Scheduled Entries

Wonderful, LJ’s ‘scheduled entries’ no longer works. Better yet, not only is it failing to post the entries, but it also eats up the entries that were supposed to be posted. Ain’t that grand? But one cannot honestly claim to be shocked. It is the sort of service one comes to expect from LJ nowadays. Though, in truth, I was getting the feeling that things were turning around, but it was just a tease, I guess. Maybe this is a little taste of what it is like to live in Russia. One can better appreciate where Ayn Rand is coming from in her adoration for efficient and effective businesses.

Scheduled Entries

Wonderful, LJ’s ‘scheduled entries’ no longer works. Better yet, not only is it failing to post the entries, but it also eats up the entries that were supposed to be posted. Ain’t that grand? But one cannot honestly claim to be shocked. It is the sort of service one comes to expect from LJ nowadays. Though, in truth, I was getting the feeling that things were turning around, but it was just a tease, I guess. Maybe this is a little taste of what it is like to live in Russia. One can better appreciate where Ayn Rand is coming from in her adoration for efficient and effective businesses.

Capitalism and the Fable of the Bees

The New York Times has earned its liberal reputation with its publication of this opinion piece relating pychopathology to capitalism.

_ _ _

THERE is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they are, what their social role may be, whether they are good or bad. Well, consider the following. A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law.

The only thing that puzzles me about these claims is that anyone would find them surprising. Wall Street is capitalism in its purest form, and capitalism is predicated on bad behavior. This should hardly be news. The English writer Bernard Mandeville asserted nearly as much three centuries ago in a satirical-poem-cum-philosophical-treatise called “The Fable of the Bees.”



“Private Vices, Publick Benefits” read the book’s subtitle. A Machiavelli of the economic realm — a man who showed us as we are, not as we like to think we are — Mandeville argued that commercial society creates prosperity by harnessing our natural impulses: fraud, luxury and pride. By “pride” Mandeville meant vanity; by “luxury” he meant the desire for sensuous indulgence. These create demand, as every ad man knows. On the supply side, as we’d say, was fraud: “All Trades and Places knew some Cheat, / No Calling was without Deceit.”

In other words, Enron, BP, Goldman, Philip Morris, G.E., Merck, etc., etc. Accounting fraud, tax evasion, toxic dumping, product safety violations, bid rigging, overbilling, perjury. The Walmart bribery scandal, the News Corp. hacking scandal — just open up the business section on an average day. Shafting your workers, hurting your customers, destroying the land. Leaving the public to pick up the tab. These aren’t anomalies; this is how the system works: you get away with what you can and try to weasel out when you get caught.

I always found the notion of a business school amusing. What kinds of courses do they offer? Robbing Widows and Orphans? Grinding the Faces of the Poor? Having It Both Ways? Feeding at the Public Trough? There was a documentary several years ago called “The Corporation” that accepted the premise that corporations are persons and then asked what kind of people they are. The answer was, precisely, psychopaths: indifferent to others, incapable of guilt, exclusively devoted to their own interests.

There are ethical corporations, yes, and ethical businesspeople, but ethics in capitalism is purely optional, purely extrinsic. To expect morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians in our public life can also be the most bellicose proponents of an unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.) Capitalist values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like Christian ethics, the principles of republican government require us to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the single-minded pursuit of profit, would have us believe that it’s every man for himself.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about “job creators,” a phrase begotten by Frank Luntz, the right-wing propaganda guru, on the ghost of Ayn Rand. The rich deserve our gratitude as well as everything they have, in other words, and all the rest is envy.

First of all, if entrepreneurs are job creators, workers are wealth creators. Entrepreneurs use wealth to create jobs for workers. Workers use labor to create wealth for entrepreneurs — the excess productivity, over and above wages and other compensation, that goes to corporate profits. It’s neither party’s goal to benefit the other, but that’s what happens nonetheless.

Also, entrepreneurs and the rich are different and only partly overlapping categories. Most of the rich are not entrepreneurs; they are executives of established corporations, institutional managers of other kinds, the wealthiest doctors and lawyers, the most successful entertainers and athletes, people who simply inherited their money or, yes, people who work on Wall Street.

MOST important, neither entrepreneurs nor the rich have a monopoly on brains, sweat or risk. There are scientists — and artists and scholars — who are just as smart as any entrepreneur, only they are interested in different rewards. A single mother holding down a job and putting herself through community college works just as hard as any hedge fund manager. A person who takes out a mortgage — or a student loan, or who conceives a child — on the strength of a job she knows she could lose at any moment (thanks, perhaps, to one of those job creators) assumes as much risk as someone who starts a business.

