Posts by Rich Lock
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A draft negotiating text of the agreement has been released, for those that are interested.
I'm not sure if it's online, but it is a public copy.
If people can't track a copy down, then come back to me and I'll see what I can do.
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There was also the short-lived UK documentary 'The Living Soap', broadcast in 1993.
Has anyone tried to watch 'Jersey Shore'? Was on in the breakroom yesterday lunchtime (it was like that when I found it, officer...).
If anyone can even start to explain the appeal, I'd be most grateful.
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I happened to see this thread, and wonder if I can contribute on this? This "Jesus=Mithras" stuff floats around on the web. A few years ago I got tired of seeing it and researched it. The *facts* involved turned out to be wrong.
Roger, thanks for that. I'm by no means well-versed in the subject, although it does appear that when you scratch the surface of many religions that have their origins in Europe and the Middle East, a lot of interesting parallels come up. It does strongly suggest that there was a lot of borrowing and swapping of concepts going on. Which I think does need to be acknowledged, as each of these religions seem to spend an awful lot of time trying to convince people that there particular flavour is The One True Flavour, and anything else is false. Christianity, for example, doesn't appear to be the huge quantum leap we are lead to believe, more of a small step away from a lot of existing ideas.
I'd point out in relation to Mithras/Christ, that both appear to do a lot of 'washing in the blood of' (bulls or lambs, take your pick). This may have led to the drawing of some of the offhand parallels which you mention. Although the Mithraists did seem to take it somewhat more literally.
The Norse material is genuine, I believe, but I don't know the sources. I hope there is no insinuation that the Greeks ca. 30 AD were borrowing from the old Norse? (!)
No, not at all. But the Norse did travel very widely. I'm pretty sure they regualrly travelled and traded as least as far as Constantinople/Turkey, which isn't so far away from Greece.
The rest is embroidered on top of it by atheists of limited education who were rather too willing to state as fact whatever would be convenient.
Ouch...
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I don't recall ever once being invited to actually speculate on the laws of the universe. At what level does this happen?
Well beyond undergrad. I've mentioned before that a friend of mine is fond of saying that he got his PhD in physics despite, rather than because of, 13 years of being taught the subject.
Another friend dropped out of his University physics course after being arbitrarily asked to apply a correction factor of 10 to his calculations (for the mass of the universe, if I recall correctly). When he queried this, and suggested that 'dark matter' (which was a radically new concept at the time) might be responsible, he was effectively told to shut up and stop rocking the boat. He kinda lost interest in being 'taught' after that.
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The example of Socrates has always struck me as drawing very stark parallels to that of Christ.
There are some interesting parallels between a lot of mediterranean/middle-eastern religions and christianity once you start looking.
Mithras was 'born of a virgin'. And did the whole nailed-to-a-tree-and-coming-back-to-life thing.
Which also appears in Norse mythology, Odin sacrificing himself by being hung from the world tree.
And the number 12 crops up an awful lot.
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surely the editors there must be looking at the string of outright inventions in the column and wondering about the paper's reputation.
I'm sure there's some law-type point about libel or somesuch to be made here. Something about having a reputation to trash in the frst place?
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Putting the heavy in metal
The Beatles - Were just a band.
The Sex Pistols - Just a band.
The Clash - Just a band.
Minor Threat - Just a band.
The Cure - Just a band.
The Smiths - Just a band.
Nirvana - Just a band.
The Pixies - Just a band.
Oasis - Just a band.
Radiohead - Just a band.
The next big thing - JUST A BAND.Hope that's the vid I was thinking of, BTW. Firewalls are not my friends.
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Impressed with the goat-story-finding. I was was assuming it was part of the reasonably various body of extra-biblical folklore.
When I was at school, I had two RE teachers over the course of some years.
One of them was yer common-or-garden RE teacher. When challenged on any point (such as showing proof of the existence of god) you could more or less see 'does not compute' flash up on his internal monitor. He was easily dismissed as an idiot.
The other was far more interesting. Although by the time I met him, he appeared to have found some sort of inner peace, you could easily imagine that in earlier years, the phrase 'tortured soul' could have been applied to him frequently.
Although he himself was a christian, he clearly wrestled with his faith. He would generally spend lessons forcing us to realise how absurd most of the bible actually was, and how much of it was cribbed from other parts (as he pointed out, huge chunks of the four main gospels appear to have been cut/pasted from each other).
He is responsible for my knowledge of the goat story. One lesson was devoted to teaching us the creation of the official king james bible, and how this involved the dropping of quite a few gospels which until that point had been taken as...well...gospel. The goat story was used as an illustrative example.
Although he was insanely strict, he was an excellent teacher. The sort of christian that I can get along with quite easily.
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The gospel which your Grandfather refers to is probably either the 'Infancy gospel of Thomas, or the Syriac Infancy gospel.
Neither of these is canonical in the sense that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are. The Church decided to quietly drop a certain number of gospels back in the reign of King James 1 when they were coming up with what we might refer to as The Most Ultimate Official Bible EVAR.
EDIT: text of the Arabic Infancy Gospel here.
On another day the Lord Jesus went out into the road, and saw the boys that had come together to play, and followed them; but the boys hid themselves from Him. The Lord Jesus, therefore, having come to the door of a certain house, and seen some women standing there, asked them where the boys had gone; and when they answered that there was no one there, He said again: Who are these whom you see in the furnace?' They replied that they were kids of three years old. And the Lord Jesus cried out, and said: Come out hither, O kids, to your Shepherd. Then the boys, in the form of kids, came out, and began to dance round Him; and the women, seeing this, were very much astonished, and were seized with trembling, and speedily, supplicated and adored the Lord Jesus, saying: O our Lord Jesus, son of Mary, Thou art of a truth that good Shepherd of Israel; have mercy on Thy handmaidens who stand before Thee, and who have never doubted: for Thou hast come, O our Lord, to heal, and not to destroy. And when the Lord Jesus answered that the sons of Israel were like the Ethiopians among the nations, the women said: Thou, O Lord, knowest all things, nor is anything hid from Thee; now, indeed, we beseech Thee, and ask Thee of Thy affection to restore these boys Thy servants to their former condition. The Lord Jesus therefore said: Come, boys, let us go and play. And immediately, while these women were standing by, the kids were changed into boys.
It seems to me that possibly the reason the church decided to drop these gospels is because they don't exactly show Our Lord Jeebus in the best of lights. In fact, I'd go as far as to say he comes across as an unmitigated little shit.
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Gluckman does seem to know what he's on about. As said earlier, would be nice if people were listening.
They might, if they had something to listen to.
Amount of coverage in today's Herald on the Gluckman speech: zero.
Amount of coverage on Stuff: zero. In fact, front page story yesterday afternoon on Stuff: this.
I did get the impression from Russell's write-up that this speech was a reasonably big deal? So where's the coverage?
Steven Joyce made the weird claim the other day that the new bigger longer heavier trucks that he had approved would mean fewer trucks on the road.
i have this weird memory of someone recently making the claim that bigger, heavier trucks were A Good Thing, because they created more repair work for all the road gangs and thus kept them in work.
I must have dreamt that, surely?