Review: A History of Pagan Europe

Moving right along in my autumn reading spree, I just finished A History of Pagan Europe by Prudence Jones & Nigel Pennick.

I'm going to start right off with the book's major weakness: Because so many centuries and so much territory was crammed into a relatively short volume, the text had a tendency to degenerate into a list of dates and events. Also, for the same reasons, the book was able to do little more than summarize traditions and pantheons, without giving more depth to cultural context. In addition, some of the illustrations were downright irrelevant. Their captions offered little information, and many of them were never even mentioned in the main body of the text, so they served no purpose.

On the other hand, the book had a few notable strengths. For one thing, this history of paganism was not offered through the lens of a Christian bias, yet doesn't seem to project modern Neo-Pagan concepts on ancient traditions. This is remarkably refreshing. Also, the book addresses more than simply classical Greek and Roman practices and Celtic practices. I found the second half of the book much more interesting than the first half because of its glimpses into societies and traditions that aren't covered ad nauseam elsewhere. Another virtue of the text is that, unlike many Christian-biased histories, it does not portray the displacement of official paganism by official Christianity as a simple clear-cut event; rather, the sometimes lengthy persistence of many folk practices through time is given proper acknowledgement (without being unduly portrayed as the continuance of a formal pagan priesthood through the ages). Lastly, the book illustrates the roots of some not-so-obvious remnants of folk religion in modern culture.

All-in-all, I would recommend this book as a basic overview for readers who have not already engaged in any in-depth study of pre-Christian religion in Europe. If you're pretty grounded in Celtic or classical Greco-Roman culture, the latter half of the book still has value for you as it addresses Germanic and Slavic religion and the interaction of those cultures with the better-known Celtic and Greco-Roman traditions.

Women's Bodies Are So Gross!

You Should Fear The Barbie Crotch | xoJane: Really, there isn't a whole lot I can add to this brilliant article, except that you shouldn't read it if you're squeamish about lady bits, and you should definitely read it if you own a set of lady bits.

Also, the woman that designed this stupid product has clearly never heard of how our paleolithic ancestors revered vulva for their life-giving power. If she had, maybe she wouldn't be so ashamed of her own that she has to try to make herself feel better by telling other women to be ashamed of theirs.

As for me, I can only strive daily to not buy into this culture of self-loathing. I can only tell myself as often as possible that there is nothing wrong with my face, hair, figure, or sexual organs that needs to be "fixed" by anything I can buy at a store. And if I'm going to cave on something, it's going to be a bottle of nail polish, not a designer anti-cameltoe apparatus.

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4 Reasons the United States Postal Service Blows

1) The Postal Service doesn't do the job. Not a day goes by that I don't hear someone complaining about a package that was lost, bills delivered to the wrong house, or time-sensitive material arriving too late. If I'm the one who happens to be complaining, every single person I complain to can sympathize. I don't know a single person who thinks the Postal Service does a good job. Even most postal employees I know won't look me in the eye and say they think the USPS does good work. There are two kinds of people in relation to the Postal Service; people who know the post office sucks but that we should keep it because there's no alternative, and people who know the post office sucks and think we should give it the ax so we can create some good alternatives.

2) The Postal Service doesn't even care that it sucks. Have you tried to get some good customer service from USPS lately? Call their 800 number to complain that your carrier didn't even attempt to deliver your parcel. Leave a note for your carrier to please stop delivering mail that goes to the people who lived in your house five years ago. Go talk to the station manager at your local post office about how your carrier is a twit. It's like talking to a brick wall. The folks at the 800 number are more than happy to record your complaint, thank you for calling, and let you know that the manager from your local station will call you. Nothing ever happens, there's never any apology, and the station manager never calls. If you have one of the good carriers, which is about a 50/50 chance, leaving some sort of request in the box might get your issue at least somewhat addressed... until routes are re-assigned or it's your carrier's day off. That, I could live with. If you have the lazy twit carrier (of which there are many), you will be lucky if the worst thing that happens is that the carrier ignores your request. Some carriers will write back on your request with a snide remark. Some will continue delivering mail you have refused. Some will begin intentionally misdelivering or not delivering your mail (a federal offense IF you can prove it). The worst ones will actually damage your parcels (again, a federal offense IF you can prove it) or vandalize your property if they think you're troublesome or if you've been complaining about them (yes, I know of more than one actual occurrence of this). And complaining in person to a station manager? Generally useless, because station managers invariably speak to you as though your request is unreasonable or as though you're too stupid to understand the complex process of delivering the mail.

