A Cure for Bad Analogies

‘What if I had the cure for cancer?” DP, the evangelizing history teacher, muses in the video In God We Teach, shown in the previous post. He goes on to ask rhetorically if he should keep it in a closet in case he ever needs it, or share it with others. The point he is trying to make, of course, is that he has knowledge as valuable as the cure for cancer would be, and so the only ethical thing to do is to share it.

So what is the problem, you ask? (Or maybe you don’t, because maybe you spot it as quickly as other people, myself included, have.) 

Think about what has to happen for DP to have the cure for cancer. He has to have the idea for something that could conceivably cure cancer. Once he has the idea, he can’t just spring it on the world and say, “I have the cure for cancer!” He has to test it, to be sure that it is in fact the cure for cancer. He has to test it first on animals and then on people, using double blind trials of sufficient sample size to be certain that his cure 1) kills cancer cells and 2) doesn’t kill patients in the process of killing the patients' cancers. He has to get FDA approval of his drug as a cancer cure. Unless he does, he can't call it a cancer cure. It’s an idea for a cancer cure, or a treatment that is in the experimental stages, or an old herbal remedy passed along to him by a shaman in a dream (in which case, keeping it hidden in a cupboard somewhere is the ethical thing to do, IMO), but it’s not the cure for cancer yet. That’s how science works.

All this costs money, a lot of it. DP will in all likelihood have to get this money through grants. I doubt very much that the people giving DP large grants to research his cure for cancer are going to give DP exclusive rights to patent and market it when he’s done. Tucking it away in a cupboard for his use alone is not going to be an option.

But let’s say that DP is a wealthy mad scientist who has the resources to carry on all the research and testing on this drug by himself. He still cannot legally test it on people without the approval of an Institutional Review Board. That means by the time he has established that this is indeed a cure for cancer, the secret is out. If he announces that he is not releasing the cure or the formula so that others can manufacture the cure, people will be begging him to change his mind. 

So let’s get back to the point of the analogy - if DP has knowledge as valuable as the cure for cancer would be, should he share it? Well, yes, if people are begging him for it, like they would be for the proven cure posited in the mad scientist scenario above. But DP was being accused of evangelizing to a captive audience of students in a public school history class, so not the same thing. No one ever said he couldn’t preach to the youth at his church where he is youth pastor.

What if DP has found the cure for cancer and decides not to hoard it all for himself? First of all, he cannot administer it to anyone. Even if it gets FDA approval, it’s not going to be sold over the counter at Walgreen’s under “Cancer Cures, for Reals”. It needs to be prescribed by a doctor, preferably an oncologist.

Second of all, what if an oncologist prescribes it for a patients and the patient says, “Nuh, uh. I’ve read up on the side effects and there’s no way I’m going to take that stuff” or “I’ve decided to try diet and herbal therapy instead” or “I’m 93 years old and you can’t keep me alive forever”? Unless it can be established that the patient is not competent to decide, the patient does not get the treatment. Even if it is The Best Stuff Ever, Proven to Cure Cancer in Five Minutes, the patient does not get the treatment.

None of this means I think DP's analogy is completely worthless. I think if he thought it through, he’d learn something about why he was being criticized for promoting his religious views in class. 

Which brings up a question for me. If I find the cure for lack of self awareness, should I keep it in a cupboard for myself, or share it? I know I need it, but I’m not the only one.

In God We Teach

I found this video on Chris Rodda’s Blog, This Week in Christian Nationalism, and found it interesting and thought provoking. It runs just over an hour. The filmaker describes it as follows:

A film by Vic Losick, “In God We Teach” tells the story of a high school student who secretly recorded his history teacher in class, and accused him of proselytizing for Jesus. The teacher, in danger of losing his job strenuously denied it. The specifics of the controversy lead directly to the church & state arguments that are in the news this election year. With Stephen Colbert, Alan Dershowitz, Neil deGrasse Tyson and others.

It can be found, with more information, on the website www.InGodWeTeach.com.

Moonrise Kingdom

Monday John wanted to go see Moonrise Kingdom. I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing a movie, but figured I could always nap through it if I didn’t like it.

