Thursday, April 06, 2017

Famous people dying

It gets confusing after awhile.  Don Rickles just passed at 90.  Now he's insulting St. Peter.  Some people remember Billy Graham having 3 funerals.  For some reason I thought Jimmy Breslin had died some time ago.  Larry Hagman is gone as well as Farrah Fawcett but Kirk Douglas is still 100.  Prince, George Michael gone too soon but Betty White is still alive, 93 I believe.  If you're a multiverser John Glenn might die again in a few years.  CRAZY EDDIE I think is gone but it's best to google.  Unfortunately Charles Manson is still alive.  Hef I'm sure they got the obits all ready to roll.  Please don't give me a test on this;)

195 comments:

  1. My HS class newsletter lists 144 of us have bit the dust. Last week they fished a body out of the river; turned out to be a guy that fell out of a boat upstream 9 years ago.
    So Amelia Earhart and Jimmy Hoffa gotta be someplace.

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  2. Lana Del Rey recently had an album (can we still call them albums?) called "Born to Die" which is what it is. I always feel like I have unfinished business. How many FB users are dead?

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    1. Knew a guy who died in '94, still got a spot in Classmates. ..doesn't post much.

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  3. Looks like Trump has his first foreign policy crisis.

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    1. Kind of odd; he did a complete 180 on his campaign
      statements about ignoring Syria. The middle east is
      like sticky flypaper, whatever we do-it always gets worse. Obama wanted to do that in 2013, but the GOP
      congress wouldn't let him; now all three branches
      are GOP, so support is there. Gassing civilians with
      nerve gas deserves something, so smoking up an airport
      seems appropriate. Heard one dude mention that if he
      angers Putin, the Russkies will release all the hacks
      they have on the Donald. Dunno, Z-Man, interesting times.

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  4. & of course Gorsuch was confirmed.

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  5. Regarding the passing of famous people, we note the peculiarity of comedians: they either live long lives: Charlie Chaplin 88, Milton Berle 93, Bob Hope 100, George Burns 100, Sid Caesar 91 worked beyond retirement age.
    Carl Reiner 91, Mel Brooks 87, Bob Newhart 84 and Mort
    Sahl 86 still hard at it. The next comdedic generation
    discovered the drugs and booze circuit: Chris Farley, John Belushi, Andy Kaufman, Lenny Bruce, Robin Williams, Richard Pryor: or bad luck- Gilda Radnor and John Ritter. So it is
    with the funny among us. We ponder other occupations and
    their mortality peculiarities.

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    1. John Candy although that was apparently a weight problem. I always liked John Ritter as he was not a political comedian. Gone way too soon.

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  6. Last year was also a bad year for musicians. David Bowie, George Michael, Glenn Frey among others. This year sees Chuck Berry gone, arguably the most influential of the rock n roll age.

    There isn't much argument from the GOP about how much power Trump has on his own. I think this whole Syria thing is a ploy to get attention off the Russia scandal. At the same time he's crying over civilians he's refusing to let in refugees. A bit of a contradiction there. But where, if anywhere, is a real and authentic Trump? He goes where the ratings are.

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    1. Keith and Mick keep rocking on even though they look like something out of a George Romero movie.

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  7. Longevity- politicians Alf Landon and Strom Thurmond lived to be 100; John & Robert Kennedy, quite a bit younger. Military service is risky- Custer 47, Alexander the Great 32
    Joan of Arc 19, Nathan Hale 21. Yet in the extremely hazardous German submarine service, one Richard Hardegan,
    U-Boat commander, survived until 104. Pocahantas lived to
    21, Cleopatra to 39, like Caligula 28, a victim of Roman
    'justice'. Lady Jane Grey would-be English queen executed
    at 16..Jesus at 33 and Billy the Kid gunned down at 21.
    Fame and age are not related.

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  8. 27 seems to be an extremely risky time of life. Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison. Keith Richards looks like the CryptKeeper but he's going strong. I saw a meme on facebook that said 'every time you light a cigarette God takes one hour of your life and gives it to Keith Richards'. Truly the day he goes is going to be a sad one.

    Fame does seem to be more guaranteed when one dies at a young age. Look at James Dean or the crash that took out Richie Valens and the Big Bopper and Buddy Holly. It seems as though the fact of the death births the legend.

    I went through a period of my life where I was reasonably certain I wouldn't live to see 25. Thankfully it was just another time I was completely wrong about stuff.

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  9. Some theoretical physicists have a new conception of death. When you die you immediately get shifted to a parallel reality and don't really know you died. Some YouTubers have picked up on this. At first you go it's wacky then well ya know...BB might have passed ten years ago but he loves posting comments. You keep on doing your thing.

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  10. Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and the LaBomba Kid played my
    hometown a week before 'the music died'. I was a HS senior,
    but stayed home (26 below that night). Fournier's Ballroom,
    big deal in 1959. So big, that to this day, and impersonator group plays Eau Claire to
    standing only crowds. I have nieces and nephews and their
    little kids that always go and are still great fans (and an
    old HS friend who sang Buddy Holly songs, had Buddy Holly
    glasses and drove and old Buddy Holly car until the day he died) So, while I can't say I was there, I always remember
    those guys and their songs.

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  11. It always seems like the best talents die way before their time. I often think what other things Rod Serling would have churned out. It wouldn't have been crap.

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  12. I thought you were gonna comment on the we're-all-dead-theory. Only problem is why are we still clocking in?

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  13. We aren't all dead. You don't die, anyway, you go on to a new body and a new life. Besides if you're dead how can you keep on posting?

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  14. Like the chef guy says nobody really knows where the dead go? Do you report to the auditorium as a group? Do you find yourself wandering a lovely field and you don't know why? The guy on YouTube made me laugh but I just put it away in my intellectual pantry.

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    1. I'm still posting. I'll ask the Dr. at my physical next month and report back if he concludes I've been
      dead for years and operating in a different dimension.
      Of course I feel alive and act alive, but YouTube may
      be smarter than me.

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    2. I'm waiting for a mortician to post on bodies and their fates; at least they are up on hands on stuff.
      Soul stuff is hardly hands on, ya know?

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    3. Post-singularity, we will be able to transfer our brain contents to a Z-wave computerized robot. While
      our bones turn to dust, we will have eternal electronic life...Lost In Civilization, year 2950
      and colonoscopies will be a thing of the distant past. :)

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    4. Maybe the doctor's dead too.

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    5. Pondering the scientific method which is basically the book I'm holding in my hands is reality. It can be touched felt measured read the pages torn out and thrown against the wall but it is real. Same thing with a 'fridge a car but everything else either doesn't exist or is a matter of faith. Useful but limited imo.

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  15. Hot topic at reddit at the moment but creepy in alot of opinions. Me and alot of folk thought Louie Anderson passed some time back. Another fat comic dead. Had a fairly strong impression he died, not a huge story but a news item. Apparently according to reddit still alive. As usual I blame Kardashian informational overload.

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    1. Was thinking of my reputation as sort of a de-bunker.
      In this very same dimension are people who de-bunk
      evolution, climate change, theoretical physics, agnostics, government, etc. I respond to those as
      a de-bunker of their de-bunking. Of course they respond with a re-de-bunking. No one listens or understands and there is soon a re-de-re-bunk. Is
      there a reddit thread on that and/or is it similar
      to the inevitable Godwins Law? Whatever happened to
      Occam's Razor...or has that been de-bunked? Color me
      confused.

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    2. Wikipedia has several pages on the Scientific Method. Basically a process consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and
      modification of hypotheses. In street terms, it
      is why Oak Ridge never had a mushroom cloud overhead, while meth labs routinely explode and burn. You are right in that the method rests on
      the observable and measurable and is ineffective in
      understanding the spiritual and mystical ponderings of the homo sapiens. Presumably, the powerful tool
      called logic, much used in the sciences, could be
      applied to the unknown, unseen, immeasurable entities we believe in without knowing why, but seems to produce little result. It is like the old
      game '20 questions': is it bigger than a breadbox?
      Is it a vegetable? We played that game at supper with the kids for years. It requires organization and logic without even knowing it. Now, the question becomes- what is the opposite of the Scientific Method?

