Following Crosswalk America

Change

by Merrill

@ Unlimited Coffee

Sometime in 1965 I had a conversation with a lieutenant, jg. We were talking about his stereo which was of the electron tube variety. He preferred tubes to the, then, newer transistor technology because he could hear a “hiss” in transistor equipment. At least he said he could. Since he was an officer and I was an enlisted petty officer I kept my mouth shut. Still I did think about how people often find reasons for rejecting new technology. It wasn’t that the lieutenant was old school, in most things he seemed to be fairly “hip” (a term current at the time). He had for his own reasons decided that real stereos were made with tubes and not with transistors. Later on in life I can remember an engineer I worked with declaring that integrated circuits meant the end of engineering (of the electronic variety). This particular man loved designing new circuits with discrete components. New ideas and ways of thinking are sometimes difficult accept.

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Sometimes I have trouble believing that things change. Last month I posted Out of Context and expressed my difficulty believing that the Roman Catholic Church had changed its attitude about science. After that I read another article, Vatican’s Celestial Eye, Seeking Not Angels but Data about the Vatican’s telescope here in Arizona. Who knew? Thinking about this has reminded me that attitudes in people, organizations and society do change. Scientists also have trouble accepting new ideas sometimes. Until the late 1960s (1967 I think) the idea that the continents could move (and had) was unthinkable to geologists. Then along came the idea of plate tectonics and almost overnight all the textbooks on geology became obsolete. It wasn’t that geologists were dumb or resistant to change; they had told astronomers (and physicists) that the earth was four billion years old when astronomers were pegging the universe’s age in millions of years. It was just that the idea of continents plowing through a solid seabed was unthinkable. Michael E. Wysession, in The Teaching Company’s course, How the Earth Works, describes how he finds the explanations of geology in old textbooks convoluted and contrived in light of our present knowledge.

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I recently read about a museum that explains a lot of science in that way. It is the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I had read of this museum before in Adam and Eve in the Land of the Dinosaurs. That article was a museum review written at the time of its opening. A little over a week ago I read of the reactions of some paleontologists that took a field trip to the museum. The article was Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh in the New York Times. I especially enjoyed some of the quotes.

I’m speechless; it’s rather scary.

Derek E.G. Briggs, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale as reported in Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh in the New York Times, June 30 2009

I think they should rename the museum — not the Creation Museum, but the Confusion Museum.

Unfortunately, they do it knowingly.

I was dismayed. As a Christian, I was dismayed.

Dr. Lisa E. Park, a professor of paleontology at the University of Akron as reported in Paleontology and Creationism Meet but Don’t Mesh in the New York Times, June 30 2009

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There is a difference between the convoluted and contrived explanations the Creation Museum espouses and those found in outmoded geology textbooks. The textbooks were trying to fit observations into a rational framework of the knowledge current at the time of their being written. The Creation Museum is trying to fit observations into a framework of knowledge as it was 2000 to 6000 years ago. Professor Wysession also points out that that knowledge does change and that some time in the future we may look back at our present knowledge and wonder how we could have believed what we do at the present. That is not possible if your knowledge base is frozen in time. I agree with Derek Briggs; it is scary. I also find myself in agreement with Dr. Park. I am definitely dismayed as a Christian.

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I wonder what the Vatican’s position on the Creation Museum is. I also wonder if my lieutenant ever updated his stereo system.

More questions than answers

by Merrill

@ Duck and Decanter

Every time I pick up a new book I am reminded of two things I read in the 70s. The first was a statement made by a general – at least I think he was a general. The statement was “At this juncture of human events…”. He could have said “now”. The second was the safety report for Three Mile Island. Can you remember Three Mile Island? The report, written before the meltdown, was quite clear in its conclusion. The procedures in place were flawed and there was a good possibility of something going wrong. The problem was that the report was written in a scholarly fashion with data and facts comprising most of the report with the conclusion indicating a dangerous problem found in a paragraph on the final page. Anyone reading the report was put to sleep long before reaching the conclusion. I read books with those examples as a standard.

