As someone who teaches both Hebrew Bible and Intro to Christianity, I've always found the 'Jesus is really just [other ancient deity]!!!' arguments pretty offensive for a variety of reasons -- foremost among them being that they tend to discount or entirely dismiss the thousand-plus years of Israelite/Jewish culture prior to Jesus' advent. Yes, surely a bunch of first-century Palestinean Jews, deeply insular yet unable to find anything redeeming about their own culture, went shopping for salvation myths from surrounding cultures, despite how: a) many of those cultures had historically been in conflict with the Israelites, b) Israelite/Jewish religious traditions perpetuated themselves despite their followers' being in diaspora by strict rejection of local cultic traditions, and c) worship of other gods is pretty much the #1 bad thing in all of the Hebrew Bible, both prescriptively and descriptively. This must be the most logical answer.
Sure, you can -- and should -- make arguments about Canaanite/Midianite influences on ancient Israelite religion. But that's way, way before Jesus' time.
He suggests the government could help limit further house price rises by encouraging the building of more homes.
This (the idea that the way to keep house prices steady is to build more houses) is a myth, albeit one that's quite widely-believed and oft-repeated, even by those (like housing ministers) who really should know better. It turns out that things just don't work like that, not least because it's unclear how you'd get the developers to join in: their entire business model relies on being able to make large profits from building new houses and then selling them for as high a price as they can get.
I was reading something just the other day about how by the end of the year it is likely that interest rates will have gone up to 5%, because we have a very serious problem with stealth-inflation seriously outstripping government targets. (Due to Quantitative Easing.)
Which will obviously hit people with mortages, who have had it incredibly easy the last 7 or 8 years with these record low interest rates we've had. And probably be the thing that drives the correction in house prices.
I'd guess the housing minister maybe wants to try and get ahead of the curve on this one...
The Mithras etc thing is particularly annoying. Around Christmas it often comes up and the people who argue for it that I encounter have never really done any background reading (usually they've seen the Qi show that mentions it).
"Star Wars is not entertainment. Star Wars is George Lucas masturbating to a picture of Joseph Campbell and conning billions of people into watching the money shot"
I'm puzzled by the Scalzi article. He generally seems pretty with-it, even when he's being controversial, but I genuinely couldn't tell what he was getting at (but didn't want to go over there and resurrect an apparently old comment thread). It seems to be a conflation of several overlapping and individually false claims:
(i) that Lucas made starwars with little or no desire to make an entertaining story (which seems unlikely for any director)
(ii) that if someone didn't intend something as entertainment, then it's not entertainment, even if it's sold and consumed as entertainment
(iii) that the best stories are not typically produced by people with a vision rather than people striving for popularity (both seem to have their place)
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Doe US copyright law apply to the whole world or something?
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Sure, you can -- and should -- make arguments about Canaanite/Midianite influences on ancient Israelite religion. But that's way, way before Jesus' time.
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This (the idea that the way to keep house prices steady is to build more houses) is a myth, albeit one that's quite widely-believed and oft-repeated, even by those (like housing ministers) who really should know better. It turns out that things just don't work like that, not least because it's unclear how you'd get the developers to join in: their entire business model relies on being able to make large profits from building new houses and then selling them for as high a price as they can get.
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Which will obviously hit people with mortages, who have had it incredibly easy the last 7 or 8 years with these record low interest rates we've had. And probably be the thing that drives the correction in house prices.
I'd guess the housing minister maybe wants to try and get ahead of the curve on this one...
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Lol.
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(i) that Lucas made starwars with little or no desire to make an entertaining story (which seems unlikely for any director)
(ii) that if someone didn't intend something as entertainment, then it's not entertainment, even if it's sold and consumed as entertainment
(iii) that the best stories are not typically produced by people with a vision rather than people striving for popularity (both seem to have their place)
...
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