Such a quake would break the freeways heading east. The only “escape” would be north. The first city north is Bakersfield, whose mayor has stated that they would be unable to deal with the influx of refugees that such a quake would cause and would shut down the freeway. Which just underlines the importance of working together: we’re in this together, as a state and as people.

Such a quake would cause fires, fires that LA firefighters would start work on, and which San Diego firefighters would very quickly pitch in with. Until the aftershock hit SD, forcing them home. The best thing to do in that kind of situation would be to head to the beach and watch the city burn.

If evacuated, people would surrender their household belongings to the looters, who would come. If people have a disaster plan, and if they stick to that plan, most people will congregate with their friends and family members, with food, water, data (hopefully!), and pets. (See comments for my disaster plan.) My sister made the very valid point that we (humans) can live without food for weeks (although I will have my cats) as long as we have water. My sisters’ plans are to congregate, one with food, one with guns & ammo.

It’s interesting to me to listen to peoples’ disaster preparedness plans, and in Southern California, disasters (fires, quakes) are never far from peoples’ minds. But I have found that most people my age don’t discuss disaster preparedness in terms of fires, quakes, or tornadoes; we discuss it in terms of zombies. “When the zombies attack…” is the frequent start of conversations among friends & coworkers.

“When the zombies attack, if you can’t grow your own food, you won’t survive.” A coworker (who always bikes to work) has told me, just before pointing me in the direction of his favorite gardener-cum-activist.

“When the zombies attack, this will be one of the worst places to be.” Is a frequent phrase heard early in the morning at the Apple store, just before the giant glass doors (they weight a ton each) slide open to admit the first shoppers with their dead dead eyes.

“Dude, when the zombies attack, I’m hanging out with him.” This violates my rule, since it was spoken by a 40-ish coworker about a 60-ish coworker who holds the record for his age group in running the marathon. However, the logic here is misplaced since, when the zombies attack, he’s gonna be running. And we won’t be able to keep up…

“Of course I’ve got an earthquake kit at home. When the zombies attack, you need to be prepared!” This one was interesting to me since it combined the two: being prepared for an earthquake as the same as being prepared for a zombie apocalypse.

“My wife calls it the panic room,” a friend says of a closet in his home where he keeps his guns, “and when the zombies attack, we’ll be set!” His wife is now thinking of putting provisions in there.

In the same conversation, his brother said, “No, when the zombies attack, I’m going to WalMart!” And then proceeded to outline his clearly thought-out reasons: food, lockdown, and guns. Although WalMart no longer carries guns, which we reminded him of. “Okay, then when the zombies attack, I’ll swing by your place first. We can get some guns and then hole up in WalMart.”

There’s no if in these conversations. There never is. The zombie apocalypse is clearly very entrenched into our psyches. And I wonder if it really is the most concrete way we can think about the unknown disasters that can strike. I’m currently reading the Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, which discusses the difficulty humans have preparing for, mentally and physically for the improbable and for the not-clearly-defined. Southern Californians can say glibly that we have many earthquakes a day and that there is a high likelihood that a large one will hit us soon. But very few of us have a disaster plan. Is the zombie apocalypse so outlandish that it becomes real to us? Something that we can prepare for in a way that we cannot prepare for earthquakes, fires, and tornadoes? Or is it a broader social commentary about social sheep/zombies? Or, or! Is it because there are hundreds of cultural zombie artifacts (movies, TV shows, books) to help mentally prepare ourselves but for natural disasters, we must turn to the hated genres of history and documentary (Twister, I think, actually proves this point).

Spark is a category for sharing links. No intense commentary, just a link & a brief reason you might want to click on it. Something to Spark your Mind to Flame, if you will.

And he’s right. This will surely help release the right-wingers from the woodwork. But maybe, just maybe, it’ll release the left-wingers, too.

