Sometimes, very occasionally, the Academic and the "Real World" align rather well.

As of late, I'm sure most have been introduced to Sen. Obama's former paster, Rev Wright. The media's obession with his 'bombastic' speach is interesting but at the same time it helps illustrate something I've noticed before: Most people have no idea what the Bible says.

Rev Wright recently has done some interviews to explain the exerpted You-Tubed comments of his that were all over the airwaves the last few weeks. Adventus has some longer exerpts from those appearances as well as some commentary on them.

Listening to the questions, and the responses, it struck me how little people know about what the Bible, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, actually say. To further back this up, my Hebrew course this semester has been focusing on Ezekiel.

Ezekiel and the prophets I think we tend to forget about because they say a lot of things that might make us uncomfortable. And when we do look at them, we insist their message was for a specific group of people in history and can't be applied to us.

Micah calls for us to "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God" after suggesting that all the pomp, ceremony, and ritual is precisely what God is not interested in. (Micah 6:6-8) Hosea tells us God wants mercy more the sacrifice. (Hosea 6:6) Other prophets extort their audiences to protect the poor, the oppressed, the alien, the widow and the orphen.

And for bombastic language, well, here's Ezekiel 22:23-31:

The word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, say to it: You are a land that is not cleansed, not rained upon in the day of indignation. Its princes within it are like a roaring lion tearing the prey; they have devoured human lives; they have taken treasure and precious things; they have made many widows within it. Its priests have done violence to my teaching and have profaned my holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them. Its officials within it are like wolves tearing the prey, shedding blood, destroying lives to get dishonest gain. Its prophets have smeared whitewash on their behalf, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, “Thus says the Lord God,” when the Lord has not spoken. The people of the land have practiced extortion and committed robbery; they have oppressed the poor and needy, and have extorted from the alien without redress. And I sought for anyone among them who would repair the wall and stand in the breach before me on behalf of the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one. Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath; I have returned their conduct upon their heads, says the Lord God.

And if you think that calling the leaders "wolves" that "tear prey" is tamer than what is being said now, Ezekiel 16 gets very raw. (And when it translates things all 'nice' as "fornication" and "harlotry", they're the same word and I think "harlotry" and its other forms are being used because they sound more... Academic than dropping F-bombs.)

So I read through Rev Wright's sermons, and I hear some of them via YouTube and I think... What's the big deal? Not only is the same sort of language that is throughout the Bible*, but I would think that it should be used. Part of the "mission" of religion is to challenge us to be better than we are, and we can't do that without someone pointing out uncomfortable things to us.

And how is it that Rev Wright (and Obama) get called to task for "God damn America" while Rev Hagee (and McCain) don't get called to task for blaming Katrina on Americans (gays, specifically)? Or the many that say that 9/11 was God's wrath on the US for it's permissiveness?

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*Heck, Christ calls the priests a "brood a vipers" or more loosely from the greek "bastards of snakes", as the word "brood" meant illegitimate offspring. Matthew 3:7 and others

Tristero has a post up on why torture is immoral.

And I'm not sure I have a whole lot to add, except I miss when torture was something third world countries and the medieval world did, not my own country.

From Fresh Air, an interview with the director and the star of Ratatouille.

And yes, as fortuna_juvat said, just wait until they get to "grok".

Via Atrios, from The Carpetbagger Report

“The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room.”

Yeah. ERs are great, aren't they? I mean, they legally -have- to treat you if you're not stable. We'll ignore that a bill follows. We'll ignore that if you can't pay that bill taxpayers pay that. We'll ignore that if they were to have a physician see them in the office regularly (or as regularly as anyone else goes to the Dr) it would be far cheaper for taxpayers than a hospital visit...

I get the feeling he doesn't know how the system works. But then, talking with ayradyss I get the feeling no one in goverment knows how it works.

Bush does know he's more or less alone one this one, right?

It costs $35 billion over 5 years ($7 billion a year or roughly $23 per US citizen per year). It covers more uninsured children for health care. The medical community is behind it, the insurance companies (you know, the ones Universal Care would put out of business) are behind it.

His only supporters are the ones that would stand behind him even if he went on live TV and killed puppies. (Which, sad to say, seems to be a lot of Congress...)

Let's hope the House wakes up and overrides this. (The Senate passed with a big enough margin, the House almost so.)

One year ago today was one of the worst moments for the Amish community, and probably the worst for a specific Amish community. I find their rememberance interesting. They're not setting up a memorial. They're not agrondizing about their loss. Yes, they still hurt, but their peaceful acceptance and return to their lives I think is something we could all learn from.

This section particularly struck me:

Officials from Virginia Tech were also invited to attend. Four months after the massacre at that school, members of the Amish community traveled to Blacksburg, Virginia, to pass along a comfort quilt.

If we could all reach out a bit more like that...

So Iran's President Ahmadinejad is in New York with a number of other people for a UN meeting. In the time before the meeting, he spoke at Columbia University and wanted to visit the site of the 9/11 attacks to pay his respects (see previous link). The second trip, though, because:

Several groups were outraged. Security became an issue and the visit was canceled.

Several things bother me about this. The biggest is that Iran offered condolences to the victims and condemned the attacks the very same day they happened.

Yes, it was the previous president of Iran. Yes, he was more liberal/Western than the current one. Yes, Ahmadinejad has a large number of things wrong with his rhetoric and actions as President of Iran.

