Time to put away the carping

The presents have been opened. The family have returned to their respective homes.

The joy of being with my children remains, along with some sadness that the time together couldn't longer, but that's what happens when they grow up and begin to build their own homes.

The trees are still up and lit -- one of my favorite parts of Christmas because the ornaments remind me of the years gone by. I'm sure they'll come down this weekend, and I'll miss the lights each evening.

As glorious as the Christmas season is, one aspect will not be missed: the annual carping about putting the Christ back in Christmas. The message has been the same for decades, only the reason for carping has changed.

The phrase used to be bandied about because we were afraid Christmas had become too commercial, now it is seen as a remedy to the so-called War on Christmas.

Thing I haven't figured out is why we keep pushing that worn out phrase. Christmas is more commercial and secular than ever. Do we really think that continuing to fuss about it is going to stem the tide, especially when the nation is even more diverse religiously than before? No one has ever satisfactorily explained to me how giving overworked, harried store clerks "permission" to violate their companies' rules wins hearts and minds to Jesus.

We are so combative these days. Editorial letter writers complain about every perceived slight to Christianity and whine that no one worries about offending us. Heck, they don't have to worry. We're offended by just about anything -- or nothing -- these days. Our sense of outrage grows almost daily.

We are a bunch of spoiled, former only children who have suddenly been faced by younger siblings. "Mom, he's picking on me again!" is our cry.

Of course, our mothers would have told us something along the lines of, "Honey, just ignore him. He's just try to get your goat. Every time you react, he gets what he wanted."

Of course some Christians suffer injustice, even persecution. But most of the stuff being carped about fails to rise to those levels. And given that Jesus warned us that the world would be against us, why do we continue to be surprised when it is, even here in America?

We are not called to protect the American way of life; we are called to live as the faithful disciples of Christ. And no, the two are not the same, no matter how much we believe that Christianity forms the underpinnings of our our culture and government.

We'd do well to complain less. And we'd also do well to remember that Jesus' harshest words were not to the Romans and pagans of his day. They were directed at the community of faith. The people who believed they enjoyed God's favor.

Maybe, just maybe, if we were to listen, we would hear the Master's voice telling us that the problem lies not so much with the government and the boards of corporations and "the media" but in ourselves.

Who are "they"

I was fussing about something one day -- don't remember about what because I fuss so much -- and whoever the poor victim was who had to listen to my ravings interrupted with a question.

"Who are 'they'?"

You know how it goes. You're upset so you start nattering about how they did this, and they did that, but you don't ever indicate who "they" are. My listener wanted to know specifics. If my rant was the usual kind of fussing, I probably had no specific individuals in mind, and the whole concept worked better if I didn't become specific.

As long as my oppressors, or villains, or whatever were some nebulous "they," I could be as indignant as I wanted and also put myself in the position of powerless victim.

Though the phenomenon probably goes back to the beginnings of human consciousness, I've been unusually aware of how we use nonspecifc groups to feed our rhetoric these days.

One favorite group of long standing is, of course, the Liberal Media, often referred to as the Mainstream Media. The Media are responsible for an enormous number of our current woes, and we all apparently know exact who "they" are.

Except we don't. The New York Times is one favorite whipping boy, but some of its writers go off on their own tangents and produce articles that agree with a particular complainer's point of view. When that happens, The NYT may be freely quoted without the Liberal or Mainstream tag.

A current favorite is the Government. Whatever the Liberal Media aren't busy ruining in our society, the Government is. The Government is this evil, wasteful, horrible entity whose only purpose seems to be to make life miserable. Until, of course, we have some problem we want solved.

Amorphic groups can work on the other side of an issue as well.

The Founding Fathers are often invoked in support of a number of causes. Whatever you want to see happening in society can be backed by bringing them up.

The Founding Fathers wanted America to be a Christian nation. No, The Founding Fathers wanted America to be a haven for religious liberty. But what Founding Fathers are we talking about? Who are they?

