Compassionate Curmudgeon

Belated Squirrel Blogging

Ten Things I Hate About Commandments

PZ Myers is showing a trailer that I rate LOL!!!

Ten Things I Hate About Commandments

The Queen

Given that my reaction on learning of the death of Princess Diana ten years ago was more curmudgeonly than compassionate, I had little interest in seeing a movie about the actions of Queen Elizabeth II in the days following the fatal car crash.

However, since practically every writer whose opinion I value has been praising The Queen in euphoric terms, I decided to give it a look. I'm glad I did.

It's a surprisingly moving, funny, and engrossing film, thanks in no small part to the justly praised performance of Helen Mirren in the title role.

And while it hasn't changed my view of Diana, a woman who made a conscious decision to enter the royal family, it does confirm my feeling about Elizabeth herself, who was born into the family. The angry dressing-down that Tony Blair gives to one of his staffers near the end of the film pretty much sums up my views.

The Bible on Adultery

Jesus defines Adultery:

Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.
--Mark 10:11-12

And the Penalty is:

If a man commits adultery with another man's wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.
--Leviticus 20:10

Uh, maybe someone ought to tell Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani and John McCain and...

Friday Squirrel Blogging

Sound Familiar?

Fifty-three years ago William F. Knowland, Republican Senator from California and the Senate Majority Leader, wrote an article for the January 24, 1954, issue of Collier's magazine entitled "Be Prepared to Fight in China":

"We must not fool ourselves into thinking we can avoid taking up arms with the Chinese Reds. If we don't fight them in China and Formosa, we will be fighting them in San Francisco, in Seattle, in Kansas City."

Happily, President Eisenhower ignored that advice.

Psalm 137

For some reason, when this Psalm is reprinted, the final verse is often dropped. Can you guess why?

Psalm 137

1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.

2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,

3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

4 How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?

5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill .

6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.

7 Remember, O LORD, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
"Tear it down," they cried,
"tear it down to its foundations!"

8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-

9 he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.

--Psalm 137

Friday Squirrel Blogging

Whenever They Say It's Not About the Money...

The thing about NBC's decision to stop simulcasting the Imus show is that they are trying to portray it as a principled decision, when it's really just about the money.

Today's nytimes has the details:

"MSNBC paid a fee to CBS to simulcast the show, about $4 million a year. It was spending about $500,000 a year to produce the show for television. For that investment, it earned what it labeled a modest profit."

So they were making a "modest profit" on a four and a half million dollar outlay. Proctor and Gamble withdrew a million dollars of advertising from all MSNBC's daytime programming. Not to mention Staples, General Motors, American Express, Sprint Nextel, GlaxoSmithKline, TD Ameritrade, and Ditech.com.

So it really was about the money. NBC News president Steve Capus's pathetic attempt to make it sound like it was an employee-driven decision to preserve NBC's reputation doesn't hold water. NBC News hasn't had a reputation worth preserving for years.

And as for the Imus enablers like Jonathan Alter and Tom Oliphant, they just don't want to give up their best outlet for pimping their books.

Kurt Vonnegut

In the mid 90's I went to the Philadelphia premier performance of a musical based upon Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. Mr. Vonnegut was in attendance, sitting about five or six rows behind me. He ducked out quickly after each act, apparently to satisfy his nicotine addiction.

He was sufficiently pleased with the show to give the producers permission to take the musical to New York. From my little sample of the audience, I gathered that those of us who had read the book enjoyed the show, while those who had not were completely befuddled. Never heard of the show again.

Thus ends my Kurt Vonnegut story.

Tolstoy's Resurrection

One of Leo Tolstoy's lesser known novels, Resurrection, revolves around the youthful transgressions of a 19th century Russian nobleman and his attempts in later life to atone for those misdeeds. It's a strong statement of Tolstoy's utter contempt for the social injustices he saw in his world.

The Russian Orthodox church rewarded him for his work by excommunicating him.

To understand why, take a look at the beginning of Book One Chapter XL, where Tolstoy comments on a church service:

And none of those present, from the inspector down to Maslova, seemed conscious of the fact that this Jesus, whose name the priest repeated such a great number of times, and whom he praised with all these curious expressions, had forbidden the very things that were being done there; that He had prohibited not only this meaningless much-speaking and the blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine, but had also, in the clearest words, forbidden men to call other men their master, and to pray in temples; and had ordered that every one should pray in solitude, had forbidden to erect temples, saying that He had come to destroy them, and that one should worship, not in a temple, but in spirit and in truth; and, above all, that He had forbidden not only to judge, to imprison, to torment, to execute men, as was being done here, but had prohibited any kind of violence, saying that He had come to give freedom to the captives.

No one present seemed conscious that all that was going on here was the greatest blasphemy and a supreme mockery of that same Christ in whose name it was being done. No one seemed to realise that the gilt cross with the enamel medallions at the ends, which the priest held out to the people to be kissed, was nothing but the emblem of that gallows on which Christ had been executed for denouncing just what was going on here. That these priests, who imagined they were eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine, did in reality eat and drink His flesh and His blood, but not as wine and bits of bread, but by ensnaring “these little ones” with whom He identified Himself, by depriving them of the greatest blessings and submitting them to most cruel torments, and by hiding from men the tidings of great joy which He had brought. That thought did not enter into the mind of any one present.

There's lots more like that. The full text can be found here.

The First Resurrection

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, "Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?"

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

"Don't be alarmed," he said. "You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, 'He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.' "

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

--Mark 16:1-8

And that's where the earliest and most reliable manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark come to an end. Mark was written around 70 C.E., or in other words about 40 years after the events it purports to describe.

I guess the story continued to grow after that...

100 Years

Wow! I just noticed that Richland's Neptune Fire Company just celebrated its 100th anniversary.

It's been 30 years since I lived there, so I don't recognize most of the people anymore.

They even have some videos.

I wonder if they still have the carnivals on Saturday nights in July?

Friday Squirrel Blogging

Mr. Rivets

How many people remember Mr. Rivets?

He was a mechanical man portrayed by Joe Earley on Philadelphia's Channel 3, back in the day when its call letters were WPTZ.

Next to Howdy Doody, he's probably my earliest television memory, and I remember watching him faithfully, usually with my mother nearby. One day (this was probably in 1954 or 55) the host of the show, Alan Scott, asked Mr. Rivets to write my name on the blackboard. By my name, I mean "Jimmy" which is what everyone in my family called me in those days. Anyway, Mr. Rivets refused.

This probably went on for a few seconds until Alan finally turned to look directly into the camera and say, "You see, Jimmy. Mr. Rivets won't write your name because you don't listen to your mother. You just pick at your food. You have to learn to eat all the food your mother gives you."

At which point my mother turned to me and said, "You see! Even Mr. Rivets says you have to eat more."

Many years later I finally realized that, in a misguided attempt to get me to eat my vegetables, my mother must have written a letter to the station. The trouble is it didn't work.

It just never occurred to my five-or-six-year-old self that Alan Scott might actually be talking about me. It must have been someone else with the same name.

I did ask my mother about it about 30 years later, but she didn't even recall Mr. Rivets, let alone writing a letter to him.

Hiya, Cindy!

The hyacinths aren't as hardy this year because of the odd weather we've been having...

Dueling Bible Verses

How to reconcile these?

For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

--Romans 3:28


You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone.

--James 2:24