Herr Luther Is Now on Twitter

You may follow his tweets, or not, as your digestion sees fit.

Of Course He Will, Unless He Doesn’t

Commentary for today. Actually, last week.

It’s That Time. Oh — It’s That Time.

Well, as you can see, this blog has become more and more Farkish over the past few weeks. Life, the universe, and everything have been pulling me in several directions, and I just have not had the time to work up some high-quality nonsense, as is my wont.

And, frankly, what started as a giggle has become a chore. And soon will become a bore. And I would end it before that day arrives.

So I am off — perhaps to bring something new to your attention in due course, even something of redeeming social value. (Although, I wouldn’t count on it.)

Before I go, I want to thank my cast of regular readers and commenters: Sally, Lars, Ellyn, Susan, Shelia, Barry, Frank, the Reverends McCain and Klages, Necessarily Rough Dan, Salvo Jerry, the Invincible Mollie, Nathaniel and Aardie, who linked early — and especially Gene Veith, who linked to this site more times than it deserved.

I also want to leave you with a dollop of wisdom from a book that has influenced me greatly. I hope you too will benefit from its insights:

Check if the power of the TV and Set-top box are turned on. Check if the cable is connected to the “Cable Input” jack. Check if the STB is selected as the TV’s source. If the CH3/4 OUT port is connected to an analog TV, check if the basic channel number (CH 3) and the external number of the TV match.

–Troubleshooting tips, “Digital HD STB User Guide”

I thank you.

If One Is Born Every Minute, How Many Are Avoiding Taxes Every April 15?

Another false religion. Don't bite.

Jim Carrey is “priest” of new Hollywood-based “religion” called GATE that preaches self-deification. I thought Hollywood had already gotten that religion. As with Scientology, follow the money.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is pronounced the winner of Iranian elections. And this surprises you because …?

Never exorcise at home.

Sandra Bullock hates her own movies. Oh, man … too easy … too easy …

Six-thousand-year-old tombs have been found near Stonehenge. One headstone reads “Beloved father, husband, wicker salesman.”

The elder Bush defends Judge Sotomayor. But he had yet to come back down to earth.

German teen hit by meterorite. Now has three superpowers, including ability to invade Poland without secret Russian alliance.

Which Apple-rumors site is most accurate? How about the one that predicted that Macmaniacs will believe virtually anything if it entails more RAM?

North Korea has declared it will “weaponize” its plutonium. Webster’s has declared that North Korea must stop verbizizing nouns.

Reading this blog every day will make you smarter. It’s now a proven scientific fact. You will also live forever, make $720,000 more than you would have otherwise, and gain the love and devotion of countless, nameless millions. Your gift for hyperbole will also expand exponentially.

And finally, Joy Behar is getting her own talk show. Where are all the anti-torture voices now?

Video-Game Maker Faked Christian Protest as Marketing Ploy. Ooooh. They’re Going to He-e-e-l-l-l

The stupid game is called Dante’s Inferno, and its stupid creators hired a stupid marketing outfit to pull a stupid stunt to generate the attention that attaches itself to stupid religious controversies.

The game company hired a group of almost 20 people to stand outside the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on Wednesday, the Associated Press says. The phony protesters passed out amateurish material and held signs bearing slogans such as “Trade in Your PlayStation for a PrayStation,” “Hell is not a Game” and “EA = Electronic Anti-Christ.”

Holly Rockwood, an EA spokeswoman, said the charade was arranged by a viral marketing agency hired by the company.

A web page in the crude style of 1990s web design was also created in connection with the stunt. It depicted crosses crushing the word “sin” and placed images of the King James Bible among phony condemnations and thinly-veiled promotions of the game.

“A video game hero does not have the authority to save and damn… ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE. and he will not judge the sinners who play this game kindly,” the site said.

And good luck in that eighth circle, by the way. As gaming goes, I hear that only the very best (er, worst) make it to circle nine.

(Via Amy Welborn)

Real protests, however, should break out about this: A Christian man in Pakistan was beaten to death for drinking out of a cup designated for Muslims.

(Via Mere Comments)

If You’re a Genius and You Know It, Clap One Hand

The value of your work as a scientist will now be evaluated Technorati-style — based on how many times someone links to it, literally or figuratively.

Mormons are using their missionary positions in strangers’ homes. And get your mind out of the gutter.

Millions of TVs are turning into a static-ridden haze of lifelessness today. Twenty bucks no one notices a thing.

The president wrote an absentee note for some kid who missed school because she was late getting back from some POTUS gabfest in Green Bay. “Dear Teacher So-and-So, Please excuse [your name here]. What’s more important than listening to me? I know, I know — obeying me. Sincerely, Barack Obama.”

Mini-epidemic of HIV cases among porn stars. Obviously, it’s the fault of a repressed, puritanical culture that kept them innocent and ignorant too long. Because knowledge is power, don’t you know.

Crazy-like-a-lox is claiming victory in Iran. It was his promise to exterminate all his political rivals that gave him that much needed edge in the last days of the election.

My Name Is Earl is no more. That’s what happens when you try to burn your karma on a manure spit.

Daniel Baldwin was voted off the island when someone finally realized he wasn’t his younger brother Jeff.

Al-Qaeda is moving. Seeking condo or co-op without doorman, preferably below ground, poor lighting.

CofE bishop wants Christians to make Christianity attractive to unbelievers, just as the first generation did when they were set alight by Caligula’s minions.

And finally, 1984 turns 60. Which would make everyone born in 1960 84.

O.K., I’m outta here.

