Xiphias's Law of Invasions

1. Never invade a country where every adult male carries an AK-47.

2. If you do invade a country where every adult male carries an AK-47, don't go in believing that it will be easy, quick, and painless.

Some thoughts on weird "miracles"

Let me just put it this way: when this happens to Muslims, "Hundreds of Muslims are converging on the mosque to see the vegetable."

When Christians spot this, well, that happened in 1996, and people are still showing up to pray at it.

But when a Jew gets this, he kills and sells the fish.

I just want to point out that the Jew got it right. Carp, and eggplants, are to be eaten. Office buildings are to be worked in. You can feel free to acknowlege the existence of the miraculous in talking carp, a name of G-d in an eggplant, and apparations of the Virgin Mary in water damage to the sun-reflective coating on windows, but that doesn't change the fact that they remain fish, vegetables, and real estate. From a theological point of view, the existence of fish, and eggplants, and humans who can invent and build reflective coatings on windows, is so miraculous in the first place that the addition of speech, or writing, or a picture of the Virgin Mary doesn't make it significantly MORE miraculous. The world exists, we are taught, because G-d, at every moment, believes in every particle of the Universe -- every quark is a manefestation of G-d's belief in it. If G-d, for one instant, did not believe in the universe, then it would cease to exist.

Measured against that, a fish is just a fish, even if it talks.