Don't do that, it's BAD for you!

Coffee is bad for you. No it's not, it's GOOD for you!

OK, sugar is bad for you. No it's not, sugar is good for you!

Red meat and eggs are bad for you. No, they are GOOD for you!

Well, a couple of ounces of alcohol is good for you. No it's not, alcohol is BAD for you!

Who knows what is what anymore. Take just about anything or any situation and there are the pluses and minuses for each side.

The same thing goes for life and living in general.

In the past there have been rumours and stories about all kinds of things that weren't true but caught the public imagination.

"It was the Jews who killed Christ!" No it wasn't, it was the Romans! Who else did you think it was, the Mexicans?

Columbus discovered America. No it wasn't, it was the Vikings on the east coast and the Indians about 10-15 thousand years before that on the west coast.

Also the Polynesians at some time in the past, down in South America.

Christ was resurrected for our sins! No he wasn't. When and if he was crucified he was dead as a doornail.......... and stayed that way!

God works in mysterious ways............. O.K. I'll give you that one!

The first world war was started by political maneuvering and unrest in the Balkans!

No it wasn't, it was a family feud between the royal houses of Europe, the same as always. (Up until then.)

The second world war was started by the Nazi's. No it wasn't, the second world war was started by the heavy conditions and and reparations that were imposed on the German people by the allies after the first world war.

And while we are on the subject.......... the Catholic church turned their back on the Jews during the second world war.

This last one has gained a lot of acceptance in the last while but nothing could be further from the truth!!!

In fact in 1945 the World Jewish Congress donated a great deal of money to the Vatican, with Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem thanking Pope Pius XII, "for his lifesaving efforts on behalf of the Jews during the occupation of Italy."

When the Pope died in 1958 Golda Meir, then Israeli foreign minister, gave a eulogy at the United Nations praising the man for his efforts on behalf of the Jewish people.

The attacks on the Pope only really began in the 1960s when leftist German playwright Rolf Hochhuth claimed in his play, The Deputy, that the Vatican did little to save the Jews and even collaborated with the Nazis.

Nonsense. As was British author John Cornwall's 1999 book, Hitler's Pope. Its dust jacket featured a photograph of Pope Pius walking past German soldiers.

(It was not explained that the picture was taken long before Hitler came to power and the soldiers were part of the anti-Nazi Wiemar Republic.)

Before he became Pope Pius, Cardinal Pacelli drafted the papal encyclical denouncing Nazi anti-Semitism. The Vatican used its assets to ransom Jews from the Nazis, ran an elaborate escape route and hid Jewish families throughout Italy.

Now I have ranted about how the Bible is not actual history but rather a collection of stories and parables and metaphors about Jesus that were eventually turned into the modern tales of Christ and the basis for the Christian church.

BUT, never mind two thousand year old history, some of the more recent stuff is highly suspect as well.

Your "always trying to set the record straight" 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

Forty Years Ago

If you were watching the nightly news with Walter Cronkite forty years ago, this is what you would have seen! Vietnam was on everbody's mind!


This is that young girl after she grew up!





And, if you had a crystal ball, this is some of the stuff the rest of the year held in store for us.


Goldie Hawn made her debut and Martin Luther King made his exit.



















Hair was growing and Bobby Kennedy was cut short.





The Beatles had their White Album




Kent State had it's riot.

Nixon arrived and so did Black Power. Both of them didn't last very long!
















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!

These documentaries by James Burke are among the best series of programs that have ever been produced. (Equal to the "Cosmos" series by Carl Sagan!)

Although they were made over twenty years ago the subject matter of these works is timeless and it's presentation is flawless.

The first in the series; "The day the Universe changed," was a ten part series presented here in full and it dealt with the impact certain inventions had in changing history.

The next few; "Connections," Connections II," Connections III," and "Re-Connections," all look at how our modern world is interconnected and when one event occures, how it can have far reaching implications and be connected to other events in ways that we did not, and could not, know!

I am going to present a short clip from this series every day, Monday to Friday, and I promise you that following them will be well worth it! Enjoy!

Episode 1-1



James Burke, the creator and host of 'Connections', explains the Haber-Bosch Process Connections was a ten-episode documentary television series created and narrated by science historian James Burke.

The series was produced and directed by Mick Jackson of the BBC Science & Features Department and first aired in 1978.

It took an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention and demonstrates how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events built off one another in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology.

The series is well-known for Burke's impeccable narration (especially its dry humour), historical reenactments, intricate working models, skillful use of classical music (most notably Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi, or "O Fortuna" from Carmina Burana), and shots on location as far afield as Penang (Malaysia).

The popular success of the series led to two sequels, Connections² in 1994, and Connections³ in 1997, both produced for TLC.

Modern soldiers demonstrate the use of steel-tipped pikes by the Swiss against Charles the Bold in one of the many reenactments used in Connections.Connections explores an "Alternative View of Change" (the subtitle of the series) that rejects the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress.

Burke contends that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation. Rather, the entire gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting in rational self-interest with no concept of the final, modern result of what either their or their contemporaries' actions finally lead to.

The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drives history and innovation, and is also the main focus of the series and its sequels.

