Little Bang

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I’ve always been interested in the sky.  At times it feels like I’m in love with it.  Having attended a Sputnik-era high school—a rural high school with an actual planetarium!—I took the offered astronomy course.  Buoyed up by this, I also enrolled in a college astronomy class only to discover that that career track involved far too much math for my humble abilities.  Still, I learned a lot about the nighttime sky.  I’ve also been a lifelong reader of lay science.  I very much appreciate scientists who write so that nonspecialists can understand them.  So it was that I was glad to see a New York Times letter by Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser titled “The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel.”  I’ve mentioned Gleiser here before because I’ve read a couple of his wonderful books.  But this article was mind-expanding.

Frank and Gleiser suggest that the Big Bang Theory may, eventually, need to be replaced.  They point out that small inconsistencies have crept into it over the years (keep in mind that it was really only “confirmed” within my lifetime, back in the sixties).  Most of these have been patched up with quilt-work astrophysics, but the James Webb Space Telescope is making some of those past patches strain a bit at the seams.  Fully formed galaxies are being spied too far back in time (for stargazing is looking into the deep past) for the standard model.  They shouldn’t be there, but they are.  The letter interestingly raises the point that the scientific study of quantum physics, as well as that of consciousness, also strain the standard models.  Perhaps it’s time for a rethinking of reality?

Image credit: NASA, public domain

Isn’t this breathtakingly exciting?  To be alive when a major leap of understanding the universe we call home may be discovered?  The authors point out that cosmology and philosophy often have to interact.  Our understanding of the universe is a human understanding, not sacred writ.  The scientific method is built to be falsifiable.  If it’s not, it’s not science.  (This often separates it from some religions which declare themselves unfalsifiable, and therefore likely wrong.)  New scientific discoveries are made daily, of course, but new paradigms only tend to come on the scale of lifetimes, or several generations.  We don’t see them all the time.  I guess it’s heartening to see that the system works.  When science becomes orthodoxy, we run into similar problems that we encounter with religions.  A bit of humility and a ship-load of wonder can go a long, long way.

Consider the Ant

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Ants, the Bible suggests, are worth both watching and learning from. I was reminded of this while at the Easton VegFest a couple weeks back. The VegFest is an annual event promoting vegan food in a riverside park. I’d given someone a ride and ended up finishing earlier. I could either walk all the way back to the car or spend the time outdoors. It was a pleasant enough day and there were places to sit (with no back support, however). One such sitting venue is a concrete retaining wall about 12-feet high, that borders a walking trail along the river. Since there’s a lively inner tubing business along the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers, you could watch groups float by, looking very relaxed in the way that only being on the water can make you. It was while sitting along the top of this wall that I realized I was on an ant highway.

Image credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos, under CC BY-NC license, via Wikimedia Commons

While individual ants don’t live very long, colonies (and their lives are very interconnected) can last several years. Some queens even make it to 30, which is impressive for an insect. As I was sitting (more like leaning, since the wall has a rounded top and I have a fear of falling) I’d notice some larger ants approaching with great determination. I would stand to let them pass. They weren’t in a close line or anything, so if I didn’t notice one in time, I became part of the trail. Looking confused—if an ant can look confused—at missing the chemical trail, they’d nevertheless continue in the same general direction unless some microscopic bit of a dropped piece of lunch on my lap caught their attention. Their determination was a lesson. They simply don’t give up.

Although the wall predates any of their individual lives, it has become their highway just as any interstate becomes ours. They didn’t build it, but it has become their recognized and known pathway. This was clear because in the course of my hour there, several members of what I presume was the same hive came by. I suspect the writer of Proverbs wanted readers to notice their busyness, but what I saw was their marked will power. Not even a giant wearily resting on their road deterred them. There was an utter conviction about what they were doing. Obstacles were simply climbed or gone around in the assurance that the trail would resume on the other side. Their sense of hope was admirable and, in its way, contagious.

