I have seen the words "mock-turtle soup" a thousand times while skimming through various recipe books, but they have never inspired me to investigate further. I had "actual" turtle soup once in Ocalla, Florida, and though it was good, it was not good enough to interest me in attempting to approximate it in absence of the unfortunate turtle that gave it its flavor. But tonight, I am feeling saucy, and the question I can't get out of my head is this: What is a mock-turtle?
Based on a hot tip from a sympathetic party, I will begin my investigation at smitten kitchen (http://smittenkitchen.com/). Perhaps mock-turtle soup is not as popular today as it was in the 50s when most of my cookbooks were published, this site's search engine gave me the digital equivalent of looking at me like I am stupid. Touche, smitten kitchen, touche--you've won this time.
I guess it's back to the drawing board (aka: google.com).
Typing "mock-turtle soup recipe" into google gets an immediate hit from "cooks.com", a site I visit often--though she can be a fickle lover (such as with the 'Shepard's Pie debacle' of '09), she is usually steadfast and reliable.
According to the site's top recipe (http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1748,149175-233204,00.html), a mock turtle is ground beef seasoned with ketchup, Worcestershire, sherry, sugar, cloves, allspice, and bayleaves. This mysterious combination of ingredients evokes numerous questions and bizarre speculations about what real turtles are made of, but they will have to wait till next Saturday.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Lenny Bruce is not afraid. . . .
I don't mean to sound curmudgeonly, but I'm a little bit touchy about this subject. The first time I ever saw a cellphone was on a horrific television program called "Saved By The Bell". The show centered around a group of narcissistic and affluent suburban high school students confronting a new nauseatingly watered-down and parent-friendly version of a typical teenage issue each episode. Just when it would begin to look like the group's pet geek wouldn't be able to buff the scratch out of dad's Hummer in time for the Spring Formal, Zack (the consummate product of Germany's top secret eugenics program during WW2 and defacto group leader) would whip out his tissue-box sized cellphone and make a call, saving the day with his astounding powers of. . . . speed dialing?
When this program was originally aired in 1989 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096694/), kids who were merely rich had pagers clipped to the waistbands of their $100 Guess jeans. People with mobile phones were either CIA agents, cocaine entrepreneurs, or hotel heiresses. I remember seeing the show and immediately thinking about Richie Rich, the gazillionaire cartoon protagonist who taught Regan-era children that if you throw enough money at any problem, it will go away. Zack and his cellphone were representative of everything wrong with post-Sesame Street America. Richie Rich had won, and in winning was reborn more powerful than ever in the form of Zack. Banjo playing frogs who sang soulfully about the hardships of being green gave way to purple dinosaurs droning about citizenship to an endlessly looping backdrop of patriotic marching music. George H.W. Bush gleefully danced atop Buckminster Fuller's grave like a madman, his malevolent eyes gleaming in the gathering darkness.
That being said, my spouse du jour bought me a cellphone in 1999. After a day of acquainting myself with what a sea-otter must feel like after being radio-tagged by National Geographic, I threw the vile device in the garbage. I tried again two years ago; texting had become fashionable and seemed like a less invasive method of having nowhere to hide. But after losing three phones (and replacing two of them) in the space of three months, I realized that like Tom Bombadil when faced with Sauron's abominable ring, the phone simply had no power over me--I could never care about one enough to be trusted to keep track of it.
A few weeks ago, a couple of girls outside of Faculty Hall--cellphones in hand--were lamenting how annoying it was that people wouldn't stop calling them. It had been a long and arduous day and I was unable to stop myself from pointing out that they could always just turn the devices off. The loudest complainant retorted that she had a sick relative, and as such was obliged to be constantly available.
It isn't that I am unsympathetic to an illness in the family (nor am a blind to the fact that a cellphone would have handily saved me a 2 mile walk home from Library Orientation two weeks ago), but when I suggested that I could remember when humanity managed to survive (however crudely) seemingly unimpeded before the advent of cellphones, they looked at me as though I were speaking Aramaic.
Now we have Smart Phones, and up til this moment I have been able to say with pride that I have no idea what one is, or what makes it so smart.
Apple (http://www.apple.com/iphone/?cid=wwa-naus-seg-iphone10-024&cp=www-seg-iphone10-smartphones&sr=sem) tells me that with an "iphone4", I can pretend like I'm Jadzea Dax Bantering from a shuttle-craft with Captain Sisko on the bridge of DeepSpace9--as tempting as that is, face to face real-time videophone conversations seem like an extension of the ever elaborate ruse that causes people to ignore what is in front of them in favor of what is not.
The phone also offers something called a "retina display", which is apparently an ultra-scientific way of saying "real sharp picture". If you were wondering why it is important (or maybe it was just me) for your telephone to display pictures in which pixels are impossibly small, the helpful demonstration picture (http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html) suggests that it is so you won't feel like you got ripped off when you are inspecting your display window for microscopic flaws with a powerful magnifying glass.
The next heading reads: "Multitasking. Give everything your undivided attention" followed by an explanation of how iphone4 allows users to divide their attention between several applications at once, which is just silly.
