Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

Faith and science: compatible?

Religious Americans by and large support science.

For Ask Roger Anything, Chris asks:

How do you spiritually reconcile your faith with your acceptance of science?

I don’t really see a problem with this. Faith is what I believe, and science is what I know, or what is reasonably knowable. There’s no contradiction. My running joke used to be “God allowed the Big Bang,” which is overly simplistic, I suppose.

This Slate story about a 2015 Pew Research Center survey on religion and science, indicates: “Highly religious Americans are less likely than others to see conflict between faith and science.”

I think this is true: “The people who are farther away from religion themselves tend to see stronger conflict, because they’re not as close to actual religious people… They aren’t seeing all those people who don’t have a conflict.”

The problem happens, I think, when people use, for instance, the Bible as a history book – mostly, it is not – or as science book – surely, it is NOT – rather than as a series of stories, written by a bunch of different writers, over a long period, that help shape a theology.

And of course, this was established long ago, well before Galileo and Copernicus got jammed up with their heliocentric “heresy”.

Currently, “the media tends to focus on those rare flashpoints of controversy, such as fights over evolution and the content of science textbooks, and to highlight the most outspoken conservative fundamentalists. For the nonreligious, these strong voices become the faces of religion, and these flashpoints become evidence that religion and science are in conflict. In fact, religious Americans by and large support science.”

What was your favorite or most memorable science demo as a kid?

It was almost certainly at the Corning Museum of Glass, an hour west of Binghamton, with a bunch of “I didn’t know they could do THAT with glass” moments. We went there at least four times before in 1972, when it was damaged in the flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes and was subsequently rebuilt.

Sears, where America used to shop

It later gave me an odd case of melancholy, that first representation of fiscal adulthood.

The sad, but unsurprising, news that the Sears at Colonie Center in Albany County, NY would be closing in September 2017 made me sadder than I would have thought, given the fact that I can’t remember the last time I entered the building. Certainly, it was before Sears leased out part of its footprint to the Whole Foods chain in 2011 because I’ve never been to Whole Foods.

After I graduated from college in 1977, I had difficulty paying back my student loans, some low-paying jobs and a stretch of unemployment facilitating that. As a result, I didn’t get my first charge card until 1982. And that first card was from Sears.

I bought EVERYTHING from Sears. The first item I got was a clock-radio; it cost $12, I think. Somehow, it suffered some external damage- something melted the case – but it still worked. When I got married in 1999, my spouse insisted we toss it out, and I did, but it later gave me an odd case of melancholy, that first representation of fiscal adulthood.

Still, there were plenty other items that ended up in my various apartments: a television set that I had for over 20 years; a microwave or two; my first VCR; at least two bicycles; Craftman tools, of course; and countless other necessities, big and small. Most of my clothes came from there. I could find anything in that place better than most salespeople.

In fact, I even got a Christmas tree, on December 24, 1991, which I hauled home on a CDTA bus. I didn’t ask, and the driver said nothing.

Sidebar: Final JEOPARDY! November 10, 1998: Native New Englander seen here, modeling for his company’s catalog sometime before WWI. Two people said, Sears. I knew that was not possible; Sears was founded in Chicago, as I well knew. (The correct response was “Who was L.L. Bean?”, which I got.)

And since I was a good customer, Sears offered me the opportunity to get one of the first charge cards from this new entity that was going to try to compete with MasterCard and VISA. It was called Discover, and back in 1986, it wasn’t accepted in too many places besides Sears, though FantaCo, the comic book/mail order store I worked at was an early acceptor.

But eventually, that Sears store started cutting back some categories, moving things around as though people wouldn’t notice what was missing. The last time I know for sure that I went in there was around 2003, when I bought a power lawnmower I eventually returned – a rarity for me anywhere – because it kept clogging up.

And now, Sears nationwide is in serious trouble. Some analyst I read suggested that, given the Sears catalog’s once-dominant place in the American economy and psyche, the company was in the best position to evolve into what Amazon, in fact, did become, the monster of online retail.

Now I don’t even bother to read the weekly ads Sears sends me. And the latest closures also include the store in my home county, Broome (Johnson City, NY).

“Their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Political parties would “push a narrow, self-interested agenda that would block the national interest” and “create a deadlocked and dysfunctional democracy” that would “leave citizens frustrated by inefficiency and ineffectiveness.”

Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I have found many things that have taken place on the political landscape in the last six months or so worthy of celebration.

There have been protests, many of them local, for banning the bomb, upholding women’s rights, protecting the immigrant and the refugee, saving the environment, and several other causes.

People are becoming actively engaged in the political process, working on special elections, running for office, or at least considering it. They are showing up at town halls when members of Congress come back to town.

The veil is coming off FOX “news”. Yet other news outlets are thriving.

A couple interviews on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah in June 2017, on successive days in June 2017, gave me encouragement. William J. Barber II is shifting the moral conversation about the poor, a group neither major candidate for President talked about last year. Among other things, Rev. Barber is the architect of the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement.

I was also taken by John Avlon. The Daily Beast’s Editor-in-Chief was promoting his new book “Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations.”

George Washington feared, he explained, that political parties would “push a narrow, self-interested agenda that would block the national interest” and “create a deadlocked and dysfunctional democracy” that would leave citizens “so frustrated by the inefficiency and ineffectiveness that it could open the door to a demagogue with authoritarian ambitions.”

And by demagogue, I mean “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.”

So on this Independence Day, it is important to note the words of another of our Founders, Alexander Hamilton: “Of those men who have overturned the liberty of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by playing an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”

We must always push back against tyranny.

Z is for Zeus, King of the Gods

“Zeus’ most distinctive attribute was his stylized lightning bolt which he wielded in his hand like a javelin.”


There were 12 great gods of the Greeks, known as the Olympians, but Zeus was “the King of the Gods and the god of the sky, weather, law and order, destiny and fate, and kingship.”

In the program guide for the annual St. Sophia Greek Festival in May 2017, there was an article entitled “Greek gods in mythology, part IV,” featuring Zeus. The first three parts were in the previous years’ programs.

“Remember Cronus, the kid who attacked his dad, Uranus and banished him from the Earth because he was an abusive go?… Cronus was even worse… he swallowed each of his own kids… However, one child named Zeus escaped this horrible doom and was hidden by his mother.

“After mom, gave Cronus a potent drink which made him upchuck, the kids that he swallowed were set free… [Zeus, his sibs and uncles] prepared to fight the evil Titans.

“The Cyclopes… made the weapons… They armed Zeus wit a thunderbolt that shook the universe…

“It was a fierce and long 10-year war between the old gods and the new gods, but at last Cronus and the Titans were defeated…”

Zeus‘ “name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter. His mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of the Indo-European deities such as Indra, Jupiter, Perun, Thor, and Odin.”

Cronus was not the only person eater in this story line. “Zeus devoured the pregnant goddess Metis when an oracle revealed that her son was destined to replace him as King of the Gods. Their child, Athena, was subsequently born in his belly and birthed directly from his head.”

“Zeus’ most distinctive attribute was his stylized lightning bolt which he wielded in his hand like a javelin. His other attributes included a royal sceptre, a throne, an eagle, a miniature Nike (winged goddess of victory), and the aigis (a goat-skin arm-guard). The god was usually clothed in a long robe (chiton) and cloak (himation) but was sometimes depicted nude. He was often crowned with a wreath of olive leaves.”

For ABC Wednesday, Round 20

The conventional wisdom: Syria, Alex Jones

The man should be held accountable for every ACTUAL falsehood he’s perpetrated, and they are SO many.

Scott Ritter, 2006
ITEM: Mark Evanier wrote:

“Once upon a time, weapons inspector Scott Ritter warned us that Saddam Hussein did not possess Weapons of Mass Destruction and we should not go to war there on the belief that he did. Ritter was widely denounced as foolish and gullible, and his warnings were ignored.

He is now warning that Trump’s claims of chemical weapons in Syria are a lie that could be used to justify another war build on a false premise. Maybe someone oughta at least consider that this man could be right again.”

There are people who will dismiss what Scott Ritter says, based on issues having nothing to do with his expertise. But I heard him speak in June 2002 at an Albany United Methodist Society dinner. He said what was going to happen in the lead-up to the Iraq war in March 2003, and he was 100% correct.

ITEM: States refuse Trump commission request for U.S. voter data, as well they should. But it was the conservative Red State who writes that it is “simply another conspiracy theory that he’s bound and determined to use his office to pursue.”

ITEM: One of my good buds blasted NBC for the Megyn Kelly interview with the vile Alex Jones, “almost certainly the most prolific conspiracy theorist in contemporary America,” calling it “noxious behavior in service of the dollar.” And I didn’t see it that way at all.

I thought she pressed him on his bs. I’m not sure whether she “vivisected the bloated conspiracy hog”, but she gave it a go.

Does Alex Jones merit an interview? I like to know the enemy, so I say yes. And perhaps only Kelly, among the MSM folk, could have gotten it, a “Nixon goes to China” scenario.

Part of the problem was the tease from the previous week, which gave some the impression that the former FOX “News” personality was going to be buddy-buddy with this schmuck. I understand that, as a result of the backlash before the piece even aired, NBC re-edited it to be “tougher.”

ITEM: When a certain orange person said, “Comey better hope there are no tapes,” and then said there were no tapes, that is not a lie. (Unless there ARE tapes, in which case…) It was merely him saying words. It was an empty threat that, by itself, won’t reach the level of obstruction of justice.

The man should be held accountable for every ACTUAL falsehood he’s perpetrated, and they are SO many. But let’s pick the real prevarications.

ITEM: I was SO oversaturated with email, from both sides, regarding the expensive House race in Georgia’s 6th CD. And as If Jon Ossoff Wins… or Loses notes, the response to the outcome was predictable.

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