T.I.B.S. Promoting Communism

Dear Conservatives:

Stop promoting Communism.

Seriously.

Look at our economic situation: we're in a recovery--a slow, jobless recovery, but the economy is nonetheless on the mend. So that's good news, but that mending won't translate into higher rates of employment for several years. What happened?

Well, we balked on stimulus. When faced with an economic crisis, we started to do what every Econ 101 textbook since the Great Depression prescribes: use government spending to counter the lack of private spending, keep the economy growing. This is pure, basic Keynesianism. There's nothing mysterious about it.

But we balked, thanks to an angry conservative movement who were find when burning money in Iraq, but couldn't stand the thought of spending it on ourselves. But how do we know that Keynesianism even works? Because it is working. In China.

China saw the crisis and reacted immediately. They had government work programs going within weeks, and they're looking at economic growth of 7-8% right now, not because they were Communists, but because they reacted swiftly and stalwartly to a threat using a widely-accepted cure. The net result is that the U.S. is sliding away as the lead economic force in the world, and China is growing into it. China is propping up Europe, not the U.S. How did we drop the ball, here?

So, to the conservatives who bitched and moaned about stimulus and bailouts and teabags, stop it. If you're going to have an opinion on economics, RTFM first! Your actions have directly resulted in Communism having a more prominent place on the world stage, and we really need you to grow up or shut up. I'll say it one more time, for those of you who aren't clear:

Conservative policies are literally promoting Communism. Knock it off.

While we're on the subject, stop making the U.S. economy a highlight reel about everything that's wrong with Capitalism. We don't produce anything (finance is not and industry, people). We don't export anything. American cars are made in Mexico for fuck's sake. And we're falling desperately behind in the technology that is changing the shape of the world economy, that is, the Internet; this is doubly embarrassing when you consider that we're the ones who invented it.

And another thing: protectionism is not capitalism. In fact, the two are pretty much mutually exclusive. Let me illustrate, this "crisis" could have been an opportunity. We could bulked up our pathetic network infrastructure, given American businesses a real chance to play in the world. But no. It's too important to get it done right--we have to leave it to the fucking telecom companies. Unless we protect them, the Internet will never thrive. Trouble is, they're not going to improve our infrastructure. No one is. So it will never get done.

Missed opportunities. Unintended consequences. A lost decade of economic growth. Ideology kills.

This is bullshit.

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Ninja Vanish

I got in my ninja costume last week for a them party this weekend. It was purchased via Amazon, and while I'm on the subject: attention retailers--"Standard" is not a size!!

I went with the "full cut", which seems to be polite costume-store-speak for "tall and/or portly". And I'm glad I did, because if that's what a "full cut" is, I would no-way-in-hell fit into a "standard". Seriously. I'm not a small man, I'm 6'2" and 1/8th of a ton (or nearly), but I'm not "portly".

Anyway, check out the picture below of me in my ninja costume.

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Coming Soon: MistCopulated (A Prequel)

It's been a long time since I've been sucked into a book--particularly a non-fiction book. The last real page-turner I can remember reading was Michael Crichton's A Case of Need, but that was years ago.

But recently I picked up the first book in Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series, and I've been thoroughly engrossed. It's contemporary epic fantasy, which is something I've never really read. I've read Tolkien, which is anything but contemporary, and I've read Pratchett, which is fantastical but more satirical than anything else. Thankfully, Mistborn is side-stepping the usual orcs and elves and dragons tripe. It exists in an imaginative world with a unique magic system and what appears to be a fairly rich history--but Sanderson doesn't drown you in back story. In fact, the slow trickle of information through the action of the story is part of what's so compelling about it.

So I'm about three-hundred pages in, which puts me near the halfway point, and I just can't put it down. And it's Saturday and I didn't feel like editorializing. So if you like fantasy, give Mistborn a look.

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Especially the Wet Floor Sign

Now this is a man after my own heart (click to enlarge):

How Do You Clean Sunshine?

We watched Sunshine Cleaning the other night, and I must say that it is a truly, truly interesting story that crumbles under poor writing and direction.

Amy Adams stars as Rose, a thirty-ish single mother of an 8-year-old, Oscar, with peculiar disciplinary problems. Her younger sister, Norah, is chronically unemployed, and her father is a widower who strings together get-rich-quick scheme after get-rich-quick scheme, none of which ever seem to pan out. Rose is scraping by as a maid and the high point of her week seems to be her "classes", that is, encounters with her married ex-boyfriend Mac. When Oscar gets kicked out of public school... again... this time for licking a teacher, Rose decides to go into the more lucrative business cleaning up bio-hazardous materials (read as: blood and such) from crime scenes, and drags her sister Norah along for the ride.

If this isn't a treatment for a black comedy, I don't know what is. Unfortunately, Sunshine Cleaning has decided to take itself seriously and it falls very flat in spite of some spirited performances and premise with real promise. This is not a review. I hated it. There. There's your review. Instead, I think Sunshine Cleaning is an excellent tutorial in how to not tell a story. In your storytelling, avoid the following pitfalls:

Also, spoilers ahead.

Unclear Progression of Plot

Let me introduce you to a little friend I call The 3-Act Formula. Act I - set up initial conflict. Act II - conflict gets worse, often with a dramatic twist. Act III - Conflict is resolved. It's formulaic, yes, but it works, and unless you have something better to replace it with, you need to use it (the only movie I can think of that really abandons this formula is Garden State, which is imminently enjoyable, but not because of its plot).

SC has no over-arching story. Conflicts arise and are dealt with, and then we wait for the next conflict to arise without any idea what it may be. Subplots are introduced and abandoned, or drag on without the characters showing any real change. Rose isn't shown getting better at her job, her quality of life doesn't improve. At one point she cuts off the affair with her ex, but that's it. The only difference between end-of-the-film Rose and start-of-the-film Rose is that she has successfully started a new business.

They needed to develop some of the minor subplots into actual story-advancing subplots. Rose and Norah are amateurs and they get called out for it. That conflict is resolved in the beginning (or so) of Act II. They lose their business because of a fire and a lack of insurance--but there's no mention of the lack of insurance. Norah collects things from a few of the houses they clean--things she was supposed to have thrown away. This is used to introduce a potential romantic interest, but as soon as the ugly truth comes out, the romantic relationship is over, end of story. Any of these things could have been turned into real subplots.

Unclear Progression of Time

Audiences need to know what's going on. How long have Rose and Norah been doing this? Have they had time to believably cultivate their business and relationships? What felt like a very long time of career development all seemed to occur between the time Rose meets a very pregnant woman and when that woman has a baby shower. It's confusing, and therefore it is also distracting.

Why not use the baby shower as a deadline. When Rose meets her pregnant friend, she gives the impression that her life is all put-together. One line of dialog would have done wonders. Ready for it? Here it is: "That baby shower is in two months, and if my life is still in shambles, I just won't be able to show my face there and embarrass myself in front of all of my old high school friends." Or some such. Couple that with a shot of a calendar during a montage and you've got it fixed.

Awkward Silences

Silence can be powerful, but more silence doesn't mean more powerful. Use dialog. Also, use music.

Confusing "Off-Beat" for "Humorous"

I get the distinct impression that Rose's father and his failed get-rich-quick schemes were supposed to serve as comic relief, but they were too weird to be funny, and in an otherwise dramatic movie, they stuck out awkwardly (dark humor is great, but it needs some light humor for balance, ya?). Some genuine comedy from time to time might have lightened the tone of the overall film, making the dramatic bits seem genuinely dramatic, and making the characters seem more endearing.

