World's 1st film for a paying audience was Aussie boxer

1895 On this day, Australian boxer Young Griffo (Albert Griffiths; 1871 - 1927), a character in my novel, Faces in the Street, starred in Young Griffo vs. Battling Charles Barnett (filmed on the roof of Madison Square Garden, May 4, 1895), the world's first motion picture to be screened before a paying audience, on this day at 153 Broadway in New York City.

It premiered more than seven months before the Lumière brothers showed their film at the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, on December 28 – the event usually said to be the first movie-by-ticket screening in the world.

Young Griffo's brilliant boxing career in America came to a grinding end in New York City in 1895, at the peak of his international fame, after he was convicted of raping William Gottlieb, an 11-year-old boy. He spent the last three decades of his life drinking himself to death ...



Categories: movies, cinema, history

Mat somersaults

Mat somersaults
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

Mat, whose surname I don't know, likes to somersault into the Bellinger River. I'm a member of the Rainbow Region Flickr group for North-eastern New South Wales.

Mat prepares to somersault

Mat prepares to somersault
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

Mat, whose surname I don't know, likes to somersault into the Bellinger River. I'm a member of the Rainbow Region Flickr group for North-eastern New South Wales.

Stoopidity spells disaster for Australia's future

Stoopidity spells disaster for Australia's future Bob Ellis writes: "It means, must mean, that children of the present generation and those that grew up in the 1980s and 1990s are stupider than those, like me, who grew up in the 1950s. "

From Baz le Tuff, with thanks.



Categories: education, english, youth

Nolan's Ned Kelly paintings not my cuppa tea

Those who like this sort of art will applaud NSW Art Gallery director Edmund Capon and the gallery's $4.5 million purchase. Ugh! "The Art Gallery of NSW will today announce it is the new owner of the most expensive Australian painting sold at auction, Sidney Nolan's Ned Kelly First-Class Marksman, which last week set a record of $4.5 million." http://bit.ly/9ICzjd

More on famous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly at http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/book/jun28.html

Categories: art, australia, bushranger

At Alma Doeppel Park, Mylestom

At Alma Doeppel Park, Mylestom
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

In full-size view, an elderly couple are fishing. They always throw the fish back - they tell me they just like to fish. I'm a member of the Rainbow Region Flickr group for North-eastern New South Wales.

Memorial to a drowned child

Memorial to a drowned child
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

So sad. A little boy drowned near the Bellinger River tidal pool at Mylestom very recently. People have left flowers, teddy bears and a little toy dolphin, among other gifts and notes.

I'm a member of the Rainbow Region Flickr group for North-eastern New South Wales.

Government goes to war with Google over net censorship

Government goes to war with Google over net censorship: Australia: "The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has launched a stinging attack on Google and its credibility in response to the search giant's campaign against the government's internet filtering policy.

"In an interview on ABC Radio last night, Senator Conroy also said he was unaware of complaints the Obama administration said it had raised with the government over the policy."

"The government intends to introduce legislation within weeks forcing all ISPs to block a blacklist of "refused classification" websites for all Australians ..."

Thanks Baz le Tuff.



Internet Censorship - GetUp! Campaign Actions

Categories: australia, internet, censorship

Beware of ruins - a comment on hyperreality

Stonehenge unrestored « The Heritage Journal: "Beware of ruins; the heart is apt to make/Monstrous assumptions on the unburied past;/Though cleverly restored, the Tudor tower/Is spurious, the facade a fake ..." - a comment on hyperreality, from 'Beware of Ruins' by Australian poet AD Hope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._D._Hope (see http://heritageaction.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/stonehenge-unrestored/)

Do 3D films make you sick?

Do 3D films make you sick? - Telegraph

3D films can make you very sick

Take care of 3D movies like 'Avatar' & 'How to Train Your Dragon'. I was given a ticket to 'Dragon', and it's great. But the new 3D makes some people really sick. I'm one, maybe because I've suffered 41 yrs of a mild form of epilepsy. Desperately ill for 4 hours, I nearly called ambulance. The audience won't help u -- Hollywood's worth more than humanity. See http://tinyurl.com/y8zdb35

Categories: health, movie, science

Wilson family motto

"Be kind to one another. Have a good attitude. Don't waste time. Never give up." Wilson family motto

National Geographic best pictures for 2009

National Geographic best pictures for the year 2009

Thank you, Misty.

