How many biodegradable plastic bags can dance on the head of a pin? Why, let’s ask the Holy Synod of the Park Slope Co-Op, which met in an intense conclave last night. A reader sends this live-tweeted account of the interminable meeting. It is horrible. It is hilarious. You must read it at once.

Honestly, I would rather survive on genetically-modified Cheetos and Mountain Dew purchased at the 7-Eleven than have to buy food from these people.

Emily Esfahani Smith remembers Johnny Cash’s spirituality:

“I don’t compromise my religion,” Cash once declared. “If I’m with someone who doesn’t want to talk about it, I don’t talk about it. I don’t impose myself on anybody in any way, including religion. When you’re imposing you’re offending, I feel. Although I am evangelical, and I’ll give the message to anyone that wants to hear it, or anybody that is willing to listen. But if they let me know that they don’t want to hear it, they ain’t never going to hear it from me. If I think they don’t want to hear it, then I will not bring it up. “

In short, “telling others is part of our faith all right, but the way we live it speaks louder than we can say it,” Cash said. “The gospel of Christ must always be an open door with a welcome sign for all. “

“There’s nothing hypocritical about it,” Cash told Rolling Stone scribe Anthony DeCurtis. “There is a spiritual side to me that goes real deep, but I confess right up front that I’m the biggest sinner of them all.” To Cash, even his near deadly bout with drug addiction contained a crucial spiritual element. “I used drugs to escape, and they worked pretty well when I was younger. But they devastated me physically and emotionally—and spiritually … [they put me] in such a low state that I couldn’t communicate with God. There’s no lonelier place to be. I was separated from God, and I wasn’t even trying to call on Him. I knew that there was no line of communication. But He came back. And I came back.”

And while his body suffered under the strain wrought by years of abuse, Cash’s mind stayed strong … and his spirit stayed stronger.

“Being a Christian isn’t for sissies,” Cash said once. “It takes a real man to live for God–a lot more man than to live for the devil, you know? If you really want to live right these days, you gotta be tough.” What’s more, he’s intimately aware of the hard truths about living God’s way: “If you’re going to be a Christian, you’re going to change. You’re going to lose some old friends, not because you want to, but because you need to.”

“Being a Christian isn’t for sissies.” Can you imagine a pop star saying that today in our metrosexual culture? Which brings me to another point: just as Cash’s spirituality is starkly present in his songs, so is his smoldering manliness–two qualities that could stand to make a comeback among our popular singers and songwriters today.

In Wired, Jonah Lehrer brings us news from the future:

This new model of memory isn’t just a theory—neuroscientists actually have a molecular explanation of how and why memories change. In fact, their definition of memory has broadened to encompass not only the cliché cinematic scenes from childhood but also the persisting mental loops of illnesses like PTSD and addiction—and even pain disorders like neuropathy. Unlike most brain research, the field of memory has actually developed simpler explanations. Whenever the brain wants to retain something, it relies on just a handful of chemicals. Even more startling, an equally small family of compounds could turn out to be a universal eraser of history, a pill that we could take whenever we wanted to forget anything.

And researchers have found one of these compounds.

In the very near future, the act of remembering will become a choice.

Read the whole thing.  If you’ve ever known anyone debilitated by painful memories — of trauma, of abuse, etc. — you will grasp instantly what a godsend this kind of therapy could be. However, there is enormous potential for political manipulation, a fact so obvious it hardly needs elaboration here.

The more interesting philosophical question Lehrer article raises, at least for me, is how memory defines our character. I know people whose characters have been warped by the pain of indelible memories. Holding those memories in their minds has not been character-building at all, but to a certain extent character-destroying. To have these memories erased would be the psychological equivalent of setting a broken bone so it can heal. And yet, it is perhaps a more common experience for us to learn from painful experiences, and to build our character. Paul Fussell, whose book “The Great War and Modern Memory” explored the way British literary figures “remembered” their experiences of World War I created Modernism, once told the NEA president that an especially terrible memory of his World War II experience was useful to him:

Hackney: You write in one of your essays — your essay “My War” in The Boy Scout Handbook and Other Observations, which is a wonderful collection — you say toward the end of that essay, “Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.”

