Friday, September 28, 2007

Conspiracies

There are a lot of conspiracy theories floating around, from JFK to Elvis to 9/11. We tend to be very suspicious. Sometimes we should be, but other times, we're just finding patterns because we are looking for them.

Really, I started with JFK, but the oldest existing conspiracy theory that I know of is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Briefly, in 1864, a man named Maurice Joly wrote a novel called Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu about a plot against Napolean III. In 1868 a German anti-Semite named Hermann Goedshe 'borrowed' much of the storyline from that book, and wrote another book called Biarritz. In his book, the plot was Jews trying to take over the world. The Protocols, published in 1897, took whole sections of Goedshe's novel, and claimed to have been taken from Jewish world leaders. Czar Nicholas II used the protocols to blame all of Russia's problems on the Jews. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin both used the Protocols to justify wholesale slaughter of Jews. After that, other conspiracy theorists have claimed that the Holocaust was orchestrated by Zionists in Germany as part of their plot to achieve world domination--yes, some Jews were killed, but only the ones that refused to go along with the plot (hmm. let's think about this. You give me a choice of dying a horrible death, or being part of a group that rules the world. I'll have to think about that. Can I get back to you later?).

The JFK plot, to be honest, I have to admit, my personal belief is that there is a lot more to that story than we've been led to believe. On the other hand, the main argument against a conspiracy in that instance is that no one has broken silence, 45 years later. You would think that somebody would have left a confession in a safety deposit box ("On the event of my death, I want the world to know that I helped assassinate John F. Kennedy. At the time, I believed it was the best thing for my country..." yada yada yada). Can you imagine being part of a plot to kill the president, and not being able to tell anyone about it? But a lone gunman, choosing the right vantage point, and the right time, could avoid Secret Service protection, without having to worry about whether one of his cronies might chicken out and spoil the whole deal. In any case, there's a lot of talk about the JFK assassination, but if there was more to it than Lee Harvey Oswald, we will know about it until one of the original team confesses--and, even then, there will be spin doctors ready to discount that account. I think most of the talk is just fueled by the idea that, with all that protection, how could one man have gotten to the president?

The 9/11 theories are, IMHO, mostly fueled by past events that have led to war. In February of 1898, an explosion wrecked the USS Maine in Havana harbor, thus launching the Spanish-American War (Cuba was, at that time, still part of Spain). Later, after the war, it was determined that the explosion was entirely internal (as in, one sailor decided to sneak a smoke in the powder magazine?). But the battle cry of the Spanish-American war was, 'Remember the Maine!" In May of 1915, the Lusitania was carrying armaments from New York City to England. We were, at the time, officially neutral in what would later become known as World War I, but, our government was sympathetic towards the British. The German consulate in New York took out a full page ad in the New York Times, warning travelers that the Lusitania was 'smuggling' arms to Great Britain and the the German Navy would never allow those arms to reach England. Several passengers expressed concern, and were assured the American customs would never allow a passenger ship to leave New York harbor carrying weapons. The Lusitania was intercepted by a German naval vessel, and ordered to surrender the armaments. The German vessel fired a warning torpedo. That torpedo, instead of passing across the Lusitania's bow as intended, somehow hit either the compartment that housed the arms that she wasn't carrying, or a nearly empty coal bin(empty of coal, that is, full of coal dust and fumes). The resulting explosion sent the Lusitania to the bottom, killing a large number of people, some of them Americans. We still didn't get involved in World War I right away, but the event definitely helped us along that path. In December of 1941, there was a growing suspicion that the Japanese were in league with Nazi Germany, and that they were planning an attack against us. Of course, we had a pretty good idea that Adolf Hitler wanted us side-tracked in the Pacific, so that we would not get involved in Europe (little did he know, get us mad enough, we can fight on multiple fronts). A message was sent out to all commands in the Pacific warning of the suspected attack, but supposedly, Pearl Harbor didn't get the message until three hours after the attack. Obviously, they say, Washington didn't want Pearl Harbor to get the message. What a lot of people don't understand, is that, yes, we had a pretty good idea that the Japanese were going to attack, but we didn't think they were going to attack Hawaii. We had a base in the Philippine Islands (that we took from Spain in the Spanish-American War) which was much closer to Japan, and much easier for them to attack. Of course, there actually were some intelligence reports that Al-Qaeda was planning something prior to 9/11. Some of those reports even indicated that they might try to hijack airplanes. Those reports were squelched at fairly low levels in the intelligence community, though. In retrospect, it seems obvious that they should have gone all the way to the top--and they should have. But, there was a lot of "chatter" about a lot of different things without any real detail (even the reports that we had of terrorists hijacking airplanes didn't suggest that they would fly the planes into buildings--or give dates when this would happen). Most of the chatter had nothing to do with 9/11. Really, although there has certainly been some odd things about 9/11, to suggest that our government had something to with planning it so that we would have an excuse to attack Iraq is just ludicrous. Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attack, and if we had planned it, wouldn't we have used Iraqi terrorists? A lot of people, too, have complained loudly that fire doesn't melt steel. A hot enough fire will, but, burning aircraft fuel doesn't get that hot. What they seem to have missed is that nobody is saying that the steel girders in the World Trade Center melted. In order for the towers to collapse, the girders only had to get hot enough to buckle--well within the range of temperature of burning jet fuel. Also, there has been talk of tower seven being 'an inside job' because in appeared to be undamaged until just before it collapsed. From the outside, anyway; inside there had been a fire raging for hours, but the fire department was too busy with the main towers to try to combat that blaze.

Elvis? Well, some things are just too popular to let die.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Politics