Categories: photo, photography

David Lean, David Who?

1908, birth date of David Lean (d. 1991), British filmmaker (Great Expectations; Oliver Twist; Ryan's Daughter; Lawrence of Arabia, [Oscar]; Doctor Zhivago; A Passage to India; The Bridge on the River Kwai [Oscar]).

David Who?
I have good reason to be skeptical of 'experts'. One night I was listening to a film reviewer on ABC Radio in Sydney, Australia (I shouldn't be too scathing because the ABC, the national broadcaster, for a considerably long time broadcast Wilson's Almanac). A caller phoned to say he admired the films of David Lean. Neither the compère nor the expert reviewer had ever heard of the brilliant, double-Oscar-winning director ... Such is the state of Australian journalism ...



Categories: movie, uk, biography

William Morris was not just your usual bloke

1834 Birth date of William Morris (d. October 3, 1896), English philosopher, artist, social reformer, poet, medievalist, utopian novelist (News from Nowhere). With other pre-Raphaelite contemporaries he helped reform Victorian tastes in colour and design, celebrating 'beauty for beauty's sake'.

He was one of the principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts Movement and is still highly regarded as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics, as well as a writer of poetry and fiction, and an early founder of the socialist movement in Britain. He was a great supporter of the Paris Commune of 1871 ...



Categories: utopia, utopian, socialism, art, artist, uk, radicalism

Bees in more trouble than ever after bad winter

Bees in more trouble than ever after bad winter - Yahoo! News

If ... a poem for passage from boyhood to manhood

Rudyard Kipling (Dec 30, 1865 - Jan 18, 1936) wasn't taught to me at school, nor at my university studies in English Lit from 1971-'89, being considered 'old hat', and a British imperialist, as indeed he was. But he had some things to say. The poem, 'If' still has value for young males in the passage from boyhood to manhood -- and for all men and women, IMHO.

If ...

(By Rudyard Kipling, British author (Jungle Book) and poet, born in India. In 1907, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, making him the first English-language writer to receive the prize, and he is still its youngest recipient.)

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream -- and not make dreams your master;
If you can think -- and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings -- nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And -- which is more -- you'll be a Man, my son!

Categories: poetry, english-literature, imperialism, uk, children, men

Moon cult ties with US legislature

On this day in 2004, self-styled Messiah and genuine wacko, Rev. Sun Myung Moon (b. 1920), and his wife, Hak Ja Han, were crowned the 'King and Queen of Peace' on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, inside the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Participating were 81 US Senators and Members of Congress, 26 ambassadors to the USA, and some 450 leaders from various fields.

"It was the spirit world that said he was the Messiah," said Archbishop George A Stallings, Jr, pastor of an independent African-American Catholic congregation.

Moon, who is not only the head of the multi-million dollar Moonies cult and owner of The Washington Times, is also the font of such wisdom as: "Homosexuals and fornicators are like dirty dung eating dogs", and advice to men: "If your love organ does not listen to your conscience, then you should cut off the tip".

According to a Washington Post description of the event, more than a dozen US lawmakers attended. One of them, Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) "wore white gloves and carried a pillow holding an ornate crown that was placed on Moon's head" ...

Watch the BBC documentary on Moon, 'Emperor of the Universe'.

Also: Blog by anti-Moonies activist :: The King of America (documentary)



Categories: religion, usa, congress, cult, fraud

The debt we owe to Stephen Pearl Andrews

1812 Stephen Pearl Andrews (d. May 21, 1886), anarchist abolitionist, Modern Times community founder (with Josiah Warren; 1799 - 1874); born at Templeton, Massachusetts, USA. He was a lawyer, author (The Sovereignty of the Individual; Science of Society) and free-love advocate; it is said that he knew 32 languages.

