The other day, my friend Colette mentioned to me that I was only one of two people she had talked with concerning recent events in her life that did not become angry. We both attributed this to a lack of personal perspective on my part. And, while I won’t discount that short-coming, I would also like to think it has no little relationship to the meditation practice I’ve followed now for nearly one-third of a century.

As I was thinking about this I recalled an article I’d read in the March issue of Arthur. In Killing The Madman, – subtitled What does meditation have to do with activism? – poet Michael Brownstein writes:

In Tibetan Buddhism there’s something called idiot compassion which says that you must never allow your compassion to make you a victim. It says that even if you would never harm a flea, when your survival requires it – when a madman is coming toward you with a knife in his hand – you have no hesitation in killing. You can do this without generating negative consequences as long as you’re unattached to the emotion called forth, as long as you don’t invest it with qualities of right or wrong. Killing the madman then simply becomes what has to be done.

That’s when the warrior quality within you arises. Once you’ve liberated yourself from reactivity, once you’re able to separate yourself from your emotions and watch them come and go like clouds in the sky, you discover your fearlessness.

When I was in the Navy I spent a brief time in Japan and became fascinated by Bushido, the Samurai Way of the Warrior. A small part of this Way arises from this 14th century warrior’s creed:

I have no parents – I make the heavens and the earth my parents.
I have no home – I make awareness my home.
I have no life or death – I make the tides of my breathing my life and death.
I have no divine power – I make honesty my divine power.
I have no means – I make understanding my means.
I have no magic secrets – I make character my magic secret.
I have no body – I make endurance my body.
I have no eyes – I make the flash of lightning my eyes.
I have no ears – I make sensibility my ears.
I have no limbs – I make promptness my limbs.
I have no strategy – I make “unshadowed by thought” my strategy.
I have no designs – I make “seizing opportunity by the forelock” my design.
I have no miracles – I make right action my miracles.
I have no principles – I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles.
I have no tactics – I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.
I have no talents – I make ready wit my talent.
I have no friends – I make my mind my friend.
I have no lovers – I make stillness my lover.
I have no enemy – I make carelessness my enemy.
I have no armor – I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.
I have no castle – I make immovable mind my castle.
I have no sword – I make absence of self my sword.

When I read Takashi Matsuoka’s Cloud of Sparrows, I copied two lines into my electronic chapbook. The first is a 1344 quote from Suzume-No-Kumo:

When attacking, await the right moment. When waiting be poised like a boulder on the edge of a ten-thousand-foot precipice. When the right moment manifests itself, vanish into the attack like a boulder plummeting into the void.

The second comes a few pages later in the story:

Banzai! (literally ten thousand years!) is an expression of deepest sincerity, deepest commitment. The speaker is expressing his willingness to trade eternity for this single moment.

My goal is to have a life full of such moments.

My Soundtrack:

In My Backpack… Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir In Books by Azar Nafisi (Hey, Bonnie, I made it to page 210 today.); In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… Knowing French by Julian Barnes; On My Computer… American Gothic by Michelle Boisseau; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: Mr. Bad Example by Warren Zevon.

[Update: From the artist P. Alexandria – But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. Umberto Eco.]

Journalists who haven’t at least successfully completed a full course of high school biology, chemistry and physics shouldn’t attempt to write stories about science. The religious wrong has been getting some well earned scrutiny of late with the idiocy in Kansas. One tried and true way to distract attention is to point fingers in another direction as Pamela Winnick does in A Textbook Case Of Junk Science in the 9 May issue of The Weekly Standard.

Winnick is a an attorney and journalist living in Pittsburgh, and the author of A Jealous God: Science’s Crusade Against Religion. This important piece of information is not disclosed to the reader until the very end of the article. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to how much of the article comes from her book?

Winnick’s writing, and I suspect her book as well, fails on a number of points, three of which I’ll examine in some detail. In her lede, Winnick tell us:

Several centuries ago, some “very light-skinned” people were shipwrecked on a tropical island. After “many years under the tropical sun,” this light-skinned population became “dark-skinned,” says Biology: The Study of Life, a high-school textbook published in 1998 by Prentice Hall, an imprint of Pearson Education.

Pearson Education spokesperson Wendy Spiegel admits the error in describing the evolution of skin color, but says the teacher’s manual explains the phenomenon correctly. Just why teachers are given accurate information while students are misled remains unclear.

First, I do not have a copy of Biology: The Study of Life in front of me, so I’m working just from what Winnick writes. But I think that will be sufficient.

Would a group of very light-skinned people shipwrecked on a tropical island become dark-skinned? Of course it would. Anybody who’s visited Florida or Southern California has seen the phenomenon many times. What Winnick implies, but does not provide evidence for, however, is that a form of Lysenkoism – that the children of these people would be born with dark skin – is being taught in the text book.

But by quickly moving on to the quote from Nina Jablonski (I wonder, is Jablonski a PhD.? If so, why didn’t Winnick refer to her as Dr.?), Winnick attempts to distract the reader from her omission of facts. I would also be curious to know if Winnick got her quote by telling Jablonski about the text or if she provided her with a full copy to examine and comment on.

