itself. We intend to organize Independents to join the Bandwagon in every community in the State. Our first step is to post a CMS (Content Management System) site to allow us all to interact, share information and work in each of our communities to develop a strong voice and collective impact.

They’re right. We don’t need another “Independent” political party, though sometimes it will be necessary for centrist candidates to run as Independents—as Ben Westlund is doing. More importantly, I’m hoping that The Independent Bandwagon will demonstrate the strength of the middle, so that both Democratic and Republican candidates will have to moderate their positions in order to be elected.

Currently both parties play to their extreme bases, as Mortimer Zuckerman editorialized in a recent issue of U.S. News & World Report. He says, “America has always flourished when it listens to the heartbeat of the people, when centrist leaders have sought consensus…Today, sadly, our divisions encourage our enemies, dishearten our allies, and sap our resolve. We must change gears.”

When I took the World’s Smallest Political Quiz I came out as a Liberal, not a Centrist. Yet I’m a registered Independent. And I almost always vote Democratic. So I don’t think progressives have anything to fear from The Independent Bandwagon, Westlund’s candidacy, and other motion toward the political center.

The center is the place from which change most easily occurs. As a Tai Chi student, I’m well aware of that. When you get off-balance and tilt too far in any direction, you’re stuck. If you need to flexibly respond to a changing circumstance—such as a punch heading for your face—you can’t.

Similarly, both Oregon and the United States are unable to deal with pressing problems because the Democratic and Republican parties lean so far toward the left and the right they’re unable to move the body politic in a centrist, balanced fashion.

Ideologues no longer will get my vote. Candidates from any party with good ideas will.

Join the Michael Smith presidential bandwagon

Yesterday I learned that Corvallis resident Michael Smith is running for President of the United States on the Republican ticket. Today we at HinesSight have endorsed Michael, using “we” liberally in the typical blogging sense of “me, myself, and I.”

After I saw the Smith for President web site I knew that Michael was my kind of candidate. His official campaign photo shows him holding a tuba! Because, he plays the tuba. As if that isn’t enough of a qualification to become President of the United States, I was taken by the sum total of his “endorsements” page:

"Love you no matter what" - Mom

Clearly Michael won’t be beholden to special interests after he’s elected. (All we’ll have to worry about is how much influence his mother will have over the Smith administration).

The Corvallist blog beat me on publicizing Smith’s recently-announced candidacy. That’s appropriate, since he’s a Corvallis resident. However, I’m disappointed that The Corvallist says that it is only giving Michael a “mild plug” rather than a full-blown endorsement.

Hey, who else is there on the Republican presidential scene who has a platform with refreshing policy statements like these?

Gay marriage. Many of the arguments against gay marriage run in logical conflict with the separation of Church & State. There are certainly civil rights associated with marriage, but any "sanctity" of marriage is a religious concept. Call it "civil union" if you like, but gay marriage is no threat to the fabric of society, and arguably strengthens the community. The civil benefits of marriage should be granted to committed partnerships and that commitment validated by the community.

The Religious Right. It's great that some people have all the answers conveyed to them directly by God. Those of us who don't have all the answers depend on the protections of the constitution to protect our freedoms. A theocracy, even if it's a theocracy based on your beliefs, is a dangerous thing. When the theocracy starts to dictate science, write laws, and apply religious doctrine to government, oppression is inevitable. Our country was built by thousands of immigrants seeking religious freedoms. Let's honor the Pilgrims, the Protestants, the Jews, and even the Unitarians by keeping religious doctrine out of our governmental processes. For those who can't separate their religious beliefs from their politics, I'd remind them; "Judge not, that ye not be judged".

Michael Smith also has an appealingly pithy stump speech.

I’m a registered Independent, so won’t be able to sign a Republican nominating petition for Michael. If you know any moderate Oregon Republicans (yes, they do exist), send them Michael’s way. We’ve got to get his bandwagon rolling before John McCain and other presidential wannabes know what hit them.