Andrews started with a brilliant career at the American bar and sacrificed it by his zealous work for the abolition of slavery. He also contributed frequently to the Truth Seeker, a journal of rational thought that is still in publication (other eminent contributors included Thomas Edison, Clarence Darrow, Mark Twain, Robert G Ingersoll, HL Mencken, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Margaret Sanger). By the 1860s he was propounding an ideal society called Pantarchy, and from this he moved on to a philosophy he called "universology", which stressed the unity of all knowledge and activities.

Andrews was cited in the article on Anarchism by none other than Prince Peter Kropotkin in the famed 1910 edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica ...

See also Early progressives in the Book of Days



Categories: anarchism, progressive, activism, activist, free-thought, free-love, community, alternative-lifestyle, radical, history

Ostara and the Equinox

(Ostara, Alban Eiler, Esther, Eostre, Ostarun, ôstartag', Eastre, Eoastrae, Oestre)

One of the Lesser Wiccan Sabbats, Ostara is one of the eight solar holidays or sabbats of Neopaganism. It is celebrated on the Spring Equinox, in the Northern Hemisphere circa March 21 and in the Southern Hemisphere circa September 21, but, because of its origins, may instead be celebrated on the fixed date of March 25.

The name may refer to an ancient Germanic goddess named Eostre; it is alleged that this name was used in English when the Paschal holiday was introduced, and this name (not the holiday) was converted to Easter, in German Ostern ...



Categories: pagan, neopagan, calendar-customs

Brutal movie in family restaurant

Last night (March 20) I celebrated a boy's 13th birthday, with his family, at a well-established 'barbecue barn' in Coffs Harbour. Near us, and in our direct line of vision, as we ate our meal, the management was repetitively showing the brutal movie 'Young Guns' on a huge projection screen approximately two metres wide. Around us were tables of families (for this is supposed to be a 'family restaurant', often patronized by families before and after the cinema), with mums, dads, infants and children.

As we ate, my party was regaled by this Western movie featuring much gratuitous violence. As characters were shot, we saw blood spurting from their foreheads and the rest of their bodies, and gore gushing from their mouths.

My complaint is not so much that it was nauseating to us as diners (as it was), as that it is indecently reprehensible to expose little children to such horrors and charge their parents for such bad example. I, for one, will never dine there again unless the corporation that owns this fake 'cowboy' steakhouse develops some social responsibility for the next generation in a too-violent world. Just imagine if the displayed film contained obscenities of sex rather than obscenities of human murder. What an uproar there would be!

Business owners ought to be reminded that one satisfied customer may tell five people, but a disgusted one will probably tell 20. They might also consider developing good corporate citizenship in our community.

***
Update: The management of the restaurant replied within hours, "I received your email regarding your evening with us last night and would like apologise for distressing you and your family. I have removed that movie from those available to be shown and I appreciate your prompt correspondence regarding your disappointment. It was a complete oversight on my part, as we do try to play movies that are suitable for everyone. This was a lack of attention to detail and I am very sorry."

Natch, I've accepted the apology, which I think was very graciously written. Matter concluded.

Categories: violence, movie, food, children, pornography

Illegal invasion of Iraq: Happy New Year, towelheads!

On Nowruz, March 20, 2003, the day of Muslim New Year (Spring Equinox) celebrations, land troops from the USA (248,000), United Kingdom (45,000), Australia (2,000), and Poland (194) illegally invaded Iraq, preceded by an air strike on the suspected bunker of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Thirty-six other countries were involved in its aftermath. Since then, more than 1,366,000 Iraqis have died violently (see http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq).



Myths of the 'War on Terrorism' and Iraq
What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy

Categories: iraq, disinfo, war, war-on-terror, bush, usa, australia, poland, uk, blair, wmd, disinformation, war-crime

Australian definition of a Canadian

Email from Almaniac Vera L: Once in a while someone does a nice job of describing a Canadian, this time it was an Australian dentist.

An Australian definition of a Canadian In case anyone asks you who a Canadian is ...

You probably missed it in the local news, but there was a report that someone in Pakistan had advertised in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed a Canadian - any Canadian.

An Australian dentist wrote the following editorial to help define what a Canadian is, so they would know one when they found one.

