GOOD AFTERNOON MYANMAR…
0430 by Jeff Hess
I am really getting sick of keeping score. Americans in particular, but it appears the broader world as well, is obsessed with death tolls. If it isn’t the biggest, the worst, most tragic, we don’t seem to be interested. The news today is flooded with the report that the United Nations has increased the death toll in Myanmar to 31.
Who gives a flying feck?
Is an oppressive regime more evil if it murders 31 of its citizens instead of 29? Is 19 a significant number? how about nine?
Now there’s a number I can relate to because of Abraham and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Abraham argued with God, bargaining for the people of those two cities, asking how many righteous people would his nephew Lot have to find there before God would spare the cities.
Abraham started at 50 and convinced God to spare the cities if that number of righteous people could be found there. Then it was 45 and 40, 35, until he reached 10. There Abraham stopped. And the rabbis ask: why did Abraham stop at 10?
Why were 10 sufficient and nine not?
What is your murder-of-innocents threshold?
My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. 
I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is 
I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: 
Congress is filled with shameless sycophants sucking at the public teat and a waste of human genome. Particularly worthless is my own representative in the House: Stephanie Tubbs Jones who is often referred to as our affirmative action politician. If I sound angry or even bitter, it’s because I am:
