As a major Obama supporter who's been dwelling on the subject of the questionable value of religion, recent events regarding his relationship with Jeremiah Wright have me a little shaken. One question I ask myself is, how religious is Obama really? Did he choose to join this church as a typically political antidote to the taboo against being irreligious? Did he do it just for street cred in the black community? Maybe the guy is really, deeply religious as he claims? I've never been sure I wanted to believe this last possibility, but on the other hand, he's always struck me as being authentic, so to be a true believer would be in line with that.

The shocking Christmas Day incident at the San Francisco Zoo in which a Siberian Tiger escaped its enclosure and attacked and killed one zoo visitor and severely wounded two others has had a powerful effect on me emotionally. I have suffered over the years from chronic nightmares involving attacks by various big cats and have felt drawn to all stories involving incidents of this nature at zoos and in the wild.

I feel further attachment to this story because I have come to know this zoo pretty well and feel especially connected with the big cats there.

Note: this is second in a series of posts I'm doing reviewing Robert Zubrin's Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil. Part 1 is here and originally posted at New Worlds.

President Bush has said Iraq is "the central front in the War on Terrorism." He is wrong. The central, decisive front is America's fight for energy independence.

The world economy is currently running on a resource that is controlled by our enemies. This threatens to leave us prostrate. It must change—and the good news is that it can change, quickly.

I plan to do a chapter-by-chapter review of Robert Zubrin's Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil at my blog, New Worlds, and will cross post here because I think the subject is of great interest to the progressive community. I also hope to get feedback from some of the excellent thinkers on energy and environment who post here regularly.

First a few words on the author. I first encountered Dr. Zubrin through his leadership of the Mars Society and his outstanding book The Case for Mars. Zubrin is a brilliant engineer, holding advanced degrees in aeronautics, astronautics and nuclear engineering. He is also blessed with a wide ranging visionary mind, has studied and written extensively on history and even has a couple of sci-fi novels to his credit. I have enormous respect for him personally.

Any opera fans out there?

Having just seen Wagner's Tannhäuser performed by the SF Opera last week I'd like to share my take on it before it fades from memory. First, a very brief outline of the plot:

Act 1 has Tannhäuser hanging out with Venus beneath a mountain somewhere in Germany in erotic bliss. They've been screwing for months or years apparently so Tannhäuser has lost all sense of time and connection with the real world and begins to get restless. He tells Venus he digs her a lot but pines for some things he's been missing like nature, blue sky, lust for battle. Venus tells him he's full of shit and he never had it so good. Tannhäuser almost gives in again to her charms but finally breaks the spell by invoking the name of the Virgin Mary. Suddenly Venus and the mountain are gone and he's in an open meadow. Some knights wander in and it turns out they're his old friends. He doesn't say where he's been but agrees to go back with them to the Vartburg, their castle.

This is not a pleasant diary.  It's not about politics- though I was reminded of Sicko a few times during the ordeal. If you're not a kidney stone sufferer or don't know anyone who is or was, best to skip on by. I've been plagued by stones for the past 7 years or so, but this time something really unusual seems to be occurring. Every time in the past the problem, though excruciatingly painful initially, was over within hours. This time its two weeks and counting.

I've been a Kossack almost forever (UID 801) and rarely post but am a true lurkaholic. I don't like sharing these embarrassing medical details but I'm at wit's end as to what's going on and figure there may well be knowledgeable doctors or scientists or just smart folks who may have some helpful advice.

My timeline of delight is just after the flip.

What a strange topic. It's almost impossible to write, let alone to even think, rationally about the subject. When viewed in strictly biological terms it's a normal function of the reproductive system but with sensory feedback way out of proportion to what it aims to achieve, in humans at least. In most animals it makes more sense as a temporary "pon far" like episode; a ritual madness clearly oriented toward the act of reproduction. When the season is passed the animal can get down to normal activities without preoccupation. Not so with the "reasoning" species.

Apologies for the lack of context, but the following is cross-posted from my blog at New Worlds and I thought it was worth sharing with a larger community. The comment thread there raises some very interesting issues and I wouldn't mind a little feedback.

-----------------------------

Been holding back too much...

The anonymous but highly respected progressive blogger who goes by the name of Digby was presented with the Paul Wellstone award and gave a righteous acceptance speech, defending the progressive blogosphere against the various scurrilous attacks being leveled at the oh so radical lefty blogsphere.

Jim Kunstler is my favorite curmudgeon. I used to check his column every Monday morning, until I bought a house and realized I didn't want to think about the imminent collapse of modern civilization every week. But sometimes, you just want to hear it straight- and Jim don't hold back.

It seems to me you can call the situation in Iraq a lot of things, but it's not a war. Not at this point, anyway. Call it an unsuccessful nation-building project, a failed occupation, a botched policing job, a monkey-in-the-middle clusterfuck. All the US political factions, from left to right, do the public a disservice by calling it a war, because it misrepresents what we're doing there.