3) The Postal Service is a money sink. In USPS new employee training, employees are trained to recite the mantra that the USPS has been self-sustaining since 1984. The reason that employees are trained with this little tidbit of knowledge, is specifically for the sake of arguing with customers who might accost the employee and accuse the USPS and its crappy service of being a waste of tax dollars. The employee replies to the accusation that actually, the USPS has been self-sustaining since 1984, and therefore wastes no tax dollars. The problem with this is, the USPS is always in the red and can't even raise enough revenue to pay all of its employees' salaries, so it operates on a massive line of credit from the federal government. That means tax dollars, folks. So even if you are really hardcore and boycott the USPS (which means not sending letters, not subscribing to publications, not ordering Netflix, paying more to send every possible thing by other means), they are still getting money from you one way or another. And they certainly aren't self-sustaining by any stretch of the imagination (though they are correct in saying that they have been legally mandated to be self-sustaining since 1984).

4) The USPS abuses its employees. Take a survey of postal employees someday and find out how many clerks and carriers there are that haven't had job-related injuries. Out of postal employees that have worked for the USPS for more than 10 years, find out how many aren't needing surgery from a permanent job-related injury. There aren't many. And why is that? Because the USPS bullies its employees into rushing when it isn't safe to do so, and into working when they're hurt. And once there is a serious injury, USPS supervisors try to find some reason to blame the employee for the injury and write them up (a letter carrier can get written up if they are the victim of a dog attack, for example). And then the supervisor tries to bully the employee into not filing a workman's comp claim. The supervisors pressure the employee to see the USPS-provided doctor (who is paid by the USPS and therefore will nearly always declare that the injury is not serious and that the employee can get back to work right away). And then, if the employee insists on filing a workman's comp claim and seeing a competent doctor, the supervisor will get in the employee's face and scream that the employee is obviously not really hurt and is trying to scam the USPS.

I think those are four pretty good reasons to hate the USPS. Congress should repeal the law that bans price competition with USPS, and then stop all government subsidies. The USPS would then be forced to become competitive in the areas of quality and customer service. The USPS would probably have to cut jobs in the process (they're doing that anyway), but the startups that would be jumping to compete with it would be creating jobs, many of which would end up going to experienced former postal workers anyway. And I wouldn't have to sit here writing rants against the freaking USPS.

Review: The Fossil Trail

I went on a birthday book-buying binge (oooh, alliteration!), so I expect to be writing up a few book reviews in the near future. The first one is now!

I just finished The Fossil Trail: How We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution by Ian Tattersall, who is currently with the American Museum of Natural History. It's the revised edition of a book first released in 1995. I would rate the reading as being on the level of a college-level introductory paleoanthropology course. Having never done any previous reading on the subject matter before, I still found Tattersall's explanations relatively easy to follow.

One thing I noticed throughout the book is that it is rife with typos. The book otherwise seemed to be of pretty decent quality, but the missing letters and duplicate letters ran rampant throughout the book, and it got pretty irritating after a while. Tattersall also seemed to have a bit of trouble organizing his material, with a large number of instances of "more on that later," but that could simply be due to the complexity of subject matter being squeezed into one volume. It can also be difficult to keep up with the large number of fossil specimens specifically dealt with in the text. The additional chapters added for the second edition, though, did a pretty good job of bringing the text up to speed with current developments in the field, and I thought Tattersall's treatment of the subject matter was pretty enlightening and thought-provoking.

Some thoughts this book brought to mind:

1) I hadn't truly realized how young the science of paleoanthropology is, nor how arbitrary species classification is. Really, when I began to comprehend how much uncertainty riddles the field, I almost began to have some idea of how there are people in the world who can still militantly oppose the idea of evolution. I say "almost," because with some of those people, I'm pretty sure that even if there were no uncertainty in the field, they would be just as militant in their objections anyway.

2) The book addresses the fact that species classification is only possible because of gaps in the fossil record, which reminds me of an article I read some time ago that discussed offspring always being the same species as the parents... so presumably, if there were no gaps in the fossil record, there would theoretically only be one species from us all the way back to our point of origin. The same would be true of every other species on the planet. Then, theoretically, by this reasoning, if we all descended from some common single-celled organism, we would all have to be classified as the same species. That possibility puts me in mind of the Native American "all my relations" concept of all living things being our brethren. It was a profound moment in my reading. I had to sit the book down and process that idea for a minute before I went on. That one train of thought alone made it worthwhile for me to pick up this book on impulse off the table at Half Price Books.

Overall, I really enjoyed this read, and would recommend it to anyone who gets into science, anthropology, human evolution, and the like. I would particularly recommend it to folks who are interested in those topics but don't have a previous background in studying those topics. If you've studied the subject matter already, this overview of the development of the field of paleoanthropology may be a bit too basic for you.

The More Words You Write, the Better the Chances That Some Don't Suck

What It Takes To Write Like Francis Ford Coppola | The Write Practice: A good tidbit of advice to keep in mind, for those of us who beat ourselves up daily for our creative failings. I'm going to have to pin this up on the wall and meditate on it daily... when I'm not busy writing all those millions of words, of course.