Every election cycle brings up another amazing group: The American People, who always "have spoken." The only problem with that is that apparently I cease to be part of The American People about every other election or so.

Just think about all the groups that have so much influence. The Man wants to keep you down. The Religious Right wants to us to live in a theocracy. The Liberals want to create a socialist society. The list goes on and on.

Unfortunately, I find that the actual uselessness of using these nonspecific groups as support for whatever side I'm taking hasn't stopped me from invoking them. Apparently I prefer the easy argument to serious discussion and specifics.

One of my own favorite groups was Readers, as in newspaper readers who might have actually read an article of mine in the paper or magazine we produced. I have to admit I miss them as both scapegoats and supporters.

I'm in search of a new, amorphous group. Sure hope I find one soon because when I do, they're going to have some explaining to do and some causes to promote.

Only three kinds of lies

Numbers. We use them all the time; we're influenced by them; and we haven't a clue much of the time as to what they really mean.

We listened to an interesting podcast about numbers while driving home from Thanksgiving dinner with the wonderful sons. The interviewee is a journalism professor who's just published a book about what he calls "the dark side of mathematics."

Most of what he dealt with was the statistics branch of math. No better way to lie to people than by using statistics.

The amusing part of the podcast came when the prof failed to properly apply his own principles.

Citing a study that showed men have an average of seven sexual partners in their lifetimes while women report only having four, the prof declared that this was impossible, that the numbers should be close to even.

But he forgot that the study involves sampling a population and making generalizations about the population. Of course, this is the basis of modern polling, and it works in various levels of success.

But consider this. We have an unusual sample of eight people, one guy and seven women. Now, it happens that the guy happened to sleep with all seven women. So he reports having seven partners. Now what if each woman also slept with three other men during their lifetimes. Men not represented in our sample.

Bingo. We've matched the study results.

This is, of course, wildly simplified. But in a study like this one, unless you've a huge sample, you face a similar difficulty. The results may be absolutely accurate and still not be representative of the population as a whole.

But in one of those delicious coincidences often mistakenly referred to as irony, the next morning a news show I was watching reported on a "study" conducted by Popular Mechanics (one of my favorite sources for reliable research!) that showed the U.S. Postal Service handled packages more gently than FedEx and UPS.

They even included graphs, another technique the professor noted as being useful for deception, and one of my personal favorites. By manipulating the scale, you can make relatively small differences seem much greater.

Since the title is about three kinds of lies, I'll mention one more -- even though that's not what the quote refers to.

The professor noted that many studies the news media report on show correlations. You know, people who eat kale tend to have fewer cancers than people who don't, or people who drive red Fords have fewer accidents than people who drive black Pontiacs.

But correlations don't necessarily indicate cause. They can help point the way, but correlations are always starting points.

I learned so much about how to properly use numbers, I decided to do a little research and report on the results here.

Consider the graph above. I took a representative sample of approximate IQ scores of people I know read these ramblings. The first thing to notice from this graph is that I am dumber than my readers.

Note, however, that I am not myself particularly dumb. The graph clearly shows I am way above average.

But the obvious conclusion to be reached here is that reading my blog makes you smarter, so I encourage you, dear reader, to pass this along to all your friends.

Have they no shame? Nope

One of the local TV stations is spin checking the advertising for the governor's race, and doing a bang-up job. You know, as in "You're doing a bang-up job, Brownie."

Of course, doing a really good job of checking these ads could turn into a full-time job this year. Both sides are throwing around the most ludicrous claims, and the outside groups fan the flames with the nonsense they put on the air.

My favorite stupid Bill White commercial is the one where he carps about Perry becoming a millionaire while in office. Perry's assets were placed in a blind trust, which means that the manager is doing an excellent job. Oh, I know about the shady land deal accusations, but really, I wish I could find someone to entrust my money to who could turn me into a millionaire.

My least favorite White commercial, on the other hand, comes from one of those outside groups that believes it should "help" a candidate. The ad brings up the Gardisil controversy -- surely one of Gov. Goodhair's less shining moments in office.

