Why would a good God allow ideology?

Much to my great delight, I went to the theatre since prayer meeting was canceled and lo, it was showing "Persepolis", a film I thought would never be shown around these parts. "Persepolis" is an animated feature from France based on an autobiographical graphic novel by a young woman, Marjane Satrapi, who grew up in Tehran during the last tears of the Shaw and reign of the Khomeinists. I give it five stars out of five.

CAUTION: SPOILERS

I like films like this because they challenge my perspective on things in a way that makes me want to listen. Another example of this, although a completely different style and situation, was "Tales from the Hood". The film recounts the author's experiences as a young and precocious child growing up in a Communist family that posed itself as an enemy of the state before the fall of the Shah, and as a teenager during the reign of the Isalmic fundamentalists, including the war with Iraq. We learn from her parents about the provenance of the Shah's father, how he was foolish and would have instituted a democracy but was told by Britain that a democracy would not work with such a populace and that he should be an emperor instead. This led to an autocracy where political dissenters are imprisoned and tortured, including Ms. Satrapi's very beloved uncle, who recieved training in Marxism-Leninism in Russia. When the Shah fell, the prisoners are released and the family is reunited and delighted -- until the new regime recaptures the uncle and has him executed. At this point, Ms. Satrapi who started out in life ambitious to be God's next prophet, dismisses God from her life. Satrapi's family and friends begin to lead a cryptic life to avoid the regulators who patrol the streets to make sure Islamic dress and behavior codes are maintained while Satrapi is being indoctrinated at school/

When Saddam attacks and begins to war with Iran for years, Satrapi's parents send her to Vienna to school. She experiences life for once without mullahs and without war and violence. However, what she does find in Europe is prejudice, anarchists, and nihilism. Youth in Europe are immersed in ideologies that are as bleak as the ones she left behind. We see a humorous and Thurber-esque account of her trials with love and pot. But ultimately she suffers from terrible guilt at the thought that while she is enjoying life in Europe her family is still suffereng the pains of the war. However, she gets kicked out of her last house and winds up stranded and starving in Vienna, finally asking to come home and be with her family again.

At this point the war with Iraq is over, but her family tells her that if anything things are much worse. As a young woman, she goes through a terrible struggle looking for direction and wondering how to make sense of what has been happening to her. She goes to a psychiatrist who listenes to her in Freudian detachment and then prescribes a lot of medicine --"Depression is curable". The medicine only leaves her doped up and during one of those experiences she re-connects with God (with Karl Marx cheering her on from the side). As a result she is able to pull herself together and go back to college to study art. (Now think, of the ironies attached to studying art in a fundamentalist controlled university). After this are several other events, confronting the authorities at school, a failed marriage, and so on, but in the end the situation deteriorates enough, both circumstantially and interiorly, where her family sends her again to France, forbidding her to return to Iran.

In spite of the tragic circumstances the film is infused with the good humor of the author which shines in several different places with great comic sensibility that fits well with the original medium. We are reminded that these are comics and it is an interesting medium to tell a story such as this. The film reminded me of "Maus". It was also a delight to see such geeky tropes, indicating that the geek sensibility is transnational. The film has references to Godzilla, Terminator, Iron Maiden, and so on. As separated as we are from one another by religion and politics, here was at least one note we could connect on. Of course, this is because it is a coming of age story.

But what is being accomplished is far more important. By telling her story, the author makes it clear that not all Iranians are what they are often represented to be in the media, that there are people who will respond when seriously treated as rational people. Some Iranians are ready for a modern state that recognizes human rights. On the other hand, where the Iranians are modern, they are modernistic, embracing theory as the basis for life and allowing life to operate willy nilly where theory does not apply. Where our heroine is most lost is in dealing with the frontiers of permissiveness without much to help her in dealing with relationships. This is what leads to starvation, in a world were she remains isolated and alone.

Of course, it seems understandable given her situation. The tragic aspect of the film is that she in every phase of her life is that she seems surrounded by bleak ideologies either Marxian or anarchistic on one side or Islamism reduced to a politcal ideological machine on the other. A religion of liberation or a Western constitution of liberty are approaches not available to her given the West's collusion in rise of the Shah, the support for both sides of the Iraq war, the western interest in oil, and the training of the torturers by he CIA. Whatever one could have hope another country might learn from our history as been eclipsed by the western policy of supporting authoritarian governments as a hedge against the spread of Communism. The movie illustrates how the conduct of such governments left few without any recourse except to turn to communism.

The movie also illustrates how the hedonism of the Iranians contrasted with the hedonism of the European youth. Given the repressive regime, engaging in parties and illegal wine consumption was not mere fun but a protest of the regime, a demonstration of liberties denied. But in Europe, this is not necessary. This also applies to the feminism one sees lifted up in the movie which clearly must be seen first and foremost as a version of equity feminism. By going against the obvious double standard in which clothing prescriptions were only applied to women, while men were allowed to were normal western clothing, the characters are challenging a specific distortion of sex.

The sea of abstractions that Satrapi is constantly swimming in offers no hope and she finds herself facing the dilemma of choosing the bleak ideology of an imminent engineered theoretically perspicuous deity like the state, or face absolute nihilism. But the way that she ultimately escapes this false dilemma and becomes post-ideological is rediscovering and re-appreciating her family and in particular her grandmother. The movie is to be held up as providing one of the few pieces of cinema that illustrates a properly functioning family. Her parents have a solid committed relationship and display their love for their daughter through their infinite patience with her. Her father encourages her to think and to be independent while her mother guides and encourages her. Her uncle fascinates her with his adventures and deeply impresses her with his suffering for a principle. But her grandmother turns out to be her best counselor, not so much by appealing to this or that prescription (at least not in this movie) but encouraging in every with her humor, her proactive attitude toward life (she puts jasmine leaves in her bra to make a nice smell -- I won't say where she puts her breasts), and her guidance. She encourages Satrapi to have integrity, scolds her for delighting in cleverness when she should be thinking about the other person, applauds her for her courageous displays, and tells her not bear a grudge or seek personal vengeance. In other words it is in these vague features that prove to be more effective for her and sustain her. In a way, this story is about her grandmother. It ends when we find out the day she left Iran for France was the last day she saw her alive.

It is also noteworthy that God is always pictured as a large grandfatherly old man who teaches and guides, even when He is being dismissed by her and even when He returns in her dreams. We cannot but project into our transitional representations of God the images we have of our own parents. So in Satrapi's picture God is the grandfather who loves and guides, just like her own parents and relatives and even when he is mad at Him for the death of her uncle. God pleads with the free will defense, "But these are the acts of men". She can't but see Him as good when she accuses Him of evil. This and the fact that God never really quite goes away is impressive.

It is a real challenge to think of this person being is such empty circumstances precise at the same time (the 80's) when it really felt like morning in America for guys like me. For Iran, is was pitch black in what seems to me like a tomb. it was amazing to see how the human spirit can still find touches of wonder and humor is such situations but that is all the more reason to see such people set free from them. The big question at the end of the movie for me is whether she had found or ever will find true freedom from the inside out. Even though free from the repressive regime in Iran, was she free in being open to other possibilities than what her world made available to her.

William F. Buckley R.I.P.

This has been a rough week.

The debt I owe Bill Buckley to my personal development goes beyond even the debt I owe Larry that I cannot express it, even though I have nothing like the closeness with Buckley's world as many who are now posting at NRO this week. So I will let them express my mourning for as well as with me.

I Hope I'll See You in Heaven

When I was in college the second time, my friends and I considered ourselves members of the "3L decade", mostly because of our experiences the first time we went to college, but especially because we were all Christians in our teens when we were impacted by the still fresh evangelical MOVEMENT still going on at the time. We read books by Francis Schaeffer, CS Lewis, Os Guiness, John Stott, James Packer, and Martin Lloyd-Jones, and we listened to music by Phil Keaggy, Randy Stonehill, the Darrell Mansfield Band, and the group Daniel Amos. The helped shape our first steps in seeing Christianity not as a peripheral religious activity and to see it instead as a world and life view that informed every area of life. Such was our version of young idealism.

"3L" was our alternative to the 3M of the previous decade -- Marx, Mao, and Marcuse. "3L" stood for L'abri, Lausanne, and Larry Norman. The first was an alternative style mission run by Francis Schaeffer, pastor-thinker for post 60's students which he started with his family in Switzerland and now exists in many places through out the world. The second stood for the first evangelical international missions conference that renewed proclamation centered missions in contrast to the shrinking role of proclamation in what had become of the mainline missions movement, and which still continues today. And the third . . .

Well, the third was the father of Christian alternative music, the guy who asked the question, "Why should the Devil have all the good music?" He was our Bob Dylan (until Bob Dylan became our Bob Dylan for awhile -- thanks in part to Larry). Larry was the first to try to establish a distinctive Christian Rock on a distinctively Christian Record label, and he helped to put together a distinguished array of talented and faithful Christian performers as well as encouraging many others.

Larry Norman had been suffering from severe health conditions. On Feb. 25, they finally caught up to him and he passed away. Even though I didn't wind up agreeing with all of Larry's stuff all the time, I whole heartedly agreed and agree with his effort to that Christian distinctiveness in arts (including popular arts) does not mean exclusiveness to arts within the church. I, in my roleplaying, try to live up to Larry in his music.

Please pray for the Normans.

Hasta La Vista, Larry.

