Previous Martian probe may have found alien life and killed it. Not that life could evolve on Mars, but this report on a theory on Martian life is too funny and true to avoid a blog link.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Three unconnected items
Just now, on his radio show, Hugh Hewitt made the following spit-take inducing statement: “That’s why I’m repeating the first hour of this program, though I don’t often do that.”
Hugh, you know what happens to little boys who tell fibs, don’t you?
By way of Paul McCain’s Cyberbrethren blog, this incredible Bible map site. Extremely cool.
Our IT guy came to my office to replace my two side-by-side computer monitors (I use two computers at work. One’s dedicated to cataloging) with a wonderful new big-screen monitor today, plus adding a nifty switch that toggles back and forth between the two, clearing one monitor’s footprint from my desk. More room for clutter!
He told me about a woman he’d talked to recently. She’d grown disillusioned with the Very Large Lutheran Church Body That Shall Remain Nameless. She’d been involved in some sort of planned giving commitment, and she’d finally come to the end of that. She sent them a final check, in the amount of $10.00.
Someone from HQ called her and asked her what the ten buck check was for.
“I’d like you to take that ten dollars and buy a Bible with it,” she told them. “I don’t think you have one up there.”
Thoughts, or a reasonable equivalent
In which I insult my second-favorite country
Today I went to work, and I worked. Not a single interesting thought sullied the virgin veneer of my mind.
So I’ll pass on this link, (hat tip to Archaeology in Europe) which won’t interest most of you. It’s about a plan to move the famous Viking ships in Oslo, Norway from their present home to a new one, closer to the center of Oslo.
The present location is a little out of the way. It’s on a peninsula called Bygdøy, across the harbor from the downtown. For generations, tourists have been taking ferryboats to Bygdøy to see the Ships Museum, along with its neighbor, the Folk Museum, where you can see buildings (including one of the country’s most impressive stave churches) which have been relocated from the various districts, reconstructed and preserved.
At first I was surprised to read about it. The current building is probably a little small for the size of modern crowds, but it enjoys an almost religious reverence among Norwegians. It even looks a little like a cathedral (the modern kind).
And frankly, I was surprised the Norwegians would want to spend money to bring their nationalistic heritage to the forefront in the current cultural climate. Aren’t all good Europeans supposed to believe that their heritage is evil, after all? Aren’t they taught that Asia and Africa are superior in every way?
Then I figured it out. The Viking ships are heathen artifacts. No taint of Christianity adheres to them. To affirm pre-Christian culture is almost as noble in European eyes as to affirm non-Christian culture.
Uff-da. I was worried there for a while.
Field Mice A-Caroling
At last the Rat succeeded in decoying [the Mole] to the table, and had just got seriously to work with the sardine-opener when sounds were heard from the fore-court without – sounds like the scuffling of small feet in the gravel and a confused murmur of tiny voices, while broken sentences reached them – “Now, all in a line – hold the lantern up a bit, Tommy – clear your throats first – no coughing after I say one, two, three. – Where”s young Bill? – Here, come on, do, we”re all a-waiting – – ”
“What”s up?” inquired the Rat, pausing in his labours.
“I think it must be the field-mice,” replied the Mole, with a touch of pride in his manner. “They go round carol-singing regularly at this time of the year. They”re quite an institution in these parts. And they never pass me over – they come to Mole End last of all; and I used to give them hot drinks, and supper too sometimes, when I could afford it. It will be like old times to hear them again.”
“Let”s have a look at them!” cried the Rat, jumping up and running to the door.
It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes when they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing and applying oat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder ones that carried the lantern was just saying, “Now then, one, two, three!” and forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed down to be sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time.
Villagers all, this frosty tide,
Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may follow, and snow beside,
Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
Joy shall be yours in the morning!
Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,
Blowing fingers and stamping feet,
Come from far away you to greet –
You by the fire and we in the street –
Bidding you joy in the morning!
For ere one half of the night was gone,
Sudden a star has led us on,
Raining bliss and benison –
Bliss to-morrow and more anon,
Joy for every morning!Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow –
Saw the star o”er a stable low;
Mary she might not further go –
Welcome thatch, and litter below!
Joy was hers in the morning!
And then they heard the angels tell
“Who were the first to cry Nowell?
Animals all, as it befell,
In the stable where they did dwell!
Joy shall be theirs in the morning!”
The voices ceased, the singers, bashful but smiling, exchanged sidelong glances, and silence succeeded – but for a moment only. Then, from up above and far away, down the tunnel they had so lately travelled was borne to their ears in a faint musical hum the sound of distant bells ringing a joyful and clangorous peal.
“Very well sung, boys!” cried the Rat heartily. “And now come along in, all of you, and warm yourselves by the fire, and have something hot!”
from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.