A Canadian can be English, Scottish or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. A Canadian can be Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, Arab, Pakistani or Afghan. A Canadian may also be a Cree, Métis, Mohawk, Blackfoot, Sioux, or one of the many other tribes known as native Canadians. A Canadian's religious beliefs range from Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or none. In fact, there are more Muslims in Canada than in Afghanistan. The key difference is that in Canada they are free to worship as each of them chooses. Whether they have a religion or no religion, each Canadian ultimately answers only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.

A Canadian lives in one of the most prosperous lands in the history of the world. The root of that prosperity can be found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which recognize the right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.

A Canadian is generous and Canadians have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need, never asking a thing in return. Canadians welcome the best of everything, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best services and the best minds. But they also welcome the least - the oppressed, the outcast and the rejected.

These are the people who built Canada. You can try to kill a Canadian if you must as other blood-thirsty tyrants in the world have tried but in doing so you could just be killing a relative or a neighbour. This is because Canadians are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, can be a Canadian.

Please keep this going! Pass this around the World. Then pass it around again. It says it all, for all of us.

'Keep your stick on the ice'

This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm

Categories: canada

Allah Is a Zionist - but who is a permaculturist?

Allah Is a Zionist - by Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi Interesting and persuasive article by the Muslim scholar, but I have to say the following and hope it doesn't sting anyone. To a politically aware (and active) Australian atheist goy, and I think it reasonable to call myself such, the Solomon's Temple debate - in fact the whole gargantuan and ancient discourse that encompasses it - are only more important than, say, an hypothetical bulldozing of a bora ring, would be to practically any politically active Israeli, Zionist, Palestinian, Jew or Muslim, because of one thing, and that's the current military ramifications of such inexcusable human obduracy.

Both situations, even my hypothetical one, recall antique beliefs, wars, joys, superstitions, intransigence, goodness, wickedness, love, hate, community, genocide, vandalism and so much more I won't bore you all day.

Jews, Muslims, Zionists and Christian Zionists: please get over it. The debate and enmity are so ridiculously lost in time, that, were it not for all the bombs, it would be totally risible. Most of the world really, really doesn't give a damn about rocks and ancient history.

A modest proposal: start - start today - permaculturing the whole Middle East and stand fast against the worst aspects of globalization, and you'll have a new Garden of Eden in a few generations, with plenty for all and some left over. Then, with luck and hard work building instead of arguing, your grandkids will wonder what the sand, rocks and ancient rivalries were that their stupid, gullible, irascible ancestors used to fight over. Even 1967 is ancient history to me, let alone my grandkids, and let alone 2,000 BCE. Excuse me for being blunt, but I do think most of the world is utterly sick of of religions and ideologies dividing people instead of uniting them, and scaring ths shite out of the rest of us, and many people see a possibility of a wonderful future for the world. I'm one of them. Now, guys, please grow up, shake hands, act like the brothers and sisters you are, and learn how to make the land sustainably abundant for your grandkids and their grandkids. It will take more than kibbutzim; more than foreign aid. Permaculture is the best proposition for sharing land and living abundantly.

Thanks Lynn, for sharing the link.

Categories: israel, palestine, judaism, islam, permaculture, peace, war, future, religion, fundamentalism

Sir Richard Burton, intellectual adventurer

1821 Birth date of Sir Richard Burton, British consul, explorer, translator, and orientalist. Burton travelled alone and in disguise to Mecca, translated Arabian Nights and the erotic classics Kama Sutra and The Perfumed Garden, journeyed with John Hanning Speke to discover the great lakes of Africa and the sources of the Nile, visited with Mormon leader Brigham Young in Salt Lake City, Utah, travelled far and wide, and wrote much. He later served as British Consul in Trieste, Damascus, and Fernando Po, and was knighted in 1866.

Burton died on October 20, 1890. His widow, Isabel Arundel Gordon, allegedly burned many of his papers, because she prudishly believed they would be harmful to his (and her) reputation due to sexually explicit content. This, however, is disputed ...



Categories: biography, history

Festival of Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom

First day of the Greater Quinquatria, Festival of Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, Roman Empire (Mar 19 - 23). The name of this festival to Minerva derives from its duration of five days. It was also known as the Minervalia. The Palladium statue which had supposedly fallen from Olympus was carried in procession during the Quinquatria. 