Not Knowing What The Scene Is About

At Rose and Norah's first job, they are unprepared for the situation but muscle through anyway on sheer chutzpah. We see them struggle, but we don't get to see the chutzpah. Rose never stands up for herself and says "we're professionals, we can do this", despite showing up without biohazard protection or adequate cleaners. She wreaks of amateurism but never stands up for herself.

The worst offender, though, was the "trestling" scene. Norah takes her romantic interest down to a railroad bridge, has a conversation about her mother's death, and then climbs up the bridge to "trestle", that is, to sit under the tracks as the train passes overhead, bathing in the sparks and hanging on despite the violent shaking. This action is intercut with flashback scenes--she's remembering her mother's death--remembering, not confronting. Then they go to a coffee shop, Norah makes a confession to this romantic interest that dissolves their relationship. No no no.

First off, the scene should not be about Norah's mother. It's an info-dump disguised as plot. The scene is about Norah sharing an intimate moment with an acquaintance and then, when she opens up, losing that acquaintance. But Norah and her friend converse in wide steady-cam one-shots that convey awkwardness and conflict and tension. Why not, instead, do a tight two-shot of the conversation with interspersed close-up coverage, something that implies that for this moment they are sharing the same space. Then, when Norah climbs up alone, this foreshadows the pending end of the relationship, and when she "trestles", lose the intercutting. We don't need to know exactly how her mother died. Let the conflict remain implicit.

Plot Devices That Don't Make Sense

When Rose arrives at the baby shower, she parks behind a Porsche. This is all well and good, but wealthy mothers and mothers-to-be don't drive sports coupes. Oscar's father is never mentioned. Why isn't she receiving child-support payments? Why isn't he involved in schooling decisions? Also, public schools don't kick kids out for licking the teacher--they send them to a school for troubled children. Also, a man can't sell his house and buy a custom-painted van without his daughter noticing, especially if she lives in the same city and counts on him to babysit. Do some research. Test plot devices to make sure they work. RTFM!

Conclusion

What's really funny about all this is something Abby pointed out--a lot of these problems could have been solved with some voice-over. Amy Adams describes what's going on in a scene. She points out that the wealthy wives of New Mexico drive sports cars, and then it becomes a joke, not a poorly chosen plot device that can be seen, in some lights, as humorous, if you're willing to disregard its incongruous nature. This also might have dealt with some of the awkward silences and overall heavy tone.

I could go on and on, but I think I've made enough of a point. Don't watch Sunshine Cleaning if you expect to be entertained. Watch it because it should serve as an example to others.

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Enjoy The Madness

Lots of fun things creeping around the interwebs this week. So, links.

Test your computer's power.

Or take a ride in the Helen Keller Simulator.

Or, here's a fun rap about douchebags (very NSFW, and pretty catchy).

A very wrong cartoon about our favorite paperclip.

XKCD maps out tech support for your non-tech-savvy parents/grandparents/friends.

Pop psychology is BS 101.

Don't say I never gave you nothing.

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How Would YOU Explain It?

Paul Krugman (quoting someone, I forget who... whom... yes, whom... anyway) said that economic bubbles are naturally occurring Ponzi schemes, which I'd say is a pretty fair assessment.

Anyway, between my new niece on Abby's side, the new niece coming on my side, et al, we've been up to our ears in parenting news and magazines and baby toys and baby gates, etc, etc, etc. So I've been thinking a lot about child-rearing and the nature of the relationship between parents and children and I came to a startling conclusion. I realized that childhood is a naturally occurring case of Stockholm Syndrome.

I think there might be a white paper in this.

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Socialize This!

All this talk about socialism lately has only reinforced a position I've long held: the laity have no understanding of basic economic principles. Time to fill in the gaps.

Let's get one thing abundantly clear: socialized medicine is not the same as socialism. We have lots of socialized services: police, army, education, et al, and socializing one more thing isn't going to turn us into Soviet Russia. If we Laissez-faire'd absolutely everything, our society would crumble. If we socialized everything, our society would crumble. You have to look at things case-by-case. Some things fare pretty well from mild-to-moderate government involvement, other things suffer badly from any involvement, some things absolutely need copious amounts of government involvement. Blanket prescriptions do not work.

Let's get another thing out of the way: markets don't work miracles. They don't find your car keys, cure cancer, or change Coke to Pepsi. Not literally, anyway. Markets are very good at efficiently allocating resources, that's it. Efficient resource allocation is definitely a good thing, but it's not the only thing. Sometimes resources are disregarded. Sometimes efficiency is not nearly as desirable as equity. Situations like this are called market failures in econo-speak. Now, there are various strategies throughout the first world (apart from the U.S., anyway) to guarantee health care to citizens, and they involve varying degrees of nationalization. Rather than look too hard at different plans, I'd like to discuss different types of market failures and see if Health Care fits into that broader category. Here are some situations in which the free market fails:

Externalities

An externality is something that is involved with a market transaction, but whose cost is not considered in that transaction. The classic example is leaded gasoline. You see, leaded gasoline burns better than unleaded and can be made cheaper, but produces more soot and negatively affects our health. The markets wouldn't do anything about this, though because the costs of "health" or "planet-cleanliness" weren't being factored into market actions. Efficiently allocating resources meant building cars that ran on cheaper leaded gasoline--furthermore, if a company wanted to make a cleaner-running car, they were out of luck because the added costs of non-leaded gasoline would put them out of business. No one would buy because the costs (paying more at the pump) would dwarf the benefits, i.e., making the world a healthier place. So the government stepped in and told car companies that they couldn't make lead-burning vehicles anymore. Because everyone had to switch over, the benefits were realized as health care costs for people living in urban areas began to dramatically decline.

The Market Produces Undesirable Results

Some things are more important than efficiency. The classic example is wages--if you let the market determine the wage, it is possible (and at times it's downright commonplace) to have a market-determined wage that falls below a livable level. This is why we have a minimum wage. Also, markets can fluctuate wildly. Take something like the police force--no one would ever consider a privatized police force because it's too important to our society to be governed by market fluctuations. We don't want to suddenly be cop-less because the police went out of business. Perhaps a private police force would be more efficient, but a publicly-funded police force guarantees that it will still be there if the market collapses.

Asymmetric Information

Sometimes markets result in resources being misallocated because either the buyer or the producer doesn't know enough about the transaction. Car safety is a good example--a car purchaser wouldn't know the probability that their car would explode or that a vital system would fail resulting in a catastrophic crash, but these are things that would affect their decision. So we have things like safety ratings. But sometimes the appearance can undermine the facts. Think of the recent SUV trend--they look huge and a great many people purchased them because they appeared to be safer, when they routinely scored poorly in safety tests.

The above categories are admittedly somewhat nebulous and certainly not comprehensive nor even mutually exclusive. They simply represent a broad swath of situations in which markets fail or in which they succeed but produce an undesirable success. So which of these does Health Care fit into?

I would answer d) All of the above. The potential losses to society are an externality--what if Stephen Hawking were an American under the American Health Care system? Would he have lived to make his vast contributions to science? A purely competitive market for Health Care would be disastrous--what would happen if you could only get those treatments that you could actually afford? And compare it to education or the police--why are doctors less systemically important then teachers or police officers? And in regards to both of these categories, treatment is far less effective than prevention, but treatment pays better. So we have markets skewed towards treatment, and allocating resources that way.

And as for Asymmetric information, why that is the very soul of the current debate about medical insurance. Insurers obfuscate policies or claim to offer coverage only to cancel coverage once an expensive treatment is prescribed. Patients lie about their medical histories to get cheaper coverage or don't get coverage at all while they're relatively healthy.

So, what we have is a market for health care that provides undesirable results inefficiently and doesn't disclose all the information about it. Should the government step in?

I'd say so.

