Integral Options Cafe

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Bill Maher on Ted Haggard and Stuff

Bill Maher's New Rules for November 11, 2006 -- and a commentary on Ted Haggard.

Find this video and thousands of others at vSocial!

When the 12-Steps Lead to Prison

When William Beebe began his Twelve Step program as an alcoholic, he probably didn't plan on ending up in prison, but that is exactly what happened.

He sent a letter of apology to a Liz Seccuro, a woman he had raped 22 years ago at a college frat party. She took the ensuing email exchange to the police, who reopened the case and prosecuted Beebe for rape. He plead guilty and received a two-year sentence.

Here is the ABC News story:

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. Nov 15, 2006 (AP)— A man who sexually assaulted a fellow student at a fraternity party in 1984, then apologized to her two decades later as part of the 12-step Alcoholics Anonymous program, pleaded guilty Tuesday and could go to prison.

William Beebe calmly entered a plea to aggravated sexual battery as his victim, Liz Seccuro, bowed her head and wiped away tears.

"Twenty-two years ago I harmed another person, and I have tried to set that right," the real estate agent and former University of Virginia student said outside court.

Under the plea bargain, prosecutors asked that Beebe get two years in prison when he is sentenced in March.

Prosecutor Claude Worrell said authorities agreed to the deal in part because the investigation revealed that more than one person may have sexually assaulted Seccuro at the Phi Kappa Psi party. Beebe agreed to cooperate with the investigation into exactly what happened to Seccuro that night.

"We believe that the matter doesn't end here," Worrell said in court.

Beebe, 41, of Las Vegas, had been awaiting trial later this month on charges of rape and object sexual penetration and could have gotten life in prison if convicted.

The ninth step in AA's 12-step recovery program calls on alcoholics to make amends to those they have harmed. Last year, Beebe wrote Seccuro a letter of apology, and an exchange of e-mails ensued, in which he wrote: "I want to make clear that I'm not intentionally minimizing the fact of having raped you. I did."

In December, Seccuro called Charlottesville police to report what had happened. Beebe was arrested in Las Vegas.

It was unclear whether Beebe knew he could still be prosecuted for the crime in Virginia, which has no statute of limitations on felonies. Beebe and his attorney refused to answer questions outside court.

Seccuro, now 39 and living in Greenwich, Conn., said she was given a drink at the party that made her feel strange. She said she vividly recalls being assaulted by Beebe and passing out that night. She reported the assault to university officials but said a dean and the campus police treated her dismissively, and the case was never prosecuted. After a few years, she said, she gave up.

First of all, Beebe deserves to do some time, no matter how long ago it was. Secondly, he should be commended for coming forward, for taking his recovery seriously enough to own up to his past and take responsibility for his actions.

BUT, how will this impact others who are working the 12 steps and their willingness to come clean on crimes that may send them to prison? This is a tricky area for the recovery world. If people who are otherwise good citizens end up in prison for past acts when the do the apology step of their program, it might stop some people from doing that step as completely as they need to get themselves right.

Any thoughts on this case and the questions is raises?

The Inner Critic and the Mud Creature

[Feral Inner Child]

I've been blogging from time to time about my Inner Critic, and more recently about my inner Mud Demon. The Mud Demon might be seen in Freudian terms as the id, the pleasure seeking part of my psyche; but more precisely, it is a subpersonality devoted to my basest instincts, including pleasure, anger, and avoidance of responsibilities.

It likes loud angry music -- and I think it is the source of some of my escapist tendencies, as well. But it also is curious and open to new things. It likes dirt and trees, playing in rivers and climbing mountains; and it likes having someone to share all that with.

As I have been exploring this "self," it has become clear that the tag of "demon" is my Inner Critic labeling this playful aspect of my psyche with its pejorative criticism. The Critic doesn't like the Mud Creature (it's new name) because it opens me up to all the things it fears: failure, ridicule, embarrassment, or any number of other adverse experiences. But it also fears its spontaneity and willingness to take risks.

So for most of my life, the Critic has tried to keep this part of me, which in essence is my Inner Child, although I hate that term because of all the New Age touchy-feely associations that come with it. But in Hal and Sidra Stone's subpersonality work, that is exactly what that self is, the Child. This is from Embracing the Inner Critic:

This Inner Child has many aspects. In addition to the Vulnerable Child, who carries our deepest feelings, sensitivities, and vulnerabilities, other aspects of the Inner Child carry major portions of our spontaneity, shyness, neediness, fears, joy, magic, our ability to be unselfconscious, our playfulness, and our adventurousness. The Inner Child can be extremely angry with us or with others when we neglect or mistreat it.