With iphone4's HD recording feature, a user need never actually be engaged in anything again! Unburdened of her life while it is going on, she can concern herself with recording it in high definition so that she may nostalgically relive events for which she was never fully present through a quasi-real digital filter.
I can't go on, it's making me sick--suffice to say that with iphone4's highspeed internet access, GPS mapping, television, video game, and music storage/streaming capabilities, no one will ever actually have learn anything, know anything, go anywhere, or experience anything firsthand ever again.
When this program was originally aired in 1989 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096694/), kids who were merely rich had pagers clipped to the waistbands of their $100 Guess jeans. People with mobile phones were either CIA agents, cocaine entrepreneurs, or hotel heiresses. I remember seeing the show and immediately thinking about Richie Rich, the gazillionaire cartoon protagonist who taught Regan-era children that if you throw enough money at any problem, it will go away. Zack and his cellphone were representative of everything wrong with post-Sesame Street America. Richie Rich had won, and in winning was reborn more powerful than ever in the form of Zack. Banjo playing frogs who sang soulfully about the hardships of being green gave way to purple dinosaurs droning about citizenship to an endlessly looping backdrop of patriotic marching music. George H.W. Bush gleefully danced atop Buckminster Fuller's grave like a madman, his malevolent eyes gleaming in the gathering darkness.
That being said, my spouse du jour bought me a cellphone in 1999. After a day of acquainting myself with what a sea-otter must feel like after being radio-tagged by National Geographic, I threw the vile device in the garbage. I tried again two years ago; texting had become fashionable and seemed like a less invasive method of having nowhere to hide. But after losing three phones (and replacing two of them) in the space of three months, I realized that like Tom Bombadil when faced with Sauron's abominable ring, the phone simply had no power over me--I could never care about one enough to be trusted to keep track of it.
A few weeks ago, a couple of girls outside of Faculty Hall--cellphones in hand--were lamenting how annoying it was that people wouldn't stop calling them. It had been a long and arduous day and I was unable to stop myself from pointing out that they could always just turn the devices off. The loudest complainant retorted that she had a sick relative, and as such was obliged to be constantly available.
It isn't that I am unsympathetic to an illness in the family (nor am a blind to the fact that a cellphone would have handily saved me a 2 mile walk home from Library Orientation two weeks ago), but when I suggested that I could remember when humanity managed to survive (however crudely) seemingly unimpeded before the advent of cellphones, they looked at me as though I were speaking Aramaic.
Now we have Smart Phones, and up til this moment I have been able to say with pride that I have no idea what one is, or what makes it so smart.
Apple (http://www.apple.com/iphone/?cid=wwa-naus-seg-iphone10-024&cp=www-seg-iphone10-smartphones&sr=sem) tells me that with an "iphone4", I can pretend like I'm Jadzea Dax Bantering from a shuttle-craft with Captain Sisko on the bridge of DeepSpace9--as tempting as that is, face to face real-time videophone conversations seem like an extension of the ever elaborate ruse that causes people to ignore what is in front of them in favor of what is not.
The phone also offers something called a "retina display", which is apparently an ultra-scientific way of saying "real sharp picture". If you were wondering why it is important (or maybe it was just me) for your telephone to display pictures in which pixels are impossibly small, the helpful demonstration picture (http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html) suggests that it is so you won't feel like you got ripped off when you are inspecting your display window for microscopic flaws with a powerful magnifying glass.
The next heading reads: "Multitasking. Give everything your undivided attention" followed by an explanation of how iphone4 allows users to divide their attention between several applications at once, which is just silly.
With iphone4's HD recording feature, a user need never actually be engaged in anything again! Unburdened of her life while it is going on, she can concern herself with recording it in high definition so that she may nostalgically relive events for which she was never fully present through a quasi-real digital filter.
I can't go on, it's making me sick--suffice to say that with iphone4's highspeed internet access, GPS mapping, television, video game, and music storage/streaming capabilities, no one will ever actually have learn anything, know anything, go anywhere, or experience anything firsthand ever again.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Free-ish Information
Since I already have The New York Times website pulled up after briefly researching wikilinks, I believe it will be interesting to find a recent article that will to some degree demonstrate the state of the Freedom of Information Act--is it alive and well? Are government organizations adhering to the law which compels them to disclose?
The first article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/us/politics/29issa.html?scp=1&sq=freedom%20of%20information%20act&st=cse) that appears on a search for "freedom of information act" on the Times database reports on a Republican representative's (Darrell Issa) efforts to obtain a comprehensive list of everyone who has requested information under the FOIA and any communications between requesting parties and relevant federal agencies between 2005 and 2010. The article mentions that requests for information are routinely delayed (often due to the resources of the organizations involved being sapped by oversight requests such this one) and concludes with the reminder that Congress is exempt from FOIA provisions.
