If I told you Once

There are lots of things that I can not figure out. Some things really hurt the head to try to think about but I can think about most anything that anyone can suggest. There are a few things that I can not think about. One of those things is what geniuses who lived three thousand years ago daydreamed about. It seems funny how often the most profound concept is the most simple and that it takes the smartest person to think it up. The Bible says that there is nothing new under the sun. Well if that is true then when Did the first person daydream about time travel? If This Then That. If That Then Wait, it IS possible ! Has someone in the past thought of something that we have not?

Peoples imaginations are magnificent, if unregulated and unruly and undisciplined. I think that the ancient adage from the dawn of the computer age is still quite true, “it takes a person to screw up, it takes a computer to reallllly screw up !” We had lots of imagination on our own but now with the computer it is out of this world. Just think, using a computer to smash two galaxies into each other and watch the results ! Just think, we can now “create” a worm hole and watch what happens when a space ship tries to go through it. Actually I am not aware of a computer writing a best seller on the topic of time travel yet, but people have. We still have an edge on the ol’ box yet. Actually there still is not yet – and I maintain never will be – a computer that can pick a random number either.

So is time travel possible. Yes. We are always traveling forward through it. But there I go, how do I know that there is such a thing. What I would like to have is several sets of photos. One set of my home, where I grew up, taken every five hundred years for the past six thousand years. One of the city of Jerusalem, from the Mt of Olives, taken every five hundred years for the past six thousand years. What could I learn from those twelve photos?

Oh

Adultery has always been illegal, in Pakistan

The national assembly voted that rape should no longer fall under Sharia law. Until now, rape cases were dealt with in Sharia courts. Victims had to have four male witnesses to the crime - if not, they faced prosecution for adultery.
Religious parties called the new legislation "a harbinger of lewdness and indecency in the country", and against the strictures of the Koran and Sharia law.
(Religion is morally neutral. So says Tutu. I suppose that if women are non human then the religious “strictures” of the Koran and Sharia law are right, it would be a neutral law to say that there must be four male witnesses - but then why do they say “crime”?? Ah, it could become a crime if one group of men were trying to implicate another in some crime in order to put them in their place. Yes Political. No crime to get someone to rape your wife with no witnesses or at least less than four in order to be able to get rid of her. Hummm)

Isn’t it funny, science has to have a ‘scientific’ explanation for everything. People don’t like art just for the sake of art but rather because it follows some scientific formula that creates some chemical balance within our hormonal out put or input that makes us feel pleasure. – never mind if the art is not art and the idea of pleasure is totally screwed up. So Now since we have been arguing that homo ‘lifestyle’ in humans is chemical and in the genes and Not the person’s Fault morally we seem to have to change our tune to try another line of defense; we do have to defend it, somehow some nasty gene got into us that says we should condemn the practice. Animals practice Homo. Not just that, “said Linda Wolfe, You can make up all kinds of stories: Oh it's for dominance, it's for this, it's for that, but when it comes down to the bottom I think it's just for sexual pleasure," Wow, there doesn’t need to be any science behind it ! It is just for pleasure ! What can possibly be wrong with pleasure ? To bad the world was not all Parthenogenetic animals, which create exact copies of themselves, are all females: mothers cloning daughters. The world would be ever so much better of a place.

Wow!
“Scientists have reconstructed a chunk of DNA from the genome of a Neanderthal man who lived 38,000 years ago.” You mean that you believe that a chunk of DNA could survive for 38,000 years ? ?

WOW again ! ! Are we ever intelligent and getting more and more and more so all the time !! !!
“A doctor who carried out a failed contraceptive operation has been ordered by a German court to pay financial support for the child. The gynaecologist had inserted a patch into the patient's arm, but it failed to prevent pregnancy six months later. The woman, who had recently qualified as a teacher, had to give up her new job to care for her child. The highest judicial court has ruled the doctor must pay 600 euros (£400) a month until the child reaches 18.
The parents, who had known each other six months at the time of the conception, were no longer together, the court said. The father will also be compensated for the maintenance he is paying for the child.”
There is something to be said for Judges being elected and thus responsible directly to the people. Here we have this “rule of the people, by the people, for the people” thing and then we have courts that can overrule laws that our elected representatives have made And come up with decisions quite apart from any guiding norms at all. I always said that the hardest part of making up a system of ethics is deciding who has the authority to make it in the first place. Who rules? The person with the biggest guns? The biggest brains? The biggest bank account? The biggest something else? Or just the most gall?
Why ever should the doc have to pay child support for something like that? Hey if the doc fertilized some woman – not personaly, maybe; but this? ?

