"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

Two recent blurbs from an article in this week's New Yorker make me wonder why I have spent the past year studying the Bible:

'...A large survey in 2001 found that more than half of American Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians believed that Jesus sinned—thus rejecting a central dogma of their own churches...'

and

'...Surveys by the Barna Research Group, a Christian organization, have found that most Christians don’t know who preached the Sermon on the Mount...'

R.I.P. Jerry Falwell

So there I am, busy as all get up, composing in my mind a new post – just about wrapping it up, actually – on the story of the Syro-Phonecian woman in Mark. I was planning on writing it today, and then all hell breaks loose. First of all I read about Focus on the Family Founder James Dobson’s visit to the White House to go over Iranian foreign policy with the President:

‘…I heard about this danger [from Iran] not only at the White House but from other pro-family leaders that I met during that week in Washington," he said. “Many people in a position to know are talking about the possibility of losing a city to nuclear or biological or chemical attack. And if we can lose one we can lose ten. If we can lose ten we can lose a hundred, especially if North Korea and Russia and China pile on…’

He is now spending the entire weeks worth of Radio addresses on ‘Radical Islam’s Impact on America,’ to help listeners ‘better grasp the danger’

Of course then while I started writing about that one, I read about Chuck Norris’ new column at World Net Daily, where he is advocating a religious test for elected officials. It’s apparently quite a problem:

‘…these organizations and individuals [Godless groups like Atheist organizations and the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, all lumped together] would love nothing more than to help society look with disdain upon Christianity and, ultimately, make its components illegal. In fact, right now, they are coalescing and rallying at least 5 million of their troops to mount counter offensives to Christianity…’

So of course I started to work on that topic.

And then of course Jerry Falwell dies.

What to say. I met him back in 1985, in the process of getting thrown out of one of his ‘prayer meetings.’ He struck me as a consummate speaker, very sure of himself, and a complete demagogue. To paraphrase Atrios, one hopes that he finds God to be more forgiving than he believed Her to be.

Several sites have decided that rather than writing long angry screeds, that they will just let his history speak for itself. Carpetbagger and Rude Pundit have already started. Some choice highlights from them and others:

1958:

‘…In this message, Falwell intoned pompously, 'I want to use the Bible alone as our guide. It is never worthwhile to give man's opinion...The answer to the whole subject can be found in Genesis 9:18-27.' Falwell went on to explain that Ham, the son of Noah, had seen Noah naked one day. When Noah discovered this, he cursed Ham's son, Canaan: 'A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.' Falwell explained that Ham later became the progenitor of the African race.



"He rambled on, still using 'the Bible alone' as his guide: 'The true Negro does not want integration...He realizes his potential is far better among his own race...We see the hand of Moscow in the background...We see the Devil himself behind it...It will destroy our race eventually...In one northern city, a pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live next door to his church as man and wife ...It boils down to whether we are going to take God's Word as final.'



"Oblivious to the hatefulness of his sermon, Falwell concluded: '...If we live in constant fellowship with the Lord, He can enable us to live Christ-like before others.'"

1980:

‘…After Southern Baptist Convention President Bailey Smith tells a Dallas Religious Right gathering that “God Almighty does not hear the prayer of a Jew,” Falwell gives a similar view. “I do not believe,” he told reporters, “that God answers the prayer of any unredeemed Gentile or Jew.” After a meeting with an American Jewish Committee rabbi, he changed course, telling an interviewer on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “God hears the prayers of all persons…. God hears everything.”…’

Mid 1980’s:

‘…Falwell supported apartheid in South Africa, called Desmond Tutu "a phony," and urged his followers to buy Kruggerands…’

1984:

‘…Falwell is forced to pay gay activist Jerry Sloan $5,000 after losing a court battle. During a TV debate in Sacramento, Falwell denied calling the gay-oriented Metropolitan Community Churches “brute beasts” and “a vile and Satanic system” that will “one day be utterly annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven.” When Sloan insisted he had a tape, Falwell promised $5,000 if he could produce it. Sloan did so, Falwell refused to pay and Sloan successfully sued. Falwell appealed, with his attorney charging that the Jewish judge in the case was prejudiced. He lost again and was forced to pay an additional $2,875 in sanctions and court fees…’

1988:

