Okay, now, just for fun. I was...rather young in 1971 when the Three Dog Night's rendition of "Joy to the World" topped the charts. And besides, I was a sweet little Baptist girl, and what would I know about rock music? It was a while more before we had a TV, and a while more after that before I saw a sappy and silly movie called something like Sunshine in the middle of which the song occurred. I don't remember a lot about the movie--a lot of motorcycle riding, a cute little girl--but the song stuck. It was cool.
In my teens, my taste in music had gone downhill temporarily. By then we were into the era of (ick) disco. But still, "Joy to the World" stuck somewhere in the back of my head. And for something like twenty years now I've been wondering how the lyrics go after "was a good friend of mine." Lyric searches are, surprisingly often, vain on the Internet because of copyright considerations, so I've only just now gotten around to trying to looking it up. And here it is.
Elsewhere on the fun front, from The Onion, here is a news flash on a new Iraqi law to require a five-day waiting period before purchasing suicide vests. Don't drink anything while watching it. It's hilarious. (HT for that one--TROP)
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Norman Finkelstein--Kookball Extraordinaire
I had heard only faint rumblings about a professor denied tenure at DePaul last summer/fall. I paid little attention and hadn't wittingly ever heard of Norman Finkelstein until his name came up on Little Green Footballs a couple of months back. (I'm not going to do the search just now to find the link.) Couldn't quite figure the whole thing out. LGF and others call him a Holocaust denier, which could be true for all I know, but maybe he's a "minimizer" instead, given that apparently his mother was a Holocaust survivor. "Minimizers," I gather, come in various shapes and forms, though they are odious enough.
I couldn't quite figure out exactly why he was denied tenure from an academic point of view. I mean, consider all the people who do have tenure. How did they find a way to deny this guy? On the other hand, he's apparently a sort of sycophantic attack-dog for his dear friend Noam Chomsky, which is probably enough to lower the quality of anyone's academic work. And no, I don't mean in linguistics.
As it happens, I have a friend who is on staff at DePaul who tells me that the word on the staff side is that you were lucky if you never had to deal with Norm, because he's a jerk. I put a lot of weight on this, by the way. In my opinion, staff at a large university pretty much keep the place running, sometimes nearly single-handed, and they probably deserve to get paid a lot more than they do get paid. If the staff think a faculty member is a jerk, odds are high that he is a jerk.
I'm not planning to run out and read Finkelstein's infamous Holocaust book, so I basically just went on not knowing very much about the guy but assuming he was bad news in general terms. Until the other day.
Watch this video clip only if you have a strong stomach. Because now I know in more detail that Norman Finkelstein is a scary and completely, ideologically crazy person.
In case you don't want to put your stomach to the test, here's a brief version. The linked video is an interview Finkelstein gave to Lebanese TV on a recent visit. In it he lauds Hezbollah to the skies and pours scorn upon those Lebanese people, including the female interviewer talking to him, who don't support Hezbollah. He calls Lebanese Hezbollah opponents "slaves"--to Israel and the U.S., of course. He calls the raining of rockets upon northern Israel in the summer of 2006 a mere "pretext" for Israel to attack. Because they just want the Lebanese people to be their slaves, apparently out of sheer sadism. George W. Bush, he says, "destroyed your entire country" that summer. (Really? The whole country? And Bush did that?) Norm is infuriated that Bush was received in Lebanon recently on a visit at all. He says that the French resistance against the Nazis in WWII (all of them?) were Communists and were harsh and brutal, but that we admire them--and he clearly thinks we should admire them--because they resisted the enslavement of their country by the Nazis. Hezbollah, he says, is like that. He says that war against Israel is the only way for Lebanon not to be slaves. (Guess that means more rockets fired on northern Israel then. They'd better get cracking. This guy must just love Hamas in Gaza.) Oh, and perhaps the wildest line: He says he wishes there were some other way than war and that probably Hitler, too, would have preferred if "his goals" could have been accomplished in some way other than by war.
A nut. A complete and bizarro nut.
So now I know all I need to know about Norman Finkelstein.
HT Israel Matzav
I couldn't quite figure out exactly why he was denied tenure from an academic point of view. I mean, consider all the people who do have tenure. How did they find a way to deny this guy? On the other hand, he's apparently a sort of sycophantic attack-dog for his dear friend Noam Chomsky, which is probably enough to lower the quality of anyone's academic work. And no, I don't mean in linguistics.
As it happens, I have a friend who is on staff at DePaul who tells me that the word on the staff side is that you were lucky if you never had to deal with Norm, because he's a jerk. I put a lot of weight on this, by the way. In my opinion, staff at a large university pretty much keep the place running, sometimes nearly single-handed, and they probably deserve to get paid a lot more than they do get paid. If the staff think a faculty member is a jerk, odds are high that he is a jerk.
I'm not planning to run out and read Finkelstein's infamous Holocaust book, so I basically just went on not knowing very much about the guy but assuming he was bad news in general terms. Until the other day.
Watch this video clip only if you have a strong stomach. Because now I know in more detail that Norman Finkelstein is a scary and completely, ideologically crazy person.
