The Conspiracy Theorist on Campus

Today, I was approached by a small balding man who handed me a sheet of paper and told me that I needed to know my rights.  At first, he seemed legit - as if there was something going on I needed to know about - but it didn't take me long to see that he was not there to tell me about building codes.  He quickly informed me that the police have no right to ticket me and that I should not obey their laws.  I wanted to know more about what made my new friend tick, so I asked him for more information.  Here's what I learned:

• The Romans invented capitol letters and used them to take away my rights.  I have no rights, today, because of this.  (Don't ask me.  I didn't make this stuff up.)
• Japan's radiation problems will destroy their companies.  This will, in turn, destroy the U.S. Stock exchange.
• The United States of America will soon collapse completely as a result of losing Wall Street.  ("I figure...oh, about July," he told me.) Our country will no longer exist.
• I should not obey traffic laws because they are simply illegal and do not actually hold any authority over me.  (Of course, if the U.S. is about to come to an end, I'm not sure why petty moving violations should be my concern.)
• He told me that he could (at any moment) decide to hold me down and put me in a citizen's arrest and detain me until the police came, because he's just as powerful as the police.  (I let him know that I would have no trouble detaining him if he wanted to go that route.  He changed the subject.)
• He told me that Blackstone's Lawbook includes a loophole that takes away our rights.  I told him that Blackwell was not considered gospel in today's courts.  He changed the subject.
• His handout lists numerous city/state codes and what he thinks are proofs that they are invalid.  I'm not convinced.

I had more questions, but he had more propaganda to hand out.  Maybe I'll see him in August if the government doesn't collapse.

Blame the Media for 'Burn a Koran' Day and its Aftermath

Last September, I pleaded with Terry Jones asking him not to burn the Koran in a pointless demonstration.  It was a useless waste of time, but I had to try.  He did postpone the event for some reason, but this March he decided to light a Koran on fire after all.  It sparked protests in the middle east and now people are asking if Terry Jones is responsible for the violence and deaths that have gone on there.

He's not.

Burning a book - any book - is dumb.  But I'll bet he's not the first person to set that particular book on fire.  So, why was this such a big deal?  Because the media wanted it to be.  Everyone thinks that Terry Jones is a bit crazy, which may be why he didn't understand how this demonstration would do more harm than good.  But what excuse does our media have?  Are all of the journalists in our country also slightly insane?  (I'm willing to entertain the notion.)  It's very irresponsible to make this story so prominent when doing so could lead to violence.  Do we really need the story of one nutty preacher burning a book  on the nightly news?  The media gave him his platform, and now the media thinks that the aftermath of 'Burn a Koran Day' is his fault.  It's always someone else's fault, isn't it?

So, stop blaming Terry Jones.  Blame the journalists who could have been reporting on real news, but chose to create violence and hatred by telling the story of one crazy man's demonstration.  (Currently, the same people are trying to convince you that Charlie Sheen's love life is front page news.  It's not.)  If we had ignored Jones then no one would have noticed when one angry man set a book on fire in front of a few people.  I recommend we start ignoring the media.

'Eat, Pray, Love' - A Film that Acutally Has Something to Say

Most marriages are strong enough to survive the problems that couples face, but not all of them can withstand the battle over the TV remote control.  Will the man keep a tight reign on the remote and use it to check SportsCenter every ten minutes?  Or will he become a meek prisoner of Glee and Dancing with the Stars?  My wife and I are quite proud of our egalitarian TV watching conduct, and if one of us is sick then that person always gets to choose the program.  When she was ill last week I assumed that we would be checking out a Colin Firth film or a British period piece, but this time it was Eat, Pray, Love starring Julia Roberts.

Since I'm a Christian, you probably would expect me to nitpick the theology and complain that it's not compatible with my faith, but I'm not going to do that because I'd rather focus on what we can learn from the story.  (However, as I expected, the film tries to respect Eastern and Western religions in order to be Universal, but ends up trying to force the mutually exclusive concepts of pantheism and panentheism into the same worldview in order to meet this goal.  I expect no better from Hollywood screenwriters - par for the course, really - but there is still plenty to learn from the movie.)

The main character, Liz, is burned out.  She isn't happy with her life, and she tells everyone that she needs a radical change of some sort.  Her friends are skeptical and tell her that she just needs a vacation or a new outfit or something to occupy her mind until her depression passes.  But Liz knows better - she knows that she is not suffering an affliction of the mind, but one of the soul.  It is spiritual renewal that she seeks, and in the first part of the story she learns that she can't find this through a new home and a new boyfriend.

And this is where the film speaks to us.  I applaud the movie for admitting that there is more to a human being than just the body; we have a spiritual component that must be seen to, and when that part of us is needy we cannot remedy it through physical things.  It is human nature to seek fulfillment in Higher Things, and that is the purpose of Liz's journey.

We don't deny ourselves food when we are hungry - likewise, let us not neglect our souls.  That is the lesson to be learned from Eat, Pray, Love.  It's also filled with eating montages and a scene where two skinny girls pretend to understand what it's like to gain weight and not fit into their (size zero) jeans.  But it also reminds us to look after our spiritual side, and I can respect that.

Charlemagne was a Woman? New Painting Confirms what Historians Have Long Suspected.

Charlemagne is a name ripe with dignity and admiration and it simply rings of masculinity and alpha-male leadership; there's just one problem - he's a she.  A medieval painting from the Spanish archives (only opened in 1975 at Franco's death and still not completely explored) shows us, finally, a contemporary painting of Charles the Great that answers our questions once and for all.  I've got a link to the painting and the relevant article at the end of this post.

We medieval historians have long scratched our heads over certain passages in Charlemagne's history.  Why, for example, did Charlemagne spend so much time with his daughters rather than his sons (as we learn from his personal historian, Einhard)?  And why does Notker the Stammerrer (in a volume sometimes attributed to "The Monk of Gaul") tell us that Charlemagne's visitors were shocked to see him wearing men's hunting clothing when he rode instead of the fancier clothing they had expected him to wear?  Was his hunchbacked son imprisoned because he knew the truth?  (The details of that imprisonment have been hidden from us.)

There's more.  A famous poem in the middle ages ('Floris and Blancheflour') is a romance that comes to us in many different versions.  In one particularly interesting one, the hero is a man who looks like a woman.  While pursuing the woman he loves, he hides out in an Emir's harem and is able to pass for a woman, and when he lays down with his girl they are mistaken for a pair of ladies by everyone in the company.  We are later told that this man is Charlemagne's grandfather (on his mother's side).  Did the poet know a secret about Charlemagne that could only be told to us in code?

It's been long suspected that this is so, but I've already said too much and the painting will speak for itself.  Click to go to  the painting.