Debating the Debate

So tomorrow there may or may not be a Presidential debate...and if you ask me I don't care.

First off it seems kinda stupid to have it on a Friday night when people usually are not watching TV (I could be wrong seeing as I have not had mine on in 2 months).

Even if they do have it what good can come of it? Do the debates really influence people or are they merely a tool for both sides to perpetuate the Politics of fear and half truths and then try to spin it so that they come out looking good while making the other guy look like the devil incarnate.

If either candidate has more to lose I would have to say it would be McCain since Obama's whole M.O. is that of an orator.

You heard it here first it will be a repeat of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate. Historians and the public at the time agree that "fact wise Nixon won" but Kennedy was charismatic and used his oration skills to appeal directly to the people. Sure this is a pretty basic recap but I don't have the time or energy to do it any more justice.

So that's my two cents on the debates...I will be gloating and saying "I told you so" on Saturday.

and as always Whom ever wins...the Nation loses.

Making The Rounds

So in the past 2 weeks I have been on 2 podcasts...yes they were comic book related

Comic Timing (episode 71)
When I was in PA I sat in with the guys who do the podcast. This was the second year I sat in and recorded with them. As always it was a blast and kinda rowdy...I am surprised we didn't get kicked out or at least warned by hotel security. If you listen you will learn what it means to be "maped." I will warn you that if you are easily offended then pass or if you are listening to it at work headphones are a must.


Raging Bullets
This past Sunday on my way back from Cleveland I recorded a segment with the guys who do the DC Fan Podcast. I have known the guys for a few years now and last time I was over in Cleveland they invited me to record with them. It was really cool to sit with them and geek out over the first 2 issues of Ambush Bug: Year Zero. It was a good time and I hope I get to do it again next time I am over that way and maybe then will have gone through the 2 months of back issues I have stacked up here.

Makes me want to do a podcast of my own

Another New Blog

Yeah so I had to start the new Tri Blog early.

I Don't Date...I Train

Quote of the day by my older brother in response to my Uncle who was bragging about the Cleveland Indians having a 20 win pitcher:
"A 20 win pitcher and $5 will get you a cup of coffee to enjoy while you watch another team in the playoffs"

That's funny...I don't care who you are...

YANKEES SUCK!!!!

The Yankees aren't going to make the playoffs...I Love It!!

Of course the Yankees fans are bitter about that seeing how the Red Sox are going to clinch the Wild Card. If it weren't for the fact that my man Tom Brady is out with an injury for the season I would be looking forward to Football.

Of course Yankees fans just love the fact that Brady got hurt. In fact I think Curt Schilling said it best when he called NY Fans "Bitter and Miserable".

I hope the Yankees enjoy the post season...watching it from their living rooms.

iPOD Top 25 Played Songs

So if you ever wondered what the Top 25 played songs on my Ipod (Top 3 include actual songs from YouTube)--->




3. The Airborne Toxic Event: Sometime After Midnight



Indie rock band I first heard on Sirius Alt Nation. Great song

2. Breaking Benjamin: Breath



1. Linkin Park: Leave Out All the Rest



Pretty much have liked Linkin Park from when they came first debuted. Their music is great to workout to and every time they come out with a new album they reinvent themselves just enough to stay fresh.

Politics in the Key of Duh!

So I saw this on CNN.com this morning…do the Republicans ever learn???

Heart condemns McCain-Palin use of 'Barracuda'

In February of this year John McCain at his campaign rallies, used John Mellencamp’s “Our Country” and “Pink Houses” booming out over the speakers. Uplifting heartland rock must have seemed like a smart pick, but there’s just one problem: Mellencamp is an ardent Democrat and was a supporter of John Edwards – who had been playing “Our Country” and “Small Town” at his rallies. At the time Mellencamp didn’t make a public response, but his reps were quietly reaching out to McCain and asking him to stop playing his tunes. Not to mention that those votes McCain was seeking probably wouldn’t agree with the mildly progressive lyrics to “Our Country,” which call on the government to “help the poor and common man” and suggest that “there’s room enough here for science to live/ And there’s room enough here for religion to forgive.” And did McCain really want to associate himself with those “Pink Houses” lines about the “simple man” paying for the “the thrills, the bills and the pills that kill”? Really don't think that shouts Family Values....


more recently McCain got in trouble for using Jackson Brown's song "Running on Empty" in a tv ad.