Fear and Reviewing

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I have a confession to make.  I don’t always read reviews of my books.  I’m always a little scared, even though they made it through the review process and were accepted for publication, there will be those who don’t like them.  I’ve only seen three full reviews of Nightmares with the Bible and two of them were negative.  Eventually, however, I generally come around to taking a look.  Yesterday I found the first review of The Wicker Man on FilmJuice.  It took some time before I could settle down to read it, and to my great relief it was a positive review.  You see, I knew I was taking a chance by writing this book because I was approaching the movie from an unexpected angle.  That often makes fans uncomfortable.  I’m glad that at least one reader found it worth his time. (By the way, I tried to leave a thank you but WordPress, ironically, wouldn’t let me log in—hey guys, I’ve been blogging here for 14 years!)

I’ve watched horror movies since I was a kid.  I started writing about them in 2009, back when I started this blog.  It was tentative at first, being trained as a religion scholar as I was.  I think many of my early readers didn’t know what to make of it when I wrote about horror—wasn’t this a blog about religion?  Well, actually it’s a blog in the old sense of the word, a log.  Ship logs and diaries both depend on what’s going on at the time.  I still work with religion for a job, but I rely on horror films to help me make sense of life.  Since I watch them, I write about them.  Holy Horror was a bit of an experiment for me.  It didn’t exactly become a best seller, but it brought me into the conversation.

Holy Horror was the first book where I discussed The Wicker Man.  I’d discussed it many times on this blog, of course, but having a book published means that somebody’s invested in your thoughts, or at least thinks they can make a buck or two from them.  (This blog is entirely non-profit.)  I knew the Devil’s Advocates series was lacking a volume on The Wicker Man so I asked the series editor if he’d be interested in a new angle.  That set the direction for the next couple years of my life.  Despite my skittishness, I’m delighted to have a positive review on my reading of the film.  If negative reviews come (and they likely will) I’ll at least have the satisfaction of knowing one reader gets what I’m trying to do here.  And I confess that it feels good.

Middle Ground

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It’s the real poison Trump baptized.  Polarization.  The idea that there is no middle ground.  It’s a shame since the middle ground has been what’s kept America stable over the years.  Now it seems to be eroding rapidly.  While my sympathies have always been on the left, I realize that radical change tends to dirempt societies.  As much as I deeply desire justice and fairness for all, I know it will take time.  In my way of thinking that “all” includes animals.  That’s why I’m vegan.  Now, I know being completely vegan is likely not possible since who knows what everything is made of, and who has the time to find out?  I do the best I can and I don’t eat animal products and I try not to wear them either.  I know there are those who don’t share my outlook and they’re entitled to their point of view.

For nostalgia’s sake, and to get out of the house, we attended a 4-H county fair.  An annual event when we lived in New Jersey, it’s now a rarer treat.  So I put on that scarce recording of Bruce Springsteen’s song “County Fair,” not on any of his studio albums, and headed for New Jersey.  This county fair is the kind with animals rather than rides, and we stopped in to see the sheep, goats, cows, and alpacas.  It was in the cattle tent that I saw the following poster, claiming “There’s no such thing as vegan.”  Well, I don’t go around saying there’s no such thing as omnivores (thus the polarization) but this poster convinced me that we need to try even harder to stop raising animals to exploit. I understand, I think, the intent of the poster—cattle aren’t just meat.  The thing is, I think of them as conscious beings.

I miss the middle ground.  People no longer want to compromise or negotiate.  Since Trump it’s become “my way or the highway.”  I think I prefer the highway.  That highway takes me far from industrial feedlots where it’s illegal to document the cruelty that these animals undergo daily.  It’s quite a different thing for Bessie to lay down with a fan blowing on her under a tent with a small farmer caring for her, but that won’t feed a nation.  Small farms aren’t the problem. I don’t insist everyone be vegan.  I would like it if we could sit down and talk about it, however.  Cattle raising is the industry that generates the greatest amount of greenhouse gases that are causing global warming.  If we keep dividing ourselves and refusing to change we’ll be having this polarizing argument under water before too many years have gone by.  My highway is middle of the road.  Even slow change can benefit many.  The goal is to get “many” to “all.”

Geography Quiz

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With my daughter’s encouragement, I’ve taken an interest in geography.  While not exactly an isolationist, I’ve often thought that America trying to impose its will on foreign nations is generally wrong-headed.  Still, when I read histories of the early United States, it appears that the desire to own and organize everything from Atlantic to Pacific makes sense to a particular outlook.  Taking the land from its rightful owners was clearly wrong.  It seems that wherever there are borders people fight.  I’ve been quizzing myself on geography and I’m getting fairly decent at identifying countries (not all of them, and not always correctly).  Doing so has led to some learning opportunities.  Africa was, of course, heavily colonized even into my own lifetime.  Only recently have we begun to realize that people should have the right to independence—sounds familiar, right America?