On this, the first day (the Quinquatrus), sacrifices and oblations were offered, though no blood was spilled.

Throughout the festival, plays would be enacted and public discussion of the arts openly encouraged. The festival was also associated with the opening of the campaign season; during this time the arms, horses and trumpets of the army would be ceremoniously purified at Rome.

During the following days the citizens enjoyed gladiatorial displays, and on the fifth and final day a solemn procession made its way through the streets of Rome. On these days the trumpets (tubae) were lustrated (purified by offerings); this seems to have been originally a separate festival called 'Tubilustrium'. Unlike today's instrument, a tuba was a long, straight trumpet, but we know that, like the tuba, it made a deep sound. These were were blown during sacrifices, funerals and public games, and Scipio Africanus used them to cause Hannibal's elephants to stampede at his final defeat at Carthage.

Sacrifices were offered to Minerva, the Roman goddess of war as well as wisdom, arts and crafts, dyeing, science and trade, and patroness of trumpet players. She was also the patroness of scholars and pedagogues (teachers), who enjoyed a holiday at this time, with the pupils giving their pedagogues gifts, dedicated to Minerva, at the close of the festival. We see her depicted in art with Juno and Jupiter on the Great Arch of Trajan, and she frequently appears on sarcophagi offering a new life beyond the grave.

The Roman goddess Minerva probably derived from the Etruscan goddess Menrva, and was later modelled on Greek Pallas Athena. Menrva was the Etruscan version of Athena, and depicted similarly (with helm, spear, and shield). Like Athena, Menrva was born from the head of a god, in her case Tinia, and she is part of a triad with Tinia and Uni. Minerva sprang fully armed from the head of Jupiter (Zeus), whose head had been split open with Vulcan's axe.

Modern Minervalias were held early in the 20th Century in Guatemala City, Guatemala ..



Categories: roman-mythology, mythology, deity, calendar-customs, festival, ancient-rome

The US Vs John Lennon, movie in full

The US Vs John Lennon -- the whole full-length movie for free at http://bit.ly/9IOb5N

Birds smaller due to warmer temps

iTWire - Birds smaller due to warmer temps

Categories: global-warming, bird, climate-change, nature, environment, science

McNamara's band of Aussie radicals

1857: Birth of WHT McNamara, radical orator and owner of McNamara's Book and News Depot, Sydney, where many radicals of the day met, including the writer Henry Lawson, who married his step-daughter Bertha Bredt. His other daughter, Hilda, married the famous anarchist-turned-State Premier, Jack Lang.

McNamara learned journalism in Melbourne and was in Sydney by May, 1887. After a time in Sydney, he went back to Melbourne, married Bertha Bredt senior, a widow with two daughters (Bertha and Hilda), and on his return in 1892 became Sydney's radical bookseller.

On May 4, 1887, McNamara and six others met as a socialist group and began taking members. They held debates on Sundays and out of these, and open-air meetings, grew the foundation of the Australian Socialist League (ASL), which met on Sunday evenings at 533½ George St, Sydney, with McNamara, George Black and Thomas Walker as leaders. The ASL reading rooms housed more than 220 foreign newspapers, many of them radical. Contemporary anarchist Jack Andrews preferred to call it the "Alleged Socialist League".

WHT McNamara's Book and News Depot
McNamara's first bookshop, founded in 1892, was at 238 Castlereagh St, next door to the Labour Bureau run by the American anarchist Larry Petrie, who bombed the Aramac. Heat from the police forced the move to 221, next door to Leigh House on one side, and on the other the Active Service Brigade, urban unemployed workers organised by John Dwyer (1856 - 1934) and Arthur Desmond during the 1890s Depression. The Brigade ran a soup kitchen, housed the homeless and also disrupted Parliament and Protestant church services ...





Categories: australia, radical-history, labor-history, radical, anarchism, henry-lawson, biography, history, australian-history

Irish Mick did a great job

Irish Mick did a great job
Originally uploaded by Pip_Wilson.

Thanks, Irish Mick, for all the hours of work you put into decorating the Federal Hotel, Bellingen, for St Paddy's Day 2010. And to Glenda for making the brilliant banner.