I usually stay away from politics in this blog (although I did post about Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia the other day--and if you read that post, I just updated it), but something that happened recently reminded me of something that happened several years ago, and, well, here it is:
When George W. Bush nominated Harriet Myers to be a Supreme Court justice, one of the criticisms that was leveled at her was that she "belonged to, and paid tithes to, a church that does not support abortion." My first thought was, "So does Ted Kennedy. So what?" It bothered me that the Senate judiciary committee appeared to be willing to block her nomination on the grounds of her religious beliefs (when they should have simply blocked her for her qualifications--or lack thereof). The problem here, of course, is that the senate wanted to be sure that her religious views (if confirmed as a justice) did not violate separation of church and state; but by seeking out her religious views, they themselves were violating separation of church and state. Now, as far as Senator Kennedy, just because he is a Roman Catholic, it doesn't necessarily follow that he personally shares the church's view on abortion. In any case, it seems clear that his constituents support abortion (or they wouldn't keep voting for him), and so he is voting the views of his constituency (there is some circular logic there, but it holds together--do they vote for him because he is politically pro-choice, or is he pro-choice because they are? It doesn't really matter--if he were not voting their beliefs, he would not get re-elected).
Recently Congressman Larry Craig has gotten into hot water. In the aftermath, he has been accused of being a hypocrite, because he has consistently opposed homosexual rights, and it now seems clear that he is one. It seems to me that he is in kind of the same situation as Senator Kennedy. He votes as a representative of his constituency, and so does not necessarily vote his own beliefs, or even support his own agenda.
By the way, as long as I'm talking about Larry Craig, another comment that I heard about him was that he "had to go looking for sex in a public bathroom." I'm not so sure that he 'had' to--I mean, for a public figure, soliciting in a public restroom isn't really too much different than cruising gay bars, or wherever else gay men usually hook up; he could easily be recognized either way. I had a woman tell me once that she liked having sex in elevators, because the possibility of being caught added a thrill to the encounter. I suspect that Larry Craig was engaging in the same kind of behavior.
The other thing that brought the Harriet Myers nomination to mind was a Methodist organization that lost their tax exemption on part of its property because they refused to allow two lesbian couples to have civil union ceremonies in the pavilion of their property. Now, I think I've made it clear before that I believe in civil unions, but, apparently, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association doesn't. When I first heard about this, I was under the impression that the tax exemption was based on religious use. It turns out it wasn't; the exemption is based on New Jersey's Green Acres Program, which holds that organizations don't have to pay property tax on property that they leave open to the public. The state commissioner environmental protection held that the pavilion is not open to the public, because the two lesbian couples were denied use of it. I'm not entirely sure I follow that logic (after all, they weren't told that they couldn't sit in it, or have a picnic in it), but the New York Times reports that the pavilion is "...used largely for Sunday church services and youth ministry programs..." That being the case, aren't they entitled to a tax exemption on the basis of religious usage, anyway? And, if not, why not? I have a feeling, that, given all the publicity, the state of New Jersey is going to be reluctant, at best, to grant them tax exemption for any reason. So, the good news is, they didn't lose their tax exemption based on religious reasons. Unfortunately, they may have a hard time getting a religious use exemption.
From what I understand, at least one of the lesbian couples ended up having their ceremony on the Methodist group's property anyway, so I'm not sure why the Methodists had a problem with them having the ceremony in the pavilion in the first place. It's kind of like opening up a vegetarian restaurant, but then allowing people to bring in food from the burger joint across the street, as long as they stay in the smoking section... On the other hand, I don't really understand the state's response. Shouldn't there at least be some discussion about this? We understand that you did this, and that's not in line with our policy, and you could be in danger of losing your tax exemption... The worry, of course, is that this looks like something very close to the state trying to tell a church what their beliefs need to be in order to maintain tax exempt status. That didn't happen in this case, but...

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Arguments

Some years ago, I knew two different men who had both grown up in the same state (for the purposes of this discussion, I will refer to this state as 'the state of confusion') in a different part of the country from here. Both of them happened to be gregarious individuals, and both of them were good friends. At one point, 'Tim' got very irritated at 'Bill' (I suspect that he just didn't get as much chance to talk as he wanted when the other one was around--I should probably point out that, although I am not a licensed psychiatrist, my diagnosis is that Tim was somewhat insecure. He got a sense of self-worth by getting people to listen to him. He would rather that you argue with him--because at least then he knew you were listening--than that you pay attention to someone else. Therefore, another talkative individual, like Bill, took an opportunity away from him to boost his self-esteem) . Tim muttered to me that, "Bill talks too much." I probably should have kept my mouth shut, but it irked me that he would say such a thing (it was kind of like GM criticising Ford for making too many cars, you know? and about somebody from his home state). I replied, "That seems to be a common trait among people from the state of confusion." Tim got very upset with me, and told me that, "By saying that, you have not only insulted me, but you have insulted..." and he named off two other mutual friends. Every time he saw me for the next several days, he had something to say about my comment, each time getting a little further from the original remark. Finally he said something that I couldn't argue with at all, but really had nothing to do with the statement that had upset him so much. "So you see? Not everyone from the state of confusion is exactly alike." Well, duh! But he had convinced himself that I had said everyone from the state of confusion was exactly alike. I reminded him of the original conversation, he opened his mouth to argue (again), but I knew that he was going to point out that, although he really couldn't argue that he talked too much, or that Bill talked too much (especially since he was the one who pointed that out), the other two friends were not nearly so verbose, so I cut him off, and said, "...and that's obviously true, half the people I know from the state of confusion talk too much!" He didn't talk to me for three days. And he never criticised Bill again (at least, not close enough to me that I could hear it).
The point of the story is not to show how clever I am (believe me, most of my arguments don't go nearly that well), but just to illustrate the idea of a 'strawman argument.' Basically, when one has a deep-rooted belief in something (say, Bill and I are nothing alike), but then an argument against their belief crops up that they don't know how to argue against (like, wait a minute, both of you talk all the time), so they (consciously or unconsciously) morph the argument into something they can fight against (what do you mean, you think Bill and I are exactly alike?). In other words, I can't fight your soldiers, so I'll set up some strawmen that I will attribute to you, and I will knock them down and show everybody that I can beat you. I want to point out that, just because someone sets up a 'strawman argument,' it doesn't necessarily mean that their original position was wrong. Sometimes they just don't have the fortitude to stand up to an argument that seems big and scary.
One of the problems that people run into is that we have a tendency to take things personally that we really shouldn't. I've known groom's mothers to argue with the bride over what color the bridesmaid's dresses should be, and both of them wind of very upset (just in case you didn't know: the bride chooses the bridesmaid's dresses. Period. The bridesmaids can sometimes get away with saying, "Oh, but I don't look good in that color--can't we wear something a little more..." but, the groom's mother? out of her purview. She has no say). Neither one of them should take the other one's opinion personally, though. Look, girls start planning their weddings before they start school. Unfortunately, mothers often start planning their son's wedding before he starts school, so when the blessed event actually happens, both have deep-rooted plans that often have only one thing in common: the groom. Mom needs to take a back seat, though, she's had her day. Of course, sometimes the biggest thing the groom's mother wants to change is the bride...
The point is, that when we take it personally that someone disagrees with us, then our own sense of self-worth gets caught up in winning the argument. Sometimes we resort to any dirty trick to win the argument, including setting up strawmen.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Propaganda

There was a story that went around back during the cold war; it probably wasn't true, but it's an interesting tale: The Soviet ambassador to the United States asked the Secretary of State for some help with an 'urgent' matter; it seems that there was a dire shortage of birth control in Russia. Was there any way the the United States could come up with 1,000 such devices? and, by the way, these need to be big enough to fit Russian men. The dimensions given made it clear that this was an attempt at some form of anti-American propaganda; either the United States simply refused to deliver the requested devices, in which case the Soviets could accuse us of being uncaring (after all, in the midst of the cold war, the last thing we should want would be Soviet procreation), or we admitted that we didn't have any that size, in which case the Soviets would advertise that American men are considerably less manly that Russian men. The Secretary of State promised to look into it, and to accommodate the request if it were at all possible. He immediately got on the phone to the leading American manufacturer of such devices and explained the situation, including the Soviet propaganda angle. The manufacturer understood, and promised their best effort. They re-tooled their plant to produce devices of the given specifications, and called the company that supplied their packaging (we can't very well pile up 1,000 prophylactics on a plane and fly them to Russia, now can we?). Fortunately, the packaging company also manufactured pizza boxes, so they simply imprinted the appropriate logo onto 1,000 extra-large pizza boxes. Overnight, the devices were manufactured, boxed, and ready for shipment, just as though these were common items in the United States. Not only that, but someone at the packaging company took the time to stamp each one of the boxes, "Size: Small."
Lately there has been a lot of talk about Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to lay a wreath at ground zero, to pay his respects to the 9/11 dead. Some have theorized that he may want to pay his respects more to the 19 terrorists than to the 2,948 victims, but I doubt it. The terrorists were Arab Sunnis, he is a Persian Shiite. I have to believe that he has some ulterior motive, if only to make himself look good in the eyes of the International community. I'm not sure what is going on in his head, but I do think that he wants to distance himself from Al-Qaeda. Maybe in this process he will attempt to make accusations against our government, that they knew about, or even conspired with, the terrorist plot. It would not surprise me. What I have a hard time believing is that this guy can come into our country, wanting to lay a wreath at ground zero, and we can't come up with anything better to do with this than to refuse him? Has it occurred to anybody that his whole purpose may simply be to propagandize our refusal to let him pay his respects? Surely we can come up with a way to let him pay his respects and then spin it, so that at the very least, it shows that even radical Muslims like Ahmadinejad don't agree with Al-Qaeda. Can't we? Are we really that pathetic?
By the way, his visit to Columbia University didn't turn out the way anybody planned. I have to commend Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger. Some have criticised Mr. Bollinger for allowing Ahmadinejad to speak at all, but I would have to say that at least the speech was given context. If I were going to criticise, I would point out that it's rude to invite someone to speak and then introduce them in such a way as to suggest that we really shouldn't be listening to what this person has to say. On the other hand, Mr. Bollinger had a responsibility to his students to make sure that they knew Ahmadinejad's background.
Update: (September 27th) I've given more thought to Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia, and I have decided that whatever good Bollinger did by prefacing the speech with criticism was outweighed by the sheer rudeness of it. Maybe if he had saved his comments until after? I don't know. Really, the best thing would have been just to not invite the man to speak in the first place.