However, that’s all just back story. What I really want to do is reiterate the fact that I think religious marriage should be separate from political marriage. I was never married in a church, as far as I’m concerned, the only reason to do so is for the ceremony. A church might afford me some rights within its laws upon marriage, but the state’s and country’s political rights are much more interesting to me. Some places where they might well be separate:

Gay marriage. Many churches wish to deny marriage to their homosexual members. Fine! No problem! The state recognizes a marriage, so they get tax, hospital, and insurance benefits. Their church does not, so they may be denied ritual and after-life benefits. Most religions that deny marriage to homosexuals would deny these (ritual, &c.) benefits to these members anyway. Marriage notwithstanding.

Polygamy/Polyandry I have no problem with the state recognizing only one spouse: if a religion wishes to recognize more than one, no problem! Again, we’re talking about temporal vs. spiritual rights (tee hee, rites). I do not think that religion should have a hand in the debate for political rights.

I’ve said this before: that I think we need to separate the church definition and the state definition of marriage. This ruling just underlines it. I see it as an antiquated hold-over from when church and state were not separate (I mean…when they were not officially separate…as opposed to now). The state doesn’t care if you’re baptized, confirmed, or get last rights. Why should it care if you get (religiously) married?

I do surveys online and near the end, they always ask me demographic information: what gender, what age range, what zip code, &c. But this one bugs me and has since I first started living in sin:

Are you:
- Married
- Living with partner
- Single, Divorced, Widowed

(sometimes the last one is split into two or three). To me, the first two are the same thing. In fact, I would rather think of myself as “living with [my] partner [in crime, love, and social situations]” than as “married”. Married still carries the religious “I’m the little wife who stays home, bakes cookies, and has children” to me. Even though my political marriage solidified certain rights that my husband and I now share (insurance, both health & car, and taxes chief among them). So that is the kind of marriage I hope for everyone in love: a political marriage that makes life just easier. If you want a religious marriage, take it up with your priest, bishop, ward, pope, chaplain, or ship’s captain. Don’t bring it to your polling place.

So…NARAL just came out in support of Obama, who is *gasp* a man, for those of you who weren’t sure. I don’t know about all you vaginas (since it’s obviously what we think with) out there, but I had always thought that he had a stronger pro-choice position than Hillary. Although I’m currently perusing both their websites and can’t find anything concrete on either. I thought he, at least, was better than that. [See Obama on Family, Education, or Ethics; wait, maybe it’s under Heathcare, or Poverty…nope? Too bad there’s no search function. See Hillary as a Champion for Women and Supporting Parents and Caring for Children (I feel like a Dick & Jane book). No? Well, she doesn’t have a search function either.]

John sent me an email to see what I’d heard in the Feminist Blogosphere (I’d not heard anything, actually, his email was the first), so I Googled it. According to him, “a lot of NARAL folks were pretty pissed off”, which I shall leave to him to substantiate (sorry, I’ve got fifteen tabs open in this window alone, my li’l iBook cana take much more ). So this is what I found in the feminist blogosphere:

The usually verbose Feministe had a very short post regarding it which I feel sums up my frustration with this:

This is going to ruffle some feathers.

Which just sets this up as a cat-fight. We feminists are so disorganized, so unsure of what is in our own best interests, such bitches, that we just can’t agree on anything! Excuse me while I contract a case of the vapours.

Pandagon was quite equanimous about it. She brings up the fact that he has a strong track record, has a better chance of winning, and is not McCain (which is a slightly odd argument, but okay), all of which make him a good choice for (a) people, (b) women, and (c) feminist organizations with political clout. Pandagon is disturbed by the comments on NARAL’s site (the cat-fight noted above) and reiterates that the point is having a feminist in the White House.

Feministing, my favorite (and only one left on my daily click) mentions that EMILY’s List disagrees with the choice but that NARAL’s stated goal is not to promote women in politics (as EMILY’s is) but, again, to promote feminism (and choice). She then leaves open what her particular leanings on the subject are but once again anticipates that there will be a cat-fight:

Thoughts, y’all? (Please, please keep it civil. Both Clinton and Obama supporters are participants in this blog community. Be kind.)

