Monthly Archives: December 2011

From a hanger-on Part II

Posted on December 30, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Detail from the cover of Hitch-22, taken from Salon.com

Yes, the party without Christopher Hitchens is clearly far less interesting, and even though there is, equally as clearly, nothing we can do to fill that hole, I find myself among the cadre – a rather larger cadre than Hitchens might have expected – of folks reading and watching all the Hitch we can get our eyes on.

In one of my recent sessions with Hitch, I watched Brian Lamb, in a 1992 Q&A episode with Hitchens and John Fund, hold up, in typical Q&A fashion, a headline.  You know, where Lamb holds up and the camera zooms in on a newspaper or periodical headline.  I especially like those zooms.  Starting at a point where only Superman could read the text, and then flying in to the point where we mere mortals see the topic come into visual focus.  Where, although we don’t yet know Lamb’s question, we know, because we can see in print, its context.

There are several things, really delicious things, going on with the observer right at that moment.  In rapider-fire succession than I can conceive, there is the visual focus moment followed by the one where the eyes and thinking brain connect.  The moment where one becomes aware that the “engage” button in the brain has been depressed.  Cool moment that is.

Could it get any better?  Well, yes, because that moment is followed by Lamb’s asking of the question, and then the next, where we mortals take a last anticipatory inhale as we watch Hitch begin to formulate his answer.

————————————————————————————

I think the thing, or one thing, we Hitchens admirers have in common, is finding that “engage” button’s being depressed every time and all of the time that we spent with Hitchens.  Whether in person (I never experienced that), on-screen, on audio, or in print.  And loving it.

But I see now that he’s gone, and at no inconsiderable risk that this will sound like if not turn into a what-I-learned-from-Hitch piece, that I must generate more “engage” moments now.  On my own.  This what appears to be an all-of-a-sudden need to think probably doesn’t apply to all of you or maybe even many of you.  You think more than I do.  But since I am more than a bit of a couch potato and likely to be counted on the lowest rung of the Hitchens Admirers ladder, I haven’t exactly had it, that is, my engage, on.

Resources for engagement:

  • Public library.  I checked out the Thomas Paine book from the library just before Christmas (and confess to missing the beautiful old wooden card catalog).
  • Magazine subscriptions.  I now have a subscription to Harper’s for one year, during which time I will have access to the current year’s and archives of all previously published work, including all of Hitchens.  The same appears to hold true for archives of articles in The Nation.  Although the Hitchens articles in Vanity Fair appear to be available online, I can’t tell whether the online and print versions are a layover.  Slate offers up its collection of his articles.  I do not know how complete a collection it is.  Richard Lea at The Guardian has already highlighted the online written Hitchens, so please look there before you consider your search complete.
  • The blog The Film Archive.  Whatever else it does (I have barely scratched its surface), it captures in the 10-minute segments common for, if not required by, YouTube, the episodes, laid out back-to-back, of Hitchens being interviewed on C-SPAN and elsewhere, including the January 12, 1992 Q&A segment with Hitchens and John Fund; and
  • C-SPAN online archive of sessions with Hitch, including his last Q&A with Brian Lamb made nearly twenty years to the day after the one last referenced.

So, as I compile my Hitchens and other engagement sources, I want to express my appreciation to everyone responsible for access to his work and to everyone in Hitchens’ life.

I’ve got lots of reading to.  But don’t get the impression that I expect to become “anything like” truly well-read any time soon.  Or ever.  What I’d still prefer is reading enough to have an inkling of what Hitch is pointing to as he talks, sitting in perfect couch potato position, and listening to him.

Oh, how I wish I could write an article like the one behind this photo. Photo: Christopher Cox

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From a hanger-on

Posted on December 27, 2011 by | 1 Comment

From Christopher Hitchens Facebook page. I don't know who to credit or I would

Hitchens observed that the bitch of dying (not his exact words but now I can’t find the video) was that the party would go on here after he was gone; he just wouldn’t be able to participate. Well, it sure doesn’t feel like that here. It feels as if the entire party is over, and we are left here among the hangers-on who are well into the process of over-staying our welcome.  And at a decidedly less interesting party.  But partly because we’re here at this awkward hour and partly because the life of the party has just left, it might approach rudeness to walk out.

