When I read Genesis 26, it's deja vu all over again. This is a rehash of a story about Father of Multitudes, only ths time with He Laughs and To Bind in the lead roles. There's a famine, so He Laughs takes his entourage to Gerar, still ruled by the same king that Father of Multitudes made a pact with. God promises He Laughs that his descendants will be multitudes, that his seed will be a blessing, all on account of Father of Multitudes' obedience to God's law. Oh, and the land of the Philistines, including Gerar would belong to his successors.
Anyway, He Laughs pulls the old "She's my sister not my wife" trick just like his old man. The King of Gerar is on to him though and upbraids him for exposing people to sin because someone might have lain with To Bind. This is an interesting concept of sin, a kind of strict liablity in which intent plays no part. So far in these stories, screwing another man's wife is one of the few sins that have been enumerated. Don't kill people, unless God tells you to, and don't consume blood are the other two rules. I almost forgot genital mutilation. Following the law in those days wasn't too complicated.
He Laughs prospers and grows so strong that the King of Gerar asks him to leave, so he settles in the valley. He continued to have conflict with the locals over water rights, but he and the King of Gerar make a peace pact just as had been done with Father of Multitudes.
He Finishes marries a couple of Hittite women. Evidently, He Laughs and To Bind didn't like them.
Chapter 27 is a tale of unmitigated douchebaggery. He Laughs is old and blind and reckons the hand of death is nigh, so he sends He Finishes out to get him some game for stew after which he plans to give He Finishes his blessing. To Bind has Supplanter fetch kids so she can make a savory dish. She puts the kids' skins on Supplanter so that he can pass for the hirstute He Finishes when he goes in and steals the blessing. Supplanter holds himself out as He Finishes even when He Laughs expresses doubts (after all, the voice is Supplanter's). He even lies about how God provided the game when He Laughs questions him about he got it so quickly. Under false pretenses then, He Laughs bestows his blessing on Supplanter and allows as how he will be the master of his kin and that his brothers will serve him.
He Finishes then comes in with the game stew and asks for the blessing. Alas, it has already been bestowed on the deceiver and there's nothing for it. He Laughs gives He Finishes the crappiest blessing ever, to wit that he would live away for the fertility of the earth and the dew of heaven and would serve his brother. As a sop he gets some day to break his brother's yoke from his neck.
Understandably, He Finishes is in a fratricidal mood. To Bind tells Supplanter to go hide out in her brother's house in Haran until everything blows over.
I reckon He Laughs must have wanted to bless Supplanter all along, that he must have known that there was a subterfuge. Once again, the cadet screws over the first born, and it doesn't seem right to me at all. Either way, these patriarchs are not to be trusted. They're shameless liars and grifters, and I would not hold any of them out as a role model so far in the story.
I notice that God doesn't show up so much with He Laughs as he did with Father of Multitudes. He doesn't play an active role in the deceptions of Supplanter and there doesn't seem to be much of an effort to lend the imprimatur of divine approval to them.
The moral of the story is get the blessing up front before you go hunting for stew meat.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Health Insurance
I'm in the market for health insurance. I'm self employed and Mrs Vache Folle is probably going to become self employed in the near future. COBRA from her job will cost more than a grand a month and will be short term only. What I'd like to get is something with low monthly premiums and a high deductible that would kick in if something catastrophic happens. We can handle routine office visits and prescriptions out of pocket and still come out ahead. It's the hospitalizations and scary diseases that we have to protect against, not the routine care.
But I'm finding it really hard to shop for individual insurance. Other insurance is easy to understand and compare and get quotes. Health insurance is a morass. Maybe the health care reform bill will help by making health insurance more transparent. It could happen.
I read the summary of the House bill, and it looks pretty good unless you're a health insurer. Apparently, one problem with the public option that many opponents have is that it is too good and will drive private insurers out of business. Seeing as how the public plan has to pay for itself with premiums just like the other plans and seeing as how private companies are said to be better than government agencies, I don't see what the private insurers have to worry about from the public option.
But I'm finding it really hard to shop for individual insurance. Other insurance is easy to understand and compare and get quotes. Health insurance is a morass. Maybe the health care reform bill will help by making health insurance more transparent. It could happen.
I read the summary of the House bill, and it looks pretty good unless you're a health insurer. Apparently, one problem with the public option that many opponents have is that it is too good and will drive private insurers out of business. Seeing as how the public plan has to pay for itself with premiums just like the other plans and seeing as how private companies are said to be better than government agencies, I don't see what the private insurers have to worry about from the public option.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Genesis 24 and 25
In Genesis 24, Father of Multitudes extracts an oath from his steward to find a wife for He laughs from among Father of Multitudes' kinfolk. The steward takes ten camels to the city of Nahor and asks God for a sign, to wit, that a woman who offers to water his camels would be the one who would be the wife of He Laughs. Such a woman, To Bind, appears and fulfills the sign. What's more she's the grandniece of father of Multitudes, a young maiden still a virgin and comely. To Bind's family grants hospitality to the steward who tells him of his oath and the sign that To Bind had fulflled. He asks for To Bind to return with him to be He Laugh's wife. And that's what happened.
This chapter is interesting mainly for the narrative form. The steward repeats the entire part about the oath, the sign and his earlier conversation with To Bind, and the author writes them all out instead of simply referring back to them. Perhaps this was how the bards who transmitted the stories orally had done it, and ths would have been a way to reinforce significant parts of the story. No Canaanite wife for He Laughs, thank you very much, and none from Ur of the Chaldees. This marriage was made in heaven.
In Chapter 25, the widowed Father of Multitudes takes a third wife and begat children, but He laughs was the only heir. Father of Multitudes dies and is buried by Princess. Then follows genealogical remarks about the descendants of Ishmael, including twelve princes.
To Bind becomes pregnant with twins about whom God tells her "the older shall serve the younger" and that they shall be two nations. He Finishes comes out first, all red and hairy, and Supplanter follows with his hand on his older brother's heel. He Finishes becomes a hunter and the favorite of He laughs, whereas Supplanter was the beloved of To Bind.
One day He Finishes comes in from the field hungry and begs Supplanter for some red stew that Supplanter has made. Supplanter makes He Finishes sell him his birthright for the stew. He Finishes gets the nickname Red Stuff from this episode. I doubt that He Finishes thought Supplanter was serious, and Supplanter comes off pretty douchy in the story. Then again, I'm a firstborn.
This chapter is interesting mainly for the narrative form. The steward repeats the entire part about the oath, the sign and his earlier conversation with To Bind, and the author writes them all out instead of simply referring back to them. Perhaps this was how the bards who transmitted the stories orally had done it, and ths would have been a way to reinforce significant parts of the story. No Canaanite wife for He Laughs, thank you very much, and none from Ur of the Chaldees. This marriage was made in heaven.
In Chapter 25, the widowed Father of Multitudes takes a third wife and begat children, but He laughs was the only heir. Father of Multitudes dies and is buried by Princess. Then follows genealogical remarks about the descendants of Ishmael, including twelve princes.
To Bind becomes pregnant with twins about whom God tells her "the older shall serve the younger" and that they shall be two nations. He Finishes comes out first, all red and hairy, and Supplanter follows with his hand on his older brother's heel. He Finishes becomes a hunter and the favorite of He laughs, whereas Supplanter was the beloved of To Bind.
One day He Finishes comes in from the field hungry and begs Supplanter for some red stew that Supplanter has made. Supplanter makes He Finishes sell him his birthright for the stew. He Finishes gets the nickname Red Stuff from this episode. I doubt that He Finishes thought Supplanter was serious, and Supplanter comes off pretty douchy in the story. Then again, I'm a firstborn.
Genesis 22 and 23: God Tests Father of Multitudes, and Princess Dies
Chapter 22 looks to me to be a completely different story about the Covenant or a sign that God was playing Father of Multitudes. Here God "tests" His chosen man by ordering him to take He Laughs to a mountain and kill him as a human sacrifice and then burn his body on an altar. Father of Multitudes takes his young son He Laughs to the mountain as God has instructed. He laughs asks his old man where the sacrificial animal is, and Father of Multitudes answers that God will provide the lamb. Then Father of Multitudes puts He laughs in a stack of wood and, with a faggot in one hand and a knife in the other, gets set to murder his son.
At the last second, the angel of the Lord calls out and stops Father of Multitudes. God, via the angel, says "for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me." God tells Father of Multitudes that "because you have done this thing", He is going to multiply Father of Multitude's descendants and make his seed a blessing to all nations. A ram is found conveniently nearby and slaughtered for the entertainment of God. The chapter finishes with some genealogical remarks about Father of Multitude's brother's family. (I would be surprised if anyone ever gave a sermon centered on verses 20-24. It could be funny what with names like Uz and Buz and Kemuel and Chesed and Hazo and Pildash and Jidlaph.)
Hadn't God already made the promise to Father of Multitudes? Was He about to renege on it, or is this just a case of a series of related stories having been jumbled together? Why wouldn't God know that Father of Multitudes feared Him? The God of Father of Multitudes does not appear to have developed omniscience yet. Also, He Laughs is referred to as Father of Multitudes' "only" son when we know that He Laughs has an older brother Ishmael.
I get the impression that human sacrifice was not unheard of in those days since Father of Multitudes doesn't seem shocked about it. How did he explain these actions to He Laughs, and how much therapy did He Laughs require after his father set out to kill him?
Chapter 23 is taken up with the death of Princess and arrangements for her burial.
At the last second, the angel of the Lord calls out and stops Father of Multitudes. God, via the angel, says "for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me." God tells Father of Multitudes that "because you have done this thing", He is going to multiply Father of Multitude's descendants and make his seed a blessing to all nations. A ram is found conveniently nearby and slaughtered for the entertainment of God. The chapter finishes with some genealogical remarks about Father of Multitude's brother's family. (I would be surprised if anyone ever gave a sermon centered on verses 20-24. It could be funny what with names like Uz and Buz and Kemuel and Chesed and Hazo and Pildash and Jidlaph.)
Hadn't God already made the promise to Father of Multitudes? Was He about to renege on it, or is this just a case of a series of related stories having been jumbled together? Why wouldn't God know that Father of Multitudes feared Him? The God of Father of Multitudes does not appear to have developed omniscience yet. Also, He Laughs is referred to as Father of Multitudes' "only" son when we know that He Laughs has an older brother Ishmael.
I get the impression that human sacrifice was not unheard of in those days since Father of Multitudes doesn't seem shocked about it. How did he explain these actions to He Laughs, and how much therapy did He Laughs require after his father set out to kill him?
Chapter 23 is taken up with the death of Princess and arrangements for her burial.
Democrats Right to Appear to Seek Bipartisanship
I get the feeling that some folks in the liberal blogosphere are frustrated with President Obama and the democratic Congress. Why aren't they using their power to enact a sweeping progressive agenda? Why are they bothering with bipartisanship instead of ignoring the irrelevant GOP?
I reckon it's because the politicians know that despite everything the GOP is doing to render itself irrelevant and to become a regional coalition of various nutjob constituencies, it still got almost as many votes for the frightening McCain-Palin ticket as the Obama-Biden ticket got. Seriously, tens of millions of people voted for the GOP. Not just the nutjobs. Other dupes by the trainload went to the polls and pulled the lever for the party of evil and incompetence.
Obama was elected by some 20% of Americans. McCain got a few percentage points fewer. About 60% of Americans didn't vote either because they weren't allowed to or they didn't care to. That 60% contains a few principled non-voters, but it's mostly comprised of the indifferent, apathetic and misinformed, and the GOP might hit on some dumbass talking point that resonates with enough of them to get them off their asses and to the polls. It doesn't matter how odious the GOP really is, because these folks won't know about it.
I reckon it's because the politicians know that despite everything the GOP is doing to render itself irrelevant and to become a regional coalition of various nutjob constituencies, it still got almost as many votes for the frightening McCain-Palin ticket as the Obama-Biden ticket got. Seriously, tens of millions of people voted for the GOP. Not just the nutjobs. Other dupes by the trainload went to the polls and pulled the lever for the party of evil and incompetence.
Obama was elected by some 20% of Americans. McCain got a few percentage points fewer. About 60% of Americans didn't vote either because they weren't allowed to or they didn't care to. That 60% contains a few principled non-voters, but it's mostly comprised of the indifferent, apathetic and misinformed, and the GOP might hit on some dumbass talking point that resonates with enough of them to get them off their asses and to the polls. It doesn't matter how odious the GOP really is, because these folks won't know about it.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Spam
I've had it up to here with spams about Acai berry, penis enlargement, replica watches, Viagra, and diplomas on-line. Seriously, does anyone ever respond to this stuff? If they do, let's kill them.
Our Weekend in Manhattan
Mrs Vache Folle and I spent the weekend in Manhattan. We stayed at the Hilton on 54th and 6th (I got a good rate because I agreed to sit through a time share pitch). We ate at Sinegual in midtown on Friday. It was great high end Mexican cuisine. I had a lobster enchilada and a couple of killer margaritas. And a chile relleno. Then we went to Campbell's apartment( some guy named Campbell used to have this kick ass apartment in Grand Central Station and now it's a bar). I had the gayest drink ever made.
On Saturday, we ate at a deli (pastrami hash and eggs for me) and visited the Folk Art Museum. This featured a visiting collection of wood carvings by Savannah barber Ulysses Davis. Also, there was a remarkable display of "kaleidoscope quilts" comprised of thousands of tiny slivers of fabric in intricate symmetrical patterns.
We also visited the Central Park zoo where my occasional contempt for parents of small children was validated. Note to said parents: If you have a stroller the size of a Buick, don't bring it inside the freaking penguin house or other small spaces full of people. Your kid can't see anything from the stroller anyway and you're going to have to take her/him/them out. Meanwhile, you are inconveniencing everyone else and creating a hazard. And if your child's intellectual capacity is not as well developed as the penguins', why are you bringing them to the penguin house in the first place? The zoo was exhausting, so we rode a pedal cab back to Central Park South.
After a nap, we ate at Maison, a so so Frenchie kind of place on 7th. Then we went to see Round and Round the Garden, one of the plays in The Norman Conquests trilogy. It was hilarious with great perfomances by Jessica Hynes, Amanda Root and the rest of the cast whom I had not heard of before. Celebrities Tyne Daily and the guy who plays Ben Lyons on Lost were in the audience. I stood behind "Ben" as he ordered a bourbon and ginger ale during intermission. I tried this drink later at the hotel so I could be more like my hero, guy who plays Ben.
