Southern Bread Blog

There seems to be this fear among conservatives that this oil spill is going to be used as justification by Obama for shutting down oil drilling. Please don’t fall for this. It’s not going to happen folks. It wouldn’t make any sense.

As I always say: think about who benefits. Firstly, Obama gets tons of campaign money from the oil industry:

In a new ad, Obama says, “I don’t take money from oil companies.”

Technically, that’s true, since a law that has been on the books for more than a century prohibits corporations from giving money directly to any federal candidate. But that doesn’t distinguish Obama from his rivals in the race.

We find the statement misleading:

• Obama has accepted more than $213,000 from individuals who work for companies in the oil and gas industry and their spouses.
• Two of Obama’s bundlers are top executives at oil companies and are listed on his Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the presidential hopeful.

–Factcheck.org

and from BP specifically, nobody was given more than Obama during the 2008 election cycle:

During the 2008 campaign cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, individuals and political action committees (PACs) associated with oil-giant BP contributed about $500,000 to federal candidates. About 40 percent went to Democrats.

The top recipient overall? President Obama, who got $71,000 from the company tied to the environmental disaster in the Gulf, according to the group.

–Brian Montopoli, CBS

So, armed with those facts, how are you going to convince yourself that Obama is going to shut down off-shore drilling? He’s not. What he will do is make multiple head-fakes to appease his green base. That’s a given. He did one of them yesterday:

President Obama ordered a halt Thursday to drilling operations at all 33 exploratory deep-water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for as long as six months, one of several steps he announced at a news conference where he sought to defend his administration’s handling of the spill.

Most of the measures, including a six-month moratorium on new wells, concern future operations. But in perhaps the most dramatic shift, Obama ordered nearly three dozen existing rigs or others preparing to drill to stop operation pending the findings of a presidential commission. Production rigs in deep water may continue to operate, and exploratory drilling in shallow water will continue, White House officials said.

–Shear and Wilson, Washington Post

This is a classic political head-fake. Obama announces that he is halting drilling until his commission concludes it’s research. We get a clearer picture on exactly what’s going on by looking at another article:

(Reuters) – President Barack Obama will announce a six month extension on a deepwater oil drilling moratorium on Thursday while a special commission studies the reasons for the Gulf of Mexico spill, a White House aide said.

–Hans Deryk, Reuters

So, when he says that he’s “halting drilling”, what he means is that he’s simply extending an existing moratorium on off-shore drilling that has been in place since 1990. This is the same moratorium that he vowed to “relax” as recently as March:

The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

–John Broder, NY Times (March 31, 2010)

So, he isn’t “banning” or “halting” anything in any meaningful way. He’s just extending an already in-place moratorium on drilling off of the East coast. Guess who first put that moratorium in place. Yep, George Bush Sr.:

Navigating a middle course between environmental advocates and oil companies, President Clinton announced today a 10-year extension of the moratorium on oil drilling off virtually all United States ocean coastlines.

Mr. Clinton also placed several marine sanctuaries off-limits to oil exploration, setting no expiration date. The areas include the Channel Islands and Monterey Bay sanctuaries in California, the Florida Keys, Gray’s Reef in Georgia and the Olympic Coast sanctuary off Washington State.

The moratorium does not, however, affect areas off the Texas and Louisiana coasts, where extensive drilling has been going on for years, nor does it protect any areas, including the coastline of the southeastern United States, not already covered by the drilling ban first imposed by President George Bush in 1990.

–John Broder, NY Times(1998)

And a little more digging in the NY Times archive turns up further clarification of exactly what the moratorium entails:

New Coastal Drilling Would Be Barred by Gore

Vice President Al Gore said that as President he would ban any new offshore drilling for oil and gas along the California and Florida coasts. The proposal by Mr. Gore, who is battling his Presidential rival Bill Bradley for the support of environmental groups, would go beyond a current moratorium on drilling and apply to companies that had already bought billions of dollars’ worth of leases but not drilled yet. Mr. Gore cast his proposal as part of a bold environmental agenda that he pledged would be central to his campaign.

