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2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink The Most Holy Church of Rockall - this one's hilarious. If you're not Catholic, Orthodox or Anglican or come from a liturgical tradition, you probably won't find it funny though. Their urlLink Liturgy page is a scream - the detail there had me in tears of laughter. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink King Tut liked red wine - Ancient Egyptians believed in properly equipping a body for the afterlife, and not just through mummification. A new study reveals that King Tutankhamun eased his arduous journey with a stash of red wine. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Successful Strategic Bombing : The Popular Party’s error was trying to wage a cabinet war typical of the 18th century under modern conditions. In terms of national interests, Spain had nothing at stake in America’s war with Iraq. Polls indicated that the Spanish people were strongly opposed to sending the tercios to Iraq, by as much as 90%. But the Popular Party’s Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, saw a chance to get his name up in lights. And he did, with frequent invitations to the White House and even President Bush’s Texas ranch. He felt like one of the big boys, and the price seemed small – a few dead Spanish soldiers. Like Bush and Blair, he assumed that war could be a one-way street where only the enemy suffered. And now he’s out in the cold, his party defeated in an election the polls said it would handily win. The Madrid bombings brought the war home to Spanish soil, which suddenly made Spain’s participation in it issue number one. Why was Spain in Iraq? The government had no answer, because there really was none. Spain is not the only country whose government is playing the game of cabinet war. Britain’s involvement in Iraq is a cabinet war. So for that matter is America’s; Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam was not working with America’s real, Fourth Generation enemies and the United States had no vital national interests at stake. All over Europe, countries are 'reforming' their militaries to prepare them for cabinet wars, wars in far-off lands where the key quality is 'rapid deployment.' Nations such as Norway have troops fighting in places like Afghanistan. The whole notion that the 21st century can suddenly revert to the 18th and governments can fight wars in which the people and vital national interests are not involved is absurd. That is the real lesson of the Spanish election. War is no longer a 'game of princes.' The people are involved, and Fourth Generation opponents know how to make sure they are intensely involved, by bringing the war home to them. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Serge : urlLink Spain's Zapatero Rejects Bush Appeal on Iraq - 'Spain's incoming prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero Wednesday rebuffed an appeal from President Bush to stand by the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. 'I will listen to Mr Bush but my position is very clear and very firm,' Zapatero told Onda Cero radio. 'The occupation is a fiasco. There have been almost more deaths after the war than during the war.'' - A leader with cojones ! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Dappled Things : urlLink We locked you up in jail for 25 years and you were innocent all along? That’ll be £80,000 please - Outrageous article about a British government attempt to make people wrongfully convicted pay three thousand pounds for each year of their 'room and board' in prison. '... On Tuesday, [Home Secretary David] Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn’t have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets....' And people wonder why I hate the Labour Party. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Serge : urlLink www.seeyageorge.com - absolutely hilarious. I'd buy their stuff if I could - my own Californian aunt is one of his supporters. Of course, her being Californian explains a lot. Look at the stuff they make: urlLink The Bushocchio Hot Air Doll ! Fill with hot-air and enjoy ! Our nose-growing doll will be a hit with all ! Stands 24' high, in his AWOL flight suit. Weapons of Mass Destruction not included. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Here's a thought: Chinese chilli-oil - the sort that has thick dried chilli paste in bright orange-red oil, which is favoured by Hongkongers and mainland chinese, is a great base with which to make Aglio e Olio sauce. Just add a bit more olive oil, and heat, and add garlic. Fabulous, as the chilli paste is intense and the oil it comes with highly flavourful to start off with! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink http://www.nice-tits.org/types.html - this one's a gem. Thanks Justin! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink There MUST Be A Place For The Classics - To the very stupid, the study of Latin or Greek may appear a waste of time. To such people, these languages are 'dead' and have no value... Part of the problem is down to the obsession with moving funding to those subjects and those departments which are commercially lucrative. In one sense, that strategy makes sense - where the public sector can work with private industry, it should do so. Certainly, creating tie-ups between the private and public sectors is a sensible move. But that cannot become a justification for an obsession that each and every academic subject be commercially viable. IBM or Microsoft are never going to seek strategic alliances with classics departments of Scottish universities. But that does not mean that Latin and Greek have no worth. A government that does not see the difference between monetary value and educational worth is not one worthy of being in charge of Scottish education. The obvious cognitive development, the likelihood of equipping children with the tools to learn other languages more quickly, and the awakening of some sense of the history of world civilisation are only a few of the points to consider. As important are the development of precise analysis and thought, a rigorous mental discipline and, with Latin particularly, an overwhelming emphasis on logic and deduction. Add to that an appreciation of grammar, and you have an utterly compelling case. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Italian Police Break Into Church to Install Priest - Police in a small Italian town had to break into a church to let a priest take up his new job, thwarting a six-month blockade by parishioners devoted to his predecessor. The faithful in the mountain town of Trasacco had jammed the church doors shut in protest after the Church transferred their Capuchin monk and sent a non-Capuchin to replace him. So attached were parishioners to the Capuchins, who had served them for the last 430 years, that they briefly bricked the last friar into the local monastery to try to stop him leaving their town about 60 miles east of Rome. ... |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Happy St Patrick's Day according to the thrice-cursed Gregorian Calendar! *raises a pint of Guinness* *HIC* I miss Bruce. He went into the army yesterday, and I miss his bantering. I was told today I should be cast in Sound of Music - 'you have the perfect Mother Superior scowl!'. WELL!! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I have just been informed that some former students of mine in ACS Barker are forming a band. They're about 14 and 15 years old. The name of the proposed band? Group Hug. Edepol, even I'm cringing. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Just got through to her - she's ok. Thank goodness. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I'm getting really worried. 3 days and no email response from Ana in Madrid. I've a good mind to call her and ask if she's ok. Lord, save and protect thy servant Ana from every harm. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Cooked lunch for my parents, as they decided to gang up on me and insisted I cook. With whatever I could find around the house. I took the easy way out and made Fusilli with Aglio e Olio. That's spiral pasta with garlic and olive oil. It's one of the easiest sauces to make - one simply lightly fries minced garlic in olive oil (but not till it's brown), then add chopped chillies (I tend to use lots of both), remove from heat, add chopped parsley, salt, then stir through the cooked pasta. Extremely easy (no joke about it matching the cook please), highly flavourful and one can add a dollop of parmesan cheese if one so pleases. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | O Apollo, this is so funny. Do you guys remember Rainbow, the English children's show that used to show in the 70s and 80s? With Bungo and Zippy and that gang? Here's a clip from it - urlLink a MUST WATCH. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Two very beautiful and insightful quotes from Solzhenitsyn: 'If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?' 'Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.' Almost Zen-like, I think. Both quotes are from the urlLink Gulag Archipelago - if you don't know who Solzhenitsyn is or haven't read the Gulag Archipelago, I'd encourage you to read him. You'll be glad you did. Earlier on, I posted a summary in a blog post of what the Gulag Archipelago's about , that may be found urlLink here . |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From Angela: urlLink Frozen Lobsters Return to Life - Call it cryonics for crustaceans. A Connecticut company says its frozen lobsters sometimes come back to life when thawed. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Lew Rockwell : urlLink The Myth of Animal Rights - Tibor R. Machan explains to PETA. Saying that animals don't have rights doesn't mean approving of animal torture or ignoring their pain. 'My point was, in essence, that rights are just not the sort of things animals other than people could have. Could animals have guilt, be blamed, feel regret and remorse, or apologize or anything on that order? No, and why so, that was the gist of my thesis: they are not moral agents like us, not even the great apes.' urlLink G-Strings and Baggy Pants - Linda Schrock Taylor on the public schools' youth culture. What's particularly amusing is what she says about the baggy pants that seem so popular with youth today, especially those who like rap and hip-hop. 'I suspect that if more of our teen boys were told the original meaning behind the baggy pants, the fad would end soon enough. At a teacher in-service on gangs, a specialist who works with such groups informed us that the fad came straight out of the prisons. The speaker explained that in prison those baggy pants are the trademark of a prison prostitute and thus advertise availability. I find it so sad that our boys are unknowingly lured into dressing in such ways, and that those boys lack parents with the wisdom, and the stamina, to say, 'Absolutely NOT!'' |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Anecdote from dad: On holiday with mum in Brazil in the late 60s, the two of them are at Rio airport waiting for a flight to Buenos Aires. The airport is not airconditioned, and it's a sweltering day. Next to them they notice a fellow in a heavy tweed coat and tie, sweating profusely. Dad suggests he might take his coat off. The reply, 'What? Don't be silly! I'm an Englishman!' Those of my readers who are older or understand classically British culture will understand the humour in this. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Akropolis World News - world news in Ancient Greek, would you believe? Text only, but great for keeping one's Ancient Greek in practice, as it's nice to have something other than the ancient texts to read. urlLink Nuntii Latini - a Finnish radio station's weekly broadcast of news in Latin. Excellent, even though the Classical pronuncation with a Finnish accent takes some getting used to. Transcripts available urlLink here . Of course, a problem common to both is the question of modern vocabulary: how can we say in Ancient Greek “Terrorist attempt with hand granades and machine-guns against a minister as he was landing with an airplane Boeing 747”? The only factible solution for words that do not exist in Ancient Greek is to take them from Modern Greek (both from Katharevousa and Demotiki) and to adapt them in form into Ancient, doing the necessary modifications for its framing into the declension or the conjugation that suits best. I mean, what is usually called “neologism”. For Latin, one has the Vatican, which comes up with lists of new words every so often, so at least there's some semblance of a linguistic authority. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | It being the 15th of March, I couldn't resist that title. =p Why the Ides of March? Look urlLink here . And in case you didn't know about the Roman system of dating the days in the month, urlLink here's a link explaining the complicated system of Ides, Kalends and Nones within a month. Bright fresh and early in the morning, I sent text messages (that's SMS for you Singaporeans) to many people in my mobile phone list. The message read 'Beware the Ides of March'. A shocking number replied with 'HUH???'. Some got it and smiled. A few got the reference and replied in attempted Elizabethan english, which was nice. One guy, Marcus, replied with 'He is a dreamer; let us leave him. Pass.' - Caesar's next line in the play, and hence the correct response (which I wasn't really expecting). Considering Marcus is awfully handsome, has a great body and is extremely flirty, and that I used to have a crush on him... the crush might just come back now. After all, how many guys out there can reply with the succeeding line almost immediately? I'm busy ripping my CDs into mp3 form. A recent discussion in PC Magazine sneers at those extremist audiophiles who might want encoding rates higher than 96Kbps, which seems to say that this rate is good enough for any ordinary person. Problem is, I'm not one of those ordinary persons - when one listens to Jazz and Classical, or when one is a trained musician with sensitive ears, things ripped at 96kbps sound terrible. I tried the Gloria from Mozart's Great Mass in C minor K427 - first ripped at 96kbps, and the louder sections were unbearably 'shimmery', the strings were a bit shrill, and the woodwinds sounded, well, like plastic. Ripping at 64kbps was unbearable - with a clear 'underwater' or warbling effect. I settled for 128kbps finally, and even that is lossy and nowhere as good as CD-quality. Why do those silly tech journalists insist that mp3 is cd-quality then? I believe there are four reasons for this: * Hype : People want MP3 to work miracles, and they’re accustomed to Digital Technology as working miracles. Overstating the quality of MP3 recordings is par for the course. * Ignorance : Many people really don’t know what stereophonic music should sound like, and I suspect quite a few tech journalists fall into that crowd. If you’ve never heard anything better than a boom box, you’ve never heard what a CD should sound like. * Equipment problems : This is a variation on 'ignorance,' in one sense. If your equipment doesn’t offer decent reproduction, the loss of quality may not be audible. I used an inexpensive set of speakers for this test—much better than a boombox or a typical carry-along player, but nowhere near as good as a 'mid-fi' stereo system. If you can’t hear the difference between a song played on FM radio and CD, you may not be bothered by MP3 sound. If you don’t care about the difference between AM radio, a cheap cassette player, and CD, then you certainly won’t mind MP3 sound. * Hearing problems : One supposes that those accustomed to listening to heavy metal, rock or electronic music wouldn't notice because they don't really know what real instruments sound like. However if you're accustomed to listening out for tiny nuances in performance, know what real accoustic instruments should sound like and can appreciate the tiny differences in tone quality between instruments made by different makers (say, lutes by Tieffenbrucker and Sellas, or violins by Stradivarius and Amati), then clearly one should rip mp3s at as high a rate as one can manage. A lot of people—particularly a lot of adult men—have significant hearing loss, and many of them really don’t care. Once again: if you can’t hear the difference, you won’t care about the difference. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | More on Passion! from urlLink Gen X Revert : Total as of March 12th, 2004: urlLink $264,041,000 Those who are 'boycotting' the movie are doing some real damage eh? urlLink Revisionism takes on ‘The Passion’ - 'Hundreds of movies about Jesus are rerun every Easter. Why would this new one bring out the critics? The reason is the Jesus depicted in the movie “The Passion of The Christ” is not the Jesus of the 21st century... The Passion is a visual depiction of the Jesus of the New Testament. This Jesus is not acceptable these days. I saw the movie the other night. Now I understand why the critics have labeled it as controversial. They do not want a suffering Jesus; they want a Hollywood Jesus. Mel Gibson is taking heat in the Hollywood community because he produced a movie about the wrong Jesus, a Jesus who willingly chose to undergo suffering and to go to the cross. What is the movie about? Simple stated, the movie is about the cross. Our society wants to deconstruct the image of the cross. The cross becomes a hip piece of jewelry for Madonna wannabes. It becomes a symbol of group identification. Contemporary theologians have deconstructed the cross as a symbol of political correctness. The cross is a symbol for love and tolerance for all views. It is a symbol of liberation from capitalism. The Passion confronts these reinterpretations of the cross and places the crucifixion as a horrendous event experienced by Jesus. Today’s church also is in danger of deconstructing Jesus in its own image.' Insightful, but that's what Protestantism has been doing since the 16th Century! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Ut Unum Sint : urlLink Gulf News: 'Passionate portrayal of historical fact' In the UAE Gulf News, urlLink Dr. Ezzedin Ibrahim comments on 'The Passion of the Christ.' He wonders what the Jews want--it seems to him to be clearly Biblical, and he quotes the pope as approving it. Or are the Jews asking Christians to clear them, in past and present, of responsibility for Jesus' innocent blood and to solely hold the Romans guilty for his death? The fact is, Pilate, the representative of a cruel imperial power, was reluctant to crucify Jesus and finally washed his hands in front of the crowd to declare his innocence of Jesus' blood. Anyway, the Jews attempted this in 1965, when Pope John XXV in his well-known Nostra Aetate, cleared the Jews of today from the guilt of killing Jesus, demanding that Christians treat them well. Being a significant step to stop persecution against Jews, especially following the Nazi period, this noble attitude by the Pope was widely understood by people everywhere, although with reservation by some churches. Among those was the Coptic Church of Egypt whose Pope, Shenouda III, was a historian before being a theologian and knew the historical facts fully well. He argued that if the forgiveness was meant for the Jews of the past, then Jesus himself had forgiven them. If the aim of the forgiveness was to ignore what had happened, then this would amount to twisting history and censoring facts. He also said that forgiveness should be preceded by the acceptance of guilt, so had the Jews repudiated the crimes against Jesus to deserve this forgiveness? ... Gibson is a member of a Catholic community that doesn't approve forgiving Jews for their killing of Jesus. This may be the reason behind his recent effort to keep this past event a living memory. This is surely an unpleasant memory. ...the Romans wanted to satisfy the Jews, and convince them not to demand Jesus' killing. However, even this bloody effort didn't pay because the Romans hadn't comprehended the Jewish philosophy of crucifixion. Jews believe that the 'crucified are damned by God,' so the priests insisted on the crucifixion of Jesus to demonstrate his damnation before their people.... Some critics say The Passion of the Christ contradicts the Nostra Aetate. But that argument is baseless because the Catholic Church has forgiven the Jews and not cleared them of the guilt.... Jews will attack the movie relentlessly, just as they have been lobbying for a long time against any American or European researcher who defies their version of historical events. Dr. Ezzeddin Ibrahim is the Cultural Adviser to the Presidential Court of the United Arab Emirates--a 'moderate Arab state.' urlLink 'Mel Gibson's Pieta' Traditionalist urlLink Seattle Catholic reviews 'The Passion.' ...[T]he novus ordo culture produced Jesus of Nazareth. A staunch traditionalist gave the world The Passion of the Christ. Mr. Gibson's willingness and ability to make this movie arose from the two things for which he is now attacked—first, his voluntary withdrawal, not from the Church, but from the novus ordo culture, and second, his staunch adherence to traditional Catholicism and all that it represents. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I'M 73.5% X-rated. HOW HORNY ARE YOU? I'M 107 PROOF. HOW DRUNK ARE YOU? I'm 91% fanatical about IM. HOW SICK ARE YOU? - I think this applies to MSN and ICQ as well as AIM (I happen to be on all three). I'm refusing to get Yahoo Messenger because that's my last line of defence wrt why I'm NOT an IM freak. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Live broadcast of Sunday Liturgy (requires Realplayer) from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Stunningly beautiful, this cathedral was built to commemorate the victory over Napoleon, blown up by Stalin in the 1930s, and rebuilt in the 1990s. The singing is excellent and the services elaborate. Broadcast usually on Sunday afternoon Singapore time from 3-5 p.m. or so, and on feastdays. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | We're all Crusaders now. urlLink Reuters: Al Qaeda Letter claims Spain bombings. Thursday's letter, a copy of which was faxed by al Quds newspaper to Reuters, said: 'We have succeeded in infiltrating the heart of crusader Europe and struck one of the bases of the crusader alliance.' We don't know for sure if the letter's real, but my take is - the Crusades have never ended. The fight between Christendom and the armies of Mahometanism is merely temporarily suspended. Let no Christian ever forget that the Crusades were not a land-grabbing exercise against harmless Mahometans - it was a fighting-back and an attempt to regain for Christendom what had been forcibly stolen from us by invaders. For a bit of background, look urlLink here and urlLink here (video link) . Now put this down in your notebook, because it will be on the test: urlLink The crusades were in every way a defensive war. They were the West's belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world. Once again, let no one harbour the illusion that the Crusades were an offensive war against peaceful Mahometans. Contrary to current myths, the Crusades were not a simple bloody campaign by Christian knights against the peaceful Mahometans of the Middle East. The truth is always more complex than the one-sentence explanation. The Mahometans attacked first, unprovoked. I think Belloc put it something like this - 'The Arab soldier found in the South of France cannot justly claim to be a peaceful farmer first disturbed in his vegetable garden outside Mecca'. Problem with calling a Crusade these days is, there's no truly Christian state anymore. The West has not been 'Christendom' for many centuries. All we have left is the Vatican, which doesn't exactly have the greatest army. One may recall that when someone mentioned the Pope in Rome and warned Staling against open conflict with the Catholic Church, said 'How may divisions does the Pope have?', but look whose empire fell in the end. Let's not forget that the founder of the Mahometan religion was a violent man who would be a war-criminal wer he alive today. The position that the modern decadent West is morally preferable to the Islamic world is dubious at best. Is the trash that is modern Europe, and America for that matter, really worth saving? Food for thought. But then what I want to save is not what it is now, but rather what it has been, and can be, is the point. Its Christian (note I don't add 'Judaeo') roots are the source of both the good it has done and can do again. Living under the shadow of Mahometanism (Islam) is a terrible thing. Ever heard of the concept of urlLink Dhimmitude ? All non-Mahometans are second-class citizens under Islamic law, so I can't imagine why any Chinese in Malaysia would vote for the Islamic PAS party, for example. Here's urlLink a bit of a sensible rant from my buddy Chenseong who's malaysian, on that very topic. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Ut Unum Sint : Anti-religious psychological torture at Guantanamo ... urlLink Jamal al-Harith , one of the Britons released from Guantanamo this week, is interviewed in the Mirror. Jamal's most shocking disclosure centred on the use of vice girls to torment the most religiously devout detainees. Prisoners who had never seen an 'unveiled' woman before would be forced to watch as the hookers touched their own naked bodies. The men would return distraught. One said an American girl had smeared menstrual blood across his face in an act of humiliation. Jamal said: 'I knew of this happening about 10 times. It always seemed to be those who were very young or known to be particularly religious who would be taken away. 'I would joke with the other British lads, 'Bring them to us - we'll have them'. It made us laugh. But the Americans obviously knew we wouldn't be shocked by seeing Western women, so they didn't bother. 'It was a profoundly disturbing experience for these men. They would refuse to speak about what had happened. It would take perhaps four weeks for them to tell a friend - and we would shout it out around the whole block.' If this is true ... one can understand why American Muslim soldiers would be sympathetic toward the prisoners. If this is true ... it is an outrage against all religions. If this is true, and the other charges of torture ... I daresay we have lost whatever moral legitimacy we may once have been able to claim. More importantly, we have lost the war itself--if the war is seen as fundamentally a war of ideas and principles. This demands an immediate investigation. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | We all know what happened in Madrid. I'm worried sick for my friend Ana, who lives and works in Madrid. Ana I met when we both worked as volunteer cathedral guides last summer in Florence. I sent an email to her asking if she was alright as soon as I heard about it. Niccolo from Florence also sent one the next day. We've not heard from her yet. I'll give her till the end of the weekend before I call her phone to check on her. O Lord, save and protect Thy servant Ana from every harm! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Today's picks from Lew Rockwell: urlLink Napalm That Village - A tale of federal aggression in Vietnam, and good soldiers who wouldn't obey orders. Frightening, the evil that humans are capable of. urlLink The Conservatives' Religion - Joseph Sobran on war. urlLink Thank You, China! - Pay no attention to the anti-China lobby, says Stephen Roach. urlLink Africans Enslaving Europeans - urlLink White Slavery in the Mediterranean , by Robert Davis. One detail I found curious was ' Ruling pashas, entitled to an eighth of all captured Christians, housed them in overcrowded baths known as baños and used them for public works such as building harbours and cutting trees. ' 'baños' (pronounced ban-yos) sounds awfully like the Russian word for bath-house - 'Banya'. I'm guessing the Russians got their word from the Mahometans! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | So yesterday I popped down to the pharmacy to see if I could find some antihistamines that I'm actually not allergic to. I've been having hives for nearly a month, and was prescribed prednisolone to control the itching. The docs neglected to tell me the side effects: rapid weight gain, mood swings, increased appetite and skin breakouts. No wonder I've been a grumpy spotty whale lately. Had lunch with Kenley Kwan, Teh Zhiyu and Justin Lee (ώ καλλιστός νεάνιας). First time I'm actually meeting Justin, friendly enough chap. Had a bite to eat with Paul afterwards too. Oink, I say. Soundtrack: ' O Lord, save Thy people ' - the Troparion of the Holy Cross sung by Slavyanka. Before Thy Cross, we bow down in worship, 0 Master, and Thy Holy Resurrection, we glorify (Hymn of Veneration before the Cross). It's the Third Sunday of Great Lent today, when we of the Byzantine Tradition commemorate the Holy Cross. Here's the Troparion Hymn to the Holy Cross: Σώσον Κύριε τόν λαόν σου καί ευλόγησον τήν κληρονομίαν σου, νίκας τοίς Βασιλεύσι κατά βαρβάρων δωρούμενος καί τό σόν φυλάττων διά τού Σταυρού σου πολίτευμα. O Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance, grant victory to the Emperors over the barbarians and protect thy commonwealth by Thy Cross. This was an unofficial anthem of the Byzantine empire. What's it sound like? Click urlLink here for it in Greek. urlLink Here 's a midi of it in the Russian version. If that sounds familiar, that may be because it was used by Tchaikovsky in his 1812 overture to represent the Russian army. Here are some pictures of the Orthodox veneration of the Holy Cross that happens on the Feast of the Holy Cross: The Cross, on a tray, surrounded by flowers. A Bishop, clergy and faithful make prostrations to the Cross. The faithful venerate the Cross with a kiss. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Sountrack: 'Gloria' by Queldryk, from 'The Old Hall Manuscript', performed by the Hilliard Ensemble. A stunning piece of late mediaeval/early renaissance english polyphony. I sit here with my hair full of blue dye, waiting for the dye to set. My hair's been pretty much blue since last December, but it's fading into a sort of strange purple-brown, so I'm refreshing the colour as it were. I'm having lunch with some friends later. urlLink Nun Faces Jail for Drunk Tractor Driving - that's quite amusing. From urlLink Lew Rockwell : urlLink What the Ukrainians Suffered - One of the great state crimes of all time is forgotten, even dismissed. What really annoys me about the Jews today is their need to make their WW2 Holocaust a unique thing, as if no one else suffered. I don't see the Ukrainians crowing about their victimhood and making the Famine a defining factor of their identity and existence. urlLink Repair the Coliseum - A Roman architect's plans. (And note the insouciance with which the state's massacre of Christians is treated.) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Extreme Catholic and urlLink Dhimmi Watch : urlLink Islam 'will be dominant UK religion' Quoting the Gulf Daily News: Islam will be the most widely practised religion in the UK by 2020, according to British and Muslim magazine editor Sarah Joseph. She says mosque attendance is expected to outstrip church attendance over the next 16 years. Estimates suggest that anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 people a year convert to Islam in the UK, which is currently home to approximately 1.8 million Muslims. Robert Spencer has some great comments on how Islam is being presented to Muslim youth in the U.K. I want to add some points of hope: * Freed from oppresive Muslim governments, many Muslims in the US stop practicing the faith, or as I pray, convert to the Catholic faith. The Catholic faith being the 'purest of Christianity' in the Muslim worldview. * Through mixing in with non-Muslim children, the Muslim children are learning tolerance and a less-biased version of history * Through intermarriage the Muslim faith may not always be passed down to the next generation. A few fears: * Many Muslim communities are being undermined or being taken over by Wahhabists funded by Saudis. * Many Muslim schools preach intolerance and a distorted history to children. * With political skills and common appeal to the ACLU absolutists sin the suppression of Christianity, Muslims are able to get special rights as religious minority in school and in public life that would trigger a lawsuit if they were obtained by Christians. This is still worrying. Eastern Christians have lived under the shadow of fierce warlike Mahometanism (Islam) for over a thousand years - it is NOT a religion of peace. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Dappled Things : Speaking of our conquest of the world, urlLink this insightful site explains the whole bit of the Pope kissing the Koran: it is the way of making Islam part of the Catholic Church and turning the Koran into canon law as part of Pope John Paul's scheme to turn the entire world into a Papal State. From the urlLink main page , you can also learn more about the danger of reading the 'satanic author' urlLink J.R.R. Tolkien , who was a 'friend of the dog, urlLink C.S. Lewis .' We're talking some hard-core Bible-believin' here. from urlLink Rogue Classicism : Caught in the daily scan is a piece on the urlLink history of insults , which includes the following: Like many good English words, 'insult' started out as a good Latin word. 'Insultare' means to spring on, or leap upon. An insult was originally an attack. It still is, only now, the attack is verbal. The day of the snappy retort is not over. We just need to use our imagination to creatively 'tell someone off.' Unfortunately, the classic zinger is quickly becoming a lost art. It is easy to call a spade a spade, but to do it with style and grace takes practice. We seem to be content, however, to simply yell at each other, use racial epitaphs, or vulgar language. Such was not always the case. In fact, an ancient Roman poet practiced the fine art of the acid tongue when he wrote, 'I could do without your face, and your neck, and your hands, and your limbs, and your bosom, and other of your charms. Indeed, not to fatigue myself with enumerating each of them, I could do without you, Chloe, altogether.' The unnamed Roman poet, of course, was Martial and this is Epigram 3.53. Here's the Latin (via the urlLink Latin Library ): Et uoltu poteram tuo carere et collo manibusque cruribusque et mammis natibusque clunibusque, et, ne singula persequi laborem, tota te poteram, Chloe, carere. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Lew Rockwell's Blog : urlLink A plea for modesty urlLink Anne Karpf finds herself wondering if some of the old virtues were dismissed too quickly [thanks urlLink Ladies Against Feminism ]. My favourite line: '...modesty is now almost invariably preceded by the word 'false'. It's seen as a defect, a sign of insufficient self-belief, marking you down as in dire need of a makeover to bring out your inner peacock.' urlLink Mel's Sweet Revenge HollywoodReporter.com recently estimated very conservatively that Mel Gibson stands to personally pocket over $100 million from The Passion's U.S. sales alone. It's not out of the question that he could double that after international distribution. How sweet Mel's revenge must be with regard to all those Catholic-hating Hollywood bigshots who refused to do business with him on this film. Frank Rich must have ground his teeth down to a nub over this news by now! urlLink You Don't Watch TV!? urlLink Great article , Karen and Brad, I had somehow missed it the first time. After reading some of it out to my wife, she mentioned that when she is substitute teaching at gov't schools she makes a point to tell the students that we do not get broadcast TV at home. The students' eyes get big and they look shocked and confused. They say things like, 'You don't watch any TV? What do you do in the evening?' They really cannot imagine life without television. My wife patiently explains to them that we read books, we play games, we talk to each other, we attend lectures together and engage in many other activities that do not revolve around the TV. They blink and look uncomprehendingly at her as she says these things. My wife points out that this implies that these elementary, junior high and high school children are not being talked to, played with or read to. Very sad. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink I'm Joey Tribbiani from Friends! urlLink Take the Friends Quiz here. created by urlLink urlLink stomps . Women? Uh, run that by me again? urlLink 'Passion' and the culture wars - If the Gospels are true – and I believe they are – then no matter what the state does to Christians or anyone else, in the end it really has no power at all, except what God chooses to give it at any appointed time. The ultimate foolishness of conservative Christians is not belief in Christ, as the intellectuals and political classes would have us believe. No, the ultimate foolishness is the belief by too many who should know better that voting in enough 'good people' or grabbing the reins of the courts and the law is the ultimate victory, one that will enable them to 'win' the 'Culture War.' Christ rejected all of those things, yet reigns and will come again to judge the world. urlLink Passion and the Neocons . |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Nutty Tibetans on Passion - 'But now I see that it is not only Buddhas who reincarnate. It is also devils. The Romans in that film, the way they treated my friend, and all the Jews, I realized that the Communist Chinese of today are reincarnates of those Romans. The same tactics, the same policies. 'Jesus was in trouble from the moment someone called him king of the Jews, for there could be only one king of the Jews, Caesar. So it is for Tibet. The Dalai Lama is no longer recognized as head of state as had been the case for many centuries because there can be only one head of state, and now it must be Chinese. Just as the Romans did with Jesus, the Chinese torture and kill our brave monks and nuns who continue to seek Buddhahood. The message is the same, stay in line, do as we say, and perhaps all will be fine.' Oh, a fig to these nutty Tibetan secessionists. Tibet is part of China and long may it remain so! urlLink Protesting Gibson's Passion Lacks Moral Legitimac y - Also a fig to those perfidious Jews who protest the film. May their memory be blotted out forever. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: DJ Sasha's ' urlLink Airdrawndagger ' album. Very ambient, not what one might expect from the dance master, but an intensely beautiful album nonetheless. It'd be great for parties and chilling out to. I've gone and started up a second Friendster profile because I've hit 500 with the first one and that's the upper limit. I got called a Friendster slut by one friend, and another chipped in 'why bring in Friendster?' Was in the elevator today with a malay fellow whose phone ringtone was a recording of his young daughter saying 'daddy, telephone call' in Malay. How very cute - 'Bapak, talipon!' Had my teeth scaled and polished today - they're white and luverly once again, hurrah! urlLink To read or not to read - New Shakespeare translations are the question. Can you believe some American students actually require translations of Shakespeare? Here's an example: 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.' --- Act 3, Scene 2. 'Friends, Romans, countrymen, give me your attention. I have come here to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do is remembered after their deaths, but the good is often buried with them.' --- Same scene, 'No Fear Shakespeare' translation. Even our schoolchildren in Singapore, with many for whom English is not a first language, don't work with a crib of this sort. Disgraceful. There, students volunteered to read aloud. Some cheered and booed the characters. But they're excited about learning! Doesn't that make up for the fact that they're no longer learning anything? At Sandy Creek, Kollias teaches students who are on track to attend college but have poor reading skills. How can someone who has poor reading skills be 'on track to attend college?' What happens when they get to college and can't do the work because their teacher didn't teach them how to read? The story is so suspenseful, [another student] said she would have read it in the original text. 'But this means I don't have to think so hard about what the words mean and I can just relax and enjoy the story more,' she said. '. . .And I am having a lot more fun reading it.' Well, that's what's important. Who needs to think in school, when you can have fun instead? God forbid you ever have to get a job some day and work for a living. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From Dappled Things: urlLink New York Anti-Smoking Nazis Try To Ban Arab Waterpipes : have these nutty left-wingers nothing better to do? from urlLink Serge : urlLink Coca-Cola’s Dasani bottled water actually comes from tap - In the USA, where it apparently also comes from municipal sources, Coca-Cola sold 1.3 billion litres of the stuff last year. Now, I don't like indulging in national stereotypes, but can my American friends possibly see where the gullible Yank lampoon comes from? From urlLink Lew Rockwell : urlLink ‘Passion’ Proves Gospels Still Matter - Many nonbelievers no doubt couldn’t care less about the movie, one way or another. But the guardians of our secular culture reacted in such a hostile way that it reminded Christians of the relevance of the crucifixion and resurrection. In this culture, one can probably find elite defenders of anything short of a snuff film. But a serious, biblically accurate account of Jesus Christ’s last hours on Earth is beyond the pale. I can’t recall any similar effort to shut down a movie, to destroy the reputation of a producer or to associate a project with the vilest half-truths and innuendoes. Why? Because the Gospel story still matters. It still offends. It still causes haters of the message to want to crucify, albeit figuratively, the messenger. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from Jonathan: urlLink What Tolkien Officially Said About Elf Sex - highly amusing. ' Although Tolkien never said that the elves DID have hot gay sex, he also never said that they DIDN’T. And I know what I make of that. '. Also, in case you're wondering how to say 'you sexy thing' in Quenya, you might want to try narlyë nat vanya - which literally translates to 'you beautiful thing', but in context please! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Libertarian Purity Test - I scored 80 on this, which makes me a ' medium-core libertarian, probably self-consciously so. Your friends probably encourage you to quit talking about your views so much. ' - My own father thinks I'm a nut politically :) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | ok, so i cheated on those extracts back there... i still can't figure out how on earth to get a combination of diacrits on a single character - i can get a vowels with breath marks OR accents: ἁ ἀ ά ὰ ᾶ but not both together. ὦ - i want THAT but i had to cut and paste that from elsewhere. It's strange, the layout that the keyboard mapper uses: in any sensible layout, Θθ would be at Q, but here it's at U; Ξξ would be at C, but here it's at J; Ψψ should be at Y, but it's at C; Ωω should be at W, but it's at V. Very annoying. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Κάδμος ὦ πένθος οὐ μετρητὸν οὐδ' οἷόν τ' ἰδεῖν, φόνον ταλαίναις χερσὶν ἐξειργασμένων. καλὸν τὸ θῦμα καταβαλοῦσα δαίμοσιν ἐπὶ δαῖτα Θήβας τάσδε κἀμὲ παρακαλεῖς. οἴμοι κακῶν μὲν πρῶτα σῶν, ἔπειτ' ἐμῶν: ὡς ὁ θεὸς ἡμᾶς ἐνδίκως μέν, ἀλλ' ἄγαν, Βρόμιος ἄναξ ἀπώλεσ' οἰκεῖος γεγώς. - Cadmus' lament from Euripides' Bacchae I'm just testing out my typing here, so bear with me, typing in Ancient Greek in Unicode is a pain, Chinese is much easier, and to think my Greek's far better than my Chinese... |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | hurrah! now that we've learned how to do Greek and Chinese... next comes the Cyrillic alphabet for all those lovely Slavic languages... not quite sure I want to do that within the next few years though... |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προί̈αψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι, Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή, ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεί̈δης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. - the opening of Homer's Iliad let's see if that shows up fine... |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Am currently trying to figure out how on earth to enter polytonic Greek in Unicode. 'tis trickier than I thought. Damn Microsoft only has monotonic Greek characters, catering only for Modern Greek which uses one accent - the acute: άέίόήώύ On the other hand, Classical Greek requires several accents and rough breathings: Ο θεὸς, ὁ θεὸς μου, πρόσχες μοι, ἱνατί ἐγκατέλιπές με; μακρὰν ἀπὸ τῆς σωτηρίας μου οἱ λόγοι τῶν παραπτωμάτων μου. That wasn't easy to type, because the character mapping is annoying and counter-intuitive. *shakes fist at Microsoft* Alas, the woes of Classical scholars. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink 'Finding the common potential for reverence is what enables us to see each other as human.' - an excellent interview! Remember this, when you Lay waste to the land of Troy: Be reverent to the gods. Nothing matters more, as Zeus the father knows. Reverence is not subject to the deaths of men; They live, they die, but reverence shall not perish. ~Heracles, speaking to leaders of the Greeks, in Sophocles' Philoctetes (lines 1439-44) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Dappled Things : urlLink The Washington Times had a very interesting article recently on ethnic and linguistic groups in first-century Palestine. Everyone knows how the Jews and Romans clashed in the Holy Land, but where were the Arabs during all this? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | You think you've seen nutty? urlLink Here's a site that believes the Catholic Church and the Jesuits were behind the New York attack in 2002. urlLink Vatican Assasins ? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Have you ever heard of the urlLink Darwin Awards ? It's awarded to those who best improve our human gene pool... by removing themselves from it - i.e. those who accidentally kill themselves in really stupid ways. Remember The Exorcist? urlLink Here it is in 30 seconds, performed by bunnies! Beer for Jesus For your devotional reading today, here is a little pious quote from St. Brigid of Ireland: I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us. I would like an abundance of peace. I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy. I would like cheerfulness to preside over all. I would like Jesus to be present. I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us. I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts. I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me. I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings. I would like to be watching Heaven's family drinking it through all eternity. Now that sounds like a pleasant thing to do! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink First gay Episcopal bishop to take reins in N.H. today Robinson upbeat despite unrest within church '...'I am having so much fun - it is such an honor and privilege I can't believe I'm getting to do this, and it so feels like me,' Robinson said. 'After you feel the call, there is always a measure of doubt in your mind - is God really calling me to this or am I just making mischief with my own mind - and this just feels so right, as hard as it is.' Robinson makes no apologies for his sexuality, or his decision to seek election as bishop. He declares that he is eager to marry his male partner, and will do so if such marriages ever become legal in New Hampshire. He allowed a camera crew from '60 Minutes' to film him talking about the church inside a New York City gay bar. He plans to bring his partner to a meeting of Episcopal bishops and their spouses. And next Saturday, he will attend the 11th annual Men's Event of Boston's Fenway Community Health Center -- a fund-raiser that is one of the biggest events on Boston's gay male social calendar -- to accept the Congressman Gerry E. Studds Visibility Award....' I can't see ANY Christian symbols on his regalia, which is perhaps appropriate. I wish it were just a joke, and a sick joke at that. But it's not - it's for real. Glad to hear that he is having fun while his Church collapses. You would think that a Christian would be concerned of the pain his actions have caused. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I've recently developed a taste for a particular genre of ancient Chinese music that's called 南管 (Nanguan in pinyin romanisation) - the Hokkiens/Fukienese call it Namkwan or Lamkwan (depending on which bit of the province they're from). It's also sometimes called 南音 Nanyin. An interesting article on it: urlLink Ancient Music Applies For World Intangible Heritage. The lyrics are Tang Dynasty poems, over a thousand years old, and the music itself is only found in China's Fukien province and Taiwan, and among literati Hokkiens/Fukienese in the diaspora. It's very old art music, and was only ever played in the houses and courts of the intellectuals and highly cultured, so if you're Hokkien and you've never heard of it, you're probably not of exalted enough descent. The music itself is very curious, the style is very different from what we usually think of as Chinese Classical music - it's for voices, pipa-lute （琵琶） played horizontally like a lute/guitar (the way Tang musicians are depicted in paintings and how the Japanese still play their Biwa) instead of the modern vertical position, hsiao/xiao vertical flute （箫） and a few more plucked instruments. The stuff that one hears in modern Chinese orchestras is heavily bastardised, with Mongol and Manchu influences - let's not even bring in the matter of cellos in them. This stuff sounds and feels very old - it's supposed to be as pure as we can get in a line of descent from the music that was once played in the Tang dynasty courts and before. A brief introduction to the music may be found urlLink here . From urlLink a page on other stuff , a short intro to Nanguan: Nanguan literally called “Southern Pipes.” It is a regional musical genre originated in the Quanzhou and Amoy areas in southern part of Fujian province in southeastern coastal China. It is an instrumental and vocal ensemble traditionally performed by the literati class. Nanguan musicians form clubs, such clubs are often associated with temples, which provide them with a place for rehearsal in exchange for their services during temple festivals. The occasions of Nanguan performances include regular rehearsals, the spring and autumn ritual commemorating the patron god and deceased master teachers, the religious celebration at temple festivals, the rite of passage of fellow members of the clubs. The repertory of Nanguan consists of three categories: 1. The sixteen instrumental suites ( known as Pu, 普), 2. The 48 song suites (zhi, 纸),3. the numerous individual songs (qu, 曲). Most of the instrumental suites have programmatic titles, depicting flowers, animals, or scenery. The song suites and the individual songs have narrative or lyrical song texts which are based on historical stories that have been popular in the southern Fujian province for centuries. A song suite consists of two to seven songs which, in most cases, share the same story. A Nanguan ensemble usually consists of five instruments. The pipa 琵琶, a four stringed plucked lute, plays the melody (known as gu, 骨 the bone) as given in the notation and functions as the conductor of the whole ensemble. The sanxian 三线, a three-stringed plucked lute, supports the pipa by doubling the pipa melody one octave below, although in rare cases it may add some ornamentations. The xiao 箫, a vertical end-blown flute, elaborates the pipa melody by adding ornamentation (known as rou 肉, the meat). The erxian 二线, a two-stringed bowed lute, also adds ornamentation, in its own idiomatic way, to the pipa melody and is considered subsidiary to the flute. Finally, the paiban 拍板, the five-slab wooden clapper, punctuates the meter. When singing is involved, the singer plays the clapper and sings the ornamented melody in a manner similar to that of the flute and the bowed lute.” |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Something Positive : urlLink OUCH ! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From the urlLink Spectator : Dear Mary... Q. I find that I can’t remember somebody’s name for longer than 30 seconds after I have been introduced to them. It is worse at a party where I recognise people’s faces and suspect I know them well, but cannot remember who they are. Recently, at a fashion party, there was a typical worst-case scenario when I saw an old friend from university who now moves in fashion circles, and his name completely eclipsed [sic] me. Can you recommend a foolproof procedure that will work every time to prevent me from having these problems? I do not want to have to go on a five-day memory improvement course. S.G., London W8 A. In junior circles such as your own the mobile telephone provides an instant solution to this problem. Have it to hand as you go round parties, then, when you see a beaming stranger approaching, you are poised to present him with the device crying, ‘I’m glad I’ve seen you while I’ve got this in my hand. Would you mind entering your new details?’ In the pretence of admiring his dexterity, stand over him as he keys in his name. A BRILLIANT IDEA! Next, also from the Spectator: A QUANTUM LEAP Stephen Pettitt says that rock musicians who compose classical music are out of their depth A couple of weeks ago a press release arrived in my electronic in-tray. It was from Naxos, the record company much admired for its bargain recordings of a repertoire ranging wide and free over the thousand years or so of what we on my side of the business like to call Western art music. Naxos makes them cheap and turns in a profit by taking a chance on artists who might not have reached glamour status. Thus the company feeds on a thirst for repertoire, not on the cult of celebrity. Or at least that has been the case until now. The email I received angled for me to provide gushing coverage of a new, prestigious release, a recording with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, no less, of a newly composed orchestral suite. What could be wrong with that? The championing of contemporary music by such a label — and it has already done good work in this department, not least by commissioning a whole series of string quartets from Sir Peter Maxwell Davies — is surely something very noble and desirable. The problem was that the composer of this suite, which is called Seven on the basis that it consists of seven movements, is one Tony Banks. Not the affable Labour MP, but, the bumf tells me, ‘keyboard player and composer for the progressive rock group Genesis’. Alarm-bells rang, and I’m ashamed to say that I responded to the email with a thoroughly prejudiced and uncharacteristically rude ‘Oh, God’ even before I’d heard a note of the work. When the product arrived, however, all my prejudices proved justified. Seven is nothing more than musical doodling. While it has some sweet ideas, its language is severely restricted. It doesn’t challenge, move, or inspire. It’s rather like the work of someone who has taken early retirement from a boring office job and has taken instead to painting naff watercolours of idyllic lakeside scenes and pretty thatched cottages. Therapy for the creator, maybe, but dull for any reasonably intelligent beholder. What’s more, as is common in such enterprises, in order to realise the piece for orchestra, Banks was obliged to engage the services of an orchestrator, one Simon Hale. Hale has achieved what any orchestrator should achieve: a professional if unremarkable job. But these days orchestration is an integral part of the creative process, not something slapped on to the music afterwards. It’s as if Banks had left the colouring-in of his naff watercolours to someone else. Of course, anyone — even the odd critic — is perfectly entitled to compose music if he or she feels so moved. My objection is not that Banks has done so but that we are being sold the line that his reputation as a famous rock musician is enough to guarantee that he can be a classical composer of interest and ability. It’s not true of Banks. It was not true, either, of McCartney with his Liverpool Oratorio (likewise orchestrated by another hand). It’s not true even of the more sophisticated Elvis Costello, whose offerings with the Brodsky Quartet I have always found insipid and pretentious. I’m not sure what Banks’s business arrangement with Naxos is, but he was able to use the LPO, even engaging them for a second set of sessions (who paid?) because, unused to the way orchestras work in the studio and on his own admission, he was inadequately prepared for the first. Everything about this product suggests that Naxos is not as idealistic an enterprise as we first thought. It’s not alone. Projects like EMI Classics’s dreadful Queen Symphony, a tiresome sequence of cheap Hollywood-style epic climaxes, or more recently Sanctuary Classics’s bland crossover effort, Patrick Hawes’s Blue in Blue, betray a willingness to compromise standards for profit that goes far beyond the populist ethos of Your Hundred Best Tunes. At least they were all good tunes. Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the rock-musician-turned-classical-composer phenomenon is that it underlines the tendency nowadays to ignore the vast skills gap that exists between classical and pop/rock musicians, whether composers or players. I am not suggesting that people like Eric Clapton or Elton John are unskilled. Clearly they are not. But where many a classical musician could ape their achievements, is the reverse also true? Can John play the Hammerklavier? Would Clapton get his fingers around a Bach lute suite? For the record companies, however, the rule seems to be that if you are famous enough then you are good enough. For a would-be composer desiring to cross the great divide, the chasm between the two art forms is perhaps even wider. Consider what the genre of the pop song generally demands of its creator. At best it can approach the outwardly simple lyric subtlety of Schubert. But mostly as music it is pretty crude. No organic exploration (Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner), collisions of musical types (Monteverdi, Messiaen), or complex layerings (Bruckner, Stravinsky, Carter). No dynamic shading, since everything is loud. No subtle instrumentation. An insistent tribal drum thud. Limited harmonies. Normally, a rigid four beats to a bar, and an equally rigid tempo, defined in bpms (beats per minute). It’s most often a music about pulse and power. Even in progressive rock, the spirit of musical adventure is severely restricted. Which is right, for its language suits its purpose. Given a rooting in a craft so formulaic, is it any wonder that a rock musician wanting to compose something more substantial, more classical, should find himself at sea? A quantum leap is demanded of him. Yet the message we are being given is that we must laud him, that we must accept that his music can hold its own alongside the wonders of Monteverdi, Beethoven, Sibelius, Birtwistle. It’s just snobbishness if we do not. Well, if snobbishness it is, a snob I will have to remain, for I find presumptuous this staking a claim on the territory of art music. Few rock stars know much about the commitment and skills that it takes to be a real musician, about the tedious hours spent practising each day, about the requirement to stand back and ruthlessly self-criticise, about the demands of getting inside a piece of real music. Few would tolerate the insecurity of an orchestral musician’s working environment, or know just how much courage it takes to mount the stage night after night and do the physically impossible. Few can contemplate the agonies that a composer puts himself or herself through in order to find the inner voice, the language, the form, the right sound for the moment. By all means allow the rock stars their indulgences, particularly if one consequence is that some of their wealth finds its way into real musicians’ pockets. But please do not try to sell it as something that it is not. Not to me, anyway. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Not much, but whenever Lucretius makes it into the press, it must be noteworthy. This time, he's mentioned by an MP/Editor of the Spectator (writing a column for the urlLink Telegraph ) who seems to have the Life of Brian and Passion inextricably bound together in his noggin: I could defend myself by saying that a spot of laughter never did any religion any harm. Look at the evil maniacs at work in Iraq: if only they'd lighten up, hundreds of people would not be dead this morning in Karbala. I suppose I could quote the great materialist and Epicurean Lucretius to the effect that tantum religio potuit suadere malorum . |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink rogueclassicism : Interesting rumours flitting about that Mel Gibson intends to (or it is being suggested to him or something) make a movie about the heroism of ancient Jews, apparently to 'prove' he isn't anti-semitic. From the Orlando Sentinel : The first rumor flitting through the evangelical world is that the filmmaker intends to plow the profits from The Passion into a movie about the central characters of the holiday of Hanukkah, fighters called the Maccabees. Their story is told in sacred writings of the biblical period, although the two books of the same name are not officially a part of either testament. Nearly 200 years before Jesus' birth, religious Jews in the land of Israel rose in violent rebellion against pagan occupiers and their Jewish allies. A political heir of Alexander the Great, the Syrian Greek emperor Antiochus Epiphanes, tried to impose a single faith and culture throughout his Middle Eastern realm. For Jewish subjects, that meant they could no longer practice their faith. Antiochus banned Sabbath observance and circumcision -- on pain of death. The Maccabean uprising was sparked when a government official compelled a Jew to offer a pagan sacrifice. This sacrilegious act enraged a pious man named Mattathias, who killed the collaborator and the official with his sword, and then shouted to the crowd: 'Whoever is for the Lord, follow me!' Mattathias led his five sons and their followers into the hills, from which they launched a protracted guerrilla war, led by his son Judah, a brilliant military tactician. Bloody battles and torture ensued, as the outnumbered believers wore down their enemies, some of whom rode into the fray on armored elephants. In the end, after Mattathias died and several of his sons were killed in battle, the orthodox Jewish believers triumphed and the temple in Jerusalem was cleansed and restored to holiness. According to tradition, a remnant of sanctified oil in the temple lamp miraculously burned for eight days, until more could be found. For Gibson, there are several advantages, apart from a familiar scenario. Having succeeded with subtitles, it should be easy to shift from The Passion's Aramaic and Latin to the earlier period's Hebrew and Greek. Also, since the Maccabee story takes place only 200 years before The Passion, and peasant fashions probably didn't change much in those days, he could conceivably use many of the same costumes. A suggested pursuit Last week, the American-born Israeli educator Yossi Katz suggested that Gibson's next film should be a dramatization of the Bar Kochba Revolt of A.D. 132-135. This rebellion took place a century after Jesus' death, and 60 years after a failed uprising against the Roman occupation that led to half a million Jewish deaths and the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Writing in a column syndicated to Jewish weekly newspapers, Katz recalled that the Roman emperor Hadrian -- like Antiochus Epiphanes before him -- tried to impose paganism on the Jews at sword's point. This time, the revolt was led by a sage named Rabbi Akiba and a younger military protégé, Simon Bar Kochba. Chafing under oppressive Roman rule, the Jews plotted their revolt for three years. Slaves working in the armories deliberately nicked swords, knowing they would be rejected for use by the Romans. Later, the discarded weapons would be collected and hidden. Miles of underground tunnels and subterranean redoubts were built, Katz wrote, in preparation for the uprising. At first, the rebellion was a success, with Bar Kochba's army decimating an entire Roman legion. But after 31/2 years, the rebellion was crushed, and the Jewish general was killed in battle. Roman historians estimated that 600,000 Jews died in the revolt. Ten leading rabbis were captured and executed in the Roman theater in Caesarea. Akiba was tortured and flayed to death with hot metal combs, much like the scourging of Jesus in The Passion and the execution of William Wallace in Braveheart. Of course, even a sympathetic portrayal of Jewish heroes might not assuage all of Gibson's critics. Abraham Foxman, executive director of the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation League, predicts that if Gibson dramatizes either Jewish rebellion, 'we'll lose.' 'He'll write his own history,' Foxman says. 'I would prefer to leave the fate of Jewish history and Hollywood to Steven Spielberg. The Maccabees and Bar Kochba are our sacred history. 'The way he treats history -- with a cherry picker of that which fits his ideology or view -- is not the way I would like the world to learn about the heroism of the Maccabees or Bar Kochba. So, thanks but no thanks.' [ urlLink the whole thing ] |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink This Is London : Wildlife experts have been stunned by the apparent discovery of a three-headed frog hopping around the garden of a children's nursery. Children could not believe their eyes when they saw the strange, multi-faced creature, which also has six legs. Staff at the Green Umbrella nursery in Weston-super-Mare believed the mutant amphibian was three frogs huddled together at first. But they soon realised it was just one animal with three croaking heads. Animal experts were today trying to capture the frog to carry out further tests to investigate its biological make-up. This looks like a job for the (quin)decimviri sacris faciundis ... |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | You are the chinese element of Water. People who are under the element of Water are creative, independent and intelligent. Water you are a dreamer, but are quite vulnerable, and have hidden agendas. The color of water is black, and your symbol is the tortoise. Winter is the season in which Water shines and it's months are October/November. Your weather condition is cold. Water is the direction of north, and your day is Wednesday, while your planet is Mercury. Animals under your element are usually shelled. People under you are Turks. Your sense is hearing, your taste is salty, your sound is moaning and your virtue is knowledge. Your organs are the kidneys. You were created by Metal and control Fire. urlLink Which of the 5 Chinese Elements Are You? brought to you by urlLink Quizilla The calligraphy of the character for Water is atrocious! You're chocolate. You're the old soul type, people feel that they have known you their entire life. Many often open up to you for they view you as thoughtful and trustworthy. Although people trust you, you have a hard time trusting them. You prefer to keep your feelings bottled up inside, or display them very quietly. It is alright to open up every once in a while. urlLink Which kind of candy are you? brought to you by urlLink Quizilla Well, you are what you eat, after all. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I know it's Lent, but hey, this is for all those of you who don't follow the Eastern Fast and continue to eat meat, eggs, fish and dairy during Lent! urlLink Eat Dangerously - life's to be lived after all! As the creators of the site say, because 'Being healthy pays off when you’re old while eating delicious food pays off RIGHT NOW.' They also have urlLink French Kiss : Anyone who has tried to throw a dinner party knows how complicated it can get. Forgotten ingredients and missing recipes can turn a very pleasant evening into a chaotic disaster! That's why we wrote A French K.i.s.s. A French K.i.s.s. is a menu creation tool that allows you to quickly and easily organize your dinner parties. Simply create the menu you would like to serve by selecting from the options in our menu bar below, click on 'CREATE RECIPE' and you are ready to go! French K.i.s.s. will compile the ingredients required into one easy to use shopping list and will provide you with a step by step guide to preparing each of the delicacies in your feast. urlLink Death by Curry - self-explanatory I think. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink rougeclassicism : A week or so ago I wondered about historical advisors for The Passion ... this is the closest I've come so far (from the Chicago Tribune): The task of achieving linguistic authenticity fell to Rev. William Fulco, a Jesuit priest and professor of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Gibson got Fulco's name from Yale University, where Fulco received a doctorate and taught Aramaic. 'I got a call while I was in Jerusalem: `Hey, Padre, It's Mel, I got a job for you,'' Fulco said. 'I said, `Mel who?' We talked for about an hour. He told me about the project, and I couldn't pass it up.' In 2002, Gibson gave Fulco the script written by Benedict Fitzgerald, mostly derived from the Gospels, and asked Fulco to translate it into Aramaic , Hebrew and Latin. Fulco later translated the script back into English subtitles. The use of multiple languages in the film reflects the linguistic diversity of Palestine during Jesus' life. Most people spoke Aramaic, which the Jews adopted while exiled in Babylon in the 6th Century before Jesus' birth. Hebrew, their language before the exile, was retained in religious writings and liturgy (and is spoken by Jesus in prayer in 'The Passion'). Latin was spoken by the Roman soldiers occupying the region. Greek was spoken throughout the Roman Empire, thanks to Alexander the Great, but was seen as a sign of secularization and thus resisted by many Jews. Fulco left Greek out of 'The Passion,' substituting Latin in occasional cases where Greek might have been used. He also made mostly imperceptible distinctions between the elegant Latin of Pilate and the crude Latin of soldiers, thanks to an X-rated source he found on his shelf. 'I tracked down some obscene graffiti from Roman army camps,' Fulco said. 'Somebody who knows Latin really well, their ears will fall off. We didn't subtitle those words.' Fulco even confessed to some linguistic mischief. 'Here and there I put in playful things which nobody will know. There's one scene where Caiaphas turns to his cohorts and says something in Aramaic. The subtitle says, `You take care of it.' He's actually saying, `Take care of my laundry.'' Other linguistic tricks of Fulco's serve a function in the script. For example, he incorporated deliberate dialogue errors in the scenes where the Roman soldiers, speaking Aramaic, are shouting to Jewish crowds, who respond in Latin. To illustrate the groups' inability to communicate with each other, each side speaks with incorrect pronunciations and word endings. Later, 'there's an exchange where Pilate addresses Jesus in Aramaic, and Jesus answers in Latin. It's kind of a nifty little symbolic thing: Jesus is going to beat him at his own game,' Fulco said. 'One line [in that exchange] I kind of enjoyed is when Jesus says, `My power is given from above, otherwise my followers would not have allowed this.' That's [spoken in] the pluperfect subjunctive.' Appreciating the niceties It takes a linguist to appreciate that grammatical nicety as remarkable for being uttered by a Palestinian Jew who mostly spoke Aramaic and Greek. For the relatively few Middle Eastern Christians who still speak Aramaic, 'The Passion' may sound riddled with mistakes -- spurring Fulco to point out, 'modern Aramaic dialects are as different [from ancient ones] as Chaucer and modern English.' Still, now that the movie is in general release, Fulco fully expects to get an earful about his use of languages. 'We linguists are a crazy bunch,' he said. 