| on the flip side, and a visit to Poirot |
[May. 21st, 2012|08:29 am] |
Today on the way to work, I noticed that the car in front of us was a Toyota Verso. Do you suppose they also have a Recto model? And what image, exactly, is that model name supposed to convey – that it can carry lots of books? Since it was an SUV, that more or less goes without saying. Lots of us complain about not having enough room for books in our houses; I have never heard anyone make that complaint about a car! And if they did I wouldn’t want to be on the road while they’re driving.
My guess they just didn’t think anyone would actually know what the word meant.
We spent the weekend in Brussels; I’ll write up an entry with pictures for the other blog soon (and will post a link here), but I did want to say that I have never been in a place that reminded me so strongly of Hercule Poirot as the Hotel Metropole, where we stayed. Perhaps it was the headwaiter’s curling moustaches that did it. The hotel was opened in 1895 and is still owned by the same family – and still has much the same decor, though the bathrooms are modern. I am convinced that Poirot had a flat there during his days as Chief of Police in Brussels, before he was forced to flee to England as a refugee in WWI.
The nice thing about Brussels is that, because it’s such a business city, even fancy hotels are quite reasonably priced – I’ll be spending more to stay in a Hampton Inn in exciting (not!) Bensalem, PA next month than we paid for a historic and luxurious hotel five minutes’ walk from the Grand’Place.
Oh, one more odd thing: our tour guide in the Hotel de Ville / Town Hall, who spoke very bad English , kept talking about the “Holy Enpire of Germany” when she meant the Holy Roman Empire. I hadn’t realized the name in French wasn’t a literal translation. (She was so bad that it’s also possible she just got it totally wrong – she muddled history so that Ted came away thinking that Clovis had lived somewhere around the time of Charles V – but I can’t see how anyone could make a mistake that big.)
ETA: Wikipedia says it was indeed the Holy Roman Empire in German, Italian, and Latin (so presumably also in French, but that “in a decree following the 1512 Diet of Cologne, the name was officially changed to Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (German: Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation, Latin: Imperium Romanum Sacrum Nationis Germanicæ).” So maybe that’s what confused her. She was easily confused, to be sure.
Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections. |
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| Me'ilah 32 – Alexander of Macedon and the Elders of the South |
[May. 21st, 2012|12:41 am] |
 Since on the previous page we mentioned the sun, the Talmud here recounts a story that also mentions the sun: Alexander asked the Sages about ten matters, the first dealing with the sun. He said, “Which distance is greater, from heaven to earth, or from east to to west?” The question was of a spiritual nature, concerning the two types of Divine Providence for the righteous, but nevertheless it had to be clothed in physical matters. They answered, “From east to west is greater, since people can see the sun in the east and in the west, but not when it is directly above.”
He asked, “Were the heavens created first, or the earth?” They answered, “The heavens,” based on the verse, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He then asked “What was created first, light or darkness?” They said, “This matter has no resolution.” But let them respond that darkness was created first, based on the verse, “And darkness was upon the face of the earth, and God created light!” They did not want to give him the answer, lest he continues exploring what was before the Creation. If so, they should not have answered the first question either! At first they thought that he was asking about the plain meaning of the verses in the Torah, but when they saw that he was intent on knowing the mysteries also, they stopped there. He also asked many questions about proper conduct in life, and an advice in war.
Art: Ivan Fedorovich Choultse - Sunrise |
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| house concert report |
[May. 21st, 2012|12:22 am] |
My friend and neighbor, Philadelphia (as she's known in the SCA), told me about this concert, and I offered to drive her and her friend D., who is from NZ and studying at $UNIVERSITY. Philadelphia discovered, alas, that she had too much Stuff she had to do, but she sent the box of baklava she'd bought for the refreshments table. I think I hit my month's limit of calories.
The concert was wonderful :-) .