The NAACP convention was starting at our hotel, so it was a hopping place. It's the 100th anniversary, and President Obama is slated to appear on Thursday.
The time share pitch was masterful and almost a joy to sit through. That's how good these guys were. I could tell they knew Mrs Vache Folle was the decisionmaker because everything was not too subtly pitched to her. We managed to get out without a time share.
On Saturday, we ate at a deli (pastrami hash and eggs for me) and visited the Folk Art Museum. This featured a visiting collection of wood carvings by Savannah barber Ulysses Davis. Also, there was a remarkable display of "kaleidoscope quilts" comprised of thousands of tiny slivers of fabric in intricate symmetrical patterns.
We also visited the Central Park zoo where my occasional contempt for parents of small children was validated. Note to said parents: If you have a stroller the size of a Buick, don't bring it inside the freaking penguin house or other small spaces full of people. Your kid can't see anything from the stroller anyway and you're going to have to take her/him/them out. Meanwhile, you are inconveniencing everyone else and creating a hazard. And if your child's intellectual capacity is not as well developed as the penguins', why are you bringing them to the penguin house in the first place? The zoo was exhausting, so we rode a pedal cab back to Central Park South.
After a nap, we ate at Maison, a so so Frenchie kind of place on 7th. Then we went to see Round and Round the Garden, one of the plays in The Norman Conquests trilogy. It was hilarious with great perfomances by Jessica Hynes, Amanda Root and the rest of the cast whom I had not heard of before. Celebrities Tyne Daily and the guy who plays Ben Lyons on Lost were in the audience. I stood behind "Ben" as he ordered a bourbon and ginger ale during intermission. I tried this drink later at the hotel so I could be more like my hero, guy who plays Ben.
The NAACP convention was starting at our hotel, so it was a hopping place. It's the 100th anniversary, and President Obama is slated to appear on Thursday.
The time share pitch was masterful and almost a joy to sit through. That's how good these guys were. I could tell they knew Mrs Vache Folle was the decisionmaker because everything was not too subtly pitched to her. We managed to get out without a time share.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
I'm not Threatened by Artificial Sperm
Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon links to an article about artificial sperm and discusses the comments at Salon of some men who reckon that this presages the end of men: http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/were_not_all_out_to_get_you/
The reasoning goes that women don't really like men and sex and would, if they could, dispense with men altogether if they didn't need sperm. I suppose that artifical sperm or parthenogenesis would provide women with more options, but I don't see that these technologies would lead to the wholesale abandonment of men. I like to think of myself as more than a life support system for a penis. And I know that Mrs Vache Folle doesn't love me for my sperm. Hell, on the rare occasions when I deliver sperm, she can't wait to get rid of it.
Men have lots of other uses besides sperm production, storage and delivery. We do yardwork, for example. And some women genuinely like us. They would keep us around even if they didn't need our sperm, perhaps as pets.
The reasoning goes that women don't really like men and sex and would, if they could, dispense with men altogether if they didn't need sperm. I suppose that artifical sperm or parthenogenesis would provide women with more options, but I don't see that these technologies would lead to the wholesale abandonment of men. I like to think of myself as more than a life support system for a penis. And I know that Mrs Vache Folle doesn't love me for my sperm. Hell, on the rare occasions when I deliver sperm, she can't wait to get rid of it.
Men have lots of other uses besides sperm production, storage and delivery. We do yardwork, for example. And some women genuinely like us. They would keep us around even if they didn't need our sperm, perhaps as pets.
The Bible is not a History Book or a Science Text
Are the stories in chapters 1-21 true? It depends on what you mean by "true". They are not true in the sense of history. History hadn't been invented yet when these stories were written down. They may be true in a mythological sense in that they seek to deal symbolically with the meaning of things. For the storytellers, everything came from God, was ordained by God, and their people were marked by God to be a blessing to the whole world. It's not important for any of these stories to have actually been lived out by real people. The significance of the stories lies in what they tell us about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or at least what the storytellers thought about Him.
Genesis 20 and 21: The Origin of the Deadbeat Dad
In chapter 20, Father of Multitudes pulls his trick of passing Princess off as his sister (it worked so well in Egypt). The King of Gerar, where Father of Multitudes is hanging out, takes Princess for his own. She must have been one hot ninety year old woman, let me tell you. I'm beginning to suspect that maybe princess was in her thirties or early forties and still looking good. After all, she hadn't entered menopause.
God tells the King of Gerar in a dream that Princess is Father of Multitude's wife and that he had better restore her to her husband. The king asks why Father of Multitudes would pull such a stunt. The answer is that Father of Multitudes was always afraid that someone would kill him on account of his hot wife. Besides, Princess was technically his half sister (he was her brother by another mother), so it wasn't really lying. This tells me that Father of Multitudes didn't put much stock in God's prediction/promise that he would have a good long life.
In chapter 21, Princess gives birth to He Laughs. She asks Father of Multitudes to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael, and God assures him that this is the right thing to do. Don't worry, God says, I will make of Ishmael a great nation. So Father of Multitudes sends Hagar and his oldest son into the wilderness with some bread and a skin of water. They are at the point of death when God's angel intercedes and shows her a well of water. Everything turns out great for Ishmael. He becomes a great archer and marries an Egyptian.
This story hits home for me, not just because it's another story of a breach of male promogeniture. I was abandoned by my father at about the same age as Ishmael, and my father had a son whom he loved and raised at about the same time in my life that He Laughs was born in Ishmael's life. I'm sure a lot of deadbeat dads take comfort in this story. I did okay without a dad. Just like Ishmael.
Anyway the rest of the chapter involves a covenant between Father of Multitudes and the King of Gerar that the King and his progeny will not be treated falsely on account of the kindness the King had shown. Also, they stipulated that Father of Multitudes had dug the well at Beersheba.
What I take from these stories is that Father of Multitudes was kind of a douche, but God chose him anyway.
God tells the King of Gerar in a dream that Princess is Father of Multitude's wife and that he had better restore her to her husband. The king asks why Father of Multitudes would pull such a stunt. The answer is that Father of Multitudes was always afraid that someone would kill him on account of his hot wife. Besides, Princess was technically his half sister (he was her brother by another mother), so it wasn't really lying. This tells me that Father of Multitudes didn't put much stock in God's prediction/promise that he would have a good long life.
In chapter 21, Princess gives birth to He Laughs. She asks Father of Multitudes to get rid of Hagar and Ishmael, and God assures him that this is the right thing to do. Don't worry, God says, I will make of Ishmael a great nation. So Father of Multitudes sends Hagar and his oldest son into the wilderness with some bread and a skin of water. They are at the point of death when God's angel intercedes and shows her a well of water. Everything turns out great for Ishmael. He becomes a great archer and marries an Egyptian.
This story hits home for me, not just because it's another story of a breach of male promogeniture. I was abandoned by my father at about the same age as Ishmael, and my father had a son whom he loved and raised at about the same time in my life that He Laughs was born in Ishmael's life. I'm sure a lot of deadbeat dads take comfort in this story. I did okay without a dad. Just like Ishmael.
Anyway the rest of the chapter involves a covenant between Father of Multitudes and the King of Gerar that the King and his progeny will not be treated falsely on account of the kindness the King had shown. Also, they stipulated that Father of Multitudes had dug the well at Beersheba.
What I take from these stories is that Father of Multitudes was kind of a douche, but God chose him anyway.
Genesis 18 and 19: Sodom and Gomorrah Get Theirs
In chapter 18, God and two angels show up at Father of Multitude's place in human form, and Father of Multitudes feeds them calf, curds and milk, and bread cakes. God repeats the prediction that Princess will bear a son, and Princess laughs at the idea because she is too old. For me the money quote is in verse 18 where God declares that Father of Multitudes will become a populous nation and "in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed". Of course, Father of Multitudes is expected to bring up his children to do righteousness and justice.
God and his angels are on their way to Sodom and Gomorrah to check out rumours about the wickedness of the denizens of those cities and to destroy them if it turns out that they are as wicked as they have heard. Father of Multitudes pleads with God to spare the cities if 500 righteous people may be found in them as it would be unjust to kill the righteous and wicked alike. God agrees, and Father of Multitudes bargains Him down to ten righteous people. As it turns out, there weren't even five righteous people, not even infants or toddlers. Just Lot, his wife and their two daughters, so they were six righteous persons short.
In chapter 19, the two angels arrive at Sodom where Lot meets them and invites them to stay in his house. Presumably God is elsewhere conducting His investigation. Then the Sodomite men show up.
SODOMITES: "Hey, Lot, send out those guys so we can sodomize 'em. We're Sodomites, and that's how we roll."
LOT: "That's wicked. Take my virgin daughters instead and have your way with them. These men are my guests and under my protection."
SODOMITES: "That damned foreigner! Who is he to judge the matter? Let's sodomize him, too."
We'll encounter a similar story later on in the Bible, where women are offered up as substitutes for male guests for gang rape.
The angels rescue Lot and warn him to flee with his family. His prospective sons-in-law refuse to go because they think he's kidding, so just the four of them escape. Mrs Lot turns around to look at the hail of fire and brimstone falling on the cities and turns into a pillar of salt. It's unclear whether this phenomenon was a side effect of the rain of fire or punishment for failing to heed the warning not to look back. I prefer to think it was the former.
Lot and his daughters end up living in a cave. The daughters get him drunk, have sex with him, conceive and bear sons Moab and Ammon, the putative progenitors of the Moabites and Ammonites. I don't know if this was supposed to be an insult to those ethnicities.
Here's how I figure this part of the story came about. The cities of the Jordan Valley were destroyed in some spectacular cataclysmic event, and storytellers attributed it to punishment for wickedness. They put Father of Multitudes and his nephew into the story as a chance to show their concern for justice and their righteousness. There may have been a geologic formation that had the shape of a woman, and this was explained as Lot's unfortunate wife. Given the concept of God that was developing, it would have been very natural to attribute a catastophe to the hand of God. And since God was beginning to be understood as the "judge of the world", it was natural to assume that wickedness was the motivating factor. After all, God wouldn't let cities be destroyed for no reason, would he? If bad things happen to you, it must be because you deserve it.
Note also that God doesn't seem to have developed omniscience at this point since He has to investigate the outcry over the cities of the valley and doesn't know if there are ten righteous people. He also doesn't appear to know what He is going to do. I wonder if Melchizedek was destroyed along with the wicked.
God and his angels are on their way to Sodom and Gomorrah to check out rumours about the wickedness of the denizens of those cities and to destroy them if it turns out that they are as wicked as they have heard. Father of Multitudes pleads with God to spare the cities if 500 righteous people may be found in them as it would be unjust to kill the righteous and wicked alike. God agrees, and Father of Multitudes bargains Him down to ten righteous people. As it turns out, there weren't even five righteous people, not even infants or toddlers. Just Lot, his wife and their two daughters, so they were six righteous persons short.
In chapter 19, the two angels arrive at Sodom where Lot meets them and invites them to stay in his house. Presumably God is elsewhere conducting His investigation. Then the Sodomite men show up.
SODOMITES: "Hey, Lot, send out those guys so we can sodomize 'em. We're Sodomites, and that's how we roll."
LOT: "That's wicked. Take my virgin daughters instead and have your way with them. These men are my guests and under my protection."
SODOMITES: "That damned foreigner! Who is he to judge the matter? Let's sodomize him, too."
We'll encounter a similar story later on in the Bible, where women are offered up as substitutes for male guests for gang rape.
The angels rescue Lot and warn him to flee with his family. His prospective sons-in-law refuse to go because they think he's kidding, so just the four of them escape. Mrs Lot turns around to look at the hail of fire and brimstone falling on the cities and turns into a pillar of salt. It's unclear whether this phenomenon was a side effect of the rain of fire or punishment for failing to heed the warning not to look back. I prefer to think it was the former.
Lot and his daughters end up living in a cave. The daughters get him drunk, have sex with him, conceive and bear sons Moab and Ammon, the putative progenitors of the Moabites and Ammonites. I don't know if this was supposed to be an insult to those ethnicities.
Here's how I figure this part of the story came about. The cities of the Jordan Valley were destroyed in some spectacular cataclysmic event, and storytellers attributed it to punishment for wickedness. They put Father of Multitudes and his nephew into the story as a chance to show their concern for justice and their righteousness. There may have been a geologic formation that had the shape of a woman, and this was explained as Lot's unfortunate wife. Given the concept of God that was developing, it would have been very natural to attribute a catastophe to the hand of God. And since God was beginning to be understood as the "judge of the world", it was natural to assume that wickedness was the motivating factor. After all, God wouldn't let cities be destroyed for no reason, would he? If bad things happen to you, it must be because you deserve it.
Note also that God doesn't seem to have developed omniscience at this point since He has to investigate the outcry over the cities of the valley and doesn't know if there are ten righteous people. He also doesn't appear to know what He is going to do. I wonder if Melchizedek was destroyed along with the wicked.
Genesis 16 and 17 How We Got the Ishmaelites and Genital Mutilation
What's the point of Genesis 16? Exalted Father's (Abram's) wife talks him into marrying her handmaiden Hagar. Hagar begets a son, Ishmael, and the angel of the Lord appears to her and promises that her descendants would be multiplied so that they could not be counted. Ishmael, it was predicted, would be a "wild donkey of a man" and against everyone. Ishmael, as we learn later, doesn't figure in the story that is unfolding, so why even bring him up? I reckon this is another instance of having to explain why a cadet branch of a family ends up with the inheritance. As a first born son, I'm not too keen on this theme.
In chapter 17, God changes Exalted Father's name to Father of Multitudes (Abraham) and his wife's name to Princess (Sarah). God tells Father of Multitudes that Princess, who is 90 years old, will bear a son. Father of Multitudes falls down laughing when he hears God say this, and God doesn't smite him or anything. Instead He directs that the son who Princess will bear shall be called He Laughs (Isaac). He Laughs is going to sire twelve princes, says God, and God is going to be the God of Father of Multitudes and his descendants forever, at least the ones from He Laughs. There's a catch, though. Every male has to be circumcised. The author doesn't tell us how this went over with the entourage, but every male in Father of Multitude's household had his genitals mutilated that very day. It's not entirely clear, but Father of Multitudes may have performed the procedures himself.
