Severed heads, stoning of adulteresses, woman in veils, martyrs, self flagellation are all symbols and lore familiar to followers of the most ancient and largest Christian religion, Roman Catholicism. As a young boy, the Mass was in Latin and I attended six days a week. To keep it interesting, I went to summer Baptist Bible school. I was fascinated by the lore and confused that there could be different views on the same icons, Christ on the cross, the Resurrection and everlasting life eternal. As a man I have adjusted my beliefs to account for the contradictions and have put away some of the unexplainable and embarrassing details. The Catholic Church has as well. These would surely include the inquisition and burnings at the stake. The Protestant wings of the Christian Church have some unpleasantness as well.
The story in human terms and the evolving role between man and God is dependent on the time. Reforms cannot be expected to take hold from outside. Reform is far more personal. It comes from inside the heart and mind. It requires acceptance of past misdeeds, an act of contrition and a desire and determination to be be forgiven and to change.
Americans have led the way in reconciling religion with the state and with personal freedoms. Perhaps that is the dream that inspired our clumsy entrance into the world of Islam. Perhaps someday something good will come out of it. That seems to require divine intervention, but then that is the idea.
Music mystery of Da Vinci Code chapel cracked
Audio: The Rosslyn motet performed
By Richard Alleyne The Telegraph
A Scottish church featured in The Da Vinci Code is embroiled in a fresh mystery of secret codes and heretical knowledge - but this one could be more than mere fiction.
An ex-RAF codebreaker and his composer son say they have deciphered a musical score hidden for nearly 600 years in the elaborate carvings on the walls of Rosslyn Chapel.
The pair believe the tune was encrypted because knowledge of music could have been considered heretical.
Thomas Mitchell, 75, a music teacher, and his son Stuart, 41, a pianist and composer, say they became intrigued by the markings on the chapel's arches more than 20 years ago.
Thomas was particularly struck by the 213 carved cubes in the Lady Chapel.
"I was obsessed by these symbols. I was convinced they meant something." Using codebreaking skills learned during the Korean War and his knowledge of classical music, Thomas Mitchell finally realised that the cubes depicted patterns made by sound waves.
"After scratching our brains for years the whole thing just came together in a eureka moment. We believe this is the Holy Grail of music and, unlike The Da Vinci Code, it is absolutely factual." Mr Mitchell realised the patterns on the cubes seem to match a phenomenon called cymatics or Chladni patterns. These form when a note is used to vibrate a sheet of metal or glass covered in powder.
Different frequencies produce different patterns such as flowers, diamonds and hexagons - shapes all present on the cubes.
The two men have brought the music back to life using instruments from the Middle Ages, adding words from a contemporary hymn to finish the piece, called The Rosslyn Motet.
Among the theories about Rosslyn is that it is the secret resting place of the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant and even the mummified head of Christ.
My, my, my!
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allen said...
bart hall (kansas, usa),
re: Prices do not have to increase by much in Europe (or Japan) for it to become profitable to ship American energy overseas.
Nothing will be shipped overseas! Don't you know, the American "mercenary" military will step in at the behest of BushHitlerHalliburtonIsraelCheneyal-MalikiRiceKnewof9/11Conspiracy etc, etc, etc?
;-)
Well, the mercenary military will step in if it is not too busy sending innocent service members to the gallows and dungeons, a la, Haditha.
Gosh,
ReplyDeleteAs young Mr. Science, I was impressed by the pattern of iron filings in a magnetic field.
Where is Boy's Life/Popular Science when you need them for instructions on setting up the
Magic Theater of Sound?
Well, allen has left US, to water with the other US socialist nationalists, the defenders of federal institutions, everywhere.
