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Topics - Universe Prince

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151
3DHS / The truth about the "Gospel"
« on: December 04, 2007, 05:54:27 PM »
from an article in The New York Times, by April D. DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University:

      Amid much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn't betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas's reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.

It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society's transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic's translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.		      

   [...]

      So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the "Thirteenth." In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons ? an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh, whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.

Whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas was a harsh critic of mainstream Christianity and its rituals. Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when Judas sacrifices Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks mainstream Christians' belief in the atoning value of Jesus' death and in the effectiveness of the Eucharist.		      

Whole article at the other end of this link.

152
3DHS / Drew Carey Defends Medical Marijuana
« on: November 09, 2007, 02:40:44 PM »
Over at Reason's new project, reason.tv, here is a nice, 10 minute video of Drew Carey defending the use of marijuana as medicine.

http://www.reason.tv/video/show/57.html

153
3DHS / Interview with Matt Taibbi
« on: November 09, 2007, 12:54:23 PM »
Over at Reason Online is a short interview with Matt Taibbi, the current chief political reporter for the magazine Rolling Stone. In it Taibbi says something that made me smile.

Quote
People are steadily growing disenchanted with red state versus blue state?this really aggressive storyline where if you?re conservative you have to hate liberals, and if you?re liberal then you have to hate conservatives. For the first time on the campaign trail that I?ve seen, people are saying, ?I haven?t spoken to my liberal brother in years but we?re actually talking now because we?re both disappointed in our respective parties, and we?re both getting behind Ron Paul." There?s more on-the-ground energy for Ron Paul than there is for the rest of the candidates combined.

I hope he is correct. The whole interview can be found at the other end of this link.

154
3DHS / another Ron Paul post
« on: October 31, 2007, 05:11:36 AM »
Ron Paul on Jay Leno:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0KwY9Uzqtk

I did not see the show, but I've heard that John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of the band Sex Pistols) seems to be something of a fan.

155
3DHS / "And if you look past the warrantless surveillance..."
« on: October 26, 2007, 11:21:21 AM »

156
Culture Vultures / The origin of Batman
« on: October 23, 2007, 06:38:33 AM »
Over at another internet forum where I usually only lurk, there is a post that has a couple of articles explaining how Batman's inspiration was not Zorro, as commonly thought, but The Shadow. Apparently the link is so direct that several of Batman's early stories were lifted directly from plots of The Shadow novels. If you're interested in learning more, here is the link:
http://forums.nightly.net/index.php?showtopic=52497

157
3DHS / economic consequences of cracking down on illegal immigration
« on: September 26, 2007, 02:39:24 PM »
Yes, this information does come from the dreaded The New York Times, but try not to let that influence you.

      With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.      

   [...]

      Rival advocacy groups in the immigration debate turned this otherwise sleepy town into a litmus test for their causes. As the television cameras rolled, Riverside was branded, in turns, a racist enclave and a town fighting for American values.

Some residents who backed the ban last year were reluctant to discuss their stance now, though they uniformly blamed outsiders for misrepresenting their motives. By and large, they said the ordinance was a success because it drove out illegal immigrants, even if it hurt the town's economy.

"It changed the face of Riverside a little bit," said Charles Hilton, the former mayor who pushed for the ordinance. (He was voted out of office last fall but said it was not because he had supported the law.)

"The business district is fairly vacant now, but it's not the legitimate businesses that are gone," he said. "It's all the ones that were supporting the illegal immigrants, or, as I like to call them, the criminal aliens."		      

   [...]

      Numerous storefronts on Scott Street are boarded up or are empty, with For Sale by Owner signs in the windows. Business is down by half at Luis Ordonez's River Dance Music Store, which sells Western Union wire transfers, cellphones and perfume. Next door, his restaurant, the Scott Street Family Cafe, which has a multiethnic menu in English, Spanish and Portuguese, was empty at lunchtime.      

Whole article at The New York Times.

Nothing says "American values" like boarded up store fronts and empty businesses. Just wait until we can do this for all of America. Won't it be glorious!

(For those of you who might be unsure, yes, that is sarcasm.)

158
3DHS / personal thoughts on the Jena 6
« on: September 21, 2007, 06:13:34 PM »
The story, as I understand it, is that some dark-skinned teens asked for permission to hang out by a tree, on school property, where normally a bunch of pale-skinned teens hang out. The dark-skinned teens got permission, but then found nooses hanging from the tree. Nooses painted in the school colors apparently. (I'm sure someone thought that was clever.) This got a mild reaction from the school officials, and, long story short, tempers flared until a pale-skinned teen ended up getting the snot beat out of him by six dark-skinned teens. The local D.A. then decided to charge those six dark-skinned teens with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder, and the local D.A. thought a good idea would be to try those six dark-skinned teens as adults.

