From what I hear, pigs are supposed to be extremely intelligent.
I'll believe that when they tell us to stop eating them.
*.*
A Sign in a Canadian Store Window:
"WE WOULD RATHER DO BUSINESS WITH 1000 AL QAEDA TERRORISTS THAN WITH ONE SINGLE CANADIAN"
This sign was prominently displayed in the window of a business in Hamilton, Ontario. You are probably outraged at the thought of such an inflammatory statement. One would think that anti-hate groups from all across the country would be marching on this business and that the RCMP might have to be called to keep the angry crowds back. But, perhaps in these stressful times one might be tempted to let the proprietors simply make their statement . . We are a society which holds Freedom of Speech as perhaps our greatest liberty. And after all, it is just a sign.
You may ask what kind of business would dare post such a sign?
A Funeral Home
*.*
As I was lying in bed that night, I got to thinking, "What would Jesus do?"
That didn't prove much help, so I got a bit more specific:
"What would Jesus do with a dead hooker's body?"
*.*
After MURPHY'S LAW, there's...
THE SUPERMARKET LAW: Any line you wheel into at the check-out counter, no matter how short, will automatically come to a halt and remain that way until your ice cream has melted and dropped into your shoes.
THE LEFTOVER LAW: Any food that would be delicious as a leftover will never be left over.
THE LAUNDRY LAW: The average washer or dryer will, in its lifetime, consume its own weight in socks... with a limit of one sock per pair.
THE BARGAIN-BASEMENT LAW: Any dress on sale at 50% off and fit to wear to an occasion more elegant than a wheel alignment will never be available in your size.
THE CHICKEN-CROSSING-THE-ROAD LAW: Any person trying to cross a highway from a side road will find that traffic, nonexistent seconds before, will now build to holiday-weekend proportions.
THE CLEAN HOUSE LAW: If you wax the floors, wash the windows, scrub the walls and rinse out the light fixtures, no living soul will come to your door. Conversely, if you fail to dust, leave the dishes in the sink and let the children bathe the dog in the tub; your front porch will sag with unexpected visitors.
*.*
Oneliners:
In t-shirt sizes, XL > L > M, but it's the opposite in roman numerals.
120,000,000 Just sat down and watched a group of millionaires throw a ball.
"Sh*ts and giggles" is kind of cute, but "Sharts and gargles" is an entirely different mental image.
It must be hard for people in England to tell other people when they have a bloody nose.
It would be ironic if snake oil was found to be the cure for cancer.
Children are like farts. While you can tolerate your own, it's tough to put up with anyone else's.
If Japan had won WWII, we'd be learning in school about the Japanese freeing people from the concentration camps in America.
I wish there was a secret handshake or a badge that identified you to other retail workers as being a current or former retail worker so they know you're not just another dumb customer.
There is one person on the planet for who the phrase, "someone has it worse than you do" doesn't apply.
Poor people used to entertain rich people, now it's the opposite.
My pubes are a calendar for how long it's been since I was sexually active.
The people who are the most athletically ready for a zombie apocalypse are the ones who will be our worst enemy if they become zombies.
Issue of the Times;
7 Myths about the Inquisition by Adam N. Crawford
— 1 —
The term “Inquisition” actually refers to an institution not an event.
Actually, more like a group of institutions within the judicial system of the Roman Catholic Church whose aim was to combat or suppress heresy. Begun in 12th century France, the ecclesiastical tribunal known as the inquisition has evolved over the years but is still an active part of the Roman Curia today, although admittedly operating under a different name. Originally the inquisition was carried out using local clergy as judges,1 but starting in the 1250’s inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order due to their unique charism. St. Dominic founded his order in 1216 in order to preach the Gospel and combat heresy. Is it any wonder that their name gave rise to the pun that they were the Domini canes, or Hounds of the Lord?2 In 1904 the office of the inquisition was given the new name Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, and in 1965 it became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and remains as such to this day.
— 2 —
Much like the Crusades, the Inquisition was not a single event, but can be generally broken into the following categories.
• Medieval Inquisition – 1184 AD through the 14th century.
• Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance – During this time the tribunal’s geographic scope was expanded to other European countries resulting most notably in:
1. The Spanish Inquisition – 1478 AD – 1834 AD (this is the inquisition which is perhaps most widely misrepresented today.)
2. Portuguese Inquisition – 1536 AD – 1821 AD
• The Roman Inquisition – 1588 AD – Present, in the form of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Spain and Portugal in particular operated inquisitorial courts throughout their respective empires with a particular focus on the issue of Jewish and Muslim converts to Catholicism – partly because these minority groups were more numerous in Spain and Portugal than in many other parts of Europe, and partly because they were often considered suspect due to the assumption that they had secretly reverted back to their previous religions.
The concept and scope of these inquisitions were also significantly expanded in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
— 3 —
The Inquisition was born out of a need for fair trials, and to prevent unjust executions.
“For people who lived during those times, religion was not something one did just at church. It was science, philosophy, politics, identity, and hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth. Heresy, then, struck at the heart of that truth. It doomed the heretic, endangered those near him, and tore apart the fabric of community.
The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw them as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath. When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig or damaged shrubbery (really, it was a serious crime in England). Yet in contrast to those crimes, it was not so easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. For starters, one needed some basic theological training–something most medieval lords sorely lacked. The result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge.
The Catholic Church’s response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges. From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.”3
— 4 —
The Spanish Inquisition was actually vastly superior to other secular courts of the day.
Unlike the situation in the secular courts of the day, the use of torture was strictly regulated by the Church. In fact, torture was not regarded as a mode of punishment, but purely as a means of eliciting the truth. It was actually prohibited for the first twenty years of the inquisition before being first authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1265.
The procedures of the Inquisition are well known through a whole series of papal bulls and other authoritative documents, but mainly through such formularies and manuals as were prepared by St. Raymond Peñaforte (c1180-1275), the great Spanish canonist, and Bernard Gui (1261-1331), one of the most celebrated inquisitors of the early 14th Century. The Inquisitors were certainly interrogators, but they were also theological experts who followed the rules and instructions meticulously, and were either dismissed or punished when they showed too little regard for justice. When, for example, in 1223 Robert of Bourger gleefully announced his aim to burn heretics, not to convert them, he was immediately suspended and imprisoned for life by Pope Gregory IX.4
From the start limits were placed on the use of torture that were unheard of in the secular courts of the day.
• It was not to cause bloodshed, the loss of life or limb, or imperil life.
• Torture was to applied only once, and not then unless all other expedients were exhausted.
• When it was used, it was not to be applied for more than 15 minutes.
• It was never administered by the inquisitor (a cleric) but rather by the executioner appointed by the state. (In fact, in the beginning, torture was held to be so odious that clerics were forbidden to be present under pain of irregularity)
• A Physician had to be present and could stop the proceedings at any time.
There were no rapes, feet burning, creative torture chambers, iron maidens, etc., and reports show that between 98%-99% of all inquisition trials did not involve torture at all. Compared to secular courts that decreed the death penalty for damaging shrubs in England, or disembowelment for sheep-stealing in France, the Spanish Inquisition was actually far more conservative than the secular Europe of the day. In fact, there are multiple accounts of convicts in Spain blaspheming on purpose, precisely so that they would be transferred to the significantly more humane prisons of the Spanish Inquisition.
According to Professor Kamen, “In fact, the Inquisition used torture very infrequently. In Valencia, I found that out of 7,000 cases only two percent suffered any form of torture at all and usually for no more than 15 minutes . . . I found no one suffering torture more than twice.” Prof. Jaime Conterras agreed: “We find when comparing the Spanish Inquisition with other tribunals that the Spanish Inquisition used torture much less. And if we compare the Spanish Inquisition with tribunals in other countries, we find that the Spanish Inquisition has a virtually clean record in respect to torture.”5
— 5 —
The death toll numbers that you have heard are wrong. Flat out wrong.
Protestant preacher Jimmy Swaggart claimed that 20 million people were murdered by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition.6 Another Protestant text, “The Mystery of Babylon Revealed” claims 95 million people were killed during the Inquisition.
Really? 95 million? How is that even possible? It is not until modern times that the population of all of Europe even begins to approach 95 million. The present-day population of France, Spain, and Italy is about 150 million. To kill 95 million during just the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church would have had to kill every man, woman, and child in all of Europe, then import millions more just to kill them too.
In contrast to these claims, modern historians have begun to study the documentary records of the Spanish Inquisition. The archives of the Suprema, today held by the National Historical Archive of Spain (Archivo Histórico Nacional), conserves the annual relations of all inquisition processes between 1560 and 1700 AD. This material provides information about 49,092 judgements which were carefully studied by Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras. They calculate that only 1.9% of those processed were burned at the stake.
You read that right –
According to the historical records, less than 2% of all accused heretics were executed.
García Cárcel estimates that the total number processed by the Spanish Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150,000. Applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560 – 1700 AD (about 2%), the approximate total would be about 3,000 put to death. Even if we take into account variances due to records from other regions and possible variations throughout the rest of the time period, it is highly unlikely that the total death toll would exceed 3,000 – 5,000 executed during the entire 300 year period of the Spanish Inquisition. Henningsen and Contreras also studied the records of 44,674 other cases, finding that 826 resulted in executions in person and 778 were executions in effigy alone – i.e. a straw dummy was burned in place of the person.7
With all of that in mind, it is also important to note:
— 6 —
The Catholic Church executed no one.
That’s right, the Catholic Church never executed a single heretic. The Church did impose punishment on heretics in order to bring them to repentance. Most frequently certain good works were ordered, e.g. the building of a church, the visitation of a church, a pilgrimage, the offering of a candle or a chalice, participation in a crusade, and the like. Other punishments were more severe: fines whose proceeds were devoted to public purposes such as church-building and road-making, whipping with rods during religious services, the pillory, the wearing of colored crosses, and so on.
