Daily Archives: June 8, 2017

I have a BA in Philosophy and MA in Theology. The more I read in my fields, the more I find that my training is outside the norm. In both programs that I was involved in, almost all of my professors would hammer any paper they got if it didnt adhere to the Principle of Charity. For them it was important that you assumed that the people you were studying (Locke, Plato, Sartre, Calvin, Frame, etc) were at least as smart as you, a lowly and ignorant student. If you found a supposed contradiction in their writings you had to do your best to find a way to reconcile the contradiction before attacking it. It was assumed that they were smart enough to see obvious problems and avoid them if possible. We also read the primary texts of each of these writers foremost, not commentaries.

This led to actual learning on my part. Looking so hard at a text of Rousseau (who I despise as a thinker), and trying to see what he was saying from his point of view made me understand what he was trying to say, and taught me a lot about the French Revolution, and the Romantic and Socialist thought which sprang from him. It also allowed me to be influenced and to argue better against those that agreed with him far more than I did. This goes for all the works that I read in my education.

It turns out that isnt how most students in humanities were and are being taught. Rather, they are following the path laid out by the Higher Critics of the Bible from the 18th century. They are taught to find a supposed contradiction and amplify it without any attempt to reconcile it. (1 Kings says that 26,357 people died here and 1 Chronicles says only 26,000! The Bible is false!) When the supposed contradiction is found, you amplify it to the point where you either dismiss the entire work, or to dismiss it as authoritative in any way that challenges yourself and your preconceptions.

This is the end game of Post-Modernism, which is an outgrowth of Existentialism, which is an outgrowth of Romantic thought, which is an outgrowth of Kantianism, which is an outgrowth of Rationalism, which is an outgrowth of Nominalism, so it goes back a ways. The hope was that this would demystify texts and foster the self-discovery of the reader, to lower the text and raise the reader. But what it really does is impoverish the reader.

So many people in my circles (and it is getting worse) will have read Plato (or more likely, a commentary on him), but will have no idea what he actually said. They get to the first hard passage, superficially compare that with an earlier passage, find a simple change in what was said and then reject the whole body of his work.

They are never taught Irony, Hyperbole, Rhetorical Nuance, or anything that leads one to be a good reader. As a result, they dont marinate in the good and the bad of Plato, and have learned nothing from him. A good reader of this type will be able to dismiss everyone that could teach them anything apart from the self and its preconceptions. As a result of this type of reading, we have very well read people that are incredibly dumb. (Dumb, not stupid or ignorant. The stupid and ignorant can still be taught, but dumb cuts them off from learning because they have the material but have rejected it so thoroughly that they can never be reached with its knowledge.)

These are our elites! They can intimidate with the long list of books and articles they have read, but they havent learned anything from that list. Well read imbeciles that shut down an argument by saying you sound like Hobbes, have you read him? No? well I have so you need to shut up. This is what Ben Sasse is talking about in his new book. They have looked at words, but they have never been taught how to read.

View post:

The Real Bane of the Humanities: Critical Reading - Ricochet.com

President Donald Trump wants to cut a budget the Bureau of Land Management uses to care for wild horses. Instead of paying to feed them, he has proposed lifting restrictions preventing the sale of American mustangs to horse meat dealers who supply Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses.

Horse meat, or chevaline, as its supporters have rebranded it, looks like beef, but darker, with coarser grain and yellow fat. It seems healthy enough, boasting almost as much omega-3 fatty acids as farmed salmon and twice as much iron as steak. But horse meat has always lurked in the shadow of beef in the United States. Its supply and demand are irregular, and its regulation is minimal. Horse meats cheapness and resemblance to beef make it easy to sneak into sausages and ground meat. Horse lovers are committed and formidable opponents of the industry, too.

The management of wild horse herds is a complex issue, which might create difficulty for Trump. Horse meat has a long history of causing problems for American politicians.

* * *

Horses originated in North America. They departed for Eurasia when the climate cooled in the Pleistocene, only to return thousands of years later with the conquistadors. Horses became a taboo meat in the ancient Middle East, possibly because they were associated with companionship, royalty, and war. The Book of Leviticus rules out eating horse, and in 732 Pope Gregory III instructed his subjects to stop eating horse because it was an impure and detestable pagan meat. As butchers formed guilds, they too strengthened the distinction between their work and that of the knacker, who broke down old horses into unclean meat and parts. By the 16th century, hippophagythe practice of eating horse meathad become a capital offense in France.