There are lots of quiz games available on the internet that help making these identifications fun.  I’ve learned that the newest country recognized is South Sudan, in Africa.  It became independent just twelve years ago, breaking away from Sudan.  South Sudan is one of the least developed nations in the world—I suspect that some of these conditions contributed to the desire for independence.  Another thing that becomes evident in learning geography is just how much disputed territory there is.  Thousands, probably millions, of lives are lost over border disputes.  This seems like such a testosterone-driven form of politics that patriarchy ought to be thoroughly ashamed of itself.  The United States still plays these games as well, backing our favorites, despite the will of the people.

One nation that consistently shows up in these quizzes is Western Sahara.  Apparently this is still a disputed territory, colonized by Spain but released from its control in 1975.  Immediately fighting broke out between Morocco and Mauritania, its neighbors.  Both wanted control of the region.  The territory is one of the most sparsely populated in the world, being mostly Sahara, but even so it’s worth fighting over, in the strange geography of the human psyche.  I often ponder our apparently insatiable urge to fight and control.  As if we can really control anything.  All it takes is a thunderstorm to park over an area for four hours and any house will begin to feel the damage.  Nobody’s really in control, as you’d think events in Russia might underscore.  It seems unbelievable to me that a world so connected—entangled even—with the internet would still insist on disputing who owns this rock or that.  Just think how much we could accomplish if we’d even allow for a little leeway in our geography.

Remember this?

America the Religious

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One of the truths that doctoral work teaches you is that if you look closely at something, minute differences appear.  Those interested in historical subjects write up syntheses that cover over many of these minute differences until somewhat of a false impression might occur.  Consider Puritan New England.  The image is a familiar one to the American imagination.  Rigid, pious, fearful church-goers predominated.  Stern, often acerbic, ministers were voices of authority.  But in actual fact, maybe a third of those eligible to be so in Puritan New England were church members.  Many lived in remote locations and used folk traditions (what the church would condemn as “witchcraft”) to meet their spiritual needs.  This was DIY religion.  And yet, the overall picture is of an uptight, strict, Calvinistic world.  That’s only part of the story.

Controlling the narrative is a powerful thing.  For example, the religious right has often flouted the idea that America was very religious from the beginning.  The “falling away” from the church is only the result of modernism.  Before that, they claim, pretty much everybody was religious.  This is patently untrue.  But if the narrative is believed, it becomes powerful.  Historians face a dilemma here.  Not every single little detail can be written about anything.  If you read a history of, say, the United States, do you think everything is in those thousand pages?  No, not by a long shot.  Entire books written about a single individual don’t cover everything.  The temptation is to present an approximation that covers the general trends.  Those of us who study religious history have an extra hurdle—what people say they believe and what they actually believe might be quite different.

Demographic studies that show only a third of New Englanders were church members indicates that two-thirds of the story remained untold.  The city on a hill may have been an ideal, but most of the people lived in the valley.  People prefer a happy story, of course.  That’s natural enough.  When we look for facts sometimes the story can grow a little confused.  Shrink that history of the US down to a single state and it’s still unwieldy.  Even a single city.  Choices have to be made and approaches have to be decided.  What really happened?  You can bet your bottom dollar that it was a lot more complex than any history book indicates.  People prefer mythological national narratives to naturalistic ones.  When we buy into simple materialism we often mistake our mythic past for a factual one.

Seminary Daze

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It’s surprisingly easy to throw away an expensive career that once held much promise.  It really involves just a two steps: spend thousands of dollars earning a Ph.D. in religious studies, and take a job in a seminary.  It’s disheartening to watch colleagues going through this as seminaries contract, then close.  I know how it feels personally.  You’re suddenly aware that your years and years of training have made you practically unemployable.  If you do find a job it won’t pay as well.  Chances are you won’t enjoy it either.  Having taught in a seminary will mark you in academia as one of those “uncritical believers,” and, well, nobody wants to touch one of those.  While I would’ve taken a regular seminary job after my doctorate, my wife remembers me lying awake at night asking “Am I cutting off my career if I take a job at Nashotah House?”  The answer: yes.