In case you don't want to put your stomach to the test, here's a brief version. The linked video is an interview Finkelstein gave to Lebanese TV on a recent visit. In it he lauds Hezbollah to the skies and pours scorn upon those Lebanese people, including the female interviewer talking to him, who don't support Hezbollah. He calls Lebanese Hezbollah opponents "slaves"--to Israel and the U.S., of course. He calls the raining of rockets upon northern Israel in the summer of 2006 a mere "pretext" for Israel to attack. Because they just want the Lebanese people to be their slaves, apparently out of sheer sadism. George W. Bush, he says, "destroyed your entire country" that summer. (Really? The whole country? And Bush did that?) Norm is infuriated that Bush was received in Lebanon recently on a visit at all. He says that the French resistance against the Nazis in WWII (all of them?) were Communists and were harsh and brutal, but that we admire them--and he clearly thinks we should admire them--because they resisted the enslavement of their country by the Nazis. Hezbollah, he says, is like that. He says that war against Israel is the only way for Lebanon not to be slaves. (Guess that means more rockets fired on northern Israel then. They'd better get cracking. This guy must just love Hamas in Gaza.) Oh, and perhaps the wildest line: He says he wishes there were some other way than war and that probably Hitler, too, would have preferred if "his goals" could have been accomplished in some way other than by war.
A nut. A complete and bizarro nut.
So now I know all I need to know about Norman Finkelstein.
HT Israel Matzav
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Weird connectivity problems
(Gee, I almost found myself saying "issues" in the post header. Don't you hate the new use of "issue" to mean "problem"?)
The connectivity problems referred to in the title are not to this site. As you can see, here I am. Ta-da! I also have e-mail and can connect to nearly all of my usual Internet sites. However, I suddenly (as of yesterday morning) cannot connect to my beloved group blog, to which I am a contributor, What's Wrong With the World.
By asking all my friends to try it and see if they can connect, I have narrowed down the problem to, apparently, my own house. My neighbor across the street has the same ISP that I do, and he can get the site.
I found this nifty article that may diagnose the problem. If so, we'll have to call in an expert. (I hope our physically local expert is available; he isn't always.) It says "only experienced Windows-savvy users" should attempt the workaround described, so I think we'll probably not try it ourselves. If this should turn out to be the problem, the mystery is why it suddenly arose yesterday morning, when nothing had changed in our local configuration.
Anyway, to all my many fans, I will be able to blog only here for a while, not at WWWtW, until it's all back up and running. One always hopes, with a trace of superstition, that the problem will just "fix itself." Maybe I'll wake up again tomorrow and it will all be better. Evidently (according to the article) that could actually happen if various servers started sending smaller "packets" that could fit down the "tunnel" of my router. Or something.
Update: The problem appears to be our local wireless router. When we plug the cable modem directly into the computer I use, the problem goes away. All sites become available. Unfortunately this means that no one else can use the Internet from a laptop at the same time. So for the time being, the cludge is that when no one else needs to use the Internet, I can switch the cables, reboot the computer (it doesn't work otherwise), and then go wherever I want on the Internet. When the wireless router is needed, we switch the cables back. Then I can come here, do e-mail, go most places, but not go to a few sites, including What's Wrong with the World. That's until we get an expert out here to find a better workaround. All most odd. I have a feeling some Bright Lad changed a packet size setting somewhere out there in cyberspace overnight between Friday and Saturday.
Update #2: Problem solved. The connection problem was indeed, as the article I linked above suggests, fixed by changing the MTU setting on my Linksys router down to 1492. The mystery that remains is why this should suddenly be necessary now. As far as I know, the setting has always been the factory-standard 1500, and this has never been a problem before, for over a year and a half. I've certainly never touched it before. I keep my ignorant hands off that stuff as much as possible. Anyway, thanks to Zippy and to Todd McKimmey for patient help and advice over the weekend. And thanks especially to Todd for pointing out to me what the linked article is not clear about and what I in my ignorance would have overlooked: If the problem is with the router, then the MTU setting that needs to be changed is the one on the router, not the one in the registry of the desktop computer. Of course. But it wouldn't have occurred to me. So just remember, if this esoteric problem should plague your Internet connection, the magic number is...1492.
The connectivity problems referred to in the title are not to this site. As you can see, here I am. Ta-da! I also have e-mail and can connect to nearly all of my usual Internet sites. However, I suddenly (as of yesterday morning) cannot connect to my beloved group blog, to which I am a contributor, What's Wrong With the World.
By asking all my friends to try it and see if they can connect, I have narrowed down the problem to, apparently, my own house. My neighbor across the street has the same ISP that I do, and he can get the site.
I found this nifty article that may diagnose the problem. If so, we'll have to call in an expert. (I hope our physically local expert is available; he isn't always.) It says "only experienced Windows-savvy users" should attempt the workaround described, so I think we'll probably not try it ourselves. If this should turn out to be the problem, the mystery is why it suddenly arose yesterday morning, when nothing had changed in our local configuration.
Anyway, to all my many fans, I will be able to blog only here for a while, not at WWWtW, until it's all back up and running. One always hopes, with a trace of superstition, that the problem will just "fix itself." Maybe I'll wake up again tomorrow and it will all be better. Evidently (according to the article) that could actually happen if various servers started sending smaller "packets" that could fit down the "tunnel" of my router. Or something.
Update: The problem appears to be our local wireless router. When we plug the cable modem directly into the computer I use, the problem goes away. All sites become available. Unfortunately this means that no one else can use the Internet from a laptop at the same time. So for the time being, the cludge is that when no one else needs to use the Internet, I can switch the cables, reboot the computer (it doesn't work otherwise), and then go wherever I want on the Internet. When the wireless router is needed, we switch the cables back. Then I can come here, do e-mail, go most places, but not go to a few sites, including What's Wrong with the World. That's until we get an expert out here to find a better workaround. All most odd. I have a feeling some Bright Lad changed a packet size setting somewhere out there in cyberspace overnight between Friday and Saturday.