However, a combination of Enlightenment rationalism, the Napoleonic Wars, and a rising population of urban working horses led European nations to experiment with horse meat in the 19th century. Gradually, the taboo fell. Horses were killed in specialist abattoirs, and their meat was sold in separate butcher shops, where it remained marginalized. Britain alone rejected hippophagy, perhaps because it could source adequate red meat from its empire.

America also needed no horse meat. For one part, the Pilgrims had brought the European prohibition on eating horse flesh, inherited from the pre-Christian tradition. But for another, by the 1700s the New World was a place of carnivorous abundance. Even the Civil War caused beef prices to fall, thanks to a wartime surplus and new access to Western cattle ranges. Innovations in meat production, from transport by rail to packing plants and refrigeration, further increased the sense of plenty. Periodic rises in the price of beef were never enough to put horse on the American plate.

Besides, horse meat was considered un-American. Nineteenth-century newspapers abound with ghoulish accounts of the rise of hippophagy in the Old World. In these narratives, horse meat is the food of poverty, war, social breakdown, and revolutioneverything new migrants had left behind. Nihilists share horse carcasses in Russia; wretched Frenchmen gnaw on cab horses in besieged Paris; poor Berliners slurp on horse soup.

But in the 1890s, a new American horse meat industry arose, if awkwardly. With the appearance of the electric street car and the battery-powered automobile, the era of the horse as a transportation technology was ending. American entrepreneurs proposed canning unwanted horses for sale in the Old World, paying hefty bonds to guarantee they wouldnt sell their goods at home. But Europe had higher standards and didnt like the intrusion of American meat onto its home market. U.S. aversion to regulation had led to food scares and poisonings. When French and German consuls visited a Chicago abattoir suspected of selling diseased horse to Europe, opponents tried to smear the U.S. Agriculture secretary, who had previously intervened. By 1896, the fledgling industry was faltering: Belgium barred U.S. horse meat, Chicagoans were rumored to be eating chevaline unwittingly, and the price of horses had fallen so drastically that their flesh was being fed to chickens because it was cheaper than corn.

In 1899, horse meat was dragged into one of the highest-profile food scandals of the century: the notorious Beef Court investigating how American soldiers fighting in the Spanish-American War ended up poisoned by their own corned meat. Many speculated wrongly that the contaminated beef was in fact horse meat. The first decade of Americas horse meat industry had been an unprofitable, ill-regulated disaster for the countrys reputation. The new regulations put in place in the 1906 Pure Food Act could not reverse this overnight.

* * *

When beef prices rose as canners shipped it abroad during World War I, Americans finally discovered horse steak. By 1919, Congress was persuaded to authorize the Department of Agriculture to provide official inspections and stamps for American horse meat, although as soon as beef returned after the war, most citizens abandoned chevaline.

The end of the war meant another drop in demand for range-bred horses no longer needed on the Western Front. A dealer, Philip Chappel, found a new use for them: Ken-L-Ration, the first commercial canned dog food. His success attracted perhaps the first direct action in the name of animal liberation: A miner named Frank Litts twice attempted to dynamite his Rockford, Illinois packing plant.

During World War II food shortages, horse meat once again found its way to American tables, but the post-war backlash was rapid. Horse meat became a political insult. You dont want your administration to be known as a horse meat administration, do you? the former New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia demanded of his successor William ODwyer. President Truman was nicknamed Horse meat Harry by Republicans during food shortages in the run up to the 1948 Beefsteak Election. In 1951, reporters asked if there would be a Horse meat Congress, one that put the old gray mare on the family dinner table. When Adlai Stevenson ran for president in 1952, he was also taunted as Horse meat Adlai thanks to a Mafia scam uncovered in Illinois when he was governor.

Although work horses vanished by the 1970s and mustangs were finally under federal protection, the growing number of leisure horses led to another surge in horse slaughter. The 1973 oil crisis pushed up the price of beef and, inevitably, domestic horse meat sales rose. Protestors picketed stores on horseback, and Pennsylvania Senator Paul S. Schweiker floated a bill banning the sale of horse meat for human consumption.