"Good" Art and "Good" Science

Yet another random thought: Thomas Wolfe, the conservative counterpart to Hunter S. Thompson (sort of), wrote a bright piece of non-fiction about "modern art" called "The Painted Word". Specifically, he was criticizing the Pop and Op Art movements that developed around the 1960's. One of his crucial points from which the book derives its title is that rather than the critics sitting at the feet so to speak of the works of the artists and coming to discover and appreciate the value within them, it seemed that the art was driven by the critics stipulations as to what counted or did not count as art. The theory drove the art, and so what was "painted" was a set of conventions; the painted word. Wolfe imagines that a future retrospective of this period would not have the actual paintings from this period but rather just a display of the original articles that appeared in various critical reviews, as the true representation of what this period of art was about.

The criteria stipulated by these critics seemed to completely ad hoc. For example, the painting had to be something that could be seen "fast", that is, the viewer could immediately appreciate what the painting was about. Imagine seeing a painting of three concentric bands like a target each of different colors -- you got it in one. Another rule was that the painting had to have precisely the same amount of paint in each area, the painting had to be uniformly thick. It seems clear that on Wolfe's account, the critics were trying give an analysis of art -- a work A is art if and only if a work satisfied a set of empirically verifiable features, a kind of aesthetic positivism, one that dictated what could and could not be a possible work of art. It is also possible to imagine a work of art just falling out of the sky.

In the linked article, Phillip Johnson compares the thought of two outstanding evolutionary scientists, Theodosius Dobzhansky and Pierre Grassé. Grassé was considered a heretic scientist because he only accepted evolution as term describing the general phenomena of zoological distribution and rejected the idea of natural selection as a plausible account of species variation. Dobzhansky rejected this conclusion in his review of a book by Grassé, but made it clear that this rejection was to imply any demerit or lack of qualification on the part of Grassé, who was Dobzhansky recognized as one of the most distinguished French zoologists and as having an encyclopedic knowledge. In other words, Grassé thought that explanation for the appearance of genetic information in natural history could not reasonably be explained by natural selection and common descent given a knowledge of all the facts and further even if we knew all the facts we would still not know the answer to the question.

Dobzhansky, on the other hand, while affirming that we cannot question Grassé as being unscientific, rejects his position. We must accept the natural selection account because it allows us to keep doing science. While the facts provide no support for thinking that selection model provided for us in microevolution within also applies to macroevolution of new species, we "must" apply it as such as the best candidate that allows us to continue doing science as normal. It seems in this case, it is a matter of following the rules rather than sitting a the feet of the object. As Johnson points out, modern media is more apt to say, unlike Dobzhansky himself, that Dobzhansky is doing is science and Grassé is being unscientific. It seems that, here as in Wolfe's case about art, what counts as science is deduced from certain stipulations which are prior to the work of research. Will the Smithsonian someday display the columns of commentators as the achievements of modern science? In this context, Johnson brings up Larry Laudan's criticism of the idea that we can demarcate science from non-science. He might also have mentioned O. K. Bousma's remark about the only girl for the boys in the alley is our girl Sally.

One other point. Wolfe points out in an afterword that one particular phase of the pop art movement led to an other than expected responses from the critics, namely so-called "Photographic Realism", where paintings seem to be paintings of photographs as photographs. The thing about such paintings is that they satisfied all the stipulations set by the critics, and yet the critics hated them. One suspects that what irritated the critics was that such paintings were able to restore what was hoped to be eliminated by the stipulations, namely representationalism. The photographs that that were painted were already photographs of something or another.

On the other hand, the hope in the stipulations of science is that by only allowing explanations that fit the rules they will still "capture" representationalism or at least the phenomena we call representation, along with features that like representation, are irreducibly complex or which require more than just two mutually interacting terms to explain. Perhaps both science and art in this sense hope to isolate and remove "naive" representation but the trouble is that the specter of representation will not stay away. And if naive representation exists, it seems certainly spectral.

Anyway, its just as clear that one cannot answer the charge that Intelligent Design is not science by affirming that it is as it is that one cannot complain that Photographic Realism is art but shouldn't be.

The Greatest Conceivable President

(1) Let Obama df= the president the greater than which cannot be conceived.
(2) A being which exists in the mind and in reality is greater than if it existed in the mind and not reality.
(3) Obama exists in the mind and not in reality. (assumed for indirect proof)
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(4) Therefore, a candidate for president is conceivable which is greater than X. (from 2 and 3)
(5) Therefore, a candidate for president is conceivable which is greater than the president the greater than which cannot be conceived. (from 1 and 4)
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(6) Therefore, Obama either exists neither in mind or in reality of Obama exists in both. (from 1-5 by indirect proof)

Comment: Even if we accept (2), the argument fails because the inference from 2 and 3 to 4 and again to five is false. The valid entailment is actually:

(5') Therefore, a being is conceivable which is greater than the president the greater than which cannot be conceived.

which is not absurd and this does not lead to an indirect proof of the existence of Obama, much less that this or that empirical candidate is the Obama candidate.

However, in the case of letting God be the greatest conceivable being, the inference does work and it a least shows that the concept of God necessarily involves necessary existence as if existence were a great making property of God, even if it fails to show that God actually does exist. Further, if there is any recognition of a hierarchy of good things that goes beyond the empirical facts about the world, as seems often to be the case, that would be explained by the existence of God as the greatest conceivable being, so it is at least epistemically possible that God exists. So given the conceivability and epistemic possibility of God, a trusting belief in God is a rationally live option for someone who is brave enough to risk seeking God rather than just living life.

However, it is not clear that it is conceivable or epistemically possible for any candidate to be the Obama. As far as I know, not one of them in the 2008 USA presidential race has claimed to be God yet. So it still seems to me that religion is more a rational choice than Obamism.

New York, 2040

NEW YORK CITY, NEW ENGLAND PREFECTURE, 2040 C.E.

Due to the pressures of globalization, the rise of new international powers, the effectiveness of the new bloodless form of cyber-information warfare, and the loss of American influence, New York City has become the capital of a semi-autonomous political entity called the New England Prefecture, which includes much of the former northeastern American states and eastern Canada. The loss of influence lead to the dissolution of both the American federal government and local state governments. The world is divided between Eurasia, India, China, and Japan now and and the NEP is a political franchise of Eurasia, basically allowed to keep its historic traditions alive but under contract with the Eurasian market. Global climate change has made Long Island and some of downtown Manhattan much like Venice except extremely poor and unstable. The government buildings and offices are based in Yonkers. In spite of the Eurasian franchise, the new business centers are primarily dotted with corporations from India, Japan, and Japanese Australia.

Society has been strongly divided with the progress of both genetic programming and cybernetics. While there is no law against having a child naturally (such children are called "godchildren"), society vastly favors people who receive genetic programming prior to fertilization. This has led to a major and sweeping division among social classes between those who had the means to receive genetic programming, which has become the certificate of reliability for all economic and social matters, and those who are godchildren. Even in the cases where the luck of the draw has lead to optimal performance, the fact that the person in question still speaks against them. Consequently, only geneticized people hold the top positions in society, while godchildren are chronically disadvantaged.

The other technology that has impacted society is cyberization. Thanks to new available surgical methods, many human ills can be taken care of through prosthetics and computer and cellular software can be installed directly into a person's skull case. Such components can access the web by wifi or through an external jack system. Cyberized individuals have enhanced computation and communication links, can display information and images inside their own field of vision and audio and can immediately link into most computer systems. Two important consequences from this are brain hacking, in which an outside source can download a virus into someone's cybernetics and make that person a puppet, and the new social mobility, where the only way a godchild can overcome to a substantial extent the social stigma attached to them is by getting cyberized. But this being very expensive, the only way it could be made available is by joining the military and serving in special ops, which require a full body cybernetic reconstruction for military purposes. As you can imagine, while cyberization bestows many benefits, it is very expensive to maintain, and cyborgs typically wind up working as security agents for corporations in exchange for regular maintenance.

In the future, crime has taken on new meaning, including both high level security issues, organlegging, data crimes, and political terrorism, all of which can count on the genius to exploit the new technological advances. Such crime calls for special police task forces and advanced hired militias. That is where your character comes in.

YOUR CHARACTER

Your character has been assigned to the NYC Police Department Special Ops Unit, which is in charge of Cyber-crime and Cyber-terrorism. Your character is one of three possible archetypes:

Cyber-Detective: Your character is genetically programmed and represents the upper tier of society but has for some reason or another devoted themselves to police work. Your character is at least minimally cyberized with communication and computer access facilites and has the training t o make the most of these for security purposes. Your character also has leadership experience and functions as a liason between the unit and significant stakeholders in the unit's performance, such as higher ups, executives, and ordinary citizens.

Cyber-Specialist: Your character has benefited from some specialized service and is sufficiently cyberneticly and roboticly modified to accommodate that service, typically because of special circumstances such as military service and training, such as being equipped with built in tether wires for second story work or with a satellite synchronized camera-eye and robotic steady arm in order to be a sniper. Your background may be in some way mixed but your appearance is effected enough by your enhancements to make it socially difficult. You are not a complete cyborg and some parts of you are vulnerable to normal damage.

Cyber-Inventory: Your character came into the ranks from the street by joining the military special ops. Your character is completely cyberized but still designed to look as human as possible. However, some parts of you may not even look human (bazooka arm, scope eye, or tank treads) but that is pretty rare. Generally, your character is super strong, super fast, super destructive, and competent in basic weapons and tactics. Plus you have had great experience, usually more than most detectives, who the nevertheless have to serve under. They are also foreboding in appearance and often have to interact with polite society through intermediates. They do however, possess a great deal of street cred.