No offense intended to the other good minds out there.  I expect that I’ll read Sam Harris soon.  And look for local readings by authors.  I almost don’t care if they’re any good or not; I just want to hear something read to me.  But I expect that’s not correct.  I want to go to one of his readings; failing that impossibility, whatever might give me an inkling of a hint of aroma of beautiful logic and literature combined will have to do.  But bless their little hearts, as we in the South say.  I hope it doesn’t show on my face during someone’s reading that I was expecting Hitch to walk in, and interrupt, and expose the scorious nature of the intellectual light-lifting by the speaker.  Again, no offense intended; that’s just the grief talking.

On a more positive note, I did see on Richard Dawkins’ site that there is a schedule of events, inluding events in Sri Lanka, Jaipur, and Oxford (where Richard will be debating the Archbishop of Canterbury!!!).  And, it seems, there is a party at the Mall on March 24, 2012, to celebrate secularism.

The intent is to unify, energize, and embolden secular people nationwide, while dispelling the negative opinions held by so much of American Society… and having a damn good time doing it!

So, that was good news.  A date in March.  But it will be a date without Hitch.

While real writers are refining their first bursts of wallowy emotion and looking to the future for its promise, I will continue to wallow a bit longer and thank wordpress for the space for this blog.

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The Four Horsemen: wonderful conversation with Hitchens on faith

Posted on December 26, 2011 by | 2 Comments

Via the wonders of YouTube and blue tooth technology, as I drove to and from my holiday family visit, I was able to listen to many wonderful Christopher Hitchens’ videos and audios over my radio.  One of the rare treats was a two-hour (in two parts) conversation among Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens. Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris, convened and recorded by The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

The following dialogue, which I particularly like, begins at about 15 minutes and is just a teaser for a marvelous experience with discourse:

  • DENNETT:  I don’t think many of them ever let themselves contemplate the question, which I think scientists ask themselves all the time, “What if I am wrong? What if I’m wrong?”  It’s just not part of their repertoire.
  • HITCHENS:  Would you mind if I disagree with you about that?  A lot of talk that makes religious people hard to, not hard to beat, but hard to argue with, is precisely that they ‘ll say that they’re in a permanent crisis of faith.  There is indeed a prayer, “Lord, I believe; help thou my own belief.”  Graham Greene says, the great thing about being a Catholic was that it was a challenge to his unbelief.   A lot of people live by keeping two sets of books. In fact, it’s my impression that a majority of the people I know who call themselves believers or people of faith do that all the time.  I wouldn’t say that it is schizophrenia; that would be rude.  They’re quite aware of the implausibility of what they say.  They don’t act on it when they go to the doctor or when they travel, or anything of this kind. But in some sense they couldn’t do without it.  They’re quite respectful of the idea of doubt.  In fact, they make, uh, they try and build it in when they can.
  • DAWKINS:  Well, that’s interesting then, and so when they are reciting the creed with its total, sort of apparent conviction.  Is this a kind of mantra which is forcing themselves to overcome doubt by saying, yes, I do believe, I do believe, I do believe.
  • HITCHENS: And of course, like their secular counterparts, they’re glad other people believe it. It’s an affirmation they wouldn’t want other people not to be making.
  • HARRIS:  Also, there’s this curious bootstrapping move  which I tried to point out in this recent On Faith piece, this idea that you start with the premise that belief without evidence is especially noble, this is the doctrine of faith,  this is the parable of Doubting Thomas.  So you start with that, and then you add this notion, which has come to me through various debates, that the fact that people can believe without evidence is itself a subtle form of evidence.  I mean, that we’re kind of wired, Francis Collins, you mentioned,  brings this up in his book, the fact that we have this intuition of god is itself some subtle form of evidence.  It has this kind of kindling phenomenon, where if once you say, it’s good to start without evidence, the fact that you can is itself a subtle form of evidence, and then the demand for any more evidence is itself a kind of corruption of the intellect or a temptation or something to be guarded against.  And you get a kind of perpetual motion machine of self-deception where you can get this thing up and running.
  • HITCHENS: Well, they like the idea that it can’t be demonstrated, because then there’d be nothing to be faithful about.  If everyone had seen the resurrection, and we all knew that we’d been saved by it, then we would be living in an unalterable system of belief, and it would have to be policed, and it would actually be, those of us who don’t believe in it, who are glad it’s not true, because we think it would be horrible, those who do believe it don’t want it to be absolutely proven so there can’t be any doubt about it, because then there’s no wrestling with the conscience, no dark nights of the soul.

