Explain Your Acronyms, People

You all know and use acronyms. In baseball, it is well know that RBI is an acronym of “runs batted in” and ERA is the “earned run average” for pitchers. In common use are FBI for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and IRS is the Internal Revenue Service of the federal government. But please, when using a less well known acronym, explain what they stand for. For example these came up in recent posts unexplained.

UBI From the context and more than a little thinking I twigged that this stood for “universal basic income” which is when a government ensures that all citizens make a minimum amount and if one fails to do that the government backfills the amount.

NVC This stands for Non-violent Communication. Who knew?

WRC+ This acronym stands for Weighted Runs Created Plus which is a comprehensive baseball statistic that measures a player’s total offensive production, adjusting for ballpark effects and league-wide scoring, with 100 being league average, making it easy to compare hitters across different eras and parks.

I am a long time baseball fan and I didn’t know what the heck this stat was, so I had to look it up. But such things shouldn’t have to be looked up. Standard practice used to be that unless an acronym was very widely known, e.g. IRS, FBI, NASA, etc. that you used the whole name followed by the acronym to used subsequently in parentheses:
Weighted Runs Created Plus (WRC+)
Non-violent Communication (NVC)
Universal Basic Income (UBI).

In this oh, so sophisticated age you can even do this in reverse, leading with the acronym and then following with the clarification (for the less well informed, sniff, sniff):
(WRC+) Weighted Runs Created Plus
(NVC) Non-violent Communication
(UBI) Universal Basic Income.

Enough said, now I gotta go chase some of those damned kids off my lawn!

PS Don’t get me started on why some idiot decided only the first letter in an acronym need be capitalized.

“No Afterlife for You”

The title above is a spin on the Soup Nazi character from Seinfeld TV show of long ago. His tag line was “No soup for you!”

America’s 47^th president and hopeful dictator seems particularly concerned lately with where he’s headed when he dies. Trump mused about his chances at eternal salvation with the cast of Fox and Friends this August. He explained that he wants to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia because  “I want to try and get to Heaven, if possible.” The president was uncharacteristically skeptical of his prospects, however. “I’m hearing I’m not doing well.”

Since then he has reinforced his desire to end up in the Good Place when he dies. So, what do you think his chances are?

He claims to be a Christian and the loosely put criteria for achieving a room in the Father’s mansion of many rooms are faith in Jesus and loving its god. Has Trump shown any signs of either? (Hint: no … actually Hell, No!)

In fact Trump has lied, cheated, and stolen to achieve great wealth and Jesus said outright: “And Jesus said unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, It is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:23-26

So, Trump being hell-bent on being a “rich man” (yugely rich, mind you) is not a good sign.

And what does the Bible say about liars and others with attributes like Trump, including those who were untrustworthy in marriage, aka adulterous, etc.? Well the Holy Bible has hundreds of comments about not getting into Heaven, oh my!

Here is a taste:

• But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. (Revelation 21:8)
• A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish. (Proverbs 19:9)
• But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life. (Revelation 21:27)
• Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Galatians 5:19-21)
• For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. (Ephesians 5:5)
• Nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:10)
• Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. (Hebrews 13:4)

So, Trump in Heaven? Only if there is a subdivision with a Lake of Fire for him and all of the other liars, cheaters, adulterers, greedy, etc. There might even be a golf course for him, but the water hazards are really, really hazardous. I do, however, like the part about Trump dying.

How Progressive Christianity Distorts The Truth

The title above was the subtitle of a medium post entitled “Say ‘No’ to Progressive Christianity” (8/9/2025). I had to read at least a little bit of the post to see what “truth” Progressive Christianity could distort, given that there are over 4500 denominations of Christianity and if there is any truth there, it is very, very, very hard to see.

Bless her heart, the author doesn’t shilly-shally but gets right to it up front, “Progressive Christianity. It’s not the real thing! Please see the differences below between real, biblical Christianity and Progressive Christianity.”

Ah, Biblical Christianity, The Real Thing™ and all this time I thought Coke was the Real Thing! (Coca-Cola has a trademark on “It’s the Real Thing,” not the Bible.)

The real question in my mind is should I keep reading.

Again, the author doesn’t disappoint. The first point in her argument is this:

Biblical The Bible is the inspired Word of God. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” (2 Timothy 3:16–17, KJV)

Progressive The Bible is simply a human book written by fallible human beings and is subject to error and revision.

Setting aside using a Bible quote to establish its authenticity is a mite circular, it is debatable as to who actually wrote this book in the New Testament. For example: “Paul did not write either 1 or 2 Timothy (or Titus). This is one of the most widely agreed upon things in Pauline scholarship.” Versus “The Second Epistle to Timothy is one of the three pastoral epistles traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle.” (Traditionally here means, others did it, you should do it, too.)

It is not uncommon that true Bible believers quote the Bible as if it were the truth whether scholarship supports that or not. I guess it doesn’t bother the author that the point she is making is supported by a forger, and I suspect that anyone forging “God’s Truth” would be unwelcome in her prayer circles.

