WHAT HATH THOU WROUGHT?
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Show posts MenuQuoteIf my goal were to corrupt lots of people, I would start with the moral vocabulary. First, pick a virtue, then make up a new word for that virtue, and say that the new word denotes a vice. For example, I want to discourage modesty. So I invent a new word, "prudery", that is just another word for modesty, but has a negative connotation. Nothing but evil will come of this. Many souls have maintained righteousness by asking questions like "am I being cowardly?" or "am I being dishonest?", but I'm pretty sure that no one has ever become a better person for worrying about being a prude.
Next, I'd distort the meanings of virtue words, making sure that the virtues I really wanted to get rid of would have no well-known word at all. Being in league with the Devil, I'd be especially eager to snuff out charity–the supernatural love of God that Saint Thomas called the form of all other virtues. I'd take that word and reassign it to mean something boring, like giving money to poverty relief, and leave no word for the theological virtue. Or I'd take piety, a word that once referred primarily to the honor we owe our parents, and convince people that being "pious" just means going to church a lot. Then if someone wanted to refer to the original, down-to-earth virtue, he'd have to say "filial piety", but not too many people will know Latin-ish words like "filial". Why is this so important? Because virtues we don't have words for are off our mental radar.
Last, I'd start using words for vices as if they were virtues, e.g. referring to a book or a movie as "irreverent" as if this were a good thing. This would probably be going to far, though. I don't think anybody would be willing to go along with this.
QuoteA joint SAS-MI6 team was kicked out of Libya last night after their mission to link up with rebels fighting Colonel Gaddafi turned to farce.
The eight-man unit was sent to have secret talks with opposition leaders but humiliatingly the team was detained and held by a group of farmhands.
The crack troops, armed with guns, ammunition, explosives and false passports, were mistaken for enemy spies, detained and stripped of their mobile phones and satellite communications devices.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on March 08, 2011, 12:30:38 AM
1. Eclectic Pagans: This type of Pagan worships every God they've ever heard of, with no regard to pantheon, conflicting belief, or even basic knowledge of who or what that God was. A common quote from Eclectic Pagans is "I just got tapped by Geb, and I feel really really close to him. Can anyone tell me anything about him?" Eclectic pagans pride themselves on "working with" the most obscure Gods possible...The pecking order is in fact based on who could dig up the most obscure diety.
QuoteA group of activists in southern Arizona is hoping to turn Pima County into a new state – Baja Arizona.
QuoteOn the February 16 edition of his Fox News show, Beck stated that protests in Madison, WI, as well as in the Middle East and Mexico are part of "evil spreading around the globe."
Quote"You are about to see this president start embracing the uprisings in this country. You are going to see him embrace the teachers unions and all of the unions that are marching on the streets." Beck later characterized the protests as "riots in the streets."
QuoteIn a February 16 post about protests in Wisconsin, Michelle Malkin wrote that the SEIU "and its allies stormed in for a sleepover protest" at the state Capitol building. She later wrote of teachers staging a protest: "Kiddie human shields become kiddie sacrificial lambs." In a later post, Malkin called the protesters "union thugs."
QuoteMore than 10,000 people have signed an American Jewish organisation's petition calling on Rupert Murdoch to fire controversial pundit Glenn Beck because of his "grotesque falsehoods" about Jews.
Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ) launched the petition following the showing of Mr Beck's recent three-part series "Puppet Master" on Fox News. The channel is part of Mr Murdoch's media empire.
On the programme Mr Beck attacked Jewish businessman George Soros' Holocaust record and accused him of helping "to send the Jews to the death camps".
He also suggested Mr Soros was a "puppet master...at the centre" of the economic crisis and made the comment in front of a picture of a star or David.
JFSJ said Mr Beck seemed "to draw his material straight from the antisemitic forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion".
The group also criticised a programme earlier this month in which Mr Beck examined the nine public figures of the last century who created "the era of the big lie". The list included Jewish psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and Jewish writer Walter Lippman.
The JFSJ president, Simon Greer, said: "We find it hard to believe that it was only coincidence that eight of the nine individuals on his list alleging a shadowy alliance to control the Americans through propaganda were Jewish."
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Astronomers with the Minnesota Planetarium Society have dropped a bomb on the zodiac, noting that thanks to the millennia-long effect of the moon's gravitational pull on the Earth, there's about a one-month bump in the alignment of the stars. The result?
"When [astrologers] say that the sun is in Pisces, it's really not in Pisces," Parke Kunkle, a board member of the Minnesota Planetarium Society, told the Star Tribune.
And if the sun isn't in Pisces, YOU'RE not in Pisces. Surprise! You're an Aquarius!
Much of astrology -- called an ancient and complex system that uses math and science to predict the future -- relies upon careful observation of the heavens. And your astrological sign is based on the date of your birth, something that was tied very tightly to the position of the heavens back in Babylonian times.
Seeing stars yet? It all comes down to the 26,000-year procession of the planets through space, he said, noting that a variety of gravitational forces have changed the position of the planets in the sky over time.
Bottom line, the astrological forecasts we've all been turning to may -- gasp! -- not be accurate at all, or at least they may be intended for other readers.
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The United States takes its ban on chocolate eggs with toys inside very seriously, a Canadian woman discovered when she was threatened at the border with a 300-dollar fine over a Kinder Surprise, media said Tuesday.
Public broadcaster CBC said Lind Bird was stopped at the US border last month and selected for a random search of her vehicle. Authorities found and seized a two-dollar Kinder Surprise as illegal contraband.
