Oberlin Food Fight: A Cook's Perspective

You're going to want to read this.

Quote of the Day: People Behaving Badly On Social Media

All too accurate (and delightfully said by one of my favorite British wordsmiths):

"Twitter is indeed a bare-knuckle bear pit of a witch hunt frenzy nightmare of bile, invective and round, unvarnished evil."

Rant: Textual Harassment

So first there was this.  How to respond?  Nope.  By "editing the Bible" these people could mean "changing an ancient text so it's more convenient for you" or maybe even worse, "bowdlerizing the text for cheap political purposes."  

Come on, the guy in HuffPo blatantly advocates excising things that he personally finds objectionable.  That's not really editing.  That's doing actual violence to the integrity of the text.  Dude's a professor of writing; you'd think he'd grasp this basic point, but noooooooooo.  And unless he's got a real command of the ancient languages in which the Bible is written and can read them in any meaningful scholarly way, then he can shut his socially superior piehole, because just mucking about with (often bad) modern English translations is a waste of time if you're really talking about editing/bowdlerizing/whatever.  

Oh, I am totally making my rant/argument from the standpoint of a student of history and language and literature.  I'm not opening the can of religious worms.  I'm also pretty darn sure that I don't have to in order to make my point about capriciously changing a historical literary document (really a collection of documents) to suit your current mood. People, even rather famous people, have tried this little tack before.  Anyway, why do I also get a nagging feeling that this current proposal is yet another a not-too-subtle potshot at the traditional Church both Catholic and Protestant and its opposition to various progressive crusades?  Christians these days make such easy targets.

Whatever.  I also have a counter-proposal: how about, in the spirit of this self-proclaimed ecumenical religious open-mindedness and desire to elide uncomfortable passages in ancient texts, you also advocate "updating" all other ancient religious texts of every other creed?  How about "editing" the Koran?  Cutting out all the bits you personally don't like?  Any takers?

Quote of the Day: Culture Wars in the Middle East

From an op-ed with a Pakistani background:

Salman Rushdie’s book — Satanic Verses — sparked global outrage in the late 1908s and since then, we have increasing polarisation between those who view freedom of expression as an absolute value, and extremists within Muslims who think violence is the only way to ‘save’ Islam from such attacks. Millions of Muslims are trapped between the two ends of this hate-spectrum. Despite the offence caused by such provocation, they will not resort to violence or support wanton destruction of life and property. But are these voices represented and articulated through credible leadership? The answer is no because the hold of clerics and merchants of political Islam is gaining more and more traction across the globe.

Reminder: The Long History of Muslim Anti-Western Protests

Surprise!  They didn't begin with George W. Bush, and they certainly won't end with Barack Obama.  On another day, maybe we'll talk about Napoleon's 1798 campaign in Egypt, a campaign that might count as the beginning of the modern period in the Middle East, along with Western impact thereon.

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Dignified Rant!

Quote of the Day: Yelling "Fire" In a Global Theater?

From this piece in Foreign Policy:

First, there is a fundamental disagreement between what the United States views as a basic right and what many Muslims living in Arab states view as a basic right. Where Americans prioritize freedom of speech as a value to be cherished and upheld no matter the circumstance, the Arab world sees sanctity of religion as a value that cannot be violated in any instance. While this is not new, the explosion in communications technology and the resulting dissemination of information, no matter how obscure or trivial, pushes this divergence of worldviews to the forefront. 

Five years ago, nobody in the United States, let alone in Egypt or Libya, would have heard of "Sam Bacile," and not more than a handful of people would have seen any part of the infamous film. Now, however, anyone with a laptop can create an abhorrent masterpiece and ensure that it is viewed by millions of people the world over. The entire planet has become, in the words of Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, a "crowded theater" on the brink of stampede.

Writer Michael Koplow concludes that embassy riots aren't going to stop any time soon because every little stupid thing produced by fringe idiots is so easily publicized to an inflammatory audience.  By the way, if you're not following his blog Ottomans and Zionists, you should.  

OK, I should add that we're talking here about communications technology and not so much about censorship or self-censorship.  For the record, I'm a free speech absolutist of the Voltaire school.  In the end, I'm with the late Hitchens, who declared that he was not willing to live his life under the veto of the most easily offended.