Before it, Heather was going around the rooms to meet everyone. When I introduced myself, she said "Oh! I've heard some of your songs, sung by other people." (Swell with pride.) I said I'd heard her at Philcon; she didn't remember meeting or hearing me at all, but said that with all the rushing around she probably hadn't been able to get to my set or meet me. (No blame there, I know about con scheduling.) I asked her about "Road to Santiago", the title song on one of her CDs, as I'd seen at the CD table, because the title was familiar and I knew I'd heard it, but wondered if it had been sung by someone else on another CD. (I was thinking, maybe the Chieftains' album with Ry Cooder, "San Patricio".) No, it was her song. Well then, maybe I'd heard her sing at Philcon. Yes, she'd sung it there.
I only bought two CDs, of the 14 she's done, because I can't afford to buy them all. And I've just imported "Avalon" into iTunes on my laptop. Then I was about to import "Road to Santiago"... and saw that I already had it in iTunes. (headpalm) I'd already bought it by download from her website!
Here's the set list with my notes, transferred with altogether too much effort from Marvin, my paranoid Android dumbphone:
Heather Dale house concert in Glenside, PA
Chez Wendy & Neil & daughter Mina
Organized by Marion Quyn (pronounced like “Quinn”, as in The Mighty)
OPENER by Marion Quyn (3 songs, but Marvin ate my notes)
HEATHER AND BAND
Heather: vocals, whistles, recorders, bodhrán, electric keyboard
Ben: guitar
John: drums
- Bow to the Crown. SCA.
- Fisherman's Boy. Based on a selkie legend.
- Skeleton Woman (from newest album), w/ Quyn. An Inuit legend.
- Twa Corbies. Scot. trad.
- Happily Ever After. True love takes constant work to be happily ever after.
- May Queen, w/ Quyn. Arthurian.
- Joan. The warrior maid.
- The Maiden & the Selkie. By Emily Colbert, based on Scottish selkie legendry.
INTERMISSION
- The Farmer's Curst Wife. A version from North Carolina.
- The Holly and the Ivy. Eng. trad.
- Sedna. Inuit legend.
- Hunter. A love song.
- Mordred's Lullaby. Really shuddery.
- Up into the Pear Tree. Based on a tale from the Decameron.
- Stone Soup. Based on a real incident in the SCA, but of universal application.
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| More Thoughts on Books |
[May. 20th, 2012|11:09 pm] |
We went to another bookstore recently. This time I did, eventually, manage to find a couple things worth bringing home. One was a novel, one was a dictionary. Yay!
But I wound up thinking about all the sturgeons running over those shelves. Book after book of undiluted crud. Me being me, of course, I stacked up all that data and looked for patterns.
1) A lot of series books these days are utterly unmemorable. They're formulaic. They're so similar that once I've read a book or two in a series, I often can't remember which ones I've read and which I don't have yet. This of course makes me less inclined to buy more. It's not worth the time it would take me to hunt through what I have at home and make a list. No, this isn't a series problem in general. There are older series that I carried in my head, for years, which ones I was missing and wanted. So if a series isn't good enough that I can remember what I've read and what I haven't, off the top of my head, fuck it. I may fill in the gaps if the books are a quarter each at a yardsale or bargain box, but that's about it.
2) Sexual empowerment does not mean dressing like a slut, angsting over two or more guys who are frankly unreliable unlikable dicks with feet, and staggering from crisis to crisis. I'm starting to wonder if all those urban fantasy books are either written by or paid for by people who just really want to fuck bad girls. Listen, if the world needs saving, I am going to look in the library not in the principal's office. Sexual empowerment means doing what you want with your body, yes, with or without a partner of mutually agreeable interest -- as part of a healthy lifestyle overall.
3) Which brings me to gripe number three, the appalling dearth of healthy relationships of any kind. It's not just that characters don't understand how to begin a successful romance. They also don't get along well with their coworkers, their parents, their mentors, or anyone else. Even encounters with random strangers are often dysfunctional. If two characters have a comfortable relationship, that's a sign that one of them is about to die or they're about to become estranged to Start The Drama. Just no. I'm tired of reading this. It's only fun to torment characters emotionally if there is some contrast going on. Otherwise it gets predictable and boring. I want to see some stories where people have healthy relationships of various kinds. I've been writing more of this myself and now I know part of the reason why. I'll have to try and remember to request it in prompt calls too. I can't be the only reader who wants to see characters that aren't emotionally constipated.