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This past week I picked up two new books. The adult after church study class (I hesitate to call it a Sunday School Class) at Asbury is starting on this book Sunday. I don’t think I will be able to attend much but I bought the book anyway. It is Paul among the Postliberals – Pauline Theology beyond Christendom and Modernity by Douglas Harink. If you want a book report look here. So far I have managed the introduction (12 pages) and part (25 pages) of the first chapter, Justification. This is not a book for the faint of heart. It may not even be a book for me. Harink does a great job in the introduction of telling what the book is about (Pauline theology in relation to particular theologians). But, so far, I have a lot more questions than answers and that leads me to think that Harink may be somewhat akin to the verbose general.

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I should have been warned by the title. After all, just exactly what is a “postliberal” (and here)? I thought perhaps the introduction might enlighten me. No joy. The best I could do was figure out that some theologians I know of (Karl Barth, Stanley Hauerwas and John Howard Yoder – note that in addition to the links I have given all three can be found on Wikipedia) with others that I am not familiar with (Krister Stendahl, Hans Frei and George Lindbeck – also to be found on Wikipedia) are/were postliberals. Great. I have read some things by Yoder and Hauerwas and neither of them are exactly easy to grasp. So now we have someone that clumps them together along with other theologians that I am totally ignorant of under the rather ill-defined title of postliberal and states that they preach Paul’s theology? Another question I have is: what books (of the New Testament) does he accept as authentic Pauline? I hope to find the answers in the rest of the book.

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The second book I started is Deepak Chopra’s The Third Jesus. A less skeptical bio of Deepak can be found here. As with Paul among the Postliberals. I have not read much, just the introduction (4 pages), the first chapter, Redeeming the Redeemer (14 pages) and 5 pages of the second chapter, “I am the Light”. I am unsure at this point what I think of the book. I choose the book because I thought it would be nice to see a non-Christian’s view of Jesus. I expected a detached viewpoint. I don’t believe that is what we have here. I will continue reading and see what develops.

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One impression I have is that Deepak has read the gospels rather uncritically. For example he assumes that Jesus’ actual words are quoted in the Gospels. I am not so sure of that especially when it comes to John. Don’t get me wrong, I love the language of John but I am not so sure of the accurateness of his wording. John and the other gospels for the most part were written in Greek but Greek was not the language that Jesus spoke. So how good is John’s translation of what Jesus said and how close were the words that he wrote to those that Jesus uttered? John wrote some 65 years after the crucifixion. I think maybe he (Deepak) was taught that the gospels were inerrant (at least in fact) by the Irish Catholic brothers that were his teachers in India. Deepak also appears to draw a lot of meaning from very few words. It is almost as if he has the inverse problem of the safety report for Three Mile Island. That is, he does not seem to have enough facts (reality) for his conclusions. I hope not but only the rest of the book will tell. On the other hand his ultimate conclusion appears to be in the last section of the book (judging from the table of contents). I hope I don’t fall asleep before I get there.

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Did you know that Deepak Chopra champions intelligent design? I wonder if that has any bearing.

Prejudice

by Merrill

@ Duck and Decanter

I seem to be running into the same names over and over. This week I once again heard the name of Arthur Eddington. This time in was in conjunction with that of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (and here). I suppose I should not be amazed since I am still plugging through my video course, Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, 2nd Edition, from The Teaching Company. You may remember from my post, In the eye of the believer (or just the facts), that Arthur fudged his data a bit because he believed in Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. In that instance he got away with it because Einstein was correct in his thinking. In the case of Chandra (that is how he preferred to be called) he doesn’t come off looking so good.

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The bare bones outline of this story I heard from Alex Filippenko, the professor of my course. It goes something like this: Chandra graduated from Presidency College, B.Sc. (Hon.), in physics - June 1930. He was twenty years old and had a scholarship for Cambridge University in England. He sailed to England (I am not sure that you could even fly from India to England in 1930) and the voyage took some three weeks. Not one to waste the time, Chandra did some heavy duty thinking and determined the upper mass limit for white dwarf stars. Eventually this limit was named after him (the Chandrasekhar limit) and he won a Nobel Prize in physics (1983) for this work. To arrive at his results he not only had to be conversant in astronomy but he had to understand quantum mechanics which was something that Albert Einstein never quite mastered. Oh yeah, his math skills had to be outstanding also. And he is a twenty year old? Pretty impressive.

