I can't post anything about finance like Craig requested, I just can't. I can post all day about sharks though. For you enlightenment, the 7 most badass sharks....
#7: This Shark
Two thoughts:
1) I'm pretty certain that happened at Crystal Beach
2) That shark probably got a bit of a crystal meth high after that bite.
#6: The Mako Shark
Makos can swim up to 40 mph, or twice as fast as our old Jet Skis. BTW, how are the Assads still talking to us after Dad swindled them into buying those Jet Skis? I'm pretty sure those things were like 3 hours away from sinking or spontaneously combusting at that point. I blame it on Lake Somerville water. I remember I would stand in about two inches of water and I could not see my toes. Too much cow shit and agrochemicals. That place should be condemned.
#5 The Tiger Shark
Much like Japanese people, the Tiger Shark will eat anything in the sea. Sea Turtles, dolphins, whatever, its dinner to the Tiger Shark. One thing Tiger Sharks won't eat: green beans. Those are disgusting.
#4 The Oceanic White Tip
Shark experts always say that no shark actively hunts humans. Bullshit. The Oceanic White Ship patrols the open ocean, just waiting for a plane crash or drunk Italian cruise ship captain to plunk some tasty tourists into the ocean. In 1945, the American cruiser the USS Indianapolis got torpedoed in the South Pacific, and these hellish Al-Queda sharks ate like 500 sailors. There are very few things to eat out in the blue desert, so they will eat anything that moves. Think about that on your next transoceanic flight.
#3 The Bull Shark
Short, stout, violent, and having more testosterone than any other animial, the bull shark is basically like the Chase Jones of sharks. There are a ton of them in the Gulf, and they are responsible for most of the shark attacks in the U.S. What makes them really scary is that they can live in fresh water, and they find their way into all sorts or fresh water bodies of water. One even was caught near St. Louis. If one ever found its way into Lake Somerville, it would mutate in the green, oozing waters and turn into some sort of supervillian that Batman would have to fight.
#2 The Great White Shark
The good news: Great Whites Sharks don't really hunt people. Most GWS attacks are due to mistaken identity.
The bad news: If I see something in my fridge thats edibility status is ambiguous, I usually poke it or smell it first. The Great White does the same thing, except instead of poke and smell its food, it swims into it at 30 mph, bites it, and thrashes it around. Seems rational. Unfortunately the human body is not designed to take 30 mph tooth punches from a 16 foot, 3,000 pound animal. So that is why it takes down more people than any other species of shark. It has no natural predators, and only one other shark has been known to kill it. Not for food, mind you, but seemingly for fun. Speaking of which.....
#1 The Orca aka The Killer Whale
Some people, like Sea World losers and "scientists" will tell you that the killer whale is technically not a shark. But if you have been known to kill Great Whites and the Sperm Whale, the largest predator on earth that eats Giant Squid for breakfast, you qualify as a shark in my book. Fortunately, the planet's apex predator is confined to oceans and theme parks. Or is it?
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
God is not all-powerful
The Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, is awesome. The stories have been told for over 2500 years and are still gripping, despite the fact that most preachers and sunday school teachers don't have the imagination to make them feel alive. How a story told 2500 years ago to an illiterate group of farmers in the Near East forever on the brink of civilization collapse and destruction can still resonate with modern people across cultures and languages attests to how cool these stories are. More than anything, what these stories are about is a people's struggle to understand their God in the midst of some pretty terrible circumstances. In the end, the question is: "What is God like?"
We hear stories about God hearing something terrible has happened, goes down to Earth to fix the problem and does so through asking some nobody to confront someone powerful. That's the story of Moses, Jeremiah, Abraham, David, Samson, Elijah, and many more. This is a God who gets in a wrestling match with Jacob and nearly loses, a God who enters into a courtroom drama with Satan over the life of an ordinary man, a God who argues with Abraham about whether or not a city should be destroyed and loses, a God who acknowledges the existence of other Gods, who speaks as "us" before the creation of the world and a God who ultimately chooses a nothing, insignificant, constantly conquered nation to be God's chosen people.
Somehow, this God became something different by the 4th century. The God who nearly loses the wrestling match with Jacob, becomes all-powerful. The God who hears something terrible is going on and has to go down and investigate has become ever-present. The God who gets in an argument with Abraham and loses, has become all-knowing. This happened even after God's revelation of God's own self in the life of an illiterate peasant from Galilee, the most hated region of a nothing nation, who starts a political movement against the powers of Rome and the temple and is ultimately killed as a treasonous revolutionary. His followers scatter and are ultimately killed. The God who becomes human in Jesus of Nazareth, has become a God who cannot change.
How did the God of Scripture turn into an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present man with a beard in the sky looking down on us knowing everything we think and everything we're going to do?
In theology, we have to check everything we say against what God has actually revealed - through scripture, tradition, reason and experience. We find it a lot easier to say what God isn't, rather than what God actually is. Even if we say something easy like "God is loving" we have to reinterpret what "love" is through what "love" looks like in Scripture.
