Happy As Kings

Copyrighted materials

While my mind was wandering this morning, the eye that never sleeps (sometimes actually) noticed that the blurb on the toothpaste tube, Pepsodent during this shopping cycle, is copyrighted.  Intrigued, the inner homeschooler went looking, and found that the Cortizone 10 left over from the poison ivy incident, the Benadryl cream (bug bites), and the Blistex tube blurbs are similarly copyrighted.

The generic triple antibiotic ointment and the generic 2% allergy cream blurbs are not.

Now, I'm left wondering if it's because of the presence of trademarked names, or specialized ingredients, or ... unique application instructions?  Or maybe high priced lawyers?

In any case, it's a more interesting morning event than finding a spider in your shoe.

All fertilized eggs will become someone great

• Unborn Obama

Point 1:  declining to accept a production for broadcast is not synonymous with banning.  I just watched the advertisement, so it hasn't been "banned."

Point 2:  the implication that all children born to broken homes or in circumstances not conducive to a happy life will overcome the roadblocks in their lives has been around for a while.  The first time I saw this proposition was in a short questionnaire in which the series of negative life circumstances is finished with, "You just aborted Beethoven."

Do you think the same sadness at the loss of Beethoven's work would be feltif we'd lost the work of Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Papa Doc Duvalier, Baby Doc, Jim Jones, Ted Bundy, Mao Tse Tung, Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, Saddam Hussein (or his sons), Lucretia Borgia, Typhoid Mary, Lizzie Borden, Ma Barker, Bonnie and Clyde, Al Capone, and others?

My point isn't that abortion is a humdrum non-event when taken out of the personal context, only that the proposition of "abortion kills our future leaders" doesn't hold up logically when the point isn't carried through.  The equation must balance.

Ted Bundy and James Dobson

On a homeschool email list, a concerned member posted a PR-release about an interview by James Dobson of Focus on the Family with Ted Bundy, an infamously notorious serial killer who targeted young women between 1974 and 1978. I was a young woman between 1974 and 1978, so a national crime spree concerning that age group caught my attention, and held it.

The public relations release is curious:

• Why is a 20th anniversary ... observation ... necessary?
• What was Florida-incarcerated Bundy's real motive in talking to a 20-years-ago Coloradan James Dobson instead of someone else? (yes, I've seen the credited reason)
• Are the statements in the press release accurate?
• If it's so important, why did Focus on the Family cancel the public appearance on the Glenn Beck show because it seems that Mr. Beck is a Mormon. (? -- I'm unfamiliar both with Mr. Beck and with the program) If pornography is a national emergency, shouldn't a television host's religious faith be immaterial if our immortal souls are at stake?

I also wonder what application the press release has to homeschooling since I saw the release only on a list meant for local homeschooling parents. I really don't mean to kvetch about what shows up on the list, but the apparent conclusion that anything from Focus on the Family = 'homeschooling concerns' is a niggling pebble-in-a-shoe. [read]-[delete] [read]-[delete] [read]-[delete] [ad infinitum] It also seems petty to send items to the list that I find significant, but that have nothing specific to do with homeschooling. Pointed discussions are discouraged.

=========================

But back to the pornography.

Is the conclusion that pornography leads to evil actions accurate? I don't have any use for pornography,but I also don't like being made to fear things for no good reason because I'm of a slightly nervous temperament, so the fear aspect is personal for me.

I remember when Erich von Däniken's book Chariots of the Gods? was made into a television program in the 1970s. When I watched it in my parent's' living room during one visit (4 channels, no surfing) my husband was sitting on the couch, and I was sitting on the floor between his feet with my back against the couch. Part of the way into the program, my husband startled me by patting me on the shoulder. "It's OK. Calm down. It's just a tv program." I didn't even know I was nervous, and I don't remember believing every single word of the narration. Apparently, though, my body language was obvious, even from the back of my head. I guess, at heart, I'm gullible.

So, do I need to worry about the pornography epidemic? Is a fear-reaction prudent? I hear that pornography is everywhere (especially online -- :::glances around the screen:::) and that I must beware lest I'm trapped in the filth. I wonder about the nudie pictures because I lived in Germany for 18 years and didn't notice rampant sexual violence, while at the same time I did see rampant nekkid ladies (rarely any nekkid fellows);pictured on magazines in the grocery store, and billboard ads with untowelled (non-frontal) families relaxing in their indoor saunas. Then there were the people who changed clothes outside at the swimming pool. Srsly! (I bet Hitler had something to do with it.) How did we escape the vile effects?

Intrigued by the email (gullible, gullible, gullible), I virtually went looking for information, and found a research paper. It is an older paper (in line with the age of James Dobson's interview with Ted Bundy), but the research looks sound.

• Pornography, Sex Crime, and Public Policy, Berl Kutchinsky Professor of Criminology Institute of Criminology and Criminal Science University of Copenhagen Denmark

The paper was part of the proceedings at a criminology conference held by the Australian Institute of Criminology. The page was updated in 2007 (meaning someone still values the information), so I'm happy not to have to sully my hard drive history with more searches for sex crimes.

I don't intend to give the impression that I want to sanitize pornography or give it a Good Housekeeping-style seal of approval (not that the paper does that), so I'll just include brief quotations that seems to reflect my limited observations about differences between sexual attitudes in Germany and in the U.S.:

According to these studies, sex offenders generally reported sexually repressive family backgrounds, immature and inadequate sexual histories and rigid, conservative attitudes towards sexuality.

(I consider this quotation significant because of the suicide of a friend of my sister whose father was like nothing I'd ever heard of before, even though her suicide was by gunshot)

...

At any rate it would seem fair to conclude that overall there could not have been any increase in the actual number of rapes committed in West Germany during the years when pornography was legalised and became widely available.

In this study of the crime statistics in four countries, pornography was not implicated in sex crimes despite James Dobson's assertion ca. minute 4:45.

The paper is just 14 pages long and is readable.

Ted Bundy may have believed that pornography was what fueled his repulsively malignant actions. In the brief look I've taken just now at the online information about him, I would guess that his grandfather's repellent influence had more to do with his character malformation than did looking at 'dirty pictures.' (although, the images must have been a trigger for him -- he would know that)

I find nothing uplifting or useful in pornography, but I don't think it helps matters to blame what is possibly the wrong cause of a social problem that brings such despair to the human spirit. Focusing our efforts in the wrong area only delays finding a solution.

The Twelve Days of Christmas and Advent

'Life' has me by the throat at the moment, so blogging isn't high on my to-do list.  Right about now, 'supper' is probably the pole star around which my days revolve because it shows up regardless.  Despite my focus elsewhere, one of the local television stations' news persons irked me the other night by saying something about the station's "Twelve Days of Christmas" something-or-other with whichever evening it was being the Xth Day of Christmas.  Wrong.  The twelve days of Christmas do not begin until Christmas.

(I suppose I am extra-irked because if a television station's news staff can't get right something as ubiquitous in our culture as where the twelve days of Christmas fall, how can I trust these reporters with less well-known facets of reporting?)

I realize that Christmas is now more of a secular celebration than a religious one, and that secular celebrations build up to a climax, then move on to the next big (moneymaking) deal.  In this view, the twelve days would be a countdown rather than a continuation.  The celebration of "Christmas," though, is grounded in Christian religious traditions, even if the winter solstice is the original 'reason for the season.'  Therefore, more logically, the 12-day celebration should still follow Christmas, what with the United States being that famous "Christian nation" and all.

In Christian liturgical churches, the church calendars lay out the various times for celebrating holy days and the seasons that follow them.  In contrast to the secular view of religious holidays, the holiday/holy day is not the end-day of the season, but rather the beginning.  Therefore, Christmas begins Christmastide (which ends, depending on your viewpoint, either on Epiphany, 6 January, or Candlemas, 2 February -- that, like many other dates in Western culture, are muddled with earlier non-Christian celebrations)

CHRISTMAS TO CANDLEMAS IN A CATHOLIC HOME:  THE SEASON OF GRACE AND JOY

Christmas is a liturgical season of great joy. It lasts forty days, from December 25 to February 2, during which the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior, is celebrated as one continuous festival.

