By the numbers

Number of headlines on front page of Google News that say "Romney's slipping with Catholic voters": One. (From a Utah paper!) Number of headlines in same place that say (more or less) "Obama's surging with Catholic voters": Three.

Number of places I can be at one time: One. Number of places I would have to be tonight to satisfy everyone's expectations: Three.

Number of articles I had to edit today: Nine. Number that came in after I drove home from the hospital in rush hour traffic: One.

Number of Tory MPs who broke with the PM and voted to reconsider when human life begins: 88.

More thoughts on separation of contempt and state

Most people, religious or not, believe in some kind of God. If you don't, you're not going to win them over to your side by constantly saying this makes you smarter than them.

If you don't want to win them over, if you like the idea of being one of a tiny band of True Believers while everyone else rushes to ruin, you're just as bad as the smallest-minded of the religious believers you hold in such contempt.

Can't we all just cook along?

Got immobilized today with nothing to do but watch one of those chef tournament shows. While it was nice to watch a batch of pros, for once, not knowing quite what they were doing,  not getting everything right, finding their breaded fish didn't stay breaded and their reductions weren't reducing and they'd have to stick the dish under the broiler if they wanted it to brown -- it was also disheartening to watch all those people who really loved cooking set at odds with each other, tearing each other to shreds over something so important to all of them.

Why don't I feel the same about Catholics at odds over the Church?

Spare thoughts on . . .

• Editing.I can't always tell whether I'm taking out mistakes -- or attempts at originality. Also, I do a lot of replacing "we" with "a" -- that is, turning "were" into "are". I like movie reviews to take place in the present tense.
•  God's mercy. How is it different from just getting out of something you had coming to you? For one thing, you're required to pass it on.
• "Personal matters". If religion is one, then contempt for religion ought to be one too -- not to be tossed around casually among people who might not be on board with it, and certainly not to be allowed to influence public policy. We'll call it separation of contempt and state.

No patience today for anything more than this

Papyrus Fragment of Mr. Moore

Most of the Wife-o-Jesus articles don't include these parts

The only places I've seen them are the dead tree edition of one of the papers we get, and, strangely enough, the online NYT.

So, partly out of sympathy for Ms. King, here are some of the things that got dropped along the way:

In an interview, Ms. King repeatedly cautioned the fragment should not be taken as proof Jesus, the historical person, was actually married . . . Ms. King said she wants nothing to do with the [Da Vinci] Code or its author: "At least, don't say this proves Dan Brown was right."

I also like the descriptions of this extensive document:

[T]he faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card . . . The piece is torn into a rough rectangle, so the document is missing its adjoining text on the left, right, top, and bottom.

Much of the context, therefore, is missing.

Yeah, I guess it would be. But who needs context?

 

My Amazon review of The Telmaj by Erin Manning

Saving myself a little time today by cross-posting. Check out the author's blogs here and here.

What's a Telmaj? We're not told till a third of the way through this book, but by then we're caught up in the story, which starts with just a boy hiding behind a garbage can.

Smijj, like Harry Potter (and this'll occur to anybody who's read HP), is an orphan living in a harsh world, who sometimes finds himself able to do things that should be physically impossible. Like Harry, he's about to find out what he is. This will lead to both joy and danger.

Smijj's home is a rundown space station, thousands of years in our future. His talent is teleportation, the ability to move himself and other people and objects by thought. He can't control it very well, or he wouldn't be hiding from the staff of a store he's just stolen something from. His people, the Telmaj, are needed in an economy that depends on space travel, but they're also exploited. When he escapes onto a well-run cargo ship, it's literally a wish come true. But it's also the beginning of new troubles for him.

One thing that keeps Smijj going is the kindness he finds here and there -- in neighbours, other crew members, and even slaves. He always tries to return it, instead of letting his harsh life make him selfish.

