Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site http://www.god-101.com/
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Bike For Sale!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site http://www.god-101.com/
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
HELP!
Due to a hectic winter schedule for the Perspective research staff and a general lack of free time we let things get away from us in the housekeeping department!
Now that it's time for spring clean-up we actually have to hire someone to take the crap away for us and it's not going to be cheap.
In order to continue to provide you with the latest news and information we must humbly ask for donations so that we may make some sense out of the mess we have accumulated here.
Any amount would be appreciated since the offering plate from "The Church of Allan" has been rather dry these past few months.
The sooner we get this sorted out the faster we will be able to get more than one person at a time in the office!
Now that it's time for spring clean-up we actually have to hire someone to take the crap away for us and it's not going to be cheap.
In order to continue to provide you with the latest news and information we must humbly ask for donations so that we may make some sense out of the mess we have accumulated here.
Any amount would be appreciated since the offering plate from "The Church of Allan" has been rather dry these past few months.
The sooner we get this sorted out the faster we will be able to get more than one person at a time in the office!
<-- The donation things is just to the left here or go to Paypal or just send some loose change in an envelope!
Many thanks from your humble scribe;
Allan W Janssen
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site http://www.god-101.com/
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
THE THREE STOOGES!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
WINNERS AND LOSERS!
To make it to the exulted position of "Asshole of the week" takes a lot of daring or imagination or guts, or any combination of these three!A woman jumped behind the wheel of an idling stretch Hummer limousine early Friday, embarking on a wild ride through Toronto that caused six accidents, injured a pedestrian and smashed up cars, trees and a house, police said.
The bizarre incident began shortly after 1 a.m. ET near Yonge and Wellesley Streets, when a limo driver left his Hummer running while he used a nearby bathroom. He left his passengers inside the vehicle, police said.
A 20-year-old woman approached and asked the handful of passengers if she could hitch a ride. When they refused her request, she pushed her way into the vehicle and got in the driver's seat, police said.
The passengers managed to jump out, and the woman drove off.
The woman, who police said does not have a driver's licence, drove through the downtown core, causing six accidents, striking a hydro pole, and hitting a female pedestrian, who was not seriously injured.
Police said the woman then drove four kilometres to Inglewood Drive, near Mount Pleasant Road and St. Clair Avenue.
There, she drove through a front yard, knocked down several trees, and hit three parked cars. The vehicle finally came to rest in a snowbank.
The woman has been charged with failing to remain at the scene of an accident, dangerous driving, theft, possession of stolen property, and driving without a licence. And to top it all off, this broad was sober!!!!!!
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"Winner of the Day!"
An unemployed man in Japan had an unexpected windfall in his mailbox when he found one million yen ($10,000 dollars) in cash from an anonymous benefactor, police said Friday. The 61-year-old man discovered the wad of cash last week along with a slip of paper with the message, "Please make use of this in your everyday life," written with a black ballpoint pen.
But instead of following the advice, the jobless man in the ancient capital of Nara in western Japan turned over the gift to police.
The sender has until June 27 to claim the money or the unemployed man will get it.
"He has absolutely no clue who it is," a police official said.
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"Loser of the Day - ISLAM"
Muslim nations on Friday condemned a film by a Dutch lawmaker that accuses the Koran of inciting violence. Whether we condemn Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician who made the film, or the Muslims who get upset by it, or any number of other reasons, Islam itself is in a "no win" situation for letting things get this far out of hand. Geert Wilders, leader of the anti-immigration Freedom Party, launched his short video on the Internet on Thursday evening, prompting an al Qaeda-linked website to call for his death and increased attacks on Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan.(And some IDIOTS here in Ontario wanted to allow Sharia law for the Muslim community!)
"The correct Sharia (Islamic law) response is to cut (off) his head and let him follow his predecessor, van Gogh, to hell," a member of Al-Ekhlaas wrote on the al-Qaeda affiliated forum, according to the SITE Institute, a U.S.-based terrorism monitoring service.
Dutch director Theo van Gogh, who made a film accusing Islam of condoning violence against women, was murdered by a militant Islamist in 2004.
Wilders' film "Fitna" -- an Arabic term sometimes translated as "strife" -- intersperses images of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and Islamist bombings with quotations from the Koran, Islam's holy book.
The film urges Muslims to tear out "hate-filled" verses from the Koran and starts and ends with a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb under his turban, accompanied by the sound of ticking.
We can directly blame the radical Imams for first of all inciting violence and then condemning those who speak out against it, but the end result is still the same!
Islam has one hell of a public relations problem here in the West.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Saturday Morning Confusion #2375
The controversy surrounding the anti-radical Islamic movie "Fitna" continues bunky!
Part 1;
Part 2;
Let's see how long these last!
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AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! (Just to confuse you even more!)
Fox news has never been known for it's journalistic integrity but even they have sunk to new lows............ which makes this perfect for the news department here at "Perspective!"
Ohio man facing charges for having sex with a picnic table!
Your "right on top of things" scribe;
Allan W Janssen
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed reportsfrom certain corners of the British media that could directly affect the safety of some staff members, LiveLeak has been left with no other choice choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.Soooooooo! Not be be stymied, we will put another one from another source up here!
This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else.
We would like to thank thousands of people, from al backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realised LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one.
Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one anothers culture.
We stood for what we believe in, the ability to get heard, but in the end the price was too high. LiveLeak.com
Part 1;
Part 2;
Let's see how long these last!
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AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! (Just to confuse you even more!)
Fox news has never been known for it's journalistic integrity but even they have sunk to new lows............ which makes this perfect for the news department here at "Perspective!"
Ohio man facing charges for having sex with a picnic table!
Police say a man in Bellevue, Ohio was caught on tape having sex with a picnic table.Then there is that old song from the fifties; "What's the matter with kids these days?Bellevue Police Captain Matt Johnson says Art Price, Jr., 40, was seen on four occasions between the hours of 10:30 a.m. and noon having sex with his picnic table.
What makes this a felony, Johnson says, is that it took place in close proximity to a school, which made it likely that children could have seen Price.
The neighbor -- who wishes to remain anonymous -- saw Price walk out onto his deck, stand a round metal table on its side and use the hole in the umbrella to have sex.
The most recent instance took place March 14, we're told. A neighbor videotaped Price."The first video we had, he was completely nude. He would use the hole from the umbrella and have sex with the table," Johnson says.
Police say Price admitted to the crimes -- four charges of public indecency. Usually these sorts of things are misdemeanors, but in this case, they are felonies.
"What boosts it up to a felony is that the statute says if it's likely to be viewed by a minor," Johnson explains.
The Price family did not want to talk with us, but neighbors did.
Some are not happy Price was released on his own recognizance.
This case has police in this small town shaking their heads. "Once you think you've seen it all, something else comes around," Johnson says.
A Florida elementary school student was tasered Thursday after punching a school security officer during a fight.Hudepohl was treated for a possible broken nose.
The incident began when teachers at the Moss Elemenary School in Orange County confronted an 11-year-old girl for allegedly attempting to push another student into ongoing traffic outside the campus, MyFOXOrlando.com reported.
Authorities say the young female ignored the teacher and walked inside the homeroom, where she was again approached by teachers over her behavior. The student responded by thowing a desk and chair and attempting to spit on the instructor, according to MyFOXOrlando.com.
Donna Hudepohl, a school resource officer called to remove the troubled girl from the classroom, was allegedly pushed and punched in the face during a struggle to restrain her.
Hudepohl responded by tasering the girl.
The student was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, disrupting a school function as well as resisting with violence and is being held at the juvenile detention center.
Your "right on top of things" scribe;
Allan W Janssen
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Friday, March 28, 2008
FLAT EARTHERS!
Right wing fundamentalist Christians believe the world was created 7000 years ago and that there is no such thing as evolution. I lot of the really "die hard" (sorry Bruce!) adherents even still believe that the world is FLAT!!!
Are they idiots? To put it very bluntly and crudely......... Yes they are!
BUT! They aren't the only ones kids, NOOOOOOO SIR!
The Koran can fuck-you-up just as bad as the Bible any day of the week!
Here is a Muslim religious guy and a Muslim scientist with an opinion on how the world works............ and there ain't no difference between them and what we get here in the the Christian world. Nope!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Are they idiots? To put it very bluntly and crudely......... Yes they are!
BUT! They aren't the only ones kids, NOOOOOOO SIR!
