Shabbat Only in San Francisco?

This is another last-minute item responding to a Facebook Event just brought to my attention. LISTEN is a Jewish liturgical music series curated by musician and scholar Jeremiah Lockwood. It takes place in conjunction with the regular Friday evening Shabbat services held by Congregation Beth Sholom. For this evening’s service, LISTEN will provide the Kabbalat Shabbat, which translates as “receiving the Sabbath.”

As the name suggests, the content was originally composed by sixteenth-century Kabbalists; and it serves as a mystical prelude to the Shabbat service itself. The texts come from Psalms 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, and 29, intended to correspond to the six weekdays. Composers such as Samuel Adler have provided music for the singing of these Psalm texts.

Fay Victor, special guest for Kabbalat Shabbat at Congregation Beth Sholom (from the Facebook Events Web page for this service)

This evening the service will offer “something completely different.” The singing will be by Fay Victor, an improvising vocalist, composer, lyricist, and educator. She is currently based in Brooklyn and is visiting San Francisco this month. She is a major performer of jazz and improvised music.

The service will begin this Friday evening, September 20, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Food will be set out for the congregation beginning at 6 p.m. Following the service, at 7:30 pm., desserts will be set out for the oneg Shabbat. The service will take place in the Gronkowski Family Chapel. Congregation Beth Sholom is located in Central Richmond at 301 14th Avenue, near the corner of Clement Street.

Musical Concepts Reissues A Cappella Rachmaninoff on its alto Label

At the middle of last month, Musical Concepts released a reissue of a 1986 Melodiya recording of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s a cappella Opus 37, whose title in English is All-Night Vigil, on its alto label. The performers were the members of the Chamber Choir of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, conducted by Valery Polyansky; and the original recording was taken from the Moscow Studio Archives. The soloists were mezzo Irina Arkhipova, tenor Viktor Rumantsev, and basso profundo Yuriy Vishnyakov.

This composition has an interesting recording history. The first recording was also made by Melodiya in 1965, exactly half a century after the music had been given its first performance. However, this was a time when atheism was a major cornerstone in Soviet propaganda; and, as a result, the recording was made available only for export or special private study. This is at least moderately ironic since Rachmaninoff himself was not a regular churchgoer, although he probably would not have called himself an atheist. Nevertheless, Opus 37 was one of his favorite compositions (which says something given that it has absolutely nothing to do with his virtuosity as a pianist); and he left instructions that the “Nunc dimittis” setting be sung at his funeral.

Because this music is so remote from what one expects from Rachmaninoff, it tends to receive relatively little exposure. (For that matter, if San Francisco is in any way representative, coming by any a cappella recitals is not very easy.) Thus, the mere fact that this particular recording is back in circulation is definitely worthy of attention, sufficiently so that one can forgive an approach to packaging in which text content is not always that helpful and sometimes incorrect. Because the listener is likely to benefit from background knowledge, (s)he will probably benefit from the efforts of the authorship of the Wikipedia page for this composition.

Most important is that, of the fifteen movements, each setting the text of a prayer, of All-Night Vigil, only five are original Rachmaninoff compositions. The remaining movements draw upon three styles of chant, the Znamenny Chant traditionally associated with the Russian Orthodox Church, a “Greek style” for recitation, and a “Kiev” style that only began to emerge in the sixteenth century. The Wikipedia page provides an excellent tabular representation of the movements giving the title text in both Church Slavonic and transliteration, an English translation, and the music’s origins. The prayers themselves come from Russian Orthodox services for Vespers, Matins, and The First Hour, which accounts for services that would take place over the course of a winter night (when the amount of daylight is at its shortest).

The entire recording lasts a little more than an hour. One may wish to follow the full English text in the accompanying booklet, but the major virtue of this recording resides in the sonorities of the entire cycle. This may amount to a somewhat artificial account of what one might experience at an actual Russian Orthodox service; but, between the impressive vocal qualities of this Soviet choir and Polyansky’s meticulous attention to dynamics and phrasing, one may well be better off listening to this as “context-free” music. From that point of view (or point of listening), there is more than enough to enjoy in experiencing how Rachmaninoff could work with a rich ensemble of voices divorced from the interference of any musical instruments.

