Well, if the ADL is wishing people Happy Hanukkah, then I guess I can (In fact, I’m probably a day late. Even so, I have more days available.)
Theologically, Hanukkah (however you spell it) is considered to be a minor holiday commemorating a military victory. But there are reasons why it’s more widely recognized (particularly in the United States) than more major Jewish holidays. For one thing, every human culture since pre-pre-history has had sone kind of holiday, festival, ritual – centered aroind the winter solstice, and celebrating light. For another, Hanukkah, certainly in the United States, has become very much about the children. And parents of any culture can see an opportunity to teach religious and cultural principles without pushback just as well as parents of any other culture.
In fact, I find actions like those of Hobby Lobby – removing all Hanukkah merchandise from all stores – to be shameful. I’ve said this before, but I think not here. The historical events upon which Hanukkah is based can be roughly dated to 170-160 BCE. (I grant that at that time history was not considered an exact science deserving of accuracy, but there are written histories datable to at least sometime in the BCE referencing Antiochus abd the Maccabbees.) That certainly suggests that Joseph and Mary grew up celebrating Hanukkah, which in turn siggests that Jesus as a child also celebrated, even in Egypt. All these self-styled Christians who whine about this or that attempt for any person to be the person they were born to be “makes the Baby Jesus cry” should start asking themself what taking away the baby Jesus’s dreidl and gelt away – let alone latkes – does to the baby Jesus’s mood.
It’s still possible to find the books of First and Second Maccabbees in some (though not all) Catholic versions of the Bible. And Handel’s Oratorio “Judas Maccabeus” – at least parts of it – are still being sung (probably mostly by Jews for Hannukah, ironically.) I’m not trying to advocate cultural appropriation, but would it hurt us to give a nod to a story which is part of our story too? One which shows what religious persecution really means (and that it DOESN’T mean people saying “Happy Holidays”)?
Religious persecution also doesn’t mean a menorah (specifically a Hanukkiah – menorah basically means candlestick, and there are different kinds) like this one. Anything that holds the right number of candles in the right configuration will do – and probably has done, at some point in history.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
If anyone feels that today’s article coupled with my remarks constitute more of a personal rant than a political statement, I won’t disagree. However, if politics is to be regarded as a means of improving (and then maintaining and building upon those improvements – a proposition which seems to be losing suppport, but which should not be, then the personal Is political – is, indeed, the foundation of all politics. And it distresses me personally me that we seem to be going backwards, not only on this political point, but also on our cultural understanding of reality. I am not old enough to have see Christine Jorgenson in a movie, but I am old enough to have heard about her, and heard that she was a female soul (or person, or personality – I’m sure not everyone used the word soul – born into a male body. That made sense to me thenm and it still makes sense as an explanation, and still makes it quite clear that Christine had no choice in the matter. Yet, we were told then, and many of our worse, this youth are still being told today, that “gay” is a choice. Because “God doesn’t make mistakes.” No one appears to grasp the implication here -that, “No, God doesn’t make mistakes. You just think, in your arrogance, that you know what constitutes a mistake better than God does.” Dorothy L. Sayers knew better than that – in a novel published in the 1930’s, she has the character of a poorly educated farmer say of an elderly lesbian, “The Lord makes some on ’em that way to suit his own purposes.” These days, our “poorly educated” think they know better then their own all-knowing God.
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Biological sex is far from binary − this college course examines the science of sex diversity in people, fungi and across the animal kingdom
Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.
Title of course:
Diversity of Biological Sex Characteristics
What prompted the idea for the course?
Most people view biological sex, or the physical features related to reproduction, as simple and binary – either male or female. Even those who recognize that gender – referring to cultural norms around biological sex, or a person’s internal feeling of being masculine, feminine or both – can be complex and nuanced don’t see biological sex in the same way. Many also regard variability in sex and gender as exclusive to people – not found in nonhuman animals.
