Remember Your Chocolate - corrected and expanded!

We sang "Remember Your Love" by Darryl Ducote and Gary Daigle as the Communion hymn at Mass yesterday.

I rather like the first bit of the song because it sounds kind of like chant.

But the hook always makes me think of Willy Wonka, and I really want to know the back story there.

Had Darryl been battling a 3-day fever with nothing but Gene Wilder movies in the house to watch? I like to watch G movies when I am sick. Maybe he does too.

Were Gary's kids playing it all the time in the background? "DADDY! Can we please watch Willy Wonka for the 47th time?" "Yeah, yeah, just let me write this hymn and I'll be right there!"

Did it inspire one or both of them so deeply that, after seeing it only once, it floated to his conscious mind years later as the perfect hook for his song about Our Lord and his Mercy?

I like to think they woke up, hungover, to find the following version on a cocktail napkin, and then edited out all the chocolate references they could, leaving only the tune as a reminder of one crazy night in Hershey, PA.

Refrain:
"Remember Your Lo-ove
And Your faithfulness, O Lord!
Remember Your Fact'ry
and make chocolate for us, Lord!

V1. In a world of pure imagination
The Lord is ne-ear!
Though others turn into blueberries,
I shall not fe-ear!

V2. Don't get too close to chocolate rivers;
Shun gluttony-y!
Don't constantly demand more presents
So brattily-y!

V3. The prophets who will give you warnings
Will show the wa-ay
Their orange faces may be scary
But they're oka-ay!

V4. Avoid unhealthily obsessing
About TV-ee!
Obey all rules and regulations
And you'll go fre-ee!"

Hymnals could be so much more entertaining if they included tracknotes. Alert GIA!

Trolley Problems, or A Great Way to Spend My Time

DarwinCatholiclinked to a great Trolley Problem that I just had to draw in Paint.

"

On Twin Earth, a brain in a vat is at the wheel of a runaway trolley. There are only two options that the brain can take: the right side of the fork in the track or the left side of the fork. There is no way in sight of derailing or stopping the trolley and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows trolleys. The brain is causally hooked up to the trolley such that the brain can determine the course which the trolley will take.

On the right side of the track there is a single railroad worker, Jones, who will definitely be killed if the brain steers the trolley to the right. If the railman on the right lives, he will go on to kill five men for the sake of killing them, but in doing so will inadvertently save the lives of thirty orphans (one of the five men he will kill is planning to destroy a bridge that the orphans’ bus will be crossing later that night). One of the orphans that will be killed would have grown up to become a tyrant who would make good utilitarian men do bad things. Another of the orphans would grow up to become G.E.M. Anscombe, while a third would invent the pop-top can.

If the brain in the vat chooses the left side of the track, the trolley will definitely hit and kill a railman on the left side of the track, ‘Leftie,’ and will hit and destroy ten beating hearts on the track that could (and would) have been transplanted into ten patients in the local hospital that will die without donor hearts. These are the only hearts available, and the brain is aware of this, for the brain knows hearts. If the railman on the left side of the track lives, he too will kill five men, in fact the same five that the railman on the right would kill. However, ‘Leftie’ will kill the five as an unintended consequence of saving ten men: he will inadvertently kill the five men rushing the ten hearts to the local hospital for transplantation. A further result of ‘Leftie’s’ act would be that the busload of orphans will be spared. Among the five men killed by ‘Leftie’ are both the man responsible for putting the brain at the controls of the trolley, and the author of this example. If the ten hearts and ‘Leftie’ are killed by the trolley, the ten prospective heart-transplant patients will die and their kidneys will be used to save the lives of twenty kidney-transplant patients, one of whom will grow up to cure cancer, and one of whom will grow up to be Hitler. There are other kidneys and dialysis machines available; however, the brain does not know kidneys, and this is not a factor.

Assume that the brain’s choice, whatever it turns out to be, will serve as an example to other brains-in-vats and so the effects of his decision will be amplified. Also assume that if the brain chooses the right side of the fork, an unjust war free of war crimes will ensue, while if the brain chooses the left fork, a just war fraught with war crimes will result. Furthermore, there is an intermittently active Cartesian demon deceiving the brain in such a manner that the brain is never sure if it is being deceived.