Mrs. Manning doesn't go overboard with gruesome details. Smijj's life is unpleasant, not unbearable. The slaves in the story aren't beaten or starved -- they just have to spend their days doing things like mending dishes with futuristic Krazy Glue. Likewise, the love story of two adult characters is told with next to no mushiness.

I would've liked to see more physical description, especially of the Telmaj homeworld, but we can hope for that in the second book. It also seemed to me that the plot wound up a little too quickly. But, again, the story's not really over yet.

Seriatim

That's the word ("in a series; one after another") I learned last night while reading a 19th-century novel, and which also jumped out at me from today's paper.

References to Burberry also seem to be following me around, but I don't think I'm meant to "request an appointment to visit the Burberry Regent Street Store in London", as their site invites me to.

Vintage tackiness

Nothing is sacred

Unemployed professors are selling term papers to students.

Archie Bunker's little goil is up for drunk driving.

And I have inside information that Ernest and Julio Gallo are selling wine before its time.

Adnonsense

Selling ads for the sites I edit is not my job at all -- I'd be no good at it -- but if it were, I wouldn't find ads on them for things like introductions to women "desperate for a BF", complete with the caution "these girls will persue you". Wonder if the girls can spell any better than their organizer?

As I read the food section in the paper today, I was reflecting that I'd read pretty much anything with a recipe in it -- even an ad. Which got me wondering if it's possible to put a recipe in a Google ad . . . The house is being painted, so I may be hallucinating from the fumes.

Catching up

Right, no post yesterday, so here's stuff from yesterday's paper -- and earlier:

The Kielburgers document three development projects in  Kenya that never got off the ground, fallout from:

the Field of Dreams syndrome: the naive belief that if you build a hospital, school or well, somehow, magically, doctors and teachers and maintenance workers will just appear to make the project a success.

That reminded me of something I'd thought of after reading Three Cups of Deceit, about the man who got famous for building schools in Afghanistan -- except building them was just the first step, and many of them never got past it. The trouble was, again, getting professionals to work in remote areas. If he wanted the kids to learn, why didn't he also raise money to pay (as much as was necessary) teachers? Or, I don't know, stay and teach the kids himself? Obscure teachers don't get famous, of course, and neither do donors who quietly cover their expenses, but if all that mattered was that the kids got taught . . .

Not your Grandma's paper doll clothes

More like Grandma's own clothes from back then. Oh, I've seen the photos.

I love Dover.

Not an exorcism, just a cleansing

Daily Mail:

A terrified widow called for a priest to cleanse her ‘evil’ house after she claims to have seen her dead husband appear on her bedroom wall.

Whatever appeared on the wall, it's still there, as you can see in the photo.

Our last priest said, at least half the time he was asked to do a house blessing, it was because the people thought the house was haunted. He inclined toward the theory of restless souls.

I'm going to lay off Pauline

A man was killed (R.I.P.) in the hall where she was speaking on what was supposed to be her big night; she's had enough for now. 

But the shooter, a "a disturbed-looking heavy-set middle-aged man wearing a bathrobe . . . saying something about the English waking up" is fair game. It seems the English may be waking up, but they haven't managed to get dressed yet.

Unnumbered list

• Pauline is in. Now everyone in Quebec will be issued a crucifix inscribed, not INRI or IHS, but ADFCS for "a des fins culturelles seulement" -- for cultural purposes only.
• An imam in Bahrain's been transferred for saying "anyone who believes that a church is a true place of worship is someone who has broken in their faith in God." Has broken? Does he think everyone is born Muslim and, if they're not lucky, corrupted by their infidel parents?
• Not again.

Three, four, whatever

"Is this the worst lie Paul Ryan has told yet?" 

So what if it is? What bothers me is that already he's acquired a name for never letting the truth spoil a good story. Like Mulroney; like Michael Moore.

Chesterton said the English party system was founded on the principle that half a truth was better than no politics. In this one instance, the Irish seem to agree. Half a truth is more than enough. No politics would be unthinkable.