But once again the bubble burst. Competition sent beef prices into freefall. Even poor Americans didnt need to buy the poor mans beef, so U.S. manufacturers continued to export horse meat to Europe and Asia. Politicians began to apply pressure. In the early 1980s, Montana and Texas senators shamed the Navy into removing horse meat from commissary stores. The few remaining horse-packing plants dwindled during a market squeeze that also drove down welfare standards. Sick, injured, or distressed horses were driven long distances to slaughter under poor conditions.

In 1997, the Los Angeles Times broke the news that 90 percent of the mustangs removed from the range by the Bureau of Land Management had been sold on for meat by their supposed adopters. An Oregon horse abattoir called Cavel West was named in the report. It burned down that July, in an attack claimed by the Animal Liberation Front on behalf of the mustangs. The members of the ALF cell responsible were tried for terrorism, but Cavel West was never rebuilt. Nonviolent activists also applied pressure to the horse meat business, with California banning the transport and sale of horses for meat.

Activists and politicians worked to shut down the remaining abattoirs in the years that followed. In early September 2006, the Horse Slaughter Prevention Act passed the U.S. House, with Republican John Sweeney calling the horse meat business one of the most inhumane, brutal and shady practices going on in the United States today. Horse slaughter was not outlawed, but both federal and commercial funding for inspections was canceled, effectively shutting down the business.

Meanwhile, the town of Kaufman, Texas, mobilized against the Belgian-owned abattoir on their outskirts that paid little tax but spilled blood into the sewage system. The plant, along with another in Fort Worth, were closed. In DeKalb, Illinois, the only remaining American horse meat plant burned down in unexplained circumstances. The owners were prevented from rebuilding, as Illinois once more passed a law to stop the horse meat business. Horse slaughter ceased on U.S. soil, at least for domestic use as food. Even so, American horses were still being transported long distance to Mexican and Canadian abattoirs.

* * *

The 2009 financial crisis dealt the equestrian industry a heavy blow. The pro-slaughter lobby, backed by a 2011 GAO study, suggested that American horses had suffered, as owners no longer receiving meat money would not pay to dispose of them. Groups like United Horsemen coopted Tea Party rhetoric to compare animal-welfare campaigners to the Nazis. Opponents pointed out that poor paperwork meant many slaughter-bound horses had been treated by drugs that should have ruled them out of the food chain. Across America, both sides clashed when Obama signed a new law lifting the ban on funding for inspections. New abattoirs were proposed, but town after town blocked the measures. The 2014 Obama budget once more ruled out a revival. Meanwhile, the horses continued to be shipped to Mexico and Canada.

Today, all the familiar contradictions of the American horse meat business are playing out again, as Trump looks toward horse meat as a cost-cutting measure. Ranges are overflowing with mustangs. Animal-welfare information has disappeared from government websites, and the administration is rumored to have called on the GAO to launch another study into the benefits of building domestic abattoirs.

And yet, without adequate funding for proper inspections in a reborn U.S. horse meat industry, the market might languish. Europe is already skeptical of Mexican and Canadian exports sourced from the United States, making horse meat less profitable anyway.

Forever marginal, always unsteady, the business of packing and selling the poor mans beef could boom and crash again in America. If it does, Trump might find himself sporting a new political epithet: Horse-Meat Donny.

This article appears courtesy of Object Lessons.

Originally posted here:

The Troubled History of Horse Meat in America - The Atlantic

With millions of people posting photos online every day, many people believe that professional photography is in jeopardy. But fine art photographer Mehrdad Naraghi is not one of them.

The simplification of photography provides more chances for artists to use the medium to express themselves, says Naraghi, whose project, Japanese Gardens, was the recipient of the 2014 PHOTOQUAI Residencies Award supported by Muse du Quai Branly in Paris.

Yet the ubiquitous of digital technology does carry its own dangers, notes Naraghi. If a photographer is preoccupied with technique more than an internal search and a meaningful way to express him or herself, things become difficult, Naraghi, who was born and raised in Tehran, told me in a recent interview in New York City.

