things that make you go hmmm.....

Since it's been so long since I've posted anything, I've been keeping a running tally of a list of odds and ends that have interested me, kinda like news of the weird. only it may only be interesting to me. who knows.

1. Somewhere in your mind, if you consider companies such as Lego, with their cute little Star Wars action figures and such, you're thinking to yourself, "Lego is a wonderful place. I love Lego. I bet working there would be awesome." Well, time to pop that bubble. Seems that one of the girls from my work used to work at Lego, they have a plant in Endfield, CT. And instead of being regaled with happy shiny stories of harmonious Lego goodness, I'm told that they regale each other with such happy phrases as "F..off" and are an argumentative lot, with their plant situated just across the street from a jail. Apparently it's alot less like Santa's elves and workshop than we knew or ever expected. A dream died then.

2. One of the most galling things I've ever heard.....Africa is one of the poorest third world countries.....we all know this. What we didn't know is that recently cell phone companies have been making inroads into their country. That's right, a place that doesn't have running water, electricity, or even a good mail system now has cell phone towers. I don't even know how the people afford them, or who the hell they're going to talk to in such a place, but MY GOD COME ON! It's more important to cater an accessory of the richer countries than to feed them and give them drinking water?? What the hell? How can they (those companies) look at themselves in the mirror every morning??

3. Adding gall upon gall, in case we didn't have enough people out there giving christians a bad name, we have Pat Robertson. Truly, the man has lost his lid for his rambling discourse on assasinating random world leaders we don't like. At this rate we will all be labeled bumbling idiots. perhaps we already are. But dammit, it's time to say that we're not all like that, and we don't approve of his words. A finer response than I could ever give to that can be found here:

Sonja's page

3. there's a Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence, RI, like our TD Banknorth Garden. While driving through with Shauna, we noticed this and my first thought was, you know, the greeks and romans would be ashamed of us. They at least named their large gathering places important sounding names like the acropolis or the parthenon. Instead, due to commercialization, we have cheap ass ridiculous names like "the Dunkin' Donuts Center". Oh so sad.

4. Last week I had the supreme pleasure of bible geeking with Erin. She picked up an encyclopedia of christian people in history and one of mythic characters and we went off. In our random findings, we discovered that Herod in the bible was actually a family of people given the surname of their father's name of Herod. So even if their names were something else, because their dad's name was herod they were known as Herod "blah add real name here". But that wasn't the interesting part.

The interesting part is how their family tree doesn't really fork necessarily, and how even the little bits that you thought were screwed up about them were really just the tip of the iceberg. I may need a flow chart but here goes:


Herod the great married a woman named Mariamne. They had five sons, almost all named starting with the letter A. There was Aristobulus, Alexander, Archelaus, Antipas, (and oddly) Philip. Here's where it gets freaky. Seems Aristobulus and Mariamne had a daughter named Heriodias. That's right, he slept with his mom. And it seems that perhaps Alexander did too, because when Herod put Aristobulus and Mariamne to death, he threw in Alexander too. Somehow, Herodias escaped unscathed. Perhaps she was named after Herod to make him think it was his child, or to appease him by naming her after him? I don't know. But she was still alive so I guess that worked.

Herod the great was the guy that tried to kill Jesus when he was a baby. he died around the time of 4 BC. Somewhere in the middle of all this, Philip marries Herodias; his half sister and niece. Antipas ruled after Herod died, and when John the baptist accused Herod of wrong and so was beheaded, he was talking of Antipas, who stole Herodias, his half sister and niece from Philip and took her for his own wife. John had just been talking of adultery, somehow I think he would have had more of a conniption if he'd known the rampant incest going on.

Of the remaining sons, Archaelus had helped reign during his father's lifetime, (since there were 3 provinces to keep in check, Judea, Samaria and Israel) and kept his post when his seemingly older brother Antipas was made ruler over all the provinces following Herod's death. Three years into this reign with his brother, he was exiled for, guess what, trying to steal his brother's wife.

Now it doesn't say for sure which brother or which wife in the books we read. But really, the only person who could exile was the King, and that was Antipas. At this point, the only other two of his brothers who were alive were Anitpas and Philip, and both had the shared wife of Herodias. So she's the only wife that he could have stolen.

For those lost in the middle of this, let me make this clear: Two of the brothers were killed for sleeping with their mother. One of them had a child by their mother, and then the rest of the brothers fought for who would get to sleep with her, their half sister and niece. And it seems that Antipas had a thing for Herodias's daughter Salome (a child from when she was married to Philip) who had danced very provocatively before him and his guests, and who by that dance gained the right to ask for John the Baptist's head on a platter (her mother wanted John dead for saying anything against what she was doing). So who knows, he could have slept with her too. At this point, I don't put anything past them.

Antipas got exiled with Herodias by Agrippa, who was either their child or the child of Philip or Archalus. Since it seems no one married anyone other than their sister here, it was probably Herodias who was the mother. Really the books just say it was Herod the great's grandson, so it was someone's child, who obviously didn't take to the family with love and adoration. But hey, with families like this, who needs enemies?

5. More bible geeking with Erin about mythical creatures led to a discussion on what ones of them were in the bible, and finding the references for unicorns present in the text. Amazingly, the NIV loses the translation of unicorn and dulls it down to a wild bull, while the King James loses none of its unicorn-ness. Both have dragons though, which I'm sure we will dig into more when we find the time.

This also reminded me of a discussion I had with some of Jocelyn's orthodox church family about Harry Potter, and how a few scholars believed that Harry Potter was not against christianity but in a certain extent for it, claiming that alchemy is not an entirely occult science and that many mythic creatures, such as griffins, unicorns and phoenix are actually or have been used as mythic symbols of Christ. Naturally I found this fascinating (especially since they were rabid Harry Potter fans), but I haven't made the time to go look at the links he gave me. If you like, this is one of them:

Hogwarts Professor

6. Lastly, Jocelyn makes me laugh. Well, so does her husband Steve. Crack me right up. And this is a fine example of that:

Jo's page

If I have the time later, I'll post about new theories of creationism bracketed with the title, "I too have been touched by his noodly appendage". Stay tuned.