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It's Sunday, Isn't It

Every year in the U.S., around 115 children are abducted by strangers, so we tell them not to talk to strangers. But did you know that every year roughly over 600 American children--that's five times as many--are molested by Catholic priests?

Don't go to church today. Do it for the children.

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Gotta Catchem All

So my weird sense of humor seems to be rubbing off on my wife. While watching True Blood, we came to a scene in which Bill the vampire is telling his girlfriend Sookie that he will protect her because he's brought on all this trouble into her life, and she rebuffs him because she chose him and knew the consequences.

And immediately Abby belts out "I choose you, Vampire-boyfriend!" as though it were some line of Pokemon that come in coffins instead of balls (her joke there, too), and we started making up names for them.

Have a good weekend, all.

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At Least The Dentist Is Kinda Cute

Don't ever get peridontitus. The disease isn't awful, per se, but one tends to get bloody gums and there's a possibility that your teeth with fall out. The treatment is absolutely effective and pretty damned unnerving. And I went through part 1 today.

They numb your for it, but it basically amounts to getting your teeth scraped below the gumline for an hour or so. This is my penance for going 13 years without a dentist's visit, so it's my own damned fault, I know. And I must say, for having gone so long between visits, I was surprised at the lack of condescending lecturing coming from the anyone in the office. So surprised, in fact, that I've recommended this dentist to my wife and best friend, both of whom have gone without seeing a dentist for several years.

Guilt trips, they don't make us floss, but they do make us skip cleanings.

Anyway, I took my ipod in hopes of starting an audiobook, but no such luck--I actually had to participate somewhat. And now I feel vaguely like I've been punched in the left side of my face. And, what's more, I get to look forward to getting punched in the right side next week. Yay.

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Also, Chicks Dig Scars

So my new guilty pleasure is Wipeout, which is now available on Hulu. In it, competitors must cross outlandish obstacle courses, and failure generally involves painfully bouncing off the course and falling fifteen feet into a pool of water. The obvious comparison to make is to Takeshi Castle or its wildly popular American localization: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.

The point of all this: pratfalls are fucking hilarious.

Wipeout is a little bit better-natured about its competition--"wiping out" often gets you time penalties rather than elimination. And by the end of the show you're narrowed down to a handful of contestants who are racing the clock for the prize. They're only winnowing their winner from a pool of 24 contestants rather than Takeshi Castle's 100. Said contestants are the bizarre gamut of everymen and everywomen that is quintessentially American: the proud, the brave, and the moderately stupid from every demographic.

No contestant manages, however, to match the sheer scripted idiocy of the hosts. It wouldn't be so bad if they told each horrible joke once, or even twice, or any number of times less than eight, really. But they don't. Any joke worth making is apparently worth making twice per segment. Yeah. Pay attention. I'm the guy with a reputation for telling awful jokes--the yardstick by which bad humor is measured--and even I think these guys are beneath me.

So, yeah. Wipeout is not a good show, not by any stretch of imagination. But it's enjoyable, because here's the thing: I find myself genuinely rooting for the players. They knew what they were getting into, and they're out there giving as much as they can. You have to admire them, really--to borrow a line from Peter Jackson: "Pain is temporary; film is forever". And they take some pain.

See above note regarding pratfalls.

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I Fail At Blog

Today's post dropped yesterday because I forget how numbers work from time to time. Sorry for the inconvenience. Play me off, keyboard cat.

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Miyazaki's Mom

So on Sunday Abby and I went to see Ponyo, the latest film from Hayao Miyazaki, the creative force behind such anime filme classics at Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and My Neighber Totoro. True to form, it's a fanciful and heart-warming tale in which a child finds something magical and some degree of environmentally-friendly adventure ensues.

Ponyo's worth seeing, by the way, although it's very much a children's movie, I think it has more of an American audience in mind. There are fewer strange Japanese cultural quirks in the background than some of his previous films. But something that really struck me about Ponyo was the tangibility of the human interactions. Sōsuke, our 5-year-old hero, has a very realistic relationship with his mother, Lisa, and behaves like a believable, normal 5-year-old placed in a strange circumstance. Lisa has a very realistic relationship with her husband. And then Liam Neeson comes out of the ocean to chase down his daughter who used to be a fish until she grew feet and began running across giant fish during a typhoon.

So, yeah...

It got me wondering why these movies are so accessible, though. They all feature magical creatures and fantastical worlds; why do we buy it? Well, we buy it because so much effort is put into the normalcy of the characters. The same day I watched Ponyo, I listened to a Writing Excuses podcast about subplots, and one point that they brought up was that subplots reinforce the credibility of the storyteller. If you make the extra effort to get the unimportant bits right, then you can gloss over the important bits and people just assume that you got those right as well--and this is extremely important in a fantastical setting.

For example, an early scene in Ponyo basically amounts to a fight between Lisa and her husband, a chip's captain. He was supposed to be home, but he's going right back out to sea and she's extremely upset. Now, the captain's being at sea is important to the plot, but the fight about him going right back out to sea is extraneous as far as the main story is concerned. It also causes the first act to drag a bit (3-Act structure is not as embedded in Japanese storytelling, so we can't really count that against them), but what is succeeds at is showing us an insight into Lisa's character. The fight is carried out in Morse Code using signal lights between a house on a cliff and a ship at sea, so words have to be chosen carefully and delivered relatively slowly. The result is a woman who still retains a lot of un-vented anger and depression who has to re-summon her strength so she can go back to taking care of her son.

Sōsuke's role in the scene is more about setting up his actions in the third act--we see how he reveres his father and how he has some basic knowledge of nautical concepts, like communicating via signal light in Morse code. Later (mild spoiler), Sōsuke pilots a small boat to go and find his mother, and it only works because of the fight scene. Not only do we believe that this 5-year-old boy could be capable of steering a small boat, but are invested in his search for his mother because we care about her as well.

It's not universal, but there's a definite trend in Miyazaki films towards setting up a believable relationship between protagonists and their parents. So when we watch My Neighbor Totoro, we see two sisters who behave and interact believably, so when they get lost and cat bus has to come and save them, we're okay with that.

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I Net-Flicked It

So today is the release date of Season 3 of Dexter on DVD, and Netflix would be sending me a disc except that they now work on Saturdays. Let me back up.

Netflix. Traditionally their warehouse was open Monday through Friday (the St. Louis warehouse, anyway). That means anything they send out typically gets to you the next day, but it gets a little tricky with the weekends. Send something back on Friday, they're not there on Saturday so they get it on Monday and send you your next disc, which you get on Tuesday. This works out well enough because Tuesday is new release day, and if you want to catch a new release on the day it comes out, you have to time it pretty carefully. Make sure you send something back on Friday or Saturday, they'll send you out the new release on Monday and you'll get it on Tuesday.

Only now the warehouse is operating on Saturdays. On the one hand this is great, because now you can get a movie on Monday, but if you send back a disc on Friday expecting to get a new release (like I did last Friday), you've missed the window.

I'm not complaining, just commenting that now the system is slightly different, so we have to approach it differently if we want to get the most out of it. It's changed before. It'll change again. Who knows, in five years will we even be sending discs through the mail or will it have been completely supplanted by streaming video?

Time will tell, but my lips are sealed.