The hardest penalties were imprisonment, excommunication from the Church, and surrender to the civil authority. “Cum ecclesia” ran the regular expression, “ultra non habeat quod faciat pro suis demeritis contra ipsum, idcirco, eundum reliquimus brachio et iudicio saeculari” — i.e. since the Church can no farther punish his misdeeds, she leaves him to the civil authority.
Officially then, it was never the Catholic Church that sentenced unrepenting heretics to death. Rather, it was the state who determined and carried out the sentence of death. Heretics were traitors to both God and king, and dangerous to the welfare of the kingdom. Therefore, they deserved death. And unlike the Church, the state had no qualms about carrying out this sentence.
— 7 —
The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition
“Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries in western Europe, the Latin Christian Church adapted certain elements of Roman legal procedure and charged papally appointed clergy to employ them in order to preserve orthodox religious beliefs from the attacks of heretics … Between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries … these procedures, personnel and institutions were transformed by polemic and fiction into myth, the myth of The Inquisition. The institutions and the myth lived — and developed – in western Europe and the New World until the early nineteenth century, when most of the inquisitions were abolished, and the myth itself was universalized …
Although the inquisitions disappeared, The Inquisition did not. The myth was originally devised to serve variously the political purposes of a number of early modern political regimes, as well as Protestant Reformers, proponents of religious and civil toleration, philosophical enemies of the civil power of organized religions, and progressive modernists; but the myth remained durable, widely adaptable, and useful, so that in time it came to be woven tightly into the fabric of modern consciousness. So tight is its place in that weave that the myth has been revived in the twentieth century …
Some myths are tougher and more durable than the occasions which first create and employ them. The Inquisition [as myth] was an invention of the religious disputes and political conflicts of the sixteenth century. It was adapted to the causes of religious toleration and philosophical and political enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this process, although it was always anti-Catholic and usually anti-Spanish, it tended to become universalized, until, by the end of the eighteenth century, it had become the representative of all repressive religions that opposed freedom of conscience, political liberty and philosophical enlightenment.
In the United States, far more than in Europe, The Inquisition remained an evil abstraction, sustained by anti-Catholicism and supported by political opposition.”8
In 1994 the BBC broadcast a television documentary entitled, The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition. It is just over 45 minutes long, free to watch on YouTube, and I highly recommend it. Enjoy!
Quote of the Times;
For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” – II Thessalonians 3:10
Link of the Times;
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/10/31/the-decline-and-fall-of-western-culture-in-one-photo/
Inquisition?
Cruelty?
"If we could convince the Chinese that Jihadists’ testicles are an aphrodisiac, in 10 years they could be extinct."
*.*
Looking back on my childhood, I'm really thankful that Lincoln Logs were not invented by M.C. Escher.
*.*
Veterans Threaten Michael Moore Over Cartoon Depicting Chris Kyle
FLINT, Mich. — Veterans are threatening violence and murder over a satirical cartoon of American Sniper author Chris Kyle drawn by film director Michael Moore, according to chatter on veteran message boards.
Moore’s illustration, which he released on Twitter, displays Chris Kyle shooting a crippled Iraqi girl in the back as he gives Uncle Sam a handjob on a pile of dollar bills.
“You just can’t question a war hero like Chris Kyle, or the book he wrote to glorify himself, or the movie made by a Hollywood star interpreting that book,” said former Navy SEAL Tom Lancer in one of several hundred “open letters” to Michael Moore. “You have no right to voice an opinion against any of us who defend the Constitution and its immutable freedoms.”
Comments by other veterans range from, “I will beat your ass, Michael Moore,” to “Watch ur back, I’m a sniper.”
Michael Moore, who is currently teaching a military history class on Rules of Engagement at the University of Michigan, said that he never intended to insult Kyle.
“What I posted was a drawing of the sniper that killed my grandfather,” tweeted Moore. Snipers have joined the long list of Moore’s enemies, as his other grandfather was killed by a nutritionist, and his childhood border collie was run over by a logician.
Actor Seth Rogen added thoughtfully to the dialogue. “Michael Moore’s cartoon reminded me of the time your mom gave me and Chris Kyle a handjob,” tweeted Rogen. When thousands responded angrily to his comments, Rogen was surprised. “I said it reminded me of your mom’s handjob, not that it was an accurate depiction. Sheesh,” he replied.
A group of concerned locals from Dearborn, Michigan have already foiled a veteran extremist plot to execute Moore and his colleagues. In response, the citizens of Nigeria gathered by the millions to support the cause of American freedoms and the sanctity of life, as well as sending relief money and armed security guards.
Moore seemed pleased by the threats. “I’m glad I can incite so much anger from people who claim not to care what I think, especially after I have been irrelevant for almost a decade.”
*.*
Oneliners:
A million quarters is a quarter million
After looking at the 1.5 billion pixel image of the Andromeda Galaxy, I realized that we can take a picture of something so big that our minds cannot comprehend it and save it on something so small our minds cannot comprehend it.
If my eyes could see 5 years into the future I would have 2020 vision.
What do centaurs do with their arms when they run.
Somewhere in the bowels of that stadium, Lenny Kravitz is fucking a backup dancer in a foam shark costume.
A "human being" who has died is technically a "human has been"
When my iPhone says "Siri not available" it should be in a voice other than Siri's.
*.*
A completely inebriated man walked into a bar and, after staring for some time at the only woman seated at the bar, walked over to her, placed his hand up her skirt and began fondling her.
She jumped up and slapped him silly. He immediately apologized and explained, "I'm sorry. I thought you were my wife. You look exactly like her."
"Why you drunken, worthless, insufferable asshole!" she screamed.
Funny," he muttered, "you even sound exactly like her."
Issue of the Times;
Redemption Through Cruelty by Theodore Dalrymple
One little phrase in Le Monde’s report of an incident in Nice—in which a man aged 30 called Moussa Coulibaly attacked with a knife three soldiers guarding a Jewish community center—caught my attention: rien de bien méchant, nothing very bad.
It was used in describing his prior record: Coulibaly had been found guilty six times between 2003 and 2012 by French courts of “theft, use of drugs, insulting policemen,” and had received either fines or suspended prison sentences for his rien de bien méchant. Given the percentage of offenses that are actually elucidated in France (as elsewhere), the chances are that he had committed at least ten times as much as he had ever been charged with, and it is also very likely that some of what he had done was a good deal more serious than anything that has come to light. At the very least delinquency was his way of life; and the total amount of harm he did, the misery caused to or inflicted on others, considerable. Rien de bien méchant doesn’t quite capture it, and could only have been written by someone inhabiting so utterly different a social world that he has no idea of the nature of Coulibaly’s.
The trajectory followed by Coulibaly is by now depressingly familiar: so familiar, indeed, that I could have written the outlines of his biography myself merely by having read what he did in Nice. As with many others of his type, his delinquency was followed by religious radicalization that gave to his criminal impulses a patina of moral justification. It not only gave him permission to do bad things, but made them morally obligatory. Could there be any greater pleasure in life than making others suffer for righteousness’s sake? For such as he, and those worse than he, sadism is next to godliness, or even the thing itself.
Coulibaly’s action was probably an instance of the Werther effect that has been known for a long time to those who study suicide. When there is a well-publicized case of suicide there is often a brief increase in the number of suicides afterwards. The effect was first noticed after the publication of Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the young hero killed himself for the sake of forlorn love; and all over Europe young men, who fancied themselves forlorn, followed suit. There is no underestimating the weakness of the human mind.
Coulibaly’s efforts were preceded by those of a Burundian convert to Islam, Bertrand Nzohabonayo, who not long ago entered a police station in a suburb of Tours and stabbed three policemen before being shot dead by a fourth. He, it seems, was responding to a call by a video by ISIS calling on Muslims in France to kill officials of the state by whatever means possible.
The Werther effect is not confined to Muslim converts or radicals, though no doubt such conversion adds to the weak-mindedness of which the effect is a manifestation. Not long ago in the city in which I worked, there were three attacks in quick succession on crowded places by men wielding machetes, the latter two presumably imitating the first. What was also interesting to me was that machetes should be so easily obtained in the city, though it was hardly famous for its sugar cane fields or jungle undergrowth (literal, not metaphorical) where such implements might be genuinely useful or necessary. This reminds me of the interesting fact that in England, where baseball is not played, the sale of baseball bats far exceeds the sale of baseball balls, the bats used for purposes which it does not require much effort of the imagination to guess.
And this is a convenient point to reflect upon the culture—I use the word culture in its anthropological sense—which produced Moussa Coulibaly. Though Le Monde did not mention it, I should be very surprised if he had never evinced an interest in rap music or had never worn the slum costume whose style—another word I use in its anthropological sense—originates in the black ghettos of America. Two of the fashions at least appear to have a carceral origin: the baseball cap worn backwards and the trousers worn at half-mast, as it were. The former was first employed by visitors to prison, who wanted to get nearer to the prisoner whom they were visiting, and the peak of whose cap prevented this so that the cap had to be reversed. The latter was in imitation of prisoners who were allowed no belts in case they were used for suicide (or hanging others), and whose nether garments therefore hung low. I add two caveats: the first that the origin of these two fashions is conjectural, and second that such as Moussa Coulibaly are not necessarily interested in tracing the historical origins of their own tastes, tending to live as they do in an eternal present moment.
Anyway, what is more or less certain is that Coulibaly would have emerged from a swamp of discontent, of thwarted entitlement, or more accurately of a thwarted sense of entitlement. Hardly a day would have gone by without him being told, or hearing somehow or other, that he inhabited the land of les droits de l’homme, of human rights, of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But what would his experience of daily life have been? Armed at huge public expense with the worst education which could possibly be provided over the prolonged period of his childhood and adolescence (an adolescence from which he would never emerge into adulthood), made aware neither of the possibility or necessity of personal effort, his mind filled with ideas and values derived from debased products for consumption by proletarians manufactured by a cynical culture industry, neither obliged or able to earn a living, and aware of the disdain and contempt with which he would be viewed by anyone minimally successful, his mind a bubbling cauldron of inchoate resentment; how wonderful for him to have found a providential—and enjoyable—role and purpose in the world, namely to kill or injure people!
