mahalo.

boy, i had an exciting weekend. on saturday, i played scrabble until 5 in the morning. that game is pretty awesome. especially when you throw in the letter replacement policy… things start to get very strategic. there’s also a mcdonald’s with 24 hour drive through in san ramon. we could use one of those around here.

decided this doesn’t need to be a daily thing… especially since a lot of the old testament is pretty dry.

- deuteronomy 14 - lots of details about what kind of food can/cannot be eaten (clean/unclean). what i actually got from this, is that i’m reminded of how later on, jesus will tell peter that what god has made clean, is clean. effectively, the laws set in the old testament should be taken with a grain of salt, because really, what is said in the new testament, when jesus is on earth, is what takes precedence.

on tithes - it doesn’t seem that what is tithed necessarily needs to be given away to a church. it seems that what is done with a tithe is just meant to be shared and enjoyed with god.

- deuteronomy 17

2 If a man or woman living among you in one of the towns the LORD gives you is found doing evil in the eyes of the LORD your God in violation of his covenant, 3 and contrary to my command has worshiped other gods, bowing down to them or to the sun or the moon or the stars of the sky, 4 and this has been brought to your attention, then you must investigate it thoroughly. If it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done in Israel, 5 take the man or woman who has done this evil deed to your city gate and stone that person to death. 6 On the testimony of two or three witnesses a man shall be put to death, but no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. 7 The hands of the witnesses must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. You must purge the evil from among you.

interesting, the responsibility that is put on someone who observes a murder by chance. they are clearly obligated to investigate the matter on their own. such a different attitude then the “mind your own business” attitude of present time.

deuteronomy 18 - false prophets:

21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD ?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.

more common sense for the people hoping for insight.

deuteronomy 20 - on going to war:

5 The officers shall say to the army: “Has anyone built a new house and not dedicated it? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else may dedicate it. 6 Has anyone planted a vineyard and not begun to enjoy it? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else enjoy it. 7 Has anyone become pledged to a woman and not married her? Let him go home, or he may die in battle and someone else marry her.” 8 Then the officers shall add, “Is any man afraid or fainthearted? Let him go home so that his brothers will not become disheartened too.” 9 When the officers have finished speaking to the army, they shall appoint commanders over it.

interesting take on things. it is not the size of the army that matters most, it is also the heart within it and the hand behind it.

deuteronomy 22

5 A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.

- to make a point about this. first of all, i don’t see how anyone interprets their way around a statement like this, saying that it’s “subjective”. at the same time, what god says he detests, doesn’t mean that as christians, we’re supposed to go around telling people that they should change or that they are sinners. if you were god, yes, then that is what you could go and say. but god’s commandment to us was not to go and judge each other. what is significant is that you love god and obey his commands.

as far as the rest of humanity, obey the greatest commandment, love one another as i have loved you. some people on the far right interpret this to mean, give tough love, as jesus did. no, jesus needed to come back to revise the covenent that he had made with israel. and god remains the only one who can say what is right or wrong for all mankind. it is clear in the bible that we don’t understand the way god understands, and so we cannot judge others as god judges. the only judgement we can pass is what is in our own hearts and minds - because it is our duty to love god with all our hearts, souls, and mind (and all mankind as the song goes).

11 Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.

- somewhere, someone is definitely not following this law.

some harsh laws regarding women and marriage:
first, if a man marries a woman and then slanders her by saying that she’s not a virgin, and the girl’s parents are able to bring proof of virginity (don’t ask me how this was done), then the man is fined 100 shekels of silver, and he is forced to continue to be her husband and not divorce her for as long as he lives… that really gives you a sense of the worth women had then… that it’s better for a woman to be stuck in a marriage with no trust than to be without a man at all.

20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done a disgraceful thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.

22 If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.

the exception to this rule is if the woman was out in the country and is raped. in which case, even though the girl screams, there is no one to rescue her.

28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. [c] He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

- let’s put this in perspective. if a man rapes a woman, that is a less serious offense than if a woman’s husband falsely accuses her of not being a virgin. strange times.

deuteronomy 24
yet as much as the laws are harsh against women, there is a certain emphasis of their husbands having a responsibility to make them loved.

5 If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.

emphasis on the phrase “bring happiness to the wife”, it’s not so that the man is happy, or that they can be a family, it is so that the man can make his wife happy.

