Acts 4:28

“to do whatever Your hand and purpose predestined to occur.”

ellauri155.html on line 689: You must also note that God predestines people such as Paul and his friends in Rom. 8:30, and Eph. 1:5, 11. There is, however, controversy as to the nature of this predestination. In the Reformed (Calvinist) camp, predestination includes individuals. In other words, the Reformed doctrine of predestination is that God predestines whom He wants to be saved and that without this predestination, none would be saved. The non-Reformed camp states that God predestines people to salvation, but that these people freely choose to follow God on their own. In other words, in the non-Reformed perspective, God is reacting to the will of individuals and predestining them only because they choose God, whereby contrast the Reformed position states that people choose God only because He has first predestined them. I must say that the non-reformed position 2) sounds like gobbledygook. Either you get predestined or you don´t, what the fuck. Who was it that thought predestination and free will were compatible, was it Hume? Yes it was! The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy paper on this topic is so wordy that it needed translating into Basic English.
ellauri155.html on line 721: Kantin tapaiset sakemanni idealisti pökiöt väittää, että jos halumme ja valintamme määräytyvät itse edeltäjien syiden mukaan, emme voisi koskaan valita muuta kuin me. Kun otetaan huomioon edeltävät syy-seurausolosuhteet, meidän on aina toimittava niin kuin teemme. Siksi emme voi olla vastuussa käyttäytymisestämme, koska tässä tapauksessa meillä ei ole käytettävissämme "todellisia vaihtoehtoja" tai "avoimia mahdollisuuksia". So what. Ei olekaan! Siinähän just talousliberaalit astuu paskaan.
ellauri155.html on line 754: By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.
ellauri155.html on line 763: And what pray, does this mean? It is just a clear declaration by the Lord that he finds nothing in men themselves to induce him to show kindness, that it is owing entirely to his own mercy, and, accordingly, that their salvation is his own work. Since God places your salvation in himself alone, why should you descend to yourself?
ellauri155.html on line 777: God’s thoughts are higher than man’s, and men will be trapped in a mental maze if they try to understand things that are beyond their human comprehension. So what the fuck do you bother us with them in the first place? Can´t you just get comfy in the institution and play with Nopperi blocks?
ellauri155.html on line 793: Another argument which they employ to overthrow predestination is that if it stand, all care and study of well doing must cease. For what man can hear (say they) that life and death are fixed by an eternal and immutable decree of God, without immediately concluding that it is of no consequence how he acts, since no work of his can either hinder or further the predestination of God?
ellauri155.html on line 795: What was Calvin’s answer? He reminds his readers what the predestinated are predestined to do! He points out what the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 1:4, where he reminds us that the end for which we are elected is “that we should be holy, and without blame before him.” “If the end of election is holiness of life, it ought to arouse and stimulate us strenuously to aspire to it, instead of serving as a pretext for sloth.” He develops how predestination should lead us to fear God all the more, and consequently should both comfort us and spur us on even in the worst of times to greater holiness.
ellauri155.html on line 870: Strawson’s purposed to dissolve the so-called problem of determinism and responsibility by drawing a contrast between two different perspectives we can take on the world: the ‘participant’ and ‘objective’ standpoints. These perspectives involve different explanations of other people’s actions. From the objective point of view, we see people as elements of the natural world, causally manipulated and manipulable in various ways. From the participant point of view, we see others as appropriate objects of ‘reactive attitudes’, attitudes such as gratitude, anger, sympathy and resentment, which presuppose the responsibility of other people. These two perspectives are opposed to one another, but both are legitimate. In particular, Strawson argues that our reactive attitudes towards others and ourselves are natural and irrevocable. They are a central part of what it is to be human. The truth of determinism cannot, then, force us to give up the participant standpoint, because the reactive attitudes are too deeply embedded in our humanity. Fuck humanity, and fuck viewpoints. Game theory is an optimization technology used by animals. As such it forms a part of the causal net.
ellauri155.html on line 899: I give back to the earth what the earth gave, Annan maalle takaisin maan antimet,
ellauri155.html on line 914: Blow what winds would, the ancient truth was mine, Sama puhalsiko tuuli, vanha totuus oli mulla,
ellauri155.html on line 972: Now, as to what I should like to do. It is to send Bertie £1,000 or $5000 a
ellauri155.html on line 995: me first, telling me what you think of the matter or what procedure would be
ellauri155.html on line 1013: Now she too is old and, I think, comparitively poor: and you see what she says
ellauri155.html on line 1035: draft of what I should say, which you may use to guide you, if you like. I also
ellauri155.html on line 1059: Sir” and “Yours truly” are perhaps not what they would say in England, but are
ellauri156.html on line 45: But here is the spoiler: What David's story tells us is that it is OK to be as awful and nasty a person privately as you could ever wish to be, as long as you end up as the overall winner of the cup. Winners can do nothing seriously wrong, because the victory at the end is the crucial thing. In terms of good old game theory: a virtuous life is no game of attrition, where every mistake counts and your deeds are toted up at the end. No, it is a winner takes all, you either win or lose at the end, whatever happens in subgames on the way is just wiped away. This applies to Dog himself, as Lauri Snellman with his nifty jesuitical game-theoretical theodicy argument has shown.
ellauri156.html on line 62: When my Grandmother Palmer was alive, she lived on a farm outside of Shelton, Washington. At the entrance to her driveway was a small lot, where a small mobile home was parked. As I recall, the woman who lived in the trailer and her husband were estranged. The husband, who had served time in prison, was prone to violence. When the husband came to the mobile home to see his wife, another man was there. An argument resulted, and blows were exchanged. Ultimately, the woman's visitor brandished a weapon and demanded that the husband leave. He left, but only while uttering threats about what he was yet to do.
ellauri156.html on line 68: Many tragic incidents occur as the unexpected outcome of a sequence of events. Certainly that is the case with King David. A little vacation from war leads to a day spent in bed, followed by a stroll along the roof of his palace as night begins to fall on Jerusalem. By chance, David sees a woman bathing herself, a sight which David fixes upon, his pecker coming instantly to attention, and then follows up on with an investigation as to her identity. The woman is shortly summoned to the palace and then to his bedroom, where David sleeps with her (well no, actually he spends time with her very much awake; what is meant by this euphemism is that he fucks the lady crazy.) Even though he has discovered she is the wife of Uriah, a warrior who is fighting for the army of Israel. Never mind. The woman becomes pregnant, and so David calls Uriah home, hoping it will be thought that he has gotten his wife pregnant. When this does not work, David gives orders to Joab, the commander of the army, which arranges for Uriah's death in battle. It looks like the perfect crime, but David's sin is discovered and dealt with by Nathan, the prophet of God. Nathan is Philip Roth's alter ego's name, Nathan Zuckerman! Can this be an accident? Jehova knows, it's too late to ask Phil.
ellauri156.html on line 100: 9 The Lord said to Egad, David’s seer, 10 “Go and tell David, ‘This is what the Lord says: I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you.’” 11 So Gad went to David and said to him, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Take your choice: 12 three years of famine, three months of being swept away[a] before your enemies, with their swords overtaking you, or three days of the sword of the Lord—days of plague in the land, with the angel of the Lord ravaging every part of Israel.’ Now then, decide how I should answer the one who sent me.”
ellauri156.html on line 241: I was in my bed a-sleepin', oh-boy, what a dream
ellauri156.html on line 242: I was in my bed sleepin', oh-boy, what a dream
ellauri156.html on line 283: The information David receives should be sufficient for him to end the matter, or more appropriately, to start it. If this woman is married, he has no business going any further. No matter how great his position and power, nothing gives him the right to take another man's wife. The pattern for David's actions is clearly outlined by Joseph, who was hotly pursued by his master's wife (but the shoe was on the other foot that time, a puma hunting for a young rattlesnake. And Joseph was a bachelor, so what was the sin in that?).
ellauri156.html on line 287: The report David is given concerning Bathsheba gives him all the information he needs, and more, if he is intent upon doing what is right. He knows Bathsheba is married and thus out of the question. He also knows Bathsheba is married to Uriah the Hittite. This is no nameless husband, someone David has never heard of before. David has to know Uriah, even if he does not know his wife. In 2 Samuel 23:39, “Uriah the Hittite” is named as one of David's mighty men, known for his bravery and courage as a soldier. If he does not know it, surely someone there among his servants would inform him.
ellauri156.html on line 309: To approach this same issue from the opposite perspective, think with me about the Book of Esther. When the king summoned his wife, Queen Vashti, to appear (perhaps in a way that would inappropriately display her goodies to the king's guests), she refused. She was removed (see Esther 1:1-22). She did not lose her life, but she was at least replaced by Esther, who had no such compunctions. Then, we read later in this same book that no one could approach the king unless he summoned them. If any approached the king and he did not raise his "scepter", they were put to death (Esther 4:10-11). Does this not portray the way of eastern kings? Does this not explain why Bathsheba went to the king's palace when summoned? Does this help to explain why she seems to have given in to the king's lustful acts? (We do not know what protests -- like Tamar's in chapter 13 -- she may have uttered, but we do have some sense of the powerlessness of a woman in those days, especially when given orders by the king. (Later on it became the requirement that a raped lady should kill herself to save her husband the disgrace of having horns.)
ellauri156.html on line 311: Now, having looked at the big picture, let's concentrate on the juicy details. The text informs us that David sees this woman bathing and notes that she is very beautiful. It is sometimes thought that David saw Bathsheba unclothed as she bathed herself publicly, and that the sight of her (unclothed/partially) body prompted David to act as he did. Virtually the identical words employed in our text (“very beautiful in appearance”) are found in Genesis 24:16 of Rebekah, as she came to the well with a water jug on her shoulder. She was neither naked nor partially clothed. Similar (though not identical) descriptions are found, where no exposure of the woman is indicated at all (see Genesis 12:11; 26:7; 29:17; Esther 1:1). I believe one of the reasons David summons Bathsheba to his palace is that he has not seen all that he wishes. (Haahaa! Bob, you are a little too bashful here. Most likely he wants to try on what he saw, like St. Thomas who wanted to put his finger in the wound. Seeing is not believing.)
ellauri156.html on line 319: It is not as if Bathsheba is acting in an unbecoming manner, knowing that men are around. She has every right to assume they are not. David is around, but he should not be. On top of this, she is not bathing herself at high noon; she is bathing herself in the evening. This is when the law prescribed (for ceremonial cleansing), and it is when the sun is setting. In other words, it is nearly dark when Bathsheba sets out to wash herself. David has to crane his neck and use his binoculars to see what he does. I believe Bathsheba makes every effort to assure her modesty, but the king's vantage point is too high, and he is looking with too much zeal. I am suggesting that David is much more of a peeping Tom than Bathsheba is an exhibitionist. I believe the text bears me out on this.
ellauri156.html on line 321: If I am right in what I have been saying, David's sin becomes that much more wicked. In some instances (if not most), a woman may purposely or unwittingly encourage the one who assaults her. In this case, there is not so much as a hint that this takes place. In fact, if I am reading the story accurately, David's “sighting” of Bathsheba is the result of her keeping the law, while David is failing his responsibilities as king. But not his duties as the king of the apes.
ellauri156.html on line 325: First, the root of David's sin is not low self-esteem; it is arrogance. (Since when is low self-esteem a sin? Well I bet it is for American believers. Think of Bill James' Will to Believe.) I am getting quite weary of hearing that the root of all evils is low self-esteem. I wonder why we see nothing of this in the Bible. David's problem is just the opposite. He has become puffed up and arrogant because of his success and status as Israel's king. He has come to see himself as different/better than the rest of the Israelites. They need to go to war; he does not. They need to sleep in the open field; he needs to get his rest in his own bed, in his palace. They can have a wife; he can have whatever woman he wants.
ellauri156.html on line 329: Sexual abuse and sexual harassment are just two of the ways people abuse their power. Parents begin to think they own their children, and that they can use their children to satisfy themselves, so they engage in various forms of abuse, often sexual in nature. Bosses get used to being in control and telling people what to do, and it should not be surprising to learn that they sometimes abuse their power over employees and subordinates to sexually satisfy themselves. This sin is no different from that of David. (Oh, oh, this is too good, my cup runneth over.)
ellauri156.html on line 367: There are two fascinating questions, which the text does not clearly seem to answer: (1) From what was Bathsheba purifying herself -- from her menstrual uncleanness, or from her uncleanness due to sexual intercourse? Both are dealt with in Leviticus 15.
ellauri156.html on line 378: Twenty-five years ago, hotel personnel noticed that a stairwell door lock had been taped in the open position. Burglars had broken in to readjust some of the bugging equipment installed in an earlier break-in in May. No one really seemed able to explain just what these burglars expected to gain from their crime.
ellauri156.html on line 388: The story of David and Uriah reminds me of the story of the “Sorcerer's Apprentice.” It has been awhile, but as I remember the plot (probably the Walt Disney version), the sorcerer goes away, leaving his apprentice behind to do his chores. The apprentice gets the bright idea that the work would be a whole lot easier if he used his master's magical arts so he could sit back and watch other powers at work. The problem was that he didn't know how to stop what he started, and so more and more helpers came on the scene as the apprentice tried to reverse the process. The worst was when Mickey tried to cleave the broom with an axe, and got instead a million of smaller brooms.
ellauri156.html on line 398: (2) It seems unlikely that Uriah is ignorant of what David has done and of what he is trying to accomplish by calling him home to Jerusalem. Rumors must have been circulating around Jerusalem about David and Bathsheba, and could easily have reached the Israelite army which had besieged Rabbah. Uriah not only refuses to go to his house and sleep with his wife, he sleeps at the doorway of the king's house, in the midst of his servants. He has many witnesses to testify that any child borne by his wife during this time is not his child. It is clear that Uriah understands exactly what David wants him to do (to have sex with his wife), and that he refuses, even when the king virtually orders him to do so. One finds this difficult to explain if Uriah is ignorant of what happened between David and Bathsheba. At least Uriah knows what David is trying to get him to do on this stay in Jerusalem. The implications of all this we will explore later.
ellauri156.html on line 400: (3) Bathsheba is not said to have any part in David's scheme to deceive Uriah or to bring about his death, much less any knowledge of what David is doing. When she informs David that she is pregnant, David takes decisive action, but nowhere are we told that Bathsheba has a part in his schemes. Verse 26 makes it sound as though she learns of Uriah's death after the fact, through normal channels. After all, would David really want his new wife to know he murdered her husband? David acts without Bathsheba's help.
ellauri156.html on line 437: The United States of America was also born on July 4th, the date proposed for David's birth. Is that of any significance? If so, there will also be at least another witness, according to what has been discovered so far in the research. It turns out that Thu 4 Jul 1776 was also 17 Tammuz on the Hebrew calendar as was David's birth, so it may not be by chance that the nation which consistently sides with modern-day Israel was born on David's birthday.
ellauri156.html on line 453: The film sparked protests in Singapore over what the Muslim community considered an unflattering portrait of David, considered an important prophet in Islam, as a hedonist susceptible to sexual overtures. Mohammed and his 9-year old wife would have been outraged.
ellauri156.html on line 463: However, in giving Bathsheba a more active role, Adele Reinhartz found that "it reflects tensions and questions about gender identity in America in the aftermath of World War II, when women had entered the work force in large numbers and experienced a greater degree of independence and economic self-sufficiency. ...[Bathsheba] is not satisfied in the role of neglected wife and decides for herself what to do about it." Susan Wayward was later quoted as having asked why the film was not called Bathsheba and David. I guess it has something to do with the fact that Dog is called Dog in the bible instead of Bitch.
ellauri156.html on line 469: Uriah leaves David's presence. Now David adds a further touch. He sends a “present from the king” after, or with, Uriah. How we would love to know just what that “gift” was. Was it a night for two at the Jerusalem Hilton? Was it dinner and dancing at a romantic restaurant? I think we can safely say this: (1) We are not told what the present was. (2) We are not supposed to know, or it would not add to the story for us to know what it was. (3) Whatever it was, it was very carefully planned to facilitate David's scheme of getting Uriah to bed with his wife, as quickly as possible.
ellauri156.html on line 471: Uriah has to understand what the king is suggesting. Who wouldn't want to go home and enjoy his wife after some time of separation, thanks to the war with the Ammonites? Instead, we are told that Uriah never leaves the king's house. He sleeps in the doorway of the king's house, in the presence of a number of the king's servants. I am inclined to understand that at least some of these servants, if not all of them, are the king's bodyguards (compare 1 Kings 14:27-28). Uriah is a soldier. He has been called to his king's presence, away from the battle. But as a faithful servant of the king, he will not enjoy a night alone with his wife; instead, he will join with those who guard the king's life. This is the way he can serve his king in Jerusalem, and so this is what he chooses to do rather than to go home. The irony is overwhelming. The king's faithful soldier spends the night guarding the 50% new life of the king in his wife's womb, the king who has taken his own wife in the night, and who will soon take his life as well. Dramatic irony.
ellauri156.html on line 475: On to plan B. David has his spies watching Uriah as though he is the enemy. (Well, he is a rival all right.) They know what David wants; he wants Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife. If they do not know all of the details of what David has done with Bathsheba (which is hard to believe) and what he intends to accomplish by Uriah's visit, they certainly know something out of the ordinary is taking place. One way or the other, David is making these servant-spies co-conspirators with him.
ellauri156.html on line 481: And explain he does; Uriah's words to his commander-in-chief are as stinging a rebuke as David receives from Nathan in the next chapter. Uriah clearly understands that what David once encouraged him to do (i.e. go to be with his wife) he is now strongly urging -- even commanding -- him to do. Uriah humbly but steadfastly refuses to do this:
ellauri156.html on line 491: 1 Then David came to Nob to Ahimelech the priest; and Ahimelech came trembling to meet David and said to him, “Why are you alone and no one with you?” 2 David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has commissioned me with a matter and has said to me, 'Let no one know anything about the matter on which I am sending you and with which I have commissioned you; and I have directed the young men to a certain place.' 3 “Now therefore, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever can be found.” 4 The priest answered David and said, “There is no ordinary bread on hand, but there is consecrated bread; if only the young men have kept themselves from women.” 5 David answered the priest and said to him, “Surely women have been kept from us as previously when I set out and the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was an ordinary journey; how much more then today will their vessels be holy?” (1 Samuel 21:1-5). Pyhiä vesseleitä. Tarkoittaako se siemenjohtimia? Ilmeisesti, suomexi se on: palvelijoiden reput ovat olleet pyhät. Reppureissulaisia pyhäkouluretkellä pussit tyhjinä. Kassit jätetään ulkopuolelle.
ellauri156.html on line 511: In all likelihood, this was all in a day's work for the Israeli army even then. So it is not strange to see David, the mighty man of valor, (1 Samuel 16:18) dealing with Uriah, another mighty man of valor, like the enemy. Here is Uriah, a man who will give his life for his king (but not his wife? Did David even ask?), and David, a man who is now willing to take Uriah's life to cover his sin. We all know that it doesn’t work. (Actually, we all know that it works perfectly: David will be honored by posterity as the best Israeli king ever.) How strange it is to see David making Joab his partner in crime, especially after what Joab has done to li'l Abner:
ellauri156.html on line 556: The answer is quite simple, as is evident by Joab's own concerns. The entire mission is a fiasco. The Israelites have besieged the city of Rabbah. This means they surround the city, giving the people no way in or out of the city. All the Israelites have to do is wait them out and starve them out. There is no need for any attack. The mission is a suicide mission from the outset, and it does not take a genius to see it for what it is. Joab has to assemble a group of mighty men, like Uriah, and including Uriah, to wage an attack on the city. This attack is not at the enemy's weakest point, as we would expect, but at the strongest point. This attack provokes a counter-attack by the Ammonites against Uriah and those with him. When the Israelite army draws back from their own men, they leave them defenseless, and the obvious result is a slaughter. How can one possibly report this fiasco in a way that doesn’t make Joab look like a fool (at best), or a murderer (at worst)?
ellauri156.html on line 562: Now why does this messenger not wait for David to respond in anger, as Joab instructed? Why does he inform David that Uriah has been killed, before he even utters a word of criticism or protest? I believe the messenger gives the report in this way because he understands what is really going on here. I think he may know about David and Bathsheba, and perhaps even of her pregnancy. He certainly knows that Uriah was summoned to Jerusalem. I think he also figures out that David wants to get rid of Uriah, and that Joab has accomplished this by this miserable excuse for an offensive against the enemy. I think the messenger figures out that if David knows Uriah has been killed, he will not raise any objections to this needless slaughter. And so, rather than wait for David to hypocritically rant and rave about the stupidity of such a move, he just goes on and tells him first, so that he will not receive any reaction from David.
ellauri156.html on line 570: Our text has many applications and implications for today. Let me suggest a few as I conclude this lesson. First, “Can a Christian fall?” Yes. Some folks in the Bible may cause us to question whether they really ever came to please Dog, folks like Balaam or Samson or Saul. But we have no such questions regarding David. He is not only a believer, he is a model believer. In the Bible, David sets the standard because he is a man after God's heart. Nevertheless, this man David, in spite of his popularity in Dog's circles, in spite of his marvelous times of worship and his bea-u-utiful psalms, falls deeply into sin. If David can fall, so can we, which is precisely what Paul, another crook and tricky Dick, warns us about:
ellauri156.html on line 578: Fourth, "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" Sin snowballs. Sin has not got a snowball's chance in hell. Sin is not stagnant; it is not static. Sin grows. Look at the progression of sin in our text. David's sin starts when he ceases to act like a soldier and (what is way worse) becomes a late sleeper. David's sin grows from staying up late to adultery to murder. His sin begins very privately, but as the story progresses, more and more people become aware of it, and worse yet, more and more people become participants in it. His sin first acted out by his taking another man's wife, and then taking another man's life, and along with his life, his wife, plus the lives of a number of men who must die with him to make his death credible. David's sin blossoms so that it transforms a true and loyal friend (Uriah) to his enemy, and his enemies (the Ammonites, and his other rival Joab) into his allies.
ellauri156.html on line 580: Fifth, when we seek to conceal our sin, things only get worse. Thus, the best course of action is to confess our sins and to forsake them. But that would have been an embarrassing loss of face to Dog, who had been rooting for David all this time. So better not, after all. Everything went well in the end anyway, and that's what counts.
ellauri156.html on line 588: Sixth, our text makes Uriah a hero and a dress model, not a chump and not a sucker. There are those who might conclude that Uriah's elevator may not “go to the top floor” (as my neighbor used to say of those she considered less than bright). Is Uriah gullible? Is he ignorant of what David is trying to do? Is he a coon? A spook? I don't think so. This is what makes his loyalty to David and to God's Law so striking. I think it is safe to say that here Uriah is very much like David in his earlier days, in terms of his response to Saul. As Saul sought to kill David unjustly, because he was jealous of his successes, so also David submitted himself to faithfully serving Saul, his master. He left his safety and future in God's hands, and God did not fail him. Who? Not Uriah, apparently.
ellauri156.html on line 590: Seventh, Uriah is a reminder to us that God does not always deliver the righteous from the hand of the wicked immediately, or even in this lifetime. This is a really crucial point! Don't except to be saved except ex post facto. Daniel's three friends told the king that their God was able to deliver them. They did not presume that He would, or that He must, only that theoretically, he could if he wanted to. And God did deliver them, though with late delivery, rather like today's postal services. I think Christians should look upon this sort of deliverance as the rule, rather than the exception. But when Uriah faithfully serves his king (David), he loses his life. God is not obliged to “bail us out of trouble” or to keep us from trials and tribulations just because we trust in Him. Sometimes it is the will of God for men to trust fully in Him and to submit to human government (what? like U.S. government? No way Jose!), and still to suffer adversity, from which God may not deliver us. Spirituality is no guarantee that we will no longer suffer in this life. In fact, spiritual intimacy with God is often the cause of our sufferings (see Matthew 5).
ellauri156.html on line 613: 13 All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. 15 And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them. 32 And what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, 33 who by faith conquered kingdoms, performed acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. 35 Women received back their dead by resurrection; and others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that they might obtain a better resurrection; 36 and others experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, in foreskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated 38 (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground. 39 And all these, having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40 because God had provided something even better for us, to make up for the wait, so that apart from us they would not be made perfect (Hebrews 11:13-16, 32-40).
ellauri156.html on line 620: 41 Is this, by any chance, a clue as to what the “present” was that David sent after Uriah in verse 8? Was the present some “food and drink”? I wonder. 42 Uriah’s actions raise some interesting questions about those who get themselves drunk. It seems to me that our text strongly implies that even drunk, a man cannot be forced to violate his convictions, unless of course he wants to do so. I wonder how many people get drunk because they want to do what they do drunk, and they think they can blame alcohol for their own sin? It seems like another version of, “The Devil made me do it.”
ellauri156.html on line 627: In addition to the hundreds of sheep in a nearby pasture, there was a small lamb in a pen, very close to the house. It was a frisky, friendly little fellow, and we loved to "play" with it. We were somewhat perplexed as to why this fellow was kept by himself, away from the rest of the flock. The farmer's nephew came by, and I asked him. It took a while to understand his strong accent, but finally I realized he was telling me this was his “pet lamb.” The problem was that he said it as though it were one word, “bedlam.” This was obviously a separate category, distinct from the category of mere “sheep” or a “lamb.” This “pet lamb” was given a special pen, right by the house, and a lot more attention and care than the rest. I did not dare to ask the man where his "penis".
ellauri156.html on line 637: It all seems to be over. David is not looking for another wife; he is not even looking for an affair. He is looking for a conquest. That should have happened on the battlefield, not in the bedroom! Things take a very different turn when Bathsheba sends word to David that she is pregnant. David first seeks to cover up his sin by ordering Joab to send Uriah home on furlough, ostensibly to give David a report on the war. David's efforts to get Uriah into bed with Bathsheba begin as subtle hints, then change to veiled orders, and then turn crass as David seeks to get Uriah to do drunk what he will not do sober. When these efforts fail (due to Uriah's noble character), David sends Uriah back to Joab, with written orders to Joab to put him to death in a way that makes it seem like a casualty of war. Joab does as he is told and sends word to David: “Mission accomplished.” It is here that our apparently never-ending story resumes.
ellauri156.html on line 641: Bathsheba's response to the death of her husband is as we would expect, as we would also hope. From what the text tells us, she has absolutely no part in David's plot to deceive her husband, let alone to put him to death. Undoubtedly, she learns of Uriah's death in much the same way every war widow does, then or now. When she is officially informed of Uriah's death in battle, she mourns for her husband. We cannot be certain just how long this period of mourning is. We know, for example, that if a virgin of some distant (i.e., not Canaanite) nation was captured by an Israelite during a raid on her town, the Israelite could take her for a wife after she had mourned for her parents (who would have been killed in the raid) for a full month (Deuteronomy 21:10-13). As I will seek to show in a moment, I believe Bathsheba's mourning is genuine, and not hypocritical. I believe she mourns her husband's death because she loves him.
ellauri156.html on line 645: When Bathsheba's mourning is complete, David sends for her and brings her to himself as his wife. Wait, was little David born as yet, or did he start fucking her with her belly full? I do not see him bending down on his knees, proposing. I do not see him courting her, sending her roses. I see him “taking” her once again. And again. In fact, this is my favourite part. The question in my mind is, “Why?” Why does David take Bathsheba into his house as one of his wives? I do not think he is any longer trying to “cover up” his sin; it is far too late for that. She must be “showing” her pregnancy by now, and it is hard to imagine how all Israel cannot know what has been going on. It appears that at this point, David is not trying to conceal his sin, but to legitimize it. Whatever David's reasons may be, they are hardly spiritual, and they are most certainly self-serving.
ellauri156.html on line 675: There are several important things to note about this meeting between Nathan and King David. First, note that Nathan is sent to David. Nathan is, of course, a prophet. However it comes about, he knows what David has done. If you will pardon the pun, David cannot pull the wool over his eyes. His words are, in the final analysis, the very word of God (see 12:11). If Nathan is a prophet, he is also a man who seems to be a friend to David. One of David's sons is named Nathan (2 Samuel 5:14). David informs Nathan of his desire to build a temple (chapter 7). Nathan will later christen (sorry, name) Bathsheba's and David's second son (12:25). He will remain loyal to the king and to Solomon when Adonijah seeks to usurp the throne (1 Kings 2). Nathan does not come to David only as God's spokesman, he comes to David as his friend.
ellauri156.html on line 679: Second, note that Nathan is sent to David. Twelve times in the last chapter the word “sent” is employed by the author. A number of these instances refer to David “sending” someone or “sending” for someone. David is a man of power and authority, and so he can “send out” for whatever he wants, including the death of Uriah. Now, it is God who does the “sending.” Herra se on herrallakin. Is David impressed with his power and authority? Has he gotten used to “sending” people to do his work for him (like sending Joab and all Israel to fight the Ammonites)? Let David take note that God is sending Nathan. He is a godsend to Dave.
ellauri156.html on line 689: As I understand the Bible, there is more to the story than this, however. Our lord (meaning Jeshua) frequently told stories. Why was this? Was it because he was trying to “put the cookies on the lowest shelf”? Was he accommodating his teaching to those who might have difficulty understanding it? Sometimes our lord told stories to the religious experts, who should have been able to follow a more technical argument. No, I think his own elevator did not quite reach the upper floors. I am thinking in particular of the story of the Good Samaritan, as recorded in Luke 10. A religious lawyer stood up and asked Jesus a question, not to sincerely learn, but with the hope of making our Lord look bad before the people. He asked, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus turned the question around. This man was the expert in the Law of Moses, what did it teach? The man answered, “YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND; AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF, THAT IS, EVEN MORE.” (Luke 10:27). In effect, Jesus responded, “Right. Now do it.” That was the problem with the law, no one could do it without failing, and so no one could earn their way to heaven by good works. Well, how high can we get with mediocre works? Someplace between heaven and hell would actually be most preferable.
ellauri156.html on line 705: Some of you cannot even imagine what this is like. It is a horrifying thought to you. How could anyone treat an animal that way? I have only one response: Obviously you haven't been to our house lately to be greeted by two cats (who, to the dismay of my wife, can be found around -- and sometimes on -- the table) and four dogs (none of them are ours, technically). I say nothing about my petlamb, even Jennifer doesn't quite approve.
ellauri156.html on line 711: David does not see what is coming. The story Nathan tells makes David furious. The David who was once ready to do in Nabal and all the male members of his household (1 Samuel 25) is now angry enough to do in the villain of Nathan's story. Doing in folks was one of his pet lambs. In some ways, David's response is a bit overdone. He reminds me a bit of Judah in Genesis 38, when he learns that Tamar, his daughter-in-law is pregnant out of wedlock. Not realizing that he is the father of the child in her womb, Judah is ready to have Tamar burned to death. How ironic that those who are guilty of a particular sin are intolerant of this sin in the life of others. Well said, Bob! Christians are really hard on people who have no charity.
ellauri156.html on line 722: Second, David recognizes what he views as the greater sin, and that is the rich man's total lack of compassion. David is furious because a rich man stole and slaughtered a poor man's pet. He does not yet see the connection to his lack of compassion for stealing a poor man's beloved companion, Uriah's wife, Bathsheba. The slaughtering of Uriah is most certainly an act which lacks compassion. The crowning touch in David's display of righteous indignation is the religious flavoring he gives it by the words, “as the Lord lives” (verse 5).
ellauri156.html on line 740: Nathan tells David the story of a rich man and a poor man. God tells David through Nathan that all that he possesses (his riches) it is he, the boss, who has given them to him. God is like the rich man, and David the poor one with just the one. David's problem is that his possessions have come to own him. He is so stingy he won't even give his petlamb to Mr. Rich. He is so “possessed” with his lamb that he is unwilling to spend it when his boss has a party. He wants “more” and “more,” and so he begins to take what isn’t his to take, rather than to ask the divine Giver for all he has and more.
ellauri156.html on line 778: 20 So Moses said to them, “If you will do this, if you will arm yourselves before the LORD for the war, 21 and all of you armed men cross over the Jordan before the LORD until He has driven His enemies out from before Him, 22 and the land is subdued before the LORD, then afterward you shall return and be free of obligation toward the LORD and toward Israel, and this land shall be yours for a possession before the LORD. 23 “But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the LORD, and be sure your sin will find you out (Numbers 32:20-23, emphasis mine). Note what this says! We must support Israel against its mooslem neighbors! They are not their neighbors! Or rather of course they are but they are also enemies!
ellauri156.html on line 798: Because David did what was right in the sight of the LORD, and had not turned aside from anything that He commanded him all the days of his life, except in the case of Uriah the Hittite, and, well, in a minor way, stalking Bathsheba while she was washing herself and then fucking her without leave (1 Kings 15:5, emphasis mine).nn
ellauri156.html on line 800: (5) David's sin, like all sin, is never worth the price. I have actually had people ask me what the penalty for a certain sin would be, planning to do it and then be forgiven. There are those who toy with sin, thinking that if they sin, they may suffer some consequences, but that God is obliged to forgive them, and thus their eternal future is certain and secure, no matter what they do, even if intentionally. I know of one situation in which a church leader left his wife and ran off with the wife of another, planning to later repent, and then expecting to be welcomed back into the fellowship of that church. This is presumptuous sin, sin of the most serious and dangerous kind. Rather than open a “can of worms” at this point in this message, let me simply say this: “No one ever chooses to sin, and then comes out of it with a smile on their face.” My friend Dawg will almost certainly wipe that smug smirk off their face. I still seethe when I think of that colleague of mine, and how he got away with dumping her hag and plucking a dainty dish from Brother ... (better not say). Took just a few months for the brotherhood to relent. Fuck, it shouldn't be that easy! A little more speedy delivery of the retribution would be indicated, don't you think, milord? Not that I criticize you in any way, milord.
ellauri156.html on line 806: (6) It was the story of the slaughter of a lamb which exposed the immensity of David's sin. It is the story of the slaughter of The Lamb of God which exposes the immensity of our sins. (I am not suggesting that this comparison is on all fours, though the thought is close. Like the rich man slaughtering the poor people's only lamb to have a feast.) Isn't it amazing that David was so blinded by his own sin that he could not see it? It was by means of the story of the slaughter of a poor man's pet lamb that David was gripped with the immensity of the sin which was his own. David could see his own sin when he heard the story of what appeared to be the sin of another.
ellauri156.html on line 812: That is precisely what the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ does for us. We were dead in our trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1-3). We were blinded to the immensity of our sins (2 Corinthians 4:4). The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, His perfect life, His innocent and sacrificial death, His literal and physical resurrection are all historical events. But the gospel is also a story, a true story. When we read the New Testament Gospels, we read a story that is even more dramatic, more amazing, more disturbing than the story Nathan told David. When we see the way unbelieving men treated our Lord, we should be shocked, horrified, and angered. We should cry out, “They deserve to die!” And that they do. But the Gospel is not written only to show us their sins -- those who actually heard Jesus and cried, “Crucify Him, Crucify Him” -- it is written so that the Spirit of God can cry out in our hearts, “Thou art the man! Yo mon!” When we see the way men treated Jesus, we see the way we would treat him, if he were here. We see how we treat him today. With laughter and ridicule. And that, my friend, reveals the immensity of our sin, and the immensity of our need for repentance and forgiveness. Words, words, words. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
ellauri156.html on line 816: He bore ours sins on the cross! And by trusting in His death, burial, and resurrection, we die to sin (or sin to die, pick your choice, like David from Nathan's deck of bottom cards) and are raised to novelty products of eternal life, in Christ. The Gospel must first bring us to a recognition of the magnitude of our sin, and of our guilt, and then it takes us to the magnitude of God's grace in Jesus Christ, by which our sins can be forgiven. Have you come to see how great your sins are before a holy God? Then I urge you to experience how great a salvation is yours, brought about by this same God, through the death, burial, and resurrection of Lord Jesus Christ. What a Relief! Plop plop fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is.
ellauri158.html on line 692: All men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that all have the desire to seek for what is useful to them, and that they are conscious of such desire. Herefrom it follows, first, that men think themselves free inasmuch as they are conscious of their volitions and desires, and never even dream, in their ignorance, of the causes which have disposed them so to wish and desire. Secondly, that men do all things for an end, namely, for that which is useful to them, and which they seek. Thus it comes to pass that they only look for a knowledge of the final causes of events, and when these are learned, they are content, as having no cause for further doubt. If they cannot learn such causes from external sources, they are compelled to turn to considering themselves, and reflecting what end would have induced them personally to bring about the given event, and thus they necessarily judge other natures by their own. Further, as they find in themselves and outside themselves many means which assist them not a little in the search for what is useful, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish, &c., they come to look on the whole of nature as a means for obtaining such conveniences. Now as they are aware, that they found these conveniences and did not make them, they think they have cause for believing, that some other being has made them for their use. As they look upon things as means, they cannot believe them to be self—created; but, judging from the means which they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted everything for human use. They are bound to estimate the nature of such rulers (having no information on the subject) in accordance with their own nature, and therefore they assert that the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honor.
ellauri159.html on line 581:

