Wednesday Bible Study: A poetic interlude
Ch. 3 is a poem, in which Job laments his existence, and wishes for the succor of extinction. At the same time, he invokes the ubiquity of suffering and the despair countless others have felt. It refers to injustice and oppression, as well as simple misfortune such as his own. This is the first serious reflection on the human condition we have encountered in the Tanakh, and by far the most sophisticated literary creation. Again, we aren ' t sure whether the book has a single authorship, or whether this poem was inserted into the larger work by an editor. In any case, its existence implies that there must have been a substa...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 16, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Journalistic norms
Here ' s Paul Campos commenting on a Peter Baker view from nowhere piece in the NYT. Key Baker quote: " Yet most Americans made up their minds about Mr. Trump long before prosecutors likeFani T. Willis orJack Smith weighed in, polls have shown.He
is, depending on the perspective, a serial lawbreaker finally being
brought to justice or a victim of persecution by partisans intent on
keeping him out of office. " I do have a few reflections of my own on the very weird place in which we find ourselves. First, given the presumption of innocence that is fundamental to the criminal justice system, journalists and the...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 15, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Frenemies
The character of Satan as a partial solution to the problem of evil creates many problems. It means, first of all, that Judaism and Christianity are not in fact monotheistic. Christianity isn ' t anyway, because of the Trinity, the goddess Mary, and innumerable demigod saints. But Satan clearly has the full status of a rival God. His existence implies that Yahweh is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Satan knows things that Yahweh does not, and exercises powers of his own. You can ' t have it both ways.The relationship between the two seems rivalrous, but also cordial if not rather chummy. What we see here is much like the...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 13, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
A whole new perspective
Through a chain of events that I won ' t bore you by reciting, I find myself the Democratic candidate for First Selectman of the very small town I live in. (I expect that ' s surprising. It is to me.) This suddenly makes me think about problems I really hadn ' t considered much before.Our town ' s main industry is agriculture. We don ' t really have a main street. There ' s a liquor store, an auto repair business, an acupuncturist, a seamstress (really) and a chain saw shop. We have a sawmill and a campground. That ' s about it. Our problem is that agricultural land pays very little in real estate taxes, which means that a...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 12, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Profundity?
The Book of Job has been influential in Jewish and Christian theology, and in later secular Western culture. There have been many allusions to it in literature and art, and it was adapted into a play in verse, titled J.B., by the American poet Archibald MacLeish, which won a Pulitzer prize.* Scholars believe it to have been written between the 7th and 4th Centuries BCE, but as with much of the Tanakh there is controversy as to whether it has a single authorship, or represents an accretion of material. As with Esther, the setting is not in Judah. Job appears to be an Israelite who has a relationship with the Israelite ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 9, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Richer than all their tribe
Professor Campos laments the large incomes of U.S. physicians, and it is certainly true that they make more than the sawbones in other countries. Quoting from a WaPo article, which I don ' t link directly due to the paywall:By accounting for all streams of income, [a study] revealed that doctors make
more than anyone thought — and more than any other occupation we’ve
measured. In the prime earning years of 40 to 55, the average physician
made $405,000 in 2017 — almost all of it (94 percent) from wages.
