Today's Jon Carroll column

[RussellK]

There really isn't a good way of communicating with parents. Cant rely on the call chain God knows how that would end. Can't rely on mail the rumor mill would be in full throttle before the first letter is delivered. Same thing with calling special meetings. We used to have robo calls from the high school and they were usually deleted before we got home from work. The memo seem to be the most efficient way. I don't know the contents of the superintendents letter but I bet he had to be really careful with wording. The thing I find really interesting was this Superintendent is getting heat for his honesty. Basically he said a lot of our kids are having sex some of them are getting sick from it. More will if we don't do something about it. I found his honesty refreshing.

an envelope would have solved the problem in our case. i didnt mind having it come home in a folder, but i didnt think it should be wide open like that.

cindy

We used to get memos too. Found about 10 of them in the bottom of Tony's bookbag one year. Maybe if they didn't have time to stuff all those envelopes they coulda stapled it shut. I remember a memo about a flasher. It just raised more questions than gave answers but did remind us to go over the rules on dealing with strangers. That was always a tough one. I never liked the idea of fearful kids

[DjEep]

I agree with the spirit of the column, if not the letter of it. I agree with Russell that contacting the specific students is a non-starter. Don't really understand what it would accomplish. If the stats are culled from testing, then the kids already know they've got it, now it's only a matter of preventing further transmission. IMHO, the way to deal with it would have been to address the student body directly, not the parents. And not tell them the stats, and let the rumor mill fly, but open a discussion of the entire topic. If they are mature enough to get HIV, they are mature enough to discuss it.

Sex+teens= "lalalalalala, I can't hear you" But it shouldn't be that way. I had sex as a teen. I'm not scared by teens having sex now. Teens have had sex since the dawn of time. When the average life expectancy was 35 years, having sex as a teen was necessary to survival. Only recently has teen sex been vilified by adults, but as a teen it's hard to vilify your own natural biological urges. Not saying teens should go out and boink like rabbits, but they should not be made to feel shamed by their nature.

I think a lot of the unease felt by adults regarding the matter comes from a certain amount of envy, perverted as it sounds (we humans are a perverted lot anyway). They wish they were able to act on their own urges during their youth, and envy the "action" their kids are getting. But seeing as this is a "perverse" thought, it presents itself in the form of fear and righteousness. Think the "Haggart Effect".

As for Jon Carroll, he's an awesome columnist from the SF Chronicle. But he's not a political columnist, and doesn't claim to be any expert on anything. In fact, his column runs on the back of the entertainment section. He is just a guy who writes what he feels like, be it about his cats, his granddaughter, the circus, GWB, the drug war, neighbors, traffic, food, etc, etc... Not meant to be biting social commentary, just one guy's personal take on his world.

[chitwnvw]

That said, sex can lead to disease, babies, rape, and heavy emotions. If my daughters can navigate that mine field and have 'fun', yes, more power to them.

[DjEep]

'zactly, which is why dialogue, not shame, is the way to "deal with" teen sex.

[RussellK]

'zactly, which is why dialogue, not shame, is the way to "deal with" teen sex.

Exactly right. The concept of abstinence education completely ignores reality. Honest open dialogue is the way.

[JLT]

In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I'd share one of the finest things ever written about the subject. It was written by Jon Carroll some years ago and updated yearly with topical references until he got tired of doing that and retired it.

If you haven't already read it, I urge you to do so.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... D72545.DTL

Enjoy!

[static]

Season's greetings!

Jon Carroll

Friday, December 12, 2008

There is a church about a mile from my house with a small billboard out front. Usually it has generic messages of peace and love, although it occasionally does intimate that I am going to hell pretty much right away because of my failure to worship the God of their choice.

One of the agnostic's great problems is that we don't have a hell. Oh, it would be so nice to assign all those Hindu and Muslim and Jewish and Christian fundamentalists to a place of eternal torture and suffering. Alas, all we can cling to is the belief that their own venom-spewing hatred will so poison their brains that they will never know real happiness.

