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In a 4-3 ruling this morning, the California Supreme Court overturned the state's ban on gay marriage on the grounds that domestic partnerships constitute a separate and unequal second-class status with regard to the option to marry that is afforded to opposite-gender partners. (The full opinion is available as a PDF file on the court's site.)
I'm still reading the opinion. I may have more to say later.
An administrator at the University of Toledo has been fired after writing a column for the Toledo Free Press in which she criticized gay-rights activists in a column last month. After the column appeared April 18, Crystal Dixon, the university's associate vice president for human resources, was placed on paid administrative leave. She has since received verbal notice from the university that she has been fired. According to Andy at Towleroad, Dixon plans to sue the university.
The controversy appears to center around the following passage from Dixon's column last month:
As a Black woman ... I take great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are civil rights victims. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. Daily thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle.
Predictably, the Christianists and the neocons are trying to paint this as an instance of liberal suppression of conservative free speech and infringement on First Amendment rights. I'm not buying it--about which more in a moment. For now, I'm going to take issue with Dixon's basic premise. If, as she avers (without producing a shred of evidence in support of the claim, naturally), "thousands of homosexuals" make a decision to stop being gay every day, whereas she can't just wake up some morning and decide not to be black, I'd like to ask Ms. Dixon how she can be so sure she isn't going to wake up some morning and decide to be a lesbian. I'd also love to ask her exactly when it was she "decided" she would be heterosexual.
Of course her premise is bogus--as anyone familiar with the literature on the genesis of homosexuality (to say nothing of the validity--or the success rates--of so-called "ex-gay" programs) should have been able to tell her. Whatever the ultimate cause of sexual orientation may be (and we really don't have a very good idea about it), it is universally acknowledged, by all except Christianists and other deluded folk, that a person's sexual orientation is more or less immutably fixed well before the age of five years. That hypothesis, I should point out, was first advanced by Sigmund Freud well over a century ago.
Now, let's talk about her firing. To claim that this is an attempt to suppress her freedom of speech is simply ludicrous. She was perfectly free to publish the opinion piece--but, as she of all people ought to know, actions have consequences. And her actions were irresponsible at best. When you are in charge of hiring and firing, you have to be extremely circumspect in what you say in public--especially when what you say makes it appear that you cannot be objective in certain situations. And given that the university's equal opportunity policy (PDF link) states, in pertinent part, that "...the university is committed to providing employment and educational opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, veteran status, the presence of a disability, familial status, political affiliation and participation in protected activities," Dixon had to have known (or should have) that she was on thin ice by appearing to call that policy into question--or at least casting doubt on her ability as one of the responsible university officials to administer it in an equitable fashion.
Dixon's indiscretion might have been pardonable if she were just a faculty member or a lower-level staffer. But when you rise to the level of the senior administration--as I have had plenty of opportunities to observe over the last decade, as my work has brought me into regular contact with people in analogous positions at my university--you really have to be very careful about what you say, to whom you say it, and in what contexts you say it. Dixon, apparently, forgot all of that very basic information--and is consequently out of a job. Her losing her job has, I imagine, very little to do with the fact that she thinks gay people are icky and shouldn't have the same rights and freedoms that she insists on as a black woman. She's got every right in the world to think that: and, as a private citizen at least, every right to publish her thoughts on the subject in any venue that will accept them.
But the important fact to keep in mind is that Ms. Dixon was not just a private citizen when she wrote that column last month. She was a very senior administrator, whose job responsibilities included seeing to it that the university lived up to and enforced all of its policies--including the one that says it will not, as a matter of principle, discriminate against people on the basis of their sexual orientation in hiring or academic matters. By publishing her derogatory remarks about gay rights and gay-rights activists, Dixon made it abundantly clear that she disagreed with the university in regard to that policy and, therefore, could no longer be trusted to act as a spokesperson for the university or, as an administrator, to uphold the policies of the institution in an even-handed manner. And if she can't be trusted to carry out either of those two functions, then there was really no reason to keep paying her a salary. The university might have chosen, if she had the appropriate academic credentials, to allow Dixon to step down from her administrative position and accept a teaching job in whatever department she held tenure. On the other hand, by standing up for the institution and its policies and refusing to allow Ms. Dixon to sow any further dissent on campus, her superiors were simply doing what she herself forgot to do--looking out for the university's best interests. If she's smart, she'll drop the lawsuit, as I seriously doubt it will go well for her.
