Serene Musings

Notes from the Cave

2012-02-12T13:47:00.003-05:00

"It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

That opening sentence from Orwell's "1984" would be perfectly appropriate at this moment, except that it's not April.

The Spawn are across the street, and the Mate is shopping with a friend. That means Yours Truly gets to sit at home and watch Lost, read, and do a little blogging.

If you follow me on Twitter (@BScottChristmas), you may have noticed that I have started getting involved in the so-called "Indie Writer" crowd. Twitter is a HUGE medium for independent authors, and they all follow each other and retweet each other all the time. Some of these writers seem to be on Twitter all day long, seven days a week, sending out tweet after tweet after tweet, often times repeating the exact same thing (an advertisement for their book, for instance). Many of them never tweet anything that is not related to Indie book publishing and writing. It's as if they eat, sleep, drink, and breathe Indie publishing.

To be honest, I find it a bit annoying, and somewhat creepy. Like this underworld subculture of mostly unsuccessful writers that no one knows about.

I'm not trying to be mean - I'm one of them after all! - but the obsessive way some of them (and I emphasize, it's only SOME) use Twitter to self-promote is a bit of a put-off. There is at least one guy who I un-followed simply because I got sick of seeing the same self-promoting tweets over and over and over again - dozens of times a day.

Anyway....to my regular followers, sorry for the occasional book-related retweet or for the occasional tweet promoting my own books. I like the Indie writers community, and I appreciate it that it's there as a resource for me, but I try not to overdo it or abuse it.

Anyway....

This past week at work was, in all honestly, probably the most stressful week I've had since I've been an X-ray tech. Very, very busy all week, everyone frazzled and stressed out, and that stress just emanates around the group and becomes a vicious cycle. It was not fun, at all. It did, however, make Happy Hour on Friday night especially fun, and we had a very good turn out. My birthday, as many of you know, was last Wednesday, and while I am not too thrilled about 37, at least it's not 40. :)

I am making slow progress on what is set to be my first novel published on Amazon. As my good friends and family will know, I have written five novels over the years, but have not yet published any of them. It took me a while to decide which one to publish, and now that I have made the decision, I have to essentially re-write the whole thing.

The title of the book (which MIGHT be changed) is The Pyrate Chronicles. This was the first novel I ever completed. I started writing it after being inspired by a dream in the summer of 1995 - the summer after my Sophomore year of college. I wrote the first half of the book that summer, then set it aside during my Junior year of school. The following summer - 1996 - I returned to it and completed it. It was a big accomplishment, of course, but the book itself was not very good.

I did a mild rewrite of the book in 1997, and then a much more thorough rewrite about 1998. Even then, it wasn't particularly good, and I decided to finally put it aside and move on to other things. I have always regarded it with an almost paternal affection, not just because it was my first literary offspring, but also because it was hopelessly flawed, but still an important stepping stone in my development.

So here I am now, 17-some years down the road since I wrote the novel's first line, and I have decided to resurrect it with a complete rewrite and release it as my first published novel. As the title implies, it is a pirate tale, and I hope to make it a sort of action/adventure story with a strong sense of historical setting and historical integrity. It's not going to be supernatural, like Pirates of the Caribbean, and it also won't be a totally romanticized story - like Treasure Island - of a pirate world that never really existed.

It is set in Europe in the late 17th century, and the central character is an English sailor turned pirate who haunts the Mediterranean Sea and has a bit of a Robin Hood streak. He is joined by his lover, a woman who was sold into white slavery on the Barbary Coast as a child, but was rescued by a Dutch privateer and raised on his ship. Taking a cue from my recent obsession with the TV show "Lost," I intend to fill the book with flashbacks, slowly revealing the back story of the various main characters as the novel progresses.

I will, of course, keep you filled in on my progress :)

I was very happy yesterday to see the UK Wildcats pull out a tough road win against Vanderbilt - one of the hardest teams to beat on their own floor. I hate to sound silly, but I really do think this particular Kentucky team is one of the very best UK teams in a very, very long time. They seem to be peaking at just the right time, and they are playing really good basketball right now. The "favorite" team of the last few years has NOT managed to go on to win a national championship. I think UK is the clear "favorite" right now, so I hope that they will break the streak. They seem to be standing out from the pack right now, in a way that I have not seen teams do for the last few years - which is why, I think, that no "favorite" has won a championship. There has been quite a bit of parity in college basketball in recent years, but I feel like Kentucky is really stretching out ahead right now. We'll see how it progresses.

I feel like there is more I should talk about, but I can't really think of anything at the moment. I hope to get back to work soon on part III of my political party history. Don't die from anticipation, please.

The Convoluted History of the Beatles Catalog

2012-02-06T15:47:00.001-05:00

Sounds like a fascinating subject, eh? Well, I think it is.

(By the way, I am opting to use the more modern spelling of "catalog" in this post, because I am tired of having Google Chrome tell me I am spelling it wrong. I have always spelled this word as "catalogue," but apparently that spelling is no longer in vogue [or should I say "vog"?]. Perhaps "catalogue" is the British spelling. Either way, you're getting "catalog.")

As my Twitter and Facebook followers will know, I just received the entire Beatles catalog for my birthday. There aren't many performers for whom you can buy the entire catalog in one fell swoop, but the Beatles, evidently, are no common musicians. In 2009, their record company released a box set that basically includes every song they ever recorded and released during their reign in the 1960's. I had never owned a Beatles album before, but have been increasingly interested in their music as I've gotten older, so I decided to just go all out and get the whole thing.

As it turns out, the actual catalog itself has an interesting, and at times extremely confusing, history.

To put it simply, by the time the Beatles broke up in 1970, they essentially had two catalogs: their UK catalog, and their U.S. catalog. To put it in modern parlance, they basically had two separate discographies - different albums, with different titles, different songs, and different artwork.

To explain this mess, and how it was resolved, it is perhaps best to begin by explaining the often confusing, and sometimes completely paradoxical, terminology used in the music business.

There are three basic types of releases common in the music industry. The first is the so-called "single." This is perhaps one of the most confusing terms in the history of popular music.

To begin with, there are two types of singles. The first type is a song that is released only as a single unit. It cannot be purchased on a full-length album because it was never put on an album. It was only and forever a single.

The second type of single is a song that is released as part of a full-length album, but is also released as a single unit. You can purchase the song either by buying the single, or by buying the entire album. When I was growing up in the 1980's and 90's, this was the most common type of single. An album would be put out, and several of the best songs from the album would also be released as singles.

Earlier, in the 50's and 60's, the first type of single - the stand-along single - was much more common. Bands and performers frequently released songs as singles that were never on a full-length studio album. With the advent of digital MP3 downloads, it has become common once again for performers to release songs that are only released as singles.

In addition to this, the word "single," itself, is a misnomer, because in the days before digital music, a "single" actually had two songs on it, not one. So it was really a "double." There would be a song on the front, or "A" side, and a second song on the back, or "B" side (this was true whether it was a record or a tape). The A-side song would typically be the song that would get the most airplay on radio stations, and, as such, it would usually be the song that would make the Top 40 lists. Sometimes, however, the B-side song would get a lot of radio play as well, and it, too, might become a hit. There are a few cases of B-side songs actually ranking higher on the Top 40 than the corresponding A-side song.

The second type of music industry release is the so-called "LP." This stands for Long Play, and it is the most common type of album. When your favorite performer releases a new, full-length studio album, it is considered an LP. In the 60's and 70's, an LP might have had 8 or 9 songs on it, depending on how long the songs were. With the advent of tapes, and later CD's, LP's generally became longer, with as many as 11 or 12 songs (records couldn't hold that many songs, unless the songs were really short; as a result, during the 1980's, when both records and tapes were still being mass-produced, the record version of an album would usually have fewer songs, or the songs would have portions cut out of them to make them shorter). Even though CD's can hold much more than that, the 12-song standard has generally remained in place for modern LP albums.

The final type of music industry release is the EP, or Extended Play. Even though this sounds like it should be the longest of the bunch, it's actually in between a single and an LP - something that I always found extremely confusing. If a single had 2 songs, and an LP had 10 songs, an EP might have 6 songs. Guns n' Roses' second album, G n' R Lies, is a famous example of an EP.

With that background in mind, we look now to the actual Beatles catalog. The first two Beatles albums were released in the UK in 1963. However, when Beatles music finally came to the U.S. in 1964, entirely new albums were created for the U.S. market. They were basically made up of songs that had been on the first two UK albums, as well as some songs that had only been released as singles in the UK. Otherwise, the titles were different, and even some of the cover art was different. This trend continued up through the 1966 album "Revolver." Beginning in 1967 with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the catalogs were finally brought together, and with one exception, all the following albums were the same in the U.S. and UK.

The one exception was the second album of 1967, Magical Mystery Tour. In the UK, this was a Double-EP album - meaning two EP records. Each record had 3 songs - 2 on the front and 1 on the back. In the U.S., however, it was an LP with a total of 11 songs on one record. The front side had the same 6 songs that had been on the UK version, but the back side had an additional 5 songs that had been released only as singles in the UK.

Because of all this, by the time the Beatles broke up in 1970, they had a significant number of LP's, EP's, and singles to their name, and none of it was unified. In the UK alone, they had released 12 LP's, 13 EP's, and 22 singles. Among all countries combined, it was 27 LP's, 21 EP's, and 55 singles. The various catalogs were made up of essentially the same songs, but they were on different albums with different names and different artwork. Some songs that had been singles in one country were on albums in other countries, and some songs that were part of an LP in one country were part of an EP in another country, and on and on and on. Even the record companies themselves were different, depending on where the song/album was released.

This mishmash remained until 1987 when the catalog was released for the first time on CD. Apple Records, the Beatles record label by that time, decided to streamline the catalog to make it easier to access. The way they fixed the problem was simple: they essentially did away with all the releases in the U.S. and other countries, and made the original British LP's the "official" discography. However, this act, alone, did not solve the problem, because there were a significant number of Beatles tunes that had never appeared on any full-length LP in the UK.

To correct this problem, Apple first did away with all the British EP's. They could do this because the vast majority of the songs released on British EP's had also been released, at one time or another, on British LP's. However, there were still a number of Beatles songs that had been released only as singles in the UK (as well as one song that had only been released in the U.S.). So Apple took those stand-alone singles, combined them with the handful of EP songs that had not ever been on a British LP, and made them into two compilation CD's, which they called "Past Masters." These albums also included several singles that were later re-mixed or re-recorded for full length albums (such as Let It Be, which was released first as a single, then later re-mixed and re-released on the album of the same name).

Even after this, however, the problem was still not solved, because the 1967 Magical Mystery Tour album had only been an EP in the UK, while it was a full-length LP in the U.S. So instead of including those songs from the U.S. version on the Past Masters compilation, and then doing away with the British EP, they simply made the U.S. version of Magical Mystery Tour the "official" album.

Now, finally, every song ever recorded and released by the Beatles was available in a unified format as a single catalog - 13 studio albums, of which 12 were original UK releases, with the original UK titles and artwork, and 1 was an original U.S. release, and two compilation albums that included all the songs that were leftover from singles and EP's.

And now I have them all. And you can too! Just follow the link below.

The Beatles Stereo Box Set

10 Fun Facts About Martin Van Buren

2012-01-31T19:54:00.000-05:00

Martin Van Buren, the 8th President of the United States

1. Born in New York in 1782, Martin Van Buren was the first U.S. president born as a citizen of the United States. All of his predecessors had been born as British subjects prior to the American Revolution. His family was of Dutch ancestry, and Van Buren was the only president in U.S. history for whom English was a second language.

2. A lawyer by trade, Van Buren married Hannah Hoes in 1807. The marriage produced five sons and one daughter. Hannah Van Buren died in 1819, long before her husband's presidency, and he never remarried. He became the second widower to assume the office of the president (his immediate predecessor, Andrew Jackson, had been the first).

3. As a New York state politician, Van Buren was instrumental in forming the first true "political machine" in U.S. history, helping to develop a political system in New York that virtually controlled all of New York politics. Later, during the tenure of Andrew Jackson, for whom Van Buren served first as Secretary of State, and later as Vice-President, Van Buren was the primary leader in the formation of Jacksonian Democracy, the original Democratic Party.

4. During Van Buren's time as Secretary of State to Andrew Jackson, he became embroiled in the so-called Petticoat Affair. This scandal occurred when a prominent Washington widow, Peggy Timberlake, married Andrew Jackson's Secretary of War, John Eaton. Washington society women found this marriage scandalous because Peggy Timberlake had only been widowed for a short time, and her deceased husband had been a close associate of Eaton's. The wives of Jackson's cabinent members shunned her, and the scandal intensified when Vice-President John Calhoun's wife, Floride, began leading a virtual witch-hunt against John Eaton and his new wife, calling for his resignation. The scandal eventually caused such a rift in Jackson's cabinet that the entire cabinet resigned, including Martin Van Buren, though - as a widower - he had largely stayed out of the fray. A year later, Andrew Jackson named Van Buren to be his running mate for re-election, replacing John Calhoun, who had also resigned.

5. Van Buren won the 1836 presidential election in an electoral college landslide, though he garnered only about 50% of the total popular vote. Van Buren's victory is notable because no sitting vice-president would be elected to the presidency again until George H. W. Bush in 1988. In the 1836 election, the Democrat Van Buren ran against a coalition of Whig Party candidates from different areas of the country - the only time in a presidential election when a major party ran more than one candidate. The Whigs had hoped that by running multiple candidates, they would split the electoral vote sufficiently to force a run-off in the House of Representatives, which they believed they could win. Their strategy failed; because so many Whig votes were split among the Whig candidates, Van Buren ended up winning states (particularly in the south) that he would likely have never won had the Whigs run a single man against him.

6. Within several months of taking office in 1837, an economic crisis known as the Panic of 1837 erupted, leading to an economic depression that lasted throughout Van Buren's presidency. His political enemies would come to refer to him as Martin Van Ruin, blaming him not only for the economic depression in the first place, but for his failure to resolve it.

7. Van Buren served under Andrew Jackson as the 8th Vice-President of the United States. Later, he became the 8th President of the United States. After his presidency, he lived to see the election of 8 more presidents, each from 8 different states. He was also the first in a consecutive string of 8 one-term presidents. Earlier in his career, he had been the 8th elected governor of New York (one prior governor, John Taylor, had served only as Acting Governor for several months, following a the elected governor's resignation).

8. From early in his career, Van Buren had been known as "Old Kinderhook" (a reference to the New York city of his birth.) In the 1840 election, one of the rallying cries of his supporters was "Vote for OK!" The abbreviation "o.k.," meaning "all is well," had only just appeared in the 1830's, during a fad for humorous abbreviations - it stood for the phrase "Oll Korrect," spelled with Germanic inflections. Van Buren's campaign quickly picked up on it, claiming it stood for "Old Kinderhook," and its widespread use in the 1840 election has been cited as the primary reason the word fell into general use in American English.

9. Because of the Panic of 1837 and the ensuing depression, Van Buren lost his re-election bid in 1840 to one of his opponents from 1836, William Henry Harrison. Harrison, a war hero, had gotten the most votes among the various Whig candidates in 1836, and defeated Van Buren easily in 1840, thanks largely to a remarkably effective campaign. After it was over, Van Buren was famously quoted as saying: "As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it."

10. Despite his famous quip, Van Buren was not deterred by his defeat in 1840. He ran for the Democratic nomination again in 1844, but eventually lost to James K. Polk. In 1848, he ran on the ticket of the anti-slavery Free Soil party, but failed to win any electoral votes. He lived out the remainder of his life at his home in New York, dying in 1862, having outlived four of his successors to the White House (Harrison, Tyler, Polk, and Taylor).

Notes from the Cave

2012-01-24T11:49:00.000-05:00

Because I've gotten so much commentary on my series on political parties, I know you all are waiting expectantly for part 3. Never fear, it's coming. (That's a joke, by the way. I haven't had a single comment, on the site or in email, about these posts. Haha. Gonna keep publishing them anyway though.)

I'm off work today (I work this weekend), and I've kept Spawn the Younger home from daycare with me. I will be taking her to Kindergarten at noon. She is running around harassing the dog. She just came up to me and asked if she could spray her toy dog with body spray. I told her no. She's doing it anyway.

I'm teaching a business lesson later on today at Worldwide Frontier. This is the language and culture training company that I work for. We market primarily to Asian people looking for help with English, and for training in American business culture expectations. A high school friend of mine runs the company, which is based here in the Cincinnati area.

I realize it's no secret to most of my readers that I am an avowed liberal when it comes to politics. Be that as it may, I can't help but look at someone like Newt Gingrich and just marvel at how so many people can be so enamored with him. This is a politician who, while Speaker of the House, was reprimanded and fined $300K for ethics violations. The vote to impose these sanctions passed 395-28, in a Republican-controlled Congress! This was, and is, the only time in United States history that a presiding Speaker of the House was sanctioned by the House of Representatives! The following year, in 1998, he resigned both his job as Speaker, and his job as a congressman from Georgia, stating that he was "willing to lead" but was "not willing to preside over people who are cannibals."

