the devil's always in the details
I've been absent the last couple of weeks because I was finishing the albatross that has been around my neck for over six months. I finally sent out my first sole-authored paper for review. Now, I just need to get me a reviewer voodoo doll!
I am getting ready to head to ASA. I'm sad that I missed the Scatterplot party and will get in too late for the Anomie's grad student brunch, but hopefully I will find others through the new ASA tweet network.
Tornado footage from Iowa was on T.V. late last night, and yes, we brought up the Apocalypse, and yes, we cracked open a Bible. That's what two pitchers of margaritas and dozens of years of education will do to a party.
Comparisons of the past few years to the end of days--New-Testament-style--are fairly common. I'm sure 2008 is not the first year this has been brought up. After all, the Bible describes the end of the world as a panoply of persecution, climate change, and violence, all of which have been going on, sadly enough, for quite some time. In Revelations, unspeakable violence destroys a quarter of the earth (for starters), the moon becomes red like blood, the sun is blacked out, wind stops blowing, and stars fall to the earth.
And as long as we were trying to feel out how much we could say about this without sounding too ridiculous, I thought of the recent SCOTUS decision on the D.C. gun ban.
Second Amendment
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
If writers could see 200, or 2000 years into the future, which many would say God can, and our founders attempted to, what was predictable or perpetual? Could our founders have predicted the kind of weapons technology that exists today? The moon is often red these days (thanks pollution), and we've had several devastating earthquakes. Is the end upon us, is another interpretation correct--or am I looking in the wrong book?
All the natural disasters lately have been distressing, and it's impossible to read the minds of writers of recent years, let alone writers of centuries and millennia ago--but for better or for worse, this is the job of the powerful. And I'm having trouble evaluating the quality of their work.