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    3. Well for you it's the GOP. There's a part in the Apostle's Creed at Mass that God created the visible and the invisible. The scientific method would seem to leave that out. Saty and I think about these other things which are probably not testable.

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    4. Some are saying Occam's Razor is overrated in our complex world. Debunking - I just seem some as having a need to debunk. It's like if the Empire State Building disappeared overnight most would go that's weird. The debunker might go it was never there in the first place. Debunkers never say we don't know. Skepticism is a bias imo although a healthy one.

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    5. "...visible and invisible.." is part of the Nicene
      Creed and does not appear in the Apostle's Creed.
      De-bunk me. :)

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    6. Writing off the top of my head again. Apostles Creed is shorter but I always liked that passage. It's almost quantum.

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  16. Quandary - researching Worldwide Hum again and it more accurately describes my symptoms almost precisely. The nature of the noise, times of day etc. Mention this to a doctor and they fall back on ent/bad nerve stuff almost treating it like a fringe topic. Just trying to cut to the chase is all.

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    1. I suspect a lot of patients with miserable, but ill defined symptoms get little help from the medical community. My wife's recent energy loss, which has a number of possible causes, is accompanied by a phantom symptom she calls 'wonkiness' as in "I feel sort of wonky". That is not in the physician reference manual. Same way with Lymes: I heard from
      Swiss relatives last week, it is cropping up in the
      Alps countryside where it is termed borreliosis. There are 52 known species of Borrelia. 21 are members of the Lyme disease group, 29 belong to the relapsing fever group, and two are members of a third. For what ever reason, these spirochete prokaryotes have moved from their endemic animal infections to humans, where there are a wide range
      of mild to severe symptoms. Ever feel wonky?

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    2. RE: the Worldwide Hum, we not the latest news discusses some hypotheses and provides some recent links. If sensitive instruments pick it up, the question is
      why do only a few people constantly hear it. IMO,
      it may be one of those things that has multiple
      (some interactive, others not) causes. If you ever
      get to Antarctica, I'd be interested if the noise goes away. Yes, there are chef jobs there. :)

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    3. Wonkiness...fluorescent lighting is the worst for me. Didn't always be that way but as soon as I walk into Walmart let's say I feel totally different and not in a good way. A form of infernal lighting imo.

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    4. The Hum...if only 2-10% of any population hears it it doesn't constitute a public health issue and Charles Schumer doesn't talk about it. IMO it's a result of the Industrial Age. Doubt Lewis and Clark heard it.

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  17. The Hum may be proof that you're either from another dimension or should be. Why should only a few people hear it if it's worldwide? Maybe it's your superpower. Maybe you're an alien dropped off on this planet as a baby (like Kal-El....Superman) and have just been hovering on the edge of the dimension all along. Debunk that. LOL.

    The Nicene Creed; I am currently still in Volume 2 of my book reading much about heresies, Irenaeus, Origen, and Tertullian. There was a very interesting chart with the evolution of the Apostles Creed and the different ways it was written before they settled on what we have now. It really has made me think about how much of the Catholic faith is revealed and how much is just burecratic (I have tried to spell that word right three times and it can just sit there now wrong for all I care) statements from a centralized authority interpreting what it speculates about (and the word speculative comes up very frequently as it relates to the formulation of doctrines). It contrasts sharply with my own belief set which basically brings with it the revealed teachings and strongly rejects any attempt to speculate, improvise or otherwise interpret. It's an interesting thing to me to see how they contrast in their approach to doctrine. Philosophical speculation is specifically condemned in our system, actually, so as I read about Origen and Justin Martyr and how they speculated on different issues and tried in theoretical ways to resolve them it strikes me as pretty weird. Just my take on it. This really is a good book(s) and the bibliographies are pretty stunning. Considering he wrote it before the Internet and Wiki it's amazing the resources he had at his command, not to mention a lot of multi-lingual skills.

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    1. Not untypical of the formative arguments during the
      first half millennium, Origen's views, while creative,
      merging nascent Christian pre-dogma with Greek philosophy, and still admired- he ran afoul of the
      hierarchy. The Synod of Constantinople banned him on
      15 heteroclite beliefs:
      "If anyone does not anathematise Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, as well as their impious writings, as also all other heretics already condemned and anathematised by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and by the aforesaid four Holy Synods and [if anyone does not equally anathematise] all those who have held and hold or who in their impiety persist in holding to the end the same opinion as those heretics just mentioned: let him be anathema"
      Most of the indicted were great thinkers who contributed to the growing dogma, but IMO became victims of 'professional jealousy'. We suspect Jesus
      would have been confounded by the long running trinitarian squabbles having been described some hundreds of years after as 'begotten, not made' in
      existence since the beginning of time, the son of God, but also God, the holy spirit having impregnated the Jewish girl Mary. Until Constantine, converts were few, believing the then Christians worshiped at
      least three Gods. It is ironic that those fundamentalist Christians who deny biological evolution have not a wit of understanding of the
      evolution of their own beliefs.

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    2. The only thing I know about Origen is that he subscribed or was he the founder of the doctrine of universal salvation namely that everyone including the Devil would be saved in the end.

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    3. You are correct. Universal salvation was on of the earliest constructs and was more or less orthodox until St. Augustine, who countered with Eternal Damnation, which has been more or less orthodox since. So much did Auggie relish the horrors of Hell, he had to be persuaded by other theologians to at least show mercy to unbaptized infants. When
      limbo derived. IMO though anachronistic, I think
      Augustine was a Calvanist. :)

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    4. Even though I think the existence of Hell is perfectly logical (it would seem to me that certain people should go there) visions of certain saints and Fatima itself portray God as shoveling boatloads of people there. God as an insane tyrant. What the visions leave out is why are they there? what is the reason? Trying to make sense out of Hell.

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    5. Lots of hellish explanations . So, with tongue in cheek, we note Bishop Sheen's admonition..
      "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality." Who did you vote for again? :)

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    6. The classic Hobbesian Choice.

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    7. Hell, Sheol, the River Styx, Naraka, 21 Hindu Hells (serially progressive, I think), Jahannam,
      Kibalba, Hades...bleak afterlife places. Valhalla
      sounds pretty good-free beer, lots of stories.

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    8. I'm guessing Hell is for people who feel like they have nothing to be sorry for. However does an eternity in the place serve a purpose? If Hell is underneath the earth (Kola Superdeep Borehole anyone?) then when Earth is no more where goes Hell?

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    9. The Rowan Atkinson link is pretty funny. No end to lawyer jokes.

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  18. I love religious discussion. I'm just eating this right up.

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  19. I know sincerely religious people who say God made kittens but why did He make creatures like pythons? That 25-year old family man in Indonesia who was attacked by a reticulated python, suffocated and swallowed whole. Who made the creature? One half of Nature is soft and cuddly, the other half vicious and brutal. Chew on that.

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  20. God made all the creatures. When Lord Vishnu lies down He rests on Ananta Sesa, which has the form of a huge cobra with many hoods. Everything is there in the spiritual world. When it gets reflected here it becomes perverted. In an interesting note it is not a sin to kill a snake.

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  21. I think that ties in with the Isaiah 11:6 passage re the lion and the lamb lying down together. That's in a perfect world. Why do serpents have such a bad reputation?

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  22. 'And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered.'
    Genesis 9:2 Biologically paraphrasing the ancient observation, we note that all creatures great and small,
    possess and instinctive fear of man..even a reticulated python prefers to silently slip away in fear; the tick that
    gave you Limes was doing its blood sucking thing and the transfer of burgdorfi into your bloodstream and incidental
    accident. Probably the few exceptions involve the mothers of young animals (Grizzlies, Moose, perhaps apes) and the
    human influenced old chimps that go berserk. Crocodiles
    are probably the greatest killers of humans; not in rage or anger, but hunger for things that lurk along the river bank.
    The woodland creatures fear man, he kills; sometimes as a
    pastime or hobby. Probably should have left him off the ark?

