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December 25, 2004

Happy Non-Denominational Winter Solstice Celebration from San Francisco

Alex sends along this email circulating at his SF law firm:

HAVE A VERY HAPPY ONE!
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all ...

... And a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2005, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great, (not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country or is the only "AMERICA" in the Western Hemisphere), and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

posted by Ace at 03:18 AM

Comments

Heh. How very true.

Let me be the first to wish everyone a Merry Christmahanukkwanzaamadanstice!

Posted by: blackbird4739 on December 25, 2004 04:22 AM

You forgot to mention Festivus, blackbird. You can expect a call from the ACLU tomorrow.

That said, I'd like to wish you all a safe and happy non-denominational, eco-friendly, and inclusive celebration. Unless you don't feel like celebrating anything. That's cool, too.

Posted by: Sean M. on December 25, 2004 05:05 AM

I like Jim Treacher's take: Have a good Red State Fascist Antiquated Gift-Giving Ceremony for Capitalist Racist Rednecks!

Posted by: Joe R. the Unabrewer on December 25, 2004 09:26 AM

You know it's getting bad when you see e-mails like this. It honestly doesn't surprise me. We had a "Holiday" card being passed around at our work for the big boss with over 20 signatures wishing him "Happy Holidays" and only one with "Merry Christmas". Make that two "Merry Christmas" greetings after I signed it.

Posted by: Natalie R. on December 25, 2004 10:56 AM

Well I'll wish eveyone the politically incorrect Merry Christmas!

Posted by: Retread on December 25, 2004 12:25 PM

I object to their use of the term Holiday, and also the wish that we should celebrate. Implying to me that I should have a reason to celebrate, or that there is anything Holy about this day (whatever Holy may mean), is forcing me to react to their idea of what is worth celebrating. Don't will your traditions and values on me! The oppression is stifling!

Posted by: Mark on December 25, 2004 12:38 PM

This year the Christians seem to be fighting back more aggressively than their milksop priests and ministers counsiled in the past 2 decades. Even the Pope is saying "enough".

Most welcome is the large number of Jewish writers coming to the defense of Christmas - admitting that the ACLU is mostly a Jewish-funded institution utilizing activist Jewish lawyers to impliment their lawsuit strategy for Christian-bashing ---but saying the ACLU does not speak for the vast majority of Jews that have no problem with public or private expressions of Christianity. And that Christmas is rather nice, they like Christmas carols, and are no Grinches trying to impose PC thought. Good for them!

It might help reform the ACLU to an impartial civil liberties organization again. They are already taking heavy hits on the anti-Boy Scout jihad they are on, Christian-bashing, and seeming to side with terrorists more than Americans need for enhanced security following 9/11. (being forced to jump to your death from a burning skyscraper is the ultimate deprivation of your civil liberties, not wiretapping an Islamoid fond of calling for "Death to America" in a Jersey City mosque).

The counterattack on the ACLU, vs. playing pure and thus losing, defense, has started. They still keep their private donors and members secret, but talk is now of a nation-wide boycott of any lawyer appearing in public court documents working for the ACLU in going after Boy Scouts, Christian expression, 2nd Amendment rights.

Also, going after the 501C-3 tax exempts that have to report moneys given the ACLU in their public disclosures. The largest tax-exempt donor to the ACLU is the Ford Foundation. A fact that most Ford-drivers in the Red States and red areas of Blue states are so far unaware of. Not many "blue" voters drive Fords anyways...Volvos, Audis, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus,and Acuras for them.

And moderate Democrats, blacks - need to tell their Party that they don't like the Far Left wing of the Democrats trying to destroy things that moderate
Dems and blacks love and believe in...especially Christmas..

Posted by: Cedarford on December 25, 2004 12:48 PM

Ah, good old reliable Cedarford. Always guarding good Christian folk against those sneaky Joooos. They'e up to no good, I tells ya!

Hmm. I wonder, what's the ACLU's stance on tax cuts for the wealthy?

Posted by: zetetic on December 25, 2004 02:02 PM

Sometimes...a simple 'Merry Christmas' comment will suffice.

Posted by: jmflynny on December 25, 2004 04:03 PM

Well, Zetetic, paleo-boy DID mention that some Jewish people are coming out against the Christmas-bashing agenda.

