Art Clokey, RIP

'Gumby' creator and Los Osos resident Art Clokey dies

""""Art Clokey, whose iconic Gumby entertained generations of children, died Friday morning.

Gumby – the slender, green clay character partly modeled after Clokey’s father – was a fixture on television through the decades, starting with an appearance on the “Howdy Doody” show in 1956. Through the years, the stop motion star made several comebacks, including a new show in the 80s, after a “Saturday Night Live” skit with actor Eddie Murphy made the character popular again. Throughout Gumby’s long run, Gumby toys – most notably, the bendable – have been a staple of toy stores everywhere."""""

Ave Atque Vale
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Donate/Haiti


An opportune time to review the Evidential Problem of Evil.
Let's not forget that any monotheist (i.e. one who belongs to an Abrahamic faith--christianity, islam, or judaism--) would be obliged to agree that an omnipotent G*d controls all natural phenomena, and physical laws--including tectonic plates and faults. Ergo, according to the theist's own definition, G*d allows/creates earthquakes. Yet monotheists also claim their G*d is Just (Bubba certainly would not attend sunday school with his phamily to worship an amoral, or malevolent Being, would he).

So, Houston, we have a problem, the Problem of Eevil--a classic of literature, and philosophy, and religious thinking (as the Book of Job shows--or Voltaire's Candide, or Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov), just in terms of the natural world, even without resorting to the POE as it applies to human events (ie wars, poverty, crime, etc), and the issue of free will so-called. Modern writers might avoid the normative implications of Eevil, and term it the problem of unmerited suffering (though any Being who would permit untold thousands to die during natural disasters or plagues would seem to be Evil). Either way, there does not appear to be a simple way for the orthodox believer to resolve the problem except by altering the traditional definitions of G*d: perhaps He's not omnipotent? Yet that suggests...imperfection, if not paganism (polydeism?? manicheanism??). Or, conversely, He's not Just (which suggests something even more..unsavory--gnosticism, perhaps). Or, rather, He doesn't exist.

Now, enough of the phony indignation, and back to the Mail Order Fraud, Bubba