From the heart of a continent where Christianity is dying and public figures are converting to Islam comes a new religious phenomenon: Braco.
KPTV Oregon says Croatian Man Heals With His Eyes. “Norae McRae says she suffers from 10 physical ailments, including multiple sclerosis, and traveled from Seattle to see Braco, a Croatian healer who allegedly draws crowds of 10,000 people in Europe.” At the heart of Braco’s healing power is Gazing.
The vast majority of people who come to group gazing sessions feel a positive energy at work and recognize positive changes in their lives, with some experiencing miraculous physical healing. Not everyone is affected by the energy, and no one can explain exactly why, but the majority of people do feel something exceptional or special is taking place. This is why over 200,000 people visit gazing events in Europe alone each year. Individuals experience many things during sessions. For some, in their first 5-minute gazing session, an answer to a difficult life question becomes clear, a certainty comes that a relationship has changed or physical healings take place. Others will experience an unfolding effect in the first few days or weeks following a gazing session, and still others will come back many times before they feel a great shift has taken place.
Here are tips on how to Gaze back. Make innocent wishes. Feel. “A feeling holds more power and information than words can explain.” Bring photos of your loved ones to fuel the energy. And remember, all current sessions have tickets available, only $8 per person. The venue room size is 600 seats, and that’s Indianapolis. Iowahawk shares a video that I know all of you would like to talk about, showing the power of Braco.
embedded by Embedded VideoYouTube Direkt
It is not true, as some have argued, that religion is declining in the world. “God is Back” say two writers in the Economist. “From Russia to Turkey to India, nations that swore off faith in the last century—or even tried to stamp it out—are now run by avowedly religious leaders. Formerly secular conflicts like the one in Palestine have taken on an overtly religious cast.” It may not even be true that religion is declining in Europe, simply that people have turned away from the State-sponsored product to other brands. A Eurobarometer poll taken in 2005 asked three questions: whether the person believed “there is a God”, believed “there is some sort of spirit of life force”, “didn’t believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force”.
The results are interesting. Even in places where only a very small percentage of people “believed in God”, a very high percentage of people retained some openness to a “spirit, God or life-force”. In the UK, for example, only 38% believed in God but only 20% believed in neither “spirit, God or life force”. That suggested a potential market of more than 40% of the population that was open to “spirit, God or life force” in a country where the churches are emptying.
In place of the UK’s 38:20, it is 23:23 in Sweden, 31:19 in Denmark and 38:11 in Iceland. The number of people who believe in “neither spirit, God or life force” is remarkably small, even though the number of people who “believe in God” is low.
GK Chesterton famously observed that before Christianity they had superstition, and after it, they would have superstition again. “‘It’s drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it’s coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.’ The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything: ‘And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery.’”
The peculiar characteristic of European culture until lately was the belief that God and reason were not incompatible; that individuals could have an unintermediated relationship with truth and reality. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”. You got them directly; could understand them directly and didn’t need anything but reason, eked in places by a little Revelation, to tell you which way was up.
Today it may be reason, not “spirit, God or life force” that is actually under threat. People don’t want to hear about how the numbers add; how perhaps good is good and bad is bad. Those are negative vibes. What they seem to crave is mystery and magic. A world that congratulates itself on being too sophisticated to believe in Jesus has no problem turning to Gaia, Xenu or Graco. The real trick to successfully selling religion and politics today is not to advance belief that is consistent with rationalism but to promote beliefs that are wholly stupendous and arbitrary.
The more outrageous the prophet, the more followers he has. The lesson is, don’t run for President; run for Messiah. Don’t claim you can slash the deficit. Tell your followers than you can make the seas fall or that you can pay their bills. Do not argue for belief in a God that can be known by reason. Say rather that God is unbound by reason; that he can command you to commit murder, burn houses and even strangle your own children and you will be rewarded by numerous virgins in Paradise.
In late 2009, the citizens of Detroit were told that applications for mortgage relief would be handed out in Cobo Hall. But that announcement, transformed in the many retellings and watered by the financial desperation soon became the belief that money was going to be given out for free at that very venue. A huge crowd gathered and the press was so great than ambulances arrived to treat those overcome by the jostling and constant standing. Ken Rogulski of WJR interviewed two people standing in line.
ROGULSKI: Why are you here?
WOMAN #1: To get some money.
ROGULSKI: What kind of money?
WOMAN #1: Obama money.
ROGULSKI: Where’s it coming from?
WOMAN #1: Obama.
ROGULSKI: And where did Obama get it?
WOMAN #1: I don’t know, his stash. I don’t know. (laughter) I don’t know where he got it from, but he givin’ it to us, to help us.
WOMAN #2: And we love him.
WOMAN #1: We love him. That’s why we voted for him!
The need to believe is extremely strong in humanity. Voltaire once said, “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” And remember, tickets are still available for only $8 a seat.
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Perhaps “Braco” is just the Croatian form of “Barack.”
Apropos of Voltaire’s era, we should not forget that the so-called Age of Reason was also enthralled by the magnétisme animal of Franz Anton Mesmer (whence “mesmerism”) and the occultism, forged documents, and other swindles of Alessandro Cagliostro.
Sad. Entropy in action. I guess we will have a lot of blood before the reason returns… eventually.
This is the Obama solution to the health care gap. If you are elderly your most useful (taxable) years are past so you will be prescribed a gazing session. Good luck with that tumor.
See? No death panels. Only hope and change.
The Poor are losing faith.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/gallup-obama-s-approval-drops-below-50-p
And the Gallup poll tends to skew optimistic for Democrats IMO.
I do believe I’ll have another drink.
–
I’ve thought long and hard about this stuff over the last few years. What people know, what they believe, what they say, what they do, … most particularly that last. Seems most people can drive a car just fine. Only a minority could fix anything on that car. Only one in a thousand might build that car (or likely a much simpler one) from billets of steel. Maybe no single human would have the understanding and expertise to build the whole complex thing. We are therefore all at the mercy of forces we do not understand, cannot harness. What then? A hunger for control, or at least a modest comprehension of where we are, and hope.
Things can be more complex, but hope we always need.
There is one born every minute. Get yours before somebody else gets their money.
And never NEVER, I say never ever drink the koolaid. At least not until you see the alien spaceship land.
I’m trying to figure out why my cell phone changed ring tones on me. Cars are no problem but cell phones confuse me. I use the smallest and simplest one I could find.
After WW1– mumbo jumbo spiritualism became quite popular for a while in Europe
–mainly because the Christian Churches did not face the deaths of a generation of young men in the war.
The ground was then ripe for demagogues–and they came-in full force.
After that the Soviets declared war on Christianity–followed by the Nazi war on Christianity– followed in the 60s by the new lefts war on Christianity-and then the Rev Wrights “liberation theology” in Chicago and elsewhere.
Interestingly these days, on American campuses the traditional Christian services are full to overflowing.
In traditional Christian churches across American you see lots of people under 45 yrs old and people over 65 yrs–but few in between.
There is a lost generation between 45-65yrs who will believe in anything–but particularly believe in and worship Narcissism.
The trivial voyage into the self–and the culture of death.
—the cottage industry, and pseudo science of psychotherapy is happy to collect the rent from those living in that empty castle.
A lot of this lost generation have distorted Buddhism in to American Narcissism- to the amusement of Asian Buddhists.
The RC Pope, the “German Shepherd”, has addressed this issue
–calling for a smaller, devout, Christian Faith in Europe
–rather than some new age Christian heresy.
If you look at Africa and China–traditional Christianity is thriving.
The threat to Christian Civilization in the West is not Muslims–it is the abandonment of Christianity by the 60s generation.
Fortunately the new generation in the US, Africa and China have revitalized muscular Christianity and it now seems to be catching fire in Europe also.
Even the Brits, French and Germans now see that multiculturalism and narcissism are dead ends.
Maybe just in time
Magic is very attractive. Would you rather hear Paul Ryan declare that hardship, sacrifice and cutbacks are necessary in the near future or listen to Obama say Hope and Change are on the way?
There’s this too. Barack Obama is exotic. Magic needs esoteric trappings. One of the reasons the churches lost so many adherents in the 1960s was they became accessible. Things were more magical when the missal was in Latin and the the church was dark and candlelit. “You cannot let light in upon a magic”. A big part of the subconscious attraction of Islam to Western intellectuals is precisely the veils, the impenetrable Arabic. It is all the magic they’ve stripped away from their own rite.
On the other hand, Paul Ryan sounds like an articulate, charismatic dentist. Smart, well presented, telegenic, but just a man all the same. “Barry Soetoro” can never be a magic man in the same way that Barack Obama can.
But above all, many people yearn to put freedom away. They want the questions to stop; to have someone take care of it. The difference between faith and fanaticism is that some element of doubt must always be present in the faithful man.
It is always easier to sell certainty than doubt. The passages “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and “let this cup pass away” are not things you want to bring up unless you want to explain the fact that the door is always open; that you might choose to be a lifelong Christian, Jew or Muslim but that you can never know beforehand that you will be. That there is always room to change your mind along the way.
For some reason every generation must answer the same questions for itself. It may be handed the answers of its forefathers, but until they make the same choices for themselves, the faculty of freedom is not exercised. And this is exhausting. “Eternal vigilance” is a drag. Magic is so much easier.
Faith in whatever makes you feel good. Faith in what is good, not so much.
Wretchard says: Magic needs esoteric trappings.
