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There is a school of thought that posits that Adam - of Genesis fame - was not actually the first man, but rather the first prophet in the line of prophets that spawned the Abrahamic faiths. The crux of this is that there was nothing good nor evil prior to the teachings of the creator having reached us - hence like the ravening wolf or the ferocious lion, there was nothing intrinsically wrong in anything we did since it was only natural. Once the concept was introduced that there was a purpose-driven, life-loving God, however, good and evil could be finally identified as those behaviors which departed from that purpose and interfered with that life. Hence the tale of Cain and Abel and most everything else in the Torah.
Now I am not here to argue this idea today. I am more interested in the location. Adam is said to have appeared in the garden of Eden, and of all the locales that have been proposed as the "real" Eden, I have been most convinced by the suggestion of David Rohl that it might have been Tabriz. I think it was the documentary, In Search of Eden - which can be found on You Tube that mostly convinced me. I may well be mistaken, however, so do your own research.
What intrigues me about this location is that some six thousand years later, around 1844, another man appeared in Iran claiming to be next in the Adamic line of prophets. Ignoring every gory detail about this, I will merely note that the Islamic clergy of Iran had this man executed on July 9, 1850 in what was then downtown Tabriz.
In a sense, then, what began with Adam in Eden came full circle and was brought to a close in the same location. Curious.
So, if Iran was in fact the host to the original garden of Eden, then it would follow that some of the oldest cultural elements of civilization may have sprung from that region, and one might expect that some of the most mature concepts regarding life the universe and everything have been and continue to be evolving there.
Sadly, Iran is mostly being demonized these days - not without good reason, mind you - to the citizens of the USA, so it is a knee-jerk reaction of many in the West to eschew everything associated with Iran. In fact, most of the evils that issue out of that country seem to be caused by a minority of fanatics who have a stranglehold on governance and their oppressions are evident and well documented. To some extent, the people of that country are rising up against that oppression, so there may well be an end one day to that circumstance.
All of this is a long way around to recommending that every "educated" American should be familiar with the story of Layla and Majnun - perhaps the original "Romeo and Juliette". It is a tale familiar to most every Iranian, one that inspired Eric Clapton in composing perhaps his most famous tune. Maybe one day, Hollywood will grace us with a worthy film depiction of it.
Likewise, those who would account themselves as culturally informed might wish to peruse some of the poetry of Rumi:
BeyondOut beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.Ideas,
language,
even the phrase "each other"
doesn't make any sense.
and Hafez:
Will Beat You UpJealousy
And most all of your sufferings
Are from believing
You know better than God.
Of course,
Such a special brand of arrogance as that
Always proves disastrous,
And will rip the seams
In your caravan tent,
Then cordially invite in many species
Of mean biting flies and
Strange thoughts-
That will
Beat you
Up.
So just some ideas on how to fill your new year, or whatever.
Oh yeah, and if any of your neighbors are Iranian refugees, consider going out of your way to talk with them. For the record, I am not Iranian, but one of my neighbors is.
--
"So make the best of the situation before I finally go insane", -Derek and the Dominos, Layla
(Score: 1) by nostyle on Thursday February 02, @11:45PM (43 children)
So i get it. I post here about ancient scripture and somebody else posts about ancient movies. I talk about spirits and jinn and angels and somebody else talks about cartoon characters that never really existed. Some might see this a some sort of symmetric warfare, or a means to mock me. I don't know and I don't mind. It's okay by me. I do not come here to prove anything - only to enjoy myself and participate in a public service project - sharing stuff I've studied and wit that occurs to me.
To that end, I embed here the opening verses of the second chapter of the Qur'an. While perusing it recall that these verses are supposedly the ones Muhammad heard dictated to Him by the angel Gabriel. For those worried about the decline and fall of language, note that my rendering of the translation into English mostly adheres to Early Modern English as best I understand it - that being a more precise way of communicating.
If you are one already prejudiced against the Islamic faith, it is all the same whether I post this here or not. You will not profit from it. The curious might be interested to learn that the title, The Cow, refers to a passage further on in the chapter discussing the Jewish practice of selecting a cow to be sacrificed for expiation of sins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @01:09AM
...oops! Got distracted and forgot the lyrical sig.
