The corn is knee high
As a matter of fact, we ' ve had ample rain this year (unlike last summer) and it ' s a little more than knee high. The farm fields and gardens -- including mine -- are jumping. The point of this seeming digression is that July 4 is not really an occasion for people to contemplate the nature of the American experiment or the meaning of patriotism or anything else having to do with national purpose or identity. It marks the unofficial start of summer, and it ' s an occasion to drink too much, grill cheap (and carcinogenic) meat products, and watch fireworks displays.Contrary to Lincoln ' s famous oratory, our fathers did no...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 4, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Yeah, we get it
Don ' t worry, we ' re almost done with this dreck. I ' ll have a good deal to say about the Book of Ester, which comes next, and is something completely different. Meanwhile, the point of this chapter is pretty much the same as the point of the previous chapter: hammering home that the people are supplying the priests and their hangers on in the Temple with plenty of swag. First though, we a list of names. Ezra, or somebody with that name, reappears, but the name is just in passing and he ' s apparently nobody special. Then there ' s the celebration of completion of the wall, featuring a lot of music. (As I ' ve said befo...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 2, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The boys are always prepared
I live in eastern Connecticut, not far from the Coast Guard Academy. For those who don ' t know it ' s in New London, actually across the street from Connecticut College, which my cousin attended and a friend of mind taught at, so I ' ve been in the area a few times. The Academy is a source of pride to our state and one of a few important symbols of our maritime tradition. Actually I drive right past it whenever I ' m headed to Mystic and points nearby. The Mystic Seaport museum is another of those important symbols -- home, among other rare artifacts, to the only surviving wooden whaling ship, the Charles W. Morgan. ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 30, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Hit the snooze button
As I said last time, don ' t worry we ' re almost done with this dreck. Here we get another meaningless list of names. The whole proposition doesn ' t make a lot of sense, or at least it hasn ' t been explained. Remember that most of the exiles returned something like 100 years ago. Nehemiah is parachuting in to a society that has already become established. For some reason, the number of people who have settled in the city of Jerusalem is fewer than he considers desirable, so he invites people to come in from the countryside and forces a number more to do so when he doesn ' t get enough volunteers. Why anybody would care ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 28, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
This and that
Responding to some of the responses to my last post on global carbon emissions, yes, we agree on the facts, the issue seems to be the implications. It is correct that at this moment, the U.S. accounts for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and we have been heading downward; while China in particular has been going in the wrong direction and is the largest emitter. Maybe " fairness " is an issue here, since the U.S. is responsible for far more cumulative emissions and China ' s emissions per capita are not as large, but given the crisis facing humanity I think that ' s pretty much beside the point. What matters i...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 26, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Taking the pledge
Don ' t worry, we ' re getting close to the end of Nehemiah and the books that come next are a lot more interesting. Ch. 10 starts off with the sort of pointless list of names that the Chronicler and whoever wrote this seem to like. Note, however, that Ezra once again seems to have disappeared.Then it describes the pledge the people took which mostly has to do with giving stuff to the priests, which is a major emphasis of all the material we ' ve been reading going back to Deuteronomy. Which is no surprise, don ' t forget who wrote this.Nehemiah the governor, the son of Hakaliah.Zedekiah,2 Seraiah, Az...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 25, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Carbon footprint
Whenever I post anything about anthropogenic climate change, I get " What about China? " comments. It is true that the U.S. has actually reduced its carbon emissions slightly in recent years, and that China has now surpassed the U.S. in annual emissions. But we ' re still the #2 emitter in the world. Growing emissions from India are also a problem. Note that because the U.S. was the #1 emitter for most of the industrial age, we ' re still far an away responsible for the largest cumulative amount of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere. Here ' s the story for the whole planet right now. So yes, if...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 22, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Recapitulation
In Nehemiah 9, the Levites recite a prayer, which recapitulates the key events of Genesis and Exodus, and then refers summarily to the " Groundhog Day " story of the Deuteronomistic History, and its recapitulation in Chronicles; that is the repeated oscillation between the people ' s faithfulness to Yahweh and good fortune, and apostasy followed by misfortune. However, the context is now different and we get that in the punchline in verses 36 and 37. The narrator, whether designated Ezra or Nehemiah, has been careful not to challenge the authority of the Persian emperor -- in fact Nehemiah is his representative. However, h...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 21, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Holy Crap
CNN is trying, really trying, to break through the wall of complacency and denialism. Yep, the global average atmospheric surface temperature is now the hottest it has been since record keeping began. What worries me more, as it should you, is that sea surface temperatures are even farther off the charts. Aside from the decimation of marine life, which maybe you don ' t care about, this means ever more powerful storms. In fact, a very unusual tropical cyclone has just formed from a tropical wave coming off the African coast, which normally does not happen until August. (Early season storms tend ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 19, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Who'dat?