Update #2: Problem solved. The connection problem was indeed, as the article I linked above suggests, fixed by changing the MTU setting on my Linksys router down to 1492. The mystery that remains is why this should suddenly be necessary now. As far as I know, the setting has always been the factory-standard 1500, and this has never been a problem before, for over a year and a half. I've certainly never touched it before. I keep my ignorant hands off that stuff as much as possible. Anyway, thanks to Zippy and to Todd McKimmey for patient help and advice over the weekend. And thanks especially to Todd for pointing out to me what the linked article is not clear about and what I in my ignorance would have overlooked: If the problem is with the router, then the MTU setting that needs to be changed is the one on the router, not the one in the registry of the desktop computer. Of course. But it wouldn't have occurred to me. So just remember, if this esoteric problem should plague your Internet connection, the magic number is...1492.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Introducing Mark Pickup
For those of you who don't know of him, Mark Pickup is a Canadian blogger with multiple sclerosis who has been writing about life issues for quite some years. I first read Mark's columns in National Right to Life News before anyone had ever heard of the blogosphere. (At least, that's how I recall it.) Wesley J. Smith has also mentioned Mark as a personal friend a number of times. I've just added Mark's blog to the links on the left, even though I'm not a very faithful reader, after seeing this post, "Sickness seen through a lens of Christian faith," from late January of this year.
Mark was diagnosed with MS when he was thirty years old and lives in a wheelchair. He recalls in this post how his wife found an old love letter he wrote to her when they were both young. In it, he wrote this:
Mark was diagnosed with MS when he was thirty years old and lives in a wheelchair. He recalls in this post how his wife found an old love letter he wrote to her when they were both young. In it, he wrote this:
What about our health? Health is like money in that it can be taken away. If either of us were to lose our health, we can be thankful for having known good health. There are thousands of people who have never had the gift of good health; they live with sick or twisted bodies that have never been whole. We have so much to be thankful for but most of all, we have each other.Mark continues:
I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of thirty. Contrary to my earlier youthful words in a love-letter to my wife, I was not thankful I had known good health after it was gone. I was angry I lost it!Read the whole thing.
Fear overcame me about what lay in store for me. I knew multiple sclerosis is a serious disease that often has a catastrophic impact of the lives of people it strikes. I knew people with MS: often their lives were torn apart as their marriages crumbled, careers shattered, and they were abandoned to a living hell.
Multiple sclerosis devastated my life. It stripped away my health, layer by layer, like pealing an onion, and eventually left me triplegic and in an electric wheelchair.
Looking back over more than twenty years of increasingly profound and crippling disability I must say that I have become one of those people I wrote about who lives with a sick and twisted body. Yes, there were times when my heart broke – along with the hearts of those loved me. There were times throughout the years when it was me (not someone else) who was on the verge of despair. Protracted suffering seemed to isolate me in sorrow – just as my wife’s sorrow seemed to isolate her. At other times we lived two solitudes rooted in the same overwhelming and inexpressible sorrow.
The only way for our two broken hearts to unite was to kneel together before the cross and ask Jesus to console the inconsolable within us.
When people unite their suffering and sorrows with Christ’s Passion, a mysterious solidarity often occurs with other sufferers; solitudes of human anguish come together in mutual comfort at the foot of the cross. Christ’s outreached arms bid welcome to all heavy-hearted people, calling us beyond ourselves and our pain to find our consolation in Him.
Monday, February 18, 2008
I wanna be like Zippy
My hordes of readers will notice the blog's new look. And just in case anyone doesn't get the allusion, it is to Zippy Catholic's blog, the look of which I have always liked better than my own. The content's pretty darned good, too!
The really good news is that now I can put up links to other people's blogs without fearing that warning that "all your changes will be lost if you change your format." I had to do a little html stuff to put up the three links that have always been there, and retaining as I do a bit of the technophobe, this was fiddly and annoying. I also believed that when it said that all my changes would be lost, it meant the links too, and I'd have to redo them, so I've kept it to just three against the day (today) when I would get that seagoing look I really wanted.
But the worry was for nothing. As it turns out, the links all survived the transition to the new lighthouse-y look, and now I don't have to think about it. So I can start adding a few more links. Now, if only they have some new user-friendly way to do that...
Update: Thanks entirely to Zippy for the recent comments feature. This should encourage y'all to comment frequently just to see yourself up there on top of the list!
The really good news is that now I can put up links to other people's blogs without fearing that warning that "all your changes will be lost if you change your format." I had to do a little html stuff to put up the three links that have always been there, and retaining as I do a bit of the technophobe, this was fiddly and annoying. I also believed that when it said that all my changes would be lost, it meant the links too, and I'd have to redo them, so I've kept it to just three against the day (today) when I would get that seagoing look I really wanted.
But the worry was for nothing. As it turns out, the links all survived the transition to the new lighthouse-y look, and now I don't have to think about it. So I can start adding a few more links. Now, if only they have some new user-friendly way to do that...
Update: Thanks entirely to Zippy for the recent comments feature. This should encourage y'all to comment frequently just to see yourself up there on top of the list!
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Men ought always to pray, and not to faint
Luke 18:1 says, "And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint."
Thus begins the parable of the unjust judge. You all know it. A woman bugs and nags an unjust judge, until he finally gives in and defends her against her enemies. And Jesus, according to St. Luke, is telling us by this parable that we should nag God. Really. Jesus himself ends by saying that God will "avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him..."