After I read various accounts of this story the other day, my first thought was that I understood exactly why the pale-skinned kid got the snot beat out of him. And to be quite honest I'm having an emotional reaction to this story to the point that I have to say I am thinking the Jena 6 should get off with a slap on the wrist, and the guys who hung the nooses should be publicly humiliated in some fashion.

What sort of person hangs nooses in a tree just because someone with darker skin wants to share the shade of that tree? I don't really know for sure, but my first guess is a low-grade imbecile. And yet, I know the person(s) who hung the nooses is(are) probably not actually that stupid. So why would someone do something that stupid anyway? And charging the teens with attempted and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder? What the frak? I seriously do not understand this. I don't get it. Is it fear? Hate? What causes people to make these choices in A.D. 2007?

159
3DHS / good news from the "war on drugs" front
« on: September 21, 2007, 04:13:15 AM »
Richard Paey has been pardoned.

      Freed at 2:51 p.m., he was to be imprisoned for almost 22 more years.

The catch: Everyone, including judges, acknowledged the traffic accident victim was using the pills for debilitating pain. And since his incarceration, prison doctors have hooked him up to a morphine drip, which delivers more narcotics in about two days than he was convicted of trafficking.		      

   [...]

      [Florida Governor Charlie] Crist, too, took a swipe at the prosecutors, saying the war on drugs itself isn't just to blame in cases such as this. "If they're prosecuted appropriately, then justice will be done," he said. "Obviously, this case cries out for a review of that process."      

Whole article at the other end of this link.

160
3DHS / UK's NHS in action, or rather, UK's NHS inaction
« on: September 21, 2007, 04:05:45 AM »
An example of how a nationalized health care system makes decisions:

      A man with a broken ankle is facing a lifetime of pain because a Health Service hospital has refused to treat him unless he gives up smoking.

John Nuttall, 57, needs surgery to set the ankle which he broke in three places two years ago because it did not mend naturally with a plaster cast.

Doctors at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro have refused to operate because they say his heavy smoking would reduce the chance of healing, and there is a risk of complications which could lead to amputation.

They have told him they will treat him only if he gives up smoking. But the former builder has been unable to break his habit and is now resigned to coping with the injury as he cannot afford private treatment.

He is in constant pain from the grating of the broken bones against each other and has been prescribed daily doses of morphine. 		      

The whole article at the other end of this link. This must be what is meant by "collective health". Smokers left without medical care for the good of the public. Yeah. Is this a scare tactic? That depends; is the truth scary?

161
3DHS / The Protectionist Pincer Movement
« on: September 17, 2007, 10:21:31 PM »
Excerpted from "Tuning Out the World" by Reason magazine's David Weigel:

      ...Things are looking up for protectionists left and right. On June 28, the Senate anesthetized an immigration reform bill over concerns that it might grant "amnesty" to illegal immigrants already living and working in the United States. A day later, the House of Representatives let the clock run out on fast track, the presidential power to cut trade deals without congressional amendments.      

   [...]

      The GOP's front-runners aren't adopting the trade demagoguery. Their speechwriters are too busy with immigration demagoguery. Eleven years ago the party rejected Pat Buchanan's presidential bid and his proposed wall along the Mexican border. Not this year. No GOP candidate opposes a border wall. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, immigration enthusiasts in their previous political lives, spent June blasting the Senate's immigration bill--not because of the restrictions it put on freedom of movement but because they objected to possible citizenship or special worker status for illegal immigrants.

To former Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), Republicans who pander to those voters are economically incoherent. (And political hemophiliacs too: The GOP lost the retiring Kolbe's Republican-leaning seat in 2006 when it nominated a border hawk who thought Kolbe had been too soft on the issue.) "I don't know many people who are ardent free traders and who want a wall built," Kolbe says. "If you're talking about the movement of goods, how can you not talk about movement of labor? How can you not talk about the movement of people? It's absolutely absurd."		      

   [...]

      Interestingly, while polls showed a healthy chunk--in some surveys, a majority--of those Democrats opposed to the immigration bill, most elected Democrats supported it. Their party doesn't pander when it comes to the labor market on the border. It panders on every other labor market.

