by Doctor Science
So, it's Rapture Weekend! As Fred Clark says at slactivist, it's not altogether all that funny -- the people who really believe are truly suffering, and worse is to come. The formula is clear: half will despair, and half will double down.
A lot of people are posting links to their favorite "end of the world" songs today, and here's my nominee:
at YouTube
By chagrined, using audio from Great Big Sea's version of "It's the End of the World", video from "Life After People". Even if all us humans disappear tomorrow, there's plenty of life to go on.
If you don't believe the Rapture will happen real soon now, it behooves you to listen to Real Climate Scientists warning that "Earth, unlike Alien, has no sequel":
This is the "clean" version; the more-authentic NSFW version is here. I think I got this from Andrew Sullivan.
Speaking of sequels, I'm not going to be around, really, this weekend -- I'm getting ready to head out for Sprog #1's college graduation. [email protected]#[email protected]! How'd that happen?!?!? Should you happen to know of any jobs for a multi-lingual grad (English+French/Latin/Ancient Greek/Japanese/Medieval French/Hebrew so far -- but obvs a quick study who'd *love* to get the opportunity to learn Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Korean ...) who might be going on to a Master of Library Science after a few years of working, mention it in comments and I'll email you. Favored locations: between greater Boston and greater Philly, not in NYC unless it's the opportunity of a lifetime (with salary to match).
Fort Meade.
Posted by: Ugh | May 20, 2011 at 01:40 PM
Here, in honor of TEOTWAWKI, is the answer:
Posted by: ral | May 20, 2011 at 01:50 PM
Ugh: You mean for a possible job? That might be too far south for her, and I don't know how willing she is to work for the military -- she took an excellent history course on "Writing about War", which was just as traumatic as it ought to be.
Posted by: Doctor Science | May 20, 2011 at 02:27 PM
But I understand it is a global problem, and our team is glad to help in any wak possible.
They missed one, ral.
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | May 20, 2011 at 02:50 PM
Fort Meade usually refers to the National Security Agency, not the military. So she'd be spying on, well, in theory, non-US residents mostly. They're the spooks that live north of DC as opposed to the spooks from Langley that live south.
Posted by: Turbulence | May 20, 2011 at 02:53 PM
hsh, there's always one more bug. :-)
Posted by: ral | May 20, 2011 at 03:02 PM
You mean for a possible job?
Yes, sorry, I know of no such actual job. Just musing that, as Turb notes, the NSA (or CIA) would be interested in someone with linguistic skills (or they should be).
Posted by: Ugh | May 20, 2011 at 03:08 PM
I'll talk to her about it, but I think that the War course only increased her repugnance for REMFs and all their works. In addition to her being a flaming lefty, that is. Who makes chainmail in her spare time ...
Posted by: Doctor Science | May 20, 2011 at 03:23 PM
Just REMFs?
Posted by: Ugh | May 20, 2011 at 03:30 PM
Them more than any -- the course *started* with learning about PTSD, so she sees everyone who's been in a active war zone (soldier or civilian) as wounded to some degree. But people who enable -- or start -- wars and don't pay, they're lower than the low.
She's also been reading Homer (in the original), where there are no REMFs -- except the gods, and no wonder the Greeks didn't think their gods were perfect.
Posted by: Doctor Science | May 20, 2011 at 04:06 PM
I'm a big fan of Homer. His contributions to philosophy are underappreciated, in general.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | May 20, 2011 at 05:04 PM
A few lefties in the NSA or CIA might be a good thing for the world.
Posted by: Marcellina | May 20, 2011 at 05:15 PM
Damn, I was going to suggest the DIA, CIA or NSA. I've been beaten to it.
"Them more than any -- the course *started* with learning about PTSD, so she sees everyone who's been in a active war zone (soldier or civilian) as wounded to some degree."
Ha! there's that ivort tower lib victim talk again.
Well, if an interesting and important career defending her country is not on her list of priorities, it seems that she is most qualified for alternative careers with a host of employers; McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC to name a few. If she has a good body and a decent face (probably not though, huh?) there's always stripping. Otherwise, I can't imagine what are those liberal arts degrees and lack of life experience gets you.
