Monomaniac

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...


quote (from me)

Ahab had been bitten, and gathered the crew to be smitten with hatred for the White Whale, as had happened when Moby Dick smited Ahab.

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Once a year there's a bad Hemingway contest...writers vie to parody the great novelist...I looked about the web to see if there is a bad Melville contest...seems his writing would lend itself to such!...above a fanciful beginning for one I might write...:)

Actually, actually, ever since I started going on about biting, (Maya, my dog's, biting, werewolf and vampire biting), I've had in the back of my mind that Ahab in Melville's book Moby Dick had his leg bitten off by the Great White Whale...

It is a wonderful sea yarn...

quote (from me)

Every night we lie awake in our bunks, the thud thud, thud thud, of Ahab's prosthetic whale bone leg pacing on the deck above drowning out the restful creaking cradle rock of the wooden ship on the lullaby of the waves...'Give it a rest, Ahab'...

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I did find a parody, the story told from Moby Dick's viewpoint...

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Oh for crying out loud, here he comes again. I have to say, this gets really tiresome. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a monomaniac, some single-minded bore with an agenda.

If the Whale Wrote ‘Moby Dick’

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/06/if-the-whale-wrote-moby-dick.html

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And the midnight youtube movie last night was Moby Dick 1956...actually it was like the 2am show, and I was up 'till dawn reading quotations from the story...both the movie and the book are marvels...much to think on...Ray Bradbury wrote the screen play, which is partly why the movie is so finely crafted, that, and the director John Huston, and the great acting cast...


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“If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.”

Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury

https://books.google.com/books?id=y3CyRurE7P4C&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=Peace,+Montag.+Give+the+people+contests&source=bl&ots=H6mn2pQ0eM&sig=af4J900ikKrA8d1nX6z8atksZSU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD4Q6AEwBmoVChMIgYP5roKgyAIVhRKSCh0e5wIp#v=onepage&q=Peace%2C%20Montag.%20Give%20the%20people%20contests&f=false

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The movie The Searchers 1956 has a plot formula similar to Moby Dick...in the Old West, Indians attack a farm, kill all the family, and kidnap two children...Ethan, John Wayne, takes off in search of the kids, and his search has much the same look to it as Ahab's search for Moby Dick...the movie was directed by John Ford, and again the acting is a marvel...both movies are near the top of best movies ever...and both movies, I find, are far enough back in time that they look to really be from the time of the stories' settings in the mid 19th century!...

The plot formula is simple...the hero is wronged, bitten,  and he sets out in revenge...Captain Nemo lost his wife to the arms merchants in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, if I remember right...

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In the initial draft of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Nemo was a Polish noble, a member of the szlachta, resenting the murder of his family during the Russian repression of the January Uprising; but Verne's editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel feared a book ban in the Russian market and offending a French ally, the Russian Empire, and had Verne obscure Nemo's motivation in the first book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Nemo



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Disney's movie had it that Nemo was about clearing the oceans of warships...and it is in that movie I think is the arms merchant reference...Master of the World movie has that theme too...I forget just how it goes in the book...

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Nemo takes Aronnax to the penal colony island of Rura Penthe. Nemo reveals he was once a prisoner there, as were many of his crew. The prisoners are loading an ammunitions ship. The Nautilus rams the ship, destroying its cargo and killing the crew. An anguished Nemo tells Arronax that his actions have saved thousands from death in war; he also discloses that this "hated nation" tortured his wife and son to death while attempting to force him to reveal the secrets of his work. Ned discovers the coordinates of Nemo's secret island base, Vulcania, and releases messages in bottles, hoping somebody will find them and free him from captivity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20,000_Leagues_Under_the_Sea_(1954_film)

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They're alike, Ahab, Ethan, Nemo...

Melville expresses why Ahab is so driven...

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The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. [. . .] All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it. (41.19)

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Next:..I've found that some of the Ten Lost Tribes are thought to have been found for real!

DavidDavid
mobilis in mobili

Queequeg

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

John Wooden built a pyramid too...his famous Pyramid of Success...and his success in basketball gives it credence, along with all his supporters that have found it useful...

I..I just thought to look it up, thinking on pyramids as I have been...you know, no stone unturned, and at wiki's take there's a few Wooden quotes...Wooden was famous for quotable sayings...and one I'd just seen in the posting studies...

quote

Be quick, but don't hurry

John Wooden

^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wooden}

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Oh!...have to pause a sec...Maya my dog is barking...she never barks!...gotta go see what's up...brb...don't know what...keep her on the porch awhile...

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The dolphin and anchor is a famous historic symbol. Titus, Emperor of Rome, took the device of a dolphin twisted round an anchor, to imply, like the emblem of Augustus, the medium between haste and slowness, the anchor being the symbol of delay

The Dolphin of Legend and of Heraldry

http://www.sacred-texts.com/lcr/fsca/fsca68.htm

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In ancient times, Hasten Slowly was on the lintel of the Temple at Delphi, along with the enigmatic letter E....wait..."Know Thyself" was that motto, maxim...

