No Mercy Intended

 At one point during Christ's crucifixion, he says that he is thirsty, and a Roman soldier lifts a sponge soaked in vinegar to his lips, but Christ refuses it.  

A very common "explanation" for this tableau -- and one which I have long believed to be not merely mistaken but utterly false -- is that this was an act of kindness or mercy, the vinegar being offered to dull the horrible pain of the crucified victim, and that Christ refused it so as to fully experience taking upon himself the weight of mankind's sin.  But, this doesn't make sense; for the whole point of crucifixion was to kill the condemned by slow torture, with as much humiliation and horror as possible.

Here is what I believe to be what was really going on: the Roman soldier was offering Christ vinegar delivered on the Roman equivalent of toilet paper. In their public latrines, Romans wiped their asses with sponges on sticks. Christ refused it not because our salvation required him fully experience the horror, but because it was unclean.

Coincidentally, just before I started writing this post, I did a quick search and came across the following web-page, which argues for the same conclusion -- The Crucifixion Sponge: Adding Insult to Injury

About Those Lawns

 Recently, when asked *specifically* what she intended to do to "bring down prices and mak[e] life more affordable", Kamala "Sutra" Harris went into word-salad mode ... and never got close to answering the question.  As she meandered her way to no-where, she said that she "grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn ...".  What, you may wonder, is that all about?

What it's about is that she's trying to tell black "folks" that, "See! I'm just like you!"

Recall that Kamala "Sutra" Harris grew up in Canada, and has little to none of the "lived-experience" of black Americans.  BUT, she has heard of the old stereotype within "the black community" of the "lawn-proud" black man.  So, she's making reference to that stereotype to say to black "folks" that, "See! I'm just like you!" ... probably without realizing that the "lawn-proud" black man was a figure of both amusement and bemusement.

By the way, in the black neighborhood in which I grew up, only the very few white households (my family were the only white household with children for blocks around) had lawns.  The reason for this is that in the black households, the lady of the house *swept* the lawn with a broom on a daily basis.

EDIT (2024/09/02):

Isn't it odd that Kamala Sutra was raised in a middle-class neighborhood, where people were proud of their lawns, and simultaneously grew up living in an apartment above a "child-care center", with the business being owned by a woman who lived "two doors down [the hall]"?

Liberals ... and Speed Limits

Seen on the internet -- "Conservatives are just liberals doing the speed limit."

My response --

True enough in the cases of most people.

Meanwhile, "liberals" are just unprincipled leftists. That is, "liberals" are people who subscribe to leftist presuppositions, they just don't like some of the destinations logically entailed in those presuppositions. BUT, as they have no *principle* by which to reject the logic, and thus the entailed destination, they will always eventually fold when the open leftists demand it.

In the meantime. unless your proffered alternative to leftism is Jesus Christ, then you are also just another variant of leftist.

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The late Andrew Breitbart famously said, "Politics is downstream of culture."

And, while that is true, it is incomplete. A more complete statement is expressed by my internet friend Kristor: "Politics is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of cult." 'Cult' is not here a pejorative, as the word is commonly erroneously used in present-day English.

Or, as as (Calvinist) pastor and blogger, Douglas Wilson, points out: "There is always a god of the system." There is no such thing as metaphysical/religious neutrality (*); there is always some metaphysical underpinning of the social system, and which will be expressed in its politics. There are always blasphemy laws, but what is counted "sacred", and thus not to be blasphemed, depends upon the underlying metaphysics.

(*) The secularist promise of "religious neutrality" was a deliberate bait-and-switch lie. The goal was not "religious neutrality", which is impossible, but rather to disarm the general Christian(ish) populace long enough to install their anti-Christian metaphysics as the organizing principle of Western societies. It worked because most people were merely "cultural Christians", who wanted to enjoy the fruits of a Christian culture, while bulldozing the orchard.

Zeus ... and the 'atheist'

A recent thread on the 'Shadow to Light' blog ("Atheist Tries to Defend Atheist Talking Point") concerns the common attempt by 'atheists' to avoid actually making arguments, and actually defending their position, by (falsely) asserting that atheism is merely a "lack of belief in gods".

The commenter, MP, remarked, "For that matter, it can also be interesting to observe an atheist who has to deal with the fact that some Roman and Japanese emperors were considered to be gods. Given what atheists claim to believe, they would have to say that those emperors did not exist, as “there is no evidence for them”. Yet, somehow, that does not really happen…"

The commenter, TFBW, replied, "That raises the question, “what is a god?” What is the statement “Roman emperors were not gods” denying, exactly?"