But the entire two hours is a treasure of discussion and dialogue.  Enjoy.

And to you I say, Namaste.

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Christopher Hitchens

Posted on December 26, 2011 by | 2 Comments

From http://hitchensdebates.blogspot.com

During his life time, I was aware of only a fractional part of Christopher Hitchens’ body of work.  I knew enough of it, however, to have more than an inkling of our loss at his departure, and so began my mourning.  A mourning that was, and is, saturated by the images, text and voice of Mr. Hitchens.

Which brings up my first “external” dilemma:  what to call him.  When I write about him.  Which I might.  This piece is my first, other than the tweeting (I’m @mobrock) and facebooking of links to and short observations about Mr. Hitchens Hitch him.  A small dilemma, but one with which I will have to deal.  I suspect.  Unless I never again write about him.  Which I doubt will be the case, but which query I am not going to answer here.

As I write this, I recognize that anyone who respects Hitch (too familiar?) will hate the text I’ve just written.  But this blog is so far outside the scope of your radar (I was going to say “beneath your intellectual . . . ,” but I couldn’t figure out how to say it.  See?  My vocabulary sucks.  I think you get my drift.) that you won’t ever see my linguistic ineptitude.  But for the rest of us, I am an adequate to above adequate writer, occasionally witty, despite the fact that I don’t need to be, but mostly just self-indulgent.  At least on the subject of Hitchens, and during my mourning.  But then,

I don’t need a seconder. My own opinion is enough for me. And I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get on line, and kiss my ass.                            - Christopher Hitchens

So, here’s what my mourning has looked like: Upon reading the announcement of his death, likely from Twitter, I watched several hours of Youtube recordings of Christopher by FORA.tv and C-SPAN and loaded by some of you to whom I am so grateful.

Note: If you aren’t mourning, you haven’t yet discovered Christopher Hitchens.  But not to worry.   His work, so luckily for us, is documented and available.  And I am hoping and believing that many more recordations and memorials  will continue to appear.

Next, I cancelled my workout (thank you, Shari, for understanding).  Then I went for a long walkabout in Stone Mountain Park.  A long, slow walk with my coffee-and-a-little-something in honor of the man.  Four hours of slow forward motion and slowed emotion; a quiet walk punctuated with tears, laughter, observations about the scenery and its mood, and dialogues about life.  I dreamed about him that night.  For the first, and so far, the last, time.

During the few days between his death and my drive to visit my beloved family for the holidays, I spent more hours in his presence.  Watching videos, transcribing into short bursts on Facebook and Twitter a few of his quotes, and sharing observations about him.

My family – bless them – I think, are a bit worried that I am taking his death too hard, and maybe in an inappropriate way. So I am especially thankful for those of you who understand this grief, although many of you are experiencing a much deeper and more intimate grief than mine.

To all of us, I say, relish it.

Because whatever it will be like, it won’t be like this forever.  At some point in the future, the pain will be less sharp.  We’ll accommodate it in order to remain functional in this world.  We’ll sob less often as we continue to learn about the man and find him to be a crystalline lens through which we can focus our perspectives on future current events, and ask, you can hear it coming, “WWHD?”  And although I’m not sure that Hitch would condone my own attempt to dissect an issue by considering how he would see it, instead of clearly evaluating what my own thoughts and observations are; and at the risk of being secularly sacrilegious in that reference, I just have to observe one contrast between WWHD and WWJD:  how much more appropriate it is to consider the basis for the thoughts of a man who authored a considerable body of work and whose lectures and debates are recorded, on the one hand, versus those of a dubiously historical figure and potential mythical character, about whom we know only via stories written about him by other people, after his death, and through numerous translations.

I am definitely not guru-izing H.  Nothing of the sort.  And I suspect that you noticed that I said next to nothing about him.  The thing is, I wouldn’t know how to choose what I wanted to say or was worth saying.  You know what I mean.  And now, back to the mourning.