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"Three Yards and a Cloud of Dust"

Woody Hayes

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A couple days back, John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, in an interview regarding why he's picking up, used that quote, by way of explaining...well...let me get the conversation...or a story about the conversation...I think it was cnn's interview...CBS actually...

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Boehner described his incremental legislative style as “the Woody Hayes school of football: three years and a cloud of dust, three yards and a cloud of dust.” - See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/Boehner_warns_fellow_Republicans_with_Beware_false_prophets_advice_#sthash.znze6gmc.dpuf

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one good quote deserves another, and Boehner threw another one out...which grabbed headlines...

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"The Bible says beware of false prophets. And there are people out there, you know, spreading noise about how much can get done.

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that would be in Jeremiah, and from Jesus in the New Testament...

a Brazilian billionaire has gone and built an oversize replica of the Second Temple at Jerusalem...

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The majority of the temple space is devoted to the main sanctuary. The sanctuary is lined with pews imported from Spain, which face the main altar.^[7] The sanctuary has a conveyor belt system designed to carry tithes and offerings from the altar directly into a safe room.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Solomon_(UCKG)

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Seems a bit phony, but I used to live and work in apartment complex across from the Crystal Cathedral, a drive in glass church, and a bit over the top, but the hymns being sung on Sunday were nice, I thought, while I was fixing this or that...

In ancient times, false prophets could meet a grim fate...

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Whenever the Scythian king falls sick, he sends for the three soothsayers of most renown at the time, who come and make trial of their art in the mode above described. Generally they say that the king is ill because such or such a person, mentioning his name, has sworn falsely by the royal hearth. This is the usual oath among the Scythians, when they wish to swear with very great solemnity. Then the man accused of having foresworn himself is arrested and brought before the king. The soothsayers tell him that by their art it is clear he has sworn a false oath by the royal hearth, and so caused the illness of the king- he denies the charge, protests that he has sworn no false oath, and loudly complains of the wrong done to him. Upon this the king sends for six new soothsayers, who try the matter by soothsaying. If they too find the man guilty of the offence, straightway he is beheaded by those who first accused him, and his goods are parted among them: if, on the contrary, they acquit him, other soothsayers, and again others, are sent for, to try the case. Should the greater number decide in favour of the man's innocence, then they who first accused him forfeit their lives.

The mode of their execution is the following: a waggon is loaded with brushwood, and oxen are harnessed to it; the soothsayers, with their feet tied together, their hands bound behind their backs, and their mouths gagged, are thrust into the midst of the brushwood; finally the wood is set alight, and the oxen, being startled, are made to rush off with the waggon. It often happens that the oxen and the soothsayers are both consumed together, but sometimes the pole of the waggon is burnt through, and the oxen escape with a scorching. Diviners- lying diviners, they call them- are burnt in the way described, for other causes besides the one here spoken of. When the king puts one of them to death, he takes care not to let any of his sons survive: all the male offspring are slain with the father, only the females being allowed to live.

Herodotus
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The Scythians were a rough bunch...

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In what concerns war, their customs are the following. The Scythian soldier drinks the blood of the first man he overthrows in battle. Whatever number he slays, he cuts off all their heads, and carries them to the king; since he is thus entitled to a share of the booty, whereto he forfeits all claim if he does not produce a head. In order to strip the skull of its covering, he makes a cut round the head above the ears, and, laying hold of the scalp, shakes the skull out; then with the rib of an ox he scrapes the scalp clean of flesh, and softening it by rubbing between the hands, uses it thenceforth as a napkin. The Scyth is proud of these scalps, and hangs them from his bridle-rein; the greater the number of such napkins that a man can show, the more highly is he esteemed among them. Many make themselves cloaks, like the capotes of our peasants, by sewing a quantity of these scalps together. Others flay the right arms of their dead enemies, and make of the skin, which stripped off with the nails hanging to it, a covering for their quivers. Now the skin of a man is thick and glossy, and would in whiteness surpass almost all other hides. Some even flay the entire body of their enemy, and stretching it upon a frame carry it about with them wherever they ride. Such are the Scythian customs with respect to scalps and skins.

Herodotus

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The old Japanese, with their penchant for ceremony and ritual, dwelled much on the taking of enemy heads...

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 The heads were then mounted on wooden plates with a central spike and prepared for later viewing. At the end of the battle, the "Head Viewing Ceremony" would be held amongst much pomp and circumstance,

quote of a facebook quote from this book, I gather...

"The Battle of Sekigahara, The Greatest Samurai Battle in History".

https://www.facebook.com/TheBattleOfSekigahara/posts/925902774140828

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Just in the news, has been the story of the Aztec skull rack found in Mexico City...

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The Aztecs had their share of tzompantli; one such example is in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. The skull rack here is a reminder of the Aztec's ongoing Flowery Wars.^[13] Aztec warfare was primarily concerned with the capture of enemy warriors to serve as sacrifice, which is evident from the amount of warriors found sacrificed around Aztec structures.^[14] The heart of the captive would be torn from his chest, and the corpse pushed down the stairs at the front of the temple. Attendants at the bottom were responsible for severing the limbs and head from the torso, and the warrior who brought the captive in would be given the limbs as property. Many scholars have determined that these limbs would be cannibalized

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzompantli

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one more...

