Category Archives: Ranting

Want to Join Me in Starting the "Galileo Award?"

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For a long time I’ve toyed with the idea of starting a web page that annually awards the dumbest teaching or ruling from the Catholic Church that year. The obvious reason for the name is the way the 17th Century Catholic Church treated Galileo Galilei (1564-1642).

Galileo (and Nicolas Copernicus before him) challenged the theory that the sun revolved around the earth. As a reward for his scientific work the Church denounced him, ordered him to recant, and held him under house arrest. The Church argued that he must be wrong because Psalm 93:1 states: “Yea, the world is established; it shall never be moved.” Also, Psalm 104:5 says: “[God] didst set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken.” Finally, Ecclesiastes 1:5 states: “The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.” [Quotations are from the Revised Standard Version Bible]

Now, in fairness, there has been some progress since 1633. In 1943 Pope Pius XII wrote the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu which essentially stated that the Catholic Church is not fundamentalist in reading Scripture. And in 1992 Pope John Paul II announced that Galileo was correct; this is particularly inspiring as it came only 23 years after the moon landing.

And while the Church now acknowledges Galileo was right, and while I still find great joy and love in being Catholic, she continues to make occasional stupid and senseless rulings. Catholics of my generation remember well the 1968 encyclical On Human Life, better known as Humanae Vitae that created great pain for young married couples. Other notables are the 1992 document from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (aka the Office of the Inquisition) that allows for discrimination against our gay brothers and sisters and Vatican’s support of those who demanded that Terry Shiavo be kept alive long after it was clear that it was time to say goodbye to her.

The event that finally moved to me throw this suggestion to the cyberworld is the latest publication from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Reiki. For the unaware, Reiki is a spiritual practice that has been adopted for healing. Reiki practitioners use energy practices on people who are experiencing illness or pain, and we use this at San Diego Hospice where I work. I have to confess that I don’t fully understand how it works, but I also don’t understand acupuncture, aroma therapy, or a host of other alternative therapies. In any case, our bishops have decided that reiki is really about attacking faith and they have condemned it as being unscientific. Hard to imagine what Galileo is thinking about that. You can download the PDF on their ruling here.

In any case, this is my first nominee for 2009. I suggest the award be given on January 8th, the anniversary of Galileo’s death. This conforms to Catholic tradition where a saint’s day is determined by the date of his death, or in other words, his birth into Heaven.

Let me know what you think.

Shock and Outrage Reaches a New High

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This is a story I read in my local paper, the San Diego Union Tribune, and still can’t believe it’s true. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania two federal judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, have plead guilty to accepting money to send juveniles to a privately owned (for profit) juvenile detention center.

You can read the timeline here and you should. Basically they were paid by the operators of the facility to sentence juvenile offenders to long sentences, disproportionate to their offenses.

Perhaps the best synopsis is an editorial from the local newspaper, the Citizen’s Voice:

Luzerne County’s top judges have hurt, betrayed and shamed all of Luzerne County.
For the last six years, Michael T. Conahan and then Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. served as president judges, at the very top of the Luzerne County judiciary.
Instead of assuring the justice we expect when we appear in county court, the two men, through a variety of complex schemes, severely violated the public trust as they secretly raked in $2.6 million for themselves, according to federal prosecutors.
Federal officials say the two defrauded taxpayers, in part by arranging for county money to build a juvenile center from which they would secretly profit. They assured the center would have plenty of paying customers by tearing juveniles from their families and sending them to the facility, at times against the advice of probation officers.
The judges covered up their schemes, filing false documents and lying about their income to the state and to the Internal Revenue Service, federal officials say.
Conahan and Ciavarella entered a plea agreement Friday to two counts each of fraud and agreed to 87-month federal prison terms, disbarment and restitution.
County residents, although angered and disgusted with the news, were not all that surprised. The indictments Monday confirmed the very worst of their fears.
Rumors and speculation about corruption within the county courthouse have been circulating for more than a year, and many area residents say these charges of fraud, even against judges, are not so surprising for Luzerne County.
Still, Judge Chester Muroski, in comments Monday morning, offered hope for an immediate new beginning to the county’s judicial system.
The remaining county judges will “do everything we need to restore pubic confidence in the court,” said Muroski. Fairness and justice without outside influences would be top priorities, he promised.
The courthouse probe will continue and federal officials ask the public for help with information that may aid their investigation.
We urge the remaining county judges and all who will take the bench in the future to remember Conahan’s and Ciavarella’s shameful examples.
Remember, too, they must earn the trust we so badly need from our judges.