The Koran can fuck-you-up just as bad as the Bible any day of the week!
Here is a Muslim religious guy and a Muslim scientist with an opinion on how the world works............ and there ain't no difference between them and what we get here in the the Christian world. Nope!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
It's a whole new generation kids!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Scientific Firsts
At first, the grainy high-pitched warble doesn't sound like much but scientists say the French recording from 1860 is the oldest known recorded human voice.
The 10-second clip of a woman singing "Au Clair de la Lune," taken from a so-called phonautogram, was recently discovered by audio historian David Giovannoni. The recording predates Thomas Edison's "Mary had a little lamb" - previously credited as the oldest recorded voice - by 17 years.
The tune was captured using a phonautograph, a device created by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville that made visual recordings of sound waves.
Using a needle that moved in response to sound, the phonautograph etched sound waves into paper coated with soot from an oil lamp.
Giovannoni and his research partner, Patrick Feaster, began looking for phonautograms last year and in December discovered two of Scott's - from 1857 and 1859 - in France's patent office. Using high-resolution optical-scanning equipment, Giovannoni collected images of the phonautograms that he took back to the United States.
"What Scott was trying to do in 1861 was establish that he was the first to arrive at this idea," Giovannoni said.
"He was depositing with the French Academy examples of his work."
"We took those images back to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and found that (Scott's) technique wasn't very developed," Giovannoni said.
"There were squiggles on paper but it was not recording sound."
So Giovannoni, who collaborates with many other audio historians, including scientists at Berkeley, asked the French Academy of Sciences to send digital scans of more of Scott's papers. Those scans arrived March 1.
"When I opened up the file, I nearly fell off my chair," Giovannoni said.
"We had beautifully recorded and preserved phonautograms, many of which had dates on them.
Here the recording H E R E
As if that weren't enough a New York auction house is selling a primitive photograph that could be a much earlier work than originally believed.
If so, it says, it would be one of the most important discoveries in the history of photography.
The work, "Leaf," to be sold at Sotheby's on April 7, is a photogenic drawing — a cameraless process in which an object is placed on silver nitrate-coated paper or leather to form a negative image.
It had previously been attributed to William Henry Fox Talbot, considered the father of photography along with Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre. It was thought to have been made in 1839 at what is widely accepted as the dawn of photography.
But Sotheby's says research by a leading photo expert suggests otherwise — that several early photo experimenters could be the authors, including Thomas Wedgwood, James Watt and Humphry Davy, who worked in the medium decades earlier. If that theory is true, it means the photo could have been made as early as 1790.
What it will fetch at auction is anyone's guess, said Denise Bethel, Sotheby's director of photography.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
The 10-second clip of a woman singing "Au Clair de la Lune," taken from a so-called phonautogram, was recently discovered by audio historian David Giovannoni. The recording predates Thomas Edison's "Mary had a little lamb" - previously credited as the oldest recorded voice - by 17 years.
The tune was captured using a phonautograph, a device created by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville that made visual recordings of sound waves.
Using a needle that moved in response to sound, the phonautograph etched sound waves into paper coated with soot from an oil lamp.
Giovannoni and his research partner, Patrick Feaster, began looking for phonautograms last year and in December discovered two of Scott's - from 1857 and 1859 - in France's patent office. Using high-resolution optical-scanning equipment, Giovannoni collected images of the phonautograms that he took back to the United States.
"What Scott was trying to do in 1861 was establish that he was the first to arrive at this idea," Giovannoni said.
"He was depositing with the French Academy examples of his work."
"We took those images back to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and found that (Scott's) technique wasn't very developed," Giovannoni said.
"There were squiggles on paper but it was not recording sound."
So Giovannoni, who collaborates with many other audio historians, including scientists at Berkeley, asked the French Academy of Sciences to send digital scans of more of Scott's papers. Those scans arrived March 1.
"When I opened up the file, I nearly fell off my chair," Giovannoni said.
"We had beautifully recorded and preserved phonautograms, many of which had dates on them.
Here the recording H E R E
As if that weren't enough a New York auction house is selling a primitive photograph that could be a much earlier work than originally believed.
If so, it says, it would be one of the most important discoveries in the history of photography.
The work, "Leaf," to be sold at Sotheby's on April 7, is a photogenic drawing — a cameraless process in which an object is placed on silver nitrate-coated paper or leather to form a negative image.
It had previously been attributed to William Henry Fox Talbot, considered the father of photography along with Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre. It was thought to have been made in 1839 at what is widely accepted as the dawn of photography.
But Sotheby's says research by a leading photo expert suggests otherwise — that several early photo experimenters could be the authors, including Thomas Wedgwood, James Watt and Humphry Davy, who worked in the medium decades earlier. If that theory is true, it means the photo could have been made as early as 1790.
What it will fetch at auction is anyone's guess, said Denise Bethel, Sotheby's director of photography.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Nobody remembers second place!
This might be sour grapes because I'm a Toronto native, but I have this terrific urge to say "I told you so!"
Toronto lost out to Atlanta for the Summer Olympics in a squeaker of a vote because of influence peddling by the U.S. government. Not a problem with that even though I was mildly pissed.
But, when Toronto beat out Paris and a host of other world-class cities only to lose to Beijing, that was a travesty.
The I.O.C. did what it thought was the "Politically Correct" thing to do and awarded China the Olympics and there has been second guessing ever since.
It seems that decision is now coming back to bite them in the ass.
First some of the major runners quit because of the pollution in Beijing and China starts censoring the Internet, and now Tibet is getting out of hand because they see a perfect opportunity to draw World attention to their Independence cause ahead of the opening ceremonies.
If we are lucky the only serious repercussions will be a boycott of some of the opening or closing ceremonies, but it could escalate into another "Moscow" style general boycott.
In that case I WILL be saying; "I told you so!"
I still get upset when I think that we could be having the Olympics HERE this year!
(Plus, then I would have gotten a chance to go too!)
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site http://www.god-101.com/
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Toronto lost out to Atlanta for the Summer Olympics in a squeaker of a vote because of influence peddling by the U.S. government. Not a problem with that even though I was mildly pissed.
But, when Toronto beat out Paris and a host of other world-class cities only to lose to Beijing, that was a travesty.
The I.O.C. did what it thought was the "Politically Correct" thing to do and awarded China the Olympics and there has been second guessing ever since.
It seems that decision is now coming back to bite them in the ass.
First some of the major runners quit because of the pollution in Beijing and China starts censoring the Internet, and now Tibet is getting out of hand because they see a perfect opportunity to draw World attention to their Independence cause ahead of the opening ceremonies.
If we are lucky the only serious repercussions will be a boycott of some of the opening or closing ceremonies, but it could escalate into another "Moscow" style general boycott.
In that case I WILL be saying; "I told you so!"
I still get upset when I think that we could be having the Olympics HERE this year!
(Plus, then I would have gotten a chance to go too!)
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site http://www.god-101.com/
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
CONNECTIONS!
Another in the riveting series about how and why things work the way they do!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Saturday Night in Idaho!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site http://www.god-101.com/
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders' film about the Quran
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Ship Ahoy!
THE US NAVY'S NEWEST SHIP:THE USS RONALD REAGAN CVN 76
Seeing it next to the Arizona Memorial really puts its size into "Perspective!"
ENORMOUS!
When the Bridge pipes 'Man the Rail' there is a lot of rail to man on this monster shoulder to shoulder, around 4.5 acres. Her displacement is about 100,000 tons with full complement.
Capability:
Top speed exceeds 30 knots, powered by two nuclear reactors that can operate for more than 20 years without refueling
1. Expected to operate in the fleet for about 50 years
2. Carries over 80 combat aircraft�
3. Three arresting cables can stop a 28-ton aircraft going 150 miles per hour in less than 400 feet
Size:
Towers 20 stories above the waterline�
1. 1092 feet long; nearly as long as the Empire StateBuilding is tall
2. Flight deck covers 4.5 acres
3. 4 bronze propellers, each 21 feet across, weighing 66,200 pounds
4. 2 rudders, each 29 by 22 feet and weighing 50 tons
5. 4 high speed aircraft elevators, each over 4,000 square feet
Capacity:
Home to about 6,000 Navy personnel
1. Carries enough food and supplies to operate for 90 days
2. 18,150 meals served daily
3. Distillation plants provide 400,000 gallons of fresh water from sea water daily, enough for 2000 homes
4. Nearly 30,000 light fixtures and 1,325 miles of cable and wiring, 1,400 telephones
5. 14,000 pillowcases and 28,000 sheets
6. Costs the Navy approximately $250,000 per day for pier side operation
7. Costs the Navy approximately $25 million per day for underway operations.
(Sailor's salaries included)
CDN NAVY WELCOMES HMCS JEAN CHRETEIN.