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One of the greatest historians of the Roman Empire, Tacitus (56 AD – 120 AD) described the aftermath of the Roman’s famous defeat in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD.
“In the middle of the plain, bones lay either spread out or heaped, depending on whether they had fled or resisted. Next to the bones lay bits of spears and horse limbs, and there were also human heads nailed to trees. In the nearby groves were barbarian altars in which they had sacrificed tribunes and centurions of the first rank,” Tacitus wrote in his Annals.

An entire army sacrificed in a bog

http://sciencenordic.com/entire-army-sacrificed-bog

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Skull racks have their modern counterpart in the trophy rooms in the lobbies of stadiums and such...

Combat, and its rituals and ceremonies, gave rise to religion... war, with its comradery in arms, is the oldest faith...and it is everywhere found around the earth stretching all the way back in history...how it got to be that way, I don't know...

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 "Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."

Ishmael
Moby Dick
Herman Melville

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queequeg

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oh...and this...

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Goliath's skull found near Jerusalem?

http://www.hope-of-israel.org/p7.htm

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and this...

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A Pentagon spokesman said the US had faith the Afghan military would recapture the city.

Afghan force fight to retake Kunduz from Taliban

• 2 hours ago
• From the section Asia

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34387914

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DavidDavid

Cubit

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...



Stopped off at the Dollar store to get some of those little wooden craft blocks...and they were gone...I have a package, but one package isn't enough...one package isn't enough to build a model Great Pyramid!

I've gotten diverted...I know what I was reaching for in the last post, and maybe can still get there...

Anyway, everyone has an idea on how the Pyramids were built...looking about I found the Nat Geo take that the Great Pyramid was built with a spiral ramp, not a ramp going around the outside, but one inside the courses...I thought on this, and let fly a comment:

quote (from me)

yes..my thought too, and they would have filled in the entire ramp...it's gone, except maybe the stones used to close the ramp are different...maybe that is what is showing in the sunlight...the seven degree discoloration...the ramp was on the stone courses...then coming down the limestone capping stones were added...I don't think it was a corridor...more like switch backs going up a mountain...they could have used switch backs too on the pyramid blocks themselves, though the interior ramp looks to be seen in those discolorations...no need for external mud ramp...switch backs going up all four sides at once on the stones themselves...then the capstone work coming down...more than one way to build a pyramid!

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Nat Geo has it the spiral ramp is still there, a hidden corridor going up the Pyramid...they seem to gloss over the possibility that the ramp would have been closed in, making it a seamless part of the Pyramid...actually, Nat Geo glosses over a lot of things...like the Egyptians are known to have used exterior ramps...there is still one remaining at Karnack...when Napoleon saw it there was still a block on it...it was like the Egyptians picked up and left the Pylon they were working on unfinished and the ramp in place...

there is one wall painting depiction of the Egyptians moving a huge statue...it's on a sledge being pulled by a small army...there's another wall painting, a relief actually, showing this, but it's not Egyptian, it's from Nimrod, an ancient town near modern Mosul in Iraq...(what remains of Nimrod has been bulldozed by the assassins...this in the news)...here's a page that has the Nimrod (Assyria) relief (it is only known from the drawing made by the Englishman who found it, it was too fragile to transport, and while re-covered with soil, back filled, for safety, it seems to be gone)...page also has how a full sized light house was moved in modern times...

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Moving Large Objects

http://www.catchpenny.org/movebig.html

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to work with stone the Egyptians had copper core drills, and copper saws, and here's is page about their tool usage...

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Ancient Egyptian Stoneworking Tools and Methods

http://www.oocities.org/unforbidden_geology/ancient_egyptian_copper_slabbing_saws.html

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being diligent and doing my homework!...so after seeing a lot of different ideas, I refined my own...stones quarried with copper tools, moved on sledges,  elevated with ramps, ramps that are interior to the Pyramid as opposed to being on its outside...I don't know how they lifted the really big stones into place...for irrigation they have a simple fulcrum, a shadoof, and maybe that was the design for the stone moving machines Herodotus reports!

There are many ideas about how the Pyramid was built, and many back and forths!...I happened on this one this afternoon, and it diverted me completely, but not so much for its take on the Pyramid, but for a link it has to the author's uncle (both deceased) who was held a prisoner of war by the Japanese after the fall of the Philippines...the soldier, a US artillery Captain, kept a diary...most of the entries are just one line or two, so not too long to read through the years from 1942 to 1945...

here's the diary:
http://www.fsteiger.com/gsteipow.html

here's the nephews Pyramid page:
http://www.fsteiger.com/Pyramid.html

Even Isaac Newton studied the Pyramid...

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Newton had an obsession of establishing the value of the "cubit" of the ancient Egyptians. This was no mere curiosity. His Theory of Gravitation was dependent on an accurate knowledge of the circumference of the earth. The only figures he currently had were the inaccurate calculations of Eratosthenes and his followers. With these figures his theory did not work out.