McCain is not the first to make these mistakes. George W. used "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty at campaign events during the 2000 presidential race but was compelled to stop using the song after receiving a cease and desist letter from Petty's publisher. Petty did not want the use of his song to be construed as an endorsement of then candidate Bush. During the 2004 election cycle George W. Bush used “Times Like These” by the Foo Fighters much to the dismay of Dave Grohl and company and prompted him and the rest of the band to get more politically active, and ended up helping the Kerry campaign as a result.
The ultimate misuse of a song was by Ronald Reagan, while one of my favorite Presidents, not the brightest move when he used Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” Lyrically, the song deals with the effects of the Vietnam War onAmericans, although it is often misinterpreted as purely patriotic and jingoistic. The song is in part a tribute to Springsteen's friends who had experienced the Vietnam War, some of whom did not come back; it also protests the hardships the veterans faced upon their return from the war


In late August 1984, the Born in the U.S.A. album was selling very well, its songs were all over the radio, and the associated tour was drawing considerable press. Springsteen shows outside of D.C. attracted even more media attention, and more notably, the widely-read conservative columnist George Will, who after attending a show, published a piece entitled "A Yankee Doodle Springsteen" in which he praised Springsteen as an exemplar of classic American values. He wrote:
"I have not got a clue about Springsteen's politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: 'Born in the U.S.A.!'"

At the same time, the 1984 presidential campaign was in full stride at the time, and Will had connections to President Ronald Reagan's re-election organization. Will thought that Springsteen might endorse Reagan, and got the notion pushed up to high-level Reagan advisor Michael Deaver's office. Those staffers made inquiries to Springsteen's management which were politely rebuffed.

Nevertheless, on September 19, 1984, at a campaign stop in Hammonton, New Jersey, Reagan added the following to his usual stump speech:

"America's future rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts; it rests in the message of hope in songs so many young Americans admire: New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen. And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of mine is all about."

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Granted the Republican party is at a disadvantage when it comes to music, Republican musicians tend to be Country singers and historically the Democrats are more anti establishment rock and roll.

I would like to think that those running the campagin for the guy who wants to be the leader of the free world would be a bit more careful...maybe they thought they could get away with it ...I mean was anyone watching the convention anyway???

Even a young kid knows after a few times ( I am a slow learner so it probably took me 10) that you if you touch a hot stove you are going to get burned. It is not like I am looking for things about the McCain Campagin to nitpick about...I would like to find something about his campaign I can latch onto ... and just not the hotness of Sarah Palin (especially that one picture where she is holding the machine gun...it just gives me that funny feeling)

I just think that they would be smart enough by now to avoid the negative PR....you would think

Political Masturbation...

The Good News:
Tonight ends 2 weeks of political foreplay commonly know as the Convention Season

The Bad News:
There are still 2 months of name calling, pandering, posturing, and ads telling how evil the "other guy" is and how he is going to destroy America and life as we know it.

The Even Worse News:
Nothing pressing like oh lets say the tanking economy, the war, and pretty much every other problem are not going to be addressed in a constructive manner.
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Now I have only followed the conventions from what I read on the news sites but I can pretty much sum up both parties conventions:

Democrats:
The Republicans are evil warmongering people who don't care about the little guy and want to anally rape your grandparents and make them eat dog food while they count their fat stacks of cash on their backs from BIG OIL

Republicans:
The Democrats are anti-patriotic whiners who will tax you broke and bend over backwards to appease anyone who even thinks about pointing a squirt gun in the direction of the U.S. while they make sure that you can't drive your Hummer without taking out a 3rd and 4th Mortgage.


