It's all in the interpretation
It turns out the words "kill" "slay" and "unfaithful" appear a lot in the Quran. But from all of the interpretations I've read this morning (and last night), seems to me that it doesn't call for those who believe in the faith of Islam to seek out and kill the infidel. Instead it calls for them to take that action only when attacked first.
Now I'm not theologian but when looking at who is interpreting these writings one way versus the other, the agenda is usually clear. Those who are calling for the rest of the world to put a stop to what they label as "Islamofasicm" want to take the worst of the acts of the radical Muslims and use them as a justification to pump spending into intelligence, defense and other ways that will supposedly increase our security. They want to blame the worst of the terrorist acts on more of the broader population of those who are Muslims. Those who also claim the Quran calls for killings like at that mall in Kenya yesterday, but support and extol such cowardly acts are taking a similar interpretation of the scripture, but to pervert what the book says to validate their agenda of terror.
Then there are those who point out that Islam is a faith of peace, who decry the terrorism and say that only when taken out of context does the Quran call for such things and I find them to be the most credible. Their only agenda seems to be a search for the truthful interpretations of these writings.
I hold no ill will toward any individual based on their religious beliefs. I do hold ill will against those who in the name of religion carry out acts of terrorism.
* * *
Saw a great movie this morning. "Enough Said" is the first film starring James Gandolfini that was released following his tragic death. There is one more film he is in that should be released at some point, but it was very nice to see most of the audience applauding at the end of the credits when the screen read simply, "For Jim".
Now I'm home resting. I will be here for the rest of today and most of tomorrow. Tuesday I'm back in the classroom, followed by three more days off. One of my colleagues has asked me to cover two of his classes in October, which should be fine; but the good news is I've made it through the rough patch.
Time to expend some energy on other things now that I have my teaching in hand. There are film reviews to write, other films to watch and review and just getting some rest would be nice. I've also got to deal with rescheduling that defibrillator procedure but I'll work on that tomorrow.
* * *
Senator Ted Cruz, a probably candidate to be the Republican nominee in the 2016 presidential election is saying he will block any bill to fund the government beyond September 30th that doesn't defund Obamacare.
To put this another way, this Senator is willing to let the federal government stop functioning, let employees go without paychecks, damage what little economic recovery there is, all in the name of politics.
Any chance that I might have considered him a viable choice in the 2016 or any future presidential election just evaporated. You don't play brinksmanship politics with the nation's basic functions and/or economy.
Now the question becomes, can he do this? Surprisingly, even in the face of the rule that says it takes only 51 votes in the Senate to invoke cloture of a budget resolution, the answer is yes. It's a point of parliamentary procedure. If the budget resolution is filibustered and then cloture invoked, the Senate can vote and pass it. But until the Senate passes a second resolution that "deems" the budget resolution the Senate has approved to be identical to the House resolution and then and only then does it go to the President's desk for signature.
I was not fully aware of this. So Senator Cruz can and apparently will filibuster this "deeming" resolution if he follows through on his threat.
Naturally the ultra-conservatives favor his approach. Then again, they also appear to favor letting people who are dying be turned away from emergency rooms if they can't pay.
* * *
The death of an 83 year old adjunct professor of French at Duquesne University has raised the question of whether or not part-time professors should be paid more. Margaret Mary Vojtko had taught there for 25 years before being informed last spring her contract would not be renewed. She was suffering from cancer, couldn't afford to heat her home and had no health insurance. Why she didn't have Medicare is something that is not addressed by the news articles telling her story.
What is there are scathing statements that adjunct professors are a way that colleges and universities have tried to hold down the cost of education. Considering that President Obama just talked about how we must hold the cost of education in check, this makes this a very relevant topic.
One thing that needs to stop is the outcry that paying coaches so much money while adjunct professors are underpaid is evidence that the priorities of the educational system are out of balance. They may be, but this is not proof of this assertion.
Almost without exception, every major university's athletic department budget is funded in full by revenue from the sports they compete in. A little over two years ago, the Pac-12 signed a 12 year television contract worth $3 billion, giving each of the conference's schools roughly $21 million per year. And some football and basketball games were excluded from the contract. Now there's a PAC-12 sports television network all its own.
