Terry Pratchett and the ubiquity of negligent chance

As you all should know, the inimitable Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He’s writing about it as long as he can, and so far he’s remarkably lucid and open…and also, you can tell, a bit angry at the sheer arbitrariness of the disease and the difficulty in finding treatment for it.

…it is strange that a disease that attracts so much attention, awe, fear and superstition is so underfunded in treatment and research. We don’t know what causes it, and as far as we know the only way to be sure of not developing it is to die young. Regular exercise and eating sensibly are a good idea, but they don’t come with any guarantees. There is no cure. Researchers are talking about the possibility of a whole palette of treatments or regimes to help those people with dementia to live active and satisfying lives, with the disease kept in reasonably permanent check in very much the same way as treatments now exist for HIV. Not so much a cure therefore as – we hope – a permanent reprieve. We hope it will come quickly, and be affordable.

When my father was in his terminal year, I discussed death with him. I recall very clearly his relief that the cancer that was taking him was at least allowing him “all his marbles”. Dementia in its varied forms is not like cancer. Dad saw the cancer in his pancreas as an invader. But Alzheimer’s is me unwinding, losing trust in myself, a butt of my own jokes and on bad days capable of playing hunt the slipper by myself and losing.

Zeno has also found an appropriate quote from Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) (I recommend it!). It’s a quote from Havelock Vetinari, one of my favorite characters in the Discworld series, on natural evil.

I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

The casual cruelty of nature is one example of the absence of a benevolent overseer in the universe. For another, I’d add the fact that Pratchett has been afflicted with a disease with no cure, of a kind that will slowly destroy his mind. We’re left with only two alternatives: that if there is a god, he’s insane or evil and rules the world with wanton whimsy; or the most likely answer, that there is no such being and it’s simple chance that leads to these daily haphazard catastrophes.

That’s so depressing. Here, cheer up, it’s the holiday season — go read Hogfather(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). You own a copy, right? If not, buy it — the money will go to a good man who has just donated a million dollars to Alzheimer’s research.

It’s the cover-up, stupid

Bad news out of Germany: they’ve been investigating cases of priestly child abuse, and found lots (159 priests, 15 deacons, 96 religion teachers and six pastoral employees implicated so far), but they also found evidence of a systematic cover-up by the Catholic church.

Germany’s Catholic Church systematically covered up cases of sexual abuse within its own ranks for several decades, according to an expert study commissioned by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising.

The lawyer heading up the investigation, Marion Westpfahl, said at a press conference on Friday that the available records pointed to huge gaps in the documentation between 1945 and 2009. She added this hinted strongly at a “systematic system of cover-up,” in which few abuse cases were criminally prosecuted.

“Only 26 priests were convicted for sexual offences,” Westpfahl explained to reporters, saying she found 365 files containing evidence that “acts of abuse had taken place in an almost commonplace manner.”

“We have to assume that there is a large unknown number [of abuse cases],” she said. “We are dealing with the extensive destruction of files.”

Note also:

Westpfahl also said that the period of 1977 to 1982, when Pope Benedikt XVI – then Archbishop Josef Ratzinger – headed up the archdiocese, was particularly poorly documented.

So now we know what he’s good at — burying the bodies.

The study was commissioned by Archbishop Reinhard Marx, who made this little comment that somehow reminded me of someone else.

For me, these were surely the worst months of my life. I felt shame, grief and dismay. As a church, we ask forgiveness for those things done by our church employees.

No one gives a damn about your worst moment, Marx. Think about how awful it was for the people under your care, instead.

I am beginning to understand why Christians makes such a big deal about forgiveness. It’s because they need it so much.

Christ and Corruption

Ken Ham commissioned a company named “America’s Research Group” to produce a feasibility study for the construction of his theme park for biblical literalists — I’m sure its conclusion that the park would bring in 1.5 million visitors and $200 million in revenue was a factor in convincing the Governor of Kentucky to embrace the idea.

Only there’s a catch. America’s Research Group is run by Britt Beemer. Who is Britt Beemer? Oh, look: the feasibility study was written by Ken Ham’s personal friend, coauthor, and fellow fundagelical kook.