-nostyle
--
"Angel came down from heaven yesterday" -Jimi Hendrix, Angel
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @02:28AM (1 child)
It's all about morals, ethics, values, selflessness... marking time in the hopes they regain favor. How one expresses it, reacts, accepts, ignores, buys or sells it, is beyond our control. This isn't a chorus... our lyrics are our own.
The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans
The Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like
Anybody very much
But we can be tranquil
And thankful and proud
For man's been endowed
With a mushroom shaped cloud
And we know for certain
That some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off
And we will all be blown away
- The Kingston Trio
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @07:32AM
Of similar vintage, Lehrer's National Brotherhood Week [genius.com].
--
"Be grateful that it doesn't last all year" -Tom Lehrer
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @03:10AM (2 children)
I relish a finely-drawn and lyrical one-liner.
Once you can do that well, you can share the essence of complex concepts.
Now, do it a thousand times more.
To paraphrase Richard Feynman, if you can't explain it succinctly, you don't get it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @03:43AM
Sorry, Mr. Feynman. One more try:
There are magnificent, expressable truths in physics. Now we see that physics doesn't work the same way, a few parsecs over to the left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @06:24AM
That certainly didn't sound very selfless. Sorry.
This was one of those days you get out of exhausted and droopy, but too much Adrenalin or whatever it is you call that bullet-dodging emotion. Let some of it out by working in the backyard at night; bad idea.
(Score: 1) by nostyle on Friday February 03, @05:32PM (16 children)
Then having foreshadowed the topic of mockery, we continue (verses 8-20) chapter 2...
Indeed, the start of the Qur'an is something of a character study.
--
-The Undisputed Truth, Smiling Faces Sometimes
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @09:13PM (15 children)
This is probably the least mocking thread in this whole dump. And if anybody needs it, we all do.
Have never found "Louisiana Love Call" by Maria Muldaur. (She did "Midnight At The Oasis," but don't hold that against her.) Haven't listened to FM in years, but one song still haunts; something like...
Dem dat know
Dey know dat de know
Dem dat don't know
Dey don't know dey don't know
In other news... no, that's the news, right there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @09:32PM (1 child)
Copy in haste...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @09:48PM
Thanks for clarifying. Disregard my sibling gibe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @09:35PM (12 children)
You forgot prepending: 'Fain would they deceive..." - or maybe you took that part as a recommendation... creative excerpting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @10:00PM (11 children)
> creative excerpting?
Not very. Every time I think I have a good point, I leave out something important! Like about that brother who took off, but it looked like I did. Ignore the following personal note...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 03, @11:29PM
Now it's everybody with sibling gibes!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 04, @03:26AM (1 child)
"How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us." -Hamlet
"Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?" -Hamlet
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 04, @06:13AM
Sub-vocalizing, our own posts surely sound like Shakespearean prose, hewn anew, recounted reverentially from high on a golden pulpit. Them other posts ain't diddly-squat.
Just imagine what a new word processor could do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05, @06:11PM
Truly was a bullet-dodging day. Have to be thankful. Truly am thankful. And calmingly relieved... dreamed that night about an old rust-brown Ford Mustang rebuilt into a stretch limo, complete with primer on a front fender&door and chrome knock-off wheels. Hope it was a fastback. Woke up when somebody asked me to get in.
Calm enough that I finally got to the store. Unfortunately it was W*lM*rt. They had "Pepsi Zero Sugar," which is like the recently-hip Dodge Charger... or is it called a Challenger? Anyway, it is all over TV — both of them — like the dark hero of a current movie, with sinister black undertones and even more sinister black overtones, and colorful accents to highlight its edginess, but you know it wears a mask when it's sitting alone in the garage. That brother probably likes the plastic ponycar. Too much battery acid, if you ask me... causes bad dreams.
The white zone is for loading and unloading of passengers only, and there's no stopping in the red zone
- LAX
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13, @10:29PM (6 children)
Another bullet-dodging day. Have to be thankful.
This time it's not just the corporeal, but got a letter from the DMV canceling the car license for lack of insurance. May-June of last year was so much harder than right now that sometimes I don't know how I got through it. Somewhere along the way, I missed that bill (Lord knows enough other bills kept flying by that I couldn't keep track of... one $400 I know I paid twice, but they never thanked me). You'd think that when I paid the house insurance a couple of months ago the insurance company would have mentioned it.