“I’ll give them liberty, equality, and fraternity!” he would have thought (or felt). Because of his sense of entitlement, it would never have occurred to him that he had been fed, watered, housed, schooled, doctored all his life for nothing in return. What is given as an entitlement is not received with gratitude.
So in thinking about our home-grown Islamists, it is not enough to fume at the sheer idiocy and wickedness of their ideas; we should turn our attention inward as well, to our own societies.
Quote of the Times;
“You have the body of a hunter-gatherer but you may well inhabit the environment of a zoo. Which is maybe why you don’t feel brilliant 100% of the time.” – Bate
Link of the Times;
http://www.naturalnews.com/048467_vaccine_industry_intelligent_questions_scientific_principles.html
*.*
Looking back on my childhood, I'm really thankful that Lincoln Logs were not invented by M.C. Escher.
*.*
Veterans Threaten Michael Moore Over Cartoon Depicting Chris Kyle
FLINT, Mich. — Veterans are threatening violence and murder over a satirical cartoon of American Sniper author Chris Kyle drawn by film director Michael Moore, according to chatter on veteran message boards.
Moore’s illustration, which he released on Twitter, displays Chris Kyle shooting a crippled Iraqi girl in the back as he gives Uncle Sam a handjob on a pile of dollar bills.
“You just can’t question a war hero like Chris Kyle, or the book he wrote to glorify himself, or the movie made by a Hollywood star interpreting that book,” said former Navy SEAL Tom Lancer in one of several hundred “open letters” to Michael Moore. “You have no right to voice an opinion against any of us who defend the Constitution and its immutable freedoms.”
Comments by other veterans range from, “I will beat your ass, Michael Moore,” to “Watch ur back, I’m a sniper.”
Michael Moore, who is currently teaching a military history class on Rules of Engagement at the University of Michigan, said that he never intended to insult Kyle.
“What I posted was a drawing of the sniper that killed my grandfather,” tweeted Moore. Snipers have joined the long list of Moore’s enemies, as his other grandfather was killed by a nutritionist, and his childhood border collie was run over by a logician.
Actor Seth Rogen added thoughtfully to the dialogue. “Michael Moore’s cartoon reminded me of the time your mom gave me and Chris Kyle a handjob,” tweeted Rogen. When thousands responded angrily to his comments, Rogen was surprised. “I said it reminded me of your mom’s handjob, not that it was an accurate depiction. Sheesh,” he replied.
A group of concerned locals from Dearborn, Michigan have already foiled a veteran extremist plot to execute Moore and his colleagues. In response, the citizens of Nigeria gathered by the millions to support the cause of American freedoms and the sanctity of life, as well as sending relief money and armed security guards.
Moore seemed pleased by the threats. “I’m glad I can incite so much anger from people who claim not to care what I think, especially after I have been irrelevant for almost a decade.”
*.*
Oneliners:
A million quarters is a quarter million
After looking at the 1.5 billion pixel image of the Andromeda Galaxy, I realized that we can take a picture of something so big that our minds cannot comprehend it and save it on something so small our minds cannot comprehend it.
If my eyes could see 5 years into the future I would have 2020 vision.
What do centaurs do with their arms when they run.
Somewhere in the bowels of that stadium, Lenny Kravitz is fucking a backup dancer in a foam shark costume.
A "human being" who has died is technically a "human has been"
When my iPhone says "Siri not available" it should be in a voice other than Siri's.
*.*
A completely inebriated man walked into a bar and, after staring for some time at the only woman seated at the bar, walked over to her, placed his hand up her skirt and began fondling her.
She jumped up and slapped him silly. He immediately apologized and explained, "I'm sorry. I thought you were my wife. You look exactly like her."
"Why you drunken, worthless, insufferable asshole!" she screamed.
Funny," he muttered, "you even sound exactly like her."
Issue of the Times;
Redemption Through Cruelty by Theodore Dalrymple
One little phrase in Le Monde’s report of an incident in Nice—in which a man aged 30 called Moussa Coulibaly attacked with a knife three soldiers guarding a Jewish community center—caught my attention: rien de bien méchant, nothing very bad.
It was used in describing his prior record: Coulibaly had been found guilty six times between 2003 and 2012 by French courts of “theft, use of drugs, insulting policemen,” and had received either fines or suspended prison sentences for his rien de bien méchant. Given the percentage of offenses that are actually elucidated in France (as elsewhere), the chances are that he had committed at least ten times as much as he had ever been charged with, and it is also very likely that some of what he had done was a good deal more serious than anything that has come to light. At the very least delinquency was his way of life; and the total amount of harm he did, the misery caused to or inflicted on others, considerable. Rien de bien méchant doesn’t quite capture it, and could only have been written by someone inhabiting so utterly different a social world that he has no idea of the nature of Coulibaly’s.
The trajectory followed by Coulibaly is by now depressingly familiar: so familiar, indeed, that I could have written the outlines of his biography myself merely by having read what he did in Nice. As with many others of his type, his delinquency was followed by religious radicalization that gave to his criminal impulses a patina of moral justification. It not only gave him permission to do bad things, but made them morally obligatory. Could there be any greater pleasure in life than making others suffer for righteousness’s sake? For such as he, and those worse than he, sadism is next to godliness, or even the thing itself.
Coulibaly’s action was probably an instance of the Werther effect that has been known for a long time to those who study suicide. When there is a well-publicized case of suicide there is often a brief increase in the number of suicides afterwards. The effect was first noticed after the publication of Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the young hero killed himself for the sake of forlorn love; and all over Europe young men, who fancied themselves forlorn, followed suit. There is no underestimating the weakness of the human mind.
Coulibaly’s efforts were preceded by those of a Burundian convert to Islam, Bertrand Nzohabonayo, who not long ago entered a police station in a suburb of Tours and stabbed three policemen before being shot dead by a fourth. He, it seems, was responding to a call by a video by ISIS calling on Muslims in France to kill officials of the state by whatever means possible.
The Werther effect is not confined to Muslim converts or radicals, though no doubt such conversion adds to the weak-mindedness of which the effect is a manifestation. Not long ago in the city in which I worked, there were three attacks in quick succession on crowded places by men wielding machetes, the latter two presumably imitating the first. What was also interesting to me was that machetes should be so easily obtained in the city, though it was hardly famous for its sugar cane fields or jungle undergrowth (literal, not metaphorical) where such implements might be genuinely useful or necessary. This reminds me of the interesting fact that in England, where baseball is not played, the sale of baseball bats far exceeds the sale of baseball balls, the bats used for purposes which it does not require much effort of the imagination to guess.
And this is a convenient point to reflect upon the culture—I use the word culture in its anthropological sense—which produced Moussa Coulibaly. Though Le Monde did not mention it, I should be very surprised if he had never evinced an interest in rap music or had never worn the slum costume whose style—another word I use in its anthropological sense—originates in the black ghettos of America. Two of the fashions at least appear to have a carceral origin: the baseball cap worn backwards and the trousers worn at half-mast, as it were. The former was first employed by visitors to prison, who wanted to get nearer to the prisoner whom they were visiting, and the peak of whose cap prevented this so that the cap had to be reversed. The latter was in imitation of prisoners who were allowed no belts in case they were used for suicide (or hanging others), and whose nether garments therefore hung low. I add two caveats: the first that the origin of these two fashions is conjectural, and second that such as Moussa Coulibaly are not necessarily interested in tracing the historical origins of their own tastes, tending to live as they do in an eternal present moment.
Anyway, what is more or less certain is that Coulibaly would have emerged from a swamp of discontent, of thwarted entitlement, or more accurately of a thwarted sense of entitlement. Hardly a day would have gone by without him being told, or hearing somehow or other, that he inhabited the land of les droits de l’homme, of human rights, of liberty, equality, and fraternity. But what would his experience of daily life have been? Armed at huge public expense with the worst education which could possibly be provided over the prolonged period of his childhood and adolescence (an adolescence from which he would never emerge into adulthood), made aware neither of the possibility or necessity of personal effort, his mind filled with ideas and values derived from debased products for consumption by proletarians manufactured by a cynical culture industry, neither obliged or able to earn a living, and aware of the disdain and contempt with which he would be viewed by anyone minimally successful, his mind a bubbling cauldron of inchoate resentment; how wonderful for him to have found a providential—and enjoyable—role and purpose in the world, namely to kill or injure people!
“I’ll give them liberty, equality, and fraternity!” he would have thought (or felt). Because of his sense of entitlement, it would never have occurred to him that he had been fed, watered, housed, schooled, doctored all his life for nothing in return. What is given as an entitlement is not received with gratitude.
So in thinking about our home-grown Islamists, it is not enough to fume at the sheer idiocy and wickedness of their ideas; we should turn our attention inward as well, to our own societies.
Quote of the Times;
“You have the body of a hunter-gatherer but you may well inhabit the environment of a zoo. Which is maybe why you don’t feel brilliant 100% of the time.” – Bate
Link of the Times;
http://www.naturalnews.com/048467_vaccine_industry_intelligent_questions_scientific_principles.html
Crusades?
Onliners:
Bear Grylls should take the spoiled rich kids from MTV's My Super Sweet 16 to live in the wild and name the show "Grylls Scouts"
If a pizza has radius 'z' and a thickness of 'a', then its volume can be defined as Pi(z*z)a
Starbucks employees have to work at a business where 100% of the customers have not yet had their cup of morning coffee. Sounds like the most hostile work environment ever. Hats off to those baristas.
If there's ever an X-men movie solely about Mystique, a mirror would make a great movie poster.