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It did not impress our friend, Arthur Eddington. In fact, according to Alex Filippenko, Eddington openly ridiculed Chandra and his work. Chandra for his part publically always referred to Eddington as a friend. Apparently, they also maintained a friendly social contact. I am rather surprised about this because Chandra was under no illusions as to the reason that Eddington was so antagonistic. It was prejudice – see here. He (Chandra) must have been quite a person (and from all reports was). I don’t know how Eddington referred to Chandra and I don’t really care. I don’t think I like Eddington very much. It is a shame Eddington died before Chandra won the Nobel Prize.

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I love to hear stories of people overcoming prejudice. I wonder if Eddington’s prejudice had anything to do with Chandra moving to the US instead of remaining in England.

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NASA’s x-ray observatory launched in 1999 was named Chandra.

Matthew the astrologer?

by Merrill

@ Duck and Decanter

After I posted Age of Aquarius, that can’t be right; can it? I read The Star of Bethlehem and discovered a wealth of information about ancient astrology. The author, Michael R. Molnar, is an astronomer and former head of the Physics Instructional Labs at Rutgers University. Mr. Molnar collects ancient coins. One particular coin he bought led him to study ancient (Hellenistic) astrology and the “star” of Bethlehem. According to Mr. Molnar’s thesis the story told by Matthew (in the gospel according to) came from an astrological event and not some wondrous, dramatic, manifestation that everyday folk (or even kings such as Herod) would have noticed. To be sure the alignment of the planet Jupiter with Aries, the sun and other planets was visible to everyone but only those versed in astrology (i.e. the magi) would have paid any attention to the momentous (to astrologers) events in the sky.

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The Star of Bethlehem has abundant information about astronomy, astrology, history and early Christianity. As such I enjoyed reading it. But more interesting than the well researched facts was Mr. Molnar’s attitude. His original  attitude was that the story of the nativity found in Matthew makes little or no sense from a factual astronomical viewpoint. For instance, how does a star stop over a house? The answer is that it doesn’t. But the story does make sense from an astrological point of view. Furthermore it doesn’t make much sense if interpreted in terms of later astrology. But it makes a lot of sense from the viewpoint of a first century Hellenic astrologer. To some one versed in the astrology of the times the events of April 16 of 6 BCE did foretell of the birth of a powerful king in Judea. In fact many of the Greek words that Matthew uses to tell the story of the birth of Jesus are astrological terms. I am (with Mr. Molnar) forced to the conclusion that the author of Matthew was an astrologer or at least very familiar with astrology.

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Almost as an afterthought Mr. Molnar mentions the birth story as told in Luke. Unlike Matthew, Luke did not believe in astrology (or maybe he just didn’t know much about it). But his story none the less has hints of astrology. Take the shepherds watching the sheep “by night”. Aries is a ram and when else do you see the stars. Then there is the term “heavenly hosts” used by Luke. According to Mr. Molnar the Greek term translated as “heavenly hosts” means the stars and planets of the heavens. We English speaking peoples of the 21^st century think of angels and what not but to the Greek speaking world of the first century it had a different meaning. He also points out that at the time planets were thought of as stars.

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So there you have it. The story of the nativity was told by an astrologer (Matthew) and a skeptic (Luke). Same story, told with two different viewpoints. Today we read the story with different viewpoints; some read the story literally, some read it as skeptics, some read it from a 21^st century perspective, and some read it as a pair of fables. When I read both of the stories literally it never even occurred to me that there were any differences. After I read The Star of Bethlehem I realized that I need to remember how differently people of first century thought and that maybe both Matthew and Luke made sense to them.

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I wonder if there are other stories told by Matthew that needs to be viewed with first a first century astrology filter in place. I’ll have to read his gospel again and see.

