“This is a slightly unusual request,” said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint. “As far as I know, it’s the first time anyone’s been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an Automatic Sequence Computer. I don’t wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that your — ah — establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you explain just what you intend to do with it?”

“Gladly,” replied the lama, readjusting his silk robes and carefully putting away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. “Your Mark V Computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be printing words, not columns of figures.”

“I don’t quite understand….”

“This is a project on which we have been working for the last three centuries — since the lamasery was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I explain it.”

“Naturally.”

“It is really quite simple. We have been compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We have reason to believe,” continued the lama imperturbably, “that all such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we have devised.”

“And you have been doing this for three centuries?”

“Yes: we expected it would take us about fifteen thousand years to complete the task.”

Old Friend on the Phone last Friday: “I can’t take it anymore. I can’t take these lying fucks. I’ve been reading four newspapers a day for decades and it has gotten to such a level of lying I can’t take it. And the fucking tube is just a cathedral of worms and lies. I can’t watch them for a second anymore. It’s like watching worms move in their mouths. I gotta give it up. I try to be unbiased or at least look at all sides but all sides now are all lies. It’s a waste of life. I can’t do it. Why are all these “news sources” the way that they are? Why?“

Me (talking him down from the ledge on the cliff above his slough of respond): They can’t help themselves at this point. They are sick with a sickness bred in the bone.

Which is when I found this on an old archive shelf and brought it back into the light…

“If you tell someone they have a short attention span often enough, they might believe you enough to get one, but then they’ll forget what channel you’re on.” — TV producer, Fox News, 2002

[Editor’s Note: This is a test. A long test. If you can’t read all of this you may be infected by media-induced ADD / HD. Seek professional help.]

The Short Attention Spans of Media Professionals Mean a Hyperactive Headline Glut for You

RECENTLY I BECAME ACQUAINTED with a young boy, just turned nine. He’s a brilliant and happy kid, but he has a problem with cleaning up and organizing his room. It isn’t that he can’t do it, he simply has to be told about every five minutes to continue the process. In the course of picking things up to put away, he discovers anew their potential to fascinate him.

The Gameboy? “Oh, here’s where I saved that last stage of Turok. Let’s see if I can get the flame thrower and…”

Any one of the 3,000 + Lego units? “Gee, I never did get the moon base Hemi-dome set up, just let me put these 400 blocks in place and…” Books? “Sure thing and, hey, did Horton ever hatch that egg…”

On it goes until, after the sixth or seventh cajoling instruction, a path has been cleared for the vacuum cleaner. After which, he promptly begins taking everything he has put away out and strews it about the floor once again.

Today’s pop psychologists, addlepated educators, and the marketing departments of large drug companies are hard at work trying to convince me children who behave like this have “Attention Deficit Disorder” or ADD. But I know enough to know it is the companies who are obsessed, confused and greedy in about that order.

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
–Burns

A look at Americans from the outside by the charming Eva zu Beck: Right now, I’m living Expedition Wild – driving the length of the Pan-American Highway in my Land Rover Defender, which I converted into a 4×4 mini-camper. With a new video here on the channel each week, make sure you follow me on my solo adventures around the world.

Here’s a brief clip from her life on the road in the United States:

[HT: Joan who says, “This was better than I thought it was going to be.” I agree]

Here’s some music never to play for those people described as suffering from idiopathic anxiety. pic.twitter.com/cJTuY56E67

— 🇺🇸Lionel🇺🇸 (@LionelMedia) July 24, 2022

I once thought, “Use an accordion, go to jail.” — and then… Hrustevich.

[HT: Dr. Jay]

NYC Today, July 26, 2022

Warning. The following is extremely depraved and toxic. I’m not kidding. You’ve been warned.
[continue reading…]

https://youtube.com/shorts/fuhfMHhYMqw?feature=share

Eugene Atget capture the vanished streets of Old Paris, 1900s

Florida man arrested for battering a police officer with a hot dog. | Police officers were ready to open the road back up to normal traffic. They let Stoll know that it was time to pack up and go home, but Stoll was still hustling. When the officers insisted, Stoll threw a hotdog at them, striking one of the officer’s uniform. The police officers arrested Stoll and actually mustard up the courage to charge him with battery with a hotdog.

AWWWWWWwwwwwwwwww…….

How to Meow in Yiddish? It’s easy when you know how.

