Convicted Hitman Jimmy "Two Shoes" McCarthy confessed today that he was once hired to beat a cow to death in a rice field using only two small porcelain figures. Police admit that this may be the first known case of a Knick-Knack Paddy whack.
The fundamental question we must ask ourselves at the beginning of the century is this: What is the purpose of marriage? Is it — given the game-changing realities of birth control, female equality and the fact that motherhood outside of marriage is no longer stigmatized — simply an institution that has the capacity to increase the pleasure of the adults who enter into it? If so, we might as well hold the wake now: there probably aren't many people whose idea of 24-hour-a-day good times consists of being yoked to the same romantic partner, through bouts of stomach flu and depression, financial setbacks and emotional upsets, until after many a long decade, one or the other eventually dies in harness.
Or is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function — to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation's own safe passage into adulthood? Think of it this way: the current generation of children, the one watching commitments between adults snap like dry twigs and observing parents who simply can't be bothered to marry each other and who hence drift in and out of their children's lives — that's the generation who will be taking care of us when we are old.
Who is left to ensure that these kids grow up into estimable people once the Mark Sanfords and other marital frauds and casual sadists have jumped ship? The good among us, the ones who are willing to sacrifice the thrill of a love letter for the betterment of their children. "His career is not a concern of mine," says Jenny Sanford. "He'll be worrying about that, and I'll be worrying about my family and the character of my children." What we teach about the true meaning of marriage will determine a great deal about our fate.
"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
Phil 4:4-7
"Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear. On a hot summer day in the country you can hear the corn growing, the crack of a tin roof buckling under the power of the sun. In a real old-fashioned parlor silence so deep you can hear the dust settling on the velveteen settee, you might hear the footsteps of something sinister gaining on you, or a heart-stoppingly beautiful phrase from Mozart you haven't heard since childhood, or the voice of somebody — now gone — whom you loved. Or sometime when you're talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to yourself. It's good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamelessly foolishly."-Russell Baker, 1995 Connecticut College Commencement Address
Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise;-Proverbs 17:28
when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.
4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it...
...9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.
3:19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.
Hence it is necessary that Christians contend on both sides against the devil and their own flesh. For when they begin to repent and would gladly become different people, then they first feel the devil's influence, how he excites, hinders and controls them, so that they make no progress, but remain in their old state, etc. Again, if they cannot prevent this, and in spite of the devil turn to God and call upon him, he will attack them with weak courage and cowardice. First, he makes sin so very small, and puts them so far beyond the reach of the eyes and hearts of men, that men may despise them and not desire grace, or they put off repentance. Then on the contrary, he makes sin really too great, as he can blow a fire from a spark greater than heaven and earth, so that it will again be difficult to lay hold of forgiveness, or to bring into his heart the words: "God be thou merciful to me!" Thus indeed it is and will continue to be a great art, and we may well take this publican as our example, our teacher and doctor, and learn of him, and call upon God that we may also obtain the end of our faith.Martin Luther, The Publican & The Pharisee
If you tried to name them, one a second, naming all the stars in our galaxy...I don't mean all the stars in the universe, just this galaxy here...it takes 3000 years. And yet, that's not a very big number. Because if those stars were to drop one dollar bill on the earth during a year, each start dropping one dollar bill, they might take care of the deficit which is suggested for the budget of the United States.- Richard Feynman, Physicist, from a 1983 interview.
And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.This is the account of a 90+ year old man with a wife who was aged and barren. To believe that God would provide a single child is faith enough. But God did not stop there in pushing Abraham beyond the realms of probability. The Lord outlined a plan that was beyond believable, and used a metaphor that even today is incomprehensible - "so (as the number of stars) shall your offspring be".
