There are some people here who appear to be very angry at God.
I wonder, are they angry at him for existing, or for not existing?
Haven't seen any of those. Have seen a few angry at the people who claim to speak in his name.
CHip said:
I'm also wondering whether the caller picked mostly far-suburb or small-town locations, which is the sort of assumption that Milgram debunked. But didn't \anyone/ say "You'll never believe the crank call I got" on the managers' grapevine? Was everyone conned, or do they get enough strange calls that this wasn't remarkable?
I'm wondering whether word *has* got around, but people go ahead and do it anyway. Especially if the word has got around that the police regard the manager as a victim.
Alice said:
Julie - Job as a story about how God has little to do with individual humans' suffering? I really must read that commentary, then. An agnostic friend of mine actually centers a lot of her ideas about God around that chapter. She says it shows God is flawed and capricious, so why should she trust someone like that? I'm simplifying the argument, of course, but I had nothing to say to that, except, "We didn't focus too much on that chapter in Sunday School."
I have no idea which anthology it was in - I read it over twenty years ago. But it made quite an impact on me. :-) Job makes an awful lot of sense considered as a clue-by-four written by someone not impressed with the attitude that the poor and the sick have brought it on themselves with their sins.
Xopher wrote:
Julia, you may know that Asimov himself died of AIDS. He got it from a blood transfusion while in the hospital for a heart thing of some kind.
I knew, but had completely forgotten until you mentioned it.
I've never actually read Asimov's Guide to the Bible (although I've just checked, and yes it is in print and I'm going to order it:-), but there were snippets of Bible commentary in anthologies I *have* read. He did a fantastic job on explaining what the parable of the Good Samaritan meant. The other one I specifically remember is also pertinent to this discussion - the book of Job is basically a rebuttal of the notion that illness and misfortune is a just punishment from God for your sins. That one should be required reading for the "Christians" who say that they're not obliged to look after the poor and the hungry, because it's God's will that they're wealthy and well-fed, and others not.
I still miss that man's writing.
Phelps needs to have Matthew 22: 37-40 tattooed all over his body. Including on the inside of his eyelids.
I don't see any verse 39.5 saying "except for the faggots and [hate groups of choice] and anyone else you want to hate for being different" in *my* copy of the King James Bible. Maybe it's in a different translation.
Asimov had it right about the lesson of the Good Samaritan being lost.
I like all the suggestions, but Jordin's is the one that had me nearly falling off my chair, once I'd worked out what it actually said.
Spam - my UK ISP, Demon, started using Brightmail earlier this year. There was a bit of a problem to begin with, in that they'd asked for a spam filter, and got a spam filter plus unannounced free net nanny (and yes, the inhabitants of demon.service had enormous fun testing which words were deemed offensive...). Once that was sorted out, it was fairly successful at removing a large percentage of spam without eating real email. It's creeping up again, but it's still doing a fairly good job, considering that I was getting ~400 spams a day just before the filter was put in in February, and I'm now getting half a dozen.
I'm clearly on someone's list of potential terrorists. For the last couple of years, every single time I've gone through an American airport, I've been selected for the "random" extra-special search at the gate. Last time but one, the airline staff member at the ticket desk didn't quite manage to hide her reaction when she read whatever it was that came up on the screen after she'd scanned my ticket and passport.
Now, I can think of several reasons why I might be profiled, not least being that I was born in Belfast. But it's only *American* airports. Not British or Australian airports, or any of the points between. And occasionally I think paranoid thoughts about why that might be.
Those pictures are lovely:-)
It occurred to me yesterday that I've heard "the sky is falling" gay marriages hysteria before. When the Mixed Marriages Act was about to be abolished in South Africa. Some of the stuff about it being against God and nature, what next, marrying your dog will be legal, our society will be destroyed... it's almost identical to the reaction of some of the God-fearing Afrikaaners who genuinely believed that miscegenation was a deliberate insult to God. I hope this one proves as unstoppable - I'd like to go to the weddings of one or two of my friends who don't currently have that option.
The Ghost Town website is impressive - I ran into a link on another blog earlier today. Amazing how stuff like this spreads...
One of the things that struck me was what she said about people being afraid of something because it was indetectable - I'd heard the same thing, in almost the same words, on the NPR piece this morning for the anniversary of Three Mile Island.