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Every Every Song Ever

Coming up on another string of songs tied together by vocabulary. We're on the "Every's". Here's what's coming up:

• The Police - Every Breath You Take
• Nine Inch Nails - Every Day Is Exactly The Same
• Lauryn Hill - Every Ghetto, Every City
• The Police - Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
• Sugar Ray - Every Morning
• Five Iron Frenzy - Every New Day (plus hidden track The Godzilla Song)
• Gorillaz - Every Planet We Reach Is Dead
• Monty Python - Every Sperm Is Sacred
• L.T.D. - (Every Time I Turn Around) Back In Love Again

And then a stretch of "Everybody's"

• Chic - Everybody Dance
• Nikka Costa - Everybody Got Their Something
• Billy Joel - Everybody Has A Dream
• Wang Chung - Everybody Have Fun Tonight
• R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts
• Queens Of The Stone Age - Everybody Knows That You Are Insane
• Don McLean - Everybody Loves Me, Baby
• Evanescence - Everybody's Fool
• Rozalla - Everybody's Free (To Feel Good)
  
• The Kink's - Everybody's Gonna Be Happy
• The Beatles - Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey
• Harry Nilsson - Everybody's Talkin'

And finish it off with a hodgepodge "Everyday", "Everyone", "Everything", "Everytime", and "Everywhere".

• Pspazz - Everyday
• Sheryl Crow - Everyday Is A Winding Road
• Moby - Everyday It's 1989
• Nathan Fillion (as Captain Hammer) - Everyone's A Hero (from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog)
• Everyone's A Little Bit Racist (from Avenue Q)
• Limp Bizkit - Everything (a mostly-instrumental extended jam that is fabulous in spite of being 16:27 long; less Fred = better music)
• Depeche Mode - Everything Counts (Live)
• Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place
• Lauryn Hill - Everything Is Everything
• Phoenix - Everything Is Everything
• Moby - Everything Is Wrong
• Neil Patrick Harris (as Dr. Horrible) - Everything You Ever (from Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog)
• Weird Al Yankovic - Everything You Know Is Wrong
• Bush - Everything Zen
• Coldplay - Everything's Not Lost
• Moby - Everytime You Touch Me
• Fleetwood Mac - Everywhere
• Five Iron Frenzy - Everywhere I Go
• The Follow - Everywhere You Fall

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WTFY? (NSFW)

Has anyone else noticed a plethora of sites called "Fuck Yeah, ____!"?

Abby follows on called Fuck Yeah, Puppies! and I follow Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts!, but I was somewhat shocked today to see a link to a Fuck Yeah, Emma Watson! site. She's not alone either, there's also a Fuck Yeah, Neil Patrick Harris!, Fuck Yeah, Ryan Gosling!, and Fuck Yeah, Anne Hathaway!, or, for those who like celebs but abhor specificity, there's Fuck Yeah, Hollywood!

Is a little WTF, in order?

Check out the Fuck Yeah, Directory! on Tumblr (which seems to host 99% of these) and you can find Fuck Yeah, Desserts!, Fuck Yeah, Facts!, Fuck Yeah, Sharks!, and a whole host of Fuck-Yeah-related oddities.

I don't quite know how to respond to all this. Part of me thinks its childish and churlish, but part of me kind of digs it. Actually, part of me really digs it; it's like LOLs with attitude. Part of me sees all these sites and just wants to shout out...

Well, you can guess.

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The Case Against Christ, pt 7: Jesus vs The Lizard Men

This is the conclusion of a week-long series. I encourage you to start at the beginning.

There's a strange conspiracy theory out there that Lizard People rule the Earth. No, really. And it's practitioners are more numerous and--despite evidence to the contrary--normal than you might think. They pieced this theory together from a wide diversity of ideas, some drawn from ancient art or history, some from cross-cultural archetypes, some even from the Old Testament. Then, one man collated all the existing beliefs into a single story about how the Lizard Men are the rulers of mankind, and the story and its variants have been repeated and repeated and repeated.

Now removed the phrase "the Lizard Men" from the above paragraph and replace it with "Jesus Christ".

Still seem implausible?

I was asked why I didn't believe that Jesus existed, and it comes down to the New Testament. The New Testament is a disjointed collection of teachings and stories that takes place largely in a world that doesn't exist today--a semi-agrarian, semi-nomadic world of demons and miracles and covenants. It tells the story of our salvation, but it can't be bothered to consistently agree with itself or even settle on a coherent theology. So which is the most likely? Which takes the smallest leap of faith?

1. The New Testament, flawed as it is, is the work of an infinitely perfect God and his infinitely perfect son.

2. The New Testament, flawed as it is, is the work of many people working mostly in concert, and it ultimately focuses on a single man with no real place in secular history whose ministry affected vast groups in completely disparate and ultra-isolated ways.

3. The New Testament, flawed as it is, is the work of many people working independently and with different focuses, but as ideas spread similar ones glommed together, philosophical and spiritual communities merged, and from the din appeared an individual movement that invented its own singular history and founder to give itself identity, legitimacy, legacy, and a glimmer of hope in a world that is mighty shy on hope.

I can't speak for everyone, but personally, I go with the third one.

As I mentioned on Sunday, I owe much of this to the work of Earl Doherty and if you have more questions about the Christ Myth Theory, I point you to his website and his book. The website is more current, but the book is more thorough. It's dense, but well sourced and well argued--there are worse ways to spend $23.

Thank you for indulging me for another week-long diatribe. Tomorrow, you will be returned to your regularly scheduled editorializing.

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The Case Against Christ, pt 6: Growing a Gospel

This is part six of seven in a week-long series. I encourage you to start at the beginning.

Yesterday we talked about Q and how all the gospels are, at some level, redactions of Mark. Today we get tautological. Jesus existed. Or he didn't. Those two choices should just about cover us. Let's examine Mark and ask ourselves what we would expect if Jesus existed and whether or not Mark fits that bill.

If Jesus existed, you would expect there to be eye-witness accounts. Instead, we have eye-witness account, sans the "s", as in singular. One. Uno. No one else writes about Jesus's life, and certainly no one mentions the passion narrative before Mark or afterward until the middle of the second century (with a few caveats, of course--Paul writes about Jesus, but only in a spiritual context and he gives no details of the passion story, and the few non-Christian references are easily debunked: e.g., read the full treatment on Josephus here). Mark is generally dated to around 70 CE or later, so if he was an eye-witness he waited at least forty years to write anything down. But maybe there were other eye-witnesses, maybe Mark just assembled the stories.

That's not very likely either. Consider a book that is an oral tradition, like Genesis. Genesis is a patchwork of tales told in different styles with different voices and structures--Chapter 1 is a creation myth, Chapter 2 is a totally different creation myth. Throughout Genesis there are narratives mixed with hymns mixed with sermons. Mark, by comparison, is downright literary. It has a narrative structure that reflects an author's decisions. Jesus performs two sets of five miracles, each set starts with a water-cross (walking on water or calming the sea) and ends with feeding a multitude. Peter's betrayal isn't told as a single story but is interrupted, rather, by Jesus' trial before the Sanhedrin. In this way, Mark contrasts Peter's cowardice against Jesus' own bravery at trial. These are literary devices. Mark has recurring themes and conflicts which are interwoven throughout the story and all resolve at the climax: the passion narrative. In short, the book of Mark is exactly what you would expect from a single person telling a story that is largely of his/her own creation.

So if the story elements didn't come from history, whence did they come?

Mark began a tradition that has lived on in Christianity--synthesizing and assimilating belief systems into a new creation. The Catholic church (remember that "Catholic" means "universal") notoriously co-opted Pagan festivals, figures and traditions into orthodoxy. Likewise, Mark built his gospel from the pieces that were at his disposal. He took a few broad swaths from Paul: there was a Jesus and he was crucified for the salvation of mankind--the idea of a Lord's Supper is also evident in Paul (although he never goes into details about what it is, and communal meals were common amongst all religions of the day). He took some of the teaching motifs from antecedents of the Q community. He based the themes and structure on a long-standing archetype: the suffering and valediction of a righteous innocent, the same story/character arc found in the stories of Joseph and his coat of many colors, or Esther, or Daniel, or the apocryphal stories of Tobit, Susanna, and 2 & 3 Maccabees, and others.