14 Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. 15 Pay him his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it. Otherwise he may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.

- as much as i believe in competition and market economies… this passage makes you wonder about the fairness of exploiting foreign countries (or even our own country) for cheap labor. although, i guess the justification is, in those countries, the wage that we pay the workers is actually high relative to the other jobs there, so they would not cry out against the LORD in that case.

definition: “Family of the Unsandaled”
- family of a man who refuses to marry his dead brother’s wife sonless wife (not fulfilling the duty of a brother-in-law).

this one was always obscure, but interesting:

11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.

i previously noted that i thought they were dangerously close to the attitudes of the KKK. dr. dobson (a man quoted in the spongebob fiasco) posted a response to the “we are family” promotion with spongebob squarepants and the other cartoons. for the most part, i still think that the attackers didn’t need to meddle in this.

the only thing worth noting for me was the fact that this group and promotion was support by several large pro-gay activist groups, and among the materials available, were lesson plans that defined the following terms:

# Compulsory Heterosexuality: The assumption that women are “naturally” or innately drawn sexually and emotionally toward men, and men toward women; the view that heterosexuality is the “norm” for all sexual relationships. The institutionalization of heterosexuality in all aspects of society includes the idealization of heterosexual orientation, romance, and marriage. Compulsory heterosexuality leads to the notion of women as inherently “weak,” and the institutionalized inequality of power: power of men to control women’s sexuality, labor, childbirth and childrearing, physical movement, safety, creativity, and access to knowledge. It can also include legal and social discrimination against homosexuals and the invisibility or intolerance of lesbian and gay existence.

# Gender: A cultural notion of what it is to be a woman or a man; a construct based on the social shaping of femininity and masculinity. It usually includes identification with males as a class or with females as a class. Gender includes subjective concepts about character traits and expected behaviors that vary from place to place and person to person.

# Heterosexism: A system of beliefs, action, advantages, and assumptions in the superiority of heterosexuals or heterosexuality. It includes unrecognized privileges of heterosexual people and the exclusion of nonheterosexual people from policies, procedures, events and decisions about what is important.

# Homophobia: Thoughts, feelings, or actions based on fear, dislike, judgment or hatred of gay men and lesbians / of those who love and sexually desire those of the same sex. Homophobia has roots in sexism and can include prejudice, discrimination, harassment, and acts of violence.

heterosexism and homophobia fine. but compulsory hetersoexuality and gender… for the straight among us… doesn’t that almost make you ashamed not to be homosexual?

from slashdot, from atlas shrugged

“[…] I’m after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men’s minds, we will not have a decent world to live in.”

“What man?”

“Robin Hood.”

Rearden looked at him blankly, not understanding.

“He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor. Well, I’m the man who robs the poor and gives to the rich-or, to be exact, the man who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.”

“What in blazes do you mean?”

“If you remember the stories you’ve read about me in the newspapers, before they stopped printing them, you know that I have never robbed a private ship and never taken any private property. Nor have I ever robbed a military vessel - because the purpose of a military fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it, which is the proper function of a government. But I have seized every loot carrier that came within range of my guns, every government relief ship, subsidy ship, loan ship, gift ship, every vessel with a cargo of goods taken by force from some men for the unpaid, unearned benefit of others. I seized the boats that sailed under the flag of the idea which I am fighting: the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices - that the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over others - that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us - and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads down on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord. This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an ideal of righteousness. It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, has demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures - the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich - whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal. And this has brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all his rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant - while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is to be in need. Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us? That is what I am fighting, Mr. Rearden. Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.”

Rearden listened, feeling numb. But under the numbness, like the first thrust of a seed breaking through, he felt an emotion he could not identify except that it seemed familiar and very distant, like something experienced and renounced long ago.

( excerpt from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” )

during the time when the israelites were slowly taking over the land of canaan. there was a guy named balaam. i’m not totally clear on what his title was, but he talked to god.

one day while he was on the road, angels were appearing before him, but only his donkey could see them. so in the process, he beat his donkey three times… once each time it tried to go off the road.

28 Then the LORD opened the donkey’s mouth, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you to make you beat me these three times?”