A single recent topical article, in which mention is made of a Congressman attempting to track those who dare to request information, bureaucratic delays of information release, and our own representatives circumventing the legislation they passed in the name of transparency, all of this in the first 13 paragraphs that randomly appeared on the subject. It is safe to conclude that the FOIA is very much alive, but was never quite well--but on a more optimistic note, the amount of effort which is expended to thwart the FOIA is proof of a sort, that the legislation is in part doing what it was intended to do, if it weren't, conservative opponents of federal accountability (such as Congressman Issa) wouldn't be so concerned about it.
The first article (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/us/politics/29issa.html?scp=1&sq=freedom%20of%20information%20act&st=cse) that appears on a search for "freedom of information act" on the Times database reports on a Republican representative's (Darrell Issa) efforts to obtain a comprehensive list of everyone who has requested information under the FOIA and any communications between requesting parties and relevant federal agencies between 2005 and 2010. The article mentions that requests for information are routinely delayed (often due to the resources of the organizations involved being sapped by oversight requests such this one) and concludes with the reminder that Congress is exempt from FOIA provisions.
A single recent topical article, in which mention is made of a Congressman attempting to track those who dare to request information, bureaucratic delays of information release, and our own representatives circumventing the legislation they passed in the name of transparency, all of this in the first 13 paragraphs that randomly appeared on the subject. It is safe to conclude that the FOIA is very much alive, but was never quite well--but on a more optimistic note, the amount of effort which is expended to thwart the FOIA is proof of a sort, that the legislation is in part doing what it was intended to do, if it weren't, conservative opponents of federal accountability (such as Congressman Issa) wouldn't be so concerned about it.
Loose Lips and Sunken Ships
Is it terrible that I didn't care? Does my lack of interest signify that the dark forces of apathy, having gained a foothold in the American soul, are stepping up their campaign and routing the synaptic defenses which keep our limbic systems plugged into the national character? When the world crumbles down around my ears, will its fall echo in the mournful tenor voice of Ralston Hill recounting General Washington's desperate plea: "Is anybody there? Does anybody care?"
So I may have heard some things about wikileaks--if there is an advantage to existing in a relative state of friendlessness other than nobody wanting to borrow ones shoes, it is surely the opportunity one has to listen quietly to what those around her are saying. Here is what I think I know (having avoided reading a single word on the subject) about wikileaks as compiled from the ambient buzzing of humanity on cigarette breaks outside of Faculty Hall, in line at the grocery store, and flipping through radio-stations in search of that really pretty song about the guy who (figuratively) collects women's hearts in a jar:
It would seem that some person or persons have designated a Wikipedia-like web space for users to publish secrets of governments, corporations, and high-profile individuals. The U.S. Federal Government--abhorring unchecked gossip about itself--attempted to shut down the site, curtailing free expression in the name of national security, but was ultimately forced to give up fruitless efforts to legally eradicate the extensively mirrored site
Don't get me wrong, free expression is a huge deal to me. It is the adamantium framework around which all of my strongest beliefs are articulated, but seriously--what do people expect? Until such time as the Angel of The Lord grabs his trumpet and cues up the Armageddon orchestra (featuring the musical stylings of the Continental Congress) it will be Adlai Stevenson's voice that echos in my mind, saying "Your public servants serve you right; indeed, often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve."
The last activist political demonstration in which I took part occurred on a strip of grace officially designated as Murray State's "free speech zone"--for those who have been happily living in caves since Jimmy Carter left office, a free speech zone is a place where it isn't illegal for Americans to exercise their fundamental constitutionally guaranteed right to free expression, you know, the one which was inviolable before the second Bush administration took power but eviscerated well before the American people reelected the second Bush of their own free will. To say that I am deeply disturbed by this state of affairs wouldn't begin to cover it, but the first amendment has been functionally dead for years, and as such I fail to see how the desecration of her corpse rates front page news.
That being said, it's time to find out if what I've absorbed through osmosis bears any resemblance to the generally accepted truth, and more specifically, if wikileaks has ultimately been silenced by the home of the free and the brave (thus vindicating my cynicism), or if the Bill of Rights has uncharacteristically triumphed over the efforts of those who are charged with administering its protections.
My work here is made blessedly simple by the fact that wikileaks has been a relatively hot news item, because of this I can skip most of the traditional nonsense and move straight on to the good stuff. First (and presumably last) stop: The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/). Phase two (typing "wikileaks" in the site's search-bar) leads me to an article ( http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/w/wikileaks/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=wikileaks&st=cse) which provides an excellent overview of the wiki-scandal to date. As it turns out, most of my information was relatively accurate, but incomplete. This plot has been thickened by rape charges against wikileaks' founder, criminal investigations launched by the U.S. government, internal squabbling among wikileaks operators, and debilitating cyber-attacks against organizations deemed unfriendly to wikileaks and free information in general.
My cynicism is well founded; there was a court decision to shut down the website, and that decision was reversed not out of deference to free speech, but out of the untenability of enforcing it. Unable to silence the site directly, the federal government is investigating its founder in an attempt to silence it indirectly. I'm not blind to the reality that some information is secret for good reason, that certain knowledge falling into the wrong hands could endanger individuals or even nations--but as a people, we cannot afford to concern ourselves with the government's right to secrecy when the government has failed to concern itself with the people's right to free expression. It is reasonable for informed and free people to make concessions under circumstances which warrant them, but it is madness for people who have been forced to concede those freedoms which ensure their ability to inform one another to do the same.
So I may have heard some things about wikileaks--if there is an advantage to existing in a relative state of friendlessness other than nobody wanting to borrow ones shoes, it is surely the opportunity one has to listen quietly to what those around her are saying. Here is what I think I know (having avoided reading a single word on the subject) about wikileaks as compiled from the ambient buzzing of humanity on cigarette breaks outside of Faculty Hall, in line at the grocery store, and flipping through radio-stations in search of that really pretty song about the guy who (figuratively) collects women's hearts in a jar:
It would seem that some person or persons have designated a Wikipedia-like web space for users to publish secrets of governments, corporations, and high-profile individuals. The U.S. Federal Government--abhorring unchecked gossip about itself--attempted to shut down the site, curtailing free expression in the name of national security, but was ultimately forced to give up fruitless efforts to legally eradicate the extensively mirrored site
Don't get me wrong, free expression is a huge deal to me. It is the adamantium framework around which all of my strongest beliefs are articulated, but seriously--what do people expect? Until such time as the Angel of The Lord grabs his trumpet and cues up the Armageddon orchestra (featuring the musical stylings of the Continental Congress) it will be Adlai Stevenson's voice that echos in my mind, saying "Your public servants serve you right; indeed, often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve."
The last activist political demonstration in which I took part occurred on a strip of grace officially designated as Murray State's "free speech zone"--for those who have been happily living in caves since Jimmy Carter left office, a free speech zone is a place where it isn't illegal for Americans to exercise their fundamental constitutionally guaranteed right to free expression, you know, the one which was inviolable before the second Bush administration took power but eviscerated well before the American people reelected the second Bush of their own free will. To say that I am deeply disturbed by this state of affairs wouldn't begin to cover it, but the first amendment has been functionally dead for years, and as such I fail to see how the desecration of her corpse rates front page news.
That being said, it's time to find out if what I've absorbed through osmosis bears any resemblance to the generally accepted truth, and more specifically, if wikileaks has ultimately been silenced by the home of the free and the brave (thus vindicating my cynicism), or if the Bill of Rights has uncharacteristically triumphed over the efforts of those who are charged with administering its protections.
My work here is made blessedly simple by the fact that wikileaks has been a relatively hot news item, because of this I can skip most of the traditional nonsense and move straight on to the good stuff. First (and presumably last) stop: The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/). Phase two (typing "wikileaks" in the site's search-bar) leads me to an article ( http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/w/wikileaks/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=wikileaks&st=cse) which provides an excellent overview of the wiki-scandal to date. As it turns out, most of my information was relatively accurate, but incomplete. This plot has been thickened by rape charges against wikileaks' founder, criminal investigations launched by the U.S. government, internal squabbling among wikileaks operators, and debilitating cyber-attacks against organizations deemed unfriendly to wikileaks and free information in general.
My cynicism is well founded; there was a court decision to shut down the website, and that decision was reversed not out of deference to free speech, but out of the untenability of enforcing it. Unable to silence the site directly, the federal government is investigating its founder in an attempt to silence it indirectly. I'm not blind to the reality that some information is secret for good reason, that certain knowledge falling into the wrong hands could endanger individuals or even nations--but as a people, we cannot afford to concern ourselves with the government's right to secrecy when the government has failed to concern itself with the people's right to free expression. It is reasonable for informed and free people to make concessions under circumstances which warrant them, but it is madness for people who have been forced to concede those freedoms which ensure their ability to inform one another to do the same.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
On the third day of pizza. . . .
Every long once in a while, maybe once every 6 years, I get an overpowering craving for which the only solution is to add anchovies to my usual order of pepperoni and extra cheese pizza. Two days ago this abomination was fantastic, yesterday it was pretty good, but as I was eying the box again today around lunch-time, I was forced to wonder: Was this a hassle-free method of raising cholesterol while avoiding actually cooking anything, or was I flirting with food-poisoning? Just how long do anchovies keep in the refrigerator?
Google has been letting me down a lot lately, and now is no exception. A search of "how long do anchovies keep in refrigerator" reveals a million forums from cooking websites. The information available here is probably accurate, and had I not chosen this for my blogging assignment I would be more than willing to gamble my health on it, but this is bigger than just me--I'm being observed, judged, recorded for posterity, and these anecdotal snippets of folk wisdom aren't going to cut it for Mr or Mrs John Q. Professor. Fortunately, I have a backup plan.
My survival instincts have served me well, and what they usually tell me is this: when in doubt, trust a source that has a lot to lose from leading you astray. It is the very same instinct that allows me to eat at the establishments of corporate fast-food behemoths with impunity; McDonald's for example has billions in the bank, billions that they would prefer not to lose to me in a highly publicized lawsuit subsequent to poisoning my quarter pounder with cyanide. This is the delicate equilibrium of capitalism and consumer in a hyper-litigious society. Who has more to lose than McDonald's? Perhaps no one except Exxon, Hollywood, and the U.S. Government.
