Jesus' View of Women

Jesus was a revolutionary when it came to attitudes about women.

Some time ago I came across this most interesting site. Having grown up in the 20th century Western world, I never realized just how radical the teaching of Jesus was. As I read this article, it spurs my spirit to honor and respect women on a plane I'm not sure I've ever quite reached. Here I've included a chunk of the article as a teaser:

It is forbidden for dogs, women or palm trees to pass between two men, nor may others walk between dogs, women or palm trees (Pesahim 111a). Gentile women were considered even lower than a Jewish woman as she was designated an animal (Kerithoth 6b and Berakoth 58a). Women were to be shunned in public social contact. From the Mishna tractate Abot, 1,5: “Engage not in too much conversation with women. They said this with regard to one’s own wife. How much more does the rule apply to another man’s wife? As long as a man engages in too much conversation with women, he causes evil to himself, for he goes idle from the study of the Torah, so that his end will be that he will inherit gehenna.” Imagine living with this kind of attitude of fear of damnation for a conversation.

...

Women were not allowed to be taught the Torah publicly despite that it was allowed in the Old Testament period (Josh. 8:35; Neh. 8:2-3). Restrictions applied to any public reading of Scripture in the Synagogue (Megillot 73a) and they were unable to pronounce the benediction after a meal in the home (Mishna Bereshit 7:2). Women were restricted from orally communicating the Torah to others, even to children. From the tractate Sota, 10a: “May the words of Torah be burned, than that they should be handed over to women.” In Sota 21b it is written, “Rabbi Eliezer says: Whoever teaches his daughter Torah teaches her obscenity.” Women were not allowed to be educated in the same schools as men. They could not learn the Torah by themselves nor along with the men. This was practiced in the Second Temple period of Jesus’ time and in synagogues afterwards; they were separated from men in the service.

...

These religious limitations were not always found in the Old Testament. This is why Jesus reacted so strongly against the teachings of the fathers (elders Mk.7), because they were not Biblical. Women being accepted in Jesus’ ministry was certainly not the practice of the Rabbis of His time. “One is not so much as to greet a woman.” (Talmud bBerakhoth 43b). Jesus’ attitude toward women in His ministry becomes a liberating factor against these types of religious practices that were accepted in his day. Jesus often did the forbidden in the religious practice of the Pharisees by ministering to both women as well as men that were off limits. He conversed with the Samaritan woman at a well, (John 4:1-42 that was an unaccepted practice for a male and rabbi of His day.) Even his disciples in v:27 “came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman”, as they were taught not to talk to a gentile woman in public. He instructed her and revealed Himself to her as the Messiah and she went forth with the message.

The Rabbis (tradition of the elders) taught that women were intellectually inferior and incapable of studying the Torah. When Jesus was in the house of Mary and Martha, (Luke 10:38-42), as Martha went about her daily chores he instructed her that Mary had actually “chosen that good part” by sitting and learning (Luke 10:42). Jesus did not condemn Martha for going about her household duties, but commended Mary for a better ministry, her desire to learn the Word.

And there's more like this. Recommended reading.

America: Former Home of the Free

David D. writes in a letter to the editor of WorldNetDaily on 30 October 2007:

In America, we are under a much-refined model of state domination. Our rulers have learned that if they allow us to say almost anything, allow us to buy almost anything, allow us the illusion of private property, tell us that we have a voice (vote) and encourage us to use that voice (within limits set by them), we will accept the conditioning and tell ourselves, "We live in a free country."

But who has the last word in all the most important areas of your life? The State.

The Fed/IRS tell you how much of your own earnings you're allowed to keep. Property taxes tell you if you can afford to continue living in your own home. The FDA and DEA lay a massive claim to your body and what you put in it. The FCC limits your speech. Campaign finance laws shut out a super-majority of would-be challengers to the throne. The war on terror now justifies extreme snooping on all of us.

By any reasonable standard, America as a free county is gone.