Enormous matters of policy depend on these perceptions: what we’re going to tax, and how much; what we’re going to spend, and on whom. But while “job creators” may be a new term, the adulation it expresses — and the contempt that it so clearly signals — are not. “Poor Americans are urged to hate themselves,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote in “Slaughterhouse-Five.” And so, “they mock themselves and glorify their betters.” Our most destructive lie, he added, “is that it is very easy for any American to make money.” The lie goes on. The poor are lazy, stupid and evil. The rich are brilliant, courageous and good. They shower their beneficence upon the rest of us.

Mandeville believed the individual pursuit of self-interest could redound to public benefit, but unlike Adam Smith, he didn’t think it did so on its own. Smith’s “hand” was “invisible” — the automatic operation of the market. Mandeville’s involved “the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician” — in modern terms, legislation, regulation and taxation. Or as he versified it, “Vice is beneficial found, / When it’s by Justice lopt, and bound.”

-- WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ at The New York Times

_ _ _

Notice that this does say that capitalism ought to be abolished, but only that it needs to be better regulated and managed. Such may be the moral complexity of the world that it seems to be understood that we need to give our animal spirits a little room to run and to create. We only need to be mindful that the weaker and more vulnerable ought not to be savaged in the process.

Capitalism and the Fable of the Bees

The New York Times has earned its liberal reputation with its publication of this opinion piece relating pychopathology to capitalism.

_ _ _

THERE is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they are, what their social role may be, whether they are good or bad. Well, consider the following. A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law.

The only thing that puzzles me about these claims is that anyone would find them surprising. Wall Street is capitalism in its purest form, and capitalism is predicated on bad behavior. This should hardly be news. The English writer Bernard Mandeville asserted nearly as much three centuries ago in a satirical-poem-cum-philosophical-treatise called “The Fable of the Bees.”



“Private Vices, Publick Benefits” read the book’s subtitle. A Machiavelli of the economic realm — a man who showed us as we are, not as we like to think we are — Mandeville argued that commercial society creates prosperity by harnessing our natural impulses: fraud, luxury and pride. By “pride” Mandeville meant vanity; by “luxury” he meant the desire for sensuous indulgence. These create demand, as every ad man knows. On the supply side, as we’d say, was fraud: “All Trades and Places knew some Cheat, / No Calling was without Deceit.”

In other words, Enron, BP, Goldman, Philip Morris, G.E., Merck, etc., etc. Accounting fraud, tax evasion, toxic dumping, product safety violations, bid rigging, overbilling, perjury. The Walmart bribery scandal, the News Corp. hacking scandal — just open up the business section on an average day. Shafting your workers, hurting your customers, destroying the land. Leaving the public to pick up the tab. These aren’t anomalies; this is how the system works: you get away with what you can and try to weasel out when you get caught.

I always found the notion of a business school amusing. What kinds of courses do they offer? Robbing Widows and Orphans? Grinding the Faces of the Poor? Having It Both Ways? Feeding at the Public Trough? There was a documentary several years ago called “The Corporation” that accepted the premise that corporations are persons and then asked what kind of people they are. The answer was, precisely, psychopaths: indifferent to others, incapable of guilt, exclusively devoted to their own interests.

There are ethical corporations, yes, and ethical businesspeople, but ethics in capitalism is purely optional, purely extrinsic. To expect morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians in our public life can also be the most bellicose proponents of an unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.) Capitalist values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like Christian ethics, the principles of republican government require us to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the single-minded pursuit of profit, would have us believe that it’s every man for himself.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about “job creators,” a phrase begotten by Frank Luntz, the right-wing propaganda guru, on the ghost of Ayn Rand. The rich deserve our gratitude as well as everything they have, in other words, and all the rest is envy.

First of all, if entrepreneurs are job creators, workers are wealth creators. Entrepreneurs use wealth to create jobs for workers. Workers use labor to create wealth for entrepreneurs — the excess productivity, over and above wages and other compensation, that goes to corporate profits. It’s neither party’s goal to benefit the other, but that’s what happens nonetheless.