–News Summary, NY Times(1999)

So, essentially, the moratorium itself was a classic corporate protection bill to begin with. It applied only to companies that had not “already bought billions of dollars’ worth of leases.” It essentially kept competition out of the oil exploration market, thus protecting the big boys. All that Obama has done is just find a politically expedient way to extend this big oil protection mechanism for even longer, while cashing it out as a green friendly move to mollify his base. And it’s working like a charm:

Finally: Obama halts new offshore leases and stumps for climate bill

Now we’re getting somewhere on the offshore drilling problem. Some progress from the top:

Mr. Obama ordered a further six-month moratorium on new permits for new deepwater oil and gas wells; suspended the planned exploration in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off the coast of Alaska; canceled a planned August lease sale in the western Gulf of Mexico; and canceled a proposed lease sale off the coast of Virginia. Environmentalists who had opposed the Alaska and Virginia projects hailed the decisions.

Mr. Obama said further moves will be made to strengthen oversight of the drilling industry and enhance safety as a commission he is appointing opens its own six-month inquiry.

–Jonathan Hiskes, Grist.org

So the green army(ever naive), have fallen for the bait hook, line and sinker. [sigh] I guess they will never learn. Politics is always smoke and mirrors. If you just read a headline and take it as fact, you will never, ever be properly informed. It takes tracing the flow of influence, money and motivation in order to find out the truth.

I don’t know anything about this guy, but he does a good job of laying out the issues from the perspective of a man that had to deal with it on a daily basis and knows the system is broken:

I hate to say i told you so for the up-teenth time, but:

It took four months for Senator Scott Brown to be transformed by the Washington establishment, but it has finally happened. No longer the 41st vote against far-reaching government takeovers, yesterday Brown availed himself as the 60th vote in favor of the Dodd financial takeover bill. This came only a day after he had voted no on the very same legislation.

–Getliberty.org

So much for the Massachusetts “revolution.” What a joke. This just re-affirms the fact that politics is not a solution to our problems. It’s the cause.

The neo-con blogs were buzzing yesterday with the news that Rand Paul criticized the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the hypocrisy of their criticism is palpable. Grab any conservative off of the street and ask them if opposing the Clean Water Act is synonymous with opposing clean water and they will tell you absolutely not. Criticizing a piece of legislation and criticizing the stated goal of that legislation are two completely different things. Otherwise, if you consider Rand Paul a racist for thinking that the Civil Rights Act was flawed, you must also think that every Republican in congress doesn’t want poor people to have healthcare since they all opposed the “Affordable Health Care for America Act” (i.e. Obamacare). Please. What silliness.

It’s obvious what’s going on. The old guard Republican establishment is terrified of the Tea Partiers and anybody that smacks of libertarianism. That’s why Dick Cheney and Mitch Mconnell came out in support of Rand Paul’s primary opponent, Trey Grayson. Mconnell even went so far as to privately mislead James Dobson about Rand Paul’s views on abortion. Dobson later came out and switched his vote from Grayson to Paul after he learned that he had been mislead. Obviously the GOP elitists hate Rand Paul with a passion. And then, out of nowhere comes this big hubbub about his criticisms of the Civil Rights Act, originating from the neo-con blogosphere.

The dirty little secret of historical fact that they leave out of every story is that the Civil Rights Act was soundly criticized by many people at the time it was being debated, especially libertarians. Their criticism had nothing to do with race. Instead, they were thoroughly disgusted with the amount of power that the legislation gave to the federal government. Even though most of the CRA was justified(specifically titles I and III were long overdue), there were real causes for concern in other parts of the bill when it came to civil liberties of blacks and whites.