The details echo the Old Testament, but not in a fulfillment-of-prophecy sort of way. For example, at the foot of the cross, soldiers cast lots for Jesus' clothes. This is almost a word-for-word quotation of Psalm 22: 18, which reads "They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing". Psalm 22 is not a prophecy, it's a hymn of anguish. The opening line is "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" which Jesus again quotes while on the cross. It's not a stretch of the imagination that a historical Jesus would have quoted a hymn of anguish while in a state of anguish. It seems odd that Roman soldiers would choose to act out the same hymn, however. Other examples abound. What we have here is midrash, the Hebrew tradition of using scriptures to tell a story in modern context so as to find new truths and new relevancy. As such, it is unlikely to have any basis in reality.

Even John Dominic Crossan, one of the leading scholars in the quest for a historical Jesus, admits that the literary/midrashic nature of the passion story undermines its historical feasibility. Crossan, a Jesus biographer, has voiced suspicions that Jesus ever went to Jerusalem, let alone died there. He posits that the truths of Jesus's death were lost to the early Christian community, so they went to scripture to fill in the gaps in their origin story. But this is all hinged on the assumption that there was ever a Jesus to forget.

By exposing the content of Mark's gospel as midrash, we can divine (if you will) his purpose. Mark wrote his gospel as a teaching tool, a magnificent fable using familiar scriptures and archetypes as story elements, and incorporates the cultural zeitgeist of several communities. More than that, it's a story of hope and inspiration to a people that were beaten, leaderless, and scattered. He wrote the 1st century Jewish equivalent of Star Wars, is what I'm saying, with just a touch of The Shawshank Redemption. It's entirely plausible that he never expected it to be read as a literal account at all. But the story was so well-received that it was told and retold, expanded upon by Matthew and Luke, and accepted by the growing Christian community as--if you'll pardon the expression--gospel.

Tomorrow, we wrap things up.

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The Case Against Christ, pt 5: Q and The Gospels

This is part five of seven in a week-long series. I encourage you to start at the beginning.

Yesterday I spoke at length about the Jerusalem Tradition of Jesus, today I will talk about the Galilean Tradition; what is Q and where did it come from?

The Q Theory was developed as a response to the Synoptic Problem surrounding the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (and to a lesser extent John). Scholars overwhelming dismiss the idea that the Gospels were actually written by St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John or that they were written by eye-witnesses, contrary to what's taught in Sunday School. The actual documents claim neither direct witness nor attribution--so even if every word of the gospels were true, we could still comfortably argue that they weren't written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. That said, as shorthand people typically refer to the author of Mark as, simply, Mark, the author of Luke as Luke, etc, and I will follow suit. The Synoptic Problem is the issue that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the same story, often telling similar passages with the exact same wording, but with substantial differences in chronology, theme, context, and theology. Q is an attempt to explain this problem, and it is one that has been widely accepted.

Mark was undoubted written first--it's the shortest Gospel, it has the most primitive language and least developed theology, it leaves out important events like the nativity story (the oldest versions do not even include a resurrection). Almost all of the material in Mark is in Matthew and Luke, with some of it slightly updated to reflect the theme and style of the new author. However, there's a great deal of overlap between what Matthew and Luke didn't take from Mark. These overlapping elements, sometimes sayings, sometimes stories or parables, are found in completely different contexts and orders, but again, often with the exact same wording. It would appear that Matthew and Luke both had another document as a source that they used to redact Mark, and this document is called Q, from the German "quelle" which means "source". It's worth noting that no surviving copy of Q exists, but we know what it says even if we don't know the exact order of its contents--it's a collection of sayings and stories and it probably best represents the undiluted ministry of Jesus. Such "sayings gospels" were not uncommon in this time period.

So if we know of a collection of sayings and stories and parables attributed to or about Jesus, that would be a pretty strong argument that Jesus actually existed, right? Well, in theory, yes. But let's take a closer look at what Q has to say.

Scholars have identified three strata within Q, although admittedly the line between Q2 and Q3 is a bit fuzzy. Q1, however, is a clear descendant of Greek Cynicism. The Cynics (and by "Cynics" I mean the students of that philosophy, as opposed to every-man-over-thirty-as-described-by-himself) rejected ethics and morality and materialism, instead offering down-to-Earth advice for clean living. Q2 and Q3 (Q3 is essentially an set of allegorical combinations of related elements from Q2) are rooted in Jewish apocalypticism. If the entire Q were the preachings of a single man, why does this man preach both asceticism and apocalypticism? The two don't really go together. Why offer advice on living a good life if the world is going to end within a generation? And why don't they make any mention of salvation by crucifixion? That is, after all, the central dogma of Christianity, isn't it? If Q is the best representation of Jesus's ministry, why didn't he talk about his pending death that would save all of mankind?

Furthermore, why are elements from Q1 (and only Q1) so neatly tied to non-canonical documents either obliquely, as in the Didache, or directly as in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. The Coptic (or Gnostic, not to be confused with the Infancy) Gospel of Thomas was discovered in Egypt in 1945. About 1/3 of it is the Q1 stratum, but the rest of it is a development of proto-Gnostic theology that is attributed to Jesus but is at complete odds with Christianity. It's a strong case that the Q both existed and was stratified. It's also highly likely that an even earlier version of Q was used by Mark when he was assembling his gospel. It's also thought that when Mark was being disseminated, that it was distributed alongside the Q, which prompted two writers (who were not working in concert) to combine the two into a more complete narrative that also included newly accepted elements of the mythology, such as a virgin birth.

Let's be clear. We've known for about two centuries now that, in spite of the fact that there are four canonical documents detailing the life of Jesus, there is only one narrative: Mark. Everything comes from Mark. The details of Jesus' life all originate in Mark. Matthew contain about 90% of Mark verbatim alongside the contents of Q, and some of his own embellishments (Matthew's priority seems to be tying Jesus to the Old Testament while simultaneously blaming the Jews for his death). Luke contains over 50% of Mark, including all the basic structural elements, the contents of Q, and embellishments that focus on Jesus as a teacher. Even John--whose purpose, language, and theology are wholly different--takes the structure of Mark and keeping Markan structural narrative choices, some of which make far more sense in Mark than they do in John. At the end of the day, it all comes down to Mark.

So what about Mark? He wrote the story down for the first time--doesn't that imply that there was a man who lived the story? Why did he write it? How did he write it? What would he have to gain by making up a narrative?

That discussion begins tomorrow.

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The Case Against Christ, pt 4: Paul's Christ

This is part four of seven in a week-long series. I encourage you to start at the beginning.

Yesterday I talked about the emergence of Greek mystery cults emerging from the trying times and the blending of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and local cultures. Today, we talk about Paul.

Paul was very much a product of his age: a Roman citizen, Jewish by birth, and Greek by culture. Out of the entire New Testament, the Pauline epistles were the first to appear--appearing before some parts of the Old Testament showed up in written form. Paul was the most important force the spread of Christianity, and I posit (rather, others posit and I agree) that he did so because Christianity was ultimately his own creation. I present two scenarios and I leave it to you to determine which is more likely.

In the first scenario, Paul used a process called midrash to birth his own mystery cult, incorporating ideas of Logos and Sofia with elements purged from scriptures: the Son of Man (an idea rooted in the book of Daniel), and the Hebrew Messiah (which is not the same thing as the Son of Man, at least to the Jews). He gives this Messiah the Greek title "Christ", which echoes the Jewish tradition of anointment ("Christ" literally means "anointed one") and chooses a rather obvious name for this savior: "Jesus" in Greek or "Yeshua" in Hebrew. "Yeshua" means "Yahweh saves" and is anglicized as "Joshua", which happens to be the name shared the Jewish hero who led the Hebrews to the promised land of Canaan. "Jesus Christ" basically translates to "Savior King".

