I had another dream, I had another life
My latest at The Slow Hunch looks at a little-known anime series that teaches a profound lesson about progress, which can be applied to work, home, and abroad. Doesn’t hurt that the lesson is based on the work of management expert Peter Drucker. Check it out.
The following comes from a new report out of the McKinsey Global Institute (McKinsey & Co.):
As shown above, the report identifies five major catalysts for economic growth:
Perhaps the US does not need to “get used to slower growth.” Perhaps we just need to know our options.
Saw this social attitude test (mostly about politics) earlier today. It claims to be based on the work of Hans Eysenck, who was a famous but also controversial research psychologist. (At the time of his death in 1997, he was the most frequently cited psychologist in academic literature.) My scores were:
Radicalism 61
Socialism 18.75
Tenderness 75
These are on a 0 – 100 scales with the starting point at 50, so it means I’m slightly radical, very much not a socialist, and tender” (whatever that means). Apparently this makes me a laissez faire capitalist, a moderate progressive, and a libertarian all at once. In other words: ” the political profile one might associate with an animal rights activist”. Sounds like a strange description of a social conservative, but if you factor in that I think unborn human beings are in more need of protection than animals this is actually just about right.
I’m curious to see what other people get.
I missed last Monday due to scheduling snafu’s at Times & Seasons, but I’m back in my current Monday slot this morning with a piece about accepting growth and, by implication, accepting that growth takes time.
Ok, this isn’t a new statistic. In fact, the video I watched (below) that sparked this post is almost a year old. But it’s something I think about a lot because it just makes me so sad. Eugenics is horrifying, and we need to talk about it, and we need to give women support who get these diagnoses.
I particularly loved this comment on a LifeSiteNews article about the video:
it’s so odd that people want “perfect” children, I was briefly pregnant at age 46 (had a miscarriage) and had refused pre-natal testing because by then my other children were teenagers and I had learned there is no pre-natal test for tantrums, bed-wetting, climbing out on the roof, jumping out of 2nd story windows, driving 89 mph in a 40 zone, driving a car 15 miles without oil, failing math or physics, losing a brand new Starter jacket, or pooping on the sidewalk after church. There is no prenatal test for any of that, so why bother? No child is perfect!
Watch the ESPN video below about a marathon runner who wanted his wife to choose abortion when their second daughter was diagnosed with Down and instead learned a lesson about perfection.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4foXehDmWs#t=808
The following chart comes from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. It shows the increase in regulations from 1997 to 2008, deflating the claim that “deregulation” led to the financial crisis.
The researchers concluded,
Using the Mercatus Center at George Mason University’s RegData, we find that between 1997 and 2008 the number of financial regulatory restrictions in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) rose from approximately 40,286 restrictions to 47,494—an increase of 17.9 percent. Regulatory restrictions in Title 12 of the CFR—which regulates banking—increased 18.2 percent while the number of restrictions in Title 17—which regulates commodity futures and securities markets—increased 17.4 percent.
…Total regulatory restrictions pertaining to the financial services sector grew every year between 1999 and 2008, increasing 23 percent during this time. The Patriot Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and Regulation NMS all contributed to this growth. The repeal of parts of the Glass-Steagall Act via the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act did not result in noticeable deregulation of the financial services sector. Nor did the Commodity Futures Modernization Act facilitate overall financial deregulation. Not even the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act of 2006, legislation intended to decrease regulatory burdens on the financial industry, reversed the ever-growing burden of regulatory restrictions faced by the financial services sector in the years leading up to the financial crisis.
While “deregulation” may be a dirty word among some of the political elite and their supporters, the chart above and video below should cause one to give pause and reconsider the costs of heavy-handed regulations.
Arstechnica writes about the Obama Administration’s so-called commitment to “independent review” of government surveillance programs. The rumored review panel, as reported by ABC News, appears to consist of at least four people with overt government connections and whose backgrounds would make it hard for those four people to convince even their own spouses of “independence” in any meaningful sense of the word. The argument that (former) government insiders are needed because they can brandish leverage is insufficient by the definitions of the words “independent” and “outside.”
There is simply no pretense at objectivity being made here by the Obama Administration. As they have done time and time again, they make good on promises in letter only, simply to have a reference (“See? We did what we said we would do!”) in order to more effectively dismiss criticisms. Leaving such a review in the hands of this particular group of experts is a bit like hiring David Novak to do an “independent study” on the health benefits of fast food. Sure, you’ll get your study, but who’ll buy it?
Oh. Right. We will.
I’ve seen the claim that most states allow rapists custody rights to children they fathered through rape. In this context I wasn’t sure whether “rapists” meant men found guilty of rape or men accused of rape. Apparently it is the former. According to the recently introduced Rape Survivor Child Custody Act:
Currently only 6 States have statutes allowing rape survivors to petition for the termination of parental rights of the rapist based on clear and convincing evidence that the child was conceived through rape.
This CNN article discusses the estimated tens of thousands of pregnancies that result from rape each year in the US. The article claims about two thirds of these pregnancies are terminated, which still means thousands of rape victims choosing to carry to term each year.
