Clay Burell's Bookmarks

Behold, the ongoing, increasingly startling research:
homosexual and bisexual behavior, it turns out, is rampant in the
animal kingdom. And by rampant, I mean proving to be damn near universal,
commonplace across all species everywhere, existing for myriad reasons
ranging from pure survival and procreative influence, right on over to
pure pleasure, co-parenting, giddy screeching multiple monkey orgasm,
even love, and a few dozen other potential explanations science hasn't
quite figured out yet. Imagine.

Are you thinking, why sure, everyone knows about those
sex-crazed dolphins and those superslut bonobo monkeys and the few
other godless creatures like them, the sea turtles and the weird sheep
and such, creatures who obviously haven't read Leviticus. But that's
about it, right? Most animals are devoutly hetero and straight and damn
happy about it, right?

Wrong.

New research
is revealing so many creatures and species that exhibit
homosexual/bisexual behavior of some kind, scientists are now saying
there are actually very few, if any, species in existence that don't
exhibit it in some way. It's everywhere: Bison. Giraffes. Ducks.
Hyenas. Lions and lambs, lizards and dragonflies, polecats and
elephants. Hetero sex. Anal sex. Partner swapping. The works.

we are going to move on now to the
second major section of the Bible. We have been discussing the Torah,
or Pentateuch, and now we are moving on to the section of the Bible
that is referred to as the Prophets. This section of the Bible is
divided into two parts we refer to as the "Former Prophets" and then
the "Latter Prophets." The Former Prophets will concern us for the next
few lectures. And the Former Prophets include the books of Joshua,
Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings. They read as a historical
narrative.

This material is a theologically oriented account of Israel's
history from the conquest of Canaan, or what is represented as the
conquest of Canaan, to the destruction of the state by the Babylonians
in 587-586 BCE. This material is therefore crucial background to
reading the Latter Prophets. Now the Latter Prophets is a collection of
books, each of which bears the name of the individual whose prophecies
it purports to contain. These prophets delivered their oracles at
critical junctures in Israel's history, in the nation's history, so
their words are only going to make sense to us if we first understand
the particular historical crises that they are addressing. And that
historical narrative that runs from Joshua through 2 Kings provides
that information. It tells us of the critical junctures in the nation's
history, and that will help us then slot the different prophets in.

The study showed that in 33% of the coastal states classified as low-income (commonly countries in Africa and Oceania) most fishing is carried out by foreign fleets from either the European Union, South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan or the United States. The only attribute in which poorer and wealthier countries overlapped significantly was their limited ability to convert scientific recommendations into policy. The mechanism for this pattern, however, was different. Poor countries reportedly struggle with the effects of corruption while wealthier countries often encounter more political or economical pressures.

Researchers spent a year approaching almost 14,000 fishery experts, including marine biologists, fishery managers and university professors around the globe, asking them to take an online survey in either English, French, Spanish, German or Portuguese about local fishing practices and policies. Almost 1,200 completed the survey from 243 countries and territories, including representatives from every country that borders the ocean. The survey asked the experts about their respective nations' scientific data about fish populations and ecosystems, and how they translated those scientific findings into regulations and enforcement.

The dismal results: Only 7 percent of coastal states did rigorous scientific assessments to generate fishing policies; a pitiful 1.4 percent have a participatory and transparent process for turning that science into policy; and fewer than 1 percent had strong mechanisms to insure enforcement with fishing policies.

"Perhaps the most striking result of our survey was that not a single country in the world was consistently good with respect to all these management attributes," says Camilo Mora, 34, a research biologist at Dalhousie University, who was one of the coauthors of the study. "So which countries are doing well, and which are not, is a question whose answer depends on the specific attribute you are looking at."

The results show that the majority of adults surveyed have heard of Charles Darwin and know at least a little about his theory of evolution with the highest levels in Great Britain (71%), the USA (71%), Mexico (68%), Argentina (65%), China (54%) and Russia (53%) whilst 62 percent of adults surveyed in Egypt and 73 percent in South Africa said they had never heard of Charles Darwin or his theory of evolution. Overall, the majority (70%) of adults surveyed across the 10 countries have at least heard of the British naturalist.

In all countries surveyed more people showed some agreement than disagreement that “it is possible to believe in a God and still hold the view that life on Earth, including human life, evolved over time as a result of natural selection”.

The results also show that USA, in South Africa and in India are the most likely to believe that life on Earth, including human life, was created by a God and has always existed in its current form (all at 43%).

But most people in the world take a scientific view, with the majority of adults in China (67%), Mexico (42%), Argentina (37%), Great Britain (38%), Spain (38%) and Russia (32%) believing that life on Earth, including human life, evolved over time as a result of natural selection, in which no God played a part.

The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists
expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying
rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe - a rise
in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable - can no longer be
considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome
if we continue along our present course.

Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a
temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this
century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global
greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some
mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans,
are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there's growing evidence
that climate change is self-reinforcing - that, for example, rising
temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even
more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points
out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate
of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas,
and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves - the kind that
traditionally occur only once in a generation - may become annual or
biannual events.

In other words, we're facing a clear and present danger to our way
of life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify
failing to act?

if you watched the debate on Friday, you didn't see people
who've thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the
right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of
being interested in the truth. They don't like the political and policy
implications of climate change, so they've decided not to believe in it
- and they'll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds
their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday's debate, it was
the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate
change is nothing but a "hoax" that has been "perpetrated out of the
scientific community." I'd call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but
doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After
all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a
vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists - a cabal so powerful
that it has managed to create false records on everything from global
temperatures to Arctic sea ice.

Yet Mr. Broun's declaration was met with applause.

Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed
that terrorism posed an "existential threat" to America, a threat in
whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole - but the
existential threat from climate change is all too real.

D.C. schools are under a federal court order from the late 1990s to improve the timeliness of their response to special-needs children. About 23 percent of the 46,000 students in the D.C. public school system receive special education services. Many receive services from private schools at taxpayer expense.

By contrast, in the 2007-08 school year, 12 percent of the 21,800 students in D.C. public charter schools -- which are also subject to the court order -- received special education services.

In trying to rebuild our capability to capture and develop knowledge and wisdom, we have to back away from some of our sacred constructs. Here are four of my own observations:

1. School is not a useful model for learning. But learning to ride a bike or a foreign language is. Schools are only good for teaching people how to be students, and maybe teachers.

2. Books, magazines, and movies are not a sufficiently useful model for capturing wisdom. Would you learn leadership or innovation that way?

3. Professional (or other highly structured) sports are not a useful ideal for play. But pick-up games are. Professional sports are a better model for work.

4. Computer games are not a useful ideal for play, any more than white bread and candy are good models for food.

I will be delving into these in more detail in the weeks to come.

Another key idea that occurs in Deuteronomy is the idea of Israel as
the chosen people. We find it here for the first time. It's an
expression of the particularity of Israel and its unique relationship
with God, and that uniqueness is expressed by this term, bachar,
which means "to elect" or "to choose." This is the first time we
encounter this. Yahweh has chosen Israel in an act of freely bestowed
grace and love to be his special property. Deuteronomy 10:14:

Mark, the heavens to their uttermost reaches belong to the
Lord your God, the earth and all that is on it! Yet it was to your
fathers that the Lord was drawn in His love for them, so that He chose
you, their lineal descendents, from among all peoples--as is now the
case.

Do you think religions share certain core principles?

Not many. People in the modern world, certainly in America, think of religion as being largely about prescribing moral behavior. But religion wasn't originally about that at all. To judge by hunter-gatherer religions, religion was not fundamentally about morality before the invention of agriculture. It was trying to figure out why bad things happen and increasing the frequency with which good things happen. Why do you sometimes get earthquakes, storms, disease and get slaughtered? But then sometimes you get nice weather, abundant game and you get to do the slaughtering. Those were the religious questions in the beginning.

Why did monotheism first develop?

My explanation for Abrahamic monotheism is different from the standard one. I believe it emerged later than most people think -- in the 6th century BCE, when Israelite elites were exiled by the Babylonians who conquered them. The spirit of monotheism was originally a lot less sunny and benign than people claim. Morally, it got better, but at its birth, monotheism was fundamentally about retribution.

Israel was a small nation in a bad neighborhood that got kicked around. This culminated in the exile, which was humiliating. It dispossessed the Israelites. It's not crazy to compare the mind-set of the Israelites then to the mind-set of today's Palestinians, who feel humiliated and dispossessed. This kind of mind-set brings out the belligerence in a religion. You see that in the Book of Isaiah, thought to be written by so-called Second Isaiah. These are the earliest scriptures in the Bible that are clearly monotheistic. You get the sense that monotheism is about punishing the various nations that have persecuted Israel.

So you see a connection between the political power of a people and the god they believed in?

In ancient times, there was always a close association between politics and gods. The victor of a war was always the nation whose god beat the other god. But the specific political dynamic that monotheism reflected at its birth was Israel's desire to punish other nations by denying the very existence of their gods, and also envisioning a day when Israel's god, Yahweh, would actually subjugate those nations.

Does Yahweh become a tool for Israelite kings to consolidate power?

You see that especially with King Josiah. Israel was polytheistic for a lot longer than most people think. A lot of things factored into its movement toward monotheism. One was a king who wanted to eliminate domestic political rivals. Those political rivals would have claimed access to various gods other than Yahweh, so King Josiah wanted to eliminate them. He killed some of them and also made it illegal to worship their gods. That gets you to the brink of monotheism. I think the exile pushes you over. You have a very belligerent, exclusive monotheism, whose very purpose is to exclude other nations from this privileged circle of God's most favored people.