I’ve been watching colleagues have their worlds torn apart as seminaries try to figure out how to stay open when institutional churches are dying.  Megachurches don’t require a seminary degree to run—natural grifters do it quite well with no advanced education, thank you.  But mainstream churches have been losing members, and therefore financial support, for years now.  And seminaries supply a commodity no longer in demand.  This may have been a trend when I started out back in the eighties.  If so, nobody told me about it.  I walked into this career naive and came out jaded and cynical.  My motives were to help other people.  It’s getting harder and harder to find jobs where you do that any more.  At least while being able to keep body and soul together.

Thing is, it takes years to earn the degrees you need to teach in a seminary. You have to think ahead.  When I started out, trends suggested a huge glut of jobs in the teaching market.  That never panned out, of course, as human predictions seldom do, and the decline in jobs has been pretty steady over the past thirty years.  Back in the eighties seminaries were doing okay.  Growing, even.  I do hope it didn’t have anything to do with me, but I hit this surprisingly fragile market at just the wrong time.  After having been overboard without a life preserver myself, it pains me to watch colleagues facing the same fate themselves.  Religion hasn’t disappeared—it’s simply taken on new forms.  Those forms don’t require seminary. Those of us who followed the rules on how to teach religious studies, however, somehow find ourselves in disposable careers.

Good Book Selling

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A few weeks back, probably several now actually, the New York Times ran a story about the Bible.  In this age of declining interest in the Good Book such things catch my attention.  Of course, the reason that the story ran was because of the money involved.  Let me explain.  Or at least give the headline: “Oldest Nearly Complete Hebrew Bible Sells for $38.1 Million.”  Money talks, even when it comes to Scripture.  The story was about the auction of the Codex Sassoon, which went to a museum.  Most regular Bible readers aren’t aware of the textual criticism behind their favorite translations—yes, even the good ol’ King James.  You see, no original biblical manuscripts survive.  Not by a long shot.  Every biblical manuscript in the world is a copy of a copy of a copy, etc.  And these copies differ from one another.  Often quite a bit.

Textual criticism is the job of comparing manuscripts and using scientific—yes, scientific—principles to determine which one better reflects what was likely original.  Since we don’t actually have the original we can’t say.  Those who hold views of extreme reverence for one translation or another have to resort to divine guidance of the textual critics to make the case.  For example, they might argue that God inspired the translators of the King James to follow one manuscript rather than another.  The King James was based on manuscripts known at the time (only about six of them) and far older manuscripts—inherently more likely to reflect earlier views and potentially closer to the original—have been discovered since then.  And are still discovered.  That was one of the reasons behind all the fuss over the Dead Sea Scrolls.  They represent some of the earliest biblical manuscripts ever found.

The Bible is an identity-generating book.  In this secular age, the failure of “the educated” to realize this simple fact often leads to underestimation of the importance of religion.  It motivates the largest majority of people in the world.  We should pay attention to it.  It doesn’t make headlines too often, though.  Instead, politicians who pretend they respect the Bible but live lives about as far from its precepts as possible, gather the limelight.  When money gets involved the Bible becomes interesting again.  We think about that thirty-eight-million.  What we might do with that kind of money.  How we might be able to pay somebody to paint that fence that desperately needs it, or better, to help those in desperate need.  The many victims of capitalism.  Where their heart is, there their treasure will be also.

Creepy AI Doll

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We’ve all seen the killing doll horror movie before, of course.  Who hasn’t?  What makes M3GAN different is the whole artificial intelligence angle.  Okay, so you understand it’s about a killing doll, but unlike Chucky or Annabelle, M3GAN has a titanium frame and a super-advanced, wifi-connected brain.  Like generative AI, she’s able to learn on her own and even able to use her own reasoning to get around her basic programming.  Now, you’re likely smarter than me and I didn’t catch what the critics call the “campiness” to the film.  Yes, there are places that made me snicker a little, but although the killing doll premise made the results somewhat predictable, I watched it seriously.  Some websites list it as horror comedy, while others prefer sci-fi thriller.  Nevertheless, it isn’t really that funny.  And there’s a cautionary element to it.