It is the Vulnerable Child who is one of the major players in making intimacy possible in relationship. We speak about this in our book Embracing Each Other. When the Vulnerable Child is present in relationship you actually feel it. There is an almost palpable warmth between you and others and the air feels full between you. When this Child is not there, you feel empty and alone.

So my Critic has been acting like a restrictive parent -- which is what it does best -- with the Child and squelching any expression of the Child's positive aspects. So the Child gets angry and that's the only thing that can get through. But my Critic sees the anger as inappropriate behavior -- I wasn't allowed to get angry as a kid -- and labels the Child a Mud Demon because it connects with that angry, primal energy.

For the past several months, the only way the Child can express itself under the harsh control of the Critic is through anger, which distances those close to me and leaves me with a limited range of experience. The other result of this pattern was the loss of intimacy in my previous relationship -- certainly one of the main factors in it ending. [There's more to what happened than that, but the absence of the Child energy was one factor.]

But the Critic is not acting alone in this whole thing -- it has a team of experts working with it to make sure that the Child stays quiet and under control. But the result of this pattern is the loss of vitality, intimacy, and expression. More in Part II.

Technical Difficulties & Lessons

[image source]

It seems Earthlink was down most of the morning, and when it went down it blew out my DSL modem, so that when it came back on I still had no access to the world. There's a big technical band-aid fixing that for now, until a new modem arrives, so I'm back.

When my technology lets me down, I get very angry. I want my internet and I want it now. For four hours this morning (clients canceled) I wanted to get online and blog, and for four hours before I went to the gym I had to sit with my anxiety about not getting to do it.

It was a good lesson in trying to breathe through hard feelings. I have very little patience for things not working on my schedule, so it was a tough morning. But it points me toward one of the things I really need to work on -- simply accepting the world as it is when I can't change it.

Speedlinking 11/15/06

Morning image, the Crow Constellation, is from the Hubble Telescope:

BODY
~ The Training Split Roundtable, Part II, with Alwyn Cosgrove, Chad Waterbury, and Christian Thibaudeau. Moderated by Chris Shugart
~ Sustained Reduction Of Type 2 Diabetes Achieved With Simple Lifestyle Interventions. Once more, with feeling: diet and exercise.
~ People With Knee OA Could Be Just A Few Pounds Away From Relief. Lose weight and your arthritic knees will feel better.
~ One of the chocolate lovers out there: Chocolate addiction lead to sweet discovery. Eating a little each day can help cut risk of heart attack, researchers say. Moderation, everyone, moderation.
~ Energy zapped? Try these tips to help you pick up the pace.
~ 15 INSTANT ENERGY BOOSTERS. I vote for #10 being adopted as the reference standard.
~ High Blood Glucose Responsible For Over 3 Million Deaths Worldwide.

PSYCHE
~ Studies Look At How Genes Affect Antipsychotic Drug Response. "While we know a great deal about the pharmacology of antipsychotics like risperidone, there is still much to learn about their influence on cognition and brain function, as well as how genetics affect overall medication response."
~ Researchers spur growth of adult brain stem cells. "Researchers have found a way to spur the growth of neural stem cells in the brains of adult mice with an eye toward harnessing the brain's innate capacity for repair to help people with diseases such as Alzheimer's."
~ Even Baby Boomers Suffer From Eating Disorders.
~ Research Says Massage May Help Infants Sleep More, Cry Less And Be Less Stressed. Also seems to help with mother-child bonding.
~ Doing Without Feeling. "Having introduced the idea of the emotional unconscious in the last post, I am going to dive straight into some of the research which attempts to prove its existence."
~ Memories: It's All In The Packaging, Scientists Say.
~ From My Insights: A Fundamental Problem in Theoretical Psychology: Intelligent Performance.

CULTURE
~ Smokers, obese should pay more health insurance: poll. The poll definitely reveals a cultural bias against ~ smokers (more so) and the obese (less so). I blogged on this yesterday.
~ Traditional Books Provide More Positive Parent-Child Interaction. Good old paper-based books promote better bonding than e-books and other formats.
~ The Last Antiwar Poem. "Rolf Potts considers the enduring impact of Allen Ginsberg's 1966 poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra," and the way it speaks with jarring relevance today as America grapples with war, the uses of terror and the limits of language in a political world."
~ The Online Beat: What Feingold Wants to Do Now.
~ Prayer: Intention or Attention? An article from Deepak Chopra's Intent Blog.
~ From Sam Harris: The Case Against Faith. Religion does untold damage to our politics. An atheist's lament.