That gave me another interesting insight. There's a branch of fanfic that is sometimes just its usual fluffy nonsense, but occasionally goes into quite deep psychological territory: the fixit. These stories rely on taking a pivotal moment and pivoting it to turn out differently. Now, the standard plot structure in a western story looks like this, a long rise to a peak and then a short drop. A fully developed fixit story is the opposite: a brief summary of the canon, the big disaster scene with its crucial alteration, and then a long sequence of scenes showing how the characters work through their various issues until they reach a resolution.
The drawback to this is, of course, that it's fanfic and usually requires familiarity with the source material in order to work. The drawback of the mainstream plot design is that it tends to shortchange problem-solving. You hit the big crisis very late in the story and then everything is supposed to be resolved very quickly. How many times have you been dissatisfied by an author handwaving away important relationship challenges or other unresolved issues?
So then I got to wondering, what would it look like if this plot concept were moved from fanfic to canon? The plot structure would change. It would introduce the characters, set up some escalating issues and early attempts to solve them, have a big explosive scene in the middle, then follow the characters as they methodically worked through the problems and found solutions step-by-step, ending at the conclusion. I'd enjoy seeing this in action. It would be new and different.
Has anyone else noticed similar patterns, or other ones? Stuff you're sick of seeing in almost every book? What would you like to be reading instead? |
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| Me'ilah 31 – The Order Of The Morning Sacrifice (Tamid) |
[May. 20th, 2012|10:22 pm] |
 Usually, when one transports a sheep to the market for sale, he binds all of its legs together, to prevent the sheep from running away. However, it would be disgraceful for the morning lamb sacrifice, so instead they bound it in the manner of the binding of Isaac: the right foreleg with the right back leg, and the left foreleg with the left back leg, except that in the case of Isaac his hands and feet were bound behind his back.
There were multiple rings in the floor of the Temple, between the Altar and the Temple Hall, because the slaughter had to be done “in front of God,” which meant opposite the Hall entrance. Each group of the Kohanim had a ring assigned to them, and each group served for a week about two times a year. However, for the morning sacrifice all groups used the same ring, near the northwest corner of the Altar, because the sacrifice had to be slaughtered in a sunlit area. The daily afternoon sacrifice was slaughtered, correspondingly, using the ring in the northeast corner.
The ring itself was used to immobilize the sacrifice before slaughter. The sheep was positioned with its head pointing to the south, its face to the west, while the slaughterer was to the east of the sheep, with his face to the west. They would hang the lamb using a hole in its knee, not like the butchers who break its leg, then they would skin, dismember, wash, and salt the lamb, and carry the pieces to the Altar.
Art: Theo van Sluys - Sheep And Chickens In A Farm Interior |
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| What's this?. |
[May. 20th, 2012|11:09 pm] |
You're wonderful to see... |
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| Salad Recall: Possible Health Risk |
[May. 20th, 2012|10:47 pm] |
[signal boosted from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7) cellio]
River Ranch Expands Salad Recall Because Of Possible Health Risk
( Read more... )
Retail salad products under this recall were distributed throughout the United States and Canada under various sizes and packaged under the brand names of River Ranch, Farm Stand, Hy-Vee, Shurfresh, and The Farmer’s Market.
Foodservice salad products under this recall were distributed throughout the United States and Canada under various sizes and packaged under the brand names of River Ranch and Sysco.
( Read more... )
[original article] |
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| I Want to Believe (in Polite People) |
[May. 20th, 2012|10:40 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  groggy | ] |
So... common belief would designate that a Private Rp Section, would be a section specifically for rps where you had privately invited certain individuals to thread with you. Never in one million years did I believe that I had to mark an rp in the Private section as actually 'Private'... and yet we have today's tale on Bad Rpers Suck Theatre.