Not that I would ever really think a thought like that. I would pretend to think a thought like that as a dramatic exercise. Then I would pretend to be a tree.

Anyway, the billboard on the church currently reads "Jesus is the Reason for the Season." Well, no. Jesus is a reason for the season, no question. But Jesus is not the reason I'm going to take Alice to buy an evergreen tree tomorrow, nor is he the reason Tracy will make pancakes on the morning of Dec. 25, nor is he the reason that we will exchange presents. He's not even the reason that there's an angel on the top of the tree.

The angel is there because it's always been there. It's not a real angel; it's made of cardboard. It may be that somewhere, deep in my family's history, someone believed that Jesus was the reason for the season, but he didn't tell me about it. The angel symbolized "peace on earth, goodwill toward men," which is a sentiment that does not require Jesus to make it a useful reminder.

I know lots of Jews who have trees and give presents; Jesus is not their reason either. Their reason is cultural; they live in America, and America is a country whose citizens attempt to stave off the drear cold days of winter with festive song, hot, strong drink and tokens of affection. A person can refuse to do that, of course, because it seems too darned Christian, but ... let me tell you a story I heard. It may be apocryphal, but the person who told it to me knew a lot about Nepal.

When the Christian missionaries came to Nepal, they were welcomed freely. The people were interested in their Jesus, and they hung his picture on their walls, and heard the story of his miraculous resurrection, and said, "Thank you for telling us about this god." It was only when the missionaries insisted that the Nepalese give up their other gods - they had quite a few - that conflict developed. One more god was a fine development; a thousand fewer gods was pointless and offensive.

That's kind of my idea. When I sing Christmas carols - and I do, although very badly - I am participating in a community ritual. I know what the words say, but I don't really believe them, any more than I believe that "All you need is love" or "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" - although those are two profound sentiments.

The season is many things. It's Santa Claus, or St. Nicholas, who, in a previous incarnation, was Odin, god of sundry Germanic peoples and Wagnerian superstar. Odin was said to lead a great hunting party through the sky on the feast of Yule, from which we get the yule log. Santa also traces his distinguished lineage back to Thor, the Norse god of thunder, who rode in a celestial carriage drawn by (wait for it) reindeer.

Of course, most cold-weather countries had winter celebrations, because - well, wouldn't you? All these celebrations intermarried, as it were, and eventually were given a nice overlay of a religious tale about the birth of a child in a land that had no snow, no reindeer, no elves and few evergreen trees.

There's lots of talk about the "war on Christmas," as though the Christians had the holiday first and vile secularists are now trying to steal it with their subversive "season's greetings" and "happy holidays." But the reverse is true - the world had winter festivals and spring festivals and harvest festivals, because we are descended from agriculturalists and we celebrate times associated with crops - and sundry religions (not just Christianity) tried to appropriate them.

Which is fine if everyone agrees, but in this case, everyone does not agree. Jesus is not the reason for the season; the reason for the season is the Northern Hemisphere tilting away from the sun, and everything else is just culture. So give it a rest. Let us all be of good cheer. Let us practice tolerance and love. Nothing is warmer in winter than a friendly human to embrace.

I think the point is merriment. That's what we seek, and that's what we wish for. If you want to drag a tree into it, be my guest.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 14LL83.DTL

[Cindy]

i always enjoy these. thanks.

cindy

[JLT]

Season's greetings!

Jon Carroll

Friday, December 12, 2008

Thanks for posting that, Static. It's a nice companion piece to his Thanksgiving essay.

Wish us relative dry this weekend.

[static]

The Old Wisdom

We've been around. We know things. Not you, of course - you are as fresh and innocent as a butterfly in April - but the rest of us. Some of us are even grizzled; I'll cop to having a griz or two. So let's remove labels and names and everything, and just deal with the stuff we know because we've been around.

We know that hurriedly concocted, gigantic, expensive bits of legislation are always flawed. No one actually reads them; no one considers how Section 17, subsection c, paragraph 2 might interact with Section 31, subsection j, paragraph 6 in the event of, say, an oil company going bankrupt.

