Formerly Gray Lady Has No Taste In Books

Heaven help us, the Gray Lady has published a list of 100 Notable Books of 2011. Color me skeptical of the premise, but Mercy! Look at the descriptions of the fiction and poetry books and try to stay awake. Alternatively, read them aloud and see if whoever's in the room with you can tell whether a book or a bottle of wine is being described. There are 5-6 on the list that sound like worthwhile reading -- or at least honestly told stories innocent of propaganda, but most sound like the same old pretentious, transgressive, cynical, nihilist crap that's been churned out for 50 years. Get a load of this:

• "a liberating reminder that terror existed long before there was a war on it" (who said otherwise?)
• "an allusive, Franzen-like first novel" (what?)
• "a big, insightful novel about social and ethnic conflict in contemporary Los Angeles." (Is it the length of the tale that makes it insightful?).  
• a "capacious, metaphysically inclined graphic novel" with "unsettling comic vision." (This merlot I'm sipping is capacious and has unsettling comic vision, too.)
• "overturns clichéd expectations of immigrant idealism" (overturning clichéd expectations is the biggest cliché of them all)
• "what can happen when the self’s rhythms and certainties are shaken." (someone shake the reviewer's certainties, please)
• "Complex but fundamentally decent characters hurt one another and are hurt by forces greater than themselves, as a family sinks beneath the weight of a terrible secret." ("Complex" probably meaning "not actually decent")
• "Beneath the shadowless Norman Rockwell contours of Baxter’s Midwest lurks a chilling starkness and sense of isolation" (ding ding ding! Bonus points for unnecessary dig at Norman Rockwell while condescending to the Midwest. Too bad you didn't work in "Ozzie & Harriet," though, for the Gold star.)
• "Hilarious and extremely dirty." (Isn't that redundant?)
• "A wry, world-weary and hyper-articulate werewolf, morally as well as physically ambiguous..." (Honestly, did he lose you at "werewolf"? Or at "world-weary"? )
• "In this novelistic version of the biblical prophecy known as the Rapture, Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims as well as Christians mysteriously disappear." (Much to the delight of the Times' Review of Books)
• "Smith’s impressive range is on full display in her third poetry collection, in which she mourns her father, who worked on the Hubble Telescope." (OK, that's not nihilistic & pretentious so much as unintentionally hilarious.)
• "socially realistic novel is split between two characters who react in opposite ways to their old affair." (Oo, a book about an affair. Naughty!)
• "a refined eye for the outrageous" (just like me!)
• "about a paroled sex offender, bravely tries to find humanity in people whom society often despises." (that damn "society"!)
• "particularly astute on the uncertainties awaiting after graduation." (Life outside of academia is not worth living.)
• "sardonic novel of a young Albanian immigrant in New Jersey sets Ameri­ca in high relief" (America criticized by someone with no attachment to her? Praised in the Times? Do tell!)
• "a love story and a dystopian fantasy that raises questions of psychology and ethics." (No one has done dystopia.)
• "stories of longing and disappointment"
• "an unexpected bequest forces a man to re-evaluate his relationships" (movie of the week, anyone? Not the dread "re-evaluation of relationships" trope).
• "an aspiring architect in 1980s Germany, wanders between his charming, frigid wife and plain but devoted mistress."
• "The Bosnian hero of Prcic’s absorbing and unsettling first novel is shattered by war. "
• "the most ambitious, and disturbing, of Kasischke’s eight books"
• "acerbic and deeply sad narrative"
• "relatives and scholars grappling with the legacy of a Rupert Brooke-like poet killed during World War I"
• "darkly comic"
• "Viscerally smoldering anger, the signature quality of Murray’s poetry, turns conventional pieties inside out. " (Honey, viscerally smoldering anger IS a conventional piety.)
• "a group of friends, lovers, parents and children through the straight-edge music scene and the early days of the AIDS epidemic." (Strangely, this novel is not called "Rent.")
• "A family’s Manhattan life comes apart when their 15-year-old forwards a sexually explicit video made for him, unsolicited, by a girl two years younger." (Bet that's uplifting)
• "patterns of suspicion, superstition and everyday violence"
• "splendidly devious novel"

Does no one want to just tell a story anymore? At any rate, the most predictable-sounding "literature" imaginable. I'm bored to tears by ironic distance and am looking for some warmth and heart.