Sunday July 2nd 2006 Leaving Vancouver , BC
The DND welcomed the latest member of its fleet today.
The ship is the first of its kind in the Navy and is a standing legacy to Jean Chretien 'for his foresight in military budget cuts' and his conduct while prime minister.
CDN NAVY WELCOMES HMCS JEAN CHRETEIN.
Sunday July 2nd 2006 Leaving Vancouver , BC
The DND welcomed the latest member of its fleet today.
The ship is the first of its kind in the Navy and is a standing legacy to Jean Chretien 'for his foresight in military budget cuts' and his conduct while prime minister.
The ship is constructed nearly entirely from recycled aluminum and is completely solar powered with a top speed of 5 knots.
It boasts an arsenal comprised of one (unarmed) Seaking helicopter or one (unarmed) CF18 Hornet aircraft which, although they cannot be launched or captured on the 100 foot flight deck, form a very menacing presence.
As a standing order there are no firearms allowed on board. The 20-person crew is completely diversified, including members of all races, creeds, sex, and sexual orientation.
Don't ask-Don't tell.
This crew, the crew aboard the HMCS Jean Chretien, is specially trained to avoid conflicts and appease any and all enemies of Canada at all costs!
A Type One DNC Universal Translator can send messages of apology in any language to anyone who may find Canada offensive. The number of apologies are limitless and, though some may sound hollow and disingenuous , the Navy advises that all apologies will sound very sincere.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
More Random Rants!
Saw something today that totally surprised me!We all know that there are rattlesnakes in North America but did you know that 8-10 THOUSAND people are bitten by them every year?
Fortunately, with anti-venom easily available only a handful of victims actually die from these bites! But God help you if you're miles in the bush hunting or fishing!
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We all know about the gang problem and organized crime in North America as well, but did you know one of the biggest gangs and source of organized crime are the Indians?
I'm not talking about the ones with the Turbans on their heads, I'm talking about the ones with the feathers!
As I have written a few times, one of the biggest cons they have going is the issue of "land claims!"
Since they are holding the government for ransom and not the average citizen they get away with a lot more and believe me, they are pushing as hard as they can!
It's really quite simple; Look at any land claim ever signed....... declare it unfair or better yet, null and void, and then re-occupy the land and hold it for ransom.
We had an Indian here in Ontario by the name of Dudley George, and he was killed by the cops during a standoff at Ipperwash Provincial Park in the 1990's. (Dudley was a member of the FBI.... A Fucking Big Indian!) (This is the best thing that ever happened to the Indians because they raised such a public stink about it that the cops are now afraid to do anything to them no matter how much they trample the law!)
On top of the hundreds of millions in land claims, they have moved into newly built subdivisions, claim it as theirs, and occupied the new houses. They claim rivers as their fishing territory and then charge anyone who builds within five miles of it a development fee.
(And this is in heavily populated Southern Ontario!)
They even tried to claim half of the City of Sarnia, but when talk among the white folk about "Lynchings" started to circulate, they gave that one up!
Now the latest scam is about to surface. Here is part of an article in the London Free Press this morning by MICHAEL OLIVEIRA, of Canada Press.
An alleged plan by Ontario Provincial Police to break up a native protest with force and the recent incarceration of aboriginal leaders for protesting a mining site on their land are threatening the already fragile relationship between First Nations and governments, aboriginal leaders said yesterday.Now kids, listen to this! Here is just how far the Indianscan go with the government. Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant said the government has already offered $200,000 toward the protesters' legal fees and is willing to do more if they decide to appeal their convictions.
Representatives from several northern Ontario First Nation communities gathered in Toronto to speak out against the cases of seven aboriginal protesters -- including a chief and deputy chief -- who last week were handed six-month jail sentences for violating court orders and continuing protests against mining on their traditional lands.
"The children of the jailed protesters will be without a parent for half a year, and the communities feel spurned by the Ontario government despite promises of a new, healthier relationship in the years ahead," said Chief Scott Jacob of the Webequie First Nation. "The decision last week to incarcerate (aboriginal) leadership to me is not a respectful, meaningful relationship," he said.
The Liberal government didn't want the protesters from the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First nation to receive jail sentences and petitioned to the court on their behalf, but Premier Dalton McGuinty said he can't undo the court's decision. "There's an independent judicial process," McGuinty said.
"There's no way that as long as they're incarcerated, we're going to be able to make much progress," Bryant said. "That's why we opposed in court their incarceration.."The Indians keep saying they will not tolerate this sort of situation...... when do we start saying the same thing!!!!!!!
But representatives from the KI and Ardoch Algonquin First Nations made it clear in a letter to McGuinty they don't feel the government is on their side.
"The indifference shown by your government towards the rights of First Nation communities, and the imposition of long jail terms and crippling fines in the name of the 'rule of law' has further eroded respect for both the legal system and the government of Ontario," the letter reads.
The communities were even more distressed after hearing a CBC report that alleged OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino told officers they should use force if necessary when facing protests during last June's aboriginal day of action.
"When people want to speak out for their rights and guns are pulled out . . . that is not right and that is not just and that is what's affecting our people today," said KI spokesperson John Cutfeet.
The CBC reported a series of notes handwritten by police officers outlined orders to carry out a morning raid of blockades that were set up on highways in eastern Ontario. The raid did not take place, and protesters eventually removed the barricades, but some notes said the scene verged on "anarchy" at times, and suggested Fantino "would not/could not tolerate (Highway) 401 being closed all day."
IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE WE HAVE A PROBLEM THEN READ THIS ARTICLE THAT WAS ON THE NEXT PAGE!
Police seized weapons including three grenade launchers yesterday during raids on a network accused of moving Quebec pot to the United States through Mohawk territory.Your "On the warpath" scribe;
A senior RCMP official says he was taken aback by the arms cache found during yesterday's bust.
"This isn't something you stumble across in every investigation," Supt. Steve Covey said.
Covey said police had no idea what the grenade launchers were going to be used for.
The heavy-duty weapons including several assault rifles were rounded up by 300 police officers who targeted Montreal and three aboriginal communities.
Raids were carried out by the Mounties, QPP and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.The raids took place in Montreal and the Mohawk communities of Kahnawake, Kanesatake and Akwesasne.
The small arsenal included two AK-47 and two M-16 assault rifles as well as $2 million in cash. Police also seized luxury vehicles and about 110 kilograms of cannabis.
Insp. Lino Maurizio of the Quebec provincial police said about 30 suspects were arrested and members of the ring will charged with offences including gangsterism, drug trafficking and conspiracy.
They will also face charges of possession of prohibited weapons.
Ten of the suspects were arrested in Akwesasne, near Cornwall eight in Kahnawake, south of Montreal, and one in the native community of Kanesetake.
The others were picked up in the Montreal area.
Gorden McGregor, president of Quebec's association of aboriginal community police chiefs, said a flood of drugs and money have caused serious harm to native communities.
"Imagine a little community when large amounts of money and drugs coming in like that, the trouble that comes with it," said McGregor.
"For us, our priority is drugs. Drug trafficking causes the biggest social problem in our communities."
Allan W Janssen
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
CONNECTIONS!
Another in the riveting series about how and why things work the way they do!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Fitna, Not-na!
There is a U.S. Internet service provider called Network Solutions that has just banned a Dutch film called "Fitna" because it goes against their "fair use" policy!
It claims the film advocates violence because it quotes passages of the Quran that sanctions the use of war and terrorism to promote and spread Islam.
Even though the film itself was not shown yet, but rather had a notice that it was coming, there was so much of an uproar from the Muslim community that the web-site was closed down by Network Solutions.
We can't even call this "Political Correctness" because terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaida have, or have had, sites on Network Solutions.
There is something rotten in Denmark (or in this case, the Netherlands!) as the old saying goes, and I'm not talking about just political cartoons here.
This might help explain the controversy better!
A lot of people are cancelling their subscriptions to Network Solutions because they gave in to radical Islamists............. and I don't blame them!