But frankly, I'm sick to death of colonial history right now. So while I was taking a blogging break, I came across something interesting at Scott's Take: a new quiz that seems to be tied to some sort of lame campaign allegations about one of our two interchangeable Democratic candidates for president. It's called the Elitist Quiz.
According to my results, I'm a "book and language snob." While I object to the term "snob" and to several of the conclusions drawn, here's what it says about me:
You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every book ever published. You are a fountain of endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and never fail to impress at a party.What people love: You can answer almost any question people ask, and have thus been nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their grammar and insult their paperbacks.
I do speak (and write) eloquently--it's one of the reasons I'm good at what I do. And I think the fact that I've been invited to audition for Jeopardy! for a third time this summer speaks adequately to the amount of useless knowledge I have socked away in my head. Not so sure about impressing at parties, however, given that I'm really not that much of a party person.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, nicknamed "Jeeves." I do remember being taunted with the epithet "encyclopedia" in grammar school or some such, but that was aeons ago. I don't make a habit of insulting anyone's choice in reading material, even if it isn't one that I share. (Most of the time, I'm amazed to discover that people still read, given all the dire statistics one hears about the hordes of people who tell pollsters that they never pick up another book after they graduate from college.) And I typically only correct the grammar of (a) obnoxious gits on the internets or (b) people who pay me to do it so they don't have to.
I could just as easily have been a music or a wine and food snob, but books have always been my first love. Every dream house I've ever designed or even just imagined has featured a huge library--and even my current apartment has more books in it than anything else. I've had a running love affair with the printed word for four decades now--and I'm not planning on calling it quits anytime soon. Give me a stack of books to read and a quiet place in which to read them in reasonable comfort, and I'll be as happy as can be. I read in airports and on long trips when I'm not driving or carrying on a lengthy conversation with the driver or another passenger. I read constantly--in bed before going to sleep, while I'm eating (when eating alone), in the bathroom. Even while waiting in line, if I know ahead of time that I'm going to be waiting in one.
That's not to say I'm not picky about food and wine, or that I don't have a huge music collection. Both are true. My ancient 20GB iPod has more than 4,000 tracks on it--and I just downloaded another 45 or 50 this weekend (a couple more volumes of John Dowland's lute music, some of which I'm listening to now as I write this post), and I've probably got at least 200 CDs on shelves in my office or in my living room. As I was remarking to my mom the other day, I've got something like 13 cabinets in the kitchen of my apartment--and they're all full. Some, of course, contain foodstuffs and basic staples. But a lot of them contain dishes, cooking utensils, and other esoteric paraphernalia. According to her, the first word I ever said was "Hot," after I touched the stove when she was baking something--despite her having warned me repeatedly not to do so. I think I was all of three or four at the time. And I've been in the kitchen ever since I was old enough to see over the top of the stove. I don't cook much for myself that's fancy, largely because it's silly to make a big meal for one--because then you're either stuck eating the same leftovers for a week, or else you've got to have a huge freezer to store all that you don't eat the first time around. But boy, let me have people over or be invited to a party, and I'm digging into the recipe books or scouting around cooking sites on the intertubes.
Same thing with wine and spirits. I don't drink all that much myself--a glass or two of wine with my mom once a week, a few beers at the local watering hole with my fellow graduate students and some of our instructors once a week when I'm in a regular class and we can all go out afterward--and that's about it. On rare occasions when I'm celebrating something or feel a need for other reasons, I might have a glass of sherry or port, or a couple of fingers' worth of whiskey, or one beer at home. But I like to make sure that the sherry or port or whiskey or beer or wine (or whatever else I'm drinking) is something good. Life's too damn short for cheap booze. And one benefit of traveling, especially in France, is that you get to try a lot of good wines and local spirits. Of course, that comes at a price, given that it's usually next to impossible to find the same stuff on this side of the pond--and even more impossible to ship it back home without going through a licensed importer or distributor.
