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Saturday, 8 August 2026

From Anguish Languish to English Language: Trains-lading debt Furry Tail avowed Beers into a Fairy Tale about Bears

 It's been decades since I first posted Furry Tails to this blog, and since most of my readers are from countries other than the one in which Anguish Languish was first published, I thought I'd do them the favour of translating this one into Standard English. Here, then, is Goldy Locks and the Three Bears:

Wants pawn term dare worsted ladle gull hoe hat search putty yowler coils debt pimple colder Guilty Looks. Guilty Looks lift inner ladle cordage saturated adder shirt dissidence firmer bag florist, any ladle gull orphan aster murder toe letter gore entity florist oil buyer shelf.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had such pretty yellow curls that people called her Goldy Locks. Goldy Locks lived in a little cottage situated at a short distance from a big forest, and a little girl often asked her mother to let her go into the forest all by herself. 

Guilty Looks!” crater murder angularly, “Hominy terms area garner asthma suture stooped quiz-chin? Goiter door florist? Sordidly NUT!”

“Wire nut, murder?” wined Guilty Looks, hoe dint peony tension tore murder’s scaldings.

“Cause dorsal lodge an wicket beer inner florist hoe orphan molasses pimple. Ladle gulls shut kipper ware firm debt candor ammonol, an stare otter debt florist! Debt florist’s mush toe dentures furry ladle gull!”

Wail, pimple oil-wares wander doe wart udder pimple dum wampum toe doe. Debt’s jest hormone nurture. Wan moaning, Guilty Looks dissipater murder, an win entity florist.

"Goldy Locks!" cried her mother angrily, "How many times are you going to ask me such a stupid question? Go to the forest? Certainly NOT!"

"Why not, mother?" whined Goldy Locks, who didn't pay any attention to her mother's scoldings.

"'Cause there's a large and wicked bear in the forest who often molests people. Little girls should keep away from that kind of animal, and stay out of that forest! That forest's much too dangerous for a little girl!"

Well, people always want to do what other people don't want them to do. That's just human nature. One morning, Goldy Locks disobeyed her mother and went into the forest. 

Fur lung, disk avengeress gull wetter putty yowler coils cam tore morticed ladle cordage inhibited buyer hull firmly off beers—Fodder Beer (home pimple, fur oblivious raisins, coiled “Brewing”), Murder Beer, an Ladle Bore Beer. Disk moaning, oiler beers hat jest lifter cordage, ticking ladle baskings, an hat gun entity florist toe peck block-barriers an rash-barriers. Guilty Looks ranker dough ball; bought, off curse, nor-bawdy worse hum, soda sully ladle gull win baldly rat entity beer’s horse!

'Fore long, this adventurous girl with her pretty yellow curls came to a modest little cottage inhabited by a whole family of bears--Father Bear (whom people, for obvious reasons, called Bruin), Mother Bear, and Little Boy Bear. This morning, all the bears had just left a cottage, taking little baskets, and had gone into the forest to pick blackberries and raspberries. Goldy Locks rang a door bell, but, of course, nobody was home, so the silly little girl went boldly right into the bear's house!

Honor tipple inner darning rum, stud tree boils fuller sop—wan grade bag boiler sop, wan muddle-sash boil, an wan tawny ladle boil. Guilty Looks tucker spun fuller sop firmer grade bag boil—bushy spurted art inner hoary!

“Arch!” crater gull, “Debt sop’s toe hart—barns mar mouse!”

Dingy traitor sop inner muddle-sash boil, witch worse toe coiled. Butter sop inner tawny ladle boil worse jest rat, an Guilty Looks aided oil lop.

Dingy nudist tree cheers—wan anomalous cheer, wan muddle-sash cheer, an wan tawny ladle cheer. Guilty Looks set darn inner ladle cheer, bushy worse toe bag ferret, ant soddenly bustard.

