Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of The Christ” has gotten a lot of credit for being the “most realistic portrayal of the suffering of Jesus” that’s even been captured on film. Well, not to be nitpicky, but I’ve already noticed two things they’ve gotten wrong.

If you watch this extended preview, near the end when they nail him to that big wooden “T”, you can see the Roman guy place the spike into the center of Jesus’s palm, but according to a 1986 article from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) about the medical aspects of crucifixion, that just wouldn’t work :

The hands could be nailed or tied to the crossbar, but nailing apparently was preferred by the Romans. The archaeological remains of a crucified body, found in an ossuary near Jerusalem and dating from the time of Christ, indicate that the nails were tapered iron spikes approximately 5 to 7 in (13 to 18 cm) long with a square shaft 3/8 in (1 cm) across. Furthermore, ossuary findings and the Shroud of Turin have documented that the nails commonly were driven through the wrists rather than the palms.

With arms outstreched but not taut, the wrists were nailed to the patibulum. It has been shown that the ligaments and bones of the wrist can support the weight of a body hanging from them, but the palms cannot. Accordingly, the iron spikes probably were driven between the radius and the carpals or between the two rows of carpal bones, either proximal to of through the strong bandlike flexor retinaculum and the various intercarpal ligaments. Although a nail in either location in the wrist might pass between the bony elements and thereby produce no fractures, the likelihood of painful periosteal injury would seem great. Furthermore, the driven nail would crush or sever the rather large sensorimotor median nerve. The stimulated nerve would produce excruciating bolts of fiery pain in both arms. Although the severed median nerve would result in paralysis on a portion of the hand, ischemic contractures and impalement of various ligaments by the iron spike might produce a clawlike grip.
. . .
Although scriptural references are made to nails in the hands, these are not at odds with the archaeological evidence of wrist wounds, since the ancients customarily considered the wrist to be a part of the hand.

Secondly, let’s face it : Jesus wasn’t a white guy. Through the work of forensic anthropologists, Popular Mechanics compiled a picture a couple years ago of what Jesus probably looked like :

As you can probably guess, I’m disappointed and relieved that Dean dropped out of the race this week. Disappointed because I still think he’d make the best president of all the candidates and relieved because the “Dean is a madman” meme has spread to the point that the man is damn-near unelectable. It’s a shame. He seems like a really great guy. Here’s hoping he’s able to turn his campaign into a broader movement.

As far as the question of how Dean went from frontrunner to big loser, my friend Ross has an interesting theory :

With this in mind, I still think that Dean may have made a worse candidate than was apparent during the lead up to the primaries. He made some fairly crucial errors really early in the campaign. For my money, the single worst moment occurred back in 2002, when he said during an off the cuff interview, that the United States “won’t be the world’s most powerful country forever”. He’s right of course, but frightening historical inevitabilities are for historians and political scientists to make note of - They require subtle explanations of historical trends and provision of cognate examples.

Unfortunately for those of us who actually obsess over such things, subtlety is generally lost on the electorate in an age when most complex political discourse is limited to 5 seconds bursts. Hell, even in intelligent conversation with like minded people, we have a tendency to want to nail people down to the simplest explanation, even if the answer requires a 3 hour lecture to really get across the intricacies and possibilities. Sort of like people who want to think that the answer to “Why did Rome Fall?” can be contained in a single paragraph.*

Meaning of course that even if it is true that someday, even we won’t be King Of The Hill any longer, a serious Presidential candidate should never, ever say such a thing. Not because we need to be lied to, but because sometimes, having too firm a grip on the long view of history can diminish your ability to convey the necessary sense of optimism and practical change needed to reassure your constituents that you’ve got what it takes to secure the future of this country, regardless of our relative power.

I’d be hard pressed to disagree with Ross’s point, but I think his example is part of a larger series if strategic mistakes that caused Dean’s downfall. Here are the biggest reasons why Dean lost :

If you ever want to write a song about how much you hate being a teenager, here’s a helpful tip : The word “school” rhymes with “cool”, “rule”, “fuel”, “cruel”, and “fool”. Enjoy!

At least, that’s how Jesse at Pandagon has described Mel Gibson’s new movie. From all I’ve heard about the movie’s lusty reenactment of the suffering of Jesus, it does seem like the film will arouse a “prurient interest” (a religious, rather than sexual, one of course). Just from the outset, it seems that the whole purpose of this film (and the “passion play” tradition from which it derives) is to wallow in the suffering of Jesus as a way to validate religious faith. I dunno about you, but it all seems kinda morbid to me.