The ludicrous part of the ad is its implication that Perry will somehow press ahead with the immunization plan if re-elected. Rick's a lot of things, politically dumb ain't one of them.

But the award for the most noxious ad goes to Texans for Rick Perry and its ad featuring a Houston policeman's widow. She talks about the man who killed her husband, an illegal who'd been arrested a couple of times and deported. The structure of the rest of the ad implies that White supported policies that led to her husband's death.

But the Houston police policies that the ad challenges would not have hampered the police from running the murderer in or out of town if they'd encountered him. In fact, he's exactly the kind of guy the policies were designed for.

The commercial then asks if Houston will remain a sanctuary city. What? White is no longer mayor. If the policies are still in effect, fuss at the current mayor. And no one with any sense claims that Houston is a sanctuary city.

And if the intent is to suggest that if Gov. P is re-elected he will somehow put an end to Houston's policies, then I have to infer that the ad's saying he would interfere in the operations of a city in the same way he claims Washington interferes with Texas.

The candidates still have a week or so to dumbfound me. If they want to succeed, they could quit with the stupidity.

A bigot by any other name

Say you knew someone who didn't like blacks or Hispanics just because they were black or Hispanic. You'd probably believe that person was a bigot, not cool.

We're supposed to be enlightened folks these days who wouldn't admit to bigotry, believing it to be unacceptable, except in certain parts of Redneckville, where the unenlightened congregate in small groups to convince themselves of their superiority.

But a couple of incidents this past week show that bigotry can still be socially acceptable, if it's wrapped in the right package.

A letter to the editor appeared in the Star-T that at first blush extolled the virtues of Bill White when compared with the governor of our fair state, Rick "It's amazing what they can do with makeup to hide wrinkles" Perry.

The writer said he was tired of the guv and his tenure in Austin, and he was attracted to White's stance on education.

But, he said, White had three insurmountable problems: the prez, the speaker of the House, and the Senate majority leader. If White were elected, the writer proclaimed, he would probably immediately become an Obama-Pelosi-Reid pawn and lead our fair state into the jaws of ruin.

No evidence was given for this stance. No suggestion was made that White might actually be a person in his own right, capable of making decisions based on his convictions.

Nope. White has a "D" behind his name, so he must be lumped in with a stereotyped belief about Democratic leadership and be denied the governorship. Perry may not be worth anything, but he's better than a Democrat.

Next one of my Facebook "friends" posted a message to the people of a congressional district, of which the FbF (Facebook friend) is not a resident, urging them to vote against the incumbent, a Democrat, because the FbF had read that the incumbent had voted with Pelosi 97 percent of the time.

I challenged that, asking whether FbF knew the congressman, had ever talked to the man about his positions, or even knew what issues the congressman had voted against the party line about. (Hint: They were votes the FbF would have approved of because they support the FbF's values.)

Nope. Didn't know any of that. The Elephants political platform supported all the things the FbF holds dear, and even though not all Republicans fully held to the party line, the FbF was sure that Republican leadership would force any wayward members to conform and vote the "right" way.

Leaving aside that stunningly illogical reasoning, the essence of the argument comes down to one person being on the wrong side -- you know, the one that starts with "D".

Now, unless I'm missing something, believing that one side is superior based on a select set of criteria, lumping all members of another group together and demonizing them based on another select set of criteria, and refusing to judge an individual on the basis of character is pretty much the essence of bigotry.

So apparently being a racial bigot is wrong, but being a political bigot is OK. Yep. I believe I'm missing something.

Government 101

It's popular these days to blame the government for all our woes.

Government is too big, too obtrusive, the critics say. The only solution is to rid ourselves of the rats in office and pare back the bureaucracy.

But how did government get this way? Has it really ceased being of the people and for the people? Maybe not.

Take this tale as an example.

A bunch of cotton farmers grew tired of old boll weevil eating up their profits, so they banded together and decided on a plan to eradicate the bug.