And what bothers me isn't that it was a political decision not to allow him to visit, but rather we have enough people who have bought the bile that we've been shoveling on Iran since Bush's "Axis of Evil" comment*.

I still think that if someone wants to pay their respects to the dead of an atrocity, they should have that chance. He might have said something outrageous, sure. So what?

Edit: Forgot something: No I don't like Ahmedinajad, I think he's said some horrifically reprehensible things. He should still be afforded the same basic rights we give everyone here in this country.




*I'll note that

1. Iran is a democracy


2. Before that comment, Iran's government had been much more left-leaning than it had been since the Islamic Revolution


3. I'm not sure that Bush's comments and following actions didn't start the Iranian people to embrace the rhetoric of the more hard-right party there and lead to Ahmadinejad's election

And yet another reason to leave...

As I recall, the only reason they have a functional parliament at all is because Sadr finally agreed to work with it. He wants assurances that the US troops won't become a permanent fixture in Iraq. The American people want the same thing. The Iraqi people want the same thing. And yet, Bush won't listen.

I'm still trying to figure out how saying "We want to be out of here in 18 months time" helps the enemy. Are they just going to stop the violence and stockpile weapons until we leave? Doubtful.

I've also abandoned the idea that we should somehow "fix" Iraq. I used to think that since we "broke" it, we should fix it. But the question was always how to do that. The only way that seems feasible would be a full-on occupation. The problem with this is we would need to probably double the troop numbers we have there.

We don't have that many troops.

So, we either institute a draft to get that many troops and just wait it out until they're trained or convince someone else to help. We've run out of people willing to keep small numbers of troops there, let alone add in the 100,000 or so more we'd need. Drafting 100,000+ people would get us the numbers, but it'd take a year or so to train them so they could go. Add in that the draft is still a political suicide, it's unlikely that if the drafted happened that anyone drafted would actually set foot overseas before a time line for withdraw was in place.

So that leaves us with leaving or keeping the numbers of troops we have there until it's "fixed". The problem is that we've been on a treadmill for the last three years or so, and if anything it's only gotten worse.

It's time to bring our men and women home. There's not much more they can do there until the Iraqis want the help we're offering.

Apparently, a teacher and a principal were caught on film having sex in the principal's office. Now, I'm not saying it's not inappropriate. I'm not sure I think they should have resigned/been fired over it. (I'm assuming any windows were closed and there were no students present.) I mean, how many other office environments do co-workers, even supervisor-subordinate relationships happen? Heck, I remember doing some not-so-work-appropriate things back when I was working in undergrad.

What really gets me is this:

"It made me sick," Grivakis said. "It's very graphic. I can't tell you how graphic because I have two children standing right here."

Really? Then don't watch it. It's that simple. The couple were apparently consenting adults, I don't really care how "graphic" there sex is. Especially since they weren't filming it to mail to the parents themselves. It's not like they wanted their actions known. Otherwise one would have been caught under the table in front of the other at a PTA meeting or some such. Or just would have sent a letter out "Oh yeah, we're screwing".

Yes, what they did was probably inappropriate. But they're both adults and apparently consenting, so... what? Educators have to be celibate?

It could be very useful in dealing with nuclear waste. And since that's the only major issue with nuclear power...

The real question is would fission produce enough energy to power the units needed to increase decay rates and still net energy? If not, then there's the problem of no net energy production.

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In a side note, my ayradyss is off on a business trip for the rest of the week. Here's hoping she doesn't bake out there.

Really, now. You'd think they'd learn.

Let's tell a story about Bob, Sam, and Pete.

Bob is walking down a street when he sees Sam run up to Pete and start pounding the crap out of him. Let's say Pete's a relatively weak-looking guy, Sam is more buff, but Bob is both a black belt and benches ridiculous amounts of weight. Bob could -easily- stop Sam. Bob could even say "Stop, Sam!" But instead, Bob watches, commenting to other observers "You know, we need to find a lasting solution, so that Pete can't throw dirty punches at Sam." And then Sam says, "Well, that means I can beat Pete into a bloody pulp."

Yes, it's an overly simplified situation. But I'd say that Sam has a pretty good interpretation of what Bob just said. So why does the administration think by saying "We need to find a permanent solution to the problem of Hesbollah and Israel, rather than stop the fighting now," they debate Israel when Israel says that they take that to mean they can continue their heavy-handed tactics?

Mostly because Israel says by not doing so, we're saying it's ok.

And maybe Bush does think it's ok that Israel is bombarding Hezbollah and killing what ever civilians (or UN troops) happen to be in the way. Why would he?

Because Hezbollah is a "terrorist" group. Meaning what? It had been acting previously to oust what it (and the rest of the world, as I recall) an occupying force through what means it had. I don't like their methods, but something tells me if Canadian troops were occupying a section of Montana, we wouldn't be calling the militiamen doing drive-by shootings from the pickups terrorists, even if they did lob some bombs a bit indiscriminately.

Life isn't as black and white as we'd like, it would seem. I just wish our leaders understood that.

Apparently, according to slashdot, a French telecom is offering 2.5Gb/s downstream (1.5 Gb/s up) to homes for about $85/month. This includes TV (probably cable, not sure, as I don't read French that well) and phone.

Maybe I need to move. *drools*