art, politics, religion: discuss
‘There is grandeur in this view of life’ by Richard Dawkins, AAI 2009
Listen here.
Last night we roasted a chicken stuffed with lemon, tarragon, parsley and thyme sitting atop a bed or onion, carrots, yukon golds, and garlic. I think integrating lemon into recipes has become one of my favorite go-to ingredients.
Bon appétit.
Over at Attempts at Rational Behavior, Julie tore into a tweeter who erroneously tweets about all kinds of subjects, but lately about Christmas. Julie reams the guy for the far-from-intellectual use of dragging Hitler’s name into all things atheist. Yawn.
I remember being affected by this kind of propaganda growing up. Hearing about the war on Christmas got my ire up. Thankfully, I grew out of that nonsense, because the more I researched the whole shenanigan of Christmas, the more I learned it’s not a war, it’s a lot of hooey that a lot of people don’t take time to research.
When I was in junior high, the church youth group I went to changed its name to “Icthys”, named after the little ubiquitous vesica piscis symbol for Christ that has been stuck on the back of many cars in the United States. Ichthys is an acronym for the Greek lettering that made up the words, “Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior.” In Greek, it’s: “Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ ͑Υιός, Σωτήρ”, Iēsous Christos Theou Huios, Sōtēr.
The Greek word for “Christ” starts with X. And as Julie points out in her post, it’s where the abbreviation of “Xmas” comes from.
Julie mentioned the date of December 25th being close to the winter solstice, and Christians ripped the date off from pagan celebrations.
Added to her point, over 2,000 years ago astrology permeated the culture. Before electricity and buildings soaking up more energy than the sun, the stars seemed much brighter, and constellations were mysterious and “godly”.
In those days, everyone knew that from year zero give or take a few years back 2,000 years was considered the age of the Virgo (VIRGIN). The Virgo constellation was prominent for 2,000 years, and then Virgo gave birth to the next constellation which was Pisces (the fish). We just left the age of the fish, and now we are in the age of Aquarius.
Try and get the song “Age of Aquarious” out of your head now.
If your socks are on, that’ll change in just a few seconds.
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Buy This (Soon): “A Bit Cross” by Michiel Cornelissen.
A practical pendant with two screwing bits and an IKEA-style hex key.
Will be available for purchase shortly.
[via.]
Seen at the Daily What.
Le Café Wittypoots 