I believe that it is not always coincidence but sometimes Providence that we hear particular things at particular times. This past Thursday at ladies' Bible study Phil. 4:6-7 was one of the verses we went over, in which we are told not to worry but rather to "make [our] requests known unto God." And this morning the hymn "Commit Thou All That Grieves Thee" was on the slate, chosen by the priest, not by me. Unfortunately, it appears that none of the cyber-hymnals have it, because for some reason the words are still copyright. It's #446 in the 1940 hymnal, and the first verse goes like this:
Commit thou all that grieves thee
And fills thy heart with care.
To Him whose faithful mercy
The skies above declare,
Who gives the winds their courses,
Who points the clouds their way
Tis He will guide thy footsteps
And be thy staff and stay.
And then while I was thinking about prayer, Jesus' parable of the unjust judge came to mind.
The point of all of this seems to me to be that we should get over ourselves. By that I mean that we should stop worrying about wasting God's time with our "little" worries or with things that "might not seem important to him." We have no dignity with God anyway, so let's get on with it: Jesus says we are to pray and not to faint. St. Paul says we are to bring our requests to God. These strike me as biblical injunctions simply to speak to God about our concerns and worries, to make our requests humbly, realizing that it might not be His will to grant them, but not to try to get an "inside line" on what God is already planning to do in the matter or what God wants us to say, the exact feelings He wants us to have. It really isn't about our feelings anyway (unless that happens to be what we are praying about). It's about whatever the subject of the request happens to be, which we should simply lay before Him as we are told to do.
So, since I think these things are sometimes not coincidences, I give you these thoughts for what they are worth, so that if God put them into my mind for a reason connected to one of my readers as well as to my own preoccupations, they are available.
Thus begins the parable of the unjust judge. You all know it. A woman bugs and nags an unjust judge, until he finally gives in and defends her against her enemies. And Jesus, according to St. Luke, is telling us by this parable that we should nag God. Really. Jesus himself ends by saying that God will "avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him..."
I believe that it is not always coincidence but sometimes Providence that we hear particular things at particular times. This past Thursday at ladies' Bible study Phil. 4:6-7 was one of the verses we went over, in which we are told not to worry but rather to "make [our] requests known unto God." And this morning the hymn "Commit Thou All That Grieves Thee" was on the slate, chosen by the priest, not by me. Unfortunately, it appears that none of the cyber-hymnals have it, because for some reason the words are still copyright. It's #446 in the 1940 hymnal, and the first verse goes like this:
Commit thou all that grieves thee
And fills thy heart with care.
To Him whose faithful mercy
The skies above declare,
Who gives the winds their courses,
Who points the clouds their way
Tis He will guide thy footsteps
And be thy staff and stay.
And then while I was thinking about prayer, Jesus' parable of the unjust judge came to mind.
The point of all of this seems to me to be that we should get over ourselves. By that I mean that we should stop worrying about wasting God's time with our "little" worries or with things that "might not seem important to him." We have no dignity with God anyway, so let's get on with it: Jesus says we are to pray and not to faint. St. Paul says we are to bring our requests to God. These strike me as biblical injunctions simply to speak to God about our concerns and worries, to make our requests humbly, realizing that it might not be His will to grant them, but not to try to get an "inside line" on what God is already planning to do in the matter or what God wants us to say, the exact feelings He wants us to have. It really isn't about our feelings anyway (unless that happens to be what we are praying about). It's about whatever the subject of the request happens to be, which we should simply lay before Him as we are told to do.
So, since I think these things are sometimes not coincidences, I give you these thoughts for what they are worth, so that if God put them into my mind for a reason connected to one of my readers as well as to my own preoccupations, they are available.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
I have nothing in common with this man
Nothing. Whatsoever. Here is an Australian professor who is such an environmentalist wacko freak (see, it's my personal blog, so I don't have to be restrained) that he praises China--China of the forced abortions, the political prisoners, the executed Falun Gong, y'know, China--because...wait for it...they outlawed plastic shopping bags. Yes, folks, this is how environmentalists think. The heck with all that nasty, personal, comfort-loving, individualistic nonsense that they have over there in America. In communist China they know how to do things right, effectively, with authority. Achtung! They just go right out there and ban those horrible, planet-destroying plastic bags that are killing all those beautiful polar bears and melting the ice caps. Or something. We don't need no stinkin' freedom.
He complains that when people suggest such things they are accused of being Marxists. Ya think? (Says Wesley J. Smith)
Next time I hear somebody complaining about all the unpleasant individualism we have in America, about how we need to get rid of our individualism and think instead in terms of "the community," and does so not while discussing murdering unborn people but rather in the context of, say, bemoaning the evils of corporations, I'm not going to be able to help it: I'm going to think of this Australian kookball, Comrade Citizen David Shearman--"Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens." Sweet and addictive, huh? Such people are creepy.
Thank God I live in a country that is an "extreme case" of liberal democracy. God bless America, and pass the plastic shopping bags.
HT Secondhand Smoke
He complains that when people suggest such things they are accused of being Marxists. Ya think? (Says Wesley J. Smith)
Next time I hear somebody complaining about all the unpleasant individualism we have in America, about how we need to get rid of our individualism and think instead in terms of "the community," and does so not while discussing murdering unborn people but rather in the context of, say, bemoaning the evils of corporations, I'm not going to be able to help it: I'm going to think of this Australian kookball, Comrade Citizen David Shearman--"Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens." Sweet and addictive, huh? Such people are creepy.
Thank God I live in a country that is an "extreme case" of liberal democracy. God bless America, and pass the plastic shopping bags.
HT Secondhand Smoke
Israel continues not to defend its civilians
And the rockets just go on falling on Sderot. The kassams fall there day after day. Today it looks like an eight-year-old boy may have lost his legs from shrapnel. Just imagine this on one of our border towns. Meanwhile, the "Palestinians" in Gaza celebrate this successful attack.