Vox Clamantis’ Second Full ECM Album is Also the Latest Addition to the Arvo Pärt Discography

This Friday ECM New Series will release is its second full album of the Estonian vocal chamber ensemble Vox Clamantis, conducted by Artistic Director Jaan-Eik Tulve. As usual, Amazon.com is taking pre-orders for those wishing to receive this new recording as soon as possible. Entitled The Deer’s Cry, the album is devoted entirely to the music of Estonia’s best-known composer, Arvo Pärt. Vox Clamantis has been performing Pärt’s music since 1999, when the group performed Gregorian chant between the sections of his organ composition “Annum per Annum.” Plainchant was also the focus of their first New Series release, Filia Sion, although the album also included an intriguing example of fifteenth-century counterpoint by Piotr of Grudziądz (Petrus Wilhelmi de Grudencz). There was also a fascinating interpretation of the “Beata viscera” conductus by Pérotin (Magister Perotinus), a monophonic setting enhanced with the natural overtones of throat-singing technique.

Pärt’s relationship with New Series predates that with Vox Clamantis. Indeed, it goes all the way back to 1984, when Tablua Rasa, which showcased his work, marked the inauguration of New Series on the ECM label. That album was significant enough that ECM gave it a deluxe Special Edition re-issue at the end of 2010 in celebration of Pärt’s 75th birthday. More recently Vox Clamantis contributed to the Adam’s Lament New Series album, which was released in October 30, performing with the Sinfonietta Riga. That recording included a performance of “Alleluia-Tropus,” composed in 2008 and revised in 2010 for mixed choir and string orchestra. However, in 2008 Pärt also published a version for choir and “8 violoncellos (ad lib.)” (from the list of his works on the Universal Edition Web site). On the new The Deer’s Cry album, “ad lib.” means that the cellos are eliminated entirely; and the work is sung a cappella.

By this point the reader should be aware that Pärt is a composer for whom sonority is as significant as a faithful account of the notes. This is particularly true of an approach to composition that he calls “tintinnabuli,” which is Latin for “little bells.” These are pieces in which the sustained resonance of tones are as important as their points of attack. One might say that he uses voices to evoke a microcosm of the chiming of the large bells of a cathedral. This is best demonstrated on The Deer’s Cry by “Da pacem Domine;” but it is an effect that is best appreciated in spatial terms. Thus, for all the quality of the recording technique, one is more likely to appreciate just what Pärt had in mind through an actual performance. However, because such performances are not always easy to find, this recording is definitely one of the best viable alternatives. It is also an excellent introduction to another significant vocal technique, which is the use of very high-register tones from the soprano (often a single voice), soaring over the rest of the ensemble, almost as an evocation of divine oversight.

This new recording is also valuable for providing examples of Pärt’s other approaches to composition in languages that include English and German, as well as Latin. In addition, there are examples in which a small number of instruments add their voices to those of the choir, as well as instances of vocal solos. What pervades the album, though, is an overall sense of ritual with a greater diversity of approaches to celebrate that rite than one might expect. While one might think that this would make listening a rather solemn experience, Pärt’s spare approach to the use of resources actually makes it a highly intimate one. One gets the impression that Pärt’s personal approach to religion is one of intimate communion between the individual and the Divine. From that point of view, The Deer’s Cry stands as an album in which Pärt’s approach may be appreciated from a variety of different perspectives over the course of its thirteen selections.

Church of the Advent Announces Music for the Feast of the Assumption

This coming Monday the Church of the Advent of Christ the King will celebrate the Feast of the Assumption. This feast commemorates the end the the earthly life of the Virgin Mary and the taking (assumptio in Latin) of her body into Heaven. The service will consist of a Procession and High Mass with music provided by the resident choir Schola Adventus. The Celebrant will be Father Alex Martin, and the Preacher will be Father Paul Allick.

The music for the service has been selected by Director of Music Paul Ellison. The Ordinary of the Mass will involve the singing of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina’s six voice setting Missa Assumpta est Maria. Schola Adventus will also sing Palestrina’s “Assumpta est Maria” motet, the thematic source for his Mass setting. The anthem for the service will be John Taverner’s “Hymn for the Dormition of the Virgin Mary;” and Schola Adventus will sing Robert Parsons’ “Ave Maria” setting for the gradual. For the postlude, Ellison will give an organ performance of the double fugue from Michel Corrette’s setting of the Magnificat canticle in the third and fourth tones.

