Something that has lately amused and puzzled me

Why is it that, after The Man is received into a cloud, "behold two men stood by them in white garments"? Continuing,
"¹¹ Who also said: Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven? This Jesus who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, as you have seen him going into heaven." Not that it is unusual for "men" to appear and disappear, in the Inspired Record of Salvation History (it might have been unusual in an absolute sense, but the Bible isn't about business-as-usual), and yet... Is it, for instance, possible that the eleven were in danger of lingering by the mount untill they sequentially keeled over for hunger and exhaustion? Why, for this very practical nudge, is it so conveniens that it be delivered by angels and not Our Lord who, really, was just right there. And what about their non-question interjection: "[he] shall so come, as you have seen him going"; is this advice to them, and how is it not the answer to their own question, "why stand you looking up to heaven"? I presume they were angels, for Peter and James and John would recognize Moses and Elijah, and Luke would have said so if it were them again.

These are some things that lately have puzzled and amused me.

Any thoughts? (please limit your comments to less than 1 megabyte in size)

Troubles with Scientism and Antiscientism

Oh, for the good old days that never were...

Have I ranted here before about the silly slogan "gravity is just a theory"? To sum-up (too much to explain), it revolves around (hee!) a confusion of "theory", "hypothesis", and "observation".

Today in my book of faces arises a photo impression of a "science" "quiz" titled "Dinosaurs: Genesis and the Gospel"; the keeper of the books of faces have tried to make it difficult to circulate this thing, and the circulator (not circulants) is doing her darndest to get around (are we talking in circles, yet? It's not intentional) such frustrations.

The trouble with the Scientist is that, while fighting the antiscientist, she thinks she is fighting something to do with "religion". But religio ("I bind together", man to God, men to men) has very little to do with the D:G&G "science" "quiz"; it is rather a work of superstition (on which the OED says that its etymology is confused, but may have something to do with a soldier pointlessly standing over a defeated enemy).

The particular superstition of the Book-Literal antiscientist is that God's Creation ought to fit in a book; there is a similar kind of scientistic superstition as well that the Universe ought to fit within Creation, but... why, under Heaven, anyone would take the name of Christ and insist that God made Creation a small thing, a humanly brief and fleeting thing... as though He wouldn't be large enough anymore if the Past and Future didn't fit within human history... For instance, it is abundantly clear that the people we hear about who breathe the air and speak and sing to the Lord a new song do not flee, as it were a shadow, neither is alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras, und alle Herlichkeit des Menschen wie des Græses Blumen — das Gras ist verdorret, und die Blume abgefallen. We are (in a litteral sense) rather more long-enduring than grass and flowers, if not more permanent in body. But that's not the point of the Book!

How often have I lamented (in other words) that the difficulty in talking with the world is that the world has forgotten how to talk? And there's something about that in The Last Battle...

Anyways, this is, I suppose, one of those letters-to-nobody... I wonder who will open it?

a Christopher

Brief and Minimally Considered

• I have this hour run across MyJetpack
  
• There are many ways to work stale bread into sweet pudding. At least two involve eggs.
  
• The american robin, it seems, is a relative of the thrush. I haven't seen them eating snails; but then it's been a while since I saw wild snails. Perhaps in later in the season.
  
• Have you before considered use of "the" to treat as gramatically definite a fictitious generic creature, as in "The american robin..."? These things amuse me!
  
• I'm starting actually to get tired of this friendly web-logging thing; the gimmick isn't holding up and very few people ever say hello; and that's OK. At the tmbl (which I'm using in a most-untmbly fashion, it seems) there is still the fresh focus of my academic speciality, which might keep me going there longer in spite of even fewer people saying hello, but this... One of my early inspirations-unto-blogging did recommend it as a way to make acquaintances, but I've made more from reading than from writing, and that one also doesn't 'blogg any more that I know of. And that's OK, too...
  
• TeX-setting diagrams is tricky, but you can do it incrementally. One day MathJax will pick up XYJax and then we'll all be that much more impressed with everything.
  
• Six is enough, I think. Don't you?