‘…The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a $200,000 jury award to Falwell for “emotional distress” he suffered because of a Hustler magazine parody. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, usually a Falwell favorite, wrote the unanimous opinion in Hustler v. Falwell, ruling that the First Amendment protects free speech…’

1989:

‘…he ordered that all of the employees of his empire had to join his church. And that they all had to tithe ten percent of their earnings to said ministry. So, like, if you were offered $20,000 to clean the Toilets of Jesus' Love, it was automatically reduced to $18,000 because of the enforced goodness of your heart…’

1994:

‘…Falwell is criticized for using his “Old Time Gospel Hour” to hawk a scurrilous video called “The Clinton Chronicles” that makes a number of unsubstantiated charges against President Bill Clinton — among them that he is a drug addict and that he arranged the murders of political enemies in Arkansas. Despite claims he had no ties to the project, evidence surfaced that Falwell helped bankroll the venture with $200,000 paid to a group called Citizens for Honest Government (CHG). CHG’s Pat Matrisciana later admitted that Falwell and he staged an infomercial interview promoting the video in which a silhouetted reporter said his life was in danger for investigating Clinton. (Matrisciana himself posed as the reporter.) “That was Jerry’s idea to do that,” Matrisciana recalled. “He thought that would be dramatic.”…’

1999:

‘…Falwell tells a pastors’ conference in Kingsport, Tenn., that the Antichrist prophesied in the Bible is alive today and “of course he’ll be Jewish.”…’

Also, 1999, as he starts his complete descent into insanity:

‘…Falwell becomes the object of nationwide ridicule after his National Liberty Journal newspaper issues a “parents alert” warning that Tinky Winky, a character on the popular PBS children’s show “Teletubbies,” might be gay…’

2007:

‘…Falwell describes global warming as a conspiracy orchestrated by Satan, liberals, and The Weather Channel…’

Of course he will remain infamous for his September 11th comments, blaming Americans, specifically

‘…Pagans, abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America…’

Prior to that, on September 9th, while listing the events happening around the world that were indicators of the Rapture, one of his top was the increase in speed of transportation. He closed that sermon:

'...If you're not ready, repent and receive Jesus Christ as Savior. As Tim LaHaye might say, "Don't be left behind." The Bible says that He will come "as a thief in the night." (1 Thess. 5:2)...'

Falwell was a thief in the day. And She came for him today. I wonder if he repented.

Look like jesus christ
Act like jesus christ I know
Here’s your jesus christ
I’m your jesus christ I know

Bleeding to death again (my bleeding heart)
Stuck in the heart again (goes out to you)
Somebody nail my hands (I needed pain)
Somebody take my hand (I bleed again)

I knew it all along and now
We’re screwed forever (screwed forever)
Shake these demons off my back
And I can make it better (make it better)
But I can’t go on knowing I am
Permanent on this holiday
I think you know what I am saying

I became the big disgrace
I know that I’m the ugly face
I need some time to reconcile
I need some time to heal a while

You’ll be sorry when I’m gone
I guess you knew this all along

-Bob Mould, JC Auto, 1993

R.I.P. Wally Schirra

As poor serendipity would have it, Wally Schirra died this past Wednesday. No, he didn’t make it to the moon, as I had drunkenly insisted earlier (see post below), but he was the only astronaut to fly in all three of the earliest American space programs: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. The picture above is from his final mission, Apollo 7. His generation is passing, and is being replaced by those who use their NASA underwear to go on long road trips to shoot each other, like rejected plot episodes from Desperate Housewives.

On the subject, here is a link to a cool image of all objects in our solar system greater than 200 miles in diameter. (Link courtesy of Incoming Signals, which doesn’t post nearly as often as it should). Note the large number of Trans Neptunian objects discovered in the past few years. Our neighborhood is filled with large balls of rock and ice that we are only just now becoming faintly familiar with. We’ve got a long ways to go.

The Wrong Stuff

The movie ‘Blades of Glory’ has now passed the $100 million mark in receipts, so congrats to them. I have no idea if there is yet any profit to the film, as they spent so much money promoting it. Aside from the endless amount of TV and print ads, they also engaged in viral marketing of the film, at least in New York, and I had the unfortunate experience of seeing that first hand.