Please Make It Stop

I thought Monty Python had a copyright on the dirty vicar.

Chastity Bono has found the ultimate escape from the legacy of the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.

David Carradine deserved better than this. I think. I hope.

I can see why the guy who played William Wallace Rob Roy would want to play Hannibal — but why this one?

The Reverend Wright — the president’s former pastor — says he meant Zionists when he said Jews. I believe that’s the distinction all left-wing antisemites make, but I could be mistaken.

You should be following Mollie Hemingway as she follows the press coverage of politically motivated killings in light of the Tiller murder. She’s just had a baby and she’s done more reading, writing, and research than I can do after I’ve just had a cookie.

Windows 7 is going IE-free in the EU. That’ll teach those anti-monopolist bastards. Try registering your OS online now! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha! AHHHHH HA HA HA HA HA HA!

A rock star stopped Twittering when he realized there are people who like to say nasty things to celebrities. One down, 762 to go.

And finally — when it’s your time to go, it is your time to go.

And Now for Something Amazingly Similar

Tom Jones is outed as more English than he is Welsh. Riots expected.

Speaking of English, it now possesses 1 million words in its vocabulary, more than any other language group. The world community has expressed outrage, declaring it Scrabble neo-imperialism.

Speaking of imperialism, Khaddafi is visiting Italy with a photo of the anti-Italian guerilla fighter Omar al-Mukhtar pinned to his chest. That would be the Omar al-Mukhtar who lost. To Italy.

Fake friends are available for rent. But they’ll all be Japanese. Fine by me. My real friends charge me anyway.

Why does Iron Man II look like Mad Max III?

For that matter, will Jack Black play Harcourt Fenton Mudd? And will Clint Howard play himself?

iPhone owners hate AT&T. AT&T hates them back. But not more than Verizon hates its customers. Cell phones are just conduits of hate. I hate them.

Mayor Ray Nagin has been released from his Chinese quarantine. “‘On behalf of my family and the citizens of New Orleans, I would like to express my deepest appreciation to the medical officials in Shanghai, Shanghai Officials, the US Embassy and others for prioritizing the health and safety of myself, my wife, Mrs. Nagin and the city’s law enforcement officer. Thank you. Thank you,’ [Nagin's] statement reads.” Wow. Is the health care in Louisiana that bad?

Jon Voight calls the president a false prophet. Obamas delete Transformers from Netflix queue in protest.

Over at NRO, Mark Hemingway reviews the memoir of a child of revolutionaries sent to prison for trying to rob a Brinks truck in 1981. Chesa Boudin was subsequently raised by Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. I stumbled on this link just as I finished watching The Weather Underground, a 2002 documentary about the radical leftist group that broke off from the Students for a Democratic Society to blow things up. (Todd Gitlin, a “New Left activist,” appears in the film to provide context and critique from the left.) Ayers, of course, was a member of the group, along with his wife. They emerged from hiding when they finally realized no one cared who they were anymore.

Your computer is trying to kill you. But you knew that already.

Australian comedy troupe famous for mocking the apparently unmockable have finally been censured/censored for making fun of dying children. Can a fascist dictatorship be far behind? (But then again, it’s fascists who love making fun of the unfit and infirm … this is a conundrum …)

Chrysler is now Fiat. Except it’s still Chrysler. But Fiat remains Fiat. And Leon’s getting la-a-a-a-a-r-r-r-ger.

For the high-tech Luddites among us.

Charles Krauthammer declares FOX News to be an alternate reality. You mean there’s such a thing as reality to begin with? On TV?

Atomic Nutboy defines pot calling kettle black.

We officially have more czars than all the Russias had in all their history. Enough. Already. With the czars.

Woman throws out mattress with $1 million stuffed in it. Landfills turn up nothing. And you thought you were having a bad day.

For Your Personal and Spiritual Edification

How Terrible could Ivan have been if this was his Bible?

Greg Boyd, pastor of Woodland Hills Church and co-author of the excellent Jesus Legend, has produced a series of informative videos in which he makes profound distinctions between Eckhart Tolle’s self-contradictory guide to self-deification The New Earth and Christianity — and how Christianity is almost always misrepresented and misinterpreted by pop-Buddhist and New Agey types. (Boyd also discusses the emergent church, postmodernism, and the abandonment of reason.)

It seems that even TEC cannot abide a bishop who rejects every essential doctrine of the historic Christian faith AND embraces Buddhism. It’s got to be one or the other, apparently.

Mollie Hemingway reminds readers that George Tiller was excommunicated from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, only to be embraced by the ELCA. Speaks volumes.

Monergism, a site devoted to Reformed theology and apologetics, is focusing on law/gospel distinctions, typically regarded as a peculiarly Lutheran emphasis. (Via Mockingbird)

Oswald Chambers’ Utmost for His Highest devotional reading for today suggests we ask of God without a specific answer in mind — as in beggars can’t be choosers. Try it. Harder than it sounds.

Christopher Blosser over at Against the Grain challenges the idea that evangelical apologist Francis Schaeffer advocated the overthrow of the U.S. government — this in light of the Tiller murder. (He is also blogging over at FIRST THOUGHTS these days.)

Jack Kilcrease, instructor in theology at Marquette, and Paul R. Hinlicky, professor of Lutheran studies at Roanoke College, have exchanged views on the doctrine of Scripture and the Church — or at least on whether Kilcrease clearly and precisely represented Hinlicky’s views on same. (And check out the comments for a quickie debate between Hinlicky and Paul McCain on what Jesus believed about Genesis 1. Better than any “Bonus Features” you’ll find on a DVD.)

