It's all in how one translates the city's motto "Benigno Numine," which is written in the mother of all flexibly decipherable languages, Latin.
Three St. Mark Middle School students who created four designs for an official city flag have translated "Benigno Numine," the motto on the city seal, as "Under Protection of the Goddess."
... "It's strange that they picked goddess instead of God," [Latin teacher John] McCormick said. "A lot of state mottos are under the protection of God, having it masculine. So I thought it was strange that they chose [goddess], unless they have a specific deity in mind."
One would assume those who translate it "God" have a specific deity in mind as well. All in all, while I don't know enough Latin (any at all, really) to say which is the most accurate translation, I'd prefer one of the suggested non-specific translations like McCormick's "By Divine Favor." Then again, I'd rather have an agnostic motto.
There are a few weird things about this story. One is that nobody is up in arms about it. Usually when you hear stories like this, it's because some evangelical Christian faction is denouncing the pagan practices. But McCormick's fairly mild comment -- which is more confusion resulting from his assumptions being challenged rather than condemnation -- is the most critical comment in the article. Second is the weird speculation of the author that "Goddess" is supposed to refer to the city's mayor (as well as the feeling on WitchVox that this was some pagan coup). As far as the story lets on, the "Goddess" translation was just a quirky version handed down between teachers, not a declaration of faith in a female deity. posted by Stentor Danielson at 14:56 -- link --
Two Oklahoma Indian tribes that claim ancestral roots in Pennsylvania say they will file suit in federal court to get their lands back unless Gov. Ed Rendell and the state Legislature agree to give them other suitable property where they can start gambling operations.
... Kahrahrah said because the Legislature was gearing up for a debate on expanding legalized gambling in Pennsylvania, it was time for the Indians to make a play for property. He said the Indians are researching ancestral properties elsewhere in the eastern portion of the state, including near Philadelphia.
According to this, the land claim is more of a threat, intended to cow the state into granting the tribe land for a casino. The bad PR of saying they want a casino could hurt the land claim case, but it could also make the land claim case more fearsome (especially given the courts' tendency to side with Native Americans), thus motivating the state to settle out of court. posted by Stentor Danielson at 15:37 -- link --
Two American Indian tribes with historic ties to the Lehigh Valley returned to Pennsylvania on Wednesday to lay claim to their ancestral lands in an effort to bring expanded gambling to the state.
Leaders of the Delaware Nation of Anadarko, Okla., and the Delaware Tribe of Bartlesville, Okla., have initially set their sights on a 315-acre parcel called Tatamy's Place in Forks Township in Northampton County that is now home to Binney & Smith Inc. and 25 private residences.
... ''Today we are gathered to announce that the Delawares intend to reclaim their land rights in Pennsylvania,'' said Bernard Kahrahrah, tribal planner for the 1,200-member Delaware Nation. ''From this day forward will insist that any discussion about the future of gaming in Pennsylvania must include Indian gaming.''
What's surprising about this claim is the brazenness of the economic motive. Land claims that I've seen generally frame themselves as first and foremost an issue of justice -- fixing past disposession. But the Delawares seem to be saying essentially that the only reason they care is that they want to build a casino. WHile that may be honest, it seems like an odd strategy to take. Gambling is one of the most divisive issues between Native Americans and their non-Native neighbors. And it seems likely to be even more divisive given that the Delawares have been living in Oklahoma for over a century, and thus this land claim comes as a total surprise to the current residents of the area. posted by Stentor Danielson at 15:37 -- link --
VVV A follow up to that last post: I notice the following defense of its methodology in the JBHE report:
Unlike other ranking efforts in the field of higher education, our statistics, without exception, are highly quantitative. This is in sharp contrast to highly impressionistic institutional rankings such as those compiled by U.S. News & World Report in which 25 percent or more of the total ranking score is derived from subjective surveys of university reputations as determined by presidents, provosts, and deans of admissions at other institutions.
There's a definite confusion here between quantitative and objective. I imagine the reputation survey was in fact quantitative -- they probably asked something like "on a scale of 1-10, how prestigious is Eemeet Meeker's School of Paving?" At the same time, that's clearly a subjective quantification. The key, of course, is that the subjectivity is on the part of the respondent, not of the researcher.
