Hoi Logoi

Aw Yeah

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Sat, 26 May 2012 01:27:00 +0000

No, I'm not dead. Neither have I been kidnapped, disheartened from the whole blogging exercise, or French. Well...I am just a little bit French, but I don't let it keep me from going out and living life.

I've spent the last two months grappling with a financial licensing exam. That's pretty much all the time I want to spend on that, other than to observe that FINRA has yet to write a test I cannot make into my bitch. It took all of my time while it was going on, but now I am free and writing shall rapidly recommence.

See you all in fairly short order.

I Promise There Will Be Some Actual Writing Soon, but In the Meantime...

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:08:00 +0000

...Want:

My Trump Card for the Zombie Apocalypse

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:55:00 +0000

Also, for Mondays.

But Isn't This Every News Story?

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:21:00 +0000

Save Yourself Some Money

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:12:00 +0000

Well, I'm all set for movie watching for the year.

Except for Avengers. They didn't really cover Avengers.

"In the Case of Pepsi Products, the Cells Derived from the Aborted Fetus Do not End Up in the Final Product"

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:13:00 +0000

...Which, I suppose, is a relief. Except for the fact that some part of the development process for a soft drink involves bits of a murdered human being.

I don't say this very often, as I try to keep this blog a family- and work-friendly venue, but...for fuck's sake, people. We live in a world where a company that makes rutting soda uses material from aborted fetuses in developing a beverage. And then tells the SEC that its shareholders are too stupid to understand why; and that, anyway, it's an integral part of the business that the company does.

What, again, is that business, exactly? Apparently, it involves getting not even a little bit more of mine.

Thing That Would Make My Kitchen Better:

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 20:11:00 +0000

My Monday Just Got Better

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:54:00 +0000

Darth Vader In A Kilt On A Unicycle Playing Bagpipes - Watch More Funny Videos

In some places on the Internet, this might qualify as a thing that invalidates arguments. For my part, I'm just pleased with the awesomeness of the find.

Oh, Hello There, Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:12:00 +0000

Bring it on, week. I'm ready for you.

The Wonders of Modern Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:45:00 +0000

I'm sorry, sir, but I believe you got some awesome mixed up in my awesome.

The Thing That Gets Lost in the Soundbites

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:42:00 +0000

Pay attention, now, because I'm going to do two things that I hope will be extraordinarily uncommon, and I'm going to do them together: first, I'm going to give props to Newt Gingrich; second, I'm going to give a tip of the pipe to Donald McClarey. The latter gets the pipe tip for bringing up the thing that gets props for the former. Now before we go on, I want you to watch the following video, in its entirety.

Done? Great. Let's move on.

As much as I really loathe Newt, I will give him this one thing: If someone has defined the grounds for a discussion in a way that he deems spurious, he'll let you know and then re-frame the grounds to his liking. Sometimes, that's really little more than a substitution of one flavor of bullshit for another flavor of bullshit. In this case, it happens to be a re-orientation toward the reality of the debate. Many, many people have taken up pen and keyboard on this issue and explained it in a respectable and honest way. I simply reposted the Gingrich clip because it serves as a convenient and succinct summary. What I really want to talk about is why we as Catholics see this as a necessary fight.

I'm not talking about the abortion side of the issue. That, while present and absolutely worth fighting, is a subject that I have visited and re-visited enough that I would hope my position was clear. What we're going to do today is talk about why we're going to the mat over contraception - why, in other words, Catholics have a problem with it. It tends to get lost in the soundbites, partially because the people reporting on this stuff don't care what the argument is, and partially because even if they did, it's more nuanced than their 30-second-interval attention spans can handle.

There are a whole host of reasons to be against contraception. There's the fact that it can make it harder for a woman to conceive when she does come round to deciding to have kids; and let's not forget that mucking with hormones has a proclivity to invite cancer into the picture. What creates the real problem, though, is that contraception definitively cuts off the sex from its material and spiritual causes, and in doing so establishes a dehumanizing objectification - really, a culture of sexual slavery - that would make any honest feminist twitch with indignity.

