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Jesus vs. Batman

May 5, 2011 Comic Books / Friends / Internet / Life, the Universe, and Everything / Money / Pictures / Politics / Post-A-Day 2011 / Stories
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Thanks to Vince T for shar­ing this with me!

Beware, the fol­low­ing could be con­sid­ered offen­sive or sac­ri­le­gious. I think it’s fair game since one troll was out­done by another.

These images might be a bit dif­fi­cult to read, so check the orig­nal link above the pictures.

As I some­what jok­ingly replied to Vince T’s post on Face­book, I am insulted that the Jesus team implied Bat­man would kill Jesus and allow him to use his res­ur­rec­tion abil­ity. Every­one knows Bat­man never kills. Then again, they also called him a Mar­vel hero.

But on a more seri­ous level, I’m kinda dis­turbed at the fact that one of the Jesus team used the “fic­tional” argu­ment against Bat­man mul­ti­ple times. Yes, obvi­ously Bat­man is made up. That’s why Bob Kane always gets cred­ited. I do not believe that there was an actual man named Bruce Wayne who sharp­ened his sur­vivor guilt, need for revenge, and super­hu­man willpower into a crime-​fighting super­hero alter-​ego. At the same time, whether an actual man named Jesus lived or not, I also do not believe he did all those things the Bible says he did. Over a thou­sand years of oral tra­di­tion, trans­la­tion, hand-​copying, edit­ing, com­bin­ing mul­ti­ple sources, and pol­i­tics pretty much guar­an­tees that.

These are both mytho­log­i­cal fig­ures, and their sto­ries are meant to inspire, to teach, to explain, and to enter­tain. Isn’t that more than enough?

Oh, and on a bit of a tan­gent, Azrael and Cru­sader are cast­ing judge­ment on all the heroes of Gotham at the moment. Here’s Tim Drake’s encounter with them:

Tim would actual be the one I’d put money on to pass the chal­lenges, but he is dis­qual­i­fied for being an unbe­liever. This is one of my big­ger stick­ing points with Chris­tian­ity. Why is belief a pre­req? Why can’t you go to Heaven just for being a good per­son? This rule instantly screws any­one who did not know about or was born before Jesus’s life­time. (Sim­i­lar to the unbaptised/​virtuous pagan “Limbo” level of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.) As a pagan (and I’d like to believe a fairly vir­tu­ous one), this both­ers me on an intel­lec­tual level, despite the fact that I do not believe in Heaven or Hell.

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True Story

March 21, 2011 Music / Pictures / Politics / Post-A-Day 2011
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Yes, that is a true story. Yet another rea­son Teddy Roo­sevelt was my favorite president.

It’s a shame the Smith­son­ian isn’t using these posters, it would def­i­nitely gen­er­ate some inter­est with the young’uns. (It’s also a shame they asked the artists to change the logo at the bot­tom to generic ones.) Thanks to Ryan M for the link.

Black April

April 30, 2010 Family / Money / Politics
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I had read about War­ren Buffett’s “Ovar­ian Lot­tery” before, but a reminder always helps.

Here’s the meat of it, for those of you who don’t want to click on the link -

It’s 24 hours before your birth, and a genie appears to you. He tells you that you can set the rules for the world you’re about to enter — eco­nomic, social, polit­i­cal — the whole enchi­lada. Sounds great, right? What’s the catch?

Before you enter the world, you will pick one ball from a bar­rel of 6.8 bil­lion (the num­ber of peo­ple on the planet). That ball will deter­mine your gen­der, race, nation­al­ity, nat­ural abil­i­ties, and health — whether you are born rich or poor, sick or able-​bodied, bril­liant or below aver­age, Amer­i­can or Zimbabwean.

This is what Buf­fett calls the ovar­ian lot­tery. As he explained to a group of Uni­ver­sity of Florida stu­dents, “You’re going to get one ball out of there, and that is the most impor­tant thing that’s ever going to hap­pen to you in your life.”

Accord­ing to the world’s third-​richest man, that’s a good per­spec­tive to have when set­ting the rules for our world. We should be design­ing a soci­ety that, as Buf­fett says, “doesn’t leave behind some­one who acci­den­tally got the wrong ball and is not well-​wired for this par­tic­u­lar sys­tem.” He points out that he is designed for the Amer­i­can sys­tem — and he was lucky to be born into it. He can allo­cate cap­i­tal, and he lives in a place and at a time when those skills are well rewarded. (His pal Bill Gates is quick to point out that if Buf­fett had been born in an ear­lier time, he’d be some animal’s lunch because the Ora­cle of Omaha can’t run fast or climb trees.)

When Buf­fett talks about this lot­tery, he often con­cludes by asking:

If you could put your ball back, and they took out, at ran­dom, a hun­dred other balls, and you had to pick one of those, would you put your ball back in? Now, of those hun­dred balls … roughly five of them will be Amer­i­can. … Half of them are going to be below-​average intel­li­gence, half will be above. Do you want to put your ball back? Most of you, I think, will not. … What you’re say­ing is, “I’m in the luck­i­est 1% of the world right now.”

Everything’s about per­spec­tive. When­ever I think I have it rough, I think about if I would trade it for one of those hun­dred other balls, and things don’t look so bad. Espe­cially today, Black April. It’s the anniver­sary of the Fall of Saigon, when Amer­ica pulled out of the Viet­nam War, a defin­ing moment for three gen­er­a­tions of my fam­ily. I think of all that my par­ents and grand­par­ents did to give me a bet­ter pick in the lot­tery than what they had drawn, and I won­der if I’ll be able to do the same for the next generation.

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