Then, of course, it comes out last week, right before the South Carolina primary, that Gingrich had asked one of his ex-wives for an open marriage. Of course he denied it, and of course he blasted the media for playing a dirty trick on him (airing this interview right before the primary), but I don't think there are very many people who doubt that it is true. In addition to this, his ex-wife also said he was carrying on an affair, and that it was happening during the very time that Gingrich was leading the impeachment crusade against Bill Clinton for having "relations" with Monica Lewinsky.

Now we can debate all day long about whether these accusations are true, or whether this is just a jilted ex-wife trying to get back at her former husband, but clearly Gingrich has some skeletons in his closet, and those skeletons make his inquisitional crusade against Bill Clinton seem all the more insidious and hypocritical.

Yet the Republican voters of South Carolina, never ones to worry about inconsistency, voted for him in the primary by an overwhelming margin! He didn't just win this primary, he won it by almost 15% of the vote! That would be a landslide in a presidential election.

How can so many people who consider themselves the party of "family values" and "character" and "faith" vote for a man with this sort of background? House ethics violations. Multiple ex-wives. Past affairs. Accusations of unfaithfulness while he, himself, was trying to impeach a president for the very same thing.

I suppose these people would respond in one of two ways: either they'd say that his ideas for how to "fix" the country overshadow any problems in his personal life or past political life, or they'd say they simply don't believe any of the "lies" put out by the "liberal media" against Gingrich.

Anyway....Gingrich is simply one of those politicians for whom you can pretty much assume that if his mouth is open, he is lying. Even as a liberal, I don't, and wouldn't, say that about all Republican politicians. I wouldn't say that, for instance, about Ron Paul or even Mitt Romney (though I don't care for either one of their platforms).

But, to me, Gingrich is basically just Bill Clinton with conservative values. And considering how much the conservatives hated Bill Clinton for being smarmy and unfaithful and unethical and having "no character," it's shocking to me that so many conservatives are supporting Gingrich, who is essentially an exact replica of Bill Clinton in that regard.

(Don't get me wrong: I loved Bill Clinton and thought he was a wonderful president, but I have always been able to admit his personal flaws and failures; those flaws and failures just didn't overshadow his political leadership - for me, anyway.)

And don't think this parenthetical statement makes me a hypocrite, since I just criticized Republicans for looking past Gingrich's personal flaws. I, after all, am not the one who wanted to impeach Clinton for being unethical and unfaithful. It was the conservatives who did that. And it is conservatives who always harp on family values and "character." So it makes their overlooking of Gingrich's flaws inconsistent at best, and hypocritical at worst.

In the end, of course, all of this is probably a moot point, because I still don't think Gingrich has any legitimate chance to win the nomination. South Carolina's trend of always picking the winning Republican candidate notwithstanding, I do not think the Republicans across the country will support Gingrich, precisely because of the issues I raised above. I think South Carolina Republicans are just a special example of unashamed hypocrisy. These are the original secessionists, after all - the veritable home of American disunion. And for some reason, they think this is a tradition worthy of glorification, with their anti-American Confederate flag flying over their state capital.

Can you tell I don't care much for South Carolina? Pretty beaches, traitorous politics.

Anyway, I wonder if this will generate some hate mail from South Carolina readers?

What else? Don't care about football. Happy to see the Kentucky Wildcats back on top of the college basketball polls, with a unanimous vote for #1 this week. It will be interesting to see how long they can stay there. They don't have any tough games in the next few weeks, so unless they fall apart against someone, they should be able to maintain the position until at least mid-February.

I'm watching free episodes of "Lost" on my Kindle Fire. I had always wanted to watch this show, but by the time I got interested in seeing it, it was already several seasons into its series run, and I knew I'd be lost (excuse the pun) if I tried to start watching it at that point. So I never watched it, always assuming I'd eventually buy the DVD's or something. Now, with my Amazon Prime membership, I can watch it for free on my Kindle Fire. It's fantastic. I am totally obsessed. I've watched the first 6 episodes in just the last two days. If you've not ever watched Lost, I highly recommend it, in whatever format you can access it.

UK Wildcats Riding High Again

2012-01-22T03:49:00.000-05:00

With Kentucky's win Saturday against Alabama, combined with Notre Dame's defeat of top-ranked Syracuse, Kentucky will undoubtedly rise to #1 in the nation on Monday, for their second stint there this season.

I haven't been doing many UK-themed blog posts this season, but don't think that means I haven't been following the team very closely. In fact, I actually attended my first UK game this year. (Yes, I know that's hard to believe, being that I was born in Lexington, raised in Louisville as a UK fan, then lived in the Lexington area for the first 15 years of my adulthood, but I simply never had the inclination to spring for tickets and fight the crowds.) I saw the highly-touted UK/UNC game in December that UK won after blocking a last second 10-footer that would have won the game for UNC. It was definitely a great first experience.

In any case, Kentucky started the year ranked #2 in the nation, jumped to #1 for two weeks after top-ranked UNC lost, then fell back to #3 for several weeks following a loss to IU, before returning to the #2 spot, where they will remain until Monday's new rankings come out.

I know I could easily be accused of bias when it comes to evaluating the college basketball world, but I can't help but feel like UK is not getting entirely fair treatment this season from the analysts and mouthpieces on ESPN and other media outlets. Now don't get me wrong: Kentucky gets plenty of press, much of it positive, and there are certainly analysts out there (Dick Vitale comes to mind) who absolutely gush over UK (of course, Vitale gushes over everyone), but I can't help but feel like Kentucky is, in many ways, getting a raw deal by a lot of the more notable college basketball analysts.

A perfect example is live on ESPN's site right now - a video blog between Andy Katz and Doug Gottlieb about Saturday's events. It is titled "Gottlieb's new No. 1 -- it's not UK." In it, Gottlieb states that he would choose current #6 Ohio State to be the new #1 after the loss by Syracuse. He essentially writes off OSU's three losses by chalking them up to "tough road games." He is not, apparently, willing to write off UK's one loss as a "tough road game," even though it was to one of the very same "tough teams" that OSU lost to on the road. Basically, it's a ridiculous argument. Gottlieb, apparently, simply doesn't want to give UK the respect it deserves as a team who is 19-1, with their only loss coming to a highly ranked Indiana team at Indiana, and that loss only coming on a 3-pointer at the buzzer to give IU a 1-point victory, along with three other signature wins against ranked teams, one of which was not a home game (UK beat Kansas at Madison Square Garden). They've also started off 5-0 in SEC play - the only unbeaten SEC team. In fact, the only other team in a major conference who is still unbeaten in conference play is Kansas.

The same sort of general disregard seemed true last year too. For instance, Kentucky reached the Final Four last year, but not a single ESPN analyst had picked them to do so. Kentucky also received what was, in my opinion, a scandalously low seeding in the NCAA tournament (they were a 4 seed). Three teams who were ranked lower than UK got higher seedings by the NCAA selection committee, including Florida, who had just been blown-out in the SEC championship game by UK!

In any case, I think UK is even better than many people think this year. Syracuse seems overrated to me. Prior to conference play, they only played one true road game - and while that is true of Kentucky as well, Kentucky's one true road game was against a quality, ranked opponent in IU; Syracuse played a tepid NC State team who has lost at home four times this year. Since starting conference play, Syracuse has played on the road three times (before Saturday), and those three teams are among the five worst teams in the Big East. Saturday's game at Notre Dame was literally Syracuse's first legitimate road test all season (Notre Dame's record isn't stellar - 11-8 coming in - but they've played 7 [seven!] ranked teams prior to this match-up with Syracuse, so they've been toughened), and the 'Cuse got beat down by 10 points, never had the lead in the entire game, and were down by as much as 18 at one point.

As for Kentucky, I think they get underrated a bit because many of the analysts don't give fair treatment to the SEC as a whole. Up until last week, Kentucky had been getting one first place vote every week in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll - the other 30 votes had all been going to Syracuse. Some voter out there thought Kentucky deserved to be #1. But after Kentucky struggled at Auburn, and only won at Tennessee by a few points, that voter abandoned Kentucky this week, and all 31 votes in the poll went to Syracuse. Clearly, even though Kentucky won those games (and they ended up winning the Auburn game by double digits, after struggling early), and even though both games were on the road, whoever that voter was clearly believed SEC competition is so weak that Kentucky should have blown both those teams out by 30 points. Since they didn't do that, this voter switched.

My point in spelling all this out is that I think SEC competition is undervalued. I think people see these SEC schools like Auburn and South Carolina and Arkansas and Ole Miss, who haven't been any good in decades, and who are primarily football schools, and they assume that when a team like Kentucky plays them, they don't really "count" very much towards respect or legitimacy. This is largely based, of course, on the RPI system. Without going into too much detail, the RPI system is a convoluted mathematical formula that attempts to determine how good a team is based on their winning percentage, the winning percentages of the teams they have played, and the winning percentages of the teams their opponents have played. As such, it changes with every game a team plays. It does not take into consideration a team's stats (shooting percentage, points per game, etc.), nor does it consider margins of victory or loss - a 1 point victory or loss is the same as a 30 point victory or loss. It also does not evaluate how one team's strengths and weaknesses will match up with another team's strengths and weaknesses.

With the RPI system, Kentucky frequently gets a low strength of schedule rating, because many of the teams it faces in the SEC have poor winning percentages. As a result, its RPI is frequently lower than a lot of other major teams. This year for instance (as of Friday), Kentucky's RPI was only 7, even though they are ranked second in the nation. That means six other teams are, by this mathematical formula, "better" than Kentucky (this year, one of those teams is Seton Hall, who isn't even ranked, and another of those teams is Kansas, who Kentucky beat).

Because of the prominence of the RPI in ranking and analyzing teams, many of Kentucky's games in the SEC are undervalued, in my opinion - which ultimately leads to Kentucky getting at least somewhat undervalued or underrated. The reason for this is because the RPI not only doesn't take into consideration margins of victory or a team's personal stats, but it also cannot evaluate subjective things like rivalry games.
As anyone familiar with sports knows, a heated rivalry can frequently produce very good games, and very close games, even when one of the teams is having an "off" season. For instance, Kentucky has a very heated and long-standing rivalry with Louisville - and regardless of where they happen to be ranked in a given season, or what their winning percentage happens to be in a given season, you can never be sure who is going to win that game.

Additionally, the RPI cannot take into consideration how easy or difficult a given team is to beat on their own court. For instance, it is widely accepted that Kansas's Allen Fieldhouse is one of the toughest places to play in all of college basketball. Currently, Kansas has won 85 of its last 86 games there. There are, of course, a number of others (including Kentucky's Rupp Arena). So a team might have a poor RPI, and be a very average team, but be difficult to beat on their home court.

Finally, the RPI cannot evaluate the intensity of play in a given conference. There is no question that some conferences are more competitive than others. And by "more competitive," I don't mean "more teams with high winning percentages." I'm talking about intensity of competition and expectation. The Ohio Valley Conference, for instance, could hardly be considered a "highly intense" conference, regardless of how good or bad its teams might be. The Big 10, however, is an incredibly intense conference, with many heated rivalries and very high expectations among its fan base - and again, that comes regardless of how "good" the conference is.

All of these things play a role in undervaluing the SEC and Kentucky, in my opinion. The SEC is a very intense conference. It's an old conference made up of teams who have been playing each other on a very regular basis for decades. There are numerous old rivalries throughout the conference. In fact, it could be fair to say that virtually every game played in the SEC is a "rivalry" game. This increases the level of competition dramatically. There are also many difficult courts to win on in the SEC, most notably Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Mississippi State, and Kentucky. Finally, SEC fans tend to be rabid and tend to have very high expectations for their schools, even those schools whose programs tend to be weak - this, too, plays a role in the overall difficulty of SEC play.

There is also one more factor to be considered, and it's probably the most important. Kentucky is the undisputed king of the SEC. With the exception of Vanderbilt, Kentucky is the only "basketball" school in the conference: all the others are primarily known as football schools. Kentucky has won more SEC regular season titles, more SEC championship titles, more Final Fours, and more National Championships, than all the other schools combined. In SEC championships, Kentucky has won 27; the next closest are Alabama with 6, and Tennessee with 4, and neither of those teams has won an SEC championship in more than 20 years.

All this is to say that when Kentucky plays games in the SEC, they play with a target on their backs, every game, every year. Kentucky is the "signature win" that every single SEC team wants to get. The good teams, like Florida and Vandy and Tennessee, want to beat them to increase their seeding in the NCAA tournament; poorer teams, like Arkansas and Ole Miss and Georgia, want to beat them to increase their chances of making the NCAA tournament. Every team wants to beat them for general bragging rights. With the possible exception of Kansas in the Big 12, there is no other team in the college basketball world that plays under these kinds of "targeted" conditions in conference play.

Put simply, Kentucky gets the best of every team they play, especially in the SEC.

A perfect case in point is the game Kentucky won Saturday against Alabama. I heard more than one analyst say that Alabama played its best basketball of the season during the second half of the game. Kentucky still won, but they got the best Alabama had to give them. This is pretty much par for the course when it comes to Kentucky games in the SEC.

Because of the inability of the RPI to evaluate subjective things like rivalries, tough road courts, and conference intensity, and especially because of Kentucky's somewhat unique place in college basketball as a team who gets the very best out of every team who plays them, I think Kentucky sometimes gets overlooked by analysts who don't take any of those subjective things into consideration.

The fact is, biased though I may be, I think Kentucky is the best team in the nation this year, with nowhere to go but up. I think they are better than Syracuse. I think they are better than Ohio State. I think they are better than Baylor and Duke and UNC. If they haven't blown out every opponent, and if they've played some close contests with teams with sub-par records, it's only because Kentucky plays all of its games, every year, with an enormous target on its back, they play numerous rivalry games, and they seem to always get the best that any SEC team - no matter how good or bad - can throw at them.

I'm picking Kentucky to win its 8th National Championship this year. They have the talent, they have the intensity, and they are very quickly gaining the experience they will need through tough SEC match-ups and hard-fought battles in close games. Winning every game by 20 points is a sure path to finding yourself without a clue what to do when it comes time for the scrappy, high intensity games of the NCAA tournament. Syracuse, this year, had never been down by more than 8 points in a game, had never trailed at halftime, and had an average margin of victory close to 20 points. Their only close game was a 4-point victory at home over Florida in December - Florida, the only ranked team they have played all season. On Saturday, they found themselves in a tough road match with a battle-hardened team, they found themselves on the bottom looking up, and they did not know how to respond.

Kentucky isn't going to have that problem, thanks to the toughness of the games they play in the SEC. This, I predict, will help propel them to a National Championship on April 2 in New Orleans.

A History of American Political Parties, Part II

2012-01-21T01:54:00.000-05:00

Read Part I.

The Era of Good Feelings - a name given to the 2-term presidency of James Monroe - came to a screeching halt with the end of his time in office in 1825. For the past quarter century, the United States had effectively been a 1-party democracy, controlled by the so-called Democratic-Republicans. This party had been founded by Thomas Jefferson in the 1790's as a populist movement focusing on states' rights and a limited federal government. It had consolidated its influence over the U.S. political system with Jefferson's presidential victory in 1800 over John Adams. Adams' party, the Federalists, had very quickly fallen apart, and didn't even bother running a candidate against James Monroe in 1820.

In 1824, four major candidates of the Democratic-Republican camp ran for president - Henry Clay, William Crawford, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson. Three were southerners; only Adams came from a northern state.

With four well-known and widely-liked candidates from the same party all running against each other - effectively splintering the party - the election results were unlike anything we can imagine today. Clay won 13% of the popular vote and 37 electoral votes. Crawford won a slightly lower percentage of the popular vote, but took 41 electoral votes. Adams, whose father had been the only Federalist president, took virtually all of New England (the old Federalist stronghold), and garnered 84 electoral votes. Finally, Jackson took 41% of the popular vote, including most of the southern states, and won the most electoral votes, with 99.

However, because of the 12th Amendment, which had been passed after the divisive 1796 and 1800 elections, none of the candidates won the presidency. The 12th Amendment requires that the winning candidate carry a majority of the electoral vote, regardless of popular vote percentages. In this election, 131 electoral votes would have been needed to win a majority. So with none of the candidates getting enough electoral votes to win, the election had to be decided by the House of Representatives, as stipulated in the 12th Amendment. This is the only time in U.S. history that this has happened.

Considering that he won the most popular votes, along with the most electoral votes, Andrew Jackson expected to win the vote in the House. However, because the stipulation of the 12th Amendment states that only the top three candidates can be considered in a House run-off, Henry Clay (who got the least electoral votes) was not on this congressional ballot. Clay was not only the Speaker of the House, but also a major political enemy of Andrew Jackson. Because of his status in the House, he was able to convince a number of representatives to vote for Adams instead of Jackson. For his part, Adams agreed to make Clay his Secretary of State if Clay could help him win.