Are you smarter than a sixth-grader? Thomas Merton explains monasticism to one. See if you can follow along.

If you would like to hear Carl R. Trueman, professor of historical theology and church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, sermonize, you can do so at the Sermon Audio Archives at the Emmanuel Orthodox Presbyterian Church website.

That’s it. I’m spent …

Frog Worshiped as a God. Not Much More You Can Say After That.

Before you judge: The frog changes color. A lot.

Hundreds of curious followers flock to Reji Kumar’s home every day to pray and ask for miracles.

Now one of the country’s top zoologists plans to study the rainbow frog. But Reji, 35, who keeps the creature in a glass bottle after finding it while out watering plants, is afraid it might CROAK first.

He said: “My one problem is that this frog does not appear to eat. I keep trying to feed it but it doesn’t eat anything. I don’t know what else to give it.”

The frog was a dazzling WHITE colour when Reji, from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, first spotted it.

Then it changed to YELLOW and had gone GREY by the time he got it home.

Lift worker Reji added: “By night the frog was dark yellow, and then it became transparent so you could see its internal organs.

“It seemed like a miracle to me that this frog had so many different coats. So now people come to see him and pray to him.”

But there’s always some smart aleck determined to destroy people’s faith.

Professor Oommen V. Oommen from India’s Kerala University, said it was not uncommon for animals to change colour.

He explained: “Frogs do change colour to scare away predators.”

Oh fine. The guy couldn’t even come up with two different names, yet he knows what’s what with supernatural frogs …

Science Declares Conservatives Disgusting. Or Disgusted. Maybe Both.

So I think someone has definitely jumped the shark with this one:

Are you someone who squirms when confronted with slime, shudders at stickiness or gets grossed out by gore? Do crawly insects make you cringe or dead bodies make you blanch?

If so, chances are you’re more conservative — politically, and especially in your attitudes toward gays and lesbians — than your less-squeamish counterparts, according to two Cornell studies.

The results, said study leader David Pizarro, Cornell assistant professor of psychology, raise questions about the role of disgust — an emotion that likely evolved in humans to keep them safe from potentially hazardous or disease-carrying environments — in contemporary judgments of morality and purity.

Let me guess at the impression intended to be left: If you reject anything the Left deems unobjectionable, you’re simply responding viscerally to a nonexistent threat. In short, you’ve never really thought it through.

To test whether disgust sensitivity is linked to specific conservative attitudes, the researchers then surveyed 91 Cornell undergraduates with the DSS, as well as with questions about their positions on issues including gay marriage, abortion, gun control, labor unions, tax cuts and affirmative action.

Participants who rated higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to oppose gay marriage and abortion, issues that are related to notions of morality or purity. The researchers also found a weak correlation between disgust sensitivity and support for tax cuts, but no link between disgust sensitivity and the other issues. …

Liberals and conservatives disagree about whether disgust has a valid place in making moral judgments, Pizarro noted. Conservatives have argued that there is inherent wisdom in repugnance; that feeling disgusted about something — gay sex between consenting adults, for example — is cause enough to judge it wrong or immoral, even lacking a concrete reason. Liberals tend to disagree, and are more likely to base judgments on whether an action or a thing causes actual harm.

Conservatives have never based their arguments on whether X causes harm? On what planet?

American Couple Spied for Cuba for 30 Years, Castro Now Has Secret to ‘Moving Picture Box’

Yes, an ex State official, Walter Myers, and his wife, Mrs. Walter Myers, have been spying for those miserable communists for 30 years. And I don’t mean the Canadians!

Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Myers, were charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government, providing classified information to that government, and wire fraud, according to court documents unsealed in Washington.

The couple appeared briefly Friday before a federal magistrate in Washington, who ordered them held without bail pending a detention hearing Wednesday. Judge John Facciolo agreed with prosecutors that the couple might try to flee the country if not held.

They were arrested late Thursday, the Justice Department said.

The State Department isn’t clear at this stage on what information the Myerses may have passed to their Cuban handlers, according to a senior State Department official, who said that such information would come out of a full damage assessment.

“We were confident” at the time of Kendall Myers’ retirement, the official said, that he had been passing information to Cuban intelligence. Diplomatic security officials “let it go for a while” to see what information might emerge.

They were supposedly paid “expenses” by Cuba — stationary, underwear, snacks, and of course 30 years’ worth of envelope X-ray spray.

Kendall Myers confided to the undercover agent that he had received a “lot of medals” from the Cuban government for his work and that he and his wife spent an evening with Fidel Castro in 1995.

Some tin-foil jewelry they couldn’t wear out in public (except maybe in Hollywood) and an evening with a decrepit, bloviating dictator. I can definitely see how any American could be beguiled into walking on the dark side …

It’s Been That Kind of Week. Again.

Three Dog Night tribute band

Another reason not to own a pet: they all secretly want to kill you.

Oprah says she is not a purveyor of snake oil – which is too bad for purveyors of snake oil, as they could really cash in if she were.

TEC to study same-sex relationships so it can discover ex post factor explanations for conclusions it has already reached. 

Pastor asks congregants to bring their weapons to church just in case his sermon goes past the 45-minute mark. (Also, what’s more objectionable, that a pastor would want a group of people sitting on hard wooden planks and facing him as he threatens them with hellfire to be armed, or that the Telegraph would refer to him as a priest, revealing an Anglican bias?)