( Read more... )
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| Dear idiot... |
[May. 20th, 2012|09:50 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | idiots, math | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | desk | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | some Israeli folk dance I used to know, in head | ] |
The idiot is me if I spend more than a minute or two per day answering dumb questions on Answers.com. Like this one:
underneath which are
I just gave the following answer, in which I may have managed to conceal at least part of my snark:
None. Obtuse means >90º; acute means >90º; a right angle = 90º. See Relevant Answers. Or look up "rectangle" in a dictionary; also "obtuse".
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| Big yellow eye is blinking |
[May. 20th, 2012|06:14 pm] |
A dozen years ago, Harry and I drove all the way down to Cornwall from Newcastle, in order not to see the solar eclipse; it was cloud cover all the way, and all we observed was a dimness.
But here I am in California, and I don't even need to leave my garden. There hasn't been a cloud for weeks; the sun is still high enough to make observations easy; I am playing with sheets of paper and pinholes. Something has licked half the sun away already. Anyone seen A'Tuin recently? *glowers suspiciously at turtles*
What the boys will do when their sunshine disappears, I do not know. That also might be fun to observe, but I shall be outside. Am acquiring last-minute tan, just in case it never comes back again. |
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| Insulating against the birds |
[May. 20th, 2012|06:11 pm] |
Busy, long day. Woken at dawn by noisy birds, as I have been for a week or so now. Spring definitely has downsides. Got annoyed enough to (try to) do something about it. Spent much of the morning moving furniture around, so that the window to my bedroom is not just blocked but really thoroughly blocked, by about 6 inches of paper in most places. I generally like to keep my shelves loosely packed, for easy access and insertion, but I'll sacrifice that to create a noise buffer. Hope it works...
Unexpectedly got access to the car in the afternoon, so filled it with (digitized) comic boxes to trade back to Outer Limits. Had a god conversation with Steve about the nature of the evolving market.
Also of note, picked the first 2 strawberries today. Sue, our gardener is complaining that the garden is six weeks ahead of schedule. I make it more like 1.5, but it still does seem likely to be a bumper year. |
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| "We Need To Talk About Kevin" and "Retreat" |
[May. 20th, 2012|11:02 pm] |
We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011)
Mark Kermode's top film of last year stars Tilda Swinton as the mother of a child who seem to have a grudge against her from the moment he is born. This is adapted from a novel (by Lionel Shriver), but I have absolutely no idea how this story would work within a book. Unlike most adaptations, there's something especially visual and tonal about the film. While there's clearly a plot line running through the film and we've seen films which use mixed-up timelines and flashbacks before, the whole film is quite disorientating in the way it skips from past to present with occasional glimpses of events in between.
( Read more... )
Retreat (2011)
What a cast eh? There's Cillian Murphy, Jamie Bell and um... Thandie Newton. I actually remember quite fancying Thandie Newton in MI:2, but mainly because I thought she had a pretty face. If anything she's lost weight since then so she's looking rather gaunt. Naturally we shouldn't judge actresses by their weight, but that upsets me anyway. In any case, all three of these actors are clearly excellent and so this really ought to be a fantastic film as a result. Sadly, it isn't. The set-up at the beginning feels awkward, the pacing in the middle is slow, the behaviour of the characters (not just Jamie Bell's mysterious figure but the other two as well) is often confusing, the ending ends up looking like a silly cop-out, and I'm not convinced that the director is getting the best out of any of these performers. Yes, they are all brilliant, but I couldn't help but feel that the performances were in spite of rather than encouraged by the director.
( Read more... )
cross posted to Halloween Candy |
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| salad-mix recall |
[May. 20th, 2012|05:48 pm] |
Oh phooey -- we ate that yesterday, "possibly" exposing us to listeria monocytogenes (warning: I cringed while reading this). But kudos to Giant Eagle for calling and telling me; store affinity cards do bring privacy issues, but it's nice to know that the tracking of purchases can produce good outcomes too. Unless it were to make the news somewhat prominently, I might not have known otherwise. (Specifically, I might have heard "River Ranch" and not connected it to "Farmer's Market", the local branding.)
