Putting the split between Judeo and Christian

Religious revisionism is a tiresome thing. As a Jew who's actually taken the time to learn, and as a human who's learned about rational things like science, the news that "Intelligent Design" is being taught for college credit in a non-religious setting blows my mind.

I might remind those focused on the pure letter of the Book about the six days it took to create the earth. And that it took three 'nights' and three 'days' before the sun and moon were created to make diurnal references possible.

Judaism has no problem with these issues: since our view of God permits metaphor instead of slavish obedience to the letter of the law, evolution, all the way up to humanity and the story of the Garden of Eden, is not a problem. A hallmark of the Jewish view of miracles is that they are worked in concert with nature as often as possible. It is in the rare occasions, such as the Ten Plagues, or the parting of the Sea of Reeds (ya gotta watch translations in other languages, folks, there was nothing red about the sea until a monk missed a letter!), when God's power is proclaimed for effect.

For those of you worrying about family purity and such, just stop and take a breath. If there were only two humans on the planet, and they only had two boys, and one killed the other... we would all be descendents from one man and one woman. Um, doesn't work that way, which is one of the reasons why incest is such an abomination in your religion. There is room for metaphor, if only to prevent incest from being seen as the method of God's choice for making the next generation.

Back to the course. Along with Janet Jackson's nipple slip, the FCC's sudden prurient interest in idiot speech heretofore covered by the First Ammendment and the self-censorship being executed by various actors' venues, I see factions in the United States attempting to return to the kind of self-censorship and muzzling that only drives deeper, and internalizes, the festering heart of independent thought and action.

While this may be amusing to our European and local neighbors, even as I applaud my children not being exposed to 'shock jock' talk, I fear for the honesty and progress of this great country. And courses in pseudo-science lead to pseudo-scientists, pseudo-thinkers, and pseudo-leaders. Caveat Emptor.

A King Recrowned

Today, America has seen the crowning of what some believe to be the Glory of the Lord. For others, for many others throughout this great land, the events portended in Mr. Bush's speech today presage a battle for the voters to understand the depth and breadth of the gap between what Republicans want reality to be, and what we the People must contend with in their plans.

Freedom for us starts with liberty throughout the world. Does he perceive China as such a country? Will he be so brave with them, and North Korea, as he is with Iraq and weaker countries? Can he blame Iran and other countries for their desire to slip under the tent and join the Nuclear Nations, as those that are are treated with extra kid gloves? What will he sacrifice for pushing liberty? The billions of dollars in trade deficit with China? The hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs we'd lose access to and the concomitant rise in retail prices to pay for our values? I think not.

Is liberty the freedom to want? The freedom to hunger? The freedom to make bad choices when not given enough education or opportunity to choose better?

Ownership was espoused as something americans should enjoy more of. More home ownership. More ownership of retirement. But the cost of this ownership is measured in profit to large companies, opportunity for people without time or education to make decisions that will effect how many post-retirement careers they will need at Wal-Mart before they can 'retire' in exhaustion, supported either by their next generations or by whatever religion they've adopted, if, in their freedom, that was a path they chose.

Bush talks of health insurance ownership. This from a man who drove child insurance in Texas to the lowest of any state in the union. #49 in illiteracy. #1 in teen pregnancy. Sorry, the concepts sound great, but the executor of this plan needs to have something more than abject failure as proof he can do this.

Last and not least is Bush's assertion of god's role in the United States. This, the same god of my people's Holocaust and the quarter-million dead in the tsunami of the last days of 2004?

Mr. Bush: God does as god wills. And god's will is no more yours than it is that of an imam in Pakistan, a rabbi in the Gaza Strip, a monk in Acheh or a fundamentalist in Waco. You would do well to focus on the attainable, practical, humanitarian, social and environmental goals that leave your stewardship of the land something not making your god wrathful.

Anger in all things

I snapped at my daughter in anger this morning; really freaked her out. I called her out for laughing about something she clearly didn't understand. 'I hate sycophants,' was I believe the thoughtlet running through my head before my mouth took her head off.

There was no excuse for that: it was plain and simple nastiness. small children do not have the capacity to be true sycophants, she was just trying to hang with the grown-ups. She was, I think almost upset that I didn't make up 'right,' that for my offense. So a public apology it is, tonight.