I didn’t get a wink of sleep.

I don’t know how exactly to describe this movie. I suspect it belongs to a genre of movies that I don’t recognize because I haven’t seen the others. I found it whimsical and charming, but with an underlying realism. The cinematography had a stereotyped look, sort of like a Norman Rockwell painting, very much in contrast with, say, the grim visual realism of Snow White and the Huntsman. The first look at the screen let you know that you were about to see a “once upon a time” tale, although the time was 1965. True, those were real trees and boats and cottages and kids running around in “Khaki Scout” uniforms, but they looked too precise and a little unreal, like the kind of illustrations you would find in the books that Suzy, one of the two main characters, steals from her school library.

The characters are stereotyped and improbable as well, especially Tilda Swinton as Social Services (the only name we are ever given for her character) who wears a uniform reminiscent of visiting nurses of the Cherry Ames era and projects a combination of efficiency and rules-first thinking that still manages to hint at some concern for her missing charge.

Her charge, Sam, is a 12 year old Khaki Scout, orphaned and living in a group foster home, who has run away during a camping trip to be with his girlfriend, Suzy. Sam is picked on by his foster siblings and troop mates. Suzy has a reputation for going berserk when things don’t go her way. They meet when Sam blunders into the girl’s dressing room at a performance of Noye’s Fludde, and write to each other for a year before planning to run away together. Their running away is marked by the whimsical unreality of the movie as a whole. Suzy packs her suitcase with her favorite (unreturned) library books and canned food for her cat, and runs off wearing a skirt and Sunday School shoes. They run away on a small island where there is nowhere to go where they can’t be found, as they are rather quickly, only to run away again when Sam’s troop mates decide that they have been unreasonably unkind to him and that they should help him instead. While this is going on, a record storm is brewing.

So at first blush, the movie seems like a cartoon, a comedy for preteens to keep them busy on a summer day.

Yet there is the underlying reality. With all its whimsey, the movie tells the big truth about twelve year olds. They keep secrets. They run away, even if only into the recesses of their minds, where their parents cannot follow. They think about love and sex much earlier than their parents would prefer to acknowledge. They pick on each other for no really good reason and make alliances for no really good reason and have a code of conduct that has nothing to do with the adults around them.

As teenagers we fight to defend our boundaries from our parents and to keep secrets, and then as parents we fight to know what our children are thinking and feeling so we can keep them safe. We become the ones who are whimsical and unreal, thinking we can get inside our children’s heads and protect them from making every bad decision we ever made. Suzy travels with a pair of binoculars so that she can see everything in detail. She likes to think that it is her “secret power”. As a parent I would have given a lot to have that secret power.

So once upon a time there was a real, true story of growing up and away from the people who are desperate to protect us. And all around, a storm is brewing.

Survey Says

Sunday at St. Anonymous Dr. J handed out  a relationship survey for members to fill out. The answers are going to be the basis of sermons she will preach on what women wish men knew about women and what men wish women knew about men.

What I wish men knew about women is that each one of us has our own unique wish list and that I would be happy to convey mine upon request if only a man would a) ask and b) listen to the answer. I can’t speak for other women, let alone men, but I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar held true for them.

Anyway, after five demographic questions about age, marital status, and sex, the survey asks the following questions. The answers I’ve come up with so far are given, followed by comments in italics that won’t appear on the form when turned in. 

6. The most common misconception about men is:

That they know how to use logic.

7. The most common misconception about women is:

I really wanted to say, “That ‘vagina’ is the word for our external genitalia rather than being the name only for the sheath that connects the vulva to the uterus”, but did I mention that this survey is for a church? So here’s the answer I’m really giving:

That we don’t know how to use logic.

I don’t mean to flip the stereotype and say that women are more logical than men. I think it’s clear that human brains are no more perfectly suited to logic than our bodies are to bipedal locomotion. Even when we humans, male or female, think we are being logical, our thinking is often full of fallacies and shortcuts. So I think men are less logical than they’d like to believe and women are more logical than we’ve been led to believe and we all could use critical thinking classes.

