Pixel Scroll 9/26/18 Ent Misbehavin’

(1) ROWLING STEPS IN IT AGAIN. Yahoo! Entertainment reports that “Cries of racism erupt over the casting of Nagini in latest ‘Fantastic Beasts’ installment”.

The final trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald contained a jaw-dropping character reveal that has some Harry Potter fans fuming. As it turns out, one of the prequel franchise’s “new” characters, played by Claudia Kim, is actually a familiar villain from the original series: Voldemort’s evil snake companion Nagini. Author and screenwriter J.K. Rowling tweeted that she’d been sitting on this secret “for around 20 years.” But social media skeptics say that Nagini’s shocking past as a Korean woman seems highly implausible and possibly racist.

Here is the trailer:

Rowling’s tweet in response to a critic —

Fans have pointed out many troubling implications. Here is one of the less-sexualized examples —

(2) SPINRAD ASKED FOR HIS VIEWS ABOUT ISLAM. Rachid Ouadah of motionXmedia interviewed the author of Osama the Gun — “Norman Spinrad: ‘There is a difference between the religion of islam by itself and middle-eastern politics’”.  (Spinrad sent the link.)

Considering that the whole world is in crisis – we would not have had Trump if the world was in a good shape – would it be correct to say that terrorism is an expression of the crisis in the islamic world ? I didn’t say “arabic” because they are such a small part of muslims compared to Indonesians.

Indonesia is very complicated situation so I won’t go into that. (…) Islam and democracy are deeply against each other ideologically. Democracy says that legitimacy of a government arises from the consent of the people as expressed in a vote. Traditional islam says legitimacy of a government arises from the Quran, that human beings have no right to change these rules because it’s the word of Allah. And you can have a country that’s a democracy with a majority of muslims but you can’t have an islamic republic. Iran is not a real republic. It’s a phoney republic. The ultimate word is the word of Khamenei. And not of the president, not of anybody who that’s been elected. It’s not that it is a dictatorship. The ideology of what’s a legitimate government is completely different between an islamic government and a democratic government. So their take on what’s a democracy is it’s evil because it says that the decisions of humans can overrule the word of Allah. On the other side, democracy says [islam] is evil because it doesn’t allow people to decide. There is no middle ground between a theocratic muslim state and an electoral democracy. And that’s the core of the whole thing.

(3) TWO TO GEAR UP. SYFY Wire has artwork from the latest genre crossover: “IDW’s Star Trek vs Transformers #1: Beam up and roll out with artist Philip Murphy”.

Geek galaxies collide in a cosmic crossover for the ages in IDW’s new Star Trek vs. Transformers series, and SYFY WIRE has an exclusive chat with artist Philip Murphy and a first peek inside the pages of this perfect pairing of beloved sci-fi properties.

(4) EIGHT GREAT TOMATOES…ARE NOT ENOUGH. Hector Gonzalez’ saga of cooking for MexicanX Initiative participants at Worldcon 76 continues: “My Road to Worldcon 76. Part 5: Best Laid Plans…”

…The plan was set to bring the items to the main kitchen, get the mushrooms carnitas started, then work on the salsas. The pork will cook overnight and things will be ready in the morning. All seemed perfect. However, Mexican Pollyanna counted her chickens too soon. When we got to Doc Doyle’s home I discovered the besides missing some of the pork I needed for the carnitas, they had shopped dramatically wrong on different things I required, namely tomatoes, tomatillos, and onions. I asked for 8 lbs of tomatoes and only bought EIGHT TOMATOES. This meant another trip to the store, which bothered me. The least time I had at the kitchen, the longer this would take. It was already 2:30PM….

(5) IMAGINATIVE MERGER THEORIES. With Disney and Fox joining up, there’s money to be made! Yahoo! Entertainment heard one fan’s idea for how to do it — “This Marvel Fan Theory Explains How X-Men and the Fantastic Four Will Be Introduced Through ‘Avengers 4′”.