Newton felt that if he could find the exact length of the Egyptian "cubit", this would allow him to find the exact length of their "stadium", reputed by others to bear a relation to a "geographical degree". This measurement, which he needed for his theory of gravitation, he believed to be somehow enshrined in the proportions of the Great Pyramid. Thus, he would have the necessary measurements for his Theory of Gravitation.
http://www.gizapyramid.com/newton.htm

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and here I find myself reading about Cubits, and recalling Q*Bert!...a video game where a toon hops up a pyramid of cubes, or not, depending on one's skill!...and I'm back on track...or hop!

a unit of measure might be something that would radiate out with the Ten Tribes, or the Trojans...from Jerusalem, from Egypt, from Sumer, from somewhere...:)

more tomorrowmorrow...

DavidDavid

Double Sunset

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

There are Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and are lost to history, at least history told by dna, and archaeological remains...but not so lost to the imagination!...over the centuries they have been conjectured to be all the races on earth, in one fashion or another...many many  books and web pages about this...going back centuries...

I even tried once to pry out of my Jewish friend Malcom if the Trojans of Homer's Illiad might have been Israelites, one of the Tribes...Troy was located on the shores of Turkey (not so far from where that drowned refugee kid washed up...on the web, someone in India did a sand sculpture of this scene on a beach...just really sad to see!), and I was trying to picture just how extensive was King Solomon's lands...and find out why so many Medieval and Renaissance European Kings and Queens and such, claimed descent by blood from Trojans...famously, the Romans too claimed descent from the Trojans....I've always been partial to USC Trojan football...which is neither here nor there!...but Malcom was circumspect!

But why the fascination with the fallen Trojans.?..they didn't win the Trojan war, the Greeks did...and the whole story appears for the most part in just one source, Homer's Illiad...

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The events of the Trojan War are found in many works of Greek literature and depicted in numerous works of Greek art. There is no single, authoritative text which tells the entire events of the war. Instead, the story is assembled from a variety of sources, some of which report contradictory versions of the events.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War

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checking my own thinking, I see that Homer had sources to draw from, and the story well known in his time...

anyway, the Greeks destroyed Troy even more completely than the Tenth Legion destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem, and the Trojans that survived, fled, or were taken captive, like Cassandra...there was a diaspora of Trojans, albeit likely an imagined one...but they turn up all over like the Lost Ten Tribes...refugee diasporas are a kind of repeating theme in history!

There's no dna evidence for the Lost Tribes, and there's not much evidence of Jewish religions practices being found wide spread in ancient Peoples' religions...seems the Tribes would carry such with them...but the Bible itself suggests the Tribes were wayward, and didn't keep to the ordinances...so, so, it's a muddle, and murkey enough that all manor of imaginings about the Tribes emerge from the murk...

my Mormon friend would show me Egyptian like drawings supposedly made by Lost Tribes in the Americas, and I'd wince, 'they're not even drawn right'...and asked, 'how can you believe in all this stuff, and not believe in aliens?'...'oh!, but we do!' he answered...I, I just assumed religious sorts don't believe in aliens!

While there isn't any dna evidence, or religious ritual evidence, of a Jewish world wide Ten Tribes refugee diaspora back in  earliest times (that would come later with the two known Tribes), there are some other things that seem to connect up...I don't know if these things radiated outward from Jerusalem, or Jerusalem was a part of a world wide set of self similar things...

famously, there are pyramids all over, and no apparent connection between the ancient cultures that built them...

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The Pyramids of Güímar refer to six rectangular pyramid-shaped, terraced structures, built from lava stone without the use of mortar. They are located in the district of Chacona, part of the town of Güímar on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. The structures have been dated to the 19th century and their original function explained as a byproduct of contemporary agricultural techniques.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid

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Those Spanish pyramids may explain how pyramids got started...farmers clearing their fields stacked up the stones...from there imagination took over!

What ancient monuments all have in common is that they are works of our imaginations...

on that Spanish island there is something called a double sunset...

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Also, standing on the platform of the largest pyramid on the day of the Summer solstice it is possible to experience a double sunset, as first the sun sets behind a mountain top, then it emerges again from behind the mountain and sets a second time behind a neighbouring peak.

<sup>same as above

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I was trying to imagine if the Great Pyramid in Egypt is some kind of static sky telescope...thought is if one stands back from it, and looks at its silhouette against the night sky and stars, one could observe and time  movements of night time celestial bodies...it's well known that obelisks were sun dial clocks...the pavement around them had markings that the point of the obelisk would cast a shadow on, marking the hours...

quote</sup>

There is nothing I love more than a great astronomical history mystery story and today our sister site LiveScience has this great one to share: Using NASA data and computer simulations, scientists have managed to finally reveal exactly how the sun lined up with an Egyptian obelisk at the heart of an ancient Roman sundial.

http://www.space.com/24119-ancient-roman-sundial-secrets-revealed.html

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I think the notion of the Pyramid being used to watch the stars is in Tompkins' book...one thought had it that the Pyramid was at first truncated...a platform on top where the priests would observe...then, for some reason, it was built up to a point...

my thought is that the Pyramid/Pyramids at Giza provides the opportunity to watch double sunsets...a star passing one edge, then appearing at the other edge...a priest stands closer, or further back to the Pyramid to watch different stars...I'll have to go to Las Vegas and see if this could work!...probably too many city lights there to see the stars...

if nothing else, the Great Pyramid is a stimulus to the imagination...and maybe that is all it was intended to be...

more tomorrowmorrow!