Doctors in the top 10 percent averaged $1.3 million. And those in the
top 1 percent averaged an astounding $4 m...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 7, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Getting it over with
Ch. 10 is only three verses, so I ' ll give you chapters 9 and 10 today and that will be all for the book of Esther. Here the Jews massacre 75,000 people, which is a cause for great celebration. In verse 6, they kill 500 people in Susa, and in verse 15, they kill 300 at Susa, apparently some leftovers. They kill the ten sons of Haman in verse 10, then impale them in verses 13 and 14, presumably already dead, then they impale them again in verse 25. Whoopee! Time for a party!Next up is the Book of Job, which I know very well.9 On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar,
the edict commanded by ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 6, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Gdp
Yesterday I discovered that a huge tree limb had fallen on my property. It came from an oak tree so tall I couldn ' t actually see the scar where it had broken off. It would have been a pretty big tree all by itself. I heat with firewood so on the one hand, this was a bonanza, but on the other hand it was complicated and laborious to clean it up. I ' ve been harvesting firewood and cleaning up deadfall since I was a kid, and I have have the necessary fixed capital - two chainsaws, a tractor with a loader, a peevee. There ' s a lot of knowledge, skill and judgment involved to do it safely. You have to start by removing...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 4, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The ultimate sanction
Some while back I discussed the death penalty here, in response to a couple of atrocious crimes that happened in Connecticut and provoked a lot of controversy. The first person to be executed in the state following the Supreme Court moratorium was a man named Michael Ross, who raped and murdered young women in what is now my neck of the woods as it were, a bit before I moved out here. He asked his attorneys to stop trying to prevent it, in other words he went to his death willingly, evidently preferring it to life in prison. So in that situation one has to ask, what ' s the point? One element of controversy was whether his...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 3, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Historical oddity
Sorry for missing regular posting recently. I was dealing with some extremely frustrating technical problems. Will get back to it. Chapter 8 departs in a few ways from what has been our understanding of the situation of the Jewish population in this historical era. Note again the complete lack of any mention of Jerusalem or Judah. The Jews appear to be dispersed throughout the Achaemenid empire, from " India to Ethiopia. " Furthermore it is possible for people to convert to Judaism everywhere in this diaspora, which is basically contrary to the law and custom in all of the previous literature, in which far from being ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 2, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: The king has dementia
In the previous chapter we saw the king completely forget that Mordecai had tipped him off to an assassination plot. Now, the king has completely forgotten that in Ch. 3, he had ordered the murder of the Jews at the behest of Haman. Just in case there ' s any doubt or confusion, I ' ll reproduce it here. Obviously, the king has Alzeheimer ' s disease, because he has no memory of this.8 Then
Haman said to King Xerxes, “There is a certain people dispersed among
the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves
separate. Their customs are different from those of all other people, and t...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 30, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The view from nowhere
I commend to your attentionthis essay from Dan Froomkin on the willful blindness of the corporate media to the reality of right wing politics in the U.S. today. (Even Froomkin doesn ' t seem to notice that the Republican party generallyis driven by dispensationalism, that most of their voters really do believe in Biblical inerrancy and literalism, and the imminent apocalypse. But that ' s for another day.)I was particularly interested in Froomkin ' s example of opposition to solar farms in rural Ohio. Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein really stepped in it with his remarkably na ïve article headlined “Small-...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 29, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Quote of the Day
From The Madness of Crowds, by William J. Bernstein, describing John Blunt, the mastermind of the South Sea Bubble:From their earliest histories, commercial societies equate riches with intelligence and rectitude; people of great wealth appreciate hearing of their superior brainpower and moral fiber. The wealth and adulation that accompany financial successes inevitably instill an overweening pride that corrodes self-awareness. worse, great wealth not infrequently arises more from dishonesty [or luck -- C.] than from intelligence and enterprise, in which case the adulation induces a malignancy of the soul, as indeed ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 27, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Turnabout
In Ch. 6, Haman gets his rude awakening. There is a continuity problem, however, because the king already knew that Mordecai had tipped him off to Bigthana and Teresh, as recounted explicitly in Ch. 2. But we ' ll take it that he needed reminding -- too much banqueting, I guess. 6 That night the king could not sleep; so he ordered the book of the chronicles, the record of his reign, to be brought in and read to him.2 It
was found recorded there that Mordecai had exposed Bigthana and Teresh,
two of the king ’s officers who guarded the doorway, who had conspired
to assassinate King Xerxes.3 “What h...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 26, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Play
I came downstairs yesterday morning and looked out the window, to see a doe and two fawns grazing on my lawn. Evidently they were finding something worth eating among the crabgrass. But the fawns weren ' t all that interested in breakfast. They ' d nibble a bit then gambol -- i.e. jump around -- singly or together. They ' d nuzzle the mother briefly, and she might nuzzle them back. At one point they both suddenly ran off into the woods. She just waited patiently until they came running back. They seemed to be testing or teasing her. Of course at some point she ' s going to have to let them go, but not yet. What I find...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 25, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