Kathy and I were out with two friends, and after seeing the Rossini opera La Donna del lago and a meal of Afghani food, we headed over to The Thirsty Scholar, a favorite bar of mine in the East Village. We were minding our own business, as the patrons of that bar do, when the peace was interrupted by two guys wearing goofy ice skating clothes, wandering around and getting involved in conversations, promoting the movie. And that’s when I got into a fight with one of them.

Fueled by a good quantity of beer and sambuca, I confronted him by asking if he knew the name of the person who was the last one to walk on the moon, and when he did it. This may seem like a non-sequitur, but to me it made perfect sense, at least in my inebriated state. You see, this has happened more than once, generally when I am confronted by something in our culture that is exceedingly banal or insipid. (And, also, generally when I am drunk.)

The guy didn’t know and got angry. I informed him that it was Wally Schirra in 1973. Of course, I got that wrong as well. Lesson 1: don’t try to teach history when you’ve had too much to drink. Apollo 17 was actually in December, 1972 (though to be fair, I had thought January 1973 so I was only off by a month), and Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt were the last to walk on the moon. Fortunately before the yelling got too loud he and his friend quickly left the bar, after explaining that he really didn’t give a shit, and he was just trying to make a few bucks, so would I please leave him the hell alone.

So why did this strike such a nerve? Because a generation ago our nation was sending people to the moon, and today they are sending people to bars to embarrass themselves by promoting crappy movies for minimum wage. It’s a tremendous disappointment to be involved in a culture that is in such an obvious state of decline, but no one notices.

To offer evidence of this, over the past several weeks I have been assembling a comprehensive list of accomplishments of our supposed great age of space exploration in contrast to the last great age of grand voyage and exploration, 500 years ago. Taking as a starting point the years 1969, when we landed on the moon, and 1492, when Columbus voyaged to the New World, I have listed the events year by year in comparison:

1969/1492:
Apollo 11/12
Columbus First Voyage

1970 /1493:
Apollo 13
Columbus Second Voyage

1971/1494:
Apollo 14/15
Salyut 1

1972/1495:
Apollo 16/17
Apollo program canceled

1973/1496:
Skylab
Soyuz 13

1974/1497:
Skylab
John Cabot to North America
Amerigo Vespuci to North America
Vasco da Gama to India

1975/1498:
Apollo-Soyuz
Columbus Third Voyage
John Cabot to North America
Portuguese to Tanzania and Kenya
Vasco da Gama to India

1976/1499:
Alonso de Ojeda to Venezuela

1977/1500 :
Vicente Yáñez Pinzón to Brazil
Pedro Álvares Cabral to Brazil
Gaspar Cortereal, to Labrador

1978/1501:
Joao da Nova to the Ascension Islands
Gaspar de Corte-Real, to North America
Amerigo Vespuci to Brazil
Rodrigo de Bastidas to South America

1979/1502:
Columbus Fourth Voyage
Joao da Nova to St Helena

1980/1503:
Columbus Fourth Voyage
Vasco da Gama to India

1981/1504:
STS-1; STS-2
Ferdinand Columbus to Central America
Juan de la Cosa to South America

1982/1505:
3 Shuttle Flights
Dom Lourenço d'Almeida to Sri Lanka

1983/1506:
4 Shuttle Flights

1984/1507:
5 Shuttle Flights
Portuguese to Mozambique

1985/1508:
9 Shuttle Flights
Juan Diaz de Solis to the Yucatan
Sebastian de Ocampo to Cuba

1986/1509:
2 Shuttle Flights
Challenger accident
Mir

1987/1510:
I got Nothing

1988/1511:
2 Shuttle Flights
Diego Velázquez and Hernán Cortés to Cuba

1989/1512:
5 Shuttle Flights
Ponce de León to the Turks and Caicos Islands

1990/1513:
6 Shuttle Flights
Juan Ponce de Leon to Florida
Vasco Núñez de Balboa to the Pacific
Magellan in the Pacific

1991/1514:
6 Shuttle Flights

1992/1515:
8 Shuttle Flights
Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar to Cuba

1993/1516:
7 Shuttle Flights
Pedro de Solis to South America

1994/1517:
7 Shuttle Flights
Fernao Pires de Andrade to China

1995/1518:
7 Shuttle Flights
Cordova to the Yucatan
Grijalva to Mexico

1996/1519:
7 Shuttle Flights
Hernan Cortes to Mexico
Beginning of Magellan’s Voyage