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    1. One version of Isaiah 11:6 has "and then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb" (weird). Supposed changes to biblical passages are a hot topic with evangelicals saying Satan/the Antichrist are causing it. Luke 19:27 has Christ saying "But as for those my enemies, who would not have me reign over them, bring them hither, and kill them before me." I would agree this is an inversion of everything Jesus taught. Others say there are so many versions and translations of the Good Book what matter?

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    2. The standard exegesis for that verse is based on the preceding "‘Take the mina from him, and give it to the one who has the ten minas.’ 25 And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten minas!’ 26 ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away." Which refers to the wicked banker of
      the parable...and by quite stretch, to the judgement of God. One of the parables that really
      don't make much sense (like the grape pickers that showed up and the end of the day and were paid the same as those that had been laboring since sun-up). May we term those the "Wells Fargo Verses"?

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    3. That's the thing. What is the point of the parable? It goes against everything Christ taught. As for the lion/lamb controversy there's all the overwhelming amount of religious artwork depicting a lion and a lamb not a wolf. Also the old guy sitting in a rocker in the 1941 movie "Sergeant York" reading Isaiah 11:6 and saying lamb.

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    4. The old guy in the movie saying lion and lamb and not wolf (early morning edit).

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    5. Aside from the Redditization of the phrase, the word
      lion appears mostly in the old testament, referring to strength, power, ferocity, and primarily as the totem of the Tribe of Judah. It is again referenced in Revelations with respect to that tribe. Wolves, the other predatory species in that area in those times, were more commonly mentioned as the enemy of the shepherd and the sheep flocks. The wolf was also mentioned in the OT as the totem of the Tribe of Bemjamin. We surmise, the lion, being also admired by the many statues of the related semetic
      peoples like the Assyrians and Babylonians, was the
      Persian Lion, probably very rare in Palestine; so
      the wolf would make sense, and is indeed the subject of the analogy of peace- the wolf and the lamb...predator and prey, neutralized by God. But the idea is the same, whether lion or wolf and we proceed to the world of alt-fact, Mandelaism and truthiness. IMO

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    6. Wolf has negative connotations as opposed to the noble lion and lamb of course can also refer to Christ. Many evangelicals whose life is Scripture, it's what they do, remember the lion and the lamb and many were taken aback by the apparent change. In fairness I give some weight to their words.

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    7. Seems probable that the all inclusive phrases from
      Isaiah 11:6 gave rise to the lion/lamb:
      "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." In fairness, I agree,
      but the exact quote is as above. If the bible were
      arranged with the succinct and exact construction as the periodic table of the elements-no problem.
      You never hear Lithium mixed up with the noble gases. Even in Reddit.

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    8. If an evangelical pastor whose whole day-to-day is the Bible told me in the old KJV Bibles there were no such words and phrases as "stuff", "piss", "unicorn", "matrix", "two women grinding together" and "two men in a bed", that they were nowhere to be found but now there they are I'd tend to lean fairly strongly in the professional's favor.

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  23. There are a whole group of Christians who believe you can ONLY be saved through the KJV and that all other versions are of Satan. It begs me to ask the question what about all those folks prior to the 1600s who didn't have the KJV? Anyway I am not up on all the modern translations but apart from the Psalms I was never a big fan of the KJV because I couldn't understand it. Language is a living thing and it does change over time. Things and phrases that made sense to Shakespeare wouldn't necessarily mean the same thing today. The point really is though that with all the translating and paraphrasing going on is the meaning really staying intact? There are two ways to look at that, one is that if it's God's Bible presumably He would make sure it stays intact. The second way is the one I lean on and that's most of these groups who translate et al have a specific agenda they're putting across and one single word can change the meaning of an entire paragraph. I'm not saying Satan but I am saying agenda. So from that standpoint maybe I can understand the KJV only folks, though they seem a bit on the narrowminded end to me. I think this argument could equally be put out against any scriptures. In our books the format is to have the Sanskrit verse and then a word by word translation of the verse, and then the translated verse. Imo it helps to ensure that there isn't much mucking about with multiple meanings and really there's a whole vetting process about from whom doth thy translation come? because you have to have certain credentials just to be able to publish this stuff and have it taken seriously.

    I just love yall.

    The day before yesterday as I was sitting outside chanting a fox ran across the yard. Did I already tell you that? It was very pretty, chasing a bird. Kind of futile but there it went.

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  24. Two other thoughts come to mind. One, the Jehovahs Witnesses use the New World Translation of the Greek Scriptures. NOBODY else uses that version. Now why is that?

    Second, J. Geils (of the J. Giles Band) died. He was 71.

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  25. J. Geils Band toured heavily in the 70's but didn't hit it big commercially until the 80's. "Centerfold" - great video. Watching it I detect just a bit of Western or Country or something. Hearkens back to my school days. Sad:)

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  26. Maybe the Bible is like the Constitution. You have your originalists, your free interpreters, a living document. There's quite a stir about the changes to certain passages and I agree it might point to an agenda. BB is the laidback debunker type who could probably make sense of it all.

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    1. There is a fringe Christian community in S Idaho which
      has been in the news. Not Christian Scientists, but
      they believe prayer can heal their little kids. So far
      it hasn't worked well, and their community of little graves is filled with burst appendix, acute meningitis, internal bleedout from compound fractures, etc. So every year the legislature considers doing something to protect the children;
      every year they conclude that is interfering with religious rights. IMO, an example of too much, too
      blind, belief...pretty sure they don't believe in
      evolution or global warming (those other 'fake' concerns. Kind of a dilemma-who to protect, the believer parents or their dying kids. BTW, your bible/constitution analogy seems right: we even some
      background on those writings, except the Good Book
      has no Amendments, other than a few key changes that
      scholars (and Saty) recognize. A key to that is language, and when a word shows up in a scripture of
      700 BC that wasn't invented until 300 BC is sort of
      lights up for those folks. Another useful comparison
      is the laws of a musket in the cabin and slaves on
      the plantation age problematically, as does the ox
      in the mud and the occupation of Roman legions. Odd,
      I was thinking of the book of Job this morning. I worked for a guy that was Job-like, hard working, enthusiastic, companionable. But everything he did
      seemed to go sour. Lost his wife to a real estate
      salesman, lost his job, started his own company,
      it went bankrupt, his boat sank and he died of cancer
      before 50. Doesn't sound like poor old Job?

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    2. That last part interests me. You don't consent to your own existence. God makes you and Life is supposed to be a gift and yet some people seem born under an unlucky star like tragedy is their birthright. Googled once Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science. From what I can gather disease is an illusion and you should be able to heal yourself. Your right leave the kids out of it.

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    3. Big med probably doesn't get rich of Christian Scientists. On the other hand, they reveal the
      phenomena of the hypochondriac, who contributes more
      to Big Med than necessary. Got an in-law aunt that
      brags of 52 major surgeries (even dying during three of them). Meanwhile, I'm 5 years younger than
      her, have spent a total of 2 days in the hospital and never had surgery. Call me medically cheap.

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  27. The 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association' does not list
    Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSbP), although there seem to
    be recognizable cases. Because of legal problems and disagreement among expert witnesses, Munchausen Syndrome by
    Proxy (MSbP) has been replaced by the condition known as
    Fabricated or Induced Illness by Carer(FIIC). But that is
    not in the book either. You heard it here first.

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    1. It's like they got depression broken down into subcategories which often overlap. One form is less severe than clinical depression but more longer-lasting. Fancy name for that. Munchhausen by Proxy, we recently had a case right here in Westchester.

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  28. Didn't know Eddie Murphy had an older brother, didn't know he was a well-known comic. Charles Murphy aged 57 died of leukemia. What dimension am I from?

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  29. I didn't know he had a brother either. I don't get out much.

    Called Directv to see if I could negotiate a lower price for our tv service, didn't do bad, moved to a lower package that has the (few) channels we watch and saved $40 a month although it brings with it a 1 year commitment. I went with it, the girl thought she won me over (because I started the conversation with wanting to cancel) and I think I did pretty well, everyone's happy in the end. Scott wanted to cancel it altogether and I wasn't too happy with that so this is a compromise all the way around, less money but we still have tv. Honestly we could have gone back to a digital antenna (we got 11 channels) but I would really miss the NFL Network.