The backroom bargaining paid off. In a shocking turn of events, Adams ended up winning the House run-off, with Jackson left wondering how he had been outfoxed. Adams immediately named Clay as his Secretary of State, and considering that the previous three Secretaries of State had gone on to win the following presidential election, this was seen as Adams' way of effectively naming Clay as his presidential successor.

As a result of this highly divisive presidential election, the prevailing Democratic-Republican party began to splinter. Jackson accused Adams and Clay of unethical backroom deals (which was probably a fair accusation), and the faction supporting Jackson began to form itself into a new party, called the Democratic Party. Their main platforms included Manifest Destiny - the notion that Americans had a God-given right to the unsettled territories of North America; a free market economy; opposition to national banks, and even, for some Democrats, all banks; and a patronage system that rewarded political supporters with government-appointed jobs.

Supporters of Adams and Clay, on the other hand, began to refer to themselves as the Anti-Jackson party, or the National Republicans. Unlike their Jacksonian counterparts, they did not believe the U.S. should worry about expansion into new territories (Manifest Destiny), but should instead focus on strengthening the existing United States. They believed in a strong national bank, as well as tariffs on trade goods to bring revenue into the federal government. This revenue, in turn, could be used to subsidize internal improvements like roads and bridges and canals. Where the Jacksonians tended to be focused on agriculture and territory expansion, the Adams-Clay faction focused more on the economy and growth of cities.

In 1828, Adams and Jackson faced off once again, and this time it was no contest. Jackson, who had gained enormous popularity during the previous four years, defeated the incumbent Adams in a landslide, winning every state outside of New England, as well as Pennsylvania and New York - traditional strongholds for Adams.

As a result of this dramatic repudiation of John Quincy Adams, and the growing strength of the populist Democratic Party headed by Andrew Jackson, the burgeoning National Republican party was halted in its tracks, and basically fell apart before it ever really got started.

Out of its ashes, in the early 1830's, would rise the ill-fated Whig Party, which would see two men elected president, but would also suffer both their deaths in office.

A History of American Political Parties, Part I

2012-01-14T22:52:00.000-05:00

Political parties are a little bit like religious denominations - they are rarely formed out of thin air, but instead tend to evolve over time.

This fact is easy to forget in this day and age when the U.S. is virtually wholly controlled by two prevailing parties, representing two prevailing political ideologies. For many of us, it may seem that these two parties have always existed, and have always been just like they are today.

Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth.

In the earliest days of the United States, there was no such thing as a political party. There were political ideologies, of course, many of which stood in stark contrast to one another, but there was no such thing as an organized political party that used resources and manpower to help elect like-minded individuals. As such, the first few sessions of Congress, as well as the first presidency under George Washington, were all non-partisan. It's hard to imagine such a scenario today.

By the end of Washington's second term, in 1796, political parties were developing into what might be called an embryonic stage. Two primary ideologies had taken widepspread root, with politicians and average citizens generally falling into one camp or the other. The first camp was known as the Federalists, and they generally believed in a stronger federal government (hence the name), a national bank to streamline the economy and assume the public debt of the states, and a large standing army. To put a modern spin on it, they might be thought of as the "big government" ideologues of the 18th century. Though George Washington never aligned himself with any political party, he was most in line, politically, with the Federalists. The Federalist founder and leader was Alexander Hamilton, who was Treasury Secretary under George Washington.

The other party developing during these years was known by a number of different names. Historians today generally refer to them as the Democratic-Republican party. In their own day, they tended to either call themselves Jeffersonians (after their leader, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson), or, more often, Republicans. They generally believed in stronger states' rights, state militias instead of standing federal armies, and private banks. They were essentially the "small government/states' rights" group of the 18th century. They called themselves Republicans because they believed strongly in republican principles of government - representatives, elected by the people, doing the will of the people. They are not related to the modern day Republican Party. The Jeffersonian Republicans viewed the Federalist movement as leaning too closely to monarchy, and thus to tyranny, and even insultingly referred to the Federalists as "tories" - the name for members of the British parliament who were strong supporters of the king.

The Federalists generally supported big businesses, banks, and wealthy urban interests; they also supported improved relations with Great Britain. The Jeffersonians, on the other hand, pushed for the rights of rural America, arguing for the importance of farmers and planters over industrialists and financial investors. They were sympathetic with the anti-monarchy values of the French revolution, and were opposed to the Federalist treaties with Great Britain.

These ideological differences tended to play out geographically. Federalists were strong in the industrialized north, while the Jeffersonians were strong in the agrarian south. In many ways, it's not much different than the tension that still exists today between management and labor, Wall Street and Main Street, urban and rural, the 1% against the 99%.

Both of these political ideologies coalesced, during the 1790's, into true, burgeoning political parties. Their main way of gaining prominence and backing and support was through the use of mainstream media, which, at that time, consisted primarily of newspapers. Newspapers have tended to have a political slant ever since.

After choosing not to accept a third term in the White House, George Washington delivered a farewell address to the nation, which was printed in all the newspapers around the country. Sensing the trouble brewing in the political arena, he spent no less than six paragraphs of this address condemning political parties and encouraging Americans not to form them.

This [tendency among people to form political coalitions]...is inseparable from our nature...But, it is truly [our] worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another...is itself a frightful despotism...The common and continual mischiefs of [political parties] are sufficient to make it in the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain [them].

Unfortunately, no one took the Father of Our Nation very seriously on this point.

In the 1796 election, John Adams, who had been Vice-President under George Washington, ran on the Federalist platform. He ran against Thomas Jefferson, who was running on the Democratic-Republican platform. This election proved to be immensely divisive, and in the end, Adams won by only 3 electoral votes over Jefferson, with voting split geographically - the North going with Adams, and the South with Jefferson.

Because of the rules of electoral college voting at the time, Jefferson ended up being elected as Adams' Vice-President, marking the only time in American history when two people from different political parties shared the Executive office. Jefferson went on to do everything in his power to undermine Adams' presidency, and four years later, they faced off again in an even more divisive election, and this time Jefferson won. Adams did not attend his inauguration.

Following Jefferson's victory in the 1800 election, the Federalist party began to fall apart, and no Federalist was ever elected again to the presidency. For the next 25 years, the U.S. was essentially a one-party system. The Democratic-Republicans held the White House, and also maintained what can only be called a "super-majority" in Congress (often as high as 80%). In the 1820 election, the Federalists didn't even bother to run anyone against James Monroe, and he became the only president since Washington to run unopposed. His eight years in office are frequently referred to as the Era of Good Feelings, because there was virtually no political rancor going on in Washington - something that is virtually unthinkable in this day and age. Essentially, by this time, Americans had stopped thinking of politics in terms of parties, and simply viewed everyone as part of the same basic team.

These good feelings, however, were about to be turned on their head.

Read Part II.

Notes from the Cave

2012-01-09T20:24:00.000-05:00

I've been having a hard time getting the writing thing going again since the holidays. I've had several ideas for things to write about, but I can't seem to make the time or find the energy. Maybe this edition of Notes from the Cave will break me out of the slump.

My ads for Amazon served me well over the holidays - I made over 100 bucks for doing absolutely nothing but owning a blog. The sales I generated for Amazon were somewhere in the range of $1,800. Of course, none of this is dependent on the holidays - readers can still click the ads anytime they want to make Amazon purchases. And in case you didn't know, you do not have to be purchasing whatever the ad is selling in order for it to work. You can click the ad and buy pantyhose, and I'll get a commission for it.

Those of you who got Kindle readers for the holidays should use my ads to buy your e-books, and you should also buy all four of my own e-books, or I will hunt you down and murder you. You don't have to read them; just support the cause. And tell all your friends and family.

Okay, that's it for reader assignments...for this week, anyway.

I made a few New Year's resolutions this year. First, I am eating healthier. Not only am I attempting to eat more healthy foods and less unhealthy foods, I am also trying to eat regular meals - something I have been very, very bad about for the last few years. Connected with this, I am starting a walking routine, which works two ways, because not only is it good for me, but I also take the dog with me, and the exercise helps control his bad behavior. I don't know if I've lost any weight yet or not, but a few people have commented that I look trimmer.

Secondly, and much more importantly, I have also quit smoking. I stopped on January 1st, and although I had a little setback this weekend, I have recommitted myself to the task and I feel good about it. I am using an electronic cigarette and I absolutely cannot say enough about this thing.

I bought one originally about two months ago, after stopping to browse at a kiosk in the mall. I got suckered into buying a kit by the extremely pushy salesperson, even though I wasn't actually ready to get one yet. I tried it a few times over the last few weeks, and kinda sorta liked it, but not really. I felt like I had gotten suckered into buying a crappy brand - and that's the thing that is so frustrating about e-cigarettes: there are literally dozens of brands out there and you have no way of knowing which one is best.

Fortunately, I have a cousin-in-law (does that exist?) who uses a brand called GreenSmoke, and he absolutely loves it. He was a lifelong smoker and was able to quit tobacco by using this brand of e-cigarette. So, knowing that my crappy brand was going to impact my ability to quit, I ponied up some more cash and bought the GreenSmoke brand. I got it in the mail today, and I absolutely love it. It is superior to the other one in every single possible way. It really does feel like I am smoking a cigarette. It's absolutely as close to the real thing as I can imagine technology could get.

In case you don't know what an electronic cigarette is, it is basically exactly what it says - a cigarette that runs on a battery. Instead of tobacco, there is a glycerin-based liquid that is flavored and contains nicotine. When you draw on the cigarette, the liquid turns to mist and you inhale and exhale the mist. It's basically like an asthma inhaler (and uses the same chemicals), but without the medicine. You can choose your level of nicotine, including no nicotine at all. You can also choose from among numerous flavors, including traditional tobacco flavor. I currently am using "Smooth Chocolate" and "Menthol Ice."

Although these things haven't been FDA approved for quitting smoking, and have not been officially recognized as a safe alternative to smoking, numerous studies have shown them to be safe, and they are being increasingly promoted by doctors and physician groups. They don't contain the carcinogens that cigarettes contain (because there is no tobacco and the "smoke" is actually just a water vapor mist), and the chemicals used in them are known to be safe, and are widely used in other food products we all eat every day. In short, they are basically the cigarette of the future.

Finally, I have made a resolution to get in bed at a decent hour, and to actually sleep in the bed (instead of in the EZ chair or on the couch. In addition to my eating habits, my sleeping habits have long been totally off kilter.

So I am eating regularly. I am eating healthier foods more often. I am drinking diet soft drinks instead of regular. I have quit smoking. I have started sleeping in the bed every night, and I have started getting to bed at a decent hour so I get enough sleep.

And doing all these things has already made a huge difference in how I feel, and it's only been a little over a week. I have more energy, I am losing weight, I can breathe better, I feel better - not only physically, but also emotionally - and, in general, I feel more positive.

So...here's to hoping I can stick with it. I was a little nervous about trying to make too many changes at once, but I think it's for the best - better to just go balls out and commit myself to a lifestyle change, rather than try to ease into it. In actuality, I have tried to "ease into it" one at a time (sleeping, eating, smoking), for a very long time, and have gotten nowhere. Also, I am not being a Nazi with myself about it either (except for the smoking) - if I have a regular soft drink, or eat a big meal, or forget breakfast now and then, it's okay. Last night on third shift, for instance, I drank a shit-ton of regular Mt. Dew.

I'm planning an upcoming blog post about the history of American political parties. Stay tuned for that. I'm really starting to get interested in U.S. presidential and political history - which is something I have never had much interest in before. I will also, of course, be continuing my series on presidential fun facts.

I was very pleased to see Barry Larkin get his overdue calling to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He should have been chosen on the first ballot - last year - and it was a farce that he wasn't. Apparently the voters realized that, because he made the biggest 1-year jump in history, or something close to it. He only had 40-something percent last year, and jumped up to 86% this year. You have to have 75% to get in. Larkin always played in the shadow of Ozzie Smith, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he was a superior all-around player to Ozzie Smith. It's not even a contest, in my opinion. Yet Smith got in on the first ballot with, I think, the highest percentage in history.

2011 Reading List

2012-01-04T13:00:00.000-05:00

It's that time again, time for the posting of the annual reading list. I am sad to say that this was my worst year ever in terms of the number of books completed (worst, that is, since I started keeping track in 2004).

I'm not sure what the problem was this year, other than simply having a lot of things that got in the way of reading. Also, I did read a number of very, very long books this year, so that's part of it. Still, I'm embarrassed to say that I finished only 18 books this year. This is only the second time I've been below 30 since 2004, and the first time below 20.

Oh well, on with the countdown.

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The Diamond Hunters – Wilbur Smith

This was my second reading of this great little Wilbur Smith adventure novel from the early 70's. It's vintage Wilbur, set in southern Africa and centering on the diamond mining industry.

Lion in the Valley – Elizabeth Peters

I started reading the Elizabeth Peters mysteries starring Amelia Peabody in 2010 and I love them. They are set in the golden age of Egyptology - late 19th and early 20th centuries - and they are perfect "fireside" mysteries. They are also really funny, particularly if you appreciate dry British humor.

When Christ and His Saints Slept – Sharon Kay Penman

I just discovered Sharon Kay Penman this year, and I absolutely love her. She is a writer of medieval historical fiction, and When Christ and His Saints Slept is the first book in a trilogy about the tumultuous 12th century in England and France. It covers the period of English history known as "the Anarchy," when Stephen stole the throne from his cousin Maude, instigating a 20-year civil war. If you like historical fiction, and if you like the Middle Ages, this is a must-read.

Altar of Eden – James Rollins

This is the first book Rollins has published in several years that was NOT part of his Sigma Force series - which explains why I read it. I got bored with his series novels and gave them up, because they had become so totally predictable and irritatingly formulaic, but I gave this one a shot because it was a stand alone novel. It was okay. It didn't impress itself upon me all that greatly.

Time and Chance – Sharon Kay Penman

The second book of the above-mentioned trilogy. It centers on Maude's son, who became Henry II, and his infamous clash with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett.

Swan Song – Robert McCammon

I love Robert McCammon. He's Stephen King, but without the extra 500 extraneous and meaningless scenes that don't move the plot forward in any appreciable sense. He writes with immense emotional depth and his prose is extremely descriptive and high quality. Written at the height of the Cold War in the 1980's, Swan Song is a masterpiece of post-Apocalyptic fiction that imagines what life might be like for the few people who survive a nuclear holocaust. Fans of Stephen King's "The Stand" might recognize the theme, because it's virtually the same (replace "nuclear holocaust" with "biological holocaust"). Both books even have a human version of Satan as the main protagonist. I've read both books. Both are very long. McCammon's is significantly better.

Forged – Bart Ehrman

Yet another fantastic book by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, this time centering on the issue of forgery in early Christian writing, including texts of the New Testament.

Devil’s Brood – Sharon Kay Penman

Book 3 of the trilogy, ending with the ascension of Henry's son, Richard the Lionheart.

Gone South – Robert R. McCammon

Another great McCammon book, this one not quite so dense as Swan Song. It's about a murder investigation in the deep south.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson

As many people have said, this book starts out really, really slowly. It's almost perplexing how slowly it moves at first. From everything you hear, you expect this to be a fantastic thriller novel that just captivates you, and yet it just lollygags along like a Sunday driver. In the first 300 pages, the plot hardly moves forward at all. Then, it suddenly - and finally - takes off and starts really drawing you in. Then the story ends, and yet, oddly, there are still about 50 or 75 pages to go.

What it boils down to is that there are two books in this novel. One is about the main character's life as a journalist, and all the trouble he gets himself into, and the other is about him getting hired to investigate a murder mystery. The journalist part takes up the first 300 pages or so, and the last 50 pages or so. The murder mystery part takes up the middle 250 pages. The murder mystery part is the good part. The rest is boring, extraneous crap.

I have done everything in my power to figure out just what the hell the publishers of this novel were thinking. The author, of course, died shortly after sending the manuscripts to the publisher, so presumably they were not able to work with him through a long editing process. Is this why the book was published this way? Was this first book originally two books, and the publisher simply wanted to cram them together so that the entire series could be a trilogy instead of a quartet? Did the publisher just not realize how boring the first 300 pages of this novel are?

Of course, the amazing thing is that it worked! Despite breaking virtually every rule of novel writing and publishing standards, somehow this novel, and its two successors, have managed to sell tens of millions of copies and make enormous amounts of money for the publisher and the unfortunate, dead author.

Which just goes to show you how important good marketing can be.

Gideon’s Sword – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Preston & Child have started a new series with a new lead character, and this is the first book. It was very much "Meh." They need to stick with Agent Pendergast, the greatest literary detective in history.

The Jesus Dynasty – James D. Tabor

I wrote a whole blog post about this book, so I won't rehash it here.

The Winter King – Bernard Cornwell

One of my favorite historical novelists. This is the first book in a trilogy fictionalizing the life of King Arthur. I had a thing with trilogies this year.

The Girl Who Played With Fire – Stieg Larsson

Unlike the first book, this book is actually good from page 1.

Enemy of God – Bernard Cornwell

Book two in the Arthur saga.