1997/1520:
8 Shuttle Flights
Cortes in Mexico
Magellan to the Pacific

1998/1521:
5 Shuttle Flights
Cortes in Mexico
Magellan to the Pacific

1999/1522:
3 Shuttle Flights

2000/1523:
5 Shuttle Flights
First Crew Arrives at ISS
Verrazano to North America

2001/1524:
6 Shuttle Flights
Verrazano to North America
Jacques Cartier to North America
Pizarro to the Pacific

2002/1525:
5 Shuttle Flights
Rodrigo de Bastidas to Columbia
Pedro de Alvarado to Guatemala

2003/1526:
1 Shuttle Flights
Columbia accident

2004/1527:
John Rut to Newfoundland

2005/1528:
1 Shuttle Flight
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca to Texas

2006/1529:
3 Shuttle Flights
Ambrosius Ehinger to Venezuela

2007/1530:
5 Shuttle Flights planned
Martin Afonso de Souza to Brazil

So by 1530, almost all of the great voyages that we learned about in school had already happened. Most of the lands of America had been discovered. Magellan had completed his around the world voyage (though dying along the way). Colonies had been established around the globe. And these trips took far, far longer and were more dangerous than anything the space age has had to offer. By comparison our culture has completely given up, in the equivalent of in 1496 the combined powers of Europe deciding that they will never venture more than 150 miles from shore. The orbit of the space shuttle is 1-200 miles above the Earth’s surface; the same for Mir and the ISS. A typical commuter covers that distance in far less than a week.

To be fair, the comparison ignores the immense complexities of exploration, the violence and destruction involved (intended and unintended), and the motivation (geo power politics in much of both cases, a quest for wealth in others). Still, the point remains: a lack of fundamental imagination of what our culture can do. It doesn’t have to be the moon, but it does have to be grand, and please, God, just a little bit more than Will Ferrell vehicles.

Math is Hard! Let's Go Shopping!

Shortly after I got married five years ago I tried to buy a pair of plane tickets on the American Airlines website for Kathy and me; I was prevented from doing so since Kathy had kept her last name, and therefore the website wouldn’t recognize her as my spouse. In the end we had to make the reservations over the phone (paying ten bucks more for the privilege, if I remember correctly.)

I was reminded of this yesterday, when I read that American Airlines has been recently diving into gender-based niche marketing. With some decidedly mixed results. It seems that they launched a women’s version of the website last week, complete with pink background and fewer of those ‘search’ tools that the fairer sex find so difficult to use. It included the following text:

‘..Check the latest carry-on regulations, find advice on travel safety and wellness, and pick up tips for a stylish and efficient travel wardrobe…’

Needless to say this went over like a lead balloon. The Consumerist tracked the sad story here, here, and here, by which point the airline finally gave up on the idea. One would think that American Airlines learned something from this. Sadly, no:

African American site Coming Soon!

Thursday Cat Blogging

It’s been a criminally negligent amount of time since I posted kitty pictures, so I am making up for it now. As you can see they are doing quite well.

Posting Kitty photos comes on the heels of the latest announcement from the John McCain camp. It seems that they have hired one Fred Malek as the national finance co-chair for his presidential campaign. Who is Fred Malek, one might ask? Well, in addition to being a prodigious fund raiser for the Republican party, he has some less-than-savory things in his past.

First of all he used to work in the Nixon administration, keeping himself busy by counting the number of Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

‘…Nixon summoned the White House personnel chief, Fred Malek, to his office to discuss a "Jewish cabal" in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The "cabal," Nixon said, was tilting economic figures to make his Administration look bad. How many Jews were there in the bureau? He wanted to know. Malek reported back on the number, and told the President that the bureau's methods of weighing statistics were normal procedure that had been in use for years…’

But doing odd jobs for Tricky Dick pales compared to the other noteworthy event in Mr. Malek’s past. Namely that he is apparently a cat person, or at least not much of a dog person:

‘…On a Friday in August 1959, five men in their twenties were arrested about 2 a.m...

After checking the blood-spattered pants of one of the men at the state crime laboratory in Springfield, it was determined that the stains were animal and not human blood. [Sheriff Harry] Backes said the men then changed their story and said they had "caught a dog and were barbecuing it."