    In news, I understand (from hearsay, I haven't seen it myself) that NC is looking to overturn same sex marriage. I guess they're pissed off about HB2 and need to find a new way to marginalize people. Also, new state employees hired after 2/1/18 will no longer have a pension. I mean, that's the only reason to work for the state to begin with (and the rest of the benefits are good) so I anticipate our staffing problems will only get worse. Our new democratic governor has his work cut out for him.

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  30. Hardly any news coverage that I saw about J. Geil's death except on my CNN app. Lots of coverage on Eddie Murphy's comic brother that we didn't know about.

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  31. Gov Bentley of AL resigned rather than be impeached. He was
    elected by the moral majority, turned out to be all moral talk, but not the walk. We note:
    "But others said it had become clear that for conservative Christians, the cultural and political issues that define modern conservative politics mattered at least as much as moral piety. That was why, they suggested, Mr. Bentley was able to cling to his job for nearly 13 months after his reputation as a paragon of probity came under fire.
    “The idea that moral hypocrisy hurts you among evangelical voters is not true, if you’re sound on all of the fundamentals,” said Wayne Flynt, an ordained Baptist minister and one of Alabama’s pre-eminent historians. “Being sound on the fundamentals depends on what the evangelical community has decided the fundamentals have become. At this time, what is fundamental is hating liberals, hating Obama, hating abortion and hating same-sex marriage.” They think Jesus was for guns, too.

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    1. That's a broad brush. Liberals hate conservatives, hated Bush Jr., love abortion, embrace fisting...how did you feel when I said that?

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    2. Same as I felt before you said it. We presume that is taught in one of the many atheist cathedrals by
      some foam-at-the-mouth TV non-evangelical guru?
      Possibly Rev Rachel Maddow?

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  32. In the 'who cares?' Trivia Dept-
    Another block buster movie is already on TV:
    Navy Seals VS Zombies..no mention if it was five star.
    88 Year old WalMart greeter was fired. A wild turkey got by him, apparently headed for the bird seed department.
    Making the stuff that goes into ammo primers continues hazardous: Lake City Army Ammo Plant reported one killed and
    four injured in explosion while transferring the stuff. It is typically placed in conductive bins and moved on a cart called an 'Angel Buggy'.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Watched a PBS thing on the 'Epic of Gilgamesh'. Written in
    Sumerian cuneiform 5000 years ago in Uruk on the Euphrates:
    a religious precursor of the old testament, flood story and
    numerous passages bemoaning the human condition of birth, life and death. Writing on clay tablets, the smartphones of
    those days, fell into disuse and Gilgamesh was lost for 2000 years, until discovered by archeologists early in the
    1900s. The story, like the bible, Koran etc. fails to give
    a satisfying view of death, other than the obvious that it
    seems a part of life, eg. every living thing becomes a dead
    thing. We ponder the archeological interpretation in the far
    future, when someone digs up a fossilized cronut....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My anxiety about Life stems from the absurdist school you could say. First off it's too short and a tortoise lives longer. 78 years say is not enough time to cram it all in and make the right decisions. Time is like an existential problem and it flows faster the more you age. Nothing seems logical to me but at least some quantum physicists are now saying when we die we move into another timestream. Faith teaches heaven and hell so there's a conflict here.

      Delete
    2. You asked me once if I thought the Mandela Effect is a flash-in-the-pan. I don't think it is. First off it hasn't been resolved to everyone's satisfaction but I think it goes deeper. Many people are dissatisfied with their lives so the idea of other maybe more positive timestreams offers some hope. I think the skeptics and they're abundant on reddit just accept life as it comes and so just chalk up even the weirdest examples as false memory. I still cringe when I walk through the supermarket aisle and see Depend diapers. Somehow Haas Avocadoes made more sense but now apparently it's Hass (rhymes with Ass) and I can't blame people;)

      Delete
    3. I agree, the birth, life, death is hard to accept:
      there is in innate will to live we see even in injured animals. Most of us like it (Gilgamesh says
      embrace and enjoy it, Kervorkian says if it is too
      awful, end it, etc. IMO, the concern is valid, but
      over concern leads to things like new age glass pyramids, sceancing with Uncle Louie, Scientology,
      cryogenic coffins...sort of absurd conclusions that
      perhaps make our current good fortune of living a
      bit more miserable, almost paranoid. Conversely, if
      that provides comfort to some, I have no problem.
      We codfish are pragmatic. Just saying.

      Delete
    4. I agree. Scientology actually started off ok if you do the background but with the Mandela Effect there is at least an appeal to science in the form of quantum mechanics. You might say the theoretical physicists started it all but when the average person expands on it they become mental not the physicists who still get their accolades. There are people who remember Billy Graham's funeral on tv which does not jibe with the historical records. I've never had that happen to me but it must be an extremely creepy experience. Let the debate/discussion run its course. It's not going to be short-circuited by sarcasm and putdowns as some of the redditors are trying to do.

      Delete
  34. Pondering how many famous people have died of some form of cancer? Many who would still be with us. I haven't googled it but I'm guessing it's a fairly high number.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Seemingly high incidence of pancreatic cancer...Hubert Humphrey, Frank Church, Micheal Landon, Patrick Swazee

      Delete
    2. oops! hit the publish button..premature exportation.
      ..Donna Reed, Wernher von Braun, Joan Crawford, Steve Jobs, Juliet Prouse, Sally Ride, Rex Harrison,
      Fernando Lamas, Ben Gazzara, Count Basie, Jack Benny, Ann Francis. OK, BB now hit 'publish'

      Delete
    3. Statistically it would seem unacceptable, mathematically odd if you're slightly buzzed. Who do we blame Fate?

      Delete
  35. When I first read Dianetics my thought was 'how do people believe this nonsense'. It's interesting how many celebrities in particular embrace Scientology. Is it because it's an expensive religion (to obtain higher levels one has to pay huge sums of money) and thus by default elitist or is there something further that just tends to attract those types of personalities? Leah Remini grew up in Scientology and is currently on a crusade against it. As far as I'm concerned L. Ron Hubbard was a science fiction writer and that's about what Scientology is.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I read Leah Remini's book and now Scientology is on a crusade against her. I too read "Dianetics" and found it the most ponderous read of my life. Though on dubious scientific footing from the outset (the whole engram thing) to be fair I think the intent was good. Who can be against releasing people's traumatic memory traces and liberating them so they can lead the lives of full human potential they were meant to lead? After that the movement began the bizarre evolving into what we have today of which Tom Cruise is now the de facto head. Intergalactic warlords, volcanoes, thetans and like you said why so many celebrities?

      Delete
  36. L. Ron Hubbard was a weird man. So is his religion. So are his followers. Other than that....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well I don't think you need to worry that much. Last I googled they have pretty low numbers worldwide and falling. They also don't behead folk and blow up churches. Weird? w/o a doubt.

      Delete
    2. No, they don't seem jihad violent. But they tend to
      harass former members in sinister ways. Weird.

      Delete
    3. & effective ways. Critics too. Be careful in the diner.

      Delete
  37. So I was on YouTube before watching a Mandela Effect video about all the new animal species from our merged realities. Two species highlighted are the star-nosed mole and the narwhal both of which I remember as a kid. After about 50 species the guy goes he doesn't remember any of them. Neither do I/I'm not a zoologist. Another video called "We're Already Dead (But That's OK)". YT is a blast.

    ReplyDelete
  38. I still don't understand the Mandela Effect.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Neither does Mandela!

      Delete
    2. I can't explain it. The best place to go is r/Mandela Effect on reddit. It gets tedious after awhile. The best way to explain it is if you woke one morning and Mr. Clean is black then people tell you it's always been that way. You google it and wiki it and sure enough he's black and there's no solid proof he was ever white. OK that's an extreme example;)

      Delete
    3. It's usually attributed to collective false memory. There are endless examples. The only fly in the ointment is what if our memories are poor but not that poor?