Monday, September 24, 2007

The Answer Is in Your Hands

There is an old legend about a wise old man who lived in a village, and a young man in the same village that decided to best the old man. "I'll show people that he's not so smart." So he took a bird, and he held the bird behind his back, with the bird's body in one hand, and it's head in the other. He then challenged the old man to tell him whether the bird was alive or dead; thinking that, if the old man answered that the bird was dead, he could produce the living bird, but if the old man answered 'alive,' then he could wring the bird's neck and produce the dead bird. The old man simply replied, "The answer is in your hands."
In John 8, the scribes and the pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who had been taken 'in the very act' of adultery, and asked him whether they should stone her. He stooped down and started writing on the ground, as if he didn't hear them. Eventually He made the now-famous statement, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
There are all kinds of subtleties to this situation: First of all, if she was taken in the very act, shouldn't there have been another participant? It's doggone difficult to commit adultery alone. Secondly, what was it He was writing in the dirt? Third, if they really wanted to see justice done, why were they coming to Him, and not to the established legal system? (of course, the passage answers that question: they came to Him specifically so that they could make an accusation against Him) What accusation were they trying to concoct? Wouldn't they have expected Jesus to commend the law of Moses?
All right, let's take this one step at a time: First, where was the man? I can only speculate; the Bible doesn't say. Let me suggest that it isn't really important, the point of the story is to teach us forgiveness. As far as my personal opinion, I suspect that he was standing right there with a stone in his hand. Consider for a moment, that the whole idea here was to find some excuse to accuse Jesus of something. That means that these religious people went looking for an adulteress, and were fortunate enough to catch one red-handed. How did they know where to look for one? I suspect that they had a pretty good idea where to find one, because they had each sought out such a woman in the past. When they found her, she was with one of their own--but that didn't matter, because the object of the exercise was to get Jesus (it's been said that Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, Protestants don't recognize the Pope as the leader of the Christian church, and Southern Baptists don't recognize each other at Hooters; not to suggest that Southern Baptists are really any different than the rest of us--but I think that the Pharisees must have had that mindset as well--it's human nature to overlook the faults of one's friends).
Second, what did He write? Again, pure speculation, the Bible doesn't say. It was probably something very personal to the men standing in judgment. One thing that has been suggested: It was a list of the names of the woman's accusers, with recently committed sins (possibly even dates and times that they had been with her). After all, He was God manifest in the flesh, He would have known these things, but, it might have been a greater show of power than He was willing to give them. Someday, I'll get a chance to ask Him, in person (and He may just tell me that I don't need to know).
Third, the accusation. This is the part that most people don't get. Under the law of Moses, she should have been stoned. However, Israel was under Roman occupation. Adultery was not a capital crime under Roman law. As a matter of fact, stoning was not allowed under Roman rule (why do you think that the Pharisees didn't just take Jesus out and stone Him?); that would have been considered murder. If Jesus had said, "Stone her," then they could have accused Him to the Romans of not obeying Roman law. If He had simply said, "Let her go," then they could have accused Him to the people of Israel as not respecting the law of Moses. They figured that, either way He answered, they could get Him in trouble with somebody. They didn't really care who.
Again, this isn't really important. The important thing was that it was a lesson in forgiveness. None of us are perfect, each of us will need forgiveness at various times along our journey. We have to be willing to forgive others. That's not always easy, but if we understand that even those people that we have the hardest time getting along with are not that mush different from ourselves, and that, in some ways, forgiving others is forgiving one's self. Can you forgive others? The answer is in your hands.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

I Want to Believe

Yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I knew that in advance, I thought about it yesterday morning, but when I logged on this morning, I saw some stuff about it, and realized, I did not say anything pirate-like at all yesterday. I didn't even post pirate-like phrases in my blog yesterday. Aaargh! What a scurvy thing for me to do! Ye must think me to be quite the scallywag.
Oh well, I can't go back and change it now. What's done is done.
Something that popped into my head for no apparent reason this morning: Some years ago, when I was in the Navy, I was stationed in the Chicago area when Michael Jordan was playing for the Bulls, and I had a roommate that was from Michigan. He hated the fact that, even though the Pistons were a good team, the Bulls kept beating them. I think he really hated Michael Jordan. He read somewhere that Jordan was averaging better than 25% of the Bulls points, and he harped on that fact for weeks. Anytime he heard anything about the Bulls (even if it was criticism), he would say, "You know, that's pretty sad when one guy scored 25% of your team's points. Pretty sad."
For a long time, I didn't really get what he meant by that, but someone else overheard him (someone that had played for his high school basketball team), and kind of pulled me aside, and explained that what my roommate was talking about was that with five players on the court at once, and, generally, one player isn't going to play the whole game; if everyone on the team is equally skilled, and they play as a team, no one player should score more than 20% of the team's total. Of course, there are a lot of if's there. He pointed out that, given Jordan extra-ordinary ability, and the fact that he was spending more time on the court that the average player, for him to only score 25% of the Bulls' total was actually a testament to their teamwork.
The next time my roommate made his "pretty sad" comment, there just happened to be a newspaper lying nearby. I picked it up, flipped to the sports section, and, as it happened, it had a rundown of the Piston's latest game. If memory serves, Isiah Thomas had scored 35 points of the Pistons 98 point total. I don't even need a calculator to figure that percentage. I read the numbers to him, and then said, "You know, that's pretty sad when one guy scores 35% of the team's points." He didn't say anything. I didn't hear him say anything about the Bulls for about a week, and then something set him off again. As luck would have it, there was once again a newspaper close at hand, with a Pistons write-up in it. This time, Thomas had scored 37 points, and Detroit still hadn't broken 100. I don't have to tell you what I said next. I never heard anything more about Jordan's 25% again.
Come to think of it, I think I know why this popped into my head--Isiah Thomas was in the news yesterday. But that's another story, and I'm not going to get into that.
I think sometimes we all get in the mindset that, I want to believe this, so whatever evidence supports my belief (no matter how flimsy), I will hold onto that, and I will disregard any evidence to the contrary. We make excuses for the evidence that we don't like, if possible: Oh, that study was done by such-and-such a group, and they are funded by this other group that... What ever. And certainly, sometimes studies are tainted, but sometimes we just plain want to believe what we want to believe.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The Bible Under Attack

