Leviticus 15:19-20
When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean.
Discuss.
EEEWWWWW!
Girl-cooties!! YUK!
(Written in the spirit of the old men who brought you the Bible, or the Torah, written, re-written and edited these many thousands of years now)
As said by others previously, if men menstruated it would be a sacrament.
Why do Abrahamic religions hate women?
@4
Well, Stay Free(TM) Maxi Pads hadn’t been invented yet.
Lots of stuff in that old book are just plain stupid.
I think what was intended was to say that sex during menstruation is icky.
Of course, this is matter of taste but as the Creator, don’t I get an opinion?
I am that I am
PS
There are other things that I would think you would find distasteful .. golden showers,latex maska, butt plugs … I created weird!
Some of the greatest stories ever told are the stories we tell ourselves. Most of us have stopped writing them down, calling it the word of God.
In college, I used to date a girl from Athens, GA. She was beautiful, had this silky drawl, and knew the Allmans.
She was especially horny during her period. So, we did it in the shower a lot.
I think the “official” jews (Levites) who wrote this passage didn’t care for sex, period, all that much. They didn’t like seafood much either. Their loss.
Zotz
taste is a blessed thing.
Some, after all. like it icky.
I am that I am.
Modern “christians” take this and a few other passages as to mean that women in general are unclean or weak or otherwise unfit.
Certainly James Dobson, Bryain Fischer and John Hagee have alluded to this many times. I find it fascinating that these staunch anti-homosexual fanatics should also find women so repellent as to reject any notion of gender equality in politics or in general scholarship. They seem to believe that women exist to be servants, sexually, socially and personally.
Jesus is a Friend of Mine
The upside to the people who find girls icky is they don’t reproduce and therefore their anti-women ideology tends to die out after one generation. See, e.g., the Taliban.
My guess? This is what Goldy said to his wife right before she left him.
It occurs to me that 7 days doesn’t quite cut it for some women I know.
I think Goldy found the wolfbane of trolls!
Menses are to trolls
as
Crucifixes are to vampires!
@ 15
And for the same reason.
The Silent Crisis In Ph.D.s
American universities are simply churning out too many Ph.D.s for the available jobs — by a wide margin. For the colleges, the oversupply of Ph.D. candidates and post-docs is a source of cheap research and teaching labor. For students, the choice to pursue a Ph.D. often leads to personal economic disaster.
http://www.economist.com/node/17723223
GOP Supports Public Option
In a twist of irony, Republicans may succeed in enacting public option. Here’s how it’ll work. First, they get the individual mandate portion of Obamacare struck down by the courts. Then, all the insurers go bankrupt. Finally, the government steps in to provide health coverage to the tens of millions of uninsured who were promised coverage under Obamacare.
http://www.economist.com/node/17733377
@17
Yes, it’s very true (though off topic).
I spent too many years on mine, and it results in a gigantic deferral of saving – my retirement account would be much healthier if I hadn’t gotten a PhD.
SJ is in that business – I’d be interested to hear his perspective on this.
As a preeminent baby boomer (i will be 64 in sixteen days), i pursued undergraduate and graduate work as a part of just growing up. Fortunately the personal costs were very little, paid by scholarships and fellowships. Jobs were available, though not in the numbers that were fully expected, and there was a better balance of living costs and wages (w/ total compensation). Then the faux tax revolts came and gutted education across the board (along with all other services). Students couldn’t afford to pay the initial costs, and were forced to accept loans at varying rates. Potential jobs were made attractive, mostly to encourage students to attend graduate schools to maintain the flow of monies. Today we have a glut of programs, churning out academic factory workers who are forced to access ever-increasing costs of loans to keep the academic factories working; and more faux tax revolts.
sorry about OT….. but squeezing blood from a turnip seems somehow appropriate. Biblical injunctions:
men don’t bleed must be good, women bleed must be bad…
women bleed, must be like apes and monkeys…
men stay clean, must be god-like…
women smell stinky, must be bad like devil…
Roger …
LibSci …
I have no idea how to respond to your question other than with another and another question.
Are we turning out too many scientists or is our economy too messed up to use them?
Should we cheer that we can not employ these folks or fear that China and India are outproducing us in this way as well?
What sorts of PhDs are we talking about? Do we need philosophers, economists and historians?
Are we also overproducing basket ball players, musicians, actors and writers?
Do we have unemployed carpenters and cooks?
Is the job of education to produce a high tech economy?
Roger. Lib Sci ctd.
I can offer a different perspective,
Are we producing “too many” basic scientists?
I do not know. The standards and the quality of the American students today are amazing. We literally outclass the entire world.
Is that good? Can we afford it?
I think you know my answer.
The government funds basic research. That basic research, in turn, produces cures for cancer, heart disease, psychosis, and aging. Some of these cures make money. Other basic research produces solar energy, computers, video games, carbon fibers, and .. some of these produce jobs.
