Just now the Confessor came up to his mother and informed her solemnly that he told his sister to do a time-out because she called him a dummy.

In this week's issue of The Economist, there is an article about an international forum investigating the spread of AIDS worldwide, particularly the reasons for why it spread faster in Africa than elsewhere.

Office Space gets minus one star for reminding me of everything I loathed about living and working in America and curing me of any homesickness I felt (well, for the time being anyway, probably until I watch a baseball game).

It also gets minus one star for curing BoE of any illusions of wanting to live there.

It gets seven stars for being awesomely funny.

(I had only seen clips of it until now and never saw the whole thing.)

Monday night BoE and I were invited to a friend's birthday party, which happened to be at a new local Australian restaurant.

A Russian colleague of BoE's sent this along. Seems the Russkies may be giving rednecks a run for their money...and possibly winning.

If "winning" is the right word here.

[THE SCENE: Ethelred is talking to BoE about a woman he got to know online who is coming over for a visit.]

ETHELRED
As it happens she's in the vicinity to pick up her veil at the cathedral in $NEARBY_CITY and wants to stop by and visit.

BoE
Veil? What for?

ETHELRED
She wants to be a consecrated virgin.

BoE
Sounds interesting. How's that work?

ETHELRED
Well, it's a bit late for you.

BoE
Not really. You don't count.

[THE SCENE: Ethelred returns home from grocery shopping, where he spots a copy of Pocahontas on special on DVD. Since the Confessor has been asking a lot about Virginia lately, Ethelred seizes the opportunity. However, BoE generally dislikes Ethelred's impulse purchases...]

ETHELRED [producing DVD from behind his back]
Surprise!

BoE [looking squinty-eyed skeptical]
What's that?

ETHELRED
It's a bit of Virginia history!

BoE
Uh-huh.

ETHELRED
I got it just for the Confessor!

BoE.
Uh. Huh.

ETHELRED
And she has a nice rack!

BoE
Really. Well, I'm calling your mother.*

ETHELRED
You wouldn't!

* - You see, BoE has the rare advantage of having her mother-in-law always on her side, so she gets to complain about me to a sympathetic ear all the time. Further evidence that women-folk are just generally incapable of understanding my greatness.

The following conversation ensued this evening after I got back from our monthly English service. BoE and the kids didn't go this time because BoE was feeling under the weather.

BoE
So how was the service?

ETHELRED
Oh, it went well enough.

BoE
And what was your sermon about?

ETHELRED
More or less about why we celebrate Advent and Christmas, and being awake--

BoE
Oh, well, whatever you said, I'm sure it was wrong.

ETHELRED
Er...

BoE
Obviously people started celebrating Christmas so they could have a White Christmas.

ETHELRED
[wondering where this is leading]

BoE
...and obviously it's the best time of year to go shopping for presents. So what are you giving me?

ETHELRED
A lump of coal.

BoE
Oooooh, you mean the tiny compressed kind you wear on your finger?

ETHELRED
No, you have to compress it yourself.

BoE
Well, you could always put it between your cheeks for that, then.

---

You see what I put up with? Mutiny in the ranks! Insubordination! Insurrection! MATRIMONY!

Already wrote this in Tammy's blog, but saving it here for posterity.

When BoE and I were still studying, we would occasionally drive from the town where we lived at the time to where BoE's family lives. The route took us over land and through a number of small villages, one of which had a fairly large house at the main intersection (the town was just a wide spot in the road) and with a parking lot in front, conspicuously with cars only having out-of-town plates.

Once my parents visited us, and BoE and I were driving them to visit her family. Naturally we drove through that town, and my dad (who tends to be amazingly naïve sometimes, and who likes to vocally point out anything and everything of remote interest to him) pointed at the house and said, "Ooooh, look at the purty red lights!"

BoE and I sniggered while my mom asked him through clenched teeth if he knew what the red lights were for. He was utterly mystified.

