We're beginning to get the feeling that Kevin Swanson, the Colorado radio preacher and homeschooling advocate, doesn't like America very much. Just maybe. His ebook Apostate: The Men Who Destroyed the Christian West is mostly a rant about how America would be a much better place if only it were post-Reformation Europe, or at the very least if it were Puritan New England before they allowed in all those Quakers and voted for Dukakis. Mark Twain sits at the top of Swanson's Public Intellectual Enemies list, because, as Swanson says,
Back in the late 70's - early '80s I was the product manager for, among other things, an 8-bit microcontroller that was fairly widely used in new-fangled gasoline pumps. We got to do an awful lot of tech support as the manufacturers tried to figure out how to rewrite or patch the ROMcode for their programs, because of course some of them had not thought to allow for a per gallon price greater than 0.999.
As the price crept higher, the fun escalated, as the station-owners, who had already bought and installed uC-controlled pumps became vociferous.
In the long run, of course, it worked out to benefit the pump manufacturers, because (once they had patched the code) it increased the attractiveness of a replacement pump.
I will go to my grave insisting &quot;The Minister&#039;s Black Veil&quot; is a better story than <i>Scarlet Letter</i>, because it gets the same job done in less than a fourth the time.
I...what? How is it possible to write Huck Finn without using all the naughty words, and still have it maintain the narrative voice of Huck Finn, who spoke mainly in naughty words?
Also impressive that he&#039;s read <i>Pilgrim&#039;s Progress</i> and managed to get just as little out of it as <i>Huck Finn.</i>.
Civilization collapsed when that blowhard Cortez came ashore with his steel-jacketed men and their steel swords, his horses, his unintelligible language, his strange religion, his alien diseases and his breathtaking arrogance. But that&#039;s a story for another day.
&quot;Twain depicts the American Christian <strike>God</strike> as a pro-slavery villain who would have Huck surrender his friendship for the cause of slavery.&quot;
FIFY, Swanson. Not that you wanted it fixed, of course.
<i><strike>Mark Twain</strike> <b>Kevin Swanson</b> wasn&rsquo;t interested in discovering <strike>what the Bible really said about slavery</strike> <b>whether Satan wrote this book</b> or anything else. At heart, he was a <strike>humanist</strike> <b>dogmatic fundy wingnut</b>. It was already a decided fact in his mind.</i>
Hm. The raw probability is pretty high.
Back in the late 70&#039;s - early &#039;80s I was the product manager for, among other things, an 8-bit microcontroller that was fairly widely used in new-fangled gasoline pumps. We got to do an awful lot of tech support as the manufacturers tried to figure out how to rewrite or patch the ROMcode for their programs, because of course some of them had not thought to allow for a per gallon price greater than 0.999.
As the price crept higher, the fun escalated, as the station-owners, who had already bought and installed uC-controlled pumps became vociferous.
In the long run, of course, it worked out to benefit the pump manufacturers, because (once they had patched the code) it increased the attractiveness of a replacement pump.
That is a rather revealing noun phrase there, isn&#039;t it? Not too &quot;Biblical&quot;.
I will go to my grave insisting &quot;The Minister&#039;s Black Veil&quot; is a better story than <i>Scarlet Letter</i>, because it gets the same job done in less than a fourth the time.
I...what? How is it possible to write Huck Finn without using all the naughty words, and still have it maintain the narrative voice of Huck Finn, who spoke mainly in naughty words?
Also impressive that he&#039;s read <i>Pilgrim&#039;s Progress</i> and managed to get just as little out of it as <i>Huck Finn.</i>.
Is there a chapter on Poe? His work is a field ripe for fertilization with Swanson&#039; s bullshit.
So you think Swanson is redundant, duplicative, repetitive, wordy, prolix and superfluous, and says the same thing over and over, also too?
I can&#039;t wait for Swanson to tear into <i>To Kill A Mockingbird</i> and that little satanist Scout.
Delicious. That word does not mean what you think it means.
Well, the green eggs do imply spinach. Or gangrene.
So, a tossup.
#notallchristians
Civilization collapsed when that blowhard Cortez came ashore with his steel-jacketed men and their steel swords, his horses, his unintelligible language, his strange religion, his alien diseases and his breathtaking arrogance. But that&#039;s a story for another day.
Or, to put it in the language of formal logic:
EITHER You don&#039;t believe that God is real OR Mark Twain was a dangerous man.
It&#039;s like when Nietzsche said the equivalent of &quot;whatever does not make me stronger KILLS me.&quot;
&quot;Twain depicts the American Christian <strike>God</strike> as a pro-slavery villain who would have Huck surrender his friendship for the cause of slavery.&quot;
FIFY, Swanson. Not that you wanted it fixed, of course.
<i><strike>Mark Twain</strike> <b>Kevin Swanson</b> wasn&rsquo;t interested in discovering <strike>what the Bible really said about slavery</strike> <b>whether Satan wrote this book</b> or anything else. At heart, he was a <strike>humanist</strike> <b>dogmatic fundy wingnut</b>. It was already a decided fact in his mind.</i>
FTFY