The insurance company had sent an email reminder last May about car insurance, at the same time g**gl* was closing their grips and locked me out of the email account. Got the DMV letter the same time as the email got running again (at the cost of a virtual soul). And the same time I'm getting together a long email for a truly heroic, brilliant life-saving doctor. And the same time the latest physical thing hit. Today is a blur; will fix it all tomorrow.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @02:33AM (1 child)
So the missus is off on adventure, and curiously, when I got home from dropping her at the airport, brother coyote ran past my house, and gazed into my window while passing as if to say, "We scruffy types are best when we trot through our lives alone. Too bad we are trapped here in a semi-civilized suburb. It just makes things tougher."
Or maybe I was projecting.
Keep dodging the bullets.
--
-Joni Mitchell, Coyote
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @03:46AM
Hope she has a great trip. But warn her about roving packs of feral Peterbilts, late at night.
It was in the news a couple of days ago, that squirrels are racist. Hawks, however, are ecumenical. Outside the window before my father's big pine tree came down, used to see a hawk preparing doves; hawks are awfully messy eaters. But on the other hand, every now and then there's a Warner Bros. Cartoon bird out in the street. Not just Sylvester's kind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 14, @06:15AM
Interested in anxiety and panic. Depressing thought?
Watching the effects of medication and consoling and even slapping some sense into 'em.
Here's the secret: sometimes anything will work, and sometimes nothing will.
Not even with the same customer.
Sometimes it takes an all-expenses paid month in Bali. Or a deep breath.
A consistent treatment regimen certainly doesn't work, which is why you see over-medicated people who only have transient problems. And self-medicated zombies, walking the streets. Is it wiring or software, or a combination? (To give it away: there's no firewall.) Serotonin is not magic... I've seen one expert extol the virtues of St John's Wort, while the next insists that it's quackery.
Sure he thinks he's a chicken, but fix him!?!? Not now, when eggs are $5 a dozen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @02:33AM (2 children)
> ...Today is a blur; will fix it all tomorrow.
Blur? Yes. Tomorrow? Hah!
Three or four calls to the insurance company and three visits to DMV, and all I learned was that 40% of people standing in line, pass the time playing with their cellphone-telephones. 20% commiserate with strangers. The rest stare around vacantly. Including the DMV agents.
Started on Monday; this is Friday. Spent two hours on one call, today, getting transferred over much of the western hemisphere. Theoretically, all that's left is one more trip to the DMV, next week. Theoretically.
It's been a tough week for the whole world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @03:45PM (1 child)
Of course, this is why it is more fun to drive without a license*. ...but then I drive, on average, two miles a day.**
--
* I jest - don't try this at home unless you have to - you might wind up living through a worse week.
-nostyle
--
** "Watch the police and the tax man miss me" -The Who, Going Mobile
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 18, @05:57PM
Never had car insurance when living in CA during the drudge era; wasn't required, anyway. Figured if worse-came-to-it, could just chuck the key and walk away from the old car.
Had an uncle (by marriage), back when cars had running boards, back in your neck o' the woods. Story was that he didn't believe in driver's licenses; he thought it was like applying for your God-given right to walk or spit or breathe. Oh, and he spent his life... selling cars.
(Score: 1) by nostyle on Monday February 06, @02:36AM (11 children)
I learned a new word today courtesy of the NYT Crossword (I am religious on Sunday): fantod. I will leave it to the reader to research it further, but you can get through your entire life without knowing it. I have.
So recapping [poorly] the twenty verses in chapter two so far, TLDR:
It is interesting to notice that this seems to be a universal response to any and all guidance, like
So, then, to complete the first tenth of chapter two, here is the next installment, wherein we begin to get an overview of the actual guidance:
Since the ensuing verses [spoiler alert] take up the topic of Adam, my plan is to start a new thread in this journal (about Adam).
--
-Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06, @04:00AM (2 children)
> Since the ensuing verses [spoiler alert] take up the topic of Adam, my plan is to start a new thread in this journal (about Adam).
Then I take it all back. Fannoyed.
Drifting is what keeps life... life, it's what keeps the "human" in language. Communication is a free-association art, growing upon previous meals. This is a lunch meeting, right?
Frankly, there is not much to recommend the front page, and you'll slip right off again, with the next wave of frenzies. I keep my notes in one pile. I don't always eat at the same place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06, @05:14AM (1 child)
You mistake my meaning. I will not start a new journal - merely post a root level comment to this one. This one has legs.
