Day: September 23, 2003

  • Command them to be well.

    Found at Slate:

    One is presuming (is one not?) that this is the same god who actually created the audience he was addressing. This leaves us with the insoluble mystery of why he would have molded (“in his own image,” yet) a covetous, murderous, disrespectful, lying, and adulterous species. Create them sick, and then command them to be well? What a mad despot this is, and how fortunate we are that he exists only in the minds of his worshippers.

    The full article is interesting reading, though not the sort of thing you can take without a grain or two of salt. For instance, the author uses the word “religion” when he means “Christianity and its cousins” in the last paragraph:

    Too many editorialists have described the recent flap as a silly confrontation with exhibitionist fundamentalism, when the true problem is our failure to recognize that religion is not just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it.

    (via blargblog, by the creator of In Contempt Comics)

  • The AS/400 saga never really ends.

    After many phone calls (already!) this week, here’s what my schedule currently looks like:

    Today: Work, go home, eat, go back to work by midnight to kick off a tape backup, start the major software upgrade at about 5am, work through the day…

    Tomorrow: Work, and in the evening install the invoicing software about which much trouble has been caused.

    That’s right, I’m getting no sleep tonight. Woo hoo, baby. I’m going to need another vacation, and soon…