Helps to explain why so many hard-charging obsessed-with-success types fell for James Ray and his fake Native American sweat lodge ritual, in which three of them died:
“[Brown] was drawn more to the practical approach of James Arthur Ray, whose seminars challenged participants to shed fears and old baggage and build ‘harmonic’ lives with personal and financial success in balance. Believing the so-called ‘mystical millionaire’ could coach her on how to ‘live impeccably,’ as he put it, Brown ponied up $9,695 — her life’s savings — for Ray’s Spiritual Warrior seminar in Sedona, Arizona, in October 2009.”
Among other highlights of the “spiritual Warrior” retreat: “On the third day, Ray put the participants through a Samurai role-playing game in which he dressed in white and literally played God.”
Native American, Japanese samurai, a real smorgasbord of exotica. Unfortunately the magic wasn’t strong enough to overcome the effects of ordinary, unexotic dehydration and heat stroke.
More details about the retreat and Ray’s manslaughter trial here: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/13/kirby.brown.sweat.lodge/index.html
People have paradoxical desire not to know things too well; to keep it the province of mystery. There are things we prefer to keep in the shade or to perceive only indistinctly. Anything that we can see too clearly loses its appeal. The magic of the night is provided by obscurity and the allure of first love lies in the promise, not in the fulfillment. All prophets, if they seek to retain their charisma, must speak in riddles.
Maybe the reason why Barack Obama wants to keep his past sealed is to preserve the aura. One of the best predictors of electoral contests is physical height. Height only became a factor since 1900 when the general public obtained the means to know the candidate’s height.
Height is a “blank slate” on which we can project our desires. Aura counts. And by the time light has been shined on the mystery, the charismatic has gone to the bank. The process can last a long time. Bernie Madoff swindled a lot of people by promising something that was too good to be true. But his real genius was in making you work to be his client; he made you think that he was the initiate to some mystery, which he shared only with friends. The real secret was something else; and it was nothing that he shared with his friends. The secret was that he was a swindler. There was no steak. But there was lots of sizzle.
I thought it wasn’t PC to speak of healing Gaze?
Magic. The moment we shine a light upon it or speak of it, the spell breaks. And the reason, CS Lewis thinks, is that all real magic is private. Every heaven is made for us alone.
That is why President Obama’s first term has been so hard on the disillusioned liberals. The moment they started talking about what he did they heard themselves for the first time. And they realized how stupid it sounded.
The conservatives always saw Obama for what he was; something probably no more or less than the average Chicago politcian. The disappointment of men in men cannot be sharp. But the illusion has farther to fall.
In contrast the true believer is bereaved. It is not Obama the man who has been shattered by the sordid incompetence of his first term, it is Obama the dream. The daylight came and the magic fled with the stars.
Obama is not an evil or bad person–he was ambitious–that is ok-he just had no experience and is in over his head.
He was elevated by Holly Wood hype and propaganda–remember the polystyrene temple at the Denver convention?
Hype, hasbara, spin and propaganda can all work for a while–but they cannot compensate nor correct for fundamental flaws, incompetence and fake.
One of the great things about America is the separation of Church and State- originally that meant freedom of Christian religious practice–after the intra Christian sect wars in Europe.
86% of Americans identify themselves as Christian and we are tolerant of other faiths–or no faith as long as they do not oppose our fundamental interests and values–like those against child mutilation, slavery and the oppression of women.
America is the apex of Christian Civilization in which Christians and non Christians pay the same taxes on April 15.
We can argue about how much we pay in taxes, but Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Scientologists etc pay the same tax rate .
Which should be changed to Flat Tax
I can’t emphasize how strongly I agree with everything said above about tradition. I am a “trad” Catholic myself, firstly because traditional Catholicism is true, but also because Novus Ordo masses have long since morphed into something that differs little from one of Braco’s gazing sessions. Medjugorje is probably the single biggest example of this sort of thing happening with a Catholic tincture, but it is by no means the only one.
And then there’s this: Having somebody turn a loving gaze toward you can certainly be a very moving experience. We are designed to respond positively to such encounters. But with the breakdown of family and social life, how many people today ever really got enough caressing during their formative years, or went on to have the sort of rewarding friendships and family ties that bring fulfillment to one’s life?
Even a trifling knowledge of metaphysics is enough to reduce Braco’s “healing” claims to ashes; but metaphysics takes a back seat to emotion when a lost and lonely soul suddenly feels like somebody in this world cares about them. It’s as good a reason as any to nurture your children. When they grow up, they’ll be inoculated against such hoaxes.
He is persistent at staying on message with this “We can argue” line. The emissary from Turkey isn’t part of “We.”
Is the height prejudice an externality? That is is it a false signal prejudice that imposes a cost or is it a first order positive discrimination to focus your search on a pool more likely to have desirable candidates? Has anyone ever worked for a man who was shorter than 5′ 4″?
One of the primary things many people like about Braco is that there is NO DOGMA. Well, except for the Seven Second Rule. Showing that gaze for too long on the internet or on DVD would violate firm guidelines from Spirit. And Braco has made an agreement with Spirit concerning this rule.
Do you think this rule protects or weakens the mystery?
Cagney, EG Robertson, Alan Ladd, all made fortunes for them who was willing to hitch their wagons to stars about that size.
#17 blast
There seems to be a general agreement in a thread on Strategy Page that at least for combat purposes, fitness and strength are just as desirable as height; also that “tallness” is relative to population and historical period. One poster noted, “Generally speaking, in hand to hand combat, greater reach means greater success. I found this to be true when I was fencing as well. So taller people should do better (assuming training is equal). From archeology, however, it has been established that the height of the average Roman legionnaire was between 4’8″ and 5’0″ (1,42 to 1,52 m). They regularly beat the tar out of Celtic and German tribes whose men (to say nothing of their women) were much taller.”
If the archaeological data are correct, they would explain why Julius Caesar (about 5’7″) and Augustus (about 5’8″) were considered taller than average by the soldiers they commanded. I remember that when I was in high school, the third-year Latin class took a field trip to Philadelphia to see the Roman art/archaeology collection at the University of Pennsylvania museum. The boys in the class were fascinated by the samples of Roman armor on display and delighted to discover that every single one of them was taller than the average legionary.
Other stats about the desirable/average heights for various infantry and ceremonial units here: http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/1-13091.aspx
Yes, we have “healers” in Sydney, Australia, too. A pair of them were recently found guilty of sexually abusing a woman over a prolongued period.
You can sell almost any person to the voters if you have the media mostly onside and enough advertising funds. But when the snow job is done so thoroughly as it was here in 2007 and in the USA in 2008, buyers remorse is bound to set in, even during the first term – which here is just three years.
Omigosh, I’ve never even heard of this Braco guy yet apparently he’s been touring Europe and gazing for 15 years. Seeing him on the video above made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He’s creepy. Slightly cross-eyed too. Alas, I must be one of the unenlightened ones. Because immediately upon viewing the video, Galatians 1:8-10 came to mind: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”
KarenT @18 has it about right. The great appeal is no dogma. Nothing is required of you except to put aside your reasoning mind and wallow in a great squishy wordless feeling. And if enough people the world over would only do this simple thing, hand yourself over to the power of some nebulous, mysterious energy – who knows what it is or from whence it comes (who cares, it feels great!) – the whole planet could be healed. It’s scary to think that people believe this, but not so hard to understand. Modern Europeans (according to that Eurobarometer poll) may be able to reject belief in God, but they still know something’s missing.
What’s missing has long since been revealed, but having rejected that, they go on searching and hoping – and opening themselves to deception.
I wonder, have any of Braco’s “healings” been documented? 15 years is plenty long enough for some kind of track record more verifiable than hearsay and anecdote.
Victor #8
“The trivial voyage into the self–and the culture of death.”
Said voyage does not occur in a vacuum. This is the key role played by the education industry and our “merchants of culture” in Hollywood in the U.S. In other words, this is deeply aided and abetted by the crypto-bolsheviks and Gramscian wind-up robots and anti-Christian bigots we have foolishly entrusted with education and culture.
The idea is to push people along this path so that during their most productive years they do in fact wallow in the type of narcissism you decribe, Victor. Their professors and the alleged information industry contantly bombard them with imagery and rhetoric which tell them that they are awesome and deserve to feel self-esteem and joy and contentment and that in order to get these things that they should ignore or even actively attack things authentically spiritual.
“Baby you’re a firework” just because you are above ground and breathing even if you’ve done nothing and have never worked on you skills and talents and have never engaged in authentic, personal charity to help your fellow man downtrodden and have never worked hard mentally to puzzle out the universe or try to live closer to God. An empty castle, indeed, because anyone with a glimmer of intelligence ultimately finds this sort of secular pseudo-Buddhist self-stroke or “new” age faux-spirituality to be empty and, as you point out, ultimately goes to the less scientific arm of the psychology industry (or artificial alcohols like antidepressants) to get the good feelings they were promised but never really had.
It’s an attempt to have spiritual joy on the cheap; the good feelings with no rules or mental discipline or need to do the hard but necessary work of being judgemental when the frequent need arises. If profs and the NPR left and your favorite movie star promise that there is a way to this joy and contenment without the discipline and work and need to feel anxiety telling someone they are doing the wrong thing, then there is a large percentage of folks who will jump on that bandwagon.
Matt is onto something with his talk of the joy of family and community. These are powerful things and this is why the left seeks to replace the family as the basic unit and isntitution of society with the apparatus of state, because ultimately family attachements like those draw one to God and not government.
no mo: True enough, but it may be the real problem is not “Pseudo-Buddhism” but rather “secular humanism” as articulated by positivism and what we might call “scientific realism”: Man at the center of the Universe “rationally” finding fulfillment and peace in the material world–Heaven on Earth. The “Pseudo-Buddhism” may more be a reaction, however errant, to this barren world view than the true cause of our predicament. At root is the noxious notion that Man does in fact live by bread alone, and along with it the equally toxic idea that all prior generations were superstitious fools.
It is this “Modernist” disease that is at the root of a our collective spiritual crisis. This is how we come to confuse egoism with enlightenment and appetite with virtue.
Old Hippies, that is what I saw on that tape.
Sorry, old, hippies, trying to find something. This is the same bunch that has been ruining America for the last forty years with their feel-good ideas. It really is too bad that they didn’t all OD at Woodstock and clear the way for productive people. Now these same sorry slugs are seeking the high that dope/sex/rock&roll no longer provides. Trying to find a spiritualism to stand in for the religion that they rejected.
Staring into the old, gray face of their waning years with nothing to show for their time on earth except a ruined economy and wasted opportunities they seek solace in a “magic feeling”.
Pathetic, really.
no mo: Also, it is not true that those dead to the spiritual nature of Man and life “never worked on their skills and talents”. Many are quite skilled and have developed their considerable talents well; they are in fact in their way highly disciplined. They have forgotten where those skill and talents come from and ultimately what they are for.
The crisis of our times in not merely among the fringes nor does it originate there. If this were true there would really not be a crisis at all. A fish rots form the head down.
This is why merely disclaiming them will not fix matters much. We appear to be in the situation were we must see to our own souls, save what we can, resist how we might and wait it out while this all runs its course. Let us hope that the West survives the damage.
Mongoose #24:
The sort of pseudo-Buddhism to which I was referring was that of Gere or Jackson, not real Buddhists.
I get what you’re saying, though. At its roots is the secular humanist “bread alone” thinking. I work in a technological field and I am a trained scientist. Science, when applied to the realm for which it was suited, is highly useful, even essential. But it doesn’t fulfill the other realm at all, despite the fact that many millions attempt to shoehorn the other realm into that framework. (Conversely, there are those who try to shoehorn that which belongs in the scientific realm into the faith realm, and that causes problems, too, but that’s for another thread.)
Two different flavors of the “spiritual joy on the cheap” were luridly on display in the tiff between Phil Jackson and Kobe Bryant. Very revealing, I’d say, and that leads right into the comments by Anton #26 about old bitter hollowed-out hippies seeking what was there all along but rejected in pursuit of physical pleasure without guilt or judgement or rules.
Of all the words
of tongue or pen,
Saddest by far:
“What might have been”
–Anon (?)
no mo: Yes, just so. I too have worked as a technologist and scientist, and I know of what you speak. What you describe is properly call “Scientism”, and it springs from positivism and other assorted forms of “Modernist” solipsism. I think it rather a symptom than the disease, though I may just be splitting hairs here. Whatever the case, at least in part it comes from a rather embarrassing misunderstanding of what science and engineering are about. This is not to say that science and technology does not have its place, as you well point out. What we need to understand is that science works precisely because it does not seek meaning; it is ontologically limited, as it were. To paraphrase Chesterton, asking for direction out of science is like asking your horse where you sould like to go. It is a tool to an end and not an end in and of itself.
And yes it is true that some try to bring spiritual matters into science, but, let me point out, this is understandable given what they are up against. When science is set up as a faith the door is open to this sort of thing.
A sucker is NOT born every minute!
In the period since P.T. Barnum uttered his famous phrase the production rate has gone up quite a bit, and the Democratic Party developed a training course for those not so endowed at birth.
Michael Crichton wrote a piece not long before his death entitled “The Demon Haunted World” in which he explains that modern pseudo-science has brought back the belief in magic, in supernatural, in unseen forces controlling things that are beyond our ken. If you will believe in AGW, you are just as likely to believe in solar power being able to be our primary source of electricity, in magic boxes you attach to your car’s engine that give you 100 MPG, and that “they have the money and we should just make them give it to us.”
Wretchard probably could tell us about the American who invented electric turn signals for cars and then went to the Phillipines and convinced some villagers there he had created a “Power Machine” that would provide for all their needs. They marched in support of his invention, demanding the authorities make it happen. That was the first Green Energy march; the others since then have been no better.
“See? No death panels. Only hope and change.”
I like it. Sick but I like it.
Along the same vein, somebody should capture this con man and dissect him. While alive, of course so as to measure his “essence”. Pretty sure that the measurements wouldn’t tell us much but if was to be made standard policy it sure would cut down (pun intended) on the number of con men claiming ‘essence’. Wouldn’t eliminate them but maybe one day one would really have essence that could be measured and studied.
If so we could render him down, cut the ‘essence’ with tap water and sell 1/10 gram bottles for a few thousand a pop. That poses a moral question. Should we fatten him up first?
A friggin’ genius! No words to be misinterpreted. No language barrier! No wild actions to mock; even the facial features and expression are perfectly benign. No opinions, no teachings,no nothing. I think I saw this idea on a sitcom one time.
Friggin’ genius.
yo…
couldn´t we just send BRACO to Gaza and ´´look around for a solution¨¨. cheaper than another 5 billion ´´development budget´´ the palis are fishing for in Europe…of all places.
m/29, And yes it is true that some try to bring spiritual matters into science, but, let me point out, this is understandable given what they are up against. When science is set up as a faith the door is open to this sort of thing
…including the J Robert Oppenheimer sort of thing, where the bucket of sunshine he spilt in the New Mexico desert that summer of 1945 inspired his Bhagavad Gita quote where the Hindu giver of life has become death.
Or expressed a different way, that since rule one of system order law is kill or be killed by chaotic subsystems which must kill or be killed by the system, the existence of Mankind as a chaotic subsystem, is a Problem –not a feature but a bug.
Or as Admiral Togo, hero of the Battle of Tsushima Straits, reduced the thought to the heart of essence:
“When victorious, a soldier tightens his helmet.”
(emhasis mine, to with brevity imply the context)
#1 PA Cat………
Braco’s last name is Bama.
Speaking of old burned out hippies Carlos Casteneda now firmly in the ‘other realm’, still has followers: http://www.castaneda.com/
He was the ultimate new-age-magic-is-real-lets-pretend-that-getting-stoned-is-a-spiritual-thing guru.
Who knows if he believed in his own hype, but he was a magician. He turned nothing into a fortune with no effort, had an unlimited supply of beautiful devoted lovers and followers, and lived exactly as he wanted.
Reading about his life the parallels to Obama are shocking. One of his inner circle is quoted in a Salon article:
“According to all who knew him, Castaneda wasn’t only mesmerizing, he also had a great sense of humor. “One of the reasons I was involved was the idea that I was in this fascinating, on the edge, avant garde, extraordinary group of beings,” Wallace said. “Life was always exciting. We were free from the tedium of the world.”
And because, as Jennings puts it, Castaneda was a “control freak,” followers were often freed from the anxiety of decision-making”
The true mystic knows that his chants, numerology, meditations or whatever are only tools to understand the real world, not to escape from it. The danger is that it is seductive and easy to fall prey to your own ego.
The Kabbalists refused to allow study of their teachings until one had mastered the entire Talmud, reached the age of 40, and married. Poor Madonna tried the Castaneda version. I hear she is going opus dei now.
Healing gaze? A bit like distance healing and diagnosis using dowsing. People make money out of that, too; there’s one born every minute.
I think the best comment about this subject was that made about Billy Graham-style revivalist meetings at the end of which people are invited to put away their wheelchairs and walking sticks, “for you are healed”. Typically, many wheelchairs and walking sticks are found discarded afterwards. But never any artificial limbs.
Placebo effect, maybe?
I’ve been working as a temp out of my field on a big science project, building a radio telescope array. Everyone I work with is an engineer or scientist of some kind, most very well educated. We’re building the most powerful telescope ever to be assembled. There’s still no shortage of magical thinking among this crowd.
Mongoose: “the equally toxic idea that all prior generations were superstitious fools.”
I think you hit on the problem right there. I see this commonly in my age group. They’ve been led to believe that nothing old is good, or can be…
There’s no connection with the past, their ancestors and family, history, community, the natural world, etc. No context. Nothing beyond their vicarious experiences had through the TV.
aaron #38:
When I was in college, studying mechanical engineering, some of the electrical engineering students seemed to be positively offended by the concept of thermodynamics.
They seemed to be convinced that if they could conceive of something, make it appear on a computer screen, that was as good as the actual physical creation. We would have full size cars that would run on two AA batteries if we just soldered up the right circuit and wrote the right software. The computer revolution seems to have multiplied this delusion.
Images –carrying ‘selection’ info for early man in that his speed and intensity of emotional reaction to them was a thumbs up or thumbs down from the gene pool –bypass intellect to register ASAP in the ‘old’ brain –after which, as conditions permit, the intellect gets a look-see.
So while ‘pictures’ fool nobody’s intellect, they fool everybody’s ‘unconscious’ –the place where all ‘memory’ sorts and unsorts by the diktat and whim of character, to produce a ‘feeling’ that is ‘real’.
Jim Chanos is short alternative energy tech – can’t handle the base load – not even close.
#36 Spindoc: I had a very nice colleague at work once who had an advanced degree in psychology. He had me read Castaneda’s first book so that I would believe him when he told me that his mother was a Mexican witch. He was sort of scared of his mother and seemed to have some anxiety about similar powers in his wife’s family. Despite his advanced degree in psychology and his insights into the world of spiritualism, he asked me for advice on personal matters where the wise course of action would seem obvious to most people. The stupidest was, “Should I have an affair with my sister-in-law?” His wife’s younger sister was trying to seduce him and he seemed not to know what to do. He didn’t seem to be overly attracted to her, but was still confused about the most practical course of action to take.
Interesting that the idea of “shape-shifting” which shows up in Castaneda’s writing was also noted by at least one person who had gazed back at Braco in one of the videos above. I don’t know that Braco ever claimed to be a shape-shifter. But an erudite-sounding organizer of a spiritual conference in Basel, Switzerland which also featured Native American dancers stated that Braco was “something special”. Braco is apparently an economist, married, and the father of a son. Makes me wonder about the value of Western education in terms of increasing wisdom.
#28 buddy larsen
You’re thinking of John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “Maud Muller.” It’s about two people who meet by chance and do not follow through on their initial attraction to each other.
Lines in question are at the end:
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!
Full poem is here: http://bartleby.com/102/76.html
sd@36: He turned nothing into a fortune with no effort, had an unlimited supply of beautiful devoted lovers and followers, and lived exactly as he wanted.
Sounds like Jimmy Buffett.
Participation Mystique, or the Psychology of the Crowd, is an often observed if poorly understood phenomenon. It is a readily observed and powerful actor within any society. On one end of the spectrum we find the Marine Corps’ Esprit de Corps and the Catholic Church’s priesthood. On the other end we find the simple and dangerous mob psychology of sport events and public hangings.
Wretchard had a post a few weeks back that introduced chaos, complexity, cooperation and entropy where it was found that subsystems have some mechanisms that cooperate to create larger systems at the edge of entropy. It isn’t difficult to imagine that conscious beings cooperate at some level when forming families, tribes and societies.
The cooperative nature of human consciousness is perceived by us all, but its mechanism, purpose and goals, while readily manipulated, is most likely unknowable to us, the cooperative subsystems.
F.C.: In your statement, “Billy Graham-style revivalist meetings at the end of which people are invited to put away their wheelchairs and walking sticks”, you err: Billy Graham does not practice “faith healing” and is in fact not even a so called “charismatic”. It is a bit over the top to even characterize his “services” as “revival meetings”. As someone raised a strict RC and who spent some of his childhood areas where there actually were actual “revival meetings”, “faith healers”. “tent shows” and other assorted pseudo-religious con games, I am painfully aware of the difference. You may trust me on this. It would me better to characterize this sort of theng as an “Oral Roberts’ style revivail meeting” if you must bring personalities into it.
Graham is a legitimate preacher inside his confession, which pretty much that of mainstream Evangelical Protestants. One may doubt the legitimacy of this confession or argue it merits, but one may not doubt Graham’s legitimacy and sincerity inside that confession. Evangelicals, BTW, do not as a rule believe in any of this stuff, particularly those often refereed to as “Fundamentalists”. Faith healing is on the fringes. The agiprop machines of the Left in the MSM attempt to conflate these fringes with the “Evangelicals” in an effort to delegitimize them as a political voice, but this amount to little but lies.
I will give you that benefit of the doubt abut this and assume that you did not intend slander. Still, here you show a woeful ignorance of America and a tendency to accept EU and UK leftist propaganda about her uncritically, something that keeps cropping up with you. You would be better served to research and consider matters a little more carefully before you speak.
This is gonna be kinda compacted, I have to earn a living (yes, one of THOSE).
Every error, every evil, finds its roots in a chink or crack in human imperfection as a remedy for an imperfect truth or good. Human nature is inherently imperfect and replete with chinks, cracks, lacunae and such. The question that occurs to me is, “In what crack has this Braco gazing taken root, and what the imperfect good it seeks to remedy?”
Premise that Man is created in the Image of the Triune God, Whose relationship to Himself is a ceaseless outpouring of love among the Divine Persons. It is Man’s nature to love and be loved, principally his Creator, then those also created in the Imago Dei and finally all that is created.
For centuries the goal of the Christian mystic (there are others but I cannot speak much about them as I don’t really know or care) is to seek the face of God and, however fleetingly and incompletely, experience in mortal life what he hopes to enjoy in life eternal: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” The desire to know even as also I am known, in short to love and be loved, is THE fundamental core of what it means to be human. All sin is a failure of love, substituting things for true relationship with persons, both human and Divine or failing to value and honor these relationships appropriately.
This is an age in which men have eschewed relationship with God. They wander about trying to fill the aching void at their core with all kinds of things that seem to promise to satiate the hunger but can never do so. Braco’s gazing is one such. It is not nor can ever be other than a defective substitute.
It occurs to me, that however deficient gazing might be as a conduit to holiness, that if my wife and I were to spend a few minutes a week gazing at teach other (in addition to gazing at God in prayer together) our marriage might be somewhat improved. I’ll suggest it to her, shield in hand.
I took a course in hypnosis once. I became increasingly skeptical but sat through to the second day. The instructor asked me to come forward for a demonstration in which he painlessly put a 19 gauge needle through the back of my hand.
Thing is, it was a trick and I knew it as it was going on. He picked a place with few nerve endings, squeezed it, held it up, rubbed alcohol, used a sharp medical needle…but the real trick was that I wanted it to look good, that was his skill, he knew I was not going to wince or show pain (maybe he saw I was talking with an attractive woman next to me), somehow I was invested like a magicians assistant.
I think that partially accounts for the success of a guy like Braco. By the time you get up there for the staring contest you are so invested that it cannot fail, so it does not.
Many, many people use social proof to determine truth.
Group acceptance trumps all.
For them Braco ( Bama ) is their way to the top of Maslow’s pyramid.
Well, at least as far as they can ascend.
Such sheeple need not be deeply analyzed.
It’s rather like trying to find depth on a chalk board.
Imagination becomes your only projection.
Most of the adoring multitudes in that video were women…
–have to admit, i love Castaneda’s stuff. Not as ‘new age’ alt religio ‘ah, gringos, you have no eyes’ (quoting Angel, to the Gorch bros, at the Rio Grande –after Angel gazes across and says ‘ah, Mehico lindo’ and Tector responds, ‘i don’t see nuthin so damn lindo about it’ and Lyle adds, ‘yep, just looks like more o Texas to me’ –in The Wild Bunch), but as sort of dramatized anthropology, where the Yaqui shaman explained the religion –with a great deal of wit and humor –through the author, who wrote not as a reporter but as a legit Anthropologist (which he was, a university professor teaching in California) originally interested in writing an academic treatise, to his topic at first a reluctant skeptic, but soon immersed and an increasingly mystified (okay, psychedelicized too) acolyte, all of which he probably did ‘play at’, actually with the old medicine man in the desert, but stripping out the academically respectable ten disclaimers per page so that he could enter literature, by way of setting in the spare, elemental hallucinatory desert a stage where a human being somehow became abnormally plastic, like Alice via the Jefferson Airplane, way small or way large, never the ‘right’ being –whose every simple act is extraordinary altho precisely why is a question whose answer is the province of a higher power.
IOW, not too different than the man and the supernatural dualism found everywhere in human nature across time and space. But the books, the presentation, the dramatic arc engineered by Castaneda, just made it attractive to read –and spread the word, thus, that Kollege Kids might show a little respect for the Indians that Tyrone Power playing Geronimo might have taken away.
***
PAC/43, thanks for that –you is a veritable fount of Americana –oddly, the JG Whittier version flows a little better than my foggy reproduction by the prolific Anon. There’s a reason, one is reminded reading Maud Muller, those guys are called ‘the American Romantics’. Imagine a Quaker romantic poet, and you’re at the frontier idiosyncratic –advancing the true radical revolution of the West.
***
m/46, i feel likewise about Graham –as well as heirs apparent daughter and son. Especially the very serious Franklin. In fact the whole family is in that same broad tradition as Whittier the Quaker American Romantic Abolitionist Poet Idiosyncratic Authentic.
The utopian socialists debated endlessly (of course they did) over the role of religion in the “coming world” they believed they were creating. They looked to the Christian utopian communities they wanted to emulate, in terms of shared possessions and labor, and tried to figure out ways to create the same thing without the Christianity. It never worked, and failed most spectacularly in those colonies that banned religion or replaced it with cultish worship of a “spiritual leader.” The requirements of such leaders are strangely inevitable: retreat from reality, orchestrated sexual licentiousness, breaking family ties, and demanding that followers submit to time-consuming, collective, public self-examination.
Christianity has a word for this: it’s called “sloth.” There are others, too, but if you want to think about the outcome differential between New Age beliefs and traditional religion, it’s a nice dividing line. When I look at the old retired guy wearing a pastel leisure suit after a lifetime of work, who genuflects and serves the host with hair in his ears and utter humility in his eyes, I can’t help but feel I’m in the presence, not just of the sacred, but of a human system that works extremely well. It isn’t a lack of mysticism but the presence of some other thing that seems characteristically American: men in leisure suits not embarrassed by handling such a momentous thing.
s/48, that was my experience too –the act i was deliberately (i was thinking) cooperating with was the hypnotist telling me that the handkerchief in his hand was a bird. Soon i was ducking and evading every flick of the hankie –as if it had talons and a sharp beak –to the laughter of the audience. Only after the ‘snap out’ did i realize i had been hypnotized –and would never had gotten so animated otherwise. Humorous rue followed and still follows –
Thing is, once you ‘take the stage’ (a big clue right there in the phrase!), the play’s the thing (to quote the Bard).