Funki, a Seattle-based toy company, is always trying to stay ahead of the competition.  Animatronic toys are the rage, and Gemma (brilliant choice to have a female mad scientist here) is a visionary programmer.  She wasn’t expecting, however, to become her niece’s guardian after Gemma’s sister was killed in an accident.  The M3GAN prototype was already underway, but Gemma kicks it into high gear to help make up for her own lack of parenting skills.  M3GAN becomes her niece’s companion—soulmate, even—and since the two are bonded with biometrics, her protector.  Bullies, lend me your ear; you don’t want to mess with a girl who has an android as a bestie.  And nosey neighbors, fix that hole in your fence.  Or at least curb your dog.

Instead of I, Robot this is more like You, Robot.  There is a wisdom to the othering that goes on here because none of us know in what kind of reasoning generative IA might engage.  In real life computers have been discovered communicating with one another in a language that their programmers couldn’t read.  We’re all biological, however, and thinking, as we know it, involves many biological factors.  Logic is part of it, but it’s not the whole story.  So techies who idolize Spock and his lack of emotion feel that they can emulate thinking by making it a set of algorithms.  My algorithms lead me to watch horror films out of a combination of curiosity and a need for therapy.  Where does a computer go for therapy?  The internet?  Well, you might find some good advice there, but don’t be surprised if it comes at you with a paper-cutter sword in the end.  You’ve been warned.

Devil Talk

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Around here, an after-school Satanic Temple club, prompted by an after-school evangelical club, led to a lawsuit where our tax dollars are being wasted.  Many local people wondered what was going on and I knew I had a book on my shelf that would help to answer that but I had to find the time to read it.  Joseph P. Laycock has been writing fascinating books for a few years now.  I picked up his Speak of the Devil: How the Satanic Temple Is Changing the Way We Talk about Religion just after it was published, but it always takes some time for me to get to books that I know I’ll have to spend time with.  I was right about spending time—there’s a lot packed in here that requires some thought.  I was vaguely aware of what the Satanic Temple is but had difficulty distinguishing it from the Church of Satan.  (I have a book on the latter, but it’s quite big and I haven’t found the time for it yet either.)  Laycock spells it out clearly.

The book begins by discussing how the Satanic Temple entered public consciousness in 2013.  Yes, it’s only been about a decade.  If you think it’s more than that, you may be confusing it with Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan.  They are different organizations.  One thing they have in common is that neither promotes belief in a literal Satan.  Both also rely on shock tactics to get their point across.  The Satanic Temple is a socially conscious organization that reacts to provocations of conservative Christian groups to try to establish their brand of Christianity as the officially sanctioned state religion.  And the evangelical groups have been making in-roads for years.  Playing the innocence card, “We’re just mainstream America saying what everyone’s thinking,” they put religious monuments in public spaces, start public meetings with Christian prayers, and receive state funding for their programs.  Often unchallenged.

Laycock’s not discussing evangelicals, but rather how the Satanic Temple arose in response to efforts to establish one form of Christianity as state sponsored.  There’s a ton of information in this book.  Among the many takeaways for me was the discussion of how good and evil are determined.  This is obviously directly relevant when Satan is involved, especially since the Devil is a post-biblical development.  The Satanic Temple, which doesn’t teach that there’s a literal Devil, attempts to counter the standard narrative by doing good deeds in the name of humanism.  You might be able to guess the conservative Christian response to that.  If you can’t, this book will help to spell it out for you.

Perhaps Unexpected

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Of course I’d heard about it, but I hadn’t envisioned myself seeing it.  My family, however, wanted to get in on the Barbie conversation and, I justified to myself, at least we’d be in air conditioning for a couple of hours.  Besides, I now get “senior” rates at matinees!  I knew very little of what to expect, and I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.  In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie that was so full of social commentary.  And I actually learned quite a bit.  If you’re one of the maybe a dozen people who hasn’t seen it, the plot is more complex than you might think.  And the writing is smart.  And it’s funny.  I was hooked from the opening parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The scene based on The Matrix made me realize that I was watching something unusual and important.

I’ll try to be careful with spoilers here, but basically, stereotypical Barbie experiences an existential crisis that leads her to the real world to find out what’s going on.  Ken tags along, uninvited, and Barbie is distressed to find that the real world hasn’t been equalized between the genders the way that she was intended to help it become.  While in the real world Ken gets a taste of patriarchy and decides to take it back to Barbie Land.  When Barbie returns she finds her once perfect world upside down.  But that’s not quite right.  She comes to realize that the world run by women wasn’t exactly perfect because men and women need to cooperate and share some responsibility.