Most criticism of the CRA was focused on Title II, which attempted to outlaw discrimination in businesses. I say “attempted” because, as we recently explored, laws can never properly fulfill their stated goals. No law can outlaw racial discrimination. It can ban certain behaviour under threat of punishment, but it can’t ban discrimination itself. That’s impossible. So, what title II did was force people to behave in ways that they weren’t comfortable with. This may have helped blacks get a better table in a restaurant, but I can guarantee you that the cook spit in their food. Why? Because the CRA didn’t change what he actually thought about race. It just told whites and blacks that they had to play ball or else they would be punished. That’s not a solution to racism. It’s a recipe for exacerbating racial hatred.

Title IV was also a focus of criticism by many. The fear was that it would lead to quotas and forced busing. Although the CRA’s proponents routinely denied this, it nevertheless happened:

One of the most “damaging” arguments by the bill’s opponents was that once passed, the bill would require forced busing to achieve certain racial quotas in schools. Proponents of the bill, such as Emanuel Celler and Jacob Javits, said that the bill would not authorize such measures. Leading sponsor Hubert Humphrey wrote two amendments specifically designed to outlaw busing. Humphrey said “if the bill were to compel it, it would be a violation [of the Constitution], because it would be handling the matter on the basis of race and we would be transporting children because of race.” While Javits said any government official who sought to use the bill for busing purposes “would be making a fool of himself,” two years later the Department of Health, Education and Welfare said that Southern school districts would be required to meet mathematical ratios of students by busing.

–Civil Rights Act of 1964, Wikipedia

This forced desegregation by forcibly transporting black children across town to white schools was a clear violation of black people’s civil liberties. It opened up black school children to being beaten by white kids and being shunned by white teachers who were being forced out of their comfort zone too fast. That’s the danger of omnipotent legislation. The natural flow of society is jolted. Racism is a mental scar that needs a lot of time to correct itself in the hearts of men. Rushing the process by threat of force might speed it up, but at the cost of large short-term harm to the very people it’s aimed at helping.

One of the persistent critics of forced school desegregation was black author Zora Neal Hurston – author of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Although she totally opposed segregation on moral grounds, she feared that such things as the court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education set a dangerous precedent of encroaching on civil liberties. Although she died in 1960, it’s clear that the portions of the CRA that expanded the size and power of the federal state would have troubled her greatly. Her famous letter to the Orlando Sentinel is a fantastic read. Please go read it before it goes down the collective memory hole.

On a personal note, I find racism abhorrent, as I’ve posted before. But, what I find equally abhorrent are demigod politicians and black robed dieties forcing society to conform to their image by threat of physical and financial harm. Racism itself is idiotic. It makes no financial sense to restrict trade because of the color of a man’s skin. As people come to realize this, racism naturally falls by the wayside as an artifact of history. A black man’s money is the same as a white’s. A black man’s labour is the same as a white’s. This fact alone would have driven racism out of our culture as people began to see, more and more that racism itself is foolishness. Opposition to title II and title IV of the CRA isn’t an endorsement of racism. It’s a principled opposition to a piece of far-reaching legislation motivated by an equally strong commitment to the preservation of personal liberty.

Sometimes a love of liberty and a love for people come down on different sides of an issue and it’s hard to make a decision between the two. If I saw a restaurant owner turn away a black man for being black I would probably go over and punch him in the nose. But, that doesn’t mean that I think title II of the CRA was appropriate. Personal liberty is too fragile and too easily discarded. It must be protected. Maybe I’m naive, but I think racism in the U.S. was destined to be eradicated by society itself, without the help of legislation; except such legislation that was necessary to correct racist laws that our government had already passed.

We talked last time about how laws can’t fully embody the ideas they are meant to represent. I’d like to continue that with some more examples and commentary.

Firstly, I want to reiterate that when I say that laws are insufficient for their purported purpose, that’s not the same thing as saying that “laws are bad” or “laws shouldn’t exist.” I’m not saying that. I’m proposing something very specific: laws can’t ever do what they are intended to do. I gave the example last time of drunk driving, and how laws designed to stop it can’t actually do that. All they end up doing is punishing drunk driving after the fact, or preemptively agressing against those who haven’t yet broken the law, including the innocent. And that is not the same thing as stopping it. A law can’t do that. But, if that’s the case, then, from a Christian perspective, why the ten commandments? Why did God tell his people “Thou shall not kill?”