UPDATE 1: Maybe the "yelling fire in a theater" analogy is flawed?  (See #3.)

UPDATE 2: Lest we forget, in the end, the moral agency and final responsibility rest with the rioters. I'm not calling them "protesters" because there's a clear difference between peacefully standing with a placard expressing opposition to policy and storming another nation's sovereign territory with intent to destroy property and harm people.

Quote of the Day: Olympics and Achievement

Heh:

The Olympics were an unapologetic festival of competitiveness, pursuit of individual excellence, almost superhuman self-discipline, and uncompromising reward for merit. They were, in other words, a celebration of all those aspects of the human condition which the political fashion and educational ideology of the past 40 years has attempted to denigrate. And the country loved it. Indeed, it was ecstatically untroubled by the fact that some people – who were exceptionally talented and phenomenally dedicated – won, and some other people, with considerable courage and no dishonour, lost.

One Chick-fil-A Rant Worth a Look

Pretty much, yeah. Remember this too. FOCUS. Both sides are flailing around in their divisive, overheated, media-enabled moral outrage that's as much about display as anything else. Everybody just calm the heck down and have an ice cream.  Good grief, people. There's one more thing I want to add for the most histrionic on both sides: the fact that somebody does not agree with you does not automatically mean that s/he (a) is evil or stupid or morally degenerate, (b) hates you and wants to destroy you, or (c) must be suppressed in the name of some faux idea of whatever.  A person who disagrees with you is still a person.  Special note to the dipstick politicians: SHAME ON YOU.

Thoughts on North Carolina: "How to win a culture war and lose a generation"

Here is a pretty darn sensible blog post about the recent uproar about North Carolina's voting to amend its state constitution.  Here's a piece of it:

Despite the fact that the North Carolina law already holds that marriage in the eyes of state is only between a man and a woman, an amendment was put on the ballot to permanently ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution. The initiative doesn’t appear to change anything on a practical level, (though some are saying it may have unintended negative consequences on heterosexual relationships), but seems to serve primarily as an ideological statement. 

... an expensive, destructive, and impractical ideological statement.  

... it should be clear that amendments like these needlessly offend gays and lesbians, damage the reputation of Christians, and further alienate young adults—both Christians and non-Christian—from the Church.  

So my question for those evangelicals leading the charge in the culture wars is this: Is it worth it? 

Besides, I don't like the idea of tampering with constitutions, period.  Also a side effect of culture wars: everybody comes out looking and feeling worse, and everybody comes out more radicalized in one direction or the other - and this makes everything even worse than they were in the beginning.

Mark Steyn Considers Geert Wilders and the Dutch

Steyn is always fascinating.  As for Wilders, whatever else he is, he's also a lightning rod. Death threats are not okay, no matter what sort of person he might be.  As for Steyn's piece, this is how it begins:

When I was asked to write a foreword to Geert Wilders’ new book, my first reaction, to be honest, was to pass. Mr. Wilders lives under 24/7 armed guard because significant numbers of motivated people wish to kill him, and it seemed to me, as someone who’s attracted more than enough homicidal attention over the years, that sharing space in these pages was likely to lead to an uptick in my own death threats. Who needs it? Why not just plead too crowded a schedule and suggest the author try elsewhere? I would imagine Geert Wilders gets quite a lot of this. 

And then I took a stroll in the woods, and felt vaguely ashamed at the ease with which I was willing to hand a small victory to his enemies. 

The Pop Culture War: Hollywood Vs. the Internet

Hint: the Internet is winning.

Quote of the Day: the Online Echo Chamber and Its Perils

The ultimate "comfort zone"?  Here is something to consider:

The same progressives who bemoan the way Fox News has polarized political discourse in America, masquerading as news while never troubling its followers with anything that would disturb its most cherished and untested convictions, happily turn to the satellite radio station of their preferred genre or subgenre of music or seek out the support group or message board that fits their demographic, the political site that skews their way. Entering the realm of the other seems done solely to express rage.  