Fussell: They have experienced secretly and privately their natural human impulse toward sadism and brutality. As I say in this new book of mine, not merely did I learn to kill with a noose of piano wire put around somebody’s neck from behind, but I learned to enjoy the prospect of killing that way. It’s those things that you learn about yourself that you never forget. You learn that you have much wider dimensions than you had imagined before you had to fight a war. That’s salutary. It’s well to know exactly who you are so you can conduct the rest of your life properly.

If you take a pill to forget who you are — at least a troubling part of who you are — will you be able to conduct the rest of your life properly? Isn’t it also the case that some people are not able to conduct their lives properly because the power of a particular memory debilitates them? What is “properly”?

If someone offered me a pill to take away one memory, or set of related memories, I would be tempted to “forget” those two years in high school when I was bullied. But I don’t think I would, in the end, take the pill. For one thing, if I hadn’t had that experience, I think it would have left me a lot less empathetic, and aware of my own capacity for cruelty. I struggle with selfishness, and the memory of what it is like to be a mistreated outsider often calls me to reconsider my position and behavior.

Besides, a wonderful — almost miraculous — thing happened after my sister died. I don’t know how this happened or why this happened — well, I kind of know, but I think it is above all a gift of grace: the emotional pain those memories caused me was taken away. I remember the exact moment I became aware of this. I was driving home from work in Philadelphia on a rainy afternoon, not long after we had returned from the funeral. I was about to turn onto a particular road, and for some reason my hometown came to mind. For the first time in forever, my stomach didn’t clench, and I realized that whatever had been there for 27 years to make me behave that way was no longer present. It was gone. I burst into tears and thanked God, aloud, and thanked Ruthie.

If I had been able to take a pill and erase those memories, perhaps I would have been able to have moved back home a lot sooner. But my homecoming wouldn’t have had the meaning it did, or be as full of unmerited grace as it has been. If I had been 30 years old, and offered this pill, I would have taken it for this memory. At 45, though, I am glad it didn’t exist for me then.

Are there any memories you would be tempted to erase with a pill? Would you do so? Why or why not?

Tina Korbe notes that a young woman of low morals and even lower dignity complained to Congress that she and her Hoya sistren are suffering terribly from a lack of subsidized contraception. Excerpt:

“Forty percent of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy (Georgetown student insurance not covering contraception),” Fluke reported.

It costs a female student $3,000 to have protected sex over the course of her three-year stint in law school, according to her calculations.

“Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school,” Fluke told the hearing.

Korbe observes:

What Fluke is arguing, then, is that her fellow law students have a right to consequence-free sex whenever, wherever. Why, exactly, especially if it costs other people something? When I can’t pay for something, I do without it. Fortunately, in the case of contraception, women can make lifestyle choices that render it unnecessary.

At one point, Fluke mentions a friend who felt “embarrassed and powerless” when she learned her insurance didn’t cover contraception. Can you imagine how proud and empowered that same friend would be if she learned she has the ability to resist her own sexual urges? We can only assume she doesn’t know that because Fluke and she both labor under the illusion that contraception is a medical necessity.

Yeah you right, Tina Korbe. Is there anything more embarrassing than going whining to Congress — to Congress! — about the gross injustice of your Catholic university not subsidizing your extramarital sex life? Is this what bourgeois feminism has come to? The sense of entitlement here galls.

A BBC feature writer without enough to think about worries that we’re losing bad movies.  Excerpt:

In his Purdue University class on bad films, assistant professor Lance Duerfahrd screens old science fiction movies, 1950s health-and-hygenie films and other poorly-produced films. They come complete with bad special effects, actors forgetting their lines and props missing from one cut to the next.

These obvious flaws can provide viewers with a different experience than that of a well-made movie.

“There’s some room for play and room for unexpected delights,” Mr Duerfahrd says. “Most films force-feed us.”

Wait, what? Do you know how much it costs to go to Purdue? If you live in state, $23,500; out-of-staters pay $42,500. If I were bleeding out that kind of money for my kid to go to Purdue, I would shoot his damn laptop if he signed up for a class about bad films. I mean, J.C. from Vicksburg!