8. If I could convince members of the opposite sex of ONE thing it would be . . .

They aren’t the Princes of the Universe.

Was the Queen song written  to be the Highlander theme or did it just get borrowed, does anyone know?

9. The TV or Movie character that most accurately portrays my view of the ideal man is:

Nico on Necessary Roughness.

 (What? He fixes things, just like my husband. I like that in a man. He’s also amazingly easy on the eyes, but that didn’t influence my answer, honest.)

10. The TV or Movie character that most accurately portrays my view of the ideal woman is:

She’s not the ideal woman, but I like Mary Shannon on In Plain Sight. She has many of the same flaws that I do, but she’s proud of hers.

11. I believe the secret to a happy, healthy relationship is:

a poor memory.

Okay, yeah, I understand that a poor memory can just as easily lead you to forget the good stuff that you need to remember to stay in love with your spouse or let you forget the bad stuff that you need to remember if you are in a relationship that’s dangerous, but the ability to forget the little irritating thing your spouse does  can be really helpful. Besides, I’m on my second marriage; I’m not sure anyone should be asking my advice on happy, healthy relationships.

If anyone wants to chime in on any of these questions in the comments, feel free. I have until July 9 to turn them in.

The Law of Holes, Revisited

Last night I followed the discussion of the Jerry Sandusky verdict on a blog that I read. The second comment expressed a veiled wish for Sandusky to be raped in prison, a remark which quickly brought admonishment from other posters. The commenter jumped in with explanations (which eventually became contradictory) of what he meant, and the conversation devolved from there*. References were made to the Law of Holes: "If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging."

This gave me reason to reflect on two meanings of the word “law”. There is of course the meaning of a set of instructions regarding conduct that carries a penalty for its violation. That is the meaning people have in mind when they invoke the Law of Holes, or First Law of Holes. 

There is also the meaning of “law” in the context of a scientific law: “ a statement of fact, deduced from observation, to the effect that a particular natural or scientific phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions are present.” 

Coleslaw’s Law of Holes is a law in the second sense. Coleslaw’s Law of Holes cannot be stated quite as pithily as the First Law of Holes. It goes something like, “If you are digging a hole, and people come along and start throwing rocks at you, keep digging further as fast as possible so you can take cover.”

The First Law of Holes, is, of course, an excellent piece of advice for living.   Coleslaw’s Law of Holes, on the other hand, is the one people actually follow.

*link here, but major trigger warnings.

What You Wish For

There was a period of time between April, 1999 and September of 2001 when I was the most dangerous person on earth. I certainly didn’t intend to be. I don’t know where my powers came from or why they disappeared, but –

Let me start at the beginning. In 1999, my son was still wending his way through college at a snail’s pace. I don’t remember what he and a friend’s son, also the same age, had done, but to cheer my friend and me up I wrote my Twelve Steps for Parents of Teens and Young Adults.  

Around then I also read and posted on a newsgroup devoted to anti-fandom of a well-known radio personality. I had been invited into a sort-of inner circle of posters, the existence of which was rumored to exist in the larger group. Not all rumors are untrue. Another of the members is a journalist who wrote mostly features for a newspaper out west. One day she emailed us about the troubles one of her friends was having with her teen. I sent her back a copy of my twelve steps and suggested she use her best judgement as to whether sharing them would make the woman feel better or worse. 

C thought they were funny and asked my permission to use them as a sidebar to an article she was preparing on coping with teenagers. I agreed.

On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris showed up at Columbine High School with an arsenal and killed 13 people and injured 21 more before dying themselves. Columbine High School is in the vicinity of C’s newspaper.

It took me until at least the next day to get over the horror of the event enough to realize I needed to email C and suggest that my humorous take on parents’ woes with their teens was not going to be a suitable subject for the newspaper for any time soon (“soon” being a decade or so). C was ahead of me on that; she had emailed me saying basically the same thing.

A year later, I bought my beloved Ford Mustang, after the usual negotiations with sleazy car dealers, which I poked fun of in an email to friends and family in the form of a game show entitled What’s The Catch? It was a list of ten multiple choice questions such as “The reason the car’s price was discounted was that, unbeknownst to me

A) It had been used for transporting drugs across state lines.

