Hello again Folks. I have been out of town enjoying some down time with my friends in the Sabian Assembly. When I got back, I felt guilty about not writing something up in my Blog. So as I sat down to correct that and I reflected on the idea of Guilt or Guiltiness as the case may be. Where did that idea come from? Is it born in us or did we invent that concept perhaps to flagellate ourselves to better effort(whatever that may be). So I did some research.
The dictionary definition which was traditional sent me to the Bible and Numbers, chapter 5. And here there was the old idea of sin being a missing of the mark or a deviation from some standard. Moses was to instruct the priests who in turn elaborately laid the guilt on the sinner and extracted a material penalty from the sinner. Which incidentally became the property of the priest since after all, God could have nothing to do with material things.
Next I asked myself... is there any survival value to something like a sense of guilt? Because if there were survival value then the sense of guilt would be innate and it would have evolved over the millenia. But guilt, unlike fear, did not seem to have survival value. So I had to conclude that guilt represented a survival value only to the community and not necessarily to the individual. For example. If I stole something from some other man, or woman for that matter, it would give me pleasure or satisfaction of some sort. However, it would cause a sense of loss in the other person. Soooo the sense of guilt and the state of guiltiness appears to be a man-made concept to protect man's property.
While I had my nose in the Bible, I looked at the Ten Commandments as a whole. And I thought I saw a pattern. It appears that the first five commandments describe the existence and omnipetence of God and the second five describe the respect for man's property. In biblical times property consisted of a man's women, his children, his animals, his tents wagons and other equipment.
Curiously enough, in today's lexicon this concept extends to women, children, animals, the environment and the like. In other words a respect for the personality of all living things.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Home Alone... and I am not 5 years old either
Well Barbara has left me alone for about nine days. When people ask, I blythely say "she has gone to Heaven". But before they can express their sorrows, I tell them that heaven is Palm Springs and she is having the time of her life. She is visiting her daughter, Mary, and my old friends Phyllis and Dan Reynolds who have been living there for about 3 years are planning on showing them all the good spots. After a harrowing 11 hour trip due to delays in connection at LA, Barb has settled in to the delights of fruit trees scattered around for anyone to pick and real snow-capped mountains only a couple of miles away. And best of all temperatures in the 60's and 70's which are no challenge to a gal whose blood has been thickened in New England most of her life.
With all the conditioning of a lifetime as mother and wife, Barb left me with a refrigerator full of packaged food for the next nine days. She made sure that three jugs of green tea were cooled in our outside refrigerator, namely the garage and finally a can of coffee and filters should I get a hankering for a fix of caffeine. But this lead to a series of adventures for this old city boy.
Now there have been times in my life when I had to resort to frozen dinners for my sustenance. But pre-cooked and packaged in aluminum foil and whatever are a challenge I was not prepared for. So this is what happened step by step and up the learning curve we go.
Removing the aluminum foil and the Saran wrap was merely child's play but now I come to find that the food was firmly stuck to the paper plate that it was placed on.`
Brute force did no good because that just resulted in more or less paper shreds sticking to the pile of food itself. So then let me just put it in the microwave and heat it for a few minutes.... result.. a smaller snowball and the paper still stuck on but more peelable. Ugh.. remove more of the paper and flip the food and back into the microwave for another couple of minutes...now it is fairly pliable but still pretty cool. Ok so it is a real challenge. Back into the microwave for five minutes this time. Wallah! Now it is completely heated, in fact hot as hell. But that is what the very cold ice tea is for.. to keep my tongue from blistering.
Now I can sit down to dinner. No problem except this one long shred of paper I kept chewing on before I realized what it was and also the lesson that meat tends to get very well done even in the microwave.
This is what I learned on the second day. I left the uncovered plate on the counter for a half hour before I attempted to unbuckle the food from the paper plate. Aha this time most of it came off. And there was only a golf ball sized snowball in the middle of the food. So I put it in for three minutes and stirred it when I took it out... looked pretty good so I put it back in for another three minutes.
Success at last except that the broccoli didn't taste the same somehow as when Barb makes it for me straight up.
But the paper was kept to a trifling minimum.
Now today I plan on unwrapping the meal and placing it on a towel on the counter for about a half hour... this should do a better job of defrosting and allow the paper to peel off 100% and result in a consistency that will allow for stirring or mixing at an earlier stage. Then I can put it in the microwave for only three minutes and eat a warm meal with out making it into shoe leather. If that does not work then Burger King here I come...
With all the conditioning of a lifetime as mother and wife, Barb left me with a refrigerator full of packaged food for the next nine days. She made sure that three jugs of green tea were cooled in our outside refrigerator, namely the garage and finally a can of coffee and filters should I get a hankering for a fix of caffeine. But this lead to a series of adventures for this old city boy.
Now there have been times in my life when I had to resort to frozen dinners for my sustenance. But pre-cooked and packaged in aluminum foil and whatever are a challenge I was not prepared for. So this is what happened step by step and up the learning curve we go.
Removing the aluminum foil and the Saran wrap was merely child's play but now I come to find that the food was firmly stuck to the paper plate that it was placed on.`
Brute force did no good because that just resulted in more or less paper shreds sticking to the pile of food itself. So then let me just put it in the microwave and heat it for a few minutes.... result.. a smaller snowball and the paper still stuck on but more peelable. Ugh.. remove more of the paper and flip the food and back into the microwave for another couple of minutes...now it is fairly pliable but still pretty cool. Ok so it is a real challenge. Back into the microwave for five minutes this time. Wallah! Now it is completely heated, in fact hot as hell. But that is what the very cold ice tea is for.. to keep my tongue from blistering.
