All Thoughts Being Equal

This is a technical note: I've done some housekeeping and largely excised most of my old (like, winter 2010 and before) posts. Not that I think Parasites was a bad sequence, per se, but it doesn't really mesh with the current direction of the blog. Also I don't want to be confused with an English major or anything.

In my previous post I made (quite spontaneously) a connection between cultural literacy as promoted by E. D. Hirsch and white privilege as described by Peggy McIntosh : One interesting thing about McIntosh's analogy is that some of the provisions in the "invisible knapsack"—namely the "maps, passports, codebooks, visas,"—are what you might expect a tourist to have. A traveler, who wants to be able to accurately and easily move around. E. D. Hirsch, in his Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know , describes cultural literacy in exactly these same terms. I wonder how much of what social justice activists and Tumblrites think of as "white privilege" isn't just evidence of a vast and still growing rift between class-cultures. However, gluing the fragmented cultures back together might smack of "cultural appropriation." That will be a tough sell. Indeed, it was a tough sell—too tough, since after a brief resurgen...

DISCLAIMER: This is, to put it mildly, a sensitive issue. But I want to be clear about the theme of this post. I am not trying to deny anyone's lived experiences. My criticism is levied at descriptions of cultural issues that don't end up actually describe anything. The descriptions themselves are empty, not the experiences (in fact, I offer up descriptions that might be more on-target, but that's open to criticism as well). Now, on with the original post. There was a bit of an outrage at Western Washington University a couple weeks ago, involving an event (originally) called "TRIBAL DISCO II." Feelings were hurt, the event was shut down, and now the conversation is mostly over, at least for this specific incident. I think it's time enough for a post mortem on what happened, what went wrong, and what people did to improve or destroy the conversation.

or, Thoughts on a Libertarian Party Convention The Libertarian Party of Washington State (LP-WA) held their party convention in Bellingham this Saturday, 20 April 2013. On a lark—me being a fan of liberty and the event being free if you didn't want food—I decided to go. An afternoon of short speaker presentations followed. This being an event by libertarians, for libertarians, I was treated to a collection of mostly-similar messages; nevertheless, I was intrigued by the nuanced differences embedded in that homogeneity.

or, the Protection Racket Behind “America’s Moral Decline,” Part the First You might remember my previous two posts regarding a seminar about Biblical prophecy and the End Times. “Incredible Prophecies”—their emphasis on Prophecies , mine on Incredible —continues, and I went back to learn about America’s “moral decline.” It wasn’t as bizarre as I expected (no talk of “demonic principalities” puppeteering American elites, nor of the loss of the “Seven Mountains of Culture” out of true Christian control), but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t nuts. The lecture got off to a rollicking start with the assertion that America was founded on Biblical principles, including the Ten Commandments. I got a bit excited, and thought maybe this would be an extended fever-dream of Christian historical revisionism. It was more of a David Barton Lite treatment. Dan Bentzinger (the presenter, for those who didn’t click through to my previous posts) cycled through (cherry-picked) quotes from a few Founding F...

or, Concerning a Lecture Concerning Biblical Prophecy Concerning the End of Days and the Second Coming, Part the Second (Coming) In the last post, I looked at the religious quirks of the “Incredible Prophecies”—their emphasis on Prophecies , mine on Incredible —lecture, entitled “…And the Time of the End.” Check it out , then check back here. After bemoaning the lack of “true” Christians (though not as much as you might think; more on that in a bit!), speaker Dan Bentzinger unfurled a body of what he called evidence: various facts, figures, and events from recent history that prove Beyond a shadow of a doubt! that these are indeed well and truly the Last Days. Never mind that he had just read some verses from Scripture condemning false prophets. Never mind that he had used Rapture-guy Harold Camping as an example of a latter-day false prophet. Never mind that 7DA itself is the product of a failed Rapture prophecy (called the Great Disappointment , of all things). Shhhh. Let’s just ex...

or, Concerning a Lecture Concerning Biblical Prophecy Concerning the End of Days and the Second Coming, Part the First This evening at 7:00pm I attended one of a series of lectures on Biblical prophecy. Those of you who know me or even those who have just read some of my blog posts might ascertain that I am neither religious nor that big into prophecy. But what you may not have guessed is that I still really like that stuff. I’ve come to understand that some of humanity’s best cultural output is in it’s weird things . The odd; the absurd; the cartoonish; the nonsense, especially nonsense that some people take very, very seriously. In the funhouse mirror of our kooks and crazy talk, certain fascinating features of the human psyche bulge out. So there I was, at the Seventh-Day Adventist Church on North Forest Street in Bellingham. I was an outlier.