Obviously, it wasn’t because God thought that a law stating “thou shall not kill” would actually stop murder from happening among the Israelites. In fact, if we interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament, as we discussed yesterday, we see a clearer picture of the law presented by Christ himself. He says:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment;”

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

–Matthew 5 via ESV Online

He goes on and gives a few more “you’ve heard X, but I say Y” statements. In this way, He’s clearly showing that each law that they cherished, even if fully adhered to, is still not adequate for meeting the standard that it is derived from. God’s standard is a level of moral and emotional perfection that is so foreign to us that it’s inscrutable. Christ is telling the Jews here that the law wasn’t meant as a measuring stick, but as a whip. Paul confirms this later on in Galatians when he says “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.” Put more clearly, the law is for punishment, nothing else.

For that reason, I’m in favor of laws that are geographically local and limited in scope. For instance, I would be in favor of laws and rules in a household set down by parents. After all, the scripture says “spare the rod, spoil the child.” Parents know themselves and their children best and are able to tailor rules that minimize negative side-effects and target particular bad behavior better. I’d be ok with some sort of community rules or laws too, as long as they were few and targeted. Beyond that, I don’t see the point. Once you get beyond the community level, the only laws that do less harm than good are pinpoint targeted laws that are part of the universal moral code already. Things such as “don’t murder” or “don’t steal.” Those things hardly need to be defined as laws by the state. Everyone has those laws burned into them already by virtue of our humanity under God’s common grace. Defining them on paper doesn’t make them any more or less enforceable.

It seems to me that the utility of a law (here I’m speaking of those laws that aren’t just restatements of the universal moral code within each man) is inversely proportional to that law’s geographical scope. That is to say, the more people that fall under the jurisdiction of a particular law, the greater the probability that, that law will do more net harm than good.

For instance, consider a proposed law that bans the trading of financial derivatives. This might seem like a good idea at first, and that it should be applied across the board as a Federal law. But, the fact is that a derivative in and of itself is just a financial instrument to hedge against risk. It has no moral character on it’s on. Some people will use it as a means of reasonably protecting themselves against loss in a responsible manner. Others will use it as a means to overleverage themselves knowing that they can use the taxpayer as a backstop against loss. Banning the sale of derivatives altogether doesn’t stop financial catastrophe from occuring. It just harms those institutions that would have used it wisely.

A better alternative would be for institutions themselves to apply rules about derivative use internally, or perhaps to form working groups with other firms to agree on a set of common rules. Don’t scoff. This happens all of the time. Tell me which government agency developed the USB standard that computers use to connect devices. That’s right. None. The computer industry itself saw the need for a high speed interconnect and developed a working group to address the issue. Manufacturers saw it as being in their best interest and adopted the proposed standard. That’s how these things work. No state was necessary to bring all of that about. And no state is necessary to enforce a law that says “don’t make incompatible USB devices.” It’s not necessary because the firms involved know that if they go off and break the standard, nobody will buy their product.

In the same way, it’s not necessary to have a state that pronounces nation-wide laws. Individuals, families and communities are better equipped to develop laws that are more suited for the problems they face as small people groups. Those types of laws, while not perfect, since no law can be, will at least do less secondary harm.

I think it’s right for other Christians to challenge me on my views about politics. I claim to be an anarchist after all; and that word is socially charged enough to require a decent response from me. Especially since I claim to be a follower of Christ. And, in that vain, let me lay out one of the absolutely foundational lines of thought that under-gird my anarchism: the fundamental inability of laws to properly represent the ideas they are supposed to represent.