As we know, Avengers 4 will likely require some tricky inter-dimensional manipulation and time travel to undo Thanos’ big snap that killed half the universe. As we also know, back in the real world, Disney and 21st Century Fox are completing a merger, which gives the Marvel Cinematic Universe access to properties that were formerly owned by a separate company, such as X-Men and Fantastic 4. And, as Disney CEO Bob Iger said earlier this year, the company plans to “expand iconic movie franchises like Avatar, Marvel’s X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Deadpool, Planet of the Apes, Kingsman, and many others.”

So, the gears are all in motion for this great meeting of the Marvel characters to happen as soon as Avengers 4. One interesting fan theory on Reddit explains how the reversal of Thanos’ snap could cause the introduction of both The Fantastic 4 and Mutants. If the snap can bring Captain Marvel back to Earth to help, certainly it could bring the Fantastic 4 back as well.

(6) VADER NEEDS YOU. SlashGear fills fans in on a new video game — “Star Wars: Vader Immortal trailer and release info revealed”.

This game will have the user – you – dropped out of hyperspace near the planet Mustafar. That’s the largely volcanic planet where Anakin Skywalker fought Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Vader was effectively born. There, Vader’s palace can be found. This is the palace we first saw in film form in the movie Star Wars: Rogue One.

 

(7) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.

The carpet in the house of Sid, the villain of the first “Toy Story” film, is the same pattern as the hotel carpet in “The Shining.” The character of Sid was also partially based on a former employee at Pixar studios. — Source: The Daily Dot

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • September 26, 2001 Star Trek: Enterprise premiered on this day.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled  by  Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • Born September 26, 1946 – Togo Igawa, 72, Actor and Producer. A Japanese actor who became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, his genre credits include a small role in The Last Jedi and playing the voice of Hiro the Wise Engine in many Thomas the Tank Engine TV episodes and movies.
  • Born September 26, 1948 – Olivia Newton-John, 70, Actor, Singer, Composer, and Producer from Australia who starred in the fantasy musical Xanadu as a muse sent to help struggling artists achieve their dreams.
  • Born September 26, 1956 – Linda Hamilton, 62, Actor, best known for playing Sarah Connor in the first two Terminator movies, and her lead role in the TV series Beauty and the Beast. She’ll be reprising her role in a Terminator reboot movie expected out next year.
  • Born September 26, 1957 – Tanya Huff, 61, Writer. Canadian author of several fantasy series, all superb, including the Valor Confederation, Enchantment Emporium and Keeper Chronicles. Her Blood Books series, which pairs a Detective removed from the Force for failing eyesight with a vampire, was adapted as a series by CBC Television. She lives in rural Ontario with her partner, six cats, and an “unintentional chihuahua”.
  • Born September 26, 1963 – Lysette Anthony, 55, Actor and Producer from England, known for genre roles in the movie Dracula: Dead and Loving It, the remake of the Dark Shadows TV series, and the classic epic sci-fantasy movie Krull (LALALALA ICantHearYou SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP).
  • Born September 26, 1968 – Jim Caviezel, 50, Actor and Producer. Genre roles include the movie Frequency, the TV miniseries remake of The Prisoner, and 5 seasons in a lead role on Person of Interest.

I’m just going to leave this bit of craptastic birthday nostalgia here for your enjoyment:

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Superheroes helping each other out at The Argyle Sweater.
  • This is just the way I felt about the surveys we had to fill out at work — Bizarro.

(11) OH THE HUMANITY. Metro has coverage of the latest cultural crisis: “Library really needs people to stop sticking googly eyes on book covers”.

Library staff are pleading with people to stop attaching ‘googly eyes’ to book covers because the result will ‘haunt nightmares for all eternity’. Visitors to Alexandria-Monroe Public Library in Indiana, US, have apparently damaged a number of books by sticking the eyes to their covers. Bosses shared a picture of the library’s copy of The Turn of the Shrew to its Facebook page this week, on which a pair of ‘grotesque and haunting’ eyes were placed.

 

(12) PHONE HOME. JPL posted the Mars orbiter’s new photo of rover Opportunity. TechCrunch explicates: “Mars orbiter spots silent, dust-covered Opportunity rover as dust storm clears”.

