Damn

I wrote a great post about this but then accidentally deleted it. I'm not willing to rewrite it. Once is quite enough for blog posts.

So just go read it. Chris Cuomo schooled Bill Donohue on gay marriage. It's lots of fun.

Pope Francis fails

Catholics had high hopes for a recent conclave that Francis assembled. Here, we were told, the church would finally grapple with the issues of gay marriage and the status of divorced Catholics. Uh-huh. Big fail.

First, Francis mouthed this nonsense:

Pope Francis on Friday said couples whose marriages fail should be “accompanied” and not “condemned”, wading into a debate on divorce that is testing his promise to put the Church in touch with modern life.

“When love fails, and it fails many times, we have to feel the pain of that failure, accompany the people who have felt the failure of their love,” the pope said during the daily mass he holds in the Vatican.

“Don’t condemn them! Walk with them!” he said, adding: “We have to be so close to the brothers and sisters who have suffered the failure of love in their lives”.

Francis's words are completely meaningless. But that's apparently the best he can do because the Vatican plan is to keep attacking divorced people and gays. They're stuck in a hateful groove and they have no intention of climbing out. Thanks for nothing, Frankie.

And then there's this. In a discussion of how the church can deal with divorced, remarried Catholics, this disgusting morsel popped out of a holy mouth:

Another possibility could be the Orthodox model, which allows some divorcees to re-marry in church and take Holy Communion but gives only a blessing for the second marriage and does not consider it a sacrament.

Francis mentioned the Orthodox solution as a “parenthesis” on the plane during his return from a visit to Brazil and it was raised again by some cardinals in their consistory this month in which they said it could happen following “a period of penitence”.

But see, the divorced couples have absolutely nothing to apologize for. A human-inspired joining failed; these things happen. And now they're supposed to submit themselves to "a period of penitence"?! The only penance that is called for is the jailing of every Catholic priest who raped or abetted the rapes of children. I don't hear too much about that from this "moral" church.

Francis is a breath of stale air.

Noted in passing

I happened to bump into this paragraph today:

“[Obama's] arrogance is breathtaking,” Dr. Janice Shaw Crouse, director and senior fellow of Concerned Women for America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute, told LifeSiteNews. The “president repeatedly insists that his personal values and beliefs are equated with the nation’s values and beliefs. When he insists that those controversial ideas constitute a human right, the president is saying that the deeply-held religious beliefs of many Americans are irrelevant.”

Yup, it's another edition of: "My beautiful Christian faith compels me to spew venom at certain groups of people while trying to harm them and destroy their families -- but I'm blameless!" I don't think we need say anything about that. It's just your typical Christian persecution complex in action. These people are nuts. But that wasn't what struck me about the paragraph.

It was the mention of the Beverly LaHaye Institute. Does that or does that not sound like the kind of place where Myra Breckenridge might work? It's perfect. (It also sounds like a great drag queen name: "And now, help me give a big hand to the fabulous Beverly LaHaye!!!")

Just saying.

Alan Alda and science

There's a nice article about Alan Alda at the NY Times. He's been great for science. He's such a smart, curious guy and he's got a pretty good handle on the issues that concern science today. How'd he get all that information? By reading. Turns out, school wasn't a good place to learn about science. I agree wholeheartedly, especially since I'm of a similar age and suffered through the same, unimaginative science lessons.

In biology, there was a teacher who talked about how when you cried, the tears got rid of toxins, so it was good for you to cry. I said, “What about the other way — is it good to laugh?” And the teacher said, “Please, be serious.”

I was never as bored as when I sat in high school science classes. Talk about a long day! They never presented one thing in an interesting fashion. And that's exactly where Alan Alda comes in. Stony Brook worked with him to set up the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. (No other university was interested. Gotta love that. Nitwits.) It's a place where scientists are taught how to reach out to everyday people, to help them understand what science is all about.

As he said, if they don't understand science, they're not primed to fund it. And that's where we are right now in America, where science funding allocations are being reduced across the board. It's as if legislators think science isn't important. Duh.

Read the article if such things interest you. I thought it was terrific. Alan Alda is an amazing American. We're lucky to have him.

What would your heaven look like?