On a table in the dining room stood three bowls full of soup--one great big bowl of soup, one middle-sized bow, and one tiny little bow. Goldy Locks took her spoon full of soup from a great big bowl, but she spit it out in a hurry!

"Ouch!" cried the girl, "That soup's too hot--burns my mouth!"

Then she tried the soup in a middle-sized bowl, which was too cold. But the soup in a tiny little bowl was just right, and Goldy Locks ate it all up. 
Then she noticed three chairs--one enormous chair, one middle-sized chair, and one tiny little chair. Goldy Locks sat down in a little chair, but she was too big for it, and it suddenly busted. 

Clamming upper stars tutor beer’s bet-rum, Guilty Looks dish-cupboard tree bets—wan grade bag bet, wan muddle-sash bet, an wan tawny ladle bet. Failing torrid, shay flunker shelf honor ladle bet, an, jester cobbler menace letter, worse sunder slip an snorting.

Climbing up a stairs to the bear's bedroom, Goldy Locks discovered three beds--one great big bed, one middle-sized bed, and one tiny little bed. Feeling tired, she flung herself on a little bed, and, just a couple minutes later, was sound asleep and snoring. 

Inner ladle wile, donors offer cordage cam beck firmer barrier-pecking extradition, currying baskings fuller rash-barriers. Whinny entity darning rum, Fodder Beer stuttered snuffing an gruelling tomb shelf.

“Warts ban goring earn hair?” crumpled dole beer, “Conjure small psalm-sing deferent a boarder horse?”

“Crashes!” crater murder beer, ashy castor quack glands adder tipple, “Hose ban muddling wet debt sop?”

Ladle Bore Beer stuttered crayon.

“Jest locket mar ladle boiler sop—oil garbled dope! An locket mar itchy pitchy cheer—oil bustard!”

In a little while, the owners of the cottage came back from their berry-picking expedition, carrying baskets full of raspberries. When he entered the dining room, Father Bear started sniffing and growling to himself. 
"What's been going on here?" grumbled the old bear, "Can't you smell something different about the house?" 
"Gracious!" cried mother bear, as she cast a quick glance at the table, "Who's been meddling with that soup?"
Little Bear started crying. "Just look at my little bowl of soup--all gobbled up! And look at my itty-bitty chair--all busted!"

Locking adder bustard cheer, Murder Beer bay-gander gat historical, an stuttered hurling tore horsebarn:

“Brewing! Brewing! Way gut BURGHERS inner horse. HORSE BURGHERS! Quack! Coiler place! Wail, dun stun dare lacking end-bustle during nosing! Coiler Place Deportment, quack!”

“Harmer garner coiler Place Deportment wen way dun heifer toiler-fun?” resplendent Brewing, inner trampling verse. “Set darn, worming, an cape quoit! Yore oil-wares thanking dare burghers inner horse!”

Oiler shame, Brewing worse jesters scarred aster udders; infect, haze niece war shagging.

Finely, Fodder Beer gutter grade bag short-gum, Murder Beer gutter muddle-sash haunting raffle, an Ladle Bore Beer gutter tawny ladle pestle, an oiler beers crypt upper stars, ware Guilty Looks worse line honor bet, sunder slip an snorting. Herring door beers, shay weakened, lipped otter door windrow, an dished aware harm jesters fascist shagged scrabble.

Looking at a busted chair, Mother Bair began to get hysterical, and started howling to her husband:
"Bruin! Bruin! We got BURGLARS in the house, HOUSE BURGLARS! Quick! Call a police! Well, don't stand there like an imbecile doing nothing! Call a Police Department, quick!"
"How am I gonna call a Police Department when we don't have a telephone?" responded Bruin, in a trembling voice. "Sit down, woman, and keep quiet! You're always thinking there are burglars in the house! 
All a same, Bruin was just as scared as the others; in fact, his knees were shaking. 
Finally, Father Bear got a great big shotgun, Mother Bear got a middle-sized hunting rifle, and Little Boy Bear got a tiny little pistol, ad all a bears crept up a stairs, where Goldy Locks was lying on a bed, sound asleep and storing. Hearing the bears, she wakened, leaped out of the window, and dashed away home just as fast as she could scramble. 