Also, entrepreneurs and the rich are different and only partly overlapping categories. Most of the rich are not entrepreneurs; they are executives of established corporations, institutional managers of other kinds, the wealthiest doctors and lawyers, the most successful entertainers and athletes, people who simply inherited their money or, yes, people who work on Wall Street.

MOST important, neither entrepreneurs nor the rich have a monopoly on brains, sweat or risk. There are scientists — and artists and scholars — who are just as smart as any entrepreneur, only they are interested in different rewards. A single mother holding down a job and putting herself through community college works just as hard as any hedge fund manager. A person who takes out a mortgage — or a student loan, or who conceives a child — on the strength of a job she knows she could lose at any moment (thanks, perhaps, to one of those job creators) assumes as much risk as someone who starts a business.

Enormous matters of policy depend on these perceptions: what we’re going to tax, and how much; what we’re going to spend, and on whom. But while “job creators” may be a new term, the adulation it expresses — and the contempt that it so clearly signals — are not. “Poor Americans are urged to hate themselves,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote in “Slaughterhouse-Five.” And so, “they mock themselves and glorify their betters.” Our most destructive lie, he added, “is that it is very easy for any American to make money.” The lie goes on. The poor are lazy, stupid and evil. The rich are brilliant, courageous and good. They shower their beneficence upon the rest of us.

Mandeville believed the individual pursuit of self-interest could redound to public benefit, but unlike Adam Smith, he didn’t think it did so on its own. Smith’s “hand” was “invisible” — the automatic operation of the market. Mandeville’s involved “the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician” — in modern terms, legislation, regulation and taxation. Or as he versified it, “Vice is beneficial found, / When it’s by Justice lopt, and bound.”

-- WILLIAM DERESIEWICZ at The New York Times

_ _ _

Notice that this does say that capitalism ought to be abolished, but only that it needs to be better regulated and managed. Such may be the moral complexity of the world that it seems to be understood that we need to give our animal spirits a little room to run and to create. We only need to be mindful that the weaker and more vulnerable ought not to be savaged in the process.

Kid Psychopaths

Is it wrong to think that that mean, conniving nine-year-old punk who lives down the street could actually be a psychopath?

The Times has an interesting article on the little controversy. Some experts argue that you can ruin a person's life by laying such a heavy label on them so young, but there is the counter-hope that such an early diagnosis might give us an opportunity to treat them: “As the nuns used to say, ‘Get them young enough, and they can change,’ ” Dadds observes. “You have to hope that’s true. Otherwise, what are we stuck with? These monsters.”


_ _ _

In some children, C.U. traits [callous-unemotional traits]manifest in obvious ways. Paul Frick, a psychologist at the University of New Orleans who has studied risk factors for psychopathy in children for two decades, described one boy who used a knife to cut off the tail of the family cat bit by bit, over a period of weeks. The boy was proud of the serial amputations, which his parents initially failed to notice. “When we talked about it, he was very straightforward,” Frick recalls. “He said: ‘I want to be a scientist, and I was experimenting. I wanted to see how the cat would react.’ ”

In another famous case, a 9-year-old boy named Jeffrey Bailey pushed a toddler into the deep end of a motel swimming pool in Florida. As the boy struggled and sank to the bottom, Bailey pulled up a chair to watch. Questioned by the police afterward, Bailey explained that he was curious to see someone drown. When he was taken into custody, he seemed untroubled by the prospect of jail but was pleased to be the center of attention.

In many children, though, the signs are subtler. Callous-unemotional children tend to be highly manipulative, Frick notes. They also lie frequently — not just to avoid punishment, as all children will, but for any reason, or none. “Most kids, if you catch them stealing a cookie from the jar before dinner, they’ll look guilty,” Frick says. “They want the cookie, but they also feel bad. Even kids with severe A.D.H.D.: they may have poor impulse control, but they still feel bad when they realize that their mom is mad at them.” Callous-unemotional children are unrepentant. “They don’t care if someone is mad at them,” Frick says. “They don’t care if they hurt someone’s feelings.” Like adult psychopaths, they can seem to lack humanity. “If they can get what they want without being cruel, that’s often easier,” Frick observes. “But at the end of the day, they’ll do whatever works best.”

[... In the hope for successful treatment, it is noted that it can be tricky.]

While it may be possible to modify a callous-unemotional child’s behavior, what’s less clear is whether it’s possible to make up for underlying neurological deficits — like a lack of empathy. In one oft-cited study, an inmate therapy group that halved the recidivism rate in violent prisoners famously increased the rate of “successful” crimes in psychopaths, by improving their ability to mimic regret and self-reflection. A related article recently speculated that treating antisocial children with Ritalin could be dangerous, because the drug suppresses their impulsive behavior and might enable them to plan crueller and more surreptitious reprisals.

