What's a vote? New post at W4

I have a new post at W4 that has been the product of much thought, though I had for a while decided that it would never actually be written. It's on the nature of the vote. It has been prompted by the crazy news that some so-called pro-lifers are considering voting for Barak Obama. To my mind the best comment on this was by my co-blogger Zippy in a combox:

This may be our first genuinely postmodern election cycle. "Zionists for Hitler!"

I couldn't have said it better myself. But as I do have more to say on the meaning of voting, I've said it, here.

But feel free to comment here, if you like. :-)

Comments moderation removed

Dear readers,

I have removed comments moderation and the requirement for blogger ID for the time being. You will have to do one of those things where you type the word you see. I hope that this will work well.

A joke about penguins

I had been drafting a really depressing post about a book I'm re-reading (In the Beginning, one of his third-tier ones) by Jewish novelist Chaim Potok and about how Israel isn't defending herself and stuff, but it will have to wait. I got so depressed trying to write it that it's still in draft.

So to go along with the extremely profound post below about ziploc bags, herewith a joke I found on Dawn Eden's blog:

A policeman is out on patrol when he sees a man driving a convertible with a bunch of penguins in the back seat. The cop pulls him over and says, "Hey, you can't drive around with a bunch of penguins like that. I want you to take those penguins to the zoo right now!" The driver says, "Sure thing, officer. Right away. I don't want any trouble." And the policeman lets him drive off. The next day the policeman sees the same guy out with the same penguins, only this time they're wearing dark glasses and bathing suits. So he pulls him over. "Hey! I thought I told you to take those penguins to the zoo yesterday." The man looks a little puzzled. "Yes, sir, officer. I did just as you said. Today they want to go to the beach."

I really like that one.

Ziploc bags--Supply creates its own demand

I tried really hard to think of something profound to say about Pentecost, today being that feast. But nothing came to mind. So rather than bore you with my uninspired thoughts about the Holy Ghost, or even about the collect for Pentecost, I thought I would talk about something I know a lot more about. Ziploc bags.

Why in the world? (I hear you ask.) Well, because I was putting something into a ziploc bag the other evening, and it suddenly occurred to me that I understand now the good sense in which supply creates its own demand. (This, as all of you know, is a saying in economics.) Now, we all have heard people talk about how terrible it is for manufacturers to create by advertising a desire in people for something they never previously wanted. It's supposed to be a form of stimulating lust and so forth. It can be made to sound faintly indecent--making people think they need something that they manifestly don't need. It's easiest to make it sound bad if you get on a roll talking about bigger cars or about food that is probably going to make people fat and isn't good for them anyway. Whiny kids and breakfast cereal commercials are another good target.

But I would bet that I'm not that much over the average age of the people in my audience of, oh, two to five people who will ever read this post. And so I'll bet most of you can remember a world without ziploc bags. Remember? All my toys used to be tumbled into a big padded white toy box. It was like I was putting them away in a padded cell. A very messy padded cell, and one that got dirtier and dirtier as the years went by, so that eventually it was grey and the plastic torn, and I would find pieces of long-forgotten toys rattling around inside. Even if my parents had wanted to be good citizens and give away my toys to the poor(er) as I outgrew them (I having no younger siblings), they couldn't have, because every set and everything with parts was separated into its component parts, which were scattered to the four winds. Or piled into the toy box.

Leftover food had to be kept in tupperware. This was after tupperware. But if it got forgotten in the fridge, the tupperware had mold on it, which might or might not wash off. You couldn't just throw it away. You had to try to scrub it. And sometimes the tupperware lost its seal, or the plastic wrap didn't cling, or one was foolish enough to use tinfoil, which didn't really seal out air, and stuff got completely dried out. (I just recently got rid of a lot of old tupperware.)

And don't even get me started talking about what one did with the pieces from half-finished jigsaw puzzles, nuts and bolts that were no longer in their blister packs, or tiny little lego pieces.

The world needed ziploc bags. The world didn't know that it needed ziploc bags, but it did. Big ones, medium-sized ones, and small ones.

Is need relative? Sure it is. I would rather have the food (that gets dry if not well-sealed) and no ziploc bags to seal it in than have the bags and no food. Right. Check. I'm there.

But the minute whoever-he-was (I haven't googled to try to find out) invented ziploc bags, the world woke up and began to think about how, if it could afford this new product, it could solve a lot of niggly, annoying, practical problems in storage.