Now I can sit down to dinner. No problem except this one long shred of paper I kept chewing on before I realized what it was and also the lesson that meat tends to get very well done even in the microwave.
This is what I learned on the second day. I left the uncovered plate on the counter for a half hour before I attempted to unbuckle the food from the paper plate. Aha this time most of it came off. And there was only a golf ball sized snowball in the middle of the food. So I put it in for three minutes and stirred it when I took it out... looked pretty good so I put it back in for another three minutes.
Success at last except that the broccoli didn't taste the same somehow as when Barb makes it for me straight up.
But the paper was kept to a trifling minimum.
Now today I plan on unwrapping the meal and placing it on a towel on the counter for about a half hour... this should do a better job of defrosting and allow the paper to peel off 100% and result in a consistency that will allow for stirring or mixing at an earlier stage. Then I can put it in the microwave for only three minutes and eat a warm meal with out making it into shoe leather. If that does not work then Burger King here I come...
Friday, February 4, 2011
Out with the old... In with the new
Well folks along with the snow and ice and the responsibilities for year-end financial duties for the Sabian Publishing Society my usual weekly pattern of posts has become bi-weekly during the month of January at least. So as a result I received a "get with it" poke in the butt by my good friend Peg along with a couple of questions on Astology.
Since your "WalrusSez" has been pretty quiet, could I suggest:
Why don't you editorialize on the recent changes they have -- or are trying to -- foist upon us? I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on the new number of planets and the new number of astrological signs.
OK, I figure at least you can put into words I can understand just what these things mean. The planets really don't impact me all that much (and probably that astrology wouldn't either) but I'd be interested in knowing how you feel about it. If you put it out there, the subject(s) might get some comments and we'd see how others interpret them.
What Peg is referring to is two recent comments..(1) the declaration that Pluto is not a planet, but considered a dwarf planet and perhaps maybe not even of the solar system and (2) that the stars which made up the constellations identified as signs of the zodiac are not in the same locations as they were thousands of years ago due to the precession of the equinoxes. And these are scientifically correct observations as our technology has allowed us to make more precise and refined observations of the universe that we live in. But this matters not in the system of Astrology which divides the sphere of the sky into 12 parts and comments on the relationships of the planets of the solar system as they travel around the sun in their orbits.
It is not my intention to write a book on Astology in this blog. But Astrology when it is done in the proper fashion is just as deterministic and follows similar protocols as any scientific discipline as I have ever studied. The purpose of Astrology has always been to solve problems and understand situations more complex than just plain human conjecture can accomplish. So then the main use for Astology and its primary tool, the Horoscope, is to understand human character and personality. To depend on any one or group of stars for that purpose is not necessary to divide the celestial orb into twelve sections. So the prcession of the equinoxes has no bearing on the insight into character and personality that is revealed to the Astrologer by the Horoscope. And by the way, it will return to the way it was orignally in only a paltry 25,600 years roughly.
In the beginning, as the ancients used Astrology some 5 to 6 thousand years ago there were only seven planets in the horoscope. The Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These were the planets seen by the naked eye. Later on after the telescope was invented, the planets Neptune and Uranus were added and finally around 1930 Pluto was added to the lexicon of horoscopy. So for about 80 years, Pluto was considered a planet symbolizing the higher mind or a quality of personality which shows enlightenment or intellectual expansion.
But alas and alack, perhaps being technically correct is akin to being politically correct but Astrologers will still include Pluto in their horoscopes and use it to signify probity or some other higher values of character inherent in us human apes.
Thank you Peg for your question.
Since your "WalrusSez" has been pretty quiet, could I suggest:
Why don't you editorialize on the recent changes they have -- or are trying to -- foist upon us? I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on the new number of planets and the new number of astrological signs.
OK, I figure at least you can put into words I can understand just what these things mean. The planets really don't impact me all that much (and probably that astrology wouldn't either) but I'd be interested in knowing how you feel about it. If you put it out there, the subject(s) might get some comments and we'd see how others interpret them.
What Peg is referring to is two recent comments..(1) the declaration that Pluto is not a planet, but considered a dwarf planet and perhaps maybe not even of the solar system and (2) that the stars which made up the constellations identified as signs of the zodiac are not in the same locations as they were thousands of years ago due to the precession of the equinoxes. And these are scientifically correct observations as our technology has allowed us to make more precise and refined observations of the universe that we live in. But this matters not in the system of Astrology which divides the sphere of the sky into 12 parts and comments on the relationships of the planets of the solar system as they travel around the sun in their orbits.
It is not my intention to write a book on Astology in this blog. But Astrology when it is done in the proper fashion is just as deterministic and follows similar protocols as any scientific discipline as I have ever studied. The purpose of Astrology has always been to solve problems and understand situations more complex than just plain human conjecture can accomplish. So then the main use for Astology and its primary tool, the Horoscope, is to understand human character and personality. To depend on any one or group of stars for that purpose is not necessary to divide the celestial orb into twelve sections. So the prcession of the equinoxes has no bearing on the insight into character and personality that is revealed to the Astrologer by the Horoscope. And by the way, it will return to the way it was orignally in only a paltry 25,600 years roughly.
In the beginning, as the ancients used Astrology some 5 to 6 thousand years ago there were only seven planets in the horoscope. The Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These were the planets seen by the naked eye. Later on after the telescope was invented, the planets Neptune and Uranus were added and finally around 1930 Pluto was added to the lexicon of horoscopy. So for about 80 years, Pluto was considered a planet symbolizing the higher mind or a quality of personality which shows enlightenment or intellectual expansion.
But alas and alack, perhaps being technically correct is akin to being politically correct but Astrologers will still include Pluto in their horoscopes and use it to signify probity or some other higher values of character inherent in us human apes.
Thank you Peg for your question.
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