DESIGNING YOUR CHARACTER

There are no stats in this game. The success of your character depends on how well you conceive of him. Pick one of the three archetypes and make it your characters own by tricking it out with specifics. Then tell a good story about how the birth of your character and how he eventually wound up working for the NYPD. Then based logically on your character's description, identify four "virtues" and two "faults" that your character has. They need not be moral virtues, the could also be intellectual or other virtues. Examples, Dick the cyber-detective lists GOOD WITH NUMBERS, LADIES MAN, HISTORY BUFF, and DIPLOMACY as virtues and SHORT-TEMPERED and FEAR OF HEIGHTS, which are all justified by the story he tells about his character. If the player wants a bonus in making a roll, he can get it by incorporating the mention of the virtue in the description of the action you are taking. This gives you a +1d6 bonus to your action. However, if the GM can invoke one of your faults in the description of a setting of your character's action, you get a +1d6 penalty to your action. Further, of the four virtues, pick one that is the best fit with your character. If you use that one, you get a +2d6 bonus.

Finally, add 2 free Mulligan points, and your character is finished.

"Pulp in a Cup!" A pick-up RPG engine.

"Pulp in a Cup" (a.k.a. PnC, and formerly known as "LAME-O") is an RPG kind of an ultimate universal game mechanic that can be used to jump start a game most anywhere you happen to be. It for players who have a hard time find ways to get people together but still want to play if an occasion presents itself. Players pick a setting based on a well known movie, animation, or comic franchise that everyone in the group is familiar with (e.g. Superman, X-Men, Star Trek, Ghost in the Shell, Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy, etc.). One person acts as the Game Master and prepares a story or at least a scenario that is set in the franchise world while the other players pick favorite characters to role play in that setting. Play proceeds by acting in character in ways consistent with the story familiar to everybody. When the situation comes to a point where there needs to be a resolution to some action or encounter use the simple mechanic below.

• Rule 1: All players creatively conceive and communicate their characters and their specific actions in the game narrative and the Game Master conceives and communicates the world setting and specific situations in enough detail such that the resolution of player actions is clearly indicated by the logic of the story.
  

• Rule 2: If there is no clear outcome even after detailed exposition, this means that the opposing forces in the story are fairly evenly matched. If so, use the following die mechanic. Every time it comes down to a dice role, then the player rolls 1d20 and 3d6 (This is called a standard role). The 3d6 represents the difficulty of the task and the d20 represents the degree of success. Then the GM adapts the narrative of the action (with the players' input) to justify the results of the roll. If the d20 is greater than the 3d6 roll, the task is a basic success for the player. A 20 on the d20 is an automatic critical success for the player and a 1 on the d20 is an automatic failure. The GM then determines what additional benefits beyond success occur on 20 and what additional liabilities occur on 1.

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ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS:

And that's all the rules. What follows are simply optional suggestions on how to implement the rules of PnC.

• Degree of Success (DoS): Degree of success (or failure) is the difference between the d20 result and the 3d6 result. This is often worth noticing in order determine exactly how extensive the impact of success is, especially in assessing damage from combat. It is important to realize that the degree of success actually increases geometrically as the difference increases incrementally. See the example below.

• Resolving Critical d20 results: Make the d20 roll open ended to determine critical results. If the d20 results in "20", roll the d20 again, treating another result of "20" as zero, and add it to 20 as a total result. If the d20 results in "1", roll the d20 again, treating another result of "20" as zero, and subtract it from 1 as a total result. By this means results are possible from -18 to +39. Compare the d20 result with the 3d6 result.
  

• Example: Deactivating a Time Bomb: The difference (d20 - 3d6) determines the degree of success based on the following scale;

1. (+11 or more)----"Divine intervention", "Terrorists give up and turn themselves in."
2. (+8 - +10)------- Spectacular success (substantial collateral benefits), "Bomb deactivated and source for terrorist technology discovered."
3. (+5 - +7) --------Great success (marginal collateral benefits), "Bomb deactivated and components salvaged."
4. (+2 - +4) --------Sufficient success (no collateral benefits), "Bomb deactivated."
5. (-1 - +1) ---------Partial, insufficient success (may roll again), "Bomb still active but timer pauses."
6. (-4 - -2) ---------Sufficient failure (no collateral costs), "Bomb still active. Run away."
7. (-7 - -5) ---------Great failure (marginal collateral costs), "Bomb active and timer speeds up."
8. (-10 - -8) --------Spectacular failure (substantial collateral costs), "Ka-boom! The player's character is dead."
9. (-11 or less) ------"Divine retribution", "Player's character dead, family loses NSA pension, and her favorite candidate loses re-election."

• Dice rolls in combat and other competitions: In combat situations, an attack roll works just like a standard roll except that the attacking character rolls the d20 and the defending character rolls the 3d6. The roll is made by whoever controls the attacker or defender (the GM rolls for non-player characters). If the roll is a success for the attacker, the degree of success determines the amount of damage which is handled narratively. If the role is a great failure or more there may be self-inflicted damage. (Other possible penalties could include losing place in the initiative order (the original initiative order in a combat situation can be established by having each character roll 1d6, rolling off tie results, and having everyone go from highest result to lowest), losing the next attack, or the defender getting a free attack on the attacker.) It is up to the GM whether an attack roll or a standard roll is used. Attack rolls are expected for combat situations but some contests of skill can be resolved by by attack rolls also (like trying to sneak up on a very perceptive guard). Other competitions between characters can be resolved by comparing the degree of success of the results of two standard rolls (like a footrace).
  

• Conducting combat scenes: If characters find themselves in a combat situation, the GM should first determine who can attack at that moment and who cannot. Maybe some characters were caught off guard or cannot immediately react because of their stance. Of those who can attack, have each make a standard roll to determine the order of initiative. Greatest degree of success attacks first, next greatest second, and so on. You may want to give players the option of holding on to their attacks even until the next time through, so that they can attack after their turn comes up but not before. On their turn, make an attack roll with the attacker rolling the d20 and the defender rolling the 3d6. The damage is determined by the degree of success along with the player's presentation of what sort of way their character is attacking. A degree of success of 1 with a sword may just graze the opponent's armor, while a degree of success of 6 with a sword may mean an open wound that needs immediate attention. Combat continues until one of the opposing characters surrender, fall unconscious or die, or escape.

• Levels of Difficulty (LoD): There are times when the rules still seem too inflexible to accommodate the story in a credible way, times when you want to make a roll but one adjusted to fit the circumstances. These differences of degree of challenge are called higher or lower levels of difficulty and can be resolved with bonus or penalty d6's. If you think that some things ought to be more challenging than other things and that everything should not just be averaged together, you can use the following system. Suppose you think a task should be especially hard for a character. In that case, the player makes a standard roll except that she adds 1-3 additional penalty d6's to her roll depending on how much difficult it is thought to be, and the d20 is compared to the total result of the three highest d6's. Similarly, for situations where the player has a distinct advantage, add 1-3 more bonus d6's and compare the d20 to the total result of the three lowest d6's. Players and GMs should be free to negotiate on their own behalf which factors may provide distinct advantages or disadvantages for the character in any situation, appealing to the features already given in the story, but the GM has final say. The dice should reflect the final net advantage, whether positive, negative, or inconsequential, of all the relevant factors. Players and GMs can anticipate such judgements by using a ladder of descriptive terms (very easy, easy, average, hard, very hard) when describing the characters features or the circumstances. For example, if the character is a "good jumper" but the ravine is "not just wide but very wide", the bonus of the character's good skill is offset by the especially difficult jump and the GM may decide he still gets one but only one difficulty d6. However, if levels of difficulty are introduced, the GM, is going to have to be careful that they are not abused and that the characters and situation are both fairly balanced in terms of levels of difficulty.

• Levels of Difficulty in Combat: You can also use bonus/penalty dice in combat by adding them to the defenders 3d6, but remember that what is to the defender's advantage is to the attacker's disadvantage. So adding a bonus d6 for the defender having plate armor is to add a penalty d6 to the attacker -- the attacker must roll a d20 result that is greater than the three highest d6 rolls to succeed in significantly hitting the defender. Bonus/penalty dice can also be used in cases where the enemy is surprised or attacked from above. They can also be used in the standard roll that determines the initiative order.

• Mulligan Points: A GM may want to assign three mulligan points to each player before the beginning of the session. A player may spend a mulligan in order to re-roll any particularly unfavorable standard roll or her part (the d20 or the 3d6) of a combat roll. The point must be spent before the re-roll. This gives the player more input over the way the story goes. The GM may also give a player a mulligan point every time he rolls a 20 and take a mulligan point away every time he rolls a 1 on the d20. However, one cannot have negative mulligan points and only loses a mulligan point when he has one to lose.
  

From "LAME-O" to "Pulp in a Cup!"

First, LAME-O is hereby baptized with a new and less self-depreciating working moniker.

From now, LAME-O will be redesignated "Pulp in a Cup!". The name captures the self-contained aspect in the rules in that you can take up the whole mechanism as you would a cup of dice. Further, it captures the "go anywhere" aspect of the game and that it is basically designed for pick-up gaming situations. It also captures the feature of the rules that make them most fit for mid-level powered hero games, like pulp fiction based games. Finally, it captures the relatively unserious feature of this game compared to a full rule set RPG and also that one must have a comic sensibility to appreciate and incorporate some of the extreme results of the mechanism.

Second, um, I'm going to go back to "1st edition rules", plus suggestions. There is simply no beating the basic simplicity of the game. So I am going to redo the 2nd edition post.

Third, among the suggestions, I am adding a suggestion for incorporating more flexibility for degrees of difficulty, if the GM thinks its unavoidable.