With his blurring of geographical markers and dreamlike imagery, Naragahi's photography is the visual embodiment of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical realism. We dont have any borders in dreamswe can be anywhere in our dreams, he says.

Naraghis quiet, still and opaque images, often seen only through slivers of light, demand the viewers studied attention. The quick visual impact common and expected in Western art is not to be found in his work, which invites the viewer to explore and wander slowly through his evocative images.

Naraghis photos have been exhibited in galleries in China, France, Iran, the Netherlands, the UAE, the US and the UK, and published in prominent art magazines and books, including Different Sames: New Perspectives in Iranian Contemporary Art, Connaissance des Arts (No 21) and La Photographie Iranienne, (Un regard Sur la Creation Contemporaine en Iran).

Excerpts from the interview follow:

One of the characteristics of your work is the blurred geographical traces in your photos, to the point where it is not clear at all in which city or country the photographs were taken. Once geographical identifiers are lost, viewers of your photographs face a global space. What should the viewer be looking for in this space?

The atmosphere of my work is dreamlike, and we dont have any borders in dreamswe can be anywhere in our dreams. In order to create this atmosphere, I avoid using elements that have specific geographic markers.

Just as people outside Iran cannot tell my nationality only from my appearance, this is also true about my art. We live at a time when our differences are no longer as visible on the surface, but found in deeper layers, layers that are formed from history, collective memory and the political conditions of our individual geographies.

Your photographs have been exhibited in countries such as China, the Netherlands, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and France, and you are in the U.S. now. What differences have you observed in the way this diverse audience has viewed your work?

By Mehrdad Naraghi

When I work within the realm of dreams, borders disappear, including those among my audience. I work in a realm that is shared by all human beings. In this respect, my work is similar to that of Andrei Tarkovsky, whose films depict a Russian location but have global audience, or Hayo Miyasaki, whose animations reflect Japan but have followers all over the world.

Perhaps the only border that can be defined is between Eastern and Western audiences. Subjects that are not based on rationalism or logic but instead rely more on intuition are more easily accepted by Eastern audiences. Eastern audiences have a different sensibility that allows time for study and reflection. Of course, this is a generalization and it is not possible to separate the two audiences with certainty. The only thing I can say with certainty is that audiences who are not dreamers relate less to my work.

I have also come to realize that as an artist from the Middle East, an artist who carries with him the memory of revolution and war, I feel closer to pain and am drawn to artwork that reflects this pain. This is something shared by many Iranian artists. Recently, after attending a Roger Waters concert in New York (he is a legend in Iran!), I realized that Iranians relate to his music on such a deep level because the issues he addresses, such as dictatorship, war and resistance, are a part of our daily lives, not an abstract or historical memory.

In a recent visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, I viewed works by Andy Warhol and Anselm Kiefer, and my identification with political upheaval was reinforced. I saw that as much as Warhols pop art is foreign to me, the pain and destruction in Kiefers works is familiar to me.

In the Fairyland collection, we face a labyrinth-like atmosphere. Although the photos are of accessible subjects, the lines, colors, and objects do not allow the audience to move easily between the pieces. The viewer needs to linger and search for other layers. This is complex simplicity. Fairyland feels like Japanese Haiku or Hafez poetry. Each time we approach it, we face a different perception of the piece. What kind of professional or artistic experiences led to this collection?

This collection (and my other collections) were not developed with a pre-defined plan. I see myself more as a member of the audience to my works, than as its creator. When I am faced with questions about my work it often takes a long time before I find answers to those questions, and even then, they are tentative answers! In effect, I review my own works just as I would other artists works, and I ponder them. I can only say that in the formation of this collection, the secretive aspect of nature, as well as the collective depression of Iranians, played roles.

In Zen teaching, it is said that the sound of one hand clapping exists. According to this teaching, the sound exists in the atmosphere and through clapping we only hear it. I believe that more than creating an art piece, the artist is just a transmitter, like a radio that makes the waves audible, but does not produce the sounds we hear!

Photo by: Mehrdad Naraghi

In several of your photography collections, there are very few humans present. Why is that?

I believe that the presence of humanstheir clothing, facial expression and even the way they stand, can completely affect and dominate the frame and dictate a direction to the audience which distances the work from the atmosphere I had in mind.

