We arrived with no expectations, but decided it could be fun to tour the visitors’ center, upon entering which, we were immediately accosted by a doe-eyed twenty-something who was secreting a mucilaginously welcoming demeanor. She introduced herself, but I promptly forgot her name. Her badge read “Hermana T–”, which I initially thought to be a feminine form of Herman.

She sat us down next two to other gentleman: a hardened-looking man dressed in black leather, and his adult son who looked terribly inconvenienced and desperately in need of a cigarette. I began asking Hermana questions about the history of the building, and of the western migration of Mormons to Utah. However, I was soon cut short when she directed us to focus our attention on the larger-than-life statue of Jesus in front of us, and his presumptive voice that was being piped in from above. It was the standard “get to the father through me” stuff that you’ll hear from most Christians, and was pretty uninteresting.

When she returned, she eagerly asked us what we thought of the presentation, and all I managed to muster “this room is cool.” Z– said it made him wonder who did the voice. She seemed unfazed when we admitted we didn’t feel touched by Heavenly Father over the course of the presentation.

Hermana, and her associate, who I’ll call Hermana Dos, then asked us if we wanted to watch a 20 minute presentation. Z– and I looked at each other, back to the Hermanas, and said “sure, why not.” They took us to the entrance of a presentation room that I could tell from the lobby contained dioramas. My heart sank, as I was then sure we were entering a Hell House. Luckily however, it turned out to be nothing more than a rather boring video about the story of a Mormon family. It was presented in vignettes, as we moved from exhibit to exhibit. It laid the “importance of the family” theme on pretty thick, but didn’t say anything that surprising. Finally, we ended up in a room where we watched a short video about the role of the Mormon Temple in the lives of the family, and how Mormons are “sealed” to their spouses and children, so they can spend eternity together.

When the lights came up, the Hermanas picked on Z– to ask a question, and he obliged. “I grew up in a Christian church,” he said “and from this presentation, I don’t see a difference between that and Mormonism.” The Hermanas looked at each other, and then to the man in leather: “maybe you can answer.”

Turns out he was a recent convert — two weeks a Mormon — who was ostensibly trying to straighten out his wayward son. The man looked down solemnly for a moment, and then cast piercing (but somewhat vacant) gaze directly into my eyes and said “love. It’s the love.” He went on to explain how Mormonism had led him out of bad times, which made me feel icky (read: vaguely malicious/immature) for visiting what I thought to be a theological petting zoo.

We wrapped up the visit in a fantastically beautiful room with soaring windows looking out over the Bay. I tried to extract some more details on dogma and doctrine from Hermana Dos, but she was more interested in having us interact with a touchscreen kiosk that explained the different rooms in the temple (since we were “unclean” and therefore forbidden from entering to see them ourselves). I tried to get her to state the church’s position on evolution, but all I could elicit was a vague distrust of Darwinism, and that we are not apes. Nothing on the age of the earth.

I also asked (rather pedantically) how you could expect to be together with your nuclear family for eternity, if your spouse will still be “sealed” to her parents and your children will be sealed to their spouses etc., to which she responded “we have faith that it will work out, though we do not understand.”

Hermana Uno returned for her comrade, and they left us for a moment while we marveled at the display of Books of Mormon in different languages. I salivated over the Mayan copy.

They returned with literature for us, as well as an (English) copy of the book, inscribed with a handwritten blurb from each of them on the front cover. We said our goodbyes and thanked them warmly.

–

It was an interesting experience and I’m glad we did it, but it wasn’t life altering. Mostly what I took away was that Mormons are deeply preoccupied with the concept of family, surely because they believe you’ll be with yours for eternity. In retrospect I remember hearing this before, when Proposition 8 was on the ballot. At the time, a source I read stated that the measure carried great meaning for the eternal family: if gays can marry, then shit gets all fucked up. My visit to the temple brought this fact into sharper focus.