The current liturgical season is Advent.  Advent is supposed to be a time similar to Lent, a time of spiritual preparation for the coming holiday/holy day, with some practical preparation as well.  Secularly, I suppose the preparation concept could include all the cookie-making, light-stringing, and tree-trimming so that Advent could be a natural part of the secular festivities.  In thinking about it, I find it curious that the Christmas tree crossed the Atlantic with German immigrants, but the Advent wreath was all but left behind. 

    

(Wikimedia image)

In Germany, Advent wreaths are a popular decoration, even in public places. In stores, you can even buy graduated candles so that you don't end the Advent season with yet one more collection of varying-height purple and pink candles.  (For those who don't use an Advent wreath, one candle is lit each week for the four weeks preceding Christmas so that by the time Christmas arrives, the wreath has one very short candle, one sort of short candle, one medium-sized candle, and one tall candle.   These candles can later be useful when the power goes out, a 'power'ful event that seems to be a feature of American life rather than German life, so I don't know what German families do with their (usually) pink and purple leftovers.)

But, I'm wandering away from the Twelve Days theme, and confusing it (as an English-derived construction -- think Shakespeare's Twelfth Night) with German traditions.  I guess that's an American melting-pot effect.

In any case, the Twelve Days of Christmas follow Christmas, they do not precede it.  You'd think that a 'news' (read:  'research') organization would know that.

Now, it's time to keep on keeping up with 'Life.' With luck, this Christmas season I'll get more than one Advent candle burnt (one lit once so far), and maybe even get the outdoor wreath hung up on the front porch rail.  If the Christmas spirits smile on me, a tree might even be in the offing.

A person from Porlock is on my list

Just a few moments ago, I answered a knock at the door.  Two ladies were standing outside -- I figured they were campaigners.  I was wrong.  They were persons from Porlock.

Lady #1:  "Hi, I see that the sign you have out here says your spiritual needs are taken care of."

Good eye.  She can read.

Still Lady #1:  [holds out folded leaflet]  "Can I give you this [whatever it is] that points you to specific passages in the Bible to help you with your problems?"

No. 

I have tried to spare all of us a waste of time by putting the notice by the door, but this woman acts as if the notice does not apply to her, that her wishes trump mine, that she is special and, apparently, I am not.  Her actions tell me that my self-determination is not something she respects, that the worth of accomplishing her self-determined mission outweighs whatever I happen to be doing. 

This woman might say she is acting out of 'love,' the love Christ has for all people in order to save them from eternal death (which might well be preferable to eternal door-knockers if it gets me some peace and quiet).  However, Christ's sacrifice was that He died.  He didn't interrupt people at home who have made it clear to all the strangers at their door that they have already availed themselves of their desired form of spiritual succor.  You don't even have to bother getting my dust on your shoes so that later you have to shake it off. 

This bossy kind of 'love' reminds me of my father's admonition to my sinful little self when myself was indeed much littler and was insisting I was so, so, sorry after I was caught yet one more time with my hand in the cookie jar:  Actions speak louder than words.  Since this stranger acts as if she holds me in such negligible esteem (you have freedom of religion, not freedom from me pushing my religion on you), why should I so much as make the barest movement -- as if I might touch that paper -- to thereby honor and validate her disregard (you have no expectation of privacy if you don't bar your front walk from strangers), her disregard being of the sort that she believes she can inflict on me during my time and on my doorstep (and, so irritating to me because I am articulate only after I've closed the door with a curt, "No, thank you.")?

It would be simple to lay this problem at the door of religion, especially proselytizing religions whose adherents have convinced themselves that They Alone, in all the millennia of human existence, in all nations, countries, cities, towns and hamlets, and among all the True Believers, have been let in on The Secret.  I think, though, that they are just part of the Rude Group who believe they are above it all.

• legislators who not only disregard pleas not to spend $700 billion, but then add to it
• legislators who enact propositions that have previously failed at the polls
• people from other cities trying to get your city to do something
• people who either run red lights, or assume that 'right on red' means they have the right of way over oncoming traffic

 The list goes on, but (today) those are my top picks.

