Why I Dropped Sitemeter

Not that you have been checking the graphics on my sidebar, but if you have, you will not longer see Sitemeter’s little rainbow square.

As this article from Geek News Central states, Sitemeter started planting spyware/third-party cookies on visitors’ computers.

I already had an account with StatCounter for a commercial Web project, so I have added my blogs to it. They say they won’t use third-party cookies. And StatCounter has a free counter and visitor-tracking service too.

When I am at home with a dial-up connection, I can see the difference: this blog loads more quickly now that the Sitemeter code is removed.

And, speaking of banners, I added one to the definitive Pagan blogs list.

Sneaky Doin’s in the Graveyard

Cremains were the apparent target in this case from Los Angeles.

It sounds to me as though the accused grave robber was making up her own kind of “goofer dust”.

(Hat tip: Steve Bodio.)

Vulnerability in the Classroom-2

My earlier post.

This issue has taken off in academic circles. Engineering professor Barbara Oakley writes an op-ed in the New York Times, ending with

In other words, most of the broad social “lessons” we are being told we must learn from the Virginia Tech shootings have little to do with what allowed the horrors to occur. This is about evil, and about how our universities are able to deal with it as a literary subject but not as a fact of life. Can administrators and deans really continue to leave professors and other college personnel to deal with deeply disturbed students on their own, with only pencils in their defense?

Law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh asks questions about self defense:

What, though, is the argument against allowing professors and other university staff to possess weapons, if they choose? (Assume the professors lack criminal records, and assume they go through whatever testing and modest training is required to get a concealed carry permit, or perhaps even some extra training.) One argument is that it’s just dangerous for law-abiding citizens to have weapons, because they’ll start shooting over arguments or fender-benders. But that’s precisely the argument that has been rejected by the 38 states that allow any law-abiding citizen to get a concealed carry license (or, in 2 of the 38 states, to carry without a license).

I’ve also heard some arguments that suggest universities are different because they are places for reasoning, not violence: They should be gun-free zones (except of course for university police officers and security guards, who for some reason don’t count) because that’s needed to create the proper climate of peaceful inquiry. But the sad fact is that you can’t make a university into a gun-free zone. Mad killers can bring guns, and use them, regardless of what policies you announce.

The Combat Philosopher fears that administrations will just implement heavy-handed “security” measures:

It is also quite likely that there will be new provisions made, in a bid by the administration to enhance campus security. In all likelihood, these provisions will be burdensome and work against the free flow of people and ideas that makes campus life vibrant. Would you be inclined to return to your office, or lab of an evening if you had to run a gauntlet of security?

On my campus, the new director of counseling (not the person I mentioned earlier) writes a campus-wide email:

If you encounter a person who you believe to be a risk to you or someone else and wish to discuss your concern with someone at the Student Counseling Center, we will help you evaluate the level of threat.

That is fine, but the problem is the conflict between student privacy laws and warning the instructor. If I have a deaf student, for instance, he or she will show up with a letter from the Disability Center explaining his or her needs, such as an interpretor. But no one tells you if you have a mentally disturbed student in your class–or what to do about it. You are left to figure it out on your own. In a big class, you might never know.

What usually happens is described by The Phantom Professor:

It’s a common strategy for dealing with troubled and troubling students: Just get ’em through the department. Do whatever it takes, but don’t cause problems or invite legal hassles by leaning too hard on him. Is he still paying his tuition? Then just deal with it. He’ll be gone next year. Shut up and deal with it.

Lutheran Terrorists Release Brit Captives

And now for something completely different: From the fertile brain of Iowahawk, Midwest Peace Breakthrough as British Marines Released. (He can even do Brit tabloid headline-ese. Man’s a genius.)

Excerpts:

The surprise morning release of the 38 sailors and marines ended a tense three-day standoff between the British government and a breakaway Lutheran militia group that controls large swaths of the notorious “Manure Triangle” region spanning Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

…

As he skipped and cartwheeled off to the waiting double-decker, a beaming Rumpsworthy turned to BBC cameras and shouted, “Look, Mum! Weeee! I’m a hero!”

…

The former captives’ ordeal began Tuesday, when the British destroyer HMS Chamberlain was conducting joint training exercises with the US Navy at Great Lakes Naval Training Station on Lake Michigan, just north of Chicago. According to insurgent naval commander Chuck Sorenson, the vessel strayed into Lutheran territorial waters.

“Oh yah, dey were totally on the Wisconsin side,” said Sorenson. “I was tossin’ some empty driveway patch cans out dere in my storage shed and I could see ’em out dere on da lake, big as day.”

Read the whole thing.

The Student is Psycho–What Then?

Dr. Helen Smith continues blogging on the problems of dealing with “time bomb” students.

