I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about this week, and then I heard this story on the radio yesterday. Apparently, the night after Al Gore won an Oscar for “An Inconvenient Truth” last year, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research released a report stating that Gore’s home “uses more than 20 times the national average” and other rather provocative statements like this one:
Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year”
Whenever statements like that get thrown about, I like to check them out at snopes.com, so I went there and apparently, it’s true.
In his defense, a spokesperson for the Gores said at that time,
both Al and Tipper Gore work out of their home and the bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint. And what vice president Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it.
That was February, 2007.
On Tuesday, an update was released showing his energy usage a year later, and found that his energy usage has actually increased by 10% rather than being reduced.
Admittedly, the article I linked to is politically conservative. Nevertheless, if the numbers they’re revealing are true (I’ve not looked into it myself - I only just heard about it and decided to write this), shouldn’t Al, who won a Nobel Prize and made millions of dollors for his “Inconvenient Truth,” be doing the thing for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize? Shouldn’t a leader in the global warming movement, who is profiting from the global warming movement, practice what he preaches?
Just a thought.
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Mike O | 29 Comments »
Last week Mike asked who we thought Jesus was as a man. We just don’t have enough evidence to make a fair assessment but a few points came out. One thing I mentioned was that Jesus taught through stories. There are over 30 parables, many deal with worldly matters like the parables of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son. Others, like as the parables of the Drawing in of the Net or the Pearl, deal with the idea of heaven as a reward or example.
I love stories. I love reading them, I love listening to them, I love telling them. We have a long walk to school each morning and sometimes tell each other stories on the way. A bag blown in the wind becomes a blue cloaked witch, a red car becomes a fire breathing dragon or a dog comes a dancing bear in a story. We take turns telling the story, asking questions about the witch or the bear or the dragon, each of us adding a part. It’s a way to pass the time and make the walk more interesting.
Beyond being entertaining stories can also be educational. Some of my favourite complex ideas are made accessible through stories. Attempting to illustrate a problem with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics Erwin Schrödinger used the story of a cat in a box that could be either dead or alive (or simultaneously both) in his thought experiment. The story simplifies a very complicated idea and makes it interesting and easy to explain. Einstein’s train (or tram) is another example.
The problem with teaching in stories is that they mean different things to different people. To one person Romeo and Juliet might be a romantic tale of love, to another it might be about two families keeping lovers apart, to a third it might be about the folly of youth and the foolishness of suicide. We interpret stories in relation to our own lives and apply their lessons in ways that make sense to us. That’s why reading a story for the first time elicits one response but reading it again might provide another.
I suppose that’s also what makes stories so compelling and, by extension, what makes Jesus’ parables so compelling. Indeed viewing the life of Jesus as a story is an education in itself. It’s entertaining and sometimes enlightening but, like all stories, open to interpretation. For me, as an atheist, I find that I can gain an appreciation for life and for compassion from Jesus and the stories surrounding him. I don’t have to believe that they are real to do so. Equally I don’t have to reject the lessons because I think that they are nothing more than stories.
Update:
I’ve added my own interpretation of the Parable of the Guests to Bill’s Friendly Christian site. I wonder how much it differs from the interpretation that a Christian might offer.
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Jason | 7 Comments »I don’t want this to derail the other active topics that are going (particularly MINE!) :), but I just wanted to let everyone know that after 6 1/2 months of hard searching, I finally landed a job yesterday afternoon. We formalized the paperwork this morning, and I start on June 30th. And to that, I say, WHEW [insert visual brow-wipe and flick]!
Anyway, my wife and I are taking this opportunity to bust out of town tomorrow afternoon for the weekend to celebrate, so if I “go dark” for a while, that’s why. Anyway, thanks, everyone for your concern. I count you all as my friends.
Mike
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Mike O | 7 Comments »