Category Archives: Chuckling

The Trouble With Satire? We've Become Too Dumb to Recognize It

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On December 28, 2012 Daniel Akst wrote an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times entitled: Hey Kids, Don’t Forget Your Guns. He began the article by talking about the NRA’s proposal that we make our schools safe by posting an armed law enforcement officer in every school. Daniel suggested that the best way to make schools safe is to give the students guns and train them in how to shoot.

My thanks to Mrs. Farris, my 12th grade English teacher who had us read A Modest Proposal by Jonathon Swift. Swift suggested in 1729 (in response to large numbers of his fellow Irish in poverty) that their 1 year old children be sold to the rich to be eaten. We learned in reading this about satire.

Daniel was doing the same thing. Several of us caught the meaning, but I’m amazed at how many didn’t. The responses of shock and outrage caused the Times to publish a postscript on January 5th that you can read here. In the article Sue Horton wrote: “Should we have made it more obvious that Akst was writing tongue-in-cheek if clearly intelligent readers didn’t get the joke?” At the end of the article she wrote: “We do like to run the occasional piece of satire on the Op-Ed pages, and we intend to continue to publish it. But we will also continue to look for ways — through headlines, say, or visual presentation — to better tip the readers to the joke. If we fail occasionally, as we almost certainly will, we apologize.”

We apologize? WE APOLOGIZE? C’mon man. I don’t expect that everyone who reads this article will make the connection to Jonathon Swift, but it scares me to think that we’ve gotten to the point where we can’t recognize satire. Last May I wrote an article about a column that claimed President Lincoln filed the first patent in 1845 for what would become Facebook. It was picked up by several news organizations who assumed it was true.

How does this happen? I have a few theories:

  • We are bombarded by too much information. We hear so much each day about so many things that we simply can’t keep up. No longer do we have the time to step back and ask: “Does this make any sense?” The media used to filter out the crazy stuff, but now they amplify it. Our 24 hour news organizations are so hungry for new content that they no longer filter but put everything out and tell us we decide. We’re not good at it.
  • Organizations that we think should be mature or reasonable are neither. My best evidence of this is the NRA itself. Their answer to gun violence is the need for more guns. Is is so much of a stretch to think that if 1 gun in a school is reasonable, 600 isn’t?
  • Finally, we’ve never been good at identifying satire. Indeed, in 1729 Swift’s essay was met by outrage in some circles by people who thought he was serious. On October 30, 1938 Orson Wells produced a radio show called War of the Worlds. Even with disclaimers before, during, and after the show, people thought that Earth was being invaded. Within days of the attacks of 9/11/2001 we began hearing that this was caused by the US government. Really. You can read about it here.

So where do we go from here? Me, I’m praying for the people who fall for these stories, and still vote.

So Does This Make Me a Man?

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Over last weekend I was surfing the internet looking for the recipe for the perfect martini. I found that there are several opinions on this (and don’t get me started on the whole gin vs. vodka thing) but I found a good recipe on the website The Art of Manliness.

I used that recipe, and started exploring the page. They had a page on the 100 books every man should read. While I’ve never worried about my status as a man, I’m a sucker for booklists. I even have booklist of my own. So how did I do?

Well, of the 100 books they list, I’ve read (or at least started) 25 of them. Here are the books they recommend that I’ve read:

  1. The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald. I read this a few years ago.
  2. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I read this in 1977 at the end of my junior year in High School.
  3. 1984 by George Orwell. I read this in high school, and was frankly more impressed with his novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
  4. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I read this in 9th grade. The book is excellent but you should also watch the movie.
  5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I read this in High School after reading 1984. It didn’t scare me as much as it was supposed to.
  6. The Odyssey by Homer. I can only claim half credit because the web page lists both the Odyssey and the The Illiad, also by Homer. I read only the Odyssey in my 2nd year of college.
  7. Walden by Henry David Thoreau. I ready this in my junior year in High School
  8. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. This has become a political football. I can only claim half credit as I stopped 2/3 of the way through the book as I found Ayn annoying. I still believe I am my brother’s keeper.
  9. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. I didn’t like this book, but most of those who read it liked it. I’m happy for them.
  10. The Divine Comedy by Dante Aligheri. I read this in college.
  11. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. It was my gateway to the rest of his stuff, and also to C.S. Lewis.
  12. The Boy Scout Handbook by the Boy Scouts of America. For a very brief time I was a Cub Scout in the late 1960s. They lured me in on the pretense of camping but I soon found out it was all about medals (that I couldn’t have cared less about). On the other hand, this is where I learned to tie a tie.
  13. Animal Farm by George Orwell. I read this in high school before 1984.
  14. The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. I can only claim half credit as I haven’t read all of them, but I’ve enjoyed what I have read.
  15. Moby Dick, or The Whale by Herman Melville. I’ve seen both versions of the movie, and started the book. Someday I’ll finish it. Give me half credit.
  16. Hamlet by William Shakespeare. I took a course in 12th grade on Shakespeare’s tragedies. I’m actually happy about a book I was assigned to read in high school
  17. The Boys of Summer by Roger Kahn. Nancy is a big Dodger’s fan so it was inevitable we’d read this. It was a few years ago.
  18. The Stranger by Albert Camus. I read this as a senior in high school in 5th year French. Do I get extra credit for reading it in the original French?
  19. On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I “read” this as an audiobook a few years ago. I agree with Truman Capote: “That’s not writing, it’s typing.”
  20. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. If this doesn’t dissuade you from climbing Mt. Everest, you shouldn’t have children
  21. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. I read this in English class in high school; the course was called “War Literature.” It may have started my fascination with World War I.
  22. The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. I also read this in the “War Literature” course; I was already fascinated by the Civil War. Thanks Mr. Brady.
  23. The Bible. This is really a collection of books, but in the course of several years of seminary, I’m sure I’ve read all of it.
  24. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I read this a few years after the mini-series came out. Still not a fan of westerns.
  25. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I read this in 9th grade English in a course called “Family Literature.” Thanks Mrs. Peterson. It’s a rare event where the book and the movie are equally brilliant. I still refer to a house in my neighborhood as the “Boo Radley House.”

If you want to see the other 75 you’ll have to go on the web page. I don’t want to publish it here as I’m not eager to have people email me with your shock that I haven’t read your favorite book.

Ballot Propositions: Sometimes Democracy is Hard to Love

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I’ve lived in several states in the last few decades and each one brings its own learning curve. When I moved to California in 1988 there were several ballot propositions dedicated to auto insurance reform (as an aside, most of them were drawn up by auto insurance companies to confuse the voters; it didn’t work). I have to admit I was a little taken aback that my ballot contained what looked like ordinary legislation that the state government should have taken care of. I wrongly assumed these propositions were legislation that the legislature didn’t want to act on, and they punted it to us.

I was wrong. I got this information from the state web page. In a special election in 1911 voters approved a way to create legislation (or amend the state constitution) by popular vote, bypassing the governor and state legislature. I’ve boiled down the process:

  1. Write up the legislation you want and submit it to the Attorney General
  2. Determine if it will affect the state budget
  3. Write up the petition and get signatures. You need to obtain signatures equal to 5% of the number who voted for governor in the last election. All signatures must be registered voters.
  4. After the signatures are checked and verified, your initiative is on the ballot. If it gets 50% of the vote (55% in some cases), it becomes law.

We’ve learned over the last 101 years just how easy it is to pass legislation. You need a smart person to write the initiative, and lots of money. Any Californian will tell you that we know it’s election season because everytime we leave a grocery store there is someone there with multiple petitions and a sign that says something like: “Help people get what they need.” The person is being paid, often $1.00 per signature, and usually has no idea what the initiatives actually mean. Once it’s on the ballot you need to spend millions (or least more than your opponent) convincing voters that your initiative is the only thing keeping us from doom and that your opponent wants to destroy all you hold dear.