Wretchard probably could tell us about the American who invented electric turn signals for cars and then went to the Phillipines and convinced some villagers there he had created a “Power Machine” that would provide for all their needs.
That’s a story I don’t know. But here’s one I do know from personal experience. A neighborhood was terrified by the “budol-budol” men (voodoo men) who were allegedly able to mesmerize a person with a single glance and relieve them of all their possessions. The victims would wake up with no memory of being robbed.
Nobody had actually ever seen the “budol-budol” men but everybody believed they were around. Out of genuine concern I was asked to stay on the alert.
Fortunately, I had a pair of Ray-Bans with “diamond hard” lenses on me, which at certain angles looked mirrorized. I put them on and solemnly declared that the lenses would reflect the “budol-budol” men’s gazes back at them and that for so long as I had the Ray Bans on, they were powerless against me. To my surprise the reasoning was accepted as valid.
Magic is vulnerable to counter-spells. None of this is rational, nor does it even make sense. But as I’ve explained often, there are still places in the world where people advance into combat with amulets or with music playing (Toothpick’s gang favored “Knock 3 Times on the Ceiling If You Want Me”). And sad as it is to say, belief in magic may not be confined to the Third World. Parts of the west are back in the world of sorcery, at least subconsciously.
It only just now that I realized that the entire “budol-budol” premise underlies “Men in Black”, complete with the sunglasses. But I swear this actual incident happened to me independently.
Max Hardberger describes hiring a voodoo priest to cast a spell on the only highly visible line of sight area near the port where he was preparing to steal back a stolen freighter. The voodoo kept the soldiers from patrolling the area, allowing Max to slip the lines and sail away.
Gotta play the hand you’re dealt!
Missionary stories are full of successful attempts to work with the witch doctor to convince him that his spells AND penicillin worked together to kill evil germs.
People in the French countryside still worship fire. We’re not far from that, it seems.
sd@48: The instructor asked me to come forward for a demonstration in which he painlessly put a 19 gauge needle through the back of my hand.
In 1996 my neck was broken in two places as the result of a car accident (I was the pedestrian.) Neck had to be wired with one of those metal braces that looks that an inverted cone – used to see them on football players. It’s literally screwed into the skull – in four places to keep the spinal cord rigid.
I’ve always been afraid of needles so it’s probably good I didn’t have a clear idea of what was coming. The neurosurgeon walked in on the day of the procedure and pulled out a needle about 12-in long to anesthetize the four areas. I remember his hands shook.
I’m not sure to this day how I got through it but my working theory is that I self-hypnotized. I mentally put myself into a ‘state’ in which it was impossible to scream in terror. Or else I was literally paralyzed with fear.
People will call it anything but magic but….consider a lot of baseball players and fans the rituals and objects that they believe confers luck. I’m a gun nut and we are prone to look for a “magic” weapon. I’m a recovering 1911 cultist myself and also belonged to the sub-sect Dillon reloader press. I’ve taken down my shrine to St. John Moses Browning, the candles tended to set of the smoke alarm. Real gun nuts will give weapons personnel names.
If you want to recall the most dramatic and instructive demonstration of what Wretchard describes in his posts #9 and 12, just take a look at the phenomenon of the Reverend Jim Jones.
The monster got his most solid power base from the pathetic crook politicians of the San Francisco Bay area, particularly from San Francisco and Sacramento legislators.
But the whole structure worked ONLY because his followers were willing to yield up their personal responsibility for their souls, giving unquestioning loyalty to a charismatic leader in return for his PROMISE of their personal salvation.
Sound familiar?
I s’pose there are other definitions of MAGIC.
20. PA Cat
#17 blast
From archeology, however, it has been established that the height of the average Roman legionnaire was between 4’8″ and 5’0″ (1,42 to 1,52 m).
Seriously? I find that to be a tad low, although probably not by much. Which archeological information is that? I believe you could add a couple of inches at least to that average. Undernourished N. Korean soldiers average 5 ft according to anecdotal reports. I do think 5′ 2″ to 5′ 4″ must be more accurate for Roman legionnaires at the height of the Republic and first half of the Empire period. And I could be wrong.
Obama’s supporters in the 2008 election included people beyond those who believed that he had the power to halt the rise of the oceans, pay everyone’s bills, etc. Late in 2009, Shelby Steele said, The president always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol. Specifically concerning race issues in the country, but also for some as a “new voice”. This kind of attraction might or might not be religious in nature, but it has a redemptive quality.
When Obama wrote his second book, he recognized that people would project their own hopes onto him, and that many of them would eventually be disappointed. But he encouraged this kind of projection anyway. He doesn’t seem to be dealing well with the disappointment which he also predicted.
Glamour specialists Virginia Postrel noted that Obama should avoid over-exposure if he wanted to retain his glamour. And there have been times when he seemed to be avoiding the press, perhaps for that reason. There is a contrast between his awkwardness speaking about policy issues and his brilliance in a prepared stump speech. He still had that old charisma when speaking before an adoring crowd last fall, in behalf of Barbara Boxer.
One of the guys over at Powerline suggested that Obama would make a good constitutional monarch – a symbol of the country who had no executive power. He could play golf, hobnob with celebrities and give inspiring speeches. And we would have our first Royal Family – “How cool would that be? “
Mongoose – I’ve seen Billy Graham on TV. And watching him makes me feel sick. Mostly because of the hypocrisy. If he was really serious, he would be seen on TV in a homespun robe tied with string; instead, he turns up in a three-thousand-dollar suit. His dental job probably cost more than my car.
Having said that, I’m quite prepared to admit that he probably doesn’t indulge in the most extreme of revivialist meetings. Others do, though – and the televangelist con-man is a very real phenomenon.
The archetypical televangelist con-man par excellence is actually Benny Hinn, for what it’s worth.
The Golden Hinde was replicated exactly to scale — and sent on a world tour.
Sir Francis Drake was the tallest of the crew, it was said, and his cabin just cleared his head by inches.
But his cabin’s height was but 5’2″!
I experienced it during 1973 in San Francisco Bay… And that cabin was all that everyone wanted to talk about.
All other ships dimensions were similarly constrained.
So I take it to be reasonable that bread and water diets in the Roman era didn’t make for big men.
The Vikings had a fish laden diet. Hence, they were regarded as ‘bear-shirters.’ That coupled to the fact that peat bogs in their lands double as hematite deposits meant that they were not just large — but packing iron, and lots of it. This made them so exceptional that just 60 Vikings terrified entire armies. They were the Shaq of their day.
( It seems a good bet that Vikings / ancestors discovered how to smelt iron first just because of this fact. Unlike all other hematite deposits — it took absolutely no sophistication to discover crude ingots glowing at the bottom of a serious bonfire. No other hematite deposit has that property. Once discovered ( by Thor, of course ) it spread like crazy. Rusted Viking steel showed ancient man what iron looks like in a state of nature — before the god of fire made it magic. )
fc/61, –Having said that, I’m quite prepared to admit that most Englishmen probably don’t indulge in the most extreme of wife-decapitating English King behavior. Others do, though – and the wife-decapitating Englishman is a very real phenomenon.
***
b/63, –twas the Longboat, tho, that put the steelish bear-men where they could best pillage –an oceanic vessel with riverine draft, the flexible hull rope-rigged bow, stern and mast, worked organically with wind and sea to keep the long timbers in compression as needed by conditions, and out of the hull-weakening tension.
On the subject of physical height, I have read somewhere that American colonists by the time of the War of Independence (I prefer that term to “Revolution”) were on average taller than their European cousins.
I don’t think this is a trivial statistic. It speaks directly to the reasons why Americans rebelled against Crown and Parliament. They led a better life than most of their home country counterparts, which included a better diet; Americans rebelled not because they thought they’d never had it so bad, but rather, because they’d never had it so good and wanted to keep it that way; they were convinced that King George and Parliament were going to sabotage their good life. This is an essence of what it means to be and think like an American.
#51 buddy larsen
Thank you for the kind words, but my maternal grandmother should get the credit for my knowledge of Whittier, Longfellow, and all the nineteenth-century American Romantic poets. Nana used to read (and recite) them to me at length when she babysat me–also Shakespeare and other poetry that her generation had been expected to memorize. (Props to my high school and college, too– I belong to the last generation that was taught the traditional literary canon of the West before the PC “diversity” anthologies became standard fare.)
Apropos of your and spindok’s experiences with hypnosis: either that or Braco’s healing gaze may explain why Sheriff Joe dozed off during Teh Won’s execrable logorrhea yesterday. Anyone who wants to see the video of the VP in Dreamland, it’s here: http://minx.cc/?post=314765
PA Cat
I fell asleep watching loco-Joe…
Don Rodrigo…
The Crown had run up a terrible tab during the 7-Years War. England had shunted mega-bucks to Frederick the Great — all gone.
The first step was to raise taxes on trading merchants and whatnot — right in London, too. The Empire was a reasonably sealed system — or so it seemed — so tariffs were it.
But America built her own merchant ships and could send them where she would. In this case, to Holland which had killer low trading tariffs. ( usually none! ) This meant that America was getting all of her addictive essentials outside the Crown’s tariff system! ( Coffee, tea, sugar, rum in trade for tobacco, cotton ) What finished manufactures obtained across the London docks rocketed up it price/ down in quality & quantity.
Tobacco exporters noticed the fall off right in their faces.
