Live from Austin!

"The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers." — Ron Paul.

"The goal of the Constitution Party is to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries. [...] The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law, administered by representatives who are Constitutionally elected by the citizens." — "Constitution" Party platform.

Ten books on my bookshelf which almost certainly aren’t on yours.

1. "Threaded Interpretive Languages" by Loeliger. Describes how to build FORTH systems. Published by Byte back when FORTH was mainstream. (Why, yes, I am that old.)
2. A.R.T.H.U.R. by Lawrence Lerner. Poetry from an imaginary AI. Much better than RACTER.
3. "The Third Word War: Apostrophe Theory" by Ian Lee. Starts off as a catalog of grocers’ apostropes, mutates into a collection of photographic meta-references and arch puns.
4. "Fortran 5" by Simon Leonard. Three surreal stories by one of the guys behind the bands I Start Counting, Fortran 5, and Komputer.
5. "RCL20". A celebration of 20 years of the Handheld and Portable Computer Club. Contains the story behind the design of a number of classic HP RPN calculators. Gift of the editor.
6. "Zenarchy" by Kerry W. Thornley. One of the authors of Principia Discordia; neopagan, libertarian, friend of Lee Harvey Oswald and allegedly part of the conspiracy to assassinate JFK. This book is his often-overlooked approach to Zen Buddhism. Copies seem to be going for $95 and up on Amazon, but I’m keeping mine.
7. "Zen Without Zen Masters" by Camden Benares. Continues the non-mainstream Western approach to Zen theme. Apparently the author was a friend of Kip Thornley. Like Zenarchy, this book is frequently hilarious, and shouldn’t a true religion be funny?
8. "Think Tank" by Roger Langley. "The Prisoner" fan fiction.
9. "Nineteen Ninety-Four". Novelization of the radio series. Think "1984 meets the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy".
10. "Bad Shave: The Story of Baby Bird So Far". Compilation of articles about lo-fi pop god Stephen Jones, aka Baby Bird, aka Babybird (the band).

Previous entries, withdrawn because they are insufficiently rare:

1. "Twitching and Shattered" by Frank Key. The gentleman is an acquired taste, and this is a taste I acquired back in 1990 or so. His books for children, such as "Derek the Dust Particle", are truly inspired, and recommended if you want your children to grow up to be like me.
2. "Beat Your Relatives To A Bloody Pulp" by Maxim Décharné. A Narrative Concerning the Proper Chastisement of Personages Without Whom &c &c.
3. "Literary Machines" by Ted Nelson. Describes the design of the Xanadu system. Self-published by Ted.
4. Bob Black, "Friendly Fire". Compilation of articles by everyone’s favorite anarchist.

Just so you can plan appropriately :

An elusive group just outside of Abilene, Texas is claiming the end of the world is coming in less than a week.

The House of Yahweh recently gave ABC reporter Brian Ross access to their west Texas compound. Yahweh leader Yisrayl Hawkins says a nuclear holocaust will come June 12th and only members of his group will be saved.

And in case you were thinking they were harmless:

Local authorities claim the group is dangerous and practices polygamy.

Oh my god! Polygamy! Quick, send in the ATF flamethrowers!

I did one of those online religion questionnaires. I’m not going to reproduce the whole list of what it suggested for me; the interesting part is it rated Buddhism above Secular Humanism. (Specifically, Therevada Buddhism.)

Intellectually, that’s spot on, but the problem I always have is observance. Somehow I seem to be unable to sustain a practice of regular meditation. And without at least that, I don’t see that I could honestly describe myself as a Buddhist.

On the plus side, I managed to keep exercising through until the Christmas vacation; and now that the new year has started and my back has settled down a bit, I’m back to exercising daily, at least during the week. (It didn’t happen this weekend, for various timing reasons.)

Most people manage to keep going to church or otherwise practicing religion, but fail to exercise. I suppose I should consider myself lucky that my problem is the other way around.

While some people see Jews everywhere–controlling the media, running international banking, spreading Communism and corrupting our precious bodily fluids–I have the opposite problem: I suffer from Jew blindness. It happens time and time again:

“Do you want to sign this Hannukkah card?”

“Sure… Wait, Bill is Jewish?!”

“Um… Yeah. Duh.”

Or another time:

“Wait, he speaks Hebrew?”

“Well, yes, obviously.”

“That’s kinda unusual isn’t it?”

“Not necessarily…”

“Oh, wait, I get it…”

It can be embarassing, so I’ve asked if there’s some obvious detection method I’m missing. The answer: if someone is your friend, you just know that kind of thing about them, apparently. Well, maybe. But to me, Jewishness is one of the least important things about a person. Oh, sure, if they keep kosher, that’s useful information; but I’m talking about ethnicity here, not observance.

Sometimes the signs are unmissable. If you’re Israeli, or your surname is Cohen, I’ll probably catch on. If I see a menorah or a dreidel, I’ll make the obvious deduction. But still, this December has resulted in the usual handful of  surprise revelations.

Truth is, I’ve often felt a little jealous of persons of the Hebrew persuasion. While I have a little Jewish ancestry a few levels up in my family tree, there’s no maternal line of descent; but when I learned this, I had to wonder if it was connected to my instinctive dislike of pork and bacon since early childhood. I’m undeniably bookish, a little neurotic, guilt-ridden, and prone to overintellectualizing things. I’ve been told I’d make a good Jew. And who wouldn’t want to be part of a rich and ancient culture that values scholarship? Obviously there have been a few downsides over the years, but I think that’s over with now, isn’t it?

So if I’ve said anything over the years that seemed like an insensitive slight against your Jewishness, please consider the possibility that I simply haven’t worked it out yet.

Quote:

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance.

—Ron Paul, 2003

Well, now I feel better about the fact that he’s going to lose.

Guardian:

More people in Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows that an overwhelming majority see religion as a cause of division and tension — greatly outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can be a force for good.

Well, that’ll give Richard Dawkins a merry Christmas.

Want to see the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that are causing controversy? They’re on the web. Also here.

Personally, I don’t think they’re very good, except the second one, but that’s not really the point.

2005-09-04: Pat Robertson may have had the good sense to take his meds last week, but inevitably some Christians are seeing the New Orleans disaster as proof of the existence of God. Because, you know, if it wasn’t for God, things would have been worse:

Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, also sees God’s mercy in the aftermath of Katrina — but in a different way. Shanks says the hurricane has wiped out much of the rampant sin common to the city.

The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as “Southern Decadence” — an annual six-day “gay pride” event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week — God’s judgment would be felt.

New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”

—Agape Press (sic) Christian News

Update 2005-09-18: Dateline Hollywood have a satirical item featuring Pat Robertson announcing that Hurrican Katrina was because Ellen Degeneres was chosen to host The Emmy Awards, and that she may have been to blame for 9/11 as well.

(Bar all homosexuals and bisexuals from taking part in the Emmy awards? That would thin the herd a bit…)

Poll results: “Surprisingly Few Adults Outside of Christianity Have Positive Views of Christians”.

I’d say it was probably only a surprise to the Christians.