May we burn her?

When I was an undergraduate one of our favorite bad questions was "Is it acceptable to torment the damned?"

This was the sort of loaded bad question you could drop on zealous underclassmen who would emerge three hours later with some vague notion they needed to break up with their girlfriends and spend more time praying. (Though, to be fair, these were the default conclusions of underclassmen after any real discussion) Our very favorite bad question was "If God created a rock so big he couldn't lift it, would it make him insecure?" Once I asked it on a discussion board as a joke. Dozens of posts later earnest people were asking me for the true answer.

The bad question in question has bad premises, assumes badly that we could know, and uses the word "damned" which must be bad if you go to an evangelical protestant liberal arts college. And probably most times I asked the bad question it was with a supercilious air of torment with little concern for the immortal state of my targets. I am concerned that some day I shall have my reward in full. Still, the question came to mind today in consideration of Christian violence/non-violence.

Jesus models non-violence and exhorts us in almost every circumstance to do likewise, right? I think so. What do we make of Jesus inciting violence against himself? For he surely did. He incited individuals, mobs, establishments, and even governments against himself with the ultimate violent end. If violence is bad then how can this be a good thing? Was this spurring non-believers on to unrighteous acts? If you're Jesus is it acceptable to torment the damned?

Divine Justice is a tricky thing. Lord have mercy on those who may or must weild it.

Amazon Wins Beedle the Bard Bid!

In a shrewd move, Amazon.com won the Sotheby's auction for the single commercially available copy of J.K. Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard.




Really cool photographs (and apparently spoilers for those of you waiting to get your copy) here.

Maybe for Amazon this is a huge publicity stunt. Maybe it's donation to a good charitable cause to the tune of $4 million. Maybe it's an investment and this book will actually go up for sale on Amazon. Maybe it's to protect the copyright integrity of the volume. In any case you have to think Amazon wins in all this.

And, apparently JoRo hand inked all seven volumes that were produced: none of them are prints. So there are seven unique volumes in existence. If that's not magical I don't know what is.

Bunked by the magic plastic card

Here's a question: If a frequent flier mileage credit card offers you $50 off a ticket for signing up, is it worth it?

My former professional life involved these questions on a regular basis. The moral is almost always that the catches make the deals not worth it.

But I anticipate a LOT of travel in the next year so I read the finest print and accepted this offer. With a full awareness that the $50 annual fee would immediately offset the saved $ from my first ticket.

So now I have the card, and yes the print gets even finer. No APR interest charged on balance transfers, that's good. Oh, wait, there's a "finance charge" for transfers of 3%, capped at $50. If I transfer $2000 (which I'm pleased to say I can't do) the fee is $50. But at least I get a FF mile for every dollar transferred so that helps right? Well, cashing them in for a ticket takes 25,000 miles, so in this scheme 25k miles are probably worth about $300 assuming I can get on the flight I want, which makes the cash-munny value of each mile-dollar transferred about a penny. So, I pay $50 to earn 2000 miles, worth about $20. The only way transferring balances is worthwhile is if you transfer so many the finance charge is mitigated. To break even I have to transfer $5000 and pay it off before the robust interest rate kicks in. This balance transfer offer is the kind of dog that should be kicked for looking cute but wanting to bite your hand.

Is the card a deal? Jury is out. I get to try it free for a year. I don't spend that much regularly on credit so it will remain to be seen if tickets purchased are a clincher and can make this work in my favor. I'm no longer optimistic.

And if you stopped reading before you go to this point your probably the kind of consumer that fine print printers make money off of. Not that you know it.