Those in Peril – Wilbur Smith

This is Wilbur's most recent novel, and it was sort of ho-hum. He's definitely lost some of his powers in his old age (he's about 80). His writing is a bit more sappy than it used to be, and he seems to be struggling for new ideas. He also seems to have lost some of his inhibitions because this book has some extremely explicit sex scenes, as well as some immensely shocking violence. Wilbur has never been one to shy away from sex or violence, but he blazes new pathways with this book. He also throws in a few overt political commentaries as well, which I always find somewhat irritating, whether I agree with them or not. Finally, he seemed to be attempting to write high-tech military fiction - a genre that is extremely popular right now. He's not really all that good at it.

Mystery Walk – Robert McCammon

An old thriller book from the early 80's, earlier than any of the other McCammon books I have read. It was pretty good, though not quite up to par with some of his later works. After starting strong, it seems to fizzle out a bit as it goes along.

Cold Vengeance – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

The most recent Agent Pendergast novel. Typical Preston/Child fare. Very good.

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To inaugurate this new year of 2012, I am going to start a new Reading List tradition - naming my favorite Book of the Year. Wish I had thought to do this before.

Anyway, among these paltry 18 books that I managed to get through this year, my favorites were: When Christ and his Saints Slept, Swan Song, the Winter King, and Forged.

And the Book of the Year award goes to....

Notes From the Cave: Elissa's Kitchen Edition

2011-12-31T23:38:00.002-05:00

1. Blogging from the kitchen of my sister, Elisser.

2. Happy Frickin' New Year.

3. It is officially 11:02 p.m.

4. It's still 2011 but it will soon be 2012. Thank God. Because it was a bad year. According to Elisser.

5. We just talked about Manfred von Richthofen.

6. My youngest daughter had her allergies tested last week. She has outgrown her milk, egg, seafood, and tree nut allergies. This is good news. Celebrate with me.

7. The words to "Rocket Man" by Elton John are: " Burning up the fumes up here alone."

8. When I was a child my family would travel down by the Green River where Paradise lay.

9. The above is by John Prine, from the song "Paradise."

10. My sister and I just argued over whether there should be a comma between "Prine" and "from" in the bullet point above.

11. My sister and I really miss our parents and wish they would move here, goddammit.

12. My sister is being ridonkulous.

13. My sister is pretty sure she died on the Titanic, but if that's the case, then she must have died as a child during the Great War.

14. Yes, that's the kind of shit my sister and I talk about.

15. My sister's best friend reminded my sister that she was a Bingham of Louisville in a past life. If so, her current incarnation has failed miserably.

16. Eight more miles to Louisville, the hometown of my heart.

17. I love Rush. My sister does not agree. Screw her.

18. In a past life, my mother thinks she was.........well, we can't actually mention that.

19. The UK Wildcats men's basketball team beat the U'll of Ell Cardinals today in the Dream Game series. This makes us very, very happy. But we still like Denny Crum. My mother has a thing for him.

20. The Cincinnati Bengals could go to the playoffs if they win tomorrow. I don't care either way. Football is for pussies.

21. I was Henry II in a past life.

22. My father doesn't believe in past lives, but we are pretty sure he was Marie Curie in a past life, primarily because he is a chemist, and he is remarkably in touch with his feminine side.

23. My sister had a very bad 2011. But hey, in 2012 she turns 40, so problem solved!!!

24. Elisser and I are STILL arguing about commas.

25. Come dancing. Come on sister, have yourself a ball. Love you Lisser. :)

26. She's crying over #25.

Taking God's Name in Vain

2011-12-27T21:47:00.000-05:00

If you are a regular and long-time reader of my blog, or if you have purchased my book "Christianity is a Verb," you will know that I have written on this topic before. Never fear, my intention is not to rehash my arguments, but to provide an "update" of sorts.

In that previous post, I broke down the individual Hebrew words of the 3rd Commandment and argued that it is not talking about using God's name as an expletive (i.e., stubbing your toe and saying "Goddammit!"), but rather, it is talking about not accepting the name of God upon yourself if you don't really mean it; in other words, don't claim to be Godly (a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, etc.,) if you aren't really living the lifestyle that goes along with it.

Everyone is familiar with this sort of argument - within Christianity, the notion of someone claiming to be a Christian, but not living like a Christian, is so widespread as to be almost banal. When we hear of someone committing murder in the name of Jesus, we say they aren't really a Christian. When we hear of Christian priests and monks fighting in the Church of the Nativity at Christmas, we say they aren't acting like Christians. On the other hand, when we see someone who is a good, upstanding, ethical person, we call them a "good Christian," and say they are truly living like Christ.

This is what the 3rd Commandment is talking about. Claiming to be Godly, but not acting Godly; claiming to be a Christian, but not living like a Christian. The focus of the commandment is to be sincere in your devotion to God.

It has nothing to do with using words like "God," and "Jesus," and "Christ" as cuss words or expletives. Many people find such language offensive, but when they point to the 3rd Commandment to back up that view (i.e., "Don't take the Lord's name in vain!!" after hearing someone say "Goddammit!"), they are simply misunderstanding what that commandment meant in its original context. Saying "Goddammit" is not taking the Lord's name in vain. Saying you are a Godly person, and then doing ungodly things: that is taking the Lord's name in vain.

It's true, of course, that many people would consider "foul language" to be ungodly. In that sense, then, you could argue that the 3rd Commandment encompasses using God's name as an expletive - as well as any other explicit or foul language a person might use. But I've sure never heard anyone scold someone for saying "shit" by telling them not to take the Lord's name in vain.

The fact is, when you read what the verse actually says, there is simply no reason to assume it had anything to do with using God's name as an expletive. It's interesting to point out that the verse does not say: "Do not use the name of the Lord in vain," or "Do not speak the name of the Lord in vain." It says: "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain."

This is interesting because in many modern English translations of the Bible, they have done away with this King James phraseology ("take in vain") and translated the word as "misuse" - "Do not misuse the name of the Lord." This is true in both the popular NIV and the favorite of New Testament scholars, the NRSV.

But the word in question didn't mean "misuse." I can only chalk this up to the modern translations being influenced by modern notions of what this phrase means (i.e., that it teaches not to use God's name as an expletive). If you read Strong's Concordance with Hebrew and Greek Lexicon - which is the authoritative publication on the translation of words and phrases in the Bible - it is very clear that the Hebrew word in question meant nothing like "misuse." It means "to take" or "to carry" or "to lift up." When you read this same word in other passages, it's meaning becomes perfectly clear. To give just one example, Genesis 13:10: "And Lot lifted up his eyes and beheld all the plain of the Jordan." This word absolutely does not mean "misuse."

If the writers of the Jewish scriptures (or, God, if you prefer) had meant for the 3rd Commandment to be talking about using God's name as an expletive, wouldn't have the sentence read: "Do not speak the name of the Lord in vain"? But it doesn't say that. It says don't "take" the name of the Lord in vain. "Take" doesn't mean "speak." It means to grab something, or carry something, or accept something. If I say: "Congress is useless," would you describe that as me taking something about Congress? Of course not; that doesn't even make sense. I have said something about Congress, not taken something.

"Taking" God's name in vain has nothing to do with speech or utterance. It means exactly what it says: "take" means to carry something or accept something. Thus, the commandment is telling us not to accept the name of God, not to carry the name of God on our shoulders, while at the same time doing nothing to imply that we are actually people of God. A Chicago Cub wouldn't wear a Cincinnati Reds jersey, because he's not a Cincinnati Red. He's a Cub. In the same way, a person shouldn't take the name of God upon themselves if they aren't really a Godly person.

This is what the 3rd Commandment means.

Christmas With the Christmas Family

2011-12-24T04:15:00.000-05:00

People always ask me: "What's Christmas like in the Christmas family?"

Okay, actually, I've never been asked that question in my life. But I'm going to answer it anyway, with a pictorial history of the Christmas family at Christmas time.

The Louisville Courier-Journal ran an article sometime in the 1950's about my father's family. The headline read "Christmas With The Christmases" and this was the picture that went with the article. My father is the young lad in the center, holding his prized Christmas robot.

My mother, with her grandfather, probably taken sometime before I was born. In the box is a clitoral stimulator, which explains my great-grandfather's stern, yet curious, expression.

I admit it. I love nutcrackers, and I collect them. This is a shot from a few years back, when they were arrayed atop the TV cabinet.

I'm about 99% certain this isn't actually a picture taken at Christmas time, but rather, Thanksgiving. Still, it's the Christmas family in Baptist party mode, circa 1985. I'm pretty sure my grandmother is beseeching Jesus because my aunts were fighting again.

Right after this picture was taken, I stood up and began singing O Tannenbaum. Check out those sneakers, and that hi-tech TV! Yes, that's a VCR on the top. This is probably about 1987ish.

Merry Christmas from the Christmases, circa 1981. My Dad got laid a lot. Thankfully, that hideous couch was in my aunt's house. Notice how pissed I am that I got clothes for Christmas.

This is just to prove that yes, I did have hair as an adult. This was Our First Christmas, 1997, in Our First Apartment. I have absolutely no idea why there is a Rambo knife lying in the floor. Oh wait, I was using it to commit suicide with before this picture was taken. I'm not kidding when I say that the glasses I was wearing in this picture were just replaced about 2 months ago.

Circa 2000ish at my parents' home in Texas. My Dad still gets laid a lot. My wife started looking for the Rambo knife after this picture was taken.

My sister's Best Christmas Gift Ever. Just revel in this picture for a while. My grandmother is saying: "There's a black man on that shirt!"

According to the date on the picture, this was Christmas, 1956. That's my mother, as a little boy, drunk.

This was taken at my aunt's house, probably around 1990. My mother was in her James Brown hair-do phase, while my aunt was doing her best to look older than my grandmother, and also, to look like she was having a bowel movement.

At my parents' house in Texas, about 2001. My wife and I went down there with my sister for a 4-day weekend, and my sister was a complete and total neurotic bitch the entire time, and I wanted to pull the Rambo knife on her. Happy Holidays!

Just revel in it.

This is about 1978, I would guess. My cousin, dressed like one of the Brady's, is as happy about my truck and car set as I am. My sister has been strangled to death.

No, that's not me in the long john's. That's my cousin - I think the same one as in the picture above. Judging by my sister's age, and the well-formed lump hiding behind my mother's hands, this must have been Christmas 1974, right before I was born. My Dad is behind the tree, looking like Warmed Over Death.

Merry Christmas honey, here's a fucking dishpan. My guess is that this is about 1971 or so. Why is my father always near plastic robots in Christmas pictures? Is that the Tin-Man?

Yeah, I was pretty much Kick Ass, rockin' the cowboy outfit.

This is 2006, at my sister's house, right after a huge argument wherein my mother decided to throw out all the booze, upsetting my sister greatly. Dad was passed out on the porch.

This would have been 1973ish, well before my birth. I remember playing with that hippo as a child. I'm pretty sure I used scissors to cut a butthole for it.

My sister's first Christmas, 1972. She was born about 40 pounds.

1989ish. Fortunately, I put some clothes on for this picture with my grandmother. Yes, my jeans are tight-rolled. Yes, I was a virgin.

My youngest daughter, Christmas 2009, ordering up some weed for the festivities.

Christmas 2010. I don't think a single one of these toys has been around since roughly January, 2011.

My Dad, sporting the Man-Stache, and my Mom, sporting her 'Fro and holding my cousin's baby. This is about 1988. The honeymoon was definitely over.

Christmas Eve dinner, 1987. I remember posing for this shot, trying to look goofy. Not that the camo outfit required much help.

Obviously, the same Christmas. Have just received a Swiss Army Knife. My Mom is laughing because it was Swiss Army Knife number 2 for that Christmas. Which was okay with me, because I was an army guy, and needed both.

Christmas train set my Dad and I made to sit on top of our TV stand. We later added snow and trees and shit. I was pretty damn proud of this. Circa 1989.

Christmas in West Chester, Ohio, circa 1988, fake tree in the Family Room, live tree in the Living Room. Dad with his photo-grays on. Looks like a white Christmas out that window, eh?

Same Christmas as above, different room. Damn that light chain hanging down from the ceiling fan and ruining the postcard scene!

In my mind, I was thinking: "Fucking pajamas." But they were Transformer pajamas, which was pretty cool. Yes, my Mom was wearing a full-length apron, even after dinner was over.

Christmas, 2003, at my sister's house. This was my sister's last Christmas, before she died of malnutrition.

And that, my friends, is Christmas With the Christmas Family. Happy Hanukkah!

10 Fun Facts About Zachary Taylor

2011-12-21T01:30:00.000-05:00

Zachary Taylor, the 12th President of the United States

1) Born in Virginia in 1784, Taylor came from a distinguished line of American families that included three passengers on the Mayflower. His second cousin was future President James Madison. The family moved to the frontier of Kentucky when Taylor was still a child, and he grew up in a log cabin near present day Louisville, where his father - a prominent Revolutionary war officer - became a large landowner.

2) Because of his frontier upbringing, Taylor had virtually no formal education, and this is illustrated in a number of personal letters where he routinely misspells words and uses poor grammar.

3) Taylor entered military service around 1808 and served throughout the War of 1812. His duties with the military eventually took him to New Orleans, and he ultimately bought a plantation and settled in nearby Baton Rouge. Shortly after entering military service, he met and married a Maryland woman named Margaret Smith. Together, they had 6 children. Taylor's only son, Richard, would later become a general in the Confederate army. One of his daughters, Elizabeth, fulfilled the duties of First Lady while her father was president; Taylor's wife Margaret, by this time, was a virtual recluse and took no part in official functions.

4) In 1835, another daughter, Sarah, met and married a young West Point graduate named Jefferson Davis. Taylor disapproved of the marriage because he didn't want a military life for his daughter. In order to get Taylor's blessing, Davis resigned his commission in the military. Sarah, however, died after only three months of marriage. Davis, of course, would go on to become the President of the Confederacy during the Civil War. He and his former father-in-law remained estranged until serving together in the 1840's.

5) Taylor rose to prominence for his service in the Mexican War of the mid-1840's, where he won a number of decisive victories against superior Mexican forces. When he returned from the war, he was welcomed as a hero, with many people comparing him to the likes of George Washington and Andrew Jackson. He was commonly known by the nickname "Old Rough and Ready."

6) Taylor was courted as a presidential candidate in 1848 primarily because of his prominence as a war hero. Prior to running for president, Zachary Taylor had never even personally voted in a presidential election. Pursued by both the Whig and the Democratic parties, he eventually declared himself a Whig and easily won their nomination for president. With the Democratic party partially split by an anti-slavery third party called the Free Soil Party (which nominated former president Martin Van Buren), Taylor managed to win the election, despite only garnering 47% of the popular vote.

7) Taylor was the last U.S. president to own slaves while in the White House.

8) The issue of slavery - and, specifically, the question of whether slavery should be allowed to expand into new western territories won in the Mexican War - dominated most of Taylor's time in office. Though he was a slaver-holder himself, Taylor supported the so-called Wilmot Proviso, which would have effectively outlawed slavery in new western territories. Southern states threatened to secede over this issue, and Taylor - a nationalist to the core - promised to lead the armies himself, if necessary, to preserve the Union. In a meeting with southern leaders in February of 1850, he is said to have stated: "Anyone taken in rebellion against the Union, I will hang, with less reluctance than I hanged deserters and spies in Mexico."

9) While discussions were taking place among the leaders of Congress on a compromise solution to the question of slavery in the western territories, Taylor took a break in July, 1850, to observe the groundbreaking ceremonies, on July 4, of the new Washington Monument. It was a hot day, and he cooled off by consuming fruit and milk. Within several days, he was battling a severe digestive ailment, possibly cholera, and succumbed to the illness on July 9, 1850, only 16 months into his presidency. He became the second president in less than a decade to die in office from illness. He was buried near his childhood home in Louisville, Kentucky.

10) In the 1980's, questions began to be raised about the possibility that Zachary Taylor had been assassinated by poisoning. The theories pointed to the unusual circumstances of his death (there were no known cholera outbreaks that year in Washington, and his symptoms are not entirely consistent with other food-born illnesses, like typhoid), and to the fact that he had many political enemies in Washington, due to his refusal to compromise over the issue of slavery. It is a historical fact that, without Taylor's death, the Compromise of 1850 - which allowed California into the Union as a free state, but which kept slavery possible in other territories - may never have happened. As a result of this speculation, Taylor's body was exhumed in 1991, to be tested for arsenic - which tends to remain in the body after death. The tests showed conclusively that Taylor was not poisoned by arsenic. The medical examiners who opened his casket reported that his body was well-preserved, and was recognizable from photographs of the long-dead president.

10 Fun Facts About Warren G. Harding

2011-12-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States

1) Warren G. Harding was born in rural Blooming Grove, Ohio, in 1865. His parents had the unusual 19th century distinction of both being doctors - his mother had been granted a medical license because of her work as a midwife. The family eventually moved to nearby Caledonia, Ohio, where they bought, and began operating, the local newspaper. Warren was known by the nickname "Winnie."

