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Below are the most recent 12 friends' journal entries.
| Monday, December 21st, 2009 |
allandaros
|
10:21p |
I'm really losing interest in Schlock Mercenary and XKCD. There's no glee when I open up their stuff anymore. This is sad, because for the longest time, Schlock's been my go-to webcomic, and it's given me the most enjoyable comics storyline I've ever read, bar none. (It starts here if you're curious.) Yes, I said bar none. That storyline which Taylor launched in October 2004 trumps Sandman for me, and The Dark Knight Returns, and all those others. (Well, maybe not V for Vendetta. So bar one, I guess.) I don't say that it should do the same for you; my tastes are idiosyncratic. The point is, it's gone from a comic which I've loved to pieces...to something which I don't really care about any more. Meh, so it goes. |
| Sunday, December 20th, 2009 |
timmypowg
|
3:05p |
Bible Literalism
Conservatives love to use Leviticus as a justification against homosexuality, and everyone else loves to use the rest of Leviticus as a justification against shellfish, touching menstruating women, etc. in retort. Examples (saw both today): http://www.magic-city-news.com/Entertainment_8/Debating_Dr_Laura_Schlesinger12743.shtmlhttp://weblog.sinteur.com/index.php/2009/12/20/the-bible-is-true/The argument is something like this: you can't accept one Biblical statement as the word of God and dismiss another as outdated. You can't justify your requirement that *I* adhere to something by saying that it's the word of God when similar words of God go unheeded. This argument is extremely fallacious because it takes Leviticus WAY out of context. First of all, the laws are the laws of the Israelites, not of everyone. In other words, I am not bound to the word of your god if I don't take him as my god as well; I have to be a descendant of Israel or a convert (which the Bible goes back and forth on) to be bound to the laws. This is pretty critical, because the Bible itself uses "abomination" in different contexts (following Haidt, I equate it to "disgusting"). Israelites were told to find gay male sex to be an abomination, and the same with eating shellfish. Egyptians, however, found eating with Hebrews to be an abomination, so Joseph had to dine alone despite being the right hand of the Pharaoh. It does not say that *everyone* needs to find these things to be abominations. Second, there are many things that have a punishment of stoning, or execution of some sort. It's not immediately clear that this is the case, but the intention is that this is the punishment to be given by a court of law. Why else would Jethro have set them up back in Exodus? Despite contradictory messages in the Torah, it's just not the case that you get to stone whomever you decide has broken the law. So I find that these retorts often ring hollow. They're funny, because the people basing their claims of homosexuality being an abomination on the Bible are usually not that smart, and making fun of them is very fair game. They're just not intellectually honest, and I feel like this comes from ignorance on the part of the "atheist". N.B. The understanding here, though, is that in modern Judaism, the situation is much more complex, but we're not really talking about Jews in this case (Schlesinger should know better, anyway). |
timmypowg
|
3:59a |
The Bible
Reading it again -- this time, in Hebrew (one column is fully vocalized/accented Hebrew, the other is the JPS English translation)! It's amazing how much more interesting things are when you have to read it word by word, pausing to understand each unfamiliar construction and appropriate it for later understanding. Except one thing: BIBLICAL GENEALOGIES ARE REALLY, REALLY, REALLY BORING. MEOD MEOD. You don't notice this when you have a version with commentary explaining why those genealogies might be the way they are; they go by quickly because it's English and when it goes slowly, it's because it's filled with interesting information. NOT SO IN HEBREW. The nice part is that at least I get to learn the actual names of people rather than the traditional transliteration. I did not know that Abel was actually Hevel (though I did know Eve was Chavah, of course). Also interestingly, the Hebrew grammar is fairly simplistic (or if it's actually complicated, the complexities are beyond me -- this seems more likely, but we'll carry on with assumption 1 anyway). There's a lot more meaning in understanding this, I feel, and there are many opportunities to notice repeated words and stems that enrich the experience. The lack of punctuation makes for somewhat difficult reading (especially when sometimes there are many unfamiliar words). The Hebrew might be somewhat archaic, but it's an interesting preservation of an ancient language -- when I see modern Hebrew and recognize words from the Bible, I see that it's not even as archaic as Shakespeare is to us, if much more flowery at least. It's good times, though. This will be a very long endeavor, no doubt, and I'll keep studying vocab and grammar on top of it. By the way, quick question for you Jew-knowledgeable types: occasionally there is a thin vertical bar between words. What is that? Is it cantillation, punctuation, a mark indicating something that would be on the scroll itself, or what? Now, back to bed to try to sleep some more... The heat is on full blast for some reason, so I'm hoping that letting some of this beautiful blizzard in will cool things down a bit. |
| Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 |
timmypowg
|
1:02p |
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| Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 |
timmypowg
|
9:43a |
The War on Christmas Gets Violent
