On Oct. 6. the case, called Snyder v. Phelps, will ask the justices of the Supreme Court to consider whether and to what degree protesters who yelled inflammatory words during the memorial service of a fallen Marine back in 2006 are protected from suit by the First Amendment.

At the service, fundamentalist pastor Fred Phelps and his followers yelled at Albert Snyder, whose 20-year-old son was being buried. Phelps was generally protesting what he perceives to be the military’s tolerance of gays and lesbians.

Matthew Snyder, was not gay. But his funeral in Westminster, Md., gave Phelps the chance to broadcast his message. Among the signs he brought were some that said, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” Snyder sued Phelps for his distress, saying he feels like he has been stabbed, and the wound will not heal. Phelps brushed aside Albert’s claims of distress. “He ought to be very thankful to us that we … warn people about the perils of sinful conduct that will destroy a nation.”

Snyder sued Phelps and family members who were the primary demonstrators for the distress he suffered from their picketing. Snyder won a $5 million verdict in 2007. A federal appeals court overturned the judgment last year, saying the Phelps protest was protected by the First Amendment. Now the Supreme Court will decide.

You can weigh in on this matter (I think) by posting a comment on the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog. Here is the link. It is possible you won’t be able to connect if you are not a subscriber to the WSJ. In that case, send me your comment and I will post it.

And not only that. I don’t know why I am publishing this thing. (Well not entirely.)

The religious wars that had torn France apart when Protestant Jean Valliere was burned at the stake in 1523, and which Huguenots (French Protestants) and Catholics resorted to murder and war (actually eight wars were fought) in defense of God’s true faith, as they saw it, came to an end when Henry of Navarre became king. In 1598, Hank issued the not-so-famous Edict of Nantes which allowed breathing room for the Huguenots but along came Louis XIV who did much like the Edict and revoked it.

Now, shoot forward a little more than 410 years and consider the fact that a 30-foot wooden cross in front of Warsaw’s presidential palace commemorating those killed in a plane crash in Russia, has been the scene between Catholic pro-cross supporters and counter protesters consisting of youthful secularists, police and officials.

All this is perfect news for the great cartoonist, Al Silver, a specialist in crosses. It is time for having an Edict of Warsaw. Get to work, Oh, Great One.

It is estimated by PEW that there are 1.57 billion Muslims in the world. No precise count of Muslims in America exists for a variety of reasons. A conservative guess is that there are at least one million. On the basis of nothing whatsoever but my right to make a guess, I say that 99.5% of those Muslims in America are loyal to the United States and despise terrorism. Is that good enough? Possibly as many as 1/20th of 1% of them would help terrorists if they could. Would you fly on a plane conducted by an airline for which 1/20 of 1% of its planes crash?

Of the 1.57 billion Muslims in the world, considering the state of affairs in Muslim-dominated countries, I would hazard a guess that as high as 2% of them have warm feelings toward terrorists. Perhaps a 1/4 of them would help terrorists if they could. On the basis of this I condemn Islam as barbaric.

Christians commit barbaric acts in the name of Christianity but they don’t have biblical text demanding they kill Muslims. On the other hand, the Koran is full of references demanding that Muslims kill non-Muslims. [See my posts documenting this by doing a search in www.watchingpolitics.com]

Please click on the link below. Would Muslim countries permit demonstrations like this by Christians? Of course not. That gives you a good clue as to how deeply Islamic culture (if we can call it “culture) is saturated with a love of violence. https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox/12a7396d7f9e87eb

I believe those Muslims who are not actively engaged in jihad are violating the laws of Islam. For that, more power to them.

According to the Shulkhan Arukh, which very observant Jews wrongly think is the authoritative code of law, people who are not Jews may assist Jews on Shabbes (Yiddish for Sabbath) with certain tasks that Jews are forbidden to do for themselves. According to the great 16th century rabbi, Joe Karo – known widely among the adulators as Yosef Karo) there are principles of divorce, finance, religious conversion, eating, breathing – you name it, Joe wrote about it – that apply only to Jews and not the heathen (i.e. YOU). It took Joe 20 years to create his masterpiece.