UCLA has six football games scheduled at their home stadium, the Rose Bowl, this season. Last season they averaged over 68,000 attendance. General admission tickets are $20 while reserved seats go for $45. Figure an average ticket price of ($20 + $45)/2 and you get $32.50. Reduce that down to $28 to account for the fact that season ticket holders get a 10% discount and some general admission tickets for kids are sold at a lower price. $28 per ticket x 68,000 x 6 games = $11,424,000 in ticket revenue from home football games. Add concessions, parking and between the TV contract and just football home game gross revenues, the athletics department has raked in nearly $40 million in revenues. Add booster donations and the like and it becomes fairly clear that athletics programs pay for themselves; and the big sports like football and basketball pay for their poorer cousins like water polo and tennis.
So let's keep the spending on sports out of the debate on paying teachers at colleges and universities, please?
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Kate Hudson is indeed beautiful, and I happen to know she's intelligent and a good person. But the entertainment media needs to let go of their obsession with her legs. She's a person, not a "pair of pins."
One white supremacist is trying to turn a very small town in North Dakota into a "whites only" town and the locals are planning to fight his efforts. I hope he fails miserably.
I wound up with some attorney's card and I have no idea where I got it. Weird.
Hillary Clinton is smart in taking her time about running for the presidency in 2016. She shouldn't commit unless she has a real chance to win the general election (she'd win the primary easily, but Benghazi might harm her later on). Now if she has a real chance, she should give it a shot.
Miley Cyrus can sing? Yes. She proved it at the iHeart Music Festival. Unfortunately she seems to prefer twerking to singing.
Wayne LaPierre of the NRA says that if more of the workers at the Washington Naval Yard had been armed with their own weapons, fewer would have died. Why don't we just go back to the days of the old West, Wayne, with everyone "strapped" and disputes settled on Main street with a quick-draw contest? Weapons in the home for defense are fine. Out in public, we need to make workplaces and streets safer, not more dangerous.
So President Obama thinks that the Director of National Intelligence should oversee the "independent" review of the National Security Agency in the wake of the Snowden release of classified information? Quis custodiet ipsos custodies, Mr. President?
* * *
66 – Roman Emperor Nero creates the Legion I Italica.
904 – The warlord Zhu Quanzhong kills Emperor Zhaozong, the penultimate emperor of the Tang Dynasty, after seizing control of the imperial government.
1236 – The Lithuanians and Semigallians defeat the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in the Battle of Saule.
1499 – Treaty of Basel
1586 – Battle of Zutphen: Spanish victory over the English and Dutch.
1598 – English playwright Ben Jonson kills an actor in a duel and is indicted for manslaughter.
1692 – The last people hanged for witchcraft in England's North American colonies takes place.
1711 – The Tuscarora War begins in present-day North Carolina.
1761 – George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz are crowned King and Queen, respectively, of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
1776 – Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during American Revolution.
1789 – The office of United States Postmaster General is established.
1789 – Battle of Rymnik establishes Alexander Suvorov as a pre-eminent Russian military commander after his allied army defeat superior Ottoman Empire forces.
1792 – Primidi Vendémiaire of year 1 of the French Republican Calendar as the French First Republic comes into being.
1823 – Joseph Smith, Jr. states he found the Golden plates on this date after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried.
1857 – The Russian warship Lefort capsizes and sinks during a storm in the Gulf of Finland, killing all 826 aboard.
1862 – Slavery in the United States: a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation is released.
1866 – Battle of Curupaity in the Paraguayan War.
1869 – Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold premieres in Munich.
1885 – Lord Randolph Churchill makes a speech in Ulster in opposition to Home Rule.
1888 – The first issue of National Geographic Magazine is published.
1896 – Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history.
1908 – The Bulgarian Declaration of Independence is proclaimed.
1910 – The Duke of York's Picture House opens in Brighton, now the oldest continually operating cinema in Britain.
1914 – German submarine SM U-9 torpedoes and sinks the British cruisers, HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy on the Broad Fourteens off the Dutch coast with the loss of over 1,400 men.
1919 – The steel strike of 1919, led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, begins in Pennsylvania before spreading across the United States.
1927 – Jack Dempsey loses the "Long Count" boxing match to Gene Tunney.
1934 – An explosion takes place at Gresford Colliery in Wales, leading to the deaths of 266 miners and rescuers.
1937 – Spanish Civil War: Peña Blanca is taken; the end of the Battle of El Mazuco.