Posted by: avedis | May 20, 2011 at 08:16 PM
Indeed! What could someone who speaks haf a dozen languages and can easily learn more possibly do in life besides the military, mcdonalds, or stripping?
What. An. Ass.
Posted by: Turbulence | May 20, 2011 at 09:02 PM
Hey, Avedis, it's Friday night - shouldn't you be out pressuring strangers for sex? After all, you fought for their rights, so they owe you, and time for them to pay up, eh? Or maybe you're just an *internet* bully?
When did ObWi begin to tolerate open trolling and plain thuggery?
Posted by: chmood | May 20, 2011 at 09:44 PM
What chmood said.
Posted by: JanieM | May 20, 2011 at 11:08 PM
where for the MLS? my sprog #3 is at U WA, just finishing the first year of her mostly on-line courses. she has to take at least one on campus every quarter to get her GI bill.
Congrats to you both! and good luck with the job thing.
Posted by: geographylady | May 20, 2011 at 11:10 PM
To register my opinion, avedis, we banned Count-me-in for his comments concerning your daughter until he apologized, so your comments about someone's daughter should require the same banning pending an apology (regardless how you took it, I might add). And while this is my opinion, I am a front pager, so if the other front pagers agree, consider this your warning.
Posted by: liberal japonicus | May 21, 2011 at 12:53 AM
Sydney, Australia, 8.34 pm 21 May 2011. Still here, folks, and no suspicious piles of clothes in the streets. Either all Australians are damned, or nothing's happening.
Posted by: Emma | May 21, 2011 at 06:35 AM
"Sydney, Australia, 8.34 pm 21 May 2011"
God is certainly on Pacific Standard Time.
Posted by: CCDG | May 21, 2011 at 08:31 AM
do they even let lefties into the NSA ?
Posted by: cleek | May 21, 2011 at 09:04 AM
@ Emma:
Either all Australians are damned, or nothing's happening.
And you're sure the two conditions are mutually exclusive???? ;-)
And by the by, New York City is still here today as well; with no appreciable diminuition of the population. You would know The Rapture here by the horde of real estate agents it would bring out looking to grab listings for all those newly-empty apartments....
Posted by: Jay C | May 21, 2011 at 09:21 AM
she sees everyone who's been in a active war zone (soldier or civilian) as wounded to some degree."
Ha! there's that ivort tower lib victim talk again.
To register my opinion: QED.
My opinion only, of course.
Regarding LJ's comment, there is this from the posting rules:
Do not consistently abuse or vilify other posters for its own sake.
You appear to have some kind of issue with Doctor Science, specifically. That's fine, everybody's got someone who rubs them the wrong way.
No doubt you play that role for some folks.
Your manner of expressing your general annoyance with what you perceive to be Doc Science's "ivory tower lib victim talk" is pretty freaking hard to distinguish from abuse and vilification for its own sake.
So, FWIW, I second LJ's comment.
It's pretty simple: when you feel the urge to be a jerk, step away from the computer for ten minutes. We'll all be happier for it.
Posted by: russell | May 21, 2011 at 09:24 AM
"And by the by, New York City is still here today as well; with no appreciable diminuition of the population. You would know The Rapture here by the horde of real estate agents it would bring out looking to grab listings for
all thosethat newly-empty apartments...."We are talking about NYC, so I fixed that for you.
Posted by: CCDG | May 21, 2011 at 09:39 AM
Has anyone checked with the Vatican?
Posted by: CCDG | May 21, 2011 at 09:41 AM
Avedis, your comment above is abusive -- and highly offensive -- and falls under the posting rules, in my opinion. I concur with liberal japonicus.
Posted by: fiddler | May 21, 2011 at 10:16 AM
State likes people like that, too. She should take the Foreign Service exam.
Posted by: freelunch | May 21, 2011 at 03:22 PM
I MADE IT! THE WORLD DID NOT END TODAY!