Genesis 15:5,6
"For to worship is to quicken the conscience by the holiness of God, to feed the mind with the truth of God, to purge the imagination by the beauty of God, to open up the heart to the love of God, to devote the will to the purpose of God."William Temple, late Archbishop of Canterbury
God does not search around to find a mate that's totally compatible with you. Most probably he's going to find you a mate that's incompatible with you.Interesting thoughts... and based on an understanding of the fatherly discipline of the Lord and the incisive work of the Holy Spirit, I believe it is biblically consistent, even if humanly we fight the idea (because especially in this case, we're looking for a "soul-mate", not a walking spiritual Bowflex (a workout machine)). No one willingly walks into a situation that promises intense humbling. However, just like the old saying goes, "it's good for you". That sounds stoic, but it's meant to challenge you, measure it up to scripture and then do as you see fit.
He's going to give you a mate in all the areas that you need them to be strong so that "you are not tempted more than you can bear" but he's also going to give you a mate who fails in some of the areas that you most do not want them to fail so that you become like Jesus... what does that mean? So that you learn to love someone unconditionally that does not meet the conditions.
I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?John Stott, "God on the Gallows"
I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time, after awhile I have had to turn away.
And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wretched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me!
He laid aside His immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross of Christ... is God's only self-justification in such a world as ours.
You can be mad as a mad dog at the way things went
You can swear and curse the fates;
But when it comes to the end,
You have to let go.
-The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
First Rule of the Ant Colony: No Hanky Panky
To the long list of reasons you should be glad you're not an ant, add this: You'd have to forget about having sex. You'd also have to forget about even trying. Sneak off for a little insectile assignation and the others members of the colony would know immediately — and attack you for it. Entomologists have long known this was the practice in the ant world, but what they didn't know is the forensic science that allows the community to uncover the crime. Now, thanks to a study in the current issue of Cell Biology, they do.
Ant colonies have good reason to be abstemious places. When you're trying to hold together so complex a society without — let's face it — a lot of brainpower, you want a population made up of the fittest individuals you can get. A queen that has the genetic mettle to crank out lots of good eggs that produce lots of good babies doesn't need any competition from other, lesser females setting up a nest nearby. Even the queen herself is not allowed to fool with the gene pool once it's been set. She mates only once in her life and stores all of the sperm she'll ever need for the thousands of eggs she'll produce. (See TIME's photos of the insect world)
The rules, of course, don't prevent the other ants in the colony — which spend their lives tending eggs, gathering food and digging tunnels — from feeling a little randy now and then (never mind the fact that they're all, genetically speaking, brothers and sisters). But not only are those who give into the procreative urge pounced on by the others, those who are even considering it are often restrained before they can try. The tip-off, as with so many other things in the animal world, appears to be smell.
Earlier studies had shown that a queen that senses potential competition from another fertile female will chemically mark the pretender; that female will then be attacked by lower-ranking females. Biologists Jürgen Liebig and Adrian Smith of Arizona State University suspected that something similar might go on even without the queen's intervention and believed the answer might lie in scent chemicals called cuticular hydrocarbons.
Ants that are capable of reproducing naturally emit hydrocarbon-based odors, and the eggs they produce smell the same way. Ants that can't reproduce emit no such odor. Liebig and Smith produced a synthetic hydrocarbon in the lab that had the same olfactory properties as the natural one, then plucked a few completely innocent ants from a nest and dabbed the chemical on them. When they were returned to the colony they were promptly attacked — never mind that they had essentially been framed.
The sexual environment does sometimes loosen up in ant colonies. While the place may never become a Caligulan free-for-all, collective breeding will resume if the queen dies or is experimentally removed — but only until a new queen establishes herself and the reproductive lockdown resumes.
Complex critters like us might be glad to be part of a species that's free of such Draconian sexual rules, but Liebig doesn't think it's wise to get above ourselves. All manner of lawsuits, divorces and blood feuds have erupted over people breeding when — or with whom — they oughtn't. Often, the methods used to expose the cheaters aren't terribly different from those of the ants: more than one philanderer, after all, has been exposed by a whiff of the wrong perfume on his clothes when he came home. "The idea that social harmony is dependent on strict systems to prevent and punish cheating seems to apply to most successful societies," Liebig explained in a comment released with his paper. Regardless of the genome, in matters of sex, nature still appears to prefer us not to stray.