While most of the commentary on the film has been of the “Is it anti-semitic?” variety (on which I have mixed feelings), I think the more interesting aspects are the larger question of the role of the crucifixion in Christian tradition. As far as the movie’s depiction of Jesus’s death, this interview with Rev. Mark Stanger (who saw the film at a screening hosted by Gibson) has some pretty shocking things to say :

Did you feel in the storytelling there were any particularly glaring omissions or otherwise historically inaccurate stuff?

Not really, except that Jesus’ crucifixion was made too singular. This was an ordinary event. Jesus was one of dozens of insurrectionists that the local Roman occupiers would have crucified, but [Gibson] tried to make his suffering especially agonizing and horrible. That was the other subtext — I thought there was an unspoken assumption that somehow, for Jesus’ death to have meaning to believers, it had to be more horrible than any other kind of suffering and death. The film doesn’t really say that, but that’s the idea, and that’s why it has an “R” rating — for the violence. The protracted scourging.

You felt it was gratuitous violence?

I thought it was sickening. At the screening they were handing out boxes of Kleenex — they should have handed out barf bags.

Oo! Oooooo!

There was no reason for this [violence], spiritually or theologically. Do you remember in the movie “Gladiator” that short shot where he comes home to find his wife and family crucified, and there was also a report that she had been sexually assaulted beforehand? It was brutal and ugly and horrible, and you didn’t need 20 minutes of blood flow to get the message across. I thought “The Passion” was really perverse and really depraved. There’s a lot of criticism against the film that it gives a bad picture of Jews — I think it gives a worse picture of Christians. Holding this up as somehow emblematic of something central to our belief — this preoccupation with both sin and blood sacrifice — is just absolutely primitive.
. . .
I think a 5-year-old who has to get cancer surgery and radiation and chemotherapy suffers more than Jesus suffered; I think that a kid in the Gaza Strip who steps on a land mine and loses two limbs suffers more; I think a battered wife with no resources suffers more; I think people without medical care dying of AIDS in Africa suffer more than Jesus did that day. I mean, I don’t want to take away from that, but this preoccupation with the intensity of the suffering, I think, has no theological or spiritual value.

As far as the larger question of “Why is the death of someone who’s immortal a big deal?”, Earnest has a good point :

Take John’s argument that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son…” Where does the represent any kind of real sacrifice by an omnipotent being. Had he any motivation in that direction, Jehova could simply conjure up another human as he did Adam, taking his new creation for his son. The key word probably is “begotten” though. The word implies a real offspring, as in the manner employed through Mary. Again, what keeps Jehova from impregnating another woman other than personal restraint? If there were a real sacrifice, it would have to be Mary’s and Jesus’s. Mary had to cope with the idea that she were birthing a person doomed to die. Jesus had to deal with the excruciating pain of being crucified. That still makes affording any devotion to Jesus for that sacrifice difficult. After all, his actions were foreordained– he lacked any real power to object to the proceedings and opt out. At best, you can feel sympathy for Jesus, or thankfulness to Jehova for providing an easy mechanism for redemption, but the act of crucifixion is at best symbolic of what Jehova would be willing to do were he human. The Bible contains several stories of people being willing to sacrifice offsprings’ lives for the greater good as signs of devotion, so Jesus’s death is the ultimate reiteration of what is really a common Biblical story. The crucifixion, then, is not important in substance but in style.

In the end, I’d rather see a movie about Jesus concentrate on his, what many preachers derisively call, “good works” (feeding the poor, preaching tolerance, emphasizing compassion for your enemies, etc.) rather than his magic tricks miracles.

It looks like Australia has a unique way of solving the problem of low voter turnout :

Every Australian citizen (18 years or older) is required by law to vote. If the citizen is unable to provide a “valid and sufficient” reason for not voting, a penalty is imposed.

History of compulsory voting in Australia:

compulsory voting was advocated by Alfred Deakin at the turn of the century

compulsory enrolment introduced in 1911

compulsory voting first adopted in Queensland in 1915. Federally it was introduced in 1924 on the basis of a Private Members Bill

Note: Compulsory Voting Act 1915 - provided for compulsory voting, by electors residing within 5 miles of a polling place, in referendums which were to be submitted to the people in 1915. The referendums were cancelled by legislation, after the writs had been issued;

compulsory voting has become a distinctive feature of the Australian political culture.

Arguments used in favour of compulsory voting:

voting is a civic duty comparable to other duties citizens perform eg taxation, compulsory education, jury duty

teaches the benefits of political participation

Parliament reflects more accurately the “will of the electorate”

governments must consider the total electorate in policy formulation and management

candidates can concentrate their campaigning energies on issues rather than encouraging voters to attend the poll

the voter isn?t actually compelled to vote for anyone because voting is by secret ballot.

