Kurt Cobain has been dead a while.

Today is the 20th anniversary of when musician Kurt Cobain shot himself. Of course the press jumps all over anniversaries like this, even when it’s a busy news day, ’cause nostalgia will steer web traffic just as effectively as actual news.

So, why are all the 30- and 40-somethings making such a fuss about him? Well, he was the first musician who died that we actually liked. We were too young to appreciate John Lennon or Marvin Gaye’s deaths, or feel any great loss at their passing. Cobain was different. We liked his music. True, we were young and dumb and had no taste, but that makes no difference. We liked him, and suddenly lost him.

Yeah, I watch 𝘊𝘰𝘴𝘮𝘰𝘴.

I’m not a scientist. I’m a science buff, in that I read a lot of stuff about science. I read a lot of history, and a certain amount of philosophy. Included in all that would be biographies of various scientists, or the history of scientific theory. When you read a biography of Benjamin Franklin, you’re gonna read a bit about his discoveries in electricity; when you read on Galileo Galilei, you’ll pick up astronomy; when you read on Albert Einstein, relativity. But sometimes I’ve just straight-up read Charles Darwin, or Nicolaus Copernicus, or Aristotle, just to see where these guys were coming from. Never be afraid of the original sources: I found Einstein himself explained relativity much more clearly than his biographer did.

So when I saw the promotions for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey last year, I was looking forward to it. I saw the original series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, back in 1980, on public television. Dad liked science shows, like Nova or National Geographic, and didn’t mind my watching them with him. Probably because they were “educational.” I found it interesting. Years later I found the companion book to the series and read it; also interesting.

Host and writer Dr. Carl Sagan used it to promote science and scientific discovery: As an agnostic, he’d ruled out the Judaism of his ancestors as an explanation for life in the universe, and the meaning of life. I’ve read enough of Sagan’s stuff to realize he hoped there was a God, but he didn’t care to search for him in temple, or a church. Instead he turned to nature. He looked to astronomy. He got his sense of awe from looking at the biggest things there are. And Cosmos (in both the original and 2014 versions) comes across as quite evangelical: It’s trying to give us that same sense of awe by showing us the wonders of nature, and getting us to be impressed by the science we used to discover it.

On the “Ham on Nye” debate.

So I watched the Bill Nye / Ken Ham debate on creationism.

[Update, 10/20/24: They took it off the Answers in Genesis website years ago, but YouTube still has it. Wanna watch it? Here ya go.

I’m guessing the DVD sales weren’t all that. The original video started with a really long countdown; glad that’s gone.]

Some thoughts.

January fasting and bible-reading.

Two things tend to happen to Protestants in January: Our churches encourage us to fast, and to start a program of reading the bible. The fasting is because we’re ostensibly seeking God’s face for the new year—we want to start it right by showing him we’re really serious about following him, and really seeking some new revelations from him about his upcoming plans—and so we fast. The bible-reading is because, well, we’re Christians; we oughta read the bible. And if you’ve never read the bible all the way through, it’s high time you made it your New Year’s resolution, and start a-reading.

My church calls for a fast every January. And I hate fasting—and so does everyone, ’cause we’re Americans and don’t like to deprive ourselves of anything if we can help it. That’s why, I suspect, so many of us choose to go on the “Daniel Fast,” which is a popular fast-but-not-really-a-fast. You don’t actually go without food. You go without some foods, namely meat and sugar and oil. It’s a diet, really. It’s an exercise in self-control, and frankly a lot of us could use self-control, so in in the end it’s a good thing.

On “Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat.”

[The Colbert Report.]

Back in 2010, Stephen Colbert did a funny bit entitled “Jesus Is a Liberal Democrat,” which I watched again recently. He did it round Christmastime. When it came out, there was much rejoicing among the Christian Left blogosphere, and one of the lefty blogs I glance at re-posted it for fun. It still applies.

[Update, 10/20/24: Paramount has taken it down, so you’ll have to settle for my transcript.]

COLBERT. Just seems to me the Democrats don’t get Christmas. Another example: Congressman Jim McDermott, who used the baby Jesus to push his pro-poor people agenda. Jim?

MCDERMOTT. [video clip from Hardball] This is Christmastime. We talk about good Samaritans. We talk about the poor, and the little baby Jesus in the cradle, and all this stuff, and then we say to the unemployed, “We won’t give you a check to feed your family.” That’s simply wrong!

COLBERT. Of course it’s wrong! We should’t be talking to them at all! They’ve got unemployment cooties.

And I am not the only one upset by McDermott’s flagrant injection of charity into the Christmas season. So is Papa Bear Bill O'Reilly. In his weekly column, he wrote, “Every fair-minded person should support government safety nets for people who need assistance through no fault of their own. But guys like McDermott don’t make distinctions like that. For them, the baby Jesus wants us to ‘provide’ no matter what he circumstance. But being a Christian, I know that while Jesus promoted charity at the highest level, he was not self-destructive.”

Good point, Bill. Jesus said we only have to love those who deserve it.

When Black Friday comes.

[Photo illustration by Reddit user kencrema.]

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Days before Thanksgiving, I picked up Mom’s head cold, so the day of, I was boiling cranberries and sweet potatoes (no, not together; separate pots) and coughing away from the food. I felt like Typhoid Mary. But much of the rest of the family has already suffered from one virus or another recently, and everything I cooked was pretty well sterile by the time it got to everyone’s plate. I think. I hope.

That morning we got the big-ass Thanskgiving edition of The Reporter, which contained all the Black Friday ads. And of course, half the stores weren’t gonna bother to wait till Black Friday: Their doors were either open already, or were opening at 6 or 8 p.m. Which means their employees had to be there even earlier, and cut short their Thanksgiving dinners, or move them to a different day.

I call this “the War on Thanksgiving.” Never mind the War on Christmas; that’s all hype. The War on Thanksgiving is bound to be a lot more successful because it’s based on Mammonism: Businesses wanna make more money, certain employees wanna make more overtime (assuming their employers even offer them overtime pay for working Thanksgiving; Walmart doesn’t). Plenty of Christians who will object, at the drop of a hat, to anyone wishing them a Happy Holidays, quickly turn libertarian when it comes to working Thanksgiving. Or even Christmas. ’Cause it’s money. And nothing should interfere with Americans’ God-given right to make a buck… and drag their employees in, holidays be damned, in order to help them make those bucks.

On getting friend-zoned.

To me, the “friend zone” is an easy concept. It basically means someone isn’t attracted to you. They like you—if they didn’t, you wouldn’t be considered friends—but they’ve ruled you out as a prospective romantic partner.

Either you were never attractive to begin with, or you were superficially attractive, and once they got to know you, they changed their mind. I, fr'instance, am attracted to brains. Beauty may get my attention, but intelligence holds my attention. So when I meet a woman, I might be attracted up to the minute she opens her mouth. Then I find out her character, and that determines which category she goes into.

Sometimes she’s a fool, meaning she doesn’t think things through, or invests all her thinking into silly things, like fashion or gossip or popular culture or sports. Sometimes she’s evil: She spends a lot of time manipulating her “friends,” or plotting against her “enemies,” or otherwise trying to transform her life into a bad soap opera. Sometimes she’s spiritually immature: She’s uncommitted to her religion, and lacks balance, self-control, emotional control, generosity, patience, peace, or love—and I don’t see her changing anytime soon, and I certainly don’t want her to change for my sake, but Jesus’s. And sometimes she has other habits and beliefs which I find irritating. I won’t get into a laundry list, but there are certain things which kill my attraction like someone shooting out a lightbulb with a pellet gun.