Ann Coulter on Jews and Christianity

A week or three ago Ann Coulter was on a talk show and mentioned something to the effect that she wishes Jews would convert to Christianity in order to be "completed" (I don't know if this was her term or not). She caught quite a bit of flack for it from some in the Jewish community (and elsewhere) who claimed this was offensive to Jews, although some in the Jewish community thought it was reasonable for her to speak her beliefs.

When I read the transcript, I thought she could have said it better, but I think she did adequately at explaining the Christian position without having warning beforehand as to how she'd respond to such a conversation.

But last night I casually came across Ephesians 2:11 and following, and the answer that Ann should have given started to gel in my mind.

Approximately 4000 years ago, God called Abraham to be his follower, and made three promises to him: 1) to give him the land in and around current-day Israel, 2) to make him the father of multitudes, and 3) to bless the world through his descendant. Abram believed God, and God counted this faith as righteousness. You can read about these things in Genesis, chapters 12 through 15.

Generations and about 430 years later, Abraham's children were led out of Egyptian slavery by the descendant of Abraham, Moses. As these millions of people moved out of Egypt and into the land which would become Israel, Moses, spokesman for God, established a complex set of rules and regulations for life and worship. This "Mosaic Law" constitutes the bulk of the Jewish Torah, the first five books of what Christians call the "Old Testament".

It's important at this point to realize that the promise made by God to Abraham was established by faith, and had nothing to do with the Mosaic Law.

It's also important at this point to realize that it soon became apparent that the Law of Moses doesn't work well for fallible humanity. So God promised a new covenant. Look what he has to say in Jeremiah 31:31-34:

31 "The time is coming," declares YHWH,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,"
declares YHWH.
33 "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time," declares YHWH.
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know YHWH,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares YWHW.
"For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more."

So it's clear that the Mosaic Law was only temporary, to be replaced by a new covenant sometime in the future.

Traveling forward in time another 1500 or so years, we come to the time of Jesus. After his crucifixion and subsequent physical, bodily resurrection, the twelve men who had been his disciples for the previous three years then turned the world upside-down preaching the Good News ("Gospel") that the promised seed of Abraham, and the new covenant, had arrived. Although the first believers didn't yet realize it, the time had come for all nations to be blessed via Abraham's seed, and not just the nation of Israel.

However, the nation of Israel by and large rejected this message, being too wrapped up in the Mosaic Law to see the preeminence and superiority of the first promise to Abraham, or to recognize the fulfillment of the prophecy made by Jeremiah. Still, it should be noted that for the first decade or three of the Christian church, every believer was a Jew. It was unthinkable to the Jews that non-Jews were allowed into the family of Abraham. (Non-Jews could be converted to Judaism through a strict rite of conversion, but they were then no longer non-Jews.)

Finally, God got the attention of Peter, one of the early leaders of the Christ-accepting Jews. Through Peter, non-Jews (or "Gentiles", or "the uncircumcised") started to be accepted into the Jewish sect known as Christianity, although not without considerable resistance and difficulty.

Later, another Christian leader, Paul, explains in his letter to the Ephesians (2:11ff) how non-Jews fit in:

11Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called "uncircumcised" by those who call themselves "the circumcision" (that done in the body by the hands of men)— 12remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.
14For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, 16and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
19Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

This same Paul explains elsewhere (Galatians 3:6ff) that the Torah demonstrates that righteousness does not come by the Mosaic Law:

Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." 7Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. 8The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you." 9So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.
...
17 What I mean is this: The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. 18For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.

In other words, the inheritors of the blessings promised to Abraham do not inherit based on bloodline, or on observance of the Mosaic Law, but rather on the basis of Faith, brought to all nations of the world through a bloodline descendant of Abraham.