In order to do this effectively, a whole bunch of factors had to come together. And pretty much the only way to make the whole thing work was to involve the government. Only the government could pass the laws that would ensure that everyone participated in the program because the program only works if every cotton farmer participates. And only the government could enforce penalties for failing to participate.

Funding for the program intially came mostly from the farmers, but government funds, state and federal, would be needed to fully fund operations. In case you didn't immediately think it, government funds mean taxpayer dollars.

Eventually, to convince all the state's farmers to participate, more and more government funds were needed. Yep, that means more taxpayer funds.

In addition, government agencies would need to provide oversight. This didn't necessarily mean that new employees would be hired, but the time they spent on this program would be footed by taxpayers as well.

To accomplish all this, the cotton farmers had to convince legislators to pass the necessary laws and work to obtain the necessary funding. They would be sweet-talked and pressured, whatever was needed to bring about the enabling legislation.

That's an abbreviated version of the process, but think about this: Groups of people in every state work on their elected representatives from every level -- from city councils to the U.S. Congress -- to convince them that in the case of whatever they want, "there oughta be a law."

And when the law is passed, often money has to be spent, and that money comes from us.

So, I ask you, gentle reader, where does the problem lie?

Now add to that the services we think we have to have. Public schools, libraries, infrastructure, police and fire protection -- the list goes on and on.

Residents of a town say, "Hey, we need a new water tower." (Or something else; pick your own example.)

They go to the city and say, "Buy us a new water tower," and city officials say, "We can't. We don't have the money. We can raise your taxes."

The residents say, "No way, but you better get us a water tower, or we'll find a new council."

So the council calls its state officials who may find funds to help out. If not, council members go to the feds.

I ask again, where does the problem lie?

Is it possible, to badly paraphrase Shakespeare, that the problem, dear friends, lies not in the politicians, but ourselves?

This just in

God announced today that he has postponed the apocalypse.

Although he still refused to reveal the "times and seasons," God said the timeline for bringing about the end of the world has been postponed for at least two months.

Speaking through his prophet, Glenn Beck, God said he is waiting to see the results of the November election.

"If, as I expect, the Republicans are able to take both houses of Congress, I plan to extend the delay for another two years," he said. "Balance will be restored to the universe, and at best, Congress won't accomplish a blessed thing because neither party is likely to have a large enough majority to cram legislation through, and if they did, Obama will veto it.

"Without the ability to override a veto, the parties will return to blaming each other for ... whatever, and there'll be no need for me to act."

Beck, or God, whoever, said the focus would shift to the 2012 elections. If Republicans win back the presidency, then the forces of good will have triumphed, God/Beck said, and the apocalypse could be postponed for four more years.

Beck/God refused to answer questions about his reasons for couching his announcement in conditional language as though the Almighty didn't know for sure what was going to happen.

The Christian Booksellers Association expressed its dismay at the announcement.

"Our best-selling books are about prophecies concerning the end of the world," said spokesman I.M. Wright. "We're likely to experience a drop in sales, but we'll encourage our authors to shift their focus to pop psychology."

Wright said sales of serious books on Bible study or Christian discipleship probably wouldn't be affected.

"Nobody much reads those kinds of books, anyway," he said.

God/Beck said another announcement would be made after Christmas.

"We don't want to interfere with holiday protests about putting Christ back in Christmas and pushing economice recovery through purchasing big-ticket electronics for presents."

The margins of error seem pretty large

Listened to a fascinating podcast today with author and journalist Kathryn Schulz, who has a book out -- "Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error."

Schulz discussed one of the processes whereby people come to the conclusion that others who disagree with them aren't just wrong but evil.

Suppose two people are having a disagreement; doesn't matter about what, so let's pick on politics.

Around here, the dominant group I deal with is Republicans, and not just Republicans, but the brand of Republican that is convinced that the president isn't just wrong about anything you want to bring up, but out to destroy society as we know it.

Now, the process would go something like this. They say that Obama is a socialist. I respond by saying he isn't and laying out whatever evidence I believe backs up my point.