Woman who sued Capt. Crunch because he failed to provide mythical crunchberries in his box of crunchberry cereal has lost her case. The concept of the frivolous lawsuit is, alas, not mythical. (Although, we now know why the good captain has never made admiral. Crunchberry indeed …)

As I reported in the dark recesses of history past, R. Crumb has illustrated the Book of Genesis. Turns out he also consults the Gospel of Thomas and the Book of Ecclesiastes when he is searching for spiritual succor, which any sucker will tell you is the last place to look for such a thing.

Our fearless leader expresses sympathy/empathy for Islam, then demands that centuries-old North African and Near Easter Christian churches/institutions that were destroyed during imperial Muslim invasions be restored. Just kidding.

Quote of the Day: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Feb. 4, 1906 – April 9, 1945)

I had been following the discussion over at Gene Veith’s Cranach blog about the association of Roeder and his murder of abortionist George Tiller with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was implicated in one of many attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

I then read Elizabeth Scalia’s essay on the home page of FIRST THINGS this morning.

I will simply quote from Bonhoeffer’s work Ethics, specifically the chapter ”History and Good,” and leave it at that. I am using the Macmillan 1965 paperback edition. I have broken these passages down into discrete paragraphs and added commas for easier reading. All boldface emphases are mine as well.

Jesus does not desire to be regarded as the only perfect one at the expense of men; He does not desire to look down on mankind as the ony guiltless one while mankind goes to its ruin under the weight of its guilt; He does not wish that some idea of a new man should triumph amid the wreckage of a humanity whose guilt has destroyed it. He does not wish to acquit Himself of the guilt under which men die. A love which left man alone in his guilt would not be love for a real man.

As one who acts responsibly in the historical existence of men, Jesus becomes guilty. It must be emphasized that it is solely His love which makes Him incur guilt. From his selfless love, from His freedom from sin, Jesus enters into the guilt of men and takes this guilt upon himself. Freedom from sin and the question of guilt are inseparable in Him. It is as the one who is without sin that Jesus takes upon Himself the guilt of His brothers, and it is under the burden of this guilt that He shows Himself to be without sin. In this Jesus Christ, who is guilty without sin, lies the origin of every action of responsible deputyship. It is responsible action, if it is action which is concerned solely and entirely with the other man, if it arises from selfless love for the real man who is our brother, then, precisely because this is so, it cannot wish to shun the fellowship of human guilt.

Jesus took upon Himself the guilt of all men, and for that reason every man who acts responsibly becomes guilty. If any man tries to escape guilt in responsibility he detaches himself from the ultimate reality of human existence, and what is more he cuts himself off from the redeeming mystery of Christ’s bearing guilt without sin and he has no share in the divine justification which lies upon this event. He sets his own personal innocence above his personaly responsibility for men, and he is blind to the more irredeemable guilt which he incures precisely in this; he is blind also to the fact that real innocence shows itself precisely in a man’s entering into the fellowship of guilt for the sake of other men. Through Jesus Christ it becomes an essential part of responsible action that the man who is without sin loves selflessly and for that reason incurs guilt. …

Jesus Christ has become my conscience. This means that I can now find unity with myself only in the surrender of my ego to God and to men. The origina and the goal of my conscience in not a law but it is the living God and the living man as he confronts me in Jesus Christ. For the sake of God and of men, Jesus became a breaker of the law. He broke the law of the Sabbath in order to keep it holy in love for God and for men. He forsook his parents in order to dwell in the house of His Father and thereby to purify sinners and outcasts; and for the love of men He came to be forsaken by God in His last hour. …

Thus it is Jesus Christ who sets conscience free for the service of God and or our neighbor; He sets conscience free even and especially when man enters into the fellowship of human guilt. The conscience which has been set free from the law will not be afraid to enter into the guilt of another man for the other man’s sake, and indeed precisely in doing this it will show itself in its purity. The conscience which has been set free is not timid like the conscience which is bound by the law, but it stands wide open for our neighbor and for his concrete distress. And so conscience joins with the responsibility which has its foundation in Christ in bearing guilt for the sake of our neighbor. …

From the principle of truthfulness Kant draws the grotesque conclusion that I must even return an honest “yes” to the enquiry of the murderer who breaks into my house and asks whether my friend whom he is pursuing has taken refuge there; in such a case, self-righteousness of conscience has become outrageous presumption and blocks the path of responsible action. Responsibility is the total and realistic response of man to the claim of God and our neighbor; but this example shows in its true light how the response of a conscience which is bound by principles is only a partial one. If I refuse to incur guilt against the principle of untruthfulness for the sake of my friend (for it is only the self-righteously law-abiding conscience which will pretend that, in fact, no lie is involved), if, in other words, I refuse to bear guilt for charity’s sake, then my action is in contradiction to my responsibility which has its foundation in reality. Here again it is precisely in the responsible acceptance of guilt that a conscience which is bound solely to Christ will best prove its innocence.

We must understand that Bonhoeffer is always talking of specific acts by specific human beings in specific historical contexts. There is no room for Kant’s categorial imperative here. Anyone who would build an ideology out of such concrete actions do so in the name of self-righteousness — it is an attempt to construct laws that bind the conscience in such a way that it is no longer free in Christ for the sake of one’s neighbor. Miss this and you miss Bonhoeffer. Miss this and you miss Lutheranism’s simul justus and peccator.

Over at Luther at the Movies, a couple of years ago, the most active and anguished discussion that ever took place — one I ultimately had to shut down — was over Rahab and her lie. Rahab lies for the sake of the spies — actually for the sake of her family’s welfare – and becomes a heroine of the faith, incorporated into the people of Israel and celebrated in the book of Hebrews. Nowhere in either the Old or the New Testament is Rahab ever chided for sinning — for breaking the Eighth Commandment.  