Even so Come

The current palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, said last week he was willing to resign if it would end the crippling Western aid boycott against the administration. A future Palestinian national unity government will not agree to demands that it recognize Israel, the ruling Hamas faction has said. "It was not asked from the two Germanys to recognize each other, while the whole world recognized them. "Why should Palestine, which is not yet a state, recognize Israel?" he said, also citing as examples China and Taiwan.
(I would like to ask what difference it would make if Ismail did resign? Why would the palestinians need western aid? Why don’t the arab nations help them instead of just giving them guns? I ask how can Canada have a Quebec national government? I ask how can palistine “not yet a state” have a government that is recognized by anyone? How do you talk to someone who isn’t? True it is puzzling what passes for diplomacy in the world. Why does the world stand by and let china eradicate Tibet? Main land china is a legal identity as a nation? More to say on this topic later.)

A 1.5kg Alba white truffle, sold to a Hong Kong businessman for a record-breaking 125,000 euros ($160,000; £85,000). (I am going to take up truffle growing ! $10,000 per 100 grams !)

We are all aliens !

In July 2001, a mysterious red rain started falling over a large area of southern India. Dr Louis discovered that there were tiny biological cells present, but because they did not appear to contain DNA, the essential component of all life on Earth, he reasoned they must be alien life forms. It also raises the intriguing possibility that if life first originated on another planet then it must mean all Earth organisms, including humans, evolved from alien life.


The existing Marriage Act in South Africa defines a marriage as a "union between a man and a woman". South Africa's parliament has voted to legalize same-sex weddings The ruling African National Congress ordered all MPs to turn up and vote for the bill, despite the opposition of church and traditional leaders.

"The impression we got is that there is overwhelming opposition to this bill from people throughout South Africa," Cardinal Wilfrid Napier.( What ever happened to democracy, rule by majority? Government of the people for the people by the people ? I always wondered how women’s lib considered finally being able to smoke raised their level of liberty? Liberty to get cancer and etc ? ? Is homo behaviour really liberty? seems that they are responsible for all sorts of animal and even plant diseases that have never before been seen in humans ... )
Archbishop Desmond Tutu insisted with regard to increasing polarization between the West and Islam" One of our major conclusions is that the divide is not religious or cultural but political." "They are political causes: when people are poor, when people are hungry or humiliated. But religion is morally neutral."
(this is a MOST amazing statement by Tutu. “religion is morally neutral”. This is the single MOST astonishing statement ever made by man. WOW”)

“we need to fight and resist all forms of discrimination” Tutu ( what ever is wrong with discrimination? ? ? I use it all the time when I go to the store to buy something. Employers use it all the time to hire the right person for the job. I for one am glad that our universities do use discrimination when they pass out medical doctorates, oh sure I am not always happy with everything that they do but I am glad that not just anyone can decide to be a doctor!)
an Ottoman Palace on one bank of the Bosphorus, with a view on to a vast bridge linking East and West. "If we are to build bridges between civilizations, what better place to begin!" UN Secretary General Kofi Annan remarked in his opening address.
"As long as the Palestinians live under occupation, exposed to daily frustration and humiliation, and as long as Israelis are blown up in buses and in dance halls, so long will passions everywhere be inflamed."
(So all the world’s problems are political? Not monetary or just plain people’s own nature showing through in everything that we ever do? Why ever was Kofi in a palace? I do agree that we need to show leadership some regard But how much do they need? What does Kofi think is the solution? One government for the whole world? Wouldn’t that be nice, the UN becomes the official world government. Maybe then Kofi would apply to be the first Enpokoelmucho. That is a new term, like emperor is the kink of kinks an Enpokoelmucho is the emperor of all emperors.)

