I wrote before about the discussion of the good and bad deeds committed by Joe Paterno and how people seem to juxtapose these events in some sort of moralistic pros and cons list. I mentioned the article Sally Jenkins wrote for the Washington Post and her subsequent interview on Hang Up and Listen.

According to Mike McQueary, the graduate student who walked in on Jerry Sandusky having anal sex with a young boy in the Penn State locker room,he was “delicate” in his description of the event when he told Paterno. Jenkins asks Paterno if he would have taken more serious action if McQueary had been more explicit.

Paterno replies:

“I don’t know that it would have done any good, because I never heard of, of, rape and a man,”

Joe Paterno was born in 1926. He existed on planet Earth for 86 years. He lived through How To Catch A Predator, Jeffery Dahmer, The Kite Runner (the book and the movie), Michael Devlin, Mystic River, the child soldiers in the Congo, Steven Stayner, Sleepers, and the entire sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. There is a near zero probability that he had “never heard of” a man raping a boy.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, with no TV and no internet and no neighborhood gossip, you can’t possibly be unaware that sometimes men sexually abuse young boys. You could, however, be willfully ignorant of the abuse going on in your own locker room.

On my commute this morning, I listend to Radio Lab today and their discussion about the Battle of Jericho. According to the Book of Joshua (Joshua 6:1-27), the Israelites, led by Joshua, attacked the city of Jericho and were victorious, killing everyone in the city. The city was surrounded by strong walls so to overcome the barrier, God commanded Joshua to march the army around the city once a day for six days, with seven priests carrying horns. On the seventh day, Joshua was to march about the city seven times, with the priests blowing the horns. According to God, the walls would collapse.

Except it wouldn’t work.

Radio Lab got together a few scientists to study the details of the story and, essentially, even if you could generate enough noise to physically damage the walls, you would also be damaging the soldiers standing near the walls. In short, if the noise is loud enough for the wall to implode, so would the soldiers’ heads.

Of course, this being the Bible, the fall of Jericho is attributed to God. Any religious person will tell you that God intervened that day outside the walls of Jericho and ensured that the walls fell and no head implosions occurred.

If God was going to intervene, why make the army jump through all the hoops? Couldn’t Joshua just knock on the door to Jericho and then God could make the walls collapse? Though perhaps, if God really existed and really was loving and caring, he wouldn’t have slaughtered an entire city of people (including all the children.)

[Translated from Dutch]

“Do you want to watch me fuck another guy? :$”

What the hell is :$? Should it indicate you have a dollar bill taped across your face?

I found the book to be very accessible and light-hearted, despite the threats of violence. The history of punctuation was very interesting and Truss outlines how it has changed over time. I discovered I was really attached to how we punctuate in the English language. Capitalizing every noun, as is done in German, seems crazy to me.

What are your thoughts on the book? Are you a Truss hater? If so, why?