Some people believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. Some people believe that the Bible is an elaborate work of fiction. I think most people believe something somewhere in between.
I'm not even going to bother with the idea that the Bible is complete fiction. As far as the individual attacks on various parts of the Bible, though, let me put forth some discussion:
There is an organization called the Jesus Seminar, which, judging by the name, would seem to be a Christian organization, but, basically, this is a group of 'learned scholars' who have taken the opportunity to sit down and go through the New Testament, and decide (by a majority vote) which passages are true, and which are exaggerations or fabrications. This is a little like taking a group of people who have never seen a car, and giving them the owner's manual of a Porsche 911, and asking them to determine which parts of the manual are true. These people have never met Jesus, what criteria are they using to judge the veracity of the New Testament? Personal experience? If my experiences are dissimilar to yours, does that make mine invalid?
One common point of discussion (perhaps the word 'attack' is to severe) is that this book or that book wasn't written by the person who's name is on it. There are no written copies of the Gospels that date back to the time of the apostles lives, therefore they must not have been written by the apostles. Just out of curiosity, do we have any of the works of Shakespeare written in his own hand (I don't know, but I doubt it)? If Apostle Matthew didn't write the gospel of Matthew, then who did? Why did they attach Matthew's name to it? (well, okay, I know this one; it would have been to grant legitimacy to the document) More to the point, is there any real reason to believe that the Gospels were not written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? I've heard it said that only one of the (alleged) gospel writers was even an eye-witness; I'm not sure which of the four he's referring to: Matthew and John were both disciples of Jesus, and Mark's position is somewhat unclear (he wasn't one of the twelve, but he may have been a follower, just the same). Luke was definitely not an eyewitness, but he became a Christian shortly after the crucifixion, and wrote down what he knew of the gospel story for the benefit of others. Luke's account shows that he had more than a little understanding of what would be required of an historian. Now, the fact that two of the four gospels are written be people who make no claim to be eyewitnesses at least partially refutes the idea that someone affixed Matthew's name or John's name to their account to add credibility (granted, the fact that Luke's account is accepted, even though he was not there, it doesn't necessarily follow that 'The Gospel According to Saint Arismus' would be accepted, but if Arismus was unsure of how a document written in his own name would fare, he might have attached an apostle's name to it). The other book that is frequently questioned is the book of Hebrews. This book claims to be a letter written by Paul to the Hebrews. Many scholars have compared this book to other Pauline epistles, and have concluded that the literary style is quite different. There is supposition that it was actually written by Priscilla, but she attached Paul's name to it because the early church wasn't ready to accept the writings of a woman. Let me take a little side trip for a moment. Anyone familiar with Shel Silverstein? I believe he is best known as an author of children's books, such as 'A Light in the Attic,' 'Where the Sidewalk Ends,' and 'The Giving Tree.' It's my understanding that these are all excellent books for children (I can't personally vouch for any of them, I haven't read them). Shel has also been a contributor to Playboy magazine, and has published some books with that organization. Now, the question is, do you suppose that Mr. Silverstein wrote children's books in the same style that he wrote for Playboy? The point being, there is more to literary style than just the identity of the author, the same author is going to write differently when his words are being directed to different audiences. Oh, but, you say, Paul wrote all of his epistles to Christians in the early church; where is the difference in audience? The difference is this: the book of Hebrews was the only epistle that Paul wrote to a body of believers that was familiar with Old Testament Scripture. He, having been raised a Pharisee, knew the Tanakh very well, and was able to use a lot more Old Testament references with the Hebrews than he could with any other of the epistles. IMHO, writing to gentiles must have been very much like writing to children--he would have had to have picked his words and phrases very carefully to make sure that no confusion arose due to his cross-culture communication. With the Hebrews, he could actually write what was on his heart, using the existent scripture, and use terms that were familiar to the Jews, drawing on their common upbringing.
Also, some people have brought up the fact that there are 'other gospels' that are not included in the Bible. Some have even made claims that these other gospels are older than the text from which the Bible is comprised. That's simply not the case. It is true that there are other documents out there that claim to be gospels, but they are not any older than Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Most of the others are incomplete, as well. There is a well-known quote in 'The DaVinci Code' where contrarian scholar Sir Leigh Teabing 'reads' a passage from one of the gnostic gospels, but a good portion of that passage is supposition--the sentence in question is based on fragments of parchment (Dan Brown also pulls a linguistic 'fast one' here, pointing out that the phrase uses the term, 'companion,' which, in Aramaic, is the same word that would be translated as 'spouse.' That's true, but what Brown conveniently neglects to mention is that the gnostic gospels were written in Ancient Greek, which had very different words for 'companion' and 'spouse').
By the way, I don't mean to knock Dan Brown: He is a fiction writer, and, as far as I know, has never claimed to believe any of the things that Teabing espoused in the novel. Quite frankly, I think that by including religious controversy in his book, he helped to draw a lot of attention that the book probably wouldn't have gotten as just another murder mystery. That makes Brown a very clever man.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Apostolic Succession

On July tenth, Pope Bennedict issued a statement to the effect that Protestant churches are not churches in the proper sense. This upset a lot of people. I'm not entirely sure why he felt that he had to make that statement, and I'm also not sure that anybody should be upset by it.
First of all, what did the Pope mean by 'churches in the proper sense?' Let's face it, the Roman Catholic church has long thought of itself as 'The Church,' and all others as 'churches.' The statement goes on to refer to products of the Protestant reformation as 'ecclesial communities.' What exactly is an ecclesial community? I don't claim to know, but I suspect that it is something close to what the rest of us would consider a church, just not under papal authority, and thereby not granted papal recognition.
Secondly, I suspect that a good portion of the motivation behind the timing of the statement, if not the statement itself, is the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has, in recent times, been more and more liberal about recognizing other denominations--particularly those whose doctrine is closest. Lately, though, there have been some events that threaten that relationship (an openly gay bishop, a priest who claims to be both Christian and Muslim). I suspect that Pope Bennedict felt that it was time to reiterate the Catholic belief that there is only one true church--the Roman Catholic Church.
The claim rests on the doctrine of Apostolic Succession. The logic is, that there were the original twelve apostles, and they only ordained men that they knew had a good understanding of the precepts of the faith. Those men, in turn, ensured that the men that they ordained to the clergy also had good understanding. Part of the reasoning behind Apostolic Succession is that, on occassion, heretics arise and debate the accepted interpretation of Scripture, twisting the words of Scripture to support their own doctrine. In those instances, since the dispute cannot be resolved strictly by the authority of Scripture, then one can rely on the source of knowledge (that is, who did you study under? Where did you learn this idea that you are proposing?) That makes good sense. At the same time, some Protestant churches branched off from the Roman church with substantial numbers of clergy. These men coninued the practice of Apostolic Succession within their denomonations. Pope Bennedict has stated that this is not true Apostolic Succession, because there was a break with 'The Church' (for some reason, this logic does not apply to the Orthodox Church). To be honest, this smacks of circular logic to me (you aren't a true church because you don't practice Apostolic Succession. Well, you do, but it isn't true Apostolic Succession, because you aren't part of the true church). Maybe there's more to it that I don't understand.
Something else that bothers me about this. When exactly did Apostolic Succession become such an important part of doctrine? I can see why it's an important part, but I can't help but wonder: When Peter was teaching and ordaining new clergy, did he sign ordination papers? I suspect that he did not. During times of persecution, the possession of such papers could make one a serious target. So when did ordination papers come about? Probably not until after Constantine, at least. When did written records showing Apostolic Succession come about? I'm thinking probably not until later still. So, how does one go back and trace three hundred years of ordinations with no written records? Probably not very well.
Look, the bottom line is this: You can't be an effective leader in any Christian church unless you are well founded in Christian doctrine. If you have a piece of paper that shows that you were ordained (and, presumably verified as knowing your stuff) by someone who was ordained by... and that piece of paper traces your succession all the way to the Apostles, that's nice. But if you know your stuff, and you don't know who ordained the bishop that ordained you, what of it? I can't help but think about what the Wizard of Oz told the scarecrow, "Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven't got: a diploma." A diploma is a piece of paper that really says more about what learning one was exposed to than what one has actually learned, and I suspect that the papers showing succession are very much the same.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Marital Relations