      Delete
    4. My guess is most of the Mandela examples are light
      culture type stuff, not family, not work and day to
      day needed memory. Hence they are shuffled off to
      the less important (non reinforced) portion of our
      memory. Could our memories be poor in that portion, but not that poor in what our brain regards as more
      important, that which is constantly reinforced and
      even dreamed about? In the Mandela paradigm, you
      should always remember your Dad's name as Rudy and
      not Bud, but quite possible mis-recall some line from an old movie or song. Not to de-bunk, just explain.

      Delete
    5. My pov has evolved to this. Probably most of the ME's that the redditors post can be explained by just what you said. However a small % at this time can't be so easily explained (e.g. Dolly's braces) so I shuffle that off to the "weird" category. It becomes a kind of denial if you will. The examples of the "effects" are so endless that imo for the skeptics to have the final conclusive say our collective memories would have to be extremely poor. My position is our memories can be poor but we still have a functioning memory that suffices. There's a strong resistance to putting the quantum option on the table. Most people remember Rodin's the Thinker as having a fist and not the laid-back hand. Even if explained by psychology many people find it strange. We both agree there's way too much junk in the mental attic. As long as you remember April 15 you're good.

      Delete
    6. Perhaps. Nothing is impossible; except a tinnitus cure. But to reinforce my tentative hypothesis above, we note experimental neuroimaging experiments investigating memory and the brain.
      The hard/soft storage termed 'transient memory':
      "Two regions of the brain showed greater activity when people made abstract/concrete judgments about words they later remembered compared with those they later forgot. One was in the inner part of the temporal lobe, a part of the brain that, when damaged, can result in severe memory loss. The other region whose activity predicted subsequent memory was located further forward, in the lower left part of the vast territory known as the frontal lobes.

      This finding was not entirely unexpected, because previous neuroimaging studies indicated that the lower left part of the frontal lobe works especially hard when people elaborate on incoming information by associating it to what they already know.

      These results were exciting because there is something fascinating, almost science fiction-like, about peering into a person's brain in the present and foretelling what she will likely remember and forget in the future. But beyond an exercise in scientific fortune-telling, these studies managed to trace some of the roots of transience to the split-second encoding operations that take place during the birth of a memory. What happens in frontal and temporal regions during those critical moments determines, at least in part, whether an experience will be remembered for a lifetime, or drop off into the oblivion of the forgotten."
      ...that is backed by experiment, while the quantum,
      dimension, alt-universe explanation remains
      strictly conjectural ...but fun.
      Reference
      But you have probably seen all that in the Reditt,
      er Reedit, er Reddit, I forget the place. :)




      Delete
    7. Hordes of James Bond fans clearly remember Dolly wearing braces when she and Jaws fell in love. He smiled and she smiled thus the joke. There may be a neuroscientific explanation for such a massive visual confabulation like an autoscript in the brain but I haven't heard of any. Watch "Moonraker" now and Dolly has no braces. A slide? My friend said a friend recently sent him a text message and it didn't show up until two weeks later. Maybe we've gone quantum.

      Delete
    8. On the flipside I worked in a public library for six years and always remember the BerenSTAIN Bears but I'm a weirdo that way. Had a mammal field guide as a kid and was always fascinated/repulsed by the star-nosed mole. Where the heck did I come from???

      Delete
  39. I've long held there must be a fairly high % of psychos on Facebook and to a lesser extent on other social media. The recent FB killer who shot an older man in Cleveland and streamed the murder in real-time on FB Live then killed himself when the police were closing in on him raises the issues there's alot of downsides with social media. It gives the losers a sense of empowerment, the psychos their 15 minutes of fame. It's an instant forum for grievances, resentments and other darknesses and ulcers of the soul. Too many times social media is anti-social media.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anthony Weiner & Facebook Live. Now that's a dangerous combination.

      Delete
    2. The concept made Zuckerman a rich kid.

      Delete
    3. I avoid media which requires a password anymore;
      upside is NSA doesn't monitor landlines anymore, blogs are fading and snail mail is passé. Also good,
      colonoscopy is not a monitored word for Homeland Security, Russian Hackers or Wikileaks.

      Delete
    4. Zuckerberg. I read my e-mail and thought you were talking about the publisher of the NY Daily News.

      Delete
    5. Zuckersomthing; either Mandela Effect or that part of my frontal lobe reserved for stuff that is disinteresting to the rest of my lobe. It's like those password questions, "What was your mother's maiden name?" "What was your dog's favorite food?"
      "When did you learn to play the glockenspiel?" My
      garbage lobe is notorious. I took a internet survey
      the other day. Said list your favorite current movies from one to five. I had to leave it blank.
      Said list the next five upcoming movies you want to see. I had to leave it blank. How's about I forward
      those surveys on to you? They never ask about the
      solid part of my frontal lobe. What did Jean-Francios Chompillion do? Why did Glenn T. Seaborg
      win the Nobel Prize in physics? What was the 1500BC
      Babylonian interiation method used for? We ancients
      are useless throwbacks. I'm telling ya.

      Delete
    6. I think we all agree our memories are shit. Why do some bosses have such good memories? They'll remember what you did last Tuesday two weeks ago and you don't remember what you did yesterday.

      Delete
  40. I was wondering what would happen if we passed the event horizon? Would Anthony Weiner become president with Judge Judy as VP?

    ReplyDelete
  41. My limited understanding of theo phys places most, if not all, event horizons at the edge of a black hole. But, given
    high order statistical mechanics, graviton theory and the singularity, the possibilities appear infinite. So we could
    posit Steven Hawking is governor of Alaska and Sarah Palin
    lecturing on space-time physics during the first millionth
    of a second of the Big Bang. If we do a Gaussian Elimination
    and change the sign of the right Hamiltonian Operator, your
    blog will still be going. With thousands of post singularity
    comments.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What are the odds of Earth one day going into a black hole and coming out thru the other side at the white hole? Sort of a cosmic colonoscopy.

      Delete
    2. Maybe that is what Mr. Spock and Scotty do with their transporter. Never thought of black holes having another side, given their concentric gigantic
      gravity suck. But, the math probably leaves an outlet to an anti-universe. There, broccoli would be a delicacy, ice cream served hot, liberals would
      be pro-life and the workforce would consist of penguins. Or not.

      Delete
    3. Thought Experiment - Let's say the authorities were fairly certain we were going to be sucked into a supermassive black hole within the next 3-5 years would they inform the public-at-large? Global panics and rioting ensues OR do nothing and let it ride, see how it goes. Pee Wee Herman becomes Sec'y Gen of the UN and that's it and NASA and gov't officials breathe a huge sigh of relief. The public just finds it weird.

      Delete
    4. Given what we know of O'Reilly's affairs, the over familiarity with the Kardashians, etc. That would be
      a hard secret to cover up. The top secret scientists
      would feel compelled to speak out...but Julian Assange would publish a full release before Pee Wee
      could give his UN speech. Global panics and riots would be tame, IMO: rape, pillage, mass suicides,
      a full confession from Trump, nuclear weapons in the
      hands of Yonkers gangs and Amazon selling expensive
      anti-black hole shelters delivered by drones would be more like it. Did I mention Pat Robinson recommending sacrifice of the firstborn? A dark thought experiment..only winner was Amazon.Com...

      Delete
    5. On YouTube just now to brush up on the topic. Apparently our Milky Way System has millions of stellar black holes and there's one supermassive black hole right now in Sagitarrius A hurtling through space at literally millions mph. Then somebody else says you have to be fairly close to one to even be sucked into it. Talking about Yonkers gangs but the cosmic neighborhood we're in can make one nervous so it would seem the odds of eventually going into one would somehow be more than not going into one but the pros seem to say not to worry or don't talk about it. With this supermassive one right now they got something like 12 radio telescopes around the world set up to gather data to probably be released sometime in 2018. Pat Robinson?

      Delete
    6. The consensus would be you would die if you fell into one. Z-man would probably be stretched into a long streamer a mile long but Hawking thinks all information that goes into a black hole would not be ultimately destroyed but somehow preserved like in a black hole library?