The reaction from Wendy Spiegal is also curious. Exactly what error is Spiegal admitting to? Because Spiegal is paraphrased and not quoted directly, we can’t tell and that makes my Lemmings Meter is tick.

In the fourth graph we get to the real agenda of Winnick’s writing: an attack on choosing political correctness over scientific fact.

But then there’s lots that’s puzzling about the science textbooks used in American classrooms. A sloppy way with facts, a preference for the politically correct over the scientifically sound, and sheer faddism characterize their content. It’s as if their authors had decided above all not to expose students to the intellectual rigor that is the lifeblood of science.

Now there’s a broad sweeping generality if I ever read one. If only Winnick were so interested in intellectual rigor.

How many text books did Winnick examine? She doesn’t tell us. Much deeper in her article she mentions a study by The David And Lucile Packard Foundation in 2001 that:

found 500 pages of scientific error in 12 middle-school textbooks used by 85 percent of the students in the country.

(Is that 500 errors in 12 middle-school textbooks, or, as she writes 500 pages of scientific errors? There’s a big difference.)

Because Winnick places so much distance between her generality and the mention of the foundation, it is unclear if the former refers to the latter.

As an example of the unfairness of this political correctness, Winnick tells us:

Houghton Mifflin spokesman Collin Earnst says [mythic] tales are included in order to “connect science to culture.” He might more precisely have said to connect science to certain preferred, non-Western, or primitive cultures. Were a connection drawn to, say, a Bible story, the outcry would be heard around the world.

The difference that Winnick fails to note is that when Houghton Mifflin includes a Native America myth about how primitive peoples named the months, the material is clearly presented as a myth. If she would like to see a real outcry, imagine if the publisher were to include any portion of Genesis in a textbook and label it as a myth on par with an Algonquin myth.

Finally, I’d like to express my opinion on the title of Winnick’s book. There is no crusade against religion by science. What there is, however, is an unrelenting quest for the best empiric, testable, understanding of how our Universe works. In such a quest there is no room for superstition and ignorance. If Winnick’s cherished fables suffer as a result, then so be it, but it isn’t personal.

My Soundtrack: A Quiet Normal Life by Warren Zevon.

One of the predictions that came out of the Blogger Meet-Up discussion on Wal-Mart Wednesday evening was that in the mid-term, Wal-Mart would close and leave the area to be developed as Cleveland’s Red Light district. Well, at least one Wal-Mart store has gotten a jump on the concept with Red Ribbon Nights.

Shoppers tie a red ribbon to their carts indicating that, along with their search for cheap plastic crap, they’re also looking for love. Maybe Mayor Campbell is just interested in helping all the lonely singles out there. Can’t you just see it now:

We both were reaching for the last super jumbo 96-roll pack of toilet paper at Wal-Mart and when his hand touched mine it was love at first sight.

My Soundtrack: My Ride’s Here by Warren Zevon.

The families of Wal-Mart employees use an estimated 38 percent more in other (non-health care) public assistance programs (such as food stamps, Earned Income Tax Credit, subsidized school lunches, and subsidized housing) than the average for families of all large retail employees.

George Nemeth offers an excellent round-up of NEO Blogger response to the Wal-Mart announcement. Watch Tim Russo and Bill Calahan for more updates.

In My Backpack… Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir In Books by Azar Nafisi (Hey, Bonnie, I made it to page 200 today.); In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… Knowing French by Julian Barnes; On My Computer… To My Cat with an Eating Disorder by Alice N. Persons; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: Strictly Commerical by Frank Zappa.

Last night at the Blogger Meet Up the central topic was the return of Wal-Mart to the Steelyard Commons project. We talked about what we bloggers who think it’s a bad idea to build a Wal-Mart in Cleveland could do.

I made two suggestions for immediate action. First, that those of us who think Mayor Campbell is smoking something unusual, should add a special Wal-Not blog roll to our blogs. Second, that we should start posting daily Wal-Not factoids to keep the pressure on those who stand to profit from this bad idea.

I’m counting on Tim Russo and Bill Callahan to come up with suggestions for the first, but this is the first of what I hope will be an on-going of daily information post on the retailing mega-giant.

So, without further ado, here’s Wal-Not Factoid No. 1:

Reliance by Wal-Mart workers on public assistance programs in California comes at a cost to the taxpayers of an estimated $86 million annually; this is comprised of $32 million in health related expenses and $54 million in other assistance.

My Soundtrack: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere by Neil Young.

In My Backpack… Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir In Books by Azar Nafisi (Hey, Bonnie, I made it to page 200 today.); In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… My First European by Edmund White; On My Computer… Phone Call Idyll by Henry Allen; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: After The Gold Rush by Neil Young.