ReplyDeleteThe US Federals have fallen short, again. This time in the 90% "other" category, again.
h/t to the Tank
The Truly Sorry of U.S. Public "Diplomacy" in the War on Terrorism [J. Peter Pham]
Joel Mowbray's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal underscores the rather sorry state of what passes for U.S. public diplomacy in the midst of the global war on terrorism. According to Mowbray, the taxpayer-supported satellite network Al-Hurra, which was supposed to be "the centerpiece of America's aggressive post-9/11 courtship of the Arab world," has ended up broadcasting terrorist propaganda and Holocaust denial.
The text of the the article, "Mad TV," is available here, at the WSJ
Good point DR, the only reports we get from Allen are through Doug.
ReplyDeleteNeat to see Steve Schippert @ the Tank.
ReplyDeleteMy first science was putting together a crystal HF hetrodyne receiver. It fascinated me and led to an interesting lifelong interest in electronics.
ReplyDeleteBring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
ReplyDelete"... the film's bleak worldview and constant violence difficult to take, and Bennie's elevating psychosis throughout the film, expressed through his macabre relationship with the severed head of the title, led many critics to see the film as proof of Peckinpah's declining mental state. ...
Peckinpah himself was deeply proud of the film. Never apologizing for it, he often cited it as his purest and most personal work, and the only one of his films which was completed without any compromises to studio or audience, precisely as he had intended it.
After Peckinpah's death, the film began to be reevaluted by critics and audiences. Many critics came to praise the film's uncompromising vision and the film has begun to be seen as the consummation of the themes present in all of Peckinpah's films – the conflict between honor and the necessity of survival in a dishonorable world, the dangers of vengeance and greed, the nature of human violence ...
Oooh ho, Mexico, if you've never been you really want to go ...
With a porous border, how long until the flow reverses, with US citizens, heading south.
With populations smaller than many US cities, countries like Costa Rica and Panama could soon be overwhelmed by a porportionatly greater influx of norteamericanos moving south.
An interesting piece in the NYTimes
ReplyDeleteWhy Congress Should Embrace the Surge
"... What was most remarkable, however, was the military’s inability to grab the reins and articulate a realistic war plan for Iraq. At home, recruiting, supply and deployment crises were solved; but in Iraq the generals continued to offer assessments of the fight that were as obviously inaccurate as those trumpeted by the politicians. The goal was to put Iraqi forces in the lead, but as a consequence, large-scale battlefield adaptation was scarce.
Today the civil-military relationship has righted itself, yet soldiers like me who believe that Iraq can be stabilized face a bitter irony. On one hand, the military is finally making meaningful adjustments to the complex fight. On the other, the politicians are finally asserting themselves. The tragedy is that the two groups are going in opposite directions. ...
...
We’re four years into a global conflict that will span generations, fighting virulent ideologues obsessed with expansion. It’s time for those who are against the war in Iraq to consider the probable military consequences of withdrawal. But it is also time for supporters of the war to step back and recognize that public opinion in great part dictates our martial options.
It’s hard for a soldier like me to reconcile a political jab like Senator Harry Reid’s “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything” when it’s made in front of a banner that reads “Support Our Troops.” But the politician’s job is different from the soldier’s. Mr. Reid’s belief — that the best way to support the troops is by acknowledging defeat and pulling them out of Iraq — is likely shared by a large slice of the population, which gives it legitimacy.
...
So how can we reconcile this military reality with the desire by the majority of Americans to reduce troop levels in Iraq? The current surge may provide an excellent opportunity, if we acknowledge two things: Iraq is now a law enforcement war and Iraqi security forces are best suited to fight it.
The surge must be accompanied by a commensurate surge in Iraqi troops. To date, the Iraqis have simply been shifting soldiers from other areas into Baghdad. But these are stop-gap soldiers — as are our own — when what we seek is permanence. The Iraqi government must double the size of its army, to 300,000 combat troops from 150,000 today. The American surge will give them the breathing room to do so, and a deadline by which it must be done.