2) An advanced student, Harding earned a Bachelor of Science degree in 1882 at the age of 17. He was known as an accomplished cornet player while in school, and also edited the school's newspaper.

3) After college, Harding raised money to purchase a newspaper in Marion, Ohio, which he built into a successful publication, respected state-wide. The Marion Daily Star is still published to this day (as the Marion Star).

4) Harding's principle opponent in the newspaper world was Amos Kling, the financier of Marion's most popular newspaper, the Marion Independent. Competition between these two newspapers got so heated that one argument was, apparently, settled at gunpoint. Harding, however, ultimately got the best of his rival - he married Kling's estranged daughter, a divorced woman named Flossie Kling DeWolfe. Her father was so upset he didn't speak to either of them for eight years. Winnie and Flossie never had children, but Flossie brough a young son to the marriage, who was raised, in part, by the Hardings. Named Marshall DeWolfe, he eventually married and had children of his own, but died of alcholism in his early 30's, in 1915. When Harding later came to the White House, the fact that he had a stepson who had died of alcholism was not widely known or reported by the contemporary media.

5) A lifelong Republican, Harding entered politics around the turn of the century, and served several terms in the Ohio legislature, before serving as Ohio's lieutenant governor from 1904 to 1906. He ran for governor in 1909, but lost. During these years, he also continued to run his newspaper business, and eventually reconciled with his father-in-law and former nemesis. A rising star in the Republican party, he gave the nominating speech at the Republican National Convention in 1912, and went on to chair the 1916 convention; in between, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1914. By 1920, he won the Republican nomination for the presidency.

6) During the 1920 campaign, Harding revolutionized political campaigning. For the first time, newsreels and photo-ops became the norm in presidential campaigning, and campaign results were broadcast on the radio for the first time. Harding brillaintly marketed his own quaint home in rural Ohio as his primary podium, instituting what he called a "front porch" campaign, in which he was routinely depicted in photographs on his front porch, and gave numerous speeches there to enormous audiences. He was also widely regarded to be a handsome, and thus photogenic, man, and although there were many rumors of extra-marital affairs, Harding was popular with female voters, primarily because he had supported Women's Suffrage and not, as the legend says, because he was so good-looking. The 1920 election, of course, was the first in which women were permitted to vote. All the campaigning and women voters paid off; he won the largest landslide in U.S. history, taking more than 60% of the popular vote. He defeated Ohio governor James Cox, whose running mate was a little-known Navy bureaucrat named Franklin D. Roosevelt.

7) Rumors of African-American ancestry dogged Harding throughout his life (this was, apparently, the source of the gun-pointing episode with his future father-in-law, referred to above). The rumors, apprently, had been around for a very long time, from even before Harding's own birth. During the 1920 election, the rumors came to the forefront of a smear campaign, and were published, though without much widespread effect. Historical research into Harding's family tree has never uncovered any African ancestry.

8) As president, Harding made it his mission to reduce federal spending and cut taxes across the board. He succeeded: by 1922, federal spending was only about half of what it had been in 1920, and taxes had been cut for every income level. Harding was also instrumental in passing the first major budget and accounting bill in U.S. history, which helped establish the federal budget process still in place today. Included in this bill was the establishment of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Government Accountability Office. Harding also established the Veterans Bureau - the first of its type in the U.S. - which later became the Veterans Administration.

9) Harding's accomplishments in office were largely overshadowed by a series of scandals, many of which did not fully come to light until after his time in office. Harding's primary involvement in most of these scandals was in his tendency to place friends and financial contributors into powerful government positions for which they were otherwise unqualified - and then turn a blind eye to how they operated. Many of these appointees went on to take bribes, create under-the-table deals, and generally run crooked enterprises with government resources. Several of Harding's Cabinet members eventually served prison time for various crimes, and at least one person committed suicide. For this reason, Harding has been primarily remembered as a president who fostered a culture of corruption, and historians have generally ranked him quite low among other presidents. During his own time in office, however, Harding enjoyed widespread popularity.

10) As news began to leak out relating to various scandals in his Cabinet, Harding decided to take a long journey across the country to give a series of speeches, traveling as far away as Alaska. His health noticeably declined on this trip, and on August 2, 1923, he collapsed and died while in conversation with his wife. His sudden and untimely death left most of the questions unanswered in regards to his involvement in, and knowledge of, the scandals that rocked his Cabinet; his wife made matters worse by destroying virtually all of his private papers immediately after his death, in order to protect his legacy. Serving a little over two years, he was the shortest-serving president of the 20th century.

The Theology of Jesus

2011-12-16T03:49:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot recently about the theology espoused by Jesus. Yes, I admit, I sit around thinking about things like this.

In thinking about these things, I have come to realize - and even marvel at - how different Jesus's theology was compared to modern Christian theology. For those who read my blog a lot, it may come as a surprise to discover that I have only just recently come to grips with a firm and clear understanding of what Jesus's basic theology entailed. More on that in a minute.

First, it might be important to define what I mean by "theology." Simply put, theology refers to what you believe about God or supernatural things. Ancient Egyptians, for instance, believed that when you died, you were judged by a divine tribunal, headed by the god Osiris. Your heart was weighed against the feather of the goddess Ma'at. If you had lived by Ma'at's precepts during your life (in other words, if you were a "good" person), you would pass that test and be presented to Osiris, who would ultimately grant you eternal life. If your heart did not pass the test against the feather of Ma'at, you would be fed to the goddess Amemet, who was part hippo and part lion, with the head of a crocodile, and who had the job of devouring the hearts (and thus the life force) of the wicked.

This, then, is theology. It's what you believe about divine things.

When we look at the theology of modern Christianity, we find, of course, that it is all over the map. This is why both Mother Theresa and a member of the KKK can claim to be Christians. But it is certainly possible to describe the most common aspects of modern Christianity - those theological beliefs that are most widely adhered to by everyday, practicing Christians.

In a nutshell, modern, mainstream Christian theology states that Jesus was the divine son of God who became a great prophet and healer, doing the work of God and spreading God's message to his followers. He was crucified and buried, and then was physically resurrected through the power of God. Because of his resurrection, human beings can be reconciled to God by accepting Jesus as their savior and asking forgiveness for their sins. If they do this, they will go to heaven when they die, to live eternally. If they do not accept Jesus, they will spend eternity in separation from God, which, for most Christians, means going to hell.

But when we turn to the pages of the New Testament itself, to see what Jesus, himself, actually did and said during his life, we find something completely different - virtually nothing like the theology of mainstream Christianity.

Before I even begin here, I want to point out that what follows is not my own pet theory about Jesus. It's not some harebrained idea that I've put together. It is basically Jesus Theology 101, similar to what any student would be taught at any mainstream seminary across the country. I stick to the basics and discuss only those things that are widely-accepted and established among scholars, historians, and theologians.

To begin with, Jesus said explicitly that his message was only for Jews - for the children of Abraham. This wasn't an effort on Jesus's part to be ethnocentric, or to exclude someone who was not ethnically Jewish. Anyone could follow him, but following his teachings included following the teachings of the Jewish scriptures - including all the purity laws of Moses. Doing so, however, would by definition make you a Jew. A Jew is not just someone of a specific ethnic background, but also of a specific religious background. In the same way that a person today can be ethnically non-Jewish, but Jewish by religion, this was true in the 1st century as well. Jesus welcomed everyone, but he also taught that Jewish laws and customs had to be followed, because they came from God. Ethical teachings from the Jewish scriptures were essentially the basis of Jesus's own ethical teachings.

Secondly, Jesus was a firm and outspoken apocalyptist. What I mean by that is that Jesus believed the end of the world was right around the corner. He says this explicitly in the gospels, even affirming that the end would happen within his own generation, and within the lifespans of many of his followers. No matter how uncomfortable this might make people, it is a fact that simply cannot be ignored. It's right there in the texts of the New Testament. For instance, in Mark, chapter 13, he tells his disciples all the things they are going to see at the end of the world, and then goes on to say: "When you see these things happening, you will know that [the end] is near, right at the door." He follows this up even more explicitly by saying: "This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened."

So Jesus was a dyed-in-the-wool apocalyptist, believing that the world was coming to an end. But what, exactly, did this end-of-the-world scenario look like? What was going to take place?

In short, the world would descend farther and farther into chaos. Wars would occur between nations. Many people would die. Eventually, Israel itself would be consumed and overrun. But then God would intervene and establish what one scholar has called "the Great Divine Clean-Up" of the world. His agent for this clean up would be a figure called the Son of Humanity (or "Son of Man" in earlier Christian parlance). Many debates exist about who Jesus thought this person was, with the most common conclusion being that it was Jesus himself; but many other scholars argue that Jesus was talking about a different person all together, or maybe even using an expression meant to refer to the Jewish people as a whole.

In any case, how can a person ensure that they are on the right side of God when the Son of Humanity comes to institute the Great Divine Clean-Up? Easy; by following the path of righteousness taught by Jesus, which essentially meant being a good person and following God's commandments as outlined in the Jewish scriptures, especially the commandments about loving others, helping others, and performing acts of loving-kindness. If you do that, Jesus said, you will be among God's chosen people; you will be on the right side of the fence when the end of time occurs.

So what, then, will happen during the Great Divine Clean-Up? Put simply, God will sweep away all the powers and nations of the earth, which have grown out of the corruption of sin, going all the way back to Adam. Essentially, God will push the "reset" button. The kingdom of God, sometimes called the kingdom of heaven, will be enthroned here on earth, and will rule a new earth, transformed from the old, corrupted earth on which we now live. It will be an earth like God originally envisioned for humanity, where human beings will live in harmony together, loving God and one another, and living for eternity in this blissful paradise that is essentially a remaking of the Garden of Eden. No one will "go to heaven." Instead, heaven, essentially, will come here, to this planet, to earth.

Jesus says that the coming Son of Humanity will institute all of this, and will "gather his chosen ones from the four corners of the earth." In other words, all of those who followed Jesus's path of righteousness will be gathered together, where they will become the inheritors of God's renewed earthly kingdom. When Jesus said that "the meek" and "the poor" and "the persecuted" will inherit the earth, he wasn't talking metaphorically. He meant that statement quite literally. The ones who follow God will literally become the future rulers of God's renewed earth.

So what about evil people? And what about those who are already dead when all this takes place?

As for those wicked people who are still alive at the end, they will effectively be cast out of God's renewed earth. Their bodies (presumably still living), will be thrown into hell. Hell, for Jesus, was not the supernatural dimension of Medieval Catholicism and modern day fundamentalism, but was instead a quite literal place, right here on earth - just as God's kingdom is a literal kingdom right here on the literal earth. The word Jesus uses, which is translated into English as "hell", is the Greek word "Gehenna." This Greek word, in turn, was a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, which was a literal valley on the southwest side of ancient Jerusalem that you can still walk through to this day. At its most southern point, it met up with the Kidron Valley, which is also mentioned in New Testament writings (in the Gospel of John, Jesus crosses the Kidron Valley to get to the Garden of Gethsemane).

In ancient times, the Valley of Hinnom was essentially where Jerusalem's garbage dump was located. As such, it was an immensely "unclean" place, where no self-respecting 1st century Jew would ever venture. In addition to dumping refuse there, corpses would be placed there as well, if the deceased had no one to pay for a burial (such as a homeless person or criminal). Ancient writers indicate that this enormous pile of garbage burned year-round.

The Valley of Hinnom had long been associated with punishment and judgment in Jewish thought. Jewish scripture (specifically, 2 Chronicles and Jeremiah) indicates that the Valley of Hinnom was the place where Canaanites performed religious rituals, including the sacrificing of children in fire, and another account - this time in Isaiah - indicates that the fires of the Hinnom Valley would consume the enemies of Israel (specifically, the Assyrians).

So by the time of Jesus, the Valley of Hinnom was viewed as the unclean place where pagans, in the "olden days," had burned their children in sacrifices to their evil gods, and where now an enormous pile of garbage, topped with the corpses of criminals and other evil-doers, burned in perpetuity.

It is not hard to understand, then, why Jesus, and other Jews of his day, began imagining the Hinnom Valley as a place of divine retribution - Isaiah had indicated that very thing more than 700 years earlier.

So whenever Jesus mentions "hell" in the New Testament, he is explicitly referring to the literal Valley of Hinnom, ancient Jerusalem's burning garbage dump. His teachings indicate that the wicked who are still alive at the end of time will be cast into the Valley of Hinnom, where their bodies will be consumed and ultimately destroyed by the fires that never go out.

And this is a key, and quite eye-opening, aspect of Jesus's theology. He never says, not even one time, that wicked people will go to hell and suffer there forever (as many modern Christians, particularly evangelicals, believe). I remember growing up and wondering how someone could live forever in hell, without ever dying. It made me shudder to imagine experiencing the scorching pain of fire, for all eternity, without the ability to "die" and make it go away. In fact, Jesus never, ever, ever, not even once, says such a thing about hell. Instead, he says that the bodies of the wicked will be destroyed there. It is the fire that is eternal, not the body inside the fire.

For many modern Christians, the punishment of not following Jesus is having to burn eternally in hell. Jesus wasn't nearly that vindictive. For Jesus, simply dying, having your body permanently annihilated, and not getting to take part in the renewed earth, was punishment enough.

As for the wicked who have already died, Jesus never really mentions this group of people explicitly, but one can assume that they will simply remain dead. Their bodies have already been destroyed by natural processes. They have already gotten their just desserts.

So what, then, about the good people who have already died? Those who followed Jesus's path, but who died before the End? Unlike the wicked who have died, the righteous will be resurrected - their bodies will literally come back to life and rise up out of their graves and tombs. The Son of Humanity, through God, will restore them back to life, to join up with the others who were are still alive.

All these things, then, make up the gist of Jesus's theology. The world is coming to an end, very, very soon. Jesus, himself, brings the good news of the coming kingdom of God, and tells people what they need to do to prepare - essentially, they need to follow the teachings of Jewish scripture. When the End comes, God will send the mysterious Son of Humanity, who will gather the living from around the earth, and separate the good from the wicked. The good will inherit God's renewed earthly kingdom, and becomes its rulers from Jerusalem. The wicked will be cast into the Hinnom Valley where their bodies will be destroyed. Of those who are already dead, the righteous will be resurrected to join in the festivities of the new earth. The wicked who are already dead will, presumably, just remain that way. All of this is going to happen within a few years, or maybe a few decades at most.

This is Jesus's theology in a nutshell.

And, of course, it doesn't take a theologian or Biblical scholar to point out that it is practically nothing like what modern Christians believe. To modern Christian sensibilities, in fact, it would no doubt seem absolutely preposterous. Heaven isn't on earth, it's up in the sky, or it's in some kind of otherworldly dimension. You don't have to wait until the end of time to be resurrected - your soul is resurrected to heaven immediately upon your death. People aren't sent to hell to be killed, they go there after they die, and they live there forever in torment and agony. Jesus's message wasn't just to the Jews of his own day, it was to all people in all time periods. Jesus didn't expect the world to end in the 1st century - that would mean Jesus was wrong about something!

Unfortunately, these things simply are not consistent with what the New Testament gospels explicitly tell us about Jesus and his life and beliefs and theological dispositions. For Jesus, heaven was the place God lived, not the place where humans go after death. Human beings don't go to heaven. They die and await resurrection at the end of time, where they will be raised up to live again on a renewed earth. The end of time is not thousands of years in the future; it's literally going to happen in the next few years. Jesus's message is for anyone who wants to hear it, but it involves essentially becoming Jewish by following Jewish laws and religious customs. Wicked people don't burn in hell for all eternity. If they are still alive at the End, they are thrown into the burning garbage dump of the Hinnom Valley, where their bodies are destroyed.

It is my firm and passionate belief that if Christians want to step more fully into the lifestyle that Jesus taught and gave his own life for, it is vitally important to understand who he was, and what he taught, and why he taught it, even if those things are uncomfortable. As many great theologians and Christian scholars have come to realize over the centuries, the fact that Jesus was, effectively, a failed apocalyptist, does not mean that Jesus, himself, was a failure, or that Christianity is a fraud. It simply means that Christians have to come to a deeper understanding of what it means to follow Jesus and to be a practicing Christian in the 21st century. And this frequently means jettisoning old ideas and old ways of thinking that simply do not hold up to scrutiny of the texts of the Bible. It means joining Jesus on his path of righteousness, following him in his lifestyle of love, kindness, and living for others. For Christians in the 21st century, this is what it means to attain salvation and commune with God.

Was Jesus Born in a Stable?

2011-12-14T04:17:00.000-05:00

Outside of his death and resurrection, there is perhaps no story from the life of Jesus as well known and widely imagined as his birth in a Bethlehem stable.

Though we have two New Testament gospel accounts of the events surrounding Jesus's birth, the version of events found in the Gospel of Luke has easily played the most significant role in developing Christian images of the Nativity.

