The Burrow

Lucretius said it best, writing On the Nature of Things  at the time of Christ. Sympathizing with a potential student, he commiserated thusly: (hierophants = priests)    And you, at any moment now, in fear of hierophantic threats will seek to leave me. For think of the endless fantasies your priests devise, that can subvert all reasoned thought, and turn your life to terror and confusion. I came up against hierophantic threats early in my religious education. For a short but intense period of time in my early teens, I prayed after every dinner, hoping that this would serve as expiation for the fact that I wore different cloths at the same time, didn't spend much time in synagogue, and refused to leave my leather shoes home on Yom Kippur.  Though my parents kept a kosher home, we had no trouble eating buttered garlic bread with spaghetti and meat balls, nor putting parmesan cheese on the meat itself.  As a tween, the disconnect between the rules and our acti...

Does the situation in the Middle East seem to get stranger and stranger with every passing day? Elections look like they'll be won by "the good guys" and then suddenly that candidate is under house arrest and the in's are still in. "Poor people in the countryside" apparently tipped the election away from the more educated city-dwellers making such a splash on Western televisions. All those green scarves and young faces were not enough to change the political climate. Haven't heard much from the Grand Ayatollah, though. Since he's the man who's ultimately in charge, it seems fair to say that Iran's political landscape has changed its haircut but not by much. Instead of a perm and a new color, Iran got a shampoo and a blow-dry. Netanyahu says he's all in favor of a two state resolution to the Palestinian/Israel conflict, so long as the two states don't undermine his political influence at the moment. The Palestinians who are despe...