Sunday Sermonette: Music lesson
Psalms 4 through 6 include instructions that give us little hints about the music. (The attribution to David is certainly fanciful, these were composed long after his death assuming he even existed.) The RSV translates some of the Hebrew terms which are not translated in the KJV, perhaps because back in 1611 they didn ' t have enough information. The term in Chapter 4 is " neginoth, " which is believed to refer to all stringed instruments. Some people have tried to assign it to a specific instrument, but the current consensus is that it is generic for strings. They probably didn ' t have bowed instruments, and perhaps not ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 12, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Capitalist pigs
I ' ve had a few things to say now and again about the incompatibility of the pursuit of profit with medicine. The corporatization and commodification of health care has been bad for people biologically, emotionally, and financially. There ' s a lot to unpack about that, but one of the most egregious problems is so-called private equity, that is companies that are not publicly traded, do not have to make substantive financial disclosures, and generally operate by buying up existing companies, squeezing profit out of them by cutting costs, and then selling them, usually as husks of their former selves. Here ' s one of innum...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 10, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Sing that Thing!
The Book of Psalms is a hymnal, consisting of song lyrics believed to be associated with worship at the Temple. The psalms are thought to have been composed from the 9th through 5th Centuries BCE, but they were compiled in the 5th Century, i.e. the Second Temple period. The canonical version in the protestant Old Testament largely corresponds to the Masoretic text. There are some small differences in numbering and content with the Septuagint, but I won ' t waste your time with that. We don ' t know much of anything about the music. There was instrumental accompaniment, at least to many of them, as it is occasionally r...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 8, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Yes, people really believe this
Tom Sullivan at Digby ' s blog excerpts and discusses an interview by Chauncy DeVegawith Robert Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute. If you want to read the entire interview, Sullivan gives a link, or you may be satisfied just with his discussion.What you don ' t get a strong sense of from the post, however, is some of the specific content of white Christian nationalism. As we ' ve been reading the Bible, we know that it ' s riddled with contradictions, manifest nonsense, and theology that is inconsistent with what fundamentalist Christians claim to believe. You may have heard that Speaker of the House Mike Joh...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 6, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Let's get it over with
I ' m going to post the last three chapters of Job today because we really need to move on. In chapters 40 and 41, God rants about creatures called respectively behemoth and leviathan. No-one is sure what these are supposed to be. The NIV footnote actually suggests that behemoth is a hippopotamus, and the footnote to chapter 41 suggests that leviathan is a crocodile. Neither of these solutions would seem to justify the vast powers God attributes to these creatures, but anyway, theirs existence is supposed to demonstrate the greatness of God. So Job says " Okay, I ' m just shit, " which is the answer God wants to hear, wher...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 5, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Scam Bunkum-Fraud
Here ' s a description of Bunkum-Fraud ' s wet kleenex defense from Alex Kirshner at Slate. What Kirshner doesn ' t really try to explain is why Scammie thought he could go to trial, take the stand, and get acquitted when he is obviously guilty, all of his co-conspirators took the stand to say so, and there is nothing in the least complicated about it. He stole depositors ' money, and spent it on a lavish lifestyle, paying reporters to write hagiographies about him, and making political contributions to buy influence.* He did all this while adopting a carefully cultivated eccentric persona and spouting bullshit his p...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 3, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Since you ask . . .
I got about six comments on my previous post saying " Okay, Krugman says there are solutions for Medicare and Social Security but the Democrats don ' t have any and aren ' t proposing anything. " Err, no.Sayeth the New York Times: As a candidate for president, Mr. Biden
proposed adding a new tier of payroll tax contributions for people with
incomes over $400,000. That would extend solvency by roughly five years.
The Social Security 2100 Act, sponsored by Representative John Larson,
Democrat of Connecticut, enjoys widespread support in the Democratic
caucus. It mirrors President Biden ’s payroll tax proposal.Soc...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 1, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The big guy in the sky has questions
Elihu having yammered his last, God shows up and bombards Job with 100 questions intended to prove that God knows everything and is all powerful and Job is just an ignorant piece of crap. Of course, we know that the cosmology God claims credit for is all wrong, as is by the way much of his animal behaviorism. (Ostriches are actually attentive parents.) But I will say that these chapters have contributed some colorful language.38 Then theLord answered Job out of the whirlwind:2 “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?3 Gird up your loins like a man, I will questio...
