Pastor Hinn in Nigerian money row

Snigger. Hinn the Hair can't even con money off the Nigerians for Crissakes.

Hello from Home!

..here's a picture of our doggies, Charybdys(the buckskin)and Scylla (the black). Prize of a sincere handclap to anyone who can tell me where their names come from.

Yule means "feast".Or maybe"wheel".

However, some who have studied the linguistics tell me that the association of "Yule" with "wheel" (a fond belief you will find in many places, since the words are nearly identical) is a myth. The roots of the two words have about as much similarity in Scandinavian languages as in English. According to one theory, the root word for Yule came from the aboriginal Scandinavians, and has always meant only one thing: the festival at the Winter Solstice. The word for wheel came from the Indo-Europeans who migrated to Scandinavia around 3800 BC (although they didn't even begin to use wheels until about 2500 BC!) The debate points out how ancient the word is. For ancient Germanic and Celtic people, the impulse to celebrate solstice was the same as for their neighbors to the south -- a celebration of the cycle of nature and a reaffirmation of the continuation of life. But the style and substance of their celebrations took very different shape. It isn't hard to figure out why. These northern cultures survived a colder, darker winter for one thing. And they were just as likely to be herders and hunters as farmers.It's cold, it's dark many more hours than light, and snows cover the fields where your herds might forage. What is there to do but make a delight of necessity, with a great slaughter and feasting?And what better time to do it than at the point that marks the return of the sun's light and warmth?

From Candlegrove

Wife Batterers Inc.

DOUG[ThinkNoGod@aol.com] writes on the IIErrancy Group about those disgusting bastards, The Promise Keepers:

Who are the Promise Keepers? In 1990 Bill McCartney, ex-coach of the University of Colorado football team, founded the Promise Keepers to "celebrate Biblical manhood and motivate men toward a Christ-like masculinity." The organization encourages men to keep Bible-based promises to their wives, family, and churches. The huge rallies and multimillion dollar budget show that the organization is a major force in the conservative movement. What’s Wrong with the Promise Keepers? They are part of a politically conservative agenda. McCartney supported a Colorado amendment to block civil rights protections for gays and lesbians and has spoken at Operation Rescue rallies. In 1995 a protest outside a Denver Planned Parenthood clinic led to the arrest of PK employee Harvey Baynes. PK Leader Raleigh Washington has been quoted as saying "There is no way this group can restrict itself when it comes to public policy. We are producing leaders in this organization. They will enter the political sphere." PK is supported by right-wing luminaries such as Jerry Falwell and James Dobson. They denigrate the role of women. Genesis 3:16 states that the husband shall rule over the wife. 1 Corinthians 3:11 says that “the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man,” and Ephesians 5 says “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife.” Promise Keepers cite these and other misogynist verses and openly call for wives to "submit" to their husbands. In Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper, PK author Tony Evans demands that men reassert a dominant role in marriage: "I am not suggesting that you ask for your role back, I am urging you to take it back. There can be no compromise here." Bunny Wilson, a speaker for Chosen Women, a women’s PK satellite group, writes in her book Liberated through Submission that men should "rule with a hand of steel that is covered with velvet." She tells women to "go against" their "feelings, thoughts and opinions, and `yield pleasantly' to authority," including their "husband, pastor or employer." And just about any male authority figure. Wilson states "Our job is to submit to our teachers and our Professors...even if we know they are wrong. It is then in God's hands.” The Heritage Keepers, another women’s satellite group, preaches that "submission is a place of honor.” Wellington Boone, in his book Woman! You are a Kingmaker! writes that “ (http://www.wellingtonboone.wbmresources.com/ProductCart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=6) Kingmakers are women whose purpose in life is making others great.” A statement released by the National Organization for Women (NOW) says the Promise Keepers "ideology is one of power and control. It resembles the rationale of the batterer, not the savior." The PK want to roll back the hard-won advances the feminist movement has gained to better the status of women in our society. And doesn’t this treatment of women conflict with Jesus’ advice to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”? (Luke 6:31) They idolize subservience in men too. The PK pay lip service to "racial reconciliation,” but PK speaker Wellington Boone, an African-American self-appointed Bishop, states "I want to boldly affirm Uncle Tom. The black community must stop criticizing Uncle Tom. He is a role model, who, when he was stepped on like a worm, at a point of crisis, evidenced the nature of the classic, model worm, Jesus.” Such statements, speaking positively of the stereotypical subservient slave, can only impede any progress toward racial reconciliation. Boone has also said: “I believe that slavery, and the understanding of it when you see it God's way, was redemptive” and “Blacks have had more than two centuries of training in being a slave of man. It can be added as a long-term qualification to prepare them to be a fine slave of God or to rule as a king.” But slavery was an atrocity, not training. The idea that an African-American would praise the virtues of slavery is truly horrific. They are homophobic. Bill McCartney, PK founder, called lesbians and gays "stark raving mad." They foster a stereotype of the macho male. In 1989 McCartney dismissed claims that two players on his football team committed date rape because "rape by definition is a violent act. And so I don't think that's what we are talking about here, although that's what the charges are." One Promise Keeper described Jesus as a macho man who practiced carpentry "when they didn't have power saws." Tony Evans said, “The demise of our community and culture is the fault of sissified men who have been overly influenced by women” and “The primary cause of this national crisis is the feminization of men.” McCartney said, “You do know, don't you, that we're raising our children at a time when it's an effeminate society. It's not the proper climate. We need young boys that are launched to be men and that has to be imitated for them by a godly man.” But this testosterone idolatry is psychologically harmful. The Promise Keepers have the right to congregate. But others also have the right to protest their bad ideas. Asking men to keep their promises is a great idea, but not if the promises come at the expense of the mental health and welfare of their wives, children, gays and lesbians in society, and others.

