Jeff Foxworthy, Mr. Gradgrind, and Bible trivia

Last updated on: September 18, 2012 at 10:29 am By Fred Clark

The Game Show Network has a (basic-cable) hit on its hands with The American Bible Challenge, a new quiz-show hosted by comedian Jeff Foxworthy. GSN says the show features contestants who: “compete based on their knowledge of the Bible. Utilizing current as well as historical references, questions will be drawn from the rich, dense narrative found in the world’s best-selling book.” It’s not quite true that the game is based on “knowledge of the Bible, but about trivia extracted from... Read more

I stole a bike from the Second Mile

Last updated on: September 17, 2012 at 2:38 pm By Fred Clark

“Kremer and D’Souza seem to have forgotten one of the first rules of storytelling, at least when I was growing up: The one who wants to rule the world is The Bad Guy.“ “For Romney, God blesses America because it is America and America is good because it is America and America will succeed because it is America. To put this sensibility in the terms of a common religious expression, let us bless ourselves: In the name of America, the... Read more

A question on quorums and unrepresentative elections

Last updated on: September 17, 2012 at 9:54 am By Fred Clark

In almost any legislative body — from the U.S. Congress to a middle-school student council — if only 10 percent of the members are present, they lack a quorum and cannot have a binding vote. Robert’s Rules of Order defines a quorum as “protection against totally unrepresentative action in the name of the body by an unduly small number of persons.” That’s a just measure reflecting a concern for justice. It’s wrong to pretend that “totally unrepresentative action in the... Read more

More smart people saying smart things

Last updated on: September 16, 2012 at 11:29 pm By Fred Clark

Katherine Boo: “Reporting Poverty” As a reporter, you know the tropes of how stories on poverty work in any country. A reporter will go to an NGO and say, “Tell me about the good work that you’re doing and introduce me to the poor people who represent the kind of help you give.” It serves to streamline the storytelling, but it gives you a lopsided cosmos in which almost every poor person you read about is involved with a NGO... Read more

Right-wing Americans going Dutch with bigot loser in Netherlands

Last updated on: September 16, 2012 at 8:57 pm By Fred Clark

Geert Wilders is a loser. The right-wing Dutch politician’s anti-immigrant, anti-Islam platform flopped in national elections last week in the Netherlands. But if Wilders is unpopular at home, he’s popular here in the U.S. with our own far-right whackaloons. Reuters’ Anthony Deutsch and Mark Hosenball report: Groups in America seeking to counter Islamic influence in the West say they funded police protection and paid legal costs for Wilders. … Wilders’ ideas — calling for a halt to non-Western immigration and... Read more

Shana Tova

Last updated on: September 16, 2012 at 6:34 pm By Fred Clark

Happy New Year to all who celebrate this day. At Religion News Service, Lauren Markoe has a quick “Rosh Hashanah 101: What you should know about the Jewish New Year.” (Wikipedia’s entry is more informative, but it doesn’t have video.) Rabbi Brant Rosen offers a lovely reflection “On a New Year of Healing, Hope and Transformation.” Every opening of a door, every act of peacemaking, every move we make to heal the world around us has the potential to create... Read more

Calvinists, Arminians, atheists and other sub-categories of non-Sheilaism

Last updated on: September 16, 2012 at 6:03 pm By Fred Clark

“Does God Play Duck-Duck-Goose?” Richard Beck asks, critiquing the Calvinist doctrine of “double predestination.” That’s the idea that “before you were even born, God had predestined you to either go to heaven or go to hell.” Beck notes that: Double predestination has been roundly criticized, even within Reformed circles. But many people do subscribe to the doctrine. Double predestination is deemed to be a crude bastardization of Reformed theology, but crude bastardizations tend to be pretty popular. He then goes... Read more

Why prophets are funny

Last updated on: September 16, 2012 at 12:35 pm By Fred Clark

Mark Evanier: Comedy is about taking on the rich and powerful, not siding with them. The first great American comedy movie star was a tramp, not a banker. To the extent it’s funny watching a person slip on a banana peel, it’s funny to have it be a fat, pompous tycoon as opposed to, say, a homeless person. A lot of comedy is about bringing the powerful and inflated down to “our” level so it’s done from a lower POV.... Read more

Sunday favorites

Last updated on: September 1, 2012 at 9:55 pm By Fred Clark

Nehemiah 5:2-6 For there were those who said, ‘With our sons and our daughters, we are many; we must get grain, so that we may eat and stay alive.’ There were also those who said, ‘We are having to pledge our fields, our vineyards, and our houses in order to get grain during the famine.’ And there were those who said, ‘We are having to borrow money on our fields and vineyards to pay the king’s tax. Now our flesh... Read more

Two long reads worth your time

Last updated on: September 15, 2012 at 12:56 pm By Fred Clark

Here are a couple of recent longer essays, both challenging and insightful, that reward the time it may take to read them even if neither is a quick click-through. I’ve excerpted a bit from both of these below, but neither piece really lends itself to a simple excerpt-summary. The few paragraphs I’ve copied here are meant to entice you to read the rest, not to serve as Cliff-Note substitutes. The latter piece, by Andrew Solomon, deals forthrightly with the subject... Read more