Catholic Obama supporter Melinda Henneberger makes the case against the “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA), which, it appears, could result in Catholic hosptials (a third of all hospitals in the US, according to Henneberger) shutting their doors rather than being forced to provide abortions. Many of these hospitals rely on Medicade and Medicare funds to keep operating, and FOCA would require recipients of federal funds to provide abortion services. On top of that, FOCA would make it even harder to come to some kind of political compromise on abortion than it already is, as it would sweep aside existing restrictions.
Author: Lee M.
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Slow blogging?
Kind of a cool idea, actually. I don’t necessarily think that more blogging is always better (in case you couldn’t tell), or that “blog in haste, repent at leisure” is necessarily wise.
I find that my best posts (or at least the ones I like best) are the ones that I think about a bit beforehand, but not necessarily ones that go through rounds and rounds of revision (I almost always end up deleting those ones before posting them, since they seem to get “stale” after too much overthinking and tweaking). The blogging I like best hits some kind of sweet spot between the quickie link-post and the fully fleshed out and polished essay.
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Extremism in the defense of beer
Great story about the rise of craft brewing in the US, focusing especially on Dogfish Head Brewery in Delaware, maker of various “extreme” beers (really hoppy ales, beers with offbeat ingredients, etc.). For my birthday I treated myself to a 4-pack of their 90 minute IPA. Yummy stuff.
The article, though, becomes a kind of philosophical debate about the nature of beer: is beer best defined within strict parameters, such as those enshrined in the (unfortunately named) German “Purity Laws”? Or can beer encompass all kinds of odd ingredients and styles? When is a beer not a beer?
I was also charmed by the Trappist monk/brewer interviewed in the article who named Budweiser as his favorite American beer. Being catholic–at least in my taste in beer–I certainly appreciate the King of Beers on occasion (even if it’s now owned by a Belgian brewer!).
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Gourmands, aesthetics, and ethics
If more proof was needed that I’m not hip, I’m sorry to say that I never read David Foster Wallace–and indeed only vaguely knew who he was–before his suicide this past September. But I recently came across this incredible piece of his published in 2004 in Gourmet magazine. Incredible not least because it was actually published in Gourmet. Wallace was assigned to cover the Maine Lobster Festival and spends the better part of the article weighing the moral pros and cons of boiling alive sentient beings for our gustatory pleasure:
Given this article’s venue and my own lack of culinary sophistication, I’m curious about whether the reader can identify with any of these reactions and acknowledgments and discomforts. I am also concerned not to come off as shrill or preachy when what I really am is confused. Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)? And for those gourmets who’ll have no truck with convictions or rationales and who regard stuff like the previous paragraph as just so much pointless navel-gazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? That is, is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?
You have to think they got some angry letters to the editor after this one.
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Thought for the day
…theology, an enterprise that, despite the oftentimes homicidal urgency Christians attach to it, has yet to save anybody. What saves us is Jesus, and the way we lay hold of that salvation is by faith. And faith is something that […] I shall resolutely refuse to let mean anything other than trusting Jesus. It is simply saying yes to him rather than no. It is, at its root, a mere “uh-huh” to him personally. It does not necessarily involve any particular theological structure or formulation; it does not entail any particular degree of emotional fervor; and above all, it does not depend on any specific repertoire of good works–physical, mental, or moral. It’s just “Yes, Jesus,” till we die–just letting the power of his resurrection do, in our deaths, what it has already done in his. — Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus, pp. 24-25.
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Usage question
I’ve noticed a somewhat widespread tendency for writers to use the expression “to paraphrase” in something like the opposite of its proper meaning. “To paraphrase” properly means, as far as I know, to express the same idea using a different form of words. But many people now seem to use it to mean something like “to express a different idea using a similar form of words.”
For example, in this (otherwise excellent!) blog post about torture, Andrew Sullivan writes:
To paraphrase Hitch: torture poisons everything.
Now, this isn’t quite right, is it? If Sullivan were paraphrasing Christopher Hitchens’ statement that “religion poisons everything,” he’d be expressing the same idea as Hitchens, but in his own words. He’d say something like “religion morally taints everything it comes in contact with.” That’s a paraphrase. What Sullivan’s doing is adapting Hitchens’ words to express a different thought: that torture taints everything it comes into contact with.
This problem isn’t as widespread or irritating as the now-ubiquitous abuse of “begs the question,” but it makes me wonder if there is a term or expression to describe what is properly the adaptation of someone else’s specific words to express a different idea.
Am I the only one who’s noticed this?
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Of Palin and poultry
I’m with Jim Henley – there’s nothing particularly disturbing about this Sarah Palin interview at a turkey farm (well, except insofar as Sarah Palin is inherently disturbing). Where exactly do people think Thanksgiving turkeys come from?
Jim’s also right that the farm where the interview takes place is, by all appearances, far more humane than, say, this.
I did find it grimly amusing how the MSNBC anchor introduced the clip by saying that the video had been “sanitized” as much as possible, but that parents might want to have kids leave the room, etc. If animal slaughter is so unspeakably horrible, maybe there’s something, y’know, wrong with it? At the very least, isn’t there a problem if you think that our food production process is so awful that it needs to be shielded from public view?
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WALL-E
Strangely affecting! I haven’t gotten that choked up at an animated movie about robots since The Iron Giant.
A Thinking Reed 