The Bible talks a good bit about marriage. Of course, a lot of things have changed since the Bible was written, but people remain very much the same. Some of what was written is not as clear as it was, because of changes in culture, but it still applies.
There is a passage in Matthew chapter 5 that I had to spend a lot of time and prayer before I felt like I understood it. Jesus talks about putting away one's wife for cause of fornication, but then says that if she marries someone else, she is committing adultery. Now, I wondered about this for a long time, because my understanding of the two words, 'fornication' and 'adultery' is that adultery is between two people, at least one of whom is married, but are not married to each other; fornication is between two people, neither of whom is married. So, the question in my mind was, how does a married woman (and this principle works the other way also--even though Jesus was talking about a man divorcing a woman, a woman can divorce a man, too. That probably didn't much happen in that culture, but, let's face it, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander) commit fornication? Someone suggested that maybe it could be considered fornication if the other person isn't married. I struggled with that for awhile, until I realized that, right there in the same verse, Jesus says that if she that has been put away marries someone else, then she is committing adultery, and the man that she marries is committing adultery. Obviously, this judgment comes from an understanding that the divorce isn't valid, she is still married; so why would the same act be considered fornication before the meaningless divorce, and adultery afterwards?
The Bible also makes many comparisons between the relationship of a husband and wife and the relationship of Christ to the church. In John 3:29, John the Baptist refers to himself as the friend of the bridegroom; Matthew 25 refers to the coming of Christ as a wedding, with those that were ready at the time of His coming being the bride; Matthew 22 has a parable about a great king throwing a wedding feast for his son (who could that be?); and Revelations 19 talks about the marriage of the Lamb. This is an example of the Bible using a physical thing that people generally understand, to try to explain something spiritual. Jesus did that a lot in His teachings, because we are physical creatures, and we sometimes have a hard time understanding spiritual things. So, in the spiritual sense, we are betrothed to Christ, and, when He returns, then we will be His bride.
So, in the first paragraph, when the passage uses the term, 'fornication,' it is talking in the spiritual sense, not the physical, since a married person cannot commit fornication; but we are not yet married to Christ. And just in case it wasn't clear, Apostle Paul spells it out for us in 1st Corinthians 7. If a brother or sister is married to an unbeliever (by the way, I don't think Paul is advocating religious mixed marriages, but if a couple gets married, and then one of them accepts Christ, or if one of a Christian couple decides that they no longer believe, either way, a Christian man or woman is now married to an unbeliever, through no fault of their own) then the Christian has no right to end that marriage, but if the unbeliever chooses to go a different way, then that marriage is dissolved, the Christian is not bound to that individual any longer.
So, does that mean that adultery is not a good enough reason to get a divorce? Not in and of itself, no, really it isn't. On the other hand, it's unlikely that a Christian spouse would commit adultery. Don't misunderstand me, we are imperfect people, and sometimes we slip. If one of us were to stumble that badly, but to confess, and to show contrition, then the spouse is required to forgive, just as God forgives. Keep in mind also, though, that even though Jesus said that you must forgive until seventy times seven, I don't think that's talking about the same sin, over and over again. If I stole a car, and then confessed, and returned the car, and then went out and stole another car, would you believe that I had repented of stealing the first car? Maybe I repented that I didn't steal a nicer car... By the same token, if you catch your spouse cheating on you, and they confess, and make a show of repentance, but then later you catch them again, I think that you can assume that they are being unfaithful to both you and God: Toss that person out. Well, okay, I can't really tell you that you have to, you may be of a mind that once is a slip, twice is just the same slip again, and even three times is just evidence that your spouse has a weakness. Pray about that. Hard. An unfaithful spouse can bring home a whole world of trouble that you really don't need.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Misrepresentation

I have mentioned before that I am involved in electronics training. Recently, a young woman trainee was having a lot of trouble staying awake before the lunch break, but then came back from lunch wide-awake and jittery. She insisted that she had only had one soda during lunch. This puzzled me at first--particularly since she began making these claims before I said anything to her about the marked difference in her demeanor--but it finally dawned on me that she might not have been talking about a twelve-ounce Coca-Cola. Upon further questioning, she admitted that her 'one soda' was a twenty-ounce Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew is considerably more potent than Coke, and the extra eight ounces resulted in much more caffeine than 'one soda.' She didn't lie--she probably didn't even intentionally misrepresent herself, but she definitely created a somewhat different impression than what was actually the truth.
When I was in the Navy, I was once on duty when someone's car was broken into on the base, and a stereo was taken. As it happened, base security quickly apprehended two suspects and brought them to my post. One insisted that he didn't break into anybody's car, and the other insisted that he hadn't stolen anything. That was a fairly obvious (and futile) attempt to mislead.
There are some times when misrepresentation would seem to be a good thing. In 'Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country,' Spock, who never lies, tells a subordinate to transmit a message to Star Fleet Command, misrepresenting their situation. The subordinate asks, "A lie, Commander?" Spock responds, "An omission." Of course, it is in Star Fleet's best interest not to know what Spock is planning. In 'The Rainmaker,' Rudy Baylor, played by Matt Damon, discovers that his landlady inherited a considerable amount of money from her late husband, but estate taxes, legal fees, and bad financial planning have eaten up almost all of it. Not only that, but she wants him to rewrite his will disowning her son and giving all of the money to a televangelist. When the son finds out that she is rewriting her will, he shows up, and it quickly becomes evident why she doesn't want to leave him any money. Baylor has already expressed his opinion that the televangelist doesn't need the money, and he doesn't like family being cut out. What to do? He lets it slip to the son that she inherited a sizable sum, and suddenly Del starts acting much nicer towards his mother.
I was taught, as a child, that intentionally misleading someone was no different than lying. I have to admit, that there have been a few times (well, maybe more than just a few) in my life where omitting certain details was convenient, and I told myself that I wasn't lying. In retrospect, I wish I could say that I've never done it, but that would be just misleading, that would be lying. The fact that I admit having done it should not be taken as evidence that i approve of it. I don't, and neither should you.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