Please, let’s have no more talk of moral relativism or slippery slopes in relation to Bonhoeffer until his thought has been engaged on a very deep level.

It’s at times like these that I particularly wish Richard John Neuhaus were still with us. He had a great respect and understanding of Bonhoeffer’s work and would have made a considerable,profound contribution to these discussions.

Going forward, I would love to see a serious discussion about Bonhoeffer’s rejection of Lutheranism’s Two Kingdoms theory, at least as it was most commonly conceived and preached in his day. He did not believe there was a Christian morality and another morality for the state rooted in natural law. He perceived rightly that natural law can give rise to a state that is either a democracy or a dictatorship, depending on whether justice or power is its basis. Bonhoeffer preferred to speak of divine government, which was of God and always had God as its referent.

Bonhoeffer’s was ultimately a unifying, holistic vision, which nevertheless made a distinction between penultimate and ultimate things — including ethics.

Salinger Sues Over Proposed ‘Catcher’ Sequel, Even He’s Sick of Holden Caulfield

I never got the Catcher in the Rye phenomenon. Maybe I was never sufficiently alienated from society. Or maybe I was so alienated, I couldn’t even connect with other alienated characters. But I swear, I tried. I read the book twice — and forgot it about five minutes after I read it each time. (I do remember one sweet scene, when Caulfield sneaks back into the family house to say good-bye to his sister. I think that’s in there somewhere.)

In any event, some smart-aleck who goes by the name J.D. California has written a sequel entitled Sixty Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, to be published by some low-rent Swedish press. Well, when J.D. Salinger — as in the author of the original — got wind of it, he sicked his lawyers on them all.

Lawyers for Salinger filed suit in federal court this week to stop the publication, sale and advertisement of “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,” a novel written by an author calling himself J.D. California and published by a Swedish company that advertises joke books and a “sexual dictionary” on its Web site.

“The Sequel infringes Salinger’s copyright rights in both his novel and the character Holden Caulfield, who is the narrator and essence of that novel,” said the suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in New York.

Published in 1951, “The Catcher in the Rye” is an iconic take on teen alienation that is consistently listed among the greatest English-language novels ever written.

Salinger, 90, who has famously lived the life of a recluse in New Hampshire for most of the past half-century, last published in 1965. With the exception of a 1949 movie based on one of his early short stories, he has never authorized adaptations of any of his work, even turning down an overture from director Steven Spielberg to make “Catcher” into a movie.

“There’s no more to Holden Caulfield. Read the book again. It’s all there,” the court filing quotes Salinger as saying in 1980. “Holden Caulfield is only a frozen moment in time.”

So here’s a man who knows when he’s said everything he has to say and is wise enough to write “finis” and retire to tend his own garden. Good for him.

Osama Calls Out Obama, Declares Jon and Kate Doomed

He’s nothing if not current. Assuming, of course, it’s him and not a voicemail from another mass-murdering wackjob with too many “anytime” minutes.

Zeroing in on the conflict in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, where Pakistan’s troops are taking on Taliban militants, the message asserts that President Obama is proving that he is “walking the same road of his predecessors to build enmity against Muslims and increasing the number of fighters, and establishing more lasting wars.”

Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language TV network that aired the message, said the statement was “a voice recording by bin Laden,” and a CNN analysis said the voice does indeed sound like the leader of the terrorist network that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.

The remarks — which would be bin Laden’s first assessment of Obama’s policy — were believed to have been recorded several weeks ago at the start of a mass civilian exodus because of fighting in northwestern Pakistan.

The speaker cites strikes, destruction and Obama’s “order” to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari “to prevent the people of Swat from implementing sharia law.”

“All this led to the displacement of about a million Muslim elders, women and children from their villages and homes. They became refugees in tents after they were honored in their own homes,” the message says.

“This basically means that Obama and his administration put new seeds of hatred and revenge against America. The number of these seeds is the same as the number of those victims and refugees in Swat and the tribal area in northern and southern Waziristan.”

When he says seeds, he really means dead bodies. Seems he just finished the “Metaphor vs. Simile”chapter of Poesy in Action. His book of verse, Massacred Infidels Under the Yew, will be available on Kindle sometime this fall.

Windows 7 to Debut October 22, Anniversary of the Death of Charles Martel, King of the Franks

Coincidence? I think not.

[Microsoft] also confirmed, without giving details, that it plans to offer some sort of “technology guarantee” giving those who buy Vista machines close to the Windows 7 launch a free or discounted copy of the new operating system. As with past similar programs, details on pricing will be up to individual computer makers, although Microsoft did say the upgrade program will apply to Vista Home Premium and higher-priced editions (meaning not Windows Vista Basic).

The tech guarantee program is not beginning immediately, but Microsoft did raise the possibility it will offer some sort of lower-cost upgrade to those who are already using Windows Vista.

As every school boy knows, Charles Martel is responsible for winning the Battle of Tours in 732, beating back a Muslim invasion and stopping Islamic expansion in Western Europe. By launching their successor to a dead OS that ceded market share to Leopard, Microsoft is casting Apple in the role of the invader, and Windows 7 as the only hope for maintaining control of its territory.

And everyone knows that the Franks gave their name to Gaul, which became France. And it was a French TV presenter who sued Microsoft for basically stealing his copyrighted trademark Vista.

You have to read between the lines here. And it never hurts to make stuff up.