I know this is an old problem (Gilbert and Sullivan's song from The Mikado, "I've got a little list" was first sung in 1855), and that one blog post will not cure the world of this (usually) petty evil. Still, I like to dwell on how much pleasanter it would be if the problem were cured, that people paid attention to indications that their advances were unwanted, and we were all saved some aggravation.

Snopes co-opted in Burundanga scaremail

I just got an email about the latest threat-to-women: a business-card soaked in something called burundanga. 

According to the email, if you as much as sniff the burundanga, you lose all self-control and are at the mercy of the bad guys.  The underhandedness of the punk scaremail writer goes beyond the "sky is falling" hysteria, because he or she "quotes" Snopes about the validity of the information. 

[Snopes logo in email]

NEW WARNING --- PLEASE READ AND BE AWARE!!!!!

I checked w Snopes /see the snopes report

Subject: NEW  WARNING:  BE AWARE!   READ THIS LADIES!!!

This Incident has been confirmed. In Katy , TX 

snopes.com: Burundanga Business Card ••••

Strangers use burundanga-soaked business cards to incapacitate victims?
...Home --> Horrors --> Malicious Mayhem --> Burundanga Burundanga Claim: Strangers use burundanga-soaked business cards to incapacitate victims...
...Jaime checked the Internet and there is a drug called " Burundanga" that is used by some people to incapacitate a victim in order to steal or take...
...burundanga, an extract of the datura plant which contains alkaloids such as scopolamine and atropine and which hails from Colombia . However, burundanga...
Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:27:34 GMT http://www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/burundanga.asp

Sure looks real, don't it.  [cue scary music]

Trouble is, for email readers, is that Snopes debunks the email, but unless you click the link, you won't know.  Clever trick, that, co-opting the Snopes name.  Even I fell for that part (I didn't click the link at first), even though the scaremail itself was transparent in its falsity.

Red flag #1:

A man came over and offered his services as a painter to a female putting gas in her car and left his card.

"A man" gave a card to "a female?"  That's a set-up for women-readers to identify with a clinical assesment of the woman as a victim.  Either the two people are "male and female" or "man and woman," but not "man and female."

Red flag #2:

The man then got into a car driven by another gentleman.

"Gentleman?"  The slimeball is out to rape, pillage or murder and he's given the honorific of "gentleman?"  Now, maybe the writer wants you to think this fictional person looked like a "gentleman" but, as well see further, this is just more linquistic smoke and mirrors.

Red flag #3:

As the lady left the service station, she saw the men following her out of the station at the same time.   Almost immediately,  she started to feel dizzy and could not catch her breath.

OK.  So's this "man" gives a "female" a card, and she's "started" on dizzy and can't catch her breath, but the guys (superguys?) who've had this card in their possession for -- how long? -- continue on as if they're out for a Sunday spin in the Chevy?  Why aren't the guys dizzy and breathless?

Since the "man" and "gentleman" are not slumped and in thrall to passers-by, what gives?  How are they immune?

• Did the "painter" wear a double-filter mask while breathing like Darth Vader?
• Did the "painter" have on protective gloves?
• Did the "painter" peel plastic off the business card as if it was a Kraft Single, while wearing latex gloves so he could grip the plastic?
• Did the "painter" have the cards in a plastic bag, while wearing protective gloves?
• Did the "painter" discard the protective gloves before he got back in the car with his getaway driver?
• Did the "painter" not need to discard the gloves because the fumes are activated by something in skin?

Any situation in which this "man" hands the "female" a poison-soaked card has to have him protected against the card.  And if he is protected, who, in their right mind, is going to let someone decked out in some kind of HazMat gear give them anything?

It's too bad that the writer of this email has no long-term discipline.  He should work on his logic, and maybe apply himself to writing mysteries or thrillers.  He could have a career.  Until then, he's just a punk.

Seriously stupid people

A few weeks ago, someone stole my husband's license plates -- tore 'em right off the front & back of his car.  We filed the police report, got new plates, bought a motion detecting porch light, didn't cry over the spilt milk, and forgot about it.