My kids have a building toy called Wedgits. I recommend it, with the proviso that if you have more than one child of any age from two to fifteen years old, they will probably squabble over these things. They are very cool. You can build all kinds of fascinating shapes with them. They come in an interesting box that has a plastic storage piece in the bottom. If you put the set of Wedgits together perfectly into the three-dimensional shape of a diamond, the diamond, containing all the Wedgits in that set, will fit back into the storage unit it came in. But who has the time to figure out how to do that every time? And I want the four-year-old to be able to pick up for herself. Ziploc bags.

In other words, and to put it prosaically, this was a case where people did not lust over something that was bad for them or that they should not want as a result of the desire-creation of the market. They looked at something, ingeniously designed, that would help make their lives more efficient, they discovered that it was cheap enough for them to afford, and they rationally decided to buy it. Supply created its own demand, and the rest is history.

I'm for it.

Blessed Feast of the Ascension

The feast of the Ascension has been one of my favorite church holy days for a long time. It celebrates all that great stuff from the Epistle to the Hebrews: Jesus is both man and God. Therefore, when Jesus goes back to heaven where he "sitteth on the right hand of the Father," man has actually been exalted to the heavens in Christ. This was the first time that a resurrected human body had gone to heaven. Even though Elijah had apparently been taken up living into heaven, he didn't have a glorified body. We aren't told what happened to his ordinary body, but presumably he has to wait for the resurrection of the dead along with the rest of us for his resurrection body. Jesus was, as Paul says in I Corinthians, "the firstfruits of them that sleep." He was the first one to be risen in a new body that will never die. So when he ascended into heaven, he took that glorified humanity back to the Father, where it had never been before. From there he intercedes for us, for as Hebrews says, he is a fitting high priest for us, having both offered himself for our sins and also being human as we are.

My impression is that Ascension did not always have an octave. Cranmer wrote his own collect for the Sunday after Ascension, basing it on a song that the Venerable Bede is supposed to have sung on his deathbed. Here are both collects for Ascension.

Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.


O God, the King of glory, who hast exalted thine only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph unto thy kingdom in heaven; We beseech thee, leave us not comfortless; but send to us thine Holy Ghost to comfort us, and exalt us unto the same place whither our Saviour Christ is gone before, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.

P.S. On a mundane note, and in case anyone else has this problem, I figured out how to turn on "sent items" in Yahoo mail. George was no help. The relevant thing to click is hidden over in mail options.

New Post on W4 plus the Amazing Disappearing Sent Items

My blogging time this week went into a new post at What's Wrong with the World on a disturbing thing--disturbing to me anyway--I'm starting to learn about forced upward mobility in the corporate world. It's here.

Plus, my conservative soul is vexed to find that Yahoo has changed my e-mail format. Why do they do that? It was fine. Of course, they play it as a great improvement. Can't say I see it. One nifty new aspect is the disappearance of the "save sent items" feature. The "sent items" folder is still there. You just can't turn it on. I haven't found out yet if this is a judgement for my having had it turned off. I don't like to save everything I send, so I usually have it off. Now there's no way to turn it on anymore. I've written to Yahoo help about this three (count 'em, three) times. Each time I get a cute note from what is obviously a computer calling itself George (I hate computers with names) telling me that, because Yahoo likes to provide fast and efficient service, they aren't going to answer my question. It's a pretty simple question: "Has the save sent items feature really disappeared, or is the button just moved? If the former, could you please put the feature back again? I was using it sometimes." But no answer. Just a repeated link to a help page which, of course, doesn't mention this topic.

I definitely think they need to get some good, capitalist customer service going at Yahoo. And they should fire George. I don't think he has a wife computer and baby computers at home to support.

Easter IV

The collect for the fourth Sunday after Easter reads as follows:

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Why is this such a great collect? I'm gilding the lilies even to talk about it, but I feel that not enough attention is paid to the great collects of the Prayer Book and that they deserve that we should stop and think about them and, of course, pray them.

Verbally, it is one of those works of liturgical genius which really cannot be improved upon--or at least can't be improved upon anymore. Cranmer translated it from the Latin, but in 1662 the Restoration Prayer Book revisers added the invocation "O God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men." As is so often the case with the Prayer Book, it is amazing that men spaced hundreds of years apart in history should have worked so well together to create the final product. Any sensible person nowadays should shudder at the words "liturgical revision." But the 1662 guys could put something in that really worked.

