Author: Laura Conrad

I actually had more religious education than a lot of the
people I know, and I’m pretty sure that at one time I knew why
there were wars fought over whether the Holy Ghost proceded from
the Father and the Son or from the Father
through the Son.

It isn’t a problem that usually impacts my current life, but
I was delighted when my reading of RSS feeds led me to this
article about the making of the New Testament. It’s a pretty
long post, so here’s a brief excerpt, which should show you
whether you want to read more of it:

Among the books that Eusebius of Caesarea was considering were the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of John. He had to have an apocalypse, the end of the world, because he’d started with the Gospel of John at “In Principio.” Nice symmetrical bookending. But he had several Apocalypses in his Disputed list and none in his Accepted list. What to do?

He had many objections to the Apocalypse of John, starting with What Was He Smoking, and moving on to Too Many Contemporary Political References and I’m Not 100% Sure John Was The Guy Who Wrote This. Eusebius preferred the Apocalypse of Peter, where Jesus takes Peter on a long tour of Heaven and Hell. And after Christ explains all the tortures of the damned, according to category (quite Dantesque), Peter says, “Hey, Josh. You and me go way back, went fishing together, been out drinking, talking philosophy ‘til dawn, and the whole time You’ve been all peace and love and forgiveness and mercy. Isn’t this a little dark for You?” And Jesus replies, “Yeah, Pete. I know. I’ve got to have a hell because it’s a logical necessity, but I never liked the place. Let me tell you a secret, just between you and me: I’m not going to actually put anyone in here. I’m going to save everyone.”

So Eusebius of Caesarea thought about this and said to himself, “If everyone gets saved why will anyone bother believing in Christ and being good and doing good works and loving their neighbor?” so he went with the Apocalypse of John with the seven seals and the great beast and 666 and all that instead.

I was reading email and thinking about having supper and
watching TV last night, when there was a loud knock on my door and
the doorbell also rang. (They use the
Winnie-the-Pooh method.)

It turned out to be two policemen, who apologized for
disturbing me, but someone had hit my car, which was parked in
front of my building. They had an eye-witness report of the
hit-and-run driver, including license place number. The witness
stated that the car had attempted a u-turn, and managed to hit
parked vehicles on both sides of the street. I have a small car,
and I can make a u-turn (carefully) with a car parked on one side
of the street, but even my Honda Civic needs a 3-point turn if
there are cars on both sides.

I said it sounded to me like that person shouldn’t have been
driving, and they agreed that it sounded that way to them,
too.

I called the insurance company and made the claim this morning,
and they were very sympathetic, and said that if the police have
turned up the other driver there shouldn’t be any problem getting
the other insurance company to pay the deductible.

The visible damage is pretty much just the driver side of the
front bumper, but I don’t think I’ve ever had body work done that
takes less than a week, so I have to find a week when I don’t need
the car. The body shop I’ve used the last couple of times is
walking distance and fairly good to deal with, so it won’t be
terrible, but it’s a nuisance. I hope they do something
appropriate about the driver.

The picture I managed to get of the damage isn’t very good
(using my phone at all in the sunlight is difficult, and I was too
lazy to get out the real camera and upload pictures from it), so
I’m also giving you a picture of the sunset we had two days ago,
right after a thunderstorm blew through.

I know the many people who read the story
about Sammy going on antibiotics will want to know how it
turned out.

Speaking as someone who knows him, he’s much better. (You
can’t tell from this picture — it’s morning nap time.) His
energy level is higher, he isn’t having accidents in the house, he
doesn’t seem to be drinking as much, and while he’s still peeing
more than he used to, he can often get across the street before he
has to do it.

The vet called on Tuesday with the results of the tests he took
after finishing the antibiotics. It turns out that there is not
an increased level of antibodies to leptospirosis, so he probably
didn’t have that, so we don’t have to worry about the liver and
kidney damage that would have done.

So the likely thing is that he had some kind of infection that
the antibiotics he took for the possible leptospirosis cured.

The vet says his urine is still pretty dilute, so it’s likely
that there’s some kind of kidney malfunction that isn’t showing up
on the bloodwork. He would have liked to do an ultrasound to see
if there’s a kidney problem that that could find, but that didn’t
sound reasonable to me.

It’s likely that the kidneys aren’t working as well as they
used to, but he also has (according to the vet) a “muffled
heartbeat”, and he’s about to be 13, so it seems to me quite
likely that something else will kill him before whatever the
ultrasound turned up, even if it was something treatable.

I get lots of high-tech modern medicine for myself, but I’m
likely to live another 30 years, and I have health insurance to
pay for it.

The New York Times front page covers polls of people against
military strikes on Syria, but not anything about the protests
organized by MoveOn and other
organizations.

I didn’t go to the one I was invited to in Boston, but I know
some of the people who organized the one in Fall River. Here’s
the interview
the organizers gave the Fall River Herald News.

Ms Conrad reports that there were 30-50 people and lots of
energy. More energy for chanting, “NO WAR” than for listening to
speaches or singing “Blowing in the Wind”. But there were three
TV stations and at least two newspapers. So I don’t know why the
Times doesn’t think demonstrations are more newsworthy than
polls.

If the Times is going to go on reporting polls as “news”, they
should at least explain what the pollsters are doing to correct
for the growing number of people with only cell phones that the
pollsters aren’t supposed to call. The story this morning only
said, “The nationwide poll was conducted via landlines and
cellphones from Sept. 6 to Sept. 8 with 1,011 adults.”