HT Israel Matzav
HT Israel Matzav
It's comments like this
...that make me unsure that I should be called a "traditionalist conservative." Just when I think I'm the traddest of the trads, what with believing women are designed by God to stay home with their children and other such oddball ideas, along comes somebody who lauds as "conforming to natural and divine law" arranged, unchosen marriages of the Medieval period and who cannot see what we would be missing in the U.S. if we didn't have a tradition of freedom of religion.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Hymn--Pass me not
We haven't had a hymn around here for a while. I happened to pick this one to play as part of my organ prelude on Sunday morning--"Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior."
Entirely unbeknownst to me (I hadn't happened to look and didn't remember), the version of this story from St. Luke was the gospel reading on Sunday. A happy coincidence, if a coincidence.
There is something poignant and urgent about the words. One can well believe the story told here about a young man who was moved to conversion by hearing them and by the thought, "What if he should pass me by?" C. S. Lewis said in a letter that anyone who has once known God at all will be awakened one day to the fear of losing him. We may hope so.
Pass me not, O gentle Savior,Here is Fanny Crosby's trademark allusion to blindness. The words refer to the story of Bartimaeus, as he is called in one gospel (Mark 10:46), the beggar who cried out to Jesus. The evangelists tell of how the crowd tried to hush him, but he cried all the louder, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." (Luke 18:35ff) Jesus heard him, asked that he be brought to Him, and asked what he wanted: "Lord, that I might receive my sight." And Jesus healed him.
Hear my humble cry;
While on others Thou art calling,
Do not pass me by.
Refrain:
Savior, Savior,
Hear my humble cry,
While on others Thou are calling,
Do not pass me by.
Entirely unbeknownst to me (I hadn't happened to look and didn't remember), the version of this story from St. Luke was the gospel reading on Sunday. A happy coincidence, if a coincidence.
There is something poignant and urgent about the words. One can well believe the story told here about a young man who was moved to conversion by hearing them and by the thought, "What if he should pass me by?" C. S. Lewis said in a letter that anyone who has once known God at all will be awakened one day to the fear of losing him. We may hope so.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
I was going to put a post up
...in the last couple of days, with content--specifically, a hymn post. Instead I have become embroiled in a probably futile on-line shopping hunt for waterproof winter boots (with a flat sole, for small feet), having just discovered that mine have holes in them. The sloppy February weather has revealed their hidden weaknesses. I hope that this does not count as descending into low-intellect, over-personal blogging, but take it as an apology for the lack of content.
Friday, February 01, 2008
This is funny
This video really is funny. This is for those of you who like stuff about male-female differences and the battle of the sexes. Watch it with your spouse, if possible. It's even funnier that way.
HT Dawn Eden
HT Dawn Eden
Saturday, January 26, 2008
A New Thought on Forgiveness
New to me, anyway. Last night I was pondering that old question: Are Christians obligated to forgive people who have wronged them but are unrepentant and have not sought forgiveness?
You probably know some of the arguments on both sides. On the one hand, Jesus asked the Father to forgive his murderers when they were unrepentant. Therefore, we have to follow Jesus' example and do so as well. On the other hand, we ask God to forgive us as we forgive our debtors, but God does not forgive us unless we do repent. Jesus' murderers were not cleansed of their sin unless they repented of it and sought forgiveness.
But here's a pretty simple argument on the "yes" side: Suppose that I wrong somebody, but I can't see that I have wronged him. Suppose that I listen to the complaint but just can't agree that I did wrong. But suppose I'm evaluating wrongly, and I did do wrong. Do I want the other fellow to forgive me even though I don't ask for it? You bet. Of course I do. So the Golden Rule says that I have to do the same for others.
You probably know some of the arguments on both sides. On the one hand, Jesus asked the Father to forgive his murderers when they were unrepentant. Therefore, we have to follow Jesus' example and do so as well. On the other hand, we ask God to forgive us as we forgive our debtors, but God does not forgive us unless we do repent. Jesus' murderers were not cleansed of their sin unless they repented of it and sought forgiveness.
But here's a pretty simple argument on the "yes" side: Suppose that I wrong somebody, but I can't see that I have wronged him. Suppose that I listen to the complaint but just can't agree that I did wrong. But suppose I'm evaluating wrongly, and I did do wrong. Do I want the other fellow to forgive me even though I don't ask for it? You bet. Of course I do. So the Golden Rule says that I have to do the same for others.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
The novels of Elizabeth Goudge
I have a post on her books over on What's Wrong With the World. I wouldn't dream of trying to recreate all the quotations and stuff here, but just in case anyone reads this blog who doesn't read that one, unlikely as that sounds, please do go and read it. I recommend her highly as a very enjoyable novelist who will surprise you from time to time, just when you thought you were merely reading a pleasant and mildly flowery story, with her hard-as-nails Christianity and her rather uncomfortable insight into human nature.
I forgot to mention there that Goudge is steeped in the liturgy of the Anglican Church and brings it up constantly. She is much attracted to Catholicism but was Anglican herself. Her father was Regius Professor of Theology at Oxford. She lived in several of the cities she writes about--Ely, Oxford, and Wells.
I forgot to mention there that Goudge is steeped in the liturgy of the Anglican Church and brings it up constantly. She is much attracted to Catholicism but was Anglican herself. Her father was Regius Professor of Theology at Oxford. She lived in several of the cities she writes about--Ely, Oxford, and Wells.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Never try to buffalo Buffalo buffalo
And now, for something completely different: Courtesy of the Lighten Up Brigade (aka my friend Eric V.), I give you the following grammatically correct English sentence:
Now, didn't you always want to know that?