It reads as a rather backhanded recognition of those good people, to be sure, but there it is. You could knock me over with a feather.

Posted by: lauraw on December 25, 2004 05:53 PM

Cedarford is no paleocon. He wouldn't know a states' rights argument if it reached up and goosed him.

Posted by: Smack on December 25, 2004 07:55 PM

Have a dolphin-safe December, everyone!

Posted by: Kazmin on December 25, 2004 09:18 PM

I'm reminded of Roger Zelazny's Agnostic's Prayer:

Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness...

and Robin Weinbaum's prayer in "The Quincunx of Time" by James Blish:

To Whom it may concern: Thy Will, not mine.

Posted by: on December 26, 2004 03:11 AM

I'm reminded of Roger Zelazny's Agnostic's Prayer:

Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness...

and Robin Weinbaum's prayer in "The Quincunx of Time" by James Blish:

To Whom it may concern: Thy Will, not mine.

Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger on December 26, 2004 03:12 AM

Amazon.com Widgets

Now Available!
The Deplorable Gourmet
A Horde-sourced Cookbook
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Top Headlines

This is the dumbest AI bullslop I've seen in a while: the CIA can use "quantum magnetometry" to track an individual man's heartbeat from twelve miles away
I wouldn't click on it, it's not interesting, it's just stupid clickslop. I just want to share my annoyance with you.

Oil prices plunge on bizarre realization that Eric Swalwell may actually be straight. A rapey molester, allegedly, but a straight one.

Artemis II Crew releases clearest images of the Far Side yet recorded

Classic Rock Mystery Click
This is super-obscure and I only barely remember it. Given that, I'll give you the hint that it's by the Red Rocker.
And I guess you think you've got it made
Oh, but then, you never were afraid
Of anything that you've left behind
Oh, but it's alright with me now
'Cause I'll get back up somehow
And with a little luck, yes, I'm bound to win
Now twenty people will tell me it's not obscure, it was huge in their hometown and played at their prom. That's how it usually goes. When I linked Donnie Iris's "Love is Like a Rock," everyone said they knew that one and that his other song (which I didn't know at all) Ah Leah! was huge in their area.

Sarah Longwell spotting

Tuq'r's makeover is 100!

Alfred Hitchcock learns to talk with TJM

Ryan Long goes to the No Kings rally to pick up young liberal hotties and is greatly disappointed in the quality of the mish
thanks to stevey

You know we "joke" about the GOPe just "conserving" leftist things?
David French just posted:

Populists ask what conservativism has ever conserved?
Well its about to conserve birthright citizenship!
Posted by: 18-1

I couldn't hate this queen of the cuck-chair more if it paid seven figures and came with a corner office.

TJM definitively ranks the films of John Boorman.

Kid punks CNN chump by speaking truth to retard

Podcast: CBD and Sefton talk birthright citizenship, the 14th Amendment and SCOTUS, no boots in Iran, Artemis II and refocusing NASA, the NBA's hatred of everything non-woke, and more!

In more marketing for Project Hail Mary, scientists say they've found the biosigns indicating life growing on an alien planet. It's not proof, just signatures of chemicals that are produced by biological metabolism, and it could be nothing, but scientists think it's a strong sign that this planet is inhabited by something.

In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a team of scientists announced the detection of dimethyl sulfide (along with a similar detection of dimethyl disulfide) in the atmosphere of an exoplanet called K2-18b. This is actually the second detection of dimethyl sulfide made on this planet, following a tentative detection in 2023.
Tons of chemicals are detected in the atmospheres of celestial objects every day. But dimethyl sulfide is different, because on Earth, it's only produced by living organisms.
"It is a shock to the system," Nikku Madhusudhan, first author on the paper, told the New York Times. "We spent an enormous amount of time just trying to get rid of the signal."

He means they tried to prove the signal was caused by things other than dimethyl sulfide but they could not.

Artemis moon shot a go, scheduled for 6:24 Eastern time tonight
Great marketing arranged by Amazon to promote Project Hail Mary. Okay not really but it does work out that way.

TJM talks John Boorman, director of Excalibur

Good rickroll

What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]