From the King James Version of Luke, chapter 2:

And Joseph also went up from Galilee...unto the City of David, which is called Bethlehem...to be taxed with Mary, his espoused wife...And while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

Although Luke's account provides most of the commonly-known details of Jesus's birth, we use the Gospel of Matthew to add a guiding star "in the east," leading three wise men to Jesus's side, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

As a result, Christian tradition has created a sort of combined image of the Nativity: wise men together with shepherds, worshipping the baby Jesus, who lies in a wooden manger inside a covered stable, cows and lambs resting contentedly in the background, as a magnificent star glows in the sky overhead, superimposed over a host of singing angels.

This image is reinforced in everything from great works of art by Renaissance masters, to modern Christmas hymns and nativity scenes. Ask most people to describe the scene of Jesus's birth, and they will talk about stars and stables, mangers and three wise men, shepherds and a "heavenly host" of angels, and the gentle lowing of the cattle. A few might even throw in a little drummer boy in the shadows.

Of course, as many folks realize, a number of these images are either downright absent from the New Testament accounts all together, or are twisted out of context.

I have written before about the varied discrepancies between the birth accounts of Matthew and Luke, including how we tend to combine images from these two otherwise differing accounts of the same event, to effectively create a third account that does not actually exist, so I won't repeat myself here.

Instead, I want to focus on the actual place where Jesus is said to have been born - inside a stable in Bethlehem.

To begin with, it may come as quite a surprise to many readers to discover that, in fact, no writer in the New Testament ever once mentions anything about a stable. There is, quite simply, no stable in any New Testament account of Jesus's birth.

This may almost seem shocking to some people. Why in the world do we imagine Jesus born in a stable when the birth stories of the New Testament don't actually mention any such thing?

The widespread nature of Christian belief in a stable can be illustrated by a very brief survey on the Internet. At a website called www.JesusAnswers.com, they have this to say: "When they arrived at Bethlehem in the evening, Joseph wanted to find a comfortable place for his wife Mary...The only place they found was a stable with camels, donkeys, and sheep."

Apparently this website doesn't realize camels aren't native to Palestine, and are also considered ritually unclean. But I digress.

Another article, this time at www.christianity.about.com, puts it like this: "While in Bethlehem, Mary gave birth to Jesus. Probably because of the census, the inn was too crowded, and Mary gave birth in a crude stable."

Clearly, the notion that Jesus was born in a stable is quite widespread, and it would seem that very few people actually realize that no writer of the New Testament ever places Jesus in a stable at birth.

It doesn't take a scholar of the New Testament to figure out why the image of the stable has developed in Christian tradition. The Gospel of Luke does tell us that Joseph and Mary were unable to find a place to stay in Bethlehem, and therefore Jesus was placed "in a manger." And a manger, after all, is a feeding trough. Surely, some might argue, this implies a stable?

As it turns out, the answer to that question is no.

There are two reasons why Luke's account cannot be taken to imply a birth in a stable. One is a purely archaeological reason, the other is essentially a historical reason.

Archaeological discoveries in modern Israel have demonstrated that within ancient Jewish cities, feeding troughs - or mangers - were stone basins placed, essentially, along the curb in front of ancient buildings. To put it simply, when travelers brought donkeys into the city, they tied them up in front of the building and left them there to eat - much the same way that a cowboy in the Old West might have tied his mount in front of the saloon. If a resident inside an ancient Jewish city owned a donkey or some other grazing animal, that animal would typically be kept within the courtyard of the house, where a manger would be situated.

This is evidenced, among other things, within another passage from the Gospel of Luke itself. In chapter 13, Jesus is teaching about working on the Sabbath, and states: "Does not each of you, on the Sabbath, untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?" Animals were fixed to the feeding trough, which itself sat on city streets or within residential courtyards. If mangers were understood to be situated inside an enclosed structure like a stable, what reason would there be to have the animal tied to the manger?

Simply put, when Luke tells us that Jesus was placed "in a manger," because there was no room inside the inn, he is saying, in effect, that Jesus was born either on the sidewalk in front of the inn, or perhaps more likely, in the courtyard appended to the inn. But in either case, there would certainly have been no stable involved. (Interestingly enough, the word translated in this passage as "inn" is probably better translated as "guestroom," implying that Joseph and Mary weren't trying to get lodging at an inn at all, but rather inside a relative's house.)

And this moves us to the second reason why Luke could not have been implying a stable for Jesus's birth. From a historical standpoint, stables simply didn't exist, in any widespread fashion, in ancient Israel. The climate of Israel is mild, with average temperatures ranging from the low 40's in winter to the mid 80's in summer. Some areas are dry, and others are more rainy, but snow and bitterly cold temperatures are a rarity. There was simply no climatic need for stables - or barns - to house cattle. It's interesting to note that at least one ancient stable area has been excavated in ancient Israel, in the area of Meggido, a city which was abandoned around 500 B.C.E. This stable, however, was made of stone (unlike the typical Nativity image of a wooden stable looking like something found in 16th century Europe), and there are a number of archaeologists who have argued that, in fact, it wasn't a stable at all, but a warehouse or storage building of some type.

The simple fact is, people in ancient Israel kept animals in pastures or within residential courtyards. They did not house them in stables or other walled and covered structures. Such structures, for the most part, would have been unnecessary, except, perhaps, in cases of kings housing their battle horses and so on. Regular cattle and beasts of burden - donkeys, cows, oxen, sheep, etc. - would have lived out-of-doors.

In the end, it seems that we are forced to accept that our common and widely-accepted image of Jesus's birth in a stable simply is not true, whether from a Biblical, archaeological, or historical standpoint. The New Testament does not tell us Jesus was born in a stable, and archaeology and history demonstrate that there is no reason to suppose an implied stable in Luke's account.

Based on historical context, the implication in Luke's account is that Jesus was born in an open-air courtyard (or maybe even on the side of the road!), placed in a feeding trough for lack of a bed, and bundled in soft blankets to protect him against the night air and the cold stone interior of the manger.

10 Fun Facts About George Washington

2011-12-11T13:29:00.001-05:00

George Washington, the 1st President of the United States

1) George Washington was born in 1732 in Virginia, to a family who owned tobacco plantations and numerous slaves. A number of Washington's siblings died at young ages, and his father died when he was only 11 years old, leaving him largely brought up by his eldest half-brother and that half-brother's father-in-law, William Fairfax, who was himself a cousin to Thomas Fairfax, the wealthiest landowner in Virginia. When his half-brother Lawrence died in 1752, George inherited the estate of Mount Vernon from him.

2) Through political appointments, Washington entered military service in the early 1750's, very quickly earning a reputation as a competent leader and battle commander. At only 23 years of age, he became the commander-in-chief of the Virginia colony's militia, and fought numerous battles against hostile Native American tribes scattered along the borders of the colony.

3) In 1758, on a mission to capture a French fort, Washington's unit was involved in an exchange of fire with what they believed were enemy combatants. Fourteen men were killed and another twenty-six wounded before both sides realized they were firing at friendly troops. Whether because of this mishap or not, Washington resigned his commission after the expedition, and returned to private life on his Virginia plantation.

4) In 1759, Washington married the very wealthy widow Martha Custis, who brought two children with her to the marriage. George and Martha never had children of their own; it has been suggested that George Washington may have been sterile due to a bout with smallpox in the early 1750's. In any case, they raised Martha's children at Mount Vernon, and later (after both those children had died as young adults), Martha's two grandchildren. The couple became one of the most prominent and wealthiest of Virginia's landowners in the 1760's.

5) When the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, Washington came out of retirement to volunteer his services, and was immediately named as the commander-in-chief of the newly formed Continental Army.

6) Following his success in the Revolutionary War, Washington - to the surprise of virtually everyone - resigned his commission to return to private life. Apparently dedicated to the old Roman ideal of serving only when needed, his actions gave rise to the so-called Society of the Cincinnati, which was named after the 5th century B.C.E. Roman consul Cincinnatus, who had left his plow to lead Rome during a crisis, then returned to his plow when the crisis was over (rather than use his influence to become a dictator). Washington became the society's first president, holding that office until his death. The society was a key supporter of land grants to war veterans, and the city of Cincinnati was founded primarily by veterans who had been beneficiaries of these grants.

7) After presiding over the formation of the Constitution, Washington was unanimously elected the country's first president in 1789. However, his term was considered to have officially begun when the Constitution was approved in 1788, and as such, the term ended in 1792, with Washington having only served three years. He was re-elected in 1792. In both those elections, electoral college members were selected by the states, and those electors were then required to place votes for two people to be president - their "favorite two," as it were. Whoever ended up with the most votes became president, while the runner-up would become vice-president. Some states did not actually use a general election, or a "popular vote," to determine electors; instead, those electors were simply appointed by the state legislatures. As a result, many Americans did not actually get to vote in either of these elections - the outcomes were determined by electoral college members, who were in turn chosen by a variety of methods among the states. It is estimated that only 0.5% of the U.S. population actually voted in the 1792 election - and those few who did get to vote only voted for electors, not for the actual presidential candidates.

8) During his time as president, Washington worked out of New York and Philadelphia. In 1790, a resolution was passed allowing the president to choose the permanent location of the federal government, and so Washington - a Virginia native - chose a parcel of land along the Potomac River in northern Virginia - modern day Washington, D.C.

9) In 1796, after declining to run for a third term in office, Washington delivered a farewell address, in the form of a letter, to the United States. He spent no less than six paragraphs within this document talking about the evils of political parties and encouraging American citizens not to form them.

10) George Washington died in December of 1799 after inspecting his fields in bad weather and developing a throat infection. He missed seeing the turn of the century by just 17 days. In his will, he freed all of his slaves. After his death, a writer interviewed people who had, supposedly, known Washington as a child, and it is from these accounts that we get the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree. However, this writer is known to have forged many other stories in his book, which was published in 1800, and today most scholars assume the story is fictitious.

El Caganer: Feliz Navidad!

2011-12-09T22:46:00.001-05:00

El Caganer

From Wikipedia: "A Caganer is a figurine appearing in nativity scenes in Catalonia [northern Spain]...The figure is depicted in the act of defecation."

That's right. This is a very popular tradition in the Catalonia region of northeastern Spain. This little guy goes somewhere in the background of a nativity scene.

WTF?

Apparently, no one knows how this tradition got started. But it's a really popular one. And they like to make caganer figurines of famous people too.

Yes, that's Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge. Shitting.

A few years back, the city of Barcelona put up a nativity scene that did not include a caganer. Their reason was because it set a bad example in light of a recent law that banned public urination or defecation. The public outrage was so great, they capitulated and stuck the caganer back into the scene.

I don't know what else to say about this, so I'll just let you think about it a while.

10 Fun Facts About Franklin Pierce

2011-12-08T18:12:00.001-05:00

Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States

1) Born November 23, 1804, in a New Hampshire log cabin, Franklin Pierce was one of eight children, and would later become the first U.S. president born in the 19th century. His father, Benjamin Pierce, would later become a two-term governor of New Hampshire.

2) Barbara Bush, former First Lady, and the wife and mother of two U.S. presidents, is distantly related to him (her maiden name is Pierce). She and Franklin Pierce are 4th cousins, 4 times removed.

3) Pierce studied law at Bowdoin College, in Massachusetts, where he was classmates with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, both of whom would go on to be great 19th century American writers. Pierce had a particularly good friendship with Hawthorne, and Hawthorne wrote a brief biography about him in 1852, during his presidential election campaign.

4) Entering politics after leaving college, Pierce served first in the state legislature of New Hampshire, before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1832 as a Democrat. At 27 years of age, he was the youngest congressman in Washington. He would later become a U.S. Senator.

5) Pierce met and married a woman named Jane Appleton. Their first two children, both boys, died in childhood of illnesses. Their third child, also a boy, was killed in a horrific train accident shortly after Pierce was elected president. The child was apparently decapitated right in front of his mother and father, and the tragedy haunted Pierce's presidency. They had no other children. Pierce's wife had not been particularly keen about his political ambitions, reportedly fainting at the news that he had been nominated for president in 1852, and came to view their last child's death - just two months before he took office - as God's punishment. She lived as a virtual hermit during his time in the White House, not making her first official appearance as first lady until halfway through his term.

6) Pierce served in the military during the Mexican-American war, where he sustained a serious leg injury. Still serving in battle following the injury, he collapsed and was forced to be carried off the field. This was later used against him, in the 1852 presidential election, with his political foes suggesting he had left the field of battle because of cowardice and not because of any real injury.

7) Pierce won all but four states during the 1852 presidential election, and became, at age 48, the youngest president in U.S. history. He was widely regarded as handsome and dashing, and rode a strong wave of popularity into the White House. Following this election, the Whig party, which lost in a landslide, became splintered, and eventually gave rise to the Republican party. The Democrats had last won the White House in 1844, under James K. Polk, and for that reason, their slogan in the 1852 campaign was: "We Polked you in 1844; we shall Pierce you in 1852!"

8) During his inauguration, Pierce chose not to swear his oath of office on a bible, choosing instead to "affirm" his oath on a law book.

9) Pierce's time in office was tumultuous. His love affair with the American people soured very quickly because of perceived poor leadership. He was also viewed as easily manipulated by powerful advisers. After supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened the door for the spread of slavery into new western states, Pierce lost favor with many anti-slavery advocates in the north. In 1856, Pierce failed to win re-nomination by the Democratic party, and the nomination went instead to James Buchanan, who ultimately won the White House. Pierce was effectively forced into retirement. By the end of his term, he had become so unpopular that he became the first U.S. president to hire a full-time bodyguard.

10) During the Civil War, ex-president Pierce came out as a supporter of the Confederacy, and was known to be close friends with Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Letters Pierce sent to Davis, criticizing President Lincoln, the war, and abolitionism in general, came to light in 1863 - after Davis's home was captured - and Pierce's reputation suffered even more. A lifelong alcoholic, Pierce died of liver failure in 1869, and was buried in New Hampshire, beside his wife (who had died in 1863) and two of his three sons.

The Psychology of Following God's Will

2011-12-05T23:03:00.001-05:00

I've been involved recently in a discussion with several people, including a faithful Mormon, about seeing God's blessings in your life as a result of following God's will.

The Mormon in these discussions has been arguing that one of the reasons he feels so confident in his faith is because once he started making the decision to listen to God and do God's will, things started turning around in his life. He uses several examples of personal experiences, which he believes are simply too astounding to be coincidental.

To repeat just one of them, he had been out of work and applying frantically for jobs. He wasn't able to find one and eventually his unemployment insurance ran out. Just two weeks after this, he got an interview at a place he had applied for more than two months earlier - and had more or less given up on. He ended up getting this job, which was a blessing in its own right, but after he started, his boss there told him an interesting story. He said that he had been going through applications, and had been set to hire someone, but for whatever reason, this person turned out to be ineligible for hire. On the same day that he called this person to let him know the bad news, the Mormon's application appeared in his email inbox. Recall that the person in question had sent this application two months earlier. For some reason, however, it came to the hiring manager at just the right time, he called the guy, and the guy got the job.

My Mormon friend regards this as a blessing from God for following God's will and making God the center of his life.

He has also argued that since he listens to God - waits for God to give him direction on big choices - he always knows that his choices will turn out good, and he can always look back and see how God has blessed him. This is a very common idea within Christian circles at large - the notion that sometimes you find yourself in what seems like a bad situation, but if you trust God and do God's will, you will eventually come to see how God was working through your life.

Most Christians, I believe, could probably give examples of situations like this. I'm immediately reminded of an old Garth Brooks hit called "Unanswered Prayers," which tells the story of how badly he wanted a girl in high school, and prayed ceaselessly about it, didn't have his prayer answered, then saw her again many years later and realized that she was nothing compared to the wonderful wife that God did give him. The moral of the story is that God is in control, and if we simply trust God and follow God's will, we will always see God's hand at work in our lives - even if we can't see it until much later. (I've always found it highly ironic, and I must say, a bit amusing, that Garth Brooks eventually divorced this wife and ran off with Trisha Yearwood.)

In any case, these discussions got me thinking about the psychology underpinning this sort of faith. It seems to me that what people like my Mormon friend call "God's hand at work," people in secular society simply call thinking positively and looking on the bright side of things. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Anyone, Christian or not, can look back on events in their lives and see experiences that seemed terrible at the time, but which turned out for the good. In my life, for instance, my family moved to a new city during the summer between 7th and 8th grade. The experience was horrific and traumatic for me, and quite frankly, scarred me emotionally in many ways. Yet I have always looked back and thought about all the things that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't moved. I wouldn't have met my wife. I wouldn't have gone to the college I went to, and met all the friends I met there. I wouldn't have the job and the friends I have today. I wouldn't have the children I have today.

If I were a secularist, I would just call this a positive attitude - finding the good in things. If I were a Christian, I would call this God's will playing out in my life. The phenomenon is the same - it's the language we use to describe it that is different.

In any case, I think this particular tendency among Christians can also certainly have a negative impact. When we expect God to move in our lives, and when we interpret good things as God's blessings in our lives, if those things end up turning to crap (to put it bluntly), where does that leave us in regards to God? Take, for instance, someone looking for love and finally finding someone they believe is their "soul mate." They attribute this wonderful experience to God. Two months later, the soul mate gets hit by a bus. Now what?