Happy St Patrick's Day. Who was Patrick?

Saint Patrick was an historical character who was born in an unknown place called Bannavem, probably in England or South Wales, about 389 CE. His father, Calpurnius, was a Roman official and deacon of the Christian Church. At the age of 16, Patrick was captured by Celtic raiders and spent six years as a slave swineherd on an Irish farm, where he learned the Irish language, until he escaped to Europe. There he studied theology and was sent by Pope Celestine I back to Ireland to teach the natives about Christianity.

Landing at Wicklow in 432, he soon established religious communities and churches, despite the relentless opposition of the established religion of the pagan Druids - a religion that in succeeding centuries was fiercely suppressed.

Showing great courage, Patrick even preached the Gospel to the High King of Tara, and eventually the faith which he had brought to the Emerald Isle won over almost completely, as is evidenced even today. (Of course, there were many other Christian proselytizers who did the work besides Patrick, as well as many potentates and preachers who felt it their duty to destroy the indigenous religions.)

Patrick’s life story, as it has been passed down over the centuries, is delightfully replete with miraculous events and adventures. As every schoolchild knows, it was he who was responsible for the fact that there are no snakes or similar vermin in Ireland even yet.
Several versions exist to tell how he performed this miracle. One relates how the good saint beat a drum whenever he entered a town. On one occasion, he beat his drum on Mount Croagh Patrick (later named after him, in County Mayo), and, proclaiming his intention to rid Ireland of snakes, beat the drum so hard as to punch a hole in it. When simultaneously a huge black serpent appeared, the locals thought Patrick’s faith was insufficient for the task. Suddenly, however, an angel of the Lord appeared and mended his drum, and as Patrick beat his instrument the snakes vanished from the land.
A charming addendum to this legend is the tale that one old serpent resisted the banishment, so the saint made a box and ordered the snake into it. Naturally, the serpent objected, saying it was too small for him, but St Patrick insisted that it wasn't.

To prove that the box was too small, the snake slithered in: Patrick slammed the lid down and threw the box and its miserable contents into the sea.  

The belief in the anti-serpentine nature of Irish soil was so widespread that when, in the early nineteenth century, Sydney's famous mansion, Vaucluse House (home of William Charles Wentworth), was built, soil from Ireland was imported and spread around the fence line to keep out snakes ...

Read more at http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/patrick.html

Categories: calendar-customs, ireland, folklore, saint, superstition

The Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another

Joy! Last week I paid only $5 for a good-condition hard-cover of Boswell's famous biography of Dr Samuel Johnson. I've wanted a copy for decades. It was Johnson who said the above, according to James Boswell.

Categories: biography, ireland

Ramtha, what the BLEEP?

Actual birth date in 1946 Judith Darlene Hampton (aka JZ Knight and Ramtha), American woman who claims to "channel" the spirit of a 35,000 year-old (Cro-Magnon?) male spirit-warrior named Ramtha (7 feet tall, with "black dancing eyes"), who first appeared in Knight's kitchen in Tacoma, Washington in 1977.



"What be you? You are God!"

Ramtha inexplicably speaks in accented semi-Jacobean English – the language of the age of King James I of England – which perhaps he picked up on the way from Atlantis via Lemuria, two of his former mythical nations of residence. (Or perhaps he got it from the angel who gave the golden plates to Mormonism founder Joseph Smith, as they exhibit the same anachronistic linguistic quirk – note that Hampton is not the first such charlatan, nor will probably be the last, to invoke the language of the King James Bible (the AV) and Shakespeare to impart a ring of authority.) Hampton is also known for adopting physical poses that look something like the characters on pyramid walls.

Hampton has thrown together a hodge-podge of all the usual essentials of phoney New Ageism: a bit of gnosticism, add some Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky, mix with some UFO alien stuff (Hampton was born in Roswell, NM, after all), stir with high school science, add a pinch of ersatz Egyptology and roast in a moderate brain. Ramthaism is perhaps not as dangerous (yet) as some cults such as Jim Jones's People's Temple (Jonestown), Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate and L Ron Hubbard's Scientology, but it has to be one of the silliest, and somehow is making Hampton a very rich Cro-Magnon man: it has been estimated she's raking in $10 million a year from seminars and merchandizing.