The main problem with Islam right now is that when radicals commit autrocities there is barely a murmour from the Muslim community at large, but if something seems to slight or denigrate THEM, then there is a great uproar and kerfufle including such extreme reactions as death threats and calls for revenge for damage to their "honor!"
Fitna will be on other sites by this weekend so let's see what happens!
Your confused scribe;
Allan W Janssen
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
It claims the film advocates violence because it quotes passages of the Quran that sanctions the use of war and terrorism to promote and spread Islam.
Even though the film itself was not shown yet, but rather had a notice that it was coming, there was so much of an uproar from the Muslim community that the web-site was closed down by Network Solutions.
We can't even call this "Political Correctness" because terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaida have, or have had, sites on Network Solutions.
There is something rotten in Denmark (or in this case, the Netherlands!) as the old saying goes, and I'm not talking about just political cartoons here.
This might help explain the controversy better!
A lot of people are cancelling their subscriptions to Network Solutions because they gave in to radical Islamists............. and I don't blame them!
The main problem with Islam right now is that when radicals commit autrocities there is barely a murmour from the Muslim community at large, but if something seems to slight or denigrate THEM, then there is a great uproar and kerfufle including such extreme reactions as death threats and calls for revenge for damage to their "honor!"
Fitna will be on other sites by this weekend so let's see what happens!
Your confused scribe;
Allan W Janssen
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
MSG - WTF
The food additive MSG (Mono-Sodium Glutamate) is a slow poison.
MSG hides behind 25 or more names, such as "Natural Flavoring."
I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, and so did a friend of mine, John Erb. He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo in Ontario , Canada , and spent years working for the government. He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called The Slow Poisoning of America.
In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies. No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so scientists have to create them. They make these creatures morbidly obese by injecting them with MSG when they are first born.
The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats (and perhaps humans) to become obese. They even have a name for the fat rodents they create: "MSG-Treated Rats."
When I heard this, I was shocked. I went into my kitchen and checked the cupboards and the refrigerator. MSG was in everything -- the Campbell 's soups, the Hostess Doritos, the Lays flavored potato chips, Top Ramen, Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Swanson frozen prepared meals, and Kraft salad dressings, especially the "healthy low-fat" ones.
The items that didn't have MSG marked on the product label had something called "Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein," which is just another name for Monosodium Glutamate.
It was shocking to see just how many of the foods we feed our children everyday are filled with this stuff.
MSG is hidden under many different names in order to fool those who read the ingredient list, so that they don't catch on. (Other names for MSG are "Accent, "Aginomoto," "Natural Meat Tenderizer," etc.)
But it didn't stop there.
When our family went out to eat, we started asking at the restaurants what menu items contained MSG. Many employees, even the managers, swore they didn't use MSG.
But when we ask for the ingredient list, which they grudgingly provided, sure enough, MSG and Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein were everywhere.
Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, every restaurant -- even the sit-down eateries like Applebee's, and Denny's -- use MSG in abundance.
Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to be the WORST offender: MSG was in every chicken dish, salad dressing. and gravy. No wonder I loved to eat that coating on the skin -- their secret spice was MSG!
So why is MSG in so many of the foods we eat? Is it a preservative, or a vitamin?
Not according to my friend John Erb. In his book The Slow Poisoning of America, he said that MSG is added to food for the addictive effect it has on the human body.
Even the propaganda website sponsored by the food manufacturers lobby group supporting MSG explains that the reason they add it to food is to make people eat more.
A study of the elderly showed that older people eat more of the foods that it is added to. The Glutamate Association lobbying group says eating more is a benefit to the elderly, but what does it do to the rest of us?
"Betcha can't eat [just] one," takes on a whole new meaning where MSG is concerned!
And we wonder why North Americans overweight!
MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn't added.
Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, it is an addictive substance.
Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the pre-packaged meals, soups, snacks, and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday.
In the States the FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food. They claim it's safe to eat in any amount. But how can they claim it's safe when there are hundreds of scientific studies that says they're not.
Both the "medical research community" and "food manufacturers" have known about the side effects of MSG for decades.
Many more of the studies mentioned in John Erb's book link MSG to diabetes, migraines and headaches, autism, ADHD, and even Alzheimer's.
So what can we do to stop the food manufactures from dumping this fattening and addictive MSG into our food supply and causing the obesity epidemic we now see?
Several months ago, John Erb took his book and his concerns to one of the highest government health officials in Canada.
While he was sitting in the government office, the official told him, "Sure, I know how bad MSG is. I wouldn't touch the stuff." But this top-level government official refuses to tell the public what he knows.
The big media doesn't want to tell the public either, fearing issues with their advertisers. It seems that the fallout on the fast food industry may hurt their profit margin.
The food producers and restaurants have been addicting us to their products for years, and now we are paying the price for it. Our children should not be cursed with obesity caused by an addictive food additive.
But what can I do about it? I'm just one voice! What can I do to stop the poisoning of our children, while our governments are insuring financial protection for the industry that is poisoning us?
This message is going out to everyone I know in an attempt to tell you the truth that the corporate-owned politicians and media won't tell you.
The best way you can help to save yourself and your children from this drug-induced epidemic is to forward this article to everyone. With any luck, it will circle the globe before politicians can pass the legislation protecting those who are poisoning us.
The food industry learned a lot from the tobacco industry. Imagine if big tobacco had a bill like this in place before someone blew the whistle on nicotine?
If you are one of the few who can still believe that MSG is good for us and you don't believe what John Erb has to say, see for yourself.
Go to the National Library of Medicine at www.pubmed.com.
Type in the words "MSG Obese" and read a few of the 115 medical studies that appear.
We the public do not want to be rats in one giant experiment, and we do not approve of food that makes us into a nation of obese, lethargic, addicted sheep, feeding the food industry's bottom line while waiting for the heart transplant, the diabetic-induced amputation, blindness, or other obesity-induced, life-threatening disorders.
With your help we can put an end to this poison.
Do your part in sending this message out by word of mouth, e-mail, or by distribution of this printout to your friends all over the world and stop this "Slow Poisoning of Mankind" by the packaged food industry.
Blowing the whistle on MSG is our responsibility, so get the word out.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
MSG hides behind 25 or more names, such as "Natural Flavoring."
I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, and so did a friend of mine, John Erb. He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo in Ontario , Canada , and spent years working for the government. He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called The Slow Poisoning of America.
In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies. No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so scientists have to create them. They make these creatures morbidly obese by injecting them with MSG when they are first born.
The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats (and perhaps humans) to become obese. They even have a name for the fat rodents they create: "MSG-Treated Rats."
When I heard this, I was shocked. I went into my kitchen and checked the cupboards and the refrigerator. MSG was in everything -- the Campbell 's soups, the Hostess Doritos, the Lays flavored potato chips, Top Ramen, Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Swanson frozen prepared meals, and Kraft salad dressings, especially the "healthy low-fat" ones.
The items that didn't have MSG marked on the product label had something called "Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein," which is just another name for Monosodium Glutamate.
It was shocking to see just how many of the foods we feed our children everyday are filled with this stuff.
MSG is hidden under many different names in order to fool those who read the ingredient list, so that they don't catch on. (Other names for MSG are "Accent, "Aginomoto," "Natural Meat Tenderizer," etc.)
But it didn't stop there.
When our family went out to eat, we started asking at the restaurants what menu items contained MSG. Many employees, even the managers, swore they didn't use MSG.
But when we ask for the ingredient list, which they grudgingly provided, sure enough, MSG and Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein were everywhere.
Burger King, McDonald's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, every restaurant -- even the sit-down eateries like Applebee's, and Denny's -- use MSG in abundance.
Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to be the WORST offender: MSG was in every chicken dish, salad dressing. and gravy. No wonder I loved to eat that coating on the skin -- their secret spice was MSG!
So why is MSG in so many of the foods we eat? Is it a preservative, or a vitamin?
Not according to my friend John Erb. In his book The Slow Poisoning of America, he said that MSG is added to food for the addictive effect it has on the human body.
Even the propaganda website sponsored by the food manufacturers lobby group supporting MSG explains that the reason they add it to food is to make people eat more.
A study of the elderly showed that older people eat more of the foods that it is added to. The Glutamate Association lobbying group says eating more is a benefit to the elderly, but what does it do to the rest of us?