There is no difference between counterfeit money and real money until someone realizes it's counterfeit.
I pay every month to get my hair cut, a subscription fee for my hairstyle.
I'm really good at solving Rubik's cubes in reverse.
'Hotness' is the speed limit of soup-eating
I wish I could google smells.
If you took two GoPros, a drone, an Oculus rift, and some programming, you could watch yourself in 3rd-person in real time and control yourself like a Grand Theft Auto character.
*.*
The teacher noticed that Johnny had been daydreaming for a long time. She decided to get his attention. "Johnny," she said, "If the world is 25,000 miles around and eggs are sixty cents a dozen, how old am I?
"Thirty-four," Johnny answered unhesitatingly.
The teacher replied "Well, that's not far from my actual age. Tell me...how did you guess?"
Oh, there's nothing to it," Johnny said. "My big sister is seventeen and she's only half-crazy."
*.*
Fred was telling his friend how his uncle tried to make a new car for himself..."so he took wheels from a Cadillac, a radiator from a Ford, some tires and fenders from a Plymouth..."
"Holy Cow," interrupted his friend, "What did he end up with?"
Fred replied, "Four years with time off for good behavior."
*.*
A man is sitting on his front stoop staring morosely at the ground when his neighbor strolls over.
The neighbor tries to start a conversation several times, but the older man barely responds. Finally, the neighbor asks what the problem is.
"Well," the man says, "I ran afoul of one of those questions women ask. Now I'm in the doghouse."
"What kind of question?" the neighbor asks.
"My wife asked me if I would still love her when she was old, fat and ugly."
"That's easy," says the neighbor. "You just say, 'Of course I will'".
"Yeah," says the other man, "that's what I meant to say. But what came out was, 'Of course I do.'"
*.*
Are you interested in making $$$$ fast?
Try it now!
1) Hold down the shift key.
2) Hit the 4 key four times very quickly
Issue of the Times;
7 Myths About the Crusades by Adam N. Crawford
The Crusades were never referred to as such by their participants.
The original crusaders were known by various terms, including fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of Saint Peter) or milites Christi (knights of Christ). The word “Crusade” is a relatively modern term, from the French croisade and Spanish cruzada. The French form of the word first appears in the L’Histoire des Croisades written by A. de Clermont and published in 1638. It wasn’t until 1750 that the various forms of the word “Crusade” had established themselves in English, French, and German. The origin of the word may be traced to the cross (crux) made of (typically) red cloth and sewn as a badge onto the outer garment of those who took part in these enterprises. This “taking of the cross”, eventually became associated with the entire journey. The crusaders saw themselves as undertaking a journey, or a peregrinate – an armed pilgrimage. Additionally, before the 16th century the words “Muslim” and “Islam” were very rarely used by Europeans. During the Crusades the term widely used for Muslim was Saracen. In Greek and Latin this term had a longer evolution from the beginning of the first millennia where it referred to a people who lived in desert areas around the Roman province of Arabia and who were distinguished from Arabs. The Crusades took place under the direction of the Popes and were all announced by preaching. After pronouncing a solemn vow, each warrior received a cross from the hands of the Pope or his legates, and was thenceforth considered a soldier of the Church. The Crusades were wars undertaken in the name of Christendom, but not primarily for religious reasons.
More wars have been started over religion than for any other reason.
Although this claim is oft repeated, and most often leveled against the Crusades of the Catholic Church, it is patently ridiculous. In their Encyclopedia of Wars, authors Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod attempt a comprehensive listing of wars in history. They document 1763 wars overall, of which an astonishingly low 123 (6.98%) have been classified to involve a religious conflict. However, when one subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23%. William T. Cavanaugh in his Myth of Religious Violence (2009) argues that what is termed “religious wars” is a largely “Western dichotomy”, arguing that virtually all wars that are classified as “religious” have secular (economic or political) ramifications.
The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world.
Again, this is patently ridiculous. Let’s look briefly at just the major Islamic invasions and conquests in the West which proceeded the Crusades:
630 – Muhammad conquers Mecca from his base in Medina.
632 – Muhammad dies in Medina. Islam controls the Hijaz.
636 – Muslims conquest of Syria, and the surrounding lands, all Christian – including Palestine and Iraq.
637 – Muslim Crusaders conquer Iraq (some date it in 635 or 636)
638 – Muslim Crusaders conquer and annex Jerusalem, taking it from the Byzantines.
638 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Iran, except along Caspian Sea.
639 – 642 Muslim Crusaders conquer Egypt.
641 – Muslim Crusaders control Syria and Palestine.
643 – 707 Muslim Crusaders conquer North Africa.
644 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa, and establish Islamic rule in Iran, Afghanistan, and Sind.
673 – 678 Arabs besiege Constantinople, capital of Byzantine Empire
691 – Dome of the Rock is completed in Jerusalem, only six decades after Muhammad’s death.
710 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer the lower Indus Valley.
711 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer Spain and impose the kingdom of Andalus. The Muslim conquest moves into Europe.
718 – Conquest of Spain complete.
732 – Muslim invasion of France is stopped at the Battle of Poitiers / Battle of Tours. The Franks, under their leader Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne), defeat the Muslims and turn them back out of France.
762 – Foundation of Baghdad
785 – Foundation of the Great Mosque of Cordova
789 – Rise of Idrisid amirs (Muslim Crusaders) in Morocco; Christoforos, a Muslim who converted to Christianity, is executed.
800 – Autonomous Aghlabid dynasty (Muslim Crusaders) in Tunisia
807 – Caliph Harun al—Rashid orders the destruction of non-Muslim prayer houses & of the church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem
809 – Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sardinia, Italy
813 – Christians in Palestine are attacked; many flee the country
831 – Muslim Crusaders capture Palermo, Italy; raids in Southern Italy
837 – 901 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sicily, raid Corsica, Italy, France
869 – 883 Revolt of black slaves in Iraq
909 – Rise of the Fatimid Caliphate in Tunisia; these Muslim Crusaders occupy Sicily, Sardinia
928 – 969 Byzantine military revival, they retake old territories, such as Cyprus (964) and Tarsus (969)
937 – The Church of the Resurrection (aka Church of Holy Sepulcher) is burned down by Muslims; more churches in Jerusalem are attacked
960 – Conversion of Qarakhanid Turks to Islam 969 – Fatimids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Egypt and found Cairo
973 – Israel and southern Syria are again conquered by the Fatimids
1003 – First persecutions by al—Hakim; the Church of St. Mark in Fustat, Egypt, is destroyed
1009 – Destruction of the Church of the Resurrection by al—Hakim (see 937)
1012 – Beginning of al—Hakim’s oppressive decrees against Jews and Christians
1050 – Creation of Almoravid (Muslim Crusaders) movement in Mauretania; Almoravids (aka Murabitun) are coalition of western Saharan Berbers; followers of Islam, focusing on the Quran, the hadith, and Maliki law.
1071 – Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk Turks (Muslim Crusaders) defeat Byzantines and occupy much of Anatolia 1071 – Turks (Muslim Crusaders) invade Palestine
1073 – Conquest of Jerusalem by Turks (Muslim Crusaders)
1075 – Seljuks (Muslim Crusaders) capture Nicea (Iznik) and make it their capital in Anatolia
1076 – Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) conquer western Ghana
1086 – Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) send help to Andalus, Battle of Zallaca
1090 – 1091 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) occupy all of Andalus except Saragossa and Balearic Islands
1094 – Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I asks western Christendom for help against Seljuk (Muslim Turks) invasions of his territory
1095 – Pope Urban II preaches first Crusade; they capture Jerusalem in 1099
In other words, by the end of the eleventh century the forces of Islam had captured fully two-thirds of the Christian world. And these were not merely areas at the periphery of the Christian world, but rather places which represented the very origin of the Christian communities – their heart and soul. Palestine, the home of Jesus Christ, where He was born, conducted His ministry, died and was resurrected; Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism and home to countless Saints and theologians such as St. Anthony, St. Cyprian and St. Augustine; Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted the seeds of the first Christian communities.
Far from being unprovoked, then, the Crusades actually represent the first great western Christian counterattack against the Muslim attacks which had taken place continually from the inception of Islam until the eleventh century, and which continued on thereafter, mostly unabated. Three of Christianity’s five primary episcopal sees (Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) had been captured in the seventh century; both of the others (Rome and Constantinople) had been attacked in the centuries before the crusades. (The latter would be captured in 1453, leaving only one of the five -Rome- in Christian hands by 1500.) At some point what was left of the Christian world would have to defend itself or simply succumb to Islamic conquest. St. Augustine has articulated a Christian approach to the concept of just war, one in which legitimate authorities could use violence to halt or avert a greater evil. It must be a defensive war, in reaction to an act of aggression. For Christians, therefore, violence was ethically neutral, since it could be employed either for evil or against it. When the First Crusade was called by Pope Urban II in 1095 in response to an urgent plea for help from the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, it was Urban calling the knights of Christendom to come to the aid of their eastern brethren. It was to be an errand of mercy, liberating the Christians of the East from their Muslim conquerors. The Crusades all met the criteria for just wars, and it is largely due to this defense of Christendom and the Western world that you and I don’t speak Aramaic today and require our women to wear burqas.
Christians attacked Muslims without provocation to seize their lands and forcibly convert them.
We’ve already dealt with the unprovoked assertion above, but some will respond that the Crusades rather than being defensive and just wars, were instead wars of retaliation and revenge. That the goal of the crusaders was to seize Muslim lands and forcibly convert them. To put the question in perspective, one need only consider how many times Christian forces have attacked either Mecca or Medina. The answer, of course, is never. It has however become common practice to equate the forcible conversions of the Islamic conquests with the Catholic Crusades, as if to suggest that there is a similarity between the coerced conversions of Islam and the activities of the crusaders. Nothing could be further from the truth. Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that none of the Christian military orders fighting the Muslims sought to impose baptism by force. Certainly, the crusaders did not object to using military force to establish conditions conducive to the peaceful conversion of Muslims, but that is a different matter altogether.