A goy is a nonJew. (You.) Actually, if you grew up in an all-Jewish world, you know the word is not a neutral descriptor but also a word of contempt, just as shiksa does not merely mean “non-Jewish girl” but marks her as an abomination.

Joe got it all wrong because, expert though he was on religious matters, he was a rotten philosopher. There are some simple rules of clear thinking that Joe was not privy to: (1) the rule of universalization and (2) the rule of reversibility. These two pretty much collapse into one rule but we won’t worry about niceties.

Fundamentally, (1) says “What is right for one person is right for all in relevantly similar circumstances.” And only a dirty rat fink would say “Yeah, but being of a different religion changes things.” Sure, you are entitled to a bigger portion of food than that little girl if you are 7′ and weigh 350 pounds while she stands only 3’10″ and weighs 45 pounds. Do we really have to explain that? Is that philosophy or common sense?

The trouble with being of a different religion than a Jew is that you are already off to a bad start. Jews don’t preach “We all worship God in our own ways.” In fact, only a schmuck believes that. You either have got it right or you don’t. So, if you have got it wrong that doesn’t excuse you from trying to get it right. CONVERT for God’s sake. And for your own.

If Jews have to do certain things on Saturday, so do you. Don’t think that by switching to Sunday, God will forgive you. Don’t think you can eat a chunk of a dead pig because you are not a Yid. Get it through your head – nobody can eat bits and pieces of a pig corpse. Don’t say, “But I am not Jewish and I don’t accept that.” Believe me, I will be watching you burn in hell with my telescopic lens when I get to that place with great views.

When those morons on Chester Street in Brownsville Brooklyn said to me, “Boychekel, come in for a moment and put out the lights.” they were condemning themselves, not me, because as a 10-year old boy I was merely the instrument of their disgusting tricks. And if there was a non-Jew in the neighborhood (there weren’t any, of course) and these sneaks had asked him to put out the lights (“Why make Edison rich?” was the going stupidity of that time) then only by twisted Talmudic reasoning or appeal to Joe Karo’s great guide, “How to sneak around the law” could these black-coated lunatics have fooled themselves into thinking, “Hey, am I smart or what?”

What the dopes with long sideburns did not understand was that if it was okay for me to put out the lights then it was okay for them, too. If not okay for them then not okay for me. If it was not okay for them to do it, they’ll burn in hell, I promise you, for inveigling a 10-year old boy into doing what they would not dream of asking their own sons to do. Why me, not their sons? Simple. As a rotten fall-from-grace Jew, I was worse than a goy. There is nothing more despicable than a fall-from-grace Jew. Muslims have me beat hands down. The evil Muslims do is only a consequence of their incredible stupidity but a fall-from-grace Jew makes a deliberate rejection of The Holy One.

Joe Karo is one of the main culprits of Judaic evil and I am betting my bottom dollar that his unkosher innards have long ago burnt away to ashes.

There was much wrong with my post the other day on how to create a universe. I rightly received some harsh, privately communicated criticisms. One I reject altogether. It was that I have worked this theme to death. I don’t think I have but, however I often I return to it, I won’t apologize because it is great fun for me.

Another problem is that my post was pompous, obscure and wiseguyish. The dialogue form only contributed to all three defects. I accept all three of these criticisms. So I want to try again. To those who find this tedious, I offer a quasi-apology and simply say no one is required to read it. That’s enough.

Let me lay my cards on the table although I am not sure it is necessary. I am a flat-out atheist and have been that since before I was a teenager. The problem of God’s existence is deep. Those who reject God’s existence on the grounds that the evidence for his existence is slim to none are making a big mistake. The trouble is that conceptual difficulties make the idea of God impossible. I do not refer to the biblical notion of God according to which he is a person, like us, only much better. On this sophomoric crudity, we are made in his image. Simply scan the skies with a Hubble telescope and you should, if you are not a dogmatist, soon be convinced there is no such man and no place called heaven. I adamantly refuse to argue for that. In my own way, I, too, am a dogmatist.