The first reaction is that I must be ignorant. If I only knew what they know, then surely I would abandon my wrong-headed ideas and agree with them. But as the conversation continues, they discover that I do have all the information they have.

The second reaction would be that since I'm not ignorant, I must be stupid. That has to be the only explanation for my not being able to come to the same conclusion they've come to. But those who know me know that although I'm not the male equivalent of Marilyn Vos Savant, I can think my way relatively intelligently around a problem.

That can then lead to the last part of the process: that I am either evil or under the influence of evil. How else could I be a smart guy and look at their evidence and still be so very wrong?

Of course, I could be participating in the same process.

Now, if we all wind up coming to the conclusion that those we disagree with are evil or under the influence, you can see how quickly actual communication breaks down.

Shulz suggests that one way to keep the conversation going, at least in a group situation, is for someone to suggest the possibility of being wrong. The dynamic there is that someone else will respond by saying, "Well, now, you might have a point."

But I'm not sure that works with individuals, and what I'm seeing all to frequently these days is that often and admission of possible error brings about the response, "Well, of course you are. 'Bout time you started to come around."

We can't live our lives without some certainty; we'd be paralyzed otherwise. But these days we seem to have a surfeit of certainty about too many things.

Still, Schultz has a point. Maybe in the interest of fostering communication we should be the ones who take a chance and admit we might not know so much about whatever topic we believe so fervently that we can't possibly be in error. Maybe that would preserve enough relationship to eventually bring about a serious conversation.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Satire challenged alert

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Of hamsters and men

Animals can be quite effective when used in advertisements for human products. Think Spuds Makenzie, the Budweiser frogs, maybe even the cute puppy in the toilet paper commercials.

But a couple of current commercials leave me wondering what the ad agencies, and the corporate execs who approved the ads were thinking.

Quiznos advertises its $3, $4 and $5 sandwiches using animated, to use the word loosely, cats. Singing, again using the word very loosely, cats.

The jingle uses the tune to "Three Blind Mice," an the voice is, I suppose, trying to sound like a cat would sound if a cat could sing, only the sound reminds me of blackboard produced screeches.

This is one of those commercial that makes me grab for the remote so I can hit the mute button. Perhaps the company hopes we'll be so annoyed and put off by the commercial's lack of production value that we'll run down to our nearest store, buy a sandwich, and help the company to make enough profit to produce better commercials.

Less annoying but just as puzzling to me has been the whole Kia Soul hamster series. One of the early commercials showed a bunch of giant rodents in cages on downtown streets. Good image. Commuters are like hamsters running on plain-jane wheels. I can buy that.

Then other hamsters, which look for all the world to me like giant rats drive by in a Soul, making the other rodents jealous. I admit that the Soul is kind of cute, but I'm used to the concept that the car will some how pull me out of the humdrum world I live and work in. Here they're saying, Hey, you're still a rodent, but you can drive around in a prettier cage.

Now, the commercials show the rats, er, rodents, I mean, hamsters in hip-hop dress chanting, "Oh, you can go wit dis, or you can go wit dat," while showing other rats, er, hamsters driving a box or a washing machine or some other square conveyance. The Soul, by virtue of its name and sloped roof, is cooler than all the box wagons out there, making you hipper than rodents who drive box wagons. Except you're still a rodent.

The thing about box wagons -- Elements, Scions, Cubes --is that they already appeal to people who like a vehicle that's out of the ordinary, so they really don't fit into the rodent on wheel mold, and really, who wants to think of himself or herself as a giant rodent?

We don't want to be hip rodents; we want to be hip.

Around here, lot's of people seem to be buying Souls, so maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the campaign's memorable enough to drive buyers to dealerships, and they buy the autos to be hip, to show they're not part of the rat race.

Or maybe the cars are just inexpensive.

Those who go down to the sea in ships

Those who go down to sea in ships ... have seen the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. For he spoke and raised up a stormy wind ... Ps. 107

I'm a big fan of the Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey books. (The Aubrey books are the ones the movie "Master and Commander" are based on.)

