Jamie123

It does seem incredible to me that my father, who is still alive (and still drives even!) lived right through World War II and can remember rationing, evacuations, air raids and friendly American GIs sharing out their chewing gum with the kids. Yet even back when I was at school, Nazi Germany belonged to comics, war movies and history books. It was not at all connected with the colourful modern Germany that school trips sometimes went to.

Only partially relevant I know, but I recently watched a video that argued it was not the bomb that caused Japan to surrender, but the fact that the Soviet Union chose that same moment to declare war. The Japanese knew they would need to surrender to someone (bomb or no bomb) and the Americans seemed like the softer option. The US promptly rewrote history to make their glorious bomb the big deciding matter. One could say that the Soviet invasion was triggered by the Americans' use of the bomb, but it was going to happen anyway whatever. Had Truman not given the order to drop it, that would only have delayed the inevitable. Another thing (not in this video): the Manhattan project was an international effort, not just purely American. There were British scientists at Los Alamos. After the war, Truman broke the agreement and made the bomb "USA only" - which achieved absolutely nothing except to make him look like a jerk. The British scientists just developed their own bomb at Harwell.

My Christmas Poem (writted by me for English class at the age of about 11): On Christmas Day was Jesus born In a stable dry and warm Sung by angels from the sky Seen by shepherds from the hills And the magi travelled far Led to the stable by a star

It's strange - the idea of decapitating the teacher (or throwing them to the sharks) stays funny even when you are the teacher. That's about the level of my ukulele playing: a five minute interval during each chord change. Not bad for a wee girl though.

In Dune, the still-suit reclaimed all bodily excretions and recovered the water in drinkable form (which the wearer could sip from a tube around the neck). I've often wondered how that would work, and if anyone will ever invent such a thing.

https://youtu.be/1AJmKkU5POA?si=509M2spbwAtEHx-g Michael Bubble* later married the blonde girl in that video and they now have 4 kids. She's Argentinian, though I wouldn't have said so looking at her. Yes I know it's Buble - with an accent on the e - but I enjoy being perverse. If Michael doesn't like it he can come and punch me in the gob.

Ozymandias "king of kings". I think Galadrial said "all shall love me and despair".

This is more like me at the moment: Long dreary text-debate with my wife this afternoon left me with little enthusiasm for life. Then thinking about the Gadianton robbers got me thinking about Adolf Hitler. Thinking about Adolf Hitler got me thinking about chocolate cake. Bought and ate an entire chocolate cake. Now feel very like the man in the picture (without the actual vomiting). The best I can say in my defence is I haven't actually turned to drink. That's even worse than chocolate cake. You wake up next morning with all your troubles still there, plus a splitting headache. You Latter-day types have the right idea about drink. P.S. Feeling a bit better now...

Maybe you're right in theory. But if a robber were to break into my house in the middle of the night, I wonder what the best method of repelling him would be? a. Singing songs of praises, to fill him with the terror of the Lord. b. Fooling him into thinking I was a 6ft tall body builder and had an 18 inch machete in my hand. (Assuming, of course, I had a means to pull this off.)

("Earth! render back from out thy breast...") Never seen that movie! It reminds me very much of Kenneth Branagh's Henry V:

You've set me a bit of a challenge here - to find an example of where the unrighteous were "scared away" by the righteous for any other reason than their righteousness. I can't help thinking that two thousand sword-wielding, spear waving stripling warriors bearing down on you would have been a fearsome sight whether they were righteous or not... But you could be right.

Woe be unto me for that too. ( In fact woe be unto me for a lot of things. My name is Legion.)

I think even God would agree that you cannot win a war without risking frightening the enemy.

Like I said, I'm not suggesting they were good guys. Do you think it would be OK to wear war paint made out of...ummm...whatever they made regular paint out of in those days to terrify your enemies in war? Or is it the very idea of terrifying your enemies in war that bothers you? Henry Vee would not agree... Woe be unto me then... Many a time I've had a steak when I could have gone for the vegan option.

Sorry Zil - I imagine this topic grosses you out (and I don't blame you) but if use of blood as war paint is wrong, we ought at least to ask why. Leviticus 17 clearly prohibits the drinking of blood, but... Exodus 12:7 - In the Passover, the blood of the sacrificed lamb is to be places on the sides and tops of the door frames. (When I did confirmation classes many years ago, some bright spark suggested that the "top and the sides" - being at 90 degrees to each other were a prefiguring of the cross. The priest teaching us admitted he had never thought of that before.) Leviticus 4:6-7 - The blood of the sacrificed bull is to be sprinkled in front of the sanctuary curtain, then placed on the horns of the altar. Blood was not to be imbibed, but it had its ceremonial uses. As for wearing blood as war paint, I can't help thinking of Revelation 19:11-16. Here Jesus appears and defeats the beast, and we know this is a reference to Jesus because "his name is the Word of God" ("Logos" from John 1). Verse 13 says "He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood" (presumably his own). I'm not saying the Gadianton robbers were good guys - I just don't see that their going to war smeared with blood is necessarily a black mark against them.

It probably won't be the last time. "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Only over "this wicked band". It sounds like the "king" was an irrelevance except to a very few people.

The law of Moses certainly prohibited them from drinking blood, but I'm interested in whether they were allowed to use it in other ways. (I have read the entire OT, but I don't have all the intricacies of Mosaic law memorised.) Also there is the matter of spin. Did the Gadianton people self-identify as "robbers", or is that just what their enemies called them? Perhaps they would have seen themselves as more like "freedom fighters".

I wouldn't attach too much weight to "sense of decency". What is considered "decent" changes from age to age. It wasn't all that long ago that ammonia extracted from human wee was used to bleach linen - disgusting though that sounds today.

I wonder whose blood it was - or maybe it wasn't human blood at all, but the blood of animals they had slaughtered anyway for food. Was there ever a prohibition against using animal blood as war paint?

It reminds me of the "Wheel of Fortune" I always interpreted the "Wheel" a little differently from this woman. I saw the wheel as constantly rotating: the man in squalor at the bottom if the wheel learns humility and hard work and so he rises and eventually becomes a king at the top, but then hubris and complacency set in and he gradually falls until he is back where he started and the cycle repeats - though I agree that would make the goddess "Fortuna" who turns the wheel a bit superfluous. I have seen this painting myself in Rochester Cathedral. The colours are amazingly vivid given that it is so old. It gives you a taste what our English churches must have been like before the Puritans got their mucky hands on them. P.S. the words to Carl Orff's Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi in English are: Fortune, like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing, ever waning, hateful life first oppresses and then soothes as fancy takes it; poverty and power it melts them like ice fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too; now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy fate is against me in health and virtue, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved. so at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings; since Fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me! It sounds like something Job might have said.

It's a never ending cycle isn't it? Things go bad, people repent, things turn good, people stop repenting, things go bad again until people start repenting again...etc.

It sounds very much like the promises of Hitler that Chamberlain trusted. "Peace in our time" etc.

The dates have to be at least 4 years out, as Jesus was born about 4BC. (We know this because that was when Herod died, so Jesus' birth couldn't have been born any later than that).