Charlie Brown Rebuffs the Naturalists
My soul is being tried by reading Thomas Paine. A couple of his points are good, but most of his argument against Christianity shows his ignorance of the Bible. He may not have read it through and is relying on his exposure to preaching and Christian associates. I don’t know that, but to follow Paine’s reasoning I could easily believe he has never read through the Bible even once (“for I keep no Bible,” he admits) because he appears to ascribe to the idea that possibility is evidence for reality. If it’s possible none of the Biblical books were written by their authors, then they probably weren’t because doubt is evidence enough.
Doubt coupled with ignorance makes a winning argument.
But that’s just what’s been on my mind lately. This post, for your blog-reading amusement, is about Charlie Brown’s mockery of naturalism. My children are slowly destroying a 1959 paperback called We’re On Your Side, Charlie Brown, comics taken from But We Love You, Charlie Brown Vol 1. It wasn’t in great condition before it began circulating among their books, but I doubt it’s in used-bookstore-acceptable condition now.
I came across this strip last night. Lucy and Linus are staring at the sky. Lucy tells him, “Clouds are very peculiar, Linus . . . Sometimes they seem to form actual words. . .” (ellipses in the original). Charlie Brown hears this while passing by and states, “Those aren’t clouds. That’s sky-writing!”
Lucy faces him in silence for a few moments. Then watching the sky again, she says, “Clouds are very peculiar, Linus . . . Sometimes they seem to form actual words. . .”
Master Brown confronts Lucy’s assumption that the “actual words” were formed through natural, unthinking processes and to no avail. Lucy will not be persuaded, out of pride no doubt. But for Brown, the common man, persuasion is not the goal. Declaring the truth is enough.
Merry Christmas
From Jared: “Life is Not Long, But It’s Hard: A Christmas Reflection”
“When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious . . .”
Merry Christmas
“He was on the point of retreating when his eye fell upon the fireplace–one of those vast tavern chimneys where there is always so little fire when there is any fire at all, and which are so cold to look at. There was no fire in this one, there was not even ashes; but there was something which attracted the stranger’s gaze, nevertheless. It was two tiny children’s shoes, coquettish in shape and unequal in size. The traveller recalled the graceful and immemorial custom in accordance with which children place their shoes in the chimney on Christmas eve, there to await in the darkness some sparkling gift from their good fairy. Eponine and Azelma had taken care not to omit this, and each of them had set one of her shoes on the hearth.
“The traveller bent over them. . . .” Read the rest at Semicolon, “Christmas 1823.”
Sacrifice Is Such a Complex Question
A political diversion–Best of the Web highlights a segment of Hardball with Chris Matthews (scroll down to “Matt Damon Wants You“) in which a caller named Meghan asks actors Robert DeNiro and Matt Damon, “Would you go to war if you were asked?”
“Well that’s such a complex question,” Mr. DeNiro replies, and the two actors hem-haw a bit. Mr. Damon, who was talking about the need for “a shared sense of sacrifice” just before Meghan’s call, gets around to suggesting the president’s daughters should go if they are of age.
The transcript notes applause to this non-answer.
Light in darkness
This time of year, I’m leaving work just about the same time the last light is failing. This is the pattern we live with in Minnesota, the pattern I grew up with. It’s woven in my DNA. This isn’t usually the coldest time of year (certainly not this year—the temperature is peaking around freezing, and we’re still snowless, though there are rumors of maybe a few flakes by Christmas). But it’s the time when the nights are longest. The time when the sun rations out tiny bowls of thin light-gruel to the orphans, and there’s little point in asking for more.
And that’s one reason I love Christmas. Because Christmas is the time when we defy that darkness. We burn up fuel that could be hoarded, feast on food that could be cached, and sing loudly that we believe in Light, and Light is coming back.
Sure, most of our customs have heathen origins. So what? I don’t care about the religion of the first man to trim a Yule tree any more than I care about the religion of the guy who built my house. If it’s a good house that keeps me warm in the winter and provides a place for me to gather with my family, that’s plenty for me.
I figure I know Odin and Thor as well as anybody, and they don’t scare me. Their bad elements don’t hurt me, and their good elements enrich my life. C. S. Lewis thought the old myths contained “good dreams” sent by God, stories that prepared heathens to recognize the gospel when it arrived.
I believe it.
I remember going out to do chores on the farm during Christmas season, when I was a boy. Was it cold? It was biting cold. It was burning cold. I pulled a ski mask over my face, and soon had a beard of ice forming around the mouth hole. It was dark out there—not city dark, where there are lights from house windows and street lamps to give relief, but country dark. Dark you could fall into and never hit bottom. Up above, the stars burned like an ammonia fire behind a moth-eaten blanket.
And as I trudged along, the snow squealing under my feet with a sound of tortured iron, I sang Christmas carols.
And that made the whole thing magic. That put me into a story, a pageant. It didn’t make the killer night warmer, but it made it beautiful. Deadly and beautiful, like a fine weapon.
A sword for the Lord.
Thank God for Christmas, I say.