(her emphasis)

As of this posting, Bitch, PhD has not yet weighed in, nor has the Well-Timed Period, who may or may not (she’s more concerned with actual legislation & may not mention it until which ever we get as president passes some asinine legislation).

Which they will. Make no mistake, Hillary and Obama each know how the political game is played and these are the rules: don’t mention the A-word, dance around when asked point-blank about medication (lest we say the word “pill” too loudly), quietly vote for small pieces of legislation that slip through the cracks unnoticed by all but the most rabid of anti-choicers, and publicly state that you’re “pro-woman”, “pro-family”, or “pro-child” which can ambiguously go either way. If either gets to a position of power where they might have the opportunity to introduce a constitutional amendment to uphold the right to choose, I have no illusions that either of them would. Obama has managed to strike me as the less wishy-washy of the two when it comes to this subject (which every smart Democrat is wishy-washy about), but I have been unable to find anything to back that up. Just as, in some circles, an endorsement by George II could be the kiss of death, endorsement by a vocally pro-choice organization may well not be in the best interests of either candidate. I wish Obama well. I wish he was more liberal. I wish our political process allowed him to stand up and say what he believed, rather than what his speech-writers spin for him.

And at the end of the year, I’ll be voting Democratic. It was a hard decision for me, but I cannot afford to throw my vote away this year. This is, of course, contingent on us actually having and election come November. Which I am still not convinced of.

Finally, Feministing reminds us that what is important in this election season is voting. Thanks to those who went before us, even if my first introduction to them was from Mary Poppins.

Spark is a category for sharing links. No intense commentary, just a link & a brief reason you might want to click on it. Something to Spark your Mind to Flame, if you will.

(Image from Bloomsbury Auctions)

Lots of people are talking about a newly-surfaced letter by Einstein, which seems to clarify his ambiguous views on religion with the following strongly-worded statements:

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

and

For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.

According to one blogger, the sentiments quoted above aren’t actually that new – similar ones were republished in Skeptic magazine in 1997. But even so, this reinforces them, plus they are getting a lot of press. So I am pleased by the news overall. But I think one should keep something in mind.

Namely, there are not two simple “sides” to the religion/atheism debate, but a spectrum; Einstein is the quintessential example of someone in the middle. I’m not qualified to explain his thoughts on religion definitively, but it seems clear that he is basically a “theist” in the mold of Spinoza (or going earlier, Winstanley) – i.e. someone who is an atheist as far as the traditional, personal god of theology goes, but who has an attitude of reverence towards the natural world that leads him to describe it in religious language. An atheist in substance and a religionist in style, you might say.

So anyone who tries to claim Einstein for “our team” without qualification is being a little sloppy. John Lynch of Stranger Fruit gets this, but it appears that Homosecular Gaytheist doesn’t, and neither does erv (but s/he’s hilarious so let’s call it even). At first I thought PZ Myers was making the same mistake, but I think he’s just saying that religious folk can’t claim Einstein for their “team,” not that atheists can.

If anything, Einstein would be on Team Ambiguous-Sacrilicious-Humanist – just like us here at Mind on Fire…

Why Higher Gas Prices Should Make You Smile, at least if you believe that the only way we’re going to get out of this crisis is by switching to “alternative” (to fossil fuels) forms of energy. I have often said that $4 was the price point at which I would stop driving and I’ve been trying to live up to that. I’ve been better about biking to work (I have my husband poke me in the back when my alarm goes off each morning to get me out of bed) and I’ve actually done so twice a week for the last three weeks. Yay me It means getting up & getting ready earlier than I’m used to, it means more exercise than I’m used to, and it means being more organized (like figuring out what’s for dinner the evening before I have to go shopping); but it also means a certain smugness that makes me feel warm inside (or maybe that’s just the exercise) when I pass gas stations, and an even better smugness when I pass cars because I’m actually going faster than they are in traffic.

