Taking too much too lightly

Taking too much too lightly April 17, 2015

Chewie looks good for his age:

• I loved The Cabin in the Woods for the way it deconstructed and repurposed nearly all of the stale tropes and hackneyed clichés of horror movies. It’s kind of hilarious, then, to see that some guy is now suing the screenwriters and Lionsgate, claiming they plagiarized from his self-published horror novel … because he used many of the same stale tropes and hackneyed clichés the movie deconstructs. (Via Whedonesque.)

• Let me add my personal anecdotal affirmation to Atrios’ personal anecdotal observation. He writes, “Once a judge legalized same sex marriage in Pennsylvania … everybody just stopped talking about it.” Pretty much. The sky did not fall and this already seems like ancient history. In terms of state politics, at least, no one seems determined to turn back the clock.

• Right-wing culture warrior Daniel Lapin doesn’t like American liberals or Islamist extremists. But Lapin seems to find the Islamists irresistibly “masculine.” Lapin’s explanation for why feminists love Sharia law is just as weirdly delusional as his contention that feminists love Sharia law. 

LCWR
Delegates from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious visit the Iron Bank of Braavos.

Hemant Mehta is appropriately bewildered by the newly invented KosherSwitch — a device that allows Orthodox Jews to turn electric lights on and off on the Sabbath while very, very technically not breaking the very, very technical commandment their tradition says forbids them to do so. This is the end game of any form of rule- or commandment-based ethics — loopholes that honor the rules only circuitously, by allowing them to be violated through obscure technicalities.

I hope my friend the Friendly Atheist won’t be offended when I say that his reaction to the KosherSwitch is rather Pauline (in a good way). This is pretty close to what Galatians is all about.

• “Guys! Guys! You Totally Have to Check This Out!” Matthew Keville writes, directing our attention to A Book of Creatures — a bestiary blog of monsters from folklore. This is me seconding what he said.

Consider, for example, the Boongurunguru of the Solomon Islands. It’s part of the regional flood myth — which includes an ark and a rainbow. The similarities to other ancient flood myths clearly indicate, then, that these are all references to an actual historical event and that the Boongurunguru really exists. Anyone who says otherwise hates the Bible.

• Paul Davidson continues exploring the tantalizing puzzle of the synoptic problem, this time looking at the different versions of a parable told by both Matthew and Luke, but not Mark. Did Luke copy Matthew? Did Matthew copy Luke? Did they both copy from Q? Or from Marcion’s Evangelion? Or from a possible proto-Luke?

I’ll say it again: The synoptic problem is just plain fun.

• Kudos to Tennessee’s Attorney General Herbert Slatery III for saying this, “I am quite confident that the Bible’s distinguished place in history will not be diminished in the absence of a state’s endorsement.”

Slatery also noted that the bill state legislators are pushing to make the Bible the state’s “official book” would be unconstitutional, as Tennessee’s constitution says “no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship.”

So the Bible cannot legally join the Volunteer State’s other official honorees, such as the official state amphibian (the cave salamander) and the official state tree (the tulip poplar). I’m not clear about Tennessee’s official state song, though. It’s “The Tennessee Waltz” — but I’m not sure if that means the classic Patti Page song or the song-within-the-song to which her old friend danced with her sweetheart. Here’s a nice sad take on the former by Norah Jones:

P.S. The state Senate in Tennessee declined to act on the Bible bill after the egregiously illegal proposal passed the state House.

 


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