Whether the conversations with God took place we cannot know, but the descendants of Father of Multitudes did, as the story goes, cut off their foreskins and believed that it was a sign of the covenant. And He Laughs did, as the story goes, beget twelve grandsons who were the putative progenitors of the tribes. It's a nice touch to the story for Father of Multitudes to know how well things were going to work out for him and his descendants, but it isn't really necessary to believe it for the story to have value. As the story goes, all these things came to pass whether or not Father of Multitudes knew that they would and whether or not Father of Multitudes was even an actual historic figure.
In chapter 17, God changes Exalted Father's name to Father of Multitudes (Abraham) and his wife's name to Princess (Sarah). God tells Father of Multitudes that Princess, who is 90 years old, will bear a son. Father of Multitudes falls down laughing when he hears God say this, and God doesn't smite him or anything. Instead He directs that the son who Princess will bear shall be called He Laughs (Isaac). He Laughs is going to sire twelve princes, says God, and God is going to be the God of Father of Multitudes and his descendants forever, at least the ones from He Laughs. There's a catch, though. Every male has to be circumcised. The author doesn't tell us how this went over with the entourage, but every male in Father of Multitude's household had his genitals mutilated that very day. It's not entirely clear, but Father of Multitudes may have performed the procedures himself.
Whether the conversations with God took place we cannot know, but the descendants of Father of Multitudes did, as the story goes, cut off their foreskins and believed that it was a sign of the covenant. And He Laughs did, as the story goes, beget twelve grandsons who were the putative progenitors of the tribes. It's a nice touch to the story for Father of Multitudes to know how well things were going to work out for him and his descendants, but it isn't really necessary to believe it for the story to have value. As the story goes, all these things came to pass whether or not Father of Multitudes knew that they would and whether or not Father of Multitudes was even an actual historic figure.
These stories are especially interesting because God appears to people all the time and talks to them. Later, God is conceived of as being too awesome for anyone to be in His presence. In the early days, though, God was thought of as immanent and readily accessible rather than transcendent and unimaginable.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Bible Study with Vache Folle: Lesson 5: Genesis 13-15
Genesis 13 is remarkable for what it tells us about Abram. Far from being a solitary individual, he was the chieftan of a rather extensive entourage (later we learn he had over 300 trained soldiers in is camp) with people, livestock, tents and personalty in abundance. When Abram came to town, you knew it. He needed a lot of space for his people and animals. Lot, his nephew, was also endowed with a large following, and it was decided that Abram and Lot needed to split up so as not to exceed the carrying capacity of the land. Lot went to the Jordan Valley and settled in Sodom. When Lot leaves, God reiterates His promise to Abram that his would be all the lands that he could see. Again, we don't have any way of knowing whether God actually made this promise to Abram or how he communicated it. It doesn't really matter.
In chapter 14, Abram and his trained men went to the rescue of Lot who had been taken prisoner in a war among various kingdoms. Abram defeated Chedorlaomer and brought back the people and their goods. The King of Sodom meets him and tells him to keep the goods but leave the people, but Abram declines to take anything except what his men and his allies have eaten. Melchizedek, priest of the God Most High makes an appearance.
In chapter 15, Abram begins to doubt the promise of God since he has no heirs of his body. But God tells him to put some sacrificial animals on an altar which, as a sign, manifest a smoking oven and a flaming torch between the pieces of dead animal. God qualifies His promise by pointing out that Abram's seed will be enslaved in a strange land for four centuries but would afterwards return to Canaan. This makes me think that God may not have been all that clear in His promise, that perhaps the message wasn't delivered personally. I mean, who would gainsay God Almighty if He is telling you something to your face? Who would need such a sign (which is far more equivocal than the promise)? If the promise was made, I reckon it was made through priests or in dreams or some such way. More likely, this was just made up after the fact to conform to what the authors thought had happened. As a literary device, it works. As a statement of historical fact, not so much.
In chapter 14, Abram and his trained men went to the rescue of Lot who had been taken prisoner in a war among various kingdoms. Abram defeated Chedorlaomer and brought back the people and their goods. The King of Sodom meets him and tells him to keep the goods but leave the people, but Abram declines to take anything except what his men and his allies have eaten. Melchizedek, priest of the God Most High makes an appearance.
In chapter 15, Abram begins to doubt the promise of God since he has no heirs of his body. But God tells him to put some sacrificial animals on an altar which, as a sign, manifest a smoking oven and a flaming torch between the pieces of dead animal. God qualifies His promise by pointing out that Abram's seed will be enslaved in a strange land for four centuries but would afterwards return to Canaan. This makes me think that God may not have been all that clear in His promise, that perhaps the message wasn't delivered personally. I mean, who would gainsay God Almighty if He is telling you something to your face? Who would need such a sign (which is far more equivocal than the promise)? If the promise was made, I reckon it was made through priests or in dreams or some such way. More likely, this was just made up after the fact to conform to what the authors thought had happened. As a literary device, it works. As a statement of historical fact, not so much.
Mrs Vache Folle's Boss is a Douchenozzle
Mrs Vache Folle's new job comes with the worst boss she has ever had to endure. Other than him, the job is pleasurable and rewarding, but he is such a monstrous douchenozzle that he sucks all the satisfaction out of the job.
First off, the guy is completely incompetent,a living embodiment of the Peter Principle. Secondly, his social skills are nonexistent. Thirdly, he's a martinet. I've never met him, but I've seen the effect on Mrs VF. Frankly, I'd like to tell him off.
I want Mrs VF to quit her job and find another one. I can't stand to see her so miserable. I know the economy's rough, but she's a stellar performer that any company would be lucky to have. Besides, maybe I can put in more hours on my end or even get an actual job as an employee somewhere.
First off, the guy is completely incompetent,a living embodiment of the Peter Principle. Secondly, his social skills are nonexistent. Thirdly, he's a martinet. I've never met him, but I've seen the effect on Mrs VF. Frankly, I'd like to tell him off.
I want Mrs VF to quit her job and find another one. I can't stand to see her so miserable. I know the economy's rough, but she's a stellar performer that any company would be lucky to have. Besides, maybe I can put in more hours on my end or even get an actual job as an employee somewhere.
Monday, July 06, 2009
No Check By Phone Payments to Collection Agencies
Here's some free advice. A kinswoman made the mistake of making a partial payment via "check by phone" to a collection agency. The agency failed to use the check number she provided and threatened to withdraw more money from her bank account even without her permission. She had to close her account and open a new one.
I've been trying to call to complain on her behalf, but the numbers don't work and the HQ claims its "system is down" every time I call to report a crime in one of their offices. I suspect that GC Services of Houston, the disreputable company in this case promotes threats of theft and downright theft.
The advice? Don't pay anything to a collection cvia "check by phone". You might as well give your account information to a Nigerian e-mail scam artist.
I've been trying to call to complain on her behalf, but the numbers don't work and the HQ claims its "system is down" every time I call to report a crime in one of their offices. I suspect that GC Services of Houston, the disreputable company in this case promotes threats of theft and downright theft.
The advice? Don't pay anything to a collection cvia "check by phone". You might as well give your account information to a Nigerian e-mail scam artist.
Bible Study with Vache Folle: Lesson 4: Genesis 12
Some interesting points about Genesis 1-11: (a) There's no devil, just a talking snake. (b) The evil in the world comes from God or from mankind because that's how it turns out humans had been made. That's why got regrets making mankind and decides to kill everyone but eight people. (c) Aside from a prohibition on eating blood and killing other people, there's no rules. Oh, and whatever you do, don't look upon your old man's nakedness.
It seems to me that these stories are a thin reed on which to predicate the narrative of the Fall of Man. Man didn't get thrown out of the garden because he was evil; he was thrown out because he became aware of good and evil. If mankind had continued to live in blissful ignorance, presumably we'd still be in the garden.
Chapter 12 of Genesis is where the OT really should start in my opinion. This is where a continuos narrative can be found to begin. Here's the meat:
Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
This is God's promise to Abram. He's talking about Canaan and the whole land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates. Abram's descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth and occupy the promised land forever.
As an aside, Abram goes to Egypt because there's a famine and Egypt is the go to place in lean times. There he passes his wife off as his sister and she ends up with Pharoah until the truth comes out. Abram gets kicked out of Egypt.
How did the author of Genesis 12 know that God said these things to Abram? Someone told him so. This was doubtless part of an oral tradition for many years before it was written down. The author was not an eye witness to the event. Certainly, the descendants of Abram ultimately took possession of the promised land and, assuming that Arabs and Jews are descended from Abram, occupy the promised land and more to this very day. And there are lots of them, not yet as numerous as the dust of the earth but potentially as numerous with time. Since, as I believe, all that occurs is God's will, one might easily imagine God's announcement to Abram of what would come to pass. Was such an announcement made? God alone knows. Does it matter?
For all we know, God went around announcing His intentions in those days all over the place. Other progenitors may have been promised tracts of land and reproductive success but it didn't get written up. Anyone who didn't have reproductive success would not have left descendants to speculate on whether God had announced anything to their ancestors.
The key point for me is that the storytellers began to see the blessing of Abram as part of a greater narrative in which the children of Abram are to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. There's a plan unfolding. Now the OT is about to get interesting.
It seems to me that these stories are a thin reed on which to predicate the narrative of the Fall of Man. Man didn't get thrown out of the garden because he was evil; he was thrown out because he became aware of good and evil. If mankind had continued to live in blissful ignorance, presumably we'd still be in the garden.
Chapter 12 of Genesis is where the OT really should start in my opinion. This is where a continuos narrative can be found to begin. Here's the meat:
Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.
This is God's promise to Abram. He's talking about Canaan and the whole land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates. Abram's descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth and occupy the promised land forever.
As an aside, Abram goes to Egypt because there's a famine and Egypt is the go to place in lean times. There he passes his wife off as his sister and she ends up with Pharoah until the truth comes out. Abram gets kicked out of Egypt.
How did the author of Genesis 12 know that God said these things to Abram? Someone told him so. This was doubtless part of an oral tradition for many years before it was written down. The author was not an eye witness to the event. Certainly, the descendants of Abram ultimately took possession of the promised land and, assuming that Arabs and Jews are descended from Abram, occupy the promised land and more to this very day. And there are lots of them, not yet as numerous as the dust of the earth but potentially as numerous with time. Since, as I believe, all that occurs is God's will, one might easily imagine God's announcement to Abram of what would come to pass. Was such an announcement made? God alone knows. Does it matter?
For all we know, God went around announcing His intentions in those days all over the place. Other progenitors may have been promised tracts of land and reproductive success but it didn't get written up. Anyone who didn't have reproductive success would not have left descendants to speculate on whether God had announced anything to their ancestors.
The key point for me is that the storytellers began to see the blessing of Abram as part of a greater narrative in which the children of Abram are to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. There's a plan unfolding. Now the OT is about to get interesting.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Flood
On Wednesday, it rained like hell. Our backyard had a river running through it because the pond could not contain all the water gushing off the mountain. Visibility was close to zero, and I had to drive 20 mph on the Taconic to get home.
Mrs Vache Folle and I went out to eat at Peza, our usual Wednesday night date, and by the time we got home the waters had subsided. I checked the damage and was delighted to find that our measures to prevent flood damage had almost all worked such that the only damage was the detritus that had washed up on the lawn in various places. A little raking and a little mulch replacing is all I need to do to recover from the storm. My measures by the pachysandra patch were in vain, but the pachysandras survived what I had believed was a pretty throrough scouring by the torrent from the mountain.
Anyway, I would rather have had a monstrous storm tomorrow evening. I hate fireworks.
Mrs Vache Folle and I went out to eat at Peza, our usual Wednesday night date, and by the time we got home the waters had subsided. I checked the damage and was delighted to find that our measures to prevent flood damage had almost all worked such that the only damage was the detritus that had washed up on the lawn in various places. A little raking and a little mulch replacing is all I need to do to recover from the storm. My measures by the pachysandra patch were in vain, but the pachysandras survived what I had believed was a pretty throrough scouring by the torrent from the mountain.
Anyway, I would rather have had a monstrous storm tomorrow evening. I hate fireworks.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
Bible Study with Vache Folle: Lesson 3: Genesis 9-11
Here's what God says to Noah and his family after the flood waters have receded. "Be fruitful and multiply." "You have dominion over every living thing." "Every living thing is appropriate for you to eat, but don't eat blood." "I promise never to kill everybody with a flood again and as a sign I give you the rainbow." "Don't kill each other."
Noah and his three boys are said to be the ancestors of all humanity. The youngest, Ham, sees his old man naked after Noah has been on a bender. This pisses Noah off so much that he curses Ham, more particulraly Ham's boy Canaan, and declares that Canaan will be servant to Shem and Japeth. I reckon this curse came in real handy when the Hebrews were exterminating the Canaanites later on. Man, how touchy was Noah? So somebody saw his shriveled up old frame. Big whoop.
Could Noah have been the male progenitor of all humanity? While it would have been possible, with luck, to reproduce exponentially, there is no evidence of this in archaeology or our genes. And there was no planetary flood, either. Maybe there was a spectacular local flood that inspired this and similar stories, but let's just admit that it's a myth. It's a slanderous myth at that. It makes God out to be a mass murderer and the author of evil in the world. Maybe that's how the authors saw God.
Chapter 10 gives some tidbits about the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japeth and states that the nations were divided up "every one according to his language". (Remember this when we get to the Tower of Babel.) These tidbits are unremarkable except for the exploits of Nimrod who was a mighty hunter and who built a lot of cities. This probably was meant to explain, as in a "Just So Story", the relationships of the various peoples known to the authors. Does it matter? No. Will anyone be edified spiritually by this information? Doubt it.
Chapter 11 contains the myth of the Tower of Babel and the warthful dispersion theory of linguistics. God does this because He wants to prevent humans from progressing. This seems to be a major concern of the God of the early Old Testament. Keep humans from the Tree of Life? Check. Prevent humans from attaining too much technical know how? Check. The rest of the chapter is concerned with getting from Shem to Abram and his immediate family.
Does it matter if any of this is true or not? Not a bit. Take it or leave it. It's just not believable. The first eleven chapters strike me as a hodge podge of legends thrown together for no particular reason than that folks knew them and would have expected their own history to fit into the familiar narrative. It's only when you get to Abram that the stories have any kind of narrative continuity, so I reckon you could just as well ignore the first eleven chapters and start with Genesis 12. You won't have missed anything, and you won't have started out straining credulity beyond the breaking point.