Oiler beers tar darner stars, an stuttered toe locker doers an windrows.

“Fodder,” aster ladle bore beer, finely, “Wart worse debt discussing crasher honor bet? Wart worse debt ogling ammonol wet oil debt yowler far honor had, an hoe dint half nor far atoll honor beck? Wart worse debt hobble lurking crasher, Fodder?”

Fodder Beer shuttered.

“Comb hair, mar bore. Heresy gut lessen furrier! Debt discussing crasher worsen HORMONE BANG! Kipper ware firm debt candor ammonol! Dare nor gut! Warts mar, are dun wander catcher goring entity florist oil bar yore shelf. Debt florist’s mush toe dentures furry ladle beer!”

All a bears tore down a stairs, and started to lock a doors and windows. 
"Father," asked a little boy bear, finally, "What was that disgusting creature on a bed? What was that ugly animal with all that yellow fur on her head, and who didn't have no fur at all on her back? What was that horrible looking creature, Father?"
Father Bear shuddered. 
"Come here, my boy. Here's a good lesson for your! That disgusting creature was an HUMAN BEING!
Keep away from that kind of animal! They're no good! What's more, I don't want to catch you going into the forest all by your self. That forest's much too dangerous for a little bear!"

I translated this as literally as I could exposing the weakness of the author's use of articles: he failed to distinguish between the definite and indefinite articles, sometime even confusing them with possessive pronouns. I gave him as much latitude as I could in a strict translation (probably even more, by translating 'sop' as 'soup'); using dynamic equivalence-- along the lines of the NIV--would make such inconsistencies disappear entirely. And there could be some dialect of English out there in which they wouldn't be phonemically distinct anyway.

Tuesday, 4 August 2026

Mankind makes it to the Moon

 Fifteen years ago, I noted that only men had ever been to the moon. I didn't say it in that post, but it was obvious to me that whenever men did return to the moon, it was inevitable that there would be a woman along; failure to tick off that box would be an unimaginable offense to the gods of sexual equality. 
And sure enough, the Artemis mission this year to the far side of the moon included a woman. What's interesting is that taking a woman along required a private bathroom facility, and the need to build a spaceship big enough to accommodate that did delay this milestone mission by several decades. 

Sunday, 2 August 2026

The NIV's Reformed slant in Galatians 6:16

Part and parcel of Calvinism is the notion that the Church has replaced Israel as the object of Divine favour and as the recipient of Divine promises. Popularly called Replacement Theology, it's technically referred to as Supersessionism, and it not only serves as a doctrinal pillar of Reformed Theology, it can even be shown to have roots about as far back in Church History as we are able to go. The Epistle of Barnabas, placed by its compilers in the very text of Codex Sinaiticus and thought to date almost as early as the New Testament itself, features it as a core teaching. According to Wikipedia, it argues that the Old Testament scriptures were always intended for Christians, that the Jews misinterpreted them by taking the Law literally, and that the covenant with Israel was broken early on (linked especially to the golden calf incident). Christians alone, it argues, are the true people of God.

Well, there are a lot of Bible verses that have to be suppressed--or at least ignored--for this to work. In writing to the Romans, the apostle Paul painted a picture of the Gentiles being grafted into Israel, not replacing them. His concern with the Jews was not that God had rejected them, but that they had rejected God--a situation he clearly saw as temporary. Thus throughout the millennia, Christian scholars have wrestled with the paradox that although Israel appears to have been set aside in favour of the Church, God's eternal promises to Israel have not been, and cannot be, annulled--if the words of Scripture actually mean anything like what they say. Thus, Barnabas' enduring assertion that God never intended the Law to be taken as written is crucial to the entire argument.