Potpourri of Popery, End of Year & Heart of Voodoo Edition

Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters 

Having got too busy to comment on the three great papal events of the year: World Youth Day in Spain, the triumphant return to Germany, and Assisi III (excellent round-ups at those links), I'm determined to complete a potpourri before the liturgical year closes this evening.

Popery
The Pope was in Benin last weekend. For a guy who promised himself the year before Bl. John Paul the Great passed that he was never crossing the ocean again, he sure has made a lot of trans-oceanic journeys. Time has a good slideshow here. I love the kids sneaking under the bottom rung of this fence to try to catch a glimpse of the Pontiff as he passes by.

Benin, as all the news agency headlines blared at me when I googled, is "the home of voodoo."  If that's true, it's all the more fitting that the vicar of Christ was there at the close of the liturgical year, to claim the lost in the name of the One who gathers the tribes unto himself.  

The official occasion, however, was the dedication of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Africae Munus and to celebrate with the people of Benin the 150th anniversary of its evangelization. The pope also had the personal intention of praying at the tomb of his old friend Cardinal Gantin. (Whispers has two nice posts with pictures about that aspect of the trip: the visit to his friend; and an earlier post about the Ratzinger-Gantin friendship.)

All the Benin addresses are collected here, but here are some highlights.

Sometimes the interview on the airplane en route is really interesting. He's asked, "Why Benin?" and responds that Benin is a model of well-functioning democratic institutions and a place where Catholics, other Christians, Muslims and tribal religions are at peace with one another. He talks about Cardinal Gantin:

I have always wanted, one day, to pray at his tomb.  He was really a great friend – perhaps I will speak of him at the end, and so to visit the country of Cardinal Gantin, a great representative of Catholic Africa, and of African civilization at its most humane, is a further reason for me to go to Benin.

Thoughtful answer to the question about inculturation and Catholicism not really being able to compete against Pentecostal Christianity, too. On the one hand, there's a lot to admire; but it's important not to be too impressed:

These communities are a worldwide phenomenon, found in all continents. In particular, they have a strong presence, in different forms, in Latin America and in Africa.  I would say that the characteristic elements are minimal institutional character, few institutions, lightweight teaching, a straightforward message, simple, easily grasped, apparently concrete and then – as you say – a participative liturgy with the expression of personal emotions and of the native culture, with combinations of different religions, sometimes in a syncretistic way.  All this, on the one hand, guarantees success, but it also implies instability. 

What is there for Catholics to learn then? He takes it point by point.

We also know that many people come back to the Catholic Church or else migrate from one of these communities to another. Hence, we must not imitate these communities, but we must ask what we can do to give fresh vitality to the Catholic faith.  And I would say that an initial point is certainly a simple, profound, easily grasped message; it is important that Christianity should not come across as a difficult European system that others cannot understand and put into practice, but as a universal message that there is a God, a God who matters [to us], a God who knows us and loves us, and that concrete religion stimulates cooperation and fraternity.  So, a simple concrete message is very important.

That's very much in the vein of his 2006 message to Swiss bishops which so impressed me, as well as his message to bishops at Fatima and elsewhere. Don't let the beauty and grandeur of the faith be obscured by its rules and regulations. Furthermore, he goes on, 

Another very important point is that the institution should never be too heavy, that is to say, the initiative of the community and of the individual should be predominant.   And I would also say that a participative but not emotional liturgy is needed:  it must not be based merely on the expression of emotions, but should be characterized by the presence of the mystery into which we enter, by which we are formed.

"Participative but not emotional." My new motto! 

As for inculturation, he doesn't like the word:

it is important for inculturation not to lose universality.  I would prefer to speak of interculturalism, rather than inculturation, that is, a meeting of cultures within the shared truth of our humanity and our era, giving rise to a growth in universal fraternity; we must not lose the great gift of catholicity, meaning that in every part of the world we are brothers, we are a family, knowing one another and working together in a spirit of fraternity.

Someone asks a good question -- how can you speak of hope in Africa? He seems to pooh-pooh the difficulties. Or not the difficulties themselves, but the idea that Africa's are worse than anyone else's: just different. Where are there are human beings there are serious problems, always.