Reality TV a Killing Machine, Responsible for More Deaths than Scripted TV and That’s Saying a Lot

So someone made a tally of the body count attributable in one way or another to reality-TV shows, and it comes to 11. Why not 10? Because this total goes to 11.

The victims are as varied as they are unexpected: a deputy district attorney, a single father, a young boxer — even the sister of a contestant on a makeover show prodded to make hurtful comments about her sibling’s “before” look.

And the phenomenon is not limited to the United States. TheWrap’s investigation found suicides and attempted suicide among contestants as far afield as India, England and Sweden.

Certainly, many of these people had pre-existing problems, which may have been why they were looking for such instant TV fame in the first place. But mental-health workers have discovered that many contestants on shows like “Survivor” and “Big Brother” –  even those who win — suffer severe and often long-lasting psychological trauma.

Win or lose, faking reality is hazardous to your health. Come to think of it, reality ain’t too good for you neither.

Earth Could Last a Billion Years Longer Than Expected. Crap.

No fixed atmospheric pressure! EVER!

Well this is the worst news I’ve heard so far this year.

King Fai Li and his colleagues at Caltech hypothesize that Earth’s atmospheric pressure has always varied, and that it could fall in the distant future, keeping Earth from frying for far longer than previous research had shown.

If the new idea proves correct and can be extended to other planets with biospheres, it could increase the chances that earthly civilization finds extraterrestrial life by doubling the percentage of time that planets could be inhabited.

“[T]he Earth will be identifiable as an inhabited planet for nearly half the total lifetime of the Sun, an important point to consider in the search for life on extrasolar planets,” the authors write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Over the next hundreds of millions of years, the sun will continue to get brighter until eventually, Earth becomes too hot to inhabit. Previous calculations had pegged that time at about a billion years from now, but the new paper argues that earlier models had neglected the role of atmospheric pressure in regulating the temperature of the planet on astronomical time scales.

 Atmospheric pressure is a key variable in the overall greenhouse-gas effect because it determines how much infrared radiation greenhouse gases absorb. Higher pressures mean more absorption and consequently, more heat. Lower pressures have the opposite effect.

Great. So another billion years of bad TV shows, 29.99% interest on credit cards, and acid reflux.

What’s next, human life expectancy extended indefinitely? Yeah, I wanna be paying $23 million a month for rent in the year 2133.

Thanks a lot, Poindexter. Here I was, minding my own business, expecting the world to put in its 1.5 billion — and then pffff! A ball of malorodous goo.

Why don’t you and your friends go get some real jobs. I hear Phat Burger is hiring. Their little paper hats should fit perfectly OVER YOUR POINTY HEADS!

Where’s the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse when you need them? Get those damn things out of the stables before someone requests a second season of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!

Missing Links — June 1, 2009

The Dalai Lama’s choice of reincarnated guru has decamped for the high life in Spain. I guess Master Torres reincarnated as, well, a typical Western European teenager. This despite having been treated like a god by his fellow monks. I guess nothing was worth having to watch Eddie Murphy’s Golden Child.

Wikipedia has banned all IP addresses emanating from the Church of Scientology. If you wonder why, perhaps sci-fi/fantasy writer Harlan Ellison can fill you in:

Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it … We were sitting around one night … who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said “This bullshit’s got to stop!” He says, “I gotta get money.” He says, “I want to get rich.” And somebody said, “why don’t you invent a new religion? They’re always big.” We were clowning! You know, “Become Elmer Gantry! You’ll make a fortune!” He says, “I’m going to do it.”

Jimmy Carter is demanding — by gum! — that those torture pictures be released. And no, he is not referring to his inauguration in 1977.

800 Brits have signed up to be murdered euthanized in a Swiss clinic. If I had to live under a Labour government, I might consider similar drastic measures.

The makers of Pringles, that biodegradable snack food, were hoping to convince a judge in the U.K. what we already knew — that Pringles lacked sufficient amounts of anything that could be called a potato — this to avoid having to pay back VAT taxes. Britain’s Supreme Court of Judicature begged to differ.

Sacha Baron Cohen — the artist formerly known as Borat — mooned Eminem at the MTV Music Awards. I would think there’s a redundancy there somewhere, I’m just not sure how to get at it without saying icky thinks. I will not link to the video.

James K.A. Smith espies a Whig Calvinism in Nicholas Wolterstorffs’s Justice:

This is just another way of saying that I think Wolterstorff—in good Kuyperian fashion—has unwittingly been assimilated to regnant paradigms in liberal political thought and is now “baptizing” them with a theological story.  In short, I think Wolterstorff’s most fundamental (and thus un-interrogated) assumptions demonstrate just how the Kuyperian vision can so easily slide toward cultural assimilation.

So there.

Susan Boyle, having lost the Britain’s Got Talent competition to someone or something called Diversity, has checked into a (gently) mental-health facility so as to gather her wits before trying to balance her checkbook.

Father Cutie, the former Roman Catholic priest who was caught with his collar off, so to speak, received a standing ovation for his first sermon as an Episcopal priest. As Tmatt opined over at Get Religion: “Wow, that’s a fast catechumenate.” Now, now. It’s not like there’s anything to memorize. Except where all the deeds are kept.

Speaking of our Anglican friends, the CofE has invested some fine geetis in new swine-flu vestments. If you’re saying, “That’s got to be a joke!” you would be right.

Mr. Incredible Is Mad as Hell and Is Not Going to Take It No More Times

So Craig T. Nelson — late of the TV series Coach and the phenomenal Pixar film The Incredibles — makes an appearance on the Glenn Beck Show and declares that he’s thinking of not paying his taxes as a protest against outrageous spending, a lack of accountability, and stupid-butt budget cuts.