Now I know that the reason for the Conventions are to rally the base of the party and while throwing one heck of a kegger. But when do they start trying to convince me who I should vote for? I still haven't made up my mind...
Do I go with the "orator" or the "Maverick", Darth Vader or Alfred E. Neuman, Paper or plastic?

I watched the first 30 or so minutes of Obama's acceptance speech last week with my friend over in Boston while we played "Take a Drink everytime he says "Change" or bashes Bush...we soon realized that a) there was not enough beer in the house and b) we were tired. I am not going to even watch McCain, I have better things to do like count the dust bunnies around my bed or put together my spin list so I can torture my 5:30 am Spin class tomorrow. I can tell you what his speech is going to be without hearing it: Obama is unprepared to lead, McCain is a war vetern and will take on the Washington D.C. establishment. Then I would have to sit through the pundits and spin doctors getting their rocks off

Long story short:
Whoever wins in November the nation loses and the big winner in all of this is the Companies that sold the balloons and confetti to both parties



So....

SPINsanity

Normally I would post this on my tri blog but I was trying to post maps of my bike rides for labor day weekend and apparently they thought the blog was a spam blog(which most of you probably also do) and are taking their good old time restoring it.

So the next week is going to busy teaching wise in addition to my taking the classes on Tues and Thurs:
Friday Sept 5th -5:30 am

Monday Sept 8th -6:15am to 7:15am @ Albany YMCA
8:00am to 9am @ Bethlehem YMCA (that's right two classes right after another and I will probably take the 5:30 pm class that evening)

Wednesday Sept 10th- 6:15am to 7:15am @ Albany YMCA
5:30pm to 6:30pm @ Bethlehem YMCA

Anyway tomorrow or Friday a post on politics

Misquoting Jesus - Book Review

Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
By Bart Ehram

Synopsis:
"The Bible"-its use in the singular can gloss over the fact that we do not have access to the original text, but only to manuscripts of a relatively late provenance produced at different times and places and containing among them thousands of variant wordings. An accomplished scholar of early Christianity, Ehrman (religious studies, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) ventures out of the ivory tower in this accessible lay introduction to New Testament textual criticism. He sketches the development of New Testament literature, the gradual accumulation of errors therein through the accidental or intentional revisions of copyists, and attempts (beginning with Erasmus in the 16th century) to reconstruct the original text. Since mainstream study editions of the Bible have long drawn attention to the existence of alternate readings, the reasonably well-informed reader will not find much revolutionary analysis here. But Ehrman convincingly argues that even some generally received passages are late additions, which is particularly interesting in the case of those verses with import for doctrinal issues such as women's ordination or the Atonement.
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Ehrman's book can best be described as an introduction to New Testament textual criticism for the beginners, in which he explains the subject in the context of his own background, relating his journey from being an Evangelical Christian to becoming a world renowned New Testament scholar. Besides D. C. Parker's "Living Text of the Gospels," Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus" seems to be the only book on textual criticism designed specifically for the non-expert readers.

In short, Prof. Ehrman explains the copying practises of the earliest period and how the texts of the New Testament writings were corrupted as they were copied and recopied. He begins by introducing the diverse writings produced by the early Christians, such as gospels, Acts, apocalypses, Church orders, apologies etc. Briefly, the formation of the canon is also discussed and we are informed about the literacy level among the early Christians. Thereafter we are introduced to the world of the copyists and Ehrman explains how the early scribes copied texts and the problems associated with the copying of texts.

In a little over 200 pages, Ehrman gets to the point of how the New Testament came to be what it is today. No, it didn't just appear leather-bound, shiny, and new after Jesus' resurrection; rather, it was painstakingly cobbled together decades after Jesus' crucifixion from copies of copies of copies of (you get the point) the original writings of the New Testament authors, which were slowly altered over time by scribes that handed them down, sometimes by accident or othertimes intentionally by those meaning to "correct" things in the scriptures that didn't make sense.