Big Sur – Searching Day Light The town of Big Sur has an air of old school Northern California community about it, plucked right out of 1968. It’s our last day, a Sunday, and the local fire department is sponsoring a fundraising barbecue in the park. Out under the redwoods we eat tri tip, ribs, baked beans, potato salad, deviled eggs, and coleslaw. A bargain at $10 a plate, families gather, live bluegrass wafts across the grass, and barefoot children play hide and seek.
Jack and I, bellies full, lean up against a tree and take it all in, the beautiful setting, the friendly people, the mellow vibe. “You know,” I say, only partly in jest. ”This is how the hippies did it.”
“What’s a hippy?” he asks, with half a smile.
I’ve been treasuring this entire journey with my son and, just like that, a little of the meaning slips through.
“You’re looking at one,” I say.

Have you ever seen a wild hamster doing a photoshoot? 😊

🎥 @radwildlife pic.twitter.com/gzGZxbLhL6

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) July 22, 2022

[continue reading…]

@RepMattGaetz doubled-down on his comments in our interview this morning.

Q: You’re suggesting that these women at these abortion rallies are ugly and overweight?
A: Yes

Q: What do you say to people who think those comments are offensive?
A: Be offended. https://t.co/QNyR4tLI3a pic.twitter.com/ytG7rZ2Vrn

— Olivia Iverson (@OliviaIversonTV) July 25, 2022

.@SaraHaines says “nobody is pro-abortion.” @PolitiFact alert! pic.twitter.com/G8DjXbOKPA

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) July 25, 2022

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
― George Washington #FreeSpeech pic.twitter.com/1sdN4AebMA

— A Beautiful Culture (@ABeautifulCult1) August 16, 2021

Sophia Loren, Venice 1955 🇮🇹 pic.twitter.com/yPltxB42Rw

— A Beautiful Culture (@ABeautifulCult1) July 14, 2022

San Francisco, California 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/NVBY4Cm48g

— A Beautiful Culture (@ABeautifulCult1) July 25, 2022

[continue reading…]

[continue reading…]

The owner of a cigar shop caught some looters #Bellevue pic.twitter.com/KgyVjyIoMv

— Kre8ore (@Kre8ore) June 1, 2020

The Last Days of “Joe Biden” – Kunstler “I think we have witnessed “Joe Biden’s” final appearance at any world-stage event. ” It’s like our country is trapped on one of those swirling carnival rides beloved of the county fairs… only, the felonious mutt who runs the ride has nodded off in a fentanyl delirium with the motor running at maximum speed… and the children-of-all-ages locked in the pods of this infernal machine shriek and vomit with each sickening rotation… as the half-century-old swing arms groan and wobble from metal fatigue on their squealing pivots… and suddenly comes a deafening crunch of gnashed gears, the smell of burning oil, and the pathetic whimpering of the nearly dead.

That’s us. Some terrible midsummer accident-of-state has befallen the USA Carnival, and most are too dazed to know it. Whose idea was it to send the wind-up doll president called “Joe Biden” to Saudi Arabia? I can just imagine what went on in the chamber in private with “JB” and MBS (Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman), virtual autocrat of the oil-soaked desert land. The American visitor muttered something about wanting an ice-cream cone before dropping into a catatonic thousand-yard stare.

Bornean Pig — also known as AOC

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Net Worth 2022 (Forbes) AOC Assets Salary Cars House So, here’s how this corrupt rewards system operates:

A person who gets elected to the House of Representatives receives a salary of $155,000 per year. Prior to being elected, they lived with their mother while working as a bartender and were fighting the foreclosure of their home. 29 months after assuming office, they have a net worth of $29 million. This person now owns 6 homes, 5 Cars, 2 Luxury Yachts, has cash reserves of over $3 Million and a stock portfolio that is valued at $15 million.

[continue reading…]

A 25-year-old pizza delivery guy rivals any Marvel superhero, by running into a burning house and saving the lives of 5 kids, risking his own life and suffering serious injuries in the process.

Nicholas Bostic rescued 5 kids from fire, one by leaping out a window – The Washington Post

Nicholas Bostic was on his way to get gas one night last week around midnight when he saw flames leaping from the front of a two-story house in Lafayette, Ind.
He slammed on his brakes, turned his car around and pulled into the driveway. Then he realized he’d left his phone at his home a few miles away and couldn’t dial 911.

Bostic, 25, jumped out of his car and tried to flag down another driver, but the person didn’t stop. He wasn’t sure whether anyone was in the home, so he ran to the back of the house, found an unlocked door and rushed inside. All he saw was smoke.

“I shouted, ‘Anybody here? Get out! Get out! Fire!’ ” he said, recalling that he felt his eyes and nostrils stinging from the smoke in the early morning of July 10.
He didn’t hear a response, and he was about to leave, he said. Then he saw a teenager at the top of the stairs with some younger kids.

Seionna Barrett, 18, was babysitting her three siblings and her sister’s friend while their parents were out on a date night playing darts. Seionna had smelled smoke and was frantically trying to wake up everyone to get them out of the house when Bostic busted through the back door.