I am a behavioral neurobiologist who has been teaching human physiology since 1998. Over the past several years, I have focused my reading and writingon the biology of sex. It struck me that many of my students had misguided assumptions about sex characteristics, including that all people are physically either 100% male or 100% female.
First, we examine why sexual reproduction evolved in any species. This question is still hotly debated among biologists because sex is inefficient. It requires time and energy to find a suitable mate and unite your sex cells, plus it allows you to pass on only half your genes to your offspring.
In comparison, asexual reproduction – essentially cloning yourself – is much more efficient. You don’t have to find a mate, and everyone can produce offspring themselves because there are no males. In biology, “male” refers to an individual that makes small sex cells like sperm, and “female” refers to an individual that makes large sex cells like eggs.
Sex characteristics manifest in different ways across the animal kingdom.
We then transition from nonhuman animals to people, via the brain. We learn about a few smallbrain structures in vertebrates that likely have reproductive functions and are differently sized in females versus males on average. We also learn that most people have some brain structures that are more typically male, others that are more typically female and still others that are intermediate – in other words, most people are mosaics of female-typical and male-typical brain sex characteristics.
Perhaps more than ever, there is a debate about how to treat people who do not fit neatly into a female or a male box. Many assume that biological sex is binary and regard transgender and nonbinary people as mistaken or confused. In addition, for many decades, intersex infants have undergone surgical procedures to make them appear more typically male or female. Even those who support transgender, nonbinary and intersex people often assume that biological sex is binary. But this assumption is not anchored in evidence.
What will the course prepare students to do?
Students often say that before they took this course, they had no idea biological sex characteristics could be so diverse, despite having taken several biology courses.
An improved awareness of the complexity of biological sex may help shape the research and teaching of future biologists. This will help them design experiments that take account of the diversity of their subjects and be more inclusive in their teaching. It may also help all students ask better questions and make better judgments about social and political issues related to sex and gender.
Ari Berkowitz, Presidential Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Biology; Director, Cellular & Behavioral Neurobiology Graduate Program, University of Oklahoma
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, that’s really all I have to say – and no doubt it’s more than enough.
Yesterday. after putting as much as possible for the blog together, I looked at another free knitting pattern I had found – this one for a crutch cover. I have a coulple of pairs of critches. I never use more than one at a time (I probably should touch wood when I say that) and when I use one, it isn’t always for pain – sometimes – most times – it’s for balance. Years ago I got a couple of sets (underarm pad and hand pad) in leopard skin patterns, one natural colors and one shocking pink; but they do need laundering, and I thought it would be nice to have some spares. The pattern calls for a cast-on technique I can always use more practice on, and it also calls for brioche stitch (like stocknette but the odd and the even columns are different colors.) I’m not experimenting with brioche stitch yet – instead, I’m using novelty yarn scraps instead of plan yarn for texture. The designer is known on the internet by the name “The Wooly Kraken,” which gave me a smile.
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Short Takes –
Daily Beast – RNC Flounces Out of Presidential Debates Commission With Unanimous Vote
Quote – In a Thursday statement that announced the unanimous vote, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said, “We are going to find newer, better debate platforms to ensure that future nominees are not forced to go through the biased CPD in order to make the case for the American people.” Click through for details. Reality may have a liberal bias – and, if so, it’s about the only thinkg that does. Certainly the media and the CPD don’t.
NBC News THINK – Why Good Friday is a warning against far-right Christian nationalism
Quote – Yet while Trump’s authoritarian MAGA movement has become all but synonymous with white evangelical Christianity, it does not speak for most Christians in the U.S., who are sick of seeing our faith hijacked for hateful political agendas. Click through if a Scriptural condemnation of “white evangelical Christianity” woould be useful to you. Lord Acton’s famous quote doesn’t go far enough. One does not need to have power to be corrupted by it. Wanting power is more than enough to corrupt.