The Church of the Advent of Christ the King is located at 261 Fell Street, between Franklin Street and Gough Street. The entry is diagonally across the street from the SFJAZZ Center. This is an inclusive parish of the Episcopal Church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. The service will begin at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, August 15. A festive reception will follow the service in Lathrop Hall. Those wishing further information may call 415-431-0454.

Trump's Damage has Already been Done

It would appear that, regardless of whether Donald Trump becomes the Republican candidate for President next year, his divisive rhetoric has taken hold of the general population of the United States in more ways than we might imagine. His latest victim is Riverheads High School in Augusta County in the state of Virgina, a state that tends to be sympathetic to Republicans and seems to translating that sympathy into enthusiasm for Trump. Riverheads' mistake was to encourage an appreciation of cultural differences by exploring the role of calligraphy in sacred Islamic texts. This included an assignment to reproduce the calligraphy of the Islamic declaration of faith, known as the Shahada.

Copying is often a valuable pedagogical tool. An excellent example can be found in Bernard Greenhouse's description of his cello lessons with Pablo Casals, which began with a prolonged exercise during which Casals instructed Greenhouse to produce "an absolute copy" of his way of performing Johann Sebastian Bach's BWV 1008 solo cello suite in D minor. Similarly, there used to be a counterpoint teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music whose only student assignments involved copying out the music of Giovanni Pierlugi da Palestrina.

However, as far as the good citizens of Augusta County are concerned (perhaps only the Republicans among them) there is a big difference between reproducing music, written or heard, a reproducing an Islamic declaration of faith. As a result of the hysteria stirred up by Trump, one by think that citizens were afraid that mere exposure to a significant element of that faith (one might compare it to the representation of the cross in Christianity) might turn their children into terrorists. Sober-minded students of the life and practices of Adolf Hitler know that creating a mass feeling of fear is often the key to winning popular support; and Augusta County seems to provided a powerful data point in support of this proposition. Indeed, according to the report on the Al Jazeera Web site, the school decided to close early for the Christmas break after receiving threats of violence.

Perhaps we should credit Trump for knowing more about Islamic terrorist strategies than we might have guessed, since there seems to be a clear parallel in his strategy for winning the American public to his cause.

Is ISIS a Product of the Failed Arab Spring?

I can appreciate the decision of the author of "The Mystery of ISIS," scheduled for the next issue of The New York Review of Books and currently available on their Web site, to remain anonymous. The article is rich with both historical background and analysis, yet it never draws any conclusions as to why ISIS should be recruiting so many followers on such a broad international scale. I would like to suggest that the author may have overlooked the role that may have been played by the Arab Spring, not so much in terms of any immediate impact that happened, fizzled, or backfired but with regard to the motivating forces behind protest. Those forces had so much in common that, as I observed in August of 2011, they could be found in Israel as well as its many Arab neighbors.

The writer that seems to have been most aware of those forces was Fareed Zakaria, whose analysis on the Time.com Web site argued that those who gathered in Tahrir Square were there because, regardless of how much education or training they had, they could not see a future for themselves in Egypt as it was in early 2011. Indeed, such a social context would suggest that the Arab Spring inspired not only Israeli youth but also the subsequent Occupy movement. Perhaps the most important consequence of globalization is that, practically everywhere in the world, there is now a generation of educated young people who see absolutely no prospects for a viable future. That future has been withheld from them by the tyrannical forces of an "economic elite," the top 1% of the tope 1%, if you will, that understands the world only in terms of balance sheets and returns on investment.

In any individual country this would be a desperate situation. On a global scale it is an invitation to catastrophe. Through skillful manipulation of the "consciousness industry," surpassing that of both the Nazis and the economic elite, ISIS has been able to circulate its message to those who feel, rightfully so, that there is nothing they can do to bring any satisfaction into their lives. Moralists can wax indignantly that ISIS should try to deceive so many vulnerable individuals, but do they give any thought as to why those individuals were so vulnerable in the first place?

Think about it. Through globalization the economic elite has create a world in which even the basic premises behind governance have gone onto the rocks, smashed by the domination of marketing over legislation and jurisprudence. "Rational man" may be justified in declaring that the efforts of ISIS to burn down the whole house and replace it with their caliphate are "barbaric;" but are they any more barbaric than they ways in which the "wise men [sic] of Davos" have all but obliterated the middle class in any economic society? The world may ultimately be divided between those who waste away out of their own helplessness and those who rally to ISIS for the simple reason that they have nothing better to do with themselves.