My favorite cut:

We’re going to cut education. Why? That’s the most important thing in the world … and firefighters. We don’t have fires in California — (exasperated) they were within half a mile of my house three times!

And he likes sea otters. He wasn’t saying he didn’t like sea otters. He just wants the pro-sea-otter folks to pay for the sea otters. So I don’t want to hear from the pro- or anti- sea-otter people. I get enough of that mail.

Obama May Not Be Spock, but Is Spock Padre Pio?

So I finally saw the new Star Trek movie for real. And I need my Vulcan readers to answer a few questions. (Warning! Spoilers ahead!)

1. Whence the love of the bowl haircut? Was Moe Howard once worshipped on your planet?

2. Was Antonio Gaudi a Vulcan? If not, please explain your almost exclusive use of his architectural vision?

3. If what old Spock said was true, that James T. Kirk’s father would indeed live to see his son be made a captain, why was he not there at the actual ceremony? Was Spock lying? If not, why didn’t the death of Nero in the past spare the planet Vulcan in the future? It must have, because in the series, Spock’s mother, Jane Wyatt, plays a role in his the adult Spock’s life. She also would go on to marry Robert Young. ANSWER ME!

4. We know Obama is not Spock, but is Spock in fact Padre Pio?

5. In the future, will twentysomethings with blue eyes magically morph into thirtysomethings with brown eyes (and in the case of McCoy, vice-versa)? Compare Kirks, Chekhovs, Scotties, and McCoys — now and then. (Or then and now.)

6. Why do the platforms that crisscross the cargo bays and engine rooms of starships never have guardrails, especially when everyone knows a fight is going to break out eventually and someone is going to be left dangling over the edge?

7. Why is a long black coat the sign of being cool in the future, especially when the tails can so easily catch in even 24th-century machinery?

8. How did Madea advance to the rank of admiral in Starfleet, given her prison record?

Finally, let me say that, time-warp anomalies aside, J.J. Abrams and his screenwriters did a beautiful job. The new Star Trek is exciting, funny, life-affirming, and inspiring. It is a near perfect rendering of the origins myth, and by the way — Chris Pine, the young Kirk, has one helluva career ahead of him.

This is also a testament to the enduring attraction of Gene Roddenberry’s creation. This Star Trek iteration is one that deserves to live long and prosper, and inspire another generation of Trekkies. Or Trekkers.

Nice to be able to join the crowd and faun over something every once in a while …

Man Wins $1 Billion Judgment Against Castro, Guevara, Will Be Paid in Empty Symbolism Befitting Revolutionaries’ Legacy

I left my cash in my other beret

So the architects of the Worker’s Paradise, Latin American Division, confiscated Gustavo Villoldo’s property and business, which is the most efficient way to get a decent Utopia going, don’t you know. The distress this caused Mr. Villoldo drove him to suicide.

His two sons, in what can only be described as a quixotic quest, brought suit against Castro and the graffito formerly known as Che.

And won.

”What the defendants did was torture this family and tear it apart,” said Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Peter Adrien in ruling for Gustavo Villoldo, 73, who ironically became a CIA operative and helped track down Guevara in the jungles of Bolivia in 1967.

In keeping with its practice in a handful of similar lawsuits, the Cuban government did not respond to the suit or attempt to defend itself.

Despite the judgment, Villoldo may not receive the full payment anytime soon because it may take years for him to tap Cuba’s frozen bank accounts. Adrien acknowledged that, saying he awarded the eye-popping judgment following the one-day civil trial to ”get Cuba’s attention” and “make a statement.”

Now, apologists and fans of the diabolical duo will no doubt say that you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette.

Fifty years on, Cubans are still waiting for the omelette.

I think they’ll settle for takeout right about now. Preferably not Chinese. (Indian, anyone?)

Medical Group Calls for R Rating for All Films That Depict Smoking, Ritual Beheading of Goats

Because if they see it, they will do it:

The American Medical Association Alliance, pointing to research that big-screen smoking leads teens to pick up the tobacco habit, has called for an R rating for any movie with smoking scenes.

The head of the group that gives U.S. movies their ratings, however, said the smoke has been clearing from youth-rated movies, a result of the film industry’s sensitivity to the issue.

The alliance, the medical association’s advocacy arm, launched a summer campaign this week aimed at publicly shaming studios into making smoking-free films.

“Research has shown that one-third to one-half of all young smokers in the United States can be attributed to smoking these youth see in movies,” said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, head of the Los Angeles County Public Health Department.

Fielding cited another study that he said “found that adolescents whose favorite movie stars smoked on screen are significantly more likely to be smokers themselves and to have a more accepting attitude toward smoking.”

Now don’t get me wrong: I hate smoking. I’ve never been a smoker, I hate being around smokers, and I’d have no problem seeing every last smoker force-fed his own shoes while encased in a helmet made solely of liver and Saran Wrap just so he could experience what it’s like for non-smokers to be around smokers.

But I do wonder if the mimetic theory works the other way: I wonder if kids exposed to movies with self-sacrificing, gracious, generous, heroic characters inevitably imitate them.

Now that I think of it, once upon a time, during the bad old days of the Hays Office, otherwise known as the Production Code, films had to have some “socially redeemable value.” Were people any better human beings? As a whole, probably not. But kids were. I mean, kids were not the foul-mouthed, drunken, libidinous snotheads they are today. Yes, there are exceptions. I’m sure your kids are just angelic. But just walk down a city street on an average afternoon and listen to how teenagers talk. And what they talk about. Are you going to tell me that this is what you would have heard in 1947?