Typing "FDA" into my Google search bar, I immediately get a hit--welcome to the United States Food and Drug Administration's home page ( http://www.fda.gov/). The listing for "food" in the user-friendly interface immediately catches my eye, and I select the sub-category, "consumers". Here ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/default.htm) there is a link for "fresh and frozen seafood, selecting and serving it safely" with a section on "storing seafood" ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm077331.htm).
A dead end. There is a lot of fascinating information here, but it is limited to safely storing uncooked seafood after it is purchased--I'm going to have to brave the site's search engine. Several misses later (including "storing cooked foods", which I found to be quite succinct), I search for "refrigerator" and find a heading that reads "how long can I keep my food in the refrigerator/on the shelf"--bingo.
This link (http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194273.htm) leads me to another link for the FDA's refrigerator and freezer storage chart ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/Seniors/ucm182679.htm#storchart). According to the FDA, I should not eat this pizza. Fresh fish and fatty fish should be discarded after two days in the refrigerator. This is what scientists refer to as a "major bummer", I'm going to have to cook. Farewell dear anchovies, until we meet again in 2017.
Google has been letting me down a lot lately, and now is no exception. A search of "how long do anchovies keep in refrigerator" reveals a million forums from cooking websites. The information available here is probably accurate, and had I not chosen this for my blogging assignment I would be more than willing to gamble my health on it, but this is bigger than just me--I'm being observed, judged, recorded for posterity, and these anecdotal snippets of folk wisdom aren't going to cut it for Mr or Mrs John Q. Professor. Fortunately, I have a backup plan.
My survival instincts have served me well, and what they usually tell me is this: when in doubt, trust a source that has a lot to lose from leading you astray. It is the very same instinct that allows me to eat at the establishments of corporate fast-food behemoths with impunity; McDonald's for example has billions in the bank, billions that they would prefer not to lose to me in a highly publicized lawsuit subsequent to poisoning my quarter pounder with cyanide. This is the delicate equilibrium of capitalism and consumer in a hyper-litigious society. Who has more to lose than McDonald's? Perhaps no one except Exxon, Hollywood, and the U.S. Government.
Typing "FDA" into my Google search bar, I immediately get a hit--welcome to the United States Food and Drug Administration's home page ( http://www.fda.gov/). The listing for "food" in the user-friendly interface immediately catches my eye, and I select the sub-category, "consumers". Here ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/default.htm) there is a link for "fresh and frozen seafood, selecting and serving it safely" with a section on "storing seafood" ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm077331.htm).
A dead end. There is a lot of fascinating information here, but it is limited to safely storing uncooked seafood after it is purchased--I'm going to have to brave the site's search engine. Several misses later (including "storing cooked foods", which I found to be quite succinct), I search for "refrigerator" and find a heading that reads "how long can I keep my food in the refrigerator/on the shelf"--bingo.
This link (http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194273.htm) leads me to another link for the FDA's refrigerator and freezer storage chart ( http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/Seniors/ucm182679.htm#storchart). According to the FDA, I should not eat this pizza. Fresh fish and fatty fish should be discarded after two days in the refrigerator. This is what scientists refer to as a "major bummer", I'm going to have to cook. Farewell dear anchovies, until we meet again in 2017.
Where the heart is. . . .
With Valentine's day rapidly approaching, it didn't seem out of the ordinary when my eldest daughter and fiance approached me to ask, "What is the origin of the traditional candy heart shape?"
They asked me, they said, because it seemed like "the sort of thing [I] would know", and to the esteemed credit of their collective powers of inference, they were correct: it is the sort of thing I would know. As such, I am at a loss to describe the respective shame and disappointment experienced by myself and my loved ones in that moment when as it turned out, I didn't have a clue.
Here I will attempt to remove this blemish from my personal record and restore honor to my family name. First stop: Google.com, search query: "origin of heart shape".
Ugggg, it's going to be one of those days--checking wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29) and a hit from Yahoo Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080123223720AACAYHL) for reference ideas, the consensus of the knowledgeable (never to be confused with those who possess knowledge) is that there is a great deal of controversy over the symbol's origins. This is the sort of thing that shakes my faith in the progress of humanity; by my kindergarten year in 1982 I had been promised flying cars, colonies on the moon, and robot servants in the coming millennium, and though I am not bitter, it is arguable that I have every reason to be so--but who among the authors of Omni, Discover, Popular Mechanics, or Weekly Reader would have predicted that in the age of the information superhighway, with scientists on the brink of quantum computing and artificial intelligence just around the corner, I would be unable to procure a definitive answer to a simple question of symbological history?
The Wikipedia article sources pointed to a promising text authored by one Dr Armin Dietz (http://www.heartsymbol.com/), but upon further investigation Dr. Dietz appears to be a doctor of cardiology, not symbology or semiotics. Also referenced is P.J. Vinken, who is ostensibly a neurologist (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.410010114/abstract); this illustrates a major flaw in the use of Wikipedia for research--even a well cited article is little more than useless if its sources are not credible experts in the field of study relevant to it.