Three kinds of evangelicals.

DG Hart, in his biography of J. Gresham Machen, does a masterful job of describing the various factions that Machen had to deal with in his attempts to reform the northern USA presbyterian denomination at the time (20's and 30's). His position is obscured by two mistaken but widely held perceptions. One is that at the time the contest was perceived to be between Fundamentalists and Liberals. This tended to obscure the great differences between Machen and others lumped in the fundamentalist camp. Machen was not a political puritan and did not support reforms like the temperance movement, nor did he endorse things like dispensationalism. After Machen was booted out of the church and after he died, the fundamentalists in his coalition split apart under the leadership of Carl MacIntyre. Another perception is that Machen represented ll the evangelicals withing the liberal denomination. But their was another faction of conservative evangelicals within the denomination that not only did not support Machen but enabled the forces against him to succeed. These forces were led in part by biblical commentator and churchman Charles Erdman -- the evangelical version of William Barclay. To Machen, Erdman represented a form evangelicalism which was anti-intellectual and sentimentalistic. Erdman's betrayal of Machen was striking.

As Hart indicates, for Machen it was always a terrible struggle. In his eyes for a long time it seemed to him that he could not stay in the church of his youth. It seemed that the only possibilities were (a) be an intellectual liberal with no real claim to the historic Christian Faith, (b) be part of the excluded anti-intellectual literalistic Fundamentalist party, (c) be part of the anti-intellectual, sentimentalistic, evangelical party, or (d) forget about Christianity all together as an intellectually acceptable option. Machen's salvation came with his discovery between his years as a student at Princeton Seminary along with his years studying in liberal institutions in Europe; there was an intellectually engaged tradition in defense of the historic supernatural faith in his churches heritage, namely the so-called Old Princeton Tradition of Hodge and Warfield. It represented a third form of conservative evangelicalism unlike the previous two with which he was acquainted.

Cut from JG Machen to Frank Schaeffer and his new book "Crazy for God". In it, Frank Schaeffer gives his mea culpa for "starting the Christian Right". This book goes a long way towards restoring and rehabilitating the life and ministry of his late father, Francis Schaeffer. The great mystery to be explained is how Francis Schaeffer, after successfully weaning himself away from the MacIntyre wing of the presbyterian factions and as one who fully identified himself in his early writings with the ministry of JG Machen, became so entangled with the likes of MacIntyre type Fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and James Dobson. Frank says its mainly his fault that he encouraged his father to translate his picture of the development of western society and his defense of the dignity of human nature into film. But like any film production, this required lots of money and thus needed sponsors. And the sponsors who could raise the cash and leave most of the material intact were the Pat Robertson types. Frank discloses the reality of "tell them anything" fund raising and how he had to accommodate to various demands of his sponsors, such as negotiating when they could and could not show Michaelangelo's David and the notorious "Virgin and Child" painting. He reveals his father's actual disdain for the politics and practices of these organizations. But because of this his father came to be identified with a group that he himself did not want much to do with.

This book helps save Francis Schaeffer's attachment to the Machen group of evangelicals in spite of his association with something like the MacIntyre group of evangelicals. It should be clear that even though I have anchored my presentation of these groups in the history of the presbyterian church, I think that this classification is trans-denominational (and possibly trans religious). It also seems clear that when critics refer to the "Christian Right", their guiding paradigms for that classification are Falwell and Robertson, not Machen (or Carl Henry or EJ Carnell or James Sire etc.)

I also think that they are persistent. The 80's were dominated by the rise of Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson and their brand of political activism and moralism. But in the new century we see the rise of s different kind of evangelical politician in Mike Huckabee and his defense of "Heroic/Compassionate Conservativism". In George W. Bush, we saw a clatch of certain policies - Henrietta Myers, Katrina Relief, Immigration Reform but they were mixed in with a substantial set of traditional Reagan era policy making. What came to characterize these policies were descriptors such as "compassionate", "evangelical", and "failure". Bush made it seem that his administration was at its worst when it was at its most deliberate attempt to appeal to its evangelical constituency. A special case was his attempt to promote government co-operation with so-called "faith-based" ministries. While this seemed to be a compassionate conservative idea, it was never truly understood by most evangelicals or most politicians that though the charities to be supported by religious patrons, they were necessarily mandated to be non-sectarian and non-proclamatory -- they were to be religious in the most abstract sense only. This does not make the idea bad or anti-evangelical but does make it unidentifiable with evangelicalism.

But if Bush is a mixed case, it seems Huckabee is a pure case. Its clear that Huckabee parts ways with Bush's commitment to conservative economic policies and national security policies. And while Huckabee identifies himself with the pro-life movement his social policy seems to be more dominated by issues like federally mandated smoking bans, the argument for which would lead logically to massive government interference. It is not really conservative social policy and would eliminate the "little platoons". Yet his approach to politics is identified with evangelicalism and his successes are attributed to martialing the evangelical vote. This means, if true, that evangelicals are willing to break up the coalition between them and national security and economic conservatives within the Republican Party.

These evangelicals are not the same breed as the ones that supported Reagan. It is clear that that generation of evangelicalism is passing away as an influential voting bloc and that a new younger generation is growing up and taking responsibility. This new group conceives the evangelical's role in politics differently than the former Falwell and Robertson group. The thinking of the new evangelical voter seems to be similar to what is now being called as the "emergent church" phenomena. This phenomena has been effective in exploiting the idiom of "post-modernism" as a way of revising its articulation of evangelical themes and also to move away from the meaningfulness of the idea of orthodoxy and the embracing of popular positions on things like global warming, social reform activism, and so on. It also is a movement away from the traditional evangelical insistence on truth. Huckabee seems to resonate with precisely this vibe even though he does not seem to refer to himself as an emergentist. However, his background places him with the "moderate" faction in the Southern Baptist Convention. Baptists who lead the way in preventing the SBC from losing its commitment to inerrancy, all remember Huckabee as their opponent, an evangelical who enabled the liberal faction of the party against the faction commited to the historic Baptist faith, a Baptist version of Charles Erdman. And some of the leaders conspicously refuse to support his canidacy for president.

In conclusion, I think that the Emergent Church/Huckabee nexus represents a return to prominance of the Erdman type of evangelicalism and that we are seeing something like a shift from the fundamentalist moralism of the "Fascist Christian Right" to the meddling nannyism of the "evangelicals for Huckabee". This is just a shift from the MacIntyre type of evangelicalism to the Erdman type. In other words, what our children have learned is to keep the political activism but alternate the substance of it. It is important to keep in mind that there is another type of evangelicalism, namely traditional moderate scholastic ecclesial Protestantism which has always rejected the idea of political activism in its name and has emphasized the idea of "the spirituality (seperateness) of the church (from the state)". This evangelicalism is represented by folks like Machen, Francis Schaeffer, and DG Hart, who recently published a whole book ("A Secular Faith") devoted to arguing that historic evangelicalism entails the doctrine of the independence of the state from religion.

A Solo Adventure?

One of my goals for the holidays is to write and maybe self-publish a doujin solo-adventure for LAME-O, adding a character design matrix like the one I made for "Fairyland Diner", maybe some kind of damage tracking system, and using a cyberpunk setting like "Blade Runner", "Akira", "Ghost in the Shell", or "Armitage". Hopefully it will be something I can share with friends and give at conventions.

It's an experiment. It may not work given the weight put on the reader to imagine so much of how things turn out and the lack of specific mechanisms in the game. We'll see.

Maybe Switching from Fred to Mitt.

Okay, I concede the point, not necessarily reluctantly. But while Fred has been clear and has run an excellent campaign by addressing issues in a substantial way and showing that political conservativism is a defensible position with real consequences for policy (and not a reactionary knee jerk belligerent form of ignorance), he is not the candidate with the greatest amount of relevant experience who holds such views. Fred and Mitt are comprehensive in their appreciation of conservative policy on economic, social, and national security issues. And Mitt's religion speech proves that he gets the relation between faith and politics right as well as being an articulate statement of the view. So that the relevant difference between them is the amount of executive experience. Only Guiliani competes with Mitt here but he is clearly tone deaf to social issues and that will bleed over into his radar for picking judges, no matter what he promises.

One thing that bothers me is RomneyCare, which does not seem to either work or fit with free market or marginally sufficiently sized government solutions and the ink on that is still pretty fresh. I guess it may too much to hope for a Mitt/Fred ticket.

Actually, it looks like Fred may be on his last legs. I will stick with Fred for loyalty's sake and send him some cash and wait and see how he holds up through the Iowa caucus. If Fred is out, I am definitely switching to Mitt and not to Huck.

You can call me "Otaku-sensei"

I finally took the leap and dared to include anime as part of my lecture in my college class. The class is called "Ethics of Technology and Cyberspace". It is basically an introduction to critical thinking applied to ethics. Ethics involving the consumption of technology is a good foil for this because it is not a hot button issue (and thus most students do not have a pre-formed opinion about it) but it is still one that attracts interest and is also a hidden issue in the sense that (I believe) people tend to underestimate the importance of it. I do treat the course as fulfilling an important calling in modern society.

The course is focused on real live questions regarding the use of technology and the Internet. But near the end we introduce questions about possible concerns about the future of technology and its potential to raise ethical challenges. One such challenge is the question concerning whether or not we will have to alter our conception of who/what counts as a stakeholder, particularly in the face of possible progress in artificial intelligence (A.I.) and genetic engineering. At this point in the school's curriculum, most students have been exposed to the metaphysical questions surrounding A.I.