What should the brain do? Excerpted from:
– Michael F. Patton Jr., “Tissues in the Profession: Can Bad Men Make Good Brains Do Bad Things?”, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, January 1988

I think that drawing diagrams is a great way to work through complex problems.

When I drew this crazy thing out, I noticed right away that the 5 people are doomed and the orphans will be saved in either scenario. Thank goodness, the author of the problem and the idiot who put a brain in charge of a trolley are doomed along with an orphan murderer (too bad for you, 2 other nameless victims). We're now guaranteed to have a tyrant queen Orphan Annie, a GEM Anscombe Orphan, and an Inventor-of-the-Pop-Tab Orphan grow to maturity.

So, I blocked out that whole section.







What if the brain KNEW about the extra 20 kidneys outside the scenario? It could block out that whole section, like this...







Then there's an unjust war with no war crimes, a just war with war crimes, 10 people who will or won't receive heart transplants, a nice man and a mean man. Under a strictly utilitarian scenario, the justness or unjustness of the wars may not matter if they kill different numbers of people or render them unhappy or if the "wrong" side wins. Outcomes, not justifications, are important. The war crimes sound really bad, but if the war crimes are committed against fewer people than the regular waging of the other war happens to kill, then a purely utilitarian brain would favor the criminal war. Since the brain doesn't know the numbers, it can't make a decision, and would ignore that section of the problem.









In this case, we can see that sending the trolley down the right side of the tracks will kill only one man and save 11.

HOWEVER, remember that I said that the brain is actually ignorant of kidneys, so it would NOT ignore the kidney patient problem.








I used the World Health Organization estimation of cancer deaths in 2008 to factor the worth of a cure for cancer. For Hitler, I used 12,000,000 deaths from the Holocaust (6 million Jews + 6 million others-- Gypsies, political prisoners, disabled people, etc), a number I may have underestimated, especially if you put in all the millions killed in combat in WWII. In 2 years, according to a utilitarian brain in a vat, a cure for cancer would "balance out" the Holocaust, so it would send the trolley down the LEFT side, killing the nice man, destroying the hearts, and allowing the 20 kidney patients to be saved. The brain was ignorant and made the "wrong" choice.

All this, of course, ignores both the Cartesian demon confusing the brain intermittently and the unknown ultimate effects of the brain's choice on the other brains.

Update:

I just realized the brain may be ignorant of all future outcomes of the people involved in these scenarios (from the car crashes on). If so, one might think it would kill the man on the right to save the 10 heart patients and the man on the left. If the brain is a strict utilitarian ignorant of kidneys (other than that each person has 2), though, it will destroy the hearts of 10 (plus the man on the left) so that the kidneys of 20 might be saved. So it will send the trolley down the left.

25,000,000,000 flavors

It seems that whenever someone wants to make a plug for adultery -- or to at least knock monogamy -- he asks "What if you could only have one flavor of ice cream for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE???!!!"

There are so many stupid things about this metaphor, I thought I'd write up a few approaches to answer this.



1) Holding out for better

If we did courtship like we do ice cream, it just wouldn't work for me. Internet dating sites are kind of like that. You see a bunch of guys' pictures and get a little info, and you can pick which one you want to write to. Naturally, it's up to both of you to decide whether you meet, and whether you keep dating, but the initial process seems more like choosing an ice cream flavor or pair of shoes online. When I go in an ice cream store, I never leave because the flavors on offer aren't as thrilling as I'd hoped. I have frequently left online dating sites because the men just didn't interest me.

2) Too many choices actually kind of sucks
I have been eating ice cream for 28 years, since I was weaned off formula.
I've tasted a lot of flavors. I've eaten at local ice creameries that make up flavors each week. I've explored the multiple variants of gelato, yogurt, ice cream, and custard.

I've probably had about 25 flavors in my life, and I probably won't add much more to that.

I like the mint, I like the chocolate, I really like pistachio and butter pecan if I can get them, I like berry flavors and sometimes mango or watermelon.

I've probably sampled over half of the possible flavors. I don't know if I will sample the full range, and I don't care. It's not really a top goal of my life.