It's important to realize
that the Pentateuch contains three versions of the Decalogue. And there
are differences among them. The Decalogue is going to be repeated in
Deuteronomy, chapter five. And there are some minor variations.
Specifically you'll see that the rationale for observing the Sabbath is
different. God's name in Deuteronomy 5 is not to be used in a vain oath
as opposed to a false oath. There are differences in the meaning. And
there are some more differences too in language. So what are we to make
of this?

One scholar, Marc Brettler, whose name I've mentioned before, he
says that what we learn from this, these variations, is something about
the way ancient Israel preserved and transmitted sacred texts. They
didn't strive for verbatim preservation when they transmitted biblical
texts. And they didn't employ cut and paste methods that might be
important to us in the transmission of something. Texts were modified
in the course of their transmission. Verbatim repetition was not valued
in the way that it might be for us. So that even a text like the
Decalogue, which is represented as being the unmediated word of God,
can appear in more than one version.

There's a more surprising variation that occurs, however, in Exodus
34. After smashing the first set of tablets that were inscribed with
the Decalogue--the tablets in Exodus 20, those are smashed after the
golden calf incident--Moses is then given a second set of tablets. And
the biblical writer emphasizes in the story at that point that God
writes on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets that
were broken. The same words. So we expect now a verbatim repetition of
Exodus 20. And yet we don't have it. The Decalogue that follows in fact
has very little overlap with the earlier Decalogue. There's really only
two statements that even have the same content.

Joe Sonka, managing editor of the Advocates for Youth blog Amplify, wrote of the lobby day, "Instead of abandoning their demonization of condoms and adherence to social conservative ideology over sound science, they would simply rebrand themselves as a curriculum that 'wasn't just about abstinence,' but was all about 'holistic approaches' to 'healthy lifestyle choices.'"

At an April 29 Capitol Hill briefing, Huber told the room that abstinence-only education is "not a 'just say no' message." "This is not abstinence only, this is a holistic message that prepares and gives students all of the information they need to make healthy decisions," Huber said. In fact, the NAEA isn't even calling its programs "abstinence only" anymore -- now they're "abstinence centered."

Similarly, WhyKnow -- a major provider of abstinence-only education curriculums -- recently changed its name to On Point, its tag line to "Direction for Life" and hired PR company Maycreate Idea Group to help recast its image. Lesley Scearce, executive director of On Point, said in an article for the Chattanoogan that the organization is trying to "get teens involved in new, positive directions that lead to a healthier, more fulfilling life. Without a re-naming, re-branding and re-positioning, this new direction wouldn't have been possible."

At an April 29 Capitol Hill briefing, Huber told the room that abstinence-only education is "not a 'just say no' message." "This is not abstinence only, this is a holistic message that prepares and gives students all of the information they need to make healthy decisions," Huber said. In fact, the NAEA isn't even calling its programs "abstinence only" anymore -- now they're "abstinence centered."

Similarly, WhyKnow -- a major provider of abstinence-only education curriculums -- recently changed its name to On Point, its tag line to "Direction for Life" and hired PR company Maycreate Idea Group to help recast its image. Lesley Scearce, executive director of On Point, said in an article for the Chattanoogan that the organization is trying to "get teens involved in new, positive directions that lead to a healthier, more fulfilling life. Without a re-naming, re-branding and re-positioning, this new direction wouldn't have been possible."

Joe Sonka, managing editor of the Advocates for Youth blog Amplify, wrote of the lobby day, "Instead of abandoning their demonization of condoms and adherence to social conservative ideology over sound science, they would simply rebrand themselves as a curriculum that 'wasn't just about abstinence,' but was all about 'holistic approaches' to 'healthy lifestyle choices.'"

At an April 29 Capitol Hill briefing, Huber told the room that abstinence-only education is "not a 'just say no' message." "This is not abstinence only, this is a holistic message that prepares and gives students all of the information they need to make healthy decisions," Huber said. In fact, the NAEA isn't even calling its programs "abstinence only" anymore -- now they're "abstinence centered."

Similarly, WhyKnow -- a major provider of abstinence-only education curriculums -- recently changed its name to On Point, its tag line to "Direction for Life" and hired PR company Maycreate Idea Group to help recast its image. Lesley Scearce, executive director of On Point, said in an article for the Chattanoogan that the organization is trying to "get teens involved in new, positive directions that lead to a healthier, more fulfilling life. Without a re-naming, re-branding and re-positioning, this new direction wouldn't have been possible."

The College Board favors the traditional "five paragraph essay" format taught to high school freshmen, and those who are going to succeed in college have generally mastered the format and picked up the various tricks that earn good scores on the essay. (One of Perelman's students, to show how the scoring favors quotations from famous people, accurate or not, took the test using various quotes that happened to be visible in the testing room, and attributed all of them to Lee Iacocca -- and she earned great scores.)

"The writing test is teaching students a lot of bad habits," said Perelman. "It's real predictive value, in terms of writing, is nil."