1939 – Joint victory parade of Wehrmacht and Red Army in Brest-Litovsk at the end of the Invasion of Poland.
1941 – World War II: On Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murder 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsya, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.
1955 – In the United Kingdom, the television channel ITV goes live for the first time.
1957 – In Haiti, François Duvalier is elected president.
1960 – The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation.
1965 – The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 (also known as the Second Kashmir War) between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, ends after the UN calls for a cease-fire.
1975 – Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by Oliver Sipple.
1979 – The Vela Incident (also known as the South Atlantic Flash) is observed near Bouvet Island, thought to be a nuclear weapons test.
1980 – Iraq invades Iran.
1991 – The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time by the Huntington Library.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Michael Faraday
Wilhelm Keitel
Shigeru Yoshida
Paul Muni
Joseph Valachi (a fascinating story)
Ellen Church (first airline stewardess)
Tommy Lasorda
Fay Weldon
Ingemar Johansson
Lute Olson
Jeremiah Wright
Toni Basil
David Stern
David Coverdale
Paul Le Mat
Shari Belafonte
Debby Boone
Neil Cavuto
Joan Jett
Tai Babilonia
Scott Baio
Bonnie Hunt
Catherine Oxenberg
I thought about doing movie quotes today from "Zapped" because Scott Baio was in it, but it was awful and thankfully has no memorable lines. So instead I picked a film with a figure skater in it, in honor of Tai Babilonia, "For Your Eyes Only":
[Bond walks into a Greek Confessional Booth]
James Bond: Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
Q: [Removing disguise] That's putting it mildly, 007!
#2
James Bond: The Chinese have a saying; "Before setting off on revenge, you first dig *two* graves"!
Melina: I don't expect you to understand, you're English, but I'm half Greek and Greek women like Elektra always avenge their loved ones!
(Conficius said that, but then again he also said "man who go to bed with sex problem on mind awaken with solution in hand)
#3
Bibi: That's a laugh. Everyone knows it builds up muscle tone.
James Bond: Well, how about you build up a little more muscle tone by putting on your clothes?
Bibi: Don't you like me?
James Bond: [wearily] Why, I think you're wonderful, Bibi... But I don't think your uncle Aris would approve.
Bibi: [scoffs] Him? He thinks I'm still a virgin.
James Bond: Yes, well...
Now I'm not theologian but when looking at who is interpreting these writings one way versus the other, the agenda is usually clear. Those who are calling for the rest of the world to put a stop to what they label as "Islamofasicm" want to take the worst of the acts of the radical Muslims and use them as a justification to pump spending into intelligence, defense and other ways that will supposedly increase our security. They want to blame the worst of the terrorist acts on more of the broader population of those who are Muslims. Those who also claim the Quran calls for killings like at that mall in Kenya yesterday, but support and extol such cowardly acts are taking a similar interpretation of the scripture, but to pervert what the book says to validate their agenda of terror.
Then there are those who point out that Islam is a faith of peace, who decry the terrorism and say that only when taken out of context does the Quran call for such things and I find them to be the most credible. Their only agenda seems to be a search for the truthful interpretations of these writings.
I hold no ill will toward any individual based on their religious beliefs. I do hold ill will against those who in the name of religion carry out acts of terrorism.
* * *
Saw a great movie this morning. "Enough Said" is the first film starring James Gandolfini that was released following his tragic death. There is one more film he is in that should be released at some point, but it was very nice to see most of the audience applauding at the end of the credits when the screen read simply, "For Jim".
Now I'm home resting. I will be here for the rest of today and most of tomorrow. Tuesday I'm back in the classroom, followed by three more days off. One of my colleagues has asked me to cover two of his classes in October, which should be fine; but the good news is I've made it through the rough patch.
Time to expend some energy on other things now that I have my teaching in hand. There are film reviews to write, other films to watch and review and just getting some rest would be nice. I've also got to deal with rescheduling that defibrillator procedure but I'll work on that tomorrow.
* * *
Senator Ted Cruz, a probably candidate to be the Republican nominee in the 2016 presidential election is saying he will block any bill to fund the government beyond September 30th that doesn't defund Obamacare.
To put this another way, this Senator is willing to let the federal government stop functioning, let employees go without paychecks, damage what little economic recovery there is, all in the name of politics.
Any chance that I might have considered him a viable choice in the 2016 or any future presidential election just evaporated. You don't play brinksmanship politics with the nation's basic functions and/or economy.