I have found that when I visit an ice cream store that offers only two flavors, I don't really care. I pick the one that sounds good, I eat it, I find it cool and delicious. When I visit a place that offers 50 flavors, I actually get kind of annoyed because it is so hard to choose. I only spend about 30 seconds deciding, and about 10 minutes eating it. But when I eat it, I find it cool and delicious, and I don't wish I had actually gone with another flavor.

I have not treated men the same way. There are billions of people in the world, so there are billions of men, and I definitely don't want to sample them all. Ugh. It would be impossible. I actually want to spend more than 15 seconds deciding which one I want. People aren't products.

3) Do you take this ice cream company and flavor?

If I swore an oath and signed a legal document saying I would only eat Blue Bunny Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream for the rest of my life, munching on no other flavor, whether in cold weather or hot, on holidays or Tuesdays, with bananas, toppings or plain, in a cone or a bowl, until my tongue crumbled unto the dust from whence it came,

And if all of my religious upbringing had emphasized the importance of fidelity unto ice cream flavors,

And if Hollywood films for the last hundred, and novels for the last several hundred years, and legends and tales of the last several millenia, had explored the wonders of finding the perfect ice cream flavor and the tragedy of ice cream infidelity,

And if one was traditionally supposed to discern this flavor -- not on tasting it -- but on sight, smell and nutritional packet information alone, because it was gravely improper to eat the flavor without having first sworn the Lifelong Consumer oath, so that a person would not only commit to an ice cream for life, but would have tasted no other ice cream previously,

And if I knew that other ice creams could be tainted, that if I strayed I might get food poisoning because other flavors were not as carefully preserved and other ice cream companies were not as scrupulous about testing,

And if -- should I break my vow and be discovered -- the Blue Bunny Ice Cream company could kick me out of my home, take my children from me, run about trashing me to all my friends and family, keep me in court for months, and send a representative mascot dressed as a mint chocolate chip cone to weep, curse, and throw things at me,

I might occasionally wonder about the other flavors, but I don't know how other ice cream flavors could possibly be so attractive to me that I would throw away my life for a couple of seconds of taste. And in such a society, a person who did would be considered a freak, someone with no foresight or self-control, who lived purely for their tastebuds and was pitifully selfish and foolish.

I am become ScienceGirl, Destroyer of Liturgies, Part the Second

The hot summer weather we are experiencing makes me flash back to my good old days as an altar girl in my small town church that had poor air conditioning.

Me being an altar girl -- or "acolyte" as I was called -- may have wrecked the liturgy, but it's a tough call.

The liturgy was broken on arrival, pre-wrecked by King Henry VIII, the late, of England.

Yes, I was a Catholic altar girl at the local Episcopal church. When I went to confirmation classes in college, I learned that this was all kinds of messed up, but back in my teenage years, I thought it was pretty great.

I was enlisted as acolyte by the lady in charge of all things liturgical at this tiny parish. I was one of the 9 kids over the age of 12, and since she wanted 3 altar servers at each Mass? Service? JESUS-TYPE THINGIE?, we were all signed up to help. I was a very bad Catholic at this time, and an even worse Episcopalian -- we only went because we thought it was basically the same as the Catholic church, only with a less boring priest. Each member of the tiny parish also took turns reading, or in most cases painfully mumbling, the readings. Looking back, I am surprised we were all trained by her instead of by the priest, but she did a pretty good job. I have no idea how to judge whether I was a good altar girl or not. I seem to recall playing with the rope belt a lot. That can't have been too helpful in creating an atmosphere of reverent prayer. I also could NOT MANAGE to snuff the candles after it was all over. I would put the snuffer on, then remove it. The flame would shoot up. On went the snuffer. Up flared the resilient flame. Snuffer. Flame. Snuffer. Flame. After the first JTT, I got fed up and just blew out the pesky flame, while pretending to snuff it by cleverly holding the snuffer near the candle. How I longed to be as brave as the altar boy who licked his fingers and reached right into the flame to snuff the wick. He did this way before Aragorn's candle-pinching scene in "Fellowship of the Ring," and it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Each week, I would think "This is the week to put out a flame with my fingers," but each week, I chickened out.

The detailed rubrics combined with my equal and opposite penchants for daydreaming and mortification in the face of error made the JTT's at which I served rather nerve-wracking. But stressful though it was, I loved being an altar server, and was always a bit sad when it wasn't my turn on the schedule.