We can see an example of how military conquest created the conditions conducive to peaceful conversion in an anonymous pamphlet from 1260 entitled De constructione castri Saphet, which argued that the building of a castle in conquered Muslim territory meant that “the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ can be preached freely in all the aforesaid places [in the region of Safed] and the blasphemy of Muhammad can be publicly refuted and demolished in sermons.” A perfect example of this is Pope Alexander III ’ s confirmation of the Order of Santiago, issued in 1175, which contains the injunction: “in their warfare they should devote themselves to this objective alone, namely either to protect Christians from their [the Saracens ’] attacks or to be in a position to induce them [the Saracens] to follow the Christian faith.” The latter clause, “be in a position to induce them to follow the Christian faith”, does not refer to forcible conversion, but rather an ideal situation in which Christian military dominance paves the way for peaceable evangelization by Christian missionaries. In contrast, the Islamic religion has always been advanced at the point of a sword. “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”5 Those who are conquered are given a simple choice. For those who are not People of the Book — in other words, those who are not Christians or Jews — the choice is convert to Islam or die. For those who are People of the Book, the choice is submit to Muslim rule and Islamic law or die. The expansion of Islam, therefore, was always directly linked to the military successes of jihad.
The Crusades however, were something very different. From its beginnings Christianity has always forbidden coerced conversion of any kind. Conversion by the sword, therefore, was not possible for Christianity. Unlike jihad, the purpose of the Crusades was neither to expand the Christian world nor to expand Christianity through forced conversions. In a nutshell, therefore, the major difference between Crusade and jihad is that the former was a defense against the latter, not an attempt to seize Muslim lands or acquire new converts.
The Crusaders were motivated by greed and the pursuit of Muslim lands and fortunes.
We’ve already dealt with the myth of Crusaders seeking to acquire Muslim lands, but during the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have verified that crusading knights were indeed generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap; even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade.
As Fred Cazel has noted, “Few crusaders had sufficient cash both to pay their obligations at home and to support themselves decently on a crusade.” From the very beginning, financial considerations played a major role in crusade planning. The early crusaders sold off so many of their possessions to finance their expeditions that they caused widespread inflation. Although later crusaders took this into account and began saving money long before they set out, the expense was still nearly prohibitive.
So why did these crusaders set out on these “armed pilgrimages?” Largely due to sermons which were preached in order to convince the crusaders to participate in these ventures. Crusade sermons were replete with warnings that crusading brought deprivation, suffering, and often death. As Jonathan Riley-Smith has noted, crusade preachers “had to persuade their listeners to commit themselves to enterprises that would disrupt their lives, possibly impoverish and even kill or maim them, and inconvenience their families, the support of which they would . . . need if they were to fulfill their promises.” The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (Bampton Lectures in America)
In other words, they did so not because they expected to gain material wealth (which many of them already had), but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Far from being a materialistic enterprise, crusading was impractical in worldly terms, but valuable for one’s soul. I won’t take time here to explore the doctrine of penance as it developed in late antiquity and the medieval world, but suffice it to say that the willing acceptance of difficulty and suffering was viewed (and still is, in Catholic doctrine today) as a useful way to purify one’s soul.
Europe is littered with literally thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments – charters in which these men still speak to us today if we are willing to listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing plunder if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing. “Crusading,” as Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith has rightly argued, was also understood as an “an act of love”—in this case, the love of one’s neighbor. The Crusade was seen as an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. As Pope Innocent III wrote to the Knights Templar, “You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.'”
Despite the fact that money did not yet play a major role in Western European economies in the eleventh century, there was “a heavy and persistent flow of money” from West to East as a result of the Crusades, and the financial demands of crusading caused “profound economic and monetary changes in both western Europe and the Levant.” In short: very few people became rich by crusading, and their numbers were dwarfed by those who were bankrupted.
When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred every man, woman and child in the city until the streets ran ankle deep with the blood.
So, let’s be clear. Atrocities were committed during the Crusades. The Crusades were wars, and as the old saying goes, “War is hell.” But, let’s also be clear. The above quote is pure hyperbole. No historian accepts it as anything other than literary convention. Jerusalem is a big town, and the amount of blood necessary to fill the streets to a continuous and running three-inch depth would require many, many more people than those which lived in the region, let alone the city. Also, the cities defenders had resisted right up to the end. They calculated that the formidable walls of the city would keep the crusaders at bay until a relief force from Egypt could arrive. They were wrong. When the city fell, therefore, it was put to the sack. Many were killed, yet many others were ransomed or allowed to go free. It is worth noting that in those Muslim cities that surrendered to the crusaders the people were left unmolested, retained their property and were allowed to worship freely.
But, atrocities were committed. Let’s face it, mistakes were going to be made. Have you ever known of a war where they weren’t? How about seven wars over almost two hundred years? Of course there were things done which were reprehensible. But what is really shocking is just how relatively few horrific incidents can be pointed to over such a lengthy time frame involving multiple wars. However, in the interest of fairness here are a couple of prime examples.
During the First Crusade a large band of riffraff, not associated with the main army, descended on the towns of the Rhineland and decided to rob and kill the Jews they found there. In part this was pure greed. In part it also stemmed from the incorrect belief that the Jews, as the crucifiers of Christ, were legitimate targets of the war. Pope Urban II and subsequent popes strongly condemned these attacks on Jews. Local bishops and other clergy and laity attempted to defend the Jews, although with limited success. Similarly, during the opening phase of the Second Crusade a group of renegades killed many Jews in Germany before St. Bernard was able to catch up to them and put a stop to it.
The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and sacked the Orthodox Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. This is seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, and a key turning point in the decline of the empire and of Christianity in the Near East, leaving Pope Innocent III to lament, “How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, who made their swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they have spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex. They have committed incest, adultery, and fornication before the eyes of men. They have exposed both matrons and virgins, even those dedicated to God, to the sordid lusts of boys. Not satisfied with breaking open the imperial treasury and plundering the goods of princes and lesser men, they also laid their hands on the treasures of the churches and, what is more serious, on their very possessions. They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics.”9
These relatively isolated incidents were universally condemned by the Popes and the Catholic Church and they should not be confused with the initial reasons for the Crusades – in the same way that individual atrocities committed by a small number of World War II soldiers didn’t change the necessary reasons for which the United States went to war in the first place.
Saint Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades.
John Paul II never actually apologized for the Crusades. The closest he came was on March 12, 2000, the “Day of Pardon.” During his homily he said: “We cannot fail to recognize the infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second millennium. Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among Christians, for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken toward the followers of other religions.” It is true that John Paul apologized to the Greeks for the Fourth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople in 1204, but even the Pope of that time, Innocent III, expressed similar regret as we have seen above.
Quote of the Times;
“Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own.” - Bardot
Link of the Times;
http://www.theartofselfhood.com/
Bear Grylls should take the spoiled rich kids from MTV's My Super Sweet 16 to live in the wild and name the show "Grylls Scouts"
If a pizza has radius 'z' and a thickness of 'a', then its volume can be defined as Pi(z*z)a
Starbucks employees have to work at a business where 100% of the customers have not yet had their cup of morning coffee. Sounds like the most hostile work environment ever. Hats off to those baristas.
If there's ever an X-men movie solely about Mystique, a mirror would make a great movie poster.
There is no difference between counterfeit money and real money until someone realizes it's counterfeit.
I pay every month to get my hair cut, a subscription fee for my hairstyle.
I'm really good at solving Rubik's cubes in reverse.
'Hotness' is the speed limit of soup-eating
I wish I could google smells.
If you took two GoPros, a drone, an Oculus rift, and some programming, you could watch yourself in 3rd-person in real time and control yourself like a Grand Theft Auto character.
*.*
The teacher noticed that Johnny had been daydreaming for a long time. She decided to get his attention. "Johnny," she said, "If the world is 25,000 miles around and eggs are sixty cents a dozen, how old am I?
"Thirty-four," Johnny answered unhesitatingly.
The teacher replied "Well, that's not far from my actual age. Tell me...how did you guess?"
Oh, there's nothing to it," Johnny said. "My big sister is seventeen and she's only half-crazy."
*.*
Fred was telling his friend how his uncle tried to make a new car for himself..."so he took wheels from a Cadillac, a radiator from a Ford, some tires and fenders from a Plymouth..."
"Holy Cow," interrupted his friend, "What did he end up with?"
Fred replied, "Four years with time off for good behavior."
*.*
A man is sitting on his front stoop staring morosely at the ground when his neighbor strolls over.
The neighbor tries to start a conversation several times, but the older man barely responds. Finally, the neighbor asks what the problem is.
"Well," the man says, "I ran afoul of one of those questions women ask. Now I'm in the doghouse."
"What kind of question?" the neighbor asks.
"My wife asked me if I would still love her when she was old, fat and ugly."
"That's easy," says the neighbor. "You just say, 'Of course I will'".
"Yeah," says the other man, "that's what I meant to say. But what came out was, 'Of course I do.'"
*.*
Are you interested in making $$$$ fast?
Try it now!
1) Hold down the shift key.
2) Hit the 4 key four times very quickly
Issue of the Times;
7 Myths About the Crusades by Adam N. Crawford
The Crusades were never referred to as such by their participants.