-- Jennifer Kahn at The New York Times

_ _ _

It should be useful to have something on record, if we can identify some children as having some seriously psychopathic warp in their character. That way it will be less of a mystery if one of these wonders winds up gunning down a dozen of his classmates one day. I am skeptical about being able to successfully treat them. We just have to live with the fact that the world is full of monsters.

Kid Psychopaths

Is it wrong to think that that mean, conniving nine-year-old punk who lives down the street could actually be a psychopath?

The Times has an interesting article on the little controversy. Some experts argue that you can ruin a person's life by laying such a heavy label on them so young, but there is the counter-hope that such an early diagnosis might give us an opportunity to treat them: “As the nuns used to say, ‘Get them young enough, and they can change,’ ” Dadds observes. “You have to hope that’s true. Otherwise, what are we stuck with? These monsters.”


_ _ _

In some children, C.U. traits [callous-unemotional traits]manifest in obvious ways. Paul Frick, a psychologist at the University of New Orleans who has studied risk factors for psychopathy in children for two decades, described one boy who used a knife to cut off the tail of the family cat bit by bit, over a period of weeks. The boy was proud of the serial amputations, which his parents initially failed to notice. “When we talked about it, he was very straightforward,” Frick recalls. “He said: ‘I want to be a scientist, and I was experimenting. I wanted to see how the cat would react.’ ”

In another famous case, a 9-year-old boy named Jeffrey Bailey pushed a toddler into the deep end of a motel swimming pool in Florida. As the boy struggled and sank to the bottom, Bailey pulled up a chair to watch. Questioned by the police afterward, Bailey explained that he was curious to see someone drown. When he was taken into custody, he seemed untroubled by the prospect of jail but was pleased to be the center of attention.

In many children, though, the signs are subtler. Callous-unemotional children tend to be highly manipulative, Frick notes. They also lie frequently — not just to avoid punishment, as all children will, but for any reason, or none. “Most kids, if you catch them stealing a cookie from the jar before dinner, they’ll look guilty,” Frick says. “They want the cookie, but they also feel bad. Even kids with severe A.D.H.D.: they may have poor impulse control, but they still feel bad when they realize that their mom is mad at them.” Callous-unemotional children are unrepentant. “They don’t care if someone is mad at them,” Frick says. “They don’t care if they hurt someone’s feelings.” Like adult psychopaths, they can seem to lack humanity. “If they can get what they want without being cruel, that’s often easier,” Frick observes. “But at the end of the day, they’ll do whatever works best.”

[... In the hope for successful treatment, it is noted that it can be tricky.]

While it may be possible to modify a callous-unemotional child’s behavior, what’s less clear is whether it’s possible to make up for underlying neurological deficits — like a lack of empathy. In one oft-cited study, an inmate therapy group that halved the recidivism rate in violent prisoners famously increased the rate of “successful” crimes in psychopaths, by improving their ability to mimic regret and self-reflection. A related article recently speculated that treating antisocial children with Ritalin could be dangerous, because the drug suppresses their impulsive behavior and might enable them to plan crueller and more surreptitious reprisals.

-- Jennifer Kahn at The New York Times

_ _ _

It should be useful to have something on record, if we can identify some children as having some seriously psychopathic warp in their character. That way it will be less of a mystery if one of these wonders winds up gunning down a dozen of his classmates one day. I am skeptical about being able to successfully treat them. We just have to live with the fact that the world is full of monsters.

A Perfect 10

A Perfect 10

1984 (2,8) Handfuls of Dust and Splinters of Bone

O’Brien continues his discourse on the grim life of underground rebellion against the Party. It can make apathy look attractive.

_ _ _

'You will have heard rumours of the existence of the Brotherhood. No doubt you have formed your own picture of it. You have imagined, probably, a huge underworld of conspirators, meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling messages on walls, recognizing one another by codewords or by special movements of the hand. Nothing of the kind exists. The members of the Brotherhood have no way of recognizing one another, and it is impossible for any one member to be aware of the identity of more than a few others. Goldstein himself, if he fell into the hands of the Thought Police, could not give them a complete list of members, or any information that would lead them to a complete list. No such list exists. The Brotherhood cannot be wiped out because it is not an organization in the ordinary sense. Nothing holds it together except an idea which is indestructible. You will never have anything to sustain you, except the idea. You will get no comradeship and no encouragement. When finally you are caught, you will get no help. We never help our members. At most, when it is absolutely necessary that someone should be silenced, we are occasionally able to smuggle a razor blade into a prisoner's cell. You will have to get used to living without results and without hope. You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess, and then you will die. Those are the only results that you will ever see. There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation. In the face of the Thought Police there is no other way.'