http://www.tauntongazette.com/news/x1903566059/Taunton-second-grader-suspended-over-drawing-of-JesusI'm all for fighting a war on Christmas, but I'm also a pacifist, so this article is RIDICULOUSLY STUPID. Well, the article is all right, but... A teacher tells the students to draw something that reminds them of Christmas. Any good secularist might have drawn Santa Claus or reindeer or a blank white picture of snow in a blizzard, but this 8-year-old was apparently a Christian, so he chose to draw Christ dead on the cross, as if Christ somehow reminded him of Christmas. The teacher, apparently unaware of the connection, SUSPENDED HIM for drawing violent images and made him undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Now, I'm all for considering images of Christ on the cross to be violent. I think it's pretty disgusting, actually, that people revere a graven image of a guy being tortured to death, with nails in his hands and feet, thorns on his head, etc. (Of course, the whole point of this is that this extreme suffering is due to Christ's love for us, etc. But it's still a guy being tortured to death.) But you can't POSSIBLY fault an 8-year-old for drawing his religion's most important scene (though you could argue that it's more Easter-related -- maybe the kid would have been expelled if he'd drawn a halloween scene instead). What's worse, being suspended is pretty huge for an 8-year-old, and the kid was traumatized because of this enormous insensitivity. All for absolutely no reason. Come on. Fight the war on Christmas, but don't fight it by harming children. This is ridiculous. |
| Monday, December 14th, 2009 |
allandaros
|
9:27p |
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| Sunday, December 13th, 2009 |
allandaros
|
9:15p |
1 down, 3 to go
Hey guys - thank you all so much for the support on the last entry. I looked at it right before I went into the exam (it was laptop-based), and it felt really awesome to see those comments. I was feeling more nervous about this exam than any I can remember taking in the past...4 years or so? So those good wishes really meant a lot. Thank you. As a starter attempt at repayment, I proffer Brian Blessed doing snooker commentary. Context: the lady in the clip has just stated how she dislikes people without a volume control... (Cliche as it sounds, I couldn't stop laughing after watching this, so I hope it engenders a similar response with you folks. :) ) |
timmypowg
|
3:46a |
I'm Good At Concerts
I had a Christmas concert today with my choir. We sang a Mass. At a huge Episcopal church. So naturally, since it's Chanukah, I wore my kipah the whole concert, including when I sang my solo. Oh, yeah. (: |
| Saturday, December 12th, 2009 |
allandaros
|
10:12p |
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| Thursday, December 10th, 2009 |
timmypowg
|
1:42a |
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| Wednesday, December 9th, 2009 |
allandaros
|
1:05a |
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| Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 |
timmypowg
|
3:03a |
The War on Christmas
I always liked it as a holiday -- there are presents, trees, Santa Claus, snowmen, reindeer, etc. Christmas songs, too, which are great (provided you're not forced to listen to them every time you're in a store or restaurant for an entire month, anyway). It's nice and festive. But Christmas isn't *about* all these things, right? It's about the Christian god Jesus and his birth! There are three wise men or kings or whatever they are, stars in Beit Lechem, or whatever happens. I don't actually know the nativity story that's so important, partly because Christianity is not my religion. Christmas is actually several holidays in one. It is the religious holiday based on a story from the Christian version of the Bible, it is a traditional winter holiday informed by Christian tradition and folklore through the centuries, and it is a commercial holiday to stimulate economies. The second of those is the one that I like (I believed in Santa Claus for longer than many Christian children). The third is useful to retailers but annoying as hell, and the first is just not my realm; if I celebrate the religious Christmas, it is out of a desire to learn about and participate in Christianity. I do not want, then, this first holiday to be foisted upon me. I don't want to see religious Christmas symbols put up in my name unless I get to see religious symbols for Pesach, too, in its season. I don't want my city to read the nativity story unless it also shows The Strike, the Seinfeld episode where Festivus originated. Christmas tree lighting and decorating, all that stuff, whatever -- call it a holiday tree if you want, but it's a Christmas tree. If there's a public chanukiah as well (not that I equate the two holidays in any way, of course), I don't care so long as the tree is pretty, which is usually the case. (: But in America we have this wonderful bit about separation of church and state, and I do not believe I should have to put up with actual religiosity from my local government (you can call it hypocritical that I would be OK with it if Jewish and atheist stuff were done also, but just because I would be OK with it doesn't mean that other people don't have perfectly fair objections). I don't want my city's Christmas to include any Jesus at all. If you want a Christmas celebration involving Christ, go to a church or somewhere private. (I obviously am opposed to mentioning gods in the Pledge of Allegiance, too.) Is this multiple holiday personality case an artificial distinction? Given how I've celebrated it, at least to me, Christmas is indeed made up of three distinct holidays, with somewhat overlapping meanings. Easter has a bit of this with the bunny and the eggs, and Halloween DEFINITELY has a lot of this. In Nightmare Before Christmas, there are towns for the different holidays! The Jewish holidays have some of this; Chanukah has been transformed in American culture into a tripartite analog of Christmas (though there's not much of the folklore/tradition aspect that's not directly related to the "official" story and reason to celebrate) in addition to the traditional custom of playing s'vivon and getting money, and Purim is associated with dressing up, eating oznei Haman, raashanim, getting drunk, etc. (Pesach's "thing" is the seder, which is *rather* religious, so it doesn't really count; living in the Sukah for Sukot would kinda count if it weren't in the Torah, though the solemn feast on the eighth day does have a mascot -- THE SHEMINI ATZERET FERRET! AAAAAH!) Anyway, I don't have a problem with municipal celebration of the folklore and tradition side of Christmas, just the religious side. I simply don't like that the holidays *I* like don't get attention, but I have the nice excuse of separation of church and state to justify my opposition. |
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