Steve Skojec

In January, I posted about the moral questions surrounding the seemingly popular exhibits travelling the country that display plasticized human bodies for, presumably, educational and entertainment purposes. My post at the time mentioned Cincinatti Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk’s instruction to Catholic Schools that these exhibits are not an appropriate field trip for students because they fail to adequately respect the dead in accordance with Catholic teaching.

Today, I discovered (via Kansas City Catholic) that Bishop Finn of Kansas City has issued a similar statement. While it’s hardly a tour de force on the subject, Bishop Finn echoes the teaching of the Church:

My continuing objections to such commercial exhibits are rooted in strong Catholic teaching on the God-given dignity of the human person, who is a unity of body and soul. The various Bodies exhibits now popular throughout the United States seem to go beyond the Church’s acceptance of body donation after death for the advance of biological research.

It is also true, that at least some of these Bodies exhibits are under investigation in an effort to determine the precise circumstances under which the bodies, apparently all from China, were acquired.

This week I joined Archbishop Joseph Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City Kansas in a statement opposing these displays, not primarily because of questions about the sources of the human specimens, but because they use real person’s bodies for this kind of public display.

Coincidentally, this week I was preparing to celebrate a funeral Mass as I have done many times as a priest. I took the occasion to re-read a section of the Church’s Instruction on the Order of Christian Funerals concerning the burial of the human body.

There we read,

“. The body which lies in death naturally recalls the personal story of faith, the loving family bonds, the friendships, and the words and acts of kindness of the deceased person. Indeed, the human body is inextricably associated with the human person, which acts and is experienced by others through that body. It is the body whose hands clothed the poor and embraced the sorrowing.”

“.The Church’s reverence for the sacredness of the human body grows out of a reverence and concern both natural and supernatural for the human person. The body of the deceased brings forcefully to mind the Church’s conviction that the human body is in Christ a temple of the Holy Spirit and is destined for future glory at the resurrection of the dead.” (nos. 411-412)

On the basis of these principles of human respect, I ask you to consider joining me in avoiding these particular Bodies exhibits.

I’m grateful for the moral leadership that is emerging on this issue. We have a culture that is very detatched from propriety when it comes to science. While this isn’t always a bad thing, many of the shows on Discovery Health or the History Channel or even the wide variety of museums and exhibits that we enjoy can desensitize us to the respect for the dead that arises out of the inherent dignity of the human person.

It’s good to be reminded of where the line is.

It looks like the current one child policy may be coming to an end.

The bad news is that this lessening of the restrictions still sounds like it’s not going to be providing much additional breathing room. The communist government remains devoted to controlling population through coercive means.

What strikes me as most odd about this piece is that China is one of the rare nations (Russia is the only other that comes to mind) that is showing an interest in fixing their declining population rate, which has fallen below replacement levels. I suppose some aspects of communism are nothing if not brutally practical, but it’s a shame we don’t see Western nations wising up to this devastating trend.

We’re extincting ourselves, and China won’t compromise on that sort of thing if it means a loss of power, relevance and economic growth. Why shouldn’t Italy, France, Germany, and the rest of Europe demonstrate the same concern?

Automated killer robots ‘threat to humanity’:

Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP. “They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.

[snip]

But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

“I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.

No word yet on whether these new killer robots will be called “Decepticons”, or whether a rag-tag band of lovable “Autobots” will arise to battle them for the fate of humanity.

I mean, it’s the victimless non-crime, right? Apparently that’s not how Emma Beck felt. The mother of aborted twins took her own life the day before her 31st birthday:

Her suicide note read: “I told everyone I didn’t want to do it, even at the hospital. I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does.”

Tragic. Fortunately the doctors at the hospital where the murder was perpetrated are perfectly content with how they handled the situation:

“I am satisfied that everything was done to make sure that Emma consented to the operation.

She added: “We have since appointed more counsellors so there is more holiday cover.”

There you go - problem solved.

Author Susan Jacoby had a good piece in The Washington Post yesterday about “The Dumbing of America.” The article focuses not just on the increased ignorance of American citizens in the digital age - largeley precipitated by the replacement of reading with various forms of multimedia - but the fact that so much of the citizenry is opposed to the idea that the aquisition of knowledge is important at all:

The shrinking public attention span fostered by video is closely tied to the second important anti-intellectual force in American culture: the erosion of general knowledge.

People accustomed to hearing their president explain complicated policy choices by snapping “I’m the decider” may find it almost impossible to imagine the pains that Franklin D. Roosevelt took, in the grim months after Pearl Harbor, to explain why U.S. armed forces were suffering one defeat after another in the Pacific. In February 1942, Roosevelt urged Americans to spread out a map during his radio “fireside chat” so that they might better understand the geography of battle. In stores throughout the country, maps sold out; about 80 percent of American adults tuned in to hear the president. FDR had told his speechwriters that he was certain that if Americans understood the immensity of the distances over which supplies had to travel to the armed forces, “they can take any kind of bad news right on the chin.”