In the eye of the believer (or just the facts)

by Merrill

@ Macy’s in Flagstaff

Last week I watched a rerun of Einstein on the History Channel. I had seen it before but I always enjoy serious history. That and the fact that I am desperate for anything worth while watching on TV. A big part of the story was the attempts to prove Einstein’s theory of relativity by photographing a total solar eclipse and measuring the positions of stars that appeared close to the sun. The theory of General Relativity predicts that the path of light will be bent by gravity as it passes close to a massive object. Therefore stars that appear close to the sun (they aren’t really close, they are far beyond the sun in distance but lie in the same direction as the sun) will appear even closer to the sun than they are. See Putting Relativity to the Test for a better description. At the time (1916 to 1922) the only way to photograph stars close to the sun was during a total solar eclipse. Several astronomers competed to test the theory of which Sir Arthur Eddington from the UK and William Wallace Campbell (and here) from the US were the most involved.

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I really liked the program for humanizing Albert Einstein but found it lacking in explanations. The most disturbing missing detail was in explaining the differing results obtained by Eddington and Campbell. World War I complicated things quite a bit. Einstein was in Germany, Eddington, a big fan of his, was in England and both were not too well thought of because of their views on the war. The American astronomer, Campbell definitely did not share their views of the war but was just as impeded by the conflict. What with one thing and another Campbell had the first opportunity to observe (and hence obtain photographs) of an eclipse. This was the 1918 eclipse which was visible in the state of Washington. After the war was over Eddington got his first opportunity on the island of Príncipe near Africa during the eclipse in May of 1919. Now here is the unexplained part. Campbell could not confirm that the theory was correct and was about to publish results that said Einstein was wrong when Eddington announced that he had confirmed the theory. Today we know that, in the main, Einstein had it correct and therefore Eddington was right on with his results. So, does this make Campbell out to be some sort of incompetent? The program (and almost everyone else) just goes on to praise Eddington and Einstein for this great advance in our understanding of the universe. It remained silent on how Campbell could have been wrong.

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This wasn’t a case of religion vs. science with one side obtaining knowledge by divine revelation and the other by testing a theory by observation. Or was it? Eddington was a staunch Quaker and therefore an avowed pacifist. Einstein wasn’t a Quaker but did have pacifistic leanings. Campbell was just the opposite. Eddington was a big fan of Einstein and his theory. In more modern times some have suggested that Eddington fudged his results (if he did not lie outright). I prefer to think that Eddington, who understood the theory when most scientists did not, only found results he was looking for. Campbell had another astronomer measuring the results of his observations and this astronomer was more of an observational astronomer than either Campbell or Eddington. As such he was possibly more concerned with data than implications. It turns out that photography and astronomical methods of the time were not up to the challenge of being able to prove the theory. The photographic emulsions of the time could only resolve stars to about ½ of the resolution necessary to confirm the theory. In other words a stars position could not be measured to the accuracy required using photographic emulsions available at that time.

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Today we have abundant proof that Einstein’s theory of relativity is the best description we have of the universe (even if there are some details where Albert missed the boat). There are many places where we can measure the amount of light’s deflection caused by gravity. Other proofs of the theory exist such as the explanation of the deviation (from Newtonian physics) of Mercury’s orbit. I try to remember that even scientists like to find the results they are looking for and that beliefs can put a spin on results.

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To my way of thinking, creationists and Eddington differ only in degree. Still, I won’t be changing my thinking about evolution any time soon. I also note that the History Channel airs shows such as UFO Files, UFO Hunters and Monster Quest. The best that can be said of any of those is that they involve a good deal of belief as opposed to fact. What can one believe from a source such as that?

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Note on the use of Wikipedia – often I look up things on Wikipedia but I always keep in mind that the authors of individual articles can biased and all facts reported there may not necessarily be so.

Out of context

by Merrill

Duck and Decanter

It happened again last Sunday. I was joyfully descending from the top of Piestewa Peak when someone greeted me by name and I didn’t have the foggiest as to who the young lady was. It took me about ten yards to place her. She works here at the D & D and as I lunch (and blog) here frequently I see her several times a week. The reason she knows my name is that at the D & D you are asked for your name when ordering and it is written on the lunch bag with your order. So it was natural for her to use my name. This sort of thing happens to me regularly. I can remember meeting some one that I see in church nearly every Sunday on the street during the week and it took me a couple of sentences to register who I was talking with. When I meet people out of the context in which I know them I often get confused.