Police then found the skinned animal on a spit in the park. The insides of the dog had been removed, and a bottle of liquor was found on a nearby park table. Backes said the men told him they had been drinking earlier in the evening at a West Bluff tavern.

One of the men arrested in the incident, in which a dog was killed, skinned, gutted and barbecued on a spit, was Frederick V. Malek, 22, of Berwyn, Ill…’

Should Mr. Malek ever get bored with his job with Senator McCain, he can always peruse the web and head over to this site for his latest fix.

Melts in Your Mouth

What Digby Says.

Adding that it's important to reinforce his opening paragraph. While I certainly don't feel that the Church (Catholic or otherwise) is responsible for confirming or denying every last utterance of some batshit insane crank who claims to speak for them, Donohue, and his merry Catholic League, are public figures who get plenty of airtime to pontificate on matters of import under the banner of 'speaking for the Catholic Church.' In this case, like all of the others, the silence of the church is the same as an endorsement of his views.

While there are certainly more pressing issues facing the church, their reaction to an anatomically correct confection is definitely the sort of idiocy that fascinates me more than most. The Catholic Church's abominable silence on the Iraq invasion, however, is more pressing and is appropriately being addressed by my brother on his blog, as he directly confronts the seven generations of hatred that we are going to be faced with.

But what else would one expect from a Church that on June 14th, 1978 gave Sam Cohen, the inventor of the Neutron Bomb, Pope Paul VI's peace medal.

Soylent Green is Kitties

Like most pet owners, I recently received the same apology letter and pet food recall list from Petsmart regarding the recall of certain types of dog and cat food, tainted with rat poison no less. What does create the undercurrent of astonishment is the range of the ‘brands’ involved. How could all of the different brands all get contaminated the same way? Of course we know the answer – the contamination happened all at one plant operated by Menu Foods, which is an outsourced provider for all of the food made by these different companies.

Of course, that’s not entirely true. This event reveals a rather unsavory secret in the industry, which is that despite the incredible proliferation of pet food options for those worried about getting the food ‘just right’ for their precious little furry ones, there is no difference between what’s in the different brands. Because all of the brands are just the creation of fevered minds in marketing departments.

It’s fun to troll the web and see the debates between those who prefer Iams over Eukenuba and vice versa, but they are actually owned by one company (Iams), who treats those two brands differently (they have two separate websites, etc). But of course that is only a small part of the story. For Iams is not a company itself, but is instead a division of Procter and Gamble. Science Diet is ‘owned’ by Hills. But ‘Hills’ is a division of Colgate-Palmolive. Pedigree and Royal Canin are owned by Mars. And of course Purina owns half of what else is out there. Except Purina is owned by Nestle. There are almost no ‘mom and pop’ healthy pet food companies. And those that do exist end up within a few years being part of the big machine. And yet another ‘brand’ is created, owned by one of 4 companies who either originally made chocolate or household chemicals.

So it's hardly a surprise to find out that half the pet food brands in existence all have the same contamination. When we pick Iams over Science Diet, all that we're doing is picking a favorite color or type font. The manufacturing process that Procter and Gamble uses to make their pet food and their shaving cream is going to be the same, whether or not we are paying any extra for a brand with 'nutro-' or 'orgo-' or 'healthy-' in the title.

Of course much the same is true about what people eat. All of those healthy drinks and stuff make for fun reading. Tropicana, SoBe, Quaker, Aquafina, Lipton… all owned by Pepsi. Dasani, Dannon, Earth and Sky, Eight O’Clock, Fruitopia, Five Alive, Hi-C, Minute-Maid, Mutivita, Nestea, Nature’s Own, Odwalla, Powerade, Schweppes, Sobo, Vital, Viva and Vegitabeta…all owned by Coca Cola.

Mona Lisa Smile

Today it’s raining, but overall this week it’s been quite beautiful, especially after the icy snow storm this past weekend that dumped 10 inches of slop onto our streets. And with the new lovely weather comes our bulbs in the front yard, which are now starting to poke their heads out and bloom. In a week or so I will try to get some pictures posted, once they’re more photogenic.

