Same old, same old
I don’t care about college basketball anymore, but I do still enjoy the collision of mascots, cultures, and uniform colors in the NCAA Tournament. And so I liked this Yahoo! article from March 22:
“The 16 Most Interesting Potential Final Four Combinations.”
Ah, yes, I thought, reading through the list.
The “brainiac” Final Four.
The “party school” Final Four.
The “all-Catholic” Final Four.
The “‘when’s spring football practice?’” Final Four.
Any of the sixteen combinations would have been good, except the “blue blood” Final Four (Duke, North Carolina, Villanova, Kansas).
Guess which Final Four we’re getting.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My two cents on the SCOTUS confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Senators Blackburn, Cruz, and Graham were in fine form – by which I mean, despicable form.
My right-leaning Facebook friends loved it, though.
Whine, whine, whine.
One wonders: if they don’t want a judge whose position is, Womanhood, as understood in the law, is not something for judges to define outside of the specific context of a court case informed by expert testimony of biologists – which is the long way of saying what I take Jackson’s quick and concise response to mean – what sort of judge could they want? Don’t they realize that Jackson’s response is friendly to conservative views of womanhood, and of the judiciary? Are they too busy scoffing to notice this – or to care?
(Notice, Jackson’s crucial qualifier, in this context, is omitted above.)
I am reading Proverbs, which says harsh things about scoffers and how to talk (or not talk) to them. And on Sunday, I heard a sermon about Luke 20:
Jesus tells good news. Still, the religious leaders are determined to challenge him.
When they discuss how to answer Jesus’s question, they don’t consider which answer is true. Instead, they worry about saving face.
So, they don’t really care about finding out the truth.
So, Jesus doesn’t owe them an answer.
Even so, in the following verses, Jesus gives an answer (though he addresses it to the people). He tells the parable of the wicked tenants. This parable implies that his authority is from his Father (God); and that the leaders have no regard for this authority, though they’ve just made a show of asking about it.
“The 16 Most Interesting Potential Final Four Combinations.”
Ah, yes, I thought, reading through the list.
The “brainiac” Final Four.
The “party school” Final Four.
The “all-Catholic” Final Four.
The “‘when’s spring football practice?’” Final Four.
Any of the sixteen combinations would have been good, except the “blue blood” Final Four (Duke, North Carolina, Villanova, Kansas).
Guess which Final Four we’re getting.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My two cents on the SCOTUS confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Senators Blackburn, Cruz, and Graham were in fine form – by which I mean, despicable form.
My right-leaning Facebook friends loved it, though.
Whine, whine, whine.
One wonders: if they don’t want a judge whose position is, Womanhood, as understood in the law, is not something for judges to define outside of the specific context of a court case informed by expert testimony of biologists – which is the long way of saying what I take Jackson’s quick and concise response to mean – what sort of judge could they want? Don’t they realize that Jackson’s response is friendly to conservative views of womanhood, and of the judiciary? Are they too busy scoffing to notice this – or to care?
(Notice, Jackson’s crucial qualifier, in this context, is omitted above.)
I am reading Proverbs, which says harsh things about scoffers and how to talk (or not talk) to them. And on Sunday, I heard a sermon about Luke 20:
One day, as he was teaching the people in the temple and telling the good news, the chief priests and the scribes came with the elders and said to him, “Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things? Who is it who gave you this authority?” He answered them, “I will also ask you a question, and you tell me: Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” They discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ all the people will stone us; for they are convinced that John was a prophet.” So they answered that they did not know where it came from. Then Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”A few points (not exactly the ones from the sermon, but not too different, either):
[NRSV]
Jesus tells good news. Still, the religious leaders are determined to challenge him.
When they discuss how to answer Jesus’s question, they don’t consider which answer is true. Instead, they worry about saving face.
So, they don’t really care about finding out the truth.
So, Jesus doesn’t owe them an answer.
Even so, in the following verses, Jesus gives an answer (though he addresses it to the people). He tells the parable of the wicked tenants. This parable implies that his authority is from his Father (God); and that the leaders have no regard for this authority, though they’ve just made a show of asking about it.