The last we heard from the rover was on June 10, at which point the storm was getting so intense that Opportunity couldn’t charge its batteries any more and lowered itself into a hibernation state, warmed only by its plutonium-powered heaters — if they’re even working.

Once a day, Opportunity’s deeply embedded safety circuit checks if there’s any power in its battery or coming in via solar.

“Now that the sun is shining through the dust, it will start to charge its batteries,” explained Jim Watzin, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA. And so some time in the coming weeks it will have sufficient power to wake up and place a call back to Earth. But we don’t know when that call will come.”

That’s the hope, anyway. There is of course the possibility that the dust has obscured the solar cells too thickly, or some power fault during the storm led to the safety circuit not working… there’s no shortage of what-if scenarios.

(13) POPPING UP EVERYWHERE. BBC asks: “Are themed bars and pubs the future?” Half of the opening video covers a Potterverse bar in London, where Internet-of-Things wands manipulate toys and hooch; it’s doing well enough that a second one is opening. Chip Hitchcock also admires “The Bletchley”, which “Sounds to me like a great cutoff – ‘You’re not sober enough to have another if you can’t solve this puzzle.’”

…Many themed cocktail bars and pubs were originally pop-ups, such as The Cauldron and ABQ London.

Over the past decade, pop-ups have been increasingly used by new businesses to test out ideas, says Lucy Shaw, editor of alcohol trade magazine Drinks Business.

Pop-ups are hospitality events put on for a limited amount of time. They are held in temporary locations such as a tent or an existing venue.

“It makes business sense to have a pop-up, before you plough hundreds of thousands of pounds into a business,” Ms Shaw tells the BBC. “You want a litmus test, [you want] to test the water.”

Small businesses make up over 99% of all businesses in the hospitality industry, which made up 9.3% (£161bn) of the UK economy in 2016, according to the ONS….

(14) TECH IN SERVICE. “It’s Rice Vs. Seaweed Vs. Solar ATMs For A $1 Million Prize”:

…After the presentations, it was time for the judges to confer and decide. The prestigious group included former President Bill Clinton (the Hult Prize was previously associated with the Clinton Global Initiative); Earth Day Network president Kathleen Rogers; former U.N. assistant secretary general Elizabeth Thompson and a variety of business entrepreneurs, corporate executives and leaders of nonprofit organizations.

Finally, Clinton stepped to the podium to announce the winner. As he emphasized the urgency of responding to climate change, the implication was clear: These Hult Prize innovators better get to work. And the winner was …

SunRice, from University College, London, whose plan promises to increase rice production in Southeast Asia and raise the incomes of rice farmers. They would accomplish this through the use of energy efficient rice-drying and storage technology….

(15) 1976 TECH. “Original working Apple-I computer fetches $375,000 at auction” – article includes substantial history interview with Wozniak — video, much transcribed.

“Our experts tell us that there might be 15 in the world that work properly. You can power this thing up and behave like it’s 1976. It’s pretty fantastic.”

The Apple-I holds a place in technology history as the first computer to not require any assembly, other than to plug in a monitor and keyboard.

(16) BUMMER. It might violate a regulation! Or it might not…. NPR has the story — “Maine Asks Restaurant To Stop Giving Lobsters Cannabis Before Boiling Them”, the follow-up to a recent Pixel.

According to seafoodsource.com, Maine officials have asked — but “not commanded,” notes Gill on the restaurant’s website — the eatery to stop testing medical marijuana on the lobsters. While Gill is licensed to grow marijuana for medical use, state regulators cite a lack of legislation in this area and want to investigate whether administering cannabis to lobsters violates state regulations.

David Heidrich, spokesperson for the Maine Medical Marijuana Program, told the Portland Press Herald that “medical marijuana may only be grown for and provided to persons with a marijuana recommendation from a qualified medical provider. Lobsters are not people.”

(17) CAT ENVY. This fellow has recalibrated his life’s ambition —

(18) A WORD FOR OUR SPONSOR. John Hertz sent what I’d call a “state of the File” poem —

Seven Seventy Dotcom Glyer,
Migly or just Mike to thee,
Took great care of his Filers
Though no more Hugos he’d see.
Seven Seventy Dotcom Glyer
Said to his Filers, said he,
“If any of youse get some SF news,
I hope you’ll report it to me.”