I also feel that when people get in front of a camera, they often start acting and become unnatural and consequently the work becomes unnatural and cheapened, too. This problem pops up more in cinema and stage photography (a field which is of interest to many Iranian photographers these days). Film directors either use professional actors who are able to act naturally in front of a camera, or, like Abbas Kiarostami, obtain excellent acting out of non-actors.

Photographers such as Sally Mann or Emmet Gowin, tend to photograph individuals who are very close to them, individuals who dont feel like a stranger around the camera; or, like Jeff Wall, they photograph arranged stages in such a way that they appear natural, and both of these are very difficult to manage. Very few photographers have explored different things in this area.

As I am interested in the work of painters, I follow and photograph the subjects used in the paintings, such as nature. Nevertheless I hope to work on humans and figures too someday, although it will be a difficult challenge.

In all your five collections available on your website (Work, Home, Fairyland, Japanese Gardens and City), the imagery is reminiscent of the supernatural literary style used by writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, or the poetic literature used in the German poet Hermann Hesses poems. How much has your photography been affected by literature and poetry?

Poetry, fiction, cinema and music that disconnects us from the world of reality even for a few moments have entirely affected and continue to affect my work. For me, poetry holds a special place. As an Iranian, I feel closer to the realm of poetry, as this is a distinctive aspect of Iranian culture, and one which runs through our daily lives.

When I talk about my interest in dreamlike spaces in art or literature, I am not talking about entirely imaginative and fantasy spaces, such as what we see in Harry Potter stories. Rather, I am talking about building a channel between reality and dreams, like in Haruki Murakami works, where the real and unreal worlds run in parallel, and they meet at some points but the reader does not recognize whether the events are unfolding in reality, or in ones imagination. Its a pendulum-like motion between reality and imagination.

photo by: Mehrdad Naraghi

What limitations do you see for expressing your feelings, thoughts and artistic creativity in photography? Have you ever been in a situation where you put your camera aside, because you thought it could not do justice to the situation?

Photography is the most limited artistic medium for showing dream-like spaces. As a painter or sculptor, you can create a piece 100% based on your imagination. But photography is based on reality; it documents, and you can never photograph nothing! On the other hand, this characteristic makes photography very interesting to meputting the audience in limbo between reality and dream. Looking at my works, the audience knows that because these are photographs, this space must have existed in real life, but due to lighting and color conditions, they dont see anything reflective of reality in them. The audience is put in a position where the line between reality and dream is minimized.

To what extent are photography and camera a means and to what extent an end? Is it possible that someday you might choose forms of artistic expression other than photography?

The camera and photography are only a medium of expression for me. Due to my deep interest in paintings, I have always created photographs with a painting-like quality and this method is in contradiction with the realistic nature of photography. I also use photographic errorssome intentional, others notto create the imagery and evoke the effects I am seeking.

Any form of artistic expression brings its own limitations, which are in contrast with the imaginations lack of borders. An artist who possesses different skills can constantly create new artistic works and be freed from repetition. As Abbas Kiarostami said in one of his interviews, I never think about what my next film would be, because if an idea is suitable for the medium of cinema, I would make a film. Otherwise, I would either paint, photograph, or write poetry.

In recent years, I have started experimenting with poetry, painting and film, and I hope I will be able to present works in these areas in the coming years.

By Mehrdad Naraghi

New York is a seductive city for photography. Do you have any photography projects focused on New York? Has your experiences with the city and your relationships with its people and photographers affected your work?

New York has a unique character. My work here has become closer to documentary photography. New York is a city where reality has a solid presence and this constricts the atmosphere for poetic thinking and dreaming. The hardships of living in New York may be one of the reasons why one is constantly faced with reality in this city and not allowed to daydream too much. I have only lived in this city for six months, but I hope to stay longer to develop a deeper experience with it. I publish my experiences with New York through daily postings of photographs and videos on my Instagram page.

At a time when everyone has a high quality digital camera on his or her cell phone, and considering the democratization of photography and existence of hundreds of millions of photographers, where do you see the role and place of fine art photography?

