Nobody 719

Sunday, November 18, 2007
Nobody # 719

Nobody Asked Me But:

What Man May Learn, What Man May Do
by Robert Louis Stevenson.

What man may learn, what man may do,
Of right or wrong of false or true,
While, skipper-like, his course he steers
Through nine and twenty mingled years,
Half misconceived and half forgot,
So much I know and practise not.

Old are the words of wisdom, old
The counsels of the wise and bold:
To close the ears, to check the tongue,
To keep the pining spirit young;
To act the right, to say the true,
And to be kind whate'er you do.

Thus we across the modern stage
Follow the wise of every age;
And, as oaks grow and rivers run
Unchanged in the unchanging sun,
So the eternal march of man
Goes forth on an eternal plan.

Make that fifty-three and twenty for me, but the poet’s message, except for checking the tongue, hits close to home.<<<

Blogging the Bible.

In the 6th chapter of Genesis, I find a God that I can get behind – fallible and prone to anger, just like me.

5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

Or to put it another way:

Well the Lord looked down from His window in the sky
and said I created man but I don't remember why
Nothin' but fightin' since creation day
I'll send a little water and I'll wash'em all away

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord
Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord
And he landed high and dry

But this does leave me with a couple of questions. Why was He going to kill the animals too? I mean some of them even mate for life.

And why the flood? Forty days and forty nights? I mean God must have a more efficient way of killing sinners, be they animal or man. Come to think of it, the big drenching doesn’t even work. Sometimes it rains for forty days and forty nights in Seattle and nobody dies. They just hang out at Starbucks.<<<

Life does follow art – or is it vice versa?

I recently read the very excellent “The Abstinence Teacher” by Tom Perrotta. In it a born-again religious group, objecting to the sex education program in the local school district, pressures them into changing to an abstinence curriculum. Teaching abstinence always reminds me of the boy in the dike story without the happy ending.

But it’s not just in fiction that Far Wrong Christianity is putting a move on our schools. And it’s not just in Dorothy’s Kansas either, although the ignorance vs. science battle still rages there.

It is happening eighty miles north of my computer in “beautiful” Bakersfield. The Kern County High School District has voted to display the phrase "In God We Trust" on the walls of more than 2,300 classrooms, school libraries, administrative offices and the board's meeting room.

"We're not going to accept the agenda of some radical leftists who want to expunge God from public dialogue," said Chad Vegas, an evangelical pastor who sits on the board.

By radical leftists I guess he means the Framers who wrote the First Amendment.

Perrotta’s sex ed teacher, Ruth, nails it when she says she feels like she is “living in a horror movie. ... ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’ or something. You never knew who they were going to get to next.”<<<

SEE THE “RIGHTERS” CARRY THEIR CRUSADE INTO NATIONAL POLITICS.

"It's the ultimate life issue,” said Rick Scarborough, president of the Texas-based conservative Christian group Vision America. ''If radical Islam succeeds in its ultimate goals, Christianity ceases to exist.''

Of Course IF the sun burns out soon, Christianity also ceases to exist?

Don’t hold your breath waiting for either to happen.<<<

HOOKED ON BOOKS

I just finished a novel in which the CIA plays an important part. It started me thinking about why our spy group screws up so much. I believe it is because the job becomes more important than the mission, so that rather than dealing in truth they tell the higher ups what they want to hear.<<<

From the book I am currently listening to - David Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter: America And The Korean War.”

In WW II, Douglas MacArthur thought that Japan must be using white pilots because Asians (“Orientals”) could not be so successful.

MacArthur also called Truman “that Jew in the White House” and referred to Roosevelt as Roosenfeldt.

Which begs the question: CAN AN AMERICAN BIGOT BE AN AMERICAN HERO?<<<

LIST, I LOVE LISTS

After seeing the excellent “Gone Baby Gone” recently I started thinking back of my favorite films of the 21st century. Here are my top five in no particular order:
“The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy” – 2001/03
“Mystic River” - 2003
“Lost In Translation” – 2003
“Million Dollar Baby” - 2004
“Letters From Iwo Jima” - 2006

Is it not incredible that three of the five were directed by Clint Eastwood? Rowdy Yates, you’ve come a long way.

Just missing the cut were “Road To Perdition” and “Good Night, Good Luck.”<<< A

nd as much as I dislike him personally, is there currently a finer lead actor than Russell Crowe?<<<

“Gone Baby Gone” asks the question - are the rights of motherhood absolute if the mother is an incorrigible waster?

I can answer that. NO! Once a child is born, parenting ceases to be a right and becomes a privilege. Or, at least in a moral society, it should.<<<

UP: Barack - In Thursday’s debate, when Wolf Blitzer ask Obama for a yes or no answer to the question of whether American security is more important than human rights, Barack answered that it was a false choice.

He’s right. We can have both. The North would have won the Civil War without Lincoln choosing to suspend the Constitutional right of habeas corpus. We would have defeated Japan without FDR’s decision to inter Japanese Americans. So too can we defeat terrorism without the Patriot Act.<<<

DOWN: Hillary- Her response to the same question was - "The first obligation is to protect and defend America."

That sounds right, but dig a little deeper. Suppose George II believed that the only way to protect and defend was to suspend the election of 2008 and stay in office. Would this be an act of duty or one of treason?<<<

UP: Hillary - From a Time magazine blog on a recent debate – “The most remarkable thing about it was that whatever she's taking for that cold, it seems to have lowered her voice an octave and slowed her speech by half. She sounded vaguely high.”

Vaguely high? Perhaps that is the best way to get through this debate-a- week season. You go girl!<<<

Down: The Baseball Writers of America, for their mistaken choice of C. C. Sabathia for the Cy Young Award. Sabathia had a great season but Josh Beckett’s was better.

UP: The 99 Cent Store for the originality of their ads and for giving Joe Torre a lifetime deal he can’t refuse.

ON BONDS AND BASEBALL

Separated at birth: Barry Bonds and Bud Selig are a matched pair. Both are arrogant SOB's. Bonds probably broke the law, (I will keep the probably until he is convicted) and Selig thinks he is Mr. Baseball and can convict without a trial.

And, incidentally, wasn't "Bud" a bit ethics-lite in the way he secured his job as Commissioner?<<<

What is the difference between Barry Bonds and President Bush?

One of them gets indicted for lying, the other one doesn’t.<<<

What’s in a name? As you can see by the chart, the commonality of names is rapidly changing.<<<

Here is your homework for the week. Should you decide to answer, this question will self-destruct in 60 seconds.

Looking back on all the great TV series finales over the years, which show do you believe had the best final episode?<<<