It's like how you go to the party, and nobody there is talking about anything interesting, and none of them are understanding anything you say. So you gravitate to an obscure corner and get comfortable and maybe start singing a little song to yourself to pass the time. Then after a while, if you are lucky, some kindred spirits appear, likewise fleeing the vacuousness of the main room, and maybe you don't see eye to eye, but at least you don't get totally bored. Maybe I simply never learned to drink myself silly.
So this is an abandoned corner, and while here I thought I'd bury some treasure since I am exponentially losing my health and cannot count on finishing my Mona Lisa ever. I only have something less than a quarter of the Book corrected, and it gets more painful to process verses with each passing day. In the end, though, every verse I reflect upon resolves into something I can truly agree with and benefit from, so I bury the text of it here so somebody someday might see how that happens.
I heard somewhere long ago that, back in the days when there were "real" filibusters, long tracts of the Bible got read into the official congressional record. I tickles to imagine I could embed a rendition of the entire Qur'an in the SN database.
Still, moving forward I may need to start a new journal when our comment count here exceeds some reasonable limit. I expect I would toss one on the front page and allow it to slowly roll off after about a month before posting anything that might rile up the natives.
And, of course, if enough non-AC comments were to reach me with the advice that I should STFU and the news that somehow this journal is damaging the site somehow, I could in an instant desist from further mischief here. But then there would be no reason to remain at the party.
--
Now fantod, according to dictionary.com is "a state of extreme nervousness or restlessness". So if you get nervous when you get up to perform on stage, would that be a fantod of the opera?
--
"'Cause I'm already standin' / On the ground /" -Eagles, Peaceful Easy Feeling
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06, @06:31AM
Didn't look up my variation "Fannoyed," assuming it would be a contraction of fan and annoyed. Well, if you look it up, it seems that some people have way too much time on their hands.
As to your project, am always reminded of these lines:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And always reminded that Dylan Thomas died at age 39. Please do enjoy these days with someone.
As far as I'm concerned, this is the only thing making this place livable. Almost quoted janrinok in #1289265 [soylentnews.org], but it basically says almost nothing except that they're happy with main topic participation w/o AC ruining/spamming threads, and that same AC mob has gone off to this dark corner, but it somehow doesn't ruin things here. Pat 'em on the head and send 'em to the backwoods where they belong. He hates running off-topic even more than he hates [redacteds], and thinks that metaphor and simile are euphemisms for... well, here's a tag from the bottom the page, earlier today:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06, @09:38PM (6 children)
Even more Hanoing would be if this split into two pages. Amend an old topic, and the next time you try to find it, it's on the wrong page. Doing The Soylent Shuffle.
Just don't delete this one. What with the world's lowered expectations, this would have a quintillion followers on a real site... and even a few of them wouldn't be bots or chatbots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06, @11:33PM (5 children)
Please don't throw me into the prior batch.
[Brando voice says,] "I could have been a
contenderinfluencer!"-nostyle [imagines dancing geek to geek on TikTok]
--
"Well, I coulda' been an actor, but I wound up here" -Don Henley, Dirty Laundry
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09, @09:27PM (4 children)
> "Well, I coulda' been an actor, but I wound up here"
Amp down.
Amp up: "Money for Nothing" - Dire Straits
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09, @11:19PM (3 children)
Sure, but it only seems so. It's like the other incorrect assertion "chicks for free". Anyone with any experience will tell you there is always an associated cost and like the third law of motion, everything you own has an equal and opposite ownership over you.
Still, I don't "get" the draw of Addison Rae and the Kardashian/Jenner K-coven, finding them indistinguishable from any other fat girl with a glam team.
I probably shouldn't say all this out loud. I mean God must love a working girl, right?
--
-Eagles, Hotel California
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09, @11:49PM (2 children)
Since the Panda-Demonic, haven't been out all that much. Of late, seems like a side-effect of all those shots is eyelashes growing like beach-house awnings. Blink, and their eyeglasses flying off. There's an investigation for you!
See, I watch a half-dozen TV shows, and virtually none based in my own stomping ground... especially on account of being stomped out affects one. Then there was this one epic with white sofas and supernatural beings mugging for cameras. They all had bulging... wallets. They all had those awnings... they must be the carriers! It's affecting children, now! Does the FDA or DMV know about this?