More upsetting than all that is that my kids just got a reinforcer for just the kind of behavior we don't like in them: being gruff, abrupt and rude to one another.

It's about focus. Concentration is a narrowing of the senses in search of a solution to a specific problem, but that narrow-mindedness, I think, lessens our ability to tolerate interference with focus. I don't know what I was focusing on: probably just the breakfast chatter with my spouse and kids. But my anger and being jarred from that focus was an immediate lash at the source of the 'noise.'


My boss did that today. Snap, whack! instead of a question; I think he was jarred from some activity and assumed something I did caused the problem.

When I first came to this position some folks on my team would cringe when I brought up an issue. 'They're worried they might be fired,' one of my managers explained. 'They were afraid you would shout,' said another. I thought it so sad they would think -- or allow themselves to be treated -- that way. And one of my tenets is that no one, not a customer, not a vendor, not a peer, manager, or subordinate, is allowed to create a hostile environment.

So how do I explain, aside from the feeble excuse of humanity, snapping so hard at a child? An exercise of power? A kinky affirmation of control? Annoyance without thought? This isn't an exercise in self-flagellation, but a question posed to the ether.

Four Beginnings

Every end has a beginning, every coda an initial measure.

2005 augers the unknown, as does the dawn of each year. We have the past year's terror, conflict, opportunity and wealth.

Clear already is that terror has a firm grip on us. This is no different, I think, than the fear a farmer has for his crop or her fishing take, the fear of violence that, once, we all shared before the growth of a (relatively) fair constibulary. Now we have tsnamis, which we've always had but continue to forget. We have terror, which, like a mesenteric cancer has begun infiltrating our tissues of naive peacefulness. And the political powers that have always heeded business have become so bent to their monetary masters that they are now little more than footstools for economic terror to be deployed against the American people.

The Palestinians, who have not missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, are again presented with the possibility of self-rule, in however a limited fashion that might come about in the short term. If they can control the terrorists within them, the terrorists that sometimes lead them, they stand a chance at being accepted equals among the nations of the world. But that would mean coming down from the tree they've climbed of not making a true effort at stopping the terror that they have invented and refined for over fifty years against the Jewish people and Israel. Israelis, on their part, need to risk civil war, need to risk treating Jews as bluntly as they treat Israeli and Palestinian Arabs, in retreating from the Gaza Strip. This will be no leaving of Yamit (a settlement in the Sinai Desert abandoned by Israel in the 70's). This could be a pitched battle, room by room and house by house. Or it could be a display of rational thought over zealous fanaticism, and the creation of new settlements at a new border. Both sides are transfixed by Jewish blood. Jewish extremists, who want their blood to run in places where even Kings David and Solomon never ruled. And Palestinian terrorists, in a blood lust only quickened by the sight of Jews still not punctured by mortar fragments, ball bearing, screws, nails, or bullets. In the land of 'an eye for an eye.' we are quickly running out of people with hindsight, foresight, or any sight not through a sniper's scope.

At this writing the spouse of a dear friend of mine is dying of a cancer they have fought bravely, for years after most similar sufferers have lost the battle. We lost a brilliant Congressman today of the same disease: Robert Matsui. Their disease, and Alzheimers, and cirrosis of the liver, and innumerable other ailments are at the cusp of being solved, with precise protein targeting, stem cell therapies and even vaccines. Each death is a precious reminder to the legions of scientists of the importance of their work. My father's death fourteen years ago would simply not happen today. And as I look middle age squarely in the face I am starting to look at these medical advances as my personal saviors that will hopefully cross the finish line before I need them.

It's always good to end on an upbeat note. In all the horror, terror, death, disease, evil, squalor and economic perversity, good things are happening. People knocked down are getting to their feet. Our children are growing, thinking, learning, as are legions of the next generation. One can find beauty in cedar pollen swirling off the trees, awe in unsupported bridge tresses rising from manmade mountains of freshly dumped rock and earth near my house.

My lesson to myself for 2005 is to look for the good in the bad, pleasure in the unpleasant. The tasty in the unpalatable reality that can swirl in like fog off the river and take your sight away.