May Day Roundup

It's May Day. As I told my running buddies in my weekly email, it's "the day when Commies, pagans, and children first come out to play". And I've been sitting around like the Maytag repairman, waiting for an idea for a short blog post. Oh, I've got several posts in the hopper, but they're kind of inchoate right now. If they ever come out, they'll be longer posts.

One idea that crossed my mind was to write a post on the question, "Why can't I write short posts?" Oh, it's not impossible for me to do it. It's just that many of my posts start out as a simple idea, and then they get longer and more discursive (definitions 1b, hopefully 2, and 3). But as the day went by, I saw several things around the blogosphere, each of which I could have spun into a long post. Instead, I'm putting out a May Day Roundup, a short bit on several things that have come round my way today. It's discursive, too, but more like definition 1a. I'll never challenge Instapundit's brevity (you need Glenn Reynolds' readership to get away with that), but maybe I'll end up boring my readers a bit less.

First, today is the Feast of the Ascension. As Mazurland's Religion Desk Editor, I've already written a short post on the Ascension a couple of years ago. I think the Holiday deserves a bit more meditation, but the time to write a longer post slipped away. For now, I think I can say that one of the lessons of the Ascension is that we are here for only a short time, and in that time we must be engaged in life and with each other, before we and our friends slip away.

Second, I got this link from Instapundit. It's an interesting (and long) meditation on why we should hope we never find life on Mars. And it's not for the reasons you might think: It will mean that in the long term, we, our civilization, mankind, is doomed. (No, I don't mean in the obvious ways, but from some mysterious cause.) Now, even if you disagree with some of the author's suppositions (scientific naturalism, standard evolutionary explanations, scientific hubris, etc.) it's a good read, and many of his arguments apply to all but the most God and miracle haunted universe (which may be our own).

Third, anybody with sense can see right through Obama's jettisoning of Rev, Jeremiah Wright. Wright's performances with Bill Moyers and in front of the National Press Club, both very sympathetic audiences, didn't help matters at all. And so Obama has finally decided the Reverend does not speak for him. But Wright has said far, far worse, over a long history of sermons, than he said to Moyers or the NPC. Why is it only now that Wright is unpalatable to Obama? Well, maybe after his political career is over, Obama can write an advice column for the lovelorn.

Finally, my son sent me a link to the Mother of All Mondegreens, a Bollywood music video "translated" into English. Enjoy.

[HT - Instapundit, Iowahawk, and Andy]