To demonstrate this view, Burke begins each episode with a particular event or innovation in the past (usually Ancient or Medieval times) and traces the path from that event through a series of seemingly unrelated connections to a fundamental and essential aspect of the modern world.

For example, the program traces the invention of plastics from the development of the fluyt, a type of Dutch cargo ship.

Burke also explores three corollaries to his initial thesis.

The first is that, if history is driven by individuals who act only on what they know at the time and not because of any idea as to where their actions will eventually lead, then predicting the future course of technological progress is futile conjecture.

If we are astonished by the connections Burke is able to weave among past events, then we will be equally surprised by what the events of today eventually lead to, especially events we weren't even aware of at the time.

The second and third corollaries are explored most in the introductory and concluding episodes, and they represent the downside of an interconnected history.

If history progresses because of the synergistic interaction of past events and innovations, then as history does progress, the number of these events and innovations increases.

This increase in possible connections causes the process of innovation to not only continue, but to accelerate. Burke poses the question of what happens when this rate of innovation, or more importantly change itself, becomes too much for the average person to handle and what this means for individual power, liberty, and privacy.

Lastly, if the entire modern world is built from these interconnected innovations, all increasingly maintained and improved by specialists who required years of training to gain their expertise, what chance does the average citizen without this extensive training have in making an informed decision on practical technological issues, such as the building of nuclear power plants or the funding of controversial projects such as stem cell research?

Furthermore, if the modern world is increasingly interconnected, what happens when one of those nodes collapses? Does the entire system follow suit?


Connections (1978)
The Trigger Effect
Death in the Morning
Distant Voices
Faith in Numbers
The Wheel of Fortune
Thunder in the Skies
The Long Chain
Eat, Drink and Be Merry
Countdown
Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

Connections2 (1992)
Revolutions
Sentimental Journeys
Getting It Together
Whodunit?
Something for Nothing
Echoes of the Past
Photo Finish
Separate Ways
High Times
Déjà Vu
New Harmony
Hot Pickle
The Big Spin
Bright Ideas
Making Waves
Routes
One Word
Sign Here
Better Than the Real Thing
Flexible Response

Connections3 (1997)
Feedback
What's in a Name?
Drop The Apple
Invisible Object
Life is No Picnic
Elementary Stuff
A Special Place
Fire from the Sky
Hit the Water
In Touch

Follow this series with James Burke daily, Monday thru Friday, here on "Perspective" at http://god-101.blogspot.com/

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at http://www.god-101.com/

Thank You!

Subject: Message to www.god-101.com

recipient: allanjanssen@rogers.com

email: annwn@atlanticbb.net

full_name: Carolyn

comments:

Thank you so much for being the very first person I've come into contact with who actually gets history!

When you understand history/anthropology, the truth is simply logical, but believers sometimes have a difficult time with both history and logic. I've been saying for years that Xtianity is the 'original' cult.

Carolyn; Thank you, thank you. What a breath of fresh air to hear someone say that instead of calling me a Godless Bastard or Infidel.

The whole book is based on common sense and logic instead of superstition and dogma when looking at our belief systems.

It is my attempt to foster reason, not to denigrate religion.

Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at www.God-101.com and the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

The Factor of Ten!

A quick history lesson.

After much deliberation I have come to the conclusion that every atrocity claimed in war has to be put into it's proper "perspective." (Hence the name of this blog!)

I call this "The factor of Ten (10)."

I don't think I'm too far wrong!

Take any bad thing that the victors of a war have done to the loosing side, and multiply whatever number of dead, etc. by ten.

Take the number of dead, or whatever, that the winners claim the losers did to them and divide that number by ten.

That should be fairly accurate and applies to almost any situation in history.

To give you an example without raising too much stink here are two cases to think about where we, (The winners) juggled figures.

The Allies in the Second World War bombed Dresden and claimed they killed 50,000 people.

In actual fact, Dresden was a University town with absolutely no military value and was full of women and children fleeing the Russians. The allies didn't even use ordinary bombs, they used incendiary (fire) bombs.

Even people in underground shelters died because the fires sucked all the oxygen out of the air.

There were about 500,000 (10X) civilians killed! All of them toasted, roasted or suffocated!

The U.S. bombed Hiroshima with an atomic bomb and claimed 35,000 lives.

In actual fact there were about 350,000 (10X) civilians killed. Most of them burned to death or vaporized.

It doesn't matter whether you apply this rule of thumb to WW2 or WW1 or regional conflicts or historical battles or whatever. The numbers will always come out the same.

Rember my friends, history is written by the victors and nobody is as bad or as good as they seem!

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at http://www.god-101.com/ and the blog "Perspective" at http://god-101.blogspot.com/

Good Old Days #2

We showed you what life was like in the year 1500. Now let's get ahead about 400 years. The year is 1907. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes!

Here are some statistics for the Year 1907:

The average life expectancy was 47 years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in 1907 was 22 cents per hour.
The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
An accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.
Ninety percent of all doctors had NO UNIVERSITY EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as "substandard."
"Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee was fifteen cents a pound."
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering into the country for any reason.
Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."
Eighteen percent of households had at least one full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.A!

Now, I forwarded this from someone else without typing it myself, and sent it to you and others all over the United States & Canada, possibly the world, in a matter of seconds!
Try to imagine what it may be like in another 100 years.

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at http://www.god-101.com/