All of the stamp taxes, tea taxes, etc. became American exclusives precisely because it was the Colonists who were defeating the tariff wall.
Now it was a fact that the Colonists — especially up north — had paid the blood price for victory in the 7-Years War. So you can imagine the pain and horror when their essential manufactures ( like door nails, lead, gunpowder ) rocketed in price.
Hence, the Crown was creating depressing economic conditions via taxation of trade. Shocking it is to know that the revolutionaries were, almost to a man, the economic victims of these taxes.
Pitt & Co blew up America’s economic engine — and everyone was angry. Some so angry they took up arms.
It was the America specific taxation that did it. The Crown was not applying these taxes elsewhere. The Crown figured that Americans were fat and sassy and should pay more. Certainly they were all making more than $250,000 per year and it was their duty to kick some to the Crown.
may i insert a True Grit off-thread –this is where Mattie Ross, refusing to be left behind, jumps her horse into the swift-flowing river and crosses over to join the hunt for her father’s killer. A short piece of music that goes well with the thoughts of Lexington and Concord. You want it loud.
Billy Graham’s religion is not mine but I have heard nothing from him that a reasonable man would find morally or socially objectionable, let alone sickening.
Back in ye olde days of the 1970′s the engineering design standard for an adult American male was 5 foot 7 inches. I was happy then because I was 5’8″.
Ten years later it was raised to 5’9″. It has been raised to 5’10″ the last time I looked. Some of the cockpits in the antiques that the US military flies are probably getting pretty cramped these days. The Russian choke type rangefinder uses the equivalent of 5’7″ for an adult male.
I’ve read and from what other sources that I’ve seen, for some reason the classical Romans didn’t have a cult of the sword. No magic weapons, no named swords. It all seems to be about skill of the user.
toadold…
The Roman military system on the battlefield demanded NERVE. Skill is the thinking of a Samurai, and Viking.
Like the Spartans, the Romans expected only a handful of basic evolutions from their swordsmen.
And more time and effort was spent on the shield than was ever spent on the sword.
Until group shield tactics were rote the formation was useless in the face of projectiles/ arrows.
Without nerve, the formation would collapse.
Other Roman specialties were digging dirt and felling trees. Many a battle was won with engineering.
Incredibly, the Romans had the stirrup… but considered it only a training crutch for young boys on horse!
The extreme high cost of mounts in the mountains of Italy blinded the Romans to the value of heavy cavalry.
In a similar vein, I was talking to the highly educated Indian woman across the street. Things looped from the Nuclear disaster in Japan to atomic bombs in Japan. I said I thought it was a reasonable thing to do at the time. Her response was “It was wrong to use the nuclear Bomb.” I asked her what the alternative was, and she replied she did not have to have an alternative. Because it was wrong.
To say I was flabbergasted is an understatement. Here is someone who has a very strong position (she was quite aggressive, invading personal space, forceful with her position, etc), and the strength of her conviction was related to something she could not articulate, and felt no need to justify.
There was no need to consider the many more innocent Japanese lives that could have been lost, the global imbalance with Russian influence in Japan, and needless to say, the loss of American lives. It was simply wrong, based on a belief that it was wrong. Like a commandment, no further thought is required.
This is a part of the liberal belief system, or at least what the heads want the proles to believe. Now, I think all systems in the end are “belief systems,” including science, but I think some are more compelling than others. Ones that predictably match what is expected to what happens is a good start, and maybe the best we can do. Somehow, though, leftism has become the religion for lazy people, or those who will not construct their own moral code.
As an example Obama Health care is essentially a creationist approach. The belief it somehow follows a correct moral code and will therefore be beneficial in the aggregate, is an example of this. The rationalist would say “Why don’t we study how well this kind of health care system would work.” I understand the MA plan is similar. Study the MA plan, measure it from every conceivable angle, and then extrapolate to the affect a similar program would have at the national level. Instead, the Obama plan will create a brand new system out of whole cloth. It’s creationism. Compare this to a competitive environment, in which the best system tends to survive over time. That’s what evolution is about, and it is good enough to create all the living (and some non-living things) in the world.
True, these are all “belief” systems, but without measurable outcomes, anything is possible. Perhaps if people feel things are better, that’s good enough for some. To me, though, I want to see the continued prosperity of the West, and I have to admit my particular “belief” the US is perhaps one of the best countries to have control. After all, it did have the Bomb and the standing armies in WW II, and it did not enslave the world as other countries attempted, and more would have given the opportunity.
I find it much easier to listen to the likes of the Grahams than to the current leader of the free world. I am ok with the message of the Gospel, socialism, “not so much”. Gaze braco gaze for days!
WSJ.com – For West’s Oil Firms, No Love Lost in Libya http://on.wsj.com/i0Epcu Kadhafi was making it hard for them, hence the coalition, not because he wanted to sell the lot to Chinese, rather because he changed the contracts, and could blocate foreign staff to join a Compny if she didn’t comply !
71. Blert:
I liked in particular one tactic the Legions would use. After they had thrown the piliums and the had closed to hand to hand and often shield to shield range, and the battle had become a case of their opponents trying to hammer them down, on command the legionnaires would make a stab at the armpit of the enemy that was facing his companion on the right. While not all of the enemy would have their arm up and have the area under the arm exposed, enough would to go down and reduce the effectiveness of the enemy.
Still they had their own superstitions and magical beliefs. They would “adopt” cults from other countries.
the libyan method for siphoning oil from companies
http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/gadhafi-s-son-used-libya-oil-profits-for-personal-gain-wikileaks-reveals-1.348349?localLinksEnabled=false
Roman combat units had three lines of shock troops, sorted by age and experience. On command the front unit would disengage abruptly and move back right through the two ranks behind and take up the rearmost position, there to rest their shield arms and catch breath, maybe get a quick swallow of wine, and wait their turn at the fighting front. Meanwhile of course, the rank behind them had jumped forward fighting, refilling the space almost instantly. Any enemy without that maneuver –the fighting front wilting quickly in the edged-weapon muscle warfare, had no relief by the enemy being just as tired as he, the enemy wasn’t anywhere near as tired as he.
Fletcher Christian -
The thing is, even the Gandhi-like loincloth, or the olde tyme sackcloth and ashes, can become a moral vanity and spiritual pride. “Look how holy I am, I spurn the cheap baubles of this world.” Weren’t it none other than Jesus who said something about how it’s better to go about your devotions quietly than to make a three-ring circus of it? (or words to that effect)
You also don’t know how Rev. Graham came by the fine suit. It could have been given to him as a gift by a dear friend or grateful discipled person. At my old church we bought our pastor a brand-new minivan because he was toting his entire family (wife, 3 kids, two of whom were adopted) around in an 8-year-old Camry. What was he supposed to say? “Thanks, folks, but I can’t be seen as materialistic, not when 4 billion people in the world have no mechanized personal transportation. Please take the Sienna back to the dealer.”
Sometimes you graciously accept what someone else gives you out of profligate love even if it’s somewhat embarrassing and even if it’s a lot more than you would have bought for yourself.
I’m not saying that the above explanation is the definite case with Rev. Graham. I’m saying that it’s an alternative explanation, I’ve seen that sort of thing happen, and the bottom line is you don’t know the story behind the suit and neither do I. Alas, you immediately leaped to the worst assumption about his character and convinced yourself that it was the final explanation.
My biggest amusement at your comment however is that you actually know, or claim to know, a $3,000 suit when you see one on TV. Do you hang out at Savile Row? Because I sure don’t. And therefore the assumed price tags of people’s clothes almost never leaps out at me unless “A” is standing next to “B” and looks considerably worse by comparison. (think: Ben Roethlisberger — notoriously horrible dresser — next to someone like this guy: http://tinyurl.com/3f89d6s )
Final thought: In 50+ years of preaching, Billy Graham has never, never, ever been tainted with scandal. Never. That in itself is an astonishing record.
Billy Graham is a Bible man. A serious professional expert student and teacher of the information in the Bible. What he does is teach what he knows about that body of work.
If he decided to go onstage with celebrity personal journey dramatics, and perhaps added a showy disdain for the fruits of his labor, he would be dividing himself from the people, and would be that much less a teacher of, and that much more the subject of, the way to the find the spirit within us.
Idolatry is a subtle but very real and utterly historically-proven dangerous thing, and Graham is who he is because he is forthrightly anti-idolatry, and has always gratefully accepted what his work has brought him, and has never tried to put on ‘holier than thou’ airs.
He’s quite deliberately only a man who has studied the Bible more intensely than most, and after all that study believes in it more than ever, and wants to tell you about how that happened to him and can happen to you too.
If he was into personality cultism, he’d never have golfed with Nixon, which he did , and very likely did, in part at least (the two of ‘em may’ve actually enjoyed each other’s company!), so that he could counsel the Bible to a very powerful man –which one will admit ain’t a bad idea.
The Roman army organized their army in units of 8 soldiers + 2 assists and one donkey or horse to carry the leather tent and supplies.
If the unit did not obey orders then they were decimated– 1 in 10 was killed.
Research from HBS shows that the best predictor of future graduates wealth is not grates at Harvard but their height.
Also the best predictor of US presidential candidates success is their height, optimism and depth of voice–indicators for testosterone level at early adolescence.
But watch out for the small guy at the poker table.
v/80, one in ten was killed –by the other nine –the selected victim’s own squad.