Brooks, that sounds like Future Fantasy.
It closed three months after I moved to Mountain View. I was not a happy bunny :-(
The gist seemed to be rents going up, sales going down, not worth re-signing the lease.
They did some serious remodelling of the shop after taking over, including abandoning the back unit, and it was A Bit Of A Mess for a while. But once the building work was over and they'd put the shop back to rights, the remaining floor area was well stocked. There's a lot less floor area than there used to be, but it's definitely a bookshop rather than an overgrown bestsellers rack. The main reason I don't go in there is because I've had an extended fit of buying stuff that's out of print - and once I go into Book Buyers, I sort of go into a trance...
All of which has reminded me that I have been down to Castro Street twice in the last week, fully *intending* to go into Books Inc after I've done my "check stock list and report back to UK friends" tour around Book Buyers.
I rarely go into the former Printer's Inc - something to do with it being next door to a gravitational anomaly known as Book Buyers... But the last time I looked, it had a thriving sf section, it's just moved to a different part of the shop.
One of these days I'm going to have to check out the other used book shops in the Bay area. The only trouble is, to get to any of them, I have to walk past BookBuyers on my way to the station...
Interesting to see the comments on big chain vs. independent, especially by those in a position to know.
Back when I was living in the UK, my best bookshop was the local branch of Waterstones. It had a fairly reasonablely sized sf section, largely taken up with Names and franchises, but with a good sprinkling of other stuff - including quite a few imports. This was because they had an sf buyer who was actually into sf, as I was told when I asked if they could get an obscure import for me (pre-Amazon days). Apparently the guy had catalogues from *everyone* who imported sf into the UK, and loved an excuse to get yet another title in.
By way of contrast, there was the small independent chain where I enquired why something was shelved in the children's section when I knew it to have more sexual content than many parents would be happy with, and was told by the assistant that the manager considered all sf to be childish by definition and insisted on shelving it according to his prejudices. Ditto an independent bookshop.
re: Mary Messall's complaint about physics degrees and hard sf - no, it isn't compulsory. I have a degree in maths and physics, and almost everything *I* write ends up as some mutant offspring of political sf and gay porn. I'd like to write hard sf, but apparently I don't have that sort of brain...
Okay, now I've checked whether one of the ingredients is available in the US...
My preferred option for Really Really Bad Cold/Sore Throat types of feeling rotten is to make up a mug of Robinson's Orange Barley concentrate with hot water, with a couple of teaspoons of honey. Similar effect to the lemon juice and honey in hot water, but has more sugar and less acid, so a bit kinder on raw throats (and why I use Orange Barley rather than Lemon Barley). Plus soluble aspirin or soluble aspirin/codeine depending on level of pain, although the latter is not an option in the US. (Low dose co-codeine is available without a prescription in the UK and Australia.) If you want the extra vitamin C, add fresh lemon or orange juice.
Robinson's Orange Barley Water is available in the US from import stores, but if you buy it online, shop around - I was staggered by the variation in price.
As for blocked nose, sinuses, other mucous membranes, I eventually ended up buying an electric steam inhaler after Creeping Con Crud turned into antibiotic-resistent chronic sinusitis some years ago. It's a lot better than sitting there with a bowl of steaming water and a towel. It's even more effective with a crystal or two of menthol, but the steam alone is fairly good.
And knowing just how bad Creeping Con Crud can be, I hope it's showing some sign of improvement by now.
Duly noted, although that's a bit far me to go just to get Bundi - unless I'm *really* desperate. The trouble with Mountain View is that lots of shops stock it, but not all the time, and when one's out, they're all out. Not entirely unconnected with assorted Australians I know who consider corn syrup the work of Satan and have been known to clean a store out of its entire stock of Bundaberg...
delurking...
If we're going to talk about ginger beer, may I recommend Bundaberg, an Australian brewed (as opposed to "add some colouring and flavouring to soda water") ginger beer which is available in the US in Trader Joe's *some* of the time. And Bevs-n-more, and sundry other places that stock import/exotic stuff.
Not quite a trained attack ginger beer, but enough of a bite to be interesting.
The really hard mix it with that other fine product of the Bundaberg sugar industry. Personally, I think this a waste of good ginger beer.
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| 2004 | 19 |
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