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Same thing happens when I read of or hear people making statements that challenge my understanding of what they represent. Saturday I read about Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State saying some things that really confused me. Now this guy has to be close to the present Pope (who appointed him). The present Pope is not exactly liberal. (He probably is somewhere to the right of Louis XIV.) So when I read:

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The Church never fears the truth of science, because we are convinced that all truth comes from God

Science will help our faith to purify itself. And faith at the same time will be able to broaden the horizons of man, who cannot just enclose himself in the horizons of science.

Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo as reported in the Singapore Straits Times, Vatican delegation in Cern, June 6 2009.

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I was totally taken by surprise. He is reported to have said several other things in a similar vein (you will have to read Vatican delegation in Cern if you want to know what) that also blew me away. Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo is the executive head of government for the Vatican and as such answers only to his monarch, the Pope. So what about scientists like Galileo? It took the Catholic Church 400 years to say they had made a mistake about Galileo saying that the sun wasn’t perfect (it has spots) and that Aristotle (and the bible) was incorrect in the understanding that the earth was stationary. Frankly I can’t imagine the present Pope admitting to the error; it was Pope John Paul II that officially regretted the way the Church had handled the Galileo affair and admitted that the earth did move.

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It could be, of course, that I am taking things out of context. It could be that the good cardinal and the Catholic Church have seen the light and repented of the church’s past errors in matters of science. It could be - but I doubt it. Did you know that the Pope is the Monarch of the Vatican?

Age of Aquarius, that can’t be right; can it?

by Merrill

@ Duck and Decanter

I was watching my latest DVD course, Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy, 2nd Edition, from The Teaching Company and learned a fact that raised a good many questions. It wasn’t a scientific fact per se. It was more an astrological fact. As you know, there are 12 signs of the Zodiac. These signs come from the constellations in the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the plane of the sky that the sun (and planets) traverses each year. The basic theory of astrology is that the sign you were born under (what constellation the sun was in) determines events in your life as well as your characteristics. Now there are numerous scientific reasons why this is nonsense. When it comes to believing science or believing something else, I’ll pick science every time. I have never given much credence to Astrology but there are many people that do. What I learned in my course was that there are 13 constellations in the plane of the ecliptic. The professor teaching the course, Alex Filippenko, was careful to point out that astrologers had missed one. He also said that he did not know how or why one got left out.

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Missed a sign of the zodiac? How can that be? If the whole point of astrology is that your life is determined by what constellation the sun was in when you were born (and what planets are in your sign and probably other stuff that only astrologers care about) what happens if you were born under the missing constellation? Alex Filippenko also mentioned the fact that the constellations were all different in size and the sun spent different amounts of time in them. Hmmm. This called for a quick trip to my favorite - as well as the most used – internet source of quick facts, Wikipedia. Looking up Zodiac, I discovered a mind boggling array of facts about astrology in general and the Zodiac in particular. There are some clues as to how a constellation was left out also.

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The first thing is that 13 is a terrible number to work with. It is a prime number for one thing. 12 is much better. You can divide 12 by 2, 3, 4 and 6. It is easy to figure out halves and quarters for instance. So, three signs can be assigned to each of the seasons, for example. Other games can be played with the twelve signs. You could take the middle signs and assign the middle one from each of the four quarters to the faces of the cherubim, in both Ezekiel and Revelation, as the article in Wikipedia pointed out. (The Lion is Leo; the Bull is Taurus; the Man is Aquarius; and the Eagle is Scorpio.) No doubt there are others. It is also easier to make them all equal. It wouldn’t do to have unequal numbers of people born under differing signs. If you go by length of time the sun spends in each constellation, you could have anywhere from 12% to 2.2% of the human population born in each sign. That clearly wouldn’t do. Besides, there seems to be something in the number 12. We have 12 apostles and 12 tribes in the bible as well as 12 months.

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You can also divide 12 into 360 evenly. That is important because it was the Babylonians (also known as the Chaldeans) who invented (?) astrology. The Babylonians were also the people that gave 360 degrees to circles. The ecliptic is a circle and so it made sense to them to have a division of 30 degrees for each sign. Much better than 27.69230769230770 degrees per sign don’t you think?

