(no subject)

Great thinkers over the ages must surely have tackled this question. In Genesis, why does God create male and female animals (and plants, for that matter), but at first, only a male human being?

Desperate, But Not Serious

The dramatic terrorism announcement yesterday said (and I quote) "The Government has received specific intelligence and police information this week which gives cause for serious concern about a potential terrorist threat." Now this sounds like new and urgent info was received; but it would also be consistent with an investigation that's been underway for a while - perhaps just the latest report on an individual or a group. In fact, as Australian officials have assured NZ (thanks capnoblivious), there is no imminent threat, which is why the official alert level hasn't been raised from medium to high.

If I'm understanding correctly, the rushed-through law would remove the need to prove a specific terrorist plan was afoot, only that suspects were planning some sort of attack. To be honest, I'm not clear in my own mind on the legal difference; but accordingly to intelligence gleaned from the Herald's newly mangled pages, police are ready to roll as soon as the new laws pass through the Senate this arvo. It may be too late. As one expert has noted, the government's politically expedient warning will have tipped off the terrorists.

In unrelated news

The hero of the next A-Team episode, Bad Times on the Border, is another undocumented immigrant - a tiny Mexican girl whose ailing mother is being held captive by greedy people smugglers. I can't believe this was made in the 80s!

ETA: The team are disgusted by a sweatshop. The baddies hold their cargo of victims behind chicken wire in the desert. Hannibal describes the whole operation as "slavery"; Face as "making money off of other peoples' bad luck."

(no subject)

Little Dawkins footnote. The book which he relies on for his knowledge of academic feminism - and how it supposedly rejects science, math, and logic as hopelessly sexist - Professing Feminism - is based on thirty anonymous interviews, which were then generalised to the entire field. The book, just one of numerous successful backlash publications in the nineties, became a handy tool for attacking all women's studies and all feminism based on the disgruntlings of a few.

Mark 10:6

I have a question (for the knowledgeable this time, thank you, rather than for the peanut gallery :-) about this verse:

But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. (KJV)

(Did you see what I did there?)

The context is Jesus' teaching on divorce, but I was wondering if this reference to Genesis is the one synaesthete7 mentioned a while back, and if so, if it's a paraphrase of Chapter 1. (I'm curious about how Biblical literalists reconcile Chapters 1 and 2 - again, another issue which must have engaged great minds for centuries.)