Firstly, let me quickly give a definition of my anarchism. I believe that the state should be abolished, not government. For some clarity on what I see as the points of distinction between the two, see my series of posts on Albert J. Nock’s book called Our Enemy, The State. Ok, moving on.

To me, it’s clear that laws cannot perfectly represent the ideas they are meant to enforce. There will always be gaps which exclude some people that should have been included, and exclude people that should have been included. It’s the nature of what a law is. They are inherently imperfect analogs of ideas. Let’s take an example: drunk driving. We all would agree that driving under the influence is very dangerous and needs to stop. So, how do we make a law that stops drunk driving? There is only one way, and that is to ban cars. Anything less than that will be simply variations of ways to punish drunk driving after the fact. And that’s not the same thing as stopping it. Instead, that’s just punishing it. Those are two different things.

This inability to make laws(like our drunk driving example) that properly enforce the ideals behind them leads to a worse problem. Because no law can stop something like terrorism, the only option you’re left with is to enact laws with various levels of preemption. So, returning to our drunk driving example for a moment – we know that we can’t create a law that simply stops drunk driving without resorting to some extreme like banning cars. And, that’s not going to fly. We, therefore, decide to create a law that says “you are only allowed to buy 1 alcoholic beverage per 150 pounds of body weight per day.” That way, nobody can drink too much at any one given time.

Well, that’s not exactly accurate. What if someone decided to get drunk on a Friday night and spends all week going to the store, once per day, buying his one beer and then stockpiling it. Then, on Friday night, he drinks his 7 beers and drives down to the pool hall, drunk as a skunk. Ok, so that won’t work. What if we change the law to now say that “you are only allowed to buy 1 alcoholic beverage per 150 pounds of body weight per day, and you must drink it before leaving the premises of the store where you bought it.” Well, now that won’t work either. Now you’re enforcing that people drink before they get behind the wheel. So, we are forced to keep modifying the law over and over until we find an “acceptable” amount of preemptive inconvenience or harm in order to make the law at least somewhat effective. But, even then it will never do what it was intended to do in the first place: stop drunk driving.

At this point you may be comparing what I’m saying to scripture and wondering why I’m ignoring the fact that God handed down lots of laws. If laws are so inherently broken then why did God seem to have no problem handing them down to his people? The answer to this, is to remember, first, that it’s proper in biblical interpretation to interpret the Old Testament in light of the New Testament. And, given that principle, we must look at what the New Testament teaches with regards to laws. Let’s look at a couple of passages:

18 A ruler questioned Him, saying, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

19And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.

20″You know the commandments, ‘DO NOT COMMIT ADULTERY, DO NOT MURDER, DO NOT STEAL, DO NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS, HONOR YOUR FATHER AND MOTHER.’”

21And he said, “All these things I have kept from my youth.”

22When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

23But when he had heard these things, he became very sad, for he was extremely rich.

–Luke 18:18-23(NASB), via Bible Gateway

This is the familiar story of the so-called “rich young ruler.” This man first asks Jesus what he must do in order to be saved. Christ answers him and cites a few of the ten commandments. He answers and says that he’s done all of those things. Christ then gives him a new paradigm, by telling him that he needs to sell everything he owns, give that money to the poor, and follow Him. What an interesting answer. Jesus is telling the man that it’s not laws that are going to save him, because there are no laws capable of encapsulating the proper requirements of salvation. Laws were not sufficient to get across the ideas necessary. Jesus showed him this by giving him, not a law, but a principled action that He knew the young man wouldn’t be able to fulfill because of his love of money. Christ exposed the man’s sin without using an appeal to law, because laws were insufficient for the task.

This is getting long. We’ll look at another example next time.

Ok, I swear that this is the last Miley Cyrus post, but I just saw this linked off of google news. And, since it just so happened to coincide with my post from yesterday I just had to blog it:

LOS ANGELES — Newly released video showing pop sensation Miley Cyrus giving movie producer Adam Shankman a risqué lap dance is raising more than a few eyebrows.