There’s a lot more to it than that, of course.  How we’ve gone for centuries maintaining male dominance (might makes right philosophy), even while claiming to be “enlightened” is a mystery. Gender inequality is one of the biggest social concerns we experience.  Almost nowhere in the world are societies truly equal and Barbie offers a funny, yet poignant way of thinking about that.  I wouldn’t bother writing about it if the message wasn’t important.  The movie isn’t a feminist screed.  Nor is it simplistic drivel.  It’s a surprisingly sophisticated consideration of a society out of balance.  I’ve been in favor of equal treatment of women for as long as I’ve been conscious of the difference.  Raised by a capable single mother, I noticed in my formative years that she was doing what two-parent families did, with less than half the resources.  While Barbie won’t solve all our social ills, it is getting the conversation going.  From my point of view, it’s about time.

Generation Tech

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You can’t be lazy in a technocracy.  I find myself repeating this mantra to myself when dealing with many people who use technology only when strictly necessary.  They don’t realize the war has already been lost.  If you want to thrive in this new world order, you need to keep up at least a modicum with technology.  I deal with a lot of people for whom biblical studies means handling only pens and paper.  J. C. L. Gibson, one of my doctoral advisors, wrote all his books longhand and had his secretary type them.  That’s simply no longer possible.  For authors, if you’re not willing to put notice of your books on Facebook, Twitter (or, as it seems to be going, Threads) people aren’t going to notice.  Publishers don’t send print catalogues any more.  My physical mailbox has been quite a bit less used of late.

There’s an irony to the fact that the generation that grew up on Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” are now refusing to accept our robo-overlords.  AI is here to stay and shy of a total collapse of the electrical grid, we’re not going back to where we were in the sixties.  The times have a-changed.  And you know what Bob says to do if you can’t lend an appendage.  Now, if you read my blog regularly, you know that I don’t go into this future with a sincere smile.  But at least I try to keep up with what I need to to survive.  I have to stop and remind myself how to write a check.  Or fold a roadmap.  I suspect that many of those who object to doing academic business electronically also drive by GPS.  It beats getting lost.

How does this connect to the internet?

No, I’m not the first in line.  I still wouldn’t be using a headset for Zoom/Teams meetings if my wife hadn’t given me an old one of hers.  This despite the fact I complain that I can’t hear others who insist they can speak clearly without and whose voices are muffled by the echoes in their work-at-home room.  Nevertheless, if you want to be a professional of any stripe, you need to reconcile yourself with technology and its endless changes.  You wake up one morning and Twitter is now X and you find yourself xing rather than tweeting.  I need to get more followers on Threads, but you can’t do that on your laptop—I guess times are still a-changin’.

Whither Wicker?

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The process of producing a book is a lengthy one.  Even as an author you’re not really ever quite sure when it’s out in the world.  My author copies of The Wicker Man have arrived.  The release date is set for August and the publication date is September 1.  Still, it’s out there somewhere in the world at the moment.  The release date of the book is generally the date that stock arrives in the warehouse.  The book is technically available on the release date, but the publication date isn’t until two-to-four weeks later.  The publication date is when a book is fully stocked at the warehouse and is available in all channels (Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Bookshop, and your independent local bookstore).  Chances are you won’t find this book, being a university press book, in your local, but it can be ordered now.  Even in July.

This is a short book, so I don’t want to write too much about the contents here—then you might have no reason to buy a copy!  In brief, though, I can say that it explores The Wicker Man through the lens of holiday horror.  Not a lot has been published on the sub-genre of holiday horror.  In general publishers tend to be reluctant about holiday books—the perception is that they sell only seasonally (if my buying patterns are taken into account, that’s clearly not true).  Movies, however, can be watched at any time.  The Wicker Man is about May Day but it was filmed largely in November and was released in the UK in December of 1973 (fifty years ago), and in the United States in August of 1974.  People see it when it’s offered.  (Of course, video releases have changed all that.)