(is that good or bad?)
Posted by: bobbyp | May 21, 2011 at 04:28 PM
The thing that always puzzles me when folks predict that the End Of The World And The Consummation Of All Things is coming on a particular day and time is that Jesus himself made this comment about it:
That's Mark 13:32.
I'm not interested in getting into a big eschatological discussion. It's just freaking weird that in spite of the fact that the central, most authoritative figure in these folks' personal belief system says "nobody knows this, even I don't know this, and don't believe anyone if they say they do", every few years one of them pops up and claims he or she has figured it all out with his or her sekrit decoder ring.
Anyway, happy Judgement Day y'all. I planted a spruce, a gingko, and a ninebark, mowed fertilized and overseeded the lawn, put some milky spore down for the inevitable grub explosion, pruned the lilacs, went to the dump, and had some ice cream. Bought my wife a lobster roll for lunch.
It was a great day. Hope you all had a good one, too.
Now I'm gonna go put the tools away and have a nice cold drink.
Posted by: russell | May 21, 2011 at 05:26 PM
@russell:
Planted a gingko! Now that is faith in the future. Give it a century or two, and it will be a really splendid tree. Meanwhile one can be glad of modern technology which can (so I'm told) protect one from planting a female tree. Assuming one doesn't want the seasonal smell of dog poop.
Was this project for Doomsday a deliberate bow to Martin Luther? His claim that if the world were ending tomorrow, he'd plant a tree today is probably the best thing he said.
BTW Doonesbury did a good job on the Rapture the last two days. First Zonker cites the Matthew version of the same quote; then today BD asks how Zonk happens to know these Bible passages, and he credits Linus in Peanuts. Another nice bit of homage for the day.
Posted by: Porlock Junior | May 22, 2011 at 02:59 AM
Planted a gingko! Now that is faith in the future. Give it a century or two, and it will be a really splendid tree.
It's even worse than that. It's a dwarf gingko (we have a very small lot).
Beautiful little tree, though.
I'm told by reliable sources that it's a male, but how they can tell that is beyond me.
Posted by: russell | May 22, 2011 at 08:17 AM
Never plant a female gingko tree unless you want to be perpetually checking the soles of your shoes for dogshite during fruiting season.
Trust me; I'm a Boilermaker. Someone with a horribly mischievous sense of humor planted the entire campus with female gingkos. The smell is just awful.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | May 22, 2011 at 09:01 AM
Oh, also: I concur with fiddler and lj.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | May 22, 2011 at 09:03 AM
I had a lousy day yesterday; it was anything but rapturous.
Today's turning out quite a bit better, though. It ain't heaven, but it's a start.
Posted by: Anarch | May 22, 2011 at 02:03 PM
I'm told by reliable sources that it's a male, but how they can tell that is beyond me.
tree whisperers....
Posted by: bobbyp | May 23, 2011 at 10:20 PM
What's this? I go away for a couple days and avedis pees on the rug again? sheesh.
What's boggling to me is that the alternative to Sprog thinking of soldiers as "victims" is thinking of them as (just) murderers and rapists, eagerly complicit in the multi-faceted disaster of warfare. Would avedis prefer that she be taught to spit on veterans? *That*s the other choice -- unvarnished admiration of soldierly heroism is *not* one of the options.
It's hard for me to see how a course with a reading list including: Trauma and Recovery, A History of Warfare, A Woman in Berlin, Dexter Filkins' The Forever War, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, and The Drowned and the Saved counts as "ivory tower abstraction". What it does *not* make possible is thinking of war as "heroic", or to say "it balances out".
But it may merely be that, for avedis, any attempt to have compassion for someone when you could be despising them counts as "making everyone a victim".
Posted by: Doctor Science | May 23, 2011 at 11:05 PM
I assumed that because avedis, being the strong masculine type who holds so fiercely to notions honor and proper conduct, had not returned with an apology, he must have been raptured. That is the only thing that could keep a person with his sense of right and wrong from posting something, amirite?