Ehrman provides a clear presentation of how the New Testament from it's founding, transformations, and end result, today. The New Testament was copied, translated, edited, and altered, over centuries. He provides evidence of how many of the tenets of original Orthodox Christianity were lost, altered for political reasons, mis-translated, additions added, omissions removed.

For example, Ehrman tells us that NT manuscripts contain 200,000 to 400,000 "variations." Thanks to Amazon text statistics, we can learn that the NT has about 200,000 words. 1:1 or 2:1 is a pretty high rate of uncertainty!

Ehrman explains that the variations are due to accidental transcription errors, well-intentioned revisions, and revisions made to bolster doctrinal positions. The manuscripts that are probably closest to the lost original documents are papyri found in Egypt. There are 116 of them (Ch. 4, n. 24).

The much revered King James Version was based on a Greek version that was itself based primarily on a single 12th century manuscript (p. 79-83). Because of research conducted since the 1611 publication of the KJV, most manuscripts available today are better than the KJV source (p. 209).

He explains why so many discrepancies appear in what Christians consider to be the Word of God. Some are innocent enough: fatigue, a mishearing or misreading on the part of the scribe or the monk, and the not-so-minor problem created by a form of writing that included no punctuation and no spaces between words. Others, though, are more problematic: a monk forced to choose between two distinctly different meanings for the same word would likely be inclined to choose the meaning that best represented his own beliefs. Still others were blatant errors or additions that were introduced to alter the meaning of the text. Ehrman also offers clear and compelling examples of each kind of error, enough that even a skeptical reader would be hard-pressed to argue that what we have today is what was written in the first century.

One amusing graphic is a reproduction of a page from a fourth-century manuscript in which one scribe wrote this in the margin, apparently blasting a previous copyist: "Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don't change it!"

Another fascinating insights Ehrman offers is an explanation of the literacy rates at the time of Christ and later, particularly what it meant to be "literate" --- which sometimes meant little more than the ability to copy words. Yet, before the rise of monasticism, it often fell to a "literate" Christian in a given town to copy the gospels or the letters of Paul or other letters and writings of New Testament authors. Also important to note is that Jesus spoke "Aramaic" a language that has been a dead language for a long time. Many words from the Aramaic language cannot be transliterated nor translated to other languages.The potential for error was great, and that did not go unnoticed either within the church or without. Origen, a third-century church father, complained about the many mistakes he had found, while a pagan critic of Christianity wrote that Christian scribes had done their work "as though from a drinking bout."

My only gripe is that the book takes so long setting up preliminaries. I know that's necessary for readers without a familiarity with textual criticism and the particulars in the transmission of the English Bible. But it was a slow step through it and doubly so for the initiated. If I were re-reading this, I'd start in section three immediately.

This book was an eye-opener for me, because I had never considered that the scriptures we read today may not be the ones as originally written. The author presents an eloquent and persuasive case for that occurring. He shows quite convincingly how certain verses were changed, either accidentally or deliberately by the copiers of the earliest manuscripts. Many of the changes were incidental and neutral, but several were quite important and changed the whole message of that portion of the text. This is a book that everyone interested in New Testament studies should read.

New Direction

AS I mentioned in my last post I am going to be taking this blog in a new direction. When I first started this blog it was an attempt to keep family and friends up to date on happenings in my life. Well since it seems that my life now revolves around going to the gym,spinning, and triathlon training and I have that covered with my other blog which I update on an almost daily basis (not that anyone really reads what I post. Anyway I have decided that I can use to this blog as a soapbox for other things (I have found that having a more focused blog helps me determine what to write).

So what am I going to be posting here? Well I think I will be talking about things such as politics, religion, politics and religion and reviews of documentaries and books that I have been reading much like I have been doing recently.

It should be an interesting peek into where I am in life and you might just learn somethings about me you never knew.