Crooks and Liars – James Carville Has Had It With Democratic Whiners
Quote – If you’re a Democrat, I don’t care what you are with gender, race, if you don’t see that and you are not outraged, and it doesn’t make you want to vote, I can’t do anything for you! You’re just a whiny, complaining person…. If we can’t stand in there for Joe Biden and talk about the great things he’s done, then we don’t deserve to win this election in 2022. Click through for full opinion. Not that anyone here is guilty, necessarily. But this is the same thing we saw in 2016. It didn’t turn out well.
Yesterday I overslept – the only surpise there is that it didn’t happen sooner after the weekend. But at least I had gotten pretty well caught up the previous day, so I was able to keep up.
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Why ‘bad’ ads appear on ‘good’ websites – a computer scientist explains
Quote – Programmatic advertising is a powerful tool that allows advertisers to target and reach people on a huge range of websites. As a doctoral student in computer science, I study how malicious online advertisers take advantage of this system and use online ads to spread scams or malware to millions of people. This means that online advertising companies have a big responsibility to prevent harmful ads from reaching users, but they sometimes fall short. Click through for more detailed explanation, I used to see people in comments complaining about site advertising (and assuming everyone else was seeing what they were seeing) on a daily basis Nowadays I don’t. But the problem is still real – in fact worse, because not it has infested newsletters (from large sites which use a mail service to send them out.) Not that anyone here ever does … but never click on an ad in a newsletter, even from a trusted site.
Dr. Seuss’ Banned Anti-War ‘The Butter Battle Book’ Is Now a Netflix Kids’ Show
Quote – Written in 1984, The Butter Battle Book centered around the war between an orange race called Zooks and a blue race called Yooks. Their countries were divided by a wall over a disagreement on which was the right way to butter bread: Yooks preferred them butter-side up while the Zooks preferred butter-side down. Given the time of the book’s publication, The Butter Battle Book was considered a direct commentary on the Cold War. Seuss unapologetically delved into exploring the consequences of nationalism and the nature of war via the military-industrial complex. Most of the book focused on a heated arms race that got so deadly, it ended with a dour, open-ended conclusion. Click through for synopsis of original, synopsis of adaptation, and a trailer (plus a link to a John Olver video torching Ted Cruz ove Dr. Seuss which is probably not new.) Theodor Geisel was not a perfect person … but his propensity for making people think (which too many people don’t like) was a great gift.
truthout (OpEd) – Republicans Refuse to Name Courthouse After Black Judge in Overtly Racist Move
Quote – Hatchett retired from the court in 1999 and went into private practice. He passed away last year at age 88, a widely praised and highly admired jurist. “Joe Hatchett is a person who lives and has lived by the ethical precepts which have historically guided the conduct of truly great judges and lawyers of our past and present,” said former American Bar Association (ABA) President Chesterfield Smith when Hatchett was awarded the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “Joe Hatchett to me exemplifies what is best in an American judge, one who is sometimes lonely, but one who never shirks standing alone.” Click through for full opinion. Yes, this is truthout, and yes, truthout is pretty far left. Bu there’s only one phrase in it I could conceivably disagree with, and that because it is too kind to Republicans. See what you think.
Yesterday was another pretty quiet day. It was cold, and there was some snow, but I do have a working heater in place (as opposed to last week, when the one I had died), so i was just fine.
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Daily Beast – Why Putin Is Itching to Get His Hands on This Ex-American Banker
Quote – [Bill] Browder, a financier who had once been the largest foreign investor in Russia, had long been a thorn in Moscow’s side before he was detained that day in May 2018. Years earlier, Browder had discovered that many of the companies he had invested in were being robbed by oligarchs and corrupt officials. Unwilling to let this fraud go unchallenged, Browder, as detailed in his 2015 bestseller Red Notice, decided to fight back. Click through for the gist of the story. I expect that Freezing Order is quite some book. Every group has its exceptions, even bankers (I don’t mean bank employees, who are generally good pwople; I’m thinkinfg of management when I make that generalization.)