As if to underline Hampton's contempt for the credulity of her thousands of dupes, it has been asserted that Ramtha revealed in September, 2004 that [wait for it ... drum roll!! ...] a sugary American kids' snack called Hostess Twinkies contain an ingredient that can prolong life. Apparently Twinkies are selling well in Yelm, Washington, where Hampton's followers have congregated.

'Ramtha' Hampton gained quite a bit of publicity in the mid-80s, most of it ridiculing her, so she went underground during much of the 1990s. Apparently she continued building her money-making machine, and she is making waves again, gaining many more followers and about 75 pounds in weight. The movie, What the Bleep do We Know ('Bleep' apparently being an American euphemism for an expletive), starring Marlee Matlin, was produced by followers of Hampton ...

Categories: usa, hoax, fraud, superstition, movies, religion, new-age, biography

The Outsiders Who Foresaw The Subprime Crisis : NPR

The Outsiders Who Foresaw The Subprime Crisis : NPR

Bananas as good as drugs for treating HIV, says scientists

Bananas as good as drugs for treating HIV, says scientists
"Bananas could be the key to stopping the spread of HIV, scientists said today.

"Researchers have found a chemical in bananas, called BanLec, which they say is as good as current anti-HIV drugs at stopping the virus spreading ..."

Categories: health, science, food, hiv

Did Hitler and General George Patton own the Holy Lance?

Feast day of St Longinus, the centurion converted at the Crucifixion


Readers might have heard of the Spear of Destiny, a legendary magical weapon reputed to have been owned by Herod the Great, Roman emperors Constantine and Justinian, Charlemagne, Otto the Great, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, the Habsburg Emperors, Adolf Hitler and US General George Patton. It is associated in Christian folklore with the Holy Grail, and its origins lie with this saint.

Biblical authors Matthew and Mark both tell of the Roman centurion who said "Truly this man was the son of God", and tradition calls him Longinus. He was popular in medieval legend, and said to have been blind. Presumably in medieval times a blind centurion was believable. However, he didn’t remain blind forever. Pontius Pilate ordered Longinus to spear Jesus Christ in the side – according to Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1230 - '98) in the Golden Legend, the blood ran down his spear, into his eyes and restored his sight ...

Categories: superstition, legend, folklore, christianity, jesus, saint

Medicare dentistry full of holes

If Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon is agreeing with critics of the grant for people who require financial help for their teeth, does this mean the system is cunningly on the way to the scrap heap? "Runaway uptake of the scandal-plagued Medicare dental scheme is spreading nationwide, with latest figures showing claims for expensive crowns and bridges soaring in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.

"One unidentified Sydney dentist was revealed yesterday to have claimed about $4 million in benefits since the scheme began in November, 2007.

"The federal government has twice sought to scrap the scheme and replace it with a more targeted program - but been blocked by the Senate.

"Allegations of rorting and other dubious practices are also continuing to spread, with some dentists engaging in mass leaflet drops of entire suburbs and others apparently using the $4250 available under the scheme to provide costly crowns and other treatments while ignoring the more urgent work such as fillings.

"Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon said the latest evidence of rising uptake made the case for scrapping or amending the scheme more urgent ..."
Source

Categories: australia, health

Rather unintelligent design

Whose bright idea was to call these things "wisdom teeth"? This hurts like hell. Should be called "stupidity teeth" - they serve no purpose and don't even chew food.

Categories: health

Feast of the Mamuralia, ancient Rome

This festival was celebrated during the time of the Republic.

A man clad in furs was beaten with rods and driven beyond the bounds of the city, a practice said to have commemorated the expulsion of the smith Mamurius Veturius from the city, as Rome had suffered because of a shield he had provided. It seems that Mamurius represented the old year, depicted as the god of war, Mars. This festival also celebrates the art of armour making.



On this day, Frazer (Frazer, Sir James George (1854 - 1941), The Golden Bough, 1922, Ch. LVIII) tells us (originally the day before the traditional first full moon of the new year which began on March 1), a man dressed in goatskins would be ceremonially beaten with long white rods and chased out of the city in a rite of purification. Mamurius, representing the old year and all its troubles, is thus purged from the community.