So Ann Coulter's failure to the Jewish community was in allowing the misperception to remain that Jews who convert to Christianity are leaving their Jewishness to join a non-Jewish movement. Instead, she should have made clear that Jews who become Christians are becoming the Jews that God prophesied they'd be, and non-Jews who become Christians are being adopted into the Jewish faith that God promised in the book of Jeremiah. It's not that Jews are leaving the citizenship of Israel; rather, non-Jews are becoming citizens of Israel.

The problem is not that non-Christian Jews have rejected a "Gentile" religion; it's that they've rejected the first promises to Abraham, and that they've rejected the new covenant God promised to them.

Ann Coulter, and other Christians, just want the non-Christian Jews to seize their inheritance along with us, their adopted siblings, rather than rejecting it. But hindsight is easy. I can't fault her for not being able to articulate this very complex topic in a thirty-second soundbite, especially without preparation time.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Creationists often point out that Evolution, if it were true, would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (aka The Law of Entropy). This well-established scientific principle basically states that organized systems (living cells, the universe, new cars, sculptures, etc) have a tendency to degrade into a less-organized condition rather than growing into a more organized condition or remaining at the status quo.

For example, new cars eventually break down and become rust-buckets. Living cells develop mutations and become less capable of survival and/or successful reproduction. Sculptures erode away as bird poo and rain water and freeze/thaw cycles eat away at the material. Stars blow up and galaxies spin apart.

Evolutionists are quick to counter that the Second Law only applies to closed systems, and the Earth is an open system, receiving plenty of energy from the Sun to drive the process of Evolution into higher and higher levels of complexity and order.

However, the mere addition of energy will not allow a system to overcome the Second Law.

In order to overcome the tendency toward entropy, toward decay, you need three things:

1) Energy,

2) A machine/mechanism to convert that energy into useful work, and

3) A program to control that machine/mechanism.

As an example, think of a lawn that needs mowing. It is currently in a state of disorder, and we want to convert it into a state of higher order, trimmed neat and level.

If we put this lawn in a big box in order to make it a closed system by preventing energy from reaching the lawn, the Second Law of Thermodynamics does indeed reign within this closed system: the lawn rapidly declines into the disordered state of dead dirt.

However, if we take away the big box, thereby making the lawn an open system, able to receive energy in the form of wind and rain and sunshine, entropy still increases in the lawn: we don't wind up with a lawn trimmed neat and level, but with a field of overgrowth.

So simply adding energy, requirement number one, does not increase the order of a system. It increases the disorder of that system.

So let's add requirement number two, a machine to convert energy into useful work. Let's put a lawn mower out on the lawn.

Are things more ordered now?

Nope. The sunshine and rain is an energy form that the mower can not use. We either need a different form of energy, or a different mower that can use solar and/or rain power. So we learn that not just any energy and any machine will do; they must be matched together.

Our lawn mower needs energy in the form of gasoline. So let's pour a gallon of gas all over the mower.

Has the order of the lawn increased?

Nope. Oh, right; gasoline is just a form of stored energy. In order to release that energy we need a source of ignition.

So we drop a match on the gasoline-doused mower.

Increased order?

Nope.

The two requirements of energy and a machine to convert energy into useful work are not sufficient to overcome the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

So we add the third requirement: a program to control the machinery.

In the case of our lawn mower, part of this control program is built into the design of the mower. Part of that control program requires that the gasoline go into the gasoline tank rather than being poured all over the mower. (But that's not sufficient either; try dropping your match into the tank. Increased order? Nope.) More of that control program is inherent in the length of the piston rod, and the size and shape of the combustion chamber, and in the timing of the spark, etc.

Now we have energy (gasoline) being converted into useful work (the spinning of the mower's blade).

But even that amount of control program is insufficient to trim the lawn. We need even more of a control program acting on the machine itself, not just one inherent in the machine. In our case, we can use a control program in the form of a person pushing/steering the mower, or of a computer control program in the case of a "smart mower".

Now, finally, we have an increase in order within the lawn.