Crossposted at What's Wrong with the World
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.This is properly paraphrased as
Bison from the city of Buffalo who are bullied by other bison from the city of Buffalo in turn bully yet other bison from the city of Buffalo.Mentally supplying the word 'whom' or 'that' between the second and third occurrences of 'buffalo' helps a lot. Yet the sentence is correct without that word, as when the word 'that' is left out of the phrase "games people play."
Now, didn't you always want to know that?
Crossposted at What's Wrong with the World
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Epiphany--The Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles
The collect for the Feast of the Epiphany:
The similarities between the Latin collect and the Epiphany hymn “As With Gladness” are fairly noticeable, especially for the first verse and the final two verses:
O God, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles; Mercifully grant that we, who know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead: through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.An interesting note on this collect concerns the Latin version from which it was translated. In the 1500’s,Thomas Cranmer translated most of the collect into English almost word for word as it appeared in Latin in the Roman Catholic liturgy. However, he altered the ending. Instead of referring to “the fruition of thy glorious Godhead,” the Latin collect asks “that we who know thee now by faith may be led to contemplate the sight of thy glorious Majesty.” This is less obscurely theological than Cranmer’s modification, it connects us directly with the Wise Men, and it contains the familiar and biblical (e.g., I Corinthians 13) contrast between faith and sight.
The similarities between the Latin collect and the Epiphany hymn “As With Gladness” are fairly noticeable, especially for the first verse and the final two verses:
As with gladness men of oldThis may of course be as much of a coincidence as something of the sort can be. The contrast between faith and sight is an ancient Christian theme, and the story of the Wise Men might naturally suggest it to different people’s minds—they followed a sign, but in heaven we will need no signs, as we will enjoy the beatific vision directly. But it is also an interesting possibility that William Chatterton Dix (author of the words to the hymn) may have been familiar with the Latin version of the collect.
did the guiding star behold;
as with joy they hailed in light,
leading onward, beaming bright;
so, most gracious Lord, may we
evermore be led to thee.
……
Holy Jesus! every day
keep us in the narrow way;
and, when earthly things are past,
bring our ransomed souls at last
where they need no star to guide,
where no clouds thy glory hide.
In the heavenly country bright,
need they no created light;
thou its light, its joy, its crown,
thou its sun which goes not down;
there for ever may we sing
alleluias to our King.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Lawrence Auster gets it right on You Know Who
When Auster is good, he's very good. He says he's been pressured recently by some correspondents to support Him Who Must Not Be Named. (That's the candidate with the initials R.P. who has a Zombie Army that descends upon you if you put his name into a blog post title and criticize him.) Now, as Auster says, he's been an anti-Rockwellian all this time; why should people think he'll suddenly support the uber-Rockwellian candidate for president now? But the Zombie Army is persistent. They think if you're a small-government conservative it's just inexplicable that you wouldn't support their candidate. So they've provoked Auster into saying some good stuff.
The reason it's especially interesting is because the discussion applies to several bigger issues where the paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives have their ideologies, like the Islamist threat and the "blowback" theory, as well as U.S. relations with Israel. In the thread I learned that R.P. voted against a resolution (of which I admit I haven't read the text) condemning the Iranian president's holocaust denial. Auster, by the way, takes the Iranian threat to Israel very seriously, which is interesting in itself. Of course, R.P. and his supporters say the Holocaust denial resolution is political, is unnecessary, is just symbolic, etc. (I wonder how many of them were up in arms over the refusal, based on similar reasons, of GOP Representatives to support the condemnation of the Armenian genocide. Hmmm?)
I also saw in the VFR thread a reference to R.P.'s interview with Russert in which he actually denies that "Muslim fanaticism" is the problem when it comes to terrorism. Wow! (I did see it in the VFR thread originally, but now I can't find it there, so here's the partial transcript from a different link.) Now we're not only not allowed to say that Islam is the problem. We're even supposed to deny that Islamic extremism is the problem! No, according to R.P., the "litmus test" (for what?) is whether we are occupying Islamic "holy land." Uh-huh. It's all back to that "poor, poor Muslims. We've had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, so what could OBL do over in Afghanistan but fly into a saffron-colored rage and send his charming boys to murder thousands of our citizens?"
Auster makes what is to my mind an extremely shrewd comment. He says that since paleolibertarian ideologues (but I repeat myself) hate the U.S. government because of interventionist foreign policy, they assume that the Islamists are like themselves and hate the U.S. government for the same reason. I also thought this comment was extremely good: "As I've been pointing out for years, scratch a person who claims merely to want the U.S. to be neutral and uninvolved vis a vis Israel and her enemies, and 99 times out of a hundred you'll find something else."
To me this is all something of a relief. After all, no one can accuse Auster, of all people, of being a war-mongering Bushite yes-man! Not by a long shot. But he has the paleos' number.
Oh, I almost forgot. For humor value, here's a great Don Feder post giving sample honest campaign ads for all the candidates. If you are a liberal, you won't like it. If you are a conservative, you will find it very funny.
Update (correction): Christopher points out in the comments that the interview I have linked for RP is actually with John Stossel, not Tim Russert. I apologize for the error and even more for the carelessness that led to the error.