For the rest of the collect asks God to do something for us that we know from experience is very hard to do. Do we most of the time love and desire what we are commanded by God to love and desire? "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness..." Oh, bother the kingdom of God and righteousness! I want another cup of coffee! I want some potato chips and a fun book! I want some time to myself. I want lovely weather. I want a day off. I want, I want, I want. Not bad things. But not the kingdom of God, either. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above....Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." (The epistle reading for Easter Day.) But how can I seek those things which are above, when I can't even picture them? I don't know what heaven will be like. I don't know what I'll be doing. I don't know what, exactly, it means to desire union with God or the Beatific Vision. So how do I set my affections on them and not on things on the earth?

And so forth. So the revisers were on to something when they put that bit in there about how God is the only one who can order our unruly wills and affections. And Cranmer describes, then, what we want God to do for us--make us love the things that God commands, and desire what God promises. To fix our hearts there where true joys are to be found.

What does God promise? That he will wipe away all tears from our eyes; that there will be no more death nor crying. That he will make us holy and like himself.

Sometimes we have to take it on faith that these are the true joys, because we don't naturally feel that way. Other times, it's easy. It doesn't matter. As Lewis said, our feelings are only things that happen to us. But our hearts are more than our feelings. Our hearts include our unruly wills. And that's why God sends so many sundry and manifold changes into the world. Or at least allows them. They make us long for the patria: "They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city."

What that means is that praying this collect may be inviting some unpleasantness in life, as unpleasantness does, unfortunately, seem sometimes to be required in order to make us love what God commands and desire what he promises. But part of the genius of the collect is that it works, like all great rhetoric, upon the emotions and will. Praying it quiets one's heart and makes one realize that, yes, indeed, true joys are to be found somewhere else, and we should desire to have them, whatever that takes.

So I offer you the collect for the fourth Sunday after Easter, which the editors of The Collects of Thomas Cranmer call "one of the high points of Anglican theology." And I hope it will be of value to you.

It's okay to push molecules around

I apologize to my long-suffering readers here at Extra Thoughts, if I retain any, for my silence in the last couple of weeks. Spring has finally come to this part of the world, very beautifully indeed. This does not make me any more busy, but it does lead me to drink my afternoon coffee outside and soak up a little sunshine instead of blogging. Which is probably all to the good.

You will see another post or two in the next couple of days, especially since tomorrow's collect is one of the very best in the whole Prayer Book, so I have to blog it. (There, I'm committed.)

But over at What's Wrong with the World I have a deliberately provocative post up about divine and even human intervention in nature. Not very profound. More in the nature of a rhetorical sock to the jaw for people who get all icky about the idea that anybody might push molecules around. Molecules, in my opinion, were meant to be pushed.

Hymn of the Week--Onward, Christian Soldiers

About five years ago a friend said to me, quite confidently, "Do you know what the subtitle of 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' is? 'Crusader's Hymn.'"

It's surprising that so short a statement can contain more than one egregious falsehood, but this one manages it, rather as if I were to point across the room and say, "My uncle over there is a dentist" when in fact I have no uncle and the man across the room is a hockey player.

To begin with, and as my readers probably know, hymns do not have subtitles, and the words under the title of the hymn actually are the name of the tune. Tune names make it easy for hymnodists to mix and match. The practice of naming tunes separately and writing words for them evidently goes back at least as far as the Psalms, where we sometimes find directions at the top of a Psalm along the lines of, "For my chief musician. To be sung to the tune 'Lilies'." The connection between tunes and hymn words is exceedingly varied, and most of the time the tune name has nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the words with which we most often sing the tune.

But it doesn't end there. The actual name of the tune to which we now sing "Onward, Christian Soldiers" is not "Crusader's Hymn" but rather the entirely unmilitary and humorous "St. Gertrude." The words were originally sung to a different tune, until the famous Arthur Sullivan wrote this tune to go with them in 1871 and facetiously named it after the wife of a friend of his. I don't know whether he told everyone that this was the origin of the name or whether he was trying to create a puzzle for posterity as everyone hunted for a fictitious connection to St. Gertrude, but if the latter, he has been foiled by, inter alia, the information age. (Search "Gertrude" on the page.)

As a matter of fact, "Crusader's Hymn" is really the name of the tune to "Fairest Lord Jesus," than which nothing less militaristic can be conceived, either musically or in terms of content. Just to make things thoroughly confusing, this tune is also sometimes called St. Elizabeth. I have no idea why the one tune has two different names.