Grow your own grain in Massachusetts. This is an awesome story about *ahem* grassroots sustainability. I’m so envious of Jana and her veggie garden, but I’ve never even considered growing my own wheat. Having such a relationship with a local bakery/miller is truly awesome. I can only hope that more such ingenious schemes come around. This is what’s going to help when the zombies attack.

A little taste of what you’re in for:

“So if you’re a truck buyer, be like your Meh-sai-er–only Ford pickups will do.”

“When your best friend’s a shyster, don’t drink Jagermeister. Jack is what Jesus would drink.”

h/t Friendly Atheist

A year ago, a group called Soulforce organized two buses of queer and allied folks, mostly students, to ride around the country visiting colleges with discriminatory policies – i.e. religious and military ones. The East Coast bus visited Gordon College, my alma mater, and the same week two students and I released a booklet of anonymous stories by LGBTQ and questioning Gordon students, which had never been done on that scale before. From what people on campus told me, both events had quite an impact, and there was recently a “what’s happened since then?” event.

Being two years gone, I don’t really know what it’s like on campus. And honestly I don’t really care to know except in outline – hearing detailed arguments about Romans 1:24 gets tedious after the 37th time or so, and so does splitting hairs trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. But Gordon occupies a fascinating niche between evangelicalism and the cultural mainstream, such that I’ll keep paying attention to what goes on there long after my friends have all graduated.

So I read with interest an article in the Salem News last week, about how a proposal to start a LGBT support group was voted down 7-6 by the Student Association. Read that, browse the comments if you like, and come back.

* * *

The first thing that struck me was the way the article, glossing as a newspaper must over the hard theological issues, can only treat it as an emotional issue, tut-tutting the Student Association for not being more compassionate. The solution, one would suppose, would be for them to let their hearts grow a few sizes and hold a revote, and all would be well.

But it’s not that easy, because it’s not just about homophobia in the emotional sense, like it would be at most schools. It’s also about a millennia-old intellectual system that denigrates queerness (at least in most versions). And someone who give serious assent to that system with their head cannot accept queerness even if their heart wants to.

And yet, the cure for what ails evangelicalism here is not simply more theological panels and books. Because most people, I think, even those under the sway of an ideology like evangelical Christianity, are driven enough by nonrational factors that they will eventually change their beliefs to fit their evolving values. It’s a rare person who can hold the above head/heart tension in place for very long – Gordon’s Dean of Students being one example.

* * *

Which is why, on balance, I support this article, despite the above problem and despite its multiple inaccuracies. Press like this keeps Gordon’s feet to the fire, in however small a way – a little sensationalist press is like a nice dash of paprika.

The Student Association and the Dean of Students have responded, in a campus email which has been posted here. Basically, they say that the Student Association really wants to support LGBT students, they just think it perhaps should be kept on a shorter leash by the administration, e.g. the Chapel Office or the Center for Student Development. And they’ve organized some committees which will make recommendations for actions to be taken sometime later – maybe next year.

I’m sure some of this is motivated by sincere concern. But I can’t help but note that in a year, troublemakers like Tania will have graduated, and recall the theme from civil rights that “later” is often just a way for people to say “no.” (Ever the bane of campus activism – the establishment is there for decades, while the activists are gone within four years.)

But I’ve heard of other small positive signs, so hope springs eternal.

If you want to read more on this topic, you might check out blogs by the Soulforce riders, the booklet linked above, or a local gay paper’s article about it. Me, I’m remembering how utterly depressing religious heterosexism is, so I shall leave you with the following classic video. (See also: Star Wars version)

Bonus question: I don’t imagine many gay men would find this version offensive, but what about the original? (Probably NSFW.) Read this article first. (See, queer excogitations in a secular context are SO much more fun)

Update 5/16: The Hamilton Chronicle covered the story this week, more sensitively and accurately some are saying, and I’ve heard rumors of a Boston Globe article in the works.