Philosophers and theologians are another matter. They say God is omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, all-perfect in his goodness and that he created the world ex nihilo, by which they mean out of nothing. He did not find a void and proceeded to fill it up. Literally, there was nothing, not even a void.
Atheist philosophers have hammered away at this idea, claiming – rightly in my view – that it is incoherent babble. They ask, “What was he doing before he created the universe and where was he? Fair questions, indeed. For this reason, they say it is absurd to look for empirical evidence for his existence or his nonexistence. You might as well look for evidence that the square root of 3 eats fire-shovels for breakfast. That means nothing. Thus, atheist philosophers like to say they reject atheism as they do theism for they can make no sense of either doctrine. I am very sympatico to this reasoning. You have to come up, not with evidence one way or the other but conceptual arguments for your opinion. Again, I agree.

All that being said, I have had a long-standing interest in the idea of omnipotence taken by itself, distinct from the problems of omniscience and eternality, and have even written on it in a published essay in a theological journal. That was about 35 to 40 years ago, and I can’t remember what I wrote, which is good, because it allows me to make a fresh start.

I believe all atheist philosophers have gone wrong. They take the idea of omnipotence for granted and proceed to show the difficulties it gives rise to. A favorite ploy is to show it is contradictory. The paradox of the stone is a favorite weapon. Briefly, it is this: If God is all-powerful then he should be able to make any gigantic stone too difficult to lift. But since he is all-powerful, he should also be able to lift it. So which is it? You can’t have it both ways so the notion of omnipotence is self-contradictory. I did try to resolve that one in my early essay but I have no appetite for that any longer.

I want to raise another issue. It is that God does not know how he does things. It is important to see that we should not start out with the assumption of omnipotence. That idea suggests that God is like us but more able. That idea suggests that God could tell us how he does things. In truth, he cannot. God is not skillful nor loaded with abilities. He does not create in virtue of something or other. That is only how we work. We have skills and abilities and, in principle, we can explain them to someone who doesn’t have them. Skills can be taught. If you have the right make-up, you can do what others do via practice and patience. God is not like that. Abilities and skills are, for main part, acquired, but God does not acquire his. He just has POWER. Power is primitive.

Because power is primitive, there is nothing to explain. God says, “Let the world be” and sure enough it comes to be. That’s an end to the matter. To the query, “How did you do that?” he has only one answer: “I don’t know. When I say ‘Let the world be’ it happens. If you say it, nothing happens.” You could say God is lucky and we are not. Whatever God wants to happen, happens in virtue of nothing more than his willing it. That is an extraordinary thing. We can’t call it a gift because gifts are bestowed by one individual upon another. God does not do anything in virtue of his omnipotence. That puts the cart before the horse. His omnipotence simply is a summary statement of the fact that he can do anything. Calling him omnipotent as a way to explain his actions is wrongly to think he uses his powers as means to his deeds. That is the great blunder of all philosophers and theologians alike. God is not a skilled worker. To build a universe he does not, as I said last time, go out and buy a set of tools at Ace Hardware and settle down to six days of work. The metaphor of six days is just that – a metaphor. He does not rest on the 7th day because he does not need rest. I won’t worry about the many crazy contradictions in the biblical idea of six days followed by rest.

So, is it true that God is omnipotent in the sense that I understand the term? I believe there is no other way to think of him without reducing him to a hardworking guy. That idea simply sets him up as an alternative to scientific explanations concerning the origin of the universe. If anybody thinks that, he is welcome to it. In saying, as I do, that nothing can explain God’s omnipotence and that includes God himself, I do not mean he exists. He doesn’t, period. There are many problems about God but I hope I have enumerated one, to wit, that the god of philosophy and theology posits something inconceivable: an inexplicable power that defies God’s understanding. That is no small accomplishment and is my chief contribution to theology. For those, like the estimable atheist, Ted Drange, who says, “I can conceive it but it is false” I can only say to him that he is wrong. I will leave it at that.

The notorious criminal, Tommy Lee Gardner, was executed this week in Utah. State officials placed a target on his heart and a group of marksmen fired away at a distance of 25 feet. It was the first execution by firing squad in the USA in 14 years. Gardner chose it in lieu of other methods.

I never did follow the Gardner case and have no strong opinions about it but it got me to thinking about vengeance and, so, this post is something of a follow-up to two others on pain, hate and anger that appeared here earlier this week.

So far as I know, the earliest recorded incident of vengeance occurs in the Iliad. Achilles has been sitting in his tent outside Troy for several years, brooding over the fact that Agamemnon, to show Achilles who the Boss of Bosses is, has taken Achilles’s girl friend away to be his own. Without the aid of the Big Guy, the Greeks can make no progress against the Trojans. In fact, they are getting the hell beaten out of them. Patroclus, the ace buddy of Achilles steps into the fray, dons the armor of Achilles, so that people will mistake him for the slugger, and leads the Achilles battalion into battle. Hector is unimpressed and slays him. Now he arouses the ire of the mighty one who rejoins the Greeks but only because he wants revenge against Hector. Now, Hector is really sorry about the whole mess and wishes his dumb kid brother Paris had never stolen Helen away from King Menelaus because he knows plenty of trouble lies ahead. Menelaus turns to his brother, powerhouse King Agamemnon, and asks him to raise a super army to get Helen back. For some reason I don’t understand, Achilles agrees to join in the effort although, so far as I can see, the whole affair is nothing to him. With Achilles on his team, Agamemnon is a sure winner until he makes his stupid move to remind Achilles that he is in charge. Well, that’s all background stuff and now Achilles is hot for Hector’s body and soul. Hector, although he is easily the 2nd best fighter in the world, knows he is no match for Achilles, the heavyweight champion of the planet, and asks The Big Guy to agree that the loser of the title match will be buried with honor. He knows, damn well, who that is going to be. Achilles responds with, “Are you kidding? You are going down, buddy, and I make no deals.” The result is a far-gone conclusion, and Achilles heaps humiliation on Hector by dragging his corpse all around the town of Troy. He also takes out a few thousand of the Trojans to heap injury upon injury.

What’s driving Achilles? Quite simply, I think, revenge never settles for proportionality. Achilles hasn’t read Exodus and doesn’t give a hoot for “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot.” Exodus 21:22–27. The point of lex talionis (law of retaliation) is that you should not let your thirst for revenge reach the point of madness. Lex talionis is usually misinterpreted to mean, “Give him hell for what he did.” Lex talionis is actually a restraining principle. In the case of Achilles, it fell on deaf ears.

Let’s turn to the Bible where surprisingly we find God himself has not read Exodus. Yahweh, (if I may take the liberty of addressing the Almighty by his given name), is a most vindictive sort of guy. He dispenses punishment out into eternity. It’s no use saying to him after 100 billion years of your burning in fire, “Quit already. I’m sorry. Enough is enough,” for he will surely reply, “Why, we’ve hardly begun.” He’s got all the time in the world. Not only that, but minor crimes get his goat, too. To Christians, it may not be clear but the simple truth is that not believing there is a God is a very trivial crime. After all, not believing is not a matter of stubborn willfulness but is a consequence of one’s thinking he has good reason not to believe. There is no mens rea in that. Only Kierkegaard and his followers think it is a great idea to believe in what your mind tells you is absurd. Only Kierkegaard thinks that because belief in God is totally absurd, you should believe. That’s the famous “leap into absurdity.” Over the years, I have asked my students to take that leap and believe that I am God precisely because it would be ridiculous for them to do so. The stupid retort is always, “To believe you are God is ridiculous.” “Precisely!” I reply, “So what’s holding you back?” Although they are nearly all Christians, they don’t grasp the power of my argument.

Enough of theology. Let’s get back to Yahveh. Yahweh is out for blood. When he is not brooding over the fact that well over 50% of the world has never heard of him, much less believe he is the Lord, he makes Achilles look like a bush league mobster. He drowns innocent people, visits pestilence on whole nations and, generally speaking, he is the angriest god imaginable. His anger is over the top and even says he alone is entitled to revenge. He says that when people hurt us real bad, we should forget about it. He’ll take care of things in due time. Of course, he also advises us, in other places, to give ‘em hell. It all seems so contradictory and many books have been written proving that what seems so is so. [The best of these is Ted Drange's Nonbelief and Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God , an exhaustive (and exhausting) documenting, among other things, of God's blunders.]

The trouble with all these books is that their authors think God should behave rationally, if only because he should not confuse us. In addition to pondering why there are so many contradictions in the Bible, these authors also struggle with the fact that God holds that vengeance should be his alone – assuming (what is not true) that he consistently thinks that. There is no good reason, and that’s the point. If God always towed the line of consistency and insisted that only he had the right to wreak revenge on evil-doers, nothing more could be said. If asked why, he could even say, in violation of his omniscience, “Damned if I know why.”

That’s the glory of God for you. And I pity all you atheists for not joining in the fun.

Obama doesn’t like me. I don’t know why. I have never tried to beat him up, steal his money, rape his children or tried to beat him up a flight of stairs onto an airplane. It is true I think he is very stupid, politically incompetent and lacking in integrity. What of it? Lots of people think that. Why pick on me?

Last night, he resumed his assault. He told us God never promised us a rose garden. He told us God would not directly intervene to make our lives better but he told us to pray. He did not tell us precisely what to pray for but he thinks prayer is part of the package of efforts we need to put forth to stop oil from gushing out all over the Gulf. On other occasions he told us that prayer will help us through our miseries in the Mid East. Prayer is good for everything, even for praying. Praying makes the praying go down even without a little bit of Mary Poppins sugar because the prayer is the sugar.

Obama has prayed with Billy Graham. He has prayed at mosques. Often he has prayed with Jeremiah Wright. He prays at Camp David and even enjoys a prayerful moment at 5.30 A.M. when one of his aides makes sure to zip something to him on his BlackBerry. The President is a very private person, which is exactly what Madonna and Paris Hilton say they are. So, he won’t reveal what he prays for. However, I happen to know. He prays mainly that we will join him in praying, too. Obama enjoys a a National Prayer Breakfast on Thor’s Day.

When he is not offering atheists lies to the effect that our country welcomes all faiths including the faith of atheism, he is getting down low with Rahm Emanuel and building a staircase to Israel. Joshua Dubois, director of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships sends him daily devotional e-mails to make sure he is keeping the faith (Baby). Someone sent Obama the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer as a gift at last year’s National Prayer Breakfast.

In order to feel better about slaughtering people, Obama culled work from Reinhold Niebuhr for his Nobel Prize acceptance speech when he said peace is a very bad idea. He sneered at Gandhi, Martin Luther King and other peaceniks. Once upon a time, old Reinhold slobbered on about something he called Just War Theory. Praying for guidance, Obama said it was full of swell ideas.

On a TV show, Terry Moran said: “As you know there’s a lot of curiosity about you and what you do, what you wear, all these things. And where you worship. If I may ask, how has — how have the responsibilities of the presidency affected your spiritual life, if at all?”

The Bright One replied: “Well, I had a habit of praying every night before I go to bed. I pray all the time now…” (laughter) Only his buddy, Our Lord, knows what he was nervously tittering about.

Would it be all right, Mr. President, if you got around to taking a break from prayer and did a little work around the house. You know, like making it a better world? But, if that is asking too much, would you just quit getting on my nerves? Even though you finish each of your prayers with a sotto voce, “Take that, Gendin.” I can hear you, Illinois Diz Kid. And I don’t appreciate your attacks.

People are murdering, robbing and raping voraciously. The Big Guy in the Sky grows tired of it all. He has been watching this madness for tens of thousands of years. Now, at last, he says, “Son, I am sending you down to sacrifice yourself for them. That should put an end to the stupidity once and for all.”

So, Son does Dad’s bidding and announces to an earthly judge, “Hey, take me, instead.”
Judge: How is it any of your business? What have you got to do with it?
Son: Never mind that crap. Kill me.
Judge: You’re talking nonsense. Did you study logic? Remember ignoratio elenchi? Non sequitur? Fallacy of affirming the consequent and all those other good things?
Son: Sure. I know it all. Studied with Sidney, the Schmo. He taught me logic, advanced logic, recursive function theory, Godel’s Theorem, Church’s thesis. I know it all. So, now, kill me.
Judge: I’m convinced. Bailiff, take this weirdo outside, hang him up by his little ones and invite everyone to see the roast.

After the roast, the murders, rapes and robberies continue as if nothing had ever intervened.
2000 years later, seemingly out of nowhere, Sidney the Shmeggeggi, a direct descendant of the celebrated logician, Sidney the Schmo, appears on the scene. He goes on high definition TV and announces, “KIll me.”

A new judge asks Sidney, the S., “Why, you? What have you got to do with it? We don’t accept pinch-diers in my jurisdiction. Don’t you know about ignoratio elenchi and all that sort of stuff?
Sidney, the S: Never mind that baloney. Kill me, nobody else.
Judge: Es gar nicht helfen. You know Yiddish, don’t you, the language of decency? Or, to speak more plainly, since you are a convert, plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. So, beat it.
Sidney: You jerk! Will someone nail me up, please? [Someone does.] Ow, ow!. Careful, I damn it.
Rapacious crowd, altogether now, like a Greek chorus: Too late. We’re loving it.

About 1/2 a Planck unit later, Sidney says to Dad: Think it will work this time?
Dad: Maybe, maybe not. What have we got to lose? Your cousin, Sidney the Schmuck is waiting in the wings. Let’s give it another 2000 years and see how it works out.

So far, so good. Maybe we slipped between the horns of a dilemma or something like that.

Today is, as I don’t have to remind you, the 579th anniversary of the roasting of the Maid of Orleans. Her story is now one of the best known legends of French history. Under divine guidance, she led a French army into battle during The 100 Years War when she went down for the count at age nineteen after proving herself a superstar.

She was just a peasant girl when she got word from Higher Ups, direct emissaries of God, that she was needed to restore King Charles VII to his rightful place on the throne of France. At first, she was greeted by French generals with, “Are you kidding?” but after a few glorious victories, they saw the light.

The war had raged on and off for about 90 years when little Joan came on the scene. The Brits pretty much had the better of it by then, so Chuck 7 had little to lose by allowing this teenager to take charge of his armies. What the hell. Better to fight like a girl and lose like a man then to fight like a man and lose like a girl. (Or something like that – my brain may be all twisted up.) In any case, the Brits had, (to coin a phrase), laid siege to Orleans, the last obstacle in their path to control of northern France (if that is where Orleans is).

Disguising herself as a lad, Joannie gained entrance to visit the King. She told the King that the voice of God told her she could turn the tide if given the chance. Since Chuck was in dire straits (too often confused with the Straits of Magellan for my taste), he said in a booming voice, “Sure, go for it. Go forth and do good deeds.” She donned heavy armor, a shield and all those things and went forth to do battle with the lousy Brits. Actually, the teenager did not understand. She thought she was commanded to go fourth, and not to rush into battle prematurely. In some way or other that I don’t understand, the delay was the key to her victory at Orleans.

By force of her dynamic personality, Joannie girl (the French like to call her Jeanne d’Arc, but this is patently ridiculous, and I won’t say why), changed the war from a secular conflict over who succeeds whom in the never-ending game of Who Gets to Be in Charge, which is all that wars were about in olden days, into a religious war between ???? Well, I don’t know, because Luther wasn’t born yet. Still, I have read lots of times that, under Joan, the war became a religious conflict.

After a nice round of victories, Joan was finally captured and tried for heresy. She was accused of claiming to have acted under God’s grace and the Brits wanted to know how the hell she had the right to think that. What audacity. What temerity. What gall. WHAT CHUTZPAH!! Thus, the charge of heresy was leveled on her. The Brits kept her under guard by male soldiers although inquisitorial rules specified she should have been guarded by nuns. So it is very likely that, keeping with a time-honored tradition of British soldiers, she was raped repeatedly.

At last, the trial took place and produced the expected result. Joan was tied to a stake and burned for heresy. Officially, Joan was roasted because she galloped around in men’s clothing, but to kill someone for that seems a bit weird. The simple fact is that Joan was a cross-dresser and if that were illegal today, tens of millions would be fried, zapped, gassed or dispatched in special ways only cross-dressers deserve. [I, myself, have a certain predilection for 5" high-heeled shoes - but that's a story for another day.]

What is most important about Joan, from a contemporary perspective, is that she really and truly did have conversations with God. Only crass and stupid atheists are skeptical of this. Almost as important, she really did change the course of world history. She has rightly been made a saint and shines with virtue with resplendent and therefore doesn’t give a rap for having once been a defendant. [And don't lie to people and say I plagiarized the preceding line from Billy Gilbert.] Joan was a hero to dozens of people who wrote biographies of her, all using the unimaginative pseudonym, Anon, to Napoleon, who worshipped the ground she walked on, to G. Bernie Shaw, to Maxie Anderson, to Bertold Brecht, to Pete Tchaikowsky, to Freddy Schiller, and to Lucky Besson. She was an inspiration to the very hot Alida Maria Laura Altenburger, the Baroness von Marckenstein und Frauenberg (a.k.a. Alida Valli). Hmm, hmm, good.

All this gives rise to two of the Four Big Questions that have been bugging the hell out of me since about 1944: Why, on this night, when Joan got all burned up, do we hide and eat the Afikomen? And why are we dipping our food twice tonight? What’s it to her?

Whereas cops and proctologists are one-dimensional guys, Catholic nuns seem to come in a variety of types. As we know, the principal pastime of cops is going to cop bars, getting good and drunk, and then going home to beat up their wives. Proctologists are simply the most stuck up of all their industry (a.k.a. profession) and say they went into medicine to help make sick people well. (A reason that suggests they should seek psychiatric help.) As they walk down the hallways of the Menninger Clinic, they give the middle finger in the conventional way to passing brain surgeons but make lewd index finger signals at pretty women who are walking in a pained way that indicates they have just left the office of one of the proctologist’s confreres.

Catholic nuns do various things: some of them spend their lives in “contemplative” prayer (which contrasts with people who get down on their knees each night and say, “Please help Mama feel better”). Others elect to work at Catholic colleges, teaching Fourier series and Cauchy sequences to incompetent third year math students. A more perplexing group prefer to go off to African jungles in pursuit of the contraction of malaria and the almost too readily available AIDS that hot-blooded priests are only too willing to pass on to them. Some dress in habits while others wear seductive mini-skirts. Those among them who have heard of the Arian heresy think Arius was a schmuck – and he probably was but not for the orthodox reason.

But all of them, to a woman, are fearful of dying. Traveling once with a nun on an airplane, I found my hand grasped in holy terror by an nun who had a grip that told me she was a veteran of hand-squeezing contests. After she let go, upon touching down on the runway, my hand was numb for five minutes. At the convent where I used to hang out (because the nuns stuffed visitors with good food and great ice cream), all of them were full of wails and sorrow when one of their own “passed on.” I didn’t know any nuns younger than 85 and wondered what all the fuss was about. Nuns give many reasons why they are sad when another nun dies or when their own death is creeping up on them but these all seem to be hollow rationalizations for their chicken-hearted approach to dying. Mourning seems to fit them because they are all closet atheists who fear The Great Nothingness. Why shouldn’t they be frightened out of their skulls? Knowing, as they do, that there has never been a Pope who believed in God, why should they?

Okay, give me a bit of leeway. I admit that here and there you will find a nun who believes in an afterlife but you sure won’t find them among the Cauchy girls. They know mathematical proofs of God’s nonexistence that would knock von Neumann for a loop, not to mention Cauchy himself. I knew a Cauchy girl at Hampshire College, where we both spent your tax money on summer National Endowment Fellowships. She drank hard, smoked nonfiltered cigarettes in a chain, and shared time with me buck naked in the college’s co-ed sauna. Is this any way to worship at the shrine at Nicea?

My scientific conclusion: Nuns have plenty of good reason to mourn when they are about to drop dead.