Happy New Year! I’ve spent the day so far lazing around, eating leftover pizza and listening to music. And that’s about all I’m going to do, I think.
I’ll be back at work blogging tomorrow.
In the meantime, does anyone have any especially fond memories of Tom Martin and/or Steele from the past year?
Oh, and here’s a video from an Old School New Wave band called Polyphonic Size. It was 1983. They were from Belgium.
Manatees. We like them. Misogynists, not so much.
David, please take our manifold manatee suggestions under advisement. XD
Also, I think we need a t-shirt/graphic:
Feminists: We protected the manatee to soothe you.
pecunium
Looks like I have more confidence in pecunium than pecunium has in pecunium.
And my standard of the Diogenes The Cynic Rule as applied to the Bible?
Well, the region preserves things exceptionally well. So, if archeologists were to find scrolls that test (without ambiguity) before the time the Torah was supposed to be written, but have similar events documented, it would be a major problem. So, to disprove Divine authorship of the Bible, we would have to find something on par with the Dead Sea Scrolls, but instead predating the Bible, and showing an evolution of the stories.
I figure that if a person doesn’t hold that the Bible isn’t Divine, then it had to first be a series of stories that were written, and rewritten until they look like the ones we have now. If a culture cared about those stories, they would have taken care of the thing it was written on. I’m thinking something along the lines of Gilgamesh, but in greater detail, and covering more of the Bible.
OH! The humanatee!
Proposed addition to the end of the Comments Policy:
Harming manatees.
Comments threatening to harm, or describing harm to, manatees will be immediately deleted, and the commenter will be banned and reported to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Also, this.
thebewilderness – GROAN
cloudiah – DOUBLE GROAN
😀
Who is this Huw Manatee bloke anyway? Is he Welsh?
Diogenes, your capacity for saying stupid shit is rivalled only by your capacity for being unbearably dull while doing it.
Cloudiah, do I hear something? Not anything logical anyways. Frankly, I think the various fish tank sounds next to me re more logical.
Diogenes the Dumbass — “Yes, giving a mugger your money, instead of being shot, and taking parole over jail are both not free will decisions. Funny how you ignored that part of it.”
Let me spell this out in little words then — the mugger is not entitled to full rights, as the mugger has committed a crime that harms people. Both society at large, and, more directly. You’re arguing that parole shouldn’t be an option because criminals lack the free will to not take the option. Or, more precisely, that taking parole is no more a choice than being mugged is.
Do us all a favor and either grow up or get lost.
As for the whole BS about the bible, were you aware that stories about Isis predate written stories about her? That the first written stories reflect a formed mythos? Why do you keep singling out Abrahamic religions as some sort of special thing that could be proven? Having trouble accepting that your religion is no less a myth than polytheistic religions? Or, put another way, your religion is no more correct than my paganism. You’ll live.
“TRIGGER WARNING:
The point of this blog is to expose misogynists and other terrible people by quoting the hateful things they say. It’s not a safe space. You may run across upsetting and possibly triggering things in the posts and in the fairly loosely moderated comments as well. But no manatees are harmed.”
XD want!
I now invoke the Cassandra Says rule*, which states that anyone found to be consistently tedious can and will be voted off the island.
* Not really, because this is not my blog and therefore I don’t get to make the rules.
I actually have an interest in Bible scholarship, since I was a linguistics major back in the day (don’t scoff, man, I learned a lot of what I did about the Bible first through linguistics courses!) and also since I’m writing a story about a Judaism that never had the fall of the Second Temple.
It is pretty much settled that the Torah was written by multiple authors, and no one is sure precisely when. Some parts are much older than others. Many a book has been written on the authorship of the Bible, the whens and wheres. Much as people hate to admit it, the Torah changed over time. That’s why there were so many sects around; different sects rejected and accepted different parts.
LBT —
Remeron is a tetracyclic, not a benzo — klonopin made me too out of it to carry on a “suicide is a bad idea” train of thought, ativan is part of my morning pills though. I never had a xanax script but never had issues with it (of course, having to buy it as a street drug made me use it as a last resort thing)
I can certainly understand why you’re wary, but I’m not sure that benzos would cause freak out…I’d certainly want frequent psych visits while starting it though. With a competent psych, gods was that guy dumb.