If Bush drives you crazy, he’s won

It’s easy to feel like the Bush administration is driving you crazy. Every day, it seems, there’s a new revelation about Bush lies, Bush incompetence, Bush dissembling, Bush favoritism.

In no way is he a uniter rather a divider. If there’s anyone who can shatter the composure of a concerned citizen who cares about truth, justice, and the American way, it’s George W. Bush. Just looking at him on TV, even with the sound off, makes me irritated.

But I’ve come to this conclusion: if Bush is continually bothering me, he’s won—in the same sense as we hear, “if the terrorists make us give up our way of life, they’ve won.”

Life is to be lived, not fretted about. If my psyche falls into a Bush-bashing frenzy every time I read a newspaper, watch CNN, or listen to talk radio, I’m allowing myself to be controlled by a neo-con administration whose goal is exactly that: to control the American citizenry.

Today I stomped dead blackberry vines on our rural Oregon property. I had sprayed them in the fall and they’re ready for stomping into the ground now. Like fine wine, there’s a right time for tending to these vines: the more brittle they are, the better. It’s good exercise. Sort of like step aerobics with thorns.

Our neighbors have built a large garage adjacent to the blackberry stomping grounds. It deeply irritates my wife and me. Once we had gotten the blackberries cleared, we were looking forward to a much better view of a nearby community lake. Then the three-bay garage went up, a grotesque unnatural intrusion on this part of our property.

It’s easy for me to focus on the garage whenever I’m walking or working within sight of it. I find myself looking in the garage’s direction even when there’s no need for me to do so. I can’t say that the irritation it produces in me is pleasant. But for some reason I’ve fallen into a habit of being bothered by the garage.

Today I tried something different. I did my best to accept the garage as a reality. It’s been built. It isn’t on our land, so there’s nothing I can do about it. What I can do is attend to my life on our property. To my leg, stomping dead blackberry vines right in front of me.

The garage has nothing to do with this. Can’t touch me. Can’t affect me, unless I choose to look at it. Which I can. If I want to.

If I don’t want to, I can look in the other direction. At land of ours that’s already blackberry free. No garage here. Just nature.

I don’t see any sign of the Bush administration right now. The sun is setting, wispy white clouds are slowly blowing by, in my office there’s just me and my laptop.

I’m all for regime change in this country. However, right now Bush and his cronies are like the neighboring garage. They’re there, and that’s a fact. But I don’t have to attend to them unless I want to.

And especially, I don’t have to let myself be driven crazy by them.

Salem Peace Plaza: a radical hotbed of internationalism?

On Monday the Salem (Oregon) city council rejected a demand from veterans and military personnel that the Peace Plaza be renamed Liberty Plaza or Freedom Plaza. The disgruntled peaceaphobes also were up in arms over the United Nations flag in the plaza, calling this “foreign flag” a slap in the face to military personnel.

Late this afternoon, after changing out of my blogger’s pajamas, I decided to take a look for myself and see if the Peace Plaza was the radical hotbed of secular America-hating internationalism that the city council petitioners were making it out to be.

The plaza sits in between the library and a building housing the city offices. It’s tucked out of the way and doesn’t have any handy on-street parking. Demonstrating my commitment to investigative blogging journalism, I plunked 25 cents into a library parking garage meter and walked over to the Peace Plaza.

At first glance it looked pretty, well, peaceful. Just a few people in sight.

Then I turned around. A chill went up my spine. I could almost hear the sound of black helicopters coming to take my freedoms away. The United Nations flag!

I felt like racing back to my car, driving home, and turning on Fox News so I could get my blood running red, white, and blue again. But I managed to calm myself and took a closer look at the display that sits beneath the UN flagpole.

What’s up here? I thought we spoke English in this country. And that sign on the right looks suspiciously like Russian to me. Didn’t we win the Cold War?

The dedication plaque seemed innocuous enough. “Salem” does indeed mean “peace,” though I wish whoever founded our city had chosen a pure English name like they have in other states. Such as, say, Los Angeles.