People just can't see that deeply or that far ahead. The smart ones know it, and they pass the legislation anyway because they think it's "needed" or "will do more good than harm." Both propositions are questionable on their face, and the second clearly depends on where you're standing. For me, the Columnists Tax Relief Act of 2009 was a much-needed reform; for you, maybe not.

Second, human beings are sneaky and self-serving. They understand omnibus legislation. They slip a clause in here or there, and all of a sudden it's illegal to urinate on Sundays. Well, of course the courts will knock that down, but in the meantime, you gotta go to Mexico, if you can hold it that long.

Third, very powerful entities and individuals have the ear and other body parts of legislators and their staffs. They can protect themselves and their sundry malfeasances by rewriting some section just a little. Happens all the time, in both Democratic and Republican administrations, which is why mostly potheads are in jail. They don't have an effective lobby, and they spend all their money on Ho Hos.

The phrase "permanent government" has long been used to describe the cadre of career bureaucrats and lobbyists who remain in place no matter which party is in power. They are the people who really run the place, no matter what you've heard. I'm not sure I entirely believe this thesis, but it's useful to consider.

I'd like to add the phrase "permanent constituents" to the lexicon. These are the voters who are more special than the other voters, the voters who must be catered to regardless of what group is in power. It's not individuals so much as pressure groups, although a very rich individual can become his own pressure group.

Since we've been around the block and are grizzled, we know that every hurriedly passed, gigantic, expensive omnibus legislation will inevitably benefit the permanent constituents. It may also benefit other people, but at the very least it will not harm the permanent constituents. Congress passes the laws, and Congress could not breathe without the money that comes from the permanent constituents. The country voted for change, and Barack Obama may yet find a way to create that change and move the process toward a more equitable system of government, but not yet.

The first bailout bill, passed during the Bush administration, gave (mostly) banks a whole lot of money with essentially no oversight. The banks needed the money because they had been stupid and greedy for the past decade. The banks did with the cash exactly what your 12-year-old would do - they spent it on stuff they wanted. The hope that credit would be eased and homes purchased turned to dust.

The second bailout bill, being written by a Democratic Congress, gives a lot more money to banks, still with essentially no oversight, plus adds on a bunch of programs that I personally approve of but, come on, eyes on the ball here. The permanent constituents are not unhappy with that bill, but all the Republicans in the House voted against it because it was going to pass anyway and the Republicans wanted to show how forceful they were. Or something. I think the GOP might want to pay a bit more attention to election returns, but they're betting (and, as Rush Limbaugh says, hoping) that Obama can't get out of this mess, and they want to be able to say, "See, told you so." It's so much easier to understand politics if you've been to junior high.

I'm against this bill, even though the president I voted for is supporting it. Here is our motto for today: Stimulus packages don't. Let's just build some roads and bridges instead, and commission about a thousand murals, and, oh yeah, nationalize the banks. You think I'm joking, but no. Socialism is a good thing. We need jobs; we need infrastructure repair; we need home loans. Period. If the permanent constituents would like to behave like patriotic institutions, they could join in the fun. Otherwise: Screw 'em. It's gonna be a big shakeout anyway; let's be sure the right people feel the shaking.

I don't think this is going to happen. I think Big Giveaway Part 2 will pass. It may be that American democracy is so far removed from actual democracy that's there no way home. I do hope I'm wrong.

[Velokid1]

I don't think this is going to happen. I think Big Giveaway Part 2 will pass. It may be that American democracy is so far removed from actual democracy that's there no way home. I do hope I'm wrong.

Chilling thought, mostly because it seems to be the truth.

Another fine piece from Carroll.

[Amskeptic]

I don't think this is going to happen. I think Big Giveaway Part 2 will pass. It may be that American democracy is so far removed from actual democracy that's there no way home. I do hope I'm wrong.

Chilling thought, mostly because it seems to be the truth.

Another fine piece from Carroll.

