Spring Sprungs

Skeptics

Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) is considered the Father of Modern Skepticism. Today, through the usual delightful interwebby way, i came across these quotes on wiki. Surprising, or not, how many i've heard paraphrased throughout my life.

"
I enter into discussion and argument with great freedom and ease, inasmuch as opinion finds me in a bad soil to penetrate and take deep root in. No propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, whatever contrast it offers to my own. There is no fancy so frivolous and so extravagant that it does not seem to me quite suitable to the production of the human mind.

Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.

Everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.

If you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?

Life in itself is neither good nor evil, it is the place of good and evil, according to what you make it.

The continuous work of our life is to build death.

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.

Our religion is made to eradicate vices, instead it encourages them, covers them, and nurtures them.

Man cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.

Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

No man is a hero to his own valet.

I believe it to be true that dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them.

Whether the events in our life are good or bad greatly depends on the way we perceive them.

The only thing certain is nothing is certain.

Montaigne's axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as that which least is known."






Also caught in the web: http://www.economist.com/node/18584074?fsrc=scn/tw/te/ar/thegoodgodguide

First paragraph:

RELIGION is ubiquitous but it is not universal. That is a conundrum for people trying to explain it. Religious types, noting the ubiquity (though not everyone is religious, all human societies have religions), argue that this proves religion is a real reflection of the underlying nature of things. Sceptics wonder why, if that is the case, it comes in such a variety of flavours, from the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church to the cargo cults of Papua New Guinea—each of which seems to find the explanations offered by the others anathema.

Follow the Money

Dictatorship in Benton Harbor, Michigan, not too far south of me; wish i could believe it is unbelievable. The city's mayor, commissions, and fiscal rights? Gone. Voting Rights? Gone. Democracy? Going fast. Dictatorship Nationwide? Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

Seems the city did not want to give up its public land on Lake Michigan. Seems a group known as Harbor Shores wanted the land for a golf course. Seems Whirlpool, which used to have a factory in Benton Harbor, but closed it to open a more profitable factory overseas, is a part of Harbor Shores. Seems State House Representative Fred Upton is a heir to Whirlpool.

Seems there will be a new golf course, and the annual pass to play there is expected to be be about half the average annual income of the typical Benton Harbor resident.



Something smells, fishier than a beach full of dead alewives, in the state of Michigan.

Or, Eostre

"Ishtar", which is pronounced "Easter" was a day that commemorated the resurrection of one of the gods called "Tammuz", who was believed to be the only begotten son of the moon-goddess and the sun-god.
In those ancient times, there was a man named Nimrod, who was the grandson of one of Noah's son named Ham.
Ham had a son named Cush who married a woman named Semiramis.Cush and Semiramis then had a son named him "Nimrod."
After the death of his father, Nimrod married his own mother and became a powerful King.
The Bible tells of of this man, Nimrod, in Genesis 10:8-10 as follows: "And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad,and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."
Nimrod became a god-man to the people and Semiramis, his wife and mother, became the powerful Queen of ancient Babylon.
Nimrod was eventually killed by an enemy, and his body was cut in pieces and sent to various parts of his kingdom.
Semiramis had all of the parts gathered, except for one part that could not be found.
That missing part was his reproductive organ. Semiramis claimed that Nimrod could not come back to life without it and told the people of Babylon that Nimrod had ascended to the sun and was now to be called "Baal", the sun god.



Queen Semiramis also proclaimed that Baal would be present on earth in the form of a flame, whether candle or lamp, when used in worship.
Semiramis was creating a mystery religion, and with the help of Satan, she set herself up as a goddess.
Semiramis claimed that she was immaculately conceived.
She taught that the moon was a goddess that went through a 28 day cycle and ovulated when full.
She further claimed that she came down from the moon in a giant moon egg that fell into the Euphrates River.
This was to have happened at the time of the first full moon after the spring equinox.
Semiramis became known as "Ishtar" which is pronounced "Easter", and her moon egg became known as "Ishtar's" egg."



Ishtar soon became pregnant and claimed that it was the rays of the sun-god Baal that caused her to conceive.
The son that she brought forth was named Tammuz.
Tammuz was noted to be especially fond of rabbits, and they became sacred in the ancient religion, because Tammuz was believed to be the son of the sun-god, Baal. Tammuz, like his supposed father, became a hunter.
The day came when Tammuz was killed by a wild pig.
Queen Ishtar told the people that Tammuz was now ascended to his father, Baal, and that the two of them would be with the worshippers in the sacred candle or lamp flame as Father, Son and Spirit.
Ishtar, who was now worshipped as the "Mother of God and Queen of Heaven", continued to build her mystery religion.
The queen told the worshippers that when Tammuz was killed by the wild pig, some of his blood fell on the stump of an evergreen tree, and the stump grew into a full new tree overnight. This made the evergreen tree sacred by the blood of Tammuz.
She also proclaimed a forty day period of time of sorrow each year prior to the anniversary of the death of Tammuz.
During this time, no meat was to be eaten.
Worshippers were to meditate upon the sacred mysteries of Baal and Tammuz, and to make the sign of the "T" in front of their hearts as they worshipped.
They also ate sacred cakes with the marking of a "T" or cross on the top.
Every year, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox, a celebration was made.
It was Ishtar's Sunday and was celebrated with rabbits and eggs.

And that is how the bunny comes out of the tomb.

Hosanna Heysanna

Yesterday my son got married

 

 

 

 

Today it snowed.

 

 

 

 

 

Sing Along

http://www.myvoiceoverguy.com/voice-over/sarah-palin-michele-bachmann/

words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32EZgesi7b4&feature=player_embedded

Cage Match

You control our world. You’ve poisoned the air we breathe, contaminated the water we drink, and copyrighted the food we eat. We fight in your wars, die for your causes, and sacrifice our freedoms to protect you. You’ve liquidated our savings, destroyed our middle class, and used our tax dollars to bailout your unending greed. We are slaves to your corporations, zombies to your airwaves, servants to your decadence. You’ve stolen our elections, assassinated our leaders, and abolished our basic rights as human beings. You own our property, shipped away our jobs, and shredded our unions. You’ve profited off of disaster, destabilized our currencies, and raised our cost of living. You’ve monopolized our freedom, stripped away our education, and have almost extinguished our flame. We are hit… we are bleeding… but we ain’t got time to bleed. We will bring the giants to their knees and you will witness our revolution!"
- Jesse Ventura

When Right is Wrong

The United States is only a small step away from some kind of dictatorship. This may sound like hyperbole to some, but the lack of a clear and strong opposition to military and intelligence community institutional pressures has driven the Obama administration to the right even of the Bush administration on matters of secrecy and executive power. Proposals for “terrorist courts” continue to be seriously considered, while the public uproar over the use of torture on prisoners has died down ever since Barack Obama told his Democratic Party followers not to “look back,” and made clear that accountability for war crimes would not happen on his watch. Meanwhile, tremendous inroads are made on privacy rights, while surveillance of private citizens, strip searches at airports, seizures of personal computers, and gathering of personal data from emails and phone calls are now everyday occurrences.

As a result, Obama has been the active creature of militarist forces within the government, and on point after point, has given way to lobbying by the military and intelligence establishments, themselves beholden to a power elite that holds the economic reins of the country, from oil to finance, in their hands. Obama’s role is most evident in his recent military actions against Libya.

http://my.firedoglake.com/valtin/2011/04/04/why-the-u-s-wants-military-commission-show-trials-for-911-suspects/