Clash of the Idiots

Gary Wills had a great post on NYRblog yesterday. The title was "Holy Ignorance," which he appropriated from Olivier Roy, a French anthropologist who specialized in studying belief systems. The basic argument is that fundamentalists are immune to argument based on reason. They see the use of logic to justify any with which they disagree as a test of the strength of their faith, which makes them hold to their beliefs with even greater strength. Wills wrote this in an analysis of the Pope’s decision to write an encyclical on climate change and its connection to selfishness. Almost immediately five Catholic Republicans who are part of the rush to candidacy in the next Presidential election denounced the Pope for knowing nothing about science, regardless of the fact that they knew even less (even collectively)! Clearly, Wills saw all five of them as evidence of “holy ignorance!”

What is interesting, however, is that a parallel line of argument can be developed about Muslim fundamentalists. This, in turn, may tell us something about what makes IS tick. While they are not necessarily grounded in Islam, their goal is to subvert all Western forms of government in their territory and replace it with a caliphate. This actually turns out to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand they are determined to reinstate a pre-Enlightment approach to governance based on little more than raw power. However, at the same time they know they can appeal to Muslim values to win others to their cause. Ironically, they do all this through some of the most sophisticated Internet advertising (yes, that is ultimately what it is) yet to be designed.

Perhaps the Pope should pay more attention to the book of Revelations. The prediction of the great war of Gog in the land of Magog could well involve Christian Fundamentalists in battle with Muslim Fundamentalists (hence the inspiration for my own choice of title for this post)! That is quite a change from the early nineteenth-denture hasidim, who thought Napoleon was Gog (worth remembering on this anniversary of Waterloo)!

Keeping the Faith No Longer

The BBC News Web site just posted an article based on a rather interesting finding:

Pew Research Center found that 71% of Americans identified as Christian in 2014 - down from 78% in 2007.

Statistically, that amounts to a pretty significant drop; and it will be interesting to see what sorts of hypotheses are launched to explain the shift. We have a long history of viewing our country as a secular one dedicated to the separation of church and state. However, in this new century fundamentalist Christianity seems to be playing a greater role in politics. Thus, it may be that those who previously embraced Christianity are put off by extremist fringes, possibly even seeing little difference between them and Jewish or Muslim extremists. In other words, where the fellowship of Christianity once provided a "quiet place" where an individual could take stock of his/her values within a sympathetic community, that "place" has now become unduly "noisy," meaning that, as a "social world" it is not that different from Facebook or Twitter. I have been living comfortably with my own atheism for over 40 years, so I am probably not the best source of hypotheses. Still, I have to wonder if this is yet another case of "voting against," rather than "voting for," in which case it may be a sign of an increasing loss of any value system, secular or sacred.

Ignorance of History Strikes Again

Given our country's track record of dealing with apocalyptic Christian extremist cults, particularly on our own soil, our failure to understand what Malise Ruthven called the "Lure of the Caliphate" on her recent NYRBlog post and the power it exerts in both pursuing its vision and recruiting others for assistance is nothing short of catastrophic myopia.

Being a Jew Today

I was glad to see that the DC Dispatches blog for Al Jazeera English ran a post about the fact that the protesters in the anti-Netanyahu rally outside AIPAC, where he was giving his speech, included Jews. I also appreciated that the unnamed author post took the time to interview Jews that were inside listening to Benjamin Netanyahu's speech. One of them was Rabbi Eric Solomon of the Beth Meyer Synagogue in North Carolina. One particular quote from Solomon, however, stuck in my craw: "to be a Jew today - an active, proud Jew - means to be a Zionist."

I have never been a serious practitioner of Judaism. Indeed, I have been calling myself an atheist for several decades. However, since I was born Jewish, I think I have learned a thing or two about what it means "to be a Jew;" and my disagreement with Solomon may be representative of why I no longer with to have anything to do with any organized religion. The bottom line is that "to be a Jew" comes down to living by the precepts of the Old Testament; and, if one is very serious about this, one will take into account the considerable lore of how the text should be interpreted, involving the observations of rabbis going all the way back to the Babylonian Captivity.