Posted by: liberal japonicus | May 23, 2011 at 11:34 PM
Dr. S, your daughter's talents will find a good home somewhere, no doubt, and Avedis' nasty comments are getting the response they fully merit. Still though, I am struggling with this: the alternative to Sprog thinking of soldiers as "victims" is thinking of them as (just) murderers and rapists, eagerly complicit in the multi-faceted disaster of warfare.
My dad was a career naval officer. In WWII, he was the gunnery officer on a destroyer at Normandy and then in the Pacific Theater, where he was wounded by a Kamikaze that struck his ship. As gunnery officer, he gave the command to fire the ship's main guns, making him what, a murderer because he fired against German and Japanese military targets, undoubtedly ending someone's life? And a rapist too?
He didn't have PTSD either. I am not sure your "either/or" fits the service people I've known and respected all of my life. Seems more of an ideological imprint, not unlike the fundamentalism that, in other applications, finds so little favor here and elsewhere on the predominantly left.
Posted by: McKinneyTexas | May 24, 2011 at 09:11 AM
I am not sure your "either/or" fits the service people I've known and respected all of my life.
It's an either/or as per the given Sprog characteristics as described above, AFAICT.
Posted by: Ugh | May 24, 2011 at 09:53 AM
Ugh, maybe I'm missing the good Doctor's point.
Posted by: McKinneyTexas | May 24, 2011 at 10:04 AM
I think I missed the boat at "Sprog". Rectified.
Posted by: Slartibartfast | May 24, 2011 at 10:47 AM
I think it's just that Sprog is not presently amenable to changing her views of soldiers as victims in any direction other than to "they're all complicit." Thus, the either/or view of soldiers is victims or complicity for Sprog.
Posted by: Ugh | May 24, 2011 at 11:14 AM
Thus, the either/or view of soldiers is victims or complicity for Sprog.
Must have been an interesting course.
Posted by: McKinneyTexas | May 24, 2011 at 11:18 AM
No one is a victim to the Ubermensch, rather a being lacking sufficient Will to Power to make his (yes, HIS!) own way, to control his fate, thus, only a failure. War is simply an opportunity for one to demonstrate his Uber-ness, which, if done successfully, is an unalloyed good for the newly confirmed Ubermensch. The alternative to that demonstration is failure, rather than victimhood.
The victim is a character of fiction, created by weak-kneed, liberal elitists to glorify their own lack of Will, you see. Victimhood is an artificial construct designed to prevent mankind from properly culling its own herd, which it can only do by eliminating the weak and preserving the strong (well, they don't really need preserving, because they're so danged strong, but you get the idea).
This Ivory Tower perversion of nature will someday be overcome by the advedises of the world, when mankind becomes Ubermenschkind, Willing itself to Power and ever-increasing Uber-ness, going to war eternally against weakness by inflicting greater and greater cruelty upon itself, thereby becoming ever stronger and harder, until it evolves beyond evolution itself, flexing fate effortlessly like a bulging, veiny biceps muscle fed by a lifetime of protein shakes.
Upward and onward, avedis, mythic and glorious and fit Ubermensch, with your dangerously low and godlike percentage of body fat.
(And all you cyber-wimps be damned, also too!)
Posted by: hairshirthedonist | May 24, 2011 at 12:50 PM
Nice channeling of Nietzsche's sister, hsh ;-)
Posted by: Hartmut | May 24, 2011 at 02:40 PM
So, Scalia has thrown one of his famous/infamous dissenting fits over the SCOTUS majority decision that the medical care Russian roulette of the California prison system is unconstitutional. His reasoning is that the prison litigation reform statute procedurally bars the suit in question, that the Court has overstepped its judicial power in issuing the injunction requiring release of tens of thousands of inmates, plus scary muscle-bound released prisoners (seriously).
All of which makes me wonder: if the California prison authorities said it was necessary to randomly shoot one out of every hundred prisoners to run their prison system, could the inmates win in Scalia's view?
Posted by: Ugh | May 24, 2011 at 05:09 PM