The original crusaders were known by various terms, including fideles Sancti Petri (the faithful of Saint Peter) or milites Christi (knights of Christ). The word “Crusade” is a relatively modern term, from the French croisade and Spanish cruzada. The French form of the word first appears in the L’Histoire des Croisades written by A. de Clermont and published in 1638. It wasn’t until 1750 that the various forms of the word “Crusade” had established themselves in English, French, and German. The origin of the word may be traced to the cross (crux) made of (typically) red cloth and sewn as a badge onto the outer garment of those who took part in these enterprises. This “taking of the cross”, eventually became associated with the entire journey. The crusaders saw themselves as undertaking a journey, or a peregrinate – an armed pilgrimage. Additionally, before the 16th century the words “Muslim” and “Islam” were very rarely used by Europeans. During the Crusades the term widely used for Muslim was Saracen. In Greek and Latin this term had a longer evolution from the beginning of the first millennia where it referred to a people who lived in desert areas around the Roman province of Arabia and who were distinguished from Arabs. The Crusades took place under the direction of the Popes and were all announced by preaching. After pronouncing a solemn vow, each warrior received a cross from the hands of the Pope or his legates, and was thenceforth considered a soldier of the Church. The Crusades were wars undertaken in the name of Christendom, but not primarily for religious reasons.
More wars have been started over religion than for any other reason.
Although this claim is oft repeated, and most often leveled against the Crusades of the Catholic Church, it is patently ridiculous. In their Encyclopedia of Wars, authors Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod attempt a comprehensive listing of wars in history. They document 1763 wars overall, of which an astonishingly low 123 (6.98%) have been classified to involve a religious conflict. However, when one subtracts out those waged in the name of Islam (66), the percentage is cut by more than half to 3.23%. William T. Cavanaugh in his Myth of Religious Violence (2009) argues that what is termed “religious wars” is a largely “Western dichotomy”, arguing that virtually all wars that are classified as “religious” have secular (economic or political) ramifications.
The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world.
Again, this is patently ridiculous. Let’s look briefly at just the major Islamic invasions and conquests in the West which proceeded the Crusades:
630 – Muhammad conquers Mecca from his base in Medina.
632 – Muhammad dies in Medina. Islam controls the Hijaz.
636 – Muslims conquest of Syria, and the surrounding lands, all Christian – including Palestine and Iraq.
637 – Muslim Crusaders conquer Iraq (some date it in 635 or 636)
638 – Muslim Crusaders conquer and annex Jerusalem, taking it from the Byzantines.
638 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Iran, except along Caspian Sea.
639 – 642 Muslim Crusaders conquer Egypt.
641 – Muslim Crusaders control Syria and Palestine.
643 – 707 Muslim Crusaders conquer North Africa.
644 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa, and establish Islamic rule in Iran, Afghanistan, and Sind.
673 – 678 Arabs besiege Constantinople, capital of Byzantine Empire
691 – Dome of the Rock is completed in Jerusalem, only six decades after Muhammad’s death.
710 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer the lower Indus Valley.
711 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer Spain and impose the kingdom of Andalus. The Muslim conquest moves into Europe.
718 – Conquest of Spain complete.
732 – Muslim invasion of France is stopped at the Battle of Poitiers / Battle of Tours. The Franks, under their leader Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne), defeat the Muslims and turn them back out of France.
762 – Foundation of Baghdad
785 – Foundation of the Great Mosque of Cordova
789 – Rise of Idrisid amirs (Muslim Crusaders) in Morocco; Christoforos, a Muslim who converted to Christianity, is executed.
800 – Autonomous Aghlabid dynasty (Muslim Crusaders) in Tunisia
807 – Caliph Harun al—Rashid orders the destruction of non-Muslim prayer houses & of the church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem
809 – Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sardinia, Italy
813 – Christians in Palestine are attacked; many flee the country
831 – Muslim Crusaders capture Palermo, Italy; raids in Southern Italy
837 – 901 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sicily, raid Corsica, Italy, France
869 – 883 Revolt of black slaves in Iraq
909 – Rise of the Fatimid Caliphate in Tunisia; these Muslim Crusaders occupy Sicily, Sardinia
928 – 969 Byzantine military revival, they retake old territories, such as Cyprus (964) and Tarsus (969)
937 – The Church of the Resurrection (aka Church of Holy Sepulcher) is burned down by Muslims; more churches in Jerusalem are attacked
960 – Conversion of Qarakhanid Turks to Islam 969 – Fatimids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Egypt and found Cairo
973 – Israel and southern Syria are again conquered by the Fatimids
1003 – First persecutions by al—Hakim; the Church of St. Mark in Fustat, Egypt, is destroyed
1009 – Destruction of the Church of the Resurrection by al—Hakim (see 937)
1012 – Beginning of al—Hakim’s oppressive decrees against Jews and Christians
1050 – Creation of Almoravid (Muslim Crusaders) movement in Mauretania; Almoravids (aka Murabitun) are coalition of western Saharan Berbers; followers of Islam, focusing on the Quran, the hadith, and Maliki law.
1071 – Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk Turks (Muslim Crusaders) defeat Byzantines and occupy much of Anatolia 1071 – Turks (Muslim Crusaders) invade Palestine
1073 – Conquest of Jerusalem by Turks (Muslim Crusaders)
1075 – Seljuks (Muslim Crusaders) capture Nicea (Iznik) and make it their capital in Anatolia
1076 – Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) conquer western Ghana
1086 – Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) send help to Andalus, Battle of Zallaca
1090 – 1091 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) occupy all of Andalus except Saragossa and Balearic Islands
1094 – Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I asks western Christendom for help against Seljuk (Muslim Turks) invasions of his territory
1095 – Pope Urban II preaches first Crusade; they capture Jerusalem in 1099
In other words, by the end of the eleventh century the forces of Islam had captured fully two-thirds of the Christian world. And these were not merely areas at the periphery of the Christian world, but rather places which represented the very origin of the Christian communities – their heart and soul. Palestine, the home of Jesus Christ, where He was born, conducted His ministry, died and was resurrected; Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism and home to countless Saints and theologians such as St. Anthony, St. Cyprian and St. Augustine; Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted the seeds of the first Christian communities.
Far from being unprovoked, then, the Crusades actually represent the first great western Christian counterattack against the Muslim attacks which had taken place continually from the inception of Islam until the eleventh century, and which continued on thereafter, mostly unabated. Three of Christianity’s five primary episcopal sees (Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria) had been captured in the seventh century; both of the others (Rome and Constantinople) had been attacked in the centuries before the crusades. (The latter would be captured in 1453, leaving only one of the five -Rome- in Christian hands by 1500.) At some point what was left of the Christian world would have to defend itself or simply succumb to Islamic conquest. St. Augustine has articulated a Christian approach to the concept of just war, one in which legitimate authorities could use violence to halt or avert a greater evil. It must be a defensive war, in reaction to an act of aggression. For Christians, therefore, violence was ethically neutral, since it could be employed either for evil or against it. When the First Crusade was called by Pope Urban II in 1095 in response to an urgent plea for help from the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople, it was Urban calling the knights of Christendom to come to the aid of their eastern brethren. It was to be an errand of mercy, liberating the Christians of the East from their Muslim conquerors. The Crusades all met the criteria for just wars, and it is largely due to this defense of Christendom and the Western world that you and I don’t speak Aramaic today and require our women to wear burqas.
Christians attacked Muslims without provocation to seize their lands and forcibly convert them.
We’ve already dealt with the unprovoked assertion above, but some will respond that the Crusades rather than being defensive and just wars, were instead wars of retaliation and revenge. That the goal of the crusaders was to seize Muslim lands and forcibly convert them. To put the question in perspective, one need only consider how many times Christian forces have attacked either Mecca or Medina. The answer, of course, is never. It has however become common practice to equate the forcible conversions of the Islamic conquests with the Catholic Crusades, as if to suggest that there is a similarity between the coerced conversions of Islam and the activities of the crusaders. Nothing could be further from the truth. Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that none of the Christian military orders fighting the Muslims sought to impose baptism by force. Certainly, the crusaders did not object to using military force to establish conditions conducive to the peaceful conversion of Muslims, but that is a different matter altogether.
We can see an example of how military conquest created the conditions conducive to peaceful conversion in an anonymous pamphlet from 1260 entitled De constructione castri Saphet, which argued that the building of a castle in conquered Muslim territory meant that “the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ can be preached freely in all the aforesaid places [in the region of Safed] and the blasphemy of Muhammad can be publicly refuted and demolished in sermons.” A perfect example of this is Pope Alexander III ’ s confirmation of the Order of Santiago, issued in 1175, which contains the injunction: “in their warfare they should devote themselves to this objective alone, namely either to protect Christians from their [the Saracens ’] attacks or to be in a position to induce them [the Saracens] to follow the Christian faith.” The latter clause, “be in a position to induce them to follow the Christian faith”, does not refer to forcible conversion, but rather an ideal situation in which Christian military dominance paves the way for peaceable evangelization by Christian missionaries. In contrast, the Islamic religion has always been advanced at the point of a sword. “In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the Muslim mission and (the obligation to) convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force.”5 Those who are conquered are given a simple choice. For those who are not People of the Book — in other words, those who are not Christians or Jews — the choice is convert to Islam or die. For those who are People of the Book, the choice is submit to Muslim rule and Islamic law or die. The expansion of Islam, therefore, was always directly linked to the military successes of jihad.
The Crusades however, were something very different. From its beginnings Christianity has always forbidden coerced conversion of any kind. Conversion by the sword, therefore, was not possible for Christianity. Unlike jihad, the purpose of the Crusades was neither to expand the Christian world nor to expand Christianity through forced conversions. In a nutshell, therefore, the major difference between Crusade and jihad is that the former was a defense against the latter, not an attempt to seize Muslim lands or acquire new converts.
The Crusaders were motivated by greed and the pursuit of Muslim lands and fortunes.
We’ve already dealt with the myth of Crusaders seeking to acquire Muslim lands, but during the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have verified that crusading knights were indeed generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap; even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade.
As Fred Cazel has noted, “Few crusaders had sufficient cash both to pay their obligations at home and to support themselves decently on a crusade.” From the very beginning, financial considerations played a major role in crusade planning. The early crusaders sold off so many of their possessions to finance their expeditions that they caused widespread inflation. Although later crusaders took this into account and began saving money long before they set out, the expense was still nearly prohibitive.