This is a portrait not only of a different presidency and president but also of a different country and citizenry, one that lacked access to satellite-enhanced Google maps but was far more receptive to learning and complexity than today’s public. According to a 2006 survey by National Geographic-Roper, nearly half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than a third consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it “very important.”

That leads us to the third and final factor behind the new American dumbness: not lack of knowledge per se but arrogance about that lack of knowledge. The problem is not just the things we do not know (consider the one in five American adults who, according to the National Science Foundation, thinks the sun revolves around the Earth); it’s the alarming number of Americans who have smugly concluded that they do not need to know such things in the first place. Call this anti-rationalism — a syndrome that is particularly dangerous to our public institutions and discourse. Not knowing a foreign language or the location of an important country is a manifestation of ignorance; denying that such knowledge matters is pure anti-rationalism. The toxic brew of anti-rationalism and ignorance hurts discussions of U.S. public policy on topics from health care to taxation.

This is one of the reasons I personally believe a test should be administered to those who wish to vote in a general election. It could be quite simple (think the written portion of your driver’s license test) but might help to weed out those individuals who are voting because MTV told them to, or because they think a candidate is “cool”, or because they’ll get a sticker that said “I voted today” that will get them a free taco at participating area restaraunts.

The sum total of anti-intellectualism is the success of Obama’s campaign. Nobody cares that he is bringing nothing of value to the table or that he could drive the country right off the economic cliff. Instead, they’re crying and fainting at his speeches.

We need to wise up. We’re running out of time.

Via Creative Minority Report, I found a fascinating look by Washington Post writer Monica Hesse into the bizarre world of Polyamory:

Though Nicole and James had jointly dated other people before, Rebecca, a paramedic with an efficient British accent, is the only one to mesh equally with both. For the triad’s first date, James made Rebecca a plate of homemade Jammie Dodgers (one batch with strawberry jam, one with raspberry; he didn’t know which she’d prefer). Rebecca brought them a plant. There was, says James, “a lot of courting,” and a lot of evenings that ended with him and Nicole pillow-talking about how adorable Rebecca was.

Now they all live together. Most of the time, Nicole and James sleep upstairs in the master suite and Rebecca keeps her own room downstairs. But sometimes James joins Rebecca, or Rebecca joins Nicole, or the three of them lie comatose in front of the television and ponder the baby that will arrive in five months. After that, Rebecca would like a turn at carrying a child, and if the trio meets someone they all connect with, they might add another adult to the household, too.

It’s less about them wanting to fulfill personal desires, they say, and more about needing more people to meet the daily requirements of 21st-century life. As in, if it takes two incomes to keep up with the modern mortgage and school fees, then who is going to provide the kids with a stable environment at home? “Five hundred years ago,” says James, ” ‘family’ meant mom, dad, grandma, aunt, great-grandma — everyone.”

They’re all “out” in real life, accepted by their parents, their respective workplaces and at their son’s progressive school. It’s been, they say, relatively easy. But they’ve heard enough custody horror stories (most famously, April Divilbiss, a Memphis poly, lost her daughter after discussing her lifestyle in an MTV documentary) to make them wary of being too public.

“People in my generation are recognizing that they have more choices when they’re deciding what they want their families to look like,” says Diana Adams, 28, a polyamorous lawyer who specializes in alternative family law in New York. “This is an important historical moment because of the gay marriage conversation. We’re becoming more accepting of gay parents, of single parents.” She hopes to soon start a family with her two male partners.

This is what got Rick Santorum in trouble. In 2003, he said that “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything…” Immediately, all hell broke loose. And the controversy went on indefinitely during Santorum’s tenure. Some liberals, particularly among the homosexual community, went out of their way to excoriate Santorum and besmirch his name. The details are too vile to recount here.

Stanley Kurtz at the National Review saw the connection between Santorum’s prescient assessment of the gay marriage issue and the polyamory movement years ago. Kurtz reported that a polyamorism activist had noted that ”in the wake of Lawrence v. Texas, anti-polygamy laws seem ripe for challenge.”

That was in 2005. It seems that the mainstreaming of polyamory is now already well under way.

There’s an exhibit travelling the world that you’ve probably heard of. It’s simply called Bodies: The Exhibition, and it’s an admittedly fascinating look at real human bodies which have been stripped of their skin, plasticized, and posed in  a variety of ways to demonstrate movement. It’s a unique perspective on what lies beneath what we see every day, with bones, musculature and organs visible for the education and amazement of audiences.

We have had an ongoing discussion about this exhibit in my home. My wife is very science-minded, and not the least disturbed by morbidity. She is the kind of woman who would probably have made an excellent forensic pathologist or coroner. She and our eldest daughter have very much wanted to see this exhibit out of the pure curiosity of what she can learn. And the exhibit is obviously informative.