The only way we've overcome the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Law of Entropy (the tendency toward disorder), is to fulfill the three requirements needed: an input of energy, a mechanism to convert that energy into useful work, and a program to control that mechanism.

The idea that the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not apply to open systems is simply wrong. An open system is only one requirement of three needed to overcome the Second Law.

Psychologists Doing More Damage Than Good?

I met a young girl in University a week or two ago, and in talking with her learned that she comes from a family quite dysfunctional (yes, I know; many people do). Upon learning this, I asked if she thought she was "normal" and "healthy", and she sort of hemmed and hawed on the way to answering "Yes".

So I jumped to the chase, going for a shortcut to the answer, by asking, "Let me put it this way. Are you a psychology major?"

She answered, "Yes," and all of us in the room found that funny. My experience with college psychology majors is that they tend to be messed up and subconsciously looking for help for themselves, and are thus drawn to that field of study. (Please forgive me for my over-generalization.)

Tonight I was reading a book on an unrelated topic, but it mentioned the presuppositions of various fields of study, including Psychology. And reading that blurb reminded me of this young lady.

There are only two basic approaches to the study of human psychology: either

1) humans are specially created in the image of God, or

2) humans are the result of a long evolutionary climb from animal forebears.

If the Psychology department at a university adopts the wrong approach, the entire result of their methodology will be flawed, and therefore is likely to result in more damage than good to the customers of their field.

The book I was reading pointed out that by far the bulk of the psychological field is dominated by the belief that humans are evolved animals, and will thus treat their patients as such.

However, if Genesis is true (and I believe that it is), then the bulk of the psychological field is contributing to the mental illness of society rather than to the healing of society's mental illnesses.

Sad, to me, that this young girl may be steering her life in a direction that does mental harm to herself and to her potential future patients. I guess it depends on the presuppositions adopted by her instructors and textbooks, but I fear that my concern is well-founded.

A Safe Web Site for the Kids

If you need a kid-safe web site for your kid[s] to peruse ... I just recently learned of kidsanswers.org, a branch of AnswersInGenesis.org. Their blurb in a recent publication of theirs says:

Based in part on the popular "Kids Answers" section that's in every issue of Answers magazine, the site is fun, safe, and honors our Creator. It even features kid-friendly Christian video streams and facts about a new animal each week, plus downloadable coloring sheets, click 'n find posters, and more.

I found a cartoon version video of John Bunyon's Pilgrim's Progress on the site, and although I've only watched the seventh segment (out of nine, I believe), I found it interestingly entertaining. And speaking of their magazine, Answers; it is awesome. Highly recommended.

Fictional Heroes who Contributed to Who I Am

"It was a dark and stormy night. A shot rang out. Suddenly, a ship appeared on the horizon."

That's how his novel starts. I'm still waiting to see how Snoopy ties it all together in the second chapter. I've been waiting quite a while. Probably around 30 years or so. But I always knew that Snoopy was all about vivid imaginations, and that he one day would tie these disparate events together.

About the same time I was reading Peanut's booklets, I was also reading Archie comics. I remember the principal of Archie's high school teaching Archie that old cliché: "Winners never quit, and quitters never win."

Then there was the book series that had as its hero the guy with the ring that left a tattoo on his enemies' faces when he'd punch them; I can't remember his name, but I do remember that he could walk in a dark cave/tunnel, flipping on his light only for a second, memorizing what he saw, and then walk confidently in the dark for a good distance.

This guy was probably the lead-in for my later influence by Louis L'amour characters; be observant, travel by different routes to avoid patterns, do the Right Thing even when it costs, move silently when needed, don't waste bullets by missing your target; not that I'm good at any of these things.

Captain Kirk taught boldness, and risk-taking, and adventure.

Spock taught logic, and emotional control.

Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford taught the use of brains over brawn.

Col. Robert Hogan demonstrated coolness when trouble arises, and the ability to turn a bad situation, even being stuck in a WWII German POW camp, to your favor.