Redefining my google searches first to "scholarly articles heart origin" and then "Dr of Symbology" yields nothing at all relevant. Narrowing it to "expert on symbols" (in the dim hope of starting with a credible expert and tracing it to an authoritative text on the subject) leads me only to the Japanese symbol for "expert" (http://www.japanese-symbols.org/japanese-symbol-for-expert). I can find plenty of encyclopedias of symbols, but no credentials for their authors.
The Wikipedia article and many other disappointing sites reference a Slate Magazine article (http://www.slate.com/id/2159800/), which references Dr Eric Jager (http://www.english.ucla.edu/index.php/Faculty/jager-eric), a professor of midieval literature at UCLA with an interest in literary theory. It appears as though he is the closest thing to an Dr of Symbology I'm going to find. The Slate article says the same thing as all of the others--the heart symbol may have originated in North Africa with the seed-pod of a contraceptive plant (silphium) in the 7th century B.C.E.. The Catholic church is purported to claim that the symbol first appeared as a vision of the sacred heart as seen by a saint in the 17th century C.E., and someone referenced only as a "leading scholar of heart iconography" contends that the symbol is derived from a crude (and failed ) attempt by Aristotle to draw the human heart.
I am far from satisfied. I am now qualified to parrot the beliefs and anecdotes of a knowledgeable English professor, but where are the PhD holders in history of symbology or iconography? The poor obsessed souls who have devoted their lives to unlocking the secret pasts of modern semiotics? Where is the scholar who can state plainly: the earliest physical evidence of this symbol's appearance is a parchment connected to (insert culture) around (insert year)?
They asked me, they said, because it seemed like "the sort of thing [I] would know", and to the esteemed credit of their collective powers of inference, they were correct: it is the sort of thing I would know. As such, I am at a loss to describe the respective shame and disappointment experienced by myself and my loved ones in that moment when as it turned out, I didn't have a clue.
Here I will attempt to remove this blemish from my personal record and restore honor to my family name. First stop: Google.com, search query: "origin of heart shape".
Ugggg, it's going to be one of those days--checking wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29) and a hit from Yahoo Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080123223720AACAYHL) for reference ideas, the consensus of the knowledgeable (never to be confused with those who possess knowledge) is that there is a great deal of controversy over the symbol's origins. This is the sort of thing that shakes my faith in the progress of humanity; by my kindergarten year in 1982 I had been promised flying cars, colonies on the moon, and robot servants in the coming millennium, and though I am not bitter, it is arguable that I have every reason to be so--but who among the authors of Omni, Discover, Popular Mechanics, or Weekly Reader would have predicted that in the age of the information superhighway, with scientists on the brink of quantum computing and artificial intelligence just around the corner, I would be unable to procure a definitive answer to a simple question of symbological history?
The Wikipedia article sources pointed to a promising text authored by one Dr Armin Dietz (http://www.heartsymbol.com/), but upon further investigation Dr. Dietz appears to be a doctor of cardiology, not symbology or semiotics. Also referenced is P.J. Vinken, who is ostensibly a neurologist (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.410010114/abstract); this illustrates a major flaw in the use of Wikipedia for research--even a well cited article is little more than useless if its sources are not credible experts in the field of study relevant to it.
Redefining my google searches first to "scholarly articles heart origin" and then "Dr of Symbology" yields nothing at all relevant. Narrowing it to "expert on symbols" (in the dim hope of starting with a credible expert and tracing it to an authoritative text on the subject) leads me only to the Japanese symbol for "expert" (http://www.japanese-symbols.org/japanese-symbol-for-expert). I can find plenty of encyclopedias of symbols, but no credentials for their authors.
The Wikipedia article and many other disappointing sites reference a Slate Magazine article (http://www.slate.com/id/2159800/), which references Dr Eric Jager (http://www.english.ucla.edu/index.php/Faculty/jager-eric), a professor of midieval literature at UCLA with an interest in literary theory. It appears as though he is the closest thing to an Dr of Symbology I'm going to find. The Slate article says the same thing as all of the others--the heart symbol may have originated in North Africa with the seed-pod of a contraceptive plant (silphium) in the 7th century B.C.E.. The Catholic church is purported to claim that the symbol first appeared as a vision of the sacred heart as seen by a saint in the 17th century C.E., and someone referenced only as a "leading scholar of heart iconography" contends that the symbol is derived from a crude (and failed ) attempt by Aristotle to draw the human heart.
I am far from satisfied. I am now qualified to parrot the beliefs and anecdotes of a knowledgeable English professor, but where are the PhD holders in history of symbology or iconography? The poor obsessed souls who have devoted their lives to unlocking the secret pasts of modern semiotics? Where is the scholar who can state plainly: the earliest physical evidence of this symbol's appearance is a parchment connected to (insert culture) around (insert year)?
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Standard for Legitimacy
I was recently reading an article (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-pakistan-shooting-20110130,0,2032633.story) about a man employed by the United States Embassy in Pakistan who was implicated in a shooting on the streets of Lahore. Embassy officials were demanding the release of the diplomat, who was being held by Pakistani police and charged with murder, on the basis of diplomatic immunity. Pakistani law enforcement however, contended that the suspect's immunity (or lack thereof) was a matter for the courts to decide.