Right-wingers concerned about the Peace Plaza will be pleased to know that a quotation from a great Republican president is prominently featured. Come to think of it though, those words seem like they could have been spoken by Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore. I guess Republicans like Dwight D. Eisenhower talked different back in the 1950s.

Then I saw a truly leftist quote: “Blessed are the peacemakers.” That sounds so 60s. Everybody knows that we’ve got to stay the course in Iraq now. The Christian preachers I see on Fox News tell us so, so why should we listen to what Jesus says?

The radical leaning of the Peace Plaza really hit me when I saw this mural. Pagan to the core. Children sitting cross-legged in the forest, holding hands around a big Earth. Unpatriotic too. It was getting dark and I couldn’t see very well, but if there had been any American flags in the mural I think I would have noticed them.

The newspaper story talked about a Hiroshima display in a library window adjoining the Peace Plaza that annoyed the veterans. I didn’t see any sign of that, but there was Kwanzaa propaganda all over the place. Who says the war on Christmas isn’t for real?

But seriously now...I completed my tour of the plaza by walking to the other end and gazing up at the American flag. I couldn’t help but notice the moon. The same moon that was shining down on the United Nations flag.

Made me think of how this is one world. One Earth. Which, one day, could be peaceful. Sure seems like a dream.

But dreams can come true.

What I’ve learned after 500,000 page views

Today my HinesSight blog passed the 500,000 page view mark. In celebration of this milestone I’ll reveal what people look for most in my corner of the blogosphere. Can you guess?

Three choices: (1) Cogent political analyses, (2) Profound philosophical insights, (3) Photos of sexy women.

No big surprise here. I should have said: “three choices, and the first two don’t count.”

My “The Tao of Paris Hilton” post accounted for a large share of those half a million page views. After Google Images put several of the photos in that post on the first page of a “Paris Hilton” search I began getting over 10,000 visits a day from Paris fans.

Another popular post, not surprisingly, is my “Most beautiful woman in the world” offering that features Aishwarya Rai. After a link was included on a Pakistani newspaper web site, the post became a forum for passionate debate about which country—such as India or Pakistan—has the most beauteous babes. The comments got so nasty I eventually decided to shut them down.

Other posts with at least a toe in the prurient interest water that attracted quite a bit of attention include “Shocked!—I discover my wife’s late-night Internet lusting,” “Lust and longing at the dog park,” and the innocuously titled “The clouds speak to me” (the Sky Goddess photo spoke to lots of Google Images searchers).

Every blogger wants gobs of visitors. The question becomes: to what extent are you willing to sell your blogging soul in return for page views? Do you write about high-minded important subjects that, by and large, generate a “yawn” from Internet surfers? Or do you give people what they want?

These are important questions that deserve my careful consideration. Which I’ll get to after I post a few photos.

Muslims have been depicting Mohammed for centuries

Here's why the Islamic over-reaction to the publishing of Mohammed cartoons is so ridiculous: Muslims have been depicting the Prophet for centuries. So if it's true that any caricature of Mohammed is blasphemous, Muslims have been some of the worst blasphemers of their own religion and should be boycotting themselves, not Denmark.

Check out this archive of Mohammed images, some from the Islamic world and some from Western sources. The creator of the archive says:

While the debate rages, an important point has been overlooked: despite the Islamic prohibition against depicting Mohammed under any circumstances, hundreds of paintings, drawings and other images of Mohammed have been created over the centuries, with nary a word of complaint from the Muslim world. The recent cartoons in Jyllands-Posten are nothing new; it's just that no other images of Mohammed have ever been so widely publicized.

This page is an archive of numerous depictions of Mohammed, to serve as a reminder that such imagery has been part of Western and Islamic culture since the Middle Ages -- and to serve as a resource for those interested in freedom of expression.