One of my favorite shows when I still had cable was the Riches. It’s an interesting drama, but what got me to watch the first two episodes was that it’s got one of my favorite British comedians, Eddie Izzard. Who is a transvestite. (I just spent 45 minutes on YouTube looking for the right clip and boy to I love Eddie Izzard, but I can’t find the part where he talks about being a transvestite:

I’m an action transvestite really, so it’s running, jumping, climbing trees… putting on make-up when you’re up there!

oh, well. This part comes just after it & it’s pretty good, too.) The first time I saw the Riches, I was surprised, since I’d never seen Eddie Izzard in men’s clothing. But they did work transvestism into the plot: his son likes to wear dresses. The mother occasionally tells him that, when they make up a story (according to Wikipedia, they are “Irish Traveller con artists and thieves”), he has to choose: is he a son or a daughter. So I’m not sure if he’s transgender or just transvestite (the son is about 8). If this is Liberal Hollywood’s way of normalizing trans-people, I’m all for it.

This is what immediately came to mind when I heard the article on NPR last night. I have no idea what Izzard’s childhood was like, but my heart breaks for these two children. Or at least for the one in New York. The trouble that Bradley has with pink things, the fact that he stopped playing when they removed his dolls, actually made me cry when I was telling my husband about it. The problem that I see is that Dr. Zucker is locked into the gender dichotomy mind-set. There are two genders: male and female. Men like guns. Women like pink.

I find this problematic on so many levels. And this is exactly what feminism is about. It is about saying “skirts are simply articles of clothing” no one should be forced to wear one if they do not want to and no one should be kept from wearing one if they do.

UPDATE: There’s another article today, about slightly older children who are undergoing hormone suppression. The (woman-born-)sister of one of the children discusses her (trans)sister’s discomfort with puberty. She says that she cannot imagine waking up in a body that was not female and understands the horror that her (trans)sister feels at it happening to her. Their father says that the whole experience has caused him to think about gender, and about life, in a whole new way. Good for him!

“The stuff that really brings people together, and makes us happy to live together, originates from a caring and thoughtful mind that’s been exposed to many streams of education.”

That was the key point I took away from a presentation — talk, acoustic concert, and Q&A — by Greg Graffin, frontman and co-songwriter for the seminal punk band Bad Religion, who was honored with an award the Saturday before last at Harvard’s Memorial Church. (A recording is available at the link above, thanks to the Humanist Network News podcast.)

Since last semester, people from the humanist community at Harvard have been planning a ceremony for the Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism, created last year to honor artistic contributions to human culture in a humanistic vein. The first was given to Salman Rushdie, who was a hard act to follow. But the committee, of which I was an occasional part, felt clear in the end that this year’s award should be given to Graffin, who is not only a musician but also a biology lecturer at UCLA.

That might sounds a bit caricatured at first glance — a group of atheist academics giving an award to the singer of a band called Bad Religion, whose logo is a cross with a slash through it! But the band has a more subtle relationship to faith than their name might suggest. Graffin himself is an atheist, but has said that the band uses “religion” not literally, but more as a metaphor for conformity of all kinds; for any kind of “shared way of thinking” that is prescribed by others.

The ceremony started off with an introduction by the able Dan Robinson of the undergrad Harvard Secular Society, followed by an introduction to both humanism and Graffin by Greg Epstein, Harvard’s star humanist chaplain. And then the honoree himself took the stage.

* * *

His talk began with a bit of history, starting with the scholastic tradition in the first medieval universities. Broadly speaking, scholasticism sought to use reason to make the Bible consistent with the ancient Greeks, holding the truth of both as fixed points. This was the birth of systematic theology in the West.

In contrast, the intellectual movement that came to be known as humanism emphasized the arts, especially the language arts. According to Graffin, they too paid homage to the ancient Greeks and Romans, not for the “sole purpose of making them consistent with theology,” but also to improve upon them — Copernicus improving on Ptolemy, Andreas Vesalius improving on Galen. And more interesting for Graffin, they emphasized the “creation of an active, politically responsible citizen,” arguing that the humanities were better suited than scholastic philosophy for the development of civic and social virtues.

