• Take a moment to consider our ongoing American perplexity over the (to us) incomprehensible and possibly untranslatable British phrase “cheeky Nandos.”
Now wait a century until every living person who has any direct cultural understanding of Nandos is dead and buried. Then wait another millennium or so as a completely new language evolves and arises. Now wait another 500-800 years. And then attempt to translate this phrase, “cheeky Nandos,” into the new language with all of the connotations and nuances intended by the original writer still intact.
This is how we got the Bible. This is why biblical scholars are necessary. Pony?
• “Complementarian Theology Is the Rapist’s Wingman.” Well said, Dianna E. Anderson.
• “Center for Medical Progress” sounds so much more, like, respectable and stuff than just identifying yourself as an offshoot of Operation Rescue. The new name is vaguely serious and authoritative-sounding — and, more importantly, it’s wholly untainted by decades of disreputable, dishonest behavior from the lunatic fringe, which lets “mainstream” anti-abortion folks support its hatchet-job while still pretending to distance themselves from the rabid whackaloons.
The guys from “Ghostfacers” should take a cue from this — rename themselves something like the Institute for the Study of Entities.
(That’s not entirely fair. In the fictional context of their TV show, after all, the imaginary monsters tracked by the Ghostfacers actually exist, so while they may be just as incompetent and sensationalistic as their real-world counterparts in the “Center for Medical Progress,” they’re not as enthusiastically delusional.)
• Via Scot McKnight, I learn that some website has decided that Iowa is “the most American of all the 50 states.”
Bzzt. Sorry, no, but thanks for playing. No one from Iowa signed the Declaration or ratified the Constitution in 1789. George Washington was never president of Iowa. Neither was John Adams or Thomas Jefferson or Madison or Monroe. The first president of Iowa was James K. Polk.
Nothing against Iowa, or the rest of the “heartland” that started out as the frontier, but it won’t do to pretend that the 29th star added to the American flag is somehow more authentic than any of the original thirteen. All such realmurka games are silly and stupid and clumsily fraught with political agendas, and its best not to play them at all. But for those who insist on playing them, sorry, stars and stripes outscore stars without stripes every time.
• “If anyone suggests that the fact that Mark Weiner was released this week means ‘the system works,’ I fear that I will have to punch him in the neck.”
• Here’s another Scary Story but, alas, not the kind that lets us indulge in “the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible.” Even worse, our best scientists insist this Scary Story is actually true: “The Really Big One: An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.”
Seattle-based Grist tries their best to view the Cascadia subduction zone as half-full. But it’s still apparently the case that there’s about a 1-in-3 chance that Seattle won’t still be there 50 years from now. Yeesh.
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