DavidDavid

Werewolves And Vampires

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

I saved the ticket from the day the power went out in the middle of the movie I was watching in the theater next to Petsmart...I rolled over to Petsmart this afternoon, and thought to see if I could get a ticket refund, or see another movie...and the theater obliged, and I found myself seated in E3, last seat available, surround by kids and their moms watching Hotel Transylvania 2...I'd thought it might be a comedy like Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and I was close, it's a cartoon movie for kids!

News stories roll into the past really fast, which is a good thing for most of them...the 'moving pen' writes, and skips into a new news story without a pause...myself, I've hit the pause button at the story of the Palestinian girl being shot at the border crossing...the occasion for tears something to consider...

and there I was this afternoon watching the cartoon turn all the fears of life and death upside down...surrounded by giggling kids...and it's funny...and of course the cartoon isn't real, but it's funny...

the cartoon's plot is simple...a child has been born to a vampire married to a human, and the mom vampire's dad is concerned that the half human half vampire kid won't, or will,  grow up to be a vampire...this transformation happens when the kid will grow fangs, or not...various adventures ensue, the kid under close observation for when the fangs will appear...

I've been going on about 'biting'...the transformation that happens when someone is bitten, as when a werewolf bites, or a vampire bites...I don't know what this moment is called in the vocabulary of Hollywood script writers...in the movie Friendly Persuasion...brb...here's wiki link to that movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_Persuasion_(1956_film)

curious, Ronald Reagan gifted a copy of it to Gorbachev , and Gary Cooper didn't like acting in it...not enough action for him!...it's about a Quaker family and how they deal with the Civil War and being attacked on their farm by confederates...the film is laying out the dilemmas of being bitten by war...transformed by war...

in the cartoon, getting fangs means the kid will acquire Vampire super senses...turning into a bat and such, and generally being really scary...and having fangs means he can remain living in the Hotel which is home to all kinds of monsters...

the fangs aren't appearing, and if they don't by his fifth? birthday, he'll 'just' be human...and the kid is having a birthday party, the fifth, and it is urgent to his grandpa vampire that he grow fangs, and it is urgent too to the kid's great grandpa vampire Vlad, who has been invited to the party...Vlad shows up with his side kick giant bat, and Vlad, and his bat,  are really old school monsters...and Vlad tries to scare the kid into growing fangs...being really scared being what usually makes fangs appear in vampire kids!...earlier efforts along this line had failed, and Vlad's do too...the party gets out of hand, and the kid runs away with his girl friend kid werewolf to get away from it all, and Vlad's bat follows, pretty much intent on eating both of them...but when the bat attacks the kid werewolf, the vampire kid gets his hackles up, seeing his girlfriend in peril, and the fangs come out, and he lays waste to the bat, and all the other bats that show up...the vampire half of the family transform using their super senses and join a fine cartoon bar fight battle!...a happy ending...I picked up about here before the celebratory scenes, and exited the theater, alone with some thoughts...

Vlad is played by, by played I mean Vlad has the voice of, Mel Brooks, and Mel Brooks uses a comedic Jewish accent of a stereotypical old Jewish guy...I blinked when I heard this, and the cartoon took on a serious cast...the kid is half vampire, half human...and now I saw him as being half Jewish and half Gentile...and saw the whole arc of the cartoon, like I see the arc of a movie like Friendly Persuasion, as an effort at transformation...at being bitten...Israel is like the Farm in Friendly Persuasion, and both are like Hotel Transylvania...which looks to be a bit modeled after the Castle on the Island in Lake Tahoe...an observation which is neither here nor there...but once with E. I was standing on the roadside cliff overlooking the Island, and E. said, 'it looks unreal', and suggested just jumping...I smiled...'that's just too scary...'

DavidDavid

Land of Dreams

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

quote

Israel’s security cabinet voted unanimously Thursday evening to permit the use of sniper-fire against stone throwers in circumstances where an officer’s life is not at imminent risk. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed the changes and declared the increased measures were a “fight against those who throw rocks and firebombs, and shoot fireworks.” - See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/09/mandatory-sentences-throwers#sthash.2rTEIZYt.dpuf

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So, in yesterday's news, the IDF maybe mistakes a 'bush for a bear' and shoots a Palestinian girl who maybe was brandishing a knife...a Palestinian watchdog took some photos that show the girl, dressed from head to toe in black, the customary garb for Palestinian girls when outside, and it's the photos that brings doubt to the IDF story...she's standing still while being confronted...it's one of those photos from war coverage that sums everything up...

and yesterday too the Pilgrims in Mecca stampeded and many died...this has happened before...and like last week a crane fell on the Pilgrims too during a sudden wind storm...

the Pilgrims come to Mecca because it is an ordinance of Islam...more of a request really...that once during one's life one makes the pilgrimage, if one can afford it...that 'afford it' qualification suggests that the rich 'must' make it to Mecca, and of course spend a lot of money the Saudi king can pocket...but that's being sardonic!