HABITATS
~ Companies vow to rein in kid junk food ads. It's a good thing when they agree to monitor themselves.
~ Paul Braund: The Business of Technology and Development.
~ Serving Up Energy Efficiency, Market-Style.
~ Making the government own up to its contribution to global warming. Good luck with that.
~ Sweden Leaves Smallest Global Warming Footprint. I could live in Sweden, too bad the language is so strange.
~ CyberTran: Ultra-light rail for cities and suburbs. Cool.
~ Climate change ravages land and livelihoods of Kenya's nomadic herders. But it's just Africa, so who cares, right?
~ Norwegian Hunters Kill 546 Minke Whales in 2006, Just over Half of Quota. Bastards.

MATTERS INTEGRAL
~ The Diversity of the Integral movement from Alan Kazlev at Open Integral.
~ ebuddha looks at Joe Perez's recent work in Joe Perez - Integral Stations.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Should Smokers and Obese Folks Pay More for Health Insurance?

Here's what Americans think:

Sixty percent of those polled favored higher premiums for smokers while 30 percent felt the obese should pay more.

I'm totally down with smokers paying more for health insurance -- since they are rapidly draining the system with their healthcare costs -- but how do you manage that? How do you prove who smokes and who doesn't without an x-ray? And what about social smokers who maybe smoke when they go out with friends on a Saturday night, but that's the only time?

It gets even messier with obesity. Most would want the BMI used as the determinant. But by that measure, at 6' tall and 205 lbs, with a BMI of 27-28, I am overweight. But my bodyfat is around 12%, which puts me in the "athlete" range for men my age. So I clearly am more healthy than someone clocking a 28 BMI with 25% bodyfat.

When employers offer medical insurance, they can certainly give discounts to non-smokers and those who are not overweight. But it may come down to getting a physical from your doctor to get the health discounts if we ever go to some form of universal care, which the insurance industry now supports (as of Monday and the Dems controlling both Houses of Congress). This poses serious issues for those with pre-existing conditions who have managed to stay insured over the years and avoid having those conditions factor into rate increases.

More from the article on Reuters:

The poll of 1,517 people conducted in July 2006 found consumers are ambiguous on the role of government and health insurance.

Two-thirds said government should move toward universal health insurance, but 55 percent said the government's role should be limited to help the poor, unemployed and those otherwise unable to buy it.
Said Darling: "Our view is that it has to be shared responsibility; the government is going to have to pay," meaning taxpayers.
About 52 percent of those polled supported mandatory insurance, while 48 percent said it should be left the individual to decide.

We are moving toward universal care, and the new Democratic Congress will certainly push that agenda. With the insurance industry behind them, they'll be able to lobby the GOP into supporting it as well. So the question is, how do we work it?

What do you think about this? I'd like to hear what others think about discounts for good health and about universal care. Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

New Tom Waits Album

Any time Tom Waits issues a new album, it's an event. This new collection is 3 discs and apparently started as an outtakes collection. Who cares. Waits is American music at its best and most raw.

Here is Rolling Stone's take on the album, which they give 4 stars out of 5.

Tom Waits
Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards

When Tom Waits claims he doesn't know why he called this three-CD set Orphans, he's being cagey. Orphans obviously began as an outtakes collection -- unreleased work tapes plus old soundtrack, tribute and benefit tracks. Only then, Waits, painfully aware that odds-and-sods projects were lame, decided to fill in some blanks with new songs, couldn't resist rerecording others and ended up with a definitive album. Each disc has its own subtitle: Brawlers for rock, Bawlers for ballads and Bastards for weirdness. Although the promo advertises "56 Songs. 30 New Recordings," only fourteen can be readily found on other albums.
Brawlers is Waits blues a la Mule Variations, only broader. His drummer son Casey's basic thump on "Low Down" reminds the ear that Waits generally bellows over pretty intricate beats. He was on the dreamy New Orleans lilt of "Sea of Love" back in 1988, and though Tito Puente might not think so, "Fish in the Jailhouse" is indeed a mambo. Of course, there's also the first of two Ramones covers, and, fitting nowhere but so good they'd fit anywhere, the mandolin-tinged "Bottom of the World" and the unrhymed, seven-minute "Road to Peace," a portrayal of a Palestinian terrorist that blinks even less than Springsteen's.
Bawlers is Waits' bread and butter -- professional sentimentalists love the way he mauls slow ones, and six of the soundtrack tunes are here, from Big Bad Love, Pollock and Shrek 2. Waits can get grotesquely goopy when he makes nice, but the new "Tell It to Me" and the recycled "The Fall of Troy" are genre classics right up there with Waits' bumptious claims on "Young at Heart" and "Goodnight Irene." Bastards is messier musically, but its six spoken-word pieces are long overdue for anyone who's guffawed at the shaggy-dog monologues Waits rolls out at shows. In "The Pontiac," a dad reminisces about his cars, the mad entomology lecture "Army Ants" isn't far behind, and "First Kiss" explains something we've always wondered. Waits reached that romantic milestone with a trailer crone who made up her own language, wore rubber boots and could fix anything with string. Just like our Tom.