Now the question becomes, can he do this? Surprisingly, even in the face of the rule that says it takes only 51 votes in the Senate to invoke cloture of a budget resolution, the answer is yes. It's a point of parliamentary procedure. If the budget resolution is filibustered and then cloture invoked, the Senate can vote and pass it. But until the Senate passes a second resolution that "deems" the budget resolution the Senate has approved to be identical to the House resolution and then and only then does it go to the President's desk for signature.
I was not fully aware of this. So Senator Cruz can and apparently will filibuster this "deeming" resolution if he follows through on his threat.
Naturally the ultra-conservatives favor his approach. Then again, they also appear to favor letting people who are dying be turned away from emergency rooms if they can't pay.
* * *
The death of an 83 year old adjunct professor of French at Duquesne University has raised the question of whether or not part-time professors should be paid more. Margaret Mary Vojtko had taught there for 25 years before being informed last spring her contract would not be renewed. She was suffering from cancer, couldn't afford to heat her home and had no health insurance. Why she didn't have Medicare is something that is not addressed by the news articles telling her story.
What is there are scathing statements that adjunct professors are a way that colleges and universities have tried to hold down the cost of education. Considering that President Obama just talked about how we must hold the cost of education in check, this makes this a very relevant topic.
One thing that needs to stop is the outcry that paying coaches so much money while adjunct professors are underpaid is evidence that the priorities of the educational system are out of balance. They may be, but this is not proof of this assertion.
Almost without exception, every major university's athletic department budget is funded in full by revenue from the sports they compete in. A little over two years ago, the Pac-12 signed a 12 year television contract worth $3 billion, giving each of the conference's schools roughly $21 million per year. And some football and basketball games were excluded from the contract. Now there's a PAC-12 sports television network all its own.
UCLA has six football games scheduled at their home stadium, the Rose Bowl, this season. Last season they averaged over 68,000 attendance. General admission tickets are $20 while reserved seats go for $45. Figure an average ticket price of ($20 + $45)/2 and you get $32.50. Reduce that down to $28 to account for the fact that season ticket holders get a 10% discount and some general admission tickets for kids are sold at a lower price. $28 per ticket x 68,000 x 6 games = $11,424,000 in ticket revenue from home football games. Add concessions, parking and between the TV contract and just football home game gross revenues, the athletics department has raked in nearly $40 million in revenues. Add booster donations and the like and it becomes fairly clear that athletics programs pay for themselves; and the big sports like football and basketball pay for their poorer cousins like water polo and tennis.
So let's keep the spending on sports out of the debate on paying teachers at colleges and universities, please?
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Kate Hudson is indeed beautiful, and I happen to know she's intelligent and a good person. But the entertainment media needs to let go of their obsession with her legs. She's a person, not a "pair of pins."
One white supremacist is trying to turn a very small town in North Dakota into a "whites only" town and the locals are planning to fight his efforts. I hope he fails miserably.
I wound up with some attorney's card and I have no idea where I got it. Weird.
Hillary Clinton is smart in taking her time about running for the presidency in 2016. She shouldn't commit unless she has a real chance to win the general election (she'd win the primary easily, but Benghazi might harm her later on). Now if she has a real chance, she should give it a shot.
Miley Cyrus can sing? Yes. She proved it at the iHeart Music Festival. Unfortunately she seems to prefer twerking to singing.
Wayne LaPierre of the NRA says that if more of the workers at the Washington Naval Yard had been armed with their own weapons, fewer would have died. Why don't we just go back to the days of the old West, Wayne, with everyone "strapped" and disputes settled on Main street with a quick-draw contest? Weapons in the home for defense are fine. Out in public, we need to make workplaces and streets safer, not more dangerous.
So President Obama thinks that the Director of National Intelligence should oversee the "independent" review of the National Security Agency in the wake of the Snowden release of classified information? Quis custodiet ipsos custodies, Mr. President?
* * *
66 – Roman Emperor Nero creates the Legion I Italica.
904 – The warlord Zhu Quanzhong kills Emperor Zhaozong, the penultimate emperor of the Tang Dynasty, after seizing control of the imperial government.
1236 – The Lithuanians and Semigallians defeat the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in the Battle of Saule.
1499 – Treaty of Basel
1586 – Battle of Zutphen: Spanish victory over the English and Dutch.