The next question, of course, is how we do restitution to those children who were improperly incarcerated. I pray for their healing.

Happy Birthday Eve, Mr. Darwin

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Tomorrow is the 200th birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and Charles Darwin (1809-1882). Tomorrow I’ll be writing about President Lincoln but today I want to remember Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin is best known for his book, The Origin of Species. He has become the flashpoint in a debate between evolution and creationism. Before the 19th century most people believed that the creation of the world happened as it was described in the Bible. Charles Darwin and others began to observe through scientific experimentation that there was another story.

Therein lies the rub. People who use the Bible as the only source for the world’s creation trace our orign to October 23, 4004 BC. You can read more about it here. Darwin and others began to posit the theory that the world is much older and that species evolved. In other words, the first people were not Adam and Eve. We, instead, evolved from other creatures and other primates are (in a sense) our distant cousins.

Almost immediately after the publication of his book there were those who believed that Darwin wrote his book only to destroy Christianity. They felt that anything that talked about evolution would cause well meaning believers to renounce belief in God and that the world would become atheists (and would therefore be condemned to hell.)

On the other hand, many of us believed that there is not problem in believing in both evolution and God. We were heartened by Pope John Paul II who claimed that Genesis answers the “why” of creation and not the “how.” As a lifelong Catholic it never occurred to me as a child that evolution was wrong. I never saw the connection between science class and church. I always believed in both evolution and God.

It wasn’t until I became an adult that I discovered that there were people who though the world was only 6000 years old. When I first learned about creationism (or its first cousin “intelligent design”) I couldn’t believe intelligent people could believe in such a thing. I quickly recognized that, despite their claims, this wasn’t science.

The scientific method, developed in the 1700s, follows a strict course: you begin with observation, which leads to a hypothesis, followed by experimentation. If the experimentation confirms the hypothesis, it becomes (over a series of experiments) a theory. If it doesn’t, the hypothesis is discarded in favor of another hypothesis. Over time the theory becomes more and more significant and more and more accepted (like gravity).

Creationism isn’t science because it doesn’t follow this course. It begins with the conclusion that must be found. It then develops a hypothesis that picks and chooses observations that lead to the conclusion that must be found. Any experimentation that leads in another direction is discarded, and any experimentation (no matter how suspect) that leads in the right direction must be true.

In the final word, I think the Christian Churches picked a fight with Darwin that didn’t need to be fought. Faith doesn’t mean you have to disbelieve what science finds to be true and it doesn’t mean you have to stop using your brain. My belief in God includes the possibility that God created the world and watches over its evolution. I pray for the day when all Christians believe this.

Electric Cars: Is This a Lateral Shift to Another Fossil Fuel?

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As everyone who reads this knows, I drive a Toyota Prius and my gas milage is in the low 40s MPG. I enjoy it (and especially enjoy the sticker that allows me to drive in the carpool lane even if I’m alone). But the drawback is that my gas mileage isn’t all that much better than the 35MPG I used to get in my 1997 Honda Civic. My Prius uses a battery that is recharged by use of the gas engine and isn’t running all that much.

In the last few weeks I’ve been hearing news out of Detroit that American car manufacturers are increasingly looking at cars that run on 100% electricity and plug in overnight. This would save us from lots of the oil we now convert to gas and burn and it would lower our dependence on OPEC. But it raises an obvious question for me: If, over time, we switch from gas powered cars to electric powered cars, where does the electricity come from? And if it’s coal, does switching from one finite fossil fuel to another really help?