What's happened though, is as the Christian church transitioned from a small community of Jews in the first generation after Jesus, to a large diverse group of Greeks in the following generations, Christian theology began to look less and less like the philosophy and thought of Jews and more like the philosophy of Greeks. Plato and Aristotle became just as (or more) important as Isaiah, Jeremiah and the writers of Exodus and Genesis.
Plato imagines what "God" must be like. For Plato, for something to change, meant that it must have either improved or worsened. If it could change, meant that it wasn't perfect. Therefore, Plato's God couldn't change. God is the "unmoved-mover". For Plato, the world changes constantly and must therefore be imperfect/less-good than God. The minds/souls of men or philosophy change less than the physical world and are therefore better and closer to God. The physical world is therefore evil and the world of philosophy is good.
God is described through platonic thought as "omnipresent", "omnipotent", "omniscient" etc. Despite a God in scripture that changes constantly, who becomes human and one of us (and as human is no less God), whose power as a human is displayed through suffering - The greek conception becomes the Christian one and we have a God who is from Athens and not from Jerusalem - A god inspired by Plato and not by Isaiah - and a God that looks like Zeus, not like jesus. (Don't believe me? search for a picture of Zeus and a picture of "God")
You're probably not that interested in Christian theology, but I believe that many of our problems with God and Christian theology come from how we tried to make the Greek God and the Jewish God the same when the Old Testament refuses to allow anything to define God except for God - "I am what I am". I hear Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, Pat Robertson, Pope Benedict and everyone else talk about God and they are firmly entrenched in a greek philosophical God. Tear those layers away and you'll find a surprising God in scripture that just might have a chance of claiming our lives.
Happy Easter! And go to church!
*bonus points to anyone (read steven) who can tell me where these two pictures are from.
We hear stories about God hearing something terrible has happened, goes down to Earth to fix the problem and does so through asking some nobody to confront someone powerful. That's the story of Moses, Jeremiah, Abraham, David, Samson, Elijah, and many more. This is a God who gets in a wrestling match with Jacob and nearly loses, a God who enters into a courtroom drama with Satan over the life of an ordinary man, a God who argues with Abraham about whether or not a city should be destroyed and loses, a God who acknowledges the existence of other Gods, who speaks as "us" before the creation of the world and a God who ultimately chooses a nothing, insignificant, constantly conquered nation to be God's chosen people.
Somehow, this God became something different by the 4th century. The God who nearly loses the wrestling match with Jacob, becomes all-powerful. The God who hears something terrible is going on and has to go down and investigate has become ever-present. The God who gets in an argument with Abraham and loses, has become all-knowing. This happened even after God's revelation of God's own self in the life of an illiterate peasant from Galilee, the most hated region of a nothing nation, who starts a political movement against the powers of Rome and the temple and is ultimately killed as a treasonous revolutionary. His followers scatter and are ultimately killed. The God who becomes human in Jesus of Nazareth, has become a God who cannot change.
How did the God of Scripture turn into an all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present man with a beard in the sky looking down on us knowing everything we think and everything we're going to do?
In theology, we have to check everything we say against what God has actually revealed - through scripture, tradition, reason and experience. We find it a lot easier to say what God isn't, rather than what God actually is. Even if we say something easy like "God is loving" we have to reinterpret what "love" is through what "love" looks like in Scripture.
What's happened though, is as the Christian church transitioned from a small community of Jews in the first generation after Jesus, to a large diverse group of Greeks in the following generations, Christian theology began to look less and less like the philosophy and thought of Jews and more like the philosophy of Greeks. Plato and Aristotle became just as (or more) important as Isaiah, Jeremiah and the writers of Exodus and Genesis.
Plato imagines what "God" must be like. For Plato, for something to change, meant that it must have either improved or worsened. If it could change, meant that it wasn't perfect. Therefore, Plato's God couldn't change. God is the "unmoved-mover". For Plato, the world changes constantly and must therefore be imperfect/less-good than God. The minds/souls of men or philosophy change less than the physical world and are therefore better and closer to God. The physical world is therefore evil and the world of philosophy is good.
God is described through platonic thought as "omnipresent", "omnipotent", "omniscient" etc. Despite a God in scripture that changes constantly, who becomes human and one of us (and as human is no less God), whose power as a human is displayed through suffering - The greek conception becomes the Christian one and we have a God who is from Athens and not from Jerusalem - A god inspired by Plato and not by Isaiah - and a God that looks like Zeus, not like jesus. (Don't believe me? search for a picture of Zeus and a picture of "God")
You're probably not that interested in Christian theology, but I believe that many of our problems with God and Christian theology come from how we tried to make the Greek God and the Jewish God the same when the Old Testament refuses to allow anything to define God except for God - "I am what I am". I hear Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, Pat Robertson, Pope Benedict and everyone else talk about God and they are firmly entrenched in a greek philosophical God. Tear those layers away and you'll find a surprising God in scripture that just might have a chance of claiming our lives.
Happy Easter! And go to church!
*bonus points to anyone (read steven) who can tell me where these two pictures are from.
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