After further comments by others, here is my attempt to comment on the sum of comments --

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Even aside from the important, though almost always overlooked, point of nailing down just what an 'atheist' means by the word 'god', atheism offers 'atheists' no rational principle by which deny the reality either of Christ or of Zeus ... nor of any of the miracles recorded in the Bible.

Zeus, like the 'atheist', is an effect of "the universe". Zeus, like the 'atheist', is the off-spring of a previously existing living entity, and ultimately descends from an original living entity which "came alive", all by itself, from non-living matter; and which non-living matter ultimately "came into ordered being" (i.e "Cosmos"), all by itself, from non-ordered Chaos. And again, Zeus' rationality, like that of the 'atheist', is an effect of "the universe", and "arose" from non-rationality.

But, what of Zeus' "supernatural" nature? In that regard, too, the 'atheist' has no rational principle by which to reject the possibility that Zeus could "break the laws of nature", for "scientific atheism" denies that there are any "laws of nature" in the first place.

Please bear with me that I have quoted this before, but it is important -- in 'The Demon-Haunted World', Carl Sagan said:

"Consider this claim: as I walk along, time -as measured by my wristwatch or my ageing process -slows down. Also, I shrink in the direction of motion. Also, I get more massive. Who has ever witnessed such a thing? It's easy to dismiss it out of hand. Here's another: matter and antimatter are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd! But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations and barrier tunnelling,* they're called). Like it or not, that's the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that govern the Universe.

*The average waiting time per stochastic ooze is much longer than the age of the Universe since the Big Bang. But, however improbable, in principle it might happen tomorrow."

What this means, is that, according to 'Science!', anything at all might happen at any time at all without any cause at all. That is, despite passing mention of "rules that govern the Universe", Sagan is really saying that there are no "laws of nature" in the first place for Zeus (or YHWH) to "violate" when causing a "supernatural event", or a miracle, to occur.

According to the 'atheist', Zeus just happens to be a rational living being, like himself, who, like himself, ultimately "arose" from non-rational non-living matter, which self-organized from disorganization. The difference between Zeus and the 'atheist' is that Zeus is able, whether innately or via study, to manipulate to his advantage "some of the major findings on the rules [sic] that govern the Universe."
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This is the World That Women Demanded

To be more precise, the app in question is meant for lesbian "females".

Once again: "Men invading women's spaces" is the logical consequence of what women, and especially capital-L Lesbian women, have demanded for decades: that women, with government violence backing them up, be free to "invade men's spaces".

(The late) Phyllis Schlafly, and conservatives in general, *warned* you that "men invading women's spaces" would be the logical and inevitable consequence of ratifying the so-called "Equal Rights Amendment". Even though, thanks in large part to Mrs Schlafly, the ERA itself didn't get *officially* added to the text of the Constitution, leftist judges, bureaucrats and politicians have used the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the vehicle by which to replace, in practice, the actual written Constitution with the spirit of the ERA.

If women want this sort of bullshit to end, *they* are going to have to repudiate feminism, in particular, and leftism, in general, root and branch.

A 'Trans Woman' Sued an App Meant for Females

A (Twisted) Nursery Rhyme for My Imaginary Children

If I'd had a son, I had planned to name him James Joseph (in Southern: Jimmy Joe!). Since twins run in both sides of my family, if there had been a twin, he'd have been Joseph James (in Southern: Joe Jim!). This would have named them after my father, his father, and his father.  Rather than referring to them non-specifically as "Twin", as my brother and I did to our sisters until they insisted we call them by name, either boy, or both at once, would be "JJ".

If I'd had a daughter, I had planned to name her Rachael Marie, thus naming her after my mother, her grandmother, my grandfather's sister, and a not-quite-grandmother who lived with us until her death. A twin would have been Sarah Marie; there are no Sarahs in the family that I know of.  Any daughter, no matter how many, would have had Marie as a middle name (as all my nieces do).

So, here is the (twisted) nursery rhyme:

Hush, little baby, If you don't cry,
I promise to smack you bye and bye,
Or maybe I'll turn you into a pie,
We'll have such fun if you don't cry.

Passion ... and Gravitas

Most politicians (of any party), when they try to give "passionate" speeches, just end up sounding hollow and shrill; especially the women. Lord, spare me having to listen to female politicians!

But this year's Democrats, of both alleged sexes, seem to have *practiced* sounding hollow and shrill. And bombastic; to say nothing of dishonest.