"Betcha can't eat [just] one," takes on a whole new meaning where MSG is concerned!
And we wonder why North Americans overweight!
MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn't added.
Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, it is an addictive substance.
Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the pre-packaged meals, soups, snacks, and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday.
In the States the FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food. They claim it's safe to eat in any amount. But how can they claim it's safe when there are hundreds of scientific studies that says they're not.
Both the "medical research community" and "food manufacturers" have known about the side effects of MSG for decades.
Many more of the studies mentioned in John Erb's book link MSG to diabetes, migraines and headaches, autism, ADHD, and even Alzheimer's.
So what can we do to stop the food manufactures from dumping this fattening and addictive MSG into our food supply and causing the obesity epidemic we now see?
Several months ago, John Erb took his book and his concerns to one of the highest government health officials in Canada.
While he was sitting in the government office, the official told him, "Sure, I know how bad MSG is. I wouldn't touch the stuff." But this top-level government official refuses to tell the public what he knows.
The big media doesn't want to tell the public either, fearing issues with their advertisers. It seems that the fallout on the fast food industry may hurt their profit margin.
The food producers and restaurants have been addicting us to their products for years, and now we are paying the price for it. Our children should not be cursed with obesity caused by an addictive food additive.
But what can I do about it? I'm just one voice! What can I do to stop the poisoning of our children, while our governments are insuring financial protection for the industry that is poisoning us?
This message is going out to everyone I know in an attempt to tell you the truth that the corporate-owned politicians and media won't tell you.
The best way you can help to save yourself and your children from this drug-induced epidemic is to forward this article to everyone. With any luck, it will circle the globe before politicians can pass the legislation protecting those who are poisoning us.
The food industry learned a lot from the tobacco industry. Imagine if big tobacco had a bill like this in place before someone blew the whistle on nicotine?
If you are one of the few who can still believe that MSG is good for us and you don't believe what John Erb has to say, see for yourself.
Go to the National Library of Medicine at www.pubmed.com.
Type in the words "MSG Obese" and read a few of the 115 medical studies that appear.
We the public do not want to be rats in one giant experiment, and we do not approve of food that makes us into a nation of obese, lethargic, addicted sheep, feeding the food industry's bottom line while waiting for the heart transplant, the diabetic-induced amputation, blindness, or other obesity-induced, life-threatening disorders.
With your help we can put an end to this poison.
Do your part in sending this message out by word of mouth, e-mail, or by distribution of this printout to your friends all over the world and stop this "Slow Poisoning of Mankind" by the packaged food industry.
Blowing the whistle on MSG is our responsibility, so get the word out.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Bert and Ernie!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Lassie rescues toddler from well!
NEW DELHI, India - A 2-year-old girl who fell into a 45-foot well was rescued by Lassie late Wednesday after 27 hours, officials said. (It took Lassie that long to find her because of the remote location and language barriers.) Rescuers spent much of Wednesday trying to pull the girl, identified only as Vandana, from the narrow well in a village near Agra, the site of the famed Taj Mahal, (Where Lassie was visiting with Timmy.) said Mukesh Meshram, the top official in the district south of New Delhi.
At one point, they even played music into the hole to soothe the child, who fell into the well on Tuesday night.
Rescuers used heavy earth-moving equipment to help get the child out.
In video footage broadcast on Indian television, hundreds of people who gathered near the scene could be seen surging forward as a man flanked by soldiers carried Vandana from the hole to a waiting ambulance."The girl looked dazed and started crying," Meshram said. "She was immediately handed over to paramedics and doctors."
While Meshram could not provide details of the baby's condition, the CNN-IBN television station reported that she was in a good shape but was being held overnight for observation at a nearby hospital.
The footage recalled the ordeal of Jessica McClure, the 18-month-old girl who fell into a backyard well 20 years ago in Midland, Texas.
Her rescue from the 22-foot hole took 2 1/2 days because Lassie was on vacation, and captivated television viewers around the world.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Celebrities Exposed!
They all look good with make-up!
I would even say they all look GREAT with make-up.
But, get them on the street "au-naturel" and some of the shine seems to fade!
Some of these girls are still beauties without make-up, some are so-so, and a few of them are real "barkers!"
<--Sharon (Bark) Stone 
Jessica Simpson -->
<--Eva Longoria 
Vanessa Williams -->
Heidi Klum (You can't see Seal because he is standing in the shadows!)
Katie Couric -->
Pamela (Meow) Anderson
Madonna --)
Alicia Silverstone
Holly (Bark) Hunter -->
Lindsy (Bark) Lohan
Mischa Barton -->
Jennifer (Bark) Love (Bark) Hewitt and Fiancee'.
Sheryl (Bark) Crow. ->
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site http://www.god-101.com/
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
I would even say they all look GREAT with make-up.
But, get them on the street "au-naturel" and some of the shine seems to fade!
Some of these girls are still beauties without make-up, some are so-so, and a few of them are real "barkers!"
Liza Minelli -->
<--Sharon (Bark) Stone 
Jessica Simpson -->
<--Eva Longoria 
Vanessa Williams -->
Heidi Klum (You can't see Seal because he is standing in the shadows!)
Katie Couric -->
Pamela (Meow) Anderson
Madonna --)
Alicia Silverstone
Holly (Bark) Hunter -->
Lindsy (Bark) Lohan
Mischa Barton -->
Jennifer (Bark) Love (Bark) Hewitt and Fiancee'.
Sheryl (Bark) Crow. ->
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site http://www.god-101.com/
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
CONNECTIONS!
Another in the riveting series about how and why things work the way they do!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
40 Years in the Future
Guest post by James R. Berry (1968)
IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.
The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there’s no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated.
Suddenly your TV phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device. He wishes you good luck at the coming meeting and signs off.
Ninety minutes after leaving your home, you slide beneath the dome of your destination city. Your car decelerates and heads for an outer-core office building where you’ll meet your colleagues. After you get out, the vehicle parks itself in a convenient municipal garage to await your return. Private cars are banned inside most city cores. Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public from one location to another.
With the U.S. population having soared to 350 million, 2008 transportation is among the most important factors keeping the economy running smoothly. Giant transportation hubs called modemixers are located anywhere from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers. Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air, make the trip between modemixer and central city in 10 to 15 minutes.
A major feature of most modemixers is the launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets blast off for other continents. For less well-heeled travelers there are SST and hypersonic planes that carry 200 to 300 passengers at speeds up to 4,000 mph. Short trips— between cities less than 1,000 mi. apart—are handled by slower jumbo jets.
Homes in Mi’s 80th year are practically self-maintaining. Electrostatic precipitators clean the air and climatizers maintain the temperature and humidity at optimum levels. Robots are available to do housework and other simple chores. New materials for siding and interiors are self-cleaning and never peel, chip or crack.
Dwellings for the most part are assembled from prefabricated modules, which can be attached speedily in the configuration that best suits the homeowner. Once the foundation is laid, attaching the modules to make up a two- or three-bedroom house is a job that doesn’t take more than a day. Such modular homes easily can be expanded to accommodate a growing family. A typical wedding present for the 21st century newlyweds is a fully equipped bedroom, kitchen or living room module.
Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use.
The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance. Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units, communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even before any obvious breakdown occurs.
Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities. Not every family has its private computer. Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. The machine tallies up its own services and submits a bill, just as it does with other utilities.
Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card’s number is fed into the store’s computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.
Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier. TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center. You press another combination to zero in on the department and the merchandise in which you are interested.
When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance. Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.
People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn’t totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder’s spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments—on the average, about two hours of home study a day.
Most of this study is in the form of programmed TV courses, which can be rented or borrowed from tape _ * libraries. In fact most schooling—from first grade through college—consists of programmed TV courses or lectures via closed circuit. Students visit a campus once or twice a week for personal consultations or for lab work that has to be done on site. Progress of each student is followed by computer, which assigns end term marks on the basis of tests given throughout the term.
Besides school lessons, other educational material is available for TV viewing. You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously.
TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color and three dimensions. In addition to programmed TV and the multiplicity of commercial fare, you can see top Broadway shows, hit movies and current nightclub acts for a nominal charge. Best-selling books are on TV tape and can be borrowed or rented from tape libraries.
A typical vacation in 2008 is to spend a week at an undersea resort, where your hotel room window looks out on a tropical underwater reef, a sunken ship or an ancient, excavated city. Available to guests are two- and three-person submarines in which you can cruise well-marked underwater trails.