Source: Stayin' Alive - November 1, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Medicare and Social Security
Since it was a Krugzilla column about the Republican plan to drastically cut Medicare and Social Security benefits, I ' ll let the Krug answer the people who say " But we have to cut these programs, we can ' t afford them, what are the Democrats going to do about it? "Here ' s your gift link. By all means do read, but let me summarize the main points. First, regarding Social Security, the rise in cost resulting from the Baby Boomers retiring and the general aging of the population will actually be pretty modest, from about 4.9% of GDP today to 6.4% in 2052, according to CBO projections. And that ' s assuming that life...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 30, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Elihu yammers on
I will address the question of the sustainability of Medicare and Social Security anon. I will say that while I don ' t know that there ' s a single, unified Democratic plan there are certainly some viable proposals. Unfortunately, right now I ' m stuck with posting more endless gibberish. Fortunately, today ' s post concludes our encounter with the logorrheic Elihu, after which the story will begin to move on.36 And Eli ′hu continued, and said:2 “Bear with me a little, and I will show you, for I have yet something to say on God ’s behalf.3 I will fetch my knowledge from af...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 29, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Believe it or not
I ' m gifting Krugthulu ' s column today, which tells the amazing truth about our new Speaker of the House. Do read, but just for starters:Much of the reporting on [Mike] Johnson has,
understandably, focused on his role in the efforts to overturn the 2020
election. Let me say, by the way, that the widely used term “election
denial” is a euphemism that softens and blurs what we’re really talking
about. Trying to keep your party in power after it lost a free and fair
election, without a shred of evidence of significant fraud, isn’t just
denial; it’s a betrayal of democracy.There
has also been considera...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 27, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Yadda yadda yadda
S í, estoy en Puerto Rico. As this endless vapid discourse meanders on, I will just say that although the Book of Job is as far as we know the earliest work in the Judeo-Christian tradition to deal with the theodicy problem, it ultimately fails to do so. The three comforters and Elihu all basically say the same thing, in the end: Job must have done something to deserve this, either because all humans are sinners or he transgressed in some particular way. Job says he is righteous and that God appears to him arbitrary and inscrutable. Sometimes the other four characters more or less agree with that, but still, th...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 25, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
He can duck the Republican primary debates . . .
... butat some point he ' s going to have to present himself to the general electorate. The deterioration is actually accelerating. He won ' t be able to participate in debates with Joe Biden, and his campaign speeches are becoming a ludicrous embarrassment to anyone who isn ' t utterly besotted. The latter is the puzzle however. Sure, other cults work the same way. When the apocalypse doesn ' t come, they just decide they miscalculated and set a new date. Whatever happens on the podium in front of them, they just see their god emperor. They can ' t see anything else. But it ' s getting to the point that his spe...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 24, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Yet another blowhard
It seems that four endless yammerers isn ' t enough. Now we get a fifth. Elihu runs his mouth for the next six chapters and says approximately nothing. He spends the first chapter just blathering about how he is about to speak. Then he says that Job is wrong to claim he hasn ' t done anything to deserve his fate, but the other three Bozos are losers because they haven ' t been able to prove that he ' s wrong. But then Elihu spends the next four chapters equally failing to prove anything and just spewing more endless dreck about the greatness of God. This book could easily be one twentieth as long, probably a lot less, and ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 22, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
La Isla Incantada
Tomorrow I ' m going to Puerto Rico for a conference, returning Wednesday night. It ' s the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare. I ' m doing a poster and an oral presentation, and moderating three sessions, so I ' ll be busy. I should still have time to post however and if there are any interesting highlights you ' ll get them.My own talk is about experiences of people with substance use disorder with health care. The technical term for my finding is that they are treated like shit. There ' s much more than I can fit in there but I ' ll give you a few quotations from my interviews. These are people who ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - October 21, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