In the neck of the woods around my office the warmer weather has allowed for another blossoming of sorts. The sidewalk con artists are out in force again, after a long cold spell. Tuesday brought two of them. The first is the old tried and true ‘I’m locked out of my apartment’ scam. This guy, complete with crutches no less, was quite pathetic looking, but before he got too much into his long sad story asking me for 40 dollars for the locksmith, I had to gently remind him that he had tried that one on me only last year, and while I was sorry to see him on crutches this time, he plainly had to work out a better system of storing his keys. Upon which he quickly trotted off, carrying his crutches. Oddly enough this is the fourth time someone has tried that scam on me in this town, each time twice by the same person.

The more interesting one, which I ran into not two minutes later, is a long con, not really aimed at the quick buck. The sidewalk artist scam is more popular in Europe, where there is more of a sidewalk artist tradition, but here in New York it occasionally pops up. In Europe, it is aimed more at tourists, where a guys tapes down a painting (classically of the Mona Lisa) to the sidewalk, lovingly adds to it a bit at a time, and hopes to collect some money from gullible tourists, who want to be bohemian and support the arts.

In New York the scam goes after the locals, not the tourists. Instead the focus is to have some local think that he has discovered a major unrecognized talent. If all goes well, the rube will make arrangements to have the ‘artist’ do a mural or some such large project in his home, give the guy a 50% retainer, and oddly enough the artist vanishes. The sidewalk artist will hang out in the same spot for a day or two, hopefully collecting as much as he can, and then he bolts town. Sometimes he can net over 10 grand.

The guy I ran into was painting the buildings across the street from my office, although oddly enough the skyline didn’t look anything at all like what was there. This begs the question – where do these (non-painter) ‘artists’ get their pictures? The answer, of course, is the same as where we get everything else – from China. China graduates 10,000 fine artists from their universities every year. All of those starving artist ‘sofa-sized’ wall paintings for sale at convention centers? From China.

I’ve always been interested in cons, mainly because of their insight into what motivates people. I actually have respect for con artists who use the greed of their target as the motivation. In a certain way they are charging for important life lessons. But these guys that I ran into are just thugs, preying on the willingness of people to want to help others, whether it be a poor schmuck locked out of his apartment, or an artist left behind in a culture that values only money. Hopefully as the weather keeps warming up, the three-card monte players will return to their usual spot across the street, in front of the empty store.

La vérité est dehors là

Perhaps it has something to do with the upcoming elections there, but the French Space Agency has just made France the first nation to open up all of its secret U.F.O. files to the general public. The website they created is here, but I would bookmark the link and visit in a week or two, because the traffic is so intense that the server constantly crashes.

Bush Pilot

Both Glenn Greenwald and Digby at Hullabaloo have excellent posts on the role of gender in the marketing of the modern conservative movement. Atrios bats them home with this recollection of the fawning media coverage of the pinnacle of the conservative movement: The President's Carrier Landing.

Though I would never want to generalize my personal experiences to cover an entire group of people, such as the attendees of CPAC, every single person I have ever met in my life who has presented themselves in a hyper-masculine way turned out to be homosexual.

Without exception.

Someone's Stoned, My Lord, Kum Ba Yah...

Following up on an earlier post on the role of tobacco in the Bible, I became curious about the next obvious leap - the role of marijuana. After all, there are no proscriptions against tobacco use in the Bible as tobacco is a new world plant, and wasn't in the old world until the time of Columbus. However, marijuana is an old world plant, assumed to originate in Central Asia, and hemp was widely known about and used in the ancient world in a multiple of ways - clothing, paper, rope, etc. So presumably its intoxicating effects were known, and one would assume that, like alcohol, it's use would be frowned upon in scripture.

Once again, one would be wrong. The word 'hemp' is not mentioned in the Bible, although I am only able to do word searches through specific translations. The lack of any mention in scripture, like with tobacco, is not a hindrance for those who would take a stand on marijuana use. With tobacco, however, there are only people who try to interpret scripture to condemn it's use: no one uses the Bible to support tobacco use. In the case of marijuana, though, both sides use scripture to support their position.

Those opposed to marijuana use generally refer to the same scripture used to proscribe tobacco use. And the arguments are obviously the same as well, since those verses are only subject to interpretation and aren't specific. The true fun comes from those who use the Bible to support marijuana use.