In Nehemiah 8, a character named Ezra appears. Is this the same dude who is the protagonist of the Book of Ezra? Doesn ' t seem to be -- he has a different job description. Previously, he was in charge, in basically the same role Nehemiah has in the current story. Now he ' s a priest and " teacher of the law " (rendered " scribe " in the KJV). Did Nehemiah show up and demote him? What this really shows is that the book Ezra/Nehemiah grew by accretion and there was no editor to assure continuity. Exactly how different protagonists got assigned to the two versions of the story there ' s no telling.The " Book of the Law of Mo...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 18, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The cost of costs
The reason insurers impose deductibles and copays is to discourage utilization. They believe, no doubt correctly, that if people have to spend their own money they may choose not to get as many medical services or buy as many medications. The problem with this reasoning is that people aren ’t wise shoppers for medicine. Now, I’ll be the first to shout it from the rooftops that as a nation, we spend far too much on medical services that are low value or worthless. In fact, I will do so (metaphorically) later in this book. But it’s not because consumers of medicine aren’t wise s hoppers, and making them pay out...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 17, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
A massive national failure
Over the decades, the U.S. has built a Rube Goldberg contraption out of employer provided health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and some smaller bits and piece that has resulted in, officially, about 90% of Americans having insurance.Great news! That means we can all afford the medical services we need and nobody has to go broke because they get sick or are injured in a car crash or shot by somebody exercising their Second Amendment rights! Err, no. Sadly it does not mean that. As a matter of fact, four out of ten insured adults surveyed in 2023 said they had skipped or delayed some type of care in...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 16, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Transcription error
Nehemiah 7 reveals the accretionary history of Ezra-Nehemiah. It ' s essentially a faulty transcription of Ezra 2, but the lists of the returnees from exile contradict each other in 15 places, mostly in the numbers of people. I won ' t bother to list all of the contradictions, but just so you get the idea, in Ezra 775 children of Arah returned, while here there were only 652. The numbers of the various other clans also generally differ by similar amounts, as do the number of singers and porters, and the amount of gold, silver and priestly garments the people give. So this is obviously the same story, probably copied severa...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 14, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
I-95 Bridge Collapse
I expect a lot of people around the country are thinking that I-95 being severed for several weeks is going to be a huge catastrophe. Probably not as much as you think, because I-95 in Philadelphia is a spur from the main east coast highway. People hauling good or their asses from New York and points north to Baltimore and points south depart I-95 in Mansfield, New Jersey and continue south on the New Jersey Turnpike, then connecting with I-295 and ultimately rejoining I-95 in Delaware. So I-95 in Pennsylvania carries mostly relatively local Philadelphia area traffic. That will be a major PITA for the area, but not such a ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 12, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Render unto Artaxerxes
The main point of Chapter 6 is one that has been emphasized repeatedly in Ezrah/Nehemiah. The Jews have no ambition to restore their independence. Nehemiah is avowedly a servant of Artaxerxes, and he treats the claim by hostile neighbors that he ' s planning to rebel and declare a new Jewish kingdom as libelous. So, the idea of a Jewish state was abandoned, in fact forcibly rejected, long before the creation of rabbinical Judaism and the Roman diaspora. I will just make one more observation, that a Persian diaspora continued even after the restoration of the Temple. We ' ll encounter this in the next, very curious, Book of...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 11, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