As a matter of fact, I even have experiences in my own life that are related to this, and perhaps this goes a long way towards explaining to people why I have more or less given up on the religious beliefs of my childhood. I'll tell you a story, and I hope you'll stick with me, because this story gets right to the heart of what I am trying to get at here.

In 2007, I was a year into a degree program in Radiology. I already had one degree, but had gone back to college at age 31 to get a second degree. I was now far enough into my program that I could begin working as an X-ray tech in doctor's offices. I was not yet able to work in hospitals.

For the first 9 months of my program, I had taken classes four hours each night, while working full time during the day. I essentially left the house at 8:00 every morning, went straight to school from work, and didn't get home until 9:30 or 10:00 in the evening. I did this four days a week - there were no classes on Friday.

Beginning in September of 2007, I had to start doing clinical rotations during the day, which forced me to resign my day job and get a part-time job in the evenings and on weekends. I went to work for about 9 bucks an hour inside the kitchen of a Mexican restaurant. This was a huge financial loss for me, because not only was I getting paid less, but I was also only able to work about 20 hours a week. Furthermore, I was now having to work on weekends, which essentially meant I was going 7 days a week between clinical rotations and work. It was a very stressful period.

In December, I finished that particular round of clinical rotations and was now qualified to get a job as a doctor's office X-ray tech. My plan, and my sincere hope, was to get a part-time job at an office somewhere, working in my new field and getting paid pretty well, while continuing with my schooling and clinical rotations. I would go so far as to say I was desperate for this.

Around this same time, in December of 2007 - and totally unrelated to my work/school/financial situation - I decided to take a hiatus from blogging in order to do what I called a "Spiritual Quest." In the post where I announced this, I said that I was wanting to take some time off to better understand God. I had spent several years formulating new ideas about religion, but still felt confused and uncertain about what I actually thought of God. Who is God? What does God do? How does God impact my life? What, essentially, is my basic philosophy on God? I didn't have answers to these questions, but I hoped that by going on this "spiritual quest," I might figure it out.

As laid out in that post, my quest involved prayer, meditation, and directed reading. Specifically, I was going to read three books - one scholarly book on the "history of God" within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, one book by an atheist about why God doesn't exist, and one book by a former atheist who changed his mind and embraced Deism. I hoped that by reading from among these three perspectives, I might better formulate my own ideas about God.

I felt, at the time, that my decision to do this was in some ways serendipitous. I had just finished the famous self-help book "The Road Less Traveled," which talked a lot about concepts of God, and I had also just finished a novel called The Source, which traced - in fictionalized form - the history of Judaism and dealt quite a bit with the evolving concepts of God within Judaism. I had known that The Source would involve topics like this, but I had not expected The Road Less Traveled to deal so much with philosophical concepts about God and religious faith. The fact that I had, quite accidentally, read these two books at the same time, seemed serendipitous to me, and it is what ultimately inspired me to begin this "spiritual quest," where I took about two months off from blogging and writing about religion, and focused all my energy on, basically, "finding God."

So this was all going on at the same time that I was finishing up the first part of my degree program and frantically trying to find work as an X-ray tech while I continued on with school. I wanted out of the Mexican restaurant, I wanted to work in my chosen field, and I wanted the better money that I knew would come with that change.

In early January of 2008, I got an interview with a chiropractor who was interested in hiring a student X-ray tech. Another of my classmates also interviewed for the same job. To my great surprise, I ended up getting hired, even though I had fully expected my classmate - who was every bit as qualified as I was - to beat me out. He had actually been more aggressive in going for the job, and I figured this would probably give him an edge.

I was very relieved and excited to start working in my field and receiving significantly better pay. I went in to work at the Mexican restaurant on a Sunday, planning on telling them that I was quitting and that this would be my last shift. I was starting at the chiropractor's office on Monday. When I arrived at work that day, I found out that the restaurant was shutting down - closing its doors for good - that very night. The lunch shift I was working, in fact, would be the restaurant's last shift. We had been given no prior warning. We all just showed up for work to find out we were unemployed.

I felt immensely blessed. I could not believe my good fortune. Had I not gotten this job at the chiropractor's office just two days earlier, I would have found myself in an even worse situation than I was already in. I hated the job at the restaurant, but I definitely needed the job from a financial standpoint. If not for the incredibly fortunate timing of this new job, I would have been out of work with no unemployment benefits.

Naturally, I began very quickly connecting this situation to the "spiritual quest" that I had been on, by that time, for about four weeks. Here I was, explicitly and intentionally "seeking God," focusing all my creative and spiritual energies on understanding God and my relationship to God, and voila, this incredibly good situation seemingly drops into my lap. I avoid unemployment, get a job in my chosen field, increase my pay - and all this happens with unpredictably good timing during a period of deep spiritual reflection and meditation.

Surely, I reasoned, there must be a connection? How could there not be? The coincidence was simply too great.

I started my job at the chiropractor's office the following day. From virtually the moment I walked in the door, it was a horrific situation. I had actually sensed this even during the interview, but had more or less tried to ignore it. I could write 50,000 words on everything that was terrible about this job, but I will attempt to condense it.

The chiropractor I worked for was what I can only describe as a "fundamentalist Catholic." I hadn't even known, up to this time, that such a thing really existed. He had actually asked me about my own religious beliefs during the interview, and had more or less implied that he wouldn't hire a non-Christian to work for him.

He was training someone in the office to take X-rays along with me, even though you have to have a state license to operate X-ray equipment - which this person didn't have, and couldn't get without going through an accredited program.

He was an herbal-medicine charlatan who essentially told his patients that all prescription medicines are poisonous. This includes everything from ibuprofen to antibiotics. I explicitly heard him tell a patient one day that antibiotics weren't as effective at attacking bacterial infections as garlic supplements (I think it was garlic - anyway, some herb). He once criticized me for talking about how I had taken Advil that morning for a headache. His comment was something to the effect that if I wanted to "pop pills" on my own time, that was one thing, but don't be talking about it in front of his patients.

He asked us to pray for more business.

He had a machine in his office which he claimed could diagnose any disease known to man, including cancer, AIDS, and anything else - simply by hooking up a few leads to your wrists and forehead and evaluating your energy fields.

He claimed that he once saved his son from death during an asthma attack by giving him an emergency back adjustment.

He performed a ritual on new patients that involved putting a bottle of the discontinued anti-inflammatory Vioxx onto a patient's area of pain. With the bottle held at the source of the pain, he would then perform a strength test on them which was aimed at demonstrating how the body knew that the medicine was poisonous, because the muscle strength would weaken. He would then pull out a trusty bottle of his magic herbal pills, stick that bottle on the source of the pain, then perform the strength test again. Magically, the strength test would now be positive, because the body knew the herbal medicine was effective. The entire thing, of course, was a magic trick that involved him using differing levels of pressure during the two strength tests. I watched these performances in horror, and so did many of his patients. I know of at least one who never came back.

He was committing insurance fraud by billing Medicare for therapeutic treatments that he was not actually performing. He would do some other treatment - which Medicare would not pay for - but call it the thing that Medicare would pay for. I know this, because the other chiropractor who worked in the office told me.

He once paid me and another employee cash out of his wallet for working with him at a vendor show. This was done "under-the-table," not reported to the IRS.

There are so many other things I could talk about, but I've already failed to "condense" this the way I had wanted to, so I'll just note that, in short, he was a lunatic, a charlatan, a virtual dictator, and a criminal.

Within three weeks of starting this job - still in January of 2008 - I was already trying to figure out what I was going to do and how I was going to find another job. He solved that problem for me by laying me off, claiming that there just wasn't enough business to justify keeping me on the payroll. I briefly considered reporting him to authorities, but decided to wash my hands of the whole ordeal and move on.

As a result of this horrific situation, several things happened. First of all, I was out of work with no income. Secondly, I was questioning whether I was even doing the right thing by going into the medical field. Are all jobs like this?

I ultimately decided to stick with Radiology, realizing that the bad job experience really didn't have anything to do with my own career field. But I also decided to simply go to school full time and not work. I felt burned, as it were. As a result, I had to take out living expense loans to help support my family financially.

Fast forward almost four years, and here I am today, working full time as an X-ray tech in a hospital. I love my job and my co-workers, and I get paid reasonably well. My wife and I have a dual income and we have a new house. However, we are immensely burdened by school loan debt, a significant amount of which comes from those living expense loans. Had this horrific job situation never cropped up, I may never have decided to stop working, and may never have taken out all those loans. This would make life, today, considerably less financially tight.

What all this means, of course, is that the entire situation was a negative one. Virtually nothing good has come from it, except an emotional scar and a burden of school loan debt. It most definitely had nothing whatsoever to do with God working in my life, rewarding me for faithfulness because I was on a "spiritual journey" and seeking out a better understanding of God.

It was just a coincidence that seemed wonderful at the time, but turned to crap.

I wish I could say this was the only time I had experienced something like this in my life - a situation where I thought God was at work, only to find out later that it was nothing of the sort. Unfortunately, I've had several of these experiences.

And of course, these experiences are one of the biggest reasons why I tend to be skeptical when I hear others attribute good fortune to the workings of God. It's one of the reasons why I tend to view it as being underpinned by psychology - seeing the good in things, making lemonade out of lemons, having a positive attitude.

The fact is, we all face choices every day, and sometimes we face very important, life-altering choices. What I have come to learn, however, is that most of the time, life will be okay regardless of what choice you make. Human beings are enormously adaptable creatures. It's written into our very biological code because it provides a significant evolutionary advantage.

So if someone is deciding whether or not to move the family cross-country, there may be good things that will result from that, and bad things that will result from that. Similarly, there will be bad and good that comes from staying put. If you move, you may have to get used to a "new normal," but you will ultimately adapt.

If you are a Christian, you might look back on the situation and remark at how many wonderful things have happened since moving, and attribute those things to God's blessings for following God's will. But, of course, that conclusion would ignore all the possible good things that might have happened if you had stayed put. Maybe you would have won the lottery. Who knows? The possibilities are endless. In the end, you adapt either way.

I believe this is the psychological underpinning of attributing good things to following God's will. Maybe God really does respond to those who follow God's will. But if that's true, then God also responds to people who are not explicitly trying to follow God's will. Both good and bad things happen to everyone. It's ultimately your attitude that determines whether you view events in your life as a blessing or a curse. If you choose to couch that language of attitude in religious terms, that's certainly fine, but attitude is what it's ultimately all about.

Taking Christ Out of Christmas

2011-12-04T19:53:00.001-05:00

Well, it's that time of year again, the time when a certain segment of the Christian community gets their collective panties in a wad over people who say "Happy Holidays."

I've written about this before. Last year, in fact.

I think the best line from that particular post was this: "This tired old discussion pops up every single year like an old fart wafting up from a basement couch."

Indeed.

Here's a post I read on Facebook about a week ago. I'm repeating it verbatim:

I DO NOT CARE IF THIS DOES OFFEND SOMEONE…THIS IS WHAT I BELIEVE…I AM SICK AND TIRED OF EVERY YEAR WHEN CHRISTMAS COMES AROUND; THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO WANT TO TAKE CHRIST OUT OF CHRISTMAS BECAUSE IT MIGHT OFFEND SOMEONE…WELL, HOW ABOUT ALL OF THE CHRISTIANS?...WHAT ABOUT OFFENDING US BECAUSE YOU ARE TAKING OUR CHRIST OUT OF CHRISTMAS?...CHRIST IS CHRISTMAS!...IF YOU AREN'T CELEBRATING CHRIST THEN WHY ARE YOU CELEBRATING?...CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT THE BIRTH OF OUR SAVIOR!...CHRISTMAS IS ONE OF A FEW HOLIDAYS LEFT THAT CELEBRATE "MY" CHRIST!...LEAVE "MY" HOLIDAY ALONE!...AND TELL EVERYONE MERRY CHRISTMAS, NOT HAPPY HOLIDAYS!...RE-POST IF YOU’RE NOT ASHAMED

Yes, it offends me, and I don't care if you don't care.

"Happy Holidays" is not taking "Christ out of Christmas." "Happy Holidays" is not some new euphemism invented in an atheist's basement in San Francisco intended for disbursement among American citizens for the purpose of relieving Baby Jesus of his Christmas duties.

"Happy Holidays," in fact, has been around for decades, since long before the Political Correctness movement began. It's a phrase that simply acknowledges that from the end of November through early January, there are at least 3 major American holidays, as well as several smaller, culturally-centered holidays. As such, this is a certifiable "holiday season," and has been throughout world cultures for eons. Thus, "Happy Holidays" is just a simple way of lumping them all together and acknowledging that we are in the season of celebrating.

Kindly unwind your panties, O Outraged Evangelical Goofball.

The only people taking Christ out of Christmas are those people who teach their kids about Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on Christmas gifts, fill stockings full of treats on Christmas morning, and sing Jingle Bells while dancing 'round the Christmas tree. And considering that everyone does that, perhaps you, O Goofy Evangelical, should turn that finger around and point it at your own chest. Either that, or become a Jehovah's Witness or join some other fundamentalist Christian sect that doesn't celebrate holidays. Otherwise, kindly shut your trap.

Oh, and Happy Holidays!

Was JFK a Conservative?

2011-11-30T22:52:00.001-05:00

John F. Kennedy: A Closet Conservative?

On another blog post, a friend of mine made a comment recently suggesting that JFK was probably to the right of George W. Bush on the political spectrum. To support this, he mentioned JFK's escalating of military intervention in Southeast Asia, and his policy of lowering taxes across the board to help spur a somewhat flagging early 1960's economy.

This was the first time I had ever heard anyone say such a thing. I don't know if this is my friend's own pet theory, or this is an idea that is bandied about among conservatives as a way to get under a liberal's skin (sort of the way a liberal might point out that while Republicans love to claim Abe Lincoln as their own, the Republican party actually rejected Lincoln's bid for re-election in 1864 and nominated someone else, forcing Lincoln to form a third party in order to run).

In any case, my friend's comment spurred me to do a little research, to find out just how much veracity there was to this claim that JFK was "conservative" by modern standards.

Granted, I only did a brief survey of JFK's presidential policies and platforms, but from that survey, the only similarity I can find between JFK and modern day Republicans is that JFK wanted to lower taxes as a means of helping to spur the economy. This, of course, is exactly the piece of evidence presented by my friend for why JFK was "conservative."

There are manifold problems with this, however. To begin with, in the 1960's, personal and corporate tax rates were significantly higher than they are now. In fact, they were so high, that the U.S. federal government had never had a budget deficit, outside of a war or an economic recession, in its entire history. Essentially, in 1960, budget deficits simply didn't exist under normal circumstances. This is due, primarily, to the fact that federal tax rates were so high. There was always plenty of money coming in.

So JFK's push for lower tax rates is in no way analogous to the modern conservative insistence on lower and lower taxes. In 1960, taxes were very high, primarily as a result of tax increases during World War II that had never expired. Our tax rates today are already at historic lows, and it has been years since any significant tax increase was enacted. We simply are not in the same economic position, in 2011, that we were in during the 1960's.

Furthermore, this argument seems to presuppose that "lowering taxes" is a Republican ideal, while "raising taxes" is a liberal ideal. Since JFK wanted to lower taxes, he is more like a "conservative" than a "liberal."

This, of course, is complete nonsense. In the last 25 years, two presidents have raised income taxes: one was a conservative/Republican (George H. W. Bush), and one was a liberal/Democrat (Bill Clinton). And both of those presidents had to get congressional approval to raise taxes, and both had congresses who were controlled by the opposite party.

Raising vs. lowering taxes is not a liberal vs. conservative issue, much as the conservative pundits would like you to think so. Both parties have track records of raising and lowering taxes.

Additionally, in regards to the current president, Obama has pushed endlessly for lower taxes across the board, and has approved legislation as such. The only taxes Obama has attempted to raise are the taxes on the super wealthy. This, of course, is because the super wealthy - like the rest of the country as a whole - are presently paying taxes at a historically low rate. Obama and his administration believe that one way to helps solve the country's enormous economic problems are to raise taxes on this segment of the population. You may agree or disagree with this perspective, but it hardly makes "liberals" a group who are ideologically married to "raising taxes," as my friend's perspective seems to presuppose.

This is a completely different scenario than what was faced by JFK in 1960. The super wealthy, along with everyone else, were paying enormously high tax rates by our modern standards. It was a time when tax rates needed to be lowered, and when JFK worked to lower them, he wasn't being a "conservative."

The other point my friend made was that JFK's escalation of intervention in Southeast Asia is analogous to Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This, too, I believe is a narrow-eyed view of the situation.

To begin with, JFK didn't start the war in Vietnam. He merely continued the policy of his predecessor - Eisenhower - of sending military advisers to assess the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. He also provided military aid to the South Vietnamese in their fight against a Communist takeover. Virtually every president in the 20th century used the military to support and prop up countries that were in the midst of hostile takeovers by groups the U.S. was opposed to - something that still continues to this day.