Do we blame films for this? If not, should we? And don’t films just reflect the culture in general, so that a decay in civility, manners, and morals is inevitably reflected on movie and TV screens in the interest of relevance? If so, won’t marginalizing “smokers” in cinema prove to be an empty gesture in the long run, making the habit even sexier — because the R-rated movies are where all the sex is?

Or is the culture a reflection of what we find acceptable in mass entertainment — what once was private slowly but surely becomes public because we begin seeing it regularly depicted on larger-than-life moving billboards?

Or maybe these chicken-and-egg questions are themselves pointless, and every generation chooses the way it wants to go to hell.

Man, I’m in a bad mood …

Did Luther Take the Cowl Because He Had Committed Murder? Did the Joker Really Die in ‘The Dark Knight’? Why Am I Asking You?

Over at Dave Armstrong’s site, I encountered this: a reference to a 1991 paper by one Dr. Dietrich Emme entitled Martin Luther’s Way into the Monastery.

Emme puts forth the provocative thesis that Luther joined a monastery not to fulfill a vow to St. Anne during a thunderstorm (about which there have been doubts among scholars for decades) but to hide from the authorities after killing a fellow student in a duel.

Armstrong culled the following from an old issue of the Catholic journal 30 Days:

“Did Luther choose to enter a monastery or was he sent to a monastery because he had killed a fellow student in a duel? This question has never left me and over the years I collated whatever useful material there was available in a bid to find the answer,” . . .

Although the Church and an imperial decree prohibited them, duels were a commonly deployed method of settling disputes between private citizens. Among students in particular it was not considered manly to resolve quarrels by seeking recourse to a higher authority. Emme is convinced that on April 16, 1503 Luther fought a duel and emerged from it seriously wounded. There is mention of Luther’s wounds in Tischreden (Table Talk) . . .

Emme believes it unlikely that the young Martin managed to injure himself so seriously in such a casual way and the supposition is that the tale replaced the true story of a duel . . .

Dietrich Emme sustains . . . the assumption that at the outset of Luther’s religious itinerary there was a tragic event. He has collated a considerable quantity of converging clues to this effect. The first is that according to the registers of the University of Erfurt for January and February 1505, when Luther sat at the examination and was then promoted to the position of magister of the Arts Faculty, a student had died, Hieronymous Buntz, it is written, was “not promoted because immediately after the examination he fell ill with pleurisy and died a short time later of natural causes”. Pleurisy was one of the most frequent causes of death after a duel . . . Emme explains that the “universities were concerned to cover up deaths as a result of duels because they were anxious to keep their reputations and encourage more wealthy, highly placed students to join . . . “

Other clues are to be found, according to Emme, from an analysis of Luther’s decision to enter a monastery and why he chose to join the Augustinian hermits. This monastery was one of the few which by statute were not subject to the jurisdiction of the local ecclesiastical authority (the archbishop of Mainz) but of Rome . . . there was no safer refuge. The Protestant theologian Nikolaus Selnecker (1530-1592) relates that Luther entered the Augustinian hermits’ monastery at Erfurt “secretly and by night (clam et noctu) and for two days groups of his companions and friends, of students and others kept watch on the buildings and plaid siege to it to win Luther back. But the entrance was limited so strictly that for a month no one was permitted to approach Luther” (Oratio de divo Lutero, 1590). . . .

Another clue is that Luther did not enter the monastery as a postulant or as a lay brother. He, a recently promoted magister, was given the humblest jobs to do in his first six months there. Her had to churn the milk to make cheese, he had to clean the latrines and he was generally treated as a slave. . . .

Emme followed the Lutheran trail according to the clues he found. But, says the author, “I made an effort to give sense and coherence to details of the life of Luther relegated to the shadows to date and left there unexplained. Others have simply skipped over these facts. But that is too easy. So whoever has criticisms and objections to raise should do so.”

Now, before you get your knickers in a twist, Armstrong is not contending that Luther was merely a criminal looking for a safe haven — and burdened with all the attendant spiritual and psychological baggage such a crime would entail. He’s merely conveying what someone else has put forward. And since it was first published in 1991 — and no one else has picked up on it, I doubt there’s much to it.

Before anyone gets his knickers in a twist, Armstrong doubts the truth of this allegation; he’s merely putting it out there. And I admit to finding the idea both curious and interesting myself. I also think it’s bunk, if for no other reason than no one else seems to have made anything of it — and there are plenty of scholars of all persuasions who I’m sure would love to paint Luther as a killer: first a fellow student, then all of Christendom!

From the sixteenth century on, Luther has been accused of all kinds of weirdnesses. He’s been psychoanalyzed and calumniated, reinterpreted and sold out. He’s also been lionized, solemnized, and virtually canonized. As Christian History put it:

One Catholic thought Martin Luther was a “demon in the appearance of a man.” Another who first questioned Luther’s theology later declared, “He alone is right!”

In some cases, Luthermania is just the kind of obsessive fascination that great men draw to themselves, as if they were some puzzle that, once pieced together, could convey some deeper truth about ourselves. But such deconstructions are also often vain attempts to undermine his teaching and cast the Reformation in some reductionist mold.

Luther will never fully be figured out. He was undoubtedly a mystery even to himself: “I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.”

Nor was he a systematic thinker, never mind a transparent personality. He was — is — a roiling ocean. Plunge in — and you will never be the same.