James West and Batman showed the importance of having the right tools, and of being prepared. Sometimes that tool is a well-trained horse or a derringer hidden in your boot heel; sometimes it's a Utility Belt or a car customized with safety nets and oil sprays.

Robert Petrie showed that a man should be a good and loving husband and father.

The Rifleman taught determination and bravery.

David Banner/the Hulk taught that we're different people in different situations, but that our basic character still shows through.

The Robinson family and the rest of the crew of the Jupiter 2 taught the necessity of keeping hopeful.

Dr. Richard Kimble amplified on that by teaching the principle of never giving in to hopelessness.

I'm sure there were lots of others.

I'm struck that so much of who I am came from television and books.

Then, there's Homer Simpson. D'oh!

The Value of a Woman

Here are three short audio clips (the first one about 30 minutes) recording a devotional presentation over three days to the staff of Answers In Genesis. It's about marriage and divorce. I haven't yet listened to the second and third, but the first one was very encouraging. The speaker goes back to Genesis, and finds that men and women are equal in value. The same reason men have value is why women have value:

And yet there is true equality ... we are equal to each other because we are made in the image of the same God, because He is immutable and does not change ...

A Godly man ... will treat women with great high respect because as a female she is made in the image of God; she is not an afterthought.

Now I'm going to go listen to parts two and three.

Just a Reminder

If you claim to be a Christian ...

In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12, NIV)

A Blessing Toward You

YHWH said to Moses, "Tell Aaron and his sons, 'This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them:

YHWH bless you
and keep you;

YHWH make his face shine upon you
and be gracious to you;

YHWH turn his face toward you
and give you peace.'

So they will put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them."

[Numbers 6:22-27]

I'm not of Aaron's descendants, and you're probably not an Israelite, but I'm appropriating this blessing and bestowing it upon you, my reader.

As a man thinks in his heart, so is he

Behavior is the outward expression of our root worldview.

"The Evolution of a Creationist", pg 23. Job Martin, D.M.D, TH.M. Biblical Discipleship Publishers, Rockwall, TX, 2004.

The older I get, the more I realize that what you believe matters. This world will not know peace at the point of a gun, but rather as the result of a mindset. I submit that the only mindset that will bring peace to the world is Christianity.

Top-Name Evolutionist Sounds Like Creationist

For the last couple of hundred years, Evolutionists have been insisting that Evolution is supported by vast amounts of evidence, particularly from the fossil record.

In contrast, Creationists have been claiming that the fossil record (and real life) does not show this slow, gradual change from simple life-forms to complex life-forms, but rather that it shows groupings of different types of animals (cat types and dog types and horse types and dinosaur types, etc) without any linkage between these different types of groupings (which is also the Biblical claim).

In other words, you can see variation-on-a-theme within a type -- in the horse group you can find big horses, little horses, horses with three toes, horses with one toe, zebras, donkeys, etc -- but you never see this variation stretched on out beyond the horse-type connecting it to some other type such as a cow.

Now a big name in evolutionist circles, ...

Eugene Koonin of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, has written a devastating critique of traditional Darwinism in an open-source journal, Biology Direct[reference footnote provided in original]. Koonin, an evolutionist himself, basically said that all major life forms, with all their complexity, appear suddenly in the record without intermediate forms, and this fact can no longer be denied.

Major transitions in biological evolution show the same pattern of sudden emergence of diverse forms at a new level of complexity. The relationships between major groups within an emergent new class of biological entities are hard to decipher and do not seem to fit the tree pattern that, following Darwin’s original proposal, remains the dominant description of biological evolution. The cases in point include the origin of complex RNA molecules and protein folds; major groups of viruses; archaea and bacteria, and the principal lineages within each of these prokaryotic domains; eukaryotic supergroups; and animal phyla. In each of these pivotal nexuses in life’s history, the principal “types” seem to appear rapidly and fully equipped with the signature features of the respective new level of biological organization. No intermediate “grades” or intermediate forms between different types are detectable.