      Delete
  42. I'm here, yall are just over my head again. I understand NASA had a program to try to deter a near earth asteroid but that project has to be shelved because of Trump's budget cuts. He could probably fund it if he'd give up golfing every weekend.

    I've made it into Volume 3 of my book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So if I understand you correctly Trump doesn't mind if an asteroid hits the earth.

      Delete
    2. Haven't heard of any impending asteroid collision, but makes sense to work on the technology for if and when it happens. Does Trump mind? Nope: blame Obama. Especially if Mara Laga is ground zero.

      Delete
    3. The tech being what exactly? Is Trump gonna try to nuke one and destroy the Moon?

      Delete
    4. The tech is to intercept the asteroid far away and
      plant nuclear devices to either change it's trajectory of pulverize it. Like James Garner,
      Tommy Lee Jones and Clint Eastwood. Beats standing
      around twittering just before the eastern seaboard
      goes the way of the dinosaur. Just saying.

      Delete
    5. SMBH (Super Massive Black Hole)s discovered to date
      are relatively rare, about one per galaxy. They have been given neutral boring names like SDSS J075819.70+202300.9. Surely these gravitational
      'suckers' need more colorful names? Dunno, maybe
      Big Ass Hoover Upright. Any suggestions?

      Delete
    6. Have to work on that. Definitely something with "vortex" in it. The beauty of YouTube is your average Joe can develop a respectable following by espousing their own personal exotic theories. By around 2005 we were all sucked into a supermassive black hole, we all perished of course but were instantly shifted to a parallel earth and solar system with your mandelas and hums and other effects. Create your own channel. Last one I watched an old grizzled guy kept pinching his nose, scratching his salt and pepper beard and kept telling someone in the background to keep it down. No editing, no polishing, no grooming with a Docker's hair care kit. Just the raw feed.

      Delete
    7. Not to debunk, just observe; if we went through a
      black hole in 2005 we probably would have noticed our
      'spaghettifcation' as we passed the event horizon
      and our remaining atoms getting squished by infinite
      gravity as we approached the center. On the other hand if one was in the process of a colonoscopy and
      its related drug-induced nirvana, they might have missed the whole thing. Just saying.

      Delete
    8. Googling yesterday and learned Stephen Hawking doesn't subscribe to the event horizon anymore but rather the apparent horizon (Saty are you with us?). He also doesn't believe in black holes in the classical sense anymore. Posted some stuff online once. The black hole as everyone knows warps space-time extremely. Would our spaghetti deaths be really drawn out prolonged and excrutiating or extremely quick? Would Trump become Pope?

      Delete
  43. Hate the bosses who don't drink, don't smoke and get 12 hours of sleep a night and then the next day overly alert to every minor thing you're doing wrong. They don't smoke weed, they don't watch porn just come in the next morning taskmastering you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Had a boss one time, bright hardworking guy. They went him to executive school and he came back all fired up. Gave us staff a questionnaire about his management style. We all wrote that he was a micromanager. He was pissed. I was always thankful
      for bosses that just left me alone and reaped the benefits..it ain't that hard.

      Delete
    2. One of the rules of management is to enthusiastically promote the latest Ivory Tower
      directive. Had a boss that would call us together and say "This is more BS they want us to do, smile
      and pretend it makes sense". I liked him.

      Delete
    3. Company people. Micromanagers are the worst because you can't read their minds and they make up rules as they go along. Insomniac managers - weird tantrums out of the blue then they're joking with you two hours later.

      Delete
    4. Rest assured, micromanagers go home at the end of the day and their wives make them clean house.

      Delete
  44. What's the apparent horizon? I think Stephen Hawking is a minor miracle in that he's still alive. It's as if his body is just baggage for that brain. Yes I think the tech was to do something to knock the asteroid off its course but now that project is shelved or will be once the new budget comes out.

    I have a good boss except she is incapable of delegating so she does everything herself. That sounds good on the surface but she resents it so it's really a problem. I keep telling her she shouldn't enable people by doing their jobs for them but she doesn't listen or more accurately I don't think she can change the way she is. I like her a lot but it does get annoying when she's all pissed off that someone didn't do their job because she did it first. Put that hot mess through a black hole.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No idea about the apparent horizon. Have to read it again (and again). I think his point is we talk about the mechanics of these things like established fact. All still highly theoretical. Your boss is like a rare opal.

      Delete
  45. I'd be out 'marching for science' if I could decide on a sign . ..and if my T-shirt that says
    "I'm A Chemist- to save time, let's just assume I'm never
    wrong" hadn't gotten ripped up when I wore it into a cowboy
    bar.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. OK sore point - TINNITUS. Also not everyone trusts CERN.

      Delete
    2. From my scattered reading of National Review in the past they have some real issues with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. My only beef with him is he helped take Pluto's planethood away. Now there's talk of giving it back.

      Delete
    3. He doesn't seem to have the gravitas of Sagan...although considerably more than, say 45.
      Tinnutus; where is Oral Roberts when you need him?
      IMO, diseases and conditions form more rapidly than medicine can keep up with. Who can forget, "That tooth will hafta come out, get the bourbon and my
      pliers?"

      Delete
    4. The Pluto problem is it follows a planetary orbit.
      But, a number of chintzy astroids like 4-Vesta, Ceres and Eris are larger with more mass..to say nothing about some of the large moons on the outer
      planets, Callisto, Io, Europa and Triton. What do
      you call a rock in the right place? It is there,
      it cannot be administratively removed from the system, except by Trump Executive Order.

      Delete
    5. As per wiki "Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer." What's he doing now?

      Delete
    6. You see the thing with Pluto is this. We grew up on the NINE PLANETS. It was in all the HS texts. Let me see how do I put it in liberal terms? It'd be like overturning Roe vs. Wade.

      Delete
    7. Here's the thing with tinnitus. Conventional wisdom says see an ENT and/or neurologist yet there is no cure. How much do you have to pay for "listen to a waterfall"?

      Delete
    8. Wonder if there are a number of causes of tinnitus:
      for example, if it were an auditory nerve sector, it
      could be identified by micro electrical probe and
      fixed by either an incision or tiny jolt, or an inner ear anomaly by micro robotic surgery. Meanwhile until the technology catches up to the
      problem, they try to treat the symptoms. No doubt
      there is some practitioner thinking outside the box.
      The dilemma is: if they can replace Cheney's cold hard heart by a replacement, how come a buzz or
      whine leaves them stumped?

      Delete
    9. Talking to the bakery guy once about the tinnitus. He goes "it's only going to get worse. See a doctor, he'll give you medicine." It's 2017, he was being logical.

      Delete
  46. I just got back from my MIL's in Stuarts Draft VA.

    I am going with the alien theory of tinnitus...if you can hear this mysterious worldwide hum the question becomes why can't we all hear it and that just leads me to the conclusion that you're basically an alien.

    My MIL, who has small cell cancer, is terrified that they're going to cut Medicare. I refrained from pointing out that she's the one who voted for Trump and therefore it's her own fault if they do. To get to her house you have to drive through some pretty depressed areas and you just know they all went for Trump. I guess the thought process was 'Trump hates black people, Muslims and Mexicans as much as I do therefore he's getting my vote'. I don't guess they really bargained for what they've got. Now it's legal to kill hibernating bears. Because that's a pressing economic issue, right? And the UK isn't front of the list for a trade deal, and I guess they're kind of surprised by that. Why are people surprised?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The non-mainstream theories for tinnitus make the most sense at this point. The day they cure cancer I'll march for science. Science also gave us the atom bomb. Religion didn't do that. CERN has openly said they're very interested in extra dimensions and they have some very expensive toys and a yuuuuuuge subatomic atom smasher. We used to have a joke at work. One worker would say to another worker "do you know what you're doing?"

      Delete
    2. Before science there was the Dark Ages. Fun time.

      Delete
    3. & folk died of cancer in both ages;)

      Delete
    4. Proliferation of nuclear weapons - which age?