Mamuralia and the scapegoat
This ritual of scapegoating is not uncommon in world cultures and religions – Frazer investigates some of these – and may be said to find an echo in the passion and execution of Jesus Christ ...

Categories: ancient-rome, calendar-customs, festival, holiday, religion

Twelve Great Myths of Feminism

From http://bit.ly/aWQodq Men, have you ever made some innocuous remark and been attacked, perhaps publicly ridiculed, by some woman who cultivates and celebrates anger as one of her primary emotions? Have you noticed that a woman who expresses criticism of a man or men is called a feminist, but a man who expresses criticism of a woman or women is called a sexist? Have you noticed that men are abused if they even accidentally use words such as 'ladies', 'girls', or 'chicks', instead of 'women' or 'womyn', but that women commonly use such terms and even quite often call men 'the boys'? Do you sense unfairness in these things and more? Then this article's for you: http://www.wilsonsalmanac.com/12myths.html and it's free for republication, provided a link-back is given.

It also links to an article called 'Strategic Disempowerment', http://bit.ly/cJYROY , which analyzes why such inequities occur and are rife in Western society, and constitute common sexism against males. For example, why a man can lose his job if his screensaver at work has a bikini-clad woman on it, but a woman won't lose her job for having a screensaver that shows men in brief swimmers. The name of the game is 'strategic disempowerment'. Although men are pretty smart, at least as smart as women, they've been slow to catch on to the ways in which they are being strategically disempowered by a minority but powerful elite group of ambitious women.

Categories: sexism, employment, men, women, feminism

Good news, and thank you

SINCERE THANKS to the 100s of people around the world who lit a candle for the health of my youngest son, when I requested it. So many people even sent photos of the candles they lit, and he's as grateful as I. Released from hospital, he's rapidly improving in health and has come 600 kilometers by train to live with me, for close care. We're both happy & optimistic about his wellbeing. Thank you. So many people from dozens of countries have been very kind & generous and boosted our optimism.

YouTube - Dirty Fucking Hippies WERE RIGHT!

YouTube - Dirty Fucking Hippies WERE RIGHT!

US military chiefs planned terrorism on US soil

1962 USA: The Joints Chiefs of Staff (the heads of the US Army, Air Force and Navy) presented a plan to Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara (and possibly to President John F Kennedy himself), that suggested using terrorism in the USA to turn opinion towards a US invasion of Cuba.

Click to enlarge

Long believed to be residing in the imagination of conspiracy theorists, the Operation Northwoods document (Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba [PDF file: link opens in new window]) was declassified in recent years by the Freedom of Information Act ...

Categories: usa, military, army, cuba, disinfo, cia, disinformation, terrorism, war-on-terror

The Unpersuadables

Monbiot.com » The Unpersuadables: "There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us. The new study by the Met Office, which paints an even grimmer picture than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will do nothing to change this view.

"The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as 'white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more.' ..."

Categories: science, climate-change, global-warming, skepticism, rationality

Mahatma Gandhi begins famous Salt March

1930 The Salt March: On this day 80 years ago, Mahatma Gandhi began a campaign of civil disobedience in India in defiance of British opposition, to protest the British monopoly on salt. Eventually, this non-violent tactic, known as satyagraha, helped expel the British colonial masters of India.



Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi), Indian leader and proponent of civil disobedience, set out at 6:30 am from Sabarmati with 79 volunteers on the historic Salt March 385 km (239 mi) to the sea at Dandi. A civil disobedience campaign against the British in India began, the beginning of a campaign that allowed Indians to have control of India, with the British relinquishing colonial 'ownership' of that great nation, which is now the world's largest democracy. The All-India Trade Congress had empowered Gandhi to begin the demonstrations. Gandhi led a march to the Gujarat Coast of the Arabian Sea and produced salt by evaporation of sea water in violation of the law as a gesture of defiance against the British monopoly in salt production. It was the first major step in the movement of Indians regaining India.

Mahatma Gandhi: from lawyer to national liberator (audio & transcript)

Categories: non-violence, india, peace, activism, gandhi, action, civil-disobedience