The footage, obtained by TMZ, is from the wrap party for “The Last Song.”

The clip shows the Hanna Montana star dirty dancing with producer and “So You Think You Can Dance” judge Adam Shankman before hopping aboard to give him a lap dance.

When the video was shot, Cyrus was 16 years old and Shankman was 44.

When he moves to the couch, drink in hand, Miley follows and climbs up to sit on him, where her gyrations get even more intense.

According to TMZ, several party attendees left after being offended by Miley’s little performance.

“The worst part is that there were little kids at the party and the dancing between Miley and Adam was so dirty that some of the parents actually left the party and took their kids home.”

Miley’s parents, Tish and Billy Ray Cyrus, were not in attendance.

–KTLA News

Ok, so now we have a 17 year old performing S&M music videos and, as a 16 year old, giving a 44 year old dude a lap dance in front of a bunch of little kids. I swear, this girl is disgusting. Way to go Disney. Good job baiting tens of thousands of tween girls into following the career of a juvenile perv queen. Nice work sickos.

A friend of mine said a long time ago that Nickelodeon was just a stepping stone for Viacom to move tweens to MTV. I’d say that Disney must be using the Disney Channel as a stepping stone to move tweens to ABC primetime. Desperate Housewives doesn’t look too different than what Miley has going on.

Plugged-in online has a blistering write up on the new post-Disney Miley Cyrus music video:

It’s hard to know where, exactly, to begin with “Can’t Be Tamed,” the first single from Miley Cyrus’ forthcoming album of the same name.

So I’ll start with a blunt summary: This song and its accompanying video are everything Hannah Montana isn’t. And that means the latest whiplash-inducing s-curve in Miley’s career leaves no question about her post-Disney trajectory.

Miley has traded Hannah’s innocuously superficial odes to girl power for a conspicuously superficial ode to girl sexiness. Or sleaziness. Take your pick. The result is a frantic, techno-pop celebration of Miley’s infatuation with herself and the hold she believes she has over guys.

So maybe this is still about girl power.

“For those who don’t know me,” Miley informs fans, “I can get a bit crazy/Have to get my way/24 hours a day/’Cause I’m hot like that/Every guy, everywhere/Just gives me mad attention/Like I’m under inspection/I always get a 10/’Cause I’m built like that/ … About my intentions/I’ll tell ya I’m not here to sell ya/Or tell ya to go to h‑‑‑/I’m like a puzzle but all of my pieces are jagged/If you can understand this/We can make some magic/I’m on like that.”

Miley wants people to know that life and love are all on her terms. And any man who’s interested in her should heed that warning: “I go through guys like money/ … They try to change me/But they realize they can’t/ … If you’re gonna be my man/Understand/I can’t be tamed.”

–Adam Holz, Reviewer

I’ve always had a bad feeling about Miley Cyrus from the first time I saw Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel, back when we had cable. It’s hard to explain, but you can just tell when Hollywood is using a person versus when a person is using Hollywood. It was obvious that the latter was the case with Miley Cyrus. And, when I say she used Hollywood, I mean that she used the public. The veil of innocent tween-ism in her personal life was obviously an act. The whole Disney thing was just a launching pad to a larger adult career. And all of the tweens that loved her are going to be pretty shocked to see the mask come off:

Merging Britney Spears and Lady Gaga, the video elevates the sensual and the bizarre in equal measures…

Breaking free from her confines, she and a retinue of dancers clad in black leather S&M-style outfits menace fleeing spectators and, more frequently, writhe sensually with each other. Miley, who throughout the song reveals great deal of herself, seems equally at home striking sexualized poses with male and female dancers.

Washington Post celebrity-culture blogger Liz Kelly put it this way: “‘Can’t Be Tamed’ … should perhaps be called ‘I Am Some Kind of Sexually Predatory Bird Woman (And Please Ignore the Fact That I’m Still Underage While I Grind Against This Guy).’ A mouthful, but it would be more accurate.”