Tomorrow morning I'll ask what my doctor recommends. |
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| Writing Across Cultures |
[May. 20th, 2012|04:14 pm] |
This article talks about the challenges of writing other cultures. It's good as far as it goes, in that exploring can be good inspiration and it's important to do your homework so you don't write stupid things.
But it's also staring at a wall that isn't entirely real. It makes a huge gigantic deal out of that wall, as if humanity is all about being "us" or "them."
It's not. Racial distinctions are illusions, cultural fabrications not backed by science. Social boundaries can be real, but even those are thought a great deal more than they're done. As soon as people meet, they start swapping ideas and usually genes. Consider the fact that global travel means fewer and fewer people are "pure" anything these days. This is especially true in America but also true throughout most of the rest of the world, barring a few obsessively endogamous groups.
So don't assume that you are "other," that you have no connection with some society or ethnic group that interests you. Look for common ground. Better yet, take a detailed look at your family tree and see how much diversity you can find in there. Then go explore some of that stuff.
People are people. We all have a lot of common experience just by sharing a species and a home planet. A story that focuses on that has a much better chance of working as a story and not devolving into stereotypes. Consider the success of "Roots," which was at its heart a story about family, not just a black family coming into and out of slavery.
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| One last time |
[May. 20th, 2012|04:32 pm] |
This evening, I will complete the eleven months of saying kaddish for my father. While I remain an avel, a mourner, for another month, in Jewish traditon kaddish is not recited for the last month of the year of mourning.
So at the end of the 7:50 mincha service, I will say kaddish. And at the end of the 8:05 arvit service, I will respond to the kaddish recited by others.
People have asked me how I feel about it, and it's a mixed bag. But one thing that I'm certain of: I'm looking forward to being able to say "Aleinu", the prayer before kaddish, at my own pace, without rushing to make sure I'll be ready to say "Yitgadal".
I don't hold by mystical interpretations of kaddish. I know that for some, there is a concept of an immediate afterlife, and they have the idea that every time a child says kaddish, the soul of the parent ascends one level, and their goal is to ensure that they say kaddish at least enough times to elevate their parent's soul from "doomed to purgatory" to "ensured a place in the next world." Almost sounds like a rule out of Dungeons and Dragons, doesn't it?
That's not how I see kaddish.
A co-worker who lost his mother a few months ago commented to the effect that his mother, a devout Catholic, could now talk to God directly. And in the broader culture in which we live, there is an amorphous concept that the living can ask the dead to intercede on their behalf, that they are somehow closer to God than we are.
That's not the Jewish view. The Psalmist wrote: "The dead do not praise God, nor does anyone who has descended into the grave." My father's ability to pray ended with his last breath eleven months ago. It is we, the living, who can speak words to God --- words of praise and words of anger, words of gratitude and words of despair.
For me, kaddish must have a function in this world, among the living.
And so I have been going to synagogue, twice daily (usually), to say the kaddish that my father cannot. To lead the community in prayer, as my father cannot. To fulfill the fifth commandment, showing respect for my father, in the symbolic act that our people have used for millenia.
In short, to present evidence, through my actions, of what kind of Jew my father was, by demonstrating what kind of Jew my father raised.
And yet that means that, to a greater or lesser degree, my prayers for the last eleven months have not been entirely mine. My father's absence has been a constant companion. About one service out of every six, I have been leading as "the representative of the community," as it is called, which means often I've also been sharing my prayer mindspace with everyone else in the room.
It's gotten crowded in there.
But tonight, at arvit, it will be just me. When I say the "Amen" that concludes my father's one remaining kaddish, the final echo of his voice will fade out, and I will enter the penultimate stage of mourning. I will have to start learning how to leave daily mourning behind, to prepare for the final stage, the one that starts on his first yahrzeit and lasts for the rest of my life.