Flashed back a generation in that suburb of sin and that guy with the awnings standing and preaching before the fawning acolytes who only pretended to eat their dinner. And I thought... there's something not quite right goin' on. They buy the best, but they don't eat nothin', they do nothin' for nobody, yet their wallets bulge. Maybe it's too many colitas. What else is growing unhinged, fringed from that outbreak?
In retrospect, Canoga Park was like paradise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 11, @05:05AM
It must be spreading! My nosehair is getting unruly, lately. And it's so hard to comb.
It's not helping my wallet a bit, either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 13, @12:11AM
"In earthly riches fear is hidden and peril is concealed."
--
"Every girl crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man" -ZZTop
(Score: 1) by nostyle on Tuesday February 14, @06:20AM
Correction - in case anyone cares. Verse 2:28 should read "and He gave you life":
(Score: 1) by nostyle on Tuesday February 07, @03:59PM
In a spirit of disorder and thrashing about wildly in search of sense and sensibility, here are chapters 109-111
And so this journal breaks the 200 comment barrier! (And the SQL lag increases.)
--
-Tom Petty, Refugee
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07, @08:35PM (2 children)
There are values in lyrics.
Say, a morality play, buried in a road picture.
Some seem to beat-around-the-bush, asking that the viewer/reader weighs it all.
Some audiences just go along for the ride, regardless of our good intentions.
If the audience doesn't get the metaphors, they probably won't get it from oratory.
The dominance of brainwashing in education today will, I hope, boomerang.
It's good to "St-Thomas" the true believers, as much as the disbelievers.
A true believer would have marked #1290437 in this thread as OffTopic.
Sometimes, we just need a good ride.
The Richest Man in Bogota (1962) [imdb.com]
In the Country of the Blind - H. G. Wells [gutenberg.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07, @10:16PM (1 child)
I hate to be one to burst a balloon, but it's lyrics all the way down.
-Jackson Browne
--
-R.E.M., Losing My Religion
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08, @09:26PM
Watched part of "Toy Story 1 (1995)" last night. Randy joined the Newman family business; notice that we don't quote a lot of his "lyrics?" That's another Disney feature with another bad villain... the creepy kid who lived next door (you were expecting maybe Randy?). Got to W*lM*rt a couple of days ago; that's significant because they had Diet Dr Thunder in stock.
(Follow me, don't follow me)
I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush
(Collar me, don't collar me)
I've got my spine, I've got my orange crush
(We are agents of the free)
I've had my fun and now it's time
To serve your conscience overseas (Over me, not over me)
Coming in fast, over me
- R.E.M.,
Dr PepperOrange Crush(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09, @06:56PM
Adam Sandler's movie "Click" was apparently about someone who found that his TV remote control was truly multi-purpose; he could also fast-forward through the boring parts of movies, and apparently the boring parts of life. Haven't seen the movie. It might have been ahead of its time, and didn't do well at the boxoffice. Now, may be its time.
Transit is boring... diddle with the cellphone telephone.
Lunch is boring... diddle with the cellphone telephone.
Work or play or school or walking or listening or thinking... likewise.
And at our funeral, loved ones... likewise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 06, @06:35PM (2 children)
- I asked ChatGPT to explain the Christian gospel. Here's how it responded. [notthebee.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 07, @04:50AM (1 child)
Non sequiturs...
1) We were not all "eternally separated" from God, for otherwise the teachings of Jesus could have no effect. If any are "saved" that violates "eternal separation".
2) Jesus Christ did not "come" to earth from somewhere else. His mother, Mary, gave birth to Him.
3) Eternal life is purportedly the lot of all so there is no "offering" of it. The only question is where and how we will spend it.
4) The "death" brought by sin must be allegorical - otherwise none could live forever in hell.
--
Grade D+
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09, @06:53AM
That link leads to three pages of this bot recitation, flat, without trying to be compelling or even interesting. Still, it's surprisingly well balanced and fair, and smart enough to exercise caution when handling sensitive topics.
Surprisingly free of weasel words like allegedly and some believe. Training uses many sources; a fair number of them must have leaned in this direction. Perhaps they used some cheap-shots repeated in several of their own A-list sources, and filtered out the blatant digs. There is some of that condescending "magic sky fairy" flavor to it, though muted. I truly believe that being naive and wrong is a sign of moderation... for now. It's all dependent on who's setting the default weasel levels. Who is its master?
For instance, I had expected it to be like W*k*p*d**, laundering the name Ray Epps. They call a Trump rally "January 6 United States Capitol attack"