Amazingly, Miley seems to think her song is more about empowerment and vision than overt sexuality. “I wanted it to be something different for a female artist,” she told Ryan Seacrest in an interview aired on cable’s E! channel. “That it’s not just about, ‘Oh, I have to stand here and do the whole sex thing the whole time and that be what it’s about. That’s not what this video is about at all. It’s about the creativity. … It’s about the core of, you know, I don’t want to be to be in a cage. I want to be free and do what I love.”

–Adam Holz, Reviewer

“I wanted [the video] to be something different for a female artist.” Maybe she means different in the way that Saw IV is different than Saw III? Continuing:

Asked whether trumpeting her reckless flight from circumspect adolescence into no-holds-barred “adulthood” is appropriate for the millions of tweens and teens who have become so fond of her, Miley thinks it’s a ride they’ll connect with. “It’s not like I’m going to do anything that I wouldn’t be proud of my family to see,” she told Seacrest. “Or the fact that my little sister, who’s 10, can still go to school and her friends aren’t going to be like, ‘Oh my god, your sister’s video!’ You know what I mean? I think they could all watch it. … Because I think people can relate to it, even if you’re just going to high school.”

–Adam Holz, Reviewer

“Because I think people can relate to it, even if you’re just going to high school.” Can we all please remember for a moment that she is still 17 and she’s up on a video grinding some dude. Ummm, am I the only one seeing a problem with any of this? Maybe so. Because, you know every parent wants their 10 year old to be able to “relate” to a video with S&M bondage apparel and explicit sexuality with a minor. That sounds just grand doesn’t it.

But, seriously. Does this surprise anyone? I mean, it was obvious what was going on with this girl when she did this the first time by posing in those semi-topless photos for Vanity Fair. When the parental furor went up, Disney quickly mounted a P.R. campaign to save their brand and forced her to make a public “apology”:

A Disney spokeswoman, Patti McTeague, faulted Vanity Fair for the photo. “Unfortunately, as the article suggests, a situation was created to deliberately manipulate a 15-year-old in order to sell magazines,” she said.

The article, written by Bruce Handy, seems to support that claim, quoting Ms. Cyrus as saying, “Annie took, like, a beautiful shot, and I thought it was really cool. That’s what she wanted me to do, and you can’t say no to Annie.” She also said of the photo, “I think it’s really artsy. It wasn’t in a skanky way.”

Ms. Cyrus had a different view in a prepared statement released on Sunday:

“I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be ‘artistic’ and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about.”

Beth Kseniak, a spokeswoman for both Vanity Fair magazine and Ms. Leibovitz said, “Miley’s parents and/or minders were on the set all day. Since the photo was taken digitally, they saw it on the shoot and everyone thought it was a beautiful and natural portrait of Miley.”

–Brooks Barnes, NY Times

So, now we know that she and her family absolutely faked the whole “I feel so embarrassed” thing. Maybe parents who didn’t see through that whole charade the first time will now.

But, why am I spending like 1200 words of blog space on this? It’s not because I expect culture to be moral. And, it’s not because I give a rat’s butt about Miley Cyrus. Like I said, we never let our kids watch that show anyway. The point I’m making is that media is a game. It’s all acting. On and off stage. The Miley Cyrus craze always bothered me from a parental standpoint because it was so obviously phony. It was like the Disney version of the WWF, with Miley being Hulk Hogan. One day she’s telling you to take your vitamins and say your prayers and the next day she’s joined the NWO and switched to wearing all black. Well, maybe that’s a totally weird analogy, but it serves the point that celebrities are an empty tank. They don’t stop acting when the director yells “cut.” Their whole life is an act – on and off set. Don’t throw your hard earned time and money into them. And don’t let your kids do it either.