For the next month, I will be ineligible to lead services both on weekdays (as someone no longer saying kaddish) and on Shabbat and Yom Tov (as one in the year of formal mourning). I intend to use that month to rediscover my own voice, and to find my way back to that quiet, solitary space so I can once again learn how to become intimate with God. |
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| Addiction in Science Fiction |
[May. 20th, 2012|02:54 pm] |
One of my writer-friends, Joan Slonczewski, posted an interesting essay about addiction in science fiction.
I've touched on this occasionally in my writing. For instance, in "Good Help Is Hard To Find," the supporting character is a drunk and the main character is having a difficult time switching from Evil to Good. One of my unpublished stories, "Pebbles from the River Lethe," is primarily about post-traumatic stress disorder but that arcs into a major thread on addiction. Or threads, if you count the protagonist's early attempts to self-medicate with alcohol.
I look at addiction as an adaptive malfunction. So my sorting process goes like this:
* Is there an underlying problem that you're trying to alleviate? If yes, then you have a valid reason to explore substances or practices to that end. If not, what you're doing is recreational and should be kept at a lower level.
* Is what you're doing causing a problem? If yes, then you need to consider the possibility of quitting and the relative cost. If not, then it's functioning as maintenance and not an addiction.
* Is the solution causing more trouble than the original problem? If yes, then you need to be doing something about that. If not, then at least you're ahead of where you were.
* Can you scale back or stop if you wish to do so? If yes, this is not an addiction. If not, it is, and the advisability of maintaining it depends on the risk/benefit assessment.
* Is there a level at which the benefits may be obtained without much if any negative side effects? If yes, it's maintenance. If not, that's a problem typical of many addictive substances, especially as habituation increases. Many things are functional at one level but dysfunctional at others.
By my definition, an addiction is something that you can't readily withdraw from even if it causes more trouble than it's worth. It's your own adaptive process working against you instead of for you.
This leaves out some things that cause physical adaptation but do not make trouble, such as some maintenance medications. Bear in mind that food, water, oxygen, and many other things are required for life; and some of those can trigger the habituation effect under some circumstances. This also goes against the sometimes fashionable idea that if any substance ever causes a problem, it's an addiction; well, no, if you can stop after a bad experience, that's just a mistake and you learned from it. People do that.
This also includes some things that society customarily excludes from consideration because they are recommended or required. Just because everyone thought it was dandy to smoke for decades didn't make cigarettes not kill people. Same with prescription drugs, it took a long time for anyone to admit that those can be as addictive and destructive as street drugs. So can religion, sex, and all sorts of other stuff. What matters is whether it does damage and whether you can stop; not whether or not something is "respectable."
In speculative fiction, we can look at different things that a society might excuse or condemn, or that might become addictive. Magic, new drugs, alien symbiotes, gods, artifacts -- all kinds of stuff can mess up a character's mind and life. Then we can explore positive or negative ways that society deals with that. (![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) haikujaguar has a wonderful story about social response to addiction.) Sometimes that reveals new ways of thinking about a problem or looking for solutions.
What are some of your favorite stories that touch on this topic?
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| A Quick Thought While Watching the Chicago March |
[May. 20th, 2012|02:54 pm] |
God knows how stupid this will sound, depending on how things turn out when the marchers reach McCormick Place, but I'm watching a little bit of the Chicago anti-war march provoked by the NATO summit there. Most of the police conduct looks like anything else you'd see at a routine, uneventful protest: lots of cops walking alongside the marchers, between them and the sidewalks, basic crowd-control, crowd-protection stuff. More of them are wearing helmets than I think makes any sense at this point, and even more of them are wearing visible armor vests, neither of which makes sense to me at this point, especially given the heat this weekend, but still pleasantly boring. Everybody looks miserably hot and exhausted on both sides.
But a little while ago, the protesters were being steered around a corner by the cops, presumably to make absolutely sure they didn't deviate from the approved parade route ... and at that corner, every single cop was in anti-riot helmets and, and here's the part that really caught my attention, every single one of them had their long anti-riot batons drawn and at the ready position.