By restricting themselves to those factors that are both objective and quantifiable, the JBHE researchers are making the implicit assumption that those features happen to be sufficient to establish the quality of the school. This is a common foible of social scientists who want to make their research "scientific" like the heavily mathematized natural sciences. It's like the man who dropped his keys in a dark parking lot, and searched for them only under the street lamp because that's the only place he can see. posted by Stentor Danielson at 19:50 -- link --
VVV I got the latest issue of the Scene today, and it had a blurb on this news:
Colgate University was ranked third by The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in a survey of the nation’s 25 top liberal arts colleges measuring success in integrating black students and faculty. The ranking appears in the publication’s winter 2002-2003 issue.
On the one hand, that's a heartening statistic. It's good to see Colgate doing well and being talked about as a top school. On the other hand, it's a bit depressing (in terms of the overall situation of blacks in American academia) if you consider how poorly Colgate's current black students thought of the school during the racial discussions last year, and consider that by this ranking most schools are worse.
The reason for the discrepancy may be the same as the reason often offered for why Colgate is actually better than the U.S. News rankings imply: the ranking methodology doesn't capture the intangibles. Looking at the actual JBHE report, I see that the rankings were entirely based on statistics like the number of blacks admitted and the black graduation rate. These are certainly important factors. But what aren't taken into account are the things that were so often cited by students as reasons Colgate isn't black-friendly: racial attitudes on campus, social group segregation, diversity of offerings like speakers and bands, etc.
The ratings may nevertheless be inadvertantly accurate, since those same factors may apply just as well to all the other schools. We should be careful not to infer an absolute ("Colgate is a good school for blacks") from a relative ("Colgate is a better school for blacks than most schools"). posted by Stentor Danielson at 19:38 -- link --
VVV (Part 2 of what's below. Blogger is not winning my friendship today.)
I included the last paragraph because it's an interesting observation, but what I really want to talk about is somewhat broader. I'm quite interested in pseudoarchaeology/pseudohistory (less pejoratively known as alternative archaeology), from a skeptical point of view. But skeptics' articles about the phenomenon -- and the one linked above is no exception -- often strike me as unduly strident. They decry alternative archaeologists' poor approaches to the truth, and agonize over how the public gets taken in by such things (though they do properly blame the deceptive scholarship of the alternative archaeologists instead of the gullibility of the archaeologically-uneducated public).
Yet I wonder if such a debunking approach is the best weapon. In some ways this response plays right into the alternative archaeological worldview -- specifically the claim that there's a scientific orthodoxy bent on eradicating alternative archaeology (though the alternatives posit an orthodoxy of content while skeptics base their claims in an orthodoxy of methodology). This would be fine if what was at issue was simply a search for an accurate depiction of the past. But I think there may be some deeper needs that alternative archaeology fills, an issue that goes beyond the simple diagnosis that real archaeology isn't as sexy as aliens building the pyramids.
Having not interviewed alternative archaeological believers, I can only speculate on what those needs may be. There may be a sort of Galileo Complex -- the desire to be the lone holder of the truth that others' dogmatic blinkers won’t let them see. There may be the appeal of the mystical -- while alternative archaeology offers an explanation of the past, it also reinvigorates and plays upon a sense of wonder and even spirituality about it that contrasts to mainstream archaeology's apparent methodical rational scientific disenchantment. But whatever the reasons, it seems likely that if mainstream archaeology can't find a way to compete on those grounds, it will be plagued by Zechariah Sitchins and Eirich von Dänikens forever, no matter how strident our denunciations of their scientific worth. posted by Stentor Danielson at 00:51 -- link --
VVV (More 2-part posting due to Blogger ineptitude. Here's Part 1)
The New Atlantis And The Dangers Of Pseudohistory The New Atlantis belief system can be defined by five key features: 1. There was a highly sophisticated civilization that appeared at least 15,000 years ago and is now lost to history. 2. This civilization was destroyed, almost without trace, in a catastrophe at the end of the last Ice Age. 3. Its elite survivors were able navigators who spread across the globe bringing the spark of civilization to benighted primitive populations. 4. The evidence for the existence of this Lost Civilization is indirect and circumstantial, such as inexplicable cultural similarities between supposedly separate ancient civilizations (such as pyramids on both sides of the Atlantic or a fascination with the stars) or the mysterious achievements of some ancient cultures (for example, the Nazca lines in Peru or the statues on Easter Island). 5. More familiar ancient cultures are alleged to allude to the arrival of these elite "Atlantean" visitors in legends and art (such as the Olmec Heads in Mexico, widespread myths about the flood, or tales of civilizing gods arriving from across the sea).