29 Balaam answered the donkey, “You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now.”

30 The donkey said to Balaam, “Am I not your own donkey, which you have always ridden, to this day? Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?”

“No,” he said.

31 Then the LORD opened Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell facedown.

32 The angel of the LORD asked him, “Why have you beaten your donkey these three times? I have come here to oppose you because your path is a reckless one before me. [c] 33 The donkey saw me and turned away from me these three times. If she had not turned away, I would certainly have killed you by now, but I would have spared her.”

it’s just a funny little passage about the condition of mankind. what is it that blinds us so much that we can’t see the work of god right in front of us. but on the other hand… donkeys talking? really? it’s not that i don’t have faith… but… still. really? someday when i die, i want to see how all of this actually happened.

chapter 30 has an interested tidbit as well. it’s about making vows. but what it comes down to is basically this. if a woman makes a vow, and the man currently having authority over her in her life, whether it be her father or her husband, forbids her from making her vow, she is not bound by it. however, the reverse is not true. men are held to their word, while i guess women… cannot be trusted to make good decisions? either that or it was just always meant for men to take responsibilty for their households, so if a decision is made that is not approved by the man, it should not happen. but if the man allows it to happen, then the vow stands. the interesting thing is that the phrasing is always that the vow “will stand.” but this puts no implication of responsibility if the vow is not kept.

that has to be one awesome series in order to consistently take best drama away from 24. i sure hope that this series runs until the writers/producers decide that it should end… they should be allowed to write how jack bauer dies.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6853667/

i’m going to have to comment about this later. but it’s 4am right now and i gotta go to bed.

i mentioned before that i bought the build-a-lamp kit which contains the bulb housing. on saturday, i also went and picked up what will be used for the neck of the lamp. i don’t know how to explain it, but it’s basically a flexible piece of metal, usually used to protect wires.

before that however… so this morning, i was actually contemplating waking up at 8am to get to the apple store early to pick up one of the ipod shuffles. luckily for me, i didn’t. before i went to home depot this afternoon, i went to the apple store in valley fair, just to see if they had possibly overstocked and had some shuffles left over. when i got to the store, the store rep i talked to told me that they ended up not receiving the shipment. yeah… apparently, there was a line from the apple store that almost ran all the way through nordstrom (which is right next to the apple store and is the closest entrance you can take into the mall to get to the apple store).

what a disaster. to release the first two products really targeted for the mass consumer market… and not have them available to customers on time. yeesh. i wouldn’t have wanted to be in an apple store rep’s shoes this morning…

couldn’t stay awake last night…

some tough love in numbers 15.

The Sabbath-Breaker Put to Death
32 While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34 and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35 Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” 36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.

so you know… those people that bomb abortion clinics… i’m assuming they’ve never broken the sabbath as well. because that along with murder, was also punishable by death during that time.

the way the old testament is… very rules driven… is continuing to make uninteresting reading. in numbers 7, it talks about the offerings made by the leaders of israel at the altra. what it is, is an entire chapter, that repeats the exact same block of text (representing the offering that was made) 12 times over.

chapter 11’s a story of how god punishes the ungrateful. at this point in time, the israelites had been eating manna for… a long long time. i’m not sure exactly how long. anyways, they were getting sick and tired of it, so they said

4 The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! 5 We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost-also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. 6 But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!”

and they just started whining about how they were better off in egypt because at least they had a variety of food… ugh.

anyways, so god punishes the ungrateful… sometimes by giving exactly what they want:

31 Now a wind went out from the LORD and drove quail in from the sea. It brought them [c] down all around the camp to about three feet [d] above the ground, as far as a day’s walk in any direction. 32 All that day and night and all the next day the people went out and gathered quail. No one gathered less than ten homers. [e] Then they spread them out all around the camp. 33 But while the meat was still between their teeth and before it could be consumed, the anger of the LORD burned against the people, and he struck them with a severe plague. 34 Therefore the place was named Kibroth Hattaavah, [f] because there they buried the people who had craved other food.

it almost seems like it was supposed to be a, getting-what-you-wish-for-in-a-bad-way situation. but the interesting thing is how god was so angry, that before it even really got to that, he struck down the people with whom he was displeased. god just seemed a lot more emotional in the old testament… whether it be in the display of grace for a chosen people, or the fury of his wrath against his enemies.