It was at this point that I showed the class Episode 15 of "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" titled "Time of the Machines: MACHINES DÉSIRANTES". You can read a summary of this episode at the link in the post title.

Before showing the episode, we had already discussed the relevant points of the issue and I already gave a presentation of material about questions involving expanding the scope of moral concern. Just before showing the episode, I gave a brief sketch of the world and background of the story setting, focusing especially on the provenance of both the nature of the police SWAT unit and its composition and mission, and the provenance of the Tachikoma units used by the team. For class purposes, I explained that, even though this was a work of fiction, I wanted the students to treat is like the other cases we looked at so far in the semester.

The assignment was to look at the situation from the point of view of Major Kusanagi as the responsible agent. The Major confronts the decision of whether or not to decommission the Tachikoma and decides to go ahead and do so. The question to the class was simply whether they thought that Major could have made a better decision than she did. While easily stated, of course, a good answer would require making one's own assessment of what the right thing to do in the situation is and using that account to defend the Major's decision if the student's conclusion was the same as the Major's in the story or arguing why the account properly differs from the Major's choice. Such reflection will have to confront other questions like:

Was the Major faced with at least a prima facie moral dilemma?

What is the moral status of the Tachikoma? Should they be included among the various other stakeholders in the situation?

What would you reasonable want to know before deciding? Are there any other options, not yet considered by the Major, but which would resolve the situation? Can you imagine any technological solutions?

Some other related questions are: What difference would viewing technology as being like experimenting on rational moral agents have made in this case? Do you think it could have mitigated or prevented the issue from arising? Is there some amends that ought to be made? Given that some think we have an obligation to future persons, does that extend to future artificial persons?

The episode depicts the Tachikoma as emergent intelligences with various features in a plausible way. The students tried to make explicit what features of the Tachikoma made the Tachikoma relevant for moral consideration in there own right. They also tried to identify the concerns the Major had in making her decision, the most obvious one being public safety. Students had no trouble finding other considerations that might have slowed the Major's hand, such as saving them for further research into their behavior. But no one was willing to say that they were entitled to certain rights, nor could they bury the impression that "after all, they are just robots" even after I tried to press them a little to explain how the students themselves were different from robots. It was also an uphill fight to get them to make a serious effort since after all it was pure speculation and nothing could really be concluded from it (right?).

But one thing can be concluded from it is that in such surprising cases, the same approaches to ethical reasoning play a role such that even if the future is uncertain, a future situation can be handles with the skills we are learning now. Given that critical reasoning about ethical cases can only take us so far and that in the end we must count on the cultivation of judgment as a virtue, the future of agents like us stands in the same relation to our present as our present did to any of our previous experiences. This seems to be true if we hold to some moral theory or if we reject theory for judgment.

Some advantages to using this approach: An episode is short and left sufficient time to prepare and discuss the case. The episode spends a great deal of time watching the behavior of the Tachikoma, giving plenty of grist for the exercise. Also, this being a Ghost in the Shell: SAC episode, the level of discussion already incorporated in the dialog already raises some of the relevant concerns to guide reflection on it. Further, compared to typical episode of this type in most other sci-fi shows, the status of the Tachikoma was much more ambiguous, (more so than, say, Data in Star Trek: Next Generation), and the students had to decide which contrasts and similarities to humans were relevant and which were not (e.g. appearing human, having similar values to humans, being able to discuss cybertheology. etc.) It is also a story well written to raise important questions, especially in presenting the unintended emergence of individuality in a machine that was programed with A.I. to be an autonomously functioning urban warfare weapon. The contrast between man and machine is made blurrier by the fact that the other principal characters are cyborgs -- humans enhanced with hi-tech components. Also the moral drama is suggested by the tension between the Major and her chief officer, Mr. Batou, who has a much closer relationship to the Tachikoma, and his dismay at the Major's decision suggests the possibility that there is something possibly wrong with it. From the point of view of class time usage, the use of distracting imagery was very slight. This particular episode was very light on action and heavy on content and conversation. Finally, using anime was a surprise and the exercise benefited from the shock of the unexpected. It also contributed to attendance and participation.

On the other hand, there were problems, besides the problem of the speculative nature of the case. One is the shooting. The episode opens with a sniper blowing the head off a hostage-taking terrorist which turns out to be a dummy and not a real human being, in order to test a new sniper computer system. There is also a "hogan's alley" training scene involving guns. Also, the word "crap" is used but no other strong language. Finally, the Major is not very modestly dressed although she is mostly covered up with a bomber jacket and does not appear in full through most of the episode.

I apologized to the class for the comic book orientation with its typical catering to 14 year old male tastes and for the objectification in the Major's outfit. If pressed I would have been able to set the offending details in the context of the story to show that they played an essential role. In the Major's case, it is part of the story that her apparently twenty-something body is a perk made possible by the extent of cyberization the Major underwent. The Major herself is able to occupy any cyber body and her age is significantly older than she appears. How she looks has to be considered the responsible choice of a mature woman and not the shortsighted impulsiveness of a "lolita" type character. Also, this device points back to the vision of the original author of setting of the franchise, Masemune Shirow, by inducing something that jars are moral sensibilities as a feature of the over-all culture shock brought about by the development of technology. So it is not mere fan service (although it is definitely that also) and as far as fan service goes, it is not very gratuitous. In fact, given the point being made, it is quite restrained. But I did not want to take up class time to say this.

The class is made up of juniors at a Jesuit college. I did not assign a paper for this (although they have the option of doing a writing exercise discussing this case) but I did say it would be part of what would be covered on the exam. My main objective is to get them to review the basic principles of ethical reasoning in a fresh situation so they can build up the practice of cultivating moral judgment. My secondary objective is to make a connection between reasoning by balancing moral considerations in ethics and the metaphysical issues discussed in their earlier philosophy course work (God, the Mind, Free Will). It seems that there is a moral question that turns on settling on the conception of the status of Artificial Lifeforms but that question cannot be settled except on the basis of decisions making under conditions of uncertainty. So even if we cannot satisfactorily resolve the relevant metaphysical question, it does not necessarily follow that we cannot satisfactorily answer the question on prudential grounds and this applies to the deep questions studied in their previous course work.

ADHD and Evolution

At this link there is an interesting critical review I came across between an author and one of his graduate students. The student's review amounts to an ad hominem fallacy against the author but it also brings out the difference between this author and a rival theory from another author.

The subject in question is ADHD, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Both authors agree that there is such an issue in one sense, namely that individuals with ADHD are significantly neurophysiologically different from individuals without it. However, Hartman (represented by the the student) is a relativist about the evaluation of the condition and Barkley (represented by his book) is not.

Barkley's book is based on original systematic research as well as a synthesizing of the results of all previous research. It offers a new theory of ADHD which has fruitful suggestions for all sorts of new questions for further research, for reforms of diagnostic criteria, and for therapeutic intervention, both positively and negatively.

A normal human brain has the ability not only to perceive objects but to see them oriented to one another in 3-dimensional space. This ability enables the human subject to move around effectively in the world from place to place and to form successful executive performances with respect to location. By the same token, a normal human brain also has the ability to orient events (including past and hypothetical future events) in time -- it can "see into the fourth dimension". This allows the human subject to navigate effectively and satisfy executive functions with respect to time. The ability to perform both functions is grounded in the structure of the frontal cortex of the brain.

According to Barkley, the person with ADHD is "time blind". They do not have this capacity to orient events in time that normal humans have because they have an abnormal frontal cortex. Consequently, they are forced to live always in the immediate "now" moment. It is this that explains the attention and impulsively problems, which on this view are really secondary to the real problem. It also explains chronic nature of ADHD, why it persists through life, why it can only be directly effected by medication, and why it cannot be cured by cognitive behavioral therapy, although it can be facilitated by constant, continuous behavioral scheduling. People with ADHD are like diabetics with respect to the intractability of their condition. There is no cure for ADHD.

Hartman's theory, on the other hand, suggests that the best way to make sense of ADHD is through evolutionary anthropology. At one time the human race was divided into "hunters" and "farmers". In the course of time, the farmers were more evolutionarily fit and displaced the hunters in the hegemony of society but descendants of the hunters remain in society albeit marginalized. ADHD persons are descendants of the hunters and are equipped differently from them. As hunters, their condition is only "abnormal" in virtue of the poor fit it has with respect to the dominant farmer based society.

It is no doubt the case that both author's hold to the theory of evolution, but Hartman relies on on it more conspicuously than Barkley. Barkley's view is more Aristotelian in suggesting that ADHD persons fail to have a property priorly proper to their type. It is not bad for a goat not to be able to talk since goats don't talk anyway. But it would be bad if a human being couldn't talk since talking is part of the natural powers of a human being. By the same token, it is not good for human beings to be time blind and this is not just true relative to a dominant culture, there is a fact of the matter.

Barkley is an expert researcher. I've looked at Hartman's book and it does not have the same evidential standards as Barkley. But aside from the evidential question, there is the specter of a political side to this debate. A motive you could possibly have for accepting Hartman's relativistic account is that, in a sense, in "normalizes" ADHD. "I'm a hunter and you're a farmer. We're just different." Since ADHD is often attended with morbid affect and low-self esteem, you can see how a morbid person would prefer this justification of his character. On Barkley's account, it seems like there is something necessarily inferior about the ADHD person (which seems to be Barkley's own view if the students remarks about his classroom behavior are to be believed). It may suggest that the best thing might be to round up all the ADHD people and lock them away.