Noah and his three boys are said to be the ancestors of all humanity. The youngest, Ham, sees his old man naked after Noah has been on a bender. This pisses Noah off so much that he curses Ham, more particulraly Ham's boy Canaan, and declares that Canaan will be servant to Shem and Japeth. I reckon this curse came in real handy when the Hebrews were exterminating the Canaanites later on. Man, how touchy was Noah? So somebody saw his shriveled up old frame. Big whoop.
Could Noah have been the male progenitor of all humanity? While it would have been possible, with luck, to reproduce exponentially, there is no evidence of this in archaeology or our genes. And there was no planetary flood, either. Maybe there was a spectacular local flood that inspired this and similar stories, but let's just admit that it's a myth. It's a slanderous myth at that. It makes God out to be a mass murderer and the author of evil in the world. Maybe that's how the authors saw God.
Chapter 10 gives some tidbits about the descendants of Shem, Ham and Japeth and states that the nations were divided up "every one according to his language". (Remember this when we get to the Tower of Babel.) These tidbits are unremarkable except for the exploits of Nimrod who was a mighty hunter and who built a lot of cities. This probably was meant to explain, as in a "Just So Story", the relationships of the various peoples known to the authors. Does it matter? No. Will anyone be edified spiritually by this information? Doubt it.
Chapter 11 contains the myth of the Tower of Babel and the warthful dispersion theory of linguistics. God does this because He wants to prevent humans from progressing. This seems to be a major concern of the God of the early Old Testament. Keep humans from the Tree of Life? Check. Prevent humans from attaining too much technical know how? Check. The rest of the chapter is concerned with getting from Shem to Abram and his immediate family.
Does it matter if any of this is true or not? Not a bit. Take it or leave it. It's just not believable. The first eleven chapters strike me as a hodge podge of legends thrown together for no particular reason than that folks knew them and would have expected their own history to fit into the familiar narrative. It's only when you get to Abram that the stories have any kind of narrative continuity, so I reckon you could just as well ignore the first eleven chapters and start with Genesis 12. You won't have missed anything, and you won't have started out straining credulity beyond the breaking point.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Domestic Imbalance
I have been taking a poll of married people and am finding that, just as scholars say, in households where both the husband and wife work full time, the wife takes on the lion's share of domestic and parental responsibilities. I attribute this in part to men's greater tolerance for squalor and their willingness to let their kids eat hot dogs for every meal and go to bed without taking care of personal hygiene. The men make a big to do about how much they do and tend to liken unloading the dishwasher to walking on the moon in terms of heroism.
I don't know whether I do my fair share or not. I doubt it.
I don't know whether I do my fair share or not. I doubt it.
Three Cheers for Al Franken
Al Franken is my hero. I will support him if he runs for president or for any office. Since I read Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, and The Truth With Jokes I have prayed for a man like Al Franken to run for office. I hope he continues to use humor as a weapon, because he is devastating.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Bible Study with Vache Folle: Lesson 2: Genesis 5-8
To recap the lesson Genesis 1 through 4: any similarity between these stories and the actual events of Creation is purely coincidental.
Chapter 5 recounts the mythical patrilineal genealogy from Adam to Noah. Fabulous genealogies are not uncommon, and they may serve to bind disparate clans into tribes and tribes into nations. The exceedingly long lives of the progenitors of Noah and Noah himself formed part of the basis for the famous calculation of Bishop Ussher that Creation took place in 4004 BC. We have no evidence outside this story to corroborate the claim that men once lived for up to a millenium, and I don't suppose that it signifies anything in any event. We might just as easily have skipped this and gone straight to Noah with a segue such as "And it came to pass many generations later..." It appears that this genealogy represents the line of the eldest sons (excluding Cain) of the eldest sons, and it is odd that these men sometimes waited centuries to father children.
Chapter 6 is chock full of tastes of what might have once been a more comprehensive mythology. Here we find the "sons of God" mating with human women and begetting mighty men. Also, God sets the human lifespan at 120 years, a number which is close to the human maximum life span to this day. Here also we find God regretting the Creation of every living thing and contemplating the destruction of life. He relents in this plan and instead decides to stary over with Noah and his family and an ark full of every living thing. Everyone and everything else is destined to be wiped out in a flood of a planetary scale.
In Chapter 7, God makes good on the threat to annihilate every land animal except the ones in the ark.
In Chapter 8, Noah waits for the flood waters to recede. God promises never to wipe everything out again.
Aside from this story, and similar myths about a deluge from that region, we have no evidence that any such global flood occurred or that mankind was reduced to a population of eight in the recent past. In fact, the entire story is utterly preposterous. Did Noah make it to Australia to gather up the marsupials and monotremes and then return them to their habitats? That would make a good story. Wouldn't the platypus have been mentioned somewhere? There was an apparent population bottleneck about 70,000 years ago which may have reduced the human population to about 10,000 souls, but I doubt that this was the inspiration for the story of Noah and his ark.
What do we gain from studying this myth? The idea that God might not have known what He was doing when he created life and that he was capable of regret. This is a far cry from the omniscient God we conceive of today who would have known that mankind would turn out the way he did and who would not have had to call a mulligan. The story is most interesting for what it says about the ancient Hebrew conception of God. Their God was more anthropomorphic and had a much smaller portfolio than our God today. Perhaps we should keep this in mind when we read the rest of the Old Testament. The concept of God has clearly evolved, notwithstanding the claim that He is the same Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Perhaps God is the same, but human understanding of Him is obviously not.
Other than the lesson that the ancient Hebrews had some very different ideas about God, a lesson which will doubtless be lost on many readers, I don't reckon this story signifies at all. We could have very well gotten along without it just fine with no adverse impact on theology. As far as I'm concerned, we could just start at Genesis 9 and be none the worse off. We may even be better off because the cognitive dissonance of considering a loving God who kills almost every human on earth could be avoided.
Chapter 5 recounts the mythical patrilineal genealogy from Adam to Noah. Fabulous genealogies are not uncommon, and they may serve to bind disparate clans into tribes and tribes into nations. The exceedingly long lives of the progenitors of Noah and Noah himself formed part of the basis for the famous calculation of Bishop Ussher that Creation took place in 4004 BC. We have no evidence outside this story to corroborate the claim that men once lived for up to a millenium, and I don't suppose that it signifies anything in any event. We might just as easily have skipped this and gone straight to Noah with a segue such as "And it came to pass many generations later..." It appears that this genealogy represents the line of the eldest sons (excluding Cain) of the eldest sons, and it is odd that these men sometimes waited centuries to father children.
Chapter 6 is chock full of tastes of what might have once been a more comprehensive mythology. Here we find the "sons of God" mating with human women and begetting mighty men. Also, God sets the human lifespan at 120 years, a number which is close to the human maximum life span to this day. Here also we find God regretting the Creation of every living thing and contemplating the destruction of life. He relents in this plan and instead decides to stary over with Noah and his family and an ark full of every living thing. Everyone and everything else is destined to be wiped out in a flood of a planetary scale.
In Chapter 7, God makes good on the threat to annihilate every land animal except the ones in the ark.
In Chapter 8, Noah waits for the flood waters to recede. God promises never to wipe everything out again.
Aside from this story, and similar myths about a deluge from that region, we have no evidence that any such global flood occurred or that mankind was reduced to a population of eight in the recent past. In fact, the entire story is utterly preposterous. Did Noah make it to Australia to gather up the marsupials and monotremes and then return them to their habitats? That would make a good story. Wouldn't the platypus have been mentioned somewhere? There was an apparent population bottleneck about 70,000 years ago which may have reduced the human population to about 10,000 souls, but I doubt that this was the inspiration for the story of Noah and his ark.
What do we gain from studying this myth? The idea that God might not have known what He was doing when he created life and that he was capable of regret. This is a far cry from the omniscient God we conceive of today who would have known that mankind would turn out the way he did and who would not have had to call a mulligan. The story is most interesting for what it says about the ancient Hebrew conception of God. Their God was more anthropomorphic and had a much smaller portfolio than our God today. Perhaps we should keep this in mind when we read the rest of the Old Testament. The concept of God has clearly evolved, notwithstanding the claim that He is the same Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. Perhaps God is the same, but human understanding of Him is obviously not.
Other than the lesson that the ancient Hebrews had some very different ideas about God, a lesson which will doubtless be lost on many readers, I don't reckon this story signifies at all. We could have very well gotten along without it just fine with no adverse impact on theology. As far as I'm concerned, we could just start at Genesis 9 and be none the worse off. We may even be better off because the cognitive dissonance of considering a loving God who kills almost every human on earth could be avoided.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Book Review: The End of Faith
Sam Harris begins The End of Faith sensibly, in view of his thesis that religious belief is dangerous, with an accounting of the crimes done in the name of faith, particularly those forms of faith that involve belief in the literalness of Scripture, and because of faith. He is primarily concerned with the People of the Book: Jews, Christians and Muslims. He argues forcefully that literal adherence to the canons of these religions leads necessarily to conflict and barbarism and that it is necessary, if humanity is to survive, to moderate attotudes toward the canons at a minimum or to abandon faith altogether. He rightly points out that such faith admits of no discourse, tolerance or compromise and that it is foolish to exempt faith claims from criticism.
He had me there, and I wish that he had gone no further. For he follows this line of reasoning with a gratuitous digression about moral equivalency that has nothing to do with the thesis of the book and which is nothing more than the assertion of normative propositions about terrorists versus soldiers that are no more justifiable by reason than the religious claims he has decried. That he cites the moral giant Alan Dershowitz should be enough information to permit you to assess the quality of the detour from the subject without my spending any time on it.
Then he concludes with the argument that there is no reason, in principle, that normative propositions cannot be treated just like all other truth claims and that it follows that we may yet have the benefit of scientific ethics. Harris argues that love may be shown by empirical evidence to promote happiness in the lover and the beloved and that it might form the basis of a morality predicated on reason. This somehow precedes a rather lengthy apology for torture and mass murder of recalcitrant religious folks, so I suppose that the author's concept of love differs radically from my own.
In any event, Harris seems to believe that he is the first person to have considered whether morality might be grounded on fact, that one might get to an "ought" from an "is". He certainly makes no mention of the treatment of the problem by others before him. Rather, he seems to assume that the discovery of relevant facts about the universe will necessarily inform a set of universally acceptable and justifiable normative consequences. Harris leaves the details of how this might be accomplished to greater minds.
Certainly, if science debunks factual assertions that underlie a religious belief, one might expect a reasonable person to abandon the religious belief. Perhaps this is Harris's hope. If so, I reckon it is a forlorn one given how tenaciously even civilized people cling to beliefs that stand in direct contradiction to any evidence that one might put before them.
I reckon that the book might have been far better if Harris had been content to argue that religious fundamentalism is a threat to survival and that we ought to be more outspoken in our criticism of it. He might have expounded on this at greater length and discussed how mechanisms that separate religious institutions from coercive political power can be maintained and strengthened. Also, he might have paid more attention to the way in which views about the canons in religions can be moderated. Harris seems to suggest that to be a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew requires (a) adherence to the literal truth and divine authorship of the canon, or (b) the decision to ignore inconvnenient parts of it. There are other alternatives that Harris might have explored. For example, one need not accept divine authorship or literal truth or the equal authority of every part of the canon. Moreover, in the path so many follow, one may simply choose to be a rather lukewarm practicioner. The choice is not fundamentalism or apostasy. And there are good reasons to examine what drives individuals into the fundamentalist camp.
Does belief inform and drive behavior as Harris claims? Perhaps in some cases. In religious matters, however, it is equally plausible that belief is summoned to rationalize behavior. Harris does not delve deeply enough into the premises. This could have been a useful book with a little editing and less superficial treatment of core concepts. It comes off more than anything else as a thinly veiled anti-Muslim diatribe. Muslims are the only religious category that he proposes for destruction. Harris calls for a war against Islam but not against Christianity or Judaism.
He had me there, and I wish that he had gone no further. For he follows this line of reasoning with a gratuitous digression about moral equivalency that has nothing to do with the thesis of the book and which is nothing more than the assertion of normative propositions about terrorists versus soldiers that are no more justifiable by reason than the religious claims he has decried. That he cites the moral giant Alan Dershowitz should be enough information to permit you to assess the quality of the detour from the subject without my spending any time on it.
Then he concludes with the argument that there is no reason, in principle, that normative propositions cannot be treated just like all other truth claims and that it follows that we may yet have the benefit of scientific ethics. Harris argues that love may be shown by empirical evidence to promote happiness in the lover and the beloved and that it might form the basis of a morality predicated on reason. This somehow precedes a rather lengthy apology for torture and mass murder of recalcitrant religious folks, so I suppose that the author's concept of love differs radically from my own.
In any event, Harris seems to believe that he is the first person to have considered whether morality might be grounded on fact, that one might get to an "ought" from an "is". He certainly makes no mention of the treatment of the problem by others before him. Rather, he seems to assume that the discovery of relevant facts about the universe will necessarily inform a set of universally acceptable and justifiable normative consequences. Harris leaves the details of how this might be accomplished to greater minds.
Certainly, if science debunks factual assertions that underlie a religious belief, one might expect a reasonable person to abandon the religious belief. Perhaps this is Harris's hope. If so, I reckon it is a forlorn one given how tenaciously even civilized people cling to beliefs that stand in direct contradiction to any evidence that one might put before them.
I reckon that the book might have been far better if Harris had been content to argue that religious fundamentalism is a threat to survival and that we ought to be more outspoken in our criticism of it. He might have expounded on this at greater length and discussed how mechanisms that separate religious institutions from coercive political power can be maintained and strengthened. Also, he might have paid more attention to the way in which views about the canons in religions can be moderated. Harris seems to suggest that to be a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew requires (a) adherence to the literal truth and divine authorship of the canon, or (b) the decision to ignore inconvnenient parts of it. There are other alternatives that Harris might have explored. For example, one need not accept divine authorship or literal truth or the equal authority of every part of the canon. Moreover, in the path so many follow, one may simply choose to be a rather lukewarm practicioner. The choice is not fundamentalism or apostasy. And there are good reasons to examine what drives individuals into the fundamentalist camp.