Also, I gathered from the presentation that Mormons obsess about the afterlife in a way that would be foreign to most “vanilla” Christians. Each of their temples has a “celestial room” which partially replicates the place where you’ll lounge with your ‘fam in perpetuam. This gave me the feeling that they’re a creepier death cult than mainstream Christians.

As for the nitty-gritty on the history of the Mormon church, I think I learned more from South Park’s Mormon special.

The sisters Hermanas were great sports. They were very kind and did an excellent job leading the tour and answering questions. They never seemed judgmental or rude, although Z– and I were on our best behavior. I just hope that someday they make it out of the church, for their and their children’s sake.

Lots has happened this year. I’ve gotten all but one of the pre-requisites for medical school under my belt. They were hellish at times, but I never doubted my commitment to sparkle medicine. Now I’m set to take the MCAT in April, and I’m looking forward to four months of frantic cramming in preparation. Admittedly, part of my motivation to come back to blogging was is to re-sharpen my writing skills for the essay portion of the test.

But more importantly, there’s all kinds of religious and political wackaloonery that I’ve just gotta soapbox about.

Here’s to coming back with a vengeance.

For example:

1) In general, do you support welfare?
2) Do you support Arizona’s law SB 1070?
3) Do you support affirmative action?
4) Do you oppose the “Ground Zero Mosque”?
5) Do you believe the United States is a Christian Nation?
6) Do you believe president Obama is the legitimate president of the United States?
7) Do you support a ban on burqas, niqabs and hijabs?
8) Are you against immigration?

I think you’ll generally find the Republican position on the issue is indistinguishable from the racist position. Note, the default “conservative” position on questions 2, 4, and 7 is opposite the Republican position.

This is why conservatives get called racists. Because assuming there’s a little racist homunculus living inside their head is a perfectly reasonable way to predict their opinion on any given issue. In fact, doing so even explains their deviation from principles which might otherwise be considered conservative, like supporting constitutional freedoms of minorities.

The article cogently addresses the main point of my previous post — the assertion that consistently drawing a comparison between FGM and MGM can be useful:

[Some researchers] criticize the fortresslike separation of male circumcision from FGM and suggest that the real issue in the debate is child protection: “Whether we should be subjecting any children to . . . procedures involving the excision of healthy tissue” (Fox and Thomson 2005a:467). In a further article, Fox and Thomson (2005b) develop these arguments and criticize medical and legal authorities for neglecting the rights of children and failing to undertake a full cost-benefit analysis of the effects that routine circumcision has on males.

From an ethics perspective, no coherent criticism of FGM on the basis of a child’s right to bodily integrity can be mounted without also being a criticism of MGM. I think that’s an extremely important point to grasp. The authors drive it home by observing that practitioners of FGM often point to MGM as an equivalent Western practice, saying that it’s hypocritical of us to decry FGM while routinely circumcising our infant males. And in America, you’re cutting boys!

The authors also make an interesting conjecture about Western studies addressing the cost/benefit of circumcision:

…[O]ne wonders whether it is culture or medical science that is really in the driver’s seat here. The evidence thought to show a “potential health benefit” for MGA may in fact be an artifact of its cultural acceptability and long history in U.S. society. By the same token, the absence of any culturally conditioned demand for FGA has discouraged researchers from seeking evidence of the potential advantages of such surgery. It is the cultural demand for MGA that generates the research that appears to implicate the foreskin in whatever disease is holding the public’s attention (Goldman 2004). In a culture that values science, medical (usually miscalled scientific) justifications for cultural rituals must be found, hence the numerous horror stories about the terrible risks of retaining normal human anatomy (Van Howe et al. 2005). As Lawrence Dritsas (2001) has eloquently argued, the cultural tail would appear to be wagging the scientific dog.

Indeed.

One final excerpt, because everyone loves an appeal to evolutionary biology :)

All mammals have foreskins; males are what they are because that is how they have evolved … Evolution, however, appears to be favoring ever-longer foreskins in males (Cold and McGrath 1999), suggesting that they improve survival chances and reproductive health rather than the reverse.