Another vacation is a stay on a hotel satellite. The rocket ride to the satellite and back, plus the vistas of earth and moon, make a memorable vacation jaunt.
While city life in 2008 has changed greatly, the farm has altered even more. Farmers are business executives running operations as automated as factories. TV scanners monitor tractors and other equipment computer programmed to plow, harrow and harvest. Wires imbedded in the ground send control signals to the machines.
Computers also keep track of yields-, fertilization, soil composition and other factors influencing crops. At the beginning of each year, a print-out tells the farmer what to plant where, how much to fertilize and how much yield he can expect.
Farming isn't confined to land. Mariculturists have turned areas of the sea into beds of protein-rich seaweed and algae. This raw material is processed into food that looks and tastes like steak and other meats. It also is cheap; families can have steak-like meals twice a day without feeling a budget pinch. Areas in bays or close to shore have been turned into shrimp, lobster, clam and other shellfish ranches, like the cattle spreads of yesteryear.
Medical research has guaranteed that most babies born in the 21st century will live long and healthy lives. Heart disease has virtually been eliminated by drugs and diet. If hearts or other major organs do give trouble, they can be replaced with artificial organs.
Medical examinations are a matter of sitting in a diagnostic chair for a minute or two, then receiving a full health report. Ultrasensitive microphones and electronic sensors in the chair's headrest, back and armrests pick up heartbeat, pulse, breathing rate, galvanic skin response, blood pressure, nerve reflexes and other medical signs. A computer attached to the chair digests these responses, compares them to the normal standard and prints out a full medical report.
No need to worry about failing memory or intelligence either. The intelligence pill is another 21st century commodity. Slow learners or people struck with forgetful-ness are given pills which increase the production of enzymes controlling production of the chemicals known to control learning and memory. Everyone is able to use his full mental potential.
Despite the fact that the year 2008 is only 40 years away—as far ahead as 1928 is in the past—it will be a world as strange to us as our time (1968) would be to the pilgrims. •
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
IT’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.
The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there’s no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated. Suddenly your TV phone buzzes. A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device. He wishes you good luck at the coming meeting and signs off.
Ninety minutes after leaving your home, you slide beneath the dome of your destination city. Your car decelerates and heads for an outer-core office building where you’ll meet your colleagues. After you get out, the vehicle parks itself in a convenient municipal garage to await your return. Private cars are banned inside most city cores. Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public from one location to another.
With the U.S. population having soared to 350 million, 2008 transportation is among the most important factors keeping the economy running smoothly. Giant transportation hubs called modemixers are located anywhere from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers. Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air, make the trip between modemixer and central city in 10 to 15 minutes.
A major feature of most modemixers is the launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets blast off for other continents. For less well-heeled travelers there are SST and hypersonic planes that carry 200 to 300 passengers at speeds up to 4,000 mph. Short trips— between cities less than 1,000 mi. apart—are handled by slower jumbo jets.Homes in Mi’s 80th year are practically self-maintaining. Electrostatic precipitators clean the air and climatizers maintain the temperature and humidity at optimum levels. Robots are available to do housework and other simple chores. New materials for siding and interiors are self-cleaning and never peel, chip or crack.
Dwellings for the most part are assembled from prefabricated modules, which can be attached speedily in the configuration that best suits the homeowner. Once the foundation is laid, attaching the modules to make up a two- or three-bedroom house is a job that doesn’t take more than a day. Such modular homes easily can be expanded to accommodate a growing family. A typical wedding present for the 21st century newlyweds is a fully equipped bedroom, kitchen or living room module.
Other conveniences ease kitchenwork. The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use.
The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance. Sensors in kitchen appliances, climatizing units, communicators, power supply and other household utilities warn the computer when the item is likely to fail. A repairman will show up even before any obvious breakdown occurs.Computers also handle travel reservations, relay telephone messages, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, compute taxes and even figure the monthly bills for electricity, water, telephone and other utilities. Not every family has its private computer. Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. The machine tallies up its own services and submits a bill, just as it does with other utilities.
Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card’s number is fed into the store’s computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.
Computers not only keep track of money, they make spending it easier. TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center. You press another combination to zero in on the department and the merchandise in which you are interested.
When you see what you want, you press a number that signifies “buy,” and the household computer takes over, places the order, notifies the store of the home address and subtracts the purchase price from your bank balance. Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.
People have more time for leisure activities in the year 2008. The average work day is about four hours. But the extra time isn’t totally free. The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder’s spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments—on the average, about two hours of home study a day.
Most of this study is in the form of programmed TV courses, which can be rented or borrowed from tape _ * libraries. In fact most schooling—from first grade through college—consists of programmed TV courses or lectures via closed circuit. Students visit a campus once or twice a week for personal consultations or for lab work that has to be done on site. Progress of each student is followed by computer, which assigns end term marks on the basis of tests given throughout the term.
Besides school lessons, other educational material is available for TV viewing. You simply press a combination of buttons and the pages flash on your home screen. The world’s information is available to you almost instantaneously.
TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color and three dimensions. In addition to programmed TV and the multiplicity of commercial fare, you can see top Broadway shows, hit movies and current nightclub acts for a nominal charge. Best-selling books are on TV tape and can be borrowed or rented from tape libraries.
A typical vacation in 2008 is to spend a week at an undersea resort, where your hotel room window looks out on a tropical underwater reef, a sunken ship or an ancient, excavated city. Available to guests are two- and three-person submarines in which you can cruise well-marked underwater trails.Another vacation is a stay on a hotel satellite. The rocket ride to the satellite and back, plus the vistas of earth and moon, make a memorable vacation jaunt.
While city life in 2008 has changed greatly, the farm has altered even more. Farmers are business executives running operations as automated as factories. TV scanners monitor tractors and other equipment computer programmed to plow, harrow and harvest. Wires imbedded in the ground send control signals to the machines.
Computers also keep track of yields-, fertilization, soil composition and other factors influencing crops. At the beginning of each year, a print-out tells the farmer what to plant where, how much to fertilize and how much yield he can expect.
Farming isn't confined to land. Mariculturists have turned areas of the sea into beds of protein-rich seaweed and algae. This raw material is processed into food that looks and tastes like steak and other meats. It also is cheap; families can have steak-like meals twice a day without feeling a budget pinch. Areas in bays or close to shore have been turned into shrimp, lobster, clam and other shellfish ranches, like the cattle spreads of yesteryear.
Medical research has guaranteed that most babies born in the 21st century will live long and healthy lives. Heart disease has virtually been eliminated by drugs and diet. If hearts or other major organs do give trouble, they can be replaced with artificial organs.
Medical examinations are a matter of sitting in a diagnostic chair for a minute or two, then receiving a full health report. Ultrasensitive microphones and electronic sensors in the chair's headrest, back and armrests pick up heartbeat, pulse, breathing rate, galvanic skin response, blood pressure, nerve reflexes and other medical signs. A computer attached to the chair digests these responses, compares them to the normal standard and prints out a full medical report.
No need to worry about failing memory or intelligence either. The intelligence pill is another 21st century commodity. Slow learners or people struck with forgetful-ness are given pills which increase the production of enzymes controlling production of the chemicals known to control learning and memory. Everyone is able to use his full mental potential.
Despite the fact that the year 2008 is only 40 years away—as far ahead as 1928 is in the past—it will be a world as strange to us as our time (1968) would be to the pilgrims. •
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
If IKEA were a car manufacturer!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
The Plain Truth About Jesus.
I first started researching Biblical lore in the late 1990's and published my book "The Plain Truth About God"@ in 2002.
The Bible, Jesus and Religion in general have been in the public eye for a few years now, helped along by such works as "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and it's rip-off "The Da Vinci Code."
Here in Canada, Macleans Magazine is comming out with an article on Jesus this week and it is interesting enough that I am going to reproduce it here for anyone in Europe or elsewhere who might not get the story!
Guest Post by Brian Bethune; (I wonder if he is related to Dr. Norman Bethune?)
The article is rather long but will be well worth the read!
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
The Bible, Jesus and Religion in general have been in the public eye for a few years now, helped along by such works as "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and it's rip-off "The Da Vinci Code."
Here in Canada, Macleans Magazine is comming out with an article on Jesus this week and it is interesting enough that I am going to reproduce it here for anyone in Europe or elsewhere who might not get the story!
