[links] Link salad for a Sunday

Lakeshore
An author of no particular popularity

Date:	2008-09-07 05:28
Subject:	[links] Link salad for a Sunday
Security:	Public
Tags:	cool, language, links, mainspring, personal, politics, religion, reviews

A reader reacts to Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon thb | Audible ] — It’s a care package of small reviews.

A review of Reading the OED by Ammon Shea — Fascinating stuff.

Uptalk anxiety — Language Log goes pretty deep into linguistic geek funnies on this one. For example, in ascribing certain regional British speech features to Viking populations, “Let’s note in passing that 9th-century Viking warriors were not stereotypically insecure or in need of approval or affirmation from their interlocutors.”

Searching for meteorites in Antarctica — APOD with another stunning image, and a pretty nifty cutline.

WorldOMeters — World statistics updated in real time. I like the Web page load time stat, personally. (Thanks to lt260.)

Theocrats to Pray for McCain’s Death — Mmm, what would Jesus do? Imprecatory prayer, apparently. (Snurched from mevennen.)

9/7/08
Time in saddle: 0 minutes (hiking today)
Last night’s weigh-out: n/a
This morning’s weigh-in: 237.8
Currently reading: Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

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User:	vee_ecks
Date:	2008-09-07 14:22 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

Mmm, what would Jesus do? Imprecatory prayer, apparently.

Back when I was a fundamentalist, the whole topic of imprecatory prayer was sort of this new and exciting thing, again, and I remember a few conversations with people in which they were basically wondering "When is it proper for us to go with the nuclear option?" This actually disturbed me a lot more back then than it does now, since, you know, voodoo doesn't actually work. Actually, imagining me at that age and a friend and we're arguing over whether or not it's ever acceptable to Release the Full Asswhoop Power of Prayer just kind of makes me giggle, these days.

But the answer, I guess, turned out to be "Yes, it's acceptable and all the damn time," I guess.

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User:	goulo
Date:	2008-09-07 20:17 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)
Keyword:	quo vadis

It is really bizarre, imagining Christians explicitly praying for God to murder people they don't like. It's sort of like leaders of a free country explicitly saying it's OK to imprison people with no evidence or charges and torture them, or to spy on its own citizens. In both cases, my mind boggles and wonders what the hell they are thinking.

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User:	vee_ecks
Date:	2008-09-07 20:33 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

It is really bizarre, imagining Christians explicitly praying for God to murder people they don't like.

I dunno, it's not that bizarre* if you read the Christian scriptures, in which God's greatest foot soldiers, Old and New Testament, use their superpowers to call down death and harm on several occasions. It's not like a regular thing; thus, when it's appropriate is a subject of some controversy, but it's there.

And God Hisself certainly has no problem mowing evildoers down left and right, and will apparently eventually destroy the whole world and send most everybody in it to Hell, so in that context, really, praying that a president or a supreme court justice dies is such a big deal?

*I mean, it's all still bizarre, but it's consistent, anyway.

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User:	ruthannereid
Date:	2008-09-07 23:48 (UTC)
Subject:	(no subject)

The uptalking article is fabulous. :D

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