(19) DEALING THE JOKER. The Hollywood Reporter has a short clip of Joaquin Phoenix both as “himself” and in full makeup (“See Joaquin Phoenix in His Joker Make-Up”). The clip morphs from the former to the latter… but don’t expect full-on SFX work. The movie, reportedly an origin film, is scheduled for an October 2019 release.

Here’s the first look of Joaquin Phoenix in makeup for his upcoming film about The Joker.

In a short screen test shared by director Todd Phillips, Phoenix is staring blankly into the camera before cracking a slight smile. The camera then flashes to Phoenix wearing clown makeup, but not the traditional Joker white face and green hair.

Aaaand cue Judy Collins

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, Norman Spinrad, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

85 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 9/26/18 Ent Misbehavin’

  1. 16
    I understand that the restaurant was blowing cannabis smoke across the lobsters – or the tank they’re in. Biology fail! (They have gills; they don’t inhale air.)

  2. 11) That’s lovely. They even had two different sizes for perspective. (When you buy a bag of googly eyes at the craft store, you can get one that’s all assorted. Very useful.)

    Who put nineteen great pixels in that itty bitty file?

  3. Well, the Apple 1 required a LOT of work to make function. You got the board, and a manual, but no monitor, keyboard, storage (though you could order a cassette interface board) and you also didn’t get a case!

    I pretty regularly work with a couple of different Apple 1st at the Museum and the world’s leading Apple 1 expert is a friend. It’s a neat little design. Woz is wicked smart!
    Chris

  4. I still love the Xanadu song, though the video is just weird with everything and the kitchen sink thrown in.

    Meanwhile, I offer you this Olivia Newton-John song. Not as acidtastic as Xanadu (but then what could be), but the contrast between between the very young and very angelic looking Oliva Newton-John and the murder ballad she’s singing is striking:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MilfP2fVLhU&w=560&h=315%5D

    And here we thought Olivia Newton-John only became a bad girl, when she put on skin tight black pants and got a perm and sang “You’re the one that I want”.

  5. Themed bars: if I went to one, I would want it to be this one.

    High crimes and fishdemeanors: I suppose it was inevitable that someone named “Gill” ended up running a seafood restaurant.

  6. @2: I’m surprised at Spinrad; the younger one would IME have been woke enough to say the same applies to any theocracy.

    @10: I suppose it’s expectable that today’s Aquaman would have bred electric eels with micro-USB connectors.

    @P J Evans: not according to the story: first they bubble smoke through the water, than add some above (possibly so the dissolved smoke doesn’t undissolve, says my 40-years-past professional-chemist-without-rubber-bible).

  7. Re 2), I’m not surprised at Spinrad, but I agree with Chip that the same would be (and has been) true of any theocracy.

  8. (1) Well actually the Naga are South Asian in origin – sprouting as they do from Indian religions like Hinduism and Buddhism – and got to Indonesia most likely bundled in with Hinduism, which is a majority religion on the island of Bali but to my knowledge not many other places in the Indonesian islands. She’s even lazier than she admits, given that the name for a female naga, without diacritics and such, would be “Nagini”. They’re a big deal in a bunch of other places in South-East Asia too, where they’re used in place of (or possibly sometimes in conjunction with) dragon iconography in Buddhist temples, like in Thailand.

    But Korea doesn’t, as far as I’m aware, have a tradition of Naga in their religious art, opting instead for East Asian dragon iconography, as it has a much more massive influence from China in that regard.

    tl;dr the whole nagini thing is lazy, ill-researched racism, essentially.

  9. (13) The BBC article rightly seems to focus on British themed pubs and such, but here in DC, we’ve had a company that does regular pop-ups (they’ve done themes of Game of Thrones, Christmas, The Walking Dead, and others). However, they got into trouble last month with their Rick and Morty attempt (the Wubba Lubba Dub PUB) as it turns out the company (Drink Company) did zero due diligence with licensing–here’s a recent article and got that pop-up shut down (semi-amusingly they replaced their Rick & Morty theme with GWAR, a nearby heavy metal band that will start things off by destroying the inside of the previous theme).