65. Don Rodrigo
Americans rebelled not because they thought they’d never had it so bad, but rather, because they’d never had it so good and wanted to keep it that way; they were convinced that King George and Parliament were going to sabotage their good life. This is an essence of what it means to be and think like an American.
Now that’s an interesting point. And pertinent.
The skill of the Romans in military victories depended upon their formation and discipline. They fought in organized lines. For the most part when a Roman soldier had to fight a Celt or German one on one the Roman soldier was meat.
The video showed that New-age Fuzzy Wuzzy is alive and well. Very interesting. I wonder how long gazer and gazee look at each other? Does 10 minutes of gazing give twice the buzz that you get from 5 minutes, or do you gaze until you are struck by the feeling? Braco supplies more proof that people all over the world believe in Magic.
Braco’s gazing spells are clever though because the Wizard just presents his gaze as an unfocused light that each member can receive as his feeling of choice. It’s the inverse of the Obama blank screen onto which people can project whatever they choose to see. Both Braco and Obama depend on their disciples being very superficial, otherwise the magic wouldn’t work. As all those Californians (I assume) in the video suggested – “It’s a miracle” – a superficial miracle. The other thing that is clever is the idea of the beneficient eye, as opposed to the evil eye. A modern positive spin on an ancient idea of the harmful gaze.
I note that also this week the UN is proposing that trees be given human rights. Why do I think that everyone at the big Hawaii gaze-in would be leading the charge on that one?
A comment that I have made here from time to time is that this age is most like the early 1500′s — just before Luther went to worms in 1519.
One of the big things that Luther was against — was the sale of indulgences.
The catholic church placed everyone’s ancestors in purgatory. Then the church allowed people to buy their ancestors out of purgatory and into heaven by the sale of indulgences. Its was a big revenue getter and helped fund the new vatican that was going up at the time.
Luther’s contention at the time was that the sale of indulgences –among other things– caused witchcraft.
imho the funding of the american government in this age works on much the same lines as the sale of indulgences.
Americans fund stuff by taxes so as to get their ancestors out of purgatory.
Naturally this causes witchcraft.
Two thoughts found at Theo’s spud farm.
http://www.theospark.net/2011/04/libya-campaign-patch.html
http://www.theospark.net/2011/04/thought-for-day_15.html
Victor sez: “Obama is not an evil or bad person–he was ambitious–that is ok-he just had no experience and is in over his head.”
Well, Bill Clinton is an alleged rapist (I believe you Juanita).
As with Bill, let’s dispense aspects of personality and proclivity. The president of the United States is responsible for the welfare of so many. And he is making decisions that cast a pall over unborn children, and that, once implemented, will be almost impossible to undo. Yet, he is doing this in a reckless manner without regards to the consequences, because they fit his belief system.
So how about we judge Obama on what he has done, instead of whether he is the Greatest Guy on Earth.
“America is the apex of Christian Civilization in which Christians and non Christians pay the same taxes on April 15.”
I suppose I have a much broader definition of religion than you do. Religion is simply that which you believe in, but cannot prove. There is most definitely a war of beliefs going on in the country, and those who believe self reliance, personal responsibility, and integrity are important are being bled dry by those who don’t. Over the last fifty years or so, we are seeing this increasing function of government to reward the screw ups at the expense of the successful.
“A big part of the subconscious attraction of Islam to Western intellectuals is precisely the veils, the impenetrable Arabic. It is all the magic they’ve stripped away from their own rite.”
Exactly so.
A few years ago I was walking through an airport and I was stunned to see that the LA Times featured a huge, dramatic, four-color photograph above the fold of a woman clad all in white, only her face showing. I think she was holding an infant. The caption was a quote, presumably from this woman, saying something like “For Muslims, marriage is an act of worship.”
Aside from being shocked that the Times was selling Islam on the front page, it struck me as so ironic. You would never, ever, ever see a positive remark in the LA Times from a Catholic about Holy Matrimony.
But the exotic version is deemed fascinating. The subjugation of women is a non-story, the fact that Islamists want to kill us is a non-story, but the magic, the veils, the exoticism, we eat that up with a spoon.
But the exotic version is deemed fascinating. The subjugation of women is a non-story, the fact that Islamists want to kill us is a non-story, but the magic, the veils, the exoticism, we eat that up with a spoon.
But what about the Vampires?!!
The Darkness, the Unknowing, pulls ‘em in even faster.
85/Charles – One of the big things that Luther was against — was the sale of indulgences. … imho the funding of the american government in this age works on much the same lines as the sale of indulgences.
We call them carbon credits, ObamaCare waivers, environmental land exchange offsets, etc., etc., etc. …
Roman combat units had three lines of shock troops, sorted by age and experience.
Hastati. Principes and Triarii. I remember that from my school days in Italy
That was a time when education systems were correctly confident that grade school and middle school kids could absorb complex information.
“That was a time when education systems were correctly confident that grade school and middle school kids could absorb complex information.”
What happened?!? Now we only give them disinformation and propaganda. Along with a dollop of self esteem for being incompetent to even button their own pants.
Instapundit recently commented to the effect that it’s akin to child abuse for a parent to put their kids in public school. I think he’s right.
On the original subject of this thread:
Whenever I’ve had someone tell me that they were “spiritual,” not “religious,” invariably it meant they had no moral, intellectual or emotional discipline. “Spirituality” gave them carte blanche to lead dissolute lives founded on a worldview of moral equivalence.
Ancient paganism often had many of these attributes as well. Interchanging gods from different pagan strains had gotten to be a rampant practice during the Roman Empire, acording to many accounts.
Madonna (Ciccolone, not Jesus’s mother) is supposedly giving up her fraudulent version of “Kabala” for a fraudulent version of Christianity, “Opus Dei” or something. I guess she shall no longer be “Esther” the faux Jew.
What happened?!? Now we only give them disinformation and propaganda. Along with a dollop of self esteem for being incompetent to even button their own pants.
Which has helped lead to the phenomena Wretchard writes on in this thread.
I have no use for creationism, and am fine with the basic premises of the evolutionary process, but what I’ve noticed personally about both ardent creationists, intelligent design believers, and Darwin skeptics is that all these folks seem as well, or better, grounded in concrete and scientific reality as anyone in a modern society should be. It is their most vitriolic opponents who tend to believe all sorts of nonsense and magical thinking.
W@54
“Magic is vulnerable to counter-spells.”
The front page headline on yesterday’s Arizona Republic newspaper read, “Obama Speech Counters GOP Budget Plan.”
Tabloid reports of a wizard casting spells, not news.
Tcobb @ 83– It’s interesting that “spolia opima”–a Roman general killing his opposite number in single combat–was recognized only three times in the whole history of Rome (and Marcellus’ case was the only time it happened in “historic times.”) That said, while no doubt some battle-scared centurion would feel more comfortable being part of the Roman dremel-tool, one-on-one I’d give him even odds against some naked “Herman” any day–an epic ‘stache and a bad attitude isn’t much use if you’ve bent your sword on his scutum.:)
Interesting tidbit about Madonna, although a return to presumably Catholic roots is less likely to be fraudulent than the earlier straying. That’s a pretty common trajectory.
And what on earth makes you think that Opus Dei is a fraudulent version of Christianity? I mean, other than Dan Brown.
I agree with you on the neo-Darwinists, though. These are some of the worst practitioners of scientism. They are too fundamentalist to have noticed that the most striking thing about the scientific record is the complete lack of objective support for the fanciful notion that natural selection can account for one thing becoming something else.
FWIW:
On the subject of physical height in Roman times:
At the height of empire, most empirical evidence suggest 5′ 3″ — 5′ 4″ for adult males as an average, which would vary with region and time.
And what on earth makes you think that Opus Dei is a fraudulent version of Christianity? I mean, other than Dan Brown.
I was projecting based on Madonna’s proclivities, and assumed “Opus Dei” was a bogus variant of Christianity. I tried to qualify my remarks with “or something.” Granted, not a valid way of judging “Opus Dei.”
On the subject of religion and creation, the Big Bang Theory’s premises — violating all the supposedly immutable laws of the universe for it to have happened — ought to give pause to the Godless. I’m an agnostic, and it gives me pause.
In terms of spell-casting, more recently known as setting the narrative, Paul Ryan had a good one today:
“The greatest danger to Medicare is the status quo and those defending it.”
Shazzam.
There really is power in spells, that is, in words. You have to say them properly, in the right order, or they are powerless.
Back to techno-magic: The Smartest pResident Evah longs for a “cool” phone in the sanctum sanctorum: “‘The Oval Office, I always thought I was going to have really cool phones and stuff,’ he said during a small fundraising event at a Chicago restaurant. ‘I’m like, c’mon guys, I’m the president of the United States. Where’s the fancy buttons and stuff and the big screen comes up? It doesn’t happen.’”
[cue world's smallest violin-- or maybe Wretchard can loan his magic Ray-Bans to the Preznit]
Another “unscripted” remark about jobs creation: “‘I had the emir of Qatar come by the Oval Office today,’ Obama said. ‘Pretty influential guy. He is a big booster, big promoter of democracy all throughout the Middle East. Reform, reform, reform. … Now he himself is not reforming significantly. There’s no big move toward democracy in Qatar. But you know part of the reason is that the per capita income of Qatar is $145,000 a year. That will dampen a lot of conflict. I make this point only because if there is opportunity, if people feel their lives can get better, then a lot of these problems get solved.’”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/15/obama-disappointed-lack-cool-phone-oval-office/?test=latestnews
Yeah, $145,000 per year per citizen buys a lot of political magic.