(I have officially become my father. Just so you know.)

The philosopher John Mark Reynolds, founder and director of the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola, is moving to Houston Baptist University to become its provost. Why is this so interesting, at least to me? Two reasons:

1) JMR is a convert to Orthodox Christianity. An Orthodox Christian is going to be one of the top figures at a Baptist university in Texas. Think about that.

2) He was recruited by HBU president Robert Sloan, a far-thinking Baptist who had to leave the presidency of Baylor because of internal  Baylor/Texas Baptist politics, but who managed in his tenure to bring some high-caliber Roman Catholic intellectual firepower (e.g., Thomas Hibbs) to Waco. Sloan is a man who understands better than many in religious higher education the cultural situation Christians find themselves in,  and why creative alliances with small-o orthodox Christians — Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox — have to be made. He’s just hired as his provost another Christian intellectual who gets it.

Half past eight here in the Great State, and Michigan results are still coming in. It’s looking like Romney might pull this out in a squeaker. Via Andrew Sullivan, this observation by Allahpundit:

[W]hat, if anything, could convince Romney to drop out? If he underperforms on Super Tuesday, would that do it? What about the primaries after that? I find myself wondering more and more why he’s so determined to win when he receives so much negative feedback at every turn. He has few passionate supporters and many passionate detractors; he has no big cause or grand issue that animates him; his victories are owed chiefly to carpet-bombing his rivals with negative ads rather than stirring up enthusiasm for his candidacy. It’s almost a test of wills with the base, or some sort of exceptionally complex organizational problem he’s determined to solve. Is Mitt so skillful a manager that he can propel a candidacy built on virtually nothing to the Republican nomination despite resolute opposition from activists?

There’s no reason for Romney to drop out. He’s got the most delegates, and barring some Super Tuesday shocker, will continue to pile up the most delegates. Why should he drop out? Still, the overall point here is sound. The only real passion in this GOP race seems to come from people who can’t stand Romney. He doesn’t seem to really believe in anything, except “America,” and in his own capacity to be president. What’s the point of his candidacy?

The enthusiasm level of the Republican base this fall is going to make Bob Dole’s ’96 campaign look like the Beatles’ 1964 American tour.

UPDATE: CNN gives it to Romney. No surprise there, given that I’ve been listening to Santorum babble for about 10 minutes about his family, and then flyover country, without mentioning tonight’s race. So, good for Romney, I guess.

David Mills at First Things posted links today to films about Pope Michael, a Kansas farm boy who lives with his Mama, name of Tickie, and  thinks he is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. After being booted out of an SSPX Traditionalist Catholic seminary, he and five followers, including his parents, decided to hold a conclave in 1990, in a thrift store, and boom, Pope Michael. (Half the electors have since left and formed a splinter sect.) After doing a 10-minute short, the filmmakers later made a 74-minute full-length documentary about this guy and his followers (website here). It’s strange and fascinating; you can watch it here:

Catholic blogger Mark Shea, who is generally conservative in his opinions, cuts loose on Santorum for denouncing Obama’s desire that more Americans go to college. Excerpt:

Time was when Catholics (who, you know, *invented* the university) worked and saved and struggled so that their kids could get through college. Now you have guys like Santorum talking like dimestore Protestant preachers denouncing them fancy pants college boys with their degrees and championing the glories of Know Nothingism as a moral virtue.

Being learned and proud is a grave spiritual danger, as the Pharisees show. But the cure for it is not to be ignorant and proud, and that is what Santorum is encouraging. And for what? To truckle to his audience’s burning sense of resentment in order to grab for power.

He’s right, of course, and again, this is why Santorum is so frustrating. There is an excellent appeal to be made to blue-collar voters who are being ground down by the economy, and whose prospects are dimming. There’s a lot that can be said for vocational training and other alternatives to college. A smart candidate could go at this any number of ways — ways that give people reason to hope, not to hate. But Santorum has a gift for being able to find the dumbest and the nastiest ways. Ignorant and proud, aye. He is by no means a foolish man, but his temperament is increasingly repulsive.