I did some looking on the internet and found a page from the Department of Energy. It broke down all the energy consumption in the United States in 2006 and from my calculation, we used 1,990,926 thousand Megawatt hours in coal compated to 4,064,702 thousand Megawatt hours total. If my 3rd grade math is corrrect (Mrs. Moore, are you checking this?) we get about 49% of our electricty from coal. The numbers in California are dramatically different; I found a group called One Block Off the Grid that shows in 2007 California got only 16.6% of its power from coal, but 45.2% from natural gas, another fossil fuel.

I find this a little disturbing for three reasons: First, I’m not sure that in the long run we gain much from switching to another fossil fuel. Granted we have more coal and natural gas under our own soil and this would free us up from OPEC. But the bottom line is that we’re still burning a finite fuel and it, too, will run out some day. Second, coal and natural gas are also greenhouse gases. According to naturalgas.org all three release CO2 with coal being the highest, oil in the middle, and natural gas being the least. You can find the numbers there. Finally, it’s clear that the American car industry needs to change things and change things fast to stay competitive and in business. When they start making the switch to electricity, will the current grid be able to accept all the increase in demand? We here in Southern California know well that there are times during the summer where increased use of air conditioners has led to rolling blackouts because the grid just couldn’t keep up with demand. Granted if we do start switching over to electric cars it will be a gradual thing, and the industry is saying simply “The grid will have to grow” but can it? Can we mine enough coal and natural gas to keep up with demand?

We hear all the time about areas around the world that have electricity for only a few hours a day, if at all. Most of us have never experienced that. We expect, and have come to expect, that whatever we plug in, no matter how power hungry and no matter what time of the day, will work. Those days may be changing.

T Minus 15 Days and Counting

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Fifteen days from tonight I will be up most of the night watching the election results. It’s going to be a long few weeks.

I received my sample ballot in the mail last week. You can see I have 37 candidates for President listed. Of those picks, only 6 are listed in my ballot (5 actually because I did not list Alan Keyes who is running on the American Independent Party ticket). My ballot lists only Alan Keyes, Ralph Nader, Barack Obama, Bob Barr, John McCain, and Cynthia McKinney.

I’ve made no secret that I support Senator Obama and I hope he wins. Yesterday on Meet The Press General Colin Powell endorsed Senator Obama. The interview is worth a watch and the transcript is here. General Powell was as gracious as ever and respectful of both candidates but in the final word he articulated good reasons to vote for Senator Obama. Allow me to highlight some of these reasons:

  • The economy. Senator McCain doesn’t seem to have a grasp of the economic troubles we have been facing, famously saying that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. In fairness he is caught between what clearly needs to be done (use government resources to stimulate the economy) and what the Republican Party is demanding (do nothing: look how successful it was for Herbert Hoover).
  • The choice of Sarah Palin. Senator McCain announces again and again that he is a maverick and owes his vote to no one. Yet when he clearly wanted to choose Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate, he buckled under and chose someone he had only met a few times and is clearly unqualified (meaning no disrespect to the Alaska PTA but that does not qualify someone for national office). The fact that she passes the Republican litmus test on abortion and gay marriage only shows that Senator McCain is not his own man.
  • The negative tone. Everyone knows that politics is hardball and it’s not bad to see how someone responds to being roughed up. But John McCain (whose 2000 campaign was destroyed by Karl Rove’s tactics; there is an excellent explanation in this Boston Globe article) has allowed this to get out of hand. He is an honorable man but he has allowed his campaign to smear Senator Obama with issues that are just plain wrong (he will raise everyone’s taxes) to issues that are simply offensive (he is secretly a Muslim and has an agenda he is hiding from the American people).

My only complaint with General Powell is that he didn’t do this in 2004. He was instrumental in selling the Iraq War in 2003 and it is now clear that he was using intelligence that the Bush administration knew to be wrong. He was the one person who could have blown the whistle and turned the voters against President Bush. I’m sorry he didn’t

Of all the issues, I’m most troubled by the ongoing negative campaigning. I had hoped that Senator McCain would repudiate these tactics but he clearly hasn’t. I’m proud to support Senator Obama who criticizes Senator McCain’s positions but never questions his patriotism or loyalty. The Republican Party, however, continues to hint darkly that Senator Obama is “not one of us” and Senator McCain is unwilling or unable to stop it. If you google “Obama” and “Muslim” it shows 12,100,000 hits, and the sponsored link above the results is McCain for President. The offensiveness here is deep and amazing. It hints that 1) Senator Obama isn’t running to President to serve the country but to destroy it, and 2) The mere fact (sic) that he is Muslim is proof because “they” can’t possibly love the United States.