Okay, I can’t keep reading. This is yet another example of someone claiming to know the truth, when the truth is unknown and will remain unknown unless Old Yahweh/Jesus makes a comeback tour.

Our Terrorist in Chief

I read this morning in The Guardian (Online) “As retired Admiral Mark Montgomery recently put it, the strategy of Donald Trump is not unusual “if you’re watching the Sopranos.” It is unprecedented for a president. In a single word, our commander in chief is an extortionist. He makes threats that exceed his authority, and he counts on his targets recognizing that it is cheaper to give in to those threats than it is to fight them. Seven months into the extortionist’s reign, almost every target has caved.”

But extortion has been Trump’s chief business weapon for decades. He regularly threatened contractors working with him with lawsuits if they didn’t reduce his bills, for example. But since The Donald, aka The Orange Menace, has gone global he has become a terrorist. He regularly threatens poor countries, which by being poor cannot buy as much in the way of U.S. goods as the U.S. buys of theirs, with crippling tariffs. These tariffs are not trivial to a poor country as they put businesses out of business and in small economies, the government can come crashing down quickly.

Why extort a country which has nothing to extort? The only reason is to strike fear in others. Like the mafioso who shoots you in one of your kneecaps and then tells you it would be a terrible shame if that were to happen to your other kneecap. Imagine that, aka The Mango Menace, aka The Mango Mussolini, aka The Mandarin Mussolini has within just one half of a year of his administration made terrorism an official policy of the United States of America.

I am reminded of Henry II of England’s immortal whine: “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” referring to Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1170, but in our situation it applies as “”Will no one rid us of this troublesome pol?”

“In whichever way a democratic system might be sick, terrorism does not heal it; it kills it. Democracy is healed with democracy.” (Italian prosecutor Virginio Rognoni, who took on the Red Brigades in the 1980s without resorting overmuch to police-state tactics—Source: Christopher Hitchens, And Yet…: Essays (p. 148). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition)

But What Would They Know About It?

“Two leading human rights organizations based in Israel, B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights, say Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the country’s western allies have a legal and moral duty to stop it.” Source: a post in The Guardian (28/07/2025) entitled:

Israel committing genocide in Gaza,
say Israel-based human rights groups

Palestinian children, injured after an Israeli attack, await treatment at the
Nasser hospital, Khan Yunis, in June. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Finally … !

Republicans under Ronald Reagan used this as their guiding statement: “government isn’t the solution, government is the problem.”

Government Isn’t the Solution,
Government Is the Problem

And it took the Republican administration of the execrable Donald Trump to make this come true.

Painting a Portrait of the Historical Jesus

The prompt for this post is this quite honest question: “I merely want to ask how we might recover a glimpse of the truth about Jesus from the worship and way of life of his earliest followers? Is it even possible?”

The answer is clearly no. We are now finding out that the early Christian communities had a very wide range of “understandings” of the nature of Jesus. They didn’t even refer to themselves as “Christians” although a few Roman officials did (bureaucrats need labels). Some of those communities had no “Jesus,” only “the Christ.” Others thought Jesus to have been a prophet, others a teacher, still others … well, you get the idea. And if those closest to the stimulus for creating their churches were confused, how does the passage of time clarify things.

The nascent orthodox church, however, during its development didn’t want that cacophony of voices, so it expelled, edited, even obliterated most of those voices, as heresies and heretics. (They didn’t do this before the Romans gave them official power. Prior to that point they only pleaded for tolerance.) It even went so far as to eliminate “revelations” even though the only route their Saint Paul had for acquiring the information for “his gospel” was through that route. It declared itself, the church, as the only source of valid information, superior even to scripture. (Of course, Protestants elevated the bible into the #1 position to undermine the Catholic Church.) And, the obliteration of the other traditions of Jesus/Christ worship doesn’t help us piece together what was going on.

As evidence for this position consider that there have been written hundreds of books clarifying who the “historical Jesus” truly was. All of these characters differ, of course, because there is so little actual information available, a decent picture/characterization of Jesus is impossible. The blanks in the data set far outnumber the actual data (How tall was Jesus? What color was his hair/eyes, etc.? What did his voice sound like? How much did he weigh? What was his percent body fat? Assumptions are made that he was white with blue eyes, a brown Palestinian, etc. but what characteristics might Jesus have inherited from his father, the Holy Spirit? Transparency?)

Those blanks in the data set filled in by the authors of those books and since they outnumber the actual data, the characters they create are over 50% fictional, aka imaginary.

Imagine being given a painter’s canvas with three splotches of color on it and being asked to “complete the painting.” No matter how many people attempt this task, I think there will be no two paintings alike. If the Catholic Church has more of the information needed for such a portrait in their “Apostolic Tradition,” they aren’t sharing it.

The Missing Perspective

I have written recently and also in the past about the fallacy of the “historical Jesus.” Recently I pointed out that the fact that many dozens of “Jesus scholars” have written about who this character was, even at book length, the result of which was each author finding a different character, which tells us one thing: the historical record does not contain enough information to accomplish this task, and so authors fill in with suppositions that determine more than the actual data provide and is therefore susceptible to the biases of the authors.