Sharing what’s valuable in life means not just giving away material goods, but also time, attention, wisdom and energy — the things that create a strong, rich and diverse community.
ellauri159.html on line 605: Faith is when you trust God and His purpose in your circumstances more than they seem to warrant. As Hebrews 11:1 states, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” And remember, a true knight’s first mission and calling is to please the boss.
ellauri159.html on line 657: The word used to translate the Greek word agape in most modern English Bibles is love, but in many older translations, agape was translated as “charity” when it was used in a context of one person to another. In a biblical context, this term should not be mistaken for the more modern use of the word to mean only giving to those in need (i.e., “giving to charity”), although this can be a substantial part of what’s meant by the word. A more encompassing definition of the word charity, at least in the context of a modern-day knight, would be to be charitable (or giving) to the rich as well, or even primarily.
ellauri159.html on line 682: Being truthful means being real honest with the facts, but it also means living in a way where what you know to be true influences your daily actions. A knight who has not yet fully resolved that he will speak only the truth will stumble on a lie.
ellauri159.html on line 715: For what makes you different from anyone else? That you hurt?
ellauri159.html on line 722: Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
ellauri159.html on line 725: Tää olis sitä ilmasexi pyytämistä tai antamista myöhemmän takaisinmaxun toivossa. Put simply, grace is getting what you do not deserve (e.g., a blessing or a reward), while mercy is not getting what you deserve (e.g., a punishment). ¡Gracias! Merci!
ellauri159.html on line 744: Need some help awakening your inner knight? Check out what-is-the-core-of-masculinity/">the program “Masculine Core”. It’ll help you awaken the masculine man that’s waiting inside of you.
ellauri159.html on line 751: In primitive times, what mattered most were not individual desires, but the needs of the group — that which helped the tribe survive as a whole trumped everything else. Niin ja sit naiset on tosi kehnoja suunnistamaan, ne seuraa vaan ennalta merkittyjä hajujälkiä.
ellauri159.html on line 759: You have to define your group. You need to define who is in and who is out, and you need to identify potential threats. You need to create and maintain some sort of safe zone around the perimeter of your group. Everyone will have to contribute to the group’s survival in some way unless the group agrees to protect and feed someone who can’t contribute due to age or illness. For those who can work, you’ll need to decide who does what, based on what they are good at, who works well together and what makes the most practical sense…
ellauri159.html on line 763: The first job of men in dire times has always been to establish and secure “the perimeter.” Donovan argues that the way of men is the way of the gang, because when placed in a harsh environment, men will quickly make the logical calculation that they have a much better chance of surviving if they band together than if they each try to go it alone. For some folks, “gang” is a word weighted with negative connotations, so substitute “posse” or “platoon” or whatever else if you must. The important thing to realize is that the small, tightly-knit honor group was the basic male social unit for eons. The myth of the uber-manly lone wolf is just that. With few exceptions, men have always fought and hunted together. Cowboys banded together, pioneers banded together, and Rambo wouldn’t have actually stood a chance against either gang.
ellauri159.html on line 765: Donovan argues that understanding the dynamics of these ancient honor groups is the key to understanding the essence of male psychology and how men relate to, interact, and judge each other even up through the modern day. What men respect in other men (and women find attractive), is rooted in what men wanted in the men to the left and the right of them as they stood together side-by-side on the perimeter.
ellauri159.html on line 770: You’ll also need your men to commit. You will want to know that the men beside you are us and not them. You’ll need to be able to count on them in times of crisis. You want guys who have your back. Men who don’t care about what the other men think of them aren’t dependable or trustworthy. If you’re smart, you will want the other men to prove they are committed to the team. You’ll want them to show that they care about their reputation within the gang, and you’ll want them to show that they care about your gang’s reputation with other gangs.”
ellauri159.html on line 772: To the description of the ideal perimeter-keeper outlined above, Donovan assigns four “tactical virtues”: strength, courage, mastery, and honor. These are “simple, amoral, and functional virtues” — “the practical virtues of men who must rely on one another in a worst case scenario.” They are “amoral” because they are crucial to the success of any gang — no matter if what they’re fighting for is right or wrong. Strength, courage, mastery, and honor are the attributes needed in a team of Navy SEALs just as much as a family of Mafioso. If you’ve ever wondered why we are fascinated by gangsters, pirates, bank robbers, and outlaws of all stripes, and can’t help but think of them as pretty manly despite their thuggery and extralegal activities, now you know; they’re not good men, but they’ve mastered the core fundamentals of being good at being men. So they are good men, though they are bad men. I mean.
ellauri159.html on line 785: The key to upholding honor in a male gang is to always try to pull your own weight – to seek to be a boon rather than a burden to the group. If a man lacks in physical strength, he might make up for it in the area of mastery – being the group’s best tracker, weapons-maker, or trap inventor; one crafty engineer can be worth more than many strong men. If a man lacks in both physical strength and mastery, he might still endear himself to the other men with a sense of humor, a knack for storytelling, or a talent in music that keeps everyone’s spirits up. Or he might act as a shaman or priest – performing rituals that prepare men for battle and cleanse and comfort them when they return from the front. The strong men of the group will usually take care of the weak ones who at least try to do whatever they can. Shame is reserved for those who will not, or cannot excel in the tactical virtues, but don’t try to contribute in some other way, and instead cultivate bitterness and disregard for the perimeter-keepers who ironically provide the opportunity to sit on one’s hands and carp. (Aki Manninen would love this.)
ellauri159.html on line 789: So what are the defining traits of femininity? Oh-hoho, I’m not going to touch that with a ten-foot pole. I´m not THAT brave. It’s taken me years to understand manhood, and I’m still refining my views. I wouldn’t appreciate it if a woman who hadn’t rigorously studied masculinity offered an off-the-cuff definition for it, so I will refrain from doing likewise. Someone should start an awesome Art of Womanliness-type blog and explore the subject. I’ll be a reader.
ellauri159.html on line 880: And in the dark she left behind, I knew what she had done.
ellauri159.html on line 946: ENFPs thrive on the new–new people, new activities, and new ideas. They see what is possible and are generally energetic, enthusiastic, and spontaneous. ENFP writers include Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley, Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, Anne Frank, Kurt Vonnegut, Anaïs Nin, Dr. Seuss, Hunter S. Thompson, and Erica Jong. Learn more about how ENFPs write here.
ellauri159.html on line 1057: Be self-motivated and self-directed. However, when writing for a teacher, editor, or boss, you may want explicit instructions. If you don’t have a clear understanding of other people’s expectations, you may struggle in silence. Instead, try asking to see a model of what to work toward (for example, last year’s annual report or a term paper that earned an A). A concrete example will help alleviate confusion.
ellauri159.html on line 1063: You Want to be of service to others, and naturally write in a manner that reflects this value. Keep your audience in mind, then organize your ideas into an easy-to-follow progression. You have a strong sense of harmony—of what works on the page, and what doesn’t. You may also excel at sensory detail, drawing the reader in.
ellauri159.html on line 1075: When starting a project, you want clear instructions or a model to work from. It is helpful to know what approach has succeeded in the past so you can use it as a framework. If instructions aren’t specific, you may be at a loss, so it’s best to ask for clarification, or just copy from a reliable model.
ellauri159.html on line 1089: Begin by assembling a wide variety of facts. This gives them a detailed view of the topic. Then, they weed out what doesn’t fit.
ellauri159.html on line 1107: Gather a lot of material about a subject, particularly if it’s unfamiliar. When composing a first draft, your brain works best by brainstorming about whatever comes to mind. If you try analyze as you go, it breaks your flow of ideas, and you can get stuck. Never try to walk and chew gum at the same time. Or think. That can become a real stumbling block.
ellauri159.html on line 1123: You need clear instructions and a personal connection with your audience. You may find it helpful to see an example of what your editor, instructor, or project sponsor expects. Even if you can’t copy this model as such, it will give you a concrete starting point.
ellauri159.html on line 1147: Focus on original facts rather than original ideas. You need not be interested in theory except as a way of exploring what’s tangled and undemonstrable. Seek mastery rather than discovery, although this may mean applying a new technology to an old battlefield. You don’t want to be the first—you want to be the best, and last (on the battlefield).
ellauri159.html on line 1151: Write to steal their ideas to develop yours rather than to please an audience. If your goal is to communicate your ideas to others (god beware), be sure to organize your work so that the subject folds logically. This will likely come easily to you if you invest the time. Also, engage your side to the battle by relating the subject to their personal experience. If you don’t feel comfortable writing about your own experience, write about something you’ve observed, or what the commies or aliens are likely up to.
ellauri159.html on line 1163: You should have a natural sense of the harmony of language and ideas (if not, consider one of the other 15 types we have on store). If you are schizoid at all, you may hear in your mind how combinations of words sound together. Get attuned to the tone and implications. Use these qualities to incorporate your unique voice and perspective into your writing. Ultimately, that’s what readers respond to.
ellauri159.html on line 1183: But pay heed: choose broad topics with wide-ranging effects on people. Be careful to limit the subject to what you can realistically explore in sufficient depth within the scope of the project. The class lasts just three quarters, keep that in mind. At the same time, don’t rush through the brainstorming process at the beginning. Tap into your creativity, letting one student thought suggest another. Reflect on what aspects of the topic interest you most.
ellauri159.html on line 1201: You enjoy colorful and figurative language, and like to infuse your work with images of your personal underware. At the same time, however, your writing may be too abstract for their readers, they want to see you inside them. During revision, add concrete details. In creative writing, appeal to the five senses and the 9 mortal sins. In freelance writing, include specifics like percentages and dollar amounts to get the audience´s attention. In technical writing, find out whether the customer needs to use a flat-head or a cross-head screwdriver (our dishwasher installer guys did not have a flathead anymore, I had to loan them one), and what the recommended torque is. These may be boring details to you, but they’re essential for your male reader. Wrong head, no screw.
ellauri159.html on line 1207: According to PersonalityDesk.com, INFJs are the Myers-Briggs type most likely to express marital dissatisfaction. When I first read this, it puzzled me. After all, INFJs are adept at solving problems involving people. In fact, INFJs are so good at solving problems that they may unconsciously scan their environment looking for ways to improve relationships. This, I think, is what leads to the dissatisfaction.
ellauri159.html on line 1213: Perhaps this is what draws me to writing women’s fiction. I can create relationship problems, which I can then go about solving, without hurting anyone but my fictional characters in the process. Real life, unfortunately, doesn’t work that way. The INFJs’ search for perfection can damage otherwise good relationships. So I propose a revised Serenity Prayer for INFJs: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Period. Oh, I got my period.
ellauri159.html on line 1283: You enjoy seeking knowledge for its own sake. Once you’ve solved the puzzle, though, you might lose interest in writing about what you’ve learned. It may be best to begin drafting even while you’re conducting your research. Treat the writing itself as a problem to solve. This may keep you energized until the project is complete.
ellauri159.html on line 1331: Eise ihan lupaa tässä onnistua, The negative, the alogical, is never wholly banished. Something—"call it fate, chance, freedom, spontaneity, the devil, what you will"—is still wrong and other and outside and unincluded, from your point of view (italics my own).
ellauri159.html on line 1395: Rationality means fluent thinking, 63. Simplification, 65. Clearness, 66. Their antagonism, 66. Inadequacy of the abstract, 68. The thought of nonentity, 71. Mysticism, 74. Pure theory cannot banish wonder, 75. The passage to practice may restore the feeling of rationality, 75. Familiarity and expectancy, 76. 'Substance,' 80. A rational world must appear {xvi} congruous with our powers, 82. But these differ from man to man, 88. Faith is one of them, 90. Inseparable from doubt, 95. May verify itself, 96. Its rôle in ethics, 98. Optimism and pessimism, 101. Is this a moral universe?—what does the problem mean? 103. Anaesthesia versus energy, 107. Active assumption necessary, 107. Conclusion, 110.
ellauri160.html on line 174: During the subsequent row, Pound left the table and returned with a tin bathtub on his head, suggesting it as a symbol of what he called Les Nagistes, a school created by Lowell's poem "In a Garden", which ends with "Night, and the water, and you in your whiteness, bathing!" Apparently his behavior helped Lowell win people over to her point of view, as did her offer to fund future work.
ellauri160.html on line 182: Samuel Putnam knew Pound in Paris in the 1920s and described him as stubborn, contrary, cantankerous, bossy, touchy, and "devoid of humor"; he was "an American small-towner", in Putnam's view. His attitude caused him trouble in both London and Paris. English women, with their "preponderantly derivative" minds, were inferior to American women who had minds of their own, he wrote in the New Age. The English sense of what was right was based on respect for property, not morality. "Perched on the rotten shell of a crumbling empire", London had lost its energy. England's best authors—Conrad, Hudson, James, and Yeats—were not English. English writers and critics were ignorant, he wrote in 1913.
ellauri160.html on line 196: Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry, published a letter in April 1919 from a professor of Latin, W. G. Hale, who found "about three-score errors" in the text; he said Pound was "incredibly ignorant of Latin", that "much of what he makes his author say is unintelligible", and that "If Mr. Pound were a professor of Latin, there would be nothing left for him but suicide" (adding "I do not counsel this"). Pound replied to Monroe: "Cat-piss and porcupines!! The thing is no more a translation than my 'Altaforte' is a translation, or than Fitzgerald's Omar is a translation."
ellauri160.html on line 802: However, given the vagaries of public taste, we may have to poke around in the Anglo American psyche a bit to find out what’s holding back US support for one of the most popular New Year’s events, almost as famous as AuldLang Syne.
ellauri160.html on line 806: It is really sweet that Germans and others have adopted something and that this sketch is special for them. I respect that and don’t doubt for a second the genuine love and admiration some have for Dinner for One. But I am really surprised to see Monty Python compared with Dinner for One. I have to say it was painful to sit through. Painfully, painfully bad and unfunny. That’s why it has never caught on in Britain. I suppose we must have a very different sense of humour to that of Scandinavia and the German-speaking countries. We don’t consider it funny if someone falls over something. There’s nothing subtle or clever or nuanced about it (Rowan Atkinson’s absurdist physical comedy went down so well due to its complexity, think of the sketch where Mr. Bean makes the sandwich on the park bench and it gets progressively more and more absurd, he gets the fish out of water and slaps it against the bench to kill it before eating it, etc. now that is funny, and food fights in general). It’s not funny the first time the butler falls over the tiger-skin rug and it gets progressively more and more irritating each time he does it. You can spot the punchline a mile off and so the end of the sketch falls very flat. It’s nothing whatever to do with the length of the sketch or its obscurity or difficulty finding it: people still seek out all the comic greats on Youtube, like that fat man watsisname, or Charlie Chaplin who bravely made fun of your Hitler.
ellauri160.html on line 810: Dammit, nothing to do with the quality or genre of the humor, (as for stumbling, just look at Chaplin) it´s just about the fucking continentals poking insipid fun of us anglo saxons who invented this kind of humor after all, that´s what is not funny, no Sir, no indeed. Those traitor British actors should be brought to the wall and shot, if they weren´t dead already.
ellauri161.html on line 466: Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence), an astronomy grad student, and her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) make an astounding discovery of a comet orbiting within the solar system. The problem - it's on a direct collision course with Earth. The other problem? No one really seems to care. Turns out warning mankind about a planet-killer the size of Mount Everest is an inconvenient fact to navigate. With the help of Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), Kate and Randall embark on a media tour that takes them from the office of an indifferent President Orlean (Meryl Streep) and her sycophantic son and Chief of Staff, Jason (Jonah Hill), to the airwaves of The Daily Rip, an upbeat morning show hosted by Brie (Cate Blanchett) and Jack (Tyler Perry). With only six months until the comet makes impact, managing the 24-hour news cycle and gaining the attention of the social media obsessed public before it's too late proves shockingly comical - what will it take to get the world to just look up?. — Based on truly possible events.
ellauri161.html on line 472: The Chicxulub asteroid Jennifer Lawrence's character mentions hit Earth 66 million years ago in what is now Mexico. The estimated size of the asteroid was 10 kilometers wide (six miles) and resulted in 75% of all life on the planet dying. Known as the dinosaur killer, the asteroid left a crater estimated to be 150 kilometers (93 miles) in diameter and 20 kilometers (12 miles) in depth.
ellauri161.html on line 487: I understand why some people hate this film. It feels real in its entirety, it shows you how stupid and insignificant we are and it is extremely apropos today. Also, it was marketed as a comedy, when in fact is a dramatic film that is humorous only in its accurate portrayal of humanity. Then again some people try to "tell you" what it is about and, while it is certainly metaphoric, it isn't about anything more specific than ourselves. It is a mirror. Some people don't like what they see in it.
ellauri161.html on line 493: Initially then I wasn't really overly hooked on watching the 2021 movie "Don't Look Up" since I wasn't really won over by the movie's synopsis. Granted, I hadn't checked out the movie's trailer, so I wasn't really sure what I would be in for here. But as friends started to praise the movie, I opted to sit down and watch it.
ellauri161.html on line 505: BUT what this movie really is, is a last warning by some of the world's finest actors, that we must ACT NOW against global warming by replacing fossil fuels by solar and wind energy. It can easily be done, if only the powers that be dont object and oppose...
ellauri161.html on line 529: So what exactly is wrong with McKay's picture of the "robber barons" aligning with the right? Well it's anachronistic. Today it's the left who are in power and it appears that Big Tech is in lock step with them. What's more the left can no longer be said to be sticking up for the "little guy," as they have granted a monopoly to pharmaceutical companies in their promotion of vaccines.
ellauri161.html on line 530: Despite McKay's seeming awareness of the danger of Big Tech setting up one big surveillance state, he fails to recognize that the left-particularly in the encouragement of censorship by social media platforms-has gone way beyond what the right ever did in terms of a threat to our constitutional freedoms.
ellauri161.html on line 549: So yes, this means that even the supporting characters in subplots get a C storyline. See the problem yet? (No. What is it? Everybody's got a C story line in life, so what?)
ellauri161.html on line 551: The porcellain faced Hunting gamist returns home and meets Yule due to her minor celebrity status. The thing is that the film never does anything with Kate’s government scuffle. It’s an odd detour that bloats the runtime severely. (Now THIS IS the problem: these drooping- underlip prof spectators already know what the plot should be and edit what they see accordingly. Hey where are the heroes? Where's optimism? Who's gonna save the world this time round? Superman? Batman? Anyone?)
ellauri161.html on line 568: Kate Blanchett was way the dullest character on the cast. All silicon, no AI. No interest whatsoever, human or otherwise. Dr Strangelove was a lot worse satire than this. The problem with Kubrik was that he had a villain, while the real world has not just one- rather, there are 7 billion of them.
ellauri161.html on line 576: Like an increasing amount of streaming content, you can keep track of what’s going on with your peripheral vision, turning to give the TV screen your full attention only when something good starts happening.
ellauri161.html on line 591: that's just what you need.
ellauri161.html on line 612: McKay's delivery style may appear somewhat breathless
ellauri161.html on line 621: By and large the efforts at humour here feel like juvenile, Grand Theft Auto-level sledgehamer attempts at satire (and I say that as a fan of the video game series, sophistication is not one of my hallmarks.). ’ I can count on the fingers of one hand the parts of the film that came close to eliciting some sort of feeling. And that's what films are for, ain't they?
ellauri161.html on line 641: By the way, this is a comedy with several parts that aren’t funny, often deliberately so. It’s also a horror film about substance being smothered by fluff instead of coexisting in healthy moderation. Sometimes tonally jagged is OK. Sharp and broad. Awkward and devastating. If you can’t call out danger without sounding alarmist, how do you actually sound an alarm? (Sheesh, think of what’s changed since 2011’s “Melancholia.”) Hyvä pointti Matt! Tässä sotketaan genrejä ihan kiitettävällä tavalla, ei ihme että jenkkiturvelot on exyxissä.
ellauri161.html on line 643: That’s not a point that hasn’t been made before, and it’s not like there are new notions here about what people might do with their last moments. But there’s something deceptively big and complicated about considering the human capacity to (not) address the largest challenges to their own survival as certain systems prevent action being taken — and people’s ability to recognize that a happy ending isn’t automatic but could be possible with thought and work. There’s such tragedy in the idea of, among many other things, being stuck in a loop of distraction at the expense of progress. Perpetual escapism that prevents escape, with what we’re looking away from and how continually being updated in the stories on the subject.
ellauri161.html on line 645: But, of course, what every other country is doing while the United States takes the lead is never entirely answered either. So why is every other country allowing the United States to let the comet hit the Earth?
ellauri161.html on line 671: For the majority of the film (not Talladega, the new one), we’re bouncing from one republican caricature to the next. Streep is a female version of Donald Trump. Jonah Hill is a fratty version of Donald Trump Jr. Mark Rylance is a right-wing version of Tim Cook. (What a joke, he's way too poor.) And Ron Perlman is a red-eyed version of General Turgidson. When General Turgidson wonders aloud what kind of name "Strangelove" is, saying to Mr. Staines (Jack Creley) that it is not a "Kraut name", Staines responds that Strangelove's original German surname was Merkwürdigliebe ("Strange love" in German) and that "he changed it when he became a citizen". A kike anyway, by the name.
ellauri161.html on line 701: No idea what they were trying to do here. Couldn't even get through it. Basically had the plot of Armageddon but wasn't a spoof, guess they were going for a comedy but it wasn't funny at all. Just very Hollywood and very odd. Don't waste your time.
ellauri161.html on line 715: All star Cast, All star disappointment! This movie received so much publicity, we thought it would be good. However, not one character endeared themselves to us in actually caring what happened to them. We had hope the movie would gain momentum and get better but.... it never did.
ellauri161.html on line 718: If you have more less 5 braincells and laugh at thing like poop or penis you probbably like it, otherwise what a mess of a movie with terrible humor.
ellauri161.html on line 740: I literally couldn't stay awake. I started it twice, and fell asleep both times. I looked up the ending, and from my interpretation of what the movie was supposed to show (how global warming is not being addressed by our current politicians), I think my nap was more productive than staying awake to watch this.