As mankind moves forward, so do the difficulties.  Yet the freshness of Africa’s yes to life and the youthfulness that is found there, so full of enthusiasm and hope as well as humour and liveliness, show us that Africa has a reserve of humanity, there is still a freshness about its religious sense and its hope; there is still a perception of metaphysical reality, total reality, including God: not this reduction to positivism, that constricts our life and makes it somewhat dry, extinguishing hope in the process.  So I would say that the fresh humanism found in Africa’s young soul, despite all the problems of today and tomorrow, shows that Africa still has a reserve of life and vitality for the future, on which we can depend.

I have zero experience of Africa, but my experience of African Catholics here confirms the Holy Father's assessment. They are alive and joyful in a way that the West isn't. It's attractive and infectious. At our parish's 125th anniversary recently, the Nigerian community (which normally has its own mass) joined us. They don't merely recite the Creed. They proclaim it.

Once on the ground, there was of course the airport welcome ceremony, where he lays out for the people of Benin the main themes of his visit. Next he visited the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mercy and delivered a simple, lovely reflection on mercy and on Mary as Queen of Mercy.

Given the background of the airport interview -- the Pope's concern for democracy and control of corruption and  religious tolerance and religious freedom-- I think the meeting with government leaders is the most important address of the trip. Here's the passage that attracted the most attention in the secular media, though, unsurprisingly the headlines didn't capture the spirit of the address:

When I say that Africa is a continent of hope, I am not indulging in mere rhetoric, but simply expressing a personal conviction which is also that of the Church. Too often, our mind is blocked by prejudices or by images which give a negative impression of the realities of Africa, the fruit of a bleak analysis. It is tempting to point to what does not work; it is easy to assume the judgemental tone of the moralizer or of the expert who imposes his conclusions and proposes, at the end of the day, few useful solutions. It is also tempting to analyze the realities of Africa like a curious ethnologist or like someone who sees the vast resources only in terms of energy, minerals, agriculture and humanity easily exploited for often dubious ends. These are reductionist and disrespectful points of view which lead to the unhelpful “objectification” of Africa and her inhabitants.

In reportage, this amounted to "We're No Better Than Africa": cultural relativism. Of course that's not what he's saying at all. What he's doing is apologizing to Africa for the gross cultural imperialism of the perky little tyrant types at the UN and elsewhere who do things like tie foreign aid to contraception distribution, or try to bully African countries into legalizing abortion.

The actual teaching of the address however is here, where we have a hint of his view of the Arab spring and civic unrest in our day, generally:

During recent months, many peoples have manifested their desire for liberty, their need for material security, and their wish to live in harmony according to their different ethnic groups and religions. Indeed, a new state has been born on your continent. Many conflicts have originated in man's blindness, in his will to power and in political and economic interests which mock the dignity of people and of nature. Human beings aspire to liberty; then to live in dignity; they want good schools and food for their children, dignified hospitals to take care of the sick; they want to be respected; they demand transparent governance which does not confuse private and public interests; and above all they desire peace and justice. At this time, there are too many scandals and injustices, too much corruption and greed, too many errors and lies, too much violence which leads to misery and to death. These ills certainly afflict your continent, but they also afflict the rest of the world. Every people wishes to understand the political and economic choices which are made in its name. They perceive manipulation and their revenge is sometimes violent. They wish to participate in good governance. We know that no political regime is ideal and that no economic choice is neutral. But these must always serve the common good. Hence we are faced with legitimate demands, present in all countries, for greater dignity and above all for greater humanity. Man demands that his humanity be respected and promoted.

You don't get this greater respect for humanity, however, by substituting the other guy's dominating passions for your ethnic group's, nor by making your grandchildren pay for you to live as you choose. You have to submit those passions to the common good so as not to rob your people of hope:

From this place, I launch an appeal to all political and economic leaders of African countries and the rest of the world. Do not deprive your peoples of hope! Do not cut them off from their future by mutilating their present! Adopt a courageous ethical approach to your responsibilities and, if you are believers, ask God to grant you wisdom! This wisdom will help you to understand that, as promoters of your peoples’ future, you must become true servants of hope. It is not easy to live the life of a servant, to remain consistent amid the currents of opinion and powerful interests. Power, such as it is, easily blinds, above all when private, family, ethnic or religious interests are at stake. God alone purifies hearts and intentions.

The Church does not propose any technical solution and does not impose any political solution. She repeats: do not be afraid! Humanity is not alone before the challenges of the world. God is present. There is a message of hope, hope which generates energy, which stimulates the intellect and gives the will all its dynamism. A former Archbishop of Toulouse, Cardinal Saliège, once said: "to hope is never to abandon; it is to redouble one's activity". The Church accompanies the State and its mission; she wishes to be like the soul of our body untiringly pointing to what is essential: God and man.