Of course, in his defense the house otherwise looked pretty innocuous -- obviously an old half-timber farmhouse that had been converted to the purpose, and there were no obvious signs other than the parking lot and red lights. If you didn't know what red lights mean, you could have taken it for a restaurant or club or even a private home with too many cars. Even so, whenever my parents are here and we're out for a drive, invariably "look at the purty red lights" comes up.

The funny thing is that Hannover has a big bordello (link semi-SFW) that even advertises on taxis, street signs and the radio. That kinda blew my circuits when they started up.

And yes, prostitutes have to pay taxes on their income. It is considered a regular profession. It used to be that prostitution was technically illegal (or in a legal grey zone), but prostitutes had to pay taxes anyway. But some years ago they just fully legalized it, removing the last major bars from doing it.

One other fun bit about prostitution in Germany: One fairly traditional way of doing it was (and still is) for individual prostitutes to buy an old trailer, RV, or camper, park it alongside a country road and that was their place of business. If you see her sitting at the wheel, she's open for business. If not, she's...occupied. (If the RV is rocking, she's really occupied.) You see them once in a while, though not too frequently. But the funny part was that last year we drove to Wolfsburg with my parents to visit the VW factory (they have a snazzy experience museum). I had never been on that stretch of road before, and it was packed with those RVs.

And once again my dear old dad innocently wondered what all these women were doing parked on the side of the road. :-D

I mentioned in my previous blog entry the German conservative politician who wanted to introduce intelligent design into biology classes in Hessen -- then announced she was a lesbian. OK, that's a pretty unexpected thing, which makes my head spin a little.

But some time ago, I was shopping at a new big grocery store downtown for the first time, where they have a large fresh fish counter. I was walking up to the fish counter sort of absentmindedly, noting that the fresh fish selection looked pretty extensive. The attendant was standing there with his back to me, sharpening a knife or something, and I didn't pay much attention to him. I just stood there, scanning around to see if they might have catfish (which is getting easier to find over here, much easier than it used to be).

Then he turned around abruptly and spoke to me.

Now three things hit me all at once about this person at this moment.

1. He was Turkish.
2. He was wearing lots of makeup and dangly earrings.
3. He was speaking with an outrageous gay lisp.

Any of these things, taken individually, I would hardly take notice of (if at all). Two together, I might mildly take note of, but no big deal. Put all three together, especially when caught completely off guard like that, and my mind went SPLODE and I stood there, with my brain trying to catch up to all of this. I managed to stammer something to the effect of "uh, thanks, just looking" (which was a half-truth, as I was looking at his...quite remarkable earrings) and made my way to the frozen section, where BoE was waiting. I related this to her, and she of course was highly amused at my expense.

This is, of course, why she married me -- I supply her with endless such entertainment with my moments of weakness.

Iamthefallen made a pretty remarkable statement regarding the debate between atheists and believers: "To understand the believer, you should probably understand his beliefs first."

To that end, maybe it might be interesting for me as a believer to lay out some bits of my beliefs, in particular with respect to other religions -- which may well be as effective a rebuttal to some of Dawkins' statements as I can think of.

As most of y'all are no doubt aware by now, I'm a Christian, specifically an Anglican (or, as we're known in America, an Episcopalian). I grew up in the Episcopal Church and was baptized as an infant, had First Communion as a small child, and was an acolyte in my teens. I also attended an Anglican boarding school for my freshman year of high school, then went to a non-denominational private school (albeit one that was dominated by fellow Episcopalians, since it split off from an Episcopal school) for the rest of my high school years.

Then in my college years I drifted away from the church and wasn't very much into belief at all. I would go back for Christmas and Easter, but didn't really have much particular strong feelings for the church, though I was still highly interested in church history.

Meanwhile, throughout my childhood I was interested in science, particularly in cosmology and geology. I grew up watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos series on TV and was hooked. My elementary school also had the rare bonus of having its own observatory, and I was an avid stargazer (one thing I miss about being in urbanized Germany -- the light pollution and haze is horrible and I can't stargaze). I had lots of star maps and magazines about the Big Bang and formation of galaxies. I also got to go to Virginia Tech's geology section a lot on field trips.