For some reason, however, I’ve resisted going and I’ve asked them not to as well. I have a  gut feeling that keeps telling me this is not an appropriate way to treat a human body. That while there is room for medical research within the bounds of the dignity with which we treat mortal remains, the sort of voyeuristic exhibitionism of something like this pushes the boundaries too far. I’ve been entirely unable to prove this, however, and I haven’t made a concerted effort to do so.

This morning, I read an article about some controversy that’s arisen in Cincinatti over the exhibit. It appears that Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk has instructed the Catholic schools there that this display is inappropriate for school trips, and that it’s up to the individual parents to decide whether to take their children:

He reiterated the point with a statement Monday, saying the church maintains that dead bodies must be treated “in a way that recognizes the dignity of the human person.”

“Within this framework, the use of bodies for scientific research and educational purposes has long been viewed as permissible provided that the consent of the deceased or the deceased’s family has been obtained,” the statement said. “The public exhibition of plasticized bodies, unclaimed, unreverenced, and unidentified, is a different matter entirely. It is unseemly and inappropriate.”

“This is not a crusade and we’re not calling for a boycott,” Dan Andriacco, spokesman for the archdiocese said Monday. “He (Pilarczyk) is giving his own opinions about it.”

The spokesman seems quick to make light work of the bishop’s comments, but even if it’s simply his personal opinion, what he said has resonated with what I feel.

Have any of you been to this exhibit? Have you considered it? I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Robots are, in my Transformers-loving opinion, one of the best things ever invented because they are simultaneously heart-stoppingly scary and unfathomably cool.

What escapes the notice of most of us regular schleps is just how prevalent they’re becoming. I’ve even encountered an advanced robotics project in some of my client work.

Let’s be clear what I mean when I say robots - we’re not talking about the little dudes that blew smoke after you filled their noggins with 3-in-1 oil and bounced around the kitchen saying, “I am the atomic powered robot. Please give my best wishes to everybody!!!” before falling over and making helpless clicking sounds.

No, we’re referring to fully automated, large-scale machines that make “decisions”, navigate lenghty and intricate obstacle courses, and deploy live weapon systems.

Which brings us to our story. In South Africa last week, an unmanned weapons platform went SkyNet during a training exercise and started firing a fully automated GDF Mk V twin 35mm cannon system with explosive rounds.

9 Soldiers were killed. 14 were wounded.

A video of a similar incident has surfaced, and there’s an eerie feeling about the way the weapons system seems to be seeking out targets. You can find the video at Gizmodo or the Wired Danger Room blog, both of which covered the story today.

When asked recently by the CEO of my company what I think the most transformative technological change will be in my lifetime, I responded without hesitation: nanotech. Nanotech will change our health care, the materials we use, our ability to get to and from space, our military capabilities, and will enhance robotics.

Robots, subsequently (or perhaps in parallel?) will be the other big deal in our lifetime. This weapons system was not yet approved, but the fact that we’re at this stage of development is telling. And this was the South African military. I have to wonder what Uncle Sam has.

I’ve believed this for a long time. Maybe not since the first time I read Brave New World, but probably at least by the second time. The first time, I don’t think I was old enough to really get it.

Today, a story straight out of the book has emerged in Norway, written by my old blog-pal Hilary White, and the headline says it all.

Kindergarten Children should be Encouraged to Dance Naked and Masturbate in Pre-Schools; Norwegian Child Expert:

No need to adjust your screen. Your monitor is working perfectly.

An Oslo pre-school teacher, backed by child psychologists, has suggested that kindergarten children be encouraged to “express” their sexuality through “sex-play” and games, including dancing naked and masturbating, in pre-school and day-care centres.
 
The English language edition of Norway’s Aftenposten newspaper reports that Pia Friis, the respected operator of an Oslo kindergarten, told an interviewer that children should be able “to look at each other and examine each other’s bodies. They can play doctor, play mother and father, dance naked and masturbate”.
 
“But their sexuality must also be socialized, so they are not, for example, allowed to masturbate while sitting and eating. Nor can they be allowed to pressure other children into doing things they don’t want to,” Friis said.

It’s so eerily similar to Huxley’s story that I admit I’m tempted to think it’s some sort of a joke, an intentionally disturbing parody showing how life can imitate art. From Brave New World, Chapter 3, let me provide you with a lengthy excerpt:

In a little grassy bay between tall clumps of Mediterranean heather, two children, a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravely and with all the focussed attention of scientists intent on a labour of discovery, a rudimentary sexual game.

“Charming, charming!” the D.H.C. repeated sentimentally.

“Charming,” the boys politely agreed. But their smile was rather patronizing. They had put aside similar childish amusements too recently to be able to watch them now without a touch of contempt. Charming? but it was just a pair of kids fooling about; that was all. Just kids.

“I always think,” the Director was continuing in the same rather maudlin tone, when he was interrupted by a loud boo-hooing.

From a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leading by the hand a small boy, who howled as he went. An anxious-looking little girl trotted at her heels.

“What’s the matter?” asked the Director.

(more…)