Guest Post by Brian Bethune; (I wonder if he is related to Dr. Norman Bethune?)
The article is rather long but will be well worth the read!
"Whom do men say that I am?" Jesus's own query to his disciples, asked in the oldest Gospel (Mark 8:27), has always been the ultimate question of the faith founded in his name.
The answer has determined everything from core doctrine to the authority of the clergy.
Even during his lifetime, Jesus's followers had differing answers: he was a rabbi with a new approach to Jewish law; he was the rightful claimant to the throne of David.
After his death, it took more than three centuries of often violent contention, suppression, and historical contingency before answers emerged that still define mainline Christianity: Jesus was the Messiah, the son of God and the Virgin Mary, both fully divine and fully human; crucified for our sins, he rose from the dead and will come again to judge humanity.
Orthodoxy's victory has never been final, or else there would never have been an Inquisition.
Still, reinforced by church and state, and by belief in the New Testament as an exact account of events (the "Gospel truth"), the concept of the divine Christ, our Lord and saviour, became embedded in Western civilization.
That legacy still dominates Western responses to Jesus today, affecting not just what the faithful proclaim, but the attitudes of Jesus's secular admirers.
But over the past century, historians, archaeologists, textual and linguistic scholars in a steadily more secular West, unable to accept the miracle-working Christ of tradition, have uncovered the all-too-human way in which early Christians hammered out their dogma and holy scripture, recovered startlingly unfamiliar texts — such as the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, in 2006 — held dear by the losers in the long-ago orthodoxy wars, and arrived at new interpretations of Jesus based on the context of his life, his essential Jewishness and the socio-political unrest of first-century Palestine.
For large swaths of the devout, little has changed.
Fundamentalist Protestant churches — so-called because of their fundamental principles, one of which is insistence that the whole of the Bible is the literal word of God — looked hard at what was happening in the modern world and refused to yield an inch to modern science or Biblical scholarship.
Other churches, like the Orthodox or Roman Catholic, who possess a body of tradition to buttress their scriptures, are open to viewing, and reviewing, parts of the Bible — particularly in the Old Testament — while holding fast to the divine Christ of the New Testament.
Their Christ too remains an exalted figure; as does, ironically, the Jesus envisaged by so many scholars: Biblical experts have tended to feel (as much as think) that Jesus must have been a great moral teacher — and even a pioneering feminist — so incandescently holy that some of his disciples turned him into a god.
In Vancouver writer (and Greenpeace International co-founder) Rex Weyler's new survey of the latest research, The Jesus Sayings: The Quest for His Authentic Message (Anansi), for instance, (See also "The Jesus Tapes, in my book The Plain Truth About God")) Christ emerges as a revolutionary sage, a man for the ages whose "words and deeds are sublime."
Even in "How Jesus Became a Christian" (Random House), by Barrie Wilson, a religious studies professor at Toronto's York University — which is primarily concerned with arguing that St. Paul and later "Christifiers" hijacked Jesus the Jewish rabbi through a campaign of anti-Semitism — Jesus still emerges as "a teacher of great insight."
But despite the common celebration of Jesus Christ, a chasm exists between the devout followers of the divine Christ and the seekers of the Jesus of history.
Into that chasm falls the liberal church, according to Gretta Vosper, author of With or Without God (HarperCollins), a passionately argued case for a post-Christian church.
Vosper is pastor of West Hill United Church in suburban Toronto and a leading Canadian voice in progressive Christianity, on the radical edge of what is already the most liberal denomination in Canada.
The liberal Christian church, Vosper writes, is the original wellspring of the recent tradition-destroying Biblical scholarship, and it's liberal churches that have wrestled most painfully and — in a very real sense — least successfully with the implications of its discoveries.
Committed to the ideals of Biblical study and scholarly truth, but devoted to their own religious traditions, the liberal churches were unable to either turn their backs on modernity or to embrace it fully.
So liberals tried hard to turn the now shaky parts of the Gospels (the miracles, for instance) into metaphors, Vosper writes, in order to keep time-honoured creeds and ritual superï¬cially intact.
A conspiracy of silence about beliefs also played, and still plays, its part, she adds in an interview: "The liberal clergy have an unspoken covenant with congregants — you say nothing and we'll say nothing.
If the clergy do speak about their disbelief in basic doctrine, the result is often a lot of pain, up to job loss and even breakdown. There is no place of safety for them."
The result has been a mess of compromised integrity — "if 'Jesus is Lord' really means 'love is supreme,' why not say that?"
"We have all watched the gaping wound on the right grow as those who want the 'truth' laid out for them more clearly have left for more conservative denominations happy to give it to them," she notes. "But the wound on the left has gone unnoticed and has hemorrhaged into nothingness as religious quests have become spiritual quests unconnected with church."
It's beyond time for liberal Christianity, whose heritage and responsibility this all is, to act, writes Vosper. "Those who recognize the Bible's claim to be the word of God as the monster in the tub with the baby," are the ones who must throw that monster out with the bathwater.
And that means, besides other painful changes, a real, radical look at the words and deeds of the faith's central figure.
Half a century ago in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis, speaking from the perspective of traditional Christianity, warned those who were busy stripping Christ of his divinity (while attempting to keep his moral authority) that the task couldn't be done.
"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher [but] a lunatic, on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg," he wrote. "He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
Traditional Christians would agree; substitute, in the last sentence, the words "the authors of the Gospels" for "he," and so would almost everyone else. For the ruthlessly edited New Testament is forthright about its agenda: detailing the transformation of Jesus of Nazareth into Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
What you take from Scripture depends on how you read it.
For Lewis, who accepted the historical accuracy of the Gospels, if not the whole of Biblical inerrancy (such as the six-day creation in Genesis), Christ is not just the prophet of the Sermon on the Mount, and the healer of the sick.
He is also the figure who utters the New Testament's truly terrifying statements about eternal life and death.
It was Jesus who promised to separate humanity into sheep and goats, shepherding the former to heaven and casting the latter "into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25: 41).
It was Jesus again who said that on Judgment Day, even some who preached in his name would hear the words, "I never knew you, depart from me." (Matthew 7: 23)
Such a figure, in Lewis's opinion, were he only a mortal man, could rightfully be judged mad.
But modern historians sweep all that away, along with the miraculous elements, including the whole of Jesus's childhood.No virgin birth: it's found only in two Gospels, they point out, and it's clear that St. Paul, the earliest writer in the New Testament, had no time for the idea.
No wise men, no heavenly choir of angels at the stable manger, no debating the elders at age 12 — all of it retroactively applied by his followers.
More crucial losses are words claimed as Christ's own.
A decade ago, the Jesus Seminar, the most famous (and notorious) group active in Biblical criticism, using comparative history and textual analysis, ended up being sure Christ said less than a fifth of what was attributed to him.
Members rejected verses where Jesus referred to himself, particularly in an exalted way, such as, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), and verses reflective less of his teachings and more of struggles to control the nascent church after his death: "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church" (Matthew 16:17).
And since the seminar was convinced Jesus did not preach an imminent, apocalyptic end to the world, but instead a message about how to establish the kingdom of God on earth, the rejected 80 per cent of his sayings also included all the judgmental declarations.
Not all scholars are in full agreement with the seminar (some fundamentalist organizations, unsurprisingly, have referred to it as "a tool of Satan"), but the broad outlines are widely accepted in the field.
Weyler's reconstruction of the authentic Jesus essentially follows those lines. His primary sources are what some scholars define as the oldest versions of three "collections": the Gospels of Mark and Thomas, and the Q sayings.
(The Thomas text, the jewel of the treasure trove of Gnostic Christian writings, found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, was rejected by the orthodox 1,600 years ago, but the 114 pithy and often cryptic statements in it, attributed to Jesus, have made it a favourite among historians. Q is a hypothetical document, a lost collection of sayings assumed to explain the material common to the Gospels of Luke and Matthew that did not come from Mark's Gospel, their other main source.)
The "radical, Aramaic-speaking, Jewish Jesus" who emerges in Weyler's book makes no divine claims, requires no supernatural beliefs on the part of his hearers, and demands action now.
The poor, Christ would tell his audience of peasants and day labourers, were fortunate to be suffering, for that brought them closer to the kingdom of God.
The rich, especially the temple elite obsessed with rote purity, are far from God.
