Commented at Althouse about the court case over slavery reparations. Strawman needed to put why he needed to repent right in front of himself for the High Holydays; yours truly was ever helpful. Annika is telling a tough story about the Virginia National Guard running away from the contractors they are 'protecting.' I was listening to ESPN sports, being interested in TO's psychiatric condtion or reaction thereto; it really is sobering that you can be so rich and (possibly) suicidal and was really excited to hear that 'Gagdad Bob' was coming on. Unfortunately it wasn't that Gadad Bob, a psychologist who brings you, for instance, 'parallel looniverses.'

Jim Treacher has an obscenely funny take on the current Muslim imroglio.

Mark 8:31-38 and today's Roman Catholic readings

Alcibiades at Keshertalk has an interesting reflection on the Pope's controversial remarks. The link includes the thrust of my commentary as well. My reverence for the Cistercian who gave, as in my experience they always do, such wonderful explanations and correlations with the text of today's Gospel. An English portrait painter, ? Turner, said that a portrait was a 'picture with a little something wrong about the mouth.' Only when you have a great exposition do small minds have the luxury of making small, delightful rearrangements. The monk's byway into who is Satan was most transcendental. He told the story of Job from the standpoint of seeing Satan as a passive-aggressive servant of God. God is pleased with Job's faithfulness. Satan tells Him, 'Of course he is faithful. He is the richest man there (he appreciates his reward). Make him poor.. Make him sick and ill..' And yet Job said, 'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed is the name of the Lord.'

The Garden of Eden story, further referenced by the monk, strikes me as Satan in a different category. The allegory of Satan's telling Eve that if she eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil she will be like God as a temptation to be bad in only a 'hood sense. It seems to me the development of the human, the growth of her brain as it is given in this story, is really one of making a cathexis for something desirable. In this case our advancement more clearly leads us to know the mind of the other. But, like, for example, marriage, it has its own complications which one has committed oneself to. My favorite story of my psychiatry professor, Dr. DeLoache, was his joking that the Church had it's priests be celibate because it knew 'how many souls for hell marriage produced.'

And finally, James 2: 14-18, for me informs us, as physicians, that to merely bask in the idealism of our profession, and not to seek out the subtleties in our patients and the IOM report on Gulf War Syndrome is to fail in not having works to go with our belief.

"You go fuck yourself. I say what I want." Oriana Fallaci now dead. Now we have intellectual, German Huckleberry Finn adding a historical perspective. Even religious or theological, mon Dieu. Muslim rage may not be seen its usual flatttering perspective. Note the complaint that this is the second time in 2 years something has happened before Ramadan as if the reflections of infidels should conform to its schedule. Nevertheless, what the Pope says, "..violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," is softly beautiful. Crusaders (what the jihadists call us mockingly), go with God and with sweet reason.

Update:
The entire text of the Pope's remarks are here early in comments. I think it interesting that we touched on the Pope's themes and a time and place in history he references recently in Keshertalk.

Psst! Crusader

I had been wondering how big the contradiction was going to be. Early on almost no Ameicans were being killed in Afghanistan. I don't know if Pat Tillman could've got down and talked on a radio when the separated company came together again, but I digress. Afghans grow poppies for heroin. War # c is the 'War on Drugs.' 'Bad drugs hide in your hole.' 'Shoot drugs,' er, no. I wondered how long the Afghans were going to be so happy the Taliban weren't around that they forgot to eat. Apparently, there getting hungry and kids are starving in refugee camps and 'ourcapitalismisbasedonCalvinismandCalvanismis based onbeing partof the electanddoingrighthinkingthingsdrugtakings
notincluded.soyoucan'tsellit' is losing a lot, to be honest, in translation into Arabic. A politically conservative source says an open market could use their production for legal pain medications. Market closed; 'bad drugs' iterum iterumque as the Latins used to say. I think Suboxone could help blunt even the problem of drug abuse. Of course if you're a good Calvinist aside from pain medicine it would be compost anyway. I make a big distinction between being opposed to decapitating someone and allowing them to sell something there is a market for. I also think if you want to be intrusive, you need to be intrusive about use, not possession. Hat tip: The discerning Texan.

He 'plays it by ear.'