      Delete
    5. Black Plague (which killed half of the European population), Typhus, Cholera, 30 yr War, 1/3 of
      infants dying before their fifth birthday and a lifespan of 30. Constant Viking raids, Aethelred was unready, teenage Popes, witch burning.
      "most of the great minds during those dark ages . . . were preoccupied with a thousand frivolous questions about abstract and metaphysical being instead of thoroughly investigating Nature or studying man."- Jean la Rond d'Alembert
      But, yeah, no traffic cams.

      Delete
    6. & no Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No BB I don't want to time-travel to the Dark Ages point being Science can be used for good or for evil. Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World", Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" presents the dark side at least as a theme. Why still no cure for cancer? Like Chris Rock once said when did we stop curing diseases. Meanwhile Bill Nye is too busy being political.

      Delete
    7. CERN seems to have a particular fascination with antimatter. Many people seem to have a particular fascination with CERN. First off isn't antimatter dangerous? Dan Brown seemed to think so.

      Delete
    8. Well, Z-Man, there are reasons only 6% of scientists
      admit to being GOP...and others wonder why that is so high. Like Hillary, science has become a target
      for the Breitbart Barbarians and their culpable
      minions. She took the high road and scientists took notice. They prefer not to, but sometimes you
      have to speak up. Trump just OK'd the insecticide
      that has been shown to kill infant humans. Farmers and especially Dow Chemical love it. Mothers and
      the medical community not so much. That is just the tip of the iceberg: Idaho recently removed the topic of global warming from the science curriculum
      despite 80% of residents protesting. Whether the
      data convinces or not, atmospheric physics finds what it finds. Except, Trump is cutting NOAA and EPA..so he can fund his Iron Curtain, which the Mexicans apparently won't pay for. I had given up
      writing congressmen after being informed that a former chemical officer knows nothing compared to
      a politician wanting to send cannon fodder into the desert. My most grievous pet peeve is arrogance
      reinforced with ignorance, which seems to be the
      world we have suddenly been thrust into. Face it,
      ignorant arrogance is even worse than a traffic
      cam running at 140%. I sort of liked the Dan Brown
      stuff, lot of true history sort of twisted into
      fictional drama. Anti-matter bad; particle annihilation into pure energy might be curious when
      an positron meets an electron, but anything larger
      like a truck of matter getting hit by a smart bomb
      of antimatter...Don Brown was right. My son in law
      was at CERN last year. He has stopped glowing.
      Just saying.

      Delete
    9. Wonder how many chronic tinnitus sufferers participated in the global March for Science or am I harping?

      Delete
    10. You make it sound like the GOP believes in the Flat Earth or something. I really don't care how the eggheads vote.

      Delete
    11. If we add the various marches across the US, it looks to be 130-150,000 guessing on the conservative side. Reported tinnitus sufferers in
      this country total 4.1%. That would put the number of marchers with a buzz or hum at 5330-6150. From
      another angle, there are 6.2 million scientists in the country, 4.1% or 254,200 with tinnitus. Either of those figures puts the percentage of scientists
      marching at around 2%, which seems low. Moving on
      into alt-fact fake news, we can say it was a yuuuuge number/miniscule number, and in some other dimension/universe note that the great chef march
      of '01 was larger. So, yeah, I wonder too. :)

      Delete
    12. It's astonishing the progress we've made in certain areas. It's also astonishing the lack of progress we've made in other areas. Better erections but no cure for the common buzz.

      Delete
    13. 'I really don't care how the eggheads vote.'
      Me neither
      But I care how the electorate lets themselves be
      manipulated so easily. Do they really think even
      more TrickleDown will help? With banks and big
      pharma running healthcare do they think it will
      be better? Savaging the environment is a good idea?
      That a real estate draft dodger and his family can
      fix a country where the middle class has been destroyed by constant tax cuts and additions to the debt. That smirking while the Russians threw the election and swallowing their deliberat fake news
      blitz was clever? That Breitbart is more accurate
      than NASA? That smart is stupid and stupid is smart
      is logical? That cutting education to build an Iron
      Curtin in the desert is wonderful?.
      --right, don't worry how eggheads vote, or women
      or college kids, Jews, scientists-that's a minority.
      This great country suffers fools gladly, thrives even as it descends into economic stagnation and marches well-armed, smug and proudly into neo
      feudalism. ..and blames Obama. So I worry greatly
      about the irrational segments of the electorate.
      Do you?

      Delete
    14. Hannity could get a lap dance and he'd probably call the cops. Irrational? Half the country is irrational. Half of YouTube videos are irrational. Flat-earthers, aliens running the gov't, quantum jumping to a new reality new job and better life. They even vote sometimes.

      Delete
  47. You know, you always say 'when they cure cancer' like it's one disease that needs one cure. Really cancer is a multitude of diseases and some are curable and some are not. Leukemia is curable. Small cell lung cancer is not. Colon cancer is curable. So it's not like finding a cure for one single disease. You can live with testicular cancer; it's curable. Breast cancer is curable. Not everyone gets a cure. Not everyone survives the flu, either. Some people are out of work for a week and other people die. So I think you're a little off the mark with the cancer talk.

    BB is right; the clowns are running the circus. We obviously have some serious karma to pay off to have gotten Trump for a president. The best we can hope for at this point is that he doesn't start another war. Meanwhile the people who elected him continue to wait for him to fulfil his promises. Mexico ain't paying for the wall.

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  48. OK let me rephrase the cure for cancer thing and why I feel we should be farther advanced. First off far too many people are still dying from various cancers but ok cancer is basically about uncontrolled cell division. I'm using a big brush but the next step would be to find a way to stop uncontrolled cell division so the question becomes why can't we find that way? The problem is complex but the problem can also be simply stated. We're in the year 2017.

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  49. Had a couple of weird dreams last night that didn't make sense. Woke up in the wee hours with a feeling of dread. Typical workday.

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    Replies
    1. Did you change brandy brand?

      Delete
    2. Jimador Tequila may not be for me. Can I be sued for a bad review?

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    3. Funny though when I was first put on the blood pressure meds years ago there was an increase in strange dreams which I never had before. Googled it and indeed it is a side. Big Pharma is happy. Important thing is your bp is low. So what if you dream Al Roker is floating over your yard:)

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    4. It seems almost any drug has a list of side effects and some small amount of people react while most don't. Medications such as Lopressor, metoprolol,
      micardis HCT Benicar and Lotrel (even aspartame!)
      have cause tinnitus in a small fraction of patients,
      almost from the time they began taking them. Ototxicity can affect the cochleal structures of
      the inner ear. You have probably researched this before, but there is an extensive list of common and uncommon drugs that can cause
      ototoxicity and tinnitus for some patients. If you
      use some or one of these, and the problems began when you started it, best to see your doctor and request a change. They regard that kind of tinkering as research, and if you, the patient suddenly become tinnitus-free they can take credit.
      IMO any good physician would try if for you.

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    5. It would seem like anything these days can cause tinnitus. One thing is for sure it greatly diminishes quality of life but not a priority since only a minority suffer. Hell toothpaste probably causes tinnitus.

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  50. One year anniversary of Prince's death but many on the web are firmly saying they could have sworn it was six months myself included. Yes there's the subjective age-time thing but it's disturbing. A year used to be a year.

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    1. Until CERN creates another timeline where he dies again Prince is officially deceased. I think Jimmy Breslin died a few times already. Don't know what Ernest Borgnine is doing.

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    2. You'd think that CERN would be working on the string theory of Astrology; Mercury's rare precession during it's planetary retrograde causes
      polarity change in anti-matter between Antares and
      Sadalmelik/resulting photons carrying anomalous
      backscatter through Earths' atmosphere. People born under the Sagittarius astrological sign are
      marked for showbiz success, etc.

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    3. The ancient crystal ball continues to sell well. Heard that when sales dip, they bore a few holes in the overstock for the bowling crowd.

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    4. You yourself said recently it's hard for alot of us to accept the cycle of we're born we live we die. It's not just that. We didn't sign up for this. To paraphrase Twain we were enjoying our non-existence. Now even without our ok we were yanked into existence and then we're working 9-5's. Then we grow old and maybe get around with a cane. If you're born into slavery or have to be Kim Jong-Un's barber you didn't sign up for that either. I think the New Age is just an age-old question and our modern way of coping. Some of them crystal balls are nice.