I also, as I alluded to in the discussion in the previous entry, grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt. Lots of Creationists, Pentecostals, Baptists, you name it. As liberal somewhat high church Episcopalians, we were very much the exceptions in that area. Once in a while Chick comics would float around, too. So I very much understand the feeling of being an outsider because of my beliefs.

Once I came to Germany, my interest in church history -- now that I was in easy reach of all those historical sites -- kicked into higher gear, and I went on a lot of "pilgrimages" of sorts, most especially to England in 1994 to places like Lindisfarne, Jarrow, Glastonbury and Wells.

Gradually I started to reconnect to my own feelings about the church, but didn't find any parishes here that appealed to me or that I could agree with for various reasons. I didn't want to go to a Roman Catholic parish, there were no Anglican ones nearby, and the Lutheran and other ones didn't appeal to me at all, either (generally just old people and mostly empty).

Eventually I found out about the German Old Catholics -- who are more or less the German equivalents to and partners of the Anglicans -- and that they had a parish in Hannover. Once we found them, we started going to services, and was delighted to find that they more or less thought the same things I did, the priest is my age and is very much of the same mindset, and so on. I had finally found a spiritual home. BoE was also delighted and, after having formally left her church for many years and being a registered non-believer, she became an Old Catholic and was confirmed a few months ago.

So what were my feelings, and why did I only go to Christian churches, and not other religions? Did I consider the existence of God, or the lack thereof?

I actually considered the "proof" of God for years, even as a teenager, once I found out that Sagan -- my old hero -- was an atheist. I didn't know what that was, so being a good bookworm I looked it up. A friend was a bit of a non-believer himself and we talked a lot about it, pretty endlessly, in fact.

At about the same time, when I was 17 or so, I attended a class called "Physics as Metaphor" (based on the book by the same name) taught by the book's author, Roger Jones, a professor of physics at the University of Minnesota. That course also nudged me into thinking about belief a lot and how it intersects with science.

The thing is, I reached the conclusion pretty quickly that God's existence isn't a scientific question. Science is a creature of logic, which (I reasoned) was, like all other laws, a part of this Universe that was created with the Big Bang. Just as the entire Universe would be entirely different if the simplest physical constant was changed, so too could everything be changed if logic itself worked differently. I'm sure many people would be horrified at the thought, but I'm sure logic is just as much a prisoner of our Universe as we and our physical laws are.

Yet God is, almost by definition, outside this Universe (He must be if He made it), perhaps interacting with it, but maybe not (we just don't know and can't know). Thus He is independent of logic, just as He is independent of Time and all our physical laws.

Whether or not you accept this particular line of reasoning, you do however begin to see how logic starts to disintegrate as you approach God, no matter how hard you try. At any rate, I got to this conclusion when I was 18 or so.

In the meantime, my thoughts have continued on these lines, based on ideas from the Bible -- notions of the infinite, eternal God as possible philosophical answers to "what made God", for example, or the Trinity as a possible model for explaining the philosophical problem of the multiple aspects of God that we seem to perceive in various religions.

I've also since read Orthodox Christian ideas about the nature of God, where their explanations -- unfortunately too long to write here -- are endlessly fascinating, even while they are counter-intuitive and often maddening. Sometimes the whole point of seeking God, though, is to never find Him, but to continue searching.

So why Christianity? Why go back to it and not, say, Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam?

The answer there is neatly provided by the Roman Catholic Church, post-Vatican II. In its essence the idea is that all religions may provide some idea of the trueness of God, but some religions provide a better image than others. If you imagine each religion being a camera, some cameras focus better than others or may make a finer image, while others may just be a pinhole camera, but all likely show images of the same God. The question is, which camera is the right one?

Well, which one would you choose, if you felt the need to have a camera? If you had one you were comfortable with and knew how to use, presumably that's the one you'd stick with.