Write your congressmen. Write Pelosi and Reid. Write Obama. Keep up the pressure. See, Carroll knows the status quo. We are the variable. Get to work, people. We have the means to communicate our wishes to the government beyond simply our vote. Let's go. I wrote Pelosi, Reid, Specter, individually tailored emails last night, tonight is Obama, Shumer, Boehner, and Cornyn.
Colin

[static]

Always wear a party hat

Jon Carroll

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

When last we left our hero, Pope Benedict XVI, he was reinstating a known Holocaust denier to the priesthood, then - after just a teeny bit of criticism - saying that the Vatican had made mistakes, in part because it didn't know the cleric's views because it had failed to google him.

OK, not google. But the pope did say that he or his aides had not run an Internet search on Bishop Richard Williamson, the man who believes that, OK, maybe the Nazis did murder a few hundred thousand Jews, but none were gassed and the whole thing has been blown way out of proportion.

Jerk.

So, after having apparently put out that fire, the pope got on a plane to Africa, where during an interview, he opined that condoms were not the answer to the HIV and AIDS epidemic that is sweeping the continent and, indeed, they may make the problem worse.

It is the Roman Catholic Church's position that abstinence is the only acceptable form of birth control for unmarried people. The idea (and here I paraphrase) is that because life is sacred, even a striving little sperm seeking out a willing egg and encountering a latex barrier represents a grave sin. I think that's it; I'm no theologian, and I might be just a little upset right now.

Now, many Catholics do not accept that particular chunk of dogma, and it has even been argued persuasively by some of them that these medieval remnants in Catholic teaching discredit the church and hurt its credibility. Still, the pope believes it, and he thinks that mentioning that particular opinion while flying to Africa is just a swell idea.

Much has been made in the past decade about the schism between science and religion. My personal view is that scientific rigor and spiritual beliefs are not irreconcilable and that indeed sometimes one can reinforce the other in surprising and heartening ways. (The Dalai Lama is all over this, but of course he would be.) Charles Darwin was a believing Christian; he struggled at times, but he never lost his faith either in God or in evolution.

But sometimes these things just descend into madness. On the issue of abortion, for instance, I have an opinion, but I entirely respect the views of the people on the other side. It's a thorny moral question, and one that is worth both debating and contemplating.

But contraception? Come on. Next you'll be saying that if I have lust in my heart and don't act on it, I'm committing murder. Besides, this is not an academic dispute to be resolved in the solemn councils of higher orthodoxy - this is life and death. This is about the passing of a virus through unprotected sex. This is a human being withering and dying. There's not a dispute about this anymore - HIV is a sexually transmitted virus. Block the transmission, block the virus. It seems silly even to be typing those words.

Granted, abstinence is also an extremely effective disease-prevention strategy. I support it; everyone supports it. But just in case a human being gives in to the most powerful of human urges, the one put there by nature to ensure the continuation of the species (birds do it, bees do it ...), just in case, wouldn't it be great to have a fallback plan so that people don't, you know, die because they went looking for love on a Saturday night?

And that fallback plan exists. It's cheap, it's safe, it's easy to understand. I think priests should be handing out condoms in the confessional. Isn't the Vatican interested in its parishioners staying alive? Get them clean water, cheap antibiotics and condoms; watch the continent thrive. Heck, watch the religion thrive.

I guess the reductio ad absurdum of dogmas trumps all that. Maybe the pope should read the Internet more. Search Google for "condom" and follow the links. He seems so cut off, doesn't he? He was apparently bewildered that his pardoning of an unrepentant Holocaust denier would get people all upset. I think maybe he's getting bad advice. I think some of that advice is coming from the 10th century.

And probably when he said condoms might be "making the problem worse," flying 30,000 feet above the ground in Pope Force One, he may have been living in a celestial realm just a little too far above earth. The Roman Catholic Church does and has always done heartwarming and useful charitable work and attracted the most idealistic and dedicated of people; too bad it can't avoid making so many of its followers cringe every month or so.