  10. Andrew: It’s an easy mistake to make. Turn of the Shrew was one of the lesser-known Shakespearean sequels.

  11. 9) Craptastic? I think delightful has been misspelled….

    Also….+1 and 👍 for Krull!

    @Chip Hitchcock

    the younger one would IME have been woke enough to say the same applies to any theocracy.

    Sure. But where are most of the modern theocracies located these days?

    @Paul Weimer

    Either my sarcasm detector is malfunctioning or you have not heard Rush’s song yet.

    Regards,
    Dann
    Wisdom includes not getting angry unnecessarily. The Law ignores trifles and the wise man does, too. – Job:A Comedy of Justice

  12. I have a soft spot for Xanadu. As a mythology-obsessed teen I was pleased by the inclusion of the Muses.

    I was lucky enough to see Jeff Lynne and ELO on their current tour, and they still play “All Over the World”. I also like this version of “Xanadu” that Jeff sings.

    https://youtu.be/CeXEqlkNGSM

  13. That was kind of my favorite era of Rush, when they were hitting just the right combination of trippy scifi, literary pretentiousness and prog rock.

  14. 9) Boy, I don’t remember that song at all, and that’s from when I was still listening to the radio. Some of her other stuff was pretty decent.

    13) We have at least 2 geek-themed bars in Houston — Darwin’s Pub, which is more of a sports bar with a geeky decor (and a hosting spot for the Geeks Who Drink club), and Neil’s Bahr, which is much more actually geek-oriented with video games and table games; they also host regular movie nights with genre films. Other themed bars I wouldn’t be likely to notice, as I’m not a bar-drinker.

    18) Bravo!

    @ Cora: Ah yes, one of the old sex-and-death songs. I like the non-traditional spin on this one — usually it’s the man who kills the woman for rejecting him. Also, she had a good bass backup singer there!

    @ Joe H: That’s a good version! Unfortunately, Amazon will only let me get it by buying the complete album; time to hit the used-music store.

  15. People are still scrolling pixels and nothing seems to stop them

    (1) Thats one problem with Rowling: She likes to claim representation, by retconning. „Oh, that character was actually gay“ Oh and that snake is actuallya korean woman“
    Please, just put those in the book in the first place!
    And this case seems to be „Ive heard this thing and I just think I can use it, so why not?“ without research. 20 years of sitting on this secret? Considering the implications, I highly doubt that.

    (We spoke yesterday already that her Worldbuilding is tailormade to the story. Many elements actually would have derailed stories if introduced earlier, so she seemed to have written a lot of things pretty much on the fly. This seems to bevone of those things)

  16. Lee: Boy, I don’t remember that song at all, and that’s from when I was still listening to the radio. Some of her other stuff was pretty decent.

    Half of the songs on the Xanadu soundtrack were written by John Farrar (who was responsible for most of her big hits) and performed by her, and half were by Jeff Lynne and ELO. While both sets of artists have produced some fantastic songs, IMO, the songs on the Xanadu soundtrack mostly suffered from being constrained by a need to support the “plot”, and this was the best of the bunch:

  17. Traditional islam says legitimacy of a government arises from the Quran, that human beings have no right to change these rules because it’s the word of Allah.

    All my life I’ve been told by Christians that we derive our rights, Constitution and government from God. When people express that kind of notion to call Islam a grave threat to democracy, they reveal their enormous blindspot about Christianity.

    If you asked Christians in America whether the legitimacy of our government arises from the Bible, does anyone doubt that they’d overwhelmingly say “yes”?

  18. @ JJ: Now that one I do remember.

    @ rcade: Sadly, I have no doubt at all. Nor do I doubt that this is a fully-intended effect of the deliberate sabotage of public education over the last 50 years, because that was where most people learned about the separation of church and state.