Does belief inform and drive behavior as Harris claims? Perhaps in some cases. In religious matters, however, it is equally plausible that belief is summoned to rationalize behavior. Harris does not delve deeply enough into the premises. This could have been a useful book with a little editing and less superficial treatment of core concepts. It comes off more than anything else as a thinly veiled anti-Muslim diatribe. Muslims are the only religious category that he proposes for destruction. Harris calls for a war against Islam but not against Christianity or Judaism.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Bible Study With Vache Folle Genesis 1-4
Where I grew up in the Bible Belt, a lot of folks believed that the Bible was actually WRITTEN BY GOD. A lot of them were also pretty sure that it was written in English in the King James Version, but I digress. They reckoned the Bible was the inerrant WORD OF GOD to be taken completely literally as much as possible. I have never believed this even when I was a credulous child. Believing this seems to me to be insane and, given much of the content of the Bible, dangerous.
Here begins a series on what I, a wretched Calvinist agnostic, think about the Bible. Let's start at the big inning (there's baseball in the Bible) with Genesis, chapter 1. What does this signify and how might it be useful to us today? Nothing and probably no way. This is the Creation Myth of some nomadic pastoralists, and it is interesting perhaps because it sheds light on how those pastoralists viewed the universe. It shows that Man was created in God's image, whatever that means and that, contrary to later developments, "every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you" was given, among all the others bounties of creation. What do I take from this? Frankly, very little. I agree that God created the universe, but my universe is much bigger than that of the authors of Genesis.
Chapter 2 contradicts chapter 1 in that it has Man being created after God rested. Also, no vegetation had come forth, and the female came a little later. This is also where God plants a garden in Eden as a habitat for his human specimens. Evidently, Man was created west of Eden. The critical part, for me, is that "the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." This fits in with my belief that humanity's sin is sentience. When we were dumb animals, we were innocent and unashamed. But then, in chapter 3, our ancestors develop consciouness thanks to a talking snake who convinces them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When humans have that, God worries that they'll eat from the Tree of Life and live forever like gods or angels and throws them out of the garden to live miserable lives of toil and sorrow. The snake was just a snake, not Satan. Everything the snake said to Eve was true, if you accept the premise of the story. And how could Adam and Eve not eat that fruit once they understood that it would make them wise. That's original sin- wanting to be wise/sentient/aware/conscious.
Adam and Eve probably didn't eat enough of that fruit because we're not all that wise/sentient/aware/conscious. Anyway, the trees and the garden are obviously metaphorical. The story tells us what the nomads thought about their God back in the day, but it's not much help to me now. I don't reckon humans chose to become sentient. It happened in the course of our evolution and was presumably part of God's plan from the moment the universe was created. Besides, if you accept the premise of the story, if God was worried that humans would become godlike, why did he put those trees in the garden with the humans where the humans were bound to eat from them? Or was it what He had in mind all along? If so, why the curses? They seem pretty gratuitous. The nomads who wrote Genesis blamed God for a lot of evil in the world and considered their pains punishment.
Chapter 4 includes the story of Cain and Abel, something which always troubled me. Why did God favor Abel over Cain, because Abel was a pastoralist and Cain a sedentary agriculturalist? And who lived in Cain's city in Nod? Why are we given this exposition of the descendants of Cain when, later, they're all killed in the Deluge?
Anyway, nothing in this speaks to me very much, and there's really no point in taking any of it as literal fact or to ascribe authorship to God. The God of the nomads appears to have walked around among people in those days and to have accepted offerings in person, so He is very different to the invisible, all encompassing God conceived of later. There didn't seem to be any law in those days. God dealt with things on an ad hoc basis. Kill your brother, get cursed but protected from harm. Make an offering? It had better be meat. All this tells me way more about the nomads than about God. In fact, the God of Genesis 1-4 is barely recognizable.
Here begins a series on what I, a wretched Calvinist agnostic, think about the Bible. Let's start at the big inning (there's baseball in the Bible) with Genesis, chapter 1. What does this signify and how might it be useful to us today? Nothing and probably no way. This is the Creation Myth of some nomadic pastoralists, and it is interesting perhaps because it sheds light on how those pastoralists viewed the universe. It shows that Man was created in God's image, whatever that means and that, contrary to later developments, "every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you" was given, among all the others bounties of creation. What do I take from this? Frankly, very little. I agree that God created the universe, but my universe is much bigger than that of the authors of Genesis.
Chapter 2 contradicts chapter 1 in that it has Man being created after God rested. Also, no vegetation had come forth, and the female came a little later. This is also where God plants a garden in Eden as a habitat for his human specimens. Evidently, Man was created west of Eden. The critical part, for me, is that "the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed." This fits in with my belief that humanity's sin is sentience. When we were dumb animals, we were innocent and unashamed. But then, in chapter 3, our ancestors develop consciouness thanks to a talking snake who convinces them to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When humans have that, God worries that they'll eat from the Tree of Life and live forever like gods or angels and throws them out of the garden to live miserable lives of toil and sorrow. The snake was just a snake, not Satan. Everything the snake said to Eve was true, if you accept the premise of the story. And how could Adam and Eve not eat that fruit once they understood that it would make them wise. That's original sin- wanting to be wise/sentient/aware/conscious.
Adam and Eve probably didn't eat enough of that fruit because we're not all that wise/sentient/aware/conscious. Anyway, the trees and the garden are obviously metaphorical. The story tells us what the nomads thought about their God back in the day, but it's not much help to me now. I don't reckon humans chose to become sentient. It happened in the course of our evolution and was presumably part of God's plan from the moment the universe was created. Besides, if you accept the premise of the story, if God was worried that humans would become godlike, why did he put those trees in the garden with the humans where the humans were bound to eat from them? Or was it what He had in mind all along? If so, why the curses? They seem pretty gratuitous. The nomads who wrote Genesis blamed God for a lot of evil in the world and considered their pains punishment.
Chapter 4 includes the story of Cain and Abel, something which always troubled me. Why did God favor Abel over Cain, because Abel was a pastoralist and Cain a sedentary agriculturalist? And who lived in Cain's city in Nod? Why are we given this exposition of the descendants of Cain when, later, they're all killed in the Deluge?
Anyway, nothing in this speaks to me very much, and there's really no point in taking any of it as literal fact or to ascribe authorship to God. The God of the nomads appears to have walked around among people in those days and to have accepted offerings in person, so He is very different to the invisible, all encompassing God conceived of later. There didn't seem to be any law in those days. God dealt with things on an ad hoc basis. Kill your brother, get cursed but protected from harm. Make an offering? It had better be meat. All this tells me way more about the nomads than about God. In fact, the God of Genesis 1-4 is barely recognizable.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Random Observations
Clarence Thomas reckons that the state should be able to do pretty much whatever it wants to minors. They're not people. Go ahead and poke around in their drawers to see if they're hiding stuff in them even if you have no probable cause.
Three celebrities lost to us in one week. See how it happens in threes? I bet Mark Sanford is grateful that dead Michael Jackson got the attention off his philandering self.
I wish the wingnuts would STFU about Iran and how the US isn't butting in more. It would be stupid to butt in. The US probably can't influence what's going on there. Besides aren't these wingnut advocates of the reformists in Iran the same guys who wanted them bombed into oblivion a few weeks ago?
I just found out that the NBA still exists and has a draft. Who knew?
I like the GOP argument about the public option in healthcare. The government is inefficient, corrupt and incompetent and private health insurers can't compete with it.
Who are Jon and Kate and why do I care about their marriage?
Three celebrities lost to us in one week. See how it happens in threes? I bet Mark Sanford is grateful that dead Michael Jackson got the attention off his philandering self.
I wish the wingnuts would STFU about Iran and how the US isn't butting in more. It would be stupid to butt in. The US probably can't influence what's going on there. Besides aren't these wingnut advocates of the reformists in Iran the same guys who wanted them bombed into oblivion a few weeks ago?
I just found out that the NBA still exists and has a draft. Who knew?
I like the GOP argument about the public option in healthcare. The government is inefficient, corrupt and incompetent and private health insurers can't compete with it.
Who are Jon and Kate and why do I care about their marriage?
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Critters
On Sunday, just as Mrs Vache Folle stepped outside to take a turn in the garden, a hawk snatched a jay off the feeder and made off with it before our very eyes. I had seen the same hawk a few days earlier make a move on a jay on the woodpecker feeder out back. I tentatively identify it as a Swainson's hawk.
Yesterday, two turkeys jumped the fence and wandered around by the outlet to the water supply land next door. Jasper did not know what to make of them and held back. I commanded him to "leave it" until the turkeys got up on the fence rail and then I cut him loose. I want the turkeys to learn to be wary of the premises since I don't want to clean up dead turkeys from all over the yard.
We have sighted downy woodpeckers on the hummingbird feeders lately as well as hummers and bees. This is a new phenomenon for us.
The neighbor's cat practically lives at our house. She keeps me company when I garden and occasionally startles the shit out of me by hiding under a shrub and pouncing on me all unawares. She drives the squirrels away from the feeder sometimes and waits for them in ambush under the peonies. She can't seem to catch a bird, though, so we don't mind her presence.
Crows seem to like bagels and will fly off with a half bagel with ease. You have to throw them pretty far from the house as the crows are very skittish and fly off at the slightest movement even from inside the house.
If the nursery labels a plant as deer resistant, it ain't necessarly so. That's what we found out. The deer ate the hostas this year but have so far avoided the lilies.
Yesterday, two turkeys jumped the fence and wandered around by the outlet to the water supply land next door. Jasper did not know what to make of them and held back. I commanded him to "leave it" until the turkeys got up on the fence rail and then I cut him loose. I want the turkeys to learn to be wary of the premises since I don't want to clean up dead turkeys from all over the yard.
We have sighted downy woodpeckers on the hummingbird feeders lately as well as hummers and bees. This is a new phenomenon for us.
The neighbor's cat practically lives at our house. She keeps me company when I garden and occasionally startles the shit out of me by hiding under a shrub and pouncing on me all unawares. She drives the squirrels away from the feeder sometimes and waits for them in ambush under the peonies. She can't seem to catch a bird, though, so we don't mind her presence.
Crows seem to like bagels and will fly off with a half bagel with ease. You have to throw them pretty far from the house as the crows are very skittish and fly off at the slightest movement even from inside the house.
If the nursery labels a plant as deer resistant, it ain't necessarly so. That's what we found out. The deer ate the hostas this year but have so far avoided the lilies.
FOX is Crazy but not Like a Fox
If I were king, I wouldn't give any information or access to FOX "News". To get info out of my government, they'd need to file Freedom of Information Act requests. If they complained about it, I'd point out that we gave journalistic credentials only to actual journalists and treated as journalists only those individuals working for legitimate news gathering organizations or who were legitimate freelancers. Now and then an offical might go on an entertainment show, but FOX wouldn't be one of them because they masquerade fraudulently as a news gathering organization when in reality they are a propoganda arm of the GOP. Seriously, some folks are duped into thinking they're watching the "news" such is the level of education in this country.
Also, if anyone from the real news media referred to anything said by a FOX "News" talking head or some other right wing smear artist, the official response would always be "Why would anyone listen to that lying sack of shit?"
The same goes for the Washington Times and the New York Post.
I might even hire a team to follow the FOX smear artists and debunk their every utterance.
Also, if anyone from the real news media referred to anything said by a FOX "News" talking head or some other right wing smear artist, the official response would always be "Why would anyone listen to that lying sack of shit?"
The same goes for the Washington Times and the New York Post.
I might even hire a team to follow the FOX smear artists and debunk their every utterance.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Let Haters Say All the Hateful Shit They Want
What's to be done about "hate speech"? Nothing, say I. I want haters to self identify so we can keep an eye on them. I don't want to push them underground. What I'd like to see is a transformation in the hearts and minds of haters so that they no longer hated and, therefore, no longer engaged in hateful speech acts. This probably won't happen in my lifetime, so in the meantime let's keep the haters out in the open where we can see them. They're the ones we interview first when there's actual hate crime. They're the ones we keep under surveillance as most likely to blow up a building or murder someone.
Also I like to know who's a hater right up front so I can avoid hanging out with them or associating with them to the extent possible. I hate to develop a friendship only to find out that my new friend is a racist or a homophobe. That's inconvenient.
Also I like to know who's a hater right up front so I can avoid hanging out with them or associating with them to the extent possible. I hate to develop a friendship only to find out that my new friend is a racist or a homophobe. That's inconvenient.
I Gripe About Worship Services
As he does so often, Steve Scott posted about something that has been troubling me, this time the centrality of the sermon in worship services (http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/2009/06/sermon-centered-life.html). I'm not a big fan of the sermon. They're too long if you ask me. You have to have three points and in our church at least two 1970s cultural references and this takes 30-40 minutes. And considering that the preacher has already done a welcome and announcements and will do a benediction and several prayers, the service begins to look a tad like the Pastor X Show.
I'm not saying our preachers' sermons aren't edifying. They're as edifying as any preaching I've ever heard. We have a couple of fine sermonizers on the staff. It's just that sermons seem to disrupt the mood set by other aspects of the service and make it even more of a spectator sport than I reckon it should be. What I'd like to see is a service without any preaching (except for those aspects of public prayer leading that are actually kind of preachy) and for the preachers to give talks on weekday evenings for as many as want to come out for some edification, admonishment, encouragement, prophecy, what have you. The public worship service could be devoted to music and prayer and fellowship instead of sitting through a lecture.
While I'm griping about worship services, let me say that I really hate it when the flow of the service is interrupted by unnecessary announcements of what we are about to do. It's all scripted in the bulletin. Everyone knows that when the liturgist starts the responsive reading, the congregation is supposed to respond by reciting the part in the bulletin where it is indicated. When the liturgist starts the group prayer, everybody already knows to read along aloud what's printed in the bulletin. When the liturgist reads the Scripture, he should just start reading. The reference is given in the bulletin, and everybody knows that they can follow along in the bulletin or the Bibles in the pews. If we didn't constantly interrupt the flow of the service, newcomers would present an opportunity for oldtimers to help them and to introduce themseves.