It's not just HIV, of course; there's a whole constellation of diseases that wearing condoms can protect against. It's like a miracle drug.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 16K9UL.DTL

[static]

The Torturer's Tale

Jon Carroll

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

I am prepared to accept that torture has always been part of warfare. The Mongols and Goths were just not that nice. The Saracens: some mean guys there. The soldiers would get their blood up because the other soldiers were trying to kill them, and when they finally obtained the upper hand, somehow just binding their enemies' wrists and giving them a stern lecture just wasn't enough.

The Japanese in the jungle; the Ugandans in the other jungle; even the United States on the Great Plains, where the soldiers were mad because of the Indian slaughters, so they slaughtered right back - but first, a little torture. Indeed, it's even hard to say who started the slaughtering and the torture; these were lawless times in a lawless land.

Did I mention the armies of the Prophet? Yeah, not so much fun there either.

War is ugly. War is stupid. War is hell. Even when you are a courageous settler standing in front of your cabin fighting to protect your family cowering inside - ugly, stupid, hell. After all, that's probably not your land you're standing on. Probably it was stolen. There really aren't any good guys here.

But: We do have to save special contempt for the cold-blooded torturers, the ones in nice suits thousands of miles away from the action, sitting in nice offices writing thoughtful memos explaining why torture is not really torture, or not torture as defined by the Geneva Convention, or not torture per se, as it were, see footnote three.

For one thing, and the people in the nice suits in nice offices never seem to have gotten this message, torture isn't really an effective interrogation device. This is not exactly secret information. I mean, think about it - if you were having your head slammed up against a wall repeatedly, wouldn't you say just about anything to make it stop?

"Oh yes, I remember now, there was a meeting in Yemen. Big meeting. Very secret underground tunnels; I will draw you a map. Oh, and everybody was there." And then, because by that time I'd be more than a little angry, I might name some of my enemies. "Oh, my wife's brother-in-law - big terrorist. Oh my, yes. And the owner of the video store underneath my apartment - planned the whole 9/11 thing. Not only that, he's going to blow up the White House, like, today. Better get to work!"

OK, they'll find out I'm lying pretty quick, but then perhaps I am labeled an unreliable informant and they'll leave me alone. Of course, we know from some of the released memos that they did not leave unreliable informants alone; they tortured them anyway. American soldiers and civilians tortured half-wits and liars and, well, anybody they could, it would seem.

Why? Because they had guidelines. The Justice Department said they could. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. What data do you suppose the last 10 waterboardings yielded?

And this was not hot-blooded revenge. This was not jungle fighting or ignorant armies clashing by night or the fog of war descending on the brains of scared and tired young men. This was being done on the written orders of men in the Justice Department, torture weasels who should be banished to a small rock in the Atlantic. One of them, Torture Weasel Jay Bybee, is now a judge, Ninth Circuit. Isn't that swell?

When President Obama announced that the soldiers who did the actual acts - the waterboarding and wall bashing and sleep deprivation and humiliating nudity in cold rooms - would not be prosecuted for what they did, I agreed with that decision. Soldiers act under orders, and they do what they're told. I thought about Lynndie England, a susceptible and not terribly bright young woman who served 521 days in military prison for her action at Abu Ghraib prison while the higher-ups went free, sometimes even went unidentified, and I thought that perhaps Obama was doing the right thing. In any event, it was a tough call.

But now it appears that the Obama administration is not going to prosecute the torture weasels either. Stephen Bradbury and Jay Bybee and John Yoo - having devised lovely rationales for pointless brutality, doing the United States untold harm around the world and degrading both themselves and their profession - will just go on with their lives, la la la.

Maybe it is time to put the past behind us. Maybe it is time to close this sorry chapter of the Bush administration. I can see that rationale. But is it OK if I go into this closet and scream for 10 minutes?

Well, gosh, isn't it nice that we could put that torture thing behind us and move on to forgetting some other terrible thing that happened.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... 175RSU.DTL

[vdubyah73]

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/04/22/o ... on-worked/