The suspect claims that he shot the armed men in self-defense, after they attempted to rob him, while friends and family of the victims claim that he murdered them in cold blood--I am in complete agreement with the Pakistani sentiment that it is the province of a court of law to determine the suspect's guilt or innocence, but our sensibilities diverge in the questions of whose court, and on what basis?
I submit first that the question of diplomatic immunity is irrelevant, if the diplomat has committed cold-blooded murder, he should be held accountable for it regardless of what status or documentation he might possess. But before the question of guilt can be addressed, there is a question of judicial legitimacy that must be answered: should Pakistani laws/legal institutions be recognized by American entities?
I submit that no government is legitimate which codifies into law the enslavement of a people, women specifically in the case of Pakistan. Is this view ethnocentric? Absolutely, but not on the basis of any illusions of American cultural superiority--our own legal system certainly has its problems and our human rights record is far from unblemished--but in the conviction that every culture is bound to get some things right, and that our own 14th Amendment (equal protection under the law) is America's greatest contribution to humanity's cumulative understanding of inalienable rights.
Convictions being what they are, I have no intention of attempting to research that which is more a matter of conscience and ideology than one of factual information, but the supporting arguments do raise a quantifiable question. I remember reading in Time Magazine about the horrors inflicted with impunity upon Pakistani women by Pakistani men: fathers, brothers, and sons murdering (on the basis of adultery) their wives, sisters, and mothers who had been sexually assaulted--without due process and in full compliance of the law, which recognizes a woman's testimony as worth half that of a man's. There is no question for me, that the government which condones such practices is invalid, the question is this: Does the government condone such practices?
I can't even remember when exactly I read that article, 10 years ago? 15? Information has a funny way of becoming out of date and frankly, once I enrolled in an institute of higher education, I no longer had much time or opportunity to learn. This one is going to be much trickier to answer, as there will be competing ideologies presenting what data is available in a light which most effectively supports the preconceived notions attached to them. Statistics and figures originating in this region will be difficult to determine with any certainty because personal expression and the press is tightly controlled by a government which determines its own transparency must submit to no oversight other than its own, as such I will be limiting my research to those gender inequities which can either be found in written law or are reliably demonstrated to be de facto law.
Entering "women in Pakistani law" into google, the first link that appears is published by "marxist.com", though I have no quarrel with Marxists in principle, the name carries the promise of an overt political agenda catering to a specific niche demographic. Such openly branded sources are excellent for purposes of reading that which one knows in advance will support the views she already held (I use "Women Now" publications for this sort of thing), they are not, however promising sources for the task at hand--I'll come back to it if I have to.
The next hit is more interesting, if not quite what I'm looking for--an article published by an organization called "Islam For Today" (http://www.islamfortoday.com/pakistanwomen.htm). This source is also overtly politically motivated and I cannot verify any of the information on Pakistani law printed therein, but the article is a good reference for comparison in that it is published by a Muslim organization and is thereby highly unlikely to be colored by anti-Islamic sentiment which might skew facts elsewhere. . . . .unless Islam For Today is an anti-Islamic organization posing as an Islamic organization in order to discredit actual Islamic organizations, but there isn't really anything defamatory in the site's content and paranoia is premature at this stage of inquiry.
20 domains which utterly lack cited sources later (and a fruitless search of the New York Times) , I have no choice other than to commit a cardinal sin; goodbye pride, hello Wikipedia. This link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Pakistan) appeared in a Google search of the parameters "women's rights in Pakistan". Though it confirms most of what I originally believed about the status of women in Pakistan (with the caveat that women's rights vary greatly across class and region), I am entirely unfamiliar with many of the sources included, and the citations from sources that I do recognize are at least 5 years old and many of them originate with politically activist organizations (Amnesty International, for example).
I'm going to have to regroup on this one, I still believe what I originally believed but I have no definitive proof that what I believe is true. This adventure in research was a somewhat epic failure.
The suspect claims that he shot the armed men in self-defense, after they attempted to rob him, while friends and family of the victims claim that he murdered them in cold blood--I am in complete agreement with the Pakistani sentiment that it is the province of a court of law to determine the suspect's guilt or innocence, but our sensibilities diverge in the questions of whose court, and on what basis?
I submit first that the question of diplomatic immunity is irrelevant, if the diplomat has committed cold-blooded murder, he should be held accountable for it regardless of what status or documentation he might possess. But before the question of guilt can be addressed, there is a question of judicial legitimacy that must be answered: should Pakistani laws/legal institutions be recognized by American entities?
I submit that no government is legitimate which codifies into law the enslavement of a people, women specifically in the case of Pakistan. Is this view ethnocentric? Absolutely, but not on the basis of any illusions of American cultural superiority--our own legal system certainly has its problems and our human rights record is far from unblemished--but in the conviction that every culture is bound to get some things right, and that our own 14th Amendment (equal protection under the law) is America's greatest contribution to humanity's cumulative understanding of inalienable rights.