ellauri161.html on line 1137: So what was the point? I say as disappointedly as the Korean ladies listening to a reading of Goethe's Werther's Leiden. What? He shot himself? So he never got to shag the woman of his heart? What a drag. And threw the rookie historian out on her ear.
ellauri162.html on line 104: Louis Émile Clément Georges Bernanos (French: [ʒɔʁʒ bɛʁnanɔs]; 20 February 1888 – 5 July 1948) was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. A Roman Catholic with monarchist leanings, he was critical of elitist thought and was opposed to what he identified as defeatism. He believed this had led to France´s defeat and eventual occupation by Germany in 1940 during World War II. His two major novels "Sous le soleil de Satan" (1926) and the "Journal d’un curé de campagne" (1936) both revolve around a parish priest who combats evil and despair in the world. Most of his novels have been translated into English and frequently published in both Great Britain and the United States.
ellauri162.html on line 178: It´s what the book of Hosea is all about. The wife´s name is Gomer.
ellauri162.html on line 698: Private ownership "is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary." In addition, the right to property is essential in maintaining the structure of the family. For what can pater familias use to threaten the children with if not the legacy? A worker ought to be given the opportunity to live sparingly, save money, and invest his savings for the future.
ellauri162.html on line 708: It is important to remember that we were not created for this world, but rather for everlasting life with God. Riches should be viewed as an obstacle for eternal happiness, and that they do not bring freedom. With this in mind, associations of workers and employers ought to do what is best for the body, soul, and property of all involved.
ellauri162.html on line 764: Number 1 David Silverman is President of American Atheists, the organization founded in 1963 by the grande dame of American atheism, Madalyn Murray O’Hair (1919–1995). He is a Jew. You know it´s a myth. Religion is my bitch. Bitches, I don´t trust ´em But they give me what I want for the night.
ellauri162.html on line 788: Molinism, named after 16th-century Spanish Jesuit priest and Roman Catholic theologian Luis de Molina, is the thesis that God has only middling knowledge of what is going on. It seeks to reconcile the apparent tension of divine providence and human free will. Prominent contemporary Molinists include William Lane Craig, Alfred Freddoso, Thomas Flint, Kenneth Keathley, and Louis Armstrong. What a wonderful world. Johnin mieliviini oli juuri Mölinä.
ellauri162.html on line 827: A somewhat similar report was made concerning the audience of Richard Dawkins´s web community. In February of 2010, the news organization The Telegraph reported that the atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins was embroiled "in a bitter online battle over plans to rid his popular internet forum for atheists of foul language, insults and 'frivolous gossip'." In addition, Richard Dawkins has a reputation for being abrasive.
ellauri163.html on line 361: to imply a king of the line of Judah forever, but Israel currently has no king, nor do our democratic rulers have staffs. Does this imply that "he has come to Shiloh" (JPS) or that "Shiloh has come" (KJV)? Please explain. Why does King Jimmy think the homage of the people will be Shiloh's whereas JPS says it is Judah's? Who or what is this Shiloh and why is he/it so important that the scepter will not depart from Judah till then?
ellauri163.html on line 389: So what does Genesis 49 mean?
ellauri163.html on line 748: People with higher scores on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (items included "I am fascinated by numbers," and "I find social situations difficult") had weaker belief in a personal God than those with lower IQ score ("I am fascinated by skirts", and "I find zippers difficult"). Second, reduced ability to mentalize mediated this correlation. (Mentalizing was measured with the Empathy Quotient, which assesses self-reported ability to recognize and react to others' emotions, and with a task that requires identifying what's being expressed in pictures of eyes. Systematizing -- interest in and aptitude for mechanical and abstract systems -- was correlated with autism but was not a mediator.) Third, men were much less likely than women to say they strongly believed in a personal God (even controlling for autism), and this correlation was also mediated by reduced mentalizing. They were also clearly more interested in skirts and puzzled by zippers.
ellauri163.html on line 750: Another study found that the higher the autism score, the less likely the person was to believe in God, with the link partially explained by theory of mind. In other words, the better someone felt at understanding other minds, the more fervent their belief in God, who reads everybody´s mind. (Sometimes I wonder what kind of mind God must have, when s/he has to simultaneously concentrate on several gigamonkeys worth of personal requests. I bet s/he is fascinated by numbers. S/He never says "all our service representatives are busy at this moment, please hold without hanging up the phone.")
ellauri163.html on line 759: “… it is noticeable that people with NPD, do not show a major degree of functioning problems in stress free environment or when they are supported (except that they are perceived as “not pleasant characters” to deal with). However under stress and without support they can become quite dysfunctional in a way not far from what we usually see in Asperger’s syndrome.“
ellauri163.html on line 889: By worshiping God people are unwittingly worshiping the power of the collective over them—a power that both created and guides them. They are worshiping society itself. Religion is one of the main forces that make up the collective conscience; religion which allows the individual to transcend self and act for the social good. But traditional religion was weakening under the onslaught of the division of labor; what could replace religion as the common bond?
ellauri164.html on line 370: I thought this was one of those books that comes with a “guarantee.” But of course there is no such thing. Still, I’d read only glowing reviews and boy was I ready for a “triumphant experience.” But on p. 26 I couldn’t make heads or tails of what I was really reading about. On p. 54 the voice of the innocent and well-meaning young priest began to irk the shit out of me. On p. 55 I skipped ahead to see if anything would ever actually happen to dilute all the fluffy introspection and it didn’t look promising. On p. 64 I took the kitty to the well and drowned it.
ellauri164.html on line 372: I blew through this novel myself, which in retrospect was somewhat of a grave mistake, as the book alternates between compelling and highly engaging dialogues to unrealistically long monologues which to me resemble a Rimbaud poem in translation than anything else, which is to say: hard to parse. That they got more than what they bargained for is what the ordinary reader will be struck by first when they read this. The complexity of each of the conversations cannot be overstated, which I think will inevitably result in readers just mechanically scanning the sentences rather than internalizing the arguments, with the final result being the great part of the novel sliding off like rain, leaving only vague impressions like it did with me unfortunately, but the parts that did affect me left me very humbled. And chiefly this impression will not be helped by another one of the defining features of the novel, which is its vagueness. It deliberately leaves a lot of key details unheard and leaves a lot to the ability to infer events by the reader. Though sometimes frustrating to a reader like me who reads history and biography, I recognize that it should be so for this novel, for the main conflict in it is a psychological one, so I wouldn't have it any other way.
ellauri164.html on line 379: I wanted to like this book so much more than I did. I actually found it incredibly difficult to understand. Some of it, I think, was that it was poorly translated. I read a 1962 edition that doesn't even cite a translator -- so many of the sentences were so convoluted as to be utterly obtuse. Poor translation or witless reader? I never could figure out why Mlle Chantal was such an angry bitch and why she insisted on tormenting the priest. What was her secret? Was the priest an alcoholic or just terminally sick? Gay? Why did M le Comte come to hate the priest? These are just some of the basic narrative issues I couldn't figure out. Forget the whole spiritual aspect--much of what the priest mused on and felt was incomprehensible to me as he described it. I can't help wondering if I'd have understood it if I had read it in French. Or maybe I'm just so spiritually challenged (in a God believing, Catholic way) that I can't comprehend it when it's described. All of that said, there were profoundly moving passages here and there, but over all I don't begin to know what I read. It's rather embarrassing actually--I feel so simple! (less)
ellauri164.html on line 395: I am not getting from this book what I expected based on other reviews, and not what I wanted from it either. I tried, read almost half of it. There was not as much about the interaction with his parishioners as about the lectures he gets from older priests and his superiors. And here was not much spiritual inspiration for this reader. A bit ponderous. This goes on my "life is too short" shelf. (less)
ellauri164.html on line 497: The above is only a brief sketch of Moses’ life and does not talk about his interactions with God, the manner in which he led the people, some of the specific ways in which he foreshadowed Jesus Christ, his centrality to the Jewish faith, his appearance at Jesus’ transfiguration, and other details. But it does give us some framework of the man. He is somewhat recalcitrant, to put it mildly.
ellauri164.html on line 498: So, now, what can we learn from Moses’ life? Moses’ life is generally broken down into three 40-year periods. The first is his life in the court of Pharaoh. As the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses would have had all the perks and privileges of a prince of Egypt. He was instructed “in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). As the plight of the Hebrews began to disturb his soul, Moses took it upon himself to be the savior of his people. As Stephen says before the Jewish ruling council, “[Moses] supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand” (Acts 7:25). From this incident, we learn that Moses was a man of action as well as a man possessed of a hot temper and prone to rash actions. Did God want to save His people? Yes. Did God want to use Moses as His chosen instrument of salvation? Yes. But Moses, whether or not he was truly cognizant of his role in the salvation of the Hebrew people, acted rashly and impetuously. He tried to do in his timing what God wanted done in His timing. The lesson for us is obvious: we must be acutely aware of not only doing God’s will, but doing God’s will in His timing, not ours. As is the case with so many other biblical examples, when we attempt to do God’s will in our timing, we make a bigger mess than originally existed.
ellauri164.html on line 530: Many have pondered the precise nature of Moses’ sin and why the punishment for it was so severe. (Well, gosh, he was already 120, and what's the diff which side of the Jordan river he conks out. It's the same dry desert on either side.) A few different explanations have been posited:
ellauri164.html on line 538: Why God punished him so severely is somewhat mysterious. St. Basil the Great used it as an object lesson to us all: “If the just man is scarcely saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?” (Preface on the Judgment of God).
ellauri164.html on line 540: Whatever the reason for the drastic punishment, behold what grumbling does. It fuels discontent and bitterness. Be careful, fellow Christians; we can all succumb to the temptation to draw others into our anger, doubts, dissatisfaction, and fears. After all, misery loves company. Sharing concerns with friends is good and necessary, but this must be tempered by the knowledge that too much can harm them and us. A steady diet of grumbling is not good for anyone.
ellauri164.html on line 548: 1. Moses, being directed to speak to the rock that it might give forth its water, smote it instead with the rod of God which was in his hazed (what's a hazed?) and this he did not once only, but twice.
ellauri164.html on line 692: How did Moses’s faith falter and what did the people have to do with it?
ellauri164.html on line 705: Based on the pattern established in Numbers, what do you expect will happen at Meribah when the people rebel against Moses? We expect the pattern to repeat and for God to decree punishment, but that doesn’t happen. The pattern breaks down! Instead of decreeing punishment for the people’s sin, God simply tells Moses to give the people water by speaking to the rock. This is a significant departure from the previous pattern. When a Bible author develops a pattern and then breaks it, we should pay attention because this signals that the author wants us to notice something important. Why didn’t God punish the people at Meribah? Why did he go at Moses instead?
ellauri164.html on line 707: To understand why God didn’t pronounce judgement, let’s notice what Moses did. He leads the people to the rock, calls them rebels, and instead of speaking to the rock he hits it twice with this staff. Moses is having a temper tantrum. In the prior examples in Numbers Moses never speaks harshly or loses patience. Moses is also breaking the pattern and this is the clue to understanding his sin.
ellauri164.html on line 723: Question: Please tell me what exactly is "Moses' sin." I thought it was the killing of the Egyptian when he was younger. Or was it the revolt of the Levi tribe toward the end? What reason kept him out of the Promised Land?
ellauri164.html on line 790: D. If you are going to speak for God, be sure you know what you are talking
ellauri164.html on line 822: The symbolism of Christ, the Rock is well known to Christians. If Christ is represented by this rock, what does that mean?
ellauri164.html on line 844: So why didn’t Moses do what God told him to do? God tells us why:
ellauri164.html on line 845: Moses didn’t trust God enough. Oh, he was trusting, but not quite to the point of doing what he was told, how he was told, when he was told.
ellauri164.html on line 873: We would expect the pattern to repeat here. The people have rebelled, so the next part would be God’s wrath and threats of destruction. Instead, however, God merely grants their request for water. No mention of sin or possible annihilation, just grace in providing for Israel’s needs. The fact that this cycle we’ve come to expect changes is designed to highlight an important event; the oddity of the text “awakens us from our narrative slumber,” as one commentator puts it, and forces us to pay attention closely to what’s occurring. Why would God not threaten destruction? To answer that, we have to remember a key aspect of God’s character: He does not change. Hebrews 13:8 says He is the same yesterday and today and forever, “without variation or shifting shadow,” (James 1:17). The purpose of the threats of destruction, and Moses/Aaron’s intercession, was not to actually change God’s mind. God knew exactly what was going to happen in all these instances. God’s threats on Israel are spoken to Moses so that Moses will intercede. They are tests of Moses’ (and Aaron’s) character, just as God’s conversation with Abraham over the fates of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18) was about testing Abraham’s character rather than the doomed cities. Yet here, in Numbers 20, God does not follow the pattern. Why?
ellauri164.html on line 875: This gets us back to the question of what, exactly, Moses’ sin was. Many commentators focus on the physical actions that Moses took in verses 9-11. Some say Moses sin was striking the rock rather than speaking to it, but Moses was told to take the staff of God. Exodus 17:5-6 had Moses striking the rock to cause water to come out of the rock (in fact, it’s actually the same rock of Meribah!), so it’s possible to read an inference that the staff was to be used to strike the rock. Some commentators see Moses’ harsh words for Israel as the sin, or perhaps that he speaks to the people rather than speaking to the rock. Regardless of which of these views, they don’t account for what the text itself says: Numbers 20:12 makes it clear that the sin of Moses and Aaron was “…you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel.” Indeed, focusing on Moses’ actions of striking the rock or speaking harshly makes it seem doubly unfair to Aaron, who had neither spoken nor struck the rock.
ellauri164.html on line 877: The reading that makes more sense is to focus on the breaking of the pattern established to this point. Moses’ harsh words toward the Israelites reveal his emotions in this moment; he classifies Israel as “rebels” rather than the chosen people, and his rhetorical question seems to imply that he does not view Israel as worthy of God’s grace any longer. This is the real failure of Moses in this moment: he’s lost his faith in God to fulfill His promises to these people. Israel is a nation of rebels outside of grace, outside of God’s ability to make a great nation, outside of the promises that God has given. It seems nearly forty years of dealing with this people has finally broken Moses, and he is so overwhelmed in this moment that he has lost faith. From God’s perspective, Moses has lost faith in the Lord to overcome Israel’s faithlessness. Moses has not believed in God, and has not treated Yahweh as the Holy God who is able to overcome the weakness of His people. Indeed, this is exactly what Numbers 20:12 says was Moses’ sin! He (and Aaron!) did not believe God and did not treat Yahweh as holy in that moment. God did offer Moses the opportunity to intercede for the people (and thus broke the pattern) because He knew that Moses did not have faith in Him.
ellauri164.html on line 881: The second mention is in Deuteronomy 3:23-26, where after retelling the defeats of the kings Sihon and Og Moses relates that “I also pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying, ‘O Lord God, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness and Your strong hand; for what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as Yours? Let me, I pray, cross over and see the fair land that is beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.’ But the Lord was angry with me on your account, and would not listen to me; and the Lord said to me, ‘Enough! Speak to Me no more of this matter.” Again, Moses directly links the Lord’s anger towards him with the Israelites.
ellauri164.html on line 885: Reading the Numbers 20 passage the way that has been suggested makes sense of what Moses says in Deuteronomy. He’s not shifting the blame to Israel for his own failures, but highlighting that their constant rebellion was what caused him to lose his faith in God. Moses lack of faith led him to forget the promise and covenant of God, so he is using that illustration to demonstrate the dangers of forsaking the covenant: just like Moses, Israel will be forbidden the Promised Land if they don’t maintain faith in the covenant promises of God. That’s really one of the main points of Deuteronomy. It’s not just the covenant laws for the new generation, but Moses exhorting the new generation to never lose hope in the promise of God. Moses, knowing Israel, recognizes that there will come a day when they fail to uphold the covenant and they will be punished for it, but he also recognizes that God’s promises will stand no matter how badly Israel fails to uphold it. This, then, is the main point we should derive as well: God will always keep His promises. We, as the heirs to the promises to Abraham and Israel, should always firmly believe in the power of God to bring us, a broken people like Israel, to the shores of the Promised Land!
ellauri164.html on line 890: Many brethren and sisters, not to mention those outside the church, have a wrong understanding of what the sin of Moses was and its implication(s). Often when asked or giving comments on the matter, they say that his sin was in smiting the rock twice instead of once. They think that, since at first God told Moses to take the rod and smite the rock, and the next time He also told him to take the rod, therefore, he was also instructed to strike once. Such an understanding erodes the whole essence that God had designed in the type that would later be seen in the antitype. As it will soon be clear, striking the rock even once [that second time] would have been sin on the part of Moses. In view of this, therefore, it is important for us to possess the true facts on this matter.
ellauri164.html on line 933: Did Moses realize immediately what he had done? At some point after this event, “the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.’” Their conduct had publicly displayed a lack faith, reverence and respect. God determined that this needed an equally public punishment. The punishment for this sin was grievous. God gave to them a punishment so similar to the one given to all Israel at Kadesh that it was a heart-breaking moment for Moses. Both he and Aaron would die in the wilderness and not be allowed to enter the promised land. What a bitter pill for Moses to swallow. Like David with Bathsheba, God forgave the sin, but did not remove the consequences. The consequences for Moses’ momentary lapse in reverence and respect under the terrible emotion of anger was to be barred from entrance into the promised land.
ellauri164.html on line 935: When God said Moses “failed to sanctify me in the eyes of the people,” He did not specify exactly what this failure was. God had told Moses to “speak to the rock,” but the account stated that “Moses lifted up his hand, and smote the rock with his rod twice.” Clearly, in that act, Moses went beyond what God had commanded him to do. God had told Moses to take the staff, but not use it. He was directly commanded only to speak to the rock. He went beyond what was written when struck that rock. It was similar to Nadab and Abihu who offered “strange fire which He had not commanded them.” At that time Moses saw that such behavior did not “treat God as holy or glorify him among the people” (Lev. 10:1-3). Yet Moses, in anger, failed to hallow God when he struck that rock instead of speaking to it. He had failed to learn “not to go beyond what is written,” (1Cor. 4:6). He was told to speak to the rock (and he did not do that), but struck the rock (which he had no authority to do). God later charged Moses with this sin: “you rebelled against my word at the waters of Meribah” (Num 20:24; 27:13).
ellauri164.html on line 937: There was a second sin that was also committed in that same event. It was not revealed until The Psalmist described it: “it went ill with Moses” because “he spoke rashly with his lips” (Psa 106:33). When we look at what Moses said, we can see exactly how rash he was! “Hear now, ye rebels; shall we bring you forth water out of this rock?” This was a serious lapse in judgment. Moses was not going to bring water out of that rock. So, there was a big problem with that “we.” Hence, first by striking the rock, and second by using a pronoun that elevated them, Moses “believed not in me, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel.”
ellauri164.html on line 947: “Then I pleaded with the Lord at that time, saying: 24 'O Lord God, You have begun to show Your servant Your greatness and Your mighty hand, for what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do anything like Your works and Your mighty deeds? 25 I pray, let me cross over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, those pleasant mountains, and Lebanon.' 26 "But the Lord was angry with me on your account, and would not listen to me. So the Lord said to me: 'Enough of that! Speak no more to Me of this matter. 27 Go up to the top of Pisgah, and lift your eyes toward the west, the north, the south, and the east; behold it with your eyes, for you shall not cross over this Jordan.” (Deut. 3:23-27)
ellauri164.html on line 957: Every year we plow through the many possible explanations for God’s decision to disallow Moses entry to Canaan. I would like to propose an explanation that is connected with what we already know about the Israelites and with the way the story is structured.
ellauri164.html on line 969: And here is the clue to what went wrong in this critical story: God says, “You and your brother Aaron take the rod and assemble the community, and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water. Thus you shall produce water for them from the rock and provide drink for the congregation and their beasts” (Num. 20:7-8). When the time comes, Moses does speak, but what he says is ambiguous in tone and intent. Here is the very short story:
ellauri164.html on line 973: In this very short story we see a second framework: the phrase “before the eyes” emphasizes both the importance of what the Israelites witness, and the logical nature of Moses’s punishment. Why is it so important that Moses speak “before the eyes of the Israelites”? To answer that, we need to recall their past.
ellauri164.html on line 975: The Israelites had a history of trusting in God because of what they saw. The most famous example, which we repeat in the daily morning service, quotes their experience after the crossing of the Sea of Reeds: “Israel saw the wondrous power which God had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared God; they had faith in God and in God’s servant, Moses” (Exod. 14:31). They have needed this public, indisputable evidence of their eyes ever since. God knows that what they see is what is most important. And what he wants them to see is Moses speaking—not striking the rock, as he was commanded to do on the former occasion.
ellauri164.html on line 981: Instead, Moses does what he did in the first story, ignoring the fact that he is not dealing with the same population. He acts as though he is saying to himself, “They are just like their parents! Always quarreling!” In fact, they are a new generation, and by reverting to an action that was appropriate forty years earlier, and not now, Moses shows that he is not the person to bring them into the Land.
ellauri171.html on line 398: The story continues the Bible’s exploration of the origin of evil in a world created by a God who is all goodness. (Remember the old word game: write down ‘God’ and ‘Devil’; then put an extra ‘o’ in the middle of ‘God’ and take the ‘d’ off ‘devil’; what do you have?) Another one: write the words backwards, what do you get? Dog lived. Okay never mind let's move on.