1960's Science-Fiction

There is an interesting chain of events that led to science-fiction on television in the 1960's. The first is the christening of the USS Nautilus, the US Navy's first nuclear submarine, in 1954. The second would be the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957. In 1958, Explorer I detected the Van Allen Radiation Belts. Sputnik, of course, led to President John F. Kennedy's statement in 1962 "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade..." Irwin Allen co-wrote and produced a movie, 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' about a nuclear submarine and the Van Allen belts in 1961 (how does a submarine deal with the Van Allen belts? Watch the movie and find out--I'm not in the habit of publishing spoilers). Gene Roddenberry started shopping around a story for a TV series in the early 60's that was supposed to be a kind of a Horatio Hornblower in space. NBC paid for a pilot episode of Roddenberry's series in 1964. Also in 1964, either Irwin Allen talked ABC into, or ABC talked Irwin Allen into (I haven't been able to find out which, but I suspect ABC did the talking) doing a TV series based on his 1961 movie. NBC was not impressed with Roddenberry's pilot (it didn't help that it ran over budget--meanwhile, Irwin Allen had saved most of the props from the movie, {including the model of the submarine, and even some of the sets} making his TV series relatively inexpensive). CBS still commanded the bast ratings, overall, and was, therefore, the network to compete with. Roddenberry took his idea to both CBS and ABC as well, but they weren't any more impressed that NBC was. 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea' became a very successful TV series, however. So, CBS started talking to both Irwin Allen and Gene Roddenberry about doing a science-fiction TV series. They eventually decided that they liked Irwin Allen's 'space family Robinson' idea better (possibly because Irwin Allen was better known and more successful). So, in 1965, 'Lost in Space' premiered. Now that CBS has a space-based science-fiction series, NBC wants one, too, so they commissioned a second 'Star Trek' pilot from Roddenberry. Most of the original cast was unavailable for the second pilot, but Roddenberry did some heavy rewrites and character changes, and his show deuted in 1966. Meanwhile, if CBS is going to have an Irwin Allen science fiction series, based on the success of ABC's Irwin Allen series, then ABC wants another Irwin Allen science-fiction series. So, 'The Time Tunnel' also premiered in 1966. ABC also rolled out 'Batman' and 'The Green Hornet' in 1966 (although Batman premiered in January, making it part of the 1965-1966 season), both of which at least share some elements of the science-fiction genre. ABC scheduled 'Batman' opposite 'Lost in Space,' which turned out to be a wise decision. CBS, not liking the fact that 'Batman' was getting better ratings than 'Lost in Space,' started leaning on Irwin Allen to make 'Lost in Space' more like 'Batman' (which, IMHO, was not a wise decision). The really interesting part about all of this was that Lee Merriwether, who was one of the regulars on 'The Time Tunnel,' also played Catwoman in the Batman movie, and went on to a recurring role in the series, not as Catwoman, but as one of King Tut's cronies. Grace Lee Whitney, who played the captain's personal yeoman, Janice Rand, on 'Star Trek' also played on of King Tut's cronies in the same episodes of 'Batman' (Ironically, Lee Meriwether later made a guest appearance on Star trek, but one that Grace Lee Whitney was not in). Personally, I find it interesting that two actresses from science-fiction series on two different networks appeared together on the TV show that was killing the other network's science-fiction TV series...

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Babel

In the book of Genesis, there is a story about the tower of Babel, and where God confounded man's language, to make it harder for us to work together against His purpose. Some people question the veracity of the account, but certainly language is often a barrier to communication. This is not only true of people that don't speak the same language, it is often true of people that speak the same language, but in different ways.

It's been said that the United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language. We say that we speak English, but there are many differences between the English spoken in the Untied States and the English spoken by the English people. Some of things that have evolved since the US gained its independence, some are things that simply were not standardized until after the split, still other things were adopted by one country or the other as a result of immigration. Automobile terminology provides several examples: What we in the US call the trunk (of the car), the Brits call the boot; what we call gas, they call petrol; our bonnet is their hood; etc. We still use the same units of measure, although the EU has tried to get the UK to adapt metric units.

It's also true that specialists in a particular field have a tendency to develop their own jargon. This is not always an attempt to be exclusionary, but it does work out that way sometimes. Jargon can make people within a certain specialty communicate more effectively with each other, but make it harder to communicate with 'outsiders' who are not familiar with the jargon. One individual I know has told me many times that PhD really stands for "Please Have Dictionary." If you've ever taken a college course taught by a PhD, you probably know exactly what he means. It isn't that they are trying to obfuscate the learning environment, however, the tendency to eschew technical terminology amongst individuals being indoctrinated into the profession isn't always what it should be. Sometimes the terms used within a profession become so ingrained that the professional doesn't stop to think that he or she needs to simplify the terminology when speaking to trainees, customers, or anyone else that wouldn't be familiar with the jargon.

Another thing that I have run across on occasion is that journalists are experts in researching things and expressing those things in such a way that the average person can understand. Journalists spend a lot of years in college learning the skills necessary to accomplish this. Unfortunately, they learn about writing, but they don't learn very much about the subject matter that they are supposed to be writing about. Frequently newspaper or magazine articles appear that have been considerably 'dumbed-down,' either as a result of the reporter's limited knowledge of the subject matter, or the reporter's belief that the average person knows even less than the reporter. Occasionally this happens simply because the publication isn't willing to let the article take up enough space in order for it to contain a thorough explanation of the subject. I get irritated sometimes when something happens, but when I read the local coverage of the event, I find myself still unsure of what actually happened. Doing a little research, I find another account of the same event, only to find that it's pretty much word-for-word the same account. Why? because both articles came off of the AP newswire, and the AP reporter didn't get the details that I was looking for. In those instances, I really wish that I could talk to somebody who has first hand knowledge.
One of the things that disturbed me the most is that a lot of people read books about what the Bible says, but don't ever actually read the Bible itself--not even to check the passages referred to in the book. Even if the author is legitimately trying to make scripture easier to understand, at best, you are limiting yourself to his understanding. I don't mean to suggest that such books are bad, or that reading those books won't help (sometimes they will, but sometimes they won't), but I will say that if you read the scripture for yourself, you may gain a greater understanding.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Time Wasters

BBC has an interesting article about Facebook causing lost productivity in the office. I'm not sure why they pick on Facebook, as opposed to MySpace or YouTube... The point is, if you have internet access, then there will be those workers who spend too much of their workday online. It's easy to say that I only go online when I'm on break or during my lunch hour, but ten minutes spent online easily turns into 15, then 20, etc.
We had a situation where I work a few years ago where several computers were networked together (but not connected to the internet) for a project that several of us were working on. One of us, who was a 'gamer' brought in a multi-player first person shooter game, so that different people, at different computers, could enter the game on the LAN and play as a team, or against the other player(s). He got permission for us to play during lunch. It didn't take long before people started coming to 'a good stopping place' a few minutes before lunch, and playing the game. Then people wanted to 'finish this level' at the end of lunch, before going back to work. Soon, lunch was taking about three hours. When our supervisor came to realize this, the game was hastily removed from the LAN. One can hardly blame him.
Now, we have no games loaded on out computers (not even solitaire), and, although we have internet access; Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, HoTMaiL, Yahoo Mail, G Mail and a host of other time-wasters are blocked. Again, this is somewhat understandable. There are a number of web-sites out there that claim to 'proxy' (or, essentially, redirect web pages) so that blocked pages can be viewed anyway, but our IT guys seem to find out about these sites quicker than the rest of us, and block them, too. Again, not really surprising. The bosses claim that it isn't so much lost productivity as it is expensive bandwidth: If I'm doing legitimate research on the net, but somebody else is hogging bandwidth by watching YouTube videos, then it takes me much longer to do my job; but if they pay for an internet connection that would allow all of us to watch YouTube videos without affecting anyone else, then that gets expensive.
Quite frankly, although I feel employers have a right to limit what employees can access on company computers and even employees' computers hooked up to the company's network, people were wasting time at work long before there was an internet. As a matter of fact, one of the early internet time-wasters was called watercooler.com, because it was an online version of the old stereotype of employees gathering at the water cooler to chit-chat. The problem with watercooler.com was that employees could 'gather at the water cooler' without leaving their cubicles.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Rahab