State Dept. wrong about Mohammed cartoons

It’s not often that I see eye-to-eye with William Bennett, aptly described as a right-wing “self-appointed moral compass for America.” But his take on Islamic anger over the Mohammed cartoon controversy is right on. Today on CNN I heard him tell Wolf Blitzer:

“Look, it just turns out that there are people who are acting in the world, cutting people’s heads off, putting jetliners into buildings, and saying they are doing so in the name of Allah. You know, this is what people say…they’re saying they’re doing this because of the Koran, because of the Prophet.

Now, others argue it is a distortion of that. Fine, let that debate commence. But I take it that one point of the Danish newspaper cartoons is to say this is being done in the name of Islam. Religion is not off limits when it comes to a free press. Religion is, despite the fact that our State Department may wish to deny it, very much embedded in this war against radical Islam.”

For some reason our State Department is critical of the publication of the Mohammed cartoons, calling them “offensive to the beliefs of Muslims.” Well, I’m with Bennett on this one (and it could well be the last one). As I said on my Church of the Churchless weblog a few days ago:

Earth to the Muslim world: People get disturbed by lots of things every day. People get their feelings hurt in lots of ways every day. Almost always these things and these ways aren’t illegal or immoral. They’re just part of life in a society where people can freely express themselves.

I can’t believe that our State Department is aligning itself (or at least, making excuses for) fundamentalist crazies who are saying that Denmark should be blown up and those who published the cartoons should have their heads cut off.

I believe as many people as possible should see these cartoons. Secular Western democracies can’t allow themselves to be held hostage by religious fundamentalists, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or whatever. Freedom of the press far outweighs the “right” (if such even exists) not to be offended.

So here’s a link to a site that has more readable versions of the cartoons than the image I posted previously. Take a look and practice Islamic blasphemy. What does it matter, if you’re not a Muslim? Or, even if you are.

HinesLand happenings, 2/2/06

Surely nobody is more interested in what’s happening with us than, well, us. And we know it, because we’re the happenings that are happening. For the rest of you, here’s some reflected HinesLand headlines.

Straight talk about cougars. A few days ago Laurel dashed out a letter to the Statesman-Journal editor about the newspaper’s biased cougar coverage. Lo and behold, it was published immediately. Perhaps her truthiness struck a nerve. A few days earlier David Cox made equal good sense on a similar subject: let’s leave wildlife alone; after all, they’re wild.

Ridiculous reaction to Muhammad cartoons. Over on my Church of the Churchless blog I’ve been writing about the Muslim world freaking out over some drawings of Muhammad that were published in a Danish newspaper (and recently reprinted in other European papers). Just when I think Christian fundamentalists take the cake, their Islamic brethren up the ante on crazy dogmatism.

Doggy door bell training. For about a month Serena the Wonder Dog has been undergoing intensive doggy door bell, a.k.a. Pet Chime, training. It’s not going very well, based on what I hear coming from downstairs every night as Laurel puts Serena out for a final potty break before the family pet settles in on her futon for sweet dog dreams.

“Do you want to go out? Do you? Press the paw. Press it! Go ahead, press it. Press it to go out.” This goes on for about a minute, then I hear a ding followed by: “OK, I pressed it for you. That’s how you do it. Next time you’ll do it yourself.” Maybe. But it’s been weeks now, and I think Serena has made the pet chime go off once on her own. Laurel is getting good at it though.

Highlander Hybrid tanks on first fill-up. It was pretty thrilling yesterday to pull into the gas station for the first fill-up of our newly acquired Toyota Highlander Hybrid SUV. A few minutes later I wasn’t so thrilled, after calculating the mpg by hand (for some reason the HiHy computer doesn’t show mileage for each tankful): 22.9.

Not so good, given the EPA city/highway rating is 31/27. But in the real world 4WD HiHy owners are reporting an average of 25.4 at last report. We’ve been getting about 10% lower mileage with our Prius during the winter, compared to summer. So hopefully HiHy will perk up its mpg as the weather warms up.