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    5. Ever read the CERN websites? They give their latest exciting updates and it's over your head. The proton synchronometer just discovered a W boson then the decelerator...ya know?

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  51. Just because you don't remember your previous lives doesn't mean you didn't have any. The soul is eternal; it has been through countless billions of bodies in all different forms and probably in different places. And I would argue that you did choose this existence and the circumstances surrounding it through your karma. Nothing is an accident. Now, I don't know what kind of karma one has to be Kim Jong Un's barber but I do know that karma was involved. Donald Trump is concurrently enjoying the results of some good karma whilst simultaneously creating heaps of bad karma that he will undoubtedly be held responsible for in his next life. So two things, one, you have always existed, and two, you will always exist. Where and how is up to you.

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    Replies
    1. See I like this thinking but BB would say it's not testable through the scientific method. A scientist might say it's not worth cogitating over. Karma explains much more than some pastors do. The Christians will preach life is a gift but how is it a gift to those who suffer more than their fair share? I've always felt we live more than once. This could explain things like deja vu. It makes more sense what you said we have some choice in your existence. The Christian view is kind of along the lines you're born you suffer and we can't explain it at this time.

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    2. If there are millions of souls being recycled (human only, or does that include animals?) where, when and why were they created...are new ones being
      made all the time (Mormon). It seems likely that a
      recycled soul would bring no memories with it, or
      babies would intone "call me George" etc. Z-Man is
      right, if the soul cannot be isolated for study, science has no say. But in the debunker category we note they try:
      "In my view, there really is such a thing as a spirit, a soul, but it is not as people have imagined it in the past. The soul is information of a special kind, wrapped up into a complex structure, instantiated in the circuitry of the brain. It is quirky and individual to each of us, and is precious because it is not eternal."
      -Michael Graziano, Professor of Neuroscience, Princeton University.
      IMO, the construct makes some sense in light of
      our perceptions about our lives, but it raises questions like how does the soul upon the death of
      its latest body, get transported, by who, and how is it assigned to its next fetus? newborn? If one dies while being born, the Catholics send him to Limbo (I think). Would souls be removed and transferred at that locale? Who got Hitler's soul
      and why? Do identical twins have identical souls?
      Siamese twins? What, precisely is the function of
      a soul? No answers from me, just more questions.

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    3. "(The soul) is precious because it is not eternal" - Michael Graziano who is a neuroscientist. To me that statement makes absolutely no sense. Neuroscience is taking a position on the soul when they can't even solve tinnitus (easy dig).

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    4. You ask good questions but I don't think that cancels out a valid belief in rebirth. The scientific position is and always has been you are your brain and therefore there is no life after death so almost by default science is hostile to religious claims. It's that age-old conflict. Science says we're here by random chance you and I. Man has spiritual yearnings however. As it stands now science as it is being taught is incompatible with faith.

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    5. Its too close to bedtime for me to be able to get into all those questions but just a few answers: not just human but all living things (trees, starfish, Swiss Chard plants) have souls and a soul that is currently in a human body could just as easily be in a tree or in a rat or in a clump of spinach in the next. I would argue that the person IS the soul, the body is irrelevant. Think of it like a car; the soul is the driver. When the car breaks down, you get out of it and into a new one. Siamese twins and identical twins each have their own soul. Where were they created and when? They are eternal, so they were never created, they have always been and will always be. The spirit soul is an infinitesimal part and parcel of the Supreme; qualitatively one, quantitatively different. I am not well versed enough in the Bhagavatam to be able to tell you the exact logistics of what/where/when about the transmigration of the soul but I do know that a future life is chosen at the end of the current life. Wherever your thoughts are at death is where you will be reborn. Many who are male in this life are reborn as female for that reason and vice versa. Karma also comes into it. If one dies while being born I would say that this is a person who had very little karma to pay off and that from there they went to the spiritual world. I would have to ask that of some people who know more than me, though. Hitler's soul, who got it? More like where did he go. My guess is that he went to one of the hellish planets in a very low life form. The point I'm trying to make is that the spirit soul stays the same, that's the real identity, and it just changes bodies from life to life. Hitler's soul isn't something someone else could 'get'.. it is the person itself, the real person, who just shows up in different bodies. I hope this made some sense. Goodnight.

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    6. One other thing. If you are in a body that doesn't have rational thought (ie you're paying off bad karma in a lower life form) you automatically advance through the life forms until you reach a human birth, which is in the material universe the only kind of form where you have enough brain to learn what your purpose is and get out of the karmic cycle. So a human form of life is very precious and shouldn't be wasted.

      BB I will find for you some articles about the Vedas and cosmology where you can see how ancient scriptures have accurate knowledge about the planets etc that have been verified by today's science. It's pretty amazing.

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    7. I remember a while back BB was never keen on the rebirth idea. Almost everyone asks the question though where did Hitler go?

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  52. I mentioned to a few people today that Prince died about a year ago and nobody could believe it. Everyone feels like it was six months ago. My friend says maybe we're all suffering from Mandela Alzheimer's;)

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  53. Howard Jones and his "Things Will Only Get Better." Googled the lyrics a couple days back and you have "whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa..." and now you have "wow wow wow wow wow oh oh." Redditors have at it.

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  54. I dont know how to link it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBUn24gibgM&feature=youtu.be

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  55. Some redditors think Erin Moran or Joanie from "Happy Days" died once before. I don't have a firm impression of this, vaguely. People might be mixing up MacKenzie Phillips or something. Can D-Wave do obits in other dimensions?

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  56. Type into google "how to hyperlink in blogger comments" and it's fairly easy. BB is the authority.

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  57. I've been using this place
    for years. Which makes me a link person. If I had to write
    the little code string everytime, no links from me. There is a lot of other stuff on the 'IDB Guy' Basic HTML Tag Code Generator, but the common link works like this:
    While at the site you wish to link, copy the address, from
    http:// all the way to the end (in my browser that address is the very top bar). Now paste that address into the 'enter URL' in the box under 'anchor tag'. Just beneath is another box called 'link text'. Write there the word or
    words which will send the reader to the site. Click 'link
    (anchor tab) code and the correct string appears above. Copy that string and paste into your comment where appropriated. Lot easier than writing the string and after
    a couple tries it is very quick. IDB Guy is at the top of
    my favorites\blogs. Very useful..closest thing to an app that I do.

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    Replies
    1. Ron Howard; little kid on the Andy Griffith Show, teenager on Happy Days-turned out to be one of the more talented producer-director guys out there. Still
      talks like little Opie though. I like that in a producer-director.

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    2. Average looking too. You can mistake him for a stockboy in produce. Another one Nicholas Cage. If he wasn't an actor he'd be a tollbooth collector.

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    3. I do that a href= code thing. Last time in the body of the post I hit some link url highlighted by a chain and then highlighted the key words I wanted. I figure it out as I go along.

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    4. All the actors in 'Fargo' were plain, and the crooks ugly. Good casting: they looked talked and acted like typical Fargo-ites. The film had no actual scenes in or around Fargo, though. The blizzard was real, but in Grand Forks, much of the
      rural scenes in Bemidji and Brainerd, and the urban
      stuff in the Mpls-St. Paul area--Edina, Mahtomedi,
      Forest Lake, Chanhassen..Chris's backyard.

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    5. I don't believe in Bigfoot but imo Legend of Boggy Creek is a great movie. Captures the yokel essence beautifully.

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    6. I should say; he has his own website .
      With the caveat that there is a website for everything .

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    7. It's funny how there's never a dead skunkape lying in the woods under a pile of leaves and a hunter stumbles across it. Just saying.

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    8. IMO skunk apes are in the same biological genera as
      the jackalope.

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  58. That was an interesting link Saty about the amazing parallels between ancient Hindu Scripture and modern astronomy. Beats most of the crap on YouTube.

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    Replies
    1. We note the Hindu concepts of universe and life cycles
      as the culmination of previous more primitive tribal concepts of life and death. Add some oriental philosophy and a most impressive proto-language and
      you have a system that is tightly reasoned and has served its followers for millennia.

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