Now, the Geneva Bible, in its notes on Romans 11, does hold out hope that Israel will be saved eventually, but by joining the church; kind of a reverse of Paul's scenario, combining the permanence of all of God's promises to Israel with  the entire church being the actual beneficiary (which still requires some creative interpretation--could we even call it a dismissal?--of a lot of them). But it was this very doctrine, weakened as it was, that led Oliver Cromwell to open throw open the gates of England to Jewish immigration, and eventually led to a widespread rejection of Supersessionism among readers of the English Bible--especially in the United States, where both Dispensationalism and Ministries to Jewish People flourished in the 20th century. It appears that which Bible translation one uses really can affect his doctrine and practice, even at a national scale.

Not to say that I haven't already tipped my hand, but the point of this post is actually not to argue for or against Supersessionism--but rather to point out that the Committee for Bible Translation has done that very thing. A main point of Replacement Theology is to equate the Church of God with the Israel of God, and this is exactly what several Bible translations--could we even call them that--do at Galatians 6:16.

Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God. --RSV
All who walk by this standard are the true Israel of God - his chosen people. Peace and mercy on them! --The Message
May God’s peace and mercy be upon all who live by this principle; they are the new people of God. --NLT
Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God. --NIV

All four of these, ranging from the fairly literal to the wildly paraphrastic, have to do one thing to be able to equate the two: ignore not just one, but two of the three occurrences of the word και (and/also/even)--specifically the last one, which appears to draw a distinction between two groups of people: "those who follow this rule" and "the Israel of God." 

Contrast this to the versions that don't leave out any of the conjunctions:
And whosoever shall follow this rule, peace on them and mercy: and upon the Israel of God. --Douay-Rheims
And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. --KJV
And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. --ESV

Here, the two categories are clearly separate. It's easy to see that someone whose theology would dictate that they equate Israel and the Church would be inclined to leave out that crucial 'and' to find scriptural justification for their position.

Actually, this is one of the places where I don't think either the KJV or the NIV got it quite right. One recent craze in hermeneutics has been to find chiasms all over the scriptures, and while I think it's possible to take this way too far, the point can be made that a chiastic structure is in play in this verse, and it should actually be translated the way the HCSB did:
May peace be on all those who follow this standard, and mercy also be on the Israel of God!

--which appears a much better fit to the context of Pauline theology in general and Galatians chapter six in particular. 

Whether one decides to directly translate all of the 'ands', or to leave out the first as superfluous in English, it's a doctrinal choice--not a linguistic one--to ignore the last of them.

The CBT made the doctrinal choice, by taking away a word from the Scriptures, to use their translation to push Replacement Theology--or at least the result was indistinguishable from if they had. This, from the Bible whose introduction states that the translators went to great lengths to avoid sectarian bias.

This post will probably undergo a lot of editing over the coming weeks, but it's been percolating in my mind long enough to finally start the process of getting it in writing.

EDITED TO ADD: I do recognize that at least the last couple editions of the TNIV/NNIV have 'and' here in a footnote--but I reiterate that it was a conscious decision to relegate that reading to a footnote rather than leaving it in the text. Unless, of course, the allegation is true that the NIV was just a reworking of the RSV, in which case they did leave intact the reading in their favoured text, and any criticism about this sectarian bias would deservedly be moved back to that translation committee. I forget whether the RSV introduction proclaimed their translation to be free of sectarian bias, but that's one of the things I can track down for future updates. 

ADDED FURTHER: I could be even more magnanimous and say that translating και as 'even' here would provide for the desired equivalence of Israel and the Church. But that's not what the CBT did, even in their footnote. I can see, though, how they could have justified their rendition on linguistic, rather than theological, grounds--but it's still a rendition that only a Calvinist could produce. 