Ag, sies man. While we’re about it, let’s go sign the petition on the American Family Association’s website. The question is Should parents approve sex-ed material?

However, the choices we’re given are something like this:

Parents have a right to know the kind of sex-ed material their children are being taught Parents do not have the right to know the kind of sex-ed material their children are being taught

Nice and objective, nay? Take the poll

Leave my child out of your evangelism

I've always found the Pagan society to be good for the Atheist pradigm. (That's quite apart from being one, of course):

A GUEST COLUMN BY ELIZABETH MARKLEY Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing. The fact that we are free to say what we wish without facing criminal charges shows true democracy in action. But at what point does freedom of speech become harassment? There are individuals who go door-to-door in a desperate attempt to convert others to their faith. Those of us who are not interested in this face-to-face equivalent of spam either refuse to answer the door or blindly take the pamphlet that is handed to us, knowing that we will be throwing it in the trash. I am a Pagan, so their conversion attempts are annoying, to say the least. Luckily for me, because of my honesty and courtesy toward them, there is usually no problem. Then they decided to prey upon my child. Now I realize that all they were doing was simply sharing their faith with my child, but the fact is that she is a minor, and children do not realize that they can tell such individuals to leave them alone. So out of social fear, my daughter complied with every request they made. She was next door at her friend’s house when they not only pressured her to join in on a prayer, but also told her to fill out a form that they handed to her. That is when I stepped outside to see why my daughter had not come home yet. When I saw that she was filling out some form I told her to stop writing and asked her what she was filling out. She said that she did not know, but that this man (pointing to him) told her to fill it out. That is when I asked the man what he had given to my child. He insisted that it was simply a statement of faith and nothing to worry about. I informed him that since I am her mother, he had no right to ask my child to provide personal information. He said that she could just put down her name, if that’s all she wanted to do. Didn’t I make it clear that without my consent he could not ask her to fill out anything? While I support their freedom of speech and their right to practice their religion, how do those rights extend to a right to pry private information out of a minor? I can’t help but wonder how the neighborhood would react if I were a Satanist and went around telling children about the joys of worshipping Satan. Surely I would be put in jail. So tell me, why is it that they can get away with it day after day? When are these people going to realize that what they believe does not void all laws that pertain to minors?

Cold Fusion

Michelle Thaller of The Christian Science Monitor reports, ion a surprisingly accessible way, on the resurfacing of Cold Fusion experimentation, and , more importantly, an apparent success.

I remember reading those first reports in Scientific American, out of Russia back in the 80’s.

It’s one of those dreams humans have which don’t go away, I guess.

Instead of using intense heat or pressure to get nuclei close enough together to fuse, this new experiment used a very powerful electric field to slam atoms together.

Some Thoughts for Today..Or Not

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Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your life. The object can be stated this way: Live the best life you can. Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.

Darwi Odrade Chapterhouse: Dune

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All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.

Missionaria Protectiva Text QIV (decto) Chapterhouse: Dune

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Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum.

Darwi Odrade Chapterhouse: Dune

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Religion (emulation of adults by the child) encysts past mythologies: guesses, hidden assumptions of trust in the universe, pronouncements made in search of personal power, all mingled with shreds of enlightenment. And always an unspoken commandment: Thou shalt not question! We break that commandment daily in the harnessing of human imagination to our deepest creativity.

Bene Gesserit Credo Chapterhouse: Dune

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Some never participate. Life happens to them. They get by on little more than dumb persistence and resist with anger or violence. all things that might life them out of resentment-filled illusions of security

Alma Mavis Taraza Chapterhouse: Dune

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Religion must be accepted as a source of energy. It can be directed for our purposes, but only within limits that experience reveals. He is the secret meaning of Free Will.

Missionaria Protectiva Protective Teaching Chapterhouse: Dune

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In my estimation, more misery has been created by reformers than by any other force in human history. Show me someone who says, "Something must be done!" and I will show you a head full of vicious intentions that have no other outlet. What we must strive for always is to find the natural flow and go with it.

Conversational Record, BG File GSXXMAT9 The Reverend Mother Taraza Heretics of Dune

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People always want something more than immediate joy or that deeper sense called happiness. This is one of the secrets by which we shape the fulfillment of our designs. The something more assumes amplified power with people who cannot give it a name or who (most often the case) do not even suspect its existence. Most people only react unconsciously to such hidden forces. Thus, we have only to call a calculated something more into existence, define it and give it shape, then people will follow.

Leadership Secrets of the Bene Gesserit Heretics of Dune

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It is said that there is nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durable in all the universe -- that nothing remains in its original state, that each day, each hour, each moment, there is change

Panoplia Propheticus of the Bene Gessert Dune: House Harkonnen

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Humans must never submit to animals.

Bene Gesserit Teaching Dune: House Harkonnen

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Many creatures bear the outward form of a man, but do not be fooled by appearances. Not all such life-forms can be considered human.

Bene Gesserit Azhar Book Dune: House Corrino

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These are illusions of popular history which a successful religion must promote: Evil men never prosper; only the brave deserve the fair; honesty is the best policy; actions speak louder than words; virtue always triumphs; a good deed is its own reward; any bad human can be reformed; religious talismans protect one from demon possession; only females understand the ancient mysteries; the rich are doomed to unhappiness.

From the Instruction Manual: Missionaria Protectiva Children of Dune

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Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, government tends more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class -- whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

Politics as Repeat Phenomenon: Bene Gesserit Training Manual Children of Dune