But in Barkley's own book, ADHD is a condition that the person could not choose to not have and cannot help but place the burden that he does on society. Thus, such a person should be treated with compassion rather than derision. Given how "we" could not have developed as much as we have without the faculty of time sight, the lack of such a faculty must be a grievous burden on the well intended person with ADHD both for his own sake and also for the good he would do in society. Such a picture inspires our pity and mercy. There is no occasion for mercy if Hartman is right.

As a person who takes himself to have ADHD and who is also a Christian, my inclination is to side with Barkley. For starters, Barkley's work amounts to an argument in behalf of the objectivity of human nature and an objective order of natural based values, which is consistent with a teleological argument for God's existence from the existence of natural objective "design plans" such as humans and final causes. That is, he gives us reasons for believing in a teleological universe. From the prudential side, however, I think the student should consider that in this case if everything is normal, nothing is. If one were to embrace Hartman's view because it gives an account where there is no abnormal condition and thus no reason to feel bad about oneself, then one would be throwing out a very important baby with the bath water, the idea that there is such a thing as true value and a meaning to life. The attractiveness of the hunter/farmer distinction looks appealing because it seems to describe the ADHD person's place in the Great Human Republic as "hunter", but the view actually denies the existence of the Great Human Republic altogether.

It is admittedly painful for an ADHD person to confront all the implications of the Barkley view, with the realization that he is much more like an animal than a person in this respect and that the fulfillment of human potential is something outside of his power altogether. He is bound to experience that as if it were a kind of loss of something he never really had in the first place. It would be better to by literally blind but still have time sight then it would be to have ADHD and see, it seems to me. Still, I think Barkley is the best explanation and the one that it would be the most wise to accept.

It would take a real miracle to heal ADHD, just like the man born blind, the sort of thing I don't expect to see until Jesus returns. In the mean time, Paul's remarks about the thorn in his side seem to apply. It certainly also effects my judgment of sin and responsibility.

A Good Opportunity.

I still have to work on the tensions in between my political views so the 2008 campaign looks like a good opportunity to do so.

A basic summary, for starters. In Isaiah Berlin's famous distinction between two notions of liberty, I don't accept his strong rejection, in the name of rejecting fascism, any positive assessment of that notion of liberty which he calls positive liberty.

I guess you could call my view imperfect perfectionism, which I would think is the classical political view of Plato and Aristotle. I definitely believe that their are certain liberty or negative rights that are implied by clear and perfect duties (e.g. that it is wrong to still implies a right to property). And certainly there are other rights which are justified rationally be the consequences of securing them, such as academic freedom.

But it is clear to me that the imperative force of moral norms is simply the natural imperative force of reason to rule over the non-rational, which we first encounter in our own individual selves but which we can also apply to communities by a sufficiently clear analogy such that as proper moral functioning in the individual where reason dictates and character implements, so proper functioning in society has elites who are intrinsically qualified to lead give a shepherding guidance to those citizens who are better suited to ends other than government.

If people were as good as they could conceivably be, and were absolutely diversely gifted, this system would be perfect and not fascistic. But given that all people have the same powers to some degree, and given the fragile character of goodness and the profound character of corruption, consequential reasoning requires us to allow the extension of political rights up and down the functional order of society as a check and balance by extending the rights to freedom of speech, of religion, of markets, of gun ownership, etc. to all citizens at least prima face.

I tend to favor then Locke's attempted synthesis between a natural law outlook for communities and families, with a democratic constitution of a procedural state.

But its a tenuous buisness and I don't know that it survives scrutiny.

Joining the Fred blog role.

I, the Gnu, am committing the existential leap of supporting a candidate with my blog. That is, it's my project, not the rajmeister's.

Why Fred? Let me say, with William James that I am deciding this passionally rather that intellectually. That is my reasons become exhausted at not caring for the democratic candidates and thinking that it is better to be involved per se than not involved. It would be reasonable to elect any of the Republican front runners to me but to be suspended over this and wait until after the primaries would be detrimental to the republican chances next year which are already slim. And Iraq is too important to not take a view on.

So why Fred? He is certainly scores high on social conservative values without being closed minded to policy or politically savvy judgment. He is a National Review type conservative and the one of the batch that is most like that. I hope he wins but even if he doesn't he could still keep the public debate focused on the right issues.

So; Go, Fred, go!!

LAME-O (2nd Edition)

Update: This post is no longer canon for LAME-O, but since it tells some of the history of development I'll leave it up. I have revised the rules and changed the name of the game to Pulp in a Cup.

Note: A couple of friends actually took an interest in this game, so I finally got to playtest

LAME-O, the Ludicrously Attenuated 'Magination Engine Optator!

Based on that experience, I am suggesting the following revisions. One concepts that LAME-O seems to work well with is movie franchises like Peter Jackson's "LOTR", the X-men movies, the Matrix movies, etc, since everyone who has seen them has a common idea of the world and characters already in mind. This fits nicely with the "beer & pretzels pick up" quality of the game. The link in the post title takes you to the original LAME-O game.


LAME-O ("2nd ed.")

• Rule 1: All players creatively conceive and communicate their characters and their specific actions in the game narrative and the Game Master conceives and communicates the world setting and specific situations in enough detail such that the resolution of player actions is clearly indicated by the logic of the story.
  

• Rule 2: If there is no clear outcome even after detailed exposition, this means that the opposing forces in the story are fairly evenly matched. If so, use the following die mechanic. Every time it comes down to a dice role, the roll is either a standard roll or an attack roll.
  

• With a standard roll, the player rolls 1d20 and 3d6. The 3d6 represents the difficulty of the task and the d20 represents the degree of success. Then the GM adapts the narrative of the action (with the players' input) to justify the results of the roll. Also the d20 roll is open ended. If the d20 results in "20", roll the d20 again, treating another result of "20" as zero, and add it to 20 as a total result. If the d20 results in "1", roll the d20 again, treating another result of "20" as zero, and subtract it from 1 as a total result. By this means results are possible from -18 to +39. Compare the d20 result with the 3d6 result. The difference (d20 - 3d6) determines the degree of success based on the following scale (Example: deactivating a time bomb);

1. (+11 or more)----"Divine intervention", "Terrorists give up and turn themselves in."
2. (+8 - +10)------- Spectacular success (substantial collateral benefits), "Bomb deactivated and source for terrorist technology discovered."
3. (+5 - +7) --------Great success (marginal collateral benefits), "Bomb deactivated and components salvaged."
4. (+2 - +4) --------Sufficient success (no collateral benefits), "Bomb deactivated."
5. (-1 - +1) ---------Partial, insufficient success (may roll again), "Bomb still active but timer pauses."
6. (-4 - -2) ---------Sufficient failure (no collateral costs), "Bomb still active. Run away."
7. (-7 - -5) ---------Great failure (marginal collateral costs), "Bomb active and timer speeds up."
8. (-10 - -8) --------Spectacular failure (substantial collateral costs), "Ka-boom! The player's character is dead."
9. (-11 or less) ------"Divine retribution", "Player's character dead, family loses NSA pension, and her favorite candidate loses re-election."

• An attack roll works just like a standard roll except that the attacking character rolls the d20 and the defending character rolls the 3d6. The roll is made by whoever controls the attacker or defender (the GM rolls for non-player characters). If the roll is a success for the attacker, the degree of success determines the amount of damage which is handled narratively. If the role is a great failure or more there may be self-inflicted damage. (Other possible penalties could include losing place in the initiative order (the original initiative order in a combat situation can be established by having each character roll 1d6, rolling off tie results, and having everyone go from highest result to lowest), losing the next attack, or the defender getting a free attack on the attacker.) It is up to the GM whether an attack roll or a standard roll is used. Attack rolls are expected for combat situations but some contests of skill can be resolved by by attack rolls also (like trying to sneak up on a very perceptive guard). Other competitions between characters can be resolved by comparing the degree of success of the results of two standard rolls (like a footrace). Also surprise attacks and attacks of opportunity could be resolved as a standard roll.

All religions are one.

One of the arguments of the emerging church is that structurally we have to recognize the fragmentation of society after globalization, which means that ideologically we cannot believe otherwise than by adopting the postmodernism's (a word which is always to be distinguished from "postmodernity's") conception of truth as constructed and pluralistic. A common source for this argument is the plurality of religious beliefs which seem so diverse and incompatible that they could have no common ground at all.

I was reading about Amida Buddhism, which is still one of the most popular forms of Buddhism in Japan. We don't know much about it in the West because the experts who provide the curriculum for our comparative religions courses find it too similar to Protestantism to be of any interest without seeing that it is precisely its great similarity to Western Protestantism that makes it so interesting.

A summary of my research: Amidism (also known as Jodo Shin or "Pure Land" Buddhism) may find its roots in the third and fourth century after Christ in the area of northwestern India. Amidism is oart of the larger tradition of Mahayana Buddhism and embraces Mahayana distinctives as opposed to the more philosophical Theravada school of Buddhism, which include the belief that Sidhartha was only one of many enlightened ones and that all of them participate in a universal Buddha Nature which is absolutely prior to all of them.

According to Amidism, the Buddha Amida (Amida Butsu) is one of such. The story about him is that he made a vow not to enter into enlightenment until he had accrued enough merit through ascetic discipline to obtain enlightenment not only for himself but for others. According to the story, Amida did obtain enlightenment under such a vow and so the observant who is not able to aspire to enlightment on his own ability may still obtain it just by conscientiously reaffirming in faith ten times "Namu Amida Butsu" -- "Glory to Amida Buddha!". By doing so the observant receives the excess merit accrued by Amida and is able to enter enlightenment based on that.