Hitchens, from guardian.co.uk

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Japanese Police Raid in Taiji Will Not Stop Dolphin Activism

Posted on December 18, 2011 by | 4 Comments

Lest anyone read the accounts of the latest attacks on the Cove Guardians in Taiji (where the Japanese law enforcement manufactured a search warrant authorizing them to seize cameras and laptops of U.S. and other nations’ citizens), and be concerned that this may curtail the firm stand of dolphin activists worldwide, let me assure you that you need not worry.

There exist photographs to document the slaughter.  I repeat, one needn’t worry that activists will ever forget or will ever stop short of meeting the goal of dolphin freedom.

Photo by Brooke McDonald, prior to efforts to quash publicity about the slaughter

Neither need fear the dolphins and whales that activists will forget

  • the arrest and detainment of Dutch citizen and Cove Guardian Erwin Vermeulen;
  • the relentless capture and slaughter of dolphins by 26 fishermen;
  • the direct or indirect participation in the slaughter of dolphins by trainers, brokers, and aquariums by selecting from the slaughter the pretty few whom they will take into a life of captive performing and breeding; or
  • Jiyu, who did not survive the transition from freedom to captivity, from catching her own food to being force-fed by trainers;

or will be dissuaded from seeking an ethical and free life for all dolphins and whales.  No worry necessary that this will stop our efforts.  As is the case with steel, which is strengthened by fire and the hammer, the Cove Guardians and other activists worldwide are watching and learning.

But I must confess that I am worried.  It is not, however, for activists or dolphins.  It is for the casual photographer.  If having laptops and cameras justifies a search warrant . . .

When countries make photographing illegal, we're all in trouble

My camera and I will out and about today, in honor of animals and their champions everywhere, and in particular, The Cove Guardians.

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Give the gift of dolphin and orca freedom

Posted on December 5, 2011 by | 2 Comments

This Holiday season, when you receive that solicitation from Sea World, the Georgia Aquarium or another aquarium or swim-with enterprise to buy your family a few minutes in the presence of captive dolphins or whales, just say no.

No matter how “cute” and friendly or massive and majestic they are, when you buy a ticket to the show, you are purchasing cetacean slaughter as well as capture and captive breeding.

Whatever their origin, this captive life is characterized by housing in a morbidly small tank, or occasionally more than one tank, away from the communal and familial groups with whom they live in the wild, with insufficient quality of life, unable to display the behaviors that they have for more than 30,000,000 years.

When you buy that ticket, you are purchasing force-feeding to train them that dead-fish-in-the-hands-of-humans is food.  You are buying a ticket in a crap shoot that the next dolphin or orca will adjust to captivity. Or will survive captivity.  And the stake for each captive is her life.

For a gift this year, why not try spreading the message of freedom and respect for these naturally peace-loving marine animals?  Buy a copy of The Cove for someone who does not yet know of the horrors occurring right now in Taiji, Japan.  Donate to Save Japan Dolphins or buy apparel that saves dolphins.  [Someone in my life is getting a Save Japan Dolphins bracelet and maybe a sweatshirt and a hat or two.  Wonder who?]  Watch the free documentary A Fall from Freedom with your friends and family.  Contribute to the ongoing legal efforts to free Morgan and Tokitai (Lolita).

So push “play” and watch this marvelous video by Gudrun Wiesflecker, if you haven’t already, as you read these last few words.

While the story of captivity is not a pleasant one, the story of willful blindness isn’t either.  The lasting reward of contributing to cetacean freedom, on the other hand, is a gift worthy of any holiday, but especially these now upon us.

It probably will not be the last time I say this to you, but Happy Holidays.  Peace and freedom to you and to all cetaceans, now and forever.

Cove Blue for Jiyu

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Dolphins and whale sharks as the Georgia Aquarium’s “assets”

Posted on December 2, 2011 by | 6 Comments

The following text is a transcription of a video, which I have attempted to faithfully reproduce, of Carey Rountree, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at the Georgia Aquarium; the video is posted below the text.