This, he said, is a goal modern-day humanists should share: presenting creative and written works to the public with the hope of helping people lead better lives. That’s been a goal of his own work with Bad Religion, he said: not just entertaining people, but also making them think. And conversely, in his academic lectures he seeks to entertain.

The quote that began this article came at the end of his talk, as he was drawing these and other threads together. I took him to be saying that the best products of culture come from people shaped by a diverse range of experiences. A fitting way to conclude an acceptance speech for this award, which seeks to bring the often science-driven humanist movement more in touch with the humane and artistic as well.

(Intriguingly, given the context, he described this claim as a “naive belief in an untested hypothesis” — i.e. faith. Perhaps he was joking, or perhaps he was showing us his nonconformist side…)

“If you’re satisfied with that, I’d like to play some music,” he added, to enthusiastic applause.

* * *

It was the first time he had ever done both in one evening. “I’ve never actually played guitar in… a suit,” he said, and didn’t unbutton his top button until the second song.

Because I’m new to Bad Religion’s music, and punk in general beyond The Cramps, I’ll simply post videos of the four songs he played without much comment. The first one was “Suffer” from the 1988 album of the same name, and the rest are under the cut.

(h/t Rebecca at Skepchick)

Next was “Cease” from The Gray Race (1996):

Following that was “Live Again” from the recent (2004) album The Empire Strikes First:

And finally (actually, this is the only ordering I’m 100 percent sure about) was “Sorrow” from The Process of Belief (2002). Apparently it’s been added to the latest version of Guitar Hero, which he was amused to report.

The Hymenization of Virginity

Spark is a category for sharing links. No intense commentary, just a link & a brief reason you might want to click on it. Something to Spark your Mind to Flame, if you will.

Los Angeles Southern California is a fire-prone area. Fire is part of the natural life cycle of the plants in this area. Although the Griffith Park fire in 2007 was an important one to me since I live lo these two miles from it, I don’t think it was an especially bad one. Malibu, San Diego, and other places get much worse pretty often. Especially when you consider that no one lives in Griffith Park (no one we care about, certainly, and fires are generally only cared about based on their ability to kill people or *shock* damage houses that we built too close to the forest!). So it seems like an empty gesture to “celebrate” the anniversary of this particular fire.

However, celebrating firefighters is something I can get behind. They’re hot, dedicated to the community, and put themselves into harm’s way. We already have Secretary’s Administrative Professionals’ Day, and we could probably better survive (in SoCal) without secretaries administrative professionals than we could without firefighters. So I propose that we have a National (or at least State) Firefighters’ Day!

I ran across this story recently and it drove home the point that myths often have some basis in reality:

For years, Vietnamese children were told of an ancient turtle that lived in a lake. When the turtle appears, it is said to be a portent of an extraordinary event. Now, researchers from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo say they found a rare giant turtle in a lake west of Hanoi. The turtle was thought to be extinct in the wild.

Now it remains to be seen what the extraordinary event is.

It’d be weird for a woman or a black to run the United States, I think a lot of things would change. Probably the male chauvinistic side of me is going to vote for the man just because…uh…I’m going to be honest, you know. Probably…probably won’t be McCain. […] Love thy neighbor as thyself, that’s a big part of Martinsville, too: there’s a church on every corner. [starts at 6:11]

And that just pisses me off. I wish we lived in a place where it didn’t matter and that the best person would win. But what do you all think? Will the country be less racist or less patriarchal? My vote is with Obama (obviously this is not something that we’ll be able to know by the results, but I’d like to know what you think). And I can’t help but think that part of it is because religion still helps reinforce the “weirdness” of having women in power, much less than it reinforces the “weirdness” of having “a black” in power.

More on the subject:
- Use of loaded language when discussing the candidates
- Why Obama doesn’t play the race card
- A Feminist’s Questionnaire for Democratic Candidates