Mark of the GOP Beast

The GOP has been looking for additional ways to give us the shaft - and they found a huge one. It's the old gulf oil lube.

They have used this rub before, but never so effectively.

If YOU ever vote for another republican, this is just for YOU. The GOP will be sending their poisonous message up the liberal east coast...
click on the picture for a full view

Mom & Dad

mDNA studies indicate that modern humans share a common female ancestor who lived in West Africa approximately 140,000 years ago. All men share a common male ancestor who lived in Ethiopia approximately 60,000 years ago. Not only did "Eve" get around, it seems she mated with a much younger "Adam." Way to go, you dirty old lady! Eve-o-lution!

Eve and Adam were certainly not the only humans who lived in these areas of Africa during those times. The human genome still contains many genetic traits of their contemporaries. Humanity's most recent common ancestors (MCRA) are identifiable because their traces survived by chance in small pieces of DNA that are passed down gender lines nearly unaltered from one generation to the next.

There were many failed species of humans that, because of where they lived and when they lived, were pushed out of existence. Those groups were the lucky ones. For them, the suffering is over.

Human Migration is more complex. So is the volcanic winter and population bottleneck. And there is an alternate parallel evolution theory to consider. However, that was then and this is now. We are here and they either aren't or, through the process of reincarnation, are here with us. Ida is dead and gone. Either way, it just doesn't matter (at least, not to me).

I just wanted to repost the EIGHT tribes of humanity graphic. At the center of it all is Africa, not Eden.
So why did you read this? Slow day? Actually, that also doesn't matter.

My Head Exploded

Sad, but true. Today a friend and I were sitting in an outdoor coffee shop and the fellow next to us was talking about teaching critical thinking - in the department of psychology - in a state university and how the intervention of god (he did not specifically state which one) was going to save us from the gulf oil spill. My head exploded.

Any person who has studied psychology knows about Carl Jung and "Man and his Symbols." Jung is a friend of critical thinking and an enemy of tyranny.

And the gods are symbols. Few have a problem with another culture's god or gods being merely symbolic. Many have a problem with their god being reduced symbolically.

Add the 'god spot' and you have entered the twilight zone of critical thinking. A religious experience, it turns out, is not unlike an epileptic seizure of the brain's frontal lobe. Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran has explained this epiphonic detail for years, backing off recently as the rabid Xtian Taliban has been prolifically foaming at the mouth.

Biblical Criticism looks at the bible through the eyes of critical thinkers.

Who Killed Goliath in Your Bible?

The 'other guy' is revealed in II Sam. 21:19.
KJV - Queen James Bible (1611): "Elhanan...slew the brother of Goliath."
RV - Revised Version (1881): "Elhanan...slew Goliath the Gittite."
ASV - American Standard Version (1901): "Elhanan...slew Goliath the Gittite."
NWT - New World Translation (1961): "Elhanan...got to strike down Goliath."
NASV - New American Standard Version (1970): "Elhanan...killed Goliath of Gath."
NEB - New English Bible (1970): "Elhanan...killed Goliath of Gath."
LB - Living Bible (1971): "Elhanan...killed the brother of Goliath."
GNB - Good News Bible (1976): "Elhanan...killed Goliath from Gath."
NIV - New International Version (1978): "Elhanan...killed Goliath the Gittite."
19 "In another battle with the Philistines at Gob, Elhanan son of Jaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a shaft like a weaver's rod."

The New International Version (NIV) is a translation made by more than one hundred scholars working from the best available ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. In 1967, the New York Bible Society (now International Bible Society) provided the financial sponsorship for this scholarly project. The translation of each book was assigned to a team of respected scholars, and their work was subsequently thoroughly reviewed by three additional and separate committees. Translations were tested for accuracy, clarity, and ease of reading. No other translation passed this thorough process of review. The NIV is thus an Accurate, Beautiful, Clear, and Dignified Scholarly Translation suitable for public and private reading, studying, teaching, learning, and liturgical use. The translators were united in their commitment to the faithful communication of the meaning of the original ancient writers. Modifications in sentence structure (resulting in a "thought-for-thought" translation) and constant regard for the contextual meanings of words was maintained.

Ignorant superstitions.

The pentagram was a symbol in ancient Greece and Sumeria. The Pentagram appears on jewelry in many countries. It appears on some old synagogues (e.g. Capernaum). It was the sign under which Constantine would conquer. Christians once used the pentagram to represent the five wounds of Jesus. Some have a phobia (Greek: φόβος, phóbos, meaning morbid fear) of pentagrams.

The pentagram is associated with the planet Venus, and - in times past - the worship of the goddess Venus, or her many equivalents (Isis, Ishtar, Virgin Mary, etc.). It is also associated with Lucifer - the light bringer, which is Venus (as the Morning Star). Venus is also sometimes the evening star but either stupidity or ignorance prevented the profoundly superstitious from figuring that out for themselves. If you sip enough of that Ken-Tuck Whiskey, you'll fall to believe almost anything.

"View in 2010: Venus: the dazzling morning or evening star, outshines all the other stars and planets in the night sky. It moves into the evening sky in March, low in the west as darkness begins to fall. It will climb into better view through the spring and into summer. It will disappear from view in October as it passes between Earth and the Sun. It will return to view as a "morning star" by early November, and remain there for the rest of the year."

It may have originated from the observations of Sumerian astronomers. When viewed from Earth, five successive inferior conjunctions of Venus plot pentagram shape around the zodiac at eight year intervals. It's just gravity. The second rock from the sun orbits the sun because of gravity. The devil is in the details - and those details often escape the ignorant. And, BTW, occult only means means "hidden."

Stupid. I see stupid people!
They are - they're can be confused with their or there.

Creations Myths ala carte

The Sumerian myth - "The Huluppu-Tree" - is perhaps the oldest.

For ancient creation myths, see Frankfort, Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man.

The Memphite Creation Myth, the Akkadian Creation Myth, and the 2 myths of Genesis (the first is 1:1-2:4, the second is 2:5-9) all share common elements. The ancient Greek creation story found in Hesiod THEOGONY also shares similar elements. The elements are the same but the names have been changed to localize the lore.

In Enuma Elish we read how Marduk brought order to chaos in the creation: “WHEN on high the Heavens had not been named, Firm ground below had not been called by name, Nothing but Primordial Apsu’ (deep) the Begetter, [Fresh Water]; and Mummu Tiamat’, She Who Bore them All, [Salt Water]; --their waters commingling as a single body-- No reed hut had been matted, no marsh land had appeared, Uncalled by name, their destinies undetermined-- THEN it was that the Gods were formed within Them.”

What if there was creation - of carbon - before the "creation" of the earth and sun?

Well, it turns out that there are smoking guns galore. Common sense tells you that "there is nothing harder than a diamond." Well, common sense is wrong most of the time. There is a type of black diamond which predates the earth - and our sun - by hundreds of thousands to hundreds of millions of years. Here is one of them: It ruined some guy's diamond lapidary wheel when he tried to polish it. This black diamond is harder than an earth diamond. It was forged in the furnace of a dying first generation star.

Masters of Myth Creation in the present day are the GOP folks.

The reality is this: "The GOP is wrong. Dead wrong."
Shatter forever that errant belief that "republicans are good." Republicans are not good. The motivation behind republicans is greed. And greed is the only sin in Buddhist thought.