The product of American basic science is ultimately jobs. First world jobs depend on the the government. The job market for molecular biologists is dependent on how much science we do. We are hugely productive.
24 Roger, Libsci
.. fini
So do we produce too many or is our system failing to use what we do produce?
One thing that is clear to me is that we produce far too many MBAs.
They should make learning Chinese mandatory for MBA candidates.
@24 I don’t know if we’re producing too many MBAs but I do know we’re not producing enough MBAs who know anything about ethics — or have any ethics.
You raise some interesting philosophical points about whether we’re producing too many Ph.D.s, but in the real world in which most people have to make a living, when academia can absorb only 20% of the Ph.D. output (as the Economist article suggests) it’s just not a good career track for young people.
We have the same problem in law. One of every 300 Americans is a lawyer, and there just isn’t enough paying work (and clients able to pay) to support all those lawyers. Not in grand style, anyway. There’s a reason why we have so many lawyers, and that’s because law schools are huge cash cows for universities. Law schools produce almost as much revenue as medical schools but cost only a fraction as much to set up and operate. Law schools are very high profit and that’s why we have so many of them, churning out far more new lawyers than the job market can absorb. Colleges make no attempt to match the output of law degrees to market demand (yeah, you can debate whether they should, but that doesn’t help young people who go $100,000 in debt to obtain unmarketable degrees) and, worse, they don’t warn prospective students of the market oversupply of law graduates (because they don’t want to scare them away).
I think there’s a lot to be said in favor of education for education’s sake. For example, I’d hate to see humanities disappear from our higher education system. But in the real world inhabited by the 99% of us who are non-rich, there has to be a cost-benefit analysis of whether the expense of a college degree is worth it in terms of the payoff in future earnings. Most of us can’t afford to get a Ph.D. in astronomy as a hobby. We have to make a living off whatever we go to school to learn. That’s the whole point of going to school. From a societal standpoint, our huge investment in education needs to pay off in economic output, or we can’t afford it. So the practical consideration of whether jobs await those who obtain expensive degrees is highly relevant, not irrelevant, to the question of whether students should pursue those degrees — both at an individual and societal level.
A college degree used to be a rarity in the workforce. Now, degrees are so commonplace it’s difficult to compete for the decent-paying jobs without one. It’s great that we’ve become so highly educated a society. What’s not so great is how many of today’s college graduates can’t spell, use basic grammar, or figure out whether to vote for the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate.
Roger
On Lawyers …
The problem I see is that despite the surfeit of lawyers, the costs of using lawyers have not gone down.
It seems to me that the reason for this is that the bar effectively blocks development of efficient means to cut costs.
@28
Or do more lawyers simply result in more lawyering?
Similar to many situations with MDs, the more there are, the more billing that happens and aggregate costs go up.
Like building more highways – capacity is always fully utilized.
With regard to the overload of MBA degrees, long time ago I was still a Secretary. Amazed at what the City of Seattle hiring practices performed. ANY category of job, heck since they had a MBA – hired! Call them an analyst, fill in ANY position (non-union, non-labor).
Not necessarily common sense (they typically couldn’t spell, write, whatever, because that’s why they had Secretaries to cover for their asses).
Remembering one incidence. One Analyst MBA was time clocking the Warehouse Crews. While she was reading a ROMANCE NOVEL, when the timer clicked, she would jump up to see where each of the Warehouse personnel were @ the job. Seriously, a Romance Novel!
The Warehouse people became outraged, ‘why is she reading trash on company time, while you’re worrying about us working’? They went to their manager and told get her out of here or we’re staging a full blown walkout. Right now!!
She came back to the office, totally enraged. At Boeing we MBAs were “treated with respect”! Could not even comprehend, heck if a Secretary like me were reading on the job I would have been fired.
Yes, the company later did time studies but the old timer Crew Chief guy on light duty was reading (I asked him) manuals of statistics related to the line crews. Non-insulting, business related stuff.
Sure, academia may pump out MBA students while taking their money, but whew – whatever does that mean they are delivering?
MBA = Master Bullshit Artist
Thats all the degree really is. It is a low-scholarship degree, requiring little if any real research background. Cheating through it is easy, and it requires no real intelligence or intellect to study for. It’s the degree that Jocks and cheerleaders take, as it requires no real depth of study.
GWB proved that.
Sure is amazing what is found in the Torah. Wonder why Goldy focuses on these two verses during the CHRISTmas season?
Once again Roger Dumb Rabbit hijacks a thread from it’s original track.
@29 LS lawyers vs. doctors
There are similarities but also is a huge differences.
Medicine is a matter of life or death. It is a primary need.
True, docs could manufacture demand, but they have little incentive to do so since the demand is so high.