Definitely worth the read.

New rule: now that they’ve finished reading the Constitution out loud, the teabaggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I’m talking of course about the founding fathers.

In the video, he references this crazy f*cking painting:

I want to stab my eyes out.

Your typical, baseline model fingerbox.

What is it? From Encyclopedia Dramatica:

A finger box, though ostensibly a relatively simple device, is in fact a staggeringly complex machine comprised of several thousand finely crafted components. These are most often distributed in sets of nine, but the poor, the disenfranchised and the mentally handicapped have all been observed amusing themselves for hours at a time with just a single unit. Finger boxing (also referred to colloquially as ‘fingering’ and/or ‘boxing’) is a rapidly growing trend among teens aged 13-18. The first instance of the device, though in a cruder and less intricate form, was invented by Sir Eustace Henry Trollington more than 130 years ago in Dunbartonshire, Scotland.

A Finger box basically creates a variety of sensations by stimulating the nerves of the finger tip, though the fun was short-lived when a group vicious saboteurs started contaminating the devices with old razor-blades, broken glass and ebolavirus. Panic ensued as a result of the dismemberments, lock-jaw and in some cases, slow and inexorable deaths. This led to the inevitable banning of the devices by the UK parliament in 1919, with the rest of the developed world quickly following suit.

No, really, what is it?! Know Your Meme gives a great explanation, but basically the fingerbox is a way of ferreting out newcomers on forums. Someone will post a picture of a fingerbox, at which point everyone who’s in on the joke will compliment the original poster on the quality of his/her fingerbox, or wax nostalgic about fingerboxes they used to own. Inevitably, the trap is sprung when someone asks “what is a fingerbox?” The trollers then proceed to lol vigorously at the n00b. Pretty stupid, right?

That’s what I thought, until I realized this phenomenon is analogous to bizarre religious doctrines like the Trinity. Many ambitious people have endeavored to explain a triune God who sent himself to earth to be killed so humans could be forgiven in his own eyes, but it remains a perplexing part of Christian dogma.

However, it may not be important whether belief in the Trinity actually makes sense. Like the fingerbox (or a secret handshake or codeword), such articles of faith could serve to define an ingroup, and nothing more.

In fact, the success of these phenomena may be due, in the end, to their incomprehensibility. One of the roles of religion — and 4chan — is to provide members a sense of belonging. This sense is augmented when the qualifications for membership become stricter. Religious groups “up the ante” of exclusivity by being increasingly demanding of their constituents — the harder it is to make the cut, the awesomer it is to be a member of the extra-special cool club. Ultimately, this may explain certain commonalities in practices among the world’s religions: abstinence, fasting, dietary and sartorial prohibitions, eschewal of certain music and dances, and demonization of certain sexual practices, to name a few. It makes sense that this process could extend to the articles of faith themselves, such that paradoxical or outlandish dogmas act as stringent qualifying criteria: “if you can believe that, then you definitely deserve to be a member!”

Intriguingly, nuttier beliefs could be an asset to a religion?

In Breaking the Spell, Dan Dennett makes the point that America is a thriving free market of religious ideas in vigorous competition. It makes sense that the religions that offer a better “product” — that is to say, exclusivizing doctrine — would be more successful by garnering more adherents. In other words, there’s a tendency towards an arms race of crazy beliefs, wherein sects with loonier beliefs are more fit and have greater selective advantage.

Anyway, next time you’re listening to some Christ-bot defend Noah’s Ark or Jonah living inside a whale, and you’re like “lol wut?” … you have just been pwned, ya n00b.

The article contains in-depth exploration of the cultural impact of this release on the pre-teen African American community..

Veronica Miller of NPR commented that … “little black girls are having the best week ever”, noting the rarity that “little African-American girls are publicly celebrated for their uniqueness and beauty”, due to non-positive comments about their physical appearance, making them question individual and collective beauty. On the single’s video, Miller said, “Little Willow is operating with a sort of empowerment that grown women can sense, admire, and in some cases, envy”, stating, “not many girls are taught that it’s OK to openly love and affirm yourself.”