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From the Wikipedia article I also learned that there is no one system of astrology. The two main divisions relate to use of a tropical year (solar system based) or a sidereal year (star based). But there are lots of minor differences and interpretations also. This is starting to sound a lot like religion. Weren’t the Magi supposed to be Chaldeans? When the Babylonians invented astrology the vernal equinox was in Aries which is why Aries is sign #1. That was the age of Aries. After wards it – the vernal equinox – moved into Pisces and it became the age of Pisces. Soon (or now or maybe not so soon depending which school of astrology you follow) we will be moving into the Age of Aquarius.

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When the moon is in the Seventh House

and Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius

The age of Aquarius

Aquarius! Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions

Mystic crystal revelation

And the mind’s true liberation

Aquarius! Aquarius!

When the moon is in the Seventh House

and Jupiter aligns with Mars

Then peace will guide the planets

And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius

The age of Aquarius

Aquarius! Aquarius!

As our hearts go beating through the night

We dance unto the dawn of day

To be the bearers of the water

Our light will lead the way

We are the spirit of the age of Aquarius

The age of Aquarius

Aquarius! Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

Angelic illumination

Rising fiery constellation

Travelling our starry courses

Guided by the cosmic forces

Oh, care for us; Aquarius

The Age of Aquarius from the musical Hair written by James Rado, Gerome Ragni, and Galt MacDermot,

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Astrology appears to have theories about the future even if all branches don’t agree on the timing. I wonder if the different schools of astrology have any theories about how old the earth is or — homosexuality.

Redaction in action

by Merrill

@ Duck and Decanter

In Lecture Five of his course, The New Testament, (from the Teaching Company) under essential reading Bart Ehrman lists a book, An Introduction to the New Testament by Raymond E. Brown (his obituary is here). After having watched (on DVD) this lecture a number of times and having read the transcript several more times, I decided that perhaps I could increase my knowledge of the subject (the gospel of Mark) by reading Professor Ehrman’s Essential reading. Ehrman only listed chapter 7 of An Introduction to the New Testament but after paying 45 bucks ($44.95 to be exact) I was determined to get my monies worth, and so I began at the beginning with the Foreword and Acknowledgements and have been slogging along for three or four weeks now. I just finished chapter 7 (on the gospel of Mark) and that means I can move on with Lecture Six of The New Testament. I know that An Introduction to the New Testament will be listed as Essential reading again (I cheated and checked).

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I only mention this because both Brown and Ehrman use the word “redact” a lot in various forms (as in redacted, redaction) in their discussions of the New Testament. According to the dictionary:

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Pronunciation:    \ri-dakt\

Function:    transitive verb

Etymology:     Middle English, from Latin redactus, past participle of redigere

Date:    15th century

1: to put in writing : frame

2: to select or adapt (as by obscuring or removing sensitive information) for publication or release ; broadly : edit

3: to obscure or remove (text) from a document prior to publication or release

“redact.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2009.Merriam-Webster Online. 3 June 2009 http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/redact.) redact

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Obviously then “redact” is a word uncommonly suited to discussions of written material in general and of the New Testament in particular. It is not necessarily a word that carries a negative connotation. Still, as a recovering fundamentalist, I sometimes have vague feelings of disquiet when it is used in conjunction with the bible (especially meanings 2 & 3 from the definition). At the very least I want to know what the original author (whoever that may have been) said and thought about his subject. I get even stronger feelings when I see same process being applied to history – not necessarily in the written form - today.

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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is at it again by saying “Holocaust a ‘big deception’”. You may remember his 2005 referring to the Holocaust as a big myth. This guy is just as scary as Hitler, maybe even more because of his desire to obtain nuclear capability. His views are driven by his theology (Islamic fundamentalism) and by the fact that he wants to be elected again.

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For a more unstated example we have the Peoples Republic of China. They aren’t really saying much but they have instituted internet restrictions and security measures in anticipation of the 20^th anniversary of the massacre at Tiananmen Square. The crackdown started on June 4^th and then on June 5^th there was the spectacle of one man in a white shirt standing nose to nose with a tank (actually 5 tanks, one behind another in line). For a record (and four photos) of that event, go here. According to a story in the Straits Times, another student leader of those days has turned himself in to Chinese authorities.