He halted and looked for the third time at his wrist-watch.

'It is almost time for you to leave, comrade,' he said to Julia. 'Wait. The decanter is still half full.'

He filled the glasses and raised his own glass by the stem.

'What shall it be this time?' he said, still with the same faint suggestion of irony. 'To the confusion of the Thought Police? To the death of Big Brother? To humanity? To the future?'

'To the past,' said Winston.

'The past is more important,' agreed O'Brien gravely.

They emptied their glasses, and a moment later Julia stood up to go. O'Brien took a small box from the top of a cabinet and handed her a flat white tablet which he told her to place on her tongue. It was important, he said, not to go out smelling of wine: the lift attendants were very observant. As soon as the door had shut behind her he appeared to forget her existence. He took another pace or two up and down, then stopped.

-- “1984” by George Orwell

_ _ _


Despite the indications of Julia being impressed by O’Brien, I have a hard time believing that she really wants to be part of the Brotherhood. We can understand Winston’s enthusiasm, as this is what he has been about from the beginning, in his constant aching to tear down the oppressive system. Maybe if she were older, I could see her becoming interested in such a movement, but surely she should just want to keep playing the system and trying to get the most out of life, out of her youth, rather than sacrifice herself and offer herself up for anonymous martyrdom. Though, it is difficult to say how reasonable it is to interpret the story so that she is just that deeply spellbound in her naiveté by Winston’s sexual charms and apparent maturity.

We also should make something of this toast to the past. Perhaps we can read it as a pledge offered up for us to accept, that is, to never let tyranny rise up from the struggles of liberal democracy. Life was never perfect and fair for everyone, but it is a far worse thing to suffer the emergence of totalitarian government. And once such a regime is established, it may be almost impossible to take back. Of course, I think this is the drumbeat that Orwell is constantly playing in the background of his novel.

1984 (2,8) Handfuls of Dust and Splinters of Bone

O’Brien continues his discourse on the grim life of underground rebellion against the Party. It can make apathy look attractive.

_ _ _

'You will have heard rumours of the existence of the Brotherhood. No doubt you have formed your own picture of it. You have imagined, probably, a huge underworld of conspirators, meeting secretly in cellars, scribbling messages on walls, recognizing one another by codewords or by special movements of the hand. Nothing of the kind exists. The members of the Brotherhood have no way of recognizing one another, and it is impossible for any one member to be aware of the identity of more than a few others. Goldstein himself, if he fell into the hands of the Thought Police, could not give them a complete list of members, or any information that would lead them to a complete list. No such list exists. The Brotherhood cannot be wiped out because it is not an organization in the ordinary sense. Nothing holds it together except an idea which is indestructible. You will never have anything to sustain you, except the idea. You will get no comradeship and no encouragement. When finally you are caught, you will get no help. We never help our members. At most, when it is absolutely necessary that someone should be silenced, we are occasionally able to smuggle a razor blade into a prisoner's cell. You will have to get used to living without results and without hope. You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess, and then you will die. Those are the only results that you will ever see. There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation. In the face of the Thought Police there is no other way.'


He halted and looked for the third time at his wrist-watch.

'It is almost time for you to leave, comrade,' he said to Julia. 'Wait. The decanter is still half full.'

He filled the glasses and raised his own glass by the stem.

'What shall it be this time?' he said, still with the same faint suggestion of irony. 'To the confusion of the Thought Police? To the death of Big Brother? To humanity? To the future?'

'To the past,' said Winston.

'The past is more important,' agreed O'Brien gravely.

They emptied their glasses, and a moment later Julia stood up to go. O'Brien took a small box from the top of a cabinet and handed her a flat white tablet which he told her to place on her tongue. It was important, he said, not to go out smelling of wine: the lift attendants were very observant. As soon as the door had shut behind her he appeared to forget her existence. He took another pace or two up and down, then stopped.