(We do need someone with the authority to make all these decisions for us. We can not handle it for ourselves. Even so come Lord Jesus ! ! ! )

In the very beginning

Well Hip hip hurrah ! !
Well done !
But were the first complex molecules proteins or DNA or something else? Biologists face a chicken-and-egg problem in that proteins are needed to replicate DNA, but DNA is necessary to instruct the building of proteins.
Shapiro, however, thinks this so-called "RNA world" is still too complex to be the origin of life. Information-carrying molecules like RNA are sequences of molecular "bits." The primordial soup would be full of things that would terminate these sequences before they grew long enough to be useful, Shapiro says.
"In the very beginning, you couldn't have genetic material that could copy itself unless you had chemists back then doing it for you," Shapiro told LiveScience.
Talk about talking two faced talking, how does Shapiro say in the same sentance that there was an intelegent designer and that it is all by chance and not recognise what he is doing?
That he has done it and done so successfuly is obvious. It is top of the news Live Science it self!!

the Clash

Morocco's state airline Royal Air Maroc has banned its staff praying at their offices and headquarters.
The company says that in the past its workers have abused the privilege of praying, by taking too much time away from their desks and their customers.
Other complaints from airline staff are that pilots and stewards were not allowed to fast during the month of Ramadan and that female staff are not allowed to wear the veil - although that has been an unwritten rule at many companies for several years.

The clash of two religions reverberating. Money as a god seems to win out every time.

freedom of expression

The Israeli attorney-general has given the go-ahead for a gay pride parade in Jerusalem planned for next week. Menachem Mazuz said there was no legal justification for banning the march. Mr Mazuz said he took the decision to authorise the parade "so that freedom of expression is respected" in Israel.

I wonder if they are planning a march down around the south end of the Dead sea.

How about freedom of expression for this?
The practice of homosexuality is punishable by a really long prison sentence!

a kind of mastery and order

Now here is a bunch of bulloney if I have ever seen it !

“Mathematics has shown that the paintings of US artist Jackson Pollock, currently on show at London's Tate Gallery, "reflect the fingerprint of nature".
They are not, as critics have said, "mere unorganised explosions of random energy".
"Mathematical models may be a way of attributing a kind of mastery and order, by shifting from an aesthetic, subjective mode of examination to a more objective, scientific one." Mignon Nixon”

Why? Why attribute a kind of mastery and order?

“The artist battled alcoholism and depression and is generally regarded as a self-destructive, tortured genius. He died in a car crash in 1956, aged 44.”
“Artist” ?
“Artist”?

Why? Why attribute a kind of mastery and order? I suppose Mignon would say the same thing about what passes for music. Beethoven for all his mastery did it to us. He invented Self expression in music.
What is the difference between modern art and a sunrise? When you look at a sunrise you know what it is. No one needs to attribute a “kind or mastery and order” to it. God did that. How can anyone attribute anything but “alcohol and depression” to Jackson’s canvas? The only thing that Jackson mastered was self expression, “self destructive tortured” self. A kin to what what’s his name from Holland who committed suicide put on his canvas. That is Not art ! !
Francis Schaffer it was who said that modern man can not live with his “convictions”. (WARNING ! Before you are convinced of something be sure that you will be able to live with it ! )
Still I wouldn’t mind ten percent of Jackson’s mastery or even one percent, that would be one and a half million dollars. That Kind of mastery I understand. (One of his canvases just sold for close to one hundred and fifty million)

Nelson looks even better

Papers in southern Africa have few kind words to say about former South African President PW Botha, who died on Tuesday.
"The bully-boy face of apartheid and the enforcer behind successive states of emergency aimed at keeping the lid on the boiling pot of black resistance... The image of a finger-wagging, self-righteous, smirking Groot Krokodil who defiantly refused to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to account for the excesses of his administration is still too vivid in our collective memory."

“The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones …” I don’t know if Groot Krododil ever did do anything good. While there is good reason for intolerance, there is no valid reason for the kind of segregation that apartheid would maintain. Reason? Yes! Valid reason? No. What was Groot Krokodil’s reason for his “finger-wagging hawkish” ways? I am sure that it is complex and further that he himself may not have been aware of it and that he can not be held solely responsible for it.

“If tears must be shed at his passing, they can at most be crocodile tears.”

“The Groot Krokodil (great crocodile) will bite no more.”