Saturday's Child

I noticed that my upcoming birthday is on a Saturday. I thought I recalled that I was born on a Saturday, so I looked it up. Sure enough, I'm a "Saturday's child". According to the old rhyme, "Saturday's child works hard for a living." But, truth be told, I never had to work particularly hard for my living.

About "Price-Gauging"

The puppet-masters of That Empty Vessel, Kaaamala (*) Sutra (**), recently instructed her that her policy will be to enact a federal law against "price-gauging", as she mispronounced the phrase.  Presumably, her TelePrompTer did have "price-gouging" written, but she, being as empty and vapid as she is, and perhaps not having been verbally informed as to what she would be fulminating against, could get no closer to the word "gouging" than to say "gauging".

Weird.

Still, my purpose here isn't to hammer on Kaaamala Sutra, but rather to demolish the concept of "price-gouging" itself -- to wit: I wish Gentle Reader to understand that there is no such thing as "price-gouging". The idea (and assertion) of "price-gouging" is founded upon a number of lies and hypocrisies. I'll try to elucidate these (with no guarantee that I've uncovered them all):

1) There is an objectively "right" price for a good or service: But, in fact, the only "right" price for a good or service is what someone else is willing to pay for it.  This "right" price" is both subjective and situational; it is subjective in that the persons who comprise the potential market for it will value it higher or lower in relation to other goods and services which they also desire; it is situational in that markets may change, both with respect to place and to time.

Consider: In the 19th century, before the invention of kerosene, the wealthier people lit their homes with lamps burning whale oil and/or candles made of whale oil.  There was an entire industry, centered in coastal New England, which sent thousands of men out onto the global oceans to "harvest" sperm whales to acquire this oil. The oil had a price -- based as all prices are, on the demand and the supply, and which varied over time as demand rose and supply fell. Yet, today, a century and a half later? Today, whale oil is both worthless and priceless: it is worthless in that there is no demand for it; it is priceless in that were there some eccentric individual who wanted whale oil to light his home, he would have to, in essence, rebuild that industry with his own effort and/or wealth.

2) There is some bureaucrat, somewhere, who, while knowing nothing about anyone else's life-circumstance, is competent to determine what the "right" price is for any good or service: This one is so absurd that I don't believe I need say more about it. I list it here for the sake of bringing it to Gentle Reader's attention.

3) It is "immoral" to offer a good or service for more than its "right" price: The corollary of this is, of course, that it is "immoral" to try to buy a good or service for less than its "right" price. We all know that no one who asserts the first will also assert the second, and certainly not with respect to his own desire to get a good or service as cheaply as he might.

4) "It's OK when I do it": This is related to 3) above; of those persons who whinge and fulminate about "price-gouging", there is not one person in one hundred who will not "price-gouge" in his turn should the opportunity arise.  The most prosaic example might be something like buying a house for $40,000 in 1980 and, having lived in it for 44 years (***), offering it for sale in 2024 for $250,000.

5) And, whatever other lies and hypocrisies I may have missed, the ultimate lie upon which the idea (and assertion) of "price-gouging" is based is: "I deserve to live by the sweat of your brow."

(*) Don't you dare pronounce her name according to the normal stress and cadence of the English language, you raycisss!

(**) I wish to pay homage both to her ethnic heritage and to her "political" skills.

(***) BY THE WAY, since at least the Clinton years, the Democrats have dreampt of taxing homeowners for the "unrealized capital-gains" which accrue to them by virtue of not paying rent.  After all, how unfair is it that Person A pays rent for 44 years, and ends up owning nothing, while Person B pays a mortgage for 30 years and ends up owning a house which he might be able to sell for $250,000?!!!

And, they're openly at it again.

This is true in all years, but especially in this year: Vote Democrat at your own peril.

About "Folks"

It's political season (when isn't it, anymore?), which means that the political class and its wannabes are out there trying to convince the rest of us of how "folksy" they are.  One of their main tools -- and most inauthentic and least "folksy" means -- to try to convince us of their "folksiness" is to use the word "folks" where other people say "people".

When normal people use "folks", they are referring to a person's family, and specifically one's parents. Normal people with Southern roots may use "folk" (singular) to refer to one's wider family and/or to a wider "kith and kin".

But, normal people do not use "folks" as the collective of "persons".

My rule of thumb on "folks" is that people who use "folks" in this unnatural manner are trying to deceive me in some way, even if its only to fool me into thinking that they "relate" to me.