I've gone to a number of websites that do so, and they are all identical, down to the same wording, so they are copying each other's arguments word for word. Someone wrote it originally, but I have no idea who. For the purposes of this post, I will refer to this article, not because I think it the original source (though I suppose it could be), but only because it is the least graphically offensive. Gotta make choices somehow.

Most of the scriptural basis is interpretive (as the word 'hemp' is not mentioned) but there is one mention in the book of Exodus that is regarded by the pro-marijuana group as a mention, that of the recipe for 'Holy Anointing Oil' in Exodus 30:22-29:

'Then the LORD said to Moses, "Take the following fine spices: 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, half as much (that is, 250 shekels) of fragrant cinnamon, 250 shekels of fragrant cane, 500 shekels of cassia—all according to the sanctuary shekel—and a hin of olive oil. Make these into a sacred anointing oil, a fragrant blend, the work of a perfumer. It will be the sacred anointing oil. Then use it to anoint the Tent of Meeting, the ark of the Testimony, the table and all its articles, the lampstand and its accessories, the altar of incense, the altar of burnt offering and all its utensils, and the basin with its stand. You shall consecrate them so they will be most holy, and whatever touches them will be holy.'

For reference, 500 shekels is about twelve and a half pounds. The key issue is the words 'fragrant cane' which has been argued to be marijuana. And at six and a quarter pounds of bud, that would be a holy oil with some punch. Some of the evidence is essentially circumstantial, but the linguistic argument is interesting. The basic problem is that the original Hebrew word is 'kaneh-bosm' (say it out loud and compare it to the word 'cannabis'). The word is untranslatable, as it is an ancient word whose specific source is unknown. What is known is that it refers to some sort of herb.

Another pro-marijuana website which aims at scholarly accuracy, but ultimately succumbs to the Q.E.D. problem, at least has a long series of footnotes for its arguments. This is the summary of the etymological argument:

'...But, what are the etymological arguments? Many ancient languages had 'kan' as a root word that had a double meaning: hemp or reed. In Hebrew, it is 'kaneh.' References to 'kaneh shirt' in Hebrew texts supports the hemp translation since shirts used to be made from hemp (cannabis). While the basic etymological argument (minus my medical argument) was made decades ago by etymologist Sula Benet, hardly anyone has attempted to counter it. I was able to find only one counterargument and that was from Ernest Abel, author of 'Marijuana- The First Twelve Thousand Years.' His two objections rest on the assumptions that marijuana would not be called a 'spice' as required by Exodus 30:23 and that marijuana would not be described as 'sweet-tasting' as potentially (depends on which translation is correct) required by Isaiah 43:24. Both these assumptions are incorrect since depending on the type of marijuana, it can be spicy and sweet...'

And of course pot can be both spicy and sweet. so if true then the argument by Ernest Abel is easily refuted. Of course, in the end it may yet be another biblical curiosity that is ultimately unresolvable. Nonetheless, the use of hallucinogens in religious ceremonies has a proud and ancient history, so the idea that marijuana is the active hallucinatory ingredient in an ancient sacred Jewish ointment hardly requires a stretch of imagination.

The same article refers to uses of the same holy oil in New Testament times, but as I mentioned, the rather unprofessional tone of the article makes me somewhat suspect, and I am unfamiliar with the sources mentioned (such as the reference in the Didascalia Apostolorum - how are we to know that the holy oil mentioned is of the same recipe found in Exodus?)

Ultimately I am intrigued but remain unfortunately unconvinced, despite the obvious enticements of the arguments, and the seductiveness of what it would all mean. That is an unfortunate by-product of the complexities and contradictions of ancient holy books.

But in the end there is one fun fruit to my research into this. I came across some articles about former Attorney General John Ashcroft when searching for references to 'Holy Anointing Oil.' It turns out that Mr. Ashcroft has a fetish for the stuff:

'..."'The act of anointing,' he wrote in his largely autobiographical book [Lessons From a Father to His Son], replicated the practice of 'the ancient kings of Israel, David and Saul,' who Ashcroft said 'were anointed as they undertook their administrative duties."...'

Ashcroft anointed himself before both terms as Missouri Governor. Of course he was unable to acquire 500 shekels of liquid myrrh, let alone the other ingredients, including the 'fragrant cane.' So he used the next best thing.

He covered himself in Crisco Oil.