As Darwin observed, false facts are an injurious thing. I never did find out where my friend got that particular factoid. I must assume that it circulates along with other unchecked statements in a sort of spoken version of Wikipedia among slightly leftish evangelical Christians who dislike military language.

By the way, I discovered my favorite verse of this hymn last evening when someone chose it at our hymn sing. Here's verse 2:

At the sign of triumph Satan’s host doth flee;
On then, Christian soldiers, on to victory!
Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise;
Brothers lift your voices, loud your anthems raise.

I like that image of hell's foundations quivering and Satan's host fleeing. May it be so.

Latimer supporters threaten Mark Pickup

...but he does not submit. See Mark's story about Robert Latimer, who murdered his disabled daughter and is proud of it, here. I've also blogged about the attempts to silence Mark at What's Wrong With the World, here.

Comments moderation enabled

Dear Readers,

I have reluctantly decided to enable comments moderation for a time, even on such a low-traffic blog as this one. This action is in response to continued traffic from one particular undesired reader whom I picked up quite by accident by writing a negative post about someone he evidently admires and who has ignored un-subtle hints to take himself off. This is not the first time that I have picked up oddball readers by putting the name of a fanatically admired kook into the heading of a post. Google alerts appears to be my bane, and I shall have to learn to give my posts less obvious titles. Since this is my personal blog, I do not feel obligated to interact with comments from people who give me the creeps (either by their handles or by their opinions) or who fanatically admire people who give me the creeps. So that's that.

To all the rest of you, please do not be discouraged by moderation from posting your comments. I am on my e-mail many times a day and will receive alerts and post your comments very quickly. And I hope that this change will not be permanent.

Just exactly like that

I was studying Colossians with Middle Daughter the other day. Got to the part where Paul warns his readers about people who will beguile them with enticing words. It's in the "vain philosophy" section. One conjecture is that the heresy in question was an early form of Gnosticism, so I was trying to explain a little about Gnosticism to her. I got to the part about how the Gnostics tried to create mysteries and then told people that they could be part of their secret "club" by going through an initiation ceremony. People thought this was pretty cool and that they would be profound thinkers like their teachers if they learned this hidden knowledge, but really it was all nonsense.

To which she replied, "That's sort of like postmodernism. Where they say that yes and no are the same thing."

Yes, sweetheart, very much so. Right on.

Some more Easter music

There is so much good Easter music. If I may venture to give advice, I would suggest that you sing to celebrate Easter. Even if you can't sing. Play some Handel and go around humming it. Sing something you sang in church this morning. It's worth it. He is risen!

Here is "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth." Here is "The Trumpet Shall Sound." Eldest Daughter at ages 2 and 3 (which is now getting uncomfortably long ago) used to refer to this bit of Handel as "Wumpable" from the oft-repeated line "And the dead shall be raised incorruptible." It was one of her faves.

I looked all over the Web for a sung version of "Because He Lives" that I liked. Except for the rather sappy verse about "our newborn baby," it's one of my favorite sing-along 70's Gospel songs and has been much in my mind today. We have had some wonderful times singing it with the family I blogged about here. But I just did not like any of the full-length Youtube versions. Some of them just started out with the "newborn baby" verse and entirely left out what is really verse 1, which begins, "God sent his Son. They called Him Jesus," and ends, "An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives." And leaving that verse out would seem to be leaving out the whole point, right? (The newborn baby in verse 2, for those of you who don't know, is the Gaithers' baby in 1970, not Jesus.) One version by a black group that I rather liked at first lost my endorsement and link when it got to verse 3 and gave a crucial line as "I'll fight life's trials, no war with pain." Say what? The line is actually, "I'll fight life's final war with pain," which actually is rather moving and sobering. And some versions were just too self-indulgent. So here is a relatively tame sung version of just the chorus, repeated several times. And here is just the music, with the words displayed, a fun synth version on a site called, of all things, "Mama rocks."

If you have choral versions of great Easter hymns you want to recommend, or links to other Easter music you recommend, post them in the comments. I couldn't quite yet find a choir version of "Christ the Lord is Risen Today" that had all the normal words and sounded good.

Happy Easter

A joyous feast of Our Lord's glorious resurrection to my readers.

I've been thinking a lot about the resurrection lately, what with the paper and all. C.S. Lewis said that he never felt less convinced of a doctrine than when he had just successfully defended it. Thankfully (and I am thankful) that hasn't happened to me in this case.