New Mexico In Depth – Money for abandoned uranium mine cleanup spurs questions about design, jobs
Quote – Uranium mines are personal for Dariel Yazzie. Now head of the Navajo Nation’s Superfund program, Yazzie grew up near Monument Valley, Arizona, where the Vanadium Corporation of America started uranium operations in the 1940s. His childhood home sat a stone’s throw from piles of waste from uranium milling, known as tailings. His grandfather, Luke Yazzie, helped locate the first uranium deposits mined on the Navajo Nation. His father was a uranium miner, then worked for Peabody Coal mine. Yazzie, Diné, heard the family stories about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scanning his family’s home for radiation in 1974, when he was 4 years old, finding several high contamination readings. Click through for details and anecdotes. Cleaning up after fossil fuels is bad enough … but cleaning up after uranium is worse.
Want to improve student achievement? Hire a Black principal.
Quote – Researchers have found that principals of color yield multiple benefits for students of color. A University of Minnesota study published in January about the impact of Black women principals in secondary schools linked Black principals and higher math achievement for students. Black men make up a slight majority of Black secondary school principals, but the researchers suggest that Black women in these roles have a positive effect on student achievement and teacher investment in schools. Click through for evidence. I don’t know that this would work in every school district, but in those where it wouldm it would do so like a champion.
Food For Thought:
Not a picture today, but a short quote from an email from Faithful America. Anyone not in the Christian faith tradition, please take this as confirmation of what you already know: far too many “Christians” don’t act Christian.
During Holy Week, the church remembers the final days of Christ’s earthly life and ministry. But we often forget just what it was that Jesus did to anger the religious and political authorities in the first place:
“Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers… He said to them, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer;’ but you are making it a den of robbers.'”
If we’re serious about following Jesus, we need to start flipping more tables ourselves.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
I wanted to share this article because – even before the invasion of Ukraine started, we were hearing things like “I’d rather be Russian than a Democrat,” and now we are hearing “I prefer Putin’s Christian values to Joe Bifen’s values.” And, frankly. that scares the Republication out of me. It doesn’t seem to be scaring many people, and that scares me too. So I have been trying to be alert for anything I could find on the topic
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Why is Russia’s church backing Putin’s war? Church-state history gives a clue
Vladimir Putin speaks to Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill (center) in Samolva, Russia, on Sept. 11, 2021. Alexei Druzhinin/Pool Photo via AP
Patriarch Kirill’s support for the invasion of a country where millions of people belong to his own church has led critics to conclude that Orthodox leadership has become little more than an arm of the state – and that this is the role it usually plays.
The reality is much more complicated. The relationship between Russian church and state has undergone profound historical transformations, not least in the past century – a focus of my work as a scholar of Eastern Orthodoxy. The church’s current support for the Kremlin is not inevitable or predestined, but a deliberate decision that needs to be understood.
Soviet shifts
For centuries, leaders in Byzantium and Russia prized the idea of church and state working harmoniously together in “symphony” – unlike their more competitive relationships in some Western countries.
Churchmen grew to resent the state’s interference. They did not defend the monarchy in its final hour during the February Revolution of 1917, hoping it would lead to a “free church in a free state.”
The Bolsheviks who seized power, however, embraced a militant atheism that sought to secularize society completely. They regarded the church as a threat because of its ties to the old regime. Attacks on the church proceeded from legal measures like confiscating property to executing clergy suspected of supporting the counterrevolution.
Patriarch Tikhon, head of the Church during the Revolution, criticized Bolshevik assaults on the Church, but his successor, Metropolitan Bishop Sergy, made a declaration of loyalty to the Soviet Union in 1927. Persecution of religion only intensified, however, with repression reaching a peak during the Great Terror of 1937-1938, when tens of thousands of clergy and ordinary believers were simply executed or sent to the Gulag. By the end of the 1930s, the Russian Orthodox Church had nearly been destroyed.