I had one such experience, and it illustrates how difficult it is for universities to deal with them.

She was a “non-traditional” (30-something) student in one of my upper-division nonfiction writing classes. One day she brought in for workshopping an article about Satanists in our city. It was all very 1980s “satanic panic” stuff, only a decade later.

But the stunning part was that she accused an education professor at our university of being the local Satanic leader. He not only knew where the bodies were buried, she claimed, he had put some of them in the ground himself.

And not one of the mass comm. majors in the room suggested that this might, possibly, be libelous. I suppose they were waiting for me. And I let her go (“Very interesting . . um. . . who’s next.”) I faced bad writing before, but not 24-caret craziness.

After class I went straight to the office of one of the senior people in my department who mentored me. “What do I do?” I asked her. “Tell [Dept. Chairman],” she said.

I went to his office with a copy of the satanism article. He already knew about the student, knew that she did not have both oars in the water, and that she had been kicked out of the teacher-training program by Education Professor. She had been allowed to change her major to English. He suggested talking to the counseling office, and that was all he could offer.

I ended up in a surreal conversation with the director of student counseling, who was also well-acquainted with Nutcase Student. Her response went something like this:

“Because of privacy rules, I cannot discuss a particular case. However, if I knew that a student was behaving that way, and if I knew that she had a psychiatrist in the city, I might possibly suggest to that psychiatrist that her medications be adjusted.”

I called Education Professor at home and got his wife instead. She was seriously concerned that Nutcase Student was stalking her husband and also that he did not recognize the danger. When I spoke to him, he did try to downplay the situation.

Time passed. Nutcase stopped coming to my class, for which I was thankful.

Then I had a call from the provost’s secretary. (The provost is the university official in charge of academic affairs.)

It turned out that Nutcase Student had shown up at Education Professor’s door about 2 a.m. with a knife. She was arrested and spent some time in jail. All faculty members who had had contact with her were being notified that she was now back on the street. And did I want a university security guard to sit in on my class?

I said no. And Nutcase never returned. But when the call came, it was late afternoon, and I felt very alone in my office on the long, echoing corridor.

She was no Cho Seung-Hui. But the pattern was there:

The violence-prone individual is more likely to have enduring personality pathology, such as a paranoid, schizoid, narcissistic, or antisocial personality, and a long history of difficult interpersonal relationships. He may ruminate about perceived slights or injustices for months or even years.

The counseling office cannot help someone who does not want help. Faculty members get no more advice beyond, “Be careful.” And, ironically, the advent of new psychotropic medications mean that more mentally disturbed people can sign up for higher education. They can get government-guaranteed loans too, just like the rest of the students.

Dr. Helen ends up regarding this as a civil rights issue–for university staff and other students.

Vulnerability in the classroom

As a college professor with an office across campus from the sheriff’s substation that is supposed to protect us, I have been thinking about the Virginia Tech shootings. (Not the worst in US history, by the way.)

Mostly I have been thinking of Professor Librescu, who acted like a grown-up. Maybe it’s the Israeli connection: many Israelis whom I have met are take-charge people who know that you don’t wait for help to arrive–you do it yourself. Perhaps after what he had lived through, he knew evil coming when he saw it.

This Virginia Tech student, meanwhile, speaks for anyone who who has outgrown their nanny:

First, I never want to have my safety fully in the hands of anyone else, including the police.

Forensic psychologist Helen Smith (correction: Reynolds is her married name) has some thoughts on why “the experts” always want you to give up:

Have you noticed that most of the tips you get in recent years for how to survive a violent crime involve an accompanying psychological maneuver of first trying to make you feel impotent?

Professor Librescu obviously did not lean that way.

I never had to protect my students from a mad gunman. (But today I put a Band-aid on a student’s finger.) But I run the scenarios in my head, and I have been doing that since 1999.

Sex in World Religions & Other Updates

¶ First, here is a better version of the Pagan rosary story, “‘Hail Persephone:’ Pagans Retool the Rosary,” which has a photo and also some of the rosary invocations.

Kimberly Winston’s article was also mentioned at the GetReligion blog on religion and journalism.

¶ My recent post on Carlos Castaneda must have reflected the zeitgeist. “The Dark Legacy of Carlos Castaneda” by Robert Marshall treats him as “the 20th century’s most successful literary trickster.”

Castaneda was viewed by many as a compelling writer, and his early books received overwhelmingly positive reviews. Time called them “beautifully lucid” and remarked on a “narrative power unmatched in other anthropological studies.” They were widely accepted as factual, and this contributed to their success. (Thanks, Jason.)

