Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax
From the Land of the Lost Blunderbuss
Month: November 2006
Cactus Watering
Posted on November 26, 2006 in The Phone Weather
I’ve been letting my cacti and jade plant go unwatered all summer long.
Quiet Among the Bipolars
Posted on November 26, 2006 in Bipolar Disorder
I’ve checked and rechecked my feeds: most of my online bipolar friends have not been writing for days if not weeks.
You Must Fight
Posted on November 24, 2006 in Responsibility
One price of contention is that it is hard to conduct a fearless and searching self-examination. Perhaps that is part of the aim of those who attack.
At the beginning of the Bhaghavad Gita — that section of the epic Mahabharata which has been turned into a holy book — the rebel leader Arjuna finds himself looking over the ranks of soldiers arrayed on the field of battle and feeling sick because of the carnage which is about to occur. He expresses this to the Blessed Lord, Krishna, who says “You must fight.” What follows is a long exposition on the order of things, especially the caste system.
Lately, I’ve been told by others that I do not fight for myself enough. Which means that I don’t hang around when someone is lambasting me and slandering me. When I find myself making angry exchanges, I attempt first to redirect the conversation to the purpose. And if that purpose proves to be boiling me in wordy oil, I leave. I do not have to listen to libel and I do not have to submit to torture.
I, like Arjuna, might have felt the same pain. I have found myself on the field of battle, pressed forward by a sense of obligation to press on. And it did not make me feel well to do so. There are times, it is true, that you must fight, but not for every slight or every misstep on the part of others. My recent score on this has been mixed: I have to say that I have fought when I should not have fought but, also, I have walked away when a disagreement proved too calamitous for my health.
I do not think, like some do, that growth results from not thinking about your mistakes. Sometimes we need to be hard on ourselves. I’ve seen many people remain stuck in a happy land where they are free to keep making the same mistakes, retain the same insensitivities as before, online as well as off. I don’t want to be like that.
The question one might ask is if Arjuna had been accompanied by the Buddha or Jesus or Hillel, would his companion have told him to fight? It is doubtful. We as a civilization claim to be built on the words of Christ and of Hillel, yet there’s still a barroom mentality: a drunk attacks you and you must, some say, bring out the switchblade.
Resist, I say. Stand on the facts. Be honest in your dealings but do not fight. This is not an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This is being free to believe and to investigate, to stand by your thoughts and profit from your discoveries. No blood need be shed, no reputations ruined for this. Die Gedanken sind frei.
Friday Anteater Blogging – A Grammar Lesson
Posted on November 24, 2006 in Xenartha
This came from an article in The Oregonian:
Ernest Miller shared some childhood flashbacks about the word the.
“When I was in elementary school we were taught proper use of the word the. By that I mean that whenever the word the was followed by a word beginning with a vowel it was to be pronounced thee (instead of thu).
“If I was talking about something, such as an animal, the first letter of the name of the animal determined how the word the would be pronounced.
“For example, if the name of the animal was anteater the correct usage would be, ‘I saw thee anteater in the (thu) tree, not the (thu) anteater in the (thu) tree.’
“This rule only applies to the pronunciation of the word the, and not the spelling of the word.
“All the so-called educated people, such as newscasters . . . always mispronounce the word the as it relates to the first letter of the word following.”
Who needs cat or squid blogging when anteaters combine the best qualities of both?
On The Origin of Small Hopes
Posted on November 23, 2006 in Sorrow & Regret
I just wish that people would follow my example when they speak to me about recent matters.
Thanksgiving Wish for All
Posted on November 23, 2006 in Festivals
May the only turkey at your Thanksgiving feast be the one on the table.
Atheists Diss Dawkins
Posted on November 22, 2006 in Morals & Ethics
Nice defense of the concept of religious and areligious tolerance here.
Fundamentalists reject “tolerance” because they see it as the doorway to evil, one which gives errant visions equal time with God’s unchanging truth. (“That word ‘broad-minded,'” sang the Louvin Brothers, “is spelled S-I-N.”) The Evangelical Atheists explicitly rejecttolerance, too. They argue that those who preach tolerance are creating a friendly climate for extremism. They offer no documentation to support their argument, only the rhetoric of vituperation.
Plates of Fog
Posted on November 22, 2006 in Driving
Foggy nights make familiar roads into undiscovered countries.
Dead Deer Sex
Posted on November 22, 2006 in Strange
When is an animal no longer an animal? This plea didn’t work out.
No Retraction Policy
Posted on November 22, 2006 in Site News
I will not make any retractions about anonymous and unidentifiable parties (e.g. no sex, no name, no location, no country of origin, no age, no affiliation), especially those who set up defamatory web sites and use sock puppets to promote them.
Back to regularly scheduled blogging.
Six Imans Could Have Been None
Posted on November 21, 2006 in Morals & Ethics
The details of the story are not yet in, but six imans were dragged off a US Airways flight. Some claim that it was for praying. Others for standing up just before and during takeoff, which is a safety hazard.
Taking them off in handcuffs feels extreme to me, but the men had unbuckled their seat belts and risen into a place of danger. They could have fallen and done injury to themselves or others.
If this is the case, I do not sympathize.
It seems to me that if there is a God, that it is a patient god, not a timekeeper who docks you salvation for missing a scheduled prayer or arriving a few minutes before or a few minutes after the prescribed time.
Islam makes exceptions for the sick and the young during Ramadan. They can do it for the needs of a plane flight.