Convictions being what they are, I have no intention of attempting to research that which is more a matter of conscience and ideology than one of factual information, but the supporting arguments do raise a quantifiable question. I remember reading in Time Magazine about the horrors inflicted with impunity upon Pakistani women by Pakistani men: fathers, brothers, and sons murdering (on the basis of adultery) their wives, sisters, and mothers who had been sexually assaulted--without due process and in full compliance of the law, which recognizes a woman's testimony as worth half that of a man's. There is no question for me, that the government which condones such practices is invalid, the question is this: Does the government condone such practices?
I can't even remember when exactly I read that article, 10 years ago? 15? Information has a funny way of becoming out of date and frankly, once I enrolled in an institute of higher education, I no longer had much time or opportunity to learn. This one is going to be much trickier to answer, as there will be competing ideologies presenting what data is available in a light which most effectively supports the preconceived notions attached to them. Statistics and figures originating in this region will be difficult to determine with any certainty because personal expression and the press is tightly controlled by a government which determines its own transparency must submit to no oversight other than its own, as such I will be limiting my research to those gender inequities which can either be found in written law or are reliably demonstrated to be de facto law.
Entering "women in Pakistani law" into google, the first link that appears is published by "marxist.com", though I have no quarrel with Marxists in principle, the name carries the promise of an overt political agenda catering to a specific niche demographic. Such openly branded sources are excellent for purposes of reading that which one knows in advance will support the views she already held (I use "Women Now" publications for this sort of thing), they are not, however promising sources for the task at hand--I'll come back to it if I have to.
The next hit is more interesting, if not quite what I'm looking for--an article published by an organization called "Islam For Today" (http://www.islamfortoday.com/pakistanwomen.htm). This source is also overtly politically motivated and I cannot verify any of the information on Pakistani law printed therein, but the article is a good reference for comparison in that it is published by a Muslim organization and is thereby highly unlikely to be colored by anti-Islamic sentiment which might skew facts elsewhere. . . . .unless Islam For Today is an anti-Islamic organization posing as an Islamic organization in order to discredit actual Islamic organizations, but there isn't really anything defamatory in the site's content and paranoia is premature at this stage of inquiry.
20 domains which utterly lack cited sources later (and a fruitless search of the New York Times) , I have no choice other than to commit a cardinal sin; goodbye pride, hello Wikipedia. This link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Pakistan) appeared in a Google search of the parameters "women's rights in Pakistan". Though it confirms most of what I originally believed about the status of women in Pakistan (with the caveat that women's rights vary greatly across class and region), I am entirely unfamiliar with many of the sources included, and the citations from sources that I do recognize are at least 5 years old and many of them originate with politically activist organizations (Amnesty International, for example).
I'm going to have to regroup on this one, I still believe what I originally believed but I have no definitive proof that what I believe is true. This adventure in research was a somewhat epic failure.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Money and Power
Last week while writing about the State of The Union Address, I made a jab at Congress, referring to the political body as "a hundred multimillionaires". Though I don't for a moment doubt the validity of that statement, in the interest of exactitude I wonder--just how many members of congress really are millionaires?
The first hit on Google.com for search query, "how many members of Congress are millionaires" is a listing from CBS news' website (www.cbsnews.com), so it's a good bet that here (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20023147-503544.html) is where I need to go.
According to CBS, in 2009 261 members of congress (out of 535, nearly half) were verified millionaires. It's interesting that Americans demand as a fundamental right in civil/criminal matters, to be heard by a Jury of their peers while saturating nearly 50% of Congress with those who represent only the wealthiest 1% of their citizens. If the other 99% of Americans ever start to feel alienated from the political process, they can look to their own voting habits for a solution.
CBS is a corporate broadcasting megalith which depends upon it's reputation of accuracy for its viewership and is subject to intense international scrutiny by that viewership's vastness. The network is not equipped to compete with Fox for the ludicrously inaccurate news demographic, leaving it no choice but to uphold an ethical standard of diligent fact-checking, accurate reporting, and public retraction of reported information which later proves to be inaccurate. As such, I consider CBS' website to be an accurate source of information.
The first hit on Google.com for search query, "how many members of Congress are millionaires" is a listing from CBS news' website (www.cbsnews.com), so it's a good bet that here (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20023147-503544.html) is where I need to go.
According to CBS, in 2009 261 members of congress (out of 535, nearly half) were verified millionaires. It's interesting that Americans demand as a fundamental right in civil/criminal matters, to be heard by a Jury of their peers while saturating nearly 50% of Congress with those who represent only the wealthiest 1% of their citizens. If the other 99% of Americans ever start to feel alienated from the political process, they can look to their own voting habits for a solution.
CBS is a corporate broadcasting megalith which depends upon it's reputation of accuracy for its viewership and is subject to intense international scrutiny by that viewership's vastness. The network is not equipped to compete with Fox for the ludicrously inaccurate news demographic, leaving it no choice but to uphold an ethical standard of diligent fact-checking, accurate reporting, and public retraction of reported information which later proves to be inaccurate. As such, I consider CBS' website to be an accurate source of information.
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