Most of you should be familiar with the Old Testemant story of the battle of Jericho: When Israel came out of Egypt, they wandered in the wilderness for forty years, and when they finally entered into the Promised Land, they found that cities had been built there by the Canaanites. God told Joshua to first attack Jericho, a heavily fortified city with massive walls around it. Maybe 'attack' isn't the right word: the battle didn't happen for at least a week. First Joshua sent two spies inot the city, presumably to get a sense for the feelings of the people of Jericho. To be honest, the spies report had no real bearing on the outcome: God told Joshua what to do, each step of the way. But while the spies were in Jericho, they were found out, but a woman known as Rahab the harlot helped them to escape. As a result, she, and her household, were allowed to convert to Judaism after Jericho was destroyed. It's almost as though God had Joshua deploy spies just to see who was ready to accept Him as their God.
It's an odd thing: In ancient times, it was commonly believed that if two peoples, with different belief systems, went to war with each other, then their gods also went to war; so the victor was believed to have the stronger gods. In other words, if you can defeat me, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are stronger than I am, but it does mean that your gods are stronger than mine; clearly, I should accept your gods as my own. The problem that the Jews kept running into was that, even though this belief was widespread, they were uniquely monotheistic. Other peoples had a hard time with the idea that one God was stronger than all of their gods (even Rachel had a hard time giving up the gods that she had grown up with, even after seeing how Jacob's God blessed him).
For some reason, most preachers don't want to talk about Rahab's profession. We had a visiting preacher at our church once that commented on it: He pointed out that everyone in Rahab's house was saved, and he postulated that she must have had mom and dad and grandparents and cousins by the dozens in her house. He made a little joke, that she must have been a very good harlot--apparently she was able to buy the hotel that she worked out of. Of course, that's all supposition; the Bible doesn't tell us how many people were in Rahab's house. I have to wonder, myself, how many of her family could she have told about her agreement with the spies? I'm sure that there were lots of people that she would have liked to have had with her when the Israelites attacked, but that would have turned her in if they had known that she was consorting with the enemy.
I feel confident that she found another line of work once she became a Jew, but isn't it interesting that out of all the people in Jericho, the one that God chose was a harlot. We know something about her heart, because she helped the spies. The Bible doesn't give us any indication as to how she knew who the spies were. Maybe God knew that she had a willing heart and revelated that to her; maybe she realized who they were simply because they were the only men in Jericho that didn't treat her like a harlot (after all, it didn't make any difference to them--all of the people of Jericho were non-believers that were destined to be slaughtered).
Sometimes we, as Christians, get very caught up in our own image. I don't want to be seen with that woman, she's a prostitute; someone might think that I'm soliciting her (or being solicited by her. Whatever). It doesn't help that some very prominent people (both televangelsts and politicians) have been caught actively seeking sex with someone other than their spouse. Most people automatically assume that a man talking to a woman is more interested in her physically than spiritually, because that's the way our world works. But, if you stop and think about it, one sin is very much like another in God's eyes. A prostitute and a liar occupy the same moral ground. We are taught to love the sinner but hate the sin; all too often the hatred of the sin bleeds over, though. What we need to understand is that it isn't what a person does outside of Christ that is important; it's the fact that they are outside of Christ. The Bible says that to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin (of course the obverse is true: if you know not to do something, and then do it anyway, that is also sin). We can't expect those outside of Christ to have a clear understanding of what they should and shouldn't do (although it would be nice if they would at least be discrete about their sins, so that we would not be tempted), and it really doesn't matter what they do; quite frankly, if they aren't going to seek God for salvation, then their 'final destination' is the same, no matter what sins they commit here on earth.

Friday, September 07, 2007

Another Fine Friday

It occurs to me that there is a lot of friction between 'labor' and 'big business' in this country. Part of that is because laborers see businessmen profiting off of labor--which is true. A lot of times what laborers don't see is all the time and effort and planning that went into building the business in the first place. The company owner, on the other hand, a lot of times doesn't appreciate the frustration and aggravation of working oneself to death and watching someone else get rich from that labor: The laborer should be glad to be getting a paycheck--and there are certainly other people that would like to be getting paid what this guy is getting paid. Unions came about because a lot of company's took advantage of their employees, gave them 'the opportunity' to work--for low wages and in unsafe conditions. To be honest, unions forced our government to enact a staggering amount of legislation aimed at maintaining fair wages and safe working conditions. It's not a perfect system, but, then, what government-mandated system ever is?
I don't belong to a union, and I don't expect that I ever will. Maybe. I'm not so much against unions as just that, in a lot of cases, I think that they have outlived their usefulness. Unions still claim to be about looking after the workers best interests, and I'm sure some of them still do, but I've noticed that sometimes the unions are exactly the problem that they like to accuse big business of being: Union leaders sometimes collect fairly exorbitant salaries--salaries paid out of union dues collected from workers. In other words, sometimes union leaders get rich off of the backs of the workers that they claim to be looking out for the best interests of.
I want to stress that I know not all unions do this. Unfortunately, there are a lot of union workers who know that this sort of thing happens, but they don't believe that their union would engage in those sorts of practices. Some of them are right; possibly most of them are right. I would like to think that all of them are right--that every union in this country operates strictly for the good of the workers that they represent--but I don't. Conversely, I'm not cynical enough to believe that every union exists solely as a parasitic organism.
I would like to encourage union workers to find out as much as you can about the union's financials: If the president of your union makes more than the CEO of your company, that should be a red flag. If the president of your union makes more than the average salary of the workers in your union, you might want to consider that; it isn't necessarily a red flag, maybe it's more orange... I think I would have a hard time belonging to a union where the union leaders made more money than I did, but, if it was clear that I wouldn't be making the money I was making if it were not for their efforts, i might learn to live with it.
In any case, the relationship should be symbiotic: The company depends on its workers, and should look out for the safety and well being of its workers, whether there is a union in place or not. The workers, on the other hand, depend on the company for continued employment, and should understand that unreasonable demands for increased pay can force the company to either go out of business, or move jobs overseas, where workers are more likely to be grateful for a (smaller) paycheck. Companies should never threaten to take jobs overseas, though.
Something else, too: I've heard a lot of talk about how, in some countries, workers will work for surprisingly little money, because poverty is extreme, and, for example, 14¢ an hour may actually be a living wage. How can American companies compete with that? That's a good point, but I think that you need to consider shipping costs and import taxes. It's not that unusual for a company to move jobs overseas only to find out that they're not making any more profit by taking advantage of lower wages, but they are producing a better product because the person working for less than a dollar an hour has missed more than a few meals waiting to get a job and makes sure that their work is exemplary because they don't want to be without a job again. I'm not saying that every American worker should work as though each and every product needs to be perfect, but it used to be that the pride of the American worker was well known throughout the globe: What happened to it? And, no, I don't think that unions destroyed it, but I do think that the 'us vs. them' attitude that so many unions espouse hasn't helped any. There is no 'them,' there is only us.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Six Degrees of Sepaeration

I've been told that, theoretically, at least, any two people on the face of the earth are only separated by 6 relationships. In other words, the old man down the street (a neighbor--one relationship) served in the European theater in World War II, and befriended a British Royal soldier (friend--two relationships), whose sister (sister--three relationships) was the nanny to (four relationships) a boy who is now the mechanic who regularly works on a car for a man (five relationships) who is part of Prince Charles' staff (six relationships). Theoretically, you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows where Osama Bin Laden is hiding (Talk! We'll go easier on you). The idea was first posited by a Hungarian author named Frigyes Karinthy in a short story called "Chains" or "Chain-links" (depending on which translation you are reading) in 1929.

