Jonathan's blog

Via Boing Boing, Ian's Shoelace Site provides diagrams and instructions for tieing your shoelaces in 16 different ways.

A recently-discovered fish fossil was touted as a link between fish and animals walking on land. Another fossil found recently has been reported to fill a gap in human evolution. The inside joke I keep hearing is that each new disovery that fills a gap creates two more. Anyway, from an AP story by Seth Borenstein on MSNBC.com:

The 4.2 million-year-old fossil discovered in northeastern Ethiopia helps scientists fill in the gaps of how human ancestors made the giant leap from one species to another. That's because the newest fossil, the species Australopithecus anamensis, was found in the region of the Middle Awash - where seven other human-like species spanning nearly 6 million years and three major phases of human development were previously discovered... The species anamensis is not new, but its location is what helps explain the shift from one early phase of human-like development to the next, scientists say. All eight species were within an easy day's walk of each other. Until now, what scientists had were snapshots of human evolution scattered around the world. Finding everything all in one general area makes those snapshots more of a mini home movie of evolution.

From an article in the LA Times by Stephanie Simon titled "Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies":

Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant. Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation. Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy. With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all. The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian." In that spirit, the Christian Legal Society, an association of judges and lawyers, has formed a national group to challenge tolerance policies in federal court. Several nonprofit law firms - backed by major ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ - already take on such cases for free. The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians. Evangelicals have been suspended for wearing anti-gay T-shirts to high school, fired for denouncing Gay Pride Month at work, reprimanded for refusing to attend diversity training. When they protest tolerance codes, they're labeled intolerant. A recent survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that 64% of American adults - including 80% of evangelical Christians - agreed with the statement "Religion is under attack in this country." "The message is, you're free to worship as you like, but don't you dare talk about it outside the four walls of your church," said Stephen Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Assn. Center for Law and Policy, which represents Christians who feel harassed. Critics dismiss such talk as a right-wing fundraising ploy. "They're trying to develop a persecution complex," said Jeremy Gunn, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. Others fear the banner of religious liberty could be used to justify all manner of harassment. "What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn't mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn't work?" asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay rights group Lambda Legal. Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different - a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait. By equating homosexuality with race, Baylor said, tolerance policies put conservative evangelicals in the same category as racists. He predicts the government will one day revoke the tax-exempt status of churches that preach homosexuality is sinful or that refuse to hire gays and lesbians... As they step up their legal campaign, conservative Christians face uncertain prospects. The 1st Amendment guarantees Americans "free exercise" of religion. In practice, though, the ground rules shift depending on the situation. In a 2004 case, for instance, an AT&T Broadband employee won the right to express his religious convictions by refusing to sign a pledge to "respect and value the differences among us." As long as the employee wasn't harassing co-workers, the company had to make accommodations for his faith, a federal judge in Colorado ruled. That same year, however, a federal judge in Idaho ruled that Hewlett-Packard Co. was justified in firing an employee who posted Bible verses condemning homosexuality on his cubicle. The verses, clearly visible from the hall, harassed gay employees and made it difficult for the company to meet its goal of attracting a diverse workforce, the judge ruled. In the public schools, an Ohio middle school student last year won the right to wear a T-shirt that proclaimed: "Homosexuality is a sin! Islam is a lie! Abortion is murder!" But a teen-ager in Kentucky lost in federal court when he tried to exempt himself from a school program on gay tolerance on the grounds that it violated his religious beliefs.

My guess is that it is possible for those who are driven to defend and those who are driven to condemn to communicate their points of view to one another and to others in a way that is reasonably inoffensive. In this case, I'm not sure that either side would care to do so. I also suspect that Malhotra's crew is right that in some places, such as some college campuses, there is such a fervor for political correctness that no other point of view can be tolerated. It reminds me of when Jada Pinkett Smith (a African-American female actress) received an award on the campus of Harvard. She encouraged the women in the audience by saying "Women, you can have it all - a loving man, devoted husband, loving children, a fabulous career." and was criticized by the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance because her comments were perceived to be "heteronormative." I couldn't find a news article describing that event, but there is info in a blog post here.

The episode of King of the Hill from a couple weeks back featured the Hills going church shopping after their favorite pew at the Arlen First Methodist Church was taken by a new family. Among the churches they tried before settling on a megachurch were a fundamentalist/revivalist type meeting under a tent, a Spanish Roman Catholic church, and new age/progressive type (where they didn't even get in the door before turning around to leave upon hearing "Day by Day" strummed on a guitar). They eventually got burned out at the megachurch with the endless string of activities occurring virtually every night of the week. The frequent calls asking them to take surveys to find out how they felt about this or that activity got old too. They return to Arlen First Methodist and get their favorite pew back by encouraging the new family to try the megachurch.

A week or two back, there was a US News & World Report cover story of that same name with the sub-title "A bold new take on the historical Jesus raises questions about a centuries-long quest." It's mostly a discussion of the theories of James Tabor (professor of religious studies, UNC-Charlotte) which he describes in his book, The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. The article also describes the general direction of scholarship regarding Jesus and the origins of Christianity. Tabor's is another of those analyses of the story of Jesus, trying to distinguish what is perceived to be historical versus what is perceived to be fictional.

According to Tabor, Jesus, in partnership with his cousin John the Baptizer, saw himself as the founder not of a new religion but of a worldly royal dynasty. Fulfilling ancient prophecies, the dynasty, descended from King David, was destined to restore Israel and guide it through an apocalyptic upheaval culminating in the Kingdom of God on Earth. And all of this was to happen not in the distant or metaphorical future but in the very time in which they lived. Although their message was one of peaceful change, Jesus knew that he and John had aroused the suspicions of the native Herodian rulers of Palestine as well as their Roman overlords. To carry out his work, Tabor says, Jesus had established a provisional government with 12 tribal officials and named his brother James--not Peter, as traditional Christianity holds--as his successor. And indeed, according to Tabor, James later became the leader of the early Christian movement. What Tabor attempts is not completely new. As far back as the 18th century, Enlightenment scholars sought to separate the facts about Jesus and his early movement from the theological interpretations that supposedly distorted them. That quest, pursued by a variety of seekers with diverse motives and methods, has produced strikingly different accounts of Jesus, his mission, and the Christian movement. But often Tabor must look beyond the Scriptures to support his claims. Why, for example, does he think that Jesus did not institute the "eat my body/ drink my blood" tradition at the Last Supper? Again, he calls this liturgical tradition an invention of Paul, recorded in Corinthians and picked up by Mark. Matthew and Luke follow Mark, but John does not. Tabor admits that he needs an independent source to challenge the idea that Jesus would have broken with the Jewish tradition of blessing the wine and then the bread--and, even more significantly, that he would have violated a strong Jewish taboo against even symbolic cannibalism. Tabor admits that his book uses evidence creatively. "It takes on a novel quality that is imaginative, I hope in a way that is consistent with the facts," he says. Other scholars working on early Christianity agree. "It sounds like a creative reimagining of the historical material, more like historical fiction than history," says Boston University scholar Paula Fredriksen. But her concern is that the imaginative reconstruction may lead to pat conclusions that are not faithful to the complexity of the facts. Tabor makes much of the Epistle of James as representing the view of Jesus's brother, but Fredriksen cautions that "Most people would not accept that 'James' was James." Fredriksen registers a more general caveat about Tabor's book: "It illustrates how plastic the evidence is," she says. Despite the big midcentury finds and ongoing discoveries, the evidence is still so sketchy that it can be taken to support conflicting or opposing arguments. Indeed, a number of other recent books draw on the modern research into the Jewishness of Jesus but come to conclusions quite different from Tabor's.