These women should not have to fear being tethered to their attackers for the first 18 years of their children’s lives.Removing a rapist’s parental rights seems to be the obvious choice for women’s rights advocates, as well as people on both sides of the abortion debate; neither pro-lifers nor pro-choicers want women to feel coerced into getting abortions.
If we were talking about taking away parental rights from men accused of but not found guilty of rape, I think there would be a significant concern that such legislation could take away parental rights from innocent men. However, if the legislation only applies to cases involving “clear and convincing evidence” of rape, what could be the arguments against such legislation?
WARNING: Spoilers ahoy! If you want the context of the play referenced, A Roof Overhead, the majority of the production by ASU’s Binary Theatre Company was recorded and is up on You Tube. It’s not the highest quality recording, and it was a matinee (thus, historically, less audience engagement and laughing), but you get a good sense of that particular production. The Utah production, unfortunately, was not recorded due to technical difficulties (so not even I got to see it!). Of course, I think the issues the essay raises go beyond the actual play, so feel free to read it if you haven’t the time to watch an entire play at the moment.
James Goldberg’s award winning one act play “Prodigal Son” is a stirring play that flips Jesus’ proverb of the same name, showing the relationship between a former Mormon turned atheist and his son Daniel, who joins the faith his father had long since rejected. The tension and conflict caused by the reversal of the parental disapproval is both ironic and effective. Set in this gem of a play is a haunting monologue addressed to the audience by Daniel’s father:
We’re far too casual, I think, in the way we talk about losing. “I’ve lost my keys,” for example, really means you’ve mislaid them. We say we’re “lost” when we’re just disoriented. And we lose our tempers all the time, only to find them again a few minutes later—
I wish we wouldn’t dilute the best word we have for when things are truly and permanently gone. “Lost cause” is a good phrase. It’s a cold, hard dose of reality. No one goes out to find a lost cause. It’s just lost. That phrase understands the power of the word’s finality…
So when I tell you that a long time ago I lost my faith, I don’t want you imagine that I’ve misplaced or that I could be capable of finding it again. Lost faith is like a lost limb…if it’s broken and bleeding, if you try to patch it up and ends up being inflamed and infected…at some point you have to cut it off. And after you’ve lost it the only thing left is the occasional flash of phantom pain.
I lost my faith. Twenty years later I lost my wife. And now maybe I’m losing my son.
Don’t take away from me the only word I have to cope with that.[1]
Coming from a practicing Mormon like Goldberg, the monologue is unusually and beautifully sensitive towards this fictional father’s disbelief in God and religion. It shows a well of compassion and charity on Goldberg’s part towards what really amounts to a religious minority (at least in the United States and other predominately religious countries, although that trend is fast reversing in many places in the world). It’s an unexpectedly poignant moment in a beautiful play.
In this way, Goldberg has shown that he is particularly ready to clarify the way of the atheist to believers, and pleas for understanding on the his atheist friends behalf—perhaps even to the point of being a warm ambassador or a defensive patron when discussing atheism among believers. Thus it makes sense that, in his review of my play A Roof Overhead, he was quick to come to the defense of the doubter, even though such a vigorous and heated defense was hardly needed considering the context of the play’s intended message of tolerance and pleas for mutual understanding.
As Goldberg is not the only critic to misrepresent my representation of atheism, including a handful of antagonistic reviews written against my plays Swallow the Sun and Prometheus Unbound, I feel compelled to address the issue directly. I normally like my plays to stand on their own artistically, so that people may interact with them based on their own experiences and what they personally bring to the play, without constant and intrusive commentary from me.
However, some have tried to tie me to a pattern of intolerance towards atheists, even resorting to rather personal slights and warnings to others against my work. Thus, in the name of my reputation, I feel it best to clear up what my intent is, and what my intent decidedly isn’t, towards atheism and atheists. After all, if I’m to be lambasted on the matter, I would prefer to be lambasted for something I actually believe.
George Weigel has an excellent piece over at First Things, On Really Not Getting it. In it, Weigel discusses media and abortion advocate’s disgust at having any safety regulations on abortion procedures, responds to a WaPo piece that claims, after Gosnell, the evidence of a need for any such safety regulations “is weak,” and makes a few other great points surrounding the debate.
It’s all good (please read it!!), but one of my favorite parts is this:
Marcus noted that, irrespective of what was happening in state capitols, a 1973 Gallup Poll “found 64 percent agreeing ‘that the decision to have an abortion should be made solely by a woman and her physician.’” And here is another of the canards of Those Who Really Don’t Get It. The abortion decision is most frequently made, not by a woman and “her physician,” but by a frightened woman talking with a “counselor” in a clinic run by an agency like Planned Parenthood, which has a deep financial interest in abortion. That frightened woman, who has often been abandoned by an irresponsible man, is then remanded to an abortion “provider” who is no more “her physician” than he or she is “her hairdresser.”
Bam. Here’s the link again, so you can check the whole thing out.