Arguments used against compulsory voting:

it is unsenate to force people to vote - an infringement of liberty

the “ignorant” and those with little interest in politics are forced to the polls

it may increase the number of “donkey votes”

it may increase the number of informal votes

it increases the number of safe, single-member electorates - political parties then concentrate on the more marginal electorates

resources must be allocated to determine whether those who failed to vote have “valid and sufficient” reasons.

I’m not so sure that this would work here, but it would be nice for once to see some aspect of our culture promote responsibility (and I’m not talkin’ about “abstinence only education” either).

By the way, what the hell is a “donkey vote”?

That’s what the Dems should start calling Bush. Every time he says a thing about the economy, remind him of this :

The U.S. government’s national debt — the accumulation of past budget shortfalls — totaled more than $7 trillion for the first time as of Tuesday, according to a Treasury Department report.

In its daily financial statement released on Wednesday, the Treasury said the U.S. debt subject to a congressionally set limit totaled $7.015 trillion, up from $6.983 trillion on Friday. The government was closed on Monday for the Presidents Day holiday.

While passing the $7 trillion mark itself has little practical significance, not unlike a car’s odometer rolling over, it may signal some tough political times for President Bush’s administration on fiscal policy.

The government debt ceiling stands only a few hundred billion dollars ahead at $7.384 trillion, and Treasury would need Congress’s blessing to borrow beyond that. Treasury officials say they expect the limit to be hit sometime between June and October.

I hope the Democrats in the Congress have their eyes trained on this. They should put together some progressive budget-related proposals that they know the Republicans won’t want to pass and filibuster this debt ceiling thing until they’re added. Let this become huge news, even if it leads to a temporary government shutdown. When asked about it, make sure to say something like “The Republicans keep maxing out our credit cards without worrying about where the money’s coming from. I know it hurts, but somebody’s got to act responsibly around here.”

Kevin Drum brings up an interesting point when discussing modern conservative praise of Harry Truman :

At the time, as even a quick skim of a history book will tell you, conservatives tarred Truman as the next best thing to a ravening Bolshevik. Joe McCarthy labelled both Truman and George Marshall as communist dupes, Richard Nixon led the charge against a State Department that Truman had allegedly stocked with pinko symps, conservatives were apoplectic over his firing of Douglas MacArthur, and he was accused both of losing China and failing to nuke the Soviet Union when we had the chance. (Yes, nuking the Reds really was a policy choice advocated by a number of conservatives at the time. Containment, now hailed as an example of tough-minded anti-communism, was considered by some conservatives at the time to be the worst kind of weak-kneed appeasement.)

Here’s my question for the hawks out there : Why was containment a good idea during the Cold War but a bad idea with Iraq? Was it just because we might not have won a direct conflict with the U.S.S.R. the way we seem to have won (so far) in Iraq?

Well, this is weird :

The federal prosecutor who won convictions in the government’s first and only terrorism trial after the Sept. 11 attacks has filed a lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft accusing the Justice Department of “gross mismanagement” in the war on terrorism.

The highly unusual complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington by Richard Convertino, the lead prosecutor in the conviction of three members of an alleged terrorism sleeper cell in Detroit.

Convertino is facing an internal Justice Department investigation for failing to turn over a document to the defense until long after the trial had ended.

Convertino claims the Justice Department is retaliating against him because he has attacked its efforts in the war on terrorism and cooperated with the senate Finance Committee, led by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a vocal critic of the department.

In his lawsuit, Convertino said the Justice Department has exaggerated its success in fighting terrorism. He said heavy-handed officials at Justice Department headquarters in Washington have hindered prosecutors in the field.

In the case he handled in Detroit, which Ashcroft has frequently praised as a success in the war on terrorism, Convertino said the government failed to provide the needed federal law enforcement manpower to help review documents, interview witnesses and prepare for trial.

Convertino claims he worked the case for months with the help of only one FBI special agent.

Convertino said he repeatedly asked for additional help.

In the suit, Convertino alleges there was a “lack of support and cooperation, lack of effective assistance, lack of resources and intradepartmental infighting” in terrorism cases.

“These concerns directly related to the ability of the United States to effectively utilize the criminal justice system as a component in the `war on terrorism,’ ” the lawsuit said.

If Ashcroft was only able to supply one agent to help with the prosecution, what are the rest of his people doing? Oh yeah…..

Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday defended the decision to seek medical records of women who have undergone a type of late-term abortion and said it would not violate their privacy rights.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel called on Ashcroft to drop the Justice Department’s efforts to obtain confidential medical records on abortion from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago and other university hospitals.