He goes on to address relations between the various religious believers, offering hope for the end of endless skirmishes on that front and a pointed rebuke of extremists:

I do not think it is necessary to recall the recent conflicts born in the name of God, or deaths brought about in the name of him who is life. Everyone of good sense understands that a serene and respectful dialogue about cultural and religious differences must be promoted. ... Aggression is an outmoded relational form which appeals to superficial and ignoble instincts. To use the revealed word, the Sacred Scriptures or the name of God to justify our interests, our easy and convenient policies or our violence, is a very grave fault.

He has often said with respect to ecumenism that Christian unity is not the work of man but of God, and therefore the best thing for it is for each Christian to be the best disciple he knows how to be. As we grow in union with God, he lifts us to himself, and thus will union come. Now he makes a similar point with respect to inter-religious dialogue. To be genuine, it has to spring from confidence that God is the Lord of history and there is nothing to fear in mutual submission to the truth. And sometimes the "dialogue" is not a matter of formal arguments, but of simple practical cooperation and kindness:

In your continent, there are many families whose members profess different beliefs, and yet these families remain united. This is not just a unity wished by culture, but it is a unity cemented by a fraternal affection. Sometimes, of course, there are failures, but there are also many successes. In this area, Africa can offer all of us food for thought and thus become a source of hope.

To finish, I would like to use the image of a hand. There are five fingers on it and each one is quite different. Each one is also essential and their unity makes a hand. A good understanding between cultures, consideration for each other which is not condescending, and the respect of the rights of each one are a vital duty. This must be taught to all the faithful of the various religions. Hatred is a failure, indifference is an impasse, and dialogue is an openness! Is this not good ground in which seeds of hope may be sown? To offer someone your hand means to hope, later, to love, and what could be more beautiful than a proffered hand? It was willed by God to offer and to receive. God did not want it to kill (cf. Gen 4:1ff) or to inflict suffering, but to care and to help live. Together with our heart and our intelligence, our hand too can become an instrument of dialogue. It can make hope flourish, above all when our intelligence stammers and our heart stumbles.

Love that last line!  Good deeds are inter-religious dialogue. I love this close, too:

To be afraid, to doubt and to fear, to live in the present without God, or to have nothing to hope for, these are all attitudes which are foreign to the Christian faith and, I am convinced, to all other forms of belief in God. Faith lives in the present, but it awaits future goods. God is in our present, but he is also in the future, a place of hope. The expansion of our hearts is not only hope in God but also an opening to and care for physical and temporal realities in order to glorify God. Following Peter, of whom I am a successor, I hope that your faith and hope will be in God. This is my wish for the whole of Africa, which is so dear to me! Africa, be confident and rise up! The Lord is calling you.

He met with priests, religious and seminarians, urging them to be holy and not reduce their mission to social work. He formally signed the post-synodal document. And he had the sweetest encounter with children. You have to read it and savor it; after some encouraging words about how to speak to Jesus and carry him with you in your heart each day, he says this, which makes me smile:

Dear young people, Jesus loves you. Ask your parents to pray with you! Sometimes you may even have to push them a little. But do not hesitate to do so. God is that important!

I always pay special attention to what the Pope tells bishops. Here he tells them to take care of their priests, pay special attention to their formation, maintain unity with the Church and each other, and be sure all the faithful have a personal relationship with Christ:

It is the crucified and glorious face of Christ which ought to guide us, so that we may witness to his love for the world. This attitude requires a constant conversion in order to give new strength to the prophetic dimension of our proclamation. To those who have received the mission of leading the people of God, falls the responsibility of quickening this attitude in them and helping them to discern the signs of the presence of God in the heart of persons and events. May all the faithful have this personal and communal encounter with Christ, and become his messengers. This meeting with Christ must be solidly rooted in openness to and meditation on the Word of God. The Scriptures must have a central place in the life of the Church and of each Christian. Hence, I encourage you to help them to rediscover Scripture as a source of constant renewal, so that it may unify the daily lives of the faithful and be ever more at the heart of every ecclesial activity.