ROBERT CHRISTGAU
(Posted: Nov 13, 2006)

Here is Tom doing "Hold On," and I have no idea if this is on the new album -- I just really like this song.

From Discover: Dark Matter Made Visible

Discover doesn't allow RSS feeds or provide access to all online articles unless you are a subscriber, so I was lucky to find this article in one of the social bookmark feeds I look at.

Dark Matter Made Visible
There's far more to the universe than meets the eye.
By Alex Stone
DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 11 November 2006 Space
Most of the universe, it may surprise you to know, is invisible. About 80 percent of all matter is "dark," emitting no light and interacting with normal matter only through gravity.Or that's what physicists have long suspected, without direct proof. Then two massive colliding galaxy clusters in the constellation Carina caught the attention of Marusa Bradac of the Kavli Institute at Stanford University and her colleagues, who saw this cosmic smashup as a chance to watch dark matter in action.
Bradac and her colleagues compared X-ray pictures of visible matter in the clusters with measurements of their total mass. As the clusters collided, the visible matter (red) appeared to be kicked out of alignment with the overall mass (blue). If dark matter didn't exist, the separation in the image couldn't occur. "The visible matter gets stuck there, whereas the dark matter goes through unaffected," she says.

Dark matter (blue) passed through nearly unaffected after the head-on galactic collision, while visible matter (red) slowed down and spread out.
Courtesy of NASA
Until now, the best evidence for dark matter was that orbital speeds of stars in a galaxy do not fall off with increasing distance from the galaxy's center, as would seem to be necessary to keep the stars from flying off into space. The fact that the galaxies hold together suggests that unseen mass provides the gravity to hold them together. Some researchers have sought to explain the steady orbital speed with alternative theories of gravity, but it is unlikely that anything other than dark matter can explain the new observations. "It's pretty conclusive," Bradac says.
Meanwhile, particle physicists are trying to detect dark matter on Earth. "There are dark-matter particles around you and me right now," Bradac says. "It's likely they will be detected in the next five years."

Mordehai Milgrom is skeptical about dark matter's existence—find out why.
Read scientists' reactions to Milgrom's dissenting view of dark matter.

"Abandon any hope of fruition"

[image source]

I got a good reminder about living in the present yesterday. This was yesterday's Daily Om:

Moving In Real Time
Fast-Forward Button

We all go through times when we wish we could press a fast-forward button and propel ourselves into the future and out of our current circumstances. Whether the situation we are facing is minor, or major such as the loss of a loved one, it is human nature to want to move away from pain and find comfort as soon as possible. Yet we all know deep down that we need to work through these experiences in a conscious fashion rather than bury our heads in the sand, because these are the times when we access important information about ourselves and life. The learning process may not be easy, but it is full of lessons that bring us wisdom we cannot find any other way.

The desire to press fast-forward can lead to escapism and denial, both of which only prolong our difficulties and in some cases make them worse. The more direct, clear, and courageous we are in the face of whatever we are dealing with, the more quickly we will move through the situation. Understanding this, we may begin to realize that trying to find the fast-forward button is really more akin to pressing pause. When we truly grasp that the only way out of any situation in which we find ourselves is to go through it, we stop looking for ways to escape and we start paying close attention to what is happening. We realize that we are exactly where we need to be. We remember that we are in this situation in order to learn something we need to know, and we can alleviate some of our pain with the awareness that there is a purpose to our suffering.

When you feel the urge to press the fast-forward button, remember that you are not alone; we all instinctively avoid pain. But in doing so, we often prolong our pain and delay important learning. As you choose to move forward in real time, know that in the long run, this is the least painful way to go.

This reminds me a lot of a quote by Pema Chodron that I posted way back in January:

Slogan: "Abandon any hope of fruition"

"Fruition" implies that at some future time you will feel good. One of the most powerful Buddhist teachings is that as long as you are wishing for things to change, they never will. As long as you're wanting yourself to get better, you won't. As long as you are oriented toward the future, you can never just relax into what you already have or already are.