In 1993, Will Smith starred in a movie called, "Six Degrees of Separation" which refers to the theory, but, ultimately, has a lot less to do with it than one might presume from the title. This is generally believed to be what popularized the idea, though. In 1994, two students at Albright College in Pennsylvania created a game called, "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon." From what I understand (and I can't document this) they were somewhat inebriated and watching a talk show, and someone came on talking about the idea of six degrees of separation and in their less-than-100% mental state, they heard, six degrees of Kevin Bacon ('Kevin Bacon' does sort of sound like 'separation'--sort of--but some sort of mental impairment would make it considerably easier to make that connection). In any case, the game is supposed to help illustrate the idea. In the game, one person chooses an actor or actress (or anyone else who has been in a movie) and another person tries to link that person to Kevin Bacon in 6 links or fewer. Usually, this game is played strictly based on being in a movie together, although some will allow other relationships (such as, Clint Eastwood directed Kevin Bacon in Mystic River, but did not appear in the film, or Kyra Sedgwick is married to Kevin Bacon--but she's also done a number of films with him, so that's really kind of moot). Personally, I think the game doesn't really illustrate the point very well, because most of us have fairly static lives: You have the neighborhood where you grew up, the neighborhood you live in now, and maybe you've lived a couple or three other places in your life; you have the people that you work with, and some of them have quit or retired since you've been there, and a few have been hired to replace them, and maybe you've worked a few other places; you probably have one or two places outside of work or home that you know people from (your local Starbucks, for example), but you probably don't get to know too many people in any given year. Kevin Bacon's first movie was "Animal House" in 1978. Since then he has been in 54 movies (and three more are coming soon). That's an average of almost two movies a year, and only one of those movies ever spawned a sequel--and Kevin Bacon's character was killed off in the first movie, so he wasn't in any of the sequels. That's sort of like changing jobs once a year--but only every other year actually having to move (and find a new Starbucks). Who lives like that?

Of course, there have been some variations on the game, such as, Six Degrees of Young Guns, where you pick an actor or actress and then try to tie them, with as few links as possible, two one of the actors or actresses in the movie "Young Guns" (there were an awful lot of prolific actors in "Young Guns," though), or Kosher Six Degrees, where one tries to link two actors or actors without using Kevin Bacon (since bacon isn't Kosher). Kosher Six Degrees is sometimes very frustrating to people who play a lot of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon--especially if you give them two names of people who have both worked with Kevin Bacon, but in different movies (Oh, Steve Martin was in "Novocaine" with... and Oliver Platt was in "Flatliners" with... Oh, wait, um, Steve Martin was in "Novocaine" with Helena Bonham Carter, and, um, she was in "Big Fish" with Billy Crudup, who was in "Sleepers" with Kev--I mean, um, Robert De Niro, who was in "Showtime" with Eddie Murphy, who was in "Dr. Doolittle" with Oliver Platt. [Just for the sake, a better answer would be, Steve Martin was in "Leap of Faith" with Liam Neeson, who was in "Kinsey" with Oliver Platt]). There is also a version which uses only TV shows--but cameo appearances don't count.

By the way, as far as the original concept, it's generally believed that most people will, in the course of their lifetime, get to know about 200 people--some people will get to know more, and some less, but about 200 (this does not include casual relationships). Now, obviously, a lot of those 200 will know each other, but let's suppose that one out of four of the people that each of those 200 people know don't know you, that would mean that, the 200 people that are linked directly to you each know fifty people that you don't know. That would be 10,000 people that are two links from you. 500,000 that are three links from you. 25,000,000 that are four links away; over 2.25 billion that are five links away, and way more than the 6.5 billion that actually inhabit this planet that are 6 links away.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Can a Leopard Change Its Spots?

A couple of things came together in my mind recently: A comment that Arthur Blank (owner of the Atlanta Falcons), and a song introduction.


Arthur Blank said, of Michael Vick's comment that he had turned his life over to God, "God gives us the ability to make choices and what we do with those choices is our responsibility, not God’s responsibility.” Can Michael Vick change? The expression of course, is that leopards can't change their spots, but people are not leopards, and behaviors, even deeply ingrown ones, are not things that we necessarily carry from birth to the grave. Some behaviors are difficult to change; there are many twelve step programs out there to facilitate change. I don't think that Peta has come up with a twelve step program for treating animals humanely, though.

The song introduction was for a song called, "The Potter's Hand." The song title comes from a scripture in Isaiah 64:8. The basic idea is that, just as Adam was formed from the dust of the earth, God has formed each of us for His use, and His purpose. We don't always want to be used the way He wants to use us, but, it's very much like a vase that has been formed by an artisan suddenly deciding that it would rather be a sugar bowl. Let's face it, even though they might be formed from the same clay, and even fired in the same kiln, a vase isn't going to make a very good sugar bowl. You could break the vase into pieces, and then grind the pieces into powder, and then mix the powder into fresh clay and make a sugar bowl, but that's a lot of work, and probably not worth the trouble. Sometimes God has to go through pretty much that same process with us, because we have tried to recreate ourselves in the image that we would like to have and ended up just making ourselves useless...

The bottom line is, sometimes people do change. Not as often as we should, probably, but we do. It is certainly easier with God's help, but, even then, we have to acknowledge that He created us for His plan. Our plans won't always mesh with God's plan, but He has a better view of the 'big picture.' There was a cartoon that went around a few years back that showed a golfer praying for a sunny day, while a farmer prayed for rain. Sometimes it may not seem like God has your best interests at heart, but He does. Give it time, and see how His plan works out, even if that means that you have to change.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Wow, it's been a week since I posted. Sorry about that. I've been out of town--not that it's an excuse, I had Internet access while I was gone--but spending time with family seemed much more important.
I got to see my son play some softball while I was gone--he plays on two different teams in two different leagues. Neither game that I saw went to the final inning. The first game was rained out, and the second game got a "mercy call." I believe the rule is that if one team is up by 10 points at the end of the 5th inning, then they won the game. I might be upset if it were not for the fact that, in the second game, it was his team that was ahead when they called the game (13 points ahead!).
Of course, having been out of town, I have a lot of catching up to do here, now that I'm back. I worked ahead as much as I could before I left, but there are some things you just can't do ahead of time, you know? So, I'm afraid that this is it for now. I will be back posting full-length blogs on Monday.