Now I suppose that being a Zionist may involve accepting the text from Genesis citing the extent of the land that God granted to Abraham. However, much of the Old Testament involves that old adage, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away." Over the historical period covered by the Old Testament, land was gained, and land was lost. Furthermore, there are Old Testament stories that illustrate that battles lost often had to do with God punishing the Israelites for their pride. Apparently, these are portions that Solomon does not spend much time (if any) reading.

As a result, I side with the protestors on the outside, who collectively probably know more about Judaism than all of the AIPAC members on the inside.

Live Long and Prosper

I remember Leonard Nimoy giving an interview on Public Television at which he talked about the hand sign used in Vulcan greeting. He remembered it from synagogue, where it was used for the Priestly Benediction of the congregation. He neglected to mention that only the kohanim (members of the priestly caste) were allowed to make the sign (something that my father taught me). However, whatever the traditions of Orthodox Judaism may be, I later found the same hand sign as part of a warm up exercise in a book about typewriter skills!

The Many Faces of Martyrdom

Last Friday I felt it necessary to recognize BBC World Service Radio as one of the few sources willing to acknowledge the complex relationship between free speech and hate speech. In the wake of all of the demonstrations that took place over the weekend (including here in my home town of San Francisco), I have to say that the cool voice of BBC reason seems to have taken a permanent back seat to righteous indignation. However, I use that adjective "righteous" precisely for its religious connotations.

Several sources have now shown an interview with one of the Charlie Hebdo casualties in which he said explicitly that he would not be surprised if he ended up dying as a consequence of his determination to exercise free speech in the cause of biting satire. Had such words been uttered by a Muslim fundamentalist, we would dismiss it as a fanatical embrace of martyrdom; but is Charlie Hebdo any the less fanatical just because it is a secular publication that, for all intents and purposes, lives by the creed that nothing is sacred, whether it involves religious, governmental, or any other establishments? The amount of blood spilled as a consequence of the exercise of free speech by Charlie Hebdo is relatively small in comparison with the lives lost on 9/11, but both incidents seem to share a paralysis of reason on the part of those determined to write analysis in the wake of the catastrophic turn of events. Actually, when one takes into account the many dimensions of mindlessness induced by not only the Internet but also a mass media industry dominated more by consumerism than by any drive to inform, it would be fair to say that paralysis set in a long time ago. It just takes mass tragedies to bring it into the foreground, where, as in Jean-Paul Sartre's play The Flies, we have our official rites of mourning before going back to business (perhaps that should be capitalized) as usual.

Chasing the (sort of) Money-Lenders out of the (sort of) Temple

What may be the most interesting news of the day seems to have only appeared on Al Jazeera English (by way of Associated Press) thus far. Pope Francis has dismissed all Italian members of the Financial Information Authority, the oversight body for the Vatican's financial activities. All of them had been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI. One Italian will be among the replacements, The others will be from Singapore, Switzerland (a new kind of Swiss Guard?), and the United States. The analogy with Jesus' encounters with the money-lenders in the Temple is irresistible, but then Jesus would not have known about Swiss banks!

Jeff Madrick's Latest Take on Why Economic Recovery is a Myth

Jeff Madrick's latest NYRBlog post tries to look beyond the usual cant about the uneven distribution of wealth in an effort to tease out why any suggestion of economic recovery cannot, at least at present, be anything other than an illusion. Here is the crux of his punch line:

Inequality has traditionally meant that incomes at the top grow faster than the next category down, which in turn grow faster than the next category, and so on. All categories can grow to some extent. As has been apparent to economists for several years, however, this is no longer the case. We now have stagnating incomes for a large majority of Americans and runaway incomes at the very top—especially the top tenth of the top one percent. This is not so much “inequality” as a complete lack of growth for much of the country.

To this should be added the corollary that the elite "top tenth of the top one percent" have not achieved that status through economic growth. The "creation of wealth" through elaborate processes of exchange, many of which involve computational instruments whose workings are poorly understood (even by those who profit the most by them), has nothing to do with economic growth. To paraphrase a proposition posed by Robert Skidelsky, those who make money no longer have to worry about "real-world" matters like making things.

Unfortunately, this narrow elite of money-makers now have enough of the stuff that they can exert those controls of government through which they can continue their practices unimpeded. The Occupy movement tried to bring this state of affairs to our attention. Unfortunately, being informed about it did not lead to the problem being resolved. This is due, at least in part, to the fact that, while the rest of us may have the power of the ballot box, the votes of ordinary citizens simply cannot stand up to the support of the moneyed elite. Nor will logic prevail. Because those with wealth realize that they can maintain and grow their status simply by tweaking software, the idea that they may be snuffing out an entire country of potential consumers no longer signifies.