In my opinion, while the space has become more difficult and restricted for photographers, for many artists who use photography as their medium, this has also made things easier. An artist always uses artistic media for expressing his personal views, and for this reason, the simplification of photography provides more chances for the artists to use the medium to express themselves. Conversely, if a photographer is preoccupied with technique and the medium of photography more than an internal search and a meaningful way to express him or herself, things become difficult.

In the past, the difficult part of photography lay in the utilization of a camera; now the difficult part has shifted to the editing and selection of photographs. With digital capabilities, you can have tens of frames from each scene, and with software capabilities, you can make hundreds of changes on each frame. Under these circumstances, if the photographer does not know what he or she wants or is trying to express, they will be lost in a labyrinth of images.

This is not only limited to photography. It is now possible to make a cinematic film with a cell phone. With the reduction in the prices of 3D printers, it is also now easy to create sculptures. This happened to graphic designers years ago, where PhotoShop provided graphics skills to the masses. At the time, many graphic designers resisted computer graphics. But technological advancements create restrictions only for individuals who rely solely on technique for their creations. Some may believe the time for certain media such as photography or painting has ended, but this is true only for artists who have nothing else to say. No media is ever finished. It is only an artist who may be finished.

By Mehrdad Naraghi

*A version of this story was published on GlobalVoices.org

Start your workday the right way with the news that matters most.

Read this article:

From Japanese Gardens to New York Towers: Transcending Borders With an Iranian Photographer - HuffPost

A-A+

Suicide intervention

What would you do if you were driving across Thomas Creek Bridge and saw a distressed person standing on the rail about to jump?

If a close friend suffering from depression called you late at night and said they intended to end their life before morning, would you know what to say? Would you know what to do?

AllCare Health is sponsoring an award-winning two-day workshop that answers those questions. ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) teaches participants the skills to recognize when someone is at risk of suicide and how to provide for their immediate safety. The workshop will be held in the library at Brookings-Harbor High School, June 28 and 29. No formal training is necessary to learn suicide first aid skills, anyone over 16 may attend the workshop.

The workshops full value of $220 per person, which includes lunch both days and all training materials, is available to Curry County residents for only $65, with the remainder of the fee paid by AllCare Health.

Scholarships are available to help cover the $65 registration fee if needed. For professionals, 12 hours of Continuing Education (CEU) credits are available.

To register for workshop, go to http://bit.ly/2pbnvri.

For more info about ASIST, a program of LivingWorks, visit http://www.livingworks.net/asist.

If you have questions about the workshop, contact me at Kevin Roeckl at (541) 469-7673 or email: oregonboy1@charter.net

Kevin Roeckl

spokesperson for the Curry ASIST workshop Planning Team, AllCare Healths Community Advisory Council

Global warning hoax

Buddhas rejection of self, made sense to Pyrrho of Greece, who traveled to India with Alexander the Great and interacted with Buddhist philosophers.

Pyrrho taught that nothing is truly knowable and as a result, education, philosophy, and science declined in Greece. Bacon and Galileo believed in the scientific method and Gods word. Modern science was born in critique of Aristotelian rationalism. The scientific method is subservient to observed facts. One contrary observed fact can destroy any theory. Religious zealots who suppress true science and the Bible are not true Christians.

Bill Clinton, Al Gore and former United Nations IPPC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Chief Rajendra Pachauri all promote Michael Manns hockey stick graphic, which shows 1,500 years of stable global temperature and then a sharp increase in temperature due to increased CO2 caused by humans burning fossil fuels.

However, peer review panels showed Manns conclusions are not supported by data.

The Cambria and Medieval warm periods were warmer than today. The 1990s are not the warmest decade ever. In previous periods, elephants and tigers lived in tropical forests in the Arctic, north of Siberia. Human activity contributes only 3.4 percent to CO2 levels. Nature create

96.6 percent of the increase or decrease CO2 levels. Rising levels of carbon dioxide follow higher global temperatures, as oceans release carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Progressive liberals created human-caused global warming as their method of attacking free enterprise and capitalism. Clinton, Gore and Pachauri preach the evils of over-consumption, over-population and capitalism. However, elite liberals seem to live lavish lifestyles with private jets, big homes and consumption of as much capital and promiscuity as they can.

Dr. Steve Johnston

Brookings

17426776

Read this article:

Letters to Editor June 7 - Curry Coastal Pilot