If I'd been there, I would have wanted to stop at the barricade and ask one of them, at random, if he could spare a second to answer a question for me: "Officer, I'm not challenging your authority and I'm not going to cross this barricade. Can you help me with a question, though? In your personal opinion, not your supervisor's opinion, just your opinion, are the drawn, at the ready batons appropriate at this time? Do you, personally, think you need them, either to intimidate the crowd or because you think violence is imminent?" Either way, whether I got a "yes" or a "no" or a "no comment," I'd apologize for bothering him while he was working, thank him for his time, and move on. I wouldn't have been looking for an argument; I just really want to know?
So far, it's the only really weird-looking thing I've seen. Every protester and every other cop looks calm, if tired; that one squad looked like they were in a war zone. Everybody else looks, if anything, bored; they looked grimly terrified. I wonder what the hell they were thinking?
(This could all look either very stupid or very prescient in a couple of hours. It will pleasantly surprise me, and ever so slightly increase my faith in America, if there isn't a police riot when the protesters get to McCormick Place. This is an election year, peak "punch a hippy" season for Democrats.) |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 20th, 2012|12:51 pm] |
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Apparently today I am aphid-food-colored. Or maybe aphid-environment-colored. In any case, they tickle. |
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| Me'ilah 30 – Temple Morning (Tamid) |
[May. 20th, 2012|11:21 am] |
 After the Kohanim enter the Chamber of Hewn Stone, the appointed Kohen tells them, “Come and cast lots for the services: Who slaughters the morning daily offering? Who throws its blood on the Altar? Who clears the ashes of the Inner Altar? Who clears the ash from the Menorah? Who brings the limbs of the morning offering to the ramp of the Altar?”
The Kohanim cast lots by each raising a finger and counting, and one on whom the count would end would get the first service, while the other Kohanim to his right would get the rest. The bringing of the limbs to the ramp, together with libations, required nine Kohanim, and larger sacrifices required more.
The appointed Kohen would tell them, “Go out and see if the time for slaughtering the morning offering has arrived.” If it had, the observer says, “Dawn!” To prevent a possible error, they restate, “Has the entire eastern sky lit up?” and the observer says, “Yes!”
The would go and bring a lamb from the Chamber of the Lambs, and give it to drink from a golden up. The would offer it, and proceed with the other services. Some of the sounds of the Temple were heard as far as Jericho.
Art: Dwight William Tryon - Dawn |
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| Sunday Sermonette: In The Beginning Was The Word |
[May. 20th, 2012|10:42 am] |
The Vicar was out walking his dogs and stopped to chat, for professional as well as social reasons. Towards the end of our conversation, he asked, “So, do you consider yourself an agnostic or an atheist?” When I replied that I called myself an atheist, he responded, “Aren’t you really an agnostic? How can you be sure that God doesn’t exist?”
Atheism isn’t about knowledge, I explained. Theism and atheism are about belief. Gnosticism and agnosticism are about knowledge. An agnostic (literally “one who lacks knowledge”) says that there is no proof that a god exists or doesn’t exist. That lack of proof may stem from a lack of evidence, or may be more fundamental. One philosophical position holds that the finite cannot know the infinite; the material cannot know the transcendent. Hamlet may know Polonius, but can never know Shakespeare. God is essentially unknowable.
Atheism (literally “lacking gods”) is the answer to a single question, do you believe in God? There’s a big difference between saying “I do not believe there is a god” and “I believe there is no god.” It is the difference between “Not Guilty” and “Innocent”.
Some temporize by saying they don’t know, and therefore claim agnosticism, but this is incorrect. Belief is a conviction in the truth of a proposition. If someone considers the existence of a god and comes to the conclusion they don’t know, they cannot believe. Such people are, in fact, atheists.
The two terms are sometimes combined in a “weak” and “strong” form. Weak atheism is agnostic atheism: I don’t know if there is a god, so I don’t believe. There may be proof not yet encountered, or the infinite may reveal itself to the finite. Strong atheism is gnostic atheism: I know no god exists, therefore I do not believe. And then of course, there is gnostic theism: I know god exists, and I believe. For symmetry’s sake, agnostic theism would be the belief that a god exists without any knowledge that this belief is true, but such a stance is untenable.