Throughout history many countries have perished through the irrational embrace of religious beliefs; the fate of our own country may follow a similar path, not through religion but through an intense obsession with a pernicious secular myth.

The Motive behind the Manuscript

Yesterday I used my national site on Examiner.com to write about Marie et Marion, the latest recording by Anonymous 4 on harmonia mundi to perform music from the Montpellier Codex. Taking my musicology studies seriously, I took issue with the fact that the Wikipedia entry for this manuscript described the music it contains as having been "composed." Those who have been following my posts on this site know that I have been fascinated with the fact that the very concept of "composing" did not exist (at least in any recognizable form) in the thirteenth century and only began to emerge in the sixteenth (which also happened to be century in which the printing of music emerged). More proper descriptions of the activities of the Montpellier monks would be that they were "compiling" or "documenting" music that was being "made in the field" (or in a more ecclesiastical setting), rather the way Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály did on their ethnomusicological adventures.

On the other hand, it would probably be fair to say that those monks did not see themselves as ethnomusicologists. If that was, indeed, the case, then why did they go to so much trouble? As one who is particularly interested in motivated action, I found myself asking just what motivated them to do this task. The simplest answer is that just about anything that any monk did was done "for the greater glory of God" (or words to that effect). While this may have been the primary motivation, it is worth observing that there is a fair amount of secular material in the codex, particularly on the subject of courtly love (thus accounting for "Marion" in the title of the new Anonymous 4 recording). Did the monks include this material, perhaps covertly, for the sake of a "guilty pleasure?"

That is certainly one possibility. Another is that they anticipated a remark that Martin Luther would make when he was compiling his own hymn book a few centuries later. He had no trouble appropriating secular tunes to go with the words of his hymns, and Albert Schweitzer's biography of Johann Sebastian Bach even goes so far as to claim that he was known to observe that the Devil cannot have all of the good tunes to himself! One could imagine the monks of Montpellier feeling the same way. They may not have ever said such a thing to anyone, but they still could have believed it!

The Inadequate Scholarship of Reza Aslan

I recently started reading Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Reza Aslan. It is one of those books that I had wanted to get around to reading, particularly after having seen the San Francisco Opera production of Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. There may be weaknesses in the historical record for events in the Middle East in the first century, but it is hard not to be fascinated with that period.

I was quickly impressed by Aslan's talent as a storyteller. He is particularly good as establishing context for the events he wishes to describe. Much of his language goes into providing the reader with a sense of place, whether the place is in the Temple in Jersusalem or backwater Nazareth. Nevertheless, since I do a lot of scholarly reading, I have had a fair amount to trouble sorting out how much of his storytelling is grounded on authoritative sources and how much was created for the sake of literary impact.

Because he confines his notes to the end of the book as a series of paragraphs, rather than numbered items called out by specific phrases in the main text, his approach to establishing authority never rises about the level of casual. This leads me to worry that it is more inadequate than should be acceptable. Consider his description of the priests of the Jerusalem Temple. He devotes a rich paragraph to describing their elaborate attire, including the breastplate with twelve precious stones, one for each of the tribes of Israel. He then describes the urim and thummim as "a sort of sacred dice made of wood and bone that the high priest carries in a pouch near his breast and through which he reveals the will of God by casting lots."

His notes for the chapter in which his appears never cite a source for this. Since I had always held to the verse in Exodus that associates the urim and thummim with the breastplate, I have to say that I find the Wikipedia page a more useful source than Aslan. Indeed, even Aslan's concept of revelation is a bit of an overstatement, since, if the use of the urim and thummim were used for any sort of divination, it apparently never involved anything other that establishing guilt or innocence.

Zealot tells a good story. Most likely it is a synthesis of other stories, perhaps with a bit of inference added. I happen to be one of those readers who likes to know which "men behind the curtain" played a role in the creation of this story!

Once Again, Technology Evangelists Miss the Point

This morning Amanda Kooser used her Crave blog on CNET to post a poll on whether or not Bitcoin should be banned. This provided me with yet another example of how those acolytes of anarchy, who serve at the altar of the Internet, never seem to get the point when any question of governance arises. Usually, I am content to observe that the concept of governance is simply alien to the Internet community, even when the issue at stake involves death threats to one of its own.