The relationship with Christ necessarily entails a flowering of zeal and missionary activity:

Apostolic zeal, which should animate all the faithful, is a direct result of their baptism, and they cannot shirk their responsibility to profess their faith in Christ and his Gospel wherever they find themselves, and in their daily lives. Bishops and priests, for their part, are called to revive this awareness within families, in parishes, in communities and in the different ecclesial movements. ...as I emphasized in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, “In no way can the Church restrict her pastoral work to the ‘ordinary maintenance’ of those who already know the Gospel of Christ. Missionary outreach is a clear sign of the maturity of an ecclesial community”. The Church, therefore, must reach out to everyone.

In other words, he wants a Church alive.  Which brings us to the final big event of the visit: the Mass of Christ the King. From the homily:

The Church exists to proclaim this Good News! And this duty is always urgent! After 150 years, many are those who have not heard the message of salvation in Christ! Many, too, are those who are hesitant to open their hearts to the word of God! Many are those whose faith is weak, whose way of thinking, habits and lifestyle do not know the reality of the Gospel, and who think that seeking selfish satisfaction, easy gain or power is the ultimate goal of human life. With enthusiasm, be ardent witnesses of the faith which you have received! Make the loving face of the Saviour shine in every place, in particular before the young, who search for reasons to live and hope in a difficult world! The Church in Benin has received much from her missionaries: she must in turn carry this message of hope to people who do not know or who no longer know the Lord Jesus.

In all, a series of challenging addresses, but shot through with love and hope. It seems he entrusted to the peoples of Benin a mission, as expressed in a single question from his airport farewell.

Why should an African country not show the rest of the world the path to be taken towards living an authentic fraternity in justice, based on the greatness of the family and of labour?

I can't help notice the contrast between the Pope's attitude and that of the perky little tyrants he criticized at the outset of the trip. They come to say, "You're hopelessly backwards and messed up. Stop breeding and we'll give bread to those who remain." He says, "Your problems are great, but there is no reason at all you can't conquer them. Rise!"

• Throughout Summer & Fall, the pope has also continued an enlightening series of catecheses on prayer. No doubt they'll be gathered in a book when they're completed, but for now scroll around at Zenit to find them. Here's the most recent.
• He's declared next year a Year of Faith. I jokingly said I dread this. The year of the priest turned into a year of terrible trials and purification for priests due to scandal (one priest friend of mine said he was hoping for a year of the laity so we'd see what it was like).
• BXVI on stem cell research. And on charitable work.

Potpourri

• Vatican: announces it will fund adult stem cell research, Simcha Fisher has an hilarious take; Bl. JP the Great as model for health care workers.
• Algeria: fascinating interview with Archbishop Bader
• China: a new episcopal ordination, this time w/ Rome's blessing; underground Church meeting in face of crackdown.
• Egypt: major university and "imam of the revolution" call for defense of Christians.
• Germany: not going to attempt a round-up on his visit there, but DO read his reflection on the foundations of law before the Bundestag.
• Iraq: Christmas under siege.
• Ireland: 52-yr-old NY priest named nuncio; Bishop Hegarty resigns for health reasons; Pope still may visit,
• Israel: address of Chief Rabbi to BXVI at close of recent conference.
• Nigeria: ex-terrorist converts, Muslims murder his kids
• Pakistan: "Jesus Christ" no longer a banned term in text messages; Catholic activist murdered.
• Russia: half a million Orthodox line up to visit belt believed to belong to the Virgin Mary, cure infertility.
• U.S.: bishops on their first ad limina with BXVI (will be v. interested in these addresses once they're up); bishops' annual conference dealt largely with threats to religious liberty and marriage; major addresses: President Dolan to the assembly; Archb Lori on religious liberty (it's great, but also agree with John Allen that the religious liberty focus is too parochial; hate any effort that turns the Church into an interest group rather than a defender of what is true, simply); address of our new nuncio; Anglican ordinariate set up officially; Card. Law retires;  Bishops lose anti-human-trafficking contract even though it is rated more highly than any competitor; Doug Kmiec says Obama's not anti-Catholic, apparently because he says so. New mass translation starts this Sunday at last.

And finally: Well said!  And the blessing of the beer.

Happy Thanksgiving!

"The First Thanksgiving," Jennie August Browscombe

Wishing you and your families a joyful day of rest. May St. Martha intercede for all the chefs, guardian angels protect all travelers, and may you save enough room for pie. (Our choices this year are as follows: apple, cranberry, pumpkin, chocolate bourbon pecan...and a pear tart thrown in for good measure.)