ellauri171.html on line 405: Occasionally they went too far and came a cropper. This is what happened to John.
ellauri171.html on line 502: Dinah oli yxi Enid Blytonin Salaisuussarjan lapsista. Sen veli oli Philip ja niillä oli papukaija jonka nimi oli Kiki. Kiki huusi aina jotain sattuvaa. Who was Dinah & what was her story?
ellauri171.html on line 521: But Shechem falls passionately in love post coitum! So not at all what happened with Amnon. Dinah must have been a better lay. Now love complicates what would otherwise be the simple story of a violent crime. Shechem declared that he has fallen passionately in love with Dinah. He told her this, and he told anyone who would listen to him. He loved her tenderly – the words of the story imply longing, yearning, tenderness, not the usual feelings of a rapist.
ellauri171.html on line 524: Dinah’s feelings are not recorded, so we have no way of knowing what they were. Niin aina.
ellauri171.html on line 529: Jacob does not send for his sons, but waits for them to come home from the fields. Nothing is said about Jacob’s feelings, or about what he thinks.
ellauri171.html on line 534: When Dinah’s brothers heard what had happened, they were very angry. The verb used to describe their emotion is the same as the word used to describe God’s grief when he sees what humanity has become, before the Flood (Genesis 6:6)
ellauri171.html on line 552: He has done what ‘ought not to be done’, gone against the norms of social ethics.
ellauri171.html on line 563: Shechem agrees. He is the eldest son of his family, next in line to rule the city of Shechem, so all the men the city agree to be circumcised. He does not have to explain the reason for this uncomfortable operation: everyone knows what has happened.
ellauri171.html on line 581: Now the other brothers of Dinah join in, plundering the city. They steal the flocks and herds, donkey, and whatever produce they can carry.
ellauri171.html on line 589: His anger is stoked not by any ethical consideration, but by the fear that they have become pariahs who will be hunted down by allies of the city they have attacked. He rebukes his sons for backing out of the agreement they had with the people of the city – but hasn’t he himself used duplicity all his life to get what he wants? He does not like it when his sons do the same.
ellauri171.html on line 608: The lesson is: think before you act. Ask yourself: what are the long-term consequences of your actions? Tää on kuin Johnin amerikkalaisesta lastenkirjasta: look before you leap. Pikku hiirulainen mietti tätä eikä mennyt naimisiin kuin vasta toisen hiiren kanssa.
ellauri171.html on line 642: Judges 19:15-26 describes what happened the night the couple stayed in Gibeah, a city of the Benjamites. When they entered the open square of the city an old man invited them to his home (Judges 19:16-21). While the old man and the Levite and his concubine were having dinner, we are told some “worthless fellows” surrounded the house and pounded on the door. Verses 22-24 describe the discussion that occurred with these “worthless fellows.”
ellauri171.html on line 645: While they were celebrating, behold, the men of the city, certain worthless fellows, surrounded the house, pounding the door; and they spoke to the owner of the house, the old man, saying, “Bring out the man who came into your house that we may have relations with him.” Then the man, the owner of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my fellows, please do not act so wickedly; since this man has come into my house, do not commit this act of folly. “ Here is my virgin daughter and his concubine. Please let me bring them out that you may ravish them and do to them whatever you wish. But do not commit such an act of folly against this man.” Judges 19:22-24 (NASB)
ellauri171.html on line 647: The worthless fellows wanted the old man to send out the Levite so that they could engage in sexual activity with him. But the old man refused and offered the crowd of men his virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine. The old man said, “you may ravish them” and do “whatever you wish.” He granted them permission to engage in sexual relations with the two women. Now it is obvious the men surrounding the old man’s house wanted to engage in sexual activity when the two women were offered. It is also obvious the men described as “worthless fellows” were homosexuals since they wanted sex with the Levite and two women were offered.[1, 2]
ellauri171.html on line 665: In response, Israel asked God what they should do. In Judges 20:18, 23, 28, 35 God directed them to engage the tribe of Benjamin in battle and defeat them. This reveals that God saw the great sins that had occurred in Gibeah. He directed that the tribe be killed. In fact, in Judges 20:35, 46 we are told God helped Israel destroy 25,100 men of Benjamin. God directed this punishment of the tribe of Benjamin.
ellauri171.html on line 679: The first important lesson from this account is that the Bible indicates God did not approve of the horrible sins that occurred in the city of Gibeah. Judges 20:18, 23, 28, 35 repeatedly reveal that God directed the other tribes of Israel to action against a morally evil tribe. This reveals that the accusation of some that Scripture is silent about the evil that occurred is wrong. The reason the account is recorded is summarized at the end of Judges 21. There God reveals that He condemned the nation of Israel for its actions in Judges 19-21. Judges 21:25 says, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” It reveals what happens when men and women abandon God. Romans 3:10-18 states the human race is utterly perverted and their actions will demonstrate it. It says no one seeks after God. “There is not even one!” We have all turned aside from God. Jesus said to the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:17 that there is only One who is good and He is God. The rest of Romans 3:10-18 describes our utter sinfulness and despicable behavior when we abandon God. That describes the inhabitants of Gibeah and the nation of Benjamin. Tämmöistä sakinhivutusta suositaan armeijoissa nykyäänkin. Jos syyllistä ei saada kiinni, pannaan koko komppania kärsimään. Hemmetti tää on kyllä alkeellista touhua. Kuka tästä enää haluaa mitään oppia? No vizi on että raamatun lukijoista on varmasti yli 50% just yhtä alkeellista porukkaa. Ei apinat ole mihkään muuttuneet, ne on sopeutuneet tähän.
ellauri171.html on line 681: Our second lesson is that our sins affect others and potentially lead others to sin. The first sin in this account occurred in the home of the Levite and concubine. The fact that the Levite planned to “speak tenderly to her” (Judges 19:3) in order to win her back, seems to imply that they had quarreled. The most obvious sin is that she committed adultery when she became a prostitute. The initial sin cascaded into the horrific evils in Gibeah and subsequently to the 400 virgins who were taken alive in Jabesh-gilead to be given as wives to the remaining men of Benjamin. Judges 21:25 says, “. . . everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
ellauri171.html on line 685: When Judges 21:25 records that everyone did what was right in their own eyes, we must realize that it described how insensitive the entire nation of Israel had become to sin. The reason that God ordered the destruction of the tribe of Benjamin was that they were so insensitive to sin that the tribe was irredeemably sinful and had to be destroyed. In Deuteronomy 8:19-20, God warned the nation that He would destroy it if they abandoned Him. Therefore, He destroyed most of the tribe of Benjamin in order to prevent contamination to the other eleven tribes.
ellauri171.html on line 687: A fifth lesson is that the account describes what happens when men and women abandon God. Sex and other immoral behavior replace God! The entire story is an example of unrestrained animal lust and human depravity. Total disregard for life occurs. What one desires is all that is important. As Proverbs 30:15 says, “The leech has two daughters, “Give,” “Give” . . . ” Women are less important than men. Men abuse men. Unloving men abusively rule over women. Sex trumps everything else. Why? Judges 21:25 says, “. . . everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
ellauri171.html on line 693: Another lesson is that the Levite was supposedly a godly man and priest. The account does not tell us what ultimately happened to him, but Judges 20:4-5 seems to imply that he lied about his actions in order to save himself. Scripture records what appears to be deception. It is not enough for someone to claim to a godly person. It appears that Scripture records he was not fit for the priesthood. Being a pastor or a priest is not a “job” or “vocation.” Some have said that character does not matter. It is what one accomplishes. But Scripture repeatedly demonstrates that God uses righteous ministers! This man’s behavior demonstrated he was not qualified to be a priest.
ellauri171.html on line 793: Though Christ never taught it was wrong to have wealth, He did warn about the snare of riches. For example, there was a rich young man who came to Him during His ministry. He asked Jesus what He must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus told Him, “sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me” (Matthew 19:21). As the episode unfolds, the rich young man could not bring himself to do this. He “went away sorrowful, but anyway he had great possessions” (Matthew 19:22).
ellauri171.html on line 799: Until that day, God is continually searching the hearts of His people to know what is in them. He allows some Christians to be poor, even while other believers have wealth. What a Christian does in each circumstance is important to God. In the book of Revelation, the glorified Jesus Christ said to one of His churches, "I know your… poverty, but you are rich” (Revelation 2:9). That is, these Christians were poor in the wealth of this world, but were rich in faith toward God.
ellauri171.html on line 954: In Canaanite mythology there were twin mountains Targhizizi and Tharumagi which hold the firmament up above the earth-circling ocean, thereby bounding the earth. W. F. Albright, for example, says that El Shaddai is a derivation of a Semitic stem that appears in the Akkadian shadû ("mountain") and shaddā'û or shaddû'a ("mountain-dweller"), one of the names of Amurru. Philo of Byblos states that Atlas was one of the Elohim, which would clearly fit into the story of El Shaddai as "God of the Mountain(s)". Harriet Lutzky has presented evidence that Shaddai was an attribute of a Semitic goddess, linking the epithet with Hebrew šad "breast" as "the one of the Breast". The idea of two mountains being associated here as the breasts of the Earth, fits into the Canaanite mythology quite well. The ideas of pairs of mountains seem to be quite common in Canaanite mythology (similar to Horeb and Sinai in the Bible). The late period of this cosmology makes it difficult to tell what influences (Roman, Greek, or Hebrew) may have informed Philo's writings.
ellauri171.html on line 1016: Jezebel is characterized as totally evil in the biblical text and beyond it: in the New Testament her name is a generic catchword for a whoring, non-believing female adversary (Revelations 2:20); in Judeo-Christian traditions, she is evil. The Bible is careful not to refer to her as queen. And yet, this is precisely what she seems to have been. Some early Jewish, albeit post-biblical, sources deconstruct the general picture: “Four women exercised government in the world: Jezebel and Athaliah from Israel, Semiramis and Vashti from the [gentile] nations” (in a Jewish Midrash for the Book of Esther, Esther Rabbah)
ellauri171.html on line 1036: The name Jezebel is a girl's name of Hebrew origin meaning "not exalted". Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab in the Hebrew Book of Kings, has long had a bad girl reputation. But in the modern secular world, this is somewhat mitigated by the feminist perspective of her as a strong woman, the power behind the throne. Previously avoided as a baby name, Jezebel is now, along with the also previously avoided Delilah and Desiree, coming into use, helped by its relation to other 'bel' names such as Isabel and Bella. The popular feminist celebrity blog Jezebel upped the name's cool factor. Jezebel is the title of one of Bette Davis's best known early films.
ellauri171.html on line 1051: Judah, who has bought her for his firstborn son, Er, loses it, er, I mean loses Er. When he, er, I mean Er dies, Judah gives Tamar to his second son, Onan, who is to act as levir, a surrogate for his dead brother who would beget a son to continue Er’s lineage. (Onan's sin you must be familiar with first hand!) In this way, Tamar too would be assured a place in the family. Onan, however, would make a considerable economic sacrifice. According to inheritance customs, the estate of Judah, who had three sons, would be divided into four equal parts, with the eldest son acquiring one half and the others one fourth each. A child engendered for Er would inherit at least one fourth and possibly one half (as the son of the firstborn). If Er remained childless, then Judah’s estate would be divided into three, with the eldest, most probably Onan, inheriting two thirds. Onan opts to preserve his financial advantage and does coitus interruptus with Tamar, spilling his semen on the ground. For this, God punishes Onan with death, as God had previously punished Er for doing something equally wicked (unfortunately we are not told what, maybe sodomy in the flock).
ellauri171.html on line 1061: But there is a greater threat to his honor (aw fuck, stop, you're killing us). Rumor relates that Tamar is pregnant and has obviously been faithless to her obligation to Judah to remain chaste. Judah, as the head of the family, acts swiftly to restore his honor, commanding that she be burnt to death. But Tamar has anticipated this danger. She sends his identifying pledge to him, urging him to recognize that its owner is the father. Realizing what has happened, Judah publicly announces Tamar’s innocence. His cryptic phrase, zadekah mimmeni, is often translated “she is more in the right than I” (Gen 38:26), a recognition not only of her innocence, but also of his wrongdoing in not freeing her or performing the levirate. Another possible translation is “she is innocent—it [the child] is from me.” Judah has now performed the levirate (despite himself) and never cohabits with Tamar again. Once she is pregnant, future sex with a late son’s wife would be incestuous.
ellauri171.html on line 1074: There is nothing whatever special here, but it adequately achieves its modest ambitions.
ellauri171.html on line 1110: (PST. Read what modern Bible scholars say about Tamar)
ellauri171.html on line 1115: But Amnon was not used to being refused something he wanted. He must have discussed his obsession with a friend of his, a clever cousin called Jonadab, because this young man came up with a plan. They would lure Tamar into Amnon’s room on the pretext that her half-brother was ill, and once they were alone there Amnon could have what he wanted. Bedrooms in ancient mansions were designed to receive guests/visitors.
ellauri171.html on line 1128: When she did this, leaning forward with the food, he took hold of her and pulled her to him, molesting her. Alone and unguarded, she had no chance of fending him off. She resisted him as best she could, she argued and pleaded, pointed out that what he was doing was wrong, that they could marry if he wished, that rape would bring ruin to them both.
ellauri171.html on line 1143: Her appearance, and the women’s quick realization of what had happened, plunged the harem into turmoil. The three women most affected were Tamar, her mother Maacah, and Ahinoam, the mother of Amnon. The sisters of Tamar and Amnon would also have been intimately affected.
ellauri171.html on line 1145: Other wives of David and their children would be sympathetic, but would quickly look to see what they could gain from Amnon’s crime – which way the wind blew, and what chance might there be to seize some political advantage for themselves. Among them would be Bathsheba, a commoner newly introduced into the harem.
ellauri171.html on line 1152: When her brother Absalom found out what had happened he comforted her as best he could, and moved her out of the harem into his own house. Then he went to the King and demanded that Amnon marry his sister – marriage between a half-brother and sister was a possibility in this extreme case, though biblical law prohibited it elsewhere. But for his favorite king David Jehovah was prepared to make an exception.
ellauri171.html on line 1154: Prince Amnon refused outright to marry her, the callous streak already evident in David now coming out in the son. David was angry, but did nothing to resolve the situation, or even to punish Amnon for what he had done. This was typical of David – he could never chastise his sons even when they deserved it. Instead he did what many people have done when confronted with rape or incest – he protected the abuser rather than the victim, and tried to hush things up.
ellauri171.html on line 1164: It is to be hoped that Tamar did not accompany her brother to Geshur, since her status there would have been even worse that in Israel. Instead, Maacah may have used what little influence she now had to see that her daughter returned to David’s harem. In either place Tamar’s position would have been lowly, little better than a servant. Tamar means ‘date palm’; the name suggests a date palm.
ellauri172.html on line 256: It may be objected, if man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? I am quite ready to admit, that a man placed in the equilibrium described (namely, as perceiving nothing but hunger and thirst, a certain food and a certain drink, each equally distant from him) would die of hunger and thirst. If I am asked, whether such a one should not rather be considered an ass than a man; I answer, that I do not know, neither do I know how a man should be considered, who hangs himself, or how we should consider children, fools, madmen, &c. Hyvä Pentti!
ellauri172.html on line 263: Social Psychologist Kurt Lewin's Field Theory treated this paradox experimentally. He demonstrated that lab rats experience difficulty when choosing between two equally attractive (approach-approach) goals. The typical response to approach-approach decisions is initial ambivalence, though the decision becomes more decisive as the organism moves towards one choice and away from another. [So what? Kurt should repeat the experiment with donkeys.]
ellauri172.html on line 265: The situation of Buridan's ass was given a mathematical basis in a 1984 paper by American computer scientist Leslie Lamport (LaTex -ladontaskriptikielen kexijä, LOL), in which Lamport presents an argument that, given certain assumptions about continuity in a simple mathematical model of the Buridan's ass problem, there is always some starting condition under which the ass starves to death, no matter what strategy it takes. He points out that just because we do not see people's asses starving to death through indecision, this does not disprove the principle. The persistence of a Buridan's undecided state for the required length of time may just be sufficiently improbable that it has not been observed.
ellauri172.html on line 267: I don't doubt it, but what of it? Must have happened zillion times say with flies trying to decide between staying on a turd and fleeing. He further illustrates the paradox with the example of a driver stopped at a railroad crossing trying to decide whether he has time to cross before a train arrives. Ei tällä höpsästelyllä ole mitään tekemistä apinoiden kanssa eikä niiden jumaloidenkaan.
ellauri172.html on line 299: 35 The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, “Go with the men, but speak only what I tell you.” So Balaam went with Balak’s officials.
ellauri172.html on line 303: 38 “Well, I have come to you now,” Balaam replied. “But I can’t say whatever I please. I must speak only what God puts in my mouth.”(N)
ellauri180.html on line 123: This journal will help you envision your ideal life and then identify the unconscious attachments that are preventing you from living it. Through a series of writing prompts and exercises as well as some of Brianna’s favorite quotes, most popular articles, and new passages, it will help you sort through the conflicting thoughts, feelings, and fears that are preventing you from becoming the person you want and need to be. You do not need more motivation or drive to start building the life of your dreams. You need to better understand who you are, why you keep re-creating comfortable pain patterns, and why you may not really want what is it you think you do.
ellauri180.html on line 174: OBJECTIVES: Globally approximately 25% of men are circumcised for religious, cultural, medical, or parental choice reasons. However, controversy surrounds the procedure, and its benefits and risks to health. We review current knowledge of the health benefits and risks associated with male circumcision. METHODS: We have used, where available, previously conducted reviews of the relation between male circumcision and specific outcomes as "benchmarks", and updated them by searching the Medline database for more recent information. RESULTS: There is substantial evidence that circumcision protects males from HIV infection, penile carcinoma, urinary tract infections, and ulcerative sexually transmitted diseases. We could find little scientific evidence of adverse effects on sexual, psychological, or emotional health. Surgical risks associated with circumcision, particularly bleeding, penile injury, and local infection, as well as the consequences of the pain experienced with neonatal circumcision, are valid concerns that require appropriate responses. CONCLUSION: Further analyses of the utility and cost effectiveness of male circumcision as a preventive health measure should, in the light of this information, be research and policy priorities. A decision as to whether to recommend male circumcision in a given society should be based upon an assessment of the risk for and occurrence of the diseases which are associated with the presence of the foreskin, versus the risk of the complications of the procedure. In order for individuals and their families to make an informed decision, they should be provided with the best available evidence regarding the known benefits and risks. And they should also know what God thinks of it.
ellauri180.html on line 197: Baillie (1833) also describes gonococcal phimosis and recommends that the initial treatment is nugatory' (inoperative) involving the washing of the penis (and under the prepuce with soap and tepid water, followed by the application of calomel ointment. Abernathy also warns against immediate circumcision in the face of a morbidly sensitive surface' (and declares that Sir Edward Home agrees with him!). He advocates that the posthitis (inflamed foreskin) should be allowed to soothe and allay' before surgical intervention. We can assume that the complications recognized by both Abernathy and Baillie were re-phimosis, re-stricture or suppuration; what is clear is that circumcision was not a procedure taken lightly at that time. Interestingly, neither author mentions circumcision in the neonate, suggesting that it had not yet significantly entered the domain of English surgeons.
ellauri180.html on line 212: Gairdner made the astute observations that the slow period of preputial development corresponded with the age of incontinence. He felt that the prepuce had a protective role and noted that meatal ulceration only occurred in circumcised boys. Recently, a doctor writing anonymously in the BMJ provided an analogy suggesting that the prepuce is to the glans what the eyelid is to the eye.
ellauri180.html on line 256: I accidentally stumbled upon what works for me...
ellauri180.html on line 278: For those of you that struggled to start writing your stories, what finally motivated you to do so?
ellauri180.html on line 286: First novel done. Now what?
ellauri180.html on line 304: If James Cameron had spent some time reading things written by Native people about Pocahontas and what that storyline means to their people and how offensive and damaging the sexualization of native women is, he might have reconsidered that romantic subplot. If he had started to read and then balked at all the vicious hatred and anger, it is as if he never even tried.
ellauri180.html on line 309:
ellauri180.html on line 375: Robert "Bobby" Pendragon is an everyday athletic junior high school student from (fictional) Stony Brook, Connecticut, located in the greater New York metropolitan area. Bobby is a prisoner of color. Oops sorry my bad he's not, rather he looks a lot like Harry Potter without the spectacles. But his date Lori (whatever) is a WOC. Bobby's Uncle Stop Press reveals that he will train Bobby to become one of the "Travelers": asshole-journeying young warriors from a variety of different planets and cultures. Great Dane threatens to mix them all together like a kid with watercolors until they are all the same shade of shit.
ellauri180.html on line 419: While I debated what to do. Ja vielä kun mietin next movea.
ellauri180.html on line 569: Namely a prediction for what will happen to the planet if the human race does not change (for the better).
ellauri180.html on line 581: Some "men" smile into their hands in intense cynicism for what is happening. People seem frustrated.
ellauri181.html on line 166: “Values serve as standards or criteria. Values guide the selection or evaluation of actions, policies, people, and evenz. People decide what is good or bad, justified or illegitimate, worth doing or avoiding, based on possible consequences for their cherished values. But the impact of values in everyday decisions is rarely conscious. Values enter awareness when the actions or judgmenz one is considering have conflicting implications for different values one cherishes.”
ellauri181.html on line 376: While mean scores from Likert-type scales can be compared across individuals, scores from an ipsative measure cannot. To explain, if an individual was equally extroverted and conscientious and was assessed on a Likert-type scale, each trait would be evaluated singularly, i.e. respondents would see the item "I enjoy parties" and agree or disagree with it to whatever degree reflected their preferences.[citation needed]
ellauri181.html on line 552: To help us understand what matters most we should consider the story of Benjamin Franklin. (I wonder where the name Franklin Covey � came from? - duh!) Think if you will who Ben Franklin was, but even more importantly, what was his legacy?
ellauri181.html on line 577: When he completed his list of the virtues to which he aspired, Franklin wrote a brief sentence describing each of the virtues and what it meant to him. He did not want there to be any confusion about what each of these words meant. His definitions of his virtues then looked like this.....
ellauri181.html on line 582:

(PST, a word: evil for whom? Theology teaches good is whatever pleases Cod, so he can never do anything evil except by accident, and accidents don't happen because he is infallible! So there! Hyvä jumala ei tahdo, että ihminen on onnellinen. Kärsimyxen uskonto on toivon uskonto. Hauska alkaa vasta kiven tuolla puolen. Tomismikin on parempi kuin moraalinen atomismi. Deka atoma, sanoi Ateenassa Omena.)
ellauri408.html on line 428: And it wasn’t just non-Christian Jews who failed to write about such things, it was the earliest Christians including the evangelist Paul. The “miracles” were created and backdated into the NT texts by Greek-speaking Christians who obviously had never spoken to an eyewitness; got Middle Eastern culture, geography and timelines wrong; misquoted prophets; and constantly contradicted each other. Furthermore, they didn’t consider what they were writing to be sacred texts because they changed the texts as if they were drunk, according to the Greek philosopher Celsus in his debates with the early church father Origen.
ellauri408.html on line 447: There is no “spiritual” or enlightened way to read such evil bible passages. The only thing Christians can do is complain bitterly when they are pointed out, attacking the messenger rather than being honest about what the Bible clearly says. 117.3K views on 9–9–2024, 96.8K views on 8–7–2024, 86.8K views on 7–19–2024. 129.6K views total. View 713 upvotes. View 43 shares View 1 of 60 answers.
ellauri408.html on line 453: Curious and open-minded let’s talk about what excites you.
ellauri408.html on line 457: If Putin feels he's losing, what's to stop him nuking Kiev? It's not NATO.
ellauri409.html on line 219: Ackroyd was born in London and raised on a council estate in East Acton, in what he has described as a "strict" Roman Catholic household by his mother and grandmother, after his father skedadled from the family home. He first knew that he was gay when he was seven. No wonder. In 1972, he was a Mellow fellow at Yale University.
ellauri409.html on line 321: And in whatever shape of mollusc or of ape Olinpa nilviäinen taikka apina,
ellauri409.html on line 466: Prufrock sums it up well: “It is impossible to say just what I mean!” Actually Eliot means that the plight of J. Alfred Prufrock and the plight of all humanity are parallel in their morbidity, futility, and failure. It is not just Prufrock who drowns; it is him and us.
ellauri409.html on line 552: Is there anything left to say about The Waste Land? More ink has been spilt over TS Eliot’s great modernist song of despair (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/broken-down-bank-clerk-three-months-margate-ts-eliot-wrote/) than any other poem published in the past hundred years. Its centenary has been marked by the second volume of Robert Crawford’s Eliot biography (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/new-biography-makes-ts-eliots-life-seem-unthinkably-grim/), the memoirs of Eliot’s confidante Mary Trevelyan and a life of his muse Emily Hale (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/hidden-women-ts-eliots-life/), following not all that long after a biography of his first wife, Vivienne (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/fall-sparrow-ann-pasternak-slater-review-tragic-life-ts-eliots/). That’s ignoring the nine volumes of Eliot’s letters (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/letters-ts-eliot-vol-8-review-really-necessary/), each a convenient size to club a man to death with.
ellauri411.html on line 50: Tomalin writes of Bowden, “In the immediate aftermath of the fiasco of the wedding he thought her frigidity towards him might be a sign of lesbianism.” “Frigidity”, “a sign of lesbianism” – what antique expressions, as well as male hostilities. She didn’t want to have sex with me so there must be something wrong with her. Bowden has long since been scorned by Mansfield biographers as someone who she found repulsive. “Rather weak”, as Tomalin dismissed him, and “clearly not a passionate lover”.
ellauri411.html on line 54: Biographical investigation has the right to accumulate every single piece of knowledge. It adds to the portrait. As Claire Tomalin writes of Katherine Mansfield in 1909, a New Zealander abroad, just turned 20, her genius not yet realised, “It was an absolutely crucial time for her; without an understanding of what happened to her in 1909, the rest of her life simply does not make sense.” Vittu kenenkä elämä ylipäänsä "makes sense".
ellauri411.html on line 180: Of the twelve tribes, the northern ten tribes made up Israel and the two southern tribes made up the tiny kingdom of Judea. Although the latter survived the conquest of the Assyrian Empire, what with Hosea paying them tons of silver in tribute, they received a severe blow when the Empire of Babylon conquered it. This could have been the end of the Jewish religion since the Babylonians were in the habit of destroying the cultures of the places they invaded and conquered. However, many Jews fled to different parts of the Middle East and Egypt. This led to the beginning of the Jewish diaspora.
ellauri412.html on line 64: I met a sweet gal named Jerusha. Upon hearing her name, I squealed, “I’ve never met a Jerusha!!”  She looked rather startled. (I do that to people sometimes.) “You know who Jerusha is?”  “Of course! She’s King Uzziah’s wife in the Bible.”  This sweet girl smiled and confessed she’d stumped many Bible nerds with her name. I wouldn’t have known either unless I’d been studying Isaiah and the kings who reigned during his ministry.  Here’s another woman I’ve read over at least a dozen times–Ahinoam. I knew one of David’s wives was Ahinoam, but did you know King Saul’s wife was also named Ahinoam? Aha! Got you there! And what about Job’s wife? Scripture doesn’t even name her. We only know her as the crotchety old gal that gripes at her suffering husband. The shepherd girl in Solomon’s Song of Songs is another one who gets no name. At least we know she was loved. And how! Isaiah’s wife is another woman mentioned but given no name.
ellauri412.html on line 187: The sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth. (Judges 3:7)
ellauri412.html on line 189: God had a reason for detesting the worship of Asherah, the rites used to worship Asherah were sexual and involved prostitution of both sexes. God hates everything having to do with sex for he has not got what to fuck with.
ellauri412.html on line 201: So knowing that God's warning against worshiping Asherah is repeated over and over and over you would think that mankind would get the idea that worshiping Asherah is a bad idea. And if you thought that you would be wrong. If there's one thing that the Old Testament teaches us above and beyond all other lessons is that fact that People Just Don't Learn. Seriously. The one man that God blessed with power and money and family and wisdom; Solomon, guess what he did? Go on, guess. Okay, I'll tell you anyway, it's rather juicy.
ellauri412.html on line 648: This prophecy was written 1000 years before Jesus was born. And coincidently, Judaism has tried to insert multiple messiahs to fit their own narrative of rejecting Jesus. How can you (Judaism) reject a chapter to fit your narrative of you still waiting for your messiah to come. If it’s in the word of God it is to be taken what the Lord God through the holy spirit had written. This is why, Christianity who follow Christ, we read the entire book of The Lord God We don’t have the right as his followers to reject or omit what the Lord Has written. If I was following Judaism then I would question and start to think with my own insight about how can you reject a chapter that the Lord God put in the Holy Bible, and then you have orthodox Jew who has come to the truth of Jesus Christ.
ellauri412.html on line 678: Either way, why dig in your heels about a single verse? Without a belief in God, Isaiah’s “suffering servant” could be referring to anything. Maybe he was writing about his crazy uncle who gave up his life for a neighboring tribe. Or maybe he was writing about aliens from another planet. Or maybe it is pure fiction from the mind of a delusional believer in a non-existent God. The one thing you are not allowed to reasonably conclude if you are an atheist is that Isaiah, as a prophet, was recording a message revealed to him God. Which is exactly what Isaiah would have thought he was writing at the time.
ellauri412.html on line 686: Vastaus: I get what you’re saying, Barry. Your objection is moral in nature. God ought to prevent his children from disaster, he ought to stop rapists, and it is immoral of him not to do so. And because of His moral lapse, you conclude that God’s love must be limited; He must not be omnibenevolent. It’s a modern take on Epicurus. And it’s a strong argument. Its tacit implication is that if God was really all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful, He should have created a universe without evil, suffering, or disaster. This implication suggests a presupposition that one of the highest moral values is an absence of evil and suffering. However, Christianity teaches there is an even higher moral value than an absence of evil and suffering: namely, love. You can't show how much you love if you don't first create some suffering.
ellauri412.html on line 688: Scripture reveals that our suffering is not without purpose. It can produce character and hope (Rom 5:3-4; Jas 1:2-4), draw us to God (2 Cor 1:9), teach us to love (2 Cor 1:4-5), and play an important role in our sanctification (Heb 12:6-10; Eph 5:26-27). Suffering also plays a critical role in our salvation (1 Pet 4:12-16). In fact, I think our salvation is the reason Heaven cannot contain love and free will without the existence of evil. It is like putting your foot out of the bed: it won´t feel good before you have felt what bad is like.
ellauri412.html on line 692: Dawkins is right. He says what Darwin told us. One guy's good is the other guy's bad. Rape feels great for the rapist, he would not do it otherwise. The atheist can perhaps categorize rape as undesirable, or unpleasant, or sub-optimal for society. But they have no real basis on which to label it objectively morally wrong. Your moral outrage at that child’s rape belies your atheism, my friend. Well, who needs objectivity, suum quique is quite enough.
ellauri413.html on line 276: what-are-you-waiting-for.jpg" width="100%" />
ellauri418.html on line 179: what-are-the-most-brutal-punishments-in-the-history-of-women4af0ea27-fe6e-4243-a359-446fd3a8f099-415x250.jpg" width="70%" />
ellauri419.html on line 217: ACLU founder Roger Baldwin became a strong anticommunist. Baldwin’s new anticommunist outlook set the stage for the most controversial episode in his career and in the history of the ACLU. In 1940, the ACLU board of directors adopted a policy under which no supporter of totalitarian organizations could serve in an official capacity in the American Civil Liberties Union. Under the policy, the board then quickly removed Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from its ranks because she was a member of the Communist Party. Many critics accused the ACLU of imposing the very same kind of political test that it had long fought against, and the incident tarnished the reputation of both Baldwin and the ACLU for several decades. In one of the most curious episodes in his career, Baldwin was invited to Japan in 1947 to advise General Douglas MacArthur on developing a constitution for postwar Japan. Somewhat surprisingly, the American Civil Liberties Union leader and the very conservative general established a close rapport.
ellauri419.html on line 218: Baldwin also formed a personal relationship with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover when the latter was first appointed in 1924, and he remained somewhat uncritical of the Bureau in the years that followed. Olikohan Rogerkin homofiili? No oli sillä pari vaimoa ja tytärkin. Years later, the ACLU would draw criticism from the NAACP for defending the right of the Klan to assemble peaceably. Jewish groups expressed similar disapproval when the group defended the right of automaker Henry Ford to publicize his anti–Semitic views. In these and other instances, however, the ACLU championed open discourse as opposed to suppression or censorship. Ihan Jarkko Tontin linjoilla kaikin puolin.
ellauri421.html on line 117: Paz strived to distinguish poetry, narrative and essay, but failed. ‘Duality,’ he says, ‘is a basic feature of Tantrism, it permeates all Hindu religious life: male and female, pure and impure, left and right, in this order.' Can't make head or tail of it. According to Paz, “Both love and eroticism—the double flame—are fed by the original fire: sexuality.” Wow what a strike of genius.
xxx/ellauri010.html on line 669: But I looked at the sites that you regularly visit, and I was shocked by what I saw!!!
xxx/ellauri010.html on line 675: I made a screenshot of the adult sites where you have fun (do you understand what it is about, huh?).
xxx/ellauri010.html on line 1486: I did, and what did I get for it?