But how can it be dehumanizing to give women control of their reproductive faculties? Isn't the ability to avoid pregnancy responsible for giving women expanded horizons and whole realms of self-fulfillment that would be unattainable to them were they saddled with children just for wanting to have sex? Doesn't taking childbirth away as a necessary possible consequence of sex allow women to avoid being objectified, as being treated as mere walking uteruses by the men in their lives?

These are the arguments that we very often hear in favor of the thesis that the Church is behind the times, or the bastion of a male-dominated, chauvenistic world view. And if the thesis were valid, then the arguments might carry more water. As it is, though, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a place with a more progressive view of women than the Catholic Church; and the idea that we want to relegate women into some gender-assigned caste of incubators is belied, amongst other things, by the fact that we hold in high esteem women who have in most cases chosen to never, ever have biological children. Which when you think about it, is an awfully weird thing for a bunch of manly woman-subjugators to do. Sorry to say for you self-styled progressives - so richly undeserving of the title - the Church just happens to require us to face and accept the truth.

So here is the truth: the Church teaches that artificial contraception is wrong because it cuts off women from part of their inherent nature, and in doing so, leads to both external and self-objectification around a sterile capacity for sexual stimulation. Whether there is a practical possibility for conception or not, it is a natural purpose and consequence of the sexual act; and the willingness to accept, if not the direct seeking, of that end is a source of great intimacy between a man and a woman. To go to someone knowing that your interaction may create a totally new and unique human life lends a certain undertone of gravity to even the most frivolous roll in the hay. And far from objectifying the woman by making it all about her as a baby factory, it acknowledges her unique position in nature as the sole person who can foster new life. Cut off that access to the life-giving force of sex, however, and you make it about two people seeking pleasure. Pleasure is good, but without that true self-giving that comes with the knowledge that a simple act of friction may result in a lifetime of shared responsibility and sacrifice, the energy of the act can only turn inward. The vessel of new life becomes a vessel of a most ephemeral pleasure; which to be recaptured demands the repetition of sex again and again in pursuit of that fleeting moment of ecstasy. It is a dead process, a series of rote, mechanical motions.

So that is what it's all about. This is not to say that people who use contraception are deliberately objectifying each other, or than any instance of sex that does not include the possibility of procreation is somehow wrong or unnatural. There are reams and reams of pages devoted to explaining that, and it exceeds my purpose here. All I sought was to lay out the fundamental point of moral teaching that demands that the government mandate regarding the funding of contraception be opposed and disobeyed.

I Was Always More of a Napper

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:22:00 +0000

Which, according to the BBC, was somewhat how everyone was up until a hundred years or two ago. Worth a read, if you have a minute.

I'd Vote for That

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 17:23:00 +0000

Let's face it: Patrick just seems to be a fountain of interesting ideas. I can't see all that much wrong with un-enfranchising of college students, having been one myself.

Of course, I want to go a touch further. The problem is, I don't know how strong of a touch that ought to be.

The broadening, coarsening, and general democratizing of the electorate is historically bad juju. Athens and republican Rome both faced the choice of how concentrated the power of government should be. They chose...poorly. The cosequence for Athens was being torn apart by demagogues until the once-proud and prosperous city descended into irrelevance; Romans, having fought to slough off the shackles of an absolute monarch, dickered their way through an experiment in self-governance - that more closely resembled all-out class warfare - into an absolute monarchy. America is heading down one or another of these roads right now, and it's hard to tell which. However, it pretty well cements the streak that democracy is bad news unless it's diluted.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, and help would be appreciated. Do you think it's appropriate for you to have the vote as things stand right now? Could you see yourself giving up the right to vote in exchange for seeing some major change in the constitution of society? If not, why?

The Point of Privation

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 15:55:00 +0000

Why give something up? Not because it is bad in itself. We're not Manicheans. We don't believe that physical pleasures and physical things are bad in themselves. Instead we give something up not because it is bad, but because we are seeking a greater good. We're seeking self mastery and self discipline and self control.