-- “1984” by George Orwell

_ _ _


Despite the indications of Julia being impressed by O’Brien, I have a hard time believing that she really wants to be part of the Brotherhood. We can understand Winston’s enthusiasm, as this is what he has been about from the beginning, in his constant aching to tear down the oppressive system. Maybe if she were older, I could see her becoming interested in such a movement, but surely she should just want to keep playing the system and trying to get the most out of life, out of her youth, rather than sacrifice herself and offer herself up for anonymous martyrdom. Though, it is difficult to say how reasonable it is to interpret the story so that she is just that deeply spellbound in her naiveté by Winston’s sexual charms and apparent maturity.

We also should make something of this toast to the past. Perhaps we can read it as a pledge offered up for us to accept, that is, to never let tyranny rise up from the struggles of liberal democracy. Life was never perfect and fair for everyone, but it is a far worse thing to suffer the emergence of totalitarian government. And once such a regime is established, it may be almost impossible to take back. Of course, I think this is the drumbeat that Orwell is constantly playing in the background of his novel.

Christian Sex Sells!

There's been no shortage of Christian books on the topic of sex in recent months, and Christians across the United States are buying them up in order to spice up their marriages.

DeeperCalling Media (DCM), an online Christian bookstore supplier and Christian product retailer, reports "sizzling sex book sales" among Christian bookstores, indicating that Christians are not as "prude" as they are sometimes thought to be.

"We have been astounded by the marked increase in the sales of Christian Books on the topics of Sex. It's clear that in tough economic times people are seeking ways to improve their lives through better relationships with those closest to them," said Joe Kerr, marketing manager for DCM, in a statement.

-- Jeff Schapiro at ChristianPost.com

But you have to keep it in wedlock! Which I imagine can be tricky in terms of heating up the sex life. I guess you need a number of wigs and chains and maybe the old cat o' nine tails.

Christian Sex Sells!

There's been no shortage of Christian books on the topic of sex in recent months, and Christians across the United States are buying them up in order to spice up their marriages.

DeeperCalling Media (DCM), an online Christian bookstore supplier and Christian product retailer, reports "sizzling sex book sales" among Christian bookstores, indicating that Christians are not as "prude" as they are sometimes thought to be.

"We have been astounded by the marked increase in the sales of Christian Books on the topics of Sex. It's clear that in tough economic times people are seeking ways to improve their lives through better relationships with those closest to them," said Joe Kerr, marketing manager for DCM, in a statement.

-- Jeff Schapiro at ChristianPost.com

But you have to keep it in wedlock! Which I imagine can be tricky in terms of heating up the sex life. I guess you need a number of wigs and chains and maybe the old cat o' nine tails.

The Devil's Breath

Came across a new drug in my reading. Sounds wild. The ultimate in mind control. Scopolomine. Also known as "The Devil's Breath".

_ _ _

VICE's Ryan Duffy went to Colombia to check out a strange and powerful drug called Scopolamine, also known as "The Devil's Breath." It's a substance so intense that it renders a person incapable of exercising free will.

[...]

The key seems to be that scopolamine blocks acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter essential to memory. Scans also reveal the drug affects the amygdala, a brain area controlling aggression and anxiety. This would explain scopolamine's pacifying effect. Evidence also suggests [robbery and sexual assault] victims tend to be confused and passive rather than unable to resist commands. Yet, until scopolamine's role in the chemistry of free will is fully explored, we can only speculate that the criminal underworld has unwittingly stumbled upon one of the greatest discoveries of 21st-century neuroscience.

-- Andrew Sullivan's Dish

The Devil's Breath

Came across a new drug in my reading. Sounds wild. The ultimate in mind control. Scopolomine. Also known as "The Devil's Breath".

_ _ _

VICE's Ryan Duffy went to Colombia to check out a strange and powerful drug called Scopolamine, also known as "The Devil's Breath." It's a substance so intense that it renders a person incapable of exercising free will.

[...]

The key seems to be that scopolamine blocks acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter essential to memory. Scans also reveal the drug affects the amygdala, a brain area controlling aggression and anxiety. This would explain scopolamine's pacifying effect. Evidence also suggests [robbery and sexual assault] victims tend to be confused and passive rather than unable to resist commands. Yet, until scopolamine's role in the chemistry of free will is fully explored, we can only speculate that the criminal underworld has unwittingly stumbled upon one of the greatest discoveries of 21st-century neuroscience.

-- Andrew Sullivan's Dish