Tim Russo and Bill Callahan are all over the return of Darth Vad… err.. Wal-Mart to Cleveland. I am especially happy that Bill has climbed back in the saddle after nearly two weeks off from blogging. He’s tanned, well-rested and ready to serve. When I wrote Cleveland Dodges A Wal-Mart Bullet… last week, I naively thought the issue was dead here. But boy was I wrong.

Does Mayor Jane Campbell really want her legacy for the city to be a Wal-Mart?

My Soundtrack: Year Of The Horse by Neil Young.

Wielding economic pressure at the consumer level is always a tricky endeavor at best. I’m reminded of a Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers cartoon from the ’60s where the three brothers are grocery shopping. As they move through their food co-op (you wouldn’t expect them to shop anywhere else would you) they select and then reject item after item because of one boycott after another. What they finally end up buying is a 50-pound bag of brown rice because it’s the only thing they’re not protesting.

My artist friend P. Alexandria sent me a notice earlier this week for what is being called a buycott. The idea is this:

Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation’s oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him “the Anti-Bush.”

By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela’s democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans.

I’ve done a cursory search on the Web to see if there are any red flags involving Citgo, but so far I haven’t found any. So, if I have to buy foreign oil to get around town, I might as well buy it from a democratic country.

Anybody know of any holes in this?

My Soundtrack: My Generation by The Who.

In My Backpack… Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir In Books by Azar Nafisi (Hey, Bonnie, I made it to page 200 today.); In My Car… Seizure by Robin Cook; On My Nightstand… My First European by Edmund White; On My Computer… Song to Onions by Roy Blount, Jr.; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: Songs Of Hurt And Feeling by White Magic.

[Update: Washington Post had the Quran story on 29 March.]

I started to write about the Newsweek story Sunday afternoon. I had a posting nearly finished, but the Lemmings Meter was ticking. I deleted the story. I’m glad I did. Unlike the Dan Rather/CBS debacle, this story is shaping up the other way. The White House may have jumped the shark.

The most important piece of information is that while Newsweek may be guilty of bad reporting, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Richard Myers, says:

…an after-action report provided by U.S. Army Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, commander of the Combined Forces in Afghanistan, indicated that the political violence was not, in fact, connected to the magazine report.

By jumping so hard on the story and pointing the finger at Newsweek the White House may have finally thrown open the door for a full-scale media feeding frenzy on what’s happening to prisoners in the War On Terror.

After a self-imposed hiatus from blogging, Andrew Sullivan is back with a vengeance. Since Sunday he has put up no less than 11 postings on the subject. Here’s what he says today:

Does [Presidential Spokesperson Scott] McClellan really want the press to report more widely on what has been going on at Guantanamo Bay? Does he really want more stories about forced nakedness, female interrogators using panties and fake menstrual blood, and many reports from former inmates about deliberate misuse of the Koran?

The administration has now opened the door for a fuller exploration of their policies and actual practices regarding detainees. Let’s walk in and see what’s in there, shall we?

We shall.

My Soundtrack: Frank’s Wild Years by Tom Wait.

In My Backpack… Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir In Books by Azar Nafisi (Hey, Bonnie, I made it to page 200 today.); In My Car… Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; On My Nightstand… In The Box Called Pleasure by Kim Addonizio; On My Computer… SF by David Lehman; On My Screen… Homocide : All Is Bright (***) directed by Matt Reeves, written by James Yoshimura and Julie Martin.

My Soundtrack: West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein.

Last week it was Tom The Dancing Bug. This week it’s Tom Tomorrow. Both cartoonists are regular reads for me and their spearing of ignorance is what often sets them apart from the pack. The message is clear: dumbing down our children will not benefit our country. One of the things that disturbs me in all of this is that when you finally corner someone who professes belief in anything supernatural their ultimate fall-back position is always: well, you can’t prove that it ISN’T true! And they’re right. It’s impossible to prove a negative.

But that can’t justify belief in that for which there is no evidence. Last week at the Socrates Cafe I posed this scenario to the group:

Unbeknownst to you all, I have been been secretly releasing a deadly gas into the room for the past hour and a half. I have the only antidote to this poison. If you do not wish to suffer a horrible death at some time in the future, you must all come to my apartment this Sunday morning and listen to my views for an hour.

And oh, at the end of my talk, you must also present me with cash equal to 10 percent of your income for the past week. In exchange for your time and gift of money you’ll be able to breathe the antidote to the poison that I’ve release in this room. The antidote is good for seven days.

Now. Could anyone prove that I hadn’t released the poison I said I did? Of course not. Want to take a guess at how many guests I had this past Sunday?

My Soundtrack: Heartattack And Vine by Tom Wait.

In My Backpack… Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir In Books by Azar Nafisi (Sorry Bonnie, no progress yesterday.); In My Car… Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; On My Nightstand… In The Box Called Pleasure by Kim Addonizio; On My Computer… Not Naked on the Bed by Timothy Young; On My Screen… The Shield: Dominoes Falling (**) directed by Scott Brazil, written by Shawn Ryan.

My Soundtrack: Small Change by Tom Waits.