In the second scenario, Paul is taken in by (what would have been to him) a cult surrounding a man named Jesus whom he never met, who shows up in Jerusalem and is abducted and executed by authorities for reasons that are not made clear to the people of Jerusalem. Paul then becomes this new religion's chief apologist. He writes to many cities and preaches to gentiles and Jews alike, despite the fact that the notion of a physical man-as-god would have been patently detestable to any practicing Jew, including Paul himself.

Add to his that neither Paul nor his followers seem to have the slightest interest in the life of Jesus or the content of his ministry. Paul travels to Jerusalem once for two weeks during his entire career, and he does so to get to know Peter better, not to visit Holy places or to try and meet with Jesus's surviving family. Neither Paul nor his followers quote Jesus; they make only scant references to him as a living person, and many of these are suspect (II Thessalonians, for example, contains the only reference in all the epistles to Pilate, but it comes as an interjection in the middle of the hymn and has been discounted by most scholars as a likely interpolation after-the-fact).

They use phrases that could be seen as referring to a living Jesus but could just as easily be seen as not: Paul speaks of Jesus "in the flesh", but uses an awkward phrasing in the original Greek which is better translated "according the flesh", using language more in line with the Greek mystery cults. Phrases like "take up your cross" could just as easily be colloquialisms as references to a historical event. Neither Paul nor his followers make any reference to Judas, choosing instead to quote the Old Testament when the speak of betrayal or the the murder of kings.

They speak frequently of Jesus's death and crucifixion and ascension, but never the passion narrative. There is no mention of Gethsemane or Golgatha or even Jerusalem. It's as if Paul and his followers never thought of Jesus has having existed on Earth. In fact, the author of Hebrews refers to Jesus in 8:4a by saying "if he were on earth, he would not be a priest", implying a) that he was never on Earth, and b) that he didn't preach.

So these are our choices: either Paul preached a real Jesus but ignored his entire ministry, or he preached a mythical Jesus who had no ministry and his teachings were later interpreted as being about a real person. I favor the latter.

So where did this history come from? Tomorrow we begin talking about the gospels.

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The Case Against Christ, pt 3: The Mystery Cults

This is part three of seven in a week-long series. I encourage you to start at the beginning.

For most of history, religion has been a tool of the state. From ancient Egypt to modern-day North Korea, the gods have been intricately tied to the ruling classes and more or less bounded by the territories ruled by those classes. When one nation conquered it's neighbor, it was assumed that the conquering nation's gods had defeated the gods of the neighbor state. This notion of religion-as-nationalism became corrupted when the Hebrews were conquered by the Assyrians and Babylonians in the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. During the resulting diaspora, people without a country maintained their heritage and carried it with them to foreign lands. Then, in the middle of the 4th century BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the known world but changed very little of it. He exported Greek culture and populations without displacing local rulers, then promptly died and left the Empire to collapse. By the time the Romans--who were generally quite tolerant of local cultures (so long as they paid their taxes)--entered the picture, the known world was a hodgepodge of cultures and beliefs systems that had all been racked by a succession of conquests.

Here we see the emergence of religion as a personal--rather than political--phenomenon. Cultures spread by diffusion rather than conquest. Because it no longer reflected the will of the state's leaders, religion adapted to fill the needs of its patrons, and this need was, first and foremost, for solace from a turbulent and unpredictable life. Suddenly, the ancient world found itself ankle-deep in traveling healers and mystics, promising a better life to any who would join the cause.

The first of these personal religions were extensions of Greek philosophy, notably Platonism, in which more perfect forms existed in the heavens above--literally in the sky. Other prevalent concepts included the Logos of Stoicism, an intercessor that connects man to god (the influence is all but undeniable, we see Logos--literally "word"--being referenced in the opening of John's Gospel). Stoicism is particularly noteworthy for its use of allegory in divining the will of God, a practice carried on by Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish mystic living in Egypt prior to Jesus's ministry. Philo had developed the Logos philosophy and tied it into the Jewish "Sofia", or the feminine personification of Wisdom, an idea that may have translated later into the concept of a Holy Spirit.

Far from being exempt from the goings on of this age, the Jews were exemplary. The Hebrews had defined themselves as being an oppressed culture--from the days of Egyptian captivity to the Babylonian Exile. They would constantly bicker with the Romans and resisted attempts by other cultures to assimilate them or with them (which is not to imply that they were, in any way, immune). They brought to us the concept of a Messiah--a Jewish king who would violently overthrow the tyrants and escort the Jews to their rightful role as Yahweh's chosen people. They also originated the concept of the Son of Man, an idiom used in Judaism to identify self or all of humanity. Despite their isolationism, Jewish culture was blended by such individuals as Philo, who would take non-Jewish philosophical approaches to the Hebrew texts.

After Philo, Orpheus created what may have been the first Greek mystery cult centered around Dionysus. According to the poems of Orpheus, Dionysus descended from the uppermost level of heaven to the lowest level of heaven, in which everything in heaven is a perfected mirror of what goes on upon the Earth. Dionysus was tortured by demons and murdered only to have his body burned and the ashes spread over all mankind. Dionysus would then attempt to reclaim his body by reaching out, imparting hidden knowledge upon those who had inherited his ashes into their being, offering them a conduit to heaven by participation in sacred rituals (one can see that in addition to being proto-Christian, Orpheus's Dionysus was proto-Scientologist).

This is all true, by the way.

We see here the establishment of the pattern for many salvation cults: a god descends to the lowest level of heaven, is sacrificed by demons "according to the flesh" and then resurrects and ascends back to the highest plane of heaven, providing passage for those who followed him by means of some ritual. The rituals and their implications were given to the founders of these religions by some divine secret knowledge. Typically the mystery cults were considered hidden revelations by those who participated (note the ties to Gnosticism).

That the savior gods are sacrificed by demons is significant, because demons were an extremely popular concept in 1st century Palestine (and throughout the Roman empire). People believed that the world, the sky in particular, was filled with demons, and they blamed demons for every unfortunate event in a person's life, from illness to accident. They featured heavily in all of the mystery cults and are featured prominently in all of the gospels. This is a bit of an embarrassment for the New Testament, because demons are not mentioned at all in the Old Testament and are no longer a part of modern culture since we've discovered things like germs.

So it is evident (at least to me) that Christianity was heavily influenced by the religious zeitgeist of its time, but is it possible that Christianity is purely a product of its time? Could Paul's Christ was simply another mystery cult? And if it's possible, is it likely? We'll discuss that tomorrow.

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The Case Against Christ, pt 2: Scholars v Believers

This is part two of seven in a week-long series. I encourage you to start at the beginning.

The Christ Myth Theory is ultimately rooted in the Historical Jesus movement, a segment of biblical scholarship that has attempted to root out what the actual historical Jesus Christ would have been like taking into account what we know of the time period and interpreting the surviving texts that concern this person. Biblical scholarship varies substantially from what most Christians believe about Christ. Fundamentally, Christians believe that Jesus was exactly who he claimed to be: the Son of God, the savior of all mankind, and the fulfillment of the Jewish Messianic prophecies. Scholars, on the other hand, believe that Jesus was a man, perhaps even a great man, whose teaching movement was so influential that he was recast by history as a god. Seekers of this historical Jesus, notably Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, will differentiate between a pre-Easter Jesus and a post-Easter Jesus.

