THIS & THAT X

Words we need.

Something that makes you vomit is an emetic or a nauseant.  A thing that makes you pee more is a diuretic.  A drug or food that makes you poop is a laxative.  We need a word to describe something so disgusting that it makes stuff come out of all orifices at the same time.

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Several things I learned on everydayfeminism.com:

1)    One aspect of the male privilege I routinely benefit from is that when I have an emotional reaction, no one ascribes it to my menstrual cycle.

2)    “Breast-policing” is the sense ingrained in us by the patriarchy that those girls need to strapped in at all times.  I learned this from an article by a trans-man (formerly a female) who never had his tiny but noticeable breasts removed.  As a guy, he now likes to walk around without a shirt on, but sometimes people look at him funny.

3)    If you are a Trans-something, the “something” is the thing you are turning into, not the thing you were born.  Caitlyn Jenner is a trans-woman.

4)    A “non-binary” gender is anything that is NOT a standard-brand heterosexual male or a standard-brand heterosexual female.

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Though pieces of the Big Bang Theory have been toyed with for centuries, Edwin Hubble is usually given credit for pulling it together as a unified doctrine in 1929.  It was instantly embraced by many theologians as proof of the existence of God since it posited a moment of creation, a big bang, and necessarily implied a Creator.  (Since then, some skeptical physicists and cosmologists have suggested ways in which the Big Bang might be compatible with a Godless universe, but that doesn’t concern us here.)

But there is another piece to the argument.  The Big Bang itself is not often questioned as a “historical” event.  Because of all the evidence the universe is expanding, even atheists acknowledge it.  And if you accept that the Big Bang is the beginning of the universe as we know it, you must also accept that it constitutes what is called a “singular point.”  The nature of the Big Bang is such that it is impossible to detect evidence of anything prior to the Big Bang.  One can speculate, of course.  One can suggest that the Big Bang is simply one of an endless series of expansions and contractions, but this can never be anything but pure speculation.  Since the Big Bang is a “singular point,” there can never be any real knowledge of what came before.

Suppose there is an omniscient God who knows humans will develop their brains and will eventually question the meaning of their existence, but He wants their knowledge of Him to be always a matter for faith---a God who, if he speaks to men at all, does so very rarely, to Abraham or Moses, for example, and in ways that are easily dismissed as myth.

Wouldn’t such a God create a singular point of natural history through which it is impossible to see?  That’s the Big Bang.  There is no evidence of anything that happened before it and there never will be, no matter how intelligent we become or how much we learn about the universe. There must be something before the Big Bang; otherwise, where would the material for the explosion come from?  But because the event itself walls off our knowledge of what’s back there, we can never learn, or reason our way, to the ultimate truth.  If God wants us to approach Him only through faith, and not because we KNOW He exists, wouldn’t He make that ultimate knowledge impossible to attain?

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As Hillary becomes less popular every time she appears in public, it is clear there is considerable dissatisfaction with her as a candidate.  Then there’s 1) Bernie Sanders, the 78-year-old socialist (and non-Democrat) who is starting to outpoll her, 2) Lincoln Chafee, whose is basing his campaign on a crusade to bring the metric system to America, 3) Martin O’Malley, who recently apologized for saying “All lives matter,” and 3) Jim Webb, an interesting and accomplished person whose spot on the political spectrum is somewhere between Chris Christie and Jeb Bush, and who will never be nominated by the national Democratic Party.

Hard to believe, but the 2016 race for the Democratic nomination seems to be setting up nicely for Joe Biden.

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If your home is burglarized in Philadelphia (and probably elsewhere as well), the odds on the police catching your criminal are slim.  However, if a gun is one of the items lifted, the police will come to your house and do a thorough investigation--- taking photographs, dusting for fingerprints, and reconstructing the thief’s movements.  As a friend of mine pointed out after my recent unpleasant brush with crime in the big city, this is a good reason to own a gun.

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A heartbreaking scene I see frequently at Target is a parent pushing one or more little children around the store while talking incessantly on a cellphone.  Sometimes, the kids are trying to break through by talking to the parent.  Sometimes they are screaming.  It doesn’t matter.  Nothing the kids do will pull Mom or Dad away from their phone.  For me, the saddest scene is when the kids sit silently in the cart, having given up even trying to communicate.  When I saw this the other day (for the millionth time), it made me think of the Amish attitude toward telephones.

A lot of people think the Amish are anti-technology, and that is the reason they don’t drive cars or hook in to the electrical grid or have a phone in the house.  Actually, they are not opposed to technology at all.  What they are is pro-family.  When some new device, or power source, becomes available, the elders meet and decide whether it can be adopted without threat to family and community.  That is the only question for the Amish.

And that’s the problem with phones.  For decades they were banned entirely because their use would discourage neighbors and family members from visiting each other.  Also, the idea of someone chatting with a friend on the phone while ignoring his or her family was just appalling. Today the ban is not absolute, and you will sometimes see a little shack, at some distance to an Amish house, with a phone line going into it.  It’s far enough away to be very inconvenient, especially in the winter, but it is available for emergency out-going calls or for business calls to the “English” world.  Some Amish businessmen even have cell phones, but they don’t take them home from the workshop at night, and they don’t play Angry Birds on them.

And they don’t talk on them while they are in the grocery store with their kids.

Copyright2015MichaelKubacki