Islam swept away pagan nonsense at its beginning, only to replace it with nonsense of its own!...and by nonsense, I mean what looks to be just plain silly...it makes sense to the Pilgrims...the journey to Mecca will further their spiritual path by walking around the Kaabba...and there are numerous theological explanations of why they do these things...at the stampede in Hebron they were engaged in throwing stones at a pillar that represents the Devil...oh...wait...that was at Mina...Hebron is where the girl was killed...and where the Tomb of the Patriarchs is...I don't know if at the start of Islam, pagan faiths were regarded as nonsense...maybe pagan ordinances made sense to Islam, but were to be opposed...

nowadays, scientific thinking regards religious ordinances as nonsensical...but scientists being curious, study religions anyway, and come up with explanations of this and that...the ordinance not to eat pork in ancient times being a good health advice, as pork spoils quickly and has trichinosis...what scientists are about is finding practical reasons for religious ordinances...

quote

According to a report from popular haredi news website Kikar Hashabbat , the Sadigora Rebbe, who heads that hassidic dynasty, said Wednesday that "we have merited to see miracles since the rocket did not injure anyone or cause damage to property," crediting this to the "thousands of Jews that observe Shabbat and the right to prayer [in Ashdod]."

The Sadigora Rebbe also took the location of where the rocket fell as a sign, since it fell close to the Big Fashion shopping mall, which is open on Shabbat. 
http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Hasidic-rabbis-see-rocket-as-a-sign-from-heaven-to-observe-Shabbat-404236

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The rabbis are upset that stores are open on Shabbat, which I think is Saturday...time was stores closed on Sunday...it's in the Bible, an ordinance for everyone to rest on Sunday...

quote

“A Jewish and democratic state cannot ignore the fact that it is indeed a Jewish state,” said the chief rabbi. “Shabbat is a symbol and we shouldn’t be ashamed of it.

The Jewish people are the ones who taught the whole world that a day of rest is healthy for the soul.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Chief-Rabbi-Lau-We-must-preserve-sanctity-of-Shabbat-in-Israel-415174

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is a day off healthy?...is the same day off healthy for everyone?...makes sense...but it bumps up against making money 24/7...

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Speaking to the Chief Rabbis Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau, as well as the Council of the Chief Rabbinate, Pope Francis said that great progress had been made in recent decades in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people calling the development "a gift from God." 
http://www.jpost.com/Elections-2013/Pope-calls-for-bonds-of-true-fraternity-between-Jews-and-Christians-at-meeting-with-chief-rabbis-354371

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well, I didn't realize the quotes were from the Chief Rabbi, which I have it is like the Pope in stature, which brings me to where I was reaching, the Pope in the news today speaking to Congress!...

quote

Here too I think of the march which Martin Luther King led from Selma to Montgomery fifty years ago as part of the campaign to fulfill his “dream” of full civil and political rights for African Americans. That dream continues to inspire us all. I am happy that America continues to be, for many, a land of “dreams”. Dreams which lead to action, to participation, to commitment. Dreams which awaken what is deepest and truest in the life of a people.

Pope Francis

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yeah, well, some day dreaming IDF soldiers shot an eighteen year old Palestinian girl...and there things stand...an occasion for tears...

DavidDavid







 

Dancing With Wolves Seven Years in Tibet

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

quote (from me)

all those illustrations in the Temple of Dendera are a cosmology of some sort

from yesterday's post

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I've never occasioned to write the word 'cosmology' before...best, I thought, to look it up and get a handle on what it is!...wiki's cosmology take lists all the scientific notions of what the universe is down through the ages...I glanced through those, like at midnight last night!, and refined the search, insomuch as I was going on about Ancient Egyptian cosmology...searched: religious cosmology...

It may be that the universe is finite, or infinite, but one thing seems certain, there are no boundaries to our cosmological imagination!

The Jains have it that animals are in equal standing with human beings...

quote

Literally translated, Ahimsa means to be without harm; to be utterly harmless, not only to oneself and others, but to all forms of life, from the largest mammals to the smallest bacteria.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/jainism/living/ahimsa_1.shtml

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The movie Seven Year's in Tibet has the scene where some Jain monks are traveling a Tibetan mountain path very slowly, as they have to sweep the ground in front of them so as to avoid stepping on critters.

Jain cosmology seems to be derived through logic...if a is like b, and b is like c, then a and c are alike too...we live and breath and are aware, animals live and breath, animals must be aware too...then there's the big jump...we have souls and are on a spiritual path, animals must be too....glancing through their cosmology, there looks to be a lot of reasoning like this...one I don't get is this...Jains don't believe in God, but do believe we all have souls, animals and plants and such as well!...seems their logic would include the universe having a soul too...but it's a tangle, and likely troubled by western interpretation of eastern imagination!