…and a penetrating analysis of the style of the piece…

Lyrically the song is about letting loose, having fun and being full of swagger, while she asks ladies to “whip their hair” and “shake haters off”. The lyrics have motivational undertones, speaking of self-love and assurance, and referring to letting your hair down as a representation of this in parts like the line, “Keep fighting until I get there, when I’m down and I feel like giving up/I whip my hair back and forth, I whip it, I whip it real good.”

…as well as a detailed synopsis of the music video, including crucially important color choices…

…Smith then enters the room in colorful attire, including a blue vest, orange pants and a belt with her name on it, while donning rhinestones on her lips and extravagant nail tips. With her braids shaped to form a heart, she carries a boombox filled with paint and plays it while undoing her braids and dipping them into paint inside the stereo, using her hair as a paintbrush and enlivening the atmosphere with colors… [She then dons] a colorful mohawk, performing choreography with dancers with blue shirts in front of a light blue backdrop. She alternates different hairstyles, and then walks down a hallway with her backup dancers, donning a cotton candy-esque hairstyle.

…all painstakingly compiled by some sycophantic troglodyte.

Now, that’s not to say I have anything against the song or the singer: they’re both … fine. It’s just a little disappointing that Wikipedia has almost twice as much text dedicated to this song (which will undoubtedly be jeté aux oubliettes, blissfully forgotten in five years’ time, like that Baja Men song which shall not be named), than to a song with actual historical and cultural significance. Like … I don’t know, this one.

Nauseating.

Admittedly, Wikipedia’s Stairway to Heaven article is longer, and since it’s usually voted best rock song ever, it can serve as a useful comparison. But it’s not longer by much (and it probably wouldn’t be at all if Willow were more ambitious with backward masking).

Oh well. It’s not like I was operating under the delusion that Wikipedia was an ideal information source, but it’s a little disheartening to think that the entire endeavor of constructing a user-maintained encyclopedia will forever be hobbled by the bias of “what people care about.” That is to say, there will be ten times as much human effort expended on writing and moderating Justin Bieber’s suite of articles as there will be on something like the depopulation of indigenous Americans.

Maybe it’s fine. Maybe after a few decades of operation the “fad” articles will be winnowed down to just the essential facts. Or maybe the the prolixity of such articles can be meta-analyzed as a pseudo-primary source — a signature of the zeitgeist. I don’t care, just so long as nobody looks back on Whip My Hair as more important than it was.

RIP John Lennon, October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980.

I doubt this bill has a snowball’s chance in hell, but still, it’s food for thought.

It’s particularly interesting how the pro-circumcision people revile what they perceive is a “government intrusion” into their personal decisions. I’d challenge them to put themselves in the shoes of someone who believes circumcision is morally wrong, just for a moment. If your position was that no-one should be able to surgically modify the genitals of an unconsenting infant, what would you do? Would you try to wait it out and educate parents, or would you try to effect legal protection over les petits garçons? I think the answer is clear.

The guy isn’t some leftist whackjob trying to micromanage your family, he’s taking part in a long tradition of recognizing an action is inhumane or detrimental to society, and seeking to have that action illegalized (cf. wife-beating, child abuse, tattooing your child etc.). But admittedly, he’s ahead of his time.

Is there some cognitive dissonance between the liberal part of me that says “keep the government out of my decisions” when it comes to abortion, and the part that wants government to interfere when it comes to circumcision? I don’t think so, and here’s why: no future adult has to deal with the consequences of abortion.

Which brings me back to the TYT video:

Ben Mankiewicz: What are you going to do, ask your four month old?

Ana Kasparian: Right, I know. He thinks that that decision should be made by the boy … or the man …

Ben: Well no-one’s gonna make it at eighteen!

Telling.