(from http://creationsafaris.com/crev200710.htm#20071008a, emphases have been removed)

In other words, this evolutionist says the exact same thing that Creationists have been saying all along -- "No intermediate 'grades' or intermediate forms between different types are detectable".

The web-boards are lit up with conversation about this, but the evolutionists have to tread softly because, as mentioned, Koonin is a big name. As Robert Crowther writes over at EvolutionNews,

Koonin is widely regarded and is certainly at the center of the scientific establishment. So it is no surprise that the orthodox Darwinian priesthood were careful in denouncing his heresy.

Evolution may be popular; it may be career-killing to question it (and it is); it may be what society regards as "Science"; but according to the paleontologist (fossil scientist) experts (the late Stephen J. Gould, essentially said the same thing 20 years ago, as did Niles Eldridge), it's not supported by the fossil record.

The Ten Commandments

In Exodus 20, YHWH says to the young nation of Israel ...

1. I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. Do not have other gods besides Me.


2. Do not make an idol for yourself, whether in the shape of anything in the heavens above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. You must not bow down to them or worship them; for I, YHWH your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the fathers' sin, to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing faithful love to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commands.


3. Do not misuse the name of YHWH your God, because YHWH will punish anyone who misuses His name.


4. Remember to dedicate the Sabbath day: You are to labor six days and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to YHWH your God. You must not do any work—you, your son or daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the foreigner who is within your gates. For YHWH made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything in them in six days; then He rested on the seventh day. Therefore YHWH blessed the Sabbath day and declared it holy.


5. Honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that YHWH your God is giving you.


6. Do not murder.


7. Do not commit adultery.


8. Do not steal.


9. Do not give false testimony against your neighbor.


10. Do not covet your neighbor's house. Do not covet your neighbor's wife, his male or female slave, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

The Original Languages of the Bible

I've always been taught, and have always accepted, that the original languages in which the Bible was written was Hebrew and Aramaic for the Tanahk (the "Old Testament") and Koine Greek for the New Testament.

But I just read a blurb that is a new thought for me:

1. We don't have the original manuscripts of the Bible writings; we have copies of copies for the most part, and

2. Even if we had the originals, how would we know they were the originals? (Perhaps if it was in a box with a note inside that said "This is the original letter that Paul sent to the Ephesians" we'd have confidence that we had an original.)

What this means is that we don't know what language the original Bible documents were written in.

Moses was probably brought up as a bi-lingual baby, speaking both Egyptian and Hebrew. However, by the time he reached school-age, he was probably speaking Egyptian almost exclusively, making that his native tongue. So it might have been natural for him to write the Pentateuch in his native Egyptian. On the other hand, writing for his fellow Hebrews, he might have written in their native language (assuming it was Hebrew and not Egyptian). This latter case might also be bolstered by the idea that he spent forty years with his wife's family outside of Egypt, so whatever language they spoke might have become his native language by the time of the Exodus.

The conversations in the New Testament were probably not conducted in Greek for the most part, but rather in Aramaic, at least the ones in and around Israel. So when telling the story of Jesus, especially to fellow Israelites, it might make sense to write it in Aramaic originally.

But the short version is simply that we don't know.

Having thought about the issue for maybe a grand total of 30 minutes, I still tend to think that the best case can be made for the original documents to have been written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek, as I've been taught all my life. But the fact is ...

... we just don't know.

Another New Word

As an informal meeting in a co-worker's office was breaking up this morning, one of us guys noticed that someone had scrawled the phrase "[co-worker's name] is a callipygian" on the white board in his office. Upon being asked what the word means, the single young man sheepishly replied, "It means having shapely buttocks". (Sure enough, dict.org agrees on the definition.)

I don't know which was more entertaining, learning a new word, or knowing that someone actually wrote this on my co-worker's board. But at any rate, it was indeed entertaining.