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is the feeling that the present moment is not good enough. We frequently think back to the past, which maybe was better than now, or perhaps worse. We also think ahead quite a bit to the future, always holding out hope that it will be a little bit better than now. Even if things are going really well now, we usually don't give ourselves full credit for who we are in the present.

The point is to BE HERE NOW, which was the title of an influential Ram Das book back in the day. Since I originally posted this Chodron quote, I've gotten a lot better at living in the moment. Yesterday's Daily Om was simply a reminder that I can still get caught up in living for the future.

I once knew someone who lived much of her life in the future. We clashed about it from time to time. But even she began to see how that wasn't very productive for her happiness. When she stopped living for "maybe someday . . . " she was able to make important decisions about what she felt wasn't working in her life.

Buddhism teaches us to be present to ourselves at all times, as much as we are able. But it's also important that we be gentle with ourselves about this. It shouldn't become this thing that we MUST do, which then gets us caught up in two of the most common subpersonalities, the Pusher and the Perfectionist -- I know these two well.

I f we can gently remind ourselves to be present, to stop living for the future or dwelling in the past, we will lead much happier lives.

Speaking of Faith: The Heart's Reason, Hinduism and Science

A bit about Speaking of Faith:

Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett is public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Each week, Tippett probes the myriad ways in which religious impulses inform every aspect of life and culture, nationally and globally. Speaking of Faith fills an important and neglected need in American media by addressing the intellectual and spiritual content of religion head-on, illuminating the ideas and practices that form the headlines from the inside.

There's more info at the site.

Their November 9th broadcast was called The Heart's Reason: Hinduism and Science. You can download the podcast from the site. Here is a promo blurb:

You wouldn't know it from headlines about school board controversies and best-selling books called The God Delusion, but a rich global dialogue is taking place between religious thinkers and scientists of many disciplines. A Hindu physicist is a voice in that dialogue. He explores the spirituality of Hinduism and the great tradition of science through the intersection of the two in his life.

This is good, give it a listen if you have some time.

Here are some essays by V.V. Raman, the subject of the interview:

» Indic Visions in an Age of Science: Origins and Ends
» Numbers in Religions
» Dissonance, Bi-sonance and Consonance
» Why in Science and Religion

25 Signs that sadly, You've grown up

From Digital Karma:

Grown up

1. Your house plants are alive, and you can't smoke any of them.
2. Having sex in a twin bed is out of the question.

3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.

4. 6:00 AM is when you get up, not when you go to bed.

5. You hear your favorite song on an elevator.

6. You watch the Weather Channel.

7. Your friends marry and divorce instead of hook up and break up.

8. You go from 130 days of vacation time to 14.

9. Jeans and a sweater no longer qualify as "dressed up."

10. You're the one calling the police because those damn kids next door won't turn down the stereo.

11. Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.

12. You don't know what time Taco Bell closes anymore.

13. Your car insurance goes down and your payments go up.

14. You feed your dog Science Diet instead of McDonalds leftovers.

15. Sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.

16. You no longer take naps from noon to 6 PM.

17. Dinner and a movie is the whole date instead of the beginning of one.

18. Eating a basket of chicken wings at 3 AM would severely upset, rather than settle your stomach.

19. You go to the drug store for ibuprofen and antacid, not condoms and pregnancy tests.

20. A $4.00 bottle of wine is no longer "pretty good stuff".

21. You actually eat breakfast food at breakfast time.

22. "I just can't drink the way I used to," replaces, "I'm never going to drink that much again."

23. 90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.

24. You drink at home to save money before going to a bar.

25. You read this entire list looking desperately for one sign that doesn't apply to you and can't find one to save Your sorry old ass.

The Colbert Report : The Word : Sigh

This is the best "The Word" segment since "Truthiness," and he barely says a word.

Poem: Charles Baudelaire

[Morning Light]

Elevation

Above the ponds, beyond the valleys,
The woods, the mountains, the clouds, the seas,
Farther than the sun, the distant breeze,
The spheres that wilt to infinity

My spirit, you move with agility
And, like a good swimmer who swoons in the wave
You groove the depths immensity gave,
The inexpressible and male ecstasy.

From this miasma of waste,
You will be purified in superior air
And drink a pure and divine liqueur,
A clear fire to replace the limpid space

Behind this boredom and fatigue, this vast chagrin
Whose weight moves the mists of existence,
Happy is he who vigorously fans the senses
Toward serene and luminous fields—wincing!

The one whose thoughts are like skylarks taken wing
Across the heavens mornings in full flight
—Who hovers over life, understanding without effort
The language of flowers and mute things.

Pages

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Tuesday, November 14, 2006