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My turning myself in should not be interpreted as my admission that my behavior [sic] 20 years ago in [sic, should be is] illegal and wrong. I want to reassert here the Chinese government bears complete and undeniable moral, political and legal responsibility for the tragedy that happened in China in 1989.

I hope, 20 years later, the Chinese government can set a new position on the historical problem of the ‘June 4 massacre’, admit its guilt and apologise [sic] to the Chinese people.

Mr Wu’er Kaixi as reported in Student leader turns self in, the Straits Times, June 3 2009

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The Chinese government is not quite as blatant as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; they just blame the massacre on those who died. And they are making sure that in China there is no easy way of refuting their redaction of history.

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As an example of an even more subtle redaction process we have Dick Cheney. Dick may not always edit history (although I suspect he has done so) but he certainly frames (meaning number one from the definition above) his part in a rather distorted way. He essentially says that the Bush administration did things that were effective and therefore not wrong. Such as waterboarding, for example. The same tone as taken by the Chinese government on Tiananmen Square. I am not quite sure but I think that he may have fibbed a little in misleading congress. You read Cheney Led Briefings of Lawmakers To Defend Interrogation Techniques in the Washington Post and make up your own minds. When I was in high school (and again in 1984) I read Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It has always seemed to me that one of the messages of the novel was that if you use the same methods as those you oppose then you have become like them (and therefore they have triumphed). Congratulations Dick on joining the likes of Lenin and Hitler. Maybe that was too harsh. Maybe he is only similar to the nameless faces behind the Peoples Republic of China.

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The last example I have of redaction is a bit gentler. Apparently Mormons who are excommunicated can rejoin the church after death. This was reported by the Salt Lake Tribune in Evil-doers take back door into heaven. You may remember that in years past non-Mormons have been upset over ancestors being prayed into Mormon heaven. According to a spokesperson for the Mormon Church:

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Our policy for submitting names for temple work is well documented; we have been over this ground before, and we’re not going to keep revisiting it.

Scott Trotter, LDS Church spokesman, as reported in Evil-doers take back door into heaven, the Salt Lake Tribune, June 3 2009

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I wonder if Scott knows Dick.

Unworthy thoughts

by Merrill

@ Duck and Decanter

I have a rather plain (if not downright ugly) set of dishes at home. The set was left by the people I bought my home from in 2002. The dishes are heavy, thick and don’t fit in the dishwasher very well - especially the bowls. They were left neatly boxed with all of the original paper wrappings in the box that they came in. When I first saw the dishes I wondered why anyone with any sensibilities or taste would want them. Then I noticed the neatly penciled notation on the box. It read “For the Poor”. Then I understood. Before I saw the notation I had intended to take the box (which had been opened) down to a Goodwill donation center. I thought “I’ll be damned; they will compliment my set of Corelle Ware for four (with one missing dinner plate).” The couple that left them were somewhere in their late sixties at the time and I believe that they dabbled in real estate by flipping houses. Remember those days?

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The dishes themselves had not been much used, if at all. It looked as if someone had purchased them and upon seeing what they were really like (the picture on the box was definitely their best profile) deciding that they weren’t good enough for someone that wasn’t “poor”. Maybe they were right but they are good enough for me. I thought about the dishes again this week because last Wednesday, May 27, 2009, there was an event for Native Americans at Steele Indian School Park (as well as here) in Phoenix. It was: Wellbriety Journey of Forgiveness Workshop sponsored by the Yavapai Nation & White Bison Inc. The reason I knew about it was that a friend had been asked to set up and man a table at the workshop. My friend is a successful mature woman that I would not have thought in the least bit biased or racially insensitive. We were talking about it being outside and this being late May in Phoenix when she said “Oh, they are Native Americans and it doesn’t bother them.” She must know a different set of Native Americans than I do.