This process has been taken over by deep pocket special interests. I’ve completely made this up as an illustration, but imagine this:

It’s 1900 and you make buggy whips for carriages. You’ve made a good fortune for yourself and you are touch with others who are equally successful. You hear that there is a guy in your state who is working on an invention called a “horseless carriage.” It sounds crazy, but he’s working on an internal combustion engine that will propel the carriage by burning gasoline instead of being pulled by horses. You recognize that if you remove horses from the equation you also remove buggy whips and your way of life is going to end. You want to ban these horseless carriages but you know you can’t write a ballot initiative that bans them because it’s bad for your business; that won’t pass. In a moment of inspiration you decide that since gasoline is flammable, it must be unsafe. You write an initiative that proposes to ban large containers of gasoline (5 gallons or more) on wheeled vehicles because they are “explosions waiting to happen.” Together with other buggy whip manufacturers you start a campaign called “Citizens for Public Safety” that warns of the dangers of exploding gasoline containers. Ordinary voters, who may not know who you are, vote for your initiative out of fear of firestorms in the street.

Sound crazy? Maybe, but I’m glad I’m not driving a horse powered carriage.

The Money Chronicles, Volume 6: An Economics Rap Anthem? Believe It!

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For a year or so I’ve been listening to a podcast called Planet Money from National Public Radio. I look forward to listening a few times per week and it’s taught me a great deal about what is happening in the economy.

It’s also become a bit of a political football as President Obama is a follower of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) while Governor Romney is a follower to the economist Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992).

Keynes believed that in times of dire economic depression the government needs to pour money into the economy to stimulate it and raise itself out of its troubles. Hayek believed that governments can’t do this effectively and it is better in the long run to allow the economy to fix itself. This rap does an excellent job of explaining their positions.

I Live For This!

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I’m likely not alone in this, but from time to time I get emails claiming something that just doesn’t sound right. We all get the ones who promise riches if we’ll only help a Nigerian Prince get his money, but I also get ones that other people seem to believe.

I’ve gotten emails from family and friends claiming that President Obama is a secret Muslim, that he really was born in Kenya, that the 2010 census demanded that we list the number of guns we own, etc. What has always amazed me is that a quick search on Google or Snopes would show these banal claims to be false. My attempts to hit the “reply all” button with these suggestions has been a waste of time.

Today I read a CNN story that a blogger named Nate St.Pierre wrote a post claiming Abraham Lincoln filed a patent claim in 1845 for what we now know as Facebook.

Here is an excerpt from the blog post:

Lincoln was requesting a patent for “The Gazette,” a system to “keep People aware of Others in the Town.” He laid out a plan where every town would have its own Gazette, named after the town itself. He listed the Springfield Gazette as his Visual Appendix, an example of the system he was talking about. Lincoln was proposing that each town build a centrally located collection of documents where “every Man may have his own page, where he might discuss his Family, his Work, and his Various Endeavors.”

He went on to propose that “each Man may decide if he shall make his page Available to the entire Town, or only to those with whom he has established Family or Friendship.” Evidently there was to be someone overseeing this collection of documents, and he would somehow know which pages anyone could look at, and which ones only certain people could see (it wasn’t quite clear in the application). Lincoln stated that these documents could be updated “at any time deemed Fit or Necessary,” so that anyone in town could know what was going on in their friends’ lives “without being Present in Body.”

That was it. Pretty much just a simple one-page overview of how his system would work. After we read it, we both sat there quiet for a long time. It was so obvious what this was, guys.

A patent request for Facebook, filed by Abraham Lincoln in 1845.

The funny thing is that the whole thing was a complete fabrication, existing only in the mind of Mr. St. Pierre. My gripe with these hoaxes is the not the stupidity of the people who make them up, but in the stupidity in those who pass them along or publish them. It was published on the web page of Forbes magazine and ZNET.

This never ceases to amaze me. In the 1980s I heard about a hoax that (then) Vice President Dan Quayle was eager to go to Latin America so he could practice his Latin. I got a laugh but then asked if it was true (it wasn’t). Since then the question “Is it true?” is the question nobody else seems to ask.

Maybe this story will help give credibility to this question.

Is This What St. Patrick Had in Mind?

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Nancy and I were blessed to be in Chicago this past weekend. It was a fun weekend as the celebration of St. Patrick happened while we were there.

My grandfather, Thomas J. Cazeault (1902-1995) was born of Irish parents and that gives me claim to 25% Irish heritage, even though he was orphaned and raised by a French family.