"It's just a chocolate egg," Bird told CBC. "And they were making a big deal. They said: 'If you were caught with this across the border you would get charged a 300-dollar fine.'"
While it may seem trivial to some, US authorities followed up with a seven-page letter asking Bird to formally authorize the destruction of her seized Kinder egg, she told CBC.
QuoteNorth Korea's official YouTube site has been hacked, with a cartoon posted showing Kim Jong-il's son and heir apparent running over his countrymen in a sports car.
The communist state's Twitter account has also been hacked, with posts calling for an uprising against the regime.
QuoteIt's been said the government has a plan to declare martial law and round up millions of United State citizens into concentration camps. Jesse may have found a conspiracy in plain sight as he investigates the proliferation of law enforcement Fusion Centers around the country. And they may be connected to hundreds of detention centers ready to accept prisoners at the stroke of a Presidential pen.
Quotethe dietary needs for the population of Gaza are chillingly calculated, and the amounts of food let in by the Israeli government measured to remain just enough to keep the population alive at a near-starvation level. This documents the statement made by a number of Israeli officials that they are 'putting the people of Gaza on a diet'.
QuoteThe Mexican border town of Guadalupe has been left with no police force after the last officer was kidnapped.
Erika Gandara's house was set on fire by unidentified gunmen before she was abducted last week, according to the state prosecutor's office.
QuoteA financial manager for wealthy clients will not face felony charges for a hit-and-run because it could jeopardize his job, prosecutors said Thursday.
QuoteANTI-terror police had a 12-year-old schoolboy hauled out of class over his online attempts to organize a protest against the British prime minister.
The youngster said he hoped the action could save a local youth centre,
"I said it was simply because we didn't want our youth centre to close - it's a fantastic place to go and there isn't much else for us to do round here."
The paper said the officer told Wishart his comments online were being monitored by the country's anti-terror squad and that he would be responsible if the planned protest Friday caused "trouble".
Quote"Tragedy comes in threes," O'Donnell said. "Pearl Harbor, Elizabeth Edwards's passing and Barack Obama's announcement of extending the tax cuts, which is good, but also extending the unemployment benefits."
QuoteTea Party Nation President Judson Phillips hosted the program and discussed changes that he felt should be made to voting rights in the United States. He explained that the founders of the country originally put "certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote." He continued, "One of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you're a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community ... I'm sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners"
Quote"The idea isn't to just raise revenue, economists say, but finally to turn Americans into frugal health care consumers by having them face the full costs of their medical decisions."Do you hear that? You aren't being frugal enough, so now your health insurance will double (on your side) and your employer will drop your policy (where they drive down the price by buying insurance in bulk).
QuoteQuaid and his wife Evi, who's a Canadian citizen by way of her father, were arrested last week on California warrants for vandalism and released from custody Wednesday.
On Thursday, the actor claimed that for the last 20 years he and Evi have been the victims of criminal activities by people trying to embezzle him, kill his career and even murder him to gain control of his royalties.
He became emotional as he told reporters that in the last five years eight actors he's known have been murdered, including Heath Ledger, Chris Penn and David Carradine.
QuoteToday, millions of Americans celebrate Thanksgiving with their families. To mark this holiday, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) took to the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday to explain its history. At one point, he opined, "It might be helpful to think back and say there's more to Thanksgiving than the Pilgrims." He explained that they were "a group of people who were willing to change the system, to think of different ideas." Akin continued, "They came here with the idea that after trying socialism that it wasn't going to work. They realized that it was unbiblical, that it was a form of theft, so they pitched socialism out. They learned that in the 1620s".
QuoteLONDON – WikiLeaks' next release will be seven times the size of the Iraq war logs, already the biggest leak in U.S. intelligence history, the website said Monday.
The organization made the announcement in a brief message posted to its followers on Twitter, giving no information about the content of the coming release or its exact timing — although it did refer to "the coming months" in a separate tweet sent about an hour later.
Although the website has been spilling secrets for years, WikiLeaks shot to international prominence this year with a three leaks. One exposed a classified U.S. helicopter video that appears to show an attack on two Reuters employees and other civilians. The second made public 77,000 ground-level U.S. intelligence files covering the war in Afghanistan. The third put out 400,000 more such files exposing the daily grind of attacks, detentions and interrogations in Iraq.
Although it isn't clear what WikiLeaks is planning to release next, it allegedly has a huge cache of classified U.S. State Department cables whose publication could give a behind-the-scenes look at American diplomacy around the world.
In the message, the site also said it was under "intense pressure" over the imminent release — a possible reference to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's legal problems in Sweden, where he is wanted for alleged sexual misconduct. It could also be a reference to the constant pressure Assange says is being applied to the website's servers, security, and finances.
Quote'I thought she was dead': Policeman describes horror of finding bloody and naked gang-rape victim, 16, on park bench
Quotefather said he had been frantically calling his daughter for some time when he couldn't locate her after the dance.
Finally a male had picked up the phone, officer Kaiser said.
'The male told him "how good his daughter" performed sex acts,' he said.
QuoteOrtega, who was drunk, insisted the girl herself was inebriated and wanted to have sex, Lewis said... One, Officer Gunnar Googins, testified that Ortega said of the victim, "'I just wanted to pimp her out."
Throughout Lewis' testimony Tuesday, Ortega and his co-defendants sat impassively - except for one moment. When Lewis stood to identify the man he arrested by pointing at him, Ortega smirked.