just got 2 in the mail today. . 18650 battery LED lights
which you might like -- suitable for a barnyard! -- j
.

no kidding -- it'll be a good'un!!! -- j
.

Awwww. Sweet.

What an excellent metaphorical (and probably real!) collection to have.

Jan

he was making fun of the idea that he was being asked to
require all women to wear covering, when the husband
asking it couldn't get his wife to do it if he tried. -- j
.

we're making enough noise here, I guess, so the cruise control
was applied for today. . we cruise well, in here! -- j
.

are you compiling an autobiography, and may I get on
your buy-it-first list? -- j
.

how insightful, and -- when you consider future history --
it's prescient. . think of the inaccurate "certainty" of the news
which, 'cuz it was on TV, must have veracity. . if, instead,
we had to deal with the probabilities and the facts and
the damnable math involved, we might get mired in
the stuff of thinking or something -- YUCK! -- j

p.s. this is the way that Jed O'Dea and I do books -- back and
forth with multiplying ideas!

the quote is::: "Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions
about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam,
keep her from drowning them at birth."

p.p.s. another Heinlein::: "Theology is never any help; it is
searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there.
Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." . that's why
I collect flashlights.
.

Thank you. I am still playing around with some of the parts of this idea, trying to test it's soundness. I don't think it is quite set yet...

Jan

Chuckle!

Interesting that it makes sense to you (the first part, not the drowning kids part). This is still a new idea that I am playing around with in my head. Not quite baked yet.

Jan

NOTHING COMING THROUGH ON HOT IN THE GULCH FOR NOV. 20?

Very good analysis Jan

Video taken down.

Go figure.

so we prefer Heaven to agnosticism. . delusion to facts,
many would translate. . makes perfect sense to me! -- j

p.s. Heinlein dealt with this when he reported that the species
would be extinct if parents' delusions about their kids
didn't prevent them from drowning kids at birth.
.

History repeats in 4 turnings only to start all over again. Read the 4 turnings...I plan to do so myself.

All fueled ultimately by central banking.

No, johnpe, I struggle with this question: If I understood why it happened in the ME, I might be better able to assess the chance of it happening here (with Christian fundamentalism).

The best I can come up with is that humans seem to prefer an inaccurate certainty to an accurate uncertainty. If desperation for certainty becomes great, then you are willing to accept increasingly absurd requirements (such as "Blow yourself up.") to shore up a feeling that 'the universe is KNOWN'.

Jan

Jan, do you have any inkling about why this shift to
fundamentalist views has occurred? -- j
.

To jihadists it is evolution, to the world it is devolution.

I agree. About half my friends are Christians. I sometimes accuse them of being militantly tolerant Christians. (The man holding my right hand in the circle at a pagan wedding was an Episcopal minister.)

Jan

The people were called Persian until 1935, when Dr Hjalmar Schacht, (the Nazi Minister of Economics) noted the Aryan origin of the Persians (Aryans are from the eastern Caucasus) and encouraged the Persian Reza Shah Pahlavi to ask foreign delegates to use the term Iran (the Persian word is Eran, not Iran), "land of Aryans" instead of Persia.

(Hope this doesn't invoke Godwin's law...)

I wondered way back in the 80's if when Khomeini seceded Pahlavi he (or they) would re-name it Persia... to reverse the influence of the puppet of the industrialized west.

I do remember Iran the way it was, both the positives and negatives, before the fundies brought it forward from the 20th century to the 7th. Really sad regression... and it's now happening all over the middle east.

I still wonder what would have happened if Khomeini hadn't survived his exile... if any of this insanity would have taken place.

OK, I'll take your word on it, but then I will say its society was far more secular. The folks I knew who were there loved the place and the people, they found them friendly and welcoming. They lived there 3 years.

its a snap-back consequence. The more people denounce Christian ideology in a nation founded by Christianity (among other things), the stronger the course correction when the power shift occurs (for whatever reason). All of this can be avoided with a degree of mutual respect and tolerance. Sadly, it seldom is avoided.

thanks for the correction. I misspoke.

The people of Iran are not Arab but Aryan; indeed Iran means "land of the Aryans."

Khomeini's casus belli was that the CIA assassinated Iran's then ruler, Mossadegh, in the '50s and replaced him with the Shah. Our cause for doing so was that Mossadegh had nationalized -- without compensation -- oil fields leased and developed by American companies. I have no problem with the CIA doing that, or doing the same to any other moocher government; I just wish it was still economically feasible for western countries to continue protecting their people's property this way.

In any case, though, I don't ever accept the notion that terrorism is "caused" by any provocation. The cause is the terrorist; let us kill him, if we have to send the Army to do it.