The idea is that, starting this fall, the Iraqi units would bulk up so the American units could begin to break up, moving to an advisory model in which the number of American soldiers embedded with Iraqi units triples while the overall United States force declines. Today many American patrols operate independently. In a year’s time, ideally, no American patrol would leave its base without a fully integrated Iraqi presence.
Oddly, the Congressional resolutions calling for withdrawal would allow for this continued American advisory presence, somehow not including these troops as “combat forces.” So even those members of Congress who voted for the resolutions could support bulking up the number of Americans assigned to Iraqi units without appearing as hypocrites.
The issue will be the numbers. A meaningful advisory force — both the embedded troops and the support personnel — would likely mean 75,000 Americans still in Iraq in the fall of 2008. This is about half of what we’ll have in place for the surge this summer, but more than the supporters of the resolutions might expect.
It will take political courage for these politicians to agree to the needed advisory forces. But it is the only way the Iraqis themselves will ever be able to make their country secure.
hmmm, the surge is working is it? More patrols, more checkpoints, more raids, more guns, more FORCE will fix the problem....that ole Chinese finger trap continues to tighten.
ReplyDeleteThe problems in Iraq, problems regarding societies in general are not easily (or at all) solved by top down approaches. Fascism, authoritarianism, ect. is not the answer though it is an answer easier to articulate. Those governing can only, in the end, continue to govern by the consent of the governed. Broad philosophy shit ya, but...
DR, that Owen West piece you cite, in my view, exhibits the key elements of the issue that got US where we are - that there is a military solution with a key caveat, the Iraqis gotta stand up. Well we can surge all we like till the cows come home but that will not make the Iraqis stand up. They must form their own social compact and our force won't do that for them. He also alludes to the ever threatening claim that withdrawal means things will get worse, sorta like the domino's following after 'nam. They may, or they may not, we shall need respond appropriately but things don't seem so comfy in Baghdad these days, even with a surge. An interesting, bleak, depiction of Baghdad from the Pepe at atimes. The concluding paragraphs:
"Sunni Heitein and mixed Sunni-Shi'ite al-Ameel are adjacent neighborhoods. The ethnic cleansing of Ameel has been persistent for the past four months. It all started - as almost everything in Iraq - as a tribal conflict, between the Sunni al-Janabi tribe and the Shi'ite al-Megasis tribe. Fighting with Kalahsnikovs, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades would go on all day, even during the Friday jumma prayers. In the end, Sunnis were forced to leave Ameel for good. The neighborhood became a ghost town, now virtually sealed off by the Iraqi Army. Iraq's per capita annual income plunged from $3,600 in 1980 - when Iraq was still a model developing country - to $860 in 2001 after 10 years of United Nations sanctions, to $530 at the end of 2003. Now it may be even lower than $400. Unemployment is at 60%. Thieves are desperate: there are not many more flush Iraqis left to plunder. The only lucrative business is to kidnap and resell foreigners.
An extremely high percentage of exiles are businessmen, technocrats, intellectuals, scientists - all fleeing fundamentalist or confessional carnage, whether it comes from militias, death squads, mafias, killers disguised as policemen, Saddamists or Salafi-jihadists. The absence of skilled workers and professionals is staggering. A well-known secular intellectual, whose identity must be be protected, has been insistently courted by the Maliki government: they have offered anything he wanted, even a ministry. He declined. The Sunni Arab resistance also offered him anything he wanted. He also declined. No one knows how much longer he can maintain his independence.
Most of the 5 million or so poor souls who have remained in Baghdad are the disenfranchised, the unemployed, the miserable, the wretched, like scores of old, frail men in their battered gallabie and keffiah begging in the middle of the hellish traffic, among the decomposing cars, the donkeys, the slaughtered sheep by the curbside and the endless machine gun toting convoys of Iraqi police ("They are worse than the Americans").