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Placebo Effect: Power of the Mind

The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect: There have been tons of studies about the Placebo Effect, and it always shocks me that people ignore the obvious. Researchers always find the results weird and baffling, and many people ridicule folks who are "tricked" into thinking they're feeling better because of a placebo. But new-agers and pagans out there don't so much as bat an eye at things like this. Is it because they're cuckoo, or because they simply accept the power of the mind to manifest an outcome? And while we're on the placebo topic... Do conventional medicines become less effective if the patient is told that it's a placebo? I'd like to know if any of the success medicines enjoy is because we believe docs when they tell us a medicine will work.

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Up With Cholesterol, Down With Iron

New Study: Women With Higher Cholesterol Live Longer | AnthonyColpo: Aside from the article being both informative and humorous, it brings to mind a few thoughts.

1) We as a society are so into polarity and extremes, that we are destroying ourselves with it. Everything is either soooo awesome, it's a miracle cure and you should eat it every meal every day; or it's horribly bad, causing cancer and you should never allow it into your home. In most things, I'm not given to this sort of extremism, as I haven't experienced anything in the world to be so black-and-white. Moderation is the key to health and happiness.

2) Putting your faith in a quick-fix pill for ANY kind of health problem is almost always a mistake. Many pharmaceuticals have side effects worse than the symptoms they're designed to treat. And make no mistake, pills do just that: treat symptoms. They do not cure underlying causes or rectify the imbalances that caused your problem in the first place, so even if a drug seems to be "working," you've likely just stuck a Band-Aid on your problem. Nothing replaces improving your health through lifestyle changes.

3) Doctors do not always know what's best for you. Passively accepting everything a doctor tells you and popping the little pills is doing yourself a serious disservice. Yes, doctors are trained specialists. But there is more to know about health and medicine than can be squeezed into any one doctor's head. And health knowledge changes at a pace that no one can adequately keep up with. You certainly can't expect your doctor to have all the latest and greatest info about every little thing that's ailing you. You should be your own best health expert. Besides, most doctors these days are ruled by the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies. Listen to what your doc has to say, but then apply your own reason and research.

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Some Bloggers Are Hard to Follow

OK, most people who blog, also read a lot of blogs. And it can be really hard to keep up with all of those blogs. Everybody has a favorite method of doing so. I feel that subscribing by email is sort of old-peopleish, but some folks really love it and won't have it any other way. So why, WHY, would any blogger only offer one method of following when there are so many different methods available? Most are relatively easy to implement on your blog, too (at least, I have had NO trouble implementing the desired tools on Blogger or on my self-hosted Wordpress blog). Here on my Blogger blog, I had gadgets set up within about 5 minutes that let people follow via email, RSS, NetworkedBlogs, or Google FriendConnect. On my self-hosted Wordpress, I found a number of plugins, or was able to copy and paste code into text widgets, for people to follow me via Facebook, Twitter, RSS, email, and NetworkedBlogs. It's so easy, and by neglecting the available options, a blogger effectively limits their loyal readership. Even if your readership is pretty steady, why would you not want more?

Christian Politics On the Defensive

Rising atheism in America puts 'religious right on the defensive' | World news | The Observer: Well, I think these folks are half right. I think Christianity is on the defensive as the predominant, ruling faith of this country. And for some folks, the words "Christianity" and "religion" seem to be synonymous. They're really not, though. And I have to disagree with the idea that the answer to Christianity's desire to force itself on everyone, is to remove all vestiges of religion from the country completely. What is needed here is true freedom of religion, which includes the right for people to be religionless if they so desire. This means that at some point, Christian politicians and atheist ones alike have to realize that they must separate their spiritual beliefs (or lack thereof) from their political agendas.

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RIFT 1.5 Brings Add-Ons to the Game

RIFT - RIFT 1.5 - Dynamic Fantasy MMORPG: I've been mulling this over for a few days, and I'm still annoyed about it. Ok, most of it, I really don't care about, but just scroll down to the end of the notes. There it is. Add-ons beta. Seriously? Rift has always been a WoW-clone as far as gameplay is concerned, has always been a leveling grind followed by a gear grind, with overly simplistic crafting on the side, but at least up until now, it hasn't been saturated with add-ons. Inevitably, once add-ons are allowed, a change happens. The hardcore elite equip themselves with every add-on possible so that their group can raid as efficiently as possible and go home with the loot as quickly as possible. People who don't use the add-ons can't function at nearly the level that the add-on folks can, so the non-add-on folks are eventually no longer welcome in raid groups. Eventually, the add-on usage is so prevalent in the game, that there is virtually no one (especially at endgame) who isn't using add-ons. At that point, the game is a completely different game than it would be without any add-ons. And then the developers have to go forward under the assumption that everyone is using add-ons, and design the game around add-on usage. At that point, the game has gone from "add-ons allowed," to "add-ons required." And it pisses me off.

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