¶ Those mysterious Etruscans . . . seem to have led lives filled with varied sex. (Site probably NSFW, unless you are a classicist.) These images and texts reflect the upper rungs of Etruscan society, I suspect. (Thanks: 2blowhards.)

¶ In case you forgot, “all acts of love and pleasure” are definitely not Allah’s rituals. In fact, nudity during sex invalidates marriage, says a high-ranking Islamic cleric. Some of his colleagues disagree, saying that nudity is permissible as long as you don’t look at your partner.

Saying the Pagan Rosary

Pagans and the rosary: religion journalist Kimberly Winston examines a spiritual practice and some Pagan material culture.

Fuensanta Plaza, a follower of the Norse gods who lives in Carmel, Calif., says if her house caught fire, the only thing she would run back for would be her pagan prayer beads, dedicated to the god Loki and goddess Sigyn.

“They are extremely important to my spiritual life, and therefore to my life,” she said. Every day, she sits before her home altar and slips them through her fingers one at a time, “very much, presumably, as my Catholic grandmother used to say her rosary every day.”

Yes, I linked to BeliefNet, despite what I and others are starting to think about BeliefNet, where polytheists are not welcome.

But Winston’s story may pop up in some newspapers as well. And she quotes me, yay.

Gallimaufry

¶ Here in Colorado, Rocky Mountain PBS’ group of stations weights their offerings heavily toward programs like Lawrence Welk and Antiques Roadshow. When they really want to be cutting edge, such as during fund drives, they run a John Denver special.

Having once been peripherally connected with the antiques trade, I actually enjoy Antiques Roadshow sometimes. M., however, makes some comment about the “white-shoe crowd” and leaves the room. I wish I had been watching when an Austin Osman Spare painting was discussed. Did anyone mention ceremonial magic and Borough Satyr?

PanGaia managing editor Elizabeth Barrette has a a new poem published in the fantasy webzine Lorelei Signal. She also has a book in the work on writing Pagan spells, poetry, and ritual texts. She reminds us that PanGaia’s fiction-contest deadline is June 24.

¶ This may be just too obvious, but anyway… If you work at an organization that is cyber-security obsessed, where you frequently have to change your network password, why not encode a magical intention into your password? For a writer, something like “Public@tion08”. And, look, it’s a “strong” password with a non-alphanumeric character.

¶ BeliefNet’s Blog Heaven site has been cleansed of non-monotheists. No Buddhist bloggers, no Hindus, no Pagans. And yet I hear that BeliefNet is still trying to get some Pagans to write essays for the main site. Do we even need them, with all the Pagan sites and forums out there?

¶ Stop whatever you are doing and read this. Then bookmark the blog. It is one of the best out there.

Dionysus, Jesus, Castaneda

After watching the BBC take on anthropologist – novelist – sorcerer Carlos Castaneda, M. and I rented another documentary about him. Enigma of a Sorcerer was released in 2002. It is available through Netflix, but it is only for the hardcore student of neo-shamanism as phenomenon.

Since it is only a collection of interviews (including the late Dan Noel), someone had the bright idea to put pulsating “psychedelic” backgrounds behind each talking head. “I need Dramamine,” M. said, turning away from the screen.

Amy Wallace, one of Castaneda’s inner circle of lovers-students in the 1990s and author of a memoir about that time, was another of the persons interviewed.

Watching both videos, however, you see how Castaneda was somehow possessed by Dionysus–just like every other death-defying savior with a circle of women: Krishna, Jesus, Joe Smith, Carl Jung (compare his “valkyries” to Castaneda’s “witches.”) Gurdjieff too, probably.

Soteriology–the various doctrines of salvation–all suggest the story of the God of variousness whose salvific function is well known in the Orphic cult. His name is Dionysus.

So writes David L. Miller (not to be confused with this David Miller) in The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses (1974), a book a little ahead of its time.

All promised the overcoming of death. Castaneda, according to the interviews, offered a non-ordinary death–to disappear “bodily into the Second Attention”–to his followers. After he expired from liver cancer in 1998, at least one of his lovers went alone to Death Valley, where her bones were later found. Three of the “witches,” Florinda Donner Grau, Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs, also killed themselves, Wallace claims. But she offers no details as to when and how–she just thinks that they must have done so.

Actually, had the BBC wanted to do real journalism, they could have found out who cashes the royalty checks from all of Castaneda’s books. I assume that they go to Cleargreen, Inc., the organization that he set up to incorporate his teaching methods.

Castaneda even has his own “Saint Paul,” Victor Sanchez, who fills the role of the person who never met the Teacher but who claims to be passing on his methods.

Maybe the woman we call Mary Magdalene was either a composite figure or possibly only one of a group of her Dionysian teacher’s intimates. There could be a book there . . .