Seek his kingdom within yourself, don't worry about food or clothing, accept your daily bread and share it, love your enemies, forgive others as you wish to be forgiven: God's kingdom is here, now, for those who have eyes to see.
Although many historians would not find Jesus's message as radical a break from the past as Weyler does, in his intense Jewishness, Weyler's Jesus fits comfortably with the historical figure now envisaged by almost all scholars.
What kind of Jew is an entirely different matter.
More than a decade ago, John Dominic Crossan, one of the most prominent Roman Catholic experts, noted no fewer than seven distinct types of Jewish Jesus, ranging from political revolutionary to charismatic seer.
More, including Weyler's Galilean peasant preacher at odds with the Judaism of Jerusalem's Temple elite, have emerged since.
Many of them are much more worldly than Weyler's, and just as novel.
Consider the head of the "family firm" who emerges in James Tabor's The Jesus Dynasty. (2006)
Traditional Christianity has always had trouble with Christ's "brethren" — James, Joses, Simon, Judas and unnamed sisters.
Orthodox Christianity accepts the brethren as step-siblings, the children of Joseph's first marriage; Protestants take them as half-siblings, the children of Mary and Joseph born after Jesus, the son of Mary and God; Roman Catholics, who proclaim the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity, have to view them as cousins.
Every time they appear in scripture identified as family, the Gospel writers stress they are not among his followers.
That means they have to gloss over the fact that St. Paul writes that the risen Christ appeared to James, and that James — Jesus's oldest male relative in a family-dominated society — took precedence over all other followers and became leader of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem.
In Tabor's family saga, Jesus and his cousin John the Baptist considered themselves to be the two messiahs: John as a descendent of Moses's brother Aaron, was to be the new high priest; Jesus, the descendent of King David, the new king of the Jews.
His brother James was more than Jesus's heir, he was the "beloved disciple" of the Gospel of John, commonly reckoned to be John himself by most Christians. (although Mary Magdalene is the favourite as the "beloved" of Da Vinci Code fans and many feminist theologians)
And Jesus's other brothers, far from rejecting his mission, are actually hiding in plain sight among the lists of apostles.
Jesus's Jerusalem followers were the original "Christians," although Barrie Wilson would argue they would neither recognize nor accept the name.
Now commonly called Ebionite Christians, from a Hebrew word meaning "poor ones," they were Torah-observant Jews as well as followers of Jesus, who regarded him as a human messianic prophet but not as divine.
Their concern, embodied by James — known as "the Just" to Jews as well as Christians — was to live rigorously ethical lives. And, under the rule of the "royal" family, they were the dominant strand among the Jesus movement, even while Paul tirelessly travelled the Mediterranean converting Gentiles.
Most scholars argue it's impossible to know what path Christianity might have taken if the Jerusalem church had not become caught up in the greatest cataclysm ever visited on the religious traditions of ancient Israel.
When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and its temple in 70 CE, the Gentile church began its ascendency. By the second century, the forces of orthodoxy began to turn on the Ebionites, and by the fourth century they disappeared from history.
In current scholarly trends, Jesus emerges as ever more Jewish and ever more human — a teacher, a rabbi, a claimant to Israel's ancient throne — who was transformed by Paul, a preacher of genius, in cultures far from his Jewish roots, into the divine saviour of mankind.
But crucial as these claims are for orthodox Christians and for the scholars and writers involved, they are increasingly irrelevant for progressive Christians.
They long ago lost their stake in the divine Christ, and their interest in which of the evolving paradigms best captures the historical Jesus is fading.
When Gretta Vosper looks at the emerging historical Jesus she sees no rock on which to erect a church. "In trying to capture exactly what he said, we have found, quite by accident, that what he said has little power."
But when she weighs up the Jesus legacy in terms of its validity and usefulness for the church today, she considers the entire Gospel tradition — not just the Jesus meek and mild of the scholars and spiritual seekers, but the divine Christ too.
It's all part of the Christian heritage in her view.
If the liberal church is going to refuse to face the implications of its own beliefs, then what matters is what is in the Bible, what has been proclaimed truth for centuries: "If we say we follow Jesus without clariï¬cation, we allow the assumption that we agree with all of his ideas, including the bad ones."
Looking over the New Testament, Vosper notes numerous bad ideas, some of them deep within Jesus's core message.
His teaching about love and forgiveness long predate him, within his own Jewish tradition and without.
And those are the helpful parts of his beliefs, which, Vosper argues, mix freely with parts liberal Christians no longer accept: no divorce, hell, eternal punishment.
He taught acquiescence in oppression, "a stance not at all helpful in ending slavery, racism, patriarchal hierarchy, and so on."
There is disdain and derision for those who don't agree with him, "but I suggest that we now hold dialogue, diversity and community as higher values."
Living without care for the future, keeping all assets in common, giving all we have to the poor, are other key parts of the authentic teaching as identified by Weyler and others.
That utopian idealism was perfectly natural to the hopes of an oppressed peasant society, Vosper writes, but humans have never managed to put it into practice, and surely never will.
To try to act that way only serves "to abdicate the responsibilities we have to one another — conscientious, ethical oversight of our resources is a more prudent and potentially beneficial response."
In short, "Jesus's moral teaching is not outstanding," and it's impossible to craft a moral high ground from his life, works and sayings: "His words are dead to many people. The world has changed. The words don't make sense any more."
And they aren't necessary. "Why do we need a 'revolutionary' voice from two millennia ago to guide us? We have fabulous ideas of our own, that are constantly weakened by having to tie them back to Jesus and Scripture.
What if he was recorded destroying his environment, would that mean we'd no longer need to be environmentally sensitive, or have to ignore the environment?"
Vosper isn't so much prepared for the obvious questions she faces as inured to them.
She's often asked, with various degrees of incredulity and indignation how, in the name of God or Love (if she prefers), she can call herself a Christian.
Because, she replies, her Christianity, like that of the Ebionites, is more a way of acting than a way of belief. "Being a Christian is about taking out of my faith tradition those things that are of value in my effort to live right with myself, with my relationships and with my planet," Vosper says. "And removing those things that are toxic."
Nor is the name essential, at least to Vosper personally, except that maintaining the word Christian is encouraging for other non-theistic churchgoers. "People are hurt by being told they're not Christian: our 'beliefs' are so fundamental, even when we don't really, literally believe them, that we don't want to be told that we don't belong."
Vosper doesn't "want to tear anyone's faith out of their hearts," and doesn't want to see that happen to progressives either.
Three years ago, after her views became known to the wider United Church, a motion was introduced at a meeting of the church's governing body to subject her to what she only half-jokingly calls a "heresy" trial.
She escaped a trial only by a vote of 14 to 11.
She wouldn't be surprised to undergo an actual trial this time around, after "With or Without God" arrives in bookstores this week.
In the very broad United Church, clergy are expected to be in "essential" agreement with the articles of faith, "and this book," she says gingerly, "will establish just how elastic that agreement is."
Vosper doesn't seem unduly concerned with the prospect of trial or with the possibility of losing, except for what it would convey to others she cares about: "Saying that I don't belong is saying that my supportive congregation doesn't belong, and that would be tragic."
Her reaction to the possibility of effective excommunication is bound up with her answer to the other question frequently hurled at her: why bother? If there's no divine Christ, no miracles, no salvation, no life after death, no God — what is the point of church at all?
Part of the answer is practical. "Because we are killing each other and the world," she says matter-of-factly.
"Because we have the means to do something about it — churches have so many outlets, no other single organization can disseminate important messages like the church can." Or provide, in Western culture, the sense of community that churches can offer.
And because she does not want to abandon the field to fundamentalism.
Not many Christians will be able to follow Vosper down her path, even if they are conscious of the problem she's attempting to solve: reconciling a religion of revealed truth and sacred scripture grounded in 2,000-year-old experiences, with all humanity has learned since, not just about the natural world, but about the human roots of that faith.
Most will not even accept Vosper as a fellow Christian. But there is no denying the problem she identifies is real for many.
Millions of Christians are satisfied with the balance of faith and reason in their religion, or unconcerned with it, but millions of others remain in church only by wilfully severing head and heart.
Those who cannot do that, or cannot any longer, will continue to seek a way out.
Allan W Janssen is the author of the book The Plain Truth About God (What the mainstream religions don't want you to know!) and is available at the web site www.God-101.com
Visit the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com
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