Over at WWWtW I've posted Updike's poem.

Here are the words for one of the many of the very best of the Easter hymns. By Charles Wesley, of course:

1
Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!
Sons of man and angels say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia!

2
Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once he died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where's thy victory, boasting grave? Alleluia!

3
Love's redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids him rise, Alleluia!
Christ has opened paradise, Alleluia!

4
Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!

I was trying to figure out why I was having so much trouble finding these words instead of links that had something strange I'd never seen before--"Earth and heaven in chorus say"--for the second line of verse 1. Then it hit me: That's the PC revision to avoid the word "Sons." Sheesh!

Here is the version of the words in our 1940 hymnal. I'm not quite sure I have this right, but I think from what it says here as well as at the previous link that there were some verses originally in Latin written in the 14th century and that Charles Wesley just wrote a whole bunch of others in the same vein. It looks as though all of the ones I quote above are by Wesley but only the fourth one in the 1940 hymnal is by Wesley.

Songs to Die for--Precious Lord, Take My Hand

A couple of weeks ago Youngest Daughter said, "I want you to sing to me." So I sat down with her and broke out the standard repertoire for such sessions--chiefly Negro spirituals and early American hymn tunes or folk tunes. "Brethren, We Have Met to Worship," "Sweet Little Jesus Boy," "I Wonder As I Wander," "Talk About a Soul," "Poor, Wayfarin' Stranger," "I Want Jesus to Walk With Me," and "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" are the ones I can remember. Eventually Middle Daughter came out and asked, "Are those all songs that were written by the slaves?" I told her that as far as I could tell, only a few of them were, but that the tunes to the rest of them were old American tunes. Except for one. The only one I thought fell into neither category was "Precious Lord."

So I looked it up and got quite a surprise. It turns out that "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" is written to a modified version of the very same tune as one of my other favorites, which I've blogged about already, "Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone." I've known both of those songs for years and never recognized the similarity once. But I was right that it isn't either a spiritual or early American. Thomas Dorsey, the black song writer who wrote the words and put them to the tune in 1932, did something pretty cool. Basically he took what is essentially a "white" American hymn tune (akin in chord pattern and style to "Amazing Grace"), written in the 1800's by a man named George N. Nelson, and he gave it a spiritual "swing," adding a number of extra notes to fill it out and make it slower. So my ear did detect correctly the fact that it isn't a true spiritual, but I also detected correctly its vague resemblance to a spiritual. Dorsey wrote the song after his wife died in childbirth; their child then also died. Here are the words:

Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand,
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn;
Through the storm, through the night,
Lead me on to the light:
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

When my way grows drear,
Precious Lord, linger near,
When my life is almost gone,
Hear my cry, hear my call,
Hold my hand lest I fall:
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

When the darkness appears
And the night draws near,
And the day is past and gone,
At the river I stand,
Guide my feet, hold my hand:
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

Now, if I could just find some confirmation of my gut feeling that all the sources are wrong, and that "Let us Break Bread Together on our Knees" is not a spiritual, I'd feel like a real instinctive music historian. The harmony seems wrong for the genre; the words seem wrong for the genre. But I have to admit that Google is solidly against my gut instinct on this one, so probably that one really is a spiritual.

Thy beauty, long-desired

This morning we sang "O Sacred Head." I always have a bit of trouble wrapping my mind around verse 2:

Thy beauty, long-desirèd,
hath vanished from our sight;
thy power is all expirèd,
and quenched the light of light.
Ah me! for whom thou diest,
hide not so far thy grace:
show me, O Love most highest,
the brightness of thy face.

The image is clear enough: Jesus on the cross had been so beaten by the soldiers that his face could hardly be seen clearly. But what about the "beauty" part? The trouble here is my over-literal mind. I immediately start thinking about what Jesus probably really looked like. We have absolutely no reason to believe that he was especially handsome. In fact, Isaiah 53 prophecies that he will not be particularly impressive in appearance. Considering the matter literally and historically, rather than devotionally, we should picture Our Lord at the time of his death as a Jewish man in his early 30's, toughened by outdoor living, bearded, probably dark-eyed. OMEA, as the new expression is. So what's the special "beauty" the hymn writer is talking about?