So why did these crusaders set out on these “armed pilgrimages?” Largely due to sermons which were preached in order to convince the crusaders to participate in these ventures. Crusade sermons were replete with warnings that crusading brought deprivation, suffering, and often death. As Jonathan Riley-Smith has noted, crusade preachers “had to persuade their listeners to commit themselves to enterprises that would disrupt their lives, possibly impoverish and even kill or maim them, and inconvenience their families, the support of which they would . . . need if they were to fulfill their promises.” The Crusades, Christianity, and Islam (Bampton Lectures in America)
In other words, they did so not because they expected to gain material wealth (which many of them already had), but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Far from being a materialistic enterprise, crusading was impractical in worldly terms, but valuable for one’s soul. I won’t take time here to explore the doctrine of penance as it developed in late antiquity and the medieval world, but suffice it to say that the willing acceptance of difficulty and suffering was viewed (and still is, in Catholic doctrine today) as a useful way to purify one’s soul.
Europe is littered with literally thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments – charters in which these men still speak to us today if we are willing to listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing plunder if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing. “Crusading,” as Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith has rightly argued, was also understood as an “an act of love”—in this case, the love of one’s neighbor. The Crusade was seen as an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. As Pope Innocent III wrote to the Knights Templar, “You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, ‘Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.'”
Despite the fact that money did not yet play a major role in Western European economies in the eleventh century, there was “a heavy and persistent flow of money” from West to East as a result of the Crusades, and the financial demands of crusading caused “profound economic and monetary changes in both western Europe and the Levant.” In short: very few people became rich by crusading, and their numbers were dwarfed by those who were bankrupted.
When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred every man, woman and child in the city until the streets ran ankle deep with the blood.
So, let’s be clear. Atrocities were committed during the Crusades. The Crusades were wars, and as the old saying goes, “War is hell.” But, let’s also be clear. The above quote is pure hyperbole. No historian accepts it as anything other than literary convention. Jerusalem is a big town, and the amount of blood necessary to fill the streets to a continuous and running three-inch depth would require many, many more people than those which lived in the region, let alone the city. Also, the cities defenders had resisted right up to the end. They calculated that the formidable walls of the city would keep the crusaders at bay until a relief force from Egypt could arrive. They were wrong. When the city fell, therefore, it was put to the sack. Many were killed, yet many others were ransomed or allowed to go free. It is worth noting that in those Muslim cities that surrendered to the crusaders the people were left unmolested, retained their property and were allowed to worship freely.
But, atrocities were committed. Let’s face it, mistakes were going to be made. Have you ever known of a war where they weren’t? How about seven wars over almost two hundred years? Of course there were things done which were reprehensible. But what is really shocking is just how relatively few horrific incidents can be pointed to over such a lengthy time frame involving multiple wars. However, in the interest of fairness here are a couple of prime examples.
During the First Crusade a large band of riffraff, not associated with the main army, descended on the towns of the Rhineland and decided to rob and kill the Jews they found there. In part this was pure greed. In part it also stemmed from the incorrect belief that the Jews, as the crucifiers of Christ, were legitimate targets of the war. Pope Urban II and subsequent popes strongly condemned these attacks on Jews. Local bishops and other clergy and laity attempted to defend the Jews, although with limited success. Similarly, during the opening phase of the Second Crusade a group of renegades killed many Jews in Germany before St. Bernard was able to catch up to them and put a stop to it.
The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and sacked the Orthodox Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire. This is seen as one of the final acts in the Great Schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, and a key turning point in the decline of the empire and of Christianity in the Near East, leaving Pope Innocent III to lament, “How, indeed, will the church of the Greeks, no matter how severely she is beset with afflictions and persecutions, return into ecclesiastical union and to a devotion for the Apostolic See, when she has seen in the Latins only an example of perdition and the works of darkness, so that she now, and with reason, detests the Latins more than dogs? As for those who were supposed to be seeking the ends of Jesus Christ, not their own ends, who made their swords, which they were supposed to use against the pagans, drip with Christian blood, they have spared neither religion, nor age, nor sex. They have committed incest, adultery, and fornication before the eyes of men. They have exposed both matrons and virgins, even those dedicated to God, to the sordid lusts of boys. Not satisfied with breaking open the imperial treasury and plundering the goods of princes and lesser men, they also laid their hands on the treasures of the churches and, what is more serious, on their very possessions. They have even ripped silver plates from the altars and have hacked them to pieces among themselves. They violated the holy places and have carried off crosses and relics.”9
These relatively isolated incidents were universally condemned by the Popes and the Catholic Church and they should not be confused with the initial reasons for the Crusades – in the same way that individual atrocities committed by a small number of World War II soldiers didn’t change the necessary reasons for which the United States went to war in the first place.
Saint Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades.
John Paul II never actually apologized for the Crusades. The closest he came was on March 12, 2000, the “Day of Pardon.” During his homily he said: “We cannot fail to recognize the infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second millennium. Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among Christians, for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken toward the followers of other religions.” It is true that John Paul apologized to the Greeks for the Fourth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople in 1204, but even the Pope of that time, Innocent III, expressed similar regret as we have seen above.
Quote of the Times;
“Over the last twenty years, we have given in to a subterranean, dangerous, and uncontrolled infiltration, which not only resists adjusting to our laws and customs but which will, as the years pass, attempt to impose its own.” - Bardot
Link of the Times;
http://www.theartofselfhood.com/
Toilet?
Dear Lord," the preacher began with arms extended and a rapturous look on his upturned face, "without you we are but dust..."
He would have continued, but at that moment one very obedient little girl (who was listening carefully) leaned over to her mother and asked quite audibly in her shrill little girl voice, "Mommy, WHAT is butt dust..?"
Church was pretty much over at that point.
*.*
A first grade teacher had a small number of children gathered around a table for a reading group. After the story was read she gave the children a work sheet to do. She thought they may have some problems so wanted them to work on it there.
She heard a little girl say very softly "damn!".
The teacher leaned over and said quietly, "We don't say that in school."
The little girl looked at the teacher, her eyes got very big and she said, "Not even when things are all fucked up?!"
*.*
A couple was relating their vacation experiences to a friend. "It sounds as if you had a great time in Texas,"
the friend observed. "But didn't you tell me you were planning to visit Colorado?"
"Well," the husband said, "we changed our plans because, uh..."
His wife cut in, "Oh, tell the truth, Fred!" He fell silent and she continued, "You know, it's just ridiculous. Fred simply will not ask for directions."
*.*
Get back to grass roots......
fornicate on the lawn...
Roses are red, pansies are gay,
if it weren't for women we'd all be that way....
Oral sex is a taste of things to come...
Sex Appeal. Give generously.....
The best time to fake an orgasm is when a Rottweiler is humping your leg.....
*.*
If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
Then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
and
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
But,
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
And,
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.
A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%
So, one can then conclude with mathematical certainty that While Hard work and knowledge will get you close, and, Attitude will get you there,
Bullshit and Ass kissing will put you over the top.
Issue of the Times;
Venezuelan woman earns her entire living standing in line to buy toilet paper by Simon Black
At two in the morning, Krisbell quietly slips out of bed so as to not wake the two small children curled up next to her. She grabs her phone and quickly dials her friends’ numbers as she’s already headed out the door to get the day’s intelligence report. Most importantly—where is milk, sugar, and toilet paper being sold today?
From the moment price controls were levied in the country, there were shortages of everything in Venezuela. Each month, it’s become increasingly difficult to get basic goods. And the lines are growing longer and longer. Not everyone can afford to wait in line half the day just to get a few supplies. And since you can’t even get everything in one store, it takes the second half of the day to get the rest of what you need—if there’s even anything left by then. Friends and neighbors had started coming to Krisbell, asking her if she could help them get things from the grocery store. They all have to work just to be able to afford the food in the first place, and they can’t spare the time to stand in line.
So (as reported by Bloomberg) Krisbell started taking on clients. Now she has enough that she’s earning her entire living from waiting in line. Imagine—an entire cottage industry (absurd as it may be) now exists in Venezuela because of destructive government polices. Everyone in the country has to pay extra for their basic goods, while others dedicate their professional lives to the unproductive task of standing in line. (If this seems far-fetched, consider that the US tax preparation industry takes in $6 billion annually for dedicating itself to the unproductive task of filling out Byzantine tax forms…)
There’s no limit to the stupidity and destructiveness of people in power, and Venezuela’s President Maduro is a prime example. This man (and his predecessor) took the country with the largest oil reserves in the world and crippled it to the point that Venezuela now imports oil. And that was before oil prices plummeted. Now the country is even weaker. Venezuela’s government is now on the brink of defaulting on its financial obligations... just as it has already defaulted on its obligations to its citizens.
It’s a sad example of what governments do when they go bankrupt. Almost invariably they manipulate the currency and print money. This eventually causes inflation to get out of hand and prices to soar. They try to control it by imposing price controls. And because it becomes unprofitable for businesses to produce at artificially low prices, shortages ensue. Then they institute capital controls to trap money inside the country. This movie has played out so many times before. And yet people rarely learn.
The consequences of terrible decisions creep up gradually, and then suddenly. Most people don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late. The resulting economic hardship often leads to extremism, or dangerous populism. Just look at what’s happening across Europe (and especially Greece with its new radical left Prime Minister). But it all starts with a bankrupt government and decades of destructive policies.
We’ve all seen what’s happened with Venezuela. If you’re in a bankrupt nation, make sure this doesn't affect you. Make sure you always have a Plan B.
Quote of the Times;
If by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son.
Link of the Times;
http://www.collegetimes.com/
He would have continued, but at that moment one very obedient little girl (who was listening carefully) leaned over to her mother and asked quite audibly in her shrill little girl voice, "Mommy, WHAT is butt dust..?"
Church was pretty much over at that point.