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My friend and the couple I bought my home from are unfortunately not alone in the use of demeaning stereotypes. Take, for example, an article in yesterday’s Ventura County Star. The article, Westlake High official apologizes for racially offensive skit, was about two students (who happened to be Latino) portraying negative Latino stereotypes in a skit. The skit was the students’ brain child. It also included a license plate with “BNR” – standing for “Beaner” hereafter to be referred to as “the B word”. If you want more information you will have to read the article. I don’t do article or book reports.

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I found the comments really interesting. I almost didn’t read past the first one:

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Cultural Sensitivity training ??? Are you insane ??? Just because some poor sap cant [sic] take a joke….

What if two white kids were up there driving a hoopty car and making fun of being trailer trash and did that same skit. I guarantee no one would care and would laugh because that would be funny as hell. Oh right…white kids in WV and TO have no idea what trailer trash is…my bad.

Just another example of the pussification of American…get over it.

Posted by fish on May 29, 2009 at 4:36 p.m in the Ventura County Star

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The WV (Westlake Villiage) and TO (Thousand Oaks) referred to by “fish” are affluent cities North of Los Angles. When I read the comment,  I thought “OMG!” But I persevered. To my surprise, the comments seem pretty evenly divided into categories. I read through them quickly so I am not sure how even the divisions are.

1.      What’s the fuss about?

2.      It was offensive!

3.      It was not offensive!

4.      It was funny.

5.      It was not funny.

The offensive and not offensive categories each have two sub-categories of I am, I am not Latino.

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I have one last story about this subject. The Honolulu Star Bulletin ran Waianae High yearbook contains ‘racially insensitive’ photo, DOE says . The story was about a picture of a group photo in a yearbook with students holding cards that spelled out the “N” word.

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The use of negative stereotypes seems to be endemic in humans and as far as I can tell goes back a long way in human history as well as in Christianity (and Judaism, for that matter). The New Testament is filled with “the Jews” used in negative connotations. Examples of negative stereotypes found in the bible have been used to justify slavery, mistreating Jews, keeping females in their place and of course homophobia. It is easy to think people are inferior because they are different. At least we tell ourselves that and use it as a convenient justification for our actions. The couple I bought my home from believe the poor deserved no better than their cast offs. My friend no doubt thinks since Native Americans can take the heat better than whites (supposedly, at least in her mind) it is OK for them to be without air conditioning in the summer. The dean that approved the skit thought that since the students were Latino it would be OK to use a negative stereotype. God only knows what the students in Hawaii were thinking.

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Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be able to get rid of all the negative stereotypes that lurk inside me. For example, those about the couple I bought my home from, my friend, “fish” and the Hawaiian students.

Of Archbishops and men

by Merrill

@ Duck and Decanter

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Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, has weighed in on the scandal over expenses in the UK. He wrote a guest contributor comment, Enough humiliation. We must move on, in the London Times. He has taken a lot of flack over the article. Deservedly so I think. It seems to me that the prophetic role of the church to government (and the people) is to demand justice. Justice perhaps mingled with morality. Justice includes punishment for the guilty.

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The point of this scandal is not just a little corruption in high places. There is a tremendous amount of anger in United Kingdom over this. Again, deservedly so. This is not just a few people on the take. This is systematic corruption across all political boundaries. An article, Beneath a British Scandal, Deeper Furies, in the New York Times describes both the anger and the reason behind the anger.

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For the man, the scholar, and the priest that Rowan Williams is, I have great respect and admiration. For the leader I have my doubts. This despite a very favorable piece, The Velvet Reformation, I read in the Atlantic Monthly. The article is a must read for a frank discussion of the ins and outs on Rowan Williams and the gay issue. I must say I came away with a different understanding of his stand on this issue. I still don’t agree with it but I do have more sympathy for his viewpoint. It is as a prophet – in the true sense of the word – that I see his greatest failing.

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I always think of Nathan confronting King David about the bedding of Bathsheba and then killing Uriah the Hittite, her husband, when I think of being a prophetic witness to those in power.

1.      The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, “There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor.

2.      The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle,

3.      but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

4.      “Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him.”

5.      David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die!

6.      He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.”

7.      Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul.

8.      I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more.

9.      Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.

10.  Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.’

2 Samuel 12 (New International Version)

I can’t imagine Rowan Williams as Nathan. Can you?