Does that make me an elitist? I really don't think so. Rather, I think it makes me someone who enjoys nice things, in moderation. I don't think my liking for fine wine and good food, or the fact that I've got a couple of thousand books on the shelves in my apartment, makes me any better than anybody else. But I categorically deny that it makes me any worse than anybody else, either. As the French say, chacun à son goût, to each his own taste. Personally, I can't gag down most American beer and wouldn't try even if the brewers paid me. But I don't think that gives me any kind of bragging rights over people who do prefer what I consider weak and tasteless substitutes for used dishwater. If that's what someone who's coming over to my house for a drink likes, I'll make sure I have some of it on hand. Just don't expect me to drink it--or to put down my Edmund Fitzgerald or my Jameson's.
One might have expected, given dwindling interest in joining the party associated with the Hedgemony and all of its colossal screwups over the last eight years, that the Republicans would be saying and doing as little as possible this election season that would remind voters of their existence. One might also have expected, given that their president has sunk to a new all-time low in the approval polls, that they would be doing whatever they could to play down any connection with the man or his policies.
But one would be wrong to do so. It appears that there are no depths of either degradation or irrelevancy which the Republicans will not plumb, nor heights of hypocrisy or flights of irrelevancy that they will not aspire to.
I refer, of course, to the latest displays of lame-duck petulancy put on by congressional Republicans as the Democrats begin the consideration of the defense appropriations bill. Given that the Republicans are wont to wax effusive in their praise of, and pathetically eager to demonstrate their support for, our troops, one would have thought they'd be falling all over themselves to get this bill passed. They're not happy, though, that while the Democrats are giving them the money their president asked for to continue his pointless war in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're also attaching strings to that money, in the form of requirements to begin withdrawing our forces from Iraq and Afghanistan next year, and also increased allocations for benefits under the G.I. Bill for our returning veterans. And since this may well be the only appropriations bill that gets passed while the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer is still in office, it's also been loaded up with other items that are high on the Democrats' priority list, such as increased unemployment benefits.
But Republicans have been dragging their feet, instead. As reported on Morning Edition this morning, the Republicans in the House of Representatives called no fewer than 28 roll call votes yesterday, in an effort to forestall consideration of the bill to continue funding for the war--including two (nos. 274 and 275) on the supremely important question of "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mothers Day." Their reason? They're upset at being excluded from the process of drawing up the bill.
Continue reading "Stupid Republican tricks make a comeback" »
As thick snowflakes fall outside, I'm wondering what the roads are going to be like tomorrow morning, when I'm up at the crack of dawn and on the road westward. I'm going away for a well-deserved retreat, Tuesday through Friday. I won't have computer, e-mail, or phone access during that time, so obviously there won't be any postings here until I get back, sometime on Friday afternoon/evening.
We're not even four complete months in to 2008 and already I'm ready either to start all over again or else skip to the end of this crappy year in the hopes that something better lies at the end of it than anything I've encountered thus far at the starting end.
Tragedy struck the NIU community again today, when the glassblower for the chemistry department (where I worked for twelve years before starting my current job) was killed, and his wife seriously injured, in an accident on their way to work this morning. She had to be airlifted to the regional trauma center in Rockford and undergo major surgery, but is expected to survive. He, on the other hand, was in such bad shape that they didn't dare try to airlift him out. He was due to retire in another couple of months, and was so looking forward to building his retirement home in Wisconsin, and enjoying the fishing on his property in the Ozarks. I literally spoke to him yesterday morning, when he told me how hard he was finding it to get motivated to come in to work in the mornings, knowing that his time was short and retirement was beckoning. Now he won't get the chance to enjoy any of that.
We've had two bomb scares in as many weeks, and there's all the usual end-of-semester stress to contend with as well. Small wonder many of us are wandering around in a quasi-daze, wishing the world would stop moving quite so erratically so we could figure out the pattern, account for it, and get back to doing whatever it was we were doing before all this mess got started.
The news in the wider world isn't much better. Food riots and shortages around the world, the dollar plunging to all-time lows against major world currencies, the price of oil and the price of gold are at or near record highs, and the world seems well and truly hellbound in a handbasket. The Democratic presidential candidates are engaging in an inter-gender pissing match, neither one willing to compromise with the other. Meanwhile, John McSame is consolidating his base and pulling even with both Democratic contenders in recent national polling. There was apparently some kerfuffle last week about the latest in the seemingly endless series of presidential "debates" between Obama and not-quite-Obama--as if such events hadn't been little more than televised campaign advertisements for lo! these many years.
