Month: December 2004

[SOURCE.]

NORTH POLE (DAILY PLANET) — A stunned world reacted as photographs taken at Santa’s North Pole workshop revealed unprecedented advances in cloning.

"Apparently Santa has been way ahead of the curve scientifically," said the late astronomer and science guru Carl Sagan. "He may have had the technology to make billions and billions of copies of himself for untold years–yet he never shared this technology with the world."

The Catholic Church reacted with great alarm to the shocking revelation. "This is simply unacceptable!" papal spokesman Joachim Navarro-Valls shouted in a fit of pique at a Vatican press conference. "We have given St. Nicholas a very long leash–so long that his connection to the true spirit of Christmas has become exceedingly tenuous. The Holy Father has shown extreme patience with him in the hope that he would return from the spirit of commercialism, but now he has gone too far!"

Navarro-Valls also stated that the Holy See would be conducting an apostolic visitation of Santa’s North Pole workshop to investigate the cloning scandal and determine what actions need to be taken.

"Cardinal Ratzinger will be heading the apostolic visitation," he stated. "As the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Cardinal has great expertise both in theology generally and with moral theology as well. His dicastery has already forcefully written against cloning, which represents a fundamental rupture of God’s design."

Stressing that cloning humans was fundamentally incompatible with the Christian faith, Navarro-Valls went on to hint that the full scope of the Santa cloning scandal may not have been revealed as yet.

"First, there is a question of just how long St. Nicholas has had this technology. He was born in the late second century in the province of Asia Minor, what is now Turkey, and was one of the fathers of the First Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, where the deity of Christ was dogmatically defined. How has he managed to survive all this time? Was it a special miracle of God? Or was it a ‘miracle’ of genetic engineering or even cloning? Is the Santa of today the same as the St. Nicholas of the Council of Nicaea? He hardly looks the same anymore. Perhaps he is suffering from ‘replicative fading’ due to repeated clonings of himself."

Navarro-Valls added that the cloning revelation sheds new light on many aspects of Santa’s secretive operations. "It explains, for example, how he can visit every household in the world to deliver presents in a single night. It also explains how Santa can appear in shopping malls to hear childrens’ gift requests. And it explains how there can be so many Santas on street corners bellringing for charity."

The papal spokesman also indicated that the apostolic visitation would review additional matters besides the cloning scandal with Santa at its center.

"There is the matter of the elves. Are they the product of Santa’s genetic manipulation? Has he created a Brave New World at the North Pole, with a whole class of slave laborers genetically-engineered to perform their specific task of toymaking? And where did Santa get flight-endowed reindeer? One of them even has a mutation that causes his nose to glow red!"

"All of this has gone on for far too long," Navarro-Valls stated. "It’s time for the Church to rein in this straying saint."

Y’know those online quizzes that tell you what medieval philosopher you are, what kind of shoe you are, what kind of cheese you are, which member of the Rat Pack you are?

They’re apparently very popular.

I find them silly and almost never take them. (Though I did find out that the member of the Rat Pack I am is Frank Sinatra.)

WELL I COULDN’T RESIST TAKING THIS ONE.

It purports to tell you what your "alignment" is.

Alignment is a concept used in the game Dungeons & Dragons.

I hate it. (The concept of alignment, that is; I’m also not that big on D & D, which I view as a poorly-designed game, though other Role Playing Games are better.)

Alignment is one of the elements in D & D that I consider to be poor design.

Basically, alignment is supposed to tell you how your character behaves. It analyzes your character on two axes: whether he is (1) good, (2), neutral, or (3) evil and whether he is (a) lawful, (b) neutral, or (c) chaotic.

Thus a virtuous priest might be "lawful good" (concerned with principles directed toward good) and Osama bin Laden might be "lawful evil" (concerned with principles leading to evil).

A social activist might be "chaotic good" (unconcerned with principle but fixated on good) and a psychopath might be "chaotic evil" (unconcerned with principle and fixated on evil).

I don’t like alignment because (a) it unduly restrains characters (some races in the game are only allowed certain alignments) and (b) it encourages players to take a juvenile satisfaction in being evil.

Anyway, I took the alignment quiz.

I answered all the questions as honestly as I could, even those which wouldn’t reflect well on me.

I figured that my alignment would easily come back as lawful good. (I answered an awful lot of law questions in a positive manner, and in real life I am very concerned with matters of principle.)

Apparently, though, my alignment score was tied between two options, and the quiz asked me a clarifying question to see which principle was more important to me.

One of the tied options was indeed lawful good, but the other–the one the deciding question finally determined by alignment to be–was neutral good.

Surprise, surprise!

Here’s the quiz’s description of how a "neutral good" person behaves:

A Neutral Good person tries to do the
‘goodest’ thing possible. These people are willing to work with the law
to accomplish their goal, but if the law is corrupt they are just as
willing to tear it down. To these people, doing what’s right is the
most important thing, regardless of rules, customs, or laws.

Knowing this, I understood why the quiz rated me the way it did. While I am very concerned with lawkeeping (which is why my lawful good and neutral good scores were tied), I also recognize that human laws are subordinate to the moral law and must be changed when they are in confilict with it. (E.g., the current human law favoring abortion in America.) So I’m strong on lawkeeping but ultimately concerned that human law conforms to moral law.

Okay, so I’m neutral good.

I think St. Thomas ("He’s My Hero") Aquinas would be, too.

TAKE THE QUIZ.

(Cowboy hat tip: Ancient Illuminated Seers Of Bavaria.)

GLEEFUL EXTREMIST RECOMMENDS SIX PIECES OF MANLY WISDOM THAT SHOULD BE PASSED DOWN FROM FATHER TO SON.

However, they don’t sound that extremist to me . . .