  19. Why make Nagini a Korean woman? Given Britain’s history in Asia, wouldn’t it make more sense to have her be an Indian/Burmese woman? Then Rowling can tap-dance about how she came to Britain with a British wizard somehow attached to the Raj or something like that. But Korean? Asia’s a big place, and AFAIK its cultures aren’t interchangeable.

  20. rcade says If you asked Christians in America whether the legitimacy of our government arises from the Bible, does anyone doubt that they’d overwhelmingly say “yes”?

    Christians in America are so diverse that it would be possible in each group to say what they would say but I can can tell would not overwhelmingly say yes. Some denominations would, some most decidedly, say Unitarian Universalists would be very, very opposed. So you’re flatly wrong in your assumption.

  21. @Dann665:

    Sure. But where are most of the modern theocracies located these days?

    There’s Israel for a start…

    tl;dr without the TL: presenting Islam as if it were the only instance is at best intellectually lazy, and often deliberately prejudiced.

    @rcade:

    If you asked Christians in America whether the legitimacy of our government arises from the Bible, does anyone doubt that they’d overwhelmingly say “yes”?

    I do. The Christians publically heard from are loud, rather than necessarily representative.

    wrt Nagini: has Rowling declared she is Korean, rather than simply played by a Korean actress?

  22. Christians in America are so diverse that it would be possible in each group to say what they would say but I can can tell would not overwhelmingly say yes. Some denominations would, some most decidedly, say Unitarian Universalists would be very, very opposed. So you’re flatly wrong in your assumption.

    I didn’t say all Christians would say it. I said the percentage who did would be overwhelming.

    Unitarian Universalists are less than one-tenth of one percent of all Americans. What they believe about our government being secular in origins rather than biblical is going to represent an extremely small portion of what all Christians believe. (Incidentally, if I ever darken a church’s door again it will be UU. I love their approach to religion and public life.)

  23. @rcade. I’ll just requote here a line from Spinard’s words in item 2 above.

    “And you can have a country that’s a democracy with a majority of muslims”

    He’s not saying that Islam is incompatible with democracy, just that theocracies are fundamentally not democratic, even if they have elections.

  24. He’s not saying that Islam is incompatible with democracy, just that theocracies are fundamentally not democratic, even if they have elections.

    If that’s what he means, his comments such as “Islam and democracy are deeply against each other ideologically” severely undercut that point. It’s a generalization about all Islam, not just an “Islamic republic.”

  25. @rcade–

    I didn’t say all Christians would say it. I said the percentage who did would be overwhelming.

    And you would be wrong, unless you define “Christian” the way the vocal minority of Evangelical Biblical literalists do. Which is to say, in a way that excludes most Americans who identify as Christian.

    The largest single Christian denomination in the US is Roman Catholicism. The fundies don’t consider Catholics to be Christians. Nor Episcopalians, Greek Orthodox, Lutherans…

    All of whom actually are Christians, and are not being taught the semi-literate fundie version of US history reflected in this ignorant claptrap about the Bible being the source of our Constitution and laws.

    The fundies, whom we are supposed to call Evangelicals now, are a loud, organized, and quite small minority among American Christians.

    Basically, in insisting that American Christians would “overwhelmingly” agree that the Bible is the source of the legitimacy of our government, you are demonstrating ignorance, not knowledge.

  26. @Lis Carey
    Where I lived in west Texas, there were churches that thought the Southern Baptists were too liberal and were hellbound. Members of those churches wouldn’t even go to completely secular events held at the local college, which was Baptist.

  27. And you would be wrong, unless you define “Christian” the way the vocal minority of Evangelical Biblical literalists do.

    I define “Christian” by the Christians I have known and heard from in my 51 years on the planet. I feel like you’re engaging in No True Scotsman because you don’t like some generalizations about Christians. I wouldn’t like them either if I considered myself one.

    But I think a reality check is in order about a country where we are compelled as schoolchildren to pledge allegiance to a nation “under God” and 52% of Americans believe there’s not enough religion in the schools. People who would tell that to a pollster are not likely to be asserting the idea that our government, rights and Constitution are secular in origin rather than endowed by God.