Speaking personally, I couldn't possibly care less about what Clinton said about Obama, or what Obama said about Clinton, or about who either one of them is friends with. All I want is for one or the other of them to get the nod, and then to get on with the business of beating the pants off of McSame: preferably out of my sight and/or hearing, since voting for either Clinton or Obama will require a huge amount of nose-holding and gnashing of teeth on my part, and voting for McSame is absolutely not an option. I'm sick to death of hearing endless repetitions of the same horse-race stories where the only thing that changes is who happens to be ahead at any given moment. I'm also sick to death of the presidential campaign season, which has been dragging on for the last two years at least: clearly, we need to move in the direction of the European model, where candidates have weeks, rather than months or years, to make their case to the voters.
Fortunately for my sanity (and quite possibly for my health as well), by this time next week I'll be ensconced in the deep silence of a secluded monastery, making a four-day retreat. I'll be away from the phone, away from the computer, away from the radio, away from all the political and other bullshit. Just me, a lot of silence, a lot of seclusion, and plenty of time for prayer and thought and reflection. Maybe, please God, that will get my batteries enough of a charge back that I can make it through the rest of the year without going completely 'round the bend.
Oh, yeah. The post title. It's a line from an early chorus in Aeschylus's Agamemnon. It translates to "Sorrow, sing sorrow; but let the good prevail." That's going to be one of my prayer mantras next week, I think.
I am beginning to feel distinctly less insulated from the messy world that we here in this formerly sleepy town used to think of as "out there." Barely two months after a young man shot up a campus lecture, killing five and wounding many more before taking his own life, a year and a day after another young man shot up the Virginia Tech campus, killing 32 and wounding dozens more, now NIU campus police are investigating a bomb threat at the university health center building.
What in hell is this world coming to?
The post title isn't an exact quote (because it would've been damn hard taking notes while trying to hold a lit candle (and, more importantly, given the windy conditions this evening, keeping it lit) from the remarks of NIU President John G. Peters at tonight's candlelight vigil at Northern Illinois University to honor the memory of the Hokies who lost their lives a year ago today. But they're a close approximation: I know he used both phrases in his speech, though I can't swear that they were that closely connected. Nevertheless, it's a good description for the relationship that will forevermore exist between our two campuses, our two communities.
We're both members of a club that nobody wants to join--and would to God that NIU and Virginia Tech were the last two ever given the opportunity to join it. We speak each other's language: a language that neither of us was looking to learn, and one that both of us would rather we hadn't had the opportunity to learn at all. But we have learned it, and having learnt it, we cannot--and should not--forget it.
The image is the design of the T-shirts that were handed out to the first 900 people who came to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commons. I'm happy to report that there weren't any shirts left that I could see, meaning we had at least that many people at the event.
Among them, God love them both, were two Virginia Tech students. They gave up the opportunity to be with their compatriots in Blacksburg at their own vigil today so they could come and support us--even as we tried to show our support for them and their fellow Hokies. Their presence is just the latest in a long line of expressions of support that Virginia Tech and its campus community have offered to us in the wake of our own tragedy two months ago--support for which we are eternally and profoundly grateful, and which we can never truly repay. Somehow, though, I don't think my Hokie brethren and sistren will mind.