Yes! Speak on brother with forcefulness of what is really the fuck happening. Gimme some more of that.

I met Malena on the flight from NY to Prague. She's a sixtyish lady who had the window seat next to me. I was so tired on the trip that I don't recall what prompted the conversation, but I'm glad something did, for her story was worthwhile. It turned out we had a few things in common. She was a geologist prior to her retirement and has lived for the past forty years in Pittsburgh, PA, the locale of my childhood. Her husband, who died a few years previously was a marine biologist. Back in 1967, she and her husband were newlyweds in Prague and had just bought a new apartment to begin their life under the oppressive thumb of the totalitarian government. Malena's husband was invited to Paris for a scientific conference and he decided to take his young wife along. Before leaving, he was invited by the secret police for a little pre-briefing.

Gary Hart in the Huffington Post speaks out on The Lessons of Iraq. Every time I read this guy's writing I feel like Thomas Jefferson still stands among us:

First, treat jihadist terrorism more like organized crime than traditional warfare. By declaring "war on terrorism" we made the fatal mistake that it could be crushed using conventional warfare and massed armies...

One of the frequent criticisms of those who do not believe in a God and are outspoken about their viewpoint, is that their beliefs are akin to fundamentalism of a different nature. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins defends himself against this charge in The God Delusion with a tale of two scientists. The first is an anecdote about a respected elder statesman of the Zoology Department at Oxford when he was an undergraduate.

This will be a short diary, because it is mostly composed of a link to a piece that some here might find a little contentious. Over at New Worlds, one of our frequent posters of a somewhat conservative viewpoint posted a link to a list of ten conservative principles eloquently defined by Russell Kirk.

Those of us of more liberal bent were quick to try to poke holes in the principles espoused, but I thought it might be helpful to bring some Kossack firepower to the discussion. After the flip I'll paste the introduction to Kirk's essay and urge the reading of the full piece and further commentary here and/or at New Worlds.

Courtesy of an old friend, a seriously thought provoking article regarding a form of spirituality I simply can't deny, because I've felt it deep in my bones on numerous occasions:

Pastor finds message in Grateful Dead music

Of course the lede drives me nuts...

It was a clear-cut decision back in the ’60s, either you loved the Grateful Dead, the bluesy folk band that got its start in San Francisco, or you went for the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion.

Do we always have to choose sides? Do you have to be deaf and blind to the creative wonders of Lennon, McCartney, et al, to thrill to the magic of Jerry and friends? But that's just the writer of the piece. The item that's interesting is the Pastor (if you don't mind calling a Unitarian Universalist that) who's using the Dead as the focus of a series of sermons he's giving and how this ties in to the whole "God is a delusion" idea. In short, he's hitting me in my soft spot and left me pondering.

One of the most powerful and eloquent biographies I have ever read- though I can’t say I completely enjoyed- was "Grey Eminence" by Aldous Huxley, the story of the life and career of a capuchin monk, Father Joseph, who rose to effectively become Cardinal Richelieu’s war minister during the Thirty Years War in the early seventeenth century.

Stick with me a bit and I'll explain how this relates to our current political landscape and another Joseph who goes by the last name Lieberman.

I’ve just gotten past the chapter in Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in which he states his core argument for "Why There is Almost Certainly No God." The case Dawkins presents is extremely impressive, entirely readable, and powerfully uplifting. At the conclusion of the chapter he summarizes the key points succinctly and I will present them verbatim below the fold.

Hypocrisy sucks, and one must be ever vigilant against this scourge. As much as I believe that there is no single consciousness known as Max Wyvern but rather he is comprised of a swarming assemblage of consciousnesses and therefor inconsistency of message is inevitable, I have a wish for certain core principles to remain steady enough that I'm not a complete blithering schizophrenic shredding any and all personal credibility. The other night I lay awake pondering my momentary minor fame of an unprecedented 217 comments from a single diary, my admission of a new understanding that I don't believe in the big guy in the sky, and it occurred to be that certain aspects of that essay may have run counter to an earlier, much less famous diary which decried the whole idea of fighting against those whom we disagree with in favor of fighting for that which we believe; the folly of Us. vs. them. The splendid proclamation that I am an atheist devolved predictably into the enemy camps of rationalists vs. spiritualists. Us against Them in all its glory.

Now, that wasn't very hard to say, was it?

Yes, it was very hard. So hard that I don't think I've ever made such a simple and clear statement of my non-belief since my teens, and even then I'm not sure I ever told anyone. It is a statement of simple courage, for it comes with significant risk. Atheists are looked down upon to such an extent in our culture that it's very close to a real taboo. Despite that, I don't think I'm all that rare.

The first thing I want to make clear is that this statement, this profound admission, has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else's beliefs and should not be seen as an attack or a statement of intolerance. If I believe anything, I believe people need to figure out their beliefs for themselves and that it is a terrible crime to push anyone to accept a belief they don't feel or to tear away a belief that gives them something of perceived value.