Scholars believe that about a fourth of the things attributed to Jesus in the gospels are historically likely to have happened, but the miraculous happenings such as the birth and resurrection were fictitious events appended to the life of a great teacher to make him seem even greater. Such things are pretty common, actually--many founders of ancient religions are given dramatic birth stories, from the simply incredible (a la Moses) to the out-and-out miraculous (a la The Buddha). In fact, most of the elements of Jesus' life appear to have been lifted from the "lives" of religious figures who pre-dated Jesus, including Horus, Dionysus, and Mithras. The early church would teach that these other stories had actually been planted by Satan to disrupt the faith of Jesus' followers.

This illustrates another key difference in the approaches taken by Christians vs those of scholars towards wringing truth from the Bible: Scholars are willing to consider non-canonical documents in their quest to assemble a historical Jesus, Christians tend to dismiss these as heretical. There are roughly 80 "gospels" that we know existed and perhaps twenty that we have all or part of. Perhaps the most important of these is the theoretical document Q, which was derived from Matthew and Luke (and Mark, indirectly--there will be more details about this later in the week), which represents a collection of teachings that scholars believe can be correctly attributed to Jesus, more or less. Scholars dismiss most of John (and all of Acts, they regard it as a propaganda peace that was probably written in the early second century) as not being historically reliable (side note: Acts and John are hardly "thrown out", because their existence can tell us something about the culture of the movement at that time, regardless of their historical accuracy). What's left, the actual ministry of Jesus, is referred to as the Galilean Tradition, and supposedly paints the most complete portrait of an historical Jesus.

The other side of the equation deals with epistles of Paul (who is mentioned in Acts, but again, the stories told about him in that book--including the conversion on the road to Damascus--are not considered historically reliable). Out of the entire New Testament, scholars believe that Paul's writings were the first to be written. Of the 13 epistles attributed to him, scholars believe that seven of them were probably written by him. This is referred to as the Jerusalem Tradition, because Paul's writings are almost exclusively focused on Jesus' death, which would have happened in Jerusalem. The name is misleading, however, because Paul was not active in Jerusalem, only traveled there once, and never wrote about visiting any of the holy places. And here we come to the main issue that bible scholars are trying to reconcile. Paul seemed to have no interest in the life of Jesus. Conversely, the Galilean Tradition (as outlined in the Q document) seems to have no interest the Jesus as a Messianic figure.

Scholars believe that Jesus greatly influenced these two communities profoundly but in completely different ways, and that these communities managed to stay totally insulated from each other for the 30+ years. The Christ Myth Theory is an alternative hypothesis to explain the existing data: that Paul's Christ and the Jesus of Q are two (or more) separate figures who were later redacted into a single founder. As the separate movements merged and formed a basis of common orthodoxy going forward, an origin was established and all existing documents and lore were interpreted or re-interpreted through the lens of that new origin.

It's also worth pointing out that, despite its roots in biblical scholarship, the Christ Myth Theory has not been accepted by the wider scholar community and has some very different ideas about how things fit together. Wikipedia has a fantastic chart breaking down the differences in the three perspectives, and you will see first difference is in the origination of ideas behind the movement. Doherty articulates this as well, noting that biblical scholarship starts at the assumption of a historical Jesus rather than arriving at that conclusion.

So how does this no-Jesus thing work, exactly? Well, it helps to understand what was going on in religion at that time. Tomorrow: the nature and origins of the Mystery Cults.

The Case Against Christ, pt 1: Introduction

This is part one of seven in a week-long series.

So I let slip a while back that I believed Jesus to have been not an actual human being but rather the creation of the man now known as St. Paul. I've been asked to elaborate. What follows is an argument against the existence of a Jesus as the founder of Christianity--this hypothesis is called the "Christ Myth Theory", and I will be going into some detail about some of its arguments. Much of this is based on the book The Jesus Puzzle by Earl Doherty (which is, itself, mercilessly bibliographed), but there will be a little flavor of me coming through. Since so much of this is coming from Doherty, I don't plan on giving many citations. Also, this topic is ridiculously complex and the lengthy overview that will take up this week hardly skims the surface. So, for further reading on any of this, check out Doherty's book or his website.

The meat of the argument will begin tomorrow, but today I will start this off with a few caveats. First off, we know very little about what actually happened in the first century in Jewish Palestine. We can be reasonably certain, for instance, that there was a man named Paul who preached Christianity between the years 30 and 60 CE. We know from other sources about some of the historical goings on of the time periods--for example, a failed Jewish uprising that occurred from 67-70 CE that ultimately resulted in the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. But any study of this time period ultimately comes down to a perusal of ancient documents, and any such study is going to be subject to the biases of those interpreting those documents and the data therein.

It's worth noting that the New Testament was written in a time before punctuation or the practice of putting spaces between words. As Marcus Borg has pointed out, when Jesus stood trial before the Sanhedrin and was asked if he was the king of the Jews, his response is translated "I am", but it could equally have been translated "Am I?" We have absolutely zero way of knowing from the text which is correct. But since we assume that Jesus was, in fact, king of the Jews, we translate that word as "I am". In this way, our preconceptions about the passage effect the way we choose to read it. This is a benign example; Jesus had already claimed to be the messiah, so we decide that he would more likely answer the question directly than to retort with dry wit. Other examples are less benign, such as Paul's use of the phrase "according to the flesh", which meshes well with Doherty's arguments but is rendered "in the flesh" by believers because that translation matches a believer's assumptions.

Across the board, scholarly assumptions are going to differ from those of believers. Scholars tend to date the book of Mark to around the time of the Jewish uprising of 67-70 CE because, in it, Jesus refers to the destruction of the temple. If you believe that there was a real Jesus who could prophecy the future, then it stands to reason that Mark could have been written before the events it describes. If you do not share that belief, then it does not make sense to date that Gospel before the late 60's CE, some forty years after Jesus's death in 29 CE.

In short, this is an overview of an intellectual argument and not, repeat NOT, an attempt to persuade anyone of anything. What we will see time and again is that if you look at the data, it's not conclusive, but it is suggestive--and what it suggests is going to be informed by the biases you bring to the table. So, starting tomorrow, we will begin the road to an alternate hypothesis, one that I find quite compelling, one that is rooted in modern biblical scholarship and Doherty's on work in languages, a case--if you will--against Christ.

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Google Stuff

Two Google-related things you should check out if you have the opportunity.

The first is the new beta release of Google Chrome which came out Thursday. There are some major tweaks under the hood, including support for HTML 5 and a Javascript engine with about 30% more efficiency than their standard already stupidly-fast Javascript engine. Additionally, the new tab page has been reworked. Previously is just showed you the 9 (or so) pages that you frequent the most. Now it only shows you 8 of them, but you can drag-and-drop them, delete them, or just stick them so they stay were they are (regardless of your surfing activity). And, because it's Google, there are now themes you can apply. While it's a superior browser to IE8 or Firefox, it's still somewhat lacking in that it doesn't have the extensibility of Firefox and it still doesn't run on Mac, but if you have a Windows machine and haven't tried Chrome yet and don't mind running beta software (read as: "don't mind filing bug reports if major bugs come up"), it's worth a look.

The second has been around for a while, but I saw it for the first time today. It's called "Let Me Google That For You". Suppose someone is bugging you with an obvious question. Rather than looking it up and sending them the relevant information, point your browser at LMGTFY.com, type in the query that this person should search (for example: google chrome beta), and it will generate this link which you can send on to the person in question. When you open the link, you get a mildly condescending sequence that, having chastised you, runs the search for you.

Pretty amusing.