Here is this year's Thanksgiving Day Proclamation. And the first one.

Throw Gramma From The Train

Listen to this neurosurgeon who calls in to the Mark Levin show to report on new training from his professional organizations about what Obamacare will entail in his field. He says the regs refer to people not as "patients," but as "units," and asserts that people over 70 will be given "comfort care" rather than treatment. He doesn't cite published regs, but I find him credible; at the very least this is what professionals in the field are being told.

As we noted in this space 2 years ago, we could get no treatment for free.

Always remember, though, that it is Republicans who are going to throw Seniors off a cliff.

That "Conscience" Thing

In case you missed it, Gramma Pelosi, the self-proclaimed "devout" Catholic, says Catholics let women die on the floor and have an annoying "conscience thing" that forces them to oppose abortion.

 “They would” let women die on the floor, she said. “They would! Again, whatever their intention is, this is the effect.’’
“I’m a devout Catholic and I honor my faith and love it ... but they have this conscience thing [about abortion],” added Pelosi.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest you are not a devout member of a group you think of as a "they." 

Seven Way King

The famous sermon by Dr. S. M. Lockridge set to visuals and audio. You may want to close your eyes and just listen to the marvelous cadence of his voice. By the end it's almost music. A little something different for the feast of Christ the King.

I Could Love This Rick Perry

Sure, it's pie-in-the-sky (because it takes Congress to achieve) but...a girl can dream can't she? From his "uproot and overhaul" speech:

we need a part-time Congress. I say send them home to live under the laws they pass among the people they represent.

Actually, it could be done. Pass a law banning heat and a/c in Congressional offices for "green" reasons. Everyone would go home and quit mucking around.

no longer will we prop up failed entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were at the heart of the economic collapse because of mortgage financing policies that gave false confidence to homebuyers who have now defaulted or are under water. 

We will privatize Fannie and Freddie so politicians can no longer politicize them, and taxpayers will no longer be fleeced by them.
And lastly, we will put a permanent stop to federal funding of Planned Parenthood because our tax dollars should never be used in taking an innocent, unborn life.

Can Perry do what Reagan couldn't?

We will eliminate agencies that perform redundant functions. I will get rid of the Commerce Department, the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy.
We will downsize and re-task the EPA, so it no longer torments job creators or gives an official stamp to phony science.
We will end the TSA’s harassment of law-abiding travelers and return transportation security to the private sector.
And we will restructure the behemoth that has become the Department of Homeland Security.

Etc., etc.

We will put a moratorium on every pending federal regulation, and order a full audit of the last five years of new regulations, repealing those that are not affordable, effective or that kill jobs.
And we will say to every bureaucrat except our military and law enforcement: no salary increases until the federal budget is balanced. And because a president must lead by example, we should cut his salary in half until the budget is balanced.
Washington is so broken, Americans will accept nothing less than a complete overhaul of the way business is done in America.

Unfortunately, zero specifics on how this would be accomplished. But...ah, music.....

Update: See, I was just caught up in the dream and ignoring the Constitutional absurdity. Mr. W., on the other hand, says:

When a guy says that a President has the power to cut Congressional salaries in half, I don't bother to read the rest of it.

To which I say: well, if you're gonna go all constitutional on us....

Constitutional absurdity is, as I've said, the problem with everyone in the field except Santorum & Gingrich. None of 'em have given the role of govt and its various branches even two seconds of thought, in spite of our having been in constitutional crisis for the last 25 years at least.   

Not So Vegetative State

A new brain exam can --and has-- detect brain waves in people previously thought to be in an irreversible "vegetative state."

The research team, led by Damian Cruse and Adrian M. Owen of the University of Western Ontario, gave simple instructions to 16 people said to be “vegetative”: each time you hear a beep, imagine squeezing your right hand into a fist. The subjects were given this task and another — hear a beep, wiggle your toes — and ran through up to 200 repetitions.
In healthy people who executed these instructions, the EEG picked up a clear pattern in the premotor cortex, the area of the brain that plans and prepares movements; the electrical flare associated with the hand was distinct from that associated with the toes.
The brains of three of the supposedly vegetative people showed precisely that; the subjects were a 29-year-old, a 35-year-old and a 45-year-old, all men who had been pronounced vegetative three months to two years previously.
“That’s about 20 percent of the patient group, producing responses that were identical to healthy volunteers,” said Dr. Owen.