In the movie there is the 'worm scene' ...the hero wants to build a movie theater for the young Dali Lama, and the Dali Lama insists that all the worms in the ground of the building site be removed for the worms' safety...

don't know but something like this goes on today in Israel when ever a bulldozer unearths an archaeological treasure!

trying to find that worm scene in the movie, I happened on another story about worms...

quote

The thing Silang is searching for, on hands and knees, 15,000 feet above sea level on the Tibetan plateau, is extraordinarily strange. The part that’s above ground is a tiny, capless fungus—just a brown stalk, thin as a matchstick, poking an inch or two out of the muddy soil.

Tibet's Golden Worm

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/08/tibetan-mushroom/finkel-text

The little worms have what is thought to be curative properties, and are selling for a high price, more than their weight in gold.  Science hasn't determined yet if they are really helpful...but the worms have captured the imagination of the Chinese, along with a lot of other creatures...Chinese have become a menace to species on the edge of extinction, and are ruthless in their pursuit of unproven medicinal properties in all kinds of animal parts...

The rich become sots, and indulge in all manner of selfishness...

One review of Seven Years in Tibet has a telling insight...and I can't find it again to quote it, but it was like this...movie stories like this one often show another culture through western eyes, specifically the eyes of a white westerner...Dancing With Wolves, an example...rather than through the eyes of the foreigners....oh...remembering the Dancing comparison I fashioned a search: Dancing With Wolves Seven Years in Tibet...and first hit is the review!

quote

If you accept Hollywood's version of things, history -- particularly the uglier parts of history -- is what happens while white people are watching. It's not terribly surprising, since studios generally balk at anything remotely depressing; fears can be allayed if an established Anglo actor anchors such projects. So we end up with revolution in South America through the eyes of James Woods in SALVADOR, the plight of Native Americans as seen by Kevin Costner in DANCES WITH WOLVES, upheaval in Burma as it affects Patricia Arquette in BEYOND RANGOON...not one of them a terrible film, but each one compromised by the sense that we couldn't be trusted to identify with a dark face. 

http://www.imdb.com/reviews/92/9292.html

That movie I just saw, or partly saw!, No Escape, is like that too...and a terrible film!

And National Geographic is like that too!...it's a looking on at the world through Western eyes...through Western imagination...

and a subscription is only twelve bucks...I need to re-new...

Oh...I have an imagination...then animals must too!

DavidDavid

Just My Imagination

A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

Maybe there are 360 senses...I don't know...I find myself waving my arms and saying 'I don't know!' over and over in my reading...this idea caught my attention as I had just posted that there may be more senses than the ones we commonly think about...sight hearing taste and such...but I was thinking about 'receptive' senses, the ways we observe...the fellow with the 360 senses notion has it that there are senses like the superpowers that comic book heroes have...

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These were a highly advanced people, who, utilizing 360 natural senses, were capable of great feats of manifestation, alchemy, and trans-dimensional journeying

Read more: http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa-opinion-guest-authors/khemitology-alternative-perspective-ancient-egypt-part-1#ixzz3mWGpBSA7
Follow us: @ancientorigins on Twitter | ancientoriginsweb on Facebook
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To give a scale, an idea, of what these ancients were capable of, compare:

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The Force can enhance natural, physical, and mental abilities, including strength (such as during a "Force jump" or to slow a fall from an otherwise dangerous height) and accuracy (as when Luke Skywalker was able to launch proton torpedoes into a two-meter-wide thermal exhaust port on the Death Star in A New Hope). A number of other Force powers are demonstrated in the film series including telekinesis, telepathy, levitation, deep hypnosis, enhanced empathy, reflexes, precognition, and enhanced speed. The Jedi were also able to influence and control the minds of others by making use of the Jedi mind trick.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Force_(Star_Wars)#Force_abilities

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I'm a bit wary of the mind trick my own self, and wonder at times if I'm being 'jedied'!...oh!...here's a bit that backs up my sense of senses!

quote

Humans Have a Lot More Than Five Senses
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/07/humans-have-a-lot-more-than-five-senses/

with good comments

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Found that searching for why specifically the idea of 360 'super senses!

Well, here is some of the reason as I suspected it to be...the Zodiac at Dendera, the circular one, haven't read much yet on the square ones, square in that they cover a rectangular ceiling...the round Zodiac is unique it seems, the other Egyptian Zodiacs being rectangular...the round Zodiac at Dendera is divided up into 36 decans that total 360...and this web page has it that the 360 super senses are acquired one by one as the adept moves through the houses of the Zodiac...

Oon (from which our word “noon” was derived) is “The Wise One“. The Sun is at the zenith or at its strongest. By this time we have advanced greatly, and are beginning to regain the use of up to 360 senses. The wise ones are living in a higher dimension of reality and are enjoying an inner peace and resonance with their natural environment.

https://grahamhancock.com/awyanp1/

Site has a colorful re creation of an Egyptian Zodiac, and, oh, I see it is related to grahamhancock, a kind of New Age guru...