We already have a couple of occasions where there is no announcement as when the pastor concludes a prayer "in the name of Jesus who taught us to pray.." whereupon we recite the Lord's Prayer. The preacher doesn' stop and say "And now join with me in the Lord's Prayer as printed in your bulletins." That would ruin the moment. And when the organist or pianist starts the Doxology, nobody has to say "Now please stand and join me in singing the Doxology, the lyrics of which are printed in your bulletin." Everybody knows to stand and knows the words. (It's usually right after the choir's big offertory anthem, so I reckon it's a way to get a cheap standing ovation.)
There's no need to announce the hymns, either, but often the pastor feels obliged to say "Please turn to hymn number x in your hymnals and join me in singing." Pastors can't stand it when they're not talking. Maybe it's one of the few occasions where they get to tell people what to do following which they do it. In any event, the hymn numbers are in the bulletin and the placement of the hymns in the service is set out in the program. Moreover, the numbers are on a placard in front of the church.
What should we do with the time saved by cutting gratuitous announcements and long sermons? More participation and interaction by the congregation would be nice. Maybe some little dramas or a little more music would be nice. Maybe we could just get out on time for a change.
Another beef I have is the false dichotomy between "contemporary" and "traditional" worship. Why are we compelled to choose between a service consisting of sermon plus mindlessly repetitive praise songs flashed on a screen and a service consisting of sermon plus other more complex musical perfomances and dragging old hymns? Can't there be some common ground? Why can't the "contemporary" service feature a really impressive choral number once in a while and why can't the traditionalists be exposed to some interactive singing now and then? Let's get out of the box a little.
Finally, can we do something about the Lord's Supper? Once a month, the consistory serves up croutons and thimbles of grape juice in a really solemn ceremony that I can't help feeling is a pale exercise compared to what it might be. And stay away from the gluten free host if you don't have a problem with gluten. It's so dry that you need ten thimbles of juice to quench it. The consistory frowns on taking more than one thimble.
I'm not saying our preachers' sermons aren't edifying. They're as edifying as any preaching I've ever heard. We have a couple of fine sermonizers on the staff. It's just that sermons seem to disrupt the mood set by other aspects of the service and make it even more of a spectator sport than I reckon it should be. What I'd like to see is a service without any preaching (except for those aspects of public prayer leading that are actually kind of preachy) and for the preachers to give talks on weekday evenings for as many as want to come out for some edification, admonishment, encouragement, prophecy, what have you. The public worship service could be devoted to music and prayer and fellowship instead of sitting through a lecture.
While I'm griping about worship services, let me say that I really hate it when the flow of the service is interrupted by unnecessary announcements of what we are about to do. It's all scripted in the bulletin. Everyone knows that when the liturgist starts the responsive reading, the congregation is supposed to respond by reciting the part in the bulletin where it is indicated. When the liturgist starts the group prayer, everybody already knows to read along aloud what's printed in the bulletin. When the liturgist reads the Scripture, he should just start reading. The reference is given in the bulletin, and everybody knows that they can follow along in the bulletin or the Bibles in the pews. If we didn't constantly interrupt the flow of the service, newcomers would present an opportunity for oldtimers to help them and to introduce themseves.
We already have a couple of occasions where there is no announcement as when the pastor concludes a prayer "in the name of Jesus who taught us to pray.." whereupon we recite the Lord's Prayer. The preacher doesn' stop and say "And now join with me in the Lord's Prayer as printed in your bulletins." That would ruin the moment. And when the organist or pianist starts the Doxology, nobody has to say "Now please stand and join me in singing the Doxology, the lyrics of which are printed in your bulletin." Everybody knows to stand and knows the words. (It's usually right after the choir's big offertory anthem, so I reckon it's a way to get a cheap standing ovation.)
There's no need to announce the hymns, either, but often the pastor feels obliged to say "Please turn to hymn number x in your hymnals and join me in singing." Pastors can't stand it when they're not talking. Maybe it's one of the few occasions where they get to tell people what to do following which they do it. In any event, the hymn numbers are in the bulletin and the placement of the hymns in the service is set out in the program. Moreover, the numbers are on a placard in front of the church.
What should we do with the time saved by cutting gratuitous announcements and long sermons? More participation and interaction by the congregation would be nice. Maybe some little dramas or a little more music would be nice. Maybe we could just get out on time for a change.
Another beef I have is the false dichotomy between "contemporary" and "traditional" worship. Why are we compelled to choose between a service consisting of sermon plus mindlessly repetitive praise songs flashed on a screen and a service consisting of sermon plus other more complex musical perfomances and dragging old hymns? Can't there be some common ground? Why can't the "contemporary" service feature a really impressive choral number once in a while and why can't the traditionalists be exposed to some interactive singing now and then? Let's get out of the box a little.
Finally, can we do something about the Lord's Supper? Once a month, the consistory serves up croutons and thimbles of grape juice in a really solemn ceremony that I can't help feeling is a pale exercise compared to what it might be. And stay away from the gluten free host if you don't have a problem with gluten. It's so dry that you need ten thimbles of juice to quench it. The consistory frowns on taking more than one thimble.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
This and That
Mrs Vache Folle and I went to see The Hangover last night. It was among the funniest movies I've ever seen. Three men take a bachelor party trip to Vegas with the groom and wake up the next morning with no memory of what transpired and with the groom missing. They follow various clues to figure out what happened and where their buddy could be.
My mother survived the Holocaust, but she was way too young to remember anything about it. I wish I had discussed it with my grandmother and recorded her experiences. "What was the Holocaust like, Maw?" "Well, Dagwood (she sometimes called me that), we here in Whitfield County didn't even know there was a Holocaust going on until the war was over. It was a hard time, though, because all your uncles were off fighting in World War II, and I worried about them night and day. I'm sure the Jews had it a lot worse, though."
My neighbor was flying his Confederate Battle Flag the other day, but I don't know the occasion. I don't think it was the race thing. NASCAR races on weekends, doesn't it? Anyway, it seems so out of place in the Hudson Valley. I have mixed feelings about the Confederacy. I'm pretty sure my poor illiterate ancestors in the Confederate Army were hapless dupes who didn't see themselves as fighting for slavery. At least I'd like to believe that. I don't like it when anyone pisses on their graves so to speak by attributing motives to them that I doubt they had. On the other hand, they were traitors, just like their ancestors before them in the Revolution had been. The Revolutioners succeeded, though, so we call them "Patriots". The Confederates didn't, so they're just traitors, or more charitably "Rebels". For the most part, flying the Confederate Battle Flag these days is taken as an expression of racism. Even if you're intention is otherwise, you have to expect that it will be interpreted as racist.
I went to the gym today for the first time in weeks only to find that it was closed. The sign on the door said "temporarily" and laid it off to a landlord dispute. I went on line and found out that the chain was in Chapter 11. You wouldn't know it from the Sport & Wellness websites. They make it seem as if it's business as usual when clearly it's not. A reputable company would have some FAQs about the bankruptcy and information about how it was expected to play out on its websites. So I'm assuming that the club is not going to reopen unless somebody buys it. Here I was feeling guilty for the last month about not going to the gym when it was closed the whole time.
My nutcase neighbor who was disappointed in the election last November finally took down his sign that decried the Unites Socialist States of America and referring to Obama as Redistributor-in-Chief. It doubled for a while as an advertisement for Free Kittens. They really need to spay their cat. They still have their harpoon cannon aimed across the road.
I skipped church today. The choir is on hiatus for the summer, except for the women who sing on Father's Day. They get Mother's Day off while the men sing. In summer, the music is more ad hoc with small groups singing. In August, we have church outside under a tent. Anyway, I might not go to church all summer. I'm just not into church services if I have to be a spectator. I'm not a big fan of sermons and would just as soon skip that part.
My friend who was in the horrible car crash last summer finally had his innards reattached and enjoyed his first bowel movement in eleven months. I can't tell you how relieved I am that his recovery has gone so well. He's going to be in a lot of pain for a while yet. I didn't visit him in the hospital because I am phobic. The level of anxiety that being in a hospital as a visitor creates in me is intolerable. The place is crawling with sick people and germs. The only thing I hate worse is going to a funeral home.
My mother survived the Holocaust, but she was way too young to remember anything about it. I wish I had discussed it with my grandmother and recorded her experiences. "What was the Holocaust like, Maw?" "Well, Dagwood (she sometimes called me that), we here in Whitfield County didn't even know there was a Holocaust going on until the war was over. It was a hard time, though, because all your uncles were off fighting in World War II, and I worried about them night and day. I'm sure the Jews had it a lot worse, though."
My neighbor was flying his Confederate Battle Flag the other day, but I don't know the occasion. I don't think it was the race thing. NASCAR races on weekends, doesn't it? Anyway, it seems so out of place in the Hudson Valley. I have mixed feelings about the Confederacy. I'm pretty sure my poor illiterate ancestors in the Confederate Army were hapless dupes who didn't see themselves as fighting for slavery. At least I'd like to believe that. I don't like it when anyone pisses on their graves so to speak by attributing motives to them that I doubt they had. On the other hand, they were traitors, just like their ancestors before them in the Revolution had been. The Revolutioners succeeded, though, so we call them "Patriots". The Confederates didn't, so they're just traitors, or more charitably "Rebels". For the most part, flying the Confederate Battle Flag these days is taken as an expression of racism. Even if you're intention is otherwise, you have to expect that it will be interpreted as racist.
I went to the gym today for the first time in weeks only to find that it was closed. The sign on the door said "temporarily" and laid it off to a landlord dispute. I went on line and found out that the chain was in Chapter 11. You wouldn't know it from the Sport & Wellness websites. They make it seem as if it's business as usual when clearly it's not. A reputable company would have some FAQs about the bankruptcy and information about how it was expected to play out on its websites. So I'm assuming that the club is not going to reopen unless somebody buys it. Here I was feeling guilty for the last month about not going to the gym when it was closed the whole time.
My nutcase neighbor who was disappointed in the election last November finally took down his sign that decried the Unites Socialist States of America and referring to Obama as Redistributor-in-Chief. It doubled for a while as an advertisement for Free Kittens. They really need to spay their cat. They still have their harpoon cannon aimed across the road.
I skipped church today. The choir is on hiatus for the summer, except for the women who sing on Father's Day. They get Mother's Day off while the men sing. In summer, the music is more ad hoc with small groups singing. In August, we have church outside under a tent. Anyway, I might not go to church all summer. I'm just not into church services if I have to be a spectator. I'm not a big fan of sermons and would just as soon skip that part.
My friend who was in the horrible car crash last summer finally had his innards reattached and enjoyed his first bowel movement in eleven months. I can't tell you how relieved I am that his recovery has gone so well. He's going to be in a lot of pain for a while yet. I didn't visit him in the hospital because I am phobic. The level of anxiety that being in a hospital as a visitor creates in me is intolerable. The place is crawling with sick people and germs. The only thing I hate worse is going to a funeral home.
Friday, June 19, 2009
The GOP is Still Evil
I have become convinced over the years that Democrats, for the most part, mean well. They really believe that good government can improve people's lives. Only, they're stupid. Republicans, on the other hand, do not have good intentions. They just want power and access to the treasury. They'll say or do anything to get and keep power because they don't give a shit about this country. They want what they can get for themselves, that's all. They're evil.
Democrats seem to think that they should be able to work in a bipartisan way. And they can as long as the other party is not the GOP. They don't seem to want to attribute to their counterparts in the GOP the evil motives that they seem to possess. The GOP will gladly attribute evil motives to anyone if it helps their cause even if the attribution is unsupportable.
Republicans don't care about being lying sacks of shit. It works for them. One or more of their surrogates may some outrageous claim or accusation which is then picked up by one of the right wing's captive "news" outlets (Washington Times, FOX, Weekly Standard, etc.). The surrogates and "news" outlets complain that the "liberal media" is ignoring the story, and then it filters into the mainstream media, The lazy assed talking heads at CNN and MSNBC and the like don't bother to look into the substance of the myths being created and disseminated and talk about them as if they were anything other than made up batshit lunacy. That's being "balanced" when you are too stupid or lazy to look at the facts. The mainsteam media has some right wing moles in it who make sure that the product of the right wing myth making machine get aired.
This works again and again because Democrats are too afraid or too stupid to stand up and call bullshit and shine a light on the machine. Except Al Franken.
Democrats seem to think that they should be able to work in a bipartisan way. And they can as long as the other party is not the GOP. They don't seem to want to attribute to their counterparts in the GOP the evil motives that they seem to possess. The GOP will gladly attribute evil motives to anyone if it helps their cause even if the attribution is unsupportable.
Republicans don't care about being lying sacks of shit. It works for them. One or more of their surrogates may some outrageous claim or accusation which is then picked up by one of the right wing's captive "news" outlets (Washington Times, FOX, Weekly Standard, etc.). The surrogates and "news" outlets complain that the "liberal media" is ignoring the story, and then it filters into the mainstream media, The lazy assed talking heads at CNN and MSNBC and the like don't bother to look into the substance of the myths being created and disseminated and talk about them as if they were anything other than made up batshit lunacy. That's being "balanced" when you are too stupid or lazy to look at the facts. The mainsteam media has some right wing moles in it who make sure that the product of the right wing myth making machine get aired.
This works again and again because Democrats are too afraid or too stupid to stand up and call bullshit and shine a light on the machine. Except Al Franken.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
I Fight Nature; Nature Wins
I feel as if I'm back in Seattle what with the almost constant grey skies and rain. Of course, the rain is different. In Seattle, it just sort of misted and drizzled all the time. Here in the Hudson Valley, it comes in downpours with thunder and lightning and an agitated Carpathian Shepherd keeping me up all night even though he's mostly deaf. Quite a bit of the mountain drains through my creeks and pond and parts of my yard, and I sustained a little damage to a pachysandra patch that got in the way of a flash flood that the creeks could not contain. I have fixed it, and I am proud to say that I think I came up with a solution to divert the flow coming down off the mountain from the west side.
Earlier, I put in some "levees" where the flow from the bedrock heads into the pond to channel the water into a waterfall that I had erected with big rocks. The "levees" I made by making two berms of pond muck and planting grass on them. The flow from the fencelline now is contained between them and does not wash put my perennial beds. I can't believe I didn't think of this before. When I saw what happened to the pachysandras, I nailed some planks to the fence behind the pachysandra bed to stop (or at least slow) the flow off the mountain and divert it toward the southern creek bed. Smart, huh? I have put in a layer of sand and aim to plant grass in a layer of pond muck to fight erosion even more. I reckon anything short of a deluge will be covered.