The rigorous division of websites into narrow interests, the attempts of Amazon and Netflix to steer your next purchase based on what you’ve already bought, the ability of Web users to never encounter anything outside of their established political or cultural preferences, and the way technology enables advertisers to identify each potential market and direct advertising to it, all represent the triumph of cultural segregation that is the negation of democracy. It’s the reassurance of never having to face anyone different from ourselves.

See too this recent TED talk:

Nerd News: Islamists Storm Tunisian University

This can't be good.

Cranmer's Law of Social-Political Debate

Now that he has articulated it, it is patently obvious.  Add this to Godwin's Law, of course.

Nerd Analysis: A Sociology Professor Considers the Gay Marriage Debate

Thoughts by a professor of sociology at the University of Kent.  The professor happens to support gay marriage, but that ends up being beside the point.  Here is a bit of it:

From a sociological perspective, the ascendancy of the campaign for gay marriage provides a fascinating story about the dynamics of the cultural conflicts that prevail in Western society. During the past decade the issue of gay marriage has been transformed into a cultural weapon that explicitly challenges prevailing norms through condemning those who oppose it. This is not so much a call for legal change as a cause: one that endows its supporters with moral superiority and demotes its opponents with the status of moral inferiority. 

... What we have here is the casual affirmation of a double standard: tolerance towards supporters of gay marriage and intolerance directed towards its opponents.

Thoughts on Government and the Definition of Marriage

Here are a few thoughts.  A quick blurb:

By making government definition the prize, social conservatives legitimized efforts to change marriage's definition by government decree as well. Instead, social conservatives should have taken a lesson from fiscal conservatives and fought to keep government from defining marriage at all.

Well, DUH.  Anyway, a lot of social conservatives drive me crazy because they've almost no grasp of the long term or the truly big picture when it comes to ramifications of government meddling in private affairs, but I think you already knew that.  Look, I want government to leave me the heck alone, regardless of whether that government is on the right or the left, capisce?  Anyway, note the new blog category tag for the matrimonial matters. 

You Go, Girl: Veena Malik and True Feminism

Here are some related thoughts along with this, but, really, just watch Veena go gloriously ballistic on her critic.  Now think if you would rather a world with people like Veena in charge or people like her critic calling the shots.

You may remember other Pakistanis who opposed religious violence and extremism -- folks like Shahbaz Bhatti and Salman Taseer.

A Nerd Rant: The Politicized Campus

Hmmmm.  Well, OK, but as usual this sort of generalized conversation bothers me because it focuses almost exclusively on "wow, there are so many leftists in academia" and has no mention or thought AT ALL of the conservatives, libertarians, centrists, and independents who ARE ALREADY THERE.  Gee, thanks a lot.  What are we, chopped liver?  So on one hand we have liberals basically crowing that they have a chokehold on campus culture and on the other we have folks complaining about it.  What about my tiny group of compatriots and me who are doing our best out there as teachers and students?  We want a vibrant place for debate of all ideas and political outlooks.  I for one am not advocating that we exchange one kind of campus mental hegemony for another.  Anyway, what we need is a good shot of intellectual honesty -- read this -- though I'm pretty sure we're not going to get it from anywhere.  The politicized campus is so riven with ideological faultlines that it's almost too unstable for rational discourse.  Rant follows after the jump:

Ave Atque Vale, Shahbaz Bhatti: Pakistani Christian Cabinet Member Assassinated

Like Salman Taseer, Shahbaz Bhatti openly and courageously opposed religious violence and Islamic extremism in Pakistan ... and like Salman Taseer, he was brutally murdered by fanatics. As minority affairs minister, he was Pakistan's only Christian (Roman Catholic) cabinet member, and he staunchly opposed the blasphemy law and championed Pakistan's minority groups.  More from the Anchoress, including this video interview:

So the next time some twit of a fuzzy-minded apologist attempts to explain away the actual evil of religious violence and intolerant extremism with multiculturalism or political correctness or moral equivalence, think of Salman Taseer and now of Shahbaz Bhatti.  And think of the persecuted Christians around the world who are always forgotten in the media.  You don't have to be a Christian in order to be utterly appalled and outraged.

Tweeting Salman Taseer

Read this.  Ave atque vale to Salman Taseer, governor of Pakistan's Punjab province and an outspoken critic of religious violence and Islamic extremism.