… Notice that the imperialist Atlantis of Plato's political homily has little similarity with the civilization-granting Atlantis of modern alternative historians. Despite the bloody testimony of recorded history as to what actually happens when technologically advanced human cultures encounter less complex ones, the notion of Atlantis as a benign agent of civilization was widely promoted by Ignatius Donnelly's 1882 Atlantis: The Antediluvian World …
The left's version of the anti-American regime elected in Iraq could be sodomy laws (and similar sexual morality statutes). While there has been a trend toward repealing anti-sodomy laws in the nation, there's no guarantee that they may never be removed in certain more conservative areas. And the backlash against the loosening of sexual mores in the latter half of last century led to the successful passage of numerous "defense of marriage" acts and amendments at the state level. This fact -- that in many places the will of the voters is to deny homosexual relationships the same status as heterosexual ones -- has been a boon to social conservatives. They can point to liberal social/cultural policies as unpopular and hence anti-democratic. It plays nicely into the criticism of liberal judges "legislating from the bench," and allows such social conservatives to position themselves as the real guardians of democracy. Indeed, conservative doves may have the best position here, as they can side with democracy on both Iraq's leadership and sodomy laws.
I don't mean to claim any ideological purity on this issue. As a classical conservative with a liberal morality, I tend to err on the side of respecting the will of the people while endeavoring to change that will. Yet I also recognize that liberal democracy is a two-word term for a reason, and democracy can't be allowed to radically undermine certain liberal principles such as freedom of speech. I don't have any clear rule to follow for balancing the two, but I realize that without one I risk committing, or being accused of, hypocrisy.
VVV (Part 1 of this post, part 2 will be posted above)
A popular criticism of the war is made by asking what we would do if the people of Iraq elected an anti-American regime, possibly even an Islamist theocracy. Based on America's past dealings with socialist democracies and anti-communist dictators, these critics presume that the Bush administration would value a pro-American orientation over democracy. The predicted result is used to point out the hypocrisy of the pro-war camp's claim to be bringing democracy to the world. The implication is that doves, if they found themselves in the position of an occupying power, would respect the true will of the Iraqis even if it conflicted with America's interests.
This argument is, however, somewhat problematic because of the antiwar left's relationship to democratic rhetoric and potential adverse outcomes. I don’t mean here to tar the left as apologists for Stalinist dictatorial practices. The most thriving sector of today’s left is resolutely pro-democratic, employing devices such as decentralized organization and rotating “facilitator” positions in order to forestall the accumulation by one person of disproportionate power. The popular critique of capitalism has shifted from a focus on ends ("it's exploitative an harmful to workers" -- though that point remains) to a focus on means ("the market is undemocratic" -- contrary to the assertions of libertarians) and the development of democratic production institutions like participatory economics.
Yet some on the left seem to suffer from the same sort of mistaken assumption made by optimistic hawks, who assumed that Iraqi gratitude toward the US and the destruction of Saddam's anti-American agitations would make a democratic Iraq necessarily elect a pro-American administration. Many on the left too easily assume that, because "socialism" (however that's defined) is in the interests of the oppressed, the oppressed will necessarily express progressive views once the power of the oppressor is removed. I noticed this when I attended a meeting about establishing a Worcester chapter of IndyMedia. In formulating a mission statement, participants seemed to see no problems with claiming both to represent the voice of those who aren't heard in the mainstream media, and to advance the progressive goals that are stifled by the corporate media. posted by Stentor Danielson at 23:53 -- link --