Oddly, the basement has not gotten filled up with water due to excessive rain as it had in the past. In times past, it has been necessary during some storms to run a second sump pump to keep up with the inflow. The basement water comes from underground, and I have no idea why the groundwater flow would have changed.
Earlier, I put in some "levees" where the flow from the bedrock heads into the pond to channel the water into a waterfall that I had erected with big rocks. The "levees" I made by making two berms of pond muck and planting grass on them. The flow from the fencelline now is contained between them and does not wash put my perennial beds. I can't believe I didn't think of this before. When I saw what happened to the pachysandras, I nailed some planks to the fence behind the pachysandra bed to stop (or at least slow) the flow off the mountain and divert it toward the southern creek bed. Smart, huh? I have put in a layer of sand and aim to plant grass in a layer of pond muck to fight erosion even more. I reckon anything short of a deluge will be covered.
Oddly, the basement has not gotten filled up with water due to excessive rain as it had in the past. In times past, it has been necessary during some storms to run a second sump pump to keep up with the inflow. The basement water comes from underground, and I have no idea why the groundwater flow would have changed.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Making Your McMansion Pay
I bet McMansions would make good boarding houses. They usually have extra bedrooms and even bonus rooms that could be let, and their large kitchens make cooking for a group a breeze. Let's say you have a five bedroom house in a high end subdivision. You put your kids in one room and yourself and your mate in another, and you let the rest to strangers. I bet you could get $750 a pop if meals are included. It's hard to get an apartment for that little in the Hudson Valley, and solitary folks would be so much more comfortable in a family atmosphere instead of comng home to an empty flat. It's a win-win situation for everyone.
Would the neighbors have grounds to complain? Only if your boarders made nuisances of themselves. The neighbors would probably thank you for giving them the idea to take in boarders themselves.
If you got to know some Honduran landscapers, you could probably fit 10-15 boarders in your three spare rooms at $500 a pop. That would go a long way toward paying your jumbo mortgage.
Would the neighbors have grounds to complain? Only if your boarders made nuisances of themselves. The neighbors would probably thank you for giving them the idea to take in boarders themselves.
If you got to know some Honduran landscapers, you could probably fit 10-15 boarders in your three spare rooms at $500 a pop. That would go a long way toward paying your jumbo mortgage.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Scripture
Steve Scott is starting a new series on how we really read the Bible. http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/2009/06/scripture-american-style-1.html He's using red font to express the real meaning that we seem to give it. I look forward to the series.
When I was a kid, my King James Bible used red font to indicate the words of Jesus. Also, it had italics where words had been supplied in the translation. Only I didn't know that. I reckoned the italics meant I should emphasize those words when I read them, so I did. I sounded pretty stupid, let me tell you.
Anyway, I'm reading up on some of the books that didn't make it into the Bible. Some discoveries suggest that the Gospel of Mark was edited a great deal to remove content that the orthdox bishops deemed objectionable. It makes sense when you think about it. Mark is pretty choppy in places, and it ends rather abruptly. And what's up with the young man in the linen loincloth in Gethsemane? That seems like such a non sequitur. Was linen loincloth dude a bigger part of the story in the original Mark?
I suppose that the orthodox viewpoint was the only one that could have survived and flourished through the Dark Ages. The chirch had to be authoritarian and institutional. It is only now that it is safe for other versions of Christianity to be practiced, and I reckon it would be interesting to play around with different canons.
When I was a kid, my King James Bible used red font to indicate the words of Jesus. Also, it had italics where words had been supplied in the translation. Only I didn't know that. I reckoned the italics meant I should emphasize those words when I read them, so I did. I sounded pretty stupid, let me tell you.
Anyway, I'm reading up on some of the books that didn't make it into the Bible. Some discoveries suggest that the Gospel of Mark was edited a great deal to remove content that the orthdox bishops deemed objectionable. It makes sense when you think about it. Mark is pretty choppy in places, and it ends rather abruptly. And what's up with the young man in the linen loincloth in Gethsemane? That seems like such a non sequitur. Was linen loincloth dude a bigger part of the story in the original Mark?
I suppose that the orthodox viewpoint was the only one that could have survived and flourished through the Dark Ages. The chirch had to be authoritarian and institutional. It is only now that it is safe for other versions of Christianity to be practiced, and I reckon it would be interesting to play around with different canons.
"Responsible White Separatists"
A spokesman for the white separatist movement remarked about the shooting at the Holocaust Museum: "The responsible white separatist community condemns this," he said. "It makes us look bad."
Holocaust Museum Shooting Suspect Had History of Hate, Signs of Breaking Point - washingtonpost.com
You know what makes white separatists look bad? Being white separatists.
Holocaust Museum Shooting Suspect Had History of Hate, Signs of Breaking Point - washingtonpost.com
You know what makes white separatists look bad? Being white separatists.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
And the Nominees for Worst Legislature in the Country
Are New York State, especially the Senate, where a couple of crooks that the Democrats thought they had bought refused to stay bought and sold themselves to the Republicans. The worse of the two was made President Pro Tempore of the Senate and would become Governor if David Paterson died or was incapacitated. God help the State of New York.
Divorce
My carpool companion is getting divorced, a process that's been in the works for months now. Meanwhile, he and his not soon enough to be ex-wife still live under the same roof, a situation that he once reckoned was a good idea for the sake of the kids but which is becoming increasingly intolerable as he embraces the divorce.
I reckon he's lucky to have a former divorce lawyer to commmute with, because I have been able (for free) to put him through the paces to get to the point where he can make rational decisions. He was the one who was blindsided by his adulterous wife, stay at home mother of three small children to whom my companion has devoted everything. He is a family man through and through, so the idea that he was going to lose his family was the ultimate blow. Seriously, his whole life revolves around hearth and home.
He went through the typical stages of the wronged spouse. At first, he was sure that his wife didn't really mean it, that she was just trying to get his attention, that the whole thing would blow over. I was pretty harsh with him during that phase. I pointed out that she was fucking somebody else and not him, that she did secretly set up a bank account, and that she was pretty adamant about getting divorced. I explained that she had been preparing for this for months, maybe even years, so that she was emotionally ready and poised for action. That's why it didn't seem upsetting to her. Her mind was made up. Say hello to reality.
Then he went through the "I'll do whatever it takes to save this marriage" stage where he floated all kinds of offers about how he would change, that they could work it out, get counselling, what have you. "Won't someone think of trhe children" also came into play. The dude was ready to live in a loveless marriage just for the kids and because he secretly believed that, given time, the bitch would come around and love him again. Again, I was pretty harsh. "She doesn't love you any more, if she ever did, and nothing you do or say can change that. You can't make her love you. If she changes her mind and begs you to take her back, great, but meanwhile don't be stupid. Look to your interests on the assumption that you're getting divorced. Your wife will use your vulnerability against you, so don't settle on anything until you get your head out of your ass."
Then he alternated between depression and anger for a while. This was understandable, but I told him that he had to make plans and decisions with a cool head. He wouldn't always feel this way. Eventually, he'd get over his hurt and anger enough to move on with his new life. And he'd be glad to be free of the shrewish harpy, at least as free as you can be with children together.
Now he's ready to protect himself and to work with his lawyer to get the divorce done with as little inconvenience to himself as possible. He still claims that he wants to have the kids with him way more than he probably really does, but that's what fathers are expected to say. If the ex-wife wants to saddle herself with a disproportionate amount of the burden of parenting, let her. You can always trade days with the kids for economic concessions. Down the road, she'll be begging him to take the kids more often.
One thing he can't seem to get past is that the court doesn't care whose fault it was that the marriage failed or that his wife cheated on him. I'm working on convincing him that the "Justice System" has nothing to do with justice. It really took him aback when I remarked back when the divorce process started that "nobody held a gun to your head". "This is what you sign up for when you get married and have children with someone. Didn't anyone warn you?" I reckon every marriage license should include a conspicuous warning: MARRIAGE MAY RESULT IN DIVORCE WITH YOUR SPOUSES TAKING HALF YOUR STUFF AND A LOT OF YOUR INCOME.
I reckon he's lucky to have a former divorce lawyer to commmute with, because I have been able (for free) to put him through the paces to get to the point where he can make rational decisions. He was the one who was blindsided by his adulterous wife, stay at home mother of three small children to whom my companion has devoted everything. He is a family man through and through, so the idea that he was going to lose his family was the ultimate blow. Seriously, his whole life revolves around hearth and home.
He went through the typical stages of the wronged spouse. At first, he was sure that his wife didn't really mean it, that she was just trying to get his attention, that the whole thing would blow over. I was pretty harsh with him during that phase. I pointed out that she was fucking somebody else and not him, that she did secretly set up a bank account, and that she was pretty adamant about getting divorced. I explained that she had been preparing for this for months, maybe even years, so that she was emotionally ready and poised for action. That's why it didn't seem upsetting to her. Her mind was made up. Say hello to reality.
Then he went through the "I'll do whatever it takes to save this marriage" stage where he floated all kinds of offers about how he would change, that they could work it out, get counselling, what have you. "Won't someone think of trhe children" also came into play. The dude was ready to live in a loveless marriage just for the kids and because he secretly believed that, given time, the bitch would come around and love him again. Again, I was pretty harsh. "She doesn't love you any more, if she ever did, and nothing you do or say can change that. You can't make her love you. If she changes her mind and begs you to take her back, great, but meanwhile don't be stupid. Look to your interests on the assumption that you're getting divorced. Your wife will use your vulnerability against you, so don't settle on anything until you get your head out of your ass."
Then he alternated between depression and anger for a while. This was understandable, but I told him that he had to make plans and decisions with a cool head. He wouldn't always feel this way. Eventually, he'd get over his hurt and anger enough to move on with his new life. And he'd be glad to be free of the shrewish harpy, at least as free as you can be with children together.
Now he's ready to protect himself and to work with his lawyer to get the divorce done with as little inconvenience to himself as possible. He still claims that he wants to have the kids with him way more than he probably really does, but that's what fathers are expected to say. If the ex-wife wants to saddle herself with a disproportionate amount of the burden of parenting, let her. You can always trade days with the kids for economic concessions. Down the road, she'll be begging him to take the kids more often.
One thing he can't seem to get past is that the court doesn't care whose fault it was that the marriage failed or that his wife cheated on him. I'm working on convincing him that the "Justice System" has nothing to do with justice. It really took him aback when I remarked back when the divorce process started that "nobody held a gun to your head". "This is what you sign up for when you get married and have children with someone. Didn't anyone warn you?" I reckon every marriage license should include a conspicuous warning: MARRIAGE MAY RESULT IN DIVORCE WITH YOUR SPOUSES TAKING HALF YOUR STUFF AND A LOT OF YOUR INCOME.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
I Will Never Get Up Early and Go to the Gym
Yesterday, I decided that today was going to be the first day of the rest of my life, that I was going to get my shit together once and for all. I set my alarm for 5 am and resolved that I would get up and go to the gym in the wee hours of the morning. It's so much more righteous to work out in the early morning and the opposite of my nature.
I reckon I was unconciously setting myself up for failure. I didn't sleep a wink all night and couldn't even dream of going to the gym at 5 when the alarm went off. What a maroon I am. I am dead tired at my desk and apt to fall out any minute. A power nap might not be a bad idea.
Anyway, I decided that there is no way that I will ever get up at 5 in the morning to work out. It's not in my nature. I shouldn't even think of resolving to get up earlier than I absolutely have to.
When I had drill sergeants screaming at me, I could get up and exercise. Otherwise, it isn't going to happen.
I reckon I was unconciously setting myself up for failure. I didn't sleep a wink all night and couldn't even dream of going to the gym at 5 when the alarm went off. What a maroon I am. I am dead tired at my desk and apt to fall out any minute. A power nap might not be a bad idea.
Anyway, I decided that there is no way that I will ever get up at 5 in the morning to work out. It's not in my nature. I shouldn't even think of resolving to get up earlier than I absolutely have to.
When I had drill sergeants screaming at me, I could get up and exercise. Otherwise, it isn't going to happen.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
Vacation Plans Made
I booked a cruise in the Western Mediterranean for late November. We haven't done anything cultural in a while, so we're visiting a sampling of cities. We'll have a few days in Barcelona before the cruise.
I was amazed at how inexpensive the actual cruise part is (less than $500 per person for a week), and the whole thing with air, hotel and cruise is less than $4K. Of course, excursions are extra, but most of these are under a $100 per person. Alcohol is extra, and the bar tab broke the bank on our last cruise. This time I have a plan to moderate alcohol consumption by putting off my first drink until our predinner visit to the wine bar. Also, I will drink only when Mrs Vache Folle drinks, so unless she turns into a boozehound between now and then, we'll spend way less on beverages.
Another costly item for us on our last cruise was the spa. We had massages, facials, manicures, pedicures, what have you. And it added up, let me tell you. Nowadays, we have regular appointments for massages and facials and nail care, so we won't feel any need to treat ourselves to these things at three times the cost while we are on the ship. I am used to my regular masseur and nail care professionals who are way better than the staff on the ship. Instead, we aim to get the "spa package" which for about a $100 each gives us access to the sauna, hydrotherapy pools, whirlpools, steam, and the "quiet room".
With excursions and souvenirs and wine, I'm hoping to do the trip for under $5K.
I was amazed at how inexpensive the actual cruise part is (less than $500 per person for a week), and the whole thing with air, hotel and cruise is less than $4K. Of course, excursions are extra, but most of these are under a $100 per person. Alcohol is extra, and the bar tab broke the bank on our last cruise. This time I have a plan to moderate alcohol consumption by putting off my first drink until our predinner visit to the wine bar. Also, I will drink only when Mrs Vache Folle drinks, so unless she turns into a boozehound between now and then, we'll spend way less on beverages.
Another costly item for us on our last cruise was the spa. We had massages, facials, manicures, pedicures, what have you. And it added up, let me tell you. Nowadays, we have regular appointments for massages and facials and nail care, so we won't feel any need to treat ourselves to these things at three times the cost while we are on the ship. I am used to my regular masseur and nail care professionals who are way better than the staff on the ship. Instead, we aim to get the "spa package" which for about a $100 each gives us access to the sauna, hydrotherapy pools, whirlpools, steam, and the "quiet room".