As noted, Mr. Rountree’s job is marketing, so maybe I should not be surprised that

  • he relates to dolphins and whale sharks as “assets;” or that
  • he sees the swim-with-the-whale-shark program as a marketing opportunity to acquire more customers; or that
  • his first observation about their new TV show is that it will be an opportunity, first, to talk about the Georgia Aquarium, and only second, to discuss ocean mysteries, which just happens to be the title of the show.  Sounds like it should have been, The Georgia Aquarium Show and How We Intend To Create More Customers by Talking About Ocean Mysteries.  But maybe that’s just me; or that
  • dolphins are in the aquarium because they were the #1 requested animal.  I guess I don’t feel comfortable, and please forgive me, ticket-buying public, letting the market decide whether you keep animals in captivity.  That’s pretty blatantly letting the dollars do the talking instead of science; or that
  • he spins the Georgia Aquarium’s TV show as the first to be dedicated to the aquatic world.  Oh, wait.  Maybe Jacques Cousteau’s program wasn’t technically a television “show” even though the only way to watch it was on the television.

Speaking of Jacques Cousteau and the Georgia Aquarium in the same breath is secular blasphemy.  While the Georgia Aquarium’s survival depends upon keeping marine animals in captivity and getting people to come see them (or just come listen to jazz), here’s what Jacques Cousteau said about dolphins and other marine creatures living in captivity:

No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea.  And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.

I think it is safe to say that Jacques Cousteau, who had as his mission to communicate a love of the ocean and its life in order to protect them, knew a thing or two about marine life.  Does it not seem more than ironic that the Georgia Aquarium, which claims something like that, depends upon keeping animals in obscenely small enclosures away from their natural life?

The Georgia Aquarium is not teaching a genuine love of animals.  Whatever else, it is teaching that it is acceptable to disrespect nature.  To control it.  To see it as an asset.

I think I just vomited in my mouth.

Transcript, SVP Marketing, Georgia Aquarium:

After our success with our swim-with-the-whale-shark program, and, and, really, that was our first attempt as a team to look at marketing opportunities. It hit us right between the eyes, that every day there are five or six hundred people here that have contact with the guests coming through the Georgia Aquarium.  They also have great ideas.  Because of their work place, they see what is happening in that work place every day.  So through our training staff and through our volunteer staff, we meet on a quarterly basis to just explore new ideas.

Right after we instituted the swim-with-the-whale-shark program, we were looking at other ways to drive attendance, and the Jazz Festival happened to be in town; and one of our employees came to me and said, “You know, we could have our own Jazz Nights at the Georgia Aquarium.”  So we said, “Hey, let’s go for it.”  And so, in that first year, we, we instituted Jazz Nights every Friday from May through September, and generated more than 40,000 additional guests through the door.  So, not only, you know, did we have an idea, we implemented that idea and had tremendous success from it.  So we continue to do that on a quarterly basis: look at ideas, look at our assets, not necessarily going outside and bringing new assets in.  You can’t build a hundred and ten million dollar dolphin exhibit every month, or every six months, or even every five years.  So you’ve got to take the assets that you have, invest in those assets, develop those assets, and figure out a way to make them really productive for ya.  And that’s what we’ve been able to do with this employee group that, by quarterly just sitting down, and, and bringing their ideas out.  And much of it is information they’ve garnered from guests, talking to the guests on the floor.  That’s the way we got the dolphins.  It was the Number 1 requested animal.  But other activities, you know, that, that people want to do – our guests and our employees are the best source of information to go to and find that information.

You can’t build a hundred and ten million dollar dolphin exhibit every month, or every six months, or even every five years.  So you’ve got to take the assets that you have, invest in those assets, develop those assets, and figure out a way to make them really productive for ya.  – Carey Rountree, SVP Sales & Marketing, Georgia Aquarium

I think the success of a brand is totally dependent on separating itself out and being able to identify that unique characteristic that really puts it above any other product in the category.  And we’re at the point, we think we’re growing beyond a brand and into a property.  We’re in production right now on our own television show, which will air this September.  It’ll be, uh, an educational program.  It’ll launch, uh, September 3rd.  It’ll be on ABC every Saturday morning for 52 weeks for the next five years.  So, it’s an opportunity for us to really be in every market in the country, talking about the Georgia Aquarium.  But also, talking about ocean mysteries, which is the title of the show.  So, it’s another opportunity to get out there and really . . .  there’s never been an aquatic show like this dedicated just to the aquatic world.  We’ll be the first. We love being first.  We love being the biggest.  We love being the highest-attended in the United States.

We think that, uh, being able to differentiate yourself from your competitors is the only thing you have to do in marketing.

 

Take the pledge by Save Japan Dolphins, I won’t go to a dolphin show!

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