I have a slogan for the makers of pamidronate (brand name Aredia): All The Fun of the Flu, Without Risk of Death!
My doctor doubled my dosage of the bone-building anti-osteoporosis medication last Tuesday, from 30mg administered over four hours, to 60mg. Ever since, I’ve been dealing with the kind of malaise, fever, chills and nausea that one would normally experience with the flu, but without the excuse to stay home in bed.
Just another reason it sucks to be me!
I understand why he upped the dosage. So far, the 30mg a month wasn’t accomplishing much. My pain level wasn’t changing. Now I have the pain, as well as feeling generally like death-warmed-over.
I just read this story on USAToday.com about how the Southern Baptists are all in a tizzy about the Scientologists proselytizing in their back yard. Of course, every quote set off my “irony meter.”
The best is from Tal Davis, of the North American Mission Board, the so-called “outreach arm” of the SBC. “Outreach arm” is religio-speak for “proselytizing organ.”
[The Scientology advertising] is sort of a ‘bait and switch’ method. They ask people to take the free test, then use it to tell them that Scientology can help them overcome the problems that the test supposedly revealed. It is a tool simply to get people to buy into the strange, unscientific and unchristian system designed by L. Ron Hubbard. I would recommend that Christians stay away from it.
Let’s see…
Bait and switch? How about telling people your religion is all about peace and love, and that if they’ll read this 2000 year old book, it will tell them just how messed up they are, and how badly they need Jesus to fix them?
The part that really set off the meter was when Davis refers to Scientology as “strange” and “unscientific.” You mean kind of like virgin birth, walking on water, dead people coming back to life, talking animals, et cetera?
I love this little aside: “The SBC lists Scientology as a cult. The Internal Revenue Service lists it as a religion.”
OK, this entry 10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling at “The Oatmeal” is near and dear to my heart. Seriously, folks. If you can’t do something as simple as distinguishing between three homophones, then why should I expect you to be able to drive a car, raise kids, hold down a steady job?
Learn to spell, people. If you do, I’ll respect you in the morning.
Currently Listening To: WKSU from Kent State University
I normally find nothing of any worth on either the American Family Association website or their news arm, OneNewsNow.com. Both sites are prime examples of fundamentalist Christian thought in America today, and I have little patience for them. I have to admit that I did find at least one statement of worth in their recent article “The battle for truth in Bible translation”.
The article is not so much a reaction to the recent Conservapedia Bible translation project as it is a recognition that the project exists. What struck me was the statement from Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University:
People have always done this with the Bible. Virtually everyone in a mainstream Protestant or Roman Catholic church in the United States is reading a doctored version of the Bible.
I agree with this statement almost totally. The only change I might suggest would be to lose the qualifier i.e. to say that everyone is reading a doctored version of the Bible.
The response by the anonymous OneNewsNow writer (they don’t give bylines) was a little confusing:
Jenkins is referring to the Revised Common Lectionary, a selection of biblical texts read in worship services that amounts to about a third of the full text.
The Revised Common Lectionary is not a translation of the Bible, or an attempt to revise the original text. Instead, it’s a means of organizing the Bible to fit a liturgical calendar. I’m not exactly sure what the relevance is to problems with Biblical translation, unless by the word “reading” in the first quote, Jenkins is implying that “mainstream Protestant or Roman Catholic church[es] in the United States” are only exposed to the parts of the Bible that are read in formal services. Otherwise, there’s no explanation for why the RCL could be considered a “translation” of the Bible.
I was born in Mobile, Alabama in 1969 and I've lived my entire life (so far) on the Central Gulf Coast. I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of South Alabama in 1992. Since 1993, I've worked as a graphic designer. I'm married with three dogs, six cats and three mortgages.
They say that you should write what you know, and as I get older I realize that despite everything I've learned, I know little or nothing.
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