“Your efforts violate the spirit and the letter of existing privacy laws,” the Illinois Democrat wrote in a letter expressing his “serious concerns.”

Rep. Eliot Engel called it outrageous that Ashcroft had instructed the Justice Department “to look into the medical files of women who have had legal abortions. People’s medical records should not be the tools of political operatives.”

When we’ve got a Justice Department who goes after women who have abortions and cancer patients who smoke pot, it’s obvious that the priorities of the conservative extremists who run this country are completely skewed. I thought 9/11 was supposed to change everything. Wouldn’t that include spending more effort going after terrorists than cancer patients?

As frequent readers of this site know, I’m a huge Beatles fan. So you can understand how intrigued I was by this news item :

British record company EMI Group has taken action against a DJ’s attempt to crossbreed the Beatles’ “White Album” with hip-hop star Jay-Z, but the crackdown has not stopped the spread of the unauthorized remix.

EMI, which owns the rights to the Beatles’ sound recordings, sent letters to independent record stores last week insisting they stop distributing DJ Danger Mouse’s “Gray Album,” which mixes the lyrics of Jay-Z’s “Black Album” with music from the “White Album.”

While I’m not a huge fan of rap and I’m easily turned off by Beatles sampling or covers, this is definitely something I had to hear. Having tracked down the album online, I find the whole thing a mixed bag. While some tracks (like “Encore” and “Change Clothes”) are pretty interesting, hearing John Lennon’s melancholy eulogy to his dead mother (”Julia”) interrupted with “You’re now tuned into the motherfucking greatest!” or the laughably bad “Justify My Thug” (sung to the tune of Madonna’s hit “Justify My Love”), it’s plain to see why EMI and Apple didn’t want this album released.

Of course this hasn’t stopped the bootleggers, who have this to say :

DJ Danger Mouse’s recent Grey Album, which remixes Jay-Z’s The Black Album and the Beatles White Album, has been hailed as a innovative hip-hop triumph. Despite that and the fact that only 3,000 copies of the album are in circulation, EMI sent cease and desist letters yesterday to Danger Mouse and the handful of stores that were selling the album, demanding that the album be destroyed.

“EMI isn’t looking for compensation, they’re trying to ban a work of art,” said Downhill Battle’s Rebecca Laurie.

“Special interests, including the major labels, have turned copyright law into a weapon,” said Downhill Battle co-founder Holmes Wilson. “If Danger Mouse had requested permission and offered to pay royalties, EMI still would have said no and the public would never have been able to enjoy this critically acclaimed work. Artists are being forced to break the law to innovate.”

Regardless of the quality of this remix, this is a bullshit argument. Nobody’s being “forced” to break the law. Personally I think this album should be released, but the Beatles own their recordings and while they still hold the copyrights, they’re free to restrict their use in any way they want. (We can discuss how long copyrights should last and all, but at the very least I think it’s fair that they exist while the artists are still alive.)

The idea that the only way artists like DJ Danger Mouse are allowed to “innovate” is by breaking the law is absurd. Is this DJ such a brilliant artist that he’s already exhausted every other artistic outlet available to him, or is he just pissed that he spent all this time remixing this album before asking permission first? Bootleggers may see this as a case of the Beatles “turn[ing] copyright law into a weapon”, but in the end it’s a weapon that DJ Danger Mouse has turned on himself.

The White House is pulling out the “He’s too stupid to know he’s a liar” again :

The White House backed away Wednesday from its own prediction that the economy will add 2.6 million new jobs before the end of this year, saying the forecast was the work of number-crunchers and that President Bush was not a statistician.

He’s not a statistician, therefore he’s not responsible for the claims that he makes. Right??

Wrong. This is a standard procedure for Bush. If he does something wrong, he goes out of his way to pin the blame on someone else. If that doesn’t work, the he pulls the “Well, he never said he was a genius” line, which I like to call the Corky Defense. I dunno about you, but I don’t find it very comforting that the president is all but admitting that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.

The worst thing about this though is that we went over all this in 2000. Even then it was obvious that Dubya was a few lines short of a dimebag, but he reassured us that he was surrounded by really competent people. Sure, he’s retarded, but he’s got Colin Powell and Dick Cheney. Even if he doesn’t know the right decisions to make, he’ll pick the right people to make the decisions for him.

Well that was then, this is now. The advisers that Bush “vouched” for are nothing more than “number-crunchers” to him today. If that’s the case and we can’t even trust the smart people who he surrounds himself with, what’s the incentive to reelect a dumbass??