I call this the Nat Turner strategy. Nat Turner was a slave on a plantation in Virginia; in 1831 he led an insurrection of slaves who rose up and murdered 55 people, beginning with the family that owned him. This led to harsh laws meant to prevent slaves from ever being able to do this again. The name Nat Turner now stands for anyone who appears to be loyal but is really looking for an opportunity to destroy you. In the context of the Presidential campaign the racial undertones are unmistakeable. Only a Obama win will quiet these voices.

My 401(K) Statement Came Postage Due; Is That a Bad Sign?

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‘Tis the season; like many folk I’m getting statements in the mail with the bad news about our retirement (I’m guessing that I’m not alone in getting multiple statements: I have a Rollover IRA, Nancy and I both have Roth IRA’s, I have a 401(K) from Vitas and a 403(B) from SDHIPM, and Nancy has a 403(B) from UCSD).

I’m certainly not the only one who’s portfolio is bleeding copious amounts of money, but it is upsetting to see that while we’ve been contributing generously, the value of the funds have gone down. I don’t see either of us retiring for at least another 12 to 15 years and in that sense we’re in good shape. As a matter of fact, this is a good time to buy stocks and I’m confident we’ll look back on this and be happy we stayed the course.

The financial meltdown that we’ve all be watching is troubling because it happened, but also because of the reaction. There’s enough finger pointing to go around, and let me add my two cents: It’s everyone’s fault. It’s not just the greedy investors, it’s not just the politicians who demanded that all this stuff be deregulated, it’s not just the people who lied on their mortgage applications, it’s not just the mortgage brokers to told first time buyers not to worry about the adjustable rates, and it’s not just the buyers who didn’t have a plan if the rates went up. It was all of them.

Now I’ll freely admit that Nancy and I have been lucky: we bought our house in 2001 with a fixed rate and refinanced in 2003 to get a better interest rate. We live in a wonderful house in a wonderful neighborhood that we could only have afforded because Nancy’s father lives with us and owns half the house. BUT we bought what (actually less than) we knew we could afford. I saw the monthly house payment and knew that every month for the next 360 months I would have to have enough money in the bank to write that check and I didn’t sign anything until I was sure I could do it. Not everyone did this.

Now come the recriminations, and I have to say that I have the right to be screaming the loudest. As a taxpayer I’m partly on the hook for a $700,000,000,000 bailout when I did nothing wrong. And yet I support this. There is a quotation I love (but whose source I can’t find) that states: “Not everyone is at fault but everyone is responsible.” In other words, despite the fact that I’ve followed the rules and done what I’m supposed to do, I do feel a responsibility to be part of the solution.

I do believe that we can’t do nothing. For better or for worse our economy depends on the availability of credit and we can’t function without it. To allow this to “take its course” would lead to massive layoffs and unemployment. Both Nancy and I work in healthcare and our jobs would be pretty secure but that’s of little comfort if we see friends who work in retail or service jobs lose everything.

There is no way to talk about this without acknowledging the long shadow of the Presidential campaign. We choose a new leader in 23 days and we must choose wisely. I honestly believe that Senator Obama is better able to deal with this than Senator McCain. He and his supporters (Phil Gramm being the most obvious) have been the architects of the problem. We now need architects of the cure.

Some Days It Doesn't Pay to Think Congress Can Get It Right

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I’m writing this as I watch the news about the failure of Congress to approve the $700,000,000,000 bailout plan. This morning it looked like it would narrowly pass but when the votes came in, it was 12 votes short.

Now, of course, both parties are running for cover and looking for ways to blame the other side of the aisle. I’m an unabashed Democrat and I see this through that lens, but the most incredible part of this for me is the Republican spin that some Republicans voted against the measure at the last minute because of Nancy Pelosi’s remarks. Here is the paragraph from the CNN web page:

House Republican leaders blamed Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, for the bill’s failure, saying she had scuttled a bipartisan compromise with a “partisan speech” shortly before the vote. Pelosi started her speech by citing “the Bush administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality with no regulation, no supervision and no discipline in the system.”