(I should add that at the time before I was confirmed, I didn't seriously feel the need to consider other religions, nor do I in hindsight regret my decision at all. At that point I had had comparative religion classes, was well aware of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, and of course atheism.)

Of course, there is a more to it than that. For one thing, once upon a time I was confirmed in the Church and made a solemn promise in the process, and I take that promise seriously, so I therefore stuck to it. But I also didn't see the need to seriously consider other religions, because while I would readily concede that they may genuinely lead to God, I also as a Christian must fulfill my duty to my own promise. But at least that gives you a general summary of how I got back to where I started, so to speak.

So I ended up being more or less a high church liberal Anglican, just as I was as a child, but deeper and in more detail. Am I right to do so? I have no idea, and will only know once I die. Even so, there you have a general -- if rather long -- overview of just what I believe, and why.

In another online forum -- unfortunately one that is closed to the public -- the topic of Dawkins, Harris, et. al. came up. Naturally yours truly was drawn into it (surprise, surprise). Most people there are of the agnostic, non-religious sort. A few are of the strong atheist sort. I am the only active believer type (as in, part of a specific religious group). I did, of course, mention my fandom of Sagan (including linking to that video I mentioned not long ago). Some others mentioned surprise that a believer like me could be a free thinker, but that didn't seem to make an impression on some others...for:

I have just been informed by one of the atheist types that I have no right to teach my children about my beliefs or that I should not take them with me to church, even if they express the wish to come along*. Furthermore, society (according to this fellow) has an overriding interest in protecting my children from my so-called superstitions (without of course bothering to examine just what it is I believe or why).

Welcome to fascism, 21st century style. I won't mince words. That's just what it is.

Yep, Smooch. Now you know why I'm worried by Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and the rest. It's one thing to want a secular, neutral state (something I happen to think is a good idea). It's totally another to tell me how I should raise my children or even where I'm allowed to take them, just because someone doesn't like what I believe.

I don't think I have ever been so angry in my life.

* - I have never once made the Confessor go to church with me against his will. I generally go alone. Sometimes he asks to come along, and if so, I take him (but only on Sunday mornings -- vespers has has to stay home, because it's past his bedtime). Gloriana only comes along if BoE also wants to come; often BoE prefers to stay home anyway. And if the Confessor wants to leave the service, which he sometimes does, then we leave. The notion that I am forcing anything on him or Gloriana is infuriating and wrong.

Just now I was preparing stuff for this evening's vesper service, which I have to run since the priest is out of town for a conference. I was dashing off a collect -- a type of prayer -- in German (partly translating one from English, partly composing it) and then had BoE double-check the grammar to be sure.

So I had a slight boo-boo in there and had das Finsternis for "the darkness". I should have known better, actually, but I put in "das" without thinking. BoE marked it and said it's "die", and said, "Remember that in German, darkness is female," and got an evil grin.

I retorted, "Knowing you, somehow I'm not surprised."

Ah yes, nine years of holy acrimony and still counting. :-)

I was sitting here in the workroom, minding my own business while surfing Multiply a bit, and BoE poked her head in the door to say the following:

You know this big brown thing in the corner of the bathroom? Made out of wicker? It's called a hamper.

I stared at her blankly.

You know, it's for clothing.

I continued to look at her blankly.

I can give you the precise GPS coordinates if you want.

Then I gave her a look of recognition, nodded and demonstratively turned back to my computer. She chortled. :-)

Before the new Harry Potter book comes out, I'd like to remind y'all about this post, where BoE's theory about Dumbledore's death -- or lack thereof -- is explained.

Here is the theory again:



Now, Rowling has said adamantly that Dumbledore is dead. Thing is, he'd have to die to be reborn as a phoenix, so it still lines up with her statement. She has also hinted that Dumbledore will make "some kind of appearance" in the seventh book. Well, him being reborn would be a hell of an appearance. And it would return Snape back to his original pattern of appearing evil but always turning out to be good in the end after all.