The reason it's especially interesting is because the discussion applies to several bigger issues where the paleolibertarians and paleoconservatives have their ideologies, like the Islamist threat and the "blowback" theory, as well as U.S. relations with Israel. In the thread I learned that R.P. voted against a resolution (of which I admit I haven't read the text) condemning the Iranian president's holocaust denial. Auster, by the way, takes the Iranian threat to Israel very seriously, which is interesting in itself. Of course, R.P. and his supporters say the Holocaust denial resolution is political, is unnecessary, is just symbolic, etc. (I wonder how many of them were up in arms over the refusal, based on similar reasons, of GOP Representatives to support the condemnation of the Armenian genocide. Hmmm?)
I also saw in the VFR thread a reference to R.P.'s interview with Russert in which he actually denies that "Muslim fanaticism" is the problem when it comes to terrorism. Wow! (I did see it in the VFR thread originally, but now I can't find it there, so here's the partial transcript from a different link.) Now we're not only not allowed to say that Islam is the problem. We're even supposed to deny that Islamic extremism is the problem! No, according to R.P., the "litmus test" (for what?) is whether we are occupying Islamic "holy land." Uh-huh. It's all back to that "poor, poor Muslims. We've had troops stationed in Saudi Arabia, so what could OBL do over in Afghanistan but fly into a saffron-colored rage and send his charming boys to murder thousands of our citizens?"
Auster makes what is to my mind an extremely shrewd comment. He says that since paleolibertarian ideologues (but I repeat myself) hate the U.S. government because of interventionist foreign policy, they assume that the Islamists are like themselves and hate the U.S. government for the same reason. I also thought this comment was extremely good: "As I've been pointing out for years, scratch a person who claims merely to want the U.S. to be neutral and uninvolved vis a vis Israel and her enemies, and 99 times out of a hundred you'll find something else."
To me this is all something of a relief. After all, no one can accuse Auster, of all people, of being a war-mongering Bushite yes-man! Not by a long shot. But he has the paleos' number.
Oh, I almost forgot. For humor value, here's a great Don Feder post giving sample honest campaign ads for all the candidates. If you are a liberal, you won't like it. If you are a conservative, you will find it very funny.
Update (correction): Christopher points out in the comments that the interview I have linked for RP is actually with John Stossel, not Tim Russert. I apologize for the error and even more for the carelessness that led to the error.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
New Christmas Music Pick for this year: Mannheim Steamroller
And a happy Feast of Stephen to everybody.
Speaking of St. Stephen's Day, we now have a new great Christmas CD: This one, Mannheim Steamroller's first, apparently. And it has the world's most fun rendition of "Good King Wenceslaus." Mind you, it doesn't seem to have much to do with the Duke of Bavaria who forgave his murderous twin brother with his dying breath. More kickin' than that. But we have to have fun sometimes, especially at Christmas. The CD was my husband's request for a Christmas present. The last version of "God Rest you Merry" on the CD is also exceptional, as is "Silent Night." The audio clips on Amazon don't do it justice, so I didn't know if I was going to like it. One of the best things about it is its variety. I like that Olde Renaissance Faire style (cum authentic instruments) occasionally, but in moderation. So before you have time to get tired of it, the Steamroller moves back to a straight 1980's blasting synthesizer sound that makes you want to dance. I'm now dying with curiosity to know what Chip Davis means in the liner notes by referring to his "toys" which include instruments (are they?) that I've never heard of, like "dry ice" and "dots and lines." (The official editorial reviewer on Amazon is rather snooty: "Depending on your point of view, Christmas is either a quaint sonic time capsule extracted from the mid-1980s or a timeless holiday classic." We're voting "timeless Christmas classic" around here. I don't recall buying any of that guy's music recently, so perhaps he should defer to Chip Davis, who seems to know what a Christmas classic sounds like.)
I also heartily recommend this book for your young kids, grandkids, nephews and nieces, etc. It looks at first blush like just another baby-Jesus-in-the-hay picture book for children, but it's actually something much better than that. Paul Maier is a real historian, and the emphasis of the book is on the historicity of the Christmas story. As you can imagine, this makes it much appreciated in the McGrew household. The paintings are beautiful, too, with the only newborn-looking Baby Jesus I've ever seen. The book was a present from my mom and dad.
Finally, here's the collect for St. Stephen's Day from the BCP:
Speaking of St. Stephen's Day, we now have a new great Christmas CD: This one, Mannheim Steamroller's first, apparently. And it has the world's most fun rendition of "Good King Wenceslaus." Mind you, it doesn't seem to have much to do with the Duke of Bavaria who forgave his murderous twin brother with his dying breath. More kickin' than that. But we have to have fun sometimes, especially at Christmas. The CD was my husband's request for a Christmas present. The last version of "God Rest you Merry" on the CD is also exceptional, as is "Silent Night." The audio clips on Amazon don't do it justice, so I didn't know if I was going to like it. One of the best things about it is its variety. I like that Olde Renaissance Faire style (cum authentic instruments) occasionally, but in moderation. So before you have time to get tired of it, the Steamroller moves back to a straight 1980's blasting synthesizer sound that makes you want to dance. I'm now dying with curiosity to know what Chip Davis means in the liner notes by referring to his "toys" which include instruments (are they?) that I've never heard of, like "dry ice" and "dots and lines." (The official editorial reviewer on Amazon is rather snooty: "Depending on your point of view, Christmas is either a quaint sonic time capsule extracted from the mid-1980s or a timeless holiday classic." We're voting "timeless Christmas classic" around here. I don't recall buying any of that guy's music recently, so perhaps he should defer to Chip Davis, who seems to know what a Christmas classic sounds like.)