So today, my husband is driving down our street, getting ready to pull into our driveway when he sees his stolen license plates on a van two doors down from us.  The idgwit working on the van had just put the plates on, upside down.  I guess he figured that would baffle everyone, and that my husband would have forgotten his license plate numbers.

So, my husband calls the police, and an officer arrives about fifteen minutes later, and the idgwit does a runner.  Another police vehicle arrives, neighbors come out to see what's going on, and general street commotion ensues. The police run the van's VIN and find out that it is probably stolen, too.  Supper is late.  The officer says to call again if we see the idgwit.

   

   

We have supper.

The idgwit and companions come out of their hidey holes and start working on the van again.  We call again.  The same officer arrives ... just a tad too late.  I suppose if he'd taken less time than that 1/2 hour - 45 min., he might have caught the thief.  As it is, we think Idg & Friends drove off ... leaving the van parked in the street.

The up-side?  We now have souvenir stolen plates -- the officer said they'd just throw the plates away, so he gave them back to us -- and a motion-detecting porch light.

Child-free atheists

Over at Chris's blog, he linked to a post by John Scalzi that smacked down a comment troll:  Note to self: never troll at Scalzi.com  I didn't click on the links to the history of the post ('too little time' problem -- reading comments takes long enough), but the "child-free" discussion intrigues me. 

I've tried finding a word for people without children that doesn't make the entire discussion 'child-referenced' instead of 'taxpayer-referenced.'  This is in reference to the 'I pay taxes' homeschool discussions that then express a desire to participate in school activities.  I want to refer to individuals who have no connection to someone else's procreative activities, but yet must legally support someone else's procreative results.  The words 'childless' and 'child-free' still frame the discussion with child-bearing as the default.  I'm 'zebra free' but nothing I do (other than religiously reading Pearls Before Swine and greeting my children with "Helloooo zeeba neighba!") is done with my zebra-freeness in mind.  ("Oh, good.  I can go to the store and not worry about leaving a zebra alone in the yard.")

I'm finding the same difficulty in talking about homeschoolers without making some kind of statement that has some kind of deism attached to it -- 'deism' as in belief in some god(s), instead of 'deist' meaning an impersonal god.

In most of the conversations I read (on that subject) all the people are quantified in relation to the supernatural whether or not the people acknowledge the supernatural.  Even 'atheist' has a 'god' connection within the word as if, for these people, 'god' is the default and they just won't admit it.  Some relation to religion is always triggered in the conversations.  'Mainstream' is as close as I've gotten, so far, but not even that's satisfactory.

I hope I never have to write about people who haven't procreated and are a-supernatural.  I won't be able to type.

Btw, I liked Scalzi's smackdown.  :)  Thanks for the link, Chris.

Irrational gullibility

The following report is a tale worthy of the days of the Salem witch trials. 

CityNews Exclusive: The Mother, The Child, The School Board And The Psychic

Leduc was shaken by the idea. "It's actually your worst nightmare your child being violated," she admits. "So for them to even suggest that, and that be my worst nightmare, it was horrific."

But things got worse when school officials used the "evidence" and accepted the completely unsubstantiated word of the seer by reporting the case to Children's Aid, which promptly opened a file on the family.

"They reported me to Children's Aid," Leduc declares, still disbelieving. "Based on a psychic!"

It is one thing for a credulous person to believe a cold reading, especially when that person was the one to seek out the psychic.  It is quite another thing for school administrators to allow such harmful shenanigans to be granted any credibility, and a breach of professional behavior for an agency charged with the protection of children to accept a psychic 'report' as evidence of anything but gullibility on the part of the person spreading the tale.  Again, it is one thing for an agency to act on a credible report of mistreatment of a child, and another to waste time and money on whatever dreck bubbles up from a common culture steeped in sensationalism and manipulation.

Shapeware

There's nothing new under the sun.

Dress 10 Pounds Thinner

When I was a kid, "shapewear" items were called girdles.  And before that, they were generally known as corsets.  (no big deal, it just gave me a chuckle to see "shapewear" featured as if it is a new concept ... and yes, there used to be 'soft' girdles for 'shaping' way back when, too)