I'm not an astrologer, I'm an Aries....but how imaginative of the Egyptians to portray their gods as representing stars and planets, earth, moon,and sun...all those illustrations in the Temple of Dendera are a cosmology of some sort...what were they seeing, and doing, with their 'mind's eye'?...with their imaginations?

Imagination is in fact our one 'super sense'...

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Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the ability to form new images and sensations in the mind that are not perceived through senses such as sight, hearing, or other senses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination

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There's a dedication in David Bergamini's Japan's Imperial Conspiracy where the author says the war, WW2 between America and Japan, was a clash of cultures...somewhere else I have it that an American general thought the Japanese were fighting with a medieval code of conduct, like the old days of Knighthood in Europe...and it might be said, that the war too was a clash of imaginations...every nation has its own imaginative sense of self, even as individuals do...it's our imaginations that describe ourselves to ourselves, so to speak, as individuals, and as nations...I'm reaching here for the current wars in the Middle East...they too are a clash of imaginations...super powered ones as it were!

quote

More strange than true. I never may believe

These antique fables nor these fairy toys.

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend

More than cool reason ever comprehends.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of imagination all compact.

One sees more devils than vast hell can hold—

That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,

Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy.

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Theseus
A Mid Summer Night's Dream
William Shakespeare

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DavidDavid

Dendera

 A text only post, and about history, afield from fauna and flora, sort of...and grim, so dear readers, a caution to read on...

I've buried the hatchet with Target, and return now for shopping errands, and on the way over there today on Harbor, I noticed the popular ice cream stand thereabout is boarded up, and the whole area behind being prepared for some new construction...and across Harbor from there I cast a glance, and a new Giant Howling Wolf statue is seated behind the construction fence, and there's a new street, Great Wolf, branching off now from Harbor...Great Wolf is the name of a chain of waterpark hotel resorts...with the continuing heat, they should do well!

The aether is well known to Star Wars fans...it's called the Force...

quote

One of the audio sources Lipsett sampled for 21-87 was a conversation between artificial intelligence pioneer Warren S. McCulloch and Roman Kroitor, a cinematographer who went on to develop IMAX. In the face of McCulloch's arguments that living beings are nothing but highly complex machines, Kroitor insists that there is something more: "Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God."
When asked if this was the source of "the Force," Lucas confirms that his use of the term in Star Wars was "an echo of that phrase in 21-87." The idea behind it, however, was universal: "Similar phrases have been used extensively by many different people for the last 13,000 years to describe the 'life force,'" he says.^[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Force_(Star_Wars)


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When the first Star Wars movie came out, it was Episode IV of what were to be nine? episodes...a whole bunch anyway...and they were all in George Lucas' head...I forget how many successful movies he had before Star Wars, one?, so there was immediate consternation among the immediate fan base of Star Wars that if Star Wars wasn't successful, the other episodes wouldn't be made!...and Lucas had them all in his head just waiting to be made!

I was watching a clip of a tourist group on youtube touring the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendera...it is a marvel...it was like the last of the Egyptian temples to be built...actually a rebuild...temples were always being rebuilt altered...that happens when your culture lasts like four thousand years!...every last bit of the Temple at Dendera is covered with illustrations...the French were so taken with the Zodiac in the ceiling that they stole it, and it is now in the Louvre...the French are all over things, archaeologically speaking, in Egypt, and Greece...this started when Napoleon took along his Savants on his effort to conquer Egypt...I had the book for awhile of the illustrations the Savants made....they fell on their knees with joy when they came to the Temple at Dendera...today, they have just cleaned the ceiling of the soot form the early Christians' cooking fires, and it still has its painted coloring...the whole Temple was in painted colors...Christians, maybe  Muslims too, are said to have been the ones that damaged much of the Temple's imagery...it looks like a ball peen hammer was used...little round digs in everything...but that may have been done by the Egyptians themselves...to destroy the magic of images the Egyptians would deface them, and there are older temples where this is seen, and was certainly done by the Egyptians...but vandals have been at work since back then right up to today...everything sacred, it's said, will at some time be profaned...anyway, I got to thinking that the Temple artists were like Tesla, they had everything in their mind's eye...I had a friend who could draw like this when I was a kid...where I would sketch, trying to find harmony with a lot of preliminary light lines, he would just draw the whole drawing out, quick!...Disney famously did this with the story of Snow White...he had gathered his artists together, and they weren't sure how to start, and Disney just acted out the whole story, voices and all...it was in his head!...

The Temple artists had everything in their heads too, I imagine, and what I mean is the whole lore of Ancient Egypt...they could go on about those things as easily as Star Wars fans can go on about Star Wars...they know every story, every character, every scene...however trivial!...and Lucas was the first 'fan', and had the complete lore all to himself!...but soon enough magically shared it with his movies...and where did he get his lore for Star Wars?...his imagination was steeped in previous stories, and here is link that explains this very well, and much better than I can!

How did George Lucas create Star Wars?
http://www.moongadget.com/origins/

DavidDavid