The Nazi invasion brought a dramatic reversal. Josef Stalin needed popular support to defeat Germany and allowed churches to reopen. But his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, reinvigorated the anti-religious campaign at the end of the 1950s, and for the rest of the Soviet period, the church was tightly controlled and marginalized.
Kirill’s campaigns
The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought yet another complete reversal. The church was suddenly free, yet facing enormous challenges after decades of suppression. With the collapse of Soviet ideology, Russian society seemed set adrift. Church leaders sought to reclaim it, but faced stiff competition from new forces, especially Western consumer culture and American evangelical missionaries.
A Russian Orthodox Church priest leads a service at the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin in Sokolniki in Moscow on Feb. 15, 2022. AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko
The first post-Soviet head of the church, Patriarch Aleksy II, maintained his distance from politicians. Initially, they were not very responsive to the church’s goals – including Vladimir Putin in his first two terms between 2000 and 2008. Yet in more recent years, the president has embraced Russian Orthodoxy as a cornerstone of post-Soviet identity, and relations between church and state leadership have changed significantly since Kirill became patriarch in 2009. He quickly succeeded in securing the return of church property from the state, religious instruction in public schools and military chaplains in the armed forces.
Kirill has also promoted an influential critique of Western liberalism, consumerism and individualism, contrasted with Russian “traditional values.” This idea argues that human rights are not universal, but a product of Western culture, especially when extended to LGBTQ people. The patriarch also helped develop the idea of the “Russian world”: a soft power ideology that promotes Russian civilization, ties to Russian-speakers around the world, and greater Russian influence on Ukraine and Belarus.
Although 70%-75% of Russians consider themselves Orthodox, only a small percentage are active in church life. Kirill has sought to “re-church” society by asserting that Russian Orthodoxy is central to Russian identity, patriotism and cohesion – and a strong Russian state. He has also created a highly centralized church bureaucracy that mirrors Putin’s and stifles dissenting voices.
Growing closer
A key turning point came in 2011-2012, starting with massive protests against electoral fraud and Putin’s decision to run for a third term.
Kirill initially called for the government to dialogue with protesters, but later offered unqualified support for Putin and referred to stability and prosperity during his first two terms as a “miracle of God,” in contrast to the tumultuous 1990s.
In 2012, Pussy Riot, a feminist punk group, staged a protest in a Moscow cathedral to criticize Kirill’s support for Putin – yet the episode actually pushed church and state closer together. Putin portrayed Pussy Riot and the opposition as aligned with decadent Western values, and himself as the defender of Russian morality, including Orthodoxy. A 2013 law banning dissemination of gay “propaganda” to minors, which was supported by the church, was part of this campaign to marginalize dissent.
Putin successfully won reelection, and Kirill’s ideology has been linked to Putin’s ever since.
Members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot sit in a glass cage at a courtroom in Moscow in 2012. The women were charged with hooliganism connected to religious hatred. AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the eruption of conflict in the Donbas in 2014 also had an enormous impact on the Russian Orthodox Church.
Ukraine’s Orthodox churches remained under the Moscow Patriarchate’s authority after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, about 30% of the Russian Orthodox Church’s parishes were actually in Ukraine.
The conflict in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, however, intensified Ukrainians’ calls for an independent Orthodox church. Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Orthodox Christianity, granted that independence in 2019. Moscow not only refused to recognize the new church, but also severed relations with Constantinople, threatening a broader schism.
Kirill’s close alliance with the Putin regime has had some clear payoffs. Orthodoxy has become one of the central pillars of Putin’s image of national identity. Moreover, the “culture wars” discourse of “traditional values” has attracted international supporters, including conservative evangelicals in the United States.
But Kirill does not represent the entirety of the Russian Orthodox Church any more than Putin represents the entirety of Russia. The patriarch’s positions have alienated some of his own flock, and his support for the invasion of Ukraine will likely split some of his support abroad. Christian leaders around the world are calling upon Kirill to pressure the government to stop the war.