We are assured this has nothing to do with Terri Schiavo.

The case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who became unresponsive after her heart stopped and who was removed from life support in 2005, became a political and family controversy. Doctors say it is unlikely that the EEG test would have changed the diagnosis in that case. 

This conclusion is necessarily based on nothing whatsoever. We can't tell what's happening in the brain without this test, and she never got this test so....  Whatever. Don't we all feel reassured?

Beginning To Look A Lot Like....

Eldest Weed and his Taliband have begun working on their Christmas parody album. First cut: "Lo, How A Mayor Bloomberg."

It's pretty funny, but I think it's going to be a long Advent.

Malaizy

Obama to CEOs: You're lazy.

We’ve been a little bit lazy over the last couple of decades.  We’ve kind of taken for granted — ‘Well, people would want to come here’ — and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new businesses into America,” he told the CEOs who are gathered on the sidelines of the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings, which the United States is hosting this year in Hawaii.

"Lazy" sounds so much like "malaise," doesn't it?

Vapid Response Team

Heh.
Curtsy: Slate, where Dave Weigel writes:

The competition is over: This really is the best-ever use of the White House's petition-creating widget.

And an appropriate response to a White House that would create a petition-creating widget in the first place.

John Francis Donoghue

I can't find a link to confirm it, but a facebook friend reports that Archbishop John Donoghue, emeritus of Atlanta but a real Maryland boy, passed away last night after long illness.

I didn't know him well, but have every reason to believe he was "the real deal." Both from the testimony of a friend who worked for him for years, but also because of a personal experience.

I was visiting said friend for a few days -- this was after His Grace' retirement-- and we went to daily mass before visiting some friends for lunch. The confessional happened to be open after mass, so we took advantage -- and lo and behold, it was Archbishop Donoghue in the box.

That already impressed me: the retiree putting in time in the confessional on a regular basis tells me he had a genuine spirit of service. But my confession with him was one of the most extraordinary spiritual experiences of my life. I can't get into it without revealing more than I'd like, but I was in the middle of one of those periodic valleys of faith where everything seems grey, dismal and pointless.

I did not say this to him. My usual confessor knows it all, but I didn't see the point in giving any context. This was just a stranger in a box. I'd never see him again, so I simply confessed my usual list of utterly prosaic, grey, dismal and pointless faults.

What he said back to me was as if he knew my life story. He didn't address my sins at all, but the valley of faith I was in. He also said something quite pointed on a matter I hadn't confessed and hadn't even seen until he pointed it out. His counsel was firm, wise, gentle and encouraging and I had the sense that it wasn't him speaking so much as God.

Is that what people mean by "reading souls"? Or was he just a very experienced confessor? I have no idea. I just know the stranger in the box was an instrument of grace for me, and as he was there of his own volition, I thank him for it.


May he rest in peace.

Big Honkin' Wave

I think you know my sole requirement for an adventure flick is that there be big honkin' waves. But now the best one I've ever seen is from real life -- a 90 footer, and someone surfed it.

Let's Be Honest, He's Leered At All Of Us

Update: Hmmm

Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country -- Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. -- but never in Chicago. So it's curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod​.

RTWT

Best of These I've Seen

Shamelessly pinched from facebook.

Eternal Rest Grant Unto Them, O Lord

All Souls' Day 1910, Aladar Korosfoi-Kriesch

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

1030 All who die in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

1031 The Church gives the name Purgatory to this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different from the punishment of the damned. The Church formulated her doctrine of faith on Purgatory especially at the Councils of Florence and Trent. The tradition of the Church, by reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire:

As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the Final Judgment, there is a purifying fire. He who is truth says that whoever utters blasphemy against the Holy Spirit will be pardoned neither in this age nor in the age to come. From this sentence we understand that certain offenses can be forgiven in this age, but certain others in the age to come.

1032 This teaching is also based on the practice of prayer for the dead, already mentioned in Sacred Scripture: "Therefore [Judas Maccabeus] made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin." From the beginning the Church has honored the memory of the dead and offered prayers in suffrage for them, above all the Eucharistic sacrifice, so that, thus purified, they may attain the beatific vision of God. The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead:

Let us help and commemorate them. If Job's sons were purified by their father's sacrifice, why would we doubt that our offerings for the dead bring them some consolation? Let us not hesitate to help those who have died and to offer our prayers for them.