Bostic said he hustled everyone outside — then Seionna told him the baby was missing. Bostic would soon learn she was referring to 6-year-old Kaylani, nicknamed “Baby K,” who was still in the burning house.

“I ran inside and looked under beds and closets, but I couldn’t find her,” he said. “But when I got to the stairs that led downstairs, I heard some faint crying.”

The staircase was full of smoke, and the heat seemed unbearable, he said, adding that he hesitated for a moment before plunging down the stairs.

“I thought, ‘I don’t want to die here,’ ” he said.

But he held his breath and followed the crying in the darkness until he reached Kaylani and quickly scooped her up.

“I rolled her up in my arm like a football, then felt my way back up the stairs,” Bostic said. “It was extremely hot and smoky, and it was painful to breathe. The only light I could see was coming from the rooms upstairs. So I headed up there.”

He broke open a window with his right fist, tightly wrapped the girl around his left side and leaped two stories to the ground, landing on his right side, sparing the girl from the force of his fall, he said.

Bostic had saved five lives in under 15 minutes.

UPDATE:

Now get up and go away from this screen. You’ve been sitting too long. Looking too long at this flat and framed faux universe, this simulacrum of the soul’s shadow.

Go to the window. Walk to the door. Step outside. Yes, it’s hot. It’s summer. And although the world simmers it is still, for the most part, for most humans, a world at peace. Tenuous today to be sure but today is always tenuous and tomorrow is not promised.

Look around. Look around at the continuing miracle of Creation. Consider, if you care to,  your miraculous place in that miracle. See that where you are is always in the center of the universe; much as every other being is the center of the same universe.  Strange as it seems we live within one universe created with an infinity of centers. But then the universe is always strange as it seems. Isn’t it?

No, seriously, get up. Move away.

Step outside.
See the sky above and feel the earth turning below. Enduring as it always has and always will. World without end. Always.
                       Be.
                       Here.
                       Now.

Come back later. We’ll still be here. This passing entry is all just experimental, just practice. But then they’re all practice.

Humanity does many stupid, awful, and evil things. This much I know that I know, and I know that we all know after childhood’s end.

But humanity also does things like this and these.

I am told that it is this, our capacity to love and to express our love, is why God loves us with a love that passeth my limited understanding.

All this is why I strive to relearn prayer. This time for real.

[For variations on this theme there is this . . .] [continue reading…]

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring! [continue reading…]

To the secular, nothing is sacred. Then again, why should it be? They’re “secular.”

Back in 2006 National Geographic and other media echo chambers thought enough of this “discovery” to headline it, Jesus May Have Walked on Ice, Not Water, Scientists Say . I’m not nearly so objective. After I read the story, I thought it could more reasonably be headlined, Scientist Confirms Popular Theory That Most Scientists Are Atheistic Asses with Too Much Time and Money on their Hands, Sensible People Say

The New Testament says that Jesus walked on water, but a Florida university professor believes there could be a less miraculous explanation — he walked on a floating piece of ice….
Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, said on Tuesday that his study found an unusual combination of water and atmospheric conditions in what is now northern Israel could have led to ice formation on the Sea of Galilee…..
“If you ask me if I believe someone walked on water, no, I don’t,” Nof said. “Maybe somebody walked on the ice, I don’t know. I believe that something natural was there that explains it.”
“We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account.”

We leave to others the question of whether or not this research is worth diddly-squat. What is of broader interest is the present state of the secular mindset to all things religious.

Religious in the Christian sense, that is, since the current global climate of “Fear of Muslims” seems to have created a shortage of “scientific research” into the various miracles and powers assigned to Allah in the Koran. Indeed, given the reaction to a drawing of the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, it is not hard to imagine that even if a “scientist” were to notice “something natural that explains” Allah, his next thought would be something on the order of “Why should I put my head on the chopping block?” Jesus, being a more forgiving God, is safer game.

Of course, it is, as scientists are wont to say, ‘only a theory.’ This is used in two ways.

When it comes to a central tenet of modern science, Darwinism for example, the word “theory” is used in a manner that merges forcefully into the word “fact,” and a great deal of effort is put into why “The Theory of Evolution” really means “The Absolute and Forever Established Fact of How the World and Life and Everything Else Came to Be and Everyone Else Can Just Shut UP and Sit Down.”