I liked it when it was my turn to ring the bell, though since I had only been trained once and had no written script, I was always worried I would ring it at the wrong times. If I was a candle-bearer, I would need to haul the candles around the church at different times, and what if I was 15 seconds behind noticing when the priest needed me and my sister had to nudge me? HUMILIATION!!! These were the beginnings of what I deem liturgi-phobia: irrational fear of Wrecking the Liturgy. 5 years later, I experience liturgi-phobia in my (Catholic) Confirmation Mass, when I Wrecked the Liturgy by starting to turn the wrong way after being anointed. My awe of the Holy Spirit had me in a bit of a daze, and it's a good thing for me that my Confirmation Sponsor was there to turn me around and set me back on course for my pew.

Anyway, I think I should tell you why I loved being an altar server so very much.

Tragically, it was not due to a deep love of the Eucharist (at the time I didn't know that Episcopalians don't necessarily have the Transubstantiation or believe in it). I did have a deep love of the Eucharist, and I hope God doesn't think it too idolatrous that I received the Episcopalian sacrament fully thinking it was the same Eucharist I'd learned about from the nice nuns in my First Communion prep.

Happily, it was not because I had any jealousy toward boys or desire to wreck their fun. I hadn't even known altar girls weren't de rigeur in even the Catholic church, and since I'd been enlisted by the sacristan, I thought it was just another job everyone needed to do and had always done from time immemorial.

No, my reason for loving serving at the altar was something much more simple and more worldly:

I was not sitting in a pew with my family.

Therefore, I was not sitting with my younger brother.

Therefore, I did not have to hold his hand at the Our Father or shake it at the Sign of Peace.

Therefore, I did not have to see him wipe his hand disgustedly afterward and glare at me for having sweaty palms.

Even when my brother and I were serving together, we didn't have to hold hands.

It made going to church so much nicer and less humiliating.

As a teenager, I generally felt humilitated most of the time when I was around other people, so I was happy with anything that decreased it. As an altar girl, I was actually sweatier because I had to wear the robe thingie over my clothes, but nobody could tell.

Look, it was really hot in that church, and I had all these adolescent hormones going.

Combined with the irregular periods typical for teenage girls, my numerous "hot flashes" caused by the 100+ degree weather made me fret that I probably had the medical condition called "Early Onset Menopause."

Early Onset Menopause was a condition that existed only in my brain.

You may wonder why I did not consult a doctor or my mom about my self-diagnosis.

I did not consult a doctor because I never really went to one unless I was horribly ill, what with our lack of health insurance and all.

I did not ask my mom because well, what would she know about the functioning of the uterus???

Also, I couldn't decide whether or not I dreaded or desired to confirm my EOM. On the one hand, BOO! No babies. On the other, HOORAY! No more period, ever.

My period always showed up eventually, so the thought of EOM gradually disappeared.

I stopped going to the Episcopal church, too.

My liturgical wreckage and attendance at that church may appall some nice Catholics out there, but it actually gave me a great benefit: I started praying again. The measly "Our Father" I would say after Communion in that church was for a time my only prayer for the whole week. Eventually, I got to thinking maybe I should pray more frequently. So I started saying the "Our Father" every night, and kept adding "Hail Mary's" until I ended up saying the Rosary. Actually, I started saying the Rosary as a way to fight insomnia, and my usual prayer was that I would fall asleep halfway through. I would feel so irritated if I got to the "Salve Regina" and was still wide awake! "Hey God, why are you not answering my prayer that I will not be able to finish my prayers to you???" As soon as I thought this, I realized I was being kind of dumb.

God worked a lot on me during those years.

I am become ScienceGirl, Destroyer of Liturgies, Part the First

Ah, liturgical abuse.

I have become well acquainted with it. But can I truly complain, in all fairness?

No.

For all the messed up stuff I've seen priests do over the years, I know that I have Destroyed the Liturgy uncountable times myself.

1. I Have Committed Liturgical Dance

Yes. Oh, but yes.

During Christmas Eve Mass, no less.

And it was spontaneous liturgical dance, at that!

I remember how beautiful the candles were, flickering all over the altar and near the side altar. The changing lights made me think of the angels someone was droning on about, and I had to dance. And sing.

