Microsoft sucks

Greetings.

Jewish date:  4 Tammuz 5769.

Today’s holiday:  Friday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time.

Today’s quasi-holidays:  International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, International Day in Support of Torture Victims, Take Your Dog to Work Day.

Worthy causes of the day:  “Ancient Forests at Risk”, “Take Action Now on Climate Change!”, “Why did you let Big Coal ruin the climate bill?”, “Industry lobbyists are trying to kill health care reform”, and “Demand Paid Sick Days for American Workers”.

Relevant to Divine Misconceptions:  “A nation under law?”:  This is an angry rant from a “Messianic Jew” (read:  Jewish-rite Christian) complaining about maltreatment in Israel.  This figures.  Ten percent of the Jews in Israel identify as religious/ḥaredhi, and thus have the knowledge to be certain that Jewish-rite Christians are religiously incompetent, ignorant, or dishonest in their portrayal of “Messianic Judaism” as Judaism, despite the fact that Judaism and Christianity decisively parted ways at the Council of Nicaea, and that belief in Jesus as Messiah is discredited among Jews (since Jesus did not fulfill the requirements of being the Messiah) and belief in Jesus as God to Jews is sheer heresy.  Not to mention that Jewish-rite Christians have a tendency to prey upon the ignorant, which does little to draw sympathy from Jews who actually believe in Judaism.  Given the built-in level of hostility, it is no wonder Jewish-rite Christians complain of persecution.  But what is not understandable is this paragraph:

Most Jews, even if not consciously expressing it, blame Jesus for all the troubles in the world, and want to blot out his name and memory.

I have no clue where he got this idea.  None of my fellow Jews have ever told me, even privately, that they blame Jesus for all the troubles in the world.  Did he ask any Jews about who they blame for all the troubles in the world?  Did someone do a survey?  If there was a survey, was it a methodologically sound survey?  Even as a guess, this is a poor guess.  Plenty of people suffered from war, plague, famine, violence, rape, murder, intolerance, and plenty of other unpleasant things long before Jesus was born, and the advent of Christianity did little to change that.  Jesus did not even preach violence.  So why should anyone blame Jesus for “all the troubles in the world”?  As an attempt to distract the reader away from his heresy, this sucks.  Major rule:  Never insist to anyone what they believe when it is not true; they are not likely to believe it.

Today’s news and commentary:

• “Tehran dispatch: The regime shows us movies: They want to keep us indoors, and quiet. But which subversive programmer picked "The Lord of the Rings"?”
  
• “Divorce and Its Impact on Children - Jon & Kate Plus 8”
  
• “Stoned wallabies make crop circles”
  

Today’s weird thing is “Does Microsoft Suck? USB Powered Vacuumer from Microsoft!”, which I ran across while testing out Bing. Enjoy, share the weirdness, and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron