One of the things I rarely see discussed is the fact that books—fiction and non-fiction—are products of the times in which they were written. Well, that's not completely true. Literary criticism often discusses the milieu in which a book was written if the book is fairly recent. This is true even for books a few hundred years old. Perhaps the reason for this is that we know more about the environment of recent times than we do of ancient times. 'Twas the Night Before Poverty… In a few months, many of us will either be reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol or watching one of its numerous versions being replayed on TV. The focus of the story is rightfully on the rebirth and redemption of

In the early days of Christianity, the Romans accused Christians of cannibalism. The early Christians (like contemporary Roman Catholics) believe in transubstantiation, the idea that the wine and bread of the eucharist actually turn into the blood and flesh of their deity, Jesus Christ. Since Jesus was also a man, it followed that the Christians were eating humans and drinking their blood in religious rites. This helped excuse Roman persecution of Christians (which officially ran from 64 c.e. under Nero to 313 c.e. and the Edict of Milan). Thousands of Jews were murdered in Alexandria in 38 c.e. by people believing that the Jews were killing and eating Greeks, but it was actually the

The title of this post comes from a statement by Ambassador Kosh from the TV show, Babylon 5. It was one of the best science fiction shows ever (well, the first 4 seasons were) dealing with issues of the nature of good and evil, order and chaos, and the eternal repetition and cycles of the universe. It would seem that we're about to see the restart of a negative cycle. One of the things I've noticed is that people seem willing to extend rights to others when we live in less stressful times, but as things become more stressful, people look for scapegoats as the cause of their problems. One of the traditional scapegoats has been other religions and people from other religions. Of