5 ’Av 5768: The Nine Days/National Fresh Breath Day

Greetings.

Worthy cause of the day: “Tell The FEC to Investigate Walmart's Mandatory Political Meetings”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:

• “Blow-up church looks to lure Italian beachgoers”: Nothing wrong here. Just an interesting approach.
  
• “Knights Templar to Vatican: Give us back our assets”: This strikes me as odd since the Knights Templar are supposed to be extinct.
  
• “A Jewish Peace Corps”: Good idea. We could use more of a communal spirit in the Jewish community.
  
• “New Haredi 'life card' seeks to counter organ donor cards”: I was shocked when I read this. Whatever happened to the concept of piqquaḥ nefesh, that saving a human life is so important that it overrides all prohibitions other than the three cardinal sins of polytheism/idolatry, murder, and sexual immorality? Yes, cutting up the dead is a horrible thing to do, but saving the still-living is more important. This article had better be a hoax, because if it is not, someone needs to be seriously chewed out.

Today’s news and commentary, some of which Barry may be responsible for:

• “Capital Punishment”
  
• “New VisionAire technology from Obscura”
  
• “Prescription Data Used To Assess Consumers” (Worrisome.)
  
• “Gun-control groups fear top activist was NRA spy”
  
• “California state computers can't handle pay cut, controller says” (COBOL? They’re still using COBOL?)
  
• “M.I.T. Team Working on $12 Computer Based on Apple II”
  
• “Alaska seeks to reverse U.S. polar bear decision” (<SARCASM>Because as everyone knows, every year 392 tourists in Alaska are eaten by vicious polar bears.</SARCASM>)
  
• The K Chronicles 2008-08-05 (Excellent point.)
  
• “A Quasi-quasicrystal”
  
• “Gorillas, monkeys veering toward extinction: study”, though there is good news reported in “Gorillas Galore in Congo”
  
• “While Diplomats Dither, Iran Builds Nukes” (Suggested by Harold. Everyone who expects diplomats to defuse the Iranian nuclear crisis, stand on your heads.)
  

Today’s H. P. Lovecraft story, in lieu of a weird thing due to the Nine Days and the Three Weeks, is “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”.


WARNING: BEWARE OF VICIOUS ATTACK SPOILERS.

Theological review of “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”:

This story is exceedingly boring. New theologically is the idea of alchemical resurrection of the dead from their ashes, which is worrisome since it throws into doubt what death is supposed to be in the first place. Normally death (real death, not clinical death) is the point from which one never comes back, but this story has the idea that a person reduced to ashes can be resurrected—something only a deity is supposed to be able to do. No real mechanism for how a human is supposed to be able to do this is given.

H. P. Lovecraft also shows horrendous choice in magic words, paradoxically by making use of words actually used in magic. Many of the terms used, e.g., Adonai, Eloim, Jehova, Sabaoth, Metatron are Greco-Latinized names of YHWH and angels, in this case ’Adhonay, ’Elohim, YHWH, Ṣeva’oth, and Miṭṭaṭron. That such holy names are used for blatantly unholy purposes is sacrilegious. It is fantastic to believe that a morality-intensive, immortal creator (and unthreatenable) deity, such as YHWH, would be willing or could be compelled to grant the wishes of anyone bent of evil, and if one does not believe in YHWH, then it makes no sense that calling upon Him should have any effect at all.

Theological rating: F.

Scariness rating: I was too bored to be scared. My pants were too bored to move. I sent my pet Shoggoth to dissolve all the characters in the story in acid so that no one may ever resurrect them.


Tomorrow’s Lovecraftian disaster: “The Lurking Fear”

Aaron