Ann Althouse has been laying it down on 'The Path to 9/11.' My Jones of Dallas acquaintance took me to a trendy bar years ago. I went back a couple of months later, went to the bar to get a Black Russian, and the bartender told me the guy leaning on the bar facing me was 'Art Garfunkel.' Feeling as oblivious generally to popular music as the seasons, not being a farmer 'machts nicht,' I said something like half knowing but not wanting to commit myself about what he was up to, to which he told me, he "played it by ear." His 'Joe DiMaggio' bit had led to the isolative Joe asking a lawyer to look into whether or not he was being slandered and a marketing firm finding there was residual affection for him which led to a nice advertising career. Joe DiMaggio came to Dallas in the forties, went with a local girl to have dinner at her parent's house, a story I hear some 55 years later. Anyway, I wish Art would 'play this one by ear.'

Mario Savio said at the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964, in the action that restarted leftism in America, "unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! [Prolonged applause.] " Now the left, as exemplified by Ned Lamont this week, is for what he had considered adultery before. Further as an earlier commenter (on Ann's blog) elegantly pointed out, the left found 'sexual harassment' and brought us right thinking on that before there was 'just a private sexual life (as a fruit of official finagling).' It was the hit your head in viewing it inveterate finagling of the Clintons' that really torched their opponents by the way. Now they're for yanking as a fruit of their free speech. You asked, 'Why there are no campus antiwar demonstrations?' How can you have a rally if you might not have the latest set of cue cards. Their poor little minds are going, "Now I know Bush = Hitler and Theresenstadt = Guantonomo = Gaza. But Mussolini might have liked the opera. Am I still against him? I was against the 'destruction of human flesh' but am for Roe. Do I wear panties (and if so why?)? Are their panties in a wad? How can I demonstrate? What if I have cue cards version 1.0? Where is Mario when I need him? Where have you gone Mario Savio?"

Drag injury yields safety concerns - Top Stories

Drag injury yields safety concerns - Top Stories.

This street is the main street from the University to a bookstore, places to eat, off campus housing. It is like Main Street in a small town. I guess it is a small town Texas name for a main street from the fities where people might cruise or even race. Sharon (nee) Pearson from Taylor, about 30 miles from Austin, told me they used to make a circuit of the town. VP Cheney's wife said once that her husband 'had more interests (and, by implication, a self confidence to distance himself from doing this) in the small town in Wyoming where they grew up. My sense that I didn't feel 'in' with the practice contributed to my delight at finding that the light at one of the few main intersections in Taylor had the green on top. Sharon felt, briefly, a little offset fom being in the right attitude wise.

Texas is not hospitable to bikes. I brought a clunky Schwinn to Austin my fourth year. Was yelled at 'Go back to England' by 3 brawns in a GTO or somesuch. Other personal conveyance? You may see a horseman. In the city, I have only seen the occasional Negro riding in a residential area with few side walks. On a city street, I have only seen a horse drawn flatbed cart (once) and that was in Chicago. California has bike lanes. I saw someone who told me she 'used to go everywhere on her bike' in a Dallas suburb. After about 2 years of this, she was run into by someone in a truck who injured her pelvis and left a small numb spot. She now 'knows the bus schedule.'

A leading psychiatrist, Wayne Fenton, was killed this weekend by a patient. Services occur at the synagagogue he attended. The main article on the blogosphere on this is at Shrink Rap, September 5. There are links to further articles at the end of that post.

A little fun

OK, I just sent in a manuscript, (letter really, covering material in my July 10th blog) which I am (anxiously, ? correctly) awaiting being (not really. How could it be?) trashed at the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry; so I'd like to have a little fun with the dominatrix fantasies over at the good Dr. Helen's. 'More than half of the reported sexual improprieties in prisons involve the female guards.' I'll leave you to go there seeing the anti(and pro)PC enthusiasm which starts off with the miscategorization of this as 'the committed' crimes with a few ,OK, relevant points of agreement in comments. I'd just like to point out, in related news, that Dallas is having a rash of bars having 'men's nights,' the men hopefully will come out with their buddies because they are afraid of all the submissive females that have barely (like that adjective do you, girl?) let them get to the bar. There may be some protection in a group approach. The quirkiness continues with water running uphill from the port of Galveston along with the Red snapper coming like salmon and jumping into fishermen's boats in our surrounding lakes. A couple of old fishermen have been heard to mutter, 'It aint sportin!' The 'H' organizations in the Middle East have confronted Olmert with their refusal to set off any more firecrackers even until each Israeli couple has 10 children each (Saudi Arabia is offering cash incentives to the couples); Kofi Anaan is angling for 12. Pope Bendict XVI went shopping for a new yarmulka with the chief Rabbi of Rome but is so at peace, in his little, conswervative German soul, now that the Rabbi said he can use his old one. Ahamadinehad, having a little trouble stepping out of character, threatened to wipe 'Rome off the map' if he isn't invited to a bar mitvah.