#99 Don Rodrigo
Apropos of Opus Dei, it didn’t help the group’s reputation that Robert Hanssen was a member, sending his kids to schools affiliated with Opus Dei and trying to persuade other Catholics in the FBI to join it.
DR/98–re adult stature in olden times: in the Royal Armory in Madrid are exhibits of suits of armor from various periods, including the times when a knight had to be able mount his horse with armor, shield and sword without help (this was battle armor, not jousting armor).
One thing you quickly notice is how small the suits are, ie how short these men were compared to modern times.
Karen T @18
Thank you for the answer to my time question for gazing. Seven seconds and you’re done. Watching the original video, I’d say there was some illicit gazing going on – far longer than seven seconds. Clearly, after a second look, Spirit is against unregulated gazing. How long before Braco introduces the GPA – Gaze Protection Agency – to reduce people’s carbon gaze print? After all ‘braco” can be re-arranged to be “carbo”.
I think that Braco was simply embarrassed by the videos and is rightly afraid they will damage the Wizard business if they aren’t disappeared from YouTube. Like Mr Owe in the White House; it’s all about other people’s money.
All I see in the video is a bunch of ‘effin, over the hill, pampered from childhood, WHITE, hippies. Oh sure there was an asian or TWO. Let’s not go overboard in our analysis here!!!
OT,from Hotair.com, on the attempts to get UN authorization for regime change in Libya:
“The contrasts between this situation and Iraq are striking. Hussein had already conducted a genocidal campaign against the Kurds with chemical weapons, took away water from the Marsh Arabs, and violently suppressed Iraq’s Shi’ite majority. The US and UK spent twelve years trying to get Hussein to voluntarily comply with UN resolutions, and in the end the UN refused to give the US and UK a mandate for intervention — largely due to France.
The similarities? France had deep economic interests in Iraqi oil, which Hussein allowed to flow to them while pocketing a fortune through the Oil-for-Food Programme, and they have deep economic interests in Libyan oil, which Gaddafi would probably burn now rather than sell to the French.”
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/04/15/france-wants-new-un-authorization-for-regime-change-in-libya/
PA Cat… @101
Opus Dei is in the mold of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, in staking a hard core claim to classic Catholic values.
The Jesuits were a reaction to Luther and stayed at the vanguard of Catholic thought for centuries. They were the source of the Black Robe. Previously, all priests dressed in the style of todays monk.
The Jesuits were wildly over represented in Japan and North America which became bastions.
Opus Dei is the Society of Jesus reincarnated. It’s driving force is a repudiation of anti-Catholic thought and a drive to spread the faith anew.
Bizarrely, Hitler explicitly modeled the SS after the Jesuits! ( Die hard Catholic mother, of course ) That’s why the SS had black uniforms — and WHITE dress uniforms. ( The only war era films with correct SS dress are Italian productions — they saw plenty of such. )
Nazism/ Hitlerism as faith: the Death’s Head division ( 3SS ) made every attempt to convert the boys over to it and renounce their prior faith. Only one man ever refused the social pressure — one Catholic. All others complied!
So, in fact, WWII was a religious war after all, at least to the Nazis and Japanese. No wonder they were die-hards.
WesternCanadian @103: From what I can gather, if you go to an official “gazing session”, you get two gazing periods of 7 to 10 minutes, accompanied by special music, plus a few minutes to integrate the experience before the next group is herded in. To me, the 7-second internet/DVD rule makes Spirit sound sort of authoritarian. Next thing you know, Spirit will be setting other rules, and you won’t have the exhilaration of spiritualism without dogma anymore.
–at a bit over 5′ to almost 6′ in two thousand years, we’ll be 7′ tall in the next two thousand, or about the time we finish repairing the last twenty.
Blert
A Italian friend would say, like you, that Opus Dei was behind Hitler, that it still directs policies around the world.
exhelodrvr
BS
http://bejohngalt.com/2011/03/limbaugh-its-all-about-european-oil/
see who have oil fields in Libya, and who’s got the biggest !
idem the oil for food from Irak was a hoax made by the neocons to undermine France who vetoed the 2nd Irak campain
how comes that a country not bigger than Texas could consume more oil than the whole America, knowing that our energy is supplied by 83% nuclear, and that our cars don’t consume more than 7 liters pro/100 km !
i am well placed to give some background on this topic. A charismatic Calvinist, a life long Presbyterian, born again at 4, going to church with a pastor from an Assemblies of God background, having both gone to a Billy Graham crusade in San Francisco in 1957, and worked at one in San Jose the last time he was in town, has given me familiarity with the topic.
The current name for this stuff is “signs and wonders”, it is God’s advertising program. When Jesus healed, it wasn’t just to heal, it was to demonstrate God was present.
Jesus didn’t come just to heal. That was what people wanted. Like his friends Mary & Martha when their brother was dying. They sent word to Jesus, expecting Jesus would drop everything and come heal. Jesus didn’t. The story says he “tarried two days.” This is a very important lesson in this. God isn’t a vending machine where we insert prayer, and God pops out what we want. There is a vast part of the evangelical community seduced by a “prosperity” gospel that if you just give the right amount to whatever preacher preaches this gospel, God will reward you because God loves you, and wants to bless you. The “good” example of this is a guy currently making an appearance at the San Jose Arena. His name is Joel Osteen, pastor of a megachurch in Texas. Popular, but lacking in a very important part of being a disciple, the take up your cross part.
Billy Graham is an evangelist, for most of the past 60 years, until he retired in 2005 at 87. A man with a simple message, said plainly and clearly. The first step in becoming a disciple of Jesus, to accept His gift of salvation. As far as profiting from his work, the books of the ministry have been open to all to see, unlike most televangelists. He could have made much more, he lives a simple life, or at least one for someone who traveled to almost every country of earth, and spoke to every President from Truman to Obama.
My unique perspective shows me how God has set up the universe for free will. He wants us to come voluntarily. As someone who is familiar with both Theology, geology and quantum mechanics, each shows God’s footprints and fingerprints in the universe. God speaks. I have heard him. He gave me the gift of poetry to share. This is the secret of life. God wants to give us gifts. We keep trying to earn them.
The lesson Jesus taught in his both tarrying and healing dead Lazarus is one he wants us to learn. “Will you trust Me when I am silent, and don’t answer your prayers?” This is far beyond simple healing gifts of Braco or any of the others who are living examples of signs and wonders. This paradox of this topic is that the healing we so value is just the come on to a greater gift offered, salvation & discipleship. A God who invites us to join him on a journey of Joy. You know you have heard Him when your response is: “You want me to do What!@?”
Marie,
Saddam’s personal gain from the oil-for-food program has been well-documented.
As far as the article you link, that supports the article that I quoted, which is that the Europeans are heavily invested in Libyan oil. Not sure what point you are trying to make.
And do you really want to bring up the Chirac era when the subject is corruption?
108/buddy – …we’ll be 7′ tall in the next two thousand…
Alas, I fear we may be in for some shrinkage, instead…
113) tharkun
Only if it gets cold. And due to ACW, that’s not a possibility!
RWE 30:
Except that Barnum didn’t say it. It was one of his competitors, most likely David Hannum of the Cardiff Giant Hoax.
But he appreciated the free publicity that followed being misquoted.
exhelodrvr
Europeans doesn’t mean only French !
“Saddam’s personal gain from the oil-for-food program has been well-documented.”
OK, though the documents didn’t say that France benefitted alone from the deal, all the countries did, and yours the first (also documented)
Chirac corruption was a lefty political concern first (relayed by the medias who are mainly lefty, in the occurence of Scapegoating France for her veto, your medias made their honey with our lefty sources), and only concern fake employees at Paris townhall, like many lefty town halls do too for rewarding political helps and or for hiring expensive soccer and or Basket-ball players !
Lovers gaze into each others eyes in order to, well, wallow in their intimacy. In our modern culture we have removed ourselves from intimacy, from truly seeking to know and be known. In the world in which our friends keep in touch with facebook and we chat room participants share their deepest desires with perfect and unknowable strangers it makes sense that this surrogate should be so popular.
t/117, i’m pretty sure most folks who hang around belmont do so not for the company, but for the sort of company. Not all that many folks, fun and lovable tho they may be in our actual worlds, are interested and conversant (note, i avoided the word obsessed) in these topics, and still fewer will be willing and able to bring here the considered results of some study of them, and even fewer still will wring out an expression of same in a few interesting and engaging lines or paragraphs, fastidious of word meanings and in sentences often splendidly wrought. And the smallest group of all for anybody anywhere anytime: those who share the same broad convictions, such as for forgery or counterfitting rather than for such down-market stuff as armed robbery or assault & battery –or, heaven forbid, a RICO beef.
@7 stoicheion
I’m trying to figure out why my cell phone changed ring tones on me. Cars are no problem but cell phones confuse me. I use the smallest and simplest one I could find.
Hey, that’s nothing. COMPUTERS are no problem but cell phones confuse me. So do microwave ovens. So do TV remote controls. I guess it’s because I don’t feel they’re worth learning. I just fumble through whenever I have to.
My main reaction to this Braco guy: What if it actually works? If it doesn’t, fine. The question reduces to “What’s the most that I’d be willing to pay in money, time, and hassle to try it out?” Not much, but if he were here in town, charging $25, and there was no big parking problem, I might give it a shot. Or, maybe by the time this happened, my maximum payout would have been reduced by annoyance with people who were too enthused about it. I’d probably find a way not to go, e.g., by forgetting which day he was coming.