During the last two decades, Christian fundamentalists have increasingly and openly challenged and rejected Jesus’ admonition to 'render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s." Most American have considered it proper for private citizens to influence public policy, but not for a religious group to attempt to control the processes of a democratic government or for public officials to interfere in religious affairs or use laws or tax revenues to favor certain religious institutions.
Although the issue was prominent when John Kennedy’s Catholicism was debated, I also reintroduced, inadvertently, the subject of religious faith into a presidential campaign. One April night in1976 at the home of a North Carolina political supporter I was asked point-blank if I was a “born again Christian.” There were news reporters there, and I truthfully answered, “Yes,” assuming that all devout Christians were born again, of the Holy Spirit. This was the first time that this religious characterization had been injected into the political arena, and there was an immediate furor, with media allegations that I claimed to be receiving messages directly from heaven and thought that I was endowed by God with some elements of sanctity and superiority over other candidates. From then until the end of the campaign, national reporters made a big deal of what had seemed natural to me and my Baptist hosts, making clear to me that injecting religion into politics was a mistake.
Page 52 contains a table titled “Exhibit 1.17: WPP Group / Consolidated Balance Sheet / (amounts in millions of pounds) / (Problem 1.5)”
I’ll spare you the body of the table.
For pleasure (to let my brain recover from stuff like Exhibit 1.17):
“There were, however, things that Harry needed to buy. He went to the Apothecary to replenish his store of Potions ingredients, and as his school robes were now several inches too short in the arm and leg, he visited Madam Malkin’s Robes for All Occasions and bought new ones. Most important of all, he had to buy his new schoolbooks, which would include those for his two new subjects, Care of Magical Creatures and Divination.”
Need I go on? (Rereading the series; started it for the first time right around the time Book 6 came out, and am gearing up to see movie #4 this weekend.)
When I muse about memes, I often find myself picturing an ephemeral flickering pattern of sparks leaping from brain to brain, screaming “Me, me!” Walton’s and Going’s letters reinforced this image in intersting ways. For instance, Walton begins with the simplest imaginable viral sentences - “Say me!” and “Copy me!” - and moves quickly to more complex variations with blandishments (“If you copy me, I’ll grant you three wishes!”) or threats (“Say me or I’ll put a curse on you!”), neither of which, he observes, is likely to be able to keep its word. Of course, he points out, this may not matter, the only final test of viability being success at survival in the meme pool. All’s fair in love and war - and war includes the eternal battle for survival, in the ideosphere no less than in the biosphere.
The evil associations that were ascribed to red-haired men were in place at the height of ancient Egypt and appear to have traveled within the Roman Empire into morality plays and onto the Elizabethan stage. Along the way, historic anti-Semitism fed the flames of hatred to the extent needed to keep such vivid imagery alive. At the time of Shylock’s debut, society’s fears of the Jews illuminated the meaning of the wig. Then those fears waned somewhat, only to reappear repeatedly in history. In contemporary Western culture, such wigs can be seen on the heads of circus clowns.
But as the sentiments yielding distrust of the Jews as well as the power and meaning of red hair have waxed and waned, they also appear to have parted company. One is not currently dependent on the other, it would seem, yet the discrimination against redheads carries in its backstory the fear and hatred of the Jews as an unspoken alliance, an implicit undertone that easily goes unnoticed. More recent historic intolerance of redheads appears to arise less from the association with Jews than the notion that red hair is being worn by “others”, outsiders, not of our own.
“For a knight. That’s what this woman needed, a knight in armor, preferably with a very long lance, suitable for killing bears from a distance. In all the tales, the hero had a magic sword, or magic sack from which he could draw everything he needed, or a magic helper who would do the impossible task for him. All Ivan had to help him was the limited wit of a graduate student so foolish as to be pursuing studies in a field that guaranteed him a lifetime of genteel poverty, and wghatever strength and agility remained in the body of a college decathlete three years out of shape. In other words, he had nothing, and she needed miracles.”