You can see Speaker Pelosi’s words here; regardless of what you think of her remarks, it’s hard to imagine that this bill died because Nancy hurt the feelings of the Republicans. By the way, as we listen to the Republicans blaming the Democrats, it’s helpful to note that 95 Democrats voted against the bailout, while 133 Republicans did.

But that’s what we have. Meanwhile, the party that demanded deregulation of the banking industry is doing its best to say nothing is their fault. Whatever happens is going to be of little value to those who lose their jobs and aren’t high enough to have golden parachutes.

Barack, we need you now.

Thoughts on $4.50 per Gallon for Gasoline

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In the last few months there’s been a great deal of publicity concerning the high price of oil and other fossil fuels. Maybe I’m treading in dangerous waters as a Prius driver, but it’s hard to see what part of this is surprising.

Since World War II the incidence of private car ownership has skyrocketed; before then you really had to have some wealth to own a car (and during the War there was essentially no production of cars). Also since the 1950s this country has build the greatest network of interstate highways in the world. This combines to make it remarkably easy to drive to nearly any part of our country; for my part I’ve driven cross country 3 times and found I could easily do this in about 5 days.

Additionally plane travel has gone mainstream. From 1937 to 1978 the Civil Aeronautics Board regulated routes, fares, and schedules. There were relatively few airlines and air travel was so expensive that it was reserved only for the wealthy or business travelers. Since then the government stopped regulating air travel; this has led to a dramatic drop in prices and an increase in the number of airlines. Air travel is much more affordable to a much larger population.

These two changes have led to dramatic changes in our lifestyles. We Americans are used to going to Europe or Hawaii on vacation, buying timeshares as a way to see new areas, and move away from family secure in the belief that we can be there in a matter of hours if necessary.

Now that oil, which everyone agrees is a limited and nonrenewable resource, is getting expensive, this may change. We may find in the next few decades that we are going back to being limited in our mobility. We are already seeing the growth of “staycations” instead of vacations (admittedly an easy thing to do in San Diego).

Meanwhile, our President and his cronies, continue to fiddle and count their money. Their solution is to find new places to drill for more oil. The amount of oil they will find is negligible and won’t make much of a difference. The idea of conservation or alternative sources of energy simply aren’t on the table.

This is not a good time to own a Hummer.

Reflections on Holy Thursday and Five Years of War

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In the Christian Calendar today is Holy Thursday or Maundy Thursday, depending on your tradition. We Catholics read from the 13th Chapter of John’s Gospel where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. Tonight at mass Fr. Jairo spoke eloquently about the need for leaders to be in service and not dominate.

Alas, this would have been a good sermon for President Bush to hear. As I reflect back on the 5 years we have been at war in Iraq I grieve for the 3992 of our brave men and women who have died (if you’re keeping track it’s 1675 since this time last year) but I also grieve for what our nation has become. It goes without saying that since the collapse of the Soviet Union nearly 20 years ago the United States stands alone as the world’s largest superpower. But in the last 8 years we have not used that power well. We have not been servants, but tyrants. We have treated our allies as subjects (and are puzzled when they do not cooperate with us). We have treated countries like Iran, North Korea, and others as blights on the world worthy only of destruction. And we have treated ourselves as the only country worthy of respect.

Our next president will have an immense job. He (or she) will have to reach out to our allies and mend fences; will have to reconcile with old enemies and prevent making new ones; will have to understand that science is not the enemy and we really do need to face up to global problems like warming and pollution. Our next president will have to see our economy as part of a larger world economy that ultimately should serve everyone, not just the wealthy.

We swear in a new president in 305 days and that day can’t come fast enough for me.

And the Delegate Winner Is…

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I’ve had great fun (right) trying to follow the delegate count in the election. After a fair amount of searching I decided to keep track of the pledged delegates only, knowing that the superdelegates don’t need to make their choice until the convention. I set up a table to show where each candidate was awarded delegates according to state. I also put a link on the left side of the page. I’ll keep keeping track.