With excursions and souvenirs and wine, I'm hoping to do the trip for under $5K.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Bugaboo Creek
Mrs Vache Folle and I went out to dinner with some friends on Saturday to Bugaboo Creek, a steak restaurant in Poughkeepsie, presumably one of a chain, that has as its "theme" the Canadian Rockies. The food was palatable (I had smoked spareribs) and a "Bunyan Onion" appetizer. The latter is the same as a "Bloomin' Onion" that you'd get at the Outback, but it's name reflects the fact that Canada has forests, perhaps even some that legendary giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan visited. There were unlimited refills on nonalcoholic beverages, and I must have downed a gallon of iced tea before I realized that the waiters were surreptitiously replacing my beverage container any time it got to half empty.
The main dining rooom, where we were seated, featured an animatronic mounted bison head that would come to life at intervals and crack wise. The first couple of times, it was amusing. Even more annoying was the policy of commemorating birthdays with a parade of chanting and singing waitstaff, one of which was carrying a muppet mounted moose head that would maul the celebrant. There must have been thirty birthday celebrations during our dinner. Every few minutes, waitstaff would come over and ask us "How's everything tasting?" I had to admit that everything tasted pretty good. I hope that there are defibrillators strategically placed around the premises, because arteries are acloggin' at Bugaboo Creek. That's the only thing that makes the talking decapitated ruminants and the birthday celebrations bearable.
The main dining rooom, where we were seated, featured an animatronic mounted bison head that would come to life at intervals and crack wise. The first couple of times, it was amusing. Even more annoying was the policy of commemorating birthdays with a parade of chanting and singing waitstaff, one of which was carrying a muppet mounted moose head that would maul the celebrant. There must have been thirty birthday celebrations during our dinner. Every few minutes, waitstaff would come over and ask us "How's everything tasting?" I had to admit that everything tasted pretty good. I hope that there are defibrillators strategically placed around the premises, because arteries are acloggin' at Bugaboo Creek. That's the only thing that makes the talking decapitated ruminants and the birthday celebrations bearable.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
It Sucks to Be Me
I learned from my doctor the other day when we were reviewing my lab results that my triglycerides are way too high. I need to lose weight to get them down. My doctor suggsted that I check out Medifast because my antianxiety medication causes me to gain weight and makes it hard to lose weight. It's not my fault! It was the meds all this time. Self loathing can now be moderated. My plan is to taper down on the meds and quit drinking alcohol since it interferes with the meds in the first place. Also, I'll eat better and less and get more exercise. At least that's what Morning Guy aims to do. Evening Guy or Tomorrow Guy may have other ideas.
One of my big issues is guilt. I feel guilty all the time. Often I know that what I am about to do is going to result in intense feelings of guilt, but I do it anyway. I never made the leap to guilt as a deterrent. I blame my mother for this since she played the guilt card so much that it became meaningless. My guilt is unceasing and serves no purpose. It's like a phone that rings all the time whether or not anyone is calling. I feel bad about maligning my mother just now. I am a shitty, shitty son. Anyway, if only I could channel my guilt into helping me take healthy decisions. I am such a worthless wretch.
Also, my testosterone is way low, another side effect of my meds. Aside from reduced libido, this doesn't have any adverse impacts. I've been married to the same woman for over a quarter of a century, and I don't reckon I want to do anything that would upset our routine of quarterly sex, so I'm not going to get treatment for the hormone level. I might take some OTC supplements or some such thing, but no testosterone cream for me, thank you. Sex=guilt. I don't blame Mom for this. This was the Baptists. After sex, I want to apologize right away. Thanks for nothing, Baptists.
Other than the two anomalies, my blood and urine read normal. My good cholesterol was high and my bad cholesterol was only slightly high instead of astronomically high as it would be if I didn't take meds. I feel OK except for some fatigue (meds again). Now I'm worried about some hidden defect that, having been lulled into a sense of healthfulness by the lab results, I will fail to observe in time to treat. Damn it! I can't feel good about anything for even a minute.
One of my big issues is guilt. I feel guilty all the time. Often I know that what I am about to do is going to result in intense feelings of guilt, but I do it anyway. I never made the leap to guilt as a deterrent. I blame my mother for this since she played the guilt card so much that it became meaningless. My guilt is unceasing and serves no purpose. It's like a phone that rings all the time whether or not anyone is calling. I feel bad about maligning my mother just now. I am a shitty, shitty son. Anyway, if only I could channel my guilt into helping me take healthy decisions. I am such a worthless wretch.
Also, my testosterone is way low, another side effect of my meds. Aside from reduced libido, this doesn't have any adverse impacts. I've been married to the same woman for over a quarter of a century, and I don't reckon I want to do anything that would upset our routine of quarterly sex, so I'm not going to get treatment for the hormone level. I might take some OTC supplements or some such thing, but no testosterone cream for me, thank you. Sex=guilt. I don't blame Mom for this. This was the Baptists. After sex, I want to apologize right away. Thanks for nothing, Baptists.
Other than the two anomalies, my blood and urine read normal. My good cholesterol was high and my bad cholesterol was only slightly high instead of astronomically high as it would be if I didn't take meds. I feel OK except for some fatigue (meds again). Now I'm worried about some hidden defect that, having been lulled into a sense of healthfulness by the lab results, I will fail to observe in time to treat. Damn it! I can't feel good about anything for even a minute.
Wednesday, June 03, 2009
Forget Personhood
When we ascribe personhood to an individual or category of individuals, this is ultimately based on arbitrary metaphysical assumptions about which it is pointless to argue. What we can do is discuss the practical, real world ramifications of the ascription or denial of personhood in particular cases. Even then, we will ultimately bump against subjective value judgments about costs and benefits and priorities, but it is nonetheless useful to get past the stage of "x is a person" versus "no it isn't" and to engage in constructive dialogue.
Suppose that I adhere to the irrational normative proposition that all spermatazoa are "persons" entitled to the rights and privileges apputenant thereto. After all, given access to an egg and a womb and just the right conditions, the sperm could become a human. This implies that I might support measures, however inconvenient or costly or draconian, to prevent the mistreatment or unnatural death of sperm. What do we gain by ascribing personhood to sperm? Nothing other than the satisfaction of appeasing me and my ilk in the "masturbation is murder" movement. In fact, we take on an onerous burden with no objective payoff for the social order. After all, sperm can't reciprocate. I don't deal with sperm in any manner that resembles my dealings with other "persons". Sperm don't respect my rights or personhood, and they can't even violate them of their own volition. Ascribing personhood to them seems ridiculous for these reasons and because of the difficulty of enforcing spermatazoa rights.
One might make the same arguments about human egg cells. What's the point of making them persons and recognizing rights? It is possible that a proponent of ova rights would use the ova as person argument as a justfication for the consequences of such a stance. It might suit the advocate of ova rights to limit the movement and freedom of women and to maintain an intrusive surveillance apparatus for reasons utterly unrelated to ova with ova rights being a tool to bring unwitting dupes on board with his program. Otherwise, nothing is to be gained by recognizing ova as persons.
The same goes, I reckon for an ova which has been fertilized by a spermatazoa. The fertilized egg is in no better position to recognize my rights or to violate them or to reciprocate with me in any way than the sperm or the egg that it once was. Affording it personhood does nothing other than diminish human freedom with no payoff other than appeasement of the subjective, irrational beliefs of a portion of the population. Those who call the fertilized egg a person must expect consequences to flow from the ascription, and it is likely that many who do so understand their position as a means to obtain mass support for the application of measures which protect fertilzed eggs at the expense of actual sentient human beings.
Suppose the egg successfully plants itself in the uterine wall. Nothing has changed really for the purpose of our analysis. Nothing is gained by calling it a person, and a big burden is shifted onto actual sentient human beings. The cell divides and begins to differentiate, and all along the way it remains incapable of respecting another human or reciprocating with us in any way.
At some point, protecting the fetus becomes sufficiently less costly and inconvenient that it begins to make sense to offer it some legal protection. It is not necessary to characterize it as a person in order to do this. And the interests of the actual sentient human being who carries the fetus should certainly weigh heavily and take precedence in most cases.
Let's not get caught up in whether a fetus is a person. Let's just decide what protections a fetus ought to have under various circumstances and leave it at that. After all, children aren't persons, at least not in the full sense of the word. Their rights are hugely constrained, and we expect little of them as moral agents. We afford them protections commensurate with their situation, and their personhood doesn't really play into it. Personhood for children has implications that are very complicated and that contradict traditional social norms. It is only when we come to those who have attained majority that the concept of personhood has any meaning.
Roe v Wade was, in my opinion, rightly decided. If one accepts that the enumeration of rights in the Constitution is not exclusive and that other rights nonetheless exist, that the notions of what those rights might be can evolve over time, that courts traditionally make law to deal with social developments as they have done in the creation of the evolving common law since time immemorial, and that certain rights carve out areas of life where the government is simply not empowered to act, Roe v Wade rings true. Given the development of jurisprudence vis a vis the 14th amendment and the application of federal constitutional rights to state actions, we can set aside the states' rights objection for the time being. It is one of the few decisions that stand for the proposition that the sovereign's power is not unlimited.
Suppose that I adhere to the irrational normative proposition that all spermatazoa are "persons" entitled to the rights and privileges apputenant thereto. After all, given access to an egg and a womb and just the right conditions, the sperm could become a human. This implies that I might support measures, however inconvenient or costly or draconian, to prevent the mistreatment or unnatural death of sperm. What do we gain by ascribing personhood to sperm? Nothing other than the satisfaction of appeasing me and my ilk in the "masturbation is murder" movement. In fact, we take on an onerous burden with no objective payoff for the social order. After all, sperm can't reciprocate. I don't deal with sperm in any manner that resembles my dealings with other "persons". Sperm don't respect my rights or personhood, and they can't even violate them of their own volition. Ascribing personhood to them seems ridiculous for these reasons and because of the difficulty of enforcing spermatazoa rights.
One might make the same arguments about human egg cells. What's the point of making them persons and recognizing rights? It is possible that a proponent of ova rights would use the ova as person argument as a justfication for the consequences of such a stance. It might suit the advocate of ova rights to limit the movement and freedom of women and to maintain an intrusive surveillance apparatus for reasons utterly unrelated to ova with ova rights being a tool to bring unwitting dupes on board with his program. Otherwise, nothing is to be gained by recognizing ova as persons.
The same goes, I reckon for an ova which has been fertilized by a spermatazoa. The fertilized egg is in no better position to recognize my rights or to violate them or to reciprocate with me in any way than the sperm or the egg that it once was. Affording it personhood does nothing other than diminish human freedom with no payoff other than appeasement of the subjective, irrational beliefs of a portion of the population. Those who call the fertilized egg a person must expect consequences to flow from the ascription, and it is likely that many who do so understand their position as a means to obtain mass support for the application of measures which protect fertilzed eggs at the expense of actual sentient human beings.
Suppose the egg successfully plants itself in the uterine wall. Nothing has changed really for the purpose of our analysis. Nothing is gained by calling it a person, and a big burden is shifted onto actual sentient human beings. The cell divides and begins to differentiate, and all along the way it remains incapable of respecting another human or reciprocating with us in any way.
At some point, protecting the fetus becomes sufficiently less costly and inconvenient that it begins to make sense to offer it some legal protection. It is not necessary to characterize it as a person in order to do this. And the interests of the actual sentient human being who carries the fetus should certainly weigh heavily and take precedence in most cases.
Let's not get caught up in whether a fetus is a person. Let's just decide what protections a fetus ought to have under various circumstances and leave it at that. After all, children aren't persons, at least not in the full sense of the word. Their rights are hugely constrained, and we expect little of them as moral agents. We afford them protections commensurate with their situation, and their personhood doesn't really play into it. Personhood for children has implications that are very complicated and that contradict traditional social norms. It is only when we come to those who have attained majority that the concept of personhood has any meaning.
Roe v Wade was, in my opinion, rightly decided. If one accepts that the enumeration of rights in the Constitution is not exclusive and that other rights nonetheless exist, that the notions of what those rights might be can evolve over time, that courts traditionally make law to deal with social developments as they have done in the creation of the evolving common law since time immemorial, and that certain rights carve out areas of life where the government is simply not empowered to act, Roe v Wade rings true. Given the development of jurisprudence vis a vis the 14th amendment and the application of federal constitutional rights to state actions, we can set aside the states' rights objection for the time being. It is one of the few decisions that stand for the proposition that the sovereign's power is not unlimited.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Tools Against Terror
The power of the executive to detain terrorists without trial for preventive reasons would come in handy in the investigation of anti-choice terror cells in the wake of the assassination of Dr Tiller. If you even knew the assassin, you're probaably a terrorist and eligible for preventive detention. You can't be too careful, so if in doubt detain, dtain, detain. Those FEMA camps will come in real handy, too.
Thanks to the ability to use "enhanced interrogation techniques", which the government would have to do to prevent any ticking time bomb scenario from unfolding, the confessions and the informing will come quickly. The government will, if it deploys all the tools the prior administration claimed the authority to use, can rid us once and for alll the anti-choice domestic terror movement.
Thanks to the ability to use "enhanced interrogation techniques", which the government would have to do to prevent any ticking time bomb scenario from unfolding, the confessions and the informing will come quickly. The government will, if it deploys all the tools the prior administration claimed the authority to use, can rid us once and for alll the anti-choice domestic terror movement.
Murder by Domestic Terrorists
Let's say I'm a hacktacular TV commentator who wants to see an abortion doctor get killed. How do I go about it without risking liability? I know that there are domestic terrorists, many of whom are regular viewers of my show, who are willing to kill abortion doctors, so I'll just vilify the particular doctor on my show and wait for a domestic terrorist to do my dirty work.
I'd be just like one of those clerics who issues a fatwa, except I wouldn't ever say out loud that I wanted the docttor killed. My domestic terrorist viewers know what I mean. Wink wink.
Of course, the public will be horrified, but that won't have an impact on me because I work at FOX and my viewers are douchebags who will approve of what I did.
Whom should I choose as the next target for domestic terrorism?
I'd be just like one of those clerics who issues a fatwa, except I wouldn't ever say out loud that I wanted the docttor killed. My domestic terrorist viewers know what I mean. Wink wink.
Of course, the public will be horrified, but that won't have an impact on me because I work at FOX and my viewers are douchebags who will approve of what I did.
Whom should I choose as the next target for domestic terrorism?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)