A broader rift is clearly brewing: A number of Ukrainian Orthodox bishops have already stopped commemorating Kirill during their services. If Kirill supported Russia’s actions as a way to preserve the unity of the church, the opposite outcome seems likely.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, there you have it. Any church which promotes ?traditional values” (which I put in quotes because they all fling that phrase about, never addressing “Whose tradition?” “How can you consider oppressing people to be a value” and many other related questions) will always be susceptible to becoming affiliated with autocracy. We have seen this in the Taliban. We have seen this in evangelical Christianity. And now we are seeing it in Russian Orthodoxy. For all of those groups, be they Muslim, Evangelical Christian, or Orthodox Christian, there are many others around the world who are Muslims, western Christians, and Eastern Christians who are horrified that these people who claim to profess the same faith practice it so horrifyingly.
I am not opposed to tradition, But I am opposed to confusing “traditional” with “godly.” I am reminded of the story of the little girl who was watching her mother cut off both ends of the Easter ham before putting it in the ovem, and who asked why. “My mother always did it that way,” was the response. The next time the little girl saw her grandmother, she asked the same question and go the same answer. Finally the little girl was able to speak with her great-grandmother and ask the question again. “When your Great-Grandfather and I were first married, we didn’t have a lot, and our roasting pan was very small. The ham would not fit in it without trimming the ends off.”
I cannot see a partcle of difference between these affiliations of convenience with religion and autocracy, and many others have already seen, spoken about, and written about evangelical Christianity vis-a-vis the Taliban. But I don’t see anyone but me saying that we now have a third example in Russia (and a fourth one in Israel would not surprise me, but I have no evidence for that.) There are many, many examples throughout recorded history as well. That is one history I really, really do not want to repeat.
Yesterday, I watched my Governor’s live press conference on COViD in Colorado. He was accompanied by two doctors, a family practitioner and a pediatricition who is something of an authority in Pediatric epidemiology. The latter said something I really want to share: that, given the transmissibility of the Delta varient, if one is not vaccinated, it is not a question of whether he or she will contract the disease, but when. That may not sway as many people as it should, but it may reach a few.
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Short Takes –
The Conversation – What is the Synod of Bishops? A Catholic priest and theologian explains
Quote – The topic? How the church can learn to rely more fully on this kind of consultation-and-discussion process – how it can become more “synodal” in its governance. Throughout the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has held many gatherings called “synods” – but seldom one this sweeping in its potential consequences…. In part, it is designed to make church governance more open and inclusive of all its members. Click through if you like. Pope Francis, like me, is old enough to rememner Pope John XXIII and Vatican II – and that much of the progress Vatican II made has been rescinded. This looks like he is trying to accomplish something which cnnot be rescinded so easily.
Wonkette – Why Were Capitol Police So Unprepared For The January 6 MAGA CHUD Invasion?
Quote – A former senior official in the US Capitol Police just released a scathing letter to Congress that places blaming squarely on the heads of Assistant Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman and acting Assistant Chief Sean Gallagher. The anonymous official accuses Pittman and Gallagher of ignoring an intelligence report they received on December 21 that specifically warned about a potential riot at the Capitol. It was reportedly similar to intel the FBI provided the department on January 5, which according to the Gregorian calendar is prior to January 6. Click through for story and video footage. The reason is pretty much what you’d think, and pretty much the same as with 9/11 – failure to pass on intelligence. This article is not in Wonkette’s signature style, but is pretty well straight.
Law and Crime – Murder Defendant in 2014 Killing Asks Trial Judge to Officiate Wedding
Quote – To be fair, both marriage and criminal trials are transformative life events. But one Pennsylvania murder defendant has gone so far as to ask his trial judge to officiate his wedding, according to The Associated Press…. “We’ll take care of it next week,” the judge said in court. He did not say no…. Prosecutors offered no objections. Click through for details. If you like “you just can’t make this stuff up” stories, Law and Crime was on fire yesterday, and most of them should still be on the front page today.