Allen lay there, his lunch already attracting a swarm of ants and a rock burning into his thigh, and had suddenly had enough. If today was his day, then so be it, but be wasn’t going to lie with his face in the mud for any damned gook. He stood up, brushed off his filthy flak jacket, and walked across the intervening open ground to retrieve his spoon. He cleaned it off on the edge of his shirt, put it into his chest pocket, delivered the taller half of the peace sign to the invisible enemy, and walked back to where his gun lay, refusing to hurry.
“You crazy bastard, Carmichael,” Mouse shouted, “you’re gonna get yourself killed!” Lama Pacos and BraheSilver, what are your books? They sound interesting.
“Gallopin’ Gorgons, that reminds me,” said Hagrid, clapping a hand to his forehead with enough force to knock over a cart horse, and from yet another pocket inside his overcoat he pulled an owl-- a real, live, rather ruffled-looking owl-a long quill, and a roll of parchment. With his tongue between hist eeth he scribbled a note that harry could read upside down: Dear Professor Dumbledore,
Given Harry his letter.
Taking him to buy his things tomorrow.
Weather’s horrible. Hope you’re well.
Hagrid
Kell led them to a four-seat table against one wall, but Piggy pointed to a much longer table nearby.“We’ll be joined by the other candidates” he said, his mechanical voice cutting efficiently through the cantina’s ambient noise, and Kell had to agree.
When they were seated, Kell turned back to the long-faced alien. “You were saying.”
His Britannic Majesty’s seventy four gun ship Nonsuch was out of sight of land in the Baltic. She was under easy sail, running before that persistent westerly wind, and astern of her, like a couple of ugly ducklings following their portly mother, came the two bomb-ketches. Far out to starboard, only just in sight, was the Lotus, and far out to port was the Raven. Beyond the Raven, unseen from the Nonsuch, was the Clam; the four ships made a visual chain which could sweep the narrow neck of the Baltic, from Sweden to Rugen, from side to side. There was still no news; in spring, with the melting of the ice, the whole traffic of the Baltic was outwards, towards England and Europe, and with this westerly wind so long prevailing little was astir. The air was fresh and keen, despite the sunshine, and the sea was silver grey under the dappled sky.
I’m currently reading Fargo Rock City - a heavy metal odyssey in rural North Dakota . Once I finish this I’m switching over to Killing yourself to live - 85% of a true story (that way I will have read most of his books)
Oh, yes! That’s from Flann O’Brien’s The Poor Mouth, a satire of the hardscrabble Irish memoirs that were so popular in the '50s. It’s really quite funny.
Half an hour later, there were still no tickets. The little printer hooked up to the waiters’ computer order systems lay silent. Our two runners, Manuel and Ed, informed us that the guests were arriving, the dining room filling, and all of us hoped that they’d start getting the orders in fast, in comfortably staggered fashion, so we could set a nice pace without getting swamped all at once.
“Tell them to get those orders in,” snarled Bobby. “Let’s knock down some early tables! C’mon!”
From “New Year’s Meltdown” by Anthony Bourdain in Don’t Try This at Home edited by Kimberly Witherspoon and Andrew Friedman
“I understand. I shall see to it.” Bunim turned one eye turret to the chronometer.“And now, if you will excuse me, I also have other things to see to …”
“Of course, Superior Sir.” Nesseref left Bunim’s office, and also the building housing it. Having been in the hands of the Race since shortly after the arrival of the conquest fleet, it suited her kind about as well as a building originally put up by Big Uglies could. When she went outside, into the cold of the Bialut Market Square, she found herself back in a different world.
Colonization: Down to Earth, the second book in the Colonization series by Harry Turtledove. The series is the sequel to his World War series, where a lizardlike alien Race invades Earth near the start of World War II. Humans (“Big Uglies”) fought them to a standstill, with an uneasy truce in place 20 years later. The Race controls Poland, where this scene takes place.