The fact that the situation descended - after Kennedy's death - into a horrific and unwinnable war, can hardly be put on Kennedy's shoulders. In fact, Kennedy is known to have said that he had no intention of keeping U.S. forces in Vietnam, and that he intended to pull Americans out of Vietnam after the 1964 election. He is known to have privately admitted that one of his biggest reasons for sending military aid to Vietnam was simply because he knew it would win him support in a re-election bid.

Now this, of course, is not a particularly laudable aspect of Kennedy's involvement in Vietnam, but it does show what a false analogy it is to compare Kennedy's Vietnam with Bush's invasion of two sovereign countries in 2003. It was a totally different scenario all together. We weren't aiding Iraq against a hostile takeover - we were committing the hostile takeover. We ousted a government and put in place one of our own making. This is actually what communist North Vietnam did to democratic South Vietnam in the 1960's. In that sense, a better analogy would be to compare Ho Chi Minh to George W. Bush. (Yes, I know that's an inflammatory and unfair remark; I use it simply to show how false this analogy really is).

And just like with the issue of economic policy and lower taxes, I might also point out that it is a false dichotomy to assert that military intervention is, by nature, a "conservative" ideal - that somehow JKF's military intervention in Vietnam makes him "conservative" like George W. Bush. In the same way that lowering taxes is no more a conservative ideal than a liberal ideal, so too is military intervention to support U.S. interests no more a conservative ideal than a liberal ideal. It's simply a false dichotomy.

In the end, I have to disagree with my friend that JFK was "more conservative" than George W. Bush. I simply can't find any reasonable evidence to support this notion. It is essentially just a way for modern conservatives to disassociate with Bush - by suggesting he was basically more "liberal" than a well-loved liberal president - while making an inflammatory remark to irritate liberals. Not that I was irritated or inflamed by the comment...I actually appreciate the opportunity to address the question and do a bit of research to better widen my understanding of American politics. I suspect very strongly that this opinion is not just one made on the fly by my friend. I suspect this idea is thrown about among conservatives, so I appreciate the opportunity to address it.

Thanks, Trent :)

10 Fun Facts About James A. Garfield

2011-11-28T19:50:00.001-05:00

James A. Garfield, the 20th President of the United States

1) Like his more famous predecessor, Abraham Lincoln, James Abram Garfield was born in a log cabin in rural Cuyahoga County, near Cleveland, Ohio, in 1831. His father died when he was still a baby, and he was raised by a single mother in virtual poverty.

2) In the early 1850's, Garfield studied at a college in Hiram, Ohio, where he was taught by Platt R. Spencer, who had developed a system of cursive handwriting that was the norm in American society until the advent of the typewriter in the 20th century.

3) Garfield was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity while at Williams College in Massachusetts, a fraternity which includes members from Lou Holtz of college football fame, to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

4) Before entering politics, Garfield taught Greek and other classical languages for his alma mater in Ohio (now called Hiram College), where he met and eventually married one of his pupils, Lucretia Rudolph. Together they had seven children, one of whom lived to be 102 and did not die until the 1970's.

5) During the Civil War, Garfield attained the rank of Major General, and participated in a number of battles, including the Battle of Shiloh. However, after being elected to Congress in 1862, he resigned his commission to focus on work in Washington. A strict abolitionist, he felt that Abraham Lincoln was too soft on slavery and on the South in general. In the 1864 election, he refused to endorse or support Lincoln's run for re-election.

6) Serving in Congress throughout the 1860's and 1870's, Garfield was a strong opponent of the drive to develop paper currency, at one point referring to cash as "the printed lies of the Government." He believed paper currency would be the ruin of the U.S. economy, and strongly supported keeping "specie" (that is, silver and gold coins) as the primary U.S. currency.

7) Garfield had not openly planned on running for the 1880 presidential election, instead supporting fellow Republican John Sherman. However, when a deadlock ensued in the Republican primaries over the leading three candidates (Sherman, James G. Blaine, and former president Ulysses S. Grant, who was running for a third term), Garfield - to his complete surprise - suddenly emerged as the winner, as the Republicans felt he was the best possible compromise candidate. He went on to win the 1880 presidential election by just a few thousand votes over Democrat Winfield Hancock.

8) Still serving as a Congressman in 1879, Garfield had been selected by the Ohio Senate to replace John Sherman as U.S. Senator from Ohio - Sherman having resigned his position to campaign for the presidency. Garfield then went on, unexpectedly, to win the 1880 presidential election. As a result, there was a period of time, following the presidential election, where Garfield was a sitting congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives, a U.S. Senator-elect, and the U.S. President-elect, all at the same time.

9) In July of 1881, James A. Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau as he headed for a train in Washington, D.C. Guiteau, a disgruntled and delusional former attorney, was angry with Garfield and his administration for failing to appoint him as a U.S. consul in Paris. He believed that a speech he had delivered in the streets and published as a pamphlet had been instrumental in securing Garfield's election, and he felt that Garfield's refusal to appoint him to a consular position demonstrated a lack of gratitude.

10) Garfield did not die immediately; instead, he lay sick in Washington for nearly 3 months, until the festering bullet wound in his abdomen finally killed him in September of 1881. During his time in sick bed, Alexander Graham Bell invented a metal detector to attempt to find the bullet lodged in Garfield's abdomen, but it proved unsuccessful. Another inventor, attempting to give comfort to Garfield during the hot Washington summer, invented what was likely the first air conditioner, a contraption that blew forced air over a box full of ice. By the time he died, Garfield had been president for a mere 6 months.

Abraham Lincoln: A Divisive President

2011-11-27T15:41:00.000-05:00

Abraham Lincoln, who served as president of the United States from 1861 to 1865, is widely regarded as the greatest American president. Indeed, in numerous "ranking polls" taken over the years, asking historians and political scientists to rank the presidents, Lincoln has been the consistent winner. According to a chart on Wikipedia, which records the results of 17 major polls taken over the last 50 years, Lincoln has never placed lower than third, and has taken first nine times - more than any other president. His aggregate ranking in that chart places him in the top position among American presidents.

This wide-spread academic acknowledgement of Lincoln's acheivements as president is reflected in popular culture as well. Probably no historical president is quoted, mimicked, referenced, or dramatized more often than Abraham Lincoln. His top hat and beard have become iconic symbols of his presidency. Children's games are named for him, in memory of his humble beginnings in a log cabin. No American high school student makes it through a Government class without reading his Gettysburg Address. Countless books are published about him every single year. Even in the 21st century, "Lincoln" remains a popular boy's name. Kentucky hails itself as "Lincoln's Birthplace," while Indiana calls itself "Lincoln's Boyhood Home," and Illinois proudly displays "Land of Lincoln" on its license plate.

There are literally hundreds of cities, towns, and communities around the U.S. named after him. His iconic image is stamped onto every penny minted in the United States, and he is also on our five-dollar bill.

In short, Abraham Lincoln is the most widely-regarded, well-known, and beloved of all the American presidents.

With this in mind, one might be inclined to assume that his greatness was recognized even during his life and during his time in the White House.

Surprisingly, this assumption couldn't be farther from the truth.

Everyone knows what happened after Lincoln was elected in 1860. The southern states seceded over the issue of slavery, and the Civil War began.

What is often overlooked in this scenario is that the southern states actually seceded in protest of Lincoln's election.

Throughout the 1850's, the issue of slavery dominated the American political environment. There were many different perspectives on the issue, and as a result of all these perspectives, the 1860 presidential election wound up with 4 major candidates nominated by 4 different parties.

The sitting Vice-President, John C. Breckenridge, was a pro-slavery southerner, and was easily nominated as the Southern Democrat candidate in 1860. The Northern Democrats, on the other hand, believed that slavery was a states' rights issue, and believed in allowing states, and particularly new U.S. territories, to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery (they called this platform "Popular Sovereignty"). They nominated Stephen Douglas, a well-known Illinois politician who was a political rival to Abraham Lincoln.

Stephen Douglas

It's important to keep in mind that the labels "Northern Democrat" and "Southern Democrat," in 1860, only referred to general regional loyalties. There certainly would have been supporters of the "Northern Democrats" in the South, and vice versa.

The Republican party, in 1860, was still a new political party, formed primarily in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This Act, following the platform of Douglas and the group that would come to be known as the Northern Democrats, had allowed the Kansas and Nebraska territories to choose for themselves whether they would permit slavery.

Those Whigs and Democrats who were virulently opposed to the expansion of slavery, and who, in many cases, supported outright abolition of slavery, broke away from their respective parties after 1854 and formed the Republican party, whose platform was essentially to oppose any expansion of slavery in new territories and states. In 1860, they nominated the anti-slavery Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.

The Constitutional Union party was a fourth party formed during the 1860 election as an alternative to all the others. Their basic platform was to avoid the slavery issue all together. Their primary goal was to preserve the union - hence the name. They opposed both factions of the Democratic party, because both were seen as pro-slavery, but they also opposed the Republicans, because they felt that the Republicans were too radical and believed that a Republican victory would lead to a dissolution of the union. In short, the Constitutional Union party sought only to preserve the union and put off discussions about slavery until later. They nominated a Tennessee politician and slave-owner named John Bell.

Unlike modern elections, in which third-party candidates rarely make any significant run for the White House, all four candidates in 1860 had strong bases of support and ultimately won states in the electoral college.

Stephen Douglas, of the Northern Democrats, only carried one state (Missouri), but he garnered nearly 30% of the popular vote. John Bell, the candidate of the Constitutional Union party, carried three states, but took only 12% of the popular vote, by far the least of any of the candidates.

John C. Breckinridge, the pro-slavery incumbent Vice-President, carried every southern state except for Tennessee, and took 19% of the popular vote.

John C. Breckinridge

Abraham Lincoln took most of the northern states, as well as California and Oregon, winning 39% of the popular vote and ultimately winning the election. However, within 10 of the 15 slaves states, Lincoln did not receive a single, solitary vote from a single, solitary voter. He wasn't even on the ticket there. Of the 996 counties spanning the 15 slave states, Lincoln won only 2.

As such, Lincoln won the election not by a majority, as most candidates do, but by a "plurality" - in other words, he didn't get a majority of the votes, but he got more than anyone else. Still, more than 60% of the U.S. population voted for someone other than Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election. This is remarkable; Lincoln came into office with almost two-thirds of the country opposed to him.

His election, in fact, was so divisive, that it ultimately led to the secession of the southern states, which began happening before he even took office. The dire predictions of the Constitutional Union party were being played out before everyone's eyes. The union was falling apart because of the election of a radical anti-slavery president. Lincoln attempted to stop this, giving speeches aimed at the South, promising not to abolish slavery there. It goes without saying that this failed to stem the tide.

Following Lincoln's election, the secession of the southern states, and the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln found himself up for re-election again in 1864. Although a Union victory was no longer in doubt by the time the actual election took place in November of that year, much of the 1864 campaign season took place during a time when victory was by no means assured.

Still, considering Lincoln's confident and competent leadership of the country during the war, and considering that his famous Gettysburg Address, and his even more famous and profound Emancipation Proclamation, had both already taken place by this time, one would have expected Lincoln to win his re-election handily.

Not so.

In the 1864 election, only the northern and western states were eligible to vote - the southern states had seceded and, at that time, were no longer part of the United States. This means that the only states who voted in the 1864 election were the states where Lincoln was already most popular. They were made up of states that Lincoln had mostly won in 1860, and which he had subsequently led for the previous three years.

Yet despite this, the election was not a clear-cut victory for Lincoln. In fact, Lincoln failed to gain the re-nomination of his own Republican party in 1864. The party, by this time, was pushing a platform that went even farther than Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. They wanted a constitutional amendment barring slavery for good, and wanted legislation to guarantee racial equality for all people. Lincoln was not willing to go this far, and so the party nominated John C. Fremont of California as the Republican presidential candidate.

John C. Fremont

As such, Lincoln was forced to form a third party, called the National Union party, which included more moderate Republicans and a group of northerners known as "War Democrats." These War Democrats were northern Democrats who were radically opposed to making peace with the Confederacy. Their platform was essentially to win the Civil War at all costs, and ultimately re-unite the broken country through military victory.

The Northern Democrats, by this time, had become a party advocating peace with the Confederacy. They came to be known as the Copperheads or Peace Democrats, and their most vocal leader was Clement L. Vallandigham, an Ohio congressman. They nominated Lincoln's former top general, George B. McClellan, as their candidate. This was somewhat of a contradiction, because McClellan openly supported continuing the war with the Confederacy, and largely disagreed with the party platform written by Vallandigham.

Clement L. Valladigham

As the campaign among these three candidates progressed, the Republican nominee Fremont expressed concerns about splitting the Republican vote with Lincoln's party. He openly vowed to bow out of the election if the National Union party would nominate someone other than Abraham Lincoln. The party, however, refused to do this, and Fremont himself finally relented, removing himself from the race in September of 1864.

Fremont's decision to bow out of the race ultimately led to Lincoln winning the election in November of 1864. The Northern Democrats had hurt their cause by nominating a candidate who didn't even fully agree with their own platform of peace.

George McClellan

Furthermore, the entire peace platform was becoming irrelevant by this time, since it was becoming obvious that the Union was going to win and thus re-unite the country (this had not been the case earlier in the campaign). As such, Americans voted to keep Lincoln in office.

Still, while Lincoln won a landslide in the electoral college, he won only 55% of the popular vote. Fifty-five percent! This means that even despite his leadership during the war, and despite his Gettysburg Address and his Emancipation Proclamation, and despite the Northern Democrats making several political blunders, Lincoln was still opposed by almost half of Americans - and this, of course, does not count the southerners, who were opposed to him so dramatically that they seceded over his election and ultimately assassinated him.

In the modern day, we would consider a 55% to 45% victory in the popular vote to be a strong showing and an easy win. And this would have been true in 1860 as well. However, when you bear in mind what I said at the outset of this post - when you consider the way we revere Lincoln today and consider him the greatest of our American presidents - it is downright staggering that he only managed to win 55% of the popular vote in his 1864 re-election campaign.

Abraham Lincoln's presidency was a strange one. His entire presidency was taken up by the Civil War - which started just a few months after he took office, and ended only a few weeks before he was assassinated. He never had the chance to be a "normal" president and to work on the "normal" things that presidents work on. Instead, his entire presidency was marred by a civil war between the states. He was elected initially with less than 40% of the popular vote - making him one of the most un-wanted presidents in U.S. history. The states of the south literally seceded from the union, precipitating the Civil War, in protest of his election. He failed to garner the re-nomination of his own party when he ran for re-election in 1864 because they didn't think his views on slavery and racial integration went far enough. And in that race, he won only 55% of the popular vote, even though the southern states didn't even get to vote in that election. He only had 55% support from the states where he was most widely liked!

This fact of history, of course, is an important one to keep in mind when evaluating modern presidents. It would be fair to say that Abraham Lincoln, if evaluated solely on his popularity during his time in the White House, may have been the most divisive person to ever serve the office of the presidency. The simple fact is, he was not very widely popular, and was absolutely detested by a significant portion of the American people. This is important to remember when considering the highly divisive presidents who have served over the last 20 years or so.

Notes from the Cave

2011-11-26T01:00:00.001-05:00

I really wanted to blog about something worthwhile tonight, but I just didn't have it in me. I've got some plans for a fascinating story about a 1972 plane crash in the Andes that I recently saw a documentary about, but tonight just isn't the night.

Black Friday was, for me, just another day at work, and a quite nice one at that. I spent much of the day playing crossword puzzles. Even though the day after Thanksgiving is not a holiday at my hospital, the workload was like you would expect on a holiday, meaning virtually nothing. Even the ER wasn't that busy.

You might notice a new interactive Amazon.com frame below this blog post. You can now shop Amazon right here on Serene Musings, without even leaving my website. Pretty fancy, eh?

So what's up with this Ndamukong Suh jackass who plays for the Detroit Lions? In case you didn't see or hear about it, he was tackling a Packers player during Thursday's game, and got mad and shoved the guy's head into the ground several times, before standing up and stomping on his back with his foot. Naturally, he was thrown out of the game. How can the NFL allow something like this to happen? If he is not suspended for the remainder of the season, and fined about $250,000, something is definitely wrong.

Of course, I hate football anyway.

I learned tonight that my sister-in-law has bought me a ticket, along with my brother-in-law, to watch UK take on UNC on December 3rd at Rupp Arena. This game is going to be a big one, as the teams are currently ranked #2 and #1 respectively, and will likely still be ranked that way when the game is played. The game is already being hyped as one of the biggest games of the year in college basketball, and possibly a preview of an NCAA championship game. I am uber-excited about it, particularly since I have never seen a basketball game at Rupp Arena. Yes, I realize that this is blasphemy for a lifelong UK fan, but what can I say? Tickets are hard to come by, and I am not keen enough on seeing it in person to shell out the cash it typically requires to attend one of their games. I also tend to shy away from large crowds when possible. But in any case, I am really excited about seeing my first UK game, especially since it's such a big one. Maybe I'll manage to get on TV :)

Third shift this weekend, so more than likely, I will see you on the flip side next week.

Peace, we outta here.