The last quote comes from the Sowetan. I have no idea at all who is responsible for this great quote; to bad this person is so delusional. While we can not put all the blame on Charles Darwin either, he must take his share. If we are slime what is wrong with treating each other like slime? There is some other contributor though. Farley Mowat tells of Eskimos. The guys at a Dew Line station were sending food to a group that was starving because of a bad winter. They sent the food by way of one Eskimo whom they had come to know only to find out later that he never passed any of it on to those who needed it. Laura Wilder tells of her father going to the merchant in town with others in the community. They were likewise starving. One of their number had taken the merchants money and gone, at great personal peril, to get food but when he got back the merchant greatly inflated the price of the food. Laura’s father set him straight.

The Groot Krokodil came from a long line and he has many grandchildren.

"From whence come wars - and segregations and superiority and apartheid and all the evil that man perpetrates on his fellow man ... - do they not come from within, your own lust ..."

Tribute

Nelson Mandela has issued a statement, paying tribute to former South African President PW Botha, who died at the age of 90 on Tuesday.
He described Mr Botha as a "symbol of apartheid", but recalled that he took steps towards an "eventual peacefully negotiated settlement" in the country.
He was the man who refused to release Nelson Mandela from prison and presided over a state of emergency in a failed attempt to quell opposition to the apartheid system. Yet the governing African National Congress, which was outlawed under Mr Botha, was among the first to offer condolences on Tuesday.
Mr Botha was regarded as a relic and someone stuck in a bit of a time warp ...

Good for Nelson

A Think for a Thought

A court in the Turkish city of Istanbul has acquitted a 92-year-old academic of charges of insulting Muslim women and inciting religious hatred.
Archaeologist Muazzez Ilmiye Cig was prosecuted over a book in which she linked the wearing of headscarves with ancient Sumerian sexual rites.
Charges were brought against her by a Turkish lawyer who took offence at her 2005 book "My Reactions as a Citizen".
In the book Dr Cig said that headscarves were first worn more than 5,000 years ago by Sumerian priestesses who initiated young men into sex.
Although predominantly Muslim, Turkey is a secular state and headscarves are banned in government offices and universities.

Public forum is a scarry thing. Say something, anything, positive or negative, and someone is going to bring a suit against you. Or at least go public with condemnation and denouncemnet. If we think that it is bad now what will it be like when we are all hooked up direct to the internet and everything we think does not have to pass through our lips for the world to become aware of it all.

Who, superstitious?

Next Tuesday, tourists in Nepal will have the rare opportunity of seeing a living goddess.
The opportunity is rarer than they think because six-year-old Preeti Sakya - the living Hindu goddess or Kumari - has been hidden away for six months during a row over who gets tourists' money. "now, since tourists pay the entrance fee to the municipality, the visitors demand they should get to see the Kumari while she gets nothing in return."

The Supreme Court in Nepal has ordered an inquiry into whether the tradition of worshipping a "living goddess" has led to the exploitation of girls – and possible violation of human rights A Kumari is typically chosen at the age of five to six years old, and is deemed ineligible after around the age of 12 or 13.

Incumbents are cut off from normal life, and have limited contact with their families. They are not allowed to attend regular schools. "But I think some reform measures need to be put in place to ensure their right to education, sports and all-round social development as a child," Family members of retired Kumaris say they find it difficult to get married because of a misconception among locals that a retired Kumari brings bad luck - which could ultimately lead to the untimely death of her husband.

What a world we live in. Fighting over HUMAN rights for a goddess ! ! Feuding over income that a goddess creates. And then there are the tourists – I very often think that the press are really bad for human rights abuse, nothing seems to be out of bounds for them and fans, fans of ‘famous’ people who mob them with no regard to their life and welfare (course in that case the stars Do get ample remuneration, fame and money which we assume in most cases is what they wanted) And then there are tourists, says one, "It's disappointing to learn that we will not get to see the Kumari." Like the tourist should have the right to see what even the people who own her as a goddess can not ? ? ? And an ex goddess might bring bad luck !??

Then on the other hand God has given us His Word written out for us to tell us about Himself, but still we have a LOT of debate and misconception and outright superstition about Him too. OH People, People, People ! !