They describe life in the British navy during the late 18th century into the 19th. I'm fascinated by the accounts of shipboard life, especially how the ships handled at sea.

When we owned a small sailboat, I used to wonder what it would be like to own a larger vessel and sail it on open waters. The few times I was caught in a small storm were frightening and thrilling.

So I looked forward to taking our first cruise, some 10 years ago now. We'd be on a big ship on the ocean, and I thought we'd experience a bit of seafaring life.

Of course, being on a cruise liner has nothing at all to do with reality. I know that now. On the first cruise, we barely felt any movement other than the vibrations of the engines. On our second cruise, we did encounter a bit of stormy weather and rode a launch in seas with four foot or so waves.

But this last cruise, this was an adventure.

A tropical depression formed in the Gulf just before we left and strengthened into a named storm, Alex, by the time we put to sea. Eventually Alex would become a hurricane. This caused us to experience the sea in a whole new way.

There's nothing quite like looking out your cabin window, which is about 40 foot above the water and seeing the result of the boat encountering a wave and tossing water as high or higher than your window.

And sitting in the dining room, on deck 8, another 40 feet or so up, and seeing huge swells and whitecaps out the window makes you wonder just how big the waves really are. Our captain told us when the waves were running 6 feet. These were easily 20 foot.

The Psalmist says those who go down to the sea, "reeled and staggered like a drunken man." Obviously he'd either experienced it first hand or knew someone who had. We passengers did exactly that. Though cruise ship are gigantic vessels with stabilizers built in to minimize the motion and keep passengers happy, this was a trip to develop sea legs with.

I even experienced a bit of the problem of regaining land legs our first night home. Rising in the middle of the night, I had difficulty orienting myself and felt like the house was swaying.

But the real thrill was to stand on deck and hear the roar of the winds. To sit on the taffrail and watch as the wind and wave motion made my tea cup slide on the table and forced me to chase my chair down to stack it so it wouldn't blow away. To climb up and down stairs while they moved in directions I didn't.

This time, I experienced a small bit of the life of a seaman and have a greater appreciation for those tars whose stories I've read and for those who first dared to strike out on the waters without a sure knowledge of where they would end up.

And although I experienced some small thrill, I also learned I don't have the gumption those explorers did. I'm quite sure I wouldn't care to be on rougher seas in smaller craft.

I still would like to try sailing a larger boat, perhaps in coastal waters when the weather's not so bad, but beyond that, I think I'll leave that much adventure to the real explorers.

I'm tired, too

A friend forwarded me an e-mail from some blogger I'd never heard of (like that's hard to believe). He'd titled his piece, "I'm tired."
The rest was the typical anti-Obama diatribe I've come to expect in my inbox nowadays.

The piece repeated just about every criticism directed against the president except for the one that insists he's not a citizen of the United States.

By the time I'd finished it, I was tired too. He wore me out.

I've grown really weary of reading this nonsense. Allegations are tossed about without any support. Guilt is made by association. And worst of all, bare-faced lies are told.

That's right; the dweebs -- the ones who put these e-mails together and send them out knowing that they will be sent to friends of friends of friends because it is so easy to forward an e-mail to everyone in an address list -- are big-time liars.

They attribute e-mails composed by nobodies to somebodies because that will lend greater credibility. But that's lying.

They take old e-mails that were only marginally accurate the first time they were sent out and change the names to the politician they currently can't stand. That's lying.

And they deliberately attempt to deceive readers by claiming that some authority backs them up, knowing that most readers won't bother to check it out. That's lying.

I don't even care who's being attacked -- W., the Big O, Nancy, Hillary, Sarah. If you're lying, you're lying. Period.

Then they go the extra step and wrap their lies in patriotism and Christianity. As though that makes the lies acceptable.

And, of course, the media has to be attacked as often as possible. "The lame-stream media" won't tell you this.