This wasn’t an independent study at all. It was by a personal ally with multiple ties to Ken Ham.

I don’t know about you, but I smell something rotten.

Rush Limbaugh, racist pig and sterling representative of the modern Republican

It’s hard to listen to this. It isn’t just racist, it’s stupid. I have to suspect that Limbaugh is back on the oxycontin.

For a great communicator, he sure does have a knack for drawing out his discussion beyond what is necessary; pithy and cogent are not words to apply to Rush. Here’s the relevant part of his talk.

How many native americans were killed by the arrival of the white man through disease and war?

…

how many people have died since the wm arrived due to lung cancer, thanks to the Indian custom of smoking? Who are the real killers here?

…

Where are our reparations?

The questions don’t make much sense. Of the Native American population that existed in the 16th-19th century, all of them are dead, most by disease and war; it’s what people die of. Typical estimates I’ve seen is that 80% of the native population was wiped out by introduced diseases, and the remnants were killed in wars or forced into militarily monitored districts. The descendants of those people, at least in North America, are largely confined to reservations, where the people have the lowest standard of living, the highest infant mortality rate, the shortest life spans of any group in this country. The white man nearly exterminated all of the native peoples of this continent by infection and execution and confinement.

Conversely, the European invaders have thrived, have suffered no general deprivation of life or liberty at the hands of the native population (although there were transient local flareups of violence that did cause suffering in white populations, but which were always followed by imposing greater torment on the natives).

White peoples: massive net gain. Native peoples: massive net loss. Fat privileged jerks like Rush Limbaugh do not get to play the persecution card.

And don’t even get me started on the smoking comment. Watching your children die of smallpox, seeing your friends gunned down by cavalry, having your land stripped from under you, watching your way of life eradicated, and seeing your descendants condemned to a life of poverty does not quite stack up against lighting a stogie and sipping brandy with your over-privileged pale-skinned buddies. And who, I ask, is profiting from tobacco? I don’t think it’s the native Americans.

Would you believe Rush Limbaugh is the most beloved commentator of the Republican base? It’s past time to recognize what the Republican party is: the last bastion of KKK mentality.

One more Molly added to my army, time to gather another into the horde

It’s the beginning of another month, and time to announce the Molly winner for October, and that sninily unique Pharyngulistan honor goes to…Mattir.

No sooner do I announce one winner, though, than we just move on to collecting nominations for the next one. Leave your comments here declaring your appreciation of some particular person for their contributions to the threads of November.

How authoritarians treat art

Somebody needs to grab Bill Donohue by the ear and drag him to the Neues Musem in Berlin — all the way to the airport, during the long transatlantic flight, and on the taxi ride to the museum. Pinch hard, too, and make him squeal all the way.

While digging a subway tunnel in Berlin, construction workers discovered a cache of buried expressionist sculptures, hidden survivors of the Nazi campaign to destroy what they considered “degenerate art”.

Researchers learned the bust was a portrait by Edwin Scharff, a nearly forgotten German modernist, from around 1920. It seemed anomalous until August, when more sculpture emerged nearby: “Standing Girl” by Otto Baum, “Dancer” by Marg Moll and the remains of a head by Otto Freundlich. Excavators also rescued another fragment, a different head, belonging to Emy Roeder’s “Pregnant Woman.” October produced yet a further batch.

The 11 sculptures proved to be survivors of Hitler’s campaign against what the Nazis notoriously called “degenerate art.” Several works, records showed, were seized from German museums in the 1930s, paraded in the fateful “Degenerate Art” show, and in a couple of cases also exploited for a 1941 Nazi film, an anti-Semitic comedy lambasting modern art. They were last known to have been stored in the depot of the Reichspropagandaministerium, which organized the “Degenerate” show.

I’ve found one small collection of photos of these works, and of the “Degenerate” show. They’re interesting, not great masterworks or anything, but it’s amazing how a touch of harsh history imbues them with much greater meaning.

Mr Donohue should contemplate how history regards people who try to dictate what art means, and that the person who is thought to have hidden these works from the hammers of the Nazis, Erhard Oewerdieck, is now considered heroic.