Nof opts for the Non-Denial Denial use of “Theory” in his paper. The Non-concluding Conclusion to his paper, “Is there a paleolimnological explanation for ‘walking on water’ in the Sea of Galilee,” reads:

We hesitate to draw any conclusion regarding the implications of this study to the actual events that took place at Tabgha during the last few (or several) thousand years. Our springs ice calculation may or may not be related to the origin of the account of Christ walking on water. The whole story may have originated in local ancient folklore which happened to be told best in the Christian Bible. It is hoped, however, that archeologists, religion scholars, anthropologists and believers will examine such implications in detail.

Translation: “I just pulled the pin and threw the grenade in the building. Can’t blame me. I was just the hand grenade’s messenger. And, by the way, you may cower and abase yourself when you note the insertion of the word “paleolimnnological” in the title. Makes it sound real solid scientific, don’t it?”

Of course, when Nof gets a little attention from a supportive and loving media, he phrases it a bit differently, “If you ask me if I believe someone walked on water, no, I don’t,” Nof said. “Maybe somebody walked on the ice, I don’t know. I believe that something natural was there that explains it.”

Nof’s entitled to his ‘belief’ in “something natural.” That belief system is not only the foundation of his career, but of his self-limited life itself. It is, in a very real sense, his religion.

As far as the whole “Jesus walked on the water” issue goes, my own belief is: “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I can’t seem to find the weather report from that day online. And there’s no video tape that I’m aware of. Just some eye witnesses, with all that implies.”

I’m also aware of another theory that holds that the Star of Bethlehem was a supernova that just happened to show up in the sky at Christ’s birth. Arthur C. Clarke used this to good effect in his short story “The Star.” T.S. Eliot used it earlier in “The Journey of the Magi.” In a much less distinguished manner, I’ve even used it myself in Sunday Meditation: The Star    where I noted, in passing,

In time stronger sciences would rise upon the structures of the proto-sciences of astrology and alchemy. These sciences would push the first sciences into the realm of myth, speculation, and popular fantasy. The new sciences, you see, were much, much more about Reality. They would never be tossed aside in their time as so many playthings of mankind’s youth. The authority of astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry and others was certain. Unlike astrology and alchemy, they would never be questioned. We had the evidence. There was no doubt. They were as eternal and as fixed in the truth as… well, as astrology was in 5 B.C.

All of which gets us back to pretty much where we are today where Christ is revealed to have been, at the very least, pretty good at ice-skating. And, with a supernova at birth and a frozen lake near the end, you would have to say, even as a secular scientist, that Jesus had a great sense of timing as well as a way with words.

Nof seems to have a sense of timing and a way with words as well. I’m sure there are nods of approval and various other high fives pinging into his email today from other true believers world-wide. After all, it seems that the only thing that makes a bigger splash in Science these days than a cure for cancer is some bit of “cutting-edge research” (almost always with the aid of computer modeling) that either warms the globe or disparages religion.

Why? Because it is a central tenet of faith, of pure faith, in the Secular Religion, that traditional Christianity is the “Anti-Darwin” to that faith. Strange when you consider that, in terms of actual dogma and actual acts, Islam is far more hostile to all the core tenets of science, but — as I noted above — it really isn’t very safe to take too close a look at that collection of ergot-derived insights out of the desert. Those adherents are a bit more lethal when it comes to accepting slights on their religion. But then Christianity is the dominant religion of the First World and that’s what we’re discussing here — not which faith is right, but which faith is to be master. It seems that for Science to triumph as the new religion, Christ has to die again — and this time he’s got to stay dead.

There are fundamentalist Christians who hold that everything in the Bible is as the Bible says it is. And there are fundamentalist Scientists, like Nof, who hold that nothing in the Bible is as it says it is.

My very small puppy in this fight says that there is a lot in Science that lets all of us live longer and better lives while there is a lot in Christianity that lets us live deeper and more meaningful lives.

I don’t look to Christianity to bring me the weather reports for tomorrow. At the same time I don’t look to Science to ever, in its widest dreams, reveal the core of the miracle and mystery of being a conscious entity who has been granted the gift of being able, in my better moments, to witness — even for an inch of time — the wonder of Creation.

I know that there are many zealots of the Secular Faith who will think the less of me for not being “tough minded” enough just to face up to the fact that everything really is “purposeless matter hovering in the dark.” I know that habit of mind well. I wore it like a pre-fab Medal of Honor for many years. Then one day I had had enough of Nothingness and I sent it back.

I guess you could say that being a Secular Atheist started to feel like trying to walk on thin ice.

https://youtube.com/shorts/x8Sl9DORB_A?feature=share
“Showed me his plate.”  Stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum too? Ate all his veggies and finished off his pudding and ice cream without any diversity nurse spoon-feeding him and wiping his chin? What a good boy he is. Probably still goes to the bathroom independently, like Ruprecht:

Joe’s a lucky drooler. My personal long-term care plan is the penitentiary.  What’s yours?