Of course not. It's not their job to report made-up fairy tales. And when the reference is to a story with an actual basis, chances are pretty good I've already seen or read it in a major media outlet.

If these media critics had actually read every word or seen or heard every broadcast, then they could talk. But they haven't.

If people want to be mad, fine. Be mad. But for cryin' out loud. Get it right. There's enough to criticize without making stuff up.

I think that I shall never see

Whatever happened to the paperless society?

Once upon a time I remember reading that with computers we'd eventually find we didn't need paper.

So why am I still dumping loads of paper in the local recycling dumpster?

Obviously we still have newspapers despite predictions that the 'Net would cause their demise. They may go the way of the dinosaur, but not for a while.

I left newspapers to become a paralegal and discovered a whole new profession dedicated to the construction of trees.

Our office does title opinions for the natural gas industry.

On a frequent basis, we receive boxes full of materials we have to review to trace the chain of title for properties the gas companies intend to drill on.

The boxes contain notebooks full of paper, sometimes of a couple of thousand pages.

Our lawyers will review those thousands of pages and then produce opinions, which will be printed out for other lawyers and the paralegals to review.

More printouts will follow, and in the end, even a simple opinion can consume a ream of paper.

More complicated opinions consume cases of reams of paper.

It's not like we don't have computers and sophisticated word processing programs that could eliminate the need for paper. Those tools just make it easier for us to use up paper.

According to Conservatree -- whoever they are -- one ream of paper only requires 6 percent of a tree. I assume that's a fairly large tree.

I've not paid close attention, but it may take us all of a week to use a whole tree.

That would mean just 52 trees a year. Doesn't seem too bad. Maybe twice that much if you include the paper the companies sent to us.

But how many other firms are consuming that much paper, or more?

This is not an environmental rant. I just can't figure out why we continue to do something we don't have to do.

This trend isn't likely to end any time soon, either. Most of our lawyers are young, and we're teaching them that this is the way to do things.

They're the computer savvy generation who should be making the change, but I don't think I'll ever see it.

Drat. The printer's out of paper again.

Genesis redux

A friend from church regularly sends me e-mails that have been forwarded to her and asks me for my comments.

Given the makeup of our church, it is not surprising that the e-mails are almost universally anti-Obama, though occasionally Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and illegal immigrants make an appearance, all always in a negative light.

The most recent e-mail amazed and amused me greatly.

It purported to be a sermon that had been preached at a predominantly black Virginia church and used Genesis 47 as its text.

I immediately had a number of questions. Who preached the sermon? What town in Virginia? What church? When exactly was this preached?

Now, when you're trying to sell a bogus e-mail you do one of two things. You include enough details to make it seem plausible, or you don't include any details, which makes it virtually impossible to track down.

In either case, the author trusts that readers won't bother to check.

This e-mail's author was obviously hoping to gain the sympathy of the conservative church-going crowd, which for some reason I've yet to figure out has decided that Obama isn't just wrong, but evil and bent on the destruction of all things good, beautiful and American in life.

I guess the author, I'm going to say "he," figured he could get away with a little creative exegesis as well.

I'm pretty sure he's not actually a preacher because it's way too short for 99.44 percent of the preachers I know.

In his version of the end of Genesis, Pharoah has taken advantage of a famine to nationalize the grain supply in Egypt and suck his subjects into slavery.

Obama, our exegete proclaims, is following the path of the Pharoah.

Only one problem, though. In the Genesis story, it's the hero, Joseph, who comes up with the idea of buying up all the grain, and when people bargain with someone to buy that grain during the famine, they bargain with Joseph, not Pharoah.

Now one of two things has to follow from that. Either Obama is like Joseph and therefore a hero, or Joseph is the bad guy in the story.

Somehow I doubt our biblical "scholar" would be willing to concede either point.

That church people would be fooled by such an e-mail tells me the complaints about biblical illiteracy are valid, and that their distaste for the president so distorts their thinking that they can't recognize nonsense when they see it.

Either way, or both ways, it's a sad commentary on the state of the church.