Lawyers create their own demand and do so with no incentive to meet common needs.
Puddy …
Oh?
So whysit that you did not comment?
Puddy didn’t comment? Puddy’s comment was on the thread topic.
So???
No comment on the passage?
This one’s for you, liberal “scientist.” Get the point?
BTW, Puddy
does your Roman Bible say anything about Jesus holding hands with a woman in her period? (Deity forfend any more meaningful question).
@33
Oh I know – the psychology of ‘buying’ health care is totally different from buying a car or a refrigerator, yet we often think of it in the same dispassionate economic terms.
No, what I was talking about was stuff like this, where medical utilization is driven up by the doctors themselves. My comment above was wondering aloud if a similar process happens with lawyers – I don’t know.
******
As to your tasking Pud to comment on the topic at hand, I too noticed that our resident trolls were conspicuously absent this week.
@37
What, pray tell, was that for? I’ve certainly had trolls make similar comments, but usually after I’ve made some sort of provocative comment.
What did I say?
Care to back up your cute picture with a comment?
@40: It acheived the desired effect, i.e., you noted its existence.
@39 LS
While I know that the conventional wisdom is that docs manufacture work for themselves, and there is some truth to that, the effects in medicine are fairly small because the demand for what is actually needed is so huge relative to the supply.
Most of the escalation in costs of medical care is due to two things: 1. the exponential increase in our ability to improve people’s health and 2. an inefficient bureaucracy that, like lawyers, is not subject to limits on what it charges.
Evidence for the former is easy to come by. The costs of healthcare are escalating not only in the US fee-for-service system, but worldwide. MRIs are a good example. An MRI is a life saving miracle. The machines are, however, VERY expensive. Docs here or in France do not make a lot of money out of an MRI procedure. However, MRIs do increase the costs of care because they find a lot of disease!
There is no equivalent phenomenon in law. Moreover, rising costs of medicine are very visible and the public, through politicians, demands access. There is, at least so far, no equivalent pressure on the law.
@3:
“Why do Abrahamic religions hate women?”
That’s a good point – all the Abrahamic religions seem to relegate women to the background and even seem to hate women. The Bible and other Abrahamic religious books were all written by men, so men are going to be seen, in their own eyes at least, as “better” than women.
Personally, I like Wicca as a religion: women and men pretty much share the priestess/priest role, and it’s got a “do unto others as you would do unto thyself” character about it. If wee have to have a religion in the world, Wicca seems like the least harmless.
@43
It is absurd to say that Judaism hates women. From the beginning we have had female leaders (Devorah, Mayor, Zippi).
By FAR, THE most jmportant ritual event in Judaism is the Shabbat candles, only women can do that.
Women can be, have been and are rabbis.
A woman led us against the Muslim hordes in the Magreb (Queen Kahane).
We ain’t purrfect, but lumin us with yuse guys ain’t fait!
@44
Perhaps not all Jews share your enlightened views on gender equality, SJ. More here. Some women fight back. But the problem is growing. It’s also happening in the US, where women reporters were banned from doing their jobs, and even attacked, at an orthodox community.
Come on, SJ, Jewish fundies are just as crazy and repressive as every other type of religious fundamentalist.
LS @ 45 said:
“Come on, SJ, Jewish fundies are just as crazy and repressive as every other type of religious fundamentalist.”
Absolutley goddam right! Jews have always considered themselves “God’s chosen people,” so some of them might have a little attitude about their faith versus anybody else’s belief! Heck, check out Seattle Jew’s website: it looks like an altar to self-agrandizement! No wonder he looks down on any other religions!!
Lib Sci
I did not say that all Jews are free of gender bias.
What I said was that Judaism is very different from Christianity in the role of women.
Christians, in the broad sense of all of us who grow up in Christian society, have an annoying habit of projecting the faults of their own tradition on all other religions.
Christianity sees that it is flawed by intolerance so, Christian reformers assert that the problem is not intrinsic to Christianity buy afflicts all religions.
Combine that with the bizarre idea of that Christians have of forgiving themselves for their worst deeds and the evils of slavery, evangelism, etc. end up being other people’s faults.
As a non Christian growing up in this society, my Paul on the road to Tarsus moments came when I realized that my own tradition really was not responsible for the evil side (or for that matter the good side) of Christendom.
That epiphany is a major reason that I reject meaning laden efforts to lump Abrahamic religions or create a Judeo-Christian common faith.
cross posted at SeattleJew.
Time spent reading your piece is time well spent. Many of people should certainly read this!
Interesting post. I was reading “How To Be Perfect”, a book by Daniel Harrell. It is about one church’s experiment in living the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Taking Leviticus laws and trying to apply them to a modern-day world can be a daunting task. Pulling a single verse out of context and leaving it void of the real meaning never makes for a good discussion.