The joy and uplifting beauty of this Mass moved me quite literally.

I lurched about. I waved my arms. I chanted words understood only by myself and the Lord.

It was 1984.

George Orwell got it just slightly wrong.

Big Brother was not watching me, but the priest and most of the congregation were.

Congregational Reverence: TERMINATED!

And thus began, at the age of two years, my path of Liturgical Destruction.

Throwing Cliches Under the Bus

The yahoo headlines have angered me yet again.

Mitt Romney is quoted as allegedly saying that Obama has thrown Israel under the bus.

I sincerely hope he said "Obama has betrayed Israel" or "Obama has really let Israel down" or "Obama has hurt US-Israel relations in a shocking yet also somehow entirely predictable way," and that the reporter just got clever.

Because, you see, Obama can't possibly have thrown Israel under the bus.

I say this not just because an entire country can't really be thrown, like a person, under a bus. I get that the metaphor could be extended, though tortuously, to a nation. I guess.

No.

I say this because the bus has had so many people "thrown under" it in the last few years that it can no longer run.

It is piled on a pile of thrown corpses.

Its gears are jammed with blood and guts.

Now, when anyone tries to throw anyone under the bus, they can only throw the person in front of the bus, and since the bus is no longer moving, what with being on all the other people, the thrown person just gets up and walks away unscathed.

If Anna Karenina wandered by all sad and wanted to end her life, she would find the bus no decent substitute for the Russian railway.

Even if the bus -- driven, let us suppose by an undead Ms Frizzle bent on vengeance -- even if this bus had the magical ability to expand itself to enormous size or to rear up to crush its victims like an angry steed, it still would only end up propped on the prone bodies of so many -- from Jeremiah Wright to the middle school girl whose sister refused to lend her favorite sweater -- that it would have no power left to cover Israel.

So when Obama, using his mighty arms, gathered into one the nation of Israel and tossed them/it toward the reddened tires of the DeathBus, he just threw out his back for nothing.

Mitt, Mitt, Mitt.

Be true to yourself.

"Betray" is a good, old word. It is powerful. It is serious. You are a bland, serious man. Middle English suits you. Trying to talk like you are hip and urbane will fool no one.

My Celebrity Dream: True Story

About two years ago, I had an amazing dream that I was dating a celebrity.

I had never had a dream involving a celebrity before, and this could have been a pretty fun dream. It was more weird and nightmarish than anything else.

I dreamed that Seth Rogen was my boyfriend and that I convinced him to go to Easter Vigil with me because it was so important to me. I did not at the time, nor do I now, feel a conscious attraction toward Seth Rogen.

Easter Vigil is normally about 2.5 hours because of all the readings. In my dream, it was much longer. I was feeling very guilty because my nice Jewish boyfriend Seth had finally agreed to come to Mass with me and here it was taking forever. The readings kept going on and on, and there were numerous songs between each, complete with tambourines, trumpets and drums. We sang all the verses, all the time.

Seth Rogen shifted uncomfortably on the hard pew. "Sorry," I whispered, "it's not usually like this." I was certain he would never come to Mass with me again, and I was kind of scared that he would take this chance to be witty and rude. But he was perfectly polite, in stark contrast to the oafish characters he usually plays.

I fell asleep on Seth Rogen's shoulder, and only woke up when the sunlight hit me on the face. I mean I woke up in the dream thanks to dream sunlight. The dream/nightmare Mass was still going on. "They haven't even got to the liturgy of the Eucharist," I thought miserably. "This is taking forever!" Seth Rogen had gamely stayed awake the entire night, listening to what must have been the entire Old Testament and every verse of every song ever written by Haugen, Hass, and company for Easter. Maybe they'd even run out and had to bring in the Ordinary Time stuff. I don't know because I had dreamed that I was asleep. Seth Rogen looked at me with tolerance and love.

Then I either woke up or my subconscious moved on to less memorable fare.

Why did I dream I was dating Seth Rogen, whose movies I barely like?
Why did I dream I was stressed and bored by Easter Vigil, my favorite night of the year?

Was an enemy hacking into my brain to cause an inception?

What on earth did they accomplish?

Is Seth Rogen the symbol of Jesus? Was I like the disciples falling asleep in the garden? What would that mean?

Some questions will never be answered.