The basic insight is that the rigorous path to enlightenment is only possible for the few. According to most peoples' own self-assessments, they do not have what it takes to achieve the denial of the ego that is necessary for it. If that is all there is they have no reasonable hope except to rely on the merit of another. Further, Amida is cast in a personal way (supposedly borrowed from some Chinese Taoist sects) and enlightenment is depicted as a "pure land", greatest conceivable land where the water is always clean and the fruit is always fresh and abundant, etc. The idea is that with the use of such imagery, the concept of enlightenment is easier to grasp and the poor, having set aside the insecurity of ever acheiving Nirvana, may make whatever efforts they may toward it rather than despair. Many of the Mahayana buddhas are "bodhifications" of regional deities. It is thought that Amida is the buddha counterpart to Ahura Mazda from Zoroastrianism, having come from that region of the world. In other words, the roots of Amidism are thought to be from the apocalyptic religious traditions peculiar to the Middle East.

Several things strike the evangelical reader when hearing the story of Amida Butsu. First, the tendency of the religion to raise to Augustinian degrees about the individuals ability to deny self. The number of the poor tends to expand to include all people, no matter who much some may protest there self-sufficiency. Second, the need for grace in order to be delivered from this condition. Third that this grace is the result of another's sacrifice and the transfer of there accomplished observance to the believer's credit. Fourth, that the this can only be accomplished be faith -- the nambutsu formula cannot be recited to effective, it must be prayed. Fifth, the provider of this merit is one who is a man but also the universal Buddha. Sixth, that the basis for the transfer of this merit is a vow (a covenant) made by the one in question in behalf of others. Seventh, that unlike Buddhism in general, the basis of this story is not reason reasoning from its own resources. We need to told that this vow was made by the testimony of tradition. (In other words, Amidism is an apocalyptic faith.) Eighth, Amidism promises a personal future after death in the figure of a Pure Land to which the enlightened will go -- a land not so corrupted that enlightenment is only possible for the few if possible at all. In other words, Amidism is an eschatological faith. Finally, a characteristic internal foe of Amidism in the household of Mahayana Buddhism is Zen, which promises nothing but what a person may discover for themselves through their own hard work and rejects the "over-mythologizing" of the Pure Land school. (Think of the debate between Augustinianism and Pelagianism in Christianity.)

It seems clear that the logic and rational motivations for the doctrines of Amidism is essentially the same as that for the doctrines of Protestantism. One might suspect that at least the truth conditions for both are different. But one remembers that religious language is often language not about the essence of the religious object (which being infinite is beyond our ability to comprehend much less state in an essential definition) but about the various roles fulfilled by the religious object. "Creator", "Father", "Son", "Redeemer", "Christ", "Lord", "Savior", etc. are all role-realizer words. "The Creator of the world" is "The X such that X creates the world", which is something we can know to true based on revelation and/or reason, but which tells us nothing about what X is.

In the case of the OT saints, they put their faith in the promise of a future Messiah and they did so successfully without knowing that the Messiah would be Jesus. They believed in an X such that X would bring about the Kingdom of God, a function depicted and characterized by the revealed rituals of the OT economy. We now know that the Messiah, that the X in question is Jesus.

If Amida is defined as "The name we give to the X such that X performs the role characterized by fulfilling the pure land vow legend with sufficient proximity", then for all we know "Amida" is just another name for Jesus and the faith of the Amidist is faith in Jesus in a similar sense to the OT saint's faith in Jesus. It remains an empirical question whether a teacher in good standing with the Amidist community would understand his doctrine in this way. Without being able to say for certain whether this is the case, it seems the right attitude about the sufficiency of Amida faith on the part of the Christian must be agnosticism. On the best view, it seems that Amidism is a kind of proto-evangelion. However, the likely response of an Amidist to the Christian Gospel is not to see it as the fulfillment of Amidism but rather as something that the Amidist has no felt need to adopt. This may partially explain why after so many centuries of witness, Christianity has had no significant following in Japan where the Pure Land School has such a great following. As Christian missionaries, we would most fairly expect to win them by saying "We see that you are very religious" and "What you worship in ignorance we want to make plain to you". The most likely response is "We would like to hear more of this matter" rather than scoffing or believing. If we trace this dialectic through to this result we certainly would have accomplished the kerygmatic dimension of mission.

As this example suggests, in the case of Amidism, here we have a religion well within the larger tradition of a great world religion that is significantly similar in content to our chosen faith. Further, in that larger tradition, Amidism has rival sects that answer the fundamental questions differently than Amidism (like Zen about the importance of help from others vs. only helping yourself). Finally, while evangelicals tend to only identify Christianity with Protestantism, Protestantism makes sense only in a broader sphere of distinctive religious discourse that includes alternatives like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Eastern Orthodoxy is more overtly Pelagian than the Augustinian Protestant (and not surprisingly more invested in spiritual exercises and meditation). So it sounds like you have something like this analogy:

Protestantism : Eastern Orthodoxy :: Amidism : Zen

Now it seems that what's true in this case about the relation between these views on the question of grace and responsibility is true actually or potentially of all religions and divisions of religions about all issues. All religions are one in that they wrestle with a certain set of particularly religious aporias even though they make alternative judgments about how to answer them. For any religious debate in any religious tradition, there is actually or potentially (that is, all the concepts are available in the religion to express the question not yet considered) counterpart debates in any other religious tradition. Given that the counterpart relation is one content, this means that every religion has a potential access point for making sense of any other religion, at least doctrinally.

Thus all religions have a unity that makes them potentially accessible to each other and which makes there religious claims evaluable by one another in terms of what is finally considered to be the best answer to each of the aporias all religions face (Some examples of such aporias; sovereignty vs responsibility, law vs grace, infinite vs personal, transcendence vs immanence, faith vs. works, one vs. many, atonement vs holiness, Being vs. Becoming, eternal vs. temporal, etc.) This contradicts the postmodernist account that sees all religious traditions as incommensurable and thus not available to rational discussion. As I hope to have illustrated, this view does not do justice to the phenomenology of religion.

One possible objection to this is the fact that in spite of the similarities between Amida and Protestantism, Amidism is still presupposing a general Buddhist metaphysic of Nothingness and the "no-self" which is clearly incompatible with Christianity. The reply is yes but this does not refute the possibility of internalizing the debate between Infinite Perfect Being vs. Nothingness within both Christianity and Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism already contains theistic elements and in the west we did see at least one theologian, Thomas Altizer, defend what he called "Christian Atheism". We would not necessarily accept such innovations but that does not mean we cannot discuss them.

Quasi-public Comic Books.

A couple of events this week forced me to come to grips with a dilemma. One was the casual observation from a fellow professor that all pop culture must be avoided because it dumbs down the mind and undoes progress. Another was discovering a book on the current scene in comic books by an author who didn't quite get his doctorate. i won't say anything more about that since i only glanced through the work and cannot meaningfully discuss it.

Both event though helped me diagnose a condition I was suffering from. I was reintroduced late in life to comic books by a successful doctoral student who disclosed some the the high minded themes in today's current writers. That being the case, although I could clearly recognize the sophistication in current comic writers, I eventually became weary or the apparent retreading of views and opinions subtly expressed in them that just did not resonate with me. For me the popularity of Japanese manga was a great alternative because their comics were actually fun to read. However, it was palpable that they were not doing much for me intellectually and that the reiteration of the same old devices was making the novelty wear off fast. I liked manga when it reflected on the unique features of Japanese culture. Now I can see that even the Japanese have a criticism of their own culture which shows that it is toxic. so it is hard to be excited about it anymore.

Now I see the problem. Japanese comics are pop culture and American comics are not. Let the generalization pass for the moment. More importantly, what's going on in most American comics that are made by 'Big Comics' (as in 'Big Business', 'Big Media', and 'Big Science') are featuring a certain elite body of writers (setting aside the artists for the time being) who are all very distinguished not only in comics but also in publishing, screen writing, and/or television writing, Hollywood in four color print. These writers are also involved in an ongoing conversation with one another, a conversation that has its roots in reflecting on stories and traditional and contemporary thought. The coterie of comic writers is not unlike the coterie of professors within a discipline, including the aspect of speaking mainly to each other. You might not think so since comics are "for the masses". But the fact is that comics are packaged in way such that they finally result in graphic novels which will only be purchased by the self-styled and sophisticated consumer, one that sees themselves as part of an elite, all geekiness aside.

Much of what comics mainly do in this circle is to affirm, modify, challenge, etc. what the author sees other authors doing and so most comics are really about the state of comics itself, and the development of the direction of comics fits in a rewarding way with the categories and theories of modern literary studies. The comic industry functions like an extension of the literature department of a public university, whether intentionally so or not. Consequently, it is likely to be analyzable in terms of a Kuhnian account of paradigm change or a rhetoric of culture.

Which explains what I don't like about these comics -- their dogmatism and the corresponding discounting of rival comic projects (like Astro City). Gertrude Himmelfarb uses the phrase "quasi-public" to characterize ostensibly private institutions that develop bureaucracies remarkably similar to public institutions due to there dependence on the public sector for resources. Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Are Big Comics quasi-public? Big Comics are not dependent on the public treasury for financing. But they are not banking their livelihood on Joe Fanboy's $2.95+ per issue either. They do significantly depend on other things which are quasi-public; Big Universities, Big Art, and Big Media. Consequently there is always the danger that Big Comics will become more like Court Comics. Comics becomes all about genre and not about "pop".