xxx/ellauri010.html on line 1656: So what? muuttakoot rotinkaiset stadeihin.

xxx/ellauri013.html on line 1071: I could see directly I set my eyes on him what sort of a fool he was, gasped the dying Brown. He a man! Hell! He was a hollow sham. As if he couldn't have said straight out, Hands off my plunder! blast him. That would have been like a man! Rot his superiour soul! He had me there - but he hadn't devil enough in him to make and en of me. Not he! A thng like that letting me off as if I wasn't worth a kick!... Brown struggled desperately for breath... Fraud ... letting me off ... and so I did make an end of him after all... He choked again...

xxx/ellauri013.html on line 1098: > Blaming me for having a bad day is what you did, good luck with that.
xxx/ellauri027.html on line 305: At the weekend seminar, I couldn’t shake the feeling that what we were participating in was thinly-veiled self-indulgence and little more. In hindsight, I think this was as much a branding problem (from a business perspective) as an organizational problem (social perspective). Integral Institute built their movement in order to influence academia, governmental policy, to get books and journals published, and to infuse these ideas into the world at large. Yet, here we were, spending money to sit in a room performing various forms of meditation and yoga, having group therapy sessions, art performances, and generally going on and on about how “integral” we were and how important we were to the world without seemingly doing anything on a larger scale about it.
xxx/ellauri027.html on line 1002: If 100 people manage to focus for five hours on themes that touch everybody and bear on the grand themes of life in a subjectively significant way, reaching personally relevant insights in the course of the process, any normal human being can attest to the fact that something of significance has happened even if it is not immediately obvious what has taken place.
xxx/ellauri027.html on line 1052: In actual practice, much of academic philosophy is elitist and assumes a pretence of knowledge (somewhat like economics, as described by Hayek in his towering Nobel speech). I find much of academic philosophy fear-based as it seeks to pinpoint mistakes and operates with conceptual criticism as the leading faculty of mind. The result is the lack of synthetic, life-enhancing contributions (a point made clear in Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future).
xxx/ellauri044.html on line 320: Dr. Burgo: It helps to think of narcissism as occurring along a spectrum of severity, rather than as a discrete entity that corresponds to Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The extreme narcissist is incapable of authentic love and concern, but many other people with milder narcissistic features to their personalities can feel love under certain conditions. I’ve seen people able to feel a limited kind of love for their spouse or children but who demonstrate no empathy for anyone else. The love is often fairly “selfish,” with a focus more on what the narcissist needs rather than on concern for the other, but it is a kind of love all the same.
xxx/ellauri044.html on line 1056:

Hyi häpeä, what a shame

The clerk belongs to me, I belong to the clerk, what is it to others?

xxx/ellauri075.html on line 417:

The clerk belongs to me, I belong to the clerk, what is it to others?

xxx/ellauri075.html on line 520: As a gay man at a time when homosexual practices were illegal for men in Britain, Walpole conducted a succession of intense but discreet relationships with other men, and was for much of his life in search of what he saw as "the perfect friend". He eventually found one, a married policeman, with whom he settled in the English Lake District. All is well that ends well.
xxx/ellauri076.html on line 71: But what I need to make me tight are those mutta mitä tarviin tekeytyäxeni tiukaxi on noita
xxx/ellauri076.html on line 98: I tell ya what, girl Tiezmitä tyttö
xxx/ellauri076.html on line 211: (Girls) oh, what a peaches, (Typyjä) oi mitä persikoita,
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 126: In what distant deeps or skies. Missä etämaisemissa se
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 128: On what wings dare he aspire? Mil lihaxilla uskaltaa
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 131: And what shoulder, & what art, Ja millä olan, millä tyän
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 134: What dread hand? & what dread feet? Mi iso käsi & jalkavako?
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 136: What the hammer? what the chain, Mikä nuija, ketju nääs,
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 137: In what furnace was thy braine? Missä uunissa sun pääs?
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 138: What the anvil? what dread grasp, Mi alasin ja ote tarras,
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 160: Accordingly, what does the Tyger poem symbolize?
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 164: Additionally, what is the purpose of the Tyger by William Blake? It would be a mistake to say that Blake's purpose in writing "The Tyger" was to show that God is the source of pain and violence in the world, just as it would be a mistake to assume that Blake's purpose in writing "The Lamb" was to convert people to a belief in Jesus Christ.
xxx/ellauri081.html on line 269: Robert F./Bob Death asks Gately if by any chance he’s heard the one about the fish. Glenn K. in his fucking robe overhears, and of course he’s got to put his own oar in, and breaks in and asks them all if they’ve heard the one What did the blind man say as he passed by the Quincy Market fish-stall, and without waiting says He goes “Evening, Ladies.” A couple male White Flaggers fall about, and Tamara N. slaps at the back of Glenn K.’s head’s pointy hood, but without real heat, as in like what are you going to do with this sick fuck?
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 106: If it is a surprise to learn that Lawrence originally conceived of Women in Love as a money-making pot-boiler, it comes as an endearing shock to read that James Joyce submitted some of his early work to the firm of Mills and Boon. There is no record of the reader’s report, beyond the fact that he rejected Dubliners as unsuitable material for the unique imprint of that publishing house. For his part, Lawrence had no doubt that the author of Ulysses was the real smutmonger of modern fiction. ‘My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is!’, he wrote to Aldous Huxley, ‘nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate journalistic dirty-mindedness.’ To his wife Frieda he wrote, after reading Ulysses, that ‘the last part of it is the dirtiest, most indecent, obscene thing ever written’; and he later complained that Joyce had degraded the novel to the level of an instrument for measuring twinges in the toes of unremarkable men. Joyce’s reply to the charge that he was just another pornographer doing dirt on sex was to claim that at least he had never made the subject predictable or boring. He denounced Lady Chatterbox’s Lover — his title for Lawrence’s notorious novel — as a ‘lush’ production in ‘sloppy English’ and dismissed its ending as ‘a piece of propaganda in favour of something which, outside of DHL’s country at any rate, makes all the propaganda for itself’. It is a minor irony of literary history that both men were married at Kensington Register Office in London, although, unlike Lawrence, the Irishman allowed a decent interval of twenty-five years to elapse before the solemnisation of his nuptials.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 194: I write about personal finance, investments, entrepreneurship, and basically what a cheapo I am. I am recording all my learnings and mistakes on my youtube channel. Behavioral Economic + Artificial Int
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 212: I experienced that in my early twenties, and I can understand what that feels like. The day feels never-ending.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 232: I had no dream when I entered the workforce, I don’t even know what that means.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 248: So maybe the famous CEO wasn’t lying. Maybe what he really meant to say was that even when he was officially working, his brain was taking a vacation.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 258: Also how these types think about themselves and what they supposedly contribute. Yes some contribute a lot while others have a sense of self worth that far exceeds reality believing they contribute more therefore work all the time.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 262: It's also easy to rest on their laurels or use whatever success the company has in place now, that may not be directly related to their contributions, as a soapbox.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 264: Mark Cuban for example does this. There are many facts to his beginning and journey that are not exactly moral or success related but now hes in a position to say whatever he wants and relate everything as a direct result of his effort, ability and contributions and supposedly working harder than everyone else. He just likes to hear himself talk like many of these types do.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 268: Don't make the mistake of trying to model yourself after what they say or what they say to do a. It's a much different story when you're starting out or haven't had certain opportunities to build upon like they have.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 270: Most of the time it's a waste of energy to wonder about somebody else, what they're doing and what makes them tick when you have many tasks at hand. Do your work consciously as possible look for opportunity and put fourth a sincere effort with the most innocent approach you can.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 289: Peterson has argued that there is an ongoing "crisis of masculinity" and "backlash against masculinity" in which the "masculine spirit is under assault." He has argued that the left characterises the existing societal hierarchy as an "oppressive patriarchy" but "don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence." He has said men without partners are likely to become violent, and has noted that male violence is reduced in societies in which monogamy is a social norm. He has attributed the rise of Donald Trump and far-right European politicians to what he says is a negative reaction to a push to "feminize" men, saying "If men are pushed too hard to feminize they will become more and more interested in harsh, fascist political ideology." He attracted considerable attention over a 2018 Channel 4 interview in which he clashed with interviewer Cathy Newman on the topic of the gender pay gap. He disputed the contention that the disparity was solely due to sexual discrimination. It might be predicated on competence.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 320:
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 357: So here is what happens with the “Trickle Down Economics”…. Unlike the working class that, when they get an extra couple of hundred bucks immediately goes out and spends it and helps the entire economy, those at the top of the ladder tend to invest that money. So…. The “Trickle down Economics” theory says that if we give the top 1% more money, through tax breaks, tax credits, or even credits, they will then pass that money on to their employees and servants. This simply isn't true. If it were, they would already be sharing their profits with the working class.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 398: And that’s usually where that thought experiment ends. But let’s keep going with the scenario with low taxes, shall we? After a long time of this pattern, this sandwich shop might turn into a large chain. They’re above the struggle to survive that they started in, and other sandwich shops can’t easily take away a large portion of their customers. It becomes quite expensive to try and out-compete them. But competition is also expensive on their end. And then the owner of this shop starts to think “now wait a minute… I raise the starting wage of my workers and lower my prices, and then everyone else does the same, until eventually, I’m forced to do it again. But that second time, and every time afterwards, I’m not getting more customers or more efficient workers, I’m competing with the other companies to try to maintain what I already have, with less and less profit. And the same is true for everyone I’m competing with. What if I talked to all the other big chains in this area, and we all agreed to keep about the same starting wage and price? That way we ALL make more money.” And now those lower taxes have no effect on price or wages, all that extra money becomes profit.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 413: Let me give an example and then I’ll try to tackle what proponents of Supply Side economics ARE ACTUALLY SAYING.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 419: They understood it going in. It’s called a trade-off: they know they could lose it all, but FOR the chance to make a lot of money over a long period of time they RISK losing whatever they put in. That’s WHY the business environment of taxes and regulations, trade restrictions, etc is so important: If the owner thinks that even if they succeed, the govt will take a big chunk of what they profit, then WHY RISK IT? So they will just put money overseas or in lower risk but lower returns that don’t employ as many people. (Except that more people means lower returns...)
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 428: Other barriers are produced by govt in their speeches, it might not even be policy yet, but if for example Obama talks about raising taxes and tells business owners like Joe the Plumber that “You didn’t build that!” Then what signal does that send to would-be entrepreneurs? Probably just wait til a more friendly administration comes along. Not surprising that business activity increased toward the end of Obama’s term and really took off once people figured out that Trump was going to have policies that reduced barriers.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 433: There is no such thing as “trickle-down" because that's not how business starts or works, and not what anyone with a brain is claiming. We just want more opportunities and that happens by reducing friction and barriers, not by increasing them by fiat. NOTHING trickles down, you can be sure of that.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 459: If there are profitable jobs to be created and employers don’t have the money to start it off they could take out a loan and pay it off with the profit. There simply is no situation left where lowering the rich’s taxes would create jobs. But we don’t have to rely on this argument, we can look at the many times where this was tried and, guess what: lowering the rich’s taxes has never created more jobs.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 487: Put simply, there is no empirical evidence — none whatsoever — that trickle-down economics delivers as promised, bringing more jobs, higher pay and better conditions to millions of people.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 504: That was due in no small part to Trump’s tax cuts doing not what Laffer predicted but what all sensible economists said would happen: Government revenue fell while spending increased.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 517: White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow told Fox News on Sunday this is precisely what the Trump administration is considering.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 518: “Let’s let people keep more of what they earn,” he said. “That’s the supply side of the Laffer curve. We believe in that.”
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 555: They then traced what happened to those nations’ economies in the five years after the cuts were implemented. They focused particularly on income inequality, economic growth as measured by gross domestic product, and the unemployment rate. They aggregated those trends across countries to capture the broadest possible picture of the tax cuts’ effects.
xxx/ellauri085.html on line 587: I am not saying I have all the answers, because I don’t. But if I could wave a magic wand over our country, this is what I would do.
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 70: Löytikö Wallu merkityxen nykypäivän kadotuxesta? No eipä juuri. Eipä ei. Valaisipa omalta osaltaan what the fuck on olla termiittiapina. Millaista on elää Amerikassa sellaisena. Aika kamalaa.
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 232: “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them." Hmm. Better exhale through the nose.
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 242: There actually are some references on tattoos in Leviticus 19:28: “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD." But what about tattoos for the living? A tattoo saying "I am the LORD?" Swearing not falsely but truly? Oh, this is really a can of worms.
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 498: The west-side story here, reduced to its elements: “Manhattan” is a movie about a five-foot middle-aged Jew who beds a sweet 17-year-old girl, breaks her heart when he leaves her for someone else and only comes crawling back when he gets dumped. It is not simply that so many of us were so besotted with the film for so long; it’s that we were perfectly content to look and see the small tits and the virgin butt. The problem was an addiction to “the self-gratifying view,’’ Mr. Allen suggested - having made another movie about how he relentlessly does what he pleases. Butt on fire. Joey Buttafuoco quickly became an object of derision, the butt of the joke instead of Allen.
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 608: The prefect says that he and his police detectives have searched D-'s town house and have found nothing. They checked behind the wallpaper and under the carpets. His men have examined the tables and chairs with magnifying glasses and then probed the cushions with needles but have found no sign of interference; the letter is not hidden in these places. Dupin asks the prefect if he knows what he is seeking, and the prefect reads a minute description of the letter, which Dupin memorizes. The prefect then bids them good day.
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 796: Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. Kohta kuului rapina, vähän kovempi jo kapina.
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 798: Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore— Kurkistanpa räppänästä, näkyykö jälki käppänästä,
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 813: Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!” Plutoko vai Hansuko? Vielä kerran arvaanko?
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 831: “Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store Mut siinähän se kaikki on mitä osaa taidoton.
xxx/ellauri086.html on line 840: Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— mietin että mitäpä tämä outo elävä,
xxx/ellauri087.html on line 357: In essence Keynes finds that Moore's apostles adopted his religion meaning one's attitudes towards oneself and the ultimate (Mr. Moore), but ignored his morals, whatever they might be, besides taking in pretty boys from behind like Socrates. What are they pray? Let's give G.E. himself the floor!
xxx/ellauri087.html on line 359: It appears to me that in Ethics, as in all other philosophical studies, the difficulties and disagreements, of which its history is full, are mainly due to a very simple cause: namely to the attempt to answer questions, without first discovering precisely what question it is which you desire to answer.
xxx/ellauri087.html on line 616: Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is a theoretical framework which helps to understand and analyse the relationship between the human mind (what people think and feel) and activity (what people do). It traces its origins to the founders of the cultural-historical school of Russian psychology L. S. Vygotsky and Aleksei N. Leontiev. Tää oli Esa Sariolan lempilapsi, jonka se kiusasi höynähtäneitä veistoluokissa.
xxx/ellauri087.html on line 620: The term CHAT was coined by Michael Cole and popularized by Yrjö Engeström to promote the unity of what, by the 1990s, had become a variety of currents harking back to Vygotsky's work. Engeström's now famous diagram, or basic activity triangle, – (which adds rules/norms, intersubjective community relations, and division of labor, as well as multiple activity systems sharing an object) – has become the principal third-generation model among the research community for analysing individuals and groups. Engeström summarizes the current state of CHAT with five principles:
xxx/ellauri091.html on line 308: In scramble competition resources are limited, which may lead to group member starvation. Contest competition is often the result of aggressive social domains, including hierarchies or social chains. Conversely, scramble competition is what occurs by accident when competitors naturally want the same resources. These two forms of competition can be interwoven into one another. Some researchers have noted parallels between intraspecific behaviors of competition and cooperation. These two processes can be evolutionarily adopted and they can also be accidental, which makes sense given the aggressive competition and collaborative cooperation aspects of social behavior in humans and animals. To date, few studies have looked at the interplay between contest and scramble competition, despite the fact that they do not occur in isolation. There appears to be little understanding of the interface between contest competition and scramble competition in insects. Much research still needs to be conducted concerning the overlap of contest and scramble competition systems. Contests can arise within a scramble competition system and conversely, scramble competition "may play a role in a system characterized by interference".
xxx/ellauri091.html on line 327: In politics, left refers to people and groups that have liberal views. That generally means they support progressive reforms, especially those seeking greater social and economic equality. The far left is often used for what is considered more extreme, revolutionary views, such as communism and socialism. Collectively, people and groups, as well as the positions they hold, are referred to as the Left or the left wing. What does right mean?
xxx/ellauri091.html on line 369: Right: Supports homeschooling and private schools. Generally not opposed to public education, but critical of what is taught.
xxx/ellauri091.html on line 388: Right: Believe private companies can provide healthcare services more efficiently than government-run programs. Oppose the Affordable Care Act. Insurance companies can choose what to cover and compete with each other. Healthcare is not a right.
xxx/ellauri091.html on line 526:

Its greatest claim to fame is that it has what-country-has-more-cars-than-people/">more cars than people, admittedly a big plus.

xxx/ellauri091.html on line 580:

In Bulgaria, you nod your head when you mean no and shake it for yes, and they revere an old blind lady named Vanga who what-mystic-bulgarian-peasant-baba-2363896">predicts the future. Cool!

xxx/ellauri091.html on line 585:

But they did invent the cheese slicer and also have more reindeer than anyone would ever need, so there’s that. They are way richer than us, which is somewhat irritating.

xxx/ellauri091.html on line 607:

Kudos to Lithuania for telling the Soviets to shove it back in 1990 and starting the breakup of that union. It’s also believed that Lithuanian culture survived the Iron Curtain thanks to secret home schools and alternative history texts, which makes its people sound really awesome. Isn't this just what we do? We are super-jealous of its surprisingly good basketball team.

xxx/ellauri091.html on line 623:

Mon dieu, man, what gives? How did France end up as only the 15th best European nation? Sacre bleu! 

xxx/ellauri091.html on line 635:

The Belgian fries here also destroy whatever Freedom Fries you’ll find in la République.

xxx/ellauri091.html on line 640:

And what about those tiny sausages from Vienna? How could you not like those, you heathen!

xxx/ellauri091.html on line 683:

Where would Western Civilization be without Greece? The sentinel of the Mediterranean gave us the democrats, the Olympics, sunny days, the Greek Salad, and what did they get in return from us? big fat Hollywood bosses.

xxx/ellauri091.html on line 819: John Raleigh Mott is an American like Emily Greene Balch, with whom he shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. He was born in Sullivan County in the state of New York on May 25, 1865. It was assumed that he would follow in the footsteps of his father, a timber merchant engaged in transporting timber on the tributaries of the Delaware River. But he was an avid reader, and the town’s Methodist minister persuaded his parents to allow him to continue his studies. For a long time the boy did not know what he wanted to be. His father hoped that he would return to the timber trade, while he himself vacillated between the church, law, and politics. But during his years of study he was stirred by the Gospel of Christ to mankind, and when the Y.M.C.A. asked him to become a traveling secretary among the students of American and Canadian universities he interpreted the offer as a call from the Lord. He answered the call. It did not take him back to the Delaware River. It sent him out into the wide world and it has brought him here today.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 162: Drivel has written drivel for The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Economist and many other suspect economically liberal publications. In July 2005, Shriver began writing a column for The Guardian, in which she shared her low opinion on maternal wards within Western society, the pettiness of British tax authorities, and the importance of libraries (she plans to hide whatever assets remain at her death in the Belfast Library).
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 185: When photos of the party circulated on social media, campus-wide outrage ensued. Administrators sent multiple emails to the “culprits” threatening an investigation into an “act of ethnic stereotyping.” Partygoers were placed on “social probation,” while the two hosts were ejected from their dorm and later impeached. Bowdoin’s student newspaper decried the attendees’ lack of “basic empathy.” I wonder what that meant. Must look up the word in the dictionary someday.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 190: Now, I am a little at a loss to explain what’s so insulting about a sombrero – a practical piece of headgear for a hot climate that keeps out the sun with a wide brim. And what's so insulting about shackles - a practical way to keep a cotton worker focused on his work. My parents went to Mexico when I was small, and brought a sombrero back from their travels, the better for my brothers and I to unashamedly appropriate the souvenir to play dress-up. For my part, as a German-American on both sides, I’m more than happy for anyone who doesn’t share my genetic pedigree to don a Tyrolean hat, pull on some leiderhosen, pour themselves a weisbier, and belt out the Hoffbrauhaus Song. (Leiderhosen? weisbier? Damn what ignoramus. But she is American, remember. Donald Trump is an expatriate German too. Hitler was an expatriate Austrian. Bet he had a Tirolean hat, a green one like aunt Inkeri.)
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 192: The ultimate endpoint of keeping out mitts off experience that doesn’t belong to us is that there is no fiction left. Harry Potter would not exist, because we are all muddleheads. Or what was it, muggles?
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 193: But what does this have to do with writing fiction? The moral of the sombrero scandals is clear: you’re not supposed to try on other people’s hats. Yet that’s what we’re paid to do, isn’t it? Step into other people’s shoes, and try on their hats. Try their underwear for size. Make fun of them when they don't say Calvin Klein, or have skidmarks on them.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 196: Yet were their authors honouring the new rules against helping yourself to what doesn’t belong to you, we would not have Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. We wouldn’t have most of Graham Greene’s novels, many of which are set in what for the author were foreign countries, and which therefore have Real Foreigners in them, who speak and act like foreigners, too. (Malcolm Lowry's book has been mentioned, it is pure drivel. Grandma Greene is another lousy driveler.)
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 200: We wouldn’t have Maria McCann’s erotic masterpiece, As Meat Loves Salt – in which a straight woman writes about gay men in the English Civil War. Though the book is nonfiction, it’s worth noting that we also wouldn’t have 1961’s Black Like Me, for which John Howard Griffin committed the now unpardonable sin of “blackface.” Having his skin darkened – Michael Jackson in reverse – Griffin found out what it was like to live as a black man in the segregated American South. He’d be excoriated today, yet that book made a powerful social impact at the time.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 209: So far, the majority of these farcical cases of “appropriation” have concentrated on fashion, dance, and music: At the American Music Awards 2013, Katy Perry got it in the neck for dressing like a geisha. According to the Arab-American writer Randa Jarrar, for someone like me to practice belly dancing is “white appropriation of Eastern dance,” while according to the Daily Beast Iggy Azalea committed “cultural crimes” by imitating African rap and speaking in a “blaccent.” Some of my friends got even told off for painting themselves black with shoe polish and making fat red lips! Now what may be wrong with that, I just ask. Clean innocent fun! Why don't the coons just laugh along?
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 212: Seriously folks, we have people questioning whether it’s appropriate for white people to eat pad Thai. (Oh, I read that bit already, Sorry. Ok I was here:) Turnabout, then: I guess that means that as a native of North Carolina, I can ban the Thais from eating barbecue. (I bet they’d swap.) (What? Swap what? Barbecue is really icky gooey meaty stuff, only North Carolinans can like that.)
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 218: As for the culture police’s obsession with “authenticity,” fiction is inherently inauthentic. It’s fake. It’s self-confessedly fake; that is the nature of the form, which is about people who don’t exist and events that didn’t happen. The name of the game is not whether your novel honours reality; it’s all about what you can get away with. Well mine is anyway, I don't know about you. I try to get away with anything that is not nailed or welded fast.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 223: Hold it. OK, he’s necessarily “representing” his characters, by portraying them on the page. But of course he’s using them for his plot! How could he not? They are his characters, to be manipulated at his whim, to fulfill whatever purpose he cares to put them to.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 226: Of course he’s exploiting her. It’s his book, and he made her up. He owns her, she is her property. He is free to fuck her, rape her, do whatever he wants. The character is his creature, to be exploited up a storm. Yet the reviewer chides that “special care should be taken with a story that’s not implicitly yours to tell” and worries that “Cleave pushes his own boundaries maybe further than they were meant to go.”
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 227: What stories are “implicitly ours to tell,” and what boundaries around our own lives are we mandated to remain within? I would argue that any story you can steal is yours to tell, and trying to push the boundaries of the author’s personal experience by usurping other people's is part of a fiction writer’s job. At least of drivelists like me.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 229: I’m hoping that crime writers, for example, don’t all have personal experience of committing murder. Me, I’ve depicted a high school killing spree, and I hate to break it to you: I’ve never shot fatal arrows through seven kids, a teacher, and a cafeteria worker, either. We make things up, we chance our arms, sometimes we do a little research, but in the end it’s still about what we can get away with – what we can put over on our readers. And it is surprisingly easy, you wouldnt believe what the idiots are ready to swallow, especially if it agrees with their own prejudice.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 243: For it can be dangerous these days to go the diversity route. Especially since there seems to be a consensus on the notion that San Francisco reviewer put forward that “special care should be taken with a story that’s not implicitly yours to tell.” Why on earth? Isn't it just the opposite? If it is somebody else's story you are free to do whatever you want, since you don't know it, so you can give free reins to your imagination! Chances are your all-white panel don't know the people either, so anything goes.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 254: Especially for writers from traditionally privileged demographics, the message seems to be that it’s a whole lot safer just to make all your characters from that same demographic, so you can be as hard on them as you care to be, and do with them what you like. Availing yourself of a diverse cast, you are not free; you have inadvertently invited a host of regulations upon your head, as if just having joined the EU. Use different races, ethnicities, and minority gender identities, and you are being watched.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 257:

I’m from a small rural community, and ev’rybody who lived in my neighborhood, if you want to call it that, were relatives.  We called it “the circle,” and our house was there, my grandmother’s house was there, an aun’ an’ uncle who were childless lived there, and (uh) a couple of aunts an’ uncles who had children.  There were five female cousins, an’ in the summertime we hung out together all day long from early until late.  In my grandmother’s yard was a maple tree, and the five of us developed that into our apartment building.  Each of us had a limb, and [small laugh] the less daring cousins took the lo’er limbs, and I and another cousin a year younger than I always went as far to the top as we could, an’ we– we were kinda derisive of those girls who stayed with the lower limbs.  We had front doors an’ back doors.  The front door was the — the limb — were the limbs on the front, that were nearest (um) the boxwood hedge.  And the grass was all worn away in that area.  An’ then the back doorwa–was on the back side of the tree, an’ you could only enter the front an’ exit from the rear.  And that had to be done by swinging off a limb that was fairly high off the ground, and (um) my cousin Belinda and I had no problem with that, but the other girls — that was always somethin’ we had to coax them into doin’.  But still, you entered the front, you left the rear.  We (um) ate our lunches together.  When it was lunchtime — an’ our mothers always cooked lunch in the summertime ’cause they didn’ want to be in the hot kitchen at night.  So we would just take our (um) — go home, an’ we’d load our plates with all the vegetables an’ the cornbread, an’ get our glasses of milk or ice tea or whatever we were havin’, an’ we would head for somebody’s yard, where we would all sit down an’ eat together.  It was just an institution:  lunch in somebody’s yard.  An’ if you wanted to go home for a second helping– sometimes that was quite a little walk, but it was worth it, because that was our thing, having lunch together, every day.  (Um) We gathered at my grandmother’s on Sundays.  All my aunts would get those chairs, form a circle.  (Uh) One crocheted.  (Uh) Most of them just sat an’ talked, an’ we girls hung out for the main part with the women.  (Uh) The men would gather around the fish pond, which was in a side yard.  It was (um) — it was kind of a rock (um) pond that my granddaddy had, had built.  There was a ir’n pipe in the middle, an’ when he went fishin’, he would put his catch in there.  Or he caught a mud turtle, he’d put it in there.  An’ there it stayed until it was time to kill it an’ cook it, whatever it was.  The pipe in the middle had water that sprayed up all the time.  There was a locust tree near there, an’ that’s where we girls picked the leaves an’ the thorns to make the doll clothes out o’ the locust.  It’s where we always ate the watermelon.  We always had to save the rind, an’ we always had to leave some pink on that rind, because my grandmother made watermelon pickles out o’ that rind.  I hated the things.  I thought they were the worst things I ever put in my mouth.  But ever’body else thought watermelon pickles were just a great delicacy.  That was also around the time that ev’rybody grew gladiolias [sic] an’ I thought they were the ugliest flower I’d ever laid my eyes on, but ever’body had gladiolias.  ‘Course now I’ve come to appreciate the gladiolia, but back then I had absolutely no appreciation for it.  It was also where we made (uh) ice cream, (uh) on the front porch.  We made ice cream on Sunday afternoons.  I had an aunt who worked in the general mercantile business that my family owned, an’ she was only home on Sunday, so she baked all day:  homemade rolls an’ cakes.  And so, she made cakes an’ we made ice cream, an’ ever’body wan’ed to crank, of course.  (Um) That was just a big treat, to get to crank that ice cream.  It was jus’ our Sunday afternoon thing, an’ I, I think back on it.  All the aunts would sit around an’ they’d talk, an’ they’d smoke.  Even if you never saw those ladies smoke, any other time o’ the week.  On Sunday afternoon when we all were gathered about in gran- in granny’s yard, they’d have a cigarette.  Just a way of relaxing, I suppose.  The maple tree’s now gone.  In later years, it was thought the maple tree, our apartment building, was shading the house too much an’ causing mildew, so it was removed at some point.  And I don’t, to this day, enjoy lookin’ (uh) into that part o’ the yard. …