Well, the hymn writer isn't thinking literally and historically but rather devotionally. There are several different strands or traditions, both Protestant and Catholic, of the "beautiful Jeus" motif, including the "beautiful name" motif. And I have to admit that none of them speak to me very deeply. So I'd like to take this in a totally different direction from the one the author probably intended: Consider it, in the terms of E.D. Hirsch, a matter of the "significance" of the lyrics (to me and possibly to you) rather than of their "meaning."

I was suddenly struck while singing the song with the thought that babies do appear beautiful to their mothers, even if not to strangers. When you are bonding with your newborn, you do a lot of looking down and gazing. I've never had a son, only daughters, but as far as I know it's the same way with sons as with daughters. Now, Jesus was of course someone's Son. And Mary had doubtless seen him in many different situations before he grew up and became a bearded and perhaps somewhat scruffy, outdoor-living itinerant preacher. She had seen him laughing, running, studying Torah, intent over work with Joseph, asking the questions at the Passover meal, enjoying his food, seen him grow in strength and, yes, in beauty. So even from a purely literal, human, and historical perspective, there was one person at the foot of the cross who would have had a real meaning for the notion that his beauty had "vanished from our sight." That one person would have that contrast in mind--the face battered almost beyond recognition in contrast to the tiny infant face, the laughing boyish face, the young man with a twinkle in his eye, all those images of peace, joy, and relaxation. That human beauty that every mother's son, made in the image of God, has in the eyes of a woman who loves him.

And that thought finally gave me an entrance into the devotional possibilities of that verse of the song. For he "humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross"--and that was what it meant: That by cruel men, his human worth was set aside and his human flesh, that humanity in which he had been loved and had loved, had felt the sun and the wind, had eaten and played, had sung and learned, was tortured and killed. In that, he is like every young man cruelly slaughtered by his enemies, every young man mourned by his mother. But with a difference. Because this Victim was not just a victim, and this Victim finally conquered death. And this Victim died for all the sons of men, that by His death they might be redeemed.

Quick cross reference to new W4 post

I meant to write something here about hymns and songs but don't have time. But I have a new post on What's Wrong with the World that I'm rather pleased with. The writing could stand to be polished, but the structure is fairly tight, which is a pleasant thought.

A reader of W4 is a former reader of Right Reason. He is planning a paper on the subject of the role of religious beliefs in public policy, and he sent me the link to his posts on the subject on his new blog, "Being Appeared to Bloggishly." So instead of just telling him what I thought in his combox or in an e-mail, I wrote up a post of my own about it.

Announcing a new annotated bibliography on historical apologetics

I'll be posting briefly about this on What's Wrong with the World in the next couple of days, too. Meanwhile, I'm very pleased to announce here that Tim McGrew's annotated bibliography on historical apologetics is available on my personal web page, here.

It's taken a while for Tim to be satisfied that the biblio is ready for web posting, but it really is good to make this stuff widely available to people who will find it useful. If you have a history buff in your life or a Christian apologetics buff, and especially if you know someone who is both, get him the link. It's cool stuff.

Humor for mathematical folks

Attention all you readers with some mathematical flair or knowledge. Or even without. (I don't have a whole lot of that myself and enjoyed it.) Here is a video you'll want to watch for relaxation and laughs.

I had never heard of Tom Lehrer until the other day, but I'm told that he taught statistics at MIT for quite a number of years in the Political Science department (he mentions that on the video) and then apparently made a living as a musician. Here's the Wiki article. I gather he was/is a flaming liberal and was best known years ago for his political satire against the "conservative establishment" and on subjects like nuclear proliferation. I must say that he doesn't seem as sensitive on all that stuff as liberals are nowadays in the video (made in 1997); he makes a joke in one of the songs about having a more inclusive mathematics so as not to discriminate against numbers to the left of the origin. A sense of humor is a saving grace that too many liberals lack.

The archive.org video is thirteen minutes long. He begins to introduce my favorite song of the lot at about 7 minutes, 15 seconds. It's "Sociology" and is sung to the tune of "Choreography" from the movie White Christmas. I've always loved "Choreography," sung in the movie by Danny Kaye, which in its turn mocks pretentious, pseudo-intellectual dance forms. Lehrer's version makes fun of the attempt to disguise the fact that one is talking nonsense by putting it in mathematical terms to make it look scientific. You should be able to let the video load while watching the first few minutes, then push the slider to the right until the timer reads about 8 minutes, if you want to skip to the later song. I just tried it, and it worked, though that may be because I already watched the whole thing through once on this computer. But the whole video is funny if you have the time to enjoy it.

Comic and musical relief

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)