Thursday, 18 June 2026

A mathematical formula that can guarantee lottery winnings, revisited

It's been almost a decade since I first posted about the scam going around that a mathematical formula can guarantee lottery winnings. Well, I just found out that I was wrong--sort of--and I'm back to make an apology.
Joan Ginther was a math whiz as a kid, graduated at the top of her class at a small Texas high school, and went on to get a PhD in mathematics, with an emphasis on statistics, at Stanford. She then dutifully spend the next sixteen years teaching maths at small colleges in the Western US, but all that changed when she won a $5.4 million share of the Texas Lotto in 1993. Like most lotto millionaires, she quit her job. And like most lotto millionaires, she kept right on buying lottery tickets.
But here is what made Joan Ginther different: she actually HAD found a mathematical formula to guarantee lottery winnings, and she used her initial windfall to keep playing in such a way that she went on to win big two more times in the next 15 years--enough millions to keep up her lotto habit without having to borrow against future payouts. She'd found a way to lower her odds of winning from one in tens of millions down to about one in hundreds--which means that, given the right time and place, buying out her hometown Texas store's supply of lottery tickets produced better than even odds of hitting the jackpot. This she finally did in 2006, winning $10 million from one of a stack of $50 Extreme Payout tickets she'd gotten someone to purchase for her. She also allegedly hired an attorney to come to Texas, pick up the winnings, and return them to her Las Vegas hideout.

Once Texas Lottery officials realized this mega-winner obviously had some formula for buying winning tickets, they launched a full-on investigation of her. This turned out to be quite difficult to do, as she had stopped coming to Texas in person to buy the tickets, so there wasn't much to investigate. They tried to get the FBI involved, but once the FBI learned that she was using publicly available information--published by the Lottery Board itself--and legal proxy buyers, they had to patiently inform the Lotto officials that if researching ticket distributions was legal, and ordering publicly available information was legal, and hiring someone to buy and redeem tickets in your name was legal, then there was no crime to investigate.

Joan Ginther, though, never attempted to sell her forumla. Why would she? It was working fine for her. But after she cashed in for the fourth time, the ensuing investigation resulted in changes to the distribution of tickets that basically rendered her formula useless.
In 2010.
So by the time "Jared" started trying to sell me his mathematical secret to winning the lotto--if "he" had in fact managed to break into the Sanford Archives and get "his" hands on her dissertation from the early seventies (allegedly on the way winning lotto tickets were distributed)--it was already obsolete. So I do apologise for scoffing at the idea that it could be done--but I note that in the decade since I made that claim, every multiple lottery winner has turned out to be relying on fraud and inside access--not a mathematical formula. So yeah, it's not much of a mea culpa, because it doesn't have to be.

I also need to give credit due to Nathaniel Rich and Peter Mucha, the reporters who broke the story. According to Mucha, she never stopped buying Texas Lottery tickets, even after her big win, but the fifth big payout eluded her. As for me, I'm happy to go to my grave at a ripe old age never having purchased a single one.

Monday, 13 April 2026

John MacArthur and ancient baptism

A little further reaction to John MacArthur's sermon on 1 Peter 2:
It's actually a good sermon overall, encouraging believers to fill their lives with God's word. But besides reading the whole text through Calvinist glasses, John twists Christian History itself when he makes this claim:
There was an interesting routine that was followed by some early Christians in their baptism where they would be baptized in their old clothes, and then when they came out of the waters they would go to a dressing room and they would be given new clothes. This was a symbol of the fact that salvation marked the shedding of all that was old and the beginning of all that was new.
Alas, as longtime readers of this blog are aware, the ancient custom involved removing clothes, all right: but BEFORE the baptism, not after. Cyril of Jerusalem, for example, in his teaching on the Mystery of Baptism, is recorded as saying:
"As soon as you entered, you put off your tunic; and this was an image of putting off the old man with his deeds. Having stripped yourselves, you were naked; in this also imitating Christ, who was stripped naked on the Cross, and by His nakedness put off from Himself the principalities and powers, and openly triumphed over them on the tree."