The problem, Tim Penny theorizes, is that Democrats don't want to take a political risk. They don't want to explain why the economy could be growing without some of their loyal voters seeing marked local improvements. "Instead of acknowledging we've got challenges on worker training," Penny says, "or that free trade is basically good but we can drive harder on workers? concerns, we fall into the easy rhetoric of bashing trade: 'Trade is bad, trade is bad, trade is costing us jobs.' That's not thoughtful. That is knee-jerk."		      

Whole article at the other end of this link.

Basically Weigel's argument is that opposition to open trade and open borders stems from the same sort of protectionist thinking. And he is right.

162
3DHS / if the whole world voted for the U.S. President
« on: August 31, 2007, 02:03:08 AM »
http://www.whowouldtheworldelect.com/

So far, Barack Obama and Ron Paul are the runaway favorites.

163
3DHS / Should citizens be able to video record police at work?
« on: August 17, 2007, 07:42:45 PM »
Excerpt from an article The Patriot-News, a Pennsylvania newspaper:

      Kelly said his friend was cited for speeding and because his truck's bumper was too low. He said he held the camera in plain view and turned it on when the officer yelled at his pal.

After about 20 minutes, the officer cited the driver on the traffic charges and told the men they were being recorded by a camera in his cruiser, Kelly said.

"He said, 'Young man, turn off your ... camera,'?" Kelly said. "I turned it off and handed it to him. ... Six or seven more cops pulled up, and they arrested me."

Police also took film from his pockets that wasn't related to the traffic stop, he said. 		      

Whole article at the other end of this link.

Okay, so if the police can have cameras recording traffic stops, why can't citizens record them as well? This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened, and it doesn't just happen in Pennsylvania. Video recording, say, one's ex-spouse or strangers without permission, I can understand why that could be a crime. But why would recording police, when the police are also recording the same scene, be a crime?

164
3DHS / the effect of drugs on ... government
« on: August 16, 2007, 12:53:52 AM »
An excerpt from an article by Radley Balko on the use of questionable drug informants:

      In one eye-popping exchange, two congressmen?one Democrat and one Republican?confronted Wayne Murphy, the assistant director of the FBI Directorate of Intelligence about the way the FBI uses drug informants. Rep. Dan Lundgren, R-Calif., and Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., told Murphy they were troubled by reports that the FBI had looked the other way while some of its drug informants participated in violent crimes, and that the agency then failed to notify local authorities, leaving many of those crimes unsolved.

Lundgren and Delahunt said they were also troubled by reports that in order to protect the identity of its informants, the FBI had withheld exculpatory evidence from criminal trials, resulting in innocent people going to prison.

This is worth repeating. The FBI has determined that in some cases, it's better to let innocent people be assaulted, murdered, or wrongly sent to prison than to halt a drug investigation involving one of its confidential informants.

Could Murphy assure the U.S. Congress, Delahunt and Lundgren asked, that the FBI has since instituted policies to ensure that kind of thing never happens again?

Murphy hemmed and hawed, but ultimately said that he could not make any such assurance. That in itself should have been huge news.		      

And some people wonder why I don't trust the FBI.

Moreover, I don't trust the whole "war on drugs" for exactly that kind of reason. It isn't just the FBI. Local law enforcement has gotten into trouble with drug informants, as the rest of the article points out quite well. The whole article can be found at the other end of this link.

165
3DHS / Iraqi refugees find freedom and jobs in... China
« on: August 09, 2007, 05:43:44 AM »
From NPR:

      Iraqi trader Moussa Anwar says many Iraqis come to China to do business ? and end up wanting to stay.

Indeed, the Iraqi embassy in Beijing says the number of Iraqis in China has increased by 50 percent over the past two years, and most are in Yiwu. Exiled Iraqis estimate there are about 100 Iraqi trading companies and 1,000 Iraqis in the city at any one time. 		      

   [...]

      Majjid says that life is freer in China than in Iraq today.

One example is his weekly soccer game, something that probably wouldn't be possible in Iraq. Every week, his all-Iraqi team ? made up of Shia, Sunnis and Kurds ? takes on a Chinese side.		      

   [...]

      If the Chinese authorities allow it, Mahmoud says he will stay in China "forever."

Like the other exiles in Yiwu, Mahmoud is grateful to China for making his new life possible, even as he acknowledges it is in Beijing's interests to build trade ties with Iraq. 		      

Whole article at the other end of this link.

There is your key to stability in Iraq. Entrepreneurs willing to take risks. Wonder why they went to China. Can't be for the soccer. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

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