The movie has grown in stature over the years.  It appears in many pop culture references and even those who aren’t fans of horror have often heard of it.  There’s been quite a bit of buzz about John Walsh’s book on the movie, to be released in October.  (Of course, it is distributed by Penguin Random House.  I’m learning about the importance of distribution the more I delve into the publishing realm.)  My book has a more modest release and a slightly smaller sticker price (unless you go for the hardcover, then I’m right up there with university press prices).  I thought readers might like to know it now exists.  This writer, in any case, is glad to hold a copy and see the fruits of a few years’ labor, whenever it might come.

Admit This

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I thought about writing a letter to the New York Times, but I know my chances of getting it accepted.  A piece run yesterday in said periodical on elite college admissions policies, which favor the affluent, presented an argument frequently used in defense: high-performing colleges are faced with the problem that the highest achieving students are affluent.  I’m here to call shenanigans on that.  I don’t often state explicitly what my background is here on this blog, knowing as I do that I had white privilege on my side, but this admissions reasoning is elitist to the hilt.  I grew up in a poverty-level household and yet when I reached college it was only to have professor after professor marvel at how well I did in their classes.  My GPA at graduation was 3.85, partially brought down by “freshman orientation” and senior ennui.  After graduating summa cum laude, I graduated seminary magna cum laude.  My doctorate was with a major European research university that didn’t use the cum laude system.

In short, a guy from a non-affluent background can succeed academically.  Professors who think otherwise don’t know what they might be missing.  There is a bias against the poor that assumes that intelligence is bred, not an innate ability.  My academic track-record demonstrates that this bias has no expiration date.  Despite my record of achievement, I was routinely passed over for positions at universities and colleges, many of them elite.  I used to keep my rejection letters but the file was getting pretty heavy to lift.  An academic unknown, I didn’t have connections in “the club” and was asked to check my working-class abilities at the door.  I’ll confess when I see such reasoning as “we can’t afford to take chances on the poor” my blood begins to boil.

Some of the smartest people I know never attended college.  Even as a child I could tell if someone was capable of deep thought or not.  I didn’t know many college-educated people; my social circle was among blue collars.  Clergy were the few exceptions, and not all of them had attended college.  Nevertheless, I could see what admissions committees (I used to serve on one) call “special intelligence.”  I also saw how terribly petty the discussions could be when it came to admissions.  Try as I might, I just can’t feel sorry for those in higher education who feel trapped by their own success.  There are gems located in mountains, even if they tend to be buried under tons of plain rock.  Admission teams admit those most like themselves.  Thus it has always been.  And we are poorer as a society because of it.

Not singling out UVA!

Who Are We?

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I wonder who I am.  Beyond my usual existential angst, I tried to access some online learning modules at work only to have so many barriers thrown up that I couldn’t log in.  Largely it’s because I have an online presence (be it ever so humble) outside of work.  Verification software wants to send codes to my personal email and my company has a policy against running personal emails on work computers.  Then they want to send a phone verification, but I don’t have a work cell.  I don’t need one and I have no desire to carry around two all the time because I barely use the one I have.  By the way, my cell does seem to recognize me most of the time, so maybe I should ask it who I am.

Frustrated at the learning module, I remembered that we’d been asked to explore ChatGPT for possible work applications.  I’d never used it before so I had to sign up.  I shortly ran into the very same issue.  I can’t verify through my personal phone and I found myself in the ironic position of having an artificial intelligence asking me to verify that I was human!  I know ChatGPT is not, but I do suspect it might be a politician, given all the red tape it so liberally used to get me to sign in.  Not that I plan to use it much—I was simply trying to do what a higher-up at work had asked me to do.  So now my work computer seems to doubt my identity.  I don’t doubt its—I can recognize the feel of its keyboard even in the dark.  And the way my right hand gets too hot from the battery on sweltering summer days.  It’s an unequal relationship.

My personal computer, which isn’t as paranoid as the work computer, seems to accept me for who I say I am.  I try to keep passwords secure and complex.  I have regular habits—at least most days.  I should be a compatible user.  I don’t want ChatGPT on my personal space, however, since I’m not sure I trust it.  I did try to log into the learning module on my laptop but it couldn’t be verified by the work server (because the computer’s mine, I expect).  Oh well, I didn’t really feel like chatting anyway.  But I did end the day with a computer-induced identity crisis.  If you know who I am, please let me know in the comments.  (You’ll have to authenticate with WordPress first, however.)