There isn’t enough “there” there to identify what such a character was like or even whether he actually existed.

There is something missing, however. Modern Trinitarian Christians believe that Jesus and Yahweh, the god of the Jews, and the Holy Ghost are all one and the same, yet different. So, what I would like to point out what is missing is this: when you examine the actions of this god, is that the behavior you would expect from a deity with the powers claimed? Basically, is the god claim coherent?

For example, a loyal servant of Yahweh, Satan, who served as an “adversary” for people at Yahweh’s command, got morphed over time into the Devil, the primary source of evil in the universe (contrary to Yahweh’s claim that he is the source of all evil in Isaiah 45:7). His powers were considered eventually to be so great that he could oppose Yahweh’s plans and even hide his plans and thoughts from Yahweh. So, is Yahweh/Jesus’ behavior toward Satan consistent with the powers of said god? Would an all-knowing, all-powerful god permit opposition to its plans, or would it poof said opposition out of existence like it poofed it into existence?

As another example, the Great Flood, used to wipe out the humans Yahweh was so disappointed with, is incredibly clumsy as it wiped out all the plants and animals, fishes, birds, you name it along with the human beings. Would an all-knowing, all-powerful god do this? What other options might it have had? How about simply going back in time and tweaking the creation of the first human beings so they didn’t end up so corrupted, you know create Adam and Eve 2.0? How about eliminating the source of corruption? (If it were hard-wired into humans, then their creation was flawed, not the humans.) For example, had the serpent not be given access to the Garden of Eden, how would things have worked out? How about Yahweh just thinking the humans out of existence, as he was capable of doing that with planets and solar systems and he did think them into existence, so deporting a bunch of humans to limbo or just nothingness should have been no problem, no?

Yahweh also spent considerable time in a tabernacle, being carried around the desert by Moses’ Hebrews. What about the more advanced civilizations, in India and China? Yahweh can’t have had a bias against brown people because his chosen people were brown, so why not the more populous, and more sophisticated cultures of India and China? Could not that time in the desert have been better spent checking out more advanced cultures?

I have been unable to find any actions of Yahweh/Jesus/Ghost that seem consistent with the powers claimed for that god. I remember reading a science fiction short story about how the “god of creation” was actually a child god, playing at creation, and made us when his parent’s weren’t paying attention. That makes more sense that the ridiculous stories told to us.

Stop Saying There is No Prayer in US Schools

In the past year President Trump has vowed to restore the right to pray in public schools—indeed to “champion” such prayer as a “fundamental right.”

Done.

You see, as long as there are algebra tests (or pick the topic you struggled in most), there will be prayer in schools. What is not allowed by the Constitution is school-guided prayers. Students are free to pray silently while in class and out loud between classes and during their lunch periods. They can pray after school on school grounds, even in the middle of the night. They can come by the school grounds on weekends and summer vacations and pray all they want.

They can pray in their churches, at home, on vacation, in the mall, at Costco, virtually anywhere and everywhere, but schools cannot lead them in prayer, they have to do it on their own and isn’t that what their god intended (see Matthew 6:5-13)?

What is not allowed is school-lead prayers, because the school would need to pick a prayer based upon a religion and that has been perceived as promoting that religion. Even if the schools chose prayers from all of the myriad religions, people would be dissatisfied as parents would object to prayers to Shiva, Buddha, and Allah, etc. So, prayer is left as a personal practice, not a school practice.

And how does current policy (of no school-lead prayers) restrict anyone’s religious freedom when they all can pray in the privacy of their own minds for hours on end? And with all this time they have to pray, how is it they do not have enough prayer in their lives? Gosh, do you think this is a play for favoritism, even power by evangelical churches? Gosh, how could that be?

And Trump? Pandering to his base? No, say it isn’t so!

Ooh, Aah . . .

In Jolly Old England there is a bit of a kerfuffle over an alleged Chinese spy who had cozied up to Prince Andrew. The Guardian ran a piece entitled “Prince Andrew: Alleged Chinese spy who befriended Prince Andrew is ‘tip of iceberg’, warns senior UK MP”

Oh, my a scandal! Chinese spies invited to Buckingham Palace!

But the last I looked the British royal family was basically ceremonial in nature, not having any role in politics as it were, it’s role being symbolic, don’t you see. So, they shouldn’t be being briefed on secret topics, as they have no role to play in dealing with them, no?

And then, the meetings of Parliament are open, are they not? They are reported on in the newspapers and whatnot, no?

I guess being chums with the Prince might get you into a conversation with an MP who has “secrets” but doesn’t that work both ways? Once a Chinese spy is identified (this one was kicked out of the country), could not they be fed “fake news” which is hardly in short supply nowadays. Could they not be handled?

And, why isn’t cozying up to foreign spies considered “bad form” by the royals? I guess the strain of Hitler lovers in the royal family hasn’t quite been bred out.