On the other hand, do Big Comics force the hand of the healthy minded consumer who does not want to be dumbed down but who does not fit well with the professionalized paradigm of "good story matter"? Big Comics can always oblige us to listen by their excellent quality (which no one can deny). But equally talented yet contrarian writers may just have to sit and listen and shut up. Maybe we need a blog for comic writers.

Wonderful, Wonderful, Copenhagen!

Here is an excellent "First Things" article by a physicist that explains some of the relevant philosophical features of quantum theory in a clear and useful way.

Links to other related articles.

What is the Emergent Church?

(Reposted from my post at Facebook's White Horse Inn group discussion board.)

After looking at some of Brian McClaren's writings, it seems to me that the emergent church movement has some alternative descriptions to it besides its own self-description which would help us appreciate it more than we do. The matter of self-description is very key to what they are all about as they are strategically trying to choose their words in order to be heard by the current phase of secular culture. However, they are also looking to create an opportunity to correct substantial problems in the culture of the church. The general character of these problems are distinctive in that they are not of the strictly theological sort but rather methodological. On the other hand they are still considered substantial because they deal matters of moral appraisal.

In a way, the emergent church movement is part of the story of the evangelical rejection of fundamentalism, which encouraged an open mind to culture and intellectual achievement and thus encouraged young Christians to put off their original in church upbringing and pursue university educations. The emergent church is the blowback from this move, importing academic culture into the culture of the church on the premise that, as expected, university culture had legitimate criticisms to make about the habits of churched communities and the church itself would have to listen in all fairness. Further it must be the case that these admonishments all point to blocks which prevent sophisticated academics from even considering the church. But this does not just become an issue for an elite but for all citizens receiving a college education.

The problem centers on the issue of what counts as critical thinking which the emergent church views from both sides of the church line. Much of classical evangelical apologetic method as given by Carnell, Schaeffer, Henry, CS Lewis, Van Til, Clark, and Hackett is still very much in the objective idealist tradition of philosophy at a time when professional academia has rejected that tradition for positivism. While not committed to logical positivism in its explicit form general features of the positivist view remain standard. For example, while evangelical apologetics had been emphasizing the importance of formulating a coherent world and life view according to some objective criteria of world-view evaluation (empirical fit, coherence, livability, etc.), the academy has come to reject all such activity as "system building" and to focus more on the analysis of concepts, languages, structures, signs, etc.. The only discipline which can make progress on this account is science which can be cashed out in terms of conditional hypotheses and matters of logic. This not only denies a common ground on the basis of explanatory values, the entrenchment of this view in the university is enforced by gatekeepers who maintain it as the main research framework. This basically creates a kind of culture shock but one such that there is no basis in principle of overcoming, especially if you think of culture shock as a form of shame created by the removal of cultural fig leaves in the eyes of other cultures.

As Christians have gone through the university regimen they have become more savvy about where the university culture is most vulnerable. A good example is Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga altered the agenda of religious philosophy by defending the idea that belief in God could conceivably be a belief that needs no evidence to be legitimate. From the point of view of a traditional apologetics this seemed appalling given that Paul so clearly says that creation leaves a clear witness, enough to oblige belief in all people. It seemed that Plantinga's approach fell far short of the potential of theistic evidence according to the Scripture, thus compromising by implication the authority and inerrancy of Scripture.

I'm not sure if Plantinga believes in the inerrancy of Scripture or not, but that doesn't matter. Plantinga's agenda is not determined deductively from Scripture but rather by learning how the contemporary philosophy game is played and addressing it's weaknesses strategically. It is enough that it is logically conceivable that a person may have belief in God at the foundation of his justification tree, whether one actually does or not. Such a possibility refutes the putative obligation to proportion all beliefs to empirical facts, a tacit restriction of what may count as good thinking. By making such a point Plantinga is raising an internal criticism about the rules of the game, which is a legitimate move. His dialectical strategy is such that the average church goer may have a hard time seeing what he is up to and may in fact think that Plantinga is giving away the store. But this is only because he does not have the wherewithal to see things from Plantinga's point of view.

Plantinga's strategy is an excellent example of the "David and Goliath" approach -- taking out the most intimidating of Giants with the most meager looking of weapons. In turns out that the most vulnerable spots are only susceptible to the simplest weapons.

If we generalize this case, we can see what the problem is. Imagine the evangelical of the 1970's becoming a parent and sending his child to college not just with the intention of getting a career but in order make a real application of bring all of life under the Lordship of Christ. But after four years, the child has returned home an agnostic having found no leveredge for the evangelical theology he learned to make an impact into his university experience and having to choose between "all truth" and "God's truth". This because he has only learned how he was supposed to think and not how to think simpliciter which is a skill not automatically nor widely possessed by the population, Christian or otherwise. Now if he were to stick with the university and was not afraid of how he would sound to the folks back home he would eventually find the way to hold his faith and learning together as he grew in his abilities. But his doing so would leave the home church unchanged and recreating the drama for each new college student. The church may eventually regret adopting the positive cultural outlook of evangelicalism and retreat back to fundamentalism and isolation.

Hence the program of the emergent church movement which is the radical program of reinventing local church culture to bring it up to speed with the forces pushing from the top down that are isolating it in spite of the churches best intentions. The emergent church uses the language of our "postmodern situation" to communicate its agenda according to its aims. More specificly, it is incorporating the David and Goliath strategy, moving away from overt emphases on truth, argument, and evidence for the more thin looking issues of plausibility and narrative. In spite of the term "postmodern culture" the emergent church is really trying to acclimate the church more to intensified modernity in a way that maintains the essential character of the church more effectively.

The mandate for an emergent church is thus not a call to revival or reformation nor is it a mandate for psychotherapy or church growth techniques. It's a renegotiation of the territory within and between the church and the world. By calling it an emergent church it forces the choice for local Christians between the Old Way of doing things and the New Retrofitted Way of doing things while making the New Way strategically geared to respond to the press of modern quasi-public culture that is driven by the university. In this sense the emergent church is helping the average Christian who cannot see what is going on to be already acclimated to it and thus able to adapt to it.

In conclusion, the emergent church is the offspring of the evangelical movement in the respects that this movement distinguished itself from Fundamentalism. In many ways, the emergent church is being true to the spirit of J. Gresham Machen and Francis Schaeffer if we could only see the big picture. But there are many in the church who cannot do this. In this respect, in which everything comes down to differences with respect to critical thinking, inequalities of ability are unavoidable. The emergent church movement has put aside universal education of all and has adopted the strategy of thinking with the learned and speaking differently to the vulgar.

Just a Reminder

Pancho: !Hey Cisco! !Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo!

Cisco: !Carumba! ?You know what that means don't you, amigo?

Pancho: !Si! That means that tomorrow is . . .

Pancho y Cisco: !! FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!!

Cisco: Say, Pancho. ?Do you think they'll have any Tijuana Bibles?

Pancho: Only the ones los hermanos Hernandez write.

Cisco: !Oh, Pancho!

Pancho: !Oh, Cisco!

Miller vs. Millar

After the wretchedness of Marvel's non-excelsior unsaga "Civil War" starring Mark Millar as Captain America ("Heaven knows we need more statesmen!", to quote Bloom County), and just when you thought the Dark Age of Comics entailed dark mindedness, Frank Miller comes out as being on the same page as Dennis Miller with respect to national security.

Brad Melzer ruined the contemporary comics scene for the whole professional American comic book industry. He produced a story line for DC which displayed a character building scenario showing how otherwise well minded people can come to be at odds over dilemmas that are only faced by superheroes -- part of an intelligently crafted and surprising mystery for the DC specific universe. Unfortunately, he may have set the bar too high, since the Infinity Crisis never quite rose to the standards set by its prequel.

Enter Marvel with its own universe redefining story featuring its traditional focus on 3-D character development, or so we all thought. Unfortunately what looked like another deep exploration of how the gods might disagree about a moral dilemma that only they face turned out to be a political diatribe about the administration -- not that there's anything wrong with that except being dumbed down and boring at best and deheroifying previously sainted characters at worst. Rather than producing a conscience stimulating character developing story where the partisans on both sides of the issue are keenly aware of the difficulties and strengths of each option which manifest genuine moral tragedy and crisis, what we got were "heroes" who couldn't rise above the level of partisan jingoism with one time spouting off nativistic libertarian platitudes and the other spouting sycophantic litanies. Finally, when it does end (looking at both the Mark Millar and Peter Jenkins story lines), it becomes a classic piece of rhetoric where even if you were wrong all along you were right and visa versa. ("You can't touch me here.") At least we succeeded in offending -- or at least dissatisfying -- both sides. Finally, Cap is killed off because he has become a square circle for current writers and readers.

Enter Frank Miller, godfather of the Dark Age, with his outspoken views of how 9/11 helped him to close on patriotism, the American flag, and his WWII era parents. Miller, after all, is a Joneser, the lost sociologically category between Baby Boomers and Baby Busters, that have been tending to the social right since they were born. Frank Miller offers the potentially interesting secular insight that "patriotism" is really a species of rational self-interest, potentially solving Cap's false dilemma, something which merits further thought. But Miller still has the cultural memory that impresses one with the fact that secularization needs a theodicy.

Mark Millar, however, is clearly a generation well after WWII, one which is more like the generation prior to WWI, a product of the new quasi-public, not-for-profit sector of banalized good feelings. It is not surprising that the story of Civil War failed to be the advertized challenging tragedy and turned out to be sophistical formula.

I really shouldn't be the one to say this, much as it seems to need saying. But now I can stop because Frank's coming out. I look forward to "Holy Terror, Batman" (review and video clip) when it comes in print. (/rant)