B) It had been used for transporting toxic waste from a nuclear facility.

C) It was a dealer’s demo with 6500 miles on it.

D) All of the above."

C again wanted to use my writing as a sidebar, this time for an article on buying a car. The article never got approved, for one reason or another, but on August 9, 2000, Firestone had to recall 6.5 million SUV tires after the ones on new Ford Explorers started exploding.

Some time in early 2001 an internet friend from another email group, this one comprising women weight lifters, was looking for some guest posts for her new blog. I sent her one called Getting Dressed, a mood piece about the days after my verbally abusive ex became physically violent and I evicted him from the house. I sent the link to other family and friends, including C, who showed it to her editor. They recommended I send it to another editor for consideration for publishing in a section of the paper devoted to reader’s submissions. 

My essay was accepted on September 10, 2001, for publication the next weekend. I don’t need to remind anyone what happened the next day. It was domestic, and violent.

By this time I was feeling a little queasy. I emailed my group about the series of events and said I was beginning to feel like a character in one of Ursula Le Guin’s novels. One of the group emailed back saying he was sure I hadn’t caused anything to happen, but just in case, could I write my next essay about how he won the lottery?

And I thought to myself, not said, not wrote, but thought, “You don’t understand, E, if I wrote something about how you won the lottery, the next week we’d see headlines about anthrax spores being found on lottery tickets.”

Well, I was close.

Then just like that, my mysterious ability to cause mayhem and mischief in the world just by thinking about it faded away, and not a moment too soon, in my opinion.

And yes, I know, I didn’t cause any of these horrific events. The above narrative is a product of pareidolia, selective memory, and the human desire to feel somehow magical and special, possibly even helped along by remembering events out of sequence. I know I wasn’t ever actually the most dangerous person on earth.

I do wonder, however, how the processes I listed above - pareidolia, selective memory, and the human desire to feel somehow magical and special - affect my prosaic thinking and decision making when I don’t have as strong a motivation to engage my reality testing skills as not wanting to be the most dangerous person earth. It makes me think.

I know those thoughts don’t cause bad things to happen, and that’s the important thing. Unless - oh, no!  Could it be my fault that LSU lost the national championship?

Generosity

41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."
—Mark 12:41-44, NRSV

John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!
—Andrew Jackson, 1832

In 1830, the Indian Removal Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, and later that year, the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was signed, ceding 11 million acres of tribal lands in Mississippi for 15 million acres of land in what is now Oklahoma. Of the Choctaw who moved westward along what would become known as the Trail of Tears, the first of five nations to be removed from the fertile farmland of the southeast, an estimated one third to one half died along the way, of starvation, illness and exposure.*

In 1845, potato blight struck Ireland, causing a famine, which reached its height in 1847. Many Irish immigrants left their land and came to the United States.

Moved by news of starvation in Ireland, a group of Choctaws gathered in Scullyville, Okla., to raise a relief fund. Despite their meager resources, they collected $170 and forwarded it to a U.S. famine relief organization.
— 154 Years Ago: The Choctaw Send Aid

$170 of 1847 dollars is worth $4,722.22 in 2012 dollars. It’s still not a huge amount, but coming from people who 16 years before had to walk 500 miles west with only the possessions they could carry, to learn to make a living on land completely different from the land they left behind, it was a fortune. 

I first learned of this story in reading Effigies by Mary Anna Evans, one of series of mystery novels featuring an archeologist, Faye Longchamp. As the story is narrated in the novel, by a character who is the descendant of Choctaws who stayed behind in Mississippi:

I’ll say this for the Irish. They didn’t forget. In 1997, for the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of The Great Potato Famine, a bunch of them flew to Oklahoma to say thank you. Then they walked five hundred miles until they got here, to Nanih Waiya. After that, they donated a hundred thousand dollars to feed hungry people in Africa, in honor of our brothers and sisters in Oklahoma.

They should teach these things in all the schools. The world would be a better place.

I’ll do my bit to pass the word along.

*You will notice each of the links gives different numbers.