I’ve always knows that Chicago was a city that knows how to party, but this was beyond all expectations. I’m sure this will be known as the best St. Pat’s celebration in a long time because it was on a Saturday (allowing for all day partying that can go deep into the night). It was also amazingly warm, in the mid 80s F. We started seeing the streets filling with drunk people in green about early afternoon; a few hours after that the sidewalks were so crowded it was hard to manage. Our hotel was only 2 blocks from the Chicago River (that is dyed green for the day) and by evening the hotel needed security to make sure only registered guests came into the hotel. There is an Irish bar next door and I’m assuming their restrooms were overwhelmed. They actually had portable toilets (called, interestingly enough, “LepriCANS”).

Rapture Update: Looks Like the World is Going to Keep On Going

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Well, I guess we can all stop hoping for a one way ticket to Heaven and the pleasure of watching the world end. I wrote posts in April, May, and June about Harold Camping and Family Radio. Harold has a program on Family Radio and last winter he proclaimed that on May 21st everyone who is right with God will be taken up to Heaven. From May 21st to October 21st the world will be populated by those left behind and on October 21st God will destroy the world and everyone on it.

This was bad news for everyone, but mostly for Harold Camping: May 21st came and went and nobody disappeared (at least nobody we noticed). Mr. Camping went into hiding for a few days and emerged to say that he was still right. His explanation of this was posted here. Frankly I have a hard time following the article, but here’s what it sounds like to me: May 21st was a “spiritual rapture” where God decides who will be saved and who will not. On October 21st (presumably at the same time) the righteous will be raptured and everyone else will be destroyed.

Unfortunately he did not give a time. On May 21st Mr. Camping claimed the rapture would be at 6PM but did not specify a time zone. He lives in Oakland, California and I took it to be 6PM local time. But here I am, in the same time zone as Mr. Camping, looking at the clock and it’s now a little after 8:30PM. That means it’s 11:30PM in New York, 5:30AM (October 22nd) in Paris, and 12:30PM (October 22nd) in Tokyo. If you’re going to specify a time for the Rapture, please be specific about your time zone.

In any case, Mr. Camping said the May 21st event would leave the world intact, but less populated. But the October 21st event would destroy the world and to the extent that any of us are still here, it appears Mr. Camping is running out of justification. There is a donations button on Family Radio’s web page. I suggest that nobody click on it.

By the way, if you’re looking for another chuckle, here’s where you can buy a rapture survival kit.

And Now We Have Two (Cats)

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Scully In a previous post I talked about the frustration with dealing with the local Department of Animal Services.

As you can see from the picture, it did have a happy ending. I returned on Thursday, September 1st and was actually able to take him home. Now I can be fully honest. When I went to pick him up and they told me he had to be neutered, they also told me that they would have to test him for feline leukemia. If he came back positive I could “pick another cat.” In other words, they would euthanize him. It wasn’t a great ride home.

When I brought him home we had to come up with a name. When Craig and Alison found him they suggested “Slugger” since he was found on a baseball field. Nancy at first suggested “Patches” due to his coat but I found that too common. My suggestion was “Trouvé” which is French for “Found” but Nancy thought that was too obscure. We liked the idea of a baseball theme, and Nancy suggested “Scully” after now famous Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vin Scully.

Scully came to us with a large measure of enthusiasm and purring, but also with an upper respiratory infection (ie, a cold). A kitten who sneezes constantly is always a cause for concern, but our veterinarian (Dr. John Hetzler) at Ark Animal Hospital believes it will take care of itself in a matter of days. It’s getting better, but still hard to take at 2AM.

You may ask how Scully is relating to our other cat, Missy. It hasn’t been the easiest of introductions but it seems to be working. Missy is playing the role of the older sister who is not happy about having a little brother, but she’s coping. They may end up as pals, but for the time being Missy is giving Scully a wide berth.

More later.

I'm on YouTube: Does This Mean I Should Get an Agent?

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I’ve been working as a chaplain for San Diego Hospice for 6 1/2 years now and I continue to find it a rich and rewarding experience. We at hospice constantly battle misconceptions about the care we provide, and one of the most tenacious is the belief that we only come in for the last few days or hours of life. Always the innovator, we’ve produced a short 7 minute video called “5 Lives” that is currently on You Tube.