1598 – English playwright Ben Jonson kills an actor in a duel and is indicted for manslaughter.
1692 – The last people hanged for witchcraft in England's North American colonies takes place.
1711 – The Tuscarora War begins in present-day North Carolina.
1761 – George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz are crowned King and Queen, respectively, of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
1776 – Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during American Revolution.
1789 – The office of United States Postmaster General is established.
1789 – Battle of Rymnik establishes Alexander Suvorov as a pre-eminent Russian military commander after his allied army defeat superior Ottoman Empire forces.
1792 – Primidi Vendémiaire of year 1 of the French Republican Calendar as the French First Republic comes into being.
1823 – Joseph Smith, Jr. states he found the Golden plates on this date after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried.
1857 – The Russian warship Lefort capsizes and sinks during a storm in the Gulf of Finland, killing all 826 aboard.
1862 – Slavery in the United States: a preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation is released.
1866 – Battle of Curupaity in the Paraguayan War.
1869 – Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold premieres in Munich.
1885 – Lord Randolph Churchill makes a speech in Ulster in opposition to Home Rule.
1888 – The first issue of National Geographic Magazine is published.
1896 – Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history.
1908 – The Bulgarian Declaration of Independence is proclaimed.
1910 – The Duke of York's Picture House opens in Brighton, now the oldest continually operating cinema in Britain.
1914 – German submarine SM U-9 torpedoes and sinks the British cruisers, HMS Aboukir, HMS Hogue and HMS Cressy on the Broad Fourteens off the Dutch coast with the loss of over 1,400 men.
1919 – The steel strike of 1919, led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, begins in Pennsylvania before spreading across the United States.
1927 – Jack Dempsey loses the "Long Count" boxing match to Gene Tunney.
1934 – An explosion takes place at Gresford Colliery in Wales, leading to the deaths of 266 miners and rescuers.
1937 – Spanish Civil War: Peña Blanca is taken; the end of the Battle of El Mazuco.
1939 – Joint victory parade of Wehrmacht and Red Army in Brest-Litovsk at the end of the Invasion of Poland.
1941 – World War II: On Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murder 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsya, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed.
1955 – In the United Kingdom, the television channel ITV goes live for the first time.
1957 – In Haiti, François Duvalier is elected president.
1960 – The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation.
1965 – The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 (also known as the Second Kashmir War) between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, ends after the UN calls for a cease-fire.
1975 – Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by Oliver Sipple.
1979 – The Vela Incident (also known as the South Atlantic Flash) is observed near Bouvet Island, thought to be a nuclear weapons test.
1980 – Iraq invades Iran.
1991 – The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time by the Huntington Library.
Famous Folk Born On This Date:
Michael Faraday
Wilhelm Keitel
Shigeru Yoshida
Paul Muni
Joseph Valachi (a fascinating story)
Ellen Church (first airline stewardess)
Tommy Lasorda
Fay Weldon
Ingemar Johansson
Lute Olson
Jeremiah Wright
Toni Basil
David Stern
David Coverdale
Paul Le Mat
Shari Belafonte
Debby Boone
Neil Cavuto
Joan Jett
Tai Babilonia
Scott Baio
Bonnie Hunt
Catherine Oxenberg
I thought about doing movie quotes today from "Zapped" because Scott Baio was in it, but it was awful and thankfully has no memorable lines. So instead I picked a film with a figure skater in it, in honor of Tai Babilonia, "For Your Eyes Only":
[Bond walks into a Greek Confessional Booth]
James Bond: Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
Q: [Removing disguise] That's putting it mildly, 007!
#2
James Bond: The Chinese have a saying; "Before setting off on revenge, you first dig *two* graves"!
Melina: I don't expect you to understand, you're English, but I'm half Greek and Greek women like Elektra always avenge their loved ones!
(Conficius said that, but then again he also said "man who go to bed with sex problem on mind awaken with solution in hand)
#3
Bibi: That's a laugh. Everyone knows it builds up muscle tone.
James Bond: Well, how about you build up a little more muscle tone by putting on your clothes?
Bibi: Don't you like me?
James Bond: [wearily] Why, I think you're wonderful, Bibi... But I don't think your uncle Aris would approve.
Bibi: [scoffs] Him? He thinks I'm still a virgin.
James Bond: Yes, well...
posted by me at 4:48 PM
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