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Discourse, Datcourse, Politics, Shmolitics

What has happened to political discourse? We used to discuss issues, right? Nowadays, we have two groups who define themselves as being opposed to the other. If the Democrats put out a law, the Republicans will oppose it on principle, and vice versa, regardless of the quality or tenor of legislation being introduced. They hate each other, and this is all rooted to a cheap shot some campaign strategist made thirty-odd years ago, accusing the opposition of being a "Washington insider" for actually living in DC despite serving a state or district that was somewhere else.

Today, most congressmen live in their home states or districts and commute to DC, where they put in their three or four days a week. Consequently, they don't know each other, don't lunch with each other, don't have barbecues with each other. They are so concerned with not appearing as "Washington insiders" that they are all, in fact, outsiders, answerable only to their constituents and not to their colleagues.

No wonder they hate each other. No wonder it's so difficult to pass anything but the most toothless legislation. There are, of course, a few exceptions, but they are growing rarer and rarer, and I believe that the situation has gotten substantially worse in the last thirty years or so. Think about it, our entire infrastructure is thirty-years-old or more. You could never build a highway today. You couldn't wi-fi or fiber up the country--it would take too long. Power would change hands before it could get finished and the project would get scrapped completely or bastardized into someone else's pet project.

Government has grown ineffective, and if a viewpoint can't be summed up on a bumper sticker, it doesn't count. And then there's the lies...

Look at the discussions on health care. Town hall meetings have devolved into shrill shouting matches. Seniors are convinced that the Medicare that they subscribe to is completely divorced from socialized medicine, and that the Obama administration is going to ask them how they want to die. Really? Someone is telling these lies. Someone is telling frightened, elderly people that their president intends to preside over their deaths.

What kind of person makes up a story like that for nothing but political gain? The same people who called Bill Clinton a murderer, who accused John Kerry of firing on his own troops.

We were the paragon, once. We were a shining city on a hill. We have become despicable. God help us all.

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Politics and Family

So my dad has apparently talked about moving to Canada. I don't think he's serious, and I can't say I don't relate (Abby and I had the same conversation and even did a little preliminary research during the Bush administration). And this is all hearsay anyway, so it might not even be explicitly true.

That said, I hope he's not driven to Canada by he aversion to socialized medicine, because he'd be in for a nasty surprise once he got there.

My father is a very smart man who has bought into some not-terribly-smart ideas. He's convinced that any Democratic president is going to try to take his guns away, doubly so of the Obama administration (despite no action that direction from the White House and repeated assertions that it's not on the agenda). He once told me that the reason Canadians have a higher life expectancy is because their socialized health care is so bad that they're healthier by natural selection.

Makes more sense than Bill O'Reilly's explanation, but not much.

This ties into a larger problem: political discourse has broken down. My father is not a party hard-liner (he's much more Libertarian than Republican) and he's not stupid and he at least tries to be informed about issues that are relevant to him, but you can't engage in a real debate about issues because everything degrades into cheap shots and ad hominem attacks. And all he knows are the sound bites because that's all anyone ever hears.

People are consistently complaining that they don't want their hospitals run like the post office without ever pausing to consider that the post office is run pretty well. I mean, would you rather your hospital was run like the cable company?

More on this later.

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Sanitized Life

Watch closely as logic fails.

People put on different faces in public--sanitizing our lives for the benefit of those around us. I don't talk to my mother about religion. I don't talk to my father about politics. I don't complain about my office in front of my boss. I would not gripe about my wife to my children (if I had children). For each person I interact with, there is a set of information to which they are privy.

It would naturally follow, then, that the more people you are interacting with at once, the smaller that set of information becomes, because it must contain and only contain that which is safe to share with everyone. Following that logic, then, the cyber-self, the one that we put out there on the internets, should be the tiniest subset, the most highly sanitized version of ourselves because it is visible to everyone in the world. One would think.

The truth is that no one actually does this. The "veil of anonymity" that defined the interwebz in the mid-90's has carried over to the Web 2.0 sphere, the world of social networking. Despite that fact that someone may have 113 pictures of his or herself freely available on the web, they will still operate from behind that veil of anonymity, at least until they realize that potential employers do, in fact, know how to use Google.

I bring this up because my mother is now on Facebook.

My facebook persona is, perhaps, a bit more sanitized than my blog is, and my blog is already fairly cleaned, despite what you may think. There are a number of topics about which I simply will not blog, incidents that will only refer to obliquely, etc, because I'm aware that I'm posting all of this for the whole world to see. So this is less a journal than it is a lengthy editorial page, and that's all well and good. It's nice to have a place to pick fights and wax philosophical about world events.

I'm just not sure how comfortable I would be if I knew my mother was reading my obscenity-laced-anti-god-rants. I don't feel compelled to hide or delete any of this, but I have rather enjoyed the luxury of not having to have that particular conversation with her. Thankfully, my mother has no intention of friending me on Facebook or reading my blog--she openly and consciously enjoys not knowing too much about her children or their personal lives (ditto her students, none of whom will be on her friend's list).

And that's a decision I respect, and not just because it extends the life of the aforementioned luxury.

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Go Joe!

With G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra openning this weekend, you may be as stunned as I at the buzz around this film. For all the horrible rumors, that it had received the lowest ever test screening score in the history of Paramount, or that the director had been fired (which turned out to not be true), the buzz leading up to it is... well... good. How? How is this possible? I foresee three explanations.

1. Compared to what? Maybe this movie only seemed bad until the mediocre X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the disappointing Terminator Salvation, or the out-and-out painful Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Maybe people couldn't bare the thought of a fourth horseman of the 80's-action-franchise blockbuster apocalypse. Maybe they all thought: "Well, I didn't want to gouge my eyes out with Oedopus' mother's brooches, so I guess that must have been a decent film."

2. Pick your critics carefully. GIJ:TRoC is currently at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, but there've only been 7 reviews tabulated. Maybe the pre-screeners were hand-picked to show the film in a favorable early light.

3. The most brilliant marketing plan ever. Maybe we were supposed to hear about how awful this film was, generate a huge amount of negative buzz so that the slightest bit of positive buzz closer to release would seem gut-wrenchingly newsworthy.

Of course, I suppose there's the outside possibility that it merely started out problem-ridden but was greatly improved in post-production. Or that the early negative buzz was undeserved. We'll find out this weekend, I imagine.

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Works In Progress

Writing, coding, exercise, songwriting, learning a new instrument, marriage, maintaining a healthy relationship with my parents.

Some days, everything about life is a work in progress.

Happy Monday,
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Books On Tap, Now There's A Thought

This last week I went to the dentist for the first time in 13 years. I did this because Abby was insistent and while we're all a bit afraid of the dentist, I'm far more afraid of my wife. You know, in a good way. Love you, honey. Don't kill me.

Anywho.

The experience wasn't all that bad, but I'm going to have to go back twice next month to do something about the moderate peridontitis and six cavities that have accumulated in 13 years of moderate tooth-neglect (although, in my defense, one of those cavities is really just a missing filling), so I'm in for some marathon dentistry during which I will be numbed and sitting in a chair for two or three hours.

So I've been thinking about audiobooks. I'm looking at audible.com, which seems like a pretty decent deal. I assumed Amazon would sell downloads of audiobooks, but they don't seem to. Anybody out there use them? In the days of ipods they make a lot more sense than in the days of cassette decks.

Thoughts?

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Nah, I'm Just Clownin'

Today is the first week of World Breastfeeding Week, observed the 1st through the 7th of August every year. Coincidentally, the 2nd through the 8th is recognized as International Clown Week. (Last year, the two perfectly coincided.)

So, do your part. Sometime this week, breastfeed a clown.

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Best reaction to this joke so far: "Sounds like a pretty typical weekend for me"