The UN has done next to nothing to help these millions of exiled Iraqis - not to mention the wealthy Arab emirates, or the Wahhabi millionaires in Saudi Arabia. After the total implosion of social life, Iraq has reverted to pre-modernity. Baghdad, once the pride of Islam, has reverted to the status of the saddest, most desperate of global capitals. No wonder the motto - even from secular, well-educated Shi'ites - is ubiquitous: "Iraq is finished."
So no one can say that half a trillion dollars - so far - courtesy of US taxpayers, has not served a clear "creative destruction" purpose. And this is only the hors d'oeuvres. The Baghdad gulag is yet to reach full fruition. Iraq will be finished one mini-Green Zone at a time."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE02Ak03.html
The question has been asked, what were the earlier Christians supposed to do when Constantine converted and made it the religion of the empire, turn down the offer? Continue in the martyrdom ways? Nah, but as time went on the relation with the founder became less and less clear, so finally at times it seemed to have no relation at all. It bacame hierarchical, insistent, unreasoning, class dominated. The second Christ they say was Francis of Assisi. Early Christianity was a diverse business anyway, with lots of gospels floating around, only four making the official cut. The form that emerged was the more organized, hierarchical, dogmatic social form. There seems to be a kind of survival of the fittest in religions as in other things, a scary thought.
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"Assyria had always been a land without the gift of great natural resources(I add, until the oil spigots got turned on), struggling endlessly with beasts and men, given to gloom, superstition, dread of evil spirits, divinatation, and a fanatic dedication to a religion rooted in fear. Her laws were her own, and punishment was often harsh--slitting of noses and ears, castration. Married women went about veiled."
From Chaim Potok's 'Wanderings, A History of the Jews'
That was describing things about 1000B.C. Sounds familiar, no? That veil business goes back a long way, over there. An now the possibility of nukes.
I am still working on my rocket ship in my garage, but, I can't seem to get the proton flow monitor quite right, otherwise I'd be outta here.
Early Christianity was a diverse business anyway, with lots of gospels floating around, only four making the official cut. The form that emerged was the more organized, hierarchical, dogmatic social form.
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Constantine officiated at the council of Nicea in +-324 AD which which anethmatized the arian heresy. (the name Arian came from the chief purveyor of the Heresy Arius of Alexandria, Egypt.)According to the Arian Heresy Jesus was fully Man but not fully God. This heresy was based principally on the gnostic gospel which were written after the four gospels and Paul & denounced by church fathers as early as 160 AD. Copies of the gnostic gospels were dug up in 1948 in the deserts outside alexandria...and this only a couple years before the dead sea scrolls were first identified in 1953.
A lot of the internicine wars fought in the roman empire of the 4th century after constantine had a religous component to them ie as to the nature of Jesus. In the seventh century its said that the form of Christianity that Muhammed encountered in Jerusalem was arian christianity. As well, the same was true in Egypt syria Iraq and elsewhere in the middle east & north africa. Islam wasn't stopped in Europe until it ran into trinitarian christian armies in the 8th & 16th centuries.
The 200 year ascendency of Atheism in Europe after the fall of the Bastile was accompanied by a form of arian heresy--not different in its essentials to the view of Jesus as practiced by islam. (ie Jesus is fully Man but not fully God.) That is for the first 100 years. By the 20th century it became clear to most europeans that their preachers and priests no longer believed in the God they preached so the churches were mostly abandoned. After all why worship a wise guy.
After all why worship a wise guy.
ReplyDeleteAs the crusty old Jew said about the Infinite creator to his people.
Dont worship man, ever...
Even if he is a Jew...
I KNOW it's tempting...
I KNOW it makes sense...
But TAKE it from a Jew...
The G-d of Israel doesnt take HUMAN form and shape... EVER...
Now i know that is an unpopular thought for many...
But in the end... Worshipping WHATEVER is NOT as important as decent noahite behaviors...
If you dont know Noah's covenant, do yourself a favor, expand your mind... google it....
Noah's covenant CAN and DOES prevent many things...
Even Global Warming?
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