Here are three items that came across my desk (or computer screen) over the past few days. They all seem to make a lot of sense, so I thought that I would share them with the small (very small!) handful of people who pay attention to this page.<\/p>\n
Number One:<\/span> Hilary Clinton will quit because she\u2019s running out of money<\/a>. The Democrats fell in love with Obama, and thus most of the money is going his way. And money talks. Hilary will thus fold soon, perhaps right after the North Carolina primary in early May. She is being outspent by Obama by 3 to 1 in Pennsylvania, and will thus be robbed of the big 10 point plus win that she needs there to stay viable. (Not entirely certain that she will win at all now, given the current trends in the pre-primary polls!) All that will be needed after that will be Clinton\u2019s poor showing in NC; she may not even break 40%, if the current polls are accurate. The cash spigot totally goes dry for her at that point, and she finally reads the handwriting. Obama thus becomes the political \u201cBlack Swan\u201d<\/a> of the 2008 primary season (those of you familiar with Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book know that this is NOT a racial reference; but the irony can\u2019t help but be noted). We shall see if he can take his swan feathers all the way to the White House; I myself think it\u2019s going to be another 2000 election, a real squeeker.<\/p>\n Number Two:<\/span> Contrary to what most Christians think (and perhaps Muslims too), Jesus of Nazareth did NOT preach<\/a> that we have immortal souls. That was mainly a Greek notion that was folded into Christian doctrine at a later time. Jesus, like many Jews at the time, believed in the possible resurrection of the body here on earth (but not all Jews, recall the Sauducees). But this was the physical body, not the ethereal soul. Jewish doctrine was rather quiet as to what happens to that body after that resurrection; could you die again? They really didn\u2019t say. In the decades following Jesus\u2019 death, the notion of resurrection was eventually tweaked into \u201ceternal \/ everlasting life\u201d<\/a>, as evidenced in the Gospel of John. <\/p>\n But again, the Johnine notion did not necessarily envision eternal life as \u201cspirits in heaven\u201d; it was probably eternal life in the \u201cnew kingdom\u201d here on earth, which would be brought forth at the Second Coming. Only a century or so later, when it was pretty clear that Christ wasn\u2019t coming back any time soon, did the Greek notions of spirits in heaven start becoming official doctrine in the Christian Churches. Most Christians don\u2019t appreciate just how Greek their beliefs are, and how much Jesus himself would disagree with them if he could be brought back somehow by science.<\/p>\n Number Three:<\/span> Here\u2019s a quote from letter to the editor found in the recent Atlantic Monthly, from a woman responding to an article about making compromises in finding a husband:<\/p>\n We women like to imagine ourselves as goddesses who are worthy of a man\u2019s total worship and devotion, and we are incensed when he fails to give us that. Unfortunately, we get bed hair, body odor, wrinkles, thickness in the middle, and bad attitudes. We would not easily excuse such things in men, yet we expect men to overlook them in us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My goodness, the voice of reason calling out in the desert! To be fair, I have to admit that men have such traits, in droves. But that\u2019s all been said a million times about them (us<\/span>, given that I\u2019m a guy). Finally, some balance! Too bad that the writer, a Mrs. Parkhurst from Franklin, Indiana, is a MRS. She sounds like my kind of gal! I.e., very lucid, very insightful, very honest, very fair. A common-sense kind of woman. No surprise that she’s married!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here are three items that came across my desk (or computer screen) over the past few days. They all seem to make a lot of sense, so I thought that I would share them with the small (very small!) handful of people who pay attention to this page. Number One: Hilary Clinton will quit because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,12,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5084,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/5084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}