xxx/ellauri103.html on line 264: Now I proceed to the topic "The left’s embrace of gotcha hypersensitivity inevitably invites backlash." Why, it’s largely in order to keep from losing my fictional mojo that I stay off Facebook and Twitter, which could surely install an instinctive self-censorship out of fear of attack. Ten years ago, I gave the opening address of this same festival, in which I maintained that fiction writers have a vested interest in protecting everyone’s right to offend others – because if hurting someone else’s feelings even inadvertently is sufficient justification for muzzling, there will always be someone out there who is miffed by what you say, and freedom of speech is dead. Why, freedom of speech is just about miffing! What's the use of the freedom if you are not allowed to miff! With the rise of identity politics, which privileges a subjective sense of injury as actionable basis for prosecution, that is a battle that in the decade since I last spoke in Brisbane we’ve been losing.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 266: Worse: the left’s embrace of gotcha hypersensitivity inevitably invites backlash. Donald Trump appeals to people like me who have had it up to their eyeballs with being told what they can and cannot say. Pushing back against a mainstream culture of speak-no-evil suppression, they lash out in defiance, and then what they say is pretty appalling. I actually think President Trump is a real cool guy. Especially I love his hair, it most definitely is not black and curly like that other president's.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 268: Regarding identity politics, what’s especially saddened me in my recent career is a trend toward rejecting the advocacy of anyone who does not belong to the group. In 2013, I published Big Brother, a novel that grew out of my loss of my own older brother, who in 2009 died from the complications of morbid obesity. I was moved to write the book not only from grief, but also sympathy of morbid obesity: in the years before his death, as my brother grew heavier, I saw how dreadfully other people treated him – how he would be seated off in a corner of a restaurant, how the staff would roll their eyes at each other after he’d ordered, though he hadn’t requested more food than anyone else. Just a little wafer, is all.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 279: Membership of a larger group is not an identity. Being Asian is not an identity. Being gay is not an identity. Being deaf, blind, or wheelchair-bound is not an identity, nor is being economically deprived. Now what is an identity then? Silly, it is the number on your ID card! That's an identity! Everybody is unique, and I in particular am special! There are no classes except singletons! We are haecceitates every one of us. Us? There is no such thing as us, there is just me and me and me ... and me myself.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 288: The spirit of good fiction is one of exploration, generosity, curiosity, audacity, and compassion. Writing during the day and reading when I go to bed at night, I find it an enormous relief to escape the confines of my own head. Even if novels and short stories only do so by creating an illusion, fiction helps to fell the exasperating barriers between us, and for a short while allows us to behold the astonishing reality of other people. And it really is astonishing what the other people do, at least the way I see it.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 290: The last thing we fiction writers need is restrictions on what belongs to us. In a recent interview, our colleague Chris Cleave conceded, “Do I as an Englishman have any right to write a story of a Nigerian woman? … I completely sympathise with the people who say I have no right to do this. My only excuse is that I do it well.”
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 318: So what did happen? What did Shriver say in her keynote that could drive a woman who has heard every slur under the sun to discard social convention and make such an obviously political exit?
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 325: Shriver began by making light of a recent incident in the US, where students faced prosecution for what was argued by some as “casual racial and ethnic stereotyping and cultural insensitivity” at a Mexican-themed party.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 332: As the chuckles of the audience swelled around me, reinforcing and legitimising the words coming from behind the lectern, I breathed in deeply, trying to make sense of what I was hearing. The stench of privilege hung heavy in the air, and I was reminded of my “place” in the world.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 343: The attitude drips of racial supremacy, and the implication is clear: “I don’t care what you deem is important or sacred. I want to do with it what I will. Your experience is simply a tool for me to use, because you are less human than me. You are less than human…”
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 346: My own mother, as we walked away from the tent, suggested that perhaps I was being too sensitive. Perhaps … or perhaps that is the result of decades of being told to be quiet, and accept our place. So our conversation then turned to intent. What was Shriver’s intent when she chose to discuss her distaste for the concept of cultural appropriation? Was it to build bridges, to further our intellect, to broaden horizons of what is possible?
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 436: Rowling had barfed harmful and disproven beliefs about what it means to be a transgender person.” Her views on “marginalised people are out of step with the Harry Potter community, and more in line with the Voldemort community.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 507: Doonesbury sarjakuvaa ei muista kukaan, varsinkaan sen jälkeen kun Gary Trudeau (ihan aiheesta) 2015 kritisoi Charlie Hebdon piirtäjiä "for punching downward..., attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons", and thereby wandering "into the realm of hate speech" with cartoons of Muhammad. Muiden pöyristyneiden öykkärien joukossa joku paska David Frum "criticized what he called Trudeau's moral theory that holds "the privilege-bearer responsible". Eihän se nyt käy, privilege on privilege, Mariallakin oli sellainen, eikä sitä siltäkään otettu pois. Rääppä humanistiystävineen piti rinnassa "Je suis Charlie" läppyjä. Charlie Chaplin lie ollut kyseessä.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 556: The public outcry today over the company´s labor conditions is a shadow of what it once was.
xxx/ellauri103.html on line 604: Why are some Americans so interested in knowing what race Spaniards and Italians are? Why is this such a big deal in America?
xxx/ellauri104.html on line 255: The truth is this: Neurotransmitters are always regulated for optimal performance due to a process called Homeostasis. This is the body's naturally intelligent way of regulating itself by creating a optimal condition using whatever resources is available to the body to make it as healthy as possible. Therefore there is no such thing as too much or too little of neurotransmitters, unless you have a state of malnourishment.
xxx/ellauri104.html on line 1297: - Tieteellinen todistusaineisto osoittaa vastaansanomattomasti että homosexuaalisuus on ihmisen psykosexuaalisen kehityxen häiriö. Päivin tiedot on peräsin lääketieteen opinnoista 1978-1984, "lähinnä psykoanalyyttisesta tutkimussuunnasta." Joku yhtä sivistymätön tv-persoona on tietävinään v. 2018 tutkimuxesta että homous riippuu äidin kohdun hormoonitasosta. Genetiikka selittää muutaman prosentin tapauxia. So what? Mitä tekemistä etiologialla on homofobian kanssa? Ei tätä jaxa erkkikään.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 52: With gravity, this high-energy/short-distance correspondence breaks down. If you could collide two particles with center-of-mass energy much larger than the Planck scale, then when they collide their wave packets would contain more than the Planck energy localized in a Planck-length-sized region. This creates a black hole. If you scatter them at even higher energy, you would make an even bigger black hole, because the Schwarzschild radius grows with mass. So the harder you try to study shorter distances, the worse off you are: you make black holes that are bigger and bigger and swallow up ever-larger distances. No matter what completes general relativity to solve the renormalizability problem, the physics of large black holes will be dominated by the Einstein action, so we can make this statement even without knowing the full details of quantum gravity.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 70: Hawking ja Thorne hävisivät vedon Preskillille, info ei häviä mustassa aukossa, se vaan mukiloidaan tuntemattomaxi. “I am sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes. If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognisable state.” Thorne ei ole vielä vakuuttunut, mutta se onkin vielä elossa. Se seisoo yhä Hawkingin hartioilla, jotka olivat kyllä ihan lysyssä.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 110: Determinismi on eri asia kuin ennustettavuus, on jo moneen kertaan hoettu, ja sen toteaa myös Tapani. Mitä iloa ja toisaalta haittaakaan on determinismistä, jos siitä ei seuraa ennustettavuutta? Ei mitään. Rikos ja rangaistus-teemaan sillä ei liioin ole mitään annettavaa. Eikä kvanttifysiikallakaan. Lähes 100% todennäköisyys on lähes yhtä hyvä asia kuin tosiasia, toisaalta sattuma ei ole mikään ihme, jollei se vedä systemaattisesti kotiinpäin. So what's the problem Stephen?
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 220: Personally, as someone with no religious beliefs, I’d feel a bit weird about the idea that someone might launch my ashes into space after my death. Sort of seems like a terrible waste of rocket power. It’s irrelevant what happens to my ashes after death.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 223: Westminster Abbey, whatever else it is, is a tourist attraction. Not a tacky one, but a rather nice and tasteful one.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 496: This is what Dawkins has written about the origin of life:
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 498: We have no evidence about what the first step in making life was, but we do know the kind of step it must have been. It must have been whatever it took to get natural selection started . . . by some process as yet unknown.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 500: The above quote is a classic example of evolution being a god-of-the-gaps explanation. There is a total gap in what evolution can explain about the origin of life, and Dawkins invokes the god of evolution to fill in the gap and asserts that natural selection “must” have gotten started somehow. But natural selection by itself cannot create anything; it can only select from things already created.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 502: How dense can these creation types really be? Wanting very much for something to be true turns people into imbeciles. The least one can say for Dawkins is that he knows what he doesn´t know. He his happy to just wait and see. One of my daughters challenged the teacher and said, “Miss, you keep saying ‘evolution did it,’ but you never actually explain how evolution did it.” The teacher had to confess that my daughter made a valid criticism, and the rest of class agreed. So what? How did god create the snake? Did he roll it like Gary Larson shows, or did he use some other method? Did he just make a hypnotic gesture? (Yes, see below.)
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 264: This is what the Lord Almighty says:
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 282: (From my days as a business consultant, I remember hearing one of the owners of a client company talking on the phone in a language I didn’t recognize. When he hung up I asked what language he had been speaking. “It was Farsi,” he said, “the Persian language.” “Then you’re an Arab,” I responded.
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 293: LET’S TRY TO BE MORE CAREFUL. I think there are a number of people today who are guilty of interpreting Bible prophecy in light of current events when the reverse is supposed to happen. We are supposed to interpret current events in light of Bible prophecy. These people read the world news and then scour the Bible for prophetic verses that seem to fit without fully researching their history to see to what extent they’ve already been fulfilled. Many of them are novices where Bible prophecy is concerned, but some should know better.
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 297: I frankly can’t say how or when God will restore Elam’s fortunes. But based on what I know currently, I am not comfortable with the substitution of Iran for Elam in Jeremiah 49:34-39. The truth is, we don’t need Jeremiah 49 to know what will happen to Iran, and the Bible doesn’t say how or when Elam’s fortunes will be restored. The only thing we know for sure is that God said it and therefore He will do it.
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 299: I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times what is still to come. I say, My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please (Isaiah 46:10).
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 348: Based on existing conditions in the world today we would interpret this prophecy as pertaining to Jordan. But this could all change with the Battle of Psalm 83 when Edom, Moab, and Ammon could come under Israel’s control again. Is that what will prevent the anti-Christ from conquering them, or is there more to it?
xxx/ellauri116.html on line 270: Don Rigoberto is, by far, the novel's most interesting character, not because he is especially complex but because Vargas Llosa relishes in his quirks and describes them in titillating detail, creating what Anthony Burgess calls "the pornography of hygiene."
xxx/ellauri116.html on line 387: Scholars and journalists often accuse de Beauvoir of publicly masking painful bouts of jealousy. While her inner emotional life is unclear, what’s evident is the manipulative, often dishonest, and arguably cruel treatment to which both Sartre and de Beauvoir subjected much-younger female consorts.
xxx/ellauri120.html on line 64: No, Freud was rong! Many basic tenets of Freud’s theory have been completely disproved. To name several: Psychosexual stages. The Oedipal complex. Belief that repressed memories from the first year of life can be unearthed. Sexual fantasy about intercourse with a parent is responsible for hysteria. Even more damning, his methods and procedures cannot be called scientific, his evidence lacks scientific credibility, and what is offered as evidence was sometimes fudged, if not outright fabricated. Not surprisingly, Freud is absented from contemporary psychological pedagogy, theory, and research. Claiming, “Freud is right!” is akin to shouting, “Long live the king!”; historical curiosities, both.
xxx/ellauri120.html on line 99: whatever gets it ready, in position.
xxx/ellauri120.html on line 101: whatever helps it get a running start.
xxx/ellauri120.html on line 111: Only hatred has just what it takes.
xxx/ellauri120.html on line 353: In Petronius's Satyricon, Trimalchus (pro Trimalchio) finds her shriveled to a tiny lump and kept alive in a jar. He asks her, "Sibyl, what do you want?" (in Greek, Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; pronounced more or less "Sibylla, ti theleis"). She replies, "I want to die" (in Greek, ἀποθανεῖν θέλω, pronounced "apothanein thelo"). I learned this, as you did, not from reading the Satyricon, but from beating T S Eliot's The Waste Land to death in my English Lit class.
xxx/ellauri120.html on line 359: "Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo." I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10 And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. In the mountains, there you feel free. I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, 20 You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. 30 Frisch weht der Wind Der Heimat zu Mein Irisch Kind, Wo weilest du? "You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; "They called me the hyacinth girl." - Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, 40 Looking into the heart of light, the silence. Öd’ und leer das Meer.
xxx/ellauri120.html on line 467: You think I'm jokin' but you better believe what I say
xxx/ellauri121.html on line 287: Vanhemmistaan Atwood huomauttaa: "They weren't very actively encouraging; I think their theory was to leave kids alone... I call that encouraging. The idea of parents hovering over you the whole time, making you take lessons and occupying every minute of your time, I think is probably quite bad, because it means the child has no room to invent. I did have this older brother who was very instructive, who liked passing on to me whatever information he'd acquired; it meant we didn't play dollies a lot; we'd line up our - few, I'd have to say, because it was the war, you know - our few stuffed animals and then we'd have the Battle of Waterloo."
xxx/ellauri121.html on line 314: The books he wrote were never “hot”, but they were never read, so no harm done. His novels were well crafted but never quite took off — what the French call connerie pure. In 1996, he decided to stop writing novels altogether, and concentrate on childcare and cooking & laughing at Peggy's jokes. Kinda ironic given they didnt ever marry tho. It’s as if he made sure to stick around long enough for her new sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale – The Testaments – to be published. Considerate.
xxx/ellauri121.html on line 334: In her admiring new biography of Margaret Atwood, Rosemary Sullivan passes on a story about the writer that vividly catches her youthful ambition. One day when she was in her mid-20s, she dropped in at the home of poet John Newlove, who had been drinking heavily with his friend fellow Prairie writer Patrick Lane. The men’s conversation about literature had degenerated into a series of long silences punctuated by the occasional pseudoprofound utterance. Frustrated, Atwood cut to the heart of the matter, demanding to know what their poetic ambitions were. After some drunken dithering, the two declared that what they wanted most was to win a Governor General’s Award. As Lane recalled later, Atwood was indignant at their modest expectations, declaring tartly that the only goal worth pursuing was the Nobel Prize. Swigging down her beer, she then left the room.
xxx/ellauri121.html on line 476: -To learn ways you can ready your heart for what you will experience, click HERE.
xxx/ellauri121.html on line 482: Bring a Bible. A penis nice to have but not a must (we have them on store), and a Hewlett Packard notebook so you can capture whatever God speaks to your heart. Bring cash. And some shit for my fly.
xxx/ellauri121.html on line 490: Or rather, what should you purchase. Our bestseller is
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 186: Don't forget to practise what you've learned with the activity further down this page. Listen to some examples of dialogues featuring sarcastic remarks
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 192: Oh terrific / great / brilliant! That's just what I need.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 195: Well what a surprise!
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 204: Watch the language of sarcasm. There are no fixed rules about what language to use when being sarcastic, but the following features are quite common (but this language is used when people aren't being sarcastic too!):
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 229: Great! That's just what we need!
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 244: So then we visited an enormous steam train museum and you can just imagine what fun that was (!).
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 246: Or use clarifying emoticons like the one below. You can also wear a ladies t-shrirt with a sarcasm emoji on it. Remember to remove it when you really mean what you say. Don't worry, boobs are neutral (:

xxx/ellauri122.html on line 759: A: Most Europeans would know that the US has some 300 to 350 million people, yes. They would probably guess closer to 300 million, because that’s what many of them would remember from school.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 787: Left tormented and in isolation, the innocent creature turns on his creator in this eloquent Gothic thriller, which touches the hearts of readers with its messages of the dangers of science and human judgment. This helps appreciate pro life ideas: do not meddle with what belongs to Mighty Mouse territory.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 792: While Kafka had intended for the story to be burned after his death, his friend Max Brod pressed forward to prepare it for publication. Franz was right. The two met as teenagers, following a talk Brod gave about Arthur Schopenhauer at a students’ Union Club on Prague’s Ferdinandstrasse. One of their first conversations concerned Nietzsche’s attack on Schopenhauer’s renouncement of the self. Pretty quickly the two curious minds became inseparable, usually meeting twice daily to discuss life, literature, philosophy, and whatever other topics might randomly arise. Like sex...
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 808: With characters that are semi-autobiographical, O'Brien creates a style that blurs fiction and non-fiction. Vietnam was not so bad after all, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 885: A frightening tale about good and evil and what it means to be free as humans, 'A Clockwork Orange' is told through the central character, Alex, who recounts his violent encounters with state authorities who are intent on reforming him.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 903: 'The Stranger' explores what Camus termed 'the nakedness of man faced with the absurd' through the story of a man who is drawn into a murder.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 908: Malcolm Gladwell explores the world of 'outliers' -- the world's brightest, most successful, and most famous people, and questions what makes these high-achievers different from others.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 938: Concern for others complicates the simple logic of self-preservation, and creates its own Catch-22: life is not worth living without the well-being of others, but the well-being of others endangers one’s life. Ergo self preservation sucks. So does war, for whatever cause.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 1025: Then there was Barbie; the bold doll who stood alone. She was successful, rich, mega-famous, and single. She was teaching America’s female youth that this too is what to expect out of life.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 1053: mom Ma Roberts (computer specialist, what else)
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 1092: Capote was born Truman Streckfus Persons in New Orleans, Louisiana, on September 30, 1924. His father, Arch Persons, was a well-educated ne'er-do-well from a prominent Alabama family, and his mother, Lillie Mae Faulk, was a pretty and ambitious young woman so anxious to escape the confines of small-town Alabama that she married Arch in her late teens. Capote's early childhood with Arch and Lillie Mae was marked by neglect and painful insecurity that left him with a lifelong fear of abandonment. His life gained some stability in 1930 when, at age six, he was put in the care of four elderly, unmarried cousins in Monroeville, Monroe County. He lived there full-time for three years and made extended visits throughout the decade. Capote was most influenced by his cousin Sook, who adored him and whom he celebrated in his writings. He also forged what would become a lifelong friendship with next-door neighbor Nelle Harper Lee, who later won the Pulitzer Prize for her book, To Kill a Mockingbird. Capote appears in the novel as the character Dill.
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 1202: "It has everything to do with the desperate desire to get married," she said. "A woman here is brought up for two things: marriage and motherhood. Valeria is the ultimate demonstration of what a Ukrainian woman is willing to do to herself. I bet Barbie is exactly what men dream about."
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 1205: "Those who are unsatisfied with what I do and critique me and offend me clearly don't have the same figure as I do," she said. "Otherwise they would not be so negative. They are openly jealous."
xxx/ellauri122.html on line 1206: Lukyanova is starkly against having children herself. "The very idea of having children brings out this deep revulsion in me." "It's not what being classy is all about. It's not about men or kids."
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 559: In the end, what helped me the most was an exercise you could file under “youthful naïvete:” I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down “my 30 guiding principles.” Most of them were simple, like “Let go what must be let go,” “Simplify,” and, “Have no secrets.” I still have the list. It’s on my pinboard. I’m looking at it right now. So why was I naïve to create it?
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 561: First of all, I didn’t know that what I’d come up with weren’t actually principles. They were just rules.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 569: That´s what us monkeys are like: we love rules and we like getting spanked too. Makes us feel better apes, holier than thou anyway.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 575: Today, what I’m most interested in is neither principles nor rules, but what lives in-between. That’s one of the many lessons I learned along the way: Each rule may have a lifecycle, but that cycle can repeat many times in one life. So if a rule somehow keeps reappearing, keeps proving itself as useful, and continues to hurt if I break it, that rule catches my attention.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 593: Like my own rules, they’re all quite simple, but much closer to timeless principles. So whoever you are, wherever you sit, whatever you are holding on your hand: Thank you.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 611: Sometimes, even what heals leaves a scar. Those will be with us forever. The least we can do is let them mend properly. And wear a scarf.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 615: Most of our scars come from wounds inflicted by other people (see rule 6). Words can hurt us more than weapons. But it’s not your job to imagine what arrows people might point at you inside their heads. The majority will never fire. What you think of them they could care less.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 619: Instead of taking shots at others, most people decide to draw up — and lose at — another imagined game: Who’s better? It’s a moot question. We have no idea what anyone’s story is like up to the page on which we meet them.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 623: Okay, I know, this is pure baloney! Comparing is part of competition, and strife is what
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 628: If you’re not supposed to think about others, nor what they think, what are you supposed to mull over? Yourself? Actually, it’s fine to not think so much at all. Answers often come to you when you least expect it. You are probably too stupid anyway, if you hang around this self-help page.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 634: At the end of the day, what you desire most in life only you can give to yourself. You already have everything. Right inside. Feel your pants. Point at your crotch. There. That’s where happiness is.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 636: We spend all this time looking for something we can’t see because it’s not there. The outside world is only as good as what you do with everything that happens in it. Are you cultivating your experiences? Cherishing them?
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 686: If you’ll allow me, I’d love to share my latest work with you. To respect your time, I’ll only email you when I’ve created something meaningful. That’s what friends do, don’t they? You can sign up below or go here.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 1051: don't know what is. Arresting, as well as disgusting, to suddenly notice that Lolita (who died giving birth to a stillborn girl, for Christ's sake) would have been 86 this year. … the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force d'age; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert—or was it green rot?—bizarre, tender, salivating Dr. Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad.
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 1254: Q: According to Dante´s Inferno, what circle of Hell is for pedophiles?
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 1259: If you paid a prostitute for sex, and she then told you she will perform the services you paid for only because she is forced to, then what would you do?
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 1271: Q: If Christians say God can forgive any sin, what about murder, pedophilia? I’m considering becoming a Christian, but don’t agree with this logic.
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 135: And she (April, not Tine for heaven's sake) is one of three busty £2,000 latex sex dolls with whom her husband enjoys what you might describe as an unconventional love life.
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 141: James said: "Every guy has in his head the perfect girl and this is what I see when I look in the mirror and see this look. Most manufacturers make them look something in the region of 20 years old. For a man of my age it's a fantasy because I will never be a Brad Pitt or something like that.
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 144: "We usually have sex two to three sometimes four nights a week routinely. It's amazingly like having sex with a real woman. Compared to Tine, the biggest difference is whatever position you want them in you have to put them in, as they will not get there on their own.
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 145: "Every guy knows what it is like to slap a woman on the butt and this is not unlike the real thing."
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 147: "The sexual aspect of doll ownership is a very small part of it, what you find more pleasure from in the long run is looking after them, dressing them, putting on their make up and interacting with them. I feel deeply for her, more deeply than I had ever imagined. It's more like being in relationship with a sheep.
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 149: "Most doll owners although they do go into with the doll as a sex toy they find they do do develop a relationship with it. If I had to choose between April and my wife I honestly don't know what I would do."
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 157: One worker Susan is trying to add electronics to the vaginal inserts so the deeper and faster you go there are sounds like 'oooh' and 'ahhh' and then when you roll off her she will say "was that nice for you or whatever".
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 184: As a scholar of artificial intelligence, neuroscience and the law, I'm interested in the legal and policy questions that sex robots pose. How do we ensure safe sex? How will intimacy with a sex robot affect the human brain? How will intimacy with a sex maniac affect the robot brain? Would sex with a consensual child robot be ethical? And what exactly is a sexbot anyway?
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 188: Creator Ricky Ma Tsz Hang is quick to clarify that Mark 1 is not intended to be a sex robot. Rather, such robots will aim to assist with all sorts of tasks, from preparing a child's lunch to keeping an elderly relative company. So what's the big hairy diff between your wife and Samantha? For one thing, Sam is less hairy down there, unless you opt for the pubic hair extra. And most importantly, there is the blessed on/off button.
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 273: Juutalaisittain hartioita kohauttava hymiö tarkoittaa, ettei lähettäjä tiedä vastausta tai toteaa, ettei asialle ole mitään tehtävissä. Z-sukupolvelle tämä emoji tarkoittaa kutakuinkin lausetta”it is what it is”, se on mitä se on.
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 408: of pissed off texts. “Sometimes, I just have to do what my idol tells me to and
xxx/ellauri124.html on line 416: thanks for letting me know what your priorities are.”