At times, religious people speak about the nature of heaven. I've had the misfortune to hear some of these gits say that it's a place where we will marvel at god's perfection for all eternity. On our knees, I assume. Oy. That sounds like eternal detention to me.

Heaven doesn't exist, of course. But a heaven of the type humans hunger for -- a place of eternal joy -- would have to be tailored for each individual. We like different things, so this is the only workable solution. This raises an interesting question. When you imagine the perfect heaven for you, what are its features? I considered this question last night and came up with my answer.

In my fictional but perfect heaven, there would be a book that tells the stories of all the intelligent species of the universe: how they lived, what they were like and how it ended for them (if it did end). Did any species succeed in the grandest sense? Did they create a living heaven for themselves? I want to know. The book would be incredibly well-written, of course, making every sentence a delight to read. And when I finished the book, I'd be able to discuss it with intelligent alien readers residing in their versions of heaven. (Gotta socialize, right?)

What would your heaven look like?

Amanda Marcotte nails it

At Raw Story, Amanda Marcotte has a great post about the documentary, "Questioning Darwin". In the movie, creationists are allowed to speak their mind without anyone putting them down. And that ends up being pretty scary. These people are frightened. I'm going to excerpt the same section PZ highlighted on his blog:

By going back and forth between creationists and Darwin’s life story, the documentary crafts a compelling image of the conflict between two world views: That of curiosity and that of incuriosity/fear. I agree with the New York Times reviewer that the creationists are presented non-judgementally, but as these clips amassed by Gawker make clear, the creationists do all the work for you anyway. There’s a pastor explaining he would have to accept it if the Bible said “2+2=5″ and people talking, over and over again, about the strategies they have to employ to shut down their minds in the event that they’re presented with an opportunity to think more broadly.  The major emotion that comes off them in waves is that of fear: Fear of asking questions, fear of the “world” (which is always talked about negatively), fear of difference, fear that thinking might lead them into dark places, fear that they really aren’t special that manifests in making up a God who loves you so you never have to go a moment without that feeling, fear that they will fall into the abyss without blind obedience to authority, and, of course, fear of death.

Is that perfect or what?

Going primitive

I once read a post by a female writer who said she would do anything to avoid writing. She would read any stupid thing on the internet, clean her closets, color-coordinate her clothes - anything to avoid facing that blank page. On a mini-scale, I can relate.

My writing motor is running smoothly again, but I did have some rough months. What I did to avoid writing was move my writing materials - ideas, notes, research, etc. - from one program to another, and then to another, and another ad infinitum. It was all about getting ready, an amorphous thing for a writer. But I finally realized that getting ready is something that happens in my head, not in computer apps. And this allowed me to begin writing again.

I abandoned my digital aids and returned to writing notes in, of all things, a notebook. It was a good move. I feel like I'm home each time I pick up my pen and write something down. (Mind you, the actual writing of the novel occurs in Scrivener, the world's best writing program. That's a given.) Without notes, I'm flying blind. They're a necessary tool for writers.

I discovered something long ago, but forgot it. I can record my ideas by typing them into a program, but there's something about writing the old-fashioned way that burns the idea into your brain. It's as if writing the idea down on paper makes the brain allocate a set place for it. That counts. I seem to lose many things that I type into a program - they're still there but I don't remember them or consult my notes to find them. But my handwritten notes are always there, always retrievable. Although I'm a very digital guy, I am reminded that writing by hand has benefits. I was happy to rediscover this.

I guess writer's block has similarities with baseball players who lose their swing. It's painful to watch them during these periods. They'll try anything to get their groove back, so they take advice from everyone and end up unable to play. And when they finally do find their swing again, they almost always say that the solution was to return to what they used to do when they were playing well. That's what I did. Notebooks are part of the way I write. I need them, I've got them and now I'm writing every day.

I know it sounds simple but that's how it worked for me. I'd love to hear about other writers' experiences...but that never happens on this blog. I used to write regularly about being a fiction writer. I hoped other writers would visit and share their concerns, habits, tricks, etc. The idea was that we could all benefit from hashing things out.

But I gave up. Why hold a party when no one ever arrives? Any writers out there? How does it work for you? A comment or two would be very nice. I'm not going to hold my breath, though. One learns from experience.