RE: Argenti
Gotcha. Somewhere along the way, I thought remeron was a benzo. Thanks for correcting me! Fortunately, the only meds we’re on (not counting hormones) is a low low dose of antidepressants, and it’s in some weird class of its own.
Oh WAIT. Remeron is what I’m on now. It was NIRAVAM that turned us batshit. I’m sorry, I was totally off base and confused the names! Never mind. *shakes head*
Hey, I’ll second the motion anyway!
Pretty sure that niravam is. Benzo, has the right ending for the class. Which means ignore me!
And to be fair, even Ativan has its issues —
Take the pill that’s fucking with your mind
That’s all you have to lose…
That’s funny…
Naïf: Looks like I have more confidence in pecunium than pecunium has in pecunium.
I’d say it wasn’t confidence you had, but ignorance.
Well, the region preserves things exceptionally well. So, if archeologists were to find scrolls that test (without ambiguity) before the time the Torah was supposed to be written, but have similar events documented, it would be a major problem. So, to disprove Divine authorship of the Bible, we would have to find something on par with the Dead Sea Scrolls, but instead predating the Bible, and showing an evolution of the stories.
The Divine Authorship of the Bible is a negative. Go ahead and prove that.
Quick… can you show the events of the Noachian flood in Meso-American writings? No. Can you show evidence for a flood event near, but not in the Middle East?
Yes, I can. I can also show significant changes in the Middle East, and other, non-Middle Eastern areas, which are explained by that localised event.
That would, in effect, disprove the, “Divine” authority for the Bible.
Then again, the Bible contradicts itself (Do I contradict myself, then I contradict myself, I contain multitudes). I commend, “The Book of J” for an explication of how that came to be; and how we can trace the various insertions of secondary/tertiary authors. Job is one of the classics in that vein.
So too are the debates (contemporaneous to the Dead Sea Scrolls) about what books are cannon, and what aren’t.
I figure that if a person doesn’t hold that the Bible isn’t Divine, then it had to first be a series of stories that were written, and rewritten until they look like the ones we have now. If a culture cared about those stories, they would have taken care of the thing it was written on. I’m thinking something along the lines of Gilgamesh, but in greater detail, and covering more of the Bible.
Who cares? What’t the relevance?
By that measure the Illiad is as relevant as the Bible.
Pop-Quiz number two, what are the oldest oral histories which can be tied to the events they relate?
“Pop-Quiz number two, what are the oldest oral histories which can be tied to the events they relate?”
Shit…idk that one…Chinese astrological records?
RE: Argenti
Eek, that song disturbed me. And yeah, Niravam was the problem one. (Funny, since it was given to me for totally non-psych related reasons.) I feel very lucky; remeron has had pretty much NO side effects for me. (Except for increasing my appetite and weight gain, which was what the doc WANTED to happen.)
“Eek, that song disturbed me.”
Sorry, I probably should’ve put a warning on that one, it’s meant to be disturbing. Glad remeron is working for you though, I went totally batshit on it.
Argenti: Nope. I’ll be amused if Naïf can name it, since he alleges he googles nothing, and has shown zero apparent, interest in the correct subject matter.
Shit Pecunium, the curiosity’s going to drive me nuts! Email me the answer?
RE: Pecunium and Argenti
I’m curious too…
Why does only the Bible get this “disprove its divinity” preferential treatment?
I could say that nothing can disprove the literal truth of all the oral histories that make up the various Dreamings here in Australia. And the indigenous people’s cultures go back a LOT further than the Bible.
Oh hey, Argenti, this seems like a good time to (very belatedly) thank you for posting those Emilie Autumn videos – I started listening to her a few months ago because of you, and she’s amazing. My girlfriend and I are hopefully going to see her when she comes to Montreal in February.
O_o I’m boggled by the idea that gods wrote ANYTHING, never mind the goddamn Bible, which is a mass of contradictions and obviously evolved through many authors. Dammit, guys, Spinoza got EXCOMMUNICATED for this centuries ago; I thought this was settled!
Gametime — glad I could convert another plague rat! My mother and I are going to see her in Boston. She puts on one hell of a show.
On that note, I’ll be in Boston 2/20-22 if anyone wants to grab lunch at Quincy market we’ll be there anyways, my mother’s never been.