Because "Internet fidelity" imposes blinders that limit view to only the most objectively technical issues, those acolytes have never really grasped the fact that currency systems are all "fictions of convenience." Thus, to maintain the acolyte metaphor, the very act of attributing a value of a currency amounts to an article of faith. I would modestly propose that one of the functions of government is to impose some set of constraints based on rationality to limit the damage brought on by the irrationality of faith.

In less explosive language this amounts to saying that matters of regulation and oversight should be the responsibility of some form of governmental authority. As long as the Internet is run by those who question the authority of any form of governance, abuses such as those of the recent Bitcoin episode will continue to occur, since there are no regulations to check them nor any body of oversight to implement the checking. I realize that, from this point of view, this makes the Internet sound like a lemming headed for a cliff. On the other hand, when we consider how many of today's crises may be attributed to failures of governments to do their jobs in a manner that will earn the consent of the governed, we can appreciate why a preference for anarchy among the acolytes will endure. Bitcoin may not be the cliff that kills the lemming, but we should recognize that it has the potential to do so.

Damn the Consequences! Full Innovation Ahead!

Sacred Heart Cathedral Preparatory is a school located only a few blocks north from where I live in San Francisco. I usually do not give it much thought, expect when I see a basketball game going on in the building when I am walking over to St. Mark's Lutheran Church for a concert. This afternoon, however, I noticed that they have attached a banner to a lamppost that I can see from my bedroom window. I am used to this "advertising space" being used by performing arts organizations, such as the New Century Chamber Orchestra, or museums.

Beyond the fact that it was a parochial school doing the advertising, I found the nature of the advertising itself more than a little curious. I had to do some Google searching to figure out that the key phrase on the banner, "Fearless We Pursue," came from the school's Alma Mater:

Hail Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep
Green, White and Blue
Unity proclaimed
Fearless we pursue
Untold strength will be our guide
Irish brave and true!

However, underneath that "Fearless We Pusue" phrase was a word nowhere to be found in the Alma Mater (reproduced in capital letters as it appeared on the banner):

INNOVATION

I was a little amused that a parochial school had decided to exchange innovation Kool-Aid for communion wine. Perhaps this was the school's way of saying that it was preparing its students to follow the yellow-brick road that leads to Silicon Valley, even if that is a world of smoke-and-mirrors wizardry (which, presumably, is still frowned upon by the Catholic Church) or, in a more positive light, the world Galileo (who was at least fortunate enough to be posthumously pardoned of the crime of heresy).

I am used to things being more than a little odd in this city. I would even say that such oddities provide one of the reasons why I like to live here. However, I still feel a need to draw the line when they get downright zany!

Taking Apart Specious Republican Reasoning (with help from St. Paul)

Gary Wills can always be counted on to bring to light the faulty logic behind the would-be truths of Republican pundits. In the latest issue of The New York Review, the pundit in question is Joe Scarborough. Not only does Wills take apart all of Scarborough's key points, but also he sets up his own three primary factors behind Republican policy. Taking Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians has his guide, Wills itemizes these as race, religion (not to be confused with faith), and money. Beyond irony that money holds the place that Paul set aside for love (or charity), Wills emphasizes the ordering by explicitly calling money "the greatest of these." There is nothing like enlisting the New Testament for a reality check!

Remember the Man, not the Icon

I found it interesting that both the Associated Press (in an article that appeared on the ABC7 News Web site) and the San Francisco Chronicle invoked the noun "icon" in reporting the death of Nelson Mandela, the latter drawing upon what may have been the largest font size the could muster. As one who has probably spent more time studying semiotics that was good for me, I have to say that I am acutely sensitive to the danger of confusing the signifier with the signified. In our own country we have often tended to allow our knowledge of the actions taken by Martin Luther King to be displaced by undue attention to the image. Earlier generations would have called this idol-worship; and, in many religious practices, "icon" is a working synonym (or, perhaps, a euphemism) for "idol." My guess is that Mandela staunchly resisted all forms of idolatry, whether they had to do with faith, politics, or simply deciding to follow a leader. As a result, he became a model for the philosophy of leading by your own actions; and I hope that at least a few of the ensuing memorial pieces will place those actions at the focal point they deserve.