I also heartily recommend this book for your young kids, grandkids, nephews and nieces, etc. It looks at first blush like just another baby-Jesus-in-the-hay picture book for children, but it's actually something much better than that. Paul Maier is a real historian, and the emphasis of the book is on the historicity of the Christmas story. As you can imagine, this makes it much appreciated in the McGrew household. The paintings are beautiful, too, with the only newborn-looking Baby Jesus I've ever seen. The book was a present from my mom and dad.
Finally, here's the collect for St. Stephen's Day from the BCP:
Grant, O Lord, that, in all our sufferings here upon earth for the testimony of thy truth, we may stedfastly look up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be revealed; and, being filled with the Holy Ghost, may learn to love and bless our persecutors by th example of thy first Martyr Saint Stephen, who prayed for his murderers to thee, O blessed Jesus, who standest at the right hand of God to succour all those who suffer for thee, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Merry Christmas!
And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Thanks be to God!
A blessed feast of the Nativity of Our Lord to my readers.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Terminology shift--Jerusalem now part of the "West Bank"
Terminology shifts in the news media are interesting. They often signal historical changes in the wind. Now we find that the relatively conservative Washington Times has referred to neighborhoods in Jerusalem as "settlements in the West Bank."
Let me stress this: These are not far-outlying suburbs of Jerusalem. These are Jewish neighborhoods within the city limits of the city that is Israel's own capital, and apparently not even right at the edge, either (if that mattered). All of Jerusalem is governed by Israeli law. People who live in Har Homa (the neighborhood in question) are literally just Israeli citizens living within Israel's own capital city. That's it. And the building in this neighborhood was approved ten years ago. (Again, if that mattered.)
Now, I'm very interested in being corrected if I'm wrong, but as far as I know it has not previously been part of standard practice in the American MSM to refer to any part of Jerusalem proper as "the West Bank." Certainly even I, ignorant though I have been in the past of the entire Israeli situation, would have thought of "the West Bank" as being outside of Jerusalem. Israeli blogger Carl in Jerusalem confirms that the MSM has not previously referred to any part of Jerusalem proper as being "in the West Bank." Of course, Israel is so narrow that perhaps the entire country could be thought of as "the West Bank" of the Jordan river, if one construes "bank" broadly enough. An ominous thought.
But now we have Condoleeza Rice having a snit over building in Jewish neighborhoods within the city limits of Israel's own capital, and an American official with the insufferable, sickening, almost unbelievable arrogance to say of this, "We don't like chastising people, but we don't want people to do anything to make us chastise them." And Olmert was apparently trying good and hard to give away East Jerusalem to the "Palestinians" for their own capital (read "new rocket-launching pad") at Annapolis, but somehow he didn't succeed in doing so. And Israel may be caving on a plan to build housing in a different neighborhood, also within the limits of the city of Jerusalem, in the face of Condi's wrath. So the Washington Times reporter gets the idea from all of this that the places over which all this fuss is being made must be properly designated as "settlements in the West Bank."
I don't want to make too much of one line in one article. But I think this may be a (bad) sign of things to come for the Jewish inhabitants of East Jerusalem...and, one way or another, of all of Jerusalem.
HT to Dhimmi Watch for the link to the Washington Times article. HT to Carl in Jerusalem for information on the location of these neighborhoods and for links to the Jerusalem Post. But I noticed the line about "settlements in the West Bank" and what it was referring to all on my own and am waiting for my "place in history" badge for having been the first to notice. :-)
Let me stress this: These are not far-outlying suburbs of Jerusalem. These are Jewish neighborhoods within the city limits of the city that is Israel's own capital, and apparently not even right at the edge, either (if that mattered). All of Jerusalem is governed by Israeli law. People who live in Har Homa (the neighborhood in question) are literally just Israeli citizens living within Israel's own capital city. That's it. And the building in this neighborhood was approved ten years ago. (Again, if that mattered.)
Now, I'm very interested in being corrected if I'm wrong, but as far as I know it has not previously been part of standard practice in the American MSM to refer to any part of Jerusalem proper as "the West Bank." Certainly even I, ignorant though I have been in the past of the entire Israeli situation, would have thought of "the West Bank" as being outside of Jerusalem. Israeli blogger Carl in Jerusalem confirms that the MSM has not previously referred to any part of Jerusalem proper as being "in the West Bank." Of course, Israel is so narrow that perhaps the entire country could be thought of as "the West Bank" of the Jordan river, if one construes "bank" broadly enough. An ominous thought.
But now we have Condoleeza Rice having a snit over building in Jewish neighborhoods within the city limits of Israel's own capital, and an American official with the insufferable, sickening, almost unbelievable arrogance to say of this, "We don't like chastising people, but we don't want people to do anything to make us chastise them." And Olmert was apparently trying good and hard to give away East Jerusalem to the "Palestinians" for their own capital (read "new rocket-launching pad") at Annapolis, but somehow he didn't succeed in doing so. And Israel may be caving on a plan to build housing in a different neighborhood, also within the limits of the city of Jerusalem, in the face of Condi's wrath. So the Washington Times reporter gets the idea from all of this that the places over which all this fuss is being made must be properly designated as "settlements in the West Bank."
I don't want to make too much of one line in one article. But I think this may be a (bad) sign of things to come for the Jewish inhabitants of East Jerusalem...and, one way or another, of all of Jerusalem.
HT to Dhimmi Watch for the link to the Washington Times article. HT to Carl in Jerusalem for information on the location of these neighborhoods and for links to the Jerusalem Post. But I noticed the line about "settlements in the West Bank" and what it was referring to all on my own and am waiting for my "place in history" badge for having been the first to notice. :-)
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