'The more obscure the language, the more people try to prove their territory worthwhile and say, by God, we're going to sniff out errors.' [ urlLink the whole thing ] |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | At dinner tonight, I found a new pair of chopsticks on the chopstick-rest at my place at the table. I'd hitherto been using a ivory pair about 6' long, yellow and discoloured with age, as they were used by my mother during her childhood in pre-communist Shanghai. Mum said they were a child's chopsticks and I was long overdue for a pair of adult ones, so she took a new pair from the little stash of antique (but never used) ivory ones. Thing is, I realised I now had the longest pair of chopsticks in use at home. I objected, saying that Dad should be using the longest pair (indicating the most important and most senior person in the household). After all, the only chopsticks permitted to be longer than Dad's should be the guest chopsticks. Mum and Dad both insisted that since I have the largest pair of hands in the house, I should use them. I guess that's their way of telling me certain things that are difficult to put in words. I'm an adult now, I have to remember that. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Church - a former Anglican parish in Texas, now Catholic but using the Anglican rite. Have a look at their urlLink pictures - it's stunning. Notice they built their current building from scratch. Naturally, being former Anglicans, they know what a church should look like. Shame on most of the modern Roman Catholic Church for producing CRAP like urlLink this and urlLink this . |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: 'Miserere mei Deus' by Gregorio Allegri There has been a terrible fire in Hilandar Monastery on Mt Athos. Smoke emerges from Hilandar monastery (PHOTO: AP) Hilandar is the Serbian Monastery built in 1198 by former Serb leader Saint Stephen Nemanja. The 25 monks are unhurt, and while there has been much damage, the church, as well as the priceless library are untouched, Deo Gratias! Serbian Patriarch Pavle (Paul) has issued a statement in which he called the damage 'enormous'. He has consigned a group of restoration experts to travel to the Holy Mountain to take a full assessment of the damage and restoration possibilities. Let us all pray for the monks and the entire Church of Serbia which had great treasures including precious icons, liturgical works, etc. at the monastery. More information urlLink here and urlLink here . |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink LA Times Says Opera 'Pro-Life' Not 'Anti-Abortion' - political correctness gone mad. Not surprisingly, it's from California, land of fruits and nuts. Thanks to Andrij for that one! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Hello from Peking! Flight was twenty past midnight, 3/4 full (though it was more than made up for by the shopping of the chinese tourists returning to the Mainland). Weather was 29 yesterday, but today it's dropped back to 10. Half of Peking is down with the cold. We got picked up at the airport by our chairman, as his wife's down with the cold and so is the driver. China's fascinating, one sees changes with every trip. Much of the general population could do with a good wash and grooming, but there are a few devastatingly goodlooking specimens here and there. Oh Lordy I'm in the same room as dad for the next 10 days. I'm going to have to take time off to myself every 2 days or so, otherwise I'll either go mad or strangle him. I mentioned earlier that Blogspot is blocked in China. It's urlLink STILL blocked . We're staying in Tongzhou Binguan - Tongzhou Hotel (more like a resthouse), a Govt run thing that's slightly dodgy but acceptable. It's cheaper for our guys in Peking to put us up there. The chaps behind the counter have never seen anyone who's not from hongkong, korea or china before, and were amazed at the sturdiness and thickness of singaporean passports. They spent some ten minutes scrutinising our passports - they hadn't realised Singaporeans no longer need visas to go to China. Food's excellent. Lunch in our hotel restaurant - Eggplants stir fried with beef slices; green soybeans stir fried with mustard greens; potato shreds stirfried with oil and vinegar - lots of rice. Ah, China. I'm typing this from a terminal in our company's Satellite Hub, in case you were wondering. I just got my business cards today - they say 'Edward Yong - International Business Development'. HA. That's a good one. by the way, just because blogspot's blocked and I can't view my blog or comments or tagboard doesn't mean you can all be naughty and put wicked comments there! Oh, if anyone wants anything, send me an email - the address is in the previous post. Toodles! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | So low has my mind been brought by your faults and whims, and has so destroyed itself in trying to serve you, that it can neither regard you benevolently if you behave well nor stop loving you. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Put from you the belief that 'I have been wronged', and with it will go the feeling. Reject your sense of injury, and the injury itself disappears. - Marcus Aurelius I'm a-trying. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I will be contactable via my mobile phone, on text message for urgent matters. Otherwise, my email address of kyrieATpacificDOTnetDOTsg will work fine. As I mentioned in an earlier post during another trip to China, I can blog while there, as blogger.com is accessible, but not blogspot.com - so I won't be able to read my tagboard or haloscan comments. I shall be back to regular blogging and making digests of other interesting blogs and stuff on 4th May. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Mad Rush. Whole day meetings. AND IT'S SUNDAY. My room is a mess. Always has been. Always will me. Unto the Ages of Ages. I can tell my desk is messy. under a pile of random papers sits a booklet 'The Services of Christmas'. It's been there since... well... Christmas. And we're past Lent and Easter. Well done. Perhaps it'll stay there until next Christmas. Ha. running around my room. mad rush. packing. panicking like a headless chicken. come un pollo senza capo . sounds rather nice in italian. Sars has popped up in China again, particularly Peking. Whee. can't bear leaving my obscenely huge music collection. wish I had an iPod. can't bear leaving my lute either. weather there's warmer now, 15-27 deg apparently, even though yesterday was 11 and the day before was 9. wonder how I ought to pack. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Mirabilis : urlLink Researcher Hopes to Find 'Secret of Life' with Monks’ Lifestyle Variety is the spice of life, or so the saying goes, but now a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher believes the true secret of living a long, healthy and satisfying life might be at a nearby monastery. 'Through a systematic review of the scientific literature, we found that individuals who regularly participate in organized religious activities live longer and healthier lives on average,' said Daniel Longo, MU professor of family and community medicine. 'This effect may be more significant among those who have made a life-long commitment to a religious lifestyle in an organized religious community. For example, a Dutch study found that Trappist and Benedictine monks between 1900 and 1994 experienced a 12 percent lower mortality rate than the general population of Dutch men.' Based on that information, it is likely that monks who live by The Rule of St. Benedict, which includes both Benedictines and Trappist monks, might provide the key to a lifestyle that has numerous benefits to the public, Longo said. Because so many lay people are following The Rule, it’s likely the benefits could be far-reaching outside of the monastery. While in existence for more than 1,000 years, the religious movement of following the Rule of St. Benedict as an 'oblate,' or a layperson affiliated with a monastery, has grown tremendously during the past several decades. A recent study finds that lay oblates outnumber monks 3 to 1. The Rule of St. Benedict encourages people to live a life of moderation, obedience, humility and respect for their fellow person. It is focused on a balanced life and provides individuals with guidelines for spirituality that also include behaviors and attitudes conducive to good health. Longo has analyzed The Rule and found more than 50 different references to health, health behaviors, hygiene and a balanced life. Longo presented his findings at the 50th Anniversary Symposium of the Monastic Institute in Rome. urlLink [continue] |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Mirabilis : urlLink Bumble Bees! - This is a really cute flash game. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Today is the 89th Anniversary of the first genocide of the last century - the Armenian Holocaust. 'Adolf Hitler, while persuading his associates that a Jewish holocaust would be tolerated by the west stated... 'Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'' May his words be false. Let us pray for all hurt by the Genocide and REMEMBER in hopes of not allowing this to repeat or happen to other people. The French National Assembly has formally recognized as genocide the slaughter of a million and a half Armenians living in the Ottoman empire between 1915 and 1917. Other Declarations of Recognition have come from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Kurdistan, Lebanon, Russia, Sweden, Uruguay and the Vatican. Due to continued political pressure from Turkey which has threatened economic and military sanctions against all who recognize the Genocide, the United States of America -a NATO ALLY- has yet to officially recognize it. A good resource for learning more about the Armenian Holocaust is urlLink cilicia.com Enver Pasha, one of the triumvirate rulers publicly declared on 19 May 1916, 'The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation.' Talat Pasha, in a conversation with Dr. Mordtmann of the German Embassy in June 1915, 'Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate (grundlich aufzaumen) its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.' After the German Ambassador persistently brought up the Armenian question in 1918, Talat said with a smile, 'What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians.' |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Paradosis : Preparing to knock down a communist monument in Bucharest to make room for an Orthodox Cathedral! I never tire of seeing such things. Bulgaria's MUCH cooler version of 'In God we Trust' |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Click on it; I dare you. I double dare you. I double-dog dare you: urlLink rodent revival |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Now isn't that cute? 'All The Ends Of The Earth Have Seen The Salvation Of Our God...' |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | During Stalin's violent campaign against religion, 40 bells were destroyed at the Trinity St Sergius monastery. This is the blessing for the third one to be replaced. Glory to God! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Americans use 'Mr.' and Brits use 'Mr' - what's the difference? Most Singaporeans can't grasp the difference, so here's your chance to learn something. There are abbreviations , where the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last letter of the unabbreviated word. There, the full stop indicates ' there's actually more letters after this ': Professor -> Prof. Opus -> Op. Chapter -> Chap. From -> Fr. And there are contractions , where the last letter of the contracted form is the last letter of the uncontracted word (and hence no full stop is required): Saint -> St Road -> Rd Mister -> Mr Block -> Blk Father -> Fr In English usage, abbreviations take a full stop but not contractions. In American usage, both take full stops. Anglophile that I am, I prefer the English usage - it's grammatically clearer. However, I wish writers would simply be consistent and stick with one or the other and not mix usages - it's highly annoying. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink St Stephen's Musings : Charismatics are R2D2. They live in their own universe, no one understands anything they say, and they hang out with the Arminians a lot. Anglicans are Lando Calrissian. You're not sure whose side they're playing for, but when they get their act together, they usually come out with the good guys. The Catholics are the Storm Troopers because there are basically eight quadrillion of them, so you really can't ignore them. The Pope is the Emperor. The Orthodox are the Ewoks. They're really weird and do weird things, no one really knows much about them, but you gotta love 'em because those hats are just so cute. And the Storm Troopers tried to kill them once. Oh yeah...and the megachurches are the Trade Federation from Episode I. They're huge, there are a lot of them, but man, they're just not that cool and you wonder why they even got written into the plot at all because the Storm Troopers are way cooler. Televangelism is Jabba the Hutt. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I feel like doing a urlLink pompadour in my hair. It'd be perfect with the 1950s black leather biker jacket which I don't have. Heh. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Help. Dad's done it AGAIN. I'm supposed to have lunch with Graeme on sunday, and what does Dad do? He signs himself and me both up for an E-commerce seminar at 2 p.m., ostensibly to network. He says this is more important. I want to strangle him, for the sixty-third time this week. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Christian peacemakers report killings of women and children by US troops in Fallujah - Oh, Lord. - from urlLink Serge . |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Doc today at the allergy centre says he thinks I have Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria. In other words, the hives that appear seem to have no immediate cause, and it's just my immune system playing tricks on me. Being on Prednisolone, a steroid, on a tailing dose of 30 to 5 mg over 3 months hasn't been kind to me... I've gained ten kilogrammes, had skin breakouts all over, and had horrid mood swings. To put it another way, I've been a spotty, grumpy, WHALE. So now I'm on Telfast (Fexofenadine hydrochloride), another antihistamine, this time at 120mg daily for now. Let's see if it works. Doc said if this doesn't work, he'll have to put me on something stronger. I asked 'such as Cyclosporin?', and he went 'oh! You've heard of it?'. I said 'oh, I read widely'. He explained that it was rather strong a medication and he'd rather not put me on it as a first course of action, and I added 'plus it's not cheap either' and he went again 'oh, you know!'. I once again replied, 'I read' and grinned. Dad has been hoping it's the blue hair dye that I'm allergic to. Doc says absolutely not. Dad's a tad annoyed, as this means he hasn't an excuse to get me to stop colouring my hair. Ha! I really hope this works for my hives - they're REALLY annoying. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Just so you read it here first - Dad and I are off to Peking on Monday for slightly more than a week, for an important series of business meetings. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Serge : urlLink High Passions - Normally critical of the Catholic artistic tradition, Russian Orthodox Christians have found much to admire in Mel Gibson's controversial new film. urlLink Global Eye - What a sickening spectacle George W. Bush and Tony Blair presented last weekend: piously kneeling in prayer on Easter Sunday while ordering missile strikes on crowded cities. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | urlLink Easter 1945 in Dachau - beautiful. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I am a Gauntlet Adventurer . I strive to improve my living conditions by hoarding gold, food, and sometimes keys and potions. I love adventure, fighting, and particularly winning - especially when there's a prize at stake. I occasionally get lost inside buildings and can't find the exit. I need food badly. What Video Game Character Are You? and I am Pacman . I am an aggressive sort of personality, out to get what I can, when I can. I prefer to avoid confrontation, but sometimes when it's called for, I can be a powerful character. I tend to be afflicted with munchies constantly. What Video Game Character Are You? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | from urlLink Rogue Classicism : A lovely page on urlLink Ancient Greek Music , with reconstructed extracts. Also related is the urlLink Homeric Singing site, with a reconstruction of Demodokos' song, very pleasant to listen to. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | An urlLink article and urlLink more on the urlLink Subservient Chicken. I don't know about you, but I find it creepy. Have a look at what urlLink the Old Oligarch has to say about it. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Someone please tell me HOW on earth urlLink this helps Burger King sell more sandwiches? |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink mirabilis.ca : Two mystery men dressed as Batman and Robin have been fighting crime and saving damsels in distress in a small English town. The pair have been spotted springing into action a number of times in recent weeks on the streets of Whitley, near Reading. The Reading Evening Post asked readers for news of the duo after they dealt with a pair of streakers at a local football cup final. And the newspaper was besieged with calls from residents who claimed to have seen the 'superheroes' in action. Michelle Kirby was stranded when her Peugeot 206 ran out of petrol on Easter Sunday - until Batman and Robin appeared out of nowhere and pushed her car to the nearest petrol station. She said: 'They just appeared. I saw them running down the road in Batman and Robin outfits - I was laughing so much. 'It was like a scene out of Only Fools and Horses and they stayed in character the whole time. 'They said, 'I'm Batman, I'm Robin' and I said, 'No, you're not' and asked them if they were going to a fancy dress party but they said they were going back to Gotham City.' |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | I did this one twice and I got: urlLink urlLink What Type of Villain are You? urlLink mutedfaith.com . urlLink urlLink What Type of Villain are You? urlLink mutedfaith.com . Hmm don't they have a Cad character? That's me.. the evil dandy. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Soundtrack: 'No More 'I Love You's' by Annie Lennox. That men of a certain type should behave as they do is inevitable. To wish it otherwise were to wish the fig-tree would not yield its juice. In any case, remember that in a very little while both you and he will be dead, and your very name will quickly be forgotten. Put from you the belief that 'I have been wronged', and with it will go the feeling. Reject your sense of injury, and the injury itself disappears. (begin rant) Wretch thou art. A thrice-wretched ingrate. How I would have loved thee, this thou knowest. Didst thou lack for anything whilst under my wings and in my love thou sheltered? Unto the ends of the earth I would have walked and shed every drop of my blood - solely for love of thee. (end rant) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | From urlLink Lew Rockwell and urlLink Serge : urlLink How Much Does a Bacterium Weigh? - 665 femtograms! urlLink Bush's War and Osama's - Joseph Sobran on the complete futility of the war on Iraq. urlLink The Pluperfect Is Doing Nicely - Don't despair for the classics, says James Morwood. 'THE SPECTATOR CUP: In order to do what little we can to turn the clock back, The Spectator hereby announces a monthly prize for composition in Latin or Greek . Readers are invited to submit versions of any excerpt of the magazine of roughly 300 words. The version may be in either language, prose or verse. We offer a bottle of champagne for the winning entry. At the end of this year the judges will reward the most distinguished composition with a cup.' In Latin and Greek! God bless them. urlLink Poor Little Us - We help out a country by shooting them up, and they don't appreciate it. Article by John Pilger. urlLink Going postal - by Ryan McMaken. Let us not forget that the stated reason behind the terrorism of 9-11 was American meddling in Saudi Arabia and Israel. And whether or not Bin Laden believes these are the only good reasons for killing American civilians is immaterial, for what we do know is that the millions of Muslims who see their countrymen killed by American missiles in Palestine or their neighbors urlLink beaten to death by American soldiers have become more sympathetic every day toward striking back at the United States the only way they can. What we have right now is an American government that seems to honestly believe that they have a right to interfere worldwide, but they have no responsibility in preventing the predictable blowback from killing Americans here at home. In other words, for the foreseeable future, Americans need to be prepared to sit around waiting patiently for terrorists to strike while thousands of young men and women in the Middle East are driven to joining terrorist organizations by endless wars care of Uncle Sam. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | 'Who remembers the Armenians?' said Hitler to encourage his officers in the work of exterminating the Jews. Today I watched Atom Egoyan's urlLink Ararat - a very meditative film that interweaves the story of the Armenian Genocide with various subplots here and there. I'm not sure it's entirely successful as a film, but it deals with a worthy subject that most people haven't a clue about. For those who aren't aware, the Turkish government systematically murdered the ancient native Christian populations of Anatolia in Asia Minor during the years 1890-1930, soaking the land red with the blood of urlLink Greeks , Syrians and Armenians. I'll save most of the information for later as we get closer to 24th April, which is Armenian Genocide Day. In a nutshell, some 3 million Christians were murdered by the Turks in those years - a Christian Holocaust. Here's a urlLink website and a urlLink fact sheet on this. Amazingly enough, the Turkish government continues to deny to this day that it ever happened. One day, when my Armenian's good enough, I shall learn how to sing the Armenian service for the departed. Thus when I visit Turkey again, and visit the places where the the Armenians and othe Christians were martyred, I shall be able to sing the appropriate prayers for their repose. Who remembers the Armenians? I do. MEMORY ETERNAL! |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | A team of scientists has urlLink proven that bubbles in urlLink Guinness stout really do sink. Now close examination has revealed that, as a pint settles, bubbles touching the walls of the glass experience drag, similar to that a person feels sliding their finger along glass, and that prevents them floating up. The bubbles in the middle however, are free to rise, creating a circular flow within the glass that causes bubbles at the edge to be pushed downwards on the inside surface of the glass. The Edinburgh team, working with researchers at Stanford University in California have produced high-speed video footage of the sinking bubbles -- to put at rest the minds of any drinkers who might have felt they were seeing things. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Beijing-based Red Star Co had signed a deal with an undisclosed U.S. alcohol sales company to distribute its high-end Diamond Erguotou brand of 'baijiu,' a high-proof spirit made from sorghum, the China Daily newspaper said Friday... While standard-size bottles of base-grade erguotou cost less than a dollar in Beijing, the company plans to price its top-end white bottle Diamond product at $30 in the United States. full story urlLink here. WOO HOO! That stuff rocks. It's cheap and good in China, and is sold in plastic tanks of some 10 litres. |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Thomas Fairchild: 'Democracy can be a wickedly unfair thing, Sabrina. Nobody poor was ever called democratic for marrying somebody rich.' --John Williams, 'Sabrina' (1954) |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | This time, Russian! From the urlLink Old Oligarch's Painted Stoa |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | - from urlLink A Saintly Salmagundi |
2,383,328 | male | 26 | indUnk | Virgo | 02,August,2004 | Gay Bear urlLink Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You? brought to you by urlLink Quizilla Hmmm. |
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