So runs the standard theory behind the ancient practice of fasting. But Fr. Dwight Longnecker has another take:

Here's another idea--something more radical: by giving something up we are countering the pleasure obsessed culture in which we live. We are standing the whole thing on its head. We live in a society that is not embarrassed to call itself "consumerist". We live in a culture which considers "more" to always be better and "economic growth" to be a good that cannot be questioned. We live in a society in which "self indulgence" is called "self esteem", where unlimited acquisition is considered a sign of success and where uninhibited pleasure is called "self expression."

Presented Without Comment (But You Absolutely Should Watch the Whole Thing, Seriously)

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:02:00 +0000

Leave It to Ukraine

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:09:00 +0000

...To show me the value in Bon Jovi:

And here I thought the only think he was good for was inspiring Dennis Leary (if you needed the NSFW warning, then I feel for you, man):

I Need to Find a Pilot

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:01:00 +0000

The Cub is hitting "that age"...

Nice to See Someone from the Old Homestead

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 16:55:00 +0000

...Even if he was a pedantic bugger who couldn't lower himself to use the phrase "with a grain of salt" in the bloody Queen's English.

In college, where my political science professor was, perhaps, the last Voegelinian outside of Louisiana State University, I had convinced myself that it was not inappropriate to think of the Austrian as the measure of all things wrong with political philosophy. I'm not by any remote stretch in a place where I might be inclined to embrace that assertion's opposite; but I will admit that there is certainly less than everything wrong with a man whose favorite insult was "Gnostic" and who could get verbosely vindictive against the man who beat him to Hannah Arendt.

And it's nice to see him pop up in reference, every so often.

Some Things About NYC I Think I Would Like

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:24:00 +0000

Happy Presidents' Day

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:12:00 +0000

One of the perks to working in the industry I work in is that I get some very random-seeming days off...such as this one. In celebration, I give you a lovely bit of classical music played on the traditional instruments of my people:

Yes, Please

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:20:00 +0000

...It's as if Buffy the Vampire Slayer met Ken Burns' Civil War documentary in a bar on Valentine's Day and...

...you get the idea.

Barack Obama is an Amazing Man

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:30:00 +0000

I was in the middle of writing a post last week about how I really couldn't give a hoot about who won the election any more. The way I saw it, whether Obama won, or Romney - because let's face it, nobody else was going to get the Republican nomination - nothing was going to change in any way that really mattered. If you've read my reflections on politics (I delineate "politics" from political theory here; politics is more topical) for any period of time, then you probably already know where this is going.

Yup, life.

Stealing rather blatantly from Mr. Button's concept of the 3%, I'm going to reiterate the premise that the question of the right to life is the seminal question, the seminal right. You don't get to be "progressive" if you don't get to be alive. You don't get to be successful, or drink, or fall in love, either. You don't get to be gay, you don't get to be straight. In point of fact, there are no lifestyle choices unless there is some assurance of life to start with. And as recently as a week ago, I couldn't see a difference between the GOP and the Democrats on that one very important issue, so I couldn't see how whether one party or another winning would make any difference to me.

Then Obama, that crazy genius, solved the problem for me.

My detachment and pessimistic resignation relied on the continuing premise that there would never be a terrific difference from the status quo. Leave it to our fearless, hopeful, change-y president to shoot that all to hell and gone. By indicating that he is willing to not only defend but offensively expand state sponsorship of things that run counter to the Catholic conscience on the issue of life, he's given me an active interest in his undoing. And not just me.

So, yes, Barack Obama is an amazing man. He has wrenched me loose of my torpor and disinterest in politics and has me re-engaged.

Linguistic Romanticism

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:38:00 +0000

Saw this on Patrick's site not too far back and meant to post it. So here you go.

Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:52:00 +0000

I'm not begging off here. I just want to keep y'all more up to date than had been my wont in the past. I have a couple of posts percolating, but the current events of the world are flying fast and I want to be able to comment on at least something. So bear with me, and watch this space for new developments soon.

Not a Sign of the Apocalypse

noreply@blogger.com (Der Wolfanwalt) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:58:00 +0000

Because it's Friday and because I feel in a very Who-y mood, I give you the Doctor Who Fan Orchestra and their performances to date. More than a little fitting that a collaborative performance of "New" Who music is performed by participants at various points in time and space.