Tonight's vigil was a concrete and physical reminder of a spiritual reality that my faith tradition has taught for centuries: that we are all one body, one family--and our destiny is to help one another along the road we each must travel from cradle to grave. Yes, Virginia, you are your brother's keeper--as I am yours. Or, as Jesus told his disciples in Matthew's Gospel:
Ὅταν δὲ ἔλθῃ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῇ δόξῃ αὐτοῦ καὶ πάντες οἱ ἄγγελοι μετ' αὐτοῦ, τότε καθίσει ἐπὶ θρόνου δόξης αὐτοῦ· καὶ συναχθήσονται ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, καὶ ἀφορίσει αὐτοὺς ἀπ' ἀλλήλων, ὥσπερ ὁ ποιμὴν ἀφορίζει τὰ πρόβατα ἀπὸ τῶν ἐρίφων, καὶ στήσει τὰ μὲν πρόβατα ἐκ δεξιῶν αὐτοῦ, τὰ δὲ ἐρίφια ἐξ εὐωνύμων. τότε ἐρεῖ ὁ βασιλεὺς τοῖς ἐκ δεξιῶν αὐτοῦ· δεῦτε οἱ εὐλογημένοι τοῦ πατρός μου, κληρονομήσατε τὴν ἡτοιμασμένην ὑμῖν βασιλείαν ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου. ἐπείνασα γὰρ καὶ ἐδώκατέ μοι φαγεῖν, ἐδίψησα καὶ ἐποτίσατέ με, ξένος ἤμην καὶ συνηγάγετέ με, γυμνὸς καὶ περιεβάλετέ με, ἠσθένησα καὶ ἐπεσκέψασθέ με, ἐν φυλακῇ ἤμην καὶ ἤλθατε πρός με. τότε ἀποκριθήσονται αὐτῷ οἱ δίκαιοι λέγοντες· κύριε, πότε σε εἴδομεν πεινῶντα καὶ ἐθρέψαμεν, ἢ διψῶντα καὶ ἐποτίσαμεν; πότε δέ σε εἴδομεν ξένον καὶ συνηγάγομεν, ἢ γυμνὸν καὶ περιεβάλομεν; πότε δέ σε εἴδομεν ἀσθενοῦντα ἢ ἐν φυλακῇ καὶ ἤλθομεν πρός σε; καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐρεῖ αὐτοῖς· ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ἐφ' ὅσον ἐποιήσατε ἑνὶ τούτων τῶν ἐλαχίστων, ἐμοὶ ἐποιήσατε.Whenever the Son of Man may come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon the throne of his glory: and all the nations will be gathered together in his presence, and he shall divide them one from another just as a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep upon his right hand, and the goats upon his left. Then will the Ruler say to those upon his right: "Come here, you who are blessed of my Father; inherit the realm that was prepared for you before the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; thirsty, and you gave me to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked, and you clothed me. I was ill and you looked after me, in prison, and you came to me."
Then the just will reply to him, saying: "Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?"
And the Ruler will say to them in answer, "Amen I tell you, as often as you did it for one of these the least of my brothers or my sisters, you did it for me."
--Matthew 25:31-40, my translation from the original Greek
The campus community of Virginia Tech has lived out that Gospel pericope. Tonight's vigil was one small downpayment on NIU's attempt to do so. It will not be the last, I'm sure. Nor should it be.
I realize that castigating the so-called "traditional media" for their tendency to over-generalize and their seeming inability to grasp (or at least to report) anything more subtle than, say, a Maxim ad or a celebrity mishap is rapidly becoming so commonplace as to be clichéd. But after spending most of the early morning either getting ready for work or driving thereto, while listening to the folks at National Public Radio attempt to portray George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI as best friends forever without a hair's breadth of difference between their moral stances, I simply can't sit back and hold my tongue. This kind of garbage is especially galling given the fact that the people who were trying to tell me Bush's values and Benedict's are all but identical this morning are exactly the same folks who spent all of last week telling us how much better at this reporting thing they are than all those other folks at commercial radio stations, in the second installment of their annual beg-fest. If today is any example, they really ought to consider revisiting and revising their scripts for pledge week.
As even NPR admitted, Bush is officially a Methodist. Benedict, obviously, is Catholic. That simple affiliational fact means there are substantial differences between the two men on many significant areas of belief. (Not least of which, naturally, is the precise role of the guy who, like Benedict at present, sits upon the Throne of Peter.)
It is certainly true that Benedict is a theological conservative, just as his predecessor was. Not, as NPR correctly reported this morning, as theologically conservative as either the liberals in the Church feared or the conservatives would have liked, but still far closer to the conservative end of the spectrum than toward the liberal end, or even to the middle of the road. Bush, too, is alleged to be a conservative--though the conservatives in this country seem to be in the process of rethinking that claim. But really, when you get right down to it, that's about the extent of the similarity between his positions and those of His Holiness. Both oppose abortion, and both oppose gay marriage. Both seem to feel that there is a "faithful remnant," variously defined, that is under siege by malevolent forces in the culture at large.