Happy Feast of All Saints!

Albrecht Durer, Adoration of the Holy Trinity 

The courageous and integral appeal to principles is essential and indispensable; yet simply proclaiming the message does not penetrate to the depths of people’s hearts, it does not touch their freedom, it does not change their lives. What attracts is, above all, the encounter with believing persons who, through their faith, draw others to the grace of Christ by bearing witness to him.

--Benedict XVI, to the bishops of Portugal

They Killed Google Reader

Or "Pass the Biscuits" as it's known in these parts.

ninme 'splains it to you. Deeply annoying since the whole activity of this blog lately is simply passing links along.

I await a third party rescue, since google's only interested in google plus-ing me (not interested until they relax the no pseudonym policy), and I'd have to have a whole new identity for that. Recommendations welcome.

Update:  Well, it's ugly, but it's functional: for the time being, I switched to FriendFeed, which gives me what I want: a bookmarklet with which to easily share links. Agree completely with blostopher's comment, citing a TechCrunch reader:

The new Google Reader continues the Google revamping of including lots of white space and reducing the actual amount of content available. Message to Google: It's all about content, not white space. Also, the nearly colorless theme is just totally dead and lifeless.

Designers think it's about how it looks; readers think it's about the content. How long before they kill Blogger, I am wondering?  

One Ring of Bureaucrats To Rule Them All

European democracy, RIP. My spy in NY sends along this link. EU nations will be submitting their budgets to the EU for pre-approval before citizens of the actual nations get to vote on them. Janey Daley's noticed what I have on another front...where I like to say the "N" in "never again" is silent where respect for life and human rights are concerned, she says:

it is often quite eerie how the statements and mannerisms of EU officials, seemingly so dedicated to being the precise opposite of earlier, infamous generations, end up echoing (or parodying) the more memorable moments of the war-torn 20th century. When the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, proclaimed, “I am pleased to stand before you this morning and confirm that Europe is closer to resolving its financial and economic crisis… We are showing that we can unite in the most difficult of times”, I half expected him to wave a piece of paper in the air and proclaim economic stability in our time.

Occupy Divorce Court

there has been absolutely no meaningful change in the inequality of individual income earners in the years from 1994 through 2010. If income inequality in the U.S. was really driven by economic factors, this is where we would see it, because paychecks (or dividend checks, or checks for capital gains, etc.) are made out to individuals, not to families and not to households.

Check the data to see.  The same fellow who brings us the chart draws his conclusions.

the real complaint of such people isn't about rising income inequality, but rather, how people choose to group themselves together into their families and households.

Spell that out for us.

With a near rock-steady level of income inequality among individual income earners over time, it is only possible for income inequality to rise among families and households if the most successful income earners group themselves into families and households and if the least successful income earners likewise group themselves together into families and households as well.

Think about it. The reason that the income inequality levels recorded for families and households are lower than those for individuals are because most families and households may have one high income earner, who is balanced out by individuals within the families or households who have low or no incomes.

But, if people with very high income earning potential join together to form families and households, and increasingly do so over time, perhaps because such people might have things in common that make forming themselves into families and households an attractive proposition, then income inequality among families and households will increase.

And if those people don't have any children, or just one, that has one kind of impact. And another is to be found at the opposite end of the scale from divorce and illegitimacy.

The same holds true for the opposite end of the income earning spectrum. If people with really low income earning potential join together to form families and households, or perhaps if they choose to split apart, and increasingly do so over time, then the resulting low income family and household will also make income inequality among families and households rise, even though there has been no real change in the amount of actual income inequality among individuals.  

This is not just some random blogger asserting this. Ivan Kitov did an analysis of census data from 1947 and concludes the following about changes to the economy since 1960.

the Gini curve associated with the fine PIDs is a constant near 0.51 between 1960 and 2005 despite a significant increase in the GPI/GDP ratio and the portion of people with income during this period (see Figure 1). This is a crucial observation because of the famous discussion on the increasing inequality in the USA as presented by the Gini coefficient for households (US CB, 2000). Obviously, the increasing G for households reflects some changes in their composition, i.e. social processes, but not economic processes as defined by distribution of personal incomes.

Paul Ryan & Rick Santorum have it right. It's pointless to talk about the economy if we're not going to talk about the family. And you can't tear the family apart without hurting the poor disproportionately.