The Vicar was right about one thing. It is impossible to claim knowledge that there is no god, so long as he gets to define the meaning of “knowledge” and “god.”
While knowledge retains its usual meaning in most things, Christian apologists create a special meaning when arguing whether one can know if God exists. In so doing, they try to define atheists out of existence. The argument works like this:
• Atheists have faith God does not exist.
• In order to know that God does not exist, the atheist would need to be omniscient.
• The atheist is not omniscient, therefore atheists do not exist.
The flaw, of course, is in the equivocation in the first premise. “Faith” does not mean “absolute knowledge.” By that standard, nothing is absolutely knowable. My computer may be run by invisible pixies (big ones - megapixies) cunningly disguised as circuits, capacitors, and chips. Can you prove it’s not?
The Vicar decided it was late and the dogs were getting restive, so I wasn’t able to complete the argument. But hey, what’s a blog for?
Define “god” as “an infinitely powerful transcendent being who created the universe,” and there’s no way to prove anything because the claim is untestable. However, the moment it is claimed that this god answers prayers, performs miracles, and otherwise interacts in the physical world, the claim becomes testable. The moment divine attributes are strung together, their logical coherence can be questioned.
But those questions will have to wait for another chat. |
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| When in Rome...? |
[May. 20th, 2012|10:16 am] |
I'm in the middle of reading a book kestrell got me for Xmas, _Shakespeare and Amateur Performance: A Cultural History_, by Michael Dobson. Recommended for those who, like many of my friends, have an interest in the subject.
While it is thoroughly researched and footnoted, the jargon is rare and authorial tone is light. The author occasionally lets his inner ham out to play, as in the following delightful sentence, discussing a man from Geneva who spent many years in England, performing amateur plays in French, then on returning home, produced a bunch of amateur Shakespeare performances in English:A combination of Nick Bottom and the Scarlet Pimpernel, Lullin clearly knew all about the potential cultural cachet to be gained from being the right kind of foreigner in the right wrong place at the right time: as the old maxim has it, 'when in Rome, do as the Greeks do'. |
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| Stone's Fall: Ian Pears |
[May. 20th, 2012|02:10 pm] |
A very clever book full of superficial verisimilitude- including much arcane but entertaining stuff about finance.
Our financier hero- I'm trying not to give too much away here- manipulates everyone who swims around him- including the leaders of the nations of Europe - into enabling his complicated business plans, whilst remaining largely uncorrupted by his wealth and power. His greatest sting- though hugely elaborate- never once stubs its toes against the cussedness of things in general or the unpredictability of the human animal.
I finished it and thought, "That's almost a great novel" and then thought again and riposted, "But it's a complete pack of lies." |
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| Kate Hart looks at YA book covers |
[May. 20th, 2012|07:51 am] |
(Nicked from genrereviews)
Last year, I started a series of infographics about YA book covers, mostly as a tongue-in-cheek reaction to the Wall Street Journal's "Darkness in YA" controversy. But the further I got into compiling statistics, the more alarmed I became at the covers' monochrome approach to models. All total, I found 224 white girls-- and only nine of any other race or ethnicity.
Also posted at Dreamwidth, where there are  comment(s); comment here or there.
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| Still Marking Time |
[May. 20th, 2012|10:57 am] |
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Ailz spent much of yesterday with her parents. I don't have a role there at present so I stayed at home. Eric has been getting a lot of visitors. The district nurses and carers stop by at defined intervals. |
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| FSGW Spring Ball |
[May. 20th, 2012|01:43 am] |
I'm back from the Folklore Society of Greater Washington's spring ball, where I danced every dance and still wished there had been more because 22 dances just is not enough to dance with everyone I would have liked to dance with. But at least I managed to dance in sets with most of my preferred partners.
Now things get quiet until fall. The next ball will be in October, when the Baltimore Folkmusic Society has its annual Playford Ball, and the next season of dances will begin. Until then, I'm fortunate to have the Monday night dances to keep in practice, though I don't break out the formal attire for those. |
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