All that said, however, the two men's positions start to diverge--and diverge quite quickly and quite radically. As governor of Texas, the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer signed the death warrants for more than 150 people during his six years in that office--or around 25 executions per year. While the Catholic Church does not explicitly forbid the use of capital punishment, it teaches that the state "...ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent" (John Paul II, encyclical letter Evangelium vitae, 25 March 1995, no. 56).
Or how about Bush's pet war in Iraq? It is difficult to see how it meets any of the conditions for a "legitimate defense by military force" laid out in Section 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, much less all of them, as required:
And while the prayer of His Holiness on Sunday at Ground Zero in New York is almost certainly primarily directed toward those responsible for carrying out the acts that caused the "incredible violence and pain" he addresses in the opening of that prayer, its conclusion seems equally apposite in response to the Hedgemony's seemingly endless global war on whatever it is we're at war with this week:
God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world:
peace in the hearts of all men and women
and peace among the nations of the earth.
Turn to your way of love
those whose hearts and minds
are consumed with hatred.God of understanding,
overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy,
we seek your light and guidance
as we confront such terrible events.
Grant that those whose lives were spared
may live so that the lives lost here
may not have been lost in vain.
Comfort and console us,
strengthen us in hope,
and give us the wisdom and courage
to work tirelessly for a world
where true peace and love reign
among nations and in the hearts of all.
It is also not difficult to read between the lines of the schedule and discern a certain, shall we say, diplomatic unease on the part of the Holy Father at being in the presence of the Boy Who Won't Be King Much Longer. The official welcome at Andrews Air Force Base was to last no more than 15 minutes according to the official schedule of the visit on the Vatican's web site. Pope Benedict will not be staying at the White House during his time in Washington; instead, he will stay at the residence of the Apostolic Nuncio, the Vatican's diplomatic representative in the United States. Tomorrow, His Holiness will go to the White House mid-morning for a formal welcoming, which is to be followed by a 90-minute "courtesy visit" (a private audience in everything but name) in the Oval Office. He isn't staying for lunch, and while the White House plans a Bavarian-themed dinner tomorrow evening in honor of the pope's 81st birthday, the pope won't actually be there: he'll be celebrating Evening Prayer (Vespers) at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception with the U.S. Catholic bishops. He goes nowhere near the White House all day on Thursday, nor does he visit again before taking his leave on Friday morning and flying to New York to address the U.N. General Assembly.
As His Holiness is making that address, the White House is planning to ask John McCain and a bunch of other Republican flunkies in, at what it is pleased to call the National "Catholic" Prayer Breakfast. Their definition of "Catholic," however, leaves quite a bit to be desired, given that in the minds of the president, the White House, and the people organizing this affair, "Catholic" appears to be synonymous with "Republican." The trouble with that, however, is that the word "catholic" means "universal." Anything that is universal is by definition non-partisan: hence the obvious problem with inviting a bunch of Republicans to breakfast and trying to pretend it has anything to do with Catholicism.
Not surprisingly, this event hasn't exactly attracted a great deal of attention from the traditional media. Of course, from what I could observe this evening, the coverage of the papal visit was pretty scanty to begin with. By the time they dispensed with the arrival shots and a couple of soundbytes, they were out of time. Not that one ought to expect much better from a bunch of allegedly professional reporters who could keep a straight face while trying to pretend that George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI have "the same values."
Something else I spotted in that issue of Science the other day perked me up a little. It was a news item about a graduate student in the NIU Geology Department who was wounded in the shootings on February 14. Despite having been shot five times, Brian Karpes, 27, not only survived, but managed to get his poster presentation completed in time for last month's Lunar and Planetary Science conference in Texas. Regrettably, Karpes's injuries prevented him from going to the conference and presenting his poster in person, but an NIU professor made sure it got to the conference. And, as Nature reported on its blog, dozens of colleagues stopped by to sign the poster and express well-wishes to Karpes. A note tacked to the middle of the poster quipped, with understandable pride, "He gets shot FIVE times and he still turns in his homework!!"
Not bad for a graduate student, getting noticed in the two most prestigious journals in science. What a pity that it wasn't solely on the basis of his results--but still, it's a great story and one of many little rays of light and hope that have begun to shine from the darkness surrounding our brush with tragedy earlier this year.
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