Drudge linked a story this morning that recounts a new study on morality awareness in 6-month old babies. It turns out that babies are aware of good and evil as early as the 6-month mark. This led the researchers to conclude “that the difference between good and bad may be hardwired into the brain at birth.” While this may be a valid statement from a functional standpoint, I have a feeling that they mean it in a more fundamental way. Usually when the phrase “hardwired into the brain” is used, the person saying it is describing the brain as being somehow capable, on a physical level, of producing the function in question. But, that clearly can’t be the case with something like moral judgements, because moral judgements are non-physical things.

To understand this better, let’s do Leibniz’s “thinking machine” thought experiment. Imagine for a moment a large wooden box. It’s so large, in fact, that it has a door in the side of it. This box is a thinking machine. It’s a device that is capable of thinking, just like humans do. Now, in order to see how this machine works, you enter the doorway. What will you see when you get inside? Will you see gears? Vacuum tubes? Circuits? What configuration of these parts produce the thoughts? The fact is you can’t imagine what the inside of such a machine would look like because thoughts aren’t the type of things that machines do. You can’t even sit down with a piece of paper and create a schematic of a thought producing machine, because there is no way to represent thoughts in space. They are non-physical. They can’t be mechanized, because they have no extension in space as physical objects do. And, as Alvin Plantinga says, “thinking doesn’t arise by the mechanical interaction of parts.”

And, it’s important to remember the details here. Thoughts are themselves. They aren’t representations of things. They aren’t symbols or perceptions. They are thoughts. You can diagram a syllogism after you think of it. But, what you are diagramming isn’t the thought itself. You are diagramming the thing being thought of. This is because thoughts have a property that physical things don’t have. They have the property of being “about” something. You are thinking about an argument. The argument you are thinking of isn’t the thought itself. Think of it another way. Instead of diagramming a syllogism or progression of declarations, this time imagine taking a sheet of paper and diagramming “being afraid.” You can’t. You can write down “I’m afraid of heights,” but you can’t diagram the thought of that fear itself.

I’ve blogged about this topic before, but it’s necessary to keep these things in mind as you read articles on brain science. Neurology is understandably prone to attribute all thoughtiness to the brain, and in a sense it’s understandable, since they are neurologists and not psychologists. But, that just means we have to do a good job of remembering that they are wrong when they make those conclusions. The body interacts with the soul on such a fundamental level that it’s hard to separate what one is doing from what the other is responsible for in many cases. These types of thought experiments help to reinforce the distinctions.

If you love sauerkraut, why not make your own? My wife and I made a batch last night. It’s going to take a week or so to tell if it tastes any good or not, but the process isn’t hard. It’s basically just fermenting cabbage in it’s own brine. Here’s the steps:

	Step 1 – Grow some cabbage. Or buy it at the store if you’re a loser. We grew Savoy cabbage, so that’s why it looks a bit different.
	Step 2 – Assemble your materials: cabbage, a large crock or food-grade bucket, sea salt or kosher salt (non-iodized), a plate that fits snuggly inside the crock/bucket and a knife to chop the cabbage with.
	Step 3 – Chop the cabbage and place it in the crock/bucket, sprinkling salt on it in layers so that the salt is evenly distributed throughout the cabbage. Use about 1 tablespoon of salt per head of cabbage.
	Step 4 – Press your plate down onto the top of the cabbage.
	Step 5 – Place something heavy like a gallon jug of water on top of the plate to provide constant downward pressure on the cabbage.
	Step 6 – Put a towel over the whole thing to keep out bad stuff and wait a week for the fermentation to do it’s thing.

After about a week you can start scooping it out and eating it. The pressure and salt cause all of the water to be extracted out of the cabbage. This creates an acidic brine that bad bacteria can’t grow in. Lactic bacteria love it though, and will colonize and ferment your cabbage into sauerkraut. Just make sure you sterilize your utensils and crock before you begin, to minimize bad bacteria growth. And make sure your plate fits really snug inside the crock so that it will minimize air contact. With store bought cabbage, you may have to add some water to the crock to get the brine level up above the plate where it should be. Fresh cabbage from the garden or farmer’s market has more water content.