  28. @Lis Carey:

    The fundies, whom we are supposed to call Evangelicals now, are a loud, organized, and quite small minority among American Christians.

    Pew Research puts them at between 12 and 29 % of the population, which is about 18 to 44% of the population.

  29. Nope.

    I’m not saying the fundies aren’t Christians. Bad Christians,maybe, but Christians. And Normans are freakin’ weird Christians, but Christians.

    The fundies, a small but vocal minority of Christians in America, however, who say that lots of the rest of us are Not Christians.

    And, shockingly enough, there’s no necessary correlation between thinking prayer in schools is good (even though pretty much everyone holding that view is assuming it would be their prayer, not someone else’s) and thinking the Constitution comes from the Bible, rather than being written by quite human, and smart but fallible, men.

    You’ve cited your great age and experience of having been in this planet for 51 years. I’m 61. I wouldn’t ordinarily consider that a credential (after all, it neither sheds not purrs), but there you go. And I’ve known quite a lot of Christians, both those who also regard me as a Christian, and those who regard me as someone who needs to convert to become Christian.

    You want to attribute to most Christians a belief held by a loud minority that reject secular knowledge in a wide range of areas–a perspective not shared by most Christians. And you don’t want to accept Christians telling you you’re mistaken.

  30. @John A. Arkansawyer–You’ll need to clarify. How does 29% of the population equal 44% of the population? That’s before we even ask any other questions about what Pew was asking, and what they were saying about their results.

  31. @Lis Carey: There are problems with the new Pew typology. That said, they estimate at that link that 12% of the population are “God and Country Believers”. They’re all in the fundy bag. The “Sunday Stalwarts” are 17%. I figure some portion of them are fundish, so somewhere between 12 and 29% of the population.

    They’ve got 29% non-religious, which leaves us 71% for the religious. I called that two-thirds and multiplied the 12% and 29% figures by 1.5 to get 18% and 44% of believers–not of the general population! My apologies for the error.

    My personal figure is toward the high end. I could be wrong.

    Either way, it’s not tiny. It’s not a majority; it’s probably a plurality. Probably.

  32. @John A. Arkansas–One of the “problems” is that the Pew typology doesn’t say what your apparent skim of the summary led you to conclude it says. It says explicitly, if you click through to the full report, that no category in the typology constitutes a majority of any religious denomination.

    This includes Evangelicals, who are also diverse in the style and intensity of their religious belief and practice. You’ve missed the rather important point that the categories are explicitly not tied to denominations. They’re measuring something else. You can’t tell from the percentages attributed to each category what percentage is what denomination.

    As for what that means in terms of beliefs and rcade’s point: Jimmy Carter is an Evangelical. And he’s not even close to being unique among Evangelicals.

    This is why, as much as I dislike using “Christian” as if it means only or mostly the screaming crazies, I dislike using “Evangelical” that way almost as much. It’s a larger percentage of Evangelicals, but no, it’s not even all of them.

  33. Lis Carey: I’m not saying the fundies aren’t Christians. Bad Christians,maybe, but Christians. And Normans are freakin’ weird Christians, but Christians.
    The fundies, a small but vocal minority of Christians in America, however, who say that lots of the rest of us are Not Christians.

    My personal opinion is that it’s clearly up to God who is “saved.” Having made my own view clear, which may not correspond to that of any given denomination, I’m struck by the way you make it sound as if the “fundies” are being uniquely churlish in claiming a monopoly, when there are very few varieties of Christianity that don’t.

    When I attended a Catholic friend’s funeral 25 years ago, I was excluded from communion because I’m not Catholic. Has that changed? And if you’re talking about Mormons, above, what the Catholics say about that faith doesn’t sound like a warm embrace, and a Pope said Mormon baptisms aren’t valid. I’m not calling on you to defend your assertion about Mormons, I’m just saying that you sound as if everybody but this one segment were behaving up to your standard.

  34. @P J Evans–Didn’t see your comment before, but yes, that sounds sadly unsurprising to me. Splitters everywhere, which is quite different from a healthy diversity of opinion. 🙁

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