Christmas 2007: no football game on TV

So back to the blog:

Jackie and Dunlap on Christmas

Obama on a roll; closing at a speech. Think that he is too emotionless?

A John Edwards ad (12 minutes); aimed at the rural folks.

Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire

Interesting Article: Via Three Quarks Daily

Seven Common Medical Misconceptions.

Example: shaving at a young age doesn’t make your beard grown in quicker, and turkey doesn’t make you sleepy.

Interesting Blog: Bad Idea Blog. Here is an interesting discussion on the so-called “10 Commandments”:

[...]
The Ten Commandments themselves aren’t even all they’re cracked up to be. In the modern form, they are little more than a Disney-fied version of the original Scriptures, which are far more complicated and obscure in their presentation. The first set of commandments, handed down to Moses on stone tablets, are not even called the Ten Commandments anywhere in the text. In fact, the number of actual commands are so ambiguous that different Scriptural faiths divide them up differently: there seem to be thirteen distinct statements made at least. This makes the common call to post “the” Ten Commandments on public school walls problematic even amongst believers: Protestants, Catholics, and Jews all have their own versions. Any version you pick is going to be a sectarian selection right off the bat.

Then of course there is the problem that these commandments are really only the first of a very many laws and commands, at fact which is often simply avoided, usually because many are barbaric and generally folks don’t want to follow them anyway. Also avoided is the fact that the text very explicitly describes the decidedly unlovely punishments for breaking the original commandments. In nearly every case, it’s death.

Christian theologians, when forced to actually confront these passages, often squirm and complain that Christ re-wrote the law, that it no longer applies, only ever applied to Israelites, and so on (and yes, these are, amazingly, the very same people who try to insist that only by light of their ideology can morality be absolute). I have a hard time understanding how that makes someone who was murdered for cleaning out his garage on the Sabbath any less dead, and any less unjustly dead. The same God, supposedly, ordered these punishments to be carried out, and we have every reason to believe that they were carried out on many poor souls. There is no “out” from that, no moral excuse. The fact that the penalty was magically lifted at some arbitrary date around the time of Christ makes it more absurd and morally offensive, not less. [...]

Family Shots

Barbara’s kids and grandkids were over after Christmas lunch; this was “present opening time”.

To see larger versions, go here.

Chirstmas 2007

(click here for a larger version)

Ok, I was out at 6:30 and not 5 am, and I was racewalking and not running, but you get the idea. 5 miles; I wanted to do more but my kidneys were very active, and the left hip ached a bit (toward the front; probably from the ice run two days earlier)

Other note If you are reading this on Christmas day, there is an atheist/agnostic event going on here:

Rational Responders They have many programs and radio pieces, and a couple of very attractive young women leading this.