*.*
A first grade teacher had a small number of children gathered around a table for a reading group. After the story was read she gave the children a work sheet to do. She thought they may have some problems so wanted them to work on it there.
She heard a little girl say very softly "damn!".
The teacher leaned over and said quietly, "We don't say that in school."
The little girl looked at the teacher, her eyes got very big and she said, "Not even when things are all fucked up?!"
*.*
A couple was relating their vacation experiences to a friend. "It sounds as if you had a great time in Texas,"
the friend observed. "But didn't you tell me you were planning to visit Colorado?"
"Well," the husband said, "we changed our plans because, uh..."
His wife cut in, "Oh, tell the truth, Fred!" He fell silent and she continued, "You know, it's just ridiculous. Fred simply will not ask for directions."
*.*
Get back to grass roots......
fornicate on the lawn...
Roses are red, pansies are gay,
if it weren't for women we'd all be that way....
Oral sex is a taste of things to come...
Sex Appeal. Give generously.....
The best time to fake an orgasm is when a Rottweiler is humping your leg.....
*.*
If:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z is represented as:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.
Then:
H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%
and
K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%
But,
A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
And,
B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.
A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G
1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+14+7 = 118%
So, one can then conclude with mathematical certainty that While Hard work and knowledge will get you close, and, Attitude will get you there,
Bullshit and Ass kissing will put you over the top.
Issue of the Times;
Venezuelan woman earns her entire living standing in line to buy toilet paper by Simon Black
At two in the morning, Krisbell quietly slips out of bed so as to not wake the two small children curled up next to her. She grabs her phone and quickly dials her friends’ numbers as she’s already headed out the door to get the day’s intelligence report. Most importantly—where is milk, sugar, and toilet paper being sold today?
From the moment price controls were levied in the country, there were shortages of everything in Venezuela. Each month, it’s become increasingly difficult to get basic goods. And the lines are growing longer and longer. Not everyone can afford to wait in line half the day just to get a few supplies. And since you can’t even get everything in one store, it takes the second half of the day to get the rest of what you need—if there’s even anything left by then. Friends and neighbors had started coming to Krisbell, asking her if she could help them get things from the grocery store. They all have to work just to be able to afford the food in the first place, and they can’t spare the time to stand in line.
So (as reported by Bloomberg) Krisbell started taking on clients. Now she has enough that she’s earning her entire living from waiting in line. Imagine—an entire cottage industry (absurd as it may be) now exists in Venezuela because of destructive government polices. Everyone in the country has to pay extra for their basic goods, while others dedicate their professional lives to the unproductive task of standing in line. (If this seems far-fetched, consider that the US tax preparation industry takes in $6 billion annually for dedicating itself to the unproductive task of filling out Byzantine tax forms…)
There’s no limit to the stupidity and destructiveness of people in power, and Venezuela’s President Maduro is a prime example. This man (and his predecessor) took the country with the largest oil reserves in the world and crippled it to the point that Venezuela now imports oil. And that was before oil prices plummeted. Now the country is even weaker. Venezuela’s government is now on the brink of defaulting on its financial obligations... just as it has already defaulted on its obligations to its citizens.
It’s a sad example of what governments do when they go bankrupt. Almost invariably they manipulate the currency and print money. This eventually causes inflation to get out of hand and prices to soar. They try to control it by imposing price controls. And because it becomes unprofitable for businesses to produce at artificially low prices, shortages ensue. Then they institute capital controls to trap money inside the country. This movie has played out so many times before. And yet people rarely learn.
The consequences of terrible decisions creep up gradually, and then suddenly. Most people don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late. The resulting economic hardship often leads to extremism, or dangerous populism. Just look at what’s happening across Europe (and especially Greece with its new radical left Prime Minister). But it all starts with a bankrupt government and decades of destructive policies.
We’ve all seen what’s happened with Venezuela. If you’re in a bankrupt nation, make sure this doesn't affect you. Make sure you always have a Plan B.
Quote of the Times;
If by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son.
Link of the Times;
http://www.collegetimes.com/
Pseudo?
An Addict's Story
Don't let this happen to you!!!
It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then - to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.
I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."
"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently. She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.
"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors ... They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.
I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.
I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.
*.*
Never hit a man when he's down . . .
Kick him, it's easier.
*.*
What interesting property do these words have in common:
body
day
how
one
place
thing
time
what
where?
Each forms a new word when appended to the word "some."
*.*
"Say," said the smooth operator in a confidential tone to the host of the party, "there's a lot of hot babes at this party. If I find one that's ready to grab a quick one, would you mind if I used your extra bedroom?"
"What about your wife?"
"Oh, I won't be gone that long. She'll never miss me."
"No, I'm sure she won't miss you, she borrowed the extra bedroom."
*.*
Definitions and cool meanings
Cigarette: A pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool at the other.
Conference: The confusion of one man multiplied by the number present.
Conference Room: A place where everybody talks, nobody listens & everybody disagrees on later.
Compromise: The art of dividing a cake in such a way that each person believes he got the biggest piece.
Office: A place where you can relax after your strenuous home life.
Yawn: The only time some married men ever get to open their mouths.
Etc.: A sign to make others believe that you know more than you actually do.
Philosopher: A fool who torments himself during life, to be spoken of when dead.
Opportunist: A person who starts taking a bath if he accidentally falls into a river.
Optimist: A person who, while falling from the Eiffel Tower, says midway, "See? I am not injured yet."
Pessimist: A person who says that O is the last letter in ZERO, instead of the first letter in OPPORTUNITY.
Boss: Someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early.
Politician: One who shakes your hand before elections and your confidence afterwards.
Issue of the Times;
Philip K. Dick On Fine-Tuning Your B.S.-Meter To Spot "Pseudo-Realities" by Charlie Jane Anders
How can you tell what's real, in a world where huge industries, governments and religions are all trying to force-feed you manufactured realities? Philip K. Dick sums up the challenges of detecting reality in a world that resembles Disneyland, in this great 1978 quote:
It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question "What is reality?", to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real. One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." That's all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven't been able to define reality any more lucidly.
But the problem is a real one, not a mere intellectual game. Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups—and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Sometimes when I watch my eleven-year-old daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by the child. Maybe it's all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy to reality? What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing, and catching fire. The police are always good and they always win. Do not ignore that point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message here is, Be passive. And—cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Beratta is a good man and to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.
So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe—and I am dead serious when I say this—do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.
Of course, I would say this, because I live near Disneyland, and they are always adding new rides and destroying old ones. Disneyland is an evolving organism. For years they had the Lincoln Simulacrum, like Lincoln himself, was only a temporary form which matter and energy take and then lose. The same is true of each of us, like it or not.
Quote of the Times;
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” – Voltaire
Link of the Times;
http://elitedaily.com/
Don't let this happen to you!!!
It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then - to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.
I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."
"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently. She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.
"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors ... They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.
I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting.
I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.
*.*
Never hit a man when he's down . . .
Kick him, it's easier.
*.*
What interesting property do these words have in common:
body
day
how
one
place
thing
time
what
where?
Each forms a new word when appended to the word "some."
*.*
"Say," said the smooth operator in a confidential tone to the host of the party, "there's a lot of hot babes at this party. If I find one that's ready to grab a quick one, would you mind if I used your extra bedroom?"
"What about your wife?"
"Oh, I won't be gone that long. She'll never miss me."
"No, I'm sure she won't miss you, she borrowed the extra bedroom."
*.*
Definitions and cool meanings
Cigarette: A pinch of tobacco rolled in paper with fire at one end and a fool at the other.
Conference: The confusion of one man multiplied by the number present.
Conference Room: A place where everybody talks, nobody listens & everybody disagrees on later.
Compromise: The art of dividing a cake in such a way that each person believes he got the biggest piece.
Office: A place where you can relax after your strenuous home life.
Yawn: The only time some married men ever get to open their mouths.
Etc.: A sign to make others believe that you know more than you actually do.
Philosopher: A fool who torments himself during life, to be spoken of when dead.
Opportunist: A person who starts taking a bath if he accidentally falls into a river.
Optimist: A person who, while falling from the Eiffel Tower, says midway, "See? I am not injured yet."
Pessimist: A person who says that O is the last letter in ZERO, instead of the first letter in OPPORTUNITY.
Boss: Someone who is early when you are late and late when you are early.
Politician: One who shakes your hand before elections and your confidence afterwards.
Issue of the Times;
Philip K. Dick On Fine-Tuning Your B.S.-Meter To Spot "Pseudo-Realities" by Charlie Jane Anders
How can you tell what's real, in a world where huge industries, governments and religions are all trying to force-feed you manufactured realities? Philip K. Dick sums up the challenges of detecting reality in a world that resembles Disneyland, in this great 1978 quote:
It was always my hope, in writing novels and stories which asked the question "What is reality?", to someday get an answer. This was the hope of most of my readers, too. Years passed. I wrote over thirty novels and over a hundred stories, and still I could not figure out what was real. One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." That's all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven't been able to define reality any more lucidly.
But the problem is a real one, not a mere intellectual game. Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups—and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Sometimes when I watch my eleven-year-old daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by the child. Maybe it's all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy to reality? What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing, and catching fire. The police are always good and they always win. Do not ignore that point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message here is, Be passive. And—cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Beratta is a good man and to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.
So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe—and I am dead serious when I say this—do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.
Of course, I would say this, because I live near Disneyland, and they are always adding new rides and destroying old ones. Disneyland is an evolving organism. For years they had the Lincoln Simulacrum, like Lincoln himself, was only a temporary form which matter and energy take and then lose. The same is true of each of us, like it or not.
Quote of the Times;
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.” – Voltaire
Link of the Times;
http://elitedaily.com/
Several animals were savagely beaten in the making of this page, including but not limited to; kittens, rabbits, zebu, skunks, puppies, and platypus. Also several monkeys where force fed crack to improve their typing skills.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.